Ramblings

I wish I could live in that balcony next door to you where the pigeons
sit. And I could see you through a window and hide when you look at me.
I can wait for you to come home in the evenings and wait for you to
search for me with your eyes…

Am I just living in fantasy..? but I would die if not for these…

“Wish you were here” by Pink Floyd is playing.

And then it seems.. rainy days … we can walk to the seashore and you
would gently slip your fingers into mine.. and we wont speak.. we would
be lost in dreams.. our bare feet will make prints on the wet sand and
wavelets will come and touch them.. then the froth will die out even as
we watch…

Then we would just be lost and lost and lost forever in
dreams.. and we will play slow music that kneads at our insides and
keep dreaming… we wont touch.. we will dream of touching.. and i
would steal your fragrances and thoughts to keep me company at
nights..

then we will write meaningless poems.. in languages we don’t
know.. and we will let the papers fly.. or make paper planes out of
them .. we will write in green ink that blots on the paper.. because we
like imperfection sometimes..

or we will make sand drawings and leave them there to be erased by the breeze..
because we like fading memories..

then i may cry and you may not notice.. because we like not being noticed
when we cry.. or you would smother my tears with improbable kisses..
kisses that happen only in dreams..

so .. we would walk into a ruined big palace with dusty
floors… and our feet would be bare.. because we want to feel the dust
on our feet and we want the smell of the dust in our nostrils..we would
let the dampness chill us to our bones.. and we could so easily reach
out and hug but we won’t .. because we know the beauty of distance..
and of longing..

in this dream.. there would be no people except the invisible ones that watch in silence…who have spread their own dreams on the ground for us to tread on.. so we would tread softly..

and the endless sea will make note of our sighs and gift them to her waves.. the cold palace floors, the mossy walls and the hope of a sapling that grows out of a crack in the wall.. we would grasp these fleeting moments of hope and let them away again.. because we like letting go…

then i would sit so close to you ..the warm scent of your breath so tangible..and i’d …

… sit in an unreachable distance and write to you..

Three

Think I am one of those rare creatures who likes tags. I found a nice tag which was open to all, on Usha’s blog again.

Three smells I love:

1. Wet earth after rains
2. Fresh New Books
3. Lemons

Three smells I hate:

1. Milk
2. Papaya
3. Watermelons

Three jobs that I have had in my life:

1. Copywriter
2. Instruction Designer
3. Student

Three movies that I could watch over and over:

1. City of Angels
2. Benhur
3. Finding Nemo

…and all the Harry Potter movies.

Three fond memories:

1. October 17th 2006 when I met my sweetheart for the first time.
2. November 23rd 2003 when I had my transplant and my second life.
3. January 18th 2004 …ssshhh.. secret!

Three jobs I would love to have:

1. College Professor
2. Pilot
3. Photographer

Three things I like to do:

1. Drench in the rain
2. Ride my bike
3. Talk to him

Three of my favorite foods:

1. Cheese in all its forms
2. Fruits
3. Pizzas

Three places I would like to be right now:

1. Vadodara
2. Vadodara
3. Vadodara

Three things that make me cry:

1. Rejection or being ignored
2. Memories of my mom
3. Beauty

Yay! I liked saying all these things about myself. I tag Venkat and Kishore.. gotcha!

My (everchanging) World View

I am taking this quiz on this blog for the third time in about an year. The first time I was 100% idealist, the second time I was 75% postmodernist and now I am 100% existentialist.
God save me! (Hehe..what god! )
At least it shows I am growing up, or I am changing. I am alive, if not anything.. haha!

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 100% Materialist 94% Modernist 81% Postmodernist 75% Cultural Creative 69% Romanticist 56% Idealist 44% Fundamentalist 44% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

The Pink Triangular Icecream

When she walked into the huge fair she remembered holding her mother’s hand. Now when she looked around her mother was nowhere to be seen. She saw the legs of many people around her. She looked up to see their faces but none of them looked like her mother. Every time she saw her mother she thought it was someone else and stayed away.

