Amazing!

This entry is in response to Chitra Divakaruni's prompt about one amazing thing that has happened. I have been thinking about the many amazing things, from the exquisite sunrises and twilights at the beach, to strange happenstances, like my leaving the home shores with only my punjabis and shakespeares, and realising that that's all the equipment I've needed in the new world.

But then when I really search my treasure boxes, one moment stands out like a jewel, a moment after which my very self-view has been irrevocably changed.

This moment, like all such moments, was not sudden like lightening; it had been building up for years, and with more immediate urgency the few months before it happened.

I remember it very clearly: the mirror I was looking at was blurry, with grey and ochre spots, the largest one immediately above my left temple. I also remember what I wore then, as I looked into that mirror: it was a light pink paisley printed quilted jacket, a favorite then.

I had my 6th month sonogram that day. Yes, reader, I was pregnant. We had decided that we didn't want to know the gender of the baby and had told our doctors and technicians about this. We knew we'd love it no matter what.

I was apprehensive because my family was far away, and I was afraid when I went in for the sonogram on my own, the very first time in my life I faced a scary machine with no one to hold my hand. I remember the cold gel on my skin, vaguely uncomfortable, and the quiet voice of the technician, pointing out various parts of the fetus. At last, it was over, and he said he was almost done, just a couple of minutes more.

I discovered I had never, until then, quite understood the import of holding a new life within oneself. That heart beat with such determined will; a fist half-opened in tandem with a foot suddenly flicking up, and I felt the kick. The fascinating, grey, blotchy, moving thing, image, was a human being, and wonder of wonders, it was within my body!

The technician stopped speaking, dragging, forcing my eyes away from the fascinating screen, the incredible, unbelievable throb of a life the universe had entrusted to me. When the technician knew he had my full attention, he said that the gender of the baby was quite clear; would I like to know?

I don't remember my response, but it must have been clear, for he awarded me with the most amazing words I have ever heard, "It's a girl!"

I don't remember, actually, the entire process of crying, but I do remember noticing that the ultrasound gel felt much, much colder than tears. What can I say, reader? This was the most important moment of my life, and I was sobbing and sniffling in the most pathetic manner imaginable! But I knew then, that that's what one feels when joy literally overflows: one loses one's dignity and sputters around in a daze.

I was to wait at the facility for about an hour more, and I wandered around the little strip mall, composed mainly of Cuban shops and Hispanic markets. I knew I had to do something, and I bought my daughter my first gift to her: a pair of booties and a matching skull cap. I then begged the counter-lady to use the rest room.

This, I remember as the most amazing moment: I looked into the mirror and realised that I was looking at a woman who has a daughter.

I told this to the woman in the mirror over and over again, "You have a daughter! A Dikri!"

Never has everything felt as right as those words. It was as though the universe had clicked and whirred into place, everything locked just as it should be because that very recognizable woman in the mirror had a daughter.

My daughter turns 16 this week, and I am continually amazed that I'd be trusted with a being like her, for however short a time. True, my times with her so far have been fraught with as much worry and discord as with joy and harmony, and we have had many, many amazing times.

I measure all those times against the yardstick of a woman looking into a stained mirror, owning her daughter, acknowledging her as a separate being, inseparable from her own being.

An Apology for Re-Visitation

I am visiting an old friend: Anna Karenina. It is always a special treat when I open the first page and begin to listen, in complete comfort that this is a long tale that will be told well. A reading like this, like living through a brilliant production of Hamlet, cannot be, should not be hurried. It is very much like savoring a meal one has fantasized about but hasn't enjoyed for a while. The lines, the syntax (even though it is a translation), the very cadence of the text feel like a song long buried, finally allowed to surge and haunt, and I am very grateful to the bookclub that has allowed this excuse!

Some texts disappoint by not living up to their promise: they promise richness, minute details, subtexts, and a theme complex enough to warrant a labyrinthine plot, but only skim the surface, touch on the shallow waves, and move on to end before one has had one's fill.

Anna never fails me, though. It is a nicely developed text, with enough round characters so a whole canvas is wonderfully populated, at the same time balanced, tightly woven, and not over-done or spoiled.

Maybe it was the finesse with which the text was handled when I read it while reading Literature, a finesse that lingers beyond decades and lands, thanks to one of my favorite professors of all time. Maybe it was the many Thomas Hardy's I was reading at the same time (I am not a fan; a thousand apologies!). Maybe it is the memory of feeling young I associate with this text. Maybe it is the combination of all of the above. Whatever the reasons, this is a story I long for over and over again. On my bookshelf, there are only a few texts that warrant a return, and Anna proudly sits beside the epics and the Shakespeare's I constantly re-visit.

I like to sit in a dusty corner when I treat myself to Anna. The first time I read it, it was in a hospital library, waiting for my father to finish with the first operation of his day. So now, I like to have a slightly dusty fragrance, the fragrance of un-dusted book shelves in the background. The last time I read Anna, I even made sure to wake up extra early and read it between 4 & 6am, before the day actually dawned properly, since that was also my hour at the hospital library.

Some of my friends tell me I am old fashioned to actually like a text like Anna; sometimes, some others just smile awkwardly and look away, seemingly at a loss at what to say to a being like me; they mistake my enthusiasm for posturing. I must confess these awkward moments make me feel the extreme heaviness of Odysseus' oar like few other times do. I don't understand how I could be so misunderstood, and have learned to keep my peace, to mellow my enthusiasm so I don't seem glaringly inept.

Most people tell me they have no time to read such a thick book and shudder to underline their statement. Maybe my need for texts such as Anna is a character defect, a chemical imbalance, an excuse for my innate laziness?

Yes, I have a child; yes, she keeps me busy; yes, I have missed deadlines because I was doing chores or grading; but equally true is the fact that the savoring of well-loved texts lends relevance to my existence. I don't have time to do the laundry, sweep up the floor, keep my kitchen spanking clean, cook much, or entertain enough. But that is because these stories hold me in their thrall, keep me up when I should be asleep, give me migraines of guilt when I wander too far away from them. So it is true that there is a great deal of self-indulgence in my reading.

However, enjoying Anna is more than a narcissistic wallowing for a lost self. I know there is an ageless kernel in me that demands this re-visitation every time I get tired of my daily dealings with people and their "trivial dramas," as my daughter so eloquently puts it.

So visiting a text like Anna is my paean to the teeming humanity that surrounds me; it serves to remind me why I love real people, as I admire the nobility of Levin, appreciate life like Stiva, adore the simplicity and sophistication that Kitty is, so that I might be brave enough to live as fully and passionately as Anna does.

