Christmas Truce and 2017

There are fireworks going about as I write this. I, quite in a muddled-headed manner, had forgotten, every now and then that it was New Year’s Eve – just every now and then. I did not entirely forget and I did remember a few central matters. And I remember, quite clearly, the previous New Year’s Eve’ (and that did not just happen in my head – Professor Dumbledore!). In fact, I had been grinning about the same while out on a walk in the evening…so maybe my own subliminal worries about progressive dementia are unfounded.

I remember my best friend saying that the German language is a language that is beautiful to the ears (he used different words) – I don’t quite remember when exactly that was though. I remember – well let’s say I remember a little more but I do know that I can now never again call the German language only a marching and military and merely peremptory language after chancing upon this.

The carol is my all-time favourite. But I had never before heard the German version. And that led me to glance through the comment-section. It is peculiar how memories are stored in the mind and forgotten and then retrieved. I sometimes think that psychologists – no matter how many studies they conduct on human memories (among other matters) – should do lots more studies. And I keep wishing the psychologists “good luck”.

I was reminded of the story I had first heard when I could not have been older than 8 – about The Christmas Truce during World War I. But I had forgotten all about it through the passing years. It is not that I have not thought about or worried or brooded over war and given the two Wars, WWII and even the Cold War had always stuck into me far more until I was over 26 – but the Christmas Truce! It is not only about war and killing and loss of life and meaninglessness and the utterly ridiculous nature of war per se – although of course one cannot miss any of that – but it is about a bit of hope and faith and camaraderie and comradeship and even the bare hints of possible friendship across fire-lines and in the bleakest of times. And given that I am an obsessed creature (I have had to finally accept my best friend and Fimh’s judgment on the matter of being obsessed) – I sort of hunted about. Anyone who is interested can go to the Wikipedia page of course. Here is a link of a Sainsbury grocery stores ad – a recreation of what "may-have-transpired" during Christmas 1914.

And it is very soon to be 2018. And we are still here. Human beings, animals, other life-forms, the environment, and our planet – we are here. Humanity is here and we, even in individual or shared spots manage to touch bliss – well, maybe in our minds and for bits of time in the virtual and real world. So maybe it is not a bad thing to keep one's faith and hope alive, and to believe in God – whatever one's conception of God might be. Beats many of the things that are currently viewed to be "better" or "progressive" or "holy" or "developed". 

I think I will go back to reading the interesting, perplexing and even (pleasantly) infuriating book I had been before this post becomes longer than a mile. Wishing you a happy year ahead.

A Poem by Nicki Giovanni

I read a poem by Nicki Giovanni (1943-) sometime this year – I forget when – which runs as follows:

Some people forget that love is

tucking you in and kissing you

“Good night”

no matter how young or old you are.

Some people don’t remember that

love is

listening and laughing

and asking

questions

no matter what your age.

Few recognize that love is

commitment, responsibility,

and no fun

at all

unless

Love is

You and me.

I keep wanting to add something here or there but somehow the poem sort of captures in snapshots of deft images of what I have long felt and still feel – in essence – even though I can’t, sadly enough, say that I have been able to fulfill all the points.

It is Christmas Eve’ and I shall go and make some coffee and listen to a few carols and look outwards and inwards for a little bit and take a walk. I have been sitting hunched over, typing and editing and framing word documents for almost the whole weekend, barring a few delightful moments upon unexpected mini phone-calls. I didn’t even notice when dusk approached and twilight descended. Now it feels like a dark and rather silent winter night outside. I can almost see the soft snow covering the ground and feel the blue, crisp air but that is my imagination running away.

Merry Christmas and a lovely New Year to my loved ones – Fimh included.

The oddities of Time

It feels odd to me, to put it in mildly, when I stand outside of myself sometimes and see the passage of time. Sometimes across more than three decades or across the years which have now officially become more than a decade but even across weeks. I remember writing a bit on the oddities of time from 14 years ago (2003) about a memory from a year before that (2002)…and a general musing on my perception of time:

It’s (time for) take-off: The seven hours have gone by in a snap. Just like seven years or seven minutes. Time seems to be such an amusing concept. I’m ‘gaining’ a day while travelling to the other side of the planet. That feels like such a cheeky thing to be doing — almost against the rules. While I’m doing up my seat belt, I can’t help but gurgle at that thought. I’m constantly calculating the time back on the part of the globe that I left early in the morning. An adorable baby boy is standing up in his seat and looking at me. I feel an irresistible urge to cuddle him. But it’s time for the most magnificent of moments — the glorious take-off. Later on in the flight the baby boy Ian, pulls off the blanket from my eyes and says, “Peek-a-boo.” He then proceeds to make some toast for me in his (imaginary) ‘oven’ while carrying on a conversation with me. I stare at him with bright, bright eyes while I take a slice of his ‘just-perfect-toast’…

----

Time warps ever so frequently for me. It (almost?) never travels in a linear motion. Sometimes it collapses and I can’t differentiate between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’; the past, present and future, the before and the after get sadly jumbled up in my head; sometimes it balloons up into a rising mist, floating, hanging overhead —not letting go; sometimes I’m stuck in a time dimension while the world moves along at its normal pace; sometimes I’m granted a sneak preview of the what-is-to-be and then I’m sent shooting back into the past (or should that be the present?) Sometimes time seems to be nothing but a capsule; a reservoir of memories. Does it seem this way to me because I’m mad or merely absent minded? Or is it because time is truly relative and everything is happening right now and there’s only an artificial separation, an illusory slower-ing down of vibrations so that we can live through experiences ‘in time’? Maybe then the sense of déjà vu that hits us is not about the ‘already seen’ but about the ‘being seen’ and the ‘being experienced’ – very much like the sneak previews…but (happening) at the same time in a parallel universe? Maybe my Fimh comes from some place that’s located near the mysterious zone of ‘time warps’. It’s confusing at moments and unsettling. There’s a sensation of inexpressible disorientation, similar to the experience of living through a gripping film in a darkened movie hall and then walking out into the bright sunlight. A part of the self is still locked in the movie or somewhere in between — and there’s a fragmented sense of reality. I’ve been through reality warps of different orders, different intensities; some just mildly confusing like the time warp, some distinctly more aggravating (and some distinctly, if even strangely, wondrous)…

