Where the Koel Sings… July 16, 2008
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Musings, Seasons, childhood memories.Tags: Add new tag
15 comments
I see the solitary green mango stare at me from across a crowded aisle in the rundown Asian supermarket near my place. It stands alone and proud, untouched by the chaos and the mess from the overflowing shelves all around it – the sole occupant of a now empty cardboard carton. I pick it up on an impulse and bring it back to the counter to pay for it. “$4”, the lady behind the counter tells me. $4 it is then, for a slice of firm and unripe tartness. My head is agog with ideas even as I balance it precariously on the top of all my other shopping and bring it back home. A sole green mango in a season of downpours and biting winds offers a host of endless opportunities – for an unripe mango in the winter is a harbinger of sultry summers now relegated to dusty memories.
A summer evening long ago - a shimmer of silk, a pile of sandals and shoes outside a neighbouring house as we sat crossed legged on the floor inside, the ladies and the girls of the neighbourhood feasting on the ambe-dal - soaked and cooked horse gram piquantly seasoned with grated raw mango and a smattering of red chillies- handed to us in leaf cups; downing the gossip, the giggles and occasional sharp bite of the chilli as the hostess passed around the ‘panha’ (the juice of unripe mangoes flavoured with jaggery and cardamom) in small steel tumblers.
A small hand held securely in a weather beaten one, even as we waited to cross the road, with our goodies of more ambe dal to eat later, packed securely in those green leaf cups. “Hold my hand tightly, don’t let go – we are near the main road now”, “I can’t, I am trying to eat the dal with one hand”, “Can’t you wait till we get home?”. Ah, but you couldn’t wait really, the first lesson that summer taught you was that the seasons race you by; if you waited for too long, summer was gone in the blink of an eye and you were left with an empty longing for the geriatric mango trees to blossom again.
Long summer afternoons, stupor in a never-ending siesta around the winding roads of the dusty town, as the whirr of the ceiling fans was occasionally punctuated by a koel’s cry in a far away mango tree. “Ah, the first messenger that the monsoons have arrived on the outskirts of the town”, the old octogenarian neighbour would say. Sudden storms, angry, dark skies lashing out at a parched earth. Green mangoes raining on the tin roofs of the washing sheds around the neighbourhood. Teeth clamped together in a moment of pure delight as the mangoes and the chilli powder overpowered your senses. The rain, threateningly close now - on your doorstep almost. “Come in, come in now”, the mothers and the aunts and the grandmothers would shout in unison even as giant surges of powerful moonson winds lured the half dried clothing away from the clothes-lines.
Then there were the summer holidays in a place away from home but as good as home. Anticipation looming large in the confines of the shaded drawing room where the gaggle of cousins lay sprawled, half asleep and half awake waiting for the clock to strike four o’clock. For four o’clock was official tea time. The time when the aunts and the uncles gathered around the old, rickety dining table and downed hot tea as the hot afternoon stood sullenly outside, and ruffled our hair and humoured our requests for ice-cream and bhel and panipuri at the promenade around the now dried-up lake. “Look at the heat outside”, they would laugh, “why don’t we wait till the sun sets? How will you eat your ice-creams if the sun melts them before you can eat them?” “The poor bhel wallah”, my aunt would say, admonishing us mildly at this point, “is probably having his afternoon rest at this time. Let us wait, shall we, till he can step out for the evening and start making bhel?”
Late evening walks along the crowded lakeside. Bhel with raw mangoes, icecream in tiny cones that left sticky, happy tattoes of summer on your arms and elbows. The delighted squeals of children from somewhere over the lake. Crowded rickshaw rides back home to comforting meals eaten on the terrace, even as the day started to cool down. The first stars of the night, the sharp smells of mango blossoms wafting over the terraces and the balconies where summer holidays were being enacted in all their mirth. Falling asleep to the tune of All India Radio even as sleep claimed the last of the grown up cousins who had dared everyone that he would stay awake all night.
The king of all fruit – the Alphonso, being brought home royally in rickety wooden crates, covered with layers of soft hay. A quick glimpse before the Alphonso was relegated to the dark, cool interiors of the house, usually beneath an old bed, even as the fruit was brought out every couple of days for an aamras feast. Chins, hands and plates being covered in a golden hue as the sweet, rich tones of the mango became the subject of a summer slumber.
The places, the moments, the people are no longer around. They are now sepia memories in old albums, reiterating the lesson that summer taught us long ago that the seasons do waltz by, that a moment ends for a memory to be born. Those that roamed the streets with you hunting for summer’s bounty have now moved away. The streets have changed; the trees are no longer there. The loved one that held your hand as you waited in line for ice-cream is now a black and white photograph on your dressing table. Summer has long since disappeared, leaving a trail of muted and distant sounds behind.
The heart follows its own seasons though, and for that we should be thankful. Because sometimes a raw green mango in a lone cardboard carton in a land far away from home, takes you down memory lane again. Like an errant summer shower, a memory arrives and leaves you less parched in its wake. Because in some remote recess of the heart, the koel sings eternally of her songs of a distant land and the monsoons are always waiting on the outskirts of the town.
