Wasn't it lovely?

*melody tiptoes softly out of reedy bagpipes and summer dawns momentarily*

" You should sing this song and come to my house"

"Do you know what it means?"

"But of course!

I can listen to your sweet voice for hours as it charms my heart beats to move faster. I can .."

" You know, even I know enough punjabi to know you fabricated 90% of that"

"Well so what! That's what it means to me"

"If you were to say it in English it would be hilarious"

"Shut up!"

"Well then. I sing this song and come?"

" No actually you won't come singing in your own baraat. But you should sing that to me when you ask me to marry you"

"What!"

"Are you saying you won't ever ask me that?"

"I'm saying asking is pointless when one knows the answer "

"Not even! Don't flatter yourself"

"I can't sing. How about a sonnet?"

"Ooooh! Would I like it?"

"You'd like it. How hard can it be to recite?"

"Recite?! You have to mean it and be miserable with the thought that you'd not written it for me first! "

"Well how about I just write one myself so that I don't have to be miserable?"

"You'd do that ?"

"I could. And?"

"Hmmm. Be original. Don't go down on one knee. Don't do a candlelight. Don't make it a diamond"

"Shouldn't I ask you out first?"

"Pfft! I'm too busy to date. I have *beep* degrees to attain"

" So you're going to leave me hanging?!"

"Don't act as if this is news for you"

"So one fine day so many months later I ask you to marry me straight up....... because I look like a fool?"

"You must be one. You forgot you have to put on your best act and suffer when you ask my parents first without my knowledge"

"Without your knowledge?"

"Didn't you say you wanted to surprise me?"

"So I'll have to ask your parents to keep it hush hush too then."

"But obviously!"

"So I have to make all the moves now?! Excuse me but I listed laziness as a hobby"

"As if I'd run behind a guy"

"Why would I!"

" Because I am too proud to do so"

" Leave that explanation for suckers. Can you even initiate a hug without melting to the ground?"

"Shut up! "

"Why would I do all this?"

"Oh because you never told me but along the way you fell for me really hard."

"I'm a free spirit!"

"Well you're supposed to say such things so that I don't catch on."

"Why wouldn't I want you to catch on to it?"

"Because you don't want to be turned down"

"But you just said you'd want me to ask you to marry me!"

"Shouldn't you fall in love with me first?"

"Exactly why, on this lovely walk along the creek on this crisp morning, are we discussing these hypothetical settings?"

"You didn't have a story to tell me so I told you one. Simple!
Now hand me all your icecream"

The cries of the cuckoos are mangled with the cacophony of the ugly native black birds.
There is an uneasiness in the ground as sequined white slippers tread softly on the clean roads of an officer’s colony.
There is a path that meanders out sans sprawling bungalows overflowing with potted plants.

it is a narrow path lined with dust laden trees. A few pieces of broken chalk lay scattered near the poor children’s scrawl. In a language she doesn’t understand.

She is but a trespassing guest.

There’s an emptiness you must fill in. Step right there. Fill the path, that goes nowhere, with your gaze. Stand right next to the scrawl.
It is near the child’s play you are missed the most.

In the hopscotch boxes faintly erased, a friend is needed. To hop together. Laugh over it all. To create a memory that remains as streaks of a smile .

But it isn’t a time to wait even if all stands here paused patiently. She walks slowly on the asphalt as it soaks in the late morning. Bends over and holds the piece of crude chalk. It feels like a clay ready to be molded, ready for its purpose.

She stares at the specks of blue inside the crumbling white. Her fingertips touch the protruding rounded edge. She leans over. The chalk lies two steps away after a momentary pause.

A bent figure straightens and adjusts the black shawl draped on the left shoulder. She walks back through the dusty path to the bougainvillea lined straight roads. She lifts open the metal gate and walks back into where she doesn’t belong.

It’s a game of pretense- we played house and pretended we belonged in the walls of pillows and roofs of freshly washed sheets.

