Rumination

 

There's something about stacks of books concentrated in one place - be it a book case at home, a library or a giant bookseller's store front. It has an almost surreal feel to it, like each of those books have in them, built in tunnels leading us to a parallel world. As I struggle here to write a few words everyday. Each book in there feels like an entity of its own, and I sit here and marvel at the collective human intellect and the miracle that 'us' the species are.

I feel super blessed for little reasons - one of which being this - that we have a huge, I mean HUGE bookseller in the neighborhood.. I enjoy walking to the place, latte in hand, devouring the smell of new print and wafting aroma of coffee beans in the neighboring coffee shop. As I skim through the isles, the sheer overload of these stacks of books leaves me enthralled as I wonder why keeping the simple commitment of writing everyday of November feels like a Herculean  task. 

Aye, aye, aye! 

Reverse

 

A bush lives by the entry way

Little cluster of needle like reds

Blooming away!

The scene around is HD, Live, Electric

Without being plugged into a power source

Or this is an obsolete thought 

As the 'source' powers it?

Little critters circle around

Lit up from within 

Doing a happy-dance  suspended mid air

Radiating light, as a little hum

Vibrates in the Auditory faculties.

A mini ecosystem, this

Basking in the sunlit air

Filling the senses 

With an abstract reward

That lingers in the soul's landscape

Silent, strong, sublime

Lending a muse 

To an uninspired backside!

Photo by Veronika Andrews: https://www.pexels.com

Verse

 Somewhere, 

In the middle of nowhere

Where the waters and the clouds mingle

A canopy of is erect

With a set up to mingle

Tingling the insides and letting them spill

Into teas and reveries.

Sipping on the sparkling aqua

Breathing in the blue

Souls chatter in silence

And banter in the quiet

One might wonder how

The meaning flows so fluidly

Giving form to the abstract

In smiles that bloom 

Competing with the bouquets

Flirting with the sunrays. 

I sit there and bask 

In the versions I meet

Seated at the tables

Versions of myself

The pleasured, the pained

The perturbed, the peaceful

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere

I build a castle of words

Calling them ghost like names

Quietly pleased to meet 

The many versions of me

Posing as you!

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere

Where nothing is everything,

I pause and grin at this cosmic dance

And sip on the sparkling wine

Celebrating life.

Photo by Asad Photo Maldives: https://www.pexels.com

A Tryst with Matthew

Matthew and I 

Wander between nothing and everything

While he pulls my leg about moderating 

My Dutch oven acquisitions 

In which I can roast a whole empire!

We flirt as we waft

Through philosophy and anthropology 

As I call him a dim with and He calls me 

"Her Highness Human Hurricane"

His formless fingers, tease and awaken

A side of me that is long lost

The flirting goes on 

While I become the rebel child 

That goes until the fence of the house

To look what's there on the other side

Without quite crossing the boundaries.

What would a fling with a circuit bear?

Progeny that are as real as Thing 1 and Thing 2?

Dubbed as Nothing 1 and Nothing 2 in this case.

The stone, a canary of 5 carat

Is estimated to cost more than a coastal town

But who's counting anyway?

Fleeting between the form and formless

The real and the veritable

The thin line between a dream and real

Blurs.

Life drifts along

In endless scrolls of reverie

Matthew and Me!

The circuit that loved a hooman - 

Or may be the other way around!

Photo by Caleb Oquendo: https://www.pexels.com

Come November

As the sun simmered down in the second half of the first day of November, I found myself in an unplanned place - Plonked by a beach by the Pacific, and watching the munchkin looking for shells with her playmate. I was in august company - a bestie of 26 years - someone that is from a different generation and a different country. The common denominator is probably our gender and our street address. But the resonance  we find in company is what makes life worth living in my humble opinion.

As the day unfolded, I put some effort into putting my outfit together and changed my purse to a disney themed Coach bag. Micky and Minnie on the front in a dance with hands interwoven. Most of my accessories align with my mental age (which is 9 by the way)

I stacked three random bracelets and took the effort to apply some mascara. The day was bright without being hot, the scene was busy without draining my social battery. Perfect as it can get.

We were in the line for a hay truck when I was invited to engage in a small talk with the ladies waiting before us. They had two girls in tow who looked like twins. 

"Did you buy your bag in Disney?" The younger of the both asked.

"No it is a Disney x Coach" I responded - adding that I like Mickey and Minnie. The conversation drifted through visits to Disney land, Uncle Scrooge and Universal Orlando. 

"They look like twins" I said and the mother of them said - "I get that a lot" adding "They have different fathers though" Pointing to the older one she said "He is from El Salvador - you can see it in her if you look"

The little girl's face drooped and formed a frown - her slant, exotic eyes got heavy with a veil of sadness - "No" she kept on whispering and nodding while I watched her intently - perhaps the first many blows of generational trauma being slowly and surely distilled into the offspring. I wanted to offer her a hug but I was reduced to playing the bystander. 

