I believe ...

In Aspiration…

2010-03-28T06:53:00.001-07:00

There are no questions left,
nor any answers left to be sealed.
Its just me ,
in the midst of that vast white space,
hiding behind the infinity.
I call out in an unknown voice and wait for the echo
to pierce through my senses,
to mute my voice
and to be called by no name.
There are no lines left to be read,
no words for my blank white sheet.
Its just me,
playing with the pile of meanings – intangibly spread in the air.
I feel them breathe, smell their space and
know why they belong to me.

Technorati Tags: Infinity,white,senses,nameless,words

Across the Street

2010-03-19T09:25:00.001-07:00

Have you, dear reader, ever been to the colonies ravaged by builders, where every bit of land is squeezed to make a row house fit into it? Where the philosophy of the builder has an element of mysticism to it.He wants you to empathize with your fellow beings in villages that have no roads and on the other side he amazes you with the generosity with which he makes a street which you could gaily call a greater version of a ‘pagdandi’. If you have ever had such mystic experiences you know exactly where I stay and the setting of my narrative.

Her daughter is angry with her today. Since morning she has just been asking her to do some work and has not even said "good morning". The little seven year old is hurt and sits on the terrace alone, venting all her pain to an imaginary friend of her’s for the consolation of a patient listening sans moralizing. She called for her girl aloud from the first floor in her nasal and shrill voice - “Where the hell are you? Didn’t I ask you to tidy the bed? Couldn’t you find a better time to while away on the terrace?”

My heart pained for the young one. Can’t she be somewhat soft with her children? The girl climbs down the stairs and enters the house. I hear no sound now.

I am sure they are unaware of the fact that they have an avid audience in me, their neighbour. Though our houses face each other we had never been friends. To be precise we had never wanted to be either and were quite happy being cordial neighbours until one day we just wished that our houses could turn their backs on each other . And I am sure even if the houses wanted to do as we wished them to the street would never allow.Playing the austere symbol of a sublime philosophy,it would have never let such animosity to grow on its edges. If only it could!

In spite of all that not being friends and now not being neighbors either, I have always had a keenness in her life. She is an ordinary lady with three kids, little means, a whole bunch of household work and a decently non demanding job. The little insight that our dear street allows into her private life, I have always seen her going about her work, calling out or talking to her children( something that is very close to shouting), or taking her two wheeler out to drive all the way to her work. Over the years, nothing has changed the way she has been living her a day and giving every bit of her life for being what I so casually call

a ‘homemaker’. It was only a couple of years back that they built two rooms for themselves and I imagined on her face the satisfaction of a job well done, of a home well made. As I saw the progress of the rooms being built on the first floor of her house and the path for sunshine to greet my windows shrink , I complaint and appreciated her in a peculiar blend of incomprehensible feelings. Though I have learnt to miss the sunshine I haven’t still learnt to appreciate my neighbors who are not friends.

Everyday I go to my veranda and look at her house, her children, listen to her conversations with them. Everyday I face her as both of us push off for work at the same time and everyday I strangle my inert wish to meet her eyes across the street, smile and say “You have made a beautiful house!”.

Technorati Tags: appreciation,friends,lessonns from life

Here or not, wherever I will be, I will always have a little of Kolkata in me.

2010-02-14T20:05:00.001-08:00

‘I am wrapping up from Kolkata’ – a phrase that I have been using opulently since the past week. After staying here for almost six years I am going back to my roots, to my hometown. I have carefully distanced myself from the most hyped about class of people for whom Kolkata is the be all and end all.And now as I feel terribly attached to this city and begin to grow cautious of overstepping the ‘balance of emotion’ I so insist upon I realize that this city means what it does to me because of the people that I have encountered and associated with.

Coming to Kolkata has been about getting into school to learn from amazing teachers, who have come to be a treasure for my life, knowing friendship and finding amazing friends and guess what - about discovering my own self. Living here has been about finding new meaning in the odd bunch of relations I had known to exist in all parts of the city and about having weird experiences in the PG where I stayed and having all the more weird food the tiffin service had to offer the poor veggie gal and wondering how I was putting on weight in spite of surviving the daily torture of papaya.

