Love needs a family

She hums to herself in the backseat of the car as she points out shapes in the fluffy clouds drifting by.
Then suddenly – “Cupid is around. I can see him”.
I try not to brake too hard. One gets used to such declarations with her around.
“Where can you see Cupid?”
“He is in the sky. Right there. You shouldn’t try and see him now though. You are supposed to be driving”.
“I won’t. Say my Hi to him, will you, please?”.
“Don’t you know? You have to wait till he talks to you, you cannot talk to Cupid”.
I wonder whether it is true – love picks us out for the part, we merely fall into place to say our lines when chosen.
The afternoon gets sunnier, her humming more contagious. The sky is cornflower blue. The roads are glimmering slivers. A few minutes pass in silence; the golden afternoon resolute in its staunch cheer.
“Did you know that Cupid has a brother? Cuppy. That is what they call him.”
“Really? What does Cuppy do?”
“He spreads peace. Like Cupid spreads love”
“Ahha. And why do we not hear about Cuppy as often as we hear about Cupid?”
“Cuppy spreads peace. Not everyone wants peace.” Perhaps we never know what to ask for when granted a choice. Perhaps one always gets to choose one over the other.
She doesn’t volunteer more. But I am spellbound.
“Where is Cuppy now?”, I ask
“He could be anywhere.”She waves her arms to encompass the world as she understands it. “He could be on the top of this car now – we can never tell!”
She giggles at the thought of Cuppy sharing a ride with us. And yet we spend an eternity, all of us, hoping Cuppy will ride with us. No matter what the destination.
“Cuppy is for those that go home alone at the end of the day. They have no one to talk to. And when they feel sad, Cuppy lets himself in through the window and makes them feel peaceful. Cupid is the noisy one. Because he spreads love and love needs other people. Peace can be alone”.
The enthrallment gives way to a deeper understanding. I thank her for sharing. Because life doesn’t always give us a prologue before sharing a lesson.
She leans back and continues to point out patterns in the sky. Music seeps into the silences in the car as we ponder our way home. Outside, the milieu throbs with life as we navigate the streets. I wonder what other thoughts are going through her head and whether she has already forgotten about Cuppy and Cupid.
As if reading my thoughts, she says in a soft voice, perhaps to herself, perhaps to all those that need to be reminded of simple truths, lest they forget the lesson “Cuppy and Cupid always find each other. Peace and Love. They are family”.

The Happiness Contest…

Ms A gets into the car with a sense of urgency when I pick her up from after-school care. “I am going to be busy this evening, I have so much of Easter stuff to do”, she announces. She tells me she will need to borrow my laptop and hopes we have enough paper for all her printouts and cards and thank-you notes. I wonder aloud why the normally wonderful teacher has handed out so much work and left it till the last minute.”Oh,these are my ideas, this is not school work”, she informs me.

“You want to make Easter cards for the girls, yes?”
“No, not really. It will be a contest. For happiness. Everyone will win”
“What will be a contest?Who is taking part?”
“Claire is going to be my helper”
“A, WHAT contest is this? And who is Claire?”
“I told you, I want everyone to feel happy about easter. Claire is from Year 3. She is nice.”
I gather that Ms A, with her tendency to spread cheer, has decided to organize an Easter egg colouring contest for the girls. My heart does somersaults.

“Ummm, is this like a class activity?”
“Nooo, I thought of it all by myself. We need printouts. And everyone needs to win. Because it is all about happiness”.

A part of me begins to see the grand plan this tiny person has hatched. Another part of me begins to worry about this tiny person’s grand plans.

We get home and she switches the laptop on and connects the printer even before she has changed into her home clothes. She talks excitedly of how she needs a “demo” copy for herself.She wonders who her helpers will be. She hopes she has enough copies for the whole class.She tells me how she plans to encourage all the girls and say something nice about everyone’s work.

I am caught between wanting to hug her for her meticulous planning and hoping she gives up this idea of pulling off something way that I deem beyond her years. When she says she wants to hide easter eggs around the corridor for the girls to find, I do hug her tight. “A, you have 10 mins of recess, how can you do all of this?”, I ask.

“I will not eat my fruit, I will just get started as soon as the bell rings”.With each declaration of selflessness, my heart sinks a little bit more.

