Day 6 - F for Found

On a journey of finite steps
It was found
Then tossed around.
Some caught it,
Some captured it
Some used it and some abused.
It changed hands and fates
Found thorns and roses
Fended to itself through loss
And silently endured indifference
It reveled in acheievement
Whimpered in rejection
Was lost again and waited to be found once more.
Like a recyclable.
Till one day,
It gingerly walked to the door
Shut it close
And escaped into the infinite
Through the chimney of the house
Never to be found again
Once it merged into the gleam
Thus, finding itself
Away from the finite steps
Of being tossed around,
Releasing the need
To be caught or captured,
To be loved or cared!
Then began...
Freedom.



Pic credit - Chandra Elango

Day 5 - E for Epiphany

This blog contains my afterthoughts on the movie Rangasthalam in a conversation format - loosely inspired by the real ones I had with two special women in my life, who were readily willing to share my discoveries and tolerate my spoilers.
That being said, this write up contains not just spoilers but my very detailed interpretation of what I saw on the screen. Fair warning -if you wish to see the movie and do not want it spoiled for you or do not wish to see it like I did :-)
 
                                                                      *************

"So what's the movie about?"

"They said it was about politics. But I thought it was about handicaps"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes - The movie features some handicapped people and a deaf man"

"What?"

"Yeah - this man is deaf. And he has a huge block to accept that he cannot hear. He tries to work around it and somehow covers it up with his other virtues"

"Like?"

"He develops this ability to 'see' sounds"

"Like with his eyes?"

"Primarily with his eyes - majorly with his heart. That's how he discovers the handicaps around him. People with restricted abilities due to their lacks"

"What lacks?"

"The lacks that overbear physical limitations"

"Oh!"

"So this guy is in constant search of a black cobra that bites him. but somehow finds serendipity every time he looks for it. Once he finds a gaudy stainless steel watch that he takes it to his friend. She puts it on his wrist and it becomes a part of him"

"She? - you mean friends with benefits?"

"LOL - that's what the whole village thinks. But they are friends with benefits beyond what occurs to small, locked minds"

"Like?"

"Friends with benefits to each other's souls. They trust each other blindly and help each other cope with the voids in their lives. Like she becomes his ears and he becomes her shoulder to cry upon.

"Why does she have to cry"

"She buries a secret to safeguard her honor in a a man's world. But this deaf man never poses a threat to her so she reveals it to him finally as a last resort to save him. By the way, this man finds a pretty young lady while looking for the cobra. She doesn't fall for him right away. She even questions him about his 'connection' with his lady friend like the rest of the villagers do. He doesn't care to explain it to her, in spite of being smitten hopelessly. Eventually she gets him like soulmates are supposed to get each other. Without the need for explanation. She accepts him with his inability to hear upon developing the same ability as him, to hear beyond the obvious"

"So he gets the girl?"

"No he doesn't. He renounces her and picks his brother's goals over his own happiness and the girl and tells it to her in that many words and the smart woman that she is, with her new found ability, she rises over her limitations and goes to him"

"So he does get the girl then"

"Nope, The girl gets him. I see him as a bigger catch"

"So what about the brother?"

"He is well read. Wise. He falls in love with this beautiful young woman and ever so often sneaks out to meet her. Wears his heart on his sleeve and vows to save the villagers from the clutches of the power hungry president.

"Oh, President?"

"Yes, the figurative black cobra that the deaf guy searches for. This is handicap  #1 of the movie. He is both blind and deaf - beyond his lust for power and money and spares neither lives nor expense to achieve them"

"What happens to the president? "

"Whatever is supposed to happen to bad guys happens to him. But not until much damage is done. But the deaf guy - finds serendipity right? while searching for the cobra. He also finds the  purpose of his life. To save the people around him"

"So there are more handicaps in the movie?"

"Yes - Handicap #2 seems to have risen over all limitations in his life. He supports the brother vehemently in his goals and isn't corrupt like the president. He has noble intentions to serve the people"

"So what is his handicap then?"

"His ego. His pride about his caste. He finds it repulsive to let a  lower human touch his daughter. He puts it exactly that way. Even cruder actually. But in his handicap to rise beyond his 'noble' birth, he kills the future of his own child. He cares less about her happiness and more about what he perceives as his own honor.

"And...."

"He hopefully learns his lesson too. We don't know for sure"

"And what happens to the deaf guy?"

"He realizes the purpose of his creation"

"Which is..."

