The trees know the truth.

The trees know. They really do. The Native American tribes understood the wisdom of the trees. I often think that trees just might be the wisest living things on this planet. And last week I heard a wonderful poem about trees that expressed that same sentiment. It's so exciting and awe-inspiring to read someone's writing from centuries ago, only to find that there is something in the human spirit that ripples and echoes down the ages.

Civilisation!
The trees shudder in dismay.
The city writhes on.

So much of what we call civilisation is so barbaric. And when we call men "beasts" or "animals" to express that, it seems a bit silly. They are far less barbaric than we are. And the trees .. the American tribes would say that if a tree had to be cut down, it was better to cut the younger tree, because to cut an old tree was to destroy and lose forever the wisdom within that tree. So when I see our glorious old trees being hacked and pulled out of the earth to make way for malls I can't help but think: Stupidville, here we come.

Once Upon A Speed-Bump

Once upon a speed-bump, I saw it all. We used to be the City of Gardens and Lakes and even of Beans. Somewhere along the line, we turned into the City of Potholes. And when I saw that speed-bump (aka speedbreaker or road hump) outside the Ashok Nagar Police Station, I knew exactly how Phoebe felt in that episode of Friends - the one where Carol and Susan get married.

Great big speed-bump stretching across the width of the road, designed to slow down traffic. And if that doesn't stop you, then the pothole will. Yes. A great big pothole INSIDE a great big speed-bump.

"NOW I've seen it all!"

This is why.

Perhaps the screaming mother is not creating a Hitler or a Stalin or a Saddam, perhaps he will not turn into a shadowy rapist who avenges himself of his childhood injustices with every woman he can. Perhaps he will not keep alive that searing coal within him, perhaps he will not fan it into a full flame one day in a communal riot.

Perhaps he will just be a man who screams at his own children. Who drinks a little too much at office parties, works too hard, drives too fast, smokes too much. Who hits his wife, or maybe just hates his life. Whatever he does do, however, whatever he does become, I will know. And I will know why.

His blanched fist tells me.
His choking rage screams the truth:
His parents failed him.

I am beginning to understand that in every man who raises his arm in violence, who kills, or rages, who seethes and hates, and seeks to destroy, there is something not just to fear, but also to pity. In every violent action, every such man tells us:

My mother failed me. My father failed me.I was scared. I was hurt. I was small, and alone, and fragile. I was afraid then, and I am still afraid.

THE BLOOM OF CANDLES by Laurie Lee, Rs. 30

Such a jolly sweet little name. But his poetry is so morbid. At the book fair, I found a book of his poetry, published in 1947. The book is a slim - practically anorexic - volume, bound in yellow, and titled "The Bloom of Candles".

"Tonight the wind gnaws
with teeth of glass,
the jackdaw shivers
in caged branches of iron,"

(what does that mean?)
"the stars have talons."

The stars have talons. And he is talking about Christmas Eve. He paints this depressing harsh landscape -
"the ground bitter with stones"

and then he ends with

"a new star opens
like a silver trumpet over the dead.
Tonight in a nest of ruins
the blessed babe is laid."

I kind of get where he's going: the ghastly ugly world, and the baby who's born to redeem it. It's a poem about hope, painted with despair. I don't know whether to hate it or love it.

When I first posted this on Rumi's Bird, the infamous commenter Vichoobhai sent me an excerpt about Laurie Lee:

That is the way he describes nature, always tinged with terror and gore, larks screaming, clouds fuming and sky tearing apart.

I googled Lee and found him described as a gentle, humourous, soft-spoken man and I can't help wondering what unspoken horrors he translated into words on nature.


I want to sing like the birds, not worrying about who hears or what they think - Jalaluddin Rumi

Oh, I see.

Some people see a few pots placed prettily around my balcony. I see my garden. What IS a garden? "A piece of ground on which flowers, etc., are cultivated: a pleasant spot: a fertile region". My pots qualify. And within them is a world of nature, and so much to wonder at in a flower. Even in the slow twirl of a withering leaf, where an artist could find hue upon hue for her palette. In the textures of a dry twig versus a young shoot. In the scent not only of a flower, but of a leaf. I learn how to touch, how to smell, how to listen, how to see.

My white gardenias,
dressed for their first communion,
pirouette open.

