2011/2012

My husband bought me a fitness tracker for a Christmas gift this year. It marks my steps, the stairs I climb and how well I sleep. It lets me set little goals for myself and chirps out cheery messages encouraging me through the day. I've loved setting goals for myself on the log, walking 15,000 steps instead of 10, 30 floors instead of 20, earning virtual badges for my efforts. This morning, I was amused at the roundness of these numbers, how I like to track my progress in multiples of 5 or 10, preferably both. A nice sense of completion.

But turn the year at its end over in my mind, and how little of it is so smooth and simple. 365 and something days. 12 months. 7 days. 24 hours. Time runs with sharp edges, trailing odd numbers and primes that I cannot parse into quick little pockets of even-sized memory.

Some things stand out sharper than others. People who are not here to ring in the new year, most of all. Their voices bounce around these edges, popping up abruptly at times I least expect. People who may not be here for the next. Efforts too personal to be shared even in this anonymous space. Parents visiting. Being able to afford material comforts that were unthinkable two years ago. Finding, at last, a glimmer of the person I used to be. The one who listened to the small signs the universe hands out, and trusts them.

Time and memory do not come in neatly multiples of 5 and 10. And so there is no measure I can use to weigh one against the other. A dear one's passing against the birth of my friend's child. Spotting a little sign in a car against the years of evidence that something may not work. I cannot track these things, except by running memory's fingers over the uneven edges of the year that was. Treasuring the cracks, and remembering this, an old favorite quote:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget the perfect offering.
There's a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

Wishing us all a light-filled 2012, and may the light remind us of good things :)

House guests

Now, I know the way your body relaxes into the couch, the bends of your legs and neck as you lie back to play a game. I'm aware that you're allergic to eggs, and of your firm conviction that traditional foods must be cooked with certain recipes and no other. I've watched your frenzied, last-minute style of packing, the intimate links of your togetherness cemented in these material things. One packs the other's toothbrush, the other remembers to bring the thick socks the one forgets. You, in your turn, remember my anger at being dropped off to catch a flight fifteen minutes after it departed. You remember to save some food for me when I get home, and leave me my space, respecting my home for mine.

I think you would call this familiarity. We have shared a house, shared our lives for a few weeks. Having been fed and watered by one another, our needs attended to and differences overlooked with mostly polite courtesy, we could be said to know one another.

For myself, these facts turn my mind back to other intimacies. The way I know my friend must smile when she sees my little chat window pop orange on her screen. How I know my father will respond to an article I send him. The way my husband and I know what the other thinks in a game of charades or Taboo. The depth of affection in the smallest of our connections. The way our lives resonate with one another,
even if it has been a while since we sat on a couch together, just us and no television.

If wishes were..

'Tis the season to be giving thanks. All my feeds are flooded with the Oscar speeches you wish you'd never heard- people thanking their taps for giving them water and the Tiger for not eating all the Cheetos, and much else. Of course this set me off on my own personal vote of thanks (which no, I shall not suffer anyone reading this to endure).

The list is long, and complicated, and I'm not entirely sure yet whether I am thankful for it all. No, I am not mature enough to see everything in the world as a blessing. Some things just suck, and should never have happened. (That's a pretty easy list to make, perhaps for next year though). But in the middle of it, what struck me was that I was most UN-grateful for my times of inaction.

When I had an opportunity and didn't give it my all. For fear of not having prepared enough(No, I can't pitch an editor with that!). For fear of looking like a fool (No, I will not dance). For fear of failing (What if I suck at it?). For just no reason (Never mind, I'll get to it later). Those are the times I wish I hadn't.

There is only one way to find out if you've prepared enough, if you suck at something or really have it in you to be good at it. Just doing it. And sometimes, when you take that leap of faith and pitch that big-time editor with your completely half-baked story idea, it is followed by absolute panic. But you do it anyway, because you asked for it, didn't you? You work through the half-baked pitch, the 10,000 word transcript and the even less-baked last minute draft. And then, once in a while, you hear something like this:

"We are editing your wonderful (article). Fabulous stuff!"

And it makes you wish, even more, for another chance at all those times that you didn't try.

Reprieve

I used to memorize poems when I was little. Before I knew what the words meant. John Donne and Tennyson and Browning and Keats and Santayana and Gibran. They just sounded good, even though I still don't understand some of them. Here's one, to remind me (and you, if you read the last post), that for every fearsome, loathsome, horrifying, meaningless word, there are so many perfect others.

Simple words, placed and timed effectively, that continue to dance in perfect rhythm long after their writers are gone. Like these: (The brook, by Tennyson)


I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
by many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silver water-break
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

Jargonese

I am so tired of big, clunky words.
Some of them are horrid. Pharmacogenomic.
Others are meaningless. Actionable.
And the rest are scary.
Periventricular leukomalacia.
Pulmonary hypertension.

Words bigger than the babies that try to fight these diseases. Words so big they stretch across the country from my friends' lives to strike fear in mine. Words so strong they can make me totter in my confidence at being a writer.

The words we have to fight these things, they are so small.
Hope. Love. Prayer. Faith.
And yet we hold them so, like these butterfly winged little things could flap out all the storms, and keep these babies, these dreams alive.

Anonymous

Words sometimes arrive with long kite-tails of attachment. A second story trails behind the story they frame. The body speaks of experience and reality, while the spirit that trails behind whispers of more.

Here is my story, the spirit-story reminds you. It is a story that will carry you to the farthest shores of tears and inspiration, laughter and love. On winds of kindness and experience, some words fly in like kites from distant lands. Bright and travel-worn, as rich in their living as in the intricacy of their crafting.

Some stories live so truly I wonder how they can bear to remain untold. If they were mine, would I hide them from the world? But they are not mine, and sometimes, perhaps, stories like tired kites only look for a place to lie beyond the reach of the wind.
So I hold these stories close, as precious as the people who share them with me.

Blog-speak

I ran away from home when I turned five. I wanted to find my own way. In a perhaps unique tantrum for a child so young, I was angry with the world, convinced I knew more than the grown ups, that I had it right and they knew nothing (Don't most of us do this at 13 or something?)

At five, I wandered off into the world to pretend to be a grown up who actually knew it all (unlike all the others who had NO clue!). I used big words and wore nice clothes every day. I 'did lunch' with other people who wore nice clothes and talked about value propositions and "incentivizing" projects. I bought a fancy car and dreamed of grand vacations.

You'd never have believed I was only five, honestly. I felt like a 30 year old professional, in my coordinated outfits and pretty red car zipping around like a California girl in the movies.

But even 30 year olds slip into sleep dreams every night- dreams in which they are five, and wandering far from home, and trip in high heels. Dreams filled with simple words, like "writer" and "hope" and "want" and "love", where big words only mess up the patterns. Dream-spaces where there are no slots big enough or complicated enough to fit grown-up things like budgets and therapy and value propositions.

These ideas are far too big for a five year old to handle, even when it's pretending to be 30. So if you're still reading, forgive this blog, while it tries to find its way back. You see, it only turned five last month, and it is still figuring a lot of things out.

My days of late have filled themselves without my noticing it really. For someone (like me) capable of over-reacting hugely to the tiniest annoyance, I would have expected to notice this. The days overflow with tasks at work, chores at home and desperate attempts to organize. Suddenly, I have no time to garden. No time to harvest tomatoes and basil, or watch the chrysanthemums put out new shoots. I have no time to think or feel my way to words in this space.

And yet it is not this lack of time that bothers me, but the abundance of doubt that fills it. Too many conflicting ideas, of what priorities at work should be, of who I am and what I'm doing with my time. Attempting to sort through the tangled skeins only makes me trip over the one thread that holds taut and strong through the mess.

I am drawn back to one of my favorite quotes. To paraphrase, who is the worse off: he who has never seen the light, or he who saw it and went blind, and now only has the memory of light?

Yes, that is an over-dramatic representation of the situation. I wish I had the time, and the confidence, to lay out my tangled web better than this. Perhaps this post is a first step to figuring it out.

Being bold

A task I set for myself looms closer and closer, and I am terrified to do it. It's a simple enough thing: an interview. I've interviewed enough sources to be familiar with the process and know what makes for good material. I'm not quite yet at a point where I can be casually confident enough to pick up the phone to interview someone without stalking them and their work in every way possible.

This limbo paralyzes me with fear. What if she thinks I'm the most idiotic person she ever spoke to? What if she loses her temper and hangs up half-way through? God, what if she asks me if I know the first thing about narrative before she hangs up?

