Kiss

Their hands brushed accidentally while jostling for space in the hallway. Overcome by his lust for her, which had been bubbling for days, he ceased her, just below her elbow. He called out her name, almost simultaneously.

She turned to face him, almost surprised, a little bit in nervousness, a little bit in love. Their eyes met. Her breathing was unsteady, fast. She had been dancing downstairs in the mild afternoon sun. She smelt of sweat. He smelt like cool air conditioning and the sea. He was calm and knew what was going to happen.

He moved to kiss her on the lips but paused and kissed her forehead instead. When you love someone that much, you want to love her in flesh as well. Her hair, her belly, her nose, even fingertips and ears, everything that is hers, you want to cup between your hands and kiss.

She closed her eyes in disbelief, was this really happening. She was a few inches shorter than him and he had to bend down to kiss her on the lips. They locked in a kiss for ten seconds. She was leaning on the kitchen wall and he was leaning on her. They held hands, firmly. Both hands. Like each other were all they had. Like she was his peaceful permanent. And he was hers.

After that she pulled away softly and rested her head on his chest. He wanted to go on, but the telephone rang. He didn't care and held her chin in his hands. But she wouldn't stay. With the ringing of the phone, reality had trickled into their happy cocoon. He desperately tried to hold her back, without a care for anything else in the world. All that he wanted was to have her. They stood there bathed in each other's sighs for moments. But she slipped away from him and tip toed towards the telephone. He turned to her and swallowed in large gulps. Waiting for her reaction. Waiting for her to say some things. Acknowledge somethings. 

She didn't have that courage. She pretended as if nothing had happened. After mumbling inconsequential pleasantries on the phone, she walked away slowly even as he kept calling out her name, once, twice and thrice.

And her bangles jingled all along. 

U or me

Life moves fast

Years pile up

2009 between '14 and' 08

A bit of '06 somewhere in there

Although I remember nothing 

Except for what has pained me

But I forget almost time, in its entirety 

The inconsequential hours & months

Mail exchanges with strangers 

Calls lasting into nights, breathless cycle rides

Pictures, guileless selfies, minute long videos 

A mammoth of life is locked in those

And they're casually & effortlessly erased

Perhaps because we're not meant 

To hold on to every tiny thing

Else how would we wallow in everyday misery 

Now if I recollect hard

I can contain my entire thirty odd years

In a few hours

That's how shrink worthy I am

Also how much I remember of me

Is exactly as much as I remember of you

Funny as it may seem, it be true

And our chords run so deep

Honeybunch Sugarplum

My bespectacled darling 

When I scram through my memories 

I cannot know

Which-one is you

And which-one is me

The Girl

The girl was a girl no more. At twenty-seven, she could be a woman, full-fledged. But still she was a girl because that's how girls are referred to.

The girl shared an apartment with her two friends. She has her own bedroom which she had adorned with fairy lights, mirrors, house plants and stuffed toys. However the insides of her head were disheveled. She was dragging herself from one day to the next. And barely

She had just broken up. It had been a steady relationship of what now seemed to be her entire life. But they had lived in a different cities for a while and the distance had wrecked havoc.

The girl got lonely a lot. Tried new things with her hair. Clothes. Shoes. She read poetry, racy novellas even, just to stay put. But nothing worked. Her ex dumped her. Both of them were distraught. But they had to let go when they still could. 

Although picking up the pieces of her life was blindingly difficult, there was no other way to go. Nowhere else to be. 

The girl could not manage to get out from the bed in the morning. She decided she would quit her job and live off her parents for a bit. Immediately she took up a hobby she had always yearned to nurture. Pottery.

She made vases. Ugly and ordinary. But the feel of clay in her hands made her accept that most things are malleable. After months, she could make a half decent vase. The girl put them up on Instagram. 

Then she wanted to cook. She wanted to cook so much that there was no end to it. She still hadn't managed to tell her mom and dad exactly how unemployed she was. She used the last of her savings to buy the dishes and groceries. 

