Oh, London!

 

When September began, that bewitching temptress of months, I turned another year and found myself to be in the city of cities, London. And might I just say, for starters and for the obvious lack of poetry - Oh, London, how pretty art thou!

An old soul wandering in an olde worlde - that's just the kind of escape my heart was longing for since days and the spontaneity of this trip is what makes it so incredible. Ever since we have been here, I've practically been all over the place: museum-hopping and walking past the now obscure residences of literary heavyweights; walking under the breathtaking weepy willows in a Alice-like stupor and learning the names of English roses in the royal parks; basking in the golden-green of the early autumn sun and enjoying the crackling crunch of russet leaves; childlike surprise upon spotting clumps of spring crocuses that seemed to have sprouted overnight in a great haste; oohing at the medieval architecture, a towering aspect of the city's majestic facade; experimenting the famous pub grub in the masculine-named English pubs along with cafe stalking, what with the addictive cappuccinos the city coffeehouses offer; the touristy fascinations of walking on centuries-old bridges and streets and marveling at the modern seductions added to a rapidly-changing cityscape; watching the sun set on the mythical Thames casting deep silhouettes on the the magical spires. Oh, it's all so overwhelming and surreal.

True, London can be intimidating, even terrifying at times, but a place where absolutely no one knows you can also be liberating in many ways. It is often so exhilarating to be a foreigner, to see a place with a pair of exotic, unbiased eyes. And I'll be doing just that for some more time. I purposely sat down today morning and hunted for a quote that would justify the myriad emotions I'm swimming in, for it is all too heady for me at the moment to construct a coherent post.

"The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

March musings

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image."

~ John Didion

March.
When the other side of the globe looks forward to signs of change, to pearly sprouts of spring hopes, this side has begun anticipating the reign of a brutal sun and the imminent decay of anything and everything. Life and Death, spinning the wheels of the world.

A few days back, an Instagram friend asked me to which place did I belong and if I still lived in the US since my posts are pretty random without any chronological coherence, and the quirky hashtags #upperleftusa and #northwestisbest are used a lot to caption them. My answer was: "I live in Hyderabad now, my second time in the city followed by an earlier four-years' stint as a student though I belong to the coastal state of Odisha... and yes, we were in the States for almost five years". To this the friend replied: "You belong to so many places!", and that got me thinking.
I do after all, don't I? I even belong to places where I have lived only for a week, places that I've just been to as a tourist. Maybe belongingness comes easily to me, it's the uprootedness that I have a problem with. And in the process I have given shape to absent spaces, claimed certain parts and people of those places as mine and in turn, made them a part of my little world. How effortlessly I belong to each one of them, ever so easily like wearing a new skin, partaking in their joys and miseries equally. And therefore, I cannot help but mull over these geographies from time to time, be it the fate of the people or simply the changing seasons.

These days I go back to Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City a lot, a book that I started reading some six months back and have been deliberately procrastinating to reach its end. It's so sensually rich in nostalgia and so brilliant is Pamuk's rendition of his city, that one immediately feels his aching love for the much-fabled streets of Istanbul. An acute sense of loss and melancholy hangs like a light but omnipresent fog throughout the memoir which is beautifully laced with black and white photographs of the city as Pamuk has seen and known it. One sentence that often comes back to me from the book is: "Life can't be all that bad," i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a walk along the Bosphorus."

Which is my Bosphorus then? The beach and the mango trees that I call home? Or the view of the misty Cascades that I know as home? Or the disarming smiles of the Himalayan faces amid whom I feel most at home? Or the dusty streets of an old city that I had once proudly boasted of as my second home?

   

The flip side

"Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar..."

~ William Faulkner

Only this is just the beginning of August and yet another of life's little ironies happens. Seems like only yesterday when I was choking with euphoria and slathering my joy all over the cyberspace upon finding ilishi in Seattle. That indisputable king of fish, or at least that's what we East Indians think. Now call it preoccupation or mere forgetfulness of the taste buds, we haven't had, or for that matter even searched once for the dear old fish after our return home. Instead, we were on the lookout for our Western favorite - salmon. And what's more, we finally got it! Straight from the Scottish Highlands, although frozen and therefore not at its pretty orangish best like what we used to get in that seafood heaven called the Pacific Northwest, it still tasted good. Just like the ilishi did last year. 

