48 and turning

48 revolutions around the sun
and I have watched you for seven, nearly eight,
of them.

Not from a distance,
but from the quiet, privileged center
where the noise of the world falls away.

I have seen the way time treats you
not as a thief, but as an artist
polishing the edges of your spirit,
deepening the light in your eyes.

While the seasons shifted and the years gathered,
I sat beside you in the slow theater of everyday life,
learning the architecture of your grace.

Like that distant, cosmic traveler
making its slow way through the dark everythingness,
you arrived in my orbit when our stories were already half-written...

And yet everything changed.

Every year of watching you has been a lesson
in how a single soul can anchor an entire universe.

To see you at 48
is to witness the quiet triumph of everything real.

The old delays, the years before our paths crossed,
all of it dissolves into the background of this room,
this breath,
this steady heartbeat beside mine.

You are the destination.

And as the years keep turning,
so do I,
right alongside and beside you.

The taste of not enough

If joy arrives suddenly, unexpectedly, do not hesitate. Give in to it. 

The world is often brutal, frequently cruel, and much of it lies beyond redemption. We are rarely wise and even less often kind. But life still possesses a quiet capacity for resistance. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back: that sometimes, something happens which outweighs all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything, but you will likely recognize it the instant love begins. Whatever it is, do not fear its abundance. Joy was never meant to be a crumb.

Happy days are not meant to satiate; they are too fleeting, too refreshing to ever truly fill the cup. They are butterfly wings against your eyelashes, not the bruising touch that pins you to the earth. They are kites in a high wind, children running barefoot, the sudden heat of a holiday romance.

How does one write about them? 

What is there to say other than: All was well.

The sky was a constant, deep blue; the sun held you like a warm hand on bare skin. Even the rain felt like a blessing, turning the world into a playground that made you giggle. 

Every meal was a discovery, a rhythmic progression of Mmms that deepened with every bite. I remember the merchant: the same hands, the same rhythm. He would stretch the dough so thin you could see the grey of the metal cart underneath, roll it into a layered ball, and fry it to a golden, shattering crisp. Then, he would halve it and stuff it—with a non-negotiable gluttony—full of soft, marinated meat, fresh herbs, and aromatic juices. It was the same taste, the same loop, the same way of melting into deliciousness.

There is nothing to do with happy days but to keep having them. To think we spend our lives chasing, enduring, and dying a thousand small deaths, all to reach for something which, when it finally arrives, offers no grip. 

You cannot hold it. You cannot can it, pickle it, or store it away for the lean seasons.

The only response to a happy day is to live it outrageously. You must be wasteful with it. You must bite into the ripest parts of the day and admit, "I have had enough for now." You have to allow yourself the luxury of gluttony because there is no sensible way to enjoy goodness. You can never reach the rind; the flesh of a good day is forever tender, juicy, and overflowing.

And yet, you never feel full.

I call this the "Taste of not Enough." It is the paradox of joy: it is absolute, total abundance, yet it is only ever as much as your hands can hold.

"Love me now," it whispers. "Only now. Later, I will be a mirage."

It is infuriating. It is unfair. To toil, to dream through seasons of drought and death, to face adversity embedded within adversity and then for the good days to flow so unburdened? To have the impossible suddenly feel like normalcy? 

It is maddening that there is nothing to do but take part in the dance, to flow with the current and not ask it for more than what it is currently giving.

Truly, it is ridiculous.

And yet, I return to it. I return to the table. 

The faucet is open, the happiness is flowing, and I am stepping into the current: curmudgeonly, sour, and utterly, helplessly happy.

The Liver Doctor

Three nights of ink and moonlight. 

I didn’t just read The Liver Doctor... 

I sat at the bedside of strangers, 

their families, and beloveds, and hopes crushed,

hands held,

consuming their histories until the hours blurred. 

Three consecutive nights, 

just before the world turned inward, 

I let these pages hold me.

