Resolution

 

I'm resolute that I'll let joy arrive

at its own pace, I'll not ask it to rush,

nor will I turn away from the less joyous.

Everything comes at its appointed time.

I'll wait and learn. To keep the flame alive

whatever is served. Not let months crush

the night flowers slow blooming in darkness,

the rivermagic supreme and sublime.

And I'll learn to listen more acutely,

to love deeper, in more effacing ways.

Make sure my love is felt, not seen nor heard -

I'll erase the extras most resolutely

till less than joyous also feels like grace,

beyond the need to spell it out in words.  

Well, here we are  - the first post of the year. Hope you've had a brilliant time these past holidays and that those good things are going to repeat throughout the year. Wishing you lots of happies and merries in 2025. 

I don't really make resolutions, New Year or otherwise, the above is pure poetic licence overload.  Mainly because I suck at keeping them. However, the general idea is to do a bit better, to learn something new and go someplace new. To work on the patience quotient, which, after decades, is still not at an acceptable level. And the less said the better on the detachment/decluttering index, yikes. Work in progress, work in progress. Sigh. 

Do you make New Year resolutions? Tell me the secret to not fail at them.

The Merry n Not So Merry

 

I wish for you a smoother path than you’ve had

a room, a friend, a sky to make your heart glad.

For you to know that the dark’s a balm as well,

a pathway to a lasting peace from flashy tinsel.

 

Not every festival’s star studded and bright -

love and peace are sometimes low key, low and light.

I wish for you to find the charm in low key,

learn there is solid earth below the debris.

 

The needles fall, the limbs will disintegrate

that’s the law. Tomorrow’s a different date.

I wish for you to know today’s just today,

and the future’s never an exact replay.

 

Things will turn, even if they’re grim for a spell.

I wish you hope this season. I wish you well.

It's been a rough year, they don't seem to be making the buttery silk ones anymore, they've forgotten the recipe or what?

Rough not just for me but a lot of people I know - online and offline. Not everyone can be, or even afford to be, merry right now. 

I'm not going to whinge about the disasters small and big that have dogged me this year, it serves no purpose except to spoil the general party mood. 

All I have to say is this - if you've felt crushed, panicked and/or overwhelmed by some or other life event, if you've been pushed to the limits of your endurance, then I hear ya! And I'm not wishing you a glib happy holidays!

What I am wishing for all of us is a coping mechanism, that we find a way to turn angst and helplessness into patience and a pathway forward. To find solace in the everyday miracles and good memories and the concern and love of friends, family and community. To keep the chin up and the mind open to 'dwelling in possibilities,' even when we're down on our collective knees. 

As for me personally, I could do with some of the buttery silky stuff - are you listening, Universe? 

Wish you tranquil festivals and a celebration of hope in New Year 2025. May it treat us all gently. 

Year end 2K22 : Not Just a Christmas Thing

 

One year, many years ago when the blog was still a toddler unsteady on its legs, my father and I got into a discussion about Irene Rutherford's poem 'Is Love Then So Simple?' That spun off many responses in my head and one of them was this 'ereunder. Reposting it because it felt particularly appropriate just now.

Love Is Not Just a Christmas Thing

I’ll love you with the dance in my bones

and the pigeon calls in my veins

with the soil of my flesh and its stones,

the bungled belly laugh in my brains.

I’ll love you when the dances get dim

when the anklets draw hooks and blood

when pirouette is brimstone and grim

the last thrash of fish on the mud.

I’ll love you when the tinsel’s trash

when the tree’s just needles on the floor

all festive is only one flash,

and the dark is the maw of the door.

I’ll love you still when the music thins

under the amber songs of dawnskins.

It's been an extraordinary year - the good, the bad and the ugly. The challenges have been many - some earth shattering, some just a pinprick, but then so have the high points.

But...at this time, every year end, the bad and the ugly somehow drain away and only the residues of the good remain, like the faint smear of sand on fingers that have been building sandcastles on the beach for too long. That can't be dusted away no matter how hard I try. Has to be properly scrubbed off under the shower, now that it's dark and play must be taken indoors. 

However, I have to confess I'm not taking that shower yet. As I am content to go around with the grit under my nails and inside my shoes, ever so slightly uncomfortable but welcome still because it originates from a place of happiness.  Thankful for everything the year has brought me, the learning that has happened, the castles that have been built and those that fell and/or never got finished. Everything has its place in the wider scheme of things and nothing is ever wasted, not even a grain...my mother, Arundhati, used to say that often.

The advantage of having a mother who was named after a star is that I just have to look up at the night sky and there she is....still twinkling down at me with all her wisdom and laughter and life lessons and love and constancy, still steadfastly beside her partner star in the heavens. Both my parents have been with me all through this year - the farther I travel out from the centre, the closer they watch over me and my family, the deeper and broader their presence feels in my life, both present and past. And hopefully in the future too. 

Wishing you all the joys of this festive season. Happiness, peace and plenty of sandcastles to build in 2023. See you in the New Year!

