Nidhi Katoch blog

After a long day of labour, Uma stood with her group while waiting for bus. The smell of sweat could be felt from their group if someone passed by them. Carrying baby on her one side and empty food box on another, her feet were not supporting her properly. Wasn't body ache enough that her baby started to cry? She had built up tolerance to it after few initial setbacks. She used to lose her momentum earlier, but now she couldn't care less. Babies cry, it's their job! She was told. She put up a careless face now,  but what was going on in her head, nobody knew. What had this baby brought in her life? Pain! Another mouth to feed! She had to go to work within a week. Still she carried her baby everywhere. She wanted to lie down for a bit. She eventually did. She saw a beautiful house, full of colors, clothes like those Seths in their Kothis (rich people). She was smiling and was content. Her soul flied away, breaking the gates of material houses. There lay her body, with gleam ...

Hey all,  It's raining here for third or fourth day or centuries. This made me sit down and write blog, while sipping my masala chai (as friends from West say Chai Latte). It works wonders if you've cold. I had talked about my writing slump in one of the previous posts. There are numerous incomplete draft. Today I've tried to come out of this.  Here's a raw piece of poetry, which I'd scribbled in the early hours of morning. I hope you'll like it. The humidity in the air shirts cling to bodies,  moving for their dears from dark potholes to bright lobbies. How the color of skin changes with path, place, time When shadows come out of the wall, leap over to hymn,  to the temple of lost dreams. Clouds are gathering moving in circular motion,  rain will fall over the ashes,  will lead to the corrosion.  But how much one can damage the already damaged iron. None of the ointment are going to work Neither can carry the disappointment nor can pull off the smirk....

While going through the shelves of bookstore, I stopped at Hindi section. You were sitting there on stool waiting for me to pick up some books for you. How much you trust my choice! I decided to pick few books by Amrita Pritam. This was when you asked me to not buy her books, not of any Indian woman author.  'Why?', I asked casually. But I could sense your unease at the prospect of someone bringing your own experience in front of your eyes. When someone writes about pain, loneliness, atrocities, molestation, oppression, exploitation and so on, at a certain point we all start to see those writings as our own experience, our own life. I've seen them through my eyes. My thoughts, my behavior are products of those experiences. When I came through you I knew I'm destined to these experiences. Little girl in me was gone long ago. Unnecessarily before. Do you really think I'm not aware of your uneasiness? I'm. I always was. Ps. Reader might want to know whether we boug...

  "The mist, like love, plays upon the heart of the hills and brings out surprises of beauty.", I found myself muttering these words of Rabindranath Tagore while we were sipping our tea. It was nearly 6 in the evening when we reached Gadegal Homestay . I listened to the conversation between our host and my friend. Conversation in Hindi with the pinch of pahadi dialect. Melodious in its own way. The mist was hovering over the cedars in front of our balcony. One or two vehicles were passing occasionally through the empty road below. We fixed our gaze toward the view and tried to relax after the long day in Shimla . The cool breeze of Narkanda kissed our skins. One could easily sense the hint of snow in them.  Sometimes I can't understand the kind of paradox I'm. I always brag about not being a nature person. How much I love the monuments of concrete. And again I found myself there, in the mountains, so close to the nature. In between the play of mist and clouds, night ...

I'm sitting in this corner of the room, unaware of my own self. The curtains on the window are staring at me. Every piece of this room is giving me questionable glances, without moving from their place. When I look at the vase, it asks me about the flowers I'd promised to bring. Bookshelf asks me to go through some pages and that fountain pen on the table pleads with me to refill it, to colour the whole stack of paper blue. I don't want to look at anything present here. Each and everything is asking me to move for them as if I'm the odd one here, a human who isn't supposed to choose their corner. How much I wish to become a thing, non-living, a commodity which people wouldn't notice when they enter here. I wish I could mix my skin with these walls, my eyes on the glass of the window. Stoic-Detached-Devoid. I try to gather all those drafts lying around me, but my heart wants me to tear all these into pieces. I can't bear the sight of this stack I've been ...

