F is for ... Figure ... n ... Fresh

 

Figuring out a fresh new topic everyday isn’t a piece of cake, that’s why it’s called a challenge I guess. One can't just turn a tap and find an idea. Or maybe one can? - faucet! 

The earliest recorded ones were in  Crete – terracotta pipes and faucets were used to supply water in this kingdom as far back as 1700 BCE. The Ancient Romans used a sophisticated water supply system for their fountains, public baths and private residences of the affluent. Fancy faucets made of gold, silver and marble were used for the well heeled, and bronze and brass for the hoi polloi. Forward thinking engineers used canals, aqueducts, pipes, valves and faucets to keep the city supplied with running water. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, their vast infrastructure also fell into disrepair and disuse. Europe descended into the Dark Ages. The refined plumbing systems that the Romans had perfected were no longer favoured, faucets and baths were not used except by the very wealthy. People preferred to draw water from streams and wells. The practice of bathing itself stopped being a social activity in the west, hygiene standards changed. For a long period, people were inclined to wash their clothes more often rather than their bodies.

The germ theory of disease, the relationship between disease causing micro-organisms and contagion, though long theorised, was incontrovertibly established by a series of experiments by Antonio Bassi in the early 1800s. Further work was done by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch and a host of others, and epidemics of cholera were linked to contaminated water supply and poor sanitation. By the mid-1800s, plumbing and sanitation were back on the priority lists.  The first modern screw down faucet was invented in 1845, the first mixer mechanism in  1880. By the 1900s, nearly every household in the developed world had running water. Since then, turning on a faucet in kitchens and washrooms is something most of us take for granted. So much so that 'on tap' has come to mean something that's freely available.

Things are, sadly, different in the developing countries. Nearly 800 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, do not have access to clean water. And 2.5 billion people still lack access to proper sanitation.  Not an acceptable or a fair situation. 

A-Z Challenge 2021  

E is for ... Educational ... n ... Experience

 

Enervating and educational – two words sum up this last year for me. Two major lessons learnt. First, that it is possible to learn even while doing nothing –  no texts read, no MOOCs taken, no assignments done, no new spaces physically travelled to and energetically inhabited. It is possible to learn things solely by carrying on from day to day, it just requires a state of mindfulness, to pay attention to the mundane, the overlooked, stuff which I tend to brush aside.

 

And second, time flies, no matter what. No matter how dire the times are. This was a monumental surprise, to be honest. I had always thought time flies only when one is having fun. Otherwise it should drag on and on interminably. But no! Look at this last year – this annus horribilis, probably the direst of our lifetimes for many of us, so much hardship, so many obstacles and yet it’s gone, the whole year, just like that. Even on the days when I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed, the mornings turned into afternoons and then into evenings with astounding supersonic speed. That too is a blessing, this speed, the steady rush of hours and minutes of lived and lapsed experience. The speed at which time flies is really determined, it seems to me, by how event dense the period is, whether the events themselves be pleasant or unpleasant. It took a pandemic to bust the myth of bad times being slomo.

 

Epidemics are nothing new of course.  Disease is as old as humankind but settled agriculture made their spread easier and faster. Plagues were the price humans paid for giving up the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, for congregating in ever larger numbers, sowing crops and building cities where everyone lived in close communities with shared facilities. Paradise for parasites and bugs. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, small pox etc have existed for at least 10,000 years. Travel, war and trade thickened the plot progressively. Pandemics happened when an epidemic spilled over the borders of one country into others. Those too are not new, unfortunately.

The first recorded pandemic occurred during the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE. Something historians suspect to be typhoid-like passed through Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya and then onto Athens. It decimated the Athenians and was a factor in their defeat.  Plagues kept happening with monotonous frequency every 100/200/300 years, between the 2nd and the 6th centuries a series of them affected Europe. India and South Asia on the other hand have evidence of female deities dating back to around 2nd/3rd centuries, whose particular power was to 'cool fevers' and protect children, most likely from the small pox. As trade between the Mediterranean and South Asia grew, so did the pandemics. By 11th century, leprosy was a huge issue. And then the dreadful Black Death of 1350 killed one third of the world population. 

