The Idling Wordsmith

I was scrolling down my Facebook page, as one does, often when at a loss, and I saw many people advertising their upcoming anthologies and novels. Of late, it seems to me that the world is bursting with people publishing their work.

I wonder how they manage that.

Long ago, (four years ago, actually) an Indian publisher had suggested that I write a book, their suggestion arising from one of my short stories. I thought that I had died and attained undeserving Nirvana. Fearing the chariots of time drawing ever near, I finished the book within months, full time job, failing kidneys, and graduating child notwithstanding. Every time a revision was suggested, I attacked it, conquered it, and sent back the section before suggested deadlines. I vowed to be the most agreeable, the easiest of writers anyone could dream of working with.

However, some ornery constellation stamped its feet and rather abruptly, I was told that the publisher had lost interest. No other explanation was offered. One day I had a book contract; the following day, I was anchor-less, rudder-less.

My book has been completed, revised, re-visited for years. I had tried looking for an agent and sent out about fifty letters of inquiries to various agents, my list compiled from a variety of sources (yes, including Writers & Poets!). I got nary a bite. Not A One.

And these, mind you, are agents, not publishers that I tried to approach.

Interestingly, however, whenever I have sent in sections of the book as separate stories, they have been accepted and published in magazines, no revisions asked for.

I know my work is decent, current, and fits in with what is being read. How does one jump this huge chasm between finished project and marketed product?

The person who had published my first story offered to come out with a kindle edition of my book. Of course, I have agreed. However, that constellation is still ornery, and of late, my queries are ignored. I wonder about the value that these two experiences are supposed to convey to me, but I remain at a loss. It definitely does not hearten me to know that Moby Dick was rejected 75 times.

 I have read hundreds of blogs and articles on composing the perfect query letter, choosing the right literary agencies, paying attention to the kind of material on the market, and followed a myriad of other advice. I have tried many variants and forms of query letters. I pay attention to agents that represent writers I like and whose topics match mine. These pieces of wisdom and logic assure me that agents are interested in accepting and marketing my work; after all, that is how they make money.

Perhaps then, the ones I tried are independently rich.

Perhaps I need to be independently rich and self-advertise, self-market, self-publish, self-sell, and self-buy. After all, I write for myself, not anyone else! Alas, my rather ordinary and modest circumstances, combined with my total and complete cluelessness about this process will allow no such indulgence.

My writer friend and I have agreed that it is time for us to find a proper agent for our finished projects. Of course, we have no idea how to land one. On Facebook, I see thousands of prompts that promise to stir the Muse. Many articles offer advice about how to keep writing, the importance of it. There are suggestions about places an aspiring wordsmith could disappear to, places as impossibly beautiful as a poem from a star.

I don’t think that these articles understand: I write and will continue to write because I have no choices. Inspiration is not my problem. I do not need an ivory tower to write; my sofa is quite adequate. Finishing projects is not my problem. Accepting criticism and fixing bleeding paragraphs is also not my problem, and neither is respecting deadlines.  

If only I had a spell that moved constellations! If my patient reader commands such a spell . . . However, I realize that it would be asking for much too much to share it, like asking to spare an internal organ. I do not command the words that could frame such a thing properly.

This post goes out in hopes that it will stir the stubborn stars; perhaps, lounging and floating Vishnu-like on the Milky-Way, they might read this to idle an hour by and deign to twinkle kindly.

My 40-Hour Week

I was full time faculty, and I was tired, if I were to be completely honest. I could have conducted all that I taught without being fully awake, as though an automaton, and that was the best part of the day. Then there were the endless, pointless tasks and processes that departmental assistants and secretaries used to see to, that were suddenly my job. I have not even begun to mention the interminable grading, which made Sisyphus’ rock rolling seem like a picnic. My schedule changed every several weeks, and I’d have days off that coincided with no one else’s, during which I would watch television or haunt my house as though a ghost. No one else had time off in late September for a week and I would be too exhausted to do much. Yes, being full time faculty can be exhausting, even though work-week seems to be only 25 hours long. I worked non-stop, almost 60-hour weeks, but since I did most of that work at home, it did not “count.”

 I thought that was my lot in life; things could never change.I had been faculty almost all my working life until I was RIFed from my last faculty position and decided to walk out of the classroom. Even though I soul-searched extensively and it took me a long time, I have ended up not too far from the classroom: I coordinate a writing center.

However, my insistence on trotting away from the classroom has demanded many changes, so many, in fact, that my internal compasses are different, with unfamiliar directions and strange needles. I navigate by different constellations and I cannot even imagine the nature and composition of my new horizons.

If someone were to ask me what my daily duties are, I’d not have a clear answer. I coordinate. This means that I do whatever needs to be done, and that is a surprisingly large range. I began without any training, without a clue about what was expected from me, with no idea about how to do my job, let alone how to do it well. I had had no management training, did not know how to balance a budget, create a schedule from scratch, oversee staff, or how to troubleshoot or navigate online lab platforms. Even this LMS was not familiar to me. The only thing I really understood properly was the curriculum around which the writing center revolves.

It turns out that is anchor enough as the world whirled and stood on its axis. One of my major navigational tools is Excel, something my old self had steered clear of. In my old job, I had needed just a little screen to explore the world and sculpt it into material for class; now, I cannot work without my double screened computer, and yet the material resists sculpting. As faculty, I had despaired of meaningless paperwork and forms; now, I create forms and document meticulously. As faculty, I used to feel much put upon when asked to generate reports; now, I seek out training that would help me mine and analyze substantial chunks of data. As faculty, I had felt isolated on my side of the desk and had considered myself apart from the people I spent most of my work day with, students. Now, I work on team building exercises and conduct regular meetings to be as much a part of my staff and colleagues as I can. My 25-hour week used to cling on, follow me home, and eat into weekends and evenings, especially during exams; now, my 40-hour week, though tiring, ends when I leave my office. Now, exam weeks are the best, since most of the work of the semester is done and things begin to slow down. As faculty, I sought out creative ways of presenting the same material; now, I seek out recognizable formats for ever-changing information, for precedents that reassure.

Even the very rhythm of my work-seasons is different. The time between semesters, in my old life, was a time to reflect, calm down, gather threads and reweave. Now, the time between semesters is fraught with furious activity, as I race to organize over a hundred class orientations, update orientation folders to adjust to changes in online labs, juggle ever-changing requests for schedule changes, and see to a myriad of other tasks before the semester begins.

I do miss my students a great deal; I do miss talking about timeless stories and the many ways they can be interpreted; I do miss students discovering the beauty of the written word; I do miss treading well-loved, well-worn paths. I feel that I have aged suddenly and aged far; constant contact with the young had kept me believing in my own youth. Being a manager of sorts, on the other hand, does make one the grown-up. As faculty, one might be a figure of authority, but it is not a managerial position. Now, even though I have my office, I feel more like a juggler than a person with any authority.

All things considered, however, my office has grown on me. I have begun to slice and stash things into tables and sheets. Most importantly, I am learning to decode implications when anyone speaks to me. I am more aware that all conversation has a context, a subtext, and an agenda. This is changing the way I write my characters and what they say, when I indulge in my first love, writing stories.  

I am told that this job gets easier after a couple of years. That is my hope, to find a terra firma beneath my feet, so that these paths also feel well-trod to my hesitant steps. It is rare that one gets a chance to be reinvented in the exact middle of one’s expected life-time.

 It is my hope that this overhauling will assure me that there have been less roads not taken when, at last, I consider how my light is spent.

