Just Another Romantic

I look for you
In crowded streets
And empty theaters,
Traveling trains
And bus stations,
Hoping I’d find you
Like someone who
Might chance upon
A forgotten marble
Or a lost coin.

I see you often
In song lyrics
Played over again
On sleepless nights,
And on the edges
Of fading dreams
I try to hold on to
In the morning,
But I can never quite
Make out your face.

I wonder how you
Could have been
One of those strangers
Passing by me,
And dream about
How we would
Discover much later
That a long time ago
We almost met
For the first time.

Sometimes I imagine
I see you in
People I know
When they tell me
Stories they never
Told anybody else
Or how they would
Hate to see me go
But maybe they really
Were just being nice.

I look for you
In the dark places
Where I hide
My demons away,
Hoping one day
I would come
To find you already
Learned their names
While I’ve given up
All this waiting.

'Two' Much Change

You know when you've been expecting something to happen for quite some time and you think you're all prepared, but when it actually happens, for real, and in just the way people warned you for months, you're still taken by surprise? You went full steam ahead and into it, but had to slow down to take it all in. You had this whole idea about it but when it translated to reality, it was too overwhelming. Its as if all those words could not adequately describe a whole spectrum of emotion that you would experience. Some things you have just got to do head-on - and take with a "pinch of salt".

Watching the Night

And once again, I’m looking at the stars. The window is almost the length of the wall so its hard to miss them as I go to bed every night. I watched them until they passed up above and over the roof, out of sight. Soon, the Sun would come up the same way as they did and it would be a new day. But I don’t want to think about that now. The darkness is gathering slowly around, gently hushing all sounds. Occasionally, there’s the barking of a dog, the purr of a car in the driveway below, the whistle of the night watchman and short bursts of what could possibly be bats fighting. Then, its all silent again - except for the crickets creaking and trucks howling past on the highway, obscured by apartments. But those too blend into the silence after a while. The dark shape of hills, not so far off, twinkle with lights of hilltop avenues. An orange glow from the neon lights on the hill road hangs over the massive black outline, slowly fading into the colour of the night. Its past midnight now and there’s not a star in sight. I’m still looking out, wide awake, but far from restless. And while I wait for sleep to overtake me, I’m just content watching.

Between the Lines

You can beg or tease
And try as you please,
But to tell you my story,
I won’t give in so easy.

With metaphors to amuse,
And clever words as ruse,
I’ll make you go round in circles,
And muddle you with riddles.

I’ll clothe it in disguise
And not put you wise,
For this story of mine
Is to be read between the lines.

Look beneath the words,
Behind pauses and in moods,
And then you will know,
That in silence too, there’s more.

Still, if you continue
Stubborn, and willingly pursue,
I’ll drop you clues
That certainly won’t confuse.

And when you’ve found every answer,
Put them all together,
Then it will be plain to see:
You have all the pieces of me.

Book Moments #2: Bitter seeds and Batman

Our life changes all the time. We're not the same people we were last year or the year before it. And we can never say for sure what brought those changes - maybe we were victims of circumstances, or it was something more innate that's in our spirits, rebelling to surface and show itself. But sometimes Change swoops in so suddenly, it shakes and shifts your world, all without your consent, and you can do nothing but submit to its  unrelenting force. And when it's done it's purpose, it leaves you alone - but not before making a mark. Time would pass by and you could say you've made the best of it - that your wounds have healed and the scars are no longer visible, but you're not all the same inside.

And this very thought was best described in "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. When I'd first come across it, probably on Goodreads, I thought it was another of those abstract, Booker-Prize-material books that I could never quite get the hang of. But I was intrigued by the excerpts and decide to read it. And a good decision that was. I will not summarize or review it at length (both are on Wikipedia already and also, I'm lazy) but I'll give you enough to understand the setting and mood of my Moment in this book:

Aibileen, in the movie adaptation (The book was better !! )

Aibileen is an illiterate, black nurse in Mississippi in the 1960s, and one of the three narrators in the book. She had lost her son in an accident. And since it was a time when black people were still under oppression from slavery, the accident was not without bias. After a hard day's work, the tired skinny boy in his 20s had fallen off the loading dock onto the drive, and the driver of a tractor trailer, who hadn't seen him, ran over before he could move out of the way. The white driver then dumped his body in front of the hospital for "colored" people, and drove off. And the boy didn't make it.

