Flickering Lights

The Summer is almost done and Fall knocks on window panes, broods in the trees that shade my little home, her eyes glazed as she counts her breaths, inhaling the still hot air, biding her time to exhale the cold when my house is empty once more, my family gone on to join the busyness of their own regular seasons. As I read late into the night, I, too, inhale and exhale with deliberation, trying to still my center that I may tolerate the unmoving air and thunderstorms of this season with equanimity. Now that I stand almost at the outer threshold of Summer, I need to look back to take stock of the passing season.


Last night, an unexplained plate smashed, stirring up dreams of the sleeping house. I remember waking up to cool air and the rain complaining softly outside my window. This has been the kind of season it has been: unexpected freshness of utter, complete kindnesses from the very atmosphere, breezing consistently through the frightening nightmare my kidney disease is fast becoming. The enormity of what I must journey through defeats me. If I sit down to analyze and understand this, I wonder if I could emerge from it with any of my self intact, and what parts I would have to let go, just to survive it. The daunting nature of this process has just been brought to fore lately, as I prepare to get my name on a list of people waiting for a kidney.


This process takes weeks, even months, and every time I smile and respond in complete sentences to the personnel testing my body through various apparatus, they look at me in surprise, as though they had never thought to find a person, a consciousness willing to communicate within the body they test. They are extra gentle with their needles and remind me to breathe in and out with kind, smiling eyes. I am very grateful to them. As I am told unsavory, but very real tales my blood tells, I hold on to the frankness of gazes, the pacific expressions, the clarity of phrase as proof of confidence these personnel possess, not just in the necessity of the process they are describing to me, but also in their ability to lead me through it.


I have felt like a lost Dante in the exact center of the woods (I turned 50 this year), who suddenly finds herself surrounded by many Virgils bearing glowing boughs with strong grips.


I tend to take my family and friends for granted; they've always been around so I have no reason to imagine an hour without. This year, though, their generosity and regard are warmer. I do not have words to acknowledge any of those. So I will place my friends and family in the same drawer with my book, the best part of this year, deserved or otherwise, the gifts I will take from the Universe as my due.


The year from this August to next is going to be difficult and I put this mildly. I have no idea how I am going to handle it. This is not to say that there is nothing but dark dreams on my mind: there are a couple of movies I am looking forward to, a few outings with friends that I think of with nothing but joy, even a trip (hopefully) to India so I can hold my brand new nephew. It remains my hope that if I can just concentrate on the minutiae of living: as long as I continue to complain about grading, exclaim at my regular TV shows, ply my needle through fabric, sip at my tea, I will love my living, however long it may last.


The year will begin to die soon. The two trees that guard my house will sigh in relief as summer storms finally leave and the skies get too steely for the drama that heat conjures. As evening hurries in, faster and sooner, I will continue to call and cajole the grey cat who left her house when it burned. Hopefully, she will reclaim her abandoned home and heal it, forgive it for falling apart and spooking her so, just when she was settling down in it.

Ibsit Invidia

Once upon a time, there was a king who sought to banish all pain, sickness, and death from his kingdom. Now this story, though old, is not alien. It defines the consciousness of all ages, a very human quest for an impossible utopia. This story illuminates, like few others, the importance and inevitability of all that Pandora let loose on the mortal world.

I do not remember the first time I read this story; as long as I can remember, I could rattle it by rote. So this story is not new to me. Yet every time I have been brought before it, it has affected me. It is an ancient tale, the definition of happiness very superficial, yet amazingly, it resonates with undiluted power. Our mythologies have sharpened and shaped our fears, our pain in so many forms, some sacred, some obscene, yet others that are neither. Systems of belief insist on logical connections between the profane and the ills our flesh is heir to, even provide methodologies to keep ailment at bay.

The Gita points out that what causes fear is the imagination of a circumstance rather than the circumstance itself, and so what needs to be addressed is one's imagination, not avoidance of a circumstance. The Ramayana counsels to embrace all circumstances with equanimity, presenting as role model a prince who accepts crown and banishment with the same smile. However, I find it impossible to live up to these very simple, very wise ideas. I find it impossible to react in the same way to the birth of my daughter and the loss of my son; the only similarity in those reactions is the intensity of almost exactly opposite feelings. My nightmares abound with imagined horrors that I am unable to control.

I suppose this is the reason why the old story speaks so clearly. This morning episode of Buddha addressed this part of the story. I had never thought what it would mean to banish all suffering from a city. It was a horrifying picture. Old age, sickness, pain are woven in the fabric of life, along with youth and good health. Ripping the two apart would loosen unimaginable hells, rob all that makes sense in organized civilizations. Children would languish for grandmothers' tales; sons and daughters would worry about their infirm parents; families would not be allowed to care for sick loved ones; young children, missing grandparents, could be reunited with them only if they were diseased enough. Flourishing households, torn apart, would wither away, like a city of insects deprived of their shade of a felled tree. The episode ended with the image of the infant prince weeping helplessly in his sleep at this heavy loss to his land.

