White Noise.

You can't escape it, the noise. You can't flee from it. It penetrates through the thick walls, through closed doors. It travels to the quilt you are curled under in a desperate attempt to evade it. But it passes through, and it continues past the pillow covering your head inside the quilt. It snakes in between the vaccum in the middle of your ear and the headphones that blast music to drown out that noise. It grows over the beat of the music bellowing into your ear like a formidable, daunting whisper.

It's the background hum that never recedes. Instead, it continues to built up in intensity against all odds. It rocks your threshold. Slowly breaking your hold on tranquility. It throws you into a cyclone of commotion. Clamour. Racket. Uproar. It tears away the shred of peace you hold on to.

You scream. You scream so loudly in the depths of the night and in broad daylight. It's like a shadow that haunts and stalks you, no matter what time of the day it is, no matter what your surrroundings are. It pinches your fears, fueling them into a burning rage. Bubbling hot inside you while you are in a desperate attempt to cool off.

No one understands as you stand on the threshold of insanity; breaking down brick by brick, unable to hold still. All your attempts seem frutile. Nobody sees the fear behind your glassy eyes. No one notices sweat that breaks on your face. No one realizes what pain you are in. And nobody hears your silence screaming.




-Momina.

O' Dear, Lover Of Time.

You know who I’m talking about,

Don’t you?

Yes you do,

Because I say she loved you.

And I see,

How your lips,

Slowly curl into a subtle smile.

So sad, yet glad

To have made her acquaintance

All that while,

Ago.

You see her now,

Passing by,

Through the lanes of time,

Once more.

There, I see.

In your eyes,

Tears that glisten for that golden time,

Now lost behind,

All that while,

Ago.

Sigh once again

Dear lover of time.

Because you know,

You miss that

One and only girl

Who hit home.

-Momina.

As Long As Infinity

http://instagram.com/p/dlbcIcHoa8/

The sun has set and the remaining light is slowly receding into the approaching darkness. She stands under the cold shower, shivering and gasping for breath as the icy water hits her. She has been standing under the water spray for so long, all the hot water has run out and she has to make do with the cold water. Her unknotted muscles now contract under the cold water.

She twists the knob to turn of the spray and slips into a towel robe, knotting the sash tightly. Just as she steps out of the bathroom, the lights go out. She clenches her eyes shut and stands there, hugging herself tightly in defense against the demons that might lurk in the dark. They really just reside in the crannies of her grey matter, the demons. Her fear lurks as she stands there motionless. The light returns and she sighs in relief.

This has been happening for quite a few days. It’s probably just some electrical shortage that occurs in the whole area, because the darkness isn’t restricted to her house alone. She has been meaning to get it checked. It started with a few minutes a day and the dark intervals grew rapidly over the days.

The dark lapses are way more frequent today. It such a dark night. She blindly makes her way to the window and pulls away the curtain in search of stars only to see a night so black you couldn't even see the faint shadows hovering. Just pitch black and sometimes a faint spark of light so unreal that it could only be an illusion.

These periods of darkness grow longer, momentarily still and longer and she wasted time flipping the light switches in each room. The world just plunged into darkness for seconds that lasted for an infinity. This certain one was lasting way longer than the rest. She had a weird feeling that this problem was deeper than she perceived. There is an odd feeling gnawing at her mind; a sense of cold seeping into her bones, giving her a warning, maybe.

The bell rings and she hears as the faint thud of footsteps near.

“Whose there?” she calls out.

“It’s me, Ruth!” She sighs in relief, hearing her neighbor’s name.

“Oh, hi! Come over, why are the lights all out? I mean it’s been ages and not even a speck of light is in sight.”

“What? No honey, they lights aren't out. Actually I came to ask you why all your lights are on in the middle of the night. Is everything okay?” She could hear a worry in her neighbor’s voice but her words made the world stand still for her.

“No, Ruth. No. There are no lights. I can’t see a thing. I can’t see a thing.”

