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.

BYOT

 

You know someday you'll have to go without

a certain backyard, a tree. Or a person.

Going on without is what it's mostly about. 

Deep in your bones, your heart, not a shred of doubt.

You too will have to step out from this garden -

you know someday you'll have to go without.

Life's mostly lived under some passing cloud,

you'll want to run but there's just no option.

Going on without is what it's mostly about.

The loneliest place's hidden in the crowds

millions strong around the world and nation.

You know someday you'll have to go without.

You cannot find relief, inside or out -

you can't breathe even when the window's open.

Going on without is what it's mostly about.

You can't fathom how it's ending, so throughout

you startle easy, but still get the job done.

You know someday you'll have to go without,

going on without is what it's mostly about.

BYOT is not 'bring your own tipple,' btw. It's 'bring your own title' because I am terrible at them, the title is the hardest part of a poem for me. I couldn't come up with a single word for this one. Leave me your suggestions in the comments please.

I'm on a megabinge of nonstop villanelles. This one was inspired by a contemporary Indian  historian I follow - he posted about his father's passing and wrote that post-bereavement his mother is his remaining connect to his childhood, but that thought is fraught with the knowledge that he will lose the comfort of her presence too someday. That loss is of course the most wrenching of all, but life's generally peppered with losses - from the smallest to the humongous and well, taking it into one's stride and carrying on. 

We had yet another untimely family bereavement last month. My families have changed drastically in the last three years. In my blood-family, there are now only a handful of people left who've known me as a child. In many gatherings I've become the eldest generation present. It takes some getting used to, but that can be done. What is impossibly difficult is the untimely passing of someone. It is crippling to have to see young people in their 30s have to deal with parental bereavement.

Someone recently left a  comment on a blog I visit, which essentially said blogging is an escape from reality. They come to blogs to have their mood lightened and not have problems present or past thrown at them. It made me think about what I should post here, if I should compartmentalise better. Poetry is after all fiction, I don't necessarily have to post something dark here just because my offline life has been rather sombre of late. I could easily dig up something from 5 years ago when things were slightly lighter and easy-breezy. That conflicts with my write-it-as-it-comes thumb-rule though, and it felt a bit dishonest somehow? - so in the end I didn't. 

Life's a bit messy right now and that will continue in the foreseeable future. Whatever shape and colour it is - dark, uncertain, hard to navigate...I'm still grateful, still celebrating the mess.  Hoping your week is a celebration, and also a bit tidier. Have a wonderful one. 

The Love Song of an Un-Prufrock

 

II.

If I had, like a cat, nine lives – I believe

I’d let my mother’s china be with someone

who’d use it more. I’d eat off banana leaves,

drink more from clay cups in each one rather than

fine, foreign porcelain. I’d use the word foreign

itself a lot less because more things would be

mine to cherish without paying attention

to their provenance, craftsman’s nationality.

In those other lives, I’d smell more books and rain

buy fewer umbrellas and be less afraid,

just squeeze your hand tighter when the thunder came.

I’d look more closely at the dents raindrops make

on the sands. Also at your thumbprints on glass,

leave the smudges. Learn to photograph the grass.

Pleased to report that this whole series is now complete, all nine of them. And I got some others written in the idle-time between them too. A good crop, all in all. 

The birthday always falls around the time my American friends and family celebrate Thanksgiving - and it's always seemed to me a good one to borrow into my own life. This year it feels extra special due to various reasons, not least among them the personal harvest situation going on - written and unwritten, countable and uncountable. Giving thanks for each one of them, every single day. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you in advance if you're observing. And the happiest of weeks to you if you're not. 

A thank you note

The kindness of strangers, indulgences of friends.

Someone who comes in from the very ends

of the earth, hands me a gift; and someone

else who doesn’t come in but still sends me tokens

of appreciation.  Books, and poems,

a frame, questions, an image of strings.

Grateful for all I receive, each of these things.

The intangible ways this wide universe

marks my doorstep.  I thank her with this verse.

You may think it’s nothing, a few coffee mugs,

the pile flattened in certain places on my rugs;

a badge here or there, pasted on the sidebar,

a guest’s shadow fallen on my walls, the arc

of a note straddling oceans. On my shoulder

the blessing of an unseen friend’s hand always.

The smiles of strangers threaded through my days.

The invisible ways this wide universe

wraps me tight and quiet. I thank her with this verse.

