As sparrows continue blissfully pecking at everything in general and nothing in particular, the daughter of Scheherazade weaves a frame of life with tapestries of multiple fragmented lives within. She picks at each thread and begins a story, woven with finesse into the larger frame. Her fingers caress the fabric of the narrative as her lips gently voice the magic of the unsaid, waiting to be discovered, patiently, since eternity. Her toes respond in subtle movements now and then to the hidden melody running through the blue veins underneath a soft skin. And when you ask her questions, she smiles. Your queries to her are a series of bubbles blown out through the fragile loop of self-contained vision and understanding. Each bubble a spectrum, each bubble a world...her frame grows larger as your queries multiply.

There's dawn and dusk beyond the clock as my invisible fingers weave into your soft scalp stories of yesterdays and tomorrows off the calendar. Storms settle at the vision of a sun reflecting serenity in your ocular depths. Smiles unfold and waves roll down. Dreams culminate in uncertain delicate spheres hanging from the edges of concrete sheds like a string of pearls. There's a series of thoughts, like a heap of dying breath, engulfing the cocoon before the flight of a random butterfly. The birth of a butterfly; the death of a caterpillar. What are thoughts but specks of life in a spotted narrative of wild goose chase...Body declines. Body decays. Discarded like a soiled diaper wrapped in stories of what used to be. Disposal is must, options are few. Donation only gratifies the self as you donate what you will no longer need. It's a sunburnt life, love. Every day. For, that which kills is that which cures. Ulcers sprout on distant shores like bouquets of wild blooms - too petty to be named, after intense showers of magnanimity.

And so, here was this child. Wrapped in soft woollens. Only tiny fingers visible besides two curious eyes, plump cheeks,  little red lips and a notional nose. Cushioned in an adult's lap, all set to cross the road in the morning, the pair of inquisitive eyes surveyed the abnormal rush of two-legged beings and innumerable vehicles around. How difficult to accept a possibility of that head covered in a red striped pom pom cap turning so strong one day so as to believe that nothing exists in the world outside its knowledge. To imagine that those tiny fingers might turn into fists clutching sharpness which will call for blood. To think that those little lips might one day utter words to injure another's dignity. To see that those feet hidden in pink booties may one day emerge as determined to trample ruthlessly everything which gets in their way to their destination. How sad is it to accept that the story of each perpetrator of violence must have begun one day as a vulnerable being weighing little more than three kilos... Attachments vital, connections human, are ripped off thoughtlessly, all through life and then they say, the umbilical cord is cut off just once - as if childbirth was all about body and biology!

High theory is in vogue. Verbal extravagance, the accepted order of the day. And sometimes amidst all this there are two weird feelings. Either you feel like a cow ruminating, followed by regurgitation of cud every now and then, pretty uselessly. Or the brain feels like a sudden lump of dough, being stretched from every possible direction to extreme possible sticky angular formations, and all for no good reason. Discursive formulations have complicated and ruined the world, beyond redemption it seems...

Wreaths of thoughts surround the soul, fondly bursting forth in sudden blooms against the rough surface of rugged existence, this world and beyond, as you sit quietly reminiscing the last time you had lived 

It wasn't time
No not this time

Just that bruise
On petiole
Connecting to
The tree of life

The fragile green
Let go in peace
Fluttering in
Merciful breeze

So no one knew
It had a wound

And no one said
It wasn't time

Sometimes you stand there. Simply. Your head bowed down. Your eyes closed. Everything and nothing on your mind. Everything in general. Nothing in particular. You do not look around. You don't utter a sound. You bow your head in silence. Your eyes closed. Somewhat like a chicken in the butcher's box. You can hear the conspiracy of blade and air. You can smell droplets of warm fresh blood. You can feel the steel reflecting you. And you stand there still. Simply. Your head bowed down. Your eyes closed. It takes a while to attain this. Captive-chicken-syndrome. When you just don't care. Anymore. If the sun rises tomorrow, and your head is still intact, you will stand there again. Silently. Your head bowed down. Your eyes closed. 

-ism and -ist have become such in things! Talk of equality, you are commun-ist. Talk of investment, you are capital-ist. Talk of reason, you are rational-ist. Talk of religion, you are spiritual-ist. Talk of surroundings, you are environmental-ist. Talk of choice, you are existential-ist. Talk of theology, you might as well be fundamental-ist. In fact, you do not even have to talk. Say yes, and you are conform-ist. Say no, you are non-conform-ist. Say nothing, you are invariably strateg-ist. Every other person you happen to encounter seems to be scraping layers off your existence to determine where to put you in, as if, this world has become such a huge biology laboratory. There are jars all around. Jars labelled. Jars shelved. Jars filled with formalin to preserve vertebrate samples. And you happen to be just another possible specimen being investigated for dominant traces of a particular kind so that the label may be determined before you are preserved for future reference, if at all required.

Such soaked existence!

Thankfully, children still make paper boats and paint butterflies.

It is often said that the first step in formalized art is learning to draw straight lines. Yes them, as a metaphor for discipline, diligence and concentration. But that couldn't be serious, you know! Straight lines are wildly sinister things. At the heart of almost all crooked contemplation so far. Think of the utilities of a straight line. Those with which you draw margins, and marginalize. Those that mark end to answers - notionally though, for no answer ends while life continues. Those that define bar diagrams in the extremely dangerous urge for comparisons. Those that make columns and help create illusory categories. Or those which draw borders, devastating humankind in the name of boundaries. Even when seen as a practical reality, hasn't an empty ruled notebook with straight lines all over, so closely resembled the ECG reports of several anonymous deaths put together until your verbal waves started dancing on them - as if life had started pulsating all of a sudden on an eternal desert of meaninglessness?

As for me, all my straight lines have always been waves, on which boats and twigs have floated alike.  

