LOVE

Love.

‘ I was walking on a windy day across a park

and wondering what love was.

Then I saw the sun,
and felt its warmth.

Each day it rose,

and woke up the entire world.

Unconditional, without any terms,

Lighting up each day

Across the world.

And  as I leaned to pluck a daisy,

Fresh and fragrant,

There love was,

With all its magnificence.’ 

Photographs

Life doesn’t wait for anybody. It is a flowing river, gurgling and bubbling. Sometimes its blue and lazy, sometimes it’s fast and dark and scary. 

I was always scared that life will pass me by and I’ll still be at one place. The other day when I climbed up to the terrace of the building that I stay, I could see the entire city. It was dark, and lights were twinkling everywhere, in the planes and on the faraway hills. They say we are busy these days, working, studying, reading, and laughing. But in these exact moments, life passes us by.  It slips away stealthily and we mortals can do nothing but live. 

And that is the exact reason why I click photos of everything. 

Every laughter, every sorrow. So that later, I don’t forget that what a ride my life has been. Later when I’m old and my hairs are greying and when I no longer can run up a flight of stairs without thinking twice about my knees.  

I remember when I was younger, I used to scourge my granny’s house every time I visited her, looking for a photo of my grandfather. He was tall, they used to tell me. He was calm, calmer than my father, they said.
But I never saw him and that thought made me sad.
He must have led an incredible life, must have seen incredible places, and must have been an incredible man. But he’s gone now. Entirely and completely. And that makes me sad. If only there were photographs. If only.

 
I’ve realised that birthdays aren’t too much of a happy thing, maybe even a bit ironic. But what the hell.

 I want to live every moment, cherish every rainy day, fall in love with every day that the sun rises with its happy face. I’ve realised that love is of so many different kinds and so many different colours.

 And I want photographs of each shade. 

Life lessons in general

She had always wondered what it’d be to live life on the edge. To let life take your breath away for a minute, and then give it back to you again. And what it’d be like to be numb, to not feel anything at all. So sometimes she’d walk up to the top of the small hill near her house and scream till her lungs felt limp. She’d dip her hand in a bucket of freezing cold water on a December morning till it felt numb. Her parents weren’t worried. They never were. And when her friends used to complain that their mothers would spend too much time deciding on the flavour of their birthday cakes, she’d laugh at them. She never had birthday parties, her parents never bought her a cake with stupid, silly stuff written on it with pink frosting. It was a waste of time, they said.

She found her refuse in books. Travelogues, fiction, autobiographies, poetries and an atlas her father gifted her. They were better than the friends she had at school, they never told her she wasn’t good enough. They never demanded things off her. They told her of places she’d never seen, of people she’d never met.

And as she grew up, life happened. She found out that everything in this world runs on trust.
Trust that tomorrow when we wake up, the sun will be up again. Trust that when we walk by the side of the road, the cars won’t run us over.  Trust that when a friend says he’ll be there for you, he will be. 

And then she met people. People who she believed couldn’t exist. Friends she thought she could never make. Friends who’d dance in the middle of a crowded road just for the sake of it. Friends who didn’t question her, didn’t need answers, didn’t come with terms and conditions. Friends who didn’t judge her, didn’t make her feel like less of a human being, who put friendship before anything else.
Life is a cocktail of emotions, bitter, sweet, spicy and bland at times. Though there was nobody who held her when she needed to be held, though all her life she’d never known what the fuck love was,  she didn’t care now. 

All she knew, all she ever knew was that she was alive. 

And hell, it felt awesome.