"Letting bystanders like me know that the biggest handicap us humans have is not physical. We see but we don't observe. We hear but we don't listen. We touch but we don't feel. Our sensory organs won't amount to much when we are trapped in the cocoons of our own selves and fail to look for what lies around us and what the universe collectively tries to tell us. Which is to rise above the handicap of selfishness and to have empathy"

"So it is a movie about empathy"

"Yes, The movie is about a Stage of sorts...bringing to life what Shakespeare paralleled eons ago. where we are all players and are out of control on most counts - we can reign only over our own hearts, thoughts and ego and how we choose to perceive what is unfolding before us"

                                                 *****************************
Foot note - This is a bird view of my perspective of the movie. The more I comb through the depths of the script, the more I discover - all of which, cannot fit into a blog entry :-)

Serendipity ;)


Picture courtesy - Chittibabu from Rangasthalam - Lifted off of Director B Sukumar's FB page :) 

A-Z Day 4 - D for Dream

 When I look through the air

And cogitate over my existence

I feel like a critter

Stamped into a sheet of metal

Bearing an ironical identity.

My name drags me down 

With its mythical weight.

I spread my transparent wings

Like a glider

And skim through lowly altitudes

Grazing on stained glasses of illusion.

I see so little, seek so much

Tied down to these limitations

Of my physics.

Sometimes, the distance between 

My real and surreal

Flickers inbetween

Mocking me of this trapped being.

I smile and drift

Into acceptance of my confines

And dangle onto dreams

Of flying in freedom

Over the vast blue skies

Blurring the distance

Between my real and surreal.

Day 3 - C for Caught

Sometimes you cannot. You can try all you want, but it just doesn't happen, the thing that you want, the way you want it. Then you sit and wonder if Robert Bruce was a fraud. You scream at the top of your lungs, may be not literally, in fear of waking up the neighbors at the Godforsaken hour but you do the screaming inside your head anyway. You like the shackles of the letter, but you don't like it. Confusion weighs down on creativity and all ideas look substandard. You laugh at yourself for sounding so egotistic. How do you define 'substandard' in you head? It suddenly sounds as if you have high standards. You feel embarrassed. Belittled by your own inflated sense of achievement. You keep looking around, tracing the length and breadth of everything that falls in your eye span and then look inside that grey and trace the vastness of your thoughts or lack thereof. You think of a cushion, a cup, a crease, a crevice. Catharsis, culmination, credenza - Geez! Why credenza with catharsis? Just because it sounds intelligent or it starts with a C? You laugh - not at yourself this time but at the futility of this commotion for nothing. You manage to catch a word here, and a word there and string them into some content of sorts. A catch to avoid getting caught. A catch to catch up on a challenge, a catch to call it a creation and carry the weight of it on crazy chatter. 

You sound crazy, but all you care is for the commitment. The keyboard keeps clicking akin to a pencil with some physics added to it. 

You ask Robert Bruce to forgive you. Seriously. You wink and close your laptop screen. 

Picture courtesy - Chaithanya Kanni

Day 2 - B for Bring

"Did you cook already? I'll bring dinner" 

 "Not yet - I'll bring hunger!" 

 He smiles into his blue tooth and she senses it somehow. 

 "I'll bring a problem"

 "I'll bring perspective"

 He pauses for a second. He enjoys these spontaneity of hers and somehow tries to measure up. 

 "I'll bring anger" 

 "I'll bring peace"

 "I'll bring silence" 

 "I'll bring conversation"

 "What if I bring an argument?" 

 "We got that covered -I'll bring logic" 

 "Ok my turn now to bring first" She says. "I'll bring confusion"

 "What am I supposed to bring? Aren't I the one that brings confusion?" 

 "Do a role reversal you dumbo, and bring me some clarity"

 "You are my clarity, I am your confusion. Let's leave it at that!"

 "So you ran out of stuff to bring?" She taunts him mockingly.

 "Not yet - I'll bring a fight"

 "I'll bring a white flag" 

 "Dang" He mutters "I'll bring unruliness"

 "I'll bring understanding" 

 "You are holier than thou. Aren't you?"

 "Not so soon Hon...keep them coming - we aren't done yet!"

 "I'll bring desire" 

 "I'll bring love"

 "See? Didn't I tell you? You have to top it all Mrs.Holier than thou. 

