Marayoor

On the way...

To be on the road in a car, or a dirt track,

slicing through the mists and never looking back -

that’s where you’re most at ease, without any need

to think on what lies beyond or what recedes.

 

Ferns dip their dainty toes into the highway

waterfalls weave small rainbows into their spray

the eucalypti raise their hands to the sky

a mile is a unit of time flashing by.

 

As you draw near, the sandal trees make it plain

there’s no scent without a price of crushing pain.

The border staff check the car for smuggled goods

for gold’s almost equal to this sandalwood.

 

The yearning to breathe in freely perfumed air

does not work - you return to the road from there. 

From NH 85

I am back from Kerala after a wonderful trip - the monsoons are absolutely gorgeous in the mountains, whether it's the Himalayas or the Western Ghats. Kerala, being at the very south western tip of peninsular India, has two monsoons - one when they come in from the Arabian Sea and again, when they recede. It rained nearly everyday, a beautiful drizzle that gently misted everything to a dreamscape. Clouds floated across the slopes so close you felt you could just stretch your arm out and touch them. 

I first went to Munnar in the early 90's on a work trip. It wasn't the huge tourist destination that it's become now, I'd never even heard of it before. The town was a line of straggly buildings along a tiny main street, which I had no occasion to get into because we were put up by the client at a property some distance from it. My room had wrap around windows with the most spectacular panoramic views of the mountains and tea gardens. 

It was the kind of place that makes you want to return to it even before you've left it. I resolved to go back someday. On holiday - no work meetings, no client directed facilities tours. Taken me thirty plus years but now that's been ticked off. :) 

Marayoor is about 40 km from Munnar - there is a forest of sandalwood trees, some 65000 of them. I wanted to check out the scent of the live forest as opposed to dead wood and processed oils. So I badgered the family and our guide into a drive there. Unfortunately the whole area is fenced off, naturally...sandalwood is one of the most expensive woods in the world, illegal felling and smuggling has been an issue, deforestation is an ongoing problem in India anyways...So. Walking among the sandal trees is a strict no-no. The main road cuts through the forest, that's as close as a visitor can get. I asked everyone in the car if they could smell anything. No one could, our city noses are not up to the task. Cautionary tale in there somewhere, also a life lesson if one looks hard enough. 

The drive was beyond sublime though. The only sounds that of the winds and the wheels on the road. Occasional waterfalls cascading down the how-green-is-my-valley-type slopes. And once the engine was switched off, a thousand different birdsongs in chorus.

Strangely, I did not feel half the disappointment I thought I should. Maybe I'm finally becoming capable of appreciating the meaning of the journey being the destination. 

I hope your week is filled with the most beautiful sounds and scents of nature wherever you are. 

No high alert

 

I don’t have to close my eyes to see your face,

it’s in passing clouds, in each clod on the road,

it’s been outlined in the rise and fall of days –

as winters have frozen, as springs have thawed.

 

As summers have stormed in with their fangs bared,

as the lissom rains have twirled on the ground.

I hear your voice in the soft, whispered prayers

of the sea breeze in trees that it weaves around.

 

I don’t have to prime myself body and mind

I don’t have to take any extra care,

to sharpen my senses for symbols and signs.

Wherever I reach out blind – you’re always there.

 

However great the time and space we’re apart,

you’re with me still – nothing needs a high alert.

A scheduled post - because I'm on a short break in the Nilgiris but I'm reluctant to let anything disrupt the hard-fought fortnightly schedule of posting here. Fortnightly? is that archaic? I never see people use it, come across it anywhere in writing either, unless it's 'period' writing. Ennyway. I digress.

What I meant to write was that I'm quite unsure how to label this poem - all love poetry feels like something else too, to me - deeper than the glib labels words define. However, the lines have come about because of an old 1970s photo a childhood friend posted on a social media platform. I oohed and aahed over it, I'm a sucker for old snaps. It struck me later that I've managed to remain in contact somehow through all the intervening years with all the people captured in that photograph, though we each are continents apart at this exact moment and have been so through the major part of our individual lives. 

Should poems be labelled to reflect their source of inspiration? On a different note, isn't that - that I'm still able to be in touch with them - an ineffable blessing and a celebration deeper than words? 

Hope your month has begun well, have a wonderful July.