Speculations anyone?

"You're still the same! Just as you were in Junior college." She said with no hint of incredulity.
"Really?" I ask, stunned.

Cringe.
Cringe.

Brain doing a mental check:
Should I let my hair down and show her how wild it can get?
Should I rattle off unsavory invectives I've picked up over the years, in different languages?
Should I flash her a packet of goldflake lights?
Or my shiny new credit card?
Try getting her into an argument about Mumbai v/s Bombay or Obama's policies?

She's judged me. 
But she tries to be judicious


As an after thought she adds, "No but I'm sure there's lots more up there now." (Pointing to the wonderful brain inside her wonderful head)


"So do you still attend the Music fest in college?" (the college I left five years back)
"No" I say.

It's her turn to cringe now. That's it.I've confirmed her speculation .
I exit, so she can be happy about her judgment.
 
I wonder why I stopped by to say a hi to her in the first place.

In this country, speculations are a national pastime. Or so I speculate and comfort myself.

Rumblings

I sit back and stare at the blankness of the white dashboard on my screen. My fingers itch to type something. But I punch in this instead. Words and images whir through the mess that is my head. I momentarily feel like something is going to burst. With a short but loud 'pop'. Petering into a soft fizzle. Nothing happens. I think of a few well rehearsed lines to write, so I could sound grand, or may be profound or may be interesting. I scroll  the gray button on my black mouse up and down. Randomly. The bloody auto editor underlines my 'grey' in red and indicates to me  I am wrong. I correct it. I spell it as g-r-a-y. The utter blandness of my writing of the past months strikes me. The remarkable insignificance of my words makes me cringe. There's an unusual cold wind rustling the orange curtains in my window.The soft beat of the wind chime does little to drown the noise of the silence around me. I switch on the television just to make sure the noises inside my head become inaudible. The very happy people on Channel V make me cringe a little more. I switch it off. Now i can hear the comfortable breathing of my dog. It is in perfect harmony with his little tummy which goes up and down and up with every breathe. The curtain rustles a little more. This is uncannily cold by my city standards.

I decide to call it a day.
I'll savour the cold, so rare in my city, on my train ride to work tomorrow.

Kerala Diaries Part II

Some funny sign boards I spotted propped up in different places in the motherland. Within a context or despite one, I think you'd still chortle. No?

Kerala Diaries

The winding drive through the ghats had made us a little dizzy. As we stepped out of the vehicle a strange mix of smells wafted through the thin mountain air. It was at once sweet, spicy, fragrant, delectable and jerky. A warm shower of yellow orchids hung over our heads. We softly began to tread through what was a Spice Garden in the mountains of Thekkady, in Kerala.

The Spice trail that we were whisked off on was led by an exuberant, dramatic gentleman called Paul. He took us through a long winding tour of a spice garden that grew every conceivable variety of herbs and spices found in the small town of Thekkady and near by Kumily. Though the spice garden was colorful and vibrant with an abundance of heliconias, shoe flowers, balsams, bigonias, dahlias and bougainvillea flowers, this is my favorite shot from the hour long Spice trail.

A lone coconut tree towering through the mass of green, almost touching the blueness of the day sky. There was something about this tree trunk that made me stand around it, and peer at the tree through this angle.I soon realized that, if I cajoled it a little with the might of my palm, the whole tree coyly swayed from one side to another, the palm leaves tingling to the tips.Thin beams of sunlight were caught in the leaves, only to soon fall down as a shimmer.

If only all cajoling was this simple.
:)