Tangents

Time speeds forward. Through light and dark. Regardless of the bright days or the starry, sometimes dreary, nights. Through hues and greys. Sweating up the highs and tumbling down the lows. At times warmed up by the shine. Often scorched by the heat. Bare to the nightly chills. Startled by the dawns. Anticipating the dusks. Time races on. So does life. At a matching pace. Shooting off at a tangent to every expectation.

life a shooting dart
time a tangent on its own
hope still circles though

©

[Picture: On the way to Phillip Island, Melbourne]

To Paint the Complete Picture

Pick up your thinking brush. Dip it in the skies. Let it soak in the blues. Then sweep it across the mind’s canvas. From end to end. Repeat once, twice or thrice. Or as many times as it takes for the blues to rub off the brush.

If the blues are too intense, dip the spiky bristles in the cloudy whites. Wait until the blues wash away, and then touch up your skies so they light up just a mite.

Now steep your brooding blues in the twilights. Blotch up your canvas with blobs of red, yellow, orange, and blends of all three. Make sure you leave some room for the occasional blues. Draw a few defining strokes so the blobs know their space and don’t spill all over the place.

Splash across the bottom some earthy hues. For all those shades need to bury their roots. Then plant a bed of sprouting greens of the upcoming spring. And there you are! Your canvas is complete.

Some brights and some blues
A picture replete with all hues
Ups and lows, joys and woes.

©

[Picture: Yarra Valley, Melbourne]

Canvas

South Bank, Melbourne

The horizon is a blotting canvas. The ink of the sky spreads in layers. The earthy hues roll out and halt all at once in blobs. And before the sun can dry out the misty sky and seep into the sopping earth, the twilight spills over in spatters.

Seasons come at their own pace, mostly alone or even in pairs. Sometimes they all rush in together, erasing entire patterns as they go, leaving a new picture in their trail.

Time often stands still, watching the art in progress.

Blotting canvas
Earthy dollops, inky skies
Spattered twilight.

©

Serendipity of Sorts

My visit to the Wax Museum in Kolkata brought back to me the memory of a day I had spent narrating poems to my (poet) father. This was just over a couple of months before he passed away. Age had impaired his vision, so it was a strain for him to read. Therefore, I had these long and delightful sessions of reading and discussing poetry with him. He had this amazing ability to listen to poem after poem for long hours at a stretch. And he would respond to even the subtlest of nuances in every poem. Rarely, he would ask me to stop reading and we would discuss things unrelated to poetry. After a short interlude, he would ask me to resume reading.

At the end of several hours of reading, my father would be thoroughly drained from listening, and my throat would be painfully parched from reciting. However, both of us would be elated in a way only poetry could make one feel elated.

My visit to the Wax Museum was, by the way, happenstance. Especially when I didn’t know a wax museum existed in Kolkata (Newtown). Surprisingly, most of the people I met in Kolkata – all of whom belong to the city – have not been to the museum.

On this particular day, he had asked me to read out the entire series of my (forthcoming) collection of poems, The Eternal Garden. Writing those poems was in itself a stroke of serendipity. As though they had been waiting to be written by me, they flowed out all on their own. Added to that was the instant connection Achhan had with those poems. All in all, that would always be counted as a special day in my life. Those moments can never be re-lived – not even if Achhan were not to pass on, not even if I were to write another series of poems. That experience can never be revived – not even if I were to put back the clock. It’s like a one-time password. There you have it! Live it or leave it.

After the reading session, my father said the collection was one of my best ever and the concept Tagorean. With all humility, I accept this as inspiring words of encouragement from a father to his daughter, and a generous blessing from an accomplished poet to a still aspiring one.

An excerpt from the collection, The Eternal Garden:

I lose
and
rediscover myself
in you.
At a loss again,
I wonder
where you begin
and I end?

©

Moving Stillness

Sarangkot, Pokhara, Nepal

"The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest." - Bruce Lee.

I never could get the actual sense of Lee's words, try hard as I might to figure it out in the context of his own field of action. But his words made sense to me as I, along with my co-travellers, stood atop a hill at Sarangkot, watching the horizon, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rising sun. It eluded us anyway, hiding itself behind vivid cloudy folds.

