Home

Vines up the windows. As many windows as possible. The smell of freshly baked muffins in the air. Surrounds the place like an aura. A garden, with seasonal flowers and fruits. Chairs out on the porch, for that occasional (or not) dinner outside. A barbeque?

The living room. The life of the house. With a piano and a fireplace. Cushions piled high. Books strewn about, from that evening when everybody was reading to themselves, to each other.

Island kitchen. The family eats food in the kitchen itself, with its vintage windows and cabinets. Space. So much space. A wine rack, a blackboard wall. Shopping lists and to-do lists and reminder lists on the blackboard wall. Berries on the counter. Blueberries, raspberries, berries. Cream in a jug. Cookbooks on a tiny shelf. So many of them.

Window landings. All those window landings, with tiny nooks. Nooks to read, sketch, write, talk, look out the window and dream. Cushions in the nooks, so one can fall asleep accompanied by the sound of the wind and enveloped in the smell of the night’s flowers. In the moonlight.

Stairs, the steps of which need to be repaired often. The collection of videos and records in the shelves under the stairs. A home for the books.

French windows in the bedroom, opening to a tiny balcony with seating just for two. A tray of half eaten cookies on the small table. When the moon comes up, it looks as if the entire room is cloaked in silver silk. A low bed, a comforter. Photos on the wall behind the bed.

A room on the side, with light flooding in from every direction. A clean desk, a laptop, and stacks of papers. Ink pens with so many colours of ink. Turquoise and indigo and wine red. Every single available part of the wall covered with inspiration pictures, post-its from last night’s brainstorming. Words, so many words scrawled over so many papers. A love affair with words.

Colour swatches and material boards. Florals and weaves. Every texture, every colour up on the walls. Places and spaces one can dream all day about. Boards pinned up neatly, with barely one corner visible because first the sketches were pinned around them, then came the designs and then the swatches. The samples and the shade cards. The love, and the pride.

The room for the children? I don’t know much. The walls all chalkboard covered, up to 3 feet from the floor. Every single one of them covered by wandering minds. Stars and skies on the ceiling. A wonderland of bedsheet tents and cushion mountains. Open windows. I know that much.

A home. Conventional in so many ways and unconventional is so many other ways. But regardless, a beautiful home. A place created to make memories in. Created only so one would have somewhere to come back to. Home.

I created this image as a result of a conversation which prompted the same. And it made me long for all the homes i have ever stayed in, and the one home i wish to always stay in. I realised how much of me defines this space. That this image is nothing more than me, pinned down in words. And i had the urge to ask everybody to create an image for themselves and show me. If you did not have to bother about the practicalities of it and did not have to worry about how you would finally create it, what would your home be like? What do your eyes see? Show me every detail, every flaw and every dream. Let me see you, stark naked. See what is inside of you. We might realise how similar we are or how different. We might not realise anything at all. Show me your home.

Day 30 #100Happydays

I have never been much of a software person. rather technologically challenged. The hand speaks to the pen, and on paper, a story is created. My brain has never been able to wrap itself around the beauty of that.

But when you have to, you have to. Hence the wacom. It is bliss!

Moonlight

Words. Moonlight.

Look out the window. Watch everything fly past. Its beautiful, its gone.

Write drunk.

Write everything, nothing.

Look, think. And when you want to hold onto what you think, it flies away.

It is angry, upset, and unhappy. Let down but aloof.

You look at it, and then you want to hold on. When you try to hold on you look away. It flies away, unhappy.

You look back and its still there, but not so.

Look again, look far far away and look for a while. It will come back to you. And maybe when you look intently, it will stay.

Moonlight. Pure, serene, unadulterated. Cloaking, spreading and holding.

Space, constriction, boundaries.

There is widespread, free and pure outside.

There is a boundary, lack of space inside.

Everywhere you move there is something. You cant get up, you cant sit straight. You can lie, but lie still. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Isn’t the inside, at least, required to remain free of boundaries?

Escape. You know you want to.

Light falls and passes. Real, unreal and ethereal.
Words on a page. The keys on the keyboard. The ink flows on the paper and creates your existence. Mine.

It creates everything as it moves. The mankind and everything about it. The past, present and future. What we know for sure, and what we believe in.

The ink.

Like moonlight. Writes the script of the world. Whatever it touches becomes something that exists.

