November rain.

Open windows and unexpected showers.A halo of steam rising from a bright blue mug.Rain shadows climbing your skin in the twilight.
It's coffee-and-Cohen weather outside...

"Baby,baby, let me take you back where you belong, back to your lovely, lazy island where the jewelled parrot rocks on the enamel tree and you can crunch sugar-cane between you strong, white teeth like you did when you were little,baby. When we get there,among the lilting palm trees, under the purple flowers, I'll love you to death. We'll go back and live together in a thatched house with a veranda overgrown with flowering vine and a little girl in short white frock with a yellow satin bow in her kinky pigtail will wave a huge feather fan over us, stirring the languishing air as we sway in our hammock,this way and that way...the ship, the ship is waiting in the harbour,baby."

-Black Venus, Angela Carter.

Here comes the Sun.

Chocolate and coffee. Long-forgotten violins and moonlit verandahs. Memories tucked away in dusty cellars, like old wine. Dark red and mellow. With the lingering smell of old summers in them. The scent of warm skin on old notebooks.New books waiting to be read. Winter.

For the past few months my blog has been incredibly morbid.But autumn makes me remember oldfamiliar things. I'm at peace with the world.

There are times when I feel trapped inside an enormous snow-globe: a carefully-constructed, fragile, see-through world, where everything is still, waiting eternally for someone to shake them around.
And the only way out is by shattering your sky, your world.

Song in my head.

I saw you this morning.

You were moving so fast.

Can't seem to loosen my grip.

On the Past.
And I miss you so much.
There's no one in sight.
And we're still making love
In my secret life.
In my secret life.
I smile when I'm angry
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what's wrong
And I know what is right.
And I'd die for the truth
In my secret life.
In my secret life.

-Cohen.

A place where there are no cramped spaces, no stifled lives crammed hurriedly into tiny cubicles. A place where there is no time. Only beginnings, fresh and raw.
An ancient, prehistoric place, before the emergence of this everyday, mundane world: a different world of majestic splendour and echoing loneliness.
And then, in the heart of this desolation, this vastness, appears like an insane little anomaly, the tiny town of Leh.
"Surreal, but nice."

Peace.

When everything is over, we'll go home. Back where we came from.
So what does it matter now if we are a little late, a little unsteady on our feet: stumbling and clutching, falling and tripping? In the end, we'll pick ourselves up and lightly brush away the memories of hurt.
Like dust off a favourite coat.

I need to laugh and when the sun is out

I've got something to laugh about...

Monsoon.

I love the way the city feels under my skin, warm with the scent of wet earth and rain.
The way it presses against me, overwhelming me with its nakedness.
We belong together, the city and I. We know each other by touch.

Storm.

This past week, I've seen so many dead trees. On every road, round every bend.
The majestic badam tree next door clung valiantly on to the earth for a day, leaning precariously over the street below, before it was felled yesterday.
And now the crows have nowhere to go.
They sit at the corner of my window, in the pouring rain, with their heads firmly tucked into their feathers, waiting for the storm to die down.
There must be so many more like them.