A girl sits on a chair, beside a table, then rises

A girl sits on a wooden chair, beside a wooden table. She is wearing a yellow dress, and a white skirt. At length, she slowly gets up.

A girl sits on a wooden chair. The chair seems fairly ordinary, with the usual four legs and a seat, and a plank to support one’s back. Thin nails grown rusty over time had been hammered into it, and most of them still survive. One of them, fixed on the right side of the plank, threatens to fall off, and peeps out of the wooden structure ominously. The chair occasionally creaks and groans, adding to the already acute discomfort of the person sitting on it.

The person, as has been told before, is a girl. Her countenance is pleasing, with a puckered nose and thin lips, and large, expressive blue eyes now downturned. Her black hair is tied behind her in a neat plait. She wears a flowing yellow dress, with frills hanging loose where her sleeves end. The neck is also elaborately sewn, with three white buttons firmly covering her growing womanhood. There is much cloth on her, as the numerous folds of the dress would seem to suggest. The yellow ends where it is tucked inside an even more elaborate white skirt. White strands flow over the skirt in a gorgeous floral design, like wild flowers blooming in a valley. The skirt touches the floor and hides her feet. Her hands rest on a wooden table; a table as plain as the chair on which she rests.

The table is small. Just about enough to rest the elbows of one person. But for its small stature, it seems surprisingly sturdy, and budges little under the weight of the girl. The wood seems a strong red, compared to the soft peach of the chair. For its width, it is a tall table, and rises almost to the girl’s bosom, as she places her folded arms on it. Slowly, she pushes her chair back, and stands up. The folds of her fabric straighten, and two black shoes are visible beneath her skirt.

A girl can be seen sitting on a chair, resting her arms on a wooden table. Her vision pierces straight through the table, yet ends nowhere. It is a strange blurry vision, a vision lost, but willingly so. She wears a yellow dress and a long, flowing skirt which drapes to the floor. The bright colours of her dress are in sharp contrast to the murky shades of the wood surrounding her. The blue of her eyes shimmer like jewels. It is a strange sight indeed, to see such a girl in furniture so forlorn. If she were to declare herself as a princess, one would be inclined to kneel in front of her and turn to her slave, rather than disbelieve her. Such is her difference with the throne which she now occupies. Gradually, she turns her head up, and raises herself from her seat.

A girl sits on a chair, with a table in front. Her appearance is in curious contrast to her immediate surroundings. She gazes wistfully at her hands, as a strange aura seemingly radiates from her. Her presence infuses the air with a seeping stillness, yet the atmosphere is that of disquiet. What is she doing here? Her calm seems to suggest an equivocal peace, but still the chair creaks, the table remains rigid, her dress sways ever so gently, ever so quietly. Her whole weight is on the table, as if she were preparing to spring upon someone. Suddenly, the calm in her eyes is shattered, it flashes as if in trembling anticipation. Slowly, she moves.

At first, she jerks ever so little, as if to unglue her from the chair. Then, she slowly raises herself. Her head turns up, her eyes look forward.

A girl sits, a strange expression lighting her face. An unfocussed vision, but one not devoid of hope. Perhaps she waits for her lover, a man she met in the fair, a man who handed her a flower and smiled with such grace, that she could not help giving him her heart. In a waking moment of epiphany, she realized why she was brought to this earth. Why she lived, why she tread the ground, why she danced to music, why she went down to the fair every year. From her appearance, it might be concluded that the man thus postulated might be in reality a boy, for she is young as well. The embroidered dress hides her early bloom well. A special dress she wears to meet him; given away by the excessiveness of her attire and anxiety in her eye.

For a moment, her eyes reflect joy, and then turn to trembling. She looks up. Her lover is here. Slowly, she stands. Her heart prepares herself to go to him, yet her body resists every urge. It is a beautiful moment.

Diego

This was written almost two years ago now. I shudder to think how fast time has started moving. Only last week, it seems, that I was writing with Chiku da strumming the guitar beside me. Good times.

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Diego,

Long time since you felt

The grass beneath your feet.

Long time since you felt

The breeze showing you way.

Will you share the soft

Scraping of the blades?

Or the heavy hand

Of the fleeting wind?

Oh Diego, Diego

What happened to the symphonies

You dedicated to the mandolin?

Young tunes for the old

I still remember them.

Do you plan to set out

For the western sky,

And come to me?

To that, Diego, I will tell

I have forever to wait.

And we

Forever to live.

Does the butterfly shock you now?

The yellow wings hurt your eye?

Your emancipation is not mine

It became yours a long time ago.

The husky voice of a dawn mist-

Look at the sun,

And sing the old song again.

The one you sang

Of going back home,

And travelling together for all eternity.

Do you realise

That your reflection on the stream

Is moving, Diego?

