Rain Messenger's Diary 15...Letter to Annie 4

Dear Annie,

Today, I spoke of love. Not anything or anyone in particular, it was like love, people and relationships in general…if at all they can be generalized. You know how I get sometimes. It was raining. Delhi has not seen so much rain for the last 30 years. It’s amazing how sometimes some irrelevant statistics get stuck in your head.

Anyway, without doing what I usually do, get lost in my own maze of words, let me tell you why I am writing to you. You know love reminded me of you. Don’t be worried I don’t love you anymore…sorry perhaps, that sounded more like a consolation made to myself than a statement to you….but still, it’s true. What I meant by love reminding me of you, was a fleeting thought that I had as to why I loved you or why I would love anyone for that matter. You know, it was not because you understood me or because you actually managed to like me in spite of my idiosyncrasies. It was not because of all those walks in the rains or the hurried, awkward kisses in the stairways, empty lifts or when we are lucky in empty movie-halls and during windfalls in empty rooms. It was perhaps because of the way you looked when you woke up from sleep or perhaps just before you woke up. It might also be because of the way in which you could crave for the smallest of things at the oddest of hours. Remember you once made me run around half the city for like hours early in the morning just because you wanted candy floss and just had to have it…it makes me smile now, to think of it. Or, perhaps the numerous other odd things that used to make us unique…like the way I always had to give you the same chocolate every day I met you.

It made me believe somehow we don’t love the people we love for all those things that we think matter but we love them more for those small little things that we never think will matter or even for things that perhaps irritate us a bit. I once heard someone say, “no, my love was not perfect but in the end, it was all those small imperfections that made her perfect for me.” I don’t think I understood it then, the way I understand it now. It’s still raining you know.

The sky has turned dark and the world seems different, as things seem to have slowed down, even the wet dog in the street seems least bothered and is happily getting wet, lost, even if for a moment, in the infinite beauty of our finite lives. However, these moments are increasingly becoming hard to find. Is it because the world is changing or is it because I am? As usual, I think I have puzzled you to the extent that you are thinking why I keep writing these letters to you…now after all these years, when, perhaps, you are happy, you have moved on, married, had kids…who knows…you must be wondering. Don’t worry as usual, I don’t expect a reply nor do I hope it will reach you. It will be posted like the others…to the wind or perhaps, this time to the sea and it will reach you, when it reaches you. These letters are written more to me than you…ah, that makes you smile….ya, you are right I remain as selfish as ever. These letters are perhaps an acknowledgement made to myself, that something inside me is still alive…something which is untouched from my forgotten past…it’s so ancient that even I don’t know what it is. I know you don’t mind me being alive, so I am hazarding a guess that you won’t really mind the letters and maybe, just maybe, these letters make you smile or be exasperated or just simply make you feel enough to look forward to them as something that breaks the clutter of your everyday existence.

I still enjoy the little things of life…a coffee and a cigarette, while it is raining is still my idea of a perfect evening. I hope I can love again for the same reason…the little unimportant things…the oddities that will make us unique, for if I find a real reason for being in love with a person then it is not love, is it? You see, with you I never had a reason, I just had you and perhaps, that is why these letters still find their way to you. I hope this letter finds you well and happy wherever you are in your new life.

With all my love,
Rain Messenger

Timeless Wishes

The passive green beside your name…
A hidden desire and a chosen barrier…
I wish I had seen you naked…
Your thoughts rather than your body

Time decides to play havoc
Dancing an unknown dance…
While the river swells…
Threatening to wash away all insults

Tremulous…tentative…
I look beyond…telling my story
Through endless words…
But, ending up saying nothing at all…

I wish I could have told them…
About the stolen kisses…and broken dreams
And, the vain search for your arms
And, the warmth of your face against mine

Yet, I am away…I am far…
I am dead while alive
And, you still serenade to broken stairways…
While I listen to life in the silence of the rains

May you soar…
May there always be wind beneath your wings…
While I pursue my purpose
Prove to the wind… “I” means something

Through the window & beyond

Green flashes…the occasional whistle…
The faraway engine and…
The incessant rumbling of rusted wheels
And life…stolen in glances at the faraway horizon

It’s amazing how everything feels so still
Even, when I am moving so fast…
And, I look around…
I find…gray hairs…and lost eyes…

The journey rarely felt so significant
Yet, the music tries to slowly pull me back…
I don’t want to be held now…not today…
In the distance…today, let the music be in the distance

The rain keeps me company…
A sheet of haze…
Blurring my vision, washing the green clean
While, I purge my soul

Flashes of decay…
The unavoidable circle of life…
The birth of new hope beside the barren…
Death…and you…

You come back to me…
In drifting clouds and flooded fields
But, I move on…penning my random ramblings
Watching my life fly by…through the windows of a moving train.