I’m still hungover from my not-so-recent (anymore) trip to Sikkim. And it’s not so surprising that this week’s prompt reminded me the earthly curves I saw from above.
Tag: life
The Manuscript
“Look on the bright side,” My friends advised me. The glass was half full. I still get to keep all that’s important to me.
I get my privacy, for starters. My phone balance wouldn’t disappear. My tee shirts will remain mine, and mine only, and my messy room would be just as I like it.
But I didn’t want the “bright side.” I got to keep my stuff, but my being felt empty. She had left me pining, and yearning for something stronger than the oxygen that puffed up my hollow insides.
I remained on my couch, in my track pants, reaching for a fifth beer, munching on the fourth burger.
It’s just a phase, people thought. I’d recover, they said, replenish, and then move on. Everyone did that.
But I remained on my couch, in my track pants, —
“Hey, why are you saying the same thing again?”
I sighed.
“It’s a narrative, honey,” I explained to my impatient wife who stared at my manuscript, scratching the side of her chin. “There are no rules.”
She gave me that look. The look she always gave me while she looked in through my eyes, into my soul before blurting out, “Oh, you writers!”
All You Need
“Get a life!”
Got a dog.
Winter’s Tale
We faced each other under the tree I’d like to call my second home. It was a chilly day in the midst of a beautiful winter. The sheen of snow over her head glistened in the weak November sun.
Everything around us appeared romantic. Except her eyes. She blinked through angry tears, staring at me as if I had committed a felony.
I hadn’t.
I had instead asked her to spend the rest of her life with me. And she replied with nothing more than a stream of tears rolling down her cheeks, now pale from the cold.
She walked away while I watched my hopes dangle from her coat pockets.
—
I got the call a week later. Summer hadn’t told me about her fatal illness. She left and eternal winter engulfed me.
The Fun Plan
“The thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins…”
There’s thrill, sure. And blood pumping through my veins. But there’s no chase. At least not the kind Sherlock meant. I’m chasing time instead.
Let’s start over.
We’re planning a trip to one of my favourite parts of India: Kerala. And I can’t sleep thinking about what to do, what to eat, and how to make it more than just another holiday.
There’s so much joy and excitement in planning for a trip. I’ve never fancied myself as a person sticking to plans and schedules. I like to just go with the flow. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy making plans.
Every morning when I pick out the day’s clothes, my eyes land on that one pair of jeans, or that shirt that would be great to wear on the trip. Or when I’m munching on a new flavour of fries, I make a mental note to buy it for the ride. “Ma would enjoy it,” I’d tell myself. I browse through cakes online to get “an idea” of the kind of cake we should order.
I take a virtual tour of the route we would take, look for decent rest stops, snack shops, sweet stalls, and memento stores. I zoom in and “search nearby” on Google maps, looking for fancy restaurants and coffee shops.
I go on trip planning sites to read through reviews of speciality food, and I scroll through menus and imagine myself ordering steamed fish and savouring how well it goes with the fried rice.
And I plan my work around my trip. I’ve become extra productive this week, so I could be at peace when I leave. I beg my colleagues to finish tasks soon because I wouldn’t be at work to check them out next week. I’ll go around bragging to every tea lover that I’m off to holiday amidst tea estates.
And all the while, I pretend like I don’t even have a plan. But every night, as I twist and turn in bed, sleepless, I’m glad I’m a day closer to the trip.
The Chaos Within 