Where are the words tonight? Where is my Goddess? For the last few days I've not felt her whisper brush the lobes of my ear. I've not felt her warm hand cup my heart and entreat me to write her another piece. Today I feel lost, sitting in a dorm room in the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Today I feel lonely. Shoot's not really started yet, and I've been wandering around campus pretending that I'm getting in to the skin of my character. But in honesty, I've just been wandering around, lost and fearful. Another film to do. Another knot of worry and tension coiled around my spine. What if I don't deliver on this one? What if I'm not nearly as good as I hope I am, or I need to be? What if the fraud I am will finally be exposed on celluloid with everybody watching and sniggering and shaking their heads.

There is sun here, but no heat. There is wind here, but no cool breezes. Even the quiet of night sits uninterested and sullen. The campus if full of interesting people but they have better things to do than to talk to the strange, tall boy they see in their classes or sitting in their cafeteria. They stare, some of them smile warmly, some of them come up and shake my hand. Some of them tell me they liked my work. Some of them click pictures. But still I feel alone.

I'm staying in a large room, with a wide, soft bed. Too soft for comfort. I sleep deep and troubled, waking up like a man in prison. The lights are all white and bright and harsh beyond bearing. There's a moth in my room that may just be lonelier and more lost than I. Aimlessly he flutters from corner to corner searching for whatever moths search for from light. But these energy saving bulbs give them nothing either. One of them comes and sits on my desk as I write and stares at me with his antennae twitching, trying to tell me something. I smile at it and try to tell it that you can come sit on my arm, take some of the warmth from my body. But it's wary, and rightly so. In a lifespan of about three days, why should he trust me to do anything but squash it dead?

I have things to read but I'd rather read. I have two scripts other than the one I'm currently shooting but can't seem to find the desire to flip through them past the point I've already read. I seem to to have lost the ability to gauge whether they are worth the doing or not. Every little grammatical error, every piece of bad dialogue screams at me, and I shut them fearfully. I don't want to say no to them without reading them entirely, but maybe I'm just hoping they'll turn into something written by Aaron Sorkin by the end, so I push on. I've got an Indian Ocean song ("Ma Rewa") playing on repeat throughout the night. Raghu Ram's voice and it's soulful crescendo only serving to show me the yawning chasm that separates me from the true artist, the true seeker.

Dear Goddess, bless me tonight. Let me sleep and wake full of energy and hope. Let me remember the man you created me to be. I feel strangely exiled from the calm confidence I normally carry with me throughout my days. Maybe it's just this night and it's unfriendly silence. Maybe it's just nerves before I start acting again.

What a strange profession this is. I've been dying to get back to work. Now here I am, and I'm a mess. I'd smile but I'm too tired. I wish the phone would ring. But it's not going to. I should get back to my script, but I just stare at the spaces between words when I do.

I don't mean to transmit my gloom to whoever is reading this. I just felt like pouring what I felt out of me. There is no poetry in me tonight. There is no wit, and no charm, there's just me in an empty room in an empty dorm. I'd get out and take a walk, but that would only remind me how empty the campus is at night and quiet. I could wander until I found a cluster of students and try and join in, but the thought of doing that makes me feel weak. I shouldn't need to force companionship upon myself to feel better. So I write.

And then all of a sudden, I get a letter from a friend from back in the simpler days. And he tells me he just saw one of my movies, and he's proud of me. How do I tell him the soaring relief hearing that brings me? Because admitting that would be admitting how much I need to feel loved and affirmed.

And all of a sudden I'm laughing at how silly I can be at times. And everything's alright. The moths' flapping in happy circles around my head and the Kings of Leon's "Radioactive" is crashing against the unfriendly white light and driving all of it away from me. And I'm back to being ineffable, self-adoring me.

Thank you for listening to my latest rant.

Unfinished

You are what Sufis dream of,
When they can't find God.
You are what I longed for,
Every lonely night abroad.
Those were the days,
Full of more important people,
All just passing through.
These are the nights.
That turn into mornings
Full of mist and dew.
God will forgive me,
My many many sins,
For loving you.

In That Kind of Mood

The music never stops,
The heart is always broken.
The sun is always setting,
And the door is always open.

Summers are forever ending,
And the waters are always cold.
The flight's still leaving in the morning
No matter how tightly we hold.

The food is over, there is water
Enough for one sip, maybe two.
They ate through your dreams,
And now they hunger for you.

The words don't flow, they march,
Angry and militant, a zealot tide.
Their torches are blazing bright,
There are no shadows where I could hide.

My soul remembers only sorrow.
The night is no longer my friend.
There is no great hall of greater men,
Just a quiet, wasted place waiting at the end.

The cold has come to visit,
And sits contented in the room.
You don't know when you're dying,
But you get a feeling it'll be soon.

And you're glad.

Stream of Consciousness Writing

I've got all the love in the world, nestled warm and safe in the cool cradle of my being tonight. I've managed to befriend my inner mystic, who loves only the wandering Road. I've managed to invite him into the stillness for a pot of tea. I've managed to smile through an entire night without slipping once. For a man who went through a year where his eyes never knew whether his lips were trying to smile or not, I've managed to finally arrive at the happy centre of my being. I've come home only to discover that home was a little square box of hope, holding within in nothing but the purity of me, nestled safely on a cushion of faith, that lay lodged just beneath my heart. It's the part of you that aches when happiness pushes past our skepticism and atheism. So unused to happiness I've become. At war with my quiet moments, exiled from my own peace of mind. Tonight I felt myself take another step home, another step closer to my Goddess.

