Credit |
There’s
a war coming over the mountains
snaking
past the bridges into the township.
Always
a war coming, always a countdown,
the
whispers in the streets and insider tips.
Over
bare mountains and over those mauve hills,
over
the silver line of the horizon,
there’s
always a war coming, guns and missiles
smoke
out and rip open the lives of children.
Under
the green grass and under the olives,
under
the ribbons of blue waves and white foam,
there’s
always a war coming where you now live
and
a nose for the profits in shells and bombs.
I
can’t sing you to sleep with soft lullabies
and
tell you it’s fireworks that redden your skies.
What can I say?
Life feels like a never ending battle sometimes. Death and taxes. Eye ailments, blood profiles, extreme weather, time zone management issues, terrible traffic, light and noise pollution, the waxing and waning shenanigans of the political classes, the lack of me-time, no time to write, etc, etc, etc.
Then I look at what's happening out there in the wider world and my troubles seem to have a pretty low melting point.
Have a peaceful week.
Photo by Heike Mintel on Unsplash |
Have I wasted my time?
Most of the visit
I spent in watching you
sleep. The slow curve
of lashes on cheek. That’s
the last habit
to wean off, the first rite mothers observe.
The easy rise and fall of
the blankets
tuned to the rhythms of your
resting breath,
and I listened for it as I
sat and read
as if to listen is to ward
off death.
I’ve checked on you a
million times, my child
as an infant new born then
suddenly grown.
In a moonbright night I come
awake still
and listen...before I recall
I’m alone,
only the wind stirs the
trees, an austere
pair of stars blink, as though to blink back tears.
Hello, I'm back from the other end of the world!
Shameless poetic licence taken above, because well, I'm quite clear that no part of the visit was wasted. I've had a fantastic time, thanks to my hosts - friends and family, in all the places I've been to in the last month. Travelling during Christmas and New Year meant getting to see the American cities lit up and at their sparkling best. The weather remained graciously mild, a spattering of rain here and there, that's all. Though all that changed just as I flew out, the US weather reports are scary now - bitterly cold and likely to continue through next week. Stay safe and warm, folks out there!
It's not that I haven't watched my sleeping child - all parents do. That's nature's way of making sure the parents are doing their job. Even after the job is technically over. Watching a child sleeping is never a waste of time. Nothing is ever wasted or lost anyway, just transformed. That's actually a physical law. It's also a verse in the Bhagavad Gita.
This year has begun well - in the company of my son, my childhood friends and my extended family. But I know it will be mixed, like all the others. A lot of uncertainties, transitions, anxieties are waiting to happen. However, an equal amount of learning, loveliness, kindness and fun are also waiting to be experienced. I just have to look hard enough, be mindful and not be so overwhelmed by the daily stresses as to miss the chances for laughter and learning. So that's the non-resolution for 2024, that is what I'm going to do - keep eyes peeled for the chances and make sure nothing is wasted, not a drop.
Sometimes
it can guess what was, only from what’s left.
The
rivers need no meddling with to course correct.
I
watch the wakes of boats and, though I am afraid
the
differences of skies and rivers progressively fade.
The
year flits by without a word on how to cope,
the
highs are high but the lows are fathomless in scope,
still
the waters hold the blue and its light reflect,
the
river needs no meddling with to course correct.
I
tally the sums of what I got and what I gave
count
the wakes of the boats, and count the leaves and waves
in
the end no measures quite define the intercepts
the
river brooks no meddling with to course correct.
On
my fingers are smeared the remnants of the past
some
leaves of melancholy, joys that do not last
words
that run off the page, rhymes that aren’t perfect
but
they need no meddling with to course correct.
I
sing not for heights achieved but more to endure,
take
stumbling in my stride, go where the footing’s unsure
the
river flows heedless to the paths that I select,
and
it brooks no meddling with to course correct.
I
sing for that one small step taken towards justice,
for
the unseen courage that’s so easy to miss.
Like
the river ignores all attempts to deflect
quietly
brooks no meddling with to course correct.
I’d
rather talk of the common, ordinary and plain,
the
songless birds, scentless blooms, the coarser woodgrains,
the
river takes no notice of the boats nor subjects
and
it needs no meddling with to course correct.
Come
with me to the banks where fallen leaves lie thick
the
winter light spins the waves into silver magic
the
trees dance naked as they wait, lines of spiky shade
and
differences of skies and waters progressively fade.
Happy New Year 2024 to all who stop by, from Raleigh, NC. Wishing for a gentler, more peaceful and stress free year for everyone. I'm getting back to the old hometown a couple weeks into the year and hopefully I'll get right back into couch potato mode pronto. See you soon.
