Chasing shadows

It's May, that paradox of a month when it's green and just the right amount of pretty on the other side of the globe and all we are left with is a big, blazing, burning sun that never shies away from showing off its summer might. Unfair!

As I sit at the kitchen table and watch the morning sun flood the apartment in rays of gold, many things scamper and skid through my mind. Off late, I have been chasing shadows a lot, of all shapes and kinds. Some go years back in time, when the sun was mellow and seasons were a part of life, and some very recent whose bodies are too patchy to give a name to them.

In such times, I came across Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows — the heroic story of a woman, spanning decades and their history, who wears the scars of her past on her skin, literally, and carries their ominous shadows across the length and breadth of the world. Hiroko Tanaka, a brave, resilient Japanese woman, miraculously survives the horror of the 1945 Nagasaki bombings and trails her journey across the world, mapping her life through the troubled territories of Delhi, Istanbul, Karachi, and New York, in turn witnessing more death and disaster brought on by man upon man. Battling her own ghosts, she sees it all — the waning years of the British Raj in India, the bloody partition of India and Pakistan, the rise of terrorism in Pakistan, and finally the harrowing episode of 9/11 in New York. She sees it all, living and losing through each of these catastrophes. But what pestered me through the pages is this nagging question — whether the shadows just announced themselves wherever Hiroko arrived, or it was she who kept chasing shadows relentlessly all her life?

Some people have a reputation of casting shadows wherever they go, after all. Just like some carry a legacy of brewing storms in picture-perfect calmness.

May flowers

Yesterday, while buying some flowers for a friend's housewarming, I came across two little girls with eager smiles and deep, searching eyes. As I stood inside the florist's air-conditioned shop, they were watching me keenly through the glass doors of the shop standing in the scorching sun outside. When the florist took the selected flowers out to chop off their stems and other straggly bits, the girls rushed towards him, pointing to the blood-red carnations in the bunch. I could tell from his hesitating smile that he had politely turned them down before stepping inside the shop to give the finishing touches to the bouquet. After I paid and was almost on my way out, I noticed the girls were still standing there with their faces pressed to the glass door, their gaze lingering longingly on the fresh-cut flowers in the buckets. Already late and a little bothered by how muggy it was for a day so bright, I rushed back and grabbed two yellow gerbera daisies, tossing a twenty-rupee note to the shop assistant. When I handed them each a daisy, the girls' puzzled faces lit up instantly breaking into broad, beaming smiles — a sparkle that outdid even the blazing noon sun. "Thank you, madam!", they chirped together in sing-song voices. I smiled and asked them to pose for a picture which they quite enthusiastically did. 

As I slammed the car door shut and turned on the air-condition, I realized how little it takes to make someone happy. A kind word here, a warm smile there — and that's how the world keeps spinning day after day, everyday. I also realized that, perhaps, in this unexpected exchange of smiles, I ended up being the happier one. Sure, they took the daisies home but I came back with a memory and much more.

In the wake of the very recent Nepal tragedy*, it is these little gestures of give-and-take that one must remember to share. Thousands of lives smothered under the rubble of now lost spaces, centuries' old temples and stupas battered into incoherent halves, priceless heritage pounded to nothingness, and villages 'flattened' beyond recognition — such horror of horrors!
Whenever the world is struck by a disaster, which, sadly, is so often these days, and I'm overwhelmed by a crumbling sense of doom, these lines come back to me again and again:  

"Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell".

~ Hermann Hesse

*If you are interested to contribute to the Nepal relief efforts, here is a list of the organizations that are are soliciting donations. 

February blues

Soon February will become another forgotten page in the year's calender. Like the confused, short-lived spring that's happening at the moment. Like the fast-fading flickers of a mellow spring sun that doesn't know whether to shine or sleep. It'll be summer soon and we know how those go when one's living in the tropics. I'll be left with nothing much to share here except sun-dried rants and sultry silences.

In the meanwhile, basking in the spring mellowness, I'm taking a break. Or I was, before my editor hunted me down last evening for some issues that 'needed to be addressed'. A good, long break it was from everything—breathing quiet moments of 'just be', soaking in the quotidian, taking a sip of the everyday beauty which, in moments of worldly preoccupation, we often ignore. For a fortnight, it has been mostly books and tea, and lots of sky-watching—something which I'm very good at, if I may say so myself. It's fascinating, observing the ever-changing canvas of blue everyday, dotted with somersaulting birds and wind-propelled, moody nimbus. And the best part about watching skies is being able to love the blues, for there are these happy kinds too.

It was after a long time that I came across a brilliant read, one that grips you from page one. Having a thing for Irish literature and after many recommendations, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox lived up to every inch of its reputation. Not essentially uplifting like the fluffy, cheerful clouds I stalk, but Maggie O'Farell's claustrophobic Edwardian world and its people will slowly and surely pull at your heartstrings. And Esme will stay with you for a while, long after you're done with the book.

January beginnings

I'm here. At last. After months of turning away, forcing myself on a rather long and lazy absence. No particular reason for the hibernation except the usual — work and life, and a little bit of me. Just when I was on the threshold of abandoning this one-time, only cathartic pad, I realized how much I should begin anew. That how much this space has given me in times when I had nothing but this. That this is where a part of me will always stay, latched to the pages of my inconsequential history so far and to the lives of my reader-friends. That it was time I should return. 

Because Januarys are all about beginnings, no!?

Oh, London!

 

When September began, that bewitching temptress of months, I turned another year and found myself to be in the city of cities, London. And might I just say, for starters and for the obvious lack of poetry - Oh, London, how pretty art thou!

An old soul wandering in an olde worlde - that's just the kind of escape my heart was longing for since days and the spontaneity of this trip is what makes it so incredible. Ever since we have been here, I've practically been all over the place: museum-hopping and walking past the now obscure residences of literary heavyweights; walking under the breathtaking weepy willows in a Alice-like stupor and learning the names of English roses in the royal parks; basking in the golden-green of the early autumn sun and enjoying the crackling crunch of russet leaves; childlike surprise upon spotting clumps of spring crocuses that seemed to have sprouted overnight in a great haste; oohing at the medieval architecture, a towering aspect of the city's majestic facade; experimenting the famous pub grub in the masculine-named English pubs along with cafe stalking, what with the addictive cappuccinos the city coffeehouses offer; the touristy fascinations of walking on centuries-old bridges and streets and marveling at the modern seductions added to a rapidly-changing cityscape; watching the sun set on the mythical Thames casting deep silhouettes on the the magical spires. Oh, it's all so overwhelming and surreal.

True, London can be intimidating, even terrifying at times, but a place where absolutely no one knows you can also be liberating in many ways. It is often so exhilarating to be a foreigner, to see a place with a pair of exotic, unbiased eyes. And I'll be doing just that for some more time. I purposely sat down today morning and hunted for a quote that would justify the myriad emotions I'm swimming in, for it is all too heady for me at the moment to construct a coherent post.

"The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson