Bangalore-d

"The city is not a concrete jungle, it's a human zoo."

~ Desmond Morris

A desk and chair by the window. An oddly quiet hotel room in contrast to the view it offers. Translucent beige drapes trying hard to veil the stark ugliness of a construction site. Another addition of the 'state-of-the-art elegance' to the already bursting-at-seams concrete jungle. Stray bits of news glare from the city daily's front page. I ignore them all, choosing a classic and my favorite Latin American in the world, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The subtle aroma of green tea with a hint of cinnamon and honey from a bag. The nervous anticipations of finding a place and fitting in to the rhythms of a maddeningly crowded city. The comforting assurances of old friends who are just a call and some kilometers away.

So that's me Bangalore-d for now. Though not in the strictest sense of the word. 

Solitude

"Finding solitude in the concrete jungle is powerful and peaceful."

~ Mike Dolan

Another of those picturesque lavender dusks. A sight so familiar, but still a novelty each time it happens. A bustling Friday traffic roars under the balmy pink-orange spread of the sky. Lights and buildings. Buildings and lights. The city blurs into a distance in my mind and ceases to be. A blissful solitude embraces me quietly. Let the weekend begin!

Sea

"The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude."

~ Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I have grown up by the sea, the Bay of Bengal to be precise. Over the years, I have seen its many moods and musings, albeit in flashes. As a child the beach would be my vast playground, never-ending and always welcoming, dotted with a treasure trove of white and brown shells. As I grew up, the sea ceased to be a playmate and unmasked its willful, mature face. A little daunted and defeated at first, I gradually learnt to unearth that characteristic loneliness that the sea alone brings with it. It's a different feel altogether, churning marvel and mystery, scratching sealed old wounds open yet pacifying your most loathsome fears - all at the same time.
Always a biased admirer of the mountains, over time, the sea somehow grew on me. On sultry summer evenings, I would secretly wish to be left alone by my garrulous cousins on a beach outing, so that I could bottle its hum and roar and bring back its salty seductiveness with me. Today I long for such a visit.

Why am I talking of the sea today? Because despite the fortnight's vacation in my home state, I could not visit Puri, the famous tourist magnet of eastern India where the devotees of Lord Jagannath throng the brackish shores to end their pilgrimage. In a ritual-like regularity, every summer I would visit my grandparents even if it was just for a day. Thus I turned to list the things that I missed for the third consecutive summer and while my aunt's spicy prawn curry topped the chart, the beach began to haunt me like never before. Like a gush of warm blood, the memories of innumerable summer vacations flooded my thoughts. And now, amid all the crazy running around for the new home, I long for its reassuring lull; to sit near the waves and immerse myself into their monotonous drone; to bury my rues and regrets into its dark, greedy expanse; and above all, to reach out to that bittersweet loneliness.

How I long for all these and much more, in some corner of my tired heart.

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 Bee

It buzzes past the myriad mazes
of a ticking, restless mind.
Maze after maze, it searches for nectar,
that dewy, lusty taste of life.
There is a forest of grey and white,
a forlorn winter scape.
High walls and claustrophobia
guard this haunting world of nonexistence.
The bee hovers and beats its wings aimlessly,
willfully hitting itself on the dank walls.
With each passing day,
there are flakes of gossamer wing
tumbling down like the hopes of a spring,
of blossoms abundant.
And then, there is the bee,
floating and gliding in a vacuum
without any wing, without any spring.

The Zeroes

An abstract round
that crawls and spreads its wings
into a larger round of nothingness.
An emptiness that looms large
over a room wearing a vacant expression,
it's corners squirming and inching away.

This big lump of roundness,
dances in concentric circles
like a spider's web, like the fringe of a smarting wound.
In its core I have stored some carefully plucked mistakes.
Mistakes of many colours and patterns.
Earthy reds and azure blues.
I try to kick them hard,
so that they spill out into a sea of namelessness.
But they spring back boomerang-like
rebounding, reappearing.
This time devoid of all colours.

The circles now resemble the gnawing hollow
of sunken cheekbones and beaten desires.
A cluster of full bloomed zeroes,
zoomed and magnified in a photographic lens.