Paper speaketh

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The lines on my face bear testimony,

To the endless pouring from you.

You fill me with stories untold,

Colouring me with your soul.

You entwine me between your fingers and I let you,

Always springing back to your smile of satisfaction.

You shape my very being as wont,

And I willingly become your proud creation.

It is not a few times that I act as a conduit,

To deliver your emotions unto others as though my own.

I can calm your mind like no other,

With a dialogue unspoken yet conversed.

I remind you about all that is important in life,

No matter that the evidence was an impatient scrap.

I lead you to dream through my words,

Basking in the proximity and comfort I can bring you.

You have me near you always, dear one;

I cannot imagine the white vaccum otherwise.

Heart to heart

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I will remember today as the day when V's first ever best friend moved away as her family relocated to another part of the country.  The event moved me to write a post about it although V firmly believes her best friend is going to be back in 45 days. They had apparently discussed the whole situation at length at school and had come to conclusions about many things including the fact that the best friend had to walk all the way to the new city (4 hours away by air) and V had to give her company. I dint know how to react to this apart from giving both of them warm hugs. Such a deep friendship at such an impressionable age! The teachers at school were all concerned about how they would cope with being away from each other but I think its the very memory of each other that will sustain them till they make new friends and possibly the next best ones.
It took me back to the time in my life when my first best friend Shadgunya moved away. I still have snatches of memory of her face and our play together. We were all of 6 years old. My school day descriptions would not be complete with atleast fifty mentions of her name and everything associated with her. We were last benchers and had a great time together. I even used to protect her long plaited, looped and ribbon held hair from getting pulled by some boys in our class! Her house used to be in the same compound as our family doctor's clinic in Hyderabad. So I would look forward to doctor visits in the fond hope that I would get to sit in the cane chair swing that hung in their living room. There was one particular incident which strengthened our bond. The nature of the incident makes me not want to reveal it in on this blog but it would suffice to know that it was an embarrassing one for her in front many in the school. I got wind of it and ran down to see her and I will never forget the look of appeal in her eyes to not be judgemental. Being a kid helped us put it behind us and move ahead with daily business. In the recent past I have tried a lot to find her on social networking sites but in vain. I wont give up yet. Every friend has a hand in sculpting one's attitude towards life and because of her I learnt fortitude.

Life just happened to V and her best friend as they pranced around the playground and slid down the slide two together. The artwork that V will bring home will not have her best friend's mark on it like before. They both have a lot of love for each other and for everyone else which shone through in their art work which was dominated by hearts and rainbows. I am pretty sure they will both spread sunshine and love wherever they are and as a parent I can only try to show V ways to keep in touch.

Never say never

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I am one of those people who have their feet firmly planted on the ground. I am so profoundly rooted that it does need a certain caliber of galvanizing to uproot me. I am very focussed and use the most minimal of my resources to reach my goal. As candid as that confession can be, it can be devious. Yes I am pretty grounded but not in the way you are being led to believe. Every human being has a failing and mine is mobility. Dont get me wrong here, I do thank God for my two legs and the power to move them. I love to walk and find opportunities for that. I have exacted a mechanism where not much of me moves apart from the legs and the head tilting towards the direction before the body moves as though my mind is trying to show off its control. I have been called a robot by most people I know but I continue to love walking. Everything else is a challenge that my mind finds insurmountable. I was one of the few kids in school who never ran. Nothing could get me to run. Not the school assembly bell which I would hear while still on my way. Not a soaking rain. Not a traffic jam behind me on a narrow lane. Not Kabaddi. Not running and catching in games period. Not an urgent bathroom break. Not a bus driving off. Not the treadmill (till very very recently). Nothing. But I definitely know how to run. Then came cycling with all its agony. I learnt to cycle after I got scared that my brother might just throw in the towel and leave me to my mechanics (or robotics). I never managed to cycle even to the grocery store in the next lane. Learning to ride a two wheeler was not a necessity and was more fun. For me. Not for the people who taught me. Yes please note the use of "people". From then on it was always going to be a collaborative effort. It started with my dad getting me to learn to ride his Bajaj Chetak scooter behind the old library. It was a tree lined road so am confident that not many would have seen my dad's frustrated efforts and my antics. On to my cousins both of whom tried their best to get me to balance on the Luna without my legs acting as stabilizers. Then it was Rag. All I remember of that is hearing screams reminding me to use the brakes on her Kinetic Honda. Life rolled on without me having to worry too much abt two wheelers aside from the occasional jealousy factor. At about this time my dad bought a car. And there I was, getting to learn how to drive it on empty roads at 6:30 in the morning. I did such a great job of it that one day the coach decided to bring a car whose brakes wouldnt work. After a near miss of a head-on on the busy DVG Road traffic I was ready for my licence. That went off smoothly with me doing the exact opposite of what the examiner asked me to do. It was a miracle I heard anything at all with my heart pounding in my ears. With a brand new licence to show off, the routine trips to relatives' houses happened with me at the helm. And then one day that stopped. Abruptly. I still dont remember why. From then on, many lessons and attempts later I still dont drive very well. In the dozen odd years I have not been able to take the car for a confident spin even once. Everyday begins with a resolve and by the time we are ready to leave to work I start avoiding T's eyes lest he dangle the keys in front of me. From yesterday I have officially started swimming lessons. And that for a person who has been very scared to get into more than shin deep water. I have never played with the bigger waves on a beach. I have been wanting to learn how to swim from the time I was 15. I cant fathom why I did not despite the fact that my home was a stone's throw away from one of the best pools in Bangalore, the Basavanagudi one. I dont know how many more years I will need, to be able to kick my legs, splay my arms and move 10 feet in water. I was a nervous wreck for a week before the class and nearly toppled over from the side of the pool trying to enter it. My knees were knocking together when they told us to take a soak and needed a floater for help. I start kicking like a fish trapped in a net from the word go. It was only the floater tied around my waist that was making me look like I am in control. I am going to need all the resolve to get my feet from under me to kick out upright. What I liked yesterday was the fact that I like being in water like that. So I guess there will be many more lessons to come. And we will not cow down. We will only chew on all the learning and flick away all the usage.


Maybe there is a loose connection between the part of my brain controlling my motor skills and the one controlling my perceptions. My thoughts and dreams soar and dive, run and fly and they know no boundaries.