Swings of a rhapsodic mind

A thousand tiny drops splatter on my concrete wall My eyes identify the sight but my ears feel deceived I close my eyes and let those drops sink in I see a girl making paper boats Her face all bright and lit up The sound of Boroxun splattering in the tin roofs Is what makes it alive for her She colours her boat green out of crayon stubs She gives a thought and attaches a red flag, An anchor of hope And off she runs to a puddle to let it free The boat glides, Boroxun ceases, Life happens and the boat is led adrift. I sense a chill in the humid afternoon, I open my eyes to face a concrete wall "It's raining",  I tell myself I close my windows, set my tea to boil, Put my ear plugs on, I can't bear the dull thuds of rain on the damp walls It doesn't sing to me like Boroxun does.

I  remember us like that of yesteryear When life was easier When goodbyes meant until tomorrow, And a hey forever! When life was measured over half burnt metaphors overshadowed by endless conversations. I see the burnt ashes of our effigies now And yet in one last ember, I see it all come alive Slowly and all at once. And time stops still like a dead lake. But memories run fast, Like a cigarette stub which catches fire. I try to blow it out but it catches the tallest flame.  I close my eyes And life comes alive. I hear laughter, tales and a mixture of odd melodies All washed away in time. And there I see us like that of yesteryear, And that's how I am gonna remember this. For in memories we would never change. Goodbyes would keep on meaning until tomorrow And a hey forever!

I love clicking pictures , not mine though. Photographs of everything around which catches my attention. Out of all, I like happy pictures for they remind me of happy times. I wonder how would the world have been without pictures to be stored, probably stories would have replaced them. I would have relied on the stories about my childhood and painted pictures in my imagination. Probably that would have been more fascinating for I could add any hue to it. When did I exactly outgrow my innocent self, I wonder! What would it be like to get back the consciousness of yester years, to be a kid in an adults body, to live like there was no tomorrow. That precisely I guess is too much to hope for. Years back when camera rolls offered you limited photographs to be clicked, important occasions marked the ritual of clicking photos. It had to have some significance attached and supposedly if you happened to have no luck, you couldn't make it to the camera roll. That was the charm of the whol...

The one thing that I was pretty sure of since childhood was, life wasn't going to be easy. I somehow knew that and accordingly trained myself whenever expectations received a major setback. There is this thing which I believe in, I have a faith that life won't throw wrong people my way. I am not being sceptical here. I have this notion that whoever I have been associated with till date are and were people who helped me grow and made my life less difficult. They may not know  but had it not for them, I wouldn't have come to believe in so many things. I found it amusing when someone once told me, "If given a chance, I would want to be just like you". This kept me thinking for days, for I only know about the set of struggles I have dealt with but probably I know to fake "a happy go lucky" air which makes people believe that this girl, out of all can never be sad, nor depressed. She has to be happy. That's what makes me believe that my life is never g...

It wasn't easy, rather it was difficult... Consider this : You wake up in the dead of the night to some inaudible sound coming from somewhere which you fail to locate and you leap out when that sound breaks into a sob and then into a wail. Right, you run alarmed clueless to find someone you hold dear completely shaken. What do you do in such situation?  Or probably I should be asking what does one need to do? Well, meet Mr depression.  Mr depression doesn't come with any prior notice. He just bargs in and leaves you dumbfounded. Coming back to where I was, what did I do when I found someone whom I held dear in sobs in the dead of the night complaining about life, willing to die and not live. I simply held his hand, stroked it and said let's face it together. I agree, I knew not how painful it was for him but I knew I had to stand by him. I stood and I am still standing. Someone who understood me was right when he told me that I couldn't blame myself for everything t...

People that I am closely acquainted with always complain about my reluctance while it comes to revealing what runs across my thought process. Well, I have always been wowed by people who easily can speak out their mind but every time I try to do that, words get frozen. It's not that I don't trust people, it's just that I have been always like this. I grew up confiding in me, I was solely responsible where I could take myself. There was no room for relying on anyone. My mind was solely to be guarded by me. And after decades, when I suddenly come across people who try to understand my inner core, my mind gets alarmed. It sends alarm signals asking me to not be so vulnerable and in one fleeting second, I surrendered to changes. The baggage had become too heavy to carry. I thought I too deserved to be heard, to be understood. That within me, lived another self reluctant to make an appearance. Today, as I write this my inner soul has once again taken its slumber. It no longer...

She is a paradox: shy yet fierce. She layers plethora of emotions under her skin, Solitude is what she seeks in chaos Yet, she gets scared of being left alone She is a hard shell which she allows the world to see but not penetrate But underneath is a storm which kindles A storm which challenges what she pretends to be And even then if she opens her locked up soul to you Remember, she has found her home. Ask her not to stay, you will hurt her fierce self Let her fly and sail her way For she won't tell you this but she fears to be home. For home pulls her back Home holds no judgement Home lets her sink And she wants to fight past her insecurities Past everything that holds her back And someday she will rise And be comfortable in her own skin!

December bandages my oozing wounds with frost I lay awake in the trench to protect your deep slumber It's filth dampen my clothes not my heart As I write this, my heart wanders My son perhaps longs for my warmth My wife perhaps gets tired of cooking stories for him Tell them, I live for them but I breathe for my motherland The tricolour flying high washes every pain Either I would let my tricolour fly high or return engulfed in its bosom Tell my son if his father fails to make home, He would return everytime the tricolour is held high. Ask him to not lament but be proud, To not shed a tear but keep his head high For he had left as a father to be a son of his country And soldiers don't die, they live in hearts.