Snap! Thud!

(Written for my column 'Monthly Misgivings' in Page Seven magazine)

Contrary to what some people think about me, I don’t do well at all in confusion and crisis. Actually, I am guilty of circulating this lie about myself in the hope that just saying it out loud would make it true. Turns out it doesn’t.  Some people manage to be like the proverbial eye of the storm and stay completely unperturbed by all the madness around them, or are perturbed but manage to find the inner resources that help them stay calm. Somehow, they become the reliable, rock-solid center that holds things from falling apart. Not me. I usually need a whack in the head from some sweet friend before I can calm myself down.

I remember reading a lovely analogy for a confused mind in a story about Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He had likened a confused mind to a glass of muddy water. Nothing comes out of stirring it frantically. But if you let it sit undisturbed for a while, you can hope for the mud to settle down to the bottom leaving some clear water on top. This makes perfect sense, but why is it so hard to do?  I am all zen when everything is perfect. And when I think things are better than perfect, I smell the roses, fall in love with the sky, bask in the sun, and whip out a mushy status message for Facebook.  But the moment something goes wrong, I look like a hen roused from her dozing off while sitting on her precious eggs.

So you’d understand why some people are staring at me right now in this lovely café in San Francisco. They saw me change my mind three times about paying with cash or card; do a crazy balancing act of carrying my coffee in one hand, laptop in another, backpack slung across one shoulder, jacket over another, unable to decide where I wanted to sit, which sunny spot was sunnier than the others, and, in the process, drop my mug of coffee. The sound of porcelain shattering on the floor was what made me snap out of my fluster, s down, hold my face in my hands and close my eyes. And I heard the sweet lady who came to clean up the mess say the most comforting words I could have asked for: “It’s okay. Not the end of the world. I’ll fix you another one.”

---

There is a wonderful, healing work that our memory does. In helping us cope with loss, we can filter out the not-so-good times about a person, or a place, and retain only the ones that help us move on. This is also why sometimes the dead appear in a more forgiving light in stories about them.

Some, like me, could really abuse this therapeutic possibility of memory. I, for instance, use it to cope with relationships that have ended, in letting go of people who have moved on from my life. But I don’t stop with it. I push it further. In filtering out the remembrance of times that were painful, I even come to believe, by a circuitous logic, that they never happened. And I start believing that all I had was a lovely time that I have now lost by some stupidity of mine. This belief makes me hold on to the persons in my mind and not let go of them.

In such instances, a reality check is good. You can speak to someone who remembers you from those times, who can remind you what an emotional black-hole you were to hang out with, how a certain relationship was not good for you. Or there is a more fall-with-a-thud kind of a reality check – you end up revisiting the person or place for which you have built up a dangerously Eden-like nostalgia. And you get to see how far the reality is from the colourful machinations of your mind and memory. Thud!

Memory can be a good healer, but only as long as you allow it to do its work without thrusting your hidden agendas on it. Like with any healer, you should not start forming an unhealthy relationship of transference with it. If you do, memory, like any ethical healer or therapist, might tell you that your sessions would have to end.

இப்பொழுதின் இத்-தனம்

அப்பொழுதின் அத்-தனத்தைப் போலவே

இருப்பதாகத் தோன்றிற்று. அத்தனை 

சிந்திப்பில் இப்பொழுது நழுவி 

அப்பொழுதாயிற்று. இத்தனை 

வேகமாய் விடைபெற்ற அப்பொழுதும் 

இப்பொழுது அதன் அத்-தனத்தைக் 

கைவிட்டு விலகிற்று

நினைவின் மெத்தனத்தில். 

I was just beginning to get used to death, when it chose to change its ways. Its scent, that once spread as strong as the slapping grin of a jasmined head in a sweaty bus, has ceased to be. It now has nothing to do with the disinfecting grin of hospital corridors, the scent of fear.

Death used to smell of a million things. Of coffee from a half-drunk cup, the soap that smoothed out the fall in the bathroom, the old starch of the saree that strangled, the car perfume fighting the blood-stench on the steering wheel, flesh arrested in it charring by a bucket of water thrown on it. But death is odorless for me now.

It has also taken the voices away. Many dear ones I mourn, I have forgotten how they sounded. I hear them in my own voice now, like I am reading them from a book. They have been muted out. So it is without the voices and the smells now. But hardly silent or unfamiliar. 

To Closures

Let me raise this glass of spiced tea to new closures, even though they smart on the soul like a hundred band-aids have been pulled out really fast, all at once. The scars make me a spotted creature. A strong, sinewy spotted creature. Or perhaps I am just wrapped in the skin of one. Like the god with the third eye, the one who dances both ends and new beginnings. 

