Thursday, 22 February 2018

Waking up with words


As though, miraculously in claiming that space in time we will reach back and claim the dust of stars we were born of, and trace their path to our creation. We exist in bursts of moments that catch up and hold back, born and reborn in a spiraling déjà vu that escapes our consciousness with each step we take away from the instincts that bring us to the point in time the universe carved out for us.

But we can’t fight the battles that rage through our minds. The winds fight water and waves fall without direction in a dizzying explosion of delirium. Our minds won’t rest because our thoughts are shapeshifters cloaked in darkness, walking barefoot on moss, licking salt off lips, offering prayers to a waning moon. And yet, we reach back in time to claim the dust of stars we were born of, tracing their path to our every breath. 

Friday, 13 October 2017

Untitled Joy

When I was just shy of 11 we had a rather eventful summer. For the first time ever I got on an aircraft. While this in itself is a momentous occasion for a ten year old from India, what made it particularly grand was the idea of flying abroad. There are no prizes for guessing that our first port of landing was Kuala Lampur. I was instantly in love. Tall skyscrapers unlike any from the naval bases I had lived in or Madras, gifts with burgers (oh to think a Happy Meal was the crowning glory of a holiday) and mind-numbingly delicious Ice-Kachang sealed my love affair with travel, a little something that I owe that first travel for.

There is little I remember from that journey other than the emotion of it all. There are pictures of my father, brother and I swimming the sea and parasailing while my poor hydrophobic mother, frightened of water, guarded our shoes and her sanity on the shorelines. There is a picture of a beaming 14 year old boy, metal braces in full evidence (my brother of course) posing on a bike so tall and muscular that his short legs wouldn’t hit the ground— little did we know then that a few months later that puny boy would shoot up a few feet and many years even after that buy himself a motorcycle just as special. I remember the taste of peanut sauce as it sizzled over chicken on sticks, a taste that was as foreign to me as the language I heard but just as thrilling in its unfamiliarity. What I do remember with crystal clarity is the tantrum I threw about not going to Langkawi many years later when I discovered the beauty of that island.   

I’m 29 now. The very picture of an independent woman. I have traveled extensively through India, often by myself, chasing down a wave every time I could find it— just once to surf but so many times to experience the sheer pleasure of swimming in the ocean. I will hike up hills and drive out on mucky roads for the opportunity to witness a waterfall and swim in its pools. I’ve discovered that kayaking is my preferred choice of meditation.
I’ve traveled to Norway to chase the Aurora and found myself couch surfing for the very first time and going “full legit” by diving into a Fjord at 3am because you MUST ice dive in January.
In Amsterdam I made a happy accident and decided to go pub hopping with a group and remember very little of the night other than rolling around a fountain in peals of laughter while my fellow inebriated traveler (and a dear friend) walked up to strangers saying “do you have a local Irish phone” to attempt calling an illegal taxi service— note to men, if you’re a shortish, baldish man who can’t distinguish the country you’re in from the country you live in, chances are nobody is lending you a phone. You will not be helped at all by the woman rolling about in a fountain struggling to breathe between all the laughter at your show. 

My travel through Hungary has delightful stories of drinking beer with locals and discovering belatedly how keypad locks in restrooms work or the wonder of getting hideously lost and discovering an underground club scene because I chanced upon a stranger who decided I wasn’t introduced to his city correctly when I stopped to ask for directions.
This was only a few days before my wallet was stolen in Budapest and I chose to spend the last of my money watching the ballet and then being taken dancing by the people in my hostel to celebrate my "financial independence from the shackling limitations that the concept of money imposes on you".
In Greece I learnt to say efharisto poli (thank you) repeatedly to universe—for the people, the food and the breath-taking beauty that surrounded me. And I dived; I dived under the sea to where more colours than my imagination live, off boats and ships because… well why not, and for the first time off high cliffs.

There are stories to tell of New Orleans, Delhi, Sydney and Perth. More of America, Germany, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia. I spend a lifetime writing about India’s coastline, the little villages that make up Tamil Nadu, the Sundarbans, Ranthambore, Hapmi, Waynad, Dharamshala, and Rajasthan. They’re peppered with stories of what seems like bucket list check offs but is a story of my evolution— sky diving, bunjee jumping, white water rafting, para sailing, cliff diving, kayaking, hiking, camping, picnicking, chasing fireflies, and forming deep friendships with strangers. As I write this I’m waiting for my clothes to dry to pack a bag to take with me to Turkey where another adventure awaits.

And yet my most special travel remains my last in Greece that taught me gratitude, and my first to Malaysia that taught me the wonder of travel.
--

About Sitara
When I’m not breaking the bank in search of adventure, I have a full time job in the field of communications. In the last seven years I’ve been an ad-film maker, Communications and Documentation Specialist for an NGO and a Brand Manager for a home décor company based in Jaipur (Rajasthan, India) and Atlanta (Georgia, USA). I currently work with a fashion designer called Anita Dongre. 
While my parents are undecided about it, I’m convinced there couldn’t be a better use of my degree in Psychology, English Literature and Mass Communication with a Post Graduate Diploma in Advertising and Marketing Communication.  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citramenon/
(Handle @citramenon)

Thursday, 23 July 2015

Of Every Quarter



As the rain pours down today and thunder crashes outside I’m drawn to memories that can’t possibly be mine and yet form the veins of my existence. 

