The same song

How many roads have I wandered?
None and each my own
Behind me the bridges have crumbled
No question of return
Autumn leaves like discarded dreams
Trampled underneath a tide of callous feet
It's the same song playing everywhere I go
It's like an army marching right through me

Nowhere to go but the horizon
Where then will I call my home?
Nowhere to go but the horizon
Where then will I call my home?

Summers spent in the high grass
Are just fragments, ransacked memories
Dark river snakes across this smoky heart
Boatman sings his downstream melody

Nowhere to go but the horizon
Where then will I call my home?
How many roads have I wandered?
None and each my own
Behind me the bridges have crumbled
No question of return
Nowhere to go but the horizon
Where then will I call my home?

Do I write for myself or you?
When I smile, is it a reflection of you or is just my joy?

Does it matter, either way?:)

Identity

Stand in this moment, when the door just clicks shut,
Before you reach for the light switch.
Dusk's shadows lengthen across your familiar living room,
And no one's home but you.
The shades are drawn, the lights are off
No music, no warm touch to welcome you home.
In that moment- who are you?

What do you do when the lights are off?
Do you dance, or sit with a book
Air guitar, or lip sync silently?
What do you say when no one's listening?
Swear words or intelligent critique?
When nobody's watching, who are you?
Stand by yourself and be comfortable-
Do you care whether anyone's watching?
Uh-hunh, not asking if you say you care-
It's easy enough to toss your head and tell me-
"What do I care what people think of me?"
But when the spotlight fades, when no-one's looking-
Do you care then?

Can you stand by the lake on your own?
Watch the stars and sip your wine, believing in a higher power
Or do you stand and curse that no one sees your greatness?
Speak with yourself, since I'm not here, there's no one here but you.

When there's nothing to drown yourself in, nothing to drown you out
In that moment- who are you?

Double vision

Watching The Namesake felt somewhat like being in an alternate reality, if it can be called that- Imagine being in a glass case that is your life, looking out on a blurred reality, which is just as much your life as the case itself, only a little more out of your grasp than the present. In a darkened movie hall filled with ‘strange foreign voices’, I felt so much like reaching out and explaining, when I heard whispers and laughs over “those foreign customs”. I felt like asking- Do I seem foreign to you, in my Aeropostale sweatshirt and Nikes? I speak your language, with your accent when I need to, and you see no foreign-ness to me then.

Yet I understand the need to wear sindoor, the ululating to cast off evil eyes at a wedding, the mother who expects her son to call her when he gets home, even though he is 35. I see no strangeness in an adult who feels a sense of responsibility towards their parents.

Yes, I hold my boyfriend’s hand in public here, but in that darkened theater, I cringed with Gogol as Maxine reached out to hold his hand in front of his parents.

Too many facets of life can get confusing, sometimes, refusing to blend into one coherent reality. I have been Ashoke, traveling in a second-class railway compartment, reading of English children and their nursery teas and apple trees where pixies lived. I am Ashima, held by the melodies of my land in strange foreign places. The rhythm in my feet when I walk in New York is the dhol and the tabla, not the rap that fills the air of the streets. I have spelt my name a million times, as she did over the phone. I am sometimes Gogol, my American friends impressed with my knowledge of rock music, fast food, and American customs like hot dogs at the ball game, and still, I choose to come home to good home-cooked Indian food.

And through the length of the film, I could hear in my head parallel voices. Firstly, my mother, who once lived Ashima’s life, or something fairly close to it, I imagine. Secondly, my friends, wonderfully open Americans- one read the book before watching the film, and another who so wants to visit India, to come for my wedding. Yet neither of them would understand the depths and the reach of the little things in the movie- When R. asks me if people in India really buy vegetables like that, what answer is there? When I am asked about wedding customs, how hard it is to separate the layers of religion and region, past and present… And of course, my own- a voice that shakes in nervousness with Ashima as she learns to drive, and laughs with Maushumi over the silliness of frying samosas with your mother-in-law every Thursday.

