Kamalalayam

My grandmother, like everybody's grandmother , was an old woman. She had been old and wrinkled for the twenty two years that I had known her. People said that she had once been young and pretty. My grandfather and my grandmother's anniversary photo was hung above the mantelpiece in the drawing-room. He flaunted a nicely cropped hair and a loose-fitting clothes. The wrinkles on his face, especially his forehead made him look atleast a hundred years old. He doesn't look like a person who would have a wife or children. He looks as if he
could only have lots and lots of grandchildren. She often told me of the games she used to play as a child. That seemed quite absurd and undignified on her part as i treated it like fables of the Prophets she used to tell me.

She had always been short and slim. Her face was a crisscross of wrinkles running from everywhere to everywhere. No, i was certain she had always been as i had known her. Old, so terribly old that she could not have grown older, and had stayed at the same age for twenty two years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful. She worked like an ant in the house in stainless sarees with one hand holding a utensil and the other telling the beads of her rosary. Her silver locks were scattered untidily over her pale, puckered face, and her lips constantly moved in inaudible prayer. Yes, she was beautiful. She was like the winter landscape in the mountains, an expanse of white serenity breathing peace and contentment.

My grandmother and I were good friends. My parents left me with her when they were busy with their own not-so-busy schedule. She used to wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school. She said her morning prayer in a monotonous sing-song while she bathed and dressed me in the hope that I would listen and get to know it by heart. I listened because I loved her voice but never bothered to learn it. Then she used to fetch my school bag in which she already cleaned and arranged my books and checked the level of ink in my pen. After a breakfast of a thick, stale chapatti with a little butter and sugar spread on it with a glass of milk, we walked till the bus stop. She carried several stale chapatties with her for the street dogs.

My grandmother always came with me till the bus stop because it was attached to a temple. In the afternoon, before I arrived, she used to sit and wait for me in the bus stop reading the scriptures. When I arrived and she finished, we would walk back together. This time the street dogs ould meet us at the temple door. They used to follow us to our home growling and fighting each other for the chapatties we threw to them.

When my parents could comfortably settle in a bigger, better apartment, that was a turning point in our friendship. Although we shared the same room, my grandmother no longer came to bus stop with me. There were no dogs in the streets and she took to feeding sparrows in the balcony of our new house.

As the years rolled by we saw less of each other. For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school. When I came back she would ask me what the teacher had taught me. I would tell her English words and little things of westen science and learning, the law of gravity, Archimedes' principle, the world being round, etc. This made her unhappy. She could not help me with my lessons. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about God and the scriptures. She rarely talked to me after that.

When I went up to University, I was sent to hostel to live on my own. The common link of friendship was snapped. My grandmother accepted her seclusion with resignation. She rarely left the kitchen to talk to anyone. From sunrise to sunset she spent time in kitchen preparing something or the other and reciting prayers. Only in the afternoon she relaxed for a while to feed the sparrows. While she sat in the verandah breaking the bread into little bits, hundreds of little birds collected round her creating a veritable bedlam of chipings. Some came and perched on her legs, others on her shoulders. Some sat on her head. She smiled but never shoo'd them away. It used to be the happiest half-hour of the day for her.

When I decided to shift to a different place for work, I was sure my grandmother would be upset. I would be away, and at her age one could never tell. But my grandmother could. She was not even sentimental. She came to leave me at the railway station but did not talk or show any emotion. Her lips moved in prayer, her mind was lost in prayer. Her fingers were busy telling the beads of her rosary. Silently she kissed my forehead, and when I left I cherished the moist imprint as perhaps the last sign of physical contact between us.

But that was not so. After four years I came back home and met her at the station. She did not look a day older. She still had no time for words, and while she clasped me in her arms I could hear her reciting her prayer. Even on the first day of my arrival, her happiest moments were with her sparrows whom she fed longer and with frivolous rebukes.

In the evening, a change came over her. She did not pray. She collected the women of the neighbourhood, went for rounds of our block and sat in a park for som chit-chat. We had to persuade her t avoid over-straining. That was the 1st time since I had known her that she did not pray.

The next morning she was taken ill. It was a mild fever and the doctor told us that it would go. But my grandmother thought differently. She told us that her end was near. She said that, since only a few hours before the close of the last chapter of her life she omitted to pray, she was not going to waste any more time talking to us. We protested. But she ignored our protests. She lay peacefully in bed praying and telling her beads. Even before we could suspect, her lips stopped moving and the rosary fell from her lifeless fingers. A peaceful pallor spread on her face and we knew that she was dead.

We lifted her off the bed and as is customary, laid her on the ground and covered her with red shroud. After a few hours of mourning we left her alone to make arrangements for her funeral.

In the evening, we went to her room with a crude stretcher to take her to be cremated. The sun was setting and had lit her room and verandah with a blaze of golden light. We stopped half-way. All over the verandah and in her room right up to where she lay dead and stiff wrapped in the red shroud, thousands of sparrows sat scattered on the floor. There was no chirping. We felt sorry for the birds and my mother fetched some bread for them. She broke it into little crumbs, the way my grandmother used to, and threw it to them. The sparrows took no notice of the bread. When we carried my grandmother's corpse off, they flew away quietly.

Next morning the sweeper swept the bread crumbs into the dust bin.

I ll miss you badly! :'(

Luv u... {:-*)

Do u think I've told u
Tat "I love you" enuf?

Have i let u knw without u
Lyf wud be extremely tuff?

U r everything tat gives me
Tat 1 reason 2 live.

N all i have 4 u in return
My heart n soul i give

U r all tat makes me happy
N u r all tat makes me smile

U show me u 'd do anything
N go tat extra mile

I love u more than u cud knw
U r my 1 true love

Our hearts they beat d same beat
Our hands fit like a glove

U shield d rain n stop d pain
N keep me safe frm harm

Thr is no place i 'd rather be
Than held tightly in ur arms

I love u more than yesterday
N i think its time i told

U r d 1 i want 4eva
D 1 i 'll always hold!

You're my Rainbow

Everyday I walk around in a world full of interwoven dreams, One with drops of joy, clouds of sorrow and an air of intention lying above my head. I'm counting those symmetrical tiles of kaleidoscopic space, thinking of all the colors unseen And then I look up at you, and you bring back every color on my face and in my heart and I realise what life means





You're my Violet, the passion in my soul
You're my Indigo, the deepness of my sky
You're my Blue, the calmness of my sea
You're my Green, the everlasting color of eternity
You're my Yellow, the sunshine when I'm down
You're my Orange, the fun, craziness and beyond
You're my Red, the anger in my eyes
But most importantly, You're my Rainbow, The melangé of all insignia, momentum and the working of my world

:'(

शीशे के घरों में देखो तो पत्थर दिल वाले बसते हैं
जो प्यार को खेल समझते हैं, तोड़ के दिल को हँसते हैं

जब वादे भुलाने से पहले खुद को ही भुलाया जाता था
अब कसमें कितनी झूठी हैं और वाडे कितने कच्चे हैं

अजी प्यार सौदा दिलों का है जो ये व्यापारी क्या जाने
ये प्यार तो अपनी पूजा है दौलत के पुजारी क्या जाने

अपनी हर बात छुपाते है दीवानों के फितारे कच्चे है
जो प्यार को खेल समझते हैं और तोड़ के दिल को हँसते हैं
शीशे के घरों में देखो तोह पठार दिलवाले बसते हैं