First attempts at mush.

This thing has been getting too much to bear, really.

The way they looked at each other-from the tiniest corners of their eyes, across the road he walked down everyday.

The way she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her right ear trying to suppress a stupid grin each time she caught him looking.

This way how each of their silences was being packed with so many inexplicable little unnamed desires, was getting crazy. It was like you could touch the air between their faces and feel the vibrations of these weird waves hitting every molecule of space.

It was like the air- this thing.

This thing that was getting too hard to bear.

Each time she smiled, each time he ran his fingers through his new haircut.

It just got crazier this way. Crazier and Better.

Neither of them had the right word for it till he hit upon it that night while he sat trying to read a book.

The corners of his lips curled into a smile.

"I swear, man. It's always so electric.", he said to himself.

Here's looking at you, Kid.

When my one year and four months old niece bangs her tiny little head against the glass of my sister's car window, she doesn't cry anymore. Instead, she slaps the glass with her hands and leaves behind a tiny, wet imprint on the glass that reflects the pacing lights of the city traffic. Amidst the cacophony of blaring horns, I listen to her barely formed words giving vent to her nascent pool of anger.

That's a lesson learnt, my dear D.

That it is not one's fault when one gets hurt.

Thank you. Love you.

pic: Pratichi Basu, 2010.

You know how microcosm-macrocosm works, right?

So today when I took out my clothes and folded them and stacked them in my naphthalene scented suitcase, I thought that maybe life will figure itself out too-in neat folds, in crisp pleats, lined with smells of last winter.

When I combed my hair today, holding the ends tightly while letting the comb scuffle through the knots, I thought that maybe life was sorting itself out somewhere.

In jumps and falls.

In tsk-s and sighs.