Ruchira's Ramblings

Imagine endless night, and a sleeping world, in which you are the only one awake. You decide to take a walk. It is an imaginary situation, so there are no killers or rapists or drunken drivers waiting out there for you, no kangaroo court to make an example thoroguh you of their twisted, perverted ideologies. Everyone  is asleep, save you. you walk past quiet shadowy houses and tall, silent  trees that line the path like sentires. Each house is a microcosm of illusions, a multitude of stories we tell each other in order to breathe. Each tree is a whisper from the Yggdrasil. Slumbering dogs raise their heads as you pass, sniff the air with eyes unseeing, and then return to their canine dreams. And then you note the slippery edges of the strange light of night that settles like a blanket upon the soul of the world and the only things that matter are you and the contours of the road that stretches endlessly, emptily before you. And so you keep walking through the years and eons ...

            “LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS?” - Terry Pratchett ,  Death and What Comes Next Sometimes I walk on edges, weighing my words, considering, rethinking, then not using them at all. There are rules we follow inside our heads- what to say, what not to say, who to speak to, what not to hear. When to smile and bury the anger. When to go off-stage so no one hears you. Relationships are built on silences, on things unsaid- for words are like that wisp of wind that tangles the curtain and breaks the glass menagerie into a billion thousand shards that you can no longer piece together, so sharp that they will cut you. Language is beauty. Language is art. Language is a lie, a tool that sometimes works by not working at all. So many words that w...

16 th July. Feast Day. Within thy hallowed portals Carmel dear… Colour dress, food, music and dancing. My first year, when I was still new, I turned up wearing my best frock, and found the fashion sense of the rest of the school far evolved than me. Honestly though, I liked frocks- still do. You pick one thing, and you’re done. No need to find the right blouse or where in the name of Narnian cupboards did the dupatta or salwar disappear to? Anyway, I think I wore salwar suits for the next two feast days. As absurd as it now sounds, not every girl wore jeans those days, and I didn’t have any till I got to Class 10. I owe my fellow Carmelites for my first exposure to fashion, and for being able to conceive the thought that I could wear jeans too. And so on Feast Day in Class 10, I wore my first pair of bare denims with a pale pink tee. One of my friends kept trying to get me to dance but I couldn’t dance back then and I can’t dance now. Sorry, Mr. Darcy, you’ll always be my first lo...

* Dedicated to the youngest of the Endless, who was once called Delight A city is never one city but a haphazard collection of many cities, each with their own  This part, for instance- red brick buildings, imposing architecture, a page from a different decade. And a road full of yellow taxis- bulky and bright and defiantly old-fashioned. And for the tiniest slice of time, the city is a stranger. The clouds gather. ~ Say thank you. Be polite. Smile. Or type a colon and close a bracket on the secret. Make cheerful plans. It is easy to hide if you know the words, or the signs, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet [i] … The windows are shut. What of the weather? ~ And cold iron chains my dreaming soul and bars the door to faerie… ~ Sometimes reading is like an inevitable goodbye, for you know the story must end somewhere. Or stop, at any rate. And you want to cling on to it, knowing that your life have changed irrevocably forever by these hosts of imagin...