Jogapur

Back to old roots. Upheld by sturdy pillars. And by the sacrifices of some, to whom I will be eternally grateful. There must have been people who would have opened the same drawers I did in the last hundred years, and their touch remains. The anticipation of looking into every room of the humongous number of them - each leading to the other - for a treasure trove.There must have been kids who would have tried out the khadau, like I did; maybe with the elation of putting on grown up footwear. But the awe that was there, it was the same. The huge ornate mirrors that could tell the story of the vanity and the artfulness and the beauty and the diffidence of a century worth of lives that somehow are all connected with me. The ancient portico that bore imprints of harsh British rulings, and where my Achchi nani must haved ruled as Lady of the House when they were gone. The relics, the carvings, the feel of the life lived in this place makes me wonder why anyone would not want to be a historian. The sprawling aangan, the sprawling lawns, the sprawling fields and the sprawling house; they draw me there. Maybe its the ghosts of my forefathers calling me, maybe its the appeal in the antiquity of the house, maybe its the seclusion. All I know is that someday, I will be back.

Leela

She tottered barefoot across the courtyard with uncertain steps, glancing up impatiently every now and then at the lone star shining through the morning mist. Dewdrops clouded her glasses, barring even the vestiges of what used to be her vision. With a flash of annoyance, she grabbed them off her face and tossed them onto the stone floor. A little clunk was all she heard as the absolute stillness of the sepulcher was devoured by the rooster’s cry. Her heart lifted. As if in answer, her feet responded. They spelled out a beat. Momentary. Then the rooster’s second cry. On cue. She glanced up to her left. Right at the corner of the high walled courtyard of her ancient house, she could see the first rays of the sun peeking through. Dawn had broken. Routine. Timed. She heaved a sigh. An echo. It came from the bricks of her home, the mortar that held them together, the history that had been lived there - in answer to a sigh they had been witness to since so many days that they had lost count.

She moved towards her mother’s portrait, her fountain of strength she drank from every morning. A blur. She cursed her glasses.

She heard it then, the milkman’s whistle. It was a signal from him, the milkman – she liked to call him Shyam in her mind. All was well with the world. The wrinkles on that drooping face lit up in a smile. So did her courtyard, she thought with awe. Perhaps it was her heightened sense of clarity that day, or one of those coincidental realizations of the divine present in our mundane mortal lives.

As she pottered around with her little chores, her lips moved soundlessly. In perfect rhythm. But she had no words. She didn’t worry. The words would come. And they did. It was the song urchins sang as they played hopscotch under the great banyan that grew right outside her home. It was tradition, the kids had changed, the song hadn’t.

The sparrows came then, her everyday visitors. She brought out a handful of grains to feed them. She heard the yells of Ramesh and Lakshmi, her neighbors for as far as she could remember, as they quarreled to a practiced tiff. She smiled in reminiscence. She counted to five. The thud. Count to seven. Another thud. She had been detached from the physicality of it long ago. And she really liked their kids Luv and Kush. They called her Eeya. She would knit them new sweaters, she thought, smiling in anticipation. She got up and looked around. The sparrows wouldn’t leave her alone today, she thought, surprised. They had outstayed their normal schedule. Well, I wouldn’t bother, she thought crossly, they just think I am an old woman with nothing better to do.

Indignant, and energized by the rush of it, she walked quickly across the yard to the storeroom, her treasure trove of family heirlooms, keepsakes from times gone by and the wisps of memory she had forgotten existed. It had not been opened for ten years, she thought in amazement. Ever since Gayatri had left home. Her helper Gayatri. But she wouldn’t think of that, she decided. Bygones were bygones. She unlocked the storeroom and walked in. Right in front of her stood the green box her Nani had given her, dusty, yet retaining that inner sheen that she’d always associated with her Nani’s face. She brought it out.

With a smile on her face, she sat down cross-legged in the center of the courtyard and opened her box. The little trinket glistened in the sunlight. She had been given it when she was born. Her thoughts wandered. To another era, or so it seemed. Of experiences. And to the mere shadow of life she was living now.

