Specks of dust

 

Where do people go,

after they go forever?

To the heavens above 

to meet the ones gone before?

Or do they turn into dust,

a part of the universe,

to stay only in memories,

in dreams and stories,

until those who remember

also come to pass?

It seems so much in vain,

to live and just disappear,

like the countless before 

and all those here.

Yet that is the only story,

told over and over again.

No matter what we do;

No matter what we say.

We are just specks of dust,

granted a glorious time,

to live and love a little while,

and then become a memory,

a dream, a story.

And we go back to the earth,

a part of the universe.

To the ones who left, the ones in my dreams and memories, to your unforgettable stories;
I wish you are still here, a part of this universe.

We Are The World

 

A nostalgia video was doing rounds on WhatsApp showing the snippets of the original album, along with current images of the singers.

My daughters peeped in.

Oh, I know Michael Jackson!

Hmmm, I’ve heard this name too.

Oh! So this what Bruce Springsteen looked like!

And then the questions:

Wait, what are they singing about? 

Is this about 9-11? 

1980s…. was there a pandemic then also?

They were singing about making a brighter world in the 80s and then we went on further with the climate mess to generate more famines and floods, and then came global terrorism, and then the current pandemic.

Damn. What would they sing about the world today?

Across the Bridge: InVerse

I long so much to go, across that bridge.

I can’t see much, because of the mist,

But I know it has to be better than this.

A world of peace, love and bliss.

Freedom from the struggle here,

full of hatred, stress and fear.

The sun dips low into the gloom

I leave as darkness begins to loom,

A new day begins on that shore.

I start walking, with new hope.

Dawn breaks and the mist drifts apart,

I look ahead, leaving behind the past.

I see another woman, beyond the stream,

Walking across, with the very same dream.

The Old Normal

When it will be the old-normal again?

But what really was that?

A world where I was free to meet and hug my friends,

But how often did I do that?

A world I could go wherever I wanted to.

Just when was the last time I did that?

A time I wasn’t so scared of loved ones falling sick or dying.

But wasn’t that always a possibility?

Oh yes, I had a house-help and a cook.

That definitely feels like a necessity.

But, is that really what I am worried about?

I have learnt to cope, so not really.

It’s just the fear that’s new,

And all I need to stop being so scared of it all,

To keep the faith and believe,

This too shall pass,

And the new will become the old again,

As it always has.

 

 Image by Alex Strachan from Pixabay 

Just where is the silver lining?

Since I like reading data from random and not-so random sources, my husband often asks me for a summary of what’s happening. Especially with the coronavirus situation.

Nothing seems to be improving. The cases rises everyday, and there seems to be no respite possible for months ahead.

That must be because we are testing more everyday, he tries to be optimistic.

But in terms of test per population numbers we are far behind and still have the highest numbers.

India is almost at 11 Lakhs! Karnataka’s growth rates are the highest, the mortality percentage is highest and Bangalore is out of doctors and hospital beds, there are queues at the crematoriums.

There must be some positive news somewhere?

That is what I too look for in the numbers everyday, but..

Well number of recoveries are good in Rajasthan…

And most of Europe since to be recovering and going out for picnics on Sundays.

And then from what we know, even the Spanish flu waned in two years even though no one found a cure. And we are done with more than six months…damn how do I find hope with the existing data!

Maybe we need to look beyond the data which shows only doom. Look beyond the fear that this will never go away.

Look for hope that this too shall pass, sooner with modern medicines and breakthroughs that can happen any moment. Hope in human resilience and in nature healing itself. Hope in staying safe through the worst of it. Hope in something changing in the world for the better, once all of it is over.

That is the most optimism I can channel up at the moment.

And gratitude that we were safe today.

Giving up-Not

Isn’t creating targets and deadlines for something you are doing for yourself self-defeating? Why stress yourself out, force yourself to do something which you love doing anyway?

Because otherwise I’d never do the thing I love to do.

I wrote non-stop in December in January, almost writing the same number of posts that I had written ever since I started this blog, ten years ago. Yeah TEN. I started it as a stress buster and because I liked putting words together and watching stories emerge. I became a part of a group who enjoyed reading each other’s words and that kept all of us going.

And then other things took over. It wasn’t that life got busier, it was always crazy, but I am not sure why the habit just broke. I made a few full-intentioned but half-hearted attempts to get back but couldn’t get back. No one was reading my posts anymore, so there were no commitments to uphold.

