Picking Pebbles

I have spent so many quiet hours picking pebbles. Every morning after tea and oranges, I put on my sun hat, bend over the flowerbeds, and move the earth with my fingers. 

I mostly find amoeba-shaped pebbles and rocks that I toss in the small pot I carry about. Sometimes, I find bits of plastic wraps and wonder how they ended up in the garden. Twice, or at most thrice, I have found stone beads perhaps from some jewellery or other. And once, I unearthed a coin that I covered with soil again.

For company, I have mother watering the plants, spring birds now returned from their winter sojourn, and occasionally a neighbourhood cat, Manoli.

Throne of Sawdust

There’s a constant ache in my chest. But I’m forgetting again and again what’s causing it. I ask myself, “Why do I feel so?” Then I remember.

Sweety died.

And I remember her golden coat so shiny under the sun’s light as she sprang about the neighbourhood. And her soft eyes as she looked up every time I called out, “Hi girl,” from the balcony. And her haughty airs as she perched atop her throne of sawdust, paying no heed to the food that was laid out for her.

Sweety was everyone’s and no one’s. She was free. But she was so proud. She reminded me sometimes of the Little Prince’s Rose. Perhaps she had reasons enough for her pride. She was young and beautiful and feminine in her graces. She was the darling of the neighbourhood.

How she tested mumma’s patience every time she brought her food. Mumma would wait, call out her name again and again, and at last leave the warm food down below to turn cold. Sweety would still feign indifference, her nose pointing towards the heavens. But let another dog so much as sniff at her food and how she would growl.

I didn’t care much about Sweety. I had known her only two years. I had touched her only once, her soft forehead. I didn’t care much about her, at least not as much as mumma and Kriti did. Mumma composed a song for her that she sang all day, all night. And Kriti said Sweety was her own. But I didn’t care much about her. Perhaps because she didn’t care about me at all. A Rose, a Rose!

Why is mending so hard?

This train of thought began with a crashing sound. I looked down and saw my ceramic coaster in five broken pieces. How many cups of tea it had borne the heat of, how many dark round stains it had endured while I was busy poetry writing…

It happened in the early hours of the morning. I was dusting the room when my careless hand swept over the coaster and it slid off the table and onto the marble floor. Mother in the kitchen thought the monkeys had attacked us again. I told her it was only a coaster and she let out a sigh.

I picked the pieces and left them on my table. I made the bed, wiped the mirror and the windowsill, and opened the window for fresh air before returning to the coaster pieces. I would have thrown them, why certainly I would have, and I almost did. But they didn’t look beyond repair.

The Imperfect Jewellery Box

For the past many months, I had been searching for a jewellery box.

My search began because of a present. For my 24th birthday in February, my parents gifted me a dainty, darling diamond ring. I wore it at all times during the day, and even slept wearing it a few nights.

But every time I took it off, I would have no choice but to abandon it to the cold and impersonal jeweller’s box it came in.

And so, for the past few months, I found myself strolling the online marketplaces, looking for the perfect box to safeguard my ring.

There was a glass box with a tiny clasp I liked, but its fragile transparency stopped me from getting it. Another was a velvet box with floral prints, but it seemed too rectangular for my round ring. I may have liked a wooden box, too, but was put off by the reviews. And thus was my hunt for the perfect jewellery box on until…

The other day I was cleaning some old and forgotten drawers with my mother. That’s when I first saw it. It was a box of the perfect everything—colour, shape, size, and even touch.

About a Cardboard Box

Was it always so? Did I always need a little space of my own, my solitary abode I could retreat to every now and then? Or is this need for solitude a new awakening within me, one sprung from the same desire that makes me stitch words together?

I remember a cardboard box from my girlhood days. It perhaps came with a refrigerator, or maybe a computer when they were built massive. Or was it not a T.V. carton?

I can’t tell exactly how it came into my possession. But I was more excited about the box itself than the valuable item it was made for. I asked my parents if I could keep it. (My mother still calls me a collector of all things useless.)

For a whole summer, I called the cardboard box home. In the afternoons, I would carry it outdoors and lock myself away for hours. I remember asking papa to carve a door in its frame (I wasn’t allowed to use paper-cutters then). I also made a latch of sorts with bits of cardboard so as to keep intruders at bay.

Should You Become Digital

Should you become digital
While I rot in this human cloak,
Should you travel the world
Through giant computer networks
While I make great efforts to rise
From bed to kitchen to garden to desk,
Should you meet every being in the world
In a mere matter of minutes
While I from one weekend to next
Wait for our grandchild to visit,
Should you tell me your digital world
Far exceeds mine in beauty and tech
While I still love and live in this
Refusing to press that glorious button,
Should you go on living and living
While I battle for breath and die,
Oh how tragic it would be then
To hear the sound of the afterlife
To meet gods and devils and angels
And all our ancestors and friends,
To taste the sweet fruit of eternity
And at last the posthumous bliss
And all and all and all and all
And all and more without you.