a purple breeze

Cauliflowers and Autorickshaws

2009-02-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

It was evening and the sun was still on the horizon, shining sweetly at people who wanted some light. She walked along little streets, thinking to herself, making some phone calls on her cell phone and making notes in her mind about the things she needed to do. Groceries, change of clothes, gym and such. Things you and I think of on otherwise normal evenings.

She crossed the main road. Cauliflowers. It is cauliflower season in this part of the world. She’d seen vendors in pushcarts selling big, fresh cauliflowers neatly stacked one on top of the other. That is what she wanted to get before she went home.

Traffic went by, there did not seem to be many auto rickshaws at that time. Most of them were away in schools picking kids up and then dropping them off home. She played a bit with her hair, tossed it around and waited impatiently on the side of the road.

And then he came along. In his yellow auto. They didn’t have to bargain too much. He was wearing one of those big rings on his finger which had the picture of a movie star from yesteryears. He went on to tell her many things. He had three children and he was putting money in the bank for their college education. One of them liked sweets while the other two liked spicy snacks. He got them biscuits and peanuts and sweets.

He told her how they saved money, the expenses, and the loan on the auto that he had to pay every month. In a year and a half, this auto will be mine, he said. He told her that his eldest daughter got him that ring when she went to buy a gold bracelet. Both together cost 20K. He seemed a like a charming fellow, working hard with his family to make ends meet. He seemed like a guy with his plans in place, like a guy who smiled a lot and took things in his stride.

Being swept over by all these details, the mundane details of everyday life, this little peep into another person’s world made her smile in her mind. On the way, they found a pushcart selling those fresh, big, bright, happy, smiling cauliflowers. She got two. One for him and one for her.

She smiled at him and also gave him a tip when she got off at the gate of her apartment. A tip and a cauliflower for this peek into his life. For making it seem while the ride lasted that life works out one way or the other. That funny though it may seem, she felt comforted that these things are enough to keep one occupied and smiling. That you can feel content in working just these details out.

Cauliflowers and an autorickshaw ride can make your evening, do you know?

I am

2008-11-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

I am a poem, a dusky sketch on a long forgotten leaf. I am that bringer of gifts and luck, that strength that eggs you on, I am that cripple you saw two weeks ago.

I have a life of my own, many things that I need to do. I consider gathering flowers for long forgotten tombs of friends. The same fingers also collect presents for brides to be, wish the best for brothers who turned their backs, flinch just a little with every hardship that comes crashing on my head.

My back is hunched, I can no longer be of use the way I used to. Although my spirit still sings praises of life, all its beauty, and the one above. I may not look like I have been upto any good, infact I may even look like I am not feeling so very good. Oh but I did reach out a hug every tired soul who walked past my door step.

You come to me telling me of all your sorrows, of all your hardships. And yet when I speak of mine, you either walk away or do not listen. My little misfortunes seem not to matter to anyone, and now I’m afraid I do not seem to take seem to take them in either.

I am the fading sunset, I am the water at the edge of the river, I am everything I’ve ever wanted to be, I am the end of the road, I am so very tired.

Walking

2008-07-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

Three years eight months and twelve days. That’s how long it’s been since I began this journey. It started as most journeys do, just with a strong urge that you have to go some where.

He was sitting across from me, on one otherwise uneventful train ride. He may not have been much to look at on first glance. But the seasoned traveller can recognise those invisible marks on the face, the stories that is held within in a smile exposing decoloured teeth. Slowly, you recognise other things. The book he’s reading- not common for a local, an armlet that looks like it’s travelled a long way too, the shoes that have done a lot of walking. The clothes that will help blend into any culture. Oh yes, you know those signs.

In the conversation that followed, you recognised many things about each other. It was then that he mentioned, somewhat as an afterthought. This place in the mountains. The air is crisp, nippy even. Cedars surround the place. Something about the air there, fills you up in a certain way. On some mornings you can feel it, the air is blue. Woods surround. Somewhere in the woods, there is a stone hut with the bow of a hunter still intact.

You chuckle at the thought of the folklore. A stone hut with a hunter’s bow. That is how myths are born. That is how stories start. That is how journeys begin.

Many summers and winters have gone by since. You’ve come a long way, visited cottages in the hills, forts on mountains and places by the sea. You have attained a calm that is difficult to explain.

However, there is one thing. Just one little thing. No matter how far your feet seem to carry you and not matter how many lives look at you from the outside and smile gently, there is the memory of a face that refuses to go away. It seems at times that yes, this is your calling, that yes, you are meant to be this nomad. And yet in the deepest of moments when the mind has achieved this certain sense of acceptance- it can happen anywhere, in a monastery or by a nameless grave, you feel the gentle piercing of fluid in the corners of your eyes.

You wipe them off before they amount to much.

It surprises me, these sudden attacks, these sudden moments where I know for certain where I ought to be and yet every new journey does not seem to be leading me there, leading me to you. It surprises me because although over the years, my tear glands seem to function less, and yet the heart and mind still come together as if in meditation, making me aware. Aware of a need.

I do not know how many miles I’m going to continue walking. I do not know how far I’ll go. I do not know if any of my questions will be answered, if in some round about way our paths will cross never to separate again.

For now, I just have to keep walking.

Notes

2008-03-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

The dinner table is being set at a certain rhythm. The green porcelain and cutlery carefully juxtaposed, the smells of the meal gently waft in from the kitchen. He was on his reading chair, smoking. She was doing odd little things here and there when not stirring the pot or checking the oven.

From the corner of his eyes, he’d look at her. His woman of twenty something years. What age had done to her. She actually looks nicer by the day, he caught himself thinking.

Mozart ofcourse is playing recklessly in the background, a sonata in C major. She has the prelude playing in her head off and on, even when it wasn’t being played on the piano. She reaches over to grab something from the edge of the kitchen counter.

From the corner of her eyes, she sees a photograph in a silver frame. A picture of them from many, many years ago. From a time when they were really young, horribly truamatised by feelings of many kinds, and yet when you look at the picture, you look at two people who were so completely in love.

The meal sizzles to a completion. She sets it down on the table, and he is there filling their glasses just the way he has been for all those years together. For no particular reason, and yet for too many to put down, she smiles in her mind- and a mild reflection of that smile plays in the corners of her mouth. He catches her looking at him and gazes back.

***

The young twenty something scribbles the last few words and gazes out the window of the café. Winter is almost here, and people scuttle by looking for more comfort and warmth in the grey of their everyday being. Mozart, the sonata in C major, is playing furiously in her head. And there are all these words dancing with the divine music, some of them his words. She found herself incapable of stringing all those words together to form complete sentences. All she could focus on at that moment was the blush on his cheeks, the music in her head and the people huddling outside in their greys.

She looked behind her at the rest of the café, for a teeny moment. All kinds of people seated and having discussions of every other kind over whatever caught their fancy for that moment. The guy at the far corner caught her eyes. She drew back into her world, where there were words and notes for company. And photographs of happy people squinting in the sun, radiating back each other’s warmth.

There was this feeling they shared, and both of them knew it. Like how only certain pianos respond to your touch among a whole lot, among a galaxy of choices. They had that- that dish without a name, that tune without a beginning or an end.

She uncrossed her legs, crossed them back and washed down the thoughts with the rest of the coffee. The cup was stained a colour of nude in the shaped of her lips. She cupped her hands over her ears, careful not to let in the sounds of the outside world, let the music play on in that very schizotypal way.

***

If I were to rip this sheet off my scratch pad and give it to you, if I told you that you’re the guy in there, that this is the sum of things I really want, making that meal for you twenty years from now, would you give it to me? Oh, would you?

For when there are other beginnings

2008-03-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

Her nicely done up lashes looked on and off at the fuel indicator. Full. Anybody else watching her that evening would have called it a piece of poetry, poetry in seeming randomness. Her lavender lacquered nails rested on the steering wheel, as she waited for the lights to change.

It was this grey evening, one that seemed minutes away from a drizzle. The guy selling flowers round the corner was there. The yellow and red carnations and the lavender of the Iris danced in front of her eyes. Like how when you’re cooking with your soul, you sometimes reach out for things, like a dash of cinnamon, that your heart just says it belongs here, in the warmth of your cooking pot.

She wanted to step out in her chiffon summer dress and silhouettes, the blanched almondness of her skin dancing with joy as the first few drops of rain came down. But she drove on instead, drove on home. Watching signal after signal. A left here, a right there. And then just take the road ahead.

Before you know it, night creeps in on all of us. The prodigy playing symphonies on the piano is turned off, and the bed side lamp has a book lying next to it. Each speaking to the other of an evening of contentment, with the rain outside singing out odes and lasciviously conjuring up images of what can be togetherness and what is loneliness, in exactly that order.

From one chamber of dreams to another, she quietly tiptoes. Careful not to wake anyone up, not to disturb other dreams. And she floats amidst scents and colours and minds and wishes and horses and shades and blushes. In one of those chambers, one that was a colour between gentle autumn happiness thrown in with a light blue summer sky, he came. They had this chat. Something about waiting till July. And then he would tell her. She didn’t know what to do. Whether this is good or bad or ugly or undefined. Whether it would make her ache. Or if he was going to just gather her up and drive away to some place where there are no traffic signals, just rain on windshields.

And then the orchestra of dreams did a grand rendition of vague tunes, and her finger tips reached for the edge of the sheets. The erstwhile nicely done up lashes fluttered open. The bed lamp glowing a dreamlike yellow, the bookmark sticking out of a paperback. She remembered the dream. She remembered the face. She knew who it was.

In the expanse of that night, she lay awake.

Fractional Dementia

2008-01-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

S, thanks for the inspiration. This one is for you.

You are a pattern in chaos
A vertex here, a circle there
Within that closed space
You hold
But what is
An entire world

Numbers and facts
You can be reduced to those
Ayes and nays said
About your life

The closed space holds
Matter that is infinite
Affairs, living, food and being
That tattles across
In many, many ways

Then comes a man
Spirited and drunk
And tugs at chaos
That very pattern
Defined by fragrances and nodes
"Nay, woman, where is your morality?"

The floating point is taken over
By bubbles and pine cones
Closed spaces do not have any character
Not even those fine wrinkles
Closed spaced do not hold any meaning
Not even when broken.

Rosette Skies

2007-11-10T04:03:00.000-08:00

The hours before dawn are the darkest. There are so many ways of looking at that sentence, and it does seem rosette and promising if you’re inclined to optimism and the like. Having watched dusk and dawn relentlessly over the many moons of my life, I think one of the few things that has changed apart from the colour of the skies at these times in the various cities that I’ve lived in, is my perspective at that statement.

What really surprises me is the starling difference between day and night. How days are filled with activities and little tasks and thoughts and odds and ends. And nights. How they are filled with such unbearable darkness. I think I have begun to almost fear them now. Long, never ending nights.

How I fill these hours is something worthy of a prize of sorts for the angst and somewhat distraught. What do you really do, once you have grown out of being a party animal, have had enough of night outs with friends and beloveds, do not have anything captivating enough to read, and do not like the humdrum and noise-like qualities of idiot boxes and ear plug-ins?

You spend long, endless nights. That’s what.

I think I am now familiar with all the patterns of the night. The little noises the security guards make, the distant barking of stray dogs, the guy in the apartment across who reads in bed with the blinds up till two a.m., and the occasional police and ambulance sirens. These are things nights are made of.

Sometimes there are people sleeping over in my apartment. Sometimes in my bed, sometimes on the living room couch with Tabby the Cat alternating between our bodily warmth. It is funny, is it not, to finally realise that you are growing into that old lady who lives alone in her apartment and who loves her cat more than just about anything else? Clichés are such ironic fun, especially if you find yourself being one.

Here is another night
Slipping into the sheets of day
Part pubescent, part sombre
I wonder what it is like
To be able to fill this world
With all your darkness

You come and go
Come and go
Like a little brown child
And a dusky butterfly;
Come stay in my abode
I promise I’d make a worthy lover

Tangled and messed up
I wander rooms and corridors
Staring at pictures
With people squinting joy
Step in, they seem to say
There is enough sunshine
For all of us

My little tabby
Sometimes follows me
On these nightly excursions;
Woman and pet
Together we sit
Bride and best man
Waiting for you
To pluck me away
From these rosette skies.

I carry your heart with me

2007-08-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

Another gem. Thank you, Cummings.

I carry your heart with me(I carry it in
my heart)I am never without it(anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)I want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of
the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart
(I carry it in my heart)

E E Cummings

The Stroyteller

2007-06-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

They called her Abuela Inés. Grandmother Inés. She lives down the street from me, in a brick coloured house. In a town like this one, stories and scandals do not escape anybody. They say that the wind here is such that it transpires stories even to the deaf.

However, when it came to Abuela Inés, no one ever said a thing. It was as if her aura or even a small part of her soul is near you when you think of her, and lulls you to a silence when you are about to speak of her.

At Pop’s one afternoon, between mouthfuls of soda, a little jingle made me look up. Abuela was seated in front of me- her light blue eyes were fixed on me and the translucent ageing skin of her arms extended towards mine.

“You sent a little bit of your soul to God yesterday”, she said. The ice-cream and the soda made a little lump on its way down my food pipe; I muttered a semi-choke in question.

She went on in her Peruvian accent, her crystal earrings jingling ever so gently as she shook her head.

“He likes reminders to see how you are doing down here. When your cat died yesterday, a small little part of you died with it and went straight up to Him.

Sometimes, he keeps asking these reminders of you- when you lose a job, have an accident, mourn a beloved, get your heartbroken. The little parts of you that die, go straight up to Him.

When finally the day comes for you to meet The Creator, you are then united again with all your treasures. Good health that you lost in the spring of youth, innocence that you lost in the clutches of a man, a pet that you lost in a fire- all of it is restored back to you.

So then you are whole, and every part of you is alive and breathing.

That is why, Up There is called heaven.”

With that, she reached over and her fingertips touched my cheekbone. The storyteller then got up and left, as silently as she crept in.

A little fizz and a tiny jingle remains in the air.

Where do I Begin

2007-05-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

My fingers are slipping. Bit by bit by bit. I know it is coming. I know I know I know.

Sheet music in G Minor. The tune just goes on and on. I wonder why the neighbours don’t complain of having to deal with someone so autistic. The fingers do not seem to be able to stop and I have come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, they are not mine anymore. Playing the tune for something infinite to dance to. Again and again, round and round.

You took me out dancing last night. Even then as I was feeling your shirt, the fabric, the pattern with my fingers and smelling every emotion with it, the tune in G Minor continued to play. With all the jazzy lights, with all the crazy beats of music I was not too familiar with.

Many years ago I looked like this girl. Her unkempt, long hair often played with the contours of her chest. A sight that you liked watching. Time passes, yeah buddy, you told me that once. Time passes.

But how the tune refuses to go away with time is something I have not been able to understand. Explain it to me, why do the fingers itch so much, why do the notes have to dance alive in front of me no less than a million times, why? Shouldn’t time affect on that as well?

I will have to go away now. To another part of the world that is poorer for not being able to listen to the carousal sheet music, for not being able to dance in a room with white walls and no music playing.

The monsoons are going to be here soon, the Gulmohar flowers are a riot. The red and the green effortlessly adding colour to the soothing sky. The rains are going to be here, the sheet music will continue to play.

Across time and space there will be a cosmic dance, and I am going to be the queen of the ball. For now, the music has to resume.

Prayer

2007-04-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

I do not want to talk to you
Not today
Not here
Not now

The little boy
Plays in my mind
Dreams of him
In his robes
Living the life
Of a monk

I can see
I can still see
The pale skin colour
The calm in his eyes
The magic of his presence

He left
With the alms
Some food, some fruit
As daylight played its usual tricks
Filling my world
With such an aching void

To bring him near
To hold him close
To mother, to pray

Little boy,
Staring out the window
I realised
This is the only prayer I can offer
The songs in my head
Are long gone

In you I see
Such things as truth and beauty
Peace and love
The ache inside
Is now turbulent
Swallowing me bit by bit

To look into your peaceful eyes
To watch you look at the world
With boyish wonder
To see your shy smile
To watch your little fingers
Hold your prayer beads

I am going away today
Where to, I do not know
I do not want anyone to find me
Not today
Not you
Not now

Bunglaow by the Sea

2007-03-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

The sea is rumbling at a distance, with the tides and the sand enjoying a touch and go relationship. I sometimes imagine what life must be like for them. The sea might whisper out "I am there", as they touch, and then an "I am not there" during its sinuous relapse back.

I am there. I am not there.

A chalky, muffled laugh maybe as they continue their respective missions to touch and un-touch each other. In the time that the sea decides to look away, the sand gets restless. Therefore the patterns of little snails creeping out of the sand for a peek, the sometimes solitary footsteps that seem to lead away into a tomorrow unknown.

And then the waves come in, and wash all of them away. Let's start afresh, it seems to say, for don't all endings portend new beginnings?

All this go on at the back of my mind, as I sit on one of the wicker chairs that line the sunlight veranda, facing the blue wall. As if concurring with my thoughts, the dog comes and rests its damp nose on my lap.

You'd do that too, all the time. When you were bored, sick, eating, reading, breathing, being. Amma's lap. The only piece of cushioning you found in the entire house.

This is how I spend my days now. Thinking about the pitter patter of little feet that once ran all over this house. The memories, the yearning. The clichéd empty nest.

That's how I live now. In the bungalow by the sea.