When You Are Old… February 20, 2008
Posted by scarlettletters in Love, Moments in Time, Relationships.22 comments
A summer afternoon long ago. From far away echoed the tumbling laughter of a class having it recess.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
Sunlight pattered in through the old and dusty windows of the Year 7 class, making undecipherable patterns on the black cuddapah tiles. Old,wooden benches stood embellished with the stains of ink, tired notebooks bore doodles in the margins of the foolscap pages and the scribbling sound of notes being made filled the air as the words of WB Yeats were read out aloud by Ms S. The charm of childhood and perhaps teenage to some extent is that you do not fully comprehend the intricacies and the complexities of the journey that lies ahead. Eternity isn’t a reality when you are a child; it is a mere concept of a time far away, a place beyond the safe fences of your imagination. You do not appreciate the convolution of love anymore than you understand the realities of old age. You do not understand that there is a love that remains when age has staked its claim and that this love is quite different from the love of shy glances and stolen kisses and hastily scribbled notes.
Ms S was a person I adored unconditionally. She had a soft but firm voice with a gentle lilt to her dulcet tones. She was a strong personality with a face that asked you to maintain your distance if you were not sure of yourself. She was a tall, well built woman too, who strode down the school corridors leaving a trail of discipline and an aura of awe in her wake. You prayed that you wouldn’t be summoned to her office because while she never raised her voice, she used her words carefully and often acerbically. I adored her because I looked up to her, because her tough exterior made me feel safe and made me feel that she was in charge which she always was. Mostly I loved her because she taught English and because she always had time for my ramblings and essays, because she took the time to make me look up the dictionary if I dared use a word without understanding its meaning and because she knew just how much the English classes meant to me.
But this is not about Ms S, not really anyway, for when you are a child, and when you look up to an adult, you don’t see the adult for what they are but rather for what you want them to be. And so it was that when Ms S took me along to an Inter School Dinner, I tagged along eager and honoured. We chatted like acquaintances for a while and when a tall, handsome man with greying hair came up to chat to us, I felt annoyed that my little party was being intruded upon. This was my day with her and I didn’t want him stealing the limelight.
“Will you alright by yourself for a few minutes?” she asked me even as she got up to go away, “The Colonel and I would like to catch up since I haven’t seen him for long”. So he was a Colonel and so she knew him. Was he a friend, I wondered idly? She had been a spinster for as long as everyone knew and the Colonel didn’t exactly look very young. I stayed inside the hall by myself for about 20 minutes and then I decided I wanted to see where she was because I was sure it was time to go home. The air was redolent with the smell of jasmine and the ground smelled of the first bounty of rain as I stepped out into the night.
It took me less than 5 minutes to find them, they were under a jasmine laden rotunda and he had his arms around her, her head on his shoulders. I stood there for eternity staring at the woman that I had always thought was incredibly strong and yet the vulnerable look on her face, taught me my first lesson about the truth that lurks behind facades. I should have looked away but I watched dumbfounded as he whispered sweet nothings in her ear and she blushed. And again before my eyes, the woman who could silence you with a mere raised eyebrow stepped away into the shadows and in her place I saw a woman whose features had been softened by the evening. She saw me then and broke free from his embrace. The magic of the moment receded into thin air as she walked towards me as in control as ever and took my hand. “Shall we leave?” she asked, “Shall we get something to eat first?”
I don’t remember my answers but I shall always remember the feeling of the air going dull and heavy around us as if the last traces of life had been sucked away from the evening. If she was upset that I had intruded upon a special and rare moment, she didn’t show it. It was as if she switched roles and my peek into her world ended as she closed the windows. She took my hand and led me inside, turning around to acknowledge him only once, as we opened the doors to the hall and merged with the milieu inside. I saw the look on her face then, and learnt that hope and love and heartbreak are a family. That time always manages to have the last word no matter how much is at stake.
When I mentioned this encounter at home, I was told that the Colonel was a much married man with a family of his own in the next town. Nothing more was ever said on the topic and I didn’t tell anyone though it was the kind of thing that a 12 year old on the cusp of teenage would have loved to share with friends and giggle over, in the comforting recesses of her room. I didn’t tell anyone not because I thought I would get her into trouble by mentioning this daring display of affection in an era of supposedly gentle sensibilities but because that brief encounter opened my eyes up to the love that the moment exuded. I would understand it many years hence but suddenly I knew that love even when it is at its messiest and fragile best, rises above the confusion and the shackles that bind it, and anoints itself as the one magnificent force that has the power to change lives and fates. And in that romantic interlude between Ms S and the handsome Colonel, this power of belief impressed itself upon me more than their sad situation and the frailties that both of them had to contend with.
I saw her again, years later, the ravages of time had peppered her hair with white strands and crows feet and the first appearance of wrinkles had changed her face with firm reminders of how the years had treated her. Her voice was the same; the unmistakable lilt was the same. “How are you?” she asked me with the same warmth that had graced me all these years. I could not take my eyes away from the small ‘mangalsutra’ that adorned her now. “The Colonel and I got married”, she said, as I got up an hour later to say goodbye. It is almost like she owed me this explanation for the evening many, many years earlier. A plethora of questions rushed to my aide but she answered all of them with a mere “He couldn’t leave his life and start anew - so we lead our lives as before. We do meet every now and then when he is in town”. There were no more questions after this, because I knew that she didn’t have any more answers.
But yet, I pretended I hadn’t heard the resigned sigh in her voice, I pretended that the strands of white hair were not due to a fate that took victims of those that dared gamble with life. I wondered if she lived with her memories of the future as she once dreamt it, I wondered if his was the face that made her smile as she taught us Yeats years ago. Did she believe in eternal love? Does one ever stop believing in eternal love? When the future arrives and it is not the sepia spool of your dreams, do you dream again or do you sift through what once was?
