April Chronicles..

April is my most cruel month.Its hot and ungracious. Its unrelenting and hopeless. It also is too long for my liking.

April Memories

Once when I was younger Mom Dad took me to visit Kang Farm in Sasaiyan where TT Uncle had married and settled with his Australian wife 'April'. Theirs was one of those plush mechanised farms in the Terrai. It was so exotic really. They had  Grey Hounds and German Shephards running around without leashes on the farm. The lovely garden which flowered even in April and offcourse those star shaped cookies they served with Tea. It was all too much for the poor little small town  me. But what I most of all I remeber is April, the first blond  relative I had acquired. I must have been 6 years old then. She was so tall and so pretty.So much prettier than my dusky old familiar mom . The registeration of her presence in my memory is like a shock of white heat. A bright patch with lot of light and excitemnet but no details.


Years later one got to know that Uncle had got divorced and April had left him, leaving behind a daughter with white skin and black eyes called May. May wore pink flannel frocks and spoke cute english and was so much prettier and adorable that the natty 12 year old me. By now the farm had 3 Great Danes and a Pomerarian and 5 hens running around . The garden was unkempt and Uncle TT had setlled abroad leaving little May behind in the care of her very feeble and old grandparents who did not understand her language. I was always afraid that the huge dogs would eat May.


The farmhouse slowly lost its charm for me except that one memory of Aunt April that has stayed all these years. For me Aunt April would always remain that enigma I had found walking on Uncle's farm.  That tall strikingly beautiful woman who blasted everone with her sizzling chemistry even when she just walked beside much shorter Uncle TT. Her orange lipstick, her sparkling blue eyes and her loud manly laughter. In burning April afternoons I often remember her peeping through the net of the wooden door calling  Uncle TT to come in for Tea. She was so beautiful and hardy that I dont belive that the house ever divorced her memories although Uncle TT found another australian wife who never visited the farm in India.(for good reason I am sure!)
In the naked heat of April the sharp colours of memory too turn cruel and I remember Aunt April. She gave Kang family that eternal space in my memory with her shadows passing through the thick April sunlight. Strong colourful and cruel. Not to be kept but only remebered.

Memory is made of salt and embers

Memory is made of salt and embers. Look at what I have remebered!

The 1st strange dream of fecundity. Of fairies dancing around a tree bowing with ripe mangoes in a basement near my childhood home. I stood there thirsty for my chance to bite at a mango. But I stood in awe of white sparkling wings of fairies dancing in a circle. The dream comes back everytime I am in a new place pregnent with possibilities.

The taste of sweet parathas packed in a steel lunch box resembling a iron press. It always tasted the same 6 days a week. Mom doesnt make those paranthas anymore.

The graveyard that I passed on the way to school. Thats where our milkman died while grazing his cattle. He was riding a horse and the horse died too.

The little snake kept in a beaker in the Clinic of a doctor who put a menancing iron rod inside my throat to check my tonsils (I think that part of my throat still hurts because of what he did then). The snake looked very very sinister despite its size.

The vacation where Ma Pa and I were coming back from Nanital and the thunder shouted over our Jeep. There were raw mangoes covering the road and some fell on the windscreen of the White Mahindra Jeep that Dad drove.

The stadium where they kept the Ravana effigies before assembling them for Dusshera. It was such a far away place from home. But there was so much magic in it.

The white lily bed near the veranda in the Bareilly house. I think there was some black magic in those pink and white flowers that brought strange sensations to a 12 year old girl's mind.

Gill aunty( and I dont know her name..except Gill aunty..I dont even think her kids know her name) chopping onions and garlic in her little brown mixer sitting on her haunches. Now that she is dead I still remeber her doing that. I think thats what she did at all times of the day . Prepare Tadka for the food.

How I dance crazy to the Nache Mayuri song the day I came back home to celebrate the Summer vacations starting from next day.

The face of My first school principal Sister Adolphus who died. I still have her signs in my report cards of KG, 1ST , 2ND , 3RD, 4TH Class. I dont think she ever noticed that I too existed on this planet. She is gone but I am still here!

