Standing At The Edge

Standing At The Edge
Looking at her was quite like looking at a skyscraper while standing on the ground floor of an adjacent building. She was larger than life for me. I jumped up into air when I realised I had finally discovered her, she   stood taller than all of my contemporary problems. All of them were solved. This was where I was supposed to find quite a bit of myself, but her discovery made me feel like I had lost myself.  

Quite a bit of me was to be found in the jungle of concrete that was before me, but before that I had to find my real self.  I had to have a clear concept of the world around me too. The lenses of my glasses were frosted with mist, and it did matter a lot for I had to look at the world around me with an objective eye. The lenses of my glasses had to be cleaned.

I could feel the warmth of life as it unfurled itself symbolising all occupants of the skyscraper I saw through my lenses. The mist on my glasses was all set to wither off thanks to the heat of civilisation in the building. Although the skyscraper before me stood tall and mighty in front of me, there were quite a few people living in it, and I knew not all of them were happy.

Somehow, I know everyone around me is not happy. Even she, the one I idealise and almost worship, isn’t happy. Somehow, I know I’m not wrong in my conjectures; everyone in this world breathes almost an identical quantity and quality of air, but all of us are satisfied with different amounts of happiness.

 All of us want different ends. All of us make efforts pointed in different directions to get to the same end, to be happy. This way, all of us strive for different ends and end up at different ends, but not all of us are happy. The truth remains that there stands a different level at which either of us can be and are satisfied. Very few of us ever reach the ideal height we have in our minds. This difference is what makes up the utter diversity of our world.

All of us aim for a different zenith in our lives, and all of us achieve different heights even while we walk on the same ground. There is not a single defined height that makes all of us contended or that suits all of us. There is always a variable present in our individual definitions of happiness and even in our perception of this difference.

This variable is precisely what defines all of us as different individuals. Although it appears to be a petty matter, it is factually an important entity defining our entire lives and all those involved in it. Those who are unable to get to their ideal height have to be contended with wherever they get to and this can be quite frustrating. It is important to get what you like or you will have to put up with whatever bits and bytes of happiness that come your way.

Happiness is an entity all of us strive for, but the truth remains that only a few of us manage to get it in its pristine form. The amount of happiness each of us gets differs with varying parameters of our efforts and a lot banks on our destiny, but whatever happiness we get always appears to be less than what we bargained for.

Most of us have to be content and happy with whatever wee bit of happiness we get. The striking beauty of this is that none of us is satisfied with what we have, all of us strive for it, and this is what keeps the world around us ticking. At the end of the day, all of us want more than what we get from our lives.

Throughout our lives we make efforts to be happy, we always want to be more happy than whatever bit is inscribed in our destinies; some of us do get a bit more of it. We always want more of it, and even more of it. We live every single day of our lives making efforts to get more of happiness.

It is quite pathetic that most of our efforts end up as failures and we can’t do anything about our failures. It gets all the more frustrating when our repeated efforts to be happy end up in failures and frustrations.

Throughout our lives, we wander about alleys of a forbidden city in the hope of reaching a definite goal one day, but most of us can’t get to it. Those who do get to it are really quite fortunate. They stand taller than everyone else.

The other building I saw through my glasses was certainly quite tall and mighty, but it’s grandeur was toned down by flaws over the lens of my glasses created by an incumbent spell of bad weather. It has been raining heavily.

I find myself running for shelter for I don’t even have an umbrella to shield myself from the rain and hail. Rumbling clouds raised me from my slumbers in the morning today. Similar warning-bells have been ringing all throughout my life, but I never paid heed.

I do have some regrets, but I don’t think I could have done much to help myself. It  has always seemed to be the first morning of my life, quite like the time when I was born. I ventured out of my house despite all the warnings, and found a heavy and dark sky above me.

 A deep dark pervasiveness prevails over me while I look at the skyscraper. There is a sun out in the horizon, but it can’t alleviate an inch of the darkness. I can feel the skyscraper I am in crumbling to the ground. Life is crumbling around me: it is coming to an end. I am so close to the edge.

I might tip over and fall.

