drizzlendrafts - Tumblr blog

[drizzlendrafts]

Wear all the colours, frills and glitter you want to or wear cheap faded loose fabrics. Be the drama if you want to or be still. Fight the whole world or only a selected few. Do whatever you want to but hey ladies, do not suffer silently, do not pine for validation, do not bear guilt to please "providers".

If someone, anyone, tries to shudder your life for any reason whatsoever walk away. I say WALK AWAY. If you have dealt with these people you can deal with anything in life.

Speak with me: I'm unapologetic.

~yours fiercely

[drizzlendrafts]

An Old Setting

Nothing like seeing a picture of the old setting of a favourite place and finding yourself in it.

[drizzlendrafts]

Some songs are like incense vapours inside your body, thoroughly purifying.

[drizzlendrafts]

Where is that time when my grandpa would talk endlessly about his favourite black and white movies. The way he would appreciate art as if he were absorbed by it and not a judge viewing it externally. I muse over things, ignore some ignorance, but when certain questions are raised, I revert to take a stroll in my land of musings where there is music and art and sincere appreciation for it and where life is lived wholesomely.

[drizzlendrafts]

What do you do when you are torn? Among love, hate and gratitude for one single person you are simply torn. What do you do?

[drizzlendrafts]

Love defeats inner demons.

[drizzlendrafts]

A Forgotten Truth

I am bewildered at the sight of this young girl. She approaches me with gentle enthusiasm. Her black school skirt is muddy. I point that out to her casually. She confirms she is aware of it and a big smile comes over her face just as easily when she explains she spent half an hour playing on the swing after school.

Today was the day of results. She has come second in her class. Her mother and teachers are proud of her. She doesn't tell me that out of humility. It seems to me the joy of swinging with friends afterwards is equally rewarding to her. To her, happiness comes in all shapes and sizes. After coming home she is looking forward to eating the meal cooked by her mother. After lunch she would play with her little brother and cycle around in the open yard.

Her laughter rings aloud in a manner as if the world is a sweet sweet place. She is quite elegant for her age. She talks like adults and speaks after thinking things through. She isn't hurt by the shoutings and scoldings. She doesn't care about those things. She knows some truth that I am unaware of or perhaps have forgotten with time. I am bewildered at the sight of this young girl.

[drizzlendrafts]

This morning as I open the metal door to the terrace, I am embraced by a beautiful day. Big white clouds have hid the sun playfully as if it were a little kid. The trees are calm and the wind gentle. I look up to see a mighty eagle gliding through the sky. I am fascinated by its willful freedom. The farm is full of shrubs but there are butterflies fluttering about them in so many colours: little yellow ones, black ones with white polka dots, orangish red with black lines. The joy of watching butterflies fluttering about in your backyard is unmatched. I am endowed with a feeling that perhaps the butterflies are aware of their beauty, their ephemeral enigma. Nature knows herself. Spending time looking at the green lands and kind trees for as far as I could see, I realise how our perceptions of the world are so fragile and feeble. The ultimate truth is sustained in these green blades of grasses effortlessly swaying in the breeze; free, warm and aware.

[drizzlendrafts]

~ Learn from the flowers; for as long as we are blossoms, we must blossom in our full glory.

[drizzlendrafts]

STARDUST IN MY WINDOW

This evening a sudden storm swirled up outside. My daily ritual of going up to the terrace for a leisurely walk went astray just like that. A major upheavel in a life where that's the only connection with the outside world. I plumped down on the plastic chair in the verandah contenting myself with the rustic view of the pitter patter dance in the garden. The water drops slided down the cable wires like commuters in a cosmopolitan city except that they were in perfect harmony. The whole sight before my eyes made me brood on several things. My mind posed several questions almost like a checklist, keeping a track of our current stand on multiple issues. After a while I got entangled in my head and so I decided to head back to my room. When I had walked out I had left my room dark but when I came back and opened the wooden flaps of my window, I was amazed to see what the evening had bestowed upon me. I was struck by stardust.

Not much might seem pretty right now but soon you shall find yourself in the best of all worlds.

[drizzlendrafts]

Forever in a Day

This evening I passed by a school- a kindergarten school. I have known this school in a very long while. I was myself a school goer when I saw it getting built up brick by brick. I was there that morning when they first painted a wall. Slowly benches were bought and placed in a very warm, homely manner. Beautiful quotations were calligraphed on its colourful boundaries. I read them everytime I passed by that place and dwelled in thoughts of its simplicity. I recall it was a bright summer morning when the merry-go-rounds were brought joyously and carefully placed in the grassy little space in front of the classrooms. Slowly after a season little kids started pouring in like fresh blossoms of daffodils in the morning light. Parents bringing their pieces of hearts in ones and twos lifted in arms, in bright orange uniforms and water bottles hanging from their necks swaying with every step. It felt strangely fulfilling to watch them come, play, laugh every morning. That little courtyard seemed like a different world somewhere far away from where the rest of us existed.

After a while the pandemic hit. Little kids were no more to be seen outside for a very long time. Days, weeks and months passed but there was no sign of revival. I got accustomed to seeing the school that way. But late this evening when I passed by that route, I was held back by what caught my attention. I don't know when it happened but it felt like forever had happened in a day. The iron gate was all rusted, the courtyard was lost in a jungle of long green grasses and bushes, in coarse shades of green and dried brown. The walls had become pale and the quotations were not speaking out anymore. But the most saddening of it all was the sight of the little cheery merry-go-round thrown away on the terrace front facing the road, tilted to one side ready to fall down any minute.