Regarding our little "American" grocery store, I always knew it existed but never cared to visit it. And that was before my life as a foreigner. But now, once back with another world throbbing inside me, continuously reminding me of its riches and beauty, it was a must visit. I can hardly express my emotions, that gush of warm familiarity that rushed through me after stepping into the tiny store last Sunday. Let's just say if nostalgia was a river, I would have been kayaking on it. That's how high I was! Just like I used to be when stumbling upon my brand of curry powder in an Indian grocery store back in the States.

 
Even the once monotonous and ridiculously familiar box of Cheerios made me do a little dance! 

Pine

"Dark pine, I dream for me you wait."

~ Robert William Service, Dark Pine

A month had limped past, riddled with old fears, some long known regrets and new hopes. The most confusing concoction of emotions. And yet... She could still smell the pines in her sleep. That moist, earthy smell with a teasing tinge of longing. Laced like strings of raw emeralds, they dazzled on the rugged neck of the mountains. That gouging, blinding green; the colour of her dreams. Those towering torchbearers that once paved her path and danced to her moods. The feathered, faithful, forever evergreens!
Their brooding darkness called out to her, in wails and bawls. That which was foreign and lost felt hers, in a strange, protective way. That which was left far, far behind felt more alive than the current, ticking second. One of the many ironies of life. And the foreignness lingers on.  

Ilishi love

Finally. After what felt like ages and a desperation that matched the calls of "O ilishi, ilishi! Wherefore art thou ilishi?", I found it. The fish hilsa or ilishi/ilish as we east Indians call it, is an essential part of many a tales of growing up and one of the many reasons of why we are such staunch foodies. Part seafood lover and part geographical genes, the Bay of Bengal to be precise, I don't need to establish my love affair with fish. More so when it is the prized ilishi, aka the King of Fish.
After our move to the States, after four good years of living across all over the length and breadth of this ridiculously vast country, and after bouts of craving so acute that I had almost forgotten what it tastes like, where do I find it? Seattle. The city that has given me umpteen reasons to celebrate life, always. Stacked neatly in a tiny corner of the refrigerator section of an international grocery store, there it was labelled 'Chandpuri Hilsa'. It didn't take me long to crack that code - it was from the Chandpur district of Bangladesh which holds the reputation of exporting the best ilishi in the world. Now, I could not have been more happy had I discovered a gold mine!

Once back from the store I got busy in no time. With ready help from an equally ilishi-deprived husband, the whole fish was descaled and cleaned promptly for that ritualistic rub of salt and turmeric. Since our fish was a monsoon catch which happens to be the breeding time, it also had eggs in its belly. Just like the fish, its eggs too are fried to a golden crunchy perfection and are considered a regional delicacy back home.
As they say, all good times begin with a great meal, and ours was just perfect - a classic Odiya fare of white rice with dal, steamed ilishi in mustard paste, ilishi fry, and boiled potatoes mashed together with raw onions, green chilies and mustard oil. The drone of my incessant cries of homesickness were hushed with the silken, buttery wonder of the King of Fish. But to get there one must really wage a war with the countless obstructing bones. There are just way too many of them!
We did well though, from finding ilishi to revisiting a carefully preserved time and age that is etched fondly and forever in our hearts called childhood.

And yes, yet another quintessential 'foreigner' moment conquered!

Autumn child

I am an autumn child, September to be precise. Which is how I am infinitely attracted to and inspired by the season's earthy mellowness, touched by its slow yet heady melancholia and prone to unpredictable bursts of mood swings. As if being an only child wasn't enough trouble for the world already!

Back home in India, there is no autumn really but only a prolonged and resolute summer which someone once rightly described as 'the dead summer's soul'. So quite understandably, during my first autumn here, I was utterly awestruck by this surreal and surprising change in nature's palette. That leaves actually turn, and how breathtakingly, was beyond the boundaries of my giddy euphoria. Another classic 'foreigner' moment! I would sit by the window and watch the languid leaves flutter aimlessly in the soft afternoon light, creating an illusion of a shimmering curtain of colours. The meditative afternoon walks are the most cherished, when the acoustics of the rustle and crunch of the dead leaves and the crispiness in the air stir one to the very senses. Year after year, the rituals would continue and our vacation to Vermont last autumn only strengthened the love affair forever.

