Chiffonesque

They play violins in the mountains And accordions in the snow The sun seldom shows up Except in muted tangerine glow. The music snakes up the forests Waters in the lake shine That mood of life in the distance Not lived but forever mine.

Cold and cloaked in A big thick blanket With knots and ties and a fancy weave. The hope fell through The darkness stained And withered dreams kept us warm on New Year's Eve.  

We caught a bus back to Pune last night. The bus was from Miapur where the ‘bus stop’ was a small, tinny shed with an open field for a latrine. Buses shuddered to a halt there, not because there were passengers waiting but because little bugs of rickshaws kept getting in their way. Our bus was late. It was cold. The shed served sweet (and I do mean sw-ee-ee-ee-t) tea in thimble-sized paper-cups. People around me had lit up their ciggies and a huge pancake sort of moon heaved in the sky. It looked a little yellow and bloated, like it had eaten the wrong sort of starry mushrooms. I took our luggage and sat on the dusty curb and took out the book I was reading. {It was a really light read: ‘Confessions of a Listomaniac’ by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. It has a bright, yellow cover with a drawing of a girl emerging out of a list. Ordinarily, I would finish such a book within an hour. But for some reason I was taking it all in slowly. It’s not a great book but it’s good in places you don’t...

It's a day after Christmas and I spent the whole day sleeping at J's house. Cy sat in her room and worked through her math assignment. Hours passed and the Hyderabad sky muffled the sunlight. By the time I was awake and sipping spicy tea, a cold breeze was whipping about. Later Cy and I went to Inorbit. J was to join us from office later on and A , who was visiting friends, also decided to come by after sun-down. Around eight, we were all assembled at the Cafe Coffee Day at Inorbit. Our cappucinos were downed and a healthy spate of brownie crumbs dusted the table. Then we decided to dine some place. Syn at Taj Deccan was a pretty neat affair and we tripped over fried chestnuts in plum sauce. (Also wonderful were the latticed faux leather table-mats in black.) After dinner, we trudged up the pretty cobbled path near the Taj to catch a rick. It was cold. I could feel our noses turning red. For some reason Cy and I had started giggling really hard. We looked up at a love...

People on two-wheelers fill me with more dread than smokers (if that were even possible!). However, I do admire their bohemian insouciance. Especially in Pune. They don't wear helmets. They drive recklessly. They talk, sing, whistle, hoot, swerve, skid, repeat. They approach any space on the road, at times the footpath even, with the ferocity of rabid rottweilers. But sometimes, I see them being kind. Especially to other bikers. And sometimes, they are wise. Like today. I'd gone to drop off clothes at the laundry. There was a long wait outside. The person who was usually clued in to where bundles of ironed clothes were kept was absent. People started getting antsy. A couple of minutes later, a bike with two men stopped outside the laundry. They peered in and one of them started complaining loudly. He'd come by earlier in the morning and it was just as crowded. Why wasn't the fellow who organized the bundles here yet. And this is exactly the sort o...

The little red netbook that I use to type this post has a non-functioning key. It's the '...'. (Here, I was trying to type out the key that doesn't get typed out. And this preamble must point to the event that I have come to this blog despite not having anything to post about.) I did have a subject in mind. One that makes me just.so.angry. Now, I hope I'm reading too much into this. But this rise in crime against women in Bombay has resulted in something that I find very...how shall I put it...uncouth. It has resulted in people in certain other parts of the country deliciously lapping up the city's deterioration and preening about how they are better off. And of course, since my links with all things Delhi go deep and far back, my bones of contention lie there. A couple of conversations and a few things that I read in some magazines somehow disturb me. It's like some woman being murdered in her home or someone else being raped in a gully is now the tr...