Time takes its own time and works according to its own whimsy – I am almost completely convinced of this. There is nothing absolute and fixed about the passage of time. It works according to its own fancies and feelings. Clock-time says not much about the feelings on the passage of time and those human feelings – I have been thinking more and more, and quite in contrast to what I used to think as a teen are not matters that can be or even should be entirely snuffed out by reason and rationality and logic – although these latter matters are all good and important and useful aspects. Maybe recent conversations, the different blogposts, chapters and rather odd books that I’ve been reading and re-visiting and my general state of being and whatever it is that I am doing have some hand in this. I remember having pooh-poohed the arena of ‘Sociology of Emotions’ when it had become a rather hot and also contentious topic – and yet, now I find myself reconsidering my earlier presumptuousness. But this post is about time and its oddities – not about emotions. About emotions, intentions and motivations – maybe, I’ll write on another day.

The week that went by seemed to take its own sweet time in going by – if even some random passer-by had told me casually that two and a half weeks had passed by since the previous Saturday – I would have merely nodded my head and gone back to editing or re-writing a piece of work or worrying or wondering or missing or maybe walking. And yet if I consider the four whole glorious days just before that – during Diwali and my best friend’s birthday – it seems time just decided to whizz by as though it were a flash of light.

I remember I was looking at and listening to the rain one morning, feeling the huge gusts of wind, and shivering every once in a while while sitting out on the verandah and watching a lazy dog and reading a rather weird (interestingly weird in parts but not as a whole) book on meditation, consciousness and psychology (Sam Harris ‘Waking Up’), and knowing someone was snoozing and there I was feeling an indescribable feeling of childish delight and quiet bliss. I remember walks and conversations, scoldings and tremblings, incomprehension and perfect conversations, mushrooming questions which never quite get answers, stories, and boisterous celebrations with fire crackers and lights and colours and talks and quietness and laughter and togetherness. I have no pictures or recordings to show myself that all of it really happened out-there and not just in my loony head. But I find myself thinking that maybe time while being a silent and wicked thief exists for many reasons but also so that we can separate events as they happen, cherish some memories in retrospect and remember what and whom we remember and choose to remember and why?

Precious Lord, Chiroshokha he...

Two songs, which say more than I possibly can:

Jim Reeves with Precious Lord, take my hand...

And (best experienced with eyes shut) Chiroshokha He and a Salim Chisti Sufi fusion:

Meera and Krishna II

I wanted to title this ‘Muddled conversations with Meera’ or a more proper ‘Conversations with Meera’ or maybe, with apologies, ‘Conversations with a muddled Meera’ – but this has to be titled the way it has been. The following is a continuation of the previous post:

Do I see him even then? – You ask me. After he leaves – you mean? – Do I feel him? Can I hear him?

Yes. I do. I feel his presence in his absence. Is that strange? Is that madness? I feel him, sense him, hear him, and even when I try not to or experience ludicrous doubt about my experiences or am miserable or angry or even try to be very composed and reasonable. It is his voice I hear streaming through the breeze. It is a glimpse of him that I glance at when I see the blue of the sky kissing the green of the leaves on tall trees. It is his eyes that I chance upon when the storm rips the sky and black clouds gather billow upon billow over the lonely white sands. It is him I see laughing and winking at me when I see an iridescent river flowing by even when I, very solemnly, try – to think of other things. It is his touch that undulates within me when an impatient gust of air slows down upon meeting its very own loved one. It is him I see as the raindrops finer than the tiniest shards of glass pierce my skin and become one with my tears. It is his smile for me that I see when I live and die a little every day as I breathe in and out. So I suppose I see him, and then, I suppose, I do not see him always? Or do I? I do not know what to say – I am sorry. I do not know everything. I told you I am not a saint. I feel him unless I am too full of anger, resentment or spite or misery to notice.

You look shocked and discomfited and nonplussed – all at the same time. Why? – You ask me. Why what? Why do I feel resentment, anger, spite and misery? Do you think I must not feel such lowly emotions because I am a saint? Or do you now see me as being not so saint-like? I have a twinkle in my eye –? I am tickled to see you now wondering what I am: a saint or not-a-saint but then, 'what is she'? I am supposed to be a bhakti yogini, am I not? Not a gyana yogini. The latter are far more composed and rational and very reasonable. So are the karma yoginis. I imagine I can be all-in-one – but I fail.

Yes, yes – I have fallen silent. I am gathering my thoughts, am I not? I want to be clear, do I not? You have been trying to look at my thoughts for a long time but you can never pin them down to see the whole picture. You get muddled in your higgledy-piggledy head. You listen to something I say and not to other matters because they do not fit your pretty but imaginary picture of “the beautiful and blissful and beatific Meera”. You get all garbled and then you go around bellowing and yelling from the rooftops about love! You do not?! Of course you do. Almost every year for so many years. Haha. I have noticed. That is not about me and Krishna – you say? That is what you think. Now quiet! Stop your chatter. Let me tell you what I have to say, and listen and look carefully – if you can – without interrupting. Otherwise we will be conversing till kingdom come. Do you have nothing else to do apart from talking with beings in your head – you silly girl!

Yes – so where was I? Yes – those emotions. I feel all those emotions and more. He loves so many – do you not see? Do you not know anything – about history? He has his favourites. And he has his second and third lists and fourth lists of favourites and many more, and on and on. So I rage and am filled with dumb and angry resentment and angry tears right when I imagine I am far above such lowly sentiments. And I wonder where or when exactly I went wrong. You are tittering? I am jealous, you say? I am mean-spirited and small-minded, you say? I am mindless, you claim? I am like a little imbecilic, sad simpleton who does not know about expansive love webs? I am spoilt, pampered and mad – you say?! How dare you?! – You silly girl. You said none of these things? – But you thought all of them and some more. You imagine only you can espy thoughts? – I am none of those things. There you were calling me a saint, now you are calling me all this, and in the middle you wanted to pack me off to a loony bin?! Tsk-tsk. No, he does not love me – do you not see? I am nowhere on his list of sixteen thousand or sixteen thousand and three! I am not even on his – what do you call it? – waiting list. I do not care whether I am contradicting myself! You can go away now. I do not want to talk to you. Of course it irks me! Not you, you silly girl! Him. I could smack or bite or scratch him or embrace him and cry against him now and then – if I could. But then when I can hear him or he does appear – my rage and resentment – all – disappear. I cannot even cry when he is there in front of me. It seems pretentious and fake to cry when I can see him or hear him. I weep later.

