The Silent Statuette

"Sometimes walking away silently has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength. We walk away not because we want others to realize our worth, but because we finally realize our own"

-Unknown

Though quite a self-willed and opinionated gal, I always choose silence over tongue-lashing or giving a piece of my mind. When things get ugly I choose a silent exit probably finding better avenues to vent out than a spat. What people see as my weakness, I see it as a strong-willed choice to avert the hurt that accompanies such altercations. And I also firmly believe that such fractious moments are always temporary and that an unwillingness to be a party to crossing swords is enough to either call for peace and kindness or, in irreparable cases, an indifference.

GARDEN OF WOES

  

The irked quarrel, the silent weep

Teardrops find brilliance rolling down 

It has been a while that an outstretched hand

Has offered to move aside the thistles and thorns.

Driblets gathering at it's crippled feet

Turf soaking with the stormy frenzies

The prior had the blessedness of seeding fresh roses

The prevailing can breed only weakened creepers.

A garden that once had a blossoming prolificacy 

Of florets and shimmers and hues

Now houses a sculpture as grey and cold as it's stone

With it's head bent low and vines webbed all around.

Phony Smiles :)

For some time now my grandfather's usual animated self is laced with a brooding aura that is quite alien to his personality. It got me a trifle worried when I first started noticing the brief spells of despondency he used to lapse into. A great deal of coaxing and oodles of attentive ministrations later did the wherefore unfold. 

A few months earlier glaucoma had impaired the vision in his one eye by 25% causing irreparable damage. Thankfully early detection put a freeze on the deterioration only to know in the follow-ups that the sight in the other eye was ebbing away to an age-related disorder known as Macular Degeneration. And though he was assured that the recommended three rounds of needle shots would restore his eyesight, the effects speak otherwise.  For a nonagenarian who has led a freewheeling and an unaided life all along, the drawing near of obfuscated days does cast a shadow of mild sorrow no matter how happy-go-lucky his disposition might be. With each passing day his vision grows more and more nebulous, he has trouble reading his beloved newspaper and he struggles to trace more than outlines of the faces of his audience. And all this while his spirits sing the blues. Holding him in conversations, encouraging him to narrate anecdotes or general pampering does make him forget his woes but when left to his own thoughts the shadow returns to dampen his child-like spirits.

As I sat there wondering what would make a fine fettle mind as his find well defined solid perception in all the haze, a little attention to things said and also left unsaid made me realize I was at fault in my outlook. I was looking for a way to please a perfectionist, to come to the aid of an independent grandfather with eons of experience and torrents of worldly wisdom. In my awe I failed to see him as the child that he has become. Old age makes one more childish than childhood itself. I have two excellent examples in my very home to support this theory. It is easier to overlook their child-like needs and turn a deaf ear to their fascinations and their obstinacy due to the absence of tantrums. But an ear to their mild persistence and one can see just how vulnerable they have grown to be. And  pacifying and humoring them requires much more tact and patience than managing kids. My grandfather had been dropping subtle hints about his penchant for cell phones and his aspiration to have one that can be called his very own. Coming from a guy who is extremely inquisitive and over zealous about knowing how everything under the sun works (I am literally trying to coach him about the internet and surfing and the like; today's lesson was on WhatsApp :D ), his references were brushed aside as his thirst for knowledge. But a little of reading between the lines convinced me that it was more than just that. 

So my sister and I gifted him with a cell phone and we have never been more pleased with ourselves. He has been smiling away to glory like a cheshire cat with not a hint of sorrow in those clouded eyes. Infact the fogginess has disappeared, unveiling a sparkle. The phone is a sign of his keeping pace with a fast altering, easy-to-feel-left-behind world, its a sign of his independence and also a toy to keep him and his thoughts occupied, giving them a cheerful ring...tringgg!