I’m an immigrant child. It’s something I say with pride. My heart bursts with the thrill of my gypsy roots. I live far away from anywhere my accent would place me, so every few days I get asked “where are you from?”
I’ve taken to laughing each time somebody asks me this question in anticipation of their puzzled frowns when I answer. It has been pointed out to me how rude this is, but for once my intent is not to be rude. I like saying,
“I’m from Chennai, that’s where I grew up but I’m a Malayalee. Honestly though, it’s probably more appropriate to say I’m an Indian because before we moved to Chennai my father was in the Navy and I spent some time in Goa and Arakonnam; After school I moved to Bangalore for a bit and spent what feels like an awakening in Mumbai.”

It’s a slow journey to Rajasthan where I find myself now but as people piece it together they go back to my name (Menon, mind you) and ask me if my family lives in Kerala. I like telling them then that my parents grew up in Chennai and Bangalore- not Kerala themselves. That a love story worthy of the movies took my grandmother on my mother’s side to Chennai with her husband while a love story as tragic as any Greek poet would write took my grandmother from my father’s side to Bangalore. 

This would mean that my mother is more Tamilian than Malayalee- she grew up in Chennai; while my father’s childhood gets more mongrel. He grew up in Sainik School, in a place called Bijapur and would holiday when he could in Bangalore. He speaks a smattering of Kannada,  Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and English and understands a bunch of other languages, speaking it all together in a language of his own. It’s hard for most people to tell when he’s trying to speak one language instead of another (other than with English)- it sounds the same but funnily enough he’s understood.

And so I was born with the bloodline of my gypsy grandparents. To draw from poker, I saw their stake of immigrant lives and raised them on it, moving more than them, more than my parents in their life on Naval bases (we’re counting up to each of your 26, oh parents of mine).
But it’s a funny story that started this entire legacy that can’t be measured in wealth.
(Note: Look for the Malayalam to English translations at the bottom of this post)
Nobody who has met my mother’s parents can deny that my Ammama and Ammachan were madly in love up to their dying breath. By the time I met them Ammachan was terribly ill from emphysema and Ammama was losing the power of her heart and sight from the complications of diabetes, and yet, as Ammachan sat with Ammamma on the dining table or Ammama called out “Noku (look)” to Ammachan in the middle of her TV serials that nobody else was allowed to make a sound through, there was a peace between them- a love that was theirs.

I didn’t know it then and can barely believe it now, but there was almost twenty years between Ammama and Ammachan. I’m told that Ammachan at one point had declared he didn’t want to be married and one day, on a visit he saw Ammamma in the porch of her house and found his heart had changed his mind. I like to believe that he stood mesmerized by the beauty he saw debating with himself about the child she was to his late thirties and finally gave up the battle and spoke with Ammamma’s father. Muthashan wasn’t terribly rich and he has a lot of children to take care of.  I’m told Ammachan and his family met with Muthashan, he was convinced that his Lakshmi would be taken good care of because of the family Ammachan came from, and agreed to the marriage. It was that easy.

And so my Ammamma found Chennai- a city that I can imagine being so much more her style than Pattambi, that gorgeous little village (now town) in Kerala where she grew up. Mind you, from my few visits to Pattambi I can tell you that I will forever hold a torch in my heart for the place. The Tharavadu (ancestral home) with its endless well, steep stairway and wooden floors, the temple with its Kollam (a Kerela version of a swimming pool), and Jolly cottage are filled with memories that I can’t place of joy and laughter. 

There is a room that Apputimama, Ammamma’s youngest brother, used to live in. I remember for some reason this being my favorite place in the mini Tharavadu. In our U shaped house, Apputimama’s was the section that was by itself. His rooms were in the first floor. I used to be scared mindless about going there alone- spiders, darkness and any number of monsters would jump out of crevices but the lure of Apputimama’s voice and actions as he pulled out book after book from his vast library and point out the joys of the world in them was more than I could resist. My bachelor uncle was every kind of eccentric but nobody would dare question his love for books. My mother likes to point out that his book collection, before it was emptied, was probably worth as much as the house is. A cousin found her greatest plunder in Apputimama’s books- of the many wonderful things there was a first edition Shakespeare. I’m not surprised. The leftovers I rescued from the trash cans may not be first editions but they smell of adventures and many evenings spent in discourse. 

This is the one thing that makes me like my Ammama. She was a voracious reader. I remember that towards the end, what upset her more than my Velliamma insisting that she follow her dietary restrictions, was the fact that she couldn’t read. She had this humongous magnifying glass with which she would struggle to piece words together. Ammama would read in Tamil and Malayalam while Ammachan read his English novels beside her, his glass of whiskey (or was it rum?) on the table between them- a companionable silence filled in by the ads on TV.

