MUSIC...

A soft suggestive tune drifted through the air, halted for a while in serious contemplation, teasing the strained ears, and then, with the sudden agility of a preying panther, pounced upon the eardrums….A warm chill slithered down the spine, poking each rib, strumming the heart-strings, making the feet tingle, the mouth smile…helplessly….
Music always intoxicated her…It popped open within her being, a gigantic bottle of wine….and as the creamy white froth spilled over the gaping mouth of the bottle, the dreamy smile crept stealthily into her face and forced open her parched lips, stretching it like a rubber-band….
That was all she could ask for when asked with sadistic indifference- “any last wish?”…With hands tied tightly, painfully behind her, she tiptoed towards the menacing gallows…one step at a time….and there she stood right below the lip-smacking coiled serpent…down came the black cape over her mesmerisingly beautiful eyes….and the last that the fiercely ‘lawful’ world saw of her was that hauntingly angelic smile…..The smile that tamed Death itself …tamed it with the soft tempting whip of that one musical note….

ANGELS...

"Sale is on! Sale is on!", screamed the over-enthusiastic man outside the majestic portals of the garment store..."Can i get an Angel?", She asked with large hopeful eyes...The man shook his head in mock distress and announced, "we don't sell them anymore"...A thick murky rivulet meandered down her eye...distressed and frustrated, she sat on the jagged edge of an upturned rickety wooden carton on the pavement and waited...waited for her Angel to come...
Across the street from her, on the opposite pavement, big burly men with dirty ropelike tassles hanging from their grimy skulls, sold fresh human flesh...a long chain of early morning buyers stood outside the store, with an air of nonchalence shamelessly hanging about their faces, very much like the dirty ropelike tassles crowning the grimy skulls of the flesh-sellers...
A blue and white bus came charging down the high street like a raging bull and crushed yet another soul under its killer wheels...it honked in victorious delight...a revolting concoction of malicious pleasure, sadistic joy and unadulterated malignant glee burst forth from its exhaust-pipe and blinded the eye...the poor soul lay shrouded in a bloody drape...cold and dead...
Somewhere in the distance, the ear-piercing screams of agony of a housewife could be heard as tongues of fire slithered up her frame in euphoria...The brick and mortar walls stood dutibound senitels and looked on unfeelingly as her milk-white flesh slowly withered and burnt...In the spacious hall, an ageing couple prepared the endless list of invitees for their daughter-in-law's funeral with deep concentration...
Admist this strange celebration of life, She sat on her throne..still...waiting for her Angel to appear...The world smoked and reeked of death and destruction...houses and men burnt like a mere scrap of paper...and yet she waited for her Angel to appear....
She waited and waited...waited for eternity for her Angel to come,not realising all the while that strong white wings had sprouted on her shoulders a long time back...We are all Angels in disguise...sigh! if only we would realise....

CHILDREN OF GOD....

A solitary wooden swing, swinging in distress…
The majestic sand-castle echoing its lonliness.
Paper boats, marbles and kites strewn across the floor…
Unstrung, uncared for…not needed anymore.
Peter Pan lies captivated beneath moth-eaten books in cream….
The magical path to NeverLand now seems a distant dream.
Boxes of scrabble…the stiffled voices of joy…. jungle-gyms stand empty…
A cruel cruel ploy!
And as glasses of untouched ice-cream shed creamy tears in brown…
God let go of the reins with a warning frown…..

( THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN CAME ON GOD'S URGENT CALL...HE IS STILL THERE, POLISHING HIS MAJESTIC PIPE AS LITTLE PARTHO SCRUBS AWAY THE PROUD BLACK BOOTS OF MR.SEN...PARTHO WON'T BE DOING THAT FOR TOO LONG NOW...HE WON'T...)

PEACE..AT LAST....