"That was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house. Minny came ever day to make sure I was still breathing, feed me food to keep me living. Took three months fore I even look out the window, see if the world still there. I was surprise to see the world didn't stop just cause my boy did.

Five months after the funeral, I lifted myself up out a bed. I put on my white uniform and put my little gold cross back around my neck and I went to wait on Miss Leefolt cause she just have her baby girl. But it weren't too long before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a me. And I just didn't feel so accepting anymore."

(Note: It was a nice ploy of the author to write Aibileen's narrative just as how her character would - in the vernacular.)

Sometimes, when there’s a life-changing turn of events, the more unaccepting of us say “Why? Why me?” But for those who stoically come to terms with their destruction as a cruel twist of fate or the “ways of the world”, they may bury their emotions but can’t hide them forever. It’s as if we’d turned our suppressed anger on the unfairness of it all and our inability to control our own fate – to go back in time and change that one moment that brought our world tumbling down – inwards onto ourselves. And so our hearts become colder. We are less dazzled by the light and glitter, and become friendlier with shadows. We may move on, show the world we’re alive and well, but are wary and resentful inside. The feelings well up, like a bitter seed growing, until the day we can no longer pretend. And this is exactly what Aibileen’s simple, yet powerful words convey.

Much later, I couldn't help thinking that Bruce Wayne had a "bitter seed" in him too, that drove him to become Batman. He never forgave himself for his parents' death; had he endured his fear of bats that night, they might still be alive. Unable to move on, he bid his time seeking revenge on their killer, ready to become a killer himself, and an opportune moment presented itself nearly 2 decades later - and well, everyone knows what happened after that. The hero that he became, to rebuild his parents' city and restore its former glory - it was not because of some superhuman strength, but because of a vulnerability - that one incident, unforeseen, and the overwhelming guilt that came with it, affected him and his entire life. It would only seem fitting that the symbol he chose to plant fear in the hearts of his enemies was the very thing he was afraid of, the fear of which led him to blame himself for the death of his parents. Bitter seeds come from change; they grow inside us and bear fruit a long time after, and make us do things that change the course of our lives all over again.

Gap Day

I sometimes dream about a magical day, a day that's not recorded in time, when you’d wake up and look at what day it is in your cell phone or calendar and it would not say Monday, Tuesday or whatever. Instead it would say “Today is a gap between days. It’s not called anything. Just some extra time left over the years that's been pooled into an extra day. Do what you want with it." It's like a surprise, unplanned holiday - had we known about this “extra” day earlier, we would've already planned something for it or someone else would have planned out something for us. It’s a hidden day that's not been dictated by office hours or any other chores and responsibilities like all the other days of the week. So instead of rushing into that dull monotony of your life where you mechanically do the same things everyday, out of both compulsion and habit, and just letting it all pass you by - you could take a break; stop and think about what you're doing, whether you're going where you actually want to be headed.

Or, you could also do something totally different. A gap day is a special day -  like a wild card, or like that secret level you get to play in a computer game when you've collected all the rubies or got 3 stars on all the levels – just for fun, to play more of the game, to enjoy it more, without worrying about winning or losing it. A gap day allows you to be your most uninhibited self because it's a secret - it's not recorded in time or anyone's memory, except yours. So forget about making a head start on a pending chore, because hey, you'd probably already planned to do it the next or some other day. Do something random and fun. You could wear your clothes inside out or go out in pajamas and your shabbiest t-shirt and no one would say a thing (or they might, but who cares, they’d forget tomorrow anyways). You could stand in the middle of a mall and yell “I'm a Martian!” or sing the national anthem in a different tune and curtsy everyone you meet. You could confront someone, vent out your feelings in absolute honesty and get away with it.  People would forget the words you said so they won’t be hurt or affected by them.

