So where do you step in. Should you even step in, people resolve their own karmic paths, their own journeys, life lessons, and all that. Not to discount the ego-build up brownie points, that do-gooder pat on the back, which creeps in automatically, can’t miss those red flags of I, I I…. The new lady who cleans the washroom had lost her husband in a nasty road accident a year ago, the kids are pretty useless and the family distant, as it sometimes is. So where do you step in, if at all--do you? A note or two passed wouldn’t make much of a difference to me, but might help her. Usually by conscious effort I try hard to stay uninvolved, preferring people to sort out whatever they have to, would helping interfere with a path of repair and learning that is already on?



I wish I knew.


I wish I didn’t remember what kick-in-the-gut grief feels like, every time I see her

Trees laden with yellow cassia

laburnum trembling awake

To birdsong

And someday perhaps I shall write of these

In happy, complete and content stories,

plump and placid with ever-afters.

Until then I find delight

In giving shape to

The sly and crafty, shrewd and cunning,

Shortcut prone, gritty underside

The city trembles when they walk.

Women with rich pasts and edgy tempers

And smiles like steel

Stories that waft in with the wind.

much as you’d like to believe otherwise

When I dot my I’s and cross them t’s

Tis with glee, at least, or a smile.

An underworld-inspired story, A Day of Silent Prayers, is now published on Pure Slush



http://pureslush.webs.com/dayofsilentprayers.htm

It is your birthday today. April 17.


I shall do all the usual things one does on birthdays.


Then I shall stare at the skies.

Yesterday I’d dug deep, googling an author who was a very distant name (my stepma’s grandfather) and I’d almost fallen off the settee. The accomplishments were awe inspiring, numbing, even a hundred years after- Bar-at-law, fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, reference works that are perused even now. Yet, the immediate family, his third and fourth generation descendants, does not quite give a damn. Got me thinking about legacies, particularly of the written word. And lineages that go beyond the geneline.

Delighted to announce publication of a poem, Spring, on 7 beats.



http://www.7beats.com/herenow.html

So little time to the day. And there are personal commitments I will NOT cut down on. I will walk. I will cook. I will write even if its scraggly. Work is not too easy, not too tough, requires I keep up with a barrage of information, just keep moving. Personal time is limited—very. Just realised that it is personal ENERGY that is limited. Must be very careful about who and what I invest that energy in. If I spend 1.5 hours in front of the idiot box staring at a Balaji story that really is my problem. If I tell bai that locking someone’s keys inside their house and running around to hunt and find the keys was a result of her perpetual hurry—but I frown about this all day, then that energy drain is MY problem.  Why should I play any part, however reluctant, in anyone’s life dramas? Tumhara natak, tum sambhalo. If I fritter away energy, where will I find the time to invest it, direct it?

Link OD

Chanced upon a dream home in kota stone and white. Perfect for dry hot cities (like back home), where temperatures are above 40 degrees C most times and above 47 C a few months.



Loved the way they’ve used stone, light and splashes of color.


http://devyanijayakar.com/guggari.pdf






The AT small cool entries are drool-worthy…


http://community.apartmenttherapy.com/contests/smallcool/2012






“Wish-I-had-written-that” envy at the tumbhi shortlisters, specially Vibha Batra’s The Survivor. Perfectly crafted.


http://www.tumbhi.com/short-story-writing-contest/somewhere-sometime.jsp

There is a time for all seasons....



What a googly life throws at you sometimes.

You can butt your head against the wall, and to no avail.

And then be surprised out of the blue.


I wish I could've told you.


But I shouted to the skies anyway.

Today I tracked down the closest bank branch where they’d do a Western Union transfer, and collected $50 (or Rs.2482, to be precise), but how rich does every pence feel when its for your writing.

Bai’s son has flunked his 9th standard. Yet again. Bai slogs at 5 homes, an endless round of “top work” chores, stretches her limited salary and pushes her sons to an English medium school and tuitions. The vagabonds skip classes and play marbles or whatever is the equivalent thereof. Her eldest, a driver with some travel agency, took his boss’s car on a midnight spin with his coterie, crashed the car, and the lady slogged to repair and return the car to its owner to avoid a police case. For a calamity, any of the memsahibs would have helped, but who wants to throw money at a lost cause, the boy is a scoundrel? Of course it is not the son’s fault, he is good, his friends made him do it. Why does she not make the 9th class–in-limbo a wireman or an electrician or plumber instead? No, he must clear his tenth boards and he must go to college come what may.



One can take a horse to the water but one cannot make him drink, as Baba used to say.

Had I known installing plants on that tiny window ledge was going to be as inspiring, evoke a sense of ownership and yes, contentment, I’d have done that long ago.