I saw her getting ready for a class and I muttered a goodbye. My eyes roved to the lesson she was teaching for the day, the same words of Yeats she taught me many summers ago, came back to stand between us, this time though, they were real and solid and full of painful truths.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
It may not have lasted and the love may have vamoosed in a crowd of stars. But I know that love visited her doorstep however briefly. How do you ever force a gypsy to stay? Don’t you merely gather a slice of the night and a dying ember of the fire and wait for the gypsy to pass your way again?
Linked to a Tag.. February 11, 2008
Posted by scarlettletters in Tags.9 comments
One of my new year resolutions was to post once a week, you have to believe me on this one, people. Anyhoo I will go back to my trademark dialogue that life has been getting into the way of living too often and therefore I have been busy doing other things. Thanks are in order to the lovely Altoid who tagged me and poked me out of my self imposed dormancy. Scarlett loves tags (hint, hint to all those that have been checking on me and have been questioning me about my disappearance) and Scarlett can be bribed with tags. Most times, anyways 
Without further ado, here is the tag that Altoid wants me to take up. So the rules go thus :
Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.
Family- Hmmmm. As someone that uses the term family, very loosely, to refer to my extended family and friends and all those wonderful people that have made a difference in my life, a quick walk down memory lane (this blog) indicates that the usually loquacious Scarlett has been rather reticent in this instance. But there are two people that stand out when I mention the word family. My aunt who filled my life with hues and colours that every child needs while growing up and who never once made me realize that I hadn’t received the love of grandparents, is someone who I define family by. I wish I had told her just how much love she sent my way. Why is it that sometimes the most important things are always said during a goodbye? Why did I have to wait till an obituary to express my love for her?
Then there was my adopted grandfather - a fine and gentle reminder that a family is held together by bonds of love.And that these bonds of love are not always with people of our own flesh and blood. A tribute to the old man who loved me like his own granddaughter and left me a legacy of an eternal spring even when he was in the autumn of his life.
Friends- There are those that stayed when others left. There are those that are a phone call away, an email away and those that I haven’t seen in ages. There are sepia memories and stolen fragments of time of a life and a time far away and yet there are friendships that are a part of who I am and who make me what I am. They are friends separated by time and distance and yet all I have to do to reach them is to take a walk down memory lane.
Love - Scarlett is a romantic. Enough said. Somewhere along the way, I learnt that the season of red roses gives way to the cycles of nature and fate and human frailities but sometimes, just sometimes, you find a love that stays for all times and all seasons. So I have loved and I have been loved but I am a believer and an optimist enough to believe that there is mad, irrational and overpowering love for those that choose to recieve it. And that keeps me going and keeps me a romantic.
Yourself - Really, this is a bad, bad idea. Anyone who knows me would vouch for the fact that Scarlett does not need any more prodding with this particular topic. But since you asked so nicely dear Altoid, I shall be my usual humble self and merely point to this tag that the lovely Asuph passed on to me at some stage. There are not many other posts on myself (yes, it is hard to describe myself in words) but this pretty much sums my philosophy in life.
Anything - I scrolled through all my posts but then I decided to settle on a personal favourite, just because in my mind’s eye, the whiff of a summer afternoon soothes and heals me like no other. And when we talk of afternoons and seasons and the whole cycle of giving and receiving and loving and leaving love behind, I decided to end with the feeling of relief that comes from knowing one’s role in the grand scheme.
Phew that took time but it was fun. Thanks Altoid, m’lady. Scarlett is honoured that you asked.
So who do I tag [insert evil grin here]?? Asuph, IW, Priya, Ano and Aria, please, please take up the tag because I would love to hear your take on things. IW please note that since you turn my tags down all the time, I need you to convince me that you are indeed my dear brother, dysfunctional family not withstanding.
Have fun, people. Scarlett would love to hear from you.
The Gift.. December 10, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Musings, Relationships, childhood memories.10 comments
An overcast afternoon, a sleepy road. A house rousing itself from its afternoon siesta. The girl plays hopscotch on the chalk marked tiles, with the mango trees keeping a watch on her. One. Two. Three. The double jump. She has nearly made it to the end. She hears the front gate creak to life. Four. Five. Six and Turn. And Jump. The creaking of the gate stops ominously. The decibels die away in the middle of her jump. She stares at the visitor with frightened eyes even as he leans against the gate, breathing heavily, smiling at her. She stands frozen in time as he walks in through the gate. He stands unsure for a moment wondering if he should walk towards her or attempt the steps that lead up to the portico. She will have to walk past him if she is to run inside and she doesn’t feel brave enough. “You have grown taller”, he says as he walks towards her and pats her head. She catches her breath then because his breath reeks, his hand is unsteady and his eyes are bloodshot.
His trembling hand settles on her shoulder and she stifles the urge to run, to scream, to push his hand away. “I got you a gift”, he says even as his hands fumble inside his pockets. A soiled handkerchief and a rolled up note are the only things he find. “I did get you a gift”, his voice is plaintive now, pleading even. “Would you like my bus ticket? Do you still play with such things?”. The ticket is torn and in a sorry state - it also reeks - just like him, she thinks.