It would be like a very real, day-long dream, in which you’re fully conscious; and when you wake up, you haven’t overslept like you thought you did, but would just be at the beginning of your next, usual, “normal” day, fully fresh from a day’s doing of whatever you liked and whatever you wanted. But I didn't want it to be a dream-like scenario where everyone would do things the way we want them to and not the way they actually would - we'd be lost in a labyrinth of our own desires which, sometimes dangerously, might never be enough. No, a gap day is just about freedom - to think, or to not think, to not be under pressure, and do just anything you had felt like doing but you didn't, out of fear of being judged.

I wonder if there is a skeptical crowd out there that would say you just need a little effort and courage, to do all these things on an ordinary day. Well, I don't think you can do any of them without changing something - without doing some permanent damage. *sigh* There's too much magic involved in expecting a gap day to happen. At least I'm allowed to dream about it.

I've always maintained that there aren't just 2 sides to the coin: true and false or truth and lies, like everyone else says. There's secrets too. I guess you could argue that a secret is actually a "truth that you're not telling." But then, lies are also “truths told wrong" – you know a lie is a lie when there is a predetermined and incontrovertible basis for truth. They all define each other. A secret is like a beautiful tropical island between the devil and the deep blue sea. But the island is dangerous – and lonely too. Secrets are painful to keep – the pain is the price for keeping them away from the rest of the world. When you do want to let one out into the world, you have to make a choice: say it right, as a truth; or say it wrong, as a lie. Anyway, what provoked this banter about an abstract subject was something that caught my attention while reading today (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield), a very tasteful description of the painful process of keeping a secret, likening it to restraining a stubborn teenager fighting for freedom:

“The boy has been on my mind lately. ‘Tell me the truth.’ And lately I have felt again that strange inner stirring. There is something growing inside me, dividing and multiplying. I can feel it, in my stomach, round and hard, about the life of a grapefruit. It sucks the air out of my lungs and gnaws the marrow from my bones. The long dormancy has changed it. From being a meek and biddable thing, it has become a bully. It refuses all negotiation, blocks discussion, insists on its rights. It won’t take no for an answer. The truth, it echoes, calling after the boy, watching his departing back.”

"No praise, no blame, just so"

Its a Zen saying that means working for the "general good" rather than wasting time either eulogizing or pointing fingers at someone. And that's exactly what I feel like saying when a team or a group of friends disagree over something (its also exactly what our politicians nowadays need to be told). I really liked this quote - its like, it said so much in so little words. I came across it in the most unlikely place: a zombie novel (it was terrible: at the climax, the girl kisses the zombie who then magically "becomes a human", as if transformed  by the kiss. Talk about a modern day retelling of The Princess and the Frog.. blechh).

Paper Dreams

My first tryst with origami was when I made paper boats as a kid. I didn't even know there was a word for the art of making boats (or any other thing) out of paper back then. I don’t remember who taught me how to make a paper boat – some things you become so familiar with, you'd assumed you've always known them. But I think it came from one of those cool things a friend at school showed you during recess or between periods and everybody would get curious and learn to do it too. Then we would all go home, do it again, show our parents, and keep doing it for a week or so until we lost interest.

The backyard of my old house had a cement path running from the backdoor to the drumstick tree in a rectangle. So when it rained heavily, water would get logged in between, forming a little pool. That’s when I would make the boats and put them in the muddy water even if it’s still raining. I’d make at least 2 or 3 so I could be sure at least one of them would float – they mostly “capsized” and floated sideways either when the paper got too wet or raindrops smashed into them.

Years later, and really, really long after I got bored of making boats, I saw Prison Break in one of those finish-a-TV-show-in-2-days-or-less marathons that was a popular hobby in college. Apart from the unforgettably brilliant story, what really amazed me was the symbolic use of origami by the protagonist, Michael Scofield, a habit that he actually picked up from his elder brother (whom he tries to break out of prison):

“After Mom died, when it was just you and me, I remember having trouble sleeping, never knowing where you were, but when I'd wake up in the morning there'd be this paper bird, an origami crane sitting next to my bed and I never knew what it meant exactly, but I figured it was your way of letting me know you were checking in on me. Anyway, I looked it up, the crane, stands for familial obligation, watching out for your own. Maybe it's my turn to watch out for you.”

