A touch of the moon colour and this life will glow and slowly will it know of a love story so pure that has travelled a long distance facing boldly every storm that has become a norm, followed by all, the same ones who secretly, meekly hope for someone to rise, rebel and risk it proudly, showing the world that a heart beats in every being, a heart that falls irrefutably in love, in love with a smile, a gesture, the earth, the sky and the moon… all this life needs is a touch of the moon colour.
A painting by Rabindranath Tagore. [Source- V&A Museum]
The Broken Nest
Charu and Amal didn’t understand their heart’s secret, but how could it be that their own heart hid something from them, well it did. Maybe, Charu’s binoculars didn’t work properly.
And Mr. Bhupati, a lost editor, busy sketching the details of a busy world, had no time for keeping secrets.
Why did they give their secrets to Time for safekeeping?
Time always travels light, thus, it naturally left their secrets behind, visible for them all to see, casting a spell. The spell didn’t kill, it broke hearts.
The Ghat’s Tale
Vasant… Grishm… Varsha… Sharad… Hemant… Shishir… Six seasons talked to the Ghat near the Ganga River. The seasons brought green moss at times and dry leaves at others, dipping the Ghat into sunlight and rain shower with love, the seasons spoke less, but heard sincerely.
What did the Ghat tell them? It shared stories… yours and mine.
Notebook
Let her be, why torment her, why read her notebook without her consent? She is little, just a girl, a child bride, she has left her world behind, she has carried some in her notebook.
Postmaster
Love is all-powerful and yet it blooms slowly in every soul, taking time for the realisation to sink in and sync with it completely.
A shade of love wrote a letter to the Postmaster who, tricked by mind, read it too late. Oh! That feeling…
The Broken Nest is a novella, while the other three are short stories; each one holds a complete universe and touches you deeply.
Rabindranath Tagore beautifully writes in the language of love, his characters always express something which stays usually hidden within a heart, sidelined by the talkative world.
Every story of his is like a time machine, it unfolds the past keeping it alive and magical at the same time.
The birds sing sweetest of songs in his stories, the earth dances the best to his tunes, the colour red blushes flamboyantly in his paintings and tears take time to dry up when he narrates.
Well, the map in my possession is incomplete, I still have to collect many missing jigsaw pieces- Ponyo, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, and more. I am all AGOG!
Dominant colours– green, blue, white, yellow, and red – on the map, endless stretches of farmlands, mountains, rivers, sunny days, foggy evenings, starry nights, and cottony skies are fulfilling.
Colours reinstate the quiet you, making you sensitively aware. Wide EYES!
The map warmly takes you to different worlds; worlds you will strongly start to believe you belong in, you always did. Yes, each world on the map has that charm, each world is linked through MAGIC.
Magical creatures, seen for the first time as you follow the map, will become your close friends, the closest ones. Tell them your secrets to make them yours forever.
The map took me to the magnificent majestic world of Princess Mononoke. I confess I was afraid, threatened for my familiarity with and my memories of this life-journey disowned me and left.
Alone I walked, met many Kodamas and I walked ahead. Alone and FASCINATED!
This world merges evil and good, rights and wrongs, anarchy, and peace… thoughts and feelings of being in the centre, with a grand forest and a grand iron fortress, converging. I will return to this world, for I have to.
Do you know what Prince Ashitaka said to Lady Eboshi when she asked him what was he there for? Prince Ashitaka said, ‘To see with eyes unclouded by hate.’ GRAND!
In the world called Spirited Away, I was with Chihiro all the while even when she became Sen… or was I? She kept swinging on the threshold, meeting and understanding the spirits and their realm.
With Chihiro, I crossed the tunnel in the end, we turned together with a measure of hope, wanting, trust, and belief.
We left and the threshold disappeared, but the feeling stayed. The feeling is ALIVE.
The map will take you, to your utter pleasure, both in the future and the past, in the known and the unknown, in their story and your story.
Gladly I followed the dirt road and reached the world of Totoro, My Neighbour Totoro. All I did there was dancing, under the huge tree in the Tsukamori forest along with Satsuki, Mei, Totoro, and two small Totoros.
