Five Minutes of Bliss

It is a five minute walk to my office. And the sights I see are so varied each day that I look forward to the walk. The road is narrow and lined with trees. As the road bends to encompass a huge playground, I can see frenzied players shouting at each other, engrossed in the game. One of the apartments on my left has a wind chime that welcomes me with a tinkle and automatically brings a sense of peace from within. The house next to the apartment is a small one with a line of shrubs in front. A yellow bulb hangs precariously from the roof; a newspaper lies unclaimed in front of the door, and an unswept courtyard has dry leaves playing their own games.

I turn to an even narrower lane, and see white and pink flowers that remind me of peppermint candies. I pass a house that has a book cupboard in the garage. A small boy starts trotting beside me. He has a full white uniform that has light patches of brown – the mark of a sincere mother who would have spent hours scrubbing it. He is singing loudly and picks one of those flowers. Balancing his lunch basket in one hand, and adjusting his heavy school bag with a complicated jig of shoulders, he smells the flower and puts it carefully inside his basket. Suddenly he becomes excited and shouts loudly, waving frantically at a small boy, quite at a distance in front of us. The small boy takes a while to comprehend and then recognizing his friend, laughs and then falls down because he has not been looking in front. This boy bursts out into peals of laughter and I join him heartily. The other one brushes the dust away and starts laughing too.

Abruptly they realize I have been given admission into their private moment; the boy grins coyly and runs in front to join his friend. As for me, I feel strangely light and carefree. I hum a tune and push the office gates open. It has hardly been five minutes, but I have already had a great day. :)

Waka Waka...

Errr... I lost this post..:( Thanks to my tampering with HTML codes... Anybody who has a copy :P meaning someone who saved this brilliant piece of art as a personal copy, help me retrieve it :(

Rains Once Again...

The rains are beautiful in Bangalore. A gush of nature’s fury at times, incessant at others, but pitter patter mostly. The power goes off almost immediately and sometimes never returns. I sit in the dark by the window and listen to the relentless tapping on the roof. I can hear a kid reciting his lessons, a flick of a matchstick, and slight traces of an argument next door. The watchman taps his stick on the gate to chase a stray dog away and lights his cigarette. I can smell the tobacco. Somebody has turned on a radio and bits of kannada drift across.

The lights flicker and the sounds increase. There are more conversations and movements. I can smell a burnt out candlewick. The watchman almost trips over a loose stone. My roommate slowly shifts and looks up at the lights. They flicker more intensely and then die out. The watchman kicks the stone and it hits the gate with a mighty clang. The sound reverberates and the apartment is silent once again.

Unrelated Thought: Lovely Song - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - B.J. Thomas and Even Lovelier Lyrics.