The extraordinary stillness of the year past

Some things haven’t changed.

We still walk into glass doors and flush like a turnip. We still grin through our faux pas’ and roll from one place to another with both feet in the mouth. We still secretly harbor an endless reserve to pester and still get kindly humored by the remarkable people we pester. 

We still forget to return personal calls and what makes up the sparsely populated ‘personal’ still remains as infinitely accommodating as ever. Weekends are still all about toggling multiple schedules; after which we still invariably invoke rain checks to do nothing but sloth around the house. The bookshelves still keep filling and Mother still frets about things she has fretted about forever.

This little world still keeps getting closer, getting dearer as friendships of years still defy constraints of distance, space and time. Fresh sparks of purpose still alight today’s beauty by the beauty of that which we do not know of yet, but what we will be part of tomorrow.

We still endlessly wonder how much of ourselves to be with people; and all this wonderment evaporates in a poof within moments of joyous folly. The body of regrets still diminishes as whatever we thought we might have left behind at some point of time, randomly swerves by to pleasantly surprise every once in a while. 

The Buddha still brings so much calm and all instinct is still centered around a certain sense of unknowing, which drawn by infinite belief never seems to die. Our cards still speak to us and our dreams still eerily reveal to us the truth behind things we truly ought to know.

Okay, so we have still been waiting for our 5 very loving fishes to finally morph into a dog.

But there has still been much about the passing year, to be silently thankful for. 

Des nuits en hiver

Ce n'est pas

Qu’on attend

La neige tomber

Mais quand
Un petit morceau d'un flocon de neige

Trouve son chemin chez soi
On se demande

A propos de tous les ombres

qu’il a touché. 

(Penned Dec 31, 2009)

En Anglais: In English:
It is not
That one waits
For the snow to fall
But when
A tiny bit of snowflake
Finds its way home
One wonders
Of all the shadows
It has touched. 

Lights out

And first of all, it goes away from here.
All of it?
No, not really. Some of it escapes.
How can you tell ?
You cannot. But it always does.
Where does it escape to?
To some part of you, you do not know where. It does not matter where.
It hides?
No. It takes shelter.
Why?
Because it needs light.
And then? Does it come back?
Not right away.
Then when?
It takes its time. It finds its way.
To back here?
Yes, to back here.
How will I know?
You won’t. But one day, it will tell you.
That its here?
No. One day, it will tell you to leap.
Then, should I?
You will know.
Will I fly then?
You will find out.
How do you know so much about it?
I just know.
Will you tell me a story about it?
I just did.
No. Will you tell me a better story about it?
I will.
When?
Not tonight.
Then when?
Tomorrow night.
Really?
Yes, really.
You promise?
Sleep child. And you will know.

Long way home

She took me along with her that day.

She was meeting her girl friends in the park. She had yoga class that evening and did not want to be late. While lounging there, one of her girl friends got a call from the office. It just wouldn’t get over. Tina’s dog Frisbee spotted a cat and gave chase. Tina followed hoping Frisbee wouldn’t get run into by some cyclists. Kips spotted an ice cream vendor. It would be a good idea to have some ice cream by the pond that afternoon. We agreed and she was on it. It was nice and green all around. There were white lotuses in the pond. They seemed to drift gently every time the breeze made ripples in the water. Actually they did not. There were rooted.

She was focusing on the lotuses. It suddenly seemed so quiet. She could hear me. She kept hearing me. That made her realize how long her friends were taking to get back. She was getting late for yoga class. It annoyed her. She looked at me. She could still hear me. What could I do? That’s all I do. That is what I do.

It looked now as if she was smouldering. Her friends were still not back. She got up and packed her things. She was forgetting something. She put on her shoes and picked me up. She told me, I hate you and flung me into the pond. I had no warning. Okay I have two feet but would I do? Run? 

I did not fall near the lotuses. She did not want to hurt them. I was sinking rapidly. There was heavy traffic. A dense school of pink fishes was running into me. I was still sinking. I thought one of the fishes would hurtle right into me when it gulped. It gulped me right in. I was inside the fish now. I made the pink fish very bulgy. I made it different from the rest. The others could hear it now. I made the pink fish noisy. The fish was still quite hungry.  It spotted a minnow nearby. As it drew closer, the minnow swam away and escaped. The minnow could hear the pink fish. The school understood that if they were around the pink fish, their food would swim away too. The school deserted the pink fish. By now, the pink fish was starving. I was not enough. It sensed a wiggling in the water and bit in.