Tornado Skies, Rainbow Weather

We had “bad” rains a couple of days ago, deluges that streamed down from an invisible, grey heaven, spreading floods and fear. This went on for days, which felt more like a punishment than a benediction. The air remained damp and cool. The sun remained a memory of warmth; the constant, insistent downpours conquered all, spoke above all conversations and TV shows, and turned the world into that indescribable color, that silver-grey-white. Visibility was low and we all hunkered down in cars and rooms in isolated bubbles, convinced that our range of visibility, our ten-foot radius was all that remained of the world. The unthinkable happened when malls were closed for flooding. Cars, branches, and other paraphernalia of a dry, logical world floated around, defunct, wet and lost, unable to find a use or definition.

We did not venture out unless forced. We cautioned each other on Facebook to stay in, stay dry, stay safe. My fingers and knees complained and the cats whined. Had the sun not shone when it did, we all would have begun to climb the walls in sheer cabin fever. We shudder at the memory.

We ran out of staples, of milk, bread, and eggs, but put off going out. We reminded ourselves to replenish our stock of batteries and water; we tallied our bank accounts to see if this is the year we’d get a generator (perhaps next year!). We dined on canned soup and canned beans and relished the hot water of our showers. The grocery list on our fridge began to fatten with perishables that could weather well. The sight of the empty peanut-butter jar began to cause discomfort. It was June; why didn’t we have our stock of crackers and sterno stoves? We stared wide-eyed at each other: how was this possible? Had we not just begun to get used to writing 2017 in our dates? How could half the year be gone?

Our TV’s, when they worked, were locked in at local weather stations; no other news mattered until the torrents stopped. We followed each shade of severity as the TV screen followed the storms moving inland and away, anchored our gaze on the point where we imagined we were. We stopped stitching and turned the burners on low when the weather was updated on top of the hour, and we listened. Our worried gaze sometimes shifted to the skies and we saw that green tinge that marks illogically heavy storms. We gasp when we hear that a tornado was observed in our zip code. Surely, the apocalypse must feel like this!

It is after June 1. Seasonal visitors have left for calmer latitudes. Here, where I write this, the hurricane season has begun and Sunshine State becomes a misnomer. It is one of my favorite times of the year. Perhaps it is the cathartic rains, the seriously blooming verdure, the shortened commute to and from work, and the empty grocery stores. The closet performer in me loves the drama of the storms. I have been fortunate in calling this landscape my home for long enough to know its skies well. This is the season of daily, multiple rainbows. Somehow, it is difficult to remain morose when faced with two well-defined rainbows arching above the highway.

This same splash of color spills through the landscape. Gulmohar trees burst out in flower flames. Hydrangeas bloom in a veritable rainbow. The entire vegetative world erupts in a cornucopia of colors and textures, and everything smells freshly cleansed. People bring out their colorful attire, sporting bold hues that shy away as the year gets older. Monsoon here feels like a celebration, since the children are out of school, home from colleges, visiting with families. This season feels full of promise, like a slice of fresh watermelon sprinkled with chaat masala, best served on ice. And yes, reader, it is mango season! This season is rich in color and flavor, and the rest of the year seems pale in compare.

The torrents have stopped for now. It still rains everyday, but there is no cosmic drama the skies indulge in. Of course, I pray that we are spared from a hurricane, even if it by the skin of our teeth. It is not the devastating aftermaths of hurricanes that I enjoy. But I find it difficult to resist the silvery shade of a rainy day in a season filled with blinding color and heat.

This weekend, I shall prepare my home for tornadoes, and I shall try not to miss any rainbows that are all part of this prothalmion of a season. 

Endings and Beginnings

I cannot think of a better day to begin writing on my blog than today; today is Akha Teej, the auspicious day of beginnings, one of the four holy days of the Hindu calendar.  So let me begin by wishing my readers good beginnings in all they start today!

It has been four months since I began my “new” job. Followers of this space might remember that I was heart-broken at losing my previous job of 17 years. Actually, I was so heart-broken, that I stopped looking for full-time faculty positions altogether. The one I’d lost was the perfect faculty job, I had done it well, and I was fortunate enough to lose it before it soured or got old. I had my perfect job, and I had enjoyed it for over a decade and half. I remain grateful, and yes, Reader, a part of my heart still yearns for it. I fear it always will.

Now, I coordinate the Writing Center at one of the campuses of my county’s college. It is a job that demands completely separate skill sets than the ones I had been using all my adult life. Much to my surprise and delight, I am loving it! I never expected to be happy as a manager of sorts, but I learn something new every day, and another piece of a large puzzle falls in place, giving me a whole new perspective on the landscape of an educational institution, a landscape I’d thought I knew well, too well. I have also taught at this college briefly and now that I see this side of process, I will never be the same again.

Yes, clocking in 40 hours a week feels just as strange as not having to work at home, both to me and my feline roommates. But it is growing on us. I knew that in an alternate life, I’d be running a Writing Center; now I really am doing it! Of course, my vision for a Writing Center was very different from this very real one. But as days go by, this vision becomes more focused, more possible. One day, the gods willing, I will have the Writing Center of my imagination. Of course, a lot of credit for my loving my new job goes to the people I work with, my supervisors, colleagues, and staff, who are all warm and helpful. Besides that, however, the work itself is new and challenging.

I did not mean to only sing accolades to my two jobs, though this entry seems to primarily do that. I hope that my Reader takes heart from my story; if something that seems apocalyptic happens and everything ends, there is still the grain of the coming morrow contained within; one only has to believe in the inexorability of the heartbeat and breath. They keep rhythm with the march towards future seasons.

According to Hindu myth, today, one of the seven immortals, Ved Vyas began The Mahabharata. I want to keep the messages it embodies in my mind today. I want to be courageous enough one day to be able to trust in the impermanent, malleable nature of all realities, and still recognize the grain of a beginning in all endings. I have written from the perspective of Satyavati, Ved Vyas’ mother, and I will keep her ability to adapt and her insistence on sculpting the ways in which she adapts.

And no matter how frightening it is, I will be brave enough to put one foot in front of the other and trust the Earth to hold it steady.

Ellipses

When I lost my job last month, I had imagined that I would be able to blog and write to my heart's content; after all, it's not as though I have a real job to get to! However, I find that I have less time now than I did when I was full time. I spend my time trying to plug the gaping holes in my life that have suddenly yawned open, and I can smell the threat of destitution swelling and ebbing. I spend a great deal of time praying that the band-aid plugs hold for longer than I expect.

Some of my very good friends tell me that I should take this time to finish my book, that it is a gift from the Universe, a sure sign. I am very grateful for the comforting thought, but my book is finished, has been for a couple of years. I don't know how to work on it since I am too close to it and don't have an editor or anyone to advise or suggest. So touching that project is out of question for now. I continue to write stories and try to get them out; some of them are even accepted and nothing else helps like those. At any rate, my writing is a necessity and not contingent upon the amount of free time I have.

There is another activity that eats up my time, staring out of windows and worrying about all the big and small things that are now different. I stare outside the window with the cats and watch the leaves, worrying as the sky darkens and the rain begins. Staring into the internet window is a different kind of worrying: I scroll and apply most assiduously for all full time jobs that I am capable of. I worry that I am not visible to these jobs. I know what my perfect job looks like, and I think that I glimpse it often from the corner of my eye. However, the right constellations have wheeled away, some bridge has broken down, there is a cosmic disconnect somewhere, and it remains out of clear, direct sight.