But we weren’t similar at all my grandmother and me. She was the young beauty whisked off her feet by a debonair older husband. A man who introduced her to the many wonders of the world and loved her for the enthusiasm she brought back to them. They really were a sight to behold even in their old age but when I look back to the pictures of their youth- that is when I truly lose my breath. The pictures have a woman in clothes that would put even the fashionistas of today to shame. She had poise and grace to match a queen, and beside her smiling like the cat who knew he won the world is my grandfather in his suit, neatly combed hair and perfectly styled mustachio. When I close my eyes and try to remember the picture I also see a car and a pipe, sometimes a telephone- the signs of wealth, the proof of their life, a far cry from my other grandparents.

My Achachan and Achamma were the very opposite it would seem. I have never met Achachan. I know little about him other than his love for cycling (like Achan), his insistence on having his children learn their arithmetic tables absolutely right (like Achan) and his quick temper (like Achan). When Achan’s youngest sister was 6, Achachan passed away. I always thought he died alone of a heart attack on his bicycle but Prasanna Cheriamma told me the details when we met last.
Where Amma and Velliamma’s childhood in my mind is of studying in the best private school, being chauffeured around in cars and spending weekends on the beach after a movie; my picture of what Achachan could offer his five children on his meager income as a post master casts the Vakkiyls in a grey pallor that bursts into surprising light each time I hear one of my aunts or uncle laugh as the wise adults they are.

I’m told that Achachan was working with the Indian Postal Service. A funeral is really the worst time to ask for details so I didn’t, but I know that there was a common house for men and another one for women in Bangalore where all the recruits lived. One by one everybody in both common houses got married. While I can’t grasp at what Achachan wanted, what is clear is that he went home to his village in Kerala once and came back with a bride. 

Now my Achamma, if you see pictures of her (and I’ve only ever seen one from that far back) is the picture of a Malayalee beauty. She married young (like my Ammamma) and though the pictures have faded into a black and white sepia, you can see a shy woman unsure of herself attempt to sit up straight for a picture, her face framed by a shock of curly hair pulled back. She looks shy, like she would do whatever it was that she was asked to. And maybe she did. 

I’m told that unlike Ammachan who fell in love at the first sight of his future wife, Achachan married Achamma in what was (and probably continues to be) an acceptable barter. For his sister to marry the man who had "enquired" about her, Achachan would have to marry his brother-in-law-to-be’s sister. I could draw a diagram to explain this, more easily understood but the crude way to explain it is that the daughters of each family were exchanged for the sons to marry. 

I don’t know how happy or unhappy anybody was about the arrangement. I have reason to believe that there were some tensions but these memories can’t be mine because I haven’t seen the house in Bangalore that my Achamma lived in.
I’m told it wasn’t poverty but my privileged mind with its privileged upbringing finds that hard to believe. Achamma lived in a four room house with her husband, children and a colleague of Achachan's with a compound bathroom to share with people in other houses. Her oldest son (my father) was sent away to Sainik School because it was all Achachan with his ambitions for premium education for his children could afford (Note 1). I remember Achamma telling me this story, but if the voice I remember is indeed hers I find it hard to believe that the memory is mine. 

I can hear her voice as she tells me in Malayalam in that soft voice I would have to tilt my head to hear. She tells me Achan was a sickly child. He always had a cold sniffing and sniffing constantly looking malnutrition-ed. He had a handkerchief, often hers that he would twirl around his finger and walk around with. When he was (I wonder if I have this right, I can only hear her say she was young) six, Achachan came to know of admissions in a Government Residential School where boys would be taught in the English medium at the State’s expense with the hope that they would serve in the national defence when they grew up. He offered to coach a neighbor’s son while teaching Achan. 
If my childhood learning Maths with Achan is any indication, I can imagine the thirst for knowledge those evenings stoked and the stark terror that any incorrect answer on a test would bring. I have no doubt anyway that both Achan and this neighbor’s son were thrashed impartially into learning all the facts it takes to do well at one of these tests. 

When the results came they found that Achan had cleared the papers while the neighbor’s son, with his less frightening father, hadn’t. I always ask Achan why he wrote the exam if he was so frightened about leaving home and he always looks at me like he is asking himself how somebody he has invested so much in can be so foolish. He yelled at me last time in his attempt to explain that he wasn’t spoiled like our generation is. He did what he was told to- there would be consequences for anything else. What he was told to do then was to excel at this exam despite being the sniffly dunce (Note 2) that he was deemed to be; that his father did not need permission to make him write an exam. 

I suspect he’s right about that, we really are privileged in knowing we can get away with the choices we make. I know when my parents tried to pull that trick with Ettan it didn’t work at all. They wanted him to join the National Defence Academy after his 12th standard and seeing no way to escape writing the test (is it a good time to point out that when my brother was born his name was decided on because Flt. Lt. Tarun Menon sounded best of all the options they thought of?). Ettan did everything he could to fail the exam- he makes no secret of it and there were no “consequences” other than my parents accepting his choice. 

And so, on clearing the exam, Achan was bought one trunk and whatever else was on the list of demands Achachan received from the school to prepare him for the next seven years of his life. I’m told Achamma broke down and amongst the few times in her life refused to do as she was told to. Achan was her first son, the boy who survived despite his elder brother’s death in infancy a close year before, her Sivan. But Achachan held his ground, locked Achamma into a room and made a little boy say goodbye to his mother from a window while she cried rivers (Note 3).