He would also make paper lilies to impress his lady love and prison doctor, Sara Tancredi. The whole idea was so romantic and appealed to me so much, I would frequently look up the internet and learn to do something like a crane or butterfly or a flower out of 3 or 4 square inches of paper and give them to close friends, not necessarily on special occasions. It’s a nice way to let someone know they’re special to you. It’s also amazing how a plain plane piece of paper could capture your imagination in a multitude of ways.

Too many times nowadays I daydream about being unemployed and ridiculously rich. Or rather, self-employed and ridiculously rich. Job jitters, I guess!

...

I really, really want to see a real ghost once in my lifetime!

...

I wonder if our first impressions of people are always correct... In my case, I've almost always been right about the people I thought I wouldn't get on well with. I would sometimes dismiss the negative vibes as a figment of my imagination and try to be friendly... But in the end my instincts would be proved correct. And then:

"You know when, sometimes you meet someone so beautiful, and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later, they’re as dull as a brick? Then there’s other people, and you meet them and you think, ‘Not bad; they’re okay.’ And then you get to know them, and their face sort of becomes them, like their personality is written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful."

...

Rain, rain, come again!

I love going to the park after the rain. Its a small one, right beside my home and sprouts a fresh coat of small plants and weeds glistening with raindrops every time it showers. Camera in hand, I look for those little creatures that have also been enamored by the greenery - be it the butterflies that flit out of your reach or bugs as tiny as the raindrops themselves, that you notice only up close while squatting in the mud. It makes me happy to capture their small lively world that exists, oblivious to our goings-on. I guess the sky is one of the few things which makes the world look beautiful when it's sad.

Book Moments #1: Plucking & Planting Dreams

A thought is only as tangible as the words that are used to describe it. And those who can do it in a way that no part of it is obscured or shadowed truly have a gift. Seldom have I come across a “moment” in a book that is so profound it leaves me spellbound – I read the words over and over again, letting them sink in, until that moment is impressed in my memory. I wanted to share all such moments through a series of posts – not everyone may have the time or patience to read an entire book, but they sure can read a paragraph that can probably inspire them the same way it did me.

#1 is from the most influential book I read this year so far – “And the Mountains Echoed” by Khaled Hosseini. His “Kiterunner” takes the credit for bringing me out of the fantasy fiction world. You see, Mr. Hosseini’s books talk of a different kind of magic – the magic of relationships. Not in the looming, dull and tragic way some writers do (that make you depressed and fed up with life if you already aren’t), but in one that speaks of their beauty and fragility with such depth, it moves your heart. Though his stories are for the most part set in the faraway land of Afghanistan, the actions and psyche of the characters are universal. That said, and giving the green signal for “No Spoiler Alert ahead”, this is That Moment in ATME:

“When I was a little girl, my father and I had a nightly ritual. After I’d said my twenty-one Bismillahs and he had tucked me into bed, he would sit at my side and pluck bad dreams from my head with his thumb and forefinger. His fingers would hop from my forehead to my temples, patiently searching behind my ears, at the back of my head, and he’d make a pop sound—like a bottle being uncorked—with each nightmare he purged from my brain. He stashed the dreams, one by one, into an invisible sack in his lap and pulled the drawstring tightly. He would then scour the air, looking for happy dreams to replace the ones he had sequestered away. I watched as he cocked his head slightly and frowned, his eyes roaming side to side, like he was straining to hear distant music. I held my breath, waiting for the moment when my father’s face unfurled into a smile, when he sang, Ah, here is one, when he cupped his hands, let the dream land in his palms like a petal slowly twirling down from a tree. Gently, then, so very gently—my father said all good things in life were fragile and easily lost—he would raise his hands to my face, rub his palms against my brow and happiness into my head.”

