Sunday, July 17, 2016

And the heart craves to be wet..

One day, i want to live close to water.

As i get older, i have come to realize i have some deep unexplainable relationship with water. I love the sound of water, the feel of water and even just the visuals of water. It triggers something deep within me .  It doesn't matter if it is a river, a sea, rains or even just the shower in the bathroom. I wish there was a word for that feeling, when all your senses are united, that of smell, the visual, the feel and you can sense everything together, in unison.

When you are young, you tend to latch on to whoever you are admiring at that point , to build many of your likes and dislikes, including the seasons. When i was young- winter it was, my "assumed" favorite season.  In the past decade i have realized and now completely accept, nothing makes me happier than monsoons. While in school, when it rained, i would make excuses to dash through the rain. My favorite time of the year was when we played in the rains- running and skidding through the mud, winning,  the last thing on the mind. As i grew up and started working, my fascination with the rains, the first drops probably scandalized people. I would turn it into a ritual of soaking in every bit i could. Get drenched, taste the first rains, inhale deep into my last pores the smell of rains as they hit the parched soil. That smell, oh that smell. The headiness of a drug. So yes, i would get drenched. It started with the excuse of first rains and graduated to awesome rains, to pouring rains and every year the number of times i would show up completely drenched was alarming, but yes, i couldn't resist the pull of monsoons. As i would drive  into the jungles of my beautiful keonjhar, i would roll down the windows and feel the rain. I can't explain it in words, but even if i close my eyes and you put me in a time machine and transport me to a jungle, i would be able to tell you exactly what time of the monsoon it is. The jungles have a distinct smell at every phase, the early, mid and the end of monsoons. The trees- the huge sal trees, Sisu (Rosewood,shisham), kendu(tendu), panasa (Jackfruit), Ammba (Mango), Jamu (Jamun), Arjuna (Arjun), Kusuma ( Bakul, Mimusops elengi), Piasaala (Kino), Gamhari (Gamar), Nageswara (rose chestnut), Gulmohar, palasa (Palash, Flame of forest), simili (Silk Cotton)..they all smell different at different points and it's a different kind of heady. But i digress again.

Yes, rains. The beginning of rains , the flurry of activities when farmers worship the mother earth in Odisha and start start tilling. The standing farms of green as far as your eyes can see..i can probably write a book, just on monsoons... i did not realise when monsoons had over taken my life and when i became entwined with it. When i was  younger , i could keep a pouch of soil in bag and taste it time to time. As that dry soil touched my tongue , it reminded me of rains. My mother would be really worried why i saved soil in different pouches at different places. I would tell her, i am collecting soil. Which was true- from different places, different smells of rain. I used to be fascinated , Still am,  by soil.. the varieties, the way they behave, respond , to seasons, to vegetation. How one type would be suitable for certain plants, how another would not allow it to take root.. my experimentations still continue, in the tiny balconies.

Even when monsoon reaches its peak and people can't wait for the rains to stop, i still continue being fascinated- just staring at the rain, the deep dark green of the plants, the grass and weeds snaking through every bit they can. I think, no other season intrigues, engages and uplifts me like rains.

I probably formally acknowledged my love for the first time when i moved to Mumbai. The sultriness of summer and the rains following close at heels. You just can't stop smiling when rains come in to mumbai, into the roads, the trains, the offices, your house and into your life in large pelting drops. And besides the stinky clothes that never dry, i don't think i have anything to complain.

I know this has become more about the monsoons, but my fascination with water  goes beyond just rains. To rivers and seas. The sound of water flowing, cutting through all barriers and trying again and again, to take the shape given to it and continue creating it's own. The giver of life and life itself.  The tiny little stream at Gonasika turns into this huge baitarani, the few drops at Gangotri turn into the mighty Ganga, across the world, the thousands of streams to the five oceans.. the lakes and the seas.. The sound of the calm river and sea, softly paddling the shores. The angry river and sea in high tide and storm, crashing against the shores- but always moving, always alive.

