Saturday, December 08, 2007

On the Kodak paper


Beneath the red quilt, your memories seep inside me like brandy. The days are shorter now and, in the night, when I am sometimes awakened, I feel my heartbeat – the feebleness of it. I have no more stories to tell; all plots are revealed. Some lie low, like dormant volcanoes. I suspect they will never ever erupt.

How do I weep silently again, like I did that night, years ago, when I came home, staggering on my feet, and listened to a song from Raincoat? The intensity of youth is fading away.

Yesterday, I was searching for old papers and it led me to an old, worn-out envelope. I recognised the stamp on it, probably stuck on it with your saliva. I opened it up with trembling hands. On the Kodak paper, your lips, glistening with Vaseline, sent those familiar invitations to me. In the luminosity of the pinewood burning in the fireplace, your face looked like Chinar leaves in autumn. In your hands you held a copy of Love in the times of cholera: hands that I have held in mine for God knows how many times. My fingers feel like dead branches; the lines on my palm are nothing but marks of your coming in and going out of my life.

Cook up a surprise for me. When I am lying down in a feverish blur, arrive silently and touch my parched lips. I will erase all lines from my palm. I will embalm my hands.

Come back, Maya.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was truly beautiful, Rahul. You really have a gift to make even someone totally unrelated to your world feel your pain.

Kakshi said...

Very deep, indeed, and the picture, its just so cliched but that is its beauty!!

Anonymous said...

happy new years

shabda said...

Raindrops fall to earth,
play their countless seperate dramas,
then rise,
to fall again in endlessly repeated cycles.

Similar is the tale of each soul.
Thru unnumbered cycles of return
we refine our understanding
till we become convinced to our v.depths
that the fulfillment we are seeking is ours already
-in the bliss of our own being.
why should it take so long to make such a simple discovery,
why is it so difficult to realise that
earthly pleasures are but reflections of our inner joy?
In a house of mirrors,one is less inclined to introspect.
The reflections are too fascinating.

In human life too,
the reflections of the inner joy that
we perceive in outward fulfillments are too tantalizing.
we soon realise that our fascination has been with mere images
and that wev been living in an unreal world.

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