28th July, Siddipet

The way I spiral into chaos in magnificent.

Or maybe, I don't spiral. For spiral is too much of a harsh word, too much turbulence. Perhaps the only correct word to describe this is 'sink'. I sink into chaos. Calm chaos. I imagine myself as a mosquito, waiting for a chink in the mosquito net, to slip through, to find fresh blood. This bloodthirst will eventually lead to me being extinct. Being fully aware of that, I hope to be crushed by a pretty hand, and not overconsumption of the blood which I've sunk myself in

Everything is scary when you have things at stake. We don't jaywalk on the roads. Is it because of the laws against jaywalking? I presume not. It is simply because we are scared of death as we have our lives at stake. The more I am scared, the more I have at stake, I realise. And the more homeward bound 1 get. Except that, home has only given me monotony that I fear. I belong to that very special class of imbeciles that did not think until it was too late and never had the time or the humility to swallow their ego and step down. And so will I not.

The way this river takes me in is magnificent.

I've always believed there exist a different world under the surface of the rivers. Not a world of objects, but one of events. Objects are not true there. Only events are. Objects morph into each other before one can fathom their shape or function and events stay etched in the history that is written nowhere. And in that nowhere, there is a somewhere that keeps record of the number of times my lips touched the surface of this river. I drank from the river as much as I wanted, and only from its surface. For when I went to the bottom, all I did was gasp for breath. Or maybe that is a lie. Just an excuse to not go to the bottom of the river. For the world at the bottom of the river houses all those events that I try to avoid. All those memories that I've tried to bury. All those memories that I've tried to forget. And I, in the first place do not know how they managed to get to the bottom of the river.

Sometimes I try to watch dolphins. Couples from my city, and loners like Rivo, generally frequent the ghats of north Kolkata. My refuge was a ghat at Belur. Away from the din of the city. A ghat where I wanted it to rain forever. I wanted it to rain forever, rain so hard that there were no people left on the ghat, leaving me with the quiet room at the edge of the ghat, with the river coming up through the steps to kiss me. Does the river even miss me?

The way this revolution takes me in is magnificent.

Everything gets a purpose, a sense of community. Not the sense that you belong somewhere but the sense that you've always belonged somewhere, to begin with. A place that has always been your home, a life that has always been yours, people that have always been a family, and roads that were schools for your education. It is now that I feel for the river the way it flows through everywhere to meet the sea, with so many branches like open arms, so many colours, so much mud. And yet, no home. And I realise now, maybe home is not even an object, but rather a collection of events. And familiarity is just that sequences of events waiting to happen. Even harmful events contribute to this. If it cannot help me figure out which my home, it can definitely help me figure out which is not.

Our party office is like any other. The usual murals. The usual portraits on the walls. The usual white half-sleeved shirts. The usual plastered smiles. The usual, "Yes kaamred, no kaamred". The usual chatter of a new cell, new units in universities. The usual struggles to grab a new cadre out of the postmodernist waves. The usual infighting. The usual death of peasants. It is just scary, how fast we adjust to loss. How fiercely we come back, like grass. How crazily we learn to love, sitting atop ruins.

Also, this puts me in situations that I never thought id be in my life. You don't love people in airconditioned rooms. When you're on the roof of a primary school in Siddipet, within one week of coming to Hyderabad, and there's nothing more than the bare sky to keep you company at night, with people you barely know, you wake up every twenty minutes to check if a text has arrived from a known number. It is how I've learnt love. It is how you cheat your aura of obnoxious self-confidence

The way I love her is magnificent.

I love the brown of her breasts. Yes, there are a million things else, but this comes spontaneously, without thought. The next time I meet her, I wish to bury my face into the softness her chest. I want to feel the brown of her breasts on my cheeks. The tanginess of her mouth. The smoke of her eyes. The smell of her neck. The smallness of her feet. Every bit of her, I want to devour. Almost that a prophecy has been made, like a six-hour long reel of me just violating all that is precious in my life.

She moves like the hibiscus leaves did in my mom's balcony. Every afternoon that rained, the potted palm, the white hibiscus and the red, the jasmine and the aparajita, all swayed like they were meeting a lost lover. She, in particular, feels like the wild red hibiscus, not only because it was the most beautiful, but because it was the oldest and had survived immense cold, and extreme summers. So it is tough, just like her. Just magnificent, in every sense.

I use to like the government quarters at salt lake, with their naked balconies and apartments that lacked maintainance. And she is like so. Beaten down, but feels like home.