Jujube

This year, it will not rain. Everybody had been telling so. In the gloom of impending drought, many were simply letting go. As early as March - summer had just begun. The air was thick with flavour of mango flowers. Humid afternoons made homes impossible to stay in. Languid and sweaty, we, the children, wandered from home to home, garden to garden, played kit-kit on sleepy streets and wondered- what drought would be like. 

Cousins of all kind, city cousins, village cousins, cousins once removed, nephews and nieces in relation, neighbours, school-mates - nobody left behind. We wandered in herds. And found a jujube tree, leaning over a dried pond, bustling with fruit, maroon, plump, the sour odour hanging heavy in the air for yards around. Only when one ate, one knew it could be sweet too. This was in the front-yard of one of very own - Little. Little was one of two sisters, and a reliable member of our gang, always eager to participate in our little plans. She brought along her baby sister who she guarded like a hawk. 

The pond was so dry, that the bottom had cracked open in near craters. The wild weeds that grew and the water lilies, had withered and pasted against the walls long ago. Only the jujube tree, remained, verdant, oblivious of the indignant monsoon, and full of thorns, that made it impossible to climb. Else, any lithe child would climb up and shake a bough or three while the rest of us caught the falling fruit in our skirts held spread out. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

So Little went inside and got their flower plucker. An ergonomic contraption of sorts, a long bamboo stick with a V shaped claw at the very end, used as a tool against neighbours who wake up earlier than you and boost their flower harvest by stealing from other’s gardens.With that stick- the tallest amongst us, an older city cousin who had the finest pink slippers, closed his eyes and began stringing down random boughs, and shaking them. 

Within minutes, our palms filled and our skirts filled and heaps were made on the barren belly of the pond. We the children, giggled endlessly because nobody had imagined a harvest of this magnitude. Whether to chew the plums and throw out seeds, they tasted the most judicious mix of sweet and sour, or to run home and get sacks to gather those berries into - we were joyfully confused. 

Just then, we heard a thud. A very loud and a distinct thud. Like something heavy hit the floor. It came from the house. Little ran home while her sister rushed behind her. Turned out, their grandmother had fallen. Fainted while sitting in the verandah, out of nowhere like the life had been sucked out of her. This grandmother was fair and thin and wrapped in a tattered white sari, her hair silvery, tied into untidy braids. 

There were screams and shouts and the people at home were running about, not knowing what to do. Thanks to a pacemaker, she lived many more years. But that afternoon, i had to leave my jujube heap to the jackals - that I couldn’t forget.

Inspired by : Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day)

Home-sick Stranger

In those days

When everything felt, foreign

The paint never peeled off walls,

And the roads weren’t filled with familiar snacks

In a city that moved much faster than me

Struggling with quiet discomforts 

That come with pace of these kinds

Tall blue facades of endless office buildings 

And one too many, manicured gardens

Lawns much greener than my home’s rusty grass

I was shy to confess, how much I missed

The peeled paint and the slow streets

But you knew.

You came, nevertheless, to see me.

And walk me through those unfamiliar lanes

To reassure, to comfort 

That I had the company of at least one other - homesick stranger

And that it was okay.

And that it was going to be okay.

Back Home

When I moved away from home for freedom and such

I hadn’t fully fathomed all that it will beget

While I didn’t get freedom, any

I have built worlds inside worlds

And I survive in the inner-most, of those

Never venturing out into even the penultimate

Shrinking smaller, every month, every day

Is that not the opposite of freedom

It is, I believe, time to think about home again

Familiar towns, that haven’t ceased to be 

Although changes have overwhelmed home as well

Its soul would be incorruptible, so I assume

Back home, I can yearn for freedom too

Unfettered by fears of never being free

Can wallow in honesty, in defeat, in poverty and in failure

Because why fail in a foreign land

When I can fail within the intimate boundaries of home

Thinking of summer sand dunes

Endless rain, slush streets

Scents of early November blossoms

Sparkling toe rings in salty rivers

Dancing shadows of needy children, feeble traffic 

Floating poems, sinking earthen idols

Smitten in nostalgia, drenched in memories 

In a home devoid of ladders, I could just be. 

Lounge

When I travel alone, and I normally don't, I think of you. 

It has something to do with my mind experiencing a void between errands. Not in cabs, of course. Cabs make me nauseous. But when I take the train alone I think of you. 

It's startling, how, after so many moons, you still effortlessly waft back into my thoughts. You perhaps are waiting on the fringes. Forever. I haven't been able to sequester you. Train of thought is surprisingly continuous as well. 