The questions refuse to stop. On the one hand, I want to kick myself for signing up for this. On the other, I refuse to criticize one of the few apparently sensible pitches I made. And so, I am terrified of talking to a writer as another writer.

I think there are two kinds of people who 'get the job done'. There are those who know too little to be afraid, and are enthusiastic enough, determined enough, to just do it, ignorant of what they know not. And there are the battle-weary folk, who've been there, done that enough times to know that eventually it will all fall into place. I stand somewhere in between: too aware and too inexperienced to be fearless. A little knowledge is certainly a dangerous thing, especially when you are the one holding it.

One by one, the stars fade.

Two monks were charged with chronicling the nine million names of God. No one knew what would happen when they completed the task. At the end of their mission, there was no more being to the world: No ideas to conquer, no understanding left beyond the nine million names. And as they watched, the stars began to vanish from the night sky.

I watch the stars fade and dim in these patterns, and think perhaps we have chronicled all there was to this little corner of the universe. I have counted the 9 million names of God to make this work, and now all there is this waiting, this watching the stars dim, this wondering of what universe I must learn to live through next.

What it means

Thank you for sharing your responses, everyone! If you haven't yet taken the test and don't want to read the responses, stop reading NOW :). (The quiz is here)

Read on and drop a line letting me know how accurate the quiz was for you!

In order of the questions, with further explanations/ interpretation in brackets:

The person you're walking with is the most important person in your life at this point.

The size of the animal that jumps out at you represents the way you perceive problems/ challenges in life (the most typical answer is tiger/lion, so scale accordingly if you picked a much smaller animal, like a rabbit, or a much larger one, like an elephant)

The way you deal with the animal represents how you handle problems/challenges in real life. Do you attack it, play with it, stare it down?

The fence around the house represents whether you distance people. If you had a fence, you tend to keep them at a distance.

The size of the house represents your ambitions (Rather obviously :)).

The dining room is supposed to be a symbol of personal satisfaction: If you mentioned food/ flowers/fruit etc. in your description, you're generally a happy, satisfied person.

The material the cup in the backyard is made of symbolizes the strength of your relationship (with the person you're walking with). Typically, the cup is made of china/ porcelain. Stronger materials- wood, metal- imply stronger relationships.

What you do with the cup represents the way you handle this relationship in your life. For example- if you choose to keep it outside your door rather than bring it indoors, it might imply that you don't let this person into your 'inner life'.

Walking on out, the size of the water body is scaled to your 'basal' desires- material, sexual, financial, etc. Here, I think the scale is more in terms of one's own perceptions- did you visualize a small pond or a view of the ocean?

How wet you get (or how close to the water you are) when you cross it shows how far you will go to achieve your desires.

Imagine this.

A pop personality quiz a friend shared with me several years ago. I was surprised by how accurate it was (and still is). Relax, and visualize the scenarios that follow as fully as possible. Don't put too much thought into it- just your instinctive, first response answers. I'll post the explanations in a few days. Of course, feel free to share your responses in the comments, though you don't have to :)


You're setting off for a walk in the woods. Who are you walking with?

As you walk, an animal leaps out of the bushes at you. What animal is it?

How do you react to it?

You continue along your walk and come to a clearing in the woods, where you see your dream house. Does it have a fence around it?

On a scale of 1-10 (5 being average), going from small to large, how big is your house?

You walk into the dining room of the house. Describe the room.

You wander out into the backyard, and find a cup-like vessel lying there. What is it made of?

What do you do with the cup?

Continuing on, you reach the end of your property, where there is a water body. What kind of water body is it (pond/stream/ocean) ?

If you had to, how would you cross this water body?

Of shadow cities

I write frequently of trees, and grass and flowers and oceans. But my roots are in cities, and it is cities that complete my mental landscapes like no other geography can.

Excerpts from books about two of my favorites, New York and Bombay follow. The books also happen to be some of the best writing I’ve read recently, and Shadow Cities, in particular, is a masterpiece on so many levels.

(The books: Shadow Cities, by Andre Aciman, and Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts)

From Shadow Cities:

Some people bring exile with them the way they bring it upon themselves wherever they go. (..) An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss.

It is difficult to explain what seclusion means when you find it on an island in the middle of Broadway, amid the roar of midday traffic.

Perhaps what lay beyond the trees was not the end of Manhattan, or even Paris, but the beginnings of another, unknown city, the real city, the one that always beckons, the one we invent each time and may never see and fear we’ve begun to forget.

Sometimes finding you are lost where you were lost last year can be oddly reassuring, almost familiar. You may never find yourself; but you do remember looking for yourself. That too can be reassuring, comforting.

Here I would come to remember not so much the beauty of the past as the beauty of remembering, realizing that just because we love to look back doesn’t mean we love the things we look back on.

(..) all these people and all these layers upon layers of histories, warmed-over memories, and overdrawn fantasies should forever go into letting my Straus Park, with its Parisian Frankfurts and Roman Londons, remain forever a tiny, artificial speck on the map of the world that is my center of gravity, from which radiates every road I’ve traveled, and to which I always long to return when I am away.

And a few from Shantaram:

They knew the place in me where the river stopped, and they marked it with a new name. Shantaram Kishan Kharre. I don't know if they found that name in the heart of the man they believed me to be, or if they planted it there, like a wishing tree, to bloom and grow.

I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.

Every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness.

One of the ironies of courage and why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for somone else than we do for ourselves alone

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.

If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.

Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.

It's a fact of life on the run that you often love more people than you trust. For people in the safe world, of course, exactly the opposite is true.

What characterizes the human race more, cruelty, or the capacity to feel shame for it?

Sometimes you break your heart in the right way.

Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it.

Tipping points

A familiar point of amusement for me is the three phases my relationships go through. Most of my friends are people I like instantly and deeply, within a few minutes of meeting them. I go through an initial stage of near-infatuation, where we have long conversations that linger in my mind and the person can do no wrong. On several occasions, I have fought with family and others to defend my friends and their actions. Following this, there's a phase where I find the person incredibly predictable and equally annoying- when I experience something (something I read, or a movie, or whatever else) I know EXACTLY how they will respond. And everything they do irks me.

Beyond this, there is an 'acceptance zone' where people fall in at various levels, a zone where I continue to love them but stop being irritated. I can accept their actions and behaviors as part of who they are and no longer feel the need to judge them by my standards. I like to think these zones are not obvious to my friends unless I mention them- the irritation is as unintended and inexplicable to me as the affection, and though the former passes, the latter persists through the course of these moods of mine. If I wanted to make this sound grander than I think it is, I would probably describe this equilibrium I reach as the point where my heart and brain come together in a relationship- I love, and I judge, and finally reach a phase where I can justify each to the other. (Why do I love this person and spend so much time/conversation/etc. on them? Why do I judge this person unless I care about them?)

The length of the first two phases varies- I remain infatuated with some people longer, make my peace with some sooner than others. But in every case through most of my life, I can mark off the three periods distinctly. I wonder if this is typical? (since of course, this isn't something I discuss with most friends, nor intend to!)

And in a parallel mood, I wonder if my sense of my surroundings is reaching this phase of acceptance as well. First, I couldn't get enough of being an independent adult. Then, I longed for the simplicity and security of childhood, as I (metaphorically!!) held up every cleaning rag and electricity bill and vacation plan to the light of childhood happiness asking, "Really, is this all there is to growing up?" Now, after constantly reacting to nearly everything I encounter, my body and mind are learning to fall into an equilibrium where I can move through my days with ease, and less need to evaluate each move and decision.

Two reviews

A self-absorbed prologue (skip down if you only want reviews ;)):

I rarely write reviews, here or elsewhere. It takes more immediate thought and depth of perception than I am willing to spare for most of what I come across. I like talking about books and movies, but that is about all. Beyond that, I cannot summarize what I read nor answer the question “What are you reading lately?” with a simple title or two. It is easier to say what I am remembering, what words from books or movies or songs I stumbled over previously are most resonant with my present. Two recent encounters led me to write this down, though, and so, here goes:

Not quite magic

Perhaps obviously, the last Harry Potter movie. Perhaps equally obviously, I didn’t like it very much. None of the movies lived up to my connections with the books, though I could never quite put my finger on why as precisely as I could with this last film.

