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.

Language

I feel so crippled at times, with language. There is so much that language can not express. Like that moment under water, when a beam of sunlight fell on us and the marine life, when I had held the stranger trainer's hand, and rested my life on him; it was a dive of faith, a dip of calm and beauty that cleansed me of something, and I do not know what. I was aware of my existence, and of all that I do not know, all that I haven't seen and will never see. And now, when I think of that moment and try to capture it in words, I realize my inefficiency again, as a human being, as part of an inaccurate, subjective civilization which can not express even a minute fraction of all that it experiences. How vain of us to forget this truth and go on living like the center of the universe. How inadequate of us to even classify and generalize every unique tangible and intangible experience. I like the feeling of smallness, of being a tiny insignificant speck in the thread of the universe, as small or as big as the golden striped fish that slid through my toes and altered something inside me forever.

The Artist's Burden

When is it that we really start to mess up? There is this thing with creative people. They have this very high taste for beauty, and that ends up ruining them sometimes. If you're creative, you got to have courage. You got to go out and explore. You got to search for that experience of beauty that you aspire for in your life. And you need to be practical. You can not expect the people around you to give you that experience. You got to find that on your own - by stepping out, by keeping awake, by obliterating your soul of all the inertia that holds you back. We are born with this itch in our heels. We got to live this way. Because there is no other way. 
When you feel dissatisfied, lonely, lost, confused, it is this itch, waiting to be satisfied. The process of growing up seasons all that is ordinary in us and blinds our senses to our own needs. Do not let this happen to you. Do not forget to express your needs to yourself. Do not chain your soul. You're born with the burden of a thousand worlds waiting to be explored.

China Glass

On the verge of breaking apart
Fragile figure of China glass
Too much glue and too much tape
Too much effort to keep a face
Shabby layers of Persian paint
Covering up a shallow dent
Polka patterns in pretty pink
Peeping from an ugly chink
A crystal of a sand-like thing
Escaped the fusing in the kiln
And a certain handle of sorts
Twists and curiously contorts
It rumbles, rings and also rolls
All in very clumsy control
And had you not seen its tiny mounds
You'd think it almost round


Quite a tricky object I see
No shape, no color, no certainty
Peculiarly odd for a glass thing
To be no vase, no goblet, nothing


Its almost like it aims to be
just a random oddity.

Confessions

Sometimes, I turn around on my heels
in a public place
Just to feel small again
and rejoice when I find no one paying attention.


Sometimes, I cook with just a little oil and very little salt
to let all the vegetables have their natural flavour
comparing them, in my mind, to people
young, impressionable and wishing them the freedom
to be.


Sometimes, I read multiple books
one after the other
alternating identities, between Hermione and Jane
David and Celie, Gandhi and Gulzar
My version of a literary peek-a-boo


Sometimes, I cover my face
with all my hair
and open my eyes only a little
to watch ordinary sunlight
transform into marvelous shiny fractals
- hexagonal boxes with mystical secrets
cut by the magician's sword
but still intact
like stubborn, residual, unyielding hope


Sometimes, I still
talk to myself and write self-addressed letters
in order to discover
things I forgot to tell myself.

Classroom

I want to go back to being in a classroom. Classroom education should never end if you ask me. I know life teaches a lot outside the classroom, too. But I wish we could go to classes all our lives. Classes with an inspiring teacher, where questions are asked and answers are sought, where theories are stated and examples are demonstrated, where life is simplified on the blackboard and friendships are made effortlessly, the way they are supposed to happen. I love classrooms for the way everyone there is equal and everything being taught is just another lesson. I love that, the homogeneous whole of heterogeneous individuals, the sharing, the discussions, the submergence of egos to the only thirst for learning. Voluntary classrooms, shiny, beautiful subjects of choice that go side by side with regular jobs and life, that is my dream for a better world.

