A rainy afternoon in Trivandrum. I'm in my old room, staring at the old creaky ceiling fan. I'd been counting days just to be here. Now I'm haunted by the same ghosts.

There are 3 different reports of child abuse in the newspaper. Parents beating children to death. The words parent, father, mother, guardian etc have lost their meaning.

State is battling political unrest over a new scam.

People in general, care about only one thing. Money.

I'm tired of saying ' No, I'm not working now'. I will have to explain why. So I just say that I did not get a job. Job is the only thing that matters.

Ok. Not the only thing. There is one more important thing. Looks, especially when you are beginning to lose it. I've been reminded over and over that I have put on some weight. Apparently, it is a terrible offense to let yourself be out of shape.

My nephews are here from Doha. Thankfully, they are not concerned about any of these things.
I relate more to them.  I'm glad they are here.

Lets be good to the children in our lives.

A beautiful song from Ayalum NjanumThammil.

When hatred dissolves

Someone once told me that hatred is the easiest way to get over pain. Any kind of pain, lost love, fall out with friends and family, memories of abuse and violence, bad career moves, pretty much anything which messed you up. You just hate that person, that organization, that group, that memory, so much that you cannot bear to think of them. And then, eventually, you'll stop thinking of them.

But it doesn't always work that way, believe me, I've tried.

Hatred is a poisonous emotion. If you keep on feeding it, it will suck the life out of you. Sometimes it is raw and looks like the only way, but when life urges you to move on, when time heals your wounds, you probably have to let it dissolve.

I was a victim of a college prank. Like all college pranks, it was thoughtless and cruel. It could have completely ruined my life, it did not, but it could have. For years I carried the baggage of deceit. I tried to figure out 'why me'?  How could they do that to me?

I was just an easy victim. I was an awkward teen, shy and reluctant, at least a year younger than my batch mates, I did not have the attitude for a professional college, I did not have the attitude for anything. I was completely, one hundred per cent, messed up. I felt like an outsider at home, I was not close to parents and siblings, the person who raised me had committed suicide, I felt alienated from the very thought of life, and above all, I was only coming to terms with the 'understanding' that I had been sexually abused. ( At 13 or 14, you don't really know why that 'concerned person' wants to pat you or give you a hug. May be it doesn't feel right, but you don't know how to react. May be you know you should tell someone , but you are not close to your family, so you don't have anyone to tell. The same story indeed. But I was lucky enough to come off unscathed, though the memory still burns my very skin. That's just another story of hatred. All of you, take good care of your princesses, and princes too)

I did not do anything to get noticed at college. I was perfectly happy being faceless. But somehow this group of loud kids decided to take it on me. I don't want to go into the details, but it really hurt me when I found out that 3 girls from my class had actually devised the whole thing. We were not close friends or anything, but I was civil to them. I helped them in computer lab, I let them copy my assignments, in short I did not do anything to deserve their deceit. But I guess they were just bored.

Whatever it was, it kind of defined my life. Sometimes I still shudder at the thought, that I did let some insolent kids take control of my life. But again, I was lucky enough, it did not ruin my life.

After college, everybody went on their separate ways, to find the glory of life, or to be confounded by it. The 'master-mind' got married and moved to UAE. I lost touch with her and her gang.

Then many years later I got an email. It was not an apology letter or anything, she told me about her family, asked me about mine and genuinely asked me to keep in touch. It was strange, not just because she emailed me after many years.  She had , actually, been keeping a low profile, both online and offline. Nobody knew anything about her, not even her best friends.

We've been in touch since then. If she sends me an email, I reply. If she finds me online, I chat with her. She sends me her daughter's pictures. She never actually said she was sorry, but I guess that's just difficult for some people. This was probably her way of saying sorry.

Everybody has grown up since college. I try to understand that they were also teenagers, God knows what they were going through.

She says she wants to come and meet me when I'm in India. And surprisingly, I'm also looking forward to meeting her.

 I still cannot help rooting for the possibility  'everybody shook hands and went to Disneyland'.










 

Heavily inspired from 'Milkshakes'

Lost in the wind,
Caught in the current,
We drifted away,
A thousand lifetimes

Plastered smiles,
Bogus identities,
Melting away,
In silent tears

All these songs,
Of undying love,
Holding hands,
Till eternity

What about sad,
Long lost whispers,
Tormented souls,
And unyielding distance?

The river still flows,
With age-old secrets,
Ancient depths,
Of unsaid promises.

