healing

Give yourself more credit:
You’re healing while hustling, dreaming while doubting, growing while grieving, and building while battling.
Vex Kingp

First Love

She was what her friends called a naivete, a chatterbox who wore her heart on her sleeve. But when she fell in love with him, she withdrew into her shell and started choosing her words carefully. 

In her dark kohl-drawn eyes that looked up to his warm searching eyes, you could find desire and a strange reticence to be what she was before she knew him. She talks to her friends like earlier but smiles as she speaks, thinking of him. 

Those who knew her earlier finds her new behaviour strange for she was a chatterbox talking without restraint about what mattered to her. But she was not the same after she tasted love and she forgot herself in his first embrace. 

She spends her days dreaming about him and the secrets that togetherness brings and this is one sacred space that she does not want to share with anyone. Her friends tease her about her sudden transition but she smiles and changes the topic as if she does not want to talk about him and what he means to her. 

From that moment when their souls had mingled in a sweet ethereal melody beyond any words, she has become an earth woman celebrating her newly discovered feminine nature, a woman who is one with nature and its rhythms. 

She talks to her friends but not candidly like before and in the midst of her conversation with them, she falls silent as she dreams of him and the emotions that memories of togetherness brings. 

She dreams of the sweet nothings that he whispered in her eyes as she sat next to him and the love-light in his eyes that makes her bloom like the jasmine she wears on her hair. She keeps flitting to a secret world where being one with him- mind, body and spirit- is her only thought. 

Morning

When you wake up early in the morning feeling quite content with life and you are happy that you have everything that you have always wanted in life, starting with the love of the one you desire.

You wake up feeling that all your desires are met as his limbs coil around yours early in the morning and when you wake up with your lips locked in his and mumbling good morning in his ears.

Your heart and soul are at peace and you look serene like a lotus in the pond, exactly where you are supposed to be. There is harmony in your soul because there is a brand new day to look forward to, full of new adventures.

More than usual, there is a need to do something
different ,out of ordinary on a morning like this. Though it's cloudy you decide to go on a walk outside after a long time, all because you feel high about the kind of joy you feel.

The roads are quiet and the city is silent. The signs of life are only few with a few bicycles in the road and people out for walking who like me has decided to celebrate this happy day with a morning walk.

On a day like this, much is done and much accomplished, when I woke with the sun and with your arms coiled around me. And, you feel excited to look forward to a brand new day full of exciting adventures and the memory of a perfect morning of love.

@

Making memories

I want to spend some time with you and I want to know everything about you. I want to spend all the best days across various seasons with you, wandering this world and learning more of you, what you are like and your likes and dislikes, creating some really good moments together. Someday, I want to look back and think that we were creating memories together.

I want to know close, read each and every look, every smile, learn your language and also what you say without using words. I want to see and remember how your eyes light up in a smile and how my world lights up with your smile and how this world lights up making it a better place to live.

Your fingers touch me and I forget myself and the worries of this world. Your lips kiss mine teaching me the art of love every single day.

It is with this pleasant feeling of being loved that I want to go to sleep at night and it is with the certainty of your arms around me that I want to wake up in the morning. 

Making memories

I want to spend some time with you and I want to know everything about you. I want to spend all the best days across various seasons with you, wandering this world and learning more of you, what you are like and your likes and dislikes, creating some really good moments together. Someday, I want to look back and think that we were creating memories together.

I want to know close, read each and every look, every smile, learn your language and also what you say without using words. I want to see and remember how your eyes light up in a smile and how my world lights up with your smile and how this world lights up making it a better place to live.

Your fingers touch me and I forget myself and the worries of this world. Your lips kiss mine teaching me the art of love every single day.

It is with this pleasant feeling of being loved that I want to go to sleep at night and it is with the certainty of your arms around me that I want to wake up in the morning. 

The Story Teller

Life was an open book;
Everyone knew everything
About her life and times,
And she was a storyteller
Creating happy endings
In the worlds to come.

There were adventures
Waiting to be written down.
When the words came to her
She set them in a beautiful script
With happiness, prosperity and love,
For themes in everyday life.