Run with the wind

That the waves seem still-

The walls kept you to

Themselves, long enough.

The birds, Diego, they sing.

The dawn rustles

Through the dancing leaves.

Do you remember,

Or is it you learning

It all over again?

I embraced you through the walls,

It was me.

Now I open my arms

And let you go,

So that one day you

Come back to them.

The air around you is my milk, Diego-

Drink deeply from it.

Feed from me the little girl

Who you once saw in your dreams.

She, Diego, is your mandolin,

The strings- you pulled my soul.

She is the me part in you,

And me, the you part in me.

I hid your girl in the attic,

Now she's hidden far beneath.

I've held your songs long enough,

It's time you run free.

I've sung your songs long enough,

It's time you sing for me.

----------------------------------------------------

It is about Diego, a man accused of being a rebel, and imprisoned. His house razed down, his wife or lover killed. This is the thoughts of his lover, as she looks down at him, at the moment that he sets foot outside the prison walls a free man.

Have you seen a big city? A city built with the open sky above your head, with roads below your feet, with great buildings, with stories that lead on to one another. A city so big, that in a moment you could live your entire life, yet you feel the road slipping from under your feet, the sky growing dark above your head; your moment turns away like a metronome.

There is a place in this city, a place separated from the rest, a place so unclean, that the gathering dusts refuse to obey the laws of selective nature and multiply shamelessly. People come here, for this is the market district, and they throng the shops, quarrel over prices, stare clueless through others, and leave with full bags. Our story begins in such a place.

If you take the second left from the clothing store, a flight of stairs will bring you directly to an ice-cream parlour, the name being inconsequential. Leaving the first two tables on the right, you will see a boy occupying the third. He is staring at the empty cup in his hands with an expression of suspended disgruntlement, a spoon tucked inside his mouth.

A sense of dissatisfaction is pervading him, slowly, from the bottom of his feet to the tips of his fingers. But he must not be mistaken for an atheist, for he believes Him to be most kind in granting every bit of his existence.

Yet, he cannot help but feel the desire to revert back to the time when his cup was full. For, incredulous as it seems, he is feeling that he should have talked to the ice-cream. He feels, indisputably, that that would have helped. He must not be confused for a madman either, as he has solid grounds to believe thus.

A story, he surmises, would have quite untangled the knot in his heart had he related it before falling prey to more immediate desires. A story of a man so beautiful, that when he sang the birds chirped above him, when he ran, wild flowers bloomed below his feet, as great willows moved to give him way, leading on to one another. This way he ran for years, growing almost as old as the roots of the willows, yet not in appearance, till he reached a lake.

A lake so still and serene, like a mirror, that he could not resist taking a look down at it. And even as he looked, a leaf fell from a distant bough on the surface, and ripples mutilated his face. Horrified, he looked away, and left forever, shedding a single tear, a flower that still blooms beside the lake.

Yet a simple conversation would have kept him from his misery, a tale perhaps, to relate to the misunderstood. For as he talked, the lake would have turned still, and his perfect form would have been revealed.

The man in an orange raincoat

The first day when the summer breeze blows, an empty paper cup rolls through a slanting alley.

The same day, a cow notices dust clouds rising from afar. And a few garments dance on a clothesline like the world means nothing.

The cup hits a plain and comes to a standstill.

On that very day, a man stands in a field, wearing an orange raincoat. A lush green field. A field that vanishes into the horizon as a milky turquoise. An ochre road, however, pilfers the frame of its grand continuity, and cuts it into neat halves. His face is illegible.

The man in the orange raincoat looks up into the sky, and even as he looks, the white becomes riddled with specks. And as the specks steadily grow larger, a droning can be heard. Are those aeroplanes?

The first explosion makes the ground shudder. A few birds fly off. The man desperately turns around, and starts running. As he struggles to reach the bisecting path, a few more impacts turn the world in strange angles, offering new, ghastly perspectives. A rush of wind passes over him; the man in the orange raincoat raises his head and gasps for air. The planes are gone, and a settlement is in sight.

The man tumbles into the burning town, and looks around like a stranger. The grey, brown, red and yellow of the houses unify through the dancing steam. The man in the orange raincoat keeps running.

He stops. He stops in front of the whitest house you have ever seen. Untouched by the fire, it almost looks like an abode. The man enters through the white door, and walks across a long corridor. Here he reaches another door, and he pauses. Slowly he opens his raincoat, folds it neatly, and keeps it aside. The man, now no longer in an orange raincoat, opens the door.

Inside, a woman lies on a bed; a bowl of water rests beside her with a white cloth dipped in it. She looks like a drop of bliss.

He speaks – Where are they?

– They are gone, she says.

– And what about you?

– You are here.

He walks over to her, and places his hand over her bulging stomach – Yes, he says, it will be all right.