As much beautiful and thrilling the season is, I could never overlook its pensive overtones. And I am certainly not the first one to notice that. Scores of poets and philosophers have ruminated on this riddling ripening of nature - the state when everything is at its mature yet decaying best. Despite the rush of joy from the riot of reds and golds, the falling leaves fall with such a determined longing as if they are in love with the earth, and wish to be one with it. But again, I am a pukka nature junkie and much like autumn, carry a melange of desire and doom waltzing in my heart forever.

And so, the autumn child waits...

P.S. The poetry lover in me could not resist posting these unforgettable lines of e.e. cummings, one of my favourite poets of all times:

"a wind has blown the rain away and blown

the sky away and all the leaves away,

and the trees stand. I think I too have known

autumn too long ..."

Home is the answer, always

Palms swaying in the evening breeze at Puri beach

It is that knot again, that ties and twists itself around your lungs till you are left gasping for air...

That little lump near the throat that chokes you hard, so hard that even tears struggle to wiggle out of its grip...

The rain outside pours inside you, blinding you in flashes of black and white...

The pearly cherry blossoms dance around you, yet you long for the feisty gulmohar...

Somewhere on the other side of the globe a roaring carnival is on for a much wished cricket win, and you just live through such a historic date sloshed over tea and the timeless Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa...

The wrinkled yet strong hands of helplessness keep you pinned to reality like a dead butterfly in a Zoology room...

What in God's name is this called? HOME, may be?!

Seattle loves them who love Seattle

Our caravan has moved back to Seattle, the dot from where it had rumbled on three years before. The nomads have finally cruised a full circle, wheeling the entire country from coast to coast. Although I am not a believer in serendipity, this does feel like one. Who would have thought that chance alone would throw us on the beaten ruts once again?! After all, I haven't forgotten the fuss and melodrama I had made when we had to leave Seattle abruptly. Just when it was beginning to feel like home. Just when the nature junkie had begun singing odes to her pagan god. Just when ...

I still remember the faint piney tickle of the air when I had first arrived at the Sea-Tac airport in a damp June afternoon, cold and alone. A jumble of myriad emotions somersaulted inside me - the excitement of seeing Sam after a month; the daunting foreignness of every single moment; the nervousness of getting into an airport express train, for I had no idea what those eerily fast moving things were until then; the fidgeting worry whether I'll get my check-in bags (a co-passenger had already scared me saying her's was lost and wasn't found for months); and above all the giddy joy of having made it, all by myself. Strangely, the nine-hour flight from Amsterdam, after a layover of seven gnawing hours had not killed me. Haldiram's salted almonds and Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies had kept me nourished and warm. Also, I had slept through most of the first flight from Delhi and hence felt quite rejuvenated.

So there I was, received by an almost unrecognizable husband (with a bush instead of a head!) at the baggage area, with a beaming face and a bunch of bright chrysanthemums. I remember they were dyed - green, blue, orange - and I had thought, "Wow, you could get these in green too!" Oh, and yes, my bags arrived safely too.

After three years of feverish longing and wandering in the dusty bylanes of nostalgia, we are here again. It is the same idyll, blanketed with fragrant evergreen woods and sapphire blue lakes. And what's more, it's almost spring! A quick visit to the famous Pike Place market last weekend saw a beautiful display of dewy tulips, possibly the first batch of the season to make their way into the market. After being buried for months in the brutal blizzards of the east, nothing could be more comforting than the sight of these charming flowers and the syrupy warmth of a gingerbread latte.

Well, numbing these small joys is the nagging confusion of apartment hunting coming up this weekend. Wars have to be waged over Sam's obsession with endless square footage and my balcony mania. So stay tuned for more stories from the Emerald city.

In Ashima's shoes

"For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realise, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts."

~ Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

Seven winters back when I had first read The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri's heartrending tale, it had stirred and brewed a little storm inside me. Since then I have gone back to it, in chunks and bits, like a fate-worn lover who has to return to the memories, living and losing at the same time. The love affair continues, only this time I am one of them from the pages. Ashima - a demure Bengali woman born in Calcutta, brought up amidst a fierce sense of culture and draped in unpretentious tangail sarees. She marries Ashoke, an engineering student at MIT and accompanies him for a new life to America - "the land of opportunities".