She was blessed with abundance
With music, books and coffee,
And always had anything she wanted
From the deepest desire of her hearts
And the lovestory that she wrote.

#definitions

Soul connection

There may be millions of people in this world and the population increases second by second daily. I do not want to know about these millions of people because my subject of study is you.

There may be many songs that I have heard that belong to various genres ranging from peppy, soulful or sad. But these days, I want to be the song you were humming all day long.

These days, I want all my dreams to begin and end with you, I want to become familiar each and every contour of yours and trace them with my fingers.

I want to look all day into your eyes and feel the desire surge in them. I want to make you my entire world and my favourite soul melody.

There may be many millions around but the only cure for my ache is you and I want it to be you to be you, the only one at the end of every journey home and every single daydream.

Like many before us, we were destined to meet each other and change our lives forever. You and I share a soul connection that creates a world for each other in an alternate universe.

She

She was what her friends called a naivete, a chatterbox who wore her heart on her sleeve. But when she fell in love with him,  she withdrew  into her shell and started choosing her words carefully.

In her dark kohl-drawn eyes that looked up to his warm searching eyes, you could find desire and a strange reticence to be what she was before she knew him. She talks to her friends like earlier but smiles as she speaks, thinking of him.

Those who knew her earlier finds her new behaviour strange for she was a chatterbox talking without restraint about what mattered to her. But she was not the same after she tasted love and she forgot herself in his first embrace.

She spends her days dreaming about him and the secrets that togetherness brings and this is one sacred space that she does not want to share with anyone. Her friends tease her about her sudden transition but she smiles and changes the topic as if she does not want to talk about him and what he means to her.

From that moment when their souls had mingled in a sweet ethereal melody beyond any words, she has become an earth woman celebrating her newly discovered feminine nature, a woman who is one with nature and its rhythms.

She talks to her friends but not candidly like before and in the midst of her conversation with them, she falls silent as she dreams of him and the emotions that memories of togetherness brings.

She dreams of the sweet nothings that he whispered in her eyes as she sat next to him and the love-light in his eyes that makes her bloom like the jasmine she wears on her hair. She keeps flitting to a secret world where being one with him- mind, body and spirit- is her only thought. 

The serious and the trivial

In the midst of this summer tedium, we meet once again in the same old park that we used to spend our young days. In those days, you and I would enjoy roaming around the verdant campus talking of everything under the sun. 

The sight of the tall trees made us curious about the names and we were curious about the carpet of pink blossoms as well. It was with the same thirst of knowledge that you discovered the name of the tree to be tabeubia. 

Then there were the pink and white magnolias whose smells could make us forget everything. You and me shared serious thoughts about the angst of life and trivial thoughts about books, movies, music and us. 

When we meet again, it is like a springtime of memories flash before our eyes and your words fill me with so much of happiness. The shade of these  ancient trees forget the rising summer hear and the weariness that comes with it. 

You and I speak of our common love for words- poetry that has stayed constant throughout the years. You and me chat about the serious and trivial in the old hangout near the tabeubia trees.

positive thought

When you wake up in the morning, you can think of the ways in which you can be creative with the day. Most of the time, people are worried about the past or the future and they are not fully open to the present.

Today is a new day and then only then you will be able to understand the meaning of the word present, which also means a gift. That means to be fully open to the world of possibilities and like the poet says to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. 

A lament about lost love: K R Meera's novella Meera Sadhu

Love is like milk, with the passage of time,it sours, splits and becomes poison.

The novel portrays the tragic life of Tulsi torn between duty and love and she chooses to run away with Madhavan instead of marrying her classmate Vinayan. She finds that though she loves Vinayan, she gets carried off her feet by the kind of love that Madhavan gives her.

She runs away with Madhavan on the eve of her wedding though she knows from his own mouth that she is his 27th girlfriend. Soon, she recognises that she does not have a role in his life and the story is a lament about lost love.

Through lyrical passages that describe the desire that Madhavan arouses in Tulsi, the author captures the beauty of love buy equally descriptive are her details about his treachery in love, the countless women that he has relations with. This wounds her and she grieves how she sacrificed her career and her life for the sake of the man she chose to be with in life.

