Tears of wisdom

I cried to my father
His eyes gleamed out of a photo frame.

I cried to my mother
She cried with me.

I cried to my brother
He promised revenge.

I cried to my partner
He mistook my tears and relented.

I now cry to an entity whose existence is the topic of dinner debates.

Seeing Red

The transfusion room in the hematologist's office was well turned out. Plush, comfortable with overstuffed leather recliners, soft woollen throws, an assortment of drinks to keep your thirst at bay, and a state of the art home theater system with a wide variety of blues, soft jazz, classic rock - whatever rocked your boat that day. I took tentative steps, shuffling softly on socks on the smooth buffed floor. Inching towards the last unoccupied leather chair hooked up to an IV station. It was unusually cold, I thought as they hooked me up to a dark colored liquid (liquid iron, I was told) - that was normal, they said. No, I meant the room was cold - but, never mind. I did not want to create a fuss. The nurse said they would precede the transfusion with Benadryl to counter anaphylactic response. I nodded, taking it to mean that I was going to be sleepy - no party here I was going to miss!

"So, is this your first chemo?" A deep, silky voice interrupted my somnolent state.

Through my half-open eyelids, I discerned a shock of red hair. The fiery crop was beginning to thin at the front of the forehead, but you couldn't see any roots. It was either natural, or dyed regularly. A creamy complexion that goes with that hair type. Bright red lipstick, chunky rings. A Guns n Roses locket on thick black strands around her neck. An interesting array of tattoos on her right arm - the Christian cross, Islamic moon and the Hindu Om emblazoned in three quadrants of the universal peace sign. Blue eyes shining through slits took in everything meticulously.

That body belongs on a Harley somewhere, I thought. And a cigarette. A cigarette's missing.

"Is this your first chemo, darling?"

"Oh! No, I'm just here for an iron transfusion," I blushed in spite of myself.

"Don't get worked up now. You done good. I was just curious." She sighed and started talking into space. My eyes traveled down to her fingers once more, noting the telltale groove on the side of her middle finger, and slightly yellowing fingernails. Smoker, figures.

"You know, I grew up right around the corner from this building and crossed Dr Busch's office on the way to work. My mother used to own a dry cleaning business - but she never bothered to get herself a driver's license and I was her little chauffeur. Patty and I..." her voice trailed off. Lucidity returned to her eyes and she started again. "Patty, my best friend, and I would steal puffs a door down from here. The third door down from this clinic is a Latin bakery - we would buy ourselves those itty-bitty alfajores and spritz some cologne before returning to the shop. Mum never knew." She chuckled and reached out for a glass of lemon water.

"Have you been here all your adult life?" I asked.

"Nein nein, little darling." She made a clicking noise with her tongue. "Born in Texas, raised all over. After helping my mother for a couple of years with her business, I traveled to Boulder with my boyfriend to grow out pot business. That didn't work out so well. Then on to Laramie, Wyoming to work on a ranch, a few months in Santa Fe learning pottery and Sanskrit..."

"Wait, what?" left my lips before I could stop myself.

"Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language, ya know?"

Err, yes I know. I just happen to have been born in that country. But you can't be rude to a cancer patient undergoing chemo. I let it go.

"I wanted to start a yoga studio in Abilene. That town has nothing. Mum's business was the only dry cleaner's in town , and it doubled as an UPS drop-off - the only one in town. So, I shacked up with Patty's sister in Dallas for a year and registered for any yoga teacher training classes I could lay my hands on - Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Yin - even some Qigong classes. I liked the names of the poses - halasana, bajrasana, navasana - so lyrical. So, I wanted to know more about the language. I signed up for a yoga retreat in Santa Fe, where they teach you Sanskrit. Ya know, for kicks." She winked.

My jaw clenched once more as I felt the bile rise in my throat. I had not yet learnt how to control the Indian impulse to counter every tiny belittlement of every language, mannerism and stereotype associated with the Indian subcontinent. Just let it go. Breathe.

"I had a chance to learn Sanskrit in school," I said. "My brother dissuaded me - it was either Hindi or Sanskrit and he had barely managed to scrape through Sanskrit. I was sure it would drag my grades down. I opted for Hindi, but now I wish I had learnt Sanskrit instead - easier to understand Hindi once you know Sanskrit."

"It wasn't half bad. It's easier to remember the Gayatri mantra when you know what those words mean. They run off your lips effortlessly. Om bhur bhuvah svah tát savitúr várenyam bhárgo devásya dhimahi dhíyo yó nah prachodáyat"

Pretentious, hmph.

"Have yoga and meditation helped you heal? I've heard meditation is a great boon to the terminally ill." I preened.

"Heal? What do ya mean?" Her nurse was now at her side, unhooking the IV station.

I squirmed under her blue gaze, as if transfixed by their intensity. "I thought....?"

