Verse

The lug on heart..
Fending ways to cope
 Like wax drips from a Candle..
With flickering light.

Those many inflictions,
Of spoken, unspoken words!
Of spitefulness or its absence,
Plunging into the abyss.

Like the protective armour
Cutting into flesh..
The many nerves that run
Snap here and there...

A lump forms
Griddlelock of  emotions
Choking in the bottleneck.
Some flows -  they just clog
In the gutter called
Indifference.

Travels

Varanasi. Kashi. Beneras...Same old city quiet literally no matter how you choose to address it - a city that is touted as the oldest city on planet, city of Life, city of Death and things between those two events. A city that brought a mixed bag of feelings and emotions based on the stories that floated around me since my childhood. A city that is the ultimate destination of every practicing Hindu.the one that is errected on the banks of holy Ganaga..the river that cascaded onto the Earth from the matted crowning glory of Lord Shiva.

The other side of the coin shows something else..A crowded city, filthy like never before, stinks to high heavens, city of fake swamis begging on streets, city of half burnt funeral pyres that are shoved
into Ganga..And ofcourse, beware of being looted in the name of Holy Father. Quiet the contrast, isn't it? And naturally, my decision to tag along with family and extended family wasn't an easy one, specially when thrown in with a baby and a tight itenary to the motherland. But I caved in, and it is probably one of the best travel desicions I had taken in my life!

I have a very unconventional equation with God. I say God and not religion cause I feel the term 'religion' puts barracades around the omnipresent. I grew up learning from Catholic nuns. I firmly believe in Dargah Sharif of Ajmer and Hanuman, Lord Ram's biggest fan, is an icon that I identify myself with. Vishwanadhji (Translated to 'Master of the universe) the ultimate form of Lord Shiva, resides over the holy city of Kashi. It is firmly believed that if you breath your last here, the gates of the heavens open up to you granting Nirvana. Isn't that enough to prick one's curiosity?

When I spotted lush pastures from the flight's window, a mental image that I had of Ganga ghat blurred into a reality slap. Kashi wasn't to be seen till we travel a good thirty kilometers by car. My hotel window wasn't any different. It showed a city scape..a visual that would have been any generic place in India. I am sure I irked the driver of our rental car with an equivelant of 'are we there yet?' I kept asking him as to when I would get a glimpse of the river, or the Temple's gopuram (Roof/Dome that is tapered as per Hindu archetcture). He just did the Indian negation nod after a few 'We won't be able to spot them' replies.

What followed were self discoveries, soul searches, epiphanies, deep meanings and fond memories. When I visited Vishwanadhji's temple, I was taken aback by the sheer size of his form..an insignificant dome like rock embedded into a 3x3 niche TO THE CORNER OF A 10x10 room. The experience was so surreal that ir just put things in perspective. I travelled miles and miles away from homw, changed flights, means of transport, invested hours of thinking through and apprehensions to be face to face with an idol that blurred into an epiphany of sorts...all that was for a glimpse at something as plain but the vibrations it generated in my being, the warmth it flooded my soul with and the moisture I felt in my eyes snapped in a perspective that only such and experince could impart.

What followed was a yearning to see the Ganga in all her glory. We secured stellar seating to view the spectacle called 'Ganga Aarti' an offering of prayer with an array of lamps. I was lost into a world amid all that crowd and bedlam...a spectacle that etches onto your soul with its aura and the sound of drums resonates in your heart. Ganga is a river that is considered no less than life giving elixir. One dip into her serene waters and she is believed to wash away our sins and cleanse us from inside out. I took a dip and two and three and felt like I stepped out of a hot spring with medicinal properties.

A pair of black cobras danced to the tune of a snake charmer in the premisis of KalBhairav temple a deity that is supposed to rule over and keep guard of Kashi. A deity that is one of the many forms of Lord Shiva that assumes the form of a Dog. Countless monkeys played around the Hanuman Mandir, the most spacious of all the temples in Kashi and the Consorts of Vishwanayh have humble little adobes and really dainty forms - a sharp contrast to their larger than life auras as Mothers of the universe.

There is so much to record, and so little ammunition to express them - an experince that is beyond words in the truest sense, that the words that are my creative blocks elude me.

Varanasi is everything they say it is. The Ganga was a earty red hue, with dirty banks and random water weeds floating the edges. The streets looked like mazes, not enought wide for even modestly sized four wheelers. Cows share the streets with pedestrians and clueless piligrims. The main temple is all muddy and wet, perhaps from people walking in with wet clothes after the Ganga dip. But I was  oblivious to all this. My mind was busy looking at the stars, gasping in self discoveries, amalgaming into the omnipresent. As they say - everything we see is a perspective :-)

Irony

Like the blood red rose blooming in the bush
Like the frothy wave licking  the feet
Like laces of snow dripping into water
Like the bright rainbow blurring in the sky!

Like the withered leaf falling to the dirt,
Like the bubbles in stream popping in silence
Like the breeze that gets wisps into eyes
Like the day that dips down into dusk.

Like the sand that slips through the grasp
Like the moments that zoom past like light
Like the cloud that melts into gentle drizzle
Like the fog that fades into the brightness of the sun!


Transient it is..we know, we ignore!
Thinking we are here for evermore.
That is Life in a nutshell :)

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!

:-)