As the better part of two hours flew past on the wings of albino dragons and suits of armor coming alive, the finale was met only with an insipid, not quite heartfelt, “Does it hurt to die?” In my imagination, this is the point where the 17 year old turns to childhood once more and resurrected ghosts offer more solidity than the giant trees that surround him, where the man who has done more than most ever dream of is faced with the last great fear common to Muggle and Wizard alike. On the screen, I see a marginally annoying teenager displaying neither emotion nor much else.

I didn’t quite "grow up" with Harry Potter, reading the first book when I was 15 and the rest along the way. But like my connection with books I particularly love, I remember each encounter like a meeting with a loved set of friends, and could blabber endlessly about personal connections with each one, how I stumbled across the books before most people had even heard of them(Imagine a time when you could walk into a bookstore and ask for the third HP book and be met with “Huh?”)and much more.

Most importantly, like so many other kids/adults fumbling through life, I’ve practiced the spells with Harry and Hermione and the rest. I’ve cast personal Patronus spells at anxious interviews and Riddikulus-ed away nightmares in the dark. I have learned that to use an unforgivable curse, you must mean it, that to transform a mouse into a teacup you must be able to visualize it first.

The books, you see, were never about the magic alone. They were as much about allegory and myth and growing up and finding strength as they were about learning to cast a powerful spell. The real magic was the people in the stories, not the things they did. And the movie, though well-made for a film, fails to capture that. The movie is about the fireworks and the effects, not the maturing of character and subtleties that captured my heart the first time around. It’s like licking the icing off a cake. Though I won’t say no to the icing, I prefer savoring the layers.

Magically real

And secondly, am I the last person to be reading Shantaram? I tend to avoid over-hyped books, especially when they are ‘sold’ to me by eager wannabe intellectualists over late-night bar conversations. And biased as I am in my views, I tend to be wary of books about India. But this- it is rich and layered and magical and familiar, Bombay in my eyes as I read his words. Street-smells rise off the pages and I almost feel the rickety bus and the weight of my bags as I hold them tight. Colaba streets and night-time by the Arabian sea and the ease with which the words flow. The humor reminds me of the cleverness I love about Salman Rushdie, every few lines I come across a turn of phrase or a sentence that makes me want to grab the words out and wave them on a banner that shouts, “Look at this!” and the love that seeps through the words keeps me turning the pages. Even only a few chapters in, I am hooked. And even if the rest of the book disappoints, this I would come back to.

An explanation

Saying a well thought-out "no" is perhaps one of the most empowering acts possible. It takes introspection and deep thought and much courage. Despite my tendency to optimism, I believe the capacity to refuse something is just as essential and important as the ability to say yes. This implies, of course, a certain degree of self-realization and maturity in the person involved. The refusal I refer to is not the childish tantrum of a toddler refusing his green peas, nor the denial of the eternal pessimist who believes nothing is possible.

No is the stand of a person who has seen two paths and made a choice. It is not an thoughtless process- "here I am, let me pick one and see where it goes. Why think about this?", nor is it the un-choice of the person who drifts with the tide, "Yeah, let me just see where life takes me, maybe it will work out." No is the choice of the teenager to stand up to peer pressure. It is the refusal of a person to take on more work to keep everyone around happy. It is the stand of the woman who is not afraid to take time for herself away from her family. It is the choice of the person who refuses to bend to circumstance just because it exists.

Just as important as voicing the refusal is enabling another to voice it. Perhaps the parent who has raised a child capable of saying no is a better person to explain this. In my mind, raising someone to a level of self-awareness where they have both the knowledge and strength to refuse something is an act of power. This is not always welcome, of course, since any extreme growth comes with pain. And even if the refusal is directed at the parent/ teacher, there must be, somewhere, some measure of pride that they have raised a human being who knows their mind and is unafraid to use it.

And yet a refusal rarely makes sense to the person on the receiving end. "Why must I go through this pain and this struggle?" asks the hurt voice. If there is a purpose, perhaps it is this. This was never about you. You were meant to teach someone else something about themselves, give them a degree of knowledge and strength they did not have before they met you.

Logical progression?

:Tell me the way to the big city.
:Do you want to go there?
:I don't know. Give me the directions and then I will decide.

If the journey is all that matters, why set a destination? Enjoy the sights along whatever path you are on.

If you want to reach the big city, find a way to get there regardless of what the directions say.

Unsure of both desire to reach a destination and the means to reach it, one can rarely get anywhere.

Among others, I am

I went to a party yesterday. One where I didn’t know a soul and my RSVP, sent thrice, had not been acknowledged. I walked into a tiny room filled with people and wine and beer and food, conversations and laughter and those big, intimidating circles of people who all know each other. I spoke to people I had never seen before, and eventually even the person who had ignored the RSVPs wandered over and introduced himself. About 30 people spent over two hours together, and at the end of it I was among the last 8 hanging around and chatting as we made plans to continue the conversation at a nearby bar. Bottom line: I enjoyed it, and met some good people.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be this person, I would have laughed in your face and bet my first-born child upon proving you wrong. If you were to tell anyone that knows me, they would probably do the same. I am the person who skipped out on a party I helped organize because I couldn’t talk to the classmates I had spent two years in a dorm with. I’ve skipped out on countless reunions and lab lunches, work outings and dinners with friends, only because I was “too shy”. And yet, I would do yesterday evening over without a second thought. Have I, “as a person”, changed so much?

I try not to dwell too much on the self. In terms of a personality, I don’t care for discussions or analysis of who I am. My tastes, the things I like or the ways I behave are not significantly enough a part of who I am to be held on to like symbols of identity.

Am I shy or talkative? Am I the kind of person that hangs out in bars? Am I sufficiently devout and respectful of tradition? Am I a fashionista or a geek, a chick or a scientist? I try to avoid clichés not because they exist, but because I don’t think they serve much purpose. The “person that hangs out in bars” is not always an alcoholic, and the “shy” person is often far more egoistic and full of themselves than the girl that chatters to every stranger. I don’t like being labeled, and refuse to label people based on such traits.

A personality is a set of survival tools for society, and I view it as such. At a more innate level, I am a person with ambitions and desires, a specific set of goals that bring me different kinds of satisfaction: physical, emotional and intellectual (I will not discuss the spiritual here). My “personality” is what helps me get to those satisfactions.

Cocoon

Inside these padded walls, I can bounce my ideas around. The walls lob them gently back to me, creating a resonance of harmonious theory. Nothing crashes, nothing breaks inside the silk cocoon. Any dissonance is quickly blended in until it is unrecognizable. Occasionally, an especially sharp notion may poke through, exposing the padding and threatening to break my shell. Poke the stuffing back in quickly, frayed threads and knots and all. Sew up the hole, and all that remains of the uncomfortable idea is a scar where the walls were stitched up.

Each of us creates our own padded spaces, surrounded by people and ideas we are comfortable with. Within this space, we like to think of ourselves as diverse, open-minded folk. Yet the best measure of being diverse is when one's ideas are threatened.

If everyone you speak to agrees with you and slips seamlessly into your cocoon, you never even see diversity. If you aren't being challenged, you have no idea of where to expand, where your padded walls need to be mended. The measure of your growth is how your cocoon handles challenges that don't fit into it already.

About me

Considering how much time I spend writing about myself here, it seems unfair that I should be annoyed by other people's bios. I hate having to write "About me" sections, bios or anything else that requires a snappy, succinct sentence that sums me up. And when I come across one that attempts to be humorous or deep, all I want is to rip it apart. One person describes herself as "Delightfully Indian". To whom are you delightful, and what makes you more Indian, or more delightfully so, than every other person in the sub-continent? Are you really no more than a uniquely gleeful conglomeration of race-determining gene variants?

Or someone else who says: "I like blue M & Ms". What's wrong with the rest? Yes, I went out and ate an entire pack of every color to find out what was so great about the blue ones (nothing?). Would this person get along better with the blue creatures from Avatar than normal human beings? The people with sparkly one-liners about themselves abound. I, on the other hand, must prepare for hours to introduce myself in a professional setting, just listing my qualifications. I have no world-views I would kill for, no candy fetish, and much as I love certain geographies, I like to think I am more than just "Indian", delightful or otherwise.

For myself, a recent conversation with a friend helped me understand. I like the idea of being always amused. Amusement, which stems from the verb "muser"- to think. I am constantly encountering things that set me thinking. Things I do not understand, funny things and sad things, strange things and things which explain older things I didn't understand. They all make me wonder, and most make me smile. I finally have a bio: "_ is constantly amused by the world and everything else." And even that amuses me. Ha.