The innocence of a child is capable of hurting you like no pain ever can. I realize this in that blinding instant.
In my mind’s eye, I see her do all this just to realize that all the other girls have gone off to play and that no one is interested in her plans. That after all her planned printouts, and egg hiding – there is no one to take part in her happiness contest. The thought stabs at me, makes me want to protect her from the pain of rejection and indifference and scoop her up and take her back to babydom again.

“A, ummm, you know not all the girls in the class will take part. Some of them may have other things to do!”
“I know, I dont mind. Some of them will think it is silly” (this being said with a giggle)
“And you don’t mind?”
“No, because I am doing it to spread happiness, I am happy, Mommy. And some of them will do it, wont they?”
I suddenly want the whole class to join in and help her. I also know that while hope is a great filler of the empty spaces in the heart, it is no panacea for the voids.

So, we make the cards. And the games. And the cutouts. And store them carefully. I tell her that if no one participates in her contest,I will colour in every single Easter egg and play all the games she has planned and that I hope to get a card from her collection.

“Oh, Mommy, thank you. I hope I have a card left, because everyone will love the contest, won’t they?”

No one tells you that motherhood mainly deals in the territory of vulnerability. That your heart has areas so fragile that love often blows it into smithereens.

I worry about her the whole day. I make up theories of how all of us as children, had disappointments and friends that let us down. How we had days that pushed us closer to reality and to growing up. But all the while, my heart is beating, my hope is fighting itself and I wait for the school day to end so that I can look after her. I stare at the clock all day and hope she is not too hurt, not too scarred, not too put off by cold responses.

“How did it go?”, I ask her, as soon as school is done for the day.

“It was FANTASTIC”, she squeals. “Three girls did it with me, three. Three girls were happy with the happiness contest”.

I gulp in the evening air and heave a sigh of relief. Three from the 18 girls in her class. Three is less than 18. Three is better than none.

“And T was sorry she didn’t know about the contest, so she took it home – that makes it 4″. Four is better than three.

“Awww, A, I am so proud of you” I tell her. Feeble really -but words evade me at that moment. I am fiercely proud though, because she has chosen to see what has achieved and what didn’t work out was never a part of the equation for her. “I am proud of me too”, she giggles.

The reality is that, the minute a child spies a star, makes a new friend, dreams a new dream or hopes a new hope – hurt ,rejection and failure present themselves as options and hitch along for the ride. You stand there and watch your child with your powerless heart, with vulnerablity peering over your shoulder, with a band-aid in your hands and a prayer on your lips.

You can protect your children all you want and try to keep them safe as you point out the stars through a window. But they will venture out someday and go out to claim their share. And they will do it on the premise that it is a tough world out there. You cannot gather you share of star-dust from a window sill – the journey begins only when you leave the confines of safety…and when that journey begins, all you can do is be ready to look out for a grazed knee and a wounded heart, so that you can heal them and send them out to gather their bounties again…

Someday…

There will be a day in the future when I will race up the hallway to answer the door as soon as I hear you ring the doorbell. You will no longer be a child in this vision of a distant future – the printed pyjamas and the tousled tresses and the gap from the missing tooth will have been replaced by permanent portents of an adult world. I will wonder why I was so weary to tidy up after yet another sleep-over that involved stuffed toys, midnight treats and clothes on the floor all over the house even as I wonder if your memories of the days of yore are the same as mine.

But now, as you giggle and ring the doorbell yet again and your friend asks “Anyone home?”, I continue to drink my coffee and read the newspaper and answer with a “Nope, come back another day”.

Where rainbows live…

I point out the plump, fleecy, grey clouds to her as I drive her home from school. An insolent ray of the sun filters through the grey afternoon and vaults off the sky.

“Will we get a rainbow now?”, she asks. She is well versed in the magic that happens when the raindrops give the sunshine a chance.
“You never know”, I tell her.
“I can almost see a rainbow”, she says as she points to a patch of tedious grey on the eastern horizon.
All I see is the gathering rain. Because the sun has now gone his own way. So, I tell her that I can see nothing but the clouds.
“But that is where the rainbow lives before it is born”, she tells me. “You just need to look harder at the grey clouds. Then, you can see the ‘almost’ colours behind the darkness”.

I swear I saw a smudge of colours when I looked again.

