Prashant's Solace

Laila is playing Holi with her relatives in their ancestral home. In a remote Uttar Pradesh village, this has been the yearly tradition of the Chaudhari family. One that Laila always looks forward to. But this year her anticipation was adulterated with dread. The elders say they will wait for her graduation. But preceding Chaudhari marriages indicate otherwise. Elsewhere in a village of Haryana state, three men died after consuming spurious liquor. Their wives are crying their hearts out. These tears are mixed with pain; not only from the loss. As they wail, one of the ladies' sore throat hurts. Another woman's badly bruised lips and chest hurt as the salty liquid flows down her face. The third is pregnant for the fourth time and has travelled back from her parent's home for the funeral. As is the practice and widely believed, no, she was not at her parents for pregnancy period but to collect the latest instalment of promised dowry. The wound marks on her privates ...

Nothing in that moment of tranquil sun suggested anything wrong. I was standing in a dreamy room overlooking the Parvati Valley in the laps of Himalayas. She liked nature so much that she painted her own little outdoors on the walls. A rising, glistening sun froze-rising forever on the golden sky that was her wall. It complemented the real one for most part of the year, like brothers posing one in front of the other. She had told me that her mornings began comparing the real and her wall sun. Real and surreal. Both were both to her depending on mood. On the opposite wall was a dark and dense valley, again, just like the one outside. It played heavily on the minds of first-time visitors to her shack. But it comforted her, she said. Sometimes, over and against the real view. I first saw Maya in the clouds - somewhere over the Caspian Sea. She was standing in front of the restroom from where I was taking forever to come out. Flights make it harder for me to go! ...