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There was no hope for him this time: it was his third stroke.*
The muggy cretonne’s smell in his nasal breath. The grey blinds slanting, seeping in the sunlight. It formed a strange pattern, straight streaks of orange.
Its funny, isn’t it, how smell can evoke memories.
Memories of what lie outside. Of the bazaar.
Bargaining women, drunken men jostling around, an occasional cow longing for the greens on a cart. High pitched chants of street side vendors.
Bags slung over shoulders, the colours of the market perspiring on a cheek.
Reminiscence.
My body was like a violin and her words and measures like fingers that play. Happenings on dark street corners, on a field of lilies, of summer dresses, all seamlessly converging in one long wail of a finger.
That finger.
The orange turns up slowly in its fury and converges into this shade.
Like the shade of her lamp.
The shade of the lamp that catches the curve of her neck, lights up her hair that rests there, and falling, the hand that rests on the railing.
It silently slips over the curve of her body and plays with the border of her dress.

He was graciously striding towards his late twenties then. A soft brown moustache and kind grey eyes. She liked the way she could look into them and all these stories seemed to just play on.
She was not listening to any of what he said.
The ship blew this long sad whistle through the mist. There was this impending feeling she had whenever she thought of that day. Of how the canvas of being seemed splashed with baubles of grey.
“Come”.
He spoke close to her face. She wouldn’t listen. All she did was was stare.
Their journey was all planned out. To go away. To start anew.
Where she would be married and get all the respect she deserved.
They met on the beach of their youth, two young people.
Him confident and sure of what lay ahead of him, while she pulled her cart along.
“Come”.
She buries her face in what she has of him.
Its strange how burying a face into an inanimate shirt, day after day, can evoke the same sentiments.
The intricacies of the soul are strange.
You hear so much of that cliché. If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.
That never made any sense to her. Still doesn’t
So ok, I love something. Now what do I do.
Set it free.
How?
Don't know, just free.
Ok, there you go, now you’re free.
And while you are off wandering the world in that little boat of yours that costs a million, what am I supposed to do?
Go on with life.
But how? I am waiting for an answer, remember?

She is convinced it doesn’t work that way.

Say I love a part of me.
Ok, my tresses.
I love my tresses.
So does that mean I chop it off and put it in the ocean?
And wait for eternity for that bag to return, in my city without an ocean.
If I love something, I wouldn’t set it free.

But she did, that day.
That day overlooking the little boat, she did set him free.

Don’t you just love the way the forbidden fruit tastes?

Doesn’t it give you that excitement like when you were two years old and saw this bucket full of water, you dipped your face in it. And the way the water dripped from your hair, nicely hanging on your face.

Now you know you could have drowned.
Was your little two year old spirit trying to set you free in ways that you couldn’t understand back then?

She does not have an answer.
He doesn’t either.
What are answers anyway?


Note from the author: maxims/ sayings/ proverbs should come in a box with exceptions to the rule/ statutory warnings.
* First line in Joyce's Dubliners

Day

And on this evening looking afternoon, you sit on the stairs and look.
A tree that covers most of the house from this far, making it seem like the spiral stairs actually lead to heaven.

One day I had a thought. And I named it evanescence.

Little garden next to parking lot. Fat green caterpillar eating leaves. Has this little thing on its side. A white drop, with a cicumference of black that looks like an eye. Eats leaves methodically.
You remember that science lesson from high school?
You see a leaf under a microscope and apart from the skeleton, the cells and all that actually grow ( or seem to) in straight lines.
So it actually eats the leaves bit by bit, vertically.

Summer of pigtails and red bermudas.
Dragon flies.
Running behind them all over the garden, soil as your shoes, wings for gaussamer flirtations.

One day I caught one of you. And you called it destiny.

Trying to scribble out a report, or a solution, to Fermats Last theorem one late evening in University. Looking up, spaced out. Floor cold below you, sneakers extending in front.

Two pieces of candy to melt in your mouth. A flush in your cheek. The sweetness touching you so intimately that it almost seems like a distant happiness.

One day destiny knocked my head hard. And I called it moribund.

Bus

So it is one of those days where you get up after a meeting with the director feeling all woozy and you can't for nuts find models for the photo shoot and the coordinator is busy acting like God and all you can get yourself to fantasize about is food and it is not thunder you hear but your stomach and you walk the entire distance to get a bus and he zooms by on a bike waving to you and you finally get a bus and a seat too and it quickly begins to fill and there are oh so many people and this woman boards and she has this little girl in her arms and you take the child and it is sitting on your lap and it has these really really small hands and both of you are staring at her hand in yours and she snuggles closer to you, just below your neck and falls into this slumber and there you are, holding this fragile treasure held against you and it is like the entire world just goes by and you don't notice and time exists just for the two of you so you can hold her snug and warm while she is asleep in your arms....

Gratification

Once upon a time there lived a little girl. This little girl lived on a land far away. A land full of wisdom and truth and happiness and misery.
But you know what was truly remarkable about this little girl?
She did not notice much of it.
She skipped around her life thinking her thoughts, and a few extra ones on some days.
One day she entered an enchanted jungle.
She did not know that. She just thought it was yet another jungle.
This jungle held her and played with her. Till one day something went wrong in this little girl's life.
She turned for answers to the only true nourisher, the giver of comfort and warmth.
The jungle. Her jungle.
The jungle listened to her patiently. Then it blew a cool breeze on her cheek. Her tears dried and she calmed down.
It held her and whispered in her ear. Oh so softly.

Life repeats its lessons till you learn it.

She repeated. So she'd remember.
The jungle and her became thick friends and they went about their routine business of amusing each other.
They would go for walks on some magical evenings and sit by the banks of a river chuckling in glee at what some animal did. And the girl told the forest the most wonderful stories. *
" Once upon a time there was a banana and it grew. It grew until it was large, firm, yellow and fragrant. Then it fell on the ground and someone came upon it and ate it".
Then one day the girl found a piece of coloured glass. It was the most wonderful piece of glass ever which had all these beautiful colours she always dreamt about. She would hold it up to the sun and just squint in glee at the display.
She sometimes even cut short her visits to the jungle just to play with her new friend.
Her fingers slipped.
The glass did not break.
It slit her hands.
She just lost a piece of her.
The forest pulled her close and repeated what she forgot to remember.

My sweet child. Life repeats its lessons over and over. Till you learn it.


* Extract from Yann Martel's The life of Pi.