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Troika: Part 2

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Tia was early. Half an hour early to be precise. Tia liked Powai – the broad promenades, the cafes and the bars queued up against the promenades, the lakes that stretched languidly in a city choked for space and time, the occasional speckles of green. She got herself a cigarette from the corner shop – not the best way to kill time, but the one she invariably reached out to at times like these. She inhaled deeply, staring at the street in front of her. The rains made the street shimmer with reflections. Borrowed light, when it had none of its own – mused Tia. She looked around, the city seemed to look back to her with footprints of past dates – men who knew her intimately at different points of time. Each café, each rendezvous spot seemed to be a witness to fragments of a personal story shared with different ghostly presences of men. She finished her cigarette and went inside the café. She would finish her book while waiting, she decided. But instead, she found h...
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Light and Shadows 2

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Light and Shadows

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(Oil pastels on paper)
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On Growing Up

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Part of growing up is realizing That safe havens are illusory. I used to go to my mother when I was small, And know she would make things right. Mother’s presence does not give me that assurance anymore. I have this memory of Christmas eve in London, It is a difficult time for an outsider with no moorings in the city, Streets are silent, shops are closed, There is no place that offers a balm to your homesickness. I strolled down Huddleston Road… And saw a family sitting at the dining table by their window. There I was, at the periphery, Wistfully looking at the centre of the circle, wanting in. I wanted to go home. And yet… that image took me back to this time in my childhood, I was playing with my friends on our terrace, Games of our growing up years – lagori, kho kho, lock and key. I stopped by at their place on my way back, They showed me the new upholstery their father bought for the house, It was Diwali the next day, They spoke a...
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The Fluidity of Identity

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The Skeleton in the Closet

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She wears today Not the violet of the myriad flowers that colour meadows Nor the indigo of eclectic dyes, the ilk of colonial conquests Nor the blue that reflects from the ocean, vestiges of light  that cannot be absorbed. She wears today Not the green of algae that grows on decaying, stagnant water Nor the yellow of the pus that pulsates in a purulent wound Nor the orange of the astringent antiseptic that flows through hospitals Nor the red of the fresh warm blood that oozes from a raw laceration. She wears today The white of the brittle skeleton Formed bit by bit from ossified deposits of memory Stubborn bones that shape her flesh. She wears today The skeleton that hides in her closet.
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Troika: Part 1

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“Feelings are enigmatic creatures”, my father used to say. “They are an amalgamation of the visceral and the intellectual, glorious in our inability to comprehend them. The moment we think we might have unravelled a bit of the mystery, another strand shows up and throws all our understanding into a disarray. We may be defined in flesh by finite lines, but within us there lies a gaping infinity. Infinite cells, infinite thoughts, infinite feelings ... think … think about that, sweet heart. Think of the unfathomable depths of various criss-crossing thoughts as mysterious and ancient as the universe that we carry within us. And herein lies the human conundrum, a deeper awareness of this infinity makes us aware of how little we know about ourselves. What we see and what we know is only the tip of the iceberg … and it is very easy to drown in the ocean that hosts the iceberg.” My father did eventually drown in the   cerulean   ocean of his thoughts. I was eighteen. He left a...
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