Rebirth

One dusty Delhi afternoon
something splintered in my head.

I put my quill
in a dumpster
on a dirt road.

Then I held my breath and ran.
For years

from faces and mouths
and voices.

I quarried two stone masses
And pulled shutters on the world
Aligning my bent spine
Against their cold hinges.

But all the while
I never felt ashamed
To hold sable brushes or knives
And egg-tempera tubes,
Or wrench notes
from piano keys.

Strange.
Because the quill was my true gift...

Something has happened again.

I've been hiding too long
In my primitive fortress.

World,
I can write words
Again...

A case of the Shudders...

NEVER EVER EVER tell a precocious toddler where you are taking her. Especially if it is shopping at the underwear store.

My daughter Samarra just got her report card. The teacher made a special note that she has the uncanny ability to retain matter, recall it with ease and make personal observations about it. That is apparently commendable for a 3 year old. I was all puffed up with pride and tapped my kid appreciatively on her head. What I didn't know was that that special talent of hers would cost me very dearly in the evening...

I desperately needed new underwear. A new store had opened just a stone's throw from my house. I tagged Samarra along and told her I needed to go get some new "chaddis". Samarra has this very quirky accent- a slightly modified version of mine. She calls them shuddi, with a drawl.

My daughter talks nineteen to the dozen. That way, she could shame me and my mother, both non-stoppers talkers, put together. We were out of the gate when neighbors approached, out for their evening walk. Samarra ran up to them and wished them. This was followed by an extempore on how we were going shopping for "shuddies" for me. I was wearing a bright red dress and my face blended into the outfit. I smiled and ushered her along and requested her not to say the word "shuddy" while out in public.

That of course, was fuel to the fire. My daughter is after all a chip of the old block. You tell me not to do something, I will jolly well do it ten times over with flair and flamboyance. So, as soon as we approached the next gate down the road, she looked at the neighbour there, waiting to say hello to us. Then she looked at me. And in a classic example of your own genes coming to bite your own arse, she turned to the lady and said "Hello aunty. We are going to shop to buy mamma shuddy". Then she gave me a look of innocent triumph. The lady, her husband and their son-in-law who were all at the gate, burst out laughing. And I thought these games were to be played only 10 years down the line when she turns teen-queen!

I took her announcement in my stride. I am quite thick skinned these days. Besides, I don't like to cramp Samarra's style by hush-hushing her all the time. She is a free spirit, very bold, unafraid. I am not one for repression. I teach her the essential social graces but if she chooses to be irreverent at times, I let her be. So long as no one gets killed, I am ok.We were about 100 meters from the shop. She launched into a monologue about her baby brother's shuddy, her own collection which has frills and of course, just as we were turning the corner and there were some 20 people at the paanipuri stall, the topic shifted, very providentially, to my shuddy. Everyone in that stall expressed instant interest. One woman shook with laughter.

We got into the shop. Just my luck. There were six young Iranian students there who live diagonally opposite my house. Before I could say anything, Samarra looked at the main salesman and blurted " Mamma come to buy shuddy". The last word of that sentence was delivered in the shrillest possible register and in my embarrassment, I heard it especially amplified. Time froze in that shop. I don't know what they call knickers in Tehran, but from their elbowing, the boys definitely got it. The cashier didn't know what hit him and he seemed more embarrassed than I was. The tailors who operated at the end of the shop kept chuckling and laughing. I managed fake composure and hushed Samarra through clenched smiling teeth. She demanded to be hoisted up on the counter. Then came the killer line. With a dramatic wave of her hand and knitted eyebrows, she said " Bring the shuddy!". The saleswoman and I both burst out laughing. The tailors were roaring. The Iranians were in splits. The cashier was wiping tears...

In the next fifteen minutes or so, we saw many shuddies. She had expert comments to make on them. I was a good sporty mom- I let her choose some for me.

I saw the neighbours again today when I stepped out. One of the ladies kindly asked me if the "shopping" yesterday was fun. How diplomatic. As for the Iranians, I am waiting for them to graduate and leave my colony...

Dusty Old Blueprints

One of my Bach books fell out of the bookshelf while I was cleaning yesterday. It was dusty. As are my fingers these days when it comes to tough classical pieces. I had last played those pieces effortlessly when I was 17 years old.

It was one of those rare days when the baby slept longer that usual. So, I sat at the piano and decided to work out a piece. My fingers fumbled at first. I took one note at a time. Suddenly, something unbelievable happened. My fingers started moving on their own. It was as though they seemed to remember. Of course, my playing was anything but perfect; I hit slurs where there were none and there were wrong notes galore. But in that cacophony, the basic melody was there. A faded blue print of the music obviously existed deep inside my brain. It was a good feeling. Now, with some practice, I would be able to play the piece again without making Bach turn over in his grave.