Why can I not cry, you ask me? I answered that already. Why does it feel pretentious and fake? – You ask me?

He glows like Life which is real and matters. I cannot cry when Life stands in front of me. He is dark, you see. But he is light. He glows with his changing moods – sometimes darkly, and sometimes through the dark – lightly. Oh, of course he is mine – you silly girl! So what if he is God and everybody’s God? – He is still mine. No, you cannot have him – that is why you cannot see him. There – I have answered your second question.

Why are you smiling?!

Am I his? – No – I am not his – you pesky girl pestering me with presumptuous questions. That is so because he does not want me and is not fond of me in such a way. And do not ask me what I mean by “Such a way”. I will not tell you.

Yes, yes. You can ask me other questions. – Why does he visit me then if he is not fond of me?  

That is how he is – is he not? He knows all there is to know – does he not? He knows Meera loves him and has forever loved him and always will unless Meera stops being born and dying altogether and enters into some state of oblivion that she cannot imagine. And he is sometimes – what do you call it? – suffused with kindness and compassion or maybe pity, and so he blesses his lonely and useless devotee by dropping in or by calling in to – .

What, now?

 – Of course, I am useless! I have not won battles. I have not conquered lands and people and ruled over with a benevolent, just but canny hand. I have not created grand empires with my wit and guiles and wiles. I have not created and amassed grand and almost endless material wealth, and then given almost all of it away. There have been powerful and stunning queens who have gone to battle and even a young peasant girl – so I hear or did I dream of her? Anyhow. I do not lead a many-dimensional, many-tiered, busy, grand, great life – do I? He glowers at me for looking at him sometimes or for trying to talk to him or for asking him questions. It irks him. So what do I really do? – I sing. I compose poetry. I dance. I worship him. It is all to give voice and form to my love for him and because I cannot help it – and I wait for him. I am not beautiful – so beautiful, so full of breathtaking grace, exquisite finesse and innate talents that I can enchant him with my very being, shy smile and limpid eyes from behind a veil. What is it that you say? – I am? Beautiful? – Why, thank you. There are more than thousands and thousands and another thousands like me and they all love him. I often wonder how that is possible – do you know? To be singularly enchanting – what else? No. I see. Of course, you would not. I am grimacing? No, no. It is nothing. I certainly did not say or think your ugliness is revolting! The things you imagine! What - ? Oh, okay. It was only a passing, insignificant thought. Forget that now. There, there. Stop moping – it does not matter how you – look. But you were saying I sing, were you not? – I do sing. Did you not yourself hear me, at least once – maybe faintly but clearly – so many years ago? That is what I can do and so I do what I can do.

I write poetry? – You ask me? Yes, I dream up poetry – because I must and I can and it is a beautiful act. I forget what I am at. I am with him or some disembodied being of pure consciousness floating about, skimming about, coursing the universes with him – even when the poems are angry or measured or full of abandoned passion or I am disconsolate or I have perfect clarity or I am yearning for him. It is as if there are two beings when I am writing poetry – one physical Meera who is here and another Meera who is there with him laughing and making him laugh with wild abandon.

Of course I love him. So do millions – do they not? – He does not want me around. He appears when he does – fleetingly, in snatches – and he leaves just as unpredictably. Bad? – You ask? What is bad? Bad to need him? Bad to love him? Whom would you need then? Who else would you love if not him? What would you need if you do not need him and his love, and for him to accept you and your love? 

– but, what?! But what do you do after loving him and needing him? – You ask me, again?! Are you deaf and silly and forgetful? – You do whatever it is that you do and keep at it! Did I not say that a hundred thousand times already? – That is what you do. Whatever you can and are able. I too do what I can, do I not?!

Easy? – Who said anything about it being easy? Did I say it was or is easy? Do people imagine that that is easy? Why should it be easy? I am not a cow. A cow has a fairly easy life – I would say. A cow may disagree with me and may grumble and moo, and sadly say that I know nothing about being a cow and how difficult it is being a cow. There is nothing wrong in being a cow and maybe the life of a cow is very difficult in a way I do not know about – but I did not come to the world as one of his cows which he used to love. I came here as a human being. I did not come here to win trifles as a human being. That too would be easy. Maybe. Many people will disagree with me and so I shall add – maybe not. What do I know? – Maybe it is very difficult indeed to win and hoard trifles, and preen and prance and dance about flaunting trifles. Indeed, maybe it is exhausting and very difficult. What do I know? – Maybe their trifles are very important to them or mean everything to them, and they will take those trifles with them when they die and they will look upon their trifles after they are dead, and feel jubilant. What do I know? – Maybe the Lord will love them always for being who they are. Let them be. I cannot be one of them and do not want to be. So, no. It is not easy. And no, I do not ‘move on’ – whatever that means. But it is terribly simple sometimes and I am made to move along sometimes despite my obstinacy.

What do I mean? – You ask me? – I am being difficult and contradictory?! 

Is it an adventure, you ask me?

Now which question do you wish for me to answer?! 

Oh, I am being called. I have to go now. Why? I have to go attend to the preparations for the Sravan palace celebrations. I am in charge of some of the preparations – am I not? The staying arrangements, the accommodations, setting up the palace grounds and the competitions. I am a participant too. In what? – archery, horse riding, sword fighting and a few of the debates. Who will be attending? – all kinds of people from distant lands and people from our kingdom too. Yes, yes – princes and queens and ministers and teachers and courtiers and singers and philosophers and merchants and writers and painters and performers of all kinds and silversmiths and blacksmiths and wandering minstrels and more. Sing?! – No, of course I will not sing. Are you quite mad?! – The prince is calling me. I must go now. You go do something else. – Do you not have any work? Do you not have anything else to do? Oh, stop looking like a glum goblin, you silly girl. Do you not believe in God? – And even after yesterday?  – There is a time and place for everything – do you not know anything? I will talk to you some other time, maybe.