In activities in workshops, sometimes they ask you, what thing in nature you resemble. I have given this so much thought- and have realized, i am water, a river, taking shape, breaking shape, calm and wild, learning and growing, gathering memories and images - in search still, moving..


Yes, i want to live by water one day. To be alive.




Saturday, May 7, 2016

chaos is good

the strewn boxes
the idea of perfection in my head
contradiction

a broken lamp
an upturned table
the notion of perfect corner
a journey

the decision of left and right
not right
a little left
more left
oh damn!

the stains of fresh paint
the splinters from carved wood
what was
what is
a dream

the broken connection
erratic network
the burst of clarity in thought

a wrong switch
a fuse bulb
natural light streaming through

chaos is good

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Movement and Change

We have finally moved into our new house. It still has a long way to go to become a home. And i wonder if it ever will.

It is amazing (and tiring)  , this constancy of change in my life.

All these words that are ready to be written some day , when i have some respite, some quietude, just never seems to happen. I move from one disruptive change to another, in professional and personal space. And every time i feel normalcy would return i am shaken yet again.

I haven't minded it so much i the past. One would think, almost welcomed it. But now, i'm getting tired and would love for things to settle down a bit. Being tired seems to have become my life sentence recently. I wonder if i should go to the doctor. Just in case it isn't just mental tiredness.

In change, one of the things you do while adjusting to change is introspect and observe. You understand a bit f the change and also the context of change. How change impacts people and how people (as well as spaces) respond and adjust to change. If you looked objectively, one of the things that happens, beyond the physical space being changed is the rise of a new order, a new regime almost. As usual , i struggle with the questions that keep coming up. One of the standard ones that i hear in my head are related to power.  Having studied and worked on issues of power and violence for a long time now, it is strange to see if played out, almost in slow motion, every day. It is fascinating and revolting at the same time. The very things people in power say they want to change and how they gain power and become corrupt centers of power would be funny, if it wasn't so shameful.

I had written about this earlier. But repeating them again in this context. When violence and violation is done by mistake it has scope to be corrected, to be changed, But when it is done , with complete understanding , by people who have intelligence and power- it is a corruption of a kind that cannot be easily changed, or forgiven. The repercussions are also huge and consequences have to be borne by both the innocent and the culprits.

I know, i speak in abstracts here. the point being, it's happening in the US, in India, in governments, non-governments as well as little home spaces. It is happening in religions, in politics, in communities and families.

At the end of the day, every thing is about power, or lack of power. And hence why everything is political. And personal.

More of this later. The cartons need to be unpacked. A new order needs to be created. Some normalcy needs to be restored. All the while with Caesar barking away. Sigh.


Sunday, January 3, 2016

The burden of my own words

This year, i decided to break my own tradition of writing an year end post and making a wish list for next year. For one, it seems to be the same routine every year and then, i just couldn't make myself write anything. In the past few years, i have stopped writing regularly and i am having to push myself to abide by my own ghost in the past to keep writing, to not allow my words to dry out. But if your heart isn't in it, the brain can only churn out words that have limited meaning and no feel.Strange mood to be in a new year. 

The good thing was being home.



There is something about home. 

about being with family. 

about snuggling your feet together under one blanket 

and talking about random things, 
there's something about Päpä's hyperactivity 

to ensure we get a hundred star treatment always, 
there's something about being stuffed till your head 

and still make space for what mom makes for you, 

there's something about waking up whenever you want to 

and going off to sleep mid sentence 
and then waking up to see multiple snoozing heads around, 

there is something about seeing little ones grow young 

and the old ones older,
there is something about hearing old fights melt away in the kitchen 

and smiling silently in happiness,

there's something about being carefree,
something about getting your hair oiled 

and back scrubbed in the winter sun, 


there's something about visiting your old hangouts, 
accidentally meeting people on the road 
and counting their age lines and wrinkles in the happiest smiles, 
there's something about losing some old landmarks, 
there's something about seeing new ones come up, 


there's something about reminiscing about the past, 
there's something about reliving your life.. 
there's something about home..