The Columbian Exchange introduced new crops and resources to Europe by the end of the 15th century, from where they were taken by traders and colonialists to Africa and Asia. India wouldn't have chilies, or Ireland potatoes had this voyage not happened. But the flipside was the exposure of indigenous peoples to diseases they had no immunity against - the Native American populations were devastated, an estimated 90% perished throughout the North and South Americas.  Plagues continued during the 18th, 19th, 20th centuries as colonisation and global commerce grew. In the 20th century, air travel and ever tighter linkages between nations compounded the issues manifold. But just as the problems grew, so did the search for solutions. But perhaps that's a subject best left for another time.

A-Z Challenge 2021  

D is for...Different...

 

Different – that’s what this feels like. This month. This world. This very daughterhood where there are no parents left to be daughter to. A disease has reshaped my entire existence. My parents’ death was not caused by the coronavirus, they were both covid free – my mother died of diabetes related complications, hypoglycemic encephalitis to give it the correct medical name. My father, of heart failure. Yet every aspect of their medical care, their death and death rites were defined by the pandemic. They had been isolated completely since March 22 last year.

 

My mother passed in April during the first, strictest of lockdowns, with no one but my father beside her.  I could go to my father only in October, once the restrictions were slightly relaxed. He died last month, 11 months after my mother, with no family members around, only the nurses and caregivers. The last rites were observed with just 2-3 people in each case due to the prevailing restrictions. By some miracle, two of my cousins were in Kolkata at the time of their death, one on my father’s side and the other on my mother’s – they  accompanied the hearses to the crematorium and lit the pyre. That a close blood relative could perform this final ritual for both my parents was a huge solace. I am their only child, there is no one else who can share the ramifications of this passing from the same perspective. I was able to fly in after a week after my father's death and do what needed to be done immediately – the dry procedures, the registration, the dispersal, the final turning of the key on the front door of the place they lived in for nearly forty years.

 

But for the pandemic their passing would be an opportunity to celebrate their rather full, long and interesting life. My mother was diminutive in stature, but no one was taller in courage, in joie de vivre, in faith and positivity that I know. She was a cancer survivor and a carrom and card player par excellence. She was named after a star and she twinkled like one wherever she went. She got cancer at 45 and died of diabetes at 81, that in itself is a blessing and a testimony to her spirit. My father was an art lover and an architect. He worked all over India - he designed buildings/projects in Bombay, in Delhi, in Chandigarh, in Calcutta, in the north eastern states of Assam and Manipur and god knows where else besides. He worked for the PWD in the public sector, for well known private architectural/engineering firms, and set up his own private practice too. Then he chucked it all up and moved to Nigeria and worked there for more than a decade. He loved images of all kinds - paintings and photographs, still and moving. He read widely and was a prolific correspondent. He had a phenomenal memory for people and numbers and an exceptional eye for detail, which he retained right to the end at 89 years of age. Both of them were poetry lovers and my first poetry teachers. Both of them had huge hearts and were 'people' people, kept in touch with a massive circle of extended family and friends from all over the world and took great pleasure in doing so. Unfortunately, all of this is kind of overshadowed by the manner of their passing, but I'm determined not to let it. Although I don't yet know how I'm going to stop it exactly.

My aunt, my father’s sister, his particularly cherished much younger sibling-cum-daughter almost, stuck in her son’s house many cities away, wept on the phone to me. I did not know how to comfort her. I do not know what to do with myself either. How does one get back on track? I get up in the morning and the first thought is, I must call them…and  a split second later I realise, there is no one to respond to that call. Some random memory pops into mind during an afternoon and I idly think right, I must ask my father about that, verify if I’m right, did it really happen that way? And then it crashes over me that there is no one left to answer these sorts of family history questions, the insignificant details in the fabric of bygone events and relationships. The final click of that lock has somehow unhitched me from my moorings and my past, rudderless, directionless, adrift in the ocean of an uncertain future. But then again, it's my parents who taught me to navigate, some little of it must have stuck - in time, I'll find my way home. 

