Promise delivered

Well, there’s rain outside the window,
Or at least the promise of one,
The cooling turned to a bone-chilling cold,
A steaming paper cup of sugarless coffee
And many stories.

No, no. Not the sweet nothings we’ve known before.
We are told these are things that matter --
Things that churn algorithms somewhere,
Make telephones bleat, people yell.
And then money is lost, money regained.

Life is an endless journey,
Of such fruitful days.

There’s pouring rain outside the window,
Drops chasing each other down on wet glass,
The smell of freshly dug up earth,
Comes coursing through memory.
The promise is delivered,
But my eyes burn.

Probing ties

Have you ever tried to probe,
The ties held close to the heart?
Have you ever tried to test,
The myriad shades in a start?

Have you ever felt
The overwhelming tide of distance?
Have you ever fought
The frenzied waves of an instance?

Have you ever given up, given in,
And then picked up the tossed strands again?
Have you ever unwound the knots,
Just to tie them back in another lane?

Have you then tired and despaired?
Felt ashamed of your weakness
& aware of your strength?
And then has the big why loomed?
Egging you on to fight the next length?

And the walls you built?
Breaking out, creeping in?
Sometimes protecting from the without,
At most times saving from what's within.

A crazy melee of thoughts,
They carry on and on,
Making you at times a sinner,
At other times, the sinned.
An endless shuffle,
A constant repeat,
There is the hint of strength,
But also weakness skimmed.

And finally...
How will this all end?
Will the endless grinding just come to a halt?
Or will the system crank out?
Or will there be some sort of a victory?
No sinner, no sinned,
Just a happy ending,
Of an endless story?

Prisoners of birth

"They're both oaks, even if they were planted in different forests. But then, m'lord, we all suffer in our different ways from being prisoners of birth,” – Fraser Munro (Prisoners of Birth)

So aptly put… come to think of it, most of what we are is because of something we don’t have a hand in. We can’t chose our parents, our religion, the social strata we want to belong to or for that matter our name – and it is all of these that gives us our identity. An identity that evolves, but never really goes far from its essence.

We are prisoners of our roots, and like in the extract, we can only hope to move towards the sun, while remaining firmly bound to our earth. I am not sure whether this is fortunate or otherwise, but one can only hope to grow into the tallest oak of the forest.

"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day"

You can't swap your chains with another, much as you may want to, but you can find peace in the thought that it was God who wished so. How else can you explain "why" you were born when you were born where you were born and to whom you were born?

Accept the firmness of the ground you stand on, feel it hold you in place and it will set you free.

The moment has come when I change...

From being a spectator, to being a participant. From wondering how people let themselves get bullied, to thinking how to prevent myself from getting bullied without hurting sentiments. It’s tough, I finally agree. And I now see why others succumb.

It’s tough not because one is relatively weak, but because one is never strong enough to hurt those one loves.

Marriage -- an institution that has been coming down the ages, with its own set of rules, its own stamp of patriarchy and I am finally going to step into it, with my principles of an emancipated woman intact but my actions unsteady under the assault of emotions unfelt before.

Suddenly I am surrounded by his relatives, who obviously love me because he loves me but who also expect me to behave in a certain way or do certain things befitting the bahu. Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. There is no “ghunghat” or “you can’t work”, not that they would have gone far with any such demands, but there are assumptions such as “you can’t take off the nowa”!

Kind of weird, but I couldn’t say a thing. Nowa is the sign of a married woman and linked to the husband’s life by prejudice and tradition. Even I felt weak under the strength of the belief.

I cursed myself for my weakness. A girl known for calling a spade, a spade, I was shocked at my hypocrisy. To compensate, I thought -- well let them say what they want to, I’ll do as I wish.

But really, let’s face it. I was thinking like a loser. The truth was I couldn’t say a thing, firstly out of respect, secondly out of fear and thirdly because it was after all only a nowa, a bangle. Now I sound like the Saraf girl who stopped wearing green after marriage and told me very calmly “I can wear it once I have a son, it’s only a colour”.

Its’ not only a bangle just like it’s not only a colour. It’s about principles. Why does the society require a woman to wear or not wear certain things to show the presence or absence of a man or son in her life?

But, sigh, I am shackled too. I might have the comfort of knowing that I can after all do as I wish because my doing does not depend on something as abstract as “once I have a son”, but I still have a problem.

I don’t want to do as I wish, concealed from the people who wish me to do it otherwise. They need to be told why things are being done or not done in the accepted way. Only, now I realize this cannot be done in my usual matter-of-fact way.

But it will be done nonetheless. I will make the little change I promised I would in a woman’s life, in her state… and I will begin with myself.

As honest as it can get

I find a pattern that I want to break. It’s the same story repeated over time, at different locations, with different people and the same me. Somewhere down the lane I even stopped blaming others. I agree it was time I did, but there is a certain bliss in stupidity, in the pretense of ignorance. It offers a safe haven one would not want to exit, but exit one must. What stares at me are faults, shortcomings, the existence of which is known to me to the extent of the generic abstract intangibles they are. Beyond that, once again, I move blindfolded, groping and cursing others for putting things in my way.

And I suffer loneliness, an isolation I wish I could leave behind but I can’t make up my mind as to whether this is a curse or a gift. If I can assure myself of this being a greedy need, then I would be happy. No, I am not sad but I am happy only in pockets. Is it wrong to want all my pockets to be full with things I want? I crave for bonding as I see it around me but what to do to satisfy the craving, that’s something I don’t know. And maybe, I don’t need to.

A little bird tells me it’s better this way and I have half a mind to believe it. I just pray for conviction to reach me faster than despondence.

Just random

A conventional picture, a conventional thought -- a long tunnel ending in the promise of light without, the belief of warmth, of visibility… and then there is the sudden crash. In the whirl that slowly sucks you in, the light that was so real suddenly becomes a distant star – taunting and unreachable.
A look around somehow always convinces that each person caught in that whirl will find a way out, will reach the arms of security while you wont.

Visiting a graveyard

The Hosur Road Cemetery

It's one of those things I always wanted to do. It will probably sound weird but it’s true. I still remember a story a girl in the boarding told me about All Soul’s Day.

It was early morning, she said, when she and her family and many other families went to pay their respects to the departed. The graveyard lit up with candles. A gust of wind suddenly snuffed all the candles, except for a lone one — the one my friend had lit in her brother’s memory.

This picture has stayed with me and finally last Saturday I visited a graveyard.

It wasn’t a morning Dawn had spoken of, nor were there any solemn candles. But the calmness was the same, the serenity also similar and… something more — so many stories untold.

A small granite grave of a two-day old child spoke of the grief of the mother barely out of her labor pain, the pretty picture of an 18-year old girl spoke of untimely deaths, of accidents, bricks being removed from an old grave to make place for kin of the constancy of it all, of the pattern of life while fenced in larger areas with one grave and place for more spoke of the sadness of truth, of inevitability, of times now when bookings open not only for a place under the sun but also for a space under ground.

There was more… the stamp of patriarchy where every woman who died was identified as w/o, her parents not anymore a part of her being and men remained proud individuals, needing no identification except the worldly qualifications acquired at earthly institutions.

Silence took over conversation as we left the graveyard. For some in the car it was probably many of the departures before the final arrival while for us it was a reminder of the day we would be reduced to ashes…

On the happier side of it, if I live a full life with relatives, children and grandchildren rallying around me, I will probably be able to avoid the limitation of being just somebody’s wife.
(Don’t know why I felt like adding this last bit)