Just for a day

Just for a day

I'd like to be 

small enough that a bear hug can lift me clean off my feet,

lithe enough to dance and have the world watch in wonder,

petite, with porcelain skin and soft, flowing ringlets.

Just a moment, 

I'd like to spend

as a wealthy, vain brat that dresses like barbie,

as a woman in charge, responsible and competent,

not keeping jagged elbows and knees to myself, lest my corners hurt someone.

Just one evening,

I'd like to live

knowing that i can work magic in clay or paint or cloth,
having the knowledge that i will be remembered for the lives i touched,
in the cocoon of disco lights without any inhibitions.

But forever, 

I want to be

me.

Colors

So colour me happy, I survived another one.

Oh! And what needs a mention is that I survived it my way.

It's been many a year since I mastered the technique of staying in bed, all communication lines frozen while the world outside bathes itself in an obscene amount of colour, water and bizarrely, eggs. Over the progressing years, the usual suspects have discovered that there's no point in standing anywhere; whether under my window, or balcony or for that matter a 100 feet away from the gate to my building; and hollering their colour stained vocal chords at me. I retreat deeper into my armour of blankets and turn up the volume on the elevator music that plays in my head.

There is no way that I can do the Holi routine without fear and trepidation and even the time that I did enjoy it in a whole new city with completely new people, still started with anxiety and a fair amount of shitting bricks that Mumbai city has happily agreed to use in extensive construction work.

It is, possibly, my prissiness that keeps me indoors ('you think?!' the crowd says in unison) while the sun happily bakes my friends into an army of colourful confections. But no amount of chiding or cajoling will lure me out from under the covers. Sure, I delight in the stories and laugh when people crack colourful (in vocabulary) jokes at my expense, but there's no way that you'll get me dripping water the colour of alien snort mixed with what would have made a variety of very interesting cocktails or smacking through the powdery clouds of dust that make breathing feel like rubbing a paper bag down my insides.

My mother says, 'tu tujhya Dadajinchi naat shobhte' (basically being just like my grand-dad), as she tsks around the place. I guess she's hoping all the counterviews are going to bulldoze me out of home and onto the streets (which is, surprisingly, the exact reverse of what she's usually trying to do).

So another year passes. The streets look like a many coloured battlefield with signs of scrimmage all over the place. Erie blue splatters on the walls could very well have been the last remaining signs falle… and my morbidity could very well ruin the reality for some so I'll wind up by saying this,

I see knees of green,

Red noses too,

I see them zoom,

To hot showers and loos

And I look at myself;

What a prissy, clean girl!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Holi,

See you next year?!

Or not.

The How

Bucket-lovest.

It's so wonderful!

I can send my blog letters. Love letters and hate mail and Dear-Abby-letters.

And the letters will be turned into leaves. And hung up on an endless tree of thoughts.

Sometimes people wander under that tree. Some gaze up at the filigree of thoughts and wonder at what they see. Some see beauty. Some others see ordinary. I see a million coloured reflections of me.

Each thought, as it tinkles in the summer breeze takes on a different hue. There are greys among the vibrant mauves and mango yellows. There is black behind the crimson and making the forget-me-not blue darker. But there is always a thought for every moment of my passing across the landscape of a life I can't wait to experience.

But the real brilliance is that there are others that want to traverse through my life, under the canopy of my thoughts with me. And they are the ones that pass through my letters, wading through the words that I dress my tree with. They look up into the tinkling sky and figure me out and underfoot, the beads of thought that dripped from my letters to the ground give them a summer street to be comfortable strolling along.

Wanderers through my growing forest of thoughts,

this letter is for you.

Summer swishes of plans and memories await me.

Rain will bring puddles and streams of ideas

and with the 

Winter comes my steed of many dreams.
And they will all become letters. 

To you.

From me.