If you had to pick one word or phrase to define your (most frequent) state of mind, what would it be?

The point is to live everything

Too much in the recent past is unexplained, and I struggle to find answers, even as I feel ashamed to be so expressive in this space. There are others who wonder and hurt far more deeply than I ever wish to, children and parents, lovers and wives and friends. In lieu of greater comfort, I rediscovered this:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.“
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Echo

Somewhere today a lab is out of order. People walk the hallways asking, "Have you heard?", "She was going to finish in a few months" , "She worked so hard.. poor thing."
A greying professor remembers her first emails to him. Enthusiasm bordering on desperation, the years she put into getting to a point where she could send him that email. He may even remember how he wondered at her perseverance as he presented her case to the committee, asking them to fund her graduate studies.

Somewhere, a brother takes the first flight available to meet his sister. There are anxious parental phone calls, logistics, endless paperwork and planning. This I cannot bring myself to imagine.

In frozen time-frames she walks into my room at night, after roll call, demanding and distributing her 'jaadu ki jhappis'. I hear her echo "-TA" when I call her Sanchi, completing her name emphatically. I hear her laugh and I see her dance, listen to her voice in countless conversations, real and virtual. What next, we ask and say, what next?
We've talked of plans, after hostel and after Baroda, what the US is like and the tedium of grad school, buying cars and non-academic options after a Ph.D. And each time our refrain, What next and what else?

Somewhere, there is an echo of our words that goes round and round the globe, a string of electrons magically dancing through cables under the oceans and continents. What next, it whispers, what next?

Even as the words bounce around, you are gone. In frozen time I feel the crash of metal and flesh and bone on a dark highway as it ripples under my skin, my fingers trembling in a mocking echo of yours. The smell of the fruit samples in your car and the sound of the sirens and helicopters and paramedic voices. Your emphatic ending of your own name resonates in emptiness and hits me harder than anything.

The words of our friend as she tells me you are gone. The way I wish for someone to hold her close through this.

Somewhere, shouldn't something be more ordered than it is here? Are the partings here balanced out by reunions elsewhere?

Or perhaps our echoes have no balance. Just the strength they find in their repetition as they bounce around the world, fading as we fade and revived by resonant times as somewhere, an advisor reads an enthusiastic email from a grad student. And somewhere, a brother flies out to meet his sister for a reunion happier than this one. And friends talk of things other than death when they say, What comes next?

Instead of faith

On a circling wind I watched a bird rise. Steady in its ascent, perfect stillness and awareness in every wing tip. On the same wind two sparrows tumbled through, flapping desperately to get to the nearest tree even as they were tossed around by the wind.

When I raise my eyes for inspiration, I don't always see what I wanted to see. But at times like this, I get what I needed- a good laugh at myself. So what if the universe doesn't feel like restoring my faith once in a while, and instead chooses to remind me of how ridiculous it is to flap about desperately in a storm?

Perhaps it is merely a spiritual placebo. Or perhaps it is just that when I am quiet enough to look to the skies, I can connect with a calmer, more rational and faithful self. Yet these are the times I am convinced of greater powers, a deeper universal rhythm worth keeping time to. And sometimes laughing at myself with.

I wish you a storm

"In the kingdom of the gods, one must be very careful. There are things we cannot do, words we cannot say." These are some, that for different reasons, will never reach their intended destinations in that kingdom.
=============================================================

You think you know it all. Just as I do. But here is the difference between you and I- I know that everything I stand for and believe in might be wrong. And I hope at least some of it is. But I know this also, and try, most times, to live by this. That commitment and kindness mean more than romantic ideals. That honesty counts for more than chickening out. That sticking through the tough times is worth it.

Because this much I know is true. Life is short and people disappear like summer winds. One minute they are here, talking to you on the phone about wedding dresses and how they suspected that guy you’re about to marry was your boyfriend all along, and the next minute they are gone. Before you can pick up the phone and call ‘when they are better and out of the hospital’. Before their son has a chance to start on his first job or bring a bride home. Before they can even get home from their first family vacation in ten years, they are gone in a crashing disaster of brain and heart and organ failure.

Because life slips away like this: Raw flesh tortured apart by the force of its own life-blood. A little clot that stops your brain that breaks your heart that brings your kidneys to a grinding halt. Because life slips away like this: Not in your sentimental tears and tortured emotions.

This much I know for sure. That blood surges and clots and the color of your bleeding romance will stop you in your tracks forever. This is the nature of blood and of life and of death. And this I can assure you will one day happen to both you and I, regardless of what we stand for today. So spare me your mawkish romance and your bloodshot eyes, your weeping heart and your fragile pretentions of emotion.

In this my parents, my husband and others more patient than I tell me to be kind and move on. Life is short, they remind me, and gone like a cloud in a summer storm. Love the uncle who said, the last time he called, “I’m waiting to see you at _’s wedding.” Remember the affection and hold the memory of shelter and warmth. Life is too short for unkindness, they say.

But on days like this I resonate only with one of my favorite cinematic moments. A scene from American Beauty, of a plastic bag caught in the wind. My words billow with rage and patience is ripped apart by my uncle’s passing.

I have neither time nor space to give you, ex-girlfriend of someone dear. Instead I give you my questions: Why say you were faking your emotions all this while? What sort of a woman are you, so keen on a wedding that you have forgotten what it takes to make a marriage? Why this gut-less playing of mind-games that only hurts the one I love? And what sort of family is this you come from, that thinks nothing of making outlandish demands of others’ children, but have failed to make their daughter become a decent human being?

At the end of it all, I only want for this to turn back on you, all the anger and confusion and unhappiness you have caused.

I wish you every unshed tear and all the grief you have caused. Because I hope they cut you deep enough to open your heart to this ephemeral space, where fragile things like people and love must stay so strong, when all we have is each other to hold through all the storms.

Easy way out : The boomerang effect

Sometime back, I wrote about how it's actually quite easy to fulfill one's dreams. (Before I go on, I would have to say this is speaking only in a personal growth/ professional sense. I don't mean dreams like your crush returning your affections or time travel to a care-free childhood.)

From personal experience, an important motivator is being forced to do things I dislike. Stuck in a job that is "OK", something I can tolerate from 9 to 5 and go home, rinse and repeat for the week- I am far less likely to stay up all night trying to find a way to make my 'dream' happen. But when forced to do things I actively dislike, it is far easier to make myself move towards what I want even at the end of a ridiculously long day.

The potency of fear as a motivator is well established in metaphor and reality to any adult(looming deadlines, ticking clock, back against the wall). At least for me, annoyance and hating what I was doing turned out to be pretty strong motivators to move towards what I want.

So if working towards fulfilling your dreams sounds impossible, try running in the opposite direction. And maybe you will find that hidden something that makes you push harder when you think you can't, and boomerang back to where you want to be.

Recipes and stop signs

Especially among friends, it surprises me to find people that think of recipes as rules to follow. When cooking with friends, I am amused by those that level out the flour in the measuring cup or insist rajma cannot be complete without the addition of fresh coriander/ cilantro leaves. Some friends frequently receive links to recipes with comments like: "Oh, I am very creative, I always add my own tweaks to dishes", while others might reply: "How can I make that, I don't have any _ on hand". Between the two extremes, I have grown up watching my mother add sambar powder to pasta for fussy children and serve sandwiches as dinner to a group that felt a "meal" must include rice, chapattis could hardly count as lunch or dinner.

My favorite kitchen memory of my mother is this: Working 9-6 and trying to manage two small children, one of whom always wanted sambar and the other would eat nothing but rasam, my mother put her magic spoon to work. In her absence, we were given a 'spell'. No matter what she'd cooked, all we had to do was turn the spoon thrice. Dip it in deep and turn the spoon thrice to the right for sambar, and three times the other way to turn the sambar into rasam. Et voila! We each got what we wanted. Of course, the other requirement for the spell was two naive children who didn't know that curry powder sediments at the bottom of the vessel, or even really know the difference between sambar and rasam ;).

My own culinary adventures are similar. I like to think I can cook menus off several world cuisines, and given a spare pantry will whip up a kootu or a pasta or fajitas or a stir-fry. But none of them are 'authentic', and none of them are particularly 'creative', at least in my opinion. It's food, and it tastes good to those I cook it for. It fulfills our needs and keeps us happy, and that is enough for me.

