Skip to main content

Rains.




"​How old is your soul ?"

Here Zeenat sat amongst friends and talking about old cities, the streets they once roamed, the food they gorged on and the beauty that Hyderabad was. And someone had said aloud in a story, how old is your soul and that pushed her mind back a million years. Almost like someone had yanked her body back, and that force had caused her to stumble and knock open a chest of memories. And once opened, all you wanted to do was inflict that hurt on yourself all over again. So while she sat in a mehfil and there was noise and chatter all around her, she grew still. And her mind, picked up every fragment of those broken dreams and placed them under a spotlight . And there it stayed under the spotlight, while she turned them around and let herself feel those times again. Almost, like she could see herself wearing what she was wearing on the day their hands had accidentally touched and as she pulled her hand back, he had looked at her and smirked and said "Someone's shy" and slowly pulled her palms into his and held them tight there.

And then the jazz tunes from that bar from long long back faded out in the background and the red and black colours of the decor at The Black Swan bled into a piano tune. And now she saw herself on a couch on a rainy Saturday, when the rains signaled the end of spring and the onset of winter, but something blossomed somewhere. She, who was always made fun of, because she would always feel cold and needed a cover to drape over herself, felt warm in his embrace that day, as they both listened to a beautiful piece of music.

And as the rains splattered down those wide wide windows that afternoon, she remembered thinking to herself about getting bruised and whether she needs to let her guard back up. But then, when has she ever not been bold in love, and so she told herself to give in. Zeenat smiled at that memory and the rain fell for real, in present day, and she awoke with a start on the rocking chair she was swinging herself in. Almost like someone had yanked her back again, saying, "enough now". 

​And so she came back to reality, not that any of her friends had noticed that she had allowed her heart and her soul this sojourn into the land of dreams, dreams that never came to pass.​

How old is your soul, he'd asked her, and she'd softly shut her eyelids and wondered where she should start her story from. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zindagi Migzara.

As I dimmed the lights of my room last night, Singapore's hot and humid air changed to a gush of strong cold wind. The curtains fluttered and made my ddlj cow bells ring. I turned and stared at them for a long time.  I readjusted the laptop on my bed and plonked myself against two big pillows. My eyes closed themselves. There was a silence that was neither deafening nor lonely. It was just what silence is meant to be.... silent. And my curtains moved again, moving the bells with them. The bells took me back to Shahrukh and his movies. I opened my eyes and looked at those bells for a long long time. My mom had picked them up from Switzerland for me. I thought of her and teared up. I wanted her now. I wanted her touch. It was 10pm at home in India and at this time, after dinner and closing the kitchen, my mother, takes a shower. She comes out of the bathroom, and brings with her a waft of her talcum powder and her body lotion. That fragrance can make you forget all your worries...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sugeng Warsa Enggal ~ My trip to Yogyakarta!

[ A Buddha statue looking out to the valley in Borobudur] Happy New Year or Sugeng Warsa Engga, as they would say it in Java. As 2013 came to a close, I caught myself looking back at the moments that made me insanely happy and the moments that made me indescribably sad. And what a year. Life changing indeed. So i wanted to do something for myself at the end of the year. Now what could that be. I certainly didn't want to stay here in Singapore, and didn't have enough vacation leaves to make the journey home and back. I opened my laptop and went onto the Tiger Airways site and booked myself a ticket to Yogyakarta, then booked the hotel. And in 10mins, I was ready to fly away. I've done more impromptu things like that, but never alone. Actually, I'd never traveled alone, ever. Always thought it would be too depressing. But I was in for a huge surprise. Yogya or Jogja as they call it, is a city in the Javanese group of islands in Indonesia. You can read all about...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thanks, Dad

Do Nainaa Aur ek Kahani Thoda Sa Baadal Thoda Sa Paani Aur ek Kahani Choti Si Do Jheelon Mein Wo Behati Rehati Hai Koi Sune Ya Na Sune Kehti Rehti Hai Kuch Likh Ke Aur Kuch Zubani ~Gulzar ~~Masoom This one is devoted to my Father. You know, while growing up parents always say things to the kids and they often end their arguments with "We've grown up, crossed all the paths that you will be crossing, and we know what its like" And you often say to yourself, no way! That was a different time and these are different times, things are now different, the paths are different. And so you go on, do what you want to do. It's often happened to me. And it happened again, when I told my parents that I was dating someone. My Father wrote me an email and said a lot of things. He didnt shout, he didnt preach. But it had a nice "conversation over coffee" feel to it. And I love re-reading that email sometimes. The crux of what he said was, "I...
Post a Comment
Read more