Stranger Earth

 

I don’t know this city without your footprints

marking out the roads, buildings, the streetlights

glinting on your glasses, your voice mapping

the terrain of neighbourhoods, days and nights.

I don’t know this place, it’s strangely different –

the waters an acrid shade of grey and white,

the neon signs of advertisements pulsing

like a news ticker from a disaster site.

Everything is where it was, yet it isn’t

as if the ground has shifted, ever so slight,

as if the earth’s somehow lost its mooring,

as if the sky’s fallen from a great height.

Grief is a half done crossword by your chair,

an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs.

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.

Post-Diwali

 

It’s happened before that I haven’t put up

lamps for Diwali. The winds, grief or love

have stopped the flames and the darkness has been

my deep solace and festival enough.

 

It’s an odd goddess that discriminates

and does not step in through unlit gates.

Does her omnipotence flail in the dark?

Does her third eye need lights to navigate?

 

Surely those who could not afford the oil,

the homes left dark by personal turmoil   

have the greatest need for the gods to step in,

lift faith and fortune rather than recoil.

 

I’ll continue to let emotions strike

the match, the gods too may step where they like. 

Not a reset

 

Today I remembered the bugle’s plaintive notes

somewhere near the bungalow, from across the road

every day at sunset. Some high official lived close -

his flags were raised and lowered as the bugle played.

It calms things down a bit to get into childhood,

to thumb old music - of bagpipes and Irish flutes,

this time demands a retreat into those tunes and books,

those long ago textures when she moored my decades.

 

Verses the world over, the texts have the same sting

all that’s born must die, there’s no point in suffering -

as if it’s an option, as if grief’s a reset.

There’s no preparation, no going out of mind,

no way to carry forward or leave it behind,

no knowing if memories will help or how to forget.

Orange curtained

I.

Last night I thought of you, I couldn’t sleep - 

the bedclothes were too warm, too soft, their perfume

felt like the long-ago, orange-curtained room

where you’d sat with the sunlight on your sleeve.

The hoarding outside blinked into the night

some wire loose, some pattern of disconnect

patchy skin of an anecdote, near perfect

in recall, but I know that I’m being naïve.

Nothing much has changed meanwhile, there are three

black and white photos still on the bookcase

the walls kaleidoscope into your face

and grief does not leave any marks on these.

Peace is a hollow sound, darkness is an ear

twisted  in the pillow. And insomnia.

II.

I think of you during the day as well

your hands behind my eyes a push button

umbrella, their arcs of fluorescence open,

your voice a softly blooming magic spell

on a fractured day morphing to a lullaby

for a drop of time, neither blink nor aeon,

a swirl of seconds? years? before it’s gone

and I straighten up whatever went awry

turn back again, deep dive into the phone –  

respond to an email, write a paragraph,

read the news, look up the tally, adjust

my nerves, try a new pink smile - mostly half

hearted. Grief’s the shape of my collarbone

and wrist, milliseconds marooned in the past. 

Night sky

This too is a kind of happy -

just briefly preoccupied -

that the night sky is forever

though one pole star has died.

This too is a kind of happy

that others close ranks on the map

even if it’s momentary.

Not one night permits a gap.

This too is a kind of happy -

that the sun’ll rise tomorrow.

That day skies include all stars,

happiness includes all sorrow.

Last month I lost a close and crucial member of my extended family. This is a thanksgiving for his life and a memorial. Always in the midst of our hearts and our lives - all elders.

Since I'm travelling, my posts through July and August are scheduled, but I will check in whenever I can and respond. Meanwhile, have the happiest summer/season!

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.