evening muses.....

A late February afternoon, two feisty souls braving the dark clouds hanging low over the sky, darted through the mud-splattered streets with sleep-drenched eyes, stained jeans and sling bags over the shoulders. We were lost in the galore of the exalt of pigeons over the sky, the drizzle over our eyelids, the water sprinkled flowers on the streets and the bench in the park where our thoughts got fused and meandered in that wide canvas of the blue sky.

Reminiscing that day though insignificant it may be, I wonder why did the sounds of that moment got frozen in my mind. It’s strange why some sounds, sights and smells get stuck to your mind and then as you move ahead in your life, these very same reverberations of the senses hit you back in the most unimaginable moments and times of your life. They keep lingering in some corner of your mind for some time and then disappearing again to resurface back in your mind. A sepia tinted nostalgia floats in your mind. Some smells and sounds come with a sweet pleasantness while with some you try to quickly dart it off.

As the sky changed to the inside of the mussel shell that evening, the deeply hued skyline reminded me of another evening somewhere across the seas and the frontiers of the continent.

…………The city was slowly coming back to life. Tucked in a quiet corner of the cold and the mountainous terrain of Turkey, the city of Bursa slowly glows like a firefly. There was a nip in the air, a slight chill and is just the perfect time for a walk around the ancient cobbled streets, with the Ottoman remains of the glorious past guarding the place like the evangelist.

Relishing the sights and sounds of the moment, there was a serene bliss that descended upon me. Thoughts and dreams spilled across the deeply hued sky, lights jingled, smells got fused with sights. Cars, buses, cycles whizzed past me as I stood there watching. People darted across the streets with a paced urgency. Smells of the Turkish coffee wafted across the air from a nearby Coffee joint. Life moved on like this everyday in this corner of the world, with that same sanguinity, the peace of living in unruffled waters of security and calmness. The young man at the bend in the street selling the same shoes day in and out, the lady across the street with her jazzy wedding gowns displayed upon the mannequins never changed and then the small boy who sells cigarettes and matchboxes in his small cart box that he hangs over his neck………..

Sometimes standing aside and seeing the smooth pace of life, it is difficult to gauge the magnitude of stories of every individual that struts down the streets. This has a different smell. It smells like the half read novel on a rainy day, when the smell of wet soil still lingers by. On that evening when the two feisty souls returned back to their abode, there were smells of hope and sights of dreams in their eyes, starry yet unflinching.