Lost or found…

When you lose your luggage and arrive in a foreign city with just the clothes on your back, you are more a survivor than a tourist. You wander the streets of a suburban, sun burnt city on a hot, golden afternoon. The streets are dunked in gold. The mountainous terrain exudes a strangely picturesque quaintness to an otherwise harsh landscape. The heat is reminiscent of the summer days of yore. You think of all that has been left behind and quell the mild sense of panic that comes from the realization of having lost most of your packed belongings. We are no strangers to loss, any of us. But we pretend that we are defined by what we possess and we shudder at having to find sense in a void when really the void has been there all along.

But.Yet. There is a footloose liberation in travelling light. Because your baggage does not define you anymore. You know that every journey is its own destination –but how many times do you get to learn the lesson that every destination is really a journey too? You sit down on a park bench and watch life go by. People meandering back to the lives they have built carefully or perhaps accidentally. People buying groceries and cooking their dinners and cleaning their cars. People walking their dogs and people getting their takeaway. Families and individuals and people that are in between either stage. You watch them like watching a play unravel. Because you are here for the sunset, wandering footloose, like we said. And you are here defined merely by the spot you have subjugated on a park bench.

You wander past a jeweller’s shop and something in your heart twitches a little. For all the nonchalance about losing everything, there are irreplaceable trinkets in everyone’s luggage. You wonder if you will ever see the old and shiny golden chain that has withstood generations and time and family ties. After a while, all links to the past become muted and indiscernible. And we forget sometimes, that just because something can no longer be seen, it does not cease to exist.

When the past becomes a part of the present, you can no longer imagine a future without either entity. And so you rue over the loss for a while. And then it occurs to you that when someone gifts you a memory worth keeping, it is a gift without a return by date. No matter how much change seeps into our lives, a bit of the old always percolates in with the new. So you have lost the family heirloom as things stand but really, fragments of the past that contribute towards defining you still stand intact and unsullied. And no amount of drifting or baggage will ever take away that which is innate. Perhaps you should travel light; you arrive at better places that way.

When all is done and said and the evening shadows have lengthened; when the sun has gone his own way and the silences are preparing to roost near you, when the quiet murmurs of the heart that talk of loss and longing can no longer be shushed, you realize that no matter what stays and what goes – you are defined only by what the heart salvaged from the depredation of your travels. Everything else can be discarded and renounced and left behind. You carry your destination in your heart. The journey is a mere formality.

Infalliability…

A helium balloon tethered to a fence. Dipping and swooping with marvellous cheer. Even as the weatherman told us to stay indoors because of impending wild weather and furious storms. To be oblivious of fallibility must be a wonderfully, liberating sensation…

The Mother’s Day Tag

The lovely Priya tagged me for this one. I have loved Priya’s mother-daughter posts over the years and her approach to motherhood is so serene, graceful and dignified that I have always been impressed.

Priya has asked me to mention the 5 things I love about motherhood – restricting it to five things is going to be hard, but hey, this is about motherhood. It _is_ hard, and it _is_ all about second guessing. Motherhood is about being presented with a blank canvas all over again, just when you thought you had set views and opinions on things. You get to a phase in life when you think you have a general idea of how the world functions. And suddenly a knee high person points out a burst of blossoms in winter and tells you that exceptions are possible and acceptable. Suddenly, time tested norms are thrown out of the window. An icecream can be a meal, odd socks on chubby feet can be quite cute, a washing basket is really a time machine and will be used as such, and shoeboxes can help you build castles.  Nothing is quite the same again – everything is multi-layered and multifaceted and everywhere you look, there is more to life and living. And this is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

 

1. Motherhood breaks down social barriers like no other. Strangers talk to you on the bus because of your child and her pink shoes and her pony tails. The man in the business suit next to you makes her a paper crane and grins at her. The waiters hover around your table and get her free icecream. The shop ladies talk to her stuffed dog and ask her its name. Everywhere she goes a barrier is broken, a smile is exchanged, a conversation is guaranteed. And you get to bask in this love and this attention and the general joie-de-vivre because of a little person who holds your hand and skips around puddles and starts every sentence with “Mummmm”.

