I am powerful

“But you had said you loved me”, it was a desperate plea. I guffawed. “When did I say that to you?” my reply was sharp and cruel. “Not everything needs to be told”, her eyes were confused, her face had become red, this red was redder than the red when she used to blush, her eyes narrowed and her nose looked more pointed. Her hair were still unmanaged and a lock of it tried to hid her breasts. But there was nothing she had which I hadn’t seen if she wanted to hide her body, she was still naked and so I was but I was pulling my trousers up. Her lips looked like the petals of a rose in a young spring, I wanted to taste them again as by that time I had already forgotten the taste of her lips. She was looking strange, in her anger she looked more matured. Her eyes were still confused. She said which was however a question, “you never loved me”. I have always been truthful, I nodded my head. Its not that she never asked me if I loved her, she used to ask me that question in most of our meetings which she called ‘date’ just to make it sound more fancy. To me those were just meetings and she was just another girl. Every time my reply was ‘no’ and she always smiled, the smile mocked my truth. She used to ask me if I had someone else in my life, I never have had anyone who I regarded my and I will never have one. My reply used to be simple and true, ‘No’. Her reaction suggested security, she seemed to take a deep breath and she used to pull her body so that her neck looked shorter and her shoulders used to get closer to her ear.  Now she is accusing me but I had never lied. I never have two plays at the same time. I love playing with weak and helpless because that is what I am. I won’t tell you lie, my relation with women is my attempt to prove I am not weak, I am not helpless. When they beg before me, I feel satisfied. I feel so powerful to be in a position to make or ruin somebody’s life, but I have never put a trap, I have never lied. I have never told a woman I loved her. “Not everything needs to be told”, she repeated. Was that another of the universal truth that I missed in my primary school? “But I always told you I didn’t love you”. She stared at me undoubtedly she was more confused now, her remark was an incomplete “But..”. “So is this the only thing you had wanted from me”. Even after knowing my inclination toward truth and even after knowing the answer and the truth itself, every woman asks me the same thing. “Yes” was my reply, I repented for nothing. I had not forced her to sleep with me, I had not forced her to meet me. Many times the meetings have been her arrangements. Today’s meeting was one of her arrangements in her favorite restaurant. She was happy, she wanted me to ask the reason. I asked her but I don’t remember her reply, I was just looking at her, she looked beautiful, I was looking at her from the eye of an artist. After so many failed attempts to own her body, today’s evening I didn’t even think about sleeping with her. She hardly allowed me to kiss and that had made my challenge difficult and that is what made me adamant to sleep her, to see her naked, to play with her bare body. Today she looked preetier than ever, when I drove her back, she asked me to come in. I still have no hint that today was going to be my day. She had lost her so called “morality” to her happiness, the reason of which I hadn’t listened. We watched TV and whatever happened next was just unplanned. I enjoyed, I know how she looks like naked. I know her now inside out. When everything happened and when she had lost all her physical privacy to me, when she had chosen to be my slave, she seemed to have woken up. Out of nowhere she asked me when were we supposed to marry. My reaction was innocent, “Marry? Why should I marry you”  And then was that question “But you said you loved me” She was looking so pretty that I would have made love to her once again, again and again but she spoilt everything. Her red lips disturbed me but I knew she won’t let me get closer. Deceived by my own nature I won’t lie to re-possess her body, play with it. With other women I have slept more than once but with this one, this is the first and this is the last. Oh God why can’t I lie. What would have happened had I said we will marry , next year, next month or may be tomorrow. I would have avoided finding another woman. I cursed myself. Tears rolled in her eyes, they made me more content. I wanted to yell from the terrace into the city that had already fallen asleep that I had made somebody cry, I control somebody. She said, “I have no point to live.” That won’t bother me. I was going to be same, had she wanted me to continue meeting her, I would have done that because believe me my hunger for her body had not satiated. You would say I disrespected women, I considered them as a toy to play with. Sorry, you have got me wrong. In my entire writing do you see I have created a trap, they have just fallen to me. I have never raped a woman, I have never used a woman who has been let down by the world, I have never forced anyone to sleep with me. I respect women more than those who shout for woman rights. I just seek the ultimate pleasure in the universe, just for that one moment I love women. I do not want them cry, I like smiling faces of women.

