The Open Window

By Harish Mohan alias AsExplainedByJunkie.....

It’s been a long time. Lately, through conscious means, I became a victim of THE ROUTINE. After what seemed like an age of reluctance, I persuaded myself to collect the will required to be happy by waking up, walking the dirty road to the office, and sit numbed in front of a cubicle for 8 hours, hit the gym and sleep. Today was a little different. Thrilled by the desire to be detached and inconsequential, I left office early enough to walk a road that I have not walked for quite a long time now.

The alleyway where I go to collect my stuff from is a topic fit for a painting itself. It sits just next to the main road, which on most of the days, is bustling with the noise of drums, ‘Bhiku-Matre’ dances, and begging urchins. You walk out of that noisy blare to turn right into a pitch dark, extremely narrow alley. It’s difficult to decide on a first glance, what haunts you more, the silence in the air and in the faces around, or the stench emanating from unwashed clothes and burnt fish collected at one corner. I step down to 3 stairs and enter a cramped, one room with two little girls fighting over a beautiful doll. Interrupting their session of joy, I blurt out a meek ‘Dus ka’. The ‘pudiyas’ are taken and having got the gear along, and head for my lush and huge society.

Here’s how this works. I get back to my home, switch off the lights, switch on the laptop and the music system and start to roll. After a while, when I awake from my lull in total darkness, I find myself in love with the short restless walks that I take across the hall while the music guides me through my mind. My mind runs in a series of flashy images, each promising a vision of the great beyond. Then, as the angels of imagination always do, they give me a symbol.

The symbol that I am about to talk here is that of the open window in a dark room. The best view is to look down, across the play ground where the children are cherishing their best moments of the day. This is nothing but a sight of absolute and pure joy, as little tots run around in playful glee, wishing for time to cease still. Over looking the play ground, is the by now familiar sight of lines and lines of skyscrapers and apartments, where each flashing light in a house tells a different story. There is of course, the story of the young girl, about 16, angelic in demeanor, with expressions of forlorn and lost love on her otherwise sweet face. The balcony, a refuge for the soul, in real estate terms, also plays gallery to a different shades of characters. There are the couples, each weaving their own spun versions of ‘A Promised Life’. There is the frantic dance of the young kid with dreams in his eyes and a hope in his heart, while he kicks around the football with his own visions of a prosperous future.

It is a period of total objectivity and one of the best substitutes for the brain numbing, de-sensiting medium of entertainment which is aptly called ‘The Idiot Box’. Here is the connoisseur of art, looking at a picture which he can only dream of. A portrait of the vast canvas of life, enacted in different colors, each conveying its own meaning and depth. Of what arises, and has happened to all those people who have always stood by the open window and made this their haunting ground for life, I cease to comment. But this, I hope serves as a platform for all those people who attain their idea of peace and serenity in the quiet chirps of the bird at dawn/dusk, and share their smiles with those very tots during their precious moments of joy.

So, what do you see out of the OPEN WINDOW?

P.S: Could not have helped but to take these thoughts and post before like many words which get lost in time. I hope the guy manages more of the wonderful insights or rather outside view of what lies in inside or whatever and keeps more of such amusements coming in. Brilliantly Crafted though!. And the pleasure is all mine ! :D

And he had no time to rework

With great pain he opened his eyes, the scorching piercing beams from the sun blinded him with light. “I wish I would have lived in the blur of light and not haze. How cruel !”, he thought. Above the sky was blue with not a cloud in sight which would cover the sun and provide the little needed relief. He saw two vultures hovering over him, squealing and thirsty for his warm blood. He felt the beads of sweat and the sharp pain on the cut of lips. He put his tongue out and tasted his bitter-sweat some what tangy blood. “Couldn’t have been better eh?” He thought and smiled at the sky.

How could it come to this, How?, he wondered. He was lost in his thoughts. Even now, even at this juncture in his life the questions hanged on like a child’s nightmare. He commanded his senses, “for once for a little while, just shut up, shut up. But he could not have helped it. It held there like a mirror with the same old reflection of his youthful reflection”. And eh wondered, desperately, trying to find out answers to the Hows, whens and whys, at least now ?

He was supposed to be a fucking Super Man. How in the hell did he end up with his ass lying on the burning sand. And the moment he thought of it, he smiled at himself. The pain from the lips rushed like a thunder and sharply hit the brain, and he pressed his eyes close, just to forget and absorb the painfulness of every thing in life and smiled again. That’s your idea of courage and heroism. What a hero you are, who would suck it all up and yet manage to bring a smile at your burning thirsty stingy lips. That has been your stupid idea of bravery and salvation, he thought. Bloody masochist. And now like a helpless idiot you got to wait for it to end. Damn it!. How innocent and foolish you’ve been.

