I'm ok in bits and pieces.
Yesterday, I returned to work after a long time. Three months is a long time.
Opening the door to let myself in at home, that was a disconnect.
And my sleep has gone for a toss.
So many "what-if's".
A day at a time.
But ok, I think.

Baba. Papa. Bapu. Appa. Babu. (Amongst the several names I called him.)
He breathed his valiant last this morning.
After a three month long fight.
My life lost its axis.

two months and two days.
time on tenterhooks. ICCU time.
the fight continues.
tough old man, the doc said.
you bet.

like knitting that comes undone
one thing after another
medicines we take at a muscle wince or fever can mess up the innards and kidneys of the too old or too young. So I see, day by day.
words recalled from pharmacology textbooks ditched twenty years ago.
yet.

Week 3 in the hospital begins today.
Toughest thing in the world? To make a disinterested grumpy immobile recalcitrant elder eat. And return to steel will. When cajole,charm, beguile, threaten, barter-- all fail.
Light on the lawn. What a sacred troth is life. And how callous are we.

a week after our arrival at the hosp the opn was done
after 5 bottles of b+ blood
still weak
cajoling the man to eat
recovery slow but ok I think.

the parent's in icu, has a femur frature after a fall, needs to be stablisised bp wise before they can operate.
under control.

It is good to periodically find a metaphorical mountain to climb. To pit one’s will, to stretch boundaries etc.
Now, one may logically prepare to climb the said mountain, practice with trainer wheels, hear the cautionary tales of other trekkers, think of worst and best cases and etc., and put your head down and get on with it.
But then the said, metaphorical mountain can dramatically alter, morph, take on new shapes.
And so we begin anew.
So I’m learning.

At that hour the sky is pitch dark, just the quiet and a dog or cat yodeling; but later, rich pinks flood the sky, usha arun ney kumkum pagaley.. those were the words I remember from a song learnt in class 4, and there has yet to be a better capture for this dawn parade, or the finery of gold spun over the frangipani.

Each day teaches me something new about human nature. Will polish and use in a story, not to worry.

When I walked this evening on the terrace it was later than usual, the sky a darker pastel dotted with a plane and helicopter or two, the billboards on the distant highway shone brighter than usual, twinkling lights and the faint beat of a disco garba heard in the air.
Navratri begins, and to me this is a season of resurgence, of renewal and faith.

The neem are in bloom. As are the flowers I've always thought of as the inspiration for the carving at the Taj. Not quite autumn, and a resurgence of life, and the cycle goes on.

The cloud-laden night sky was a peculiar red at four a.m., much too early to get up. And like a dowager gloating over her garnished jewellery in storage to remind herself of her faded beauty, I let my thoughts rest upon the significance and sorrow of the day, life events that lead to a place that is bleached dry and emotionless in its quiet, and the norm that all life losses would be measured on and found wanting. And almost in keeping with the Buddha’s lesson to the grieving widow, of a single mustard seed collected from a home with no sorrow, one waits for news from a surgery that a cousin has been undergoing all day; yes sometimes it takes so long.
Peace.

Added: She is doing ok, touchwood.

The home city is different every time I visit. But it is as hot, reminding one of the wild swings in temperature the place is prone to, from a miminum of 6 degrees C to a max of 47 C plus. Yet the champa- frangipani-- was generous, laden with white blooms.The auditorium I went to for a meeting brought back so many memories of school concerts and endless rehearsals on this stage with the singing group—even though the audience was only parents. How we worked hard to make everything pitch perfect. Nostalgia also was prompted by the pharmacy class of 87 getting together on yahoo groups. Who’d have thought that the most reticent of the lot would be taking the initiative, and the one with the pictures that reminded one of how thin one was, once upon a time. It takes a chance meeting with a rather fancy couple on a train journey to make one realize how frenzied and compartmentalized a life one leads, but is that a bad thing? A story that first began in I think 2007—and was cut, recut, reframed, pared, cleaned up, rehashed to infinity, till everything in it changed except for a single visual shot, finally found a home. Else and elsewhere, life goes on. The market marches onward and away without a pause—or a sensible reason.

Last night the strains of the arati, the hymn rich and clear, were like a pied piper's song, and I followed the music up unfamiliar steps to a stranger's home.
I can be happily weird sometimes.

The firecrackers, dholak- cymbals could be heard even as the sedate group chanted the Lord's names, like every week. But the jolt of energy that accompanied the palanquin past the threshold to the altar. Amazing.

AND it is good to get surprised at what life throws your way. Even if you lead a quiet, peaceful existence most times.

Last night on my last walk past ten thirty, the plump quarter moon was efflulgent, haloed in a red and black sky, even as the silence of the night was underlined by distant drums and cymbals from festive processions making their way to the sea, and elsewhere the babel of sundry tv sets and air-conditioners humming pinned the day in place.

Scintillating days.
Watching sunlight flood the green past the trees in the morning.
Watching the wind ruffle through colored flags that line the street.
And the twinkling multicolored lights at night.
The adrenalin charged beats of the dholak.
I've travelled east west north south, visiting friends for darshan.
I've taken so many different modes of transport, met so many helpful strangers along the way.
In unusual places, a benevolent, all-giving calm.
Acres of green as far as the eye can see, in Orlem.
A jutting hilltop viewed from a friend's balcony in Thane as the mist rolls past.
A handkerchief-sized farm, stubborn, jaunty amidst tall buildings.
That blessing from the Lalbaug Cha Raja, even if it was via a forward.
His blessing suffuses through my days.

Yesterday, on my way to the local station, I walked through two village clusters, gaothans, that this mega city has encompassed and swallowed whole in its obsessive growing, proper settlements with one-room homes, a main street and a place of worship. As I watched the lights for the festive season reflected in many puddles and joined the throng of commuters wending homewards, I realized sometimes we see only what we permit ourselves to, and that journey to the end of the world can begin with the next step one takes.

When I can scrounge the time, this is what I have been reading, savoring the stories and wondering how a people who are almost us, are not quite, you know, us; and as a matter of fact quite a little different, all said and done sixty-odd years isn’t much when edifices around span a few centuries.

http://inotherrooms.com/post/43849880/in-other-rooms

In the few stories that I’ve read, something seems to happen to the women’s brains once they have a dominant male in their lives. What does being sharp and jabra (which I’ll politely translate as being self preserving, so sue me) have to do with being educated or being rustic? An instinct for this self preservation is inherent to the gender across the subcontinent, but the women in these stories seem positively addled, vacuous by the second half of the story, which almost always leaves them destitute and abandoned. My unlettered grandmother who ran a tight household with her temper and flying missile-tongs, would have laughed.

In front of me is a postcard in sepia.
Showing Bombay of the 1940’s or thereabouts.
There’s the fountain at Fort, and the road divided into two by a central terminus for trams and taxis.
This looks just beautiful.
Maybe I’m in a sepia mood these days.
Maybe it’s the after-effect from reading about the music and films of the 1930’s. And following up on you tube.
Movies that have now been forgotten. Names that are no longer remembered.
But the parent still remembers.
The songs, the stories, the anecdotes about when he saw the movies and how many times did he see some. Even this spot near Fountain which he used to walk down to, to "pass time" as a penurious paying guest.
I use the kinder “courtesan” for some of the ladies when I take the lines to English.
What choice did they have, really?

Isn’t it surprising and a bit of a treat that the best of words and the finest of movies resonates with something deep within, and make us think, forces us to connect missing pieces by drawing upon our own experiences, diverse as they may be, in order to shade in the colors?
Udaan is a treat. Do not miss.
Joan Didion is a treasure.