Ruchira's Ramblings

On the first day of 2017, I woke up at my friend's house, on the bed that we had turned into a fort with bed-sheets and blankets and fairylights, after what was my first ever New Year's Eve Special Sleepover. It was the first time I had done anything different apart from watching and geting bored with the same people singing and dancing on television to usher in a new year. I woke up beside my bestfriends, teasing each other and hugging each other and making promises to begin every new year the same way- well, one of those idiots is sitting in America right now and the other one is too busy studying for an exam to meet me but that doesn't stop her from baking enticing cakes and posting pictures of them on WhatsApp- I'm sure gonna remember this. And on my own part, I just returned from a trip today after a long overnight train journey so I am definitely not going to any parties tonight. But the point here, I began this year in a manner markedly different from previous y...

You know how kids think sometimes that movies are real? When I was a kid, I didn't think so. I even knew actors' names (learned from my mother) and understood that they played different roles in different stories. But I didn't know how movies were made, and thought that they ran in real time. And so I thought, I thought... that perhaps the life I knew- with parents, friends and school and vacations was a movie that somebody else was watching the same way we watched those black and white classics on the family television set on Sunday afternoons, and that someday the movie would end and I would discover that I wasn't who I thought I was, but somebody else. And how strange and exciting would it be to discover that it was all make-believe, that I was someone else, from somewhere else.  Sometimes I think that I'm still waiting to discover who I really am. I recall no dream but broken images of imagined conversations melting away into a void of disquiet- ...

Every joy brings with it its own sorrow, every beginning- an inevitable end. And there is bereavement in every ending, no matter how longed for. We walk, from day to day, goal to goal, life to death, and for what? Only to hope, to long, to desire, to dream, for what else is there to keep us going? And our hopes fail, shattering our hearts, and we pick up the pieces and hope for miracles. Again. The lines you see on my face, and under my eyes are where I glued the fragments of my unspoken dreams, so many times that I lost count. And we keep walking, and hoping, and sometimes our wishes come true, and our wildest dreams are fulfilled, and there is so much joy in my share that I will never be able to take it all in, say all my words, sing all my songs. So I soak in the warmth as the stories get overlapped and the faces get blurred. And I don’t even know how the time has flown. And then it’s time to go home. There is a charm about winter afternoons, like a thin film of invisible glass ...

For a while, I’ve been wondering Just what would happen if I just took off? Without explaining, planning, packing or making reservations… And I would fly on the wings of drunken dreams Full of half-remembered DIYs on how to survive The zombie apocalypse. But I’ve been a little late to start And already I can feel the odour of rot But they say in the kingdom of the Moon One can be healed. So, I had this dream last night where the enemy was attacking using a zombie front and there were rather detailed, stepwise directions on dealing with it, but of course I don’t remember any of it, so don't look to me for help when it happens. But I think the reason why zombies go for brains is because at some deep level that they can’t access, they must be raging because they can’t have thoughts of their own. To be not able to think or feel, to be left with the empty husk of yourself with absolutely NOTHING inside, that is a terrible curse, one that we all fear. Isn’t that why...