Jaane Chale Jaatein Hai Kahan!

I watched a clichéd Telugu movie called Johnny the other day. Singularly unremarkable except for a scene where the hero takes his cancer-stricken wife to Mumbai for treatment and rents a house there. They are in an upbeat mood until the woman opens the window…and sees a massive cemetery right outside…the way her face falls and the sheer frustration in the hero’s face are priceless.

The helplessness we feel when our loved ones are beyond help is a pain that is impossible to describe. Apparently, no one I know noticed that scene but for me it was as real as my waking nightmare.

The effect is quite physical on me. First numbness and then an overwhelming weakness. As if I just wanna sleep wherever I am. And that is the beginning of my sleepless nights and hungerless days

When my mother was wheeled into emergency after a cardiac seizure, my life came crashing down all around me. Nothing seemed important. Nobody else mattered. It was she and she alone who filled my entire being. And how subjective physical pain is! It was her pain alone. Thank god, she came back to us. And saved us from becoming orphans.

It happens to all of us. We lose some, come close to losing some. Everyday life suddenly becomes irrelevant. It is as though that one day, one moment of trauma, stands alone, detached from other parts of life. And that moment is filled with regrets and inadequacies.

Heartbreak seems so much easier when we know what losing a loved one to death means. Because, when people go away, we can never make amends.

That’s why, thirty two years after my father passed away – a hazy figure since I was just a baby - I now know that time does not heal some wounds, it just shows us afresh how deeply permanent they are.

Rhyme of the Rain

How it pours, pours, pours,
In a never-ending sheet!
How it drives beneath the doors!
How it soaks the passer's feet!
How it rattles on the shutter!
How it rumples up the lawn!
How 'twill sigh, and moan,
and mutter, From darkness until dawn.

When it is like the tender touch of a baby’s hand on mother earth’s yearning cheek, it is a drizzle. When it sprinkles down fragrantly like a burst of cherry blossom, it is a shower. When it cascades like a silk curtain swaying gracefully in the wind, it is rain. And when it unceasingly flows down from the heavens like a heart-broken beloved’s tears, it is a downpour.

It teases, it taunts. It plays, it punches. It dances, it drives. It nurtures, it crushes. It gives life, it washes away hope. Rain.
Rain is the elixir of life. Rain is the tears of heaven. Rain is the nectar of gods. Rain is power unleashed by the sky.

Rain is white, silver, blue, black. Green, brown and violet. When it mingles with the earth, it is red and brown. When it drenches a tree, it is green honey. In the night it is black Indian Ink. In the dawn, it tinkles like silver anklets.

Across Andhra in the last few weeks, Rain Lord arrived in all his glory. Trumpeting thunder, flashing flags of lightning, the swoosh of winds and the rumble of dense clouds. The parched world eagerly drank up the monsoon.

And at Antarvedi, at the confluence of the mighty Godavari with the sea, the sky bent down to meet the ocean...the ocean surged to meet the river...the river embraced the earth as it went to meet its destination and rain hung from the sky like the pearls of a queen's crown.

We climbed into the light house perched right at the edge of the madness, angry waves rebuking the tower. The steam from the tea cups of the tower attendants mingled with the curtains of mist that wafted in from the sea.

Wind howled in the tower and I stood at the window. ...a mere teeny weeny dot in front of the mammoth cosmic drama where elements talked to each other, argued, fought and made love.

sleepwalktalk

I have just constructed this. Let me think and then come up with posts. Why have i done this? lot of time on my hands, i guess.

somnaloquist sleep-walker