Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscopes have always fascinated me. They are so simple, yet so beautiful. When I was a kid, I spent hours on end just rotating the cardboard tube and looking at all the myriad designs forming inside the cone. I think I still have one back at home. I wonder who invented these.

I like to think of my life as a kaleidoscope. It's made of a lot of ordinary simple things, but it's still beautiful.

The friends who are so weird that you can't live without them.

My family which is the reason I'm this crazy.

The roads I've walked, drove and passed.

The college that ground the brains out of me.

The skeezes who made me realize my own worth.

The poems I read but never understood, only my skin was left in goose-pimples.

The fairs I've been to and got lost.

The cats I cuddled on the road.

The last benches we carved our names on.

The wallets I lost, and lost more than money.

The best friend I found in my boyfriend.

The scars on my legs when I was learning to cycle.

The tears I wept that nobody knows about.

The burps that scandalize but also amuse my buds.

The flowers I picked from a far away hillside and pressed between books.

The autumn sky with clean white cotton clouds.

The smell of a brand new book in a musty store.

The vapours of a plate of warm khichdi on a rainy afternoon.

The old house with vines growing on its walls that I once called home.

The wind that blew tiny leaves in my face and hair.

The forks of lightning I viewed from an open terrace.

The make-believe stories I played out.

The reality which had once become make-belief.

The dates that went bad.

The movies that made me laugh and cry and swear.

The times I loved and lost, but learnt to love again.
  

To all those bits that make up my kaleidoscope every day -