Beginnings...

She thought of the smell of spices,
The sound of mustard hissing on oil.
Old women gossiping about the youth's vices,
Watching men returning from the day's toil.

Gone was the clear blue sky from her past,
In it's place were the buildings anew.
She looked for shards of her youth among the debris of the blast,
All she came up with was soot and torn clothes a few.

Tiny drops fell on her face,
She looked up to see the gods from heaven shed tears.
Their tears transformed her place,
Even made her forget her own fears.

The smell of wet rain on damp earth and green lawns,
A smell that remained the same from before.
Rain that washed away the blood and spoke of a new dawn,
Made her wish to lift higher and soar.

She would pick up the broken remnants from the past,
And walk towards a whole new dawn, full of life, full of hope.

p.s:- The photos are part of an amazing collection I found @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyforever

Laaga Chunari mein Daag

Humble readers of yours truly!

I watched laaga chunari mein daag and of course "Fallen from Grace" was an inspiration I drew from that movie.

It was a very disturbing movie but the ending came as quite a disappointment. It is not the love for poignant endings in me speaking, just that it was very unrealistic.

So those of you who have watched the movie, let me know how you would have liked the movie to end or if you agree with the ending.

A curious writer,

Waiting for reader comments!

Fallen from Grace

A little girl played in a garden,
Brown legs peeping from a spotted frock.
She played games of innocence with little men,
Building castles with sand and rock.

A young woman stood at the fence,
All signs of the little girl wrapped in layers of silk.
Her eyes shone with the same innocence,
Even as he tried to capture moments in a click.

She gathered the crumpled sheets around her,
Like broken pieces of her self, they lay.
She shuddered at the reflection in the mirror,
Seeing little of her former self from an older day.

The sari looked radiant as it fell from her shoulders,
There would be a look of envy of every woman's face.
Only she knew that she had lost her precious innocence,
With the fallen sari, she too had fallen from grace!

p.s:- Inspired by the movie Laaga Chunari mein Daag

The Pink Slip

He saw her from a distance and even this far away she seemed beautiful, basking in the afternoon sun. She looked almost ethereal in these surroundings and conjured up such passions in him that he knew not existed. He longed to get inside her, feel her wetness ,explore places unknown to mankind. The feeling was one of great exhilaration , a feeling of being on top of the world. He longed to take her to the middle of the ocean and watch the sun go down in her presence. He loved to watch the drops of water, much like beads of sweat clinging on to her body, waiting to explode.
He was so close to fulfilling his hunger that he knew not how to wait. There was nothing between them now. All these days seemed much like the dress rehearsal for the show and he was waiting for the curtains to go up and reveal all on the final day of show time.
She was Apsara, the dancing goddess who was to take him to all the places man longs to see, much less set foot. Apsara, his blue boat. He had readied her for the trip he was going to make two months from today and now as she stood proudly , he felt a pride glowing inside of him. She was entirely his and he just needed the money from his next two months of work to set off on his trip, one he had been eyeing and planning ever since he could remember. He was trying to imagine the look of surprise on his boss's face when he reveals his plans, how his eyes would enlarge , first in disbelief and then utter shock. How he would beg and plead him to change his mind. Change his mind, indeed!
He went into his office, humming a fast number and found the office unusually silent. His usually cluttered desk looked pretty neat. Maybe they are paying the cleaners a little extra to clean his desk. He sat at his chair and that was when he noticed it. The little pink slip sitting among all those files staring at him, even mocking him slightly. He picked it up and all he could manage was a smirk.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist- A Review

A novel I started after I returned from work and finished before I hit the bed. So, what was so compelling about this story that it made me finish the book in one stroke with occasional breaks for cooking dinner and consuming the cooked?
There were a couple of remarkable features about the author's style. I liked his narrative style, speaking to the reader on behalf of the stranger, his neatly etched out details of events in the cafe in Lahore and a gradual transition to a similar event in the larger, more promising city of New York. The open ended finish keeps the reader second guessing almost till the end.
The scenes where the author describes his conflicting feelings towards "his" country and "the other" country have been well brought out.
The love affair between the protagonist and Erica is at best passable, a mere detail that could have been done away with and would have had no difference to the narrative. The author displays a lot of emotion in his descriptions of his feelings towards Erica, but they seem not to leave any imprints on the minds of the reader.
It is indeed a tale of a man caught between two different realms. It is a reflection of what most people have been ranting in the wake of all the recent atrocities: We love our country, no we dont hate Americans, yes we hate American politics Oh yes, we definitely HATE WAR.

Back to Black

Some things never change!

Lost Childhood

Bright red ribbons holding neat long pigtails,
Pleated skirt showing bruised knee,
Sitting on the porch awaiting unread mails,
From lands so far, one can’t even see.

Short silky bouncy hair,
Adorning a bright cheery frock,
Writing furiously sitting on a chair,
Shaking legs wrapped in silken sock.

Memories cloud them thoughts,
Of playing games at twilight,
Of enacting plays thick with plots,
Of very many silly fights.

Each hoping against hope hopen,
Of returning to times of eternal childhood,
Hiding and seeking the other in a den,
Laughing in wonderment at times far too good.

As pen strokes fill white paper,
As waiting hands clutch unopened letters,
They each know that childhood is really over,
To reveal times that may be worse, may be better.

Amidst a deluge of emotions and mental turbulence,
They each embark upon the final journey,
Of leaving behind sweet girlhood in all its innocence,
Graduating into women creating their own destiny.

Pretty women entering a man’s world,
So many aspirations, so many hopes,
Revealing tales so far untold,
Scared and shy, yet marching ahead like antelopes!