Just then she heard the ruckus from above. Routine was back. She could have danced at the thought. Jayanti, who was carrying her baby, and her mother Saraswati. Arguing. She decided she would give the trinket to Jayanti at the birth of her child. She was enjoying herself now. She spoke out the words as they were being played upstairs next door. You don’t take care of me at all, I’m going to have a baby. Beta, calm down. No I won’t, it’s just not fair. Beta listen, I’m trying to tell you something. I’m not listening to anything, I have been…

The words caught in her throat. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. She felt choked. She glanced up, squinting her eyes at the noon sun. She looked back down. Her sparrows were still there. In that moment of epiphany, she understood. The sounds were fading out. With great affection, she looked around one last time…

school hymn

There've been times when i've turned from His presence
And i've walked other paths, other ways

:D

Its official. I had lost it. And now I have it back. Here's to Pilani in all its arbit madness which somehow makes perfect sense and to better things to come.

Happy Birthday to me!

Its my 22nd. And it feels different. There was anticipation, but it wasn't the same. It was a little late a-coming, but it did. Is change in the air? Its like the monsoons of this year, we waited, we waited, we waited, they came and went. For the last 21 years of my life, there was a peak to that anticipation, it built up, it reached a crescendo, and when the day arrived, it blossomed into an excitement that is the fruit worth sixty five and three hundred days of a lifetime, invaluable. And in retrospect, I dont know if the anticipation was really for the day at all. It would be for an Oasis, or for the Nu of my life, or thats what something tells me. Of course the five year old me in me begs to differ.
And then again, the excitement is there, but its not the same. I dont shout out that its my birthday from the rooftops anymore. Or rather, the five year old me still does, except that her voice is drowned out by the adult me, I'm guessing who's way louder. Nu would assure me otherwise. But there are winds of change in the air. I am older and wiser, and its time to leave childhood behind.

Goodbye Kiddodom, Welcome womanhood.

