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The Walk | Short story
The Walk | Short story
The beginning
The lane was devoid of any noise. Sheer silence prevailed as if the beautiful words of a poetess had mesmerized the people, leaving them numb with awe. The darkness of the night began to spread its arms, engulfing the light of the sun. Braving the night stood a street lamp at a distance whose light beautified the night with its glow. With their hearts throbbing, they walked together. Each step drawing them closer to the lamp. Each step asking them questions, and urging them to open up. The fortuitous silence paved the way for things unspoken. It wanted them to look into each other’s eyes. It wanted those eyes to flow, to tell each other about their dreams, their desires.
Perhaps it wasn’t the day for talking. The chilly, wintry night was paying homage to their love. The gentle refraction of the light revealed their faces. In a traditional yellow dress, she looked like a princess. Her eyes glittering; of course, she was emotional. Those eyes could have been stars in the sky, but tonight they were here, right in front of him. Her curly hair looked like a deep dark forest. And there he was; with his off white shirt, half tucked in his faded jeans.
The flow..
As the light of the lamp brightened her face, he looked at her through his frameless glasses. As a momentary smile came to their faces, dark clouds mounted in the night sky, adding more chill to the already cold atmosphere. The stars disappeared behind the clouds, and so did the moon, desperately trying to lighten the sky. Her fair face jewelled in the light of the lamp, and clouds did nothing to the glitter in her eyes. Her smile made a beautiful dimple in her cheek, adding immense charm to her personality. As they stared each other, their eyes began to talk. Their hands drew closer to each other, and then she immersed her hands into his. The scene was picture perfect. It seemed as if a lovely story was about to unfold, with the night, the lamp and the sky being a silent audience.
They came closer, so close that they could feel the warmth of each other’s breath. Their lips caressed each other as they exchanged a soft kiss. Enclosing each other with their arms, they hugged. They stood there that way for minutes. She gripped him tightly, resting her head against his chest. He held her tighter, she belonged to him. They loosened their holds and spoke softly near each other’s ear.
“It’s over…”
The words that were supposed to distance them instead brought their hearts closer. They stood there in the same position, both knew that it was supposedly the end. It was the end of their togetherness, the end of the emotions they shared, end of the countless memories they were a part of. He was about to get married in the coming months, while she will have to search for a life which would define her, and give her an existence of her own without his support.
Conclusion..
What went wrong? Who was to be blamed? These were questions that mattered no more. Probably it was destined to end. They wanted to end it with a smile. But smiles weren’t ready to grace their faces at that moment. Holding back tears was the priority. With every passing minute, dark became darker. It was time they should leave. With heavy hearts, they moved apart in opposite directions. They tried to force a smile on their faces which became wet with tears. No more words could be spoken. The hands left each other slowly, well aware of the fact that they can’t be held together ever again. With a lot of courage, they turned their backs towards each other and left. Their story of a beautiful journey together ended. They were able to hold their tears back, but the sky couldn’t. It rained that night.
@ramta jogi
Edited by: Akshay Toplay
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Childhood | English Poetry
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The photograph | Short story | Love
The photograph | Short story | Love
-Revealing the Un-revealed
The Beginning
On the table were lying memories. Different pictures captured at different times, different age and with different people, each telling a story of its own. Ananya gazed at them all as if she was living them in her eyes there and then yet again. But it was difficult; it was her past, unheard by many around her, in her presence. Some she had forgotten about, and some she desperately wanted to forget. This was not the first time she was going through these pictures. She wanted to know why many of her precious moments ended and still, she was happy with her life. She searched for her curiosity amongst those memories.
There was a photograph of her with Anant; her boyfriend during schooldays whom she had met for the first time in Dehradun. A tall, dark and handsome guy with whom she fell in love the very first time they met and dream of a life together. They were just 17. Love seldom showcases understanding, sometimes it just creates an aura of happiness. The same aura, Ananya was living in, then. The surrounding was blurred to them. She had her first kiss with him. Time went by and maturity knocked the doors, teenage was about to end. Who did what? Was that right? Who was wrong? What mattered and whatnot, everything needed a justification. Things began to change slowly and were never the same.