She started a kitchen and hand delivered meals to single people who lived nearby. She didn't get to rise with her head above water for months, but getting out of bed was no longer the biggest obstacle in her day. 

She cooked and packed lunches and dinners like it was nobody's business. She dressed in ordinary clothes and walked to deliver the meals. She was unrecognizable when compared with her previous self. But she had begun. To heal.

The girl. A Girl. 

I write because I too seek to heal. Because I seem to somehow know that I am too damaged to create anything beautiful. I would so rather I wasn't this way

Sujata

Sujata wore a blouse with puffed short sleeves with her usual chiffon sari that day. It was a humid afternoon in Howrah. It was just before lunch time and she was busy assembling lunch. Her husband would be home in minutes. She had filled the bitter gourds with spiced potato and was about to leave them in the frying pan, when the bell rang.

Sujata took on a lot of work. Mostly house work. Sometimes she hauled bags of groceries up the stairs. She cooked three meals for her family, washed and cleaned, folded piles of laundry etc. But she never showed any exhaustion. Perhaps because she went about tasks at her own pace, like a swan. For instance, when the bell rang, she didn't leave the gourds to open the door. Rather she saw them crackle in the oil, washed her hands, while wiping them with the end of her sari, walked to the door.

Sujata pulled out a chair for him and while he sat there scrolling through his phone, she served him several dishes that she had cooked since mid morning. Steamed rice with tempered dal, little aubergines dipped in besan and fried, a small salad, a bit of leftover chholey and the potato stuffed bittter gourd that came last. Husband had a silver jewelry shop in the market nearby and always showed up for lunch. Next would be her father in law who stayed in a room in their house and came out for necessities like food and water. He didn't like the outside much since he had a television inside the tiny room he had. Sujata sometimes served him lunch inside. But that day he had chosen to come out.

After him, Sujata's son would reach home from school and eat lunch while narrating his day to his mother. Sujata would listen to all tit bits and ask a question or two in return. Sometimes, even more folks showed up after that, unexpected, brothers, or sisters who were in the area, friends and guests. After feeding everyone, Sujata would sit with whatever food was left in a bowl alone on the dining table and eat. Slowly, at her own pace. Later she would make a cup of tea and vanish into her room for a bit before emerging to start making dinner.

That  day when she went to her bedroom after lunch, her husband was on the bed, watching the news. She often pondered whether he chatted with that old mistress of his. But she had stopped asking him that question a few years ago. Accepting had made it easier, albeit only a little. The moment she lay on the bed, he sat up and left. 

Sujata breathed deeply and thought if she should fold the laundry or speak to her son. Then she peeked out the window. It was a cloudy day, perhaps the clothes wouldn't have dried completely. So she decided to lie down a little longer. 

Her mind meandered for a while before she sat up to sip from her tea cup.

Suddenly her head rolled. The feeling traveled down her body like a thunder. Her chest felt tight and she fell on the floor. Her breathing paused. 

As per pupils closed, her thoughts stretched out a bit longer. Next in the room would be her son who would rush in after hearing the thud. He would probably call his father. Then perhaps, some neighbors or relatives. Her daughter who studied engineering and lived in a hostel, one night away, would probably be the last to arrive. 

DTF

Funny, how when I thought about a date, only food came to mind. I saw dimly lit yellow restaurants with red decor. Heard the clink of cutlery and thought about soups, hot and sour, or cream of mushroom, fried chicken or salads with my favorite dressing, breads, lots of breads and oodles of noodles. Surprisingly my mind never strayed to dessert. Someone I knew said they would skip dinner but not dessert. Not me though. I would indulge in ample amounts of both, in their natural order. But I never would fantasize as much about a cheese cake as I would about, say, a bowl of ramen or steamy dumplings.

And what was more shocking was the fact that I never invested mindspace on the man. I obviously chatted and listened. And occasionally flirted. But, I never obsessed. I was cool. Twenty-seven, and not particularly looking. But not shutting the doors entirely either. I had, what you would call, an open mind.