The Blues Came Banging on my Door

2007-03-08T02:44:00.001-08:00

Half way through,
Your fingers reached for my skirt

The tip of your fingertips
Pushed it up

I shrank back a bit
In anticipation

You reached my knee
Our eyes rested

I looked whole
In my paleness, you said

We both knew
What you were getting at

“Does it still hurt?”
Your fingers circled the erstwhile wound

A nod, and two tear drops
That’s all there is left

Like famine, it spread
And now, all of me
Feels like the erstwhile wound.

The Art of Fugue

2007-03-06T02:24:00.000-08:00

For K.P. Because.

That your passion seems all-consuming
Sunlight trickles in
In meshes
Your fingers play
Making patterns in the plethora of light
While from behind Kohl smeared eyes, I watch
Your passion seems all-consuming

The night was a dream
Went by in a wink
And a few bites
The crickets are silent now
Finally

The potted plant
Near your feet
Is abloom
With two little yellow flowers

Your fingers continue to flit
In an attempt to capture
The light
Oh, the glee
I can see your hands smile

From the corner of my eye
The curtains of your bedroom window
Whisper to me
Draw me apart, they say,
Let in more light
Golden food of my soul-

Purple lover, merciless and all-consuming,
Come hither
The brown cats of my mind
Beg to be tamed.

In Conversation

2007-01-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

Suketu Mehta

Tonight, I thought
I should write you a poem
Not one of those
That borrows
The deep blue
From the sky
Or the dusty brown
Of an impending summer

I thought
I should coat your eyelids
With the tickle
Of dandelions
And bottle away
Your fragrance
In a lachrymatory

I can feel
The precise point
Where your fingers
Rested on my back
When we smiled
For posterity

That night
Is long gone
The poem
May not really be here
But the ache inside
Is real
Even after
You touched me
The way you did.

Amber

2007-01-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Amber
Softly bright
Steadily
Burns

A lone moth
Potters
Flapping
Its wings

The night
Is long
The fluttering
Retrograde

The base
Of your neck
Far away
Inviting

I am
In a bottomless abyss
I fall
And fall
Freely

From the edges
Your voice
Gently permeates
The night

If only
In my head.

Indestructible

2007-01-15T09:51:00.000-08:00

Life is mostly froth and bubble. Time is the best healer. Light at the end of the tunnel ya da ya da. Shining pieces of in your face optimism. The utter triviality of it all. Inconsequential drivel.

It’s been over a year, she thought. It can’t be that tough. Already, one of those warm comforters that set in at a time when your stomach goes round and round like the washer, surfaced. The stained coffee cup making its almost circular mark.

See, not everything changes.

She drummed the table, played with the coaster, thought about some inconsequential conversation she just had with a stranger. Wondered about the time and why he had not yet made it. Not like him at all.

There was a new eating place that had come up bang opposite this one. Shiny and colourful. She looked at the traffic through the glass door, and the logo of the store yonder. It had been a year. Full one. More better than worse. More worse than better.

He then appeared, out of nowhere, infront of the door. Like the insane in a happy sweet bubble way that he was. That he was to her. Him. Her. Was.

One brief moment and she caught the laughter in his eyes. How grey looked lovely on him. How that moment was killing her. She wanted to disappear that very minute. Not have to be. The file, she thought, was magical stuff. Her fingers rummaged through some papers. He found her. So much for hide and seek with a blue file.

He sat himself down. Said something sweet. She could not bear looking at him. Allowed him to have a monologue. He knew. No cartographer to save her, no delusions that each of them could pocket. The chaos, the ache. The tears that poured within. The peace.

They walked out of there soon. Together. Apart. Chords cut. Belonging. Laced fingers. Him. Her. Was.

Maps

2007-01-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

It was on a late muggy evening that I landed in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. I decided to travel with S to India and do some travelling around the country that holds so much awe, as he went ahead conducting business. He had been there many times before, but it was my first trip. Inspite of all the help, pointers and guidance I received, nothing prepared me for the next few weeks.
Getting packed off by myself to Hyderabad wasn’t exactly my idea. But I did crave for the true blue Indian experience, yes, guilty as charged.
I spent a sleepless night on a hard bed with mosquitoes singing odes in my ears and rashes that never seemed to stop lusting after my hands. Just as I managed to drift into sleep, I woke up with a start to a sound.

Allah….

The Mullah offering prayers at the mosque close to my hotel. These are things they don’t prepare you for on your passage to India. The little things. Over the next few days, I was a bit grumpy at having to go through this and I kicked myself many a times at the thought of my clean apartment overlooking the Hudson. The rashes never got any better.

The sites around the place were pretty interesting and colourful, and very unique from what I saw in other cities. This city somehow seemed more carefree, and had its own pace with things. I made many trips with my camera to the bangle bazaar which is at the older quarter of town. The colours that fill this land of mystique slowly inched towards bringing life into me.

One thing that by now I grew accustomed to apart from the Mullah offering prayers was how a vast majority of people left things of consequence to the one above. For instance while planning a party someone would give out an elaborate scheme of things and then top it off with “Insha Alaah”, meaning Allah willing. The name of The Big Guy Upstairs varied accordingly, but I bet you got that already.

One morning, as I was sipping my upteenth cup of chai, I noticed there was a little girl at the door of our hotel. She was dirty, brown and her nose was running. She had my attention because she was too little to be begging- barely a year old. I looked around.

Over the last few days I had noticed similarly dressed kids round the corner. They belonged to a tribe that had just moved into the kerb. The older of the lot made a living selling toys for kids, balloons, caps with multi-coloured feathers and such odds. The kids played around and did not seem to take to begging. They lived and conducted all their business right there.

I picked my camera and went pottering about my day. Visited a gorgeous marble temple, sipped some more tea and punched some emails back home. On my way back to my room, I noticed that the little girl was still on the street and had barely moved a few feet from where she was in the morning. I decided to put off my shower for a bit, and strolled down the road instead.

The tribe I had noticed earlier weren’t there any more. Worry for a little stranger slowly began to trickle in. I made some enquiries in the shops around the place and with the couple that owned the hotel. They did not seem to know where the kid came from, where the tribe vanished, or if someone would come back for the child. However, they seemed to concur that she looked like she belonged to the aforementioned tribe.

Night began to fall, and I grew increasingly agitated with the system and the callousness around me. I worried about the little girl being hunted down by stray dogs or being taken advantage of. The owners would hear none of letting her sleep in the veranda.

I had to take a call.
I decided to let her sleep in my room for the night, and let her back out early the next day. Who knows, someone might come looking fir her. By now, we were even slightly familiar with each other thanks to the milk and bread I had given her earlier. I lay out a pillow on a small bed made from a few towels and sheets on the floor. She barely spoke, and slept through the night peacefully.

A coupe of days went by and it became obvious that nobody would get her. All of a year old, she was left to fend for myself.

I called S in the middle of the day. We had to talk. I was getting increasing involved with her and did not see any reason why she should not be helped. Asha, I used to call her.
Hope.

I asked him to pull a chair and told him all about her- how she seemed occupied in her own little world, her little fingers, how she never cried. How little by little, with baby steps, she had begun to capture my heart.

“What do you want to do?” S asked. I told him I would probably stay a while longer and figure that out. The next morning, he flew down to meet her. He knew where this was going. By then, I began to make rounds of NGOs that worked with destitute children and also researched on adoption laws.

Things were not simple at all. First, there was nothing we knew about this child. We could have very well kidnapped her, in the eyes of the law. After a lot of running and emptying our pockets a little, we found an organisation that decided to take her.

This was only one small victory among the many battles coming towards us. Shopping and caring for her gave me the strength required to fight. We were increasingly getting fond of each other. Language is not really a parameter when you have to communicate unconditional love. A tight hug, warm smell, delirious laughter, crazy games, that can be language in itself.

Time was running out and the processing and getting Asha an identity and the million other laws kept me busy and my brows knitted together. All this at a certain point got too overwhelming for me to handle. On another weekend trip, S broke it to me.

“We can’t stay any longer”.

Tears flowed, and through the denial, at some point I knew he was right.

We paid the NGO enough for her maintenance, and also made arrangements for play school. We would continue trips as and when possible till the time came when she could come home with us.

My bundle of joy. My raison d’etre.

That afternoon, we went to say our goodbyes. For now.
Asha knew something was up, a smart little kitten. She did not let go of me for one brief moment, and finally fell asleep in my arms. When the caretaker finally took her away from me, and held her close as our taxi pulled away, I could not help but mutter- Insha Allah.

The Sufi in Winter

2007-01-07T05:42:00.000-08:00

"A frosted beard
a whiff of musk"

Ranjit Hoskote reading out from his latest volume of poetry, Vanishing Acts.
Hyderabad, India.

When Rumi came alive - II

2007-01-02T07:58:00.000-08:00

The first part of this post can be found here:
http://apurplebreeze.blogspot.com/2006/09/when-rumi-came-alive-i.html
Please come back and read the continuation!

That’s just what it is about the past. Your past, my past, a nation’s past- they say things like these repeat, and also that it is not going to go away till you sit down and deal with it.

I had another way looking at things. Another way of looking at Brian, even. I saw him the way nobody else did. We grew up together playing marbles, cricket, soap bubbles and all other assorted games. I would wear his clothes and paint his face with my make up even as a teenager, out of sheet boredom. Most of the time he let me do that. There were also the fights- about inconsequential things such as who should turn which lights off, to things on the heavier side of life such as should we be going to war.

He would send me cards during my birthday that read as if he sent them to a brother or a buddy, he knew all the infinite little ways to make me smile even when I was hopping mad. That is Brian, light of so many eyes.

Many summers ago when we were in elementary school, he got this new shirt that was stripped like the army camouflage uniform. He threw up quite a fit for that, which is not normally like the undemanding him. We were walking around the neighbourhood, with my red trolley in tow. We passed a construction site and soon enough we were building something out of the little stones in the rubble. I don’t really remember what it was- could have been a castle, a pit, or maybe just a little hillock of sorts. Then we decided that we needed something just like this in our backyard, by the little inflatable tub with the yellow ducks. So we began to throw out the contents of the trailer- that included my rag doll, a broken comb and the little plastic cap that comes with cough syrups bottles- the ones that have volume marks on it.

Just as we were ready to head back home, I could not find my rag doll and went into hysterics. It was the queerest doll of all- made from cloth that had this sunny print on it and a yellow scrunchie around its neck. Brian found it a few feet away, at the footsteps of the construction site. While sprinting to get it back, he tripped and landed on his face. The wound was not like anything I had seen before- it was across his cheek, and was bleeding profusely. I began bawling my head off, at the sight of all the blood. Maybe also at the thought of him being in so much pain. He just got up, dusted his muddy hands and the sand that was stuck to the scraped palms, took my hand and asked me to cart the trolley with the other. The trolley had my rag doll in it.

I still can’t help but smile with warmth that floods all over my being at the thought of that summer afternoon. The images are so clear, the red wagon, the rag doll, and Brian as he was sprinting to get it back. The wounds were cleaned soon enough, but the there was a little scar tissue that had formed and that almost became like a mark of identification.
Time rolls on, it has its own sweet course to follow, while we are left here in a future we don’t always want to see and a past that still lingers behind eyelids, like it has just happened, refusing to go away, refusing to let you go.

We grew up, sure enough, but into very different people. I loved the idea of non-violence- from the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, to Flower Power, and I must admit even vague, non-descript stuff like making beads an essential part of my wardrobe. I made my vision very clear, and made sure that I wore every bit of it.

Brian grew into something totally different- he was tall and muscular before I realised it, and loved sports. I always thought that it was one of the few times he came out from his solitary shell, and laughed, played and made strategies with other boys. He went on to enlist in the Army.

The paths we chose for ourselves were completely different. I sometimes even think that one of the two must have felt left out while thinking of the other. Like leaving the comfort of your oldest blanket behind, and turning up the heating so high that you will never need it.
However, in relationships where the bond is from the heart and the love so deep and pure, things like this do not really change how you feel. He would always ask about me even on those briefest of calls home during the war, and I would still make him silly smiley cards for no reason at all. That’s how it is, with people you love. Even if it has been years since you saw them, even if the television blares reports of the wonderful job the boys are doing on the front and all the ecstatic things this war means. My thoughts forever hovered around Brian. Around how this is the classic recipe for disaster.

Demons have this way of shocking you around corners when you least expect them. Maybe that’s why they are called demons, even. My demon- my entire family’s demon infact, also caught up with us. A telegram. Followed by the light of our eyes, my little brother Brian in a wooden box.

The next few months went by in a blur. Just the pain remains in my memory. Like how some film makers put a lady in a bright red dress in a black and white movie, so that no matter what and no matter where you think of the film, the image of the lady in the red dress surely flashes across your mind.

That’s what the pain was like. Always there. Sometimes rising from the pit of my stomach, sometimes lulling me to sleep when I could not take it anymore. It’s funny, now to think of it, that pain and memory almost seem as if they can be transposed.

I earnestly believe that life, or whoever heads the department of cosmic intervention in the sky, sends you messages. Messages that are vague, out of the blue, and yet in that moment hold the key to a flurry of events, unlocking things from memory that you carefully stored away, never to be reopened. The message in itself may not mean a thing to anybody else, but to you, it seems like a customised page cut out and sent to you from the destiny handbook.

Here I am after all these winters and summers that have slowly slipped by, here I am still wearing my beads, sitting in at a café in a foreign country in a green skirt. The boy in the University sweatshirt and the grey green eyes has stopped talking. He is just looking in my eyes. All of sudden, I just reach over and touch the scar on his cheek.

Two stories

2006-12-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

He began to notice something was different at an early age. That is the thing about kids, it is tough to keep things out of their reach. They always manage to somehow sense things out. At first he just thought that something awfully bad had happened, and that life would just be so terrible from then on.
That was his earliest memory of what he felt when his mum and dad had a squabble. The squabbles themselves were not due to reasons that were common and prevalent in many households. His father did not drink, and his mum took care of all her duties like any good wife would. The reasons for disagreements were futile, and often not of any consequence at all. But once the disagreement started, Dinu could not stand even the thought of living through the next few hours of the fight, and ofcourse its undeniable aftermath. The voices would go up, and he would run into one of the other rooms. Dinu would always be in hearing range of the disagreement, and he would listen intently. But he’d do that from another room.
Then, like clockwork, abuses would start pouring in. What followed would make him cringe. There would be crashing noises, like an angry sea lashing out and upsetting a small boat with a poor fisherman in it. There would be violence. Some hitting. Some pounding. Invariably, someone would be hitting themselves or hitting the other against the walls. This was the point of climax. He would hear his mum scream, and in her loud voice there would be both fear and pain that would make Dinu want to run away and never ever set foot in that household again.
Of only one thing was he certain. One day, he would.

****
They say that for a kid the streets are extremely unsafe once dusk begins to fall. You had to be a man, and a tough one at that, in order to be able to survive. There were all the classic elements present that would give any neighbourhood a bad name. Drug peddlers, hookers, pimps, people selling guns and various other odds. There were also those haunts, of which some functioned more like secret holes were gangsters and their ilk would meet up, trade stories, share contacts and make lewd jokes. The sole un-chanted mantra of this street was that every kind of need could be taken care of, more so the kinky ones.
Round the corner, where the streetlight was the brightest, there would sometimes be a girl in a red dress. She would have her make up on like many other women of her establishment: loud, and totally jarring. Her blonde hair would reach down to her collar bone and it was very obvious that she was not naturally blessed with such tresses. But that was her spot. You could not miss her presence or the twirls that she liked to do around that lamp post.
Whenever she showed up, she would always be clad that way and her takers would appear out of nowhere like bats in a blue night. On taking a closer look or walking past her a few times, you cannot help notice that there was something about her that made her different in some way. It would make some people think for a while, and the thought would irritate and be there and yet not be there much like what spinach does when lodged between teeth.
What was it about her?
Some thought it was the way she danced: totally carefree, like the skies themselves were the spectators. Or maybe inspite of those curves and the lusciousness and her moves, there was something strangely masculine about her.
Every two or three days she would appear in all her elements, do her song and dance by the pole, get hooked to someone and leave just as soon as the night.
The girl in the red dress.

*******
Dinu could feel it coming. His nerves and the pores of his skin were now used to it. Predictable as all those clichés. His nerves would make him all jumpy. The yelling in the living room began. He shut his door and closed his eyes for a moment. The next moment, his fingers reached for a bundle from under his bed. Dinu slipped into the red dress.

PS: C.L., one of the five. Or is it two?

A song for the asking

2006-12-15T03:31:00.000-08:00

This morning
I saw a man
In the middle of a crowd

This is not
The kind of attention
That anybody would like
For themselves

This is not
The kind of place
One would choose
Given the chance
To have a seizure

I bit my lip
Muttered a prayer
To a God
Nietzsche
Says is dead

And then
Sang a song
For the asking.

39 Rue de Jean

2006-11-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

And then there are mornings such as these.

The absolute ordinariness of Friday mornings is known to send happiness waves among the scores of people who are a part of the proverbial grindstone. Its all the same in most places, whether your office is at Wall Street or in some other provincial part of a city.

The flight landed safely, without any incident. They looked at each other. She regretted wearing the small red skirt.

They had idle chatter through the trip- at the airport, in transit. Are you hungry, sleepy, resources and revenue kind of mundane stuff. Shop talk, mostly. And then there were the silences when she didn’t know if she should break into one of those awfully cheerful to the point of saying absolute nothing conversations.

Maybe he felt the awkwardness too. This mindless conversation in energy packets happened back and forth till the flight landed and she regretted wearing that red skirt.

It was still early morning- 4 a.m. Most of the city was asleep, with new people pouring in at intervals.