 

2. Motherhood helps me rediscover the world and all the hopes and dreams that come with the  trappings of the business of living. A sense of wonder about the universe floods me when I explain the idea of the day and night with the aid of an orange and a table lamp, to a pre-schooler. An autumn leaf on a cold day makes me appreciate seasons and cycles and patterns like never before. I see the world through new eyes and heightened senses.  I watch an ice cube melt into a puddle of water and marvel at transition. I soak in the fascination of seeing food being spun around as I stand with my nose pressed against the microwave door. I worry about baby birds when it rains because a little person reminds me that the birds dont have cardigans for the chilly days. I am no longer just me, I am in tune with the world and  I realize the joy of being part of something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

3.  It doesnt matter what kind of a day I have had, the sight of a familiar face playing hopscotch when I pick her up in the evening gladdens and heals my heart like no other.  To be able to feel a love this magnificent and overpowering and raw for another human being is the greatest gift of motherhood. It takes a child to show you how far you can traverse the regions of the heart and I know that I would make any sacrifices for her, wage any battles for her and defy the norms at any cost. It takes a child to show you that love can indeed be pristine and unconditional and forgiving. And the very notion of being the recipient of such an emotion humbles me and elevates me like no other.

4. Motherhood makes me appreciate what a fantastic mother my own mother is, in a way I would never have understood had it not been for my child. Every sleepless night, every grazed knee and every tear now makes me appreciate the roads my mother travelled, the lessons she taught and the patience and grace she exuded. Motherhood makes me a better daughter and for this I am infintely thankful.

5. Motherhood is the closest that I will get to immortality. My daughter is my link to an eternity that would have been otherwise out of my grasp.  My smile, the crinkling of eyes when I laugh, the memories my parents gave me and the lessons I learnt are now also a part of her personality – and the essence of who I am will never be tarnished by the ravages of time because long after I am gone, I will still live through her memories and those that come after her.My life will not end with my passing, my daughter is testimony to the fact my life will more be than an exercise in living and that I will live on through her heart.

I would love to tag the ever delightful Ardra to take up this tag and anyone else that wants to do it. Looks like nearly everyone else has done this

This was fun, thanks Priya

No one waiting down memory lane…

Long ago I went to Rome

 As pilgrims go in Spring,

Journeying through the happy hills

 Where nightingales sing,

And where the blue anemones

 Drift among the pines

Until the woods creep down into

 

A wilderness of vines.

There is this thing about nostalgia  – it is a diaphanous bubble, seen through a magnifying glass. And because it is magnified, the colours are brighter, the patterns more miasmic than you would expect. If you reach out – you can almost touch the flimsy, translucent covering of these cherished time-stamps. The wise thing to do, as one eventually learns, is not to reach out to touch a feeling, any feeling for that matter.  All that remains is a dyed stain on your fingers, a reminder of what once was. A memory is equal parts imagination and equal parts a slice of the past. Make no mistake, there is a fine balance here, the slice of the past is a muted, sepia backdrop: it is the imagination that colours the greys and the beiges to create a vivid, effervescent landscape of a time long past.

So, where were we? Yes, nostalgia and bubbles that leave stains on your hands.  There are places in our heart that we treat with a reverence normally deigned for fragile things.  Loss brings with it an almost sacred dignity. It talks of the roads we traversed since, it points to places that can now be no longer reached and it makes us believe that anything that is no longer a part of the present or the future, suddenly has more significance than wisps of the roads yet to be taken.

It starts off as a harmless exercise – you find a school community online, and you join it. Because in some remote corner of the mind -you can still smell the ink on Lekhak books, you can still see the roughly hewn piece of cast iron metal that acted as the school gong and you can still remember the peeling paint from non-descript lettering above each classroom door.

The colours come in now, fast and thick. Green for the lawn cuttings from the little side garden next to the Principal’s office. Blue for the relentless summer skies that gazed at you as you marched down the school grounds while the school band played its solitary tune. Dark brown for the football ground where you sat on the sides with empty water bottles and cheered the home team on, when the boys from St Paul’s, came for a match. White for the crisp letterhead paper that your father used when you neede absentee notes for missed days. Orange for the Camel pencil boxes with the silhouette of the camel against what was presumably a sunset in the desert. Black for the polished stairs and the cuddapah tiles that led to your classroom on the second floor. Navy blue for house colours. Lilac for the blossoms that covered your BSA bicycle in a blanket of buds when you parked it near the jacaranda trees. 

