Black,White and Grey

So long and winding are these roads
where I have left behind stories of nostalgia
Some slippery curves
Some hard ground
Stories of ringing laughter and painful parting
Tales of cuteness and despair
And me
that soul which keeps getting shaped
like a mound of clay
Dear, Life
Send my way
lives and stories--black, white and grey...

Little Jars of Feelings

I own little jars of feelings. I have decorated them with itsy-bitsy scraps of papers, scribbled drawings and crayons gone haywire. These little jars sit on the top-most shelf of my mind. I move across the city, cross roads, hail cabs, shield myself from blinding lights and skip puddles. The little jars shake and shiver and tumble across the shelf. Some kind soul comes and fills them with a smile or a desperate soul fills another jar with a tale of hope. Sometimes empty eyes in trains fill the jars with untold stories and sometimes anticipation and mush fill them with tales of romance. A musician on a platform fills them with flute notes and cries of penury. A girl in a pinafore and plaits wonders shares tales of academics and cliques. 

I, the collector of these feelings, play along with life and move about. I stumble and I fall. The jars--stuck that they are to their places-- keep emptying themselves in the basket of time. 

One day I will open the baskets and see what all I have missed or enjoyed. All the archives of my feelings will tell tales of laughter, hope and fear. Then, the collector of feelings will have her moment of closure. 

Till then, I will keep walking. And collecting. 

Image Credit

Notes from The Viral Loop

On newspapers and reading them online...

"It owes its analog existence to trees that are chopped down, trucked down to a mill where they are mashed into pulp,flattened into paper and transported to printing presses. There the huge rolls of paper are sprayed with letters and numbers, photos, crossword puzzles,sudoku and drawings,cut and stacked and bound and stuffed into trucks. These bundles are dropped off at newsstands or distributed to people whose job entails flinging each copy, one at a time,house to house. Later you step onto your porch,pick up the paper,scan the headlines and realize everything in it is a day late. You've already skimmed the articles on the web,were fed email links on your PDA or cell phone, or accessed RSS feeds,watched them on CNN,heard them on the radio, or caught a glimpse of them on a news ticket atop a taxi cab. By the time you read the paper, the news has moved on and so have you. It's one thing to rely on such an intricate supply chain to manufacture a Stealth bomber. Its a complete waste of scarce and expensive materials and fuel for the dissemination of mere words and pictures on a page and it takes far too long. "

Churchgate

The girl keeps running towards a very crowded station with a green umbrella that is broken at one end. Partly drenched, partly curious she looks forward to the sight she is about to see.

She has travelled a journey of forty-five minutes to meet someone. She doesn't bother about the rain, the sun or the people around. Her eyes dance with impatience, excitement and anticipation. If you were there--at that crowded station--she would be a very amusing sight. Fumbling with her umbrella, looking in all directions, gaping at trains and trying very hard to spot him. She would stare at random men with luggage and wonder.

She thinks about the coffees and the walks waiting for her in the day. She would max out every moment. Who knows where life will take her after this. How she wants to capture moments! She thinks of how days will pass in a whiff and how she will come back to this crowded station with tears in her eyes.

She would in her quiet moments relive the entire day and rethink every line in the night. Every cupcake, every coffee, every silent moment would remind her of him. But now? Now the moment is hers and hers alone. The next few days will belong to her. The endless smiling, the daily parting, the momentary goodbyes, the incessant bargaining and the feeling of home.

Then, she is brought to reality by the smile that can light a thousand dark days.

In that crowd, two people huddle together under a broken umbrella to build their share of special memories.