Not Getting Along

I continue trying to pin my concentration, and the quilting I've been doing lately definitely helps. However, it is rare that I get an hour like this, sans homework, sans high school projects, sans melodrama that every adolescent is heir to, and I know I must work on my unfinished stories.

But here is the thing: I have lost control over them. They seem have acquired a consciousness of their own and often, I hear them snickering at me from beneath my closed laptop; I hear them murmuring, plotting, bickering with each other, calling out to each other, completely ignoring me. They wake me up with their constant cacophony and I can hear them singing each to each; they will not sing to me!

Like my daughter, they too have outgrown a need for me. But like my daughter, I haven't outgrown them. My everyday life is spiced up with my fictional characters' responses. I recognize spaces the stories unfold in. As I teach my fiction students the joys of flirting with perspective, my stories change tunes, voices, selves behind my eyes.

I disapprove of their brazen conduct, their lack of decorum. They remind me of the daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, mother-in-law triads of Hindi soap operas, those family sagas for which I have a fascinated disgust, like Milton's for Satan.

After all, I am constructing these stories (confound it, I still think of them as mine!), and how do they represent me to the larger world? Whatever will everyone think? Is THIS what I brought up and nurtured? Don't they realise the immense responsibility I shoulder in acknowledging them?

The really frightening thing is, what if I am the kind of writer they say I am? Someone very, very much unlike the kind I had always thought myself to be?

So I refuse to let them out.

Jealously, I keep them atop towers with no doors and have snipped off their long hair.

I am still looking for a way to quiet them, though.

Flashes upon that Inward Eye

One would think that seeing beautiful places would strengthen the wavering needles of one's internal compass, reaffirm faith in the undying spirit that resists immunity to appreciation of the beautiful. However, I have been unable to reconcile my inner realities to the outer landscape that demands my attention with the insistence and privilege that comes from belonging and owning.

I just returned from Italy a few weeks ago and still cannot stop sighing over the places that turned out to be not dead cliches of images of exotic, improbable, far off places, but real locales, throbbing, teeming, vivacious.

I remembered to touch the stones wherever I went, trailed my fingers along the casual buildings across the street from the Vatican, laid my forehead on the walls of museums, tried to lock in the sensation of my hand resting on a parapet in Assisi, used a rock from a Mediterranean beach as a worry-stone, picked up and kept a brick-fragment from Pompeii. But every passing minute inexorably marched on, slamming into me the awareness of its passing. I tried to inhabit each one with my entire being, tried to inhale it, drink it in, possess it with every molecule, but being mortal, I have been left behind.

Of course, like any insanely infatuated tourist, I do have thousands of pictures, so as the year dwindles beneath routines, chores, and the business of carrying on, I have the option of reminding myself of a wonderful time.

I have had to treat myself repeatedly, have needed friends more than ever, all to remind me that even on that wonderful trip, I missed home, that I longed for my own bed, that I was more often than not tired of living out of suitcases that couldn't be unpacked since we rarely spent more than a couple of nights in one place.

So yes, I am glad to be back and this entry is one of my many attempts at bringing all of myself back here, on this desk.

I've always thought of my internal landscape as a hive of honeycomb-like structure, not an organized land-water-horizon realm. I find now, I have a few more chambers; I hope that these have strengthened the over-all structure, helped me understand hidden facets of who I am, and equipped me to hold more.

These hold fragments that I have no photographs of, an exotic far-off land in me, woven in the fabric of who I am, indelible, pure, true.

Tomorrow, when I look at my mirror to brush my teeth, I shall not forget to savor the sunlight spilled on cobbled streets of Florence, a golden afternoon, and smile because the day shall be good.

The Folder

1:25 in the morning I woke up to the burning bile in the back of my throat, the pungent taste of work undone. I have been gathering papers since then: transcripts, birth certificates, passports.

It amazes me how a single folder, worth no more than a couple of dollars at the stationary store, just a set of card paper folded and pocketed that one can carry without noticing, is large enough to contain a life.

Along with most people, I keep all my "important documents" (even though this sounds like an oxymoron) in one place, that I may easily dash out with in case of a fire. And like most people, I don't open that folder unless absolutely pushed to do it.

Like a lot of people, I call this The Folder.

Maybe the hour had something to do with it, but facing The Folder felt like one of those times when in the silence and solitude of an endless moment, a recognition, realization, an unveiling descends and no words could articulate it if it was to be recalled and explanation attempted.

The first thing that met me when I opened the folder was my will; then I worked backwards through the breaking of my marriage, birth of my child, various transcripts as I had tried to find a niche in a world I'd immigrated to, the numerous recommendation letters I'd moved with (concrete good will, as I used to call them), my marriage certificate, transcripts, dissertation copies, school records, and finally at the very end, tucked away in the pocket of that folder, a birth certificate.

I have been asked to provide copies of transcripts and I have an impending international journey, both of which force me to confront The Folder, a confrontation, which, I must confess feels like meeting a self in a mirror that one keeps carefully concealed behind a thick curtain.

My M. Phil. dissertation focused on the image of the woman in fiction and predictable soul that I am, I'd named it "Mirror, Mirror." Ever since then, I've found every reflection a bit unsettling, like acknowledging and owning an older, less recognizable being as self, like suddenly recognizing a doppelganger on a lonely walk. My neatly tied up resolution to the dissertation does not translate itself into more accepting, healthier reflections in my reality, especially those reflections that include a movie of my entire life as I look to my death.

Now here I am, reflecting, yet again, an hour later, my paper work addressed, The Folder put away.

I am trying to calm myself down enough to catch a couple of hours' rest before the mad rush of my day begins. I am trying to read The Ramayana, trying to get a cosmic perspective, trying to convince myself that of course I matter, that there is more richness, complexity, feeling, relevance to my existence than can be contained in a cheap folder shut away in a drawer.

The Folder awaits, in sure knowledge that what I feel for it is immaterial, that it may be a discomfort now, but that the awareness of its being is also the reason I've had many restful nights, and that it shall be the loudest proclamation of who I was when it is time for it to be opened by my survivors.

Unlike me, The Folder needs no other validations or acceptances.

Time Out

I have been contemplating the idea of time, lately. Constructing and respecting a time frame has been one of the many challenges I've had with my writing. I don't, of course, include my poems in this worrisome category, since they exist out of all time frames.

I try, very hard, as I am constructing a world, to stay as close as possible to the way reality works, in order for the fictional world to be easily recognizable. However, time is one concept that has been so difficult to frame. The last three weeks, for instance, have been packed with so much that needed to be taken care of, that even attempts at prioritizing seemed ridiculous, and ultimately, only whatever I had the time for, got taken care of. The rest awaits.

