To Maa and Papa on their Thirty First Anniversary..

Here’s to you Maa and Papa..
17th July 2010.

Have been thinking of writing this for a long time now and it has finally come a month after your anniversary but here it is! Sometimes when Subin asks me this- “So, tell me how is it between your mum and dad, as in, what kind of equation do they share” and I start to wonder which aspect of it I should describe to him… That ever since I can remember, I have seen them have their morning cup of tea together and talk about a million things under the sun, as if today were the only day they had and I would wonder how they don’t ever run out of topics !!”

or that when they are fighting and yelling at each other, the exasperation still betrays the affection they so try to hide. This in no way goes to say that my mumma and papa are in anyway custom made for each other!
While Papa’s gregarious nature and glib talk endears him to the world, mumma’s resilient nature, makes her family and the thousand animals she has adopted, her best friends in life..…Ironically, while mumma can best express her love and affection for the family and has kept it closely bonded by communicating and expressing relentlessly, papa can’t spell out some beautiful love words even to save his life! And would become flush red in the face while posing with mumma for a photograph!
And yet, despite these difference, or shall I say ‘inspite of these differences’ I have truly understood the meaning of the word ‘complement’ from what they share between them.

Mumma’s logic and analysis to complement papa’s steadfastness and determination,
Papa’s initiative and childlike innocence for Mumma’s contemplation and wisdom,
Mumma being the anchor in the relationship and yet so emotionally dependent on papa,and Papa, out there, a man of the world, with a grand career to his credit and yet looking up to what mumma says. And how one just knows it’s best to shut up when the other one has lost the top!

Again this is not to say that their togetherness has been a smooth cruise without any turbulence and not to undermine a hundred compromises that each of them may have made to make it, what it is today , and a thousand moments when each one of them would have desired just a little more!

May be mumma being the traveler at heart would have loved to travel a lot more and I see her at times holding back her love to do so, as papa loves to come back home every single evening. But she doesn't stop before she tells me that though she would have loved to travel everywhere with papa, that may not be the only way love is expressed. According to her the way papa calls her ‘mamina’ (papa’s copyright) she knows all’s well and that papa needs her most in his life. I have neither the memory nor the patience to put down all those infinite events, incidents, observations and anyway it will all just go to reiterate the same thing!

Here I am not only referring to ‘care’ which is the most natural outcome of habit and of staying as a family but of a much deeper connectedness which emanates only out of a strong involvement with and interdependence on each other.
This is manifest in a million ways- The way papa held mumma’s hand to take her up the escalator in the mall the other day, when all of us went on our own or the way she reprimands papa over things and he listens like a child.

I tell Subin these days that 30 years down the line I will want to have what they have for each other. The other day, it was another 18th June when I called them up to wish an anniversary and mumma told me that although she remembered it the previous night , she forgot to wish papa that morning and needless to say , papa would not have remembered ( given his greatest inability to remember birthdays and anniversaries even if it meant his own!). To me, it was both a case of a relationship so deeply entrenched that celebration of anniversaries was both frivolous and redundant but also a day taken for granted , lost amidst so many others, birthdays, kids’ marriages, exams, and all the daily chores.

For me too, 18th June was just a day where I would wish the both of them a happy anniversary..., till now, when I am married and as I sit here in a coffee shop writing this note and I see Subin playing games on his cell phone I know 18th June to me means more than most other days. It represents to me a manifold of emotions, of togetherness, of sacrifices, of mutual respect and admiration, of friendship, honesty and transparency, of fortitude, of valuing the little and the big things in life.Overall, it means to me, going on that roller coaster ride together and knowing helluva lot well it couldn't have been with anyone else and this just had to be it!

Papa and maa,…
On this thirty first year of your wedded life, a daughter wishes to remind the both of you that clearly, a lot of water has flown under the bridge and the two of you have experienced a lot together in your life and that it’s no mean feat to be as involved and as strong partners as you are.. to this day.. I don't have to look too far for the inspirational, ubiquitous, ‘true love’ that they all talk about..:)

Love

8 by 8

To you baba....