The salt stays in my blood, and skin. The embers shines in the anger against all the stays with me but doesnt take me along with it..If only the salt would dissolve and the embers die. The karma would clear up and I could be free.....

Walk free

Dear Story,

Its hard not to think of you today. It’s today that we met. You and I my beloved story.I don’t know if I walked into you or you walked into me. But it was quite a thing (this meeting) I always knew you were larger and bigger than what I could handle. But I trusted that I could carry you out. How wrong I was.

I remember the first time I looked into your eyes and dared to tell you that I was infact planning to bring you out. I could almost see the angels standing up and showering flowers. Here It was happening in real time. You would live forever, and I through you. The great beginning! Golden and Inevitable. For how could It not have happened? Every little twig, every bloody flower was whispering about us. Propelling us on this journey of coming out in the world to create.

I was so young and earnest that I never believed that any story that began like that could escape immortality. There were one thousand dreams that took of that day about what all would follow once you came. They were like parachutes of rainbow that started circling everywhere I went.

The DND at 90 Kmph. Swooosh! 5parachutes, Brahma studios Swishhhhhhhhh 15parachutes, Ruby Tuesday Fshhhhhhhwwww 500parachutes. Rao Tula Ram Marg Trrrrrrr 350 Parachutes, Krishna Chowk chssshhhhh 80 parachutes, IHC Drrrrrrshhhhh 5000Parachutes. Spice Mall trisshhhhhhhhh 43000parachutes. (They have still not all come back to me! I see them flying much above where I can shoot them down to come back to senses!)

And then I started seeing your cruel will my story . You didn’t want to come with me! Escaping me in big and small ways. You would run to others. You would disappear and appear in a stranger’s gaze. You would keep me waiting for hours and hours for just a few words. From just being my story you started becoming this great catch which ran faster and faster ahead of me!

There appeared no Blue pearls on the white immense paper of my notebook. The days and days and days and nights and nights and nights that I lived with a pen in my hand waiting for you. Struggling for a line that would take us ahead. Me and you. You and me. Me and thoughts of you. Me and me and Thoughts of you. No you! Only the palpable desire of straightening you on a page. I ran so hard. So hard. Got so bruised so bruised.

I didn’t know stories had their wills and ways. Such persistent cunning and morbidity. Even when you danced around my pillow , we slept alone and never met. Oh how hard I dreamed and prayed of bringing you out. The tears I cried when I thought of your cruel will You wily story!

I give up today my story. At the peak of my strength will and love. Go where you must go. Be whatever you must be. I won’t curse you anymore ( I never meant it anyway!) Go dance around like a cottonsilk seed. Drop where you really must grow. Die unplanted if thats what you like.

I have broken my pen today. Walk free of me my story.

Walk Free!

Saving me with a book

Dear Natalie Goldberg,


I will never forget how I met you at that cramped Cyber Cafe in Aligang, near the Gulacheen Temple in that graceful city of Lucknow where I lived when I was 16. There shuttling on the internet between online romances, smart quotes, and Post graduate courses( to find a respectable career) I found that online version of Writing Down the Bones. I lived with it many days before I felt a sense that couldn't live without a Hard Copy of that stuff(It really was like dope!). It became my Bible and you became the woman who walked in front of me telling me just how real women walked.


There were so few ideals then for a girl of my size growing up in a city without any considerable distractions of male attention. I held on to you like nothing else would save me. And nothing else did. Not the degrees I took. Not the heady work I did. Nor the Company of Television Heroes I was so enamored by. Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sankarshan Thakur, Tarun Tejpal. All of them have lost that slickness in life.Why even real people that I fell in love with did nothing to save me. They all crumbled right in front of my eyes.


In the agony of stony places. In the glint of adoring eyes. In the ennui that lasted and costed me a considerable amount of life...You stayed in my bones. Keeping me strong. I always knew something was gonna grow from it. This writing practice that got into my blood stream gave me the ceremony to mourn my losses. The color to paint blazing colors from the sallow tastes on my tongue. The rhythm that played in my ribs when there were no dances I was dying for. 

