~iota

What justifies my affection To lone forests To pine leaves And black tea? Why have I fallen in love With the thunderstorms Yet Crush over the teal hues Of the clear sky? Why am I intrigued By the extremes In a spectra? And Why can't I laugh At the paradox That I live?

When I think of train journeys, the first thing that comes to my mind is the ping preceding the announcement they make in the stations, informing passengers, almost always about how delayed their rides are. When I was a child, my parents smiled at my impressions of these announcements. I don’t do the impressions anymore. My hometown and the place my parents chose to settle in are a little short of 400kms in distance. From my early childhood, my family, because of the economy with which they could traverse this distance, chose trains to do so. My relationships with trains were formed in these early years. And trains have, and probably always will be symbols of togetherness, of time off from school, and of going back to one’s roots. When I moved out for my job, I realized what a lifesaver a train was for an average Indian citizen. The catch, however, is that if you need a ticket urgently, you need to opt for the tatkal booking, which is essentially a game of fastest finger first. Unsurpr...

I was packing all of my things to move out of my current house. While packing some items in the kitchen, I was thrown back to the days when four of us used to live here and work. One day to be exact, viz. the cleaning day. It was a warm day in Chennai and we saw the long-settled dust in the hallway. I'm not sure if it was an empty calendar or a sudden rise in motivation that made one among us, the responsible one we may call him, to put forth the idea of cleaning the apartment. Though skeptical at first, we finally decided to get to work. The day rushed by as four of us dusted and wiped, cleaned with water and then dried, every nook and corner of our home. It was an extremely tiring day, with all of us just wanting to sleep forever after it. However, when all was done, we were grateful that we did something productive. Now, this as such is not a great story- I agree if you felt that. However, what I really wanted to tell is an alternate story that rushed to my mind right after this...

Based on true events. I miss home. When I hear this statement being made by the people around me, the story usually ends (or sometimes starts) with sports. What they used to play when they were young. A game of football with two rocks as a goal post, a game of cricket where hitting a six meant immediate elimination and so on. Not for me. I've been an introvert for a major chunk of my life and for that very reason, my time for myself was spent indoors. The occasional bonding with the nature that I had were during the rains. I've always felt connected to the rains. The clouds and the drizzles. Now, don't get me wrong. When I say 'bonding' with the nature, it merely means taking my gaze away from the computer screen to go sit near the window, see the rain drops fall from up above. Sometimes I'll get lucky and a mist of water droplets come and greet my face. Long back, when I used to cycle back home from school, and there was a possibility of me ...

Have you ever seen daisies break open concrete and grow as if they were built to do that? Curious, isn't it? These feeble little things managing to break open skyscraper muscles? People say it's perseverance. I see it as the sunshine on a rainy day. I remember the evening when the former Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.Karunanidhi passed away. I was cycling when I heard heated arguments of someone refusing to close down their shop to what seemed like union workers. It is only when I got back home did I, along with my roommates, check our phones and came to know about the news. It was grief at first, for the people who have lost their leader and family member. Then it was panic, followed by a race- everything was shutting down and we didn't have backup stocks of food. It was the third hotel we went to, that still had some food. They were in the process of shutting down and would only let us take out and not dine in. As we were walking back to our house, careful not to l...

The breeze caresses my hair. Gentle, yet strong enough to alter the way I had combed it. The sun hasn't come out yet. I could see a sliver of a pink hue on the horizon. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. The air went in ice-cold and came out warm. It's intriguing how people say someone is dead or alive by the existence of this very process. Air moving in and out. Strange, isn't it? A chill goes down my spine, creating goosebumps all over. Why did I choose to come here? I don't know. It wasn't impulsive, nor was it part of a meticulously thought-out plan. My mind became a blank slate. No emotions. Nothing. The surroundings seem to get bright. I open my eyes. The sun had come out. Orange and red. The sky has no birds. Is it always like this? I don't know. There is no need of knowing now. I look down to the road from the ledge I'm standing on. Seven stories. Can someone be brought back to life if they fall from seven stories? I gue...

