The World Beyond Her Eyes

I have known this woman for a long time now. Sometimes her heart beats faster than normal; sometimes she feels a lump in her throat and sometimes her eyes arrest my gaze as if for eternity. When I am looking at her eyes it seems as if they are an entranceway to some mystic world too different from the world I live in.

I don’t see her everyday. I see her only when I wish to take a stroll in her world. She is the only inhabitant of her world and I am her only guest. She always stands at a high peak looking at the expanse of her world below. Once I step inside this world through her eyes I can feel her every thought, every grain of her emotion.

When this connection is established, even with my eyes wide shut I can see her world clearly. The crowd and the innumerous conversations in my world were making me restless and I decided to make my trip to this woman’s world today. I closed my eyes as I stood next to her. There was a sudden rush of energy that eased my weak shapeless thoughts. I could feel something happen to my shoulders. Next moment I saw an eagle; strong winged floating in the sky of this world.

I was the eagle. Fearlessly cutting past the currents of the wind, feeling wind against every shred of my feather. The chaos of those conversations in my world stopped affecting me the moment I became that eagle in her world. There was an aura sheltering me. At this exact moment I could feel thousand different energies within me.

I was a wall tall ocean wave journeying in an ocean. I also was the small fish in the depths under this wave, though small it was giving me tons of zest. In her world I could become a freefalling waterfall, an ant, a wild running black horse, a leaf, a single raindrop or the rain pouring at it’s own accord. Whatever form my feeble thoughts acquired it always made me feel boundless and capable of doing and undoing the exact thing so unachievable in my world.

The White Handkerchief

The bag on my shoulder was little heavier that day; it was the weight of those new books I had purchased while strolling up and down some street in Colaba. The train took a breather for few seconds at some station allowing women to crowd the already crowded ladies compartment.

I adjusted the bag to hear some raised voices. Enquiringly I looked in their direction. Women were pointing fingers towards a kid. Like a battlefield the space was divided in two halves. A boy, 8-9yrs of age was the lone commuter on one half of the compartment and the other half was inadequate for the women pointing fingers at him.

What was the paranoia about? I was wondering, a stinky street kid is no object of awe for the local train commuters. I looked harder as the panic voices couldn’t tell me anything. Now I could see the lanky kid wearing those oversized torn clothes that made him look sickly.

I realized then that the women were staring at a white handkerchief in the kid’s hand. Mumbai had few days ago witnessed a series of bomb blasts in local trains. But I was sure the all-famous Mumbaikar spirit would not surrender logic so easily to imagine explosives in a kerchief held by that fragile hand.

When my muddled mind was struggling to make sense of it all, the kid opened the white handkerchief & took it to his nose. A groomed, neatly dressed school kid using a kerchief to wipe his nose would have been a mundane sight. But seeing this urchin do the same was unusual and what followed was shocking. He took a deep breath in that handkerchief, his facial muscles flexed in excitement as he pulled the handkerchief away from his nose.

I was no stranger to the worldly horrors. There were too many newspapers in Mumbai gallantly breaking news of drug trafficking, murder, scams.. the list is never-ending. But to actually witness a kid so young demonstrate the horrendous reality was nightmarish.

Numb and frozen my thoughts were. Then suddenly a shrill piercing voice broke the trance. A lady had gathered guts to trespass into the kid’s half. Middle-aged and possibly a mother of 1-2, her motherly instinct wasn’t ready to give up on the kid. She was trying to stop the kid from smelling the white powder in that white handkerchief again. Empty eyed the kid stared at her. I wished I could snatch the kerchief and fling it out of the train but I was glued to the ground.

The train was slowing down to welcome some more women to witness the dread. As the women were struggling to get in… the kid dissolved in that crowd.

I am a Painter

I am a painter
White paper
Facing me
Colours staring eagerly

The brush seems alive
Paints my thoughts
An easy stroke here
A hurried stroke there

Like a graceful dancer
Explores the canvas
Step after step

Colours like refugees
Lifted from their bottles
Discover the undiscovered space

Like the first colony of men
Formation so unknown
Now reside on my paper.