The air left her throat and she stood in her dark world, hand flailing in the still air around her. She felt someone clutch her tight, whisper something incoherent, reassuringly but the sound of her own screams were the only thing she could here. It filled the entire house, echoing back at her deafeningly, sounding louder in the darkness of her mind. The darkness that was not just restricted to her house, it had spread to her entire world.

-Momina.

Suspended

She’s melting away in the white room,

Turning to stone while the quiet grooms.

A sole hammock hangs in a white painted room. Stark white and devoid of everything with the exception of the white hammock and a thick white carpet that covers the floor corner to corner. The carpet and the white walls are so perfectly match that at first sight you are unable to decipher as to where the floor ends and the walls start. There are no windows and only a single door. The room is efficiently illuminated by light bulbs such that there is little shadow play to hinder the dream like reality.

A pale hand hangs down the edge of the white hammock that seems to be floating in the air. The frail motionless figure whose weight presses down on the hammock is not asleep, rather absent from reality and dream altogether. She stands at the mutual edge of the both; confused as to where the reality ends and imagination begins much like the story of the carpet and the walls of the white room she lays in. There is no hurry though; she’ll stay until a state pulls her either way.

For now, everything is peaceful. Somehow right even though incomprehensible. Carelessness assaults her mind. She hasn't moved from her place on the white hammock in the white room. She has been there for a long while and she’s there to stay for a little while more. 

It gives her a feel of floating, her state and the hammock. Of drifting without moving, of defying gravity with logic. Or logic with insanity. Time lapses away; seconds, minutes, hours. A crazy energy drives her, fueling her with the strength to stay. To hold on; to her peace, to this incoherent mix of reality and dream that she is enjoying right now. To not be happy or sad but peacefully satisfied. This is her middle ground.

In the depth of her mind wild blooms,

There is red on the floor of the white room.

-Momina.

Her.

She gets up at seven in the morning. She doesn’t have a clock, but her mental clock wakes her up at seven, daily. She still gazes at the empty side table the first thing after she wakes up, where her mother’s watch always rested, but it has long been broken; smashed into tiny pieces that never made their way back to the table or her. She silently walks into the kitchen and helps herself to a drink of water. The water direct from the tap is already too hot. It must be scorching hot already.

She dresses herself carefully and then binds her hair into a braid. There is a broken mirror behind the door but she doesn’t wish to look at herself any more. There is nothing that holds any attraction at all. What would she see anyway? Eyes that speak of hurt? A broken past and a non-existent future? Pain and sadness? There was no innocence left in her weak body, the innocence portrayed on her face was nothing but a lie, it had long been extricated from her in a series of events; every time life had thrown a pebble at her, she shed her innocence and cast a thick layer of stubbornness over herself. In her adolescent years she had barely anytime to think about playgrounds where she ought to be playing or the rain that called to her while she slaved.

She wraps her dupatta sensibly around her head spreading it diligently across her upper body, again without the aid of a mirror, before rushing out, but silently. She has already wasted too much of her time thinking. There is no time to clean the tiny apartment. She’ll have to deal with the consequences later. She was rather used to it. She walks swiftly with her tattered book under one arm. Her books were as tattered as her life, she wondered. What with a drunken and abusing unemployed father and two little siblings to support. There was no mother. There was but she managed to get away from here and gave up her children to a world of abuse and slavery for that. Were they supposed to be like that, the mothers? Maybe her mother was different.

She kept looking for some hope in the absence of her mother. Maybe she would come back and take them away. Maybe she went away to get help. Or for their security, maybe. All consolations were hollow of course but they were solaces at least.

The doorman opens the gate and barely gets to a side. He smirks at her. She holds her dupatta firmly under her chin and quickly passes through the gate, rushing to the kitchen door. She puts her plastic slippers in a corner and enters the kitchen bare foot. She proceeds to wash her hands and then takes a quick peek at clock. Too late. She draws out the bowl of kneaded dough and starts making chapatis: greased in fat. Her tiny hands work fast under the scrutiny of the mistress’s dark eyes. She keeps being bombarded with instructions and comments on her tardiness.

