.a written note.

You know the lane by heart, because you carried it everywhere you went. The cracks on the wall, the colour of the powder when you grated bricks for fun, the smell of summer evenings and the sound of quiet afternoons because children were supposed to sleep till 4 o’clock. Along those lines live the directions the kids gave to the autowallas on the way back home back home, back home. Where the trees are intact albeit not ageless, you’ve carried with yourself the smell of water splashed on mud and cement. The sound of children of the house cheering, playing hide and seek till 8 o’clock. I want to write more, about the hours occupied in laughter, conversations and more of them, about the hungry lunch times and a relaxing ritual of tea-making or brewing great-grandmother’s coffee. about the annual ritual of going through wheat grains, rice and lentils. I want to write more, but how can one define the colour of nostalgia?

I feel it. I feel that I’m losing the grip over myself Was there supposed to be any? I thought I had it, I thought I could get myself together and get up, walk and just do things that I always was going to do I didn’t know I’d fall I didn’t know a fall would be like this like this giant void Which can’t be filled with or by people Their noise and silences I feel this giant void that pulls me down way further and more. Void is what owns my grip, the grip that I long to have I long to connect. to merge and be one with myself.

That’s the thing with time. One day you’re sitting doing your everyday mundane activity and it hits you. The truth behind this whole thing called life hits you and it hits you hard. All those sayings and philosophies about making the best of your life, enjoying every bit of it and making the fullest of everything — it stands no meaning in this particular moment. It’s a mundane activity with the sound of a prayer from a distant dargah . The typical dark night of 8pm. The time comes to you authoritatively, telling you one day, one day it would all be over. That slowly everything will fade out. The people near you at this moment, you can hear them talking but suddenly it’s all in slow motion. There’s going to come a day they’ll no longer be there. You’re going to wish you made the fullest, that you lived the moment fully, as long as they were there, while they were there. One day as a matter of fact even you’re going to die. The reality hits you. Whatever you have in this v

ऐ दिल, तू मान जा, समझ ले दुनिया की रीत और याद कर हररोज़ की ये तो एक नांव है, कभी शांत, कभी ज़ोर से बहती.. तू इसमें है बैठा, जैसे बैठे हैं कई हज़ार.. ना उनको पता, ना तुझे ये पल्ले पड़ता की दुनिया है घूमती अपने ही घेरों में, जैसे है तू सुनता अपनी ही धड़कने.. ये घेरे हैं थोड़े घने, बरसो से अटके इन्हे तू सुलझाने ना जा, बल्कि समझ ले वो गूंजती हुई दास्तां, जो है हर एक के लिए अलग, पर सीमित नहीं.. मुश्किल है, पर अधूरी नहीं.. ऐ दिल, तू मान जा मुझे समझा दे ये दुनिया।

What is the name of this place? Does it have a name? As I sit here, a white sheet before me and my fingers running on the keyboard like the most desperate kind of an animal, the keyboard acts as a mirror to my mind. A scanner- clearing dust from the minutest of details, I am slowly falling into this place and it’s dark here. I am able to see myself. Not from a third person’s point of view but my own. How did I end up here? I smell fear, doubt and all the other insecurities right from the smallest thing to a life choice. It’s all in here and there’s no space. How do I clear one knot to detangle another? As I keep writing, I am confronted by my own emotions- the first time in the whole day, first time in the last four days, since I last wrote. Is this what happens to the writers when they don’t write? My emotions consume me and the epiphany takes over. I need to write. I need to write. I need to write. I need light in this place.

Aren’t thoughts a world in themselves? I am on my left, a little dizzy, with WhatsApp screen on on my phone. It’s standby and I have something going on in my mind. I know this. I know what it is. It’s time standing still and I’m no longer in the same place. Like an unpredictable summer wind, I’m taken away and back to the 90s. It looks like film. Grainy. Old times really do look grainy- a blend of red and yellow and a sad brown, sepia. I see my brother, 4 years older to me, with his smile just as innocent as I recall it. His signature full lips, a wide smile showing half of his teeth, it is so intact now that I see it. Alongside him, there’s me, 4 years younger to him, a sister that wanted to fit into his idea of a good sister. He’s wearing his red Polo T-shirt and my frock is brown and white. I’m playing with him, trying to generate in myself an interest for bikes and all things mechanical so that I too will have a say in seemingly interesting conversations between him an

Last week, first visit: After days of only planning to visit and restart with my classroom now after three years, I visit finally in the last week. With little hopes of meeting all of my old students in one place, I still wish I’d meet them all for I’ve missed them so much. When I actually go to the classroom, which is basically an extra room provided by one of the families from the community, I am ecstatic to meet all of them slowly, one by one coming to the classroom as they get to know that their Arundhati Didi has come. Pankhudi is a non-governmental organization that works towards providing education to the underprivileged kids in a slum in Pune called Patil Estate. This slum is situated in the middle of probably the busiest locality in Pune that is Shivajinagar. However, the slum itself gives birth to a different life that I became a part of back in 2013. I had served there as a full-time volunteer till the middle of 2014. All of them are just as surprised as I am,

I think of you. I think of you a lot of times. Sometimes you occupy my entire day and there are times I wake up in the middle of the night because of the nightmares I get. Nightmares are made of thoughts at the back of one’s mind and more often than not, those thoughts are unaccepted, denied or just scary. I think of you when I’m walking rounds and rounds after dinner, when I’m waiting for my station standing in a crowded bus, when I’m with people laughing and talking excessively, when I’m having good days, when I’m reading a book and come across a similar character like you — like any one of you, when there are extreme joyful situations and also when there are lowest lows. I think of you. In other words, you didn’t leave my mind. You’re either no longer in my life or you’re on the verge of leaving but you haven’t left my mind and you will probably not. I met some of you in the most typical scenarios and there are those of you I met accidentally and unexpectedly. But eit

if it leaves, it’s not pain. It never was. If at all it hits you hits you hard, it’s like a blue ink it leaves behind stains that refuse to vanish no matter who’s doing the laundry. It entertains like a dream long enough to confuse you into reality and it elopes into a faraway land turning you into a melancholic mess engulfed in solitude that becomes a more fathomable, a more comfortable white-sheets bed. So, in your mind you may think you're alone all indulged on your own, what will you answer if I say I too am one, one of your irrational thoughts or loathsome imageries that hide behind the curtains of your eyes? I am the sight you thought you lost. I am the intrigued audience when you’re on stage. Therefore, let there be a time apart from their goody mouth and promising handshakes for they're all true and pretentious at their own convenience and you must not ever stand waiting For you have a universe within you dying to come alive and kill with a smile.