My mother and her surprises

I have strange memories from when I was a child. The sun felt different against my skin and retrospect makes my vision clearer, the dust of wisdom gained from disappointment doesn't cloud my vision in memory.

I was listening to this throwback compilation by U-Penn's desi a Capella band and realised I'm a child of the 90s. I may have come chocking, kicking and screaming into this world in 88- and yet the music that makes my heart melt (unconsciously and embarrassingly) is from what the screen tells me is the 1990s.

Yes, this isn't where I started but I get side tracked by the opening dusty little rooms in my mind and the people who inhabit them, you will forgive me.

The memory I have listening to this compilation is, again, of my mother. Always my mother. She was and continues to be the greatest advocate of surprises. The small things would come gift wrapped in the bubble wrap of happy, the big things would shimmer and shine with a certain dazzle nobody else can conjour. My brother has picked up on this fascinating art but Amma is, without a doubt, the ruling queen of all things surprise.

Now, I was born a morose old soul who felt the weight of the world and lashed out in dark mood swings. It's quite a shame really to be born into a large family that is so energised by the thought of every breath and a life that has given so much, to find that the one dark unpredictable cloud in the room is really- the baby of the family. I like to think that it adds a dollop of the "unexpected" and spices things up in the family. That is far from the truth and I will be the first to admit it, but let's not pay heed to the truth for today, for today we will believe the version my kind family at their patient best will explain to me and I will get on with the memory that drove me back to this blog after so long.

Chennai is a very hot city. For a child with trouble being in a good mood, the heat that wrapped itself like a thick blanket around my mind filled with the worries of the world. This is bad news.
In Madras (yes Chennai now but we ignore that as we do my sullen demeanor) it is inescapable bad news. For a child sitting in the front seat of a navy blue Maruti van powered by an LPG cylinder and cooled by an AC that would only work on being fueled by acceleration... I can't begin to explain the tragedy. Nobody should be subject to such melodramatic tragedy.

Amma would drive us, the world and God knows who else all over the city in this car. We had a music player that I think may have been more important to Amma than the gas tank. I can sing more RD Burman and Mohammed Rafi songs than I can explain to the people who catch me singing along, or in fact myself, thanks to the many car drives to music, dance, tuition, schoool, I-35, birthday parties and everything in between.  

I was just discovering going out with my friends when the film Na Tum Jaano Na Hum released. I can't explain why this was the movie we (and I don't remember who else was part of this group) chose to watch but I remember coming back and announcing that at some point of time we should buy the cassette (yes that is how long a time back this was, we bought cassettes). 
Given the tone of this post so far you get no prize for guessing that a few days later on our way back from somewhere, while we sat baking in our trusty Maruthi Van at the traffic signal in Annanagar's famous Roundtana, I announced that whatever new music was playing on the cassette player royally sucked and Amma had no taste in music.
I have always thought that Amma deserves a Nobel Peace prize for calmly telling me that this was music from Na Tum Jaano Na Hum before gunning the accelerator to cool, I suspect, my head.
I destroyed her little everyday surprise and it wasn't the last time.

The other time I remember with frightening clarity is when I was forced to move with the family out of one house to where we now live. I had my reasons, very many actually,that I continue to think are more than valid. I explained my point of view to my parents over and over again. I think I even went on a hunger strike and some strange version of mouna vrath  that only the two then villains in my life- my parents, were subjected to. The thing about my parents though is that they have never ever given into a tantrum, a lesson I am grateful (now, most certainly not then) to have been taught very early on in life, and we moved to this new house.

Unlike often before I suspect Amma felt guilty about this one. She knew what it meant to me for them to give in just that once and just how alone I felt for not winning. So one day I came back home to find Lalith and Amma working together to set up a Tata Sky Set Top Box. This was the year it was just introduced and Chennai unlike any other city in India could not access cable TV without a digital box. In that world I was one of the few privileged children, who despite my atrocious 10th standard results still had access to cable TV. I couldn't be less impressed. I was too upset, or so I let her believe.

I'm quite sure I'm screwed now. Karma is finally catching up.
Amma I still love the surprises, nobody shall ever know but it is true. Whether it is the surprise of a special dish at dinner, kulfi in the freezer on a hot summer day, a note in my suitcase when I walk into yet another new life, an elaborate party, the not-so-surprising-anymore surprise-birthday-party or a carefully and secretly thought out gift, I will always love all of it not because it is about me (ok, maybe a little) but because it captures who you are- the master happy maker.

If you've ever met my mother you know what I'm talking about.
Tarun Menon, sharpen up those skills, if you've got all the good genes you might as well make the best of them.

