The Return to Innocence

It was a Disney kind of life. There was this old Diesel Engine chugging through the green valleys of peace. Its black soot smelt of gasoline, and that was wonderful! Life was younger, more vibrant. Our dreams a lot more vivid and believable. A kiss was a kiss, not just that rubber grinding the loins and it retained the kind of naivete purity, in its adolescent entirety.

I am not sure when we grew up. Not sure when our minutes became shorter, life faster and duller. I am not sure when our
memory machines stopped making new memories, not sure when when God walked into our Eden. Not sure when we turned sinners... and sinned.

Rajesh

This one if for all the young ones. Here is wishing you beautiful memories from your growing up days.

Infallible!

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Life is a grinder. It slowly grinds the best of us unto fine powder. All our jarring edges and rough ends get ground into micron size fine dust. Its an endless process. In goes our dreams of flying planes as a kid, in goes the first love and with it, those thoughts about that beautiful teacher falling in love with me or that neighbor girl looking my way. In goes my dreams of riding a Harley with the hair of my loved one catching the winds.

Its a painstakingly slow process. The mills work silently, in long meandering vortexes of time. Everything that is our tomorrow, slowly becomes our today, gets ground, becomes one with the rest of our past. Fine Dust.

Each day that I wake up, I look at life right up front. I know that this day will also be consumed. I know that the memories that I create from today will someday be painted the same dull blue from my yesterdays. I know that my today will finally meet my yesterdays. There is no escape. There is no other way. But I look into life, and throw a challenge. Come meet me half way my dear, I say, and then walk up the rest of the way as well! I beat the slow grind of time, by stretching each beautiful memory a while longer. I steal from the fine dusts of my past and create new shapes from old forms. You cannot kill me. Every day that I wake up, I am born again. What you took away from my yesterday, I have replaced it forever for my tomorrows. I have no death, for my memories have this infallible faculty to regrow. The faculty to take shapes beyond my memories, beyond your comprehension, beyond what you and I can together imagine.

And central to this is the fine dust that you grind me into, every day. Little by little, you allow me to recreate myself each day, from my yesterday.

Amen!

The Wrong Turn

Every time I take this road, my sense of direction fails me. It annoys her no end. You see, there is a turn by the local temple, that leads me to her place; and then there is this another turn right before the milk booth, it leads me to a house with tiled roofs and a Tamarind tree. It is a dead end. That lane ends before this house.
Why do you have to take the wrong turn all the time, she screams. Her voice can be shrill when she is agitated. There is something here that confounds her. Why, why would I drive into this lane instead of the next one?
We have lived many lives my dear. Who knows why this house draws me to itself? What if long before your lane became central to my life, I had other lanes to call my own? How would you know? How would I know?

I hear you

Have you heard a cat cry. It sounds so much like humans. I remember the cry of a mother cat who had lost one of her kittens. She cried for three straight nights. Moaning, shuddering, cursing, but mostly, talking to herself about her loss. Until that night, I had not known that cats have feelings too. I was too young then. Her loss worried me no end. Each night when the moans started, I and my sister would hug each other and go to sleep.

It has been many years since I lost my grandmother. The heart is forever in mourning. Life finds a way to live but the wailing never stops. Some losses are inexplicably difficult to come to terms with.