Meera and Krishna

Krishna and Meera have been visiting my mind, now and then, for quite some years now. It was 18 or 19 years ago – I cannot quite recall; the two years (1998 and 1999) seem to have become one in my mind – when they first appeared and with Fimh and my best friend. After a few years of semi-silence they appeared again and now it’s been a decade and a half with a few missing years, here and there. I used to imagine at some point that I could write a whole book about Meera but I can’t. Yet Meera and Krishna have appeared in very odd dreams or as very tantalising images - or maybe it’s all a delicious piece of imagined reality or my delusions? I don’t really know but I don’t really think that’s what it is. This year too Meera visited and I kept asking her questions, and it was Krishna’s Birthday, and Fimh absolutely insisted that I write about what transpired. So here is a part of it:

Janmashtami 13^th/ 14^th  August –

There is a time when silence is sharper and clearer than any possible sound. The silence rings away in my ears and thuds away with my heartbeat – especially when I am waiting and waiting, and waiting some more to hear what I want to hear, to sense what I wish to sense, to feel what I want to feel and some of what I do not know and cannot expect  – the footsteps, the embrace, the whispers and his voice murmuring near the nape of my neck, the sense of touch from The One who has caressed my mind and soul, the whispers through the night, listening with my very being so as not to forget later, fighting, arguing, laughing, teasing and being teased in turn – and I do not care then about weeping with the departing strains of his voice and the fainter notes of his flute as I see dawn riding in through my windows and hijacking my dream – or was that my reality? Was he here? Was he not? Did I not hear him? Did I not feel him? Why was he here, and why did he leave?

What? – What is it that you’re asking me? Do I see him? – You ask me.

Yes. I do.

Why can’t you? – You ask me. To that I’ll give you different answers depending on my mood.

…because you do not have the eyes – I will say. Because you have not tried hard enough. Because you think you can see him with the same eyes that you see the world. Because you think you can hear him the same way you do your listening in the world. Because you are too full of what does not matter. Because you are blind and maybe deaf? Oh, I am so sorry – I have offended you. Well it is because you have not loved him like I have. Because I love him – I see him. I see now that you are all teary-eyed and you are hurt and you are angry and offended – all at the same time. There, there. You love him? Maybe you have not called him loud enough? Any louder and you’ll sound like a tuneless foghorn? – You say. Oh, no! – I do not think you should sing. Well then, maybe I sense him because I am mad, and utterly deaf and blind to the world. And so I feel him in communion with my body, spirit, soul, mind and everything about me – till there is no space or place that is private or “just” mine or me any longer. I do not know what this “me” or “I” is apart from that which recognises him, knows him, adores him and worships him. I do not know of any “I” or “me” which does not adore him.

Just seconds ago you were relieved – and almost smugly happy that I had called myself mad – how do I know that?  – I could see it on your face! – and now you call me a saint, you silly girl?! Would you rather have me be sick and mad or are you calling me a saint?

I am no saint.

I am evil and cruel and depraved and a wretch in more ways than you or anybody else can count, and many have counted and told me why I am disgusting and they have seen the better sides of me. Oh, it does not matter if I have not acted upon every terrible thought and feeling in this life. They are all there in me from other times and other places, and the selves and voices - which carry them - erupt from within me like macabre monsters and self-righteous angels and demons and they are all in me. I am not stupid, you say? - Oh, I am stupid, vapid, inert and mindless in so many countless ways too. You would be horrified to see all the selves and parts of me which move around about me and which I know prowl about in me with their mangy bad breath trying to spit at this “me” which you see (which you want to be – and only because I see him and can sing out my love for him) and which want to consume me with their evil.

What is evil? – You ask me?

That thing which feels no love and senses no love and which knows no love – that is evil. That thing becomes evil. It becomes putrid. It rots itself, and it tries to rot and corrupt everything else that comes close to it or that which it sees as easy prey. There are worse things than just murdering a person – even yourself – with a sword or dagger. It is to rot from the inside.

What is love? – You ask me? Why am I smiling? – You ask me? Love means different things to different people. I smile at what different people call love. But you called me a saint, not seconds ago! That is what I am saying too. I am not a saint.

Lust, greed, sloth, avarice, rage, resentment, anger, apathy, violence, mindlessness jostle about for space in every other cell that I carry in me. They are imprinted in me. They flow like sudden poisonous, malodorous lava spewing from ugly volcanoes lying dormant, which I think are dead and they catch me unawares, and right when I am convinced that I am holier-than-thou and deserve my Lord. Did you know that?

You call me a saint?!

“Who is this person?!” – I scream at myself.

“Who are you?” I ask myself in a whisper.

It is me.

Yes. It is.

And yet - He saves me from myself – from those mangy-breathed monsters I carry within me, which want to feed upon me and leave me to rot with no love or memory of love. He with his flute and with that insouciant feather and humour and everything else that makes him him. Each of my cells of terrible memories, each of those horrible and twisted strands that carry the tides and imprints of evil, malice, resentment, spite and vicious rage – all of that upon which I have acted somewhere, sometime – aeons ago, ages ago, many or more summers ago even – it does not matter – but even those, even those horrors and the numerous insipid, petty, ghastly vulgarities and inanities in me are washed over by gigantic, tremendous and complete waves of love and tenderness for him and from him.

Which comes first? – His love or mine – You ask me? – I do not know that. How does that matter, you silly girl?!

I lose myself in him. I find myself in him. I melt with him. I am cast asunder from him. There is bliss – infinite, ineffable, eternal, and there is the utter and absolute agony – of the sort you maybe cannot imagine in separation, in estrangement, in abandonment – in being tossed aside like a tiny, insignificant, ugly, cheap, unwanted raft by the mighty, expansive, gorgeous and churning oceans. And there are in-betweens too, are there not?

