Styrofoam cup and souvenoirs.

The tea splashed a little from the sudden jump and she swallowed hard against the bounce. The scalding tea burned her chest with sudden heat that eventually subsided into a pleasant warmth. Hugging the teacup close, she ran her tongue over her dry lips, shrinking further into the tiny space she occupied. Her weary eyes scanned the scenes that ran past, through the window; the familiar territory and landscape slowly fading, merging into the unfamiliar and desolate surroundings.

Between the throng of people and the constant bouncy ride she sat stiffly, clutching the disposable cup that was, now the only souvenir she had from the land that she had left behind.

Every now and then she would be pushed right to the edge of the seat due to the gradually increasing crowd and her hand would jolt up fixing her scarf on her head. She didn't spoke to anyone neither did anyone bother with it.

Vulnerable and lone, she picked up herself when the bus stopped this time. Holding on to the cup with one hand and the front seat with the other she waited for the bus to stop. As the people started leaving while an equal amount of people barged in, she stared fixated at the small styrofoam cup in her hand. After much thought as she was pushed by people vacating and hogging seats she pushed the cup under the seat and stepped off the bus.

She never turned back but as the bus started moving the cup rolled out from under the seat and a little boy promptly picked it up and threw it outside

-Momina.

Your Facade Is No More An Option

We live inside perfect glass bubbles. Each acting like a crystal clear ball that only shows us the reality. Seldom are the voilent winds outside our protected atmosphere lured in, disrupting the flow for a while. But once in a while those very winds whip at our perfect bubbles madly, ringing the bells of change. They cause our bubbles to spin hysterically in a perfect havoc, the bubbles clashing against one another until they crack and crash; then, the very shards of our indifference hit us along with the actual reality, piercing our skins and the white noise scraping against our eardrums like nails dragging along chalkboard.

What we had been ignoring for so long, now knocks us out. Our worst fears materalize before us. We rise and fall, ceased by the truth of it all. No one is safe. Epiphanies strike; we live within illusions, infinite illusions that merely hide the reality for us, but it's bound to strike. Truth eventually takes off that sheer blindfold. It holds you in its storm until you can no longer evade this fact. Until your facade in no longer an option.

-Momina.

The Last Note A Distant Hum Of Tinkling Bells...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benoitcourti/5057156004/

She blows delicately through perfectedly pouted lips; a gentle blow that causes the shiny liquid layer to swell into a ball and blow off with the light breeze, only to pop seconds later. The air is thick and dry, the atmosphere near barren and devoid of much color. In the midst of it float the few bubbles that waft their way here and there before they snap into tiny unseen droplets of soap. she watches them hover in the air; illuminating tiny rainbows within the delicate little see through spheres, and sighs.

She stands with her back pressed against the back of a red car, a cup of soap mix in her hand, the other clutching a ball point pen lacking its ink fill. Next to her, sitting on the boot of the car is a little kid, like her, clutching half a bottle of slick soapy water and bubble making stick.

They keep there postures intact, not moving besides their heaving shoulders and their cheeks inflating and deflating like balloons as they blow. The midday sun grows fainter over their heads, dropping lower with time while they blow their respective bubbles, watching them flutter in the light breeze. Delightfully, they watch them dance in the wind, enjoying their lives before they are popped away.

At times the little kid shrieks with delight as he streches out to burst a big bubble even before it escapes the edge of her pen, his laugh echoing in the still air, the last note a distant hum of tinkling bells. Sometimes the bubbles shatter as they were blown in. It would burst in their face, smarting their eyes slightly; like a joke with a bad pun.

Just as the sun is on the verge of dipping down and kissing the horizon she turns, tilting the remaining liquid in her glass into the kid's bottle. As she leaves he looks startled, sad and slightly happy at the prospect of more soapy water. Sitting in her car she looks at the anonymous kid sitting in his car porch on his car in the empty neighbourhood who lended her his bubble mix. He continues to blow gently, making bubbles that light up the empty surroundings in the still July air.

She smiles at his innocent form and drives away with slippery soapy hands for a another date with the future.

-Momina.

A Peek into Her Soul

Everyone with whom you share an eye contact becomes an untold story in your head. That day she bacame an unseen story in the heads of so many individuals. An untold story that buzzed with such intensity despite the little place it took in the folds of their minds.

She fled meaninglessly through the empty roads leaving a havoc in her wake. She never got a chance to read into the stories that glimpsed her that day. No, she was far beyond that point; her eyes a soulless abyss that saw through everything without actually looking at anything before them. The despair in her face and the emptiness in her eyes caused many to look back at her once or twice, but she never noticed.

