Would it be easier to process?

 

Detail from a famous Mughal tomb, Delhi.

Would grief be different if it had a headstone,

a slab of marble, an engraved epitaph,

would it be easier to process, move on

if it had more than just a photograph?

 

If the ashes weren’t dispersed, anonymous

part of the delta and onward to the bay

would it be simpler if there were a focus?

A tangible niche for a lamp or bouquet?

 

Would grief be different if it didn’t have to

look up to stars and ease be reimagined,

to look for heaven in seas and skies of blue,

to dredge for peace the rain and the sweep of wind.

 

Would it dissolve quicker and so integrate

if there were a concrete spot to touch and weep,

could a grave contain its unbearable weight

and would that make it simpler to breathe and sleep?

Once upon a time that is now light years away, a Scottish friend and I were in a deep conversation about the disposal of the dead in various cultures. I told her about the Indian Hindu practice of cremating bodies on funeral pyres lit by the eldest son. She had shuddered and said two things that stayed with me - 

1) pretty traumatising for the son, especially if young

                     and 

2) where do you go to put flowers then?

Where, indeed?

Cremation was actually quite common in many cultures, the Ancient Greeks and Romans both certainly practiced it, as well as some Nordic folks. A little different from the current practice in India, because the ashes from the pyre (which consist of the bones, all else is consumed) weren't necessarily scattered or immersed in rivers, but given a ritual burial. Therefore, there was still something tangible for the family/loved ones to gather around and feel connected to. 

This the Indian practice does not encourage because holding onto any part of the body is believed to hold the departed soul back in its spiritual journey onward. Plus it is a forcible realisation for the family and helps them accept the finality of death. The process starts with the ritual cremation and immersion of ashes. And then progresses in stages till the 4th and 11th days, and then at monthly intervals up to the first anniversary of the death. This is what my mother had explained when I brought this topic up with her. Letting go in one fell swoop and then acclimatising to it over a year. At the time, I accepted it without much thinking, I mean, who even thinks at that age, right?

But now that I'm older and slower to accept things as given, plus I have lost several family members in quick succession over the last three years, I'm wondering... If letting the remains flow away to the oceans and become an unknown part of the planet is really the best way forward for the living. Certainly from the societal point of view, considering land scarcity in cities and saturated graveyards, yes that's so. But from the pov of individual trying to get used to the absence? Does it have to be this drastic and must they have no place to go to and draw breath? Would grief be different, made easier if there was something of the earthly body of the departed left, however minuscule, on the same plane as the living? 

The other, and massive, disadvantage of cremating the dead, is that a whole heap of historical records are lost. Also in one fell swoop. Not to mention the forensic evidence in dodgy circs.

Disposal

 

Anywhere on earth, in the hills or plains,

when the last one’s drawn, and no breath remains - 

lay the withered grass down on any terrain

and there’s no need to disturb the gods.

 

Feel free not to chant prayers at the pyre -

and by the way, either would do, soil or fire -

home isn’t a point, a place to retire,

because home is, after all, a road.

 

And if you’re feeling brave, when I’m gone

let the birds have the flesh, the sun bleach the bones,

neither fire nor fuss, nor digging nor stone,

just a slow collapse into the clods.

 

Like a small footprint washed off by the sea,

a paper boat sunk after its short journey,

atoms imploding into eternity

without markers for where they implode.

Don’t disturb the gods, don’t disturb the soil,

don’t sully the air with heat and huge turmoil

don’t light up the lamp, don’t pour out the oil,

lose me gently to this bay that is broad.

Keep it light and soft, keep it natural

both the print and tread quiet, and erasable,

the end a laying down, no special disposal,

let me scatter where I fall with my load.

Vacancies 2017

The monsoon and I arrive, every year

about the same time, and the sky’s shampooed

with sudsy clouds, the asphalt’s rinsed in mud,       

all the way through the city up to here

awash with reflections, the tree leaves clear

of past dust, debris. But change’s accrued

in infinitesimal moves of blood;

in tiny degrees mapping atmosphere.

A house has fallen vacant on a street -

overgrown, greedy vines snap at its heels.

A locked cupboard somewhere, an empty chair,

a pair of old, worn slippers minus the feet.

The city commute’s the same, the same rain wheels

across the road, just that you aren’t there.

Shades of Orange As They Came Apart

I didn’t notice things – the colours of lipstick

for instance - she wore a shade between peach and brick;

dotted in her scarves too, the whole range of  orange

woven in her skirts and art, and in her magic.

She wore the deepest henna, that burnt tangerine

between her fingers, on her knuckles; dark, crushed green

staining her palms pumpkin-warm, climbing vines, blossoms

on her pulse in light apricot, and nectarine.

She fed me ripe oranges, taking them apart

tenderly in her palms, like segments of my heart;

she prised my world, eternity and each minute

wide open with her hands. The taste of that tart

sweetness remained, each segment a sunrise transferred

from her lifeline to mine. The fragrance remembered

as first sunlight flames on water.  The formless gains

shape as darkness ebbs. Undying preciousness, coloured.

In her rooms the walls are orange blossom, rugs gray

rainclouds, an ancient magazine and the doorway

fall open like her hands.  I shut my eyes, notice

the shades of orange in rust and dust, mild decay.

This is the final version of a poem I created for one of the prompts during the MOOC I did over July-August.  (Did I tell you there's talk of an anthology being compiled with some of the works that were created there? Watch this space)

The assignment was themed on Elegy and Memorial.  I thought I'd post it here today with thoughts for the families who have lost loved ones to terrorism in all the places that touch my heart, and life. 