Reasons

‎"I don't love you only for who you are. I love you for all that you are not but you so badly want to be. I love you for all those dreams that give your eyes that glint. I love you because you laugh so easily. I will never understand how anyone can laugh so easily. I love you because you are crazy. You would stick out your hand to shake hands with a child on the adjacent vehicle, you'd make faces at and wave at kids on a school bus, you meet people as if you've known them for ages, you make friends with shopkeepers, you smile at everyone that you can smile at. Its insane. It can get you in trouble. But you are you. I love you because when I had put everything at stake, you stood like a rock beside me. Because when we sip Chocoberry together, you make funny satisfied noises and laugh. Every single time. I love you because you are never about mediocrity. You are always analysing, improving, yourself and the world. I love you because when you talk about something that you feel strongly about, everyone shuts up. I love you coz you screw up, so often. And I love how you never pity yourself but fight back. I love how you can be extremely lethargic for days and then completely in charge of your life for the next few days. I love that you are able to forgive, so easily. Its impossible for me to fathom. I don't quite believe in forgiveness, but it goes with you, with who you are. I know I will never understand a large part of you that resides in verses and stories, but I love how you make a complete fool of yourself just to make it sound alright, as if your talent is something abnormal. Well, of course, it is. But I love that you pretend to accept it."
"I think you are much more than you seem to be on the surface. Like a marshmellow."
"That's it?"
"Well, I love you for the companion that you are. I love you because you laugh along, because you want to see and feel and hear and touch and live and love as much as I do. And I love that you never pretend to be who you are not. I guess I love the child in you that you have managed to keep intact despite gaining all the skills and management one needs to face the world. I will never understand this paradox of your personality. As you will never understand why I spend hours writing and listening to old sad songs even when I am not sad. I wish that you weren't a lot of things that you are, but never that you were what you aren't."
"I always knew we were very different :)"

.....

There are some things that are best left unsaid. They are to be felt, involuntarily, in the silences between two hearbeats, in the spaces between words. That is how I have experienced it, the unspoken pain of my unfulfilled dreams. They are too proud to wail. They will remain quiet. They will remain unquenched, spent embers with a tiny silent flame inside them, that will continue to burn at late hours of the night when the heart is the truest to itself. These shards of broken dreams, they are sharp around the edges, but colourful none the less. Sometimes I play with them over my veins as I wait for dawn. In the sunlight, I hold them against the sky and they diffract and multiply, giving birth to a million small dreams again. I believe them and I live them, fooling myself all the while. But at night, under the stars, there is no pretense. Its just me and the broken pieces again. And a very old kind hearted moon that spreads her milky grace over us. She tells us not to wail. It is not of grace to wail. We obey her in our silences and await the dawn again.

No Questions

I listened then
to the sound of life
resonating with my own breath
under the green waters
I floated
for an eternity
amazed
touched
silenced
A golden fish
slid between my toes perhaps
And I wept
a little salt water
into the sea
I had
no questions anymore

Refugees

Do not worry
for the generations
to come
for they shall forget
the loss and blood;
for history
is selective
and is written
by conquerors.

Lets just hold a fistful
of soil
and weep
just a little
as we leave behind
childhoods and love songs
marriages and separations
tears and laments
of our half-lives,
while we turn overnight
into something
distant and unknown
that they call 
refugees.

Hold on to the soil and weep
for our kind, they say
are forgetful
but the land
the land
shall remember all

What do you want to be?

I have had a very traditional, middle class and conscientious upbringing. My mother decided never to work to raise us, and she did a great job at it. When I was growing up, we had limited resources, but plenty of love and laughter. My parents never fought. Not in front of us, at least. We could take them for granted, and I am thankful for that. I grew up being loved and pampered by the whole of the extended family. Two big vans and jeeps full of relatives would arrive at our house around our birthdays, and the party would last a week. Most of the times, they would come for my birthday on December 30 and leave after my brother's on January 26. Everyone would stay in the two bedroom houses we lived in and my mother would be completely unreachable and out of sight, always in the kitchen, with her salwar-kameez and a pink cardigan over it, dough on her hands, but never without a smile on her face. My father is the epitome of principles. He would live with days of troubles and threats from local goons but refuse to sanction a bad loan, he would not save a penny but never refuse to meet the needs of his immediate as well as paternal family, which was tragedy-stricken, disease-ridden, big, and had only him to depend on. My father was the perfect son, my mother the perfect daughter-in-law. My brother was the blue-eyed first born on both sides of the family, I, the lucky second. I would carefully observe everything my brother would do and try to be like him all the time. He was a quiet and observant child, inquisitive, intelligent, and respectful. I tried to be him. But I was not born to fit in. I was defiant, talkative and I would always want to judge wrong and right on my own. 'Rules' never made much sense to me. But we were looked at as the perfect kids to have. We loved each other ardently, protected each other fiercely, and never fought.

But this is not about my childhood. This is about my dreams. But to know someone's dreams, to understand them truly, you need to know who the person is. I have very early memories of myself. I remember being all of three or four, conversing with 'God' when my mother took her afternoon naps. I would close my eyes and talk silently, and pray to grow up to be someone who would make my parents proud. I remember believing that I did not need to speak it out for him to listen, for he is supposed to be everywhere, even within me. I don't know how I had that idea at that age. Perhaps it was the number of stories I had heard while having my meals. I would always ask questions about God, about who was right in the story and why. I remember having given my mother a hard time after I heard about Sita's 'Agni Pariksha'.

