Good to be back

In more ways than one. First things first, there is something about being Home..it could be the messiest, dingiest place, but nothing beats the comfort of being in 'your' place. It is akin to being in your body., as in being alive:) my travels took me far and wide, to hills and valleys, to snow and scrotching sun..they were wonderful, surreal, soul stirring...but coming back home to your bed and kitchen has an incomparable charm. 

On that note, this blog post has a significance. The nomad life comes to a halt gently, transitioning into my comfort zone. A new year unfolds just in time, bringing in new promise, new lease of life and dreams and unheard, utold vows of being more regular with the jotting down of thoughts that linger. 'Why not make the much overdue restart!?', the mind ponders, and  the fingers work in harmony with the grey cells. 

And then, the winters of the west coast! A perfect yin and yang of crisp air, filled with the precarious smell of foliage waiting to burst out of the branches on the numerous trees..air so sharp, that it tickles and tingles, pierces and pokes the many invisible pores of the epedermis.  Bright sun fails in outdoing the winds but adds to the ambience nevertheless.  Bare stems stand still, tricking the eye into believing they are gone! But spring springs back, in full vigor. The sinuses protest but the senses devour the sight from a safe distance - filtering through the window panes, open blinds and sheer curtains. 

Lost in a wonderland, the little girl that lives inside reaches the footsteps of 'Home sweet home' did I hear her voice ripple in sensual echo "There is no place like home" :-)

Ponder

It had been well over a couple of weeks since I blogged last. I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. My head was filled with random ponders, threatening to burst. I have a confession to make. Life here is very complex - or complicated! Nothing like it is back home. You have help for practically everything - someone drives you around, someone cooks your meals, some one cleans after you and some one else presses your clothes - Ironically, you have no time. Ironically, it complicates your life. For me, personally, this 'help at all pauses you take' makes me busy in a very silly and absurd way. I lose track of my time. I lose the momentum - the feeling of 'being in control' and as a result get busy doing everything else except what I am supposed to be doing - and that includes blogging. I am yet to put a finger on the reasons behind my being 'busy' - but I swear my day zooms past like a commercial break punctuating a television program. I probably sleep walk - should consciously check on that ;-)

I'll get back. To the ponder that is. I connected with an acquaintance of mine yesterday - A woman of two beautiful children. A woman who is steadily becoming a good friend. A petit frail lady who passes off as few years younger than her age. She sports perfectly straight hair that falls bountifully around her shoulders and carries a tote bag on her slender arms. She talks in mouthfuls, smiling as she speaks, raising her thick set of brows, nodding in amusement at the most mundane of details I relate to her as she comes to pick up her kids from the art class. One looks at her life and sees harmony, perfection and perfect order. One wouldn't in the least suspect anything wrong with her life. She is a cancer survivor! After our family's own tryst with the 'elephant in the room', I saw her opening up more, sharing all her fears, battles, triumphs and wisdom with me while we cope with my Mother in Law's journey to recovery. I listen to her - imagining myself at her feet, taking notes about life and the battles it throws us into - the crap that happens, sometimes in moderation, sometimes in heaps and heaps - but is it not the courage and grace we sport during our worst times that unveils our true selves?

Challenges makes us or break us. Life is not fair. It is very easy to be fragile, cry and howl, complain, crib, whine and hold everyone and everything that crosses our path as the reason behind our turmoil. In our cares, we often manifest into miserable creatures, liberally splashing all that misery on everyone we come in contact with. It takes substance, integrity and character - like the one this brave and wise woman sports, to face our downfalls and fears with grace and poise. Just yesterday this woman said  "A person who understands others' feelings is a great human" - I paused, examined the sentiment and smiled my brightest. In a world where 'others' is quickly becoming obsolete, I found  this exemplary woman, who, in her own complications, is still strong enough to look out for others.

