Price for Free

This is unusual. I do not wake up on a day suddenly feeling the need to acknowledge the price of whatever we mean when we think of freedom. If I do feel this need, it awakens around August 15, India's Independence Day, an inevitable programming for someone who grew up in the often hysterical jingoistic patriotism that super-scripted the Emergency years of Indira Gandhi. Furthermore, I come from a family of doctors, not freedom fighters, so it is challenging to excavate genuine sympathy at the many ways in which the human body is deliberately harmed by others of its own species. I must also confess that I am spoiled. I have always thought of myself as a product of all that the brave sought to preserve, and like all such products, I take many kinds of freedoms for granted; I mean, doesn't everybody?

I do not need to count the ways in which we are free for my patient reader; it might smack of unimaginable boasting at worst, and will be unimaginably boring at best. I will also not tell bravery tales of battle heroes; that belongs in a classroom somewhere. What I do want to acknowledge is home courage, the kind seen at home, not on battle lines.

A discussion I invest a part of course time to every quarter I teach Greek Mythology, revolves around what happens to women in a war, not women soldiers, but other leftovers, like Hecuba and Cassandra. I tell of their plight, my material derived from a tragedy (Women of Troy) millenia old. I know this resonates with all of us because we know that nothing has changed. Often, the heaviest price for freedom is paid by those who did not choose the war, did not fight in it, and were not free enough or fast enough or resourceful enough to run away from it.

I do not mean to say, of course, that wars are bad and that we should not indulge in them. I know that wars have many benefits, like a rich cultural exchange, a forced open-mindedness, expanded gene pools, and profitable trade and travel opportunities. After all, my grandmother was lucky and resourceful enough to run away from Hitler's Dresden, all the way to the shores of Gujarat, an event I think of a great deal every time I think of my daughter away at college. We are also, it would seem, a family of globe trotters and think of all the countries we call our own as Our Country, rather than choosing one. I remember when I was in college, I made sure to Read what I loved, pursue my passions, live as fully as I could manage, because SO MUCH had gone into the making of me! All the angst of history, all the terror of immigrating to a place where no one speaks one's language, the horrors of wars, all culminating into one moment that was my life: it was an awareness I carried on my shoulders at all times.

When I think of freedom, I think of my maternal great grandfather in World War I, who chose to step out of his trench after being confined there for over three days, insisting on his need for air and a smoke, even at the cost of possibly being gunned down. When he returned from his smoke, he found himself the sole survivor of his unit, the trench bombed in his short absence.

When I think of freedom, I think of my grandmother telling us of the importance of answering door knocks in Mumbai during the Partition, with chili powder in hand, of instructing children to hide behind gas cylinders (we cook with those) and not emerge, no matter what they see or hear.

When I think of freedom, I think of my paternal grandfather, choosing to travel six villages away (by boat), because his village did not have a school offering studies higher than 6th Standard. I think of my father studying beneath street lights (his house did not have enough light after sunset).

And this is only my family. All our families have willingly paid, continue to pay the price for all flavors and sizes of freedoms, even bartering some other freedoms in exchange. None of us is an accident, I like to think, but a deliberate movement of history, that sentient river which hold in its depths the uneasy, sludgy, slippery, stinky muds, some of the richest fertilizers that can foster life.

Today is my day off. I have the freedom to chart it as I will. As I navigate it, I will try to remember what an expensive moment of history I am.



 

Open House

The rains are early this year, and ferocious. This spring-monsoon adds to my discombobulation, since I have felt stretched too thin these past weeks. I've added mileage to my life and car, neglecting parts of my life that have needed tending, juggling, settling, changing, cleaning, picking up and putting it all down in a different place. One of the most important parts that I've had to ignore is, of course, my writing: I've not written a single word in these past weeks, not a poem, not a story, nothing. I must confess I am feeling snarly, often tempted to spread a few hisses all around. Even as I write this, I know it is an indulgence, a sudden thunder storm that has forced me to settle on the sofa, to calm the cats.

Ever since I've moved back to my house, people have been asking me how I am settling down. Honestly, I don't know! My patient reader knows that I lost a cat in the fire and that the two surviving felines had to be well-nigh homeless for a few weeks. I am still reeling with the fallout from those two circumstances. So I don't know exactly how well I am settling down. I have been trying to reclaim my house from the cats inch by inch, with a great deal of help from the fragrance spitters and body sprays.

The fallout I referred to earlier is about some other stray or abandoned cats that my surviving cat seems to have befriended. Already, two of them have taken residence with us in the house and two more come at night to eat and visit. Sometimes, when I wander in during these visiting hours, I get a few causal hisses by way of greeting and warning. Sometimes, I have found "gifts" left by the visitors, namely dead birds, some even partially plucked. I wish I could tell the visitors to feel free to eat, but feel no obligation to leave behind gifts of any sort.

This has, of course, driven my cat food budget beyond the modest allowance granted to it, but that's not the worst. The worst has been the uneasy truce governing the space the cats share with me. We each have different views about how the space should be configured and inhabited. I have placed the fragrance spritzers at regular intervals around my spaces, which has kept the visitors and inhabitants away from my space, but also caused my older cat to feel ever more unwelcome and nervous. To remain fair, I have brought in some more cat furniture, to encourage the live-in cats to leave my perches alone and choose scratch-able, catnip infused, cat-friendly seats and perches.

I have spent weekends building cat shelters in my postage-stamp sized backyard, to give the old cat a place in my house, the old cat who is the only cat I can really call mine, in the sense that I had chosen her to live with me and who has, since, been driven out of my house by the other cats who have decided to cohabit with me. These shelters were meant to lure the old cat back, if not INSIDE the house then at least AROUND it, a safe place during thunderstorms.

However, both, the outside shelters as well as the cat furniture remain cat less and ignored. The old cat does come every time I call her because she has trained me to feed her, but she won't come in the house, nor will she stay. The live-in cats give my fragrance spritzed spaces a wide berth, but also ignore the perches I want them to use.  Of course, I love the cat snuggling between the back of my knees and the back-rest of the couch; after all, I HAVE been trained and conditioned well.

The first wave of thunderstorms has passed and I see three cats stretched out in their preferred spots around the room. I scarf through e-bay for inexpensive cat furniture and wonder how well I am settling down in the new house. I will have family and friends visiting the house over the Summer and I wonder how the visitors and live-in felines will react to this. Hopefully, I will be trained enough not to wonder at whatever awaits for us all this Summer!