Art Earth Ink Soul

I'd forgotten what fun it is.

2012-01-29T23:54:00.002+05:30

Ah. Crayons. Thanks to my overenthusiastic Christmas generosity, I found myself left with a spare box of jumbo Crayolas. My inner child was delighted.

See Dick speak.

2012-01-16T20:25:00.002+05:30

Say hello to Top Cop.
Say hello to the cop who's top of the cops.
(Hello Top Top Cop)

Top Cop says
women get raped because of the way they dress.
(Silly silly fashion victims)

Top Cop says
men rape when they eat food that gives good "josh" and makes them naughtier.
(Naughty naughty rapists)

Would Top Cop say
it was her own fault for being all dressed up and out so late?
(Pretty provocative Cinderella)

Would Top Cop say
those eleven men would have let her pass if they'd just had salad for dinner?
(Hearty hungry heterosexuals)

What WOULD Top Cop say
to that woman who was gang-raped on her way home from church after Midnight Mass on December 25th, 2011?
(Merry merry Christmas)

See Dick speak on Times Now TV

Click on the links above to read the news reports about Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police's views on rape

Digesting lunch.

2011-09-29T00:47:00.001+05:30

In this quiet time
The world recedes. The leaves stir
and tell me secrets.

Angel tears

2011-09-28T12:02:00.006+05:30

What makes angels cry? Is it something I've done or something I didn't?
-

The burning grief of phoenix and angel alike tell us that tears heal.
-

Is it in the dew? Sobs hidden in the thunder? Or sighs in the fog?
-

Stop being so bad or the angels will weep, they said, and the angel wept anyway.

Bad girls make them cry. That's what they said. When she wept the angels joined her.

"You bad little girl! Stop being so bad! The angels must be weeping!"

Yes. They weep for her.

16/7/2008

Magnified.

2011-08-23T00:33:00.006+05:30

Grief draws
big black lines
around my loneliness
heightens all my fears
Grief lays stark every vulnerability
and doubt
and dusts away the cobwebs
of memories both lost and hidden.

It comes again and again and again
relentlessly
an unwanted monsoon storm,
a necessary cruelty
and I keep hoping that it is just a season
that the sun will shine on me and warm me again
but the days get colder, gloomier,
and winter must first be braved.

I doodled all the day.

2011-08-19T23:21:00.005+05:30

And it wasn't easy, because drawing is what gives me the most pleasure (more than writing, even) and yet I always feel guilty about how "useless" it is. I know, I know, is the Mona Lisa useless, is the Taj Mahal? Have heard all that before, but it doesn't stop me from feeling guilty that I wasn't doing something more useful for humanity. It's the old I-must-save-the-world mentality, and yes, I do realise it's quite mental, but there it is. No advice required, I already give myself PLENTY on this topic.

Besides, guilt nonwithstanding, I did manage to allow myself the pleasure of a long doodling session with lots of twiddly details and colouring-in of white space. I was inspired by an old school friend who has a wonderful page on Facebook, The SuRealist, where she posts time-lapse clips of her doodles and lino cuts. (Go there and Like it!)

It was fun. And even better: it was useful! It cleared my mind of all the static that usually clutters me up (I'm assuming the clutter transformed and translated into all the squiggly bits I drew) and it made me happier and lighter. I suppose it was therapeutic but that sounds so clinical, so I'd rather just say that it just gave me joy, and that's a pretty useful thing to get these days.

P.S. Yes, those are elephants and no, those aren't teeth, they're piano keys.

How to Prevent Murder

2011-08-05T15:52:00.005+05:30

"The dramatic term soul murder probably was coined in the nineteenth century; it was used by the great Scandinavian playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Ibsen defines it as the destruction of the love of life in another human being. In psychiatry, the term was made familiar by the paranoid psychotic patient Schreber, whose Memoirs (1903) were the subject of one of Freud's long case histories (1911)."

- Leonard Shengold, from his book Soul Murder Revisited (click the title to read Chapter One)

Let him see you cry.

2011-08-01T23:40:00.004+05:30

(For E.)

Let him see you cry.

He is a baby. He knows something about crying, already.

He will understand.

That you are cold and wet and alone.

That you hunger for something to fill the emptiness.

That you need a hug.

That you need him to love you.

Let him see you cry.

He is your son. He looks to you for answers

To questions he can’t yet ask.

He feels their absence too.

He senses your grief.

He watches both your sorrow and your strength

And sees how to become a man.

Let him see you cry.

He is not too young to learn what it is to be human.

Your tears teach him.

That it takes courage to show vulnerability.

That deep pain is only created by deep love.

That love is what matters.

That love is what lasts.

Grave conversation.

2011-07-28T23:58:00.005+05:30

It tends to be one-sided. At least, that's been my experience, and to be honest, I like it that way. I think I'd be more than a bit disturbed if my father had had something to say this morning, when I went to visit him.

The graveyard is beautiful. I find most graveyards beautiful, but perhaps it's just because of the trees and the quiet. There is nothing to fear in a graveyard, even at midnight, except perhaps for rats, snakes stray dogs, or stray men (living ones).

The dead pose no threat. They return no greetings and answer no questions, and if they're happy to see their visitors and hear our voices, we can't see their smiles, not unless we shut our eyes and seek out their faces in a memory or a dream.

But we don't know for sure, do we? And we'll only find out when it's our turn to take a place under the earth. So I found myself babbling along, trying to remember all the important things I had to let Daddy know. Just in case. I felt a bit silly, talking to a tombstone - but surely it was no sillier than buying a lottery ticket, or blowing a fallen eyelash off the back of one's palm and making a wish ..

I would have sat there for hours to tell him all that I had to say, but the living were waiting for me at the gate, so I rushed through as much as I could, then left. Now I'm sitting here wondering if this is how we humans first created prayer: conversations with an unseen unreachable parent, someone who gave us strength, care and protection, who loved us in spite of what we were.

I suppose an atheist would see in this, the invention of God by a bereaved child. And a believer would think of Adam, separated from his Creator, calling out, yearning for that lost connection.

No answers, so all we have to go on is our faith, and on what we choose to believe. For me, I believe God hears, and even responds, although He rarely communicates with me in English. And so I think that my father might have had something to say back to me this morning, after all. I worry that I left too soon, but I like to think that he understands, and that he'll get the message across to me anyway, in a language I'm only just learning to unlock.

Good night, everyone, wherever you are. Good night, Daddy, wherever you are.

Upside down.

2011-07-27T06:57:00.003+05:30

It's four months since my father died. My world has turned upside down. I've gone from being the baby of the family to being its general manager. I've gone from reading and writing to 'rithmetic. I've gone grey. I go home every morning to do work that isn't mine, and I leave home every evening to sleep in a bed that isn't mine. I go crazy once in a while, and go into the abyss even more often. I go on. I indulge in a lot of emotional overeating, and am intrigued by the amount of emotional weight loss. I smoke like a salmon and cough like a cancer patient. I cry, even in front of other people. I wake up screaming, and wish I had an Edward Cullen. I obliviate by drowning myself in Harry-Potter-abilia, which works well until my favourite characters die, and then all the heartache comes back, and I cry like it's four months ago.

But .. I got a letter from God this weekend, and this is what it said:

So - it's been four months since my father died, and my world has turned upside down. I'm not the baby of the family any more, I've grown up. I'm learning new skills, like how to balance accounts and pay taxes. I am getting to experience emotions that I've spent most of my life running away from. And when it gets too much, I have places to escape to, some down the road, and some inside my head.I do smoke and I do overeat and I don't exercise, but I haven't walked into a bar and I haven't got hooked on sleeping pills. It's difficult closing my eyes because the nights aren't very nice, but the mornings keep coming, and when my eyes are open, that's when I catch such glimpses of the loveliness of life that is always there to find if I just look.

Upside down isn't all bad. I'm growing. Just not in a direction I'd expected.

P.S. I don't know what these amazing flowers are called. They're growing on a tree in my next-door neighbour's garden. I've been driving past for more than a decade, but I only noticed them a few days ago.

Happy Bathday.

2011-07-26T18:47:00.003+05:30

Or not. In spite of it being a wonderful sunny afternoon, Teddy Dog and Siggy here don't look too thrilled at being pinned up by their ears to dry.

Introductions are perhaps in order. Teddy Dog is, if I remember correctly, 22 years old. Cruelly abandoned by my niece when she decided she was too old for teddy bears (or dogs), he was taken in by me, and will remain with me until Ayesha comes to her senses. Teddy Dog is of a fine pedigree, and comes from the second most wonderful toyshop in the world - a gigantic building filled with nothing but toys, in London. I think the shop was called Hamley's? Or something beginning with F. Whatever.

Siggy, on the other hand (and on the right, in this picture) is of humbler origin, picked up at the Manama souq in Bahrain, back in 1999. Amazing that, really, because he does look much older than Teddy Dog. Presumably being born in London gives you some sort of anti-ageing advantage over being born in China.

I remember meeting Siggy on my first day back at work at FP7, when some of us took another new colleague, Marius, for a nice hot Indian thali lunch on a nice hot Bahraini spring afternoon. Siggy was waiting for me at a souq corner, where a Malayali gentleman was babysitting him and several other furry orphans. After trying several of these orphans on for huggability, I realised that Siggy was the one meant for me, and that was that.