It was a summer night of June. I was walking on the terrace. A shower of rain had made the night humid as well. My whole body was smeared with petrichor. I wished for once everything would stop. These constantly moving vehicles on the lane below and those irritating sounds of fifteen second videos which were coming from the terrace of another building attached to ours. Sometimes I start to hate these videos serving us the entertainment we don't even ask for, we don't really want (and definitely I don't really need). Like every other person, I'm also guilty of recording and binge watching these videos. It's hard to ignore them as much as it's hard to stop inhaling the pollutants of the environment. The only way I could think of peace was to turn on my headphones. But music wasn't able to put me at ease. I failed to find something interesting to read on my phone. Then I decided to let the thoughts come to me and go. Whenever I can't control the situations ...

A little sparrow came to my window today. It's been a while since I've seen a bird so closely or maybe it's me who has stopped noticing these little delights around me. These house sparrows are so rare to find in cities, after watching this bird I started to miss home. However, even there now their number has reduced. How easy it has become for me to ignore things around me! Now I mostly forget to observe strangers. I don't like to talk. I'm just running wild (obviously in my mind). And this running is leading me nowhere.  This little sparrow felt like a message to look around, to hear the music around me, to feel the morning sun and enjoy the summer blooms. When I opened the window, it flew away. Happy and free in the vast sky of endless possibilities.  

I saw the white Bougainvillea vine on the rear gate of someone's  house and ran toward it to click a photograph. This is what we, the slaves of technology do. We first click the picture and then praise the beauty around us. Yeah! I'm ranting like those people who constantly nag about the cons of technology and can't live without it for a moment. After all, it's this internet access which has allowed me to share my thoughts with people all around the world. Then I started  to ask my friend to try different angles to get a perfect picture of me with that vine. Yet the best picture was the one with my back on camera, which I'll share under the hashtag of summer aesthetic. Flowers have always been the part of our lives. From literature to temples, from greetings to the gift to loved ones, from our birth to doom, flowers walk with us. These little petals of colors fill our lives with colors. We compare the smile of our love with the blooming flower and our sorrow with un...

All three of us were having coffee in the cafe and were laughing at something. But my eyes were only following you. I looked at your face, 'How happy you are today!' I thought to myself, as if trying to convey my message through my mind.  I knew that the day after tomorrow you'd be home and I would remain here. Stagnant! Oh! How much I wanted to follow you like I used to do when I was a child. I had never felt so jealous of kids, the way I felt today. Kids can cry anywhere, at any moment, while we adults are supposed to behave. I wanted to hold you but I didn't. I knew you would get to know my feelings even with my single touch. This could make you sad, more than me. I didn't want to take that risk. After all, You're Mother! Far more experienced and smart than me.  I turned my gaze to my twin. I wondered if she was thinking the same! Our eyes met and she nodded with a small smile. I nodded back and became a part of the conversation again.

The carpet of pale leaves is lying on the ground. I'm listening to the rumble of leaves. These old-pale leaves are leaving their place to be filled by new ones. Don't these old leaves feel bad that soon they will be crushed by someone? Don't they realize they are nothing more than trash on these busy roads? Who can understand the cycle of life more than them? Aren't we like these leaves? Doesn't our life resemble the life of these leaves? Useless, detached, thrown when our season ends. Don't know why I'm feeling sad for these leaves. Pessimism doesn't leave us so easily. But I also believe Optimism and pessimism go hand in hand. I should see the positive side, because with the fall of those old leaves I can see more green ones, more space for new unborn leaves. More flowers on trees. After all, March is the month of warmth and flowers. Month of endings and preparation of new beginnings. Maybe I should also shed my grudges, my anger, my overthinking and w...

