Mums The Wor(l)d

Her smile is all that takes

To make me feel alls well,

There is not a worry in this world

That cannot be put to rest.

A heart so kind, a hand that helps

Heedless of night or day,

Eyes that well to woes of else

Her own she brushes aside.

Buds she nurtured to tender blooms

By showering them with her love,

Owe their entire being and happiness

To an upbringing that's compassionate to all.

Fostering the frail though not in prime herself

Her dedication undeterred,

She tends to her garden of efflorescence

With the patience of a saint.

I wish I had it in me

Only if half her strength,

It would help me be a better personage

One that I can be proud of with a clean conscience.


P.S: A vain part of me wishes I had an iota of her looks. Wouldn't have hurt to be a tad pretty! :)

2000 Leagues Across The Seas...

...is where my home is.

R's grandmother passed away the day before yesterday, rather suddenly. No one from his immediate family was around. Scattered across the globe, the rest of the family could at least make it to the funeral to pay their last respects. Everyone but us.

He sits there sad and brooding, reminiscing over the childhood moments that he spent getting pampered, with his great grandmother and grandmother at his beck and call. The loss is unfathomable even if the days spent in their company were not many in number. No child who has ever known its grandparents cannot not be crazy about them.

People will offer condolences; social protocol demands that they do. Its polite, anthropological and indifferent. They all say that the grief shall ebb away, that there is nothing that time can't heal. Over time the voices of the departed will grow faint in your head. Everyone knows what you feel because its not a complex emotion. But what the relationship meant to you is what only a few will appreciate, understand and grieve with you.

Inexorably, there were days when we did not once summon their existence into our mind. The presence of the extant is always taken for granted. It's the insurmountable that we chase, that we crave for. Life is short, capricious and unpredictable.

Right now my mind is turbulent as can be seen in the disjointed tone of this piece. I am where I am not needed, I came here when I was not needed though I would still want to believe otherwise. Some day when my thoughts are more linear will I write a post that will observe the occasion coherently. Right now my mind lies where my heart lies and that's a 7000 miles away! :'(

In memory of R's great grandmother (who passed away last year at the ripe age of 107) and grandmother 

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! :)

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 :-*

Confessions Of A Remorseful Granddaughter

Two apogeal moods make me want to write. It doesn't matter if the scrawl makes a good writeup or is a mumbo jumbo of disconnected words that I have spewed on the paper thus advertising the state of my mind. But jubilation and distress do bring out the essayist in me.

I spent the evening today sitting on my window sill alternating between reading a Japanese best-seller and watching the sun's rays permeate through gloomy cinereal clouds (I call these 'Fingers of God'). I am quite a deliberate reader; I hardly ever set an unfinished book aside even if it means reading through the night into the wee hours of morning. But today there was a whiff of melancholy in the air that let my mind go woolgathering. So absently was I perusing the pages that I had to sometimes stop, go back a line or two and read them again because the words had gone past unregistered.

Then all of a sudden this small passage managed to grab my attention. And so pertinently could I relate to this passage, especially to the last line about the granddaughter being an uncaring brat, that my eyes were stung with tears; tears of guilt and remorse. The smiling face of my grandmother danced in front of my watery eyes; the smile never leaving that face when I was being a pesky tyke. Of late I have moved from being that to being a rude, quick-tempered and an impatient granddaughter, but she remains the same adoring grandmother with the same smile embellishing her face and speaking volumes about her unconditional love.


My grandmother, numbering eighty summers, is a patient of Dementia and has the memory span of a goldfish. Her intelligence now is that of a child and with a toothless grin and vacant eyes, she resembles one too. She finds pleasures in mundane things like collecting baubles and trinkets such as hairpins and stowing them away in a little plastic container away from what she assumes to be prying eyes. She shows them off to some and lends them to no one. Her house, which has been her home since the time she got married and came to stay in Bombay in the 50s, is now a labyrinth. She has to discover her way about the house every single time; the topography taking a new shape each day in her mind. She keeps asking about the same things over and over and insists she has the memory of an elephant. A quarrel with my grandfather is always on the cards.