She lifted her face, the tears had dried but they had left their track through her cheeks. Her anger was still worse, “So, you considered me just a whore, you picked from a market, slept with and dumped.” “No” my plea was desperate. I have never picked a whore to sleep with and I will never do that. As I said earlier, to get what is easier to get is not my business. I do not want to buy a body with money, its passion that I love to possess not just a body of a woman. “I have not changed”, I said. You are no different to me than you were yesterday and few hours before when we were having lunch. I had no intentions to hurt you.

She spit in my face, that raised my temper but it dropped down. I wiped my face and I left the room, she had covered her face with her arms as she sat with bent knees. She looked like a model posing for a nude picture. The door slammed behind me. After walking for 10 minutes I looked back, the lights of her room was still on. 

Strokes of thoughts

 More than half of last one hour I wasted in vain looking for my specs and now as I write this I still do not have specs. Without specs I am not feeling myself as if I have borrowed eyes from somebody else, donated by somebody already dead. The vision is blur and strained. From last one hour I had been wanting to write something strokes of words, words if woven become poem, become sentence, become quote, become inspiration, become vision and if spread apart just meaningless. By the way in the last sentence I remembered I had a nap earlier and that reminded me where I could have left my specs. Now the specs stand on my nose. I feel better though in the last half an hour I have spilled so many thoughts that have dried. I carried it more than I could hold, like a kid holding so many things in his arm, walks with care but still unknowingly leaves behind fallen things, clothes, books, beads and so on. Possibly somebody will collect his things but who will collect my spilled thoughts, who will see it, who will fill it when me where they originated have failed to hold them. Why are they so volatile? What is the meaning of their existence? I write while I keep forgetting, I forget still I keep writing. Crazy words!!! I think to write one thing and when they are written they are something else. My thoughts are so restless, so disconnected. Since no chain exists between one wave of thought to another they just vanish similar to the items that vanishes in the hand of the magician. We tighten our fist so that we can hold things, so that it does not go away and we control it. When we tighten fist we are assured that we have strong hold of our possession but in magic they vanish when they are strongly held. In real life it’s the case with relationship I believe, stronger we hold someone away we get from him/her, by the time we open the fist alas!!! There is none left. Drink your tear then, drown in sorrow. Lost can be looked for but those who leave are gone, gone for ever. More we look for them farther they go. I again wrote things I didn’t have in my thoughts when I was looking for specs. The earlier thoughts lived their life and gone they are. I tried to tighten my fist and faster they vanished.

I returned home irritated by the cacophony in a wedding. I had a nap because my irritation would not just go away. I woke up with listlessness which I still have and then I was invaded with thoughts, random ones, those that I never feel like writing, those that have never been beautiful, those that are sticky like gums that I want to get rid of. I went for a bath, while I bathed I bathed with thoughts more than I bathed with water. Water washes the dirt from ones outer body what washes the thoughts that is inside your head, your heart. I had skirmishes with thoughts and I feel ‘skirmishes’ are the appropriate words. I came out of the bathroom into the empty home the home that is just another house when its empty. My dog slept lazily in his couch and he didn’t feel necessary to check who opened the door. I like home when there are voices filled in its atmosphere. I was raised thus in a small world of my family apart from which nothing mattered. I sought happiness among my family and that made me rather insecure.

The climate that has abruptly become hotter is equally irritating, in the roads people prefer walking in the shades. Just few days back, basking in the sun was one thing people missed about holidays but now they just stay in. Roads will be emptier and laziness will take over probably the season favorable for thoughts is slipping away. Probably in the thoughts now will be heated, sweaty and contradictory. I know that won’t happen but who knows scientists in developed world are actually experimenting on it.

