Celebration

When life started each morning was a blessing; each hour a time to celebrate. The sacred chants held a great mystery that could elevate the soul from its drabness. Now, every moment is a long drag, a step heavily drawn, from habit to habit, from place to place, without energy.

For with all its idealism, life was real from the first few years. Then you came along with your positive messages and need for miracles. Somehow, my touch with reality was lost in the same moment. No wonder, I prayed for wonders spending sleepless nights hands spread before the holy icon.

Nothing happened but a slow withdrawal into silence and a coldness that replaced the early joviality. At times, when the heart forgets its long lost desire, the one dream that mattered more than anything else on earth and rejoices in whatever has fallen into these little hands without asking.

Only on those moments, this life comes real and turns into pages of quite happiness quite unlike the loud but blessed ones who celebrate their happiness in the streets with splashes of colour and loud music. Here, only a smile shines quietly to fade again.

Blue hues

Everything is blue, this evening.
It's been a time of recollection,
To remember with sharp regret,
A broken dream from yesterday.

A string of unforeseen words,
Suddenly sprinkled on a page,
And in its shadows a dream hid,
Holding together its angst.

The blue of a showy bracelet,
Hung with minute stars and shapes,
The blue of the galloping waves
That cause you to tremble

A dream remembered upsets,
A heart that remained too placid.

Reality

It was in the shadows of this morning that you appeared in a dream, once again. Reassurance, remembrance and reciprocation, you promised while I held your hand as easily and gently as I've always have, in my dreams.

For it was easy to be us in the dreams as opposed to the dreary reality that drew borders and boundaries in our minds every day. How else can you explain how a love of a lifetime faded in ten seconds of doubt and months of hesitation?

That sense of your face so close to mine or your mere presence in my life has ceased to be miracles; for they are as far and away as lost friends and childhood memories. But these light years have covered more distances in the long wait for an expression of love.

In the meantime, the world has crumbled, shook with quakes, burnt and thrashed yet has come alive with every baby step or baby smile. Still we walk together in dreams with the same spirit and hearts brimming with love as on our first walk in the rain.

Blogger is back!

Right now, it's raining outside. Somehow, my fascination with the rain has kept me awake. I don't know how longer I'm going to stay awake at this midnight hour listening to the sound of this heavy rain. It's a great feeling of being one with nature.

This blogger was for a time ill; sick with diseases probably interesting only to my own doctor (no intentions of boring anyone with inessential details). Yesterday, I seriously thought that my blog, my favourite sacred space for a long time has stopped being so and has died out.

My day was not that interesting. The only excitement was the run to rescue the clothes left for drying from getting soaked almost completely, while the whole running exercise and the quick bath in the rain did a lot of good to cheer up my "I'm ill- not upto to anything" spirits.

Friend

It took no longer than a minute to see how you have changed from my dearest friend to the snob you are. Your every word reflects an arrogance that to the unobserved eye is like obedience; your mouth full of advice that you don't think twice before delivering.

How can I be so cruel as to judge you when I do not judge many who are lost and confused. Well, I can see through your pretenses because you can never pretend to be someone you are not, with a friend who has listened to your ramblings unedited.

Not just that, I hear though in silence, whatever that goes beyond that cunning eyes of yours. No wonder a friend one advised me to be wary of you and I never heeded. It is a shame that you speak highly of yourself before me who is the only one who is aware of your shortcomings.

But stranger is my heart who always defended you before everyone and fought hard to be friend in spite of all your big talk and our differences, trying now hard to put my hate to words, hard words so that nothing is erased from my mind.

Happy Onam

We celebrated Onam with a home-made feast of over 2o tasty dishes, prepared by my mother-in-law. It's my first Onam at the new place and I was given charge of cutting vegetables and setting the table. Interestingly, this is the first time that I have followed the traditions of Onam and it was great.

Baby Birds inside nest

Here is a view(though dark) of the baby budgies inside the nest. If you look closely, you can see a tiny little bird moving around.

Ignorance

Genuine ignorance is... profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas. ~John Dewey

Well dressed, well-spoken and with a tone that might put to shame the ancient serpent that charmed Eve are the fashionable people around me who boast of anything and everything, from a tidbit of knowledge scrapped from the edges of a ten rupee quote book to the new brand faith that they propagate in the virtues of the previous generation.

They speak hours about nothing closed in rooms that reek of some artificial scent or the other that brings a bout of sneezing or a cold. The words are worse, praising ones who are absent while closing the eyes deliberately to the ones who slug hard to keep their work-worlds intact. A good word for a good deed is the last thing; but lapses, quicker to find than a daisy in a room full of laptops.

Led by charm, they live and die, lives of exasperation, when the strange lady with cat-like eyes and a lousy mouth comes with her beauty and eat their brains right away. Held transfixed in gazes across those closed rooms, all you need is a call from a friend to distract you for at least a while.

Red rose

“Life is like a movie, if you've sat through more than half of it and its sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early.”Doug Stanhope

You were like a bird who wanted to fly high;
But your wings were clipped quite early enough.
Your heart wanted and demanded freedom,
But those around you stifled you in four walls.

For love was an addiction, his sweet words solace,
From the cruel world that blossomed your form.
Yet he could not liberate you from the four walls
That ate your happiness and killed you day by day.

Your innocent smile stares from a beautiful picture,
Your perfect face set against your dark shiny hair,
And a pair of glasses only one used to you can spot,
As you stand clad in red, a colour that you'd loved.

You could crumble those four walls with outside help,
But you chose to show your freedom to do it yourself.

Spring is here!

According to the Malayalam calendar, today is the first day of the New Year and the beginning of Spring here. Falling after Karkidakom month that signifies poverty and illness,this month of Chingam is the time of harvest and propserity.

The arrival of Chingam is celebrated with floral designs called pookalams and by dressing up in the traditional handwoven dresses interlaced with gold threads. These simple handlooms give elegance to its wearer.

During childhood, Chingam stood for Onam holidays that saw all of us children running to see the snakeboats gliding across the River Pamba to the beat of the traditional vallapaatu. It also meant onasadyas and waiting for the thiruvona thoni at midnight.


This year, the shopping sprees and festive atmosphere is very much marred by the swine-flu scare. Still, the Malayali spirit in me, decided to remember that it's spring here and Onam, the traditional festival of Kerala is only a few weeks away.