Once Upon 2.77 Acres

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, quarreling among 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 quarreled 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.

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 third word is "justice".

Picture this:
JUSTICE FOR (insert your child's name here).

And then pray, pray, pray.
Because you never know.

Your god might be busy with something else
when your child needs him most.

Pray for street lights, or sanctuary,
or even for some serendipity.

But don't ask for justice,
because justice was just
a meaningless word
for that other child.

An awarding of that which is due.
That's what the dictionary said.

What is that to a dead child?
To the woman she will never grow up to be?

Justice can't restore the dead,
or return the lost years.

Justice is just for us,
the spectators, the survivors.

Justice makes us feel a bit better
about still being alive.

It can't reach down into the grave
and delight the broken little body lying there.

By Nazu Tonse

The second word is "outrage".

I meant to come, dressed in black, and stand at your side.

But then I remembered the last time, and the outpouring of anguish and rage, followed by .. nothing until the next time .. and I wondered if these protests are anything more than a Festival of Grief that revisits the nation every so often. Like sparklers, this outrage burns so bright, it makes hearts leap for a while with hope. But then it fizzles out, and we are back in the dark.

Why is there a time limit on this outrage? Is it only those men with the blood still fresh on their hands who deserve to hang? What of the rest?  The ones who've walked free for decades, or passed away peacefully without a blemish to their name? Are they excused because their victims managed to stay alive?

There aren't many protests for these children. Because these children kept quiet. Or were told to keep quiet. These children learnt that their honour meant nothing next to the family's. That they should forget about it, get over it, stop dwelling on it, forget the past, be positive and well it's not like he killed you. These children grew up and are among the men and women around you, and you would never know because they hide so well.

They hide from the the rapists of their childhood, the ones who've walked free for decades and probably always will. They hide from each other, certain that their own pain is unworthy in comparison to others'. And they hide from you - because they have seen that this outrage, this anguish pouring forth demanding castrations and lynchings for those men in the news, doesn't burn long or bright enough to illuminate those dark secrets of another time.

Ask yourself why. Look around you at friends and family. Could you take a stand and condemn someone you know, love, or respect? Or is your outrage a limited offer only, with an expiry date, directed at strangers, for "the others" that are not part of your particular "we"?

Only when your outrage is against every rapist, even if you find one in your own home, your own village, your own state, your own caste.

Only when your anguish is for every abused child:  the dead, the living, the ones still young, the ones long gone grey, the losers, the successes, the weirdos.

When you can do this, text me. I will come, dressed in black, to stand at your side.

The first word is "fragile".

Fragile is something of value.
Fragile must not be broken.

Like glass or crystal, I suppose,
though they can be replaced
without too much heartache.
My Swarovski sunglasses
would hurt a bit more.
My life, on my Samsung?
It would shatter me.

Which reminds me.
Children break too.

Some of us you can glue
back together
and we shall go on.

Distorted, disfigured, damaged forever,
a bit lopsided but still - alive.
Never as alive as we might have been,
but at least, not dead
(only sometimes,
some of us wish we were),
and so we go on.

We may even come to see
our shattered mess of a childhood as a mosaic,
and find beauty in it,
and then find a way
to share that beauty with the rest of you.

But
sometimes the pieces can't be fixed back together.

Because no one saw.
Or someone looked and chose not to see.
Or looked then merely looked away.

Or perhaps we just looked too late.
Too late to do anything
but light a candle
and shed some tears,
and rage - in sincere pain - at the injustice of it all.

We rage and we grieve,
and our horror is true.
We rage and we grieve,
but that is all we do.

Just like the last time.

I did so hope,
as we gathered together her shards
to toss them in our bottomless pit of unlearned lessons,
that our hands bled,
because her blood was already on our hands.

Where did our dignity go?

Where did our dignity go?

I saw it once in an Englishman’s movie, so it must be true

that once we were noble and driven.

Perhaps it is hidden under a lump of complacence

rotting on our streets with the garbage

your maid threw there this morning
so that your house could start the day clean.

Perhaps it made it down the rubble that we call a pavement,

hesitating on the corner, too scared to cross

like the old man waiting for someone to slow down

and give him enough time to hobble over to the other side of the road.

