The Mothers

Some one once said that the women of my house were like the moon: they wax and they wane.
In youth they grow fat and full, prompting comments of excess and ignominy.
In age they shrink to half their already diminutive size, worrying the others with their inexorable decrease.
It's true.
In their youth their expend all their glow to light up the world around them. And in their old age, find within themselves a light that nothing outside could match.
Always, always, they were up in the sky
Looked upon by all that came into a dark world, looking for light.
The women in my family
They are like the moon.
They are there even when you can't see them.
And I carry their light in my bones
As I wax and wane.

What I talk About when I talk about Writing- Part 1

6
That's how many times I began a sentence on this bank page and deleted it.

The screen with its helpful delete options glosses over my failings. It is, in fact, gritting its teeth at my unfortunate honesty. "Did you really need to undo all that I did? Couldn't you allow them the illusion that these were the first words you placed here? Do you have to show them how lost you are?"

The Screen is right. She is efficient and looking out for my best interests. If she were in charge, there would not be a word out of place, and the lines would flow effortlessly, and no one would know of the detours taken and the bridges burnt. No one would see the flaws that shaped the piece.

But the Screen is not human.
She doesn't understand, that  the ending of a story is not the story. That effort can be beautiful. And that sometimes, it is all that counts.
If it was easy, it wouldn't matter as much.

Language was created because once upon a time there was a woman (yes, probably a woman-- we are expected to explain ourselves more often than our counterparts) who was trying desperately to manage the turmoil inside. She learnt that when you can put words to the chaos, it becomes tangible, manageable, defeatable. The confusion gets exorcised into the vessel of the word, and then you have the satisfaction of crumpling up the offending page, pummeling it with the force of your emotions. (I admit, hitting the backspace button is not half as satisfying.) And, as is the nature of  things, from necessity grew invention. When she found what words could do for pain and rage, she began to use it for other emotions-- doubt, fear, joy, uncertainty, hope, love. Words were our keys to a world we were not allowed to inhabit. In time we realised, the key became the world.

As a writer, and consequently a professional-level over-thinker, you realise that words must be chosen carefully. They spell the difference between different realities known and understood, experienced and imagined. Like an artist picks pigment,  like a chef picks flavours, the writer picks words. She eyes their shape and colour, sniffs at them gingerly, weighs their heft in the hollow of the palm, gives it a shake to check for juice, and a quick lick to judge it's texture. Meticulous as harvesting magic herbs, the writer fills her basket. She then lays out her tools and sits in front of the enchanted page, attempting to create, to placate, to aggravate, to assuage. To pull out from her insides the truest form of her voice. And perhaps give voice to a truth she is still discovering. Because ultimately, the act of writing needs you to take something out of yourself.

Nothing is ever perfect. But every once in a while you stumble across a  moment that is so close to the ideal, that is as addictive as it is elusive; a moment where, like providence, the pieces fall into a pattern closest to perfection that the author-- for once-- feels satisfied. Feels worthy. The words come streaming out like a pent up breath released in freedom. A sigh escaping in satisfaction. Or bright happy bursts of laughter and twinkling eyes. It rushes out like it was waiting for you to open the door, open yourself. Like it was waiting to greet the outside ever since it took shape. Sometimes the words are born to be released. And sometimes you need to tear them out and the mass clings to your insides, dragging bits of tissue and bone and blood as it makes its way outside, fighting the light with the ferocity of a hundred betrayals.  As it finally lies on the pristine page, the splatter bleeds back into the shape of the letters and the author heaves in air into her gaping body and mind. Like there was never a fight.

The Screen clicks its teeth. This is inconsequential. What is the ending?

Nothing is perfect. Definitely not truth or its telling. But all writing is an attempt at truth. And the truth means nothing by itself. The truth is true because of the lies it overcame. Your words ring true when it is the closest to your reality that reality could be. The words make the truth. The words you didn't use make the truth. What you are makes the truth, just as much as what you could have been. And when you write, for a short while, both those Yous sit side by side, converse and create worlds.

The Screen is unimpressed.

The Body in Quarantine.

One afternoon

Your hands tell you stories you hadn't bothered to read before; the crisscrossing lines it's own strange calligraphy. You remember the scar you got when you fell off a bus. And the other scar right next to it where they put in the needle for the IV.
You read the furrow that has dug itself into the base of ringed fingers. You smile at the seat carved into the side of you middle finger by pens and pencils and ideas that pushed into your skin with the stubbornness of a young child that wants to be carried. Your read the braille of the callouses that sprouted from carrying bags and baggage. You frown at the smoothness that has replaced the tough cliffs of your fingertips. And that is just the hands...

Another evening

The arm flung across the shoulder in a comfortably contorted self-indulgence debates what curve can carry a new mark.
May be on the left rib? Just to poke fun at Adam?
My stomach gurgles with indolence. That will involve finding a rib.
Oh hush
And as we contemplate scarification, my knees let out a sarcastic creak.
The knees are teeming with memory and rebuke. They are permanently darkened by too many falls. Do you really need more scars? Don't you have enough already?

Well those scars were not by choice.

Parts of my body are pointedly silent.
My arm shifts.

The knees creak crankily. A scar is a scar. A pretty one won't make a difference. See look at your poor shin down here-- cut deep by the sharp edge of an enamel bathroom fixture your dropped by mistake.
My left shin is indifferent. Yeah well, things happen. We are ok. Right, right leg?
Hmm? Oh sorry I had fallen asleep. Now I am all tingly.
The feet twitch with caustic candour.
She does that a lot.
The body nods and murmurs agreement.

