Twenty Years After

          Artwork by Karan Vohra - this work was ephemeral, it's message though is enduring and  is the message of this post 

Here I am surrounded by the clutter of my own thoughts, floating into this page from the fogged up zone in my head where this script has been running. 
I've started my day with my usual round of friends' posts because that's the only way to banish the confusions of the night and feel myself back in a circle of love. The past few nights have been filled with bad dreams. Last night the trees all around me were being murdered while I was away at work - what work I have no idea because I haven't done that sort of thing in 23 years. And there were belligerent salesmen crashing into my house and refusing to sell me what I had asked for till I bought a new cell phone from them. Bizarre it was but  not more bizarre than it is becoming in this strange(not brave but very cowardly) new world that 2020 has gifted us with. In other news my neighbor has parked his bed on the landing right outside my door and mom and I are quarreling over whether to shoo him out in the middle of the night or wait until dawn.
The word that hit me first today was "crepuscular" and I hoisted it up on my Facebook page as word of the day. I am indeed a creature of the liminal zones though I was born well after twilight. And this morning brought the realization that a part of me has been living in that zone for the past twenty years. 
It's that day again, the 30th of October, and it's been twenty years. I hoist up my November gloom post immediately but something is different. I am thinking about my own departure.

Today it just feels like one vast, blank space between me and that day twenty years ago. And now everybody's gone and I'm the only one left.
Chakra - leave the place as you would like to find it! Lock the door, gently turn the key and hand it over to someone who will cherish it. My only wish for when my turn comes and may it come gracefully. 

And the thoughts continue. What do I want to leave for the person who unlocks that door to take over where I left off? They will see a life vibrantly lived. They will find the key to a quaint little car that's almost as old as I am and instructions on how to drive(or not to drive) it attached to the key. They will open drawers and find bunches of keys to all kinds of treasure chests. They will be intrigued and charmed, but never angry and frustrated. They will see the swirl of confusion of a life being lived - like things thrown around. Even one hapless little spoon I forgot to wash. Some clothes drying but hopefully no dirty laundry. If it's there I promise you a working machine and water in the tank. They will see a whole lot of things thrown around and they can spend a lifetime putting them away only to find them throwing themselves around again. That will be my omnipresent prankster self that won't leave the place even after I've checked out.  
As each person melted out of my life they left me feeling increasingly abandoned. But each time an angel melted in to restore my sense of connection. I still haven't found my happy place amid the confusion. Sometimes I touch it briefly in dreams or even in the reality around me. The day I am able to hold it down and tell it to stay and that it's ok to stay, that will be the day I'm ready to leave. 
Is this my farewell message? Heck, no! Please check in again after twenty years. But meanwhile stay by me. Because if this post speaks to you, that means you belong and we need each other. 

Dedicated to my funny, crazy, fun-loving brother who weighed himself down for god-only-knows what reason. You are up there, now have fun old chap while I devour all that porridge to pay you back for eating up my four day supply in 1999 - the last meal we shared at home. And visit now and then :) 

The Curious Case Of The Beloved Ex

This post a is a quickie - yup I borrowed that word (to the chagrin of some of you maybe)

I am dashing it off on an impulse because I fear the words will evaporate from that space in my head where they have newly formed themselves. 

Most people I know have an ex(a lover, a spouse, a sibling or parent, even a so-called best friend)  with whom there has been a bitter parting. Bitter partings are often the natural consequence of unrealistic expectations and commitments, and most of all assumptions. I've been in those spaces and I carry bitter-sweet memories too.

But this post is about something else and I'll come out with it.

For some folks I know, there is one ex who is their best friend. They love each other for life by which I mean true,  unconditional love. Love unsullied by the strings of a relationship, the most sacred of which can often cut into you and leave you scarred. They love in the purest sense and often setting each other free is the most loving gift they give each other.  They don't tie themselves together on the mundane plane often because they are on distinct, individual journeys that are vital to who they are and who they want to grow into. And perhaps they are the ones who will find a way to be by your side when those who promised to do that, find themselves unable to. 

I know some of my readers will relate to this with positive feeling while it might be triggering to others. 
And I don't think this post wrote itself quite as it created itself in my head but that's bound to happen when the mundane impinges on the quiet time one needs with the self to transfer those feelings authentically onto the page. But here it is because it felt the need to pour itself out.

Read and share your thoughts.  Maybe you have such a person in your life? I know a couple of people who do.

