Hello Me!

Nostos  is the Greek word for return and algos for suffering. The two words compounded form nostalgia, meaning the suffering caused by one's yearning to return, return either to a  bracket of bygone time or to a particular place.  

Lately, I have been nostalgic for myself, for the unhindered, undulating quietness which once inhabited the vast vistas of my inner scapes...by and by, because of my own negligence I let the deep creative well which watered this stretch dry up, leaving me to deal with the frightening unfertile expanse of  desolation within me. As is my wont I blamed it all on the assault of the digital world.  I reminisced the time when smartphones and laptops were considered redundant instead of absolute necessities that they have become, without which life simply stops dead on its tracks. How could a thing become a valuable extension of myself, is the question I have asked myself over and again.

So yesterday, I decided to disconnect with the e-world in order to connect with myself. I let my gadgets rest, so I could too. I let my eyes meander across the porch, alight on the cashew tree trying to revive itself, while I did the same. I smelled the rain that had fallen last night and shook a branch over my face and felt it quiver at the supernal touch of the cool drops still clinging to the leaves. Unbeknownst to me, I landed up startling a maina which quickly fluttered off, leaving in its wake the echo of my terrified scream.

I read three short stories, two by Paul Bowles and one by Borges...and when I chanced upon an unfamiliar word, instead of skipping over it, I got up and pulled out the 22-year-old Webster to look up its meaning...Besides the meanings of  words, I found an entire trove of treasure, lost and found, and still capable of issuing  a host of memories. Along with strips of salmon pink birch bark from our land in Alaska, I discovered dried lavendar and dandelion flowers right from our backyard in New York,  yellowed neem leaves in the shape of birds which I must have picked during my constitutionals in the neighborhood here, and a minuscule cashew leaf, imitating a perfect heart. I also chanced upon some colorful shiny wrappers of Parisian chocolates my friend had once brought  and empty pouches of Biglow's herbal tea.

All the things I had once loved and had now forgotten were here tucked away in the dictionary: words, nature, friendship and Tea. Maybe, I can after all find my way back home.

Playing the Card Right

 The royal family and its entourage appointed a prominent event managing company to prepare for the pompous celebrations related to the upcoming festival of lights...The deadly virus had been banished from the kingdom and the occasion called for an extravaganza befitting the victory. So what if the farmers have been on the road protesting for almost a year now? "After all, isn't it easier to protest than to till the land and sweat it out?" the king had reasoned and left them to their lot, shivering in the November cold. And, how about those whose businesses closed down, or the daily wage labourers who lost their jobs, due to the pandemic? They would find ways to trudge on. "They are a resilient race you know. God has been kind to them," is how his highness liked to eulogize the downtrodden of his kingdom. No one disagreed, instead they marveled at his utter humility which could put on a pedestal a hoi polloi. Moreover, the king once annoyed, could simply threaten to step down, as he had done on several instances. And no one desired that of him, for he looked so frail, vulnerable and helpless that the ministers and his subjects shuddered to think of him out there, in the big bad world, all by himself. They relented to his whims to keep him happy and satisfied. 

A makeshift replica of the grand temple was  built to offer oblations to the deity. All the ministers and their families were invited to partake in the grand Pooja. The subjects were advised to remain at home and enjoy the live telecast from the comfort of their living rooms. So while the obedient people of the kingdom feasted on colorful visuals of the ministerial jamboree,  the street-dwellers decided to steal the oil from the clay lamps set in front of the houses of the wealthy, so they too could aspire for a meal on the night of the festival.

The next day, the media went beserk reporting on all the minutest detail of the event, right from the ornated deities in the temple, to the dress code observed by the royal couple as well as by the family of the second and third in command were captured with great flair. The presence of famous musicians and dancers  was described as imparting a cultural edge to the overall ambience.

