Lives after pages

Beyond 'the ends' and the closing lines, the characters are busy living on. They are making their beds, commuting to work, finding love, losing, reconciling or dealing with loss - coping with the last page. You get to decide, where to stop telling. The story, however, never stops.

In the chess game,
with destiny,
are not the pieces,
all the same colour?

Gliding,
in air-loved abandon,
the spiders sway,
and acrobats swoop.
No surface to waltz,
none needed.
What earth, where sky,
Gravity,
steps aside to watch.

Globular,
rounded water monocles.
Drips, drops, scatters.
A shuddering bird's pearls.

Scattered pearls,
rolling die,
wet-tyre tracks.
Racing,
to different finish lines.

Would you like the rain,
if it asked before pouring?

If it was mindful,
not to dive into clothes,
drooping over the line.
Brutish blotting.
They had just about dried.

If it did not startle,
those shy fragrances,
and make them dash out,
from their earthy retreat.

If it sprayed evenly,
careful not to dig up puddles.
Or make raging seas,
for paper boats.

Would you like it
if it tip-toed past the window pane,
politely, not disturbing.
Not making drippy faces,
urging you out.

Silent curl,
of burning paper.

Ember glow,
writing in air,
with crumbling black.

Visits

I have been to a place twice. Once in bustling daylight and the other, later, in imagination. When sleep sings in slow breath and time smudges night, I go there again. The charred souls of dying lamps, brim over to meet the dark. Their wicks lie limp, swollen with oil and hope - pale glistening yellow, like stained teeth. The winds sweep their burnt slippery scents through the hollow pathways. A few flecks even reach where the stone gods rest amongst fragrant bribes.

Grown-ups

I'm fine,
how have you been?
The usual flurry, I said.
We then spoke in courtesies
and pauses.

I cut the call
realising,
that she has learnt
to mouth,
unconvincing lies,
in the fidelity of the night
and betrayal of sleep.

Evenings

Streetlamps glower on at the darting birds. I always skip the time they are turned on. They droopily watch the turn of events, gazing at their feet lost in whizzing traffic. Evenings slowly dim around them like a deep inky sigh.

Green

Syrupy eucalyptus oil. It sat sulking in a tiny glass bottle marked by a label with Mandarin script. It had traveled all the way from China to the wooden table in the old house, thronged by other ointments, phone books and Quality Street tins with sewing tools. It was a stark green. Like the mouth-watering thought of raw mangoes.The potion found it's release every night when it was rubbed onto grandmother's aching knees. After she dozes off, it would drift out and wander around brutishly. So pungently stubborn, as if to say that this is how green smells like.
She had forgotten to cork it once. The gluey oil had silently left till it was nothing but a thin green scented line. The scent was now tainted with other things that had drifted in and taken refuge. There were choking fumes of the mosquito coil, the smell of the sweetmeats she stealthily ate, the odour of the musty wooden beams, the scent of voices which reached late and the thoughts which were shooed away among many others. When I found it and sniffed what remained, it stung and watered my eyes.

Catnap

You sleep, unfettered by the frail evening shadows that slowly settle on you. The shapes of leaves, the indecisive light of passing clouds. Lazily moving along with the rise and fall of your breath. Be still. Sleep calm. Lest they wake up and scamper away when you stir.

Kattan chaaya *

She would go about on a locking spree at twilight. The gate was clanged shut first. She swung it in with both hands like tethering a sluggish monster, waking up from sleep with a dull metallic growl after the day long inertia. The afternoon rain had been abrupt and brief, and like half finished sentences, misted the air - never completely leaving. When it blended with the waning light of dusk, it softened all edges and gave the front yard a feeling of being looked at through a fuzzy cobweb.
She "tch-tch"-es past muddy puddles to the front door and with an affirming sweep, bolts it. Her skin glistening and dark, as if the night had smudged onto her.
At night, rain pelted down impatiently. She settles down near the rickety dining table, under the new asbestos roof which amplifies the sound of the downpour.
"What are you drinking?" , I prod.
"Kattanchaaya"
I grin profusely. She nonchalantly takes a swig. Her mouth, flaccid and frilled by age, would never be able to hold it all in. It would brim and gloss her lips as she gulped it down. It would leave a moist imprint when she kisses my forehead. "Sleep now" , she demands as I clamber onto the bed, which smells like hiding rain and old bibles. She leaves silently, even before the wet remnant of her kiss evaporates.

*Black tea

Buffering

It was a child, frail in his disinterest, trying to the play the piano when he would rather disassemble it. He was more interested in what he would find inside, what intricate mind-boggling mechanism he would discover. This wood, which retorts with music, cannot be dead. But if it is alive, how is it a slave to his touch ? How does it wait, to wail melodiously ? He wishes the teacher would not edge him on with encouragement. Why not just chide him, so he can take offence and storm out. His playing would stop and start again erratically as he fumbles with the keys. Beethoven when he plays, a hapless child when he stops

Distances

I always walk down familiar streets at night. I do not let time tiptoe past me unnoticed. I pace slowly, observantly with the steady climb of the moon. The same drooping streetlights, the same tarred roads, the same bougainvillea tree round the corner everyday, swaying to the same song I always stop to listen.
How well I know the song, how little I know the songbird. Cruel is her beautiful ignorance. Does she not know that her song brims over, past her bolted windows and strays into my yearning arms? Does she not know that though it tears me with pain, it still engulfs me with the wonder of the cool spray of a freshly broken wave?
Does she not know that her song makes me forget my way home through familiar streets...

Suddenly

It sounded like the sizzle of water on a hot pan. That's the sound which escaped her when something suddenly scalded her. A short breath sliced by teeth. A sharp edged whisper. The tenor of a sudden downpour. The wake of distant anklets.
The dark smear of the rogue flame on her skin had startled her. Worry paved quick creases on her face. The whole world seemed aflutter at her wincing.
She then sighed and all was calm. The calm of scattered beads which have rolled away and found places to hide.

Sleep and her Night

The languid sky has gone to rest into the depths of inky water. The wind plucks on the ripples and plays a silent tune. Stars have blinked and beckoned to Sleep.

Sleep, she has crept in on my window sill, past the weeds mumbling in her trance. She has slowly tread without shadow or breath, to lull my spirit. Tempting me with the fragility of memory. Her loyalties lie with the longing night. He waits for her outside. Patiently, ardently. Till she comes after her chores. Then they meet in a transient embrace,as the moon bashfully turns away and the morning stands guard.

...........

A taste I bit into, reminded me of a certain dusk. Stretched chewing gum like shadows had grown through the powdery golden light, making them seem like they were setting out to find something that skipped the bustling minds of their owners. It was soft and undemanding, this dusk. Soft like the gargle in an old man's voice.

We had a conversation late into the cold night. On her tired face, child and woman battled.She was trying her best not to give in to the lure of sleep. Sleep, the nemesis of will, gave you no choice. Nevertheless she kept a smile behind for me, like Hansel's trail of bread crumbs. But as sleep dragged her along I saw the smile slowly retreat like falling grains of an hour glass,like an ebbing tide, like a rogue tip of thread unravelling the weave.