Hello writers,
I can't believe the year is over, can you?! Personally it has been tumultuous, mixed is an understatement. As I discovered during the first Covid year, time flies whether one's having a good time or bad. I am back at Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is "Over to You." It's an open prompt where the writer chooses her/his favourite film/title for inspiration. I have so many favourites and they are all in different languages so it's a fairly impossible task to pick one. Therefore I decided to use the phrase itself as a prompt - btw, there is a movie called Over to You, which I haven't watched, not very helpful. :)
So here's the final instalment of Chiaroscuro, which began in Dec 2022 with the Roberta Flack song 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.' I didn't think the story would get so lo-o-n-g, I'm glad I can bring it to its conclusion finally, phew!
What's happened so far:
The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead.
The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.
He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past.
He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again.
The MC goes to Sam's ancestral house situated a little way away from the city and finds the furniture that's used as props in the Janhobi's portrait - the radio, the table etc. He also chances upon an old tree engraving that clearly indicates Sam and Janhobi spent time in the house. Mukta does not get in touch as he had feared.
The old radio goes berserk in the middle of the night and Shovan doesn't get much sleep due to a stream of spooky electrical events. In the morning he finds further evidence of Sam and Janhobi's presence in the room from many years ago. His phone beeps meanwhile - it's from Mukta.
Now please read on:
Screenshot from the Guardian this morning. Spike in hate crimes in India as well. |
Should
I tell my children not to wear a scarf? –
be
it chequered black or otherwise,
the
public seems to have stoppered its heart
and
some people have hate in their eyes.
Should
I tell my sons what to wear and when,
should
they for now strictly shun the hoodie?
The
governments link crime with clothes and skin
the
police and the public seem moody.
Should
my old father give up his upaveet,
and
my old friend stop wearing his skull cap?
The
powers see the world in black and white
and
paint in splotches of red on the map.
Some day you'll go back there - where you came from.
Some day the whirling will stop, you'll go back home.
When autumn comes round you'll put up the lights -
a hundred small teardrop flames burning bright.
So from place to place. From one home to the next
till the loop's closed and fates have nothing more left.
Yet now that you're back where you started out from
something about it doesn't quite feel like home.
The trees have grown gnarled beside the straight, wide road.
Some things have toppled. Some spaces have narrowed.
The main landmarks of the city still stand.
But you've changed. So has the lie of the land.
For there's no coming back to rekindle flames,
no Diwali night will ever be the same.
Once the hometown's left it stops being home,
there's no coming back to where you start out from.
Shubho Kalipujo/Happy Diwali to you and yours if you are celebrating, and happy autumn/spring if you're not.
Screenshot from The Guardian, 05.11.2023. |
I’m
thankful you’re not in a war zone.
That
our troubles, though quite sufficient
don’t
include that brand of violent –
they’re
lower key, more mundane in tone.
I’m
so glad you’re not in a war zone.
Though
to be honest, the ones who are
don’t
seem to be altogether foreign -
their
sorrow’s a long familiar cadence
and
half my own, the distance not too far.
We
think we are not them, but we are.
I.
I
once thought proximity doesn’t count -
wherever
I am, I’ll still thrill to the sound
of
your name, be able to recreate
the
feel of my feet running on your ground.
I
thought if I just closed my eyes I’d see
your
vast skies spinning slowly over me
the
sun and the stars don’t discriminate
and
yet they now appear differently.
Is
it my sight I’m losing, or my mind?
The
exact textures of things left behind
become
harder to recall and replicate.
The
thrill’s the same, but something has gone blind.
Won’t
matter how far I go – I thought that once
but
in the end time is the greatest distance.
II.
I
thought I’d be able to grope some recess
and
find you, ever changing yet changeless.
Draw
up the exact shape of fig and neem,
the
acacias in the open wilderness.
Some
of their limbs remain - that much is true.
The
curve of highway, the straight avenue.
But
the mind isn’t quite the thing it seems,
it
loses the details without meaning to.
I’m
not the one to rail against the failings
of
sight, and mind, of puny mortal things,
the
systems of recall, blurred like a dream,
the
lengthening of shadows, the last dimming.
I
did think I’d carry you with me once
But
time’s proved to be the farthest distance.
III.
The
sunlight lying in thick slabs on the floor,
but
I cannot recall the tiles anymore.
The
cement paving in the porch and back,
the
size the glass panes were on the main door.
The
numbers on some of the cars and the crunch
of
gravel beneath their tyres. Being served lunch
on
a green table cloth. The music tracks.
The
crack in the tub. The smell of the sponge.
So
a few remain – the trivial, the strange,
and
strange are the filters chosen to arrange
the
sequence, the way the trivia stacks
and
what was changeless once begins to change.
I
thought I could dream you up anywhere once.
But
time has morphed itself into distance.
Hello!
It's October and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is the iconic musical The Phantom of the Opera. It is also splat bang in the middle of the main festival season in India, I have family visiting from abroad as well as from other Indian cities, so...I'll be reading with a lag, please bear with me.
