Believe it or not,
I was a #wunderkind of sorts.
Even that came with
admiration & expectation.
Then, I was a genius
In being the iconoclast.
Sounds great,
Like a bumbling fool.
She came along,
Love & lust followed.
She was & is numero uno,
The only one to be within.
#vss365
In such situations, most wives will use a #featherlight scalpel to slice the better half from ear to ear.
Others will smile. That is a result of love, care and trust. That is, she accepts the sad but true cliché: for some men, there is only one woman.
So, she smiled.
#vss365
from my short story 'Love in the Time of Ayurvedic Viagra'.
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2012/02/love-in-time-of-viagra.html
Once, you refused to open your eyes hiding the last #flicker. I shouted a stupid silent I-love-you. I touched your forehead, your lips before I switched off the ventilator, before the cold entered. Damn it, woman! Open your eyes! I didn't cry. I don't cry. I won't cry.
#vss365
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-see.html
He followed them to the old abandoned boat-house. He watched them enact their version of 'Rebecca' with no second chance. The man held the woman's head beneath the surface of water, counting the bubbles till there were none. There, they #isolate love and discard future.
#vss365
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-tellers-sabbatical.html
He stared at the roughly hewn steps.
He remembered the cottage at the top, the #anxiety aborted dreams gave birth to, the quarrelling.
He saw angry loud shadows race past him.
He felt a cold silence. Those ghosts had sucked the air and created a vacuum around him.
#vss365
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-tellers-sabbatical.html
Some VVIP was expected. There was a rally.
I #surrendered to the emotion of the moment.
I ran to my wife. Kissed her, like that kiss in Life magazine.
Then, it was all a blur.
At first, I heard mata ki jai. Then, it was kuththey...patti...adikkada...maaro.
#vss365
(Translation censored for the sake of global audience.)
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2017/05/kiss-of-life.html
5/24/3022 : 10:52
I fumbled briefly during the office presentation. Two other lives exerted their influence.
The orgasm with Ann coincided with the moment my nemesis, my twin, left me #paralyzed. That caused that brain fade.
The other lives were less eventful today.
#vss365
from
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/12/12-31-3010.html
I was in a meeting when she called. Remembered her husband, switched off my mobile. Took the team to a wine bar. Went home with a lady, felt lonely till the company left at the #break of dawn.
Returned her call.
"Hi."
“He died last night.”
She disconnected. Or, I did.
#vss365
from
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/07/last-time-i-wrote-about-love.html
"I'm done with the waiting." Said that to many a love. Leaving every dream, every love, never waiting. Defeating myself? I used to say that to her too. But, she knew I would wait. She was my life after all. How could I desert that? Then, she went. And, I'm done with the waiting.
It's tough to #predict the outcome of job interviews.
“I've a green card. Will you come with me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you like cooking?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want kids?”
“Yes.”
“I want two. Organic. Did you want a love marriage?”
“Me?”
“Love's better arranged,” she said.
#vss365
from
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/07/catharsis-before-wedding.html
I can remember plots and characters but names and faces slip away fast.
Yesterday, I had dinner with two colleagues and their wives. I am in an affair with one of the wives, nothing regular.
One smiled sweetly. The other scowled.
Which one, that broke my #reverie.
#vss365
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2015/05/jigsaw.html
Are you not #awestruck
By the common sight around?
Common affliction.
#vss365
#haiku ?
#sernyu ?
Two contract workers at a bus-stand. She, late teens; her husband, a few years older.
He shouts at her. From within her blouse, she takes out a Rs 500 note. He snatches it from her small hand. He marches off in the direction of a liquor shop. Her dark unblinking eyes follow his back.
The bus starts. The husband returns. Shouts about how hungry he is, how he could not get anything with the Rs 500 note. He gives her the note. She slips it within her blouse, treasures it next to her small firm bosom. As they move towards the bus, she gives him two ten rupee notes for the bus-tickets. They touch briefly, then. He stands behind her in that departing bus, his arms shielding her.
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-tellers-sabbatical.html
The early morning light crept across the lake. He noticed a lone figure on another balcony.
They shared the same scene, birdsong, touch and smell of cool air with a faint tinge of eucalyptus.
They looked at each other before going back to a life without #imagination.
#vss365
from
https://justoneavatar.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-tellers-sabbatical.html
The day we caught our cousin Indira with our football rival Sasi, we attacked him with iron bars, thick sticks and cycle chains.
I met Indira, Sasi, their kids recently. He walks with a limp. He caught me looking at his skewed face where #parallel lines met. He smiled.