Weekends are the worst. During the week, as I make phone calls, apply, grade papers, organize and prioritize, I have the illusion of doing something, somehow progressing. But on weekends, the world naps and I am at a loss. During my lowest times, I fear I have turned into a citizen of Eliot's Unreal City, of Wasteland; how could I have, when did I allow such a large part of my self be dependent on my job? By now, I should have begun to feel the relief of less responsibility. Granted, I am teaching part time at the same place, but I am teaching only the courses I have written and created from ground up; this situation should feel like a wonderful thing! And I must confess to enjoying the time in the classroom; yet it is tinged with the awareness that the institution and I owe no fealty to each other any longer, that our tomorrows are irretrievably severed, and as time goes by, these classes, these classrooms will only move farther away and finally set below my horizons.

I suppose what I miss the most, besides the obvious benefits that accompany the friendship of an institution, then, is belonging to an institution. There is so much comfort in owning a place of work as one's own; I would argue that it is as imperative to being meaningfully alive as having a room of one's own. It feels like one belongs to a wider circle of reference, and since the circle is wider, one will be well taken care of. This circle of reference provides a temenos and we all need firm land beneath our feet. This awareness of a temenos is what is liberating, not all these oodles and oodles of undefined hours. What I have right now is not free time; this is chthonic time. It does not belong to any earthly concern.

If my life were a research paper, this time would be indicated by ellipses enclosed in square brackets; not relevant to what came before or after.

July is almost done. Soon, the festivals will begin. The year wheels on and when I blink again, it might well be December. However, the Upanishads, one of my major touchstones, claim that there are forests of eternity contained between eye-blinks. This post goes out in hope that the eye-blinks wheel my world towards a belonging that brightens the horizons and puts my feet back on terra firma. 

Of Providence and Sparrows

It has been a week since my job veered away from me. There is a long weekend before I can become an official adjunct at the same place. It all feels like a century has whirled by since the time I was a full time employee, safe beneath a spreading shade of that status. I have been still, stunned, but the world around me has been spinning at twice its speed, and yet, I have perceived it like never before; that amazement is the reason why this week feels like a hundred years have passed.

Hemingway claims that courage is grace under pressure. I love imagining scenarios, and before last week, I had always imagined that I would be collected, graceful, and dignified, should a lay-off ever happen to me. This imagined self was more like a penny-dreadful heroine than a normal person. I would make cosmic, grand gestures and exit so that no one ever forgets and I'd leave behind a world that is more grey. However, no such thing happened when I was actually laid off. I don't remember much of it, mainly the disbelief, punctuated with spasms of devastation and panic. And I am going back next week, which makes me a little more nervous than I'd like to admit.

And then there was the desperate scrounging. I know that logically, I should have taken this week off, gone hiking, found a lake to build a cabin by, examined my place in the larger universe. I did no such thing; instead, I raced down cyber highways in search of a perfect place to apply for a job. I explored e-alleyways and e-market-squares alike, as though I were one of those Pac-Man mouth-figures of ancient video games, hungry for every imagined and real position, casting a ravenous eye on every ad that popped up, wondering at the full-time jobs that had birthed it. I wanted to strew the best pieces of myself all over the world, so that a job, just casually passing by, might notice something shiny and pick it, me up. I'd fallen off a carousel; it seemed unfair that I could still hear its music and watch the riders laugh.

I had many well-wishers at this time. People had many bits of advice: I should move to California, to Florence, to London (I can't! I live with cats!); I should completely reinvent myself and use my retirement nest egg to begin a business of my own (I can't! What if I run it to the ground?); and my favorite, I should write a best-seller, a la J. K. Rowling! The last one affected me enough to send me scuttling down the internet and I wasted a whole half hour Googling literary agents before giving myself a stern talking to, to get-a-grip-for-gods'-sake!

Finally, there is this incomprehension, this inability to do or grasp . Everywhere I e-went, I could see busy, busy words fluttering, about the best business practices, the latest skills and where to get them, how innovative motivation defeated the status quo,  what people felt about their full-time jobs, what these full-time jobs felt about the people working them, erudite reaction pieces to current events, everywhere, employers, employees and jobs, trending, tweeting. I often felt dizzy and cold as my fingers, helpless in their feverish scrolling scrambled around, trying to find a perch. It is no wonder that things that flit and flutter are not granted the quiet of long lives.

A lot of people have told me that this lay-off could be a blessing in disguise. If it is, it is well-disguised. I grant that it might be my myopia, but I can discern no special Providence in this flight of sparrows.

If I were writing a short story around what is happening to me, it'd be a caricature, and had I the skill, I'd illustrate it with single-dimensional stick figures, like paper dolls, blank on the back. Unfortunately, the desperation and rejection are all too real. I do see genuine sympathy and concern in the eyes of my family and friends, but like the rest of humanity, I would prefer to see admiration and envy instead.

Of course, I know that this season of my discontent will pass, like the monsoon. However, before it does, I seek the solace of the written word, to validate this spell I am living through. I take heart and think of the fairy tale of Brier Rose, or Sleeping Beauty: the stew remains unseasoned, the chicken un-plucked, the flies un-swatted for a hundred years as the princess sleeps; however, she does awake, and with a slap, a cluck, a splash, life returns.

This post goes out in hopes that this bleak century may be dreamed away, and that thorns and briers remember to bloom into flowers. After all, I must believe what I preach: life is exactly like a fairy tale!

Best Laid Plans . . .

I am soiled by the touch of a taboo, the unmentionable, the shameful: I have been laid off. This is a condition that causes people to veer away, lest the spoilage should seep into their lives; sometimes, I get a lot of pitying looks and some people just look through me. My friends and family look at me with helplessness, unable to do anything. But how can they? If I cannot help my situation, what can the ones who love me do?

I should not be surprised, though. There is the obvious fact that over half of the company's workforce has been laid off. However, some people DO remain; this inevitably leads me to sense that something HAD to be lacking in the way I worked because I was chosen over someone else, not that I wish my friends and colleagues had been laid off instead of me. I would not wish this condition on my enemy, had I an enemy. 

However, no matter how one cuts it, no matter the platitudes one feeds oneself, it feels like a betrayal and no matter what anyone says, it feels personal. 

I wish that there were some dignity to this process; I wish it didn't feel like a limb cut off; but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride! So I will stop wishing. After all, I AM grateful for the nurturing I have enjoyed here for over a decade and half. I love my job and I am going back part time (Reader, I accepted!). 

People ask me if I am angry and bitter. I have been examining my feelings and I must confess, I am sad and worried, but I can find no anger or bitterness. My friend asked me what was worse, my house burning down in 2011 or this lay off. I was flummoxed and couldn't really choose. But my child, my rock and my rainbow reminded me that this lay off is not as bad as the house burning, which left us bereft in unimaginable ways since we lost most of our worldly possessions and a feline friend to it. Comparatively, I have not yet lost my worldly possessions, and the recent loss of my feline friend is not connected to this lay off, I don't think, unless it is the movement of the spheres that lacks harmony. 

Perhaps that's what it is, a fault of my stars! I have noticed that every five years, the earth shifts away from beneath my feet and I have to figure things out all over again, emerge from great losses. Even though this loss is not on the same magnitude as the fire, it is no small thing: this job has given me definition, friends, a personal philosophy, and joy; I shall always be grateful for having it. I bought my home, my car, and my child's education with it. I wish joy to all who remain with it. 

I know I will never get this job back, no matter what shifts the spheres make. But when I dream, I forget it is no longer with me; in my dream, I wake up from this loss with relief, like I have many times these past years as I have seen the institution dwindle. 

