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.


 

Price for Free

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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