Some of you might have guessed that the reference here is to the Grand Old Lady of Delhi, the Chief Minister Kejriwal himself and his yet another staged performance revolving around Diwali. To commemorate the festival in style, he  commissioned a 30 ft by 80 ft. temporary replica of Ayodhya temple. Constructed and carved out of plywood and styrofoam, the temple was completed within a week. While the event was vigorously covered by one and all media houses, no one cared to find out what was the total budget for this utter waste of a structure and more importantly, where did all that money come from. Was it collected in the form of contributions from  party members, or was it the tax payers hard-earned dough which was being splurged? Secondly, which event management company was given the contract? And lastly, what would happen to this makeshift temple? Would it be packed, boxed and stored away for next year, or would it go to the already overflowing landfills?

This blogger here, yours truly, did her best to get in touch with the concerned authorities, via several phone calls and emails to the Chief Minister's office, but an answer has not been forthcoming so far.

Funnily, all the reports condescendingly stated that since the Chief Minister Kejriwal has had his eyes on the Uttar Pradesh elections slated for early next year, he had to play the religious card to woo the Hindu majority. In fact, it was considered a politically savvy move and was being applauded as such. It might  remind some of us of Donald Trump, 

on the campaign trail in 2016 telling a crowd  in Nevada, “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” While the media in the U.S. did not spare Trump his bigotry, Kejriwal escaped unscathed.

So, all said and done, my personal ire at such puerile and pointless activities coupled with the curiosity to dig deeper into the  cost and waste aspect of the CM's profligate theatrics apparently finds me in the minority. And the fact that most people don't care about such statistics makes it a cultural issue, not a political one. 

Far Away...and Closing in

It was the same venue as presented by several other uncertain evenings wrapped in solitude: a vast stretch of sky leaning over a long terrace. By now, my occasional walks on this fifty-five steps long tiled site had earned me a couple of loyal friends: a drongo and a jungle crow. They seemed to alternate between the two perches the simple layout of the terrace afforded: a firm one on the parapet and a free-spirited one on the clothesline. Sometimes our eyes met and locked, at others our acknowledgement of each other's presence was best expressed by discounting it.

But something unusual happened a few days ago as the dark sky momentarily lit up presenting a filigreed vision of a phantom flock of Caspian terns headed somewhere beyond the storms. Appearing suddenly on the western horizon, it imparted the impression of materializing out of thin air. An orchestral silence followed in its wake. At least a thousand of them, in a constantly wavering formation. Threading their way in and out of invisible obstacles the terns moved, stealthily dividing themselves into waves, and then coming together to form a frothy ocean. My heart sang out at this elysian sight and two poems emerged from this moment of supernal joyousness. They definitely don't do justice to the glorious beauty of our migratory guests which graced the evening, but it's an attempt nevertheless. 

1.

a ribbon of joy

spreads across the

gray and gloomy

sky above: shimmering

in their own thrill

of a long journey

ahead, the terns

quietly make their

way across the

jubilant vastness

of the ocean...

like a phantom vision

they dance with 

the dimming light

now a wavering streak

of  silver, and now a

pall of dense darkness:

hide and seek to

confuse and delight,

adventurers into

the unknown, woven

into the rhythms of

nature, they heed the

call...they dream 

the path...

2.

columns of

love flowing

unto me in the

soft rain beyond

the fields where

cows graze...dark

clouds flee above

colliding with their 

own shadows; a

phantom flock of

stroboscopic terns

makes its way across

the dark ocean:

unhurried, woven

so gently in the

choreographed 

dance of Nature...

below the wild

waves rise and roar

A Release...

A proud mom,  I was sitting amongst a small but enthusiastic audience, my heart aflutter, as I listened rapt to my son Dhani's semi-nervous yet confident voice, cruising across the hall at Kalabhoomi, the Art Centre in Auroville. 

Outside the evening storm carried out its usual theatrics. "An early monsoon", some said and shrugged matter-of-factly, others, the climate change theorists were more cynical. But thankfully, it did not stop the die-hard friends, jazz enthusiasts and fans  to trudge through the red mud and streaming roads to haul themselves to the venue to attend the release of Dhani's debut jazz album, called 'Chimu Fiesta'. 

It was a long-awaited release. One and three quarters of a year, to be precise. Recorded in Bangalore in Dec. '19, it fell prey to the clutches of Covid lockdowns and unending restrictions...  Finally, when WHO generously upgraded the Covid status in India, from being a pandemic to an endemic, did a date to release the album was finalized. Inadvertenly, the date coincided with the day of the Goddess Saraswati, who reigns over the realms of Art. Automatically, everything about the delay felt auspicious. 

