Ruchira's Ramblings

February In the parking lot, the fallen leaves flew around in that strangely sad afternoon light with it's detached indifference. I felt tired. Tired of thinking, tired of being myself, tired of the slight heaviness that weighed upon my heart in a constant throbbing ache, tired of how the ache rose up to my throat, tired of how I had absolutely no reason to cry and how I couldn't cry and how I wish I could. The leaves flew around me, with a freedom and abundance I didn't possess. The crows cawed at the dimming of the light as they returned home. I thought of how it was a lovely spring afternoon, or would be,  if a cuckoo would sing in that moment. It  was  spring after all. Here and there in the city the palash and the krishnachuras flamed their defiant reds against the greys. I wanted to participate. I wanted to feel the fire in my heart, not this weary heaviness. I didn't want to be sad. There are things I want to do but I keep freezing, distracting myself, going to b...

  I’ve been looking for things to say.   I have been afraid of staring at blank pages. What if someday I have nothing to say anymore? What if nothing I say interests anyone anymore? What if no one hears me? What if they hear me and laugh at my naiveté? So what am I going to write about? Like most of my recent posts, this too has been weeks and months in the making. I’ve been running away from saying the things I want to say. What if I say too much? Share too much? What if they laugh and roll their eyes, muttering about my presumptions? What if no one says a damn thing and I fall through the rabbit-hole of silence once again? On some days, I listen to one song on loop, willing it to weave a story in my head that transports me from my present. On other days, I run through my playlists, discarding old favourites like a moody teenager picking at food, too distracted to allow for the distraction of music and rhythm. Somebody perhaps I’ll sit down and write songs again, feel the...

Isn't the Mercury Retrograde over yet? Everything seems suspended in a strange sort of stasis. We return to our lives that used to be with the shadow of a fear. I just want us all to be happy again. In the room where I got my vaccine doses, the lights on the ceiling were soft and dreamy, and the rows of cushioned chairs slanted down a steady slope. I looked around and realized we were in a movie theatre, although the screen was covered up by the make-shift cubicles where the nurses met the unvaccinated. The realization hit me like a slow ache, bringing back memories of movie dates and lunches and friends I hadn't seen in ages. When our biggest festival came round, I spent the time in my room, flipping through facebook memories, recollecting a decade's worth of plannings and anticipations and picking out dresses and mad traffic and melancholy evening goodbyes. This is an old bereavment of mine, this traveling home after a happy hour or two, the crowd somehow always flowin...

  16 th June, 2021 . Bloom’s Day. I mark the date because it’s my blog-anniversary. This is my space to think aloud without judgment and prudent advice, to ramble my heart out, to find my way as all who wander lost may someday find theirs. It’s been a strange world, a strange time. Where would you wander when paths were closed? And the people died, without help, without love, without dignity. And the world carried on, in light that was always eight minutes late, as moments turned into memories, as memories faded into dull, half-forgotten heartaches, as all aches blurred into the fog of the blank spaces. And the light was always eight minutes late. We woke, opened our eyes, saw the world in delayed light, tried to make sense of it all, and no wonder we got it all wrong. When the darkness came, we looked up and said our prayers, pinning all our hopes on God. “Move him into the sun”, we said. And God was eight minutes late. I wonder, if tomorrow, in some moment of inexplicable co...

I don’t know who I am anymore. Who I once thought I was has been dead for years, who I want to be is nowhere to be found, and I seem to falter at every step I take towards that elusive self. Projects fail. Hours of toil amount to nothingness. The last remaining egg fails to hatch. The world breaks your heart. And meanwhile the past you want to leave behind keeps intruding. Photo by Dan Grinwis via Unsplash This blog isn’t going anywhere, is it? I know all the advice. Have read them all a hundred times. I know I don’t offer a service here, nothing that a reader may gain for spending their precious minutes reading through my ramblings. But that’s not why I started. I started because I needed to hear out my thoughts before they imploded inside my head. I write here because I can’t speak my madness and my fury and my melancholy out in person, and I don’t know who to talk to. Oh I have friends. Perhaps you are one of them. And I know you would listen. But what do I tell you? Sho...

