G is for...Geometry ... n ... Goosebumps

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

F is for... Fee

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

E is for... Elephanta ... n ... Ellora

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

Today I'm talking about two monuments which are both in India - one already visited multiple times and another that's been forever on my bucket list but hopefully, soon to be visited! Both of them are rock cut temples dated 5th century onwards. 

D is for ...Delphi... n ... Dallas

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

C is for ...Corning... Colossal ... n... Cut

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

B is for ...Brit ...Bet ...n ...Bah

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V...

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

A is for...April...And...A-Z

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V.

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't visited yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what the people of that culture want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

No Flying Objects

 

Tranquil Arabian Gulf and sky from a vastly different time.
Amwaj, Bahrain, 2019.

The warplanes didn’t fly today, no drones,

no sirens nor alerts every now and then,

and there were no frantic calls on the phones

so I came out to the park to walk alone

if some peace could be plucked from a war season.

 

It was emptier, the grass had withered and wore

a fine mesh of soot and ashes, motes of death

blown in by the winds from a stricken shore –

trophy targets had been bombed the day before,

there was no spring anywhere, not a breath.

 

Some old trees had been damaged by the fallout

I too am changed – lopped and bent by strange degrees

too complicated right now to figure out,

there’s no peace though the sky’s clear and I doubt

for those who witness war there’s ever a peace.

 

Those trees are severe wounds that might perhaps mend

and the grass might claw back again, and birdsong

might fill the park at dawn and dusk in the end

as if all this ruin had never happened,

but that will take lifetimes. And roots that are strong.

The war is on my mind still, it's too close to be otherwise. I sit with the intent of focussing on something else, write something else but somehow all my thoughts loop back to it. The first line here floated up on my feed and became the prompt for the above. 

Meanwhile, some friends have got back to their respective homelands to relative safety, thankfully. But there are others talking about the hardships of being in a war zone, the difficulties of living life in uncertainties. The crash bang thud thumps of the missiles or interceptors and falling debris. The deserted streets and souqs and malls, the huge financial losses being incurred daily by ordinary people unable to ply their regular livelihoods. Schools and universities going into online education mode. Can't imagine the panic and stress the war must be causing exam year students and their families, their exams start early May. How does a 16 year old concentrate amidst missile strikes? My feed has images of smoke rising from buildings, road closures, screenshots of SM posts on tips for conflict zone survival, dos and don'ts for civilians- all super scary and agonising. 

Meanwhile, the effects of war have reached us too in India, prices are up, morale is down. There's a LPG cylinder (cooking gas) crisis - we managed to eke out ours somehow till the refill arrived. Was looking at induction cookers as a back up, but there's a total stockout, not one available for love or money. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies because Hormuz isn't just the import route for LPG alone, it carries fertilisers, helium and many other crucial industrial inputs. If this continues it's going to affect farm production to MRI imaging in hospitals. Shudder. 

Our travel arrangements are still on, so glad that we didn't book our usual route through the ME, which is really the default setting for us, having lived there for so long. I am going to be away from couch and computer till the first week of April. Some of my A-Z posts I've managed to schedule, the rest will have to be pantzed  after I'm back. Fingers firmly crossed the war will be over by then and we all will survive/surmount our individual challenges, alphabetical and otherwise. 

Braiding hair

 

When this war’s over, when the birds come back to sing,

I’ll draw you close again in the velvet evening,

I’ll sit you down in front of me, part straight your hair,

braid in strings of jasmines, breathe in the perfumed air.

 

The sulphur smells of anguish and mushrooming smoke

from the rigs and pits and lives of shattered folk,

rows of half size coffins, waiting by half size graves,

rise and ebb as the tides, advance, recede in waves.

 

When the war’s over and the nightingales are back

to replace the sirens and the endless air attacks,

in the inner courtyard dusks will gather and still

you and I’ll sit together in the sea-blue chill.

 

The sky’s a long range missile, Earth’s a long dispute

and all metals forged and sharpened to point and shoot,

all ships are sunken wrecks not one to the rescue,

the tides – all they do is crash over me and you.

 

When it’s finished and the earth’s taken back all things

and made them whole again – the hills and squares and springs,

I’ll take out your grandmother’s comb and run it slow

like a prayer through your hair as the sunset glows.