By the next day, I had discovered that this bear had great listening skills, a sympathetic yet non-judmental eye (two of them, in fact) and a complete commitment to client confidentiality. I knew at once that this was a bear to whom I could pour out all my heart's woes and fears. Like all good therapists, he never answered my questions for me, of course. And best of all, he did not charge 30 dinars an hour. I named him Sigmund Furred.

Why God made trees.

2011-04-09T10:58:00.000+05:30

He had innumerable reasons, but I'm sure this is one of them. Sometimes I look around me at the garbage strewn around, at the strays, at the unsmiling faces. Sometimes I'm down. And then He says to me, "Look up."

(These are pictures I took one sunny Sunday afternoon in early March, walking home. These trees, and more like them, form a canopy all the way down my street).

One day in March.

2011-03-23T22:17:00.014+05:30

The sky was still blue, as blue as polluted Bangalore skies go. The leaves were still perfect in their intricacy and their symmetry. Almost everything stayed the same. Almost nothing changed.

But I've been hearing ambulance sirens since, and am surprised to find that my heart no longer races, my fear and dread no longer rise up to choke me like they used to.

Later that evening, I watered the neglected garden and noticed that a little brown butterfly with lemon-yellow markings lay dead at the foot of the lime tree my father and I planted on my birthday two years ago.

Things we have in common:
artistic talent
brains
like to plant trees
like birds
know how to make tomato jam
the same eyes
the same feet
slow to show anger
tend to think the best of other people
find it hard to say 'I love you'

The butterfly was dead and I ran the hose over it, bathing it like they bathed Daddy yesterday. This morning when I brushed my teeth there was only the faintest whiff of camphor and herbs left to remind me.

Things we did together:
walk down to the riverbank to brush our teeth when I was little
paint eggs
make gulab jamuns
do the crossword
agonise over paperwork
go for walks
go to the bank
fix things
roll our eyes at each other when Mummy got melodramatic

The man from the mosque came back later to clean the bathroom. He did a terrible job so I grabbed the Lysol, rolled up my salwar and helped him clean it a second time. I like cleaning so much that for a while I could forget that just a few hours earlier, they had been bathing my father's body just there; the wooden bier had lain on the cream tiles that my bare feet were on now.

It is now three days since I tried to warm his cold swollen feet, and then held his clammy hand while they switched off the machine. And the sky is still as blue as it gets.

Dr Abdul Razak Tonse
1 December 1926 - 21 March 2011

Bye, Daddy.

A New Year's Wish For You

2011-01-01T23:44:00.002+05:30

Walking down the road to my parents' house for New Year's lunch this afternoon, this water tanker caught my eye. While I was getting my camera set, that boy in blue happened to come into frame. It didn't bother me much, although I had intended to just get a close-up of the painting. And now, after having just read Lunar Hine's comment on my previous post, I'm thinking that maybe it's serendipity again. This is what she wrote: "I think that sometimes love is as simple as doing the washing up when it's not your turn. These are the droplets which build the rainbow we call love."

And so, my New Year's wish for you is this:

The next time you're doing the washing up, out of turn, out of love .. may the gods not just smile upon you. May they - wide-eyed, with nostrils flaring and moustaches bristling with pride - stick out a joyful red tongue and lick the side of your face.

Just now.

2010-12-26T20:27:00.006+05:30

A few moments ago, I read a ReTweet on Facebook and decided to Blog about it (yes, it's all about the Internet these days!!) This is what the Tweet said:

RT @BraveKidsVoices Never let a day go by without giving your children love, affection, attention, protection, respect. Always...

Earlier today, I had been thinking about how often we don't really know the meaning of the word "love", although it's probably one of the most frequently used words in the English language. In every language, perhaps. I wonder what results and statistics would come out of a research study on love, and whether any corporation would fund it in the first place.

I suspect that most of us believe that love is that wave of emotion that hits us when we look at a baby or at someone we're romantically interested in. Sadly, I have come to learn a large part of this wave is made up of chemicals designed to ensure protection or procreation! But love has to be more than that.

What if love is not an emotion, but rather a collection of emotions? Surely respect, compassion, protection and attention - all these are part of love, not separate from it? Because if one of these is missing, how can we be telling the truth when we say, "I love you"?

Blame the corporate giants! (or "Ode to Amazon")

2010-12-15T18:52:00.002+05:30

In answer to your possible question, "Where have you been?", I have explored all options and chosen to blame Amazon.com. Of course, it's not entirely their fault that I've been away so long. But they did cause me enough of a distraction to put down my drawing pencils for quite a while.

This distraction came not because I am a bookaholic, but because of one book in particular: a how-to guide for paedophiles that Amazon published on their site recently. It disturbed me right out of my depression. The warrior in me (now a one-and-a-half-eyed warrior) woke up. And while my health won't permit me to return to full-fledged activism on the child abuse issue, my heart and my history wouldn't allow me to stay in hibernation.

So I have been doing what I can, updating Askios, (online resources on the child abuse issue), reading, writing, sometimes despairing and taking short trips back into that abyss of depression that I can't seem to erase entirely from my travel itinerary. But mostly, trying to deal with all the emotions that Amazon's attitude to the CSA issue succeeded in jarring awake.

And now I'm here. And while I did put aside my favourite 9B pencil, I did find the time, one angry-sad evening, to pick up a pen and scribble this out:

Ode To Amazon

In our dreams, the monsters don't win.
In our dreams someone walks in.
Someone who's ready to stand up and fight,
to tell us what happened to us wasn't right.

But that's in our dreams. In the clear light of day
things tend to go in a different way.
We reach for a bottle, a pill or a knife.
We search for solutions and try to live life.

We may hide the wounds
but we can't lose the scars,
and we bleed when betrayal
mocks this pain of ours.

###

Serendipity, Sao Paulo

2010-10-27T11:36:00.001+05:30

It was love at first sight for me. From the moment I discovered the Internet, I was hooked. To seal the obsession, I was part of the team that developed the launch campaign for the Internet in Bahrain, inet for Batelco. I was one of those copywriters who liked to believe in the products she sold, and with inet it was easy.

I could go on and on about the joys of the Internet, but for now I'll rave about just one of them - the way it connects us all, around the world. Every day that I check my blog, I'm amazed - and awed - that there are visitors from continents I may never see, from cities and towns I have never heard of, or places whose names bring back memories of books I have read or songs I've listened to. Every now and then I like to google and look for the deeper connection between myself and these places or the people who come to this blog from them.

This morning I blog-hopped over to Angela's blog in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was all in Spanish, but there was one little box in the top right corner, whose contents I recognised immediately.

Se Deus e por nos,
quem sera contra nos?

It's a line from the Bible's New Testament, one that I'd heard so often as a schoolgirl, but nothing that I've kept top of mind. This morning, however, I was disturbed and confused about something I'd read last night, and there were a zillion questions bouncing around my mind. My little blog-hop to Sao Paulo gave me the answer to them all.

Thank you, Angela, for being my connection to this.

.

The Mysterious Case of the Unresolved Anger

2010-10-21T23:43:00.001+05:30

Where does it go?
Nobody sees it, not even me.
I feel it birth and swell and rise and disappear.
I think it is gone, but I should know better.

Here it is, in my blood, spitting such words of poison to the cells around it
that they cling to each other, dig their nails into walls and hold on for dear life.

There my anger is, in my arteries and veins hardening me inch by inch
all the way to my heart.

And not just in my blood, I feel it in my bones eating through and wearing me thin.
Here it is in my knees, hurting me so bad I cannot climb the stairs to an open terrace,
or sit cross-legged to play games with a baby.

Here too in my eyes, holding back the tears so the pressure builds and builds and one day
I will have to give way and be blinded by the flood of anger that sucks me into its darkness.

Here is my anger, in my stomach burning acid.

Here on my skin, erupting in tiny volcanoes of rage, breaking out across my flesh like
a rampaging, molten mob.

Here - and there - in my kidney, in my hair.
My anger is invisible, nowhere and everywhere.

I can fool myself for a while, say it's gone and smile and ignore all the clues

but my body will snarl out the truth.

#

The facts of life.

2010-10-15T12:03:00.001+05:30

Quite often, sitting on the potty brings forth pearls of wisdom. Here is today's:

Once I thought I was so cool
But really I was just a fool.

Once, I'm sure, I was quite hot
But now, alas, I'm not.

#

Tree #1's birthday present.

2010-10-08T05:46:00.022+05:30

When I turned 42, I asked friends around the world to plant trees for me, as a birthday present. I didn't quite reach my goal of 42 trees, but it's nice to know that somewhere out there are trees growing on almost every continent because of me.

The first tree from this project was planted in my parents' garden, a day before my birthday. It took three years, but on my birthday this year, we discovered its first lime, ready to be plucked.

My lime tree is nearly as tall as I am now (how quickly they grow up!) and I wonder how the other trees are doing. I must ask my friends to send me recent pictures. In the meantime, if anyone out there would like to plant me a tree, please do! Don't forget to take a picture that I can put up here. And if any of you have "special" trees, planted in celebration of a birthday or some other special occasion, I'd love to hear about it.

Choose joy.

2010-10-06T05:21:00.002+05:30

The answers are always around us. It's how we look that helps us to see. I can focus on the ugly pipe shaft from the building next door, built a little too close to its compound wall, or I can focus on the way the sunlight plays with the plant on my windowsill. There's always a choice.

Trees to paper to trees.