A promise made me realize, I could write regularly (even if it wasn’t always sensible or coherent). Managing time was stressful, so after the 2^nd month, I decided not to make a commitment anymore. To write only when I had the time and the story. And I didn’t write anything for the next half a month.

Everyone may not need them, but I have realized I do need a clock to run, even if I am not running in a race.

So here’s another valiant attempt at keeping the blog going, even if there is no set direction. A post you start with just keying in the words and hoping time would just appear.

Faith

As a child I believed in God, because my mom did. My father was mostly agnostic. We attended pujas, went to temples (not to regularly) and followed a 5-minute evening puja ritual. That was it, as far as our involvement with ‘God’ went.

As we grew older, we were allowed to figure out God for ourselves. My brother turned mostly atheist. I kept trying to look for evidence either ways. Still I had complete faith, more than friends who did pujas and fasts but continued to be amazed at my ‘Now, God wants me to sleep’ logic the night before exams. Well if God wanted me to study all night, He wouldn’t make me sleepy, would He?

(In terms of gender-neutral, politically correct language the ‘He’ would be disputed, but I went to a Catholic convent school and that is how we wrote all our lives).

Those days are long gone, I never found logical evidence to prove there was a God and continued to question my faith. 

Today I went to the house of my friend who passed away yesterday. She had been struggling with major health issues for almost 20 years. Her mother had been her rock all these years. And today, while even neighbours and strangers were struggling to hold back tears, her mother was talking about her life with a smile.

You know, there were so many times when we almost lost her. But she would always recover. God wanted her to live. This time she did not. That’s what God wanted for her.

That is faith. 

Rational or not, that has such immense power.

Getting off the treadmill

I am sleepy. I am tired. I don’t think I can write today.

I realized that I had been saying the same words to myself as I log in late at night to somehow complete that day’s post before the clock strikes 12.

I realized that once I start writing I often go beyond my self-imposed minimum word requirement.

So maybe one part of the daily challenge is figuring out what to write about.

My world has become very small now (not in kms though). Office-Traffic-Home. I haven’t had a real long conversation with someone outside the family for weeks. I haven’t done anything new. I haven’t travelled or even read something interesting.

I don’t have the time.

And this is where the impact shows.

To write, I either need to dwell upon the future which holds more doubts hope at the moment or sift through memories.

Wouldn’t it be more sensible to make a blog calendar-plan in advance what to write about, so that I waste less time and write more useful stuff.

a)    When would I make the list?

b)    Wouldn’t that become like another assignment then?

One of the points of this exercise was to rediscover the joy of writing for the sake of writing. Just letting the words flow and watch them form a post by themselves. To do something effortless for a change and just enjoying that process instead of stressing over-what is the purpose/is it good enough/how can I make it better?

I have got so programmed to do things more efficiently, to keep increasing the settings on the treadmill, that sometimes it takes so much effort to do a thing effortlessly-just do it for fun, or maybe just do it.

Stop checking the treadmill numbers. Get off it completely. And walk barefoot.

Why did they do that?

I am too tired to think straight today. Literally. I walked into a wall that has been at the same place for the last seven and a half years and hurt myself. I thought that it was a euphemism used by victims of domestic abuse and never believed anyone could actually do that.

I had three over-stretched days at work in a row.

I remember situations where it has been worse.

Where we had worked crazy timings but still filled in only eight hours in the official timesheet because that is what is official recorded. I know of managers who would make the team slog fifteen hours a day seven days a week because everything was urgent and critical and ‘had to go’ on the same day-no matter if there were a hundred completely valid reason why it could not be done.

As I moved roles and had more insights, I realized that so much of the unreasonable load was unnecessary. It existed because someone in the hierarchy wanted to show their efficiency.

A friend worked in U.S. team of a company which had an India development centre. They could delegate any amount of work to the India team and the project managers would always assure them it would be done in a sixth of the time. They would tell the team there is no option, we understand this is tough, but this needs to go today (and we do not give a fig if this makes you die tomorrow).

Why did they do that?

We were sitting in the compound of the Cellular Jain in Andaman. (A visit that needs a separate post) for the sound and light show which replays the screams of the Indian prisoners being tortured inhumanly by the guards.

Those guards were Indians. Why did they do that?

They wanted to please their masters. They wanted to prove their loyalty and stay relevant. Earn a few brownie points by ensuring they ‘exceeded expectations’ and get a few more bucks.

