A Voice in the Dark | Shubhodeep Pal

Years later, they meet in the shadow of the great oak. They stare at each other with the blankness of the years that divide them. Recognition succumbs to uneasiness. The stares grow softer. The uneasiness abates stutteringly. He removes his glasses and wipes them gingerly. August rain is raging against the tree, enveloping the silence that shrouds them. He can't bring himself to be the first to speak. He wipes his glasses more animatedly, dismayed that he can't get the rain off them. He realises the rain managed to sneak into his pockets as well. He pauses and lets the raindrops that cling to him descend to the ground. The meeting isn't planned. It could not have been. He had left the city soon after she left him. His last memory of the city is a bus-stop not far from the great oak. It was raining that day too. They had planned to take a bus to the cafe that had nursed their love for many months. He remembers that day by the colour of the sky. He likes to remember it ...

Why we, as a society, must take some blame for such crimes and their effects You. Yes, you. You blabbering all over Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere on the internet. I want you to stop with your sermons and tirades and humbug tears. I want you to stop thinking of yourselves as experts on crime. I want you to stop thinking that violent retribution - hanging, physical castrations - will stop these crimes. Instead, listen. Shed your hypocrisy please. Look within. Shed this deep-seated, generations-strong, mixed-with-your-blood hypocrisy. Stop baying for blood when your own might not be so clean. Stop screaming for heads when you yourselves award impunity to many rapists. How are you responsible, you ask? Allow me to hammer some sense into your over-charged social-network-fried brains.Violent sexual assault - indeed, sexual assault of any nature - is gut-shattering. But do you know what is worse than being a victim of such a crime? That feeling of helplessness when you don't k...

She waits for her lover's return.  Her bated breath brushes the darkness away. Her eyes flicker and sigh With each whisper of time. Minutes arrive, Days depart.  The grave remains  ensconced in her unmoving heart. Where there was emptiness,  there is emptiness still.  Follow @diaporesis

I am just words. The ones that used to drift in through the windows of your dreams on starless nights. The ones you once danced with in the mango-stained monsoons. The ones in which you first saw my face. Destined to be loved. And hated. I am the same words. The music for which is lost in a maze that's lost in memories of pain. The taste for which you lost because they wanted to fill your hours forever. The ink for which you spilt because the colour never changed. I am still just words. Replaceable, and replaced by the dictionaries whose covers promised more. Beaten and battered by the pens and matches you used to erase me. Hollow and unfeeling. Ever yours. Never yours. Yet feeling hollow and unfeeling. I am the words you erased Before you read me. Follow @diaporesis

Years later, when these tears have dried with the mist will you even recognise the pain that's floated down the years? Years later, when we walk beneath teary-eyed skies, will you spare a moment and laugh at how dry my eyes look? Years later, when all my love has turned to loss Will you turn to me and whisper that all that anger was love? Follow @diaporesis

People aren't afraid of going through the horrors of hell. Indeed, an inherent, inexplicable streak of masochism makes them welcome pain as a depraved form of pleasure. What scares people is that, after they've been through the fire, nobody will ask them how it was. That there'll be nobody to complain about hell. That nobody will hear their belated screams. That nobody will care that they're still alive. And that, eventually, it might want to make them leap into the flames again. Forever. Follow @diaporesis

Years later, when we walk On these familiar, worn roads Under grey skies and hesitant rain A few drops from the skies will Remind us of the pain of Eager expectation. Years later, Mostly forgotten memories will reawaken You and me from temporary stupor - Our thoughts touching, arms interlinked, - Nascent, tiny pains will seems blurs - Loneliness will stay alone. You and I will lie down some years Later and remember the heady buzz Of separation. And we'll laugh at how we made ourselves Victims of time. Time, you know, Evaporates. Love remains. Forever. Follow @diaporesis

winsome willow leaps in the air an act of faith overdue since the seeds  of its slow time were swept into being. a break in flight it realises the satisfaction in a slow death. the roots leave  their shallow home: sometimes life begins with death. Follow @diaporesis