Pre-Script: If you came over from my Instagram , my YouTube channel is here . ... By Kaique Rocha via Pexels Another Bloomsday gone. It has been three years since I announced the intention to revive my blog on Facebook. The aching sense of lack that drove me to that decision back then still exists. Of course a lot has happened since then. A lot has changed, a lot has been done. But sometimes, in the middle of the doings and keeping busy and ticking boxes, you ask yourself, what has really changed? Why are you here, anyway? Leopold Bloom walked the streets on a meandering search for purpose. Sounds like a fairytale in the middle of this lockdown. Still, we’re all making our ways through our daily schedules through the meandering signposts that keep us reassured that we’re doing it right, that we’re doing something, at any rate. Online, offline, or inside our heads. Perhaps it’s selfish to talk about personal ennui at a time like this. So let me ask instead, where do ...

Photo by Engina Kyurt via Pexels.com  There’s a certain type of sadness you fear in those you love. A sadness you can’t name, can’t put your finger on, can’t even properly describe. It comes out in flickers of petty, domestic discontent. The tele-soaps have all got it wrong. All those grand conspiracies, lofty heartbreaks come with an end-goal. Unhappy homes are made of smaller stuff- things misplaced, little forgettings, rotten fruits in the refrigerator, an unclicked switch, a harmless question. Even a shared anecdote. For a while, I have been watching. Counting. What breaks the ceasefire? What disrupts the peace? It is, as the saying goes, always the little things.  Truth is, nobody cares about the little things. The little things only reveal an absence. Most of human history isn’t about momentous matters, and thereby lies the discontent. There are no great goals for most of us, so we find our goals in others. A leader, a hero, a loved one. We are told to be a c...

I write a poem. Scratch it out. I write it because I am angry. I scratch it out because it is futile. I see the fissure on the earth, but I don’t know the magic words to close it. Every word that is said, mine, yours, his, hers, theirs, ours seem to widen and widen the gap. I am angry because I don’t have the right words. I am angry because I don’t matter. I am angry because we seem to be all tumbling down together, clawing and lashing and bleeding to a point of no return. An old acquaintance says we ought to listen. Learn why they hate. Try not to convert. Does it help? If I know I am right and they know they are right and if everybody is right and if we understand why they hate but if my words don’t reach far enough if my words don’t mean enough are not strong enough if their words only tell me I do not belong if I do not conform- what good does listening do? Someone I really like says both sides- there should be both sides of the views. No more fake news or biased views, see it a...

Defiance. Such a loaded word. It looks angry. Do you think words have visual personality? I do. It’s why I never enjoyed text-speak, even back in the day when we all had those sturdy Nokia phones with the 1/abc keypads and pre-WhatsApp sms charges to contend with. I still occasionally get grief on this (thanks, Twitter), but I digress. When I look at the word ‘defiance’ I see a little word with an upturned face, lower lip curled in angry rejection of the status quo. See where the ‘f’ meets the ‘i’- like a pair of discontent angry eyes? I imagine rallies and placards and balled fists and raised voices, and perhaps defiance is all that, but sometimes defiance is something quieter, deeply personal and almost invisible. The world pegs you into a certain hole- you tick off certain boxes in the right order, do the expected stuff and that’s that. And on the whole, you conform. You aren’t the rebellious type. Not yet. There are possibilities that make you go cold inside, like the...

I The water pours itself against the sand. Pour? All that energy, all that ephemeral, inexhaustible passion, all that momentary beauty- how do you find quite the right word for it? The water crashes against the sand in an endless exuberant dance, exuding something of the essence of life, stirring something like a vague residual memory in you. Look at the shapes as the froth breaks in and disappears into darkness. Look how it returns in a tremendous triumph. There is no endgame, because the sea knows it doesn’t need to win. It just is. The energy that moves the world. II I was part of the sea once, born of it as a single cell. Everything that I am now, every cell, whatever impulse that quickens life came from the sea, the original womb. And having evolved, I am so far from it. Does a protozoa have a soul? What is true? The evolving form or the eternal soul? When, in the long epochs of mutation and adaptation did consciousness enter the scenario? Why us? Why here?...