There is a quickening of steps and the portico door opens. Her mother sounds calm and measured “What are you doing here?”, she asks in a tone that is strangely clipped and unfriendly. He smiles at her and staggers down the path towards the steps. “I came to see you, it has been a long time”, his eagerness and joy shine through the gloomy afternoon.
She opens the door to let him inside and wonders if anyone saw him. Her face softens when she sees the scared face of her girl, “Do you want to come in for some tea now?”, she asks. The girl shakes her head, she is petrified and the thought of seeing him across the table fills her with dread. “Send Dad out to play with me”, she pleads. “Your father needs to have a talk with your uncle”, her mother explains. And then almost to herself “I do too, it has been long coming”. “Use the back door if you need anything” she says and then the steps hasten down the hallway.
She hears the voices then, a slurred apology, a firm tone, a soft voice asking how long he intends to hurt the people he loves in this inhuman way. She hears words like drinking and addiction and shame thrown around. She hears a muffled sob and she knows it is her Uncle because her mother is too strong to cry. She hears her father’s tones asking questions and a half-frenzied outburst in a heavy voice. She hears the door opening and her fears give her wings. She races down the garden path to where the old storage tank drips water in concentric circles on to the moss beneath. She has been told to stay away from the terrace but today she needs to escape. She grips the rickety old ladder with both hands and makes her way to the terrace. There is a stock of chopped wood there and she hides behind it. She can hear indistinct sounds from the rooms below but she feels safe here. She knows in some corner of her heart that her Uncle wouldn’t hurt her but a small, nagging voice tells her that he is not himself and that perhaps he could hurt himself someway.
Her father finds her an hour later - she has fallen asleep, leaning against the logs and her clothes smell of sawdust and the humidity of the impending rains. He picks her up and guides her down the ladder even as she leans against his shoulder and tries to invoke feelings of safety. “He has gone”, her father says. “And he wouldn’t have hurt you - but I saw him off on the bus a while ago”.
“He is not coming back”, her mother tells her. “He is not coming back till he gets better or till he wants to get better. He is not coming back because he knows he scared you”. She feels sorry for him then and wonders if he will know when to get down from the bus and she wonders if someone awaits him at the end of his journey. She feels better when she sees three teacups on the side table.
“Why did you hide on the terrace?”, her mother asks her, without once reminding her of the rules that usually forbid her to access the terrace.
“Because if he could barely walk, he wouldn’t be able to climb up the ladder”, she whispers.
She doesn’t see him for 10 years after that. He doesn’t want to get better, she assumes. Or maybe he doesn’t want to scare her again. So when her mother takes her along to a wedding and he greets her, she wants to disappear up the ladder again. His breath still reeks and his eyes are still bloodshot. He is still unsteady on his feet and his hand trembles - only one hand works now, the other one stays limp by his side. He has aged tremendously and he smiles at her in delight. “You have grown taller”, he says as she shirks away from his pat. She wanders around her mother’s old house, a house she has only seen a couple of times and stops when she sees a photo of her mother with him. She is too late though, he has walked up to her and he sees her taking in the photo. “You look like her, you look so much like her”, he smiles through his failing eyesight. She doesn’t know what to say to this old, frail, man. He is as much a stranger to her as the smiling elder brother, her mother is looking adoringly at, in the sepia photo.
Her mother takes her to the top of the house and shows her a hide-out. “I spent ages here, hiding from the world. I could tell when your Uncle was home - he always came zooming down the hill there on his shiny, new bike”. She looks at her mother with new eyes, “Did you hide here from him?” she asks and her mother laughs, “He was the best elder brother anyone could have asked for”, she says with a faraway voice. “Maybe we all stopped waiting for him to return - maybe no one was around when he did decide to get home”, she whispers.
She receives the news of the death of her uncle an year later. He died in his sleep, she hears and she wonders if he looked at the sepia photograph of his sister before he died. She wonders if he knew how his younger sister waited for him everyday, even after she turned him away.
Years later, her mother hands her a stack of old LP records that belonged to him, in another place and another time, when things like music and song coloured his world. As she goes through the records, her mother gives her a heavy, gold chain wrapped in fine muslin . ”It was my mother’s and then mine and now it is yours”, she says in a whisper. “I gave it to him many years ago, when he needed some help to battle his addiction - he never used it because he wanted it to be returned to its new, rightful owner - you”.
She knows suddenly that after all those years, that the gift he was supposed to have given her then, has come back to her. And then she wonders what it would have been like to have the gift accompanied by a trembling pat…
She has been wearing the gold chain ever since - as a reminder that even at our worst, there is some goodness that sustains us enough to create a memory for the ones we leave behind, long after we have packed up and left. And that even after you have lost the tryst, someone will remember the way you played the game and hope you made it home….safe.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond… October 29, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Places, childhood memories.13 comments
A summer afternoon long ago. Hot, humid, winds chase idle leaves through the silent streets. In the distance, approaching thunder. A flash of a dust storm. And then a furtive but determined knock on the rusty steel gate. “Didi, do you have a job for me? Anything I can do for you?”. The dust storm reappears and picks up pace, the thunder in the distance is more meancing. “You need a gardner Didi?”. A quick look towards the swollen skies to ascertain the arrival of the impending monsoons. “It will rain Didi. And the plants (a wave towards a profusion of seedlings awaiting their fate by the window sill) will grow all at once and growing plants always need to be looked after”.
