Yesterday

Yesterday is bygone . Yesterday, was, and therefore, is not threatening anymore.
Yesterday and day before that, it rained . Today is brilliant and blindingly sunny. On the surface , the mud puddles are drying up and the slush acquires the dusty sheen of dryness , within hours. When you dig deep , the soil retains the moisture for much longer than it seems . It may be moist weeks hence.
Same with life . As Salman Rushdie says in his Midnight’s Children” yesterday leaks into today and stays there in puddle.”
There is a school of thought that says , you can never get rid of your past. It stays with you , forever. Subconsciously , colouring your thoughts , speech and actions .
I have seen this more of late . When I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I find my parents ,  a strange juxtaposition of both , rather, staring out at me .
Some times , in a haze of anger , an ancestral expletive slips out of the tongue, where it must have sat patiently , for so many years, unaltered, unfettered. It takes everyone by surprise. Even me . For it has waited so long , that no dictionaries tell its meaning , and no one living does too, even me . I have just parroted , what I had heard , so many years ago, in a haze of some one else’s righteous anger.

Procrastinator's poem

Tomorrow I will get even with my fate
Tomorrow The day will dawn brighter
Tomorrow opportunity shall knock the gate
Tomorrow I shall be a fighter
Tomorrow I will not let the neighbour's dog relieve on my lawn
Tomorrow I shall transform into a Super(wo)man
Tomorrow I shall bake perfect brownies
tomorrow they'll publish my stories
tomorrow they'll acknowledge my genius
tomorrow there won't be any fracas
tomorrow there will be world peace
tomorrow there'll be no shouts,no riots
tomorrow no schools be set on fire by compatriots
tomorrow in parliament, no pandemonium
tomorrow at meetings, no acrimony,no bad blood
tomorrow everyone will be fed, no lack of food

Rain tonight

Tonight it is going to rain.
Not your friendly pitter-patter, and cheek caressing drizzle .
It is going to be a fierce outpouring of wrath and bile .
Rain
when the sky speaks and you listen .
Thunder(s)
, boom, burst and threaten to tear
the world asunder.
Lightning spits
the sky splits
sizzles
dazzles
It is a fearsome
fireworks of heaven, a lesson
dancing a terrible dance
of destruction

mothers' day

It was Sam's idea. He always had these celebratory, over the top ideas , high flying , never staying in a place kind of idea. It was okay that we were meeting after a decade or so, but what the heck, we were meeting at the funeral of our father . Is it  a time to go swimming in the creek ? That too armed with refreshments like fried chicken , not to mention Sam's gaggle of his disreputable female  friends.

Then there was Tom with his camera and tripod, not letting any thoughtless moment go unrecorded.

That evening , all came back wet , spent and happy, tripping over the carpet, in their beer- induced tipsiness.

That was the limit. Mother, still red-eyed and black laced, came charging out of her room and ordered us out of her home and her life . She has had enough , she said , and rightly so.


Five years later, she was still there, rocking herself to sleep on the porch, her overgrown cat in her lap, hissing at the sight of us . Mother had shrivelled , her spirit had not. She looked at us , squinty eyed in the sun , and did not smile . Warily she took us all in , and the rose , with great difficulty, looking for her walking stick , stoutly rejecting all help. The cat slid to the floor and ran into the back seat of the rusting Chevrolet in the backyard. Mother wouldn't sell it , for all the money in the world . For her , it reminded her more of dad , than any of us did. We were her shame . She hobbled in, and turned back to face us , her face a dark mask in the shadows, "Why have you come now ?"

Always a picture of propriety, She did not want a scene on the porch , where the neighbours could see and hear. But then , She was the one to drive us away. It could have been the overpowering and numbing grief of having lost a great spouse, a friend and companion for a life time . But we were too young and foolish to comprehend all that.

"It is mother's day Mom. Tom had to come down here, so we all decided to see how you were doing ."That's right, so like Sam , hiding behind the skirts of other people's decision.

"You didn't answer our letters ."

"Neither did you pick up the phone."
 All of us felt brave enough to chime in , after Sam's small speech.

Mom muttered and turned her back, hobbling into the kitchen. The breakfast things lay on her spotless counter. Even the sink glistened in its steely glory. She sat at the stool where she had made numerous meals , packed countless tiffins. Her rickety stool, painted white , every christmas eve, by father.

Then She turned to me , the youngest, even as all stood at the entrance to the kitchen , askance , afraid , hesitating.

