My Travelling Home

I like to imagine I own a truck which I drive in search of stories and adventures. Sometimes I let the truck take me places, as it has a compass hidden away somewhere in its recesses, whose needle points unfailingly in the direction of new adventures. The truck is my travelling home.

Since this is still my imagination being whimsical, why don't I tell you how I collect stories and memories? Cork-stoppered bottles are the only homes for stories, scents and memories outside of our heads. Dangling from my truck is one bottle of contagious laughs, two round-bottom flasks of tales from far off places, one perpetually rattling bottle of interesting conversations and some others of sounds, scents(Read about how to stash away scents here) and colours of skies that I always want to remember. A butterfly net is all you need to catch them.


At some point, I found that the truck started brimming with its own stories. I suspected that they were the ones that made the whole truck smell of ripe mangoes one day and damp earth on another- both scents I had not collected.

If you ever bump into a story wafting around in the truck, you would- depending on what story it was- feel a rush of adrenalin, a burst of wonder, an oozing feeling of peace, a whoosh of contentment. And if you close your eyes when this happens, the story would come to life in your head. It's a good thing the truck lazily drifts in whichever way it deems best when I dive into a story.

I don't know why there is hay in the back of the truck. I wondered about it when I first came to own the truck and even prodded and felt around it, but didn't get to the bottom of what it was doing there. I first thought it was the truck's way of trying to fit in with the other trucks, but quickly dispensed of this thought. The truck thrived in its eccentricity. So I just let the hay be and burrow under it sometimes to go to sleep.

I also discovered the truck has quite the repertoire of honks which it uses on unsuspecting strangers: A thunderous sneeze, a guffaw, a flushing toilet, a squeak, a gulp, a shriek that would make anyone jump a foot, a rumbling gurgle.

If you ever see my truck on the road dear Reader, do stick your thumb out. There is nothing more that my truck and I like than having company with whom to share our stories with.

Upon Us All a Little Rain Must Fall

The druid of my soul considers cycling in the rain as one of the main ingredients he uses when making soul curry. I had a generous helping of it a few days ago, when I was out with a borrowed cycle, and my soul is still burping contentedly.

The skies had been deliciously grey all day that day, and was slowly darkening outside my window. A gusty wind was distracting me from my work and wanted to play. Distant echoes from my mum and grandmother were telling me to leave before I got wet and caught a fever. I listened to them obediently and set out. Just then, with an almost inaudible chuckle, it started to rain. I decided to set out anyway. And so, zipped up under a raincoat with an overzealous hood that obscured a quarter of my vision, I cycled home in the rain. It  It was four thirty in the afternoon and the roads were empty.

The only sounds were of the rain falling against the world and of the wind blowing through trees. I cycled past a bakery exuding inviting smells of hot food, along a road lined with trees, past a group of happy school kids who didn't bother with raincoats and past knots of people taking shelter from the rain. All the while, there were rain drops trickling down my face and drumming on my head. My jeans and shoes soaked through in no time. I had forgotten what it was like to cycle in the rain. It took me completely by surprise and it was not till a little later that I slowed down to enjoy it a little more. 

Fifteen minutes with a cycle and the rain was all it took to make me feel like a carefree balloon in the wind.

Hello monsoon! I missed you.

A picture from long ago, taken when I went cycling with a MoonRiver.

(Pardon my soul, it just burped again)

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Other posts on the rain:

Absent-Minded Miss Monsoon

A February-June Romance

A Pictorial Guide to Stashing Away Scents

Storm in a Teacup

The Morning After

A Pictorial Guide To Stashing Away Scents

Today smells good enough to make me grin for absolutely no reason.

Wouldn't it be great to have a shelf full of scents and breezes that you stashed away for a day that needed it?

I think so.

Here's what you have to do:

1. Take one long breath in that would make a yoga guru proud.

2. Pause for a little bit till your lungs start to burst( this is a necessary step).

3. While your lungs just begin to burst, look for a cork and a bottle.

4. Exhale!

5. Some scents and breezes like company and they smell much better with a friend in the bottle. Rainy day scents like leaves, Raat ki Rani scents like a dusting of night and Ghee roast dosa scents like a bustling hotel sounds.

6. Tag your bottle and stash away with the others for another day.

Of Mochis

If you ever need something to be fixed, there will be an Indian who made himself some room by the side of a road or in some cramped corner, to fix or mend it.

We get our twenty odd year old grinder fixed time and again in a small shop overflowing with various parts of blenders, grinders and pressure cookers.  Need a knob changed? Fret not! There’s a whole box of old and new knobs, from which one might fit just right. A faulty grinder part will swiftly be exchanged while the shopkeeper keeps up a conversation with many people, switching effortlessly between different languages.

I am particularly fond of mochis*. They either sit on the pavement, or have a green box made for them and work wonders with shoes , whilst sitting in their characteristic mochi pose(I have tried sitting this way while fixing a shoe and I could feel the power of the mochis surging through me). They all have a set of common tools and material to help them. They swear by Fevi Quick, a heavy duty adhesive, and can fix any sole by dabbing some of it with a wedge shaped stone and then mildly hammering at it with another stone that has a flat circular base. Torn straps, toe loops that have detached themselves from the sole are all expertly fixed with needle and thread. They even make shoes.
If you take your shoes to the mochi to get them mended, they usually give it an all round check up and reinforce some old stitches. And they do all this just for about Rs. 30.  People getting their shoes fixed sometimes squat next close by and talk of this and that. Last week, a lady at the mochi was telling him at great length of various incidents with her relatives and pausing to ask, ‘is that not right?!’ To which he would shake his head in agreement and part with wise words.
I often see people who sit and while away time with a mochi while he fixes shoes.

mochi: cobbler in Hindi.

Mostly About Chappals

My old red wallet affably accomodates a few hundred bus tickets, which i used for this painting-collage.

In Which I Kidnap the Moon

Then one night, I scooped the moon out of the sky and slunk back furtively to my room with it,
gleams and shimmers squinting through my fingers.
Once there, I set it free and it flitted to a corner and looked at me uncertainly as I flopped down on my bed and proceeded to speak of apples and paper boats.

A Shop From A Dream

It was one of those AliceinWonderland shops.
That took you to another dimension when you pushed that wooden door that tinkled sofltly.
With just the right things. In just the right places.
Shades of bronze.
Dim lighting and shadows on the wall.
Like a kaliedoscope.
Like rippling water reflected on a face.
The pleasant aroma of clay.
And a shopkeeper who wrote poetry by a lamp
And spoke of magical things if you stopped to listen.