Fills me with warmth every time I read it. And the rest of the book too is as splendid. Highly recommended!

Feeling Blue

No I’m not really sad or upset. I was just mulling over the lyrics of the Taylor Swift song:

“Losing him was blue like I'd never known
Missing him was dark grey all along
Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met
But loving him was red…
Burning red”

I guess we've all associated “feelings” with various colours for as long as we could tell them apart. I vividly remember our Biology teacher in school telling the class that looking at green was “pleasant” and “good for the eyes”. There must be a reason why only red, green and yellow were chosen as colours for traffic signals all over the world and why rain or dark “gloomy” weather is used to highlight tragic scenes in movies.

As to how I feel about colours: Black is too secretive and closed, white is too open and cannot hide anything, green is omnipresent and boring, pink is mushy and cutesy, yellow reminds me of paint and its gooey-ness and strong odor, red is too loud for anything – be it a dress or a painting, violet is flowery, and I always relate orange to the icecream bars we sometimes buy on the beach that make our tongues go orange when we eat them.

But blue is nice. Blue, as in, the light blue you get in sketch pens. Blue makes me feel safe. When in the sky, it’s pacifying, and when in the sea, it’s alive. I love using blue while making something artsy, like a card – I just try and include it somehow, even coming up with a theme as an excuse. Some days, the sky is its deepest blue:  even the sun is not too harsh and makes long shadows on the ground and if there are clouds in the sky, they are fluffy and white like cotton bolls, not grey and threatening to fall. Those are the days I like a lot – they’re also good for photography. So when I feel blue, unlike many others who’re sad when they say it, I actually feel good.

Bloggering around

The other day while racking my brains for design ideas for this blog, I thought “Why not look at what other people are doing?” There was a Next Blog link on the dashboard and I always wondered where it would take me but in spite of my “seemingly morbid interest in people’s lives”, I never took that route. Mostly because the one or two times I did, I only struck a few drab, inactive ones or were full of ads. Anyways I was desperate for ideas so I stuck a little longer on the random tour this time.

As I took more than my usual amount of interest this time, I did notice a few blogs. There was one about a couple who met and married during the Second World War. The blog was written by their fourth child - a woman who seemed to be in her forties, judging from the beaming family pic with a caption at the very top of the page. The introduction caught my attention – about how her parents had barely met before her father, a soldier, had gone to fight in the war. They had a long distance relationship through letters for 2 years and finally got married (“Wow” moment for me). The rest looked like documents that I couldn’t discern head or tail of (but were definitely not love letters that I was really hoping to find).  There was another blog about a family “from Austria, not Australia” (this was actually written below the blog title which went something like “The Blog of the I-forgot-what-it-was Family”). It was just a collection of their photographs on various holiday trips with their 2 kids with really dull captions but man, weren’t they beautiful – these people have been to the most scenic of places.  There was another about a museum complete with photos of paintings. Then I hit a string of blogs of fast food restaurants that were also full of ads and I gave up.

I was secretly hoping to find a blog with even a remote likeness to mine or atleast close enough to make me feel that someone a lot like me is living a parallel life (I was obviously hoping too much). I tried again today and this time ran into a lot of foreign language ones, a travel blog of “a soul on piligrimage”, until I hit a dead end at a blog which was actually the official website of an Indian radio station. I was already done with the design idea search (you’re looking at the result) – today was just about searching for a 'blog doppelgänger' (if you get what I mean). Maybe everyone is active on Wordpress and Tumblr these days. Or posting minute-by-minute details of their life on Facebook or Twitter so they don’t actually need a blog.

Friendship over the years

School years: If there was a new kid in class, I used to make it a point to go up to him or her and purposely make friends. I wasn’t very choosy back then and there wasn’t any reason to. Making new friends was so easy. It was a class thing – we all just stuck together. I still have friends dating back to a long time ago but I’m not in touch with so many others. I guess its because “life happened”.