It seemed like a tormenting wind had come the previous night and had blown out all the life from that lively little place. It felt like a sad unfair end. It's weird when you see something come to life day after day and then you see it all go away painfully right before your eyes. You wonder what the meaning of any of it was if it had to go away like this.

Maybe it's one of those seasons we often cherish in life and recall cosily from time to time how we felt when it was happening. It's enigmatic how we get so attached to some places that they start seeming like an extension of our own selves and we don't even realise how and when it happens. Nonetheless gratitude is all we can have for all these beautiful places we get to dwell in life.

"Kids Heaven"- indeed it was.

[drizzlendrafts]

~Buttercup

This morning when I step out, I spot a fresh blossom of grandma's yellow buttercup chirpily swaying with the monsoon breeze on the arch of our gateway. I am fascinated how it is untouched by the complexities and the questions that the world poses. The fresh energy and beautiful hope of this little life seems mammoth to me at the moment. I am moved in my mind. Not much might be good in the shelter but I myself want to be like this flower swaying in the monsoon breeze.

[drizzlendrafts]

What are behind those eyes? Millions of years. Years of turmoil, labour, hardships and efforts. Happiness and sorrows. So much just beneath those two small wrinkly eyes. Yet when they close there only seems to be humble peace inside. Isn't it marvellous?

[drizzlendrafts]

Suddenly she smiles in her sleep tonight. I am so full of wonder that after all this she could smile in her sleep. I am so full of happiness for her. I want to gently caress her head in her sleep. I walk up to her but I recede my hand and pause to think for a while. Then I lightly stroke her fluffly black silky hair. She sleeps light you know.

[drizzlendrafts]

Eating Alone

I hate watching people eat alone. I once went to a local party. It was a buffet. The place was a little packed with people. I was searching for a corner or an empty space to stand peacefully and bear with the proceedings of the evening. Just then I saw an old man sitting on a plastic chair with his food. His hair had long become grey and his hands were so wrinkled that they couldn't wrinkle anymore. His eyes had seen all of the world and were now idle. He looked into the oblivion as he ate. Sometimes his hands quivered having held the plate in his hands for so long. Everyone else was in groups, chatting away. The crowd buzzed in hasty excitement. But in my mind everything else had already been transferred into the background. I could only focus on the old man. I felt excessively sad seeing him sit alone and eat all by himself. It seemed to me that perhaps he had become accustomed to this ritual. This loneliness felt like a constant companion to him or so his face read. Life had happened for him. He was simply continuing to live. I was pricked with sadness and I couldn't help but think about this all the time in the party.

In these years I have learnt to avoid feeling some things but if I am left alone to wander around, I'm sure I'll find someone else eating alone and I'd be deeply saddned. Tonight I saw myself eating alone at midnight. Plain bread with nothing to go with it. I looked back on all my own days of lonesome eating. No wonder I still remember the old man in the party.

[drizzlendrafts]

A dog barks late at night, loud and for long. He sounds disturbed. He has a lot to share. I wonder who he talks to. Suddenly his volume lowers. It comes out more like soft sobbing to me somehow. Maybe he has learnt this from humans; speaking out to themselves in anger and then weeping in unshared pain in the gentle embrace of the night.

~ Pockets of grief

[drizzlendrafts]

The Woman in the Dark

It was 2 am. Like most of the days that month I was not able to find any sleep. I went to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator to look for something to eat. Nothing appealed me so I just took a sip from a soft drink bottle. There was Maggi though. I picked up the packet, looked at the picture of the cooked Maggi on it for a while but then I put it back and came back to my room.

The night wind was cool. It was inviting. I went and stood by the window. It was the usual scene. The lane filled up with lights from the streetlamps, creepers growing around houses, black and white water tanks on terraces, humble trees swaying with the wind, illuminated spots in distance.

I peered out completely absorbed by the night scene. I thought about the nights in my grandma's home, at night if I would come out of my mother's room into the courtyard, I would get completely scared. By this time when I was cruising from one thought to another, I saw the lady from the house diagonal to ours come out in her balcony. It was a strange form of companionship, but a companionship nevertheless. So I wasn't all by myself in the night after all. She looked down from her balcony for a while, then after pacing around a little she went back inside. Somehow I had a feeling she would return to the night. When she didn't appear for a while, I let it go and started looking at the other side once again. But then she came back, this time with a chair. Clearly she was deeply troubled and had no sleep in her eyes.

After having sat down, she wasn't still. She moved a lot. I tried to make out what she was doing. Initially she was just driving away mosquitos. After observing her for a while I felt she was perhaps crying. But I couldn't say for sure. I peered at her with full concentration but it was difficult to make out anything in the dark. Everything I was able to see was in silhouettes.

The woman was well in her forties. I wondered what a woman of that age was doing up at middle of the night. Mostly the middle class women in this town wake up early, send their kids and husband to work and take care of the family members and house chores all day. I felt sad for her. For a moment I brooded over how it didn't matter what age one is in, one always has to understand the ways of life. It made me quite serious in the moment. Then I loosened myself a bit. I drank some water and came back to my room. Before getting into bed, I looked out the window one more time. There she was, dark and moving. So then I decided to let the night be hers. I crawled up into my bed and covering my face with a light blanket, I put myself to sleep. Such was the night that comforted two souls in sight.