Anuki’s Diary

Dear lovers,

Why not letting go?

I have come across many couples who think that love is all about you saying ‘yes’ to everything what your partner says. Because of this reason such kind of people make their life a living hell. There may be many reasons that your relationship is not working, could be the ideas, likings, disliking, etc.

It is right to give your best to work out a relationship, this does not mean you have to sacrifice your whole life for someone who do not even offer you pure love. I wrote sometime back that a true lover would accept you for who you are and will not expect to change you from what you are.

As I have mentioned earlier there are some couples who have met with their differences and still do not let go off the other person. Is it right to do so? Is that what love is all about?

Dear lovers, I think if you hold on to some one or something, which does not belong to you, it will make lives miserable. Isn’t that a tragedy? Instead of messing up each others lives why not take the easy way out? At least you will be left with one good friend who will stand by you at all times.

Don’t be afraid to let go things which are not right in your life. There will always be ‘Mr. right’ or ‘Miss right’ in your life. May be they might take sometime to reach you but when they do, will sure add wonderful love into the relationship.

But if you do not let go the wrong person in your life, you sure will be closing all the doors to the right one. So dear lovers, think once more and choose the way to live life with love or without it. But is it possible for one to stay out of true love?

Troubadour

She picked a crimson petal from her hair and stood there, half-laughing. Another lay on the white curve of her neck, ruby against ivory, like a flame. He thought of the swan pierced by the hunter’s arrow, bleeding crimson from the graceful down on its slender neck.

Her long fingers wove through the auburn threads loosened from her thick braid. He was enchanted. She was like the miller’s daughter, spinning straw into gold. The red sunlight caught the bronze anklets on her feet and made them gleam.

The rich, thick smell of wholesome peasant stew drifted into his nose and his stomach gave a rumble.

Onions would be floating thickly in the huge iron pot, the steaming vegetables wafting clouds of steam into the purplish dusk. He couldn’t remember if he had had anything for breakfast. The music of a distant tambourine floated from far away.

She was singing something in a low, husky voice. He couldn’t understand the words, but a strange sadness came over him. What was she singing? Her gaze was lowered, the thick lashes sweeping her high cheeks, heavy eyelids drooping over her dark, almond-shaped eyes. Eyes he had once seen on a princess in some strange Arabian tale. She was watching her shadow rippling along the grass.

The old woman cackled to herself as she bent over the boiling pot. A horse neighed and a man cursed roughly in a stream of gibberish, his voice slurred thickly with drink. A dirty child was playing alone in a dark corner of the coarse tent, cradling a muddy rag doll without any legs. The smoke fogged the still evening air.

He watched the darkening sky, listening to the shrill call of chickadees, breathing in the fragrance of wild mint and crabgrass.

The little child, abandoning its ragged playmate, crept over and sat in the grass a few feet away, sucking its thumb and staring at him with wicked brown eyes. The wooden ladle scraped against the metal pot, over and over. A strange languor spread through him, and he was sad.

The old woman screeched out something unintelligible to her and she stood up, heavy skirts swishing against the grass. The note on which she had stopped her song lingered in the dusk. He could feel it throbbing in the air around him, vibrating against his skin.

Looking around, he saw the child shrinking like a wild thing in the shadows, bright eyes watching him. He held out his hand. “Come here.” He reached into his pocket, and, bringing out a couple of hard-boiled sweets, held them out invitingly.

‘Look what I have for you!’ But the child sprang back with a snarl like a wild cat’s and slunk off into the darkness. Sighing, he lay back on the dewy grass, listening to the crickets chirping in his ears.

A filthy bundle of rags approached him. He eyed it warily. It was the old woman who had been brewing the evening meal. She eyed him cunningly from under her gnarled brow, her cold grey eyes gleaming in the dying sunlight. Her eyelashes were fledged with dirty white. He didn’t like her but she was the only one of the lot who could speak even a few words he could understand.

‘You eat?’ Her crabbed voice was harsh and throaty; more like an asthmatic old man’s than a woman’s. The rasping sound of her short, wheezy breathing irritated him. ‘You food.’ Heavy bangles jangled and clanged at her wrists as she bent over and pushed a rusty metal bowl full of steaming stew at him.