It has been an age since a book felt this alive...

since I felt the sudden, sharp friction of the drama 

between the pulse and the silence. 

It forced me to sit with the weight of it all: 

the fragile choreography of life, 

the slow surrender of death, and 

everything messy and magnificent that breathes in the space between.

I see the hand that holds the pen: a master physician, 

who knows that the best medicine is often 

just the act of looking, truly looking. 

Dr. Abby is an observer of the human fray, 

cataloging the micro-expressions of hope 

and the slow, intricate retreat of the spirit. 

As a poet, I recognize that gaze; 

I bow to the patience of that craft.

And that ending: 

a quiet, resonant bow to a story well-told. 

It didn’t just close the book; it left a lingering note in the dark, 

inviting me to carry the reflection 

into the waking light of the next day.

Alchemy of companionship

Seven years is not just time.

 

It is a slow, steady tide

The way the water shapes the stone, not by force, 

but by the relentless, quiet insistence of returning.

We have been a geography of shifting landscapes. 

Two people, once separate, 

slowly knitting a single horizon. 

I think of the small, unrecorded histories: 

the shared air, 

the way the silence between us has changed its texture, 

no longer an empty space, 

but a substance: a soft, anchoring hum that grounds the day.

We do not hold on by gripping tight. 

We hold on by letting the seasons cycle through us, 

by weathering the droughts and the sudden, lush growth of being truly known. 

Seven years of witnessing: 

you have seen the versions of me that I have already shed, and 

I have stood watch over the shadows you have outgrown.

This is the alchemy of companionship. 

We are mirrors that have stopped reflecting our own faces and began, instead, to see the other as the primary landscape of our lives.

There is no sudden arrival. 

There is only the long, beautiful transit of staying: 

of choosing to be the person who wakes up in the same gravity, 

in the same light, and knowing, 

with the deep, quiet rhythm of the heart that 

we are exactly where we intended to be all along.

You know

I know. 

But I don’t know.

On the quiet days 

when breathing slows and my feet find the rhythm of the earth 

I can feel it pulling closer. 

The thing that was always meant for me.

Light, love, home. 

They are just different frequencies of the same pulse 

traveling toward the same coordinate.

I say it was meant for me because this was signed into existence 

at the very beginning of time itself?! 

While I was busy swearing that the silence meant nothing was happening because I wasn't there to force the pieces into place 

it was already in motion. 

Undeterred by my disbelief,

this light that knows my name kept moving.

It has been traveling a terrifying distance to find me. 

It has navigated the debris of dead planets 

and the crushing gravity of nascent galaxies 

drifting through the dark everythingness of creation. 

It got caught in the webs of time 

tangled in the long rivers of delay 

stalled by the mirages of my own doubt.

To me it felt lost. 

To me it felt late.

But there is a light so absolute that 

its arrival erases the history of the wait. 

It lands and the old pain simply dissolves. 

The universe resets. 

A new life begins...

With a sore thumb nonetheless!

The burdens we let go

The weight we carry isn’t always dropped with intent. 

Sometimes, it simply dissolves— a slow hemorrhage of detail until the palms are empty, and we haven’t even noticed the lightness.

These are the quietest farewells. No ceremony. No backward glance. Just a name dissolving into the static of a defunct motherboard.

I search now for a face etched into the architecture of a former life—a steady presence whose name has slipped through the cracks of time. A ghost locked within the green circuitry of a dead phone, gathering dust in the dark of a drawer. Beneath that cracked screen lies a fossilized version of me: twenty-four, anxious, standing in the cold, blue neon of a city that never stopped moving.

I remember the shared silence of the daily Mumbai train commute. The way the world turned hollow and reflective in the late hours. The vulnerability of being alone in the vast, silent dark, and the sudden, glowing ember of a stranger’s kindness. A reassuring look that wasn’t a mask. In a night that sharp and lonely, you learn to recognize the humidity of genuine humanity.