This is the thing with feathers...

 

A couple of days in and the wing feathers

are already bedraggled; the weather

is strangely warm when it should have been cold

- summer in winter.  The year is just days old.

 

Somewhere the light’s dying. Somewhere icy winds

have knifed trees. More grace than can be imagined

even in the unkempt, in the shady light -

the rims of hope and grace are seldom watertight.

 

The anglers are gone, the fishing boats are back,

sun’s in its rightful place in the zodiac.

Waiting for the bones to move a bit less smooth

the flesh to peel away and reveal the truth –

 

that feathers, shaggy or not, knifed trees and all

remain beautiful however the light falls.

Finale

 

Still my mind and teach me to hear

the absence of a stream

the sparkle of air, crystal clear

the outline of a dream

still my mind and teach me to read

the red lines behind the gauge  

give me the skillsets that I need

to deink and strip this page

open me up to the noughts hidden

in the maze of days and nights

the trees and music, tinsel, ribbons

the spectra of festive lights

teach me to grow through colours and shapes

of silence, absence and voidscapes.

So...that's the final word. It's been a relentlessly hard year, glad to see the back of it. Thank you for your support and your time, here and on the other platforms of engagement. Wishing you a joyful, peaceful and healthful New Year 2021. 

Molina's Key

Would you believe me if I told you that it took decades for us, my cousin and I, to compare notes and figure out the whole thing? She had passed away by then. Our aunt, I mean - Matulu we called her, all the siblings and cousins of our generation. I was well into my teenage when I saw her open a bottle of Coke and the penny dropped finally. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to wonder at Molina’s choice of the Keeper of the Key.

The key to Molina’s room was kept on top of Matulu's Allwyn refrigerator. It was  huge, easily three times the size of the normal keys we saw tucked in at the waists, beyond the saree pleats of our mothers or tied into a knot at the anchal of our grandmother. Ornately fashioned from inlaid brass, with a vine and flower design climbing up the shaft, the key was impressive, and scary.

Matulu was an easygoing, affectionate maternal figure. Nearly a grandmotherly one in my case, as she was older than my own mother by almost twenty years. I spent a lot of time in her home. But I can’t remember her ever in any disciplining mode – she was always smiling. Always ready to make me my favourite dishes of Mohanbhog, Malpoa and fried potato matchsticks on demand.  And she fed them to me personally with endless tales of Teacher Fox and his Students, the Crocodile Hatchlings. The disciplinarian was Molina. Quite the opposite of Matulu, in fact.

Molina lived within the precincts of the lake on the opposite side of the road from my aunt. None of us had ever actually seen Molina up close, but we knew her well enough. Not particularly endearing, she was old and walked with a limp, in the spotless white of a Bengali widow. She had bloodshot eyes from staying up nights. Molina knew every child in the neighbourhood, even the ones who were only visitors, their comings and goings, their intentions good and bad, their deepest, darkest secrets. She took the too boisterous, the disobedient, the misbehaved ones away to the small room atop the water tower that stood beside the lake, rising many stories  above the surrounding low-rise homes.

“Into that room high up, up, up she takes them, locks the door with this key and teaches them a lesson,” Matulu said. She took the key from the top of the fridge and let me feel its weight in my small, four year old palm.

“Will she take me too, Matulu?” I asked, the key twinkling in my hand, heavy and ominous.

“Oh no, never,” came the instant reply. ”You’re a good girl, aren’t you? You’re my golden girl, you’re the best behaved. Molina only takes the naughty ones to that room.” Matulu took the key from my fingers and put it back on the fridge again. She bent down and hugged me close. “You’re ever so lokkhi. Molina would never even look at you.”

I immediately resolved to grit my teeth and be as well behaved, as lokkhi as was humanly possible. If the key to the room was this big and scary, what would the lessons conducted therein be like?

Sometime past sixteen, I saw Matulu open a Coke bottle with Molina’s key and realised that hallowed and feared object’s real purpose. The key, or the bottle-opener, still lived on the Allwyn fridge.  Why Molina, even if she did exist, would choose to keep her key on Matulu's fridge never occurred to me once in all those years of childhood.

Just a few months ago, one of my cousins and I got reminiscing together and an avalanche of a-ha moments later, figured that Molina was a common motif Matulu used to keep all her nephews and nieces in line. An imaginary, invisible disciplinarian but so very effective. We laughed, and then fell silent. Matulu was not around to see our epiphany, she has been gone more than a decade now. But she would have enjoyed it, she always did like a good laugh. 

