In Memoriam

 

Ma. Possibly in Agra in the late 1960s.

A birthday is a hollow sock

when the person’s gone,

stockings empty of the present,

no chats on the phone.

 

A birthday is flowers and vase,

and some photographs,

a looping back and touching base

and cupcakes on behalf.

 

A birthday is a cloudy mood

the weight of milestones,

a mixed up bit of pensive glad

and darker undertones.

 

Although the day's a mooring too - 

pinning the year in place,

a chance to dial the chaos down,

to renew and retrace.

 

A thumbing of old albums and

a rough-edged thankfulness

that we had what we had when they

lived at the same address. 

Something like a footfall

 

Not everything falls into place at once.

The paperwork. The people. The connects.

Maybe the days are a test of patience.

The darkest nights not restful but suspect.

 

The moon’s not a tilak on my forehead.

An angry sun reluctant to kindness.

The purple flowered vine’s gone dry and dead.

No one’s at home at the given address.

 

Yet in the twilight between day and night

there’s something like a footfall on the stairs

and a bunch of fireflies in zigzag flight

the scent of flowers opening somewhere.

 

So I will wait. I’ll wait and pace the grounds

maybe in time someone will come around.

Patience has never exactly been my forte, but still. Keeping calm and pacing the grounds....maybe if the vine is watered it'll revive? 

However, as the most famous independent journalist of India said somewhere - what's crumbled in the last ten years is never coming back. My heart sinks a little every time I think of it. 

Hearts are not made to sink though, they are buoyant little persistent things, always finding space to wriggle and rise, to balloon, to beat, to hope. 

This too shall pass. Everything passes - the bad, the good, the ugly. 

Wishing the good in your week a super slow passage, and the bad a lightning fast one. 

Idle chatter

 

Screengrab from Scroll.in 

We were just chatting, mulling things over –

falling bird populations and their lovers,

the erosion of earth, secular values,

the policing of garments but not the shoes.

The hair, the torso and their approved covers.

 

All around us, the entire city was loud –

the traffic, the politics, even the clouds.

Many had forgotten how to coexist

with their neighbours, voted in jingoists,

ignored the rights the constitution allowed.

 

The voiceless are always sidelined and othered

whether human beings or a plain looking bird.

It’s been years since you’ve looked at those on the fringe

or thought about them, shifted even an inch,

nor turned down the volume so they could be heard.

 

Only the rich and resplendent are prized.

The ordinary’s always marginalised.

We sighed, fell quiet as old friends often do,

by and by the silence was pierced by a coo.

Some find a song even when they’re compromised.

 

I wondered aloud if that was a good thing? - 

bird populations going down singing?

My friend stared and said, ‘not even a slim chance!’

But the universe does find its own balance,

with or without men and their petty failings.

It's been the usual crazy out here. Just scooting in to post this and scooting right out again. If the gadget on the sidebar shows the number of posts in any month being less than the regulation requirement of four - that gives me the heebie jeebies. It's super strange that I should be able to post through the most monumental, hectic life changes and then suddenly can't because well, I've come back home now, all the travelling and relocations finally done and dusted. It happens only in India! :) 

I was part (albeit the silent, listening part) of a conversation centred around falling bird populations, which an elderly Calcuttan was lamenting. Both this post and the last one came out of that. That and the non-stop churn of the fake news machines and the whatsappisms. 

Birds are not only birds of course. They are harbingers of hope, they are ill omens of death too. They are symbols of wisdom and peace as well as greed and evil, their nests are used for marketing models as well as the most beautiful metaphors for home and women's eyes. They are part of our mythology and idioms and slang, and life in general, in overarching ways. It boggles my mind to think of losing them, or of any other, less resplendent species, or less resplendent populations of humans for that matter. Who decides what's the definition of resplendent anyway? Diversity is what makes the planet and the nations beautiful, inclusion is a necessary condition of survival, even of the most ordinary. Without the least resplendent, we all wither and disappear. 

Have a brilliant week. 

Shunned by Sparrows

 

Photo by Milin John on Unsplash

There used to be more crows and sparrows

in the morning, pecking the backyard.

Now the roads are wider, lanes are narrow

pillows are cloud soft but life is hard.