In the next 30 minutes, Samuel Kandul, betting firmly on a strong monsoon that would create havoc in our garden, procured himself a job. He also managed to add grocery shopping (”The garden will look after itself after the first round of the monsoons, Aunty, I will shop for you when it is too rainy, haan?”), and the occasional bicycle maintenance to his list of duties. My mother gave him a cup of strong tea which he turned down emphatically. When she pointed to the storm outside, he agreed to drink the tea in the portico only because it was too windy and wet for him to venture back home. In the midsts of an impromptu electricity failure that prompted my mother to light up a large kerosene lamp, Sam with the westerlies lashing his tiny frame and the rain throwing the occasional damper his way slurped his tea from the mismatched cup and saucer that had been given to him. He lived in the tenements behind the old muncipality school, we heard and he had four young sisters. At 10, Sam contributed to the family’s income by doing odd jobs but he had figured out that he needed a permanent job and had presented himself outside our bungalow.
The monsoons raged that year but they could not alter Sam’s obsession with cleaning the gutters to remove the wet leaves and moving the potted plants from the portico around, so that they all recieved the rain’s bounty in equal measure. For someone who had largely seen the meagre and unfair side of life, Sam pursued fairness with a vengeance bordering on obsession. After my father threatened to hide the rickety and moldy bamboo ladder that was Sam’s latest tool in gutter cleaning, Sam offered to climb up the neighbouring mango tree and slide down the parapet into the gutters. “Perhaps you could also tell me what to say to your parents after they discover that I let you break your neck”, my father chided him. Sam looked at him aghast, “And what would they say if they realized that I stayed indoors while the leaves piled up?”, he demanded as indignantly as he could muster. Committment was a feverish thing in the Kandul family, as we were soon to realize.
Sam learnt to water the gardens, weed the side walks and polish the old bicycle as a treat on Sundays. He learnt to pick and store the never ending supply of fruit from the garden and when asked to leave some fruit on the trees for the birds as was the rule in our garden, Sam who had never shown much of a skill for any kind of maths, suddenly became adept at ratios and proportions. When he was given his share of the fruit, he accepted it with a solemn thanks and offered to exchange his share for the less plump and rather sickly pile behind. “It is all fruit Didi and someone needs to eat it”, he pointed out when I asked him to banish the thought.
When Sam did not turn up on a Saturday, he caused more of a worry than a stir. Monsoons and heat waves and darkened streets hadn’t stopped the boy from turning up for work and this was unlike him. He turned up the next day and refused to come in and stood near the gate. When I opened the gate to let him in, he thrust a telegram in my hands and asked me to pass it on to the Aunty and the Sahab. “My grandparents arrived yesterday and my parents had to go to work, so I stayed with them”, he explained. “That telegram arrived after they did, otherwise I would have told you earlier”, the normally cheerful voice sounded upset. “You didnt need to show us the telegram”, my mother gently admonished him, “We believe you”. “I needed to let you know that you were believing the truth”, Sam said simply before disappearing up the garden path.
The domestic help took to calling him Shyam because she couldn’t say Sam properly. The old lady next door for whom he cleaned windows once a month took to calling him Shrinivas because “the boy deserved a grand and possibly a religious name”. Sam took on the new names with delight. When I asked him if I could teach him once a week, he grinned with joy. “I would have to finish my work first, Didi”, he told me in serious tones. It became a pattern - Sam and I sat in the freshly tended garden every Sunday and I helped him with his math and his grammar and his science. What he lacked in understanding, he made up by effort. He sat on his haunches over the plain, single-lined hardbound books and rewrote his words till they made sense to him. He apologized when I had to explain the same thing twice. He came home with the question papers after every exam and waited while I cross checked his answers. “Didi, help me write about my favourite animal” , he implored one day. We spent a merry half an hour writing about elephants and Sam went away delighted. The grandeur of the animal seemed to replenish any shortcomings the education system had rewarded him.
“Didi”, the tone was urgent and full of confidence as I got home from that evening. “I had my english exams today and we were asked to write about our pets”. Before I could ask him, the answer came loud and clear “Didi, I remembered everything we had said about elephants”. Resisting an urge to laugh, I maintained the facade, “Elephants don’t make very good pets, Sam”, I gently told him. The grin disappeared but only for a minute, “If I ever get a pet Didi, it will be an elephant - nothing else would do”.
A few months after the elephant episode, the old tenements were razed to the ground to make way for a newer muncipality school. The old inhabitants were offered accomodation on the outskirts of the city. Sam and his family moved overnight and except for short trip to tell us that he wouldnt be working for us any longer, Sam bowed out as dramatically as he had arrived. “I will send someone over Sahab, those gutters will need to be cleaned” were his parting words even as he walked away looking at the foreboding clouds.
I met Sam Shyam Shrinivas Kandul after many years, he said he was earning a living working in a candle factory. The same smile, the same earnestness, the same beliefs (”Kandul, didi, like Candle, we are a family of candle makers, did you not guess that?”).
No Sam, I did not guess that all these years but I think I knew it all along. I hope the candle making works for you ; some people deserve the light much,much more than others.