In the shanty town these days there seems to be a season of nonstop recital of the Ramcharitmanas.




Yesterday from 4 till ten I visited two worlds. Negotiated a single person-only, winding alley in a shanty town to reach a friend’s engagement ceremony. Later, dined in understated opulence elsewhere, making polite talk, calculating the manhours it would take to keep the environs as pure and pristine white.

In a story: That breaking point, that’s what interests me. A commenter said that strong people stayed strong all the time, even pushed to the wall, they battled and found a way out. No, not always, and when people don’t act true to form, the stalwart giving in, the strong man buckling under pressure, the saint turning to crime—that last feather, that X factor--that’s captivating....

So- destiny, or none?



In the falling evening light I see a five-year old surrounded by toys in her playroom, playing with make-believe friends and believed-to-be friends, and I think of the changes a kind soul would bring to her life just by stepping into it and shaping it, the values, the backbone, the slant of her head—and think, yes.


I see this girl in her twenties returning to her home town, the brightness in her eyes dimmed, shaken and broken at the turn of events, learning anew about grief and sorrow--and a new workplace that started off as a place to go to, but changed, changed and changed again -- yes, destiny, and yes, she probably wouldn’t get that job today even if she wanted it.


I see a woman brokenhearted, cowering , picking herself up and walking away free, and I see the kindness of strangers and a reality that is unsheltered in the barrage of workshopped stories, lifestories, and the guiding hand of kind spirits never to be met—yes, destiny.

All luck by chance.

Change is the only constant. Happinessinthisworld has a great post on Change.



Yet something as simple as a supermarket closing down throws life out of sync.


Goodbye, More. You were great while you were around. Fruits were fresh, vegetables were straight from the fields, the staff was helpful and courteous. Poor kids, what happens to them now? Discount and range were decent, not earthshaking, and I reciprocated with my loyalty and solid billing.


Unlike a traditional housewife, you did not do in-season purchases, you did not tie up with the producer, and margins got hit—even my aunt stocks up on spices and grains in season, so how complicated is that?


Now I have to figure out how to deal with conniving, silver tongued sabziwallas who’ve made a religion out of short weights.


The positives? This opens up two free hours on Sunday morning.


And DD1 is showing a series based on the Upanishads.


This morning I got a rejection on a story that is almost as long as the story. And have decided to put up stuff on Tumbhi, starting with stories that are anyway online.

Kahaani. What a brilliant jolt-of-electric-adrenalin of a movie.
No spoiler alerts here-- go see it!
Fantastic storyline. So that's the first hero. Happy to see someone has as much of a bent criminal mind as I have.
And the CITY... magical, maddening, pristine, filthy, modern and dilapidated by turns, pulsating energy, but what awesome photography, almost like a painting, a living mural, it reaches out and touches you, the simple humanity of the place...
Like that fleeting time in Birla art gallery where I sat singing with complete strangers.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, and on and on and on again we use the same template, only this once it doesn’t evoke a reaction—no storm, no tears. Thoughtful passivity. If all of life is a choice, does it have to be this way? Or maybe a change from status quo, the venturing needs an extra shot of energy or special bravado… and I’m too attached to my security strings. Surely, if I keep returning time after time to the same point, perhaps I should give it some consideration. Other than sweeping it under the proverbial carpet.
Pat on back: drove to the lab and back without mishap.

What do you do when a friend gifts you the perfect, spherical eggplant?
Cook it. Poyemn it.
I’m thrilled to announce publication of a poem, Eggplant Rhapsody, on Pure Slush
http://bit.ly/xOPBcp
http://pureslush.webs.com/eggplantrhapsody.htm

So Columbus discovered America.
As the late parent would say when I learned or stated something that was obvious, even easy.
AUDACITY.
That’s the name of the software I downloaded, installed, used on Thursday even as the rough town beneath my living room exploded in color, light, sound. Disco on steroids for holi.
Feeling quite PRIM about using the software to record in the native, a translation of basics, cat mat bat, suchlike, for mylanguages.org.
And the shock at the size of audio files and etc.
Columbus khush hua.
Wah Taj, wah, collars up.

Aaj rang hai, Hey maa rang hai rey
Mere mehboob ke ghar rang hai rey

An ecstatic Nizamuddin once wrote
Drunk on the colors of life
invisible to but a chosen few
Today was Holi, the festival of colors
But my celebration has been ongoing for days
The colors dancing in the air-haze
In the delirious plurality of green
the burst of sunlight
cascading chorus of bird calls
My gulaal, my abir in the play and turn of the breeze
In the kesu and jasood brimming over
Nizamuddin may have long written his verse
there is hope
Yes, the world still celebrates