I had many serious infatuations, followed by not-an-affair kind of affairs with mostly emotionally unavailable men. Then a couple of medium term relationships, one in grad school and one at the work place. The former didn't last the distance, after graduation, like I had assumed it would not. The latter did not survive because, well, I grew up.

So now there was no room for drama. I was down to DTF. Although I was no Charlie Harper, I had shed most of my shyness like an old skin. And I was meeting with a guy I had run into on a dating website. We were meeting over egg rolls and other street food, out in front of a park I used to frequent.

Winter

When in sixth grade

In the middle of a school fete

On a crisp December morning

I told my plump teacher of Math

That I would miss class for a week or more

Flowers in her hair, and brows squeezed 

She asked what was I upto

We were going up to the Himalayas 

Yes, in winter

Brows immediately apart

She asked me to have some fun, please

For hundreds of miles

In a bus with nausea as a co-passenger

Families with kids, old folks 

The single and unattached

And people of all other kinds

Packed with our bags and suitcases 

Embarked on a journey north ward 

Sometime around Christmas

When the twelve year old me

Woke up in the morning 

I saw snow capped mountains 

I, literally I had never seen snow

Several mountain ranges away

But snow, nevertheless 

My eyes were awed

And I felt completely woke

I rolled down the window

A chill caught my cheek

And I felt my mellow unviolated skin

Crack in the cold

That honey, was the first feel of winter

Fling

I cannot remember your face, tonite

Wide awake as my mind floats back in time

We were acquaintances, merely

You were after my good friend

And thought, I'd fix you up with her

How naive, mister

And hence you befriended me

But slowly you gave up on my friend

Because that was not to be

And that was that

Years later I visited your city 

Wild, by the sea

And you felt obligated to show me around

Or you wanted to, really

I didn't bother to know

I was elated, you showed up

Mostly, just showing up matters

You took me out for pizza

And to the movies 

To stake dinners with candles

It felt funny because I really dressed up

Skirts and heels, so not me 

You teased me and stepped back

We had been careful about crossing lines 

I treated you to a sub, 

In a sunny looking subway on a Saturday 

Remember?

And spilled coke all over your shirt

My face was flushed pink 

And you seemed totally okay

Somewhere there we crossed those lines

You made me garlic bread 

In the middle of the night

We ate bars of chocolate 

And kissed in the dark

I wasn't the pretty one

Definitely not your type

You were far from my type too

We both knew and it didn't matter

Such was that fling

Short-lived and too casual for memory

Yet, I remember 

Everything but your face

Later, when you coyly asked me permission 

To kiss me again

I sobered up and said that's not a great idea

How you must've shrunk

I cringe to think of, now

Strangers

I noticed a framed photograph of a bunch of strangers in my living room. Next to the television. I couldn't remember why it was there. I hardly ever notice my house. Things lay, neglected and dusty. I have often wanted to have a life in which the mind is beautiful, you know. So I don't much focus on making the house beautiful. In the last decades, I've managed neither. Anyway.

I picked up the photograph and stared closely. I could spot myself in the last row. A different version of me, of course. I am, ageless, to be truthful. I was born with an older person's head. So I never feel I have been childish in the past. In the picture, my hair is tied up, I am wearing shorts and a favourite blue top. Next to me is someone I had recently met with back then.

This person, a girl, vivacious and affable had taken a keen interest in me at work. In fact, she suggested, we go out for Chinese lunch, just like that, out of the blue. I obviously couldn't turn her down and we became friends. The way an introvert and extrovert gel, we adhered to each other with a level of comfort I hadn't recently found in another human. 

This girl, she had her boyfriend introduced to me. He worked in one of the adjacent buildings. He came off as a reticent man. But when he spoke, it seemed, folks listened and intently. For some reason, could be my intense vulnerability, or me living alone, having moved into the city recently and not knowing another soul, the girl was reluctant to leave me unattended. I mean, she would hover around. And I, surprisingly, didn't rebuke her and let it be.

The couple, they never made me feel like I was third wheeling, you know. It was always like, we were friends hanging out. They started accompanying me to my Saturday night temple outings, instead of hitting the pubs in town. Who does that?

