Over Thresholds

We played. After a long long time today. I bicycled, free like a girl, after a long time today. A furiously exhausting game of tennis, Mars in the leisurely afternoon sunk inside the bucket chairs, mixed up dohars hovering over mixed up us while the afternoon bowed on its way out. A meal laced with a breezer, all soul..no fat.

Time went by ever so slowly, waiting it out. Lingering on every bend for a better view. Moments, they thawed out of stillness slowly so that the day, it seeped into the room temperature moments, soaking it all in. It was a day with a feel. Lots of it. A juicy day.  It felt seamless. The day and its movements spilled listlessly over the changing lights outside and wetted the entire canvas, making it drip. And I tasted the day on the tip of my tongue and let it rest there precariously while I felt its cool touch..before I swallowed it inside of me. I swelled up from inside and felt full and light headed at the same time.  

And we still are not through with it. The crumbs of it are still leftover, to be scraped and devoured with relish. I want to savour the taste, max it and then, let it flow..out of me, into the universe, like a cloud…towards the rising sun of tomorrow.

The Caffeine High

Sounds from the other room trickle in from the pigeon holes, the filled and the un-filled ones. The work-in-progress chatter, the dialogue of rogues playing brother-sister, friends find their meandering way to me throughout the day. News of an impending match looming over the horizon of tomorrow stealthily scurries away into the night of today from the pigeon holes and its out. The freedom of a fugitive escaping from the gallows just a day, a couple of hours before its prosecution. Whew!!! What an escape…the holes…they helped. A muffled good night, wrapped in tender cotton wool love floats over the pigeon holes and rests against my cheeks delicately. A pink blush rushed up and spreads like wildfire across your smile..and I feel its warmth and the subdued heat. The air around me becomes slightly cozier, like a mal-mal dohar wrapped around me…all this from the draft through the pigeon holes. A conversation from across the mangroves is kindled, stoked and nurtured…distances between, us and the timezones dissolve and a connection is established, through the pigeon holes.

The day divided into squares, holding disparate moments, seemingly symmetrical, well laid out…but each one organically different. A love, all encompassing, cut up into pieces for ease of storage, cataloguing..and yet, magically a whole. A whole loaf of love, delivered to me, like daily letters..in my pigeon holes.  

Language Barriers

A tamil song playing on loop in the background, the distant, indistinct sounds of all of you inhabiting, yet again, an oft visited land of the wild. The all too familiar night sounds with their unpredictable tempo; all envelop me and I feel heavy with love and familiarity. Maybe, this familiarity of the unknown, in-distinctable , un-recognisable is what makes us belong to someplace(s) and someone(s) oh so completely.

The soothing effect of the train horn cutting through the stillness of the night reaches me with a shrill and placates me. It reinstates the familiarity of the coordinates around me and I drown under my dohar, dizzier with sleep and comfort.

You two, screaming, wailing, stomping feet, bruised cries..this is all that reaches me while I am stuck to the hearth making phulkas. the blood bath thematic cacophony ironically reassures me  even though the two of you remain unseen. It is testimony to our physical intimacy, of the one-ness under a single roof, of our home and the family that resides it.

The snapping of the keys on the keyboard while I stealthily tip-toe towards you from across the hallway, draw me into your world of mishandled egos and conversations, of jobs well done and a day by-gone filled to the brim with action already brimming over to the inking daylight of the next day…I leave behind the world of motionless animals curled up in their snores, dreaming of red dinosaurs and all that they stand for..at least for some time, before the soft toy vendor, grudgingly trudges up for her loooong post midnight trek to take her wares and dreams to another land…a land of summer filled nights…warmed by the closeness of other dreams.

Night sounds, all of them, make for me the perfect lullaby. It’s lilting longing trails into sunshine mornings, still afternoons and then, as if on cue…the train shrieks past and the rumpus of the night begins. Again. May this show never end.