Bride of the wind....

Every once in a while something happens and people come up with good ideas. What happened this time was a case of writers block that did not see any writing from my end for over a month.
And the solution comes from half way across the world in the form of Ubermensch, who came up with the idea of guest blogging where we gave each other a theme, a line to begin with and one of those not so pretty things called deadlines.
So the result is here, and my piece is on his blog.

Thanks Uber for making this happen.

I'm leaving you to him-


Being is a fate of choice. Becoming, is a question of worth.
Between the door ajar of being and becoming life trickles slowly.

Your life like any others is a story of questions and answers.

You blindly cling on to the answers for a while, only to let them go later: to fly away, free and far; to whisper echoes into the blanks and spaces of your receding memory.
Spaces that you don’t know how to fill otherwise.

You just seek more answers. But then, what are answers anyway, but soon to be questions?

He thinks of all these with his head placed tenderly between her breasts and pubis, over the scaphoid of her belly.
She is asleep. And soon he falls into sleep too.

In the tiny miniscule of a moment of their orgiastic love making the questions and answers had faded away. Into erstwhile spaces and blanks.
++++

From the supple childhood right through the vagaries of the youth they tell you so many things imaginable about love.
What they don’t is what to do when in love?
In love you are left all by your own.
With your own spaces and blanks. May be that is what is love.

Then it so invariably happens: we wish to walk through the long corridors of this endless maze with the sunshine of our thoughts watering the plants of our laughters and sorrows.
In the summer the daisies smile.
After a while we might realize it is endless because it is a circle. A vicious circle, a circle we have bound ourselves forever unknowingly.
As the winter falls the light fades away. The daisies wilt.

Seasons circle.

If an answer is a singular radius of the memorable past, a circle can never expand; never be able to embrace the growing arms of the future.
And without growth a conscience ails. You suffer with your questions?

If otherwise the story is different, questions and answers sublimate. We both sail in the boat of myriad dimensions navigating through the spaces, filling the blanks.
++++

And one summer morning long ago, I had seen how the lines of light had runneled through your tresses when you had woken up from beside me after we had made love all night. At that precise moment, I knew I had seen the most beautiful of all the things I had ever seen in the history of my life. Or will. I felt as if I was not seeing myself from the outside of me for the first time; I was so overwhelmed that I wished to see it every morning for eternity.

I wonder if a Kokoschka would have felt as much when he painted all the blanks and spaces of his amber canvas into the bride of the wind.
I just wonder.

After all these winters, She still sleeps with her rodin head on my shoulders, her curve snuggly arched against me.
The spaces and blanks have been consigned to the ostriches of oblivion.

She gets up hurriedly from the bed and smiles levelling her tousled hair.

On the wall behind, hangs The Bride of the wind.





Kokoschka's Bride of the wind.

PS: Topic- Chaos of love and commitment.
Line suggested-What are answers anyway?

Do let us know if anyone else try out the same or anything similar.

Love letters

This is the story of a little girl. It might be like the story of many little girls you know. That little girl maybe you, for all you know.
So she is in the second grade. And her mother decides to throw her a birthday party.
There is this little boy.
He recieves an invitation to this party.
He gets the little girl a book. For the birthday.
The lost princess.
Later in one of the many notes they exchanged he told her that that was how she looked. The day he saw her.
As with all of us, time gently tugs these two people along. And they go to high school.
A bit about what happens with there lives and families in between. Her Mom is not in a very good relationship and things are not all sugar and cream for this little girl. She is loaded, though.
The little boy comes from a nice happy family, with a lot of love and all that blah.
So these two continue to exchange notes over the years. Our little boy is now a little man. But for reasons best known to me, we will still call him the little boy.
So he studies hard and goes to Law school. Harvard ofcourse.
In the meanwhile our little girl has not been very good.
She keeps skipping and getting thrown out of schools all over the place. Real muddled and confused in the head. Aching all over for something she can't put her finger on.
They continue to write to each other over the years.
Till one day they decide to meet. He gets a reservation at a hotel.
Does not go well. At all.
But they continue to write.
He is now a hot shot lawyer. And she an artist.
She gets married. Has children.
He gets married.
And has them too.
They continue to write.
About life.
Their less than perfect lives.
She is one of those troubled artists now.
He is running for senator.
A meeting happens. And a lot more. Between them.
The press gets to hear.
They try to keep it low.
Her marriage is broken. Loses custody of her daughters. Has a bit of a drinking problem. Is now trying to struggle and snuggle back into her past glory.
And some memories here and there.
So all in all, time goes by and they don't meet too much after that. He does not want to.
Till one day he writes.
No answer.
Writes again.
No answer.
Well.
Finally an answer.
She is not doing well.
At all.
She is infact in a home.
As soon as he gets that note, he says he is coming to meet her.
She tries to stop him.
And tells him " Andy, I will not be here by the time arrive tommorow".
He writes a letter to her mom. Which is how it started all those years ago. Sixty years ago.

Condolences.

And it ends. Before it even started.

And somewhere along the line where the stage goes dark and they play these lines from Simon and Garfunkel:
" I'm on your side...." you gasp a bit and try to stiffle those tears that are now coming real hard and you are trying to look for a tissue and its too dark and you have a feeling that the lady next to you is staring you hard in the face and that you just want to go on stage and take that bottle of scotch and just and sink into the floor. And weep.
Because you have a feeling. That this looks like the story of your life.

Love letters, a play by A. R. Gurney
Starring Rajat Kapoor and Shehnaz Patel
Prithvi theatre, Mumbai
August 2005