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?

   

Farewell October

It is winter suddenly. The indifferent autumn air has given way to colder nights and desiccated days. Roadsides are dotted with carts of bhutta (roasted corn) sellers. The thin wisps of sooty smoke rising from a makeshift fire-pit clouding the vibrant yellow and green of the corn cobs. The domestic scenery includes bottles of thick shea-butter lotion, pairs of socks, and curls of steam rising from teacups. A sudden lull drapes the evenings, which come quite early now, and time appears to freeze after a point. It is that time of the year again when food and festivals surround you for a good three months, out of which a month ends today.  

It is also the time when I enjoy my reading hours the most. Perhaps it's the quietude, perhaps it's the enveloping bubble of coziness. Once again I ended up being moved, almost driven to a state of emotional numbness by one of my most favourite authors, Jhumpa Lahiri. That there's no end to her brilliance, we all know, but her latest release, The Lowland is much more than just a novel. Interlacing history, both personal and political, and the much-explored themes of marriage and the parent-child relationship of her narratives, she builds the plot with a deftness that could only be hers. At once engaging and disturbing, it has moments that make you put down the book, sit back for a while and sometimes, suddenly burst into tears of surprise. There are lines in it which command that kind of an emotional commitment from the reader, that carve out a certain you. There are people in it who might be you or me, their defeat ours. There's a remarkable shift in Lahiri's prose - no more the lyrical, graceful style; this time she keeps it crisp and very much to-the-point, and perhaps that is why it hits you harder. 

Writing this post immediately after an hour of having finished reading the book, leaves me somewhat rattled. May be I'll attempt a coherent evaluation sometime else. Today I just want to remain lost in those windy, deserted beaches of Rhode Island and dwell upon the unintrusive, lifelong love that a father nurtures for his daughter. That and the newness that the change of season has ushered in.  

May yellow

As May unleashes its fury and the mercury climbs up to a dizzying 46 degree Celsius, the heat and the long wait for the monsoons are all one talks about these days. I, in the meanwhile, am fixated with the colour yellow - it's like everywhere, the quite obvious representative being the malevolent and monstrous ball of fire hanging in the afternoon sky. Though not my most favorite color from the mood-lifting spectrum, I tend to associate yellow with the childhood summer vacations - may be it's something to do with the ubiquitous presence of mangoes and the unrestricted freedom from the shackles of schoolwork. So as the sun continues showering its flames of vengeance, I cannot help but arrange these postcards of different yellows in my head, some vibrant and the others mellow, some seasonal and a few born out of idle musings.

Mangoes, the golden-yellow summer delights! Wherever you look, there they are - heaped in small carts lining the roadsides, dominating the fruits section in supermarkets, pulped and candied in thin, long strips, sliced and spiced in tempting pickle jars, and so on. One wonders if they'd still be such a rage if they weren't seasonal.

The full-of-hopes-yellow cover of A Thousand Splendid Suns, a tale equally, if not more heart-rending than The Kite Runner. It officially stamps me as a Khaled Hosseini fan and coincidentally, the end of May will see the release of his third novel which has already been pre-ordered online.

Yellow trumpet flowers paving the sun-beaten, desolate streets, cheerfully reminding one of the brighter aspects of an Indian summer. One could do well with a leaf or two from their book of resilience and steadfastness.

And finally, my pair of miniature yellow Bavarian clogs, which has stirred the travel bug in me that was lying dormant for a while. Gripped by a major bout of hill nostalgia, I long for a bit of the proverbial mountain air, where colorful prayer flags flutter against a blue, blue sky and the reverberating gong of a monastery makes the hills come alive. Sounds like the perfect daydream to be lost in for a while!

Spring

"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A maple grove ablaze in the nearby park. Furry, red blossoms in strings and clusters. The bride-like adorned tree. The never-ending treasure of daylight. Blue skies with whimsical, cottony clouds. The unmistakable spring in my steps. The unstoppable song in my heart. Dots of colour here, there and everywhere. Spring has sprung, at last.

Here's to new beginnings then. Happy spring to one and all.

Spring signs

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself."

~ Bashō

It's almost there. I can smell it. Bouts of lightheadedness and meaningless giggles. The ticklish ache of life stirring to burst out of the tightly closed buds. The awakening of tiny blades of grass with gentle, dewy paws. The restless robins join the impatient, hoarse calls of the crows. One less layer stripped from the confused, stuffy mask of clothing. The more than usual spell of blue sky, even here, in the perennial rain abode. 
Spring sure is in the air. It sure is about to spring somewhere. 

Farewell January

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

~ Albert Camus

With this brave thought, I bid goodbye to the gloomiest of months.
Hope February brings some sun and soul along and breaks the spell of stubborn, overcast skies.