If I am unable to manage my work and time to handle my real expectations and responsibilities, how can I presume to manage a fictional time frame?

As if to reinforce my failures, now, almost all the clocks in my house have stopped telling the real time. It seems to defy logic, but suddenly, in tandem, the two clocks in the living room and kitchen stare belligerently and blankly, refusing to move their hands, even though they both continue to tick in some kind of a cosmic mockery.

The other two clocks take turns running 10 minutes ahead and 5 minutes behind, so I never get a clear view of my temporal compasses.

My friends just laugh it off, saying I need to make the time to change all their batteries, shaking their heads at my neurotic fear of a cosmic sign, full of foreboding. Of course, I can hear how uncomfortable and uneasy their laughter is, tinged with obvious relief, thank heavens this is not happening to them.

This is exactly how time has been treating my fictional world as well: I needed a story to be contained within a morning, but it seems to want to go farther back, years back, even, trace itself to its present moment, resisting all confinement the unity of time demands of me.

I have shelved that story for the time being, and have begun another one with less rigid time-constraints. Of course, that one is taking too long to reach where it needs to.

As a child, when I first began writing, I used to begin at the climax of the plot and weave people, events, feelings, objects around it, like a quilt. This practice, of course, is one of the greatest qualifiers of my efficiency as an instructor of thesis statements, and it has drawn me so close to quilting as a hobby (when I have the time).

Maybe that's the practice I need to go back to? But no; doing things the same way feels a little nauseous, as though no matter how much I walk, I don't get any farther, rather like using a treadmill than walking to a grocery store. That is one of the fears I have: to produce by rote so that I explore no new lands within myself.

Maybe the time is merely out of joint and I just need to wait to right itself back?

I could be feeling this temporal dislocation because I shall have made two international trips in three and half months. I shall have lost and gained so many days, hours, the very prospect defeats my every effort at controlling and managing the times I live in between those trips.

One of my students claims someone owes him a Saturday. He lost it somewhere between the two coasts of this huge continent and wonders if it means that he will live a day less. Fortunately, since we were in a Fairytale class, I could assure him he'd be awarded his lost Saturday in a chthonic package, either in a Dream, during a Journey, or a in similar archetypal time-frame.

However, once I left the class-room (and the space-time of Fairytales), I've wondered about my lost time too.

I sincerely hope that I, too, get these weeks back in some way, since they too, are what I'd log in as "lost."

Of course, that begs the question: What exactly is found time, then?

Thank You For the Music . . .

Really, I wasn't expecting this to be particularly different from a lot of other recitals I've attended at the cutest, boldest, most wonderful little theatre I've been partial to for the past 8 years.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy their plays immensely, but often, the recitals are just a fun night out for me, since I haven't grown up with the music. I can't sing along with the rest of the audience; I can't always understand the folksy wisdom that forms such an important backdrop to them; and often, the recitals are the first time I've heard the songs that the rest of the audience has imbibed with the air they breathe. I can only applaud the performances in terms of the quality of singing, which makes my response rather limited. I often forget the songs themselves and fail to recognize them when my daughter hums them, expecting me to join in.

So while I enjoy myself for the evening, it rarely leaves a lasting impression on me, like the plays often do.

However, today, to my surprise, the songs and their performances made me laugh and cry, and I don't do either easily. It always amazes me when this happens without my consent or expectation.

The theatre is holding a two day Folk and Classic Rock recital over this weekend, and if you've been reading this blog, this is not the music that, how shall I put it? Oh yes, moves my soul. Even though I did grow up listening to as much of the Beatles and ABBA as any other kid of my time, I am more of a Kishore Kumar- Lata Mangeshkar kind, a Hindi-movie-song-addict, and my kind of folk music is Gujarati Garbas.

And today, the theatre used no Beatles or ABBA (from whom, of course, I've borrowed the title of this post), which have become so pervasive that listening to them is fun, but rarely much more than just uncomplicated fun that comes from comforting, familiar lyrics and melodies.

On the drive home, I started thinking about this. I had never felt the teenage angst that I used to read about, nor was I ever angrily rebellious or vehemently non-conformist. I didn't feel alienated, disappointed, or depressed. I didn't have the wild streak that drove me away from home in search of an undefinable dream (my immigration was a deliberate choice, not a desperate escape). I never really felt misunderstood; why, then, did these songs of displacement affect me so?

But like the deceptively simple diction of the songs, the answer to this was simple in the way all complex, universal truths are simple: the songs spoke of the longing for home, the inability to define or reach it, the need to belong, the miracle of sunshine, the rebellion against thought-numbing conformity, the unspeakable obscenity of war, the fear of losing all the moments as time marches on, the entrapment of thoughtless choices, the immensity and futility of barriers, the indescribable sweetness of love, . . . the list goes on.

Usually, when I am affirmed of my place in the universe, this affirmation comes through an identification and understanding of an idea or attribute connected to the places I have trotted away from, the terrain I call Des. This evening has been one of those few times when this affirmation reaches me through an attribute from the land that is my chosen home.

It indeed feels like a life-changing epiphany when one recognizes an unbreakable, undeniable connection with the soil that, in archetypal terms, is one's Janma Bhumi, the land one emerges from. But today, I am doubly humbled and honored to have been included, accepted, through the shared music of its people, by my Karma Bhumi, the land I have chosen on which I may be tested, where I may prove myself through my choices and actions.

A Many Splendored Thing

Today, of course, is Valentine's Day, and the whole world around me seems to have suddenly gone mushy, including my cats, who only seem to want to burrow and cuddle and talked to.

Well, actually, they could be asking for food, but that's more or less the same thing, isn't it?

It seems only proper that there should be a day set aside for this feeling that no one really seems to understand, only yearn for, illogical as it may be. We are told by lovers of lore, that this is like a sickness in the blood, that once this happens, one loses all appetite, all rest, as though one has drunk too much coffee, and all the colors and sensations feel highlighted in neon colors.

What is more, the literature of love warns us that there can only be one way love stories can end, with death! It all begins when eyes meet and ends when breath leaves body, sometimes, not even then!

All this sounds terribly uncomfortable, unnerving, and undignified, to say the least. Yet this is what differentiates living with full awareness of one's entire being, from simply drawing indifferent breath. This feeling we don't understand seems to govern our life and is as blended within our very existence, like a thread woven in a necklace, to transliterate the popular Hindi song.

