Dance

"Dance, when you're broken open.

Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance when you're perfectly free. "

~ Rumi

And as usual, someone great had to come and rescue my mind from the frosty grip of an increasingly grey winter. This time it was Rumi. And the remaining fire of autumn from an old, old photograph.

Let everything happen to you

"Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final"

~ Rilke

There couldn't be a truth truer than this. How many times I've checked upon a certain feeling, rehearsing its details like school lessons, only to later realize the sheer flimsiness of it all. To have nursed its sapling only to witness its green wither away gradually. To have wasted moments, sometimes days, holding on to it. Moments of epiphany crumbling into morsels of dust and nothingness.

No feeling is final. Rilke knows. He always did.

I wonder...

"I always wonder why
birds stay
in the same place
when they can fly
anywhere on the earth.
Then I ask myself
The same question."

~ Harun Yahya

I wonder a lot these days. Of open skies and floating marshmallow clouds. Of a free mind and untroubled waters. Of people who are true and their hearts green. Of rippling meadows and yellow-white chamomiles. Of birds and their unhinged freedom. Of humans and how limited our horizons are. 

Getting away

"I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better."

~ Robert Frost, 'Birches'

Sometimes getting away is good. The kind where you remain in the same place and yet manage to escape the surrounding hullabaloo. Sometimes it becomes essential to turn away from the world in order to understand it better and be understood in return. Sometimes one needs to be like a tree, to allow oneself to be equally loved and ravaged by the seasons, and yet remain unfazed by it all. Sometimes one must get away, even if it is just for a tiny while. 

Postcards from Kashmir - II

Continuing on the ruts of my previous post, we move from Srinagar to the idyllic villages that rest on the foothills of the mighty Himalayas flanked by gurgling streams and balmy pines. This is another Kashmir, with another facade, equally fascinating and inspiring as that of the city and its pristine lakes. 

Unfortunately the day, and how grudgingly, comes too soon when one has to leave behind this dream and return to the forced, the mundane. A sense of loss, a throb of fear grips me unaware as our taxi speeds into the relatively modern city-scape while the rustic scenes of the villages fade away into the blur of the descending evening twilight. What if I cannot come back? What if the conflict hits a peak again? What if the still struggling situation of peace crumbles one fine night? The thoughts leave me a little shaken, for we did see and sense the tightness of the lingering turmoil in the valley. The silent, uncomfortable presence of the army, armed and alert, almost everywhere and their uniforms oddly camouflaged with the landscape - the busy market streets lined with them, the saffron fields dotted with vigilant soldiers, their tired eyes looking for signs as we very consciously eat our fragrant Kashmiri pulao on a terrace restaurant, the airport buzzing with multiple security checks - were constant reminders of the fragility of the situation.

With a sinking feeling, I make my way inside the airplane. Reluctantly, I buckle my seat-belt and moments later when we take off, I watch the cloud-engulfed mountains garland the valley of Kashmir. It was difficult, imagining it as this beautiful, unfortunate paradox - the awkward coming together of beauty and terror. It is then that I couldn't help but recreate bits and pieces of an old, haunting poem in my mind - 'Postcard from Kashmir' by Agha Shahid Ali, one of the most talented contemporary poets from the subcontinent and Kashmir's very own, who took the tales of his land to far and wide. 

"Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.

I always loved neatness. Now I hold

the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this is the closest

I'll ever be to home. When I return,

the colors won't be so brilliant,

the Jhelum's waters so clean,

so ultramarine. My love

so overexposed.

And my memory will be a little

out of focus, in it

a giant negative, black

and white, still undeveloped."