There was no water around us now. The pink fish was flying in the air. It had bitten the bait. It was caught. Hey look, I got a big’un, a voice said. The pink fish soon stopped breathing. It was piled on a big heap of fishes of all colours, mostly grey, some silver. They could not hear me. They were all dead.

I suddenly felt a rush of cool air. A big knife just chopped up the pink fish into two. A hand hardened with calluses scooped me out of the fish. The hand was disappointed. I wish you were pearls, it said. If you were eggs, I would get a good price. But I was not eggs either so the hand threw me over the back. I fell on fish scales and fish insides. It was not a pretty picture.

Only the truly needy would reach for me from there. But someone did. I was shiny. I caught the sun. It was a tramp. He could not hear me. He was drunk. I can sell you for booze, he said and staggered to the pawn shop. It was a quiet shop made of red wood. The tramp was a regular. I got him enough to buy him at least a bottle he mumbled.

The pawn store owner gave me a good rinse. He could not get the pink fish off of me. I was placed on a high shelf so I would not put the customers off. It was not a very respectable pawn shop although it was made of red wood. I was surprised to see a respectable gentleman walk in. His young grandson followed him. I was catching a little sun from the window. I was shining. Nana, I want that, the little boy said. Nana did his bidding. The pawn store owner made a good profit. The little boy could hear me now. His ear was the first thing that felt warm.

Look Mamma, what Nana got me.
Where did you get that? Mamma said almost with alarm.
Why? said Nana.

Mamma smiled Let me make you boys some tea and I will tell you.
Over tea, Mamma brought out a glossy book. It had lovely pictures. Mamma pointed, Look here. See this. I was in the book.

Mamma worked at the museum. Mamma said I was important. Lost, untraceable, much looked for and important.

I sit in a glass case now. I have my own hallway. The little boy still comes to hear me. He is not so little anymore. He is still warm, his ear even through the glass.

Now everyone can hear me. All these years, I never stopped ticking. That’s all I did. That is what I do.

(Penned Dec 20, 2009)

The reward (Ogden Nash)

In my mind's reception room
Which is what, and who is whom?
I notice when the candle's lighted
Half the guests are uninvited,
And oddest fancies, merriest jests,
Come from these unbidden guests.

Flash retreive

It all spools one early lazy day home (Blogged Sept 7, 2006)
 
I want to blog but I don’t know what to blog about or that there are too many thoughts too few fingers to blaze them down. For starters, I am home early and I don’t know what to do with myself. I fed my fish and sat staring at them for about a good fifteen minutes. I fly tomorrow and my bags are already packed - clothes all rolled up neatly in rubber-bands as a space saving tactic. I have nothing to do. Life as a control freak - I think that is what I have become.

Why don’t you do up your hair he says. Whatever for and why? It is just so comfortable and simple and easy. She just got a complicated haircut and spends 20 minutes ironing and styling strategic strands every morning for 'the look' the stylist sold her. I shampoo, bunch up the mop on my head with a clip and it dries in office. I am so happy to be a slob. When did these things begin to matter? I do what is important what makes a difference. FIIs in emerging market equities won't plummet if I do up my hair. I wonder what else I have to hear next. But it is interesting. I thank life for its variety.

'Métro boulot dodo' that’s what the French call my way of life. So I am going to Singapore and she tells me to get my trip extended. He says he will jump off the sixteenth floor if I get my trip extended. My life is full of these generics - he's and she's. They keep swinging by like trapeze artists, like the tennis ball in a tennis match.

I know what to expect from Singapore. I will spend my flight time making a list of people for whom to buy things. I will make a list of things to buy. I will kill my non-mathematically inclined brain converting currency in every store. Hopefully I won't get lost or mugged.

It will be chok-a-blok live animated streets bright neons in the night, revelry, drinking and dancing. I will go by the waterfront and gaze into it like a fool thinking Paris will be so much better. I will do things so people think that they are being good hosts and feel good about themselves but I will be truly happiest when I am snug in bed with my socks because the floor is always so cold. I will miss my albino shark because I love the pores on his skin and because he stops dashing into the glass like a blind torpedo when he sees me. I will miss my people because any place is always so much better with them around.

My people calls me from Jersey thrice a day to connect me to sisters in Singapore I have never met in our lives so I don’t get lost. My people in Birmingham gives me a weekly countdown to the next India visit and it kills me that I act like such a cold wall to such advances. My people in Amsterdam sent me Calvin and Hobbes for two weeks everyday until I gave up being too mad and too cross. My people is in Germany and returns on the 10th and I hope we bump into each other at the airport if nowhere else. It really doesn’t matter where I am for my people is never with me.