2010-10-04T17:15:00.001+05:30

I saw these three tree designs in a book on applique stitchery and they looked such fun I couldn't resist giving them a try - but remembering years of accidentally stitching my needlework projects to my school tunic, I decided I'd be better off working with paper and scissors. An excellent form of therapy for anyone with packrat tendencies. I can now justify all those old magazines that I Just Can't Throw Away.

A tiny bit significant.

2010-10-03T14:34:00.003+05:30

My last post was about something hugely significant. It's getting such an incredible response that for the last two days I've been worrying about how to follow that up. Finally, I chose this picture I took last week. Visually I find it appealing - the round green leaves, the curl of the dried leaves, the white streaks against that lovely dark grey in the granite, and the texture of the sand. What I like about it best, though, is the fact that the green plant you see there, from one tip to another, would fit inside a 50 paise coin (a diameter of no more than 2 cm).

I love that it's possible to find beauty and symbolism in the tiniest of things. I look at this and I see so many different things. A story of survival in spite of the odds. A story of life's timeline - birth and growth, solidity and strength, withering and crumbling. And a story of reassurance: because if there is significance and beauty in a little weed down at my feet, there is significance in me, and in everything. And if everything matters, if nothing is unimportant, then the things I give far too much importance to - success, perfection, improvement and competition - might be over-rated.

All I have to do is be me.

Once upon 2.77 acres

2010-10-01T15:06:00.003+05:30

Once upon 2.77 acres of land, people discovered God. Some of the people called Him Rama. Some called Him Allah. God smiled at them all, because only He knew that He was in every name, and that He was beyond names.

Sometimes God tried to explain this to the people, but they could not understand. He tried to tell them through the leaves of trees, and through the songs of birds. He planted His truth in the eyes of every child, and He waited for the people to see it. But they would not look, and so they did not see.

The people, however, did love God. They were fascinated by Him. They adored and feared Him, and they chose beautiful ways to worship Him. They did not all choose the same way, of course, because God had long ago breathed into each of these people the gifts of self-expression and choice. So some of the people heard a hymn to God in the striking of a bell, and some heard it in the voice of a man calling them to prayer.

God heard them both. But in time, another sound started to drown out the hymns He loved. It was the sound of the people, quarrelling amongst themselves as to whose god God was.

God bowed His head and wept. And the people looked up and said, “Ah, rain.”

For a time, they were distracted, and they began to speak of weather and soil and geography. But inevitably, they returned to their arguing. And this time they quarrelled about whose land God’s land was.

“Mine,” said God, whispering the word through the rustle of leaves. But the people could not hear the word over the noise of their angers and their fears.

“Yours,” said God, scattering the word through the songs of birds. But the people were too busy gathering evidence to spare any time to find the word.

“Ours,” said God, shining the word through the eyes of children. But the people kept their eyes fixed, burning with hate, upon each other, and did not notice the word.

Besides, the people had found a new word, a word that felt powerful and reassuring. It was not a word that was as powerful and reassuring as God Himself, but it felt real and solid. It could be touched and prodded and probed, taken apart and put back together.

“Proof!” all the people cried, in a brief moment of unity. “Proof is what we need!”

And God wondered when proof had replaced Him. Faith was all He had hoped for, and all His gifts had been gifts of love. Proof had never been one of them.

Nobody knows the exact day when He walked quietly away from those 2.77 acres of land, and nobody said goodbye, because nobody noticed He had left.

The fish stops here.

2010-09-30T01:16:00.004+05:30

And so do the Swedes and Cambodians, and people from over fifty countries around the planet. I don't know why, but over the past week, there have been so many new visitors to this blog. What was it? Audrey Hepburn's middle finger? I honestly don't know

I'm thrilled to have more hits, of course, but what I absolutely love is seeing the names of places from where people are connecting to me. So many are names I have heard of or read about, and a few that I've visited. But it's the ones I've never heard of before that are the most exciting. Once I've checked my Visitor's Map and then updated my alphabetical list (a most joyous task for anyone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies), I then pick one of the previously-unknown places and google it.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Somewhere in the state of Sao Paulo, in the country Brazil, there is a city, nearly 250 years old, called PIRACICABA. They call it "the bride of the hills". I have no idea what a Brazilian bride looks like. The only Brazilian women I've ever seen were in carnival processions on TV, looking very exotic, sparkly and feathery. So I deduce that Piracicaba is a sizzling hot place, with a nice set of hills.

I found a connection, too: every year Piracicaba is host to the International Fair of Humour, where work from cartoonists around the world is on display. In tribute to my Piracicaban reader, I must dig out my favourite cartoon and post it here.

You're still wondering about the fish? Well, the city is bisected by waterfalls, and fish that swim upstream to reproduce - I'm presuming some type of salmon - can be seen here. The name "Piracicaba" is from a word in the Tupi language that means “place where the fish stops”.

I find that delightful.

P.S. Anyone know how the name is pronounced? I'm choosing to say pee-raa-chi-KAA-ba. That's what it looks-like-it-sounds-like to me :o)

Opium was a medicine, too.

2010-09-27T21:04:00.002+05:30

For some people, it's the first thing they turn on in the morning. For some, it stays on all day. For some, all night.

For some it's the soaps or serials that Simply Cannot Be Missed. It's just not the same watching a rerun the following morning. It would be like eating cold pizza. Oh, the rerun might be watched too, but that fresh first showing, oftentimes with extra cheese, can't be missed.

Sometimes the TV is a babysitter who can turn hyperactive children turn into placid zombies who can go without blinking for extraordinarily long periods of time while their parents reassure themselves that this lesser evil is for the greater good.

Sometimes it's company. Voices .. actors, musicians, news reporters .. men, women, children, animals .. the good, the bad, the ugly .. it doesn't matter what, as long as it cuts into the silence of loneliness.

Sometimes it's crowd control, because it's easier to watch a screen than it is to go out and be part of something else, whether that's a sporting event or a riot.

Sometimes it's journeys - into the past, onto an African savannah, behind the scenes or where the action is.

But whatever it is, it does something for us, takes us away or distracts us or just fills the time between one day and the next.

I'm not addicted to it, no, not me. I could easily live without it, but I like having it around. I like my serials and comedies and movies, and voices coming from the other room. I like the vampires and the impossible stunts and the surprisingly good-looking forensic scientists. I like everything except the ads (but that's another story.)

But what I like most is that inbetween all the channels and cacaphony, I sometimes find little poetic pearls of wisdom that I consider good enough to scrawl on my designated scrawling wall. (Yes I really do have one, and highly recommend the concept). And I thought I'd share them with you:

"Your job is to be yourself. And my job is to love you, no matter what."
- the father of Kurt (who is gay), on an episode of "Glee"

"We're all scared. If you're not scared, you're not paying attention."
- Dr. Bailey, on "Grey's Anatomy"

"One day you wake up and you find that you don't mind carrying it around with you."
- Detective Kate Bennett, on "Castle"
(she was talking about coming to terms with her grief and trauma over her mother's murder)

"Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going."
- Agent Rossi, on "Criminal Minds"

TV may be the "opium of the masses", but sometimes it has a healing touch.

A hands-on experience.

2010-09-21T09:00:00.003+05:30

It's not a remarkable picture, and of no one in particular, just one of those random faces I like to draw. But I discovered something interesting after I'd finished. The face tells a sad little story. If you hold your hand over the right side of the face, you'll see that on the left is a young face, full of sorrow. And when you cover the left side, the right is an older face, hardened with bitterness.

I think the story is that within a person who may seem sour or cynical, there may be a history of some sadness or despair that is still carried with them every day.

The moral: Judge not. We do it all the time, and we do not have the right qualifications.

The big Kiwi lie.

2010-09-20T20:56:00.004+05:30

I swear the shadows really did look like that. Honestly.
And talking of honesty, the Kiwis lied to me.
This apple came with a little label that read "New Zealand Delicious".
It was not.

Sometimes art heals in weird and wonderful ways.

2010-09-19T21:39:00.001+05:30

Publish Post

After I lost my darling bird Gobi, it was suggested that I turn to art or writing - about her - to "sublimate" my grief. But I couldn't. I'm not ready to face my loss so directly, just yet. So I picked up a book of movie star photos, and decided to try my hand at copying that classic Audrey Hepburn picture, the one with the loooong cigarette holder.

Somehow, I ended up with what you see here. Fortunately for Ms Hepburn, it looks nothing like her.

I'm not healed. Grief takes its own time. But I can't help smiling when I look at this ridiculous portrait, and for now, that'll do.

Postcard #3

2010-06-13T14:25:00.001+05:30

And this one should be arriving in Delhi any day now.

A second postcard

2010-05-01T19:00:00.005+05:30

Finally. Postcard #2 is done and ready to be mailed. What I'm enjoying most about this project is finding three unrelated people - the person in the picture, the person whose words I've quoted, and the person who receives the postcard - and creating a connection between them.

Practice makes pearfect.

2010-04-11T14:30:00.007+05:30

I have spent the last few days painting a pear. It is an American pear, although I'm not sure it is a Seckel, as they are supposed to be quite small. A few visitors asked me if it was a deformed apple (the actual pear, not my attempts to draw it).

It was a fun exercise, because I first tried watercolour, then a black-and-white pencil sketch, and finally the watercolour pencil one you see here. I had intended attempting a fourth - in oil pastels - but hunger got the better of me.

