Youth   It’s me, 'youth,' visiting you. I see that you’re not doing too badly even after I’ve left. Good for you. My earliest memories are of living with the cherub that you were. I was your first cry, your first steps, your babble, and scraped knees. I lived in your curiosity and your chatter. Then I grew into an adolescent. I’m rebellious and difficult to control. Emotions rage within me—pride, anger, delight, and embarrassment. I’m always searching for an identity of my own. It’s me, youth at my difficult best during the adolescent years. I’m also fast, bright, and energetic. It's when I live in you that you may make mistakes and be given some life lessons. On the whole, I’m meant to be lived and enjoyed. All too soon, I slip through your fingers. One day I’m there, and the next I’m gone. I’m just cherished memories, nostalgia, or stories you tell. You may desperately try to cling to me, but I say, “Age gracefully." There’s a beauty and charm to agei...

  Quill: writing my story   I’m an ancient writing instrument of great magnificence. I’m a quill. I was born in the 6 th century in China and existed until the 19 th century, whispering words to parchment. I was usually crafted from goose, swan, or turkey feathers. Goose feathers were common, swan feathers were considered superior, and crow feathers were used for fine lines. I either had a blunt end or a pointy one. Thomas Jefferson kept a flock of twenty geese so that he never ran out of feathers. The feathers, preferably from the left wing, were cured by heat and dried to harden them. The tip was cut and shaped to form a point. It was all exciting in the beginning, being dipped into an inkwell and dancing across paper. I felt important to be used to sign decrees and poets to express their love and longings and scholars to record their learnings. I was also privy to secret thoughts in diaries. It’s quite a feather in my cap that I was used to sign the Magna Cart...

I'm   a clear glass jar. When you brought me home, I was full of sweet, flavourful strawberry jam. When the last of the jam had been scraped out and finished, I thought my fate was sealed. I would be trash. However, like many Indian homes, you decided to keep me, and just like that, you saved my life. Ah! Sustainability and reuse! However, I feel like a nomad. One day, I’m sitting on your kitchen shelf, filled with some aromatic masala or pickle; the next, I’m chilling in your fridge full of homemade hummus or letting your oats have a good overnight soak. Then I find myself in your closet in a piggy bank avatar. Who am I? I’m suffering from a full-blown identity crisis. Then I get pushed to the back of beyond for months, lost and forgotten, and suddenly, when you’re on a cleaning mission, you rediscover me and hug me like a long-lost friend and give me prime importance in your kitchen.  On the kitchen shelf, when I'm labelled neatly, I feel important and organised. ...

  I have been home to you for the past 31 years. ,I can vividly recall the day when you walked through my doors as a nervous, blushing bride carrying your dreams with you. Slowly and steadily you embraced your new role as a homemaker. Within 15 months, your first son was born, and your second son arrived within two years of the first.  Motherhood was a completely new experience for you, but you did your best. I watched you struggle, and I’ve seen you both broken and whole.  I’ve heard your banter, your whispered secrets, your laughter, and your arguments. The boys in their teenage years drove you and their father round the bend, and I still shudder when I remember your ‘encounters’ with them during that difficult time. The slamming of my doors almost unscrewed the hinges, and the cold silences turned me into an igloo. I understood that it was a passing phase. Now I watch you deal with the empty nest syndrome; you’re not alone, because I, too, feel a litt...

 Envelope   I'm but a simple sheet of paper, folded and fashioned into a paper holder or cover for documents, money, greetings, letters, etc.  I’m usually functional and plain and not someone who would attract a lot of attention. You’ll find stacks of me in stationery stores and in your homes. I also usually live quietly in drawers, cupboards, or shelves to be picked up and used.  As I mentioned earlier, I have been created from paper and come in varying sizes and shapes. Some of my siblings are fashioned to be pretty and fancy because they carry gifts. I feel important and good about myself because I am a means of human connection. I convey both good and bad news, letters of acceptance and rejection, messages of hope, promise, disappointment, and everyday matters.  I get sealed, stamped, and sent off—I’m quite the traveller too, journeying on ships, trains, and aeroplanes across land, air, and sea. My journeys are not glamorous. I travel in bags and p...

Thirty to forty years ago, we read advertisements or watched advertisements on television about products we wished to purchase. We flipped through encyclopedias, atlases, and dictionaries for knowledge and information. The internet and cell phones had not yet entered our lives.  When the internet and cell phones took over our lives, the story of all our lives changed dramatically. We typed furiously into our browsers, searching for anything and everything. Our browsers reveal our curiosities, our anxieties, our dreams and hobbies.  I remember cutting pictures and newspaper tidbits for school projects.  For my sons’ projects and assignments, I quickly logged into Google, typed my queries and searches in the search box, and helped myself to whatever relevant information Google provided. As time passed, the boys learned to work on their own. Today, there isn't a single child who doesn't know how to work on a computer or cell phone. Down the years, my quest for knowledge...

  Tring tring! Good, bad and sad news you did bring You have forged friendships You have mended a  broken relationship. You have been privy to secrets galore, as whispers went to and fro. Through you, moms have exchanged a recipe or two. As a teenager, Many a moment I have engaged in enjoyable chatter Until I heard dad holler, "When are you going to let go of that receiver?" There are fewer of you today,   Your counterpart, the mobile holds sway. Looking at you Fills us with nostalgia and   memories a hundred and two.  Dear rotary phone, Red, green or blue, We will always miss you.

Photographs evoke memories and emotions.  One is overcome by nostalgia, joy and even sorrow as one turns the pages  of an old family album, Today pictures have gone digital but they evoke the same memories and emotions that photographs in an old-fashioned album would.  Leafing through albums of yore - those thick books with coarse black pages, and their four-cornered gummed photograph holders that preserve memorable moments and places can tear you up. When a cousin dug out a few of these old photo albums and posted old pictures of our grandparents and parents on social media I was a bundle of mixed emotions.   My maternal grandparents staring out of the picture reminds me of the gentle and pious folk that they were having left behind a legacy of love and kindness. 'Nana' standing among the pigs that she reared and another one of my uncle chasing a pig for my parents' wedding feast filled me with immense joy and laughter. My pare...