She cleans out the kitchen and then dusts down the rest of the huge house, sweeping out the rooms. If she gets all her work done before time the mistress might teach her the next lesson. She’s worked really hard on the first, as hard as she could in the time she has. There is a still a lot to do though. But if she learns all this she can even tutor the kids around her home. And she might grow up to be a teacher. She would teach lots of kids for free too. But she’d earn too and that will help them getaway, too.

Jewelry glints all around the room, where she sweeps, carelessly thrown around. Her mother stole some gold bangles when she vanished. She knew because she saw them shining under the hem of her dupatta which covered her wrist the day she went away. And her mother had never owned any gold. The wife of a drunken abusing man doesn’t get any gold. And if she has any it goes away and there is no use making futile attempts at fighting for it because they only get you more bruises and a sore body.

A slap on her jaw brings her back to the present. It’s the mistress. The tears sting but don’t leak. She is lecturing her about her daydreaming. And she pulls in her sluggishness in the lecture. She says she might cut her pay short. She stands silently with a clenched jaw, her head drooped.

Her father hit her today when she got home. She hadn’t washed out the only two glasses in the house that he uses for his drinking. He pulled her hair hard and had clumps of it when he let them go. She stood silently with a clenched jaw and head drooped low.

Everyone and everything is silent. Except the fan that whirs above. It makes more noise than it swirls air. The air is suffocating. It doesn’t matter where she goes, she always feels smothered. As if the air molecules around her have vowed to drown and choke her in her own sadness. It’s becoming too much to bear, everything. She is not responsible for her mother running away, of her father being an alcoholic, of the mistress’s house, of the penetrating gazes of the male bodies, of her doomed past.

She huddles inside her blanket and takes off her dupatta and opens the knotted corner. Inside are two rings. They are the mistress’s. Yes she stole them. They glint in the faint light. They are too pretty and intimidating. She’ll run away, she decides. Freedom clouds her vision.

She didn’t sleep. She held the rings in her clenched fists and waited for dawn. Once the light started to break through the sky, she got up silently. She goes through her usual routine of getting ready but it’s three hours early. Once she’s done with wrapping her scarf about her, she looks around the room. Her eyes meet the innocent sleepy ones of her younger sister. Innocence still prevails there. She whimpers and comes to hug her. Don’t go, she says, don’t leave us like mother. Don’t be her.

Don’t be her.
Is she not responsible for her siblings, she thinks, about her deeds, about the purity of her soul, about becoming like her mother? And how could she be something that wasn’t her. She wasn’t their mother. She wasn’t a hollow hope. Did she have to make her life more morbid and dark than it already was?

She thought while she sang her sister back to sleep. She went to the mistress’s house at seven. She silently put the glinting rings back. They seemed dull, now. All there sheen lost. She burned under the doorman’s gaze. She was degraded by the mistress. She violated her body by doing twice the amount of work. But when she proceeded for home, she felt more hopeful and fresh than she had in days. It wasn’t everyone’s imagination. The girl who had a solemn expression on her face for the past two years was indeed smiling today when she walked home with a jump in her step.

-Momina.

A Conversation With Conscience

“Give yourselves the reasons, if you don’t trust anyone else’, she heard. The sudden interruption caused her to forget about her muttering, look around and then think the situation through.

She rarely ever started a conversation but this was fascinating, and hadn't it been initiated already?

“How so?” she asked.

“You know the rights and the wrongs, a few if not all. You know when it’s okay to ask you, and you know when it’s not. And you know that anger is pointless when it’s something you can do, under your control.”

“But it’s not… destroying my peace, my contemplation. It’s wrong. Of course I am angry. Giving me an illusion of choice is wrong. Deciding my future for me is wrong.”

“Is it? Didn't you have your moments of peace? One cannot live in peace if there is a war going around in the surrounding or inside you. The illusion of choice was wrong, but so is this illusion, that of peace.”

She is speechless. It waits for her to speak; it gives her time to let it all sink in.

“The illusion of choice is given to you, you can however, correct it. Have your say. But this delusion, you have created it yourself; you've made yourself believe in it.

