Run

Run like the wind
on the blades of the green grass
freedom
like the wild horse
run like you have grown wings

Across borders
and the Himalayan range
Close your eyes
reach where you cannot
run

rain like a bullet
in your back
with that pounding heart
run

All it takes is love

I called her after 10 years. She was my school friend once. She recognised my voice. We both were happy to hear we had become wives now. We talked about our hubbies and how we had met them.

Ordinary day it seemed till I had spoken to her. After that conversation I was left smiling and content. I was happy doing the routine things at work. I was full of interest talking to the same people I meet every day at work.

In the last few months I have found my long lost friends. Some of them I got to talk to after 17 years! The experience is emotionally very satisfying. The people who you thought were lost and forgot a long time back, suddenly, destiny makes them and you cross each other's way again. People you knew when you were a child seem to leave an imprint on your mind. Years come and go. New people come into your life. You share a lot more with these people. As a teenager or an adult you have much more to you than you had to you when you were young. Maybe..

Mind is a slate , you can write the most on it when it has space. It must be true. You always find a way to your childhood. It is by returning to the people. It's not about meeting them again and calling them every single day after that. No. You moved on and yet left a piece of you there. It's about only calling them once and listening to their story. They didn't leave a vacuum when they left you. It's like finding a very old book after a long time. You don't need it. But you touch it, turn a couple of pages..it makes you feel content in that moment. You keep it back again. Maybe for you to find it some other time.

All it takes is love..When you are young, your heart is more open. It appreciates and loves almost every experience that comes it's way.

Since morning

I have painted the blue of the ocean green waves just outside our window for you to see. The morning sun rises from behind the green veil , I painted for you. The world was not built. The world was painted. Every leaf of every tree is a painting. Colours change the seasons. The flowers in our garden and the trees in the forest ; the water is golden as the sun meets your eye. The orange flames crackle in the hearth as the world gets painted in crayon.

Look differently

I like to look at the world all the time. I think I would have liked to be some bird sitting atop some wire crossing my city Mumbai. I would have preferred to be in no hurry as such and look lazily at everyone down there rushing here or there.

On my way back home I take a taxi everyday from my office to a railway station. I like the ride and the time I get to myself very much. I like it when the taxi moves slowly and is stuck in traffic for some time. I like it even better when it gets stuck just opposite a book vendor with his shop on the footpath. His stock very up to date; duplicate books, most recent ones.

Then the taxi passes a hukka shop. In the middle of Mumbai I am not sure who looks at the shop full of hukkas every day. The lane is not a tourist frequented lane at all. Through the glass walls of the shop I always admire the arty looking glass work. There is blue, green glass making the wooden brown of the hukka look like some piece which would fit as a piece in the collection of a museum.

My taxi drop's me near a bus-stop every day. I cross the road and enter the railway station from there. I look at the bus stop to see who is waiting for the bus. I don't expect any known face to be standing here, I don't know where the bus goes. I like to look. Yesterday, I looked and my heart missed a beat.

On the iron rod of the bus-stand people usually rest their backs and stand. Two small hands held each other and stood there with their heads almost touching the ground. They were hanging like bats do on the same rod, where people stood waiting for the bus. I almost yelled out to them to be careful; when they swung on the rod and were hanging with their heads up now.

They were doing these circles , hands held tight, smoothly like some trained acrobats. Where people stood; on their feet, the two hung on looking at the ground for sometime and then going in a circle and again hanging there looking at the bus-stop from a different angle all together.

Surprised!

Have you ever planned any surprises? :) I have tried doing that recently twice. The thing about surprises is that when you plan them for someone and feel you are designing it, the surprise surprises you too. I like that feeling when you feel you are in control and the little scope where things can happen at their own will, actually change the whole course of things. It's like that one spontaneous step in the choreographed dance .

It's like you don't know what happens between the 2 words of a story. The words weave the story. So does the space between them.

As a kid
as I hid
behind the door
waiting to scare
waiting to surprise

I wouldn't wait to hear the steps
I peeped a minute later
or a minute before

laugh I would, aloud
Smile I do as I write this

Let go

Let go the feather you hold in your fist
Let it fly to the world beyond your reach
You like the feeling of wings in your finger
But it needs to fly without you

The feather lands in the hand in need
it stays in the fist till a time
when your fingers grow strength
let go
It needs to fly without you

There is someone at the other end
looking up at the sky
Let go

Flowers

The flowers make me wonder how they would look in paint, on a paper. For a beginner, with no clue on colors they would teach him shades. I saw them at the backdrop of a hotel. Rows and colonies of them in one color pink and a mix, like a colorful palette.

The flowers take me to places I have never been. The purples take me to the Dal lake in Kashmir and set me afloat a shikara. The reds take me to a rock castle and a huge garden spread like a red carpet at the mammoth entrance. The white ones set me free like the cotton flying free from the pod. The yellows take me to the forest from my dreams where the flowers bloom, waterfall at its heart ..a place where you find the secret door to the light blue sky, hidden behind the green veil of the green creepers.

The flowers take me to the Ganga as the water gives the flowers their mokasha as they fall from the hands of the worshiper , as the river reaches them to the shore unseen to our eyes, untouched by our feet.