But life is not a circle; it is a displacement. 

We don’t return to the start; we only pivot from where we last stood. This is how we lose the child, how we shed the teenager—by simply moving toward a different horizon until the previous one is swallowed by the curve of the earth.

I used to be the one who clutched the ache, wondering how others could walk so freely while burdened by the gravity of so much loss. 

Silly, to think that holding on was the only way to honor the past.

The secret is in the transit. To move forward is to exhale. 

You look toward the next light, you take the step, and without a word, your hands have already let go.

Alex, the architect of our combined worlds

At 19, the syntax of the world becomes more deliberate,

a sequence of light and logic held within the glow of a screen.

You sit as the architect of your own quiet kingdom, Alex,

anchored by the crisp weight of a formal shirt, hidden from sight,

the tie a sharp, intentional line

against the soft blur of a wandering universe.

You do not seek the aimless exhaustion of the long walk,

the dust of roads that lead nowhere.

Instead, you find the sacred in the stationary:

the salt-etched geometry of French fries,

the dark, velvet gravity of a brownie,

and the thick, cold comfort of a chocolate shake.

In the familiar breath of Kiteblu,

or the steam rising at Cafe Gnocchi,

reality is not a thing that happens to you;

it is a landscape you compose.

On the wall, the Guitar Girl remains in her frozen, melodic grace.

She is more than pigment and canvas;

she is the silent resonance of Karen,

an imaginary presence of a past that once was, you’ve authored into being,

strumming chords that only the inner ear can catch.

And there is Idly,

the warm, living rhythm at your feet,

a companion who understands the beauty of the still moment,

the wag of a tail marking time

as you bridge the gap between design and soul.

Let the world spin its frantic, messy wheel.

You are busy building constellations,

one keystroke, one brushstroke,

one knotted tie at a time while you sit

to avoid shutting down the PC at 7:30 pm

In your striped t-shirt.

A meaningless puzzle?

The universe does not care that you forgot to pay your water bill.

It doesn’t care about your promotion, your heartbreak, or the fact that you’ve spent the last three hours doom-scrolling through the digital landfill of other people’s curated lives.

In the grand, silent theater of the cosmos, your entire existence is a rounding error... a brief, frantic spark between two infinities of darkness.

And that, quite frankly, is the most diabolical joke ever played on a sentient species.

 

You’re a biological prank

You are a collection of atoms that, through a series of increasingly improbable accidents, developed the ability to feel anxious about its own mortality. For four billion years, life on this damp rock has been a brutal, red-toothed relay race.

Your primate and even reptilian ancestors dodged asteroids, outran predators, and survived plagues just so they could pass a baton of scorched DNA to you.

And what do you do with this hard-won gift? You sit in traffic and wonder if you’re "living your best life".

Biologically, you are a meat-suit piloted by a chemical-soaked sponge. Your brain is wired for survival on the savannah, yet it’s forced to navigate tax codes and existential dread. 

 

We are the only creatures on Earth that know we are going to die, and we spend every waking second trying to pretend we don’t. We build cathedrals, write symphonies, and launch rockets into the void, all as a desperate "I was here" scratched into the bark of a tree that will be cut to be a piece of paper that’ll be shredded in sometime.

 

You’re a graveyard of ambition

Look back at history. It is a long, bloody ledger of people who thought they were the protagonists of reality:

• Ozymandias had his statues; now they are stumps in the sand.
• The Romans had their eternal city; now it’s a picturesque backdrop for tourists eating overpriced gelato.
• The Genghis Khans and Napoleons burned half the world to ensure their names would live forever, but a million years from now, the sun will still rise over a planet that has forgotten the sound of every human tongue.

We are standing on a pile of skulls several miles high, and we have the audacity to find ourselves "unique." Every war ever fought, every empire ever raised, every "unspeakable tragedy" is eventually reduced to a thin layer of compressed carbon in the Earth’s crust.