College years:  I made friends who I know will be there for me and I will care for life-long. There were some I didn’t take to so much in the first year but became thick friends with by the time we left. And the concept of a class drastically changed. There were people who haven’t spoken a word to each other during even a single moment in those four years. Though we did manage to have a little fun as farewell drew closer, looking back, most of them are still strangers to me! It wasn’t that we were too shy… Just our pre-conceived notions of one another and the choices we made.

Now: I made friends with total strangers on a social networking site, even exchanged numbers and talked to them. Mostly because I’m relocating to a new city and don’t know anyone there. And so far, it has been a grand success! My parents are amazed. Heck, even I’m amazed. Though this was something to dream of in my parents’ time, I admit I was (and still am, though diminishing everyday) apprehensive of this new venture. But I can’t wait to connect the voices and the words to the actual faces!

An Overdose of Jessica Day

So what happens when you have loads of spare time and decide to spend it, rather obsessively, watching re-runs of New Girl ? You just can't get enough of Jessica Day!You try to be her: talk like her, act like her until one day you realise you even talk in your head like her! There is something in her brazen frankness and offbeat outlook on life that fascinates me to no end.

Here’s the Jess Day version of my life.

When there's a question in the exam on a topic that I purposely did not study (and also, when my call letter said Pune):

After I do something outstandingly stupid:

or

Every time Spencer Reid comes on Criminal Minds:

I keep telling myself:

Mostly in the library when I was at college:

When I successfully debug a program:

When a friend asks me if I plan on getting committed soon:

What I think when someone gives me a side eye:

The last time we got a Telegram…

It was to tell us that grandfather had passed away. Me and my sister were just little kids and hardly got to know him well. It wasn’t a surprise though when they recently  announced in the paper that it would be the last day for Telegram service in India. We’d actually laughed about it – everyone has a phone nowadays allowing us to text or call someone at any time and at ridiculously low rates too, rather than send a telegram to someone "HELLO STOP URGENT NEWS STOP" only when you have something important to communicate to a far-off friend or family.

I wonder how many years the Postal Service would last. I guess we still need it, though only to send stuff larger than page-long letters which would rather be delivered easily with a mouse click only to lie unopened in the inbox along with other junk mail from shopping sites and educational services until you delete your way through them to find it (Google’s priority inbox magically solved that too, but I still get ETS emails in my primary inbox). People say there is a certain charm in posting a letter to someone.  It’s somewhat the same reason why I insist on making birthday cards myself instead of buying them. It doesn’t take much effort to throw in some fancy words and send someone an e-mail . But when you make the effort to fill in your words with ink, seal it in an envelope, glue a stamp to it and go all the way to the post office to post it, it says something about the lengths you would go to reach out to someone. What’s more, people don’t even to reply to e-mails nowadays. Everyone’s just too busy coping with life. It matters to show the people you care about that they are your numero uno priority. And that can be done by spending the “little” time you have on them.

Maybe in the not too distant future, private companies like Safe Express will pop up everywhere and suddenly sending even “stuff larger than page-long letters” would become a lot cheaper. Then the call for the close of Postal Service would come because it’d be too burdensome to maintain when no one’s even using it. They’ll put a copy of the last letter ever sent in a museum and we would tell our kids “Once upon a time, there were letters”.

Black & White

I guess up to a certain point in my life (not that I've lived too much of it) I thought I had people, in general, all figured out - they were either good or bad. I thought a person's behaviour and manner could easily be explained by his being either of these two things. It wasn't until much later that I realised that people, most of them anyway, have a complex, convoluted psyche - its each layer added by a real, human experience. Not every murderer has a stone-cold heart and not every seemingly happy person is bubbling with happiness underneath. We are what we are made of. It is difficult to put a label on someone simply because they had done something at a point of time. And it is also possible to love and hate someone at the same time. Then again, someone may say that people don't change - they are what they always have been. But what is it that they have been? Can a person's entire life be defined by a word?