Recipes are suggestions, not rules to live or die by. As are stop signs, as long as you look all ways ;). And so are 'principles'. There is always a different perspective, and principles/morals are guidelines on how to proceed, options one can choose to live by. If a moral cannot stand up to circumstantial logical scrutiny and open discussion, I don't think it is worth killing/ dying for, nor is it worth causing unhappiness over.

(P.S: Why does spell check find fajitas acceptable, but not rajma/sambar etc.? For those that want 'recipes' for any of the foods mentioned, I'm happy to oblige ;))

If self-defeating statements all spontaneously combusted, conversations would be so much more insightful. Or perhaps non-existent. Like this post should be, perhaps :)

First, a little explanation: A combination of de-motivation and procrastination, awesome words (Carl Dennis, Wallace and others), and my own desire to see something nice when I visit my own blog - are the cause of this sudden flurry of posts. One of the most recommended things to beat the blahs is a good walk/run, and I'm a strong-voiced proponent.

I started running a few years ago for the sense of strength and well-being it brings me, even if it is purely biochemical. Though I try (really!) not to preach about exercise, it is hard not to want to share the high it brings. The quote below sums it up so well, maybe it will even inspire me enough to just shut up about how great it is to run :)

"Even if you'd never get old or even get fat;And your dog could take itself out; And everyone loved you; And you always slept well; And you never got sad; And all your teachers all thought you were a genius; And no one ever broke up with you; And every scholarship was a full scholarship;And the world wasn't a mess; And your body looked good all on its own; And every day in every way; You felt like you just wanted to feel...
YOU'D STILL RUN."

This is water

After my rather silly rant yesterday, I came across some wonderful resources on productive mind-hacks (ways to inspire a procrastinating freelancer ;)), one of which mentioned this little gem. A book called "This is water" by David Foster Wallace, based on a commencement speech he gave a few years ago. Here's a link to the speech.



The mention of just remaining aware of all the possibilities every minute, day in and day out, also reminded me of this poem by Carl Dennis.

Candles

If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and couldn't find it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
After a wasted month with the want ads,
To refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
Then still a girl, will be destined to step on
When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
If he doesnt stoop down and scoop the mess up
With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.

For you to burn a candle for him
You needn't suppose the cut would be a deep one,
Just deep enough to keep her at home
The night of the hayride when she meets Helen,
Who is soon to become her dearest friend;
Whose brother George, thirty years later,
Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
Doesn't go under in the Great Depression
And his son, your father, is able to stay in school
Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.

How grateful you are for your father's efforts
Is shown by the candles you've burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
For the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
With friends and family or alone on the road,
With noone to sit at his bedside
And hold his hand, the very hand
It's time for you to imagine holding.

==========

Motivation

My email inbox overflows with compliments. Some are delicately phrased critique of samples, others are more immediate "It looks fine, no editing needed!" Complete with smiley faces and wishing me luck, wanting to stay in touch and looking forward to working with me.

You would think this would make me happy, wouldn't you? These are ventures into a field where I have no professional training, no certificates to prove my worth. Compliments from the experts are my only reassurance that I'm making the right moves. And I have enough words of praise in that inbox to satisfy not just one, but several needy egos.

But none of them begin or end with confirmed offers of a full-time job doing what I love. And I am a little de-motivated now, despite going back and reading all those emails over. (Yes, how shallow and silly. I don't know of another way to convince myself I'm doing the right thing- do you?) So I am looking for motivation. To stay committed to this, to not just sell out and go back to a lab bench streaking out cultures and designing primers and doing PCRs.

Perhaps it is petty, to think that a few months of effort should yield such rich benefits so quickly. Perhaps the praise is merely well-intentioned and not meant. But why tell me to "continue writing because of your exceptional style" if you don't intend to give me the opportunity to do it?

Bigger than us

We all need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. For some of us it is material pleasure- the next big purchase. For others it is professional achievements and constant intellectual stimulation. For others it is causes- eradicating disease and poverty and unhappiness in several forms, for the 'greater good' of humanity.

I am a strong believer in the infinite potential for happiness and 'higher ideals' that are innate to every human being. According to me, the roots of this capacity for happiness and desire for 'higher ideals' lie in the fundamental construct of a society- the simple fact that we choose to live in a society is proof that we think those around us are important, as are their circumstances. Our desire to 'improve' society is inextricably tied to our desire to live socially. Heartening to think that it is in our genes to want a better world, even though our choices every day might suggest that we don't care about the planet or other people. In this lies my fundamental faith in our humanity- that we cannot escape what is written in our genes. And therein begins the conflict.

Just as being social is encoded in our DNA, so are the simple facts of altruism and cheaters. For a successful altruistic group, each member of the group must be able to perceive and feel the benefit of contributing to the group. Secondly, simple group dynamics such as population size and contributions of members determine how much cheating a group can withstand. A queen bee "gets away" without contributing to the "work" that the drones put in only because her single contribution to a beehive "earns" her that right. Ensuring reproductive success is, to the workers, more important than being another individual collecting nectar. Population size is a simpler dynamic. In a group of four workers, one cheater is unlikely to get away uncensored. In a group of hundred, it is much easier for the slacker to get away with it.

This is where I feel grassroots movements of political and social change have a far better chance of continued success than a single, radical, nation-wide move. In a single village, kin selection is a stronger force than in a country. And it is far easier for a group of villagers to see the immediate benefits of honesty, volunteerism and forward-thinking. As group sizes increase, there is an exponential decrease in the perceived benefit of doing good relative to the effort required to do it. Here's a simple example- Taxes and traffic laws were made to benefit society. They were put in place to ensure a common standard of conformity that benefits every individual who is part of that society. Yet almost every honest, upstanding citizen would have jumped a red light or crossed the speed limit when they were in a rush. Simply because the individual benefit far outweighs the price of sticking to group rules.

A bill like the Jan Lokpal Bill seems unhappily laughable in this context. A democracy that is of the people and by the people now demands that the people stand up and answer to the rest of the people. We took a handful of people and gave them power, the license to be corruptible, then let them get away with bribery and unimaginable crimes. Now, we clamor for a bill that asks for answers. But who is asking for these answers? Another handful of people. Another group identical to the first in its origins, that 'we' will put in place to serve as "our" representatives. In exchange for their serving society by monitoring corrupt politicians, we will turn a blind eye to the corruption that is likely to permeate from the upper levels to the lower, when the rich politician tells the poor 'representative'- "Here's a few acres of land for your daughter's dowry and a college degree for your son, now let this one bribe I took slip, ok?". And once again, the immediate, individual benefit far outweighs the cost of sticking to the principles the 'aam aadmi' stood up for in the first place.

Does this view make me a pessimist? I still have infinite faith in the individual. Even in this unhappy scenario, a friend tells me of the auto driver who asked for an additional 20, but returned it when she told him she was heading to the park to join the protests. I have faith in that integrity in that person, and every other human being like him. What I lack is trust in power and laws and hand-waving about bills. Society did not evolve top down. And I don't think it can be improved from the top down either. To those at the bottom of the pile, the trickle of benefits just isn't worth the price of the sacrifice. Like the single cells that evolved into us, I believe we must start at the beginning rather than the end. If there really were enough individuals who truly believed that there is no room for corruption, no tolerance for crime, we would not need a bill such as this one at all. Let us start with making the single incorruptible individual, and the chorus that democracy should be will emerge.

(Despite the opinions voiced here, I would still like to hear why this bill would work where other anti-corruption laws and the basic principles of democracy have failed).

Endorsement

Hear me, all voices cry.

This is ME. I like cola,
and designer labels
I think Vuitton makes the coolest bags!
I LOVE Sunday mornings..mmm.

Hear me, they shout. Echoes in a crowd and screams in silence all want only to be heard.

I stand for human rights.
I run for AIDS.
Shaved my head for cancer research.
I can't STAND liars!
Peace, bread and the land.

In endorsing a product, a viewpoint or a preference, voices gain personality. This is ME. This is where I stand out from the rest of you even as I fall in with others who share these ideas. Given a space, every voice wants only to fill it up with itself. (Like this blog.)

I prefer private affirmation to public endorsement. With the spaces we now have, too often it seems like we clamor for causes and choices to fill them up with.

Petty rants we would otherwise forget, if we didn't write them down right away.
Half-formed thoughts that seem erudite in the silence in our heads.
Advice to people who will never read it. Like "Get the ball _!!! Ugh, Does _ need a runner, why is he moving so SLOWLY?"
Join my cause! Support _ and end corruption!

