Reflection

A very dear friend recently pinged me and asked when I was getting out of hybernation. We joked around the topic of my energy and time vaccum AKA the second born, who is moving faster than I can inhale and keeping me on my tired toes. After the conversation, I did realize that I was not even close to hybernating. Infact, my schedule as a mother to a toddler is anything but sleeping away in a cave, oblivious to earth's rotation and revolution. 'Why not dust that blog and stop talking to myself constantly in a blogging tone?' Was the logical query that followed. So here I am, with a stolen moment from my own life, doing what I like to do the most - write :-)

And what do you do when you have a voice over confusing you with numerous titles, topics and tales? Sometimes having too much to say gets counter productive. I have that travel experiences that need to be recorded,  ephipanies that occur around every new candle on the cake and verses, ponders, experiences, raves, rants - the list without an abyss. And ironically not enought time. Darn the alignment of stars that  throw in a block in leisure and a flow in time crunch. So here's to bigtime seasonal dusting and banter with hopes of  catching tiny glimpses of thoughts as the time zooms past in a blink!

Heart

Manuvering through the slinkest of lanes,
It refuses to stay still..
From one door to the other,
Knocking and scurrying away to next!
Not stopping - this mean menace.

Taking a peek into the translucence of a window,
Bending akimbo to glance through the hallways,
It sprouts wings, dancing in the thin air..
It glides tip toe, racing like lightning
Rest, it doesn't - freeze, it doesn't!

Up until it finds the bloom..
Enticingly spreading its petals to embrace,
It swoops down and gently alights,
And then it devours the nectar of that moment!
Time? It knows not those shackles.

Tending to dreams, sniffing the flowers,
Contemplating the hazy horizons.
Thoughts, sublime captures of life,
It treasures in the childlike heart!
Age? It is oblivious to those numbers.

Those outsides tell a different tale,
They advocate caution..those lines of expression!
Silver slivers play hide and seek
Reminders galore of three plus decades.
Limits? It is blind to those boundaries.

Simply.

Around late spring last year, I chanced upon my future lifestyle Guru. Mary Kondo, the Japanese decluttering diva made her debut in the land of the free and the brave, while I was away on my globe trotting. One has got to give credit to 'the attention span of a toddler' that kicks into moi intermittently, cause that spree of surfing the world wide web landed me before Ms.Kondo..I also had a norm defying nesting phase at that time, right before my baby made her appearance, and in that phase, I did my humble part in economy stimulus and contributed to the rising stocks of Amazon.com by ordering more books than I possibly could read. 'The life changing magic of tidying
up' thus made into my mail box and changed my life, once and for all.

Years ago, I had mastered the craft of reading inbetween the lines..in a good way ofcourse, and eversince, my thinking hardware had been formatted to excel at the same. While Kondo's  'Konmari method' as she calls it made me ruthlessly weed out remotely useless clutter from every nook and crevice of my home, it was a total cleanser of the intangible baggage I carried around in my mind and heart. The end result was a very liberating version of me that got rid of the last traces of the middle child syndrome. I let go of every unnecessary though, every petty hurt and truly experienced an epiphany of sorts. "Drop your stories" - I heard a wise friend's voice in my head - and move on to what sparks joy. Be it what you put on your outside, or inside...my simple life got simpler. It gave me the effects of transendental meditation.

Konmari method has a Zen like aftertaste to it. While She was speaking about the material cleanse, I underwent a deeper cleanse that has lived up to the overused cliche in the title of the book. There was a generous dose of supplement  books by great thinkers of my time that enhanced the experience of the cleanse for me, miraculously, all of the lessons fell together at the perfect moment. From Michael Singer's cognitive psychology, Don Miguel Ruiz's Toltec wisdom to Charles Gross, the totally random kid on Youtube culminated my whole soul experience to simply simplify the soul though none of them lectured about it. Sometimes, what you are given and what you have taken do not matchy match . We all seem to be in a chase of complexity...at the end, most of it wouldn't really matter - AT ALL.
It could possibly be my witnessing the face off with mortality upclose around me in the past year, but our lives are too short to be little. Drop them stories, declutter, rearrange and Live :-)

Verse

He stands tall, magnificient in all his glory!

