A cup of tea.

Watching sunrise from my terrace top, I slowly sip tea from a cup. All in vain efforts to shake off the last clinging residues from last night’s dream (and all the other nights too). Like spurting Bodhi trees on dilapidated constructions-It stood and grew. It is growing, still.

Sips of the hot liquid char my careless mouth and the scarlet sky burns my heart. I’m reminded of the times spent. I try bringing those vanilla memories closer to myself. They are but, just a handful. An evocative fable of a melancholic past hummed monotonously in the throbbing of my flaccid heart. I swirl the seemingly comforting liquid inside my mouth for a few seconds until it becomes unbearable. I gulp it down quick.

Little sips yet again pinched a hibernating self-loathing self awake. Blasphemous ordeals of love and ignorance, which I thought were left far behind, caught up quick, and this time taller and stronger. Like a creeper twirling around a support to stay, or a coin in the wishing well astray- I held faith strong and gulped. The remaining last few sips (now cold) from the cup.The sun is yet to grow warm and sky still a faded blue. It is time enough to contemplate the strange resemblance of the game-The cup and the tea, our lives, you and me.

The cup of tea is over, and so I guess we too, love.

The dying cloud mourns a loss,

and soil rejoices a gift of life.

Monsoons

Gurgling resounds and echoing yells of the enraged cloud

They proclaim a theft.
Led on by the violating wind messengers,

A bigger tantrum- fuming fury, lightning and sounds.
Today the cloud was torn to bits.

Its drops stolen.

You bring out the best in me, you bring out the worst in me

The boy, the bike and the blunders I

The rainclouds seem to reappear from nowhere as if to mere tantalize him, just like his mom, every time he thought of stepping out. Reluctant to get drenched in the winter rain he would give up only to realize that the sun is yet again out. This continued for a good three hours. On top of this, his mom’s repeated reminders about him being lazy and worthless irritated him. Adit thought he rather be cold than pestered at home.

The amusing thing about his mother’s taunts and arguments was, that they would always end up with mentions of his poor academic performance, an absolute unnecessary number of friends and a forecasting of him not getting married to an educated girl. The starting points of all these arguments would however vary from subject as general as cooking and astrology or as vague as aliens.

Throwing a disgusted look at the kinetic he took it out of the house. He had asked for a bike in class eleventh if he gets an eighty percent in exams. Luck be blessed, he exactly scored that much. But somehow his dad convinced him to buy a gear-less two wheeler that could also be driven by his mom. That moment be damned. Till today, there are ownership quarrels in the Kumar house between him and his mom. It always a “die or die” moment for Mr. Kumar to decide whether the kinetic be sent to the vegetable market or to the evening tuitions, but of course we know who the clear winner every time would be.

Although it was just eight months old, the kinetic behaved like living the seventieth year of its humanly existence. The battery gave up, the suspension (I wonder if it is sill there at all) the paint and the pick up- everything was in disarray. Whether this was an effect similar to a mishandled child of a messy divorce or Adit’s conscious efforts of breaking it by not missing even a single pothole in the road or making three people other than him sit on the kinetic and then racing it half way till Mussorrie, it was difficult to say. But what could a seventeen year old do about the situation. He would rather vent out his fury on the poor vehicle than to try making his parents understand how important a two-wheeler is, to be ‘in’ and ‘accepted.’ Hardly were the Kumar’s even aware of the cycles going out of fashion for the teenage crowd. Moreover just imagine the embarrassment of the young lad asking a girl out for a date after the tuitions (or even during them) without a bike. Is she expected to sit on the cycle carrier at the back or the horizontal member in the front? Moreover with the hilly ups and downs of the city roads, cycles just ‘don’t work.’ Adit just wished for his parents to see such a simple logic without him actually having to explain it to them, because frankly they might have a problem with the “girl” and the “date” bit. 

The parents thought that providing Adit with the kinetic was a gesture of scaling efficiency and love. But only the poor boy knew how he felt when this stud group of boys in his school and tuition, each with their own shiny roaring bike, would question his male sitting on the maroon gearless vehicle.