Dust arose from the fair ground and settled on her dusky skin. Her mother had oiled her hair and made two tight pigtails with red ribbons. She was wearing a red skirt and blouse. She had two thin red bangles on her arms. She started pulling at them and began to cry. She clutched at the five-rupee note. It had become wet because her palms were sweaty. The kajal in her eyes ran down her cheeks. She wiped her cheeks over and over again. She did not want to be seen crying.

By the time she approached the balloon man she had forgotten her mother. Now she saw the balloons that swayed in the breeze. The balloon man made squeaky sounds with a tiny balloon he had in his hand. And he rattled another balloon, which she supposed was filled with tiny mustard seeds. She had once broken one such balloon and the mustard had spilled all over her skirt. She saw another girl about her size, holding a blue balloon and hopping away. As she hopped, the balloon suddenly left her hand and flew into the sky. Some people ran to catch hold of it but up, up and up it rose, disappearing behind the trees. Suddenly she did not like balloons. They seemed so temporary. It took only a tiny pinprick for them to burst. They were colorful when you bought them. They smelled like notebooks with too many erased drawings. When you kept them under your bed at night, you had to keep waking up to see if they were okay. Whatever you did, by morning they shrunk to half the size. Or they grew wobbly and loose like Jimmy’s tummy. Jimmy was her dog. She had found him on the roadside. He came to drink tea from her saucer. She had tied a black string around his neck, which he pulled off invariably. Nothing stayed in its place, the way it was supposed to. “How strange and disturbing!” she thought. Balloons were so much like grandfather too. Grandfather had been robust and healthy in the beginning. He used to pick her up and walk down to the corner store where he bought her peppermints. He made her run around the playground two times so she could be healthy just like he was. Yet slowly, grandfather had grown wobbly. He held on to the walls and doors while walking. Then he sat down all the time listening to music or playing his mouth organ. Or he read some old books his glasses placed precariously on his nose. He was not like grandfather at all. She thought he was Mr. Uncle man whenever he wore glasses. She could not see him as grandfather. She woke up in the nights to see him whistling and snoring. Eventually he shrunk so much, they took him into the far away garden where a new grandfather would be made out of him. That is what her mother had told her. Yet, the new grandfather would go to another girl not come to her. Since then she had started burying her balloon skins in the garden, hoping new balloons would grow out of them. Slowly, she ambled away from the balloon man.

There was a tightrope walker here. He walked down a rope as it swayed from left to right. She almost shrieked every time he was about to fall. She saw the drummer drumming, faster and faster. A woman was singing a shrill song in a language that nobody understood. The tightrope walker was getting to the other side. She was happy. “There… only a little more!” she thought. Her eyes had grown round and big. A big pink man was beginning to photograph her. She suddenly felt so shy, that she wanted to hide behind her mother’s knees. Her memory grew so confused now. Where was mother? She was crying again. She thought she would go to the ice-cream stall in the distance. Her mother would surely come there. Everyone came to the ice-cream stall. As she walked towards the ice-cream stall, she noticed the tightrope walker was walking back to where he came from. “This would go on forever!” she thought. How absurd!

Where was she now? She began frolicking now. She was jumping up and down. Look at all those bubbles floating in thin air – The colors that danced on each of those bubbles. The way they smelled like the white dhotis drying on a line at the backyard. One bubble settled on her shoulder. Even as she was watching, it popped. She knew they did this. She laughed at the stupidity of it. Yet she wanted more of them. Colorful free bubbles; flying up in the air like dreams; like thoughts that spilled out of a mind. Some bubbles attached themselves to other bubbles; some glided evenly towards someone and settled on their hair, some popped spraying minuscule drops.

Soap bubbles seller
Selling out dreams
Wrapped in a wrapper
Of shiny colored beams

She made a small poem in her head and giggled. Then she suddenly wondered if someone was watching her. She ran away from that place through the hundreds of tiny bubbles.

Where was she now? Who was this lanky man singing a song in his gruff voice?