PS - if  you are lucky there could be more than one. In my own case, my loves are all partly tied someplace else while I travel through life solo. Do the strings hurt them and have they ever felt the need to untie some or all? I believe yes in a couple of cases. Do I for my part find myself loving a person that way? I don't have an easy answer. Maybe there'll be another post and more time to find out.

Meanwhile I'll leave you with my beloved kadam tree that grew before my eyes and showered her love on me till Amphan threw her down in one brutal blow. She still stays there within view, her leafless form etched against all hues and cloud patterns that melt in and out behind her. She is another kind of ex - her form standing by me, her spirit within me. My post Words Unspoken, Tears Unshed prompted me to include this image with these words. In fact sharing the link a few minutes earlier with a friend, led to this post being created.

Once again this is for Gauri Lankesh 

The 6:10 Express

 
Where and how do I start this? There were so many thoughts fighting for attention in my head. I've been writing these birthday posts for the past month in some space in my mind and I imagine those posts have found their way to the destination which is my mom's ears, wherever she may be holding them open, in whichever alter-verse she is currently exploring.

The dawn's copper, brass, silver turn to gold with one touch of midday sunlight

The sparkle is courtesy our genius Sailesh who brought them back to life with his magic touch

There is one place where she has permanent residence though and that's my heart. If ever there is an after-life, it's in the hearts of loved ones. And somehow that transmits itself to those who enter the lives of the loved ones at a later time. 

Just one look at the overwhelming wishes I received today from unexpected sources, will tell you that the energy she passed on to me as she crossed over to a different zone, keeps passing itself around. Everybody everywhere seems to know this Mom of mine. In fact this has been happening over the past 13 years. 

First, I figured that there was no way to celebrate a life that has been with us and around us for a century, in just one compressed birthday tribute. So I decided to weave out of this, a series on the rich heritage for which she was the prime channel, sourcing as she did from all over - what she inherited, what she absorbed from her several homes in two cities and her travels through all the reading she did and people she met. 

For starters what's with 6:10? Mom had got it into her head that she made her grand entry into the world at 6:10 am. That's what memories are all about, little fantasies we rewrite based on what our childish ears pick up from adult conversations. These sometimes stay with us a lifetime. 

My parents spent the last few years of Dad's life moving back and forth between cities(of those wanderings, another time). With them their articles and goods often roamed the country and some got misplaced while others fell victim to floods and termites. Some of those treasures turned up in unexpected places and one such was an old, journal belonging to her dad. She waved it at me triumphantly one day. "Look!" she called out. "Daughter born to Lalitha this morning."  Yup, that was her birth announcement - her dad had entered it in his journal and that journal had turned up in some random trunk. On closer inspection, she found there was a time entered and it said 6:25. Well even in 1920 with the British running the railways, the 6:10 express had been delayed by fifteen minutes!

In a way this feels like my own birthday. When our mothers are born we are already present inside them, only we don't know who we are and we need to be the lucky one that received Daddy's kiss before we turn up in this world as the makings of who we grow into. In fact I was already present inside V A Lalitha (of that precocious child-mom, another time) who had this beautiful baby in an ancient house called Lalitha Vilas in Triplicane, Madras on that special morning. The baby was named Rajarajeshwari Tripurasundari Kamakshi after a Mahavidya as she was born during Devi Paksha. 

In other news, Mom dug out her horoscope (yes back then and even now, every new born had a horoscope cast for them with the usual back and forth squabbles about whether they count the time that the baby's head was visible or the time the entire(!) baby touched Terra Firma) and that corroborated the 6:25 time. Maybe that head(she had an XXL head) peeked out at 6:10 and the rest of the train reached the station at 6:25?

Meanwhile here's the celebratory message and song posted by my dear Dheeman Ghosh (Dimu Bear) on the Quarantine Playlist group that's kept a whole bunch of us sane and forged many new and true friendships through the dismal months we've had to endure. 

"So this is a little something dedicated to our dear QP darling Mayalakshmi/Chakra, on her mom's 100th birth anniversary, from all of us ❣️ . She has been the one who has held so many of us together here through music and her kind of love that has an everlasting resonance in our souls.

This is a live performance by the infamous middle eastern metal band Orphaned Land , who reminds us that concerts can be venues where all can be themselves, young and old, different religions, sexes, dialects , all united in unison in heart and spirit through music :') , a celebration rescuing us from our dreary lives full of depression and loss at times. This song moves me to sheer joy!
P.S: The guitarist's dad has also joined in and is singing, beat that :P .
Much love to you Chakra, from all of us, happy birthday to your mom "