My parents believed in not sending kids to school till they were at least five. So we were taught our initial lessons by Mom and Dad. I would insist on learning everything my brother learnt, and in that enthusiasm, even before I could actually read the words properly, I knew all his lessons by heart. Once, when a friend of Dad's was visiting, I sat on the chair opposite to him, and started to read a chapter on 'Gai'(Cow) putting my fingers on the lines and speaking out the words that I had heard my brother read so many times. Dad's friend was amazed, because I was too small to even know alphabets properly. He started to express his amazement when my Dad smiled and asked him to make me read a random sentence. At this, I laughed and ran inside. When he came to know that I couldn't read and was just reciting it from memory, he was more impressed; by the pronunciation and the confidence. I guess it had already begun then, the love for words, and for the way they were pronounced.

Another time, at a family wedding, a relative asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. "Hindi teacher", I had replied. The whole big family had laughed a hearty laugh. Some had said, "She is already so preachy, she could do a good job at it." I was confused. I didn't know what exactly was so amusing about wanting to be a language teacher. Then, I was told that everybody would like me to be a doctor. I thought about the job of a doctor, and thought it was a noble profession. So my answer to "What do you want to be" changed, to everybody's satisfaction.

Growing up was difficult, as it is expected to be for any independent spirit in a highly traditional family. But growing up, my dreams changed from those of just being successful to make my family happy, to those of travel, and a dream home, and leisure. In those days if you asked me what I wanted to be, I would probably just say 'a successful software engineer' which would imply being able to fulfill all other dreams.

When I was twenty, I was on a bus one night with my best friend, when I told her, "I don't like the idea of being twenty. I am not sure I am everything I wanted to be when I was twenty".
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"All the wrong choices and mistakes I've made."
"But they make you who you are. They're going to make you a better person of twenty-one or twenty-two, or seventy-eight. And, you still have your dreams." she had told me.
Just the words I needed to hear at the time. So her.

I am twenty-three now. Am I who I wanted to be when I was twenty-three? Yes Sir, I am. It took me many mistakes and downfalls to be here. But I am here, and I am happy. Not because I have attained a perfect job, or because I have fallen in love. But because I have lived every day of my life for the past few years. I have laughed, I have traveled, I have made friends, I have risked being hurt, I have been hurt, and then I have received love and friendship. I have lived like a child, bruised my knees, and I have grown immensely in the process. I have lived in the mountains, listened to fireflies in the wild, tasted the sea water and witnessed the life under it, I have listened to the whispers of history in ancient ruins, I have been to war museums and ancient churches, and I have coloured myself with different cultures and cities. This was exactly my dream. This is still my dream. To always have wheels on my feet. To never stop exploring. To never miss the opportunity to play with an animal or a child, to never miss an opportunity to make a difference, and to always, always learn. Thankfully, the world is large enough to fuel this dream for a lifetime and still leave a lot to be done.

Ask me again, "What do you want to be when you grow up?". My answer: I do not want to grow up, thank you. But I want to be. I want to be so much that being is looked at as an art. I want to quit my job. Sometime soon. And I want to start something with a difference to make a difference. It will take care of old people, because I love them, more than I love children and animals. I love them because they, who once knew the spring of life, are learning to deal with its fall, and they are trying hard, alone. I love them because they are ours to love, they are stories, they are old buildings and history, they are a bundle of memories. I want to teach. Because education in the true sense is the solution to all our problems. But we never educate people. We make exam-experts and desk-jockeys and perfect corporate slaves. I want to 'educate'. I want to write a book. A marvelous, glorious book that creates history. But before that, I wish to read and travel, a lot. So that I can do justice to my first baby. It needs to be right. I do not like apartments, I wish for a beautiful bungalow, with enough garden space for my kids to grow up in. I would have a lot of pictures and quotes on the walls. I would have a large white room with just a canvas and a glass wall that overlooks a beautiful garden, or a sea. I would have unique furniture in the whole of house. It will be a practical and useful house, with space to walk in, lie in, run in, play hide and seek in, and a lot of light and air. And of course, I would always, always have the wanderlust. I would go to unknown places and experience their cultures, deeply and genuinely. I would taste different types of cuisines, learn languages, traditions, hear stories, listen to the whispers of nature, and continue to grow and share the joy, till the last breath I take in, wherever in the world that is.

