THE PATH THAT CURVED

I once walked a mountain path with two friends

and saw before me the road stretching into infinity as we talked of days past – things we had shared, places we had gone, memories that made us laugh…

Until we came upon a turning.

We couldn’t see what lay beyond and I grew quiet,

Hiding behind my thoughts as I shrank into my silence.

The bend for me an end of all that I knew to be familiar,

The voices of my companions walled out by my fear,

I didn’t want to take that turn into the unknown.

My only desire was to walk that straight unending path with two known faces – two minds in harmony with mine…

I tried to fathom what mystery lay hidden around that bend

But nothing met my eye that was not obscured…

And so I lingered, panic stricken, too awed by the strange, the nameless, the faceless - the void with many questions…

and thus I stayed as hour melted into hour and sunset into sunset,

The gentle assurance of those most loved silenced by the pounding of my heart,

As the bend, somehow, grew bigger than the road.

THE MAGIC OF MIMOSA

I’ve always marvelled at the many wonders of a tree.  In the place where I was privileged to spend a large part of my growing up years, there were trees of more varieties than I can remember.  The most beloved of them, to me, were the Mimosas and Casuarinas.  But most of all the Mimosas.  They formed an avenue to the side of the driveway leading to our house, and it was amidst their branches that I have had some of the best times, and the most poignant, of my life.  As a ten year old I climbed to the top with my friends and held secret club meetings there – in a bid to emulate our role models from Enid Blyton’s books.  As an eleven year old I huddled in the branches with that same group of friends as we held hands and prayed for the girl who had been with us on those same branches just the day before, who lost her life to a kraite bite.

  As a thirteen year old I lay back against the leaves and wrote poetry and dreamed.  At fourteen I picnicked in their shade with a transistor radio and my mum and sisters for company. At twenty two I buried my pet cat right by the trunk of my favourite Mimosa tree in the avenue.   At 25 I introduced my trees to my husband …and now I return with a childhood friend, whenever nostalgia brings him homewards, and stand there looking up into the swirls of green; feeling the love of my Mimosa trees wash over me as they welcome me back.   And in their shelter, I know that each time I return I shed the person I am… and return to the girl I used to be.  For in the shade of those changeless Mimosas, I reconnect with the part of me that, cleaving to them, will never change.

                                   Captivated by Camelot

I was looking through my shelves of ‘best loved’ books and turned the pages of Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, overcome by a feeling of nostalgia.  I was twelve or thirteen, I think, when my elder sisters Rachel and Debbie were trying to keep me occupied during the long, hot summer holidays.  My mother had put them in charge, because I generally took advantage of any lack of "adult" supervision, riding off  even during the hottest time of day on my cycle.  I don’t think I ever got sun stroke, but my mother always feared I might.   I can imagine that my two sisters, wishing to go about their own business, must have debated long and hard over the most failsafe method to keep me in the house.  I can picture them right now - whispering, conspiring, taking out first The Crystal Cave and then The Hollow Hills and placing each book in turn, in my restless hands.  I have always loved reading, but at that point in my life, I loved the outdoors more.  However, for a part of that summer I stayed indoors during the day, curled up on a sofa in the living room, completely enthralled by one of the most amazing legends of all time – the legend of King Arthur and his knights, and of Merlin, that fascinating magician.  I then read Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ which gave the Legend a new dimension altogether.  I relived the charms of Camelot some years later when Debbie managed to find, and lend me, The Once and Future King and The Sword In The Stone by T.H. White. 

Today when I see my daughters immersed in the latest fantasy novels, I wish they would give the Arthurian legends a chance - to enjoy, as I did, the indescribable bliss of being transported to the world of chivalry, magic and romance that so inspired me one summer years ago.  

                                   http://marystewartnovels.com/

                              http://www2.netdoor.com/~moulder/thwhite/

One of my favourite quotes is from Forrest Gump: “My momma always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." 

While lying in bed last night, looking out at the stars in a very clear sky, and recalling just such a moment far back in time, I thought - life is also like a box of cupcakes.  You can choose exactly the kind of topping you want – swirls of excitement, pretty dashes of colour, dark intensity, luxurious extravagance, frills and sparkle…

Whatever you choose, space out those bites and take time to savour each one very slowly... and maybe even pass up a topping or two every once in a while.   I once took a bite too large and wondered if I’d ever recover from the agonising ache of having indulged too much in something too sweet, too intense…

                                              Flashes in the Shower

For some reason my most creative ideas come to me in the shower.  I wish I had some receptacle, other than my very overloaded mind, in which to collect them, because they come flowing in and then are all washed out with the last of the suds.  Perhaps one day someone will obligingly invent a recording device embedded in a shower head …except that when it malfunctions all those carefully hoarded ideas might be washed out with the next jet of water. 

                                                                        Pranati Khanna 2012 ©


So how does one hold on to those flashes of inspiration?  I’ve often wondered.  Notebooks are the answer, said one wise friend.  I tried that.  Didn’t work.  Ideas don’t actually wait – even for a hurried exit from under the shower.  Nor do they always survive the transition from thought to paper.  In my case they almost always emerge as a somewhat indecipherable linking of letters which are generally consigned to the trash can.   Puts me in mind of Liv Tyler in ‘Stealing Beauty’ - where the character she played wrote poetry while in the bathtub, only to shred it soon after.  I wonder if she felt like I do – that all those thoughts, words and ideas which we imagined were so creative when they echoed above the sound of rushing water, lost their charm when set down in cold ink.    

WHY AM I HERE?

I’m here because people have gone hoarse telling me I need a blog – just as I need a website, which I will move on to at some point.  Be a writer, must blog, they say.  I finally succumbed.  Whether anyone will hear me from amongst this vast multitude of accomplished and prolific bloggers, I cannot say.  Still, I’m here.  Having arrived at this point I’m not sure how to begin, but I’ll give it a go.

I’m the author of one published novel - ‘Paper Boats’, and a few unpublished ones.  For over a decade I combed the Internet for a publisher and three years ago YouWriteOn, a site for Writers, published ‘Paper Boats.’  I’m still looking for that one elusive mainstream publisher who will sign me up – especially since I now have a Trilogy to offer, the first part of which is complete.  

I live in Hyderabad with my husband and two daughters and work as a Freelance Advertising Copywriter.  I love to read, listen to music, cook and dream in my spare time.  And I write whenever I’m not working at my advertising assignments. 

Well, that’s about me…


(Paper Boats is available on Amazon.com and Flipkart.com amongst other online bookstores)

I dream, I write ...

I always knew that whatever else I did with my life, I would write. And so I did.  As a wife and mother, a professional Advertising Copywriter, someone who loves to cook and spend time with family, I still find those quiet hours when all of the life I've lived, and more of the life that lives within my dreams, flows into stories that I hope people will enjoy reading.  

My stories are generally a merging of fantasy and reality - but then, which story isn't?

Photographs by Pranati Khanna