She roared with laughter. "I'm here for an iron transfusion too. Wait, you were thinking all this while that I had cancer? Psshh, cancer aint got nothin' on me."

The rumblings of a motorbike outside in the parking lot drowned my thoughts as the effects of Benadryl started wearing off slowly.

Damn it, Red.


PS Inspired by Rezhnikov on OITNB

You have to hang your boots somewhere.

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.

Ten ducklings in the pool

Do puppies, kittens and ducklings interest you? Probably yes, if you were walking by a water body enjoying the light summer breeze, squinting in the sunlight and the loud quacking of the mother duck called out to you - you might notice the school (what is the collective plural for a bunch of ducklings?) of furry ducklings following the mother's tail and occasionally dunking their heads in water, coming up quickly for air. But, would you line up against the windowed office wall cooing over ducklings for hours (minutes really) on end? I know people that would. And maybe that's human. To get food, organic or not, for the family and to feed them. It's not for me. But, let me hasten to reassure you that I do like flowers and children (most of the time). Some music. So, don't give up on me just yet.

Little Miss Sunshine

Five minutes every day don't count if you have nothing to say. A beautiful sun-dappled day presses her nose against my window-pane, begging me to abandon the computer screen and play with her as she beckons from the small green pool whose surface breaks out softly in fluid drapes, in contact with the light breeze. That's all you need to know today.

Five for a Mother

Mothers' Day must be coming up soon - I see Groupon and Facebook ads telling people what to do to make their ordinary moms feel extraordinary. That made me think of my mater and what an unnecessarily forgiving martyr she has been to a completely undeserving family. I would not be surprised if this realization strikes women when they turn mothers themselves. Happens right around the time when your FB feed is inundated by "Moms rock" posts, or when the newborn is being swaddled by a grandmother. I figured nobody was ever going to spare a word for her (not really swashbuckling hero material), so while my pen's still leaking...let me tell you a bit about this bundle of contradictions aka My Mother.

She was too timid to show up at Parent-Teacher meetings, but not enough to take the 24/29 tram all the way to the marble floored school to deliver the tiffin-box her nincompoop child had not bothered to pack. We had a running joke around the dinner table to erect a marble statue in honor of her martyrdom, since she would willingly relegate herself to licking off bowls whose contents had been emptied onto her family's plates. I mean, please! Mother India much? Not unusual, you say? Right up there with the other mothers that save money from the meagre "shongsharer khoroch" to buy a little milk for the pregnant maid, or with those who offer up their gold earrings as a wedding gift to a sister-in-law because the husband didn't get his bonus this year? Maybe, maybe not. She had grit, and that didn't come from education, pedigree or her station in life. She just wasn't one to whine.

She was terrible at accepting anything construed as a handout - well, screw handout, even simple help. There was a section of her saree pallu that was always warm and damp from kitchen fumes. You could see portions of her feet that were swollen from standing too long in line for kerosene, or for the dignified SBI official. But her hands, like her heart, were soft - they never betrayed the hours of stirring, dragging, washing, mopping,pulling, pounding and poultice-applying her job demanded. She was not a feminist in the "Would you believe it? They advertised football as a MAN'S GAME" sort of way. But, there was something not quite conventional about her....can you raise non-conformists on a staple diet of convention, I wonder.


We are still working on that statue, Ma. Happy Mother's Day, whenever that is.

Five minutes everyday makes Jill a good girl

April 22

I began subscribing to a professional writer (Daphne Gray-Grant)'s newsletter, and took her "write for 5 minutes everyday" advice to heart. Here's some from today... Trying something new. Writing for 5 minutes everyday. Whenever, wherever. It is not unusual to find framed pictures of family members in co-workers' office spaces. Spouse, children, pets, sometimes extended family and friends. It reminds one that humans need a receptacle, a repository for their love. So, a pet suffices when fellow humans fail. OK, I failed after 3 minutes....I think. Yes, that's my attention span these days. Three minutes. How did we ever last those interminably long examinations made mandatory by the State Board of Education? At our peak, we would be writing for 2-3 hours every day separated by a lunch hour, on two completely different subjects. So, not only did you need to be focused, your mind needed to be agile enough to switch from one paradigm to another - say, Maths to History, in a span separated by parental affection and milky sweets. Hot summer afternoons and the call of the "Asian Koel" (before being interrupted by a call, I was informed by a bird-acquainted friend that the koel/kokil is not equivalent to a cuckoo, and that it's a different species). And, that concludes my 5 minutes of writing for today.
*****
April 23