I do not know what awaits me; this is the hardest part of this condition, the uncertainty. Whatever comes after this, I will see it through the screen of the job that needs me no more. I understand that my job has shifted away and I know that a separate path is already beneath my feet; yet I cannot really tread on it, since my heart still looks back and yearns.

Perhaps one day,  I will stop mourning for the job; perhaps one day, my missing limb will stop hurting; perhaps one day, I will redeem myself and will be tabooed no more. This post goes out with that hope. 

One-for-Sorrow, Two-for-Joy

The other day, I blessed a couple of deities.

 It had been that sort of a day. It was overcast and even though I drove for over an hour each way, I could not find a couple birds I could find comfort in ("One for Sorrow, Two for Joy," you know). My poor sick dying cat has left my house, startled by my house cleaner and hasn't returned, despite my desperate calling. In the story I am writing, a storm had threatened, but since the story follows a snake's perspective, I was still unsure of what a storm would mean to a snake.

And I opened my computer for the day to the horror of the Orlando Shooting. Usually, I do not follow news and if I do, I am very good at not being affected, not letting it touch any of my inner realities. But somehow, the Orlando Shooting is different; I have been feeling the need to mourn, to weep copiously, I remember trying not to notice solitary birds, like faulty punctuation against a grey sky, trying not to wonder at the sorrows that make the world so incomprehensible.

Reports of senseless terrors and violence does that; they render the world incomprehensible. Such violence shakes the very foundations of the reality we are so confident of. There are more people at casinos, more people at restaurants and the movies, for what is the point of saving up for a mirage of tomorrows? How do I keep these reports from shaking my inner worlds? I find that I have to dig deep and expend a great deal of energy to feel actively angry with people who I imagined have wronged me. I cannot imagine the kind of all-pervasive hatred against an entire group of people one doesn't know, and the amount of energy required to fuel that, an anger so huge that it would make a person commit to an act of terror so monstrous that no civilized living being would own it as natural.

They say that rage hurts the person who feels it most. I wonder, then, that I still agonize over this rage that is not mine in any form or way, that I have not felt, that is so alien that I neither condone nor condemn it. All day, I had a toad in my throat I could not swallow. At the end of this day, I was exhausted by too much feeling and my insistence on letting the day be as normal as could be. I wasn't even sure what I was mourning, After all, I know none of the people involved in the tragedy even tangentially.

Then, I suspected that it had a lot to do with my missing feline friend. I remember thinking that in a world where such senseless violence is allowed to happen, what horrors may the malevolent act out on a sick, defenseless animal?

At the end of this unending day, I sat in my room, waiting for the dialysis machine to finish priming. Somehow, I must have clicked my Pinterest and suddenly, like Wordsworth's daffodils, I saw a Raagmala print of Krishna and Radha facing each other in a dark forest of flowers, with rain clouds gathering above. The sheer power of the print, the open joy on faces, the At-Last look in the deities' eyes, the colors, all of it stabbed me with the beauty of living. Here, at last, were my Two-for-Joy! And in an arrogance of gratitude, I blessed the deities, may the gods forgive me!

Why should one try to comprehend the world, after all? If there is unimaginable ugliness and terror, like the Orlando Shooting, there is also indescribable beauty and divine harmony. One only needs
to look around for the miracle of people getting on with each other normally and ordinarily, which makes acts of terror abnormal and extraordinary. We should keep those extraordinary; we should never accept them as some kind of a norm, or part of life; we should remain angry with monsters.

This post goes out in hope that we all work hard to remember the harmony of getting along rather than senseless acts of hatred. Let us all remember the fragrance of the earth and the beauty of love that only sharpens when pitted against thunder clouds, and that the skies keep changing.

Other Worlds

My good friend and reading buddy blogged about her memories of Paris in this post. It is logical for all of us to have Paris in our thoughts, as the city is flooded. The internet is full of picturesque scenes of the city's monuments surrounded by mirror-like still waters, which reflect the scene as though it were an alternate reality, an underworld, a city towering low down into submerged depths to unimaginable worlds.

I must confess, even though I have a great deal of fondness for books set in Paris, this is not my favorite city in the world. I feel little kinship with its beautiful cobbled streets and the Seine. I have visited the city more than once and have always felt like a visitor. However, today, I feel a yearning to visit it. I long for the quiet days meandering through the Louvre (I deliberately forget the long lines to get in and the forever crowds, no matter the day or hour); I long to stand in the navel of the world, beneath the Rose window of Notre Dame (again, I am not going to mention the perennial crowds); I long to get lost in Shakespeare and Company, one of my favorite places in the world.

So yes, I do miss the cafes, the flower pots hanging on terrace grills, the soft consonants and curling vowels mingling with my excellent morning coffee, warm bread and some of the best cheese I have ever tasted. The used book-kiosks along the Seine were wonderful places to waste the day away and afforded a nice view of the opposite river bank, with the ubiquitous kissing couples. I remember wanting a caricature sketched, but the footpath artist at Mont Martre quoted a price that I could only stare at. Now, I think the next time I visit, I would bargain.

And undoubtedly, there will be a next time. I cannot imagine not going. My kidney disease has me tethered to this city, the city I write this from, allowing nothing longer than day-trips. But surely, this is a temporary state of affairs? How can I be bound to a single locale? I was not made for that; I was made to walk down cobbled-roads that are ancient and not mine; I was made to touch millennium-old wooden doors, hard and smooth as stone, and rub my forehead on them. I was made to ask for coffee and bread in strange languages. I was made to weep at the beauty of history and the relics that take my breath away.

My friend's post reminds us all that the rains will come for us all. I want to remember the cities and towns of the world after the rains, colored in sparkles and rainbows, redolent with the fragrance of all things wet and fresh. I want to remember the world before the rains, dry as dust on stone, stubborn against an unforgiving sky, smelling of heat and parching.

I cannot imagine the cruelty of an imposed home, a stagnant existence; that is not living! The kindness and love of a home can only be felt upon a return from other lands. Staple fare tastes best after a wandering through the moveable feasts of the world.

This post goes out in hopes that the still waters will recede, taking the strange underworlds with them, leaving the well-loved, well-remembered cities renewed and recognizable, to enable many happy returns. 

Better Failures

My cat has been diagnosed with kidney failure: she is condemned to die the death I have refused. The first time I heard this, I could not really believe it. It sank in slowly over the past couple of weeks. Every day I see my feline friend of fourteen years grow thin, then ever thinner. She usually curls at the foot of the stove and sleeps. There used to be a little space behind the stove, next to the water heater, a little crawl-in, just right for a small grey house cat to blend snugly into. This "fault" was fixed when the house was re-built after the fire. Now, the tired cat curls up next to the remembered space; I am not the only one who suffers from a palimpsest- double-vision wherein I cannot tell between memory and reality. The fatigue I see her give in to helplessly is the same from before I began dialysis. The bone-sickness, the lack of will to get up, the need for the endless nap: I remember those well. At the time, I had believed that I would not see the seasons turn or my child graduate from college. This was not a doubt or a passing melancholic thought or even a crushing disappointment. It was a fact; I didn't particularly like it, but it was undeniable. I see the same dawning in the cat's eyes.

She lays her head on my sternum to better feel my heart when I pick her up. She stays a moment while I try to make the same sounds I used to make to her when she was a frightened kitten. But she tolerates this for no longer than a moment and not very frequently.

I keep the food within her reach and slip some ice chips into her water: she laps it up greedily. I remember that unquenchable thirst as well.