How does he love…? – You ask me?

I wonder too. He stands before me. He smiles. He speaks. He sits. He teases. He is cold. He allows an embrace. He is vulnerable. He ignores. He is aloof. He talks. He laughs with his eyes. He banters. He is brusque. He listens. He responds. He is quiet. He laughs. He is silent. He thunders. He shoots lightning forks at you which are beautiful and can burn. He reaches out his hand for you to touch – maybe once or maybe twice – and that is what you want to remember. He quarrels. He sulks. He talks like the adorable young boy he once was about his loves. He is insouciant (yes, like his feather! – You remember). He is naughty. He is wicked. He is irritated. He plays his flute. He talks of the heavens and earth. He shows you glimpses from his universes. He makes you laugh. You carry that laughter, that beauty, that love and the memories through strange days and stranger nights as time spins about like a spinning wheel. He caresses with a caress, like no other and the only one you want or will ever desire. He tells you about dharma, artha, karma, kama, karuna, gyana, bhakti, prem, moksha, shanti…You want to know more and more, and everything about him. He looks at you with those deep eyes almost mirroring your love, tenderness and bizarre desire.

What, then? – Then what?!

Then – he is gone. He leaves. With not a backward glance. He leaves you bereft. Shaking, screaming and wailing, and out of your mind. What? – No, of course not. That does not make him cruel. No! Are you out of your mind? Why would he want to be with me all the time? Can you not be reasonable? He has many things to do and he loves many  – do you not know?! And even if he wants to be alone? Is he not allowed to get bored by me and my prattle and my love? What about the Gods and Goddesses? – You ask. Speak up, you incoherent girl – I cannot hear you when you mumble beneath your breath. Hahaha! Shiva and Shakti, Vishnu and Lakshmi, Rudra and Tara - they do not get bored of one another! That is what you say? - You must ask them. I am not Lakshmi or Parvati or Durga or Tara. I am Meera.

The Sky

The sky has been changing colour. I have been noticing the sky – for weeks on end, and usually rather intensely during the weekends barring a couple of weekdays which now seem to have been from a sleep-dream sequence. One weekend the sky impinged upon me and my dim senses, and the more I tried to ignore it from my window the more loudly (and utterly silently) it demanded that I take notice of it. Now it demands to be written about – and I’m not sure why. I even gave in to the sky and one very early morning while writing in my diary, dedicated some long, involved and loving paragraphs about and to the sky and its moods and how it appeared to me – but now it demands that I write a few lines here – and after weeks of trying to ignore the demands of the sky – I am writing here.

I have to say at the onset that I have loved the sky. One cannot hate the sky or find it obnoxious or even dislike it or harbor ill-feelings or anger towards it or be irked or irritated or annoyed by it but I guess one might find it rather too obvious and all-present to harbour too many feelings about the sky. Unless one is a genuine poet or a genuine writer, one also feels that it is a trifle silly or a little ridiculous to express the feelings of rapture or ecstasy or in fact, any feelings, about the sky that one might experience in private. But I can’t help feeling that there probably are many human beings who have at some point felt something beautiful inside or even in company while watching the sky. The sky insists that I turn my attention to it and not to my own explanations and excuses or apologies for writing about it. I apologise still.

I have seen rather strange skies – and not merely in my mind’s eye, which would be of little interest here. I remember January 2003 when I had awoken very, very early one morning and with great anticipation for Fimh was telling me something or the other, and I had gone and sat in my chair to look out of my dorm window and had seen a pure black sky with a blood red gash of a horizon. I couldn’t really believe that I was seeing what I was and put on my glasses – but there it was. The sky was the blackest shade of black that I had ever seen and a little lower a liquid inky blue, and just at the horizon there was a streak of orange and right below it – a streak of pure crimson. Nobody believed me when I told them later. And I didn’t have a camera but I doubt the camera would have picked up that strange sky. I had sat there in my chair mesmerized and had felt that the sky somehow made sense. It was almost as though it were reflecting a particular mood – it felt like the sky was in a rather swashbuckling mood or even a quietly wicked mood where it was smiling softly and even grinning and was putting on a show to let whoever was awake see how utterly splendorous and enchanting and desirable it could be. Yet another time – and it was sometime in the middle of 2011 – I had gone outside to go for a walk rather late in the evening. Now in the mid-west, there is some daylight till past 9. But this was closer to 10 and it was dark but there was something a little odd that I sensed. I looked up and by God, I do not quite know how to describe what I saw. There was a humongous white elliptical band of a fuzzy white light covering the sky and the centre of the sky contained within that elliptical band looked like a puffed up black and grey cloudy swirl – and it looked as though it was trying to descend or ascend but couldn’t make up its mind completely as to what it wanted to do. I cannot remember whether I actually called a neighbour to ask him whether the aliens were finally coming or whether he just happened to be strolling into the apartment – but he was utterly unfazed when I told him to look up at the sky. He looked at it and described it as something, which I have completely forgotten, and said that it was a known occurrence in Indiana skies. He had seen the same when he was a child and it was called the “ring…” (of something that I have clean forgotten) and had seen it a few times while growing up. But even so – I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the sky while I went out for my walk up and down the hill; if the aliens were landing their spaceship - I didn't want to miss that. I also remember the huge hanging moon in the Indiana sky. The moon was incredibly large during some of the full moon nights – it looked frankly unreal, and would change colours – the dense black sky with wispy white streamers would be all there overhead and even in front of my vision in certain stretches, and I remember feeling that the moon seemed to be undecided as to whether it should keep growing larger and larger and softly descend to earth or stay in the sky. I remember seeing that dense black sky with the wispy streamers and the scudding clouds and that growing, unreal silver-gold-reddish moon while driving back from the department or while walking over the overhead bridge on some late nights and it seemed to me that the sky did have a hold on the moon and the moon rather did want to stay with the sky. And I remember the sky from other nights from even longer back. The sky, which I didn’t notice too well or just noticed in the passing but I remember the feeling of the open, expansive sky overhead and while up on a terrace and looking at trees and imaginary scenes and the freckles of stars and the lone star which shone just that little bit brighter and sharper. And I remember reading my first P.G. Wodehouse a very long time ago and laughing aloud and being in uncontrollable fits of laughter and feeling that the sky had joined me in my moment of absolute laughter. And I remember of other times – running away to the terrace and finding a secluded spot to look at the occasional aeroplanes with their flashing lights which seemed to speak of such freedom in flight and glorious shared adventures up above in that dark, mysterious sky, and of being up on the terrace one summer, so very long ago, and feeling this ineffable rush of a feeling of split-dreams and a delicious dreaminess and of the fleeting feeling of an unbelievable bliss and perfect clarity and under that great, dark, inscrutable sky stealing even a naughty, beautiful kiss.