I'm not sure if it's because I left the pear out for so many days, or if this is just the way it's supposed to taste and feel. The first bite was juicy, but the overall experience is one of powdery mush. I've eaten as much as I could bear, and stopped. Perhaps it was the anticipation, the you-can't-have-it-till-you've-painted-it. Or perhaps it turned into a senior citizen while I took my time over the paintings.But it was definitely more fun to paint than to eat.

Next time I shall pick something I don't want to eat. Watch this space for eggplant. Or click here for better pictures than mine: The Art of Botanical Illustration: An Illustrated History

Just because.

2010-04-10T21:54:00.004+05:30

Just because it's a cheap little Government of India yellow post card, doesn't mean it has to be boring. Or rural. Or official.

(If you want to know more about the lady who said this, click this link: The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life or maybe you'd prefer wiki

This postcard, mailed to my niece, is the first of many that I hope to doodle and send out across the country. If you're in India and would like to get a card too, email me your postal address, and perhaps one day you'll find something like this in your postbox.

The things you find.

2009-12-14T19:40:00.011+05:30

Lately I have been trying my hand at watercolour painting. Mostly on my bedroom wall, using watercolour pencils that I picked up in the kids' section of a stationery shop. This evening I remembered I had a pad of watercolour paper lying around somewhere. I dug it out, and discovered that I have already tried my hand at watercolour painting. I'd quite forgotten. I think it was some time in the early nineties, because this one must have been done after one of those Indian Fine Arts Society shows.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hindustani classical music, the tanpura is a stringed instrument that "drones" in the background and provides a steady beat for the lead musicians.

From my sketchbook

2009-10-27T14:58:00.009+05:30

Haven't been in the mood to write, but here's something I drew this weekend, off a photograph of my cousin's daughter. I like the way I got her expression: dreamy, shy, and pleased all at the same time (I think it was a picture of her on her honeymoon). I haven't succeeded in making her look as classically beautiful as she is in real life.

Red, revisited.

2009-07-28T21:36:00.009+05:30

I recently discovered oil pastels. Basically, these are posh, lubricated crayons that one can have hours of smudgy fun with. And much fun have I had, largely on one wall of my home that I allow myself to scribble on. Of late, though, I've been trying it out on paper, and here's something I did this evening. Recognise her? It's Red Riding Hood. She's grown up now, and has made her way out: unafraid of the forest behind her, and unintimidated by the demons ahead that may try to whisper fear and doubt back into her heart.

The moon wanes

2009-07-17T23:10:00.007+05:30

I'm a lunatic. Absolutely crazy about the moon. The full moon, especially, I can gaze at forever, practically drinking it in with my eyes like some parched alcoholic. I love the moon in all its phases, too, and it always evokes so much almost indescribable emotion in me. Found this on a scrap of paper just last week.

The moon wanes
parchment yellow in an inky sky.
Crisp with age, come upon suddenly
like an old love-letter I never meant
to read again.

(Written on 24/9/1994 at 9:05 pm)

"They went looking

2008-12-24T19:58:00.002+05:30

I wrote this in the nineties, and turned it into my Christmas card for that year.

They went looking for a king,
and came across a baby.

They went in search of wisdom,
and came away with love.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"If you love me ..

2008-11-01T13:07:00.006+05:30

If you love me
you should know
how the full moon
fills my eyes and my heart.
You should know,
so when we are apart
you have only to look up
when the moon is full,
and we shall be together.

(written in 2002?)

This poem is written for four little boys, sons of a friend, four little boys that I love dearly but lost to time and distance. When I left Bahrain, I told them to look up whenever there was a full moon, and they would know that wherever I was in the world, I would be looking up at it too, and thinking of them, sending all my love soaring up to the moon so it would bounce back downwards to them.

By now they are teenagers and adults, but I hope they do remember whenever they catch sight of a full moon. And I wait for it every month, and send them my love, and say a little prayer for each of them. My four lovely little boys - Hisham, Abdullah, Sameer and Shishi - held tight in my heart for always.

(post-script 2010: they found me on Facebook. And they remember.)

TUCK EVERLASTING, by Natalie Babbitt

2008-10-29T07:11:00.005+05:30

This is a most unusual children's book. It is a book about the importance of dying.

It's about the Tuck family, who is blessed with (or rather, doomed to) eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, and a ten-year-old girl who stumbles on their secret.

I often think we hide from death too much. Like babies who cover their eyes and believe that what they can't see doesn't exist. Sweet - in babies. A bit silly for the rest of us, given that the only certainty in every single person's life is that we will die one day. Most of the world likes to pretend that death doesn't walk around with them wherever they go. And then someone dies, and we are shocked, immobilised and offended by this "horrible" thing that has happened.

I suppose I think about all this more since my father was diagnosed with cancer. He's recovering now, but the experience forced me to accept that death WILL come, some day. It could come for me before it comes for him, for that matter. It nearly did, back in 2003 when I had the dengue haemmorhagic fever. Since then, I've started looking at life - and death - not just differently, but also more frequently. I decided that, like the baby, I need to keep growing. I need to uncover my eyes, end an endearing but pointless game, and dare to look, explore, find truths, and grow. I want to be ready. I want to die better, and also live better.

Finding this lovely little book, at this time of searching, was one of those pleasant coincidences that I often suspect are not coincidences at all.

"We who have no right to grieve ..

2008-10-28T13:48:00.001+05:30

This poem is no longer true to me. I still do feel this way at times - guilty for all that I have, judging myself and my depressive illness - far more harshly than anyone else might judge me, in fact. But I call this poem untrue because I have learnt this: EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO GRIEVE. To hurt, to cry, to want more. We are human - and rich or poor, safe or uncertain, we all have the right to our feelings.

We who have no right to grieve,
grieve the death of great ideas.

We who have no right to cry,
cry for the little we do not have.

We with everything at our feet
look at the moon with longing.

We whose lives are full,
look at the emptiness inside.

We with all the time in the world,
sit and weep so many moments away,
thinking our lives colourless and gray.

In other worlds,
there is the colour of night,
the colour of blood,
the colour of one against another.

In other worlds,
they fight for their right to smile.
Their tears are not wasted on the grief
we have the luxury to entertain.

(4.23 pm Sunday 22 Dec 1996)

"Shadows crossed my window ..

2008-10-24T13:44:00.001+05:30

Shadows crossed my window one night
(trees across the path of a garden light)
I thought it was the Angel of Death
(though it might have been the wind)
and in the morning I heard
women wailing next door.

Tonight he was here again
but he knocked and went away.
I think it was his way of telling me
he'd be back for me one day.

(written in Jan 92)

"Across unexplored distances ..

2008-10-20T13:39:00.002+05:30

Across unexplored distances
part of our souls are entwined
in an intimacy that can't be explained.
We know each other,
but are strangers.
We may never meet again,
but we have come together,
a man and a woman,
not as men and women do.

There is a bond,
and there are no bonds.
There is a kind of love that cannot be called love.
There are secrets behind each other's eyes
that we are beginning to understand,
and secrets we are too remote to share.

Finding everything my heart has longed for,
and nothing of all my body desires,
I cannot call him friend or lover.
He is both less and more.

(written on 13-3-95, 1.45 a.m.)

I wrote this for a very special friend. You know who you are!

DEAR ME: "The promises we never make ..

2008-10-08T13:36:00.003+05:30

The promises we never make
are the ones we never break
but the hearts we keep to ourselves
for the fear of hurt or hurting,
break anyway.

(written on 24-2-95)

Beauty

2008-09-10T21:50:00.014+05:30

This poem is how I wanted to be.

Beauty

Beauty without function is
not beauty.

Her mouth is beautiful
when she smiles at a child
and speaks tenderly to an old man.

Her hands are beautiful
when she touches souls.

Her eyes are beautiful.

With them she sees
each shade of a sunset
and the perfect symmetry
of a flower at the roadside.

Her eyes are beautiful
when she cries
someone else's tears.

Her ears are beautiful.

With them she hears symphonies
in the wind,
and music in a wristful of
bangles.

Her ears are beautiful
when she stops to listen
to what no one else wants to hear.

Her body is beautiful
when she forgets
that it is so.

(written in 1991? 1992?)

Reading this today, I think, just maybe, I turned out beautiful after all.

The shortest, and the saddest.

2008-08-06T13:24:00.003+05:30

Prayer

To be free.
To forget,
As you forgot me.

(written 6 May 1989, 12:37 p.m.)

Beads for jewels

2008-06-28T10:38:00.007+05:30

I always say that Manipal Hospital's greatest asset is its nursing staff - they are gems. My mom, dad and I have all had our turns in the hospital's Intensive Care Units, and every time, the nurses have taken such excellent and sincere care of us.

So when Daddy went in for bladder surgery, I decided I needed to do something special for these gems of the Urology department. I'm fascinated by all things Native American (I would like to believe that somewhere in my ancestry there is a Cherokee soul) so when I discovered the craft of cording with beads, it became a hobby. However, I didn't think the nurses would appreciate little beaded lizards, so instead I decided to make each of them a beaded name-tag on a key-ring. They were thrilled with the results, and so was I, so decided I must share some pix here.

P.S. The hand is mine.

Tree #7: a chikku tree, Bombay

2008-06-24T12:43:00.005+05:30

I'm not too sure if that's spelt right! This is a wonderful fruit tree - little leathery brown domes that you split open, and scoop out a grainy sweet pulp .. tastes delicious! And makes for mind-blowing milkshakes, too. Some people call this fruit 'sapota' and I think the origin is Mexican.