Memories
She picked up another photograph; Anuja, her best friend at college, who always stood by her in her highs and lows. Enjoyed with her in the hay-days and cried in her sorrow. She was her sole support in the 3 years of college at Delhi. Anuja and Ananya spent most of their time gossiping together. But as she began to realize what her life was meant for and what she should do to make it worthwhile, her priorities changed and so did the people around her. With her changed approach, she had to juggle her life between her best friend and her future, ultimately the relation did not work out.With her eyes wet, she kept the photograph down and searched for something which could make her smile.
She picked up the photo of her teddy bear, which made her wonder who gifted it to her. It was Ansh, her online friend. She met him on a social networking site, who made his way into her life, first through Whats App and then through Skype. At that time, she was working in Kolkata, which also happened to be her hometown. At this stage, she did not want a relationship but was eager to keep herself engaged in some activity apart from work.
Marriage was not on her cards at least for the next 2 years and so came Ansh. She met Ansh, and gradually their proximity grew. She dated him for a year. When she was with him, she felt liberated. She lost herself within him. She lived this phase of life. It made her more mature and independent. In an effort to feel free, she missed the part of understanding the person in her life. Her constraints of not entering in a relationship and still to be with Ansh confused her and that confused her relationship with hi. She never convinced herself and so knowingly or unknowingly things ended yet again.
Finally, she kept the pictures aside.
She realized how something that was once a part of her, does not exist today. Whether it was her first kiss in school with Anant, her sloshed state with Anuja, or losing her virginity with Ansh; each moment was an integral part of her life, which added some spice, excitement and thrill to her life and made her feel ecstatic. But none lasted. Going through the scattered set of pictures she realized how it was not the end in a true sense.
They always changed their direction and got lost somewhere, with a hope of returning in future. She slowly began to feel good that how she should not be sad as nothing had actually ended in the real sense. The end comes with the closure of certain things or certain people in your life. But that is what the dilemma of life is; the only thing that ends in life is life, rest everything continues, either in present or in memories of the past or in the hope of a better and brighter future.
Finally..
She was neither regretting them nor was she satisfied with letting them wave off in the ocean and reaching different shores. Instead, she understood how the memories that the pictures brought back were to make her understand the importance of time and how in each phase of life, each experience mattered and did well to her without affecting her present.
She searched through them once again, and a picture brought a smile to her face finally. Bringing it close to her and kissed it. She found an empty photo frame. She made her way towards it and put a picture in it. It was of her and her husband with whom she had an arranged marriage. She just had spent over a year with him but still, he was very important to her. What was the thing which made her choose him over others, she never understood?
She didn’t understand whether she loved him more than Anant or Ansh. Whether she was guilty of not telling him about her past, she never thought of it. She was finally happy with the answers she got. She understood there will be no end to any of the relations she lived; the only end will be that they will be one of these clicked pictures and she wanted to be clicked with a smiling face.
The door knocked, and she realized it was her husband, keeping all the pictures back in the old bag; where she thought the pictures actually belong and leaving them in the storeroom, she went to open the door.
@ramta jogi
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Childhood | English Poetry
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I do not trust love because of my parents | Life Blog | The Times of India
Life Blog | The Times of India |I do not trust love because of my parents
The beginning
I am 25, single and have all sorts of experiences in my kitty. At this juncture, my mother is in a hurry to find a suitable girl for me and get me hitched. But perhaps, I am not ready for it. Not that I am not stable in life or have any other issue, but because I fear love. The fear that has been instilled in my heart and mind because of what I have witnessed in life.
My family…
My father is hale and hearty, and he is rich too! But he does not stay with me and my mother. They got divorced when I was about to step into my twenties. Rarely does he visit us and vice versa? After parting ways with my mother, he re-married while my mother took my responsibility and remained single.
My parents met during their struggling days. Belonging to different communities meant difficulty in getting married, but anyhow, they did. Years passed, and with the passage of time, they found that things weren’t working out the way they wanted them to. Hence, they got separated.
I feel that in this era, where relationships are based on some terms and conditions and reality is hidden under the mask of understanding if your relationship loses that zeal and the stubbornness that holds two persons together, then staying together doesn’t make sense.
The beginning of the end…
In this light, I find my parents’ decision to be fairly practical. I do not blame them. It is a different thing than being a child I never wanted them to be apart. But again, divorce is like a grave disease that doesn’t show up until the final stage is reached. And unfortunately, the moment it reveals itself to you, nothing can be done to reverse its effect.
