Choice

She looks inside of her, breeding the growth thoughts, her own little dark room, developing images and impressions conjured upon reflecting on her experiences. She feels particularly empty today - unable to decide how to feel - random happenings trigger equally stray emotions in her. She wants to feel settled and keep the temperamental reactions at bay. Should she examine a old hurt and scrape new wounds out of it or hand pick a happy memory and  sculpt a smile in her heart? On days like these, where the congenital attraction towards deep, despondent contemplation tempts her a little firmly, she puts in that extra stab into her happy side. She looks at the play of light on the window panes, each piece of glass displaying their own perception of light onto them from the same exact reflection. She lets out a smile and decides for that to be the flavor of the day. Those lush green sprouts of bliss flooding her insides as she handpicks a precious little memory and relives it in her dark room.

The negatives magically drench in color offering a bright image to feast the senses upon and her dark room lights up in that flickering warmth.

Image Courtesy - Shail Mohan

Flight

A cup of tea,
Sans latte, if be.
Skip the sugar, the creamer too...
A cup of hot water would do.
A cup of water, if not hot!
Drop the cup if we come to that!
Two rattan chairs?
May be one..
Make it none - it should still be fun.
A book to read?
On second thought,
There's no need of that,
There's really not!
Breathing lungs,
A beating heart
Solitude, the missing part.
A piece of my sky,
Distant mountains serenading the eye
A balcony - creaky and small
Opening out His glory and all -
What else?  Where else? How else?
Let the breath escape
And gasp in bliss
Sinking into nature's abyss.


Pic Courtesy - Dhiren Shah

Union

He sits down with his laptop screen illuminating his face, cutting through the dimly lit room. She lies down next to him, facing the wall - "Where are you stuck, Mr.Hemingway?" She mocks without looking at him. "You aren't asleep yet?" He wonders aloud. "Not with your ambient lighting cutting through my sleep" she tries to sound intelligent. 

"I want to write a story" he says. "But my writer's block isn't budging anywhere tonight" He adds. "Reckon I could think up some interesting story to relate to you?" - "Throw in your ideas - I always win when you chime in" he says playfully. 

"Write about us" she says - "with a twist" - "Put us in a different plane - a situation other than where we are right now and imagine a story around it. What if we hadn't met as teens? what if we had met as kids and parted ways only to realize our love much later? What if we weren't this happily ever after?"

"Put us in a car, on a long drive - like soulmates that hadn't tied the knot. Like friends that hadn't met in college. You and I, meeting after a hiatus of eons, connecting like twin flames, sitting beside each other, holding hands, not breathing a word but somehow communicating volumes just with that chaste skin contact, You and I, on different continents, momentarily crossing paths, sharing a ride, weaving through a web of traffic, looking for an exit that doesn't show itself - you and I, sneaking away from the worlds we come from, desperate to know where our road is leading us to. Only to realize we do not have a destination to drive to. You and I, trying to enjoy the journey, the journey devoid of a definite stop - attempting all we can to hold each other's hands a little longer, and letting that silence pour out the vulnerabilities that are carefully wrapped away from the sight of the judging world. Us, looking through the windshield of the world and seeing it alike. Us, being in the same page of perception, harmonious in what we seek out of our escape. Our fingers entwined together like dark chocolate and caramel, creating a delicious and enticing contrast of hues - just like our thoughts entwine in all their diversity but the spirits merge in the oneness of an identical core. You and I, not like a wife and husband - heck, not even like a woman and a man but two bodies of energy that resonate and fuse together in a divine bond. You and I, like fluid love, flowing through the many creases of our hearts and cleansing those voids with the waters of compassion. Make us trap in a traffic jam actually - one of those really stuck up jams that neither let us  go forward nor backward - Let the dusk darken around us while the light of our love shines through the twilight. Let us be there, in that moment, without a care to get back home on time, without an agenda to impress each other, without the yearning to experience something beyond that very moment of togetherness - like co passengers, streaming through this web called life, not saying a word, not caring for where the path is leading us to but just in the comfort of that company, let you and me live a moment that is worth a hundred lifetimes"

"Sigh" He gasps - 'You make that sound like an epiphany" 

"I know" she quips - "I know" - "As long as you put us together, even if it is just one  long drive on a lone evening of our lives, it should be good enough. That solo moment should do"

"Go to bed, he ruffles her hair and whispers" - "Yeah right" She mocks - "Now that the ambient sound of your keyboard clicking unifies with the ambient light of your laptop screen, I should be well lulled into my dreamland"

They both smile. To themselves, thinking about the joy the other brings to them.