A-Z Challenge 2021  

C is for... Complex... n... Change...

 

Change is the only constant, the sole certainty in a volatile world. Sometimes infinitesimal – a slight shift occurring beyond the hassled, fragmented consciousness that passes for human attention nowadays, but then cascading into a groundswell that’s hard to ignore. And at others it’s cataclysmic from the get go, metamorphosing an entire familiar ecosystem in an instant to unrecognisable. All change shakes up and reconfigures comfort zones. All change is grist for growth. Adapt, or else! – be consumed. Initiate it yourself, or else be overwhelmed. 

The coronavirus pandemic has meant an avalanche of change, too much in too short a time. Climate change, large scale conflicts and civil wars, the refugee crisis remain the major challenges of our era. Unless some major changes are made, we are headed for trouble.

But change also means small sums of money - coinage. The first coins can be traced back to around 600 BCE to Lydia, a Greek state located on the Ionian coast in modern day Turkey. Coins stamped with a lion's head made of a gold-silver alloy called electrum were minted there. The concept of currency had been around for sometime. Cowrie shells were used for trade in Mesopotamia, Ancient China and India and various types of shell money was common around the world really. Now why the Lydians chose to mint coins is not quite crystal clear, but some historians feel coins were an exercise in streamlining and standardising societies that had become rather complex. An elegant experiment, in fact. Coinage allowed the Greek city-states to organise themselves in ways that made citizens feel they were transparent and fair. 

The idea spread through conquest and trade. By the 6th century BCE, coins were being minted in Aegina, Athens. Corinth, and Persia had developed their own coins. Gold and silver became the metals of choice rather than electrum. The value of the metal actually reflected the value of the coin, rather than an arbitrary amount stamped on the face as is done nowadays. Ancient Roman coins followed the same principle as did the Celtic ones. Coins were easily carried around and they provided an index of social mobility.

Coins were brought to India by the Achaemenid Empire and the successor states of Alexander the Great. Samudragupta (335-376 CE) is credited with creating the most beautiful coins of the Indian classical age. By that time coins had become powerful statement pieces - they portrayed the power and authority of the ruler, commemorated victories in battles, communicated messages/propaganda and chronicled the milestone changes in the life and times of nations. Quite a big deal really, not exactly small change.

A-Z Challenge 2021 

B is for...Balance...

 

Balance – that’s what has vaporised lately. There’s a Bengali proverb which goes as many tears as laughs but it feels untrue right now. Life is super complicated and is made up of more tears than laughter. Or so it seems. On reflection though, it’s a short term reaction, even the direst situation isn’t without its blessings. Just as there is much to grieve, there’s also much to be thankful for, I just have to count harder. The wise, the Bhagavad Gita says, are those who remain equipoised and accept the dualities that life throws at them - success and failure, joy and sorrow, flowers and thorns, and keep on keeping on.

But...that's really not the balance I'm talking about...the one I'm thinking of is far more mundane...it's a weighing scale. Two plates suspended from a beam and  a series of weights, it's a simple technology that dates back several thousand years. The oldest evidence of the use of a balance has been located at the Indus Valley  around 2400-1800 BCE. This is such a simple device that its use almost certainly predates the evidence. Archaeologists have found polished graduated weights from which they have concluded the use of weighing scales in those societies. Uniform cubic polished stones have been found in the Valley which were used as mass setting stones. 

In Egypt, stones with hieroglyphs for gold have been uncovered, the merchants there were obviously using a balance to measure the precious metal - either shipments or yields from mines. Although no actual scales have been found, many sets of weighing stones have been discovered. Murals also show balance scales indicating they were used widely by the Egyptians. In China, evidence for the use of scales go back to third century BCE in Hunan province. 

The balance has had a strong metaphorical value in cultures around the world, from antiquity to modern times.  The Mughal emperors had a tradition wherein the princes were measured against gold on a weighing scale during their birthday celebrations. The Egyptian god Anubis is depicted weighing the heart of the dead to decide the course of their afterlife. A sinless heart would of course be lighter than a feather and therefore gain entry to heaven.  Even in modern societies, the two pan balance particularly is heavy on symbolism as it is held by Lady Justice as an instrument of impartiality, drawing upon this Ancient Egyptian idea. 

