1    You say people seek immortality. That people are naturally immortal. And that is why nature ensures DNAs are carried forward by off-springs. I say, I mean immortality of some other kind. I ask if you think that is why people write, create. You say people who write seek immortality. I say people probably write just to get things off their chest. And I hear myself tell you I do not want to be immortal. I want to be forgotten when I die. The day they shove me into the electric chamber to reduce me to ashes, I want them to go home feeling free, like my parting brought them some sort of grace. I want to be forgotten. Because in this forgetfulness of theirs, I will have found my freedom, finally.

2    I feel our bruises brush against each other as we sought refuge from the stillness of the night. Your embrace hasn’t changed. You always hold like you are terrified that I will dissipate into the darkness. You wake up in snatches to touch my shoulder, to slip your arms around me, draw me close and mumble details about images you see when we are entwined like that. The images are a riot of colours, lights and shapes. Image. Image. Image. You describe and I listen. And it takes us back to the day when we first met and were hit by the notion that we would always be about conversations. Conversations about our bruised souls. We first felt like our souls would weep together and heal. But forgot that two bruised people can never heal eachother. At least that’s what my shrink says.

3    It was the voices in her head. Sometimes they felt like two people—sometimes more. They would toss and turn inside her mind, and jerk their heads sideways, as they talked to each other. They started talking first, then the voices got louder and started sounding really mad at each other. The madder they got, the more they jerked their heads. And then it seemed like there were more than two people in there. She would walk from room to room, trying to hush them. She would try not to run into other people in the house, lest they should hear these people yelling at one another inside her head. She was ashamed of them. But her mother would say something when she passed her in the kitchen and then she would be compelled to respond. But when speaking, she would know it wasn’t her. It was the voices. Then she would walk fast on the streets— quickly, quickly— to get rid of the voices. But they would keep nodding at one another in disapproval, narrowing their brows till they darkened like the winter morning. They never stopped.

4    It is one of those nights again. She is alone. She does it by choice. It’s when her sadness doesn’t even show any more because it has seeped in so deep. Into the depths from where she has forgotten how to unfurl. Sometimes, she wonders which part of her it is where all the sadness finds refuge in. Where does it all hide? She wants to undo herself layer by layer, bring it all out, spread it in the sun. Let it soak in so much sun that the moisture might find a way to evaporate. But she can’t find the place she first hid it in and then it all just seeped right in. 

5    In the quiet of her room, she becomes a face without expressions. The sadness drains from her face into her insides. It’s just the distant humming of an engine running on the Ring Road, the batteryback-up beeping to signal the power outage, and the homeless dogs’ barking. Sometimes, they howl and she wonders if the puppy she left behind weeps for her, too. And there is a sting in her eye, pricking the lids. Something like a teardrop, but a non-expression. Her face is a blank slate on nights like these.

6    There is a movie scene inside my head. It frames the face of a woman who couldn’t cry. A woman whose face is darker than the no-moon night and whose sins are written on her face. I don’t know how I have this image inside my head. I know it isn’t one of the images you described to me on those nights we spent conversing until dawn. Maybe, it remained in my head from some movie I watched as a child. This is the face of a woman condemned by the world. By herself. A woman who has chosen her own doom because she wasn’t going to let the world dismantle her. There’s a scene inside my head of a woman numbed by life. Of a woman, who couldn’t cry.

7    Sometimes, even silence is not the tranquility you need. It is only your last resort. But never the healer. You wait and wait for the silence to get over, imagining that at some stage, there must be solace. But there isn’t. Sometimes, you shatter yourself with your only redemption. And you do it over and over again, while knowing that there is no cure there either. It’s like I chose you to destroy myself with.

8.    I stifled the prayer beads all night. Spun the maanes till they were dizzy. Whispered my prayers to the multi-coloured flags hanging over my head.

    An echo bounced back at me…My deity does not exist.