Rubella Red

Plopped alone on my single bed,I stare at the length of my arms covered by a generous scarlet sprinkling of measles,as if staring at them long enough would make them vanish.I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that they do,but it's not happening.Yet again,I realise the magnitude of how little a fuck,people,especially adults give about each other.I have no where to sleep for the night,and in an empty hostel room,it's just my despair,my rubella covered arms and the awareness of my adulthood sharing space and a comfortable silence between us.
I'm alone with my thoughts again and the sound of them haunts me like a late Sunday afternoon when everyone is asleep and the corridor reeks of quiet.I realise I have caved in to rejection,caved in to the belief that my writing is not good enough for the couple of college societies that I thought I could have been a part of,that as much as I dislike going home,it is  symbolic of a screwed up sense of comfort.I've stopped looking for a physical sense of home,altogether because no matter how wonderful the people,how positive the atmosphere..there is bound to be a deep seated emptiness that cannot be forgotten.Like a dark room with soft music,when it's raining incessantly outdoors-a feeling so immensely beautiful,it has a sense of tragedy looming about it.I've come to realise,college isn't half the dream it's promised to be and just like school,there will be lecturers who will produce a physical reaction of fear in most of the class with mere words.Life almost never turns out as planned,planning is futile,it just happens-for better or for worse.It's quite a struggle for me to just stop and try to participate,before it fleets away in the blink of an eyelid,leave alone trying to control anything.
Maybe my words and dreams are tainted in the very hue my arms are-rubella red,bold.Maybe they aren't for most people to understand and maybe,this is just a mere consolation I'm trying to get by each day on.It is good enough to make it with the lack of any encouragement,making a mark might be difficult for me,but I just might be a phoenix,reborn from ashes and I just might be Sisyphus,rolling a stone up a hill,that I know will come crashing down the slope,anyway.There is much grace in being either of them,I suppose.The most essential fact that keeps me afloat on rocky seas,however,is that I still write.I write for myself,I write when I'm rejected and feel inferior,I write when I discover I might be an average,first generation literature student,I write for my loneliness and I write for my joy.I write because I've survived and I try,each day to make a little more sense of my survival.I write for my childhood self and the broken home I grew up in,the stories that need to be told.Despite not having read cannons like my classmates have or being on editorial boards and having published lengths of my writing,I write.
Because that's the point,isn't it? Making the best of what you've got.Like Scout Finch understood of what Atticus said to her about the best kinda folks being ones who make the best of what they get.

Fountain Coke

Fine,silver hair like fluff on the crown of an old man's head,
a dusty notebook where he records mundane details because mnemonics have failed him
A couple of hours spent getting to know a fragment of ninety-three years of life.
The courage to finally utter a "hi" to a dreamy senior that makes me swoon,and that indelible feeling when her face melts into the softest,most genuine smile.
The soothing after effects of a glass of fountain coke sipped out of a long,yellow straw on a sunny day and all of these things remind me,it's getting better.

Homage to a new home

The swift mechanical swish of the metro running on a line right outside my window is warm yellow reassurance at night,like lights illuminating an empty corridor.A new city awaits to be explored,I have a whole new world to discover,every morning is the promise of adventure,every day a constantly changing challenge.
College,they say,is the most abstract experience there is..where each day might seem identical to the next,like a line of dominoes waiting to collapse into each other until you create something worthwhile with catharsis or have an absolute burnout,but each moment is like that intricacy of a painting,you didn't notice the first time you looked.Only when you look closer,carefully,your eyes fall on those little details that add the kind of meaning to the painting you never thought it could convey.
Be it a torrent of rain that sends you running back indoors,one afternoon,making you smile like a child with paper boats in a puddle or be it sitting on a stairway,sharing comfortable silences into the wee hours of morning,cuddling with the campus dog and taking naps in a hallway,your bag ,a makeshift pillow.Eating tang straight out of the packet and spending all your money on one too many bottles of beer and books,without realising it might mean being broke for the rest of the month and walking three kilometeres,trying to find your way back.Every little stroke of the brush has been put on canvas to add hue,colour,contrast or even just space,you might just take a little longer to realise why some strokes have been added.

In a month,I have come to realise how much the very foundations of my world can change,entirely.How the safe little snow globe I had crafted to be my universe,has frailer walls than I had ever imagined.The people I meet were certainly not the ones I thought I would,the tears I've cried under the covers,each morning for a home that I never thought I would miss so much,the bittersweet nostalgia for a city that adds so much to my identity than I ever realised,the songs I've been singing and the dancing I've been doing,all so new,yet so welcoming.Even the kites and birds,flying in a distance outside my window,the fronds of the palm moving gently with the breeze,seem strangely stunning and familiar.
The questions I've been asking myself,mostly rhetoric,but I'm beginning to realise,they don't all need answers,always.Some of them are better mysteries than hypotheses.
Somewhere along sitting next to a lotus pond,pondering and musing, while walking late night in soft drizzle,plopping myself into a circle of near strangers on a grassy slope,singing along to the chords of a guitar,I realise.I realise that there is little we can do about what we're fated to,how much ever we try,even if we romanticize monotony.
The grand scheme of things will spiral out and spiral in like these moments,these minute details on abstract painting of our lives.Seemingly designed for a purpose we don't quite understand,at first.It is indeed our attempt to try to add meaning that,to try taking control,to try directing the strokes on our paintings to make our masterpieces a little more personalised,our belief that we can exercise choice,free will is what counts.Although it might be just a mirage of what we want to call an odyssey of self-discovery,it just this belief that is the truest sense of freedom we'll have.Like sexuality,like love,like friendship,like wisdom and knowledge,themselves,freedom is fluid,although in earnest,it might never completely belong to us,alone.It is psychological and even if institutions like society seem to shackle it with norms,we try,despite knowing there is no escape.We try to build a niche where we don't want to race towards a finish line,to compete and make a mark,we just want to fall and falter,and discover and evolve.This very attempt at letting go and finding a place to be and walking without a destination,taking one day at a time,that liberates me.I'm learning to let my hair down,to let the breeze kiss it and walk barefoot,to feel the earth beneath my feet.These unknown streets and sky rise concrete structures of my dreams,and all the uncertainty of a new beginning,,the confusion and despair of figuring stuff out and those sublime interludes of mundane peace.A city,like I began,awaits to be discovered..perhaps,this constantly changing cosmopolitan is within me.