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.

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!

Happy days.

Happy birthday, Dorothy!
Happy birthday, me!
I knew I'd be a writer.
I've known since I was three.
I don't know how I know that,
with memories blocked or lost.
Is that the price we pay for a gift?
Must childhood be the cost?

But happy birthday all the same.
It's not about THAT day.

Still beautiful.

Photo by and courtesy of Ajay Amrit Ghatage, 2014

A beautiful house with big empty windows, 

like gaping holes of unloved loneliness and pain.

If we could look into her soul we might see, 

beyond the cracks and age-stained walls:

Parapets for a teenager to straddle with 

a second-hand paperback and a cup of afternoon tea.

Terraces for her older brother to sneak a cigarette. 

Corridors for children to roll marbles down,

and window ledges for their dolls’ houses. 

Verandahs for lovers to whisper and wish and dream, 

and hold hands and watch the rain come down together. 

Knee-easy steps easing out from the front door.

Down these steps comes an old woman, alone. 

Do you see? She is like the house. Old, but still beautiful. 

Worn down but worthy of wonder for withstanding the world so far.

Holding on to her dignity and hoping that someone will notice before it's too late.

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I wrote this the other night, while visiting one of my favourite pages on Facebook, Bangalore - Photos from a Bygone Age. I came across this photograph of one of Bangalore's few remaining lovely old houses - an endangered species in a city that overvalues profit. Looking into those empty squares felt like looking into the eyes of the house, and I felt like she had a story to tell. Of course, the story I've written is more mine than hers. I have no idea of her past or her present, although I have a pretty good idea of her future.

Thank you, Ajay, for letting me share your photograph so that my readers can see how this piece of writing came to be.

Still.

Sometimes she dreams of him, the one long lost. Even in the dreams he never belongs to her, but she always seems to belong to him.

She is like a little wind-up toy, searching for a parking space and scurrying down the road to him, while around her papers fly, and grey jets. There is always a war going on in these dreams of hers, a fight for justice and liberty and equality. She never finds out who wins, but that is not why she is there or who she is in the dreams.

She is a doll, the war is outside but they are inside, and he holds her as one might a forgotten toy from childhood found years later:  with some tenderness, and a certain respect for that which was once something, and a certain awkwardness at holding something which no longer has a place in one's life.

She is a doll, and he plays with her. Gently. Or not. And his voice is still so soft when he says her name, soft and smoky, and his hands, soft and smudged, and he is always young and whole and smiling and uncertain, and when his eyes look into hers, she feels it go all the way down to her heart.

It is a sweet and nearly innocent tea party, with sugar water and candy for tea and cakes. When it is over, he wraps her in tissue and lays her down in a box and that's when her eyes open, and she finds herself lying alone and unsettled between the fiction of the dream and its almost tangible reality.

Unable to sleep and unable to choose, not sure if going back to sleep will return her to him; she stays awake but really, it is just a waiting and a hoping while her heart beats ribless, so very open and in so much danger but it beats on, unwilling to let go.

And when she truly wakes, she sees that this is all she has of him. Memories. Old memories of what once was - moments and magic and mistakes and misunderstandings. And new memories of dreams that mean nothing, but also something. These have to be enough. They are not, but they have to be. All those years ago, and she still remembers enough to dream.

It was something, to have loved him. It still is.

One day in March.

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.