Season's first

Snow! Yes, our part of the city received a very generous amount of the pristine, powdery sheen over the weekend. Just when I was beginning to worry if we would have to go back to India empty-handed, without a chance to watch the familiar soft white fluffs blanket the stubborn, wintry ground. But there it was, magical and eternal like every other first. It felt new despite our two rather harsh winters spent in the East Coast. It was welcoming even if the slushy roads were not. And it was heartwarming, in a very childlike cluelessness, in spite of the plunging temperatures and the ticklish chattering of the teeth trying to spell brrrr!!

This morning as I stood on the patio shivering, enjoying the Narnia-like landscape, it felt fantastically surreal. Like a vintage oil painting, the scene reminded me of James Joyce's 'The Dead' from Dubliners. A man who has just learnt of his wife's romantic past is shaken by the suddenness and the intensity of the moment - that her dead lover is perhaps more alive to her than her emotionally frigid husband ever could be. He contemplates this ugly truth standing by the window watching the snow fall quietly, while a slow but heady storm wells up inside him. This passage is perhaps one of the most poignant piece of writings that literature has ever seen where Joyce, the master storyteller shines throughout.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” 

~ James Joyce, 'The Dead'

Drink up the sun

(Or just the carrot juice!)

In this black and white
sun-less land
I shall pretend I see it
everyday
through the veils of the mist
through the shards of the rain
it peeks and winks at me
a giant ball of citrine
flaming and fanning
sighing and seething
looming and languishing
but all mine.

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 ..."

My summer of love

Humans have an inscrutable tendency to keep returning to things of the past. For me, summer is one of them - the summer of childhood, the summer of love and sometimes just the nagging sultriness of the season. With summer there comes a bundle of green memories that stir one to the very soul - the old and stubborn habit of recollecting tiny fragments of the past like a child gathers seashells on a seashore, and in the due course giving birth to a myriad of unexpected emotions. Memories that one loves to revisit, sometimes relive too, despite the inevitability of fate. Despite your own faults. 'Pleasing pain', the oxymoron is called.
Just like I keep returning to one of my most potent elixirs - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which is pure, unadulterated poetry in the guise of prose. A truly vintage read. If only there was a man like Florentino Ariza made of flesh and blood, and love, that walked this earth. If only love could actually transcend age and years, and hover on flapping its wings for an eternity of fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. That's how long he waited for Fermina Daza. Despite his six hundred twenty-two affairs of heart, very carefully in the dark whirls of his being, he had preserved his soul for her. I know it is magic realism at its best, but then what is life without a dollop of magic?!

Like the book, I must keep returning to my baking too, to keep my senses up and about lest the world discovers these fleeting moments of delusion and kick a good laugh out of them. Hence the return of the orange cake - classy and summery, yet light as fluff. Oozing with the love-like aroma, tangy and sweet at once, and laced with the orangeness of the zest, it is summer personified. And it's perfect companion - ice tea packed with fresh mint leaves and a hint of lime.

Summer sure fell on my lap like the elusive fruit from heaven!

Musings of a snow lover

When the trees stand fearless with their stoic naked bodies and the furry friends rest in their snug little homes you know winter has arrived. On soft baby paws marches in the snow,

that magical time of the year, that untamed high of the spirits. Like every first that we cling to so dearly and in that strange unexplained fashion, the season's first snow too feels exhilarating and quite ironically, life-giving. I am a lover of snow, of the dark desolate beauty that it ushers in on the fringes of its pristine white blanket. I am a lover of seasons and their moods. One must search for and embrace the beauty in each, although the fragrance of spring and the colours of autumn remain the undisputed winners.

Few years back when I had watched the soul-stirring Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, I had nourished a very fond dream - to romp around on a frozen water body in the true bohemian spirit of Clementine. The dream took a vivid turn when we came to live by the shores of one of the five Great Lakes, colloquially known as the Third Coast of the United States.

When we first arrived in Ohio, we were greeted by many a proud tales about Lake Erie, which by its 9,940 square miles of surface area is a mini sea in its own rights. Come winter and the lake almost freezes in chunks and is also the major cause for which the Clevelanders receive the wrath of Mother Nature - copious amounts of the "lake effect" snow.

So when the sun finally showed up with a long haggard face after days of overcast gloom, it was time to visit the frozen shores of Lake Erie. And viola! The scene before us was too surreal to believe at the first glance - the forlorn scraps of snow on the sands, the wintry look of the deserted beach and most of all the frozen still shores. The vast stretch of frozen water crystals sparkled like huge pieces of uncut diamonds when the rays of a feeble winter sun fell on them. To be Indians and to have had only heard of such miracles before, we stood there in speechless admiration marveling at nature's handiwork. And to walk gingerly on that frozen chunk of an endless lake felt like a different world altogether - something like both living and dying in that one moment.

Snowy day blues can be rather stubborn, hence I resign myself to a vista of chaste flurries that fall in gentle white fluffs by the window, with a hot cup of my signature ginger tea. During these few ruminative moments the world feels like a perfect place, sane and unprejudiced. For one who has very rarely succeeded in resisting temptation, sometimes I just grab my coat and go for a walk as the tiny flakes waver around me like thousands of unfurled dreams. Surely, heaven must be something like this. A part of me also feels like Jadis, the wicked White Queen of Narnia! Whatever, despite the plunging temperatures and the shiny red reindeer nose, I am always game for a little snow walk in my weathered boots and a warm heart.