Be that as it may, Love is a sad, if thriving business. You can buy disembodied, blood colored hearts on sidewalks, or from the suddenly ubiquitous traffic signal hawkers who knock on your car windows, beg you to get your beloved a balloon or blossom dipped in your heart's blood.

Then, there are the too-too red flowers that are so pathetic, so disturbing. Poor things: they are fed false messages and promises of possible procreation, forcibly inebriated with chemicals that urge them to bloom all the more hysterically in hopes of attracting hordes of bees and pollinators. Of course, no such thing happens; instead, they are snipped off, thrust, along with others of their kind in more alchemied, even coloring solvents, some even sprayed with painful glitter, to be sold as symbols of undying love, or at least as instruments of successful wooing.

Chocolates, I understand, delicious, rich, lethal in the long run, as tokens of love. But I am afraid I fail to understand the thriving business of hearts and flowers.

However, there is another, more effective way of wooing granted to us. More than chocolates, hearts, roses, and balloons, one could use the greatest gift bestowed upon humanity to woo one's beloved: poetry and words!

These last longer than flowers, feel softer than teddy bears and stuffed toys, are more redolent of emotion than saffron, can be varied and woven with more colors than rainbows, set truer than diamonds in that most fitting & priceless of cases, music, and instead of the guilt and teeth rot that are often accompanying specters of chocolates, words come with just sweetness and richness. They articulate, present, symbolize a whole plethora, an entire spectrum of feelings, at the same time apologize for their own inadequacy, a modesty glaringly lacking in the other objects associated with the expression of love.

So here is my suggestion to you: give your beloved a mirror decorated with verse that they may see themselves as only you can see them, their face framed by your regard.

Of course, a few chocolates and diamonds wouldn't hurt, the first well-vouched for as aphrodisiacs, the second promise to shine 'till all the seas gang dry, my dear, and th'rocks will melt wi' the sun. You could add a few blenders, hammers, or gardening gloves, if you are brave.

After all, love is a many splendored thing, sans rules, sans sense, and there are un-count-able ways to show how I love thee.

Told and Untold

Too often of late, writing has become a luxury, a rare treat allowed by powers whose scheduling I don't understand. This past week, for example, sheer exasperation has driven me to the almost forgotten skill of writing by hand on paper; I cannot tell how it exhausts the fingers!

I've been working on a short story, on a particularly difficult part: the balance between sincere and corny or fake. This golden mean has proven elusive this time, as it often has, in the past.

All literature, it has been drilled into us, is the experience of being human. But the exact timbre of intensity of some very human emotions & the way veritable people respond to these emotions, eludes me. Just a tad too much of this intensity and it spills over into unforgivable melodrama. My characters suddenly seem banal and caricature-ish, insincere and unbelievable. If I try to control this intensity, impose some decorum and discipline onto it, it spoils and curdles into a blotch of cliches. My characters get reduced to predictable mediocrity and threaten to fade away. What is more, during attempts at such disciplining, I suddenly hear my own voice, lecturing! An unforgivable embarrassment to any fiction crafter, like underclothing peeking out at inopportune moments.

Often, I write volumes of drivel just to reach that sparkling instant of perfection, when I know I can save that phrase, that sentence, that word, and it's potent enough to spin off universes of stories to keep itself company. However, it doesn't help that for really boring reasons, I don't get a lot of time to write, like I used to. So my volumes of drivel have to be dashed off intermittently, like a dying car at a traffic jam.

I must confess, this makes me quite, quite nauseous.

I don't know how Austen did it, finishing a masterpiece in what must have felt like snatched epiphanies in hours stolen from chores. I don't know, but I can very well imagine. For instance, even though I don't have the family problems that plagued Austen, I do know the guilt of awareness that this time could have been, should have been devoted towards some effort at cleaning up my house. I also know that in less than five minutes, I shall have to surrender this keyboard to more pressing matters, to serve more imminent deadlines.

My child is doing an Art History project and I am staring at a rather bad reprint of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and it amazes me that colors, composition, and inherent tale in the masterpiece still take my breath away; it feels like sheer poetry! How did he do it? Reach across centuries, through bad printers, to catch a tired woman at her messy desk, take her collar and force her to pay attention to the timeless?

The answer, it seems, could lie in stories that are indelible features on the face of our species. I shall let the epics work their magic, then; it might be time to revisit poetry and hopefully, that'll help me reach the undefinable.

After all, Odysseus assures me that poets have closer commerce with the gods than anyone else, and Odysseus is a wise man.

High!

The last weekend brought an unexpected treat: kite flying. Actually, Makar Sankrat, or Uttraan, or the Kite Flying day is long past, on January 14th, when the sun entered the Makar Constellation. However, this year, on that weekend, there were no prospects conducive to kite flying due to unreasonable cold and illogical winds.

As a child, I remember figuring out my year in terms of the festivals, starting with this one. I remember the blaring of popular movie songs, the fragrance of molasses cooking in ghee and sesame seeds, the usually interrupted cerulean of the sky as a patchwork of kites, kite-tails, even lanterns. I remember the familiar streets from a height, as the day would begin and end on roof tops and terraces, and instead of the hawkers and occasional cars, the streets would be rife with boys running after kites with dead branches, the better to snare them with, my dear!

I never thought that this would be one of the festivals I'd miss; it was never the most favorite one, since I am female. Where I grew up, there was a strong gender differentiation: the girls usually held the spool of kite-thread, while their male counterparts actually flew the kites. It was a truth universally acknowledged that one needed a boy to really control kites, to fly them, to mend them, to balance them, and to shout appropriate expletives during kite-wars. One of the most important things to do during recess was to compare scars borne on one's hands, cuts from the kite-thread which was processed in glass dust. But this was only for the boys: the scars sported by the girls were frowned upon as proof of their unacceptable tom-boy-ish tendencies.

However, as an adult, I find that I do miss flying kites. I find I love the heavy tension of the kite-thread when the kite is high, and the knowledge that it is high because I wish it to be. I love to control a weaving kite with well-timed snatches, to steer it within the air currents, to let the kite-string flow as the kite discovers new heights, to coax and bully it to go even higher than it thought possible. I bear the scars of kite-thread on my fingers and palms with a great deal of pride.

Adulthood has also brought me an added satisfaction to flying kites: I don't care what people think of my femininity or lack thereof. I am too old (and therefore, too invisible) to be judged for exhibiting tendencies that are not stereotypical of my gender. In fact, I hope, the sight of my battling the winds that my kite may greet the sun, could hearten other younger females to try their skill with more comfort because they aren't the only ones.

