The road is uphill.
The way ahead unclear.
But the mind knows that the time has come.
The mind knows the next steps.
Yet I will stop
to read the signs,
to check which way the wind blows
Why?

There was a post here about trust that I took off later.
The intention behind an impulsive action- it is important to look at that.
The heart was clean? The heart was clean.
This is learning for me.

The song of the sparrows is beautiful. Even if I saw only the last ten min.

This must have been a forest once.
Past the turning where a container truck is parked.
Past the mud and rubble on this filthy track
Must have been green, generous, bursting with life, busy bird calls.
Far overhead birds wheel in a V
as they must have, long ago.
About here- sunlight didn’t filter to the ground
Just the touch of the breeze on hushed green.
Perhaps there would have been a path here, deer doe-eyed, or a leopard or a cheetah sunning,
Where the factory now stands.
Next to the BPO. International calls, speaking as Miss Jones.
A well worn path, to the distant cave monastery, the only intrusion, mostly uphill, meandering.
Past the Aviation training academy, where the girls in short red make their way gingerly in the muck
But I’m sure this must have been a forest once.
Tall proud trees reaching for the sky, the whisper of the breeze like secrets.
And this place where a tea stall huddles with cheap meals for factory shift workers
Must’ve been a clearing for the world weary to rest. Or ponder journeys.
The years leave their mark, they say.
I wonder.

So many realities--the slum kid playing with a make believe horse made out of a rusted iron rod; the South Bombay 11th grader struggling with Hindi and class parties.

Today I awoke to a rejection.
Which all in all is a good thing.
One- the publisher got back.So many just don't.
two- the story has now moved from 400 words to 1700 words.
Which is a LOT of words. For me.
AND I have not sulked. For a change.
Ah, life!


Today's high winds are a manic delight, an almost eerie glee as they blow past buildings, whoosh through trees and twist and turn making a mockery of things like scaffolding, branches, and roofs.
The rain Gods were kind and stayed away, the century's higest tide didn't flood the city.

Tagged by Norrbu.
Tagging Amit L, PQ, Quin, mago, manuji.

They've finally taken away that truck that had rammed into the stone wall.
The beam of a heavy duty hoist has turned with the impact.
You can now see it past the huge gap in the stone wall.
The crushed auto was removed a day earlier.
The bus with the bad brakes stands at the turning.
Seven people, my autodriver tells me. Including a passer-by.
Sobering.
The plight of Yudhishthir at the gates.
Reminder to self: leave the desk and kitchen counter clean.


That glimpse of sunlight off the swishing palms, then dark clouds raced by.

Forwarding Address, a translation of Pravinsinh Chavda’s Agalnu Sarnamu, is online at Pratilipi.
http://tinyurl.com/lxgkvh

Hand in hand, we amble.
You’re saying your prayers, you set the pace.
How else would I have seen the Monet-like leaves, almost white green, or the bed of flamboyant red tiger lilies.
In colors, my prayer.

Tied myself up in knots over some words for most of last week, amazing how calm one feels once one decides upon the course of attack.

Looks like monsoon-time now.
Mumbai floods, and is as stoic.

I've watched with quiet peace the sky talk to the earth, envelop it in a misty rain cocoon, as leaves take on a million shades of green and the world looks fey.

A cocoon that I happily slip into when there is too much- too much at work, to much to think about, too difficult to find a way to say “No”. And it is still work.

Why is egoh a four letter word?
Isn’t it a thread that ties together diverse pieces of what we call the self, each with a will of its own?

My story Trital finds place in the July issue of the Birmingham Arts Journal.

http://tinyurl.com/nnpjos

Why do people self destruct?
Why do people with everything going for them, self destruct?
Saw three instances last week. One at close quarters.
Scary as hell.
Perhaps one ought to see why so many don’t breakdown despite.
Despite all.
Do we as humans have quotas of what we can take? What determines this?
And some don’t- despite all. Amazing.

That tape with the discolored, scratchy cover.
Treasured because it was “from foreign”.
Later, memories of sitting on the swing on the dark porch.
Listening to the same songs over and over again. Even if the words were a jumble.
Strange how the mind remembers.
Where exactly a line reaches higher. How exactly a drumbeat sounds.
As Radio One played a tribute this morning, so much came flooding back.
The day the music died.
What a life.

The Neighbors, my translation of the Gujarati story Padoshi by Pravinsinh Chavda, is up on Calque.

http://calquezine.blogspot.com

This story details two very different life trajectories, mindsets and expectations on the two sides of a fence in a lower-middle class locality. Sometimes life decisions are made much before one’s birth.

The first rains.
Light as a feather.
Drops flurry about in the breeze, not the real monsoon furor as yet.
For so long now I’ve scoured the skies. Scowled at the sun.
Thank the heavens.
Beneath the leaves too, a fluorescent green.
A strange bird warbles out a tune, three clear notes in three octaves.
To all things, a season.

He is a genius-Nobel laureate, fine.
But verse usually stops me short.
What startles is the simplicity, the permission to write what he will, even an Ode to a lemon.
So right.

I am, as most know, fairly taken with the stars and reading the signs.
Daft that way- but let it be.
But this is different.
Perhaps it is the art- so beautiful. There is an old age, lyrical museum-quality feel about it.
Perhaps it is the openness to interpretation that's intriguing.
You can read into it what you will. A portend is a portend, after all.
A feature may be positive, or not.
Or it can be both at the same time, depends on what you bring to it

One of the singular pleasures these days has been "sandwiching", squeezing in slivers of whatever movie catches my fancy from the bouquet on the satellite channels, of course my current faithful Ladies Special must be watched as well. I could get addicted to this movie-a-day habit.

Pico Iyer on simplicity.
My thoughts exactly.
Less is more.

Last night, enthralled, I watched Matilda, a child’s tale, a fantasy with clear line dividing good and bad, based on a Roald Dahl tale about a six year-old super smart kid with telekinetic skills. Why do we need to believe? Is it a desperate scramble to hold on to anything, something? Why do we make up improbable tales, knowing fully well they are beyond what is real? Perhaps the need to feel hope despite and notwithstanding, is genetic.

Another June 9. With the years, I see the good that was there- and there was so much solidly good, so much that changed my life. The bad I acknowledge, but its like reading lines in a history book.