Roping in some of the finest jazz musicians in the country, the album was recorded in 16 hours. Even though its concenceptualisation had begun to wriggle its way into Dhani's musical subconscious way back in 2014, it took five years to materialize. It was no wonder therefore that each piece had a story to go with it, and revealed a moment lived, seized and  imbibed with its raw and undying intensity: 

"a moment sees, the aeons toil to express"...

While expounding upon sources of inspiration behind each track, Dhani spontaneously struck a rapport with all those present as he interspersed his narration with several humorous anecdotes related to translating the theory into action. Needless to say the hiccups were many  stemming from the fact that some of the musicians were meeting each other for the first time on the recording set. "But that is what made it both challenging and exciting", confided Dhani to a riveted audience. Each one a musician par excellence, the chemistry amongst them evolved naturally, paving way for a defiantly supreme end result: 'Chimu Fiesta'. In the artist's own words, "here is a small part of the bigger Whole; a cutting of life that I either magnified or minimized a hundred times -- so that perhaps, just may be, you can experience something close to the totality of what I did".

At the end of the event, one thing was clear: one can't just sit back and listen to 'Chimu Fiesta', for it grabs you by the soul and leads you to places you didn't know even existed. 

To download, click on the link below and go to bandcamp:

https://linktr.ee/suitetheexpatriate

An Autumn Tale

 Drenched in the sudden onrush of light, I became aware that the strange, mellowed keenness of the turning earth was upon me.  Something had changed: the blue of the sky was a shade darker, and the air tad bit more moist and fragrant with the sap of the maturing pines. While a dreamy languor set the pace for the new season, it didn't last long. For the cold north wind descended one night, with the fury of a hungry child, gnawing  at the gnarled branches of the old maple tree, which supported me, and a thousand others of my frightened kith and kin...we rustled and murmured protesting in our meek way, afraid of the fall that awaited us. The wind, a clear signal of the oncoming winter, alerted  the old maple tree, who in turn reacted with the wont clockwork precision, setting the alarm bells ringing across its width and breadth. And the next thing we knew every little artery system responsible towards carting  victuals to us from the main pantry was rendered inaccessible. Cut off brutally from the central food supply, we realised we were left to fend for ourselves, even as the little food we always kept stored away for a rainy day was swiped off by the head office just before the sudden lockdown, for its own preservation through the harsh winter months. By and by, the chlorophyll started breaking down, draining off the green pigment which had once streamed through our veins and kept us healthy and shimmering...the sunlight happily licked away the remaining sugar trapped inside us... leaving us, you may think, destitute and impoverished...Nye! Once the welfare system was lifted off our shoulders,  our hidden selves took over: flamboyant and gorgeous, studded with gold, burgundy, yellow and flaming orange...and a thousand shades in between. We danced joyously with the cold, inhospitable, insane north winds, oblivious of being hungry, thirsty, deprived...

What a wake up all it turned out to be, for me and for my entire clan: Never be afraid of change. A wake up call just before the deep slumber rising from the Styx gathered us in its folds.

 

The Japanese Student

 He named their first daughter 'Aryana' after a cheerleader he used to date in highschool. "Oh, she was gorgeous", he told her, his face ecstatic as the memory of those days effortlessly etched themselves on his youthful limbs . Hayami looked at him, confused, "What is gorgeous?" She asked in her hesitant English. "Oh," he laughed almost cruelly, "I forgot you speak very rudimentary English. Oops, I mean basic...simple. Yes, you hardly know any English". He paused. "Gorgeous means very very pretty". He elongated the verys deliberately, savoring each one. Then, looking at her hurt face, he hurried to add, "You shouldn't feel bad. After all, I married you, brought you here to America, availed you of a Green Card...Now, you too can live the American dream".

Now, it was the right moment to fling a sarcastic 'thanks'  at Brian's austerely handsome marine face. But no, that was not part of Hayami's culture. Quietly she took his hand and let it rest against her cheek.

