In Limbo 2

Twelve-year-old Vela cried herself to sleep. It was a fitful slumber dotted with nightmares. Every now and then the loud jingle-jangle spilling out from the TV in the adjacent room would shake her awake. She would sit up with a start and find comfort in the fact that her  amma  and  appa  were somewhere in the house even though she was not allowed to touch them, and vice-versa. Oh, how she had wept, begging her mother to hold her close. And while the mother's heart had reached out to her, she knew that her daughter would have to bear the grief and joy of this metamorphosis alone, just the way she had, when she had her first periods...the way her mother had...and hers, and so on and so forth. It was a tradition entrenched in time and space.  At 18:04 on Aug 23, 2023, Chandrayaan-3 made a perfect landing at the uncharted south pole of the moon. Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) made waves across the international scientific community. India made history, bagging headlines

 1. sitting by the bay drenched in brackish spray with the sound of waves enslaved within the pulsating caves; like these anxious waters fraught with fury and froth, the soul too yearns  to move on and keep on moving for there is no shore  upon which it can rest anymore 2. sullen red smoke of the sun by the eastern rim swirls within the gray pall of hovering clouds. impatient rays escape from little chinks and cracks hunting for nourishment in the unfolding innocence of a new day. who? who? who? the wise owl wonders nodding off to sleep. does it dream? do you?