Desert Rose

 

The desert rose has bloomed in green places,

in coordinates that it may not choose –

in the narrowest of urban spaces,

under heavy skies and a light too diffuse,

 

in soils that are clogged with too much water,

in planters meant for different sets of roots,

in shadowed courtyards, against its own nature –

in circumstances that don’t always suit.

 

It doesn’t bloom prolific but the flowers

bloom a stubborn red as the shadows deepen,

as taller and higher rise the towers,

as the light’s withdrawn they get deeper even.

 

It doesn’t quite meet the trending standards,

but still blooms quietly in a hostile earth.

~~~

I wanted to write something ebullient - festive and season appropriate for this post, but that didn't happen for reasons various. Story of my life. Meanwhile, this plant at the back of our house, I've been fretting about it for ages because it looked peaky and wasn't producing buds - it bloomed suddenly. Red and green. As appropriate as it gets.

I first came across the Adenium, or Desert Rose as it is commonly known, in the Sahel in West Africa, where it originates. My mother's gardener Matthias had, after due consultations and round table conferences, lined the back and sides of the compound with these plants in Maiduguri. I spent a whole chunk of my afternoons out in their company, the flowers were a different colour, light pink rather than red, but I'd know the species anywhere. 

Never saw them in India during childhood home leaves - east was east and west was west then, desert was desert and green was green and no one probably attempted growing exotic foreign plants in gardens over here. India anyways has a huge heap of native flowering plants, my folks were content with the local varieties I guess. Things have changed now, I've spotted quite a few desert rose specimens in our neighbourhood. 

Kolkata is quite the opposite of a desert, you turn your back for a minute and there's a banyan or fig sprouting in a crack on the windowsill of your building. The northern Sahel has an average annual rainfall of 200 mm. Kolkata on the other hand might get 250 mm in 24 hours during peak monsoon season. And this year has been exceptionally wet. Therefore, growing a desert plant here is a serious undertaking! :) Not all plants need great gobs of fertile soil and pouring rain to thrive. 

The one who took this enterprise up in the back was my jethani, she was a keen gardener. She passed away untimely in 2023. Jethani is untranslatable in English, the western society is not so specific about extended family relationships. She was my husband's elder brother's wife, what would you call her? Sister-in-law doesn't really mean the same thing, does it? Some Indians translate jethani as 'co-sister.' Even then it falls a little short, because the 'elder' part is built into the word jethani.

Anyway, I digress. She planted several perennials, some foliage, some flowering, both local varieties and a few foreign ones. Among them this desert rose. I think of her every time I see her pot plants - they are a comfort. I'm glad the desert rose is blooming.  

Happies and merries to you. Wishing you and yours all the joys of the season and a happy New Year 2026. May your desert roses bloom under every sky and soil that comes your way. 

A Strange Celebration

 

Image from Freepik

How quiet the house feels, how tidy the room!

Only your bedroom slippers still lie askew

as if they were abandoned, switched out mid run

exchanged for strong and closed from flimsy open –

airport security scans every shoe.

 

Makes sense to keep the footwear light, the sole

limber, the ties simple. I’ve told you this –

chances are you’ll have to snatch at things you want

without breaking stride, instantly pull on

your boots, be travel ready without notice.

 

Have I ever told you? - that motherhood

is an entirely strange celebration

from first baby steps to that last slip-on

each step’s a stepping away, each milestone

an emptier room, slippers flung off mid run. 

Too much has been happening, all good albeit super strange. The offspring left home for the second time yesterday so this is empty nesting 2.0...hmmm...does practice make this perfect? I'm thinking not.  

For those who may be interested, he's reached his destination safely. Which is closer than NC but still a couple of oceans and a couple of dozen borders away and well, the time zone management is marginally less challenging but I'm older and less nimble, so it all cancels out. 

It's been a monthful of celebrations - family reunions, the Durga Puja and then this sudden relocation magicked itself in exactly a week. Stress and exhilaration combined in a mindboggling mix. Strange celebrations indeed. Uber thankful for all of them. 

Hope you've got ample cause to celebrate too this autumn. 

Entitled

 

Some days the sill’s empty. Some days it’s full.

Sparrows perch. A pigeon. A spotted dove.

Children’s laughter splashes around the pool,

clear summer skies if you cared to look up.

 

Sometimes the sill’s empty, sometimes birds stop by -

sometimes unknown raptors after a hard kill

wipe their beaks off before taking flight

nervous others stay far, on a parallel

 

ledge. But look closer, the sill’s not empty

the moults of bugs, dried palm spikes, a feather

