a year older
just as besotted by
crisp word
dappled green
peach-lined skies
and you.

Exploring gold spun
This nine day festival of the Mother Goddess
Grace is in the air.
Lights,
the drum faint in the distance
A celebration
Also a time to ponder upon
Chance and happenstance
mysteries and gifts
the benedictions of our lives
such as this
and not

The Stories in the Songs

A musical, seen this Sunday
Performed with minimal props
featured performances that gleam
burnished with years of rigorous classical training
Pitch perfect, the notes quiver and turn and float in the air
In the quiet amphitheater
No room for improvisation
The audience a scarce inch away

Vignettes
That traced the evolution of Indian classical music
Through the ages
Even as the country was overrun with invaders of various vintage
From the Mughals to the British
Thumri, tappa, chaiti, hori, kajri
Derived from the classical,
giving lifebreath to the classical
Forms that survived, thrived,
A thread inching, meandering,
Insistent, full throated
Through these centuries

From the rendition of a dancing girl
Who sneaked in a freedom song in her performance
At the behest of the Mahatma
To the sincere if fumbling, warbling
Of Lady Elizabeth Hastings
Who tried to learn this difficult form of entertainment
From a polished native performer of the arts.
And so many other tales.

Even as I clapped to the beat, and hummed and cheered and laughed
Flashes of yesterday
Crept in unannounced;
Of notes filtering past the heat haze
Of voices in unison, rising skywards
A fun duet, now competing, now out-doing
In the manner of the young
I blinked.

This afternoon
The child who wandered by the roadside
Looked out of place in this maze of industrial-office blocks
Even as cars zipped by
to drop important personage to important meetings.
Was not a slum kid, not a beggar
Her face clean
Dress neat
Pretty bangles on her wrist
Blue flip flops
She willingly gives me her hand
As I take her to a nearby construction site
That I presume she’s wandered off from
“Where’s mummy?” I ask, looking around for a laborer, maybe the mason’s wife
She points to an office block next door
“Biscuit” she lisps.
And even as I peel off the glittery wrapping
I can only wonder
At the compulsions
And life story
Of a woman who’d perforce leave her child
Wandering by the roadside
Some sun-dappled afternoon

On your birthday

I stare at my face in the mirror
And wonder about you
My nose is like yours, they say.
And demeanor
(but only when I’m good)
I stare at my face in the mirror
Trace fine lines
And think
About lifetimes, crisscrossing paths, DNA imprints
And wonder about
Free choice, chance, fate
And other unknowns
Like you.

My lesson for this week
(for a life time)
Is that dreams can come true
Even impossible ones
Crazy ones
That young girl from a remote village in the Himalayas
Made it to Prague film school
Winged it!
Sponsored by unnamed strangers
Who chipped in, piecemeal
Penny by penny
Like that ad says,
keep your head down, and keep walking.

Because I must not forget.
That early morning awakening
After checking the clock every hour past midnight
Leaving home at 4, determined, devout
The journey, traffic on the road
The twenty minute walk to find the end of the line
Past vendors, children, trinket-sellers, crowds
With trumpets, balloons, toys to sell.
The rush rush rush to hold on to your place
as the line winds past the lanes of Byculla
Negotiating a tricky maze, and then again
Just holding on, nudging, jostling in that few thousand strong crowd
For a glimpse of the deity, but fleeting
Before you’re pushed out
Yet, something’s changed,
you know your year’s moved to a new plane.

*Set free*, my translation of Shri Pravinsinh Chavda's Gujarati short story *Mukti*, features in the Sept.- Oct. issue of Reading Hour.
There is a Dhara in each of us, in the choices that we make. Sometimes the only redeeming feature of life is, that life goes on.

Where does the faith come from, he asked.
From having the faith battered a few hundred times, like an old tin can
From hitting ground zero with no where to go
Once too often
from knowing edge-of-the-mind distraught
And coming full circle.
From coincidences that fall in place, Oh… like that.
And missing catastrophe by a whisker’s breadth.
So often.
For the lessons of a bitter decade, in retrospect, amazing grace.
From glittering empty roads that you try to master, literally and figuratively,
fumbling, heart a-thunder
From the clatter of shrouded gurneys that pass by your head as you do ICU vigil
From trembling courage as you gather piles of new clothes now useless, for charity
From events that seem life shattering, but a boon in retrospect
From the people you meet. Over and over again.

You are the rhythm underlying the world,
Or so the prayer’s verse goes.
This is what I see:
The cycle of seasons, of rain pelting earth
Of the pulsating beat of colors and echoes that rebound
Exploding volcanoes, and crashing trees, red hot magma surging
In a blink of an eye, a lifespan, the three ages
The rise and collapse of civilizations, and crumbling ruins of Mohenjodaro
Wind ruffles the grass as it flows past
A heart thudding, lifeblood coursing through infinite channels
Traced by a machine beep
The swell of tides under a moonlit sky
Of the howl of wind across a bare desert
Magna throbbing in the center of the earth
That surge of green as sap gushes skywards
Pulsating stars in the deepest void
That intricate dance of infinite city lights
Of traffic rushing, blending, diverging, through
The world’s freeways
Of intellect, of a man’s grasp exceeding his reach,
Verily, you are this.