This post is not about Bach. Or piano music. It is about another faded blueprint that exists in my mind. After 14 years, I came face to face with it again. And I was so overwhelmed that I didn't know how to handle it...

I am a Pantheist, a Neo-Paganist. I worship the Sun, the Moon, Trees. I can say that I follow Hinduism in its oldest form where there were deities for everything from heavenly bodies to natural phenomena. There is only one power and that is Nature. According to me everything else that happens in our lives- luck, love, illness, death are all random occurrences which we interpret, analyze and quantify in the context of our religious beliefs and cultures. I do not believe in the the Will of any entity sitting and monitoring our lives with ledgers into which bad and good deeds are entered and consequently punished or rewarded. Do good, feel good. Good Karma, Bad karma. That has been my path for years now. But that was not how it was...

Before my kids were born, I debated on how to direct them when it came to faith. I was keen that my children should know their Hindu roots and be familiar with the scriptures just like I was. I decided that I would tell them all the stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and get them familiar with the "Gods" from a cultural perspective. So, my 3 year old daughter knows Ganesha and his antics, Shiva and his temper, makes fun of Kubera and Narada and her favorite "God" is Krishna. I light the lamp in the pooja room and tell her that "Light is God". Then she says "But Krishna is God". And I am stumped. I don't want to launch into a thesis on my beliefs. She is 3 years old after all! She can make her own intellectual formulations later on if she likes. But the present moment is all very strange for me because I am a non-believer struggling to dish out faith for a 3 year old in a convincing manner. One of the hardest things in the world is selling something you don't believe in...

The other day, she was sitting and playing with her blocks. Suddenly, she started chanting a shloka that she had learnt at her Montessori. "Saraswathi namasthubhyam". I almost dropped my son in surprise. I felt a blue print slowly emerging in my head...

When I was my daughter's age I used to be an ardent devotee of Goddess Saraswathi. I chanted Shlokas everyday, many times a day. I prayed before I studied, before I did any creative piece of writing. I prayed before I painted, before I played the piano. I prayed every time I went for a competition. I prayed every time I won. I read the scriptures, read Hindu creation myths, stories.

Then, I went to college...

I can imagine how the folks who upheld Creationism with religious fervor felt when Darwin published his theory on the Origin of the Species and what that puncturing of faith did to their psyches. It was like I had walked out the door and there was a totally different world waiting for me. One in which everything I thought real was not. Much like the guy in Plato's Simile of the Cave who ventures out one fine day to find that his life was a lie. My faith was shattered. Logic gnawed at me from all directions. The more I read, the more things seemed bleak. Nihilism, Existentialism, and all other Ism-s assaulted me. Everything I had believed in, was reduced to fairytale. My "Gods" became little cartoon figures in a graphic novel. I began to see them as not the Omnipotent divinities I had been conditioned to see them as, but as"Mythical Icons who existed within the cultures that created them". My Krishna became just a "hero" from ancient times. My Saraswathi became an "embodiment of the faculty of knowledge". She was no longer the living, breathing omnipresent deity who could bestow blessings like I had believed for the better part of my life. As my reading continued, so did my disillusionment of all religions. Russel's "Why I am not a Christian" took apart that religion for me. I was faced with a convincing case of Godlessness...

I became an Atheist. A few years later, I took a softer stance and shifted to Agnosticism. The desire to worship something, to find meaning persisted. So I became a Pantheist. I acknowledged a power higher and stronger than myself- Nature, and worshiped her. But I was convinced that I was just a creature of chance, floating through a maze of random experiences with no benevolent power protecting me. My belief in this was rock solid. And it was anything but reassuring.

Yesterday, I heard my daughter chant the hymn to Saraswathi again. I was at my study table, writing. I stopped for a minute, smiled at her and went back to my work. Then, for some reason, I slowly wrote the four line hymn on the top of the page. Then, I had a surreal moment. I saw my whole life of 31 years rush past in fast forward. I had visions of myself praying with innocence. I suddenly craved for that again.

How does one find faith when one is convinced otherwise? I remember a state of primal bliss when I knew nothing intellectually but blindly believed. The peace, the feeling that I wasn't alone. That there was someone up there watching out for me, protecting me. Rationalists say that God is Man's creation as an insurance policy for moments of emotional weakness, that the brave take their fates into their own hands and plod through the world with conviction. I am human. I am not ashamed to say that while I too can plod through the world with conviction, there are times when I feel distressingly weak. How I wish the Gods of my childhood would come and hold my hands then...