He saw a small kid standing underneath gazing up at the different bottles of chocolates, trying to make a choice. And he wondered it was only choice- that’s what he could not make in his life, but how could one have made it on chocolates and all the varied beverages. Just wishing he could have taste every thing that life’s to offer and gobble it swiftly before it was too late. And life since then was an formula one race, squealing, screeching, twisting and curling, but still grasping at every moment and grabbing the adventure. He wished, life could have stood still there in that moment under the shelves of chocolates and he would not have come under the gaze of vultures. Damn!. When did the road take this bloody turn?.

The hot wind blew over sands. He noticed his suffocation. Someone should have been there isn’t it ?. Damn!. The sands choked his breath. A little drop of water on the lips would do the magic, he thought. Just a lil wetness, and the feeling of feminie moist lips would have been awfully wonderful, but that’s a luxury he could never avail and perhaps never would. He moved his tongue over lips but to no avail, even the slightest moisture is dried up he feared. Its close. Very close. The pain had subsided. The bleeding had stopped. He was feeling slight shiver and he was scared that panic would soon take over.

“Isn’t is so bloody funny”, he thought. “It was not his moment”, he felt. He felt like he believed it. Banking all his thoughts that in a while someone would find him out. Someone across the sand dunes was destined to come and save his soul. What wrong he had done, Nothing?, at least the intentions where not malicious and deadly unlike those ideals of the cumulative human masses and there beastly selfish thoughts. Moreover he counted on his destiny which had never failed him to intervene, once again and just one last time, he wished he could gather the courage and pray for it.

Would it not been great if some pretty women find him in despair and shower her care and love and bring him out of his misery once and for all. Would it not be romantic and dramatic, he thought. Would it not be such a wonderful unique miracle he would so grandly share with his friends and loved ones, about all the adventures of little tom sawyer. Who lied dead in the Mangolian desert and then love found it s way to pull him out of his grave, he smilingly thought. And for a moment he even started making up and painting the beautiful pretty face of Liza Ray. And then her face flashed. The first girl in the school he put his eyes on. Such beauty!. Such innocence. Such confusion of mind. And the confusion lingered on. His eyes closed.

He could feel the a dried obstructing lump in throat. The panic was sinking fast inside. Some one has to come soon. Help was need badly.

Not like this! Not like this, the perturbed mind prayed. The brilliance of light compared the scorching heat of the sun. Shining with blinding whiteness till the eyes closed and tried to soothe itself in the darkness. He saw a child sitting swaying his legs, smiling, with brilliant, glittering eyes full of life and energy in front of him and then the regrets came in with a belligerent youth who with bitter insensitiveness walked out on his mother who always was with unbridled love and unfettered faith in him. Did he fail her innocent aspirations too?. How bad this is going to be!. But then he had given up on every thing on every one for it really doesn’t matter in this world. He knew the truth and eventually in every persons time, they shall know it too and had moved on in life. Moving on was the name of the game. He just wished every one would have peace in their lives and accept what life has to offer and let go of their fears and wander through the deep forests, through the river streams, across the desert and suck it all up.

The friends came in front of him. All those wonderful and cheerful people he had been with. How things changed for them too. So many stories were there to tell, few lived and many died. How they grew up like desperate bachelors and found girl friends and then eventually life partners. How sweetness in life came with its own tantalizing taste of life. And he recollected the day when they all sat on a huge table arrogant innocent on binge drinking. Pulling each others legs. Twisting every little incidence of day into a joke and those brooding heart broken lovers brooding on some unconcerned, indifferent shoulders- garnering hoards of sympathy, mutual pain and all the jokes for the next morning. And then the last toast to all those friends as mature gentleman with their devotedly loved life partners. When unconsciously life streamed the notes and tones of a melody and every one had something to relate to himself.

He felt the sharp slap of a wing on his face and nails screeched tearing through the skin and blood streamed into the eyes. It hit like a shot, like a bolt. He gained his sense for a while and thought “How something as silly as fate and destiny decides to snatch away life out from the worldly confines? Leaving nothing behind no faces, no memories, no smiles and no tears.”

His eyes rested over each other. The sun was still as ruthless as life could be and under it he lay there silently thinking to himself and mumbled the last verses he wrote :


How do you travel across the winds?
Will the wings lift or the thoughts will fly
Either way its all thy pride

Shade and light are no more surprise
Is that whats known as wisdom
Or is it just another truth about the lies.

In your love and anguish my heart cried
Oh dear shadow why did you lie
What happened to sown seed
Is that how a laughter dies?

A message from the far away skies
Swirling on winds traced the dying high
Hollow eyes found the smiling wise smile

The angels in the heaven cried
But the ones in the hell they all smile
The winds whispered gently

It’s the past, all that is
Do you now choose to die?



And he had no time to re work on "it"... damn!