Dare?
On page 261, you will find a bloodstain that will make you wonder if it is from a successful mosquito assassination attempt or a curious woman's accidental thumb slit while chopping okra or from a broken bangle that scratched my mother's wrist when she slapped me for reading books outside the curriculum. It may also be from a picked pimple or a pulled scab. A deliberate mistake. I can safely carve an explanation on page 260 to rinse off all the turmoil when you reach that page in this book. I'll choose not to. I'll rather wait for you on page 372. If you dare to go through the next 111 pages despite the possibility of dealing with an animal assassin or an authoritative aunty and everything in between, I will present you in red ink, the secret recipe of tomato chutney that stains like blood.
Yours
If you ever became mine.-
TW: I heard a rat's slowing squirms. I couldn't look at it. My grandmother was describing a girl child peeking from the window. She wants to visit her hometown with that girl. I hope it's the same rat that chewed off parking light wirings the other day. My grandmother hopes her husband didn't die 50 years ago. I bled through my clothes 2 hours ago. It's cold. I despise winters more than laundry. Her ear bled 20 hours ago. She ate her band-aid yesterday and thereby under vigilance tonight. She whispers eerily. Cursing a list of men and women from her family. All over 70 years of age. I don't hear the rat trap flipping anymore. I googled, how to dispose off a dead rat. Grandma said, she can wash the bedsheet if I'll let her. It's 5:30 a.m.
-
You part her tresses in two and hope not to hurt her. Hope, because she doesn't flinch anymore. Be careful of what you wish for, she said 13 years ago. 'I wish for a never-ending fill in the blanks puzzle'. Since then, it was like walking on walnut crusts. When it was a blank, it felt foredoomed. Encouraged to fill it with amends, I had to regret the A to Z. Shortly soon the blanks were bridged and we stepped on the words and the dreadful faucet would start dripping. You were a sustained conundrum of horror or anguish. No in between. I didn't know it will transpire in me through sutures. Carefully plucking familiar tryst puzzles ordaining myself to change the ending at least this time.
-
A cold-caught raven cawing with a soar throat, a distant merry chatter of kids-'kati patang tera kaun sa rang', surrounded by ban oaks, I changed not just the home room this time but the entire home, city, state. Sitting in two lose braids on a sunny day in a balcony, flipping through my complicated relationship with pulses, i thought about how much I have forgotten and how much is yet to forget. If not for the kind heart of 3rd year girls, i wouldn't have been able to cook tur daal here. As if names and colors were easy to correlate. There were even variations in hardness among each variety. It was one of those Sundays that knock on your floor from the basement. Once a year. I packed pulses today and gave a chance to poha instead. Rare sun days.
-
You look at a picture and say, ah! I was in love. It's you grinning at a picture of yourself that you clicked while grinning at yourself. It feels like a cold wave surging in your oesophagus. Tickles every bone. Cough. All of a sudden it all sinks into nothingness. It's the safest you have ever felt. You enjoy this nothingness. Being in love never was this safe. It's 5 degree Celsius here. You hope it doesn't rain standing amidst tourists praying for snowfall. Cold is uncomfortable. Very. Spitting volcanoes is even more uncomfortable. But you will choose the latter anyday, anyway.
-
"Deepawali pe toh bhagwan bhi Ghar wapas aa gye the", she said while counting bumps on the ceiling. 2 days ago he promised her to be on leave every birthday and Diwali. Universe didn't like it that way. Today, he sat by the window watching burning stubble in the farms of Sonepat, occasional sight of illuminated buildings and a shrieking baby on the upper berth inside probably the slowest moving train ever at 6:37 in the morning.
-
Perhaps the reason why they shaved their heads
was because hair holds memory.
Reminding widows of their change of ownership
was not necessary but obligatory.
Certainly, sitting next to a sinistral in exam hall
wasn't the bigger reason of 'marginal pass'
than the pat slithering on the back, down there.
Perhaps, the frequency of pressing Alt+tab wasn't
proportional to the coffee orders that night.
Perhaps they held defective human calculators.
Relocating to cooler places shall make 'em warmer.-