One day, the girl suggested we go the waterpark. I had never been to an amusement park. I didn't buy the idea of having an entire day set aside for fun activities. I wasn't good enough for such prizes. But she convinced me that I was. 

It was a Sunday and we took the bus to the outskirts. The day whizzed past wonderfully. I crossed the lazy river thrice. And there were tidal lakes and the joy of screaming hydrophobic strangers next to me as they drowned in waist high waves. Towards the end, we realised we didn't have a picture. So this was the last ride we took. 

It was one of those slides, roller coaster kind of thing where the cart with a dozen people crashed into the water. The picture was taken just before we crashed. Our jaws are wide open. Eyes are tremendously excited and we're screaming like there's no tomorrow.

I held the photo in my hands and realised that I had been keeping a photo of nine total strangers in my living room for over four years. The girl too moved away after she switched jobs, but not before breaking up with the reticent boyfriend. So, the only person I knew in the photograph was me. The rest were all strangers. In that brief moment, my agelessness came crashing down.

Fetch me

Come back to me, for tonight

I am right there,

Where you left me

In 2013

Outside the movie theater

Before the matinee show

In soft rain

Drenched in October

I've tried, to move on

Trust me when I say I have

And I've failed, unflinchingly

You're still the one of my dreams

Irreversibly damaged

Broken and exhausted

I'm furious at myself

For letting you leave me

Can't you come back

And fetch me

Unfuck up my life

Loosen the knots

Breathe air into my mouth

Tell me it's okay

To fail & be miserable

To be angry & unhappy

I want to be told this

I want to be gathered

In your arms

And watch that movie, we never did

Circus

The travelling circus party has halted in the city. They did that once in a few years. We lived in the hinterland, the villages. And were really little at that time. I'm talking early '90's. 

Aunties and mother, decided to take us to the city to watch the circus. The men were away at work. Those were the days when old women in the family booked a taxi and went to distant villages and fixed a girl for an uncle in marriage. Such girls then moved into our homes and became our aunties. And also there were vivacious daughters of the family, who were married at nubile ages, to government job holder men, and they were aunties too who visited from the city in summers and winters for respective vacations. 

And both categories of aunties and mother, decided to take the kids to the circus in the city. And there was no stopping. For some reason a taxi was not available. They never were, for immediate bookings. Those were the days when hardly anyone had cars and you had to tell the taxi driver weeks before. So somebody called an auto-rickshaw. Although now, it is difficult to imagine how so many of us fitted into one little auto-rickshaw, but we did. I remember one gigantic auto-rickshaw. The kind, that was probably not manufactured. 

The driver had a potbelly and a mustache. We, packed food in paper packets and water bottles, umbrellas and towels and embarked on the road trip to the city. It was more than fifty kilometres away. And with bad roads, that must have been a lot. A few of the women and children puked on the way. The auto must have been stopped. People must have complained that we would be too late for the circus. But thankfully we made it on time. 

The kids were excited beyond words. Tickets were bought with soiled notes from women who toiled in kitchens and saved money underneath pickle jars. You can't tag a value to such things. 

We got distant seats, but I don't remember regretting. Every show amazed us. The circus was held inside a gigantic tent of sorts. The seating area with rickety steel chairs was dimly lit. The stage had the brightest lights I'd ever seen. As trick after trick was performed by magicians, we, a family of a dozen women and children, huddled together, chatted, giggled and shushed each other. 

Petite little white girls hung from the roof with invisible ropes and relentlessly entertained us with their gymnastic prowess. Even our good old Indian girls did the same but the make up on their faces, outshone the lights. And we were besides ourselves to see white women, in bikinis, we had never seen someone so fair before. 

Animals were called upon. Ill fed tigers and elephants. Jokers who stood on storey high wooden legs hidden inside their pants and the littlest of kids were all wide eyed. 

When the show got over, we were all famished and thirsty and tired. But our pot-bellied auto driver had bailed on us. We looked everywhere, but he had taken an advance for the to and fro journey and left us in the lurch. The women got worried, it had already gotten dark. And there was no telephone to call and inform or get help.