I was naive, Egoistic, Blinded by my mulishness Trapped in a rat race Flagging myself, In the hopes of A false utopia, Of hollow dreams. I was an upstart, Doltish, Spoiled by what I had, For I was a fool, Branding myself a pariah. A drop of sweat, In a glass of ocean. Until yesterday, When the black horses Neighed, in unison- Celebrating her resurgence, It took her ferocity, Wrath and vengeance, Outside the walls To let me know that Nay, To let us know that We were, after all, Under one roof.

"We were just friends, Who spoke like lovers. And that seemed to be enough For two teenagers Who were scared to love one another" She was dainty, like the bud of lilac With a wisp of innocence In the curls of her hair Unfathomable affection In the depths of her eyes And an undying reassurance In the curve of her smile For ages, we held back Shrugging when people asked What we were For we were scared Drenched in apprehension Of losing what we had On a moment of doltishness Of being whimsical. Only to gaze at the midnight moons Vehemently wondering what we could be.

Confused . I'm confused Strangled by my own thoughts Betrayed, Allied musings Had not bestowed The helping hands Rather a bottomless pit Is where I am Consumed by my blindness And unheard wails of helplessness I pray for this train of thought to end To derail for good And let me be.

Through the memory lane. Yesterday, my heart asked my brain, "What's your first memory?" Although seemingly random and abstract, the question invoked unfathomable curiosity in me, and I began to ponder the idea at length. It occurred to me that my first memory, ever, in which I can remember myself making concious decisions was the one when I was in preschool.  There were tire tracks on the dried mud on the school ground from somebody's terrible attempt at turning a car. I walked along the tracks, side by side with my partner in crime, neither of us with the slightest care about the sun that  blazed above. Departing and then rejoining, we laughed all afternoon at our whimsical pleasures .

I watched as he walked joyfully down the street with a bag of veggies. The timer was about to run out and the blue count gradually changed to purple. It will, in time change to orange and then red; marking his death.  This was something that always came up in my musings. Why would a supreme power, if any, give us such a sense? - The ability to know when a peer's life ends. What good will it ever do? I sat in my usual spot in the diner and asked for a plate of bacon and some coffee. The waitress paused for a moment and walked away to the counter. I plugged in my earphones and resumed my playlist. Interrupting, the waitress gently dropped the plate on my table, audaciously showing how much she cared and parted. Her face is devoid of the faintest smile. Why can't people just smile? That was about a week ago. But today, something felt different. Good different. I noticed it once I got out of my apartment. The old lady selling flowers down the street took ...

Prosaic Musings By someone's suggestion, I subsurviently adopted the coping mechanism to observe my emotions rather than succumbing to her grapple. The feeling of grief have been under my control by this very method for a very long time, at least I thought so. Although I found myself being compared to a tin hearted being by my very conscience, I realized that such can't be the case, at least, with me, when I broke down against the face of despair that fate had in stock.

The lover that was. The house. "I just don't love you anymore." I fought the catch in my throat as she stood there, her beautiful face, with a visible paucity of emotions. When I walked out, soaked in despair, even my proudest veins pined for those lips to call me back. The mountains. The squeak of the wipers usually bothered me. Maybe more than it would anybody else, but tonight, it didn't. It helped fight the deafening silence inside the cabin.  She wasn't the greatest fan of hairpin curves and the steep drops, and maybe that's what curbed me from driving to my favorite spot off the city. The Ephemera. The thick fog and the golden sunshine gave an etheral aura to the summit, the cold air that I breath championing the spot a place among the heavens. The bone chilling drop only a few feet away, awed the lover in me.

The Bucket List. "Three months. We're sorry, but we did the best we could. It was too late." The words echoed through my ears as if from the end of a long corridor. I still believe that I had put up a good fight against cancer. But I lost. Nevertheless, I had three months before I die. Three months to live. The bus ride home was rather silent. People seemed to smile at me. Or was it just me trying to find a bright side? I didn't know. At home, I went and washed my face. A bald man looked back at me. The chemo had completely gotten rid of my hair. The pile of medicine on my dinner table were now pointless. I dumped all of it into the trash and collapsed on the sofa.   I never turned the lights on. The TV seemed to play something. I didn't want to watch it, but playing it in the background have a relief from the silence which seemed so deadly. It was way over my regular bedtime. Yet tonight, I didn't feel sleepy, nor hungry. I felt hel...