P.S.: This selfie is his artwork and the expression that accompanies the click has the likeness of a child coming face-to-face with Santa! :)

Happy Birthday Pachchi

A short post; my left side still not functional enough to type. So a post simply in memory of my aunt (my mum's aunt but closer to her in age). Today would have been her 65th birthday. I do not have a very definite memory of her; just hazy bits from stray conversations. I was but four when she passed away. And we used to live in Finland and come down just twice every year. So it sort of narrows down the time I spent with her to number a few weekends. What I do remember distinctly though is the love that she showered on me and the kind of pampering that I was subjected to on the days that I spent in her company. Even when a ravaging sickness wrecked her body, straining every bit of her strength, I remember her making undeterred trips just to visit me. This photo is from my third birthday; traces of onset of her sickness can be seen in her bony frame which doesn't go with my early recollections of her.

I can't say that missing her terribly is something that I feel. What I do feel is that I shall never know exactly what I am missing in my life by not having her as a part of it, though I can say without a trace of any doubt that it is something beautiful and decidedly irreplaceable.

For my aunt, Ranjani R (April 19, 1949 - January 07, 1987)

Cacophonous Maladies

A nasty week this was and still continues to be. What with five different bugs descending leaving me completely indisposed and tied to the bed, my highlights of this week are drawn from a nebulous composite of the real and the delirious (It must be the painkillers talking). A few things that dawdle in my mind :

• Popping pills

• Long talks with a few friends; something that had been swept away by time and tide.

• Cooking, something that I love but rarely do. Cooked up a three course meal; 13 dishes with no leftovers - Clean Bowled.

• An hour long banter at a coffee shop about why Mr. Darcy is the embodiment of every girl's notion of a suitor in spite of his numerous character flaws. It ended on the exact same note as it always does that the very characteristics that drive the guys from even venturing nigh any Jane Austen novel are the ones that make a gal swoon and drool. Period.

•  Books that I devoured; My bed-stand houses a Jenga tower.

But the focal point that made the week worthwhile and rendered the aches and pains moot was 11 friends getting together for dinner and a night-stay (some taking a holiday and travelling over) exhibiting that life is all about simple yet deep-seated and sincere pleasures :-)

Knotty Nights

      When it comes to quiescent habits, I am an owl. When darkness descends, when pin drop silence prevails, when the lull is occasionally broken by a pack of dogs' brouhaha and when the moon's silvery streak trickles down making the turf flash and shimmer, my world gains cognizance. Since the balanced and the lucid, who make up the rest of the world, eye these hours as an interlude befitting slumber, I fail to enlist a partaker or score an audience. And that leaves me in a lurch.

      So I write. I write pages and pages of anything and everything that this mind can recall. Most things committed to a memory that is by no means poor, get jotted down. Many such write-ups die an early death because of the extent of trite that they hold. A few that pass muster of self-evaluation help me restore my sense of balance. Those reflections deriving a coherent form as a post or a card or an email emulate an audience. Out of these, the formal ones and the personal ones go out as cards and emails. The rest of the casual ones that get on to this blog are for a select few; family and a few friends whom I write for. And from the scattering ones that do not see the light of the day, I glean an unplaced sense of comfort of the tangible, as if I earned myself a confidante in my nocturnal microcosm. Cheers!!

Puppy Love(s)

My anamnestic afternoon exercise for this week was to settle myself on the floor of my old room in the midst of strewn photographs; some in color, some in black and white, some discolored, some frazzled and in tatters with a tape holding the pieces together and some beyond repair. Among the ones that have endured and survived the test of time, of moving houses and of neglect are a couple of ones that brought in the wistfulness and longing surrounding the loss of a loved one. These photographs are of two lesser known members of our family; Mickey and Bobby.

Mickey (1974-1987) was a stray; mum and aunt had found him as a pup, somewhere on the streets of Bombay circa 1974. He was being stoned and teased by some wretched, sadist lads who were deriving pleasure from the little one's whimpers. Severely admonishing the boys for their brutality, my aunt picked up the whining pup and caressed him till he was convinced that he was safe. He seemed to have a belt round his neck, but there wasn't a leash attached; he appeared to have broken free from his master. The belt also could hardly be called one, it was a coarse, frayed piece of rope which probably had been put there by some of the street urchins. Once his whimpers had hushed down to coos, they placed him on the pavement and started on their way only to realize a while later that they had a new fan following. And so they brought him home. That little pup went on to grow to the size of a small calf. This picture of him nibbling on my aunt's hand was taken when he was just 3 months old.