 

 

The sky’s a dragon’s breath, the town’s potential rubble,

a few men in uniform march out on the double,

the grass is scorched black, the trees stripped of foliage.

Our eyes tire of alerts, our nerves are taut, on edge.

 

When it’s over – they say both the good and bad must pass,

I’ll sit and watch you run again on new spring-grown grass,

shirt untucked at your waist, hair loosened from your braid,

your face lit with laughter, your footsteps unafraid.

I guess its quite obvious where that's come from. It goes on for a few more stanzas, but I will spare you, it's long enough as it is  :)

I've been a bit stressed - there are friends stuck in the ME who are waiting to be repatriated and even more bad news - some friends who can't be airlifted anywhere because that's their only home. All bad things must also pass, but it doesn't look like the Iran war is ending very soon. Bahrain in particular is super vulnerable because it's very close to Iran and because of the presence of the fifth fleet. The locality in Bahrain where my husband worked has been attacked, 30 plus people injured, some quite seriously. Not personally known to me, yet it all feels terribly close and personal. Every morning I wake up hoping it's been called off but no, it's still on. Every day brings more distressing news, the ambit getting wider.  Les misérables all round. 

I was/am also planning to do the upcoming A-Z Challenge and this is my advance warning post for that. I'd originally thought I'd do the theme reveal with this, but that feels entirely inappropriate given my general unprepared and somewhat frazzled state. I'm booked to travel during the Easter break too, which of course is looking fraught with uncertainty by the bucketful right now. Travel times also coincide with the Challenge key dates, apart from coinciding with the #$%*&^ war I mean. So...though I intend to write themed posts, I am keeping things fluid for the  present. I'll see what I can do and how...I'm going to be there is all I'm saying as of now. 

I hope your near and dear ones are all safe and well and nowhere within range of any missiles. 

New n Old

 

Bring me no roses, however deep their red,

they bloom for a day, the next morning they droop,

don’t get me orchids in mauve and violet -

none of them are watertight nor weatherproof.

Plant me a night jasmine or a fig instead,

something with a longer arc, a wider sweep,

a deeper tale, not just a trivial vignette,

that will outlast us both and won’t be so brief.

Of course it's Valentine's Day, so I've been writing love poems. This one's an obvious response to roses are red... Apart from that, I've also been looking at the early V-Day posts on this blog. Here's one from Feb 2014, gosh that's 12 years back..

Loveweak I

did my love merit marks - commas, full stops

did it fuel business, make rhymes flow quicker

magic freedom into crystallised hope,

weekend loveshot irises, did it flicker

once in your blingflamed veins and quietly die?

or was it a recurring decimal

sung offkey though holy, strung through your “I”

candied on your tongue like a capital

pulped in your bone in the sponge of marrows?

it asked no marks from me, I can tell you

safely, nothing punctuation, no close

and no throat grabbing start, I never knew

 

what begun and if it’s finished with me yet

it gave no period at this close of sonnet

Well, I was certainly more experimental with my language then! However, the message is the same I find.  Underneath all that drama with no punctuation and portmanteau-ed, coined words. Some things don't change. 

Which one did you like better?  

Another Route to Return

 

Sometimes I go back, return just before dawn

to those narrow lanes we’ve long left behind,

those ancient town gates, rough-hewn cobblestones,

the modern boulevards, landscaped and tree lined.

 

The sharp edges of stones underneath my sole,

the whispers of water, wind and centuries,

the long stories that shaped them, told and retold,

the smells of growing grass and flowering trees.

 

I don’t know if it’s I who moves through those streets

or it’s the dreams and stories that move through me

like wind and water, milestones beside my knees,

plumes of grasses in autumn, shells from the sea.

 

A recurrent dream that keeps me wide awake,

it moves through me sometimes just before daybreak.

The way things are shaping up this year - I feel like returning instantly, burrowing back to places and times in the past. 

Though I am emphatically not one of those people who automatically view it with good old days type nostalgia. Old is often not gold, far from it. Go back fifty years, only 60% of women were literate. Go back a hundred, tuberculosis was a death knell. Another 25 years, there were no indoor loos for the majority, poor sanitation killed people. Mortality rates among infants and children were unbelievable. No hot water on tap, no gadgets, everything done with huge amounts of elbow grease. Life was hard. 