The hotel coffee shop was open- he sat checking his emails, while her notebook was put aside as she sat examining her shoe bites. Late night, or sometimes too early in the morning coffees, dinner with people you just met, flying in and out of cities none of which could be called home. That was the life she chose for herself. The money, the success is exhilarating, what she wanted all her life. She was almost a legacy and had built an empire for herself. She was what many women aspired to be- hard talking, glamorous, not having to take crap.

It was all her choice.

Then morning takes over, the madness of it all, the splendid beauty of it all. She excused herself. In the confines of the rest room, she seated herself and took her shoes off. If there was one thing that being in business had taught her, it was to focus, to be conscious of each minute. The wound was still a little raw- it was as if that part of her feet was living more than the rest. She just sat there and allowed herself to weep.

That night, it snowed in Paris.

Digression

2006-11-05T23:51:00.000-08:00

Cold
Winter night
Darkness
Settling
And then
Unsettling
You

Blanket
Of
Black sky
The
Only clothing
On
Your stripped self

The cemetery
Cold
Dark
So black

The chills
Hit your skin
The tear glands
Are dry
From over-use
Or shock

The answers
Unbecoming
Undeserving

You shiver
Steadily
And seat
On the closest grave

The chill
Of the marble
On your skin

The yearning
Of being.
To be.
Six feet under.

A dry brown
Leaf
Finds its way
To
Your almost frozen
Tresses

Morning comes
Surely
Who wills
Survive?

Hey, Mrs. Dalloway

2006-10-26T00:41:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Dalloway said she would pick up the flowers herself.

Through time and space, lines such as these echo. Without even being aware of such words, such poetry, silently striding in and out of her life, she looked on. It was a balmy morning- the tea was brought in, the sheets were folded away. The sunlight filtered through the windows and its many layered laces, and the spouse was off at work.

It is during these times, these very times that the formidable happens. She remembered what it was like for her a few years ago- she would always tell him that the nights were the toughest. Not because she needed another presence around to fall asleep or wake up to in the middle of the night. But because, this was when she was finally left alone with her thoughts. And those, as we know, are not exactly the kindest of things.

She looked at herself, at what she seemed like now. All the little things were done up- her toenails were painted, the pillowcases were coordinated. Oh, so much prettiness all around, could a woman ask for anything more?

What would Mrs. Dalloway have had to say about this particular situation?

Tea leaves are interesting things, she thought. They come in different flavours, and colours even. Lending all their character and richness to the brew itself, they then become objects that are best put in a compost pit or a garbage bin. But, please note, without the tea leaves there would be no tea.

So, sometimes, that’s what we do with our lives too. Give ourselves here, give in a little more there, so that in the end the useless leaves can be thrown off.

She carefully put her left foot forward, outside the confines of her silky dressing gown. Her leg was white, a little pink and peachy as her husband liked to call it. And then the bend of the knee, and an exquisitely done thigh. Sub-consciously, she parted her gown some more so that she could look at the entire length of her leg. The scars were there, blue black brown. Delightfully monochromatic colours, all. Just as the tea lent soul to the brew, the colours added character to the scars.

Some of them were mature and blended with the skin, as if that is right were they belonged. The others were a little raw, drying.
The day, and the general scheme of things seemed to suggest that the time was right too.

The tea was getting cold. She picked the cup up gingerly, and smiled to herself. The kind of smile you have that says all is right with the freaking world and you are at such utter peace, oh la la. She flung the cup across the room- straight at the wall.

The china broke into pieces- some big, some small. She picked up two of the pieces- one big, one small, and sat back on her chair. With the big piece, she made another wide slit on her just below the others- the blood trickled, the colours were so striking and beautiful. It went down the length of her leg, leaving a glorious, gory trail behind, and made this little red spot on the white floor. Oh what beautiful colours, you would surely love it, Mrs. Dalloway. She held the small piece of ceramic in her hand and looked at her creation, her piece of art. As if it required a ceremonial crowning, the little piece of china was inserted in the slit she made- the throbbing blood and muscle and nerves and all that stuff inside felt so good.

Aren’t scars beautiful things, don’t they lend so much character?
She felt alive, so very alive.

The Message

2006-10-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

She breathed
A message
Slowly
But surely
That was to
Journey
Many miles
Across land
Oceans
Mountains
For
Peace, hope
Light and love
Almost in silent answer
Grass sprouted fresh
A sprightly bloom
In a certain step
Despite the rain
Despite the falling rain.

For only gossamer my gown

2006-10-17T05:34:00.002-07:00

The stars pop out of the sky, one after the other. Dawn breaks. He slowly opens his eyes as this happens, the trickle of traffic at that hour with employees who have pulled all nighters and are on their way home for some sleep, fitness freaks in their smart fresh attire, an occasional flower seller on his bicycle to the market.

All the familiar noises. He knew them all like the palm of his hand, like the song you learn when you are five years old and the tune goes round and round your head even at thirty, sometimes haunting, sometimes not.

The ink
The water on it
The blue fades away
With the colourless

I remember someone telling me about this man when I was really young. One early morning through the dust that the sweepers gathered up, I chuckled with glee when I first saw him. Oh, the man with all the bottles. Baatliwaala, I happily joked to myself and stared at him till the yellow school bus swooshed me away.

The dreams
They were there,
I think

He would sit on the pavement, under this huge Banyan tree. Last evening, I went back for old times sake. My fingers reached out, trying to touch. And that’s all I could do at the sight of the stump that sheltered life all those days, for so very long.

Just like the glass
The scars
The cut fingers
The promises

Then, many years later when are ambling around putting things in perspective, look at what you have, what you lost, what you can have, what you may not have, what people say you will not have but you want to have, what you wished you had, what you wished you would have said, what you wish you will say, what you wish you will hear someone say, what you think someone will say but may not say, you realise you have grown into him, the old beggar man, but with just prettier clothes.

I did not know
That my ink
Will be washed away too
And I would be
Just like you,
Baatliwaala

Just like him, you do not want to admit that you are scared. Just like him, you want to see that warm face. Who knows what else is going to be just like him.

For only gossamer my gown: E. Dickison, ofcourse.

Little Blue Star

2006-10-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Little blue star
With the fragrance
Of a million lilies
Abloom together
With a touch
As soft
As an intoxicating lotus
Brushed gently
Against lips
I wish your voice
Would fill my world
With celestial music
Once again.

I strain my eyes
In the brightness
Of a full moon night
To discover
That in your place
Is now a memory.

Won’t you come
And take my hand
Like you did
All those lifetimes ago
Won’t you come
My earth soul
Begs
To be with you.

Forgotten feelings
From another life
Grips my heart,
And my mind
Is all aflutter
At the thought
Of thriving
In your shadow.

Mysterious flautist
Why don’t you
Come and make me yours
My sad heart
Is all aflutter.

Postscriptum: Heavily inspired by Alai Payude.

Warning, generous profanity ahead

2006-09-28T03:04:00.000-07:00

On some afternoons, some gentlemen do not have particularly pressing issues to deal with and decide to tag people. A certain such gentleman is Kishore, and this is in response to his tag.

I am thinking about… the conversation the girl in the next cubicle is having over her cell phone, some Taiwanese people eating aborted foetus, the nice voice that cows have, cross cultural communication, and a late night phone conversation.
I said… watch the drool, moron.
I want to… ask you to finish the rest of this tag.
I wish… I finish the bloody document I am working on and get to move on with life.
I hear… the walrus sing. Why, it is all so clear (Sorry, A. I hope you are not reading this.)
I wonder… about so many things. Sometimes I also wonder if the thoughts in my head will ever shut up.
I regret… tough one. Haahhaa, I wish my mind were this silent more often.
I am… in dire need of a hug. Or a chocolate brownie. Whichever comes first. Heck, one chocolate walnut brownie please.
I dance… clad in Zebra skin on full moon nights. And GROWL. So watchout. Yes, YOU.
I sing… when I think I should mate with the frogs.
I cry… uncontrollably.
I am not always… incoherent.
I make with my hands… perfectly circular mud pies
I write… and sometimes I don’t.
I confuse… anything straight and simple. And spellings.
I need… more books, more time, more brawn, more brains, more money, more education, more deliberation, more vodka, more this, more that. More More More! Bring it on, life. Ye hear me?? {Mumbles profanity.}

To continue the tradition, I tag Squirrel, the girl FKA transience, Gulnaz, Ô¿Ô, Sunny, Inky, Sailaja, Stormy zephyr, evestigo, H, Jessy, Anumita, Shaz, Mahen, Saltwater, Swati, MotoRama. Let me know if I forgot someone lurking around.

Man without a face

2006-09-26T21:17:00.000-07:00

This morning
From about a bumper away
I saw
Your pale white arms
In a white tee
Doing a swirl
To stretch;
Like poetry
In slow motion.

Your almond brown hair
Still nestled
The aura of dreams
At that moment
You seemed
Like
The most beautiful thing
And
At that thought
I can't help but smile.

Bookstore

2006-09-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

For K, whose perseverance and sheer magic of being makes me swell with the pride of just knowing you.

Will it rain tomorrow
I asked you
You negated
From a city
That is far away
From where I sleep

Will it be okay
I asked you
You were affirmative
Trust me, you said
I believed you

A lot of other what ifs
I asked you
You explained
Destiny and the human mind
You showed me
It is true

In the middle
Of a bookstore
In the middle
Of a working day
You read out poetry
That’s straight from your soul

You make being
Seem so easy
In spite of the what ifs
Coming to life

Amidst the sculpture
And verse
And rum
And being
You forgot
To teach me to breathe.

Silver girl

2006-09-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

The evening walks away
To join the dust of dreams
Night lulls its way through
Bringing with it
A silence

She walks by
The creaking wooden boards
And footprints in silver-moon cinders
Her only company

The tips of the pine
Tap against the windows
The moon wrangles
Putting on and taking off the clouds
Conflict abounds

Auburn tresses slide
Below the nape of her neck
Dry emotions form
At the base of her throat

She lets out a scream
Salty and earth shattering
The owls outside
Scram

Oblivious to her form
On the floor,
In a fit.

When Rumi came alive- I

2006-09-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

An auburn autumn sky begins to indulge in colours of the imbrued, colours of yore. Sitting at one of the numerous road side cafés that dot this part of the world, I await the perfection of a steaming hot latte, with half a spoon of sugar, please.
Life looks exactly the same with the sky, the overbearing cold about to break and cause red cheeks, the Scotsman at the next table whose accent reminds you of a love far away, of a love from yesterday.
So what went wrong?
Something always goes wrong, doesn’t it, or there would be a solitaire on these ink stained fingers yet. Let’s see, what went wrong the last time?
It is difficult to tell which was worse, the one cheating who was trying to have a baby with another woman, or the one who was not in love at all but was in it for who knows what?
It’s all just blah right now, anyway.
Waiting for no one at cafes like this is the most romantic thing you can bear to do for yourself right now. The banal paper napkin with squiggly stories written all over, the tip of the pen sauntering over it, careful enough not to rip pieces away.
It is the collective whole that makes sense, the entire scheme of things has a way of falling into place.
Across the street is a young man. Early twenties, you figure, standing in the trademark grey University sweatshirt. What could he be waiting for? He stands on the pavement, walks up and down slowly, looks into the shop windows mindlessly- you can tell he is not interested. You can tell so well, mainly because you were him not so long ago- one of those outsiders who spent all their time looking in. Looking into other lives, families, happiness, as time and its many winters quietly slipped by.
Maybe it is a lover he is waiting for. Or maybe drinking buddies. The waiting game is not fun to play all alone. You think of beckoning him over, so he can warm his fingers over your cup of latté.
Something from your classroom days passes over your mind silently- what was it, it is hard now to remember what once was the very fabric of your life. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Life, but a mere streetcar?

As if validating the presence of a thing as telepathy, or is it the power of staring real hard from behind Kohl smeared eyes, in a skirt riding up your knee on a cold evening, the young man in the grey green eyes casts a long look your way. You do not know where to look, what to do, but instead hold his gaze for a few fleeting seconds. The both of you look away.
Other things quickly capture your attention- for instance how few people there are sitting out, the waitress’s black skirt, and the Scotsman with the nostalgia inducing accent.
You make eye contact again, with a little smile this time. He does the same. No hurry in his eyes, just an overwhelming sense of the magnitude of here and now.
I am here. So are you. With that he reaches out and gives your hand a quick squeeze. When was the last time that happened, and why is it getting increasingly difficult to remember?
By now you figure that whatever he is waiting for is running terribly behind schedule, if it exists at all.
You make eye contact one time more, and silently give a profuse bleeding of apologies. He nods his head, as if to say its ok. Or is it another way of saying you’re being silly?
Before I know it, the boy in the grey green eyes is at the table next to mine. Whatever he was waiting for never arrived, just like so many other things in life.
I was a nice beetroot red by then, taken aback at my own childlike desire to touch another passing person, feel the texture of their nose, smell their perfume, and consequently decide whether I like it or not. Or maybe even stay up one night crying for it?
The familiar voice asks him what he would like, a garbled response follows. Garbled because I was trying so hard not to listen, not to pay attention, and like a kid in a candy shop, trying so hard not to get into trouble.
Don’t talk to strangers.
My mom told me that once, when I was young and full of life, and thought that nothing on earth could do me harm. Why was her voice ringing in my years today, when I am so far away from home, on a Saturday afternoon that is pregnant with the chills, following a destiny I chose for myself? Agreed that the destiny bit began to get a little blurred around the edges and I just toss myself from getting hurt to not getting hurt to everything else that lies in between.

I continued scratching my paper napkin winter afternoon notes, with my third latté for the day. He was somewhere in the back of my mind, kind of merging with the scheme of things. There was a sound that came from the next table that made me look up in his direction. The shuffling of pages. He was bent over this book, trailing his fingers through the pages, and from where I was seated, I could see the tips of his almond brown hair almost falling over his eyes and his cherry red lips that showed complete lack of emotion, looking so seemingly engaged.
Now this is an opportunity not many from my clan will pass up. Discovering somebody who lived in the same world as you do, living between the pages of books, thus seamlessly fleeting lifetimes and emotions. Like how immortalised in tales from other lands, where women move to strange countries with a book tugged below their arms, hoping to find more of their kind, more who belong to the same state of being. Was that really a story, or is that your story? I tried hard to tell fact from fiction, to remember what I carried under my arm when I moved to this country.
I had to know what it was. I remember mumbling something, and the grey green eyes looking up at me. He smiled slightly and I lipped another apology. The book was passed on, and then his coffee moved to my table. It was a collection of poetry by Rumi, and on the first page was written this, in hand:

Listen to the reed, how it complains of separation…

Ah, could anything have been more appropriate?
The talk continued from literary, of writers and such, to ecstatic flights into the infinite. Between the discussions, I looked into his eyes and saw the bitter sweet light of things to come. Sometimes all you need is a little magic.
With a little time and the barely there sun tugging its mattress over the sky, our conversation moved to places not seen, things not told, and stories that nearly wrecked your life, and are told as if it is but little deal.

To be continued.

The continuation can be found here:
http://apurplebreeze.blogspot.com/2007/01/when-rumi-came-alive-ii.html#comments

These Minutes

2006-09-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

Through time, there have been certain places, people, emotions that evoke the same reactions. These people and places are what the very walls and the many dormitories are to a Harvard grad: the measure of all that she has worked for and all that she has aspired to be. The emotion rises from the pit of the stomach and traces its way up to the heart, chocking every little muscle and droplet of blood with the crux of its being. Pride, some people may call it. Arrogance. Lunacy even, at times.
When at that moment, that rising in the feeling, the climax of all those years of piling little things up, it does not matter what you choose to call the experience.
She looked up from the book she had tightly clutched in her hands for over two days now. Like a compelling tour de force, these two objects held on very tight to each other. She hoped that through its pages, she would some how find the answers to all that she seeked. If the book had a voice of its own, it would also have a story to tell. Truth be told, that was what she was thinking of at that precise moment: the story of the book she held. Where it came from, all the hands it passed. The stories each of the hands that held it that went untold.
Some of life’s greatest mysteries hold the answer in the question itself. They lie within the very confines of the human head. Why we react the way we do, why in the middle of a predicament there remains a fine hardy thread of hope clearly running through. Why the balance between hope and despair can tip either way.
That day, looking up at the sepia toned sky, she knew that it will not go on forever.
She knew that between the blinking cursor of her laptop and the crumbling brownish, severely underlined pages of her books, she held close to her two of her best friends life was willing to give her.
The rain decides to come down. Slow trickles of colourless liquid seamlessly taking the hand of all those immaculately written alphabets, to merge into something more singular, something more whimsical.
Those hands, as always, snatched the two of them away, wiped the droplets off so that the fabric that added meaning to unkempt dreams and lonely promises may somehow be personified again.
Not very far from where she sat, there is a lake that is enveloped by a marsh. Not very long ago, this lake was famous for reasons of it own. For having drowned in its ebb to go on, some voices that were never to be heard again.
It is a story that has crossed the minds of the people who live there at least once. The moment can be one of many: a walk uphill, rain, bad grades, bad teeth, good grades, good teeth.
It is the story of a hand that liked to tell stories. She was messed in the head, they said. Been in and out of the cuckoo house. But when the weight of being fell on her shoulders, she did not have the strength to have to endure this tumult any more. Her hands- pretty ones at that, that wrote in the loveliest of ways, that were long and slender and had stains from certain other habits- those very hands one day picked up some rocks to put in her pocket, so that if she were to walk into a lake, the weight of the stones would ensure a smooth, swift path to hitting rock bottom. Later when she did drown herself, the now blue and bloated hands were the first part of her to surface above the lake waters. What a way to bid one final goodbye.
If you look closely, every hand has a story to tell. While some of them may not make it through tunnels of time, some others appear and reappear. Moving fingers thus write them down, at times making it complete with a Virginia Woolf style suicide.