I am no longer dealing with a lifeless sepia memory here, you realize – I can see the blossoms, I can feel the gravelly surface of the football ground and I can almost reach out to touch the cold metal of pencil box. I can feel the crinkle of the old students register, with its alphabetical list of names, its checkered cover and its dull, red binder rim.

The sounds come in next. The dull thud of a book clattering to the ground during the afternoon Chemistry class. The soothing sounds of “Humko man ki shakti dena” on cold mornings when Assembly was conducted in the main hall and not on the school ground. The squeaky and shrill tones of the bicycle bell as you navigated the main road to cross over to the parking lots. The jarring drone of the school bell when you had one last question left  in the maths exam. The sound of rain slashing against the green glass panes during the months of July and August. The off-pitch tones of the rusty harmonium being coaxed to produce a song for the Independence Day celebrations. The best friend’s giggle and the sound of secrets being whispered during roll-call. The collative thud of canvas shoes on the stairs when school ended for the day.

They are taking on a life of their own now, these memories. The oranges, the greens, the clanging bell and the cheering for the school team. The blues, the browns and the school prayer. The blacks, the whites, the silences and the reams of words. Snippets of words, mind you, because memories are always about the hours and not about the minutes.

This is when the brighter colours and the subtle hues, the muffled whispers and the crazed shouts firmly pull you away from the present into a time-sucking chasm of the past.  Time stands suspended now. Suddenly, you are not the outsider watching the spool unwind, you _are_ student number 52 with a green tunic and brown shoes and a bicycle that has a jacaranda blossom stuck in the spokes of the front wheel.   You have exams to write and puddles to jump over, you have treats to buy from the road-side vendor selling slivers of green mango with a dash of chilli powder. You can smell the make-up on your face during the annual play, you can see the half eaten remains of a school lunch discarded for an extra game of tag. You can act out this part well:  you know your way around this topography, you  have been here before.

But what you dont realize is that while a memory is a personal thing, the fate and the future of the memory lies at the mercy of those that make up this memory. Those people on the online community that you joined – they have their own memories. They talk of a time and place that you no longer recognize. They talk of people you haven’t even heard of. They jest about the things that you once revered. Their experiences do not resonate with yours – you knew this, of course you did, but the depth of this realization hurts you. You are surprised that a chunk of the past still has enough life in it to hurt you. You wonder where those people, the ones that laughed with you, the ones that chased you down the school corridors and shared your lunch have now gone. There is a poignant ache that comes from thinking about those that held your hand and taught you to draw a picture and dot your ‘i’s and hold a racquet.

It strikes you then that what you stored in your heart was a little snapshot of time. And when the camera was put away- those times, those people and those places came to life and moved away and merged with the mileu of change. They are not there anymore because like every true memory, they became part of an irretrievable past. 

Nostalgia, after a while, becomes a one way street. There is no warm welcome for those that brave this journey to the land of the past, for the past moves on too.  Like a mythical creature from a fable, the road rolls itself up and is swallowed up by the recesses of time. 

Somewhere across a flowing river, you will see the flickering lights of a place that was once home. You cannot go there anymore, you should not go there anymore. There is no one waiting for you because you left on the premise of a goodbye and you left with your face towards the future.  Some journeys are defined only by their destination, yet others by the milestones – but a walk down memory lane is only defined by how long you stay there. Sooner or later you have to leave - when you think about it, that is not such a bad thing. You cannot build your home in the past…

Now every year I go to Rome

As lovers go in dreams

To pick the fragrant cyclamen

To bathe in Sabine streams

And come at nightfall to the city

Across the shadowy plain

And hear through all the dusty streets

The waterfalls again

 

 

 

(Long ago I went to Rome – Margaret Cecilia Furse –(1911-1974))

 

 

 

 

Slipping Through My Fingers

Slipping through my fingers all the time
Schoolbag in hand she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile

 

She stands at the doorway of her room, humming a tune I haven’t heard of before.  “Mommy, I have packed”, she calls out even as she realizes I am watching her from across the hallway. It is the day of her school sleepover and in an attempt to minimize the endless “Is it time to leave yet?” I have asked her to go and pack.  I watch with a little flutter in my heart as she walks over to her cupboard and picks clothes for the night and the next morning.  And remembers to pack her toothbrush and toothpaste and hairbrush.  “Mummmm where is my cream in case my skin starts getting a rash?” Who is this little person who knows so much about herself? What happened to my little girl who wanted me to do everything for her because it was “funner that way”? Even as I answer her questions with a sense of wonder in my voice, she spots her stuffed dog Scruffy behind me and lets out a war cry. “Scrufffffffffffffffffffffy, we are going to a sleepover, in my bag now boy, NOW”. Old enough to go on a sleepover and young enough to talk to her stuffed dog. One foot in the door, childhood waiting inside a sheltered room even as a young girl with shining eyes beckons to her from the outside.

