Rhymes in the storm

Our house is a fort
Around it is a moat.
The storm ants are crowding
The street lights.... they are fading.
My childhood returns
Memories escape the urn.
The time to visit is now
The lamps are aglow.
When stories are told in their light
Nostalgia embraces us tight.
So stranger....if you had a home, or you didn't
Come hither........we will take you right in.

"Bottling up within me...... To drink from your memory"

I met a soul buddy;  a fantasy version of my values mixed with empathy , knowledge and passion. But my fantasies lie outside  the lines of my reality's jagged straight lines within which I withhold from potential companionships.  Someone rightly pointed that I may even miss a great reality in my present discipline of self love.... But reality...I know its deal. I am cautious of it because its jealous of the ideal, hence it hides away the utopian.

  I am so at peace and happy on not investing myself emotionally on another for the first time in my life. But the universe has a bitch of a timing. It throws you a curveball when you are busy with your confidence and self assured solitude. It says 'Hey you....silly moron , you only get to glimpse a flicker of a deep connection when you are smug about your preference of peaceful solitude so let's see how you tackle it in your Zen solo state...CATCH!" And then you face a human you didn't expect to encounter. You see a snatch or two of yourself in this person during a day long conversation while walking together your favourite parts of a city, discussing organically issues that matter to you - gender labels and their need to be subverted, world politics,  your family history, communities you care for, culture as you only can teach to each from your different roots and of course your shared love for food.

 And so here I am, holding onto memories of the weekend, a weekend that wasn't meant to be, but has become a page of a heavy, ancient and expensive encyclopedia. An encyclopedia I cant afford and own. So I feel like tearing out my favourite pages. Instead I must return it to its rightful place and walk out of the bookshop.

 Even if could bottle up what this weekend was, it would perhaps be a faint shadow of its burning brightness I feel inside me now. But I am only human. I will strive to make sense of a chanced encounter and of an unlikely comrade for whom what I feel now is a light flickering its last...diffused without its wick.

You shared Hafiz with me and the irony is only he makes sense now. If a page were to be turned to tell my future,  I want it to open up to this quote :

 "Come let us get drunk even if it's our ruin
For sometimes under ruins one finds treasure"

Her kind

And that is the kind of person she was. The kind who would never get her hair straightened even if all the other co anchors at her station were doing it. The kind who used her teeth to peel off the ends of sugar cane stalks, chew on them and spit them out. Like her mother had taught her as a kid. The kind to never wear nail polish but when she did, the colour stayed for a month . The kind who cooked a meal fiercely even if she cooked only for her friends who longed for homemade mutton. Or the kind to never pick up red lace lingerie instead sticking to blacks and whites because they were more practical to match with anything she wore. The kind to climb rocks, trees and seven foot gates. The higher the physical obstacle, the more she wanted to get to its other side. The kind you couldn't write off to be too modern for your son because her roots were her tradition, her mother's village her favourite retreat, her parents home her safehouse against moronic men who broke her heart and of course....of course...the sarees. Her obssessive love to be perpetually in sarees . When she draped the five yard fabric around her, you could not stop your eyes from staring at her looking so alive. You didn't want to use the word sexy. It fell short. You could not, even if you wished to, stop fantasising the wildest thought your brain could conjure, instead stopping at the most timid of them all. The thought of what it would be to have her in your arms and the saree at her feet.

A little.....and a lot more

Walk a little won't you
Talk a little won't you
Make love to me more
Till we together reach the shore

Critique me a little won't you
But hear my silent cry even if I am close to you
Hold my hand even when I am strong
Pull me out of the tide where I don't belong

Hold on longer to me a little more won't you
But fight with me a little won't you
Don't bottle up yourself at the end
Remember you never did, even as a friend

....For when you look away, I long for you the most
When you shrink back, know that I'll hold you close
It's not perfection I seek
Don't you know...I am already yours to keep?


II
If you falter, I may chide you
But know this... my heart will surely guide you
Don't worry if I take a little longer resurrecting myself from my past
Where my soul was at half mast

It's you I seek out and crave for
Since you let me walk in through your door

So cover your mouth with mine
Let our fingers do the talking
Let me show you the way just once my friend
You may have to bow a little...but I promise, you will never have to bend.

Save the last dance

As I was packing up today to leave my home in Bhubaneswar and return to Mumbai, my mother recalled an anecdote about my grandparents. A few days ago my grandaunt was proudly telling my ma how my dadu a Lieutenant Colonel in the then British army happily encouraged my grandmother to dance with other officers if they asked her hand at the evening dances. "I didn't have such good luck like your mother in law. My husband simply wouldn't let go off me at those dances ", quipped my grandaunt.
   Something about the way my mother laughed while narrating this and imagining my dadu's sportive nature took away the misery that was clouding my brain . Leaving home and the Mitras is never an easy task but stocking up such wonderful stories helps me survive the madness that is Mumbai.
 For now I pop a paan from the pack my dad gave me as a going away gift to cheer myself up and brave the traffic back home.

Happiness

Whoever has fed popular belief that happiness is tough to get or dependent on circumstances forgot to tell us this-- the truth is happiness lurks within each of us..it's boundless and yet it hides waiting for you to yank off the chain that plugs so much of it inside our brain..our heart..our soul... 

 The truth is that happiness gets a little bored waiting around indefinitely.. patiently for you to give it a chance while you go on counting your problems :)

No promise.....

Every time I get my head above water and surface just about enough to take a deep breath, I surprise myself..because here I am thinking I  will only go back to treading water a bit.

 Instead, I end up levitating...rising above tried waters...rippling from an unbridled energy I can't contain within..the kind that makes me want to take off and soar...
 
This time my skyline limits me but the ground beneath is crying out to leave ...leave with whatever I can salvage ...just that this time eastern city beckons me...puts its hands around my shoulder..onto my head ....soothing my stiffness .intimidating me to relax my goals....my relentless pragmatic stone faced resolution. It tempts to melt something within......reminding me there is comfort and strength to draw from the unexpected...

 ....even if I have no promise I can deliver to.