Remembering the Neermathalam flowers

I clearly remember the time Balyakalasmaranakal, Kamala Surayya's childhood memoir, was serialised in Mathrubhumi Azhchapathippu. I would wait for the weekly to reach my hands every week, of course I had to patiently wait for all the grown ups (there were a quite a few of them) to finish their reading. At the time I did not know anything about the taboo-breaker authoress, I was 7, I was simply relinquishing the childhood in a beautiful village in another era.

Valyamma was so amused by my devotion to the writer that she promised to take me to meet her next time we were in Trivandrum. But like many of her promises it remained unfulfilled.

My fascination to her writing grew with years, I have read almost everything she had written in Malayalam. She was probably a revolutionist in many ways, bursting the unreal images male writers created about women, her heroines were liberated in more ways than sexuality and love, their rebellion often sought new definitions to many complicated thoughts and emotions.

She wrote in many memoirs how she would stay awake after the household had fallen asleep, to finish what she was writing.  She would have worked all day organizing the household, she would be dead-tired by 11 o clock, but writing was something she could not put back. She often invented an alternate life for herself through her writing. She had stated that she needed the energy from this imaginary world to live her real life.

She shocked the conservative society by embracing Islamism at the age of 65. I'm told that her later years were spent nursing a heart break, did she believe that that she found the love she had been waiting all her life? But as she wrote herself in an article, love was a good fortune, being jilted was a better one.

I always felt that she had an aura of child like innocence about her, even when she talked about adultery and prostitution. She never really left the images from her childhood, she never really stopped worshiping love. I often wonder, did she choose the name Surayya out of her childhood fascination to actress Suraiya?

I would always remain a true fan.

I do not know if I improved my Deutsch considerably by doing an intensive language course, but I did manage to pass my test. Now what remain in my heart are the stories I've heard. I had wished many times that I didn't have to learn this language, or be in this country. When I tried to memorize words like öffentlicheverkehrsmittel, I felt that it was unfair that I wasn't given a  choice, to decide whether I wanted to gulp it down.. I would reminisce the sweetness of Malayalam poetry and wonder how I reached here.

But then I started to realize that most of my fellow students had a completely different perspective. They told me that they consider themselves lucky to get an opportunity to uproot their lives. They told me how difficult it was back home. They always did their home work honestly and took effort to improve their vocabulary.

They have different backgrounds. The Serbs and the Bosnians told me how they miss the old Yugoslavia. How different things have become since they became independent democracies, they told me that the word democracy isn't always positive, it could also mean taking a turn for the worse. But of course, the Russians told me just the opposite, they told me that they are here only for their German spouses, they said they had great lives back in Moscow, not that Germany is any less perfect, they loathed the conspiracy that the word gets a different picture of their country. "You should come and see how people live in Russia, things got miraculously better a decade after the old USSR," they told me. But my ever serious Lithuanian friend, told me that USSR was a sweet memory of her childhood, when her family had enough to eat. She is a doctor, nevertheless had a struggle-filled life. My Bulgarian friend, who has published 3 books, has worked as a journalist in a Bulgarian news paper, has four majors, came to Germany to work as a cleaning woman. "I cannot raise my children with the 200 bucks I make every month," she says. She told me how her marriage broke apart since the recession, everything, even love, is controlled by money, sadly. The jolly, hot blooded Italians told me how they miss the sweetness and warmth of their people, though how badly they wish they get a job in the cold hearted Germany. People from some middle eastern countries, told me they would be killed if they ever go back, since they have sought help from catholic church. The Greeks, twitched their sculpted noses and blamed Germany for the state of their country, though of course, they really hoped to find a job here. My Romanian friend blamed her German ancestors for  fleeing Germany during world war 2.
The war does change everything.  So, that brings me to the Syrians, they shudder and stammer when they talk about war, they worry about their families constantly, "Our country is made a play place," they cry. They also told me how it is to be refugee in Germany.