Sometimes too much of quantity is lost in search of quality. It's that haunted feeling of anticipated loss: Perfection is a terrible, and terrific, illusion. Nevertheless, illusions keep the ego sated. O Perfect Muse, come to me. Now. Follow @diaporesis

the mirror shivers and kicks my dull reflection into deep focus

And so when I go to sleep tonight I'll put my dreams on hold and strip them bare. I'll pull my blanket over my eyes and hope they won't find me. I hope they won't come  and tear my blanket away and leave me shivering in  the music-less night. I'll hope they won't take my belongings and scream with their eyes. I'll hope they won't give me the inevitable blood-draining news: That I'm just a ghost now That my past is dead That nothing belongs to me anymore That I was living in falseness That tomorrow I should take my wife  and children and start living in parking lots. That the millions I invested have crumbled to dust.  That my past was a lie That my present and future are incompatible. That my family will have to  beg to exist. That we have nothing to  call our own. That our private lives have become public objects. That I won't be able to hug my children in a few quiet moments of solitude. That from now on, whenever I have to make love, I'll ...

And the tears came. They ebbed and flowed like a seasonal flood. But this wasn't a seasonal occurrence. He hadn't cried in ages. It seemed as if he was crying from memory. Memories of a past he didn't want. Memories from a past that had broken him. But he wept all the same, shedding all shame and fear. He wept like never before. And those painful, watery utterances kept flowing. Almost like a deep wound. Perhaps it was a wound. But he didn't know. He couldn't think. He couldn't stop. He cried silently in the deep night. He let the tears stain his face. He wanted them to stain his face. He wanted the tears to purge his unholiness. And as suddenly as they had started, the tears stopped. They stopped with the speed of thought. But he wasn't thinking anymore. And finally he came to his senses. The paper he had been writing on was soaked. The ink had spread and smudged. Instead of coherent words, flimsy remnants of his thoughts remained. It's true, he thought...

There were tears in her eyes. She held him tightly for the last time. Pain closed in on them. In the background someone was playing on a guitar with painful languor. For once she brushed her tears back with the back of her hand. He let his tears trickle to the floor for the first time in ages... Finally, as it always does, reality came thudding through their stairs of thought. And they laughed. They laughed with a carefully cultivated falseness. And the tears were gone. And they were sane again. Because sanity and insanity are measured by laughter: tears just don't count. They parted with smiles they had constructed years ago. Follow @diaporesis

Black tears trickle into nothingness. I've nothing to say. Let me be me.

People change in a flash.  People change, painfully. I knew someone yesterday. Today I don't. The emptiness scalds me. The blanks in my life haunt me. Someone was mine yesterday. Today no more. Today she has the world, I have just myself and my misery. But it's love, they say. And I, (no, not we) shall overcome.

And the cycle continues. Till when, we may not know.  But till then, we still have hope.

Random utterances on a random day: 1984. The unbearable lightness of being. Random thoughts about random books by random authors. Where is stability? - where is randomness? Rashomon. Aparajita. Visuals. Heartbreaks. Differences. Where are the appendages? Where are the disjunctions? Lost in randomness, swirling in apathy. And hence, I remain, abruptly yours, The Random Interruptor.

Sometimes it's enough that you're alive, and that you can think without the need to put everything on paper. Sometimes everything's enough, yet insufficient: because somethings, however scratchy, cannot be etched with words.

Stuck between two steps: the one before and the grey one following it...

A strange silence drowned her nights and burned her days. It was a silence she had never heard before, touched before. It smelt almost like fear, but not quite so musty. This made her fear it even more than fear. She sat still in the darkest corner because it was the most obvious thing to do. Moreover, it was the only thing she could do. Darkness shrouded her like wasted memory. She wallowed in it with the pleasure of a person who’s sure to die. Then, all of a sudden, she did something she had never done before— she started thinking. It’s something normal people never do until they’re alone. She was normal, so she had never considered thinking for herself. That was partly because it’s never polite to think in company; one must always let the company think for everyone. The other part of the reason she did not know. But she knew that it existed. So now that she was alone, she could think; and so she did. She thought because she had nothing better to do. No parties to attend, no se...