i

A frozen scream

Whirling unrooted

Who am i?

No beginning

No end

A question

The answer waits

The cue

still to come

Who am I?

Just a passing thought as I went through old forwards about friendship and love and blah blah. And that thought from the millions teeming in space got me thinking. 

                      Somehow age has caught up. Most of my life I've been a gypsy at heart but as time passed and bills increased and possessions accumulated, there was no choice but to start taking root someplace. And that was the beginning of the end. An end to the spontaneous adventure called life. 

                                             Now it’s all about making it to the school bus on time, paying bills, grocery shopping and TV dinners. And in the scramble to get all this done, slowly the dreams have faded into an indistinct blur. Somewhere, the person that was supposed to be and the person that I am today are as different as chalk and cheese. 

                              In the last two years since I've been a stay-at-home mom, it’s mostly been about everyone else. I thought I would get some time to just be. Well that remained what it was, just a thought. The last couple of years have been a flurry of tending to sickness, dealing with moving homes, not once but twice, deaths of two parents, one kids’ all important public exam. 

With so much happening, I sort of sent my feelings to some place far behind, always thinking that I would get back to it when I had less to deal with. And that day has never really come. I bit my tongue and withheld nasty retorts and put my desires aside to accommodate the family’s demands. And somewhere in all this, I've forgotten who I am.

the monster of nasty thoughts

Sleep deprivation, cranky kid, stressed out husband and an almost zero bank account. Just the perfect mix for a tear fest. Had one of those rare days when everything just caught up and I got caught right in it. Financial bankruptcy loomed large as I envisaged sinking into a quagmire of bills. Desperation just found its biggest victim.

                                                                                                   Actually as I type, it seems silly to have magnified all problems to the extent that I imagined it. OK granted that the situation is not that cheerful and there have been better times. But all said and done, it’s not as bad as I imagined it. You see, these nasty thoughts just have a way of getting larger and larger as you think about it and you just can’t seem to stop. It gets bigger and bigger as you quiver and tremble in front of that gigantic monster until one good cry sends the monster flailing down the tear-floods. And sometimes, that’s all that is needed. A big flood to wash that scary monster into nothingness.

the second hand story

It’s been three months since the move to a new city and things are somewhat in place. School and college sorted for the kids, yoga class for yours truly and a routine that is beginning to show some signs of falling into a rhythm.

The local library has been a little haven for browsing and taking a book home to read. This little library is part book store, stationery supplier, bill collector, newspaper vendor, DVD renter etcetera.

The books are lined on dusty shelves, not all with their spines facing out and in no particular order. Most of the books are dusty and some have pages missing. The books all seem to have been acquired second hand and that’s the charm for me.

Each week, I pick a couple of books, sometimes more and it’s interesting to see the inscriptions. Some have just a name, others have a date in addition to the name, some are gifts. The ones in the last category are the ones I find interesting. It’s the stuff of imagination.

Perhaps one of them was a secret gift, only for the one it was addressed to. Maybe, it was a parting gift from a friend. Could it be that it was from a friend who no longer was a friend?

The answers will probably forever remain hidden and those pages would eventually disintegrate into nothingness. Like all of our lives. The brilliance is not in the history of the life but in the fullness of the present.