Achachan wasn’t a bad man at all. I’m realizing as I write this that it come across as being that because if somebody did that to me I would run screaming for the hills accusing him of abuse. I don’t think his intent was to hurt anybody. Achachan was a poor man who was doing everything he could to give his five children an education that would find them a way out of the poverty he suffered and didn’t take any pride in. (Note 4)

Baby Mema told me a story about him- Baby Mema is the youngest of Achan’s siblings. She says that when she started school a van was arranged to pick her up and drop her back- a luxury in those times, especially on a post master’s salary. This convent that she went to was just far enough for a little girl to not be able to find her way back home from and thus the luxury of a van. This is the story in Baby Mema's own words,
"
On the very first day, my dad was busy and so sent me in the van putting me in charge of a 7th std student of the same school, called Sheela, requesting her to drop me in my LKG class. As planned, the van dropped us kids at the school gate and Sheela took me by hand to my LKG classroom and since it was quite early, my teacher Ms. Dallal was not yet in class. Sheela told me to sit in the first bench and wait until my teacher came. I guess I waited for sometime and not finding anyone come in I walked out the gate (God knows how I found it) and then walked all the way home from Frazer Town to Shivaji Nagar (what Google maps says is a 2km walk).
I reached home around 11.30 or 12, that too since my house was at the corner of two roads, my mom was looking out of the kitchen window and saw a little girl with a red sweater with lot of slush around her legs, walk past her window. She initially thought that the red sweater looked similar to her baby’s only to suddenly realize with shock that the child indeed was her baby. She rushed out to pick me up from the other road and then all hell broke loose. My dad took the van driver, the teacher, the gate keeper, etc to task and that was the end of my van usage." 
Mema says Achachan didn't trust her with the van anymore and so would drop her to school and back everyday but I can't help but think that a part of it was also that he was a softie :)

I’m sure Achachan wasn’t cold, he was a man of his time making sacrifices whether in his life or another’s for what he believed was a greater good, things that must be done.
When Achachan passed away Achamma went into what can only be called depression. This was even before Achan was married so the woman she was got lost in the tangle of sorrow and confusion she felt at his sudden instantaneous death to a massive cardiac failure. The story Prasanna Cheriamma told me is that Achachan was cycling to the house that was being constructed in RT Nagar- the three bedroom house with two bathrooms of their own- a step forward in life. He collapsed while still on his bicycle (note5) but managed to have Prasanna Cheriamma called from her classes at the veterinary college. When Cheriamma rushed back, she took her father to a clinic close by where he was injected to bring his BP under control while they made a longer journey to a bigger hospital. By the time Cheriamma had him bundled into a taxi- a rare luxury that she couldn’t enjoy that day, she could feel his heartbeat gallop even faster. They cut the web of a toe to relieve some of the blood pressure but the man in the clinic had injected him for low blood pressure instead of high, ensuring his death. 

My aunt had one brother at sea to inform of their father’s death, two young sisters and a brother at home and one mother who did not know life outside the four walls of their house. Achan I’m told couldn’t even make it to Achachan’s funeral. He received news of his father’s death two days after the last rites- something the eldest son usually performs. I remember somebody mentioning that Achan had received his first stipend as a cadet earlier that week and had set aside money to finally give his father, a token of one dream coming true. He didn’t get the chance.

The Achamma I visited every summer in Bangalore was a quiet woman. I knew little about her other than how she would plead with her children and their spouses not to punish her grandchildren as all us cousins would get together and turn her house upside down. All the ettans would climb up the mango tree in our backyard yelling incorrigibly or turn Achamma’s bedroom into a skating rink by emptying a tin of talcum powder to slide around in.  As I grew older I saw a woman who shrank further and further into herself not even being able to hold her books of prayer or recognise the faces of her children. I always wondered if she saw Achachan in the dreams she would wake up from. I wonder if it mattered to her that none of her grandchildren ever met him. I’d like to think she had a fire in her that wasn’t entirely extinguished from being a woman of her time; that the bursts of anger on her sickest days weren’t her only release from injuries inflicted years ago.

My Achamma passed away a month back. I woke up to 5 missed calls from my mother and called back to hear Amma telling that Achamma had passed away. I remember feeling relieved. The woman I spent my college years in Bangalore visiting wanted nothing more than death even as she watched life go by from her place beside a window. She was ill- physically and mentally but most frighteningly, every time I saw her I felt like her soul had already died and that when she saw the rest of us she felt ashamed. On my lowest days I felt like she could see right through the façade I would put up for her benefit into the shame in my soul and on others I thought she felt ashamed of having to be taken care of by the son she took care of. 
On a note that has nothing to do with the rest of this telling- my Elema is a gift to the family with how much love and understanding showered on Achamma well after Achamma could no longer recognise her despite seeing her almost every hour of the day. 

In a strange stroke of luck I managed to get onto a plane to Bangalore that morning and make it in time to see Achamma more peaceful than I had in years. Achan truly does have the worst kind of luck. He was in Kerela to attend a Pooja that was meant for Achamma, something that my otherwise very practical father was told would ease her soul. When he got the news he hurried to Coimbatore to catch a flight to see his mother one last time- a flight that was delayed twice before being cancelled. His cousins who left Kerela at the same time that he was in Coimbatore for his flight, reached Banaglore hours before he did despite hurrying into a taxi as quickly as he could. 