It has been about walking down the streets of College Street, having ludicrous experiences in the famous Coffee House, having Momo at the Exide crossing and being called ‘Momovati’ by a dear friend(Oops!), meeting unexpected people in the library, cursing the CU people almost to the verge of hating my self for coming to this city(wince wince), fighting over with my friend on whether to take the metro or the bus, being told by her - at almost every crossing-how awesome the phuchka wala is(which has almost led me to believe that all phuchka walas in Kolkata are awesome).

It has been about noticing a house named "’Khelaghar” (playhouse) on my way to school with charm; as it bore the name of one of my most favourite songs penned by Tagore; of savoring the flavor and feel of the silent past of ‘North Calcutta’, of running to the refuge in Belur, of being desperate to go back to my hometown during Durga Puja and of just being and knowing more of myself.

And now as I am on a spree of tracing back my steps and gathering all the little somethings , I think of missing the people and the aeon spent here, and know for myself that all of it has beautifully become a part of me.

Technorati Tags: reminscence,nostalgia,Kolkata

Knowing Words

2010-02-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

There are always several words which remain unsaid or unheard. We forget some and some we remember all our lives. Some words though are not meant to be said. They just come -

“Hello! Can you hear me?”

Of course you can but who’s that.

“ Its me,” (hmmm… lets say joy), “Joy. Remember we saw each other a couple of days before.”

“Saw each other? When?”

“The day you had been watering your lilies and a butterfly had got wet in your rain. Rings a bell?

I was just there.”

You obviously have no clue.But somehow you happen to trust that voice and you open the door and let Joy in.

Joy seems familiar,someone you think that you might have come across in some of your letters or may be in some of your notes to yourself.

Yes, you vaguely remember him.

“ So finally we meet”, says he.

“ We have met.”

“No, you have seen me.”

He walks across your room, browses through the books on the shelf, passes through your well kept kitchen, looks out of the windows.

And you wonder why he is here.

Its a question he definitely doesn’t answer.

He just stays, saying nothing, listening to all you say. He waits and waits till you grow tired of trying to say something or to hear something from him.

Exhausted,you recline yourself on the sofa and just let yourself go.

There the word, Joy as he calls himself, looks into your eyes, smiles at your desperation to find answers to some petty questions about him (something he knows is typical of you), lets you go beyond the ceremony of giving and finding answers and solutions.

And once he is done with all of this, he places himself silently in the centre of your room, closes his eyes and remains.

Some words like Joy are just meant to remain .

Technorati Tags: joy,words

Not All is Love

2010-01-15T22:53:00.001-08:00

He saw something in her eyes which was alien. It was like a faint grey that had showed up in those beautiful eyes. She wasn’t quite herself – uneasy and lost.He took her hand and waited for her to look up at him with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I am sorry” were all the words she spared.

She saw reflection of her own eyes in his' and recalled how she had fallen for his ‘talkative eyes’. Over the past season of troubled waters he had subtly and sensitively done his best to bridge the gulf but she had never let the water calm. Now submerged in the same flood she groped for the bridge, for the hand in help she had persistently refused. He would understand - was all she knew and could think of at the moment.

"In spite of all differences I have never, never wanted to be... I am sorry, I am really sorry."

All these months he had patiently cared for her silence and had never forced her into words. He had faith in his love and waited for the wall to crumble but now the wall had come crashing on him. Shrinking back to his own self, he looked at the truth of not being able to revert what has happened.She had been unfaithful but not willingly perhaps, it could have been her weakness but not her deliberate will. And that was the worst of it all, he had always made such earnest efforts to understand her that it came naturally to him. He could not bear to be sympathetic to her weaknesses at a time he least wanted to be reasonable. How could he be mad at her even after knowing the loneliness that gripped her over the years , the void that neither of the two could fill, the void that had almost become a part of them and had now taken a different meaning and echoed various sounds.

Though throughout the period of differences she had blamed him for causing her pain ,it was he who suffered the agony of being in love of her,of being blamed by her and of believing in the better and happier morrow. Pain for him was locked up within and cloaked with hope but not liberated by it.