I won't bring dinner. I am cross. You go cook now" 

 "I'll bring a brick" 

 He laughs out loud. "Okay okay - I give up. I'll bring dinner" 

 "That's better. I'll bring dessert - and Don't have ideas alright? - You'll have to sit with me and watch cake wars"

 "Done deal! I'll bring slumber" 

 "I'll bring surveillance and shake you out of the slumber" 

 "I cannot win with you"

 "You won me"

 "That's enough winning"

He smiles into his blue tooth again. And somehow she knows.

Picture courtesy - Alfalfa and Darla from Little Rascals (1994)

A-Z Day 1 - A for Act

Not a novel parallel this,

Her stage - the lovely planet.

She wraps her soul

In such believable shades

Blending into the act

With seamless aplomb.

Her passion in crimson depth

Her fondness in a frothy white

Her gloom merging into the grays of the sky

Her wrath, concealed in  colorless waters.

She smiles through the unheard heartbreaks

Grins amid a sprinkle of aches.

You might reckon you see her

But then isn't seeing equal to trusting?

Like a dew drop on a lily pad

She radiates the colors beneath her transparent existence.

Never ever seeping into the surface she touches.

What rendition, this flawless facade

A performer par excellence,

With her many charades

On this dais called the Globe.

Click

"You cannot understand what you do not feel" She says without looking at him, staring into the distance with a perfunctory expression. They both sit in their garden sipping on their morning cuppa.
"How do you mean?" He asks

"Just like how I said it"

"But what if I ask how you said it?"

She shifts her gaze, looking intently at him and lets out a smile.

"Like how I never understood what it was to be a mother till I had our son"

"So do you mean I would never understand my mother cause I can never bear a child like a woman?" He challenges her.

She grins. "I didn't say you only understand what you experience. Feeling is an independent entity. you don't need to experience things to feel them sometimes and vice versa, unless it is physically felt, like a burn for instance. You can feel a burn for the most part. But can you understand something abstract without feeling it? which makes me realize, I never felt my mom's love for me the way it was supposed to be felt till I had a child of my own. What is the word I am looking for? Can you please supply it for me?"

"You do your own scavenger hunt sweetheart" He jokes.

"Empathy" - "That's what I am looking for. So, for the record, you can deliver a child and still not feel motherly, or be devoid of a reproductive system and still let motherly love seep through your every pore" She pauses. "Do I make any sense to you?"

"Hmm" he considers pursing his lips. "By and large" - "So is there anything I am not able to understand that you want to complain about?"

"Futile"

"Futile what?"

"Complaining, cause I have my shortcomings in the feelings department. I can never understand how you run from pillar to post, so charged and ambitious about your work nor can you understand  how the moment I realized I was in love, I actually felt motherly love, except I couldn't identify it as such. Up until I realized how my mom felt for me"

They both sip on their tea. He reaches out for her hand and places a gentle peck on her fingers.

"I hope you feel it" He says. "Someone very wise told me today that you don't understand what you don't feel"

"It's for you to figure out..if I you feel what I feel"

"Do you ever make a straight conversation?"

"I do. Do you ever understand my conversation?"

"Now don't corner me"

They continue their banter like school kids playing hide and seek between emotion and assimilation.

Pic Courtesy - Dhiren Shah

Celebration

I come back to you

Time and again

Searching for answers

Sorting out puzzles of life,

Pouring them all out

Into your womb,

Arranging those many fears and hopes

Into meaningless banters

Silently looking to find sense.

I find solace

Cuddling in your warmth and wisdom.

Those cathartic outpours

Magically unraveling solutions

Of the many maladies of life.

In your companionship

I decipher the meaning of this existence

And its contents.

Love, fear, hope, loss - 

They all seem more clear, much real!

Myself I find,

In your many crevices

Those borne in some heart, Those bloomed in some mind

Surprisingly giving form to my own emotion

As if, you have a mystic power

Of reading my thoughts.

Oh my mighty Verse

In your grace do I bask

Savoring you in a poet's voice

Or by feigning my own mediocrity into word heaps

And naming it a Poem.

pic credit - Chandra Elango

Appearance

Peel it off, the skin deep gloss
Cause beauty isn't the gift wrap!
It is what lies beneath the shell.
It reveals itself - slowly and not always.
Unless, the eyes delve past the obvious.
Look through the surface,
Barge into the unexplored spaces
Beyond the shallowness.
Those treasures elude the legible lines -
Bring that vision into focus
Rotate the lens, adjust the axis
Let reverence of the mind meet the oblivious.
And you just might see a flash
Of the slow revelation,
If you tune in to the vibration of the truth
Penetrating all visible allures
Taking your breath away!