I feel blessed twice, to have crossed paths with my friend, and to be a part of the family my Mother in Law hails from. Everyone in the household - that includes women in their prime with perfect health, (and of course, that includes me) had so far complained about back aches, head aches, upset stomachs, lack of sleep, PMS, boredom, lack of time, lack of rest and a gazillion other cares that I can't really list out - but the woman in her sixties, battling a life altering disease, sit there with an iron clad smile that doesn't budge from her lips. She doesn't even complain about the weather. I, every once in a while, pause and reconsider if my complaining about lack of sleep because the 'street dogs had a field day in the middle of the night' qualifies as a complaint to begin with. I freeze in this moment, in awe and wonder for all those lofty souls that endure through  thick and thin with utmost integrity, gratitude, grace and love. And I do hope, I evolve into a better person just because I am fortunate enough to know, observe and interact with these heroes and fighters.

Escapade

Once in a while, when one gets relatively lucky, one spots a sight on the busy road, like the one I spotted very recently. One might wonder what the said 'sight' is - if it is Shahrukh Khan zooming past a Harley davidson and waving back at me, or Narendra Modi doing a Namaste rallying on an open top vehicle. It was neither a mirage nor a miracle..it was, of all the things, the brightest green hued Chameleon in the whole entire world  and perhaps the most adventerous, laid back daredevil his species had produced. He had, I assume, woken up from a well rested sleep and decided to face his fears! And  behold the way he did that. He formed a slowly crawling, unmistakable smear on the road, his color was probably the saving grace that shielded him from ruthlessly unruly traffic, announcing his presence ahead of time. How else would one explain his crossing the divider and getting to the side  my vehicle was cutting through? We slowed down and please believe me when I say that I could see an expression on his face, an obvious pride and a gait that seemed to challenge the passers by.  He was not scurrying, nor was his frightened. His four limbs moved with the symmetry and precision of a robot making me wonder if he had built in special effects that animated his movements. His rigid tail curled into a tight coil at the tip and he emulated Michael Jackson doing his slow motion walk in Billie Jean video. I looked back, cranked and creaked my perpetually sprained neck muscle and tried to trace him till the end of the road, until he reduced to a speck and disappeared into the narrowing road, saying a quick prayer and hoping he'd succesfully complete his odyssey to the other end of the road.

He was just a glorified critter so to speak but the punch he packed in his courageous adventure and the shield of fearlessness that his brought along left a bright spot in my just unfolding day, a spot as green, as positive and as unmistakable as the color of his skin :-)

The white hysteria.

I did ponder upon the 'fairness' obsession of Indians a time too many, but it suddenly seems to have manifested into a white obsession that had seeped into almost every aspect of people's routine - from whiter toilet bowls to whiter shirts, sarees, suits, arm pits, bikini lines, teeth, baby soaps and the whole entire nine yards! Just the other day, when I was catching an old regional classic on TV, after a lifetime of a break, the whiteness mania jumped out of the screen, and to keep the metaphor strong enough - spat on my face and strangled my neck to suffocation.  Yes, it was insult plus injury all rolled into one, dipped into the bleach of 'collective regression' of the Indian janta and splashed all over me, its figurative pungence suffocating my brain cells to premature death! 

I gathered pieces of my scarred and shattered self to look back and ponder - not that it is going to help the 'operation white wash' in anyway - but just to purge out a little bit of that poison that was force ingested in the process of an innocent attempt to watch an old movie, walk down the childhood lane and revive some memories. The first shoker came disguised in a movie star and crickter riding an open top jeep, while the former mocks the latter about spending too much time on the pitch and getting all dark and unhappening. Then, a magical potion comes to rescue and adds the much needed glitz and glamor to the cricketer's face, and the young women of my country, being the white watchers they are, clamour after him. It was a message delivered profoundly, loudly, clearly and strongly that no matter your skill in the game or the grit in your challenges, your life is as bright as your skin tone, and nope - it is not just the women who need to be fair anymore, to get a good groom or job or just a plain old good life. We seem to have caught up on that part of gender equality. Even males need to be 'fair'! Fair enogh! Isn't it?