~ Agha Shahid Ali, 'Postcard from Kashmir' from The Half-Inch Himalayas

A cold November morning unfolds on the streets of Srinagar. The battered dome of Hazratbal undergoing a face-lift. Dance of the pigeons. Like the boys of Kashmir, they too fly away, unbeknownst of their fate. Doll-faced little girls, blushing at my touristy request to photograph them. The rural landscape patterned with terrace fields and trails of smoke escaping from the tin-roofed houses. The jagged peaks of the Himalayas at Sonmarg, the 'meadow of gold'. Pony boys' persistent pleas for a ride. The postcard-perfect village of Aru in Pahalgham. A camera-shy pashmina goat in the midst of a scurrying flock of sheep in a lavender patch. Folds of pine and fog give an impression of a surreal, layered curtain. Beautiful shepherd huts down the meadow. A village shop, rickety yet colourful. The famous Kashmiri embroidery and the ubiquitous paisley motif on a shawl. The much-celebrated maple leaves carved on a houseboat panel. A papier-mâché heaven. To the city we return, where the sublime Jehlum once again greets us with a stoic silence. 

Poetry with a spine

Last weekend, I came across this very fascinating kind of poetry, thanks to a friend's update in Facebook. Book spine poetry. What a grand yet simple idea it is - pile up some books, pick up a few interesting titles, weave a little story and voila! An instant poet you become.

I'm sure many of you might be already familiar with this but I just had to share it here. The moment I read about it, it so tickled my imagination that in the middle of preparing dinner, abandoning everything - a hungry husband, a favourite sitcom, and a friend's phone call - I dawdled near the bookcases, restlessly skimming across the titles, creating stack upon stack of spine poetry in my head. While some overbrimmed with sentimentalism, others were oddly incoherent. This, perhaps, was the most balanced of them all.
And thus ended my obsessive urge of stacking books and searching meaning in their titles.

PS. A very happy Halloween to all of you. I miss the eeriness, the pumpkin painted world and the chance to be someone else for a day.

Bukowski's bluebird

"there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you."

~ Charles Bukowski, Bluebird

Turns out, there has been, after all, a blue bird sitting idle and unnoticed in my photo archives. I know it's not a bluebird. I know it's a stellar jay, the darker and shabbier cousin of the pretty blue jay. I know it belongs to a green, green land and scented, mossy boughs. I also know, if it flies here (ah, the utter foolhardiness of it!!) and cages itself, it'll forget to sing.
But does any of that matter now? Perhaps not anymore.

John Keats

New historians have always made me a little edgy, and this is yet another of those times.

John Keats. He has been my unwavering bright star, from the word go. Ever since the nightingale song, he has been my hero. As if his enchanting poetry wasn't all, there was Fanny Brawne and then, that untimely, miserable death. His name echoed a string of tragedies - deaths in the family, unrequited love, a consuming illness; everything that endeared him to a teenage heart then.
But then came this, and ever since the morning, after reading it at a rather deliberate confusing haste, and re-reading it later to register it all, in between flashes of denial and doubt, I have reached one conclusion: I still don't understand it. May be I don't want to.

True, a languorous, dreamy aura pervades his poetry, but that cannot necessarily justify a laudanum haze. Yes, if one looks with the intention of confirming him as an opium addict, his poetry is a deluge of visions, chockablock with reveries of 'drowsy numbness' and 'a life of Sensations rather than Thoughts'. But is poetry to be read and understood literally? Isn't that against the very grain of it? Moreover, what happened to the good old trap of intentional fallacy?
On the contrary, it is this very element of detachment from the pains of the physical world and the transportation to the higher realms of tranquility and aestheticism, that makes Keats so very memorable and different from the other Romantics. The world would be a rather dull place if not for his 'Poesy' - a strange, yet impressive combination of beauty and melancholy.

And so, the bright star shines on, steadfast as ever.

"Here lies one whose name was writ on water."

~ Keats, epitaph for himself

(Portrait of Keats by William Hilton.
Source: Wikipedia)

Weekend

A good cappuccino to beat the monotony of grocery shopping, creamy pistachio kulfi with friends well past midnight, a hearty Sunday read from Gulzar's "Neglected Poems".

Quiet times, content times. The time to just be, when everything else around recedes into a blurry, oblivious distance. Another new week waits at the door impatiently, to give way to yet another whirlwind of routines and rules. But not today. Let the day be. Just be.