Moving Stillness

Stillness. It manifests in different ways. Sometimes it's frozen and hard as a rock. Sometimes it drifts by like a gentle zephyr or a sailing wisp of a cloud. At times it's quiet like still waters. And at times, deafening like a roaring sea. Now and then, it would shed all its hues and yet again wear a vibrant collage of colours.

Stillness. Occasionally, you discover it within you. More often, you come across it around you, enfolding you, trickling into you, little by little, slowly, steadily. This stillness. This moving stillness.

Still silence
seeps, fills, overflows
hushed stillness.

©

The Still Thirsty Crow

 

The crow hangs around the eaves today. Just as he had done the last morning. Yesterday he had slipped his beak into the rain gutter to take a sip of the previous night’s rain. Today he’s prancing along the trough to see if there’s any water – here, there or just around the corner. Well, no. Today is not his lucky day.

He flew in to this neighbourhood just a few days ago. It's a kind of homecoming. He had flown away from here way back when the pigeons had taken over these roofs. Strangely, the pigeons are nowhere in sight these days.

The crow wakes up from his reverie. He slants his gaze into the eaves trough once again. Could there be some drops caught at the corner? Or near the spout? Just enough so he could throw in the much-fabled pebbles? Then the water might rise a bit. It just might! But, no, there’s not even a drop. For, it had not rained last night.

Strange are the seasons nowadays. They used to span the year. Now they come and go as they please, every day. The rain was pelting the roof just the other night. And today the entire trough is dried up. Now, where can he find some water to wet his throat? Wherever the pigeons find it, perhaps. Where are the pigeons, by the way?

Fall was yesterday
Summer had its way last night
It might rain tonight.

©

On a Ramble

At the Edge of the World - Neji Ravindran

A few months back, Neji had painted a picture themed on my poem, 'Kites'. Today it's my turn. I have a poem here themed on his painting, "At the Edge of the World'. What's surprising is that this poem was written years ago. Yet the sameness of the thoughts expressed in two entirely different ways at two different points in time is amazing. One is trying to paint a poem, and the other is trying to pen a picture. And the context is the same.  But this time, the works are not intentionally collaborative.

In the poem, the protagonist is all by herself. In the painting, obviously, he is not alone. However, the 'I' in the poem can be easily replaced by the 'we' in the painting. Thank you, Neji, for this picture. 

On a Ramble

Legs dangling over the edge of the horizon

Feet splashing in the Milky Way

Watching the moon as it turns a corner

And stars light up and disappear

Drenching in the glow of a meteoric shower

In the wake of a comet's dusty trail

Basking in the aura of an approaching dawn

Before the sun is well on its way

Evading a blinding encounter

I steal away from its glaring gaze

To a farther edge of the horizon

Beyond the reach of the scorching rays

To dangle my legs and splash my feet

In the cosmic brook once again.

Strings attached

Painting & Photo: Neji Ravindran

Those were the first ever kites bought for me. Perhaps those were also the last. I remember they were red, purple and green. I was around 7 years old then and had just relocated from my hometown. On the destined day, when the sky was dotted with hundreds of kites, I went up to the terrace with mine. I didn’t know how to go about flying them. I still don’t. In fact, no one at home knew how to fly a kite. I did all the basics. Holding them up so the wind will catch them, and unravelling the lines. They would fly up a few feet or so (well, that’s what I wanted to believe), and then they would come crashing down. A relative, who was staying with us, felt sorry for me. He struggled for a while trying to help me, and I felt sorry for him. After a few pathetic attempts, my kites lay around me, torn and tattered. And I quietly climbed down the terrace. Strangely enough, I was at peace. That I had tried something which I knew at the bottom of my heart was not exactly my thing. I grew up to be a master kite-flier, though. My kites being my dreams.

 

Kites

They were tethered to the ground. Her dreams. Like kites, they stretched far and flew high in the sky. An alien sky. They got entangled and enmeshed in umpteen other dreams. Others’ dreams. Strangled, they broke and fell in a rapid descent. And crashed. Crashed at her own feet. They lay strewn around her. Waiting, hibernating. Until new dreams sprouted in new forms and colours. With wings so light they could fly higher than the farthest kite soaring the sky. With strings so entwined they could bear the strongest winds. With tails so bright they left blazing trails. Like wish-fulfilling meteors. And they conquered her entire sky. Yes, them, those kites. Her dreams.