Come grab your colorful watches
They won’t come back once they go
Time won’t come back once it goes
Come grab your colorful watches

She saw his lanky legs in a pair of trousers that seemed like it could accommodate another person. Upon looking up she found a dark face with gleaming white teeth. She was frightened. She backed off and looked up at the watch-seller. He was wearing a brown hat that looked like it had never been taken off his head ever since he wore it. He was still grinning at her. She was shy again. She began to giggle. And he said, “Come here, child! Where is your mother? Where are you off to on your own?” She blinked not knowing what to say. She tried to hide behind the tassels of cloth that hung in a shop nearby. His watches were colorful. He was wearing five of them in each of his dark hands. She found this very, very funny. She giggled, hoping he would not notice but he did. He beckoned to her dangling some of his watches in the air. There was a bright pink watch that she really liked. She clutched tightly to her five-rupee note. She slowly walked up to him and gave him the five-rupee note damp with sweat from her palm. He seemed very pleased. He took a bright orange watch from his bag and was about to tie it on to her tiny wrist. She shook her head vigorously, pointing to the pink one. He asked her if she liked that one and she nodded. So he tied it to her wrist. Though he put it on tightly it still seemed to glide up and down her arm. As she was about to hop away, he stopped her. He gave her two coins, worth two rupees each. She was very happy. She took the money and hopped away eagerly into the bustling crowds. He wished, she would turn around and smile, but she was gone.

She loved her new watch. Her mother would really appreciate her for such a beautiful watch. Yet, where o where was mother? She looked at her watch. There were two green needles on it. They both stood still. There was a small key to the right, which could not be wound. It was a fake. She had seen her uncle’s watch. There was a third needle that used to keep moving around on his watch. Her watch had nothing like that. Suddenly she felt greatly disappointed. Yet she remembered that her uncle’s watch was a dull gray color whereas hers was bright pink. She knew that her watch was the best watch in the world because it stood still and it was bright pink. Why she thought, “Who would not be happy if time stood still?” She laughed to herself and hopped on.

She suddenly remembered that she was on her way to the ice-cream stall to look for her mother. O! What a lot of distractions she had had! She now began running towards the ice-cream stall. Before she could get there what should distract her but her own favorite glass bangles! So she stopped on her tracks. Her eyes grew wide looking at so many bangles at once. There should be a hundred she thought. That was the biggest number she knew. Hundred was a lot. How sorry she was when she knew she was not as tall as the bangle vendor’s cart! She trying standing on the tip of her toes and peering at the bangles. She jumped up and down to see what she could. How she missed her mother! Her mother would have lifted her up gently and showed her all the bangles there ever was. Her face grew long. There were bigger women trying on bangles. She looked up at them hoping one of them would lift her up. Nobody seemed to notice her.

She was angry now. Hmph! Stupid bangles! Who wanted them! She would go back home and then her uncle would take her to the town on his cycle and buy her rainbow-colored bangles. Still she stood watching the other women try them on. She was grinning at times when one or two of them tried on a dozen of really beautiful bangles. Then she climbed on to a small boulder nearby and stood clutching the cart. There! She immediately knew the bangles she wanted – The little red ones with gold glitter. They were simply lovely. Why she should have waited here so long only to have those! She called to the bangle seller. “Uncle! Uncle! Please give me those red colored bangles” He did not hear her voice at all, over all the other noises. She was shouting now. “UNCLE, UNCLE!” “UNCLE! UNCLE!” “UNCLE! UNCLE!” She stopped to swallow a bit. “UNCLE! UNCLE!” She went on screaming. And then her small bobbing head caught his eye. “Arre! What are you doing there? You’re going to break something! Come here you naughty little one!” he called to her. She did not move. She pointed to her red bangles. “I want them!” she said. He came over to her side, wondering where her mother could be. Then he made her get down from the boulder. He picked up the red bangles she wanted most, caught her hand deftly, sliding them onto her wrists, two at a time. She counted them one by one with her fingers,”1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6″ and for the other hand, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6″ He said it would cost her two rupees. She gave him both the coins she had. He returned one of them back to her and patted her on the cheek. He said, “Where is your mother? Did you run away from her into the crowd?” She shook her head meaning she did not. Then he assumed that one of the ladies buying bangles should be her mother and went back to his business.