Yes, the past is great to romanticise and write poems about, but not so great to return to in actual fact. On second thought, I'm good where I am, thank you. :) Still fretting about the weather, both literal and metaphorical and about the roughness all round. But also grateful for a whole heap of things.

Weak signals

May you go places where the networks are weak,

and time’s marked with birdsong, there’s no need to speak,

the ocean whispers its secrets in your ears.

May you listen and fathom better this year.

 

Where the lanes vanish a few paces in,

the sands are knee deep and the foot traffic’s thin

and unknown lizard tracks rush off somewhere

pursued by predators. May you walk there.

 

Where the grasses are tall and the trees are high,

the fragrance of earth billows in the sky,

wildflowers bloom like fireworks in the air.

May your footsteps enhance the peace over there.

 

May you go places where the signals aren’t clear,

experience a deeper, full body year.

The year has certainly started with a bang, everything already spiralling out of control, breathless at the avalanche of changes. I've been thinking about what I want to do with the blog, if I should go back to my original practice of posting weekly. But nearly two weeks in, that idea doesn't seem all that great, right? :) So sticking to the fortnightly routine for the near future. Less is more. Taking it one step at a time and keeping it as positive as I can. That's the non-resolution for 2026.

I hope your January is going well and you are already experiencing a full body month. 

Rubaiyat of Season's Greetings

 

A bone deep peace that feels solid and not fragile,

that every day opens like a widening smile,

that if you stumble, there's a friend's hand close by

that steadies you and walks with you for a mile.

 

For all past anguish may the year bring you balm,

may wildflower bouquets of joys fill your arms,

may your paths lie under clear skies on hard earth,

the waters be navigable, deep and calm.

 

May each minute come mindfully and touch down

like gliding feathers, far too many to count

but may you be aware of their exact weight

before they leave - their size, shape, texture and sound.

 

May the year come in with slow, measured footfalls

and turn kindness to a widespread festival.

 

 

~~~

 

So...that's 2025 almost done and dusted, phew! Did it zoom past or what? Too much happening, I'm still out of breath. Hopefully, the next one will give us a break.

 

Happy New Year to you and yours! 

 

Desert Rose

 

The desert rose has bloomed in green places,

in coordinates that it may not choose –

in the narrowest of urban spaces,

under heavy skies and a light too diffuse,

 

in soils that are clogged with too much water,

in planters meant for different sets of roots,

in shadowed courtyards, against its own nature –

in circumstances that don’t always suit.

 

It doesn’t bloom prolific but the flowers

bloom a stubborn red as the shadows deepen,

as taller and higher rise the towers,

as the light’s withdrawn they get deeper even.

 

It doesn’t quite meet the trending standards,

but still blooms quietly in a hostile earth.

~~~

I wanted to write something ebullient - festive and season appropriate for this post, but that didn't happen for reasons various. Story of my life. Meanwhile, this plant at the back of our house, I've been fretting about it for ages because it looked peaky and wasn't producing buds - it bloomed suddenly. Red and green. As appropriate as it gets.

I first came across the Adenium, or Desert Rose as it is commonly known, in the Sahel in West Africa, where it originates. My mother's gardener Matthias had, after due consultations and round table conferences, lined the back and sides of the compound with these plants in Maiduguri. I spent a whole chunk of my afternoons out in their company, the flowers were a different colour, light pink rather than red, but I'd know the species anywhere. 

Never saw them in India during childhood home leaves - east was east and west was west then, desert was desert and green was green and no one probably attempted growing exotic foreign plants in gardens over here. India anyways has a huge heap of native flowering plants, my folks were content with the local varieties I guess. Things have changed now, I've spotted quite a few desert rose specimens in our neighbourhood. 

Kolkata is quite the opposite of a desert, you turn your back for a minute and there's a banyan or fig sprouting in a crack on the windowsill of your building. The northern Sahel has an average annual rainfall of 200 mm. Kolkata on the other hand might get 250 mm in 24 hours during peak monsoon season. And this year has been exceptionally wet. Therefore, growing a desert plant here is a serious undertaking! :) Not all plants need great gobs of fertile soil and pouring rain to thrive. 

The one who took this enterprise up in the back was my jethani, she was a keen gardener. She passed away untimely in 2023. Jethani is untranslatable in English, the western society is not so specific about extended family relationships. She was my husband's elder brother's wife, what would you call her? Sister-in-law doesn't really mean the same thing, does it? Some Indians translate jethani as 'co-sister.' Even then it falls a little short, because the 'elder' part is built into the word jethani.

