Day 2 - B for Bring

"Did you cook already? I'll bring dinner" 

 "Not yet - I'll bring hunger!" 

 He smiles into his blue tooth and she senses it somehow. 

 "I'll bring a problem"

 "I'll bring perspective"

 He pauses for a second. He enjoys these spontaneity of hers and somehow tries to measure up. 

 "I'll bring anger" 

 "I'll bring peace"

 "I'll bring silence" 

 "I'll bring conversation"

 "What if I bring an argument?" 

 "We got that covered -I'll bring logic" 

 "Ok my turn now to bring first" She says. "I'll bring confusion"

 "What am I supposed to bring? Aren't I the one that brings confusion?" 

 "Do a role reversal you dumbo, and bring me some clarity"

 "You are my clarity, I am your confusion. Let's leave it at that!"

 "So you ran out of stuff to bring?" She taunts him mockingly.

 "Not yet - I'll bring a fight"

 "I'll bring a white flag" 

 "Dang" He mutters "I'll bring unruliness"

 "I'll bring understanding" 

 "You are holier than thou. Aren't you?"

 "Not so soon Hon...keep them coming - we aren't done yet!"

 "I'll bring desire" 

 "I'll bring love"

 "See? Didn't I tell you? You have to top it all Mrs.Holier than thou. 

I won't bring dinner. I am cross. You go cook now" 

 "I'll bring a brick" 

 He laughs out loud. "Okay okay - I give up. I'll bring dinner" 

 "That's better. I'll bring dessert - and Don't have ideas alright? - You'll have to sit with me and watch cake wars"

 "Done deal! I'll bring slumber" 

 "I'll bring surveillance and shake you out of the slumber" 

 "I cannot win with you"

 "You won me"

 "That's enough winning"

He smiles into his blue tooth again. And somehow she knows.

Picture courtesy - Alfalfa and Darla from Little Rascals (1994)

A-Z Day 1 - A for Act

Not a novel parallel this,

Her stage - the lovely planet.

She wraps her soul

In such believable shades

Blending into the act

With seamless aplomb.

Her passion in crimson depth

Her fondness in a frothy white

Her gloom merging into the grays of the sky

Her wrath, concealed in  colorless waters.

She smiles through the unheard heartbreaks

Grins amid a sprinkle of aches.

You might reckon you see her

But then isn't seeing equal to trusting?

Like a dew drop on a lily pad

She radiates the colors beneath her transparent existence.

Never ever seeping into the surface she touches.

What rendition, this flawless facade

A performer par excellence,

With her many charades

On this dais called the Globe.

Click

"You cannot understand what you do not feel" She says without looking at him, staring into the distance with a perfunctory expression. They both sit in their garden sipping on their morning cuppa.
"How do you mean?" He asks

"Just like how I said it"

"But what if I ask how you said it?"

She shifts her gaze, looking intently at him and lets out a smile.

"Like how I never understood what it was to be a mother till I had our son"

"So do you mean I would never understand my mother cause I can never bear a child like a woman?" He challenges her.

She grins. "I didn't say you only understand what you experience. Feeling is an independent entity. you don't need to experience things to feel them sometimes and vice versa, unless it is physically felt, like a burn for instance. You can feel a burn for the most part. But can you understand something abstract without feeling it? which makes me realize, I never felt my mom's love for me the way it was supposed to be felt till I had a child of my own. What is the word I am looking for? Can you please supply it for me?"

"You do your own scavenger hunt sweetheart" He jokes.

"Empathy" - "That's what I am looking for. So, for the record, you can deliver a child and still not feel motherly, or be devoid of a reproductive system and still let motherly love seep through your every pore" She pauses. "Do I make any sense to you?"

"Hmm" he considers pursing his lips. "By and large" - "So is there anything I am not able to understand that you want to complain about?"

"Futile"

"Futile what?"

"Complaining, cause I have my shortcomings in the feelings department. I can never understand how you run from pillar to post, so charged and ambitious about your work nor can you understand  how the moment I realized I was in love, I actually felt motherly love, except I couldn't identify it as such. Up until I realized how my mom felt for me"

They both sip on their tea. He reaches out for her hand and places a gentle peck on her fingers.

"I hope you feel it" He says. "Someone very wise told me today that you don't understand what you don't feel"

"It's for you to figure out..if I you feel what I feel"

"Do you ever make a straight conversation?"

"I do. Do you ever understand my conversation?"

"Now don't corner me"

They continue their banter like school kids playing hide and seek between emotion and assimilation.

Pic Courtesy - Dhiren Shah

Celebration

I come back to you

Time and again

Searching for answers

Sorting out puzzles of life,

Pouring them all out

Into your womb,

Arranging those many fears and hopes

Into meaningless banters

Silently looking to find sense.

