Wait!

These thousand hearts are all me.

To forsake even one is 

Some kind of sunrise turning to dust,

Some kind of silence on a glassy sea.

This ineffable murmur.

Feast

That constellation you have hidden in your heart. That latticework in which you hold a child's love.

May the light always be.

A Memory

That brief silence when the incessant rain pants and sprawls itself on leaves and roofs for just one instant, revealing the sounds of the city - a bike's horn, a lorry's rumble - that moment - does it have a name?

I remember such a rain from years ago. I was then living in an apartment with red floor tiles and a red-accented wall in every room. It had 3 small patios - one opened to the city's rising face - a flyover under construction (still is), another to a small, grassy playground (the boys and the football in the mornings; the buffaloes and the shepherd in the afternoons) and the third, to the courtyard of a small house surrounded by trees (yellow flowers in the Spring; later, they cut down the trees, sold the land and moved away).

And when it began raining, it rained for days in a slow dance to an even slower song. Turning in for the night, I would wonder if, by morning, I would be cut off from the rest of the world, as the waters rose all around. I would dread the sound of each droplet - yet they together would form a lullaby as I drifted off to sleep.

If I close my eyes now, I can still feel the way the rain crept into that apartment - hanging just above the floor tiles, swirling around the front door's steel handle, simmering in the pots and pans in the kitchen.

Jasmine Dreams

Through a crowded bus, through limbs and tufts of hair, a slanted rain tried to get to the other side. In the cloudy interior, two women welcomed it in their faces and sarees for a few minutes, before pulling down the window shades. One of them was stringing garlands with jasmine flowers. She will get down at the end of her journey, into the rain, clutching her plastic bag of garlands, the muddy water gushing at her naked feet. It isn't hard to find a good rain to drench in.

They all go somewhere. To their secrets, neighbors, jars of salt, chilly and turmeric, to lunches of rice and yogurt. Sometimes, the street dog follows them till their doorsteps.

Railway tracks border their villages. The trains stopping at their tiny railway stations carry them on a pilgrimage to temples far away. They meet working women traveling alone, with their own share of stories, and try to tell them with unabashed awe that it had all been unimaginable in their times. They huddle together to talk about sons and daughters and wedding feasts into the night as the train whizzes by villages similar to their own.

They all go somewhere. And then, they go home.

Who is dancing into the night?

A Darling Monsoon, There.

Step out into that right time of the evening and a rain-soaked breeze embraces you. Life slows down on such nights. An occasional vehicle headlight lits up the trail of water droplets on the window - someone must dance on such nights, swaying to the slowest fingers on the piano.

It is with a conflicted heart, you travel the night rain. You, who finds numerous ways to be annoyed by the pulse of the city during the day, fall for its charms now. "Where have you been, where have you been?"

You glide on neon roads. The carpets of light hold the rain in their hearts. 

(I have written about rain before, here.)

In My Neck of the Woods

What is in
Being a wolf, deep in the woods,
Howling away the deepest sorrow -
Of miles and separation,
The echoes of its despair
Reaching the valleys and tiny villages
Scattered in them,
Moonless nights,
And mothers hugging their little ones
Closer, whispering 'Hush...'
While their tiny hearts pound through
Sleepless nights?
What vent is in
A howl?

Or then would you swing the axe
Wide, in a big circle
And shatter this silence
Into a million fireflies?

I wait.

Belled Rebels

What haven't we written about?
The pebbles that dried in the evening sun? The tide that went out? The notion of being passionate about a lighthouse out there?

It is not hard to talk about freedom and clarity. Your silence was not bought.

What haven't we done?

To The Swan

A window opens into the backyard. Bird songs. I think about the desert winds I have neither written about nor seen. A book about the caravans and their battles is on its way to me.

In a sunlit room, on a swinging bed, a warm afternoon, your voice drifting towards me from the entrance to this home. I wait in a place between a smile and a longing. I had stories to tell and you are finally here.

A mother and her baby in a tiny place somewhere.

Sighs

 

We walk in a breeze of thoughts, in a pool of long lost friendships, in echoes of conversations, in footsteps of autumns.

That We Do

The glory of basking in the warm sunlight. Serenity from nature. Reaching out. Growing green.
Fading ray by ray, in front of our very eyes.

Much of our silence and most of our voice. Echoing off the canyon walls. Dry, arid lands. Barren. Cracked. Deserted.

The birds. Do they survive the long flights, with no branches in sight to rest a wing on? The depth of the silence, if not for them. Falling feather by feather.

 Never let go. 

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.

Another Year For Archival

Sometimes life is more than emptiness and pain, more than the need to be politically correct or to be sharp like the roads that wind around cliffs.

Life is more than the craving for love or a home, more than the silence that hangs in a winter night around the lit fireplace.

Life is more than the flight of a soul, like that of a bird, in its trials to shorten the distance between two thoughts.

Life is so much more and yet, each breath we take is so very light, that a sigh holding the weight of the world goes from heart to heart without the slightest ripple.

Soaring

Another chunk of life is on my wings. Memories have been packed up and shipped to another city.

The times had been good.
Glimpsed this place. Saw cooked-rice grains falling softly, like snow, on top of each other and wondered if they have souls. Adversities breed character.
Lived that age. Timeless and silent, they stand terribly alone.
Met people on roads, in buses and trains, who stopped to share tiny bits of their lives with me.
Went up a spiral staircase and was glad when it finally ended.
Met myself and I am surprised again.

Little pieces of us live in the future - in dreams and tomorrows. One day, we shall meet those tiny ones and be whole.

Pebbles in a Pond

With stony certainty, we are sure of some people. We have the pulse of their being what they are. We know them as if their blood flows in our veins.
Sometimes, not so much, about some others.

They had not been sand between the fingers. Not words written on water. Not a sting, not a fall. But they are, now.
They had been sunstone, summer rain. Detours that changed our destinations, enriched our journeys. They still are.

Now, you look at the vastness of the empty space and the darkness of the deep gorge left behind by them; you hold their share of sweet memories they didn't want a part of; you try to make sense of the nothingness in everything.

Dear friend, you held it well, precious, in your palm. And that is why I am sure of you.

Present Past

One needs to get out more often to see how the world is set in motion.
Discovering relics of the past is a wonderful moment indeed, but so is being part of the present. A blend of both, here.

The kid grew up.

The cows were sold, the barn empty and barred.

The sun gets stubborn. The afternoon nap.

Bridges to Burn, May We have None

Kerrville, Texas

Panakkad, Kerala