“The sooner this breaks, the faster a new one shall come and this time it’ll be the bike, with gears and everything,” was how Adit manipulated the situation. But somewhere at the back of his mind, being the deprived child that he thought he was, he knew it was his only friend in need and hence the damages were restricted till the permitted non-fatal limit. Adit and the kinetic shared a relation, and a very deep understanding  between them. In the wild the animals kill only for food and not pleasure. Such was the case here. Damage the vehicle till the folks get the point, not to the point where there isn’t any vehicle at all, and the days of the bicycle return. Many days, in fact two torturous years raced by with numerous encounters, adventures, misshapenness and misdoings- the duo witness to all. 

I held on like a last bleached petal of the spring tulip, long gone. Thoughts like morbid oasis of blossoming cherries, in a throat wilting summer, where sane and emotions evaporate. The tears dried up leaving salt marks on the edge of my eye, never seeming to justify the gloom and ache.  Wind it wails of love misplaced, as it searches in the nooks and along the edges of the valley. A poppy in the middle of the wheat field is standing out reminding me of us, a picturesque irony of ambiguous misgivings. Love drizzled in like the welcomed monsoon, but left me swamped. The sticky knee-deep pangs of abandonment like quick sand, broke me into a sweat and pulled me into nightmares. I wake up repressed like a maple leaf in the mighty river. Helpless like a firefly in day, and lost to love. In the painful harmony of the lake and the mountains, the blue sky and the clear waters, the weeping willow by the edge seems to realize it all. Every now and then it would move and stir, creating silent ripples of pulsating soreness. The ripples they seem to grow one inside another just like my daily justifications of murk, never too immense for you and never trivial for me. 

A crime worth committing.

The scent of crushed coriander tiptoed inside my room and sneaked under my quilt waking a wistful me. The delight of a calm morning in a retired hill town is only excited by a brazen display of the velvety okras and beans trying hard to impress the gardener. Their youth is short-lived after all like the others. But the okras are oblivious to the gardener’s intentions. In a plush corner where the plums and the pears reside, the bay leaves are wearisome of concealing a secret filled with memoirs of the cold, nostalgia and all things that were joyous and content. It is the secret of cinnamon. The glossy mint huddle under the cinnamon tree seems to know something about the whole affair, but is determined to be silent about it. The patch lies still to the naked eye and to an uncaring passer by. But the green is reflected in the gardener eyes; his toil is finally paying off. But this isn’t love. It was greed.

As I meander around, between the council of beans and around the mint senate, I witness in the silence, tales of treachery and disdain, of infidelity and betrayal and the gardener’s selfish love. Of the coming over it and reliving life new, another season. The democracy of the vegetable patch stands conceited and strong. The lenient trees and the altruistic shrubs, like mothers taken for granted, speak of their poignant life only to a selected few. Being the human I am, under the watchful gaze of the jamun and the papaya trees, I pluck a few mint leaves, squish them and inhale. The gardener seems half guilty now under the spell of the dying mint. I walk to the other ignored corner where the modest lemon grass stands, dressed plainly expecting none. I did what I had to. Pluck, sniff and move on. As I reach to the end of the patch, I held in my hands, those showy okras, those velvety beans, mint and the lemon grass strands and a fistful of the cinnamon sticks. It was a crime committed. The garden looks back at me in regret and contempt, branches drooping. I only wish the garden forgives me just like it did the gardener every time. 

Painting of a child.

I drew when I was small,

icy mountains and a river bare,

a bunch of birds flying,

crows, mynas or geese- I didn't care.

From behind the mountains

a scarlet sun, with rays radiating wise,

Sometime a face, faceless otherwise,

But always seeming to rise.

The little hut besides the river,

small, big, I’d hardly worry about class.

A tiny door and just one window,

with lush green dew less grass.

Sometimes when I’d be too happy,

the skies would have more crows

or the tree gifted with apples plush,

the river with an added boat.

A thrill it was to paint a thought,

even if it rhymed with most

The mountains, the tree, the river and the hut,

No sad, no gloom, no ghost.

A fool to wish, for past to come,

For now I drew a setting sun.

The pencil and the paper, they trade

Freewill with a house of walls and gates.