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

That time of the year

Its that time of the year again . . .
The nights are starry and almost cold
and it is almost the season of love

Its that time of the year again . . .
when people take out their overcoats
and walk on the pavements we had walked.
Once.
With the stars brightening our eager souls
and our hearts fluttering in the breeze . . .

The city is almost dressed up again . . .
with yellow flowers and fragrances
and a few leaves are dying again
to be crushed by couples walking under trees
so that new love can be born . . .

Its that time of the year again . . .
when we had walked the stretches of the city
on foot and heart, and on hopefulness
when we had wished upon stars
and lit candles in old historical churches
for the unknowns and the uncertains . . .

Its that time of the year again . . .
and my heart breathes out
warm dreams that we had weaved
upon a broken star
that no one wished on . . .

I have a dream

I dream of writing songs. I dream of being in the company of musicians and write songs and watch them become music, watch them float in the air, in the sea, and in the pores of the soil and sand. I want my words to add, however infinitesimally small, a meaning, to sunshine and salt, to winter breeze and the taste of sea water. I dream not of a name, no, thats not what I want. I just want my words there, out there in the world, on their own, without my shadows, but with hidden bits and pieces of me, and all that I am, in a secret way. I dream of a day when the sun will shine through a window and someone like me, someone I've never met, in some place I've never been to, would recite a few of those words, with sighs and pauses, with the sun in his face, and gratefulness in his heart.

Divide by zero

Lets place our dreams in expressions
as a sum total of all unknowns
Let them scatter 
into bits of nothingness
And watch them be
infinite

Tonight.

Tonight, love me not
for the luster of my locks
or the softness of my eyes
Do not compare
to velvet, my voice
or to music, my laughter
Tonight,
take off my pretense
and watch me
naked with my sorrows
Kiss the disillusions on my eyelids
and touch on my trembling lips
the laments of a life
not entirely mine
Find in me the night
that has stagnated in some corner
as an endless wait
and the darkness that smells
of unfulfilled promises
and unfinished songs
Tonight,
drink from the cup
of my regrets
and soak in my solitude
Tonight, lets be solitary
together

Martha

She stood there watching the drops of rain on the wire outside, some drops joining each other to become one before they fell down and were lost forever. It had been raining all night. At this time in life, everything you see, reminds you of something long gone. Life becomes a sum total of memories and stories. She felt uncomfortable and loosened the shawl around her neck. That night too, it had rained incessantly.

She opened her eyes to a dripping morning in Lubeck. There were birds chirping outside the window, as if it was just another morning. She watched him, the light from the screens refracting on the side of his face as he slept. She ran her fingers on the somewhat grayish stubble. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "This is the best morning of my life." She closed her eyes and smelled him again. This was disastrous. She started to panic. "I should go." She started to get up when he held her by the shoulder, "It’s a Sunday. It'll be hard to get a taxi now. Let’s have breakfast in bed. I will drop you to your hotel after that." He closed his eyes and decided to feel this dream some more. 

He was in sophomore year then, on a vacation in India. She was studying history at JNU. He remembered being impressed at first, and then bowled over, by her forthright, clear and strong opinions on everything under the sun.

One evening, she took him to show him the Taj Mahal on his insistence.

"I've heard so much about it! It’s marvelous! A symbol of enduring love and everlasting beauty."

"Yes, and of monarchy and ultimate indulgence." She had smiled. He looked at her, surprised. She was glowing in the moonlight, beautiful with her defiant and revolting soul. She looked at him with a smile in her eyes, "It is breathtaking, nonetheless."

The day he was leaving, she appeared unruffled. At the airport, she hugged him and said, "Write to me" and left without turning back. He wrote. She wrote back every time he wrote. He would talk about his plans of moving to Europe and writing a book. She would tell him about the communal tension in India and how angry it made her. Sometimes, she would ask him questions about life in the states like a curious child. Other times, she would chide him for his disconnect from the tradition he belonged to. When he wrote to her about graduation night, he omitted the heavy drinking and making out part. When she wrote about her graduation, she told him about the proposal. He had sat quietly in his balcony for nights, imagining how it would have happened. He wondered if he held her hand as he said it, if he kissed her when she said yes, if he wore spectacles, if he appreciated poetry. He did not write back for months. Finally, he wished her a happy life. That was the last correspondence they had.

Thirteen years later, on a particularly cloudy and foggy evening, she hurried back to her hotel after meeting a museum curator for her research on European war monuments. It was then that she saw him, a tall figure emerging from the mist. It was him, unmistakably. There was that walk. He looked stronger, perhaps. He walked uncertainly towards her.

"Is this a dream?" he had smiled that familiar smile. She felt a thud in her chest.