As we waited for Achan that day my cousins, aunts and uncles from across the country came to Elechan’s house. We were her legacy and as each person walked in I couldn’t help but marvel at what this unlikely couple, thrown together as a bargain, had achieved for the world.
It took me back to when we sat around Ammama as her life slowly ebbed out of her. I know we sat around her- Reikhi and Pranic Healing all around and Oppa straight in from the UK changing her clothes and singing to Ammama as she drew her last breaths.

Both my grandmothers passed way in peace- one with all her family around her and the other in the peace of the early morning looking more serene than ever before, still waiting for her son to return. My grandfathers died differently but both in their daughter’s laps. One left a family that needed to pull itself together and find a way to survive while the other left a family who mourned his loss but celebrated the life he lived.

When Velliamma and Velliachan  (my mother’s sister and her husband) drove up from Chennai to pay their condolences I realized that I was in a room full of the people my four grandparents caused to happen- a room that was bathed in the sparkle of laughter and a certain togetherness. Their life, their sorrows, the dreams they had, the people they were- the people we are. Every chance was held together in this room.

Us cousins were banished into Amu and Ponnu’s room for being too loud. The “adults” (as if we weren’t that already that with my two brothers’ wives in amongst us grandchildren) smiled at us as they said we were too loud for a house in mourning. But, I wanted to shout (and knowing me, I probably did), we weren’t a house in mourning- we were in house in celebration; a celebration of the legacy my Achamma and Achachan had left the world. 
--

A special thank you to my Baby Mema who read this and tried as best she could to point out my madness and prejudice without being judgmental about any of it. These are her notes to clarify a lot of what I got horribly wrong. 


Note 1: I personally wouldn't put it this way because it was prestigious and honorable at that time to enroll one’s child for the service of the nation and not because of an affordability issue. I’m not sure if I’m right or wrong but my understanding is that it was not very cheap to do so and had tough entrance exams and interviews to get through. Your dad was brilliant in academics and so he got through to Sainik School

Note 2: He wasn't a dunce! There are stories of him and Prasanna winning prizes like toys for standing first in class

Note 3: Haven't heard about this part and don’t think it was necessary because nobody raised their voice against my dad's, ever! Other than under-the-breath protestations once in a while by my mom, or shedding quiet tears which was always over looked because the need to do what's best for everyone prevailed on dad and mom was considered as not having seen enough of the world to be able to know whats best! I don’t blame him for it because unlike today, that’s how all families behaved where the father was truly the head irrespective of whether he had the capability or not  

Note 4:  I know that each one of us found my dad very strict and found nothing wrong with not being given the chance to voice our opinions because the families we lived and interacted with around us, too behaved in exactly the same manner. That’s how below middle class families lived and we were happy too because the expectations were not there at all in the first place to feel unhappy or disappointed. 

Note 5: E
ither you got it wrong or she has- the fact is that he reached our constructed, completed and now rented house, collected the first rent, felt uneasy and went to our neighbor uncle(his own friend’s house and told them he was feeling uneasy and got them to call  call Prasanna from college over telephone

--
Malayalam to English

Achachan Paternal Grandfather
Achamma Paternal Grandmother
Achan Father
Amma Mother
Ammachan Maternal Grandfather
Ammamma Maternal Grandmother
Cheriamma Aunt (father's younger sister)
Elechan Father's younger brother
Elema Father's younger brother's wife
Ettan Elder Brother
Mema Youngest Aunt (father's younger sister)
Tharavadu Family Home
Velliachan Uncle 
Velliamma Aunt (Mother's elder sister in this case)

Thursday, 11 June 2015

Of my love for water

A lot of people have asked me about Petrichor. I love the rain and often times the anticipation of it more- the smell of the world just before the clouds burst open- and thus Petrichor. 
--

It rained last night when I was sleeping and I woke up today to a different world. 
As I touched my skin this morning I felt like a different person, the air smelt different too but I was still me and the house looked the same.

Rain for me is magical. It has the power to wipe me clean, to pause time and circumstances to make peace with them. To stay calm and wait as the world continues to be in motion, bringing me all I want heaped on a silver platter. As much as I love that platter what I crave most is this moment of weightless suspension. Everything is tranquil here just like it is at the bottom of a swimming pool.

My brother tells me I learnt to swim as a toddler but that my introduction was more graceful than his to the world we both love so much. He claims that at some unknown age soon after he could walk, my father- man in the navy- the man from whom we have inherited our deep, unquestioning devotion to water bodies- picked him up and threw him into the water. 
Ettan says that like any child he floundered a little bit under my father’s watchful gaze (and my mother’s silent- voiceless aquaphobia) and then paddled around merrily for the rest of the day.

I must be clear that a) I have no idea how this boy remembers all this and b) my parents love my brother. He is, after all, their cherubic first born who to this day laughs merrily at the slightest provocation. I must also clarify that as barbaric as it sounds, I wholly support this dumping-of-toddlers-in-water-bodies-under-controlled-environment method of teaching, especially when I meet adults who can’t swim and don’t understand the best friend they have given up on- everybody is always regretful.