She made such a lot of noise with her bangles. She liked doing something with her hands just to make them go “clink clink clink” The watch also seemed to be competing for attention with the bangles. Overall, she loved the idea of her well-decked hands. She knew how careful she had to be with the bangles. They would break with the slightest jostling. They were fragile. She remembered how she had broken some earlier once and had cried for a long time. At that time, she did not have the slightest idea that they would break. She banged them together for no good reason and they all broke. She felt very stupid and sad. Almost all the bangles were broken except three of them. She put these three onto Chumki’s hand for fear of breaking them too. Chumki is her doll. Her father had brought Chumki from the town. Now her father was not with them any more. He had fought with mother on one occasion and left them behind. Since then mother had been buying her everything. Oh no! She is digressing again. It is time she walked to the ice cream stall.

And finally she found herself near the ice-cream stall. She had only one coin left. She looked up at the ice-cream man. The man had a stoop almost as if he grew a stoop so he could look down to see all the children surrounding him all the time. He had a grin and only a few teeth here and there. His hair was scraggly like Jimmy’s hair. She imagined how many ice creams he would eat in a day. “Maybe a hundred!”, she thought. He could eat ice creams whenever he wanted, a hundred times. She wished she could grow up to be an ice-cream man. She would eat a hundred ice creams everyday. She gave him her coin. He gave her two coins in return. A one-rupee coin and a fifty paise coin. He asked her what color ice cream she wanted. She said “Blue!” He laughed and said he had no blue ice creams. She could have yellow, pink, white, green or orange. She said “Pink” without batting an eyelid.

The ice-cream man gave her a pink triangular ice-cream stick. She started licking it before he could give it to her. She held to it tight and sucked at it with relish. Its cool sweet taste made her very, very happy. Soon she had ice-cream running all over her hand. She licked at the droplets and tasted her salty skin along with the warm ice-cream drops. Now ice cream was dripping down her elbow. She wiped her elbow on her blouse. It was a mess. She bit into the ice cream but it was way too cold. Her teeth hurt. Her tongue grew pink. She put it out and looked at it down her nose. She put her tongue out and compared colors with the other children. One boy had a green tongue. It was very funny. She giggled so much that her ice cream grew all shaky and flaky. It was falling to the ground in tiny pieces. She tried to eat as much of the ice cream as she could. It seemed to be melting faster than time. She had forgotten all about the balloons, the bubbles, the tightrope walker, her bright pink watch, her glittery red bangles, her uncle, his cycle, Jimmy, Chumki, her angry father and her missing mother, even as she stood licking her single pink triangular melting ice-cream stick in the middle of a noisy fun fair at twilight.

Why?

I was reading this article – Dr. Phil.com – Advice – Letting Go of Love as directed from Usha’s blog. I was wondering how many of the things he says are true about me…

Whatever it may be.. somehow.. something deep within keeps wanting to go back.. what is it? And why does it hurt so much.. why is there a void? I too wish I could be cold and firm and forget all that there was in the past.. but what is it that makes my eyes brim with tears? Am I too weak? Why does the evening bring back memories and the need to be with the one I love..? Am I just an idiot? How long can I go on distracting myself and creating diversions to escape the truth? Is life worth living with so much struggle if I cannot even love what I want to love without interferences? Why does every word he speaks matter? Why do I attach so much value to his moves and to his criticism? Why am I powerless and lost? Why have I surrendered my self-respect, my ego, my identity and my everything to him? And why does he hate me for it?

What is it that makes my head ache with loneliness? What is that is stuck in my heart and will not leave? Why do I hurt myself so much? Why can’t I be mindless and shallow like others? Why should I crave so intensely for something that will never be the way I want it to be?

Why do I keep making the same mistakes? Why does everyone advise me against this self-effacing love for him? Why am I so shameless? Why do I keep forgetting all those things he said and all the hurts? Why do I make justifications for him? Why do I apologize for his mistakes? Why am I so addicted? Why do I long for him and wish things were as before, when he can hold himself back without so much as a second glance? Why am I all over the place? Why do I miss him when he does not even know or care?

These are not rhetorical questions..Wish I knew the answers and solutions to all of these questions… perhaps then I may forget him and move on…which is probably never going to happen!