Spiders, cockroaches and unidentified winged insects have infested the locker-rooms of my heart...there were no bloody skirmishes, no tedious wars...i submitted without a fight...simply held open the gates and in they trooped, fifty thousand blotchy scrawly creatures, beating triumphant drums of victory, majestically, trooped into my kingdom...my heart...
I was a weak queen, who could not hold on to the reins of her chariot...A weak queen who gazed at the world through translucent pink shades and smiled in delight...a queen who juggled tiny earthern 'bhars' on the shamelessly-balding stretches of the Maidan, blissfully complacent....and a queen, who intentionally kept her doors and windows unbolted and thrown open at night....
My poor patchworked heart!...It had been operated upon too often... A mercilessly-menacing pair of silver scissors, barring its saliva-dripping canines, ripped through the soft red flesh a million times...excruciating pain blinded my eyes with silent, forceful tears...then came the sadistically winking needle...thus continued the hellish task...the gory unfinished jigsaw puzzle, hoping against hope to be spared the slow-poisioning...and yet the needle took the sharp dives, swam on underwater through soft quivering flesh and emerged on the surface again in euphoric delight...and oh!..the pain of it all...my poor patchworked heart that bore it...My poor poor patchworked heart!
The secret would go to the grave with me...the fact that i had sealed a deal with the present occupants of my heart...My heart had been ravaged, plundered, it's blood spilt again and again and again...ravaged by thoses very beings to whom it opened wide the doors and windows of its castle...in they came and broke down yet another carefully constructed wall...The souls i trusted with my bounteous heart...left me maimed, mutilated for life....
Hence i resign...retire...let go of the reins and sigh.....
The spiders, cockroaches and unidentified winged creatures would do better justice to my poor patchworked heart....they would....yes, they would....

A BREATH...

The sky was not the right shade of purple…it desperately needed another coat of paint to convince itself that it was more than just a filmsy backdrop to a melodramatic world of damsels in shining armour and knights in distress over the sudden loss of their gallantry. At the high street, melancholy stray dogs stood in a tight circle and took in turns to bark aloud the sad tales of their wretched lives spent on four wretched legs. A lethargic halogen lamp, precariously hanging from the summit of a wobbly lamp-post, winked intermittently, rather shamelessly, at the moon. Occasionally, neighbouring trees exchanged formal pleasantries after a hard day’s work…the rustling leaves adding soft melody to the silent din of the night, an insipid occurrence in an irritatingly-insipid night ...and yet, nothing felt right, the sky still seemed too bright for the night…was there not enough paint left in the gigantic tin-can?...’Maybe there is!’, smirked back the moon at me..’Maybe I just hid it in some discreet corner of the attic-room where no one would find it for a while…and then, for that little while, I would drape myself in colours bright…for once, I would throw back my head and laugh…intoxicated with sublime happiness, I would do away with those suffocating iron shoes and gavotte on the roof-tops of this sombre world…for there comes a time in every existing being’s life, when that being, in a sudden burst of joyful realization, remembers to breathe…to live…to smile…’

WINGS....

There was a time...many a thousand light years ago, there was a time when i used to have wings...brick-red wings of recycled newspaper that my Maker had put together with tedious concentration and unflinching dedication....by the time this Herculean task had been completed, Heaven reeked repulsively of Dendrite, wet paper and divine sweat...but nonetheless, there stood my wings...brick-red wings of recycled paper...!...Thus, off i flew into the night air....dodging the ash-coloured bales of cotton suspended in the limitless sky, i flew on...and on..and on...The wind whistled softly, flirtatiously in my ear...i blushed a little...and then sailed on...and on..and on..and on....
Suddenly, a papery hand ticked the nape of my neck...my head turned impulsively...a flash of brick-red caught my eye...my Maker had been careless afterall...i clicked my tongue in disapproval..and yet my eyes refused to budge from the loose strip of coloured newspaper that held on tenaciously to dear life...my eyes refused to budge, attracted all of a sudden to the curious scribblings on the surface of the paper...a hand reached out and tore the strip from its root....the eyes travelled over the printed word...a light-bulb lighted up somewhere deep in the crevices of my being...i smiled a knowing smile...shook my head in witty contemplation and thus,let go of my papery appendages....the wings were of no use to me anymore...the airy sea had been conquered..there it lay tamed and purring contentedly in the palm of my hand, captured in bold black letterings...the wings were of no use to me anymore....
Or so i thought, as i shut and bolted my doors and windows, complacently ignoring my Maker's defeated sigh from above.....