To the universe, the fall of a civilization is no more significant than a gust of wind blowing through a canyon.

 

You’re ‘scientific’ silence

 

Science used to be a comfort. It was the torch we held up to the darkness. But the more we learn, the more the darkness seems to grow.

We discovered that we aren't the center of the solar system. Then we found out the solar system is a speck in a galaxy of 400 billion stars. 

Then we realized our galaxy is just one of two trillion in the observable universe. We are living on a "pale blue dot" suspended in a sunbeam, surrounded by a vacuum so vast and so cold it defies human comprehension.

And then there is entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the ultimate cosmic "No." Every star will eventually burn out. Every galaxy will drift so far apart that the night sky will become a perfect, terrifying black. The universe is heading toward a state of maximum disorder, a "Heat Death" where nothing happens, forever.

The universe isn't just indifferent to you; it is actively erasing the possibility of you.

 

So, where does that leave us?

If history is a graveyard and science is a countdown to a cold, dark room, seeking "meaning" seems like a fool’s errand. 

We look for signs in the stars, but the stars are just nuclear furnaces millions of light-years away. 

We look for purpose in our work, but our work is just a way to trade our finite hours for pieces of paper we can use to buy things to distract us from our finite hours.

But here is the twist: the punchline that makes the joke worth it.

The very fact that you are a glitch in the system is what makes you a god. In a universe governed by cold equations and dead matter, you are a point of light that can think. 

You are the universe’s way of looking in a mirror and saying, "Huh, so that’s what I look like."

The lack of inherent meaning isn’t a prison; it’s a blank check. If the universe didn’t give you a purpose, it means you don’t owe the universe anything. 

You are free to invent a meaning that is entirely, selfishly, and beautifully yours:

• Meaning is the taste of a perfectly ripe mango or a peach or a strawberry or a blueberry.
• Meaning is the way the light hits the floor at 4:00 PM on a Tuesday.
• Meaning is the irrational, defiant act of loving another person even though you both know it may end in grief.

We are ghosts driving machines made of stardust. We are the only part of the cosmos that can laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

To seek meaning in the "big picture" is to miss the point; the big picture is a vacuum. The meaning is in the pixels. Maybe.

 

That’s it!

The crisis ends when you realize that "mattering" is a human invention. The universe doesn't need you to matter. It just needs you to be.

You are a temporary arrangement of matter that has been granted a backstage pass to the greatest show in existence. You can spend your time worrying about your seat, or you can watch the performance before the lights go out.

So, stand on your tiny rock. Look up at the billions of cold, dead suns. Feel the crushing weight of history and the terrifying scale of the void. And then, do something purely, pointlessly human:

• Make a cup of coffee. 
• Hug a friend. 
• Write a poem that no one will read in a thousand years.

The universe is a vast, empty house. But for a few decades, you get to be the one who leaves the lights on.

You, matter

Consider the dust mote floating in the shaft of afternoon sun.
It navigates the air like a hull-less ship on a frantic ocean,
obeying currents of heat we cannot feel,
turning invisible the moment the light shifts two degrees to the west.
You're not so different from that suspension.

You're are the brief interruptions in the long, monotone hum of geology,
flickering with the same terrifying brevity
as a match struck in a cavern larger than the dark.

And yet, imagine the silence of a library without the turning of a single page.

Imagine the ocean without the friction of the wave against the rock.

There is a strange, quiet weight to being small.

If the universe is a sprawling, infinite fabric,
then you're the tension in the thread,
not the pattern itself, but the strain that holds the weave together.

Think of the comma in a sentence written by a giant.
It has no sound of its own,
it is merely a pause, a breath, a tiny, hooked mark
dwarfed by the nouns and verbs that surround it.

But without that pause,
the meaning collapses into noise.

To be insignificant is to be the vessel, not the water.

It is to be the dark space between the stars that allows the light to travel.