Fifth Child

Its been two years since you have been no more. Two long years that have gone by in such a blur that all i can see are experiences whizzing past, and somewhere lies a trove of the feelings missed, because they were so momentary. This year would have been your seventy-ninth. Remember you wanted to live to be a hundred? And yet, for two years, you haven't been. It doesn't really sink in, all that happens is that one gets used to your absence. But then, living in this secluded place that i am right now, away from people i love, i have gotten used to getting used to their absence. It just can't sink in. Every time i think of you, i picture you standing next to me. And then i can hear you laughter, the way it rumbled out from your stomach, so spontaneously, at the slightest comment you found funny, the way it was so full of life and pure, unadulterated mirth and made you twinkle with the joy of it, it can never cease to make me smile, not when i used to sit next to you as you laughed, at something only a little kid would find amusing, as i used to think then, nor now, when you aren't there and all i have are these lifelike memories of you and the consolation that it was in one of those childlike cheerful moods of yours that you said goodbye to me for the last time. I can see you and nani standing and waving to us outside the house, as our car moved through the driveway, you had that pointed cap on your head, and you were in your full senses, able to recognize all of us, a rarity. Life takes such unexpected turns. It was when i had left you in the October of 2006, when you were in coma and in the ICU, that i was scared that i would never see you again. It was the first time i had seen nani cry, and that memory comes to squeeze my insides at unsuspecting moments. But then, nani is one of my Gods, she had so personified the idea of a strong woman with boundless energy, stamina and tenacity, that it left me shattered to see her break down, to see my God fall. And its never been the same again. I spoke to her today in the morning, to make sure she was okay. But she wasn't. She cried and tried hard to not let me know. And somehow that let loose in me all these memories I had kept locked for a long time, because i was scared they would hurt me when the wound of losing you is so fresh. But it isn't. I can think of all of them now and pen them down here with sad affection: i don't feel pain anymore. That pain is part of a Chayanika i think i have left behind. Or maybe not. Maybe that pain had been ebbing even before your loss, when i saw you waving at us, for the last time, with that smile on your face, when i was no longer scared that it would be the last time I would ever see you.
In the mazes of my mind, the lane with the signpost saying nana is a wellworn path, with so many familiar sights and sounds. Why is it that there are certain incidents, some of them so totally nondescript, that cling to you always? And why is it that only those incidents are the ones you remember? How are they related? Even as i start to think, connections start emerging. Why is it that i just walked over to this particular desk and sat down to write about all this on this particular day? Because this is where I spent countless hours in 1-2 when i used to read meaningless books as i struggled to come to terms with your loss. I had gone to Patna for the last rites, and the place was just not the same without you. For so many years, it revolved around you, decisions were made keeping your convenience in mind, you slept off early, so we were supposed to watch TV late only after closing the doors and reducing the volume to inaudible levels. When you were ill, nani worked round the clock with only one mission in focus - to keep you alive. For two years when the two of you lived alone, when you were all she lived for. The two years when Parkinson's really took its toll on you, when you forgot who people were, when medicines made you paranoid and scared that the only person close at hand, nani, was conspiring against you, yet through all this, she was the only one you recognized. You were the centre of her universe, and in a splitsecond, you were gone. My poor nani. I can never even dare to imagine what it would feel like to lose a person you've lived with for fifty years. I've lost someone I've lived with for the best sixteen years of my life and that feels pretty bad too. As i go past this strip of memory, my mind reels back to happier times. To spring when i used to walk down the driveway when there were flowers on either side and i was a little kid. And you used to sit in the verandah and soak the sun. When the walls weren't as high, when the sunbeams used to enter the house at dawn, when there was Achchi nani, how little i remember of her.
There was a time when you used to teach me maths, science and literature. And years later, there were times when you said you couldn't do that anymore because the maths and the science went beyond your level. Those little notebooks you had, that listed all you had to do everyday. The stack of memoirs you wrote. The way you quoted great poets. The elocution contests for Kittu and me, where the first prize was two rupees and the second was one. The pats on the back. The endearments. The rebukes. The discussions we had on English literature and poetry. The discussions we had on Hindi literature and poetry. Your collection of our textbooks. How excited i used to be to learn a poem you knew and had read. You worried that i'd be fat when i started having too much butter at six! You tried to cure me of the habit of sitting in nani's lap even when she had work to do. You used to get me ready for school when nani used to go to school. You once drove to school to pick me up when it was raining. I think it was the only time i saw you driving. And then i remember the countless times i've heard nani being so annoyed with you and i remember all these things, and i know that at the bottom of her heart, nani loved you so much, and again the fond image of you laughing appears in my mind. I loved the way you introduced me to everyone as the eldest of your third generation. And i used to get so jealous of the attention you gave Kittu because he happened to be the grandson. But i mellowed down. I guess i realized that some people always hold certain people special, and they could have the randomest criteria for it. I know i do. And having held you guilty, there came a point of time when i forgave you. And on a lighter note, i know my papa holds his firstborn special, so Kittu and i even out :)
But then we all have our own ghosts to battle with and there is no one else who can do it for us. I still regret the fact that i didn't stay back even when you asked me to. I still have this feeling sometimes that things would have been different if i had. And ever since then i'm scared to let people out of my sight because having them in front of me is so comforting, i know how they are and i know i'll be there to take all their burdens if anything goes wrong. It frightens me to not know. I have nightmares about it. I think of nani living alone and i pray for her, i wish she lived in Pilani. I think of Kittu and i wish he wasn't grown up so that he could live with Mummy. And i think of Mummy and she is so alone. Its funny how throughout my teenage years i kept trying to convince myself that she doesn't know me at all and just ended up learning she the one person in the whole wide world who knows me best and loves me so much. And i think of Papa, well he has Mummy to watch over him so he is in good hands.
I remember all those times you used to tell me not to read when i was eating, when you noticed the quirks of my handwriting and pointed out all that you didn't like, so that i had an especially neat handwriting reserved just for you. I regret never having written to you ever since coming to BITS because it makes me feel guilty of assuming you weren't there anymore even before you went away. And i know you would be heartbroken to see this scrawl i write with now. I miss the books you used to give, with your name signed in and the date, i miss the fervour with you recited poems, i miss the times you asked me to sing bansiya bajavat, i miss the times you used to call me Sushmita. You took us to Indrukh once, and there you became a kid once again, as you were so many years ago, and now i think of all these things, and i become a kid too, hopping, skipping and running in our garden, climbing the mango tree and playing pretend games with myself. Remember what Jimmy had written on the front wall of the house? And how angry you had gotten. I would have said pissed off but i know you wouldn't have approved. I remember your big black umbrella and the place it used to hang every day of the year. When i started taking the bus to school, you used to take me to the bus stop and bring me back all of standards three and four. Your stories about the Ramayan and Mahabharat. There are people i meet who remind me of you because they have certain eccentricities you had. Your training about not wasting water and electricity. Every comment you made after reading my poems - all of them, the ones i wrote when i was five, and the ones when i was fifteen, your criticism of the articles i wrote. I savour all of it, because its all part of who i am now, and that part is all because of you.