Time on my tongue.
From the porch where the sharp midday shadow divides the earth into two: my cool mud house against the inferno outside— from this porch, I throw my left hand out, on its own into the scorching light for five minutes, and it returns red all over as if beaten with a bamboo, and wet under my mechanical watch, HMT Janata Devanagari.
I remove the watch and lick the sweat off the wrist: it is salty with a hint of steel from the watch cover.
I may well have tasted time. I may well have learned Devanagari by heart.
Spilled water in a blue city.
In this photograph, the spilled water on a street in Jodhpur is as golden as sunsets.
—and as blue as the houses surrounding it, as blue as the sky that spilled it.
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. December 2020.
Small messages of spring ⋮ A gust of wind.
Not every gust of wind brings a shower
of tender petals—
so soft and white, resembling the moon’s light.
Nearby trees of apricot and cherry
disintegrate helplessly
all over my front garden, into my glass of chai—
like two people falling in love.
Countless small moons under the unrelenting sun
scattered
all over my front garden.
I gather a fistful and chew happily.
Small messages of spring ⋮ A little honey bee.
A little honey bee
with stripes of a Bengal tiger
climbs
on a tender apricot petal—
A little Bengal tiger of Ranthambore
feasts
on the tender flesh of a chital—
Apricot flowers in bloom. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. March 2022.
Small messages of spring ⋮ Cherry stars.
In my new lovely home made of the Himalayan mud and cow dung
I turn on the butter-yellow porch lights:
white flowers of the nearby cherry tree gleam
soft white stars slouching over my front garden.
I turn off the porch lights:
distant stars come to light
millions of them slouching over my cherry tree and its soft flowers.
I need to get the hell out of my bed.
Even the mynas of Vashisht, with their little yellow legs, walk more in a single day than I’ve walked in the last two years. They walk in spite of their magical gift of flight. They walk as if they are villagers walking around in the village, not birds.
What’s my excuse?
The fruit of the night.
Tonight, the fruit of the night swinging in the starry sky is finally ripe but on a higher branch, unreachable as always.
You cannot grab it or bite it, but you can taste it if you stick your tongue out. It tastes of warm milk mixed with fresh snow.
The full moon from Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. March 2022.
Spring is here.
Over the snowy mountains, the white star blazes golden light from a corner of the blue sky. Against the blue sky, a black body in flight. A crow with a soft-yellow morsel in his beak. In such golden light and against the enormous blue sky, there is nothing more luminous than this yellow morsel.
Because it is spring, spring is here.
This Kathiawari bear is out of the blissful hibernation of winter and snow. Brain cells shaking off the fog. New thoughts streaming in with no effort.
Outside and in my crazy brain, spring is everywhere.
The petroleum jelly has gone back to being soft, and my lips too. Gone are the days of snow and it-might-snow, the days of bones stiff under layers of clothes, the days of hibernation — all of which I prefer and love, by the way. Everyone is outside, every little life singing an intensely green song. If someone was still hibernating yesterday, today they are out and busy. Every day is new, every day you bump into someone new.
The sun is out, springing, because spring is here.
A crow and a kite.
Earlier today around noon, I saw two crows soaring over the upper-Manali valley, matching the heights of the mountains. A hot but windy day and they were on a steady glide, once even circling as eagles and kites do.
While I was watching them with my head bent backwards, I was not only admiring them flying so high, two black bodies against the blue sky, but also trying to confirm if they were indeed crows. I was trying to zoom in on them with squinted eyes, waiting desperately for them to do something crow-like. But the pair disappeared behind the houses, leaving me baffled, perhaps for life.
As I’m not very sure that they were crows, as they were so brilliant at pretending to be kites, I’ll call them mini-kites for now — until I see them again, which I hope I do. And when I see them again, I’ll fly with them so they cannot disappear. I’ll pretend to be a crow with two crows who like to pretend to be kites.