A few favourite lines from one of the "neglected" poems:

'You gave me the earth
On which I could build
A home good enough
for you to live in;
Come, when you find
time from all your
other chores
Maybe on some
"weekend", come!'

~ Gulzar (Translated by Pavan K. Verma)

A little rain

Sometimes a small moment is big enough, and in more ways than one could possibly think of. With a significant chunk of our worlds throbbing in tiny capsules of the ever enticing internet, naturally this has something to do with my virtual existence. A few days back, I received an email from a long lost friend, a bond that was once formed in an online community over our love for a common Urdu poet, Gulzar. The subject of the email just read - 'You love poetry, you had told me once' - and the body contained nothing but yet another forgotten poem - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Rainy Day.
Now odd as it might seem, but there's this quirky, serendipitous destiny of mine when every time I am in search of that little something to stir me and can't figure out what it exactly is for the life of me, something like this happens. Someone from the ancient past, long washed away by the tides of time or just obscured by the unanswered ways of life, would make his/her way back into my life. And my day would be made, just like that, smooth and uncreased like a freshly made bed.

Having nothing more to write but much to mule after, I would leave this poignant, heart-tugging poem for you. Since it's raining (it always does, isn't it?!) for more or less everyone, be it the literal or the metaphorical shower, I hope this would be a good, invigorating read.

"Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
   Some days must be dark and dreary."

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day

Because sometime in the 'mouldering Past', in a little pastoral corner of Virginia, it looked like this after an unexpected midsummer shower.

To June

Somewhere between e-shopping for hair dryer and applying for a job in publishing, this struck me. That we are almost through half the year. That we have lived half the share of our boons and banes for this year. That come what may, one has to pull oneself through the rest of the other half for yet another hopeful whole. Interestingly, while the end of June marks the beginning of summer in the Western hemisphere, for us, the Easterners it means the end of summer. End or beginning, this is precisely the time when both the worlds are decked up in that lush, blinding green.

So while oscillating between both the searches, one materialistic and the other absolutely abstract, I embarked upon yet another search - a good June poem. And this is where it led me, The Guardian, the station where every art/book lover's search ends. I am sure many of you stop by here to catch a review or just stir those sleepy morning grey cells. Although moved by the many beautiful but mostly long forgotten poems recommended in the article, I however chose to stand by my old favorite - Neruda. 

"Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly."

~ Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

And since I couldn't find any butterflies for you in this concrete jungle, I believe my Ma's most lovingly tended and Bapa's most photographed object, the football lily (that's what we call them here) would do. A lovely coexistence, isn't it?! That's how the two have traveled through the years and today completes the thirty-first year of their journey. To June and to togetherness then! 

So long...

"If I were another on the road, I would have

hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!"

~ Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another

These lines have often come to me in different times over the years, but mostly when I'm the most unsure about things. There is a certain flimsiness about them, the kind that stirs you but still somehow keeps the cascade of emotions from tumbling out in the open. And hopefully they will pull me through the painfully long, fourteen-hour flight to Mumbai tonight as well (I'm not even counting the six-hour misery from here to Newark!). The time has come at last and being the lost soul that I am, I never understood what is the good in goodbyes. Nevertheless, I'll have a go at it, however feeble and halfhearted it sounds.

I will miss Seattle, a city that I've been madly in love with from then to now and forever will, despite its notorious reputation of the nine-months-a-year rains. What I have for this place is a very first love sort of fixation, for this is where I had first come, after crossing the proverbial seven seas. This is where I had first felt that acute, empty moment of being a foreigner once and quite ironically three years later, this is where I felt the most at home. There'll always, always be bits and pieces of our life spent here that I'll be rambling on about now and then, no matter how repetitive and annoying it gets.