“You built your own shackles, you hold the key; it’s all you.”

“It’s all me”, she said to herself as her mind wrapped about this.

She lifted herself on her feet and looked at it, staring at her with similarly curious eyes, through the mirror.

-Momina.

Your Insistence Is Adorable.

Everything in the vastness of space is in a state of perpetual motion. Every tiny speck and every gigantic object that exists because several such tiny specks came together... everything, is moving. Shaking. Hovering. Vibrating. From the tiniest electron revolving around the nucleus of an atom to a huge star in a galaxy eons away. It is all moving, gently and crazily. Silently. And I am sitting here, still; suspended in all that motion. Waiting to be lifted. Waiting to be moved or removed by an unseen force. I am the glitch in the system, the nut that refuses to rotate while the rest spin in wild, silly circles. I am right in the center of a moving world, stationary. Useless.

I can see you, sense you, reading me, following me around. Trying hard to decipher me and my struggle. Putting such great effort in thinking about my past and my future. And I don’t even know about my present. I see you trying to visualize my story, trying to adapt it, picture yourself in it.

“What happens? What happened?” I hear you ask yourself, incredulously, as you turn another page to my story, as you see me running from the horrors of an unexplained monster. Running in vain. I see you crease your forehead, run your tongue over your dried lips, change your drooping posture, so that you won’t get tired. So that you’ll be able to read a little more without interruption. Your insistence is adorable.

You are tired. You didn't sleep all night, you were so engrossed in reading me, thinking about my story and tweaking your perspective as you moved further, word by word. I was there with you, without you realizing. I was watching you enthralled by a story that wasn't even your own. So I asked myself why you did that? Why did you hurt yourself over someone else’s tale? Cry over another’s pain, laugh at someone else’s joy? Why do you sit here, your eyes following me, your mind wrapped about me, when your own story remains abandoned, unwritten?

I've chosen to be the glitch. To stop, to drag on so that you’d become agitated. So that you’d put me you aside for a moment and look around and see what your own world has come to. The ignorance of your own reality so that you can indulge in mine is flattering. But I realize I've been doing the same. Trying to indulge in your story, figure you out while you try to decode mine. I've been trying to stop you from interpreting me, all the while looking forward to your reactions when you finally unveil my end. All the while we've been simultaneously reading one another, embracing tales not our own. We are linked this way, you see.

So, when I see you handling me with such care, adoring the curve of each word, cherishing the way every scene of my story falls into the other, melding beautifully and unlocking a mystery, I melt. I see your eyes shining at my happiness, you cheeks wet at my sorrow, I never realized I became so much to you. And I never grasped how focused a part you became of mine. After all, without you I am just a dying script, drying ink that will eventually fade to nothing. But you never let that happen. You've treasured me, spending so much time with me and thoughts about me when I wasn't even there with you. You became the lips that spoke my story, the syllables were written but you sought people and shared them. And I have come to realize now that I fell in love with you every time you opened my story, over and over again just to share my repetitive joys and tears one more time. And each time when you held me carefully before giving the story to a friend and whispering a loving, ‘Take care of it’.

And I have fallen for you each time I heard your sigh of relief when you once again held me in your hands.

-Momina.

*This piece has been written keeping this in mind: 

Reflections In The Paper

She sat down dejectedly in front of the mirror with her sketch pad turned to a blank sheet, the pencil dangling from her fingers. What had life become? 

Swallowing back the lump in her throat and clenching her eyes shut to will he tears back into them, she picked up the pencil, holding it just above the blank expanse. Composing herself she began to sketch. Her pencil dragged on the clear paper leaving a grey trail behind as her eyes moved to and fro between the mirror and the paper, sketching herself. She did not have to worry about expressions; she pretty much wore a single expression now. She watched her own reflection and her hands as they held the pencil that scrawled on the paper, bringing to life there a pair of hollow eyes. 

After an hour of the tenuous job, she was done. The sketch had a hint of a forced smile; an awkward curl of one corner of the mouth. The person in the sketch was so familiar yet a complete stranger. She gazed at it for a while, altering her observation again between the sketch and her own reflection while her mind wandered off into a completely different alcove. After a while she picked up the abandoned pencil again and began to shade. 

