(Extra) Ordinary

I am not a star
No shine in me, no glitter.
An ordinary person by far
Neither too sweet nor bitter.

No extraordinary feat
No amusing stories to tell
The same old tales I repeat
Which by now, I've perfected well.

I am but an ordinary girl,
Upon mundanities I ponder.
But... I allow my life to unfurl,
The ordinary too, with wonder.

So what if I am not a star ?
So what if I don't shine ?
A rolling stone too, may go far
Without a complaint or whine.

Every thing happy or tragic
The daily hum drum around me
Have become tiny drops of magic,
God's miracles, which surround me.

Dance Again

It's ages since the feet had talked
And kissed the ground with love
The spine shook out the lazy bones,
And took on a healthy curve.

The hands moved to the steady rhythm
The feet were tapping on the ground
The hips, the waist, the thighs , the  knees,
With a happy surprise, moved around

It has been years since the body had
Moved to rhythmic Kathak beats.
Years since I felt the euphoria of
Simple 'tatkar' step repeats

A tiny flame of dancing toes
Which had almost ebbed away,
Today on reconnecting with my dance
Has again begun to sway.

Of first love and all that mush....

So I went to see a Sachin Tendulkar biopic movie today, and absolutely loved it. It managed to bring out all range of emotions in me. But this story is not about this movie.......it is about love.

As a young girl growing up in the nineties, I too fell in love. With movies, with fashion, with stories and with stardom.....I was no different from other teenagers. I loved music, Enid Blyton, Aamir Khan, Sushmita Sen.....I am sure you get my drift.
What is surprising is my love for cricket in a Bengali household. So, being a bengali, I am genetically programmed to love football, and I do. Tennis comes a close second. 

The 11 year old me though, fell in love with what India loves, Cricket.

And with cricket came the love for Rahul Dravid. Yes my dears, this post is about Rahul Dravid, the wall, the Jammy, Mr. Good Guy.

Rahul Dravid recieved reverential love from the teenage me. I did it all, scrap books, cutting all pics from all newspapers, writing ghost letters, buying posters from footpaths of CP ( one particular poster on the door of my bathroom managed to irk my father....but then, such is love) .
My heart would skip beats as he batted or licked jam out of a kissan bottle. Oblivious to my existence, he adorned my TV screen, and I wove crazy dreams around him....

So, you must be wondering, what's special ? Everyone has celebrity crushes, and does all this hoo haa haa. 

What's special my dear, is the skipped hearbeats today, as I sat with my husband and watched the Sachin movie in the theatre. On screen , Ajay Jadeja climbs a team bus, and behind him is my skipped heartbeat.

Years have passed, much water has flown under the bridge. Today, as the theatre reverberated with Sachin Sachin, and we celebrated one of India's greatest legends, I sat with my husband and teenager son and grinned like a Cheshire cat. 

How can we expect, at 37, to feel the rush of first love, the heady happiness which makes you smile for no reason ? But I got the unexpected today. I got the happiness of looking at my first love again, and skipping my heartbeat.
It felt AWESOME ❤❤❤

While Waiting

A solitary coffee with a book
A roving eye for occasional look
Li'l wait for loved ones to arrive
The hum of a song to survive
In a  bubble of suspended time
Some emotions, fuzzy , sublime
Me , me and thoughts of mine
A self built paradise divine....

Petrichor

I enjoy language. Correct grammar, wilful usage of words, textured vocabulary, are a huge turn on for me. In the same vein, I can be an irritating sod when it comes to correcting grammatical errors, or simply usage of better words. Mind you, this goes for both English and Bengali. My kids have gotten used to incessant mid sentence corrections whenever we speak.

It is drizzling today. The parched soil is drinking in the water desperately, after days of hot and dry weather. As I stand to sink in the fine weather in my balcony, my son comes and stands next to me. I turn with a smile towards him and say, " I just love the smell of first rain on dry soil"

He looks at me and says, " Petrichor. That's the word you are looking for."

Happiness buoys my heart. In a generation where 'you is U' and 'we is V',  My love for language is going to live on....my kids will carry my madness forward.

Petrichor.
My romantic moment of the day.

For he is a jolly round fellow

Pardon the ramblings of an fickle mind🤗

Without sounding biased or judgemental and without any intention of hurting sentiments, I wish to put forward an observation...
" Rotund people are usually jolly"

There are two guards at my school's parking lot. A round one and a not so round one. The round one is the smiley fellow and the not so round one doesn't smile. I have greeted both with equal cheerfullness everyday, but recieved contrasting responses. This is what has launched the line of thought during a few wasteful hours.

The round Buddha is the laughing budhha while the thinner version is all calm and serene.
We too feel like laughing at the roly polys and never at the well chiselled out people. Maybe the roly polys have developed a defense mechanism of laughing back ?

For the Enid Blyton fans , a comparison of both the mam' zelles in Malory Towers is a case in point. So is the insanely funny 'Po' from Kung fu Panda.

I guess I am a bit defensive myself , being of the 'rotund jolly' category, but isn't it 'food' for thought ? 😁😁😁

A Different Valentine

February, 14th, Delhi,
The traffic crawls ahead.
I find myself surrounded
By a brillaint sea of red

Red balloons,
with ribbons trailing
Bunch of roses
With tassle detailing

Boy in red jacket
With sheepish pride
Holding the red clad
Girl by his side

Happy faces,
Turned to each other
Lowered eyes gently
Looking into another

I turn a trafficked corner
Onto a busy street
Only to be greeted
By a visual treat

A destitute woman
Homeless with her man,
Pulls him along
As fast as she can

They are not in red
No balloon or gift
Clothes are tattered,
Hair is adrift.

But that same look
In their lowered eyes
Catches my breath
With a surprise

The love is the same
Subtly expressed
In the entwined fingers
Gently pressed

Destitute, deranged
With not much to show
Yet they loved each other
I came to know.

-Piyu