Lying upon stretcher, as if in deep sleep, my aunt was brought down from her third-floor quarantine to hospital basement. The sight hit the heart-strings like a shooting stone from a slingshot.

Now there’s too great a gulf
Between him
And everybody else around him.

The muffled echoes
Of the motorized boat
Cruising towards Gandhi-ghat
Had me in its spell

I was on Rajdhani Express, fixated on a book called An Artist of the Floating World, not aware that dinner had already been served, that a co-passenger was trying to attract my attention.

I am a sucker for deliciously scented flowers. If I smell a floral scent drifting in the air, I pause and seek its source. Thus, l came to be acquainted with Mogra (Arabian Jasmine) Honey Suckle (Madhobilata), Tuberose (Nishigandha) and the like. There’s another of its kind I fell in love with during a stay at Aarogya Bhavan in Jasidih, now a part of the state of Jharkhand.
Our journey to Jasidih became uncertain when the morning Toofan Express in which we had reservations was cancelled an hour before its scheduled departure. Our stay for a few days at Aarogya Bhavan was already booked.  So, a few hours later, we boarded another train and arrived at Jasidih quite late in the evening.

Crepuscular rays shimmer around the hummock overlooking the hamlet with its encampment of huts.

Trotting along the winding by-lanes with my friends in Varanasi, I suddenly strayed from the group. Strain of a morning raga drove me to a hole in the wall. My eyes misting up, I met an American flautist there.

Whenever I passed by the advocate’s house in the narrow lane, their husky dog on a leash threatened to attack me. His ferocious barking took the wind out of my sails as I hurried away from the place.

We were sitting under the lyre tree. She and I. There’s still an hour to go before the poetry-reading session.
“Most poets”, I said, “render their poems looking at the page. But you recite your own entirely from memory.”

He’s a queer freelancer. Nobody asks him to meet unsung people who excel in some form of creative arts. He goes on his own. Often cash-strapped, yes.