Chhath

It's the festival of Chhath. I will miss it of course, for the nth year in a row. I don't even have a count. The festival is now nothing but a tradition of nostalgia that surprisingly doesn't fade but grows stronger with time.

Chhath. A personal festival. Celebrated only in some parts of the country. And yet, it was as if the world celebrated it when we were younger, when we didn't know there was anything different that existed, that there were other cultures, other rights and wrongs, other shades of skin, of light and dark. As I type this, I realize that more often than not, I write nostalgia. And I wonder if this is who I am, if I am really trapped somewhere in the bygone, and then I realize that the present doesn't make me pick up the pen any more. Happiness doesn't make me pick up the pen. Fear and anxiety do. Loss does. Regret does.

Today, families that still manage to be families and get together on Chhath as an annual tradition would have come together. The late arrivers would have arrived today, and would have been teased as work-shirkers who arrived after all the pedakias and the thekuas are made and all the daliyas are prepared. Tomorrow, the day would be spent catching up, playing antakshari, dancing, and fake palm-readings; the children would disappear into their separate worlds with cousins, and wouldn't be found when looked for. Bedsheet tents would be made, ghost stories would be told, crackers would be burnt, fights would be resolved, tears would be wiped, while the fasting members of the family would stand in the river/ pond/ pool and play homage to the setting sun - all in the backdrop of the most melodious Chhath songs streaming from loudspeakers. 

Tomorrow night would be a night of anticipations. The kids would hardly sleep for fear of oversleeping and missing the time before dawn. Showers will be taken with cold water in the freezing hours of pre-dawn and the music and the crackers would begin anew. The earthen elephant lamps would be lit to light the darkness and the sun will be awaited. Millions would pray to the rising sun that morning and then would begin the raiding of the dagras with all the food that was not to be touched till now. Children would be warned against having too many Gagar nimbus for the fear of falling sick, so there would be elaborate planning for stealing them, probably involving holding an open bedsheet on the lower floor to catch treats being stolen and dropped from an upper floor. Everyone would chew sugarcane, peeling it with their bare teeth, and the antaksharis and leg pullings would resume.

I would like to believe that this still happens in families. That the large three storeyed houses do not echo with the sound of emptiness. That some of the generations have not disappeared entirely, that people are not so disconnected that they aren't even expected to be part of this tradition anymore.

14/06/2012

I miss home today. I have never had a 'home' home owing to the transferable nature of Dad's postings. I never had a place where I 'grew up'. So I guess I grew up with just that familiar protective nest of family, no aangans, no summer gardens, no permanent neighbourhood chachas and gubbare wallahs, no ageless neem trees. I have always felt the absence of these things, and the helplessness of a life being shut and reopened every three years, change of schools, change of friends, till the point that I began to suspect that it didn't affect me any more. But I have never missed an anchor in life. They have always been there; the two firm pillars of my existence who hand-made a picture perfect family with love, sweat and immense patience. I didn't know strife in a family. I never heard a raised adult voice directed at another. I want to go back to that. That innocence and that complete devotion to the idea of a family. We were family, and we didn't know any other way to be.
I miss them. I want to be with them and show them the beauty that I see, because they raised me to appreciate it. Because they smiled at my first ever ridiculous poem and said it was brilliant. Because they encouraged me to re-draw a sketch that I had unfairly traced, and made me believe that the honest one was the more beautiful one. 
I miss nana nani and dadi. I miss those houses where time never advances. Just that the number of people in them reduces significantly over the years. I miss that tradition of calling out people's names from the third floor to the ground floor, and that running around on those endless stairs. I miss Dadi's prayers and her intoxicating voice and devotion. I am not doing justice here, because these are not things you write about. They are not relevant. In fact, when is perfection ever relevant? This was not supposed to be about nostalgia though. This was supposed to be about now. About wanting to go back and be with them. All of us fragments at one place, on one large bed under one razaai on a winter night playing antaakshari. 
I am very tired. Dadi's bhajan is playing, not in my head, but somewhere deep, really deep inside my chest.