There was a time in the golden era of telivision when a bright white clad Lalithaji lectured the nation about the many virtues of 'Surf' detergent powder that made her win both court trials and kitty party arguments with the same aplomb. Now I see numerous manifestations of her in both genders, ages and  sizes. A whiter outfit has the potential to win you anything from jobs, contracts, romantic dates, powerful positions, leadership opportunities and even customers and clients. The same goes with smiles polished with one of those many toothpaste formulas. They make your teeth glow in the dark like florescent strips and bring the other guy's girl running to your side.  But in practical application neither the powders or the pastes add any kind of brightness to our school uniforms or molars. If there were any sort of stringent laws about false and emotional bait advertising, I am pretty sure a good number of those businesses would be sued by now.

What do these ads do to you and me apart from putting our worth and intellect down based on the shade of our skin, clothes or teeth? They induce a collective 'white' complex in all our brains - my fourteen year old nephew who is this quintessential tall dark and handsome young man with the trade mark South Indian skin tone and saucer eye balls was subjected to several brutal analyses of his 'dark' skin during his recent trip to India, even by kids his age and by family members. The American bred young  man had a disgusted look for our tribe all along. I could'nt for once, tell him the glories of our land or the virtues, cause we as a nation, didn'nt seem to have looked beyond the color of his epedermis.

Like I said, it won't change much..but my insides seem a little cleansed from all the white dirt that had piled up. I'll go back to scrubbing the kid's white uniform and cussing Ariel detergent for its underperformance - and pray that a jaded school shirt might not take away the chance of being the class monitor from my unassumingly innocent eight year old who might still not understand how her getting 'tan' after coming to India, had become a conversation starter and burning issue in the whole entire neighborhood :-) 

Here's to a fairer world and fitter screws! Screws of the brains, that is ;-)

Melodious Meanings

On a slight diversion from the ponder I intend to indulge into, I have to  admit that getting off of Facebook left a void in my routine and filled up, and did so amazingliy, some other craters that appeared in my days over a period of time. I see folks reaching out to me through the other happening app on the block. On one such 'reaching out' sessions with a friend back home that loves and misses me badly, who in return is loved and missed by me badly, sent me a link to her favorite song. Now, what are the chances that I click on links and videos sent by my friends? At a risk, I admit - few to none! Blame it on my laze, or just the short attention-span I seemed to have developed to the overload of 'shared' stuff on FB, It does take a nudge of the brutal kind from the senders to make me sit through the loading and assimilation of such shares. Last night, when I promptly clicked on the link and  unmuted my smart phone..I was greeted with the audio visual of a very articulate singer crooning a  well orchestrated number with expressions that suggested he was devoring some sort of elixir. As hard as it was to keep my brain concentrate on a song that made as much sense to me as the graffiti written in the Greek alphabet on the concretes of the narrow streets of Athens, I felt fumes of that melody making my insides stir in an unsure joy! Had it been a video of the song, I'd have contextually guessed, with the help of those lyrics,  what the words woven into those lucid notes on ranom instruments were trying to convey to me. I was done listening to it and paused for a long moment to experience the after taste of the composition only to be greeted with a blankness that startled me.

Here's my friend who nudged me the nudge that it takes to make me listen to it, claiming it makes her insides joyous, and here's me feeling slightly awkward to admit it to myself that the song did'nt speak to me. Just when I keyed in telling her that the melody  was superb and I wished  I knew what the lyrics meant, my hubby, who was unintentionally eavesdropping on the music asked me replay it exclaiming that it sounds amazing. While the husband in question didn't understand the lyric any more than I did for the same exact reason I mentioned above, he seemed to have heard the unconveyed message or it could just be that he is a better candidate to appreciate the universal language of melody. Thus, the ponderer pondered over the obvious. Am I a lesser mortal that was destined to not get the unknown but universal language of music that makes the babies, birds,beasts and even the flora and fauna respond and rejoice in its melody? How shameful, how shallow? But then it struck me, the obvious destiny that I was supposed to be meeting..the destiny of loving and living in words. To me, perhaps, it becomes very essential to understand in that many words, the meaning that breathes life into melody. It could be an obvious lack of connecting to the notes or a recklessness that refuses to make an effort to delve into those sounds, but no matter how many times I heard the song,  the desired effect eluded me with a vengeance.