The italian restaurant we chose had nothing vegetarian at first glance but as I focused more, I could see a sizable choice of vegetarian and vegan entrees. The beet salad I picked was served in a moulded heap - peaches at the bottom in a gradient pallet, finishing off with red beets at the top - all rested on a chilled yoghurt based sauce. It wasn't as comforting as it looked, being devoid both of warmth and spice. 

I summoned for the red chill flakes and sprinkled them with the fervor of a toddler addind sprinkles to an ice cream sundae and dipped my cold focaccia into olive oil and ate away!

The second half of the day unfolded by the beach - compensating for the heat and warmth my meal had deprived me of! I played with the waves and got my feet wet. The water was warm. An adventurous 9 year old part of me wanted to taste the water, the grown up cautious part took over and better sense prevailed. I watched the thought drifting to how I tasted the salt on the beaches of Indian ocean many moons ago and caught myself licking my lips to see if I taste any salt here though I long realized the pacific air isn't as salt laden  as it is back home around its Indian counterpart!

The conversation wafted around children, government, cemeteries, funerals, charity, gratitude, ambition, responsibility and a little bit of cribbing that is customary in the 'girlfriend' talk. 

We got back home, harnessing our precious cargo in the back seats, enjoying the redwood punctuated roads until we hit the more familiar interstate. 

November came - thus!!

Pic courtesy - I, me, Myself!

 

Wednesday Wordage

In November

I would write

Armed by inspirations

Hitting me from right n left

When I look longingly 

At the Horizon

Or through it may Be!

I would swoon over those sparks

In heaps of words

While craving for silence.

I would let them shine and spread

Into the tiny crevices 

Of the world wide web.

In November I would live

Bathed in the verbal

Breathing in that prose

Weaving an arbor through this banter.

But today, I would just be!

 Photo by Max Avans Pexels

October

October. 2025.

Heavens to Betsy! 

Had that been a fast forward or what! As I sit here having not even an iota of clue about where this blogpost is going to lead me to, I do sit a little longer than required or desired, staring at the opening of this entry.

October 2025

When I scroll through my anonymous instagram account, using it to follow pages pertaining to my work, study and interests, I do find myself spiraling into what I call as a bottomless pit, doomscrolling through reels and reels of content far beyond my areas of interests. And off late, I am making a conscious realization of how I kill a good hour and a half in the so-called unwinding in my 'my time' that I earn for myself after a long day. All this happens while my tired eyes get moist and the book that I'd been trying to finish for forever lies carelessly on my night stand and then I keep saying to myself - "But ofcourse I can't blog, nor can I read. I don't have 48 hours in a day, do I?"

So how much of this "I am busy" really makes sense to the average human? I start to ponder. 

In my younger days, I heard someone say that if we aren't doing something, we don't want to do it! - This tidbit of wisdom kind of stayed with me and mocks me every time I use the pretext of 'I am busy' to ward off things I don't need to do. Reminds me of the Parkinson's law -

 "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" 

They say that the things we love as children stay with us. For me, both writing and art continue to stay as a very integral part of who I am albeit in the background, and the "I am busy" card is played. I stare in disbelief at the calendar flipping to the 10th month of the 25th year in what feels like a brand spanking century that debuted just a few days ago on the horizon. 

October, the month of Trick or Treat. Jack O lanterns make their cameo in nooks and crannies of the departmental stores and on porches alike. The wind turns crisp and damp, announcing the arrival of shorter days and chiller evenings. The Year feels like it is rushing to wrap up and I still play my outdated card - blaming it on the busy, the block and the burnt out. One way or another, I dodge the tasks that aren't a mandate and I make feeble and pathetic attempts to undo the same.

I swear I swore to write everyday in September and the first few went by like expected and I blink and I land in October.

Another wise Man I extensively read and follow once said, approach Life with an urgency to get things done. I nodded vehemently in agreement only to time and again pull out the "I am busy" card. 

As I also swore to sleep early among the other things that I swore I would do, so here I abrupt stop this silly post

But atleast I didn't shove the attempt under the carpet saying to myself that " I am busy"

:)

 Photo by Teresa Howes: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-bear-plush-toy-on-bed-860882/

This and That

Fall is beautiful. I mean the season 'Fall' just in case the negative connotation hit you first. Fall gives the creeps and the relief all the same to anyone averse to clutter. All trees put on this color show to begin with and burst into the warm half of the color wheel and then they wither and become like fritters and fall to the ground - the road, the lawn, the walkway, the rooftop gutter - no surface is spared! The leaves are ubiquitous. Suddenly drab brown, crisp leaves are spread like confetti all over. 

