Life Lens

  CRADLE HANGER I picked up a small cradle hanger today— felt toys, animals, soft clouds, a gentle little orbit of color meant to twirl above a crib and keep a newborn entertained. I’d bought it for the Christmas crib I was arranging the one meant for Baby Jesus. A simple ritual, a quiet act of care. But when I lifted it over the tiny manger, something shifted inside, and the truth rose to the surface— What was I really doing? Holding up a tiny toy before a P resence - the source of light itself needed a trinket to stay amused ??? And then the realization arrived— not sharp, not accusing, but with the ease of something obvious: it is never the divine that needs hangers. It is always us. We, the adult infants of this world, still reaching upward, still wailing for brighter comforts, still collecting small distractions to keep the dark corners of our minds quiet. Give us a success, a celebration, a distraction, a dream— and we soften for a while, spellbound by...

  Krishna Speaks of the SECOND Listen, dear ones— you who chant My name with trembling faith, you who fear loss, death, loneliness, the world’s cruel turning— I tell you a secret the Upanishads sang long before you were born: The very notion of the second is the birthplace of fear. When you see Me as separate— above you, beyond you, outside you— your devotion still holds a thread of trembling. You love Me, but you fear My absence. You trust Me, but you dread My silence. You pray to Me, but you fear I may not answer. This is not wrong— it is just incomplete. For when the mind imagines two— you and Me, self and world, devotee and God — fear stands beside devotion as a silent shadow. Arjuna, this is why I revealed My cosmic form— not to frighten, but to show you there is no “other.” If all forms are My body, if all hearts are My pulse, if all beings rest in Me as waves in the sea— tell Me, beloved, what is left to fear? You are afraid only because you think ...

  MISSING MIST Bangalore, November. In the old stories, the mist arrived early— long before milkmen, long before birds, tiptoeing over red-oxide terraces, folding herself into the arms of plants and trees. She was the city’s first prayer— a pale hymn that rose from the grass and kissed every window awake. Now she stands at the threshold of Bangalore, holding her breath like an uninvited guest. She peers in, confused— Wasn’t it November? Wasn’t I once welcome here? But the city hums with sleepless electricity— Glass towers blinking like restless eyes, Roads buzzing with machines that never learned to whisper. The morning now begins with horns, not hope. Mist once believed that silence was still sacred. That people would come out wrapped in shawls, Hands curled around steel tumblers of filter coffee, Waiting to see what the world looked like before it remembered its own name. Now no one wakes early enough to notice her absence. Screens flicker blue behind curtains dr...

  I, Childhood Today, of all days, let me speak. I am Childhood — the soft wind that once ran barefoot through your ribs, the laughter that filled your days so completely, it had no place to hide. I look around now, and I see children who do not get to meet me. Their faces are young, but their days are not. They walk with backpacks filled with expectations that do not belong to them. They speak in words borrowed from grown-ups, as if innocence were something to be outgrown quickly, like last year’s shoes. They scroll, swipe, mimic, perform— hurrying to become what the world claps for, and losing the art of becoming themselves. Parents, with love heavy as worry, stitch their own unfinished stories onto these small shoulders, hoping their children will walk straighter than they ever could. But sometimes— a straight path is not a joyful one. Yet beyond the screens and the rush of cities, in dusty lanes and half-lit classrooms, I still find a home. In r...

  The Anatomy of Hunger It begins before birth— a longing older than thought, that mistook motion for meaning. We arrive not empty, but already rehearsing want. Some crave bread, some applause, some the silence that follows both. A few hunger for power, and call it purpose. Others hunger for love, and call it life. But the hunger itself— that ancient, unseen sovereign— wears every face and asks for more. We raise empires out of it, paint heavens, invent gods who mirror our ache. It builds music, and it breaks peace. It is the first architect and the last wound. Yet even hunger learns. Through births and deaths, it softens— outgrows its own ferocity, forgets its name, and finally kneels before stillness. And in that silence the soul remembers: it was never empty, only circling its own abundance.

  We call it home— as if the word itself were a roof, as if naming could make it ours. But what is it, really— this quiet geometry of brick and breath? The sand in its walls once lay in a river valley, feeling the pulse of fish and current. The bricks were fired in a kiln with no address, where smoke curled into anonymity, and hands, darkened by labour, shaped our comfort into being. The wood that holds our door once sang in the wind of another forest. The tiles remember monsoons that fell on a different roof. Even the iron in the nails was mined from a mountain that never knew our name. And yet, when the evening light folds itself across these unknowing walls, we feel something gather— a hush, a warmth, a permission to rest. Maybe home isn’t made of things but of echoes— the lingering kindness of those who built, the gratitude of those who dwell. We belong not because it’s ours, but because it holds everything we never knew we were connected to— ...

  Kavisamaya At 5:30, the city still dreams. The air is young with silence, and our steps begin softly— two silhouettes moving through half-light, between night’s hush and morning’s breath. In our ears, poets awaken. Their voices drift through the quiet— each syllable a ripple in the dawn. We listen— to their poems, their pauses, their laughter folded into lines, their worlds unfolding like light through mist. They speak of rivers that remember, of time that forgets, of how an ordinary morning can hold the weight of eternity. We walk slower, as if afraid to step on a metaphor. The road becomes a verse, the wind a listener. Even the sparrows pause as language rearranges the air. We are no longer walking for the body— it is the mind that stretches, the heart that learns to breathe again. In this hour, we are not husband and wife, but two quiet pilgrims inside the temple of thought. By the time the sun spills gold over sleeping rooftops, the poets have taken t...