Got a nice cheery SMS this morning from my friend Jill in Bombay, informing me that this tree has been planted for me in her garden. Jill is one of my oldest and dearest and truest friends, right from the age of eleven. I had just run away from boarding school the night before, and she had got blamed for a prank that some other girls did - and so we both had visits to the principal's office that morning, which is how we met each other and ended up becoming Best Friends. More than thirty years later, we still are. I could write a book about our friendship (and I probably should!) and all the magical fun we've had through school and beyond.

And another tree for our planet - joy! I wonder who will be next on my list!

Crocus going nowhere

2008-06-20T10:32:00.008+05:30

Like art, it's a path that doesn't particularly lead anywhere, but what a joy it is to walk it.
I dream of planting crocus bulbs and French marigolds on every city street.
P.S. These pictures were taken in May, in my parents' garden.

Before the monsoon

2008-06-19T22:00:00.007+05:30

There are days like this. When I feel dry, bare, buffeted. All around her, the others still wear green; this tree is out of sync with the seasons. She follows some other rhythm, some African beat that only she hears. Her pods have been emptied of their cellophane seeds, ransacked by wild parakeets and squirrels. When they fall, these pods look like canoes. But though the skies are grey and the wind promises rain, it lies, and so the canoes rot slowly in the graveyard at her feet.
P.S. This is an African flame tree that grows at the edge of the graveyard behind our terrace.

"Wouldn't it be lovely ..

2008-06-18T19:44:00.004+05:30

Dear me. From the drug-abusing poems of the eighties to the alcohol-guzzling ones of the nineties. Which just goes to show: it's no use getting rid of an addiction if you don't deal with the SOURCE of the problem. The addiction is always a symptom of something deeper. So if you manage to quit one, you can be pretty sure it will resurface in a different form sooner or later.

Wouldn't it be lovely
if we didn't need
Wouldn't it be easy
if we didn't feel
Wouldn't it be nice
to have a heart made of ice?

Then we could chip it to pieces
and put them in the kitchen sink
so our drinks can be
deliciously cold
all evening long.

(written on 5/4/97 at 3.04 a.m.)

"If I could ..

2008-06-09T18:44:00.005+05:30

Many survivors of child abuse feel like this for much of their lives, knowing that there is something wrong with their lives, but not knowing what it is, or why. Learning and understanding about the long term impact of childhood abuse changes that.

If I could only drift like a shark,
cruel and free
and not drown in petty seas of my own misery.

If I could only sleep as a child does
and wake wondrous and pure.

If I could only dive into my soul
and not simply wait on the shore.

POWER OVER PANIC, by Bronwyn Fox, Rs. 100

2008-05-29T11:00:00.011+05:30

In preparation for the 6-week cancer treatment my dad starts today, I dug this book out from my hoard. Having gone through an era of psychotherapy (make than an eon, or an aeon if you're particular) I was familiar with a lot of the information on panic and anxiety related disorders, so tended to skim through those parts. But I also found some wonderfully inspiring words that I must save here, to read and read again. Here are some excerpts, and if you like what you read then please do go ahead and get the book. Lots of useful stuff for anyone who has a panic/anxiety disorder. Of course, I always recommend 2nd hand!! Let's re-use the old ones before the publishers have to go out and cut down more trees for new editions!

" .. The need to be in control is the main obstacle towards recovery. Recovery means the opposite. Recovery means we need to let go of the need to be in control. We don't realise our overwhelming need to be in control perpetuates our disorder ..

.. The difference between panic disorder and recovery means we have taken the power back and are no longer afraid of the attack or anxiety. We have shifted the power balance. There are no more 'what ifs', but instead we have developed an attitude of 'so what' ..

.. A major obstacle to taking back the power is the lack of compassion we have for ourselves .. we negate and invalidate our own suffering and pain. Most of us cannot see, let alone acknowledge or appreciate our own strength and courage, which has brought us thus far ..

.. We never take time to examine our thoughts. We don't even realise we can. We never watch the internal world of our thoughts as it spins this way and thought. We react to our thoughts without realising they are actually separate fleeting moments in time. We don't see this separateness. Instead, we believe we have no power over the continual progression of these thoughts, and the feelings caused by them .. We need to be in control of ourselves and our environment, yet the only thing we do not control is our thinking. We need to change this by letting go of the overall need to be in control, and control our thinking ..

.. It isn't the symptoms which create the fear. The way we think creates the fear, which creates the symptoms, which creates further thoughts, which creates further fear and the cycle continues ..

.. we cannot let the fear of what other people think get in our way of full recovery. If our face turns bright red, then our face turns bright red. If we feel faint, then sit down on a chair, on the floor, on the footpath, if need be. If we vomit or have an attack of diarrhoea, then we vomit or have an attack of diarrhoea. Let it happen. When we let it happen, we turn off the adrenalin and it will be over as quick as it starts. We will not have to waste all of our energy trying to keep it under control and thereby turning on more adrenalin. Our mental health needs to be more important than other peoples' opinions ..

.. Learning to be patient with ourselves is learning to be kind to ourselves. Being kind to ourselves means we are not putting ourselves under any further unnecessary stress ..

.. Most people do not give their recovery priority. Although everyone wants to recover, there can seem a million more important things to be done first. Our recovery has to become the most important thing in our life. Our loyalty has to be to ourselves. This can be very difficult for many of us because we feel we are being selfish in putting our own needs first ..

.. Making allowances is not giving in; it is working with the disorder. Doing nothing is giving in ..

.. Begin again. These two words can mean so much .. If we feel that we are not making progress, if we feel that some our attempts didn't quite work out the way we would have liked, let them go and begin again ..

.. Our ultra-sensitivity also increases the sense of guilt we feel towards our families because we can't do everything we would like to do. We need to be aware of the extra stress caused by this. We can spend a week worrying and feeling guilty over one small incident which we think of as a failure. Guilt only increases our anxiety. It keeps us locked into the cycle. We need to let it go, so we can move forward to recovery and to the time when we will be able to do everything we haven't been able to do ..

.. Despite the image we had of ourselves, we have always known that we never felt any sense of who we are. We never had a real sense of self. This essential element was always lacking in our lives, and it is from this that our feelings of inadequacy, lack of confidence and lack of self-esteem arose ..

.. Over the years we built the image of who we thought we should be. We lived our lives with an uneasy feeling that we were not who we appeared to be. If we were not who we appeared to be, then who were we? We didn't know. We were never able to answer the question ..

.. The seemingly inherent negativity of the disorder can actually be the most positive experience of our life. How many other people are given such an opportunity? The disorder has done so much of the hard work for us. It has stripped away the image of who we thought we should be, and has returned us to the basis of who we could be ..

.. Life isn't just about growing up, having a career, getting married, having children and so on. These are things we do during life, but they are not life. Life is continual evolution and development ..

.. We begin to see that responsibility for our peace and happiness is ours, and ours alone. We cannot shift the responsibility of ourselves to other people or other factors ..

.. As we become aware of these insights we begin to see we are letting go of more than the disorder. Life begins to take on a different meaning. Our ideals and values change. Things which were once important to us no longer seem so, yet it appears there is nothing else to take its place ..

.. we are walking into unknown territory and it can seem easier to stop where we are, despite our unresolved difficulties. What we don't know is that the unknown territory is that of the self. As the 'disordered' self breaks down it can mean the birth of our real self ..

.. In the beginning it is difficult; there is fear, there is anger, there is frustration. 'Why do I have to go through this, why can't I just be normal like everyone else?' What is 'normal' anyway? Use the anger, the fear and frustration to push past these new fears. With each step, we gain new awareness, new knowledge and increased strength. The process becomes easier and more tolerable. This is life, this is growth, a continual evolution ..

.. It is a time of learning to listen to the inner voice of the self, which is more than willing to help us. If we stop and take the time to listen, the inner voice will be our guide. All too often we do not hear ourselves ..

.. We have to become aware we do have a choice in everything. In making the choice we need to be aware of its implications. We can choose and set limits if we need to. We can choose to move at our own pace. It is going to feel unfamiliar, we will feel vulnerable and the fear will be there, but so too is the self's determination to grow ..

.. Being afraid is all right. Being hesitant is all right. Feeling vulnerable and defenceless is all right. They are all part of the ongoing development of our self. When we begin to work with it, we won't know where we are, where we are going and what will happen to us along the way. This is all right too ..

.. all the resources necessary will be found in our self and we will find them waiting for us at each step. Not only will we find them waiting, we will find they have been there all along."

- from Bronwyn Fox's Power Over Panic

SURVIVOR: TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR FIGHT AGAINST CANCER, by Laura Landro

2008-04-20T11:55:00.009+05:30

I picked this up at a book fair back when my nephew Mehran had been diagnosed with bone cancer. After he passed away, I donated this and other books to the Oncology Dept at Manipal Hospital. It's funny (but not in a ha-ha way) that I donated them on April 16th 2007, and exactly one year later, I walked in to the department and asked if I could borrow some of them back.

The books have been bookcrossed, so that patients or family can borrow and return the books for free, and also make a journal entry if they want to, about how helpful the book was to them.

This is the first of several books I will probably read on cancer. My father, dear egg-painting Dr. Tonsils, has been diagnosed with bladder cancer. Fortunately it is superficial and low grade (I'm not entirely sure what that means exactly: but I do know it means chemotherapy won't be necessary, and for that I'm grateful). The lesions have been removed and he is in hospital recovering from surgery, while fighting a fever and coping with his chronic respiratory problems.

