Chiffonesque

Here’s what I began with: Spaghetti. There were three-to four large bowls of chopped onions and tomatoes; some flakes of garlic, around three fistfuls of soya granules, little bit of capsico sauce, salt, freshly ground pepper, pinches of green chillies. I boiled the spaghetti carefully in scalding water to which salt and oil had been added. In the mean time, I blended the chopped onions and tomatoes. It turned a really interesting color - a very soft, cozy pink. It could’ve been the color of a little girl’s birthday dress. While the spaghetti was getting cooked, I also soaked the soyabean granules. When they were soft enough, I drained off the water. It takes approximately twelve to fourteen minutes (not fifteen or else I would’ve heard our clock chime) for the noodles to be all soft, white, glistening, and separate. It looked like a Viking’s hair. A woman Viking, that is. She would probably have cold grey eyes and a luscious pink mouth. Pink like the blended tomatoes and onions. (It’

I have been feeling intellectually challenged lately, and also very bored. So I went on this book-buying -binge at Om bookstores in Saket. Got a little pile of them. ‘Silk’ by Alessandro Barrico, ‘Alchemy of Desire’ by Tarun Tejpal, ‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour’ by J.D.Salinger, ‘Sex and the City’ by Candace Bushnell, and a couple of other glittery-looking novels whose titles I have forgotten. These were to be my sturdy rungs to intelligent redemption. However, when I reached home, I saw an unread copy of ‘A hundred years of solitude’ which I had been trying to read ever since I was in college. So,I put my recent buys on the table, lay down on the sofa and decided to finally learn about the mystery of Macondo (is that what the village is called?) But after the gypsy gets his third invention to the village, I start feeling sleepy...... And then stayed up half the night reading ‘Sex and the City.’

Home is far from here. It’s miles away from this manicured patch of cultivated appearances I live in now. If I scream of home here, there will be no echo. Home is far away. Yesterday, with rain, with sloppy, wanton rain; with wind, with impudent, insolent wind; with clouds, with splotchy purple, rust and saffron clouds, a little bit got undone here. The veil slipped, the wig flipped. Expressions tried to look annoyed at the wet trifle of a downpour...and failed. Instead, faces grinned and voices sang out loud. Strangers in cars looked out at pedestrians walking unshielded in this vibrant glory and laughed. Happily. ‘Good for you!’ kind of happiness. ‘That looks like fun!’ kind of joy. Strangers on the roads looked at the gleaming winding roads ahead. Imagined poetic prospects of drives through avenues littered with beauty and laughed. Happily. ‘Good for you!’ kind of happiness. ‘That looks like fun!’ kind of joy. Yesterday, with rain, Delhi was home.

Strangely, I can't see anything on my blog. Some prettily mauve-hued error message is scribbled across the screen. Other than looking pretty, it seems quite incomprehensible. Like a druid's dribble.

Sometimes, after going through a tough time, a time when you forget to breathe or bathe, listen to commiserations and prayers, hear out pleas and platitudes, run through reserves of promises and tears, when you are somewhat out of it; at least enough to know that as long as there’s life, there’s hope. When you come to that stage when you are spent and look back at what happened, with fury or peace, and you remember... that while every one was there for you... no-one hugged. Except, there were these: The embrace of a storm. The warmth of a womb.