This is a very different time, a different world. But then, as Mrs Marple says, people are the same everywhere.

Photographic Memories

As I wrote before, Mr Google hijacked an entire evening by forcing me to sift through photos.

It was however an interesting exercise. I flipped through multiple folders, smiling at some memories, laughing out loud at others and cringing at some.

The years before we all had mobile cameras were so much better. I had one-tenth the numbers of photos to go through. And I am not even talking of roll cameras here-where each photo would be carefully composed before clicking, and people would decide what to click depending on how many clicks they had left on the roll.

We were much more trigger happy with the digital camera-but even those were thoughtfully clicked. 

I remember positioning my camera with the 10 second timer to click myself while travelling on my own. At the bottom of the hill, an old lady stopped to chat “Oh You are that girl who was clicking photos of herself!” 

I thought of that complete stranger from another country as I flipped through a few hundred selfies (no, not exaggerating) that the girls had dumped in the folders when they changed their phones. Selfies when they were dressed to go out, at their shabbiest, rolling eyes, sticking out tongues, making faces, sticking on snap-chat ears…phew. Those were supposed to be fun!

Of course I didn’t have the heart to delete them all, it just took a few hours to select and delete a whole lot of them. All road-trip shots of the sun and the sky, clouds, coconut trees, roadside tea stalls and temples just had to go. Deleting beaches and sunsets was tougher, but those of monuments was easy-we could always google them.

What I retained were the ones with people-the kids and their school days, stage shows, dance classes, birthday parties, fun outings and even the random ones clicked sitting in the lazy afternoon sun. I guess those are the moments that matter when we really need to choose.

Those and the travel photos. Google will make my do a further clean-up soon. I need to curate and save those memories before that!

The Countdown

One week to go for this year.

What did I do in the last 51 weeks?

The year began with series of shocks. My father had a heart attack. Yes, lots of people have them, but it still felt so unbelievable. It was a blessing that everything worked out and after a bypass surgery and some months of recovery he his back to his normal self now. Those days were unreal. It was strange taking an Uber in Jaipur and going to the hospital from the airport. I was never allowed to take a taxi in Jaipur. Papa would always insist on picking me up. (That when he empowered me to drive at fourteen and travel everywhere on my own).

It was strange going home and unlocking the door. That door would always open before we reached it. My parents would always be waiting for us at least half-an-hour before we were supposed to reach.

Watching Papa completely unconscious wired to a dozen beeping machines, breathing through a mask, with pipes stuck into his body was so unnerving that, being in Jaipur, I went and stayed with a friend instead of going home. And felt that warm reassurance of knowing we always have more than one home when we have friends.

Then I lost a close friend unexpectedly. It was something which was not supposed to happen. But it did. And there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The fragility of life and the finality of death-that was what this year hit me with. And the realization that how important each moment of life is.

It is not as if we don’t know about life and death, but when it is close, it changes some things forever. It changes how you look at the time you took for granted, the words you wish you had never said or the words you never said.

Winter Solstice

The sun was still in the sky when I left from office today.

It was such a welcome sign. The winter solstice is behind us. The days are going to stay brighter for longer.

The ‘half-glass-empty’ person in me chimes right in-that means the years is over. The kid goes back to college in 10 days. We’ll all be soon a year older! Another year gone and what did I do? I still need to lose 10 kgs. I still need to write my book. I still need to complete the M.A I signed up for. I still need to complete the story I was supposed to finish last Sunday!

Why am I so worked about dates? The calendar is just something we made up to measure time. The sun and the moon don’t give a fig about the years and the months.

Why is it so important for us to track and measure and count? Maybe because for us time is limited. (I am strictly not thinking of office login and logout times or project deadlines here, although it’s hard not to-we live by them). This whole concept of living, not knowing the literal deadline is so unsettling. How do I know whether I am going too fast or too slow? If I try to all the things I want to, I miss out on the precious moments doing nothing, spending time arguing with my daughter, reading, watching Harry Potter for the 65^th time with her. And yet if I do that, how will I complete the blog post for today, get up in time to beat the traffic tomorrow morning, save up for their future?

Live for this moment or slog for the years ahead?
The present or the future?

What is the future anyway?

That hateful alarm at 6.40 am!
And yet, I am grateful to wake up to another day. 

That’s what this year has been. It has taught me not to take the future for granted. And to love the present.