This post continues the story of Shovan and Mukta, Sam and Janhobi that began last December. What's happened so far:
The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead.
The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.
He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past.
He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again.
The MC goes to Sam's ancestral house situated a little way away from the city and finds the furniture that's used as props in the Janhobi's portrait - the radio, the table etc. He also chances upon an old tree engraving that clearly indicates Sam and Janhobi spent time in the house. Mukta does not get in touch as he had feared.
Read on to find out what happens next...
Chiaroscuro VI :
It was pitch dark at the window.
My transition from dream to
reality was so gradual, so seamless that at first I did not realise I was
awake. The noise of the static crackled in my ear just as it had minutes ago in
what I assumed was a dream, but now I was not so sure, was it?
Inside the room, the eye of the
old radio flashed on and off, bathing the ceiling above in an eerie apple
green. My cell phone matched it at every beat, the screen lighting up and going
dark every odd second, emitting its own peculiar bluish glow. I bent and
switched on the pedestal lamp someone had placed next to the bed. The light
came on for a few seconds and then it too joined the strange, ongoing sound and
light show. In this weird pulsing light, I could see the ceiling fan was
turning one way for some seconds, coming to a stop and turning the opposite way
for an equal time. I had never seen anything like it - I came bolt upright, the
last traces of sleep wiped clean from my eyes.
This was no dream.
***
I had got back from the discovery
of the tree engraving last evening and found that I had been given the room
with the radio to sleep. The low divan had been made up with a formidable old
three inch thick cotton mattress, spotless sheets, a pair of ruffled pillows
and a traditional woven coverlet. I was quite pleased – as I wanted to have a
nose around and see if any further evidence of Sam and Janhobi could be
unearthed. Though why I bothered I don’t know. Mukta had not been in touch, she
had probably gone back after her holiday in the old hometown.
I looked at the window again, it
was dark still. The phone as it lit up showed the time, still some way to go
till sunrise. I swiveled around and put
my feet on the floor, thrust my feet into my slippers. The wide verandah
connecting the rooms on the floor was dark and quiet. No other room was pulsing
and buzzing like mine. I paced up and down to make quite sure, there was not a
single crackle of static, not a pinpoint of light anywhere.
There was no moon, no shadows, not
even the friendly wink of a single star. The trees loomed against an amorphous
sky on the far side of the courtyard – darker shapes in the darkness grading
from a chiffony charcoal grey to indigo to pitch black. An owl hooted
somewhere. Moth wings fluttered against my face for a second and ricocheted
away, I felt the velvety movement on my skin but could not fathom their
direction. Only my shut door was thinly outlined in a pulsing green glow –
fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter – as if the beating of
my own heart had been transformed from sound to light and projected into that
room behind that closed door.
I groped for the switch of the
verandah lights and yanked the heavy old Bakelite job on. Nothing happened, not
one of the lights came on. I felt my way down one flight of stairs to the
landing, where the large, multipaned window opened out on the street and peered
outside, the streetlights were not on either. No joy there. I am not easily
spooked, I do not give much credence to other worldly happenings – good for a
fireside tale on a winter evening of course, but not much else. There must be
some sort of electrical snafu, only I hadn’t come across radios switching on
and off by themselves, cell phones and fans echoing them without missing a
beat. Confined to one room too while the rest of the house was minus power. At
least the fan inside would produce some sort of air circulation. It was muggy
and hot out on the verandah and apart from a long wooden bench there was
nowhere to park. I pushed the glowing doors open again.
The static from the radio had
resolved into some sort of music – like a number being played at the wrong
speed, slower than it should be, the words weirdly garbled, the bass too deep
and way off the mark, interspersed with lucid intervals. In dreams he
came…that voice which ca… do I dream again?
The fan…is there in sigh… your mind… The music went on, half
unintelligible, half clear, the song just hovering on the edge of recognition.
The table on which the radio sat
had two small drawers, one of them was glowing and pulsing the same way the
door had, as if some light emitting source was trapped inside. I went to it and
yanked it open. A bunch of pulsing pinpricks of light fluttered out and weaved
across the room, finally settling on the ceiling. It took me a few seconds to
figure out they were fireflies, not exactly some alien spirit beings from some
other world. The sound suddenly cleared up fully and the music played out at
the right pitch, the lyrics crystal clear and recognisable – the Phantom of
the Opera is there inside your mind… The song drew to its end and the music
faded out. A couple of crackles of static and then the green power indicator
went dark, the radio switched off and fell silent. I tried the light switch –
it worked this time, the lamp flooded the room with dazzling light. The fan was
whirring normally again. Whatever weirdness or electrical fault it was, it
seemed it had righted itself. I switched the light off, heaved a sigh of relief
and went back to bed. The fireflies were still on the ceiling. I fell asleep
watching them glowing on and off.