And then I picked up, to test run, the requested gift for the approaching birthday - noise cancelling headphones by Bose - and played the smooth voice of Mr.Nigam lending vocals for an impossibly chiseled  Mr.Roshan. Those magical words set to a tune, whispered into my ear, almost making me imagine a set of lips sending those sound waves directly onto my eardrums and my every cell dances respondingto the   power of  language. And thus I realize, as much as I love music, the key to my joy is vested in words.

The power to stir my soul lies in the strings of familiar sounds, the sounds that translate feelings of anguish, love, helplessness, disappointment, longing, fears, gloom, joy and tears into something palpable. My world seems to be built on them, bit by bit culminating into a whole, unfolding the mystery of the universe and beyond.  As much as my feet tap and hands sway to the seven notes, my soul refuses to budge but to the power of the millions of meanings that emerge in carefully placed patterns of the alphabet. To me, nothing beats the power of words. Those words serve as an index, as a connection, as a reflection and a translation of everything that lies between the earth and space..including Music and melody - and how rediscovered I feel just wording this ponder! :)

Reflection

These selfish bits..

They seek what they don't share,

Love they want..but do they care?

Lost in an indulgence

Of what they are denied

They bask in the glory of inflated pride.

Their blessings galore

Wash away in tears of want

They fight mighty wars, to get what they can't!

While all that is, lies heaped in a pile

It is neither counted, nor accounted -

For it is not worthwhile!

The trained sight looks diligently

Flaws it spots

Slotting itself into the poor havenots!

Yin and yang, these allies throw

Right in the face,

Just go with the flow!

Count the blessings,

Say a humble thanks!

Look away from the gaping blanks.

Peccadilloes, these turns and twists -

Our downfalls blur in the halos 

We imagine, exist!

This world ain't perfect,

It can never ever be..

And this world includes

You and me :-)

Verse

It is a flight..
Although of stairs,
It still is a flight..
Launching into space!
Those careful steps
Ascending the terrace
Leaping into the divine grace!
Life shrinks when placed below
Under  the blanket of  stars aglow!
Where do these airs of existence escape?
When the soul shuns the mortal remains?
Perhaps into this vast nothingness..
Lost like a twinkle in the Sun's blaze!
These little plights, these petty fights
What are they, but flecks of dust!
Under this celestial arbor
Things fall in the right place,
Live n love , shun malice.
This flight of stairs..
This flight into the air..
Bliss unfold..saga retold!
Lift the head and  intently gaze!
Bask in the cool of  that starry haze.

Transition

Behold, the intoxication

Of being in your company!

Abundance of exuberance

Shining in your splendor!

Beautiful faces, bountyful freshness -

A vigor that can capture the world!

Tangled heartbeats,

Lustily grazing wet skins,

Akin to love? These bountiful hormones.

The universe blurs in the background -

With thruths and realities.

Rosy lens you are -

Showcasing a mirage.

Flip by, day by day..

Slipping into finelines

Of fate and the face

Unfolding the ultimate verity!

Rising emotions, overflowing sensations,

All settle down -

The blurred background comes into focus..

Once you transition into the depths of life!

Oh youth - pretty and naive -

You are something else!