The same happens when I fly alone. Airports that run endless and I end up walking kilometres within. Escalator after escalator. Wide corridors, advertising too bright for my eyes, strangers everywhere. It seems, upon throwing one glance at me, that I am walking with great purpose and urgency. But that's furthest from the truth.

I am all undone from within. My fabric of existence has become threadbare and your memories have penetrated and dishevelled any pretense of order, there was. After walking and walking, I glimpse at screens to course correct, if at all. But I am completely robotic and lost and operating at your disposal.

And then finally when I reach the lounge, the airport lounge that is shelter to lonesome travellers like me, I imagine, I would have you waiting there. My long lost lover. 

Misc: Visiting Cards

The compulsive introvert that I have come to be, for the umpteen reasons that have coaxed me to be so, I cannot make conversation anymore. Not atleast, the kind of conversation I deem to be a conversation. Thus, I have no friends. 

But I work a job. In which I am expected to have certain charisma. A chutzpah would certainly augur my situation here, but beggars can't be choosers. Anyhow, I am to deal with people all the time. I think that's a very basic ask from any job. But for me, it is enormous and taxing. I do not form bonds, my dealings are superficial mostly and I would like to say - transactional. No deeper aspect at all. I do not form any deeper connection with anyone because I am wholly incapable of it. I cannot speak one word extra than what is needed. And when I am not succinct, I go the extreme extent of mental torture that I inflict on myself. Since I am this way, nobody perceives me as friend material. Thus, I have no friends. 

But of those I meet for work, I keep their cards. Visiting cards. Name, where they work, email, contact number, other coordinates and blah. And I have a book of mine within whose polythene flaps I slide in these cards, not in any particular order and for no other purpose, but to look at months and years later. As my only record of human interaction. 

My Beige Sweater

My beige sweater

Is as old as me, or older

It used to originally be - off-white, egg-shell-white

As decades passed, it's full-blown beige now

It's got tiny, embroidered peach roses

And a couple buttons missing

It's not a fashion item

My beige sweater 

Is a shelter

In shivering sunless winter mornings

A refuge, from cold hopeless nights

It's something I clutch on to 

I don't remember how I got it though 

Though I distinctly remember never buying it

It perhaps just showed up

In my dress rack 

A hand-me-down, from an older cousin

Or aunt

And every winter, without fail

It's stood by me, fit me smugly 

Warmed my blood

Calmed my skin

Weathered me, in my perennial morass 

Through my joyless existence, marred with fears and doubts

Wearing this, 

I have rushed through countless December mornings

Packing lunches, folding clothes, doing dishes, watering my plants, chomping my omelets, watching TV, reading the paper, waiting, thinking, not-thinking, giving up, letting go, crying, weeping, wailing, bursting out, napping, running errands, hoping, praying, hoping some more. 

So many many mornings

So many damn years

Of achieving nothing in particular 

Nothing of note

Feeling that life's slipping though my fingers like sand

But my beige sweater has remained 

With me

And I cherish it so. 

Winter Sun, The

Casuarinas sweep through the dry December air. There is a sea, waiting half a mile away. Winter Sun is so shy, glinting down between sleepy moments. Mid mornings are the longest now-a-days. Now that I am in purgatory. Sluggishly suspended in between. I rest, in a hut, with skeletal furniture. A tiny stove to boil water or make some rice. A bed, and a table to sit by. Windows open to endless sand and casuarinas, which I assume end at waves, but I've never been. Because I never step out. There's a someone, perhaps a woman, who comes to drop some food, sometimes a few clothes, before I am up. She stops showing for days, I suspect I am gonna starve. But I never feel hunger, in the pit of my stomach, just as I do not strongly feel anything anymore. My skin's thick. Like I am in a coma. And it's been November for years, at a stretch. There's a verandah. And like an alien stands a gargantuan eucalyptus, right next to it. It's the most dream like - this eucalyptus. It touches the sky, it's unabashedly vertical for a tree with no boughs. And its bark is white, layers outside keep falling off, day by day, revealing whiter insides, I am curious how. My afternoons are spend completely in observing this tree - who is now almost a companion. And then night comes quickly. The air gets cold and the trees make noises of shallow nightmares. But I do not know fear. Because I do not know for sure, if I exist at all. Or all this is merely a stretched hallucination. Pondering, I tire into sleep. When my eyes open, I see fog for distances. But I know, the winter Sun is half bobbing at the horizon. And it's the same day, happening all over again.