Payal's little anecdote

Whenever I travel I get anxiety. it is not exactly anxiety but I get into some kind of zone. And I get into it when ever I travel alone. Travelling in groups is such a fuss. After reaching the destination having family, friends or a partner might be a great idea but not while traveling.
Travelling for me is an experience, when I am with myself and the mundane does not bother me. It takes me to a different world. I don't want music then, I don't want to talk to people.  I start thinking about my co passengers as who they are ? why are they travelling? why have we met? What is their story? Am I a part of their story? What is it that has got us together?
So many things come to my head. I keep thinking about the people in the houses that I cross? Who are they? What is their story? Are they waiting for some one? Is all OK in that particular house painted in pale blue? The pale ness of the blue and those red hibiscus is giving it such a tired look. Maybe the old parents are tired and want their child to come back. May be!
When I travel, and most of it happens to be my journey from the University to my home town. So when I come back after the weekend on a Monday morning, I see a lot of people getting back to work. The women and men look tired for they have a week ahead of battle. I seem to know them so well. I create a story about each one around. If two ppl are travelling together I think up a bond between them. I will not lie I try to overhear their conversation also. It gives me more food for my story about them to fly. So I am used to this madness about myself. But what happened today was different. Today I felt caged. I wanted to run away and run away really far. I was going to the airport to pick up my mother and sister. I was traveling with papa. It is my father's first car and I am all excited. I was in the back seat. I had my chips ready for my madness. It was raining but not heavily. After we left the town behind, it is a pleasure to travel that road. On either side there are sal trees. The sal trees always take me to some kind of a place where I have never been to. This happens because as a child my sister use to sing a bhatiali song " sal piyal er bon e ekto chele sish dei aar ekti mey nache". The song has stayed with me. I still see this chele mey under the sal. I see them dancing. I see their houses. I see them sitting beside the stream. Then suddenly papa calls me to show a small tea shop where he had tea with my grandfather 30 years ago. He tries to find the shop but somehow we cannot figure it out. Then my father settles down for a bylane and declares it to be the place where the tea shop once existed. It is strange how we carry memories and give different essence to it every time. We constantly change the meaning of our memories as we need. No memories are absolute truth or are perhaps as true as our imagination.

Happy Birthday

Hello
Flower
Blooming in lovely light
Different from the bud you were
Glorious
Queen
Of a kingdom hard earned
I’m grateful it is one I share
Your
Sound
The crackle of warm fire
Traveling through the chilly air
You are
The unshakeable belief in yourself
You are
The thunder in your own skies
You are
The awakening of yourself
You are
You
You are
Beautiful.

I like my sleep long dark and dreamless. Fortunately I don't often have dreams. Or maybe I always dream and only remember a very few of them. I like the mornings when I wake up without the burden of a dream.

Yes, I view sweet dreams as a burden. The morning can never promise to live up to it. You wake up and realise how much you'd rather live in your dream. Escapism. I'd like to think I'm not the only one who suffers from an abundance of it.

Nightmares are better. You always wake up to a sense of relief. They always have a happy ending. You wake up clutching onto life. Staring fate in the eye and smiling. Drenched in the belief that the person waking up is that much stronger than the person in the bad dream.

But some of the best mornings are the ones after a dreamless sleep. Mornings you wake up and remember nothing for a few moments. And if you're fortunate enough that when the thoughts rush into your head you realise how everything is just where it should be... then that, my friend, is a good morning. 

Ashes

She's fire then she's smoke 
Now she drifts away
The burn leaves a scar
But I'm not the ashes.

Circle of Mist

I dreamt up a dawn.

In my deepest sleep I saw

Everything

Splashed in grey

Clothed in silence

And the cloth itself embroidered

With the song of birds,

Hidden,

In foliage softly trembling

Teased by a wind,

So soft, it’s almost not there

So sensual that there is nothing else

And the dew invites me to walk barefoot

Towards you

And the mist playfully hides you

But I know your shape too well

And the wind brings me your message

And I sit down and wait

To be woken by the icy heat

Of a finger tracing infinity on the back of my neck.

Terrorism is us

Communication of anger
Countenance of hate
Fall of defences
To utter ruin and we believe
These must exist so we can too
And though it chars and blackens us
Will not let go
And through our acceptance
Of the devil's blood
Monsters we become.

Sanctuary

I am so close to the window

that the rain sprays onto my face

and my hands clutching the grille are wet,

and the silhouettes in the twilight gloom

turn to trees in the lightning's brilliant glare,

for but a moment,

before 

they regain their imposing blackness,

otherworldly,

intimidating.

And the thunder is furious.

Its rage rolls through me.

And in the midst of all this

my troubled heart finds a sense of safety,

baffling me.

What mirage has it spotted

in its desire to escape

its thousand monsters

and ten thousand wounds?

And I only have to close my eyes

and the answer becomes clear to me

as I shed a tear to the rain

as I remember,

through the silhouettes all dark and wet

and the soft whisper of the rain

all around me,

a place I left so long ago,

a place I missed unknowing;

a mothers womb.