I was asked to describe the colour pink to a visually impaired person.

Pink is the clenched fist of a newborn, its soft little feet you cup in the palms of your hands.

Pink is your tongue-hue, the tongue on which your mother-language twirls and whirls in a feverish pitch when you are singing a song or uttering your favourite poem, the tongue tickled by the phonetics of a foreign language you wish to learn.

Pink is the lotus-bloom, its petal-quiver speaking to your fingertips. Pink is raaga Malhaar, soft rain-clad clouds sometimes cleaved by a thunderbolt, shattering into Indian monsoons in which you dance like only you are able to listen to peacocks cackling in the faraway mountains.

Pink is cotton candy and how you smile in that sweet sugar high – a childhood instantly retrieved in the memory of its melting in your mouth; now perhaps a bitter nostalgia.

Pink is the velvety tenderness of a rose, a flamingo feather slithering between your fingers – a wildchild who unabashedly, viscerally lives so.

Pink is the warmth, the blush on your cheek when you think of your beloved in her/his absence. Pink is the cool respite of a watermelon slice on a summer noon, the strawberry ice-cream your sibling always shared with you, the piece of ripe guava with a dab of red chilli and salt you shared with schoolmates.

Pink is the cherry blossoms falling gracefully to adorn the Earth you want to kiss with your feet. Pink is the soft, chubby cheek of a little Ladhaki girl. Pink is a coral, a seashell, a piglet you might have cradled in your hand fondly.

Pink is never the violent delight; pink is polite, tender, charm, sweet, joyous, youthful, romantic, exotic, feminine – stereotypes you don’t want to unnecessarily rebel against for the heck of being a rebel.

Pink is sometimes the mellow evening sky staying still above soft zephyrs, pink is sometimes a childhood bruise.

Pink is a pale red but not a submissive nuance. Pink is the greeting of the dawn you wake up to – rosy and promising.

Pink is nostalgia, a gentle melancholy. And so, pink, to you, has always been a thing of familiarity, of knowing.

i will learn my way into your past stories
the way I age with a word
waiting earnestly, eagerly for the meaning
to trickle down to somewhere deeper than the marrow of me
until they become timeless enough
to blur the difference between the past and the present
a small eternity I am not scared anymore to promise you

I Refuse to be Draupadi

I have felt like cheap plastic leftover in picnic spots
when after spending hours, earnestly, choosing gifts for your close friends
my affection was subjected to reasonless prejudices and mindless banter
yes you stir up a hornet’s nest when you bring pretentious friendships and their uncomfortable half-truths
close to my fierce love for you that is so full of heart, that is in honest awe of its muse
that howls melancholy, that is profound with its devotion to its beloved
yes I am an unusually stubborn child of a wife (it was YOU who called me your wife before I called you my husband, husband, do you remember? and how grateful I have been)
who cannot, for once, stay placid when her husband is an object of someone else’s distortion
when he is dressed in twisted words, pitiable gossip and subtle insults
for I will dwindle and I will die rather than stay quiet before such disloyalties
husband, I have felt enough like Draupadi
pawned away to these useless debates and inane games
I had lost you once even before we began, remember?
I have been widowed for an evening I have suffered to no end
husband, you will never understand what it feels like being an affronted woman
women like me are not cowards in their doings
we eat and endure and live pain in our stomachs that know how to digest it
we bleed month after month and still don’t die, we break our ribs to bear your children
and what we love from our gut, we don’t let that be reduced to anything less than glory
how assertive you are with me when I discard an inanimate object given by a betrayer
and how is it that your blood doesn’t boil when he speaks of me being “possibly promiscuous”?
can you tell him to restore my respect to its place the way you asked me to keep that object in its place today? can you?
your misplaced passivity and assertiveness has hurt me to my bones today, husband
I am a sentient being, husband, not that toy-tiger on your desk
and your divine deafness and blindness to the injustice done to me has destroyed something in me today
for it has said a lot about your stances about my honour
husband, today, in my eyes
YOU look like the Pandavas who sat tight-lipped when their wife was humiliated for no fault of hers
and I shall not swallow this dishonour any longer
I refuse to be Draupadi for I have and I need no Krishna to keep my honour safe
now, I dare the world to stir up this hornet’s nest
I dare it
and before I dare others and the world
I dare YOU, husband, I dare YOU
to bring back this dead part of me alive, ever, if you can
for you have, at last, earned my corpse-like unfeeling silence about this. forever.

