Its that time again. An incessant urge, a chronic disease.
It leads me through a roller coaster.
I was thinking of my college a couple of days ago. The way I would hide and run to the canteen every time I heard the walking stick of the head of the department fade in from the staff room.
I cant do that anymore. If I do, I don't get paid. Its really a simple equation.
A friend of mine got a job and moved to Bombay, and I was thinking of the aroma of the sweat mingled with cheap perfume that would violate my nostrils every time I stepped inside one of those trains.
I thought of my college and how a certain professor encouraged me to begin passing notes to the class. Of course, he didn't know about it.
Why do I think of all this? Probably because now I have to get up early in the morning, and I cannot walk into my parents' bedroom and tell them that I am taking a break to Shantiniketan with my college friends.
I cannot decide to hang out with my friends at Someplace Else on a random evening.
I cannot think of hitching a ride and going to some strange destination. Probably because I am not what I used to be.
Regrets? I have a few, I would say, copying the famous crooner.
I wish I didn't become the depressed domesticated self that I have been turned into.
I wish I could just pick up my bag, call a few friends and go watch a play.
I wish I had some friends I could simply hang out with. Discuss Marquez or Bach or even Tin Tin.
I wish there was a cup of steaming coffee in front of me and smoke from cutlets racing towards the nearest window.
I wish for a free mind and a soul that wouldn't feel trapped in an endless battle for existence.
I wish I was bisexual. I wish I could hold a woman as sensuously as I can hold a man.
I wish I could wade into water and lie in it all day.
I wish water lilies would talk to me.
I wish there would be no end to one rainy evening.
I wish to drink a bottle of wine, sitting on the floor of my terrace while people from other houses would huddle in front of the TV and pray for the rains to clear.
I wish there was someway I could escape from a dungeon.
I wish memories wouldn’t fade into nothingness.
I wish for linen to clean itself each day.
I wish for plants to stop dying, for snow to visit new places.
I wish my phone bills weren't so high.
I wish someone would see me for what I really am and embrace me. Not for being smart or being happy or honest. But for being sensitive, strange and scared.
I want to visit all the ruins in this country and dream up the wars and battles that led to history.
I want to see the dried and washed away blood that adorn battlefields.
I want to say a prayer in the name of every human that has ever walked this planet.
Finally, I want to wake up one day and feel better about myself.
