aaj...jaane ki zid naa karo

The day today, filled to the brim and spilling. Do I like them this way or empty? Somedays this and the most days that.

Guitar strings sounding taut and crisp enough to bruise the ears and shed blood. From the eyes.

I inhabit Nazi Germany most afternoons. Or maybe, it inhabits me. I can taste it in my throat. It holds my hand and I can feel its pulse, or the lack of it, in my palm. Admist all the fear, death, cold bonfires, out of tune accordions, hunger, sleepless nights, workless days and all other frosted feelings, I can sniff out childhood, hope and innocence…and my eyes burn with the smell of them. Hope in the middle of dead feeling marshes can sound, smell and look like a crude, ugly indulgence. Not just out of place but completely unwarranted. And it is from this aberration, this dash of colour in an otherwise gloomy landscape..that the colours begin to dilute, mix and spread themselves across the canvas and a story blooms born from within overgrown shrubbery of despair and sadness.

And then, the kids wake up to the drizzle of rain in the mountain ranges of the cold, picturesque foothill town in the Himalayas..and to a dancing, bubbling blue umbrella.

From stealing apples from trees in a burning Germany to savouring leftover pickles hidden from all others, universally childhood is experienced wearing sun tainted glasses on the soul, all is beautiful and exaggerated, in a good way.