Ganesh Chaturthi tomorrow, hopefully a time of contemplation, of thanksgiving. In a year of chequered squares, dark blacks and a few sunny yellows, much to be thankful for. for a guiding presence, for clarity and a soul guide, and silly me, I didn’t think I had one left. For greens, for the jumble of foliage. For hot. For cold. For nerves, yes, that too and how often and how intensely one takes that chilling next step, and how this redefined the meaning of backbone.For patience and space, for forbearance. for delight in tiny triumphs that only I can see. For intuition, of sorts, for grace in being humbled.for being guided to wisdom and serenity. “We meet the same people over and over again” says the line from the Bhagvad.Gita, I draw solace. For your presence in my darkest hour, and momentary triumphs, in a year of chequered squares and much growing up, gratitude.

There’s waiting, and then there’s hope.Waiting.for the markets to reach a new normal and take a breather. For the political situation to sort itself out. For the monsoon to end, for the skies to change so I could get on with my to-do list. The list is long and I’m primed and ready to go. In a way this is not all that different from trying to learn how to keep one’s wits and navigate AK road or JVLR, all clutch-brake-clutch, a whisker’s breadth away from hunking lorries and high agro BEST buses waiting to bear down upon a flustered you. All in good time.

Independence day
Yesterday
We saluted the flag
Sang out loud the national anthem
Remembered the valiant
The challengers of an Empire’s might
Remembered the time when the cry for freedom
Rang out from coast to coast, and adrenalin charged in the veins
Pulled out sepia memories of the greats
Gandhiji Nehru Patel
And the forgotten, the sacrifices of the untold millions
A steel backbone, the shared heritage

Today, we’re back to examining the meaning of freedom
Past potholed, traffic choked roads
Lined by a wave of regrets, lost opportunity and paved by endless corruption
Scandals and tattered reputations,
That submerge a gasping nation
Widening, ripping apart the chasm
Yet we remain stoutly democratic
A nation of so many differences, yet we remain bonded, defiant
Surely that counts for something.
Yet this morning
an 84 year Gandhian was arrested for speaking his mind
asking for the nation’s accounts
For shame!

In the mad rush for minutes one forgets the magical. Yes, the magical-- startling, breathtaking, elusive mystery spice included. Why should that be the prerogative of children and the dreamy eyed alone? For the record, I’ve for long found the manufacturing process of sublimation quite fantastic. A solution, say an injectable, goes directly from solution to a flaky powder, no heating required. So beautiful Of course, there is a great deal of science involved, lyophilisation, eutectic point, flash point and whatnot, but the clean beauty of it all! Fantastic.
And remember that equation for cellular level energy, ADP Plus P equals ATP? Magical, the way in which we systematically pick up energy from the food we eat, tuck it away into cells in pockets of energy until needed, no use before date, and so seamless the uptake and infinitely economical the usage. Brilliantly neat.
And the powers that devised these may therefore be trusted to keep the world up and running much after we’re done.

A banyan tree felled
A giant of a tree
bark gnarled, white-weathered with the years
its shoot-tree canopy destroyed too
snapped, like matchsticks
Too furious a storm, perhaps
Or age.
I stare at the location
Right outside the Dept. of Sanskrit studies
Peeling paint, turn-of-century building
But the parking lot is full
I walk away.


**

Mourners
All of us in white
I stare at the ancestors on the wall
Charcoal on white
And your portrait joins them
The last of the elders
A few teardrops
Memories,
Your voice, the angle of your head, something you’d say
A banyan tree felled
A giant of a tree

Re: The Tree of Life.
Visual colossal—overwhelming, brilliantly beautiful but too much of brilliant, that gets into your eyes..
Terse. Non-linear. Connect the dots.
Whispers… Too much hinted at.
Too much space for interpretation. One wonders what one missed in an eyeblink.
Opinion: Dunno.
Was it worth braving the traffic and rain? Yep.
Would I see it again? Dunno, maybe.
"There are only two ways, the way of nature or the way of grace..."

I wish I could grieve for you.
Fifty plus years of widowhood, borne with cheer. And duty, and devotion, patience and all the extolled virtues, but I’m not sure what it did to you as a person, to your core. That person we’d see sometimes, irrepressible bits would pop out, and the once-singer would warble a tune, the once-theater performer would deliver a line with aplomb.
Unsteady on your feet, your bones brittle with two decades of steroid and thyroid medicine, you'd restricted your interactions with the outside world. Your hand would tremble, you’d given up writing, and your signature was a scrawl.And yes, the frequent falls. Yet every time I’d drop in, you’d regale me with laughter and a tale or two, and I’d scour your kitchen the way I used to when I was a broke student.
I often left angry, seeing in your tale a reflection of my life and possibly, fate, and determined to will it otherwise.
Let this memory be your last bequest to me.

Winner indeed.
I wish they’d told me it was online.
They didn’t.
Extremely disappointed with the US Dept of State, but the yahoo for whatever it is worth.
http://span.state.gov/mar-apr2011/eng/00-span-article-winner3.html

Startled and grateful for generosity. One friend gifts me rare music.Another celebrates my buy with a special home made treat, and mithai. What did I ever do to receive such goodness? *Lump in throat*.

Truth is shining, solid, incontrovertible.
100% proof.
There’s one pro, and matching it, the one con
Fitting, like the teeth in a jigsaw puzzle piece
So one of this, to one of that;
That's what I've always thought.
Silly me.
But there can be SO many facets to a story.
Depends on the retelling. The version.
Each side fully believes it is RIGHT.
That great injustice has been done.
Even if it means summoning up the Gods.
The forefathers.
Or questioning parentage. At hyper-volume.
But not my problem.
So beyond sympathy most non committal.
And sounding equally indignant to both parties
And a shrug or two. “It happens”
while the brokers slug it out
No holds barred
I shall remain “god-fearing, naïve”
Step away,
And watch.
Perhaps good enough for a life philosophy?