Snail

A few things she carried on her back:

A blue bag - with a book of haiku and a sketch file, a pencil
A bottle of water
An umbrella for rainy days
A toy wind- mill to steer up sleepy dreams in the air
Memories of home
A few paper ships and origami cranes
A moon for a sprinkle of magic in the mundane
A lime tree from her grand ma's garden
A kettle for tea
Few seeds, reminders of possibilities
Many little bells and tiny wishes

Toy

Somewhere, in a street far away from here, the magic of twilight had just begun and she was out, under the full moon, playing. She had her favourite toy to keep her company - an old bike tyre. Together they would run in the streets following the butterflies, this way and that. Her mother thought that it might be a good idea to knit a little scarf for her, since it was getting a bit cooler. And that is exactly what she did - knitted and knitted, under the moonlight amidst the chirps, flutters and many happy giggles!

An illustration for Illustration Friday on the topic - Toy

A poem and a painting

Come, come whoever you are.
Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire, come even though
you have broken your vows a thousand times
Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Rumi

,

Breathing
in the darkness,
totally wrapped
in the color violet.
I am alive.

Goto Miyoko

From Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn't make any sense.

The tortoise and the moon were friends

Every night in the tiny pond, the moon and the tortoise would gently swim together.

In her garden

The moon had just hatched, the bees and the butterflies were still hovering around. The birds were returning home. The earth smelled of twilight. She sat in her tiny garden, breathing in its mundane magic - with a cup of tea, of course!

The nest knitters

In the still of the night, while the spider was knitting the moonlight into the air, she and the birds were knitting a nest. For the spring had almost sprouted, even the stars were singing about it. But there was still a little bit of a chill in the air, and so she kept a kettle of tea close to her. An occasional fish or two passed by, silently swimming in the vast sea of sky.

The silent walk

The spring is sprouting, in gardens, on trees, in bird songs. The starlings are weaving their song with the air. Yesterday when I was walking so many of them were sitting on the electric wires along the road as if waiting for the procession of Spring to pass from there. A red wing was heard too one day by my ears, they are here! A chickadee came, ate from my hand. And a wise man, who knows about birds, said that now I have been formally initiated into the world of animals! Delightful!

Thinking of the Amaltaas

Amaltaas , Amaltaas tree . Full and blossoming. Exploding with yellow, almost golden. In the scorching heat of the northern Indian June. On a small, sweaty, melted street. Till the eyes can reach. Overwhelming the senses. Hazing my eyes with its florescent outbursts. Flooding my nose with the delicate lacy sweet scent. Of the Amaltaas. Millions and millions of dragonflies. Buzzing , going crazy. The buzzing yellow amaltaas street. Butterflies fluttering. The fluttering , tiny , little , yellow amaltaas street. The birds chanting and screaming and and shouting. So many sounds. Layers and layers and layers of sounds, mingling and mating. Sounds, colours, smells, all playing. The passerbys'. People. Fast, slow, silent, talking, lost, present. Rickshaws, the cycles, the s coo ters, the cars, the buses. Dogs. Cows. People. Sweating. Under the clear blue sky, on a hot summer day. June. On the yellow amaltaas street. Somewhere in Punjab.

This is what an Amaltaas tree looks like :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassia_fistula

by myself

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

- Rumi

A procession of new works on my Etsy shop

A haiku garden

Each time the wind blows
the butterfly finds a new home
on the willow
- Basho

White camellias falling -
the only sound in the
moonlit evening
-Ranko

Not in a hurry
to blossom-
the plum tree at my gate
- Issa

Opening their hearts
ice and water become
friends again
- Teishitsu

Under the trees
into the salad, into the soup-
cherry-blossoms
- Basho