Reverb 10.24: Home

I’m back from a packed weekend with a number of intense experiences and I’m doing the next three prompts in a row so there’ll be patterns and repetition. Okay, you were warned. Here goes the first Reverb10 prompt.

December 24 Prompt – Everything’s OK

What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead? (Author: Kate Inglis)

Monsoon. A tiny (you won’t believe how tiny) flat on the ground floor of an unfashionably locality in suburban Mumbai. The rain lashing against the single window. An occasional earthworm getting in through godaloneknows where.

It was the final gasp of the pitchy darkness that had engulfed me in the first half of the year. I hadn’t had the time to think about it, make sense of it. And finally I did. So I remembered. And I grieved. And I raged. And I bitched. And I ranted. And I cried. A lot. Not the nearly poetic, beautiful tears cascading down my cheeks. But unsightly swollen eyes and runny nose, hacking sounds as tear glands struggled to keep up with the outpouring of emotion.

When I was all spent, I opened my eyes. My face was buried in an old tee-shirt whose smell felt alien then (and that I would come to recognize with clarity). A rough face pressed down on my head. I shifted, reality and the present coming back into sharp, sudden focus. The arms around me tightened perceptibly.

Where are you going?

It’s getting late. I should get home.

You are home.

And I was.

Chain Story: The Morning After

I started this as a Tiny Tale. But Anish Vyavahare added a chapter to it  making it a collaborative effort and a bigger story. That got up featured on Protagonize’s editor’s weekly picks. I’ve just added the third chapter. You can read just my two pieces independently or read the three-in-collaboration here. Comments awaited!

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His eyes open and he stares for a long minute. He’s surprised by his own surprise. It’s the same room that he has woken up in for the past four years, the bubbles on the corner of wall and ceiling as familiar to him as the plumbing woes that create them. His eyes flutter to his left foot, the direction, a book once told him, is where we look when we’re remembering the past. Then to the right, the direction of the future plans. He gives up and gets up, ignoring the protesting knots in his back.

And at once he realizes. He hasn’t been woken by the sunlight, most unwelcome to owners of east-facing bedroom windows. It’s the sound that has woken him up. Clattering on the tin parapet that the people below insisted on putting up last December. It’s raining.

He steps up to the window and waits for his eyes to adjust to the waking world. A few seconds pass before he realizes that it’s coming down so fast and heavy that the gray around is not his sleepiness but water, sheer water.

For the briefest second, he begins a smile, thinking the earliest conscious thought that occurs to a Mumbaiker during heavy rain. NO SCHOOL! But the smile stops before it reaches his cheek corners and he realizes there’s an investor meeting later in the day and an early morning chat with the boss to prepare. How’s he going to get to work in this downpour? He’d better carry an extra set of formal clothes, one part of his brain is already whizzing. And his hands reach for the side-drawer, groping in the musty darkness for the plastic shield for his mobilephone, lest he forget to carry it later. Survival first is the metropolitan mantra.

He should probably leave early to provide for any delays. There’ll be plenty – traffic jams, pedestrian snarls, late trains, buses negotiating puddles. As he leaves the room, his fingers brush the switch panel, turning on the light, turning off the fan and the mosquito repellent plug-in. Mid-automation, he swirls around. Even through the downpour, he can tell, the window opposite is shut. Funny. He could have sworn, it was open last night. Maybe she got up when it started raining and shut it. Maybe it was always shut. Maybe…

The doorbell rings and he rushes out of the room, all thoughts fleeing instantly. The monsoon is here and so is Monday.

Haiku: Rebirth

Uneasy lies the head
that wears the crown
and the broken heart that trusts again

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

The last leaves of an Indian summer
crunch beneath my walking feet
Come monsoon, there will be flowers again

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

Trust is like
the Catch-22 of love
Aborted without, Murdered with 

 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

SMS

1:25 a.m. is more Saturday night than Sunday morning, no matter what the calendar says.

After a day of light drizzle or no rain, the clouds let themselves go again. For a few seconds all I can hear is the rain. Not the sound the ground makes as the water hits it, nor the metal and glass and concrete shrugging off droplets. Just the sound of the rain.

And perhaps because it’s raining, Bombay is quiet outside my window, even on a Saturday night.

I pick up my phone and thumb out,

I guess you are in sleepy-bye land. It’s pouring outside my window and so the road is quiet for a Saturday night. A good time to be alone and watching the world sleep. Know what I mean? Tell me in the a.m. when you are awake and I’m not.

When I talk, I wonder if the person listening, gets what I’m saying.
After awhile when I know they do, I listen appreciatively and in anticipation for them to validate that impression.

I savour their silence,
allowing me to speak
as I know I will
let them taste my silence
with their words, shortly.

So if listening in silence is really just giving the other person a space to speak…
what else is sleep
but giving them the space to be themselves,
without you,
examining the world around
and picking what they want to bring back to you…
…and letting you do the same?

Truly, my lovely solitude is sweetened by thoughts of you.

First Rain

On the first week of June, Mumbai welcomed the monsoon of 2008. I watched it arrive, alone…which is probably the best way, with the rain.

The skies heralded the season of water.
And then I watched the drops paint the sidewalk a shiny, sheeny gloss of life.

Ray Of Light

He looks at her from the corner of his eye
Thinking she won’t notice
Secretly hoping she will
So secret, he won’t even admit to himself

She feels his look
Like sunlight, warm on her cheeks
Her eyes stay downcast
Shielded from his blinding gaze
Warmed nevertheless by its intensity

Then it starts to rain.

Room With A View

The room has a view. An expensive view.

She says,

Take a walk in the mud. Stay out in the rain so long that you never feel clean and dry again. When you return, you won’t need to stand at the window to see the view.

He shrugs,

Too late, I already paid the rent.

Weird Weather Day

It rained this morning. In Mumbai it only rains between June and September. Deadening, depressing, gloomy rain.

But today was a cloudy, cloudy day when I left home. Dark clouds blotting out the over-hot sun that turns a Mumbai morning from morning-sun-pleasant to god-its-hot HOT. Dark clouds are supposed to be foreboding of doom, aren’t they? Somehow I like cloudy days, especially cloudy mornings. I hate the rains though.

Cloudy mornings are almost like the heaviness that has come to a peak and will crash any minute and you’re standing at the very edge of it, ready to fall with it, gloriously, deliriously into restful, submissive darkness. Isn’t that weird now?

It only rained for a few minutes. Enough to make the roads damp and turn the weather sticky. But the sun is out now, joyously bright. There’s sunlight on the dirty puddles, reflecting off so bright, it’s virtually blinding the drivers and passers-by in a gleeful

Look!!!!! I’m here! It’s morning! We’re all alive!!

Very much joyful. I love the weather today.