Me, I'm holding out, trying to stay positive and encouraging. Sometimes it feels like I've been treading water in a huge dark ocean since last week, and it can be really exhausting. But it's a situation where I simply cannot lose hope, and so I rest and then tread again, knowing that somehow we will get through this, no matter what the outcome.

Instead of my usual three or four excerpts, I'm posting all the excerpts that I think I may want to read again when I'm high on stress or low on strength, energy or hope. Maybe reading it once is enough, but I feel better knowing that I can come back and read through the encouraging words whenever I need to.

"There's no use trying to figure out why you, why now. Questions are irrelevant, because it won't wait for answers.

The key to survival is taking control, learning everything you can about your treatment, making informed decisions, and being prepared to fight if necessary;

And it is important to remember that one is never alone in the fight.

Nothing would ever be the same again in my life, nor in the life of anyone who cared for me. Everything I had taken for granted - my daily concerns, my work, my well-being, my sense of my place in the world, and even my physical appearance - was about to be taken away from me. My own mortality, something I had never seriously considered, was suddenly staring me in the face.

For some, talking directly to the victim is difficult; they don't know what to say or how to act. But there is no use trying to hide .. the face that one has cancer. One good outcome of being open is that people want to help. And that is where some of the best help will come from.

Acting strong and in control actually helped me feel tougher - the old "whistle a happy tune" scenario - and sometimes I even amazed myself at how well I seemed to be dealing with everything. But I had to fight every day to ward off the despair I felt inside.

I found it helped to write down my feelings and my fears ..

.. he gave her some advice we all needed: don't project the worst; focus on the real possibility of a cure. It was the simplest, yet most important, advice we could get.

.. going ballistic about small things can help release the steam that builds up when the larger fears seem overwhelming, even incomprehensible. And once you express your fear, it's easier to find ways to psych yourself up for the time when you will really need all your courage.

"No bad vibes, Mom, no thoughts that anything bad could ever happen; don't for an instant acknowledge that he could be hurt, only positive energy," I would tell her, trying to convince myself as well.

.. though I was terrified of needles .. I had to accept that they were now a daily fact of life. "You can always raise the bar on what you can take, how much you can stand," I wrote in my notebook. "Just raise it. Raise that bar."

Conquer fear.

I fought back tears. As close as I was to the black hole in front of me, it seemed more unreal than ever. I couldn't make myself think about what might actually happen to me, I could only take things one day at a time. From now on, that was the only way to get on with the next part of my life.

.. while staying in control intellectually is crucial to taking charge of your own care, you can't bury fears and emotions. I had focused on finding my own strength and conquering my own fear, on being strong so my family wouldn't fall apart worrying about how I was dealing with things. I had wanted to show the world that I was, in fact, invincible. Those are good feelings to have, and they do help you mentally to prepare for the complete unknown. But she was right; it was okay to be scared, and very important to express it outright when I needed to.

Patients who are used to being in charge, taking care of themselves or being the person on whom others depend will find this physical debilitation very hard to cope with .. may direct their anger over loss of control at doctors, medical personnel, or even their family caregivers. She recommends that family members treat the patient with respect and acknowledge his or her intelligence. She also stresses the importance of respecting a patient's modesty and privacy.

I knew I was lucky to have my family so close to me, but sometimes I just needed to shut them all out. "There's a sense of alienation between you and anyone related to you even though they are as close to you as they've ever been," I said into my tape recorder at one 3 a.m. session. "You don't want to push them away at a time like this, but sometimes you have to."

"You don't know what your life is going to be .. I read once that after you survive cancer, it's like a sword of Damocles over your head for the rest of your life .. but life depends on how well you live it, enjoying the freedom you get and hoping your cure has been effective and you get long-term survival - that's what you go for - you've got to be one of those great statistics. You've just got to."

My family tried to keep my spirits up. "We keep telling Laura that things are going so well," my mother wrote in her notebook .. "She feels so exhausted that our encouraging words seem to have little impact. We do it because it's important for her to hear every day that her progress is remarkable ..

"I'm scared. I've got to get that old confidence back .. I've got to start getting ME back .. Now you've got to make yourself do things, but you have to be cautious, follow the rules, make yourself watch every little thing and learn how to take care of yourself .. You have to learn that there will be setbacks but that you'll be okay. You've got to believe that this has worked and that it's going to keep working.

Your body has been through so much, your soul is battered, your psyche exhausted from the sheer effort of going through it .. "It's like you've been sent to hell, and suddenly someone says you can go home now."

But in the end, you have to make yourself believe. You have to summon all the strength and faith that enabled you to get through it in the first place, and turn that strength toward getting your life back.

Caregivers .. frequently say the biggest stress comes after they leave the hospital, when the tasks usually performed by the nursing staff have to be carried out by families.

Dr Abrams' studies found that 80 percent of the caregiving tasks fall to women, and that the medical establishment needs to establish better procedures to help caregivers cope after the patient has returned home.

Returning to your regular world after surviving cancer is much like reentering the earth's atmosphere from space. It takes a period of adjustment before you can resume normal life, and your journey has opened your eyes to things most of the people you encounter can never really understand unless they've been there.

.. made me more certain than ever of the importance of self-education for a cancer patient of any kind. The more you know about the latest science and wisdom in the medical world, the more informed your choices when it comes to the treatment of your disease. Don't assume your internist or even your local specialist is up to date on everything; become a lay expert to the extent possible, and use that knowledge on your own behalf.

.. it was good to be able to meet some of the patients who were there, and to tell them that not long ago, I had been in their shoes. I think it helped them to see someone who was already back to normal.

For the first couple of years after my transplant, I was so happy to be alive that I didn't think much about whether or now I was truly happy, or about what I really wanted. As most of my friends lamented turning forty, I was thrilled just to get there.

Once you have had cancer, the risk of other cancers is higher.

.. the fact is, I probably never will truly relax. I can only be grateful I've had a second chance at life, and I'll remain vigilant about protecting it. The fear that the disease will come back is never completely gone, but it can be kept at bay. It is hard work getting comfortable with the idea that the bad times are really over, that it's okay to feel happy, loved, and secure. As for my good health, I've learned to enjoy it. But I'm not getting too cocky about anything. Let's just say, so far, so good.

As in any cancer, early detection is crucial to increasing your odds of survival. The best advice I can give to someone who has symptoms such as chronic fatigue, a respiratory infection that won't go away, or pain in the spleen area, is to get a simple blood test. Don't procrastinate, and don't let a doctor tell you you don't need one. A CBC, or complete blood count, is a standard test that any physician can justify when a patient shows up with the kind of symptoms mentioned above. Time is of the essence once your blood starts going haywire; the longer it takes to find out what's wrong with you, the less chance there is that you can stop it in time.

When it's time for your chemotherapy, radiation, and transplant, hope for the best, be prepared for the worst, and try to take the attitude that you can handle whatever comes at you.

Expect nothing from yourself other than to get through each day, and tell yourself that each day you get through brings you closer to being better again.

Don't hesitate to reach out to the people who love you, for they will be your lifeline. But understand that this is difficult for them too, and that every relationship is likely to undergo some strain.

The hardest thing for many patients is the loss of control; .. as an adult you will feel like you are a small child again, and you may even resent that.

.. face the fact that some of your relationships won't make it. If they don't, maybe that is for the best. There is nothing like a crisis to bring out the true colours in people.

It would be nice to think that once you've survived, your brush with cancer is over. But in fact, your risks of developing another cancer may be higher than the average person. You must be attentive about follow-up care, and keep up with the latest research. After a while, you won't think about it every day, and the day will come when you get through a long time without thinking about it at all. But you can never forget it. To borrow from the famous saying about freedom, the price of health is eternal vigilance.

- from Laura Landro's book: Survivor: Taking Control of Your Fight Against Cancer

HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER, by Jessica Hendra

2008-04-10T20:15:00.012+05:30

"When he was finished writing for the day, Daddy turned off his typewriter, stood from his desk, and held out his hand. The veins shone greenish-blue against the pale whiteness of his skin. They seemed like huge, protruding pipes just under his flesh. When I looked closely, I thought I could see his blood pumping through them. I would take his hand and run my little fingers over the back of it, exploring the bumpy map. Then we would go down the office stairs together and out into the night.

The two of us walked in the fields or the woods around the house, exploring fallen trees, stopping to spy quietly on deer or rabbits. He'd tell me stories about the spirits that lived in the woods. I'd hold his hand tightly, reassured by those bumps on the back. They proved he was alive. They proved he was my dad. And as long as he was with me, nothing horrible could happen - to me or to him."
*
"I remembered my life backward, from the last time I had confronted my father at Aunt Celia's, back to my teenage years, when he slipped me some coke the night he told me he was leaving my mother. Back to the days when I first started bingeing and purging. Back to the night just before I turned seven. Back to the piece he had written for the Lampoon just a few months before. He had called it 'How to Cook Your Daughter', and it started this way: A recurrent problem facing the gourmet who wishes to prepare this excellent dish is the difficulty he experiences in obtaining a daughter. .. People so often ask, How do I tell when my daughter is ready for the table? Well, there's always some little variation, but generally the exact age falls somewhere between the fifth and sixth birthdays .. "
*
Picked this up at Bangalore Book Fair last year. It's the biggest book fair in town, held annually at the Palace Grounds (yes - for those of you outside India - a real palace, belonging to the ex-Maharaja of Mysore, and vast amount of grounds where various events get held, and there's never any problem parking).