Somewhere my love

One of my all-time favorite songs …and how appropriate just now!

If you have a slow connection, please wait till the song loads fully and then listen from the beginning.

Somewhere, My Love
From the Movie “Doctor Zhivago”
by
Ray Conniff

Somewhere, my love
There will be songs to sing
Although the snow
Covers the hope of spring
Somewhere a hill
Blossoms in green and gold
And there are dreams
All that your heart can hold

Someday we’ll meet again, my love
Someday whenever the spring breaks through

You’ll come to me out of the long ago
Warm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snow
Till then my sweet
Think of me now and then
God speed my love till you are mine again

Lara my own, think of me now and then
God speed my love till you are mine again…

Technorati Tags: somewhere my love, dr. zhivago, lara’s theme, ray coniff

To the Moon and Back

Last night I watched the stories that slithered around me and mingled with thin air like wisps of incense.

Some of them were curvy and well-nourished. They were full of flirtations and unrestrained laughter. They distracted me so much so I could not put them down on a wavery wafer of a paper.

There were others that walked in with the ominous wooden thud of the crutches that held them up and collapsed in a heap even as they approached me. They were dressed in tatters like old beggars.

Some hounded me like a glare of reproach or the shrill tingle in the ears after a loud unexpected chime. I was indifferent to their accosting me rudely.

The ones that I liked most were the warm-smelling ones. They had the essence of the distant woods with trees that stood drenching in a drizzle. I wrapped myself in a warm layer of objectivity to protect myself from their intimidatingly beautiful provocations. They were the stories that could make you vulnerable as a flower in the soldiers’ thoroughfare. They would swallow you with a smile and a meaninglessness. They contained the peace of the disarmingly calm and defenseless monk child. They rend your innards with a silence that is alien to your normally-cacophonic existence. They were the passive white dove children. Unsuspecting, impulsive and trusting as wave froth at the mercy of your feet.

I began capturing these tiny winged playmates in a wine red goblet. As they slided down in drops into the four chambers in the goblet, they stained the walls of the goblet. They left marks of tapestries that told the tales of forgotten dreams. Often they merely stood like symbols for a reality that worked itself around you when you were sleeping.

In this exercise grows a tale that could only be read backwards. Today deciphers yesterday’s inexplicable moments and yesterday’s moments unravel the mysteries of a forgotten word from another day in the past. On and on they go flying backwards like hummingbirds in the mist. Sometimes they pause and return to the present. A face,  a gesture, a word, a smile, a frown, and a pause fall in place. Things slide away from their stolid existence and  comfortably  fall into their appropriate positions. Yet they know that a new knowledge tomorrow could distort their today.

What face was that in my dreams that needed reworking on…the face I had never seen or known. Yet, the face that wove every memory, dream and hope. A fragrant recompense that face had been. I remove a face from my fantasies and replace a new face into them. My facts are so interwoven with imaginings that it is hard to tell them apart. My stories are amused. They wait as I smoothen out the old face from their folds. They patiently relearn and embed the new face into their essence.. a face much more beautiful and appropriate than the face they had known. Fantasy is its own reward. The old face still smiles; Its past importance unforgotten.

Even as I close my eyes now, a new story emanates. It is an evolved story and wears the new face already. The story has touch. It has a warm grip. It has a fragrance. It has eyes and a smile. It has lips that pout. It has a voice. It has hair that flutters in the breeze. It has laughter. Now shy sunlight that had hidden behind frowning red clouds descends and gently blows the mist away.  An abstraction becomes a fact. A hypothesis becomes the truth. Yet the concreteness is as delicate as a fledgling and as fragile as a glass unicorn.

Remembering Hiroshima…

Hiroshima survivor with rice ball

War has almost become a way of life.. who remembers the number of people who die everyday.. who remembers these animals that are shred to death everyday.. we are all carnivores.

A very symbolic image of protest against nuclear tests, conducted by various countries, is the Hiroshima Peace Watch The Peace Watch counts the number of days between one nuclear test and another… it is reset to zero after every nuclear test. Well, not that anybody cares! After all if they do not care for torn bodies, bleeding limbs, homeless children and broken hearts, they would certainly not care for a dumb Watch Tower that stands in some town that rose from a history of wreckage and trauma.

