from the diaries of Tanvi

Invite me into your dream
You will be the king, I will be the queen
We will take our horses and ride
Across the pastures of our desire
Along the mountains of our ambition 
Through the breeze of our intuition
Our horses gallop amid the trees
Their pace resembling our heartbeat
We will lie down beside the lake
In the grass, at the sky we stare
The azure vastness above us bright
Where slowly drifting clouds reside
We don't hug, we don't even touch 
But it feels natural to be just us, like that
We will wait there till the stars show up
Lighting the dark sky and our desire to hug
We will take a boat and go deep into the lake
Stopping in the middle, at a mesmerizing place
Where the surface of the water reflects what's above
As if we are in between two skies - with one below
The whole world will be ours, just you and me
We will make our own kingdom like Adam and Eve.

post from the past

from the diaries of Tanvi

Out of the blue, if I tell you that I miss you, will you really realize how much?

Sometimes I think about you all day and feel why I missed something that I feel so

important. And sometimes your memory flashes in my mind like a butcher’s knife.

With one swing tearing apart my heart and going away, leaving my body to feel

the tremors. No matter what, I want you to know that I think about you and I

miss you. I don’t know if the feelings you have or I think I have towards you

are the same as they used to be. Even then, I think there is something still

remaining in me that feels bad about not being with you and having to live on

memories that become the needles used by a poor acupuncture therapist. They

hurt more than they heal.

what do I do? Like Boyzone says, words are all that I have! In a time where the value of

words is depreciating, I doubt mere ‘miss you’ can portray the entirety of my

anguish. That doesn’t mean I have to abandon my means. I use these words, which

when not felt the same way, become empty shells. But believe me, these are

heavy. With the weight of the tears gushing through my eyes and the depth of

the hollow pit formed in my heart. Don’t discard these as useless marks of ink,

they sting as they pierce out of my heart with a hope that your response would

fill the holes formed. If not my heart would remain as a netted veil covering my

memories.

bad Habit

from the diaries of Tanvi

Jealousy? Envy? Hatred? why would I feel so towards him? 

It was the feeling just after I talked with him. I wanted to talk with him since a long time. It’s been a week since we talked. It’s not that we are in a relationship. He is far more settled in his life than I am and I don’t regret it for the most part. Yes, the most part when I am busy in something or the other. But the moment I am idle, he starts staring at me from my thoughts. Following me around and sneaking from behind. All the songs that depict the restlessness of a lover, the peculiar inquiry that a lover does on her beloved’s state of being, the curiosity and enthusiasm reel back to me and start playing in a continuous loop. I am not desperate for him. For that matter, proudly proclaim that we have part our ways in a more mature way. I am pretty much occupied with my day to day activities but those few minutes that I am not engaged in anything start becoming a pain in my heart. There is no sugar-coating, I have this feeling only when my mind is not occupied with anything else. Still, the needle of this wish-compass deflects in a wide range after interacting with him.

Incidentally, this is the one similarity that I noticed between my bad habit and him. My feelings take an entirely opposite position just after the incident. The feeling to do it slowly creeps on me like the shadow of an object in the sun after midday. I try to move away but somehow it catches me before I can completely escape and I am surrounded by the darkness. I give in. But just after I am done with it, I contemplate on why I gave in, it shouldn’t be that difficult! It really is just a shadow. The shadow cannot talk or convince me, I am the one to be blamed. I wouldn’t do it the next time. Gosh! Why is it that I want to do it or to feel bad after doing it? Oh!

That is exactly what I feel after I talk to him. There is no rancor towards him, only anger on myself or is it ? But sure this keeps repeating and this bad habit eats me from inside bite by bite, thought by thought. There is pain with a weird cause, it's just that there is no blood loss.

this duality..

from the diaries of Tanvi

How come I feel something so different at the same time?
A feeling of being scared and secure.