I will also miss being a regular here for sometime, the blog-land camaraderie in particular. Howsoever virtual it is, my fellow bloggers have been a very integral part of my life for the last couple of years. Here I've found joy, compassion and comfort from sharing and being shared, and I wouldn't let anything in the world change this. Not even change, the big old bully.
So this is not really a goodbye, for as soon as I find myself rested and revived on the other side of the globe, I shall definitely try to sneak in a post or two about our 'Incredible India' or whatever it is the cliches say.

So long then!


P.S. As a befitting resolution to my Seattle diaries, the azaleas did bloom and how! They now flourish in the foster care of a very good, equally plant-loving friend.

April

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

~ T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Although we here, where the mountains are just a sneak peek away, continue to see flashes of unpredictable weather, it sure feels like it. A quick walk and some hurried shots in the nearby park told me that. And spring rain is what we are blessed with for the weekend - one of the many reasons why I couldn't resist this Eliot piece. There's a lot that could be captured both in words and sights, but as much as I would like to, I hardly have the time for longer ruminations these days. Despite the brooding intertwining of 'memory and desire' at the back of my mind, life's banalities demand the chunk of my time now.
We are already past the first quarter of the year and it only seems like yesterday when I was getting all slathered and choked up on emotions regarding our move back home. Strange, how time flies, and even stranger how it continuously fortifies you till you are left with not even so much as a whimper.

To time and blossoms galore then. Happy April.

To love

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)..."

~ e.e. cummings

Happy Valentine's Day. 

Fog again

"Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn..."

~ T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Strange are the ways of life. With the rain and the unusually winter-like chill, yesterday brought two news. As different as black and white, as contradictory as love and hate. While one friend is all thrilled to fly home for a brother's wedding, another must make the same journey but with a shattered heart from a brother's loss.

There are times when I feel a blank, a strange hollow. And this is one.

Rumi and the rock star

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I will meet you there."

~ Rumi

Last night a bunch of us friends had been to watch the just released Hindi musical drama Rockstar. I had been looking forward to this since months because of the soul-stirring music of the legendary A.R. Rahman which is accompanied by the sonorous vocals by Mohit Chauhan and the poignant poetry of Irshad Kamil. One absolutely intoxicating trio that is! Now with all the Academy adulation and international accolades post Slumdog Millionaire, the home country had been missing the quintessential Rahman for some time (strange, that I should be talking from that perspective sitting here). His sheer brilliance lies in creating tunes where rhythm after rhythm the music just grows on you and crawls into your soul till you are left with nothing but raw, scathing emotions.

That said, I'm currently mulling over something rather perplexing. The Sufi ideology that pain and heartbreak are the utmost important ingredients for creativity is where the major plot of the movie whirls around. An artist, of whatever form his/her art is, must undergo a powerful emotional catastrophe in order to get truly inspired. That is where I got stuck, and still am. What if there is no internal conflict? How much pain is enough pain? Till what extent does one push oneself and the boundaries? Or should one just wait for the elusive muse of creativity?
In the movie, as an aspiring rock star, Jordan must let his heart ravaged and torn by the ruthless claws of love and rebellion. An Indian, albeit a bit patchy take on Jim Morrison, Rockstar portrays Jordan's tumultuous journey as he lives through it all - love and loss, fame and fortune, destruction and disillusionment. By the end of the movie, when the closing credits were rolling and Jordan was reciting  the above quoted Rumi lines with a gnawing intensity, I could no more feel the world around me. Nor could I see it well with a pair of blurry eyes and a tight face. Yes, I do cry at movies but this one just went a tad further and woke up a sea of dormant emotions in me. Some other day I'll sing their moods here, but not now.

Here is one of the jewels from Rahman's eternal collection. Jordan, with his newfound success and staggering popularity, is unable to understand the ways of the world. He laments his inability to articulate the beauty of emotions surrounding him - "Jo bhi main kehna chahoon, barbaad kare alfaaz mere..." (Even though I try to say something beautiful, my words make it mundane and trivial...)