Yet of one thing, she needs no prompting; that I am her baby. I have been her baby ever since she first laid eyes on the newborn me; first born of her only daughter. Nothing really changed there when my mum met with an accident and was left bed-ridden for more than a year when I was just 3 months old; its still the same now when I am past 30. It was not as if she was in her prime youth then or in the best of health. But the untiring hours and efforts that she put in to raise me makes me picture her as one. At an age when people hang up their boots and enjoy their retired lives having done raising their offspring and seeing them settled, my grandmother was starting all over again.

I was difficult as a child, perhaps being weaned away from a mother at a time when we should have been inseparable, left its marks. Each day around midnight I would start howling and continue for hours together, sometimes through the night. Nothing could turn those wails to soblets or quietude. But at the very hint of a whimper there would be my grandmother ready to rock me, sing to me, walk me around the garden. And she would lay me down on my crib only after making sure that fatigue had taken over the insecurity and I had fallen asleep. As a child of working parents, my school going years were also spent in my grandparents' company. My grandmother, having studied in a convent herself, was my tutor throughout. I never had to resort to tution or classes; each day she would make sure to wind up the household chores before I returned from school so that I get her undivided attention be it in studies or as idle company. At an age when I should have been the one taking care of her frail aged being, she was tending to me in sickness (When I fall ill it always does reach the pinnacle of the disease and then curves down towards recovery) spending sleepless nights in a row. And I can go on and on about this and the likes. 

But today, and for quite some time now, I have been rude to this lady whom I owe my entire identity to. And all because her mind has gone fuzzy from a disease that is eating her memories away. And that she is trying real hard to at least grasp things whilst standing at the periphery of our real world and stringing together the exiguous remembrances by packing the void spaces with figments of her imagination. Today I find her incessant inquisition getting on my nerves, her off-the-wall reasoning to be vexatious and her ramblings to be unworthy of an audience or an antiphon. And today when she is the child who needs to be pampered, coddled, cosseted, listened to and loved beyond reason and condition, I, who should be first in line to try and repay an infinitesimal part of the debt, appear to be walking away. I shout, rant and scream at her which on most days she digests with the same smile though a tad dismal. Sometimes she quietly gets up and walks away muttering an apology. On rare occasions when perhaps her fortitude cracks at having the apple of her eye treat her with far less patience than she deserves and as an encumbrance, does a teardrop or two form in those forlorn eyes and roll down those wrinkled frail cheeks. But she brushes them aside just as she has been brushing aside every insolence of mine for the past how may months now. And each time it has left me feeling guilty and extremely ashen-faced, in a pool of tears! :'-(

P.S: My grandfather has an equal role in nurturing me. I am what I am today because of both my grandparents. But this post is dedicated to my grandmother specifically because of the passage from the book. I shall be writing a separate post on my Popshu (as I lovingly call him). I am working on keeping a rein on that irritable persona of mine for they mean the world to me and I do love them, a lotttttttt!!!!!

Touchwood!

They Say I Have A Perfect Life

As a baby screaming, putting up a fight,

Had aged granny rock her through the night,

Singing her lullabies, crooning and humming,

Tirelessly till the wee hours of every morning.

As a toddler spending evenings at the park,

Growing tired and cranky after setting up a lark,

Into the tired arms of old grandpa, would she leap,

He would carry her home every day and kiss her to sleep.

When procrastination during her school-going years,

Brought in a lot of tantrums and a bucketful of tears,

Dad, after a few cutting words, would hurry,

To make sure she was saved from her teacher's fury. 

Though frightful and lanky, she grew to be as a teen,

Comforting words always made her feel like a queen,

When grown-ups would remark sadly, "What a pitiable sight",

Mom's indifference to her appearance made everything seem right.

With listless mousy hair and a crooked nose,

Patchy reddened skin and bushy eyebrows,

Yet her baby sister often greeted her with cries,

Of "Oh my God! You sure are a sight for sore eyes".

She became every teacher's darling,

With her impish smile and a demeanour so appealing,

In studies she had aces, her best friends were her books,

People said it was God's way of apologizing for her looks.

