Swings of a rhapsodic mind

I have seen people around me being ecstatic of celebrating one particular day with enthusiasm. People lit up street corners, engage in merry making and welcome the first of January with full vigour. I have never believed in attaching significance to particular days. For me any day is a special day let alone this. Moments make life beautiful, memories hold those moments together and in those memories I count my life. Days are just days. 2018 brought me things which I had never anticipated. It taught me to love. I had this clichéd idea that love necessarily involves happy endings. A princess in her glass slippers had to be with a Prince at the end for my "make believe"  to find home. I romanticised the idea of love to the extent that I could never fall in love these many years until I found someone. I saw the person as someone I could put my faith on, who revolutionised my world to the extent that I no more dreamt of prince and princesses. All that I wanted was a life filled...

"Read between the lines",  I heard our professor say. We were in midst of a Victorian text. I looked at her point blank. She had spoken about something which I had no clue about. "Ma'am,  would you please elaborate? ",  I tried framing this sentence in my mind but my introverted  self overpowered my inquisitive soul like everytime. I hopelessly waited for an explanation. Ma'am started explaining about how beyond the surface meaning of any written text, there lay a wide plethora of meaning which wasn't explicitly stated. She talked about finding a void between the written words and our imagination, that void which shapes our interpretation. That explanation opened doors to my perception of reading a text. It wasn't that I had never considered about the possibilities of meanings that lay coated in words until then, but, what perhaps I lacked was to look for that void where I questioned the layers of meaning, where I put myself in those layers of wo...

There are days when I don't want to be a woman, No, don't you get confused, I take pride in who I am. I take pride in all those abstractions which make me a human Yet, as I said, there are days... Days when you spend life like an untouchable. Separate plates, separate beds, restricted entries, restrictions on what you eat and breathe! They say I have Brahmin blood, They say it right perhaps but I smell diplomacy For I don't see what sets me apart! I don't smell purity I rarely offer prayers, I sing no hymns I don't seek God in idols. When did my realisation found home?, you may ask. I was 11 when I became a woman. "Sit like a girl, act like a girl, think like a girl ", that became my birthday jingle . I had bled one night and I thought I had got hurt I expected them to take me to a doctor I was thrown into a dark room instead " Don't look at males ", pronounced my granny " Why? ", my voice echoed Because you no m...

"Aren't you the new student?",  a voice demanded. "Yes,  m... I am ",  She faltered. It was her first day in the boarding school. She quickly scanned her belongings, her mother had packed everything neatly for her. She looked at the senior girl who had come to fetch her to her dorm. The stranger looked like a rogue: rough curry hair, freckled face and deep kohl smeared eyes. The journey from the academic building to her dorm drove her out of her wits. She could see a fright in people's eyes as the senior cleared her way to her dorm. As she neared the dorm, she felt like running back to her parents who by now had left with teary eyes. She bargained with herself for a moment. "You are here to study, to make good memories",  she told herself. A huge dorm lay ahead with symmetric beds and shelves on both sides . Bed 22, that was allotted to her. She quietly lowered her bags and tried to make peace with what lay ahead. That concrete bed in one dam...

As I laid awake this morning, I could smell a change My eyes refused to welcome the dim light, it's been accustomed to sun's warmth But my heart leapt with joy as it welcomed rain. My warm blanket promised me of dreams, "stay",  I heard it's voice I bargained for a moment between dreams  and the pleasure of a rain soaked soul. "Nah, girl you cannot afford to get drenched", warned a voice . I looked out towards the sky, weeping mighty tears. My past mistakes came roaring to my window sill. In one fleeting second, I came home to rain All secrets lay threadbare as I gave myself to this rain clad morning. Was it the rain soaking my heart or my warm tears?  I would let rain decide that.

The clouds up there you see, are my companion They travel with me wherever I go. What is so special about them? You might wonder. I would say, they are beautiful in their vulnerability. They know they are beautiful without anyone vouching by them. They accept that people love the sky and ignore their fleeting existence, But they are special, special in their ordinariness. They might drown you deep but they clear their way to fetch you sunshine At times, I see them in pain grumbling with anger. I shudder in fear unable to face them, Yet, they gently cross over my window, Aware of how I feel and how difficult they have been to me. And I wake up to their cottony smile, And wonder, where do their tears dry? How difficult it must be to be a cloud! They can only be a happy soul whose tears remain unshed A legacy which weighs them down. The day all hell breaks loose on them, They no more remain who they are, they become thunder and lighting and ease out in rain drops Which...

I heard my call one fine morning as I lay awake, The silver lining of my skin could absorb it There it was, a call from the mountains. No, you probably get me wrong here, I am not into Mountain climbing Nor a person inclined towards adventures, The mountains and I share a deeper connection It's hazy blurred view from my window has been my constant It's snowing out there, the wind conspires dismal tidings, But, while the birds have left and the clouds are at rest, the mountain knows it has me. It's time I settle the mountains that have been searching home in me It's time I look for some shade and some sunshine It's time I bring home mountains.

Life precisely is a chaos which whirls unbound. You try to pull its edges together but in one fleeting second it unwraps itself and shakes us for good. The chaos at most of the times as we see, renders us confused. You would dwindle between decisions and far fetched conclusions. The water tight compartments of good and evil suddenly start fusing as the chaos takes over. The chaos around us is precisely a reflection of the chaos within. It defines the crisis or the threat which life decides to hurl at us but what we need to ask at this time of chaos is, who decides what is chaotic? To you who has a laid back life with no obligation to cater to, a slight bruise that your hand might incur as you leap fences may be chaotic whereas for a sturdy farmer working in his fields, he would wear the scars from his sickle with pride. We humans, have a tendency of looking for symmetry and anything that doesn't follow our design turn out to be chaotic. We ascribe definitions which follow rigid ...

One, two, threeee cracked the cane... Class IV (B),  the summer of 2002 it was. The teacher clad in a red shirt emitted stern hues. The students shuddered as they saw his cane taking longer strides across the corridor. There were categories of students within the class. Some were the book worm types who mugged everything they could find in the pages of the book. Some were the smart types, who knew what would come handy and relied on skim reading. The rest of the class were termed as the dumb lot who were always clueless about what their books held in them. But, in every class let alone this, there you would spot one more category of students who are often ignored under the conclusion that they seem like the dumb ones. This category of students comprises of the "introverts". There, our story finds one introvert girl shuddering in fear as the cane approached nearer. Grammar was her favourite but she had not yet mugged those verb patterns which were assigned to them as home w...