I find solace

Cuddling in your warmth and wisdom.

Those cathartic outpours

Magically unraveling solutions

Of the many maladies of life.

In your companionship

I decipher the meaning of this existence

And its contents.

Love, fear, hope, loss - 

They all seem more clear, much real!

Myself I find,

In your many crevices

Those borne in some heart, Those bloomed in some mind

Surprisingly giving form to my own emotion

As if, you have a mystic power

Of reading my thoughts.

Oh my mighty Verse

In your grace do I bask

Savoring you in a poet's voice

Or by feigning my own mediocrity into word heaps

And naming it a Poem.

pic credit - Chandra Elango

Appearance

Peel it off, the skin deep gloss
Cause beauty isn't the gift wrap!
It is what lies beneath the shell.
It reveals itself - slowly and not always.
Unless, the eyes delve past the obvious.
Look through the surface,
Barge into the unexplored spaces
Beyond the shallowness.
Those treasures elude the legible lines -
Bring that vision into focus
Rotate the lens, adjust the axis
Let reverence of the mind meet the oblivious.
And you just might see a flash
Of the slow revelation,
If you tune in to the vibration of the truth
Penetrating all visible allures
Taking your breath away!


Pic credit - Dhiren Shah

Worth

They go for a stroll in the neighborhood park as the little girl skips her way through the jogging trail. "How was your day at school?" the mother asks. "Oh my God, you have to listen to this funny thing about the girl in my class!" the kid says animatedly. "Oh!" the mom exclaims. "Would that tread into gossip territory or did this kid really say something funny that would make me laugh?" The mother tries to reinstate a lesson that speaking about others unnecessarily is never welcome in their discussion. Ever.

"Oh you are going to laugh till your sides split" the kid replies through a broad grin. "Do you remember Sara?  the tall girl that bikes past us every day? We got to fill a poster about ourselves and in a section where we were asked to describe ourselves. Sara wrote that she is tall and pretty and has the body of a super model and that is her best feature" The kid begins laughing loud - "Don't you think that is so funny mom? " I have the body of a super model" - She mocks pouting and sounding a little shrill. "What is so funny about that darling?" the mom challenges her. "Sara is a tall and beautiful girl, it is a good thing if she knows it and is proud of her looks" 

"Geez, mom - are you serious? How can someone be so proud and full of themselves that they blow their own trumpet? There were these bunch of girls that walked to Sara during recess and sarcastically told her that her poster has the best description of herself. do you know what she did? She smiled and thanked them - How dumb is that? She doesn't even know they are mocking her and she is bragging about herself. Some of them even decided to have some fun tomorrow and burst her bubble"

" I hope you are not in those 'some of them', and I would be very disappointed in you if you were"  the mother adds. "But mom, why should she act all high and mighty like we are all ugly ducklings and she is the only pretty one in the classroom?" "Darling" The mom cuts her. "So did she also write that the rest of you all are ugly ducklings?" 

"No,  But...but how can you be so braggy?" the kid questions! "Isn't that kind of arrogant and rude and so snobbish?" She offers her judgement.

It suddenly occurs to the mom that this isn't something unique to just a child of ten, and that humans somehow, sometimes manage to take offense to someone else's self love. The world often dislikes confident and outspoken people.Why do we feel so compelled to put a confident person in their place? Does it threaten our ego? Does it make us jealous or do we consider being quiet and letting them speak their mind as an acknowledgement to their opinion? She looks at the child and says "Darling, wouldn't it be a wonderful place if we let everyone look at themselves with love and regard and let them speak their mind? How should it bother or threaten us if Sara thinks she is pretty?" The smile on the child's face dulls a little "But mom, how can she, I mean...she shrugs her shoulders and throws her hands out. 

"What did you write in your description" The mom asks her. "I didn't brag" the kid adds. "Why do you all think she cannot brag just because you didn't?" 

"You always nit pick mom...you find fault with most things I say" 

"But my darling, I am here to nit pick and find faults where I spot them as I have to mother you and teach you right from wrong" - "So you think you are always right mom? and you don't need to fix anything yourself?"  - "For starters darling, let's not guess what others think, and no I am not faultless. I do acknowledge and improve upon my faults and I always learn something as I try to teach you" 

"Okay, okay" the child gesticulates her to stop "So what is it that you learned today?"

"Sara is pretty and her saying it out herself should not make us any less pretty or mad or miffed"

"Okay, okay, then I am pretty too"

"Of course, you are pretty and we don't need to make Sara any less pretty or petty to prove that"

"Mom" She rolls her eyes and runs away while the mother looks at her child and smiles.

Pic Credit - Dublin Ca. By Chandra Elango.

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