“The way complete beings find breaking” – Nayana Nair

.

You look at me
and I look at you
the way broken things look at the hands of an angry god,
the way complete beings look down
at things that can never be their equal.

You and me, we take turns,
learning to feel pain, to give pain
reaching for the light in each other’s eyes,
making copies of each other’s memories
and spilling the ink on the originals.

You and me –
we are children left alone unsupervised with this steel instrument of love.
We now know of the blood and bone within our skin, thanks to this blade.
We now know how to keep distance when nothing keeps us apart.

When we lose our color, our teeth of milk and cruelty,
when the blade loses its shine
and looks like any other rust of this world,
only then we know the pain
of having walked past a life we could have had,
the journeys we could have walked,
the meaning we carried in ourselves for each other sake,
the meaning we never looked up, never cared for.

“Knowing is also a sort of poison” – Nayana Nair

.

There are too many thought on my mind today
there is too little love in my heart
but my eyes are focused only on you dear
my ears hear only your voice.
But it doesn’t matter,
I know that too.

Knowing is also a sort of poison.
It only makes me angry at
your smile and your assurances.
It doesn’t change the fact
that today you live in hurt
and tomorrow you may not be with me to get better.
It doesn’t change the fact
that you won’t let me come close,
that you say I have no right
to know that part of you.

All that I am allowed to do now
is to smile as if I do not see,
is to talk of a tomorrow that will never be,
think of names we would never get to use,
plan a journey we will never begin.
This is all we ever did, when we had so much time.
This is all we ever did. This is what we will never do.
That’s all there is left to it.

You will say that you are fine.
I will say “I know”, when I don’t.
And I will hate the sight of your pain
and I will hate myself for it, as will you.
Maybe I will burn this place down
if you don’t let me in.
Maybe there is no place left to burn,
Maybe that’s what you’re hiding.
Maybe that’s what you mean.

“Absurdly Simple and Late” – Nayana Nair

.

Things I now remember are mostly
absurdly simple and painful.
Like the last time we met like this,
you had a white suitcase that seemed like your new pet.
It looked at peace with the snow
that was getting on your nerves.
When you smiled
all I could think was
now you cannot bear the weight of your old green bag pack,
now you cannot bear the winters I am part of.
All I could think was
that you are growing old somewhere far without me.
I didn’t know that the next thing I would have to do,
after facing such sad realization,
would be to smile for my sake more than your.

Things I now recognize are
are only those that I don’t know how to fix anymore.
Like today
as I helped you out of your heavy white coat,
as I made the coffee of your liking
I kept staring at your small form
and your frightening transparency.
I looked at the scribbles of black marker
at the corner of suitcase.
I wondered
where were you when you drew that.
At what point of your journey
you could no longer pretend
this was a life of your choosing?
Is your loneliness so overwhelming
that you are not afraid of buying and ruining whites?
Is your loneliness of my making?
Is that why you wear it so dearly?

“some sort of attachment, if not love” – Nayana Nair

A new announcer has replaced the old one.
The one with the shrill voice
is too tired or too sad to continue, I guess.
This new one, she sounds more like my type.
She seems like the one who will define my types.
I am so thankful she is not the one who tells me to go back to sleep
when I am crying at 3 without knowing why.
So thankful that this deserted night, this cold concrete,
her cold instructions, her reminder to wait patiently
reminds me that this is also a day I will forget
if I do not do anything.
I am so thankful that I cannot confess my laughable weakness to her.
If I wait as she tells me to
my life will come swooping in and take me somewhere else-
a new place where I will hate everyone again
for not speaking the way I like, for loving me wrong,
for not accompanying me on the empty train stations
when I try to run away from all that I have built,
from all that I have tried to call my new beginning.

“Lost” – Nayana Nair

We found each other on an unfamiliar street,
lost in the vanishing promises and fickle feet,
on journeys of days
to all burnt down plays,
holding the copied out lines,
clutching the words we will never get to say.

“Your Place” – Nayana Nair

I am not walking over
your footprints.
I am walking into the space you used
to occupy in this world.
I am walking into your absence.
I am taking your place.
I am taking your voice.
I am taking in the laughter
that escaped your lips
and never found their way back.
I am walking towards the fate
that took you from me, from this world.
But I do not seem to reach the place
where you are.
I have become one with the doorbell that never rings,
with the appointments on calendar
you will never be able to keep.
I can’t curse you for leaving me.
Some journeys are made without choice
and some distances are granted for our own peace.
The place you made for me in this life
is the only thing that feels right without you.
Only thing I can do
is to stop waiting,
and live your life
in your place.

“Home” – Nayana Nair

I will give you a list houses
that once used to be my home
and addresses that are the only memory
that has not been blurred
or manipulated by my mind.
If you ever want to find me,
go there.

You will see the line of trees that
framed my sunrise
and almost dry riversbeds of
round white stones, where
I slipped once (or more).
You will see the duststorms,
and the heavy rains
I stood in.
You will see the the intersections,
I could never quite cross.
But all this you see,
is not me.

If you want to find the ‘me’,
‘me’ that I do not know of,
that I cannot give you,
go there.
And look for windows I sat by.
Look for the cold floor I lied on.
Sit there and think of a girl
who never felt quite like a person,
who could look at what lay ahead
and know
that neither the path, nor the journey was hers.
Who only wanted a room flooded with
gentle light of drowning sun,
and songs that could make her sadness beautiful.