Don’t read, don’t think. When you write, you don’t think and don’t read. Let it come out. When the words are coming out of your head in something that doesn’t even make sense, that is when they are the purest. That is when it is the truth. And you don’t need to pause until you feel exhausted. Drained and fulfilled at the same time.

Now it is down on a paper. It will not fly away from your head. now maybe it will make sense, maybe it wont. But it is somewhere. It exists.

The beautiful, fleeting and present moonlight. Look around you. You are in a womb filled with pure silver light. And it is endless. You will stay.

Let me out.

Day 26 #100Happydays

So i will be honest here. One of the times when i realise i did not remember to capture a happy moment. I catch myself wondering if i even had any. In that moment, i look around for anything that seems to suffice. And this beautiful tree with pale pale leaves, is it!

I think that because we live in such constricted spaces with little allowance for interaction with nature, we turn to creating a beautiful piece of it in our tiny space. And because we know how rare it is, we try harder. At least that is how i would want to keep thinking about it.

Day 25 #100Happydays

The morning. The fact that it is morning is not the happiest part, neither is the view or something. I keep curtains pulled back through the night though, and so when i wake up in the morning the room is flooded with morning light. The light tells me if i am late or just within my on time morning, or if i am deliciously early and have another half an hour in bed.

People describe good mornings as ones when you just want to get up and seize the day. Or when you are relaxed and calm. For me, the waking up feeling is almost always in the  ‘barely awake’ bracket. But this, this makes me happy.

Day 24 #100Happydays

Most days, i am glad when i walk home from work. I am thinking at that point about the cool room and the big big bed. And binge watching gilmore girls or mad men or friends, or reading whatever book i am on at that point. Even on days that i have work to do once i reach back, the idea does not dim my joy along the way.

That week though, i felt alone. Every single evening as i walked back from work, it just felt lonely, and continued to feel the same way till the next morning. For no apparent reason too. In that state of mind, halfway home, when i realise i have not remembered to capture any happy moment for the day? Cannot be very joyful, can it? So capturing a happy moment everyday becomes a task which you have to remember to do, and obviously usually forget. Kind of beats the whole purpose of this thing here.

Then in the morning i realise i look at these flowers everyday, and something about the way they droop. It is almost lazy, languid grace. How they manage to be both laid back and graceful at the same time, i will never know. But they give me a happy moment every morning, and i didn’t even realise!

Day 23 #100Happydays

Hand lettering. So calming and beautiful!

I know it has been ages since i posted, but trust me that was not for lack of happy moments. That was maybe because i had too many of them? Anyways, i got most happy moments caught up on in my phone, and nw is the time i hope to gradually catch up on the backlog. Although i would like to mention that i am not the biggest fan of capturing happy moments. As far as i am concerned, as long as you realize something is making you happy in this particular moment, you don’t need to take your attention away from the joy even one bit in order to try and hold on to it.

Day 22 #100Happydays

Work. Work, and those tiny little elephants. So i couldn’t draw them, and they just wouldn’t look right for ages, and then BAM!

I love them. I want to have a box full of those tiny elephants and then pour them out on my bed and sleep among them. Of course, they will have to stay the same size as on paper.

You think you will sit down at some point of the day, and write that blog post, and then work comes in the way. It always comes in the way, doesn’t it?

Day 21 #100Happydays

I am so proud of this one.

Congratulations for everything you have achieved so far, and everything you achieve every single day. Also, for staying so SO humble.

You are taking on big things, new things. Scary, yes, but things you are completely prepared for. Things you deserve to excel at. Trust me when i say this. Because when you are not confident enough about yourself and all you can see are the flaws, remember that i am confident about you, and i will always believe in you.

Trust in my faith, and all the very best!

Day 20 #100Happydays

The Happiness Package arrived!

I know, those are children’s classics and all, but i never read them. My childhood reading was more Malory Towers and The Twins at St Claire’s, and Nancy Drew. Also, anything and everything that Enid Blyton wrote was automatically in the to-read list. Then goosebumps, and some classics which were definitely not kid classics. This continued till i became so addicted that i would hide the novels inside my school books and not study at all. I thought it was oh-so-clever. Obviously my parents figured it out, and from then on was laid down the rule of only reading novels during the vacations. I swear i followed that rule till the end of my schooling! I would be the nice kid with my nose buried in school books during school days, and my entire self buried in novels during vacations. That, and the extensive travelling we always did on any and every vacation, pretty much made up for the no-novels-during-school rule.

So now that there is no school, and certainly no school books, i decided i had better catch up on those well loved classics!