Frozen by the pyre

How  much more uglier can life get; how much more numb can I get?

I am desperate to vent out this pain that I feel; I haven't shed a tear on your death.  How much more immune can I get?

Have I been cursed or plain unlucky to lose two of my most loved ones at one go? I am walking out of my life. I am walking out on God.

Today, when I most need someone, I have none. Have I been so bad afterall?

These words are just too heavy for me to feel its worth anymore. Anything that I express feels irrelevant and unimportant.

Have I become so lonely afterall?

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Tears and Rain

How I wish I could surrender my soul;
Shed the clothes that become my skin;
See the liar that burns within my needing.
How I wish I'd chosen darkness from cold.
How I wish I had screamed out loud,
Instead I've found no meaning.

I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.

How I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;
Hold memory close at hand,
Help me understand the years.
How I wish I could choose between Heaven and Hell.
How I wish I would save my soul.
I'm so cold from fear.

I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
Far, far away; find comfort in pain.
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.

Incompleteness

She brought a smile to my face as she playfully teased me. And as I saw her step out of the house I live in, I was reminded by my 1 year 5 month old niece how incomplete I am. 

Motherhood calling isn't as pleasant as I once thought it would be. I do not have it in me to find faith in a man yet again. I have it in me to unconditionally love a part of me -  my child. Motherhood calling brings tears as easily as it never has been. 

Routine has gripped my loneliness so much that tears do not find a place within me.
I am deaf to the music in that lounge; I am numb to people and their mind games. I shop beyond limits to find happiness and I still feel incomplete. Alcohol only makes my silence more apparent and pain more evident in my satirical conversations.

I cry every day for a reason I do not know for sure. It feels sometimes that I am waiting for something desperately and it feels sometimes that I need nothing anymore. 

Yet amidst all this the only thing that brings a smile to my face is my niece. Her departure only grips me more into my loneliness. 

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Faith

Some promise and some break it. Some ask you to have faith in them; they assure you and keep so much at stake. It isn't easy to fight our own battles, but it is far more difficult when others fight your battles for you.  There you meet those who stand there to see you fail and you believe their words.

There you meet the one who stands there to see you succeed and you don't believe her words. 

As I walked lifelessly on the empty streets of Gateway, I asked myself, " Why is it difficult for people to have faith in me?". As I thought, I walked aimlessly watching the sea waves, hoping to find its answer in it.

It doesn't matter what I say, what I assure.
It doesn't matter what I feel, how much I love. 

As I walked tearfully on the empty pavements of Colaba, I am awakened by the hard push of a Tempo. It's rusted body brushes through my arm ruthlessly causing excruciating pain.  I don't shout despite the agony. It isn't just me but my reflexes have numbed me a lot more than I thought. 

No one saw me stumble on the dirty patch of the road and I continued bleeding hoping for the blood to stop. I move my arm delicately to see my skin tear off. It is then that my thoughts paused. 

As I lie on this hospital bed tonight, I recall everything I felt.  These medications sedate me to numb my mind. Little did they know, it only needed a thought to get me there. 

Un(?)Complicated Life !

As quiet I have been in last three weeks, as frozen I feel since past few years.  This day which you live somewhere around me, I pause emotionally each moment of it. I am not a sad soul who needs some help to revive happiness. I am just a little less ignorant than you are to let go cruelty, inhumanity as casually as you do. I concealed this all these years and pretentiously gave out an ignorant vibe, just the way you realistically do. But just that now I even lose the pretense of it. 

I am a paradox of my inherent self and my gullibility no more keeps me going in the humanly proclaimed world “sane”. There is just too much shit going on at every walk of life. Cricket and soccer are not the only sports people are enthusiastic about; chess is not the only game that challenges a witty and defeats a mind. Chess is most fantastically played by experts in maneuvering relationships. Just that the board they use is not as clearly distinguished between white and black; it simply is too grey. 

It is funny how easy it is to conceal evil and portray goodness but difficult to covert an over-proportioned belly and look thin. Just so easily life is defined, isn’t it? 

I am not in need of any company; I am in most comfort in the loneliness of my being. I smile at my lines with sarcastic genuineness and watch people around me live their self in the way they can most enjoy. Junior college young lads and girls sit out gulping a tank of beer and seem to be laughing till glory. I spent mine sitting on the bench outside college eating vada pav stuffed with green chilies. I did not need alcohol then to be high on life.  Just so easily life was then defined, wasn’t it?

I am at that phase of life where "so called eligible men" meet me for marriage. Is it with me or with them that I find a man with a failed marital relationship looking for marriage more interesting than a single fascinated by my Photoshoped pictures? I would readily happily turn down the latter for the former to find realism in relationship. 

Written by Vrushali

Words

There's so much one can say in words,
There's so much one can choose to not say.
There's so much you said that you believed in,
There's nothing I had anymore to say.
My thoughts were my impressions and not my judgment,
I say this aloud, I am no one to judge anyone.
Yet so much you judged, so much you felt about me,
And there was nothing I had anymore to say.