#vss365
from
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-football-days.html
I was in a crowded train with no #sign of hope/life.
The young lady next to me, when she had to feed her baby, sat cross-legged facing me & the window. With arm on raised knee, I shielded her from the male gaze around.
"That's how I met your mother. And you, my son."
#vss365
from
I killed the women I loved. People say it's because we were opposites. My loves were kind, friendly. I was just a filler, I resented that, the motive-seekers say. I killed them to kill myself, to suffer without an #end. Why am I admitting this in my last note?
#vss365
After the first peg,
We discussed: wife, job, travel,
Chest puffed out et al.
After the second,
Remembered: old loves, bad lives,
#Weavers of false tales.
Who counts after that,
Silencing truth till we puked.
"Who the hell am I?"
#vss365
In a restaurant, you observe young couples and remember.
You remember a place, you and another, a place not so fancy, but you two were a young couple in love. The food, the place, the money, none of that mattered. You two were priority number one to each other. Family did not matter, work, ambition, none of that mattered. You felt safe and loved.
You are woken from that reverie.
"Stop ogling at those young couples."
You laugh.
They ask, "What were you thinking?"
You say, "Old stuff."
They say, "Whatever."
Spring '23. The aliens amongst us stepped into the shoes of the top 3%. Minimal #tension for the rest.
When I brought it home:
"Of what god/caste is it?" "How will you do it?"
"It's for love," I replied.
That stretched the family motto: amor est in aliena conceptu.
#vss365
If Google has given me the wrong translation, don't blame me.
Enter. Five flights of stairs. A dark hall.
A brunette with dark eyes, pouting lips, cream chiffon blouse, deep décolletage, leads with a lit #candle to a narrow steep spiral staircase.
Blue jeans, those legs...
Trip.
"I hate this VR version of snakes & ladders!"
#vss365
from
https://newnonentities.blogspot.com/2010/11/shrinking-hope-near-innsbrucker-platz.html
"Remember our last meeting?"
"A week before your wedding."
"In that seedy restaurant."
"I thought the #diamond ring would shine bright even there."
"Diamond..."
"You gave me your wedding invitation card before I could give you that."
"Oh!"
"I still have it."
"But..."
#vss365
"There is no #teaching worth learning," my kid said.
"You shouldn't learn such stuff."
"It's in your diary."
"Anything in that diary about love and wife?" wife asked.
I looked at my son. He returned a blank-eyed stare.
Finally, I understood the last scene in 'The Omen'.
#vss365
It's time to leave.
22 months back, I lost my job in the Middle-East. Thought I had enough. My parents were the first to tell me to go. Nothing #mysterious about that. Then, her folks. She kept mum. No more fights on SM about men-women equality, about love conquers all.
#vss365
Can’t you be like them
And feel good in my #prison?
Nope, love! Freedom first.
#vss365
#haiku (definitely not, yet again)
My writing has been
#quarantined or worse banished
without the hashtag
#vss365
#haiku (surely, I am joking)
There is a politician in my constituency who frequently throws unfamiliar and big English words at his hoi polloi, that too for free. His work has been immortalized with the word 'Tharoorism'.
That must be why my uncle Hosappan has started responding to situations with German words. Will it be 'Hosism' or 'Hosappism', I wonder. Since our German is worse than our English, we have no idea if he is getting it right.
After talking to a friend who is thinking of divorce, he said: "Schadenfreude."
After trying to counsel that friend's troubled wife, "Vorfreude."
After his first date with her, "Waldeinsamkeit."
After meeting his friend after that date, "Sitzpinkler."
After the couple rode off into the sunset in Hosappan's car, "Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung."
"Beware the Ides of May."
"May is the cruelest month."
"Hanging and wiving goes by bad luck."
"Lovers whose bodies stink of each other...forever!"
"Why marry like the lusty Moor that leap'd into that #idea?"
"Bro, for fools' approval and honour, with strings and pains."
#vss365
(An experiment with not-so-humble apologies to Messrs William S. and T. Stearns E.)
"I love you."
"Rumi said: You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens."
"No Roomie-Shoome now. Break down your poetic #wall. Talk to me without your Plate and Dickens."
"Plath and Dickinson."
"Love!"
"I don't love you."
"So, that's what all that poetry says..."
#vss365
I met one of my first girlfriends. From kindergarten days.
We talked about love and marriage, that is, her kid's love and marriage.
Moral of the story: Always allow your love to go with someone else for them to live happily ever after. (Added benefit: There will be fewer love poems.)