One of mother's half a dozen brothers lived in the city. He was a big shot civil engineer who built bridges. Bridges that mother would show to us every-time we crossed them. How big a man would be, I wondered, who could build such enormous bridges. I realized he a was not that big, when we all sought refuge at his government quarters for the night. They were surprised to host so many and without notice, but what other choice did anyone have. 

The next day, after a visit to the city's big temples, and lunch at a roadside dhaba, the women and children headed back home in a bus. 

Man

What a little boy you were. With your impish smile. You hardly said anything provocative ever. You were so mild, subtle. Gentle even. I doubted if you were in love with me. Perhaps, not.

An infatuation? Yes, sure. It wasn't that long ago. But we were so much younger, you and I. Unhardened by life yet, unburdened. Cheery, dreamy even, hopeless and nevertheless filled with hope. So a crush, yes that's possible.

But love was beyond the horizon of possibilities. It always is. Now we have realised, love lapses, fades, moves on. But we didn't know this back then and were caught unawares. Naturally assuming that infatuations would, one day, convert to love, automatically.

But that never happened. We drifted, apart. Aged, lost as much as we gained. Then, thousands of nights later, I tried to imagine how you would be. Would there be lines under your eyes now? I closed my eyes to recollect your face. Nothing came to my head and my eyes saw blank. I tried again. Many other faces pushed into my recollection, but yours. I tried to discard them all and think of you again. Only you.

33

I regret everything

Not everyone, nor in the furthest of chances, I

Would appreciate, how it was possible, to ever

Regret everything

But I do

I am real

And I've messed everything up

This poverty of mind

Body, and complete lack of riches

I had never foreseen

My peers bathe in plentitude 

And I've even given up on envy

Now I merely scream into pillows

Hope isn't my alibi

For I relinquished it long ago

I reside among many absurdities

Wanting to crush my life like a crumpled sheet of paper

And throwing it into the infinity of space

I think of ending things

But still continue to be

Because the logistics of death aren't for me yet

Happy 33 to me

2020

A few years ago, we ate out, dinner in icy cold Shillong nights. Chicken kebabs, in restaurants that are now closed. And walked back in multiple jackets, scarfs, mufflers and whatnot. We were, so hopelessly romantic, looking for the one paramour.

A few years ago, we kissed the sun and wandered around Bombay beaches in sweltering summer afternoons. Slurping mango lassi at ten bucks a glass. Salty winds gushing through our tufts of hair, untamed. We could be everything, if we ever wanted. 

A few years ago, we hung out laundry to dry on crisp and breezy Bangalore Saturdays. We shopped for trinkets aimlessly in the evenings and drank in smokey bars and remembered other years.

A few years ago, in spring, in the home town, town of towns as strange flowers flowered and filled the air with addictive smells, we held mugs of creamy coffee in our hands, languorosly chatted and looked for the right words.

We don't know how we lived this long. But suddenly we're in 2020 and the world's ending. We've hardly ever been happy. But now that the literal apocalypse has been squeezed into a few months, here's to harbouring a silent hope, that we get to see 2021. 

Migration

Long ago, I lived in an old house surrounded by periwinkle bushes. A river flowed near by. We reared chickens and harvested eggs. Summer storms brought on a surfeit of mangoes. Then mother decided we needed better education. 

So we loaded every piece of furniture we owned in a minitruck and moved many many kilometres away. I still remember sighting the truck on top of the Mahanadi bridge, all our stuff covered precariously with a tarp behind. That was some summer day in the mid nineties.

By the time we reached our new home, the clouds had burst open. Ours was a two bedroom flat on the ground floor with a barren front porch. The soil looked like nothing would ever grow on it. I missed the periwinkle and the mangoes and the tall hibiscus trees that flowered in hundreds.

But soon I began to belong to the new place. I was so young and malleable. I joined a new school. I was about eight or nine. It wasn't the posh little montessori my little brother went to where they were taught vegetable painting with lady-fingers. 