 

Used to be doves cooing at midday

marking the sleepy afternoon,

now the skies are an ominous grey

the tides rise but ebb out too soon.

 

It used to be that Kishan produced

endless garments to cover our backs,

but now that’s changed – ignored, reduced,

our bodies are stripped, minds under attack.

 

Beware of cities the sparrows shun,

peace starts with the birds, the smallest ones.

You're only creating trouble for yourself if you blithely write things like 'see you soon' and 'hope to get back into usual routine,' how naïve is that anyway? - after a gazillion relocations? Yeah, well...

The house still looks like a disaster zone, okay, maybe a disaster zone after the Red Cross has made a round, but that's about it. The bookshelves still have Emily and Isaac rubbing shoulders. Not that I have anything against anyone rubbing shoulders with someone from a different era and genre...don't believe in that sort of discrimination. But it does make locating them difficult. The good news in all this is, there's been no time for any reading, neither poetry nor sci-fi. 

It's also partly the reason for the disaster zone remaining a disaster. When I am away from India, I follow the news, fret and fume, but have enough control to hold my tongue. Once the distance vanishes and I am in the thick of things, it's quite impossible to remain silent. Keeping things straight, even in my own mind, consumes every atom of energy. And there are always the various dens of bureaucracy to run around to, the endless applications for this, that and the other to fill up, the nonstop officialeese to deal with...'officer I can't access my xyz/yes ma'am, that's because you are non resident, you can access it only from abroad/but officer, I am resident now, we've come home for good/ma'am, in our records you are still non-resident, you have to be here for 6 months before that changes/what can I do to change it now?/you could write an application, ma'am..."  Who said coming home to ye olde motherland was going to be easy breezy?  (Sigh)

So there it is. It's not that I've stopped writing (that's like breathing, can't hold it in for too long) but editing, polishing, and putting it together to put up here has not been within the realms of possibility. I'm not writing 'see you soon' and jinxing whatever chances I have of achieving that. 

Have a wonderful September! I hope mine allows me to be online here more frequently as things regularise. 

Write ... Edit ... Publish ... August 2023: Chocolat

Hello writers!

It's August and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is the delightful film Chocolat based on the book by Joanne Harris. Mine is a scheduled post this time as I am relocating from Fiji back to Calcutta, so forgive me if I am a bit late with my reading and commenting.

This post continues the story of Shovan and Mukta, Sam and Janhobi that began last December. It's turning out to be a kind of double scoop sundae romance story in a story... 

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. 

Read on to find out what happens next...

Chiaroscuro V : Engraved

The surroundings deepened in colour as one travelled out, even as the bridge was crossed. The skies were incredibly bluer, the earth verdant with a million shades of green and  the air was a clear invitation to breathe deep. I had been so firmly embedded in urban spaces that I had forgotten how beautiful everything got once the city was left behind.

 

Sometime in the 17^th century, a merchant forefather of my mother’s had prospered on the back of the European jute trade. He acquired a tract of land and built a modest home close to a bend in the river. His descendants were to live there and carry on the family business happily ever after. A few centuries down the line however, plastics happened, jute declined, first the World Wars and then Independence and Partition changed the old order.

 

The descendants had quietly eroded away from the river bend to the city. The land had had to be portioned and sold off, but the house remained. By the time my mother got married, the old homestead only drew occasional visits by the family. I had only ever been there as a child, just a hazy memory.

 

Two weeks had passed since Mukta and I had met. It had ended as awkwardly as I had feared. I desperately wanted to ring her but did not know if it would be appropriate. This entire molehill-exploded-to-mountain was quite unnecessarily stressful. Getting out of the city was an escape too.  

 

*** 

 

It was smaller than my memory of it. Entering through the gate into  the traditional courtyard everything felt cramped, the columns not as lofty, the dust adding its own dingy colour to the doors, the round knockers pitted with rust. The front room with its low divan was bare of any mattress or pillows, the old teakwood armchairs were shrouded in yellowed dustcovers, brittle with age. Footsteps echoed eerily on the floors, voices seemed to ricochet round the walls. Mother got busy with her helper in making things habitable. I drifted from room to room, the bustle of people gradually receding as I climbed to the upper floor.

