An Empty Land

I walk into the familiar coffee shop, where the table by the window had belonged to me and my friends, each weekend, long ago. I order the same, for old times' sake, and we sit in silence, my coffee and I.

I look around, unseeing, as the years melt and fall away. I'm that effervescent girl once more and my friends are here with me, squeezing in around the table, engaged in noisy banter. We talk, we dream, we build castles in the air...

And in that fleeting moment, nothing has changed.

I blink, and the magic is gone. The coffee shop looks a little worse for wear now, the music that emanates from the speakers is not the same and the view from the window looks jaded. My friends are long gone, scattered across the miles, separated by distances and priorities, and the castles we built in the air are now lives rooted in routine and responsibility...

Everything has changed.

I pay for the coffee, swing my bag over my shoulder and get up to leave.

___________________________________________________________________

Tonight, We Are Young

I’ve been feeling a little crowded lately, and my claustrophobia-driven instincts scream ‘run!’ pretty much most of the time. Of course, I don’t quite have the luxury of acting on them, although, in my head, I’m already far, far away.

I go about my day, running on autopilot, tending to each task monotonously, religiously, but every once in a while, in my mind, I shrug responsibility off my shoulders, like the leaden cloak it has suddenly become, and seek refuge in a time when I have felt completely unfettered...

Tonight, I am young. I am without the responsibilities that every new role, every new relationship, inevitably forges. I lounge easily with friends in a speeding car in the black of night, enjoying the wind in my hair, feeling freer than I ever will, again. There is laughter, there is careless banter, there is friendship. We drive through an unending, unlit, desolate road...white headlights racing before us, the radio spinning out ‘The Living Daylights’ at insane decibels. We are high on youth...unafraid of tomorrow, unmindful of consequences, and blissfully content in the moment.

The moment passes; I am back to now, making mental notes as I stir the tea on the stove. I need to pick up eggs for breakfast tomorrow, write out Maths practice sheets for the kid, get the laundry done, complete an article the client had demanded yesterday, and oh, wait, no sugar to be added to this tea, for the diabetic elders. My cellphone rings then, and I smile when I see the familiar name. I pick up the phone, knowing he will be the first to speak, as always...

I hear the familiar voice of an old friend, and draw strength from the friendship, and from the million remembrances of youthful, unencumbered days that his phone call evokes. And just like that, my heart feels lighter, and responsibilities don't seem that daunting anymore. I become, once more, the person I used to be...the girl in that car, who had not a care in the world, and the world at her feet, talking animatedly to the boy steering the car that night, so many eons ago.

Tonight, we are 19, again. And life is still brimming, with possibilities.

Shifting Patterns

Raindrops create intricate, shifting patterns on my window...delicate silver streaks that twist and meander, joining other silver lines for the briefest moment, before finding their own gleaming, downward path again. I watch, mesmerized, wondering if this is how lives intersect in the canvas that is life. And then, those memories return...

Maybe someday, when you look at the random patterns the rain paints on your window, you'll remember too...

The endless, agonized waiting, before a brave smile merged the course of two lives...the love that wove itself slowly through unending conversations and interlocked fingers during stolen hours...the fragile hope that grew stronger and more impatient with each passing day...that blind faith in forever.

Someday perhaps, you'll wonder too, about that exact moment when happiness had begun to fray...When the boundless possibilities dwindled to a handful of tokens, waiting to be discarded or destroyed in hurt and helpless fury...

The diamond raindrops continue to beat down on the glass...noisily, relentlessly, mercilessly. But the rain will end and the sun will stream its brilliant, golden rays through the same glass, washed clean of yesterday's dust and regret. Maybe then, we'll understand, that our dreams were meant to intertwine, but briefly, and acknowledge, that with its continuous, forward momentum, life goes on...

Except on some moist, grey days, like today, when the rain paints patterns of the past on the window.

____________________________________________________________________

And a piece by Alexandre Desplat, The Meadow. 

East India & Company

I’d known it’d be hot, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the sticky, suffusing 44°C heat that greeted us in Jamshedpur. After the 37°C in Pune that I had whined as being oh so hot, this was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. But that’s tropical summer for you, I guess.

Jamshedpur reunited us with family, and showed us some things new, some things pretty, some places old and some places nostalgic. I got to spend a few, unhurried sunset moments by the confluence of the Subarnarekha and Kharkai Rivers - my favourite place in the town, and at Jubilee Park, where illuminated fountains lit up the late evening skies with their refreshing colours.

We travelled to Kolkata next, and though it was relatively less hot, it was definitely more humid. But there was so much here that made the noisy, dusty, yellow-death-cab-filled-city, fun for me. 

Rating highest perhaps was a delectable lunch at Flury’s, a place I associate with childhood memories, warm, mouth-watering flavours and the feeling that I’ve stepped into a different era. 

The Victoria Memorial was well worth a visit, and we spent a large part of the evening on its manicured lawns. 

Princep Ghat and the Vidyasagar Setu Bridge spanning the Hooghly River were impressive, both beautifully lit and standing out against the inky black of night. 

We might’ve visited a lot more places in Kolkata if we’d had more time, and if it hadn't been so hot, and I guess the holiday might have been more enjoyable if this had been November, and not May. But in the end, the joy of meeting the people you love far outweighs the discomfort the weather inflicts on you. So while I’m back in Pune, enjoying (and appreciating) its cooler climate, what comes to mind isn’t the sweltering heat, the sweat and the endless, blazing sun in the east.