I felt low; cried for months. I tried to divert myself towards other things when I saw my mother’s mental trauma. The pain she went through, the emotions in her eyes were something I cannot explain in words. Later, the hardships of life and my own relationships made me look at my parents’ decision from a different perspective altogether.
After effects !!
I lost all the love I had in me. Got into three beautiful relationships, and while all of them looked long-lasting, they ended in ways I never thought they will. I ended each one of them. As things became clearer, smoother, I pulled myself back from making a commitment.
I loved them, wanted them to last long, but the word ‘commitment’ gave me goosebumps. At times I thought I wasn’t cut out for it. I craved for love, but whenever I got it, I got confused. I used to distance myself from it, excusing the distance to boredom. Perhaps this was the way I tried to deceive myself from the fear of relationships. I don’t deny my mistakes, but the face of the lady who raised me up and seeing the dearth of love in her life made me more cautious. It prevented me from loving someone to the extent of getting hurt.
I was 19 when that incident hit me, I wasn’t mature enough to understand its cause or its implications.
Conclusion…
I am a changed man now. and believe in living in the present and I don’t think much of what happened and accept it as an unfortunate past which has been associated with me and I no longer regret it. Occasionally, I meet my dad, we discuss a lot of things and end our meetings quite casually. But sometimes, seeing my mother hide her grief behind a smile and the sense of loneliness in her eyes makes me hate the fate bestowed upon her.
But I don’t hate love now. I do hate my past fear of commitment, but seeing society and living with different people, I’ve realized that the love I have seen is an exception to the real one. The beauty of love lies somewhere outside the one that existed between my parents. I have definitely lost the love in me for people, but am searching for it within myself again.
@ramtajogi
Published in The Times of India
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The Desire | Poetry
The Desire | English Poetry
In a life full of frustration,Each one living here has more and more ambitions,
Some want to love, some wants feel,
Someone wants to make big, some want to heal,
Someone wants to dance, someone wants to sing,
Everyone wants something,
That might not have been heard or seen,
Each one is able, Everyone is capable,
To dance, to sing, to act and to think.
But why it still goes flat?
Why only a few climb the heights, the rest just rest.
It’s because of,
THE DESIRE
The desire, the need,
The desperation, the greed,
Is what makes you succeed.
It’s the climbing hard in the night when others sleep,
It’s when others take rest, you take a leap.
It’s when others just think and you actually act,
When others find it hard, you easily adapt.
When others give up, you give in.
Believing your work –worth believing,
Neither the noise of insult effects nor the applause of praise,
You just go on, giving what your work demands,
With a content heart and smile on your face.
You work for your work, you live for it,
You want it to succeed, you give for it
It’s in your manner, in your act,
In your character, in your deed
That desperation, that greed
That desire, that need
That makes you succeed.
@ramta jogi
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I am I | Poetry
I am I | Poetry | English
To the world which praises me high,
The people who blame me hard,
Those who consider me great,
And to them who make me feel apart,
To all those views that people share,
To them, this is what I think,
This is what I care,
I was, I am and I will be the same,
The person in me, unaffected by the name.
In me, I believe,
For my soul, I live.
My thoughts guide me,
My acts define me
I have a life and I live for it,
….
Untouched of what it might lead to being.
Today is what for I am known
Yesterday is not for regret, It’s gone
Tomorrow is not today so I leave it alone.
We are here together,
But what’s our fate?
Believe or not,
But I exist to you till we relate,
Once over, It will be no one.
You, me and everybody will be unknown
In the crowd, we will be on our own,
Searching for ourselves,
To understand and to be known.
Neither the memories will work, nor the feelings will react,
The time once gone, Is better to forget,
I Have rules, I have ethics
I follow them, I repeat, I avoid them or I leave
That’s up to me and that’s my wish
What you think is not what I care
The pressure of your thoughts is not what I bear
I say what I feel,
It may hurt you or it may heal
I am blunt, I dare,
I talk with honesty, and that’s rare.
You, we are particles of clay,
Made to exist and then decay
We are here, to run,
Once over, we are done.
Lone we came, Lone will be the End
None shared the birth,
None will share the death
It is hard but a Fact.
I know this and I feel it.,
So I don’t just leave life instead I live it.
@ramta jogiI am I | Poetry | English
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