Here's the compilation that started this up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lErtjguuvSw

For my Velliachan

I am twenty five. I live alone in a city that is still a stranger to me, with two friends whom I only recently met. I have no children nor a special somebody, not even a pet or a favorite book. I should know impermanence. Given my zeal to try new things I must expect, no crave, impermanence.
And I find that I do. Where I have the freedom to choose what changes.

In less than a year I have learnt the truth of mortality. Of human emotion and human beings. I must be grateful though. The latter I have only been given a cruel peep of but I find I am not equipped, despite my many years and many lives, I am simply not equipped to even acknowledge in peace, the frail hold I have of things dear to me.

I was recently introduced to the side of a man that is so ugly I cannot believe it exists and yet I find I can't hate that gender yet. The men whom I saw growing up have always been too perfect in their imperfections to deserve such hatred.

I have a brother whom I cannot stand and yet can't live without and a father who has encouraged me to believe in this ugly world that there is power in forgiveness and strength in truth. I wouldn't have the courage to be the good I am without knowing they will catch me when I fall and are strong enough to beat the crap out of the people who push me down if the other would only prove being worth the effort. Today though I think about my Velliachan.

Amma told me today that Velliachan had a brain surgery. That he had clots in his brain that bled, moved his brain a few millimeters and if left untreated would have killed him. I cannot believe that Velliachan's life can be threatened. My disbelief comes from the fact that few people are ever, really, truly, as alive as him.

Velliachan has always been my father in a shadow- the one who didn't get the gifts nor bear the brunt of my tantrums.  I'm told he petrified me as a child,that I would go nowhere close to him from fear. Of what I can't remember and nobody knows either because when I put myself in the smallest shoes I can remember I only see Velliachan sitting in the drawing room in I-35 telling a joke but with a face that looks like an animated announcement of torture; I think of him outside in the sunlight walking Twiggy, Lara and Buffy- teaching them to pray at lunch and giving up; I think of stories Oppa would tell me of being ridden to school and back on an old Chetak because he couldn't bear the thought of  watching her cry through another day of academic torture; I think of Arakonnam where I watched him soak shirt after shirt in the perfume from a bottle he dropped while laughing and cursing at the same time as only he can; I think of A-76, standing on the red carpet of my parents' living room reciting my speech for him to correct and learning the quiz he wrote me for the morning assembly.

I think of an older me and I remember sitting at the dining table with Achan and Velliachan as they taught me why not to smoke- dragging deeper and deeper on a cigarette until I choked and they burst into a laughter that was both apology and mirth. I think of Velliachan as I saw him the day they took Twiggy's body when she died and dumped her, unceremoniously, at the back of that garbage truck- of the words he never said and the tears I never saw; I think of new year parties and Antaksharies and Gazals. I think and think and think and I just can't see him in a hospital bed fighting for life. It doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem possible to me.

The Gods agree for now it seems and I hope it stays that way Velliacha. We have many stories to live yet and I have so much to learn from you. Stay strong. I'll see you soon.   

I feel

I wake up some days and feel life bursting out of me. It's like an explosion of colour that has more than the seven of a rainbow and colour the world in shade I want to see. Actually it isn't a morning feeling, it's an anytime feeling. I feel as much sadness as I do happiness but it's a strange world we live in where sadness is celebrated and happiness is frowned upon.

So I can't skip down a street singing my lungs out until my throat is sore and I can't see a colleague on my way to get print outs and hug him and say, "My God, I'm thankful, so thankful that you are healthy and happy and back again. I love you I do!" I can't say it without being seen as so much other than just genuinely happy to have a second chance at making somebody feel the joy they make me feel.

Some days I want to make a gob ball of everything I feel. I think it would feel like the spit gobs we made as children, gross bits of chewed up paper all stuck together with spit and drippy but strangely, oh so strangely alive. I would throw it with a big smile and an open heart to my friends and family and strangers who make me think the sun shines because of them, those days I'm even glad for them to think it shines out of their bottoms because heck, maybe they know more than I do. They would be covered in that spray of emotion and know, just know, that the world for me would suck without them.

I can hear my room-mate sing in the next room. She's a bit crazy. She sees all of my inexplicable highs and my frightening lows and only occasionally makes mention of it. She and this friend of ours put up with my bawling like a baby while blowing out the candles on my birthday cake and laughing hysterically 10 minutes later taking the most ridiculous selfies. I hug them and scream in their years and tickle them as though they really do owe me some debt that they will pay off this lifetime. They bear the weight of all my happiness and misery and they still don't know just how much I want to run down a semi-crowded street singing as though I were in a musical. It's true, sometimes I do.

I swear it bursts out of me some days. All my happiness does. But you see the problem is this- I accept being human because I like feeling despite the numbness I have begged for since August. I like feeling every feeling. It kills me to bottle it up but I feel many kinds of dead without feeling the threat of violence in my anger the failure of exhaustion in my sadness or the buoyant exuberance in my happiness. I feel it all as surely as I feel the raindrops or  smell the clawing stench of an open drain and as surely as my sight sees the children to whom that filth is home.

