let me build you a home

I'm dreaming of a home. Two and a half rooms for our books and our pillows and our cups and flower pots.
I'm dreaming of a home. With tiles as white as a time without history.
I'm dreaming of a home, which will be yours and mine. To stay. To stay.

Tea time

When it rains relentlessly, you want to stay tucked under warm things and dream. And read. And drink a warm cup of tea. Tea. I never thought about how tea is sort of been the transition, in my life. Most mornings, I wake up to my parents' fights over tea. The sugar is not right some mornings, sometimes it's the milk and sometimes, it's just not strong enough.

"I like my tea strong," I told a friend over chat today. She said she likes hers strong, too. A little bit of sugar and some milk.
"I drink tea three times a day," says she. And i say, same same.
Often, the only thing that can salvage me from my near-paralyzed stupor in bed every morning, is a cup of tea. Baa puts no sugar in my morning tea. Only milk and tea leaves. Tea is my incentive to abandon the dreams and hallucinations I have conjured up in bed.

Then it's tea time at two, just before I leave for work. It's been a ritual. While Ajee was alive, I made tea for her and Baajya. Tea and biscuits or cookies. They still feel like a treat, just before work, although I no longer have a cup for Ajee. Afternoon teas come filled with memories of Ajee's humming and Bajyaa's demand for a sweetner. What is tea if it isn't sweet? he still says.

Every evening at 6 pm, I break for tea. I have done that for last 12 years or longer. This one comes with office gossip. But over the years, my companions have changed. Some saw me through whatever was haunting me at different times. There were colleagues, who wanted a one-on-one across the table-- a longing to be elsewhere, they made up for by gulping down several glasses of tea served in glasses rinsed in a hurry. Some tea sessions occurred with girl friends, whose sole priority in life was to open their hearts up to some loving.

Some teas, have been quiet teas, as I drank alone and just tried to get over the day.
Tea. Tea. Tea.

I think I'll call myself Tea. Because I read today that there's no heartbreak a good cup of tea cannot cure. Just drink tea and stay calm :)

Dear Germie,

I'm sitting here in bed, thinking of you. My little girl lies across the bed at my feet, growling at someone in her sleep.
I injured myself when I fell in the bathroom. It sounds kind of silly and was sort of fun when it happened. I hopped, slipped and went flat on my back. That's how it began. And now am nursing a painful body and thinking of a time in the past, when something similar had happened and i had sat in bed in a neck-brace for months, writing a novel i never completed.
it's rainy again and am lonely again.
the man who had popped into my room, just to kiss my mouth, despite my neck-brace, is someone else's now.
the man has become a memory. like we've become a memory to you and to me.
what is there to salvage of it all, is the loving we find every time we trip and land on our backs. there's a kind of high in the tripping. i guess, that's why i don't mind the fall so much.

a bit of the city -- by Tiku Gauchan

A river runs through this city The river crawls along, hidden away from most people. No one, it seems, wants to admit its presence. The river’s sewage-infused water stinks. It smells of rotting animal carcasses that bob on its currents. It smells of harsh metallic chemicals from industrial runoffs. Its bends, which trap objects, smell of sour fermenting trash.
All along this forgotten river live the forgotten people. They live in cramped hives of mud huts with rusting corrugated roofs. They breathe the dust from the road that runs alongside the river.  On this road, I often see children chasing old bicycle rims. They roll the hoop along, shepherding it with a small stick. Beside one of the river’s many bends, some kids play cricket. Instead of wickets, they use bricks. Instead of a bat, they use a small plywood plank. Their fathers watch them from the doorsteps, chain-smoking. Their mothers barely look up from the job at hand. I mostly see them wringing piles of laundry. Sometimes I see them queuing at the community water taps. Plastic jars astride their hip, waiting their turn, they make small talk.
I take this pockmarked, uneven road to work to beat the traffic. After heavy rains, its surface softens to sludge. In the summer, the tyre marks turn into narrow crisscrossing ravines. But no one thinks to move the rocks that remain. They jut out at unexpected places, looming like miniature hills. They just lie there, unaccounted for by the road department.
The road department focuses on the bigger, vehicle-clogged blacktopped roads. The motorists too don’t prefer this bumpy riverside road. Thus it barely sees traffic.  The river cuts like a long gash through this city. And yet the river remains invisible to most people. Perhaps this city wants to forget the river. Perhaps the city wants to forget the people living alongside it too.

i conjure you...

all my life, i was looking for love
and i tripped on you,
who wouldn't even offer me a poem

You are my Pandora's box

Pandora's Box by Manelle Oliphant

you

so much hurt,
so much anger,
so much hatred