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This is a poem I wrote sometime back. I was inspired by the way Gulzar writes, and was trying his style. Ofcourse there is no comparison, but listen to it on its own merit :)

Vacuuming the house

Finally the weekend came when I thought I should get around vacuuming the house. Mine is a carpeted apartment. Grey colored... And you know what they say about grey right? That there are many shades of it. And every shade says something, shows something and hides something...

In fact, if you vacuum long enough, it will take you to forgotten stains and patches. Patches that you had at some time so painstakingly put into place. Just so that the carpet remains intact. Coz you see, replacing the carpet is a very difficult job, and usually it happens only when you move out of the apartment. Long after you are gone, and before the next incumbent steps in, the realtor takes care of that...

Back to the vacuuming. I began with my living room. This is the room I use the most, and naturally had a lot of dust around. As the vacuum moved around, sucking up the dust, the original color of carpet came out. And with it came a nice smell of the fragrance that I has sprayed on it long time back, but it had been suppressed by the dust that kept all the fragrance somewhere deep inside. And overtime I had pretty much forgotten about it too. within a few minutes, all the dust was gone and I had a neat smile on my face. As if I had regained my lost glory...

Excited now, I moved to my bedroom. I don't let many people in there, so its much more of a private place. The room itself is an absolute replica of what I am. Sort of untidy, but very functional. You will find anything you need on a daily basis. Not luxurious though; my bed is a very modest attempt at keeping me at 3 ft height from the ground, but there is a coffee machine, an over-the-bed table lamp, a study table, extension chord for power supply, wireless headphones, a small home exercise machine which can be tucked under the bed, full size mirror behind the door, etc etc. Basically everything to make you feel equipped.

I begin vacuuming there, and slowly slowly some stains begin to show up. These were not normal living room stains. They had some very special characteristics. Firstly, they were not normal dust colored. Some were slight transparent yellowish, some were sort of red, and some looked as if I had at some time tried very very hard to remove, but never succeeded, despite my sincerest efforts. Even the carpet showed signs of wearing off with my relentless rubbing, but the stain had stuck on... The dust had kinda hidden it from my daily notice. But now, here it was right there staring right back at me.

A little to the right of this stain was another thing. I didn't quite figure out what that was, but as the vacuum sucked away the covering on it, it too came out clear. It was a patch work. It had happened some time back when I had accidentally spilled coffee on it. And knowing that my mom would yell at me, I had tried beyond measure to remove that stain. But what a branded coffee that was! Not only the after taste remained on my taste buds for a while, but the stain it had caused never budged from its place.

And it was then that I decided to cut that piece of carpet off, and throw it away. Sad moment though, It was my bedroom's carpet! And I do like my bedroom! But be that as it may, I cut that piece off, and got another, rather unmatched piece of cloth to replace that. The carpet didn't quite look the same after that, but I guess it was worth it. I hated the patchwork. It looked ugly! it looked like some forced insertion of stuff that kinda didn't belong there. But as time passed, dust settled in, and gradually made the whole carpet look the same.

But that changed today. Vacuum cleaner made sure that all the stains and all the patchwork that had sort of faded away in my carpet, come back to life. And I was jolted back to the times when I had felt awful about putting those stains, and then tried to remove them from there.

And then I kinda thought, maybe it isn't the best thing to vacuum. Maybe I should have just let it be...