We all have choices and choices we make,
I had a choice just like yours to speak your words, to hurt you back,
But I had no such thoughts so impure to say.
There's so much you said, there's so much you felt,
I have no anger, I have no ill wishes,
I just have nothing more to say.

I am this and I am that, I was this and I was that.
You judged my past, you judged my present, you concluded my future,
I lived this life, I live this time and I shall continue to be,
And for my entire life there's so much you said, there's so much you judged,
But I have nothing on it to say.

You may be right according to you,
I don't wish to decide for you
Is that how much you understood of me?
Is that how much low you thought of me?
There's so much you said, there's so much you felt,
I will never have anything more to say.

I did not do enough for you, did I?

I did not do enough for you, did I? 

It does not matter if people around me talk ill about me.  It does matter what you feel. It does not matter if they ridicule me behind my back. What matters is if you agree with them. 

I do not crave for success; I do not aspire for anything materialistic.  I do not believe life is a game that I need to see how I win it. I do not react to people who bitch about me because I have no place in my heart to wish ill for them; because I do not have the soul to use impure words for them.  It isn’t about ignoring them; it is about forgiving them as they say it. 

Do not take my silence as my weakness; do not take my ignorance as my cowardice.  I do not believe in “goodness”; I believe in playing my role of a human in this life.

With you I laughed. With you I truly smiled. Do you know I have not laughed for a long time now?

My laugh reminds me of you and you remind me of how I disappointed someone I love so much. 

I did not do enough for you, did I?

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Want to believe you are angry!

Must have been in this life, that I must be cursed.  Rarity of my involvement in someone cannot make it purely coincidental that they go away from me always. I vow after every loss that I would not let love get over me again.  But this time yet again I end up reprimanding myself on purpose for loving someone so purely unknowingly. 

I have lost the control on my tears and I now fail miserably to freeze my expressions.  You cared, you loved, but you never said.  You protected, you worried, but you never said.  You loved me in your own way and I appreciated every expression of it. 

But it took you just a day to bring everything to an end. You did not let me speak; you did not let me discuss the fate of our relationship; you did not give me an opportunity to argue with you. I am not sure if I would have argued with you. May be not. But the point is, you did not give me an opportunity.

You slammed the door on my face and I decided to not knock it again. It occurred to me later that it was the last day I ever saw you, that it was the last time you said good-bye to me.  

I do not want to explain. I do not want to justify. I do not want to appear weak before you because you liked me strong. I do not want to cry before you, because you liked me when I smiled.

I want to believe that you will be angry with me for life. I want to believe you will never talk to me. I want to believe that my chapter is over and you have flipped through the pages and moved ahead.

 Written by Vrushali Deshpande

I am what you believe

This emptiness that I live with; this unending story that you decided to write on me, I still sit on the last page of it. 

It doesn’t matter what I feel because what matters is what you believed in. 

I have heard a lot about myself, but you were the first to believe I fooled you.  It did not matter what else you said in the fit of your anger; it did not matter what else happened.   

Tell me how did you manage to break me down with that one line? 

Every time I took decisions to see myself happy, I ended up disappointing the ones I care for the most. Every time I took those decisions, I brought more unhappiness to me than ever before. 

In last four years, I expected nothing. I only wanted to give everything I could in the time I had with me. I tried doing my best.

It never mattered what I achieved; it mattered what I gave.

Countless people congratulated me for what I got. What they didn’t know was that I lost the person I genuinely loved. 

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"You said you do not want to see my face. You won't.

I took all my belongings that day but I left my smile back there. I won't come back for it. 

It is easier to believe I erred and live with it than disrespecting you by believing I was right."

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

That I fooled you?

I mean every word that I say or I would not say it at all. I feel every emotion that I express or I would not let you know at all. To me words define the way I am to myself.  What I am to you is how I treat myself.

I am not disappointed that you accused me of fooling you. I am disappointed at myself that just my being for so many years was not enough!  I am disappointed that since then I have been waking up almost every night in tears. I am disappointed that I love you enough to reprimand myself each day since then for a sin I have not committed.  

It does not matter how hard you get on me. What mattered to me was the love you gave me. It does not matter to me that you did not bid me farewell.  What mattered to me was you came back to say take care. It does not matter to me that you do not want to see my face again. What mattered to me was that you saw me once for that one last time. 

Is everything at all really a lie to you? Is every bit of me that I poured out really a lie to you? 

You always said, “We meet people twice.”  I will make sure that your wish of never seeing me again comes true.  Believe it for once that this pain which I yet cannot express in words will stay within me. 

Was everything that I wrote to you, said to you, really a lie to you?  Couldn’t you see me breaking down each day emotionally and destroying my physical being? Was the latter a lie to you too?

I stayed for you. I then left for myself.  I was honest to you then.  I am honest to you even now.

But if only you asked me once what is it besides everything that I hid from you, I would have said it all without thinking once.  

If I was honest to you then without you probing, why would not I be now?

You chose to escape the ugly part of the conflict for two months and decided to move on. I did the same just one week prior to going away.

I never believed you fooled me by escaping it. Why did you believe I did so then?

Written by Vrushali Deshpande