The sudden downpour on the agony he had nurtured with such care, dissipated it in a cruel coldness that almost burned the inner walls of his self. He saw the tears ceaselessly and pleadingly trickling down her cheeks and it irritated his bruises further. The ire cooled and in no time left him with bruises and blisters all over.It could not cool and push him to suffocation. It could not…

He pressed her hand ,tears stopped and in her eyes he saw the grey die for the blue.He saw pain metamorphose into hope in her eyes and he felt himself disintegrating into meaningless nothings.

He slighted her head that rested on his shoulder and left her hand, took his eyes away from her and walked towards the door. The sudden coldness was unfamiliar and knocked at her walls within. She knew what to make out of it but shrunk from facing it.

He opened the door and walked out, leaving her with a parting glance and in that glance was captured the colour of dusk in her eyes and a profound sense of equality.

Technorati Tags: love,togetherness,pain and equality.

For the Zenith of the Sky

2009-12-29T21:17:00.001-08:00

I wish I could play the mellifluous song

that blesses with

a silent harmony of voices.
I wish I could weave that web of words
which when opened leaves not
a single thread for the eye that sees.

Alas! I flock far away

In a fury of jumbled nothings.
The song floats in the air,
with the wing of words to soar high.

My hands spread

hope for the zenith of the sky

and my soul in shackles,

tiptoes the earth to fall off

from the heaven of life.

Technorati Tags: life,sulime aspirations and soul

The Narrow - Minded Indian

2009-11-21T11:16:00.001-08:00

I met an IITian today in the library and struck a conversation with him.Talking of general things he asked me where I had done my schooling and college from. I have done my graduation from Lady Brabourne College, which is one of the top 5 colleges in Kolkata. The inception of this knowledge lay in the British era and it was formed exclusively for the education of Muslim girls. It is one of the very few colleges that have a separate department for Urdu and Persian.This IITian fellow had a notion that many Christian students study in this college and when I corrected him saying that there are more Muslim girls, he spontaneously said - "How pathetic?"
He asked how I could study with Muslim girls, and I couldn't believe my ears as he asked me that.
"Why do you say that?", I asked him and he asked if I have forgotten 26/11.
"You blame the whole community for 26/11?"
"No, I know they are not all to be blamed but then they are an unbearable lot ,even in IIT we can't tolerate them", he said.
May be he has not forgotten the horrific day and feels strongly about it but he has hardly understood 26/11.
I hate to be rude with people but this time I was itching to be and didn't hold myself back as the words spat out of my mouth - "You don't call yourself a modern civilized man, do you?"

Ironically this guy did his schooling from St. Xaviers and then graduated from IIT and now is a research scholar there. As I shared this instance with my sister she said that there is no relation between being an IITian and being an Indian. She is right when she says that. But it is sad nonetheless. One might hold a dozen degrees against his bosom and yet continue to survive with a closed mind and heart. Phew such a suffocating way to live! The truth is that education is mostly found to be far from the holistic growth of an individual and caters to the ambitions of the students in measured spoons.

Its almost an year now since 26/11 happened and we have several debates and discussions taking place nation wide on the security issue and how much the system has changed. But read between the lines and one will find that the mindset of the people, which is at the root of all things, has remained the same if not worsened.

For me I have learnt a lesson, a significant one too. Next time when I will hear a Varun Gandhi make a hate speech, I will not be surprised and think of him as some kind of an alien. I would know that he is one amongst many.The illusion for me has shattered and I am glad that it has. But I am optimistic as never before and feel the urge to pray and wish with greater sincerity for the opening of the closed minds and hearts of the people. I say this with a firm belief that there will be voices in galore to join me in my prayer.

2009-11-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

I had written this story in college as a part of an assignment.Read it after long a time today and thought of sharing with you all -

It is commonly said that life has few surprises to offer as and when one grows in age.The same could be said for the old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Roy.The weeks, months and years comprised for them the same days, repeating themselves over and over again with little or no variation. Mr. Roy, a retired government officer, was known to be an upright man and lived by his own clock.He would take a cup of tea sharp at 5 in the morning, then a stroll in the lonely streets of the yet to rise neighbourhood.The newspaper, which he read with alternating expressions of disgust and disapproval, would then occupy the first half of the day.