The story-telling street

A road is like time. Both have a past and a present and they continue into infinity. If roads could speak, they would have many stories to tell us – of triumph and defeat, of joy and sorrow, of love and loss, of peace and strife - of the people who travelled them in the past. And there would be stories of the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees, and the fallen leaves.

A busy street is intricately interwoven with a million stories – the stories of the street vendors, traders, and the people going up and down the street, each with a past and a present, rushing towards their separate futures.

And each story weaves into several other stories, on other roads, in other cities, from other times. Forget your own story for a while as you walk down a street, tuning into the hundreds of stories that surround you. Feel new stories being created every minute, of which you are now a part.

It was such a morning in Pondicherry. I was standing in front of a tea stall like several others who stopped by, enjoying a hearty sip. The street was overhung by the soft rays of the sun and the aura of a colonial past. A new story was forming, deftly entwined, charmingly entangled with so many others. Call it an epic, if you will.

Pondy*

Roads write an epic

Of the evolution of an ethos

Every bend a turning point

To flick to another page

To another age,

Trees bend, heavy,

Laden with memories

Laying shadowed margins -

The walkways of passing years,

Leaves are hushed whispers

Under the city’s breath

Of ancient secrets hidden

Between the lines of time,

Flowers beckon, beseech

Falling at your feet

To take a fleeting peek

Into the city’s history,

Around every wall

Behind every bolted door

Slipping through the window

Peeping through the shades

There’s a story in every street.

*Pondicherry, popularly known as Pondy, is an erstwhile French colonial settlement in South India.

The death of a muse

Here, at the hospital, a death goes unnoticed. A death I was witness to, and to be frank, the cause of. An insignificant end to a trivial manifestation of the essential soul. Rather, one of the deaths of a single soul. And here’s how.

As I sit blankly staring into nothingness in the wee hours while Amma sleeps peacefully, there's a slight disturbance under her bed. I wake up from my reverie as a cockroach appears suddenly out of nowhere and runs all over the place. I try to kill it with Amma’s slipper. As I can’t bring myself to hit really hard, it doesn’t quite die and starts wobbling around after a while. I ‘kill’ it again and it’s now lying with its feelers moving. I am hoping the cleaning ladies will come soon or I will have to ‘kill’ it all over again. I now realise, in my reluctance to kill, I am causing it to die several times. Perhaps that’s the case of many a person lying in the hospital. They are dying multiple deaths. But just how many deaths can one die?

How many deaths?

How many deaths will you die? Several and many more. When you know it’s just a matter of time before you will be gone. With every losing battle with death before the final war. With every ragged breath and every delayed heartbeat. When you accept destiny and when you alas succumb. Heart grinding to a halt. Breath dragging to a stop. Every cell giving in. One by one. Beat by beat. Breath by breath. Inch by inch. You die till what’s left is buried, burnt. Then dying over and over in every living mind, you die a million times.

It’s just that some deaths leave you still alive.

A loose page from a forgotten chapter

My Masterpiece is a poem I wrote about two decades ago when I was working as a copy writer in an advertising firm. As most copy writers had during those days and have still, I too had a fantastic rapport with my creative team. We were a team of dreamers, madly in love with colours, forever hungry for new ideas and always ready for the next project. One evening as we were closing for the day, my team mates challenged me to do a painting and bring it to work the next day. Though my skills with the pen were sort of slightly acceptable, I was hopeless with the brush. The poem, if one can call it that (I am reluctant to), was my weak response to their challenge. Written in a hurry and forgotten in a jiffy (or so I thought), I never expected it to emerge as an apparition on the Facebook twenty years later. It did, thanks to Rajesh, one of our team.

To me, the image brings on a sense of nostalgia – no, not because of the poem, but because of the memories of my old Underwood typewriter that had been passed on to me by my grandfather. The image brings memories of days and nights I had typed furiously away on that typewriter. Even the correction of the word ‘bluish’ on the image brings back delightful memories of days when computers were considered alien and a ‘delete’ option just did not exist. Of course, now I am thoroughly spoilt by, and greatly enslaved to, the unlimited possibilities offered by the computer.

