My eyelids feel heavy all of a sudden and I am sure it's the Bailey's. But I have to write this first.

A slideshow of photographs of Hiroshima. It's been 62 years and see where it is now. What the world goes there to see is what happened six decades ago. They come back with feelings I can only imagine. The horrors relived through what has been meticulously preserved, what is on display. That's what brings in the tourists and yes, the money as well.

And then a slideshow of an orphanage in Kupwara, Kashmir. Present day. It's been 60 years of independence, about 20 since the terrorism started. The world probably does not even know it exists. The horrors reflected in the eyes of children, smiling shyly behind the tattered covers of a book. Each childhood crammed into tin trunks with sharp, jagged edges. There is nothing that is meticulously preserved. Nothing on display. The tourists are long gone and with them the money.

The screen looks a little blur and my eyes sting. Am sure it's the Bailey's. Damn it.

Someone came visiting last night, as I lay under the cover, my toes still cold and my eyes barely beginning to make out the furniture in the darkness. She wore a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt, her hair in a braid falling over her shoulder. She walked barefeet, lest her footfalls wake the others. She came and sat quietly by me, her weight resting lightly on the mattress. It was not a clear night outside, with patchy clouds pasted against a dark, starless sky. The blinds trembled gently in the breeze, as a tungsten glow from the neighbour's window made striped patterns on the ceiling. She sat beside me, looking at the nightness outside, as I did.

She liked nights like these - undramatic, mundane almost. She loved the moon too. And wrote poems in vain, trying to make the words feel the darkness, drink in the heady fragrance of the kaamini tree by the window, soak in the still, humid air, feel the cool window grill in her fists. She loved nights. When the dog downstairs would let out a stray bark at a feline intruder on the boundary wall, only to be hushed by the sleeping human (her head would rest again on her paws, but her ears strained to catch the slightest rustle and her hooded eyes blinked noiselessly). The glass of iced water would send condensing rivulets trickling down the window sill, the ancient fan whirring overhead, stirring the heavy air, a hidden lizard tick-ticking behind the wooden pelmet in search of its mate, the half-curtains hanging listlessly. She would sit, quenching the thirst in her throat with sips from the glass, but never the one inside.

Last night she sat beside me, looking at the nightness outside, as I did. And I knew she was not thirsty anymore.

...but I was, for that glass of iced water, the fragrance of the kaamini tree, for the dog's stray bark.

It’s a warm, lazy afternoon. The silence nudged gently by the tapping of the keyboard and the soft whir of the washing machine from the kitchen. The wooden floor feels cool below my shoe-weary soles and lies scattered with stray strands of just-shampooed hair – black, long, wispy. Damp hair feels so utterly sensuous on my back and shoulders. There is no other way to describe it really. It adds perfectly to the warmth of the sun.

Why am I writing this? Am not sure really… just one those pointless things that you have to do, without bothering to find an excuse! It’s like when you walk along a still pond and drop in a pebble to see the ripples, it’s like when you pass by a fountain and dip in your hand for a splash, it’s like when you see a rose bush in bloom and touch the petals, it’s like when you take off your shoes and walk on grass or smile without knowing why…

Once in a while it feels good to do things that you can’t really explain. You look back, smile and shake your head in half-amusement, wondering whether it was really you who did it.