Day would slip into noon and lunch would be followed by a siesta, sharp at 4 p.m. there would be a knock at the door, which would be attended by Mrs. Roy to let in a neighbouring friend. The two would talk for a couple of hours but then what shall they talk about, there was nothing pleasant to talk of. The Government seemed to be heading nowhere with the Minimum Needs Programme, the Nuke Deal was a recipe for disaster, the economic policies were no good. The leaders didn’t know how to take India- a nation where a large chunk of the population lived from hand to mouth - to progress. Mr. Roy too had lived in those strained circumstances for the better part of his life but then he knew how to fit in his needs within his income and managed to send his only son to a convent school and then to a nationally recognized medical college.Yes, that was the only pleasant thing to talk about.

It would be during this procession of conversation that Mrs. Roy would walk in with tea and snacks, and the neighbour would compliment her for the variety she cooked, she never repeated the same snack in a month.That was a compliment indeed for Mrs. Roy, who cooked with all her heart and soul. Kitchen was her sacred space and even before the sun could steal a look at earth she would be there cleaning her sacred space and making tea for her husband.

Serving meal to Mr. Roy was was the most priced thing for her, she would look at him as he would eat the meal quietly.He never asked for more and she never forced him to take more.It was this unexpressed contentment that she cherished all day.

Beside this Mrs. Roy would stitch clothes for new borns of some distant relations, acquaintance or neighbours, and while knitting in the verandah she would occasionally peep into the adjacent room and see her husband reading,sleeping or talking to his friend.He knew that she looked at him and yet he never would return that glance. Why should he, he had nothing to tell her?

The day would thus pass into night, followed by an early dinner at seven. The intervening hours before the couple went to sleep at nine were left to the newsreaders and the characters of the daily soaps, who bore the burden off talking and raising their voices in the otherwise quiet house. Sharp at nine the lights and television would be turned off and Mrs.Roy would wait for her husband to lie down, pull the coverlet over him and then go to bed herself being reminded of what she had once told her daughter-in-law. “How do you bear with Baba’s silence Ma?",her daughter-in-law had once asked, and she had just one spontaneous answer –“I love him, beta.”

In Love of that Momemnt and Eternity ...

2009-11-11T22:25:00.001-08:00

The pink of the petals untarnished beyond bloom

the fragrance rising to touch the end to be,

the love of the plant and the call of the soil,

the wither of the petal and the death of the flower.

No urns left,no ashes remain

the flower bloomed and withered never to be.

I watch and wonder - can man not thus cease to be,

in such calm that he knew not what pain had been to

him.

And die in love and cherish of that one moment and

eternity.

Technorati Tags: in beauty,death,eternity

An amazing experience

2009-11-09T00:31:00.000-08:00

Reading often results in experiences beyond expression and a similar thing happened while I was reading a poem on Facebook. Zerai Mefsin, a memeber in the group - J. Krishnamurti, (like me) had posted a poem therein, which I cannot refrain from sharing with you all here -The Essence.

Take the plunge and unravel the wonder.

Would love to hear your reactions.

55 Fiction – Unfettered Death

2009-11-06T12:42:00.001-08:00

“It died”, cried a tender voice,"the poacher…”

Words were hushed by sobs, laments on freedom leading

to death and fear rushing through the veins.

Those petty sounds shook my clipped wings,entered my

spirit - caged and I wondered if I’d ever be shot by a

poacher and breathe my last in open air.

Technorati Tags: fetters,wings,death,freedom

Pay it Forward

2009-11-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

Receiving an award from Swapna has meant a lot to me (between I have flaunted quite stupidly about it on Facebook and Twitter, it being my first one I allowed myself that fancy.)More importantly what this award made me realize was the importance of appreciating and being appreciated. Keeping the ego aspect at bay, appreciation is actually quite a beautiful emotion. It connects one to the beauty and innocence around, towards which we are mostly nonchalant or may be are just shy to respond, and what more it spreads love and positivity.

I mean just imagine a little girl, say three to four years old, for whom her doll means the world to her. Instead of just passing on her little play or just being nostalgic about your childhood days, you reach out to the girl and say -

“Your doll is so pretty! She is quite a darling like you.” And just wait to see that innocent smile flower on her lips and trust me it would and would bless your day with sweetness and simple joy.