Hey, I am right here!

We know, comes the chorus.

Late night
The spine nudges me out of sleep.
Sorry I woke you up.
It's alright. I wasn't really sleeping.I was trying to trick myself into quiet.
There is a long beat of silence.
So...
How long do you think we will last?
Longer than we should. Longer than we can bear.
Are you alright?
Yes. No. You?
Not really.

There is a long beat of silence again.

Early morning
I realise the rest of the body had been feigning sleep too.
My eyes spy the weak light through the curtain and close themselves tight.
My body holds on to the night.

My toes whisper a squeaky question in the cocoon of the blanket.
Will we survive?
My feet hug each other in the dark.
My lips chew themselves for comfort.

Something will.

The body stays silent. I give it time.
It needs to learn to live with just me.
The throat heaves out a huff of dry laughter.
We have always lived with just you.

The eyes cannot deny the light anymore.

I am here.

We know.

Lady Lazarus. aka What it feels like to come back to life.

The blog has been dormant, and the fact that I attempt resurrection mid-pandemic is woefully cliche. But, as a wise woman once wrote, cliches are cliches for a reason.

Things happened. Too many things. Too few. Too fast. Not fast enough. In the churning confusion of hitting the ground running, it feels like I had steeled my Self into a tightened knot of kinetic survival-- not standing still enough for the muscles to unlock and the blood to flow. All of this feels abstract, I know.  But what I am trying to say is, there was no room in me for the World. I could not invite it in. It spoke in a startling tongue and hit me too hard with its blinding flares. I hurtled through existence, trying as far as possible to have no more inner spaces for outer worlds to rampage.

But the world, like love, like life, seeps in through the cracks and fills you up no matter how many shutters you bar. There are secret passage ways to the core and my traitorous soul was and is too greedy for life. She was raised on curiosity and recklessness, and she knew now how to fight for what she needed. And she needed me to give in. She needed me to break.

I bleed quicker, now. Burn faster. Hurt easier... perhaps this is healing? When the scar tissue softens and the callouses fall off, so I can be foolish and soft again?
I will not pretend that I am ready for The World According to Me. I will not claim any sense of completion or closure. I cannot promise fidelity and constancy. But I do recognise in me a small twinge, a spark which just might be coaxed into flame.

I am willing to try again. And The World According to Me, just might surprise me pleasantly. I am, as always, in your care.

Onam 2019

It is Onam.
I ought to be home.
I ought to be running into the embrace of my mother's warm gaze, long before her arms close around me. I ought to be hearing the comfort of my father's voice bubbling through the paan that he refuses to give up. I ought to be breathing in sunlight and salt filtered through petrichor and tea.
I ought to be home.
Home is a strange name to call a place I have barely lived in. My memories are cultured in the petridish of distance. My tongue clatters awkwardly foreign around the syllables and sounds of my land (though my 'L's always betray my origins). I am forever the outsider inside. Forever the traveller stopping by. Forever carrying 'home' in a backpack.
But it is my birthright.
No label, no paper, no misguided order can erase the roots that go deep into ourselves. My blood carries the sweetness of tender coconut water, my bones the stubbornness of teak, my flesh the pliancy of banana stem. When I land on that soil, the ground greets my feet like a mother kissing a newborn's feet, welcoming me home.

I have what so many of my countrymen are being denied. I have what so many need to prove to be able to touch.  I have something that no one ought to be able to take away from you. I have it.
And I am not everyone

How can I go home, when so many cannot?

Permission to Speak

Words
Words were the only things you would accept
and so I mined words from every corner of my being.
I poured a flood of words at your feet
and then warmed them with more words
like glowing embers
like hope
I threw words in the air like colour,
red as the blood in my veins,
red as the blood I would give you
if you would ask it of me.
red as the dawn that won't be denied
and red as the haze before my eyes

Now
The embers have burned out.
the flood has turned into poison mud
clogged with the carcasses
of words that died of heartbreak
bloodless and cold.

And you stand rooted
in a murk of my making.
What can I say to you
when there is nothing left of paradise
 in my song
what can I give you
when all the words have grown empty
as hollow hope

I am sorry
My words are hubris
My flaw is innocence
What can I give you now?

Thoughts after Illness

My body is soft
 like old-fashioned mochi
pounded into a semi-fluid comfort.
missing all the pleasing angles and panes
that would deem it beautiful.
Or  strong.

It is a deception this mochi softness.
My body is tough.
Like over-chewed chewing gum
that will make your jaws ache
but will deny you the comfort of an end.

My body gives the best hugs.
No sharp bones or hard muscle;
Because it is built to absorb
shocks and pain--
both mine and others'

My body is formed like the blot of ink;
that drop of paint
that fell on the page
and formed its own shape.
Spread itself out to cover
 as much as it could,
claiming room for me.

My body
 wraps itself in malleable layers
around me,
protecting me
in its fierce softness
that swallows every horrible thing
said about it
by me and by others,
and refuses to buckle.
It fights daily to keep me alive
intractable in its mission;
Every scar willfully obscured
Every ache denied.

And every once in a while
when it falters
in its illusion of sovereign protection,
It stutters and stumbles,
 bewildered by its weakness
like a flower discovering gravity,
like a child discovering
 that it is not  loved by everyone
Or an adult
Discovering she is loved.
The mochi softness folds in on itself.
waiting for the storm to pass.
Waiting for me to say something.

My body--
small
soft
imperfect
and mine.
You are not what I wished for
I am not what you wished for
We are what we've got.