I went to a bridge school. A school that would help me bridge the transfer from my older school in the village to the new english medium school in the city. The main motive behind the migration afterall was better education. 

The school I went to was nearby. I remember it being really tiny. Classrooms were as cramped as bedrooms and benches were pushed against one another. The walls has holes. I made a few friends. Somehow I never missed my old school from the village. Perhaps there was nothing to miss about it. Except a cartoon I had painted, framed and gifted to the principal before leaving. The principal was elated and he hung it on his wall. I longed to go back to solely procure that painting.

But the new tiny bridge school grew on me. It finished sometime in the afternoon and I always came home and ate lunch. One day it rained quite heavily and a friend of mine was stranded in school as nobody came to pick her up. I swooped in and suggested she come to my house.

Oddly, that day mother was at work and father was home. My little brother recited the rhymes he had been taught that day. My friend and I were both treated like guests in my own house. Father served us platters of fryums. Garnished and all. Glasses of fanta. And a plate full of boiled eggs, sliced into halves and sprinkled with pepper and salt. 

There were like half a dozen eggs on that plate. I had absolutely never felt that pampered. Eggs were special food for some reason. You always had one at a time. My friend was flabbergasted and decided to stop by often.

She never came again. I changed schools and joined where my brother went. On the first English test, I had scored 9 on 25. After years of crippling inferiority complex, I could barely adhere to that school. Somehow I always felt as if I was being pushed over some kind of edge. Never felt at home or safe anywhere for a long time that followed.

Failing

When I was about thirteen, a girl from the class above mine, flunked and came to sit in the bench behind me. She shared the bench with another girl who had flunked along with her. The teacher had made them sit together so that they could share their shame as well. But they didn't get along well at all. Almost immediately I started becoming friends with her. There was this innane frankness about her. And happiness. She was always giggling, chatting, laughing. Even as a kid that young, I remember being sad, afraid, angry. So our opposites attracted, perhaps.

She used to get idlis and curried peas in her lunch box. Everyday we began sharing lunch. We went to the water filter together to fill our bottles. We sat with each other in PT class. We talked, almost constantly. I had made a new friend. 

I used to be good at studies, I was almost about topping the class then. So it was an odd match. Even when my friend was repeating my class, she kept scoring badly in tests. Not that it hampered her joy. There was this certain effervescence about her that was inerasable. 

Since she was the weakest in math, her dad found her a tuition teacher who came to her house two days a week. I joined for the class too, along with a few other kids from the neighborhood. I now think I went solely because one of the senior boys was a neighbour of hers, and he I had a pretty bad crush on. But that's another story.

Our math teacher was excellent. He totally was a game changer for me because he made me like math. He caught me sleeping with my eyes open a few times and made fun of me adorably. But with my friend, he was more strict because he had promised her father he wouldn't let her fail again.

Her father was a businessman. Their apartment was big and flashy. My friend wore fancy clothes and was dropped off at school in a gigantic car. Often after the tuition I would stay back at her house and watch TV or just chat. And be treated with delicacies.

I told her everything that was on my mind. But she hardly ever shared anything. I imagined she had nothing going on in her head. So I let it be that way. Soon we passed out of school and parted ways. We wouldn't see each other for a long time. Because we had nothing in common anymore.

I started the gruelling journey of preparing for college entrance examinations. She casually meandered through 10+2 in a different school. I heard from somebody that she burnt her hands when a pan of hot maggi titled and fell off the stove. I didn't call her then, because I was just being me. Somehow that would be the last memory of her I would keep.

We weren't even friends on facebook. Wonder how that happened.

Then one day, when I was about eighteen or so, I heard she fell in love and eloped. With an older guy. That sounded so chain-breakingly liberating at that point in time, to me. I didn't even have a boyfriend. I was just fat and studious. 

More years went by, life really dumbed me down. That happens. A person I worked with invited me to his kid's first birthday. I happily obliged. At that party, I was lounging with a plate full of buffet Chinese food, when I saw a beautiful ten year old girl running around in a princess frock. Her mother loudly warned her to be more careful. It was my effervescent friend from school.

