Boo!

Evil thrives on fear
Like flesh-eating bacteria
Hungry for my soul.

If I am so close to God, if I place all my trust in Him (or Her, as the case may be), then where does all the fear come from? If I love God, why must I cry when someone dies? Why am I afraid of death? No answers right now.

I was watching a Christian preacher, Joyce Meyer, on Z Cafe the other morning. She mentioned how our fears are the way the devil keeps us in bondage. Her words have stayed with me as something to lean on when I feel a fear beginning to overwhelm me.

Tonight there was flesh-eating bacteria on Star World's Medical Investigation - ironically a program which promotes fear. I like to imagine this series is funded by American politicians of Rumsfeldian demeanour who own vast shareholdings with pharmaceutical giants.

Denial.

"Money is the root - "
(Half a quote is a great way
to avoid the truth.)

It sounds so different from the whole quote: "Money is the root of all evil". We do this a lot, editing our truths so that we only have to see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and then pat ourselves on the back for getting it all so right. My two favourite examples are from the two religions that most influence my life.

One is the justification of multiple wives in Islam. "Have wives if you can treat them all equally and love them all equally - " is the bit that polygamous men latch on to. They forget that this line continues: BUT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DO SO (i.e. love and treat them equally). In other words, DON'T. I'm reminded of a colleague who would zoom across junctions saying cheerfully, "What red light, officer?"

The second example is from the Bible. It sounds like a lovely sentiment: "Love thy neighbour - " but it seems to have become a catchphrase for people to justify codependency, and to negate the self, which is so soul-destroying. I think one's soul has to be full, overflowing with lifejoy before one can be a Jesus or a Mother Teresa or a saint. They didn't operate out of obligation or guilt. They were neither satiated nor deprived: they were at peace. Content. Satisfied.

And so when we're busy driving ourselves into the ground trying to play the martyr, we're doing the exact opposite of what that message is trying to tell us - Love thy neighbour AS THYSELF. We deserve as much care and respect as the other people in our life. God knows it, even if we don't.

Dissociation.

Grief's easy to find.
Joy's harder to come across.
Rage plays hide 'n' seek.

I've spent much of my life dodging emotions. The past few years I've been getting in touch with them again. The past few months I've been INUNDATED with them. My little boat floats safely enough, but all around me the seas are rough. It's easier to dissociate than to respond to bad news, but I'm trying to stay around this time, instead of disappearing into my head; I want to be here even though I don't want to be here.

"There are cracks ...

Dear me! Twenty-one years after writing this, I read it and wonder why, if I could see inside myself and express my fears so clearly, why did it take me so long to do something about it?

There are cracks in my shell
Where the tears slip through
For I am a stone only to outward view.

I have fears and confusion and I am not strong.
I am too scared to pursue things for which I long.

Scared of failure and of rejection.
Scared that no one will see that my differences and quirks
Do not lessen me.

I have faith in myself but no faith in the rest.
It makes me sad to know that to be accepted
I must pass society's test.

My other choice is to be a freak.
The ones who are different and think for themselves must stay
Isolated
Because they are unique.

(written on Dec 8th 1984, 10.30 p.m.)

Until next time.

A monthful of years.
A lifetime of memories.
It won't be enough.

Chandini, my friend
19 September 1964 - 6 October 2005

(We probably never spent more than 30-odd days in each other's company, all the years that we knew each other, and yet she became one of my closest, dearest friends. My favourite memory of her is from when she visited me in Bangalore, and we just sat together in the living room, reading. Yashoda, the cook, thought that we had argued, because we sat there in silence for so long! But no, we were totally comfortable with each other and able to enjoy just being together with our books in a very special, cosy silence. I've never had quite that type of moment again with anyone. I still miss her. - 16 Feb, 2008)

The name on my cell phone read "Chandini"

But it was her husband who spoke to me this afternoon.

By the time my father is discharged from hospital, the skies seem to be weeping with me. I drive my parents home in the pouring, pouring rain, carefully, slowly, and I try to keep my mind on the road, as Pradeep's words rise and fall in my head. Coma. Bleak. Oxygen. Brain. Vital. She is so vital, so brilliant, so important to life. I believe in miracles. I know that God can perform them. I just don't know if He will.

