Feelings...

It's weird and strange...this perfect amalgamation of two souls to create this weird strange third soul that stands in between lost to both lands but in a strange and weird way at home in both.

You wouldn't take my dad to be a sentimental person. He is for all purposes a practical person filled with so much common sense and worldly words and good practical advice. The person you go to when you want to know the best way to divide up your assets, where to invest money. But hidden somewhere in the commercial little lines of seemingly trivial Diwali card greetings simmering ever so lightly on the surface is a depth you'd miss if you didn't catch it in just the right light. A touch of sentimentalism that doesn't always use words to communicate. A lasting embrace at the airport. His actions that convey more than words ever could. Holiday postcards that fill up suitcases and leave no room for clothes.

And then you have my mum's intuitiveness. Being able to feel without someone saying a word. Knowing what's in the air before it ever materializes. The kind of intuitiveness that predicts the future. Being so keenly aware of someone's feelings that she could reach out and touch them, the feelings not the person. It's an odd gift - being able to make feelings come alive. Her hug when you didn't even fully realize your soul was aching for one, a hug that fills up your entire inner being, warms you so completely on the inside and makes you sad when it's done. Feelings that don't need words.

And then there is me trapped in the middle. Caught somewhere between that wistful sentimentalism and being able to touch feelings. Unable to find words.

Ever felt homesickness so hopelessly acute that you could reach out and hold all of that lost nostalgic sentimentalism in your hands?

The long journey home.

It’s like stepping into a childhood dream and living it all over again. A foggy memory come true. It’s reaching and touching the nostalgia that until that moment lay buried deep within. It’s allowing my heart to feel again. A deep sigh. A tired exhalation. A secret spoken out loud. It’s touching a portrait from long ago and watching it come alive. It’s smelling the jasmine out on the porch and finding my way through the lost alleys of my childhood. The familiar smell of you. It’s closing the door to the seven year distance between us. The past merging into the present. My two worlds collide. It’s knowing I’ll see you soon. The long journey home.

~vagabond~ © 2010

Unwritten

The saddest story ever told is the one that hasn’t been written yet. A dark tale of a heart that weeps, its blood red nostalgic tears seeping and staining the dirty white snow in which it lays. Sitting atop once fond memories that now lie buried deep below this frozen ground. The cold winter wind moans in grief, sweeping furiously through the landscape before pausing reverently at this mound. This graveyard of memories, I visited it today. Bringing flowers, I placed my hand on my heart that weeps nostalgically, not once daring to uncover the memories from their burial ground, lest they haunt me. Not once daring to tell the saddest story ever told.

~vagabond~ © 2010

Writer's High

It’s the struggle of your heart to find just the right words with which to express itself. That obsessive urge to find clarity that consumes you. It’s the longing to be heard of the voice that screams inside of you that you constantly muffle with the noise of the world around you. A lost identity that searches for a face.

It’s that moment in which you sit at your writing desk and the world disappears around you, melting into an insignificant nothingness and all that remains are the memories that you revive, the dark fears that you confront, and the dreams that you find freedom in.

It’s that heat of passion in which your soul recognizes its truest self and spills itself out into the words that your pen furiously scratches onto paper.

That’s writer’s high.

~vagabond~ © 2010

In memory

Your woolen shawl that smelt a strange comforting fragrance of vicks and ointment. The dentures that we loved to hide. The way you would mix up small pieces of deboned boiled fish in small pieces of rotlo and feed it to me when I was little. When you gifted me my first ever white jeans and I swore they were the coolest thing any teenager could own. Our banter back and forth when you would ask me to massage your legs. The knick knacks you’d always have hidden away in your closet that you’d dig out for us to have. A perfume from one part of the world, a lotion bottle from another. Little bits of jewelry that you’d ask me if I liked. My favorite pickles that you sent for me all the way from India and asked me if I wanted anything else. That night when we went for a walk, inching along the footpath, you holding on to my hand and stopped for bhel puri at the food stall. When you scolded me for being a spoilt brat. The loving way in which you would place your hand on my head and ask me if I was happy. How you held on to each one of us and hugged us for the longest time when we left. And ran out the door onto the porch to receive us when we came back. Tears of sorrow turning to tears of joy. Your sense of humor. Your laugh that I’ll never see again. The letters I never wrote. The phone calls I never made. The years that passed us by. And then the phone conversation I had with you when you found out about my love for a man you’d never ever met and all you asked was “is he a good man?”. Your unconditional acceptance. The face in the mirror that I inherited from you. The care you always showed even when there was just silence from my end. The words I never said. The many excuses that I made. I never once said how much I care for you, and it’s the deepest regret I’ll ever have.

Unending conversations, countless images, the many words both spoken and unspoken over the years, endless memories that ebb and flow through the seas of nostalgia in my head, now make me cry.

I know I don’t say much when I should, but just for one last moment I wish I could say and you could hear that I miss you so much, grandma. And that I do really care.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Fate

Do you believe in fate?

That sneaky old lady who creeps upon you when you least expect it? Startling you and then laughing uproariously at her own dirty joke. That mean, cranky old hag who carries all your good fortune in that dirty sack over her shoulder and laughs menacingly at you as you stare at the empty packets of nothingness she hands over to you when you beg? You know, that stern crabby woman who raps on your knuckles with her long walking stick, pulling out a scraggly list of all your misdeeds, remembering your many flaws long after you’ve forgotten them. That grouchy old rat who is impossible to please.

Do you believe in fate?

She just curled up her wrinkled lips and smiled at me today.

~vagabond~ © 2009

Relationships

So fluid. So mercurial.

Dissolved before ever created.

Created before it could dissolve.

Existent even amidst nonexistence.

Nonexistent even amidst its existence.

A concrete identity even when unnamed.

A slippery nothingness even when named.

The complicated web of trust.

Fine threads. Delicate strings.

A beautiful silk tapestry. But pull one string and it comes undone.

Cynical and me?

I just let you reach in and grab my heart.

~vagabond~ © 2009