Every time I’m happy, for reasons I don’t know,
Lights flash in my heart and it kind of . . . . discos.

Why not a waltz, polka, salsa, jive, tango or calypso?
Of all dances, I am not sure why it chooses to disco.

Perhaps, it’s a dance that it can dance on it’s own,
A dance in merry solitude when I might be alone.

Maybe, I grew up in the time when Saturday Night Fever was in tow,
When pop charts went tizzy with songs that’d make the world boom-boom go.

Maybe, my heart beats to the rhythm of life, at times funky, at times slow,
Maybe, it’s in tune with electronic sounds around me — that in a humdrum, flow.

The top left chamber of my heart, leaps, jumps and thumps so,
The bottom right chamber shakes a leg to a psychedelic-lights-show.
My arteries and ventricles throb and pulsate oh . . . OH!
Pumping blood in a sudden rush all the way to my toes.

And like the ever-glittering disco ball, I spin, shine and glow,
Every time I’m happy, my heart jumps . . . And a-dancing it goes

I go back in time
as I get a whiff of some familiar scent.

Like the aroma of spices from my mother’s pulao —- the blend of bay leaves, cinnamon, black cardamom and cloves
that left eyes sparkling in anticipation of a royal meal.

Or the scent of fruits
that made their way into my lunch at school - bananas, apples, grapes, oranges
along with an embroidered napkin
that held onto the smell of the season, the love of parents and the comfort of home.

The tanginess of lemons in my father’s cologne —- a burst of summer every time I opened his closet.

The fragrance of roses from incense sticks that my grandmother would light as she prayed —
the mysticism of life in her folded hands.
The smoke would rise from the sticks, curling, to reach heaven along with her prayers -
and I would look upward wondering if God could hear her songs and smell the roses.

The heady scent of rain and earth as we played in puddles
walking and slipping
splashing and laughing
lost in the moment
hearts as light as those drops of rain.

A whiff of these and I travel back in time
I miss the innocence
and melange of those
happy scents and aromas.

It seems like a different world.
And though far away —
It seems like yesterday.