She shaded half of the face into the darkness of the gray lead. She then looked once again at the sketch, this time in satisfaction, at the dark and bright side of the sketch, the truth of the human face.

-Momina.

Faceless Existence

She gazed back at me dryly with a piercing gaze that seemed to penetrate right through mine. Everything about her appearance was flawed; her weary eyes, dirty clothes that were badly creased, bits of nail varnish stuck to her nails, most of which had been chipped off. Her long tresses had once been in what looked like a braid, her cheeks were stained and swollen red. She stumbled on her tiny steps but her eyes were as piercing as before, unfaltering. The disturbing thing was that her eyes were as powerful as they were empty, there was nothing in them, no pain, no fear… no hope.

So I didn't knew why they had me smiling, we were like two strangely different people, connected in the crowd of unseen faces, through dots. No, I didn't know her, neither did she know me. We were strangers, unrelated yet somehow linked, something put us apart…together, but distant. As I smiled at her, a faint smile touched her dried lips, only for split second, after which it turned into a grimace; her eye brows knotted together in worry, her face distorted into anger. And within that very second she ducked her head and disappeared into the throngs of people.

She left me there, though, paused and alone while strangers blurred past. They were faceless, for me. I didn't search for her in that crowed space, but I stood there and wondered what I hadn't before, in the sole minute that I had felt a connection with her. I pondered about her unknown past and future as I stood there, alone, while she blurred past me. This time unknown. 

-Momina.

Golden Confetti

The notebook crackled as she opened it, the paper was so flimsy as if it would tater at the slightest touch, the pages adorned with doodles and quotes. She carefully turned each page, as gentle as possible. She read through the quotes the rough drafts and the scribbles, took her time reading each word of those long stories and short passages. She felt the imprints the pen had left through her finger tips and leaved through the folded papers that were cut outs and written by a type writer. She loved each word, and felt the pain, the joy, the pleasure that went through the pages. A magic land rose from those delicate paper and enveloped her inside each word. The frayed ribbon book mark led her to browned pages. Pressed among the folds was a picture, the colors of which were so bright compared to the notebook, yet it held a dullness that cased in the charm.

She touched the photo and began to read;

'Golden confetti fell through the sky, as hand in hand they ran the familiar stone paths, two sets of feet padding through the center of the town, while the rest slept, fullfilling their well earned sleep. The abandoned bicycles lay somewhere near the park, the gathered flowers fallen on the gritty road. Others slept, while they ran, they ran though joy and they ran with love as the golden confetti fell through the sky.'

One of the many that got to her, she couldn't help be lost in those words and couldn't help the imagery go, she was stuck on it and stared at it for ages, until finally she turned another page and further.

-Momina.

*Note: The whole passage is self-written and based on the single picture above. 

Locked Up In Fog

‘Always aim for the moon, so even if you fall, you can land on the stars.’

She played with the word of the quote in her mind while tears streamed down from the corners of her eyes and disappeared somewhere in her hair. As she stared at the bunk above her, even the stars seemed too far; past the two bunks above her, the roof, the second story and the limitless distance towards the sky. An impossible journey.

She looked at the hardwood of the bed above, staring back at her and wondered where her life was going. She was nowhere. Life had always been so perfect for her, the choices were never her own, just an illusion at that, but she enjoyed them nonetheless. She had honestly nothing planned for her future, and it wandered off in the forbidden lands of nowhere. But finally a decision was reached and she struggled with all her might to take it from there; she had an aim, a door to reach.

But karma, karma was a pain in the behind, the door of opportunity was nothing more than an illusion, a mirage in the dry dessert that she had taken to be an oasis, a disappointment that sent her crashing down, with all her spirits drowning in self pity and accusation. Before her lied nothing but a barren land, she had journeyed from nowhere to nowhere. At first she had had a goal to chase, that would have been her way out, but now there was no goal, no target. The planes of disappointment spread out vast in every direction she looked. They were limitless and she had no clue where to go and nobody to guide her.