How I long to revive the dusty blue print of faith again like I do long forgotten piano pieces...

Saraswathi Namasthubhyam Varadhe Kaama Roopini
Vidhya-Arambham Karishyaami Siddhir Bhavathu Me Sadhaa.

(Salutations to you, Saraswathi, the giver of boons and who is delightful in form. With your blessings I start studying and may success always crown my efforts.)

A Dog's Breakfast

I got up at 5:30, pulled on my track pants and sweat shirt. I took a good look at my stomach. It was almost flat. Nice, I thought. For a petite woman, my stomach had stretched to unimaginable proportions during both my pregnancies and here I was 6 months after the birth of my son, with a belly that was almost flat. Good job, woman, I gloated. Now, let's keep the good work going.

I looked around for my stick. Only a suicidal idiot would go for a morning walk without a stick in my colony. The place is infested with aggressive stray dogs. I have a green steel pole that I take along with me; the pole of a mop that broke. It is abnormally long, looks quite foolish and the color is almost fluorescent. I have seen many joggers muffle laughs when I approach from the opposite direction. I look more like a pole vaulter than a morning walker I suppose, with the stupid green pole from a broken mop. Other joggers carry short sticks with them but I don't see the point. For the ferocious strays dogs that loiter in my colony, those sticks would be mere tooth-picks if they decided to taking a bite off your calf muscle. Ugly green pole for me any day. I am sure that it looks reminiscent of everything from Moses on Mount Sinai to the Dandi march but who cares. At least I can fend them off effectively with some Filipino Art of Stick Fighting which I had seen on National Geographic. I even tried some of those stick wielding moves in my living room and felt very confident that I was ready to taken on any canine attacks if the need arose.

I put my shoes on, locked the door and then realized that I had forgotten the stick. The moment I opened the door again, the lights went out. It was still dark outside and pitch black inside the house. I heard a small whimper- my son was stirring. I had to get out at once if I was to go for my walk. So I said a quick hushed bye to my husband who was groping in the dark for a candle and decided to go without my stick. Just one day. No pole. Come on. What are the odds of being bitten if I go out just one day without my pole?

I hit the service road. A few people stared at me. I was not in my Sergei Bubka form today and that was unusual. I was all the while worrying if my son was up and if my husband was having a tough time finding the crib in the dark! A gray dawn was breaking by now. A few dogs went past me on the service road. None showed any interest in me. I usually keep to the main roads but today, I felt like looking at a Gulmohur tree on a side road, up close. I wanted to paint one and thought I would check the tree out. There was not a soul on the road. Just two cars parked in front of some houses. I was halfway down the road. Then everything happened in fast forward...

Three dogs sprang out from behind the cars. One was especially angry. All three raced at me. I have a very husky voice. Actually, husky is a smooth term. I have a really rough, gravelly voice from years and years of teaching. When you scream with a voice like that, it is anything but pleasant. As both the dogs and I realized. My screams were so loud and so hideous, two of the dogs got terrified and backed off. The third one, the most muscular and pissed off of the lot, must have been hard of hearing. He was up in the air like Bubka, ironically, and took a clean swipe at my knee. I kept screaming and running. A lady who was just back from her walk came out of her house and saw me holding my knee. My other hand was wrapped around my throat and I was coughing. All the while I was whining" My throat! my throat". She was horrified thinking the dogs had probably had me in a death hold around my neck! I whined that the dog had bitten me on my thigh. There was one tooth cut and the rest were all teeth impressions in the form of a smile. Very nice.

I hobbled back home on jelly legs. My thigh's better now and doesn't hurt half as much as my throat.

I'm writing a letter to the Municipal Corporation to do something about these dogs. Tomorrow, I shall go out on a signature campaign in my colony with my green pole.

Along with rabies shots, I'm taking lozenges...

Slinging along

I accepted arm-aches as an inevitable part of motherhood. I carried my daughter around for 2 years in the very tiring, upright position. After a while, your arm begins to throb. Then the baby starts slipping down, down down. Your shoulders rush to the rescue and with one immense heave, you haul the kid high with a burst of renewed energy. Then the shoulders give way too and the neck is next in line. All the while, the kid is enjoying the scenery of course. There have been days I have walked in through the gate and almost dropped my daughter on the cobble stones from the sheer exhaustion of burnt out arm muscles...