Well I guess I have bragged quite enough to put you to sleep. So I will stop right here and express my appreciation for my favourite bloggers by giving the “Good Blog Award” to them.

So here you go -

Divsi

Harsha

Umesh

Accolades and cheers awesome bloggers!

Escape from Sound to Silence.

2009-11-05T04:32:00.001-08:00

Reflections-

A puny chirper on a tree that I call mine has often seen me duck whenever the massive rush of voices and sounds has blown over. It got that share of amusement quite often than I would have preferred it to. Can’t help, the news of noise pollution touching the zenith is almost everywhere. I ducked and it stared at me with a muted gaze.

But today when I heard that tremendous onrush and in the agony to escape almost usurped the chirper’s branch, it looked at me with a gaze that now voiced I had no hope of escape – “Hey! don't you think you are too noisy yourself to escape that sound?".

Technorati Tags: silence,sound

55 Fiction – A Window to Soul

2009-10-22T12:03:00.001-07:00

Inspired by the absolutely wonderful 55 fictions penned by Divsi, I too tried to test the unknown waters. So here I am with some musings of mine -

She had just one window and it meant

the world to her. She was happy to have the window gaze at her with its wide eyes until the day she saw in those eyes the pitter patter of raindrops without and was left wishing that she too had some tears to quench her arid soul.

Sharing borders with Pakistan

2009-10-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

I came across this beautiful blogpost my journalist(NDTV)Uma Sudhir and felt the urgent need to share it with all who want to break the barriers and reach out.Uma Sudhir happened to be there in Pakistan when it was rocked by three consecutive days of violence, last week. She tells of her experience there and on reading all that she has to say I am enthused with such indomitable hope - a hope in the innate ability of human beings to connect across races and borders.

My wishes for hope and love in opulence in your life - the two feelings I believe can set everything right.

http://www.ndtv.com/news/blogs/hidden_agenda/inside_pakistan.php

With Her Gaze

2009-10-17T06:29:00.001-07:00

There was nothing that could hold her back. She wanted to go and she would. In her small and expressive eyes I saw the inevitability of her being and the inevitability of her not being.Nobody dared utter a word to her. No farewell was given, no parting words were said and she went.

I couldn’t sleep that night, her steady gaze that was fixed upon her hands almost haunted me and I felt them spying on me from somewhere within. The gaze was her shadow and now that she had gone her shadow had strangely fallen behind. i felt uneasy, scared and almost helpless. It penetrated into my consciousness and entered the dark walls of my zone of the unknown, it looked at all that I had been refusing to accept as real … as mine – my anger, my insecurities, my love, my fortitude and my death. Suffocated in the darkness of that cluttered space the gaze moved away.

Free from the forced presence of the intangible sight, I felt like my same old self - blind, deaf and numb.

To Life … With Love.

2009-10-10T02:06:00.001-07:00

Do you need a reason to feel happy? Or you could be happy just anyway. I know,you might feel that I am a completely unpredictable blogger, despondent one moment and talking of happiness the other. But I guess that is how it goes with life. It has just the right measures of everything ready for you and the moment it thinks that you have had the right dose of one feeling or experience it feeds you with the other.

Sometimes this constant feeding by life leaves one perplexed and with a set of “whys” – why did it have to happen now or happen to me or why did it have to happen at all – but clearly life doesn’t care a tiny bit about all of this. It is too busy being your good mother giving you the right thing at the right time.Remember if as a child you couldn’t get your way with your mother and had to do her instructions its nothing different with life now. It just won’t let you have your way like any strict and concerned mother.

So here a little advice for myself and all like me -

“Never ask why life is a certain way because it cannot be otherwise.

So be patient and take the prescribed doses with love.”