signal what’s been. Less romantic bird droppings

pock mark the beige concrete. It was never

 

empty, just that you’ve trained, entitled your eyes

to look for doves, pigeons, laughter, clear blue skies.

Festive

I could not spot one festive tree

decked out and lit up bright,

no charming tales of nativity

as I would have liked;

and up and down the streets I looked -

just a worn out sort of guy

over a punctured tyre he stooped -

nothing merry or blithe.

But then I passed a clump of palms

and through it the wind sighed

‘look hard - they come in many forms

sometimes quite well disguised.’

Indeed the clouds above me moved,

reconfigured the light

and dumbstruck underneath I stood,

astonished-mystified.

And since that day I do not search

for festive trees and sights;

instead look at palms on the verge,

flat tyres, stooped men, roadsides.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 

Observe. Record. Marvel.

This was one of the images that coloured my Holi. Loved it. Don't 

know the source, using it here with due respect.

I’ve understood the job – it’s to record

as clearly as I’m able, and marvel,

it should spill over my eyes and the work

even when I’m trapped in downward spirals,

and distracted, ask ‘how long?’ and not ‘how?’

it should still be a reflex to applaud

whatever passes above or below,

and wherever the craft chooses to park.

And here’s the first draft over halfway through,

I see you’re taken aback – there’s just this?

a few blurry takes, rather hit and miss,

these bullet points too cryptic to construe.

But those who stand tongue-tied could be amazed too,

and love mayn’t be just a sharper focus.

One March over the A-Z preparations, a brainwave struck - to draw upon the expat experience and record it through my first Bengali poetry. And I am pleased to report that the first draft is nearly complete! Dozens like the experimental sonnet above, but in the mother tongue. Writing them has been a special thrill!

And yes, this March too I am recording and marvelling while I prepare for the A-Z, only not just in poetry. The A-Z Challenge is such a neat excuse to indulge!

March started off with the Indian festival of colours - Holi, a most joyous and a favourite festival. I observe and record and marvel as thoroughly as I'm able. Happy Spring! 

Shattered

 

Source

The first discards are not even noticed -

the packing newspapers, old magazines,

the shift in the definition of local,

and the weather displayed on tiny screens.

One day too soon the memories are blurry

and previous city roads get unravelled.

The radio programmes, heights of doorframes

shift slightly to let you know you’ve travelled.

The last of the old supermarket’s brands,

bags bright in undegradable plastic -

a beaker bought there is suddenly broken

and shattered pieces of glass equal homesick.

You sigh, sweep up and throw them in the bin,

and that’s when the meaning of home sinks in.

I'm still celebrating the mundane, which is what I do, generally. I know, I should get a life! This year, I promise. I'll make a serious attempt. Right after I finish this post. 

Anyways, last month, last month? year end, I was talking to my friend, and of course, we started with something very crisp and concrete on the agenda and wound up someplace completely unrelated-fuzzy, history, and homes, and the meanings of both.  And something that was said - home is shared history, the stuff you carry around, the interior of the mind and not the interior of the house - must have stuck in ye olde subconscious and produced the above. 

An Egyptian kettle and a teamug broke in the  meantime, I don't know how they managed to sneak in here. But things have got to a pretty desperate stage if broken mugs and electrical appliances are making it to poems! Must find mundane, but less mundane, stuff to celebrate. Pronto!

What are you celebrating today? :)

Hello, 2018!!

Not many photos of the grass

-  so remiss! So remiss, because

the earth there wears a festive lace,

it shimmers when a mild breeze blows.

Not many photos of the grass

as it’s not in the line of sight,

effort’s needed to find the grace

that’s not obviously supersized.

Just one photograph of the grass

to snag memory in a snare.

The small always made even less,

ignored as if it isn’t there.

But the grass underfoot makes me ache,

it’s lace, and longing, and heartbreak.

I was in the African savannahs over the holidays. Got lots of photos of the wildlife, the big 5, the mammals, even the smaller less drooled-over species like dung-beetles and lizards. The variety and the beauty of the grasses blew my mind, the delicacy of their seedpods, the slant of their bending to the winds. I didn’t get too many photographs though, the breeze was always blurring the picture, when I made the effort to focus in the first place, that is. Which is odd when you think of it, because surely the star of the show in the grasslands ought to be the grasses and not befanged and betrunked animals?

But I got a few photos, and one of them is up there for your consumption, for whatever it’s worth. Not every magical moment/thing can be clicked and binary-coded into hard disks and boxed up even if I were to be less remiss – that too is a life lesson in acceptance.

