Enchanted with Darkness…..

When I walked out of the airport,the sun looked brighter and chirpier than the place I had visited for couple of weeks. The melancholy and the heavy weight of silence that we worked around with at the refugee camps was now replaced by bright lights and window shopping. Outside the airport, families were greeting their loved ones as they assembled ……no one was doing a head count of their family members…what if someone had gone missing…..but then I told myself…..that happens in the ‘other world’…where every day a mother has to rejoice to see that all her children are still around her…..where all of them made it safe across the border to the refugee camp.

I meet my dad at home….I am grateful to him that he doesn’t ask me about my experiences but makes dinner for me and sits by my side. Later, I soak myself in the bath and hope to start afresh…hope to wash away the stench of disenchantment, disappointment,loss and non-existence from my body which I had collected from the trip. As I walk out of the bathroom,I refuse to switch on the lights…..it felt like an artificial source for seeing things in a projected way.

I sit by the window and pull the heavy curtains to restrict the street lights which were trying to sneak in my room. As the darkness prevailed,my breathing grew calmer and softer,I don’t know why I used to think that darkness is for a evil and sick mind…why did I buy the ready-made perceptions of others. I enjoy darkness  and its certainty…that it will be around for days to come and that it never challenges the flashes of light that comes along, in fact darkness is the platform for light………………….I rest my back to the wall and listen to the silence and feel the same certainty that I felt back in the place I was visiting…. that no matter where you go the comfort of deeply enchanting darkness will always prevail…….

Undark woods

I prefer walking in dark woods

than the glitzy concrete road beside it

as it is

unexplored,

unassuming,

unadulterated.

With my insecurities

as my backpack,

I tread in the dark

I tip toe and poke at things in there.

Like today, I stumbled

into this burrow

where a small squirrel

is injured

I am not able to nurse the squirrel

My despair and agony and confusion

has clouded my ability

to soothe

to nurture……..

Not Brachiosaurus………..but we can still bump into an African Elephant!

Check my post here I wrote for a social work platform:

http://gutsforchange.de/de/not-brachiosaurus-but-we-can-still-bump-into-an-african-elephant/

We Need to Change the definition of ‘Social Worker’!

Check my post on this link where I wrote a for Berlin Based Social platform

http://gutsforchange.de/de/we-need-to-change-the-definition-of-social-worker/

The Swing Therapy

Most of us are trying to work around our thoughts on goals,dreams,what lists to follow,what to eat for dinner,what not to eat for dinner,what color looks good on me, what is she up to, why me, why not,how to get over this and that…………………………………………………………and we go on….to pull the breaks to go to a spa or a spiritual journey far away………then I thought may be I should try sitting on the swing in the park…and Wow…some  magic wand from the sky sorted my blurry head as I composed myself in the gentle momentum of the swing…Yup so Swing Therapy it is!

an odd face in the subway…………

You drag your feet to the nearest subway to get back home….Its a long weekend…you know the rush that awaits you…the same passively excited faces of people you will see throughout the ride….then you see an ‘odd’ face..a face which has not been wore down by the mundane idiosyncrasies of life…that face is not the most beautiful face…or a glossy face that looks at you from a page of a magazine……its just an ‘odd’ warm face….which  looks familiar…which gets ingrained in your memory as that face…..which makes you remember the day as,people I met  in the day and that face…. and then the person with that face looks at you…and for a split second you share an odd comfort….a comfort of acknowledgment….and then you get off at your stop and re run all the plans for the weekend in your head…………………………………………….

I prefer to fail

I prefer to fail

to

write good stories

I prefer to keep quiet

to

count the words I speak

I prefer to made fun of

to

make things lighter

I prefer to go slow

to

enjoy the ride

I prefer to mumble

to

express my feeling……

I prefer to stop

to

start all over again…

In someone’s dream….

last night I was in some one else’s dream…..I tip toed in his world and looked around the corners…in his cupboard…under the bed….his year book….his laundry….his sketch book..where every page had an eye scribbled on it….most of the eyes were shut….i kept flipping the pages of the sketch book in order to find a sketch where the eye was wide open……….

Possibility

I open my diary’s pages

and read all those pages of possibilities

I had made a list

a long list

of

journeys

of

crossroads

of

missed messages

of

‘inappropriate’ wishes

of

walks in the parks

of

loopy relations

of

what color to wear next day

of

holidays

of

my roots

of

those voices in my head

of

understatements

of

slaughtering myself

of

proving nothing

of

of

of

of

the possibility of filling the blank pages of my diary…………..

In the Middle…..

she stood still

in the middle of

the fork shaped crossing

like

a tree

which watched

the last few birds

which flew off its branches

she was left behind

by the vehicle

which had left its Tyre’s marks

all over one of the ways towards the right

she looked towards the left way

it looked dusty and barren

then a raven

flew past her

she followed the raven

and walked straight

straight to the woods………….