Bangalore Book Fair is massive and not to be taken lightly. I wear comfortable shoes, carry a bottle of water, my trusty portable trolley, and make sure I have a good breakfast. It can take me a whole day to get through from one end to the other. I love it.

So why am I telling you all this? Probably because it's easier to talk about the fair than about this book (which cost me the princely sum of Rs. 150 - more than I usually pay for my second-hand treasures).

I have shelves full of books at home. A lot of them are on child abuse. And some of the child abuse books are memoirs by adult survivors. But here's the thing. I never read the memoirs, just buy them and keep them.

Today, though, I decided to read this one, and I sat and read the whole thing through in about four hours. I have a headache now. I'm not sure if it's from bad reading posture, or from what I read; perhaps both.

I'm supposed to say something about it, but I'm not sure what I want to say. So I'll just say this: it's a good book. It's more than a survivor getting herself some healing by telling her story, it's also a good story, a good read. All the same, I'm disturbed after reading it, although in a way I'm glad I did read it. I'm not sure if I'm going to have scary dreams tonight, or if I'll have to sleep with the night light on, or if I'll see and hear things I know aren't real any more.

Well, I'll worry about that closer to bedtime. Meanwhile, I've done what any sensible survivor does after triggering herself silly over someone else's story. I've ordered a cheese and pepperoni pizza with a Coke on the side. And it's just arrived.

P.V. Akilandam

2008-04-02T13:37:00.006+05:30

Life is beautiful; live beautifully;

if you can't do that, at least

avoid making life ugly.

- P.V. Akilandam

Tamil novelist

from his book Chithira Pavai, 1977?

Sharon Stone said

2008-04-01T12:56:00.002+05:30

On community service:

"To be famous and do nothing is so vulgar."

found this quotation by her in my 2002 diary.

Gah.

2008-03-04T00:08:00.003+05:30

I have writer's block. Or blogger's blokk. Or something. Some terrible type of inner constipation that keeps me playing games of Freecell and Spider Solitaire, hiding at home hovering by the laptop like it's a literary lavatory, and hoping that any moment now, I shall sit down and bring forth all the words congealing within.

Hmm. Perhaps I don't have that literary constipation after all. I did manage one paragraph, and a fair amount of alliteration. My music teacher once diagnosed me with verbal diarrhoea, so I should have known that when I eventually got down to typing, SOMEthing or the other would come out! There's hope.

Tree #5: A frangipani tree in Bangalore, India

2007-10-20T14:27:00.005+05:30

My friend Priya the artist (I am much in awe of her art and secretly hope that people go around referring to me as their friend 'Nazu the writer'. Although I suspect it's more likely to be 'Nazu the clown' which, unique as it is, doesn't have the same awe-inspiring ring to it.)

Anyway, I've gone completely off track here, so let's start again. My friend Priya the artist has planted me a frangipani tree. She tells me that it will have beautiful pink and yellow flowers and promises me more pictures when it does. But for starters, here is its baby-pic.

Tree #4: A neem tree in Udupi, India

2007-10-20T09:09:00.001+05:30

This tree is Zinan's! She's Ashraf and Zeenat's daughter (see previous "Plant Me A Tree" post). I'm quite excited about this tree because neem trees are supposed to be very healing - not just in their byproducts - but in their very presence. They heal the air around them. What a lovely thought.

Zinan is 11 years old now. She's a very talented artist (it's in the Tonse genes, honestly!) and I'm going to ask her if she'll draw or paint the tree for me, instead of the usual photo.She misses her brother, I know. Although he was older, I'd often think of them as twins, they were so close to each other. There must be a big empty space in her life now. I'm glad she planted a neem tree, I hope it sends some healing air her way. Breathe deep, sweetie.

Tree #3: A nutmeg tree in Udupi, India

2007-10-20T08:58:00.002+05:30

People, you're supposed to TELL me when you plant the trees. I don't actually have psychic vibes and telephathic connections with them. (Well, not yet).

Anyway I'm happy to report, thanks to my bhabhi Zeenat's casual mention yesterday that they'd planted two trees for me a while back in Udupi - that I now require just .. oh .. 38 more .. sigh.

Zeenat is my dear cousin Ashraf Bhai's wife, and they are down here for a holiday with their daughter Zinan (Tree #4 is her contribution by the way). Zeenat is also Mehran's mother. Some of you may remember that sweet bright and unbelievably cheerful little boy who was here in Bangalore with us two years ago for his cancer treatment. He passed away last October.

Tree #2: A cherry tree in Bangalore, India

2007-09-11T09:23:00.002+05:30

I should have posted this a few days ago, but have been down with the 'flu.

My friend Sukanya's DAUGHTER is really responsible for the planting of this tree. Apparently Anahita is an avid bird-lover and amateur bird-watcher, and wanted this particular tree to attract the sunbirds. Wise and wonderful child, we need more of your kind on this planet!

And who is Sukanya, you might ask? Especially you of the good old days .. and oh, there have been many different types of good old days in Nazu's life. Sukanya is a friend of the good not-so-old days, we bumped into each other some years ago at a workshop for NGOs (not that I or Askios are NGOs .. we are more of an NGO-groupie and we tag along wherever the NGOs go, and try to be useful). Anyway, Sukanya and I bumped into each other and became friends, and now we continue to bump into each other every so often at one workshop or another.

Shameful, really, because we live in the same city. But now that our friendship has been so beautifully and symbolically rooted, I must pack my water-bottle and make the long trek to wherever it is she lives (I only know that it is very very far away from my part of town) so that I can meet fellow bird-lover Anahita and take a nice picture of us all under our tree!

"Now that it's night ...

2007-09-04T18:36:00.005+05:30

Now that it's night
You can let your fears out
The darkness will cover your scars
You can pull off your mask
And breathe free at last.

You can straighten your shoulders
Stick out your chest
Tuck in your stomach
And walk like the rest
(As you'd like to, by day.)

You can smoke all your pot
You can drink all your booze
To try keep your mind off your Freudian blues
You can lie down and wait for your dreams to come true
But watch out, cause they sneak in a nightmare or two.

You can't look in the mirror
You hate what you see
so you go for a walk
And pretend that you're free.

And you look at the moon, the stars and the clouds
But you're not man enough yet to cry out aloud
Though you know that the morning
is just a different kind of night -
And if you don't remove the shutters
You won't see any light.

(Jan 21st 1987, Madras, at Mardi Gras).

A tree poem from Puerto Vallarta.

2007-08-31T11:14:00.002+05:30

David and Liz Garlick are longtime friends of my parents, from way back when (the 1960s I suppose) in the days of Awali, Bahrain. I must have met them as a baby, but I'm not sure. But they've been one of my life's "traditions" because every year they would send us a long Christmas letter, with photographs and stories of their family (and they still do!)

So as a little girl and then a teenager and then an adult, I would always look forward to their letter. It is a bit magical to get that letter every year, to see how their children grew, where they went, what they did, their highs and lows, their joys and griefs, their gifts and their losses.

Eventually, I too starting writing back to them, and now thanks to email, manage to keep in touch more than once annually. When I wrote to them about my PlantMeATree dream, they wrote back to assure me that there would soon be a fruit tree growing for me at their home in Canada.

David - who is a poet and sends me some of his beautiful writing from time to time - also sent me this poem that he had written during one of his many travels:

A TREE.

A tree on a hill.
Not on the crest, just on the side.
There are many other trees
higher up, lower down.
I will never be a huge tree;
just a tree!
A breeze wafts, my leaves flutter.
A wind blows, my branches move
and my leaves speak.
A gale blasts and my twigs fall,
my leaves are rent.
The rain slants!
It is wet, it cleans
but I do not understand this.
I do not care anyway.
It happens!
I am a tree.
Nothing more.
Only small plants are less.
I do not think.
I do not care.
It does not matter;
for I am just a tree.

David Garlick.
Puerto Vallarta, Feb. 2001.

How the Tree-thing all started.

2007-08-25T13:57:00.004+05:30

I remember very little of my childhood, which is a pity, because alongside the bad, I've missed out on the good. Much of my life, I've pretended to remember, nodding and laughing at stories I've put together from other people's anecdotes or old photographs. So I don't really remember the planting of the first tree. It was a magnolia of some sort, I think. The ones with those big waxy white flowers that smell so heavenly. In Urdu, it's called 'franjipani'. My father planted it just inside the gate of House 429 in Awali, Bahrain. It doesn't matter that I don't remember the planting of it, though, because over the years, every time we drove down to Awali, we would pass our old house, and seeing the tree that Daddy planted was a significant part of every drive. I'm sure I have a picture of it somewhere. I hope it is still growing. It must be around 40 years old now, just a bit younger than I am.

My father was a planter of trees. And so, every house that we've lived in, that had a patch of earth, would be home not just to us, but to the trees my father would plant and leave behind as a legacy. In Gufool, in the 80s, it was two 'gulmohars' (Flame of The Forest), one of which was still as glorious as ever the last time i saw it. In Adliya in the 90s, it was a lemon tree in the backyard and more gulmohars flanking the front gate.