 He seems to support a whole plethora...

The ones that thrive under his protective shadow.

 His crowning glory, 

Lush and lavishly spread around - 

With one blow of wind,

Heaves heavily.

 His skin has a pattern to it, 

Much like a hide

 That develops a texture soaking up the fierce sun.

His limbs, sinewy as an athlete's. 

 But, is stationary and silent...

 Patience in a palpable form.

 Oblivious to the wounds that are caused to his being, 

He keeps giving! 

Never uttering as much as a sigh.

 Hushed, mute, reticent..

Unconditional till his bones make our bed frames.

 Alas..arrested by his own growth.

Memoir

Her lanky frame lent a drape to chiffons, and on that unkempt monsoon afternoon, I saw a glimpse of her walking with a handmade poncho draped on her shoulders, adding an extra layer to keep the chill at bay. She held an unbrella with a hand while it drizzled steadily and clutched to her her handbag closer to her frame. She looked back, without stopping, to wave back at my aunt. Our eyes met for a fleeting moment. 

That was the first time I ever saw her.

The waiting hall had a somber feel to it. It served a single purpose...to house the folks waiting outside. Some awaited their loved ones emerge out of the treatments - the chemo drips and the radiation chambers. Some simply looked like they didn't bother waiting. Tell tale scars on their skins, painful shadows in their eyes narrating stories of battles, survivals and apprehensions. I saw her again..nothing seemed to have changed outwardly, or perhaps very little. Her chiseled features stood out in a pretty face. Her thick hair was cropped to compliment her grace. In a fleeting moment, I recognised her. There were tears, her frail hand held mine..the warmth it carried tingles fresh in my palm as We speak...We hugged, cried, smiled and strolled down three decades of memories. Lying on the hospital table, she tried to tuck away a lush black wig under the pillow she was resting on. I pretended not to notice it. I feigned normalcy while my mind grappled to make sense of how a perfect looking lady as her was harboring a terminal illness within. She didn't look like she could catch a cold..so vibrant and beautiful her outside was, while something evil wrecked havoc inside..brutally, silently!

That was the last time I saw her.

Her association punctuates my childhood. Memories big and small sprinkle along my growing path. she was in the background as my first decade moulded. She taught me..some lessons in the school campus and some out of it. The fun ones, the tender ones. The ones that form a part of my life's simple chronicles. Those stories that my mom, my aunt and her whispered to each other..the 'grown up woes', the ubiquitous battles of womankind that somehow made way to my innocent, curious ears. Her baby arrived somewhat late on the timeline. 'Mid thirties, poor woman' random people showered unwanted  pity. Even at my age back then, it was quiet obvious to me that she commanded envy from her peers, probably because of her beauty, or her affluence or the looks and career of her Captian husband. When the tiny bundle arrived, her man was sailing on the seas. She took it all with a resilient smile. Sometimes I used to catch her sobbing, specially after she would wait in our living room for painful hours, awaiting the analog phone to screech through the suspense. "Will he or won't he?" when the call finally arrived, the air around us used to ease a bit. I used to catch collective sighs of family members around me that waited with her, for her! Her voice used to break a little , shake a little and once the brief call was over..she used to sit down with her face burried into her palms, sobbing softly, sounding like a new born kitten. " He is safe, he is safe" she used to repeat, wiping her tears, inabsolute  relief. 

She was perhaps my sneak preview into womanhood. She cared for me tenderly. 

Fashion advice, choosing nail polish, talking about crushes, giggles...it was all teeny tiny memories after memories. As I grew up and got married and left my place, I used to see her once in a while, but the connect always happened instantly.

I heard of her passing shortly after having my second child last year. Her only kid barely hit twenties. Her loving spouse was left back to grieve. It rings fresh in my ears, her story about their wedding..her marriage picture placed on her fridge with that flashing joy of a handsome man and an ecstatic bride on his arm, smiling away through the layer of her transperant veil, that bouquet in her arms, held like a baby!  