Katagiri Roshi The teacher who taught you to watch your monkey mind came to me through you Natalie. I know that man, his straight back, his coldness and wisdom and his smile. I met him on a lot of your pages. I am afraid I fell in love with him too. And I realized how he was just supposed to be a teacher and not a alive presence. I never knew his smell though.( And I know why you kept it from me!) I know all the hamburgers you ate and all the houses you lived in. Your father and your Mom. Your sister and your car. Your divorce too. How did you transcend so many blocks of distance/age/country/culture to hold my attention( AND REVERENCE!!!!) for such a long period of time. Surely you too will pass from my life, wont you?


When I read you I feel I have a life that can be made something of too. You had fallen where I had fallen and you got up looking respectable. I too would. There were no children who had made your existence more profound than mine. There was no soul mate you had met and I had missed out on meeting because of my dumbness. There was no  home where people waited for you, there were no friends which you had which were warmer than mine. We are so same same. Teacher Guru. Mad Women Mad women. Mad women making sense of the nonsense!


You live so far away in Santa Fe in New Mexico. I dont even know where it is! How much does it cost to reach there? How much to just deliver a parcel? Would you mind if I land up outside your door one day? I'll get purple flowers. Just to mark my gratitude. And when those flowers sit on your writing desk..Will you know what you have given to me?

Love and Gratitude
Pearl

PS- I am so proud of myself I haven't married the fly! :)

All that passes from my hands..

Dear Writing Gods,

I wish I could give the ligthning and thunder of a new life to my writing. But when I sit down on the floor with my laptop , mosquitos bite into my blood my unwaxed skin itches with dryness. I cant create magic. I had assumed that writing would open new worlds but this writing only takes me deeper and deeper into the same old stories. I keep returning to the past. Where is the new sparkling life I was promised? Instead of letting go I turn to clasp tighter!

I go back to my old birthdays, the times candles could be placed on a half kg cake. The gifts that I wanted to get but never got. The friends that I wished would come. But never came.
To the warm smiles of my friends who stood with the their (now) exes. They looked so good together! Where did the magic disappear between them.
The flowering trees which shouted about the changing season. I only have pictures of them on my web albums now.
The songs I loved hearing. They still keep lilting in the past. The sweet songs of love (sic) I will never hear them anymore but they sounded so sweet then!
Oh and the rivers I would run to purge myself of the madness. The madness keeps returning.

Maybe it happens because of the time locks that I put to each magical moment. The times when the moment was so precious that I would close my eyes and put a psychic lock. Click! Please dont pass me by. Stay! Grow!
And they grow. In the past and in my writing. Like remember the first time I was flying to Pune.. I closed my fists so hard and pushed and shoved god! This should happen more often! I keep going back to that flight now. With the appetising taste of a new city and new people. I have no buisness left in Pune anymore. And yet every now and then I am back into that Air India flight. 18 years. Dressed in blue jeans and white top. 15 kgs overweight. Happy to be on an aeroplane alone to say a big hello to a new world. Those people that I didnt meet come back to haunt me.
The time I stood squinting at the statue of Ahilya Bai Holkar at the Maheshwar fort. The pandits were rolling 5000 shivlings of earth to be given out to Narmada. She started worshipping shiva after her husband died. She was the most compassionate ruler the whole of Malwa had seen. I felt the rigor mortis of the dead husband descending into my system. All of this woman's glory started with the deaths of men around her. My guess is she never let them die. Held on too tightly ! I stared at the statue of this tall gangly woman dressed in white. Sometimes stones stare back. I stapled that stare into myself. I was going to use this. This was no ordinary meeting of women. I had said Hi! to a woman who had who had changed the shape of walls by the iron in her will. I could certainly use this high of meeting her somewhere in my life. She came with me in memory since that day. She is a big person to carry around! But I have lugged her around and spoken to her on the long way from my home to office. It isnt a long way from Ghaziabad to Gurgaon. I couldnt ever finish one conversation with her about how much I liked doing what I was doing! She smiled at me when I told her all that..I hated people who thought it was a waste of time to travel those two points. She didnt come out to talk to me on any other route!
Its all passed me by now. It lives more ferociously than ever before.