To Sir With Love October 22, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Love, Moments in Time, Musings.15 comments
Tucked away on the last page of a dog-eared handbook is a scribble that says “I wish you well. I hope you come back to this place after you are done with wandering the world”. Age and fading ink have turned the black writing into a sepia pattern. I don’t need to decipher the words for I know them by heart. Behind the facades of classes and lectures and gradually blossoming relationships, there was a special spot in a crevice of my heart for you. You were more than the Professor who taught me Programming, you were the reason why I enjoyed all my subjects that golden summer. I don’t know if you know this but for what seemed like eons back then, I hung around your office waiting to ask you questions that I didn’t need answers to. I took more effort with your subjects than I did with anything else. When our paths crossed on the campus, my route meandered after yours till I couldn’t keep up with you any more.
After a seemingly usual class, when one day, you stayed back and asked me if I knew the meaning of my name, love entered the heart and declared it was there to stay. It must have been a normal question but when love is leaning against the door waiting to get in, a gentle nudge is all it needs to announce its arrival. I daresay you didn’t know the old trick of “If you love someone, then they will turn around to see you as you pass the corner”. You had this habit of turning around several times as you walked back to your office, and I stayed in your line of sight every single time, ensuring that I didn’t miss that one last glance. It is these small things that define love perhaps, for when it is in its fragile state, love does not lay much in store, by time redefining moments.
Once in a lifetime comes a love that doesn’t demand anything because it doesn’t know how to ask for anything. It lives for the moment, and it barely peeks into the future; so happy is it with the present. The summer that year gave me such a love - a quiet, unassuming, placid feeling in the heart that had no rush to go anywhere with no reasons to win anyone over and no future to conquer. And so when I took to visiting a friend that lived opposite your house, you learnt to wave and smile at me. I didn’t stop to talk and neither did you. We had the equation of a Professor and a student down pat and you sometimes asked me what I was up to if you happened to bump into me, on the unpaved, cobbled sidewalk outside your house. I walked past your house a few times after you moved away at the end of the year. You cannot miss someone you never really knew. Instead the feeling of missing someone is substituted by a gnawing feeling of the possibilities that could have been. When you think of it, one sided love can be so liberating really because there is no one to limit your dreams of the relationship- sometimes this even makes up for the truth that your dreams will always remain dreams.
I googled your name the other day- after many years. I don’t know why I did it, I wasn’t feeling nostalgic and I didn’t want to walk down memory lane either. It was perhaps an overpowering need to return to something that had once been pretty perfect in its restricted framework. The college has changed so much from what I could see. I did not know that you were now the department head. Did you still go for walks around the main cricket ground, I wondered? Oh, you have changed enormously too - the salt and pepper hair tells me that we have both traversed a long way down the cobbled paths.
The battle between love and fate always leaves a casualty. You could end up disbelieving in love. Or you could end up believing in a fate that is out to short-change you. Sometimes, just sometimes, though there are no causalities. There are snippets of time that teach you that you don’t always have to win. Just being part of the game, no matter how one-sided, can be enough for a life time. I wish you well too; I am not yet done with wandering the world. But someday perhaps, I shall come back and smile at you again as our paths cross on a stone cobbled path - and as always after we have asked each other about the journeys made, we will go our own ways happily…..
-S
The Selfish Tag July 20, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Uncategorized.11 comments
I.have.been.tagged. Scarlett loves talking about herself, Scarlett loves to hear herself talk (mostly because when she starts talking about herself, there isn’t any other audience). So here are 8 completely random things about me. Why 8, you ask? Probably because it is as good a random number as any.
Thanks to Asuph (tears of gratitude drip down on to the keyboard as I type this) for tagging me and for including some of other fav. bloggers on this list too (my missing soul sister Sal for instance). So here goes, well you asked.
- I remember all sorts of trivia that people tend to forget. I can, for instance, tell you on what day of the week DD used to air its hit soaps. I know Nukkad was on Mondays and Khaandaan on Wednesdays and Intezaar on Fridays. I cannot forget this stuff. Even if I try. I can also remember lyrics and poetry and short stories that I havent revisited in the last decade. And oh, I always remember what someone wore to a party 2 years ago. _Again_, I cannot seem to forget this stuff. My brain hoards all the small stuff.
- I cry at the movies. Every single time. I sniff more than I sob though. I have a friend who threatens to disown me everytime I do this. She also stares at me in the dark if I dont sniff enough and pokes me to ensure that I am awake. I cry while watching soaps and while listening to music. I have never once cried while reading a book though I have been depressed for weeks after reading some books. I have cringed at some of own writings, if that counts.
- I am one of the most talkative people that I know. To the point where if I stop for breath or to eat at a party, people comment that I am quiet. I also have bizzare conversations with people. A lady in a supermarket queue once asked me if I could write a love song for her (OUT OF THE BLUE, I swear) and I did. Another client of mine once told me that he secretely hated all of mankind. Again, OUT OF THE BLUE, I swear.
- I have an obsessesion for earrings. I own about 75 pairs of earrings. And I buy clothes and earrings compulsively. There are clothes in my closet and earrings in my drawer that I have never worn. But I keep my mistakes, I dont throw them out
- I was a painfully, shy teenager and a ridiculously, shy kid. Most people who have known me recently do not believe that. I can talk in public or emcee at public gatherings or act on stage without missing a beat, I still however feel uncomfortable around complete strangers or asking someone where a certain aisle is, in a supermarket. Yes, I am weird.
- I have a phobia of dogs. My hands and feet go wet and clammy and I feel faint if I see one. I have been known on occasion to step out on to a busy road to merely avoid a dog on a leash.