Beth Esda, their home that was lovingly built. Princy, their bundle of joy! Suddenly, memories of her flood my everyday!

Her name had a prestine tenderness to it. I can get a whiff of its fragrance even today. Sometimes, the name defines the person. Aunty Jasmine, we didn't believe in the same God nor we were tied by blood, but you will live on with me, within me - summing up a sweet part of my childhood.

Nouveau

The year passed like a rollercoaster ride. Just when my senses got  used to a violent swing in one direction, the nauseating spin took me into the opposite motion. There was loss, light, numbness and then some serious soul searching. Virtigo like imbalance caught me unprepared but then who said life is fair? Or just when you pass the verdict of 'guilty as charged' for being brutal, it gives that ray of hope, penetrating through the dense foliage of life's lessons. It sparkles like dew on lush green leaves, it takes and gives. Amid all this circus of survival, things come to a stand still...things like writing blogs and sketching images. But recorded or not, they scroll through the grey cells begging for a form. Thus, the dusting of deams happen and chronicles of mundane life take form in virtual words, marking the beginning of Nouveau.

And life goes on...

Day 5 - E for Exams - E for Evolve

As a child I took exams very seriously. The most serious of those that came my way were the class X board exams. I was raised in the most typical of Indian middle class settings though I was exempt from being put through the pressure of doing good in examinations or the pain of being compared to the neighbor or cousin that scored more than me in Trigonometry. As a result I was exempt form the anxiety to be on top, or so I thought ...until I brought it onto myself. Don't they say it takes a village to raise a child? So the proverbial village made me realize early on, that my self worth and my appraisal in the world would be wholly and solely dependent on one thing - my mark sheet and my position in the class room, based on that mark sheet.

I looked around and realized the heroes were the ones that got top ranks, attended the best schools and had degrees that graced before and after their names as ostentatious adornments. What if someone made it through the Engineering and Medical entrance?  Please make way and worship the path that they walked on. What if they made it to the Indian Institute of Technology? - Give them the Noble prize, put their picture on your altar and pray that your kid (or you) would be fortunate enough to follow them. In short, our worth depended on our academic merit and all we needed to set our lives and cement our self worth was to rake in as many marks as we could in the examinations that determined our value as people for the rest of our lives. 

Thus I toiled. Buried myself deep into the books and dreamed day and night to get the top mark in the school - how couldn't I? Wasn't that my purpose in life? - I did all I could, never watched TV and worked more that I played like the Jack that was a dull boy! I topped my board exams, basked in the inflated ego that followed when all and sundry praised me to high heavens and thought I got it all figured out - this life and the way to live it! Up until I didn't.

My now self, on retrospect would love to tell my then fourteen year old self a thing or two about life, living and scoring top grade in exams. It was for the fortunate evolution process my heart and soul went through. I look back and let out an empty smile - how over rated that whole circus was? How naive it is to make our lives revolve around out doing, out shining and constantly comparing ourselves to others to  validate our own achievements. 

Life is about wisdom and not knowledge, about compassion and not intelligence about living it our way and not outdoing the people around us.

I am all for achievement, ambition, accumulation of degrees, making it into gifted and talented lists, attending ivy league schools and earning big pay checks. I just hope that someone tells my generation of parents and this generation of kids that happiness, worthiness and contentment in life comes independent of all these things. That a person could have the most elaborate degree but could be an emotional idiot, an arrogant individual and our self worth is definitely not determined by our accomplishments.

Let's stop and smell the roses, take it easy - cause every little child in the world doesn't need to become a neurosurgeon, a space scientist or the president of USA - it is very important, however, to be comfortable in our own skin and be compassionate and reasonable human beings. The chances of kids succeeding and giving their best, probably works out better when they are given the right instructions to life and living.

Don't force achievements - they are utterly overrated!

C for a Cluster

There was this porous, spongey material...often occurring in shades of creme and white - often adorned with a luscious layer of richly colored fluffy stuff. There was the occasional rose, molded out of edible material and color that stained the tongues and teeth in an inexplicable shade of gaudy pink. Sometimes, the shading was coveted and gaped at in the mirror with a strange awe. It tasted more like a chemical than candied sugar, but that didn't deter us from claiming to want it or eat it.

