Juni

I was missing Juno today.

Her babies had more babies a month ago, 

and the house is filled with a veritable army of mini fur-blobs, 

racing toward the fish and rice mix 

as if their lives depended upon it.

 Mum keeps them safe and warm and loved in that

 not-so-empty-now-renovated 

household.

Juno came to us when we were in between flats and farmhouses (as usual; it feels like we've just made a home and it's time to shift again for all the wrong right reasons). Her first month was in our tiny cottage, before it's walls and floors split, broke down and slicked up to became a fancy paneled house. She was a funny reddish-tabby-striped one, with these yellow eyes that went hard and cold when she wanted her alone time. 


Typical, sniff the dog-lovers in all their superiority.
The apartment, in 2010, was all white shiny tiles and make-shift settled-in. You know, with tapestries making do for curtains and all our paintings strung unto the odd hook in the wall. Landlords have a deal with the damaging relationship between hammers and nails. Juni made it a home; she cuddled into every crevice and fallen tapestry-curtain and cried to be cuddled. We two sisters and mother would watch re-runs of Lie to Me as cups of strong filter coffee, cheese-encrusted knives and bakery bread spread around us.


Juni missed the fresh air and open space of our farmland. One fine evening, she hopped into the car with Mum to see the renovation site of the cottage. Ran about sniffing and prancing up from among cables and wood panels. Even in the apartment, she was this unchanelled little wild sprite. Hunted down pigeons, rats and everything else that moved. Her hunger to prey was insatiable; it was as if she had a one-woman mission to conquer the mini-jungle of shrubs and palms between flat blocks.


She disappeared one night. A hunting expedition gone wrong, perhaps. I was in Ahmedabad, as usual, and the news came over the phone. 


I transferred my energy to coddling the bigger of a teenage pair of cats that haunted the library corridors. It was soothing to run fingers through the shallow field of short fur and hear that reassuring purr.

The Astounded Ocean

"The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We’ll meet again, we’ll meet again

Oh tell me where your freedom lies
The streets are fields that never die
Deliver me from reasons why
You’d rather cry, I’d rather fly"

It was like I felt nothing at first..then I saw the coffin,and I heard the cries of family and lovers who were suffering at a level I couldnt possibly fathom,and it hurt me inside like a fist knocking at battered wooden door,the sound echoeing...
I cant believe he's gone,and I had to be so strong..for a person or two who needed me,and that made me feel all the worse.
Death isnt about being poetic and morbid, about wearing skulls on ur t-shirt or contemplating the art of a glistening blade against young skin.It isnt about using dramatic words and it isnt about watching movies which sell sorrow and darkness.
Its about thinking about life itself, and how it can just.....go. disappear. vanish.
Id never seen a cremation before, Id never really felt the pang of the death of a loved one,like the merry old uncle who succumbed to cancer the year before,burying our laughter and memories with him.
I realised it affects you more when the persons someone you've lived with,laughed with or at,argued with or even eaten with. Someone who breathed the same air as you did....and you didnt see it any other way.
Why would you,really?
We're coccooned,all of us,safe and insecure in our worlds that keep colliding,always bouncing back and taking the simplest things for granted.
It makes me want to appreciate what I have more.Its rare I feel this,for I feel few things close to me. I actually wanted to return to Mysore, and Im soaking in the feeling right now.
Im speechless,and Im blank,and I dont like explaining it beyond the fact that I want,want,want to be back on campus right now...

Just to know what it feels like again.

jam jar

Im caught in the jam jar.
That would have been the title for this illustration/painting,nearly 2 years ago now.
how the years have flown!
I remember I had fallen so low,sunken into my own head,all because of a little bit of paper Id received from someone.I felt utterly rejected and everything that goes with it,you know...
then an hour past that feeling,a friend of mine,lets call her gaycat(is neither and both of the two words)took me on a walk.

Small hands firmly grasped my own,and we walked furthur off campus.Past rusty gates meant to be opened,and past groves of trees which held the wind-cackling voices of the minions of witches,to be sure,at night.We kept walking.
Then the land dipped,and dry golden grasses scratched our arms and hid us.Then the land split,and rocks emerged like beached sea creatures.We lay on our backs,and the heat seeped through cloth and skin.
We talked of cabbages(the wilted ones) and kings(the many downfalls and triumphs).What we wanted and simply how we didnt know what we wanted.We were disappointed and happy and glad to be lying on bare stone in a bare land talking to the skies.
During an exercise at the study centre,with the commerce and humanities batches mixed,we had to speak of our happiest and saddest moments.I spoke of that day.
And then,one hour late,we strolled into art class.They were there,the friends and the mixed feelings ones and the small talkers.I swallowed in my disilliusionment and spread it out onto paper with crayon and ink.

merry christmas,you sulky cat.

As of now my mind has a marketplace of thoughts colliding into one another and it isnt a pretty sight.
Interesting yes,for there are violent images referring to "I hate men!"declarations(of northindian mites and marshmallow origin),
fond reminiscences of my feline friend slevin(whos turned out to be female,after all),
and caantemplations (as put a hotheaded malyali nigga i know of)
about whether it was a good idea to create a random blog in the first hour of xmas
as per the advice of a literary character from a 19th century poem,known to many as la belle dame sans merci/bonifisheii.Love you narcisstic hotheaded leatherclad bonifisheii,who ironically has permanent xmas 'coloured lights' in her room that 'lighten up' my life..hehehe.
Strawberries and cream come close to heaven when consumed at 11 pm AND procured furitively from a rattling old fridge.
On rawther a serious note I here endeth.
meow and a merry christmas to myself.