I remember instead, the sharp aroma of mustard seeds sputtering in hot mustard oil, the sweetness of fluffy, white rasgullas, the warmth of shared laughter and conversations with loved ones over endless cups of tea, the places and people that I hold fondly in my thoughts...

And I bring home with me, the assurance of prayers and whispered blessings of the family elders, and reasons to return, another day. 

The Endless River

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide.

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river
Forever and ever...

Borrowing words from Pink Floyd till I can find my own. Until then, it's High Hopes. 

Striking a Chord

I hear an old Tom Jones song in a movie, and for a moment, the movie is forgotten as the tune takes me back to a time when things had been simpler, and the world, less complicated. It leads me to my childhood home, where I can picture my mother singing the same happy song while making dinner in the kitchen, my dad applying a screwdriver to an old radio he’s been repairing, and my brother and I playing with our dinky toys on the carpet. 

But that was then, and now, I’m the one singing, making dinner, as the music ties my yesterdays with today. 

Sometimes, I watch my little boy stand in front of the computer (yes, that’s where my music plays from) and listen intently to the songs running through my playlist. He asks me to play one or two of his favourites again and this time, without me singing aloud, please. And it strikes me that these songs will find a place in his memories…memories that he will look back upon some day in the distant future, when he’s in a different place maybe, when he chances upon Gary Moore or Pink Floyd playing on the radio, or an old jazz composition that his dad had loved listening to. 

And this music will take him to those carefree days, when he used to enjoy a game of Scrabble with his mom on rainy evenings, or when he read a story book, sitting with his parents on the couch, while they enjoyed a cup of tea together. He will remember the familiar tunes that had flooded the corners of his home then, and it will connect him to the child he used to be…who had been secure in the knowledge that he was loved, and that his world was alright.

And he will feel the same, again. 

The way I feel now, through every note in the music that my parents used to listen to, long ago, and in every melody that my son will recall, long after. 

Remember a Rainy Day

It’s been raining incessantly for the past week now. It’s been raining memories too; memories of another time, another place, and rain…always, the rain. 

I like the rain when it falls softly, gently…

It reminds me of my first kiss, from a boy I had secretly held in my heart, hoping, yet never expecting to be loved in return. But it rains magic sometimes, and some of that must have touched us and kept us together, if only for a while. I remember that kiss now, in that magical, misty rain, and the wonders of first love.

I like the rain when it beats down relentlessly…

It takes me back to the day my bike had refused to start – thanks to the rains – and I had had to push it all the way home, from college. What had made me ignore the near-pneumonia the weather had almost given me, was the company of the boy who had walked me home that day; who had pushed my bike for the better part of the journey and had made the hour seem to rush by in a few i-wish-they-never-ended minutes. I remember the wishful beginning of my last love.

I like the rain for the remembrances. And I like the rain for all those feelings they brings back. But lately, call it growing up or growing old…

I like the rain, mostly, when it stops. 

I give you Smokie, with 'Have you ever seen the rain'.

Glass Butterflies

It’s been long enough.

And now,

Simply

Enough.

I open my fist

To release captured moments...

Of a car ride in the pouring April rain

A walk alongside a lake at dawn

Of silence shared, understood,

And screaming joy at the park...

Street food on moist evenings,

Those fragile,

Glass butterflies in November...

The shadow across your face,

A point of no return,

And that lingering, last embrace.

They fly out

Like fireflies...

Twinkling erratically,

Before claimed

By the darkness.

I turn around

And walk beyond the place

Where our lives touched briefly,

Without regret,

With no more pain.

I think of you one last time.

Every time. 

Yesterday

"That era has passed.

Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.

He remembers those vanished years.

As though looking through a dusty window pane,

The past is something he could see, but not touch.

And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct."

- from 'In the Mood for Love'

Fragmented

Saying goodbye wasn’t easy

Knowing that

I didn’t want to leave,

And that you didn’t want me to...

But also knowing that

I couldn’t stay...

Shouldn’t stay any longer.

I kept the moments

And let you keep the memories...

So that if you should ever wonder

If I’ll come back,

You know, that

In these memories, I will...

Whenever you think

Of me.

Turn the Page

I open the heavy album and look into my paper memories. Highlighted life looks back at me…content, happy, full. Bright colours, special moments, white grins…all captured in a frame, so that someday I might look back into each picture and glow in the warmth of its recollections. These photos, the legacies of the life I have led so far, speak of my experiences, my friends, the travels, the adventures and more. Each, a window into a moment, telling a story of the person that I am, of all that I’ve valued through time.

But there are spaces between each vibrant picture in its tidy white frame…spaces filled with invisible moments that do not want to be remembered, that carry too much hurt to be remembered. The prizes that couldn’t be won, the love that promised and then went away, the friendships that destiny cruelly discarded, and the wounds that each loss seared across the heart.

Maybe good times aren’t meant to last forever. Maybe that’s why we save them in the recesses of our minds, sometimes, on paper; proof that we have lived these moments, and enjoyed the offerings of those special times. Our memories recall the vivid shape of joy, whenever happiness seems hard to imagine.

Yes, remembering is important, and yet, forgetting, even more so. Because in a world where pain outweighs happiness, it’s easy to get stuck in a moment. And forgetting is the only way we can let go and move on.

I turn another page.

Reminiscence

Nostalgia breathes a name across the sea. It lingers awhile, taking me back to the days when the sun shone brighter, the breeze kissed a little gentler.

And then the memory fades into the falling darkness around a setting sun that has quite lost its warmth and fire. I send a whisper back over the waters…