“Stop tugging at my clothes” – Nayana Nair

Though I thought it would be difficult.
Each step I took with an ease
and with a courage
that I didn’t know
was there in me.
No sadness in the world
existed in my face or heart,
but only a child,
a smaller me, tugging at my clothes,
telling me to stop
trying hard to rescue me from my fate
from this realization
that this is what I have to do forever.
That one day the loneliness of my journey
will wear down my courage and me.

“THE JOURNEY”- Nayana Nair

She walked down the road

In the middle of “everywhere”.

With the wind ruffling through her skirt

And wild flowers stomped beneath her feet.

Her hair twisted around her little finger

Along with his heart.

Of the one who had walked by her side

For an eternity.

His one hand carrying the luggage

And other clutching his heart.

His world was what she saw

And his “everywhere” where she walked.

Silences were made

To be filled by her words.

and her pauses were

meant to be filled by his voice.

The companion in their travel

Was the transient fluttering image

Of his arms entwined in hers

And her laughter weaving

A dream in his eyes.

What this image was to them?

A mirage?

A promise?

That gave them courage to take one more step.

That made every loss bearable.

Or a reality of their hearts?

An old silly idea of romance

That found no place in this world

Maybe found a place in theirs.

“Notebooks”- Nayana Nair

In school, exams used to end by March. We used to cry over this 24×7 studying. Praying for exams to get over somehow and determined not to touch even a book after exams. As soon as exams get over, our happiness is as if we/re being released from prison. Few holidays, then results are out. Some praises for toppers and lots of scolding to the ones who barely passed and the ones who couldn’t even pass.

But when all the drama is over…..time to study again.

New session, new class, new book, and new notebooks. A whole day spent on covering these new dear books of ours…which would soon become our enemies. But till that time, we gaze at them in wonder and delight. New books….the feel of their pages, their smell and opening up new notebooks in class…what a good feeling it is….

First few pages of each notebook, we write with the best possible writing….black for heading and blue for the rest, drawing margins here and there( with scales), not a drop of ink on textbook…ordered, neat, fresh clean start…….

But disorder is the law of nature I GUESS….few weeks gone and there we are….black pens and scale are long lost….leave neat handwriting…the biggest challenge is write something at all while dozing off in class…..and a set of blank pages at regular interval with PTOs written all over it….(the pages that we had left to complete our work…but sadly at last only had time to write PTOs before giving the copies for checking)….few flowers and fairies scribbled at every other corner….dialogues with our friends written on the last page of copy….lots of red marks ( most of them are question marks, obviously the teacher is as confused as we are..:) ) incomplete written all over our PTOs (applicable to only those teachers who are smart enough to encode the real meaning and purpose of our PTOs )….index…..its only meant to be filled by teacher…

And after getting 4-5 remarks, some of them lose all hope and leave note making altogether.

By the end of the year, we end up with a bundle of paper somehow held together by fate….loose sheets falling everywhere. And most of the time we wonder at our amazing talent of writing what even we can’t comprehend and staring at our sacred front few pages, even more surprised “I didn’t know I can write this neat…”. Wishing you could make a better note, wishing you had studied well and listened to something in class. While some desperate souls wander off in search of better notes to borrow, there are are a few who are not at least bothered, as studying or not doesn’t make much difference to the, they are just glad at the fun they had whole year.

At last we somehow make sense  of the nonsense writing, night before exam. That night in itself is magical, all the mysteries haunting us are revealed on this determining day. Enlightenment at last  🙂

Somehow we write our exams and the drama starts again.

Our lives are just like these notebooks of ours. How neat they are in begining and how shabby at last. We wonder at our innocence, our trusting nature. We wish to be that, what we have lost long back. The beginning was as ordered as it can be…the tags of being good child, good student, good friend…

But perfection is short lived like the neatness of our copies. With time we change, situations change. Coping with our lives gained more priority over these tags that we held. We become less innocent, cleverer, less trusting, more suspicious and more and more selfish. People changed us maybe, every time when someone scarred us, they wrote something on those clean sheets that they can’t ever take back, nor can we erase, it’s now a part of who we are. What we do, what they did, everything has led you to this point. His point where you look at your shabby copies with loose sheets falling everywhere, wondering “How on earth did I get into such a mess?”. And you wish to become what you once were…..a new blank copy.

But as we saw, however messy at this point life may seem, everything nonsense but in fact it will lead you to that determining day…when all the mysteries will be revealed, the day you’ll realize your purpose. Enlightenment at last.

Neat blank copies are what we like, but that’s not what they are meant for, they get their meaning their purpose on when written upon.

And we may not realize it now, but from this mess we’ll find our identity, we’ll find ourselves, our purpose. The purpose that only the shabby copies can fulfill. (Like passing exams)

I can’t help, but marvel at the similarity between our lives and everything that surrounds us. Confusing who is reflecting what. Or do we seek our meaning from the meaningless, or do our brains shape the truth to our own convenience. It seems that we are never born with a so called purpose. Maybe our purpose of life is what we are searching for all our lives and never quite realizing that in this journey we created one. We never quite know what it is until we look back. We create what we are, our circumstances have a huge role to play, what we had to choose from, and what we chose, what we chose to believe in spite of all odds. We end up with a meaning but only some realize it.

But then there are those, who are just glad, that they had a good life, the one they enjoyed, and nothing else matters.

I’m reminded of a song :

kaatrilE aadum kaagidham naan
nee dhaan ennai kadidham aakinaai
anbil thodangi anbil mudikkirEn
en kaalam varai ???

[I’m the paper that floats in the air
You made me into a letter
I start and end with love
Until my lifetime ???