A Goddess To Love

A Goddess To Love
I held her hand in mine and literally dragged her behind me. I wasn’t going anywhere specific, but I wanted her to be with me wherever I went. I held her hand in a tight grip, tighter than anything else I had ever held or will ever hold. I didn’t want to leave her hand now that it was in mine. It was the best possession I ever had in my life. I really don’t know how and when my priorities in life became different, but she had already become an integral part of me. I looked at her like I see my image in a mirror: we were as inseparable now.

I marvelled at the short notice I had built a lot of ideals around her. She was the very epitome of perfection. From top to toe, she didn’t have even a single misprint. She was a goddess waiting to be prostrated before while I was her servile follower ready to fall at her feet at a slight beckon. I’m sure my willingness to do so was written all over my face waiting for a camera to capture it.

The adventure we had had a short while ago was already a part of our history begging to be preserved in a tangible form before fresh experiences were created in the long life that lay before both of us. We didn’t have the slightest inkling of our future, but while we held each other’s hand, the incumbent moment was all that counted.

Our hands fitted into each other’s like two cogwheels fit into each other, and so did our dreams, like they were not meant for any other purpose. None of us uttered a single word now: quite a bit of our thoughts passed into each other through our hands. An interpreter wasn’t required for our thoughts were transcribed into epigrams of love as soon as they found themselves within us. This is a language a lot more easily comprehended than any other code ever used by man.

It manifested in a typical form on her face. I saw a glimpse of it through a corner of my eye. There was a smile on her face indicating her happiness and satisfaction. I began to wonder if it was ephemeral like a lot of happiness I have come across. The very next moment, I shook myself out of a delirium I was sinking into. There is no reason why her happiness and satisfaction should get more weightage than mine. I should think of my happiness and consider on how it should last longer. On second thoughts, this is not feasible. Being in love means an equal amount of happiness is exchanged whenever we are together and even when we aren’t.

The only way to maintain our state of happiness is to maintain our presence beside each other. I wanted to walk into eternity while I held her hand. All mortal remains of time are going to whither off when we get there. the journey is never going to end. The time span measured between this moment and the point indicating eternity is bound to have countless aeons of time. I hope each aeon is an eternity in itself.

For the time being, I should make sure she doesn’t leave my side. I pulled her closer to myself till her warm breaths fanned my shoulder. Her being with me for a longer time is to mean more and more happiness for me. I felt sure this is how she is going to be happy too. She was getting her fingers disentangled from my grip when I guessed her motive: she wanted to leave me. We had come a long way together.

 She has to be with me till I breathe my last. I held her hand a bit tighter in desperation. I think I heard a slight squeal, but I only gripped her hand all the more tightly. I wasn’t prepared to leave her hand, while she seemed to enjoy whatever attention I gave her. I began to wonder at the contentions a slight touch of her hand had initiated in me. The train of thoughts running through my mind at a terrific speed originated in an impulsive kiss I had planted on her lips: I was yet to recover from it.

The pressure of her lips was yet fresh on my lips.  They had written a quite a few messages on my mind while they had erased quite a bit of my past from my mind too. For the time being, I held her hand as if it spelt the difference between life and death for me. A mere contact with her hand was enough to send ripples of excitement through me. Their divergent pattern reminded me of the expanding nature of our love. Our love was going to encompass quite a bit of the world around us. Quite a few new relations were on their way to being forged.

The intimate moment we had shared a while back had created a whole new world around us. I was quivering with excitement while I thought of it. I wondered if my excitement was comparable to an iota of what she had experienced a while back and what she was going through right now. A large part of it was written clearly on her face. Her face had lost the initial tinge brought about by a momentous blush, but she was becoming more beautiful than ever with every passing moment. I saw all this even while my eyes looked at the pavement before me.

I was now in a position to visualise my entire life that lay before me while I held her hand. She was an important part of it now. I began to recount everything important to live. Every packet of breath I pull into myself blows life into me just as her presence blows life into the world around me. My world thrives by virtue of her presence in it.

I hope she never leaves it.