Perhaps the price was too high

and it couldn’t pay, so it couldn’t get admission.

Perhaps it was the wrong caste, or no caste at all,
or perhaps it came barefoot,

and a young mother told it to get off the swings

that are meant for better-dressed children.

Perhaps it lost hope and drank itself into oblivion

like the middle-aged daily-wager passed out on the median

under a statue of Dr Ambedkar.

Perhaps it is low on a to-do list

and will always be set aside for tomorrow.

Perhaps it was a New Year’s resolution,

and we all know what happens to them.

Perhaps it is asleep,
or pretending to be asleep,

safe under the covers
so that the monsters cannot come out to get it.

Perhaps it does not know its own potential

like a woman kept indoors for her own safety.

Perhaps it cannot survive on its own,

like a child who needs a caring parent.

Perhaps the parent is us.

Perhaps it died, but 

we are a nation fond of reincarnation, so

perhaps it is wombed in our skulls,

waiting to be born.

By Nazu Tonse

I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

He was tall. He wore torn jeans.

He was dressed for office, and over his buttoned-up cuffs a steel kada gleamed at his wrist.

His bangles were red, and his bindi was blue, and the Lion King roared on his t-shirt.

He was in hijab, and he had just come from the temple, I could tell:  his tika was fresh.

He had a bright yellow turban, a white topi, and white hair in a neat bun.

He was clean-shaven, and had a sharp goatee, and glasses - but not those round ones. He was just about eight years old, and well over eighty.

He was wrapped up against the bitter cold, and stood sweating in the sun.

He carried a rose, he carried a sign, he carried our hope and dignity and constitution.

Every time I looked, there he stood, at Town Hall and Azad Maidan and Shaheen Bagh, and he looked back at me and smiled. Smiled like he knew me, like he recognised me, although we had never met before.

When I went home, I discovered why.

I bent at the tap to wash the dust off my face, and when I straightened up, there he was again in the mirror, still smiling at me.

I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

I slept better last night, knowing he's around.

Rabindranath Revisited

Where minorities fear

and farmers hang high

Where criminals run free, and sometimes for election

Where our land has been stripped and poisoned

and then fertilised with the blood of little girls

Where lies are so loud

they muffle the truth

Where a tired hungry child

stretches its arm towards an air-conditioned car at the traffic light

Where the clear stream of reason

Is clogged with the bullet-ridden corpses of those who dared

to speak up against dead habit

Where minds are held tight by theologies and mythologies

that divide one nation into us and them

Out of this hell of hypocrisy, my People,

let our country awake.

By Nazu Tonse

Gladys also got a second verse.

Here's the link on YouTube if that's easier to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyOfHrWG0YY&feature=share

Gladys got soul.

Somewhat bizarre soul, but soul it is. Here she is celebrating the very near possibility of a shiny new suburban rail for Bangalore.

Here's the link for it on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEnf5jjxa6Y&feature=share

Who's crying now?

Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
Kissed a Sleeping Beauty,
It was a big mistake!
Her name is Bengaluru,
And now she's wide awake!

The sparkle is gone.

Today, one of my neighbours put me to shame. I'm always cribbing about people on WhatsApp who forward too-good-to-be-true miracle cures, or amazingly interesting videos that do absolutely nothing for my life other than using up a few minutes of it. Thank goodness for "Delete", I always think (but then go on to crib about how much time I must waste pressing "Delete").

Today, though, my neighbour wrote this note: "The pyrotechnics industry truly sucks! The working conditions is absolutely deplorable, with gruesome forms of child labour ruling the roost. I so wish this industry virtually ceases to exist. The images are a stark reality to this torturous trade for profit."

I skimmed quickly through that, but then I saw the pictures that followed, and froze:

I'm sharing them here and I hope there's no copyright infringement, none intended - they are stamped with "Vikatan.com" so I will assume that's who I must credit.