A heart as light as a feather. Something to work towards, aspire to. Believe, and so it shall be.

A-Z Challenge 2021 

A is for April... n... A-Z... n... Assume

 

Assume, just for a mind bending minute, that Islam didn’t get as far as India, that they did an about turn, both the marauders and mystics alike, from the Hindukush. What would India be like then? The short answer to that question is - abysmal. 

What would we have missed out on? The first thing that comes to mind is no Amir Khusrow, so no ghazals, no sitar. Indian music, both classical and light, particularly the North Indian stuff would sound completely different, a much paler version of itself. But hang on, not just Indian music. Fast forward seven centuries and take a shufti at the 1960s and that would sound quite dismal too. No sitar would mean no Ravi Shankar, no collaborations between George Harrison and the Indian maestro, no songs such as Norwegian Wood, which is on the list of 500 greatest songs of all time. Yup, one less on that list. Let that sink in while you take a listen.

There are a whole heap of other things too, of course. The luscious architecture of the Taj Mahal, for instance. Distinctive art of the Mughal paintings too, these guys were seriously into the pursuits of refinement and sophistication. Firearms and gunpowder, brought into India by the first Mughal king, Babur, from Turkey. Then there's the cuisine - all time favourites, droolworthy dishes like the Biryani, the  Kaliyas and Kormas, kababs of all kinds. The list could go on - the jewellery styles, such as the nose ring, and body art such as the henna tattoos; drier things like seamless celestial globes, maps and astrolabes; paper mills, spinning wheels and iron stirrups; more abstract things like the expansion of trade and economy. Without these, India would be unrecognisable. 

But what is perhaps the most far reaching impact was that education was liberalised under the Mughal emperors. Hinduism, mired in its caste system by medieval times, restricted education based on birth. The Muslim rulers upended that - they promoted the exchange of ideas, set up educational institutions where anyone could go learn, voraciously translated Sanskrit texts into Arabic and Persian and vice versa.  Islam brought in the idea of universal brotherhood and equality which was instrumental in the later reform movements such as the Bhakti movement and the rise of other belief systems like Sikhism. 

So...had the Muslims turned back from the Hindukush, India would have been a vastly different, much poorer place altogether. Far less attractive really, if you ask my free and frank.

A-Z Challenge 2021

To B-Z or not to B-Z, is that even a question?

 

So this is my 71/2th year, as I withdrew halfway last A-Z.  Way too much going on still -  bereavement upon bereavement, trauma upon trauma, travel for all the wrong reasons, major life changes, pandemic panic. Relentless barrage of issues big and small. Feels awful rough out where I am right now. There's no headspace left over to think themes or schedule or anything, the time for those is long past anyways. And somehow, by some mind boggling coincidence, the badge above is black and sombre and fits right into the overall scheme of things here, so how not to A-Z? But also, how to??

 

Therefore, this is the somewhat sketchy nonplan this year  - go completely random, write on the day, write whatever comes to mind and as much as is manageable, read as and when feasible, lose the stress, keep on keeping on. In short, pantz it. 

One letter at a time, one word at a time, one day at a time. And maybe I'll get to a slightly less difficult space by the end. 

From the unreal towards the Truth, from darkness towards the Light, from death towards Deathlesssness. Let there be peace everywhere.

Homecoming

 

It feels just the same – the marble white table,

the smell of stilled laughter under layered dust,

the rickety lamps, the tangle of cables,

the old photo frames in sepia crumbed rust.

The chairs are empty, the frog-like telephone

is no longer there, but old conversations

hang like spider webs. The owners are gone

but their presence lingers in dented cushions,

in pairs of shoes arranged in the shoe rack,

housebound for years now. Vaguely outlined

in spectacle cases, chipped bric-a-brac,

magazine crosswords and hobbies left behind.

Piles of stuff neatly stacked in the cupboards –

the papers, letters - the evidence of words.

Chaturthi

 

Can you get me a garland of white flowers

and also some sandalwood incense please?

