The Dance of the Muse.

``Make it bitty, scrappy, drift, come back...easy...it`s your space. Do what you will.`` This is what you wrote to me the other day about my blog. You said you had seen it and loved it. And then you corroborated it with this message ``make it bitty, scrappy, drift, come back...`` Oh me, oh my, that sounds like a waltz, i said, closing my eyes in my space. My words dance a dervish dance. Even just a bitty note from you sounds like music, and not just to my ears.

A letter to Sufi

Sufi, what a strange one you were! You arrived and left unceremoniously, leaving no trail in either case. It was my birthday and Radhika had taken me out for dinner and when we reached home at about 1 a.m., there were you, the most adorable honey-coloured creature, quite battered but waiting as though it were your mission to do so. Kindly neighbours were feeding you since you looked starved and were bleeding from every pore.                                                When i saw you sitting on my pristine white situ-floor among the hazaar plants, i gave a start. You saw me and said aloud, ``at last we meet``. You told me your name and decided you were staying with me. Someone suggested i send you off to SPCA and Pji said that he would send them to SPCA if they were mean to you. That kinda decided it. You were mine. The rest of course is a marvellous story. A fairy tale. i had to travel to Baroda once and panicked like crazy because to leave you behind was unthinkable and you would have loathed the pressurised cabin in the aircraft in that prison of a dog-box for which you were far too tall, anyway. You travelled with me to Baroda on the train and loved it so much, you wanted me to buy one for you. And that too, as i told Rongee the other day, would`ve been fine, but where would we have parked the darn thing, your lofty verhicle? You were the only dog who fraternised with the peacocks in our neighbourhood and was secretly scared of the big tom-cat lurking around, inspite of your nearly 30 solid inches of body height. You were an incredible creature. A prophet by profession. That is why you had to leave suddenly, i know.                                                                                                                                        Today, it is exactly six months since you left and i just send you this foolish note because for one, you were a high-tech guy and loved receiving mail (remember all that email exchange you had with Pji, you strange one?) and also because, most of all because noone but you really knows how i miss you. i have heard of odd things that happen in the kingdom above, Sufi. i have heard that souls get refreshed every now and again and inhabit a new body. i also hear that your dog can be as good as your own child and that even if he pretends to go away, he will soon return wearing new furs. Hey, did you hear the same stories as well? And are you taking so long just because you chose to travel by that stupid train? For this once, i implore you, get on a flying carpet. It will cost you nothing. And will bring us a whole new world of happiness. Think about it. All my love, a.

The Ice-cube and the Hibiscus.

Have you ever wondered about things? Have you ever wondered how relationships form? How people fall in love? How clouds gather from nothing and disperse into the big beyond, whatever the men of science might tell you? Have you wondered how water sizzles, then calms, then freezes into the most perfect, shaped little ice-cube, just so that it can mingle with other waters once again? Or the way in which a flower meanders from root to sap to bud to flower? After all, did you ever preempt the unfurling of a hibiscus bud? Could you ever visualize that the tiny, somewhat tubular bud ~ whether pristine white or baby pink or a grafted canary yellow with fuchsia ~ would suddenly fling open its arms one morning while you were still brewing your cuppa and reveal itself? Have you ever wondered about things, tell? Have you wondered how ice-cubes and relationships form or how a hibiscus unravels its secrets to those who can listen? Have you ever, ever wondered how people fall in love? Tell.

Pen-pals.

When i was growing up, people were still the same. They sneezed, laughed, winked, made love and war just the same. But but but in those days, there was no Internet (how did we ever survive?) And there were no cellular phones either! Those were the days, my friend! Even so, the need to communicate must have been the same ever since; after all, what do the cave-paintings of centuries ago, indicate?  And people wanted to reach out to other people all across the world even then. Letters were written on sheets of paper or on those strange blue Aerogrammes and so on. It was a veritable ritual ~ the writing, the stamping, the posting and ahhh, the receiving of a letter.                                                                                                             Massive columns in newspapers and magazines were devoted to addresses of unknown people all across the globe for the express purpose of being able to exchange little notes and foolish gifts once we got to know them a bit. A lot of time and energy and even money were spent in sifting out what seemed to be the right ``friend`` (depending upon his choice of music and films and hobbies and star signs and such rubbish!) Excited little notes of individual cultures were tossed across the seven seas like a ping pong ball. A few exchanges, photographs, then gifts and lo! at times the pen pal himself might make the Herculean effort and plan a holiday in your land! Hmm. Those were the days of the puny pen-pal. i never ever could indulge myself in that absurd luxury. And now, it is this omnipotent blog which i have resorted to, on the advise of my friend and with the sole support of Miss I in setting it up. Apparently, people can, if it interests them to make the effort, read all that i have written here and even choose to reply. i thought this was altogether spooky but am giving it a shot. Who knows, some day, i might just find a letter in my letter-box. And that will surely be my day of triumph, since i am neither Amir Khan nor Amitabh Bachchan.

How momentous, this blogging affair! i always imagined language to be a complex affair, the most complex, in fact, in the kingdom of The Word. The most basic function of language is to communicate with ease, felicity and hopefully, grace. A thought, a dream and the most bizarre fancy may be poured into language and manufactured and neatly packaged as an essay, a narrative, a folk tale, a love letter and now this! This blog thing! Gosh! How indebted am i to you, O Sultans of Technology. And of course to you, Miss I (whether or not you are reading this). 

thank you, Miss I.

``Thank you`` is such an ineffectual word for all that you always do for me, Miss I. But let me say it to you, anyway. Love you.