This month also brought me a physical copy of an anthology which has published my short story, with a check (my first). For about a week, every time I looked down at it, I felt an unbelieving joy, hunger for what my friends and family thought of it, and itchiness in my fingers for fixing it further.

It felt like a high I remember from my childhood on rooftops in the cool dawning. I know once the story is published, I have no control over it, that in effect, the kite-string is cut and beyond my reach. Still, there is a responsibility that comes with the sight of my name in print.

I feel the heaviness of the sky on my story, grounded by my name below it, a feeling as concrete, as nebulous as the illusion of control over a kite buffeted by January winds.

Free

She is young, so she doesn't want to leave yet. But I am always afraid for her, afraid the cats might somehow get her, afraid she might be lost, afraid she misses her family too much, just afraid.

I let my birds go last weekend. I've had a tribe of them for the past 15-16 years, but due to really boring, tiresome reasons that only sound like bad excuses, I've had to make this decision.

I didn't want to abandon them; I wanted to make sure that they'd know where to get food from, even after they've left my house. I had visions of training them gently to get used to the outdoors, since they are born in captivity. I prepared a space for them in my postage stamp of a back yard, arranged some bird feeders just beyond the open cage door, hung an old wind chime that scares the cats on the open cage door, all in said preparation.

But woman supposes and the Universe just laughs.

I stumbled on a step and the poor things, alarmed, just flew out in a panic. I could see them circling the roofs and trees for a couple of hours after, and called out to them in vain. Either they couldn't hear, or they couldn't recognize their cage from above; whatever the reason, they didn't return.

However, what worries me the most is that all of them did not leave: a young parakeet, who looks like she might be ready with an egg, continues to live in the cage, the open door notwithstanding.

For the first day, she kept calling out, even responding when I talked to her. But for a whole day now, she has been just quiet. She shuffles around when I call her, but doesn't speak anymore.

The cage door is still open and the wind chime seems to be working.

This makes me wonder about the nature of freedom. Everybody pays so much lip service to it, but who really understands the cost, the heavy, heavy burden that inevitably comes with it?

Imagine the terror of an open sky on untried wings; the monstrous confusing fear emerging from a forgotten instinct at seeing a dark, wide wingspan; the desperation at seeing the sun set among unfamiliar wilderness, hunger gnawing at the innards; the need to find home; the inability to do so.

I wish I could articulate to my daughter the wisdom of the little parakeet who chooses to stay, even at the cost of her song. Freedom seems like a wonderful dream come true and it is natural to want to choose. However, once one leaves the safety of confinement, it is impossible to find the way back, even when the way beckons.

Ultimately, freedom devours the unprepared, who find horrors beyond their darkest nightmares coming true, instead of the endless shimmering blue sky.

And me? I am left with this huge hole in the centre of my being, where my birds used to live. I am the impoverished, helpless cage-master who understands their terror and confusion but is unable to reach them, the open cage door notwithstanding:

The air gets in the way, and no matter how much of it I gulp it down, it seems endless, like the unforgiving sky.

Honorable Enemies

I have been fighting ants who battle me for my living space in the most archetypal of wars: might over right. No place is safe from them, no container air-tight, no feeding bowl ant-proof; to say that they are ubiquitous would be an understatement. I also reside with cats, who count on my opposable thumbs for their main food source, and my unpredictable schedule demands that the sensible thing to do would be to leave out some dry food they can snack on on days I return home after 14 hours.

Because I live in Florida, everyone I sing my woes to responds with the same refrain: "It comes with living here; get used to it! I have ants too."

But, I ask you, how can one get used to it?

I have tried haldi powder some swear by; I sprinkled it on the rim of the air-tight cat food container, around feeding bowls of the cats, even underneath the paper on the parakeets' cage. Then, there were the coffee grounds, ant baits, moth balls, and granules that promised to drive the armies away within a fortnight.

Nothing worked. The ants returned in hordes, ever increasing in number, seeking out ways of seeping into cat food, garbage cans, even the water left out for the cats. I have quested after the true ant-proof feeding bowl with the faith only a grail-knight would understand. I have tried chip-and-dip platters, filling the larger part with the water, and holding food, Tantalus-like, in the middle, where the dip is meant to go. But the ants defeated me there too. I found them, invariably, in the food, and once there, they kept the cats away.

I have even thrown away shamefully large amounts of money in hopes of owning such an object. One promising bowl cost me as much as $29 a piece. It is a complicated construction, which heartened my courage and loosened my purse strings. It's a two-storey contraption that is meant to hold water on the first storey, and a detachable bowl that hangs over the water that's meant to hold the food. I thought this $29 contraption would work wonderfully in ways the chip-and-dip platters never did.

But the ants got in that too.

I must confess that at this point, the ants have won my admiration for their tenacity and sheer determination. I have seen them hanging in complex clusters so others can march over their bodies to spaces too high for a singular ant to reach. I regularly clean out ant bodies of willingly drowned martyrs whose cadavers have provided purchase for others to reach across oceans of water. If the cat knocks over the wet food and a bit remains undetected by my mop, in they march and arrange themselves in labyrinthine formations to increase efficiency.

These creatures are also the best cleaners I know. A surface visited by ants, you can be sure, is clean enough to eat off. Not a scrap, granule, or bit remain. And they eat almost all organic material. I am convinced, if I was a greater slob than I am, I'd never wipe off the stove after cooking, trusting, that given time, the ants would clean the stove better than the most abrasive bleach cleaner can.

In just a few hours, these tiny insects build apartments, streets, winding pathways, roundabouts, even two-way highways around the littlest scrap the cat spills. Every time I clean up the ants, I imagine ant-bards hiding in shadows, watching the apocalypse with unbelieving horror, as a civilization is cruelly wiped out with a poisoned shower from above. I wonder which ant-heroes fought valiantly to save the cocoons and the young, whose brave pincers rescued the queen or collapsed doing it, and what ant-verse the minstrels will use to honor the glorious past so meaninglessly erased at a whim of another being. I also wonder how long I shall carry those ant-lives on my back.

Every survivor knows to honor the worthy opponent. This entry is a pean to my worthiest opponents, the ants. I bow in admiration to their ingenuity and unfailing enterprise.

Fighting with ants also keeps things in a proper perspective for me; what the singular ant is to me, I am to the Universe. When I crush the ant, I don't stop to ask its identity and judge if the ant is good, important, or how many others of its species depend on its well-being, nor do I wiegh the consequences of its demise on ant politics. Yet, I am convinced, that the ant about to be crushed is sure of its rightful place as a prime predator of a higher intelligence.