I first saw the "Kangaroo pouch" or "Baby sling" as it is called by top line baby shops, at a traffic signal. A beggar mother was knocking at the windows of cars. She had slung a bed sheet whose ends were tied together, over one shoulder. Her baby was peacefully sleeping in it. I didn't give the scene much thought. Till I became a mom.

When you have two really small kids like me, you worry when you take them both out together. While attending to one, the other one will be centimeters away from the headlight of a car. I had to find a way to keep my arms free to grab hold of the mobile kid while carrying the immobile one. That's when I bought a baby carrier. My son hated it. He would howl in it and spit on my clothes while squashed against my chest all the time. And worse, he would pull at his privates in agony. That's when I realized that the baby carrier with its tight harness between the baby's legs was serious torture on his manhood. I checked prices for a baby sling online and they were exorbitant. So I did what I usually do in these circumstances- I created one!

I made a Kangaroo pouch and for the past 3 months, have been slinging my son it. It is comfortable on the back and shoulders, distributes the baby's weight beautifully and the process of carrying your child around is no longer tiring. Also, because of its design, your hands are free and you can work while carting your baby around. The baby gets to be close to his mommy and be a participant in your daily activities than just a spectator lying on his back.

My son loves his sling. When he gets cranky, I slip it over my shoulder, place him into in and go about my work. He'll sit quietly, looking around. No whimper, no sound. If he is awake, he will sit up with his legs curled under him, like a J. If he's asleep, he'll be like a U. That's the only difference. Basically, he loves the feeling of being suspended ( Is this a symbolic pointer to the distant future when schooling beckons, I wonder? :-D)

I made my baby sling from the instructions on this site. So new mommies, who want to cart your little ones around without feeling too tired, go here:

http://mykarmababy.com/pages/BabySlingPattern.php

(Disclaimer: Be prepared for stares galore and advice about how your child will go through life with his legs frozen in the Lotus Position.)

Please do not use the baby sling for anything else other than the ease of carrying the baby. My brother sometimes uses the baby in the baby sling for ulterior purposes. Like when he wants to pinch the odd buck off his well off friends as you can see caught here on hidden camera. Very bad Moons, very bad!

My Mummy showing Leg!

People usually eye me with suspicion. Especially the 60 plus crowd who live on my block. I step out on a bright sunny day to go to my daughter's school and fifty shifty eyes will bore into me from balconies, from behind curtains, from tinted car windows. I swear that even the cows stare. No, I am not delusional and I do not have a persecution complex.The way I see it, I am the regular mom. I have two kids and a husband. As far as possible, I go about my life without pissing other people off. Then what is it that makes me look so suspect?

I wear only dresses. No high-riding minis or scandalous numbers at all. Just simple one piece attire- summer dresses, shirt dresses, shift dresses, empire-cut dresses, maxi-dresses. As opposed to salwar khameez or jeans/T-shirt-kurtas which 90% of the population wear. That is what makes me stick out and make people hide behind curtains to see what it is that I step out in.

Of course, if I wanted, I could ditch my wardrobe and get some kurtas and jeans and dress like most other young people. Blend into the crowd. The "When in Rome..." tactic. Or I could just be myself. A pretty brave decision these days with the Ram Sena on the prowl, beating up women in non-Indian clothing. But then, that's me. No apologies about anything.

Everyday, I take my kids to a little park behind the local temple. The place teems with elderly, 60-plus women. They are of course, "dressed appropriately" in sarees and blouses ( never mind that they burst out of them or have rolls of fat clinging to their stomachs and hips on display for all to see. They don't by any stretch of imagination consider their clothes to be revealing. They are in "Indian attire" and consequently, "decent").

In my wardrobe, I have marked out a few as "temple-appropriate-clothing" which while being non-offending stuff, still falls within my style parameter- Long skirts, collared tops, stuff that buttons all the way up to the neck, ankle length dresses. Basically, nothing is on display. All covered up.

In spite of this, I have been pulled up more than five times by five different women. The conversation is the same with slight script variations. Here's how it usually goes:

An elderly woman rolls over to me and tries very hard to pull a convincing smile."You come here everyday with your kids?".

She scans me up and down beginning with my hair. It is a porcupine cut. Short and un-womanly. Then she looks at my skirt and blouse. I am in a full length tweed skirt and white peasant top. I could be a back up singer in a Hippie band...

"Yes Aunty", I bow respectfully, "Kids get bored in the evenings My daughter loves to play on the swing and my son gets very excited about going out".

Her next question, with its tactless delivery and bad manners, slams me like the stone that hit Goliath between the eyes.