Death will not be denied, it seems. There is to be no dialysis for my poor friend. With her, I feel that a part of me is dying. I try to live more when I am not with her, and I am with her for only a few minutes a day on weekdays, no more than an hour when I am home. Of late, however, cramps have kept me from walking without limping and my enlarged abdomen never lets me forget that I need to sit down as soon as possible. These, of course, are small discomforts compared to the dimming the cat is being subject to.

As though in sympathy with this dimming, I find myself unable to write.

This frightens me more than the prospect of an imminent ceasing to be ever did. After all, my child has graduated and there are enough people I would leave behind who would ensure that no disasters strike. I am not really needed in any integral way, and the sum of my life has not been so extraordinary that there can be any deep, unhealed mourning of things left undone.

But that is a physical death. The kind I see facing me is worse: it is a loss of self that goes beyond a physical death. I cannot let it overtake me; I cannot imagine the consequences that would follow! This inability is not as simple as lacking inspiration, or not knowing what to write; I am constantly spinning in my head. In a way, it feels almost organic rather than lack of time or material.

I had set out to learn to Read Literature so that I may be better equipped to tell the stories I must tell. Inevitably, I feel as though I have failed in this.

So this post goes out with the hope that these words will lead to others, that a few more stories get exorcised before I feel my own dimming, that this time, like Beckett suggests, I fail better than before, that I can notch these new failures on the wrinkles of my face.

For I do not like the dimming and every wrinkle is a battle scar won against it.

Quest for Purgatory

My friend has been caught up in visions of Purgatory, a concept I've always had a hard time with. My patient reader knows that I am a practicing Hindu and even though we have layers of heavens and infernos, we do not have a purgatory; the very idea seems pointless from the perspective of a system of belief that revolves around reincarnation. After all, purging suggests subtraction of sorts and energy cannot be subtracted. The very thought of all souls leaning towards a singular direction makes me uncomfortable. The universe must be balanced, after all!

I have Read Literature and I am familiar with Dante and other stories of Purgatory. I understand the concept if I consider a monotheistic world; it would make sense that ALL souls have the propensity for being all good in that world. I have seen people inducing suffering on their flesh to "burn" away their indulgences and become worthy of Purgatory. In extreme cases, I have heard and read of people choosing a violent, unnatural death to directly attain Paradise, by-passing Purgatory by burning off all sins in a final conflagration of unimaginable pain that devours the very living body.

I am not convinced. I still have to squint to glimpse Purgatory. What makes most sense to me is that life itself is a place of learning and catharsis. After all, all the burning and punishments I have read about seem to be of a physical nature. People burdened by stones, people busily running around nowhere, people walking through fire, all of these seem to punish the physical body. Surely perils of the soul are different? If the soul is being purged of the faults it has paid for in hell, then surely, the purging should involve the spirit? Perhaps the prayers at the end of each circle of Purgatory are enough?

I do not have a Virgil to guide me, Also, I am not sure that I want to travel that rocky way.

However one believes, all of us are fascinated with the afterlife, sometimes more so than we are in love with being alive. My friend is not alone in her preoccupation about the afterlife. What bothers me the most about these visions, whether it is the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Greek Underworld, or Dante's song, is that they all seem to be built on the terrain of misgiving. A lot of one's moral compass, then, is driven by fear of afterlife than by an unclouded awareness of right and wrong. How can those choices, impelled as they are by apprehension of punishment or expectation of reward, be proper or clear?

If I leave Dante behind and fast forward to the 20th century and its love affair with the apocalyptic and the post-apocalyptic, I have Sartre, who suggests a completely different kind of terror and hell: of a flower speaking and of other people!

 Perhaps Camus' Sisyphus presents the most comforting of all landscapes of afterlife.

I prefer my forests of between eye-blinks, of confused gods and wise demons, arrogant demons and graceful gods, of jatiswaram animals, who remember their past lives and clueless, ambitious humans, a world in which trees and stones are worthy of worship and evil is a matter of perspective, and all the time knowing that it is all part of someone else's dream. Even though there are several layers of infernos where souls that choose malice and harm are punished, they are punished only until their horde of faults is exhausted. After that, they do earn their time in one of the layers of heavens, depending on their horde of merit. There is no in-between land of purging as the premise is that the soul itself needs no purification; it IS pure energy. The only real sin is connected with self-awareness of the living; it is ignorance and the soul fixes that by exploring life from a variety of perspectives through lifetimes. At the end of each lifetime, the hollow body is the entity that is burned without suffering. The ashes immersed in water help with the further journey of the soul.

I guess what I, my friend, and the rest of humanity search for in stories of afterlife is some sort of comfort. Mine, I find, lies in the prospect of chances varied enough to learn all I need to by delving into Life itself. Perhaps it will not bring me any closer to the divine; but then perhaps that is not the point at all.

Perhaps the divine is not to be sought without or after, but like the monstrous, It too resides within and now.

Long Story, Short Nights

The nights have turned dark, wet, and cold. Appropriately enough, I have been going through a few Dickens, in keeping with the bleak season. However, unlike expected, I have been enjoying myself immensely. I had forgotten the familiar joys of texts connected with my youth.

I began with A Tale of Two Cities, and I remembered how half our class was half in love with Sydney Carton, the Byronic non-hero of the tale. I loved revisiting the shadows of the London streets, shuddered deliciously at the clacking needles of Mme. Defarge, and despaired over the macabre Carmagnole. I remembered that I loved Dickens for the very reason that he is hated: the extra words. I enjoy those words because of the wealth of detail and humor that reside in them, and this time around, I was in no hurry to finish the book and begin analyzing themes. At the same time, the story remembered me as a young girl. A most wonderful mirror!

The other two, Great Expectations and Hard Times, seem like a reflection of all that is broken in the world of education. Mr. Gradgrind of Hard Times insists on FACTS and children today are taught to the acronym of that very idea, standardized tests. I, too, too often find myself rushing through material because of time constraints, and too often, the enormity of all that needs to be taught just defeats me and I wonder if there is anything wrong with teaching just facts.

These cold days rob me of the wherewithal to do much and I find my sleep rhythms out of sync. My disease bloats me too full at nights so I can barely breathe and I dream through the days, not always sure if I am awake. Through this chthonic time, the old texts of my youth keep anchor and compass, and even if I cannot always remember the state of my wakefulness, I remember the part of the story  that holds me.

I have always known that the written word would save me. Here, in this cold season, I find yet another way to light up my darkened path with it. I shall trust the well-told tales; after all, they are older and wiser.

Her Chariot on the Horizon

Tomorrow, Navratri begins: nine nights of celebrating the Goddess. It has always been my favorite of all festivals. Nothing gets my Gujarati blood going like a velvet full moon night, bright with promise of garba, and when the first dhol sounds, my feet fly away from my will. I love going for garba, sought it out wherever the roundel formed and only the dying music would stop my whirling.

Of course, the past couple of years has seen my body giving way to my kidney disease and even though I did not miss any more nights of garba than I absolutely had to, I could not dance a lot. I had to sit on the sidelines, watching people more fit give in to the music. I loved that too. There is no feeling better than being at garba.

This year, however, I will not be able to attend for more than a night or two, at the most. My dialysis needs 8 to 10 hours and if I have to reach work the following morning on time, I have to start my treatments before the garbas begin. I plan to go to the temple earlier in the evening and just bow to the Goddess, tell her that I would miss Her and that I'd be thinking of Her.