The novel details the transformation of Tulsi from a loving wife to Meera Sadhu grieving her life and serving others in the ghats of Varanasi. The frequent shifts in time cleverly portray her memories about her marital life including the good times and the bad times.

Learning Curve

You read and study about the world and the things that you have an interest in. You never cease in your pursuit of knowledge and you do not rest for even a minute.

Whatever task you lay your hands on, you want to learn it and do it in a better manner and that is an your understanding of learning and becoming an expert in your daily tasks or bettering your work or learning how to cook your meals or learning how to please your lover.

Sometimes, you might learn a subject just out of pure interest without having any particular aim in learning it except for the pure fun of understanding what it is about.

People might ask you: What is the use of learning this now? Will this serve any practical purpose? But you tell that learning your area of interest is necessary for the purpose of developing your understanding of it and whatever you need to know, you need to know it urgent.

You have your idiosyncrasies and your quaint tastes in reading but you for sure that your knowledge will come of use someday sometime may be in another world that might be made complete by your deep understanding.

Your life gets meaningful by the very task of simplifying all tedious work through an overall understanding of how to make it simpler, better and easier.

My roots strangely

Sometimes, you learn how to feel this sense of belonging to an unreal world and I belong only to you, my love. 

I have never felt this sense of belonging to this place that I left as a child where my brother and I stood in the cemetery every year praying for his dead soul. 

I do not belong to my father's family since its all dead and gone, with a few bones scattered in a churchyard long and far away though you get occasional visits, calls and messages from people who look just like you. 

I  do not belong to the place where I grew up in my mother's native place beside the River Green, where it was always fun to be playing in water yet there were rightful inheritors who belonged just because they grew up there. Then there were homecoming that were full of affection from your grandparents or their visits to our city that were memorable. 

Now, I belong by marriage to a family which calls me my own though the blood that runs through my veins is hardly theirs and sometimes I get the feeling that I am home, finally free from this sense of not belonging. 

Do I belong to my co-workers who call me my formal name and I am a familiar stranger who does not have many stories to tell but nods and smiles and passes them by. Yet, there are times when you connect with someone and you feel that you have always belonged there and you sense this bond that goes beyond words. 

Then, in an imaginary realm, my love, you are the one who star in my all my dreams, the one whose thoughts occupy this arid life and I long for your presence just like one longs for rain in summer. 

You know me inside out like the palm of your hand or like the page of a well-thumbed book and what makes me a woman when I am with you. You know my

feminine spirit and tenderness and not my occasional clownishness in trying to belong to some name, some family, some tribe, where I do not belong.

It is to you that I belong, your complement that fulfills and completes you,  in the melting down of the barriers between you and me, and the all engulfing tenderness that follows our lovemaking. 

That is the space where I see myself as feeling belonged and as having a pet name that you call me an

Mogra

Do you remember the first Onam from your days of togetherness when your bed was bedecked with the intoxicating scent of jasmine flowers and you whispered sweet nothings in my ear. 

What do you want, you had asked me and I said I wanted you. You looked at with surprise and had laughed when you muttered, " you already have me and I will satisfy your desire whenever you want me". 

The jasmine plant had bloomed out of season and I had plucked the jasmines from the yard. It was the first time that they had bloomed and I kept them in a bowl of water throughout the day. 

Do you remember how you and I used to talk to each other about everything under the sun and how we spent our days of togetherness learning more and more about each other. 

Then I remind you every year on this special day how you and I will share our lives across ages and across time because I chose you to be my sun in all the worlds known. 

Like a creeper entwined on the tall mango tree, I wish we will stay together till a thousand moons. 

The City of Love

Take me to Paris, she said, for it is the city of love and light and when you add three letters to Paris, it becomes Paradise, a haven of complete freedom for lovers. Let us explore the city of love together and travel its nooks and corners treasuring each moment of our days of togetherness, enjoying the enchanting pleasure it offers the senses.

Why do we need to go to Paris, he said because you are my Paris and have always been my Paradise and you will always remain my haven. You are and always have been my dream and my Paradise is where you are. When you are around my world lights up with your smiles, my heart pounds a louder music on seeing you and my heart, my body and my soul just loves being around you. It is you that I want whether I am at home or in Paris or anywhere in the world and nothing in the world equals my happiness when I am with you!

