Sunday, October 23, 2011

Strange People


Jute bedspreads,
Fragile smiles,
Sunburnt fingers.

Nervous silences,
Vaporizing hope,
Piercing implosions.

Evolution.

It is a strange place,
We are strange people.
           ***

©Rasagya Kabra, October 23, 2011



Thursday, October 13, 2011

Musical Living


“There isn’t an answer to it, I know,” she said, “but sometimes familiar places and ideas dig up old memories and the fact that those memories are indeed true, seems incredible. You realize that you’ve come such a long way that you can’t even trace back the factors that led to this journey, this culmination of things that you never thought would happen to you, but that you ended up dealing with, nevertheless. With this realization comes an odd little jab somewhere inside, this little prickly feeling that just crops up. Somebody frames a sentence in a certain way, and you reply back in a certain way, then an invisible gear is touched in your brain and you are just transported back to a different time, a different place, a different person, but a similar conversation. And then you find it hard to believe that that conversation ever took place, simultaneously realizing that the conversation happening now will also be stacked up in the archives of your brain, and may become hard to believe in the future. But that’s not the point, and you realize that. You know this conversation will have its own nuances, its own rhythm and its own music. And it is in music that life breathes, uncoils and dances. It is this music that must go on.”

© Rasagya Kabra, October 12, 2011

"But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else- the cold and where he'd go in it- was outside, for a while anyway."
-Raymond Carver, Distance and Other Stories

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Mother


The baby has light eyes, unlike any of those previously born to her. It is a boy.  He has minute eyelashes, a hint of eyebrows and a head of good, black hair.

She looks at his little hands that end in nails like hers. Square. She puts her finger in his fist and he wraps his tiny fingers around it. She kisses his forehead. There are tears in her eyes. All of him is worth rupees two lakhs. That is his price.

She puts him to her breast, for the first and the last time. He will not be told that she exists. None of them were ever told that she existed. She calls him Gopal. She whispers the name in his ears, the name by which she is going to remember this boy with the light eyes and the head of good, black hair. 

© Rasagya Kabra, October 5, 2011