Picture courtesy - my friend the Amateur clicker, Dhiren Shah.

Oblivious

She basks in her unaware brilliance, never ever familiar of her own worth, She pauses and soaks in the beauty around her with the diligence of a machine. She is so submerged in that process of gasping, acknowledging and offering thanks to the blessings graced upon the world that it almost seems like a joke to a cynical pair of eyes. Her unfamiliarity with her own self looks like false modesty to some and utter naivety to others - worse yet, it makes some completely blind to her  virtues, as if the world conveniently ignores things that aren't highlighted, underscored and thrown into one's face with obvious egotism. But it isn't like she cares to know what the world thinks of her, or even would care upon knowing. But one day, he crosses her path - He that is touted as the finder of treasures. One look and he knows her invaluable worth. He wonders if it is her merit that makes her so insanely attractive to him, or her unwitting blindness towards it. He falls in love, head first, heels atop! He is determined to win her over, show her the mirror and make her look at what she looks through - the latent heart of gold that gleams bright, concealed under the mask of her ignorance. "I am in love with you" He confesses. "Why?" She asks, instead of saying  "Me too" - The unacquainted darling that is too busy acquainting herself with the allure outside of her.

Photo credit - Dhiren Shah.

Solitaire

Gentle but bright she gleams
Her light pecks on crystal steams
The aura quiet a sight to spot
Her charm twists the heart to a knot.
A thing of beauty, forever a joy!
For you and me to see and enjoy -
The star she is, the brightest yet,
Clad in chiffon, draped in Georgette.

She slips in and out of many a guise
Conceals aches in those soulful eyes
Her skill, what skill! It wraps it all,
Obscure behind a see through wall.
She sports a smirk before the strain
Her skill what skill, she masters the feign.
Dancing diva, queen of hearts
Mistress of a thousand arts.

The star she is the brightest yet,
Outshining million peers to threat!
Don't blame her light, it's quiet innate
Her rays, they are immaculate.
The smile that sports hundred delights
Hides the inmost web of plights.
Behold, she is one of a kind
A mystery, a riddle, an enigma - defined!


Pictured -  a Glimpse of Masai Mara National reserve, Kenya 
Courtesy - Chandra Elango

Blessing

One day, You'll gaze at her
By chance, without intent.
You'll walk by, bored
Of your uneventful day,
And decide to consider the unseen.
Little would you realize
She's been right there
In front of your eyes, all these years.

You'll look at what you had looked through -
Those skeletons of emotions,
Lying there to find a confidant
The many glistening hopes of
Yearning for a binding,
Lost in the distance of apathy.
The sprouts of dreams
Craving for an ally
Confined to the grounds of indifference.

When you discover her -
Take your time, breath in that grace!
That prize, unaware of her own price
Awaits the detached,
To latch you to rapture.
Take your time, thank your stars -
For this fleeting life
Might not reward you twice!

Pic courtesy - Chandra Elango

Ultra

She sits across him studying his face. He's engrossed in the papers he is skimming through. She traces his features - boyish looks, kind eyes framed by thin rimmed glasses, acne scars that look fresh from yesterday. She reflects upon his lucent smile that stays put like a permanent fixture, his best feature perhaps  - that smile that she'd never ever not seen. Even at this very moment, the ends of his lips are curved upward, like he is greeting his paperwork.

She has seen him quiet a lot - being in the same classroom as kids and adolescents made him strangely familiar to her though they hadn't interacted much all those years. They meet again, on and off and she smiles thinking of all the good memories. This is a guy that left a deep seated influence on her though they didn't have a distinct friendship. The interactions were sporadic, but she reflects upon them time and again, almost drawing a certain take away every time she traces those conversations back. He seems to have frozen in time, but there's something about him that she sees differently now.

