Have We Talked About This Before?

Window of a rickety bus.
Muddy road, stinging eyes
In the hot summer wind.
I feel your shoulder
Grazing mine when we turn a corner.

Railings of a wooden bridge.
Silent river, silent thoughts
On a lovely autumn evening.
And I hear your footsteps
Bringing your reflection closer to me.

Cotton papered pages.
Crimson sunset, nervous fingers
After words after words after words.
From across the room, your laughter
Stealing me away from lonely stories.

I sometimes imagine
The tiniest gesture, the softest jolt
That breaks my deepest longing -
A glance from you.

The Lady in Red.

Our Journey

Early morning sun shone on her and the river blushed. That is how this journey began, many many moons ago.

I love that I love photography. It has brought precious moments and amazing people my way.

The foggy hills of Sri Lanka and the coldest monsoon in Kerala - I don't know if to live the moment or to capture it is more fulfilling. I am going to try to grow through the world you see and freeze.

My journey is mine, but it is for you, for the realization that gazing out on a sunset in silence or watching the flight of a solitary bird across the vast sky is what makes hearts feel alive.

There are a million angles to seeing the same scene. I am always amazed by the ease with which you bring out the brilliance in everything around you.
I thank you, passionate photographers, for your existence.

Open

I will not be broken-hearted
If you refuse to look at me.
Life is sometimes like a sky somewhere
Where birds don't fly free.

It Is All FruitCake

When you think that it is better to leave me alone to find myself, that is when continents begin to drift apart.

I am my own island now.

One Million Days Every Year

It is frightening to open a book for the first time. Always. The hands tremble. The heart races. What if the world turns upside down with the first page, or flies away with the last? What if new horizons open up and so do deep gorges? What will the author leave you with? Deep sorrow? Heavy and frozen happiness?
Who will you be, once the trickle of words stops?

The book travels one million days every year to a library's shelf, stays sandwiched between the ones about war and dynasty, only for a brief period before beginning its journey again. Dropped into a satchel, mulled over a coffee, read aloud to friends.
And then that single everlasting moment in between all these, when the heart races. Because another life's journey is now going to merge with yours. The vivid and wonderful world from someone else's mind is going to open up before you. You follow the lines through their meanderings, you listen in silence to the thoughts and you feel something stir within you.

After the last word is savoured, your life is never the same. Ever.

She sat there, under the sun, for a long time, lost in a book.