Love
PS

You resembled my Mommy so much!

In that grey cotton shirt with cream flowers on it.

That cut of mars on your forehead.

In all the curd that you had with me for dinner.

All those stories of white butter that you stole..

The tardy slippers you wore to work.

That missing tooth hidden behind your half smile.

That sinus sitting over your head

That callousness of leaving me alone in a market.

The smell of soap coming from your skin and some left behind your ears!

That toenail that always grew inwards that you shredded when you were tired.

That creaking sound of your knuckles when you sat on the floor

The drones of tired fitful sleep of stress.

That sobbing that absolutely broke my heart.

Those big hands always bigger than mine.

That fast walk with long steps I could never keep pace with.

You had no buisness resembling my mother!

Catching eels

If you have ever had the urge to catch eels you would know how humbling it is.. 

I start with a confidence everytime .Trusting my long eager arms and my predator'ly eyes looking into the clear water. I love eels when I am out catching them. Its only in retrospect that a lot of hard feeling come.

I dont know if it was greed or hunger with which I pushed myself into this sport. The first time I started I could hear the distant boring well gushing into the fields nearby. There were some cowheards taking scary bulls and cows across the great horizon. And yet I sat near the river making this as my only pursuit. Like there is nothing else in the world!

Dont know where this catching eels becomes so compulsive. I see all men and women stressing to catch them. I dont know too many who come out happy. But on our own quests we must...reach towards eels with our cold hands. What else is there to life?

So I tell you how I saw a whole shoal. I looked at them lustily I think.. For you cant be expected to  reverence and love for the fish you are trying to catch in your net of life. You are with your own little plans and dreams and expectations and sensations. What do you care to know about the eel you conspire to catch?

All this thing that you build up in your mind about love for eels and how diffrent they are is all bullshit. I'll tell you how all my eels have been all the same all these years( the same slimy living beings that leave a taste of failure on your tongue!)

But its a good sport for the living( young and old) eels are electric and eels are in a lot of ways like life. They always run out of your fist without turning back or saying Goodbye!

But the joy of living is those moments of terse concentration. Looking measuring and going for the catch. Many times you will be rewarded with the sensation of a living being in touch with your the front of your palm(where your life line runs)u will know the restlessness and elusiveness of these spiteful beings(the ones you wouldnt have never rewarded with your attension unless it was to have them whole for yourself) Then there is that awfully beautiful moment when you have it in your hand between your index finger and thumb. Its tails and its head. I call that moment eternity. Dont know how others refer to this interim. Its the time when you can say truthfully you have made the catch. Frankly a lot of times even after the catch your life looks the same. It isnt! If you consider how many times you are going to come back to this time. When you had the catch. All the stars were in one line. All the luck was with you. Your hands and your eyes worked under command and one poor eel dropped its defence under your agrression. You won!

Shock tears and fits! Suddenly the eel is gone. Slipped out of your hand. I feel miserable. Long for that time. Cant rewind. Will never accept. But the eel is gone.Nemesis. Love. Longing....Oh cmon! Thats life

Another eel now. I love cathing eels..What about you?

Cotton, Silk and Love!

Valentines day comes too often for my comfort . Every year this same anxiety of ' Is my love life happening enough?! 'So far I haven't passed even once. There is always something lacking. Either the love is far away, Either its too near . Most of the times there is no love at all. And yet when I see lovely cotton-silks blooming around me and smell that change of weather in the air..I know I have known love. More than I am thankful for..more than I have accounted for with my gratitude. And more than what I have understood.

I remember Sharma ji(everybody called him Sharmaji) who never spoke to me unless it was to tease me. He was so annoying, that in order to make me speak to him he would call me names! Once he even invented a poem to make fun of my name. It used to make me mad. I would shout cry and not go to school because he sang that poem to everyone as soon as I entered the scene.

'Pearl pearl main Tayyar
khane main mazedar'.

I hated him then. 
PS. I fondly remember the poem and him because of the poem.

