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.

Sparrows Remember

When I was a kid, I used to frequent Tauseef's house. I am very poor with memories. There is some sort of auto flush that wipes them away. I neither retain the good ones nor the bad ones. I have a past that is forever under construction. Its an open canvas, I paint it at will. But I remember the Gauraiyyas (Indian Sparrows). Tauseef's house was always full of them. Little chirpy birds that kept pecking on the dining table or sitting right next to aunty and waiting for her to drop them some grains. They would flit about all over the place. I don't remember any of those big celling fans ever being switched on in Tauseef's place. The gauraiyyas were always safe in his place.

When I started working on plantations some 16 years ago, I always kept fowl at the managerial bungalow. There was this ill tempered gander, two insufferable flying ducks, dozens on hens...but no sparrows. There were no sparrows in Kerala and you could not buy a sparrow, a sparrow can never be owned. The sparrow chose its own home.
7 years ago, when Hyderabad International airport was commissioned, I saw sparrows flying inside the terminal. There were about four of them making merry near the eateries. I talk to animals..and birds and reptiles and ghosts and spirits and God. I called out to the nearest sparrow and told her that someday I will make my own house and then you should come. She looked at me for a micro second and made a curious face before she flew across to join the rest of them.
It is three years since  I shifted to my own place. Last week, I saw a nest coming up near my air conditioner. Two Sparrows looked insolently at me, busy building their nest on my balcony.
A long loop thus closed. Welcome home.

Super Spice

I look at her sashaying across the aisle. There is a bounce in her gait. The pony tail hair keeps yoyoing like a pendulum. Every time she speaks, she looks straight into my eyes. There is a glint of fun a hint of mischief. There is devil dancing in her eyes.

My dear, you make it worthwhile for a million of us to fly.