Hotel Pacific

Hotel pacific is located at the end of Lighthouse Hill. It peculiarly stands well on the other side of the road from where all the buildings end.

The sign perches high above, its glow detected from half a mile away on the straight drag road. The board has such importance in the neighborhood that they didn’t bother installing lamp posts at the point where the road bifurcated in anti sense directions in front of the door. It manages to do fairly well, illuminating a perfect cone down on the front side of the building till the door at the base, a semi circle around the main road leading up to it.

However, none of this begins to qualify as to why I’d like to take you to Hotel Pacific on a breezy afternoon. The timing seems peculiar, but unfortunately they don’t open until one.

The manager is a red nosed snub with a thing for wigs, sharing his salty humour with the fidgety maître d’.
I’ve known him (the maitre d’) for quite some time now, having frequented this place since the beginning of my days in this city.
He’s not the most patient of figures, and therefore a treat to observe working with the waiters who you could swear were inspired by sloths.

That, however, works for me. Being one who talks much to himself while reading out the same menu I’ve read countless times, knowing just exactly the next dish after the other. I don’t know why I even bother going through it, when eventually all matters would come down to a double coffee with a plate of their bay cookies.
The manager The hotel takes pride in having their food named after everything nautical, often driving people nuts with their salty not so subtle humour.

While our orders travel up the food chain to the shifty chef, it’s best that we amble across the ocean of tables and chairs to the french windows that open towards the back of the circular hall.
This, I feel is the most underrated part of the place.
Before you take in the sultry sun, the disenchanted breeze to disagree with me, I should point out that it’s only in this moment that these things become noticeable.

As we pour silence between us on the cushioned recliners (privileged customers only), the seconds jump on to minutes which lead to the waiters shuffling in our respective poisons.
The wood cools underneath my suedes, the hour drags out itself and the creases on our faces longer. Before long, the sun is behind us and the high wall casts its shadow symmetrically over the planks.

This short but quite wide wooden walk through ends longitudinally on the other side with the next french windows to the ball room. Laterally, with a row of crooked equally woody bars strung together by tightrope, separating this wood’s artificial from that nature’s pale sand. The salt from the bay regardlessly carried through, dampening and loading the dusk air.
It loaded on the passing minutes too, enough for them to crumble into the hourly figures with meridian specifications.

A minor light flicks on, on my side. It makes me turn my head aimlessly, instinctively towards it but more importantly bringing back the fact that we can’t remain here immortal.

These make up only half the reasons as to why I’d like to take you to a certain Hotel Pacific. My drink remains three fourths, the ingested quarter converting itself into the other half of those reasons behind my eyes.
The waters come lapping at me again, with everything of you and none of itself.
They recede and take along the first half of me with them.
The other half of me persists dissolved in the remaining quarter of my drink.

That should roughly add up to the other half of the never ending reasons as to why I’d like to take you to a certain Hotel Pacific Paradise.

Dawn

There are pictures no music can flow through, and there’s music no picture can fill up. Although the two constitute a thought, a memory, an image, but sometimes one becomes too full of itself to actually be expressed in the other.

The night we’re talking about is a night that was intense in itself. Nothing special but just so dark and snowy that the only music that could sprinkle its surface is the crackle of a homemade fire. A homemade fire we did have, its music as enchanting as anything, making its presence known yet not disturbing the lapsed silence residing in the world.

But on such a night, the soul is stirred by the smell of a strong beverage and the sight overlooking the city wrapped in white. On such a night, a window rises to more than just a transparent sheet and actually talks to the viewer held up with the view of the subdued rooftops.

It’s not all dark, mind you. The archway is adorned with the lights of the night and faraway the luminescence creates a solitary, misshapen figure. The window initiates the conversation most of the times. Cautiously and hardly audibly, not wanting to snap the silence. It just whispers right into your mind and you reply. Since there’s no moon for it to be chatting with tonight, it points out all its friends.

You count the salted branches of the bare trees till you’re no longer remembering their residents. Even the unselecting clouds seem to matter when wandering. Soon, everything seems to repeat and the window falls silent too. The warmth that was earlier flowing through you, turned its best with its last drop to make you spot something that could capture your eye for some more time.

