The new view

It rains everyday. Sometimes in thunderous downpours but mostly in soothing lullabies. And when the dark clouds puff and rumble their way down, the coconut trees dance with a new-found greenness. For my green-deprived eyes, this is sheer visual poetry and much more when I realize that all this is happening when I'm still living in a big, bustling city. In India.
Of course there are the ubiquitous sky-hugging buildings too, that stand so assertively punctuating the green patch. Those rectangular dots of concrete, when strung together, that map the oxymoronic facade of this city. But on my side of the world here, unmindful of the cacophony of an always-on-its-toes city, the trees win. And so does the sky.

Of books and writers

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” 

~ Ernest Hemingway

It rained yesterday, a good, earthy summer rain. It has been raining now and then since the last couple of weeks - the first moody spells of the year that have washed away the lifeless, sun-baked stagnancy off one and all. I hope they'll wipe the dusty panes of my mind too, and let me see the world more clearly so that some calm can be restored in my writing/blogging hours.
And so, somewhere between waiting for it to pour while grumpily editing a convoluted manuscript and the echoing persuasions of "you should write more often" from friends and family, these strikingly illuminating words of Hemingway happened. They further took me down memory lane, to a good ten years back when I had to present a paper on Hemingway's short stories as part of the semester-end evaluation for our Modern American Literature course. As an ode to his bizarre, very shortly-written short stories (there are some that are barely a page long), the title of my paper chuckled, 'The Difficulties of Reading Hemingway'. Being someone who worshiped Hardy and Keats and tried to emulate their romanticism, I wasn't too enthusiastic then about his curbed expressions and economic usage of words. Literature meant to describe, to paint a world laced with words. I remember the awkward look of our professor, who was quite the proverbial taskmaster, when very emphatically I ended my talk with how the great writer of his times finally shot himself in the head. Yes, I was that thoroughly tired of his brilliance that apparently the whole world got, but me. In stark contrast, over the recent years, I'm amazed at the candour that I find in his writing. The very understated style that once annoyed me now astonishes me - the art of saying so much in just a handful of words. Not for nothing they say, you don't read a book once. As you grow, so does its world and the characters living inside it.

PS. My current reading stupour comes from Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul. A plot that skids between two completely different geographies - Istanbul and Arizona (peppered with bits of San Francisco as well) - and houses at least thirty characters of which about fifteen carry the narrative forward, it's a whirlwind of a read. At times I felt the urgent need of drawing a family tree so as to not lose track of who was where and when. But like I have said here before, the element that tugged at my heart amid this chaos was Istanbul - its charming cobbled streets, the call of the simit seller, the greedy seagulls hovering over a ferry on the Bosphorus, and the history that coats almost every building of the city. There lies the pull of the novel. So yes, go for the atmosphere and for a detailed critique of the general Turkish attitude toward the Armenian genocide.  

Orange joys

With nothing much to tell and hardly any time for leisurely weekend jaunts, I have taken to capturing roadside colours and flavours. Being a lover of local sights always, and more so when one lives in a colour-chocked, prismatic country such as ours, it's hard to overlook the vibrant joys that are here, there, and everywhere. And quite interestingly, when I was trying to gather a coherent mood for this little post, these different shades of orange came together. Just like that! Like a jumbled picture gradually falling into place, it meant a lot, this little coincidence. Enough to tickle the Monday blues away, enough to remind me how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such an unassuming, permeating colour palette, and enough to bask in the joy of one of my favourite colours.

Brave gulmohars rising up against a belligerent monsoon sky. Baskets of feisty marigolds, those fluffy balls of orange wonders, thronging the weekend bazaar. Mouthwatering rows of roadside chicken tikka being grilled inside a rotisserie as we wait for our to-go, Saturday-night parcel. Two halves of an orange stare at me, trying hard to perk up my Monday-morning mood. And life, suddenly, appears to be not so bad. A little less dull. A little more orangish.   

Monsoon, interrupted

Of late, I've been robbed of many of my favorite things - reading, blogging, watching the rain, to name a few. Thanks to work piling on heap upon heap, I've been away from my world for what seems like an eternity now. I tried, and not once, to come here and drop in a few lines, but every time the words would evade me. True, it's no fun editing academic stuff, because then all you are left with is finding flaws and correcting them. And it's supposed to stay so for a month more.
The only hints of newness that have stumbled across my way, other than one full day of sale-shopping madness, are these hues of green - the ubiquitous Hyderabadi haleem lacing the city roadsides in colourful, illuminated kiosks, and my potted palm that seems to be making most of the monsoons. At least someone's getting to enjoy the rains!

June

It rained. 

Has been raining for the last two days. 

In showers and drizzles. 

Need I say more? 

Just that, it rained. 

At last. 

And I feel like this dragonfly.

Savoring the green silence.
Hoarding the moment.
Making it mine.
Forever.

Rewriting, retelling

It rains this afternoon. It always does at this hour, when all is quiet and half of the day lies decaying, paving the way quietly for the other half. Searchingly, I run to the windows, for a glimpse of the rain-fattened sky, or may be a full-bodied, leafy tree to watch the drops do a dandy dance in the shaky caress of the drunken leaves. A rumble of thunderclap and I wake up from my wishful thoughts - my windows open to the neighbor's bedroom walls and my balcony offers only more concrete and broken vista. Devoid of any scenery, I make do with the familiar fragrance of wet earth that fills every corner of the house.