Soon her close friends numbered quite a few,

They poured into her ears about things they came to rue,

She became their confidante, their advisory in chief,

To date hers is the shoulder they look for in their grief.

Now in her thirties, yet she can boast,

Of being daddy's l'il princess and loved by most,

"I am my gramps' baby, the apple of their eyes,

God, let it always be so", she prays every day, in grateful cries.

Hope

Two look between the same bars,

One sees mud, the other sees stars.

                                                    -Frederick Langbridge

I am struggling with an amateur-writer's block so decided to do a guest post today.

Back in 2000, some sixty-odd poems featured in a book published by a small time local publisher. These poems were written impromptu by children, aged six to sixteen, as a part of a Children's day programme. My sister, a Class IX student then, had to choose from the topics The Steps, A Bridge and The Sky. She chose The Steps. And what follows, is a chef-d'oeuvre by a 14-year old (Biased huh? Well, it's my baby sister I am talking about :) ).

INFIRM STEPS

Step by step the fawn moved forward,

It was an effort to stand, alright,

The doe urged it to step onward,

With shivering legs it stood upright.

It's innocent eyes looked upon the world,

The green meadows and the clear stream,

Across the brook, the bridge was curled,

It was as good as a dream.

It's steps were slow and trembling,

The fawn did need some persuasion,

It tried hard to support itself but kept falling,

But, in the end, it sure did reach it's destination.

Soon it's steps will be faster,

It shall learn to take care of itself,

To protect itself from the hunters,

And to be strong like the doe herself.

                                                                          -Nivedita Rao

'Tall' Tales

I know I am a late entrant into the blogging world. It has been so with me forever, in everything that I have done in the past. When I took to Orkut, the world had moved on to Facebook. When I created my facebook account, Twitter became the rage (I stopped there; it would have been pointless to join Twitter ;) ), when I bought a laptop, people were talking about tablets! But it's been a while since I wrote anything that could adorn a blog spot. 'A while' too would be playing down the time frame; eons would place it aptly considering that, except for my last piece of literary stint, the rest of my work lies on yellowed fragments of ruled papers torn from long-exercise notebooks.

A friend egged me on to digitising my endeavours. He-who-must-not-be-named, happened to stumble upon a poem (the only one I have as a soft-copy) that I had penned for my husband (my fiancé then) and found it worthy of a place better than the 'Sent Items' of my inbox. When informed that the rest of my work was lying in some old tin box hidden away in the recesses of my two-storeyed, not so well-maintained house, he quite caustically enquired if I was saving it to be found posthumous, secretly hoping to outshine Ann Frank! So here I start by posting the very same, starry eyed, mushy and childish poem that I had written circa 2006.

TALL TALES



The beauty enticing, my eyes devour,

As I softly sail away from the shore,

Trying to grasp horizon's outstretched hand,

Leaving behind white sanded land.

A tear trickles, I wonder why,

A moment so rejoicing has made me cry,

But as I watch the sky hugging the sea,

Truth dawns, it is because of 'He'.

Memories I cherish, the ones so sweet,

Shall remain my companions till the time we meet,

To smile, to laugh, to live I shall strive,

Without my friend, the love of my life.

Supportive and compassionate he has always been,

A sturdy mask, behind lies a child unseen,

This side of his, he reveals only to a few,

As a companion he is the best gift God could give.

Accruing wealth, a dollar, a cent, a dime,

I keep counting days biding my time,

I hope to God this year just flies past,

As they say "All bad things, for long, do not last".

I wait for the moment, when his arms find me again,

Pretension I shall leave behind, a smile I shall never feign,

The glitter in my eyes shall say it all,

When my gaze shall behold a guy who calls himself tall.

This poem I dedicate to that particular 'He',

I wonder if any of this makes sense to thee,

I have tried to pen my feelings untold,

In a manner that seems to be ages old.

This is where my brain refuses to budge,

Now the entire poem to me sounds like fudge,

But I hope this does bring in his eye, a glint,

So with this I finally end my literary stint.