Anyway, I digress. She planted several perennials, some foliage, some flowering, both local varieties and a few foreign ones. Among them this desert rose. I think of her every time I see her pot plants - they are a comfort. I'm glad the desert rose is blooming.  

Happies and merries to you. Wishing you and yours all the joys of the season and a happy New Year 2026. May your desert roses bloom under every sky and soil that comes your way. 

The same sun

 

A corner cabinet where a chipped vase resides

and the afternoon sunlight hits the crystal such

that it explodes into a small rainbow of light

and flowers bloom on the wall, the plain paint is touched

with colour, drab erased – metaphors as disguised

concrete. Often the broken edges are the ones

that make the more intricate, interesting blossoms.

 

Yet you often look away, wandering outside

in an instant – your attention span isn’t much –

you search for broader, deeper, more meaningful, bright,

a different sort – combined sunlight and dark mud

growing steadily in a pavement crack despite

the trudge of endless feet, casual cruel, tiresome.

As if the one inside isn’t made by the sun.

~~~

As November closes, the stocktaking does too. It's been a challenging year but a good  birthmonth. Strange but true.

November has been kind, lots of catch ups - a close friend from our Bahrain days, now settled in Canada, flew in and made time to come home. So did another dear one from Cairo, now in Dhaka - she came met us with her family. Much fun and laughter and reminiscing ensued. 

The Exposition of the Gita at Kurukshetra. Lord Krishna explains the principles
of the Gita to Arjun before the battle, to motivate him to take up arms in a 
righteous war against his own kinsmen. Ivory. Rajasthan. 18th century CE. 

Since I last posted, I've managed to finally go visit our local museum - the Indian Museum, something which I'd been planning since I came back in 2023. It has an absolutely jaw-dropping collection of prehistoric, ancient and medieval artifacts. A coin of Alex the Great, an Egyptian mummy 4000 years old, an illuminated Persian folio from Shirin Farhad dating from the 15th century, are among the many things I oohed and aahed over. There are fossils dated to some 3200 million years back, a tree trunk 250 million years old, but history moves me more than natural history, so... I saw a lot of Buddhist and Vedic/early Hindu stuff which dovetailed neatly with what I saw in Nepal. 

Makara, a mythological aquatic beast - a combination of boar, elephant,
crocodile and/or serpent. 11th century, basalt. Makaras are often
depicted as guardians of temple gates. Also carved into
waterspouts. Saw many of these in Nepal too. 

The building itself has a history of its own - it was completed in 1875. Very impressive, humongous colonial style architecture.   The Museum was set up much earlier by the Asiatic Society in 1814, the oldest and still the largest multipurpose museum in Asia in terms of the number of collections. It doesn't get millions of footfalls or make any waves anywhere but is totally worth visiting if you happen to be in the vicinity. 

However, the flipside of being the oldest is that the displays are stuck in that age too, labels with the object, material, period and location, that's it. No elaboration on context, no story telling, no interactive audio-visual exhibits, minimal viewer engagement. I had visited last with kiddo when he was quite tiny - quite a few years back, things haven't changed much since then, that aspect's a bit saddening. Indians have always been, and remain, super casual about their own heritage, I can't fathom why...

Anyhoo I had a great time nosing around, especially in the textile gallery, which for some baffling reason is tucked away out of sight in an obscure corner behind the aquatic animals gallery. Yes I know, makes zero sense but 'we are like this only' and 'it happens only in India.'  Seek and ye shall find. The whole place is a life lesson in persistence and problem solving.

Once one manages to track it down though, it has 18th and 19th century handmade real gold zari-work Benarasi brocades and Bengal jamdanis and Balucharis and Kashmiri pashminas with work so intricate that it defies belief. And this gallery opens into another somewhat larger one where 'decorative art' objects are housed, some breathtaking miniature sculpting skills showcased there in wood, ivory and stone there as well. The paintings gallery is equally impressive. All in all a very satisfactory visit. 

The Wish-fulfilling Tree. Red sandstone sculpture from 2nd-3rd
century BCE. At the entrance of the Museum. 

That tree has done a superlative job for me this month. Hoping it's done the same for you too.