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I feel a little sad today. No particular reason except that there’s going to be heavy traveling for the next two days, and possibly a few talks with brokers. Homes are so expensive nowadays. I can find nothing on rent for my budget – nothing to which I could return and savor a beautiful night-sky. I haven’t listened to good instrumental music for so long. I should probably invest in an Ipod or something. Or better still, learn to play a musical instrument. (Just now, as I was typing ‘musical’, I was thinking ‘magical’. Words and thoughts are such funny things – even when they go in different directions, they take you to the same place.)

But that’s probably because I’m just testing waters now. I haven’t really committed to looking out for a new place. Probably next year…but if things go according to plan, I should be in Juhu next year, in a beautiful flat by the sea.

It’s a lovely flat. It has a really pretty window-sill that’s full of milky-white and poison-blue flowers. Shamir, the person who owns the flat and may be willing to share it in the future, is an avid gardener. He has turquoise-colored pots with all types of tangles – rajnigandhas and sweet peas and something else that smells positively divine after sunset. It’s fascinating, how these little blooms unfurl to let the scent escape when the sun’s harshness is gone. Everything opiate is for the moon.

Shamir serenades the plants every Sunday. He sits on a straw mat and plays the violin. It’s very melancholic. The notes feel very tender and raw - like the first time when a daughter realizes that her father is not the hero she thought he was. It’s something she keeps in her heart and continues to love her father all the same. Shamir’s music is like that. It’s a tender composition of all varieties of silent heartaches. He says that plants respond beautifully to yearning.

I asked him if I could play the violin to his plants. I’m quite good at it now – after a few lessons from my friend in Vashi. But Shamir refused. He says that my fingers are rough. “Too much optimism makes you rough”, he says. I don’t think so, but I think I understand him. A lot of happiness and a lot of sadness can result in the same thing – making your soul impermeable. That isn’t good, because all of life is osmosis of some kind..and so is death, really.

If Shamir is still around when I die, I’ll ask him to play the violin while I get cremated. I’d like to be reborn as a plant that grows in a window-sill by the sea. Even if it is in a house of a man who, people say, killed his baby.

Comments

Anonymous said…
recently finished re-reading The Great Gatsby a few years after i'd first read it.. a lot about the post and about the description of Shamir had a similar whiff to it. now been re-reading your post since yesterday. :-)
Anonymous said…
That denoument you whipped up was about as poesque as they get.

P.S- Pl snap out of your bluesies and ferret out the stuff about my fishies!

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