Listening

 

I haven’t seen you for some time, though you’ve been

all around me everywhere, in the needle thin

alleys, on Juliet balconies in spring –

not in eggshell numbers, nor pixels nor a pin.

 

Flesh smells and blood’s awkward outside a vein.

No one knows why it stops. Nor exactly when.

We only know it will. Without a question.

It too will pass. Never come this way again.

 

I’ll yank my senses free and come hold you close

and breathe you in, the rankness of flesh and rose,

purple orchid heart, the exhaust off the roads.

And we’ll walk off someplace where no one goes.

 

I’ll listen with my entire body to you,

the peace of your quiet, velvet voice all day through.

Work in Progress

 

There’s work that needs doing. Also some place

that I need to get to, not everything

can be a zoom call. Sometimes face to face

is essential. Tactility is king.

Textiles, metals, intimacy, grieving.

 

And fragrance needs a different protocol –

grass crushed underfoot, wildflowers in spring.

wet boots on the landing. Wool coats in the hall.

The sweat soaked armpits of workdays cooling

on the bus home. Sharp points of unfair rulings.

 

There’s work that needs to be done. Some other place

I must be where helplines aren’t unforgiving,

all meaning isn’t derived from screens. There’s space

for spoken words, slow growth, small-footprint living,

feather-touch grace. Where tactility’s king. 

Weak signals

May you go places where the networks are weak,

and time’s marked with birdsong, there’s no need to speak,

the ocean whispers its secrets in your ears.

May you listen and fathom better this year.

 

Where the lanes vanish a few paces in,

the sands are knee deep and the foot traffic’s thin

and unknown lizard tracks rush off somewhere

pursued by predators. May you walk there.

 

Where the grasses are tall and the trees are high,

the fragrance of earth billows in the sky,

wildflowers bloom like fireworks in the air.

May your footsteps enhance the peace over there.

 

May you go places where the signals aren’t clear,

experience a deeper, full body year.

The year has certainly started with a bang, everything already spiralling out of control, breathless at the avalanche of changes. I've been thinking about what I want to do with the blog, if I should go back to my original practice of posting weekly. But nearly two weeks in, that idea doesn't seem all that great, right? :) So sticking to the fortnightly routine for the near future. Less is more. Taking it one step at a time and keeping it as positive as I can. That's the non-resolution for 2026.

I hope your January is going well and you are already experiencing a full body month. 

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.

Mother's Day : tips from a mother

I have, in my time, gone looking for advice -

sat at the knees of sage pundits,

sat with old women picking clean their rice;

wizened bodies housing wise souls, rheumy eyes,

stacks of life lessons, tips and tricks.

And each in their way, this is what they've said,

my child, don't label things too quick.

Be at home right inside your skin and head.

Every moment is its own watershed,

spot the shining silver in it.

Today I'd like to pass this on to you -

that everything has a nugget,

a core, a thread, and even scrap's got value;

you can't build with pure silver. It needs bamboo,

clay baked hard and hot into bricks.

Um...lend me your ears...maybe...??

I've been reading my poetry lately - first for the Colours of Life Festival last month, and then for a Diwali poetry fest this past week. So I thought I'd try doing it here as well. Let me know what you think...if you'd rather read...or if this is moderately tolerable? 

Incidentally, in Bengal, a tiny rag dipped in a runny rice paste is used to draw patterns on the floor on major festival days - mostly auspicious symbols such as (goddess) footprints going in, overflowing pitchers etc. The folk artform is called 'Alpona,' done by women with great artistry. You need dark earthen or plain cement floors to show them off.  Also need knowledge of the traditional designs. And of course, massive rag control. 

Will that be enough?

 

 

 

 

I see you sometimes now,

your spectacle frames through mine
your eyes of dandelion;
your voice rasps a little
against my inner membrane
a feline cough and purr
against the nap of where I hear;
stick figures of memory march
in the convolutions of veins,
have I loved you enough
before I let you go?

 

I tend the same gardens

cook the same hot meals
in the same dented saucepans;
yellow sludge of lentils
the same wooden utensils
with their edges broken
in all the same places
and each grain of your faces;
did I grip you hard enough
before you left my table?

 

The milk of the afternoon

curdles quickly into evening;
my hands fumble at switches
you let go of your knitting,
the sacred incense somewhere
lets its unctuous fragrance wisp in
trailing the bells and conch
doing the jangly rounds of temples,
the moon with a pointy beard
waxed stiff at his chin.



I touch your chicken-skin forehead
without having an inkling
did I touch you gently enough
when I saw you out to the darkness?





Shared at dVerse where the prompt this day invites us to to sweat the small stuff and write in technicolour 3D HD...