What confuses me about the latest wave of endorsement is this: Everyone I see is geared up for a fast and a protest and a show of hands, screaming their lungs out on Facebook and Twitter to end corruption and make the difference. Either I am missing something or they are. The last time I checked, even a revolution that began with a tweet ended with real, live people. People who bled and burnt and died, flesh mingled with the land they were trying to change. Where are the people, apart from the show of hands? I hear demands that various celebrities support the cause, but feel confident that no price will be exacted if they don't- the media and the crowds will love them anyway.

And on a far more pessimistic note, I have little faith in the cause itself. It's simple enough- a bill for a cleaner government. Accountability to a public board, made up of people like you and I. But so very much of the government is made up of people who were once you and I. I have little faith in the integrity of the individual when integrity is so hard to hold up, and cheating such an easy way to prosper. In a country of billions and billions, the bill only feels like a way to make room for more power play and more corruption.

In principle, I support the idea. Let's end corruption. Let's make India Shining happen. But practically, how do we do it when the evolutionary cards are stacked so deep and high against us?

Contradictions

Only when I am quiet can I realize the sounds I fill my life with. For someone that craves silence like a drug, I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time speaking of irrelevant things. How do I decide what is relevant,worth an investment of time, emotion and effort?

My usual way is to shortlist people. These are important, the rest aren't. The important ones I invest in without thought, and the rest are casual conversations. But would I do that with other assets? Say I were to choose a company to invest my money in. Would I continue to pump my savings in if the company started making obviously foolish choices and squandering my hard-earned cash? I doubt it.

It's simple enough to say: People aren't companies, relationships are worth far more than money and such parallels are inaccurate. Of course they are inaccurate, and relationships and emotion are far more important. So it stands to reason that I must find an even better metric, does it not?

This is where I lose my footing. How do I find a single (or a few) measures that I can apply simply to my relationships, without having to constantly evaluate each move and the necessity of it? There are only so many hours in the day, and my heart goes flying to each of these people I deem important, for every little thing.

I want to yell in response to drama- queen tantrums from one. I want another to learn to be truly quiet and realize the importance of inner peace- there is a difference between not saying anything and being quiet. I want the third to stop yelling at me and his mother every time he is upset. I want another to be more involved with her choices and less with the gossip of others. And the other, who I wish would stop cribbing and realize that if she worked, she would achieve all the happiness she craves. I want _ to be kinder, gentler and more open. I want to pick up the phone and demand answers from _ that no one has had for the last 20 years. The list is endless.

For each of these people on my list I know what I want. I see their lives so clearly and wish they had my crystal clarity to solve their problems. And each time they cry out, I don my wings of sympathy and hope and solution to plonk myself into their lives. But what does it do for them or for me? I'm fairly sure the answer is either 'Not much' or 'Absolutely nothing'.

And these are just the important people, the conversations I choose to get involved in. So how do I evaluate when to invest how much in a relationship? And how do I find the silence I crave when I am so smothered in these voices I invite into my life?

Thoughts on being/ becoming- II

When I was thirteen, I had a serious crush on a married man. My best friend at the time and I spent months on end collecting every single bit of information we could about him and his wife. In pre-internet times, that meant literally combing every bit of information in his books and the scattered mentions of him in other people's books and drawing timelines of his life. We loved him as much for his mystery as for his writing.

Now, there is this-

"__ is a science writer and a professional dancer and mountain climber."
"__ is a writer who has been bitten by tarantulas, lived inside a volcano and jumps off planes to make the rent money."


Suddenly, I am overwhelmed by proofs of diversity and uniqueness. Why is passion and talent insufficient? How is the curiousness of their experiences relevant to the quality of these people's writing?

Why does it matter, whether they moonlight as street performers or astronauts? No two people that go through the same experiences come out quite the same as one another. What one learns from watching a candle flame the other may be oblivious to after racing through a forest fire. So why decide that the one who lived through the forest fire is the more 'interesting' writer? And why must the scars from the fire serve as proof of the conviction behind the words? The words are convincing, and that should be enough.

I miss the days when people were mysterious. When I didn't know where the people I looked up to had acquired their perspectives. When a piece of writing had to move me enough that I was willing to spend hours hunting down the story behind it- "Where did he learn this? What sort of person was this?"

Writing is a lot like a first date. First touch my heart. Then tell me about yourself. Otherwise, spare me the bio.

Thoughts on being/becoming - I

"I'd always been writing, but I didn't know whether I knew how to write."

Someone who has been writing for the last 10 years used these words, and I had to pause to think. Is it possible to do something but be completely unaware of whether you are doing it correctly or not?

On the one hand, I can understand the viewpoint, having experienced similar self-doubt with dancing and writing and cooking. One can write from the time you learn to use a word and a pen, and one can hold dance like a secret lover, in whispered confidence and moonlight trysts. But are either of those- unrelenting practice or a cherished idea- enough to make one a writer or a dancer? I am easily annoyed by people who use words carelessly, who think of themselves as writers but have not learned to cast a sentence effectively. People that claim to love words (or dance) but have no clue what power they hold are to me like children left in charge of power plants- Seriously dangerous to the plant and to themselves.

On the other hand, I believe self-aware confidence and work can make anyone achieve anything. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Believe in your heart that you know nothing about writing and have much to learn, but believe also in your limitless potential to learn. There are all shades of writers and dancers in the world. The writer who has stopped learning is the one who does not know whether they know how to write. I think that applies to most professions.

What is a poem?

Someone recently claimed my writing was too metaphoric and vague to be comprehensible, and hence termed it 'poetic'. I am not a trained literary critic, so the opinions here and in the pieces that will follow are obviously not those of an experienced observer. They are just impressions of what I like and dislike about certain poems. (And hopefully they will explain why I don't agree with calling a vague, incomprehensible piece of writing 'poetic'!)

In trying to answer the "What is a poem?" question the way I see it, I found it easier to begin with what I think is NOT a poem. I don't think a poem is a string of rhyming words. Likening your girlfriend or lover to a blooming springtime in an ABAB rhyme scheme does not always qualify as poetry. Unless you're Tennyson or Keats, that usually ends up being a string of pretty words held together by vague sentiment. (According to me, it works for them for different reasons, and I'll get to that later).

I am also not a fan of overly confessional poems. Grim reality and the underside of life can be portrayed effectively, if not beautifully. Teenage thoughts of suicide and how the world sucks are better left to people who have grown past them enough to articulate effectively. (Paul Simon in 'I am a rock', for example).

For a poem to be effective, it must be:

Strong: Strong images, a single (or few) emotions. It has only a few words, so each one must stand for something.

Bright: Sharp, bright words that stand out are essential. A poem that squanders its breath on decision-making is dead. "I was looking at this gorgeous sunset, it reminded me of my ephemeral youth which will dissolve into the world's apocalyptic end" - A good poem picks ONE thread there, not all three.

And true: Any poem worth sharing is true. It may be a fantasy of princesses and dragons or it may be the tale of an Auschwitz survivor, but a good poem believes it is real. And it has something vitally important to share, and the words it uses were the most effective ones it could find to say that one thing.

And what doesn't (always) make a poem, and often breaks it?
Metaphors.
Being vague.
Stylistic tenses.
Bad grammar.
Not using capitals.

The list is long, and as with every poem, there are exceptions ;)

Viewpoint

Everywhere I look there is a great wave of shadows. I believe there is a light that casts them, invisible as it seems. And I believe the shadows know they stem from brighter things, even if they run from the light that is their source.

I used to be an idealist, my face always turned towards the brighter side of things. Now I am a realist. I look to the shadows, and remember the light, and enjoy watching them dance together.

You and I

Our bond is almost umbilical. You are the first one I touch when I reach the place I call home. You are the soul in my words, the heart with which I feel my way in foreign spaces. My rose-tinted glasses through which privilege is lovelier, and the mirror that reflects my most helpless self. Anchor and wings, the lodestone to which I return every time I seek my roots.

You, whom I cannot judge with objective vision. When someone lifts a finger to you I must need explain how you became this way. Excuse her, she is old and troubled. If you had been through a past like hers you wouldn't know what to do either. I watch children cast words like stones at you. They are only just learning the depths of words like culture and history. They are idealistic enough to believe there are simple solutions. Each time they choose a label I hasten, in my mind, to explain.