Pic credit - Dhiren Shah

Worth

They go for a stroll in the neighborhood park as the little girl skips her way through the jogging trail. "How was your day at school?" the mother asks. "Oh my God, you have to listen to this funny thing about the girl in my class!" the kid says animatedly. "Oh!" the mom exclaims. "Would that tread into gossip territory or did this kid really say something funny that would make me laugh?" The mother tries to reinstate a lesson that speaking about others unnecessarily is never welcome in their discussion. Ever.

"Oh you are going to laugh till your sides split" the kid replies through a broad grin. "Do you remember Sara?  the tall girl that bikes past us every day? We got to fill a poster about ourselves and in a section where we were asked to describe ourselves. Sara wrote that she is tall and pretty and has the body of a super model and that is her best feature" The kid begins laughing loud - "Don't you think that is so funny mom? " I have the body of a super model" - She mocks pouting and sounding a little shrill. "What is so funny about that darling?" the mom challenges her. "Sara is a tall and beautiful girl, it is a good thing if she knows it and is proud of her looks" 

"Geez, mom - are you serious? How can someone be so proud and full of themselves that they blow their own trumpet? There were these bunch of girls that walked to Sara during recess and sarcastically told her that her poster has the best description of herself. do you know what she did? She smiled and thanked them - How dumb is that? She doesn't even know they are mocking her and she is bragging about herself. Some of them even decided to have some fun tomorrow and burst her bubble"

" I hope you are not in those 'some of them', and I would be very disappointed in you if you were"  the mother adds. "But mom, why should she act all high and mighty like we are all ugly ducklings and she is the only pretty one in the classroom?" "Darling" The mom cuts her. "So did she also write that the rest of you all are ugly ducklings?" 

"No,  But...but how can you be so braggy?" the kid questions! "Isn't that kind of arrogant and rude and so snobbish?" She offers her judgement.

It suddenly occurs to the mom that this isn't something unique to just a child of ten, and that humans somehow, sometimes manage to take offense to someone else's self love. The world often dislikes confident and outspoken people.Why do we feel so compelled to put a confident person in their place? Does it threaten our ego? Does it make us jealous or do we consider being quiet and letting them speak their mind as an acknowledgement to their opinion? She looks at the child and says "Darling, wouldn't it be a wonderful place if we let everyone look at themselves with love and regard and let them speak their mind? How should it bother or threaten us if Sara thinks she is pretty?" The smile on the child's face dulls a little "But mom, how can she, I mean...she shrugs her shoulders and throws her hands out. 

"What did you write in your description" The mom asks her. "I didn't brag" the kid adds. "Why do you all think she cannot brag just because you didn't?" 

"You always nit pick mom...you find fault with most things I say" 

"But my darling, I am here to nit pick and find faults where I spot them as I have to mother you and teach you right from wrong" - "So you think you are always right mom? and you don't need to fix anything yourself?"  - "For starters darling, let's not guess what others think, and no I am not faultless. I do acknowledge and improve upon my faults and I always learn something as I try to teach you" 

"Okay, okay" the child gesticulates her to stop "So what is it that you learned today?"

"Sara is pretty and her saying it out herself should not make us any less pretty or mad or miffed"

"Okay, okay, then I am pretty too"

"Of course, you are pretty and we don't need to make Sara any less pretty or petty to prove that"

"Mom" She rolls her eyes and runs away while the mother looks at her child and smiles.

Pic Credit - Dublin Ca. By Chandra Elango.

Choice

She looks inside of her, breeding the growth thoughts, her own little dark room, developing images and impressions conjured upon reflecting on her experiences. She feels particularly empty today - unable to decide how to feel - random happenings trigger equally stray emotions in her. She wants to feel settled and keep the temperamental reactions at bay. Should she examine a old hurt and scrape new wounds out of it or hand pick a happy memory and  sculpt a smile in her heart? On days like these, where the congenital attraction towards deep, despondent contemplation tempts her a little firmly, she puts in that extra stab into her happy side. She looks at the play of light on the window panes, each piece of glass displaying their own perception of light onto them from the same exact reflection. She lets out a smile and decides for that to be the flavor of the day. Those lush green sprouts of bliss flooding her insides as she handpicks a precious little memory and relives it in her dark room.

The negatives magically drench in color offering a bright image to feast the senses upon and her dark room lights up in that flickering warmth.

Image Courtesy - Shail Mohan