Our Day of Love

When the morning light drained through the windows she opened her eyes. Slowly she became conscious of everything around her. Last night, she had fallen asleep crying. Now her heart was empty but soon thoughts of reasoning and doubt would cloud it again. It was a day she had dreaded all this time. Throughout all the happy days the shadow of this inevitable day was on her happiness, on their happiness.

Back from bath, she thought, this one day I can look like an unhappy broken-hearted girl and make him unhappy.  So she chose her brightest smile and her brightest clothes and put them on with care. He would be waiting for her at the usual place, with a smile. How will I hide my heart from him, her mind asked her. She walked to the usual place with a bowed down heart and a bright face.

From the first glance itself of her walking in that resplendent dress, he read through her veneer of cheerfulness easily. How to calm her, he thought. His heart wanted to protect her from everything, make her his, so that she would never have to face her troubles again. Yet he didn’t move at all and looked at her with the utmost attention.
As if to read his thoughts, she looked straight into his eyes, reading deep into his soul with her deep sad eyes. In that one single glance, much was said. Without even uttering a word, he understood that the end had begun and smiled like he expected it all along like a stoic warrior sentenced to death. She didn’t move but went on looking at him with the same calmness.
He moved his hand to touch her cheek. She twined his hand in hers and placed it against her cheek. Slowly a tear fell on his hand. Then more came while she sobbed aloud.

Now he couldn’t bear all this distance. He leaned close to her and kissed her forehead. She smiled through her tears and rested her head against his chest. Hugging each other, they sat for long in silence.

When her tears ceased, she looked at him with a strange calmness and smiled. This smile was from heart where a strange silence took possession of her. When tears had purged the dross out of her mind and the emptiness in the heart was gone, what she felt was hope. Nothing could cast a shadow on their bliss again. As long as they lived, as long as death took one of them away, there was hope for them. An overwhelming love for him flowed in her heart. She took his hand and asked him to hug her tight and not to let her go to a universe of loss. Her eyes filled with tears for an instant. He held her tight and promised her that his love will always be for her. 

Eternal Love

I think love at my age and yours means trying to understand each other's worlds through the medium of words, smiles and touch till you comprehend me and I comprehend you. It might not be possible to fully sense what the other says or does not say but words mean a lot in our relationship. 

That doesn't mean that there are disagreements between us or misunderstandings for we are from two different worlds of understanding and upbringing. I think we often make an attempt to understand what each other's words and silences mean. 

Though you are a caveman who withdraws into your moodiness and a nature woman who has her cycles of crests and troughs, we try to find meaning in our togetherness. It has always been my dream to wander the world with you- go places, find beauty in nature and in simple things and live life to the fullest. What I have always wanted is to wake up early and watch the streaks of dawn across the sky and then snuggle you to wakefulness.  

I have found love once again with you, recovered from the strife of this mighty world and restored the beauty lost in time and I might like to wear daily the colours of holi that you splashed on my face or may be celebrate love with a spot of sindhoor that you smear on my forehead or cherish a kiss that you planted on my cheek. 

And, you and I welcome each day with gratitude for another day of togetherness, hoping in our heart of hearts that we will stay together till the end of time enjoying our mutually shared life of togetherness, where we learn our lifelessons everyday. 

#eternallove

Recompense

For every word of harshness that you hear,
There is equally a word of love somewhere.
For the darkest hours of the wakeful night,
At the end of which is a beautiful dawn.

For the loss of innocence of childhood,
There is the growing maturity of years.
For the loss of a life near river green,
There is lot more sunshine to equal.

For the trenches that this life fell into
There are the new scales that it climbs.
For the years lost in search of dreams,
There are these words on a virtual page.

Which brings in daily, strange comfort,
For every friend lost, that of strangers.

Language

Do you mean the words you say?
Do we speak the same language?
Do we comprehend each other?
Do we share the same world?

For a while thought I was fluent in you;
Yet found out that we are from two worlds
Two different worlds of understanding
Where we do not speak the same tongue.