Him

2006-08-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

Anant. Akhand. Anadi.

Unending. Inseparable. Unborn.

During the Mahabharata, Arjuna has questions about the whereabouts of God. What is God? Does He have a beggining or an end? Lord Krishna replies to all his questions with the three words: Anant. Akhand. Anadi.

Castles of Sand

2006-08-14T02:27:00.000-07:00

What do sea shells mean
to one who has never seen the beach
never seen
white froth
and happiness swelling till it bursts

What do children mean
to one who can't have any

Why do you
turn on the fan
right after building a palace
painfully
with your deck of cards

Why does the night seem endless
Why is warmth
absent
when you need it

Why is there
no silence
just when you need it

Why do we
continue living
in our castles
of sand.

Hope

2006-07-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

So I remember from a time.

It was one of those illicitly lit streets, that resonated the pitter patter of touristy feet. The backpacker, the ones looking for enlightment, the city dwellers looking for a perfect weekend getaway- all of them.

I remembered you again.

She was there many years ago, walking those very streets, singing those songs which are now in places of her memory that get unlocked only from the smell of certain t-shirts, from an occasional sentence that is phrased in a familiar style, from an old photograph that still clutches hard.

Last night, you were in my dreams.

These city dwellers were the strangest of the lot- came to places like these so unsure of what to do and expect, and yet they arrive by the bus full like clockwork, on Saturday mornings. They even get their own food for breakfast- all neatly wrapped in aluminium foils. What do you make of these people anyway? What can you say except how weird?

This is weird too; that I miss someone I have not met.

Needless to say, she was one of those travellers- running away from the madness of it all, if only for forty eight hours. The dark streets were so full of promise, the promise of anonymity can make you feel giddy and high.

I wrote to you a couple of times, I remember. But the email is now too painful to open.

They did what the entire lot of them so typically do: they came, they fell in love, they got hurt and parted. It is now considered very typical of a generation that swears by the microwave and instant gratification. Some forms of gratifications are like that, the hangovers keep fading in and out a number of times.

You were in my dreams last night, you were. Like Hope.

And then there are terrible nights, stormy nights. Where the nice fat book some how seems lacking in the promise of its company, and the purple blanket does not really keep you warm. The mornings following them are the worst of all- the heaviness from within, the haunting memories.

Maybe I can dash off yet another email today.

Uncertainty has this wonderful way of darting in your life, it maybe likes to party with the heaviness that has washed over you. Like she were a person, and he would hold her by the waist and saunter into the anonymity of those streets again. The smells of happiness that is so far away, that manifests itself if only through the screen of a computer, smiling those toothy ones at some vague party you don’t want to know about.

It’s like that, this crazy game. Sometimes you do not want to be in it. And sometimes you thank your stars that it happened.

Crazy hope, how I miss you today...

Tuesday Morning Blues

2006-07-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

The greys
Portend
Rain
Always

An email
Seems
To portend
Something similar

Deadlines
Are grey
As well
As ever

Smells
From
The morning shower
Have not
Worn off

The stray
strand of hair
still hangs
close
to the neck
still damp

And yet
There is
Nothing
Close
To freshness

A bit
Like life
New life
That is born
But feels
That
There is
No promise.

You are right. I need more Coffee.

For Symphony, where ever you are

2006-07-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

They say
That fairies and elves
Are not real

That
Happiness
Is short lived

That
We are all
Forms
Of energy

Also
The grass
Is green
On any side

That time
Waits for none

They didn’t say
That you
Don’t wait
Either

Time
And you
Blowing out candles

Similar
In your transience
Similar
In your tenacity
To go away.

Greetings

2006-07-03T04:01:00.000-07:00

In many business models and offices and classrooms around the world, it is considered as the epitome of a hard worker. There also is a poem built around it, I remember reading it sometime in junior school. It is about an ant and a cricket. The cricket spends the summer singing its lungs out, while the ant works on and on. Come winter and the ant has food but the cricket goes hungry.
Thus it is that many a tale and song sung about the ant teaches us so many lessons. I found one this morning, thanks to a sting on my leg that woke me up with the rudest of shocks. There was the culprit, walking about like my sheets were but its fine summer ground.
This little squirt needs to be taught a lesson. One that he will not forget, if he lives through it at all.
So I caught the little guy and put it in the glass that was at the foot of my bed, and put the lid on it. The little guy went walking up and down in a spiral like somehow if its little feet tread all over, the lid will magically open itself into freedom. I decided that it deserved a feast before its fate came knocking. In went a dribble of honey. But the wise one around whom business models are built, did not have anyone to share it with. Knock out destiny, yeah?
So when I thought Beaver had a fill (that’s what I began to call him, all little beings surely deserve names) of yummy Himalayan honey, I took it to my favourite haunt- the store room, and put it on the spiders web there. It must have screeched in its Beaver like way, for these are sounds my ears don’t hear. All stuck in the web, not knowing where to go. Along came the spider and sat down beside him and ate Mister Beaver away.
But then something told me that the busy guy may not have really died, and must be doing the rounds inside the spider’s stomach.
So this time the spider with the ant inside in went into my glass. What would be a fitting ending to a spider that has swallowed the ant that gave me a rude shock on a fine morning?
Then a scheme came floating into the otherwise vacant thoughts in my head. Should I just crush him under my feet? One giant stomp and squish will end all the misery.
I instead chose something more elaborate.
Out came a board and some drawing pins. The spider went on it, and the little spindly wicked legs did not really get pinned to the board, I simply cut them off with a pair of scissors and pinned the rest of the soggy being on the board.
The perfectionist in me begged for elaboration.
So I got out a little candle- the ones that go on birthday cakes and a little piece off the top, with the wick in it. This I placed on the spider.
I blew out the candle and sang Happy Birthday Kafka.

Butterfly and the Orchid farm

2006-06-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

The tarmac is spotted with the traffic control people and airplanes from all over the place. All of it, all the people involved, makes this a perfectly functional unit. Watching all of it from behind a glass screen, she slowly flicks some of her hair that ventured too close to her eyes. Her tresses were just washed, and smelled of something sweet and nutty.
The long nails painted maroon gently flicked the stray strands behind her ear. The smell from the freshly painted henna lingered at her nose for a few moments before the tinkling of two dozen red and cream bangles she had on, distracted her senses.
She looked over her shoulder, past the guy in the mauve coloured shirt who had been working on his laptop ever since she came. She could tell from the corner of her eye that he even grimaced at whatever was going on in the screen from time to time.
No sign of him.
A middle aged man walks in, and checks her out sitting cross legged, in blue jeans that had faded from too many washes. That and a little white shirt, teamed with Sindoor and all those bangles. What a pretty sight.
She looked up an again, at an empty door way and picked up her juice bottle that she bought at the grocery store just before getting there. She shook it a little, since the bottle always says shake well before use, and also to estimate how much of it was left. Her fingers felt the circumference of the cap a couple of times, while she tried to decide if she should drink some. Fluids are good for you. But the thought of the door painted with the sign of a girl helped her take a decision against it.
The waiting area was fairly full now. A lot of people had walked in, some with looks on their faces that gave away a long day at work. The seat next to her was unoccupied, except for her handbag.
The guy in the mauve shirt was frowning again at his laptop and there was another man sitting close to her, discussing something in an alien tongue.
She put the palms of her hand together and looked at the intricately painted design on them. The henna had turned a deep brown, black almost. That is a good sign before a wedding, they say. She had on a kind that was a rage- called Zardosi. It was intricate and delicate silver work along with the other pattern. It added that certain touch. Like wearing a business suit over spaghetti trimmed with lace. The pattern in itself had so many things going on, almost as if each little portion of the palms of her hand had a story to tell.
Like the swan under the thumb.
The women who came to do the henna were beautiful in their own way- secretive, giggling among themselves in a tongue that she didn’t understand, and nice milk and cream complexion. They smelled of something she couldn’t put her finger on, and kept receiving text messages that made them flush just the teeniest bit.
She was jerked out of her train of thought when he sat next to her. He was in a light blue shirt and flashed her a smile that was unnerving because of how openly it said so many things. The way his dimple slowly and suddenly formed on his cheek delighted her in many ways.
He puts his hand over her chair, she leans back just a little and his fingers were around her shoulder.
Comfort at a little corner of the world.

The Bangle Shop

2006-06-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

Origin. The point of intersection of coordinate axes. The point at which something comes into existence. The point on the graph from which all other points seem to move on, move away. The point where you diverged, from me.

Bangle store in the Old City. The sheer variety and sizes on display are stunning. He has something for every hand size- from black ones for a new born to the bright hues of a sacred red, the wedding collection.

Come here
Give me your hands
Let me hold them

Then you have the choice to make. From plastic, metal and glass. Colourful plastic ones that endure anything from playing in sand to rough weather of any kind, to teething trouble.

Let me hold them
And paint them
With colours

But the ones that occupy most of the store are the ones made of glass. Plain glass, glass with golden work on it, glass with other glassy colour, glass and shimmer. Whoever says iridescent glee can’t be bought for a price?

Turquoise, orange
Brown and pink
And shades
And glitter
And happiness

The old man behind the counter takes a look at you- and simply reaches out for your hand. Squeezes your wrist and determines what size can be woven around them. And then there is the clink of bangles, of him mixing two kinds together so that the end result, your hands, look prettier than ever.

Be here
Mine
Till I paint
For you

Strings together he does. The colours- Fuchsia and another transparent kind with glitter. Proud of the smile on his young lady-customer’s face, he reaches out yet again. To hold your gingerly hands. To slip on hues of beautiful bangles, into slender wrists that beg to mesmerise.
He turns them over, and looks. The slashes on the wrist. And the stitches that now hold them together.
Decorate wounds he does. Oh so well.
Just like the woman who surrenders her hands. Beauty, surely, is for all to see.

And then
You get to choose.
To walk away
Or walk away.

Beloved

2006-06-18T23:26:00.000-07:00

It is a dance
Of Silver anklets
And dainty feet
Of fresh puddles
And splashes
In rain water

The feet dance
The skirt raises and falls
The ankles
Slim and muddy
In rain water

Hands move
To music unheard
Just as the waist
Held tight
In a beloveds arms
In rain water

Celebrate life
Let smiles galore
Let tinted lenses
Of happiness swell
Like your lip-colour
In rain water

Let the tears
Run down your face
One with the patterns
Of the one above
Like Kohl smeared eyes
In rain water.

Summer songs of vicissitude

2006-06-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Sepia envelopes
Fingers laced
Promises made
Of an eternity
Together

Waves crash
Like clouds
Above
Nimble emotions
Run awry
Like tears
Down a cheek
Like raindrops
And thunder

Games of peek-a-boo
Played alone
With clouds

The sepia remains
So do the clouds
Does time
Really heal?

Five minute writing exercise on a particulary swamped day. Feel peaceful. Felt like free verse. The rest is here to see.

Dance with me

2006-05-21T23:56:00.000-07:00

If you were me this Saturday morning, you would have never guessed how strange, random things in the world are connected. All mish-mashed together, enfolding itself in front of the eye, popping up little glimpses of flirty pieces of happiness. For instance, would you have thought that the pair of little feet you can see from between the edge of the newspaper and your own somewhat cathartic knees, actually responds to music, like the tinkling of silver on fine China?
You can’t really tell much by looking from this angle. Except perhaps for the glow that emanates from nights of Vitamin E massages. The cut of the silhouette forming this V, like dipping your partner during a waltz, announcing to the world that you are but a structure, and she the picture that you flaunt.
The raw, animal passion in a Latino American dance, the heat that gradually works its way up from sharp glances, heart rates pounding together, the intermingling of sweat and breath caressing the bluish appeal of a nerve that seems to have worked particularly hard- somewhere above the ankle. Oh yes, who would have thought.
As if reading my eyes from behind unnaturally thick glasses and sheets of newspaper, one of the legs decided to emerge from hiding behind the other, only to take you on a sinusoidal pleasure trip, with fingers laced together, squeezing the non-existent gap between the inseparables, to give an inexplicably curvy effect to a cross-legged calf.
The slits on the full length skirt does justice to both the flattering mold of the legs and the predictable drop of an onlooker’s jaw line.
The whispering of a tan requires a special mention. It is of a kind that travelers to far away places flaunt, travelers who don’t forget the little bottle of Vitamin E lotion.
The chemistry of magic is so vague and uncertain; it invites more than a leer and a snicker, when you think of it. Would you have even guessed that when something living, and the inanimate get together, the result is but lethal to for an observer, like when the brown sumptuousness of dark wooden flooring has those pair of legs dancing on it in a ballroom dance and every onlooker’s mind is dancing with it.
Finally comes the grand finale, a rendition of the climax, when movement of the limbs gets more frenzied than ever, the blood thumping to cause pulsating flushes, just to stop suddenly, mid-air, and the dancing feet come to a halt. The breath is still fast, the smiles and flashes that unleash like glimpses of life outside a tram window, with the guy in front of you who sits seemingly engrossed in his newspaper. A sly smile dances on his lips, maybe at the thought of an imaginary movie his mind treats him to.

Itchy feet

2006-04-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Eyelids begin to open and the roof above is almost swirling. Not cured from my last dream and something faint, maybe the alarm, is screeching in the distance, maybe somewhere near my fingertips.
I open my eyes and turn it off.
The next few moments are mixed with shock and horror. I donot recognise what I see. The bed seems strange and unusually bumpy. The scrunchie, the book and the reading glasses next to the bed are mine though.
Then it sinks in. I am in yet another city, far away from home. The university sweat shirt that I sleep in, the only reminder of life that is the exact opposite of the heat, the penury, the flies, and dirty sheets around. My back-pack is in one corner of the room, my sole companion as I tread all those miles, in search of something I don't yet have and getting to know something I am yet to understand.

All you who sleep tonight
for from the ones you love,
no hand to left or right
and emptiness above-

Sometimes I wonder why my interests are not like those of most of the others I graduated with- the range lying between corporate offices, cut throat competition, companions, weddings, children and such. Not that I have anything personal against them. I remember a time when I had one of those plush jobs. Reckon was even good at it.
Its just that being a tortured traveller can be a little unsettling at times. The high points of my day and life revolve around things that are not tangible, but are fleeting.
I often wonder when I pack my bag yet another time and fasten my walking shoes, in the anticipation of a new place, what it is that I seek. What it is that the entire race of these "tortured travellers" seek.
And yet, bang in the middle of nameless faces, numberless streets, cat calls and occasional undesirable glances later, I know that I am holding on to a piece of treasure. Fleeting treasures, I thus collect and let them be a part of me, as I lug my cart around.

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Later during the day, I will settle down with some tea in one of the innumerable, ever colourful street side cafes and write a postcard home. One of those hunky dory ones taken at a tourist hot spot.
Days later, you will receive it, in my chicken scratch writing. Maybe you will smile.
I have my struggles. I have my victories. What I don't have is happiness.

All you who sleep tonight- Vikram Seth

Conversation

2006-04-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Barely six a.m. and she is at the depot in a bright red tee. She checks the number on the bus and gets in.
Seat by the window, obviously.
She sits looking out the window for longer than a few seconds, rocks back and forth a couple of times, looks behind her at the door, and settles down. Pulls out a book.
Barely a few words and tracing the bookmark a few times later, he comes. Sits next to her. They look at each other. She goes back to the open page. Not that she was reading or even intended to.
He brings the book to a close, with her fingers in it, so he can read the title.
“Hmm, you should read Coetzee”.
She does not say a thing. Looks at his liquid eyes and the layers of emotions and thoughts that they contain, and says indicating at the book, “Do you know why mosquitoes sing in ears?”
He smiles, nods his head. Her voice begins to get animated.
“One day mosquito went to ear and asked her to marry him”.
He smiles a wider one, there is light in his eyes.
“The ear laughed and refused saying ‘Look at you. You are a skeleton. How long do you think you will live?’
That is why the mosquito sings into ear every time he goes past her, to remind ear that he is still alive.”
They both chuckle, and he responds saying “Happy New Year”.
“Yeah. Is he West African, Coetzee?”
“No, South African”.
“Not sure if I will like him.”
“You can try. Give him a chance. He won the Nobel”.
They chuckle some more.
It is about three hours later. They are at a coffee shop. He is eating a sandwich, and she has a carrot cookie in her hand. The chances of her eating it were slim, though.
She plonks her hand on the table. He reaches out and puts the bangles together. Their eyes rest on their hands together, for a moment.
The air warms up. They both feel it. The touch lingered.

The mosquito-ear story is from Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart.