Slipping through my fingers all the time

Do I really see what’s in her mind

Each time I think I’m close to knowing

She keeps on growing

Slipping through my fingers all the time

 

“Can you give me money for the book fair?”, she asks one morning.  After a lengthy treatise on the value of money, I hand her money and tell her I expect to see some change.  “They don’t give change in my school”, she wisely informs me. “I am sure they do, I am presuming this book fair is run by people who can do basic maths”, I retort. “Mommy, what does change have to do with basic maths?”. I sigh and try to have a logical conversation with a person whose listening capacity matches that of a goldfish on a bad day. “Change, A, I need to see the change.  And please, ask someone to help you if you cannot work out how much you owe”. “Are dollars the same as cents?” I let it go and try not to laugh.

She comes home with a book in the evening and I am informed that she got a $1 back which has been placed in her lunch box(???!!!) because today was a “give change back day”. 

“Who went with you to buy the book?”

“No one”

“What do you mean by no one? Where was Dana , or your other best friends?”

“They all went home Mommy. I went in the after school care time”

“Didn’t you ask anyone to go with you, baby?”

“It was across the hall Mommy, I asked the teacher if I could go and buy a book and she said ok”

“Oh sweetheart, did you feel bad?”

“About what Mommy? I took my money and walked over to the hall, picked my book and took it to the counter? Mommy?”

For some unfathomable reason, I feel like crying. WHEN did she grow up? When did my baby learn to take the money from her bag and walk across to a book fair (ok, so it was at school but this is supposed to be my little girl), browse through books and buy the one she wants?

“Did you feel bad that you had to do this on your own? What thoughts were you thinking baby?”

She looks at me with her eyes shining, her pony tails framing her perfect smile, “I was thinking of what book to buy. I was so excited. And I was thinking about Dana and whether she would buy the same book tomorrow”

She is ok with growing up. Why am I so overcome then? Why do I feel like something just slipped through my fingers? I hold her tight even as she wriggles out of my grasp. Again, the feeling of something eluding me overwhelms me even as I know that the babyhood of the past is now a firm memory. And this little person, sure and full of smiles, telling me that it is a new world we both are in.

Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture

And save it from the funny tricks of time

Slipping through my fingers

 

I am packing her school bag after spending the day with her at her sports day. “Please don’t go back to work”, she pleads, “Take me home with you”. I sit down in front of her, on the tracks, and tell her why I cannot take her back with me. But meetings and a conference call don’t mean much to a six year old wearing house colours even as the other girls are being picked up by their mums. “I will be really good, but take me home”.

Guilt is a powerful thing, it makes you think you can handle the future better than the present. So I promise her treats for the weekend and lunches in the mall even as she tells me that all she wants is to spend the afternoon at home. I carry a whingeing and crying A to her class teacher who is she staying with till the after school care opens. There are tears and silent glares at me even as she packs her bag with great pretend sniffs. And then her friend Nicci tells her that she is staying back too. And all of a sudden, I get a giant hug. “Don’t you have to go Mommy? I will be fine with Nicci and Mrs K”.  I keep turning back to wave as I walk back to my car. I see her on the swings and I can hear her chuckles even as I drive away. And again the familiar feeling of dealing with someone young enough to want Mommy but someone old enough to find comfort in a friend and in familiar surroundings assuages me.

I take her out for lunch the next day as promised. It is the stuff perfect moments are made of, as we share hot fries and I allow her a sip of my coffee and we share our favourite pasta.  She leans back in her chair and the golden sunshine make her eyes look almost honey coloured as they sparkle like cut diamonds. She leans over and takes my face in her tiny hands “Look at all these people around me Mommy”, she says, “They don’t even know how happy and lucky I am, to be here with you today”.

