The Pensieve

Sometimes I wish I was Albus Dumbledore. I wonder how it would have felt pulling out those white silvery memories from my head and putting them into the pensieve….only to live those moments again at a less busy time.

Or would I?

It is probably a damp forest out here. The dark sky has a distant whitish hue which some might discard as the moon. The silence of night is brutally murdered by the fierce wind that is blowing through. The leaves are probably warning about the tempest that is arriving. They anyway are probably the only things moving tonight.

Or are they?

I am escaping them. They are probably the most ferocious of wolves, running after me, with the deadliest of fangs that somehow look voracious in the silvery night. They don’t need excuses. They need blood. Anyone’s blood…..and today it’s probably me. But I’m running. I’ll elude them.

Or would I?

I stumbled. And I can feel their fangs piercing my naked chest. I can smell my own blood and now their fangs are red with my tissue. Their unforgiving eyes know no excuse, no reason to set me free. And I have no option, but to surrender….to life…. It’s hurting and it’s hurting real bad.

Or is it?

Relax! It’s nothing. It probably just belongs to the pensieve.

Or does it?

When eyes speak.....

A lazy afternoon, and I helped her to bed, careful not to make that eye contact. And then ignoring her completely, I took the chair beside the bed, managing to steal a look at her somehow.

A pair of small big eyes that I call mine, pleaded a caress from me, stirring something deep inside....

I smiled, and hurried to appear busy reading the newspaper which I was not reading, impressed by her ways of pampering my "need to be needed"- completely, fiercely, violently, exclusively.....

So lost was I in my thoughts, that I don't know when unknowingly I started looking at her. Dammit !! She was reading every word I had in my mind, carefully hiding her triumph with an 'O! so innocent' complaint. I wanted to pull off, but it was already too late, and I had just one option left - returning her gaze !

I did, and with some assistance from a frown, and a tilt in my neck, my rebuking eyes asked her " What happened ?"

With the same innocent complaint and a hurt look on her face, she blinked.....

I promised myself I'll never forgive her for the air she left me breathless with.....

A perfect evening

Yesterday evening I was thinking about life.As I was sitting in my balcony I thought everything was just "as usual". The same old maddening crowd spreading haywire, the same old deafening voices that probably weren't speaking anything, the same old chirping birds back to their nests now.

Yes it was a perfect September Pittsburgh evening, and as I was staring into the emptiness, I couldn't help noticing a toddler with its young mother, in their lawn. I wondered what game was he trying to play, or what were the rules.... or did he even know what are rules. From all I could see he was just trying to throw a ball, and then chase it. His mother was apparently doing nothing, except for turning around and smiling to her child when he laughed at "successfully" chasing the ball.

I wondered what his mother might be thinking right now. And suddenly the empty voices became louder. "He should be coming home any moment now" or "I am so lucky I have him." I was amused to imagine what she might not even be thinking. And my attention shifted to another girl who was crossing the street, with her backpack hung carelessly round her shoulders and headphones plugged deep into her ears...." May be he will ask me out this weekend..." or "Will he call tonight?" And again, carelessly I moved on to the old couple sitting in the balcony across the street, sipping coffee. "I am so happy that 47 years back, I married you" or " We would be grandparents tomorrow !"

Yes it was a perfect September evening, and I noticed that the leaves had already begun to change their colors. And suddenly new fears appeared out of nowhere.

And I heard louder voices now. " If only you had stayed to find me waiting for you with your son, when you return from office" and "I can't believe you dumped me for her" and " I wish I could have this cancer instead of you"

I couldn't take it any longer.

And now when I sit here, writing nothing, I can probably realize that it indeed was a perfect evening. And everything was so much "as usual". Yet so different in some way. Isn't it amazing that life is so immense? Every face in the mad crowd has his/her own story, and that every deafening voice has something to say? We are probably just too much absorbed in ourselves to notice it.