Ataxophobia

[Someone pointed out that it's been quite long since I wrote verse.. so here goes.. the immature aabb still stays.. n this is as deep as it can get.. can sink no further :)]

Organized chaos surrounds me

Stretches as far as I can see

Have brought it upon myself, yes

Guess I innately prefer being in a mess..

This mess is crisp, clean and crystal clear

Irritatingly perfect - and I'm neither there nor here

As much as I try to wash off my hand

It sinks me further

As if it were quicksand...

Am I looking for a trapdoor?

With blindfold and a straitjacket, what's more

I like to be bound

By the limits of sight and sound...

A weighty problem..

Bring on all the fat jokes. The signs are all there. My jeans talk. And it’s certainly not sugar coated. They talk facts. And numbers. I could evade it if I want to. But it’s staring me in the face; or rather, through that mirror. The pin of the weighing scale looms at a scary 56-57 kgs, depending on the inaccuracies of scales. My friends say that the scale must have been the one installed at the railway station. But I know they’re not.

What does this sudden sign of prosperity attribute to? The heavy, fatty food at Delhi? Well, I had the same diet at Indore. The endorphins (aka happy hormones) that I’m supposedly producing with the sadistic pleasure derived from my friends’ plight? I did that too all along. The ‘lowe’ bestowed upon me by the campus? Lesser said the better. The lack of exercise? Possibly. I guess I’m getting warmer here.

But it’s weird for someone who has always been under pressure to gain more weight by friends and family alike to suddenly jump over (sorry, no more agile, nimble jumping – make that lumber around) the fence to the other side and be the ‘butt’ (yeah yeah I know you’re smiling now) of all the fat jokes. Now whenever I eat that li’l extra, a hasty exchange of furtive glances and stares is rampant across the table. People give me that knowing smile these days as if welcoming me to a new club or fraternity so to speak. Make that fraternity on second thoughts.

I have never had anything against people who have been well endowed. In fact I have always been considerate towards them and have never cracked any of those kind of jokes. But I like it here - to be on the thinner side. To hear from everyone I know that I need to put on weight. I like protesting that I am made this way – genetics, hereditary factors, metabolism and all of that. And all this time I am constantly hoping that it is this way.

I don’t mind the extra few pounds either, if they are at the right places if you know what I mean. But if all the extra cheese, sandwiches and pizzas decide to focus on my cheeks, it’s not so fair, init? So help me God and lead me to the good life, the healthy life, the life where I can still fit into my old pair of jeans that I still have since the time I was 15 and the courage to carry off that little skirt in my closet. Because my clothes talk.

The words flow out...

What is it with me these days? I know I’ve always liked prose. But I have never been “a-verse” to verse either. In fact, I discovered that I like writing only when I started writing poems – poems for people I knew – funny ones, sweet ones. In my engineering days, a poem written for the birthday boy/gal was a certainty. I could write about a teacher and have everyone in splits. They were never poetry, really. I would say that I can rhyme words. That’s it. It’s Anant who’s the poet of the family. Having tried some deep, profound stuff myself, I just realize how shallow I am. So I gradually came to my senses and stuck to the good ol’ long drawn paragraphs.

But I never thought that I would end up being so daft that I would actually avoid poetry. As I come across any piece, I start reading it with a critical eye. As one line follows another, I begin to give up – on the poet and wonder why he can’t say what he has to say straight. I have begun to have ‘standards’, which I am not very proud of. And by standards, I mean that I would like a Lewis Caroll or a nice Winnie the Pooh by Milne. P G Wodehouse can work wonders and so can Ogden Nash. But If it’s not Wordsworth or Keats or Shakespeare or Byron or Browning or Frost or Tennyson, fat chance I would finish reading it. It’s not about whether it’s an epic or a sonnet, if it doesn’t make sense in the first few lines, it won’t make sense to me at all.

Have I really become a dry person? Has education ruined my imagination or my ability to let my mind take flight? Am I not naïve enough anymore to believe? Or is it courage that I have lost? Have the numbers, facts, statistics and drab uncreative chapters killed the Peter Pan in me? Or is it my deteriorating grey cells that have made me incapable to comprehend something new? While I keep wondering about all of this, I find that I can still read. And write. What else does one need anyway.