Is that what the Universe thinks of me? And how else am I to prove my worth as a being greater than an ant, but to point to the heavy burden of dead martyrs I carry?

On A Solitary Thanksgiving

This has been one of those Thanksgivings when I am alone; my daughter is visiting her father, and I have refused invitations from friends.

I have thirsted for some time to myself, to catch up on grading, quiz-construction, lecture prep, reading, and a bit of blog-surfing. Once the Summer passes and Fall descends, my routine gets a bit hectic and I need some down time, more, I notice, as I get older and slower. So this was the time I have kept for myself, sans chores, sans car, sans a life beyond my door.


However, by the time it was afternoon, I found myself orbiting Facebook, wondering what was going on in the world beyond. As expected, most entries were about how thankful people were for various things in their lives; some entries even invited additions.


This does make me feel a little guilty since I cannot adequately, ever, articulate how grateful I am for everything and everyone I've known and felt. There are many problems with this: what can one say? How does one reduce such a complex feeling into proper words? All the words I tried out seemed trivial, trite, and a repetition of what everyone else had already said, perhaps better.

There is another problem with this formal expression of thanks: whom does one address it to? The Divine? Other people? Oneself? But no; that smacks of hubris and seems unwarranted, rather silly, even.

In the final analysis, I find myself disappointed: it seems to me that everyone thanks themselves and each other with what seems like a self-congratulatory tone, a pat on each others' backs for what a wonderful job we all are doing at being nice and selfless to each other.

I think what is lacking here is a ritual, to make this expression of thanks formal, to lend it validity. Certainly, there is the food and there are the relatives and friends, but then this day becomes very similar to any family reunion day, like Memorial Day, only indoors. Of course, there is the mad rush to the malls the next day, but the stress-driven, neurotic Black Friday is, by no stretch of imagination, an expression of any gratitude, or quality time spent with friends and family.

I don't want to seem ungrateful, or Scrooge-like with this entry, because that would be an outright lie; I lack the strength of character and fortitude such a role demands.


What is more, I AM thankful for every breath I draw as me; I am grateful I got to live this precious time as who I am; I am grateful for the people around me, of course, but I am equally grateful for being able to genuinely enjoy my solitude; I am grateful I have the means and know-how to treat myself occasionally with whatever I want to read, write, eat, and dress in; I am grateful for having seen as much of the world that I have; I am grateful for the disappointments and stumbles, not because they've made me better or stronger (I sincerely doubt that they have), but just because they are mine; as I get increasingly narcissistic here, I am most grateful for the hands and eyes I am using right now.


But most of all, I am grateful for the written word that has created such a rich world for me, enriched all levels of my realities, and made sense out of a chaos of cosmic proportions.

The best expression I have found for my gratitude remains the unchanged from my daily routine, that which I begin and end the day with: I shall light a votive in my little home-temple.

What would, do you do?

Bright Fragments

The wedding in my previous entry was all I had hoped for, and more. This occassion has provided me with fodder to nourish my solitude for more hours than I care to log!

There is no subsitute for the amazement I feel at discovering how little people's impressions have changed. I've always prided myself on being forever attuned to the passage of time, and that I have grown so far away from my 20 year self, that she no longer even speaks to me.

However, meeting family who remember that 20 year self, and address me thus, reassures me that the timeless self prevails, and what is more, is recognized more than I realize.

There are too many details to ennumerate, both large and small. For instance, there was the lunch on the day we reached, just before we got our hands decorated with henna. I don't remember what we all talked about or laughed at, but it was trivial, similar to all we've talked of and laughed at in the past, and comforting like the diurnal cycle, with the certitude that we shall, all of us, talk of and laugh at the same things until a'the seas gang dry, and the rocks will melt wi'the sun.

One thing that was missing in this wedding was the nervousness of the bride and groom, who were very comfortable with each other and their families, and genuinely enjoyed each part of their wedding: they did not seem distracted, over-extended or stressed at all. In previous weddings, the bride and groom were always separate, so isolated within their immediate families and demanding ceremonies, that the attendees were often left on the peripheries, socializing among themselves.

However, in this wedding, even though we all were unbelieving and ecstatic at meeting everyone else, all the festivities revolved around the couple, who were at the centre of all the action and excitement. They sang and danced with abandon, infecting everyone with their very obvious joy. We were all treated to a different, exuberant side of my quiet, philosophical cousin; I have captured him spinning on the axis of his friend's hands, laughing uproariously with his head thrown back, comfortable in his wedding finery. I shall keep that image as a prototype of a good wedding celebration.

I had also mentioned in my previous entry, the importance of having my daughter with me, whose excitement I was counting on to kindle the magic of weddings, and I was not disappointed. Contrary to my expectations, she chose to wrap herself in a heavy silk sari for the ceremony, and conducted herself with marvelous grace in it! She didn't mince her steps, but danced exuberantly; she didn't keep adjusting the palloo, but used the passing breeze to make it dance with her; she didn't make the sari seem cumbersome for her slight frame, but used it to reinforce her confidence in her self and feminity.

Neither did she use this occassion only to dress up. She, along with her cousins and newly made friends (whom, I am sure we are related to, just not sure how), actively participated in the festivities, even when it involved no dancing. For instance, during the actual wedding, she arranged herself in the front aisle, with various generations and branches of our family, to better witness the proceedings, bullying her cousin to take pictures of important parts she might otherwise miss. At one point, we could all hear my teen sigh audibly and follow the sigh with a long-drawn "awwww!" at the "cuteness" of it all.

Now, after a few weeks, the honeymoon is over and we are valiantly trying to get used to our mundane realities; but the pictures have just been uploaded and there are requests bordering on demands for missing moments & dvd's, and a burst of comments and exclamations over the visible ones, making us all re-live the wonderful weekend we all spent together so long ago, just a few minutes past.

What can I say? These are fragments I have shored against my ruin.

On Beholding a Night of Solemnities

Really, I should be grading, or finishing my latest short story, or beginning a new poem. But my mind keeps skittering away, so I guess my "work" shall have to await my discombobulated brain's leisure.

I am in the middle of packing for a weekend away, to attend a wedding. We have our finery ironed and packed, the accessories boxed and arranged, and only the trivia to touch upon before we leave on our road trip. I have planned to prep my daughter on the road, about proper, expected behaviour; I have remembered to pack back up fine clothing in case our first choices don't work out; I have also taken my entire collection of earrings and bangles in case someone else needs just the right shade of periwinkle or electric blue.