Slowly, with a soft tap on your lids and a slight touch of the head to the wall, you stop with the little lingering efforts and give in and leave the rest of the night in the hands of imagination to do over and pass on to reality. And when this cycle is covered with padded feet and nocturnal hands busily turning the world around.

With their next tap and a heaviness at the back of your mouth, your eyes sweep the morning’s arrangement around the windowsill first and then all through the walls and their adjourning components. This realization is confirmed with a long, unhurried intake of breath and turning back to look outside. The prominence looms everywhere, but slowly comes undone. Whiteness glows briskly over the sidewalk and everything eases itself to catch a bit of the rays of life.

With that it takes hold of the world again.

Comets

My heart and I had a single contention
We never agreed on one passion
It wanted to indulge in rhymes, meanings and lovely sonnets
I wanted to study waves, weird sciences and lovely comets
In between this contention, we found a solution.
Now together, we write rhymes on waves
Find meanings in weird sciences
And write sonnets on lovely comets
Streaks of shooting stars make up our paper doodles
I notched up the sun from the east
And my heart bends its warmth and rays to spread
All over the world
We float among the morning dews, exploring
The fancies of unexplored valleys that govern the attractions of earth
Sifting through piney tangles of orchards into another evenings
Owned by creatures living in millions,
But shining way more than worth of trillions
I draw the silver linings on the cloud
And my mind becomes a part of them,
An abandoned kite flying in the brumous crystals threatening to break
No strings attached, rolling deep in them till it becomes inured
And I flutter from the inside with fear,
My feeler of fears, the only crest to my troughs
Little travesty of lying realities, how else will I outlive the seas
That’s the secret, we’ve had had such serendipities
That I’d rather call it a panoply of pastiches.
And in doing so, we’ve outlived our fantasies for discoveries.
My mind chose to be something more expressed,
So it decided to be the redolent, nostalgic aroma in between the pages

We’ve become the little dots at the edges of fraying, browning scripts.
Now we float underneath the surfaces of oceans
And gaze up at the world we’d discovered
And the world that had helped us discover ourselves,
Making me the fool I am.
We’d written, gazed, swum, swirled, dived,
Lived.
Yet we can’t get enough,
Of the one fugacious elixir that lived to be a part of us
That neither the tips of mountains could shred,
Or the white clouds erase
Or the darkness of unilluminated places obscure
Or the anchors of the deepest trenches weigh down
They couldn’t, it was woven in gossamer.
My mind, come back reside in me
I’m losing my sense of breathing again,
For everything’s losing focus again, I’m turning evanescent
But we don’t have time, we’re rolling down faster
And the seas are crying, the sun is hiding its shine
This is another imbrication, but not something I need right now
We’re reminiscing.
We’re fast fading. If this is it, our exodus,
I’ll imbue one last memory of our penumbras overlapping
Completing me.
I’m whole, and in peace I close my eyes,
Freedom, we’re going to other silences now
Freedom, it’s time to leave the prison of grace.
We’ll be reborn. But you’ll remain in me, hidden.
No matter how many centuries I change,
Or
Breaths
I…
Gain…
Or
Lose.

I Wish I Could Speak Your Language

It felt brittle, cold and then the crumbled and fell away. Oh, doesn’t matter. He picked some up again. This time a handful and held it a bit longer crunched it and turned his face up to the sky and felt it trickle down on his face too. Some got stuck in his hair, he didn’t care. Some slipped down the collar of his jacket and whispered the secrets of the heaven right into the major arteries and veins in his neck. All this while he crunched the handful harder and harder. It became slippery and his hands went numb. Stung on his tongue and filled his lungs, expanding more and more as it went down his wind pipe. Turning everything frigid. He didn’t care. He breathed it out, opened his eyes. It didn’t matter. It was quiet, he could hear it rustling down the leaves and falling down. Its every movement was pronounced in the silence. The silence being its perfect companion, and it gnashing itself with the wind and desperate to keep its course. He turned his head around sideways, checking, listening.

And then it was time to go. He turned around, almost losing his balance. He was new to this, still getting used to it. Still longed for lots of things. Acceptance came slow, hard and bitter. It stung too. It came with its own winds, stronger than the howls of Arctics. It was all for nothing, his eyes turned glassy yet he felt, tasted, heard, smelled everything in black. How he missed the apricity. And now, it was a long journey ahead. Looking up to the sky one last time, he only wished he could speak the rainbow’s language again.