She was not there; wrapped in her own misery she walked through the roads leaving an eerie feeling to those who caught sight of her, stared and watched her go only to be left with an agitation for having glimpsed the darkness dividing her soul.

-Momina.

Eternal Insanity

I call for death in a desperate attempt to escape this suffering, this eternal insanity. Bewildered, I watch as it stands there, mocking me. It watches me innocently as I lie there frozen in pain of my thawing bones. It smiles knowingly. Its at ease as it watches me suffer, for it knows that I'll soon be enveloped in it's embrace. Hence, it lets me hang on to the shreds of life, overlooking my pleading eyes, my desirous cries.

The light of life dims before my blurry eyes like the flash slowly receding into darkness. In the last bits of the abating light I see death smile in my face. I smile back.

-Momina.

This may or maynot be a poem.

Lets have conversation about word and how terribly beautiful they are.
We'll have mellow music in the background while we refer to the thak thak of a typewriter;
Comparing it with the thik thik of a laptop's keys, silence of a phone's keypad
And the scratch of a pencil over a note.

Lets have a conversation about how words leap.
About how instead of painting pictures, we write in our own heads, what we see.
Lets speak about how they swerve eagerly, transforming mere thoughts
Into memories, into history.

Lets have a conversation about words and how they jump,
At the emotion unstability of our surroundings. About how they make us feel what a stranger feels,
Cry at fictional sorrows and embrace the happiness of those who reside between,
The pages of a novel.

Let's have a conversation about words, lets aimlessly wander with them.
Let's stop making sense.
Lets leave this epiphany to continue to it's own end.

-Momina.

Epiphany

As you eye her careful stance, envying her balance, her hold on life, you assume things, one over the other about the perfection of her life, herself. You never once guess at the fact that this very girl once pressed a smarting cigarette between her delicate lips, trying to ease the pressure that threatened to strangle her. You don’t assume that she relied on the blissful numbing effects of nicotine to escape the intensity of those failures.

As she walks through, smiling at one and all you assume her as a celebrity, happy and frank with all. Yet, you don’t ever see the never ceasing creases on her forehead, even as she laughs. You don’t notice how she always smiles briefly and is so often lost in thoughts. And you certainly don’t see the slight pain in her eyes that gives you a peek into the hardships of her life.

As she goes around telling people to hold on, to not let go, you don’t see how she reminisces those days when her own hold on reality was so brief that she was almost about to let go. She floats like a free bird yet her reality is a cage in itself, unable to break free.

You don’t observe the tiny tattoo of an anchor she looks to every now and then, drawing and redrawing over it, in an attempt to hold back. She hides the scars and the carcass of those hidden thoughts behind her attire and yet with each passing eternity it threatens to jump back to life and cut away her anchors. 

***

In the confines of her home, with her perfect hair wrapped in an untidy bun atop her head, lose wisps of hair framing her face she closes her eyes against the stinging smoke. There are three cigarette studs in the ash tray and sill half the box to be puffed away, while she waits for the spreading fire to swallow her completely.

-Momina.

Until then.

The sky… The sky is a perfect blue. The kind that compels you to hold your gaze there and stare at it until minutes pass .There is a dull golden moon, not half and not entirely a crescent, decorating the royal blue; partially lighting it up. The sky is still a little rusty at the edges; where the ends mingle with the lands and disappear behind buildings, all around. 

And between the tall buildings that surround the area, between the long shadows she stands silently staring above at the reality she shares with a million others. A thousand of who could be stranded alone gazing at this mutual reality, thinking this very thing. She’s holding on to that single thought or else she could sink under the weight that pushes her down. She could drown and she’s willing to but not yet. Not until that thread breaks off. Not until she really knows that there is nobody out there not going through the same troubles.

-Momina.

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.

Like Ink Unto My Soul

I am happy. I am infinitely happy. If it weren't for the first post this very day, two yeas back I wouldn't have been this happy and this proud. I wouldn't have known so many wonderful people. I would have missed the chance to interact with them and to read them.

Being a writer was never an aim as a child, it was never a dream. And yet today with every word that I write I live a dream to become a published novelist, to never abandon this romance with words.This journey is still young right now but this journey is special. And it wouldn't have been possible you all reading me and appreciating me. 

Today my blog has turn two and for once I have no words to express my happiness and gratitude. So, I summarize it into these four words from one of my pieces that you guys appreciated the most. This is for each of you:

"Your Insistence Is Adorable."

Thank you special ones and love to all. All aboard. 

-Momina.