At our first Indian home, the Awali township's namesake here in Bangalore, the trees have gone, replaced by a rather glossy commercial building that I'd ask you to please not begrudge - that building makes it possible for me to work full time on Askios (my voluntary job on CSA awareness). And now, at the new family home 'Dilmun', there are many new trees - a custard apple tree that's already borne two seasons of fruit, the 'kari-pattha' tree whose leaves I meet at lunch most days, a remarkable drumstick tree that has seen thousands of sticks distributed over the years to friends and neighbours - and that brings delightful little brown and yellow bee-eaters twittering to its flowers, a lime tree that gave up the ghosts just this year - and of course its heir Tree #1, the new lime tree planted a few days ago.

I've inherited my father's eyes and feet. His ability to make a great tomato jam. His artistic skills. His way with birds. And his tree-planting tendencies. Back in Abu Ghazaal in 2000, I turned a rubbishy old back yard into a fertile little garden and have left behind 6 ficuses growing in a row there, as well as a citrus tree and bougainvillea in the plots around the sides of my house. I often wonder how they grow (and would love it if a Bahrain-based friend who knows where I lived, could pop in and check on them for me!)

Barren spinster I may be, but I'm going to leave behind a hell of a lot of trees!

Snape Fanfic: The Blade

2007-08-25T12:15:00.008+05:30

"Have I not paid? I have given my all to the light, that I might live in dark. I have given to the dark, that I might aid the light."

- aldalindil

Just found a lovely little piece on Whitehound's site. It's short and quite magical. The Blade is not really a story, it's just words put together quite poetically, a random musing that creates a picture of Snape that I love. It's by someone called aldalindil, and was written in 2002, which is interesting because she presents the Snape we got to know only in the later books.

Go there now!

"Where do all the dead babies go ..

2007-08-25T00:00:00.007+05:30

Where do all the dead babies go?
In some bright garden my son runs free
Laughs and plays with all the others
that were never meant to be
I wonder if he remembers
Gently stirring in my womb before -
And if it hurt him as much as it hurt me, or more?
I want him never to know, never to miss
A mother's touch, a mother's kiss.
For one day I may hold his sister or brother,
But he can never have another mother.

(Written on Jan 17th Sat. 1987, 9:50 pm.)

In case you are wondering, I have never been pregnant.

A tree story from Hungary.

2007-08-24T13:13:00.003+05:30

A friend of mine wrote to me today after receiving my PlantMeATree email. Peter and his wife Ildi are good friends of mine from my days in advertising. Peter worked with me, and they were also my neighbours, living just down the road in Abu Ghazaal. Many warm memories of the times we spent together -exotic sweet spring rolls made with jackfruit and jam, wandering through the Isa Town souq chasing birds, tearfully translating Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham to an equally tearful listener (that was Ildi not Peter!), agonising over brochure amendments and the suits that brought them to us, my first taste of rosehips, discovering Hungarian music and oh-so-long words. And those of you who have seen my "poet" picture (the one where I'm fleeing the ocean with a tablecloth for a cape) may be interested toknow that it was Ildi who captured that moment on film.

Well, in today's email, Peter wrote the following and I thought it was too lovely not to add to this blog. Peter, I hope you don't mind me quotingyou here!

"it's a strange coincidence with your wish as a birthday present and witha tree in our garden. perhaps you remember that we discussed particularly the different kinds of fruits. once i listed all the trees and bushes in our garden. there was one tree i couldn't name in english. looking up in the dictionary it gave me the word: naseberry-tree. since then i've treated our loved tree as naseberry and it always reminded me of you. we noticed that its name sounds like nazu. apparently the dictionary was incorrect it is a medlar tree as i got to know recently. naseberry is a tropical fruit no matter how similar it is to a medlar. however this plant will remain to be a nazu tree."

So there already is a Nazu tree?! A pre-42 Nazu tree! And Peter and Ildi have assured me that come spring, they will be planting another specially for me. It will be a poplar that promises to grow tall. One day I shall sit under it with my friends and a big plate of hot jackfruit rolls ..

"The pain ..

2007-08-24T01:50:00.005+05:30

The pain in my heart
Echoes the pain in my womb
Dark drops of blood
Mime the tears I'm not supposed to cry
I'm lonelier than I was before
Would you have looked like me?
Or did you have his eyes?
One day I shall show your little sister
All the things I was waiting to show you
Teach her the songs you were going to sing
Call her name and think of yours
That only you and I know.

(Written on 29/11/86)

After reading the comment that followed this, I felt I ought to clarify that I've never had a miscarriage, and never been pregnant.

Tree #1: A lime tree in Bangalore, India.

2007-08-21T07:09:00.002+05:30

The first tree is from my parents, and was planted this afternoon, in their garden. It's a sapling of a lime tree - what we call "neembu" here. I now have two neembus - I also have a budgerigar named Neembu - she's lutino (yellow all over) and is exactly the same colour as the limes we get here.

Daddy supervised the planting, while Krishna (yes, who used to work for us when we were in Bahrain - he's here on holiday and came to visit) did the digging. Daddy insisted that I should be the one to place the sapling in the earth. Krishna covered down the earth and watered it, and within half an hour, God performed a lovely little finale by sending a light shower of rain.

Plant me a tree!

2007-08-20T06:56:00.002+05:30

On 22 August 2007, I turn 42, and I couldn't think of a nicer birthday present than a garden of trees growing for me around the world. Over the next year, I hope to find 42 people around the world, who will plant and nurture a tree for me.

Here's what I want you to do:

1. Find me a tree: a sapling of any tree you think appropriate.

2. Next, find me a spot: a space waiting in your garden, perhaps. Or a neighbourhood corner. Maybe even a large pot for your balcony (some trees will grow in pots - though not as large and healthy as those planted in the ground).

3. Take a picture when you plant it, and send me a copy of the picture, along with a bit of information about the tree - what tree it is, where you got it and how, why you chose this particular tree, and anything else you'd like to say. And in the future, at least once a year, send me a picture with the tree in it, so that we can all see how it's growing. You could also send pictures in different seasons, if you like.

4. Look after it for me. Let it grow as long and as strong as it can, so that there will always be a bit of green for someone who feels they may never see enough.

Trees on my mind.

2007-08-19T06:28:00.003+05:30

A few years ago, I was being rushed to Manipal Hospital in a screaming ambulance early one morning, with a suspected brain haemorrhage. Needless to say, I'm still here: the cerebral irritation, though still a mystery, turned out not to be a haemorrhage after all. At the time, though, everyone thought I was dying. I did too.

Lying in that ambulance, blacking out and coming to, over and over, on waves of pain, the thought calmly came to me: I think I'm dying. And: Shouldn't this be more dramatic? But no, it wasn't. It was a quiet, oh-well kind of resignation.

I looked up through the window and saw treetops streaming past as the ambulance raced me across town, and it struck me that dying meant I would never see trees again. So I looked and looked at the trees, trying to stay conscious and keep my eyes open to take in as much of the green as I could - while I could.

And then I lived! So now, I never ignore a tree.

Snape Fanfic: 12 Steps Against Inertia

2007-08-12T06:32:00.008+05:30

"..her hair will make beautiful roots, he thinks.."

- tsubaki-hana

12 Steps Against Inertia is a well-written fanfic that starts with Snape's childhood.

It's by tsubaki-hana, written on 5 August 2007, is a one-shot, and (sniff) tragedy. Contains Deathly Hallows spoilers so if you haven't finished reading that, you may want to wait before clicking on the link.

Snape Fanfic: Midsummer's Eve

2007-08-11T06:32:00.005+05:30

A one-shot (i.e. full story in one chapter) by ReeraTheRed, written on 1 August 2003. Midsummer's Eve is about Snape as a 15-year-old, going back to his ancestral home to carry out one final task. Stars Snape and Dumbledore and is rated PG with angst and intense emotions. Which basically means if you're a Snape fan, you'll be feeling a bit weepy and wounded at the end of it. Quite nicely written, and I enjoyed reading it. Sad but good.

"All These Tears"

2007-08-08T22:20:00.005+05:30

Oh I am so glad I grew up. Young people reading this, please know: LOVE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS. This is just desperate codependent angst-ridden obsession. I can't believe I actually thought like this once.

All these tears just beneath
the surface
are waiting to break through
if I'd only let them flow
if I could only let you go

But I've sworn to stay beside you
Even if you turn away
And if I have no tomorrows
At least I have had today.

I can cling to my dreams
As I cling to you now
And my dreams may never come true
But at least I have loved you

Everything has a price
And I am quite willing to pay
I would not exchange my
grey tomorrows
For the moments of ecstacy and sparkle of today.

( 9/86)

"Death doesn't scare me any more ...

2007-01-23T15:20:00.005+05:30

At first glance, you may think it is depressing, but this poem is about hope. I think it is incredible that I was able to look ahead with hope at this point of my life, having gone through what I had.

Death doesn't scare me any more
I already know what hell is
And heaven may not be so good
But it'll be better than this

So this is life
Out of the hell of heroin
Suspended somewhere between then and now
Until I start again

Start living, start giving,
Stop lying, stop crying,
No more hate or despair
No lifeless body swinging in the air

Dreams coming back to life
Plans pulled out of the dust
'Cause when you want and need a future
You have to free the feelings you suppressed

I'm tired of their stares
And of all the sly, knowing grins
I'm sick of those dead eyes in my mirror
And bones barely veiled by my skin

But you have to cry before you can laugh
And you have to wade thro' the mire and stench
Before you can see the sparrows and smile ...
It just takes a little while.

Written on March 21, 1986, Friday, 8:58 pm.