I know all the stuff about crackers being bad. How the noise terrifies and harms animals and birds, and how the smoke pollutes the air. I've seen the scattered scraps of burnt-out fireworks left carelessly all over our streets. I'm aware that bursting fireworks hurts asthmatics, and how Diwali can be a difficult time for heart patients, babies, the elderly, and the sick. I know how rude it can feel to be startled awake in the middle of the night by late night explosions. And I'm aware that children's hands are small and nimble, not just for knotting carpets or rolling beedis, but also for making fireworks. (I have heard so much about this last fact, that I had complacently assumed that it had been taken care of, that the government and the NGOs would have seen to it by now, that children are no longer employed in the pyrotechnics industry. I'm not so sure now).

So I never buy the "bad" fireworks. No bombs, no strings of crackers. Half a dozen flowerpots (fountains or anaar, as some people call them) maybe, because, well, they're so pretty and exciting. A couple of chakras (Catherine Wheels) - not a lot, because most of them whizz out too quickly or in inappropriate directions. I don't buy rockets at all, mainly because I am scared of lighting them, but I ooh and aah with the rest of you when I see them light up the night sky. And so of course, I buy sparklers.

Because sparklers are harmless! A little light, a little smoke, safe enough for a toddler to hold, and oh, it's like holding a shooting star in your hand! Harmless! Right?

But now these photographs, of what seems to be a middle-aged man, busy at work, making those lovely sparklers.

I do not know if he is really middle-aged, or if life has just made him look that way. And then I think about how chuffed I was just last week when someone assumed I was twenty years younger than I am.

I look at his skinny body coated silver like those chubby cherub statues. I wonder how easily it washes off, and how much gets into his pores. And then I think about long I stand in the aisle at Health & Glow, trying to decide if aloe vera or cocoa butter or Vitamin E should be the main ingredient in my body lotion.

I see that he has no shoes, no gloves, no mask. I wonder how much of what is on his outside is getting into his inside, if he knows what a good deep breath feels like, if he can even smell the sulphur any more, how long before his lungs pack up, how many years before he won't be able to work because he'll be dead. And then I think about how I agonise over the effects of the cigarette smoke that I inhale of my own free will, and how I worriedly put the windows up and turn on the AC to filter out the dust and smells when I'm stuck in my car in a traffic jam.

And worst of all, absolutely worst of all, I see on his face a look of concentration.

He is doing his job.

He is doing it to feed himself, and perhaps a family. He is doing it because he knows how, and because it will pay - not a lot, obviously, judging from his physique and wardrobe (or lack of). He is not making a career choice. He's just doing what he thinks he must, in order to survive.

I'm going to put him out of a job. It's a job that's only made necessary by my desire to hold shooting stars in my hand. How will he eat, some may ask? There are other jobs, I should reply, and it is both my job and his to make sure he finds them. How can I ever again laugh with joy as I draw circles in the air with a piece of burning wire, a cheap little sparkler that costs me so little and costs him so much?

Good bye, sparklers. I did so love you. But I simply can't be an accessory to manslaughter. So good bye.

But hey - hello, Diwali! A real Diwali this time, a festival not of noise or smoke or celebrating at the cost of someone else's life, but a festival of light. Some shopping, some sharing. Some mit'hai, some khaara. Celebrating with friends whose festival this is, and bringing a little celebration to those who can't afford it themselves. And two diyas at my doorstep, to symbolise my desire for light and knowledge to enter my home. It could be my brightest Diwali ever.

Happy Diwali, everyone. Let go of the sparkle. Let the light in.

*

beedi - tobacco rolled in a tobacco leaf and smoked like a filterless cigarette
anaar -pomegranate
chakra - spinning wheel
mit'hai - sweet
khaara - savoury
diya - oil lamp, traditionally made of clay
diwali - rows of lighted lamps (from the Sanskrit deepa + aavali)

Four words later.

So I went to a protest a week ago - a human chain of citizens objecting to a monstrously expensive steel flyover that would kill over 800 trees and scar our Garden City forever. The organisers suggested we carry signs that simply stated: No.

But somewhere in my head, that old copywriter lurks, and these four words popped into my head. I painted them on a sign, and off I went.

THOU SHALT NOT STEEL.

I knew it was a good slogan, but I never expected the response I got. People up and down the chain were giving me the thumbs up, telling me they loved it. The media loved it too - two newspapers used it as part of their headlines, and a few others posted pictures of my sign and me. As an added bonus, the Economic Times described me as "a woman in her thirties" (I'm 51). A few days later, at a public referendum, the historian and author Ramachandra Guha ended his speech with it, praising it as the most brilliant, succinct and moving critique of the flyover issue. Lovely, he called it.