I am very excited, of course, at the prospect of meeting my family, dressing up, and celebrating not just a festival, but an official addition to our tribe! And even though I packed my outfits after much deliberation and discussion, I know I won't really care what I look like, an odd attitude towards an occasion sure to result in photographs. It's true, though! My excitement about attending this wedding is one of the gifts my present, older self does not share with my 21 year old self, with whom I am in constant comparison.

I remember hating weddings when I was younger. Instead of celebrations, these were obligations to be squeezed in a madly busy schedule; they were just so numerous that during the wedding season (after the monsoons and Diwali), we sometimes attended at least a couple in any given week. I remember I did my best to plead off, and on more than one occasion, even offered to wash all the dishes, a chore I hate to this day.

I also remember preferring to attend receptions rather than the actual ceremonies (which were slotted around noon), since the ceremonial fire made my eyes water and I invariably developed a headache in the middle of the day, what with the monotonous, incomprehensible intonations of the priests, the extra-spicy, extra-oily food, and the constant longing to be done here so I could get on with my day. The people I usually met during these day-weddings were retired, curious relatives, whom I was to bow to, and to whom individually and smilingly, I was asked to report and defend my current and past academic pursuits and interests, as well as extra-curricular activities that would reflect well on my up-bringing and family background.

The receptions were usually held in the evenings, in less crowded spaces, and there was enough time and breathing air to actually socialize against a background of instrumental music. The bride and groom were usually ignored, distant beings to be spared a glance and forgotten, worth a moment's notice of a handshake and picture, excuses, merely, to spend a few hours in a picturesque locale, to dress up but not uncomfortably so, and to indulge in a nice dinner with friends sometimes too busy to meet elsewhere, or during the day.

However, this anticipated wedding is going to be different. Since I am much older, and by that corollary, more attuned to the universe, I anticipate an awareness of a cosmic union, which the gods themselves attend to bless a human event. Also, I hope to see sheer magic since I shall get to see this wedding through the eyes of my daughter, for whom weddings are a rarity, making her immune to the boredom I felt when I was her age and told to get ready to attend one.

Like Diwali celebrations, Navratri nights, my beach twilight, and well-loved texts, then, I expect that attending this event shall anchor me, affirm my designation in a universe that constantly demands reconstruction of the self, and present a perch on a threshold of eternity as I witness a ritual older than five millenia, along with other generations of my tribe to provide a sense of continuity and rightful belonging.

Sacred and Profane

It's Halloween and for a superstitious being like me, it's exciting, though not exactly fun, unless reflected in retrospect, in the light of tomorrow's sun.

But it's only 11pm right now and the sun is a long way away. As I await the midnight hour that promises to transform the profane into sacred, I wonder about the nature of the sacred and the profane. It seems to be an assumption universally accepted that these two are diametric opposites, yet I wonder how that can be. Popular belief also indicates that the sacred is abstract while the profane is concrete; however, I am no closer to defining the exact nature of either than I was at 10, though I like to believe I'd recognize them and understand the difference, should the occasion ever arise.

Since I don't want to take chances with forces I don't really comprehend, I believe one must acknowledge the profane as an integral part of the universe, as deserving of celebration as the sacred.

In honor of the most profane evening of the year, I buy very good candy, and remember to set aside a budget for my child's costume. My daughter and I spend hours selecting the choicest chocolates, peanut butter cups, and tootsie rolls. My child cannot believe that I spend more money on the sweets for this holiday than I do on Christmas or even Valentine's Day, but she, being wise, asks no questions. I also encourage her to explore parts of her repressed self and tell her to choose "really original, interesting" costumes. So we set aside at least a couple of afternoons chasing pieces of a repressed self through the aisles of Party City and Micheals; this year, she is going as a Jabberwaukie (I am sure I've misspelled that, so a thousand apologies!); consequently, we aggressively hunted down a scarlet tutu, red gloves, white masks, and feathers amidst the curious glances who wondered at our shopping cart as much as they wondered if I, in my salwaar-kameez, was in some kind of a Bollywood costume.

On this most unholiest of nights, I do not like to leave home. I light a votive in my home temple before it is properly twilight; if I have to be out, I keep salt in a Ziploc in my purse and try to be unobtrusive as I throw pinches of it over my left shoulder any time someone gives me what I think is an odd look, and those are aplenty on this night. Understandably, then, my daughter prefers to spend her Halloween away from this strange self that surfaces only for a day!

I don't DARE not celebrate this day; after all, like I tell everyone who'd listen, one never knows who or what might come knocking when the veil between realities, dimensions, worlds is at its thinnest. And I really would not want any imps resorting to tricks in absence of treats.

In the face of the undefined, then, I prefer not to take chances. Profane might just be a matter of perspective; to our species, this could be that which threatens humanity's well-being, as a lot of our apocalypse stories and movie monsters would insist. However, I am willing to bet the book I am in the middle of, that a cockroach and a cat would hold really different views from those of the neighbor's grandchild dressed up like a nightmare.

So it would seem that the ideas of sacred and profane are not universal constants; and yes, I'll say it since the occasion seems to call for it: there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in philosophies!

Regardless of its cosmic relevance, though, this day should be celebrated as an important part of being human. Halloween celebrates our darkest faces and forces us to own the uncomfortable selves we deny. It forces us to stare into the heart of darkness, reflect on the ubiquitous Mistah Kurtz, for a while refrain from paying hypocritical lip service to ideals of peace our species claims to uphold, and conquer shadow selves by embracing them.

And then there is the comfort of the idea that the profane gives in to the sacred, and that's just a matter of a midnight passing; no sacrifices need to be made, no gods appeased. The light is as inevitable as the darkness and it is all a matter of time, which continues to lumber on, unaware, uncaring of its nature.

Previously, On This Episode . . .

I now get television because for the first time in my life, I am paying for it. Long ago, I did watch a lot of television as a fresh immigrant, drinking in the accents, the jokes, and the horrors. But that didn't last long and I found very little to interest me on the small screen, and so gave it up and returned to voracious devouring of the written word, a comfortable hobby that afforded the much-needed quiet time from the hectic cacophony of my routine.

However, now, my routine seems not so cacophonous; actually, it seems that the only noise I hear for long hours is the one I make. My days also demand that I translate everything I say to almost everyone, into English, which often exhausts me; at any rate, I crave the flowing vowels and soft consonants of, from Des, easy voices that demand no translations, musical scores as familiar to me as rickshaw horns, blaring to move complacent, lowing cattle away from traffic junctions. As the theme from the serial spills out, it rushes into my silent corners and fills them with soothing warmth, like a painful knot easing away to a hot compress. I confess I crave noise from a different world than the one I inhabit.