We’re playing house a few leap years later. But it shall continue to stay alive just as well long after she has abandoned it.

And perhaps it is that. That chalked a name in the dust blown path. Two steps away from a lonely chalk.

Kite

It's a play,
of broken kites,
and ill-fitted dreams
In the park,
where alone,
night runs
In two pigtails,
and ribbons,
of red satin
The swings,
they clap,
oh so empty
The streetlight
so dim,
but night glistens
Toothy giggles,
sneakered feet,
six years old
She runs,
a game of catch,
in circles of dust
The kite falls,
out stretches night,
its tiny arms
But the night,
to die,
it must grow
Still it plays,
this night,
so young
So let this kite,
have one,
last gust
Then ,
let it lie,
finally with dust
For,
the night is young,
so the play must stretch
So she,
spills more dreams,
for the kites to cut

4 year long Imaginary conversation

Good conquered evil that we celebrate today. So we're told to remember. Remember to begin this new year, not just with lights around but within.

But sometimes there is good and nothing else. Does nothingness become evil?
Does it matter to know?

When the Good just stood by patiently. When they wrapped brambles around themselves and left petals for your feet. When they blew the cold winds that break homes away. When they stood by a man stabbed and dying, despite being a stranger.

It matters to know. For them to know.

There's us, we of the Nothingness. We're insignificant, our actions of no importance. Sometimes we too become a bit of You. But mostly, we're not the Evil that resides far yonder, but the nothingness in between that makes our existence pointless. For atleast Evil stands beside you and startles us with a reminder of who You are.

For atleast Evil challenges You.

But sometimes Nothing also can contrast with You. Because those of us who lie in what Does Not Exist are only too painfully aware of what Does when we see You.

You. The Good.

An Early Winter

You would know.

The softness of the snow as it plops on the ground withsuch gentleness.
Stretch out your arm and it tingles on your palm. Before it disappears like soap bubbles.

Do you smile?

And yet snow too turns ice.

All there is, is a chill. A chill. Suddenly.

Because the Snow Queen had sent her messengers knocking at your door. Do you hear it?

It hits you as you look around for the softness that seemed to be.

For the cottony stark white that would innocently cushion you as you lay in it. Sink onto itself and let your body mark it. Let your limbs press it against itself. So when you get up abruptly and leave it too lies in wait. Let's your body's imprints lie on itself.

And maybe if you'd stopped, turned around, you'd have seen the purity you'd vandalized.

But you forget that it lies. Outside.

Your mistress they say!

You were to be bethrothed. In the cologne that still clings to where you lay, in the carelessly strewn hair gel, aftershave lotion on the marble counter, lie these signs of wedded bliss.

Till the bliss hissed into the air and stung you like a sharp fanged cobra.

Maybe a mistress was just who she'd been

So snow fell upon snow. And snow fell upon ice.

Ice that you stamped out of your shoes and discarded in the shoes you left strewn around carelessly in the blue collar of the house.

So the snow upon snow, the ice took your leave.

It now trickles, empties out of your sight. You don't even of the rivulets that pack their bags in quiet dignity and leave.

She shuts the backdoor softly quietly.
She walks down the sidewalk without a noise.
She doesn't awaken you in the morning.

She leaves your coffee brewing in a cold heated home.

It sleeps by your side at night.

Lets you straighten your back and your muscles untense.

It lets the fight leave you. Then awakens before dawn, puts on a snow white coat and tiptoes out.

it walks down the sidewalk. And your house is in perfect order. Till you find a note scrawled in black cursive ink.

Winter had come to an end. But now all that remains is a sudden chill in the air.

It walks down the sidewalk. As it leaves you.

She leaves you without a word.

And a sudden chill snakes into where the snow melted from.

Winter had ended.

But you'd been left with a cold shoulder.

A picturebook

Waterdrops oval elongated.

Pure, musical.

Vibrating, resonating around us.

