LOVELESS...ALL BUT WE...

Where will you love me?

Where will i love you?

Vindictive park-benches screaming urgently, 'Wet paint! Wet paint!'....

Rude rings of the cycle-bell, Tring!Tring!, making us pull away,painfully...my lips, left the thirsty traveller..yet again.

Bleary-eyed streetlamps jolt themselves awake...cringing in disgust, repugnance...they flood the dark dreamy lane with nightmarish light...you slip your land away from across my waist..i feel the one tenacious iron railing giving way...i fall.

Malevolent blades of grass beckon to us with batting green eye-lids...we sigh in relief...finally!...Our tattered little tent we thus put up...you follow me in...'let the bud bloom just this one time'..i pray silently, my ears deaf to the hicupps of chuckle from beneath...

Slice! went the unforgiving knife...like the hungry scalpel of the surgeon, it tore through our tent...it collapsed with a defeated sigh,the smirking blades of grass denying its soul, a resting-place....

The city chased out Love ...chased it out with brutal severity, like cleansing the bowels of a lamb for purposes of its 'eternal' installation in the biology laboratory.Love,took to its heel...bewildered, hurt, tired...

I am tired too...so are you...this loveless city of rioting bricks and warring stones has closed its blood-stained portals on us too...

So tell me,Love...

Where will you love me?

Where will i love you?

THE HUNT...

Large hairy hands wriggled their way out through the hairline cracks on the red brick walls that stood sentinels on either side of the narrow lane...they clawed at her,seemed to derive immense cannibalistic pleasure at the sound of the sharp scratch! of their yellow nails against her soft flesh and thus,clawed for more....the bricks salivated...licked their tongues..smack! smack!...she screamed in terror...

The flourescent colour dial of the wall clock stared back at her prespiring countenence.Through the pitch black of the night, the left edge of it's ridiculously-thin black metal lips twitched, the honest efforts at keeping a straight face in a gallant show of mock sympathy...it would be a mere five minutes before this mean parody of greek tragedy will fall through...2:50 am that would be.

It has been happening every night...the choking, salivating walls..the ear-splitting cry of terror that seemed to play only in her ears..like through a set of ear phones..then she would break through the nightmare and fall back hard on her stiff bed... a confused heap of tousled hair,ruffled beadsheets and beads of sweat adorning her neck and temple....her terror-stricken eyes staring up at the senile ceiling-fan....and the sole spectator of this play, a cynical flourescent coloured wall clock...a play that plays to an almost empty auditorium every night...and yet,it gets played.

Morning dawns....she sees the sky undress yet again, stripping off the smoky-black smock of Night and buttoning up the A-line tunic of Day...the vigorous polishing of shoes,the concentrated combing of hair,the quick gulping down of milk...and the sky is ready to take on the day!

Then,the furious banging on her door...the one feminine howl that she has come to dread....her mother at the other end,saying- 'wake up sleepy head!...the fifth family will be coming to see you today!...do not forget to oil your hair well...heard the guy appreciates long black hair...eyes parched in USA,you know?!'

And she knows...the walls will hunt her out yet again..again..and again..and again.