URUnreserved
What if the sky is just a large blanket with holes?
And there is endless light beyond it. Shining through the holes, We think of them as stars. I have a blanket with holes. I have a blanket with holes. I wriggle my big toe through it. My other toes have made other holes. I think of them as vents. I am a blanket with holes. I am a blanket with holes. I am home inside it. Deep within these holes, I think I hear a song. A song about the endless light beyond the sky. by Aruna Manjunath
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Rika dreams in stillness. By this, I mean that she is very still when she sleeps. The next morning, she will inevitably tell me that she dreamt again of running. She tells me this every morning over breakfast. The toast is always slightly burnt and she traces patterns of butter on it idly as she tells me she had the same dream again. The dreams have been coming fast and heavy, and by morning she looks tired. I walk with her to the bus stop, I have been doing this for a week now. A few days ago, she called me only a few minutes after she left home to tell me she woke up on the side of the road. She had fallen asleep while walking to the bus stop.I carry a small flask of very strong coffee and she carries the burnt end of the toast. She forgets to finish it, so it stays in her hand for a good part of the morning. I wait till she gets onto the bus. I know she will fall asleep soon. I walk back to feed the cat. The cat that we haven't seen in a few days now. Rika thinks she runs in her dreams to search for the cat. But she had been running long before the cat ran away. I decide to do what I always do to keep my mornings occupied, I read about dreams and insomnia and sleep and running. Today, I find a video of cats explaining the REM cycle. It does not look like the cat that ran away.I get a call from Rika. She had woken up in a different part of the city, there were different people in the bus. I leave to pick her up. Sleeping in the bus always makes her tired, she will not go in to work today. She sleeps in the car on our way back.Early evening to night, we have perfected a new routine. We try one new thing every night that will induce sleep. The new thing adds to the list of old things. Today it is an hour of Fitness Blender, a small meal, a warm bath, sleepytime tea and a few drops of lavender essential oil on the pillow. She sleeps soundly. I watch her lay still and picture her running. A brief glimpse of changing costumes as she runs. The same trees every night. The same couple behind a tree. The same puddle of water she jumps across.The same car whizzing past.The next morning she will tell me that she has been running all night,as she forgets to eat her toast
by Shruthi Menon Legitimately, we have slept next to strangers. We have woken up to unknown eyes watching us resettle back into the conscious world. They have seen you adjust your bra, cover bare parts of your body, wipe the drool around your mouth. You have sensed their gaze. You cannot stop a voyer, an admirer, a pervert from staring at you for thirty six hours. He is on his seat. They know when you go to shit. None of us have bathed. A queer smell of our bodies ferment. You know that you are being watched, but pretend that everyone is minding their own business. Toothpaste has fallen on an awkward part on your T-shirt. You have made it more obvious, because you try to wash it off. You return. Everyone is looking at the wet part of your T-shirt. You coil in. But you’re still visible. The fans aren’t working, wafts of smells sway in the wind. Sweat. Gas. Urine. Spit. Everyone can see you eat, how you chew, how you swallow, how you lick your lips. They can sense your hunger and greed. They have seen that you could be conscious of your burps. Some others see you responding to someone else burping out loud. They have seen your ways of sitting, your ways of unpacking, of disposing. They have seen how you throw or preserve the banana peel. What you cannot control is consuming in accelerated motion. An act of balance is required, without making it too obvious. By human error, one can easily drop chai or Tomato Soup, and the reaction that follows too will attract attention. So one tries to be as graceful as a Tai Chi dancer, and does things slowly. Your transactions are suddenly transparent and public. Everyone knows where you keep your wallet. Everyone has a sense of how much money you’re carrying. They know when your lover has called. They see your shy smiles or hidden suspicions. They gauge the status of your relationship broadly. They know, if you’re flirting or settled. They know, if you are still available. They might resist approaching you, because they know they are being watched too. We are always privy to another’s world. Sometimes, you’re not reading, you are watching the rest, from behind your book. We have all eavesdropped. We have all been lurkers. An unknown curiosity, inside us takes over. Proactive in nature, it lasts the whole journey. You’re morality has no place here, unless you confront someone. It is an odd negotiation of being in your private world in the most public way. Yet suddenly, there will be moment, around dusk, when everyone becomes quiet and looks out of the window, in silence. At this moment, I believe we are collectively lost. Lost, metaphysically and metaphorically, where we are suspended from our individual realities, as if this experience was now ours. Like a newborn creature, we merge in liquidity, and we become naked. We collide and wonder about this wide landscape, what are we chasing? The past is as blue as the twilight of now. In this moment of suspension, we learn that we are part of nature, and how much can we battle that? Contained in us, is beauty and horror. We smile, in resignation. The chai seller is back. I have my tenth cup of tea for the day. And we disperse from this moment. Your best bet after you go to sleep. You sleep amidst the blazing corridors of wind, stretches of colliding light, a surreal experience of time, where you feel time physically moving around you. The weathercock is in constant motion. You Voices of people, sounds of the engine, other engines, horns, distant horns. The silence of someone at a distance. The stillness of trees that look like ballet dancers caught in a photograph. Smell of passing flavours. Memory of taste. You sleep to this lullaby. Oscillating with the rhythm of an everlasting cradle. Private joys in public spaces. by Ekta Mittal |
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