It was..

It was a beautiful campus.

The trees whispered here….they even hummed if you listened closely. You could see the sunshine, as it gracefully stepped on the roads, glittered on the shimmering leaves .At night the moonlight danced on the grass , making the dewdrops shine silver.The air was scented….shiuli , dolanchampa , chhatim ,depending on the season. The roads were painted…..yellow with fallen leaves, red with krihnachura petals and the road to school white with bird droppings.

It was a known campus.

Summers were very hot….printed frocks,afternoon naps that you were forced to take, talcum powder blotches on your neck , watermelon slices and tall glasses of squash.Winters were very cold…. thamma’s sweaters,chattering teeth, smell of mustard oil,ponds,and boroline.Mornings of racing to school on cycles, pretending they were horses. Afternoons of hopscotch, choachuyi , chuburi or reading Enid Bytons traded with friends. Often kittens were found in cupboards, and were fed with dropers. Sometimes you crawled across gardens and picked up ladybugs and keeping them as pets in matchboxes. Evenings of homework and sometimes if you finished early Chitrahar or Om namah shiva.

It was a small campus.

Small,with lots of kakus and kakimas. Small,with one little market .With shopkeepers who knew us by names, and occasionally gave mangobites for free. Small, with reasonless get-togethers. With tiffin boxes being sent over, filled with macherchop or pudding or shemai er payesh and ma making sure that they weren’t sent back empty. Small, with friends coming over to visit if you were down with fever.And mashi’s putting on band-aids if you bruised yourself in the park. Small, with kids riding tricycles on the roads or pulling little toy wagons .Young boys in half pants running with kites or little girls with braids plucking dandelions.


I live in a big city now.

Fast cars, fast life, fast people.A city with malls and multiplexes.A city with pocketmoney and cellphones. A city with tall houses,wide roads and flyovers.A city with parties and KFC’s.

It is a big city…it taught me to survive…. I like it.


It was a small campus…it taught me to live……I loved it.

To Tell A Story...

I can't remember not loving to read.I can't remember the moment when I realised what was always true...people made the world in books...worlds that I loved!And so I read...in the car,in the bathroom,on my bed,under my favourite tree...At night the charechters floated through my dreams,and by day,they waited,watching,lurking just behind the periphery of my sight...
As surely as I knew that I loved to read,it took a rainy mid-winter afternoon to teach me that I wanted to write too.
I was reading,sitting at the kitchen table set for lunch...ma stood cooking at the stove.I suddenly looked up..her face had the distance and distraction of one just about to cry.
I had seen that face often in recent weeks,my dadu (ma's father)had just died.Whenever she would reach a moment of pause...watching a traffic light remain stubbornly red..hearing silence conquer laughter..some command from within,would draw her face away from us,the present...the world that now to her lacked someone so dear..
I asked her that day what was wrong,and her lips almost smiled..her face almost came back to me as she told me how he would feed her dollops of buttered rice and mashed potatoed,pretending they were eggs of rare birds...how she hid behind curtains and he pretended to search for her...how his skin always felt smooth and cool as she hugged him and slept in scorching afternoons.She told me how dadu had gifted her and her siblings ducks,and the euphoria that she had felt
afterwards.How he had always cared about her petty things that otherwise went unseen...
She told me these,and after she spoke,tears flowed along her cheeks,fell from her chin..and exploded in the hot pan below.She cried,then she smiled,and then she cried again.
I stared at ma,and in the egotism of teenage,I couldn't imagine that she would one day be nomore..and with her would be gone her unuttered thoughts..her unrealised dreams...With her would be gone,her story...
I felt sorry for her,and I grew angry with the thought of myself standing over a stove,having to explain to a child how dollops of rice,games of hide'n'seek and quacking ducks can make a grown up woman cry!!
I resented my books then,and the stories they told of other people's lives...and that resentment fuelled.I believe now that envy taught me why I wanted to write.
I decided that night,as ma's tears fell with the ease of the rain,that I would tell my own stories...I would teach the truest of my thoughts to find expression on pages...
I wanted to realise what it is truely to be human..and some voice within,whispering in tones too quiet to be clear,tells me that writing is my way.....
MISS YOU DADU..
LOVE YOU MA...