A dark new world

Gosh! I have turned so dark! Each post I have written in the last few days is gloomier than the previous one. My thoughts can almost be used to create the sets for 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II'.

I am on my blog regularly (for the last 20 days) after a decade. Most of the time I am writing on a stop-watch mode: log out of work-drive-write-post blog-shut down-move to next task. It’s Friday evening and I have half-a-dozen less things to do today evening so I got a few minutes to click randomly on my older posts from a decade ago.

That was like watching 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone'. There was wonder and hope. There was fun and innocence and a sense of faith.The kids were on the brink of discovering a whole new magical world. The newness of it all-the majesty of the bewitched world of schools, making friends, discovering spells and learning to fly! 

There were so many people who read my posts back then. There were strangers who commented and shared their reactions. Now it is mostly a solitary reflection. It was a commitment made on Facebook that made me come back and stick through for the last twenty days. I thought I’d get over my reticence over sharing my blog with known people and broadcast the recent posts on Facebook. Maybe more people reading the random posts will make me write more (and less randomly).

When I logged on, I realized what a battlefield social media had become. The country is raging over the latest bills/acts, but it was unnerving to read the words thrown by people I thought, I knew. It’s not just the views of some my ‘friends’ but the stringent violence and outright nastiness of it. And yes, I am shocked at the depth of naivety (or plain dumbness if that’s a word) of so many of who have turned into pawns of dark wizards on both sides of the battle. So many different masks have emerged under the faces that were so familiar!

The streets of our cities are full of death-eaters and the dementors have taken over the virtual world. It is not just me; the whole world has gone dark. There is no place for our barbie-fairytopias here. This world needs a million patronuses.

Country Roads

It’s just my blog, not an assignment. I don’t have a topic, or rules, or word limits. How difficult can writing ‘something’ be?

It’s not difficult. And I mean that about the writing.

What is difficult is making the effort, keeping that promise to yourself, committing time. I do it for my job, for my family, even for friends and neighbours. Yet I find it so difficult to find time to do a thing for myself. I feel guilty. The kid is home for only a few weeks, I spend the whole day at work anyway and then I again sit down to write? There is so much more productive and important work to do, and yet I sit down and write? I doubt myself-why am I even writing. This stuff is not going to change anybody’s life, it is not going to change anything in my life, why am I even doing this?

Maybe I am doing it because of the challenge. To see whether I can keep the commitment, whether I can write. It is definitely because Swathi pulled me into the challenge, and I can see others like me making the effort too.

But most of all I think, it is for the satisfaction. It’s like coming back to your hometown after many years though you are a very different person now. Most of the landmarks have changed and the people the family next door has moved away, but that gnarly rain-tree under which you waited for the school bus is still there. 

You turn into a lane and remember happy times and your old self. You connect back to something you have left behind, and yet never left, just forgot. You have to get back to your new life in the new city. You promise to visit more regularly, but that is up to the plans life make for you. You are just glad you could come this time.

This space is that hometown for me. It is difficult to break the daily routine, to take time out for myself and even get into a mind-frame where I can hold an idea for 15-20 minutes and write about it. I may give up one day when the struggle gets too much. For now, I am just glad I could come.

The December Challenge

Once upon a time, I was a somewhat regular blogger. A mommy blogger bringing up two kids who provided adequate content for me to write about. I wrote to share. And I also wrote to keep myself sane. When I would go mad over the super-stressing incidents of the day such as finding one school sock missing on a Monday morning, I would write and laugh about it. 

The kids grew up and went to boarding school. Mommy-hood didn’t seem so much fun anymore. I would try to get back in that ‘mood’, reconnect with my blogging network (that was such a support), and resolve to get back to writing. It wouldn’t continue. The other bloggers had also moved on. Everyone had different challenges. All of us were ‘super-busy’, we didn’t know it then, but it was possible, and we did get busier. We lost touch. And the blog became something to go back to-one day.

Is today that day? I don’t know. Today is definitely an attempt. A resolve to write everyday. I am already scared. After marriage, kids, work, when was the last time I did something everyday, just for myself? Today is an attempt to do that. To do something for myself-write. To reconnect with myself and hopefully with the others like me. To write for the sake of writing.