Heaven weeps for her
and so do I, asking: WHY?
God never Replies.

Expectorants bring out the worst in me.

To wheeze or not to...
Do I really have a choice?
Snot is not noble.

Alas. I am ill. This is the best haiku I can produce. It probably does not deserve to be posted, but I feel I must.

I have just discovered another form of Japanese poetry called Tanka, that allows one a couple more syllables than haiku. Well, Tanka you very much.

Role-playing is a tough game.

I won't play Barbie
or Sacrificial Virgin:
Woman's hard enough.

Hmm. It's not really me, but I like it. A bit of porcelain inspiration (i.e. those flashes of wisdom that come to us while seated in tiny tiled rooms). I was thinking of making it "Forty is hard enough" (I just turned 40 two weeks ago!) but I really like being forty and it seems like it could be a fun year so I didn't want to suggest it's something that one needs to survive or struggle through. (But womanhood is? Another Hmm.)

"Love is not ...

Dear me! At the bottom of this poem, I had added a post-script in a special phonetic code that I'd invented just for such dramatic revelations: "Written when stoned."

Looking back now, I realise that grass does NOT enhance creativity. It just seems that way at the time. So here it is .. a cheesy, grassy poem from my freshman year, that, in at attempt to be profound, comes out quite pretentious. But also leaves me a little sad for the girl who wrote it.

Love is not true
once it is spoken.
The betrayal of feelings
renders the spell broken.

Look between the green blades
Up at the flowers of love.
There is no climbing up
Or tasting the pollen.
Cutting blades and piercing thorns
Will stand in your way.

But the wind will send you a wafting
of those pleasures yet unclaimed
And love is not the rose
but the perfume you cannot see --
The scents that fly swift and free
Uncaught, for if plucked,
a rose and its perfume will die.

So true love is the love from afar
The love that will never be proven wrong.

(written on December 4th, 1984, in Missouri, USA)

"I've been called ...

Dear me! Could I have been psychic?? This poem creeps me out a bit because I wrote it years before I actually experienced most of the circumstances woven into it. Part self-fulfilling prophecy, part vision? I was a very innocent 19 at the time. Okay, maybe not very. Relatively.

I've been called a princess
But it's only caused me shame
For to act without due dignity
Does not warrant such a name.

I've been called a friend
But it's only caused distress
When I doubted a friend's worth
Though I loved her none the less.

I've been called a daughter
But I've only felt regret
For a trust that I've betrayed and
They continue to believe in me yet.

I've been called a lover
And am filled with fear
At myself for the men I tossed
Without a single tear.

I've been called a slut:
My mistakes scrawled dark on a wall.
One name that came so close to the truth
Though I would not allow myself that fall.

I've been called a child
But I feel very, very old
For I have both known and not known who I am
And it leaves me drained and cold.

(written on October 8, 1984)

"Pain drips ...

I actually jotted down this poem almost immediately after the first poem. For some reason I had thought it would be more appropriate to date the poem the following day. And so, now in 2007, I thought I'd do the same again, although on the original Dear Me blog I had posted both poems on the same day.

Dear me! What an unnecessarily confusing paragraph that was. Pretend it never happened. Just go ahead and read the poem.

Pain drips
Like fluid from a lung
A slow stench rises:
Blood sweat dung
Dagger up your rib cage
Flames taste your arm
Blood running down your cheek:
bodily harm.

Pain clutching at your heart
Smothering your breath
Tears heartbreak vacant stares
Chalk one up for death.
Noise inside a vacuum
Silence in a crowd
Sit and mourn your life away,
nestled in your shroud.

(supposedly written on 17 October 1983 but really it was the 16th)

"Then and now ...

(My second blog, Dear Me, really starts here, with all the tormented adolescent stuff. As I've progressed through my old journals, I have discovered that I was apparently a tormented adult too. Currently, I am a tormented middle-ager - n2n, 15/12/07).

The first "proper" poem I ever wrote. I was seventeen. What I remember about this poem, written in Bahrain one afternoon, is that it was quite involuntary and unexpected. The girl I was put the pen to paper and watched the words slip out. She had never heard or thought or planned them this way. Somewhere in her head, someone had already composed it. She just wrote it down. On Oscar Wilde's birthday.

