Glow-Wish

Today is supposed to be a spectacular lunar eclipse of a red, harvest moon. But there is a heavy cloud cover so this can only be enjoyed online. Facebook is busy with many pictures of a clear,velvet sky and an improbably large moon; NASA's site has many "like" hits. Today is also Ganesh Visarjan, the day when Ganesh, who had arrived in homes, on streets and in pandals is ceremoniously paraded through the city to be immersed in a river, an ocean, a lake, with loud reminders of a speedy return. It would be a holiday, since the streets would be non-navigable. The TV proclaims Dushera and Diwali celebrations through the country.

Thanks to FaceTime, I celebrated too. However, this year's holiday season makes me very nervous. I have been on dialysis for six months and I am still juggling the process, along with all its accompanying complications. Some days, I feel like a bloated watermelon because the procedure and my body refuse to let go of extra fluid; some days, I wake up exhausted, having lost 6 lbs. overnight. Exhaustion grips me so firmly that I often have no control over the sleep that overtakes me in the middle of a sentence, when I am stitching, even in the middle of a Dr. Who episode! Throwing out the garbage tires me out, so I need a nap right after. There are days on which I am amazed that I do finish my grading and lecturing. May the gods continue this situation for long!

So this holiday season makes me wonder if I can celebrate my favorite festival, Navratri, the way I have been, for over a decade now. If I have to go to work, I need to begin my dialysis rather early and that would preclude my attending the garbas at my temple. On the weekends, I might be under weather, or I might have my clinic the following morning, or perhaps a delivery of dialysis supplies, or my blood appointment. As the year dims, I fear the advancing darkness without the holidays lighting up the long evenings. So I am thinking of alternate ways of celebrating the holidays; not celebrating might cost me part of my very humanity!

Perhaps I can go to the temple on a few nights that would be followed by free mornings. I have stocked up on Tylenol in case of the melting joints thing my body sometimes does. Perhaps I can move my clinic and doctors' appointments for later in the day. I might get an iron infusion that could address the exhaustion. Even if I cannot stay for the entire night's festivities, a little light might be all I need.And I am fortunate enough to live in a time with FaceTime, Facebook, and WhatsApp so that I am always connected to those who have lighted my holidays forever.

These are the ways in which all holidays, rituals, traditions, myths, and faiths remain immortal. I know I am not alone in having to change the way I observe and celebrate. For some, these new ways become the norm and this is wonderful, a new glow in an enduring flame.

Of course, I hope that this change for me is temporary and soon, with a successful transplant, I can return to the way the holidays were. It would be a gift better than renewed youth and beauty.

Let me end this hope-note with genuine gratitude; I know I am immeasurably fortunate in living during a time that allows me to write this even though my kidneys have failed, a sure death sentence just a few decades ago. The holidays are coming and even if I am unable to light up my world with celebrations, I hope that a sure gleam guides me through this year's dimming.

Non-days and Fairy Tales

The rains began early, started as tentative pre-dawn dripping and before a few minutes had ticked, the rains pelted, the skies lit up, all kinds of cosmic drama unleashed on my sleeping town. I have been sick since then. I can't seem to get my wellness scales quite properly balanced, and the daily thunderstorms do not help. So today, I am taking the day off from the grading, from the cleaning, from the cooking, and I am giving in to the pain, the exhaustion, the sofa, and the insistence of the cat for my lap.

And to the Doctor.

Of course, today, the sun beats down and the skies are blue. It feels like a gift to look out of the window and my little back door. I make sure that the blue skies get great, grateful smiles even as I tumble through the time vortex with the TARDIS and battle the Dalek.

Years ago, a student had suggested that I watch at least one season of Dr.Who, and thankfully, I heeded the suggestion. This was a good thing because now that I have run out of Star Trek episodes the library owns, I need some more fairy tales to heal me when I feel any of a thousand ills my flesh is heir to. Yes, I could use Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and a myriad other sites that will feed me endless, current episodes from any show, but I do not have the skill or the wherewithal to learn it when my shoulders and knees are doing their melting down thing they do when they protest, I am not quite sure what. In fact, I do not have the wherewithal to do some basic dusting and laundry.

I had always said that I would write if I had two minutes to rub together. But of late, my stories break my heart. The joy of creating characters and killing them off, or marrying them off, or sending them off, or receiving them back home, seems to have dimmed. Today, I fear that my fingers might melt if I began writing, so this blog goes out as a challenge to that inevitable melting.

Today, I fear I have morphed into Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.

Today, I fear that I have been reading too many fairy tales.

Today, I wish for more time to read more fairy tales.

The irresistible thing about fairy tales is precisely that they are NOT escapist stories: "I am not running away from things, I am running to them before they flare and fade for all time," the Doctor claims. How can anyone resist such an Odyssey, especially when one may leave behind one's ornery, grumpy, disagreeable body? Today, I use the body of a 900 year old young man with two hearts to travel through infinite time and space, while my singular human heart jumps with worry that I might not be able to travel a few hundred miles to my child's graduation or visit my birthplace for years. These fairy tales give me hope that in a few days or hours, my melting, aching joints will ease and begin working; I will travel wherever and whenever I wish. After all, everything does end in happily ever after!

The cats' Buddha-like sleep faces bespeak of similar cat-tales. However, the cats are wiser than their dormant forms suggest. Even though the skies have been blue all day long, they are now crowded with mountains of black, belying any existence of the gold the sun had spilled everywhere a few minutes ago. I had wondered why the cats had chosen to nap indoors today; now I know! The doctor is right: things are never what they appear.

Once the parallax is adjusted, though, it all ends quite happily, all things considered. So one might say that today is a non-day, a day I invest in adjusting perception to balance parallax.