Nebula

With poetry flowing and ebbing in your veins

And music brimming in your heart

Forgive yourself your failures

And brace for a brand new start

Because it’s November and there’s an east wind blowing

Stirring up the stardust in your soul

Monday-ing

You know when a day feels like it dragged on forever and yet by the end of it you can’t quite fathom where the hours went?

When you feel bleh, meh and can’t be bothered to give an eh, all in the same moment?

When you feel like you’d just started your weekend and yet Friday appears to be a million miles away?

When even coffee, cuddles and cute baby pictures aren’t enough to make the your grinch-like heart bigger and lighter?

Then know that you’ve just Monday-ed.

Red Brick Walls

Take me back to those red brick walls again

Where I learned lessons of friendships and dreams

Those walls that watched me grow

Under their watchful protection

Strong and resolute in their all surpassing fortitude

The ones I leaned on

In happiness and sadness

Or just to steady myself while retying errant shoelaces

Hopping and skipping on my way to climb monkey ladders in the playground

And when they realised I had new heights to achieve

And mountains to conquer

They gently opened the gates

And nudged me forward and onward

To forge my own way

Yes, today I long for the red, brick walls of my childhood

Where I learnt the ways of life

A small ode to a school that’s so much more than just that. Loreto Convent, Lucknow will always be the home where I left my heart as a happy, free-spirited girl navigating this journey we call life.

Tell me, won’t you, about your own home away from home?

Delightful

She wants to look for will-o-wisps in the darkest corners of the night

She dreams of places forming the most wonderous sight

She talks, excitedly, of passions

advocating with all her might

She gives up at times, yes, but never without a fight

You’d remember her whenever you see a burning ember of light

And she’d call you silly, while laughing with pure hearted delight

Micro Poem #40

Immortalised in poetry

Is that what you’ll have of me?

In the Night Time

Do you also get anxious

When the sun starts to set?

As if, as if

It’ll repeat itself

And

In the solace of darkness

Under a canopy of dreams

On the very bed of your desires

You’d be killed all over again

Is the live long night

A living nightmare for you too?

My Last Night?

I could hear bells ringing in the night time

Tolling in another day

I could here footsteps outside my door

Restlessly trying to find their way

I could hear raindrops fall on my window sill

Washing off the stench of dirt and decay

I could hear

Still hear

Even if I couldn’t move from where I lay

I wished the reaper

Would arrive without further delay

As I desperately clutched a coin

With which the ferryman I’d pay

The Queen

All she wanted was to be treated like a Queen To be touched like a feather glides over sheen; To be kissed with eyes open, eyes that spoke passionate…

The Queen

Diary Entry #6 : The New Normal

Today I attended conferences barefoot. The balcony served as an office as the pouring rain beckoned me. I wore shorts under my shirt and my messy buns have become a tad messier. As I stroked Nymphadora, her purring reminded me how every day is bring your pet to work day now. My to-do list of office tasks has found a rival in my grocery list, both vying for my attention side by side, both equally ignored – because there’s music in my ears and spreadsheets on my mind. Columns merge with squiggles and I am all smiles.

We may be a thousand miles from normal, but it doesn’t all seem too bleak? Today, I am counting the privilege of being able to work from home as one of my many blessings. What’s the new normal been like for you, dare I ask?

Diary Entry #5 : Not scared of horror movies anymore

I have always been scared of watching horror movies. Not that the movies were terrifying enough in their own right, but my over active and, frankly, runaway imagination would become my own worst enemy. I would imagine scenarios in my head. So much so that a simple trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night was an insurmountable task. Hold it in, go back to sleep, because what if you look in the mirror and saw something else. Worst still, what if you saw someone standing behind you! Damn, the thought still makes me jittery.

I tried everything. Muting the sound when the background theme gave away an upcoming jump scare. Watching from behind a cushion or a pillow with just one eye open. Using someone’s shoulder as a buffer between me and the ‘ghosts’.

But a little girl’s imagination is a little girl’s imagination, after all. It has it’s good side and bad. Yet, never even in my wildest of imaginations could I have imagined a time like 2020. Natural disasters, pandemics, civil rights movements, economic depression and freefall, border countries on the brink of war (I live in India), locust swarms attacking farms and cities alike. This is all horror movies put together and then some!