Pair

As I age, the one thing that constantly amazes me is the institution of marriage. The more years I put behind me, the more couples I see around me and the more ponders of matrimony that cross my mind - the more intrigued I become. I had the good fortune of crossing paths with a pair in the past few days. When I walk into the oncology department of the speciality hospital over here, assisting my MIL, I see a pair in such harmony that no matter what I do, my eyes constantly graze their chemistry. Their bond overtakes the whole ambience around me. The emaciated man, dressed in a dhoti and bare chested, walks out of the radiation facility sporting a sculpted ribcage. He grabs the piece of cloth and wraps it around his head in an immaculate turban with the dexterity of a young man.

      It is hard to guess their age but they should be well over the wrong side of sixty - both the man and the wife. She has stacks of red glass bangles on her thin wrists - proudly displaying her marital status. Her lined face is anchored with a  precise nose and elaborate nose pins on either side. Her salt and pepper hair is neatly rolled into a tight bun on the nape of her neck. It is hard to say which of them is thinner - or taller. They both look lean and stretched. I search her face now and then, to look for signs of emotion. She looks back at me nonchalantly while waiting for her husband, staring into my eyes with carefully concealed pain. I gather they come in for treatment through  government aided medicare and wonder if they had eaten. The moment I enter into the waiting area, I trace my eyes around the length and breadth to spot them. Her sari, tied a few inches above her ankles, her pallu tightly wrapped around those twigs of shoulders. The other day we walked into a fully occupied room and she scooted up her seat and asked my MIL if she wanted to take her seat :-) I often wondered why young men and women never got up and offered seats to seniors or patients - but was pleasantly surprised to see this old lady graciously offer her seat. We walked past her politely asking her to sit and I held my gaze into hers, for once hoping to see a sign of warming up to me. There was that very nonchalance holding my eye contact. 

     There were many instances when I took my smart phone out to click a pic of them but tucked it back promptly cause I didn't want to breach their privacy. I wanted to reach out to them, give them a hug or convey in some way my awe for their bond, for her dutiful companionship, for their unmistakable love but I held myself back feeling overpowered by their sheer presence. 

Today I was determined to say something to her, or him or both! I didn't see them when I walked in. I tried to capture their traces in my sketch and their spirit in my words. Life is so pretty that even in the face of illness and poverty there are things that stretch beyond 'stuff' - things like loving and being loved, things like grace and courage. If I could, I would put their picture as a definition of marriage :)

Imitation

Found a little time to kill this noon. With due apologies to Georgia O'Keeffe. Soft pastels on sketch pad.

is for Zenith

There is a strange satisfaction in keeping up the word. Well, deadlines in other words. As much as I claim to be laid back, I seem to have an unsettled restlessness when it comes to keeping up commitments.  It acts as a saving grace to my routine, devoid of a routine. The past few days had enough challenges thrown my way - while my stiff emotional joints grappled hard to jump over the hurdles of life happening around me, I reveled in the fact that challenges are a good thing. They are an indication of the life left in us, of the fighting spirit, of our inner capacity that lies unearthed under our own inhibitions and self doubts. Challenges bring out the best in us - the forgotten components of strength, grace and creation of a force that enables us to stream through them. I look back and smile at the thought of not taking up A to Zee this year - kicked off in my foster motherland with that moniker and smoothly halted as A to Zed, right here in the land of Karma!

A pat on the back! - and a tired smile, that is the best of its kind!

:-)

Y is for You

Where's the invisible leash?
I wonder -
That you nimbly hold on your fingers!
Gently tugging me
Everywhere you go...
The world of mine
Doing a rotation, and a revolution
Around your thoughts and memories
Like a greed that never satiates.
Days roll into years, years into decades.
But the heart and its hopeless emotion
Tangled in your web of allure
Now where, I pray - is the invisible leash!??

X for Xerox

Sometime in mid eightees, my dad and his brother-in- law joined hands in a venture with the tag line Ram & Rao - the business introduced my uncle and an edifice of a xerox machine into the expanse of my dad's office space. My siblings and I flocked around what looked like a cargo vessel with finer details magically produced copies of documents in a hazy shades of grey. The unit that occupied most of a 12x12 room stood like a land mark in dad's office, drawing eyes and feet to it like a focal point. Each time a customer came in with a mark sheet, property deed or a birth certificate that needed to be copied, we used to cautiously stand out of the boundary of the room and watch without batting the eyelids. There were several steps involved - it almost looked like a woman going through gestation, forming and nurturing an independent being in her womb. There were seeds of the leafy vegetable Amaranthus and a soot like fine powder in jet black that was sprinkled into one of the retracting drawers before the final copy slid through the opening that had a tray which caught the end result. The xerox machine was a promise of the technology in the offing and the pride of our home business. Time rolled out into decades and we saw the automatic counterparts of the very machine spring into being, that occupied only a fraction of the space and were a 1 2 3 easy operation. Now when I look at the copier, printer, scanner and fax machine we have in our home I fondly trace back to the childhood days where small things were big and big things were small :)

W for Want!

Take me back,

To that distant dusk

Where sun sinks into the earth!

Engulfing the air

With cool chills..

Just when I miss the fire ball

And his melting warmth

The soul takes a different form

Thawing to the moonlight!

Picture - Sunset in Santorini, Greece - summer 2013 ( Clicked on my iPad)

Day 23 - V for Vigor

On vines of my lashes,

Bloom dreams of love!

Vibrant, vigorous, robust, bright!

Until you set your peepers

On these budding emotions,

They lie in vain..

Pining for your longing glance!

U for Under

Miles of nerves
Vials of  blood
Heaps of thoughts
Deep down those veins!
Streaming through the being
Your sweet reminiscences
Unearth with every breath!
Under but not over with..
The bond bound to your cords
Strangles my dreams
Crushing them below
The weight of this wait! 

Day 22 - T is for Tea

Taking a chance,
Tinkering with atypical topics...
Translucent waters
Tampered with pouches of
Tiny granules.
Taste the brew,
Traveling through unseen insides..
Tepid warmth, engulfing the gut!
Take over the day
Timed perfectly with the morning cuppa:-)

Day 21 - S for Silence

There was the faint sound
Of a pin dropping on the marble floor.
Feather weight feet
Gliding on...
The rustle of leaves, lulling the mind,
The distant chirping, the dearly lub dub
Amplifying into the ears...
As the crazy heart thumps
Agitatedly onto the chest!
Mum surroundings
Maddeningly loud..
Shattering the silence.  

Day 20 - R is For Rhapsody

Randomly, it happened!

Rapture encircled her thoughts.

The first ever bloom

Of tipsy enamor.

Tender, silly

Though intense and mad!

Crushed in those dew drops

Melted by dawn.

The very first spell

Of a magic called love!

It dissipates..

Ruefully, into molten ashes

Of eternal loss.