 I find myself blaming the king for his short sightedness. However, upon reflection, I am guilty of something similar: I too have wanted to banish all suffering from my child's life. In fact, I count my failures in terms of horrors, disappointments, heartaches, and illnesses I have been unable to keep away from her. Today, I ask if I have done her any favors by trying to protect her; I, too, want her to be a feared and respected conqueror of lands, rather than a wise ascetic her peers jeer at.

This post goes out as a prayer to the universe, for strength to accept (if not welcome) whatever awaits. I am counting on old stories to hold my hand and light my household when evening insists on advancing, when night seems unending. I pray for eyes enough to discern the twilight of dawn from dusk and remember the importance of both in a fully lived day.

Still Life

I know I should be working, honing, polishing, sharpening handouts, but a heavy weariness weighs me down. I cannot imagine the cause for this fatigue, but it does feel bone deep. I know I can ill-afford these almost constant naps; I have too many clamoring projects. But my eyes burn with left over sleep and my senses shift, unable to fixate on a coherent task. I feel unable, limbless, immobile, even, so that even the passing winds fail to sway me from this spot. A friend suggested that perhaps my fatigue emerges from my strict diet, the depleted portions from a limited list. Perhaps that is true; but my diet is not a new thing. I am quite used to it and comfortable with it. I have not over-stretched myself in physical labor by any stretch of imagination.

My spirit could also be homesick, a longing to go and touch something, some place of my birth and formative years, an event nowhere on the horizon. However, the buzzing of my tribe's presence every time I get on Facebook or emails reassures me immeasurably. A brief visit from some of my tribe feels more than wonderful. So it is not abandonment or despair that is responsible for this.

I believe this torpor is a natural cycle of my being, a condition that regularly drowns me as the year begins to set. Someone asked me for recommendations for a reading list for an upcoming trip, and I have been unable to come up  with any meaningful titles, something I'd thought in my youth, would never happen. I'd believed that I would ALWAYS be in the middle of at least 3 books, and the local public library would be my second home. However, things have not unfolded thus. My bedside is strewn with the most predictable of all reading, the epics. The new Atwood (of the Oryx and Crake series) is out, but I lack the will to hunt it down; today Salman Rushdie is in town, talking about his newest book, but the very thought of driving exhausts me. Once, I'd believed that as an active reader, I was an integral component of the world woven by words. This belief used to be the prime motor of all my willingness to hop aboard many a whirlwind and carousel, the dizziness convincing me of my relevance. Now, however, just sitting down is enough.

This exhaustion could be due to the time of the year. Elements are changing their wonted liveries; the golden sunshine glimmering on the still leaves has left for the West. Days are smaller, silver, breezy, like little jewels. This landscape demands almost constant rain, but the colors bouncing off the torrents have mellowed. The moon is getting larger, nearer. Perhaps the year wants me to sit still, take stock, and exhale the months passed. Perhaps I should listen. Perhaps this is a natural part of growing older, calming down, an increasing quietude.

Before I exhale, I breathe in the advancing Autumn. It smells different, like a dream of smokiness, of promise of a chill not here yet, of  velvet moonlight, of crisp dusks. I must confess, this particular evening smells not of endings, but beginnings. The air needs a little crispiness to herald the clanging of the Goddess' chariot; the days need to be silvery that Diwali lamps shine brighter.

After all, there are so many ways to banish the darkness; to banish such darkness properly, however, it needs to descend properly. I will not resent this sluggishness, since it looks to the busyness of the festive season. Inertia is a necessary component of animation.


 

Food, Glorious Food!

  The evenings always look different from this side of the August full moon. The Summer is survived, with endless comings, goings, staying-ins, and outings. I love the hullabaloo; it makes me feel relevant, central, somehow. My fridge bulges with fare I am not allowed to even fantasize about; all seats in the front room are occupied; extra fans are strewn about the front room and the cats have to strew themselves to accommodate uncompromising angles of the re-arranged furniture; the washer-dryer are usually on, and we run around searching for more medium sized victuals to try out reinvented recipes. Today, in stark contrast, my fridge caters only to my dietary regimen; I haven't used the washer-dryer for an entire week; the cats, spooked at the emptiness, perch around me after mewling pityingly, beckoningly at empty bedrooms from where no obliging opposable digits emerge, offering treats; the seats in my front room hold books I am working with, the fans silent; and I have packed away the extra pots till the sun returns next year, when they might be needed.

