Torn Wings

She sat at the edge of the water, kohl streaks smudges across her cheeks, just above her swollen, trembling lips. Her face felt sticky with tears and grime. She had run away from all those people and now she sat by the river, her broken wings lay across her lap. She plucked at the bird feathers of the wings. They had all laughed at her. She, a butterfly, with her dark complexion and heavy hips, sniggers and taunts, till the tears came out and she ran away, so that nobody could see them.

It had taken her almost a week to prepare for the fancy-dress party. She had made her wings from feathers she had been collecting for the last many years. Each morning while waiting for her school bus, she would pick up the feathers, which often lay tangled in the bushes or lay by the dirt road. Mostly white but a few gray and black ones too. She would clean and dry each one of them and store her treasures in a box lined with tissue, under her bed.

Carefully she had painted the feathers in all the colors of her paint-box and glued them on the cardboard wings to wear over her white frock. Only her mama had known about her wings and she had smiled and kissed her when she was all ready to go. She remembered Mama had said, that she was her beautiful butterfly, the tears began to roll down again. It did not make sense. She had been so proud of her wings. She had wanted to dance and laugh with them. The river surged through her wiggling toes

Many years later

She is all grown up and pretty now and she does not need them. She does not run away anymore but stands her ground; firm and strong and looks them in the eye. Sometimes she can even laugh at them though mostly she could not care less. But some nights she can still hear them, feel those hot tears welling up in her eyes, after all these years. Somewhere deep down her wings are still soiled and torn.

What will it take to mend them?

Hmmm....that's me.

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Originally uploaded by gulnaz.

Yellow Roses 'n Time

Yellow roses, dry as paper, I stuck them around a small, circular wicker candle stand. The faded yellow of the roses looks good against the rich brown wicker. Then I added a small white candle, which K made from used candles on top of the arrangement. Now every time I pass it, sitting pretty in the drawing room, it reminds me that creativity is about playing with things and ideas. It tells me how things new and old can come together, to form something altogether different. K is my sister-in-law and neither of us believes ourselves to be particularly creative, yet we managed to put together something sweet. K and I are on a creative trip nowadays, she has started sketching and drawing on tiles and fabric and using M-seal to make tiny objects. I am doing some embroidery for my mum and some more such stuff.

I had bought those roses from a florist, almost a month back, I was longing for yellow roses. I was longing to see sunlight fall on them from a window. I had bought some tiny white flowers too, they almost seemed like a spray of mist around the yellow roses. I had enjoyed drinking tea and Kahwa while looking at my yellow roses. The wicker stand was from Orissa, a coastal state in Southern India, bought years ago by my parents when they had gone there with a friend and his family. The friend is no more and their family has developed new and strange values.

The intricacy of the folds of the flowers is heightened by their fragility. There is a meaning here, which I am not being able to grasp right now. The only lesson coming to my head is, moisturize, moisturize, moisturize and drink more water, to keep my skin looking young and fresh. Most of the times I cannot be bothered but then suddenly somewhere, on a day like today when I have not even washed my face, I will start worrying about stuff like wrinkles and growing old. There was an article in the newspaper today about how living healthy can make our bodies biologically younger than their chronological age. Don’t smoke, exercise, sleep on time, don’t fret and don’t stop learning that was the gist of the article. Hmmm…sounds good and do-able.

Hmmm, fretting I thought only dad does it, but I have noticed I too fret rather more frequently than is good for me. Its scary how we pick up our parents bad habits, while all along swearing we would be better. So much, for good intentions, makes me feel like a fraud now for getting angry all those times with him for worrying too much. He has mellowed over the years. As kids we were scared stiff of running into him when he was in a bad mood, as we would end up making it worse for him. Growing up taught me how difficult those years were for him, makes me appreciate and respect him more than ever now, yet we still have a reserve between us. I am still the scared girl trying to stand up to him but now he doesn’t seem like the giant that he used to be and I feel mean and nasty when I reply back sharply. Perspectives change with time.