Gathering Dust

Picture by Rob Hanson

Its been a year

since the end of anticipation

since the last of the million times

she picked the receiver

to check if the line still worked

and placed it back

with shaking wrinkled hands

He had said he would call

to tell her how high 

the jet had flown

How inviting the sky seemed

even at war

'Although there are
no borders in sky'

She had observed and sighed

He was thrilled beyond words

Too thrilled to hear the prayers

she muttered 

beneath her shaky breath

Then one day, the phone rang

and severed the last thread of hope

in her tiny fretting heart

Yes, the battle is won,

but he was her only son

The phone, his victory, her life

since that day, gather dust.

The picture that inspired this poem is taken by Rob Hanson, who is interviewed today at One Stop Poetry, and lends his picture for the Picture Prompt Challenge. If you are inspired by his picture, or if you would like to read other entries inspired by it, visit One Stop Poetry. 

Old Woman In The Moon

As a child, I was very choosy about food. It was a pain to feed me. The only possible way to make me eat my meal was to distract me with stories. My mother was a wonderful narrator, and she had a rich stock of stories to tell me. My father, however, would have a hard time as I would ask questions when the stories did not make sense, and I could tell when he was making them up.
Once, when I had a stomach infection, I woke up in the middle of the night due to pain. My mother went to the kitchen to cook the only thing that I would agree to eat those days, and my father picked me up and took me out on the verandah. I must have been four years old then. My father wiped the tears off my face and showed me the moon and the pattern of an old woman in it. The memory of that night still transports me to that verandah with the cool summer breeze drying my tears, the sound of utensils clattering in the kitchen as my mother prepared my food, the moonlight washing the street outside, the comfort of my father's lap, the peacefulness of midnight with the knowledge that the world is asleep, and the pattern of a kind old woman watching over us from the moon.

Somewhere, something inside me had captured the beauty of it all, for me to cherish years later, on a similar summer night.

About Me

Writing happens to me, like love, like the weather. It makes me a million things more, it gives me an adrenaline rush, and at times it induces an enveloping, nurturing calm. Sometimes, I write for myself, and sometimes, just to be read. I love words. Words that are soft and simple and still magnificent in their implication, and the way they are pronounced. I would not be me but for this congenital love for words, and stories. I love everything simple, and everything old and classy. I love the scent of old yellow pages of books, and the scent of the earth satiated by rain. I love beautiful Rajasthani ornaments, Victorian buildings, old, heavy metal boxes that contain secrets, and stories, of lives lived long ago. May be that's why I love all things old, the story part - stories that are hidden in a smile in a black and white picture, in the wrinkles at the back of hands, in the silver of the hair, in large dusty, sound-echoing rooms, in the widespread roots of age-old trees that still stand with enviable dignity; which reminds me, I love trees, and flowers, and mountains, valleys, rivers, deserts, and oceans. They overwhelm me, they whisper to me in the language of the universe,and they love me too, I think. I love having leisure, like now, to sit and write about all things I love, or to stop and smile at a child, to click pictures, to hold an old man's hand and listen to his stories, to stare at the star studded night sky, and relive the fairytales of childhood. I love the distant sound of the namaaz. I laugh, pray and cry a lot. I love being foolish. I love to narrate, if you'll listen.

P.S. The picture was taken by me near the Holsten Gate, Lubeck, Germany.

The Secret

Snehal walked on the sand- barefoot, lost- neither happy, nor sad, just peaceful. Full of sea smell and the taste of humid breeze. She sat on a stone, gazing at the horizon, at the sun that was setting away from her day to rise into his. She felt connected. To him, to the sun, to the unfathomable sea, to the changing sky, to the birds that returned home in flocks, to the empty shell under her toe. She looked up at the lighthouse and noticed two lovers watching the sunset from above, silhouetted in orange, dusky red, and then grey, as if morphing into souvenirs. Souvenirs of the beautiful moments that had slowly, stealthily grown into memories. And now, they were her most treasured belongings- the hysterical laughters, the unembarassed tears, the crazy stories, the fast music, the long drives; life, in hindsight, looked like a fast forwarded reel. Only at some points, it stoppped. Like the day they spent building castles of sand. Like the game during which they exchanged dolls as a promise to be together forever. Like the day he picked up a fight with the bully of the colony for her sake. Like the evening she spent waiting for him in the park, full of anticipation, anxiety, hoping he would come (though she hadn't called him and he didn't come). Like the night of college fest that they danced away. Like that night on the beach when they came close, when friendship crept away from between them like sand from a tight fist, only to make way for something else. Bigger or better was for fate to decide. She smiled at the moon. It smiled back, a mischievous smile, as if it held a secret it wouldn't disclose. She understood. She had secrets too. In her heart and in her womb. She inhaled the scent of wet sand and closed her eyes, trying to listen to the second heartbeat. She wondered if it smelt what she smelt, felt what she felt, if it was aware of the strange pangs of love that she felt for it, love that choked her, engulfed her, transformed her. She did not know the answer. But she was content with the not knowing. She felt complete. She got up to leave. Tomorrow he would be made party to yet another secret of hers. Rest was for fate to decide.

Open Diary-21st August 2008

The college has already started looking like a soon-to-be-past thing. Thoughts of the future have affected the present so much! I go down for a coffee and see a swarm of new faces, and it all appears like a big cycle that I’m a very minute part of. Not just the college and the passing out, but life on the whole. I don’t know why and I don’t know whether this is good or bad, but my mindset has suddenly become very spiritual. I try finding a purpose in things I do but I can’t see it. There is a big blunder somewhere in the whole equation of life that we’ve set for ourselves – all of us running this mad race and trying to work for ‘happiness’! sacrificing today’s sleep, rest, talks, smiles and laughters for a better tomorrow- I wonder where this recursion ends. Sometimes all I long for is utter peace, absolute beauty, pure nature and the ultimate solace of being in the company of myself. I wonder whether this phase will pass too; may be tomorrow when I have hordes of responsibilities scuttling up and down my priority queue, I’ll come to terms with the meaninglessness and obscurity of life. But right now, at this very moment, I find myself wiser, older and all the more inadequate and ignorant about the gift of life, breath and spirit that I’ve got.