There was a ring in her nose and several black notches in her rotten teeth. He noticed the veins protruding out of her thin, dark skin. He nodded and took the bowl, tasting the hot steam on his skin. ‘Thank you.’

The old woman cackled and moved away. He dug into the thick gruel, his tongue scorching with the heat. There was slightly too much salt, and it was seasoned with wild herbs and pigeon and rabbit, but he was too hungry to care.

He chased the soggy vegetables floating on the surface with his fingers, and drunk them in, soup dripping down his chin. She came and sat beside him, laughing quietly as she watched him. Her lips were smiling but her eyes were sad.

He scraped the bowl clean and laid it down on the grass. He would rinse it later in the little brook at the edge of the field. The wind blew over his warm skin and he felt the sticky trails of soup on his chin. The hills were turning red in the distance, warm and blushing against a purple sky.

He racked his brain for something he could say, something she could understand. His pocket crackled. ‘Would you like a sweet?’ He dug out a handful of sweets, all he had to offer, and repeated the words, slowly this time.

‘Would you like a sweet?’ A wisp of her long auburn hair shook itself free and fell on her neck, and he noticed suddenly that the little crimson petal was still there, flaming against her skin.

There it was, fluttering feebly in the wind like a torn butterfly wing, but refusing to be blown away. As if there, on the curve of her slender neck, it had found the place where it belonged.

One single soft petal. Her eyes were bright as she looked at the colourful sweets in his hand. It was then that he realised that candy must be a rare treat for her. Dusk was falling thick and fast around the fields sweet-scented with stubble.

The reaping had not long been over and the season’s harvest gathered before the gypsies had set up their homes in the field once more.

Rising, he emptied all the sweets in his pockets into her lap. Tomorrow when he came he would bring a whole bagful for her. For her, and the old woman, and the man, and the dirty child. Maybe even some apples for the old grey mare if there were still some left on the trees.

He turned to go and suddenly she broke out into a stream of words in her strange witch-language. He couldn’t understand what she was saying. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come back again tomorrow. I promise. And I’ll bring sweets for everybody. Lots. I promise.’ He smiled at her.

The sun had set, and her face was thrown in shadow. In the dim twilight her eyes shone with a brilliance that took his breath away. He had never seen her eyes look as beautiful as they did in the deepening shadows of that dusky evening.

When he came back the following day the field was empty, the stubble-plains glossed over with the reddish sheen of sunlight. Deep wedges in the grass where the tents had been hitched roughly up and smouldered ashes from a stamped-out fire were all that remained.

He sat down in the grass and watched the wind blowing stray flakes of ashes into the air. There was a brownish ring where the grass had burned out under the wood, which had spitted and snarled as the stew brewed thick and luxurious in the smoking iron pot.

He wondered where the little petal was. Had the wind finally blown it away? Or was it still lying there, against her pale ivory skin, burning like a flame? He was tempted by an absurd desire to search every inch of grass for the little flaming petal, gleaming in the dying sunlight like his bleeding soul.

But then he decided he wouldn’t. It was sweeter to imagine it lying nestled there, in the graceful curve of her neck, warmed by her skin, drinking in the sounds surrounding her world; the wheezy rasp of the old woman, the jingle of the wooden tambourine, and her husky voice murmuring a string of sweet, simple gibberish.

Pawan Madri Kalugala

Sweetness

You added sweetness to my life...
You added sweetness to my life...
Still I have so safely kept with me
The deep breath which you released
Very first day when you were with me
It perfumed my dreams in my heart
I had no trust that love can touch hearts
So deeply, so sweetly as this, until I met you
I didn’t know that love gives sweetness to the life
Promise until I feel of your sweet love
I didn’t know that love can take off the sleep
Also the love can fully cover a heart until I met you
I didn’t know a very tiny change of the love
Can give so much pain until I start to love you truly
Promise
You added the sweetness to my life
Swept away my tears, all my fears . . .

- Nathasha Kannangara -