"The smile may be?" She thinks to herself! "Was I in unrealized love?" She questions herself and outwardly negates it with a mild head shake. She is in awe. Like one would be with a hero. His brains and achievements were the stuff of many high school cafeteria discussions. But when she sees him this day, she realizes that she was never in awe with his brains as she is with his spirit. That unfazed smile - sigh! Isn't a perpetual smile associated with realized souls? like that dainty beam she spots on the face of the Christ or Buddha? Her comprehension seems to have suddenly expanded its horizons. She seems to have assimilated all those preexisting but unprocessed feelings around his presence. She is half tempted to disturb him and ask him if he ever gets angry - the tranquility she has seen him display from their childhood days and the way he has never let that beaming smile leave his lips even through conversations, his soothing voice that never raised an octave higher than necessary to hear- It would probably be the privilege of a select few to see that other side of him - the anger, the irritation, the unrest - which she somehow suspects is non existent.

He lifts his head up and catches her staring at him. His eyes light up and that immortal smile brightens up a few notches when their eyes meet. She doesn't bother to look away. She smiles back at him, a plethora of tender feelings drift through her heart! That moment generates a whole body of communication between them.That moment, perhaps, also defines the quaint bond she shares with him...a bond that buds in his smile and blooms in her heart.

Picture courtesy - Rahul Khanna's instagram (for that kind of a smile 😉)

Solitude

She spots him from the window of the coffee shop and looks at him with great interest. His visual inspires a million thoughts in her and they bring along with them some deeply buried memories of school days. Her mind conjures up poems she had committed to memory. Sometimes she wonders if those many things that she'd heard and read in the past come back to her by themselves, haunting her present or if she has this psychic ability to connect dots and make profound sense out of random and utterly ordinary sights that cross her mind.

Behold her, single in the field, 

Yon solitary Highland Lass! 

Reaping and singing by herself; 

Stop here, or gently pass! 

Alone she cuts and binds the grain, 

And sings a melancholy strain; 

O listen! for the Vale profound 

Is overflowing with the sound. 

Bits and pieces of 'The solitary reaper' seem to fit into the sight before her - the old man, with his wares and words, sitting by the sidewalk and lost in his crossword puzzle, firmly there, but oblivious in his thought, immersed in the mundane task of making a living, but living his life all the same. She makes up stories  around him - he probably has very supportive kids that are begging him to give up his toil and retire, or he has no kids at all and is supporting himself? - The many tales that she weaves around him entertain her while she gets lost in the intensity of the man’s concentration on the task ahead of him.  This Dusty little pavement doesn’t hold a candle to the Scottish highlands nor does the task of selling inexpensive hoisery parallel  with reaping a harvest amid soul stirring nature, but she somehow sees the visual in poetic perfection. The eyes of the beholder, they say - and she senses a strange pride in the way her eyes present to her angles to the soul of her universe.

Picture courtesy - Dhiren Shah. 

Evasion

She glides around her day like a superwoman, juggling work and home like an ace. She doesn't even realize how much she accomplishes being a multi-tasker, for her focus is never on herself but on the job ahead of her. This morning, she sits in her cubicle a little too long, gazing at the art work her son made for mother's day. Mackerel clouds almost shaped like a fish and a caption amid them reading "I love you to the sky and back" She smiles as she tries to settle the unrest in her heart and spine. Somethings bother her to no end...they get under her skin. She, being the gentle soul, always disregards her discomforts to accommodate others. A blunt pain keeps at her lower spine and she shuts her eyes to ease it, trying to convince herself to ignore the twinge in the vertebrae. "I am absolutely fine" she reassures herself - this phrase comes handy every time she encounters a strain, be it physical or emotional. These words let her spread out her boundaries, rising her threshold for the many afflictions of life - Broken promises, disappointments, insults, deceits, heartbreaks - "I am absolutely fine" is the one magic pill of words that cures all her worldly ailments. She reflects upon the many encroachments on her soul and quickly shuts them off. For nothing qualifies as a hurt if you tell yourself it isn't - fib your way through the hindrances of life with the magical four letters " I am absolutely fine"

Today the talisman isn't working. The caffeine isn't working either. Her pain in the spine resonates with the unaddressed, often ignored pain in the heart. She doesn't give up easily. She tries to deep breath and meditate on the drawing her son made - looking at her insides as scales of unhealed wounds denied with vehemence. But today she decides differently.

"I am not fine" she makes an admission at last. I need a break. She quickly grabs her purse and steps out to finally address those scales long ignored, to nurse that back ache and heart ache. Because she discovers that the worst kind of lies are the lies we tell ourselves.