"Are you Krrrrishyan?". She waits tensely for my answer.

Krrrrishyan? What the hell is Krrrrishyan? Ah! She means Christian...

I regain my composure and try not to show my irritation. "No Aunty. I am Hindu. Just like you. You are Hindu, right? I mean, you got to be Hindu because you are here at the temple!". I resist the urge to be cheeky.

The woman looks relieved that I haven't violated the premises. The Non-believer on the Believer's ground Syndrome. But that is short lived. She looks at me disapprovingly.

"I thought you were Krrrrishyan".

Really? What does Krrrrishyan look like? Am I carrying a cross on my back? Or do I have a poster on my forehead that screams Krrrrishyan?

She adjusts her saree over her love handles and says " You must at least wear a bindi, okay? All Hindus must wear bindis".

I smile, excuse myself and shuffle my kids towards the park. The woman goes and sits with her friends and says something to them. One cranes her head and looks in my direction and they all go back to their discussion.

I am not bitter. It's a generational thing, I say. Distrust, bigotry, stereotyping are things one has to live with. My concerns are more immediate- my family teases me saying that I am a prime candidate for Muthalik's beatings! Three women got beaten last week in the city for wearing "Western clothing". There is some kind of Talibanisation happening with Hindu Fundamentalists turning keepers of public morality. Aaah! That way, the folks on my block, the obese judgmental women, are all angels. No one has thrashed me... Yet! :-D

A Quasi-Senti post for a change

When you have some things in your life that you think are invaluable, it is only natural that you want the same for your kids. Now, whether they get that or not depends on their individual destinies. If anyone were to ask me, what are the most amazing things that have happened to me in my 31 years on the planet, many things come to mind. If I were to filter a top-5, here they are in no particular order:

1.) Piano- I've had the good fortune to train as a pianist and be really good at playing the instrument. And I have a wonderful Japanese piano, my Kawai, 19 going on 20 but getting younger day by day!

2.) Painting/Writing- Did lots of crazy things over the years with these two.

3.) Vivek- Husband and Shrink . Shall not spoil things with sentimentality. Let's just say he's an excellent Lion-Tamer ( I am the case in point!)

4.) Aiden and Samarra- My a-laugh-a-minute wonders.

5.) Moons, the Bro

No. 3 and 4 are blessings post 2000. So, looking even further back, I think Nos. 1, 2 and 5 are the oldest good things. Of them, I have to go with No.5 as my most valued gift. Moons, the Bro.

I am 7 years older than my brother. I remember sitting in a strange medical college hospital in Kerala, waiting to see him for the first time. They brought him in some kind a of a bell jar like a lab specimen! Not the usual way babies are brought in for the first time and certainly, he didn't look like most babies usually do at birth. He looked more a cousin of the cuttlefish or the camouflage octopus- he was purple and grey. He had Iodine solution smeared all over him! The guy was a "Choriyan" from birth. There is really no English equivalent for the word. Let's go with "Allergic Dude" as a crude translation. He was born with some strange rash and the doctors had slathered Iodine solution all over him. But I was totally taken up with the dimpled-fleshed, podgy, marine-life-looking baby that stared at me from the bell jar. And there started a connection that lasts to this day.

Being so many years apart, we've not been together for prolonged phases at a time. I went away to college when he was still in middle school. Then, I went off to work and missed his college years. But the strangest thing is that there has never been a disconnect. We've stayed unbelievably close through letters at first and then emails. We were always in the know of things in each other's lives. We think uncannily alike, share the same whacky sense of humor, the same comically distorted outlook at times. People who have known the two of us over the years vouch for the fact that we are really the same people in two different bodies. He's seen me through good times and bad and has been the only one who has not been just a fair weather friend( which very disappointingly, other people from whom I expected support, have been). We've been staying together now for the past 5 years ( he's on the floor below mine and we meet everyday and go nuts, as is our style, over tea and cookies). What's different about our relationship is that I am not the calm, collected and cool headed elder sister, mother figure or any such Madonna on a pedestal. And he is not the mythological son-like, obedient or dutiful brother. We are two equal chimpanzees in a parallel irreverent universe!!!

I want this for my kids. That they make each other their best buddy. That they have a bond that survives the years and experiences that the world will throw at them. That they too can connect over tea and cookies and plot about puncturing tyres of the people they don't like. I can see traces of it in them already and am optimistic that they too will have a fulfilling relationship with each other. My son crows with delight when his sister approaches and the girl absolutely loves her brother. Who know, maybe they too will be like me and my bro :-)