Yet Another Kiss

Yet Another Kiss
The two of us stood before each other in quite an awkward position. She was blushing to the tips of her ears, while I’m sure I displayed a similar response to her stimuli. It really was a surprise for me. I’m still not sure if her blush can be said to be a sign of her immaturity for I was blushing too. If one’s blush is an index of one’s immaturity, I wonder if a wayfarer could say who was being more immature.

She couldn’t see me while her eyes were lowered, but I was staring at her all this time. Here was a moon I wanted to keep looking at like a chakor-partridge stares at the moon. She was a labyrinth I wanted to lose myself in and remain lost in for a long time. I hoped I could never be found. The labyrinth spread out before me like a river on whose bank I could sleep peacefully for my lifetime. My life lay scattered on its banks in many pieces.

A whole lot of different and yet congruent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lay scattered around us begging to be drawn together into a complete picture. Each piece had a different story to tell. There were pieces that symbolised my past, but they had become quite dim and dull. The ones that screamed to be recognised at once were those that symbolised our future. I could see my future with her quite clearly.

I’m not blessed with superpowers. I don’t have an idea of what future lies before me. Even if we were to be together, somehow, I knew our future wasn’t going to be easy. My past is lined up with so many distorted events that I begin to doubt if my future can be anything better than what I’ve been through.  I don’t think it can be. I didn’t know anything about her past. She was a mystery standing before me begging to be unravelled.

I began to wonder where a train of thoughts initiated by an impulsive kiss by me was going to lead. It had already taken me on a roller-coaster-ride between my past and future. I felt sure I’d fallen in love with her. Both of us had confessed our love for each other. It wasn’t in words, but no one can doubt it. I don’t know whether to dub a momentous passion as an infatuation or did it go an inch beyond it? I think it went way ahead.

To be extended beyond it, we needed a comprehensive insight into each other’s nature. This meant something more than what we had seen in each other’s eyes. I had seen heaps of passion in her eyes, a passion lying dormant within her for a long time. It couldn’t possibly remain pent up behind a wall any longer. It had unfurled itself in the form of a kiss she had planted on me.

What I was sure of was the immense happiness, joy and ecstasy gathering within me at the same time. All of it was yearning to come out of me in some form. I wanted to kiss her again and again.  I was emboldened by my first successful adventure. She hadn’t resisted it in any form. She seemed to enjoy whatever attention I had given her. I wondered if she was going to enjoy another kiss as much as she had appreciated my first one.

I had embraced her when she was yearning and pining for love and affection from someone. I had given only a bit of all this. I’m sure she felt grateful for it. She had expressed her gratefulness by the kiss she had given me. It was a moment of intense passion, but a lot of secrets had been whispered in my ears while her lips touched mine.

She had shown an innocence and freshness typical to babies before me. I love babies, I love their innocence and freshness.  This was the freshness I found in her when I kissed her. There was a spontaneous nature typical to young kids in her. She was as fresh as a dewdrop in the morning. I loved her even more for all this.  A dewdrop’s freshness stagnates with the dawn of a new day, but I had to capture its freshness  and preserve it in a tangible form for it marked a fresh beginning we   were making.

I wish I could keep the freshness of the moment with me forever and a day. I wish I could look at her for an eternity, keep looking at her for a longer time, and discover new secrets of life with every passing aeon of time. Looking at her filled me with happiness; I knew I was going to be as happy every time I looked at her. With her, life was going to whisper new secrets in my ears every single moment, I knew.

Virtually, there isn’t an end to the mysteries life unfolds before us. All of us are exposed to different experiences and all of us form different opinions of life from them. There was a marked difference in our experiences of life, I knew. Both of us had been exposed to different worlds and we had formed different opinions of life based on these different experiences.  I wondered if there was a way to highlight similarities and ignore differences between us like a highlighter marks out important sentences in a book.

I’m not sure how many similarities and differences she discovered and appreciated while she stood before me. For the artist within me, here was beauty personified standing before me. What I had witnessed and experienced had been something truly remarkable. It seemed to be the first time, although it wasn’t: I’d fallen in love hundreds of times. This was merely another one of them.

Or was it? There was something special in this one.

I Kissed Her Again

I Kissed Her Again
A huge ton of passion lay encapsulated in the miniscule moment I held her in my arms. The moment was coming to an end before I realised it: she was trying to wriggle out of an awkward situation she had thrown herself into. She lowered her gaze while I tried to look into her eyes to tender an apology.

