HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

Now a day, the birthdays come so soon and very often; though it is actually daunting to revel amidst the melee of accumulated friends and foes, who appear meekly and subdued on the special occasions for reasons best known only to them but none else. While, the ritualistic encrypted orgies are exceptionally scary, somberly suffocating and obliquely intruding; I usually find myself, as a pertinent rule, perched atop mounds of quickly scripted encomiums of plasticity and addressing them in nihilistic languages not audible to them.
How often have I buried myself inside the burrows of self denials, honestly I do not know. Yet unwittingly, I have been discovering myself at the neatly made makeshift sacrosanct parties, as the only and one scapegoat, ready for the sumptuous feast; strangely arranged in my own honor. Even though, I would not have cheered on such festivities, I nevertheless have regularly faked happiness for the kind benefit of the unduly expectant and extra cautious proud guests of questionable substances. In turn, they have most readily; let me bask in yearlong non-animus gloomy glories of the unwillingly spent years, as a weighted barter deal.
The unceremonious and unwelcome birthdays are abject realities that one can not fully escape or postpone for a tomorrow for they are like the ugly looking bereavements. I know, the anointments must go on so that a surrendered mummification happens, still on a sneaky tomorrow. The birthdays are only, facades nothing more, I think.
For some compelling urges, we routinely buy stinking cakes, malformed balloons and suspected loyalties at still higher rates, years after years to reinforce and renew our sagging and waning whims in order to exhibit the newfound maturities surreptitiously at the hurriedly assembled birthday bashes, ours and theirs. Perhaps, we like to wear freshly stitched fanciful dresses for a special day. However, the context never changes, for sure.
To salvage myself partially, I prefer to spend my times anonymously by hiding the days-after in shame, drawing fresh air in dimly lit dingy rooms in agog and agony, though to no avail. I then come to realize always that the next birthdays are coming yet again and I must reach the decorated vestibules in smelling smiles to receive the surging and competing guests, still again, with dwindling courage.

WHEN THE RAINS COME

When the sudden rains come inebriated, after a long and cruel spell of parched silence, the agonized prayers are answered in commemorative whispers of the souls and bodies of the haughty earth. The whipped up emotions naturally then, go berserk, wearing smugly looking aplombs for a precious precarious while. When the rains lash, the naysayers go hiding in the valleys of anticipations for a season only, even as the seeds and spores of ensconced hopes sprout in abundance everywhere, barring the few perpetually barren islands of sworn refusals, apparently of self negations.
The familiar and unfamiliar enemies of the sunny days hurriedly huddle together, to redeem themselves, though comically and absentmindedly, to escape the spasmodic inundating showers, while others surprisingly coalesce under the leaking roofs and much neglected enclaves to utter encrypted holy scripts. In the soon-to-be deluge of the rains that is bound to follow, it appears so temporary that conveniently, they are all forgotten like gory deaths. Who, after all, would like to remember the soaky tales of concealed agonies and incarcerations?
Few scanty lonesome silver linings hang perilously after bouts of torrential downpours to feebly assure some of the future rainbows, picturesque canopies of intensely painted clouds, peeping moons and chimerical brides--just past of their early puberty. In helpless nights soon, these stimulants turn sour, in turn, triggering avalanches of churning gale.
Now, the prostitutes and fellow monks go unemployed and unrepresented for days, as the rising waters cut off the lanes and by-lanes, traversed by their tawdry and hungry clients earlier. While, they lay tattered gasping in isolation, the makeshift camouflaged camps turn contraband dens of cleaver conspiracies and strategies. Here and there the strewn carcasses and naked deities decay in damp pits, awaiting resurrection in the ensuing days of incessantly drizzling rainy days. Simply, they are of futile values.
For days together, the often threatening cloudbursts and thunders, under an overcast sky, inflict fictional fear, while the gullible infants renew their filial bonds liberally to the new found parents. This is also the time when the moist women of the hearth summon their angel guardians to skillfully negotiate the atrocious hails in dingy caves, in the far removed dark corners of the barracks; as the men sit back in despair to quickly mend the boats and search their oars—long forgotten.
In the fateful nights entangled with brawling rains, the erstwhile chirping birds, drenched and agitated, clutch to the secured branches, shivering yet ignoring the unfolding of a deluge, down under, that expands till the hazy heaven hanging far away for sure. The streams, rivulets, rivers, creeks, lagoons, tarns and ponds cast off their snazzy attires to bring sanity amongst the greedy tribesmen near the banks. Additionally, they carry loads of sorrows to unburden, most probably nowhere. The rains again and again collude, to uproot the egos in spate.
When the rains pour profusely, a time turns amorous, for the gushing adrenals invent quick love, long forgotten and unlubricated, in order to sustain a chanced upon deliquescent desires by the not so celestial showers, outside.
When the rains come, I go missing to play in muddy waters and to make my new paper boats in droves. I like to visit the water filled empty snake holes and rodent burrows near the corn fields and throw small pebbles leisurely at the magical whirlpools and watch the unending ripples of the ponds, just ignoring the cataclysms in wait nearby. I also count the surfacing debris of my village where I stayed for long. And you?