The evening seems perfect. I am in the balcony of my apartment and am dressed in nice and attractive casual dress. The room is bright with light and wine is filled in the glass. A nice location for a great date. I am standing in the balcony facing my room and am doing a soft dance to the music I hear in my head. The only company I have is the wind rustling the leaves. I feel the cool breeze rushing past me and making me realize my sense of touch along the contours of my body. I am slowly swinging to the sound of the invisible guitar , drums and keyboard. It feels so calm.

But from the corner of my eye I notice a city far across the lake. The city is filled with lights and its reflection is dancing on the ripples of the lake created by the wind that fondles the water. I imagine the streets filled with piercing lights, heavy traffic and noisy crowd. A sense of discomfort starts to creep in my heart. Suddenly I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, as if it is getting hotter slowly. My mind starts sweating and the sweat mixes with my blood pumping up the temperature and making my skin turn red. Is it the wine or just my imagination? A part of me wants to roam around the street without getting tainted in mind, body and heart. Is this the feeling the moth gets when attracted to a light. 

As I try to analyze and rationalize, the street in my imagination becomes desolate. The street lights are glowing orange but there is hardly any crowd. Torn paper flies in front of my eyes. The wind is sweeping the lanes like a maid hurrying in her work to go to the next street. It feels very uncomfortable. It takes me few seconds to realize that I have walked into my imagination and as soon as I realize I am back to my balcony. Suddenly I feel the weight of the tiredness on my shoulders and I sit down. Now the balcony seems a cold place to stay any more. The cool wind starts to make my body shiver. I walk into my room and shut the door. I switch off the light, neglect the wine and fall on bed with a disturbed mind and shut my eyes off for the night.

That day..

from the diaries of Tanvi:

They say it hurts only if you let it and I say yeah! I know it but try it and see. 

Get so close to someone that they are all that you see. The eyes move with them not looking at the reality and one day they will be gone and you will be overwhelmed by the scene you are left in. You become a stranger in the place you live.

It was he who always thought about everything in terms of right and wrong, good and bad. He used to judge people by their acts without even giving a few minutes of thought to the circumstances they would have been in. Yet he always got things done in the way he wanted them. He cribbed about people, their behaviour, had complaints and always wanted things to happen in the way he imagined in his mind. He couldn’t handle any situation unprepared. His behaviour was controlled by a strange function which would result in a large amount of mood swing due to a small deviation from his expectation. At times I wondered why he never came to terms with the possibility that things don’t turn out in the way we want them to be always, as there may be a large amount of unfamiliar elements that can intervene with our present. I used to shower the little bit of theosophical stuff at him when he took a break from his anxiety and anguish. After the little shower he would shake his head violently shouting out ‘this food for thought is causing indigestion for me, lets get a coffee to dry out of this’ , with a deceiving smile. That smile would blow my seriousness away and make me fall for whatever he said. Either he did not want to get involved in such discussions or he dint really care, I never could know.

At times when I used to write something about my feelings, a situation, a scene imagined, he would look at it, correct the grammar, check its familiarity in thought and wordings and finally declare out his opinion in very few selected words. Mostly of which 'good' was always a part. He never went beyond the lines to know the uncharted lands of my heart and my imagination. He always seemed hesitant as if he felt safer looking at them only from a distance.

I could not take this negligence of me as whole any longer. I drank an ocean full of courage and decided to part ways. As an advice I wanted him to know why I took such a step and shouted on his face - Liking you is the hardest thing to do. He said - No, pretending not to like you is.

Planets, we are!

from the diaries of Tanvi

"I alone am not your world, right!"

That’s how he gave me permission to take leave for the day after we met for a sip of coffee. A small part of me was wondering with a gleeful smile as it is one of the lines we would want to hear at sometime in a relation. But the other contemplated comparing the situation and scenes that happened between us. This part dominated and I was lost in thought.

There were times when I behaved like he is the only one I have to take care in my life. But at every such impression of mine, his actions reprimanded me on my thought process and fenced my feelings. It resulted in me coming to a conclusion that we are in two different worlds. At times I even fail to understand his state of mind and it keeps bothering me.