And he asks me why I don’t do up my hair.

An old favourite

Moon River http://bit.ly/53laJD

Madly to learn (James Still)

Madly to learn,
To fathom, to discern,
To master the Gobi, the ruins at Petri,
Climb K-2 and Nanga Parbat,
Swim the Strait of Malacca,
Be Ahab aboard the Peaquod,
Milton in his agony,
Shakespeare treading the boards;
To unravel, to grasp, to speak
Freud's Theory of Seduction,
The mathematical beauty of irregular surfaces,
The Quantum theory, the leap genes,
The invisible morghognetic fields
Transmitted across space and time ----
Bridges to infinity -----
And why Tennyson's "Flower in a Crannied Wall"
May not tell us all and all and all.
Madly to learn.

Something to read when time permits: http://faculty.colostate-pueblo.edu/sandy.hudock/jssection5.html#inmy

Reminds me of...

... the following quartet from Rubaiyyat, the verse copied below.

...

Indeed the idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in Men's Eye much wrong:
Have drown'd my honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my reputation for a song.

...

Saga of a crumpled piece of paper (Vivek Sharma)

I was a crumpled piece of paper
till your curiosity unfurled me;
An excited child in you ironed away
my wrinkled and discarded past
and laughed at what I bore boldly
written in her hand, in pencil
in dark arches, colons, commas,
with a full stop.

You laughed till your tears
made maps over me
and then you smiled and erased away
her words, her punctuations
and took crayons to wax me with color.
Fascinated by the impact of your hands,
you embellished me,
revived me and then artfully
sold me away.

Source: http://ow.ly/JuUg

Babysitting

Sprawling in his roundness, curling like a little eight, he sits, fragrant with talc, cushioned on a cold floor, four walls surrounding, the whirring of a fan above, time makes no sense, time is an endless loop of sleeping, waking, eating, getting cajoled over. Little diaper prince, fixes an arresting gaze, captivating marble sheen eyes, do they see you at all, telling one from another, or is it just one great blur, this speedy passing of bombarded frames? 

(Penned Dec 14, 2009)

While you were away

Do you know

What all happened
While you were away?
The mother pigeon
Nesting behind
The air conditioning duct
Lost her solitary egg
Which rolled down
7 floors to a splat.
I forgot
All about the rice
In the pressure cooker
And now
It’s burnt to a crisp
That even the maid
Cannot wash off.
Father was here
Reading by the window
He slept off
In his chair
And someone
Ran away
With his glasses
Stolen, through
The open window.
Your very favorite
Little neighbour
That little brat
Broke
Our Kondapalli doll
With his famous
Penalty shot
The daal crisps
I was making
To send back home
While set to dry
On a sheet on the terrace
Took off
With the wind
Like a magic carpet
Nothing went right
Until I sat to write
The day’s stories to you
I will have more
For you to know
Tomorrow
Like everyday
While you were away.

(Penned Dec 12, 2009)

Disruptive

Aren’t you
Just the most
Remarkable likeness
Of a fluorescent
Pink toadstool
Wedged
Foothill to barks
Awestounding
Near diminutive
To dense canopies
Pebbled ‘midst
Mossy rocks
Gleaming like
Stars in my eyes

(Penned Dec 10, 2009)

Little things

I had a longish discussion with someone about something I would've normally not had.

I said out loud things I have always known exactly the way I sensed them, not today but from many, many years ago. Then, it would never matter whether I said them or not or who’d give a damn. But deep down, I always knew that I wasn’t off mark about it then, nor am I today.

Its a little instinct; faith perhaps in the simplicity and goodness of people and a little naïveté. Bad, bad combination.

But it brought a remarkable sense of peace, the utterance of this deep rooted, earnest belief, which has nowhere to come from really. But it does not go away. It silently rings true. Everytime. Like the unregistered chime of a little cuckoo clock, tucked away in a little corner of a room full of people at a cocktail party.

And it felt quite nice. For the peace to be home.

Déjà-vu

You leap out of paper.
The familiar curves of you written
Contort to meet my finger tips,
Across a glass wall.
The sensation races down nerves
Searing a mark, branding soft flesh.
A thousand paper boats set sail at dusk
On the flaming waters that consume you.
They drown, each one of them.
He who set them there, had a plan;
For things that just cannot belong. 