I never want to let you go, even though sometimes life get's me by the ankle and I get caught in the undertow. Sucked deeper into the filth, where I can't breathe and I stand, bewildered and drowning, staring up at the receding of the Light. Sometimes life shows you just how quickly you can come up into the Sunshine.

Be still young heart, there are many oceans of blood yet to pump through your arms. There are oceans left to cross and mountains waiting for my feet. There are rivers where the waters were poured only for me, and even the fish circle in wait for the party we're going to have when I splash in.

There's a girl I know. With hair like the winding of a secret staircase, and a smile like a page from scripture. With eyes that have stared lovingly at the Goddess that resides in the Moon, and matched the Dragon stare for stare. Amber beacons that come alive when they see me, like twin lighthouses guiding me into the harbour of her arms.

There's a man I know, that I love for all the cracks in his soul, wrinkles around his smiles, and sadness in his shoulders. Tonight I will meet him in the mirror before I rest my head to sleep. Tonight I pray to my Goddess for my soul to keep, and lay me down in blankets of peace. Tonight I swim in the stillest of waters, with my soul as tall as the waters are deep.

Shall Remain Untitled

Lonely rivers flow
to the sea, to the sea.
To the open arms of the sea.
But I shall wander lost
forever.
There are no more oceans,
Waiting for rivers like me.
There is only the dust
that hides in beams of light.
There is just the ache
that comes from a heart
tired of changing it's beat.
There is the thought of you.
Always and ever,
The thought of you lying
alone on a hospital bed,
forgotten.
Waiting for some final pain
to pull you through.
Goodbye Old Man.
You could have loved me
a little.
I should have made you laugh
a little more.
I would have done anything
To make you love me
The way I remember you
Loving me before.
Lonely rivers flow
Silently, silently,
Through the broken heart
That once lived inside of me.

For the Funeral to Come

I understand sadness because of you.
This is sadness.
Your hand, barely holding mine.
Your eyes tightly shut, hoarding
even your pain.
You make me feel guilty I never visit.
But when I do, you close your eyes
And say to me not a word.
I sit in front of you
Staring at eyes that never meet mine.
Eyes that have only ever looked inward
Even now, when they should be
watching for God.

This is our relationship.
Full of unnecessary silence even
in the last hour we may have together.
I have bad coffee in my cup,
A hole in the begging bowl of my heart.
And rage that refuses to fall from
my tired tired eyes.
A sudden storm roars awake outside
And shakes and pounds the windows
and smashes down the street
and terrifies the small people
that live huddled against the Light.
But we can't even make small talk
about that.

I have a picture of you on your knees,
with me riding you piggy back,
Your hair as wild as your smile.
Another picture of you looking at me proudly.
But I'm a baby being washed in a blue tub
with ugly yellow ducks swimming around.
Two pictures, but no real memories.
So many things you should have told me.
But you barely said a word.
And I remember everything.

All I have from you,
Is my sadness,
and my empty, open hand,
And my tired, tired eyes.

Back into the Sunshine of the Doubtless Mind

I know I'm not the man You created me to be. Mind full of doubt, heart full of hate, and a body that knows nothing but lust and fatigue. I know I'm not the man I was supposed to be. For everything I try to do right, seems I waltz around doing three things wrong. Every time my soul stirs awake out of the slumber of my times and my eyes gleam and my pen sighs with pleasure at the sight of an empty page, all that remains when I'm through is another twisted little song or a now sad empty page. Of all the sins that man can commit, I'm guilty of the worst of them, not realizing my full potential. It's easy coasting along being ever just so slightly above the norm. I could go higher, I could hug and kiss the sky and dance back down on moon beams. I could make this world better. I can make anyone I know laugh until they cry and yet, often, all I want to do is stay in my apartment and sit alone moping about being lonely and unwanted. I could sketch with such burgeoning skill, that my best friend, who is an artist of sublime skill, told me that I too had been touched. When was the last time I picked up a stick of charcoal? when was the last time I dimmed the light and let my eyes wonder at all the marvelous shadows there
were around me, deep and thick like a Carvaggio painting and try to invite them to lay across my sketch book just so? When was the last time I stopped my train of thought at a quiet station and just walked a gentle sloping path up into my hills of peace? I know I haven't turned out like the man I'd hoped I was going to be, when I was sixteen and on my way to the Big Apple, full of dreams and promise, full of that liquid fire flowing like laughter in my veins. I know my apple fell very far from the tree and rolled way the fuck down the hill.

But tonight I want to ask for forgiveness, Goddess. Forgiveness for doubting your love. For doubting that I was exactly who I was meant to be. I needed the scars and the wrinkles and the cracks in my heart. To quote the divine Leonard Cohen, "there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the Light gets in." And I can feel it tonight. I can feel the blessings.

Thank you for getting me here in one ridiculously rough and ready piece. Thank you for the joy in my heart and the pep in my step, the skip in my hips and the smile on my lips. This night something great begins. Or better yet, this night I finally realize that something great began, and I get to be a part of it. Tonight I am happy to be Arunoday. YEH SAALI ZINDAGI releases this Friday. On Friday, the dreams of a nine year old boy everyone called crazy and deluded come true. That's me baby, up on that marquee. Clap your hands for me one time. Mama I made it. My name flashing in bright, bright lights, and I didn't sell my soul to get here. Dear Mama, I love you, for telling me I'd get here, every night you held me in your arms to cry. Papa I made it. I may have rolled down the hill, away from your tree, but I can feel in your arms when you hold me, that this here cub makes you proud of me. Dear Life, I love you. Thank you for keeping the faith, even when I couldn't.

Here I come. They don't know me yet. But they mudderfugging about to find out.