So..
Long time, no see. 

This one

Talks. And tries to make me

talk.

About my creative process as an artist and a writer

and my influences and my inspirations

and other bullshit people talk about.

I tell her that I write because

when it is 3 o'clock in the morning

and its a power cut and you're suffering

from chronic insomnia and you're drunk

and you've just

puked half your guts out

and you have a spare

flashlight,

there is nothing better to do.

Except make scary faces in the mirror I guess.

But that gets boring, eventually.

And she whines. Oh so much.

She tells me how she hates

Bengalis and Porcupine Tree and shallow people.

Makes plans about the future. For me too, which

slightly annoys me.

Makes the most amazing brownies. 

Writes poems.

Reads more than most. Then gets whinier.

Disappears. For days.

Because she can.

Makes me heart wrenchingly curious about

what she is doing right now.

Some chicks

just brighten up your day.

Fish curry and rice.

Four car pileup. He says. The car crashed into the truck

first.

Then the Tempo whammed into the car. Then the bus

hit the Tempo.

No one died though. Well, a dog did.

But that doesn't count.

Oh, a dumpster skidded on the broken glass and

collided with the divider

half an hour later.

I was there, he says, gnawing off the head of a fried fish

with his front teeth.

He had helped them

take out the bodies.

Seen a real live amputated leg

up close

for the first time in his life,

He smiles impatiently as he tells me.

Oh fun.

They serve good fish curry and rice here,

in this vermin infested, scavenger prone shithole

of a chai shop.

I often end up here in the evenings because there is

nothing else to do.

And their samosa paav is an commendable effort.

And it is right across the road from my favourite bar.

And because my only worry when I end up here

is how to balance the scalding teacup in one hand

and the cigarette in the other without burning myself

with either object.

I guess, there is no good fish or bad fish.

There is just, fish.

Unless you want to eat it.

Or it wants to eat you.

Wonder if they've moved the dead dog off the road yet.

Overdue.

Dear Blog,

Sometimes, when I write, I don't know who I am talking to. I never questioned my purpose to write when I started writing. It seemed worthless. I guess it was just that there was so much bile and shit and strangled words and almost-cliched thoughts which needed a secret box for safekeeping. If you were a notebook, you would be three and you would be lying between the broken table-lamp and the empty bottle of rum in my cupboard. I guess why I chose you over the notebooks was because I took a certain twisted pride in the fact that you were out in the open for everyone to see and yet, no one did. 'I need people around me to prove that I am a loner'. That I could purge myself of all unsaid, unfinished utterly useless bile and that you could take it, you inanimate object, you.

All said and done, you're just a trash can for me to dump dried remnants of washed up memories. But you're there, and that's a relief.

Thankyou, and belated happy birthday.

Me.

Indeterminate.

Backspace. Broken, twisted fingers as blood trickles downwards from the left arm and falls down on the already wet floor with a resounding, ominous plop.

Red.

Red has the maximum wavelength in all visible light. Things which we perceive to be red, blood, for example, absorb all other colours in white light and reflect red. Red of blood. Red of the panic button. Red of your full lips which, what with all their priceless little imperfections, I assure you, are still inviting. Red of the big red panic button.

I remember my Grandmother's hands. Long thin aged fingers covered with paper skin. Arms tanned so much that they looked like snakeskin in sunlight. And the small vitiligo patch near her right elbow which looked like a star on a dark horse's forehead. Her hands shook so much when she held a teacup that the rhythmic rattle of the teacup against the saucer echoed in the room. The rough papery warmth as she would hold my face in her hands and how they enveloped my entire universe and how she smelt of parsley and sandalwood and home.

I do not wish to write to be remembered. I have no story to tell. I have no wars to wage. No fight to win. My words do not have strength enough to propagate ideologies. Or overthrow them. My will is not patient enough to defend them. I am not an orphan. I am not a criminal. I have not seen the inside of a prison cell. I have not killed. I have not seen the night sky illuminated with the soft ethereal brilliance of the aurora among the millions of clear radiant stars so that it looks like the last remnants of a million of God's own Roman Candles. I have never experienced that infinite moment in time and space as I fall down from the sky with nothing but the earth below me and watch it accelerate towards me as I scramble for breath just as I scrambled for my first ever breath. I have never looked into a pair of eyes and in them realised my purpose in life. I have not lived enough. Leave me be. Leave me be. I do not wish to write to be remembered. I wish to write, to remember.