Their word for the day is 'Slavery'. I have walked past enough such 'slaves' on my way to school every day, to know what they're talking about. I agree, conditions are inhuman and children should be in school. It isn't fair. But I cringe at the word 'slave', the way they might if you termed them 'cheat'. The rules are simple, and the same for both. Pay your debts. Play fair. Be kind to your fellow human being. Families stick together. Work hard.

Does the fact that they don't abide by some rules make it more acceptable that you disregard others? No. But who are they to cast words at you, rise up in arms against the crimes they commit themselves? Whether it is a credit card or a loan for 'do bigha zameen', a debt is a debt. Being irresponsible is a choice. How does a country where debt collectors are 'just doing their job' decide that other, possibly more 'useful' forms of debt collection are unacceptable?

Armchair activism is bad enough without the complication of hypocrisy. Sitting at a laptop in a climate-controlled room, flinging labels around is just the click of a few keys. How do they take a heterogenous population of millions and click-clack fit them into the five slots of a homogenous monotheist race? Prejudice and the caste system are bad, they say. Even as they approve racial profiling and draw lines of security and acceptability in their own states. Where are the solutions?

I sit here and watch signs of you in them, and them in you. You who profiled and slotted people centuries ago. You who grew massive enough to evolve culture without thinking about religion and science, creationism and the conflicts of modernity with tradition. They're not even trying to fit the pieces together. The evolution of culture is simple enough- it has little to do with art and 'higher thought', and much more to do with our primitive instincts to keep groups of people insular. How much easier to accept the instinct and learn to live with it, than fight and question cellular urges.

And after my confused attempts to explain the evolution of a society and a country, I still turn to you for answers. I know there are no simple solutions, so I look for the isolated instances. Success stories and positivity, the empowerment of one woman in one village. One laborer's child who owns a mansion like the one across the street from where I live now. One man who sets up a trust fund for his workers after his million-dollar hotel is ripped apart by terrorists. The students that stood by their classmate through medical school after she was raped on the streets of Delhi.

I search your depths for this growing quorum of hope and change to justify my love for you. With a child's faith, I look to your heart and ignore the cracks that mar the surface.

You who work miracles in my life. You whom I love without completely understanding. You are in my every cell, every thought. Infatuation is satiated by a poem, obsession can be burnt out in a book or two. But you, you are the one I turn to when I am filled with words, and they are still never enough. If I could only write about one subject all my life, it would be you. And you I never have the right words to describe. Eternal muse, brimming with words of every imagination, every emotion. I think that is why they use the word 'Motherland'.

The hunger games

To skim the surface, a stone must be very flat, and very light. The angle at which its cast is critical, of course. Nearly the same as the water, but just a little higher. When you cast a stone correctly, it skitters and skips and lands in the shallows at the other end of the pond. And when the sun comes out and dries up the edges, the stone ceases to be a part of the water. Much of the young-adult fiction I read is like this. It skips and skims, resonates in part and casts a few ripples, and then is cast on the other end of my awareness, to slip away forgotten.

And then there are books like The Hunger Games. Small and dense, they sink to the bottom of the water, rippling out unsettling questions as they settle into my world-view. On the surface, the story is a simple one- A girl with two boyfriends, a contest and heroic acts and victory. Sparking a rebellion that changes her country forever, battling danger and death and remembering to save the pet cat as she runs from her annihilated family home. And to add to the fun, there is fashion and drama, reality TV and romantic conflict.

Though I skimmed through the first book and was a little disappointed with the second, the finale of the trilogy is what made me want to write this. The girl who was on fire is burning out, and the book captures the hero's conflict more truly than the magical worlds of Harry Potter. What happens when you take teenagers and throw them into a battle-field? Are children really resilient enough to bounce back from killing and destruction to the innocent playgrounds of their childhood?

The protagonists of the book are no heroes, perhaps. Un-magical and ordinary people, who break down with torture and the constant killing that surrounds them. They wake up screaming every night. The sound of sirens sends them hiding behind warm pipes in laundry rooms, holding themselves together until it is gone. They are lost, and vengeful, and entirely human in their attempts to live. They hold up fragmented memories and question "Real, or not real"?

As teenagers, they question the nature of love. They question government policies and parental choices and popular opinion. And they cast both youthful glow and grim shadow, as they reflect on inane game shows, the price of war and the reality of heroism. It's not just the girl who is on fire. They all shine equally, even as they move towards the end of burning.

(The books: The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins)

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

One of the advantages of a nature-based religion is that miracles are everywhere. Religious symbols based on the universal geometry of fractals and Fibonacci patterns mean we can always find a sign from the universe. Attributing meaning to geological and climate phenomena such as the turning of the winds keeps us attuned to as yet poorly understood physiology and biochemistry. Perhaps such faith is a placebo. Perhaps it is the simple means of directing attention to the harder to perceive changes in ourselves that makes these faiths seem more powerful than they are.

But it is hard to be unimpressed by the minds that created religions where faith is omnipresent and the mundane is a constant reminder of the miraculous.

Easy way out

You hate being fat.
You don't like the fact that other people take decisions for you.
You dislike asking your husband for money.
You are bored, and would rather be at work.
You are terrified of change.
You don't want to be stuck in this country where you have to ask for employment.
You want to get off your medication.

Everyone wants- Shinier, brighter, better lives. Too many people I know complain about the way they are 'forced' to live. Responsibilities and obligations and lack of choice.

Here's the easy way out- Pick up all that baggage and take it with you. Go chase your fantasy career, your thinner, more fulfilled self. Following your dream is really far, far easier than being miserable about not having it already. It is discouraging, and terrifying, and requires big, untiring effort. You will slip and fall on your face, have bad moments and wonder whether it is worth it. But I promise you, truly, that you will be happier and stronger, shinier and brighter and better for it. If you're not, I promise to listen to you the next time you cry. But first, try taking the easy way out.

Only human

I don't want to be satisfied about this. It feels too much like leaning back on my laurels, self-assured and pompous, just asking to be taken down a peg or two by the young seeker who brings the naive daring that only the fearless can know, to solve these age-old equations.

I tell myself I am only human, when I reflect on this glow I feel within after our conversations. Only human, to feel glad at your fumblings, like a baby learning to walk. I smile at your cuteness as you stumble around trying to learn your balance. And what is wrong with being human, reminiscing on this glorious sameness that all relationships go through as I watch you with your new girlfriend/boyfriend?

I have heard your judgments about other people's immaturity. You have cast your vote on tradition and the correct way to behave in relationships. Declared your hatred for flowers and gifts and mushy endearments. And today you tell me of this beautiful, wonderful human being who is your significant other, so sensible and mature despite what happened today. And you say you will never use such callous words with them, the kind I just told you worked for someone else. Your lover is far better, more refined and urbane and genteel.

I tell you love is love, and bills and insurance and the trappings of life will always be what they are. I tell you that regardless of degrees and paychecks, a broken heart will always feel what all broken hearts have felt, independent of space and time and language. But of course, the two of you are different.

So I lie back on my tales, smile and wait for you to catch up. A chronicler of stories, a gatherer of life-experience. And I try not to be too self-satisfied about it. But I am only human, just like you and your lover and everybody else.

Oof

A grey Friday morning, cold rain, and the promise of a night snow. Hot coffee, the house to myself. Half-remembered songs hunted up on YouTube bring back childhood crushes and family dinner time in nostalgic smiles. Such a contented space, quiet and welcoming- a time to give thanks for all the precious moments and the promise of so many more.

Given the setting, wouldn't you think sending polite thank-you emails to virtual strangers would be a breeze ?!

Haunted by words

Fishing is a metaphor, and the words of the speaker resonate with my thoughts about writing. Just as he is haunted by waters, I am haunted by words. And some of the words reflect so deeply what writing means to me, I would put them down here to remind myself. Some of my favorite quotes from 'A river runs through it' -

"Something within fishermen tries to make fishing into a world perfect and apart - I don't know what it is or where, because sometimes it is in my arms and sometimes in my throat and sometimes nowhere in particular except somewhere deep. Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect."

"All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible."

"I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river."

"As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them."

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."

The practical reader

A recent blog post reminded me of the many reasons 'practical' people dislike 'poetry'. The words are too confusing, the meanings too obscure, and the entire melange is nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the simplest observations. While I accept that a lot of bad poetry exists, most of it seems like the result of people 'trying' to be artistic. Are words more lovely or more meaningful only because they rhyme?