Then there was the Son of the Peon of my playschool. A  territorial and taciturn boy called Raju(what a silly name!). Once I went to school in the evening on the insistence of my cousin who wanted to play on the swings and the usually quiet Raju laughed and showed us around the whole school.(He was just another person that evening as he opened up!)  He allowed me to sit on the swings and even pushed me higher in the sky. There was no one else around from the school that evening and the playground looked like some other time and space. It was the first time I sway so far up in the sky. For the first time it felt that he considered me more alive than the walls of the school. He had looked through me all the living days of my life before that.
The school bell started sounding sweet that day onwards( he used to ring the bell)

Oh and there was a thin wiry surdy boy who followed me on my way back from school. He never said anything except just follow me like he was an ISI agent. It made me miserable. I got so stressed at 13 thinking What on the world was he doing following an ugly girl like me? Now it would be good to meet him on one of these valentine's day if he comes with roses. I love the fact how proportions of our or shapes or the schools ( I was in a convent and he was from a chungi school) we went to didn't matter to him at all! We would have looked like bitter gourd and pumpkin if we were made to stand together . It looks so completely funny now. And sweet.

Then there was this cousin of mine who treated me like a house help! He would give me silly things to do just so I didnt disturb him." Go and see if the hen has layed an egg! Dont come back without an egg!" , "Go and get the fishing pole from Nanaji.". "Get the tumbler from the bathroom" I was such a dutiful Manfriday that it breaks my heart to think of that kind of earnestness now.I adored hims so much and he always left me behind with the old women(nani mom and masi's) He had lovely brown eyes and he knew every nook of the village. He was even allowed to go for shikar with Nanaji and Mama. Once however he agreed to take me in his gang and let me come to their fishing trip. He shoo'd away the wild dogs of other villages, Taught me to roast peanuts and (I still think it could have been a dream) and decorated my hair with flowers of a gulmohur tree. I looked like a mad Red Indian that day...as everybody around picked me up to cuddle and Coo. But I still watch that picture of me and him standing side by side with my hair full of leaves and flowers. I don't think it gets higher than this. That day had all  the silk cotton and love I  needed to be alive. A little more and I would have died of happiness.

And it wasn't Valentines day!

Dancing with Men

I grew up on the romance of Himalayas with Ruskin Bond. He took me to the Graveyards of the Raj and taught me to smell the marigolds and the sweet peas in my garden. Over endless cups of tea we discussed the love of a writing life. I couldn’t have thought of becoming anything else but a writer, I loved this man so much. Even now when it rains and I smell the mud I take out the leaves from those old love books. The Room on the roof will always be the first room of a boy that I entered. Rusty was the first one who put flowers in my hair and smiled at what a tomboy I was.
Then I grew mad stubborn and wily and Rusty slowly faded away.

I was sandwiched in a crowd of sweaty men in a local bus to Badarpur border when I first met Saint German Exupery. I couldnt have known then that this little man of his book would make me fall head over heels over him. This French pilot lived centuries before me and yet he broke my heart with his most enamouring heartbreaking tale 'The Little Prince'. I sat and wept in the bus. Oh of the misery growing up and parting with loved ones. Of loving little roses with thorns around them, of leaving behind the pretty face of one's rosebush! Only a real man made in the same earth as mine could have understood the cruelty of having the little kid inside us hurt. He showed me how his inner landscape looked after he had cried too much and I remebered the times when I had grown numb from too much crying too.I saw the little loving parts within him withering away as he struggled in the hostile sands where no flowers grew. His love was simple with no unnecessary complications here. I could have lived forever with you Saint German Exupery if only you had disappeared to another planet leaving me with just two of your books.

Then one day I saw Thich Nhat Hanh walking in a red robe and I liked his colour so much that I started walking along..He smiled at me and told me the heart sutra and I became loose as the wind started flying, hugging the trees in this madness of discovering the most valuable power of dissolving and embracing all life. My ears became my hands and my hands turned into my nose and my grandfathers hands and my father’s hands all wrapped my heart with warmth . He sat me down and I felt the earth that held me and the sun that would never fade away no matter what. We ate Tangerines together, slowly mindfully in the present moment. All the pain vanished. All because I smiled at him and he smiled back till all eternity lasted.