You matter not because you persist,
but because for a fraction of a second,
you're the only place in the cosmos
where the universe could look at itself and ask,
“What am I?”

Presence

I am rediscovering that life's profoundest meaning is found in raw presence: to be rooted in the world through vivid sensation and fully alive within one's own physical self.

What we inhabit now is its bleak antithesis: a state of semi-conscious languor, a perpetual, desensitizing bath in the digital amniotic fluid of dopamine's relentless cravings, spikes, pursuits, and collapses. 

We become deaf, mute, and sightless to the world, nourished only through the narrow conduit of calculated algorithms, subsisting on intensely processed, ultra-palatable, bite-sized content. 

In this abandonment of genuine work, we simply atrophy.

True living demands engagement: to craft what is real and palpable, feeling its texture pressed into our fingertips. It calls for the painstaking, humble effort of observing the world in its exhaustive detail—memorizing its myriad names, listening to its ceaseless, ordinary hum. 

It is about an unending fascination with the minute mechanics of existence, moving beyond the fleeting thrill of sensational, superficial explorations of the grand philosophical questions, the facile sampling of grand experiences, or the tentative dabbling in grand relationships.

To live is to embrace the effort, to accept the work. It is to extend oneself outward and discover the world echoing your existence in countless dialects: the welcoming melody of the Red-Whiskered Bulbul, the brilliant splash of the Cardinal's orange, the scent released by the fragile, tissue-paper blossoms of the Tabebuia Roses tree.

In a million subtle ways, the world affirms: "You exist. You are here. You are present."

The path to ecstasy begins simply, barefoot in the grass.

It starts by anchoring firmly to sensation and to our own body, so that when our existence brushes against anything external—the strange, curious shapes of the world—we know precisely where our boundary ends and where its mystery begins.

47 and counting wishes

The light shifts. Always shifting. 

And in its changing, I find you, 

Over and over, a constant, 

Yet ever-unfolding landscape. 

Not just the woman of 47 yesterday, 

but every intricate layer beneath.

I see the younger woman who first captivated me, 

A flicker of unburdened joy, 

A certain fearless curiosity in her eyes that still sparks, 

Sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking.

And a bit older woman who built, 

Stone by careful stone, 

This quiet sanctuary we inhabit, not just walls, 

But a shared understanding deeper than any foundation. 

The one who wrestled with shadows and emerged, 

Not unscathed, perhaps, 

But richer, more incandescent.

There are moments, 

Brief catches of breath, when I glimpse the quiet woman, 

The one who sees beyond the obvious, 

Who navigates currents I sometimes miss. 

And the fiercely tender protector, 

Her heart a vast, warm ocean for those she loves.

We've walked through seasons. 

The sharp clarity of winter, 

The hesitant bloom of spring, 

The long, generous stretch of summer, 

And the reflective hues of autumn. 

Each one leaving its mark, 

A subtle deepening of the lines around her eyes, 

A new grace in her movements. 

These aren't just years passing; 

They are layers accumulating, 

Like the rings within an ancient tree, 

Each one telling a story, 

Adding to the profound, quiet strength I lean into.

So today, as the sun begins its arc, 

Or perhaps as dusk gathers its soft cloak, 

I honor the women inside you. 

The visible, 

The unseen, 

The woman I know so intimately, 

And the beautiful mysteries I am still privileged to uncover. 

You are not just time lived, 

But a profound, ongoing revelation

Of spaces that can form a human.

Sun-drenched birthmark

Speak to me of the celestial sun spots etched upon your skin,
those pale, hushed constellations, seemingly so far.

Unveil to me the commonplace nature they hold for you,
how they often fade into the tapestry unseen by hurried eyes.

Stars in the sun's bright gaze? 
Who spares them a glance —
Who truly perceives them,
save for me,
in this nearness where our very breaths entwine,
and the rhythm of your heart echoes within mine.