Sit by my side right here.
Soak in your feet.
At the edge where I sit.
Where my naked feet gently ripple the calm river.

It's a story book illustration isn't it?
What story would you like to be today?

Take this easel.
Paint me relief.
Charcoal me in.
Use your fingertips.
Smooth the lines.
But you say you can't draw.

It's a storybook illustration.
Let me show.

The sun in the mirror.
A careless pile of hay.
A red barn door.

Breeze whistling through.
Grass swaying to the whistle. Holding hands.
Leaves gently bowing.
Where we sit.

It's a perfect illustration isn't it?
I know what story I want to be.

So here.
Take this paper.
Write me a poem.
Let your assurance be the metric.
Let my silence be your rhyme.
Dedicate it to Future.

It's a a perfect storybook illustration today.
We're in it.

Smashed

Listen.

Pour all your poison into blotches on this skin.

Press it on hard push it through your pores.

Let this black and brown line you more.

Look. You now have a a distinct pattern.

Let Coach purchase it for their Limited Edition.

But now, pay heed, for this is important.

Shed this skin when you've finished, I caution.

For feet to trample, they need a hide

For this skin they shall have, even if to skin alive.

So mark my words, O Simpleton

Shed this skin, make a run.

In the crowd of a fair

" I believe Mute had died a few days ago"

"What do you mean?"

" It died a few days ago but it is only now that I see. I don't write much anymore. It's gone. Used up.

I poured it all into one big yellow balloon and now it has floated away from me.

Out of sight. Beyond what I can see.


The Wind just came and tugged away my child. Lured to it the open skies. Showed it all the freedom I couldn't give.

My words were getting choked on themselves.

There were too many though my child seemed too young for such a thought.

So my words crashed and bumped into each other instead of sitting in their allotted spaces.

They thought it was time to go hunt for an identity. But they bumped into each other and knew not one from the other or themselves.

They asked which one of us is new? Unique?

Which one of us Ma, is special?

What could I say? They were all mine.

They were all special.

But my children didn't want to hear such an answer. Each child jumped and hopped. Hoped if it would leap higher it would be my favourite. But a mother's love doesn't favour.

So one by one they left my hand in this crowd fair where I stand afraid. Where I clutched them close.

But they left my hand anyway and floated to freedom of the skies away from the strangling hold of their mother's love.

My children took the stranger's candy. Left my hand to walk

In the crowds of the chameleon skies.

And there wasn't even a goodbye. "

A thought

There's a thought that circles her where she sits with her legs under her and hair messily around her face.

It is a frightening thought. Which circles up and down around her. She doesn't see it. But the closer it gets the less she breathes.

It's whizzing by close, so close it raises up a slight rush of air on her skin from where it races by.

And she breathes more erratically. Words don't form. Coherence is crushed.

Her ribs feel a pounding within. Massive rushes of painful blows within.

She can hear her organs struggle to keep her alive but it isn't that which is frightening.

It is this thought, this shameless vicious thought. This thought that sucks out all the air from where it dwells.

This thought.
This morbid thought.

Insufficient

There had been calm for a while. P'haps too long.

So the fire alarms were rung where no smoke arose. Panic -was necessary.

The shrill sounds mercilessly twang against metal. Pounding eardrums. Sending the heartbeat into an erratic frenzy.

She thought drinking from the yellow pool was a good excuse. To be deceitful.
To contemplate the forbidden.
To feign, the yellow instead of the clear, hazed up one's mind.

As if that was reason enough to push Them off a canyon into the sharp projections of the sword-like stones.
In a canyon so wide, one's voice never echoed for it lost its way , its sound.
So deep, one never heard boulders strike ground.

No, not even in thought was it justified.

Not when we had pricked our hearts and exchanged blood .
A promise bound.
Worn in lockets.
Above the pulsating muscled organ in our chests.

But now you see- the one in your locket?

Was the impure one.