Scratches of thoughts when no mood for work

There is still time for the stars to appear in the sky, the twilight is usual. From somewhere I smell the froth of boiling tea. Ah!! there it is the push-cart, a hotel in a wheel. I have never had tea from these push-carts one I am not a great fan of tea and the other I am concerned about cleanliness and the jazz. It’s been a while that the cart has stood in front of me and as the naughty froth try to come out of the kettle the owner of the business lowers the flame of his stove. I must have been watching the over enthusiastic froth for almost ten minutes and in all these minutes not a single customer has come yet the owner seems to be in hurry. He opens one container after another. There is no reason behind my standing before the book shop watching the cart. Yes I had come to the book shop to check for a book unfortunately the book was not there. I had stopped to think what should I do next as like many times I had become thoughtless, had forgotten everything as if it were some amnesia. I could not make sense of the crowd, they make me feel dizzy, my existence become so minute and trivial, and everyone is in hurry. On the other side of the road a slogan is painted on the wall. It is an appeal I don’t understand, appeal to reconstruct the country. But that is none of my concern; I am irritated by the hubbub. All these people seem to me to have been directed to move, walk, trot in random and they are doing what they are told without knowing why they were told to do so. The book shop is crowded too and people are seeking books in all kind of subjects, subjects even my father wouldn’t have heard in his youth while he was student in a huge city of Calcutta. I believe they have renamed the city to Kolkata, may be they don’t like Shakespeare (“What’s in name that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”). Even many places in Kathmandu city have been renamed but that makes sense to me because that is what New Nepal is. I won’t be surprised if they changed the name of the country itself.
The twilight has come on a hold, it is not changing, the sky has stopped the roads are however busy, I feel the pace of people has widened. This seem to be a competition where every man on the road wants to overtake the other, as if they are running for a jewel and everyone fearing that the mine might be empty when they reach there. The steam from the kettle rises and vanishes. A gate opens and the students come out of the college chattering, playing, laughing just to lose their identity in the crowd, just to lose their voice in the noise. Small glasses are wiped and are arranged upside down in the cart, he picked a small dirty piece of cloth to lift the kettle from the stove and soon small glasses were filled as the student came directly to his stall.
Unfortunately I lost my confidence in academic degrees just after I joined the college and yet the fear of unemployment had me stuck in the college for four years. I won’t deny that I was different when I came out of the college but it has been a little help. Unwillingly I am back at the doors of college once again just to get a proof of knowing things. I try to seek if these students have different opinions. I seek it in their eyes, in their body language and in their expression. Whether it’s the light that has become scarce by this time or because of my own problems I fail to find anything. I see people more aware of political alignment and consciousness than consciousness for quality living. Soon the glasses of tea start emptying, a small boy probably the owner’s son is busy cleaning the glasses. I didn’t notice when he joined his father but I can see a man in the making I hope he grows up to become someone whose shop is bigger and more profitable than his father’s. He dips glasses into a tub of water whose color changes from colorless to light tea. He rinses them with clean water next and it becomes ready for another round.
The crowd fails to clear and I come out of my amnesia. I mix in the crowd and a bus sweeps me from one crowd to next. In my lonely room I feel significant, I feel sad to seek myself in the crowd.

Search for a book

They say you can find even god if you seek him properly but today after wandering all around Bhotahity and Ratnapark I could not find a good book of Quantitative Techniques. This is not a book I am searching with a choice but rather with an obligation of a course I am pursuing. They also say to seek god one does not need to wander from one place to another, from one temple to another, god is inside oneself, one just need to concentrate and find that god. My concentration has never been so focused and selfless as I have never found the god inside me. I race between one thing to other when I try to unlayer myself, turn the leaves after leaves inside me. There hasn’t been a long time since I have started believing in god and even that was for selfish reasons yet I believe there he is or may be she is. What’s in gender? God is god after all.

Today was probably just another bad day for me. After visiting one book shop to another I still had found nothing but coincidentally I found so many people I hadn’t seen for years, some people whose images had been wiped up from my faintest of memories. I met my primary school teacher that’s more than eighteen years back at time I hadn’t even hit the double figure of my age. Then I almost collided with one of my father’s friend who I hadn’t seen for almost twenty years. Now one will wonder do I really mean I recognized them and I should say yes I did. At the time when those images where carved into my memories I used to be sharp today I am only outwardly witty nothing close to sharp. In the crowded lanes of Bhotahity the whole city seemed to have come, is Kathmandu really so small was a question I was asking myself in my soliloquies. By the way if I close my eyes something else opens its eyes inside me, it is just another me, who keep whispering into my brain one thing after another. These soliloquies are the reasons why I have not been able to find a god inside me.