My introduction was not quite the same (according to my brother with his elephantine memory). I got a pink polka dotted bikini (despite it not being yellow, it must be said that I was quite a fashionable toddler), a matching float, and my father’s shoulders as we chilled in the sea beside Goa’s beaches. I also got a pool and very specific lessons on how to and not to breathe and co-ordinate my limbs. At some point we bid adieu to the float- I’m sure it was more from my family’s collection exhaustion from filling it with their life breath each time I wanted a swim- which was pretty much everytime I saw water- which, incase you haven’t connected the dots yet- on a naval base, on one of the most beautiful coastlines of the world- is a few times each day.

When Achan retired from the Navy and we moved to Chennai. Amma signed us up for swimming coaching. 
Here’s another something you must know of my civilian childhood- those stories you hear about kids who have done more extra curricular activities than most sane adult indulge in through their whole life put together- that was my brother and my childhood. Between the two of us (and then if you throw in Oppa who for all intents and purposes is much more sibling than cousin) there is very little that we have not done as children. 
And so of course if Oppa was swimming for the country when we moved to Chennai, Ettan and I would swim atleast state.

Every evening we’d be off to the pool to swim swim- swim- swim- swim. 
This was competitive coaching though, so we got whipped by the nylon end of a whistle for striking out wrong or splashing about in the water instead of working on speed or technique. We’d be taken to task about turning up 15 minutes late- "20 laps extra", or turning up exhausted- "get out of the pool and run 50 laps around the pool- WAKE UP!"

I loved it. I know if Amma or Ettan are reading this- especially together they’re going to look at each other with that this-one’s-memory-is-a-joke look but I swear I did. I love being pushed. I like having my endurance tested and beating the crap out of a challenge you will set out for me. I like basking in the glory of that victory. I learnt that as a child when the coach- Pratap Sir would clap us on the back with a huge smile for having learnt something well or swimming into the deep end when told to and not harassing him about it, or diving off the highest point on the dive pyramid (I’m just calling it that. I don’t have the slightest clue what it’s actually called) when your big brother thinks you won’t and has already started bullying you about it. 

Of course I made faces and pretended to hate my coaching classes- I was some single digit age when we’re meant to hate all authority figures and I didn’t know myself well enough to not care about what the done thing is.

The last time I was part of the team that was coached, I got the back of my foot stuck on some ledge and had a hunk of flesh ripped out of my foot. I was meant to swim 5 laps across the breadth of the pool and I remember crying through it and saying I was tired (because as an active child who knows what pain is) while Pratap Sir having dealt with my crap a hundred times before firmly told me to just shut up and keep swimming. 
When I did get out of the pool (after finishing all my laps let it be said) and he saw the mess my foot was, poor Pratap Sir was more upset than I was. It’s weird but I still remember going to SMF Hospital where they said some new bandage had come in that would deal with the wound better than having to get stitches and hearing my mother talk about Pratap sir apologising to her beside the pool while I was in the shower washing off the chloride before being taken to the hospital.

By the way, the hospital lied. The stupid wound took 2 or 3 months to heal and needed to be redressed everyday. I hated it but love the softly fading scar.

During the time it took for my foot to heal I know Ettan stopped going to his coaching lessons so when I was completely healed I wasn't sent either. They were really more about him than me anyway-  in the first state level event that I was signed up for (and the only one for me) Ettan finished 3rd in freestyle for his age group while I came last. The crowd cheered me for having finished because of how far back I was! 
And so Pratap Sir and I never really worked together after that day and the SDA pool in Shenoy Nagar just became this pool that I thought of as having swum around in knowing full well that kids were pissing their life out in as explanation for why that particular pool has chlorine enough to kill anything but us thick skinned humans.

Then I started traveling from one coast to another swimming in the sea, challenging the waves as I swam deeper and deeper in; Enjoying the excitement of first swimming out through rough waves to calm seas and then- the far more thrilling challenge of swimming back to shore while the waves throw you in whatever direction they feel like in a battle to hold you forever. 
Amma if you’re reading this- I’m not reckless;  I make sure to swim only as far as I can see another human being and if not then to make sure I tell the lifeguards on the beach and swim in their line of sight. 

Recently I was in what is popularly called a “bad space”. I needed an escape and despite my derision of pools only four feet deep I decided to make a run for it and work off my thoughts in a pool (I’m not a runner. Think Phoebe-from-Friends not a runner). I swam lap after lap not realizing the time go. 
I wasn't racing against anybody this time, only my thoughts and we have a lifetime together, speed would take me nowhere. The pool was mine as much as my thoughts were and as I swam I felt some of the caged anxiety drain out of me. 
There is a rhythm to swimming. One-two-three-four-five-six breathe or dip--- breathe------dip---- breathe------. It’s a pulse that codes into your heart beat and clears your mind. I felt suspended, time didn’t mean anything, physical limits didn’t either because, there was no conscious thought, lesser conscious action- it dawned on me that time is elastic.

Of course I got out of the pool and my mind caught up as I stared out of a window- even after a swim I'm still me. But I did it everyday for the next ten days. Everyday I would stake claim to two hours of my life and make it mine. After many years I dived off a board giggling like I did at 6. My father joined me a few days- we didn’t talk or even acknowledge each other in the pool but strangely I felt at peace- like life would work out anyway.