 

A long verandah ran the entire length of the house connecting the rooms. I walked along it into the last one. It was dark inside but I rattled a window open. Light poured in and picked out an arrangement of furniture that felt vaguely familiar – a Victorian table with an empty vase, an art deco radio, a chair with curved claw-and-ball legs. I dusted it off and sat down. Where had I seen these before? It eluded me for a minute. Of course – in the photo! In Mukta’s profile picture, her grandmother’s B/W photo. I sat frozen to the chair.

 

Twilight came and laid a gentle hand over the village in a crescendo of birdsong and a fluorescent arc of lilac light. The peak hour traffic rush was substituted by the field workers winding their way home from the paddies. The post office staff on tinkling bicycles, a distant local train’s chugging making the air throb vaguely without any perceptible sound. Peace made almost tangible. But on the outside only.

 

My thoughts rolled around my brain like pebbles in a shoe, sharp and uncomfortable in whatever positions I jockeyed them to. I jackknifed up from the chair –  the walls closing in suddenly unbearable – and ran down the stairs.

 

Someone called out behind me. I threw an answer over my shoulder.

“Take a torch.” My mother pressed one into my hands. “It’s dark.”

 

Indeed the lights were quite dim, quite a few were missing bulbs. The sky was bright with stars though. The house abutted the river at the back, just a couple of hundred yards from the waterfront promenade. If it could be called that with its half tumbled brick parapet, missing paving stones and ever present litter. The birds had fallen silent giving way to a chorus of crickets. Peace lapped alongside the river, the water ran with a low, continuous chuckling. The moon rose and prodded the waves with a shining finger of light. A breeze started up from somewhere. It was enough.

 

The path back was narrow and dark, surrounded by thickets of bamboo. I switched the torch on. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because the gates were nowhere to be seen. It should not have taken this long. Had I really wandered this far? Lights broke though the gaps in the foliage, there was the buzz of voices somewhere, so I kept on mechanically, mulling over this new discovery of the room and its contents.

 

The groves thinned out after a while revealing the house just ahead. There was a huge neem tree against the boundary wall, planted more than a century ago. Its branches soared up many feet above the house, dribbling its leaves over the roof, casting deep shadows on the grounds. My feet stopped of their own accord. I shone the torchlight over it.

 

The beam played up and down over the great trunk of the neem and caught a gleaming speck, it flashed gold as the light fell on it. I drew nearer – it was a chocolate wrapper, plastered flat against the bark by the breeze. I slapped my hand over it. My fingers sank in unexpectedly. Underneath the fluttering wrapper was a small hollow – a piece of bark had been stripped off.

 

As I lifted the foil away, the torch revealed the mark scratched on the trunk, one of those eternal acts of love, or vandalism, depends on your opinion – names carved on trees. This one looked decades old, the edges had healed completely, the exposed wood buffed and smoothened with age. The letters had been slashed deeply, vehemently, into the grain.  They  were now blackened with accumulated grime, but no less emphatic than when they were first made – Janhobi + Samudra, shaped into an elongated but unmistakable heart.

WC - 987

FCA

Read the other entries here :

We have heaps of great stuff going on at WEP - there's the How To Series on various aspects of the writing life. The Anthology Page is now live so that's something we are all super excited about - go check that out for details and get writing! 

And there are always the Challenges, the next prompt is in October and it's based on The Phantom of the Opera - how nifty is that for the Halloween month?!

 

WEP was also at IWSG earlier this month figuring out the fascinating links between chocolate, writers and books. That's worth a shufti too if you're into chocolate, or writing, or both! 

We at WEP are passionate about writing and storytelling in its various forms. If you like the work we do, please do share the posts on your social media platforms and help us to spread the word(s)!  Thank you for your support!

Numbers mean nothing

 

Mariner's Reach, Denarau, Fiji.

How many nights must you spend under a roof,

before you can call it a home?

Some say just thirty, others a thousand,

but I say to you – listen closely, my friend,

there’s no magic number, no theorem that proves

the time span that seals your claim.

A few aches are certain every time you move.

Thirty or thousand it’s all the same.

 

But there’s that horizon, oceans that heave,

a pink sky so breathtaking,

and a bird call can fling your life open.

Home has its place, but the wider world beckons,

your feet forget themselves and pack to leave,

done with walls and the same dawns breaking.