I wondered if she felt any regrets for what she had done a while back. It wasn’t completely my doing, after all. She was equally responsible for our bonhomie a while back.

A blush on her fair cheeks gave away an embarrassment she wanted to conceal from me. She was still panting like someone who had completed a marathon successfully. I could almost hear crowds cheering her victory. She was still quivering with excitement.

Her eyes were still searching for an entity she had lost in me. I enjoyed whatever attention she was giving me, I didn’t want her  search to end. A few wisps of her hair entangled with some buttons of my shirt were the only remnants of the immense passion she had displayed moments ago, and yet she was blushing with shame and pride at the same time as if  she had left quite a bit more of herself in me. She wanted it back, I knew, and I wasn’t going to give it back.

A part of me was also with her, she didn’t want to leave it, and yet she had wriggled out of my embrace like a snake: I was a trophy she clung hard to for a long time, but she had jumped out of a tournament if only to plunge into it again, win it again to relish the joy of winning again.

I did all I could to alleviate her embarrassment, although secretly, I didn’t want a bit of it to go. It made her blush. Her red cheeks made her all the more beautiful every single moment she was before me. I wish I could make her believe she had achieved something remarkable in her life. I had never been so close to anyone, and that too a stranger.

We were no longer strangers. We had seen quite bits of each other through a looking-glass that reflected her achievement. I wanted to see it again. I wanted to congratulate her by giving her another kiss. For a moment, I did consider a situation where she wouldn’t like it, but the very  next moment, I braced myself to accomplish my resolve.

With her hands in mine, I pulled her gently towards myself. She tried to look another way, but the very next moment, her face deflected back to its original position. I read  a clear message written in her eyes: she too wanted me to kiss her again, and this time on her lips!!

Apparently, she had enjoyed whatever attention I had conferred on her. I was elated by the fathomless attention bestowed upon me by a stranger, who had become a close friend now.

She had not resisted my spontaneous display of affection the first time. This had surprised me, but my ardour and passion didn’t seem to be a novelty for her. For a while, I wondered if many strangers had become acquainted with her in her in a similar manner in her past. She was quite good-looking, so, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a lot of admirers.

I was merely another of them, I knew. Some pangs of jealousy found themselves within me. Well, I could always be wrong in my conjectures. All the same, she stood before me blushing all over, making the moment all the more memorable.

All said and done, I wanted to know if she attached an iota of importance to the moment of contact between us a while ago. She didn’t give me any clues beyond the initial impulsive reaction I was a  witness to.

There was no way of knowing anything for she was lost in the moment like someone lost in a dense jungle. She didn’t want to be discovered; it was clear. She didn’t want to come out of the jungle, never. Before she could realise her status as a lost adventurer, I gave her another kiss.

The second contact did make her look into my eyes. Unlike my first kiss, my second one wasn’t reciprocated in any manner. She remained a passive audience to my loud whisper. I began to wonder if my second confession of love had fallen on deaf ears.

My agony melted into thin air when she lowered her gaze a while later. I could see her eyes quite clearly through her lowered eyelids. Like a well of oil in a desert of Arabia, they were full to the brim with love. A whole lot of love and mirth was boiling in each cauldron.

These moments were going to touch me with a magic wand for a long time, I knew; they   were going to make my life all the more beautiful every time I thought of theme, I knew. I wish I knew this to be true for her too.

She was still blushing all over, but I couldn’t be sure if    it was a confession of love. Did I have an immature teenager before me, I wondered; I knew for sure she was a woman I was going to dream of for a long time to come.

In a small way, I am grateful to her for giving me such a beautiful moment. The blush on her face reminded me of the brightness I had seen in the dawn of a fresh new day: a fresh chapter in my life had been opened.

Reading between the lines of the chapter is going to take me through several adventures I have never been through ever before. The novelty of the words I read was enough to propel me through paradise several times over. I began to wonder if being in paradise was going to give me more joy  and satisfaction than what I found with her.

 A lady who stood before me blushing all over had changed quite a lot in me.