It’s been two weeks since those ten days and I’m on a quest to find a pool in my little desert city. One I can cycle to everyday and stake my claim of two tranquil hours in everyday. 
But today I woke up to that feeling that I need a swimming pool for- that feeling of infinite possibilities as you tuck your ears under the surface and watch the world go by through shuttered eyelids. 
Everything is possible, everything is rushing to you as you drift on- life is blue-green-tranquil perfect. 

Friday, 24 April 2015

When Darkness finds me

I can feel you. 

You don't have to shout any louder, run any faster, be any heavier or any more anything, not even lesser. I can see you from the corner of my eye and sense you with every beat of my heart, creeping towards me. 


Your grey vapours only chase me harder when I run so I chose, this time, to brave your wrath, to cross my fingers and wait for you to pass me by. 
I chose to believe the false promises I made myself and I chose to believe the false comfort every disconnected whisper offered me because I was hiding from you in plain sight. I was hiding from the person you are conjured up by the recesses in my mind not deep enough to keep me safe.

I hate that you caught up. I hate that you chose the brightest day, in a room most filled with love in a voice I cherish deeply to wrap your vapourous trail around me and inch your way up to my mind while I stood paralysed- without even a whimper in self defense.

You know your own ugliness. 
You know I will succumb to the power you have over me. You enjoy the chase and it was longer this time than ever before. I didn't miss you. Not one bit. If I could wish you away I would. I let myself believe that is all it would take but you have proved me wrong. I will congratulate you on your victory, ever the graceful loser. You have taught me from practice, I will even thank you, gratitude flowing out of the wounds you stab into me. 

I wonder if this will be my last memory of these months in the rainbow. I stand here immobilized by the crushing weight of the knowledge you bring. 
You call it the truth and I want to believe you but it is difficult to have my mind reconstruct reality to suit a whim while you are twisting your knife deeper into my heart making sure I can see you through the haze of tears I won't shed from pride.

After all that I have sacrificed- laughing little floaty bubbles and flitting through reality, my pride is all I have and if you asked nicely I'm sure I would give you that too, but not while you suffocate me and watch me bleed out so clinically. 
It won't do. I won't give you that satisfaction, not because I don't want to- for you I would give anything, but because my pride is the only oxygen I will find in the dark lonely grave you have dug for me.

I will dream of flight and wine and dancing and sleep through the worst of this. I will wake up in another season having befriended my nightmares again. Companionship more reliable than your promised smiles in the dark- I am blind.

Friday, 27 March 2015

The parents I see

I have strong views on what good parenting is which means I have stronger views on what bad parenting is. It has been pointed out to me on multiple occasions that the validity of my views is directly proportionate to the number of children I have and thus currently, completely unimportant (I have zero children as of writing this. For the record).

Now, I acknowledge the need for practice/experimentation to validate ideas and hypothesis, allowing parents to dismiss my scaling of their skills but 
I have plenty of experience in meeting, interacting and bonding with people whose parents have and continue to do an amazing or abysmal job. And so, however unwisely, I continue to hold my judgement of parenting close to my heart against what I'm sure is good advice. 


Time and multiple bad decisions have taught me not to point out to parents of young children how to be better and save the world from the train wreck the human monsters their wards are growing into. The hope is that in time I'll either be dead and not have to deal with it being too amazed by my own adventures funded on a fat retirement saving or too damn cool to be affected by it in anyway. But since I'm not any of that yet- since I am only the woman who now has many friends with young children and irksome parenting skills (fueled no doubt by the garbage books they read instead of following intuition and directions from the people who raised them), and the aunt of two nephews I love very much, I will write this blog post  because there is little else that I can do.

If I have been any less than clear than you require let me be so now. This post is a rant that is likely to offend many people. If your sensibilities are easily hurt by dancing about architecture leave now.
(I find the need 
to explain dancing about architecture. I know my mother will ask and she's pretty smart in general. I read somewhere that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. A similar line might apply to writing about parenting without intention at this point to even go down that road)

Every time I see parents with children I wonder if they thought about it. Was money put away? A discussion about changing responsibilities around the house? The installation of a sound proof study maybe? What is the discussion that a husband and wife (yes I'm speaking only of those in this particular case although I have nothing but love for any other combination you choose) have before smiling at the thought of turning their lives upside down and only seeing if that was a good idea at the end of their lives by which time there is little they can do if anything. How do you go from the magnetic pull of the occasional wild party to a super human ability to hear your child's distress as though the message is telepathically transferred to you? Is there even a discussion outside the need to conform to the pressure of proving masculinity and femininity and the often dicey bond between a newly married husband and wife?

You'll see I've thought about this and should at any point somebody have the idea to start a family with me the poor boy will be talked to tears before birth prevention is even considered off the table.

My mother always said parenthood was about making choices about choosing what the lesser crime is to inflict on your child for a greater purpose. I've always considered that the first crime (the bad kind) in parenting is putting your progeny before the greater good. In argument, it is human selfishness that has gotten us as far as we are as a species, not self sacrificing altruism but one can hope (perhaps even for the extinction of a species that's cruel only for pleasure).