(Penned Feb 27, 2009)

We like

Amiyo by Bisso na Bisso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisso_Na_Bisso)

Vous pouvez l'écouter ici http://bit.ly/7rlKrm

You can listen to it here http://bit.ly/7rlKrm

Les paroles sont au-dessous. 

The lyrics are as under.

Amiyo (Bisso na Bisso)

Mystik
Debout telle une ombre au milieu des tempête,
Mon cœur couvre une sale angoisse.
Comme Sedar Senghor, je chante ta beauté qui passe.
Amiyo, je mange seul à table, a pointe Noire
Je suis seul sur le sable Ozala Ki yembele,
Yembele siatapatatra, quoi que tu fasse,
Tchoukouroukoundou te rattrapera
Notre belle maison au bled est vide,
Je me sens perdu tel un cheptel renié par son guide

Passi
Mon colibri je serai la Terre, mon fruit de la canne à sucre.
Tu jouira des récoltes et des autres trucs tracs trucs.
Je te kiffe comme un récépissé,
Mon laisser respirer, j'te laisse pas passer.
Passi te veut au présent, futur et participe passé.
Dans mes rêves d'Adam et Eve tu as gagné la fève.
Douce doudou, tu es mon pandou et en la matière je suis orfèvre.
Sans ton doux goût, ni ton mougou,
J'avoue, je m'achève et si tu pars
Oh ! Amiyo c'est la fin, et de la faim je fais la grève.

Refrain
Amiyo ! Ton cœur est ma maison,
Mon amour est ton toit, j'ai besoin de toi.

G-Kill
Evadons-nous du côté de Tokyo, New York city
Pourquoi pas Rio de Janeiro.
J'arracherai même mes trois crocs en "roro".
Ma vie est une histoire d'amour, je suis ton héros,
Et vis, vibre, entends-tu cette résonance.
Mon cœur est rempli de chaleur et je pense
Que nous sommes fait pour vivre ensemble.
Bolingo na nga yaka zon ga, restons ensemble.

Ben-J
Je ne peux plus penser mes sentiments tout bas.
Je ne peux plus supporter ces maux au fond de moi.
Amiyo, c'est en public que je te déclare ma flamme,
Je souffre d'avoir succombé à ton charme.
Je me suis noyé dans tes yeux de velours,
Tu m'as enivré de ton élixir d'amour
Tous ces mots pour te dire que je ne fais que souffrir,
Affaibli par ces maux que toi seul peux guérir.

Refrain
Amiyo ! Ton cœur est ma maison,
Mon amour est ton toit, j'ai besoin de toi.

Passi
Amiyo, j'ai gardé les photos quand tu es au village,
Sur d'autres, t'es belle en maillot, chez nous les pieds dans l'eau.
Pour toi Amiyo, je parlerai au dieux comme Don Camillo,
Tu es ma joie, mon joyau, Amiyo ti amo, na lingui yo.

Mystik
Même les larmes ont déserté mes yeux.
Viens qu'on se serre les coudes
Car ici dans mes yeux, le temps se trouble.
Je sais qu'on t'as dit : "Ah Mystik c'est un salaud"
Maintenant je pleure seul comme un poisson dans l'eau

Ben-J
Je me suis noyé dans tes yeux, je veux nager dans ton cœur
En apnée au fond de toi, notre avenir sera meilleur.
Combien de temps vas tu encore me laisser souffrir ?
Tu es mon souffle, mon oxygène, sans toi je ne peux plus rien dire.

G-Kill
Nos paroles sont sincères, toutes douces et franches,
Allons vivre loin de cette douce France
Je suis franc avec toi, fini les Christelle, Géraldine,
Pour moi il n'y a que toi. Oh! Amiyo !

Refrain
Amiyo ! Ton cœur est ma maison,
Mon amour est ton toit, j'ai besoin de toi.

Source: http://www.hiphopfranco.com/lyrics/2919-bisso_na_bisso__amiyo

One from 5 years ago

Threshold
(Ode to Frida Kahlo)

The glass showed me
scarred
Until frogs lept
Out of wells

People shredded
Bone charred
Frames woven
By web of strength
spurt whence
Blade pierced

Scarred is not maimed
Maimed not disabled
Disabled not dead

Guns, I implore
Find thine mark
For that which does not die
Lies beyond
the reach of knives

I take
Far more
Than I think
I can

It is indeed
A life shallow
One that
Escapes the knife

(Penned July 25, 2004)

Funnest wedding invite (ever)

Source: http://www.sharesomecandy.com/2009/06/matt-dorfman.html