A Spill the Tea story about a woman who realises she learned how to love calmly and clearly only after the person who stayed through her chaos was gone. Now grounded and emotionally capable, she confronts the quiet cost of becoming better too late, and the loneliness of having no one left to give that version of herself to. --- Riva refused tea without ceremony. I heard the gate before I heard her voice. The familiar scrape of metal against stone, followed by footsteps that didn’t hurry but didn’t hesitate either. When I stepped out into the courtyard, she left her bag where it fell, like she wasn’t planning to stay long. Near one of the charpoys like she’d done it a hundred times before. A few strands of her hair clung to her neck, unrushed, intimate, the way people look when they leave before a moment has fully settled. She wore a loose olive-green shirt, the kind that softened with age, sleeves rolled to her elbows without thought. Faded jeans. Flat sandals she’d probably owned f...
First Published on 27/06/2009 14:39 Ø I don’t know why but one fine day it happened for me to mumble a song from a Rajnikanth movie Raja Chinna Roja. Starting like this, I am not going to write a lavish praise for the beauty of the song or enchanting and soul fulfilling picturisation of the it as both are absolutely mediocre. But accidentally a couple of seemingly innocuous lines from this song provoked me to think half a day on the subject of life. Ø Let me explain, Rajnikanth would take a gang of kids to a forest where a notorious kid would set a monkey’s tail on fire. The monkey would jump from tree to tree to spread the fire across the entire jungle. An elephant for whom, the same kids helped early, would clear the fire carrying water in his tusk to retrieve them safely. Now the song goes like this, ‘Nanmai ondru seitherkal, nanmail vilaindhathu. Theemai ondru seitheerkal, theemai vilainthathu. Theemai seivathai vittu vittu nanmai sevathai thodarungal. (Translation for those who do...