Nor do we comprehend each other,
Not any longer,  since we are strangers-
You come from your dark cave
And I still move in crests and troughs.

We, both having burnt boats in a rage
And trying hard to communicate. 

Songs of Sunshine

When the heart chose its path

And burnt all the other roads,

Reason was silent and sore,

But the heart hoped and loved

More than everything else.

In the days of radiant sunshine

Free and uncensored thoughts,

Effortless talk with smiles,

Laughter, kisses and love,

No bitterness was foreseen.

Now the sunshine is gone,

Replaced by the rainy days

Just like the pre-sunshine age

Each day after the other

Again an uneventful life.

The clock has been turned

Back to the mixed times,

Bittersweet and mundane,

Where no dark clouds were,

It is raining incessantly.

The days of sunshine are over,

With no hopes of coming back,

Angry words and accusations,

No daily downloads of news

Only spite and seething anger.

Yet this heart that forgot itself,

Became rougher and tougher

Day after day remembers,

The melodious tunes it knew

In the days of bright sunshine. 

Written in Absence

The monsoons

After the wrath of the scorching summer, you celebrate the advent of the monsoons along with nature an you forget the harshness of the summer season when you suffered spending counting days tilt the arrival of the rains. You remember the scorching heat of the summer season, the cool  summer rinks that offered you comfort, bathing in the sea very week and the unguents that helped you sleep at night.

You sing the songs of the monsoon along with the rain and you love listening to the pitter patter of the raindrops on the tin roof nearby. You rejoice like someone In the arid lands celebrating the onset of rains and delight in getting soaked to the bones in the first rain so much that your miserable summer is forgotten. 

Your mornings are spent snuggling inside your warm blanket listening to the rain bursting outside an the rhythm of the raindrops pitter-pattering on the tin roof close by.

 

Couple Goals

We have celebrated our days of togetherness as if each day was a special occasion, gone on adventures in the city, explored new nooks and corners in the city or even watched movies back to back on weekends. We have also captured our moments of delight on the lens enjoying the simple delights that life offers on the way.

You and I have woven many dreams of travelling in our days of togetherness and in some of these we have woke up in each other's arms every morning watching the streaks of dawn spread across the sky. We have watched the stars come out and gone to sleep snuggling each other.

You have come to my place of birth, to this house near the River Green and watched the snake-boats glide in the waters during Onam. I have dreamt of this mighty river at times when I have been away for long especially during the summer months and when one thinks of home.

May be we will find love once again and we will beam our childhood smile once again . May be we will dab our lives with the colours splashed from our memories. Once again, we will celebrate holi with spontaneity and with mischief like from a long-forgotten childhood.

Though times have changed, I still want to go on our little adventures with you and watch sunsets and sunrises or chat with each watching the night sky. I remember our good old days and think how your presence was a source of comfort though now the days are gone by and the magic lost from this life. Yet, you long for the same delight that you felt when you recognized a kindred wanderer in him.

I find that this heart might sing a song of delight and rejoice beyond words if you come back as my soul companion. At times, you search every face that you know for a semblance of this same dream, then feels depressed when you find it is nothing but a mirage and ends every such thought with heavy feet and grim thoughts.

You choose the same kindred spirit from the many that you know for its companion, for it has known its many ups and downs, the secrets that you will never say aloud and small talk that never used to run out about everything under the sun. You dream of the same face in every dream and though surprised by your heart's desire to be with your soulmate, you wait for life to resolve your worries turning a deaf ear to the noises around you the whole time.

Home

Home is where your heart goes back time and again, where you want to spend your quality time enjoying the activities that you like. Home is the elated feeling that you experience when you reach the city that you grew up after being away from it. You love glimpses of your city in films or snaps an even recognize locations just by looking closely at the public spaces.

Home is the city that you travel through every day and still feel that there is more to explore, places you have never been to and places which you know like the palm of your hand. It’s always with a sense of curiosity and streak of curiosity that you love to explore its nooks and corners along with your soul friend and you just love the comfort of your favourite hangouts such as the museum campus or the beaches or the coffeehouses.

