­When I was a little girl I had my own theories about the world as I knew it. One thing I was firm about, we lived on the inside of the earth as geography called it, the mantle. Someone had already told me that the earth was round so strike out the option of it being a planar surface. So, the only other conclusion was that the earth was made of concentric spheres. There was a core, the land we lived on and the blue sky with empty space between the land and the space, the universe where everything flew.

The sky was of two hemispheres – one with holes- the stars and the other with a huge round lamp that changed its colour from orange – yellow to white, widely known as the Sun. The sky rotated about an axis as my geography teacher told me but the land stayed still. If the land rotated, I’d have known right! It did move once a while and we named it earthquake! Outside the world was bright white light – whose source I didn’t really give much of a thought about.

The night side of the sky had holes of multiple sizes one big hole that had some dirt on it; I guess God hadn’t had time to clean the glass. And numerous other small holes that kept twinkling.

I also believed that the airplanes could fly through the little holes at night and go to the other countries or may be visit the God but not the birds ‘cause they were pretty huge for the size of the holes... Aliens with green skin and huge poppy eyes lived there in those other countries outside! I’ve spend so many hours wondering how small would those people in the airplanes be, were they smaller than the people on TV or the ones that hid inside my radio? I thought maybe, just maybe the sky was made of glass, tinted blue –dark and light.

Sometimes the sphere leaked or cracked causing thunderstorms. My grandmother tried convincing me that it was the Gods taking a shower or bursting firecrackers. I used to laugh at how naïve she sounded; I mean come on, how stupid is that!

The other theory was that the stars were little lights that hung from the sky and the twinkling was because there was a power shortage!

This one time I was lying down on the terrace at my grandparents and couldn’t figure out what that falling star was. They were just, some birds bumping into one of the strings making one of the stars to sway and fall. Ah, the poor thing!

The clouds, they were the smoke that gets out of the little airplanes that fly. It made me go like, “Oh golly, look at the size of those things!” looking at them and making recognizable shapes of people, things and animals!

The day I experienced my first hailstorm, I was thinking, may be grandma was right; God's probably having a party up there and ice cubes are falling ;)

I’ve always had a thing for the skies and stars and since the beginning of time as I’ve known it, I've spent hours lying down on the cold floor of my terrace wondering if someone from the other worlds (continents) outside the earth was lying down on the terrace n wondering about the same thing as me.

Before I could finalize on the theory education somehow managed to ruin me and I was forced to believe that we lived on the surface and somehow didn’t fall off it because of some strange sticky thing called gravity.

The human brain is so fast it can process information seen by the eyes, bring some wanted and unwanted nostalgic scenarios, memories back in and project the vivid picture in your head. Science may call it cognition. Genuinely, I don’t actually care what science has to say, cause science can’t reason out the million memories that are played in a loop in my head within a moment’s time.

Dave and Kia walked towards the smoking zone downstairs. He sat down on the stone hedge, took a deep drag of his cigarette. Noticing, Kia was still standing, he inched towards the edge, making space for her to sit down next to him. Not even a moment passed since, the movement made his shirt to slip a bit off his neck, revealing his thin frame at the shoulder blade and his collar bone.  Flash! Collar bone…

Collar bone, ah! She’s in a bus to the city, Greg  stood right there, opposing her, the bus was crowded. He exhibited a warm smile as he spoke of some experiences to the other guy who had joined them. His  Stories; random enough to make her eyes linger over his smile, his lips. His voice in the background, his smile so bright, she thought, 'he is obviously glad that I am there with him this moment'. She pondered over his smile… Flash!

She was with a friend Sam, at this juice shop at a pavement in Bangalore, waiting for their sandwiched to arrive. A cute, short, smart looking guy with thick black retro glasses (must be in his 20s, She thought to herself) walks into the pavement and to the juice shop, inquires about a shake mentioned in the menu-card  Sharjah Shake… Flash!

Class 11, Mrs. Srimathi, the commerce teacher was standing in the middle of the aisle, talking about the advertisements of TV these days, the target they choose and how witty they are. Suddenly, she drifts off into what she had for dinner with her husband the previous night, impervious to the irritated reaction the class made, she went on and on about this new shake that hotel Aaryas, just in close proximity to the school’s back gate has started offering, she was insisting they all tried it… and it was called, sharjah shake…

“Sharjah shake has chikku and banana with milk”, said the juice wala in his unadulterated heavy mallu accent. The cute guy, obviously disgusted with the abnormal combination walked away. She let out a scornful sigh and resumed her trivial conversation with Sam. In about a couple of minutes, the cute guy walks in again, enticing her all over again, ordered a cold coffee. He stood there sipping on it unaware of a girl stealing glances at him. Her friend obviously disturbed by the fact that her attention was diverted to a stranger sipping onto coffee in a fresh fruit stall, casually asked her, “So, you notice that guy there?”. The sudden impugnation startled her and a shocked “uh?” escaped Kia’s lips, involuntarily. Sam smiled, and repeated, “you notice the guy there?”. Sam and Kia were close enough for her to reveal all her silly little fantasies, so she blurted out, “yeah! He’s kinda cute!”. What she didn't expect was that Sam would get up and walk to the cute guy. Before she realized the stupidity of her blunt statement, his hands were around the cute guy’s shoulder and they had an inaudible animated conversation. To add to her terror, they were looking at her as they spoke. Sam and the cute guy walk up to her, and the cute guy puts his hand out in a gesture of a handshake and says, “Hi! I’m Greg, Sam’s schoolmate from eighth standard”.  He sat down with them, filling up the 8 years in exile with stories and gossips. Kia had a bus to catch that night and she had plans for dinner with Sam at his place. She suggested they push off and Sam gestured a bye to Greg.  Kia looked at Greg, it was indeed nice to meet him and she had to say that. Before she could work up the courage to do so, he extended his hand again and said, “nice meeting you” and gave a broad smile at her. It all happened so quick that she couldn't process her thoughts, words slipped out of her mouth and they sounded something like, “Would you like to join us?” He said sure and threw another one of his strong astras at her, His smile…

His smile, she knew he was glad to see her in Mumbai and that he did know how glad she was too. He adjusted his hand over the rods railed to the roof of the bus and as he did, his shirt slid away a little, exposing his collar bone. Her eyes moved down from his lips to the collar bone, lingered over there a while too long and by the time she realized, his eyes were on her.  She looked up unaware of the audience in the crowded bus and they spoke, not a word uttered but message neatly conveyed through the eyes. Through the night, she carefully dropped each of her cards one after the other and finally to a, “Yes, I’m not too far from falling for you…” he smiled, because he read them all in perfect coherence.  Now that they were clear, she went on with concentrating on more pushing things of the moment, his fingers intertwined with hers under the table.

Dave, took another deep drag and asked her,” So what are you working on right now?”  She drifted back to normalcy and as if nothing happened, started discussing routines and plans for the weekend!