Nivedita Das Narayan

Meanwhile, life happens. A postscript from this morning Some years back I said hello and introduced myself to a fellow gym-goer after months of smiling and nodding at each other in the midst of our individual fitness attempts. She reciprocated and introduced herself,  'Hi, I am a marathoner.' Insisting, I sought, 'You are…?' She continued 'I am a marathoner, my name is...’ Till date I draw a blank when I try to drum up her name from my memory duct. I’d stopped listening right there at the beginning of our first hello. My memory is, however, vivid with the kind of shaken I felt that morning. My confounded self could barely make sense of this label-laden introduction by this nice girl who I was looking to befriend. A matchless encounter with one who seemed to  define herself by what she must hold highest in the pecking order of her fitness-feathered cap. If you are wondering what happened beyond that promise of a hello – well, no surprise! Till date our...

I've been meaning to write to you for the last few weeks and today, finally, I had to! Please don't mind if I come straight to the gut of the reason - You dropped in a bit too often in the last few weeks!  Either just to irritate me or to frustrate the other two who live with me. Every time, ok - most times, I saw you approach, rather intrepidly, driving-in in that massive luxury four wheel that you've acquired off late, in matt finish with the purr, parking on the side-lanes, within the rules so that the alert Singapore traffic cops can't send home a ticket! Such well placed civic sense and no grace? Arriving unannounced, without a cue?! Did you just stop adapting to the times we live in? Do you not know that today we book time to connect - even our moms book time to talk, call and visit us?! Oh, you may not 'coz you must still arrive at your Mom's doorstep without ringing the bell! OR...don't tell me! you still live with your Mom in that...

I got myself a Dreamcatcher . It trapped some, allowed many to filter out and away. Some that tangled in the web disappeared with the Sun. The morning peeped through the shutters of my window. I am human. I only yearned the ones lost. With barely half an eye, only a quarter of the heart on the dreams firmly caught in its porous wings. The ones that with little love would slide down the feathers, to drop, as tiny snowflakes of dreams whispering their fruition on my sleeping shoulders. But none of that romanced me. Not then. I am only human. God is not human. He knows I'll turn a bend, Someday, and mourn the ones once caught, castaway, and lost. With remorse and guilt. HE knows, I am only human. He watered those saps, waify- buds amorous to grow out of their dreamy tangle, Kindled life in them. Dormant at the moment, wombing a Tree of Life. Because HE knows I am human. One-day, I will find my way back ...

Said my 7-year old to me this morning! We've had this pristine ritual. A ritual we more or less formalized—of a big crush hug from him to me and me to him, right after shower, him cuddled in his bath towel, dewy and warm, smelling like the little baby that I cuddled first time 7-years back. This ritual, right before I help him into his school uniform, has been a mainstay of the short 30 minutes before he hops on to the school bus, off for 8 hours in the day. The last couple of months we'd kind of detracted from this unsaid contract.  And today, in a moment of the old, in a moment devoid of any imagined mishaps and misses, in a moment of just being with him, it all came back. He hugged me, the boy-child, allowing the child in him to say as he felt. A more recent understanding of the ‘thousand with the three zeroes’ versus ‘the hundred with the two’. It was a visible split-second choice he made of the number highest in his understanding, of saying how he acutely...