I was besides myself with joy to see her. She looked exactly the same except chubbier. Her daughter was only a younger version of her. She held a little baby boy in her arms. Her husband was a relative of my colleague's. We talked even though we didn't have much to talk about. Even though there was nothing to say, there was so much. I welled up inside. And yet, she was just smiling, giggling, like not a day had passed and she would pop open her lunch box and idlis would emerge. 

Safety-pin

I don't know how much a sense of shame men possess, in the mundane coming and going of things. Women for one, average day-to-day women are built to be ashamed. A hint of unintentional cleavage would crumple her. So I didn't know about you. 

Although sometimes when you would walk up to me and say hi, and chat while fiddling with your wedding ring, I would notice, in the folds of your shirt, a bit of your chest visible between buttons. Suddenly being conscious of it, I would look away. You wouldn't even know why I did what I did, finish our terse chat and walk away.

So, the other day, when you walked up to me, like a little boy, that you sometimes are and asked. In a nimble voice. If I had a safety-pin. Something had ripped your buttons open. You were holding your shirt together with your fingers. 

A trifle taken aback, I didn't know whether to stare at your face or your buttons. I involuntartily fished out my hand bag and started rummaging through all the pouches.

Simultaneously regretting that why being a woman I wouldn't keep basic stuff like a safety pin or a clip or a rubber band handy. Some women I have come across are so sorted, they carry everything from a snack of salted almonds to headache pills to scarves and god knows what not. And here I am, struggling to find a mere safety-pin.

You patiently waited through my dramatic search. I looked at you hopeless. I didn't have a safety-pin in my bag. You half smiled, perhaps and began walking away, still clutching your shirt together.

I asked someone else. She had one and fished it out immediately. I borrowed it from her for you. Although I didn't say it to her in as many words. And walked to you and handed it over. You grinned. This time, totally.

And right in front of me pinned your shirt right back. I didn't know where to look anymore. So I ingulged myself and inhaled that vision. 

Puri

Insanity runs in my family. Like it runs in everyone's. A fifth of cousins in every generation would be crazy in some way or the other. Or a fourth. And the rest would have sanity forced upon them. Because who then would take care of the insane cousins. 

It's true albeit not that obvious. People's brains just pop open. Some cousin develops a strong case of OCD in his teens. Some aunt has been a little off since her childhood. Some uncle can't get out of bed after retirement. Another third cousin has anger issues and can't hold a job, can't manage people, in effect can't make it from day to day. And of course, drug and alcohol issues are more rampant than they seem. 

But of course, we hide. We hide that insanity races in our veins along with the blood that we inherited. Because we're ashamed. Because we're supposed to be fine. Why wouldn't we be? How can we be anything less than what's expected of us. I think this lack of acceptance pushes many of those sitting on the edge, into the deep gorge. 

But this story is from back in the day. Many many years ago when I wasn't aware of any of this. I was little. Seven or eight years of age. My brother may have been four or five. An uncle in the extended family had gone crazy. It was made to sound like it had happened overnight. It hadn't. Things had been brewing for a really long time and then one day, everyone around just accepted that some kind of line had been crossed from being sane to being otherwise. 

We were summoned. A trip was planned. The crazy uncle lived in Puri. With his wife and three daughters. He used to be a teacher. They lived in a rickety house with a huge courtyard with trees. We, my family, had been summoned by a rich older cousin of our father who kind of oversaw everyone's well being. The rich older cousin gave us a chauffeur driven car and put us up in a hotel room. We only had to go and check on the recently insane uncle and find out how things were.

Somehow that trip has stayed very fresh in my memories. Or it may be now that everything seems to be coming back to me. We drove to Puri in peak summer. And made friends with the driver. We reached in the afternoon and headed to the uncle's house. 

