Where I'm from

Every writer needs two kinds of critics: one that always sings praise of his/her writings, and the other that tells the truth. In hopes of unearthing a few from the second category, I place this on the blog - inspired by George Ella Lyon's poem "Where I'm From". I find my childhood a comforting place, an unending source of inspiration for a jaded could-have-been writer.

I am from kitchen soot,
kisses and kohl.
I am from the evening echoes of the conch.
(Deep, mournful
it rang out to the skies from my mother's lips.)

I am from the fragrant jasmine,
the rooted banyan
whose timeworn roots
must surely go as deep as mine.

I am from rice puddings and birthday blessings,
from too much and not enough.
I am from hand-me-downs
and ne'er-give-ups,
from secrets treasured and silences untold.
I'm from the 3 D's etched in my father's letters
(duty, discipline, determination - he said)
I chose duty over them all.

I'm from the muslin of Jaycee
from the broadcloth of Teekay too.
From the land of palm tree and fish aplenty
from milk and honeyed tales
that dripped from the lips of ancient dames.
In my closet lies a crowded box
a melange of letters and pictures
of faces and words that extol and chastise
Knowingly, they whisper in my dreams,

"One day, you too shall be here."

Of a hero and his unlikely disciple

There was a recurring theme in my grandmother's stories about the partition - it was unbiased. There were no Hindus waging war on the Muslims, or Muslims up in arms against the Hindu majority - there were simply warring Indians bathing streets in blood. Every wheelbarrow filled with Hindu bodies emptied into drains were matched by Muslims in equal measure. She never blamed any one religious community. And, yet every generation removed from theirs has only gotten more and more bitter about this episode. Perhaps because they had no direct experience, their imaginations were colored by stories very similar to mine, and they chose to make what they wanted to, from childhood tales. Pity.

Did India just smite the nose to spite the face? How can citizens be more worried about corruption than genocide? How can economic progress be so important that one turns a blind eye to the skeletons in Modi's closet? Do you laud Hitler for all the planning that went into decimating a race? After all, wasn't his agenda the ethnic cleansing (leading to the betterment) of Germany? Can we condone blood on a statesman's hands if we are promised economic progress? Apparently, the great statesman's hero is Swami Vivekanda - oh, the irony. Saffron is where the similarity begins...and ends in this case.

What's your poison?

The election in India reminds me of Jennifer Lawrence mouthing "Sometimes, all you have in life are fucked-up poisonous choices" in American Hustle. Choice. To have the luxury of choices is good, to be bombarded with choices not so good, but to be presented only with terrible choices is surely the worst.

On the surface, we are all 'normal' within the paradigms of livable human society. What makes us interesting lurks beneath the surface of normalcy. Our wants are stretched thin on the surface, our needs just barely visible. If you could peel that outer layer away, you would see a colorful world of contradictions, choices and their effects, eternal struggle between free will and societal expectations, but the most endearing quality of all - a yearning for acceptance in our given (and accepted) form. Some of the most interesting stories have/could be written on aberrant behavior - the boy that lies in school (why?), the girl that laughs too much and too often (what is she hiding?), the chain smoker that gives up his/her addiction after three decades on a moment's whim, the prostitute that donates her time and money to charity, the alcoholic overachieving son of the underachieving pious father, the mother that sells her virtue for her child's material wants....the sheer complexity of human behavior is blinding.

What do your choices say about you?

Humbled

My grumblings in the kitchen have been quelled by a 70-year old woman who sells her cooking services at people's houses, to send money home to her nine married daughters. Like the "left hand that knows not the dealings of the right", she accomplishes this with the help of her clients, ruffling no feathers. Stories like these reinstate belief in the indomitable human spirit, and give me pause to reflect on the lengths a mother will go to protect her brood.