A song for the plain ones

There has to be a song

for the plain ones

The unaccomplished

A song for those who leave 

not even rhetoric Oh he was so much 

he did so much he was from so much

he made so much he was worth so much

he didn't deserve to go this way

not him not him

not him

There has to be a song for those

who go unnoticed like a fall leaf

among fall leaves lying

on fall leaves

He leaves she leaves they

leave we leave
unsung

But some are plucked 

picked folded

within pages of history

books Some deaths

are special They simply are

After all no one has tears

enough for all deaths not even

drama queens Too much information

bombards us too many posts

too many links updates feeds

of deaths of beatings of killings

One too many

it is hard too hard just

too hard to know which ones exactly

to cry for to fight for

to mourn to burn

one's hollow insides for

One has to choose

be sparing be eloquent

about deaths

some deaths

only some deaths Not all

Not even all

one hears of

You got to choose compare 

worth prices deals

It might be cheaper online

Do what you can

but choose See who cries

See who else cries

with who cries Thus

choose the death 

you will cry for

Dear Paatti

I am thinking of you, grandmother. I could just call you. You are alive. But I am thinking of you now like I think of someone long gone. Forgive me for that. I will call you tomorrow, and we will talk about your mother, my great grandmother, the one who had many stories to tell. But someone will have to hold the phone to your ears. And you may not hear me properly. Or at all. 

You always spoke when I danced. I was your trophy. You'd ask me to dance for the guests. And when I danced, you always spoke about something else. "That one's daughter is getting married. Did you know?" And the guests were too polite to ask you to shut up. So I did. Or I think I did. I always wanted to. Forgive me for that.

I remember your stories of America. Your wore like a tiara the fact that you were the first woman in the family to go on an airplane. You went to hold death's jaws open for as long as you could. But dear uncle died anyway. You changed your saree, wore shoes and sweaters, ignored the meat-smeared dishes in the sink, and even overcame the shock of how much curry leaves cost. But you lost one of your sons anyway.

Can you tell me again that story, the one about how you were locked out one night in the snow and how scared you were? I have a similar story to swap with you. It may not have snow in it, but it does have fear and loneliness. I think you will understand.

I will call you tomorrow. And, as always, you will not ask me when I would get married. You have no idea how much I love you for not asking me that ever. 

I have many stories of your failings. But I will let go of them like you let go of that vegetable when you went to Kasi and never ate again. 

I will call you tomorrow and tell you I love you. It is very likely that you won't hear me, that you won't know that it is love that rolls in my throat. And someone will have to hold the phone to your ears.

That someone will put the phone down and tell you it was I who called. They will say it louder and closer to your ears. And you will burst into a toothless grin. You will ask where I called from. They will tell you. And your winged mind will soar high above the reach of your shaking arms and hurl its love over the oceans to me. 

I love you, too. 

Trust Your Bells

For Shailja Patel, a dear friend who reminded me never to judge my work on the basis of how much money it brings, that in this capitalist world, which refuses to value the practice of art as labour (unless done within certain regimes of oppression), our very existence, our persistence at performing, writing and practising whatever art it is that we practise, are important. Of course, our concerns for our material well-being and achievement of recognition are valid and important, but they need have no bearing on how we value our work. 

(Written for performance)

You will be told many things.

For instance, you'll be told

that art isn't labour,

That it comes from sinuous vapours

rising from burning, idle hearts,

That it is not important, 

That it has never ended wars,

though nor have governments.

What does not value

art's labour

or yours

likes to hear

you judge yourself and

your artistry

for failing to bring in the buck

for your perpetual bad luck.

It smiles when you hide -

swallowing your pride -

your pen and palette.

You can hear it chortle 

when you throttle 

your ankle bells under a pillow.

It grins when your scrounge

and scrape and

grovel and gape.

But in exchange for your songs

about empires,

your dance of wrath

about plunder, what tears

your world asunder,

or even your hymn

for your gods and goddesses, 

in exchange for your truths,

your soul, your heart,

it will clothe you

in its banners. Flex is

the new haute couture,

the fabric of submission,

of surrender. 

You keep your rage, you

lie on your pillow and with your 

fingers make the bells on your anklet

toll. When you put them on,

implore them to be both

death's little doorbells

and love's little chorus,

as they will,

as they see fit.

Let them drag your feet,

take you to your truths,

to the dark cave where

your soul sits in hiding.

The bells on your feet

know,

they see, they sing,

they huddle and conspire,

they keep in them your fire,

they remember when you swaggered,

when your aching feet faltered, and

when they stomped to the ground

all meanness,

they remember your gait,

your rhythm, your falling,
but they remember too

your getting up.

Trust their buckled wisdom,

trust even the ones that have lost 

their beads and are toothless - they will

speak anyway. Trust your bells

to teach you to dance

your dance. Trust your bells

and dance.