Why has it taken me forty-one years to look beyond the scent and colour of a gardenia, and discover the divine symmetry that takes a bud into full bloom with one long slow perfect pirouette? They twirl to unfurl their glory, and I think of little Catholic girls showing off their new frilly white new dresses to one another, twirling in a cathedral courtyard, giggly and excited as they wait for their confirmation.

How could I have missed such a magical event? And paid so much more attention to bigger, noisier trivialities? I never noticed until now. But now I notice.

Xtra Strong Adult Mints

(Note from 2008, which is when I started shifting my Ad Nausea posts over to this blog: Occasionally, I can be nasty. Yes! Sometimes I just have to rave and rant about the ads I see in the media. And just to show that I am a well-balanced individual - more than a philosophical, poetic, nature-loving clown - I do not hide this darker side. Instead I jot down those rants here. Although, as you can see, I started soft).

I thought I would start with a thumbs up. This is the ad (TV commercial):

A young man goes to his girlfriend's home for dinner. Pops in a mint at the door. Frosts up his girlfriend's glasses. (Although technically, wouldn't she rather he STEAMED them up?)

But let's continue. He sits down to discover the amazing power of Xtra Strong Adult Mints. He starts as a foot slithers up his leg. He smiles at his girlfriend. She gets up from the table. The foot is still there. It's her sister's. Then, he jumps again. Another foot! His girlfriend's mother. And then the piece de resistance, he jumps and glances nervously down between his legs, and looks up to see his girlfriend's father giving him the eye (among other things).

No matter how many times I see this ad, I always crack up. Well cast, well directed, shots edited just right. A raunchy joke told subtly and wittily. I blow a kiss to the writer.

"Leave me...

I have just finished reading a book called Smack, by Melvin Burgess. Twenty years ago, I was at the height - or to be more accurate, the depth - of my heroin addiction. Reading this book was like listening to echoes, and what struck me the most was that there was not much difference between the British teenagers of those pages and the Bangalore teenagers of my past. Different slang, different lifestyles maybe, but the essence and the philosophy by which we lived and breathed: no difference. We thought we were unique. We thought our situation, our emotions, our attitudes .. we thought we were something special. It must have meant a lot to have that, I think now, because I don't think we had very much else. Today, finding this out: that none of what we did thought or felt was unique, brings up some kind of twinge, something akin to pity for that girl of twenty years ago. Back then, it probably wouldn't have mattered. That's what smack did. It made nothing else matter very much.

Today I look at this old poem of mine and suddenly it's not just mine any more. Dear me, what an odd feeling that is.

Leave me alone.
Let me live my life my way.
Let me die.

The choice is mine
and I reject life.
All I want is brief song
and silence.

Cry if you must
but forget me.
I don't want to be a memory.
I don't want a tombstone.

(written on Sept 28, 1985, at 11.44 p.m.)

Once Upon The Seashore

Once upon the seashore, someone found a shoe. Weekend afternoons were good for wanders into the desert or out to the sea. The nights were for clubbing, the mornings - well, the first half of the mornings were also for clubbing. You took your sunglasses with you the night before, because when you staggered out at 6 a.m. the sun was already up and harsh. You got home, slept a while, bathed, ate, and then you were ready to go out and DO something.

So beachcombing it was, this particular weekend: out to look for souvenirs, in the form of flotsam. Technically, flotsam is wreckage or trash that floats, and jetsam is wreckage or trash that stays underwater. But today's flotsam was, in a way, jetsam.

It was a child's shoe. It might have been a Reebok, or a Nike. It must have been a branded shoe. Brands were big in Bahrain. It was a good find, it had a personal touch. The others hadn't found anything quite as individual. It was a great souvenir.

The girl who found it tipped it over to pour out the sand that weighed it down. But then she tilted it back up, just for a moment, and dropping it where she found it, went back to the car empty-handed, waiting silently for the others to return.

The friend who told me this story found part of a seat. It even had a seat number on it. He kept it for a few days but had unnerving dreams about a man he did not know. He believes the man he dreamt of was the person who was sitting in that seat when the plane crashed into the sea just off the coast of Bahrain.

The girl who found the shoe? It wasn't empty, and it wasn't full of sand. It was a child's shoe. With a child's foot still in it. I don't think she goes beachcombing any more. In the desert you can go horse-riding and have picnics and find truffles and live happily ever after.

(August 2000: a Gulf Air A320 crashed off the coast of Bahrain, killing all 143 people on board)