And now there is the sky from the past few weeks and these abominable weekends. Had I never noticed, across two score summers that the sky changes in its moods and dispositions most awfully and capriciously during the monsoons? One day it is a refulgent glorious shade of blue – azure – and it is almost as though the sky is so joyously and absolutely in love that it is unashamedly and vociferously proclaiming its love and even beckoning at me to sing with it as it insists on shining through my window at the bleakest of moments. If I won’t sing out aloud it insists that I sing inside my head or heart or with my Holy Spirit. If I obmutaciously shake my head and say that I can’t possibly sing – it insists that I acknowledge that I feel the desire to sing and dance and connect to some parallel world or universe where maybe I am singing and dancing! And then if I do finally, pushed to a corner, agree and some bars of a song appear in my mind on demand, it wickedly tells me that it’s not about the singing, is it?! – By then of course I have to admit that no, it’s probably not just about the singing but about the feelings that rise and spill over from ever since I can remember – dreams and images and desires and expectations and ambitions and adventures and all those worldly and unworldly pursuits. And the sky shining and glowing with that unearthly blue, laughs and winks wickedly and says, ‘oh, you fool. You know it is all about Love.’ And on other days the sky has merely been a glass. A sheet of glass. And there is nothing that is given or received or taken. It stays there like a sheet of clear, invincible glass. I look at it almost expecting it to say something – but there is nothing. And on yet other days it is as if it is brooding and grey and dark and beyond gloom and yet holding back the tears that it simply will not shed. On those days I have felt that if I shed my tears, the sky might feel a bit better. But the sky is withdrawn and away from the world and far away from me. It does not care and doesn’t even care that it doesn’t care. It stays there with its beyond-gloom and even the fluffy clouds stay away. It is simply a flat, uncompromising grey – unreachable and certainly not inviting me. It refuses to correspond in any manner. “And so why were you shining so blue-ly the other day and now you won’t say a thing?!” I almost yell at it aloud when Fimh almost laughingly points out that “blue-ly” is not a word. And then now, for a whole week, there have been the rains and the rains and the rains and the intermittent and continuing rains. But the rains of the monsoons, the stormy sky, the thunder, the lightning are a different story.

And here's a picture and memories of a sky and river and of conversations of disappearing wormholes, unreal skies and the horse and Pushpak, and pure delight. 

A week gone by

6th-7th May. 2017.

The matters of living and dying, sickness, illness and old age, relationships and love have been whirling around in my mind along with (other) worldly concerns like work, income and livelihoods and related matters. The previous week that just about went by – I have to say – was rather – well, beautiful with conversations, whimsy, walks, delight, laughter, munching, movies, summer rains, and more – and despite the darkness, greyness, awful oddities, broken dreams and brooding mushroom clouds that hover over the world of human beings and despite my being what I am (I think I only stay with myself - for the most part - because I don't have the option of jumping out of my skin). Maybe it’s true that God has a strange sense of humour and so has blended paradoxes along with irony in the woof and warp of life. Anyhow. I know I thoroughly cherish the previous week. Now the weekend is almost over and I’ve been re-visiting very old favourites from Rabindranath (Taalgach being one of them – I was in class II when I read and memorised the poem! – it was listening to the live recital of the poem that made me return to it), walking, working over summer posters, having mini-prophetic sleep dreams, reading up for an upcoming research project, doing some yoga, worrying in bouts, watching some animations - in the hopes of inspiration and possible future use and for a bit of fun (and feeling so strongly that a story titled Sorcery could be made into such a marvellous animated film), breathing some sighs of relief and of even happiness…and reflecting over recent conversations. 

I remember reading in early October last year, an article which had made me grumble, frown and argue instantaneously and scribble a bit. It was a particular article from the Public Discourse blog. The writer was against all forms of assisted suicide and of having any control over the process of dying. Death is an end – according to the author – not a part of life and is a final blow full of nothing but indignity, humiliation and tragedy. Death - said the author - was “viscerally disturbing” and nothing but a “sombre tragedy”. The author made no distinction in terms of age or state of health or mental functioning. Towards the end of reading the article, the only thing I found “heartening” about it was that the writer mentioned that how a person lives and the kind of person that one chooses to become and the kind of life one chooses to live are what count and that the only dignity to be found in death is to be found in the life that preceded it. I don’t disagree with the living part. It does matter. How a person lives, thinks, speaks, acts, the values a person lives and dies by, whether s/he loves, whether s/he truly cares, whom and what s/he loves and cares for, what s/he does, how s/he is as a person – I think these matter. Somewhere, someplace, sometime – yes, but also within the temporal worldly space. Living life – as far as I have noted – does not involve only a matter of making-do or what sociologists used to term an “organic level of existence”. In our current times, maybe many human beings have turned it around and said, “we live to eat, shop, take selfies and go woo-hoo for no reason” but that doesn’t make it right. That said and I could go on with this part – but to cut it short – I certainly do not agree that all death is undignified. Death is a part of life. Absolutely, irrevocably and even perhaps, at some point, enjoyably and to be met with acceptance and peace. Horrible illness or terrible suffering or to be completely incapacitated by physical or mental debilitation...make me feel helpless and undignified but why would the entire process of dying - and with no exceptions - be considered to be undignified? I think it matters how a person faces death, accidents, illness, pain and suffering just as much as it matters how a person faces life in its happiness, joys and meaning and bursts of unalloyed laughter. The monk who was making people laugh at his funeral with the bursting firecrackers hidden in his clothes knew so. The same goes for the individual who opts for Nirvakalpa Samadhi – when s/he knows that “love is done”. Morris Schwartz felt so. Sikander sang about dying with a laugh in Muqaddar ka Sikander. The brother from the tale of the three brothers (Harry Potter) who asked for the invisibility cloak knew the same. Dumbledore said so and believed so and even when he knew he was going to die. Emily Dickinson felt and expressed the same. Sogyal Rinpoche says so in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Suvro da writes so with his, “Life is short, fun and precious…it should be fun, even the dying”. Debjaan paints a vivid picture about there being more to death than meets the eye. Only if we believe that this flesh-blood-bones and body is the only reality that exists can we actually say that death is only viscerally disturbing and a sombre tragedy and always undignified. Even if lots of people do believe in the same – I have the feeling that all those who have passed on will have something different to say about that.