"I was here for my research. What are you doing here in Lubeck of all the places in the world!" she couldn't hide the excitement in her voice.

"Long story. I live here at the moment." He smiled. "Wow! Where are you staying?

"Alstadt. I am leaving tomorrow afternoon."

"So, we have some time, don't we?"

She nodded.

"You must have already seen all the historical places." He looked at his watch. "Let me be your guide." He smiled.

They walked the pavements for some time when she learnt that he had already published two moderately successful books. The protagonist in one of them was an Indian brought up in the US with identity conflicts. She made a mental note to ask him for a copy. She told him about her son and the life-changing experience of motherhood. It was like finding a long lost friend. She remembered how well he always understood her, how in the letters; she would read his words and identify with almost everything. He stopped at a shop to buy marzipans for her. She watched him as he chitchatted with the shopkeeper in German. 

Later, she smiled, "You know, when I had met you first, I took you for a non-cultural sort of person."

"And I thought you were one of those obedient, cultured kind of woman." "I am just kidding." He smiled again. "I missed you, D. You stopped writing completely after your engagement."

"Yes, wonder why I did that considering how thrilled you were by the news!” He remained silent.

He talked at length about Martha, the protagonist of the novel he was writing. He told her how she had shades of every woman he had been with. He mentioned gently later, that she was heavily inspired by her.

Four hours, a walk by the beach and a few drinks later, he asked her if she would like to see his unfinished novel. It had started to rain heavily as they walked with tipsy steps to his apartment. She felt free, very free, after a very long time.

They sat by the fire with the draft of his book. She was too drunk to read. She just picked a few words and pronounced them again and again, more and more slowly and beautifully, when he kissed her. For a long time. She told him she had not slept well in a very long time and fell asleep on his bed. He watched her sleep for hours, painting the beauty of that moment in his head. Martha would take on unexpected hues tomorrow. He finally fell asleep beside her. It kept raining all night.

It rained all night in that small German town, as it rained in Delhi last night. Only, there was no fireplace and novel in progress. There was no one watching her as she slept, cold and uneasy by the haunting memories of the night. That morning, he had dropped her to her hotel after breakfast as he promised. He had hugged her for a long time and assured her that nothing had happened. But she knew she had been disloyal to her husband that night. It was not about the kiss or sleeping in his bed. It was about the realization that in some corner of her heart, he was still her soul mate. She hated the fact that she believed in that concept. He was the man she dreamt of for nights together in the weeks before her wedding, and then dismissed the dreams as cold feet. She remained a good wife till her husband's death, although she often met him in sonnets and fireplaces, Taj Mahal and Holsten Gate, and on rainy, dreamy nights. She often wondered what could have been had things happened differently. Perhaps she would still be lonely and cold while she slept at night. Or perhaps, they would walk with their frail figures in the woods and talk about Faiz, Ludhiyanvi, or Cummings, in warm togetherness.

Last night, as she flipped the pages of a magazine, she read him, 

"I have not slept in ages love

Let me rest tonight

Like I let you rest 

when you needed

not to be touched

just watched

For once, turn your face away

And let me close my eyes

without the knowledge that you

will never be my own

I, too, need tonight

to go to sleep alone."

'The writer and poet died in his sleep on...' She had shut the magazine and toppled on her bed all night as it rained outside. He never finished that novel he started. She wondered what that novel was all about.

Random Thought

Its like people running with their backs on the present towards the unknown. Everyone seems to be in a frantic attempt to win over the uncertainties of life. Its surprising how many people forget to 'live' in the process, how many people never know love, the magic and the beauty of it, how many people just don't let out a sigh at a beautiful sunrise, how many live their whole lives with a compromise, because their souls were too chained to fly in search for what was best for them.

Journey

Let me see you once

against the sunset and the sea

Blue, yellow and then orange

Your silhouette will be

Fill again your palette

and paint me once again

with hues of skies and waters

till only blue remains

Come climb the deck with me

and breathe the salty breeze 

Lets gaze together the horizon

until the shore is reached

Love Died

There was a love who died. No, it was not resurrected, not even on Easter. It died a sudden death. True, it was not doing well for a while. But its death was like that of a man dying of common cold. Shocking, mocking, almost comic.

P.S. This is just a random scribble. To me, this story is complete in itself. But if it inspires you take these words and create something more, I will be interested to read. Leave me a comment! :)




P.P.S. I am still on the 'break', and I am enjoying these days of refrain when blogging does not come much in the way of life. I have moved to a bigger, more airy house that overlooks a park, and I love it! Thanks for your love!