I rarely think about my roots- it would be almost as silly as remembering each step in the Krebs cycle each time I take a breath. (For the uninitiated/ non-biologists, the Krebs cycle is the biochemistry of what your body does with oxygen). While it would be foolish to recite the cycle each time I breathe, it would be foolish also to deny its importance.

Yet random conversations in the lab, and a movie like this one, can call it all into question- And I am left fumbling for my own reality, my own voice, and somewhere, my own country.

Un-slumping myself

Not easily done, but try I must-

Get off my feet and shake up the dust

I can go ride a bike, or become a cook

That should be easy- just out of a book?

But un-slumping myself is not easily done,

The only way to do it is at a good fast run

Though sleeping looks slumpy, sometimes its not

A good long sleep, can even prevent brain-rot..

...

Okay, maybe that was a pathetic attempt at unblocking the words.. but what the heck :)

Another sunset on a Delhi terrace

What bridges this hour? And what marks the boundaries between light and dark? Suspended between day and night this hour stands- part of both worlds and neither. Apart from all else, it hangs like a snatch of music confined forever to this space and hour, yet flowing wild and free within it. Waiting like a song to be plucked out of the sky- if only my hands could reach, if only my words would hold. But I don't even try, and the hour wraps itself around softly around me.

This is no place to dream of beauty- An ancient terrace, a crowded neighbourhood in a crowded city. The view- Broken tile and glass, piles of cement and an ancient commode. Just below are a neighbour's kitchen and bedrooms- All the sounds and smells of a family coming home to dinner fill this space. Yet something holds me up here-disconnected, restless and troubled, trying to put words to my thoughts.

And I don't look down at all. Across the street are a few trees clothed in grey, settling under their covers of birds for the night. Further away- a whole world of green turned grey-tinged-with-red. And in the distance, the cries of a peacock and a pair of lapwings.

Twilight. Day flying out on the dark wings of crows, pigeons crying hoarse farewells, and night stepping softly in, soundless except for the flutter of a stray bat.

All colours fade to black. All light turns dark. And long after sunset I stand here, with the sky screaming night, and my mother screaming dinner. And now, hours later, this-

Maybe there never was a need for a bridge. The span of a bird's wing closing day, and the flutter of the bat unfurling the night are all that the hour needed. My mind wants to label it and hold it and girdle it with a ring of words, but the hour still stands free.

As I do, when I stop chaining thoughts and feeling with words and labels. Complete and whole, all spirits blend if I let them- the one that soars with the birds, and the one that comes in to dinner with the family.

Godhuli

I breathe this light in, revel in it- and it feels so real, the desire to become this light. "The magic hour", most flattering of all lights- "godhuli", the light in which a bride- to- be was 'shown' to suitors for the first time. A wondrous mingling of the elements- dust on the wind at sunset, and it will come down with a night shower in a little while. But for now it is here, and I am a part of it.

It stands like a blushing, shy child, half-touching ugly buildings, beautifying them in its own image, then lingering, as if unsure whether to leave the moment the sun sets.
And now it is gone, and I stand here, wishing it hadn't. Wishing it had stayed just one moment more- one hour- one lifetime.. A light in which everything is glorified in mellow sunset brilliance.. which leaves no blacks or whites behind, just shades of pearl and grey..in which everything is just one tone more lovely- a light worth holding, for a lifetime and more.

But it fades, as all light will, leaving just a memory of colour, and I sleep to the sound of rain on dusty leaves, dusty roads and dusty minds and hearts.

And a new day is here- clear-washed blue skies, and gold light on emerald leaves shines on, not heeding loud traffic and harsh voices. A new day, and it brings with it new colour, tinting my world with all its sparkle- and it is a beautiful world- everything in it. A shade lovelier than my memory of it..

The light is always just right. Just my eyes that sometimes get a little dusty, and need a night shower to put things right.

Thought

"Analysis makes you aware. It doesn't stop you being self-destructive."

(Erich Segal, Doctors)