Thank you, Rajesh, for bringing back memories of those days of boundless creativity by means of not a ‘mouse’ but pencils, pens, paint, crayons, brushes, knives and whatever else that you could get your hands on. This image reminds me of those days when you didn’t just log out to close for the day but spent about half an hour in the washroom washing off paint from your hands, hair and sometimes your nose too! And the artists’ department was not made up of cubicles, the walls of which did to you what blinkers did to horses. Artists’ room used to be a creative haven though in utter disarray, or rather, a colourful chaos.

In those days, every work we did had an interesting story behind it. And these stories cemented the team bond. Perhaps this piece of paper is testimony to the bond – and the copies of our numerous works and other bits and pieces that I have still treasured in my safety locker!

For those who would like to read a more legible version: 

My Masterpiece

With the fine feathers

of subtle imagination

I paint a picture new,

strange, intense and sublime,

with the crimson of twilight,

the scarlet of the dawn,

the depth of midnight blue

and the ash of cloudy monsoon,

the tinted white frays

of the bluish green seas,

the spreading soft yellow

of the slowly ageing leaves,

the greenness of the ferns,

the roses of the roses

and all the soft crayons

of many a lovely dream.

Oh! Only if I could

create this masterpiece

with all the dazzling hues

that my eyes daily perceive!

           

Treasuring a legacy of memories

Illustration: Bharati Varrier

Nostalgia. That feeling of wanting to go back to a place in your memory. In reality the place may have changed far beyond recognition. But in your memory, it remains intact - the way it looks, sounds, smells, feels and even tastes. Home is a place of nostalgia. There are certain special corners of the home you relate with. The sound of rain, the sight of the garden, the smell and the taste of the food you loved - each memory evokes the same longing. Go back home, and it may remain just the same for some, but it's still not quite the same. Because you have changed. And then you have this longing to return to that particular period of time, which just cannot be and that's why you've the longing in the first place. Perhaps that's why this beautiful feeling always comes with a sense of loss. However, the happiness of the memory overpowers the unhappiness of the loss.

Homecoming is about my home where I was born and brought up. The window grill, the jasmine and the night queen are some of the tangible aspects of my memories of this wonderful home. Time can fade and wear out the subject of your memories but not the cherished memories, which remain fresh forever. They are treasures that cannot be given, taken or thrown away. They can be shared, but they are still all yours.  They are there for as long as you are.

Homecoming

Rusty latches are harsh

On hands roughened over time.

Hinges creak, the gate drags

And tears wild, overgrown weeds.

Grappling vines of wild jasmine

Grope up the wall

Overflow the terrace

Burst into a thousand blooms

Fall again in a fragrant curtain

Down the eave

And hush lingering echoes

From a long distant childhood.

The night queen showers

A riot of memories

A few fallen apart, some faded,

And some buried too soon

To lay a lush white carpet

Unswept by gaze

Untouched by breath

Undisturbed by the hands of time.

A legacy undiscovered

A treasure unseen

Just let be, don’t step on it

This heirloom of woven memories.

Mooning over the moon

One night as Dick lay half asleep,

Into his drowsy eyes

A great still light began to creep

From out the silent skies.

It was the lovely moon's, for when

He raised his dreamy head,

Her surge of silver filled the pane

And streamed across his bed.

So, for a while, each gazed at each --

Dick and the solemn moon --

Till, climbing slowly on her way,

She vanished, and was gone.

-         Walter de la Mare (“Full Moon”)

Nothing in the world would have inspired poetry as much as the moon. The moon has been glorified, romanticized, symbolised, mythologized and victimized by lovers world over. The moon has been made a messenger between young lovers, a witness to love’s solemn pledges, a partner in love’s little trespasses, a conspirer in love’s little surprises, a mediator that sorts out lovers’ tiffs and the eternal pacifier when all of love’s labour’s lost. For ages now, the moon has been listening to the yearnings, sorrows, complaints and reprimands of lovers and sometimes even held responsible for love’s frivolous and not-so-frivolous truancies.