A tree story

I pout and preen in my blossomy sheen

I swing and dance in a greenish trance

I'm the perfect coy mistress in my golden autumn dress

I shiver and sigh when the winds are high

Cold and lonely I stand, dreaming of a happy summery land

Vermont, where nature speaks in colours

Lately it has been raining uncertainties for us and each time we would think of a serene getaway to assuage our rattled nerves, life would happen. To cut a long story short, we were in desperate need of a break. Since the summers and in between the nagging disquiet, I had nurtured countless dreams of a picturesque North American autumn (somehow, I prefer the poetic 'autumn' to the bland 'fall'), the kind that we come across in glossy photographic magazines. A trip to New England was always on the cards but we had often found ourselves at crossroads when it came to pick one of the six equally breathtaking states. Since the time was autumn, New Hampshire or Vermont ruled the gamble, and ultimately Vermont it was. So there we were, up in the air one cloudy afternoon, exclaiming at the jaw-dropping aerial view - stretch after stretch of red, like the unfurling and fluttering of a giant mass of red cloth. Beaming with happiness at so surreal a sight, we realised it was only the start of a humdinger of a vacation.

A snug little log cabin awaited us, nestled in the lap of mountains overlooking a little wooded pond. Every single arrangement befitted my fancies - red Adirondack chairs in the patio, vintage floral curtains, unlimited solitude and most importantly the "there's a jungle out there" feel. But we should have foreseen the jinxing of a situation so beguilingly perfect and blissful. Mother Nature, like always, had a mood of her own. It rained intermittently on the first day, like a curse, with a vengeance. But the resolute leafpeepers braved it anyhow! For this was a break that seldom comes twice in a person's lifetime, and what's more, we were spot on time for the elusive peak - the time when the leaves pompously display their best colours. Autumn was in the air- cool and crisp. Being the quintessential maple land, one can see the roads and lanes thronged with flaming maple trees that appeared to be on a feisty, full-throated song. Never had I seen so rich a palette - yellow, orange, red, rust, mauve, gold; nor could I understand the divine magic of the same leaf turning so many brilliant shades one after the other, in just a fortnight's time.

The quaint countryside with its little country stores, verdant hillocks, grazing cattle and weathered barns contributed to my perfect autumn idyll. I was brimming with emotions of one who loves to be far from the madding crowd, feasting on the virgin beauty of nature and relishing country delights like maple candies and syrup soaked pancakes. The remnants of a deep-rooted English tradition - red telephone booths, old English inns, bleached white rectories, and gastropubs named 'Mr Pickwick's, It's a Dickens of a place' - was quite inescapable to my Anglophile's eye. It seemed as if a chunk of England has glided across the Atlantic and has pieced itself to the most charming pocket of North America.

The Green Mountains that garland the northeastern territory of the state are a vast expanse of sheer delight - lush greenery and charcoal black crests veiled with mist. Our inn keeper had assured us that rains make the colours sparkle, and he couldn't have been more right. For the wet leaves not only sparkled, they spoke. After a day of incessant rains, the sun burst forth in nooks and corners highlighting a resplendent blanket of mellow tones. Like us, there were several others who were in quest of that little patch of blue sky and at the end were fairly rewarded. The sun peeped in and out of the stubborn clouds throwing a ray or two on the faraway mosaic mountains, giving the landscape a dramatic edge. The warm rays piercing the mist shrouded mountains gave the impression of one being in a futile battle to win against all odds.

There is a lot more on the tourism platter of Vermont like apple cider mills, sugarhouses (where they make maple syrup) and vintage covered bridges. The spectacular covered bridges that symbolise a fine melange of architectural beauty and history are a treat for the historians and photographers alike. These completely wooden bridges that date back to the nineteenth century were meant for accommodating a single lane traffic, mostly horse carriages. Due to their sturdy roof and enclosed sides they still hold good in spite of the continuing damage from rain and snow. We stopped by one of the bridges to bask in the tranquility of its surroundings. It felt like the moment had frozen into timelessness, echoing a hundred tales from the past - the monotonous clopping of hooves, the creaking of wood under the weight of the hurried carriages, the legends of many a distressed maiden who tumbled off the bridge for love. One of my musings also had Francesca plucking wildflowers alongside the bridge, just like in The Bridges of Madison County.

Intoxicated with ecstasy and quenched to the core, we returned to our life of duty and obligations, to be a part of the routine again. Now the Vermont of my dreams seems far removed, a mere blurry shape of autumn colours. But I do have the memories and of course the photographs, that will keep me warm in many a winter nights. And oh, there's my prized maple syrup bottle too, 'Vermont's finest'!