I believe the principles of good writing- clarity, sharp editing, every word responsibly contributing to the meaning of the whole- apply to poetry as well. And the following poem makes part of this the point better than I could :)

A Practical Reader
- Carl Dennis

I'm willing to buy your book of poems
If you can promise that whenever you liken a day
To a coin that cant be hoarded,
You spell out exactly what I should buy with it
In the few hours left me before the sun
Sinks behind the garage outside my window,
What items more valuable than those in the shops
And mention where they're available locally.

I'm a plain person, I admit, with little patience
For vague suggestions, so if you believe
Poems need to be vague to be suggestive,
I'd better save my money for something else
(Money I dont have endless supplies of,
Not with my job as bookkeeper for a hospital),
A work of history, say, or biography
Or a book of encouragement from the self-help section.

I could use a poem showing that those who seem
To be having a better time at work than I do,
Or a better time at the beach or hiking a trail,
Have simply learned to do more with moods
No better than my good moods,
While making less of the lesser ones.

I wont complain if your book has many poems
Praising the joys of giving so long as it has a few
On the joys of taking. How to choose friends,
For example, who wont forget me after I'm gone,
Who'll tell my story now and then to themselves
If not to others. Friends glad to remember,
Who believe their gladness would be complete
If I were sitting beside them sharing it.

As for friends I've lost, do you have some advice
For the times I'm asked to speak at a funeral
When my feelings, ardent before,
Suddenly seem too cool and measured?
Dont tell me to level my words down
To the flats of fact in the name of integrity
When the task before me is rising to the occasion.
If my feelings cant make the climb, inspire me
To send up some phrases that would be honest
If I were the person I'd like to be.

Please stay undercover

I don't object to stalkers, or people that keep track of my status messages or blog posts. (By putting this information out there, I am taking that chance. And I know who the lurkers are). I don't even mind adding the friend of a friend of a friend as a friend of mine. But some actions move beyond the realm of curiosity or gossip. Why does the luxury of anonymous, instant connection bring out the dumbest in some of us?

1. "I met you on the subway in NYC last July, and you gave me medical advice for my mother. Can we connect?"
No, we cannot. I am not the random stranger that dispenses prescriptions (or medication) on the commuter rail. And if I were, you probably don't want to be linked in to me anyway.

2. "Can you send me the neutrophil killing protocol you used? And also, the PO numbers for the EMSA kit and antibodies and.."
I graduated. I wrote a dissertation and papers and left copious notes and CDs behind for a reason. Let's see if you can figure out what that was now. And if you can't, feel free to send me a polite, professional email at the contact information I left. Wait to see if I respond before bombarding me on Facebook.

3. "You used to write well. This is crap."
It's my blog. Find yourself something better to read if you don't like it. Constructive criticism is welcome, unhelpful, unpleasant opinions are not.

4. "Please tell me what _ was like when he was your boyfriend five years ago."
Yes, random stranger, I am itching to share the most intimate details of my past with you !! Let's find some pink pajamas and fuzzy pillows and have a girly party online, shall we?

5. "Will you marry me? I really think we could have something good together"
Sigh.. Hours of talking on chat and the phone, conversations heedless of time and time zones and cultural differences. The bonding when someone from another continent fixes your computer issues is a different level altogether, isn't it? But difficult as it is, I think I'll stay here and resist the urge to drop my life for the Dell customer care rep I think you are.

This is just a draft

First there is the crowning flush, after hours of painful inaction. A sign of life, there is SOMETHING here! It takes hours of agony, pained gasping breaths. Inch by painstaking inch she* emerges. Towards the end we are both confused and teary, just wanting it to end. And end it does, in a long endless sigh of relief. It is done.
Out in plain sight, confused and babbling, limbs askew and a shrieking head. Now, I rub my hands in glee. Now it begins.

Chop this end and place it there, the other one goes here and twist that around a bit. All that effort to come up with a mangled jigsaw puzzle. But wait, this piece goes here, doesn't it? And that, surely, is the corner piece that holds it all together!

When words are stuck and deadlines loom, this is my mantra- This is just a draft. Not a first-born miracle on the planet, nor a literary masterpiece. It frees me from the responsibility of the mother-instinct and the pressures that weigh down the masters of the craft. No need to guard these words, they aren't perfect. No need for these words to be perfect, this is just a draft.

=======================================================================

* My stories are 'she'. Simply because they are always as uncomfortably self-aware and confused as any adolescent girl I have ever known or been.

Out of books, to people orchards

Of course I have always loved to read. Words are as familiar and essential as breath, instinctive as inhaling air. In principle, I get incredibly annoyed with people who claim they don't "need" to read because they have instead lived life, as is the two were mutually exclusive. Their experiences are their own, they brag. They don't need books to teach them things.

Now I find myself echoing their speeches. "What are you reading these days?" asks a friend. "I have no time to read", I reply, shocking myself into silence. When I must write and write, words flow out like gasping breath, pause to catch up with thought and then run again. The run is exhilarating, even though I barely pause to inhale.

Words are like breath, cycles of inhalation and exhalation. And when I am spent, I will open my books again. But for now, when I close a book, I open life. I could teach no one anything with my words, except that I am living with something in common among men- When fighting with them, when saying all their say in my song.

Ode to the book
- Pablo Neruda

When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.

The ocean's surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio--
I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won't let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won't go clothed
in volumes,
I don't come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems--
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I'm on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.

A moment

An old friend of mine is now a filmmaker. Nothing you would have seen- She makes small-scale, independent films and conducts workshops on finding visual inspiration (or something like it). I would know her anywhere, and when I watch her movies, it is always a little surprising to find that she isn't on the screen. You see, they are just so very her, so full of her personality that it's easy to think you're seeing S. even when she isn't physically there.

Another schoolmate stars in music videos and jewelry commercials. Though I've seen the ads and videos, I wouldn't recognize her unless you told me her name. Strangely, she looks exactly the same as she did in high school. Unlike the rest of us, who have changed in so many ways, she still looks fifteen.

As for myself, I still write. I'm still learning to dance. Only more wholly than before. The rest of the trappings of being grown-up- a home, credit cards, a car, 'responsibilities'- still seem so very ephemeral, like I am yet to grow into them.

And when the late afternoon light slants in, all things in life turn back into the ache of adolescence. Adulthood seems a strange interruption, these lives with professions and pretensions of responsibility. How unreal, to think of the girls we were turned into these people in the newspapers that we as children dreamed of becoming one day. A deep, searing nostalgia fills this moment- I am filled with a sense of loss even as all my senses chronicle our achievements.

In the lengthening shadows and warm light, the dreams of old feel as unreal as the future that is now.

Metamorphosis is hard.

He remembers times past,remembers being sure footed and strong.
Nourished on green leaf, supported by many sure limbs.
He walked on bough and stem, holding them close to his heart,
Secure, cuddly, snuggled into sturdy branches.

Now he flits from bud to flower-
Sustained on little sips of sweetness
Struggling on a few spindly legs
Far from his bough, he is lost
Ambition weighs him down
Brilliant and strong and many-hued.

Years of evolution bear down on his back.
Ancestral dreams of flying high, voices that doubt he can make it
What destiny is this, this burden he carries?

From a distance, wings look like fun
But first, he must learn to fly.

Understanding

The worst kind of loneliness is when you speak your heart, and the words are lost in an un-hearing disagreement.

Awareness of a conflict. Realization of unhappiness. Words to clarify, words to help us grow into a greater understanding/ acceptance. A tentative move towards common growth. To me, this is the instinctive (and necessary) progression of relationships that matter. Most of the people closest to me seem to disagree though. More often than not, conversations end here. In an unquiet peace, an uneasy silence.

You tell me your thoughts, why you feel I was wrong/ they were wrong/ you were hurt/people hurt you. I listen. I feel your pain- trust me, I do. I know what it is like, to not be heard - To have your feelings drop away into nothingness because they didn't matter. You are angry and hurt, because your anger and hurt have never mattered to the other person. And you cry that you have never been understood, never been held. All you want is space to grow, someone to care unconditionally.

I listen to both sides. I remember the feel of cold winter tiles against my cheek, as I lay alone and cried over the two of you. If only you would hold each other and listen, none of us would cry alone.

A wish

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.


– Rainier Maria Rilke, A Walk.

A simple wish for the year that is to come- to feel the wind, and to remember inner light.