Saturday, March 17, 2018

When your verse spoke my mind.....

"Psst, can you hear it?
Not the sound of hustle and bustle,
Nor the sound of leaves rustle,
But the silent voice of the me in your ear,
Whispering how much I love you,
How much I want you - how much I need you,
Together, let’s blow this pitiful dream of success,
This dream of achievement in a society that’s meaningless,
And travel to lands frozen in times of peace,
Where the soul may flourish, not politics or greed,

For like all things living, struggling to find meaning,
Ours is each other, to love, live, dance and sing,
Not worrying, but welcoming what life may bring,
In a cottage on a hill, or a shack on a beach,
With it’s cats, dogs, rabbits and sheep,
Our home will be this world, our castle - our sheets,
Change will be our constant, just like you and me"

- D. 

Friday, September 16, 2016

To Jessica Schreindl

"Conformity is comforting, but nothing compares to being true to oneself."
My dearest friend Jessica Schreindl wrote a piece about leaving Christianity and her lonely journey to independence. I have always admired her remarkable honesty in her pursuit of everything professional and personal. Back in University, I found it saddening when a few of our male and/or conservative peers, judged her for well, just being the awesome Jessica that she is :) She however, remained consistent to her views, how she led her life and here she is!  Continuing to introspect upon and articulate all that has shaped her journey of being the adult she is. Some may squirm or question her. But she's achieved more in being true to herself. So I appeal to my peers: Sure, family and community shapes who we are, so does our religion. And there's so much credit to give for their role in rooting us to our origins, battling the hollowness within at times or superficialities of modern life. But how much we question of our religion in the world we live in today, the ways we reassess or shed some norms our family/community holds important, that step truly truly could lead us to potentials within we wouldn't have imagined ourselves earlier capable of. So........dare! Because not owning up to yourself is just a big disservice to your growth...everyone and everything else comes later.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

To solitude



To realizing the power of silence with one's own words

To being addicted to one's own company

To slow but persistent epiphanies that creep up on you but stay by your side as you find yourself capable of a little more than you expected

To learning to remember how much you loved discovering more of yourself, by yourself

To letting your brain become a closer ally to your heart


Sunday, July 17, 2016

To learnings that free us from those we wish to never let go of

"How can you "really like" someone without already having imagined a 'we' with that person?" She asked him with that sincere voice she used only when she already had a 'we' in her head. In that split moment, she thought of all the boys she had been asked by to leave , to stay but to not expect and the ones who completely had disappeared on her. Still she felt ok imagining a moment of togetherness with this man, someone she knew she may be meeting the last time.
 "What do you mean?" He spoke through the dark, his lips catching the light from the street lamp outside. Almost as if they were searching for her.
 " Well, maybe women do it more often than men - they imagine togetherness before even having given a name to the potential relationship with a man. When I know I really like a man, I have arrived at that conclusion after living a hundred random moments already with him in my brain. Fleeting but definitive moments".
 "Like what it would look like to sit by a lake and talk? Or pick up groceries together?", he responded.
 She smiled slightly. "Something as basic as holding each other in that most comforting friendly but a 'much more' embrace"
  He leaned down to turn on the lamp and took a look at her face. She was glowing with that beaitific confidence saints exude. The kind that comes with knowing one doesn't have anything to lose because one has made peace with leaving behind what they could have had. He smiled and held her gaze. Then leaning in, he held her close. This is friendly, he thought. But it was so much more. He was certain.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Rhymes in the storm

Our house is a fort
Around it is a moat.
The storm ants are crowding
The street lights.... they are fading.
My childhood returns
Memories escape the urn.
The time to visit is now
The lamps are aglow.
When stories are told in their light
Nostalgia embraces us tight.
So stranger....if you had a home, or you didn't
Come hither........we will take you right in.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

"Bottling up within me...... To drink from your memory"

I met a soul buddy;  a fantasy version of my values mixed with empathy , knowledge and passion. But my fantasies lie outside  the lines of my reality's jagged straight lines within which I withhold from potential companionships.  Someone rightly pointed that I may even miss a great reality in my present discipline of self love.... But reality...I know its deal. I am cautious of it because its jealous of the ideal, hence it hides away the utopian.

  I am so at peace and happy on not investing myself emotionally on another for the first time in my life. But the universe has a bitch of a timing. It throws you a curveball when you are busy with your confidence and self assured solitude. It says 'Hey you....silly moron , you only get to glimpse a flicker of a deep connection when you are smug about your preference of peaceful solitude so let's see how you tackle it in your Zen solo state...CATCH!" And then you face a human you didn't expect to encounter. You see a snatch or two of yourself in this person during a day long conversation while walking together your favourite parts of a city, discussing organically issues that matter to you - gender labels and their need to be subverted, world politics,  your family history, communities you care for, culture as you only can teach to each from your different roots and of course your shared love for food.

 And so here I am, holding onto memories of the weekend, a weekend that wasn't meant to be, but has become a page of a heavy, ancient and expensive encyclopedia. An encyclopedia I cant afford and own. So I feel like tearing out my favourite pages. Instead I must return it to its rightful place and walk out of the bookshop.

 Even if could bottle up what this weekend was, it would perhaps be a faint shadow of its burning brightness I feel inside me now. But I am only human. I will strive to make sense of a chanced encounter and of an unlikely comrade for whom what I feel now is a light flickering its last...diffused without its wick.

You shared Hafiz with me and the irony is only he makes sense now. If a page were to be turned to tell my future,  I want it to open up to this quote :

 "Come let us get drunk even if it's our ruin
For sometimes under ruins one finds treasure"

Friday, November 6, 2015

Her kind

And that is the kind of person she was. The kind who would never get her hair straightened even if all the other co anchors at her station were doing it. The kind who used her teeth to peel off the ends of sugar cane stalks, chew on them and spit them out. Like her mother had taught her as a kid. The kind to never wear nail polish but when she did, the colour stayed for a month . The kind who cooked a meal fiercely even if she cooked only for her friends who longed for homemade mutton. Or the kind to never pick up red lace lingerie instead sticking to blacks and whites because they were more practical to match with anything she wore. The kind to climb rocks, trees and seven foot gates. The higher the physical obstacle, the more she wanted to get to its other side. The kind you couldn't write off to be too modern for your son because her roots were her tradition, her mother's village her favourite retreat, her parents home her safehouse against moronic men who broke her heart and of course....of course...the sarees. Her obssessive love to be perpetually in sarees . When she draped the five yard fabric around her, you could not stop your eyes from staring at her looking so alive. You didn't want to use the word sexy. It fell short. You could not, even if you wished to, stop fantasising the wildest thought your brain could conjure, instead stopping at the most timid of them all. The thought of what it would be to have her in your arms and the saree at her feet.