The story of Ada

2006-04-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

In one of those many fragrant, distant lands that dot the face of this planet, was born a little girl to an excited couple. The little girl brought with her promises of so many things they had dreamed of. While her mother thought of how she would light her life up, she also nursed a commitment to make her a strong, happy woman. The father smiled softly at the thought of helping her with her first steps, riding a bicycle, and attending to him when age began to tell.
They named her Ada.
Ada lived up to many of these dreams. She was lively, intelligent, and by far the cutest little thing that walked the neighborhood.
That, until the spring of her eleventh year.
Her mom noticed something was wrong and within no time, panic ran loose.
The little girl, the light of so many eyes, came down with leprosy. Her parents wept openly. Ada showed no emotion. Just acceptance.
It is understated when suddenly, out of the blue, you take a childhood away from a child. When a pair of eyes look on yearningly at children play, or when ears pretend not to hear taunts and work very hard with the pair of eyes not to flood. Deny a child a childhood, it will become past soon. A past that will knock, mimic, mock, and haunt that child of yesteryears for all of time.
There is a saying in a certain part of the world. It loosely translates to the fact that even once a wound has healed, the area of the wound is never the same again.
Ada moved on with life, needless to say. However, when misfortunes happen to the supposedly good, they never stop with the first or the second strike. Her father became a seasoned drunkard. He would come home drunk on many nights, loudly abusing his wife on all the streets his feet took him through. She would slip her hands into her mother’s, and kept reminding her that this, too, shall pass.
And pass it did. From one predicament to another. There was a man Ada had grown to trust. On one of the days she visited him, he did the unthinkable. And just like that, she was a woman. A woman who had not consented to desire, but was made to. She picked up pieces of her clothing, and wobbled on.
Her way of dealing with this was she would wail bitterly every night, cry herself to sleep. That is how children deal with terror, someone once said. They sleep. But she didn’t remain a child after that day.
All this is not to say that Ada was the silent, helpless victim. She had one thing going for her. Her soul, her savior was her violin.
Many people who heard her on some nights felt something clench their hearts. Some swore that she played the most soulful tunes that would even make a smiling moon want to hug her and tell her it is going to be okay.
Through years that followed, she lived many secret lives. She tried to seize happiness in places she thought she would find it. Arms of men, mostly.
When an abused child- physically and emotionally- turns from flinching at every touch to consenting at most times, there is more to it than meeting a need. It is damaging to what little is left of the spirit, because when you look for love in place where there isn’t any, and you convince yourself that it will be different this time, you consent to the mysterious forces of the universe to give stronger doses of bitter hurt.
Receive these doses she did. With every sip that touched her tongue, her spirit sank a little more, her dreams tended to nonexistent, and the wails of her violin, more intense and deep. When pathos grasps you tightly in its arms, it sometimes does not even leave room for tears. The grip is so hard, so painful, its breath so tasteless, so drunk, it is like a heady pleasure trip on the negative axis.
While playing with the dirt in her backyard, Ada realised that the last ten years of her life lead her to scatter in so many places. Most of it happened as a force from above, and the rest, she thought, could not have been otherwise. Maybe some strange gleam shone in her eyes- that of power. Of how she was misfortune’s favorite little child.
The world has its share of spirits, good and bad. What links the both of them is a path, a road. When one begins a journey, it is considered a good sign- good chi- if a sacrifice is made on the path. So that the spirits are not hungry, so that the road ahead sees no hurdles.
Ada is on a path no one says anything about. It is one she does not know anyone to have taken. All the strength she has remaining is held at the gap between her fingers. Mixed with the colours of strength, are shades of faith that once was.
She is on that path because it is the only one that might have an answer. Where does one go, when tired of everything?
The time spent inching your way to an answer to that, on one and half legs, it shrouded by vacuum. This vacuum is the polar opposite of all the misfortunes of her life, since there is a lack of emotion. No life, so no hurt.
There is an unaccompanied suite by Mozart on the piano. If one listens to even the first sixty seconds of it repeatedly, it appears like an endless piece of music, its incompleteness seeming full in a way. A way that is like saying the end does not matter. What matters is here and now.

Mrs.D

2006-03-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

It is five a.m. Through twilight that has not yet arrived, I take your strong hands in mine as my hand idles on the gear.
I also steal little glimpses. You look out the window. Think about your day ahead. You look at me.
Your hand still in mine.
I drop you off at the airport and look on till I see you dissolving behind glass doors- you with your bag of clothes and laptop, secretly hoping to recreate the peck and the buh bye.
I sit in my pink reindeer pyjamas and stare into the space that you so easily occupied just minutes ago.
And I just sit in the car, windows rolled up.
On most days after I drop you off, I place my hands on my lap and fall asleep right there, in the airport parking lot.
On others, I sit there for long and then drive back home and fall asleep on the couch, where there is room for just one.
I wake up with the sunlight filtering through the living room.
It is only nine a.m. I have an entire day ahead of me till I can go back to dreams and other such yearnings.
Things of no consequence follow. The cookie jar gets refilled. Veggies get cut, to fill empty boxes.
And then I sit at the dining table, staring at the basket of oranges there. Not eat. Not touch. Just stare. At the skin and the smell that fills ones senses.
I go on to look at the search engine screen, smell your shampoo bottle, bury my face in your pillow, run the washing machine with just water and soap, count pieces of clothing.
And go back to the couch, to wonder how to dream.

Crossing

2006-02-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

She carelessly tosses a few strands of hair that sauntered to her forehead, and crumples it up a bit above the nape of her neck.
There she is, in her jeans and sports tee, the predictable tick of the maker on her bosom, her black cotton jumper undone.
And the dangling earrings. What are they, he thinks.
Indian? Turkish?
Some influence from the Far East, for sure.
Billy looks on at her, the sunlight touching her face at right angles. The wrinkles done up neatly. Who would even know they exist?
She has this bohemian, even a good witch kind of charm about her. The kind that stands out in a crowd, that makes you look on without knowing why.
Maybe it is beauty of a certain kind, in another culture.
He walks by her sometimes. When she waters the Germaniums in the garden. Or lies with a book, squinting in the sun.
He somehow just wanted to be an observer today, looking closer at something that has always been there, just to unravel some hidden puzzle, some curious answer that finds its way to you with a smile.

Through all those little tasks that fill your day, you seamlessly take your fragrance along with you, creating magic and little pieces of sunshine along the way.
He had this gift, Billy.
He could tell that from what he sees now, people would have been younger years ago.
Many men would have happily wanted to spend the rest of their lives in her arms. That even say twenty-five years ago, she must have had that wistful sadness, that longing for something one can’t quite put ones finger on, in her eyes.
She looks the other way.
The lights change. He walks on.

Rendezvous

2006-02-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

They say you were the best thing that ever happened to me.
I took a walk among the woods. And picked Pomegranate flowers- pink, with the blush of first love, and yellow with the radiance thereof.
Where there is a path now, there once was a dream we traced. With our fingers together, little by little.
I took a little trip. To where the white Dahlias caressed your tender skin. And you lay, holding it, like it were a fragile treasure.
But the wind had plans of its own, other treasures to blow away.
It is not your turn today, my love.
And when I had enough of it all, enough of fading memories, I stopped by your place to make some more.
He was there.
Like some people are. Like some people who wait in the corners of dark streets.

He was there.
I looked in his eyes.

I am not afraid.

He muttered something.
Something about passion. And gently sent a flame of the forest my way.

Certain flavours, certain smells always remain with you.
Which is why I pulled him close that day.
Pulled him close and kissed his blue lips, the lips of death, with your cold grave for a witness.

Between here and now

2006-02-11T04:57:00.000-08:00

Happiness is a slimy thing. It catches you unawares on some dark nights, and on some others, decides to go on a long walk. To some it may seem like the measure of their lives, and yet to others just a passing purple breeze. Ah, the transience of Frangipani scented afternoons.
How many lives and how many hours we spend, wondering what is amiss, or thanking our stars- when the answer is staring you right in the face. This vagabond word starting with an ' h'.
Holden also starts with an h. It is a proper noun (I think). He shares the first alphabet of his name with the theme of this piece- and he is the protagonist in many ways, if you may.
Though it is often said that the world is a small place, Millie always thinks these labyrinths are anything but small. She gets lost a lot and is incapable of telling right from left just after she has had a strong dose of some existentialist she just met on the welcoming racks of a library.
Maybe it is this quality that attracted him to her. Or was it the look- when she looks up with those dark eyes of hers, lost deep in thought, and gives you this intense stare like you are some beautiful anonymous hamlet she sees from a train window.
I am attracted to you because I know I cannot touch you, cannot be a part of you. We are but divided by the thin metallic frame of time and space.
If this is not ethereally sad, then what is?
Hush starts with an h. It is a strong word, lots of personality to it. It can be something you say holding a wailing lover in your arms, or something you say in the middle of the night when your spouse can’t seem to stop snoring and you think you heard a little noise downstairs.
Examples are hilarious figures. You can build so many stories around this. Hilarious simply because hilarious starts with an h.
She read an example once. Twisted and turned it here and there and added touches of imagination to it. That is how her favorite story was born.
Once upon a time there lived a king. This was a strong, handsome king who loved his people and generally did a good job of managing his kingdom. One day his empire came under attack. He lost.
He takes refuge in a forest close by with some of his followers.
Needless to say, they were heartbroken.
It was as if the entrance to the forest had those lines from Dante’s Paradise Lost.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
The king was dejected, but had not lost heart. One of his followers asked him how he managed to look forward to the next day given what had just happened. His answer was simple- this too shall pass.
Sweet transience.
Like a bunch of monkeys who never tire picking lice from one another’s hair, they managed to keep each other’s spirits up, and even make a strategy.
Stratagem is a pretty word. Like a pale young woman standing at night by the shore, waiting for a sign, while the wind amuses itself playing with her hair and her knee-length, thin cotton dress.
So they planned and attacked their erstwhile kingdom. And won.
What do you know; life allows you victories every now and then.
A celebration was thrown on the streets of the kingdom. The beloved King is back. Through the procession that followed, a follower asked the King “ Are you not happy, my Lord”?
Simplicity etched meticulously with wisdom. The King’s answer- this too shall pass.
So she has all these thoughts, these stories running through her head.
It is so absorbing, almost like a vaccum, where there is an opaque fragility to your aura- that of your thoughts.
But really, does that sounds like a bad thing?
Is there such a thing as bad or good? Who makes all these laws that govern our life- good, bad, three meals a day, laundry, waxed arms.
In many ways Holden is like The Little Prince. He only asks questions, does not answer them.
So then why does he leave her little presents- like a copy of a book he saw a woman read in a coffee shop? Just before he did what he likes doing most afternoons- charming his way to a woman’s heart.
In many ways their story is like one all of us share with our destiny.
Hoi polloi is a funny word. It belongs to the masses and still is a part of you. It starts with an h.

That thing they say

2006-02-04T00:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I know this is coming a little late. But nevertheless, here is the string of annual thought if hmm-what-was-2005-about-scratch, scratch-hmm..??

This is going to strictly be a literary piece, to avoid additions to the who to throw off my ninth floor window list.
A few years ago when Vikram Seth's An equal music hit my bookshelf, I found it a tad heavy to digest in one go.
I picked it up again towards the fag end of the year. It lasted about a couple of days, the stpry took me in slowly, and with one odd reference I thought that had a lot to do with Salinger.

( In The catcher, there is a rather prominent reference Holden makes. He wonders where the Ducks in CPW go during the winter. Seth says the exact same thing, except it is some other bird. I, honestly, found this is bit odd since there was no indication provided that this is a reference. Am wondering if there is a thanks Mr. Seth has conveniently forgotten to give. )

While on Salinger, I also found myself stable to be able to deal with a book that has long been giving me vibes. Franny and Zooey. It is one of those books I cannot bring myself to say anything about.

Also stumbled on this wonderful, little heard of ( in this part of the world) book called The famished road by Ben Okri. It tells the story of Azaro, a spirit child, who has decided to linger on in this world. Between recollections of what seems like another lifetime, a better one, resisting other spirits who want him back and a reality- that of dire poverty and harsh life in an Africa that has just won its freedom- this tale meanders through images that the inward eye sees and wonderful little stories scattered here and there. Magical, to say the least.

Lolita ( Vladimir Nabakov)
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Promises a rather unsettling degree of ambivalence. As pages turn and you see the perfection in the perversion in
Humbert Humbert, there is an overwhelming confusion of emotions running in your head. It oscillates endlessly between holy-cow-I-dont-believe-this and am-I-actually-enjoying-this?
The book plays horrible mind games in your head. Personally, I think the reader needs to be on the stable side to be able to take this one down, without harm to oneself or anyone else.

Night ( Elise Weisel)
The slim little book. It tells a story. It is a book without characters. It is a tale (a real one) that is simply told.
If someone has to live through this tale, live to tell the rest of the world all about it, then all you can do as a reader is be the silent dark apparition between pages.
I cannot actually bring myself to saying anything more, my apologies, except I wish Mr. Weisel has found some peace. And if he has, I hope he writes about getting there.
And if he has, then I also know that even if life might seem like one moribund, long tragedy, we all survive. We may carry our baggage and our scars, but the human spirit survives.

And late one afternoon, on a shared cab ride back home between utter exhaustion and the smell of nictotine, he introduced me to my first lesson on Sartre. The Age of reason saw afternoons of discussions and many a thought. It is on my bedside now, the last few pages waiting to be read.

Columnist Pradeep Sebastian (who writes a column called Endpaper for The Hindu's monthly Literary Review) continued to write pieces that silently put happiness into many more Sunday mornings.

Finally, an utterly delicious interview from a writers fest in 2005.

****
Tuesday April 19, 2005

Michael March: Victor Klemperer said: "What is tradition? Everything begins with me." Where does everything begin - and when did things start going wrong?

Irvine Welsh: If I were a Christian I'd go for the Garden of Eden. And I don't know if things did go wrong; I would dispute the current climate of pessimism in the west. Things are getting better. But maybe that's just with me. After all, who cares about tradition?

MM: According to Roberto Calasso, "loss proceeds presence. Every image must abide by this rule". What about the loss of hair?

IW: To lose a few hairs is careless, to lose the lot is truly a blessing.
MM: For Hannah Arendt, "mercy insists on inequality". Do you feel equal to the task?
IW: Yes, mercifully.
MM: Martin Heidegger said: "The light of the public obscures everything." Does this confirm "the unbearable lightness of being"?

IW: I never really got on with Heidegger, although probably shouldn't say that as I'm headed to Vienna. Sometimes I think the light of the public illuminates what might be better kept hidden.

MM: What is the language of love and how is it practiced?
IW: Love has it's own bizarre codes. One of the benefits of it is that you get to construct your own private language. Fortunately, this language can never be shared.

MM: While surfing near Lesbos, Friedrich Schiller remarked that "man forms himself as a fragment". Was he off his rocker?

IW: It's the sort of fleeting rumination to which surfing in the Greek islands may lend itself. It shouldn't be seen as indicative of mental infirmity.

MM: Are we what we eat?
IW: Without a doubt. The older I get, the more inclined I am to believe that we are the sum total of ingestions and immersions.

MM: Are we condemned to hope?
IW: I would certainly hope so. The alternatives seem unsustainable.
MM: Is power the leprosy of the world?
IW: Yes. There is nothing good and honourable that cannot be destroyed, corrupted and warped by the pursuit of power. Every decent enterprise can end in tyranny and brutally if those in charge are allowed to pursue it.

MM: Is ignorance our sole resource?
IW: It's seldom a real resource at all, and although it can often seem that way, that's only because we are operating from a position of ignorance.

MM: Why are Austrians ignorant of your work?
IW: I didn't know they were. My only real indication comes from my German royalty statements which are very healthy at the moment. Austria isn't counted separately, and I had always assumed that the Austrians pulled their weight here. If that isn't the case, maybe the festival will help rectify that sad state of affairs.

MM: Tell us about your new novel.
IW: Oh god, I hate it so much. I'm at that stage where I wish it would just leave my life so that I can do other things. I can't make head nor tail of it. I think it's about identity, but I could be wrong.

MM: Why are we doing this to each other?
IW: It's what we do.

Without further ado

2006-02-04T00:32:00.000-08:00

So it happens over another innocuous sounding weekend. The sun is shining down on you, and you have no sense of from where - east, west or such.
And you tread a small red sand track. You hear it.
The ocean calling out to you.
Come here, my love- let me hold you close and intimate. And almost as in a delirium, the remaining few steps are taken.
Do you know that line? The line where the last flat minor of the sinous sea meets stand? You stand there.
The sea is like an old lover. It seems like you just give and give, and he wants some more. He pulls you closer to him, small tingles on your ankles.
And closer.
The rest of the world does not matter any more now. Its just you and him.
He envolopes your senses and promises you happiness you have not seen before.
Do you know that gravitating moment before a first kiss? You know, that silence.
So he is holding you real intimate now and you dont have control over things. No way to make it stop. To go away.
The tingles and coolness all at once get more intimate. Here, my love, let me drown you in my love. Let me show yuo my abode and tell you all my dark secrets. I will tickle you in ways you can't tell till you see the stars in the palm of my hand.
Be one with me, your sea, and may your soul soar as high as my spirit. May your young feminine spirit blush around the essence of my being, even as your body loses signs of life, so that this embrace etches its way into eternity.

This and that

2005-12-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

Eight a.m.'s in many lives are surprisingly the same.
Getting a child dressed for school. Steaming and dicing in the kitchen. Ruffling papers and bags, mobile phones, car keys etc. for another day at work.
And for one little moment, you give up what a plastic identity card says and just look.
Everybody going about their business, and between glances of driving, haggling and pondering, what comes across is how these individuals seem to have a purpose. For that day atleast.

And yet in the seemingly strong willed, it is so easy to drown that feeling. Words meant to cut through skin. A voice raised too high. Hands that shake too much, shake a life sometimes, or even batter its own flesh and blood.
And then that being, the seemingly strong willed, uses a few pieces of tissue and wakes up to another day of purpose, the scars neatly and deeply introduced into the soul.
It is so easy to scar a soul.
Such a fragile thing, it.
Something that time, space, or life cannot capture can be wounded just by the raise of a voice. Or a hand.

And soon the being, the seemingly strong willed being, is just a detail in the poverty of someones mind.

