Purple Day

Today I had my music vocal exam. In the morning, the most convenient kurta that came out was purple.
As I was leaving the house, the hole in my umbrella seemed to be getting bigger, so my mum brought me another, and it turned out to be... purple! (The previous one was blue).

As I sang, my eyes absent-mindedly trailed along the examiner's sari border at her feet. Red, I realised as the song got over. And omg! Purple sari!

The exam got over before I knew it. I came out of the room thinking, it was a shade better than last year. That shade must have been black, I joked to myself, referring to my salwar. Unlike last year, when my entire attire was a mix and match combo of purple kurta and salwar, the last exam, in which I'd blanked out on the songs and hence repeated this year.

There shouldn't be an exam for music, I pondered as I fried purple-pink onions back home. Just you and your teacher, then you and your audience, then you and your teacher again. Of course I knew the merits of the exam. For the moment I wanted to believe in a life without exams, and I'm still stiflling an urge to go holidaying in the Caribbean, since a holiday even inside my country isn't possible right now due to too many reasons to quote here.

As I walked to my music teacher's house, there was a kid on a cycle, her father behind her (couldn't believe they were out on this exercise in the blinding sun). She had on an orange shirt, and mismatching purple pants! With white polka dots of course...

I was rummaging through my wardrobe in the evening. Dinner invitation. Thankfully, I'd already worn the last two purple tops yesterday. Knowing me and my habit of wearing 5% of my wardrobe 95% of the time, I'd have ended my day with purple, and I'd have started imagining that my tomato juice screwdriver was a purple whirlpool at that moment when I got sick of it...

The Story of a Song

(This was written for a 1-min story telling competition)

Once upon a time there was a song. She loved to flow, just like brooks and rivulets and impulsive poetry.

Birds trilled her, baritones embraced her.

She breezed through hills, she whistled through city lanes. At times she felt caged by her own network of notes. At times, she was the laughter of an alien tongue, a delightful surprise. At times her notes would stand parallel, in attention. At times, they'd rush and roll into a crescendo. At times she spoke nothing.

The last occasion she strummed a heart string, her last “sighting”, reported this time by a little leaf on a bountiful tree, was one melon-yellow sunset. She stepped lightly into a fallen ray. It was perfect.

To...

I want to dance
I want to fly
I don't want to feel ashamed
Of whatever made me cry.

I want to laugh
Free and loud
I want to hear
A merrier crowd.

I want to unlock
My spirits and flow.
To trill really high
To whisper an echo.

I want to cross the fence
To stop the same mistake
One impossible step
I want to take.

I want to walk
To move and move.
The stillness of speed.
Nothing to prove.

To feel the breeze
Brush through my hair.
Place my dark secrets
In the sun's glare.

I want noise,
I want to run
I want to dare
Things I've never done.

I want to float
I want to feel
Throw away these chains
Every bond and deal.

I want to hum
With the grass.
To take in full
This road I pass...

Simple things

An incident I'd like to share, just in passing.

Yesterday I was standing next to a seat in the bus, where an old man (he looked ninety years old) in a ragged shawl was sitting. At a stop an old lady, also bent and hobbling and in a ragged sweater, came and stood next to me. The man looked up, and balancing himself on his stick to get up, said- "आइये अम्मा बेठ जाईये". She protested, and he said warmly- "इतना तो मैं कर ही सकता हूँ", and hobbled past. A girl of my age-group sat in front. Her attention was elsewhere as she talked on her phone. 

Unable to offer any help from my end, I tapped her shoulder, and as soon as she saw the elderly gent next to her, she smiled and got up. "बहुत मेहेरबानी", he said, as he accepted and settled down.

Quite energising, to see such pockets of the world, who have happiness growing from inside them.

What just happened?

All kinds of things happen in my city's buses. Those levitating buses with huge seats that really aren't suitable for our overpopulated country... they leave a nice giddy feeling in my head if I've traveled too much in them in a day.
That's one of the places where I've learnt that common sense is uncommon- the way people shift to let you through. Or maybe there really isn't space.
Anyway, so there was this guy today, who parks himself on the huge space on top of a front tyre- one of my favorite spots in these new buses actually. He leans back, and to my initial disbelief- zips up so comfortably as if nobody's around. The bus had few people today, and was nice and spacious. But thankfully there were people sitting in front of me, and I hoped he couldn't see me staring.
Crazy things happen. I would never doubt.

Bribe?

Passing by on a motorbike in heavy traffic- "pata nahi kiski baaton mein aa gayi hai- paisa khaya kya kia..."

Amongst flowers

Was scouting around in the garden at my boss's house (he works from home), trying to shovel out some good photographs of the buds this spring. After ages I felt the joy of falling on my knees in the mud, getting my hands dirty by this mud and not the grease of public bus handles. Mrs. Boss came and sat in a folding chair while I composed, displaced rose pots and figured out axes. 
As I picked up the pot, it felt the same weight as maybe, a two-yr old. Which reminds me, I have a 3yr old niece. Like you have to be nearer a phone tower to hear better on your cellphone, you need to be near her parents to hear what she says. Till she gets familiar with you of course. And my 8yr old-- till the age of 2 she was a silent observer and quietly naughty, and though everyone around got worried that she didn't talk, I knew there would come a time when people would wish they hadn't wished what they had, and that time sort of came. She talks, and talks, and sooo many questions... I love such kids. In fact, I like such grown ups as well. It's like this circulatory cellphone message I just got- friendship with a flower makes you fragrant, friendship with rain soaks you, friendship with the sun burns you. Whom one is amongst matters so much. And a balance in one's company matters so much.