In Limbo 2

  she fell and broke her foot. her head bled and they cried 'get some ice," a voice screamed. 'may be I am dying. glass rain,  piercing, cruel, hot. "All my precious  ceramics and china!" detachment coerced upon the heart that loves; lying in bed the bare walls enclose upon her, resounding with blabbers  of children and grandchildren: first  words, first steps, falling crying  laughing. She smiles. The rupture  in her head hurts. Like a kitten  tangled up in a ball of wool it had  never intended to unravel, she lies there in the debris of daily life,  softly moaning. Eleven birds in the twirling depths of  skies: craned neck, eyes squinting  trying to communicate with the  dancing song of the winged beings "take me  with you, I who wanders  alone these stretches of red earth  looking for feathers, stones and  some meaning lost and never found";  a snake slithers past shy unsure  shedding the s...

  write to me with the spume and spray of the rumbling  ocean; write to  me with the  susurrant gold of barley fields  swaying in the  wind; write to  me with the  soft smudge  of the inky  clouds hovering  over a lonely  porch; write to  me with the  cool breath of a winter morning leaning against  bay windows  wanting to  sneak in; write to me with  twilight silence  clamped over  the silhouette of the tall sycamore in your backyard; write...

  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?