This obstruction in my rain-peeping brought back mellow memories of an always drenched place, when not so long before I would watch the rain drizzle on the dark pines from my patio that gave way to a magical peek of the cloud shrouded Cascades. All this, of course, seems to be a far fetched dream now or at best something like Coleridge's blurry fragment.
But this sudden burst of uncontrollable nostalgia surprises me. Was I not the one who would relentlessly complain of the sodding rains then? Was I not the one who would vent rain-soaked rants here, there and everywhere? How, then, did the once annoying rains become so dear today? Of course, I am moulding and mending the unpleasant bits of past to suit my precarious present. I am beautifying the once desolate, rain-beaten landscape into something romantic. And nostalgia is always romantic.

As luck always has her own way of mocking you, she couldn't have shoved a more appropriate read my way - The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Just a hundred and fifty pages, yet it manages to turn you round and round as if the whole time you were on a mean, never-ending roller coaster. Tony, the protagonist, takes us on a flashback journey, primarily a solipsistic one, where we meet his mates and their youthfully pretentious, philosophical takes on life. The plot thickens when the most "clever" of them, the Camus-quoting, always serious Adrian commits suicide. Justifying the title, Barnes makes sure we sense the end after a major twist, only to be further distracted by his unreliable narrator. Tony weaves people and plots from his foggy memoir that spans more than four decades, while all the time the reader sits on an edge doubting the selectivity of his memories. What we remember as the truth and what really is the truth are two very different things. With his patchwork of additions and subtractions, permutations and combinations, he finally arrives at the truth. One that could never be retold.

"How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves."

~ Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

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.

Swirls and more

A lazy, overcast day. Rain falls now and then, stubborn and whimsical. A few more deadlines make a beeline into my ever piling 'to do' list. Of course the procrastinator in me idles. A Thanksgiving dinner menu does its usual rounds inside my head. Scouring the internet for something new, unusual. Distraction knocks. This time it is a lone lavender sprouting up from the pot, framed against a backdrop of resplendent orangish leaves. Despite the frost it still flowers in tiny, fragile bits. And it is almost December doing its annual dance upon our heads. 

Pleased and brightened, I think about something warm and quick for tea. That would keep me glued to John McGahern's Amongst Women. The life of a domineering, embittered Irish Civil War veteran amid his ever fretting daughters and wife. Absent sons, scarred relationships, confused priorities. Absolutely engrossing and dramatic. Suddenly my mind rings like the oven timer - puff pastry! Impatiently thawed, smeared with ground cinnamon and sugar. Rolled and cut up into cutesy swirls. Fifteen minutes in the oven and out they come all cinnamon-y and crunchy. 

As I hunch back to my sluggish self with the book and a hot cuppa, I see the rain climb down the window panes. I know it will be back. 

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?

The moody mountain

The 'now-there-now-gone' Mount Rainier 

One last look before the infamous Seattle rains swallow it forever, and the pestering clouds enshroud its moodiness in their puffy whiteness.

Before grey and black come to mean much more than just colours.

Before the year creeps away unnoticed on its soft snowy paws.

Before a new set of temptations and resolutions knock at the door.

Before it is time for the usual set of goodbyes, yet again.

Yeh Dilli hai mere yaar!

It has been two days and a few hours in Dilli (I love it that way), and our homecoming could not have been any better. Our visas got approved, we gorged on lovely food and splurged on ethnic wears. Nothing could dampen our enthusiasm except the obvious complaints of the scorching heat and the blaring traffic. Seriously, we had no idea that the circumstances would be so favourable, especially after a harrowing flight journey of fifteen long hours followed by the fatigue and disorientation of jetlag. There were the rains too, accompanied by the nostalgic smell of wet earth and childhood. So this time the Gods weren't crazy! Ever since we got into the taxi from the airport I cannot stop humming the peppy number "Yeh Delhi hai mere yaar/ bas ishq, mohabbat, pyaar" (This is Delhi my friend, the land of love), one of my Rahman favourites. What else but this song, so simply yet so perfectly, can describe "Hindustan ka dil" (India's heart) and the eternally unbeatable mood of its people:

Iske baayen taraf bhi dil hai, iske daayen taraf bhi dil hai

Yeh sheher nahin mehfil hai.

(It has got a heart on its left as well as right side

It's not a city, it's a celebration.)

Flashback

There was once a heart inside me.

I remember swallowing it on a cold, rainy day

For warmth to feel snug and protected,

For a demon-fire to burn the wishful desires.

It was a Saturday I think.

A weekend for a perfect end

of Hope and a heap of other useless abstract nouns.

The fire remained, but only for a while.

Since then it has been dark and cold there.

A lump, perhaps of flesh, still beats feebly...

In its own mad rhythm, which I fail to understand.

Anyway, I never understood much.

Thanks for everything

Two souls snuggled

under a lone umbrella,

their cloistered world peopled with raindrops outside.

Rain, the divine intervention, as someone had once called it!

The umbrella is a shield.

It muffles the unpleasant worldly advice of caution.

Rain or tears...

Who drenched me?

I would not know.

I could not feel.

Could only hear a defeated, hesitant whisper....

"Thanks for everything".

My eye lids felt tired and heavy.

The dream sitting on them had left.

But the rain was there, still hitting hard as ever,

chilling me from skin to bone.

As if to remind me of the reality clock ticking away...

Ah! So it was a dream after all!

I kept thinking of the faceless stranger under my umbrella.

A summer rain

Pomegranate blossom in rain

The rain waltzes in with the august company of myriad hopes.

The oozing odour of the wet earth
unhinges my complete being.
I strip myself of the much accumulated worldliness
to partake in nature's pagan celebration.
My thoughts march ahead and rest on the rain drenched greenery.
Green... the harbinger of optimism!
Isn't rain cathartic?

I watch the quivering leaves flinch,
feverish with the weight of the promiscuous rain drops on them.
The droplets dangle precariously,
queued on the edge of the leaf,
as if to leave would mean the end of the world!
But, isn't life all about holding fast?
To someone, to something?

I can hear the rain seeping into my head.
I can feel my vision blur.