With no Answers and a Wish

2009-10-09T09:50:00.001-07:00

I wonder what is it that I do in life. There are moments when I feel completely at loss with myself. Everything that I do and say does not seem to be in sync with what I should be doing. Why again and again such a phase comes into my life, intrigues me with questions about myself that I can't answer. Is it because I am unstable and fickle or is it because I do not want to live my life in measured spoons?
I wish I had an answer.I wish I knew what it is with me and how I can just blow these phases out of my life and strive to set things right happily and ceaselessly.
I just wish..

life, me, void

Violence in all forms

2009-10-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

I claim to be a follower of the Gandhian values and on this account have always had debates with several of my friends, who find Gandhi and his principles to be outdated or impractical.They condemn him for following a highly inappropriate approach to attaining freedom.

Debates being debates, they mostly ended up with heavy exchange of arguements and with something I later realised to be emotional violence.

Violence becauese in the course of debate I got angered by the counter arguemnets, I got angered by the fact that my friend did not respect someone whom I honour.

The fact that something which I hold to be right is considered wrong by someoneput me off and I vehemently tried to make my point(not without prejudices).

A queer blend of pride and self assertion. Phew!!

Ironically, while I believed that I was advocating for the Mahatma, his values and believes were far from all of it.

Having learnt a lesson, I try not to participate in any of those debates anymore and leave my fellow beings with the joy of believing in what they do and save myself the same pleasure.

All I believe in doing now is being and doing what the Mahatma has preached through his life. I let my thoughts and deeds do the advocating job now.

I do not worry about being winning his cause against people who disbelieve Gandhi because Gandhism has ceased to be a dogma and has manifested itself as a way of life.

A way which is not just diificult but brave.

Its a way which takes me closer to my being.

As I essay through this path of self discovery with all those who aspire for truth and non violence (in all possible forms),my prayers for a truthful and peaceful living remains for all.

The Day of She

2009-09-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

Was it not the same day?

The day when she had come running down the stairs, laughing

and had pierced the silence in the rooms.

The day when she had flung her arms around the stillness

in expansive joy and

throughout the night had gaped wild at the moon.

Was it not the same day,

when a garb was burnt

and she was called dead?

Sharad Utsav Begins…

2009-09-24T09:44:00.001-07:00

Today is the Mahashashti.

Another Sharad Utsav

comes round in my life and I again find myself

wondering what it is all about Durga Puja.

Being a Bengali Durga Puja definitely means lots of

pandal hopping, wearing new clothes and having

nothing to do with the daily chores of life.

It means offering prayers in front of the Goddess

but a sense of incompleteness pervades.

That is not all if at all it is anything.

And as I continued to wonder, God dropped in a

message through a friend, philosopher and

guide,who mailed me a beautiful lyric, which I share

with you here -

“Christmas isn't Christmas...

Till it happens in your heart...

Somewhere deep inside you...

Is where Christmas really starts...

So bring your heart to Jesus...

And remember when you do...

That its Christmas... really Christmas...

For you......”

So as I embark on my voyage to internalise the

Durga Puja,

to free myself of the anxiety of knowing what it

signifies,

and to adore with love and simplicity all that this

festival has in store for me,

my wishes for a joyful Sharadotsav are here for you.

Shubho Sharadotsav!

A Leader Dies…

2009-09-02T23:20:00.001-07:00

How inevitable and elusive are the ways of death!

I was told by my mentor that the greatest beauty of death lies in the simple and unconditional acceptance of death and in the attempt to die beautifully.

But how do you take a death that barges into your life most unexpectedly, knocks off all that belongs to being and just puts an end abruptly?

Unknown Lines

2009-08-31T09:53:00.001-07:00

There was an old bundle of paper with random

sketches and lines drawn here and there, that I had

never attempted to open and see

and now they lay open in front of me, scattered

by an inevitable wind.

They refused to bear my deliberate blindness.

I held them in fear, picked one and read the lines

drawn, they crossed each other at the ends and

formed a vague hastily drawn enclosed figure.

The second sheet repeated the same figure with an

addition of some more mess of lines fitting inside

the enclosure.

The same pattern continued, the

more the mess of lines inscribed within thickened

the more thin the boundaries appeared.

The forces of perception and the pull of the

unperceived held tight.

Shutting my eyes from the

web of lines only opened a huge blank page .

“Good Lord!”, I cried for mercy.

My voice was being muted, my eyes growing dim

under the light of the massive blankness.