And I know then that time does freeze even as it waltzes around us in an endless charade. And as she slips away from my fingers, she leaves a memory in my hand…

I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I’m losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I’m glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl……..

The Seduction

He looked at her with a mild wave of irritation washing over him. She was it again, biting her nails as she chatted on the phone with someone, her hair unkempt and pulled back into a pony tail with a big red ribbon (a ribbon for God’s sake, who wore ribbons in their hair in this age), with her frumpy track suit and her t-shirt that was two sizes too big for her with her high pitched shrill giggle interjecting her talk every now and then. He cringed inwardly as he remembered how in the days of their courtship, he had found the giggle alluring, sexy even and for the umpteenth time he wished that the trappings of matrimony hadn’t turned out to be such a damp squib. He sighed knowing that her phone conversation would take a long time and that there would be no quiet till she had finished saying and hearing all.

 

She was gesturing to him, he could see that out of the corner of his eyes, but there was no way, he was going to give her his full attention, not now, please, not now. “Excuse me for a minute”, he heard her say and then the all too familiar sound of “Sanjuu” rang around the room. “What is it?” he asked her with barely concealed irritation, as she pointed to something bubbling and hissing on the cooker…”Turn it off, it is done…the soup for tonight’s dinner” , she pointed to a cauldron on the cooker and as she did so, the bracelets around her wrists jingled delicately. Smiling at his bemused face, she went back to her conversation, updating whoever it was at the other end, about the recipe she had used and how she had nearly burnt her food. He muttered to himself as he made his way over to the kitchenette to do the needful, and as he passed her on his way, the lingering aroma of ginger and garlic and coriander wafted towards him…for one crazy minute, he wanted to rush to her dressing table, grab the ornate perfume bottle of “Moonshine” that he had gifted her three years ago and spray her with it – just spray her madly, irrationally and forcefully till she stepped out of the dusty, mouldy garbs of domesticity that had claimed her. The temptation passed as soon as it came and he went back to his writing.

 

He didn’t notice her getting off the phone and making his way to his desk, for the next thing he knew was that she was standing right behind him wiping her hands on her hips and peering over his shoulder. “Is this a new poem?”, she asked as she surveyed the sheaf of plain lined papers with his flowing, cursive handwriting stacked neatly at the far side of his side.  “It is a sonnet actually”, he hoped this would be quick, it gave him no pleasure to explain the intricacies of his work to her, he knew she didn’t listen beyond the first couple of sentences anyway. “Always too technical for me, I hardly understand a word of all those things ”, she would grin helplessly at parties when someone asked her what he was currently working on. At such times, he felt, she almost apologized more for him, than she did for herself.

 

Once she had eased her way out of discussions of his work, she was free to mingle with the crowd, to swap recipes and to giggle about some seemingly trite thing till it was time to go home. 

 

The explanation that it was a sonnet that he was writing seemed to satisfy her and without asking any further questions, she moved away, humming to herself.  She dutifully reported the phone conversation to him, giggling all over again, and repeating a couple of things for his benefit. He wondered if she recognized his terse tone, his monosyllabic answers and his complete lack of interest in something that was obviously turning out to be the highlight of her day.

 

“Do you remember that poem that you wrote for me after the first time we met?”, she asked as she suddenly re-appeared at his desk. He looked up with surprise, taking trips down memory lane was a rare past-time for her, the present was where she was utterly comfortable. She could not be expected to weigh herself down with an era now past or just as she could not be expected to conjure up images for the future. Now and here were the only tenses of time she was familiar with, everything else, he surmised either was forgotten or not ruminated upon. “It was a poem wasn’t it?”, she prodded , “Or was it a sonnet?”. Her eyes lit up as she credited herself upon recognizing this fine distinction in the words that he was a master at conjuring up.

 

“It was a poem”, he answered, wondering where this was going. “You thought of me at day break or dawn or some such thing, didn’t you”, she was at it again.

He decided to ignore the bland simile she had presented.  The lines presented themselves to him, clear and precise, like he had penned them just yesterday and for a minute he mulled over all that could have been.