Home is your sacred space, the altar that you have created for everything that you hold close to your heart. Home is a place where I am comfortable, candid and naughty, real and authentic. Home is not four walls but the familiar comfortable space that you curl up with a well-thumbed book and a cup of coffee.

Home is you. You are my home, the safe space that you return to every time for solace far from the strife of this world. You are my home, a place of comfort that I want to wake up in and go to sleep in and cherish every time your thought crosses my mind. Home is your memory that I carry safe in my heart, safe and sacred like a talisman throughout the years and where I wander every time this world becomes too much to bear.

goat days

Goat Days

Goat Days, written by the Gulf Malayali Benyamin and translated by Joseph Koyillapally, is worth reading and worth remembering as well. Like Yann Martel's Booker-winning Life of Pi, Goat Days captures the ordeals of an innocent man in a hell beyond his imagination and creates an animal allegory to drive home his message. 

Najeeb has the typical Malayali dream, of being in the Gulf and sending money home. His desires resemble the luxuries of a Gulf-returned Malayali: “ a gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain”. He lands in Riyadh on a visa sent by his friend's brother-in-law but the life that awaits him there does not resemble his earlier idea of a gulf life. 

He finds himself in a masara tending goats, camels and sheep; working day and night; feeding them and milking them; in fact, living like one of them. He forgets even the simple pleasures of his former life such as wasing himself or even the right to privacy while defecating. However, he finds the company of the animals more comforting than that of the cruel and inhuman arbab. He longs for his homeland, the bath in the river, the presence of his family and for rain.When Najeeb breaks out of his masara and runs away, it is a huge step towards the unknown. Like Pi, Najeeb thanks God for being with him during his ordeal. 

Readable and memorable, Goat Days represents the ordeals of many Indian immigrants across the Gulf countries, the reality of which is glossed over by the glittering opulence of the few lucky ones. It is surely a slice of real life. May be a goat's life. 

I am waiting eagerly to watch the film adaptation and to reread the book to see the similarities and differences. 

Teddy Day: Dreams

Though we may be apart, in a sense we are always together, across all lives, present and future. For this sense of being alone, creeps on you even when you stand in crowds and even when you are with your friends.

You are my other half, my twin flame in this life, for it is with you that my dreams run wild and I weave stories of togetherness in an unreal realm. And, I have become like you in the years that followed.

In a way, when I look back on life, like a traditional Indian bride, I have walked with you around every revolution around the sun, I have stayed loyal to your love and held your name holy like a talisman.

You are my other self, whom I do not know for I have never seen you as you really are, for I was struck blind by your light. Yet I know you were with me in each and every circle round the holy fire and will find you near me in every dream. 

Even when I dream, you are with me and I return to your thoughts time and again just to hold your hand in an unreal realm where rules don't matter and hearts speak only the truth. In another world, in a parallel universe, we celebrate our life of eternal togetherness.

It is destiny that brought us together and again we spend our time chatting away about how life has been during these years of absence. I dream of a life of togetherness again, stargazing or soul gazing or learning more of each other.

And, though apart in real, in every circambulation around the sun, you and I will grow together in wisdom and though our lives will remain apart, you and I will find that this sense of oneness with each other in spirit, that itself is a reason for celebration.

#teddyday

 

Teddy Day: Dreams

• Love me like you do
• Kabhi neem neem
• Atak gaya hai
• I'll make love to you
• Eternal flame
• O Sanam
• Aliyambal
• Ninakente Manasile
• Tum Se Hi
• Nahin Samne

Chocolate Day Playlist

• Phir Mohabbat
• Sawan Aaya Hai
• Samjhawan
• Enna Sona
• Shape of You
• Tu Hi Hai
• Innu Konjam Neram
• Oru Venal Puzhayil
• Athmavil Mutti Vilichathu Pole
• Poongatinoum Kilikalodum 

Chocolate Day: Chocolate Evenings

We met each other for the first time two decades ago when we were in our twenties and within days we were talking to each other about our favourites- books, films, music and food.

You and I spoke of things that were serious and trivial, and formed a bond with common tastes. The first evening was followed by many more tastes and smells that we experienced at the eatery close to our workplace.