Nothing made sense any longer, no truth remained,

all sin and all goodness seemed perfectly within

reach.

The walls were crumbling, some unknown touch had

surfaced their fear, which had been cemented upon,

and all that eventually remained of them was their

unburnt ashes.

In that unfamiliar earth - my very own land - that I

had laboured to life, I knew not, remember not what

had once been true.

I Believe ...

2009-03-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

He ran across the streets almost in a fit, pushing through the crowd as if waging a war against all who came in his way. Almost breathless by the time he reached home, he banged the door open and asked aloud,

“Ma where is the little girl?”

“Little girl, whom are you talking about?”

“The little girl Ma, what do you mean by who?”

She hardly had the time to listen to him, the dough had to be made, vegetables cut and cooked, the house cleaned and then her own daily rituals of worship to be performed.

“You have become selfish ”, he said while hunting madly for the “little girl” amidst the heaps of old newspapers and rags piled up in one corner of the room; “don’t you care for that puny creature?”

She had got quite used to her son’s blabbering to respond to or get perplexed about what he said.

Tired by his solitary search for someone whom her mother refused to recognize, for someone only he cared and no one else did, he sat and shut his eyes in desperation.

How could he find her, he didn’t even remember what she wore or how she looked? But he had seen her enter; he had seen her enter his house in the dark of night when the sky was glowing red by the reflection of the fire that burnt the houses in the village.

He had seen her, from behind the curtain, enter the house and hide herself behind those pots in the garden. He had heard her moan in fear or pain; which he knew not. Only that he was too scared to go and get her in.

But she could not have gone out with all the violence on the streets. She had to be there inside his house, he would give her to eat, make her sleep comfortably; tell her that everything would be fine.

But where was she? Nowhere in the vicinity, he had searched everywhere. How could she just vanish like that?

He broke into an irrepressible cry, “I have to find her or I shall be doomed Ma, help!”

She made him rest on her lap, stroking his hair with care, “Son, it might sound crude but it is the truth. It is perhaps the cycle of nature, men fall in love with creation, get amazed by its wonders, explore it on their own terms and then … then again creation takes back all unto it self and creates again.

Don’t be afraid. Pray. ”

He couldn’t bear her words, “I am not afraid, you don’t understand.

I want to help, to save that little girl; it is not safe for her to be out now.

You have lost faith, haven’t you? But I haven’t Ma.

I have faith in me; I’ll go and find her.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, where fate had drawn an inscrutable web of lines, and moistened her eyes until she could no longer clearly see her son’s hopeless face.

“God bless!” is all she could utter as he walked out in a search only he could define and know.

Being Born

2009-03-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

It was one of those days when I was so happy being myself, my own little world defined so much to me that I hardly looked beyond to search for something which could redefine or add meaning to my life. I was myself. You would probably interpret it reader, as a natural consequence of my becoming pregnant with a child; this sudden revelation of the motherhood inherent quenched the thirst of exploring in and out. Well, if you think so I shall not deny. I was engrossed in knowing new aspects of myself. At times I would be amazed to see that I was so much capable of caring for my own self and later realized that it was all for the baby I was carrying.

This flexibility of my child’s identity and mine was wonderful, it would merge into one and the next moment would split into two. So inexpressible it was to see the identities play within me! Can I ever define my joy? Perhaps not. Then one day the identities split into two forever, what had been lighting lamps within me was there radiating in my arms. I kissed him and felt my warm lips touching my own forehead. I smiled; I had got into the habit of feeling him within. He lay there quietly by my side, a smile on his face would suddenly dissipate into a frown and then would break into a cry and I read the expressions on his face as I read a book.

It was then, when I was doting on him, I heard a shrill cry break out in a thunderous shriek, I held him close to my heart. He was still asleep, unperturbed by the sound. The shriek did not end, someone was howling ceaselessly. A mother had lost her month old infant, the nurse told me. Tears overstepped my eyes imperceptibly, I had never seen how it is when a life disintegrates into nothing and all that one knows as a being flies off without bidding a farewell. Yet I shivered and could no longer hold my child in my arms. His poised sleeping face was too large for me to bear upon my chest. I cried and knew that the next moment I could laugh.