remnant

(of a tasteless life)

Yesterday was inconsequential like any other day but it was my birthday. Apart from my parents, seven people wished me. Yes, I counted. One blog friend mailed a few minutes before the clock struck 12 another friend acquired on blogs called few minutes after the clock struck 12. Three precious pals again from blogs wished me on a networking site.

From the ‘real life’ my latest ‘ex’ sent two-three mails. He can not call coz of circumstances beyond control for another 3-4 months. And then another ‘ex’ who is actually my longest surviving friend for over 12 years gave a tinkle in the evening. He never forgets to wish and I never forget to be surprised, and it goes on..

This birthday was memorable for one reason. I was expecting the 10th wisher to be my sister. However she evaded! I can say I am heartbroken. A half-forgotten life replayed in the mind recapturing happier times. Over the years it was sis who made birthdays special. I could have expected my parents to overlook but not she *sigh *

The day in itself was nothing different from others. Birthdays can be worse than usual days if they remain a usual day. Sachin made the onset of 15th special by hitting the century on 14th and getting MOM and MOS awards. Till about 11:30 pm I was re-living the moments on news channels and was relatively in a happier frame of mind to welcome 15th. The day began and ended but in between was a huge blur. Not like an everyday blur but bleaker, muzzier ‘coz it happened to be my birthday! I nursed this malady with ache and anguish and a curiously satisfying kind of mourning – satisfying in that I had counted and introspected those whom I had lost in my longish short life yet again and in so doing was distracted from this blur. ‘Wasn’t it supposed to be a tad different from 14th and 16th coz it was 15th’ and ‘why was I at home on 15th evening’ were the usual thoughts but I shrugged them off.. aah big deal. After all, it was just another day, which signified getting a year older.


The blur reminds me, I haven’t smoked at all for five days in a row. I needed my alter ego badly yesterday but I pulled it off. How ? I reminisced a poem I had written on ‘her’ (cigarette) by that title almost a year ago – esp these lines -


“when I throw open
‘em benighted windows,
stand in the breeze
preferring to breathe
fumes from within, I know
I can outsmart her
with the aid of logic, analogy
and assorted techniques of
condescension.”


Birthdays can resurrect certain specks and dots like a rumor from the underside of the history. They have a funeral like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring twigs, of shady alcoves and lengthening vistas, which make me feel that rumination is after all an exercise in the stifled air, and can be innocuous if one returned from it with a heap of ashes. The idea of the above verse had occurred to me when I observed a cast away ‘lighted stick’ "burning herself out" I am hopeful I will too .. someday.. some place .. all I need now.. is a spark ..