Quarantine

The leaves of yesterday
lie asleep on an empty pavement
An early bird twitters;
welcomes another dawn
Sunshine strides
across a lonely street
All is quiet
Outside.
Inside.

It is time.
Our world will heal.

Everyday love

Wet nose, a happy thump, brown melting eyes,
a doggy snout pushing its way to open the doors of your heart...
                                               
                                                                                A dash of love
                                                                                     sprinkled over food prepared with care...
                                                  A blue butterfly
taking a free ride on the sleeves of my blue shirt...
                                                                                          Waking up in the envelope of warm sunshine
                                                                                                after the icy fingers of the long night...
         Travelling in a bus
         with a red balloon held high...
                                                 
                                                               Ah, the many shades of everyday love...

On an impulse...

Life has a way of catching you unawares.
Leaving you spell bound at times; at a complete loss at others.

How fleeting every breath of life is...
A friend once said, "Life happens in the blink of an eyelash"
I couldn't agree more. I sometimes think it's good to be impulsive and live in the moment.
Grab it, live it, cherish it.

Go on. Do it.
Give that compliment you've been meaning to give:
the warmth of your words may be the only comfort on an otherwise cold day.
Step out on a leap of faith.
Drink in the skies
Waltz in the rain
Ribbon in the breeze
Chase a rainbow
Catch your breath.

Walk down a grey lane
hope bobbing above you.
Smile at strangers--
it worries them silly.

It's all about the moment:
here today, gone tomorrow.
Embrace it for all it's worth--'coz life is not forever.

A moment of impulse can change your life:
the first step on the road not taken.
You might as well make that attempt to reach for the stars;
Than climb the wrong ladder all the way to your grave.

Tread well on the path of life so every step leaves a trail where there was none.

Reaching Out

Thirty pairs of young eyes stared back at me.

Curious.

Watchful.

I had a daunting assignment: To teach them English. In Hindi.

So we began. With their dreams.

Ruby wanted to become a beautician

Roll #1 Akash dreamed of being an ‘officer’

Alka saw herself in a bank.

Tall, lanky Prakash shyly said, “I want football player”

Neelam just wanted to be able to read ‘Englis’ books.

And so began a journey through grammar, diction, vocabulary...of pride, of confidence.

Their lives were not simple. 

By day they were 'cycle repair' boys, housemaids, tea shop 'chotus'. 

Once home, other duties awaited them—to make the dinner, care for a bunch of younger siblings, wash, sweep, repair, clean, get roughed up by a drunk father…they were just another set of earning hands that ought to be doing something more useful than holding a pencil.

Yet, what they held in their hearts--what nobody could take away from them; was the Will to learn.

And how we learned! Lazy summer afternoons woke up to stories read aloud, a question here, an answer there, a stifled giggle at another's error, laughter at one's own, stumbling over words, yet rising after every fall... They took it beyond the school building: walking back home, they'd read posters, billboards, fliers, anything to satiate the hunger deep within their little souls.

There were other lessons—lessons of courage

To dream

To hold their heads high

To look the world in the eye

and take pride in who they were

where they came from

where they could reach

if only they determined

to never give up.

  

Pushed to grow up too early, denied a childhood, these children persevered--and some did see their dreams take flight.

Those sunny afternoons spent in the company of sing song voices; fidgety feet, mischievous minds will remain  some of my most cherished lessons in life. 

[Outreach was a program for underprivileged children to help them complete their basic education and thereafter make them employable. I got an opportunity to be a part of  it as a section of the curriculum of management studies]

Lacing Loops

As my fingers slip through the ring

Dipping the shuttle in and out of a sailor’s knot,

I marvel at the way we dip in, slip out of each other’s lives

Tatting all the way…

Some we meet, wound by the frail thread of life;
Only to move on.

Some walk with us a longer mile

One knot at a time...

Some we lose and yet meet again,

Bound into a pretty pattern:
Blessed, Richer for having met
Along the winding shuttles of life’s breath.

I’m glad we laced our lives together

To become yet another loop in the larger puzzle of eternity.

The Broken Jar

courtesy: Getty Images

Crash! 
One moment

is all it took to disintegrate into a million little pieces.......rapidly rolling away into distant corners.
And then.....an eternity of silence.

There it lay.....a magnificent jar....in shards.

The potter slowly shuffled around, picking the pieces, dusting them into his wheel again. He held them in his hands, put the broken pieces together, melted, moulded, shaped them anew...One more creation out of the same nothings.

Your life may be in a million little pieces today.

You can choose to watch them roll away into oblivion. Or pick them up one by one, and make them whole again. Just this time a different configuration-yet another variant of the essence that is you: one you’ve never known before; waiting to be explored, waiting to bloom.

Own your life.

Use it, eke it, stretch it, tease it, till it can be used no more.

There is no perfect picture. It’s what you make of your brokenness that makes it picture-perfect.

Pencils and Erasors

Fascinated, I watch my 4B ambling, skating, tiptoeing, waltzing in wild ecstasy, over spotless, fresh paper. Grey soot rubbing over silky white in long, even strokes.

As I write out my every day,

the graphite often slips, trips, smudges

across the pristine scapes of an unexplored life.

Every morning I carve out the letters of a perfect day-

To love, to live, to spread the joy around.

Yet somewhere along the line, I meet moments I’d like to unlive;

Undo, live all over again—this time better than the last.

Some days I want to be an angel

yet allow another to steal away my peace,

Some days I see the path I ought to tread

Yet stray away, sowing hurt along the way.

And yet, through all these some days, there are always people

Who choose to forgive, to forget, to erase out my flaws and still believe in me,

Overlook the scars left over time.

As I write out my tomorrows, one scribble at a time,

I remind myself that every day I have a choice:

To start anew, to write afresh.

Perfect or not, my pencil writes on.

You can choose to let the graphite run till the carbon runs to meet its end

Or keep it sharpened and poised indefinitely over a clean slate.

To exist and never make a mistake

Or to err as human, rise to live again.