4th August 2009, Goa Guest House, 6 30 PM.

Those stray thoughts …seem surreal now…
I got a whiff of you in my hair…
right now as the ceiling fan blew the
Curl behind my ear onto my face..

Stray thoughts… almost surreal…
8 by 8, when there was no tomorrow..
I woke up once, to the smell of freshly brewed coffee
Wafting through the kitchen door..

Some stray thoughts… almost surreal …
8 by 8, where fingers ran on my back.
A game of anticipation
Of where the trail would follow next…
I burrow into darkness, into comfort…
I cant hear no one breathe..

Some stray thoughts, almost surreal..
8 by 8 and a Secret Malayalam…no one understands,
No idea what was said…Knowing well though all that was felt…
Those words that seem familiar now…

Some stray thoughts, almost surreal…
8 by 8, Fresh mint lounge on a Saturday morning,
I point my toes to you…
Master at the mercy of the slave…
How I wish the neighbors didn’t hear what was uttered.

Some stray thoughts.. almost surreal..
8 by 8 and those dark nights..
When nothing would ever seem right,
In the throes of guilt, having wronged…
The tears that drowned me and left you hapless..
The perpetual fear of being watched…
Our look over our own shoulders….
The million lies to make this happen…
We were in it together…

It’s all behind us now.

I miss our 8 by 8.

Opine

Musings eek out from all nooks ...
Views are decrepit..
Why doesn't reality bite me?

Memory Sake

5th June ’10, Goa

Dusk speckled evening..
A bench along the roadside that has remained there forever...
Sitting there as life whizzes past us...
Cold coffee in our PET bottles...
Yeah..the small kicks of togetherness..

Time Travel

I stand in tomorrow
and look at today,
You have gone and we have drifted...
with promises for a tomorrrow,
that we know will never come...

Obliterated...

My husband and I took pictures of people riding them...
Generations after us may not know what bicycles looked like...:)
What a pity....

cleansed

Pain's cathartic...

We shall overcome...

Thinking of the scene in the SRK movie and humming ' we shall over come.. we shall overcome some day.. ' interspersed with ' hum honge kamyaab, hum honge kamyaab.. ek din'...
' Deep in my heart, i do believe.....'
Why don't i believe, why can't i believe... the way I am supposed to.. the way millions do, the way they believe and they fight and they make sure they bloody well made their own small difference to the world....
Why can't i believe that the water that i leave running while brushing will not all run out one day..
That when i shut the tap, i would have made any small difference in the lives of many others who don't have water to drink...

Why can't i believe that the 1141 tigers will be saved one day by people who will take it upon themselves and rage a war against the tiger killers.. and more importantly why don't i believe that when such tiger killers are caught and punished there will not be any others who will rise to take their place...Why can't i believe that any effort that we put in by blogging, educating will prevent the doom...Why do i just know in my heart that I will show my kids , such a page in a school book that ' this is how a tiger looked and that it was our national animal'...
Why can't I believe that by not using paper as indiscriminately as i now do i would make any damn difference to the forests on this planet...

Why can't i believe that by deploying environment friendly fuel and resources we can prevent the depletion of natural resources in any big way.. why do i know that even if i tried , there are thousands and thousands out there who spend their everyday lives , like we are all that matters, that we are the last to live on this earth..
Why can't i believe in any of these things and many more that I am supposed to believe in.. that i want to believe in..
Why can i so easily visualize doom ...?
' We shall overcome' seems a farce....

Theatre

That late night SRK movie,
I followed this spec of dust that floated in front of me,
Like a fire fly ...
in the way of the projector light..
off and on..
fire fly and a spec of dust...

To my dear friend..

I saw these white birds take to flight today in the morning, against the glum grey skies..
My spirit soared with them for that split second..
Peace is near somewhere...