Though their stories differ, they are happy that they are here. They look forward to their future here. Chemical engineers work in casinos, piano teachers work as dish washers, court clerks work as house maids, perhaps this is called life.

Bad things do happen, to countries as well as people, call it communism, democracy, war or fate, but isn't it always better to believe that we can rise above it, that things would get better, or we'd find a way to make it better.

I'm glad that I've met these people, heard their stories.

Now I know that most people from Rome, are incurable atheists.

Things would get better, for all of us.
 

Its spring here. There are flowers everywhere. Cherry trees are in bloom..
These trees, they were bare just a couple of months before. Now there are leaves, flowers and fruits. I do believe that the nature has the power to restore everything. Worries would melt by the warmth of love. Love, after all, is the eternal spring, isn't it? 

The sense of an ending

Julian Barnes' Man Booker prize winning novel 'The sense of an ending' ends like this.

"There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest."

The sense of an ending is rather a philosophical mystery. A careful, peace loving young man, his awkward intelligent school mate, a mysterious young woman, her mother or 'the mother' and an unplanned baby who grows. There, you solved everything.

Sense of the ending starts as the memoir of Tony Webster, a retiree who had lived a peaceful life, a peaceful marriage and a calm divorce. He remembers his old school mate Adrian and the incidents leading to his mysterious death. Intelligent and genuinely serious,  Adrian was a class apart from his other friends. Their friendship is broken the senior year in college when Adrian wanted to date a girl Tony had some history with. Later Tony finds out that Adrian had committed suicide. He tries to reason with it philosophically and moves on with his life.

Its only until a letter arrives in his peaceful retirement that he begins to ponder the no so peaceful memories. Veronica, whom Tony had known as a mysterious manipulator arrives with an air of a victim, and she blames Tony for everything, though she never actually reveals what Tony had done.

 Adrian could not assume the responsibility of his actions and killed himself, Veronica was betrayed by everyone else, the mother lived a sad life, and Tony had remained blissfully unaware.


 

Its poetry again

Poetry had been an important part of my very early years and I grew up thinking that it was natural to all human beings. So when my son was born, I started singing him all appropriate verses I still remembered, hoping that he would start liking them. I even wrote him a few songs (Oh.. only if he would grow up to understand the value of a poem written to him!!!). As a baby, and almost an insomniac at that, he would sing with me almost all the poems I used to sing. But in these last few years he grew out of such elevated level of affection completely. He likes science, he talks passionately about photosynthesis and things like that. So, I accepted my defeat gracefully, poetry was a lost cause.

And then came a new German teacher to his class, who had  slightly different methods to teach non-native speakers of the language, one of which was poetry. German poetry, of course!
Every week she would give a small poem to the first graders, they could learn it by heart if they like and say it before the class and earn some extra credits. I wouldn't say Navneeth is anywhere near being ambitious, but somehow, I actually made him learn a few since I found those little poems really interesting. To my surprise, he likes them too. A couple of those poems had been about spring, the most aesthetic season of all. About the month April, when the chilly wind, the mild showers, the darling buds, the chirping birds and the shy butterflies meet the children playing in the garden. They are lovely.

Poetry, when you begin to understand it, somehow breaks the barriers of a language.

Here is a song or poem I once made up for Navneeth.

അമ്പിളിപ്പൂമ്പൈതലേ നീ, എൻ മടിയിൽ വീണുറങ്ങ്.
താരകങ്ങൾ കണ്ണുചിമ്മും രാവുണർന്നൂ, നീയുറങ്ങ്.
നേർത്ത മഞ്ഞിൻ പുതപ്പുമൂടി, പൂക്കളെല്ലാമുറക്കമായി.
ദൂരെയേതോ മാമരത്തിൽ കാറ്റുപോലും വീണുറങ്ങി.
പൂനിലാവിൻ നേർത്തനൂലാൽ പൊൻകിനാക്കൾ നെയ്തുറങ്ങ്.
താരകങ്ങൾ കണ്ണുചിമ്മും രാവുണർന്നൂ, നീയുറങ്ങ്.