 There were layers and layers, literal and the not so, to the simple pleasure of devouring a piece of cake and how it enticed me every single time I lay my eyes on a piece, though it was occasional. The usual birthday, the Christmas cake or the New year one. That's it? - yes, just three definite occasions and then the bonus, rare and random ones.

Cake continues to be a great draw for me - and sometimes I wonder if all the idioms, expressions and adages were coined just keeping my awe for the yummy treat! -

Now, that was a pice of cake, making this entry into my A-Z journey, but no, it won't be all!


                                                                      **********


Clueless and confused, I embarked on a journey with my husband, shunning my small town roots, to this land,  to Golden California. Ever since, this had effortlessly replaced my little idyllic town on the banks of a perennial river, somewhere in the lush lands of South east Asia.  I look at the ocean, the numerous shades and genes of diversity that color this land, the magical allure of Golden gate bridge, the steely cold pangs of the Pacific that lick my feet with their froth every time I take a stroll on the beach and feel the crunch of Sourdough on my taste buds, I feel a part of my very existence merging into this piece of land....

If C has to denote something, it has to be my home sweet home :-)



                                                                       ***********

I have a friend - almost a family member. But not the one that is typical to either of these groups. He keeps me company, humors me, flatters me and makes me giggle to myself in moments of my solitude. I look for resemblances, for matching points of view. I watch him in awe for the way he articulates and  simplifies truths of life - for his math atheism. For his unconditional bond with an imaginary friend. Calvin can easily make a place in my family tree...he could be one of my ancestors, he could be one of my offsprings - heck, he could be me! I banter in elaborate vocabulary - Calvin does that! I question the need of calculation and arithmetic (ditto, Calvin) He has replaced voids caused by realtime folks, he pops in my mind, hallucinating around my senses, offering me life advice. If I am Remy the rat, He is Gustav, the chef that acts as my guide.

A list without Calvin under the alphabet "c" is complete - Never! And nothing can leave me more content than listing him among my coveted possessions.


Concluding the 'C' is the Calvin fan from Charming California, consuming crumbs of creamy cake.

Ciao!

:-)

Day 2 - B for Banal

And now the real challenge starts - of making the title appear a little 'trying to be modest' - and if the challenge is failed - advanced apologies! And yes, sorry for making this an arbitrary one and starting the first two sentences with a conjunction:)

As far as I can manage - no Verse this time around. I don't want the easy way out. The elbow grease, the trying hard enough, the putting in required effort et al come into play. If I am doing it anyway, why not do it the right way? So here goes another dose of prose - (well, just a bunch of non poetic blah blah to be more precise but the rhyming of dose and prose was kind of irresistible.) On retrospect, I should have made this blog about just that - Blog! I should've no?

I keep saying Ten, but I am close to being eleven years old in the blog world. Just last night, I did a stroll back the memory lane into the recent past and was humored by my own thoughts and bits n pieces of ideas. Was a good idea, this Blog thingie. It really does give me a place I call  my own - sometimes conveniently forgetting that, albeit a small chunk, I do have an audience. If anyone of you, writers, non writers, thinkers, non thinkers are wondering what it would be like to have a blog, let me tell you, it is like having this 'resort' on cyber space, where you can be yourself and go on a vacation from the toxic world. (And at free of cost to boot) Yes, we do live in an overload of all things - good, bad and ugly. The space to introspect, create and reflect is as pious as our body. So blog equals to body on a very figurative perspective - an alternate being where you could choose to be your own critique, shrink, friend, philosopher, guide etc...and the beauty comes in when you have others peeping into the world of yours.  I keep saying this - who knows? An offspring might discover you generations down - in your now seemingly insignificant banter. So folks, if you are cogitating on a blog of your own - jump the gun, right now! (and keep at it, that's the trickier part)

I could go on and on when I call it Banal - but I are going to be considering - I mean, I am going to be considerate - to myself of course ;-) And save the Banal stuff and recycle it calling it Cliched, Dull, Everyday, Hackneyed, Insipid...(you get the drift don't you? ;-) in the coming days of Alphabetical blogging!
But like I said, all that matters is keeping at it!