Today's 5 minute investment is triggered by an author I have never read - Penelope Lively. Primarily her memoir Dancing Fish and Ammonites, where she writes that she was born in Cairo. How exciting! While I cannot comment on her writing, an interview with NPR shines light on her take on 'possessions' in old age and how it echoes my feelings. She no longer feels the urge to accumulate things/stuff in her house/life now that she is eighty. This minimalistic lifestyle has often made me feel inadequate. I have visited houses that are ornately decorated (an instant turn-off) and habitats that are tastefully but sparsely decorated - and it is the latter that has made me marvel at the woman (more often than not)'s aesthetic sense. Aside from those brief lapses (and about twice a year, I realize that I am a woman and that I am supposed to accumulate stuff and decorate my surroundings, transform the yin of the bathroom with the plush yang of rugs, towels and heady perfumes), I tend not to feel the urge to buy things. However, this is also accompanied by a vague sense of discomfort and of not being worthy of the feminine kin. Comments like Penelope's root my senses and I tell myself I'm okay, not too far off from the mean - well, maybe a few standard deviations but that's cool.

Kabhi kadhi kabhi Gham

Overheard in an Indian vegetarian restaurant - American male asks Indian colleage incredulously, while slurping on kadhi: "So, you make yoghurt at home?" "Yes I do. I mean, my mother...uhh my wife does." :) Wife trained him well.

Fleeting introspection from a car window

December 10
Miami, FL

I saw you tonight clutching the wheel tightly, driving an old blue battered minivan. An ordinary-looking woman in her 50s not unlike many we pass unthinkingly on the street. Your chin barely reached over the top of the wheel, and you leaned forward intently, eyes darting, mouth agape, concentrating only on inching the vehicle past us. I wondered – what is your story, Miss? That “I love soccer” sticker on the rear window would suggest a Spanish-speaking matron in Miami-Dade County. Or, maybe you don’t care about soccer at all. Perhaps you bought that pre-owned car dirt-cheap, with the sticker, from Little Havana. You need it to shuttle from one day-job to another. There is nothing special about how your greasy hair is pulled away from your face in a tight ponytail that bares the veins at your temples. Nothing remarkable about the pink face scrubbed clean hurriedly before the next errand of the day. What’s special is the grit that shines through that ordinary face. The grit that makes you invincible in daily life. The patience the family banks on when all hell breaks loose. The cool practicality that soothes troubled children's minds just as well as the cooing and petting once soothed tired little bodies.

Is that your story, Miss? Here's a fan screaming her lungs out for you - you rule the world.

Subterfuge

If you know my worst, you know me best.

I see in you the promise of tomorrow, the potential of today. When they ask for your innocence, thumb your nose at them.

The Higher Entity and I

The aim is not to write something stellar everytime, but to gain comfort in expression.

Arguments about the existence of a Higher Entity, not unlike political leanings, create deep divisions between people. It is a deeply personal matter for some. A topic of debate, for others. My interpretation of the Higher Entity says much about me as a person, my experiences, and how my beliefs have been shaped over time. Therefore -

Self-validation, after falling from grace, quite literally feels like Manna from Heaven.

Snippets - August 2013

Jeff Guinn's talk on Charles Manson continues KERA'S "insanity focus". Intrigued to hear of Charles Manson's consistent behavior of manipulating people to do his bidding - traced back to his childhood. He twisted his life to appear more gruesome than reality. Begs the question - when are the seeds of insanity implanted in a human mind? If psychotropic drus were not an option, could a caring and nurturing environment turn the tables on insanity?


Reading "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid. When requested by his girlfriend's mother to give the girl (another loony spiraling downwards) a wide berth, Mohsin's protagonist agrees, but with a certain uncertainty. "Still, I remained concerned for Erica's well-being - and remained also in the grip of a certain, probably irrational, hope - so the ongoing task of abstaining from communication was a struggle not unlike that of a man attempting to rid himself of an addiction."

Baby Mama

Suddenly, it's everybody's business.

"Any news?"
"When do we get to hear the good news?"

Err, probably not until a semblance of stability has been established in swirling world economics. Oh, but you were not interested in that, were you? What you were really asking is this -

"Are you having sex?"
"Are you having regular sex?"
"Are you having sex on those days?"

But, you don't because you are polite. So, you mask these questions with "Good news?" and twinkling eyes and a smile I just don't get. I anticipate, even expect questions from doddering oldies but not from you, a friend or an acquaintance, who has been married for 10-odd years and has barely recuperated from delivery before posing - "So, ....." intermingled with gory details of childbirth. So, the next time you ask me a question like that, please be prepared to field "Have you resumed regular sex after having a baby?"

But, that would not be polite. Or worse, you would reply with gushing detail.

Sigh.


Written Nov '10, in a fit of angst.
Posted May '13, with twisted amusement.

A man's world?

If you are an Indian Hindu, you are aware of and sensitive to the treatment of Muslims in Hindustan. On a daily basis, you do your bit to relieve your conscience of what Muslims would have you believe - that they are an oppressed religious minority barely surviving amongst teeming millions of Hindus in this kaleidoscopic countryscape.