Hiroshima Peace Watch

” Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum reset its Peace Watch, a clock tower that indicates the number of days since the last nuclear test, Tuesday morning for 11th time since the clock began operating on Aug. 6, 2001.

Koichiro Maeda, the museum director, reset the clock to one, indicating that a day had passed since North Korea is believed to have conducted an underground nuclear test, for the first time since Aug. 31 when the United States conducted a subcritical nuclear test.”

This image here describes the trauma of a father who cremated his child. I don’t want to reproduce the translation here because I don’t want to sensationalize his suffering.

All the children at an Elementary School died as they stood in line for the morning assembly. I remember how we reacted to the death of school children at a fire accident in Kumbakonam. Would we react only when it happens to us?

I remembered a poem by Vikram Seth called “A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945″

“I saw the shadowy forms of people, some
Were ghosts, some scarecrows, all were wordless, dumb–
Arms stretched straight out, shoulder to dangling hand;
It took some time for me to understand
The friction on their burns caused so much pain
They feared to chafe flesh against flesh again.”

He talks about the humiliation and the bare nakedness caused by the bombing itself and the shock that paralysed them and rendered them incapable of reacting to their own nakedness or the nakedness of others. The poem talks of a return to a primordial state of shamlessness. Almost an echo to the primitive savagery of the bombers.

Reminds me of another quotation by Einstein

“I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with — stone clubs.”

I can leave you only with one thought. Yes, we all speak of violence as wrong. We all speak of the importance of peace. We all want freedom to do the things we want to do. We all want to live in happiness. Yet, the violence in a war is not alien to our own selves. This violence is in each one of us. When we look at our neighbour differently, when we accuse a friend of betrayal, when we wish someone would die, when we resent someone’s behaviour, when we are selfish, when we hate people from a particular religion or caste, when we hate a person because he is rich or poor, then we are also propagating the same kind of violence.

If there was a land without maps or boundaries, that is where I want to be. I don’t believe in drawing lines on land and killing each other for it. I don’t want to create my identity out of these lines. I don’t want to fight for such an identity.

Remember Chernobyl
Remember Hiroshima
Remember your own hatred and violence..
Say no to the absurdity of violence..

You can begin by Saying No to Nuclear Power..

Unchained Melody

The faraway sun kisses me

The invisible breeze touches me

Waiting for faraway invisible you….

Unchained Melody by Righteous Brothers

Oh! My love, my darling,
I’ve hungered for your touch,
A long, Lonely time.
And time goes by, so slowly,
And time can do so much,
Are you still mine?
I need your love.
I need your love.
God, speed your love to me.
Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea,
To the open arms of the sea, yeah.
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me,
I’ll be coming home, wait for me.
Oh! My love, my darling,
I’ve hungered, hungered!, for your touch,
A long lonely time.
And time goes by, so slowly,
And time can do so much,
Are you still mine?
I need your love.
I, I need your love.
God speed your love to me.

 

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Mingled Beyond Parting

Aihole Sculpture

yaayum yaaragiyaro

endhaiyum nundhaiyum emmuraik kelir

yaanum neeyum evvazhi arithum

chembulap peyalneer pola

anbudai nenjamdaan kalandhanavae

- Chembulappeyalneeraar (Kuruntokai 40)

What He Said

What could my mother be to yours?

What kin is my father to yours anyway?

And how did you and I meet ever?

But in love our hearts are

As red earth and pouring rain: mingled beyond parting.

- Trans. by A.K. Ramanujan

This is a Thamizh poem from Sangam Literature.

“And the vintage Tamil verse became the first (also the only Asian and Indian) poem in a set of six, now displayed on the London subway through June-July 2001.”

Read this and this to know the significance of this beautiful verse.
Also listen to Vairamuthu’s rendering of this verse in his own words.
Movie: Iruvar Music: A.R. Rahman.

For further reading:
Poems of Love and War by A.K. Ramanujan

Thanks: Quadruplex Telegraph and Indian Writing