 Please keep company - most kindly! :)

Day 1 - This and That

A very ardent supporter and well wisher of mine pinged me a couple of days ago, reminding me of the A-Z challenge that had become a tradition of sorts in my blogging journey for the past four years.

" Well, you are not too late yet, don't rob the world of your thoughts" the encouragement went on. And tell you what? - that qualifies as an answer to one of those 'What's the nicest thing you'd heard about yourself' questions! -) So, for obvious reasons, revived by the pleasant nudge that came my way, I decided to give it a try my own way - cause I was too self absorbed to realize it was April and too condescending of my own works to realize they'd be missed :-D

So, here I go, trying my shot at blogging each day of April - Ironically, Sundays were supposed to be days off - since I am doing it my own way, I thought it would be a good opportunity to keep at the daily writing and upping my blog count for the year - and of course, I did rule out the 'block' as imaginative in my previous ponders - so all the more reason to bounce back! Thus Sunday becomes the day one.

If you had any idea of how my previous attempts at A-Z went, they were hard core - picking one alphabet a day and trying to feign a verse with that themed letter. Honestly, verses come easier to me for some reason - they are less demanding of format, grammar and flow, and I effortlessly pick a few words, tie them up with a thought and an exaggerated dose of artistic liberties and call it a day! - A couple of years, I did the group blog thingie - it was nice. Now who doesn't like the ego stroked and cajoled and after all that "I am not ambitious' banter, it is a fact that everyone likes a kind word thrown at them once in a while - nothing succeeds like succulent words of appreciation. But somehow, the introvert kicks in violently and I retire back into my snail shell of being alone and being left alone - which are by the way, not as depressing as they sound! Alone and lonely are separate words with separate meanings. A wise soul once told me that if you like your own company, you can never be lonely! - I know, this reeks of self absorption, but if it simplifies your life - why not??

Technically, I should be blogging about something with the alphabet 'A' - I was majorly attracted to blog about 'assumptions', as I see the world runs on them - on your assumptions, on mine and the ones that our neighbor and his brother has about you, me and the world in general. If there is one single, solitary thing I'd like to work on to simplify life - it would be the caution in making assumptions. They somehow shut the 360 degree view to things, narrowing the view to a sentiment that might or might not be true. It further complicates our thoughts, our reactions, our reasoning and at a deeper level - our lives!

This thought is something that can't be skimmed through in a rush, so I thought I'd blog about 'Ahem' - not the 'ahem ahem' - like clearing the throat, but the sanskrit word 'Ahem' as in "I" - the big bad and ugly 'Ego' in other words! It is startling how my nine year old has one, slightly larger than her 4'5" frame and I do see it occurring everywhere, age and gender no bar! But then again, how can I really confine the vastness of the subject in one simple entry? I cannot! Can I?

Totally displaying my adult ADD, I need to add that the New Yorker really puts my attention span and comprehension skills to test. I do enjoy it when I am utterly it moment,concentrating on what is being said - which unfortunately gets me to the fact that we as humans are stunted in our attention span. We are not as good listeners as we are thinkers and speakers. Note to self - work on listening. As they are not many speakers when I listen, if you discount the little girl that remembers to tell me some random fact about deers (the new non fiction book she's read) for the umpteenth time and makes me wonder how she remembers the fact but forgets that she repeated it enough times to cause brain shut down in me) I decided to work on the concentration skills - which might at some deeper level, inspire a wish to meditate - one can hope, can't one?? And, sincere thanks to New Yorker for driving home that point!

I shall come back, more this and thats' ? The occasional easier ways out in the form of poetry? The desperate 'photo entry' to keep the 'blog each day' sentiment going...I know not what all I'd resort to. But it is going to be a month of putting the 'concentration' on a task to challenge.

I am too laid back for them Challenges, till one is thrown my way! And then, magically - a well hidden program to keep up, pops in and does the trick!