From the time of his entry into our family till the year I was born ,Mickey was never kept on a leash or forced to stay outdoors, though at night he preferred staying out. Sometimes he would just take himself off for a walk around our colony. On other nights he would choose to loiter around our garden or simply sleep on the bench in our patio. During the day he would tail my grandmother all around the house. He would sit at her feet obediently as she cooked in the kitchen, he would tug at her saree pallu cajoling her to join him in his playful antics as she hung the clothes out to dry, he would whine around lunch time with a soulful expression of absolute starvation on his face and he would curl at the foot of her bed during her afternoon siestas. He absolutely loved company, not as much canine as human. When my mum brought home her friends from college, Mickey would grace the drawing room with his presence and would neatly settle himself right at the center of the gang, occasionally throwing in a bark or two while the friends sat chit-chatting. And the friends absolutely loved him.

Most people now believe that quite a few animals including dogs have an intelligence to match or exceed that of humans. But on an emotional level, they still think animals to be quite devoid of the profound faculties. When my grandmother lost her sister, as she was lying on the bed mourning with tears pouring from her shut eyes, she felt something wet wipe away her tears from her streaming cheeks. She opened her eyes to find Mickey licking away her teardrops. And he kept doing so all night, till she stopped crying and fell asleep. Only after that did he lie down right there at her feet. On his mischievous front; Sofas and beds were out of bounds and my grandfather would make it clear to him with a "Mickey, sofaari chonu bashcha na" (Mickey, no climbing and sitting on the sofa) every morning before leaving for work. So every morning  right after the sound of his footsteps would die away, Mickey would make it a point to jump onto the sofa, run the full length of it, jump on to an adjacent diwan and jump back onto the sofa, to and fro, till he would get tired of the exercise. And every evening he would be on an alert, straining his ears for the sound of my grandfather's footsteps as he returned from work. My grandfather's stepping into the veranda coincided exactly with Mickey's descent from the sofa and he would settle himself in one corner of the room, a picture of virtuousness and saintly inculpability as if he never so much as knew the feel of a sofa.

When I was born everything changed; my entry meant Mickey's exit from the family home. He was confined to a kennel in our garden. I feel guilty thinking that I might have been responsible for his losing most of his playfulness in the years to come. When I got a little older, he was sometimes allowed inside the house. I used to play with him quite often and have sometimes had a ride or two on his back. He still was deeply attached to every member of our family but he must have missed his sense of belonging and freedom. He started falling sick quite often. On one such sickness spell, he developed ulcers both inside his throat and also on his body. The body wounds got septic and used to ooze out pus that had a really foul smell of rotting flesh. The vet had given up and was egging us to put him to sleep. But my grandfather refused and took it on himself to feed him, bathe and doctor his wounds. Every day, wearing a surgical mask to keep out the infection as well as to beat the foul smell, he would bathe his wounds, apply antiseptics and bandage them and then would feed him using a tube that he had fashioned from the garden pipe and had sterilized. And Mickey did survive. He continued guarding our house for many years thereafter as he had done several times earlier and managed to foil several burglary attempts around our neighborhood.

One such burglary that Mickey helped nip in the bud cost him his life. Two afternoons after the night he had raised the alarm by his incessant barking and pounding on the kennel door, my grandmother found him lying listless inside his kennel as she took him his lunch. He did not acknowledge her with his usual welcome barks or even eye the food that was placed before him. My grandmother chided him to stop fussing and threatened to take away the food to which he listened to with flattened ears and a teary look. Finally she left him on an acid note saying "Megele saglo dees na tukka javonu baschaka" (I do not have a whole day to feed you). That evening when our gardener, with whom he was on the friendliest of terms, called out his name there was no response. He pulled him by his feet only to find him gone; blue bottled flies and ants had already made home on his furry coat. Someone, in a streak of pure vindictiveness, had poisoned his food  the previous day. I was five then. That picture is still vivid in my mind as I tearfully watched my friend being bundled into a sack.

