“This house is a broken Louvre.”
It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon. Sunday is a prelude to the blues that Monday will bring. As you grow up, Sundays stop feeling like one. It’s a puddle of thoughts, anxieties, what ifs and whatnots. The mind flutters.
The word fluttering has an essence of stringing a kite. The wind navigates the direction and temperament of the act of fluttering. You hurt your fingers but the kite flies.
This act of fluttering is telling me now that I can never be a good writer. You know why? Mostly because I am not setting any premise for what I am writing. There is no beginning, no destination.
Its almost as if you were walking down the street and a piece of chocolate cake hits you on your head. You gobble it up, no questions asked. Writing is the same for me. I am being hit with a delicious piece of chocolate cake, and while I eat it, I am sharing a bite or two with you.
“Memories Are Ghost Towns”
Memory is a storehouse of vivid emotions that are non-existent at the present. Its a ghost town, someone deserted it with the intention of never coming back. My grandparents’ apartment is in immaculate state in this ghost town. You can see me sitting on the chair, my feet not touching the ground.
Dimma is frying desserts and serving them, piping hot, on my plate. I am wearing a green, polka-dotted dress that she stitched for me. I don’t want to go home.
The overwhelming expanse of silence that two women shared at this given point in the past made perfect sense to me even then, when a lot of things around were insensible.
Safe havens are not a myth. Dimma continues to be one. Lean, tall, smelling of all the goodness and simplicity in the world… And, sometimes Jasmine ittar, it was a no nonsense love.
Before this space turned to a ghost town, she turned to a ghost first. Her gaze told me that I am swiped clean from her senses. There is little to no recognition in her gaze. She has forgotten she loved me, that I loved her.
“Everyone Is In Transit”
January 1, 2022. Bombay experiences a late sunset. I am looking at one, on an airport runaway through gigantic, glass windows. The airport is one of my favourite places to be in. Transit. What are you waiting for? Who are you bidding goodbye to?
I was waiting for the sun to set, a half-empty cup of coffee in my hands. I was bidding goodbye to a lot of things that created a looming sense of foreboding that I wanted to shake off since the past few years.
My neighbour was waiting for her husband to bring back two cups of tea. A young girl opposite me was talking to someone over the phone, who was waiting for her to come home. Everyone is in transit… Waiting. Who are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?
Asking rhetorical question is a coward’s ploy. Either you are too scared to find out the answers, or you are already aware of the answers, but they scare you. I have swiped my plate clean, no remains of any chocolate cake anymore, like Dimma’s memory. Did you do the same?