Thank God for forgotten and hidden potential, great friends, true inspirations and the motivation to keep on.

So, after all, A is for an Attempt (yet again) :)

Ponder - Paradigm shift

2014 looks like a fragment of my imagination from where I see it. It is amusing how my brain completely shuts off this part of my world once I am in my homeland. It is as if this home and these streets never existed. And magically, the same thing happens when I get back. It is probably my inbuilt defense mechanism that shuts these things off, making me more resilient and adaptable to the surroundings I am in.

My extended stay back home bought so many things into light - it was an eye opener in more ways than one. Some of the discoveries were made within and some without. Like they say - everything we see is a perspective and everything we hear is an opinion. There isn't the right and wrong like we categorize things - no black and white but numerous shades of Grey. The possible reference to 50 shades is just a sheer coincidence :-)

I was always known to think 'weird' - one of my close associates used a euphemism to tone down the 'weirdness' and called me 'eclectic'. Like I keep reiterating again and again - labels aren't for me. I am as volatile as it can get though the reflections, the experiences and the exposures did frame the core of my insides. I used to despise certain things from this very core - 'common sense' or lack thereof, for example - or Stupidity. Though I categorize myself as 'live let live' and never make 'to the face' judgements in general, I should be fair and admit that I always thought of myself as a practical and rational thinker. This obvious pride often led me on the roads of 'judgement' and undermining the people I thought were below my understanding of having common sense or being stupid.

Go place yourself in a country like India, and viola - you see a totally new ball of wax - one sees many stereotypes, blind beliefs, social taboos exercised with utmost pride - and most of all - the attitudes and the bandwagon effects and herd behaviours are totally amusing. It is said that people who believe they are rational are often more susceptible to cognitive biases and mine was probably the 'bias blind spot' - as in the tendency to see oneself as less biased than others :-) Yes, point made and how!!

I cannot completely take credit to my so called 'well rounded' personality (and no, that's not the midriff I am referring to ;-)) - I spent the better part of my life in the amazingly diverse 'west coast' of the USA and a better part of that better part wasn't spent parked in a three by three cubicle, going through the daily grind. Thanks to the spouse that granted me all the freedom to pick and choose and be myself. Over the past decade and a half, I transformed from this small town young woman into someone that had exposure to several different cultures, works of thought, situations, unlimited knowledge that unfolded on the world wide web, a fresh 'perspective' and not to mention the advantage of aging. And when you arrive with all these tools in tow, to a place like suburban India, it could be a ego inflating and an isolating experience at the same time. You would suddenly appear so larger than life to yourself that every bit of 'ignorance' you see around irritates you.

www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid


The silent judgements were masked, the irritation was carefully concealed - but I did end up feeling like I belonged else where and not in the place I chose to be. It probably made me feel like this because I was pumped up with a 'holier than thou' halo effect. Had I been living there, with that kind of environment and people around me, I am sure, I'd have been half this global, progressive or broad in my thinking.

Common sense and stupidity are very subjective. In an Indian household, it is common sense to leave the footwear outside. Just because your American counterpart doesn't do it, it is not a lack of 'common sense'.  Rather - it is not a common occurrence in that particular culture. I remember writing a blog about how 'hating someone with bad grammar' group on a social media website was a little over the top. In the same way, the group shares, the memes, the jokes and the inspiration messages that people share, reflect their own personal preferences. Just because they don't match my sensibilities - I learnt not to disdain them. Guilty as charged - I seldom open or acknowledge any of these links that are shared in my friends' circle. After this Aha moment, I make a conscious effort to go thorough them and appreciate what is seen on the sharing end of the link. I have to admit, my being 'smart' stopped me from doing so earlier.

We are a product of a lot of things other than our own prowess. And no matter how smart I consider myself to be, I am sure I fall somewhere in the spectrum of 'stupid' when it comes to the numerous smartypants out there that inhibit my planet. I have my share of biases, committed a few blunders and brutally judged people for who they are or what they are not.  But once the paradigm shifts, the panoramic view comes into picture.

Dear God, Let me never get too big for my britches! Amen.