And yes, from now on I am a Ranbir Kapoor fan, stamped and certified. The boy sure has blossomed and how. He has so eloquently eternalised Jordan that it is difficult to get the character out of my head. He just sits there in his military jacket and Afghan pants airing his angst while I croon the songs again and again. And again.

Yeats and weekend

"I have spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

~ W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for Cloths of Heaven

This is the result of an ongoing Yeats overdose in the Modern Irish Literature course I am currently into, knee-deep and sleep-deprived. So it's Sleepless in Seattle literally! Although not my most favourite of poets, some of his poetry, especially the early period with the vanishing fairies and the intriguing Celtic folklore is quite seductive. They almost take you on a day trip to Neverland.
The later phase is where I get disenchanted. The political, propagandist Yeats is not my cup of tea. Try as I might, I could never get my head around it.
You see, the mumbo-jumbo is where I feel at home.

That said and nudging Yeats aside, I am two happy feet today. It's almost weekend (I am on PST and hence the more than half a day's tiring wait), which means a promised shopping excursion and all I have been dreaming of lately are scarves. Also there's a potluck dinner tomorrow and I am making methi chicken, which is chicken cooked with aromatic fenugreek leaves. So scarves and chicken - could I be more happy?!

Have a lovely weekend, dear friends.

Neruda and rain

It rains today. It had rained yesterday and the day before as well. And a few years back, inside me, around me, in blinding downpours.
There is something about these nascent drops of water, in the wee bit o' quivering life trapped in them. Something that sneers at the pretender in me. All those things that I am not, that I can never be. If not for this world and its suspicious ways. Once I turn my back to them, I like to be me. And the rain makes me just that. It inspires me to sing and dance like the possessed raindrops cascading from the far-flung sky, before the ground swallows them into its dank, mirthless world.

As I watch the reluctant drops trickle off the edges of the yellowed leaves, the rain seeps into me and waters the dry, dusty bylanes of my head. And I start living again.
Just like this baby jade that shows off its grand green glory post a good shower.

When in between such swings of rumination and the chill invading the sock and stealthily climbing up my toes, what better than the trusted, heady combination of tea and poetry? Today it is about love - the unadulterated, unconditional love that Pablo Neruda celebrates in his initially infamous yet oft quoted Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Although translated, who else croons love's myriad tunes with such intense perfection? Let it all rush to the head, then!

A few lines close to my heart, from Sonnet XVII:

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."


What do you do when it rains?

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 ..."

Spring Renaissance

"My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms - will it return to my body when they scatter?" ~ Kotomichi

"Spring? And now?", will be probably your first question. I know it is quite late into the year for celebrating cherry blossoms, particularly when the leaves are about to turn and set the earth's canvas ablaze in fiery, feisty hues. But what the heck, there's no time for spring! We carry it in our hearts all the time, don't we? When happiness is perched on green leafy branches, oozing with the fragrance of love and joy... When long forgotten emotions waltz through the air and bring back a basket of ethereal moments... When that sudden realization of being alive stirs up a little throbbing storm inside... When dormant hopes rise up from their dank beds to bathe you in sunshine and desire...

So, disobeying chronology and upsetting nature's scrapbook, I thought of talking cherry blossoms today. Cherry blossoms and their revival in me.

Back in the real spring, I had come across an achingly beautiful quote by the eighteenth century Japanese author Kotomichi, which I had fallen in love with the moment I had read it. How it couldn't make its way into this blog I do not remember, for it had touched me a great deal. The coming together of the fairy-like delicate cherry blossoms and the transience of human happiness in the lines is beyond poignancy. And so I want to preserve it somewhere here, which has become a sketchy memoir of sorts. This further led me meandering to one of the most popular and oft cited poems of Modern American Literature - In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound. Taking birth from intense emotions and composed of a handful of just fourteen words, the poem is Imagism at its best. To do justice to the renewal of spring, I married off these beautiful lines with some photos that I had clicked earlier this spring. And what gorgeous couples they make!

"The apparitions of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough."

~ Ezra Pound