Photo Courtesy- Abbas Shamael Rizvi

Wicker lamps of Haridwar

It was someday in March a day after your birthday that I landed in Haridwar. I was with two single friends on trip long overdue and I could see clearly till the end of the sky when I finally reached.We took a room in Ganga Kinare UP tourism bungalow and missed the evening aarti by sleeping overtime. We were high on something that afternoon, I don’t remember too well now what it was. Maybe it was the freedom of three single girls travelling alone on taxi with enough cash to last them for quite some time!

The next morning I stole away to the shore to take a private dip, I felt I had a lot of madness to wash away. As I stepped slowly into the the cold freezing water the reality of my flesh struck me. Shivering like a nobody I saw an old sadhu far away on the other side of the shore. He was old, grey and looked very lonely.  He could have died with the shock of cold water on his flesh but he was hardy. More hardy than me. Hardier than my being a woman let me be.I covered myself from the gaze of that measly sadhu far away to not distract him.

It was good to see him bathe in the glory of his being a man.To only be a distant observer of the customs that he drew his strength from. I guess in a way I was also trying to be a man like him by taking this morning dip. There was no other way of being close to him other than becoming like him. But it made my flesh week and dissolve into the cutting water. Clearly I wasn't cut out to do this. I wondered that tingling morning if it was easier for men to cut away from those warm familiar things and strike for the larger truth.To push away the comforting blanket, to snub off the well meaning affection. To walk away from invoked vows of togetherness. To live like nobody else deserved any compassion! Olny an aggresive hunt for the the truth!

As I looked at him my thoughts turned to you. You and that old Brahmin were so much alike. Both of you so rooted in the habit of suffering. There was a hardly a trace of sloth on your bodies.

Did all my warmth look like sloth to you? Maybe it did! Is that why you had pushed me away? I didn’t know…I was only 24 then. All I wished that moment was to not have been pushed away so indifferently into the cold cutting real life.The sadhu was mumbling some mantras and pushing away the little wicker lamps into the river I wondered if he saw any light or warmth in those little lights fading away in the vastness of water. 

I prayed that you merge In the divine whenever you died. I hope you don’t come back because I saw how inconsequential those little lights are in the vast flow. It made no sense lighting up those silly sentimental things...

I came back to the room shivering to the room wrapped I my yellow Hare Rama stole. I looked like a crow as the morning pictures tell me. The two women wrapped me in some warm clothes and the sun came up. I saw some blooming flame of the forest and took pictures. It was an alive day after all the little faltering lamps had died down in the Ganges..I am glad I missed the evening aarti. I prefer the raging sun and the the crippling cold river to those lamps that never reach anywhere.

photo courtesy: Abbas Shamael Rizvi

We were little girls then...

Dear Sagun,

I always remember you when I think of Nashik. And that one favorite song of yours that made me fall in love with you.
We were in that sad hostel for working women. Together in a corner room that you were apprehensive about sharing with me. Offcourse you had to be smart if you wanted to live with sanity in that city with cunning women and their nosy boyfriends. I off course didn’t have any, but that wasnt enough to grow a tree of trust.. There was such a huge gap between our folding beds depite the small talk floating together from the mugs of our sickly tea.

Your parents far away in Nepal. Who had given up on you were distant. You told me about your caring Maharastrian boyfriend and I could see the little nests hanging out of your hair.You had figured out the tough equation of love while I was still struggling at the bitter taste of love on my tongue.

And then one day they played that song on the radio. ‘Zindagi aa raha hun main’
You chukled and jumped from your bed to mine. Suddenly we weren’t women with secrets between us anymore. We were handsome men with the promise of the road ahead!

‘This is my favourite song double haddi, this is how you must live life’ you had declared! And I must have looked puzzled for sure. After all what did the 5foot of you know about me ? To tell me about how to live my life!  And then in that daze of the exasperating energy burst in you I heard and saw you for the first time!