Listen to the track we all danced to –
*
*
Déjà vu, dreams, and fantasy fused together in this world and promised. A promise so DEEP, one never made before.
Oh how the dreams never end, how we build on and on… maybe for the dreams speak to us honestly without any guilt, without shying from LOVE.
I have been on Howl’s Moving Castle, what a wonderful world.
But I warn you, it is like being in a dream, a lengthy dream, one which tackles evil and disgust and the power game; where love and compassion dimly shine and darkness shakes you from within, leaving you weak.
If you hold on, Howl the wizard fights back and casts a spell to restore harmony and balance.
How well a spell can work? For how long will it preserve? Corruption spreads, how will it all end? Howl’s Flying Castle a dreamlike reality…
I left this world after learning how to make a castle fly – apart from Calcifer’s (the fire-demon) help, you need to nurture freedom within. VOILA!
And so the map showed me another beautiful world which was all about flying, The Wind Rises it was called. Know that ‘flying and magic’ is a must in life. Abide by for there is magic WITHIN.
If you happen to forget yourself, truly forget yourself, may you be reminded as the wind rises, that you must LIVE.
Live to fulfil, to cherish, to create, to inspire, to love, to remember, to let go, to smile, to embrace the truth as it all ENDS.
I will continue to make the map to Miyazaki as slowly it is being revealed to me how the dreams are unfolded, how the stories are made, what it takes to truly believe in it all, and what a treasure living is.
P.S- My friend Tashi gave me the first piece of this map, the one that took me to the world of Princess Mononoke; this is the tradition, I now pass it on to you.
So after I watched Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou I went for an evening walk with a question in my mind.
Why did Marianne call him Pierrot? I left without an answer.
The Poster of Pierrot Le Fou, a film by Jean-Luc Godard
It was getting dark as slowly the fog from the mountains was covering the valley from all the sides. The clouds made a thundering noise at some distance. It was surely going to rain and I still didn’t take any umbrella.
The two dogs with me were extremely excited, they rarely worry. Rain or not, they are always up for a walk.
I have a habit of calling them not by their names. Funny, they always wag their tails. I guess I call them so because of what their personalities reflect as a dog.
So happy!
So excited!
Anyway, Pierrot Le Fou…what a ride! From eccentricity to understanding it, from the society to clashing with it, from love to killing it, from life to getting killed. It was about Pierrot…a single individual and the incidents that occur one after the other in his life.
Criss-cross, criss-cross we climbed down the mountain. My mind was quietly dealing with the same question – why Pierrot?
Was it because of his personality, did Marianne know him more than he knew himself?
It seems so, in fact, he was aware about it but was reluctant to accept this fact and that’s why he reminded her each time she called him Pierrot that his name is Ferdinand not Pierrot.
Suddenly, as I was busy thinking and talking at the same time, it started drizzling. We decided to go back. The dogs were as happy to return as they were when we left the house.
I started running and so did the dogs, it was raining heavily now. Climbing a mountain is tough. I was short of air soon and I stopped to get some.
The dogs also stopped, we were getting wet. Breathe, breathe, I told myself and started walking briskly. And then when the cool fog was all around and my nose felt very icy, the question in my mind escaped.
Panting heavily, trying to catch up with the two dogs, I felt truly in the moment…I was in the present.
As if someone was behind me with a gun, I ran so fast. The dogs were running next to me. It was downhill now and we increased our speed. ‘Thundering typhoons, run, run, run!’
I am sure about one thing, Marianne didn’t lie when she called him Pierrot. She was being honest with him.
But I don’t blame Pierrot either. After all, he was busy reading and contemplating all the time. Someone’s philosophy ruled him.
Pierrot, busy reading.
This is what he was reading.
We reached home, wet. I was smiling. I sat on the chair and looked at the view. The young tree in front, with green leaves, was playing ‘raindrops’ tune. I listened.
Then I felt that I know the answer to the question, finally, but couldn’t put it in words.