Bobby (1992-2003) came to us as a month old pup. He was a cur; mixed breed of a dalmatian and a stray. Unlike Mickey, Bobby was always kept outdoors. And his personality was also quite in contrast to Mickey's. Bobby was hardly ever friendly to anyone outside our immediate family, was  a sickly sort and remained little bigger than the size of a pup. But his ferocity was in contrary to his stunted size; he would tug his leash with all his might and snarl menacingly at anyone who happened to so much as touch our gate. And like Mickey, he was a faithful companion for eleven years.

He was kept harnessed; tied to our drawing room window that overlooked the garden. Whenever he needed to grab our attention he used to balance on his hind paws and scratch continuously on the glass pane with his fore paws. He was terribly fond of biscuits and had learnt what the phonetic of the word meant. Any mention of the word would bring in the rasping and he wouldn't stop till he was given one; later we used to spell out B-I-S-C-U-I-T if we ever had to say the word. He loved auto rides, chasing butterflies, playing fetch and was petrified of the water. When out for a walk, he would bark at and challenge other dogs while still on the leash. Once set free, he wasn't much of a hero that he wished to make us believe; he would try and hide behind our legs while the barks would turn into soft woofs. 

When it comes to Bobby too, I feel guilty for he was not kept as close to our family as we should have. He must have been lonely which was evident from his overt jubilation when he was sometimes set free inside the house. He would run around like a maniac with such joyful yelps, lick people's feet and finally settle down on someone's lap hoping for a few petting strokes and more tit-bits. I wasn't around during his last moments and have my sister's depiction to go by. He had been sick for a while and wasn't showing any signs of improvement. That afternoon while I was away at college, his gait became a trifle errant and he suddenly slouched while trying to get to his feet. My grandfather then picked him up and placed him on his lap while his breathing came in gasps and looked pleadingly into his eyes as if trying to find reassurance and comfort in them. For nearly an hour and a half, he sat cradling the little fellow, all the while talking lovingly to him and soothing him with soft caresses till he breathed his last in my grandfather's arms.

They say a dog answers to only one master. For both, Mickey and Bobby, that master was undoubtedly my grandfather. They were both terrified of him and at the same time loved him unconditionally with all the devotion that a dog has for his master. The rest of us were sous-masters; we were to be loved but never obeyed to. That was reserved solely for their master. One raised eyebrow and one call of the name was more than enough to get them crawling on their knees. And I know, though he does not speak of them often, he misses them more than all the rest of us put together. We have never had the nerve to introduce any more pets into the family after these two. The dismal truth that those welcoming barks will never fall on these ears no matter how hard we strain them and the heart wrenching spectacle of watching the little balls of fur turn to dust is not something that our hearts can endure for a third time! Love you, my munchkins. We miss you! :'-(

It was a Friday!

      My grandfather is in his 90s and even now lives his daily life with a clockwork precision. His chronically tailored day commences with an inaugural walk around our residential colony at the crack of dawn followed by a healthy breakfast which sometimes goes the unhealthy way when my mom's watchful eyes are occupied elsewhere. She is the only one in our family whom he lends an ear to or submits to. A protest from anyone else over the sly sleight of hand in making the junk tit-bits vanish off the table brings in nothing more than a shrug. If mum happens to make an entry at the time of this interchange, the shrug transforms to a look of pained ignorance of a soul wronged. He then picks up the stack of newspapers and it's supplements and drinks in the stories that made headlines that day. Once the nitty-grittys have been devoured, the lesser quintessential ones are left for his perusal between forty winks reserved for his afternoons. Betwixt the two sessions of staying abreast with the current affairs, he manages to do household chores, fix broken appliances, showcase his carpentry as well as his art skills and make sure that my grandmother gets her daily dose of medicines. Evenings are reserved for detective TV shows. His timetable as well as his time management puts the younger generations in our family to shame.

      And his proneness for exactitude does not stop just there. Anything and everything associated with him or his work speaks about his meticulousness, of not a hair being out of it's place no matter how fine toothed a comb you happen to run through. It irks him to no bounds having to watch his grand-kids, far from inheriting his traits, develop antithetically not sharing an ounce of his love for the impeccable.

