Luminous Infinitus

"Ankle deep, he waded through the bluebells. His spirit rose and exalted... as he breathed in the sun-drenched air. The glorious day was in its last decline. Long shadows lay on the sward... and from above the leaves dripped their shimmering drops of gold-green light. Moths and butterflies swarmed in merry hosts... flittering here, glimmering there. But, hush. Could that be a deer?" When we were searching for "Tess of d'Urbervilles" in the library memories rushed in, almost overwhelming me.  Memories of school days when I would look at a bookshelf and see different worlds, when Hercule Poirot and Dirk Pitt and Sherlock Holmes loomed larger than life, when the reality of life was less real than those in books,  when my sadness and happiness and mood changes did not depend on what happened in the life I was living but in the lives of characters that I was closely following,  when even though the only place I had been to, other than Bangalore, that too occasionally

More than a year whizzed past without me writing anything here. When you're working for a company that does more than double the work in less than half the time that the client does it in and if the cient happens to be this uber-fast techie company that rolls out 8 million lines of code once every 2 weeks with almost 50K lines of code changing every week, time is a pricey quantity. It is a given ! But to get a chance to walk shoulder to shoulder with giants, ah ! other concerns vanish into obscurity. I have a new plan. I guess one should plan things with the view that the world goes around in 8hr cycles and force oneself to get stuff done. 8 ? Why not 12 ? 8 is too less. I always aim to finish something faster than the target and finish on target. I tell A, give me 2 hrs and I'd be done with it and it might usually take 3. I used to do this every night in the initial days. "Here you go.. we'll sleep at 12. ", "1 O clock, surely" but the offshore calls w

A has given me the ultimatum. "It is too much. You've been fooling me for more than a year. Write now. Just 10 minutes. Whatever comes to your mind" She's been hitting the url for over a year expecting me to surprise her by writing something and I've always been saying.. I will, I will.  But more than a year of procrastination is bad I guess. At least for your loved one's patience ... It's coming, the pasting of a new rainbow butterfly in a fresh page.. in moments.  10 minutes if you want to time it.  Go, now !

I’m lying flat on my back and looking at the open sky. It is clear. There are no stars. Only a single moon. Is the queen of the night sky smiling at me ? Or at the seabird sitting at the stern. Or at her own beauty that is reflected by the sea ? Well, at least I’m happy that she’s there and she’s smiling. The seabird has been sitting there, at the pointed end of the boat, quietly, for hours now. She didn’t bring the astral blueberries this time. She couldn’t have forgotten for sure. May be she gave them to others on her way, ones who yearned for them more than I did. May be she traveled too long and couldn’t bring it this far. Had I come that far? In my quest to see new places, to uncover new truths, to discover new wonders, I’d rowed faster and faster towards exotic places in the far corners of the sea. Had I gone too far ? The astral blueberries, the melodies that resonate my soul - I’ve almost forgotten their taste. Sometimes I feel I’m chewing on to one – one of those soft fleshy

I was* so preoccupied with my ever growing to-do list (one of which was to write this ! and this.. was not at the top of the list. Hey, whatever happened to doing priority tasks? ) and this general feeling of “Aw ! I should’ve done this yesterday” , that I couldn’t sit in a place and gather my thoughts, my rainbow butterflies. Why haven’t I been writing? I guess I haven’t been thinking at all. May be I shouldn’t be staying a hop away from home. And even that hopping distance, may be I shouldn’t be covering in car ! Those days in which I stayed far away from home, when I used to travel by train, those dreaming-thinking-talking**-sleeping-writing-reading-thinking-dreaming travels. Oh ! I wish they were back. *was? I still am ? **talking not with self like a madman (used to do that when I was a kid though. I gather I’m more self conscious now!) but with fellow passengers. -------------- Oh my ding ding, what do I write ? What did I do last week ? Friday evening 6 PM – the beginning of a

Thought of finally taking a break to roll up my sleeves, blow the dust off the writing desk and sit and gather the fluttering paper rainbow butterflies and stick them to the book. They’re around, just a catch away. The touch of the rainbow butterflies, oh boy ! they almost take my breath away. I kiss each one of them and stick them to the book. They’re mine and they’re beautiful. How I miss them ! The other day A shouted from her boat. “Look, Look !” I watched. It was a bright one. Bright ones are usually flapping around the boat, within my hand’s reach at anytime. But this one was almost in the water. Ah! May be the wind carried it down. It twisted and turned. Turned and twisted. It stood there for a moment, mustering all its strength to defy gravity, hoping that the eastern wind would carry it to me. But it met its end, the frail paper and its seven colors. It touched water. Did it shiver? It floated for a brief second and faded.. into the blueness of the sea. Before it vanished,