blue velvet night

spreading its hands

groping in the dark

looking for blood

just one corner

where memories are alive

the more things change, the more they remain the same.

thank you “blackie”  for reminding me..

i found the letter
you never wrote
frayed ends, discoloured ink
it smells of your perfume not frequently used
the words are big
in your small script
jostling
in the small unshared silences
true once
they tumble under whispers
erringly overheard
your name,
i write
no music flows now into my ears
the ink tastes bitter
paper smells of ashes
perhaps even your death is dead
i wrap you up and stare
at my newly emptied space.

 

watching a comedy show on tv

thought i’d make up for lost laughs

bide the lonely evening thus

 

everyone loves a wedding joke

people and flowers

and happy colours

food and dance

faith strengthened 

by drunken dizziness

 

so i sat

all set to laugh

a party bedecked by lights

and the joke began

 

a joke about

happy bulbs

celebrating.

just a touch 

a switch

and brightness spread

 

and then he looked past

the joker

at them flickering tubes

struggling to be in the scene

 

oh i get it

i thought

its a joke about watching from outside

thats 

well

kind of funny

 

trying hard to get to the light

watch them tubes

he said,

stuttering to start

cursed children of god

watch their broken smiles

while others

light up with a grin.

 

they must stay there

then

in the back

for only the happy make it to the line

 

it made me sad

the joke about stuttering tubelights.

 

but i guess thats the way it is

sad to some

is happy to others.

 

(Raju Srivastava mouthed this joke on a popular tv show)

 

 

 

 

thinking a lot about growing older these days.

not wiser, just older. older, with lesser options, more stability. older, with more self knowledge, and self doubt. older, with plenty of mistakes behind me. and plenty of sunshine days. 

must be the monsoons that sets sepia tinted photographs to life again. green and grey all together.

thinking of all the firsts i leave behind.

heartache. rebellion. first love. eternal hope. doubt. anger.

that first time the silence in a film spoke to me and left me speechless. nights of talking to the moon up on the terrace. finding as yet hidden parts to myself in songs. hiding behind books in school and later college.   

and carrying that little person that i was inside of me. that person who seems to have stayed there, somewhere in the past.

thinking about people who are young today, and looking forward to growing older, and wiser.

i’m envious.  

age is all in the mind, no.

chimes in the wind

rains gather to fall endlessly

silent inside 

surging waves

gasping, i reached out 

only to crash at tranquil shores.

silently poised 

the pen on a blank sheet of paper

the day dies.

whilst it poured outside, safe and dry at home all day. watching the cat sleep. all in town friends currently out of town. revisited an old friend. remembering the way she came into my life.

time was when there was yet enough time to watch life with all its currents and see meaning therein.

you had come as a messiah of friendship then when i needed you most. it was a time of heartbreak, when heartaches where all that mattered. and you had laid your soothing hand on my forehead. a vision of grace and womanhood even back then, when i was struggling yet with compartments. the woman versus the idea of the woman imposed by the society. of love and giving and when it is enough. of trusting and doubt. thought and instinct.

somewhere i think i still am. remember the awe i felt when i saw you straddling your womanhood. all instinct and feeling. carrying your heart on your proud shoulders. 

strange thing is i think i never told you what you meant to me then. came away too soon for that.

this is for you r.

with love.

i know that you’re beautiful wherever you are.

nothing like the rains to make a beginning.

i had landed in bombay on one such wet morning. and this monsoon, clouded dark seems right to bring to mind the long lost rains.

the wet smell of the earth mixed up with the first flush of freedom. the fear, the soaring giddiness, the dreams that seemed to near to catch. everything left behind to be made sense of by everything i had come in search for..

wading through knee deep water boarding the half empty bus from khar to versova..the one image that became bombay to me was the irrepressible smile on a wet face..struggling to get on to the bus, everything drowning in that rain that seemed to have no end…and yet that smile, that had no grouse in it..no regret..just an acceptance with open arms..

that was my first memory of bombay.

the first impression to be followed later by many ebbs and flows. i’ve always felt bombay is like the sea. it gives and takes, gives back some more and then takes it all. pulls you in and pushes you away. you try hard to hold on but the sand just slips away from grasp..

seven years now. seems long enough to now set roots in this sandy terrain.