I can't stop thinking of Her, actually. All year, I would do enough cardio exercises, just so I could dance the garba. I went through Navratri days as though someone had switched on a light deep within me; I glowed and people thought I was in love.  My name for my daughter is no accident: I named her for the Goddess. There are times when I believe that the Goddess did descend within my daughter, especially when I see her insisting on her rights, fighting for what she thinks is fair. My child loved Navratri too. I would buy the pass to go for the large garba sponsored by IRCC, and loved every minute of it. One year, my child, who was in highschool, gathered her few friends and I bundled them into my car and took them dancing till dinner was served after aarti, after 2am. It remains one of my fondest memories of Navratri.

Tonight, I am working on calming myself: after all, I cannot attend the festivities this year, so I should not feel excited at the prospect. However, I cannot help it. I went through the day today, smelling sugar; I almost bought some incense; I stopped myself from a mental inventory of my chanya choli, the odhni scarves that might need ironing, my favorite earrings and bindis waiting since last year in the drawer. But then, I see the dialysis machine waiting on top of the drawer, patiently waiting for me to remember it, and I have to laugh.

I have had so many wonderful Navratri memories that I do not resent having to sit out a year or so. I wish that my child would find a roundel to whirl in during these magical nights, to unleash the Gujju that lurks in her. I know that she is very far and I can no longer see her whirling with unconscious grace, with her unique steps and dips.

Tomorrow, when I go to the Goddess, I will remember to ask her blessing for my child and grant her a roundel all her own, so that years from now, if her body cannot whirl any more, she remembers this year's magic and it warms her darkening year. 

Three Mahabharat Poems

Once, I had a book contract: six stories that followed perspective of six women characters from Hindu Mythology (Sita, Radha, Shikhandi / Amba, Anasuya, Shakuntala, and Satyavati). This contract was triggered by my story, "I, Sita," which was published with Freedom Fiction Journal. I worked, re-worked, and revised all six stories, tried to meet expectations of editors across oceans. My efforts, however, fell short: the editors dropped my project, claiming that they did not have the editorial support my stories needed. It took me months to acknowledge that my work of over two years has come to naught.

I now have six well-dressed characters, waiting; I watch them sitting around on my desktop, adjusting their clothing, glancing questioningly around, and I wish I could apologize. They no longer have anywhere to go. How do I tell them? These six characters are very strong women: diplomats, queens, warriors, lovers, yogis, all ferocious, two attained apotheosis, one even re-born as a man to exact her revenge. I, their messenger of ill-tidings, would not be allowed to exist in the same room as any of them. Whatever will they say? What will they do to me when they hear? Do I even have language to phrase what I must tell them?

Well-wishers and friends keep asking after the book contract; how far has it gone? When is the book being released? My head hangs even lower at these inquiries. A lot of  people had promised to be the first to buy a book such as the one I was working on. How do I bring them to where my characters await?

I do not resent the work, of course. I'd do it all over again, and gladly. It was a labor of love. I learned a great deal, both about the myths and the way I write. I am not the same. Perhaps that is enough. After all, in the final analysis, I wrote mainly for myself. The one person who truly enjoyed the stories has been me; I wonder at my whining!

Let me remind myself: I do have a few poems published. Here are a couple of poems. They are included in Swaranrekha, an anthology of poets from the Indian Subcontinent. Perhaps these voices will give heart to me and my muted characters.

I.

Gandhari Explains

My sons number in hundreds, like iron fillings

Almost indistinguishable, black and hard like my chosen darkness

The birthing was difficult; I prayed for death and release

Posterity wishes I had died, rather than birth what I did

I don’t, of course. I understand their necessity;

This black age needed them to prick itself with, to corrode from within, rust, disintegrate

This knowledge brings no hope, no comfort, no wisdom, no divine insight

I find the false light intolerable, like a transparent, insincere promise

Of a maybe-paradise-after-life if certain cosmic forces are benign

If I can embody ideal of good-wife, good-mother, good-queen

But these good-women cancel each other out, contradict each other,

Pop and blink each other out of existence when they try to be

I prefer denial, the softness of the blindfold, a chosen lack

To keep the balanced universe on its toes, force some boon,

The heavy price already paid in advance, like a flexible spending account

For I have known of my sons’ nature from the time they were a glint,

A splinter of shining metal, glowing darkly in their blind father’s eyes

Which only see his lot shortened, cheated, overlooked

No deity, demon, being can force me to watch in 3-D Kodak color

The slow destruction of an era dying in my sons’ faults,

Their thousand-and-one trespasses on divine patience

All their juvenile assassination attempts laughed off as boys-being-boys

Their malicious tricks and sneers they thought I was too blind to see, shards in my breast

They were indulged when they should have been slapped silly: an expense to be paid by

This world, the golden city my oldest rules justly, if not wisely

Do you wonder why I chose this blindness now? With a

Brother like mine, Husband like mine, Sons like mine,

Would you have chosen differently?

Yet do not call me cursed! I have that

Which Kunti, even, could not coax of the gods:

My dismissed daughter that you forgot, who did not forget me

Stoic and iron-willed, surviving father, uncles, brothers, cousins, husband

After the bloody apocalypse of eighteen days, I need only her touch to bless

My forfeit of illusory sight. The divine nephew, charioteer of victors and kin-killers knows

She is the kindness the cosmos was forced to surrender to my stubborn blindness.

II.

Ganga, Unable

The light confuses me, twisting colors, weaving hues

I keep squinting, unable to focus on a single dimension

Seeing too many tenses at once, unable to hold moments singly

Unable to dwell on a penumbra to tell if it’s dawn or dusk 

I should never have left my heavenly streams

There is such peace, such uniformity in darkness beyond space

This tellurian world demands I assume a safe domesticity,

Properly befitting my gender, scholarship, ancestry, origin

I try, tried modulating gracefully in sweet tones of wifehood, queen-ship

But these cloths, though silken and pliant like my waters,

Do not fit.

They keep slithering about, like the king’s promises,

Get stuck and break apart, like dark suspicions,

Whisper severe doubts along deserted palace halls,

Remain opaque and unyielding so my fluid self is cloaked

 I sit here, at the window seat, my hands idle

The mynah on the mango tree screeches sweetly as she despoils the fruit

I must leave soon; I see the forbidden question squatting on the sunset

Unspoken as yet, but imminent, inevitable, like you, my newly conceived son 

             I only want to keep you formless within me, my taintless child, spun of waves and swords,

Like this ageless song snatched from the tenuous plundering bird;

You don’t agree and insistence on proper whittling distresses me

I am relieved when the bird flies off to desecrate other unripe fruit 

A lucid glance at my husband shocks as I rise in greeting and recognition:

For when I see the king through my variegated veil, I am unable to un-see

                               The obsequious timeworn son behind the temerarious impulsive father.

Finally, here is one of my favorites. It was posted on this page some years ago and is included in my book.

Arjun at the Swayamvar

Being best friends with the divine doesn’t help

The same old intrigue and desperations led me to this contest and fire

My arrow, though true to its mark, is fueled by mortal sinew and blood

The eye it snags spits out tissue and nerve

The whole exercise feels like a hoax, a bad deal with too-tiny small print

But the Fire Princess seems oblivious to any cosmic conspiracy

Seeing only the promise and comfort of my muscled shoulder, my twinkling glance

Admiring only the sensuous garland entwining my bronzed epithelium. 

I lower my eyes (she is shorter by a full head) to hint at my noble humility

She exchanges a quick glance with her brothers, one divine, one fiery

Seeking assurance for the rightness of her choice, the propriety of what is happening

I too look around, but my brothers have forgotten me in the moment

They all are busy blinking tears, of victory, of gratitude

You’d think I’d blinded them when my arrow targeted the fish eye.