      His another aspect that has stood the sands of time is his unimpaired ability to recollect with precision everything that those old and experienced eyes have ever witnessed or any bit of information that his acute mind has ever assimilated. And it is always right on to the puniest itsy-bitsy level. He also likes sharing anecdotes about things from his heydays and about history in general. On one such occasion he was recounting the scene to a friend of mine, surrounding the Bombay Explosion that had occurred in the Victoria Dock of Bombay when a freighter carrying varied cargo including tons of explosives had caught fire. His workplace was not far from the dockyard so he was basically narrating the events of the afternoon as seen and experienced from his desk at his office. And he concluded the narrative by saying "This happened on the 14th of April 1944...It was a Friday!". My friend found this level of recall to be both amazing as well as amusing. The next time we happened to talk about the episode, he jokingly mentioned to my grandfather that he had almost expected him to have even given us the time when the explosion occurred, right down to the minute. To which, without missing a beat came the reply, "It occurred at 04:14 pm"! My friend and I had nothing really to say further.

      Try as I might, I cannot be anything like my grandfather. He is basically my idol, the person whom I would love to ape, my alarm, my day planner, my reminder call, my diary, my calendar, my encyclopedia, everything bundled into one; he is my Grandfather Clock :-*

A Tale Of Two Pities!

       It is 3 am on a Saturday night. Usually if I am awake this late on a weekend it is because I am busy watching a movie, or reading an entrancing novel that has left me so glued to its pages that I just can't put it down or because I am busy with something else that I love doing. But today it is because I am struggling to catch some sleep and rest. My cold in the head has strengthened its hold and has dangerously spread its roots thereby attacking my nose, teeth, jaws, ear and throat. And when it comes to the level of pain that this cold is bringing in, it is at least 4 notches above a terrible migraine. I have tried everything in the last 4 hours to alienate the pain from this obstinate head, right from popping not one, but two painkillers, to subjecting my being to every experiment of home remedies that anyone has ever happened to suggest (no matter how revolting the after taste or effect the remedy leaves). I have tried distracting myself by picking up a spine chilling novel but couldn't reach too far; my concentration radar having gone widely astray. I ended up shutting the book with a snap not having gone past the prologue, having had to go back and read every second line again as if I had suddenly developed retro amnesia or short term memory loss. I then decided to try my luck at drifting into slumberland, so lie down again, I did! And started with the age old method of counting sheep. I must have crossed the 2000 mark, having envisioned every sheep of mine to be hopping a fence onto a green grazing pasture. My sheep finished their grazing for the day, jumped back the same fence (I counted till 2000 again, of them jumping the same fence in the opposite direction), reached their pen and are now all fast asleep after a hearty meal. And I am still trying to get there. Arghhhhhhhhhh!

      Finally I decided to pen down anything that came into this throbbing head of mine and even then all I could think of was my stupid migraine and my dear sleep. Hence this blog. And as I am still in the same pitiable state, getting neither any relief from the former (infact it has worsened; I have teardrops running down my swollen cheeks out of sheer pain in my ear and head) nor an invitation from the latter, its time to try something different. Hopefully my next post will not be as irrelevant and random as this one. Good night (or Good morning as it is close on 4am)!

Shark Tales

     One diverting memory that brought in the snigger earlier today was an episode that occured while holidaying in the picturesque Maldives. If there is one holiday destination that I am going to revisit, it is this. I pronounced so the moment I stepped out of the bantam airport and found blue blankets spread right across a single lane street. Crossing the span to behold a stretch of a crease-less azure expanse above me clabbered with white muffs to form a buttermilk sky. And below me was a palette splashed munificently with every conceivable shade of blue between milky foams that the waves were embodying. There was cyan, turquoise, maya right where I stood. A little further where the corals ensconced, the blues took a darker shade encompassing the azure, sapphire and cobalt. And the deepest shades like the Duke, Navy and Ultramarine marked the stretch ahead to as far as my eyes could discern, the dark inkiness accentuating the fathomage. But I digress.

