In Limbo 2

  1. Someone nudged. I turned around and screamed. Her calm eyes caressed my confusion. "Back off," I shouted, despair ringing in my voice. She refused to budge.  "Please take her away from me," I pleaded with the dhaba-wala, who seemed rather amused by my reaction.  "It's almost done," he said without looking up. I thought he was announcing my order was nearly ready, even though at that moment, with  her   breathing fire down my neck, food was the least of my concerns. But, before I could say anything, he was next to the enormous creature with kohled eyes and flared up nostrils. While one hand gently rested on her back, the other sweetly fed her freshly-made soft chapathis smeared in ghee. Overwhelmed by this gesture of spontaneous bonding, the trauma that had gripped my being earlier, quietly departed. Feast over, he patted the beast and then folding his hands in reverence backed away. She snorted with contentment and joined the evening traffic on th...

The early morning light pulls me off the bed, ushering me outside to have a tête-à-tête with myself and with the little black cat called Maya. Maya and I enjoy a moment of simple camaraderie which involves looking at and through each other, simultaneously. Quiet, furtive and observant, both of us cherish our status as shadow beings... We stand in deep contemplation, in sync with the cashew tree and the path which winds by it. But, a deeper perception of silence coerces the eyes skyward. And, there they are, flying south, a whole colony of them. Gulls. And lo, in a flash the shadows metamorphose into light and are up There, part of the seabirds' flurried whiteness and partaking in its voyage across dreamtime.  In the unveiling of the memory, the ears catch the sound of my own heart fluttering delightfully, reminiscing the cool autumn days splashed with blotches of gold and rust. It was against such panoramic change that all winged movement took a southing tendency and the quivering...

Pirañas, they congregate around the victim. Schools of them. Morsel by morsel, within no time the body is stripped to the bone...what remains is a perfectly clean skeleton. What about me? I  still have a lot of flesh left. In fact I could fall into the fat category. No, not obese. The nurse Shantini, who used to dress my big toe after the nail came off in an avoidable accident told me I was perfect the way I was. I remember her beautiful warm smile when she said that. Like the blue arch of the sky with just one feather-light cloud floating in it. I wanted to hug her. She was pregnant, and girdled in soft natal mist. Everyone  wants a nice clean life. How can we not? The post-covid era, with its emphasis on exercising excessive precautions, being ultra hygienic, avoiding contact with strangers have finally succeeded in herding the humanity to the paddock where it can comfortably sit and cud. For the average individual this translates into the ultimate convenience  of ...

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 histor...

 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?

sailboat made with upcycled plastic   basket woven with throwaway plastic  .                        . . .and more From being a tax officer with the commonwealth of Australia to an ocean/beach comber to a pioneer artisan in upcycling of multilayer plastic: that in brief encapsulates the journey my brother Satyajit has taken in the last decade. The latter part of it started with COVID-19 and the sudden acquisition of that precious commodity which on normal days is hard to come by: gargantuan chunks of free time! Being an avid swimmer with a childhood love for the ocean, it didn't take long for the boy in 48-year-old Satya to re-emerge. And, there he was on deserted beaches which were once abuzz with tourists,  wrestling not only with the waves, but also with trash strewn across the sands.  Soon a whole bunch of stranded backpackers from around the world and like-minded people had joined hands to clean up the ...

The old man wrapped waist down in blue loincloth, staff in hand, walks amidst the tribe of goats. No urgency tethers his gait. A song stalks him, rising out of the golden dust of some living past. An earth-bound spirit, he possesses the air of a renunciant, an adventurer, alone and naked.  The incoherent rhythms of the modern world bypass him. I want to stop and say hello, greet him with a smile, but am afraid to intrude upon his world, and in return shatter my own. I don't think I fall within the periphery of his thoughts, the way he falls within mine. We don't speak the same language or live in the same neighborhood. Our worlds don't intersect except during my morning and evening constitutionals when he can be seen herding his goats through the open field in our backyard. At times, he stands there, supporting his weight on the crooked staff..watching and not watching. His eyes rest lightly upon the green of the grass. The sound of birds, breeze and the goats' chompin...