In brief, this used to be the story of my Japanese student Hayami when I first met her. I used to teach her English as a second language. At 26, mothering little Aryana, she was a stay-at-home mom in a strange land, whose language and people she still needed to understand. She and Brian had met in Okinawa, while he was stationed there at the U.S. base. She was the chief attendant at the McDonald's counter in the food court of the local mall, the place he frequented the most...(surprise, surprise!) 

Hayami wore beautiful dresses, delicate and elegant both in fabric and design, which complemented her petite frame. I once commented on how lovely her wardrobe was and on how near impossible it was to find something like it in the malls in America. She flushed and said, "Brian hates them...they are too un-American".

It was from her I learnt about the festival of Ohagani, simply translated into English, it means, 'viewing'. Observed during the spring, when cherry blossoms are in bloom, it revolves around families with their picnic baskets, venturing out to spend time under the flowering trees and breathing in the eternal beauty of those few transient moments. 

Hayami possessed a soft purring corner for cats. Unfortunately, the apartment building she lived in did not allow pets. But, this of course did not deter her from getting a built-to-scale resin cat whom she fondly called Mitsy after her own feline friend back in Okinawa. Mitsy looked so lifelike that every time I came, I felt tempted to bend down and pet it as she lay lazily by the front door next to the potted bamboo plant. My Japanese student also flaunted a healthy collection of Maneki Neko's statues, the luck-inviting figurine of a red and white cat with its right paw raised. "Whenever I visit Tokyo", she once confided, "I  make it a point to pay homage to Maneki Neko at Gotokuji Cat temple".  A cat temple? Really? But then, if India can have a  rat temple,  why can't the land of the rising sun flaunt a cat temple? Thankfully,  the twain shall never meet. However, if they did, imagine the massacre!

During the course of two years that I tutored her in English, I saw Hayami metamorphose before my very eyes, as she got hooked to pro wrestling, baseball and black coffee. From jet-black haired woman who wore elegant dresses, she was to become a jeans and T-shirt gal with purple and green highlights in her hair and dark lipstick, cuddling up to her marine husband and asking, "Am I gorgeous or what?" 

Cling not, and it shalt be...

...bestowed unto thee

A flash of brilliance strikes the brain cells and lo, an idea manifests out of nowhere, lighting up that otherwise dull space. Somewhere in a moment of elation my being wows. And the hippocampus goes on a wild spree finding ways to label and store it in the right compartment in order to revoke it later.  And just when the task has been carried out satisfactorily, poof! the idea vanishes. Like a candle flame extinguishing without even the slightest brush of the passing zephyr. Returning to the obscure dungeon of my diurnal thoughts, fruitlessly I scramble for the least spark of that genius which was mine for one triumphant moment. What happened to it, which cerebral or psychogenic blackhole sucked it in, leaving no trace behind of its existence? Into which realm of non-being did it evanesce? Was it the overwhelming stimulus generated by the ingenuity of the thought and the subsequent effort of the mind to label and organize it within the shallow racks of the brain that impelled it to escape? Eschew mortality? 

Even though it wasn't the first time this unusual phenomenon had taken place, it was the first time I felt intrigued by this illusionist-like disappearing act. It felt akin to some dreams that I had fiercely wanted to remember for their ethereal and illusive  quality, and kept playing, replaying them in my semi-conscious mind. And yet, on waking up, they simply slipped as through a wormhole, into a totally another dimension, leaving me feeling unsettled and incomplete. However, it did make me wonder- into whose memory pad did they land on?- or, better still, did they land at all?

Somehow my mind wants to connect these two oft-experienced occurrences of one's daily life to the obstacle most novice meditators face. As one by one, judiciously they try to strike out the thoughts, their mind latches on to one minuscule vanquishing statement: "I am thought-free now". And it is precisely in this self-absorbed acknowledgement that all the effort and energy channelized towards emptying one's mind is annulled...

In all these three incidents it is in  the overt cognizance of their existence, either of ideas, dreams or emptiness, that our failure lies. If only we could let them be instead of clinging on to them, allowing them to linger within the panoramic scapes of our inner being... Waiting in blissful concentration of no-thought for the right precise moment to apprehend (though never conquer) It.