With a gentle touch, I chart the landscapes of your being,
seeking the silent narratives held within each birthmark,
on this warm afternoon's embrace,
where tenderness rests between us,
a drowsy warmth, curled and content as a sun-drenched cat or dog.

Not alone

Today 

has ended tomorrow.

 
Yesterday

I buttoned up and refused to leave the universe anyway 

but alive.

Apricot skies. Strawberry fields. Libraries.

 
You're not alone. 

You have me along with these.

The withering

On a rainy day, faraway

a withering flower 

whispered a poem.

The winds of the mind 

carried it afar

via words

burdened with their own weight.

For where medicines

and meditations may fail

Words work.

For they carry...

love,

the warmest of words,

the lightest of feelings.

The winds stop, 

the clouds pour,

the body pauses, 

the soul cleanses, 

the mind cries.

The poet always 

loves, and 

tries.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Yesternight, as I grappled with a throbbing headache, my partner "surpgifted" me with one of the most thoughtful and wonderful gifts/books ever. The book helped.

It's truly a poem on everything. :-)

I am only halfway through it but it's really unputdownable. One of the best books I've ever read...

Here's my humble contribution to the dictionary:

• Assisong - the act of assigning a song to a person, to yourself, to a slice of life, to a situation, or to a place either in the past or present.
• Citalgia - the emotions that pour out of you when you think of the city(ies) you've been to/lived in and the memories you made there knowing fully well that you may never go back there/live there again.
• Restalgia - the emotions, and dare I say, saliva too, that pour out of you when you think of your favorite restaurant(s) and your favorite food from there knowing fully well that you may never get to eat there again or that that restaurant(s) has closed down/may close down soon.
• Quitenjob - the feeling that overtakes you during your last few days at a workplace while you're serving your notice period, or as your contract period gets over and won't be renewed, or if they've served you a notice period.
• Asgoodasitgetsintend - the helpless feeling when the love of your life gives you a last hug (which you don't know is the last one at the time) and you feel like this is/was as good as it gets till it lasts/lasted and then it ends/ended one fine day like everything alive dies/died.
• Surpgift - the surprise gift that beats all other gifts because of its meaningfulness and intensity.

My Bangalore Days are over

Bangalore, a city that evokes different and distinct emotions for different folks.

 
For me, it only evokes memories... 

In 2002, when Ani shifted from apna Vasai to work at HP, it was still HP. Bangalore was still Bangalore. Wind Tunnel Road was still like a tunnel made of old trees on both sides with canopies closing in above. 

The whole city was still green. There were no frothing lakes. HSR Layout and Sahakar Nagar were simple-but-far-from-city-center residential layouts with mud roads. Yelahanka was like a satellite town. 

The airport was still inside the city with green fields surrounding it. ACs were not a necessity yet.

Ani has his own share of memories in Bangalore: him meeting a few loves of his life and finally marrying one of them...

I certainly have no nostalgic memories of Bangalore without him though. He meant Bangalore for me.

 
Now, I'll only miss its weather. Which is also soon leaving the place like he is.

Bangalore never meant food joints or pubs to me. It was the only place I felt I always had a second home. Home was where Ani lived.

He certainly was Bangalore's non-resident resident, if that makes sense. His interactions with the locals and the city culture were minimal and if-and-only-if-required kinds. But he did make a few lasting or memorable relationships here.

This was the city where we shared Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Practice, Breaking Bad, most seasons of GoT, and beer together.

This was the city where we made long trips braving city traffic to collect pirated DVDs of A or B-grade thrillers, slashers, and a few good films together.

I have seen the city being abused. Seen it grow without any direction.
Now am directionless. In Bengaluru. 

For there's no place called home here anymore.

Bengaluru without Ani is just another dying city in India. For me, he made the city come alive with love, laughter, and hope.

Now, I hope that I can call Lisbon my second home soon. Hope he makes it BIGger there.