One step. And two. Dust eddies round your feet

and somewhere a welcome is waiting.

 

There’s that long horizon, pathways that twist

in and out of unknown forests.

The light is a tunnel that lures like a trap,

the ribs of leaves are rivers on a map,

the breeze writes gently on your back and lists

the things that can unravel rest.

And somewhere a welcome is waiting amidst

strangers’ smiles to the east or west.

 

Here it is cosy, the smoke from the stove

spiced with cinnamon and anise.

Secret garnets in the depths of tamarind,

the slow unfolding music of the winds,

butterfly wings in someone’s mango grove

in some weird definition of bliss.

The paddies are furred and rich, seen from above –

the world has its place. So has this.

 

So that’s it – you’ll sway, swing back, twang away,

the horizon just out of range.

The airplanes will keep flying overhead

to different cities with others instead.

The ships will weigh anchor and go on their way –

you’ll always be chasing change.

And you’ll wonder how many nights and days

make home and what makes a roof strange.

 

All your days you’ll fritter away in research

and find that numbers mean nothing.

Only the movement of road, car and coach,

the aerial view of a strange town’s approach,

the spiral of descent, the craft’s thrilling lurch,

the horizons in blues and pinks.

Only being out and away by and large

gives roofs their final meaning.

Welcome to M-i-V! - now based out of Kolkata! Hopefully, for good. I thought I'll post a bit early since I've been away for so long...and say things in...um...slightly more expansive wordcounts. It's also been the longest time since I wrote anything more than a 14 liner. In fact the last long-ish poem I wrote was in 2017 - Remembering Zeinabu. 

The pandemic years have made me shrink in many ways, this is one of them. However, it's time to put that behind me and open up a bit - it's the fourth year of the Big P and my store of small p patience was never really robust. Neither is my word (limit) control. Expect longer stanzas, line counts, ramblings...thank you for reading and your time!

There's lots happening this month, both on the personal front and online. The offspring has come home for a few days and the aforesaid home looks like a disaster zone, but who cares? It's good to have the family under one roof, even if it is only for a fortnight. I hope to be back to regular posts here, also get back to my normal reading as and when I am able to straighten the house out. A few aches are certain every time you move...I'm finding many layers of meaning in that line. The bookshelves are full, even though in complete disarray, a hodgepodge of Bengali, English and genres - Emily D is next to Asimov and just looking at that is freaking me out... :) There's no way anyone can ever locate a specific book in this current mess. That's a job that needs tackling pronto but will have to wait till son flies back to uni. 

Online, there's WEP, the Chocolat Challenge, I can't say enough about that deliciousness however many wordcounts you allow me... so excited! And looking forward to what people write for this one!

I hope the month has started well for you and may it continue throughout. Have an awesome August! See you soon.

The Song of the Shifting Lessee

 

The garden has fewer flowers this year,

though there’s indeed much unseasonal rain -

that’s not enough. Water alone can’t force

flowers onto stems. Nature takes its course.

Things need light and air, that is made quite plain.

The lease is over. And departure’s near.

 

The lease is ending. Everything’s finite.

Even blooms must be exactly numbered.

Do plants grow less flowers for the lessee?

Dismiss the transient and the tenancy?

Or is this a farewell, just without words?

Maybe it boils down to a trick of light.

This is probably the last post for July. The rest of the month will go in packing up and moving back. I'll be offline for a couple days in transit and then back online here and at WEP in August. That's going to be an awesome month - online and off, for various reasons.

You have a great rest of July, see you soon. 

One Road, Many Routes

 

There’s only one road and not a thousand,

though the ways to get home are many.

Mango blossoms and the flamboyant’s,

piled up clouds on a day that’s rainy.

 

The sound of a key turning a lock

the rattle of a cracked casement glass,

a worm’s eye view of bridges of smoke,

grazing cattle configured on grass.

 

An old railway map marbled with tracks

boarding passes of bleached, faded trips

a chipped drawer stacked with photographs -

the preserved debris of old friendships.

 

Each one of them is a sufficient route

to loop back in a flash and touch the roots.      

What does the world have that home doesn't? Not a trick question, genuine. 

