Ruchira's Ramblings

Day 17. Today I wrote a haiku for International Haiku Day, using the phrase 'gibbous moon'. This was the prompt from the Instagram page Kavyajananipoetry. The prompt from  napowrimo.net  was quite cool, it was just that I wanted to catch up with some of my reading lists, so I wrote only one poem. But I did think about the other prompt, you know, the prompt not taken, as it were, and it brought back memories. So what was it? Dogs, All the dogs you've known in your life. The prompt was  developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about  dogs you have known, seen, or heard about , and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you. Cool yeah? I have never had a dog. When I was young, I was terrified that the neighbourhood strays would bite me and then I would have to take 17 injections (I don't exactly remember if the number was 17, but it was a big number). As I recall, the dogs seemed to bark a lot and always seemed angry, but ...

I left a little bit of me at every place, A little broken trust, a little broken heart, A little bit of not loving myself. I found a little bit of me in all of you, A bit of spite, the good despite, A little bit of old me replaced anew. I left a little bit of me in your songs, A tattered toy, a dash of joy, A little story retold winded long. I found a little bit of me in your love, A stronger voice, a truer choice, A little light along the road as we evolve. How do you make friends? You are thrown together to sit at a table at 4 or 5 by your Kindergarten teacher. You run into each other during afternoon play because you happen to live in the same neighbourhood. At that age, that’s all that matters. You don’t think of big words like wavelength and frequency, because you don’t know your own frequency yet, and you can only like or dislike from amongst what you are given. When I try to recollect my earliest friendships, I cannot recall any great sur...

Will you be my forever, Will you be my light? Shall we walk along the river Hand in hand all night? When I was 12, my best-friend tried to keep pace, waving as lovers do in slow-motion movie scenes, as our car slowly backed away from my childhood, forever. And I left behind the alphabets in three languages, and numbers, the basketball court that I had never liked anyway, and half my heart. I brought with me memorized phone numbers, and pin codes and promises to keep on a dark snowy road in a bright, hot country.  No wonder they melted. Later, I would learn of the road not taken and ponder on the what-ifs, but that was many many years after love had taken my hand again, when I had forgotten to be surprised even by the absence of pain. Sometimes I try recalling that 12 year old, to touch some part of that bereaved solitude crying in silence in a class of strangers. Where has she gone? Among my decades old accumulated paperwork, there is an old handwritten essay ...

To many more years of clashing dates and running late, of torn shoe straps and dreaded traffic traps, pink dresses and letdown tresses, missing friends and catching trends: I raise a margarita with a straw! ~ We were in class 11 when we started going out pandalhopping together. The first year, I wasn't in the city during Durga Pujo, so my turn came next year, when we were in class 12. I remember the frenzied planning involved- renting a car, chipping in the money, deciding a place to eat (and eventually not finding seats there), picking the outfits and so on. I remember trying to apply nail polish the day before and making a mess and frantically calling up friends (on the landline) for help. I remember people losing their ways on the perfectly straight road between Carmel High and JU Gate 4. And I remember the miles and miles of walking, in spite of the car, and getting foot sore from all the new fancy shoes and having to shop for bandaid in between pandals. I remember the grou...

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...

Wanting to ask you something, I groped around my dusty days And found I had no questions. Wishing greatly to speak to you, I searched the pages of the book And learnt there was nothing to say. I ran through the entire phonebook: All names were yours and you were nowhere. I deleted the message I’d typed for you. And all my words have lost their way Into some indifferent black-hole.