Only carrots, very little stick. A neat trick, and gentle. Molina’s key. Kind of sums up the zeitgeist of our entire collective childhood.

~~~

So that's it folks, 2019 is done, the last post is written and here is a brand new decade waiting to start. Who knows what exciting things it will bring?! A happy year end to you and the very best of the New Year 2020 and the coming decade! 

Smileworthy

Festivals that seep into rooms

somehow by osmosis;

faraway strains of childhood tunes;

streamers peeping through mists;

a rainbow in a small oil slick,

preserved daisies in books;

flamingos clustered close and thick

somewhere behind the souqs.

The gentle turns of planets, years,

seamless the season’s bends,

the random points marked on a sphere

for beginnings and ends.

Wishing all here a fun, creative and positive 2017.  I got an email greeting which said 'may your happiness break all previous records' and I'm shamelessly plagiarising that. Record breaking levels of joy - that's my wish for you this year. Stay blissful, stay well.

Nah...thanks, nothing that can be broken

I’m not committing to a thing

that can be broken, chipped, or marred.

The year can take me anywhere -

unending oceans, city squares

cut up neat between their boulevards,

edges soft with leafsilk lining.

I’ll not be making resolutions -

anything that’s hard to keep.

I’ll be easy in my shoes and skin.

The year is free to take me in

or throw me out, and I’ll sleep

on its pebbled grounds, or oceans.

I’m not running so panic stricken,

wringing hands, trembling with fright.

The path’s a thin thread but I’m on it

and everywhere I stop to sit

there’s birdsong and bread. Some trick of light

makes it a destination.

I have to admit I am not a very systematic person, especially where things like goals and resolutions are concerned.  One year (and I can't even remember which, so deep in my past this is buried) I came up with some vague phrases - try something new, be more mindful, work on patience, STOP panicking! and called them my resolutions and they looked good even after the year was over, and so I never bothered to make any fresh ones. They have served me perfectly well for as long as I have had them.   

Last year try something new translated to a new recipe every month - looking back it feels way more energetic than I thought I could ever feel!  This year has whooshed past before I consciously got to grips with what new stuff I could try even. But I have ended up doing a bunch of things for the first time in default willing-spirit, woolly-brain, weak-flesh mode anyways, so I guess it's okay, I'm on track still. 

That's all I am going to do for 2017 too - stay on track most of the time, and veer off whenever it feels it'd be worthwhile, and stop anywhere that looks like it has some cool birdsong :)  What are you planning to do with 2017?

Let's start with a blank page...

The year stumbles on old cobblestones,

slip-slides a bit, loses its footing

the hour comes with anxious undertones

a nervous sidestep when no one’s looking

hold its face steady and never betray

the minor flaw that spoils the symmetry -

the old year’s more than its last day

the new  more than omens and augury

shut the frantic pulses of blood and bones

and nip the fears, let the hopes hang free

a year comes and a year turns away

and somewhere between a fresh start’s lurking.

Happy New Year 2016!

It's not always peacock-feathered

This thing had no feathers, nor carried a tune,

just a low growing scrub I saw, by a dune;

no bird had ever sung in that desolate spot,

no cloud had marred that sky with its untidy blot;

yet it grew, stood its ground without any fuss

in a quiet version of hope, unselfconscious.

An immense vastness, a certain light offers

tiny, easily missed, wild-austere metaphors.

It is not always peacock-feathered and resplendent.

It doesn’t sing always, it can remain silent. 

And that rounds off my rather turbulent year on a note of quiet hope, I know it will start singing sometime.  Thank you for being here and seeing this year through with me. A very happy new year MMXV to you and yours. Stay happy and blessed, wishing you lots of poetry and birdsongs of hope. See you next year. 

Pirouette

Another year comes and pirouettes

twirls once, twice, and then leaves the stage
without making time for elaborate
recaps, without the clichéd, set
speeches that fall grandly off the page;

 

the last of the mornings draws to a close

behind an amorphous mist of rooftops
behind the naked trees, and winter shows
of merry red blooms, and jingling radios
and pushy red signs in the malls and shops;

 

somewhere the leaf-drop of terrible news;

the scream of a shell fossilised into stone.
Soft mollusc insides of lives torn, the livid bruise
of blood in stinging brine, the wounded queues,
the bubbles of pain, each cruising alone.

 

But the vicious trickle of viscous black despair

still gets stoppered by the crumbly cork
of shaky hope, and love pricks it everywhere
and breaks the quick-formed crust over its layer.
The new year comes in with its turns and torque.

Welcome 2012

It doesn’t seem too good -

A cyclone rounds off the year
Laying waste a certain neighbourhood.
It feels like mine, though it’s quite clear
That I am connected through
Only the most tenuous of ties.
Only because I happen to know you,
Whose faraway life now lies
Ruined over there. And no connection otherwise.
Nothing at all familiar.

The year has stood me along its edges

And in a minute will push what's left,
Regardless of the personal damages
Into the year that’s coming next.
And there are many neighbourhoods
That became flotsam on the tide
And losses of great magnitudes
Taken calmly  into stride
By distant lives on different sides
Of the world.  Not mine, nor even yours, derelict.

A feeling that won't be described, won't be reasoned

Away, its white width flagged
By the clenched fist of conviction
And joyfully dragged
Alongside me, its motifs blurred.
And tattered, but still brave
Enough to confidently stir
Hope, like a slogan-scribbled banner waves
High above the crushed debris, the edges, the graves.
The year’s going to be better, though it has lagged.