Rain at Rainbow Resort

I’m at Kasar Rainbow Resort, savouring a deliciously warm mint tea, sitting apart from the group of hippies at the café. Why do I sit alone? Maybe because I’m an Indian girl, being eyed curiously by the dreadlocked white people who haven’t seen a brown girl in shorts in the mountains.

Outside, the rain beats down on the tin roof, the roads stacked with pine needles, a riot of dull colours—grey, orange brown, green and a sheer blue. I’m listening to music that my brother Jennie liked; that he spent hours installing on my computer. Memories of more than a year ago, and I “Faithfully Remain” loyal to those tales. Somethings are lost on the way, some are found and the rest just wait. I lost Jennie to death, I found poetry on the way to acceptance of memories of my brother as my only choice and the rest, well the rest just has to wait.

I find myself wondering how I will explain this life to my own future past. You can tell, can’t you of how lyrics, movies, people and a specific culture are colouring this rambling? Do poets imagine stories from and of the people/things they experience? Or do they add the magic of words to memories otherwise laughed over a pint of beer?

I find myself remaining faithful to the passage of time; perhaps this, right now, is what “feeling alive” is meant to give to you. Perhaps the end of a song, ends the rambling of a solitary city girl, challenging herself in the mountains.

They are inaudible melodies in my head; people who I loved and lost and found; memories that once were life, and now are mere tales. It’s strange, is it not that rain makes one ponder, euphorically or with regret. I find myself having conversations in my head with Jennie. More conversations in my head than we ever had while he lived.

All that comes now to mind is what he’d hum in his soulful voice, a voice that experienced more in life than it could ever keep up to offer to him. And when the highs and lows became one straight road, Jennie walked on, leaving me with this:

 “Slow down everyone you’re moving too fast

Frames can’t catch you when you’re moving like that”.

Let Me Be

Let me be. Is it too much to ask from a fellow human being?

Let me be. Is that a boundary you crossed or I did?

Let me be. Does that mark the end of a chapter or the beginning of a new one?

Let me be. Is that a will to live or the need to survive?

Let me be. Sobbed the woman into a pillow after her husband raped her.

Let me be. Screamed the son, tearing up his literature scores to settle on engineering.

Let me be. Sighed the tired salesman to the expectant faces at home.

Let me be. Grunted the mother haggling with vendors to save a dollar.

Let me be. Cried the man who loved another man, to his neighbours.

Let me be. Yelled the man from the hospital bed, to the insurance company.

Let me be. Begged the soldier caught prisoner and tortured by the rebels.

I listened to these implorations and looked away

I heard them not as cries for solitude

I heard them not as a will to disappear.

I heard them as cries for help

I heard them as a yearning for more, for less, for clarity.

They made me say to myself “Let me be”

When you did worse than walking away.

They made me say to myself "Let me be"

When you let the silence take over till it screamed over and over.

Between you and me. To let us be. Strangers of the multitude.

Post-dated Resignation Letter

I’m a cog in the wheel

I’m a cog in the wheel

Repeat after me

I’m a cog in the wheel

Now ask yourself

Why?

Are you mulling over the thought?

Savouring it? Like the first spoonful of hot soup

On this soft winter day?

But of course, your desire

For warm bread, for ‘owning’ things

Surpasses this feeling.

I just quit my job

And the very first sentiment was

ECSTASY

Not because I’m lazy

Not because I’m rich

Not because I’m not passionate

But because

I was a cog in the wheel.

You share pictures of athletes failing and standing up.

You share ‘inspiring’ quotes to urge yourself.

To rise above the mundane,

To speak up against the numbness.

And yet, your ticking watch

Your laptop screen and your telephone screen

Keep you hooked onto the salary cheque.

It’s time to move beyond real time.

It’s time to reject the virtual world.

To live in warmth

Not from an electric heater

But from the shining sun in a park full of laughter.

It’s time to say NO to the ATM machine

It’s time to look beyond a day’s minutes into life over the years.

Would you rather say that you spent 50 hours a week, working?

Or that you spent a week, living?

The park’s lawns are calling out to me.

The satisfying smile of a small bank balance and a large heart of happiness

Await me.

On the scrabble board of life.

It’s time now, for me to play with words and create meaning out of ‘me’.