Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed~ Mary Oliver
It was a morning of August. I was standing near the signal after my regular walk, waiting for the traffic light to change its color. She was there, wearing her smile under a blue mask, spreading warmth through her eyes, ” Ninth month?” I nodded, “Yes.” “Must be hard in a pandemic.” I nodded again. Continue reading “On a new life and an old year”
“And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful-
how the mind clings to the road it knows,
rushing through crossroads, sticking
like lint to the familiar.”― Mary Oliver
Last week I heard it for the first time- my daughter reminiscing her recent pasts- “Remember when I used to go to school, you used to make smoothies?” Continue reading “Living in a pandemic: Longing, the word, the feeling”
I grew up in India. That means I know a country that kills its girls before they are born. A country where parents of a girl child have to work hard to save money for dowry. A country where wings of women are chopped and dreams are shoved. A country where love happens only on the screen of Bollywood films because marriages are arranged and girls from rural areas and cities still cannot choose love or life partners. Women’s day should have felt special because in a country like that womanhood definitely deserved a day of celebration to cheer up. India is also the country that had a female prime minister, a female president, a lot of warrior queens and princesses, goddesses who killed the evils and saved the goodness. India is also the country where a lot of women fought for independence from the British Government with guns and peace talks until seventy years ago. There are glories to shade the darkness. Continue reading “My thoughts about Women’s Day”
As I am writing here, rain has returned to the bay. Hills over my shoulder are sleeping, tucked in fog and cloud. This time every year my mind becomes overactive, and creatively wanders on muddy paths, jumps in puddles, rescues fallen leaves, wipes off raindrops on the blurry windows of nostalgia, whispers to the rose bushes, hugs a sad tree, and opens up the refrigerator door multiple times to get some food for thoughts. Continue reading “Petrichor, once more”
When I was in my twenties, my life felt like someone’s unending wedding party that I had to attend- joyful but stretchy. Continue reading “Temporary”
At 6 o’clock in the morning when loneliness stalks you,
visit your garden, listen to the whisper of the branches.
See how green the grass looks at the other side of your body.
Watch the cloud worshiping the bright orange hue in the sky,
see how everything in the nature is neatly arranged,
so individualistic, so alone, yet so much in order and friendship. Continue reading “At 6 o’clock in the morning”
Through the windshield now
a supermoon is staring at us,
escaping a handful of gray clouds
that are trying to blanket her in.
Cozy, she never wants to feel. Continue reading “So far”
“Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ But the examined one … is no bargain” – My most favorite take-away from Woody Allen’s latest ‘Café Society’
In my building, the walls are so thick that you cannot hear your neighbors. I know couple of them by the things they display- their well groomed pets, and cars that silently stop behind me when I try to reach the crosswalk. I found each family owns multiple cars, at least one for each family member. Continue reading “In the depth of August”
“time is a tree (this life one leaf)but love is the sky and i am for youjust so long and long enough” – E.E. Cummings
Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth. ― Khaled Hosseini
It was one lazy Sunday afternoon. My husband decided to do cooking and laundry to give me a break from those mundane weekend activities. Alone in a corner, I was reading the first story from Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” and I was sobbing.
There was a part about mother-daughter relationship that made me speculate about a time in future when my mother won’t be around. Continue reading “Fictions and Feelings”
