Where'd you go

Remember i used to write letters to you, when i was far far away. Far away in another land. Today they told me you never got them. They told me you dont live there anymore. No one knows where you are. 

I wonder if they tried to look for you. Someone must have, or maybe not.

I saw the little boys who used to run around in your front yard and play with the broken pieces of brick that lay scattered on the wet grass.They seem all grown up. I saw them go to school today morning. Their pleated pale grey trousers reminded me of your curtains. The colour seemed very similar, or maybe so i think. Your house still stands at the end of the road mighty strong but it does look withered with time. 

When i see you i shall tell how the roads have changed, i shall tell you how the skies here don't seem the same because you ain't around. Remember the times we spent in your porch on winter afternoons. The tea cups had so much to tell...The scar on my right hand has faded..the trees have grown taller and they bear fruit now..and the fishbowl by your window. I dont see it through the window anymore. Did you take it when you left ? Did it die ? 

I have searched for you.I searched for you today. I look for you in the old alleys, the sunlit ones around the lake. I have looked for you in your porch and my rooftop, in the porcelain tea cups and the never sent letters. I dig out the sand out of the box of nostalgia every day, everywhere, I promise. But you just dont seem to be there. Tonight its dark outside the road side lanterns are dim. But as the dawn breaks i shall look for you again, behind the grey curtains and creeks of the old gate in the play park. I shall look for you..I shall wait by the corner of the road near the lolly shop in the afternoon and if i find you we shall go by the lake again..like old times...I shall look for you..I shall wait my friend.

Midnight Chronicles

I have a strange habit of looking out of the window everynight before i doze off, be it full moon or no full moon, be it a clear sky or too many clouds to peep through, be it a lovely windy whisper or a thunder that teears apart the sky. Its just a mere tendency to watch the night through it's glorious darkness i have grown over the past few years.
Just the other night as i sat by the huge window, my old bed side lamp giving away a depressive dim light to make the dull maroon sheets on my bed a little feminity, the darkness outside seemed so much more calm than the day before, and the day before that. The breeze that blew by reminded me of lullabies my grandmother sang to me on summer nights. There was so much resemblence with the all that the night had to whisper, with my childhood. As i gazed into the floating clouds i heard an owl's cry. I peeped out of my window to figure out the direction it came from but in vain. It was just one cry and everything was silent. One cry which felt like an ongoing turmoil around everything. The immediate abrupt silence reminded me of my of my mother sitting on her huge rocking chair reciting aloud ''The Owl'' by Edward Thomas to her students. A war poem which talks about a runaway soldier, a poem which has dug in deep in my mind. I have seen my mother teach the verse again and again, year after year, to many a student.
A drop of tear trickled down the unworthy lines on my face.
A strange emptiness filled up my room, a vagueness in the pictured that stay stuck to my wall.
The bed side lamp seems to have grown so much more dim than the last time i had looked at it. The maroon sheets no more looked as feminine.
A questionable belief on the everyday trust on the man sitting above.
A rare insight of the 'myself' i prefer not to look into.
A little prayer unsaid, a little grief covered up with the sands of time and a little wish buried under compulsion.

The Letter Box

She stared at it for a little longer. The moonlight had made its red out of rust skin shine. The view of it from her balcony was just so vivid. It had been there for years now. She remembered her dad placing it when they first moved into the house around twenty years ago. It stood like a testimony of time. Once filled with pretty envelopes overflowing with love and wishes from everyone she knew, from birthday wishes to funeral invitation. It hardly bore letters now. Someone told her the old postman is now too sick to ride the cycle, a new young boy had taken up his place and ever hardly stopped by it. The last time she saw an envelope there, was almost five years ago.  It sheltered a wedding card. His wedding card. The most beautiful card she had ever seen. Just the way she had imagined hers to be. Just the way he had told her he wanted his to be. One wedding card from Iceland and the letter box was never the same. It stayed there stuck to its ground rusted, old and frail like the forgotten lover. The lover who smelt him even today, years later in all his letters. The letters which once had spoken of everything beautiful under the sun. The letters that now stay crumbled under the bed. A little torn on the edges from everyday reading. She stood there watching it rain on the red letter box. A few drops kissed her crown skin. A little boy ran barefoot in the alley chasing a pretty girl, their laughter echoing in her ears. She ran back into the room gasping for breath. The old bed sheets looked abandoned. She scratched down her nails on the walls stained with charcoal. The paintings were hardly visible, all smudged with time. From the window on the side she looked outside to see the mirror. The Letter Box which no more brought his letters,  the letter box which stood rusted like the forgotten lover.

The maiden who sold smiles.

Clinging on to the memory walking down the streets,

She looked around for a soul.

The night that stared into her making holes of regret.

A friend she had, a friend she loved,

Putting a price to her smiles.

She sold a few, she sold a many,

Till she had her basket barren

She borrowed a few from the friend she loved.

She used them well and sold them too.

She roamed the streets and the markets,

She looked for them in forests and lost dreams,

She pulled apart cupboards and ripped open old letters,

Burnt a few pictures and set up the wrold on fire,

The fumes still had no smile to give...

The friend came back looking for his smiles...

She sat with the barren basket, devoid and barren.

She gave away the one she wore on her face,

A friend she lost,t he friend she loved.

That night it rained, rained so hard...

It rained on a soul that died without a smile on her face.