I have given myself this evening off. The grading is shelved for now, bills abated (for now), reading stalled, and the TV ignored. I haven't felt words on my fingers for a very long time, it seems to me, and even though my fingers have been quenching their need with quilting and embroidery, these words feel fitting in with the quietude of the shortening twilight. It feels familiar again: the increasing haziness of late evenings, the rings around the full moon, the smell of the clear sky and the wind skipping through. It smells and feels like the holidays: Rakshabandhan is past and next week is Janmashtmi. Soon, my child will be back for Navratri (our favorite holiday) and before I know it, Diwali will have passed and the year changed! Certainly, the Summer is past, and Fall strides in. Today, however, is given over to reflection, to catch breath before the whirlwind of the holidays begins to spin dizzyingly.

This brings to my mind the idea of food. I have never been a foodie; I have been content when I am not hungry, or subjected to a certain inborn annoyance I associate with hunger. In fact, I don't even associate holidays particularly with food. So why mention it now, my patient reader might well wonder? The answer lies in the Summer that is just past, that aged not just the year but me as well. Most of my foods are taken away and existing quantities reduced. My kidneys are failing, so I am on an extremely low sodium, low potassium, low calorie diet. For someone who has preferred savory to sweet, this feels like a personal vendetta: no more spinach or tomatoes or just plain yogurt; I mourn when I think of handvo, daal, and dosas!

However, that was Summer; now, I am getting used to my diet and feel confident enough to share a few recipes that I've invented. The problem has been that my dietitian does not understand my food, so I've had to gather material from obscure sources, which makes me feel justified in sharing.

The first of these is a staple. One of the first things to go away were dhebras, and I love radish, so I came up with this one:

1 cup chapatti flour
1/3 cup bajra flour
2 oz. cube of frozen methi leaves (thawed in microwave)
1 tsp freshly ground jalepenos, garlic cloves, ginger, and lemon juice
1/3  tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp low fat yogurt
1 cup freshly ground radish
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cilantro paste (1/3 cup freshly chopped cilantro / coriander if preferred)

Knead into dough, make 12 sections, roll and roast like you would a chapatti or paratha. Makes 12 servings.

These dhebras / chapatis / parathas are very low in potassium (in spite of the yogurt, methi, cumin, and the flours!). If this is tried, do let me know! If you like it, I'd especially like to know; hopefully, that'll help me stop fantasizing about pizzas!




 

'Tis Almost Fairy Time!

The days have suddenly shortened. Like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I watch the dwindling light, wonder and fear as at one stride comes the dark. On days like today, even as the temperature mounts in mid day, the sky never brightens and 6pm feels like 8pm, and my cat worries that I might have forgotten to feed him. My postage stamp of a backyard is alive with night rodents that scratch and screech into the hot wee hours.

Something archetypal in me recoils at the fading lights; in the dying year, I find it difficult to trust the shifting whispers of leaves. Many friends, especially the ones who live in different geographies and landscapes, claim to love Fall of all the seasons and I admire their courage to notice beauties as all things close and end. In this season of endings, mornings feel like a gyp, misnomers for the grey mists shrouding and hiding the earth in treacherous cobwebs.

I think it might be more difficult to face the Fall for those of us who nest in the Tropics, where either the day is bright or stormy or both, but never neither. I wonder if the urbane ducks, cats, and palm trees are affected similarly, if they would confess to a discomfiture with the anomaly of Autumn in the land of eternal sunshine.

I remember a really, really black Fall, many moons ago, when I used to consider 3pm and worry about where I was to be when all light was gone from the skies. That was the Fall when I first took my small daughter fairy hunting in the streets near indifferent strip malls. We would arrange rocks of broken cement and come back the following evening to exclaim amazement if they were or weren't where we'd left them. I took to spending nap hours to eek out child verses with hackneyed meter and beaten rhymes, and hiding them in hedges for us to find later that evening; those were our fairy lamps and they brightened many evenings.

Yesterday, we attended Sol's An Afternoon with the Elves, and not surprisingly, that resonated with me. The play celebrates our need to believe in the numinous in the midst of unbelievable, heartbreaking realities we often find ourselves in. In fact, the play contends that so strong is this pull towards the numinous, that often, we find ourselves upsetting the comfortable, easy status quo of the familiar and recognizable, as we race after the flickering, winking glimmers we imagine on the borders beyond our peripheral ken.

It is this very need that makes the lengthening nights sparkle with festive votive and lanterns,as the darkness is shawled in clothes of brightest hues; firecrackers and joyful music mingle with twinkling, tinkling jewelry to drown out the dusk hush; the greenest of evergreens grace lintels and mantels; the once tightly shut doors smile open in welcome, their thresholds sporting Rangoli.

Tropics do change their seasons after all, and fairies do light up the path markers of Fall. As I watch the long shadows dancing in my backyard and through my window, I am aware of a deep gratitude for the incredible, extraordinary capacity of our species to take arms against the very mantle of the sky, and by opposing, end the smothering dark.