It is real- every emotion. And yet, it's a funny world I live in- there is only so much emotion us mortals are allowed to admit to.  

An educated mind has nothing to do with a broken heart

I read an article the other day. It confused me and then it got me thinking and now I find myself writing about it.

I live in India, a country I am both proud and ashamed of just as I am about myself. In this democratic nation where free-will has as much meaning as your neighbor will allow, the courts make decisions that seem like a page out of literature. I wish I were joking, or maybe my lack of  proficiency in legaleese allows me to believe that verdicts that unfold across multiple pages longer than the standard A4 , in language with more literary devices than Blake would remember- including rhyme and rhythm, are a mockery of a system we can do little to alter.

This particular verdict had something about a woman who was living with a married man and appealed to the courts for support after he left her to go back to his family (after 18 years might I add). The courts denied her request for multiple reasons and activist groups are up in arms about what this verdict means for the future. A future that they promised is what every illiterate (or was it uneducated) woman who didn't know better would face.
I read the news on an app on my phone, I do it because pretending to know whatever the app will tell me that Facebook won't makes me feel sane- my sanity is defined by the knowledge important or otherwise, that I acquire. That ritual of unwrapping the morning newspaper and folding down specific corners and hearing the paper crinkle just right does not exist to me. The news therefore is not a prediction of my day ahead, it doesn't mean enough to me. This piece though, the implications the reaction of it won't leave my mind.

I think back over and over again to groups of men and women who believe literacy or education somehow teaches you not to listen to the sound of your heart- not to believe a man you know is lying and build dreams in thin air. It has to be a joke. It must because otherwise the reality I know is.

I don't hold illusions about education- it does its job, for better or for worse one walks away with bundles of papers that proclaim everything from intelligence to capability. What it fails to do however is teach you just how vulnerable you are. I think, and shoot me if I have this wrong, that the sense of accomplishment that earning respected degrees lets you feel, closes you off to the reality that to another person you mean as much as their happiness will accommodate. With an education we are blind to our inner weaknesses masked by the endless layers of self assurance and confidence an education will create. We keep telling ourselves, because we must in this rat race that we are too smart, too accomplished to be treated with anything but respect and awe.

A broken heart though, is a broken heart. Love makes us do foolish things, things we will ourselves to believe and a wounded heart has nothing to do with an educated mind because life teaches the true lessons and she isn't kind to people whose sight from within their soul is lost.  

For my Faultmate

As I speed down slopes on my bicycle with the cold wind biting into my skin I am transported to dark alleys in a different part of the country. We didn't have a bike then and we certainly weren't in any hurry. I remember then that my mind wasn't filled with questions, a to-do list or a mental inventory of what is in the fridge to fix a meal with, it was filled with the sound of your chatter as we walked down lanes like tributaries off a road that was mistakenly called loafers lane. I still hold the opinion that it should be called rat lane to warn every other 17 year old about what on first sight looks like an earthquake but is actually a rat pack on the same prowl as us.

I haven't forgotten any of it, or maybe my mind reconstructs the portions that I have forgotten. However you see it I will always have a memory of us silly 17 year olds heading out as often as we were hungry looking for the latest to eat in the little shops that dotted Vasanth Nagar. How brave we were setting out into cold, dirty, often dark streets,  looking for meaning on the pretext of finding a good meal. By the end of our year I could navigate the streets better than any auto driver, a habit we carried into the discovery of lanes behind RT Nagar filled with the mouth-watering goodness of fresh kebabs (that come to think of it I never ate!). I wonder if they would be surprised, our 17 year old-full-of-faith-in-the-future selves, that though our lives turned out nothing like we expected, so did our friendship, across geographies that span continents and multiple oceans.

Oh we were silly weren't we, forsaking the surety of a meal every night for our adventures on that little strip of networking hopes. I wouldn't change a thing. Not from that year at least.

We have come a long way from that simpler time where our greatest worries were managing a princely rent of Rs. 3,000 and waking up in time for class, or in your case convincing people that I really wasn't addicted to drugs- that sleep was my poison of choice. They wouldn't believe the horrors we now tell each other of or the depth of anger we can feel for other people who caused those stories to be each others' truth.

I still have our book of meticulously kept accounts. They remind me of a happier if frugal time, times that neither of us would have sought to add a descriptor to, consider a benchmark.

