Sometimes I think I’d be quite happy in a languid silence cocoon, stirring now and then, content to let the world merrily spin by - and I gently remind myself that I’m almost there.

The wind whistles a banshee wail, scatters rain spray, and bounds off the glass walls of this six-storeyed building on a hill.

Every time there is a bombing I think of Kandahar. Tolerate for how long?

The oversized mickey mouse that watches over the wet playswings wears a lopsided grin, the puddles by the pink and rainbow slide shine back at a blurry sky, its finally raining (after a long dry spell),oh yes a certain whatchacallit in the air.

Do you remember what 2000 was like? I do not. Scary, this grainy sense of days coalescing into each other like photographs you can't quite see the images on, nameless blobs of b&w with nothing to show for it.

I coo at this chubby five-month charmer as he gurgles, shows off a toothless smile while his proud parents beam; yes, truly a miracle, a reminder for cynical-at-the-edges me.

A puree of this, that and the other thrown together; you dipstick taste it but a vital something’s missing and it nags you.

Part of the struggle in the act of changing the words over is keeping the meaning intact, part is admitting to oneself the thought-change any set of words causes.

On the horizon the sunset an orange-red slash sandwiched by dense blue black ; a dramatic backdrop to reminisce about the school in a mango orchard, long-gone teachers whose admonitions still echo, and first sighs.

Two weddings, one condolence visit; the widow’s grief a shroud, in all enough social activity-chit chat to last me a month, and I step back into a quiet place.

Crimson, which is also on the older roughpad, is accepted for a poetry anthology.
Feels good.

Yesterday this colleague from another department was someone you met in the lift, said good morning to. Today its not. Why is death so sudden?

Second anniv. of July 11 commuter train bomb blasts.

Stunning greens in the park. Shock still for a moment I reach out and clasp, drink thirstily this energy, exuberant life force, rooted yet reaching skywards; an instant. Whtchacallit.

A rustle wave through knee-high grass, a cat crouches- all white, black paw, amber eyed- but goblins and elves?

What kind of man does this?
In the dark, in the softly falling rain, a girl in a medicated daze, runs and is chased by a man with a camera while her father looks on, the OB van follows close behind, the live feed for national broadcast has supers reading “obsessed/jilted fan hounds celebrity” or similar.
What kind of man does this?
My response is unladylike and quite unprintable.

When it’s the harsh real-world grittiness and intriguing multiple-layer complexity of a Sarkar Raj that stays with you versus the few frames of a frothy chocolatey Dil to Pagal Hai that you force yourself to see “for old times sake”; that you really realize what the years do- you’ve changed.

Watching the machine instantly correct blemishes to make the images print-ready, one wonders what if this option were available in real life, an instant flowing mane, creamy skin or slender waist; but if something were too easy to access in no time it would lose value.

That water finds its own level.
That water flows downhill.
Mostly. But if the path downhill is blocked, water floods.
And so it did.
Caged a lift marking a furrow in the said flood waters (memories of Cal), made it to work to learn I was the only person in my group, turned right around and went home.
The BMC commissioner more or less says “live with it”.
Was that in English?