Humming along with that song of Hardy dreams. You weren’t the weary girl from Nepal anymore! You were the tall lanky man who had to make a home in this city that your parents would never visit (so what?!) The people here (in Nashik) didn’t belong to you but you would win them over one day! The suspicion that small everyday wars had brought in you wafted away in the dim light of the 40 watt blinking bulb. You became a happy go lucky soldier who would win over the boyfriend’s discomfort of commitment, his parent’s resistance and the cold indifference of your family.

It still amazes me how in this 5 foots of you, you have packed in so much hardy hope, ferociousness and cold insight about the world. All of 5foot 9 inches of me fell in love with you in that magical moment. I remember your strength every time I hear that song now. Off course you were a  little girl then, but you were a winsome gallant man too!

Love
Your Double haddi

Sand Wind and Stars~

Dear Dadaji,

When I look at your picture I am amazed at how many parts of you have left around us like the sand wind and the stars. Your hands that live in Papa’s hands, Your gentle presence that Papa exudes just the way you did, sitting hours in the winter sun.

I don’t remember your passing away bringing up any sadness in my 5 year old heart.  The stench of urine that coming from your room cut me off from you. I was so scared to enter then. You were growing old and I was growing young. I was getting the power to make choices to be with people or to avoid them. I would avoid you for days and days when you would call for me. I felt I could altogether avoid the unnecessary involvement with death disease and decay (Although not so consciously!) Sometimes when I could muster enough good sense to enter your room which had Papa’s tools hanging on the walls you would lovingly tell me broken stories. Some stories that I already remembered, some I recognized to be warped some completely drones of your sound breaking.

On clear days you would come out of your room and take a walk. And I remember your lively long stepped walk. You were such a tall man. It was difficult to think that someone so well formed could be falling apart in body.

Its strange I never saw you intensly alive. You were always my old dadaji to me. The most electric I have seen you were in your stories of travels across the world. Your days of fighting the world war in Hungary where you got lice in your hair. Your hundred stories of Raja Ram Chandra of Ayodhya who had a dutiful wife. The stories of your illiterate brothers and  your bringing them to civilization and farming in the terai of Nanital. I still read your books kept in the dingy store room in Bareilly now. Although I find it hard to imagine that you read them too. I still remember your shiny white strong teeth. They lasted you more than mine will! I remember that Tall lanky figure with a flowing white beard and didn’t quite know what kind of a man you would have made for woman around you. But I know the man you were in your bones and blood. I carry you inside me like the sand wind and stars.

Love

Seetal

My favorite hell

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry."

Hungry desolate ghosts walked on it night and day...they had little memories of the the period of abundance. They just remebered their hungers and kept weeping and crying for want of things. Their hungers and broken dreams were the only real things in their lives. No one could have blamed them for their small crying selves.

Then their were the tall giants who walked on that road.

Ben Okri- The Famished Road

Lost Homes

At 26 its hard to get over lost homes.I thought not counting would make me forget them better. But every lost home takes away parts of I am not young enough to loose with so much grace. I snout pout beg beseech and curse now! For every cut that is made on to me. And yet who can shout out all the pain of loosing a home?
I miss those white walls everyday. I wonder if they miss me too.Maybe I even hate them for not missing me! They were stark the first time I saw them. Stark white with rough patches. And yet they invited one with a purpose. I entered. I didn't like it for a long time. It was a rough place just not the kind where you could get comfortable easily. Hardly the kind where you would think of settling down for a long time. But as human beings are silly, they make pets out of foxes and even start talking to walls. So I did! I started talking to walls. And the walls started talking back to me. Sometimes.
Then I thought we were frequently talking. And then one day the walls went silent.
I think I started shouting at the walls then...I was told to leave. There were some new people who had entered and they had now perhaps a new language of talking to the walls. They told me to vacate..Because the walls obviously didnt talk to me anymore. I lost my home and I lost my language.
I still talk to those white walls. I am sure they hear me...I want to know why do they change their language so frequently? I thought homes were supposed to last longer than hearts. Isnt that why people build homes?

eyes of light

She twinkles in the moonlite like today's...
Sleeping in an alien city now..wonder if she has had dinner or has she dozed off on the bed alongside the books.She likes tea before sleeping( yellow label with very little sugar).Nights with her are like a balm...There is absolutely nothing that cant be paired down to perspective(except the temperature of the air conditioner..she likes to sleep freezing)

Everything has a proper place.You like me wouldnt know it until you know better from her!The big decisions and the small decisions are all in her EDL. Just press the button and you would know Just the right thing for you!You're a big fish or a small fish or a medium sized fish..she has a recipe for every disaster that you have tasted in life so far!(Really i am telling you!)