Reselience

Life happens, not like it is expected to,
It serves bloody blows for me and you!
The next turn would have been
The dream come true -
But the twists we encounter
Detours to challenges anew.
Thorns sink in the skin -
Roses we desire!
Was that a happy grin
Set to fire?
Seek to smile, joyly dance-
Circumstances snatch the chance.
Dreams knock down
Like domino blocks.
The doors to bliss
Appear with locks -
But wait a blink,
Be positive when you think,
As clouds they say, have silver linings!
Poke through hurdles
Armed with smiles-
Then journey unfolds
Of joyful miles.
Those hits you endure
Of  bricks and stones-
They break the bones,
But hold in the moans!
Gather them together,
Prepare your ground,
Build your abode
In a strong rebound!
Rope in the guts,
Life does get hard -
To meet with those cares,
Hardy soul prepares - 
And sprouts fresh foliage
Of grit and dares!


(Inspired by the click above by a dear friend)

Pain

If  the droplets could be heaped,
They would reach the skies
And puddle back in under the eyelids.
Flooding the pining insides!
If  feelings could be stacked
They would topple down in a mess -
Call it grief, call it gloom
Call it a bud, nipped in bloom!
Homeless dreams haunt the broken heart.
An orphaned hope mocks back,
Making rude faces.
Vessels we are..
Carrying  loads, being used.
Caught in a mirage..
Chasing an illusion.
Life goes on yet,
Wrapped up in lies
The ones we tell, the ones we hear
What's the purpose of crumpled hearts?
Of ripped apart feelings?
Could they heal? Could they unbreak?
Life goes on yet,
Wrapped in lies..
In the lies we pitifully live!

(picture - light sifting through the darkness of  my room)

Joy ride.

I spent a sizable amout of my life in an automobile, both behind the steering and in the passenger seat. The flow and order on a US highway baffled me to no end..the high speed cars zooming past, and the ones that changed lines did so seamlessly, as though they are weaving a tapestry of vehicles in perfect design. Looking at the traffic through my tinted window seemed near meditative. It had a soothing quality to it that lulled me into peace. Now take that scene and put it next to the roads of Hyderabad and you get  the perfect yin and yang. If there is a perfect visual antonym for order, it has to be the roads and the traffic here. A concoction of pedestrians, metro rail workers, hawkers at the signal posts, beggars, random stray animals, two wheelers, three wheelers, four wheelers, eight wheelers - you get the idea! I made it a point these days to put my camera away while soaking in the details of the road - or  else, I'd have had pictures of six passengers on a motorbike, twenty in a pick up truck with odds and ends like bundles of hay, Share autos busting at seams with people stuffed in to double the capacity - but somehow, they all seem to safely make it to their destinations. It is hard to spot people riding with helmets and toddlers sit on the back seat of bikes holding while wrapping their tiny arms to their guardians' waists.

The perfect accent to this bedlam is the sea of faces that stream through. No two faces dress, look or emote alike. The skins seem transperant with minimal decorations - mostly Bindis in random shapes and the occasional streak of vermilion in the parting of the hair in lieu of a wedding band. I recollect the overcrowd of makeup counters in our departmental stores back home and wonder what Indian women do differently to sport the clear complexions and natural beauties. Now, it is not like I want to brand myself as a bonafide foreigner, but the simple fact that I'd been away for a while now and life had drastically changed with special reference to the traffic on roads and perhaps my own angles of looking at them changed too :)

The most interesting part is the hoardings I spot. The grammar Nazi in me has a loud chuckle and the amateur shutterbugger gasps at almost every other sight. I shall make it a point to designate one of my upcoming trips to clicking just to add the visuals to my descriptions. I spotted everything from Testy Food join, Multi cushion restaurants and other linguistic marvels that escape my mind at the moment. Ironies of life clutter the road, almost unfolding a thesis of sorts into the human psyche.

The best part though, is the sheer variety - the adults, the kids, the workers, the drivers and their super unique signatures and expressions. It looks like a mini world, kind of like a Noah's arc where one of every kind is thrown in to survive - except the sheer number of specimens is overwhelming. Now it might be soothing to sit next to a window on the west bound US highway I 580 - but these lanes and roads, these twists and turns stimulate the body, mind and spirit in a way that only these paths can do - the priceless bonus is food for thought and numerous ponders that pulverize the infamous block :)

Picture - one of the many ironies, clicked with my smartphone! ;)