Why are adults so complicated?

This simple query so lucidly framed has been the most difficult to answer so far. Not due to reasons philosophical but the very vagueness associated with the attempt to answer it. Nonetheless, let's give it another try.

Human offsprings, you see, when quite negligible in size, are close to the earth. Their habitual activities presume a touch of the ground which perhaps keeps them grounded. As they grow, their posture balances itself on the hindlimbs. The forelimbs, due to reasons of anatomy and possibly choice, are removed from the ground. Consequently, with an excess of the structure, they mostly do not know what to do with the forelimbs now dangling loose in the air from the two sides. Also, as a result of growth, and some call it development too, by the sheer verticality of physical existence, their prime olfactory organ, sometimes called the nose, gradually becomes quite distant from the ground. As they realize the fact of growing and can see objects previously out of reach due to height coming to a closer proximity, they oft times begin to hallucinate that the sky is nearby. Hallucinations of the kind are quite prevalent among the human species, nobody knows why, to the point of being assimilated in the collective unconscious. The result, you see, is the complicated product called the adult - head in the clouds, nose far removed from the ground, forelimbs in the air free to create nuisance and a terrible sense of insecurity from the possibility of imbalance perchance the hindlimbs don't thump existence loud enough to be registered in one's head. This head to feet contradiction makes the poor thing seem complicated. Forgive the next one you happen to meet.   

The touch of the crimson flower resolves it all.

As it embraces the frame, all pain wears off. Dreams and desires sublimate into nonentities. The eyes closed resign to its warmth. Ambitions have already become subaltern history by then - the potentials and futilities being discussed by informed minds outside! Sounds dissolve in the whispers of the crimson flower cleansing the frame of all realities, for what is a reality but a story we create and choose to believe in. Flesh melts away, transcending mortal claims on identity. Bones surrender to the selflessness of passionate fury lapping up the last traces of all hurt, all judgments, all prejudices and notions. A few concerned souls wait outside, wanting to determine the direction of the new journey as they submit the remnants at the end of the process to the august company of phytoplanktons and zooplanktons.

And as all this happens, I believe, I will still smile foolishly from margins of invisibility, as I do now. Just that the blog won't have an update on the experience!

Balloons were a childhood delight. To the not-so-smart generation that did not get gadgets to play with, balloons used to be festive things. Things that brought alive a colourful palette of wonderstruck imagination, in multiple shapes. Allowances were little, for pocket-money used to be a sacrilegious concept signifying a spoilt brat at the receiving end, and choices were few - perhaps, the reason why happiness was easily attained. And so when you had an occasional penny, you almost rushed for a balloon. Smaller ones for fifty paise, bigger ones for a rupee. You watched the balloon seller mesmerized as he blew his breath into the little pouch of your chosen colour with all his might. And once you had got it, you treasured it, as it gradually shrunk in size, day by day. Today the price for balloons hasn't gone up much. A minimum is still around five rupees. Well...human breath was always cheap. No amount of inflation has raised its worth. Looking back, there's just this sad fairytale remembrance of 'once upon a time' when life was easy, desires were simple and breathing could create spheres of untainted happiness.

The hands straightened out a crumpled piece of paper. Let's not endow the hands with an epithet, for epithets, they say, are the biggest enemies to nouns. Besides, comments and conjectures are smoky things in futility.

So, the hands straightened out the crumpled piece of paper.

And the deed was done. Quite unnecessarily, quite done. An action was performed. Call it restoration of identity, or violation of privacy. The deed was quite done. Restoration of identity, so it was perhaps. But what if the paper understood or realized its identity in its crumpled-ness! What if the state of being crumpled was home to it, in the sense that it signified the acceptance of having been damaged quite beyond rehabilitation and therefore served as a guard against any further intervention from external agency! The sensible world, however, will not confer identity to paper. As if dealing with plurality of identity in living beings was not challenging enough! So on a sensible note, what if the crumpled paper was not a paper but a grave. A grave which held within itself errors unpardonable..perhaps, a dream unattainable, a calculation gone all wrong, a sentence in incorrect grammar, a misplaced answer to a resolute question, a glaring folly in a meticulous plan, or perhaps, simply the stray handwriting of some little darling that had not learnt to write in straight lines...

So, as the hands straightened out a crumpled piece of paper, a mistake was unraveled. Light fell upon the creases...is a crease a wound...?   

Each morning, as you balance your fragile self in vertical alignment upon a round surface, supported by laws of gravity taken to be as universally sanctioned as the thoughtless act of breathing all the time, it falls. It falls soundlessly carving edges of transient, notional space into the eternal flow of heaven-sent light. It falls. It falls quite inconsequentially to trace a trajectory of angular displacement through the day. 

You begin a day. You succumb to the powers of the two hands going around within a symmetrical geometrical pattern. It remains fallen. As fallen as ever. Falling is not its choice, neither is it destiny. The shadow, you see, is far too unimportant to lay claims on the divine concept of preordained existence. It falls, because it exists. Falling is its way of being. Choice or chance is the playfield for theorists and philosophers. 

It falls today, because it is. It will fall tomorrow too, because it will be. Be in silence, assimilating the pain and bewilderment of existence.

Sometimes you live like a preposition.

No compulsion to generate meaning. A sort of hyphenated existence hanging between being and non-being. You are neither the subject, nor the object. There is no action expected or implied as of a verb. No quality assessment holds true as for an adjective. Just a preposition. A tiny preposition in the structured abstraction called life. Your need lies in serving grammatical requirements. The momentary gratification of codes, howsoever vague, within an overwhelming structure you have no business to understand. For, language can be reframed anytime. So can the vague statements of life.

Blood-smeared wings lose flight in independence

Bereft of body, they embrace liberty in the butcher's blade