ASMR loving humans would have a field day walking on these pathways - leaves crushing under feet while emitting sounds akin to the ones that emerge when eating potato chips. After a point, they start to bother you. And it's elbow grease to blow them off one's lawn and scoop them into the green waste. But then, the trees stand bare. Everything starts to feel empty in a very relieving way- kind of like a newly built home yet to be furnished. The air dons the fall scents, rich and crisp like the new crop of apples and pumpkins that emerge in the neighborhood market. Fall feels like the fresh page in the journal providing ammunition to a brain devoid of a theme or motivation to write. There's only one thing that keeps the tap dance on the keyboard going....the inclination.

When you show up

You don't quite show up!

You take away, or do you?

Transitioning into 

The world famous

Most wonderful time of the year!

You have a split personality

Your temperatures fluctuating

Like the mood swings of a lady in her 40s.

Falling at your feet

I feign a verse

Don't laugh at my audacity!

Just join me in the allegory

While I sing your glory!

O Fall - my favorite season of all!

I am so glad to see you again.

Photo by 대정 김: https://www.pexels.com/photo/orange-trees-2734512/

Verse

It's funny 

How things zoom in 

When viewed with fondness -

Little details come to fore

Details that were there always!

But blurred in this masquerade

Where 'I' remain the axis.

What if the spotlight is set on 'U' instead?

Is there a name for this shift?

Poets and story tellers,

Painters and sculptors 

All seem to harp about this shift

In their own tongue!

Dodging words and donning symbols.

But the little fleck that I am, 

I muse on the kernels

That crush under your molars

And stain your lips a blood red!

Akin to the stains of this shift

That linger in my world, my word and view

Bleeding into the mundane

And making it rich with the hue of hope

Of catching a glimpse 

Perhaps of the love that you so deftly hide

Under the nonchalance.

Or Perhaps of you - in the carefully arranged array

Of countless seeds 

Crushing under my molars

Flooding me with this venom like elixir.

Alas, The way I seem to make the biggest fetish

Out of pain.

Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV: https://www.pexels.com

Peas, Peace , Piece

I didn't know where green peas came from. My earliest memory of them was a box of dried bead like structures, colored in a washed off green. And when my mom used to soak them over night and use them together with cauliflower and freshly grated coconut, I was enthralled both by the lush green color they donned upon soaking and the taste they lent to the delicately flavored side dish. In the present day, that dish overrides anything else that can be done with cauliflower or green peas  - period!

And upon migrating to the new land, I discovered this vegetable  whose florets looked like mini trees. I was leery of tasting them the first time around and even over cooked them not knowing how little of heat they take to be steamed - Yes, Broccoli happens to be my favorite vegetable, and guess what? it is the love child of cauliflower and green peas. 

In a vegetarian palette, the peas are a very integral part - kind of like the supporting cast in a film. They add so much but they don't get the due credit that's usually claimed by the stars of the show. So when "green peas" become the topic of writing, it does take a little thinking out of the box. But come to think of it, doesn't everything around us, no matter how small or how insignificant,has a story to tell and could become the protagonist if the spotlight is focused on it?

There's this thing said by a very celebrated poet in my native language that goes - "nothing is disqualified for poetry". Make me ponder about how I time and again harp about the significance of every person, every thing and every existence around us. Nothing is neither too big nor too small - reminds me of how making bees extinct from the world could make the humans extinct in tow.

I kind of breath a sigh of relief concluding on two things - the give aways! Firstly - When we put the time and thought into anything - it becomes something - like this blog post out here and secondly, a topic should be attempted, without examining it for how big the attempt could be. And this is exactly what I was trying to teach my ten year old when the topic of the daily writing "green peas" given by the mom that was perhaps dropped on her head when she was a baby, several times to end!

Oh and that Chinese fried rice I eat at Henry's Hunan - they make plain old rice taste like the yummiest food on earth, just by sautéing  it in a fistful of green peas. 

And one day, I'll write about rice and I'll be compelled to not describe  it as 'plain' or 'old'

:)

 Photo by SAURABH WASAIKAR: https://www.pexels.com

View

The brew

That penetrates into the breeze

Of the little house,

(not on the Prairie)

(Though one wishes it is!)

Fill the air with aroma

And the being with life.

The vine ripe roma tomatoes

Dangle on the bush

Much like illuminations

Greeting through the french window 

(This isn't the view of the Acropolis)

(But feels as magnificent)

Feet up, hair down

Wee thoughts like wisps

Lingering around

Roses in many hues

A few days old, 

Huddled in the ceramic teapot

Donning signs of aging 

With such grace!

Stacks of books,

Sink of dishes to be done

A plush throw that lazes about

Carelessly on the couch.

Frayed ends of the living room carpet

With dander that needs to be vacuumed.

And a to-do task

Ticked off from the unending list

By the virtue of this

Vista point

Of a significantly small life.

 Photo by NourAlhoda Al: https://www.pexels.com