The Hindu head of the household may well employ a Muslim driver, the lady of the house may well hire a Muslim maid, the children of the house might even feast on Sevaiyan brought lovingly by Rani-Bibi, and the family might even make monthly donations to the maid's son's college fund. The Hindu soul is appeased. Perhaps, a tad like the white-black schism in the West. Where, as a famous black comedian once put it - "All the black people I know have several white friends; all the white people I know have only one black friend"! Do what appeases your conscience, soothes the soul and wear the "I did my bit" badge on your social sleeve. It is an assumption of mine that Bengalis treat their sons and daughters in much the same way. Simplistic, you say? Perhaps, but humor me today.

Calcutta in the 80s was a land where men were men, and women were Femina-beautiful. Most families followed traditional social norms; men were the sole breadwinners, women were homemakers, and a Bengali household would serve up rice pudding on the son's birthday, but not quite as often for the girl-child. Admittedly, we were granting more exposure to our daughters, opening them up to a world of possibilities by showering them with a "convent education", or "something your mother never had". Our sons were well, boys. Sigh. They would roll in the mud, scrape their elbows, jump off brick walls, and would simply not do their homework. You could often hear a mother (of a son or two) prosaically hold forth "I wish I had had a daughter instead". You could perhaps discern that it was even fashionable - to yearn for daughters in a day and age where airhostesses were the rage, female co-pilots were cheered, and Kiran Bedi was on TV. But, while we let our boys be boys and groomed our daughters to be sons, unwittingly we were laying the bricks for the evolution of the "modern family" as we know it today - where the man behaves less like a man, and the woman strives to be more than a woman. That still leaves us with way more testosterone than the world needs.

What has not changed since the 80s though, are our expectations of our children. The MO of the 70s-80s parent brigade was that the girl child needed to be educated to "secure her future", not that of her parents - mind you ["Aajkal-kar cheleder bhorsha nei" banal chatter pervaded the atmosphere]. Which differed greatly from the expectations of the boy child. You could retrace decades into the annals of Indian social history and find legions of sons with familial (I mean financial) chains. The girls were married off, with the expectation that they would raise families, run households, hold down jobs with equal panache. Not to worry about the folks back home. Which raises the question, who truly suffers from this "soft bigotry of low expectations"? When you arm your daughters with an education (not a degree), expect them to be opinionated - don't saddle them with the same traditional marriages of yore. Ask of them what you ask of your sons. Accept from them the helping hand you once lent them. Surely, "To whom much is given, much is expected" was not coined only with men in mind.

Imuse, as my spacebar calls it

I need something fancier than Notepad to write anything worthwhile. Imuse. Yes, and a functional space bar wouldhelp. I think back, unravel the memory loops to go as farback as possible. Thinking of how writing came to me **. As a soothing poultice on the forehead of an inky night's turmoil. As the unexpected gushing-forth of fevered creativity from a schoolgirl's fountain pen. As the strutting pride of a child's desperate attempt to impress her hero. I have none of those anymore - not the first rhyming poem, neither the continuance of a paragraph from Kidnapped, certainly not the essay about a stormy night.

You tempt me now, an hour away frommidnight. I wiggle my fingers and write tentatively, coaxing words out of a stultified imagination.

Tonight, I write for me. No pressure to outperform, to wittily summarize, engage or enamor. Tonight, you are mine to mold and twist, to sweep to heights, to plumb the depths, to bridge the growing chasm. I wonder, at a time when I hoped to befriend you, have you at last abandoned me?

** (how can one not draw references to Neruda, when plagued by writer's block?)

A Suggestion

I thought it would be nice if you started off with Uncle Podger and Josephine March. Or, even an Oliver Twist. You need one character to make you smile (no matter how old you are) and one character to feel like his/her story was yours in writing.

Growing up, Little Women was where my heart was and Wuthering Heights was the love-story that diverted a child's mind to the exploratory regions of adolescence. Heathcliff was the man my adolescent heart yearned for - one that appealed to a girl's fantasy. Soon, that too gave way to Gone with the Wind. For me, it had always been fashionable to look down upon Mills and Boon romance stories. But, it is Jerome K Jerome that my mind turns to when I need comfort, familiarity and humor on a cold, gray afternoon.

I hope you find some characters for keeps. I know I have. These books transport me effortlessly and swiftly to my school days when the school building looked no less exciting than the first glimpse Darryl had of Malory Towers. To a time when life's simplicity was bound in white starched skirts & pigtails and sucking on honeysuckle stems. When it was all right to move your head to rippling notes played on the piano without knowing it was Fur Elise. It was OK to be who you were. One could find comfort in a sea of white starched skirts and pigtails and occasionally, hardbound library books.