As usual, I'm again sitting idle. This is the most common start of accounts, encounters (or whatever you want to call) which I often share here. Sometimes I feel that you (yes! You, my reader) are definitely bored of this beginning. But still you come here again and again to see what story this idler has to tell.  Oh! yes, story.  I'm an early riser and love to see the sunrise. I was standing on the balcony that morning. The sun was about to rise. Few people were coming out of their houses for morning walk . I was slightly irritated by the constant cooing of pigeons. One stray kitten was busy jumping from wall to wall while another was sitting by my side. In this city, people hire men to wash their cars daily, unlike in my own place, where people usually forget when was the last time their vehicle took a bath. A deliveryman was waiting to deliver a courier outside a house. A guy came out with a toothbrush in his mouth, the deliveryman handed him a bouquet of roses and left.I w...

I was browsing the bookstore when I felt a pang of loneliness. I knew this feeling would leave me soon. After all, I didn't visit the bookstore alone. The noise of people started to irritate me like the buzz of a housefly in my ear. I shut my ear with my hands to block that buzz from coming toward me. Everything stopped but my heartbeat.  Who on earth has ever been successful in deceiving his own heart? I shut my eyes. But still I could see that my heart was increasing in size constantly. It was becoming bigger and bigger and started to pop out of my body. There came a point when it burst into a thousand pieces. Those pieces fell in every direction, some pieces decided to hang in the air. A few people came forward to collect those pieces as if those were some precious metal. Some tried to place them in their voids. Some tried to swallow those.  I was standing there, alive, wondering why they were so greedy? Greedy or needy? I could see a part of me in them.  I felt like e...

I bought myself coffee and settled on a nearby bench. A lady and a young man were sitting in front of me. They seemed mother and son by their gestures. It was the fifteenth consecutive day that the sun hadn't spread its rays. This is the problem with the plains. When I'm at home, on the hills, I get to witness the sun, even if it is for a few minutes. But in the plains, it seems impossible to get blessings from the Sun God during winter. Some readers might be aware that I'm not a big fan of cloudy days. These grey skies color my heart blue and blue skies make me cheerful. I wanted to push clouds aside and take some warmth from the sun. Obviously, I couldn't do it, so I indulged myself in a favorite habit of mine, observing (one might say snooping in strangers' lives). The scene around me was simple, some were heading to their destination, some were hanging around. A person who makes paid sketches of people was sketching a kid sitting in front of him. It was evident ...

I was sitting by the lake watching the birds come and go.  At some distance from me a man was looking at the lake lost in his thoughts. I tried to figure out the emotions behind his cold stare. But obviously I can't stare him for long without looking like a creep. So I decided to return to my thoughts. Wind and water were playing with each other. They were making calm music and it seemed birds were taking part in symphony. I wanted to get lost in their world. I imagined myself as light as feather only to fly freely and calmly settle down on earth. From where a child would pick me up, place me in his palm and again blew me in the air.  Never to come back but to float with wind, to play with water and to settle again in someone's palm or in the lap of earth. I looked again at the direction of that man. This time he turned his head to look at me. He waved his hand and I waved back with a smile. And we kept on sitting there, lost in our own thoughts... 

' I don't think it'll rain today, 'You said to me. 'Look how the sun is shining.' I didn't make any reply. We kept on walking in that silent corridor. Occasionally one or two people passed by us. For a while I took off the mask to breathe freely and soak my face in fresh air and sunshine. 'There's the scent of old almonds here.', I said to you. But according to you it had a wet earthy scent. Every place carries a different scent. We often associate memories with fragrances. That fragrance was reminding me of an old house made of mud which had been closed for a long time and I had written my name on its wall with coal. The next day was a great spectacle like in every Indian village. Because the owner of the house who had shifted to his new pucca house, had complained at home itself. I got scolded and scolded more for showing my teeth. 'Just because you're now capable of writing your name, it doesn't mean you should show it off everywhe...