And yet. It isn’t that making some semblance of peace with the fact of death and dying being a part of life makes all the pain, questions and doubts go away. Further questions arise. For one thing, one starts wondering and worrying about the hereafter. I do not know whether this is a function of age. Two decades ago, I remember I had been blissfully bereft of any broodings about the hereafter. I was sure that that would be taken care of by the powers-that-be. Now twenty years later, I am still here and I can’t help but wonder sometimes and worry. And then if one goes along that particular pathway – the matters of bardos, reincarnation, karma and the utterly improbable hits and the even more ludicrous misses (in this lifetime) keep rising to one’s foreconscious or maybe have made a permanent home there. The contrast between what has transpired and what hasn't feels well-nigh remarkable. I sometimes feel (and I cannot even begin to explain the conundrum) that I am rapidly and horribly racing against time towards making this lifetime a little useful before it’s too late (leave alone any future ones) and sometimes feel that all is in place and I am exactly where I am supposed to be, so help me God (I am quite sure that it's Fimh who makes me feel this). One can rage against God and weep with one’s Fimh or howl in Fimh's presence or be utterly peevish when suddenly God or maybe Fimh will decide to grace one with a break. Or else one can be as calm and as true to oneself as one can possibly be, insist upon feeling and sending out positive/good vibrations, be utterly grateful...and say that one will just believe in one’s highest truth that one has truly felt and seen and known, and move along at which point there might descend further darkness or sudden light and even words and a pathway that just might bring solace within and a way on the out...I know that there is a correct combination for moving ahead in both the true and useful mode in a single lifetime. Some six years ago, I was jubilantly sure I was putting it into practise and I still have the feeling that I really did at that point, but sadly enough I cannot say that I have come anywhere close to mastering the method in the intervening years, and something tells me that I should have, by now. Even if God came and gave me a consolation prize for 'best effort' - I would grunt at this point and shake my head.  

I know I have thought a bit and reflected a bit in this lifetime – although I am not claiming to have always thought and reflected fruitfully and with great purity (my best friend sometimes calls it “wool gathering”) – but I think that what scares many people about dying and death is the matter of physical pain, the fear of the unknown or of getting stuck somewhere, the fear of letting go of what has become habitual and familiar and known, the niggling feeling or fear of not having lived the life they feel they were supposed to have lived this time around, the fear of being an inconsequential bit of nothing, and for some or a few – of love not mattering. And then there is the matter of those who are left behind, about which I will stay quiet about here. Maybe sometimes a fear or a couple are dismissed or they evaporate or they are warded off or one is told repeatedly that there is no real reason to fear - and one can feel the truth of it in moments of clarity or immense love even if one does not understand the reasons behind it. And I do feel that no matter whether a single lifetime is a mere bubble in the cosmic sense of time and space – a single lifetime does matter. That's why finding meaning and identifying and having a purpose or a few or maybe many, matter. And then one takes one’s leave when it is time and one goes somewhere else. I don't know how many "purposes" can be fulfilled across a single lifetime but one must be able to look back and say that one did what one could do and that one was able to give some times of pure joy and laughter...I don't have material evidence of whether I am right or wrong or delusional but through my readings, reflections, and the moments of clarity and beauty, and even prayer or meditation - that is as far as I have got. And these are just a few of the aspects which keep taunting or teasing or niggling at me me when they do.

And yet. I know for a fact that there are so many aspects (more than I usually think of or imagine) which are not just out of my control but don't even fall within my scope of understanding, no matter how I have tried to coax them to reveal their secrets across the decades. But sometimes I wish that even if I didn't have the power to control outcomes - I understood the complete picture of life, living, specific lifetimes and the hereafter. But I don't even fully understand what the soul is - and this annoys me. What really is the soul? I had this utterly barmy idea once that every soul has a soul-keeper but I think that was just my wistful bit of imagination doing what it does. Anyway. I won't digress further. Sometimes I am sure that such understanding (of life, living, specific lifetimes and so on) would bestow upon the perceiver a wonderfully rare and glorious power. And in a very worldly sense - it would lead to becoming naturally productive and useful...which would be perfect for me. That makes some part of me immediately call myself a "donkey". That part of me is quite right in addressing me thus and for thinking that I can get away with such a thought. For it was this realm precisely which is so utterly beyond my ken that The Buddha brought within his purview of understanding. Old age, illness and death – every human being, at some point or the other is made aware of these parts of life and yet it was The Buddha who made it his life’s single purpose to understand the same, see through the same, remember his past lives and to even state that he would never be involved in the same and then he went forth to do what? - To teach others. 

And yet...but I'll let this post be. 

Here is a School of Life video, which made me nod my head in parts, disagree vociferously (a brain in a jar! - it reminded me of the creepy Roald Dahl tale) and mildly in parts and wonder a bit. I think it is still interesting on the whole. And here is an animation with a doggy Dustin and a Dust-in, which made me grin...it sort of reminded me of the lifelike robots from Asimov's tales.

I see the sea...