I really struggled to come out of my burial. I was buried in works and before I could complete one another work will arrive. If one had to breathe voluntarily I would have died finding no time to breathe. I was thirsty as I walked the littered roads, my mouth parched. There was no water in office today because both the peons were absent. I measured the roads between Thamel to Shahid-Gate in vain. Many book sellers didn’t know what Quantitative Techniques really was. To be true even I didn’t know till few days back, I didn’t know statistics was called Quantitative techniques. When the teacher brought the subject before class, and discussed its role in decision making I was puzzled how could decision be quantified? And now I know it. It is not actually quantifying decision but aiding the making of proper and effective decision. Luckily I am not ashamed of my ignorance and that is why I enjoy the Eureka moments. The transition between complex problems to easy solutions is such a wonderful experience. Problems are problems until we find a solution, (what a silly statement it seems to be but that’s it). Complexity are properties of things, events etc. until a way-out has been found. Possibly simplicity is the fundamental property of every thing, may be we just need to discover it. The ‘Eureka’ moments cherishes us.

I almost ran out of the break time as I wasted all the time running helplessly from one book store to next. I cannot afford staying hungry, my hunger for knowledge would never be satiated with a burger but without a burger I will not be able to stay alive to enjoy the hunger for knowledge. Unfortunately this hunger for Quantitative Analysis is an induced one not a genuine one. Hopefully I will find it somewhere else.

Unaccountable coins

It felt good when the conductor handed me three coins one rupee each when I told him I had a student card while handling him a note of ten rupee. If day before yesterday I had handed him the same amount he would have gruffly asked for three rupees more. I had got a new student identity card from my new college yesterday. Why it felt good, though three rupees does not make me richer neither does it buy anything that I would love to have and unfortunately there are nothing these days I would love to have except when the chill air try to pierce my body when I return from college in my friend’s bike and I wish I wish I had a car. Other days it would have been nothing but books unfortunately not even books appeal me these days. May be its work that is taking its toll; with six projects whose deadlines are already approaching, 24 hours seem insufficient. To add to that next month there will be visits to branches something worse than a pain in the butt.
Ok, now with the three rupees I have saved six rupees in fact. How come? Had I not have the card I would have paid thirteen rupees but with card I only paid seven so thirteen minus seven is six. Unfortunately even six rupee does not make me richer so that I can quit the job tomorrow and lay in my bed my legs crossed with a good book in hand or may be a soothing music in the background. Even all the six rupees I will save these two years I won’t have anything worthy. So, where will that three rupee coin go? Most probably tomorrow when I will be leaving for office, Sarita will ask for one rupee and I will hand her two because I love to see the sparkle in her eyes when she gets more than what she wants. The other one rupee will again go to her or go missing unaccountable. The ‘materialistic concept’ of accounting which I am studying in college these days also holds for me. Why would I bother about one rupee coin? If I keep getting this concession for being a student, coins will accumulate and where will they go? Nothing worth pondering though. Let’s forget Sarita because she does not get coins everyday. Now if I give ten rupees note to the conductor he will return me 3 rupees coin. Tomorrow I will hand the other conductor a note of Rupee five and two rupee coin. Now comes again the remaining one rupee coin and since my pockets have no hole, they will be spent. One of a similar day, an old man hardly able to keep his eyes open, his bony body standing on lanky legs with support of a stick, all my coins will be poured to him. But that does not make me a philanthropist not nearer to the greatest philanthropist in the history of mankind ‘Bill Gates’, the other side says no-one in the entire history of mankind has amassed as much wealth as him. I do not dismiss his being the greatest philanthropist because had I been him I would have never done that. Now that reminds me of another thing.
Only when a colleague asked if I was going home or not I realized it was already time to leave. At the station people waited desperately for a transport and none was to come, those which came didn’t stop as they were filled to limit. After 15 minutes a bus came and there was a kind of stampede to get to the bus. Few fell but I luckily was the third person to get into the bus and secured a seat by a window. While getting into the bus, running after it, a man so aggressively pulled me and threw his hand that my specs almost fell. That didn’t count as my specs were safe, my eyes safe and I was seated in a seat by window. Everyone got into it and the bus swelled. Then it changed its route. That made me indifferent as by either route I would have reached my destination. A man raised his voice, he was to get off at the same place where I was to get off even then he said its not if the bus takes him to his destination or not it should not leave those whose destination was in the other route hopeless. He was a sage who didn’t care if it comforted him or not but he felt others should not be left as such. I didn’t care after all it will reach my destination anyway. The man was seated in front of me, he turned toward me for reasons I don’t know may be to gather my support. He was the same man who had pulled me and almost broken my specs. ‘Double standards’ my boy I said to myself. I could have done surgery on his nature, what he did and what he said then it was time for me to get off then came my change the three rupees. Oops that was where I started. Leave it……..who cares for one rupee afterall.