Swings of a rhapsodic mind

She sat by her grandpa under a starlit sky. It was a sultry summer night and was still an era where she could actually escape into her dream world aided by power cuts which had devoted hours each night. She would fiddle with her Maths copy unable to bear the wrath of sums and would keep praying to God to bless them with a power cut which meant story time with her grandpa. No sooner would her prayers get answered, she would spring to action. Ah! There was her grandpa waiting for her as eagerly as she was waiting to hear the story. It was a daily ritual for them to discuss stories. I am attaching one of those: WHO IS GOD? The idea of God often perplexed the little kid. Born and brought up in a Brahmin household which vibrated each morning and evening with the chants of prayers offered to deities, the idea of the supreme almighty seemed perplexing. Her mother had instilled into her  the habit of chanting saraswati vandana which she would chant each evening folding her hands as she were

It was a humid autumn afternoon,  she was waiting for the bus in the crowded bus stand. Just as she was about to board the bus, she felt something slip past, but before she could actually figure out what was going on she had boarded the bus and it had already plunged in its routine fashion. She quietly took shelter in the window seat, ah! that was the only thing which made her mundane life beautiful. The cool breeze fondled her hair and soothed her racing heart. She was quite lost in herself when a whisper jolted her back. The man seated next to her was holding a book. Hold on! Wasn't it her book? She thought aloud. She reached for her back pack, well not again! It wasn't a new thing, she had been infamously famous for being careless since school. She smiled coyly at the stranger who by now had in a very precise manner told her how he had seen her drop the book while boarding the bus and hence had thought of picking it up for her. She pocketed her embarrassment and thanked h

Dear soul, why do you seek yourself in others, Those imperfect perfections can't really pull your pieces. They may try but they aren't you. You are those last rays of sun smiling on broken window panes. They talk of French windows, of castles and towers Which you admire but wouldn't like to own. You are that last ounce of pain that you carefully hide under your smile, They talk of tattoos, they brag of fame, Ah! bogus and baseless, your mind reports. You pour affections day and out in their cup And they drain it out without thinking much. This should stop, I tell you, you need to love yourself, For, you can't call them by your name, can you? They may act, they may try but they can never be you They will put on a fake reflection obscuring your vision But, dear soul don't get deceived. You deserve to be free, you deserve to be you and no one else!

"Let me fit you into a locket", said he. He was a hopeless romantic , whom she could never understand. She mused, couldn't he carry those warm feelings in his heart, why would she be needed to fit into an odd sized locket dangling on his neck! They both had been together since long, so much so that he still could point out the exact years when she had her pimples. Well, he was madly in love with her, even she was but with time as they grew, he grew obsessed. She felt stifled , suffocated out of the intensity of love he displayed. Slowly, she found they had everything but love had silently slipped away from the window without leaving a trace to bring it back to them. She tried to the last bit possible, forsaking a part of herself each time. But as they say, love blinded him so much so that he couldn't even feel the void she packed beneath her smile. He had begun to hurt her each time he took her to bed. The bruises reminded her of her decaying soul which pleaded each

"A butterfly, I would want you to be" , these words keep reverberating in Nafiza's mind. Years! It's been years but the intensity of these words inflict her bruised heart. "Abba", how much she had longed to hear this word escape her lips but how could she deceive her bruised heart. Well, when was it last that she was made to believe that she could have a family of her own, with both Ammi and Abba. How much she longed to take rides to the school with her Abba, and how dejected she felt each parent's day to see the vacant look at Ammi's face whenever anyone inquired about him. She could see it all, that something was so not right, for her Abba was a mystery to the world who appeared shielded by the moon and disappeared before the sun could reveal his whereabouts. She as her neighbour once told her was a child of "haram". She was fascinated by the word and raced her way to reach Ammi, she could see Ammi go pale while she asked for the meaning

Nine yards, the sarees  hanging in my mother's cupboard have become  my new companion. A saree, isn't just yards of threads juxtaposed to form a drape, a saree is possibly an emotion which thrives ! I have grown seeing the pretty ladies of my family adorning sarees of all kinds. But, as a kid I was fascinated by my grandma's sarees, the reason being , she held on to the bright fabrics which resembled an artist's dreamscape. I would pester her to drape me one and she would mockingly pull my cheeks saying first outgrow the nine yards and then you can have all of these sarees for yourself. Ah! Wish you were around 'aama', without you here I don't even feel like looking at your closet which has been clinging to a mothballed past. I was never a person who could master the art of draping a saree, I would make a fuss over it's unwillingness to neatly stay locked in pleats. But I have believed that the grace a saree holds can't be substituted by any ot

I don't have the sky over my head, The land underneath fails to hold me. I stagger between the best of both worlds Too plain to be a human, too bold to be a spirit. My creased skin sparkles under the magic dust, But I wish I could get rid of it, my past aflictions! I wish to see what I couldn't blinded by time, I wish a whisper from the past could set me free. I wish I could die slowly and yet all at once. I wish against the wishes that life holds. I wish I could rob the secrets of Pandora's box, I wish I could sing  sleeping beauty a little lullaby , I wish to tell the happy prince, it's okay, I see him cry! I wish to tell everyone that it's okay to wear one's skin That it's okay to be what you want to be That being alive were a blessing enough That the sky still smiles at them That the ground is still theirs That they still get the best of one world That they are alive, that they are free That they are everything that I failed to be.

Isn't it strange how love binds people who are polar opposites! I have always believed love to be a faith which grows deeper each day as it is based on trust and the ability to hold on just like the waves hold on to the sea. The story is about two love birds who got caught in the web of love. He resembles the morning sunshine, shy yet bold enough to fight past the night's gloom. A deafening silence engulfing his soul. She is a tempest who gave his silence a shattering jolt. And just when the word impossible could have defined the bond they likely could have shared, the word split itself into " I am possible!" and a possibly, "I am possible" love story took birth. What interests me is the way they stand together,  I have seen them fight, seen them suffer but that suffering has it's beauty of it's own where one cries and the other feels the pain (Okay, that was a cliche!) I was always attracted towards stories which had pain in the sense that it mad