10-07-2014
10:30 pm IST
Vasant Vihar, Thane
It's time to sleep but I thought I'd stay up and write something. You see I love to write and I think it's only fair I profess that love some way or the other. This impromptu decision to sit up then--when I all I want to do is yawn and sleep--is perhaps my way of professing that love for the art and science of sentence construction...
I am looking around my room right now. It's cloaked in darkness as if the night tore open an envelope and let the wind blow letters of pitch black all over the table, the chairs, the cupboards, the bed, the mattresses and the pillow. Yet, despite the glee with which those letters have shrouded my room, I can see a bit of everything - a bit of my hair in the mirror of the wardrobe next to which I sleep, an upturned page trembling in the blast of the breeze that the fan spits out, and dark purple spots yo-yoing their way all over the floor and up onto the window panes and pausing to check if I have caught up with them.
The stack of apartments next to mine have been kind enough to keep their lights on. Which is why I feel safe - comfortable actually. Wait a minute. I think - more than comfortable - the lights make me feel cozy. As if I am in the small room on the first floor of my home in Vasai. Vasai is my native place. I wasn't born there but I sure was brought up there during the summer, monsoon, and winter of 1985.
The small room overlooked the backyard and furnished me with a grand view of a giant old yet sturdy tamarind tree. Every day, it let shed hundreds of leaves that came down with plenty of tamarind. Tamarind that I and my cousins collected, smeared with salt, and relished in the noiseless hours of the summer afternoons.
Summer mornings I spent in the small room itself. I'd make every excuse known to me to not get out of bed. And since I had aged enough to be called a small boy, I more or less had my way and stayed put in the mattress till 10 am or so. I would put my face into the white bed sheet that covered the mattress and lie still. Then, a little later, as if I were in search of some more sleep, I would dig my face even further into the mattress and let the smell of the cotton fill my nose.
"This," I remember thinking, "is so nice. So so very nice."
It's strange that that summer morning wafted into my memory this night - all because of the white and yellow circles and lines of light peering into my window from the apartment block next door.
Well, not that I mind the strangeness of the situation. It's pleasant, makes me smile, and yet makes me think it weird. Perhaps that's because this feeling sauntered in just when I wasn't expecting it to.
I'm smiling again - laughing actually - at me hesitating to allow it to sink in. I should allow it to. Yes, it's not something I cannot live without. But then, it's something I can, and must learn to, accept.
"Have a heart and be generous," I think I must say to myself, "and offer it some place in your being."
For the feeling is as old as I am and perhaps finding itself as well...
10:30 pm IST
Vasant Vihar, Thane
It's time to sleep but I thought I'd stay up and write something. You see I love to write and I think it's only fair I profess that love some way or the other. This impromptu decision to sit up then--when I all I want to do is yawn and sleep--is perhaps my way of professing that love for the art and science of sentence construction...
I am looking around my room right now. It's cloaked in darkness as if the night tore open an envelope and let the wind blow letters of pitch black all over the table, the chairs, the cupboards, the bed, the mattresses and the pillow. Yet, despite the glee with which those letters have shrouded my room, I can see a bit of everything - a bit of my hair in the mirror of the wardrobe next to which I sleep, an upturned page trembling in the blast of the breeze that the fan spits out, and dark purple spots yo-yoing their way all over the floor and up onto the window panes and pausing to check if I have caught up with them.
The stack of apartments next to mine have been kind enough to keep their lights on. Which is why I feel safe - comfortable actually. Wait a minute. I think - more than comfortable - the lights make me feel cozy. As if I am in the small room on the first floor of my home in Vasai. Vasai is my native place. I wasn't born there but I sure was brought up there during the summer, monsoon, and winter of 1985.
The small room overlooked the backyard and furnished me with a grand view of a giant old yet sturdy tamarind tree. Every day, it let shed hundreds of leaves that came down with plenty of tamarind. Tamarind that I and my cousins collected, smeared with salt, and relished in the noiseless hours of the summer afternoons.
Summer mornings I spent in the small room itself. I'd make every excuse known to me to not get out of bed. And since I had aged enough to be called a small boy, I more or less had my way and stayed put in the mattress till 10 am or so. I would put my face into the white bed sheet that covered the mattress and lie still. Then, a little later, as if I were in search of some more sleep, I would dig my face even further into the mattress and let the smell of the cotton fill my nose.
"This," I remember thinking, "is so nice. So so very nice."
It's strange that that summer morning wafted into my memory this night - all because of the white and yellow circles and lines of light peering into my window from the apartment block next door.
Well, not that I mind the strangeness of the situation. It's pleasant, makes me smile, and yet makes me think it weird. Perhaps that's because this feeling sauntered in just when I wasn't expecting it to.
I'm smiling again - laughing actually - at me hesitating to allow it to sink in. I should allow it to. Yes, it's not something I cannot live without. But then, it's something I can, and must learn to, accept.
"Have a heart and be generous," I think I must say to myself, "and offer it some place in your being."
For the feeling is as old as I am and perhaps finding itself as well...
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