- I laugh very, very easily. The simplest thing makes me laugh. I am also reminded of something funny during the most inoppurtune of times and I end up having to stifle my laughter while everyone looks at me like I am a fruitcake. I have excused myself from board meetings to have a good laugh (by myself) in the corridor while everyone else just waited for a semblance of order to return.
- I often dream of entire pages of text and visualize characters and stories and fantastic characterization and really good poetry when I am asleep. I wake up the next day, tired and grumpy and with a complete amnesia of the brilliant ideas that I had dreamt of. No, I am not going to get up to write them down. I love my sleep as much as I love my books. Which is very, very much.
Ha. Bet you didnt know all that about me. Aint I ever so interesting? So here is what I need to do next. I tag
IW my dearest brother, Priya, Altoid, Dips the bestest friend, Chets, LL, and anyone else at SL that wishes to do this tag.
Please, pretty please, take up the tag if you have the time, people . No compulsion though
Cheers,
Scarlett
Here is the tag description, that one is supposed to put with the tag post:
——————————————————————
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Series or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes. (what does it mean?)
——————————————————————
A One Way Ticket July 2, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Musings.13 comments
I see Joanne walk up the steep incline of the road even as the bus gets to the bus stop. She waves frantically and attempts to push her walker faster but it is a hard walk and there is a chilly winter wind racing down the streets and she couldnt really move any faster even if she tried. Perhaps there is a pattern: spring and promises and youth, autumn for the seasons of change, summer for memories that come alive on sultry nights, and winter and old age tied together like the last two people on the dance floor that were left without dance partners.
The bus has to wait for her while she makes her way to the doors. She struggles with her footing and attempts to get in before the doors have fully opened and before the driver can get down to help her. The walker gets caught in the doors and she flinches audibly as her fingers graze the side of the walker’s handle-bars. She gets in to find her usual seat occupied. The bus is running late and the driver pulls off from the kerb even before Joanne settles down. She nearly loses her balance and tumbles on to the nearest seat, red faced and visibly upset. She fumbles with her wallet and looks around for someone to buy and swipe her ticket for her. Her eyes settle on me even as I walk over to get her ticket for her. I get her her ticket and swipe it and hand her back the change. Her arthritic fingers struggle to open and a coin starts to roll away down the aisle with a dull,clinking sound. She tries to get to it before I can and her head hits the walker again.
It takes me five minutes to gather the courage to look at her and when I do, I look away immdediately. Her wrinkled face is puckered together and two large tears are streaming down her cheeks. She runs a nervous hand through her thinning, windswept hair and stares out of the window. All this time, the tears make their way through the crevices of her time-lined face. All this time, people get off and on the bus and new destinations are being punched in.
As I pass her by to get to the door, she catches sight of me and she whispers a thank you. I ask her if she needs help getting off the bus and she shakes her head. “It was not always this bad, you know”, she mouths even as she scans the list of upcoming stops. I desperately want to believe her then, and I want to see Joanne as someone who could sprint behind a bus to catch it, as someone who was not always struggling with the fear of being left behind. That winter and old limbs were not always a part of her equation. That the man whose wedding ring she wears on her finger because he is no longer around to wear it himself, would be hurt to see her like this.
It is when I get down that I realize that she has bought herself a one way ticket. And the journey is all uphill from here. And she doesn’t even know when she plans to get off. And there is a chance that she has already passed the best sights of her journey.
When you get there… June 27, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Places.13 comments
[A journey to the inner south Queensland]
It is scrub land out here. Till where the eye can see, there are brave, desolate, defiant and solitary shrubs and trees. An old silo is pitted against a plump,overcast sky. An ancient coal train lies abandoned on the tracks. It hasn’t gone anywhere in the past decade. The paint is rusting, the wheels are sagging and there is merely a line of carriages with no guiding engine at either end. It is still on the tracks though. Like someday, if time were to walk this way again, perhaps the old cogs could fall back into place and the rusty coal train would merely pick up and move on without missing a beat. Perhaps there is a thin line between hope and impossibility. Perhaps impossibility is merely hope that hung around forever.
The soil is red. Not the fertile red that one would expect in such a tropical setting but rather the deeper red that talks of having seen and heard secrets that coloured it forever. The rain alternates between a steady drizzle and a sulking thunderstorm. The visibility varies based on the sporadic bursts of sunlight that manage to make it through the sooty, opaque clouds. There is road kill in these parts, a hapless kangaroo, a dead emu and a stray koala all dot the road. It can happen to anyone, a sudden sleet of rain, a wrong turn, and a wildlife casualty. There is no town around for ages. There is no farmland or vegetation either. This is the desert but not as we know it. It is a desert without the stretching sands, the endless heat and the silhouetted horizons. It is still a desert though because you cannot see the end of the journey in sight, because there is a still a mirage of an extinct, but gleaming rail line. A mirage defines a desert because it is the only thing about the desert that you would rather want to exist. Everything else is a proven reality, the mirage is the only possibility that could change the landscape and possibly the ending of your story.
The longest road eventually ends up in a country town because all solitude flirts with company, sooner or later. The main pub is still open for business. Everyone talks to everyone here, a visitor will never be a guest if he is not acknowledged. They are out of food because really, who drives past sleepy deserts and country towns on a chilly June night when even the moon has deserted the sky!Fries and a lemon lime and bitters are dinner. There is a fire in the corner and old country music blares out of the juke box. A draught announces every new visitor as if to say “Look, he braved the winds to make it this far, so take him gladly and share the warmth with him for he will be on the road again, and he will need to remember what it was like, to be warm and to be under a roof”.