 

When night flees, gathering her robe

And dawn peers over the horizon

At a pristine promise, yet untouched

I sift through your memories

And paint a sunrise for the day that will be

 

When the seasons serenade the earth

And spring arrives with music in her steps

Ripe with new beginnings and dreams

I sift through your memories

And gather rosebuds for the times that will be

 

He repeated them for her sake with his voice taking on a new tenderness and depth and she listened, just like she used to in another era and time. He had never dared to ask her back then if those lines or any lines from any poem for that matter, stirred her soul and released a longing inside her, like it always did for him. When you are not sure you have the strength to bear the answer, your questions go unasked, he had read somewhere long ago. It was a truth that he now solemnly practised with her, because he was weary of asking her anything or of expecting a response that could have matched his intensity and his anticipation.

 

For a minute they stared at each other and he took in her raven black hair, her brown eyes, the fullness of her mouth and the smile that was playing at the corner of her lips.

“It sounds beautiful”, she said, and then added “I am not even sure I really understand it or anything, but it sounds nice…”. He smiled wanly and managed a thank you. He wondered if she had uttered something similar when she heard it for the first time. It seemed like eons ago now and he could see her in his mind’s eye with her head leaning against his shoulder as she chewed on a blade of grass with her eyes half closed. He had been confident back then, that she would be the inspiration for many, many of his creations. It hurt him to remind himself that his writing was now more of an escape from the mundane quality she seemed to emanate towards him and the surroundings.

 

“Did you ever get that poem published?”, she asked all of a sudden. He knew that she considered his work done, when he published something, in vain he had tried to tell her that his creations, any creations for that matter was an act of completion in itself for the creator, and that no work of art could be tagged with such labels. She had dismissed his theories with her smile and with the logic that no composition was complete till it reached its audience. He had to confess that he had been struck dumbfounded by her ideas, he never expected her to give the whole cycle of art and its creation so much of thought. Then again, like she said, she hadn’t given it much thought per se, she was just extending the analogy of what one did with a cooked meal or anything else that was to be consumed.

 

“Nah, I never got it published, there are many such poems and verses I have, that were written for special occasions…at least the occasions were special back then ”, he confessed, “They are not for publication, they are private emotions”

 

“You should get this one published though”, she laughed. “It is just the kind of thing that your readers would love, wouldn’t they, all those words conjuring up images of morning and of night disappearing with the darkness”.  She cleared his desk and made herself comfortable on the glass topped cherry stained table. He noticed that she was rubbing at a turmeric stain on her t-shirt sleeve, like always it amazed him that she seemed to accept such things as part of her daily ritual and they rarely bothered her.

 

He wondered how she could be so blatantly disloyal to what he considered a very special gift that he had presented her with. Didn’t she realize that he had written each word with her in mind, that her fragrance had filled his senses as the words flew out of his pen, that he could feel the warmth of her body as she leaned in towards him to tell him something…how could she not feel that he was violating something by sharing those moments with the world? “It would be sacrilege”, he mumbled, “I was sharing a piece of myself with you then, it was our love, it wasn’t love that sought to be put up for review”.

 

“It does not bother you then, that your words touch me but not in the way you want them to?”, she asked. “ I mean, I am not one of your poetic types, I can never respond in kind – we know that don’t we?”. He looked up sharply to see if she appeared upset but she was calm, composed even.

 

“You should get it published”, she said, her voice strong and steady, “There is no infidelity here from your side here, some one will read it and sigh over it. How would you describe it – yes, maybe some young beating heart will recite these lines to his lady love on a summer morning, maybe an old couple will read the poem together as the moon comes up to light the wintry sky. Don’t you see, the love you sought to express, will somehow find its way? That is the best we can do for each other, sometimes letting go is the only way you can reclaim something”.

 

He stared at her as she went on, for a split second he couldn’t believe she was the same person whose giggling had infuriated him a while ago.

 

“I sometimes think of all your readers as your mistresses”, she smiled lightly, her voice almost musical with its low pitch, “I need to share you with them but that is the only way, that you will come back home to me, for at the end of the day, you do not need to woo me, like you need to woo them. I am the part of your life that can exist without this seduction”.

 

Even as the words sunk in, she jumped off his desk and walked towards the kitchen, picking up the same tune, that she had stopped humming a while ago. For a long time, he stared after her and then kept staring in the direction of the kitchen.

 

After a while, he went back to writing, only this time he knew that sometimes when you set out to leave, your footsteps can find their way back home.