Eja

She doesn't have warm hands they write poetry about. Instead, she has perennially wet fingers for cooking thrice a day. They don't warm me up on a winter morning when she wakes me up. No, they have always crackled like icicles since when she taught me to stand on my own. They are the kind that hold my wrist when my vehement blood boils and soak in the heat running through my veins.They are the kind that are placed on my feverish, dolorous eye-ducts and defy physics to transfer placidity. They are her hands, that I have now.

Scratttcccchhhh

Time zones - Part 2

I even dream of you now
On the other end of the phone.
Do you know how many miles of submarine communication cables are there between us?
Do you know how many people are there between us?
Billions.
I would get tired even if they all carried me one-by-one to you.

P.S. Some drafts are meant to see the light of the day years after they were conceived. Oh well!

Chez moi!

Because I'll be leaving my own little haven. And because I love it so much that I need to document it.

Do you remember when we couldn't any more?

Do you remember when the turtles crawled up the ceiling , hanging upside down,

Milky Way gleaming on their shells?

Our own giant stars, they were.

And that one time when you placed a drop of rain on my osmotic throat,

You thought it'd quench my perennial thirst.

All it did was make my insides drier.

When, once, lilies grew in the tumultuous winds

Their petals spinning in spirals.

We were sucked into its vortex, floating in the low pressured center.

Or the time when the clouds caressed my body and you hated them for it?

When we walked carelessly on crunchy snails on the forest path

And the pitter-patter of the rain became an ominous growl.

Was it the snails getting back at us? Or the Gods?

I don't feel gods under my feet, 

I feel only snail squash, and it makes me jump.

I believe in snails, 

Soft and hard

Linear and curvy

Fallible, squashable.

Who can believe in gods?

Infallible, unsquashable.

So unreal, so unlike us!

Waiting in vain?

Sometimes happiness wears you out too. Some days, this inertia, borne out of satisfaction of mere existence, is (weirdly) just enough. I sleep well. I have almost forgotten how to be bluesy (much to the chagrin of my Flamenco teacher). On other occasions, I try to shake my insides for an ounce of any emotion other than glee, to feel something else. Not sadness. Longing, may be, for the summer rain, or for my father's arms. But, I seem to be fine with windy days, sunny skies and perpetual company of me. Then, one hour ago, I found her. I am still figuring if it's too early to be obsessing already. No I am not. I am dancing to her divine voice. It's past midnight. I'll be dipping my fingers in paints soon. I long to lay down on the wooden patio of the shack with him under a billion blinding stars, smelling cold air and thick coniferous cover. The lassitude ebbs away.

Oh Hindi Zahra, your wine-stained mouth is beautiful and, might I add, oddly inspiring.

You and I

In this caffeinated world!