They do not smell the fog of envy that clouds the Hall

It stings my eyes as it rises to the canopy and darkens the skies 

 I wonder what sightlessness descended when my arrow pierced that eye

The contest feels weighed, like loaded dice, a veneer covering a warning

A clanging prothalmion sung as prelude to apocalypse

My shoulders sag under the heaviness of flowers as I lift the bridal garland with sure hands

And hang my head to accept the burdensome future of a dying age.

It is my hope that these three voices will remind me how much I loved the project, the stories, and the characters that emerged and began speaking. I am very fortunate that I was allowed to hear. Telling is complicated and could take long. After all, it took my characters all of my life time to reach me! But if they can reach me across the oceans of myths and millennia, I am hopeful that my telling may yet reach out those who await it.

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.

Loudly Celebrated

It is the 4th of July again, and again, it is cloudy, hot, and smokey. I do not look forward to this day. Yes, the day off is definitely welcome, but other than that, there are few things that redeem this holiday.

We finish groceries and chores early in the week to avoid leaving the house on this day. The beach is overly over-crowded, as are the few stores that are open. People descend on the beaches and parks armed with chairs and gigantic coolers with lots of beer. Things get really loud after that, and this is just late morning. By the time the 4th dawns, even, the air crackles with extra static and fumes; people have been fire cracking away for days. The little showers that are so much a part of this land and this season, do little but add steam and damp.

One of the extraordinary things about this part of the world, unlike India, is that festivals are all the business of individuals, not the entire community; these are controlled events, contained within designated areas and there is no joy or celebration that spills over to the streets. If one were to find oneself driving around town on festival days, there is little evidence of anything being celebrated.

In India, I remember pandals, exhibits at every street corner, music, people in festive garb, extra hawkers, extra beggars, colored lights and flags stringed all over streets, and no one would be confused about what victory, god, beginning or end is being celebrated. Fresh flowers and colored sand would be in great demand for days before the day, as people plan decorations for their businesses, streets, houses, temples,even public buildings in their neighborhood. There was a particular smell of festivals: the air smelled of marigolds, incense,and laddoos. Freshly cleaned and decorated houses stood invitingly open, the family in newly stitched clothes milling around with neighbors and visitors, sharing sweetmeats with all, acquaintances and strangers alike. Even if one did not share the ideals or the faith being celebrated, one didn't have a choice but to get swept in the celebrations. I loved it all except the firecrackers during Diwali.

Here, I do not have much family in town. So today is truly a day off. No music blares so I cannot work; no fragrances distract; indeed, this could be any Saturday, a sunny morning with rain later on silent streets and quiet houses.

This post may sound unpatriotic or snooty. However, as we move towards a more globalized entity, I wonder how many Independence Days one should celebrate, and what exactly we celebrate. These days celebrate our victories over each other and often, become the flint that spark riots in some parts of the world. I shudder and fear that instead of celebrating end of atrocities, these days open up scabs and force old wounds to bleed and weep anew. They remind us, most of all, of our differences, our separations.

For these reasons, I AM glad that the 4th of July is quieter here than the 15th of August is, in India. After all, freedom-day is a serious thought, a quiet contemplation about the price it demands, an examination of its various hues, a continuous re-adjustment of its definition, and it is a sad day that forces survivors to reflect on the heavy losses incurred.

I wish we had an anthem for the planet, a day that marks end of global atrocities, a song that arouses an upsurge of patriotic feeling for the land, the oceans, and the air above, without imaginary, artificial boundaries that apply only to human beings.

On such a day, perhaps, I will not mind the fire works.

Paradise

The longest day of the year is past, and in the wet afternoons, I smell the coming Fall. My house, it seems, spends the entire Summer preparing for the darkening year and spends the beginning of the year catching its breath. Of course, right now, it is the heat that has stilled us, the cats on the tiled floor and humans surrounded by fans, all of us waiting for the worst of the heat to pass.

This stillness descends every year and yet I never remember it as part of the break between quarters that I so look forward to. Invariably, I wonder where the break has flown, I wonder what kept me from accomplishing the list the end of Spring readies, the list that I review and memorize for weeks in preparation for the break. I do not remember that I spent the break supine on the sofa, defeated by the still, hot air. The very thought of movement, even to get coffee is too much to bear. I spend days without coffee (too hot!), a little vague, a little lost, subconsciously nursing a persistent headache. I wander around the house, waiting for the day to get bearable. This heat is problematic since I hate air conditioning and cannot stand it for very long.

Already, I see that a few precious days have already gone by and I cannot bring myself to revising my rubric, re-constructing my assignments, re-structuring my courses. The sun shining on the gently swaying leaves is so fascinating. The cats seem to understand, since all of them are staring at the same swaying branches that have me so mesmerized.

Perhaps the afternoon (10am-6pm) will have passed when I blink next.

We finish grocery shopping before 10am and do not venture out until after 6. The sun doesn't set until late 8pm, and our entire day has been pushed back, with a giant donut hole of an afternoon squatting in its center.

When the rains wet the earth and I remember Fall, it is not with anticipation of relief from the season; October heat is the worst here. It seems that nothing will stir until the holidays begin, until the Goddess descends and Navratri lights up the nights.

One might very well wonder why I stay here. The days are lethargic and insomnia stretches out the humid nights. Yet I am always extolling the virtues of living in what I call paradise to any who would listen.

Paradise indeed it is, the unbearable afternoons notwithstanding. The dawn and dusk skies are a sight to behold, drama in colors splashed around, covering everything with improbable hues and shadows. It is not unusual to imagine brilliant, clear waters and clean, cerulean skies when imagining paradise. This canvas is a few minutes' drive from my sofa. Of course, I would not recommend seeking out the beach front between 10am and 6pm. But I keep that image in my mind's eye while I stare at the sunlight skipping on the leaves.

There are farmers' markets, nurseries, tropical trails, gardens, and parks with plenty of hospitable shade to while the day, watching butterflies and herbs going about their routines. Sometimes, we go to the movies, the mall, ice cream parlors (I do not partake, of course), and then I keep a shawl because the air conditioning is always cranked up to its coolest in all public indoor places.

Compared to the debilitating cold that regularly grips Northern places, I find this still air much easier to tolerate. For someone who has lived all her immigrant life in Florida, I have shoveled too much snow. If I do not shovel another ounce, it'll  be enough. I hear of horror stories about burst water pipes, failing heaters, cold so biting that one feels it in one's organs and deeper still. And there is no relief from this cold either; no brilliant sunsets to compensate for the day's discomfort, no shining sunlight on dancing leaves, no fragrance of fresh earth with the rainfall.

The terrain here is simple and straight; if one can read a graph, one never needs be lost. The terrain in other places, I know, is complex. It rises and dips, uncaring of its effect on slipping tires and shoes. It demands an ability to balance so that one is constantly looking for that center of being. Often, for months, these rises and dips are hidden beneath inches of snow. Here, the earth centers the being and unless there is something wrong with the internal workings of the organism, no balancing is needed.

I know that the prognosis of this land being the way it is, is not good. I know that this land is being swallowed up and soon, there will be no land. But as long as this land stands, I will choose it; perhaps the oceans will be patient enough to wait for me to be done before they swallow my paradise.

 

Tech-Faced

Facebook just pointed out the many advantages of reading literary fiction; of course, I had to share that on my wall; that is so me! Of late, when I have a few minutes between sets of ungraded papers, waiting for a call back from the pharmacy, or just trying to unwind after a whirlwind day, I find myself scouring Facebook.