The dilapidated soul

A few withered leaves rushed down the lane

The severe quiteness of the dark night whispered her tales she had never heard

Every strong gush of wind brought her a gift

A gift she dare not open

Nostalgia she had buried under the ruins of reality

She looked through the storm that was yet to come

The delapidated soul that cried for the rains

The clouds ensured they wouldnt break tonight

The soul cried harder, the clouds stronger.

And she saw a little boy walk down the street

Amazed and scared at the sight

She sprinted to save him from the storm

Chaos in her mind that never siezed

At the touch of the boy,

The winds whispered her something she had heard before

The lightning showed her sights she hadnt seen for long..

The delapidated soul dug out memoirs from the relam of reality..

Tales of childhood she wanted the night to know..

The clouds didnt break still, She did. And their was rain on her soul...

There was rain on her delapidated soul.

...That Girl i knew...

...As i used to walk down the aisle in front of the ice cream shop, i saw her....i used to see her every day. They used to say she was the men magnet...That girl from the convent school, her wheatish complexion gave away away rays of innocence under the sun...and i used to watch her move around with eyes so black, so beautiful, her hair fell like the waters from the heaven...she had her hair coloured dark brown and a few of her original black strands peeped out from here and there...The men they used to turn around for another glimpse where ever she walked...they fought for their chance to come and sweep her away...they never could...i remember seeing fair ladies with longer black hair and redder lips and slimmer body that defined the quintessential beauty of women ....but she wasnt anywhere near...she still had her way...she smiled like she knew the world breaths on it..she laughed like she had nothing to worry..every time..
       She had rough clothes on, mostly white and weird nail colours, yet she had the town talking...She had love at her footsteps...and men wearing their hearts in their sleeves just to give it away...she picked none...she chose none..she just smiled...and it killed them again...over and over again...
I remember when i was 12 and i used to see her with the men...with her friends and sometimes with her tall father who never smiled and frowned at every man who looked at her...and how i always wanted to bejust the way she was...and then suddenly one fine day i heard she finished school and they sent her away to a foreign land....land where the rich live...land where the air is clean and the roads are dirt-less...
          I grew up in the mean while...and i went off to a different city keeping in mind how i wanted to be like her..and i did...i had their head turnings too..but somewhere i lost it out...just wasnt the way she was...
          When i used to come back home i used to hear them speak of her...but never did i see her.. until then..until seven years later...i saw her again...just at the same place where i used to see her laughing off her world around...
           But she looked different, so different that i almost missed her...Her hair was still black but they had lost the shine..or maybe the thickness...her eyes still sparkled.....but with water...her face no more gave out rays...her clothes were rich i could see...She rode a car that had the town talking again...and i asked them what happened to her...
              They say she lives alone...they dont see her smile anymore...neither does she talk much...she is just there..and not..She goes around looking for love...and she finds them here and there...just not what she looks for...she has her kohl smeared around her eyes...they wonder if she lives on cannabis...and her car smells of bad smoke and spirits...She works big and earns bigger...yet she lives still with her parents...She walked around like she so no one, heard no one, felt no one...I never saw her white..all she wore was grey and more grey...And then i saw her again in front of the Ice cream shop that evening...with the same best friend she had years ago......somehow she saw me from the corner of the eye..she looked up and smiled at me, the saddest smile i could ever think of...and i wondered if she had ever seen me before...
                I wondered what happened...what could have happened...what made the girl who could once clad in love...now searches around for it...what is it that makes her cry so much...her face looked paler..and her body frail and fragile...She looked for love...she looked for love...
Why did she look for love...Love...What did she look for in love ??
Oh no....wait...What is love ?

The mother..

Tired and fatigue she looked at the wooden door as it creaked open,
He walked in with a bunch of the most beautiful yellow roses.
The sight of it made her smile making her wrinkles visible.
Her sagging skin glowed even then. She got up from her chair leaving the half knitted maroon scarf on the carpet.
He put the bunch in the old ivory vase. She walked up and touched them, and it made her cry with joy.
She had loved yellow roses since she was 16, it reminded her of her father who had planted dozens of yellow rose plants in their backyard, it reminded of how her father loved these flowers more than himself, it reminded of her childhood summer evenings, not any more though.
He walked into the kitchen to prepare lunch and she wobbled and hurried behind him.
"I cooked dinner for my son today, would you also like to have some with us ?"
Her old fragile hands shook as they searched for spoons.
He looked at her closely and with the most dying smile he said 'Yes please.'
'I made porridge today, i think, but i dont remember where i kept it', she struggled with the spoons and looked around everywhere for the bowl of porridge. It was no where.
'I cant find it anywhere dear, i cant find it, would you help me young man', she started sobbing and cheeks were tasting salt water, her hands started shaking terribly and she looked around frantically.
He help her by the shoulders and turned her around to a shelf with a note that said, 'No Porridge today'.
'Oh ! did my son leave that ??', She fell on the floor throwing away the mittens all over...'What did i do ?? But where is the porridge ?? What shall i do when my son comes??'
He came closer and hugged her tight,' Because it is you birthday mumma, and we shall have cakes and wine tonight.'
She looked at  him so much wonder in her eyes, as she ran her withered hands through his hair looking deeper into his eyes, weeping harder, she whispered, 'Your my son....yes...your my son..My son !! You are my son !!'
'Yes mumma...'
He pulled her up steady and they walked up to the table, they both smiled and they drank wine that night and she had the cake as well.
And as the night came to an end and he took her mother to sleep, lying on the big bed, she help his hand tight,'What was your name again ??'.....and tears rolled down his eyes.
'Nathan mumma...your son Nathan'.
And she turned over to sleep.