Place of my heart

 "There is nothing like returning to a place that has remained unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

~ Nelson Mandela

December. That same streaming of winter sunshine through marigolds and their fragrant, dark-green leaves. The view from the portico, a blurry tracery of gold and green. The tea that hasn't changed in flavor or the doting love with which it is made and served. Aai, my ever-smiling grandmother, pairing a ceremonial saucer with the teacup despite my repeated refusals. My favourite red-and-orange marigold that is planted every winter. The constant gardener, my grandfather, fretting over the indiscipline of the dried leaves in the yard lawn. And then, there's the sea. The never-changing, ever-same sea. The grey-green waves, folding and unfolding in similar crests, humming the same restless tune for years. Their self-destructive love of coming back to the same heartless shore regardless of the continuous battering.
The place of one's heart truly remains unchanged and so does that tiny corner of the heart that houses it. It will always stay the way it once was.

PS. Also, I did not know how else to pay my tribute to a great, wise man.

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.

November light

Diwali. The festival of lights, the time I wait for, for most part of the year. A golden warmth spreads to the root of every heart. The earthy scent of the oil-drunk clay diyas. Orange-yellow marigold patterns adorning doorsteps. The crisp November air thick with an amalgamation of smells, mostly that of fried sweets and noisy firecrackers. Happy people, reunited in a bubble of joy, tucking away their differences for a day or two. A perfect world.

Happy Diwali dear friends.

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.  

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.