The book begins to take shape.

Most books begin existing in the writer's mind first; then on paper and then in the reader's head and so on. Somewhere if the process is fortuitous, it is not robbed of its essence. However it is difficult to articulate how some people can easily give words to thoughts and names to things. This story and this book is intended for people who don't find it that easy. You will find here the same confusions in naming and expression that you face in finding your way through a new city without knowing its language. Know that it is as alien to me as is to you. 

----

It was a strange weather in her mind. Like the phrase "big waves of the ocean" can often be used to describe indigestion of the stomach, she now could feel the churning the mind and the heart. The body does not digest uncertainty let alone the mind. Words that were once friends of hers, came rushing to the tongue of the brain and then stood shocked and blank at the crossword puzzle of the situations in her life. When they were called upon for a simple task, they banished themselves and when least prepared, eloquence ramp walked in the midst of a beggar crowd.

Her understanding of the word - ‘sanity’, was losing itself in the myriad colours and forms of life. Often relationships, places, food or even clothes changed yet the uncertainty persisted. A faint sense of disease, disquiet and irritation sang through much of her daily routine and she felt like giving up every other hour or so. The sense of not belonging anywhere and wanting to be everywhere pervaded her conscience constantly. Almost everything begun was already on the verge of giving up itself in the face of her fluctuating apathy and passion. Stories started tumbling themselves into dead-ended mishaps and the sense of time started pressing itself upon the windows of the mind with cheeky triumph of having defeated her again in the past, present and future. A sense of helplessness and loss of control, no matter justified through the existence of God, others and their denial, made her feel purposeless and adrift in the sea of people so motivated and ambitious. What indeed did she have to contribute to their lives? Or her own for that matter...

Her need to feel needed was building since childhood but she never did surrender to its extremities. Alas philosophy and the company of her equally quirky believing friends had made it more poignant. But in a strange sense of paradoxical humour the more others needed her, the more she felt repulsed by humanity and her own pettiness. Thus, she was stuck in a marble maze unable to move forward or back… How did this state of affairs come into being, you ask? But it is why this book was written by her in the first place. I am merely relaying the information, chapter by chapter.  

REFUGEES AT HEART

Every apple pie, Christmas cake, rogan Josh, puttu kadala, spaghetti weekend, alu paratha and sushi salad that is ever described in a fictional universe found a way home. I cooked several meals in my head where friends were gathered round a table and did not judge each other except for being my friends.
I wondered then as I do now, even in my dreams, is this what home looks like?

Every shade of paint in existence found a way into the pallete,
Where the brush and I spent ourselves in a hurried frenzy
Making sense of the past and thumbing our noses at it
Painting self-adored and wholly private art on India tourism calender-backs.
Spiced tea lay witness to those nights and afternoons where Picasso and van Gogh vied for my mental health and insanity at the same time. Because at the pretext of art anything is possible. Five year old's scenery painted in tears, coffee stains and old school borrowed water colours with poetry scribbled in between.
I asked them that day, is this what home looks like for you?
The voices told me yeah it does, laughing and chiding.

My parents often recount their homes and memories, they sound good to hear for some parts and then there are silences and when I ask them, "is this what home looks like for you?",
They say, "No, you do." They leave their silences to me to fill with my colours.

For city dwellers like me, who have dreams of country vacation homes yet ambitious urban super sonic realities,
There is a particular pace of life and walking with our elbows tucked and heels clicking.
When we meet strangers we speak silence.
We do not make much eye contact,
Afraid of seeing the emotion
The depth of pain and it's recognition in the other pair of eyes.
No denial or anger can tarnish the exultation of possible happy endings to horror stories in human eyes.
Instead, we move on, just asking one question to every related stranger on the road:
"Is this what home looks like?

Stories on skin.

Flaky skin, darkened patches 

Translucent veins. Tattoos that hide pain within them and under them.
Ghosts of sorrows past and present.
Gift wrapped in soft flesh and softer souls.
Stories that are seldom told but when done right, become scars.
And how we like to pick them up in others, hiding our own.
Trading wound for wound and never counting the other person's battles.

My first was a crescent shaped burn mark. Not intentional.
A play thing. A mark of siblinghood and protection. Another a fall from grace splitting my knee open where my brother got to play doctor and then went on to become one. Another a slash from a broken wash basin when I overreached my attempt to be clean. That's my list.
But once I started noticing, I saw that they bloom everywhere.

In crooks of necks and curving elbows, in corners of eyebrows and squashed noses and chiseled cheekbones.
Things that were broken upon human skin leaving scars deeper. I can still feel the glass metal and wood that entered people and stayed hidden in the folds of trauma well beneath skin.
And then there are voices and images and words flashing back.
A horror film that became a silent movie.
Nothing to explain. Nothing to record.
Blood running cold, smiles fading.

ANOTHER DAY

I've got so much to say but all the words are trapped. I'm a message in a bottle that was never sent to anybody. I've always had an audience, even when there was no one sitting in front of me. I listen to poetry as emphatic exertions of those lost souls looking for a beacon, a light house. Those who can't go home or have one. I'm their audience, hidden in the shadows - not applauding, not interrupting. It's almost a crowd me by myself, And all the voices in my head. And when I listen, it feels as if a million of us were listening. Alone - together. And some music. It's a tango sometimes or some blues. A party. Made up of poetry and silence. Love unspoken. Untiring. Unconventional. Unrequited. Born of a schizophrenic heart


--- FROM mental health poetry collections

REBIRTH

So I am back to blogging after ages. Mostly into the void. Time scattered most of my purposes. So I let go of my own ideas.

Travel light

Snip snip snippety snip
Don't hold your breath
Let them cut away
There will be no pain
But people will see, you lost something
But the gain won't be noticed.

Hair is the biggest statement of all
An indicator of change
A radical rediscovery
The shape of your head as it was intended
Maybe a few brain cells here and there shifted their home.
Maybe you grew up a little.

The anger and defiance of youth, the new Bob or the refashioning of tastes in adolescence is known.
This is different. This is difficult. It's a scissoring away of identities.
A refusal to bow to suffering but embrace it.
An emphasis on me as me. And nothing more on the offering that is pleasing for the world to see.
Mostly it's a sign of recognition.
~
Arrival.

Don't hold your breath for change will happen
The most fearful and difficult journeys
Are taken alone.
The sadness is washed away
You emerge stronger.
You do unimaginable things
You also make mistakes
Fall down
Be imperfect
The cracks on your soul are beautiful
The wounds on your hands tell
How many times you tried to help someone and got hurt.
Your face is a map for people
To look for their lost treasure, so that they can trust you,
We met before souls were sent to inhabit the earth
Our love was not newly born here.
So when we roam the mazes,
And find each other - similar souls
Our eyes shouldn't forget to recognize.
That we always would have been around.
For we gave our word to the maker.
Send us to our homes on earth, and when we are done learning, take us back home.
Together.