You sat beside me for a friendly chat sipping hot coffee in an evening air that smelt of freshly brewed coffee and newly baked bread. It was that book by Robin Sharma that brought you to my mind because I remember how you were so passionate about what you love.

Those days, I think was a transition period because I saw myself transform into a princess and I would spend hours in front of the mirror wondering what you saw in me.

I think it's the magic of those bygone days that come with the smells of hot chocolate and freshly baked bread. And, I remember you because though I am sad that you were never mine, I always wonder how wonderful I have felt with you around me.

Today, your sweet words made me remember our long lost days of togetherness.

#chocolateday

Rose Day

I still remember how you had created a CD with your favourite songs and gave it to me for listening. I think the songs stay in the memory and became my favorite in the coming years. What I have always wanted was to create a playlist for you like the one you had made that year for me.

This year, I think I will listen to these songs on every day of the Valentine week and watch a few chick-flicks to make myself feel good a put on share some really good quotes from memorable books that we used to discuss.

Like the rose that I gifted that year, I will gift you a list of handpicked melodies though it might make you go back in time to our days of togetherness and transport you a  different world like it did to me.

This Rose day brings you back to me again and I celebrate it with old favourites playing in the background. 

Propose Day Playlist

1. Tum Tak

2. Chori Chori jab tumse

3. Pehla nasha

4. Apna Bana le

5. Kabira

6. Perfect

7. Runaway 

8. Malare

9. Jeevamshamayi

10. darshana

Rose Day Playlist

Here are some melodies that stay close to the heart.

 I knew I loved you

2. Aashiyan

3. My dil goes hmmm

4. Pyar Hua Chupke Se

5. Aisa Lagta Hai

6. Ghar Se Nikalte He

7. Banjaara 

8. O Rey Chori

9.Walking in the Moonlight

10. Aradhike

Rose Day: Sacred Spaces

In times of despair and darkness, your soul lingers on a favourite memory for a second and without knowing how or why, there is shift in thinking that realign you to the present. This memory could be a place near the River Green, where you grew up or could be the verdant campus where you studied or your favourite space in your house.

The spaces you love, the view that your balcony offers, your favourite reading space in the drawing room or the serene space you have made for your gods-all become memories to be visited in the mind's eye.

However, my favourite space was my armchair from where I visited many imaginary lands and learnt the magic of written words. The view that this room offered was lovely, with the blue skies and the sight of tall buildings etched across. During the rains, this is the space from where I sang my favourite songs.

Yet my love, you are my favourite sacred space, the one I visit every day, whenever I think of our days of togetherness, the one secret haven where I rest when in strife and where my soul might linger even after I am gone.

You are that sacred space that I will inhabit in the realms of dreams where the bonds of this world don't matter any longer.

Memories

Earlier, life was celebrated fully and these cherished moments were captured on the lens. Most of the time, you loved to stand and stare and wander and find joy in the things around you. For you could watch with delight whatever was offered on the wayside and in your wanderings you came across many sights that always caught your eye. 

Every occasion was marked by countless snaps took on the camera and sometimes even our days of togetherness were treasured memories in small pixels. But with the passage of time, on growing older and wiser and lazier, you have changed a lot and you no longer believe in the power of the lens to capture memorable moments. Now, you want to sit still and enjoy the moment, be mindful and present, taking in the whole experience in its entirety. 

The sights that you see around are captured on your mind’s eye as you savour and record each and every sensory detail- the miracle of your child's first cry, the morning sights on the city roads, the sunsets by the beach and the soothing sight of the waves crashing against the shore, the rhythmic way your wayside shopkeeper makes your favourite pani puri and the countless moments that are too good to be caught on the lens. 

I find that there are moments more cherished than all these, like our days of togetherness though not caught on any lens any day. What you and I try to do is to find the magic of togetherness in the everyday life and beauty in the mundane around us. 

You need to wait so that you and I can set forth on our wanderings and find delight in the solace that nature offers. I wish for more days when we can sit idle near the seashore listening to the soothing music of waves thrashing against the shore or wander in the city basking in the morning light. 

Anyway, I would say you are my favourite movie rerun in my mind's eye, with the smallest details and more precious than any captured moments and I would trade everything just to capture your smile on the lens, with you watching the beauty around you.