A sense of hopelessness prevailed. The air was dry. Stories were traded quietly. He had become very difficult to contain, his wife mentioned. Everything was manageable until a few months ago when suddenly one day he stopped going to work and started screaming expletives at the neighbors. He had shattered all tea cups and hence we had been served tea in steel glasses. And he went away erratically and came back home with torn clothes.  The daughters were older than us. They seemed to be hiding although as is expected we were supposed to become friends almost immediately. We didn't. I don't even remember what their names were. 

But I clearly remember that even though I was very excited in our sea facing hotel room at the fag end of the beach, I was sad too. It was all trickling down into my head because I had heard the whispers. That night I came down with a fever without warning. It rarely happens that way, my mother said as she shut the tall windows and kept the sea breeze out.

Free

Our mouths smelled of

Red wine and shami kebabs

It was a night of Friday

And late

Lights were disco

We saw

Only what we

Wanted to see

Music was quite deafening

Mixing with sea waves

And the midnight wind

Made me feel rootlessly free

You

Came from behind

And tapped me on my right shoulder

With three fingers or two

That was the first time

We touched

Both were quite inebriated

So that's understandable

I turned 

Saw you and smiled

You grinned too

And asked me to join the dance 

Amnesia

The mind is a tricky animal. I read somewhere that the heart understands. The heart is on your side. But the mind, the mind is dicey. It will go berserk in a second. It will mess you up bad, you will never know peace. 

Off late, I have been more unhinged than usual. After my son was born, things have been hard. My mind has been asking me to rebel, break free. It has systematically not allowed my heart to love. That apart, I have come to believe that amnesia is a part of post partum. Like, I wouldn't be able to recall which friend I spoke to last week, which sheets are in the laundry bag, what I had for lunch yesterday, whether I have been planning to call my mother or I have already called her in the past half an hour. So I seem to forget things more than usual. Sometimes I wonder if it's nature's coping mechanism to make me forget how hard being a mother is.

Since my short term memory is being wiped off as we speak, my repository of events to go back is taking me further behind. So I have had an average life, nothing out of the ordinary. Mostly, I have to try hard to remember if some event happened in 2016 or 2017. Everything before that is quite hazy. Hence I try not to remember anything in the first place. So it could be that my subconscious is digging further behind, or it could be the isolation and confinement at home for months, but suddenly memories of decades ago have started sprouting in my head.

I now remember, clear as day, incidents, painful episodes of sexual abuse that I was subjected to as a child. Perhaps, I had blocked them out completely because that's what the hippocampus does. As an act of self defense. But now, as I see my son erupt one milk teeth after another, I cannot help but roar in pain that when I was abused, I was so little that I too had my milk teeth. And yet, I can feel the day, the light, the time, the smells, the texture of the floor, the aridity in the air, the sighting of blood. It's like I am there. Immediately transported back to an hour in my life I didn't know I had lived through until a few months ago. 

And then my mind does its thing and connects the precendents and the consequences of the episode and everything comes back. Nothing is blocked anymore. I writhe in agony and wonder who would do that to a child as I nestle mine in my arms. But there's no escape. There's no forgetting. There's no getting past. There's no understanding. And I become a million scattered pieces of myself in the air. 

Potpourri

Back in the day

I never knew what potpourri was

Then in my fourth standard book of GK

I found out

All my life, I have wondered

How underrated smells are

Olfactory is a powerful sense

But we let it wither so easily

So now

At the age of whatever I am

I am making potpourri

Unless I think otherwise tomorrow

In a glass bottle

That came with the dessert we ordered

On an evening long ago

Mango mousse, or something

Am gonna put orange peels

As many as I can

And sprinkle it with dried bougainvillea

Pink & white & orange

Then am gonna add beads

From a bracelet I got made

Long ago in a fete I wandered into alone

With letters of my name

Am gonna also put

Old earrings with their tarnished stones

And some more dried petals of rose

Sprayed with my expired perfumes 

Am gonna tear up old Polaroids & put them in

Just to add to the nostalgia

And a bit of the umbilical cord 

Sprouting from my newborn's navel

Also add drops of my mother's shampoo

So that it smells like her too

And scrunched old love letters as well

Because old lovers deserve some caging too