My iridescent bubble

These are such perfect alone days of contentment. I converse when I want to, I clam-up whenever I feel like. I'm  no longer good, no longer worried about being good. No pressure of trying to live up to an image that people conjure for me. I, somehow, could never live-up to anyone's expectations, I frequently disappoint. 


Perfect days of contentment,
stretch their legs in my chair,
and sleep in my bedroom.
While I watch, 
from another room.


We don't talk,
the days have their hours to keep,
I have some words.
To write,
from another room.


There are no curtains though,
I remember who wants them,
There are no sparrows too.
An empty room,
from another room.

A happy insomnia

I wonder what could be the cause for me being awake every night these days. I'm not worried or tense, I just find it very soothing to be up till 4 a.m. The world is quiet and the early morning cool steadily creeps onto you and makes your toes go cold.


Cold, that is one thing I miss from my Doon, the winters when the hands go numb and the eyes water. February is a strange month in Dun, just like September. It's too cold inside and too warm in the Sun, there's a steady breeze that blows throughout the day, making those curtains flutter.


Aaaah and the nights are amazing. I usually sit out in the verandah, jostling with my ageing dog, who still likes to think he has the vigour of a two year old. You can smell the weather changing, the wet clammy monsoon giving way to the clear, crisp autumn.


The freshly painted night sky with the Orion and his dog, rising in the south, chasing Lepus. There is a slow moon that rises from the East, starting just under the hills, and about as big as my palm. On nights like these, I just sit out and stare at the skies, tracing those stories. I miss such a sky in Bangalore. I miss those mango trees, our red gate, the seasonal river, that road up the hill.


But then I forget all this when I am in Bangalore, I never seem to hanker for anything from home. I think they go into some dark corner of my sub-conscious and snapped shut. Only once did I dream of those wild flowers that grow on the hilly slopes of Mussoorie. I could feel that dew, cold on my palm, and smell that wet grass. I woke up. Funny, how it's never funny.


I guess in these early mornings, I remember a lot of things that I loved and have left behind. What I wouldn't give to watch the Sun rise from behind those mountains and sit in the bare branches of that gigantic semul tree.

Ending summer

In days of despair,

I offer a prayer

of breaths and whispers,

half-lies and apologies.

Hope ferments

a dreamer's mind,

drunken wild with visions -

of mountains and a stream.

To have a home
beneath those stars,

while the world goes round,

chasing its tail,

giddy to its teeth.