I Kissed Her

I Kissed Her
I held her as close to myself as was propitious at that moment. There was no one around us, we were strangers, but there was something typical to our closeness that prompted me to shatter a glass-wall between us. The glass-wall was melting into obscurity as we held each other in a tight embrace. Both of us were looking for worlds where we were to find happiness with greater numerators than we had found in other fractions. All my efforts to do so had drawn negative results till now, but deep in my heart, I was optimistic about a future packed with several fractions of joy and happiness if life began this way.

All my algebra and arithmetic calculations waivered off as I felt her breaths on my shoulders. Her warmth gathered around me and bound me to her like a magnet. Her body-odour pulled me to her like a typical feminine-pheromone. I felt myself being pulled towards her like a primitive animal. For that moment, she was a primitive God incarnated before me in His pristine form. I was prepared to prostrate before the goddess of love before me. She did look like one. I wondered if any god can ever look better than her. Perhaps none can.

The very next moment, I felt sure nothing can ever be. Her embrace pushed out all my past from my mind. She had all His powers of creation and destruction. She was creating a new me, while at the same time, I was being fragmented into a million pieces even as she trembled in my arms. She was quivering with excitement like a delicate feather ruffled by a breeze, and so was I.

I felt sure she was clinging to me for relief from a crisis in her life. I tried to look for some signs of comfort and relief from a crisis, but all her past was completely obliterated from her face. All the same, I felt a lot of my incumbent dilemmas fading into the ether as I held her tighter in my arms. Her warm breaths sped up my breaths. I began to consider the possibility of a heart-attack. She was going to crash before I did because she was panting with unfathomable excitement, and so was I.

This was the first time anyone had been so close to me, and that too a stranger. I was struck by her frankness and lack of formality, but I enjoyed every moment, so I let her nails dig into my shoulders as she clung on harder. This certainly was the first time, and I clung on to her like it was the last time in my life anyone was going to be so close to me. I don’t know if a lion can ever dig harder with its claws.

Both of us  were looking into thin air over each other’s shoulders, but we could see a fire burning in each other’s hearts. It was reflected by a red tint in her eyes. I know she was looking for a fire in my eyes too. While I looked closely into her eyes, she looked into mine even as we looked over each other’s shoulders. I wish time would pause at that moment while we looked into each other. A couple of floodlights had been switched on and we saw each and every aspect of each other’s nature quite clearly.

I felt honoured and dignified by the attention she accorded me as I studied every movement of each pupil of each of her eyes. Her eyes were looking for an entity beyond the domain of her eyes while she looked at me. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for, I shall never know.  I was looking for love in its purest form while I peered into her eyes, and I did find quite a bit of it.

The moment was a beautiful one. She was even more beautiful than the moment; her dark black eyes made her fair complexion stand out from her pretty face. There was a lot more than her eyes to see in her face: a beautifully sculpted nose sat between her lips and broad forehead.  I wanted to kiss her lips. It was beyond the paremetres of propriety, I knew, I found it hard to conceal the urge to be so frank and forthright. All the same, my eyes remained fixed on the black holes before me. All the world around me seemed to converge into her eyes. I myself was sinking in a whirlpool bent on pulling in everything there was around it. Her eyes pulled everything into themselves with a force stronger than the strongest suction-pump ever made.

All intricacies of life I face every day were being sucked into her eyes while I looked into them. I was being purged of all woes I had till now; all of it was wiped out and obliterated while she held me in her arms. I wonder if she felt a similar catharsis. I will never know what thoughts went through her mind while she held me in her arms. My heart beat rapidly with excitement, and I felt sure her heart too palpitated at a similar pace. The ground between us quivered and shook as it shared the excitement within us. I badly wanted to kiss her.      

I trembled with fear; I was on the verge of crossing some barriers set out by our society, our religion and I really didn’t know if I should be doing what I was going to do or what I was contemplating on. A typical odour of the unknown wrapped itself around me coupled with a thrill of discovering a novelty. Vibrations were, I’m sure, felt all over the world. I was breathless with excitement. I was humming like strings of a sitar in a dark night. Its darkness gathered around me; I wandered in her embrace as if I had lost my way.

And I kissed her.