My time off turned out to spur the longest ever list of ‘Evers….’

Ever lay in bed at night and felt the mist float and hang over you…
Ever looked at the sky and known for certain that tonight there will be a million stars that I will see…
Ever felt the warmth of another hand when you’re terribly cold… and felt the wonder of life in that moment…
Ever felt a strawberry’s flavors make your senses reel…
Ever saw so much beauty around you that you can’t get yourself to sketch anything…
Ever swayed with every curve that the car takes on a mountain…
Ever walked so much that your feet don’t need your mind anymore… they just won’t stop…
Ever saw the magic in a butterfly’s flight…
Ever stuck you face out of a moving car and discovered why your dog loves doing that : )
Ever fell off a swing… got hurt… but could not stop laughing!!
Ever found that strangers can care about strangers…
Ever wished in a tunnel…
Ever tried to wipe out an entire field of strawberries… : ) it’s a satisfying feeling…
Ever felt stupid and felt real good about it and then felt stupid for feeling that…
Ever found that trees tell a story just by the way they look…
Ever felt like starting your own little hotel and then actually drawing up a plan of what you would do!!
Ever switched off your phone for 3 whole days and not cared…
Ever felt that the mind can forget easily… and yet it can’t forget easily…
Ever felt your heart flip flop… and loved that feeling…
Ever felt that you will hold on to the small gestures forever…
Ever saw a colour and felt that there is no way in hell you could ever replicate that in a painting…
Ever realized that there were just too many people who you let slip away from you too easily…
Ever realized that there is sometimes something like ‘too late’…
Ever longed for one of those childhood friendships… in all their simplicity yet seeped in a 7 year old’s complexities…
Ever longed for those crazy intense childhood conversations… the kiddiness giddiness of it all…
Ever felt simple yoga stretch make every muscle in you twitch to life…
Ever saw a flower spiraling down…
Ever shut your eyes and tried to hear every sound of the night and felt your senses unable to cope…
Ever felt sometimes words spoil it… bring in the confusion and the hurt…

Ever felt that ‘ever felts’ are exactly what they are and not meant to be described briefly and hastily in a jumble of words that don’t justify how they ever felt…

my own patch of sky : )

ever played that silly game where you spent hours starring at the clouds and making their random shapes into recognizable forms… it’s a game that requires so little effort and it always leaves you feeling good… found an angle from the bed where I can actually get a good view of a patch of sky… and its been so wonderfully cloudy lately…

I think it has to do with the randomness… it’s taking a nothing and giving it a name, a form…
Sometimes people and feelings remain random… till we give them a name… a form… nothing changes and yet its never the same again…

Defiance...

Sat in the gurudwara… in the middle of the song ‘aye malik tere bande hum’… and that death was such a part of life kept coming into my mind… that I was attending the prayer service of my very dear friend’s grandma was tough… especially cos he was not there… and all of a sudden it frightened me… all the people in white… all the heads covered and bowed in humility and respect… and I saw myself with my head covered in white like the others but held up high… in defiance… false defiance… who was I fooling… how would I ever stop death… how would I ever hold on to someone that was not meant to stay… I was just been stupid and yet that’s all I know how to be sometimes… that’s all I can do to remain sane and not crumble into a bundle of nerves… the belief that I have some control over my life… that I will not go down without a fight…

What keeps us going… I wonder sometimes… what is my breaking point? Who’s the person that I could not live without? Can I live by myself? What’s my source of energy? What makes me look up and see the magic that no one else can? What makes me question my beliefs? What makes me so me? can I ever really know? Will knowing change anything at all?

The Jar...

The jar was filled with its emptiness.. brimming with it… she often wondered how it contained itself so well… it changed colour too… it reflected and soaked in all around it… and yet did not let that seep out… she’d had it on her little table next to the lamp for over a year now… and each evening as she sat down at the end of another day, she’d spend time looking at the jar… watching how carefully it guarded its treasure… how selfishly it held it so no one saw… she’d take comfort it in… and as the days passed and she grew more and more curious about the emptiness, she’d toy with the idea of seeing what it was like… there were days when she’d actually gone as far as to pick the jar up and place her hand over its lid… but something always made her stop… What would she achieve by letting the emptiness out? Would it really leave… she’d just add more to it…
somethings are better left unleashed…

strawberries...

She sat surrounded by strawberries… unable to speak… a cold nip in the morning air… fogging lodging in her head...and she sat down in disbelief…he’d actually done it… the idiot… the adorable idiot…
just the week before she’d wanted to buy a box of strawberries at a traffic light and he’s stopped her… and she’d sulked… told him that life was about taking chances and dealing with the consequences… so what if the bottom layer of strawberries were over ripe… she’d be happy with the ones on top… and he’d just sat still… ‘don’t settle for anything less than the best’… they’d left it at that…
she had no idea what the secret weekend with him had in store for her…she’d let go of her need to plan… her need to know where she was going and what she was doing… she’d let him take her away…
And now as she sat right in the middle of a field of strawberries in mahabaleshwar, he’d simply laughed… ‘the best only… and you can pick… you have a choice…’

holding your breath...

Ever held your breath for someone…ever let your heart stop for an instant…and in that one instant, seen everything so much clearer… realizing how that spontaneous halting of your breath said much more than words or thoughts would allow you to…happens sometimes out of the blue and really puts the world as you know it into a bit of a spin… and you try to analyze it… break it down into gestures and expressions… and they can never make sense… all that remains is how it felt… nothing else matters…
May this year have many of those moments in store for each of us…