But people actually aren't that simple. Take yourself for example. If you hadn't met a certain person, would you still be the same one today? Or if you had made different choices?  Or if a particular instance in your life hadn't (or had) occurred? You cannot just paint someone black or white without imagining yourself standing in their shoes and asking yourself what you would have done. I'm just trying to say that everyone has a story. And  a complicated one at that. Even today, when I find myself being too judgmental about somebody, I try to stop myself and be more.. understanding. I guess its because I read a lot of fiction that makes it an even more challenging task than it should be. In most books the characters have pre-defined attributes - they act a certain way and in a typical act of poetic justice, they get an ending they "deserve". But life is different. Its not just black and white. Neither do we have pre-defined attributes nor is the end predictable. And thats actually a good thing - one just has to realise that even if we ruined it and can't start over again, there's room for second and many more chances.

Faces with Stories

I always find travel inspiring. For a short while you're thrust into the company of people you've never met but who make the same journey as you. There is no exchange of words or greetings and they get on and off at some point without a hi or bye. Sometimes there may be the occasional conversation - about the weather, the traffic, the slow driver, the destination you're headed and so on. But at the end of it all your fellow traveller would remain a nameless stranger. So on a long journey when no urgent matters worry the mind one sometimes can't help sitting  back and wondering what their story was... What brought them here? What is their life really like?

In school, when I took the city bus home every afternoon, there was a college-going girl who took the same bus and got down two stops before me. She had a brace on her leg and everyone used to make way so she could go in first and sit in the front seat. One day I happened to sit along with her. I'm sure she noticed me as much as I did everyday so I decided to make conversation. In my innocence, I asked her how she hurt her leg. "No I didn't get hurt, I have polio," she smiled and replied. I realised my mistake and said I was sorry. But I went on to ask her where she lived and what she studied and we talked until she got down at her stop. And from that day on, we smiled at each other whenever we met and bid goodbye when she got down the bus. Eventually due to extra classes or some other reason I used to arrive late at the bus stop and didnt see her for a while. Then a whole year passed and I decided she must have left college and settled elsewhere. I don't remember what her name was but I wonder about her sometimes... if her life changed as much as mine did..

Another thing that I always try, especially in a train (when I'm not dozing off), is 'guessing the story' - the clothes, luggage and scraps of conversation often provide sufficient detail. A chattering family off to a wedding or piligrimage, a gentleman with light luggage wearing a leather jacket and checking his phone every few minutes is obviously travelling on business, a girl with her anxious parents going to attend her first day in college in a faraway city (deja vu :P) and rarely, a couple of very cooperative students on a holiday tour. The others like the chai-wala, moori-wala, the woman selling bananas.. their 'story' seems obvious on the outside but one day of their life would be so.. different.. and detached.. from ours. And yet here we are, on the same journey and we will not see each other again.

There are no limits to human curiosity.. And after going through my ramblings above, I wondered.. There are strangers whose stories we may never know. But sometimes even people we are close to surprise us.. So much so that we are left to question if we ever knew their 'story' at all...

Forgotten Things

The other day, while searching for a bottle to keep my collection of shells, I remembered that it might be in the box that contained all my playthings. With help from my mom, I located it in my dad's room where it sat in a corner below the cupboard, forgotten, and collecting dust. I opened it, and there they all were - a chessboard with pieces (that was really old and probably belonged to my grandfather), a Ludo and Snakes & Ladders board, Scrabble, coins for the carrom board, a ring to play catch with (like frisbee), a pack of cards and a set of marbles (to play that brainteaser game in which you are supposed to have one marble left at the end). And of course there was the empty 'Gems' tube, which seemed apt for my requirement (now when I think about it, its probably more than 5 years old! - I have the habit of leaving such odd things lying around...).

I sighed... They brought back so many memories. Those were the treasures of my school years -  every summer vacation, when it was too hot to step outside, me and my sister would enjoy many hours playing indoor games. Snakes and ladders was a favourite (it was especially fun when playing with 'sound effects', whenever one went up a ladder or was gobbled by a snake). Those wonderful days seem so far away now... Its been years since I've actually played or even touched any of those games!

But I did not let my find that day go to waste... And now I can say I've become re-addicted to Scrabble ;)