Ashima's life in the States is shaped out of many realities - the regular calls to Fulton fish market in the hope of a lucky catch of rohu or ilish, the much dreaded driving lessons when she would cringe her face and push the accelerator uneasily which would result in a beeline of traffic honking impatiently behind her, the mounting vexation during the customer care calls when she has to spell every single alphabet of 'Ganguli' unfailingly and with examples. Prior to my life as a foreigner, this futile yet continuous search of one's identity and the reluctant unraveling of oneself to blend in, both physically and mentally, had not been this huge a part of me. Now I, too, am ashima - one who does not have boundaries - for one simply cannot afford any in the desperate confusion of the old and the new.

My solidarity with Ashima transgresses the boundaries of age and experience. A surge of tender pity grips me when anxious and alone in the final trimester of pregnancy she craves for jhaal muri (an East Indian snack of puffed rice and spices) and quite helplessly tosses chopped onions into a bowl of Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts. There was not much choice for an Indian's culinary comforts in the America of the 70s. Ashima's most intimidating task, more so because she wears her Indianness with aplomb, is to understand and accept the American ways of her children who are themselves trapped in a huge chasm of cultural mores. How much could one fight one's way out of the linguistic and cultural barriers back then?

Even after a good thirty years nothing much has changed. Foodwise, yes, a lot has. With the mushrooming of Indian grocery stores and restaurants in almost every corner of the States, pleasing one's taste buds isn't a questionable dream anymore. Also, what was once the struggle for existence has undergone a vast change over the last twenty years resulting in an unbecoming vanity fair. But the old haunting feeling of rootlessness sits still in the same dusty corner of the heart. Festivals come and go, seasons spring and fall, but the ache remains. I have been walking in Ashima's shoes for the past three years, across six states and on a multitude of roads. With each step the bite has become worse, fanning the sore of longing till the wound feels like a second skin. And thus another day breaks, impregnated with a perpetual unknown wait...

The spice jar

"Take this with you, but careful -
Don't lose it in the vastness of the Atlantic."
She meant her words, my mother,
a simple woman with little desires.
True, losing 'things' across infinite miles is easy.
I have learnt it well, bit by bit.
A dear dear uncle, a cousin...
Ma told me how the sad, hungry ocean swallowed them all.
And I just stared, defeated and distanced.

The glass walls of the small jar looked familiar,
choked with cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon sticks, pepper pods.
A very Indian smell, guardians of my world.
I've emptied it into my days and nights,
into my morning tea, flavouring the curries,
always searching for that familiar aroma.
The aroma of Ma's palms,
of ginger garlic, of love and sacrifice.

Everyday I see it, the half filled, half emptied jar,
sitting mute in the disturbingly neat white kitchen cupboard.
Perfunctorily, I refilled the jar today
with imported spices from the India bazaar.
Spices that have traveled across the proverbial seven seas
shedding some skin of originality on their way.
And so I mixed them all, the Was and the Is,
letting my world unhinge into an unknown territory.
But deep inside my labyrinthine thoughts
I am scared, as if I have lost my only defense.

For the Was and the Is never meet.

I am all that I have

Gigantic spruce and pines engirdle my vision

watchful, stern as armed guards.
Rhododendrons of a bloody hue
proud of their plump bloom,
flank a choking-green yard.
Shivering thistle leaves promise a good summer.
Only what kind of summer, I ponder...
Unknown birds sing unheard tunes as if,
their lyrics were potent enough
to germinate a belongingness!

Strange, a nature so unscathed and unmarred,
everyday bruises my identity!
These hardly seem mine...
the trees, the flowers, the birds.
All beautiful, in such proximity
and yet so much distanced!
They can charm and excite,
and yet fail to captivate the 'me'...

A foreign me
that searches for trails of known-ness.
For sunny, tropical faces
For spices wafting in the air
For the known cacophony of crows, of blaring honks.
This frozen, alien nature,
this unaccustomed earth...
This is not mine.
Only, I am all that I have.

P.S. This was written with certain pre-conceived, foolish notions of a hopeless romantic about her initial experiences of being the 'foreigner'. Even the sylvan abundance of Seattle had failed to soothe her homesickness back then!