That Pinch of Blue with Grey

Long flights dredges up lost memories from an otherwise sunshiny life. They come from all the corners, steadily, like coyotes, biting away small bits, from my otherwise well preserved sanity.

From my childhood, comes echoes of laughter, and playing in the sand, and jumping off trees and beautiful looking Didi's and school teachers and sir Raj, smoking charms, endlessly. The laughter bounces off my brusque facade of professional chicanery, and chips away some paint on the go. Right from under the starched white shirt front, I bleed blue, as I remember myself and my sis, playing, alone, under the guava tree. We were young once, and our life was full of each other, forever.

From my youth, my grand uncle calls out, in a voice unheard for a decade. I see myself grinding arecanut for him to chew, in return of cardamom treated raw tobacco. I see us painting the front lawn red, together, three generations apart, chewing home grown betel. Some bit of that red betel haunts me again, sparkling red splatters in my otherwise clinical, lab life.

And then there is that wide expanse of tranquil greens, amidst which my grandma sleeps in peace.

It's a long flight. I wish for this journey to end. I look forward to being home again. It's a journey well begun. Some day, I got to be home again.

Tomorrow is just another day

The train that I was on stopped at a small station on route to its destination. There was a sudden silence that fell like a velvet robe across the train. The station was absolutely empty. No guards visible, no vendors, no beggars, no dogs, no dripping of water from leaking ancient pipes... Absolutely nothing. It was almost as if the visualizer had morphed a train full of tired people into a 3d postcard.

Right then there was a shudder on the other lane. A train thundered across the rails at a speed that for me was incredible. Such was the speed that it did not allow me to count its bogies. Such was the speed that I almost forgot to breathe for about 30 seconds. Now I knew why my train was halted at this junction. We had to give way to the faster train. Our journey was about to end in an hour, this one's had only begun.

I see my little nephew raise a storm at our ancestral house even as his grandpa looks fondly at him, loving the coiled energy in the child. The young are in a perpetual hurry. The old get glued into postcards.