MY BUTTERFLIES

There was a time that conspicuously stands elapsed, when I chased butterflies and virtually did nothing else in the ravines, meadows, marshes, thickets and the neighborhoods; not knowing fully, why I had to do that and the exact meaning of my apparent odd quest.
Like others in the village, I never grew up for a secure future. Usually living a life of calculated abilities was what I dreaded most—not the devil spirits of the ageing banyan trees near the burial ground, not the unceasing droughts of the doomed region, not the sorrows of the untouchables, nor the marauding uncertainties of the young widows.
Ever since I started dreaming, I only liked the deep blue skies, the surreal clouds, the inundating nights, the twirling stars, the bustling springs, the meditating pebbles, the ecstatic flowers, the fluttering birds, the lazy lizards and of course, the ever busy butterflies, who dotted my space. My dreams were so alluring that I always felt like feasting on them undisturbed and nestled far away. Though, I somehow knew that beyond the dilapidated mud walls of my house, a wretched fate awaits me in rapt attention; I mostly preferred to ignore it and as a maneuver, traded for a quicksand existence for me, mostly of my own making. Perhaps, I preferred the darkness of a beautiful morning for my unmeasured sojourn.
The butterflies, my obsessions, wore spells, which stretched like eternal fluxes in me, ever since, I stared liking them. Always they came in droves to bury me and than rescue me and to float with them near the distant horizon, in suspended animation. I preferred to lay in wait, in anticipation of the enactment, in intense surrendered agog.
Whenever the days came, I hurried up to catch up with a familiar landscape, full of conflicting realities, scattered and cluttered out there. I knew, I would never fit the characters of the melodramas and so obliquely sulked to unfathomable depths of forced ugly pains. At times, I screeched for help that was never to be of any meaning. For me simply, the days were bizarre, I discovered and decided to escape to a loneliness of nonchalant innocence of a battered self, still sprouting. I hurried breathlessly to desolateness, and found a willing alley in the butterflies. For me, these butterflies were the ultimate hermits I was supposed to be in search. With them I started living an occasional life in the periphery of a beginning or may be the end itself.
I never accumulated a past, for they were the scripts of imprisonments. I never chiseled a tomorrow, for they were the perfect recipe of debility. I never had a present also, for they were just crippling.
Yet, I grew up one day by proxies and trials to again turn into voids, while reaching their destinations. Largely, this was not the myself but someone else resembling me. May be, I was sans myself for a while. It was then that to hide, I prepared masks of various sizes and colors, though they never came handy or suited perfectly on me. I also forgot my once recurring dreams. My primordial incarnations and my new found sins coexisted, very strangely. It was a time of parting ways. It was also a time to disintegrate and to count the possessions. It was a time when I had no butterflies in my garden. This was the time when I was a miserable skeleton, and bereft of myself.These times were so suffocating that I wanted to stifle and gag the accompanying eventualities. And then the miracle happened. Thousands of butterflies, for hours and hours flew from all directions. I could recognize that they were the same butterflies I had seen all my life. It was strange, as I was the only witness to the swarming. For a moment, I was awe stricken and than started chasing them like I did before.
I had no idea from where they came or where they were going. I had no idea also about the directions they will take. I had no idea of my own direction that I must take. It was the most difficult time for me. I was so short of energy that finally, I aborted a run after the butterflies. Since then I never existed again, either way. I found myself a moth eaten corpse full of fears and no dreams. My people have carried me to a safe morgue and anointed me. The butterflies are nowhere in the vicinities, now. Do they have fears like mine?