I spent three and a half hours splashing about in the sea, showing all my pearly whites every now and then and trotting along a beach and through the waves, and drawing and writing gigantic words on the sand with a staff that got washed onto the beach right near my feet and I pretended to be a woman Moses but the sea did not part and so I just kept looking away at the sea and the sky and I could almost see words (I did in my mind) and images and was reminded most awfully of the utterly unexpected holiday at Pondicherry from the previous month and some songs too and words as well and even rather distant dreams. God knows why some songs keep following me around and from where they suddenly spring a well of memories and even memories of what never really happened. There has been Nazia's 'Boom boom' and John Denver's 'Annie's Song' and there's Jack Johnson with 'Upside down'. For the last one the whole video keeps playing in my head and I feel a little or a lot like Curious George...well, I don't quite feel like a monkey but I do feel like Curious George. Here's the video of the song - below:

Down South from February

14^th February 2017

Hullo, It’s over a month that I’ve been away from my domicile state. I’m officially in Andhra Pradesh – and I realize as I’m writing this that this is the first time that I’m visiting this state in all my 41 years. I was in Madras for a bit and then in Bangalore. There was a trip to Vellore which we cancelled. But the project on Young (and Old) Biologists in India is coming to an end. I find myself even hoping sometimes – that it blooms.

Away for a month from my usual moorings doesn’t make me feel any different as a person. For better or worse, I see the same thoughts and same images in my head, talk to Fimh when I do, worry when I do about old worries, smile a rather toothy smile when I do about the identical reasons, pray for, rant about and wonder about the same things that I usually do. Come to think of it – wasn’t I the same when I was 10,000 miles west? I’m not sure whether that makes me bizarre or boring. The only difference here is that I take a bus to work at the same time every morning and I probably smoke a little less, since there is this draconian no-smoking policy in almost all campuses and guest houses and so forth.

The places that I have been staying at in the South of India feel very different from the plains of the North-ish and East. Not so much in terms of geography or the spread of the land or the colours. But in terms of culture and language and the people – the regions strike me to be as being remarkably different. I feel guilty for feeling thus – but I feel like an outsider. Every day as I travel by bus and when I look out and observe people and signs and the hustle and bustle of this town which is famous for its temple – I am quite perplexed by my own emotion. Objectively speaking, the people don’t look that different, on an average, from the people of West Bengal. I thought they did. I was sure they did. But one day I told myself on the bus to pretend that I was traveling through some districts of West Bengal and while the emotional side of me told me that I was an idiot for even trying to pretend – one part of me observed. Not the language on the billboards or the flexboards and signs on the shops – but just the people. I was less sure of the absolute difference. And what about the people of Sri Lanka? That part of my head said. Do they look very different from Indians? The only discernible difference among the people that I can actually notice without bias is that many women go about their daily days with flowers in their hair and many of the men sport very big, almost handlebar moustaches. But it’s the language – whispers a very diffident part of me. The language sounds very different.

The language does sound different to the ears – true. The majority in Madras speaks Tamil and here in Tirupati, the majority speaks Telugu. The language barrier is probably what makes me feel like an alien. Hindi is really a no-no. By this time, I feel as though I could carry on a medium-length conversation in Hindi – given the options. One is more likely to be understood if one speaks English or very-broken-English. The head bob that Desmond Morris spoke about in his BBC documentary on body language is very popular here – far more than in the East is my guess. As far as I have noticed – the head bob is almost conspicuous in its absence in Delhi and its surrounding areas. But the meaning of the head bob is not always clear.

On the first night when I took a taxi to a guest house in the IIT campus at Madras – the taxi driver gave me a smile and a vigorous head bob when I asked him whether he knew where the guest house was and he led me to his taxi. In the middle of the ride he suddenly spoke a sudden string of sentences and I had no real clue as to what he was saying. He might have been asking me where I was from or speaking about the weather. I knew after a bit that he had no clue of where I wanted to go. I spoke from my end repeating the address and he didn’t know what I was saying but he was vigorously doing his head bob. He didn’t seem in the slightest bit perturbed as he kept driving at a healthy almost speedy pace to God-knows-where. I wanted to ask him where he was going. Finally I managed to get him to stop the taxi and I asked a policeman. The policeman, listened to and nodded at me in a deadpan way (which is probably the universal code for policemen) and gave the taxi driver the directions. I sat in the back not knowing what was being said when the policeman breaking the universal code for policemen waved me off with a smile and the head bob. I asked the driver in an absurd mix of Hindi and English whether he now knew where we were going. He half turned around and gave me a smile along with the head bob. This time he did know where to go and we reached the campus and the guest house. I think I have now almost picked up a permanent head bob.

Many college and university campuses in India are all becoming no-smoking or have been for decades and I have not known about it. Even smoking in public spaces is frowned upon. It would have been marvelous had we shown the same religiosity regarding cleanliness in our public surroundings, maintaining road rules (having some enforceable laws in the first place might have been a good idea) and really dealing with and taking care of the hungry, diseased, injured and often emaciated stray animals. Those are just three things I can think of right now. For a day and a half I went about smoking on the IIT campus and thought it distinctly strange that not only was I the only person to be doing so but that there was not a sign of even one random cigarette butt anywhere. Nobody said anything and so I went about my business. Finally one afternoon while I was running out of one appointment to go to another and I was taking a few hasty puffs – a student stopped me on the road and informed me that the entire campus was no smoking. And that campus gate was at least two miles away.

The Saturday that I was there in Chennai, I felt an overwhelming urge to visit the beach. The interviews were done. I had got my workshop proposal in. I was leaving early on Sunday morning. “We can go to the beach!” –  so Fimh said. But I didn’t go to the beach. Between then and now there has been the trip to Bangalore apart from this stint at Tirupati. I think I prefer Bangalore to Tirupati – in terms of distant-places-where-I-do-not-stay….which is odd because normally I prefer towns to cities. But then again – this whole work trip seems very odd. There might be a real holiday trip to Pondicherry – but I don’t know for sure, as yet. I have an interesting view out of the window from the guest-house here in the evenings and early mornings. I can see gentle, rolling hills in the distance and the open expanse of the sky is full of stars and there’s one very bright star in the midst. I am sure of this. Tata for now.