Chiffonesque

Day before was plump with goodies! It started with me reaching Lower Parel in the morning, earlier than I'd estimated. I hung about for a while inside Palladium looking at those beautiful stores, but mainly the Anita Dongre and the Rohit Bal ones. There was a scarlet, gold, and green ghagra in the Anita Dongre's showroom that looked so old-world opulent that I imagined the mannequin to have been transported by an elephant. A similar palanquin-panache haze hung about outside Rohit Bal's Prive'. There were rows and rows of princess-like lehengas in heavy white silks and dull gold zardozi. I'd reached early and the stores weren't open for business. But they were all lit up and happy looking, so I could peer in through the metal barricades. These stores - they looked like affluent babies sleeping in plush, luxurious bedrooms under thick, soft quilts. In time, they would stir, yawn, and get ready for the world to descend and fawn upon them. To pass time, I went to ...

Last evening was comforting. It was like having warm custard pudding after an exhausting trudge in the rain. Last few months have been knotty. The past few weeks, however, have had me straining at the leash for some sanity and sleep. There has been an accident of some sort. Not too much harm done, but if the soul were a Martini, it's been shaken, stirred, spurted, and spit out. Last evening, I met up with this friend who'd gone through the same accident, but seems to be taking it with amazing sang-froid . We went for a walk around one of those tiny market areas that Vashi has so many of. Sweet, earnest little shops displaying polyester nighties in alarming colors and prints, bright baubles and combs and all that. We took a turn and entered a side-road. Suddenly, any trace of it being Saturday night fell away. It was quiet and calm. Even the light from the street lamps fell softly. It felt like the world had suddenly been baby-proofed. No sharp edges, nothing to scrape or bump...

While I am sleeping, The past comes stampeding With summer nights and rainy days; The storm doesn't pass In fact, it seems to last Until I've heard everything that nostalgia says; Memory mottled with half-smiles And farewell whispers Blow about in gusts of gold Reminiscences narrate their pretty foibles And precious little stories get told. By the time dawn breaks Gemstones lay heaped in a sharp, dazzling lot I wake up to pick out a jewel And be adorned with a stampeding thought.

I don't visit doctors all that much now but there used to be a time when I did. For a rough, scratchy throat maybe or some ache in the tummy or a dull headache or quiet, strong fever. The doctor would ask, "Where does it hurt?" Even physiologically, it was always a little difficult to determine. Like, was my stomach hurting three inches to the left of the navel or two inches below? Or all over? It was hard to say. Growing up and now fully grown up, I stopped going to doctors. Although, in times of silent distress that all living beings go through, I have tried to address that question - "Where does it hurt?" It's a question I asked myself before I decided to shift out of Mumbai for the first time, decided to give up law, decided to major in Sociology instead of English, decided to be a vegetarian. It's interesting because this question, often, does not come up. It's quite possible to be hurting but not realize that one is in pain. Of course, very o...