Varanasi

December 21. Winter Solstice. Cold Full Moon. Meteor Shower. My visit to Varanasi couldn’t have been timed better. To see the full-moon spilling her light and shattering into silver shards on the quivering Ganga… I hope I don’t jump into the river! I’ve been dreaming of visiting this sacred ancient land for years now. And it’s it’s finally happening. I’m waiting to spend a lot of time at the Manikarnika Ghat. I’m yet to write so much about my Africa trip and another journey has already begun. Kashi Vishvanaathaaaaa! Help me!!! 🙂

Boarding the plane in two hours. Sigh.

Mist

Forgiving. Forgiving in its quietness. Forgiving in its presence that defers the harshness of the sun. Forgiving in its gradual leaving, a leaving that doesn’t jolt one out of reverie.
Forgiving because in its vanishing, the world reveals itself like a slow miracle of so many things.

There is another way of loving you.

Loving in despair.

A gentle song throbs in me

With him, it’s a delicate fondness. Like that which exists between MalenaaDu monsoons and wildflowers in full bloom.

To love life

To recognise that vulnerability is the biggest strength. To be always open to life, the totality of it. To become one with it, and to so become none.

Mild horror

The anxiousness of the last light on the windowsill.

Birthday Jitters

The days maunder on in their swift succession. A sad, helpless slur. The days eclipse the brightness I envision for all the tomorrows, for all the grand plans I have for travel, for making more art, for witnessing more art, and most importantly, for love. These days, slipping away through my fingers as I watch helplessly, defeated, evoke a deep fear in me: what if more than half of this lifetime is going to slip away this way? There isn’t enough time to haul out from my mind all the poems I want to – of unexpected rains and sunsets and the dust-motes twirling slowly, as if in torpor, in the first shafts of morning light entering my room – and keep them close to my heart and chronicle them. The days, with their grime and struggle for survival, leave hardly any time for me to return to my habits that keep the spirit of me, the soul of me alive. When will I collect all these truths, these inferences, these observations that I’ve been leaving for tomorrows? When will I write of time’s thievings and their offerings? When will there be enough time to preserve all that moves me – the light, the dark, the human, the mystic. Write, write, write and write a lot, I want to.

Nine days short of my 29^th birthday, I am anxious thusly. But I hope and pray that this is just a phase and that I get to travel and make all the art I want to soonly. For now, there is solace in the knowledge that my man will return just in time for my birthday from his 12-day photography expedition in Bandhavgarh’s wilderness. I am going to the airport to pick him up and we have so many stories to trade. And you, my reader-dears, wish me the best, for I want to tell him, again, on my birthday, that he is the one and that I want to spend the rest of my life with him.

A ‘thank you’ note to all of you who have intensified the joy of sharing by blessing this space with your time.

Two months ago, standing on the Sandbank Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania, a thought visited the foyer of mind which I intend to explore deeper, understand better. Oh, the sea! The sea. It was as if for the first time I ever opened my eyes to the blatant truth that the sea simply is – has been – ever since its beginning. We grow (physically, at least!), trees grow, cats grow, inevitably. But the sea, the sea is just the same. And I thought to myself how humbling it is that the world is always letting us feel and think new things. And an added joy to this is the presence of people with whom one can share what they feel without inhibition. So I thank each one of you who have been visiting this space and making this journey a merrier one than it could have been otherwise. I thank you for your patience and understanding and empathy. And for your humanity and time – perhaps the best gifts we can ever give to one another. Thank you. I love you.

Ardently,
Sourabha Rao