THE 13 CLUES

I lie awake on the naked rooftops
Of cloud lapped skyscrapers
And I feel cold....
Until I feel your starry gaze upon me
From a million feet tall
Synthetic billboard.....


Before you embraced the silver screens
You played only for me
But you were only playing your part well
That I could never see


And now you would
Only look at me from afar
You are nothing
But a busy shooting star


………..
As the release date of ‘13 Clues’ draws closer
My mind goes back to how it started.


I cast myself and Winnie in the roles of-
Myself and Winnie


Even though we hadn’t spoken in over a year
And even though I was sure she’ll refuse
She had accepted the role
No one else could’ve played her
No one but her


So, with Cannes in our eyes
We started work on ‘13 Clues’
It was a whodunit
About a woman’s murder
Parts of it were autobiographical too
My whole life captured in a movie,
My whole world recreated in a studio
This was going to be art, baby!


(And after this point,
I’ve disguised myself so cunningly
That, even the cleverest reader
Will fail to recognize me
All my notes are muddled)


The lights flashed
The camera came on
Atomic bright
The flash leaves
Scarlet after image after image
Images
Prisons of the soul
My Sony retina
A distant planet


French kissing
Dancing around trees
Campus romance
Gyrating Pelvis
Mexican standoffs
Shot my first chase sequence on the fifth
An expensive car rolling down the cliff
Kidding


On the sets
It's like Prague in there
Two light bulbs
The actors don't see
There are no resources
To brighten the place up


Here I am again in the waiting room
You in the van
Waiting for the scene to be called
Greasing your hair
Forgetting for a brief instant
That it’s a film


You avoided me on the sets
Like a contraceptive
You were so
Professional
Polite
Well meaning
And cold


I didn’t tell you then
But watching you make out with Anuj
On or off the sets
Gave me insomniac nights
I used to wake up in sweats
With you in my head
And you’d flow out
Like a dream upon awakening
Did he solve you in a way I didn’t?
That’s when I first decided to kill you


And on the morning of 24th February
We packed up


In the cutting room
I dwelled through the negatives
I delved into your memories
The frozen frames
In the screening room
Your blow ups
You looked so different
The camera never lied


The test audience told me the ending was bad
“Too tragic”
They said
I said-
“We’ve given them too many dreams to take home
Too many happy endings to believe in
Not anymore
Show’s over, my friends
Go home fellas
The End”


All characters and events in this film
Are fictional
Any resemblance to anyone or anything
Is coincidental


And then I remember you walked in
You seemed like a tempestuous
Gulzar heroine
Wearing mufflers of clouds
And raincoats
The whole of Gravity’s rainbow
In your eyes
Bearing evidence of mysterious allegories
In Rembrandt’s masterpieces


Your kiss flared
My slumber broken
Kiss me again
Kiss me
Kiss me again
And again
Never enough
Greedy lips
Speedwell eyes
Blue skies
Blue and Jet black
Your familiar
Yardley Lavender
In Dreams


You’re falling in love with me
Again
I dreamt


Don’t your dreams mix with reality?
Is it all an illusion?
Isn’t life too?
Is life a film?


That last day
I stood alone, watching the sets getting dismantled
Like little pieces of my soul being taken away
I had reveled in them for so long
I could never finish the film
The way I wanted to
But may I live in that world for a bit longer?


I realized then that
Shooting you was the most difficult part
But I did it
Anything for art
However the red, squalid liquid on my hands
Just doesn’t go off


What had started out as a mystery
Had somehow become a tragic love story
In fact, so many things had changed
There were so many things we wanted to do
Wanted to be
We became something else
Someone else
Somewhere down the line
We let it happen to us


They say life imitates art
Or is it the other way around?
Because I realized
That even then,
When we had fallen in love,
We were someone else