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Tower of Babylon

And, here is a tree and its gnarled surface. The cat seeks out its dappled spots, quickly lapping up the fat globules of light. The scent of burgeoning cashew blossoms lingers around the feline creature, the sheared bits of deep blue sky wells up in its eyes.  The avian life, nervous by the paw-still presence of the new arrival, is suddenly on tenterhooks, issuing forth many a cacophonous conversations, aimed at strategic action or change of plans, who can tell? But the noise is unbearable. Moreover, I am completely excluded from the decision-making process. Conversations give way to heated arguments. Rufus treepie and cuckoo are the most vociferous, their size give them the leverage. But the tiny sunbirds with hooked beaks tutting away in loud metallic chirps would not be left behind...their little nest swinging from one of the upper branches is at stake and so is the future of their brood.  Trying to read Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, I find myself going over the same senten...
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Of Holi and Holica

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Why wake up? What for? Unwillingly, the comatose body rolls off the bed and hauls itself down the stairs, just because... The first stirrings of slow dissolution. The waning fragrance of  cestrum nocturnum, raat ki raani,  has sensuously wrapped itself around the morning.  "Happy Holi", my ever-zealous 82-year-old mom greets with a shower of flaming red hibiscus petals. A shower of flowers is the new, preferred, civilized way of playing Holi in our family, a far cry from the customary hurling of water balloons or bucketful of colored chemical solution the way I remember it from my childhood. I can't help but smile. The babblers start their cacophonous chant. I too get some bougainvillea blossoms and color her bright smile with them. My whatsApp is overflowing with Happy Holi messages. I have never been crazy about this particular festival, even though it represents the best of spring, the victory of truth over evil and the Lila of Divine Love. My recollection of Holi...
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Silence

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  swirling silence  of a moonless night: a heart wrenched out of its orbit and  hurled to feed the immortals: like vultures they feast upon it  delighting in the  ambrosial juices of its passion and pain.  then it shuts; the seas slide back 2. from the bottom of a pool, stillness of the  reeling stars stare back: grasses lean closer  grazing past infinite  spaces: swishing sibilance in silence  stoops 3. that long long path who has trodden it? may be an animal following the scent nosing out a trail... a path that runs through  no man's land: rough-hewn scarred, in a fight with itself  with shadows that trespass it endanger its solitude... A path that runs over  moors and into the woods,  towards disentangling spaces  it meanders all day, at night,  over a creek it dips, listens... reposing at last on the woof and  warp of unraveling silence
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The new Social Fabric: a Warp and Weft of Real and Fake

Trying to glean scraps of reality from hunks of false news which hits one's WhatsApp account is a task for those with ample curiosity and a huge chunk of time  at their disposal. Even though over the  years I have become quite apt at separating the one from the other, the need to be corroborated by those whose full-time job is precisely that remains acute. By and by, I have succeeded in narrowing down a couple of trustworthy fact-check engines which claim to have their professional research teams dedicated to such matters of no importance. Lately however, it is AI who has been jostling to be the first responder to most of my Google quests. One such reel doing the WhatsApp rounds revolved around an artist called Madhav hailing from a poor village in Odisha. By the stroke of his brush and latent passion Madhav achieved the impossible: he turned his sleepy depressed village into a vibrant stretch of unique artworks, attracting thousands of tourists. In no time, tourism brought pr...
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The Agelessness of Ageing

She who dwells in timelessness is a master storyteller. I watch the shifting weight of light cloud her face as she speaks . My mind doodles with words absent-mindedly, but the being soaks up the quintessence of such couch-potato moments; of my sister and I. Midway, a sentence is splintered by the sound of a passing train...and then another. Cars swishing past on the highway add haphazard punctuations and ellipsis to her stories. I listen...at some point, we  both drift off into our own inner domains. Floating between here and there, we learn to negotiate the narrow lanes of reality. 1. she rides  on the elusive  wings of her stories   words radiant steeped in love. songs surge eyes droop to hide the passions  long-dead and yet breathing... an army band playing the  national anthem passes by unheeded but the memories  from once-upon-a-time march on... the blue kite  entwined within the flaming  palash blossoms catches the wind: free at la...
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In-between

Another last day of the year. Feels like any other, like a birthday or any such day which offers an eligible opportunity to get wasted, lose ourselves in lights and beats and bottled up dreams so we can unbottle, loosen, find our real voice in a moment of unconscious, and arrive at the new year in a state of squirmish cognizance of Life from all the peeling deadness of the disappearing year. The sun penetrates the skin. The shadow of the pearly earring, of cashew leaves, of a  few strands of hair escaped from the bun embrace the dead stillness of the concrete porch and shake it awake.  Resonating in the background of this sleepy morning  is the sound of drums from the village yonder announcing an old man's death; a rich old man with many sons and several acres of land. The crow pheasant with its fiery wings hops around skipping gentle hollow sounds, looking for a mate. Frenzied beats of the drums grow louder and faster.  Clouds scowl, earth recoils into darkness. The...
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Paul Klee and I

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A book on Paul Klee and his paintings was one of the most thoughtful gifts I received on my birthday from my son Dhani. The gift came accompanied by a comment which catapulted me into the realm of unfounded egotistical bliss, "something of his work reminds me of you", he said as I pulled the book out off the gift-wrap. "Really?" disbelief and exhilaration ran simultaneously in my veins. Of course, I had admired Paul Klee for several reasons, but mainly it was the spontaneity and  joy permeating his paintings which had appealed to me the most. Needless to say I felt terribly flattered. Yet, honestly speaking, the similarity between Paul Klee and I began and ended with both Klee and I willingly disregarding our own passions to homeschool the child we had brought forth into this world. Yes, believe it or not, while Klee's wife enjoyed a full-fledged musical career, the painter decided to be a stay-at-home dad to bring up their son Felix. He donned on the role of a ...
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