I’ve got cotton wicks rolled for my father

a terracotta lamp, reams of memories -

random phrases one after another

a fast spinning medley of layered stories,

and though I can’t speak too clearly this hour

there’s a mind that’s focussed on him, and peace.

 

There’s no sandalwood and no white garlands

you know that he doesn’t need any of these,

and nor do you need any unstitched garments

nor waters from sacred rivers and seas -

put a match to the wick, and cup your hands,

let the flame burn steady and that’ll be peace.

Chaturthi refers to the fourth day funeral rites, observed by a daughter for her father's soul. My father passed last Sunday. He was a pivotal presence in my life - my safety net and also my alpha reader. He read every poem I ever wrote here.

Rest well now, Baba. Rest in eternal bliss. 

Old hands

 

I still dream. Of hills of trees. Of banyan mists

and sandstorm suns. Coffeepot clouds thread the day

into its hours one by one. It persists

in see-through layers of chiffon seaspray

wetting my toes. I still dream of tender wrists

from long ago resting on past laps, halfway

between memory, fiction, forgotten myths.

 

Yes, still dream but can’t recall all the details

except that they were beaded with love, carefree

laidback. They didn’t ask much. They left contrails

of laughter in curtained rooms. They let me be,

weave in and out as I wished, fall and fail

no big deal. They turned pages of poetry.

Picked me up time after time, though old and frail.

Route plans

 

Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home. ~ Matsuo Basho (1644-94).

Amwaj, Bahrain.

What you thought was home turned out just a path,

and what you took to be a journey, was home,

paid little attention to the maps and maths

and now you’ve no-one but yourself to blame

now that you’re so geographically doomed.

It’s not just a casual photograph

bleached out on a whim, pared to monochrome,

and surely not a thousand and a half

attempts at so called half draft of poems -

a whole heap of things that can’t be consumed.

Neither the doors nor the compass was yours

you let them possess you more than they should,

when you turned there were no wakes left, no shores -

just a diffuse, shadowless light. And driftwood.

Recognise

 

From the Marine Drive, Mumbai.

Some weeks are darker than others

some fortnight’s just shades of agony,

the distress of fathers and brothers

is hard to stand witness and see;

but every darkness gets over,

it's transient, temporary,

each minute it’s spinning closer -

some sort of lightfall. Clarity.

 

Not all light must be a sunrise,

all darkness doesn't cradle stars.

Sometimes the dark is a disguise,

for light’s got degrees and avatars -

lift up this face and recognise

light and darkness for what they are.

Write... Edit... Publish... + IWSG February 2021 : The Kiss

 

Keeping it spare for Write...Edit...Publish...  Lite as we start off year 2021. Back to fiction with a fractured something...an old write repurposed because it fit the prompt. 

The worst ever

He had stalked me for days. His lips were rubbery, too large, too wide open, hot-wet and slimy.  Gross didn’t begin to describe it.  He was taking his time too, as if he was wooing some swooning heroine in some crazy version of a Brontë romance.  The worst kiss ever. And his limbs were like bloody suckers, I pushed at him hard but he hung on like one of those tree-huggers. How could this be happening?  Why had I allowed it in the first place? I groped for the knife, found it and slashed upwards. He broke away with a repulsive sucking sound that made even my toenails curl. 

 

I sat up, my chest heaving, my heart beating a frantic tattoo against my ribs.  My head swam with a potent mix of emotions – disbelief. disgust, outrage, abject terror.  I shut my eyes and tried to get a grip.  When I opened them again, everything was quiet.  Moonlight came in through the blinds and lay in deep slices on the floor. I could see vague dark stains on the bedclothes, they were twisted around my torso in a python-coil.  The rest of the room was strangely and chillingly untouched by the upheavals I had just experienced - my clothes were still on the pegs, my books as I had left them on my desk.  Only Toddy had fallen out of the cubbyhole and lay spread-eagled on the papers. 

I untangled myself slowly from the snarled sheets.  Piled the pillows behind my back and half-lounged against them.  Not to sleep for the rest of the night felt like a sensible decision.

