December 2009.
Karachi X-Rays,
Pakistan.





Garbed in this stiff blue surgical gown, I feel like I have been stuffed in a garish Halloween costume
which leaves me empty, bare, hollow.
Stripped of any piece of cloth, any accessory that defined me, belonged to me,
could be claimed as mine.

Blue blurs wander around like lost souls.
Apparitions of people past, people present, people that they will become.
Apparitions like clues,
memories.
I have been here before.


A blue blur among others, I want to scream at these rigid-faced nurses, these doctors that nod at me cursorily.

Bring me back my blue robe of 2 years ago, my discarded skin.
It might still have some traces of me, my faint perfume,
some preserved warmth of skin
which I can hold touch breath
reclaim as myself.

Let me inhale those rags and pour into my lungs the same fears the same happiness the same little quirky insecurities that congealed to form one broken whole.


Bring me back my discarded skin.
so that maybe I can recollect those pieces of me.
Maybe I can wrap them around my arms as shimmering bangles and drape them over my skin as golden ornaments and wear them with pride and add to my self like how sometimes clothes accessories and plastic little nothings define us as who we are and who we become.

Maybe in those blue discarded stitches of skin, I can find myself again.

-eeda

p.s.
photocredits Skin deep by chix0r, modified by memememe.. :P

Food Court.
Pacific Center Mall
Vancouver,
4th March 2009.

In the mall? Alone?
Writing!!!???

No, I would rather just write.

I'm lit in the artificial.
Neon yellow halo's that spell 'Flaming Wok. Chinese food here!'
I am not Chinese.
or English. or Canadian.

The modern artifact of post-colonialism:- Me.
Brown suede shoes, and black cardigan, I am a walking vestige of their Indian colony;
won and lost.
western in my eastern skin.

Or eastern in my western skin?
My skin which has been tainted by them, 150 years ago?
How can I call this brown flesh,
exclusively mine?

*rewind*

Me.
wrapped in a turquoise blue sari. austere bun, each strand of taut, silken hair yelling for liberty,
like the voice of all my countrymen.

I was gathering fallen jasmines in my palms when they threw me out. House ablaze, men caged.
The smell of fire and ash and wilted, trampled jasmines.
You Indian Scum.

*forward*

Me.
feet resting on metal rims of the stool, fingers clutching my 2$ bottle of chilled Pepsi.
My head swims in kaleidoscopic advertisements, Gucci bags, fur coats,
the aroma of my jasmine scented Calvin Klein perfume I sprayed meticulously earlier in the day.


The war they abdicated is even now, won.
With every Mc Donald's, every Levi's, I buy, their war is won.

Did all our sacrifices remain futile?

.....................




Not to say that Ima mulla inspired kid with an anti-westernization agenda of my own,
but isn't it sad? Through the media and the commercial hoopla, they've managed to infiltrate our lands once again. It means nothing to be a cultured eastern anymore?
What east? What culture?


but yes, i do eat at McDonald's too.
it's just something to think about,

love,
-eeda.

Dekha eik khwab to yeh silsile huey....


It is a shaadi house, insofar as I can tell between being simultaneously fully asleep and fully aware within my own dream that i am dreaming.

There is a string of gainday ke phool in my hand that I am tying to a staircase. This house is foreign, yet festive, homely yet not Home.

Some instinct tells me that is my Home, even if the physical structure does not induce any memory, the spirit of it is there. Maybe the presence of tinkling laughter, the young girls running around in bright pink and yellow and orange dupattas, ammi instructing me to hurry up, the dulhan is going to be here any second.

Brilliant larger-than-life colours. Blinding yellowing lights and yet a sense of gloom.
Andhera, but then that's nothing new.Most of my dreams are that way. I shrug off the feeling and join the gaggle of girls milling round trying to look busy, but getting in everyone's way.

Someone remarks that there's no flower garlands for the dulhan. It strikes me as odd, and speaks to some better part of me. I exit unnoticed and flag a bus down to the phool ki dukan. I realize this western element has set in me already; even in my dream I flag a bus as opposed to ordering my driver to take me to the little makeshift brown chowkis barely held together with sweat and spit, overloaded with motia ke gajray, gainday ke phool, gulab ki lareeyan.

My purchase done, some guy tells me that the next bus is not for 15 minutes. I panic, I must get home. And then a further realization, I do not know the way. I find myself distressed, crying, lost in a crowd of suspicious men with leering eyes and claw-like hands, and not a single comforting gaze.

Somehow I end up on the roof of some building. This too is nothing new, being at vantage points for suicides is also a constant feature of my dreams. By this time my sister has somehow miraculously apparated next to me, but she too doesn't know the way home.
A taxi cab driver offers to take me, but I tell him 'Mujhay raasta nahee pata..'


The horror rises up in my throat like bile, strongly reminiscent of the one time my dad left me waiting in the car to go see some mechanic when I was 7, and returned back to find me in tears and convulsions.I have had an indescribable fear of being left behind waiting since, and the thought alone causes me to get physically fearful.

The thought shifts..On the tenth try I manage to call and my brother picks up. He doesn't realize the plea in my vice, how frantic I am, and won't tell me where Home is. I stand there yelling and screaming and pleading to the faceless gods, heavens, whatever forsaken angels inhabit the realm of our wildest dreams.., 'Kahan hai ghar?' but to no obvious avail.
I bend over crying, and the overwhelming feeling of paranoia and loss and anxiety overcomes me until......

...... I wake up, staring at the ceiling and wondering whose house, whose bed I'm lying in..I gulp down some air like a drowned fish, still sweaty and still confused.It takes me a good deal of 10 minutes to finally calm down and get my bearings right. But does it matter?
Returning to reality doesn't mean the Nightmare's ended,
for this pale white blanket, the feel of this pillow, this cold and lonely bed is still foreign, still not mine.
and I'm still not Home.


and worse yet, even in reality and all sense functioning, I don't even know where that is...


nostalgia attacks.
-eeda

the difference between childhood and growing up is that
when you're a child, the world is never really there.
when you grow up, it never really leaves.

it always comes back and knocks on your door, and without asking
places itself back on your shoulders.

it does not ask if you can carry it, does not ask if it might be
hurting some part of you, if your shoulders are not sagging if
your back is not crumpling your
spine not bent broken dented with the
weight.

to the world,
the world appears light as a feather.


the undebatable monotony of everyday.
you wake up, you walk through your entire day as if following an unknown plan to add a bit of this person and a part of that feeling and a shard of that old forgotten hope or pain
back onto yourself.
you build these castles, carve into yourself these shelters these holes these little places of comfort for them and them and them
and forget
that maybe you need a place to crawl back into too? at the end of the day..
when the light fades out and you wonder if maybe under all those
people places masks faces
bones and bodies and nails and toes and flesh and blood and
ashes ashes ashes,
under all that, is there any bits of you left?

you search but you do not can not will not
find.

because you've forgotten if there ever was a you
because all there is now is this and that and them .
and under all of it
there is nothing.

no you.


That
is a scary thought to wake up to.



maybe that realization is what growing up is.
or maybe i just need another cup of coffee.
-eeda.