You are on the road again and the landscape will talk to you if you will listen. The old hay bales and the rusty stables will have a tale to share because they have been here since the beginning of time. A good story will come to you if it was meant for you, but you could travel the length of the entire road and still come back empty handed if it was not destined to be. A barn owl takes flight and some night life at the edge of the road stirs. You pass small towns in the night - a row of cottages, a school, a church, a couple of shops. The blinds are drawn, but a sliver of light tells you that someone is home behind those curtains. Concentric smoke from the chimney tells you that somewhere behind this closed door is a memory being made or re-lived. That someday, this now nascent memory will include the patter of the rain, the moonless night, the occasional car on the highway and the barn owl’s flight. That everywhere around you is a picture being created and a memory being stored and you pass these ways giving up a bit of yourself at every turn.
“Did it take you long to get here?” The inn keeper asks. How do you define a journey? By the road? By the time taken? By the way time stopped when you didn’t want to? Or by how long you will stay when you know you are already charting your return journey? So I tell her that it took me a while because most journeys do take a while. And I drink the hot tea gratefully and fall asleep listening to the rain knowing that it doesn’t matter whether you stay or you leave or whether you finally get past the bend in the road.
When all is said and done, it comes down to having a memory of the road traveled and a knowing that you will be okay as long as you can look over your shoulder for the paths you traveled, and that you can do it again anytime you want to. And then you toss out the map for the road ahead because you already know the road this time.
For now and forever.. May 15, 2007
Posted by scarlettletters in Moments in Time, Musings, Relationships.7 comments
I see you for a split second as my car passes the country cemetery. Dark, foreboding clouds hang low in the sky, somewhere in the distance are the echoes of a faint, rumbling thunder. The sky is turning from an angry blue to a sooty black even as the last rays of sunlight flee in face of the emerging storm. You stand in rumination at the foot of a grave, bright gerberas in hand; your back to the road, the rest of the world passing you by in an oblivion. The road opposite the cemetery meanders back to the town square where families and mothers and daughters have gathered around polished, wooden tables with checkered table-clothes, for mother’s day luncheons. Strings of ribbons and gauzy wrapping paper dot the family landscapes, there is much laughter and mirth hanging heavy in the air. And yet, around the corner, up the path, with a bouquet of red gerberas for company, you stand by yourself because the other half of your share of the mother-daughter equation is missing.
What kind of a mother was she? I want to ask. Did you ever laugh long into the night, did she teach you to name the stars as she pointed out the night sky to you? Did she make you the bestest birthday cake ever, with frosted sugar icing and pink roses? Did she sing along in the car as she drove you to places, hold your hand perhaps as you both waited to cross the street? Did you spend lazy afternoons making daisy chains with the sun tickling your necks? Did she make you drink water on a hot day when you had no time to stop even for a minute, as summer coloured your holidays with all her glory? Were you allowed to get up only after you had finished everything on your plate, did she cut your food into bite sized pieces as she raced the clock for you to win?
By virtue of her role, she became your best friend, your confidante, your cheerleader and your worst critic; a quirk that she perhaps had is now yours to keep through a series of genes and family history. Perhaps you have an old sepia photo of her somewhere, tucked away in a drawer, safely hidden away from the ravages of time so that age and death can no longer get through to you and to what she left behind. Perhaps you have her eyes, her smile maybe, a gift from one generation to another, another example of her giving you a part of herself, a presence that talks to you every time you see yourself in the mirror. The red gerberas tell me that there is no weather beaten hand to guide you any more, there is no quickening of the steps down the hallway as you ring the doorbell. There is no one else that quite understands the unsaid words in the crevices of your heart. There is quite likely no one else with whom you can begin a phone conversation with the words “Its me”.
I don’t know what she was like, this lady that you are now grieving, but in a strange way I hope you are celebrating the birthdays and the songs and the laughs, the time-outs and the arguments even. I hope you have enough memories to last you for the journey, and to protect you for what lies ahead. I know that somewhere above your head hovers a cloud of memories so real that is almost tangible –good old homespun memories mind you, not necessarily important milestones. Just fragments of time, where you remember her laying the table for dinner or humming above the static of the radio on humid afternoons. I know that if you strain your ears you can hear her voice mixed with the smell of washing liquid, billowing through freshly laundered sheets on stooping clotheslines, and you can conjure up her magical and far away tones that permeated the blankets on lazy Sunday mornings as you fought bravely to hang on to the last remnants of sleep.
I am going to drive away with a burning feeling in my throat, though really I would like to come in and stand with you awhile but this is your moment and hers. You must know that death is too feeble to get into the way of something as powerful as a mother’s love. You are here today, flowers in hand, celebrating a woman who is no longer around and yet all that she has done for you is stronger than the moments she will never get to share with you. Eternity is a two way street : when you realize that the moment doesn’t last forever, but that a memory of that moment does, you have created your own eternity. And mothers are powerful that way, for whenever things like death and loss and separation get in the way, they merely take you back to a childhood road that time forgot to visit. Dark, foreboding clouds hang low in the sky, somewhere in the distance is the gentle patter of autumn rain. The sky is turning from a sooty black to an inky blue even as the last rays of sunlight step out from behind the clouds.
