May 2010
Her face, wrinkled like a parchment, the same colour.
She leans against the grey stone and calmly surveys the world.
It's early still, the world is just stirring around her.
Soon, this quiet street will be a river of cars, of noise, of colour.
People walking in that hurried step, so common to city dwellers, as though hard pressed to keep pace with their own lives.
But for now, it's quiet. A sparrow hops on the pavement.
She sits with her hands on her knees, and watches until it flys away,a joyous fluttering brown.
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August 2010
They are here almost every day,the two young men. They wear matching tees, and blue jeans.
One has spiky hair. Sometimes, it's flattened under a cap.
One has a guitar and a prosthetic leg that he detaches and keeps for display.
The guitar case is laid out, and a few coins and notes tossed in, for encouragement.
The mike squeaks.
And then they sing, their voices filling the cavernous underpass.
A small floating crowd, but most people rush by. There are things to do, places to be.
Their music follows me, sunshine and laughter, as I emerge into the summer afternoon.
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May 2010
It's been a struggle to wake up this morning. The sun is so bright, already, that it hurts my reluctant eyes.
Shining morning face, indeed, I sulk inwardly.
There's a chance of rain, later in the day, I know. I think complacently about the umbrella I've packed in my bag.
Always prepared. That's me.
Or my father, living through me.
It's been The Weepies, this last week, that ferry me to office in the morning.
That an American folk-rock band provides the perfect soundtrack to nomadic life in a Chinese city is a fact that I'm both amused and awed by.
At the signals, dumpy women with harsh voices sell bright red cherries, deep purple plums, and blossoms, an ethereal, damning pink.
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December 2010
I always order the same thing-1 chai latte, tall.
Sometimes, a blueberry muffin.
It's a small place, but often busy, and it's not easy to get a place.
I perch on one of the high stools near the window that faces the street.
Evening is falling, and the bright neon advertisements casts odd glows on the people and cars that stream by.
The world is reduced to this: a sentence- Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world that people possess?-and the warmth of the styrofoam cup against my fingers. *
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January 2011
The winter sun in the afternoon, glints off the glass windows.
For a minute, the building shimmers like water, through the shorn branches of the trees that line the street, and my heart beats so hard, I hardly know why.
Then I recognize it as joy.
I will leave this city soon, and may never return.
I'm not sorry to go, but I have been happy here.
Joy, not life, measured in coffee spoons.
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* The sentence is from the Nabokov novel, "Pnin". In my mind, Nabokov and Nanjing are going to remain inextricably twined- reading "The Secret Life of Sebastian Knight" during summer here, woke me up, after what felt like a slumber of aeons. Funnily enough, it's not one of his most celebrated or even polished novels. Quirks of fate. :)
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