****

Rereading

One of the things that occurs to me everytime I reread a book is how new meanings and dimensions seem to emerge the second or third time around. The words and the writer remain the same.

A detail that did not catch your eye earlier, a line that you did muse on for long enough.
Is it really the book that has changed or is it the reader?
One conversation that has remained tucked in the corner of my mind for years now is early one summer morning while discussing the then newly released God of small things with a friend, we both mused and agreed that there is a book for every age.
As time goes by, and the leaves in our scrap book of experiences increase, interpretations of books change too.

It is like what Pradeep Sebastian says in his article Rereading in The Hindu's Literary Review ( December 5, 2005).
" Increasingly, it seems to me that what a committed reader has with a book is a relationship. And that its like most relationships- sustaining, volatile, vulnerable. "

Through time one relationship that has me feeling loved and warm and swept over by someone with rather high levels of naivete is that with Salinger's works.

Rereading Salinger, I still manage to feel as lost in thought as I used to when I first read him at fifteen.

" If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people. Once, in the park, when Franny was still in the carriage, I put my hand on the downy pate of her head and left it there too long. Another time, at Loew's Seventy-second street, with Zooey during a spooky movie. He was about six or seven, and he went under the seat to avoid watching a scary scene. I put my hand on his head. Certain heads, certain colors and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charolette once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh, God, if I am anything by a clinical name, I'm kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters, and Seymour An introduction
J. D. Salinger

Lightness and weight

2005-11-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Einmal ist keinmal.
What happens but once might as well not happened at all.
Not so long ago, my fingers held on to the black and whiteness of words drifting in Elie Weisel's Night. White background giving depth to colours.
Contrast to give clarity.
Ironic, isn't it, to lose faith in all that you have believed in, just to believe in the exact opposite.
To lose all faith and believe in Neitchze's idea of death of God.
As this helpless, lifeless fifteen year old watched a small(er?) boy being hanged, his small weightless body swinging, even as death took its own sweet time to come.
Those hours where he hung between life and death, between light and dark, dark and darker.
This happened but once. The rest of the German adage is but agreeable in another dimension.
And yet I wonder.
Does this, then, imply in a marriage of Karma and absoluteness?
What about that moment when Tomas woke up and found Tereza holding on to his finger, tightly.
Will you, then, light up my face once and continue to do so over and over?
Or is life a singular tale, a life once lived, as good as not lived at all.

Though many a times it does seem like a friendly voice over your shoulder telling you the only thing you need to hear. Like late one night, when she drove on a calm highway, into a storm, refusing to look at the rareview leaving things behind. A tiny part of her soul believed.
But the rest of her shook with violence, any thought of comfort, any thought other than his fingers wrapped around hers.

Oh Kundera.

Bohemian rhapsody

2005-10-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

She lays there. All bronzed. Silences can speak a lot.

Do you not feel like playing with me anymore? Is this change necessary after all these years? Do you not remember how we played all those winters ago, even as tears ran down your cheek? Take me in your arms again, even if it lasts just one night. One time more.

The story of their first meeting was like any other. He was visiting a friend. In the brown walnut-y comfort of his parlor, they sat conversing. He looked over his shoulder, and there she was.

You eyes gazed at me, and I saw how you held your tea cup. Radio 4 played in the background and after a few longing glances, you finally walked up to me.
Do you believe in such a thing as love at first sight?

And so they met and held each other tight the very first time. They almost seemed to belong. He did not care how she was related to his friend. It felt so right. That happens to people, doesn’t it, when your heart tells you it is just right.

Your fingers touched me. On and off. The warmth from the tea cup still lingered. I remember being held to your chest, so close, that I could hear your heart beat, and you trying to match mine.

Boyhood slowly walked away, school was done. Work required a lot of travel. And he did not believe in long distance. She always went with him. Through all those cities and music that filled their lives, through those fleeting moments where you think life is just one big jet plane.

I never got mad you for taking me through all that. Not even when you spilt wine on me. I loved the way cared. Like the time I had that buzz? You did not leave my side. But do you know what I like most?
The smell of a fresh cotton shirt on you.

So life takes you through all these moments, filling you with all these emotions. Emotions are not always black and white. There are shades of grey. Fleeting moments where you feel a little bit of this and that.

I thought you are giving up on me. Men do that these days, I hear. Giving up for a newer, sleeker model. But not you.
You picked me up again today. And I stare at your beautiful face, sitting at your feet. You have aged well. Your fingers are so ginger, when you pick me up from my box.

He is sipping his coffee, eyes ruminating about some music notes and a faint tune plays on his lips.
The unmistakable red mark from holding a violin is on his chin.

Morocco, Day 2

2005-10-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to not making advance hotel reservations, Danielle’s French and my inherent ability to space out, we have survived our first night in Morocco.
Time to head out into the city of Fes.
Fes can easily be called the intellectual and spiritual capital of Morocco. As you wander around, bundled up in cotton clothing and layers of sunscreen, through its arched gateways, winding streets, hand carved wooden window panes to wonder, enchanting courtyards, you see the spirit and soul that is Morocco.
Here and there are traditional mansions, which are also called Riads. Some of them have been turned to hotels, which for the wary tourist can be both cheap and comfortable.
Meal time is a ceremony of a gastronomic kind. Traditionally, it starts with a cleansing of the hands, with stuff that smells like rose water, on a silver dish.
For starters there are salads of seven kinds. A tomato salad, potato and cream, olives and something, loads of meat (I understand it is a traditional dish called kefta, or meatballs) all served and meant to be licked off with bread.
Bread here is a community thing.
Every street has a bakery. Families bring their own bread and leave it here to bake. Interestingly, every family puts a pattern, a design on their loaf so they can identify which ones belong to them. The baker tells us that just by looking at the size and shape of the loaf, he can tell which family has made it.
So, back to lunch.
For main course there is a traditional Tagine, cooked over a coal fire in a beautiful clay dish.
Being vegetarian, the rest of lunch was best avoided. Danielle tells me the pigeon meat was “extraordinaire”.
If you are a pigeon in New York, watch out.
For dessert, they have a piece of heaven. It is a light almond pastry with hints of cinnamon and the honey-ness and buttery-ness tickles your taste buds.
Just melts in your mouth, I tell you.
To help digest lunch, a walk through the market is in the offing.
We are greeted with the smell of spices and herbs wafting in the air, and more food.
Each market and province in Morocco has these markets which are filled with fresh fruits and vegetables. And olives.
Green olives, dark green, red ones, olives in vinegar, pickled olives, salted olives, olives in lemon, olives and olives and more olives.
Little wonder that they are the country’s primary export to the rest of the olive starved world.
What catches my fancy in this market is this green looking thing. You know, a bright leafy green.
Turns out to be figs filled with a dry fruit stuffing. Outrageously good.
Our guide Basheeer takes us to our next stop. The tannery.
And you have to thank me here that there are no visuals.
The tannery is filled with carcasses, all stacked up till the sky. If you think the sight is grotesque, wait till you smell it. Sticking your nose inside a fish will prove to be a delightfully aromatic experience compared to this one.
Basheer also tells us that the skin is treated with pigeon shit to toughen it up.
This is one country where they know what to do with their pigeons. From feathers to meat to even shit. Productivity at its best, huh??
So it turns out that Fes has a sizeable Jewish community. The cemetery here has pilgrims from the world over.
Next stop, Marrakech.

Les environs de Marrakech.

From Fes, it is an 8 hour ride by train. Pretty comfy coaches, air conditioned and all, for the price you pay.
Food and little walks to the end of the train was enough entertainment.
Walks to the end of the train for puffs of hash.
For someone whose idea of a high is a tablet of Vicks action 500, this can make you highhhhhhh.
Everything seems so high.
One thing about the whole experience is it can make you appreciate the simple things in life. You look out the window and go “the mountains are so highhhhhhhhh…”
And then there is this other part of you that tries to shut you up saying “of course you dope, mountains are meant to be high”.
I start contemplating my visit to Morocco. About the wonders of travel, new cultures and new countries, this feeling of living without boundaries. The way it jolts you from the patterns of life and lets you see things from the outside. Perspective.
And all these images for your mind and wonderful conversations with friends, strangers in the market, wisdom from random people, all forming these dots in your head. And how as you take yourself from city to city, day to day, life unravels itself, connecting these dots and a strange familiar pattern seems to emerge.
The markets, also called a Souks, are a must visit. There are various to choose from. Like the carpet market. But the golden rule to remember here is to bargain your head out.
One that needs a special mention here is a food market that starts late in the evening. Full of varieties of street food, this is also a world heritage sight.
Imagine, the United Nations endorsing a yummy street full of food.
Apart from the f factor (food factor, you pervert) and the shopping, the mere entirety of this place just absorbs and soaks up all your senses.
Just like Marrakech, built on an oasis with huge palm grooves surrounding, Morocco is has a spirit that unique in its own way.
With its tangy, delectable mix of Arab, Africa and Europe, of tracing patterns, splashes of wild colour, friendly smiling faces, tortoises trying to find their way through your linen, it is sure to be a travel experience like no other.
At the end of it all, reality almost feels like an illusion.
On my plane ride back home, to work and my desk, a green fig melts in my mouth.
And I feel highhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Space

2005-09-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

There was no hope for him this time: it was his third stroke.*
The muggy cretonne’s smell in his nasal breath. The grey blinds slanting, seeping in the sunlight. It formed a strange pattern, straight streaks of orange.
Its funny, isn’t it, how smell can evoke memories.
Memories of what lie outside. Of the bazaar.
Bargaining women, drunken men jostling around, an occasional cow longing for the greens on a cart. High pitched chants of street side vendors.
Bags slung over shoulders, the colours of the market perspiring on a cheek.
Reminiscence.
My body was like a violin and her words and measures like fingers that play. Happenings on dark street corners, on a field of lilies, of summer dresses, all seamlessly converging in one long wail of a finger.
That finger.
The orange turns up slowly in its fury and converges into this shade.
Like the shade of her lamp.
The shade of the lamp that catches the curve of her neck, lights up her hair that rests there, and falling, the hand that rests on the railing.
It silently slips over the curve of her body and plays with the border of her dress.

He was graciously striding towards his late twenties then. A soft brown moustache and kind grey eyes. She liked the way she could look into them and all these stories seemed to just play on.
She was not listening to any of what he said.
The ship blew this long sad whistle through the mist. There was this impending feeling she had whenever she thought of that day. Of how the canvas of being seemed splashed with baubles of grey.
“Come”.
He spoke close to her face. She wouldn’t listen. All she did was was stare.
Their journey was all planned out. To go away. To start anew.
Where she would be married and get all the respect she deserved.
They met on the beach of their youth, two young people.
Him confident and sure of what lay ahead of him, while she pulled her cart along.
“Come”.
She buries her face in what she has of him.
Its strange how burying a face into an inanimate shirt, day after day, can evoke the same sentiments.
The intricacies of the soul are strange.
You hear so much of that cliché. If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.
That never made any sense to her. Still doesn’t
So ok, I love something. Now what do I do.
Set it free.
How?
Don't know, just free.
Ok, there you go, now you’re free.
And while you are off wandering the world in that little boat of yours that costs a million, what am I supposed to do?
Go on with life.
But how? I am waiting for an answer, remember?

She is convinced it doesn’t work that way.

Say I love a part of me.
Ok, my tresses.
I love my tresses.
So does that mean I chop it off and put it in the ocean?
And wait for eternity for that bag to return, in my city without an ocean.
If I love something, I wouldn’t set it free.

But she did, that day.
That day overlooking the little boat, she did set him free.

Don’t you just love the way the forbidden fruit tastes?

Doesn’t it give you that excitement like when you were two years old and saw this bucket full of water, you dipped your face in it. And the way the water dripped from your hair, nicely hanging on your face.

Now you know you could have drowned.
Was your little two year old spirit trying to set you free in ways that you couldn’t understand back then?

She does not have an answer.
He doesn’t either.
What are answers anyway?

Note from the author: maxims/ sayings/ proverbs should come in a box with exceptions to the rule/ statutory warnings.
* First line in Joyce's Dubliners

Day

2005-09-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

And on this evening looking afternoon, you sit on the stairs and look.
A tree that covers most of the house from this far, making it seem like the spiral stairs actually lead to heaven.

One day I had a thought. And I named it evanescence.

Little garden next to parking lot. Fat green caterpillar eating leaves. Has this little thing on its side. A white drop, with a cicumference of black that looks like an eye. Eats leaves methodically.
You remember that science lesson from high school?
You see a leaf under a microscope and apart from the skeleton, the cells and all that actually grow ( or seem to) in straight lines.
So it actually eats the leaves bit by bit, vertically.

Summer of pigtails and red bermudas.
Dragon flies.
Running behind them all over the garden, soil as your shoes, wings for gaussamer flirtations.

One day I caught one of you. And you called it destiny.

Trying to scribble out a report, or a solution, to Fermats Last theorem one late evening in University. Looking up, spaced out. Floor cold below you, sneakers extending in front.

Two pieces of candy to melt in your mouth. A flush in your cheek. The sweetness touching you so intimately that it almost seems like a distant happiness.

One day destiny knocked my head hard. And I called it moribund.

Bus

2005-09-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

So it is one of those days where you get up after a meeting with the director feeling all woozy and you can't for nuts find models for the photo shoot and the coordinator is busy acting like God and all you can get yourself to fantasize about is food and it is not thunder you hear but your stomach and you walk the entire distance to get a bus and he zooms by on a bike waving to you and you finally get a bus and a seat too and it quickly begins to fill and there are oh so many people and this woman boards and she has this little girl in her arms and you take the child and it is sitting on your lap and it has these really really small hands and both of you are staring at her hand in yours and she snuggles closer to you, just below your neck and falls into this slumber and there you are, holding this fragile treasure held against you and it is like the entire world just goes by and you don't notice and time exists just for the two of you so you can hold her snug and warm while she is asleep in your arms....

Gratification

2005-09-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there lived a little girl. This little girl lived on a land far away. A land full of wisdom and truth and happiness and misery.
But you know what was truly remarkable about this little girl?
She did not notice much of it.
She skipped around her life thinking her thoughts, and a few extra ones on some days.
One day she entered an enchanted jungle.
She did not know that. She just thought it was yet another jungle.
This jungle held her and played with her. Till one day something went wrong in this little girl's life.
She turned for answers to the only true nourisher, the giver of comfort and warmth.
The jungle. Her jungle.
The jungle listened to her patiently. Then it blew a cool breeze on her cheek. Her tears dried and she calmed down.
It held her and whispered in her ear. Oh so softly.

Life repeats its lessons till you learn it.

She repeated. So she'd remember.
The jungle and her became thick friends and they went about their routine business of amusing each other.
They would go for walks on some magical evenings and sit by the banks of a river chuckling in glee at what some animal did. And the girl told the forest the most wonderful stories. *
" Once upon a time there was a banana and it grew. It grew until it was large, firm, yellow and fragrant. Then it fell on the ground and someone came upon it and ate it".
Then one day the girl found a piece of coloured glass. It was the most wonderful piece of glass ever which had all these beautiful colours she always dreamt about. She would hold it up to the sun and just squint in glee at the display.
She sometimes even cut short her visits to the jungle just to play with her new friend.
Her fingers slipped.
The glass did not break.
It slit her hands.
She just lost a piece of her.
The forest pulled her close and repeated what she forgot to remember.

My sweet child. Life repeats its lessons over and over. Till you learn it.

* Extract from Yann Martel's The life of Pi.

Bride of the wind....

2005-08-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while something happens and people come up with good ideas. What happened this time was a case of writers block that did not see any writing from my end for over a month.
And the solution comes from half way across the world in the form of Ubermensch, who came up with the idea of guest blogging where we gave each other a theme, a line to begin with and one of those not so pretty things called deadlines.
So the result is here, and my piece is on his blog.

Thanks Uber for making this happen.

I'm leaving you to him-

Being is a fate of choice. Becoming, is a question of worth.
Between the door ajar of being and becoming life trickles slowly.

Your life like any others is a story of questions and answers.

You blindly cling on to the answers for a while, only to let them go later: to fly away, free and far; to whisper echoes into the blanks and spaces of your receding memory.
Spaces that you don’t know how to fill otherwise.

You just seek more answers. But then, what are answers anyway, but soon to be questions?

He thinks of all these with his head placed tenderly between her breasts and pubis, over the scaphoid of her belly.
She is asleep. And soon he falls into sleep too.

In the tiny miniscule of a moment of their orgiastic love making the questions and answers had faded away. Into erstwhile spaces and blanks.
++++

From the supple childhood right through the vagaries of the youth they tell you so many things imaginable about love.
What they don’t is what to do when in love?
In love you are left all by your own.
With your own spaces and blanks. May be that is what is love.

Then it so invariably happens: we wish to walk through the long corridors of this endless maze with the sunshine of our thoughts watering the plants of our laughters and sorrows.
In the summer the daisies smile.
After a while we might realize it is endless because it is a circle. A vicious circle, a circle we have bound ourselves forever unknowingly.
As the winter falls the light fades away. The daisies wilt.

Seasons circle.

If an answer is a singular radius of the memorable past, a circle can never expand; never be able to embrace the growing arms of the future.
And without growth a conscience ails. You suffer with your questions?

If otherwise the story is different, questions and answers sublimate. We both sail in the boat of myriad dimensions navigating through the spaces, filling the blanks.
++++

And one summer morning long ago, I had seen how the lines of light had runneled through your tresses when you had woken up from beside me after we had made love all night. At that precise moment, I knew I had seen the most beautiful of all the things I had ever seen in the history of my life. Or will. I felt as if I was not seeing myself from the outside of me for the first time; I was so overwhelmed that I wished to see it every morning for eternity.