Poems about the moon, however, do not always revolve around romance. Sometimes the moon herself is the mother and sometimes the Divine Mother. Though the moon is almost always a she (a fair woman, a maiden, Mrs. Moon, a little old lady…and so on), it has been referred to as a he also though not often. Then there is also the crazed moon, the cruel moon, the hooded moon, the sad moon, the cold moon and the merciless moon along with the fair moon, the bright moon and the beautiful moon…

Surprisingly the moon has also been …hold your breath…the celestial onion, a sheet of paper and a saucer of dusty milk. What’s more, the moon has been a jewel for many a maiden’s hair, a motif, a lamp in the air, a sailing ship and sometimes just a yellow thing.

Let me confess, The Half-Moon is my way of mooning over the moon. By the way, this is an honest poem. That night the moon was just half. It was midnight. The French door was half open. The drapes were fluttering. And I was drowsily watching the moon.

The Half-Moon

Sailing across half the night

The half-moon peeps

Through the half-open French window,

Fluttering drapes throw gentle shadows

Across my half of the bed

And paint a featured half-wall of light and shade -

A slideshow of wanton dreams.

I lie half asleep, or half awake,

Like the night’s simmering embers,

Half unspent, half unleashed.

A trot down the memory lane

Illustration: Bharati Varrier

                                          

Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger,

My daughter, as we walk together now.

All my life I’ll feel a ring invisibly

Circle this bone with shining: when she is grown

Far from today as her eyes are far already.

-         Stephen Spender (“To My Daughter”)

I read for the umpteenth time the above poem - my most favourite. I have always loved these lines right from when I first read it, going back to reading them over and over again through the years, and I continue to love the poem even now when I have two daughters, one in her teens and the other in her ty’s. Today when I read it, my thoughts rush back to those days when I had walked (with my whole hand around my father’s little finger for a while and later trotting around just as kids do) along the country road from the banks of a gurgling river to my paternal home.

It was a large house standing majestically at the heart of a large areca estate. The road was rough terrain in itself – untarred, untamed and unspoilt. There were loose rocks and stones, and the journey was long. It was impossible to walk without sandals because it hurt and it was difficult to walk with them as they slipped off my feet at every step. But walking was still fun and this yearly trip was one I always looked forward to. I loved watching the flowers and the butterflies in all hues and shapes and sizes. The tiniest of the tiny flowers that grew on the wayside shrubs grabbed my attention the most, for, it was a constant surprise to me (it still is) that such tiny flowers existed…and so pretty too!

It was a long walk, or maybe it was just so from a child’s point of view, for that road and the walk were lost to me in my teens. The river that we ferried across before setting out on this wonderful ramble was also very long, flowing past our courtyard all the way down to greet us from where we boarded the ferry, and we enjoyed glimpses of it as we wound our way up home. As I grew up, of course, my hand encircled my father’s finger no more, but the scenery still continued to amaze me, and my feelings too varied in hue keeping up with the flowers and the ’flies.

I began this post to describe that long journey but felt reliving the same as a kid would be best. Reflections is a poem I wrote years, rather decades, ago which mirrors the haphazard, yet beautiful, memories of a walk that a kid loved and treasured through her life. I thought of rewriting the poem, but by doing so I would be unfair to the kid, spoiling her side of the story. So I have left the poem unprocessed and the memories it carries remain raw and rustic like the countryside it portrays.

Reflections

Memories retreat        

to a lost childhood,

to a remote village,

to a far-away home

and a dancing ferry

which moves in a ballet

to the rhythms of joy

on the waves of a river

that flows shallow

in the heat of summer

and heaves a panting bosom

in the throes of monsoon,

to alight on a shore

and a long-winding trail,

never-ending, tiresome

and yet so peaceful.

The way is craggy,

dark with shadows

and so crudely bare

to the passions of weather.

It often disappears

into cool green thickets

to (alas!) arrive at

the ancient mansion of a home

that appears tiny

at the heart of a compound

vast, its boundaries

lost in the rows and rows

of areca palms,

jack and coconut trees.

As homeward I near

on springing feet

treading ever so softly

over the touch-me-nots,

and the fallen buttercups

in a charming confusion,

my heart surges in joy.

I am eager to lose

myself in the wonder

of a calm enchanting world,

where the soft sweet gurgle

of a beautiful river

would soothe my afternoons

in the sprawling backyard,

where I’d lie still and awake

to the squabble of crickets

in the stillness of nights

into the chilling wee hours,

where I can quietly run away

into the labyrinth of trees

and happily lose my way

in my fancy dreams.