We're so pretty I couldn't pick just one picture :P

I can still hear your voice when you sent me that message- "His loss. He has
nothing. No spine, no you". It was the first time I had laughed since that great tragedy that we let seep into our lives then. I remember you telling me later about you, my all consuming worry that you laughed at and even got mad at me about. I worry because I can't confuse you with the anger I feel on your behalf, I worry because you will walk into structures with your heart on your sleeve making friends with people whom you love more than yourself- with people who love themselves more than they appreciate you and your distinct brand of care. I wonder if you remember that time on the terrace. I had just walked in and saw you crying about somebody who wasn't fair to you and took off in a range about just what would be done to that person. What I remember most bout that night, other than the biting cold, is your confusion at my anger and how that night turned into you calming me down instead of the other way around.

We have our memories don't we, that nobody else would understand; The very best and the very worst. So here's to you dear flatmate/faultmate and our plan of retiring at 30 to explore Africa as we did once Karnataka.
You bloody well make it that far if I will, we have vineyards to explore and men to heap hate on.

Because mornings are clearer

This was an e-mail I received. Yes he is fine (I checked) but I wanted to share this here because I can't find my own words today.

i wanted to write this on a public blog (or facebook notes or whatever) but i decided not to, though i am drunk. in fact, i was too ashamed so i am writing to you in person

it's so tempting for me to write '[FADE IN]' here but i will not because i like to believe this is serious. AND resist my film-maker's instinct or wanna-be filmmaker's instinct rather.

i see her online right now and i wanna ping but i decide not to. there was a time when she wanted me to be something that i refused to be. it was more material than emotional - like having a job, making money et al. hence i refused. OR may be that was just an excuse. i did not do what she wanted me to because i was too lazy. or because i wasn't good enough.

looking back, after a few years, i think she was right. or at least her advice was. i feel like a loser right now because i DID NOT listen to her. i should have been what she wanted me to be. i would have been happily married with kids and money and whatever if only i did listen.

i always thought my life was gonna be perfect - like since i was a kid. with a dream job, love of my life, a super awesome home with remote-controlled electronic appliances, lots of money to throw away, people to look up to me etc. i do have the maturity to accept that not everything we wish for happens. but not even one single wish? seriously? how the fuck am i supposed to believe in god then? or screw god, how am i supposed to go on with life?

I DO NOT KNOW.

that makes me feel like an immature IDIOT and i don't like it. but in the end it doesn't even matter, does it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4

yes, i was a fan of LP in my early years. still am, secretly

doesn't make sense, does it? that how nights are. mornings are better & clearer.

GOOD NIGHT!

Dear Pen

My dearest pen,

Courtesy of http://www.penherostore.com 

I miss you. I can't put words to how heavy my heart feels at the thought of replacing you and yet I must.

I loved you the minute I set eyes on you- my first true acquisition. I wonder if you could tell how scared I was about losing you as I had everything else dear. He said I had earned the right to have you, that nobody else he knew would take care of you as I would, that you and I deserved to be together from the first salary he ever drew.

Oh I loved you but I was so scared I would lose you. For a whole year you lay in my draw with jewelry and cameras, only used at home. You dried out so often I would wash you out after every use and search the internet every time for proof I wouldn't destroy you. I worried and worried and worried that I would ruin you- that you would be like all those perfumes Velliachan would bring back for Ammama from his travels across the world, stored away until they turned putrid. Oh but I loved you; I loved you so much that I couldn't resist your demand to see the world.

I remember the first day you came to work with me. We were writing lists, boring boring lists for a production house that I would later discovered, I loved. I remember being asked about my handwriting, you- you always gathered so much attention it almost took away from the work of art you are. Oh but how we flew- you me and stacks of magazines, the sheer joy of writing...
I also remember the first time I couldn't find you- the panic and tears, the prayers and amusement on the other end of the phone. You were you and so much more. I wonder if it is the same relief parents speak of, the feeling of my sins being washed away on your discovery the next morning, exactly as I had left you, on my desk the night before. We had our adventures didn't we... so many. We traveled, you found words for my tears and stoically refused to speak of our travels, so many letters bear your mark mistaken for mine.

Today somebody else said I had earned a pen. I was so happy, discussing the details in giddy excitement as only those who labor over a nib for a year and a half for the perfect angle will ever understand. We were discussing the weight of the nib and I could only think of you love. I couldn't replace you but now I must, I've earned it, she said. You will always be my favorite discovery but I hope you know I had to let you go. I couldn't bear the sight of you anymore if you weren't all of you. It wasn't you love, it was the world and that is the tragedy of it all, that mighty as you are, you weren't allowed to have your say.

I remember when I decided to let you go. I felt frozen until I washed your ink out in water just the right temperature and wiped you down one last time. I can't remember if I kissed you and held you tight, if I whispered my words of regret as I packed you away for the last time as my world shattered around me.

I hope you're happy. That you are treated with the love and respect you deserve. That he understands you need love and care, some adventure and some bravery. I hope you have ink and sunlight, paper and solemnity; I hope you don't miss me but know how much I miss you, how much I will always miss you.

You were my wings love, I look up into the blue for you- always, always.