Now there is nothing extraordinary or new about this. I would not exaggerate if I claimed that this behaviour is quite common for the 21st century homosapien. It is a sign of the times that I split the people I know into two main group, those on Facebook and those who resist. Since I belong most definitely to the former, I despair of ways of keeping in touch with the latter. Surely, I am not expected to do something primitive like actually making a voice call? My students would shudder at the very idea. After all, even if one were to dial the number (is that phrase obsolete?), what would one say? Every time I do make a voice call, I am aware of an underlying wish that the person I am calling would not pick up, that I could just leave a succinct message and hang up to end the awkward experience. I am also aware that, like the rest of my Gujarati family, I tend to speak louder when I talk on the phone, the logic involving a physics formula about the complex relationship between the volume of the voice and the distance it has to travel. The end of such a call, inevitably, is accompanied with a distinct awareness of the needlessly high tones that one has to own up to.

No. Let us connect on Facebook instead. Or perhaps text. Surely, you have downloaded WhatsApp on your smart phone? Why involve something as personal as, as strange as disembodied voices?

One of the TV channels I watch proclaims Vasudhaiva Kutumbekam (world is one family) as its tag line. I cannot think of a better descriptor for the globalization that I take for granted, an idea that my younger self could only sigh over while watching Star Trek. My child posts pictures from her phone onto my Facebook wall so that now, I know what the EU headquarters in Brussels look like; my cousin FaceTimes with us from Vadodara so that his toddler can show us his new toys; my Google+ holds our clan's photo albums; my Geni informs me when a birthday nears; I can even borrow books from my county library on my Kindle while waiting for my flight connection at Heathrow.

A few of my friends are disappointed at the direction the world seems to be taking; the figure of Darth Vader seems to personify this fear of losing our humanity to technology, very much like the Minotaur expressed the ancient Greek's fear of losing humanity to the beast within. This is a valid fear, of course. However, if being part machine helps us become more human, does it not make the machine more human than the other way around? Take pacemakers or dialysis machines, for example. Would we be willing to go back to a world without those? I remember typing up papers with carbon sheets ensconced in between, which copious gallons of whiteout could not salvage. If given a choice, I would never go back to those days! Many fictional re-creations of post apocalyptic stories explore what the world would be like without the present day's communication channels. My blood runs cold with fright when I read those.

I cannot imagine that devices that help us communicate in varied ways can be essentially malignant. Certainly, some people will misbehave and misuse these devices; however, do we let the fear of misbehaviour guide us? Is it even in our nature to do that? History is evidence that we have always looked for ways to make the world smaller; thanks to Facebook and smart phones, this world is at our fingertips, and it is up to us to expand it exponentially until it becomes real or to contract it to a thumbnail.

I am grateful that I live in the same age as these devices. Worlds I had thought were lost to me have been returned a thousand fold; I am thinking of ancient legends, the dance form I was trained in (Kathak), my favorite painting genre (Indian miniatures), Hindi songs and films from the 1960's, and garbas or Gujarati folk dance music so ancient that most lyrics are derived from oral history. One can enjoy the Gregorian Chant and Sanskrit shlokas with the same crystal clarity as though they were being spoken in one's presence. I can find ancient trade routes or recreate a festival day of an Indonesian wife without much trouble. I wouldn't be able to spark my students' interest in Greek Mythology or Folk Tales if I couldn't bring up Google Images of Echidna or Baba Yaga.

I could go on, of course. I do so love the times I inhabit, may the Luddite gods forgive me! I fail to imagine what the next half decade will bring, but I am very excited about it.

Now my patient reader must excuse me. I must go back to preparing a collection of my favorite garbas on my flash drive so that I can plug it into my car and listen to these ancient lyrics on my way to work. After that, I must find a kidney friendly recipe from websites recommended by my online support group, transfer money between accounts, and order a birthday gift from Amazon; I must flex my fingers and send them racing across the keyboard, and the world I manage. In between these chores, if you are on Facebook, I might wander in and say a quick Hey.



 

Body Language

My body has a language: it sings in numbers and I am grateful to say that I can hear its song.

But first things first: I have been amiss in posting. Things fell apart and the center could not hold.

This anarchy has also been of my body's making. The humors flowed sluggishly; red stitched itself through the eyes; the eyelids proved unable to stay lifted long enough to let the eyes see; the balloon feet staggered, unbalanced; the heart raced to keep up and then slowed down, tired. All I wanted to do was to sink within and let my body have its way. My kidneys have failed, causing panic to shoot through an organic system that had taken its balance and well-being for granted. Undefined anxieties exploded and my mild distaste of needles loomed into a major phobia.

However, today, I am glad to report that the storm has been contained. My kidney disease has brought me many gifts and this entry goes out in acknowledgement of these gifts.

When I was younger, people teased me that I was not of this "modern" world, that I operated from some golden, pre-lapsarian past because of a predilection of seeing the world through romanticized glasses. I have never agreed with this; I am born in exactly the absolute correct age and I never had any pink prisms to filter the world's realities. This age suits me and I owe it my very life. Thanks to this wondrous age, even though my major organs have failed, I am aware of a feeling of undeniable well-being. I can enjoy my job, sustain a conversation, and savor a demi-tasse of coffee. Of late, I have even found the wherewithal to use earrings when I go out for dinner with family and friends.
Yes, these outings exhaust me once they are over; yes, I have muscle cramps that go on for days; yes, I have forgotten what it is like to sleep through the night; yes, my social life is seriously compromised. Even so, all this is nothing when I remember my body's desperate attempt to reach me to help it. I also remember my total inability to help.

Then, this age, this millenium came to my body's rescue and taught me to understand its language. I started dialysis, a miraculous process that helps my confused body to maintain balance, to come to terms with its condition. Patient experts taught me how to listen and talk with the flesh I inhabit.

I have always known that my body has an intelligence all its own, an intelligence that I have no understanding of, that I have been unable to access. But now, I have learned to balance my diet (the strictest kind) with the medications I have to take; I have learned to understand the relationship between daily weight, blood pressure, and the kind of dialysis solution (or dialysate) I use that night. I await my blood results with alacrity because that is how  my body speaks now. Last month, I celebrated my independence from Epogen shots and blood infusions to maintain my red blood cell count; my body actually beat anemia! A couple of weeks ago, my nephrologist congratulated me on controlling my phosphorous after months of trying to achieve the correct balance between including enough protein in my diet while avoiding phosphorous. It took almost a year of trials and failures to achieve the correct potassium numbers.

Every morning, when I take my blood pressure, record my weight, and finish my treatment, I am grateful for the ability to do so. Every evening, when I again take my blood pressure, record my weight, and begin my treatment, I am grateful for having lived the day. Yes, I do wish my life were easier, but more often than that, I am glad, so, so glad that it is as easy as it is!

The Geeta insists on the importance of making friends with oneself. The truth of this issue has been brought to me. I understand now that I need a lot of people and a lot of things, but all pale in comparison to how much I need to get along with my body. I am humbled by the incredible adaptability of my body, its admirable insistence on being my best friend, its stubborn loyalty in its refusal to abandon me, its ever-youthful willingness to accommodate new ways of replacing parts of itself, and at the risk of intense narcissism, I am so, so proud of being allowed to inhabit this wonderful machine that celebrates the spirit of being human with every breath it draws for me, with me.

I have learned to love my body with a completely different sort of appreciation and for that alone, if for nothing else, I wish to live forever with this body. There can be no gift greater than an aware life lived in a body that won't quit.