***
I woke past eight, the sun was up and hot. Last night felt unreal. Had I dreamt one of those hyper real
dreams?
Only thing was the drawer below the radio was still open. I got out of bed and walked to it. A card lay on top of a pile of papers, the whole dusty and yellowed with age. I picked it up – it was one of those fancy invites, gilt borders and lettering…The President of the Cine Club cordially invites Jahnabi Roy to a special screening of the Phantom of the Opera...
My cell phone suddenly beeped, startling me. It was Mukta.
WC : 1077
FCA
Tagline : An old radio goes berserk in the middle of the night...
Read the other entries here:
Whole
histories lie in torn curtains, crumbed rust
on
exposed steel, in cracks on the stair treads,
in
your own careless thumbprint on the dust,
a
barely there spider web’s single thread
caught
briefly in the beam striking the bed.
Ordinary
lives summed up by the contents
of
desks and drawers, by tattered bookmarks
showing
where they’d stopped reading, sure they’d meant
to
go on, only it had gone too dark -
pages
spelling out their exits’ exact arc.
A
weekly crossword has been left half done,
you
can’t quite bring yourself to complete it
because
that feels like a small desecration,
as
if that’s tampering, it’s not your remit.
You
waver, you neither write nor can you quit.
You
want to clear the space out and rearrange -
the
useless old teapots, the dulled silverware.
No! - you can’t bear the thought of the slightest change.
Let
the lifeless represent the life lived there –
the
half done crossword, the same cracks on the stair.
Not sure where that came from - except that some of our old window stays had to be replaced because they had got so rusted that the shutters couldn't be shut. It's 60 days into the homecoming? more than halfway to 100 and it's been a lively time - in a good way and also not in a good way.
I've been to the wholesale hardware market and shopped for stays (because the style we have is so ancient that it is carried only by the bulk distributors, it's a 50 yo house). I've shopped for textiles, storage jars, frames, planters. I've got the last remaining items on the furniture wish list finally done, I've got the passport done, I've got my first dog bite - so that last one takes care of 'experience something new' for 2023. Anti rabies shots - yum! :)
We are still jumping through the various regulatory hoops and this time around my stores of patience, never very robust to begin with, have worn really thin. There are so many safeguards yet the mega fraudsters go scot free while ordinary folk like me are driven insane, one needs to sign forms in triplicate and a password to sneeze even. It would be comical if it weren't so uber tedious.
It is of course Gandhi Jayanti (birth anniversary) today and the festival season in India begins on the 14th. So the good times are set to continue, as family from Mumbai and Lucknow will be visiting. And cousins are here to attend from the USA as well. There's the spookfest challenge at WEP too...like I said, happy-busy month, hopefully.
Happy October to you too and happy festivals, whichever you may be celebrating.
You
have to walk uneven footpaths
where
workmen have dug up the bricks
and
show the housing of your heart
beyond
your body and its ribs.
You
must steer through old tree shadows
lying
in wait like feral beasts
the
leaves like spears from ancient wars,
warnings
laid down on modern streets.
You
must look straight at flinty eyes
and
never even once must you flinch,
you
must prove, whatever your crimes,
legally
they amount to nothing.
You’ll
spread out your life in bills and cards
the
locations of all your roofs
a
lifetime of paper innards
in
forms that are government approved.
You
must learn to wait, and be dismissed,
you
must know how to stand in queues,
carry on as though it counts not a bit
that
your probity must be proved.
Passport renewal - totally an eyeroll-worthy process I'd have thought, especially In Kolkata where illegal immigrants are brought in by some shady politicians and given Indian i.d.s including passports to inflate their own vote banks. So it takes time and there's a police verification involved for everyone, no exemptions.
The last time my passport was renewed here, Kolkata was Calcutta and I was not present at home when the authorities came in to verify - I was at work and my blood family and in-laws managed it between them. That was in 1992, long time! - the renewal was necessary due to the change in marital status and the consequent changes.
Subsequently, my passport has been issued by embassies abroad, pretty smooth process, no verifications, nothing hassly. I was expecting this time to be a contrast, but surprisingly it wasn't too bad. The new one came through less than a week after the police verification was completed.
This was my second interaction with the Kolkata Police recently, I had gone to the local P.S. for a clearance certificate before leaving for Fiji last year. We'd been told to apply online and it had come through in 48 hours flat, no time at all.
Our films and stories and even the neighbourhood gossip always paint a negative picture of the police, but my real life experiences with them has been quite the opposite. I have been in police stations multiple times and have been treated with courtesy, efficiency and exemplary professionalism each time. I also have close family members who have been victims of burglaries and the police has unerringly recovered the stolen items within weeks. Therefore, I am a fan of our police force and this is my own small way of countering all the negative stereotypes flying around.