I'll think of you,
You'll think of me,
That's our destiny,
Nothing more

Sunrise Sunset Midnight

18 years ago, an American boy and a French girl met on a train en route to Paris. They got off at Vienna and spent an entire day, roaming around the streets, reading old tombstones, listening to poetry, and drinking wine. And they talked, shared thoughts, argued and laughed.
But she had to board her train by sunrise, and he had a flight to catch. They were both poor students who could not afford frequent trips across continents, they agree never to contact each other. But love is a strange emotion , when her train was about to leave , he told her that he would wait for her at the station exactly 6 months from that day. They smiled, kissed and said good bye (not forever, just for 6 months, or so they thought)

Then after 9 years we found out that they did not meet as planned. Something unexpected had happened and she could not make the trip, though he waited for her. They moved on with their lives. He got married and started a family. Then he wrote a book. What was it about? Oh it was about a French girl he once met on a train.

He met her again on a press meet in Paris. She had read his book of course. He told her about his family. She told him about her boyfriend. Everything was lovely with both their lives, and everybody was happy. But as they walked around the streets of Paris, again bound by time, they realised that they had let love slip through their fingers by not exchanging phone numbers. Again he had to catch a flight by sunset.

I have been a big fan of the Before Sunrise-Sunset movies. It is not one of those 'chick-flick' movies , men flinch away from . Its about 2 very intelligent people and their spontaneous intelligent conversations. For years and years I, like most other fans, had wondered about Jesse and Celine. Now at last, I got to know that they are married,  they do have occasional tiffs, but who doesn't.
Thanks to Wikipedia and other reviews of the new movie, Before midnight, the last in the trilogy.

I haven't seen the movie yet., but I am just very happy, for Jesse and Celine

 

The girl and the garland

Early one morning in the late eighties, I got up and sat sleepy eyed on the kitchen steps. She was singing in a low voice as she cut vegetables. She must have been in a good mood that particular morning, usually she never sang while she was busy in the kitchen. Her voice flew, high and low over the crest and base of the lines from a beautiful Malayalam poem. 'Aa poomala ' by Changampuzha Krishnapilla

This woman who raised me - she breathed poetry! If she had not stopped studies after inter, probably she would have pursued a degree in Malayalam literature. She would have done a great job as a Malayalam teacher. Then probably, she would have lived a happy life teaching poetry for a living, not worrying about money and the lack of it. But no.. That was not the way it was to be.

The beauty of  'Aa poomala'  lies in its simplicity, it is not a report of a deprived society, it is not a tragic tale of two un-united lovers, it is not about death, it is not about social evils and  no universal truth hides menacingly between the lines. Usually valyamma is an admirer of well-crafted sorrow and unobserved truth, 'Aa poomala' was definitely not one of her usual favourites, it did not come from the alcove of her soul, but I guess, she was just happy that morning.

The poem is a vividly sketched image of a little girl with a garland, crafted with only the most beautiful words from Malayalam language, as only Changampuzha could have. The girl stands there near the courtyard of a palace and sings! She sings of the garland made with the finest flowers of the garden, she sings of its fragrance and grace, she sings for the crowd of potential buyers. The poet, (who was as sleepy eyed as I was) is fascinated by the beauty of the girl, her voice and the garland, watches her from distance. She does not sell the garland, on her way back home, she gifts the garland to a young shepherd boy (with a hint of some puppy love there, how sweet!- God, why am I so wicked these days)

I only had one question to valyamma after her soulful rendition of the poem. Why was the girl standing there in the sun and yelling at the top of her voice, if she had no intention to sell the garland? She could have easily gone into the woods and given it to the boy instead of making a spectacle of herself. Why did she have to insult the rich men who offered her gold?

Valyamma told me that poetry was not meant to be analysed.

I don't know why, she saw her protégé in me. She wanted to teach me the art of feeling the soul of a poem, she wanted to teach me the art of recitation, the art of enouncing the words musically. And I let her down. I was shy and reluctant and above all I could not learn the lines by heart. I did not continue the Akshara sloka classes, I did not understand many of the slokas, I did not like the game of mutilating poetry. My voice was almost irritatingly sweet.

But when I first started writing poetry ( or something close) in Malayalam, I took care to make them as musical as I could. I never learned big words in any language , so they were just too plain and simple. I often wondered what she would think of them, would she have cared enough to recite them? I was reluctant at first to show them to anybody, and then she did not stick around for long.

I happened to find 'Aa poomala' on youtube, apparently it opened up a whole treasure chest of memories!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT2K1u0rQA4