Not So Paper Moon

Recently I attended a function in which I too had taken part. By “taking part”, I imply all the work done pre-D Day and spending the main day roaming about the fields aimlessly like a ghost. I just felt like typing out something, without knowing what, about the evening. I kind of like evenings and dusks and dawns.

The evening, for me, started in the back of a sweltering auto stuck in the traffic jam just around the corner of the venue. I’d already haggled with the driver to bring down the rate and he’d stalled me and said that we’d settle when we got there. Not wanting to go find another one as I was already late, I connived. The late afternoon sun was on its way to grace the other side of the world and as I peered out the side of the auto, I couldn’t help notice the heat waves rising up because of the refraction or something we’d studied earlier. My mind has this really odd habit of flashing the oddest things from the back of my mind just when I’m concentrating which in this case, was my cursing. When I finally made it to the venue in one piece, I decided to give the guy a fraction more than what I initially intended to pay. This was lead by a canter to the fields where the decoration was still being given the final touches.

The tent guys were rounding up the knots and my seniors were roaming near the entrance. The females cursing the blue saris they were forced to wear, I believe for the sake of uniformity. I still don’t know why I was rushing to get to the fields. I had no idea. My legs just moved swiftly, my whole body tense to react to even the slightest of a hint of my knees locking, courtesy to an injury. Maybe in the back of my mind I knew that the dusk would somehow look better among all the humdrum of the proceedings on the greens. The nagging to find a reason as to what I was rushing myself for remained with me till I decided to slow down and finally take a seat. Most of the seats were empty. Looking around, I saw everyone busy. Not a single soul looked as lost as me. Not a single soul was in an attire as casual as mine. Blue Puma windbreaker, DG sneakers and jet black jeans hardly passed me off as a person who could’ve contributed in making the show to be what it was going to be.

After spending about ten minutes looking around, I went to the canteen hoping to find something to eat. Met an acquaintance who I accompanied to the other building because the canteen guy was adamant on not selling anything before the program ended. The real hustling and bustling was going on inside the buildings as people rushed off for make up, dresses, half eaten sandwiches and forgotten shoes. I made my way out after half an hour after having gone through greeting everyone who was involved in the productions, just in time to see people start trickling in.

I met my senior who, like everyone, was cursing her sari and we chatted up till the time she had to leave. And that’s how I basically spent the rest of the time till the show was halfway done. I’d spent time with an acquaintance, and another, and another. So, it wasn’t until she was free that we roamed about in search of something to eat. I managed to coax a guy into giving up a packet of Kurkure from a load of other stuff he’d bought from outside the area. Not a bad idea but then again, it was too much work. There remained no trace of the sun and the moon shone in its etirety. It cast a beautiful area of white light above the awning, highlighting the intricate creases of the red draping. Since she didn’t have anything to do till the very end, we decided to just walk around. Since I’d changed my windbreaker for a blazer, she’d held onto the windbreaker which partially smelt of the cologne I’d used earlier.

As we’d walked in silence on the stone path between the bushes and the tall rods of the construction going on, I couldn’t help but feel calm and serene. My mind again did the whole oddest thought thing. I found myself playing the lyrics of Under A Paper Moon in my mind. For a change, the moon didn’t look as if it were cut out of paper. It looked content in its place, looking down upon millions yet remaining solitary in its throne. Borrowing someone else’s shine to put on an indolent shine of its own.

My reverie was broken when she remarked how the windbreaker smelled good. I’d never noticed. I kept on munching the spicy snack. She said she didn’t like the spice all that much in it. As we moved from the stone onto the soft grass, our pace slowed even more. Amidst all the rods and the artificial lighting set up by the construction workers, the moonlight occupied a part of the night sky to itself and turned evanescent as one’s gaze turned more heaven-ward. A gust of soft, cold wind blew and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I believed then, that platonic relationships could exist.

Everything seemed to be so simple. And yet there was a small voice at the back of my mind that screamed- “Nothing is really this simple. Everything is a mirage. Nothing remains the same!”

A refraction, different from the one I’d studied in physics. This one more visceral and confusing. Borrowed images aided by a borrowed gleam. And as we headed back inside, I already knew that I wanted to write about something, not sure of what, but something.