I wonder if a Kokoschka would have felt as much when he painted all the blanks and spaces of his amber canvas into the bride of the wind.
I just wonder.

After all these winters, She still sleeps with her rodin head on my shoulders, her curve snuggly arched against me.
The spaces and blanks have been consigned to the ostriches of oblivion.

She gets up hurriedly from the bed and smiles levelling her tousled hair.

On the wall behind, hangs The Bride of the wind.

Kokoschka's Bride of the wind.

PS: Topic- Chaos of love and commitment.
Line suggested-What are answers anyway?

Do let us know if anyone else try out the same or anything similar.

Love letters

2005-08-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

This is the story of a little girl. It might be like the story of many little girls you know. That little girl maybe you, for all you know.
So she is in the second grade. And her mother decides to throw her a birthday party.
There is this little boy.
He recieves an invitation to this party.
He gets the little girl a book. For the birthday.
The lost princess.
Later in one of the many notes they exchanged he told her that that was how she looked. The day he saw her.
As with all of us, time gently tugs these two people along. And they go to high school.
A bit about what happens with there lives and families in between. Her Mom is not in a very good relationship and things are not all sugar and cream for this little girl. She is loaded, though.
The little boy comes from a nice happy family, with a lot of love and all that blah.
So these two continue to exchange notes over the years. Our little boy is now a little man. But for reasons best known to me, we will still call him the little boy.
So he studies hard and goes to Law school. Harvard ofcourse.
In the meanwhile our little girl has not been very good.
She keeps skipping and getting thrown out of schools all over the place. Real muddled and confused in the head. Aching all over for something she can't put her finger on.
They continue to write to each other over the years.
Till one day they decide to meet. He gets a reservation at a hotel.
Does not go well. At all.
But they continue to write.
He is now a hot shot lawyer. And she an artist.
She gets married. Has children.
He gets married.
And has them too.
They continue to write.
About life.
Their less than perfect lives.
She is one of those troubled artists now.
He is running for senator.
A meeting happens. And a lot more. Between them.
The press gets to hear.
They try to keep it low.
Her marriage is broken. Loses custody of her daughters. Has a bit of a drinking problem. Is now trying to struggle and snuggle back into her past glory.
And some memories here and there.
So all in all, time goes by and they don't meet too much after that. He does not want to.
Till one day he writes.
No answer.
Writes again.
No answer.
Well.
Finally an answer.
She is not doing well.
At all.
She is infact in a home.
As soon as he gets that note, he says he is coming to meet her.
She tries to stop him.
And tells him " Andy, I will not be here by the time arrive tommorow".
He writes a letter to her mom. Which is how it started all those years ago. Sixty years ago.

Condolences.

And it ends. Before it even started.

And somewhere along the line where the stage goes dark and they play these lines from Simon and Garfunkel:
" I'm on your side...." you gasp a bit and try to stiffle those tears that are now coming real hard and you are trying to look for a tissue and its too dark and you have a feeling that the lady next to you is staring you hard in the face and that you just want to go on stage and take that bottle of scotch and just and sink into the floor. And weep.
Because you have a feeling. That this looks like the story of your life.

Love letters, a play by A. R. Gurney
Starring Rajat Kapoor and Shehnaz Patel
Prithvi theatre, Mumbai
August 2005

An old friend

2005-07-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

Can you beat this, wisdom staring at you at 2 in the night, from the cartoon strip of a newspaper. Who else but the impeccable little lad from Calvin and Hobbes. Sigh.
A box of new crayons! Now they're all pointy and lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they'll be a bunch of ground-down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colours. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic.

Nothingness

2005-07-14T02:37:00.000-07:00

And then there are days like this when you come out of the shower clad in your pristine white bath towel and just sit on your bed and not move, not even think.
You just know it. You just saw it early this morning as you walked down the empty street and just looked over your shoulder, at the butchers, floor covered in fresh blood. So fresh that there are no flies yet , almost touching the road, touching you on the road, fresh carcass hanging, the insides of a creature being pulled out.
There is no hope. We are all doomed. Pieces of us die everyday, insides of you pulled out by invisible hands all the time, and sometimes all the scar that is left is an ache.
You feel a horrible, terrifying ache as you reach out and grope into space, tears in your eyes and crashing noises in your ears, teeth clenched hard, grinding against one another, hands still gesticulating wildly as your fingers clench an invisible throat, tugging hard just for comfort.

Drops of life

2005-06-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Seven a.m. at the train station with the morning paper,wrapped in a jerkin and looking at the rain pour from under the umbrella.
You pace up and down the platform slowly after an all night excursion at a disc, smell of nicotine in your hair and clothes, music still playing in your ears and little picures that your mind took while your little Chinese friend showed off marital arts skills to the sounds of thumping Bollywood " masala" numbers.
Your train pulls in, a seat near the window beckons you. However, you hang on near the door. The sun just wonders whether he should turn a little and take an eeny weeny nap before a full days work begins.
You journey begins. Speed increases. The familiar feeling sets in as you stand there looking at the tracks.
Jump.
You look away for a moment. Wonder if it will hurt. If it will cause a few scratches or more.
Windows of apartments glow with lights. The city is waking up. You wonder if they are kitchen windows. What is cooking. If the tea is ready and the bread is warm. Does the butter melt just the way you like it? If there is a happy family sitting there, all cuddled up in the rain, still in pajamas, smelling of sleep, smiling at the thought of their last dream and waiting for mummy to pass the cookies with the warm glass of milk.
You step slightly away from the door, sink slightly into the carriage.
Though there are these pretty Saturday morning moments which makes everything else seem like it is worth it, there is still a slightly unpleasent fact that you have to face.
One of those things which determine whether or not you grow up. Or so you think.
You donot matter.
That even if I have this incredibly gifted, blessed life with all the luxuries I can ask for, all the love I can think of, if I were to vanish, to cease to be one fine day, just like that, your life still goes on. You might feel the pinch initially when I am not around anymore, but your life goes on never the less.
Time might stop occasionally if you catch my smell when you open the closet door, but all in all the other 23 hours and 59 minutes will easily be spent sans me.
I donot matter.
And then you smile sweetly at this seven year old boy selling red flowers on rainy days.

Ciao stellina

2005-06-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

The wind sweeps over her face. Over the Oakwood and grass. She finds some peace.
Everyday she would go back to his sly silvery voice coming from beneath the covers.
I want him gone. I want him not to exist. I want to forget everything that has happened to me before. I want to freeze this moment forever.
The grime, the guitar, the sweat in his voice, the streamy streets, the clairvoyance in his eyes. The music barrels within him and magic comes out to the world.
I'm falling. Its all scribble.
She dreams of all the things she wish she would have said. Only to wake up exhausted, to realise she is going to live.
Its like that classic bankruptcy moment Hemingway describes in The sun also rises. Gradually and then suddenly.
I worry about being here. About not being here. I don't have to be Freud to discover that I have the fear of rejection. That I am waiting.
When normal people bleed, they put this piece of plaster on it and just go on. I just like to watch the red trickle. Gradually and then suddenly.
Some day I know I will pay you back. I swear I will.
Thoughts trickle into nothingness. A black wave sweeps over.
Her clock is ticking. He watches her on the couch. Drawing from her last few breaths.
Claude Monet must have felt as much as he did, as he picked up his brush and nestled the canvas on his lap, where she once was.
He paints her as she lay dying. Navigating the brush as if to give her one more breath. The strands of her hair carefully, carelessly tousled.
The atoms in her body freeze in its orbits. Life slips.
And he watches, pastels still wet on the pallete.
It is scary sometimes, being deprived of your tears.
In a way you braught me back to life. You were so full of promise. I wanted the best for you in your life.
But I will be okay. And for a reason. Maybe to muck up one more life.
Its like what Maugham says in The moon and sixpence.
The protest of romance against the commonplace of life.

Stellina = star, ciao stellina is what my very wise Italian friend said just befroe I sat down to write this. Thank you, JM.

A few steps short

2005-05-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Throw together a bunch of overworked, underfed, stressed twenty- something year olds on a Friday night in Mumbai, and things are headed the wild way. Psychedelic music and the smell of nicotine in the air. Well, things take a slight turn and you find yourself carefully treading the city streets at 3 a.m. with a couple of close buddies.
Empty streets can be an eye cooler in a city with no place for immigrant ants.
Silent orange lamps glow down at you, while you mindlessly sip tea and munch biscuits.
And then it happens.
He stops.
You look back.
He looks you in the eye. A strange, weird, sublime smile takes over his face.
Three little words.
" We got engaged".
Hugs, laughter and many hours later, both of you go back home. Him to his new love, his woman.
You to your apartment, airconditioner cranked up too high and thoughts screaming too loud.
It takes so little to be humpty, dumpty, smiley, wiley happy.
As you make coffee, you also muse and watch these couple. Can't help but wonder how the story will go ahead.
What brings people together? Two entirely different people, as different as chalk and cheese. Differnt backgrounds, different cultures, different likes, different this, different that. Different, different, different.
During darker moods, it also makes you think about people who haven't had it so lucky. Or easy.
Of love that was, of love that isn't. Of dreams that were, of dreams that aren't. Of times when one of the two falls out of love, leaving the other hanging there.
Like a lone orange leaf that clings to the brown of a trunk, refusing to let go, as the autumn sun sets in a dark magenta goodbye.
Its like what Shoba De says in her book spouse.
" People feel what they feel- you can't talk them out of an emotion even if it sounds absurd to you" .
You continue with your journey through lonely streets, lamps still glowing down softly at you. One buddy less, one couple happier.
One observer more, spending minutes, hours, days, nights looking in. From outside.

Memory

2005-04-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

So then, here it is. Another 4 a. m. muse when a distant Cuckoo has begun a song, of a memory, perhaps?

Sunshine
Warm rays
Add to your blush
Early morn
A distant taxi
Blows its horn
Footsteps
On a sun kissed creek
A cuckoo
Singing a tune
Reminding you of yesterday
A yellow flower
Slides down
Your tresses
So soft
You look up,
smoldering black eyes
And smile
An unknown, distant smile
Is it then
Just a memory of yesterday?
Or thoughts
Of a magician
Weaving colours of laughter
And happiness
And just as
The pink of your fingertips
Reach out
To the bubble
Iridescent;
With smells of a rainy cozy afternoon
It bursts.
A blue noise
That makes you smile
With a heavy heart
Yet another memory,
of yesterday?

Sale! Sale!

2005-04-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

It comes in many many colours
various shapes, various sizes
and I'm sure you'll find a kind
that'll make you smile
just as the white and blue
of a sea
kisses the brown
of a promising shore
and you put
a pretty sea shell
to your ear
and hear
an Octopus sing
oh yes, an octopus sing
my fingers sink
into the depths
of my pockets
and lay on the table
one by one
for your eyes
to see
pieces
I've spent my life picking
and now
here they are.
My dreams.
For sale.

Ra, the Egyptian sun God

2005-04-05T01:48:00.000-07:00

Part one
The absolute smugness of taking an overnight train ride. Looking out a window that whistles its way out of a city, out what you called home.
Through nameless, numberless hamlets, children standing close to the railway tracks, staring on.
One instant your eyes meet.You are a part of an anonymous, slightly yellow eyed, green frocked, pony tailed life for one microscopic moment.
Green fields, black soil, palm trees, farmers in their spotless white in an intriguing chat, as the sun quietly slips down in a glorious crimson last bow. Tomorrow is another day.
Crowded city with a lust for everything. Life. Money. People. Lights. Food.
You arrive. Something on cartoon network is playing in your mind. Yeah, sheep in the big city. Smiling inwardly, you walk through a muggy night in Mumbai.
Between bites of vada paav and memorising the local train schedule, the sun decides to set again, the pretty blue ocean creating a sand pattern on your soles.
A woman behind you screams an obscenity in Marathi.
Life may not always play fair. But atleast it has got a helluva good sense of humour.

Ra, part two
And so you have it finally. The sea. The sun has set in front of my eyes, down an indigo skyline with the sea wafting a tune that my skin finds familiar.
All that is left is the hint of splashes of pink crimson on a dark background.
Walking down a path of saltiness touching fine sand, looking back at footprints that get washed away. Leaving behind but a memory.
Like the smell of a familiar perfume that catches you unawares one busy day, making you smile.
Children play. People mill. Some jog. Some stare.
A few distant stars peep down.
As you then walk down this line, are you getting one step closer to home? Will you reach the distant orange lights you eye?
Or will the final climax come just like this one day. Catching you unawares, when your eyes are moist.
Will you continue to tread all over the west coast looking for that one singular moment, missing it by but a few baby steps?
Or as you pick pieces of yourself, also look for nails for your coffin?

Soliloquy

2005-03-17T08:13:00.000-08:00

The sun comes out from beyond, scratches itself a bit and extends its warmth & glory to the multitude. And with this, finally, a moving finger writes. To live spherically in many directions, as Frances Mayes says.
And so you wake, amongst the four walls that protects you, the dreamer. Thoughts of the green monsters under your bed melting in the light. You've had nightmares. You live to see another day on the land you were born, where you loved, you lost, you won, you wept. You learned to walk, to laugh like a Kookabura, to return to that childish innocence that you so believe in. To believe that you'll be alright. And when early one morning you hear a peacock sing for the first time, you don't realise that you have learned to smile again. You are breathing.
These days, you are something of a loner. Between the pages of a Buddhist monastery, you think of lands far away. Of colours that are new. And just like that one day, between sips of Hazelnut latte, he quietly slides in, to put his hand on your shoulder. Those warm eyes.
Where have you been, dear old poet?
Where have you been, Czeslaw Milosz?

In Black despair
In grayish doubt and black despair,
I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,
pretending to joy, although I lacked it.
The age had made lament redundant.
So here's the question --
who can answer it --
Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?

The words go round and round your head, like you are tasting a fine new wine, your taste buds testing its youth and fragrance. All your senses absorbed in one task. No, not getting drunk. Your eyelids close for one brief instant.
All things go on, just as they used to.

Somewhere

2005-03-16T06:34:00.000-08:00

Somewhere far away is a little girl. She looks out the window, at the snow. Flakes slide off the tips of pines, like silk that once knew the pink of her shoulders. In her bubble, tresses caress her nape, the scent of which he knows so well.
She looks on, waiting. Thoughts float. Dreams were dreamt.
Somewhere on a sunny day, he was with her. On a cobblestone street, they skipped together. The entire world ceased to be. The young blush on her face stroked by laughter and recklessness. They sat together, for time that is now etched into eternity. A sea of possibilities. It was not very long before she drove back. To what was home. On a dark night, into a storm. The black outside only disturbed by a white angry frown from the skies, lightning that struck hard and seemed to have some purpose.
There is quiet now. A lone drop of eye silver finds its way to her lips. Lips that once fed hunger. Hunger she can't remember. A touch now traces a name on dust.
He is there. Relishing wines of far away lands, as winds from distant forests & smells of past lives disturb but a strand of hair on his head. Each of which her fingers recognised so well.
Not all is well in that country. She bats an eyelid, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except she is not little anymore. A song saunters into the stillness.

Somewhere my love there will be songs*

to sing

Although the snow covers the hope

of Spring

Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and

gold

And there are dreams,

all that your heart can hold......

She knows what follows. So well. Romances that are short lived. Moments which are relived, once, twice and yet another time. A hussy sunset. He left her that night. To never return. To pick up pieces of porcelin with naked fingers. Porcelin so fine that fingers will bleed.
Somewhere, a woman's fingers bleed.

If you love something, set it free,

if it was meant to be yours, it will return.

This could be said for many things or people that

we know in our life time.

For that special love in our life.

"Someday we'll meet again, my love"

Somewhere.....

* Somewhere my love
Lara's theme- Dr. Zhivago

Born into brothels

2005-03-03T23:18:00.000-08:00

So we watched the seemingly endless list of " I would like to thank....." at the grand gala Oscars on Sunday. And though for a portion of us living worlds away, who got hooked perhaps just to see how The Miliion Dollar baby vs Aviator would fare, there was a surprise.
The Oscar this year for the best documentary film went to Born into brothels.
Zana Briski is an American photographer who arrived in Calcutta, India with her collaborator Ross Kauffman. They were on a mission to film prostitution in Calcutta's (in)famous Sonagachi red light area.
Now in a place like this, lives behind curtains and walls are not for everyone to see, let alone be filmed. A couple of American photographers with cameras is something that gets avoided like the plague.
But what moves them is the lives of children born to these prostitutes. The photographers befriend these children and teach them photography.
A lot of pictures in the film are taken by these children.
In India, with a buzzing middle class, a booming economy and an executive class, these children almost seem to live in a parallel universe. From which there seems to be no exit . Life without an intermission.
Courageous, wickedly funny sometimes and just plain naive like most other children, they make these pictures and mark favorites with a crayon. The girls almost resigned to what they know will be fate. The boys who want to save friends.
This film defines life for some people you may never meet. Yet it will tug at your heart, these children will almost call out to you.
When they begin to see the grim and bleakness around them through their own eyes, they also begin to respect themselves some more.
And that perhaps is very important given the way these kids get treated in a society that looks down at them, a society that does not let these children go to school with their own smug, legitimate children.
When they comprehend the harsh realities of existence, and when a stranger walks into their lives and decides to make it better, this film undoubtedly validates the triumph of the human spirit that dances and smiles despite the odds.
It is a film that will be applauded by any audience. A film that reflects the difference an individual can make.
Truly, the power of one.

