The first sentence... no, the first word.
Behind it - all words, all sentences, thoughts and stories - all muddled up.
Behind that first release, behind that hardening - frozen, withdrawn - all that I must say.
Behind that winter.
Behind that hesitation - all hesitation, all action.
Behind that stillness - all movement.
Behind that quiet - voices and echoes, his, hers and mine.
Behind that shadow - all light, everything.


And when it breaks,
Will it be a trickle of coherence
That brings all understanding, all forgiveness?
Or will it be an incomprehensible grunt?

Sharing a room with cockroaches - and the thing is they stay for free!

We were all ready to move into this house, a 1 BHK, Rs. 15,000 a month  a little too much for our meagre salaries but we thought we could still somehow get by. The 15th of September - the most awaited day in a really long time bringing with it a simple joy of settling down. We imagined such happiness around that little apartment - a simple happiness but abundant. It was this nice, cosy place with an alfresco balcony behind towering glass doors and the view - a monument of epic proportions, gracefully aging, reminiscent of a glorious past, battling with immortality. And we were to settle there in that house - somewhere between now and then - to settle between two indefinite threads of time, definitely. And we'd sit in the balcony on two low chairs, with coffee steaming from our cups kept neatly on a round, wooden table - the glass doors rendered translucent by the milky vapour rising from the coffee and from our mouths, on a still winter morning. And in that stillness, we would find our refuge, safe in our haven, looking at the greying monument as voices would come trickling up to us as if they were something distant, far away. What would they be talking about? The pleasure of voyeurism experienced from the nest of our quiet contentment! And in the evenings, as the cold ash grey of the day would give way to the amorphous gold of brilliance at its edge, we'd talk about the passing of that day - little things, trivial things that happen so that the day could happen. Such would our happiness be. Such happiness I had imagined.

But then, at the last minute, at the pinnacle of our flickering hope, things took a sharp turn.