Praise and compliments are great. As is the knowledge that my words resonated with so many people. But the best thing these four words did for me, was to jolt me out of my apathy. They reminded me that I am a writer (who does not write much any more). They reminded me that I had a talent for words that can get people's attention, communicate and convince, and inspire change. They reminded me that 14 years I ago, I left a fun and financially delicious career in advertising because I wanted to use that talent to sell more than luxury cars and fizzy drinks.

So today, along with the #SteelFlyoverBeda protesters, who have been accused of "waking up too late" on the flyover issue, I'm awake too, with that voice in my head repeating clear:  thou shalt write.

I shall.

Lying down is not good for the soul.

No writing, no planting, not much of anything, of late. I've spent the last fortnight in bed with a bad back or hip (still not too sure which, doctors love being mysterious with their diagnoses .. and their handwriting, too, so I haven't been able to decipher the scrawls that explained my pain).

Lying down is not good for the soul, not in this large dose, at any rate. It's left me pain free but also lethargic and low. Despondent and pessimistic and very frustrated at not being able to leap about at will. Not that I've been able to leap about since my thirties .. but you know what I mean.

So really, I have nothing to say today.

Four months later ..

and I realised that I have not blogged for ages. I have been busy forever, mostly with taxes. I've also moved home, sort of. And I've been busy organising my high school batch's 35th year reunion (in less than a fortnight, I get to reconnect with girls I last met when we were just 16. Now we're all 50, but judging from the barrage of Whatsapp messages, we're all pretty much still a bunch of giggly girls - at least on the inside!)

Best of all, I've been planting trees!! You're going to hear a lot about them. But not today. I've been up since six and I. Am. Exhausted.

Several thousand words.

Not much I need to say about these, except to tell you that this is where my father was born - the island of Thimmanna Kudru, on the River Suvarna, near Kemmanu, in southwest coastal India. Pretty much unchanged from what I remember as a child, over 40 years ago. A picture's worth a thousand words, it's said, so I'll let them do the talking, and just interrupt here and there with a caption.

View from the tip of the island

Punting down the river Suvarna in a "hodi"

Perfect place to just stand and breathe.

Hanging bridge to Thimmanna Kudru

Interracial harmony .. these girls were still hanging out together when I returned several hours later

Coconut tree

Collecting firewood

Someone's got a lovely bunch of coconuts (my cousin, apparently).

Garden well

Things change: heart motifs, a satellite dish and utility lines ..
also this used to be a thatched hut.

Cashew tree - unripe fruit

Illegal sand dredging - a heavy load

Chalk-white dreams.

I have been collecting old photographs that my father took throughout his life. At first I thought of creating a separate blog for them, but it seems like too much of a hassle! So I've decided to share them here, as everyone knows this blog already.

This picture was taken by Daddy, probably in the late 50s or early 60s.

The Al-Khamis mosque is the oldest mosque in Bahrain, and one of the oldest in the Arab world. The original mosque was thought to be built around 692 C.E. (that's Common Era, in case you were wondering, I prefer not to use the outdated/inappropriate "A.D." which stands for Anno Domini and means "in the year of our lord"). However, an inscription found on the site suggests the foundation dates back to the 11th century.

A mihrab slab found there dates back to the 12th century. The mihrab is a slab of stone (limestone, in this case) that is placed in mosques to indicate "qibla", the direction in which Muslims face to pray, i.e. in the direction of the Ka'aba in Mecca. On the mihrab at the Al Khamis mosque is an inscription of verses 34 and 35 from chapter 21 of the Qur'an.

I have driven past this mosque many thousands of times for the first thirty-odd years of my life, but never thought of going inside. Now I wish I had. I'm not sure visitors are allowed right inside, anyway, perhaps just in the courtyard area where I believe there are also ancient gravestones.

But .. I often dream of this mosque, of climbing up a narrow rough winding staircase of limestone, and going up to the top of the minaret. Everything is chalk white and cool and still. It's one of my favourite dreams about Bahrain, and is just as good, if not better, than a memory!