Live with me, and be my love

2005-03-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

For sweet romances and pretty butterfly thoughts, walks in the snow and thoughts by the sea.
For you and me and eternity.
Shakespeare.

Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.

LOVE'S ANSWER.

If that the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

That day

2005-02-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

It is a familiar comfort that welcomes you. A cold floor, but inviting. You stumble around in the corners of your university library, sometimes having to turn lights on. Your fingers reach out to the multitude of books on display, and you blink. A touch here, a caress there and a sigh elsewhere.
You know you are alone. So alone. You walk further into the darkness, it takes you in without complain.
You pick a book, finally. Too burnt to walk to a table, you sprawl on the floor. Feet pointing to places unknown.
Fingers trace the name on the cover. Dante.
You read book one, Hell. Something about the words that make you feel melancholy. Supposed to happen, you guess. You go on and catch up with more of him.
Before you know it, the warmth and comfort of that library is not a part of the fabric that defines your life.
But somehow. The feeling comes back. Sighing for the unknown, just like back then. You hit the find button on your computer now. Ah, Dante. The pages are not yellow this time.
You are awake once more, you feel the emptiness once more, you feel the blackness pulling you closer. The words are there. Emotions rekindled. Night begins to fall. Just like it does for Dante and Virgil. Flights through dark and unknown forests.
“Through me the way into the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost…Abandon every hope, who enter here.”
Pages turn.
Loud thunder stirs Dante from his sleep. Dante finds himself in a new place, on the edge of an abyss the bottom of which he cannot see.
You tip toe quietly through many more pages. Move on to Purgatory, to Paradiso.
You touch the screen of your computer, almost reaching out to something. You know. The darkness never left.

You tell the world

2005-02-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

You tell the world that a boy was born with the body of a snake they will believe it. You tell them that you can go around the world in 28 minutes 41 seconds, they will believe it. You put a sign on a bench saying wet paint, they will touch it .
It doesn't stop there.
You tell the lizard on my wall heading towards the book on bugs that it is virtual reality, he will not listen.

What I got to do

2005-02-15T05:36:00.000-08:00

I got to get me one of those. A beer milkshake. Or a beer and coffee cocktail. And trace the notes of Schubert's violin compositions on a lake with stars. And make my hands one with the blessing Buddha. And sing songs of the night with elves, on a swing of lilies with amber studs. And curl up in the gentle curves of a yellow half moon. And fall into a gentle slumber, with two stars pecking my cheek. And dream of angels stroking my hair. And an invisible, gurgling laughter fills the sky. As I sleep.
And there are no nightmares.
And I wake.
And there are no nightmares.

Left unsaid

2005-02-11T05:32:00.000-08:00

A piece of prose on a fellow blogger's page has egged me into writing this apology finally.
She was young, beautiful, full of love, life, laughter, dashes of innocence here and there. All this was with her till one singular moment within the confines of cold hospital walls. Convinced that life is just, and things can't possibly go wrong, she fell asleep. And then it happened.
He said one final goodbye. She saw his shell. Felt like he was whispering to her. Be strong, I'm not actually leaving you.
She awoke, shaken, and just that moment they got to hear. A "sorry" from the doctors who said he was doing fine just a few hours ago. Bitter tears, harsh realities.
She went back to the beach they visited a week ago. Where he sat next to her on the beach and said he'd like to stay there forever. She went back to do just that. Make him one with the ocean he so loved. The saltiness of the sea, the saltiness on her face all one, all the same.
What will now happen of this little girl?
Will she also look for small pleasures, sweet memories as she goes through a wardrobe, searching for a familiar smell? Will she see that time doesn't wait, everytime she holds a familiar watch in her hands? Will she smile with a tinge of sadness as she picks up the phone he always held? Will she remember those stories he liked telling her, will she remember his final promise that he will always be with her? Will she celebrate the life that once was?
I donot know the answer. And I am sorry, that this happened to someone very young. That this was sudden. That he tried telling you. And you somehow did not see.
I am sorry.
You always will be his little girl.

Two gallons of wine

2005-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs maybe graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy, despon
ency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trial splits and there is no certainty.
- John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat.

Thought for the day

2005-02-02T04:21:00.000-08:00

Eagles soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Vertigo

2005-01-30T10:24:00.000-08:00

You have a three thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. But you donot have the picture. You sometimes know what shapes fit where. Most of the times, you don't.
There is a certain appeal though. You are attracted to something so much. It feels just right. But you donot want it.

"What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
Milan Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being.

Is he then saying that one runs away from what one lusts after the most? That, if you love someone, it is a form of vertigo that whispers in your ear that you cannot belong?
Or, does Kundera refer to death? Death. In all its forms. Failure. Shame. Ridicule. Defeat. Mortality. The fear not of falling, but that of never being able to rise again.
A learned friend of mine said that a Buddhist saying might answer my questions. "He who has seen his own death has reached his peace "
But no, it hasn't. Sometimes knowing or understanding is just not good enough. It just is not good enough sometimes.

On the street

2005-01-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

A beautiful evening falls, right after a small shower. The smell of rain on sun scorched earth. The trees and potted plants have had cool new hair do's from the Gardener and shiny tiny new leaves sprout. The promise of new life and happinesses and laughter and sunny days and flowers.
It makes you feel all smug and blink up occasionally at how the world suddenly seems just right.
You hear something on the street. Sounds like a baby wailing. It gets louder and kind of tugs at your heart. Maybe it is just a cat making noises.
You open the gate to take a peek. There is a little child on the road. About a year old. Blue coloured little tee shirt and orange coloured shorts. You see the child's small slipper-less feet, and he continues to wail loudly.
There also is a girl. Maybe seven years old. She is carrying a plastic bottle of water on her head. Must be atleast five kilos, you figure. And you can see the look in this girls eyes as she is holding up that huge bottle and looking at the child.
He continues to cry. She turns and walks on. This little child walks behind her, in its baby wobbly gait. The distance between them gets larger like the wails and it is almost tearing your heart. You want to pick up that small being and just comfort him.
The little girl is almost at the end of the street now, and finally, a saree clad woman comes running and picks him up.
They are too far away for you to hear. But you see. Baby in mommy's arms, three people without footwear walk away. Big bottle on little girl's head.
And you shut the gate. And go back to your book neatly laid on a coffee table, with a bookmark. A piece of china with your evening tea awaits you.

That afternoon

2005-01-21T04:45:00.000-08:00

Memory from long ago.
You are a pig tailed little girl, biting into a Mango. Donot believe in spoons and knifes, and have icky sweet fruit as a part of your makeup scheme. You finish and stare deliriously happy at the seed. You skip behind your Grampa as he leads you to the backyard. You watch as he expertly digs into the brown Earth and help bury the seed. Make a mud pie to mark the spot.
Years roll by. It is a warm afternoon and you are reading a book, sipping tea beneath a Mango tree. There is warm sunshine dancing at your feet, an occasional yellow leaf drifts on the page.
Things are different now. You would trade all the mangoes in the world to talk to those friendly eyes once again. Giggle at stories about elephants.
You get back to your book, gulp down the tea. And then one brief moment, you look at the fence. There you see it. A little baby mongoose. Scurrying around below little purple flowers. You call out to it "Heyyyyy!". It stops. Turns around, looks at you with those little shiny eyes. Your brain grumbles that you don't have a camera, and it returns to wherever mongooses go on warm sunny afternoons.
You smile to yourself, the sun warming your shell, your blood warming you within.
This perhaps is what magical afternoons are made of.

Donkeys rock!

2005-01-19T06:09:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there lived an old mule. One fine day, this mule fell into a well. A farmer heard the mule praying or whatever it is that mules do when they fall into wells. After carefully considering the situation, the farmer decided that neither the mule nor the well were worth the trouble of saving.
So this farmer called some of his neighbours and decided that atleast the mule deserved a descent burial. So all of them hauled dirt and started dumping it into the well. Initially the mule was hysterical and brayed loudly and all over the place.
But the farmers wouldn't stop, bury they would. Then suddenly a thought struck the mule. As dirt landed on his back, he would shake it off and step up! This he did, blow after blow. " Shake it off, and step up! Shake it off, and step up!". He repeated this to himself so he would remember. And continued no matter how hard or painful it got. The old mule just kept right on.
It wasn't long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of the well! What seemed like would bury him actually gave him new life. And boy, was the mule grateful.
Not giving in to self pity, bitterness or panic is a good idea. Sometimes, being an adamant old mule rocks!

Night

2005-01-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

It is three fourths of a moon that parts through the deep blue skies tonight to look down at me. And give me one of his famous Mona Lisa smiles. Are you sad or happy, dear moon? Teach me how you smile that way, someday.
Then there is the quintessential mug of everynight-can't-sleep-without-you hot chocolate lying on the table. Its sweetness irritates me today. Its warmth almost appalling.
I have untied the drapes to my windows. And shut them. Maybe the moon will leave me alone now. I miss Elie Wiesel right now. Miss the way he said "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
The streets are cold and there are dogs making a noise occasionally. There is orange light outside my window. There is a watchman who blows his whistle now and then.
There is so much.
Yet so little.

Dinner conversation

2005-01-16T01:46:00.000-08:00

Dinner conversation with my Uncle and two brothers JD and JR when discussing Mango Souffle.
Uncle says "Do you know the origin of the word Souffle?"
I mutter something, nods from the rest.
"In French, Souffle means to blow up. "
JD triumphantly looks at JR, declaring " JR Souffles' money!"
Haaaahaaaa, Brother!

Life's lessons

2005-01-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, question, I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath.
"What's the question?" he says.
Remember the Book of Job?
"From the Bible?"
Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith.
"I remember."
Takes away everything he has, his house, his money, his family....
"His health."
Makes him sick.
"To test his faith."
Right. To test his faith. So, I'm wondering.....
"What are you wondering?"
What do you think about that?
Morrie coughs violently. His hands quiver as he drops them by his side.
"I think," he says, smiling, "God overdid it."
-Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie.

Real to me

2005-01-13T03:03:00.000-08:00

Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses: he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste- nothing. There's no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world. And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence. The question is then asked: Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head? If so, where does it come from? How does he get it?
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
A very scary, slightly sour, and yet deep thought.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume would have said that the eighteen year old will have no thought whatsoever and therefore imply that knowledge is exclusively derived from the senses. So does that mean the moon is not there when no one is looking? That a tree falling in a forest makes no noise if there is nobody around, not a soul, to percieve it?
Quantum Physics defines reality as that which is in the presence of observation. In other words, no observation implies no reality. No people implies no moon.
Yet again, that does not seem a convincing answer. In Osho Rajneesh’s book called the Psychology of the Esoteric, Osho believes that the western mind is a scientific one and the Eastern a philosophic. Thus, in stark comparision to the concept of Quantum Reality, lies Vedantic reality which says reality consists of ideas and perceptions. Dreams seem real when we are asleep, but we later realize that it is all in the mind.
What causes dreams when we are asleep can cause the same when awake too.
We simply donot know what is real. There doesn’t seem to be a constant we can compare anything with. Reality as you know it, just might be an illusion.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe

Conversation

2005-01-12T02:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the plush cafeteria of an MNC with a friend. He looked at me a couple of times as I sat there, sinking in my chair, staring hard at the table. Then the dude asked me why I was so lost, to which he got to see a brilliant display of my teeth.
Could I have told you, dear friend, that I was thinking right then of Palestine, of the Orange March in Ireland, terrorism in Jammu, the peace process in Israel and all those millions of little children living as refugees across the world? They do not even have human rights, you know. And they are hungry. And we were considering Souffle. And elephants in the Savanna are getting grilled to extinction, literally. And the poachers throw their ears away. And you know, the world has it share of grief and things need to be thought over.
And I am thinking. Either that, or I just enjoy my company too much.

For you

2005-01-12T02:26:00.000-08:00

The world was closing like the shutters of a camera and there was darkness one was getting used to, world turning the colour of honey and then browner and bleaker and things that fell apart began drifting away leaving a piece of bitter carbon behind who would sink deep into the Earth wondering where the end was and how it looked, with tears that did not dry yet. And then you came. And made the living fine. Like sun scorched Earth that needs moisture. The ground beneath my feet is soft again, the Earth inviting and cuddling between my toes. Thankyou.

Reality check

2005-01-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

I'm not in denial. I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept.
Calvin & Hobbes.
A recent C & H strip I read got me thinking big time.
Do you think Tigers go to the same heaven that people go to? I mean, in heaven, everyone is supposed to be happy, right? But then people wouldn't be happy if they were always in danger of being eaten by Tigers! On the other hand, heaven wouldn't be very nice without tigers, either.Maybe Tigers don't eat people in heaven. But then, Tigers wouldn't be happy.
God almighty, go easy on loading us with these questions, will ya?!

The monk

2005-01-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

On a hill in the Far East, the winds howl and ice gathers on cold mornings on rocks outside the walls of a monastery. This monastery was like any another in many ways: the maroon and yellow robed monks, some pupils and some teachers each submitting himself entirely to the Buddha.
In this monastery, lived this monk. He was a pupil who was given the task of weaving. So everyday, this monk said his daily prayers and then sat down to weave.
On many occasions he would wonder why all he was given was yellow yarn. All day and for many hours into the night, he would weave the yellow yarn, till one day he could take it no more.
He decided to question. He explained how he felt about the yellow yarn and told his teacher that he did not want to do this job anymore.
The teacher gently smiled at him and asked if he was sure, to which he gets an affirmative reply.
“Come with me”, and the monk followed.
The teacher led him into a room and told him, “ I will show you that which you have been weaving all along”, and with this pointed at a painting of the Buddha. An intricate work of art which overflowed with a sense of peace. And the Buddha had the glow of a halo around him, in yellow.
The reason I was reminded of this story is because sometimes many of are swept by this overwhelming feeling of being lost in a huge tide. Like a bird flying in a blue sky without the little compass in its head. This huge feeling of being incapable of saying nothing other than ' I dunno'.
And as we cry and laugh and get netteled and overwhelmed and feel lost and insignificant, there just might be a plan for all of us. An invisible painting we trace stroke by stroke.

A void

2005-01-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

You fall into the emptiness of another dark day. The blue all around caressing you. A song from yesterday reminding you of sunsets. Of times that never were. Of happinesses as you knew it. Of inconsequential touches and thoughts by a vast ocean, heaviness gripping you like a painful spasm. A creeper growing on you, sapping all the life away.
The song comes back and touches your wet cheek. You hold out your arms once more and pull it closer like neither ever left.

Being

2005-01-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

You open the door and a vague chill hits you. He is there. Lying at your doorstep. You wonder when he came. You walk the few notches upto him. Look down. He is there, lying in all his doggie bliss. You put your knees to the cold cement floor and continue to stare at the life it holds. Reach out for his head, wonder what he dreams of. Run your hand all over his face, touch his wet breathing nose. You try a silly thing you are capable of. You try to shake his hand when he is trying to dream. Take his paw in your hands. He dosent get up and bite your head like you might have if you were him.
Ah, he loves you.
You lie next to him. On a cold cement floor in flimsy bed clothes. He always listens. Reflects when you are morose, fills you with mad unprecedented thank you for being alive happiness when you are happy. Rubbing his doggy skin, you thought train halts. Your mind comes along to take a picture. To know you is to know warmth and being and life and togetherness. I love you.
You lie there, like that, for a while. And then get up. You have to leave him for now. To go on with life. Or something like it.

Things to do

2004-12-31T08:31:00.000-08:00

Things I wish I finally do in 2005. Among others.

1. Take notes in fingerpaint.
2. Spill coffee on a conference table and put a little paper boat in it.
3. Sit in the last row of a class looking at the board with binoculars.
4. Hide in the clothing rack and when somebody comes around, pop up screaming 'Pick me! Pick me!'.
5. Make a paper plane and aim it at my boss' left nostril.
6. Look for nutrition in places other than antacid tablets.
7. Find somebody with tanned palms.
9. Blow a bubble gum bubble.
10. Say no.

Random Physics

2004-12-27T03:03:00.000-08:00

I took a physics course that was so hard I couldn't find the classroom.
Steven Wright

... Einstein was doubly wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of particle emission from black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (1993)

The circle of life

2004-12-26T09:16:00.000-08:00

There was once this wooden cirlce. He was pretty content. Just one teeny weeny thing nagging him though. He had a small part of his circle missing, a little sector that was not there.
He would roll around all day, talk to the grass, the warm earth and the little purple flowers in its bosom, the blue skies and the birds from far away. It made him happy, but for that small nag. He would try to complete himself, try and find little pieces that fit his hollowness. They never were right, and he continued his journey. Listening to the moon laugh.
To his luck one afternoon, he found this piece of wood. It looked just right. He tried it on. Voila! It fit perfectly too! He beamed with joy and rolled on the same warm earth so fast, he was finally complete!
He went on, deliriously, amazed at how he thought this piece completed him. Ah, to be free finally.
Oddly, he sometimes still felt heavy. He never listened to the birds anymore. Or a babbling brook. The rustle of orange leaves in autumn. This time however, he knew what to do. He gave the piece up. And he realised he had come a full circle.

Nostalgia

2004-12-24T09:04:00.000-08:00

Rummaged through some ancient print outs from a paper bag with silver fish. This particular one from a high school friend made me smile:
Hi Freddie,
Whats your math score?
Watch the Flintstones tommorow 16th june at 2130 hrs on HBO.
Byebye for now
Barney

Fell out of touch with Barney. And I don't remember all the characters from The Flintstones anymore.