High Hopes

Hear the strains of a psychedelic song

encouraging me to get comfortable, stay numb.

Feel the whiff of nostalgia.

Cigarette smoke curling up towards a dark and purpled ceiling,

while we held hands and nodded at each other. 

When I was in school may be the ninth or the tenth standard, Anu gave me a birthday card that congratulated me for being a non-conformist. I was thrilled. It spoke volumes about the way she understood me. After all, the best sort of understanding is when someone sees you just the way you see yourself, no? And the card in spite of being made at Archies/Hall Mark, I forget which, did not conform to an idea of a birthday card. There I was, young, with a friend who understood me, poised at the edge of the world - ready to take it on, ready to change it.

Change the world

Love and music and literature will show us how

We are each so special. All of us so unique

Let’s make our own path

Let’s really let our light shine!

Later in life, there was nothing I wanted more than to have that perfect man who made me laugh, who made me immeasurably happy and with whom I would make plenty of babies. And may be I would teach and empathise with writers, have gender and queer debates, snug and comfortable in my own world - celebrating normalcy, enjoying the mediocrity of existence. A career woman I never wanted to be, a super woman I could have become. Like a typical Bollywood heroine with a man by her side. 

Blue funk engulfs me or as a friend would call it -

'Did you still not get your flow?' Is that what it is?

Red blood runs and ruins the hope of creation

I wouldn't have had this sense of desperate urgency had it not been for him -

'You may never have a child and I cannot be with someone like that.' 

There is comfort in myths because we believe them to be true. Kannagi did ruin a city, and closer home a fertile land became filled with sand and generations of kings had to resort to adopting their heirs. They would never have a child - not them who wounded with their words and did worse deeds. Dishonest. Hypocritical. Disloyal. Go look. Seek and you will find. Exactly what you deserve. 

  

Feverish, seeing visions without drugs with lips stuck together

Mere hunger must be triggering the spells oh you dumb seer, poet, or just an impotent writer!

Blue funk comes in psychedelic strains

There is an urge to run like hell 

away from my own thoughts and their seductive tales. 

Just to be contrary, I ask myself what is wrong with mediocrity. In settling down? After all, that is what is celebrated always. Remember the corporate world of congratulatory mails for work that just met expectation? Geniuses lurk in shadows and simply go mad. And die inglorious deaths swimming in thoughts so deep, they actually drown. Look at Virginia, and think about Van Gogh. May be we should all cut off our ears. May be that's what the world wants us to be - mere broken busts when alive - unfit for fame or prayers or hope. What use are we to the world if we can't make money, if we can't make ends meet, if we can't take a fucking holiday? If we can’t have a mate or make a child? If we can't be like the rest the all-knowing cogs, who still run the wheel?

There were men then - all blending into one

It took three or sometimes four to make that perfect one.

And they had to be of a kind - they had to be the ones who let me see me

The way I was - broken, maimed, but full of potential still. 

Fucking fertile still even though I never had to fuck them back. 

But I love even when I don't need to. It verily is a bitch. Who can stop the flow of love? Love has never been poly cystic, has it? Love flows strong and turbulent (and yes that ghastly word) intense - towards my friends and all my men - my blue-eyed man, my light-hearted puppy, my twin soul, my best friend. All the people who made me again - stand, laugh, dream. And finally love. 

It shines in me now like a diamond in the sun

A new beginning, a new hope

Dreaming about sounds

A baby that cackles as we all look at each other and smile

A family forged by non-conformist bonds.

They tell me now that I am blazing a new trail. That it is unconventional thought. Choosing not to have a man? Don't lose hope yet. Don't give up so soon. And the other thought? Why, that is unheard of! And once done, it simply cannot be undone. I am again the non-conformist at work, frustrated with health and the binds society ties and caught up in a double bind. What is it - yea or nay? Will it? Won't it? Good? Bad? Right? Wrong? Selfish? Just another way of life? And to hope that way again, and to want something so badly again? What lessons have I learned after all, then?

So I just wish you were here

That you'd hold my hand, laugh by my side, lighten my pain and ease my confusion

It's not only the psychedelic music; it's the same high hope again and the same old fear again 

Will I still live like the Queen I am? Or will I simply die - unfertile, unhealthy, unsung and unheard of?

That's blue funk in mute times.