Then and now
Then and now
Winter summer spring and fall -
They come, they play
They take a bow;
But man from youth turns slowly
Old
And over age he has no hold
Live the passionate days, and live the cold:
You have no curtain call.

(written on 16 October 1983)

From the same palette as Mynah's beak.

(which, incidentally, glows translucent in the early morning sun .. there is so much to see if one just LOOKS).

Something new each time.
Today I learnt the colour
of Kite's feet. (Yellow).

Who would have thought it? But one kite flew so low overhead, while my head was thrown back in its usual One-Day-All-This-Sky-Watching-Will-Lead-To-Spondylosis position. Usually what I see is practically a silhouette, although at times I watch the kites turn their heads left and right as they scan below them, perhaps for prey. But this kite was so low, I could see its feet clearly .. and they were a bright golden cheerful yellow. It was like being let in on some big secret.

Roll over, Sarojini Naidu, here comes Blog #2

I set aside the Haiku Noodles for a while, when I started finding poetry I had written as a teenager, in old diaries. This one is not quite "proper" poetry, but I just had to share it with the world! I had just turned 16, and was in the 11th Standard at school. While sick in bed with jaundice, I got quite creative and wrote this spoof on Sarojini Naidu's beautiful poem "Coromandel Fishers". I also remember writing and illustrating a spoof on Jonathan Livingston Seagull; it was the story of Felix Uriah Cockroach, who only wanted to sing. It ended tragically, in a bathtub (he risked all for better acoustics). Alas, that remarkable piece of writing was lost forever in 1985. Here then, is all that remains, the first verse of "Bathroom Cleaners" written on August 26, 1981:

Rise, brothers, rise!
The wakening skies
fill with factory smoke.
The cockroaches lie at the side of the road
along with the beggar folk.
Come let us gather our
brooms from the floor
and take hold of a scrubbing brush -
To kill the germs inside the pot
for we are the sons of the flush.

Back from the burnout.

No, not me.Years of therapy, medication and introspection have put paid to burnout. My life is now one long happy sabbatical. Alas, my computer monitor was not so fortunate. But all is well now and I am back to noodling with the old haikus. Here's one I came up with, courtesy my Californian magnetic poetry set:

Rocky seas of pain
Cried over with rose water.
Salt dissolves, stone stays.

I like it. For me, it relates to childhood abuse, and how healing can take away the sting, although the original scar can never be totally erased, only cleansed as much as it can, and then accepted.

Learning from Forrest's grandfather.

We're always on some path. Every breath is another step forward, right? Yet we're so focused on where we're going, or where we want to be. I'm beginning to see that the travelling is more important than the arrival, and that seeking inward is more rewarding than seeking outward.

This is pilgrimage.
Journeying not to, but with.
Destination: me.

I'm reading a wonderful children's book, The Education of Little Tree; a true story by Forrest Carter, who was raised by his Cherokee (Native American) grandparents, and there is a lot in that book to inspire me. The grandfather - what a grand grandfather he must have been. I'm awed by the wisdom of his spirituality, I'm humbled by the depth in the simplicity of his ways.

Afterthought: why must the original inhabitants of that continent be called "Native" Americans? Why aren't they called Americans, and the others called Immigrant Americans? They were there from the first. Every one else arrived.

Yoo- hoo.

We have so much to learn, so much to RE-learn. Gym, diets, doctors, spas, salons .. our bodies get the works, but our minds and spirits are so often neglected. I've always thought of psychotherapy, counseling, support groups, workshops etc., anything to do with self development, as gym for the mind and the soul.

The sky and roof called.
I took my soul for a walk.
Do you exercise?

Here, the general consensus is that if it's in the mind, then it's "just" in the mind: it's unmentionable. Where is the sense of self? Lost in a mire of martyrdom and codependency. Sometimes I just want to grab this nation by the shoulders and give her a good shake. Wake up!

Bees' knees and butterfly kisses

Looking at the last Noodle scribbled on my bedroom whiteboard, it struck me that I was being terribly arrogant to assume that a garden’s reality depends on human interaction. But we humans ARE terribly arrogant about so much of nature, we often think it belongs to us, to do with as we please. We forget that if there are aliens on this planet, they are us, and that nature circles on and around us inspite of us. I think Native American spirituality is the closest we ever get to being true “earthlings”.