To Life

Here's to sleeplessness
and to wide eyed dreams
and also to jobs not challenging enough
and to ennui of extremes

Here's to fucked up relationships
and all the shit they create
to dilemmas and deadlocks
and all the love and hate

Here's to adolescence
and its foolish expectations
and to growing up and letting go
and all its implications

Here's is to the only thing
with no hidden strings
to childhood and its rains
and its marvelous springs

Old Woman In The Moon

As a child, I was very choosy about food. It was a pain to feed me. The only possible way to make me eat my meal was to distract me with stories. My mother was a wonderful narrator, and she had a rich stock of stories to tell me. My father, however, would have a hard time as I would ask questions when the stories did not make sense, and I could tell when he was making them up.
Once, when I had a stomach infection, I woke up in the middle of the night due to pain. My mother went to the kitchen to cook the only thing that I would agree to eat those days, and my father picked me up and took me out on the verandah. I must have been four years old then. My father wiped the tears off my face and showed me the moon and the pattern of an old woman in it. The memory of that night still transports me to that verandah with the cool summer breeze drying my tears, the sound of utensils clattering in the kitchen as my mother prepared my food, the moonlight washing the street outside, the comfort of my father's lap, the peacefulness of midnight with the knowledge that the world is asleep, and the pattern of a kind old woman watching over us from the moon.

Somewhere, something inside me had captured the beauty of it all, for me to cherish years later, on a similar summer night.

To NDA, With Love :)

On this nostalgic Sunday morning, I raise a toast to NDA, for being a part of our identities. To those endless preparations for talent nights, sports days, teachers' days, debates, elocutions, one-act plays, to those majestic corridors where we laughed and ran during the breaks, those morning assemblies and prayers, that 'Big Field' with that 'magic' brick boundary which could 'make your wishes come true' if you completed one round without falling. To the canteen and the panipuri wala. To the grand Julie Hall that we thronged for all occasions. To the chapel where we prayed whenever we were unprepared for a test. To the mysterious sisters' convent where we weren't allowed to go. To Mrs. Bhavana Shekhar for her motherly attention to details and for kindling my affair with the Hindi language. To Mrs. Rekha Srivastava for her oh-so-fabulous accent that could make anyone fall in love with the English language, to Mrs. Madan for being the strict disciplinarian that she was and for always pushing us towards those perfectly tailored 'to-the-point' CBSE format answers. To Mrs. Tresa David for her infectious love for numbers, to Mrs. Sujata Mukherjee for those free periods and Mrs. Sushma Prasad for being a wonderful person and encouraging class teacher. To Miss Ekata Harshavardhan for supporting us when we needed her despite the hard times that we gave her. To Sister Joan, wasn't she the most innocent creature possible? To her music classes where she made us clap at 'clap with your hands, our God is good' , and to her Value Education classes where she taught us the Ten Commandments with extra elaboration of the 'Do not covet..' part ; ) . To that 12th std English class where we sang a prayer of rain with her and it actually rained. To those long queues of Michaelites, Loyolites, Boscons, etc outside the gate, who no matter how much we pretended to hate, managed to boost our teenage egoes everyday. Toast to Sister Jayshree, we grumbled and made fuss but we knew you were the best administrator possible. May your soul rest in peace. Toast to Shubhangi, Chinu, Nishu, Sneh, Nidhi, Sachi, Garima....my comfort circle, my friends for life..and to the uncountable magical moments we spent together. To Ruchi, Pallo and Monica who meant to me in their own special ways. To every single day spent in that second home that shaped us into who we are. To those memories that are still as fresh as if it all happened yesterday. To that ideology of Notre Dame where strength of character and truthfulness came first and material success second. To the 'women of substance' that it strived to turn us into. To all the girls in red who will undoubtedly rule the world and who will always remain Damians at heart. No matter where they go. Cheers...

Dedicated to the two pillars my world stands on...

when the night was dark

and the way unknown

how did u still

lead me back home

when the body was bleeding

and the weapons gone

tell me how

u still fought on

when emotions were still

and eyes were dry

u still kept smiling

tell me why

how do u make all moments so bright

why do i feel u r always right

why does every fairytale

make me believe

your values will prevail

why do all deceiving eyes

convey to me

that truth will rise

whenever the wrong

battles the right

wat makes me speak

"i will fight"

yes it is your firm conviction

that truth is always

mightier than fiction

its your belief that makes me say

that my footsteps

will never go astray

no, gratitude would be too small a word

to tell you dear parents

that YOU ARE MY WORLD!!