Scribbles and stories.

We are in our first week of October, and I’m still thinking about September. That month always has its ways with me. When the sky finds new shades to show off, the flowers play along with more-r shades. It’s a game worth losing, because you win either way. The rains that find your home and the nostalgia of a childhood far and gone. As it takes different forms now and then, you desperately pray for a no-flood season every night. September is as slumber as it can get; life doesn’t change much during that month. It is the same, and so you find ways to make it seem interesting. You notice, and you make stories, because what else can one do?  This September, however, surprised me with an unforeseen independence. Moving and building a home alone happened, and life changed in little ways.  Chennai is supposed to be less hot from September, but damn, the heat is unbearable! And the burden of the climate change that we are witnessing in the fancy name called El Niño, as if ...

I smile, And you hold my hands,  Hold.  Touch.  I hear people say, the lines found in your hands decide your destiny, Age-old myth?  A folktale or a legend?  Hands. Lines. Destiny.  I wonder, When we hold hands, does destiny also coincide? The lines on my hands, met yours  A boat shape,  All the way from the tip of my palm, an uneven line crossed yours Some missed, some dispersed, Do our hands, these lines really hold our future? Are we to move parallel Or to intersect ever?  With endless lines Like waves in an ocean Or stars in the sky, Do we ever meet?  Of flickering hope and unsaid words,  What a game of destiny  As the sun began to rise, Holding hands, I look up and ask, "Kadal kannan povam?"

Forget me today,  Forget me tomorrow, Forget me forever.  One night you told me,  Nobody can break us We are stardust, we are already broken. But you were wrong.  We are broken, but those tiny bits and pieces came together In the end.  Always.  We are a constellation, ourselves  Building home But the only difference is, I'm never a part of yours, Nor you mine Starcrossed are God's favourite, they say Then we were her most Parallel, like Earth and sky Mirror, like you and me Forget me today, Forget me tomorrow Forget me forever For the universe doesn't conspire for us. 

"Omanathinkal Kidavo", A familiar song, but an unfamiliar voice. It's been years since Rahel and Estha have last heard this song. She used to sing this, very often. This was their song, Ammu's favourite song. Today, after all these years those emotions rush back and hit them all of a sudden. Had they forgotten her? That long black hair, eyes full of sadness and hands which embraced them.  Full of love; Their Ammu, their mother.  Holding hands, they listen to the rest of it.  Half asleep, they are in a far away land. Where love was not questioned. For love was the answer.  With Ammu by their side, holding them close. They smiled at the familiar song, now sung by the familiar voice.  For now, they are home. They are loved.     "Omanathinkal Kidavo, Nalla Komala Thamara Poovo, Poovil Niranja Madhuvo, Pari poornendu thande nilavo"

She sat on her big veranda and slowly opened the cover. A letter inside. Aamaya was always fond of letters. For her, a letter is not just a piece of paper filled with letters but rather emotions. As she unfolds it, her heart wrenches. There is hope, a part of her is curious and, another devastated. As she starts reading it, she smiles through her tears. She can hear that voice reading it for her. It's not she who is reading it, but them narrating. Those stories, moments, words brought all those memories and all of a sudden everything hits back. Nostalgic? No, much more than that. And that moment, that very moment she wished for the universe to pause. The smell of old paper and blue ink. And that handwriting, she could never forget. As she touched it, she felt their presence, those emotions; raw and just. As words became sentences and sentences to paragraphs; she wished for this letter to never end. Vigorously she reads but not wanting it to end. How selfish we become, sometimes. Is...

She now lives in the world of an other,  of people unknown  and stories from far of lands; Finally,  the fallen flower found a new home.