Memories

When I was in my twenties, I had this habit of capturing moments on the lens and almost very occasion was marked by the countless snaps took on the camera. But with the passing of years, on growing older, you have changed your nature and you no longer believe in taking snaps to treasure memorable moments. 

Most of the time you want to sit idle and be there in the moment, taking in the experience as a whole with your whole self. Then, you come back to your experience and rerun it in your mind's eye savouring each and every detail- the miracle of your child's first cry, the morning sights on the city roads, the sunsets by the beach and the soothing sight of the waves crashing against the shore, the rhythmic way your wayside shopkeeper makes your favourite pani puri and the countless moments that are too good to be caught on the lens. 

I find that there are moments more cherished than all these, like our days of togetherness though not caught on any lens any day. Anyway, I would say you are my favourite movie rerun in my mind's eye, with the smallest details and more precious than any moment ever caught on the lens. 

My Dream World

I belong to only to you, my dream world- not to the place that I have left as a child, or to my native place, to my father's place which I have left as a child. I do not feel that I belong to my father's family as he is dead and gone long back and what I have left of him are a few scattered bones in a graveyard and some books and diaries that he left behind.

I do not belong to the place I grew up as a child beside the River Green, where it was always fun playing in the river yet I never belonged to my mother's family for there were rightful inheritors who belonged more rightful than me. I do not belong to my extended family for I have blindly followed their traditions and values without questioning them and created a tradition of handing over the acquired culture.

I belong only to you, my dream world and my twin flame, who knows my ups and downs, my feminine spirit and tenderness, my occasional clownishness in trying to belong to some name, some family, some tribe,where I do not belong. Yet in the realm of unreality, it is you who define me, in the sacred space of our togetherness,in the melting down of the barriers between you and me, and the all engulfing tenderness that follows, that is the space where I see myself, as yours having a name that you call me when no one is around and being yours other beloging to any place, tribe or family.

Rain Chants

The sacred space by the temple was created on a platform of red bricks and nearby a saffron-clad priest chanted the ancient chants for rain in high tones. The land was dried up and deviod of any trace of life and the people draped in earth-coloured cottons chanted with the sun scorching their wheat-coloured skins.

The chants reverbrated in the blazing summers and were offered to the gods of the sky and the wind and the people remembered all the occasions when the land was blessed with rain following the rituals. The children from the village played by the dried up temple pond, thinking of the days where they splashed in the cool water, sat idly in the cool recesses of the rocks, or chattering with the juice of ripe mangoes oozing on their hands and faces.

The ancient chanting went on incessantly, in a land of purity, where none could wash or bathe except in the muddy pond waters and the summer  blazed along with the hot afternoons, when none could sleep, for the heat numbed and scorched the earth.

The ancient chants went on praising the rains: oh you rain; much awaited, the boon of heavens,
that brings joy to the earth, wealth to its people,oh you rain, come with thunder and lightning,
and soak our brown skins with delight. Oh rain, the fulfillment of forecasts and incessant prayers,
I invoke you in the names of the barren earth, the dried up rivers and lakes, the animals and birds,the silent trees and the people on earth.

The rains were awaited after the prayers to end the blazing afternoons of summer heat with the first drops of summer rain and you set the warm smell of earth rising and you bedeck trees with jewels like brides, from furnace hot afternoons to nights of restless pace. It is for the rains, incense is burnt and prayers chanted and it is for you, the comforter on hot summer days. The land and the people waited for the comfort offered by the summer rains.

However, on the third day of endless repentance and prayers, grey and white dappled clouds rose to silhouette the sky, with hints of a sudden outburst. With the advent of the rain clouds, the entire city rejoiced as the wait was over.  The days of drought are finally over and the soft rain slushed over the crowd with bolts of thunder and lightning. The people received in open hands stretched to skies what the heavens granted as comfort from the scorching heat of Indian summer.

The rain fell over the blazing holy fire, with the land and the people soaked in the rain and the beaming children screamed at delight when the droplets of rain drenched their bodies. Finally, the prayers of the people were answered and the land was blessed with rain.