Well, chocolate for one. In my case. Chocolate has been produced in India from 1960's onwards, but except for niche, artisanal (read super pricey!) chocolate, the mass market stuff is overly sweet and too hard/harsh for my palate. European chocolate is still my favourite, available through out the ME but extremely expensive in Fiji as well as India. However, Fiji produces its own chocolate and there are other brands from NZ which aren't too bad. I will lose access to them obviously, once I move back. It will become an occasional treat from a-few-squares-a-day-keeps-the-heebie-jeebies-away type daily essential commodity at present. I'll have to deal with that. Home is not where the chocolate is. 

The reason why I am thinking all this is because that's what the prompt is at WEP next month - 

Join us! Post Aug 16th-18th, 2023.

.

Bittersweet, dark or white, studded with nuts, dusted with candied fruit, encasing intoxicating liqueurs in various heady flavours. Haunted by dodgy dealings and mirroring its own bittersweetness in its history,  which is changing but not changing fast enough - it's a veritable metaphor for life itself!  What's not to love, right? 

1001

 

This is a screengrab from somewhere

I forgot to note, apologies. My mum's

was different, it had a domed top 

made of glass, slightly more decorative. 

The principle was the same of course. 

I.

Mother’s first kitchen had a bamboo screen,

a four-slice toaster shaped like a carousel

the elements exposed, the frame in stainless steel

a knob of Bakelite to make the bread swivel,

small, birdcage like and nothing automatic -

the slices had to be turned, attended to,

each side evenly browned, equally crisped.

Every dish made there had something to do

with a larger mindfulness, constant presence,

a more hands on approach, a more involved love.

Mother insisted on four-slice models

through the sleeker, automatic pop ups

with regulators and covered elements

through all her relocations, all her travels.

~~*~~

 

IV.

She’s long gone, yet I sit thumbing her presence -

her pistachio green, Usha table top fan,

her progression through her successive kitchens,

her toasters and her taps in which cold water ran.

She’s long gone, more than thousand days at rough count

 and yet what I count aren’t the days of her absence,

instead dream up her transistors, and the sound

of signature tunes, the beeps at starts and ends.

They’re all gone. Pistachio green and stainless steel.

The nine o’clock siren that she set clocks by,

the clocks themselves lost in time, lying unwound.

Her hanger with her mauve georgette tie-and-dye.

I close my eyes, touch that edge and somehow feel

she’s not gone far. She’s somewhere here. That’s what counts.

~~*~~

VII. 

She’s long gone, but she’s here, not just on and off

like air that’s breathed, fluid that fills up each cell.

Constant, low grade grief’s also some sort of love,

I wouldn’t even call it grief. Hard to tell

where it ends, if it does, and breathing begins

and which exact bits of her have I inhaled,

if I forgot to breathe out what I breathed in

and how her taps, tunes, smiles and linens dovetailed

into me somewhere and can’t be prised apart.

Can grief end if love does not? does this deserve

a different name? how often our language fails!

An immense bandwidth reduced to just two words.

To binaries. With neither heads nor hearts.

Grief and she don’t quite fit, match standard thumbnails.

1001 is a charged number - the best known is the storyteller Shahrazade from the Arabian Nights.  This 1001th one is for my mother who was, no is my very first poetry teacher and one of the finest storytellers it's been my privilege to encounter. 

I've been travelling, happy travels after what feels like an aeon - I went to meet up with a schoolfriend after some 40 years at her son's wedding in Bali. Am back now and back at full attention at M-i-V as well as WEP, where the winners' post is live, go check it out to see who and what won the June Challenge, the creativity was exceptional this round. So blown away!

For the rest, I've been writing this series for the better part of June, I thought the milestone should be dedicated to her who I celebrate and miss everyday with a greater intensity than the day before. This doesn't in any way feel like grief, just a quiet teasing out of various memories that give shape and meaning to my life overall. It started with that vintage toaster and moved through various other stuff from half a century ago to now and got embedded into this series. So I thought I'd post a few of them here. 

That's not her first kitchen of course, but that's the very first one I remember, which was in New Delhi in a three storey stand-alone residence and at least twice, probably three times the size of her last kitchen in her flat in Calcutta. Do you remember your mother's kitchen from your childhood? Any particular gadget come to your mind? 

Hope your summer/season is going smooth and well.