We are two different planets revolving in our orbits, mutually exclusive and independent. There is not even a minor chance of us colliding. The pattern of our orbits is such that we come very close to each other at a certain point of time. Past few years seem to be that period. Few things get exchanged, moved, thrown apart due to mutual gravitational forces but after this phase, we part in our separate ways without any knowledge of when we are going to come close again!!

Every Time

from the diaries of Tanvi:

I stop in my tracks. I try to find some support. I stop whatever I am doing. Each and every incident, from the first day that u confessed the million feelings you had locked inside your heart since a long time ,  starts to play on (the film of) my mind. The innocence in your eyes at every word you said, the happiness coming out in bursts with the words that came out of your mouth appear so vividly to me that reality blurs. I lose track of time. 

The first shivers that ran through my spine when you took out the Rose with mischievous smile, the first time you took me in your arms and kissed me in the dark, the first time you held my arm as we walked along the beach, all the times from then that you never left it, the times we made fool of each other in front of all by staring for too long, the flying kisses that missed the targets, the silly messages and night long calls,the code words we created,the traces that we deleted - all these roll one after the other.I gape into nothingness looking at all these in my mind's eye. 

Comes atlast the moment, me breaking the promise, like a hungry predator waiting behind bushes to pound on it's prey. All the memories melt and flow out as tears. My hands don't even dare to touch them leave aside wiping them. I let them dry on my face. Disappointed at myself I walk away. This repeats every time you come to my mind.

Invitation from death

from the diaries of Tanvi:
Its dark.I don't see anything mainly because my eyes are shut. Sensing my surroundings I understand I am surrounded by water. I am in the process of drowning. I am scared of water may be that's why I have shut my eyes. Any minute I am about to die but I don't know why I am dying.

Suddenly something grabs me by my whole body and pulls me out. But as my head comes above the surface I see that I am being pulled by my arm by some one in dark cloak with the face inside the hood. That figure resembles the dementor shown in Harry Potter movie. I don't feel scared but instead I hold on to the hand and help myself to climb into the boat in which that figure has come to rescue me. After I climb into the boat I realize there is one more man with spectacles with thick black borders. He appears like a confused geek, like one of the guys whom my boy friend makes fun of. I look at my dress to get an idea of where I was before this. I am wearing a dark long skirt. On some other day I would have looked sexy but now I am all wet but I am feeling uncomfortable as if it's very sunny with no air around. I discard the feeling.

The figure suddenly grabs a big pile of what seems like books kept one on the other, covered with a cloth from the postal dept and tied together. It lifts the packet and throws it into the water far away. I feel disturbed for they are my books, no they are memories piled as books and booklets. I am not going to get them back. That's when I realize I am in a boat which is in a very big lake, the water is stagnant, there are tree branches coming out of the water and are in the way as the boat moves slowly forward. The guy beside frowns at me and I hear something from him. I don't see his lips moving but I hear "what use are they for you when you are dead". I contemplate for few seconds and recollect that I was warned before coming to this place that it is equivalent to receiving invitation from death. Then I put the events that happened one after the other. I was suffocating under water and this figure,in dark black robes, invited me on to this boat. Is this figure the death?

I don't seem to worry about the fact that I am dead probably part of me doesn't believe this or doesn't believe on death itself. Either way I appear callous. I notice that there is no air around not even through my nostrils. I am not breathing.

The Treasured letter.

from the diaries of Tanvi:

It was a Sunday and he came all the way to give me a piece of paper.

It read -

Lets not call this anything, lets not give this a name. These moves are very different, it seems to be different game. Just a day before everything was crisp and clear but just a close and open of eye and it seems blurred. Fogged by my own thoughts/conclusions or should I say expectations on the people around me and the situations that are yet to be. What are you to me? At times I feel you close and at times you are nobody. But what ever it is I admit that I like it. May be because of the lack of responsibilities or obligations between each other. Hmph! What a careless thought! May be it is not what I said, may be coz it is maintenance free and anytime ready. Lets see as time flies by, what would happen to "we".

I don't know why I still treasure it!

the call

from the diaries of Tanvi:

surprise(n.) : an emotion aroused by something suden of unexpected.

