Word images

Utraan today. I scour the sky for kites, but its an empty pale blue. I turn the corner and see a notice board with kites in ten different colors, kites that kids from the colony have decorated. Suddenly sunshine.


The platform was unending, stretched way into the suburb, but the train halted there for all of two min., way better than going all the way to the other suburb with its platform chock a block with people and all that running about. This one was quiet, eerie, or serene- depending on your point of view. Not a single soul on the platform when I reached, not too many when the train left. But yes, it did give you a balcony view of the homes lining the station, complete with banana trees, tulsi chowk and the constant sound of running water.

The home town was chill, but one was prepared. After glaring at the autofella for not going by the meter it was but natural to walk home, yes to that brief moment of fear, the steps echoing too loudly at the underbridge, yes to that trickle of water dripping somewhere and that weird sound of the grate and that moment of relief when one stepped out. Striding on RC Dutt Rd when even the strays were asleep, past the two bungalows that stand stately proud the way good and propah regal homes should. Got home all charged, and was asleep in a few.

The kites! Spilling over footpaths. Decked across impromptu shops. Every nook and corner and inch of the city. Too bad I can’t stay. But the colors- I take them back, all the hues.


Reading Paulo Coelho on the flight back. Thinking abt the way the right words reach you at the right time. Thinking abt how grief recovery is a process, a language with its own syntax and grammar and no matter what I’ll tell her, she has to resolve this. Live through this. Alone. About how the terrain from a plane window is so much like the big picture we see when we pull back from a situation. The terrain all browns, curving and folding upon itself, that line sweeping to the far distance -so much like a human brain.

Race course is a velvet carpet interrupted by a whirly bird. The surprise of it all, finding it plonked behind the auto garages, and then that stupendous shortcut up the bridge, ah life!