  The Joke on Perfection If you seek perfect, start by asking Alexander — he’ll tell you how the world shrinks once you’ve conquered it. Maps can be flawless, but men cannot. He found no perfection in the desert’s last grain of sand. Ask Arjuna, whose arrows never missed, but whose questions never stopped. Ask Drona, who could teach every strike except the one that would make him whole. In the epic of certainties, every hero bends somewhere. Even the Buddha tried balance, and still called it the middle path, not the perfect one. The pyramids look precise, but their builders were buried under uneven stones. Da Vinci drew the golden man, and left half his inventions unfinished. Michelangelo chipped marble and called the cracks “the breath of life.” Perfection, my friend, is a moving mirage — it always takes one step back when you take one forward. It’s the joke time tells to those who take themselves too seriously. There is no perfect lover, only som...

Between Action and Cut The set is always half-built, props recast by time, and someone keeps adjusting the light, so even our cracks can pass for character. We wait for our cue, face powdered with borrowed courage, rehearsing lines we wrote, believing someone, somewhere, was listening. The Director never speaks directly— just a nod, a silence, and we guess what the scene demands. Sometimes we overact, sometimes we forget our lines, and sometimes the camera keeps rolling even after we think it’s done. There are retakes, of course— not of the same moment, but of the same mistake with better lighting. We find our marks, trust the tape beneath our feet; face the camera, hit the cue, even when the scene’s not in our bones. Between Action and Cut is where everything real happens— the tremor in the voice, the glance the script forgot, the truth that slipped through before editing began. Some scenes never make it to the final reel. Some faces blur in post-produc...

  The Freedom of Strays The news came in with the morning whistle — humans have decided, we are to be collected, catalogued, and contained. “No more wandering,” said the man with the stick. “Shelter life from now — good food, safe walls.” We looked at each other — the way only dogs can look, half amusement, half pity. Raja , the self-appointed philosopher, snorted, “So, after centuries of sniffing liberty, we’re now to live in neat enclosures— fed on time, bored on schedule.” Tommy wagged. “But food! Think of it — one bowl a day, maybe two. No chasing dustbins, no begging at weddings. We could finally rest.” Sweety tilted her head, “Rest? You mean retirement before old age? Freedom exchanged for a full stomach?” Blackie growled softly, “They call it protection. I call it polite imprisonment.” A young pup barked, “But isn’t it good to be cared for?” Raja chuckled, “Kid, that’s how it begins — first they feed you, then they fence you, and soon, you’ll forget ...

ಇಲ್ಲವಾಗುವುದು : A meditation on learning to leave gently, without resistance or regret One day, I too will become less— less quieter in memory, less lighter on the earth. So let me begin the rehearsal gently— to speak less for noise and more for meaning, to hold less for possession and more for care. Let me loosen my grip on what will not come with me— the arguments, the proofs, the names carved for permanence on dissolving walls. I will learn to walk softer, so even the dust forgives my passing. I will learn to give fully, so absence finds me emptied, not erased. Each evening, I will practice disappearance— in the slow unmaking of light, in the silence that follows a song. Perhaps fading is not a loss but a return— the way mist returns to air, and air to the wide, waiting sky. If I must go, let it be like this— not sudden, not sorrowful, but certain and clear— like a lamp that knows when dawn has come, and quietly goes out.

Between Departures There are words we would never tell the ones we love— too heavy, too tangled, too afraid of what their eyes might say. Yet we offer them freely to someone sitting beside us on a train we’ll never board again. A face across the aisle, a fellow traveller on a flight, a woman in a queue— their silence opens like a window, their attention soft, unburdened by history. They do not know our stories, and in that unknowing lies a strange mercy. We speak, because they do not matter— and yet, for that brief hour, they matter more than anyone. They hold our truth without reaction, their gaze neither mends nor breaks, it simply is . And so the words flow— as though sharing is less about unburdening, and more about being heard. The stranger nods, smiles perhaps, or shares a memory like a leaf in passing— and suddenly we are both lighter, as though the act of being heard is enough to make us human again. The comfort of strangers is not that they listen b...

  Monochrome There was a time when the world sang in dialects— each bird with its own grammar of dawn, each river whispering a taste its stones had learned to remember. Villages smelled of what they made— earth breathing through clay, jaggery melting in brass, threads steeped in dyes and in the hum of a grandmother’s song. Dharwad had its sweetness, Banaras its silk that shimmered like prayer, Bidar its craft of shadowed silver— the map of India was not drawn by borders, but by the fragrance of its earth, by textures, accents, and the slow music of hands. Now the shelves gleam— everything available everywhere, everywhere tasting the same. The world wears one fabric— immaculate, efficient, stitched by a machine that has forgotten the warmth of touch. We call it progress— a symmetry that shines, yet leaves the heart unstirred. I miss the uneven, the crooked, the imperfectly real— where surprise bloomed in the crack of difference. The monochrome is gentle...