That is what I felt when I got a call from him His calm-and-low-voiced "hello" gave me goosebumps. He called me from his office. I wondered what it could be! "Whats up?" I said waiting for his next words. Nothing came to my mind as to what he would say I waited like the child waiting for the las drop of honey to come out the emptied bottle. As if he read my mind, he spoke nothing for few seconds. Then he said, "Nothing I called you just like that".

I felt light at heart when I heard it. Middle of the day, stuck in a problem with my work, all I could ask him was, "Hows work?".He gave a quick answer - fine. We talked few seconds about how everything was going on. I sensed some uneasiness in his voice. He was hesitating to ask something I said, "Want to ask me something?" He murmured and said, "Well nothin much.. call me if you would like to have a chat, when ever you are free". He waited for my "OK" and disconnected the call

With a single phone call, he pushed me far away from my work, from the place I was in, from the state I was in. "Call me if you can". That's how our relation began The first time we talked, more or less happened the same way. Strangers as we were, we talked about our childhood days and I said these words before he cut the call. "Call me if you can, when you are free".

the long awaited meeting...

from the diaries of Tanvi:

He was coming to me when I looked up after sending a message in hurry. He crossed the road on the bike and saw me. A simple smile wishing me ‘Hi’. He asked me to get on the bike. He took out his cell and was trying to make a call. Looking at his mobile I asked him when and why he changed it! He started telling about how his old mobile a better and higher model got under a car and was damaged beyond 1000 rupees repair. He showed me the old piece. He finished the call soon and we started to the place we decided to spend some time. I don’t know the reason but I was excited to meet him. It was almost close to a year that I last saw him. The first impression looking at him was, nothing changed in him but (later) the evening proved it otherwise. We went to beach. It was not like the old days when he used to talk as if in an extempore and would give little gaps expecting me to continue it or talk something. This time, I became the contestant and he, the judge. I gave him a brief account of my whole life since the day we parted. Though we talked with each other a couple of times during last one year, I felt this was the first time after the farewell.

I passed the mic. He was too calm, more than what I have known him to be. He was casual. I dint see any hint of excitement of interest on his face. I doubted whether our relation was so deep that he is behaving as if we met yesterday or is it that meeting me for a couple of hours doesn’t make any difference. I dint take any guess. I waited for him to talk. In spite of us sitting in front of the water, I found difficulty in breaking the ice. He was moving like a professional killer patiently waiting for his target to move to the spot he marked in his plan. I showed him my camera and took few snaps of the beach, of him and of him & the beach. He told me his resentment towards his life. He dint like the way things were at the office. He told me how he feels he has wasted one full year doing nothing, nothing worthwhile. He dint enjoy his life. He was sad and dull telling all this. He appreciated me for the time I had with the people I was with. I couldn’t carry the conversation sitting there so I suggested a walk. We walked near to the line from where the water returned into the sea.

We walked few rounds on the sand. We talked about love. It was a small conversation. He told about the girl who was after him. ‘Hmm.. ‘ I thought ‘..girl friend, interesting’. We sat again. The sky was dark, the stars were out and the crescent moon added to the beauty of the scenery. We could see each other’s faces in the lights that were on, around the beach boundary. He was looking at me but it was more like he was looking through me. There was a twitch on his lips. No one spoke. The sound from the sea was waxing and waning through my ears and mind. He looked without blinking his eyes and asked me, ‘Is it so hard to make your parents agree for the relation?’ His tone was obedient, his eyes looked innocent and his body language – pleading. I never faced emotion in such multitude. I lost words, lost my thoughts and lost sense of time. I remained silent for I don’t know how much time. He asked the question again with his eyebrows. I hung my head and looked towards the sand. I only said ‘I already told you’. He looked away with a feeling of helplessness. We dint talk about it again. I sensed a dead end to our conversation. After a few moments, we started from the beach. After we covered some distance, he started talking again, about his family, his work and his life. He dropped me at the end of the street where I told him to. He smiled, said ‘Keep in touch’. His face said a silent good bye. He was gone. I moved on.