Back to the Sun

Shreds....pieces....broken.... blocks... unrecognized sets of thought. That’s how my mind is like. Nothing stays. Nothing leaves. I am now the epitome of confusion. I know not what makes the chicken tandoori tastier when my friend cooks it with the same ingredients as I do. I also don’t quite understand which makes my eyes look brighter- a black kohl or a brown. Confusion prevails when I think of settling with a lesser qualification and a higher peace of mind. It still stands erect when I debate between going home in 4 months or pushing it away till the next summers. In a line, I need to give my mind a break....from the potpourri of endless thoughts of to be and not to be’s. Yet I thought... I would try to give some kind of a shape to the feelings that well up from time to time. And, every time I try talking about it to someone, I either end up talking rubbish, or, the person in front of me lacks that eccentric element in his intellect to grasp my emotions. So, the best option was to write. Oops! ...type.
There was a time when I loved to bask in the sun. Around the last week of December, a fortnight left till the school would re-open, I’d bask in the sun....till my skin would go darker and my hair greyer. Sometimes Ma would be kind and offer a hot oil hair massage while I still sat there. Those days would count as bonuses. Also, those days would have a palette satisfying element for; my mother would be in a mellowed mood. We would sit at the table like starved falcons; since the aroma which had been escaping her pots and pans since morning would efficiently kill the civilised beings within us. I loved my mom’s cooking then. Now, I miss it. I have, however, succeeded in making myself a very bad photocopy of it. You know- the kind where the ink ends and you have to shake the cartridge to get a copy somehow....that kind.
When I stand at the bus stop on a summer day here in Winnipeg, the sun sometimes burns so bright that I can feel the tickling of its invisible rays on the bare skin of my arms and legs. The sunscreens are sometimes effective, but almost every day I come home to a darker version of my previous self. I keep wanting to sit idly on the grasses and basking in the sun as I did back home. But here, in spite of having a frenzied population going crazy about ‘sunbathing’, the sun lacks its sweetness which evokes the desire of ‘basking in the sun’. It’s more of a phenomenon devoid of the ‘s’- baking!! The same sun....in an alien land....behaves so alien-ly!! So now, I stand alone.....not basking....but rather, with my back to the sun!