     Returning to the anecdote, we took a catamaran from the airport which dropped us off on an island that housed our resort. As I alighted from the boat onto the gangplank I could see schools of fish drifting right below me, the smaller ones swimming nimbly and enthusiastically while the bigger ones, nonchalantly, humoring the petite. I was drinking in the beauty encircling this archipelago, when a fellow passenger who was promenading a little ahead let out a shriek that sounded oddly like "Sharkkkkkkkkkk". I thought I had misheard her and was wondering what exactly had she uttered, when she obliged by going a few decibels higher and indeed, she had said "Shark". At that I let out an almost audible laugh thinking that this lady definitely was in need of a basic lesson on our animal kingdom. We were right at the shore; if we jumped from the walk-way into the ocean we would be standing in less than knee-deep water. Still chortling while trying to guess which fish had the likeness to be misconstrued as a shark in such shallow waters, I reached the throng which this species or the lady's interjection had drawn. And this was what I saw.

It undeniably was a shark, swimming slowly, lazily, unperturbed by the din above; a 4-5 feet long coral reef shark that infested the waters around the resort almost right till the shores. And the lady would have had the last laugh, if only she knew!

     Three days into my stay, I decided to test the waters (literally) by trying my hand at snorkeling. I am a little less, if not equally, petrified of aquatic creatures than I am of aerial ones. Nevertheless I resolved to set my fears aside and, escorted by R, audaciously waded into the shark infested waters. But only after spending a little more than an hour sizing up the lagoon and making sure that there was no sign whatsoever of a fin breaking the swirly surface. No sooner had I put on the gear and made a couple of splashes, that an inquisitive catfish that was hovering around decided it wanted a closer look and darted right at my face. The underwater goggles have magnifiable glasses. Caught off guard and terror-stricken at what appeared to be a giant fish ogling centimeters from my face, I guzzled in mouthfuls of the brine, before I could get myself to surface. When I did, I let out such a high pitched and a loud screech of "Sharkkkkk" that it put the lady's earlier wail about the same creature, to shame. Since it was an afternoon of burning, scorching sun, there were not many people around. There were a few snorkeling and wouldn't have heard the scream in it's true form, with their ears underwater and only the heads bobbing on the surface. The rest who were out sunbathing, were all definitely within earshot, my voice having carried over at least a mile in radius. I had also jumped onto R's back and was riding on his shoulders with my arms twisted around his neck like the Old Man of the Sea from Sinbad's fifth voyage. All this, while he was spectacleless, aimlessly trashing around and putting in every ounce of the energy he possessed in getting our combined weights back to the shore.  

     But while this melodrama was being enacted (only after I had safely hoisted myself away from the besetting waters) my attention was caught by this one lady who, I had observed earlier, had been sunbathing on a float leisurely reading from a book, not afar from my scene of crime. So startled was she by my howl, that she fell off her float. And so fast did she swim to the shore leaving behind her float and her soddened book that I am pretty sure my scream had conjured up visions of 'Jaws', 'Jaws 2', 'Jaws 3',(Do the arithmetic progression; I am not sure how many they number) complete with the daunting crescendo that is signature to the advent of the villainous shark in all of the movies, drumming in her ears. Not only did she return to the shore but took to her heels (to her room probably) and, I swear, was never seen on the island again by R or me. The population of the occupants is not a large one since the island is tiny and the rooms number a few, so it is almost an accepted fact that I managed to drive her off the island. I am sure no one else can boast of forcing someones hand at cutting short a Maldevian holiday. Now that's a Feather, no wait, a Fin To My Cap! Curtsy :-) 

Anamnestic Afternoons

      Today's was spent skimming through old photographs. Emotions running high, I covered the whole gamut of the affective state of consciousness. Nostalgia obviously was right through, in every high and low; so was affection. There was joy in most, reminiscing the fun and happy moments that life had presented and that each image had captured so well, completely doing justice to the occasion. Some brought in grief, a sense of longing and wistfulness with the realization that a few loved ones were now confined to memories and to Polaroids. There was amusement and chuckling when a picture brought in a droll or an entertaining recollection. Then there was pride, inspiration, satisfaction, sensitiveness, each predominant in it's own way depending on the story that the image expressed.

      And all these at one fell swoop kindled in me a desire to rush back in time and relive those highs and lows. I craved for the tangible. I wanted all of these to be more than mere remembrances, to experience more than overt manifestations of an emotional upheaval. And suddenly helplessness usurped every other emotion. And pared those lovely captures to just smoke and mirrors!