"Can you put the kettle on dear? The coffee is in the drawer, and the mugs in the cupboard. It has been ages ...." She trailed off and I was the first one to go and hug her. I was the youngest and I had that privilege. Also to see the tears in her eyes .The others sighed , and the sun suddenly seemed brighter and sunnier , as if a huge cloud had lifted.

Hello Yellow

Yellow in the turmeric of the curry in today’s menu
Yellow in the colour of prosperity of a bride’s trousseau
Yellow in the rust golden , lush paddy crop,
Yellow in my basmati, coloured by a saffron milky drop
Yellow in the gigantic ,happy sunflower heads,bold
nodding in the midday sun, in a field awash with gold
Yellow is the colour of the soil of "Haldighati" before it reddened 
Yellow is the colour of silky yolk swaying,gladdened 
in a sea of gooey, eggy, moist, sumptuous  vision
Yellow is the overwhelming promise of an ocean 
of shimmering mustard flowers, stalks lithe and long
Yellow in the dhoti of the punditji doing Paath, sing song
Yellow of the sun that washes over the backyard old
after a morning of rain and clouds , wet and cold
Yellow of the "Nishaan sahib" waving defiant 
in wind , sun and moon, in rain pliant
Yellow in the earthy goodness of falling leaves 
of sleet and breeze and rain drops from eaves.

Evolution of faith

The old man sitting under the peepul tree, on his rope-charpoy, smoking hubble -bubble the whole day long was the village bringer of wisdom.
 He would sit there, hunched , practically the whole day long, doing precious nothing but smoke his hookah and stare at the trees.
 People would come and present their queries. There would be a long pause . More bubbling and chillum-smoke . After a long pause , the old man , would deign to remove the pipe from his mouth and proceed to offer solutions , to patiently waiting people.
 Sometimes , he wouldn’t answer at all. he would just continue smoking his hookah and staring at the trees.
 People would wait for hours and then go. They would be back again the next day.
One day, the old man , like all mortals,passed away.
The entire village came to attend his funeral. His ashes were not submerged in some holy river as was the custom . By popular vote it was enshrined in a small temple which came up under the peepul tree.
The local MLA came and spoke words in praise of the old man . A pucca road was built till the peepul tree.
Loudspeakers were installed , and holy  songs were played . non-stop from the top of the temple . People still came with their problems , prayed to the old man , who was a full fledged deity now .
He still had no answers for them . People , however , did not stop flocking to his temple .
All sorts of healing miracles were associated with him , and he became a saint .

Olfactory memories

Heera, the charwoman , was in the habit of applying some kind of a strongly aromatic oil in her hair . Being downwind of Heera as she dusted the windows and sang bawdy songs , was the worst thing that could happen to you on a freshly washed , crisp Monday morning. All promises wilted, as you veered windward, while trying to finish homework, assignments, and projects.
Assembly bell would sound in a  couple of minutes. But Mother Superior had to have the class register, filled in correctly, brown paper cover crisp and not torn, and names entered correctly, no smudges there, please. So , lives for senior students and prefects was edgy, a few minutes before the assembly. Heera's assault on everyone's olfactory senses did not help much either. In fact, it cemented  a sort of pavlovian response, so much so that the other day, in a  local train , when I was accosted with a similar smell, I was filled with a foolish dread of urgency. I had to do something , fill some register, submit some assignment, which lay pending.
Smells are known to trigger memories. Sudha , the head girl , offered Heera her imported scarf , when all entreaties ("dust the room later, Heera", Why don't you go and wash your hair , Heera?" " Which cat s(h)at on your head , Heera?")failed to evict the determined sweeper.
Next day , the scarf was seen adorning the nether-end of Heera's last born, lungi-fashion.

My grandmother chewed betel nut and  cloves . The fragrance still makes me , falsely so, very comfortable and reassured , and results in fruitless, time -wasting conversations with pot-bellied grocers. These nearly always end with me getting conned into buying cloves by the "Pudiyas",which keep getting accumulated in my kitchen, un used.

The fragrance of fresh apples , makes me want to read tintin comics, hiding in a shady corner of a sun-washed terrace. My father brought apples and tintin comics for us , in one large duffel bag , resulting in this hodge-podge of memories.

The aroma of aggarbattis means Gods have been propitiated , and all is well, or is going to be well.

The smell of frankincense burning, means the  pooja has come to an end , and delicious , sweet prasad awaits us all.