One spectacular evening…one that began when the sky yawned and the first shower of stars got sprayed out. Stars that looked like icy confetti. The evening stretched out like the sky above and the sea before. The sea where ships and horizons and shorelines melted and fused and morphed into a platter of fantasies.
One morning…that began with the howl of wind and crack of thunder. With a friend sweetly massaging my feet and then getting up to make hot, ginger tea. A morning that was to be a regular April Sunday and got tipsy with fun. A morning so special that it doomed one to expectantly look up at summer skies forever after to catch a bit of mystery magic.
One dusk. Driving back home on Palm Beach road – open, slick, and dark. A heavy-lidded winter evening. And in one second…in a split-second… all the lamps along the road get lit at the same time.
One afternoon. It’s Kashmir and I’m eight. Sitting by the fire in a houseboat. Am with my grandparents. Grandmom is unwrapping a pista-colored Paschmina embroidered in fine silver and pink. My grandfather has dozed off, after reading some new petition or the other. It is warm, and oddly melodious. Like when such beauty and such stillness meet, there will be music. The fire crackles and a little bit leaps out onto the wooden floor. I quickly waddle out of the way, but remember how beautiful that hot, little spit of flame was. A tiny butterfly made of fire that flit away into nostalgia right away.
It takes a lifetime to collect exquisitely carved morning, noons, and nights; to have enough for a perfect day.
One morning…that began with the howl of wind and crack of thunder. With a friend sweetly massaging my feet and then getting up to make hot, ginger tea. A morning that was to be a regular April Sunday and got tipsy with fun. A morning so special that it doomed one to expectantly look up at summer skies forever after to catch a bit of mystery magic.
One dusk. Driving back home on Palm Beach road – open, slick, and dark. A heavy-lidded winter evening. And in one second…in a split-second… all the lamps along the road get lit at the same time.
One afternoon. It’s Kashmir and I’m eight. Sitting by the fire in a houseboat. Am with my grandparents. Grandmom is unwrapping a pista-colored Paschmina embroidered in fine silver and pink. My grandfather has dozed off, after reading some new petition or the other. It is warm, and oddly melodious. Like when such beauty and such stillness meet, there will be music. The fire crackles and a little bit leaps out onto the wooden floor. I quickly waddle out of the way, but remember how beautiful that hot, little spit of flame was. A tiny butterfly made of fire that flit away into nostalgia right away.
It takes a lifetime to collect exquisitely carved morning, noons, and nights; to have enough for a perfect day.
Comments