I also had this vague expectation, fully aware it was wrong and therefore duly afraid of being disillusioned as well - this mixed and mixed-up expectation that somehow it would offer me a route to the utter peace, the aching content that the savannahs of my childhood did. It was a thinly veiled attempt to return to lapsed spaces and times. Which of course was doomed to fail from the outset. 

But as it turned out, it wasn’t a failure.  The landscapes of the East are different from the West where I spent my childhood - the acacia species, the missing baobabs, the mango trees laden with a totally different red-magenta fruit. Even some of the grasses felt different. But that heart-stopping hushed feeling when in the savannahs, stretching from where your feet are planted to the horizons? Exactly the same. You breathe deep, and you mentally clasp your hands together in gratitude.

Welcome! to M-i-V in 2018, which is going to be roughly the same as it was in 2017, but hopefully a little wiser, a little less remiss, with a slightly clearer focus on the grasses while keeping an eye out for the betrunked and the befanged in the savannahs of life.

Leftover smoke

Because it isn’t

always a given -

the pleasures of perfume -

I have breathed you in

through my heart

and skin,

through underlying veins

and every other sense

that zithered to life

when you ambled in.

When this whole

is once again

reduced to ash and dust,

what will rise -

no part of me –

but yours first and last

a faint thread, a residue

that’s yours, and only you.

I am not very good totally terrible at the hearts and chocolate and flower type thingies, so I am going with the less spectacular, sometimes acrid even, ways of celebrating this month. The mundane, the routine, the not so noticeable that actually fill our lives with joy and beauty, as a commenter remarked in my previous post.

And I want to just quickly mention that I am back at Write...Edit...Publish... on Wednesday 15th, where the prompt is 'Back of the Drawer' and can be as Valentine-y, or not, as you want.  Here's the list, looking forward to some super fun, definitely not something I'd want to keep in the back of the drawer :)

Old melodies

Listening non-stop to old melodies

dredged up from clogged memories of childhood,

frayed satin ribbons, pressed flowers in scrapbooks,

caught in folds of pages, in an obscure crease

of time and place. Reminiscent of things

I hardly think about now, the drizzle

of sunlight through leaves, long-tailed kites, and whistles,

wide open skies, gentle lands, and landings.

Halfway across the world, streets, towns convulse -

someone, something has fallen, crashed again,

the earth is slack jawed, crushed to smithereens

a lone armed man gloats at a feeble pulse.

Can't find a tune to match, something titled -

‘never yours, with aversion’?  Unbridled.

Synonym

Can’t say if he’s my north and south, my sea and earth,

but I know he’s my compass always pointing true.

He’s the track I lose sometimes, he’s its frantic search.

The jet contrail aiming home through the clearest blue.

He’s the stone fortress and its secret passageway;

the arched roof of tunnels; the stem of the goblet.

He’s the fizzing froth of light that makes up the day;

he’s that single star improving on the sunset.

Not my working week, no, he’s my blessed sabbath -

the spine of sacredness binding leaves of routine;

he’s my quiet street, my escape route, my private booth;

he is my ruby wine, he's my strongest caffeine.

He isn’t my voice or tongue, neither a song nor hymn.

He is not life or love.  Only their synonym.

Back at the usual spot on the couch after the travels, much enjoyed the break and enjoying being back at rest too. That closes my year here, which has been good, writing-wise and otherwise, closing it now with gratitude and hope. Happy New Year 2016!

For a school friend

Someone asks what’s on my mind, and I pause

for a second, because I can’t recall

the exact details, which class we met, what was

the surname, how many siblings in all.

But clear three shaky lines drawn with charcoal

topped with squiggly dashes to make the stumps -

the pretend-wickets dropped on that low wall,

the games of make-believe, the fights, the thumbs

clicked against teeth, the k-word, the huge lump-

in-throat walk home alone. The making-up

next morning without adult fuss, the sum

of long-lost friendship, easy childhood love.

Someone asks me what; I pause a sec and say,

“Nothing. Just an old friend. His birthday today.”

I am travelling and will catch up with you when I get back.  Meanwhile, wish you all the joys of the season, and a very happy, peaceful and fun 2016.

The title is the hardest part, therefore 

I've left it wholly blank, left it to your 

imagination to supply the words 

and I just carry on writing the verse. 

There are no titles to my days and nights;

they come and go behind my back as I write.

The sun plays out his reel to hook the moon

in the oceans of the sky, the tides turn -

surge and ebb, surge and ebb without headings,

without glossaries and footnotes shedding

any insight, their whispers softly muted;

the dots of stars always unconnected.

Summing the whole with just a part, just a phrase

seems bizarre, much better off with a blank space.