Picture Courtesy - Chaitanya Kanni

Unfinished

They were meant to be, that bound souls were supposed to meet, to fill in some craters, some petty dents sustained while lost in the woods of life. Those kindred spirits were to dwell here upon the weirdness of existence. They were supposed to catch up or complain - to bare it all without filters, so the other could collect their gripes and somehow stretch them around and soothe them into acceptance. They were to look through the view, contemplating upon their challenges, to seek counsel and provide solace. They were to laugh till they cry and then cry some cause they have to do that too, to somehow flush out the frozen heartaches. They were supposed to thrive in each other's company, lending a shoulder to lean upon, or the much needed ear - cause what are intense emotions worth unless they are shared with someone? That laughter, those tears, those hopes and fears - they all need an audience or a witness to coax those feelings into everlasting smiles or bearable burdens.

It was meant to be. But it might not be....cause sometimes they are too busy. Sometimes one of them might exit unannounced. Sometimes they might consider it a bit too much or plan it to an exhaustion that plonks at execution. Cause sometimes, they might lose their plot or just be so caught in their conceptions or lack there of that they might never cross the road or even meet the other mid way, or worse yet, they might nurse a miscommunication tad much and smother their empathy to non existence.

Here's the silence, clad in emptiness,  mourning all those unrealized 'Meant to Bes.'

Picture courtesy - Dhiren Shah. Wildernest, Chorla.

Genuine

Eva gets a call from the same number for the umpteenth time, a number she cannot recognize. She picks it up wondering if it is an important call that shouldn't be missed. "Hello" a female voice responds. "How are you Eva? I had been trying to reach you for long to say thanks" the voice continues. Eva places the exotic accent. "Oh hello there Sana" She greets cheerfully. "Why do I need to be thanked?" she wonders aloud. "For my job recommendation" Sana replies.

Eva experiences a blanked out moment. She recollects recommending Sana to a trainee opening in a friend's work place months ago. It paid a meager stipend but Sana was looking to get back to work after a long hiatus. "I am so sorry" she manages. I never knew you got a placement there. It wasn't a big deal. I found about the trainee position and thought about you. Glad you fit right in" She sounds very happy for Sana.

"May I come by tomorrow to see you?" Sana asks. "I would like to say thanks in person" 

"I would love to see you, but hey, there's nothing much to thank here. I am sure they loved you enough to offer you a permanent position" 

"But I was there in the first place because you cared to recommend me" Sana insists. They have a chuckle about this blame game and decide to meet the next day.

Sana shows up with a vase of white buttercup roses, luscious and lively. "I know you are a nature lover, but I had to buy you something that didn't die the moment I turn my back on you. I want you to look at these silk flowers and remember me as often as you can" she quips. 

"Look at them...how natural they look" Eva offers genuine praise. Besides white is my favorite color. It fits so well into my shabby chic living space" 

They catch up on life. Eva remembers how Sana, in their last meeting months ago, comes to pay for some medicines she got her from a friend's apothecary, though Eva keeps telling her that it was a chicken feed of an amount and she shouldn't bother. Sana relates a Burmese fable to Eva about the Owl, crow and koel. When owl gets hurt, he seeks help from crow. Crow knows of koel that treats ailments and takes his friend owl to her. Koel suggests a remedy that cures the owl and asks for her payment. Owl promises to pay it later and crow vouches for the owl. Later when it is time to pay, the owl refuses to pay the koel. As a result, crow ends up repaying his friend's dues by tending to koel's eggs.

"I don't want to ever be like the owl" Sana adds, and make someone pay for my dues no matter how small. Eva smiles and accepts the money, won over by how Sana thinks through the minutest of things and puts a wonderful perspective to them. It is these little things that Sana does that makes Eva get a sense of the person Sana is....Honest, considerate, reliable and very thoughtful. Eva kind of senses why Sana is so readily welcomed into the work space. She feel certain that Sana does bigger things with as much love and care as she does the smaller ones.

After the ladies catch up on their lives, Sana takes leave, thanking her again and apologizing yet again for not bringing her real flowers. They both joke and laugh over the matter and part ways.

Eva places the flowers on her whitewashed coffee table. The sunlight filtering through the windows hit the petals and lend them a grace only light could lend. They look lit from within...She admires them, gently stroking on the lush lifelikeness of the buttercups. From where she sees it, a gesture of gratitude couldn't be any more heart touching than these beauties she's feasting her eyes upon.

"Blessed are the ones that give without remembering, Blessed are the ones that get without forgetting" Her dad's favorite quote rings in her ears as she spends a moment devouring the wee joys of life.