Despite all that, irrespective of how this conversation went down, should you have your birds and bees in order or the good doctor working his magic you have a new, mostly dependent camper in an average of 9 months. I wonder if you can tell how parents will be based on how they treat a pregnancy. I haven't had a chance to explore that question. Have you? Is the degree of paranoia or not, disinterest or not, a sign of the rest of their lives?

But like I said, irrespective, a living breathing thing with a supposedly malleable mind arrives. Young (or old) parents assume responsibility to shape this person and if nothing else put up with it for eighteen years keeping him or her fed and clothed with a roof above their heads for the most part for at least 18 years.

I was a disgusting teenager. Like the kind whose ear strangers want to twist while walking angrily to already harassed parents who are ringing their hands in fury while also thinking up the punishments that would make me most miserable and terrified of pulling bad stunts from simply not wanting to deal with the punishment. My parents were so very scary, I learnt bravery from defying them, they were far far scarier than the prospect of jumping off a bridge 83m high. The point I'm making though is that I was a self righteous teenager who walked around with the grand notion that since I didn't choose my life and my parents did it was their job to provide me with the food, clothing, home and education that I felt was my right and not expect gratitude for it in any way- the choice wasn't mine right? 

I've since spent a lot of time with children who deserve everything I have had and more and yet receive so little that I've had my head detached from my bum and screwed on straight, but there is one thing that holds true. Children don't choose to be born (we're talking biology here. Do not get started on the spiritual relevance of that statement. I have an argument but it is completely out of context), parents make that choice irrespective of what forced them to or not. I wonder then how they could think it's ok to want so little to do with these mini people's lives.

I just don't understand how dropping food on a mother's lap while eating is more stressful than the child not eating after a long exhausting day; how is it ok to leave your child unsupervised at heights; how is the only tone you find when speaking to your child that of derision. I just don't understand it. 
How can you feel ashamed of giving up a job you hate anyway to spend as much time as you can with your child to a)see the magic of their becoming themselves b) helping shape that person who could well change the world. How can a discussion about your disgust of government policies that you neither understand nor have a valid opinion on (you don't vote!) be more important than helping your child develop the ability to tell right from wrong? 

This is the part that scares me- as a parent, how could you not be the first one to hear your normally quiet child's call of distress and be able to tell the difference between genuine distress and an ugly tantrum? Why, as a stranger can I hear it and recognise the shock in your face when the sound registers?

I don't understand this and so much more about parents these days and to be quite honest I don't intend to.
But if you are a parent who sees why this is how it should be, do go on and educate me. I really do want to know. 


Friday, 20 February 2015

My list of 25

I'm trawling saved drafts of blogs I wrote but didn't publish. I find this list as relevant now as I probably did writing it. Learnings to take to the grave only maybe?
---
Here are the lessons I have learnt from my quarter life crisis, ones that I hope, in an alternate universe I am wise enough to learn earlier. So dear 25 years of my life, here is what you have taught me

  1. It only gets as bad as I let it
  2. My family might drive me to a point where I want to stab every vital organ out with a fork, but they're there. Always. Especially when I least deserve it
  3. Sometimes, a fresh start with new people is all I need
  4. Everytime, some indulgent self-loathing, self sympathy is all I need- I can be my best friend
  5. Promises change just as priorities do. It is the principles that matter
  6. It's ok to shop
  7. It's ok to be broke
  8. It's ok to love somebody or something- even a job that doesn't love you back.
    The magic is not in waiting, the magic (and might I add, satisfaction) is in knowing you gave it all you had and did not take no until you achieved what you set out to- surprise yourself
  9. It's ok to call in sick when you feel like the world has folded on itself. Take the day, find yourself and go back and show ém why you matter while the sick day doesn't
  10. Sometimes, just let it play out. Some battles you win from walking away
  11. Let other people stand up for you. It doesn't make you weak, and it is ok to be taken care of
  12. A hang over is not good, lime juice on the other most certainly is. And watermelon juice. And raw mango juice. And sweet lime juice. And orange juice (you get the picture)
  13. People change, that's life. Today you matter to somebody tomorrow you don't. It's ok, you are still worthy of being the best damn person you know to be without needing somebody's validation of it
  14. Trust your gut. You do not need permission to set things right
  15.  Trust your gut. Some people are not worth it, some things are not.
    Trust your gut and do not be persuaded by guilt
  16. Learn to speak many languages, especially your own tongue
  17. Collaboration is a high like no other- listen to ideas, evaluate them, then put your spin on it, then let the other people put their spin on it, work at the collaborative idea until it's better than anything your mind came up with alone and revel in the brilliance of it
  18. Do not let the good times go- celebrate them
  19. Dirty laundry smells great after a good wash
  20. Do not give up because somebody tells you to
  21. A clean conscience is worth so much more than a stamp of approval
  22. When you're telling a person to go to hell, if you say it right they will enjoy the ride and love you for it
  23. You can't help the spite. Let. It. Go.
  24. All it takes is an easily repeated signature. Do not get smart with banks or immigration officers- a signature is not a piece of art!
  25. A handwritten note is magic.