 

***

 

“Oh look, aren’t they cute?!” Aditi exclaimed.

“Now don’t start that again, Dits,” I was not particularly taken with the clumps of teddy bears and alligators and giraffes the vendor was hawking in the train.  She was obsessed with soft toys.

“Aw, c’mon,” she cajoled. “Just look at them.  Let me get you one, please. One for you, one for me.  Just as a souvenir. Just one last time, okay?”

“Oh, yeah? One last time?” I was skeptical. She said that every time. On every trip.

 

The vendor meanwhile had spotted a pushover and made his way to where we were sitting. He pointed out the awesomeness of his wares with exaggerated, faintly effeminate gestures, adding fuel to an already blazing fire.  I gave in, it was useless to resist.  Deal done, Aditi sat back with a sigh and a smile clutching the toys as though she were five instead of twenty-five.

 

“Oh, they’re just too cute. Don’t you love this vest?”

 “Hmm,” I really couldn’t match her enthusiasm.

  “What shall we call them?”

 “Froddy? Frodo? Freddie? Anything.  Your choice, really.”

 “Are they frogs or toads?”

 “I don’t think frogs come in that muddy colour.”

 “I know,” Aditi said with the air of someone having an epiphany, “Toddy! Let’s call this one Toddy. And this can be Muddy.” 

 

***

 

I woke abruptly.  Daylight was streaming in at the window. The clock on the night-stand read 6:16, the dots pulsing each second, like a pair of blinking evil eyes. A flock of crows had started up their raucous commotion somewhere just outside.

My mouth felt like a dozer had smashed into it.  My whole body was a disaster zone, as if it had come through a wringer.  Every bone ached. I flung the bedclothes back, there were weird dried stains on them.  There was no time to change the sheets.  If I didn’t hurry, I would be seriously late, the pick up came at half past.  I briefly wondered what kind of night Aditi had had. I pushed away the thoughts that wisped unbidden into my mind.  No, that was beyond crazy. I shuddered. Was I going out of my mind? There was little time to ponder, and the workday soon pushed the night’s events out of sight if not completely out of mind.

I saw it when I came back from work and went to lay my bag down as usual.  He wasn’t on the desk, not inside the cubbyhole, not where he had fallen on the papers last night, nor on the floor underneath.  Not anywhere visible in the room. Scrunched up on one side was the vest, slashed open in a ragged cut where the knife must have gone in and caught the seam.  There were dried bloodstains on the vest too. Mine? I swatted away the thought they could be anyone else’s.  I picked it up and smoothed it out.  The front, I had never really noticed the front. It was the back that was constantly on view as he sat low, squat and fat on all fours.  The writing glittered, still undamaged, the words gleaming in the last of the daylight.  Prince, in disguise. I read them again.  Mouthing the words like a child learning to read.  Prince. In. Disguise.

WC- 814

FCA

Read the other entries here - 

 

 

 

Making the bed...

 

What makes a garden – the gardener or the vine,

the squirrels that dig it up, the birds that peck fruit,

the weeds which spontaneously undermine

the efforts of the cultivated to take firm root?

 

Is this still a garden? – if those weeds flower

and they’re smaller, less showy than the marigold,

if the wild grass were to wholly overpower

the careful beds and furrows marked by the household.

 

And if the bees come calling but so do the bears

what’s fertilised and grows is not quite by design,

and pests and pollinators take an unfair share

of the nectar and honey and fruits and sunshine,

 

if the yield’s not consumed by designated humans

is that just a pity? a waste? or a garden?

Directly inspired by Yolanda Renee here. Hope all goes and grows well in your garden. Happy V-day to those celebrating. 

Recalibrate

 

Credit

One day, you know the world will restart

and all that’s slipped will itself restore

to a new order, a fresh, new heart.

The regimens of outdoor and indoor

will change again as they’ve in the past

and we’ll be free to take to the roads

without any temperatures asked

except maybe of the weather gods.

So be patient – wait for the needle

to straighten itself and to point true,

but steel aligns to the magnetic.

Some will drop but not all the people

hopefully among them me and you

ready to resume post pandemic.