There are times when:

When you want that phone to ring/beep, but it just won't.

When you want that stranger you just met on the street to turn around, but they just won't.

When you search through the racks of the library frantically to find that one particular book, but you just won't.

When you run your eyes up and down repeatedly through that list to locate your name on it, earnestly hoping that you might've missed it the last time, but you just won't.

When you want a particular story you're reading/ movie you're watching to take a happy turn, but it just won't.

When you want that train/flight to run behind schedule for merely ten minutes, but it just won't.

When you want someone to treat you the same way (if not better) you treat them, but they just won't.

When you want the doctor to just smile at you and say everything is fine and that there's nothing to worry about, but he just won't.

When you want someone whom you secretly liked and whom all your friends hated in college, to turn out to be great, but they just won't.

When you want the people who are the closest to you to understand your problem without you even having to express it, but they just won't.

When you see a four year child completely absorbed in a cartoon series that you had once watched with as much of interest, but now, no matter how hard you try, you just won't.

When you learn about a new development in your friend's life and you want to genuinely feel happy about it, but you just can't.

When you want to say really nasty and mean things to someone who's a complete douche-bag, but you just won't.

When you want life to stop being a bitch for once, but it just wont.

When you want to stop ranting about life and just live it, but you just won't. :)

निजगाद सा यदुनन्दने

I wish to twirl in your darkness, 
wrapping it around my fair self.
Let your darkness permeate my very soul 
and dye me black.
Taint me, for purity is banal.

Let your darkness
prance upon my barren self.
Let it rise like thick smoke,
eclipsing me and my doubts.

Let it drip along my form,
drop by drop, 
washing away my vanity and frailty.

Smear me with your darkness.
Allow me to dissolve in it.
For this form is too tiresome to bear.
Bless me with ignorance 
which only your touch could accord.

Let your darkness grow on me, 
and consume me.
Let it camouflage me
in this dark night, 
in the cosmic darkness
that knows no bounds.

I don’t wish to be seen; 
conceal me in your dark embrace.
I wish to be as close to you as your darkness.
I want to be you.
Let your darkness eat me away 
leaving behind no residue.

                                                   

For Once

For once let's fly and never come back.
For once let's make it a magical night.
For once let's forget everything else.
For once let it just be you and I.
For once let's not judge and be not judged.
For once let's overlook the imperfections yours and mine.
For once let there be no fear.
For once let the anxities be suspended.
For once let not the uncertainities ruin the moment now.
For once let the prudence hang lose.
For once let the eyes speak.
For once let the word be felt not heard.
For once let's touch moonlight.
For once let's capture the twinkle of stars.
For once let the silence of the night permeate our souls.
For once let's lose ourselves.
For once let's try to find each other.
For once let's forget the wrong and right.
For once let's make it a magical night.
For once let it be just you and I.

The Ancient Youth

“Arts fac, baithiye, Arts fac! Bees rupaye. Baithiye!" (Arts fac, sit, Arts fac! Twenty rupees. Sit!")

Angai wondered, as she emerged out of the metro station, how these rickshaw-pullers always slotted the people without erring, how they somehow knew that person like her would go nowhere else but Arts faculty. She was in hurry and in no mood of haggling. She nodded and boarded the rickshaw silently. On her way to Arts Faculty she saw a motley of students passing by—walking, chatting, munching, making faces at each other, nudging each other. They all looked so charming to her.

“bhaiya khule nahi hain?”

She got off the rickshaw after rummaging through her wallet for change for a minute or so. As soon as she stepped on the campus of the University of Delhi, the words of Alisha, a dear friend, echoed in her head, “soak in some campus air for me when you go there.” She felt like a foreigner encroaching upon her property. It was Alisha’s campus. Her heart ached for Alisha. She wished she could go and salvage her from her house arrest. She wished she could just go argue fiercely with Alisha's parents and ask them to let her be, let her fly, let her breathe.

She reached the first floor where she was to submit the form—her form. Another attempt. She was anxious. She took out the form from the bag. The form had become limp, maybe because of the weight of her hopes, she thought.

“That way. Window number 53. Submit your form there,” a gentleman told her.

This was a familiar territory. She was acquainted with those classrooms. She had attended a few classes there. They seemed inviting. There was something so romantic about those corridors; they had an old-world charm about them; something very organic.

Her eyes met a slew of students waiting much before him to submit the form. Some were making inquiries; some were fanning themselves with their forms; some were cursing the prolonged lunch break. The wait seemed endless. She observed all of them closely. Her gaze was glazed with awe. These were the students who had studied literature formally. They had read Derrida and Foucault as part of their curriculum. They had thrived on Shakespeare, and had breathed Wordsworth and Keats. And here was she, merely on a caprice. How farcical it must seem to them if they got to know about it. They’d laugh, she was positive. They had formally read literature; whereas she...she merely lived it. Yet she, a student of medicine, was there...among them; trying to be one among them. Why, she wondered. Everyone she knew would either find her decision amusing or absurd. The people sharing the latter sentiment certainly outnumbered those who shared the former.

Though she vociferously defended it, she herself knew how impractical and unsound the decision was when considered on financial and professional grounds. Maybe she did not want others to tell her that. Why, she wondered again. Was it to prove a point? If yes, then to whom? No. Not to others definitely. She could have continued with her medical practice, had that been the case for that would make his kin so happy. Then? To herself? Maybe yes. It wasn’t just a course for him; not just another thing to be done. It was a decision as queer as her. It could be something that would define her. She knew she deserved to be there regardless of the result of the entrance test. He knew how deeply he revered the subject, how she slept with Othello pressed hard against her chest, how she had read so much into Faustus, how her eyes would light up every time there was a discussion on Austen or the Bronte sisters. She wanted to belong there. She too wanted to be part of that system; to be able to gripe about it legitimately.

“May I borrow that pen for a second?”

The girl standing next to her obliged. She wrote her phone number at the back of the Demand Draft which was to be submitted along with the form. The queue had moved a few inches forward. She spotted something-- a someone rather. How could she have not noticed this boy till now? The boy stood tall and lean; his complexion clear and glowing; his face bespectacled. While the rest of them were constantly fretting, fidgeting and grumbling, checking and re-checking if their documents were in place or not, this fellow was standing with his sang-froid. This nonchalance was magnetic. To Angai’s fanciful gaze he looked like young and solemn Buddha. The ancient youth was biting his lips and was lost in some sort of deep meditation. His entire demeanour suggested as if he was gravid with some profound realisation. He certainly seemed to be on the brink of it, if not fully realised it.

Angai was happy. She had found an engagement worthwhile. This should help him ignore the crawling pace of the queue and the humid summer. No, the attraction was far from sexual. The boy looked too pristine to evoke any such sentiments. This attraction was pure. Something similar to what she had felt for Priyank. In her head Angai had walked up to him and said “hi” already; the boy, too, had flashed a broad smile and took keen interest in this random stranger who had walked up to him to strike a conversation; they had hit off instantly; they were sitting in some cafe conversing seamlessly and the conversation segued from literature to philosophy, from politics to their personal lives; they had contemplated on the purpose of life, or the incoherence of life by now. That was all that Angai expected—his company. But, as always, that was all in Angai’s head. All these things only happened with others. Angai either read about them or heard about them.  The queue had moved. The boy had submitted his form already and left. All Angai could do was to watch the back of his navy blue shirt, drenched in sweat, disappear slowly in the crowd.

“Form dijiye...” the clerk peeped from behind the window.