Category: Feelings
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Life’s little lessons
Yesterday walking past my mailbox at work, I noticed an unmarked white envelope sticking out. This was a first. In about four years. Of course a smile plastered from ear to ear, I picked the envelope and tore it open. Inside was a beautiful note from K. I felt my heart lift with happiness. I…
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Intangible joys
Reaching home pretty late after dinner with a girlfriend I was left to whip something up for K who braved the cold and loved me enough to chauffeur me around. Falling back on the standard dhal, chawal subzi routine, I could not wait to lay my hands on my newly acquired Calphalon pan. Pulling it…
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Looking ahead
With Birthday come and gone without a trace, the allure of the new year has me pointedly looking into the future. Each year as this rolls around, I can’t help but go back and try to recollect the highs and lows from the year past. January saw Obama take oath, Slumdog Millionaire rise up among…
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Ever happen to you?
You start your day fixated on a specific time. Watch the clock and the phone or email if waiting for an update. Something as important to you say as your sister meeting a potential suitor or your mom returning from a doctor appointment? As the time nears you feel an excitement that only your poor…
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Focusing on the one
Lighting the twin oil lamps in front of my makeshift puja cabinet, I lifted my eyes to a plethora of Gods arranged in a random order in the dark cavernous space before me. Lightly touching the entrance to the space and touching my eye, I closed my eyes and prayed. Like I have taken to…
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Changing directions
Every once in a while, I stop what am doing to ponder on that path I am on. To use a metaphor, growing up my family portrait looked like this. Two tall silhouettes and two tiny ones hands linked walking into the sunset. Of course, in my mind’s eye the tiny ones would have my…
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I owe you
Walking down the aisle at my workplace, head bent, eyes focused on the eerie back lit glow of the iPhone, I smiled to myself. A bright blue encircled one stood next to my inbox. There are very few times I expect something and it falls in place. Scanning the email quickly I realized how much…
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A peek through my window
Waking up to the sound of the telephone ringing, I sauntered over to the little balcony in our bedroom overlooking the tiny woods in my backyard. The windy morning was beautiful. Yellow leaves floating gracefully to our wet deck. The smell of rain. A fog in the making. I realized with a smile that it…
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Hope and Grief – Twin emotions
A revised version of this essay appears in The Smudged Hyphen (2026). Not suitable if you are looking for something feel good. Folding a humongous pile of clothes my mind wanders in a thousand scattered directions. The muted volume of the TV murmurs in the background. I take pause and notice every detail around me.…
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Come walk a mile in my shoe
Stirring the colorful melange of vegetables simmering on my stove I said something to K only to realize his raptured attention to a Jagjit Singh ghazal playing on TV. It hit me how much I needed people around me to feel what I felt when I felt it. The moment passed and I was tempted…