Granny’s smile has lots of secrets and lots of memories in it. She is always smiling, beaming; we can also count her wrinkles rising from her cheeks to her closed eyes; eyes shining with childlike brightness, watery eyes speaking the language of love.
It is early morning and everyone in the house is running hither and thither. Mummy is cooking food and packing the tiffin-boxes. The children are late once again and Daddy is going to give them a lift to the school. But Daddy himself cannot find his tie and the green file and somehow Mummy is managing everything right from the kitchen.
In this daily drama we see Granny sitting in the balcony, she is combing her grand-daughter’s plaits; Granny talks about her late grandmother who use to tie her plaits, to which her little granddaughter giggles up and says, ‘Granny you also had a Granny?’
Mummy shouts from the kitchen as the clock declares it is 8. Everyone is late!
In this relay race, this cute family is asked to stop and pose for a photograph. Daddy says no but the children agree and Mummy is caught between them; while everyone else hesitates only to agree in the end, the granddaughter brings Granny inside and both of them settle comfortably on the sofa for the photograph.
Say Cheese! Click!
Daddy is awkwardly smiling with a bad tie-shirt combination making him look funny; Mummy is smiling nicely and is hiding her apron behind her; the children are looking full of life and sleepy at the same time; the granddaughter is hugging her Granny and saying cheese loudly; Granny is smiling peacefully.
Daddy, Mummy and the children wish Granny a good-bye, she waves back at them from the balcony. They leave in their car and get mixed with the ‘bhroom-honk-honk-bhroom’ crowd on the road.
When Granny is asked about the brightness in her eyes and the secret behind her smile, she laughs musically and says, ‘thank you very much’.
Enjoying the scene from her gallery she seems to be waiting for somebody. She walks slowly to the kitchen like there is no need to hurry, this is how blessed she is, maybe this the reason behind her smile.
When we are about to leave the house, she calls us and asks us to meet her friend. Back in the gallery, Granny is feeding a stale roti to a crow with extreme joy in her eyes.
She indicates us to take her photograph with the crow. She is already saying cheese. Click!
Endless footprints following footprints/
When suddenly a few of them rise/
To bloom like a flower.
Greetings!
A storyteller, following the ancient tradition of cave chroniclers, standing in vrikshasana (the tree pose) on a hill top (it is sunny, but windy), breathing in and out stories (relishing it all, but at times overwhelmed), declares animatedly that she will continue to – tell stories, share rare story gems, and connect with the pacy universe while also keeping the website ad-free.
Big thanks to my readers. Stay tuned!
Also, a humble request to the new subscribers to check the spam folder after subscribing. Silly (but necessary) confirmation emails often land there instead of the bright inboxes. Merci!
Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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Gabbeh, the 1996 film, is a simple tale of a gipsy girl, her clan and the way their life goes on. Unfolding beautifully just like an artist painting a canvas, Gabbeh quietly touches the grand questions.
Ranked as one of the greatest British films of all time, The Lavender Hill Mob confides in the audience, letting them see, feel, laugh and think without tickling persuasively with a joke here and a punch-line there.
Godard… Breathless and Alive
A Tribute to Jean-Luc Godard, the Film Philologist who Reinvented Cinema.
Yes fly! For walking on the second track is dull and usual, but dreaming high, high, high requires tools. Tools like the right pair of shoes, a chirpy, gritty soul that eats butter-jam dreams, a soul that drinks milky-milky creams.
Silver cascade shimmering the night sky, music to the waves and surreal beauty to the eyes, the Moon loves the art of discipline.
It may be difficult to believe for the Moon’s splendour defies time, it stupefies the clock, it follows the path of a dreamer, but how could this be possible if the Moon knew not discipline?
In this moment, I am a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I am complete and incomplete, I am pleased and uncertain, I wish for nothing and I know I have to wait.
Because the distance covered reminds me of the hurdles I have crossed and the ones I could not, it reminds me of a throbbing past and a dreamy future and it reminds me of how much time is left.
Meredith and the Green Lake
Illimitable Splendour
A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