An incredible amount of happy things, small and momentous, have happened in May so far, and more is expected, which will keep me off the blog till next Monday. Thank you to those who have 'marked my doorstep', you know who you are, thank you to the ones who sent the books and badges and poems my way, and thank you to the one who's arranging the fun.  You know who you are too! My heart is on its knees, with folded hands :)

Riki's Prayer

Image : Riki Roy

The prompt

"Can you write me a poem too or a prayer whichever you like...where my ashes be strewn in the Rockies near Jasper..as I am in love with the place...and may I be born in Canada to snowboard in Jasper's amazing slopes...where my hubby is my instructor and I fall in love with him again in a new time and place and we marry amongst the singing slopes and enchanting lakes..."

The poem

I.

Snowmelt’s going to be washed to the oceans

someday anyway, so give my ashes to

a fresh snowfall laid at the feet of mountains,

give them to the arms of pinewoods,  the immense

worlds tucked in a print of a caribou.

Give them, my love, to the vast stillness, the flakes

dancing to the leaps and whims of snowstorms,

trembling on the ribbed ripples of tranquil lakes

and when the universe finally remakes

them, may they again take a woman’s form.

May I be reborn around these mountains, close

to these spring-touched fields, these winter-bright slopes;

and one day quite by chance walking these snows

may we meet again where the conifer grows

as stars pin clouds in place with their sapphire drops.

May I be born here on the ridge of a mountain,

come face to face with you, and fall in love again.

II.

Let me be grateful for each scar, each success,

every step taken with you by my side;

and every step taken alone in some dim recess

of memory, but special nevertheless

because each led here, where our paths coincide.

Let me be grateful for wonder and its huge breadth,

the depth of my passion, the lightness of mischief;

the bonds between us that persist beyond death

and the ken of humans, beyond narrow faiths

and streams speckled with leaf-shadows of grief.

And grateful for each grain of sand and grit,

the barefoot mornings, carefree and wriggly-toed

coming in with summers swinging at their hips.

For the jewelled ice on winter nights’ fingertips,

for pristine snows on hard shoulders of the road.

Grateful that you test the knots, ease every climb

just by going ahead or backing me up all the time.

III.

Praying that when I’m remade in some future birth

I walk along this same majestic icefield;

or wavy tracks on a slope where snow’s disturbed,

a red helmet moves against the sky and earth

in graceful loops; and again, my fate is sealed.

It’s déjà vu, “I know you! from someplace else,”

you’re nonplussed but too polite to contradict.

Far below, the green lake ripples, the snowmelts

chuckle gently, trickle soft in their channels.

You’re visibly relieved as I change the topic,

“I’d like to learn snowboarding, give me a try?”

and you unstrap and step off, ever courteous.

I’m shaky as I mount, and your palm’s a sigh.

Thunderstruck at this touch, your smile’s awry -

you finally make the connect between us.

“Notice the helmet’s still red, what does that prove?”

the board steadies underfoot as I start to move. 

For my dear friend Riki Roy, with thanks and much love and friendship. May she be guided to her love and happiness unerringly, in every life that is granted her, and may they both be equally inspirational partners in all of them, as they are now. 

This one is strictly 'write as it comes' - no editing, no over-thinking, posted as soon as written, from the heart to brain to blog in half a morning's work over three consecutive days.  I hope I have been able to do justice to the prompt, Rik.

Riki's prayer II

Image : Riki Roy

Let me be grateful for each scar, each success,

every step taken with you by my side;

and every step taken alone in some dim recess

of memory, but special nevertheless

because each led here, where our paths coincide.

Let me be grateful for wonder and its huge breadth,

the depth of my passion, the lightness of mischief;

the bonds between us that persist beyond death

and the ken of humans, beyond narrow faiths

and streams speckled with leaf-shadows of grief.

And grateful for each grain of sand and grit,

the barefoot mornings, carefree and wriggly-toed

coming in with a summer swing at the hips.

For the jewelled ice on winter nights’ fingertips,

for pristine snows on hard shoulders of the road.

Grateful that you test the knots, ease every climb

just by going ahead or backing me up all the time.

Not reaping what I sow

Some I will reap,

though not of my sowing.

The others will keep.

There’s  no knowing

to whom the last fruit will fall.

 

Maybe birds peck it

or maybe a squirrel;

a child could visit

and tear off and swivel

it over the garden wall.

 

Seeds I plant here -

if they’re coaxed to sprout -

with the passage of years

will fruit no doubt.

But not for me those harvests.

 

For all and one

welcomed to the orchard,

the fruits will ripen

and will be offered

after me to future guests.

In a specially jelly-kneed thanksgiving today for those who have sowed for me for years and years,  and the grace and favour I reap consequently.

Wordless

The heart’s full

the lips sealed
the fingers still
of their own accord.
Far away, a rainbow sky
chooses me as I pass by
and neither side says a word.