Tears came stronger than ever as she realized the reality of her situation again. She considered calling her best-friend and spilling out all her worry to her but she had probably done all she could; she had helped her up after she had crashed down under the weight of disappointments and dusted her down, raising her drowned spirits. She had felt a lot better then, but now, weighing her options she had to admit that she was stuck, her mind clogged.

She heaved muted sobs in the dark room as the night grew longer. Eventually she fell in a chain of weird dreams that woke her up every half hour or so, every time greeted by the everlasting darkness. At sunrise she sat up in her bed with a throbbing head and stinging eyes that were red and strained as she contemplated on her series of dreams, they had felt so meaningful but now they just seemed like pointless gibberish. She sighed, but couldn’t bring herself to sleep again.

The days became unnumbered as she went through her daily routine. She felt bored out of her wits yet there was so much to do that the day passed away in a blur. The nights were the same; an endless series of little sleep and deep dreams that lost meaning as soon as she pondered over them. Her thought had attached themselves to her mind like a leech, they sucked all energy out of her, her state was all she could think of and it always left her with a numbing headache that sent shivers down her spine and flooded her in cold sweat. She was stuck in the dry planes of nowhere looking for answers while her life had become a struggle, a question of her existence, an effort to live everyday one after the other in a single hope that somewhere she’ll find a response, a sign, a guide. 

Details

She ignored the lift, opting for the stairs instead. She climbed each step dejectedly; hands buried deep in the pockets of the plush terry robe that she wore over her pajamas, her head hung low. Her head was throbbing with a piercing headache that was inclining her eyes to close; dark tresses that had escaped the bun atop her head hung loosely around her face. She didn’t know if she encountered anyone while she was trudging up the four floors, if she did she didn’t bother returning their kind nods and pleasant greetings. She didn’t know how to feel, there was the fear gnawing at the pit of her stomach making her want to cry but tears wouldn’t come. Maybe because she had buried them deep inside, and she was wounded somewhere inside too, seething at the lost of her own spirits.

She entered her apartment and sighed, she really did want her tears to come out. She tucked the annoying strands uselessly back in the bun only to have them fall across her face a minute later. She sighed again, aloud and pulled open her desk drawer. She pulled out a cigarette, it was built differently than the regular ones; rolled much longer and thinner she found them somewhat elegant. In fact she had reserved it for a right time and this was it, she needed it. She opened the curtains and stood by the window letting the sunshine color the darkened room, as she lighted her cigarette. She held her hand protectively in front of the match as she lit it, remembering how when her friend had first lighted her a cigarette the stingy smoke wafting from it had made her cringe but now it didn’t affect her, she breathed it in.

She looked out at the sun, unblinkingly, as her eyes strained from the strong light. She took a swig of her cigarette and blew away white smoke, it wafted up forming patterns that drifted apart and disappeared in the white ceiling. Much like her dreams. As an early smoker she had smoked less and engaged herself much more by making random patterns in the air with the wisps of smoke escaping from the cigarette. Now she watched as the thin blue tinted stream of white smoke evading from her cigarette filled the room.

Her headache that had reduced to a numb at the back of her head fired up again. She winced stubbing out her cigarette at the window sill, forming a black ring among more similar ones. She was agitated. It felt as if her gut and lungs were blocked, the smoky room made her want to gag, she needed air. She threw open the window. This was not what she was supposed to be, what she wanted to become. Why was life playing this horrible game with her?? She rummaged in her open desk drawer and found her cigarettes, throwing the whole pack outside. This was not what she had planned to be, not her future. This was nothing expect a monster eating her inside. Something welled up deep inside as she was suddenly at a loss of energy. She sat on the bed as tears pricked her eyes. She was not this. She brought her knees to her chest wrapping her arms around them she closed her eyes and rocked back and forth trying to calm herself. She wanted change, not soon but now. She sighed again letting her tears brim over. And as the war breeze wafted in she soon lost her wrecked self to sleep. 

-Momina.