The season's changing out here where I am, though the temperatures remain high, they are slowly softening. Much of this region of course has two seasons - hot and less hot, but my brain and body are still attuned to the Indian six. There's a cleaning up of the skies back home about now, lots of fluffy clouds chasing off the heavy dark monsoon ones, the festival season starts in less than a month.  It's a particularly beautiful time of the year.  'Sharat' we call it in Bengali, there is no English counterpart available, it's not autumn yet, a pre- or proto-autumn is more like it.

Here too, the plants which had been singed to cinders during the summer, are greening back to normal.  Flowers have their happy faces on, the leaves are plumping up.  I have been writing more, learning more, blogging a little less than usual, but the blog's going to green itself back to normal as well. Things are changing outside and inside. My year so far feels like an adventure and a gigantic blessing, which I suppose are synonyms really. 

I hope your year, and month, is going well too.

Sunbeam smiles

I will turn away from prying eyes

and screaming lines, and find a place -

may be a path that we walked once

the steps to friendship from acquaintance

and mourn alone that lost slow rise

of sunbeam smiles, shone onto my face.

In Memoriam

I know when I open the door

the rooms will be empty, and dusty.

Their dust has long been scattered, washed

from the river into the sea;

there’s just the photo on the wall.

I know that I must turn the key,

yet I stop and raise my hand to knock

as though someone still waits for me.

The streetlamp in front sputters and glows

unsteady in some Morse like code.

A car’s long hand on the horn

skims down from the end of road,

the silence inside screams once, and twice

and then goes into rustling mode.

I turn the knob, the portrait is there

just that it's a bit more yellowed.

The light’s a whisper of the dark -

the frizz of smoke blown from its lips.

Silk thin shadows their edges blurred,

a sunmoonstar in reversed eclipse;

the dust a plume of a lonely search

paused before some rambling scripts

and death’s life with its grim mouth pursed

drumming the silence with fingertips.

Down at the Dead Sea

I tasted the Sea, it wasn’t salt,  

more like a bitter, burning flame.
So, a lake has come to be called
by a somewhat grandiose name;
and just as well I tasted a drop
because lakes and death both might be
named different from what they ought;
based on their past reality.

 

It’s rarely enough to think a thought,

each drop must be tested twice,
and I mulled them over as I walked -
the names of lakes, their taste and size;
a lagoon had somehow cut off
its lifeline to the birthing sea
and so both lakes and death might morph
beyond their size and history.

 

It’s never enough to think just once,

each thought must be tasted twice -
a drop of bitter on the tongue
on second taste gets close to nice;
meanings acquired when I was young,
as I change I must cut free,
but they persist, correct or wrong -
lakes; and death; and eternity.

 

I tried a drop, but  it was not

as I’d expected - the burn of salt
somewhere between bitter and hot
and no way of pinning the fault -
whether it’s my taste that is flawed
or that’s the truth of salinity?
All that’s certain is that I strode
down the shores of a once live sea.

Maybe you’d come back to me if I didn’t try so hard

to find you everywhere, in ribs of leaves,

in ruffles of afternoon petals, in the textured dark bark

of night, in the fuzzy days of windblown grass,

in the dim muddy alleys of my own grief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9th of May

 

I.

 

She slips into mind, every year, about this time

when spring hesitates to get to summer, dithers;
a dancing graph, light of dawn, in one straight line
from the sun over the water, she too shivers

 

just like that; the sunrise reflects on the man-made pond

like her smile, and I am more mindful, notice then
without knowing why.  They tell me some unnamed bond
ties me still, ties me fast, closer than tight apron

strings. I can’t believe in soul-aprons, dust and ash
the only ends, the cosmic chasm the last vessel.
They tell me she’s a better place, they know it’s trash -
the feel good chants, cosy hype, raised snug levels.

 

It doesn’t matter where she’s gone.  She was here.

That’s what counts. And that quiver.  This time of year.

 

II.

 

Did I tell you how soft she was? How soft her lap

and what she wore slung over her back? always white
but stained with my finger-marks, turmeric mishaps;
did I tell you that her smile was like the first sunlight

 

filtered through leaves, slanted on streams, dappled glee;

that taut peace of the needle when north is found?
the high-noon ice-cool solace of the filigree
shade of trees? that flock of birds overhead homeward bound?

 

Did I tell you how frail her arms, and yet how wide

their love, how strong their resolve, how tender their touch?
all floated into oceans now on countless tides,
whatever remained after the fire, and that’s not much.

 

As I can’t lay petals on cold tongues of headstones

I lay words here, writing blind, not knowing whereon.

 

 

III.

 

It’s no use now telling me that the earth still bends

magnetic lines from south to north as it always did
and if I held my compass up the needle ends
would still align; but there’s no peace left in the grid.

 

Never again the same refuge in an unstitched cloth,

never again her fingers on my hair and brow.
Let all needles point always to the axis north
what difference can it make to anyone now?

 

It’s a barefaced lie that I said she comes to mind

once a year, on occasion, when the seasons cusp;
I haven’t kept an exact count - how many times
I’ve thought of her since she turned to ashes and dust.

 

But still sunlight’s on the pond, a sudden flicker

about this time every year. When seasons dither.

 

 

IV.

 

One by one the reference points change their spots

from living homes to burning ghats and then nowhere;
not a cordoned off mourning zone, just nothing, nought!
just an immense gulf, a cosmic gulp of ash and air.

 

The deepest loneliness is born of crippling grief

the more they chant the placebos, the deeper it gets
a flicker of light on a wave brings little relief
from this music of lies the myths of light around death.

 

Where are the new cardinal points, where do I go?

now that those wrists have no more an earthly address
no coordinates to mourn at and pent-up sorrow
doesn’t light the way out of any loneliness.

 

Maybe this is all there is to navigate it with:

loneliness, and flickers of light; music and myth.