Lying beside her on nights like these,I have felt gawky and bumbling..like one feels while holding a little baby in one's big scratched hands. My smoothness has all gone where her shines bright! My courage is waning away while she still protects her dreams in a small wicked space...I bump into walls and reach her to ask why didnt I see them?

On dark nights when the greys of the world leaave me blind with their details, I miss those eyes of light!

Salt~

If it doesnt taste sweet
If it doesnt change color
If it hasnt burnt to become something else
If it doesnt loose taste after all the warm concoctions and freezing indiffrences breathed into it
If it doesnt harm the insides after swallowing
If it tastes bitter compared to other things at your table
If it still sticks to your 'full hands'
If you cant take it back once you've given it
If nobody can buy it nothing can undo it
Its salt!
The little salt that turned into an earring from your hand into mine...

A day like all other days...

There is a drone of Cicada in the air, its your ring tone.
Somebody is calling...nothing important you know.
End of March and the weather gives pleasant surprises on some days.
Like just yesterday you got up feeling happy for no reason really.
That slight headache from morning has become like a ticklish fog circling your eyes and forehead a pleasant sensation of wheeziness right now.
There is work but not too much.
Today is just the day to be lost in your thoughts.
You are remembering that old song that you hummed when you were younger.
You got up with it playing in your head today!
You caught yourself blushing thinking about that thing that happened yesterday! Strange!
That one thing that you wanted to do for a long time, seems more and more likely next weekend?.Rafting? Vipassna, Rishikesh, Holiday, Yes!
All those life and death matters have suddenly become dour.
The truth has settled on you like a shaft of evening light.
Filtered through lace curtains dancing on your arms and hands.
A world of memories and sensations open up.
That black and white picture of yours that youve kept in your wallet for a long time flashes suddenly.
The edges of it are wearing of but that sharp look in the eyes just doesnt fade.
It surprises you some times. That aliveness and magic where did it come from?
You remember that gust of air that hit you on the face through the train window when you were travelling without a ticket.
You loved travelling without ticket, although you havent done it in a long time.
Someday soon you promise yourself.
And you never keep your promises!
Its just another day...

Of being

When you are an elephant, born an elephant,There is nothing that you can do about it!(except be an elephant!)
You can only fall in love with elephants
You cant run away from your elephant hunger.
You cant squeeze yourself to resemble a porcupine( although it has much better defence mechanisms!)
You cant lie to yourself like smaller animals.
You cant run away fast from danger and threat.
You cant help your memory(even if you remember useless details which have long ceased to be a reality or the truth)
Your truth is the elephants truth. It weights you down and you carry it gracefully.
Someday you will scramble the whole bloody world if doesnt stand up to your elephant reality( and youre more than capable of it, let no one live in any illusions!)
You are hungary on life..and you shall have your elephants share!

Burning away the darkness

Do you know the name of the village where my grandmother lived?
The name of my grandfather scribbled over the iron box,along with his designation. The family that my runaway aunt married into!
The hospital I was born in..
How old was I when my younger sister was born?
What did I feel when I first took her in my arms..
If I have ever seen a baby prettier then her?
How I learnt to be responsible for her one fine day.
The story behind my and my sister's name.
The first thing my dad asked for after he had a freak accident!
What age was my dad when he discovered that he was a diabetic?
What was that one song that he and I keep listening to?
How am I like/unlike him?
Have you ever thought of burning away the darkness of this world by knowing the essential few things of your or my life?

Be very scared of me!

I have nothing to loose except my dreams!