These posts more of an exercise in testing whether I can still write, whether I can keep doing it everyday of the month. The posts may not be fun. I think I have changed as a person since then. Or life has changed. These may not be scintillating. I don’t have much interesting stuff to write about these days. I am too depressed about what we are doing and becoming as a race to write optimistic, upbeat posts, and I don’t want to write bitter, sad and angry posts either.  So, it’s also an exercise in finding ideas to write about. Now that gets more overwhelming. 

Let me see how it goes. Wishing myself luck.

The Story I Never Wrote

For years it was in my plan.

I had a vague sort of plot,

and an idea of the ending,

But wasn’t sure how it began.

I knew what it would be about,

Once I sat down to write,

It’s just that I wrote more in my head,

Than on paper or computer.

So, the story which never got told;

blew around in bits and pieces.

Then came the storm and the rain;

the wind howling through cracks and crevices.

I saw how fragile is this life;

And how tough is this strife,

I felt more than ever before,

That I may not get the chance any more.

I need to write right now,

But the story which was waiting to be read,

Lies in tatters, bereft and shred;

and now it feels like even the words are dead.

Because it's too late

Today, I lost an old friend with whom I wasn’t even in regular touch. I came to know about it through Facebook. All day long there were posts tagging her photo with shocked ‘What Happened?’s and sad ‘RIPs’.

So many of her friends posted about fond memories and what a wonderful person she had been. I kept wishing that she could read those messages.

With all the technology we have, could some geek make it possible? Just to tell someone how loved they were, after they are gone?

Because we hardly get to tell them while they are around,

Because we have so many other responsibilities to fulfill, 

much more important than keeping in touch.

Because we have so many other things to consider like ego and pride to take the first step,

Because we keep putting off the things we need to say for yet another day,

Because when we finally want to say it, they are just too far away.

Quitting

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year! (I know it's almost mid-January but this is the first post of the year, so...)

Strange topic to being the year with. Yet, maybe this explains my absence from the blog for a long time. Does this mean more posts going forward? It means hope, definitely.

I have been in a bad work situation. And I kept getting a lot of motivational advice from genuine well wishers on trying harder, adjusting, accepting.

And then I read this article on how a frog is cooked in hot water. (Ugh! Don't know why anyone would want to do that, but that's besides the point here.) If a frog is dropped in hot water, it will jump out, create mayhem in the kitchen and bring the Master Chef audition video to an abrupt end.

However, if you increase the water temperature slowly, the frog will go through the stages of being mildly uncomfortable, restless but still drifting; more uncomfortable but still mobile; and then extremely uncomfortable and trying to jump out. Now it can't jump because it's muscles are wasted away and have lost their strength.

I see it happening to people around me, in work and personal life. The situation is bad-they adjust. It gets worse; they accept, they work harder, they change, they wait. The situation becomes unbearable; then some try to jump, but can't because the world outside has grown too different and daunting. Some don't even try because they are too numb to feel the pain, devoid of will, or courage, or hope. They accept and wait.

Are they wrong?

Should we jump at the slightest discomfort?

Then what will happen to all relationships/careers?

And won't it be like admitting we are losers, that we are not strong enough to stay and fight when so many others are fighting bigger battles around us? 
"Isn't it like running away," I asked a friend. "Yeah", she replied nonchalantly. Then she looked at me seriously and said "Sometimes, that's the smartest thing to do."

What if we leave it till it's too late? I couldn't figure out how to pin-point the defining moment when to stop accepting.

But I did realize one thing, I needed to jump before I lost belief in my own worth or hope.

Talking about Poetry

Not many people read my blog now. So it is more like the early days-a random diary which the Internet saves for you. A space to write just for the fun of playing with words. 

This one started with a conversation about one more thing I don't understand too well-modern poetry! 



In our days, we had to learn our poems. How does one do that without the cadence?

They as usual, shrug it off as another example of my ignorance

Poetry is how Wordsworth describes daffodils,
it makes you feel like the cloud o’er the hills.

Poetry for me is all about the rhyme;
and the music which stays with you over time.

What makes a poem, mom, is the rhythm;
the kids insist but I can’t agree with’em.

So they try their best to explain:
when you feel that punctuation is a pain,
when you have words, but not the patience,
to find more to complete the sentence,

You just write what you think and feel,
forget the grammar, and focus on the zeal,
and that is what makes great poetry.
It’s the thought, mom, not the symmetry.

Oh well, it’s most likely that they are right,
but looking out on a dark, silent night,
the words in my heart playing around,
are ones that had thoughts, and the sound.

The Empty Chair