I am arrogant
to think the garden unloved.
It’s worshipped daily.

What I like best about this Noodle is the way the title and the haiku complement one another.

The roses of the Red Garden.

Is it a garden,
whose rows and rows of roses
nobody may kiss?

The phrase “rows and rows of roses” dropped into my head some time ago; I like the alliteration. And two things came to mind: first of all, Danielle, who also likes alliteration. I remember her saying so, and although I can’t remember any specific headlines right now, do recall her appreciating “a little alliteration” every now and then in my copy.

Then I thought of Lalbagh, Bangalore's Kew, whose buildings and walls are all of red hue (lal = red, bagh = garden), and of its rose garden, where indeed one can see rows and rows of roses of so many colours. They can be quite beautiful to pass by, but a high fence separates us because visitors would otherwise feel entitled to pluck them (we're not very good with boundaries in this country). I sometimes walk along the fence, hoping to get a whiff of the rich sweet fragrance of these roses, but I never do. No scent to inhale, and no permission to touch velvet and silk petals: it might just as well be a picture.

You missed it.

Symphony above!
God conducts sky, just for me.
Below, rush hour shoves.

Since I discovered the rooftop, I’ve been exercising regularly, walking up and down for a half-hour every evening. It’s far more pleasant than driving through manic traffic to Richmond Park, which is full of other walkers anyway. One evening last week, I arrived upstairs in time for the sunset. It was magnificent. Everywhere I turned, there was something to take my breath away, and every time I turned back, there was something new, just as captivating. Clouds silhouetted against each other, the light, the shade, the hues, the slow peaceful drifting towards twilight. I could NOT walk. It was too glorious to ignore, too majestic to give precedence to my calories. Down below, I could hear rush hour traffic: restless, sweaty, impatient, tired.

Going around in circles can lead somewhere.

This evening I scooted upstairs for a half-hour walk on the roof of my apartment building. It's only four storeys, but high enough to escape the worst of Bangalore rush-hour pollution, to enjoy the sunset, and to be eye-level with the treetops. Just inches away from the parapet, is a gulmohar tree (flame of the forest). It has beautifully exotic petals and bits and pieces that are probably called anthers and stamens (basically floral genitalia). It's flamboyantly vermilion, but short-lived. A brief flash of can-can dancing. Last evening, Navaz, in her sermon on haiku, referred to it frequently, and mentioned that it only blooms briefly during the summer. This evening, my father, walking me to my car, noticed that the wind had changed direction, and predicted that the monsoon was slowly blowing its way into India.

Gulmohar on fire.
You sing out - the rains approach! -
And die when they do.

In the beginning there was an earth journey.

(I have nearly ten blogs. One on haiku. One about ads. One about clowning. There's even one on Severus Snape. I'm not sure why I felt the need to compartmentalise my writing like this. After all, they're all me. So now I've decided to simplify things and have all my favourite posts here on this one blog, titled after the things I like my life to revolve around. - n2n, 15 Dec 2007)

Last night I went to my first "Bhoomi Jathre" (translates roughly as Earth Journey), a dusk-to-dawn cultural festival held at Fireflies, an ecological ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore. An amphitheatre of granite slabs circles down towards a stage actually built right around a huge peepul tree. The tree provides both centrepiece and ceiling.

This year's theme was the tree god. There were traditional dancers, and music ranging from ancient classical to modern fusion. There was also a flea market of arts and crafts, and food stalls selling organic salads, local breads, homemade cakes and brownies and freshly steamed Tibetan momos. There was a free book stall, and free tree saplings. The entire festival is non-sponsored: no corporate logos around, and even the soft drinks were local: the coconut of your choice, broken into with a farmer's sickle for its cool sweet naarial paani (coconut water).

On the one-hour drive down Kanakapura Road towards all this, Navaz briefed me on the haiku writing competition at the festival, that she had been asked to organise. In return for safe passage to and from the festival, I was roped in as Assistant Haiku Person.

The haiku never happened. I think the word "competition" intimidated everyone. But having discovered the 5-7-5 rule, this word junkie is hooked! I'm not sure my attempts qualify as haiku -- I know there's more to the process than just the 17 syllables -- but I'll learn as I go along.

I came to haiku.
Seeking words, I found momos.
All night long I burped.