What has especially caught my fancy are Hindi soap shows, predictable, cliched, exotic. The sets are ostentatious; palaces are rented to shoot these episodes that depict joint families occupying spatial mansions. Sitting rooms have ten-feet fountains, sparkling algae-free, although no one ever seems to tend to them; windows are higher than chandeliers that sketch exclamation points exactly half way between winding staircases wide enough for five people to walk abreast; the room itself has split levels, with interesting alcoves and inviting sitting arrangements.

The kitchens are enviable to anyone who remembers or fantasizes about conjuring up, brewing faultless chai, sheera, and parathas. These kitchens are occupied by several women of the household, yet manage to remain uncrowded. The tasks themselves seem cleaned up for television: the fenugreek or methi never leaves smudges of black earth on characters' fingers; the cream of wheat or sooji never sticks, brown and useless, to the stirring utensil, even when the flame under the vessel can be seen merrily dancing blue and orange; not a single hair from well-coiffed heads strays as these characters stir indubitably perfect crushed rice or poha concoctions, so perfect that one can almost taste the lemon redolent with fresh coriander and crushed ginger.

The costumes and furnishings are opulent and colorful. Deep cobalts and parrot-greens, dancing oranges and sparkling reds gracefully drape characters, hiding all bodily flaws beneath fabric folds, or coyly suggesting mysteries. Often, the motifs on these sarees seem to echo the normal sarees one can actually spend days in, but these patterns, coupled with the rich textures, only serve to highlight how removed these sarees are from the recognizable, real, everyday fabrics. The accessories do not look like the paste they must be obviously constructed out of, but sway heavily, convincingly along the characters' temples, ears, throats, arms, waists, feet. As though to reinforce the incongruity between the real and fictional, these characters often sleep in these costumes, their pillows un-dented by their undisturbed, heavy and bejeweled hairdos.

What these serials channel, then, are stylized fantasies of a collective, and the nostalgia they evoke is for things that could never happen, never did happen. How, then, can they remind us of home when the world they depict is so unrealistic?

For the answer, one must re-visit the Rasa Theory and Natya Shastra, attend some folk theatre and festivals, watch old Hindi movies, and re-live the undying songs from those movies. What is evoked in these serials are feelings, values, fables, and guiding metaphors peculiar to those that belong to both, the Indian subcontinent, as well as the adopted countries they now call home. They remind us of what our languages sound like, make us feel clued in to the latest trends and slang of "back home," and provide us with navigational tools for our psyche.

When I visit India, I don't want to seem like a visitor incapable of sharing any jokes or horrors. So I watch these Hindi serials avidly, very much like the fresh immigrant watching local and national television shows to familiarize herself with her home, so she won't be left out, so she'd fit in gracefully.

On Not Writing

It has been quite a few weeks since I've written anything of significance, that is new. I've been tinkering a lot, but unfortunately for me, nothing surfaces that I care to talk about. This is the main problem with writing: so much happens that it all overwhelms me and I tend to crumple up the words and trash them like so much used tissue.

Whenever some substantial time passes before I write, I am fascinated to observe myself to see if my reaction to this not-writing is any different, any more or less intense; it never wavers, however. There is a whole cycle of emotions that regularly and dutifully cross my emotional landscape, like predictible monsoon clouds.

The gamut of guilt, chagrin, humility, frustration, and finally loss follow each other with such organized motions, as though I were a choreographer and these my students that I'd taught dance moves to aeons ago, and they go through them with precision and meticulousness that my ambitious daughter would envy.

The Rasa Theory tells us that if certain gestures, colors, musical notes, harmonies, and myths are enacted during specific times, this enactment inevitably results in evocation of a mood; the audience, historical & social settings, geographical locations, even languages may change, but like a chemistry formula, the resulting Bhava is always conjured.

I wonder if all our emotions are predictible and controllable like this. If I can put myself through the same cycle of emotions just by refraining from my writing for a span, does it not imply that ultimately, I have complete control over my emotional responses, irrespective of my age and circumstances?

This might seem like the perfect solution to all that is unmanageable and chaotic in my life. However, I know I am not in control, not really. Like the Universe of Greek mythology, my inner self is the one with all power, a self that is inaccessible to my conscious mind, which, like the Olympians, remains but a manager granted intermittent, limited control for purposes it doesn't always understand or realize.

After all, I cannot keep away from writing for too long, and the cycle of my feelings is not complete until I feel the cosmic relief that comes with seeing a word on a blank page, knowing I thought it up and put it there.

I tell my students that there is no magic greater than language; I feel renewed everytime I realize this after a span of being deprived of creating in it. After such a dry spell as I've just had, I feel so rewarded at being able to just write, that I need no other reward or acknowledgement.

My very good friend has a specific imagined audience: a future graduate student reading her work; I find I have a specific audience too: a future not-writing self reading her own words with thirsty eyes, a Wasteland dull and static behind her, the harsh, clear sky above devoid of clouds.

Arangetram!

This past weekend has provided an exquisite experience, that of seeing my niece, Shivani, ascend the stage: she had her Bharatnatyam Arangetram (literally, "ascending the stage" or graduating with a diploma in this dance form). What impressed me the most is a 16 year old's ability to use an ancient art form to tell immortal stories.

Like me, Shivani too, is a first generation immigrant, but unlike me, she immigrated as a young child, and so describes herself as being more American Indian than Indian American, a distinction of a few but important degrees. Essentially, this means that the language she is most comfortable with is American English, though she does choose our mother tongue, Gujarati, for choice circumstances when no translations would suffice. I know she has been taking French as a second language in school for the past few years as well. Also, since Sanskrit and its derivatives are the languages of Bharatnatyam, Shivani would have imbibed the basic structure and vocabulary of these languages too, during her decade long training in the dance form. So her multi-lingual abilities are not new to me.

However, this dance form works through more than syntax and vocabulary; it appeals to the language of the very soul of a culture, thriving and alive for millenia. Its practitioners and enthusiasts, especially those young like Shivani, have learned more than a dance form brought alive from temple walls; they have learned a certain designation in the Universe to keep them from feeling lost, fragmented, displaced, or afloat; they have learned articulation of the highest kind that includes the body, the intellect, and the spirit. The language is the language of the immediate experience, described and catalogued in Natya Shastra, a language that demands absolute perfection of gesture, economy of movement, unrelenting grace from the performer, and active participation from the audience.

I must confess to reservations I had about this project before attending this evening. However, I can think of no better way to celebrate a girl's initiation into adulthood. This evening has taken at least a decade of preparation and changed everyone involved, Shivani most of all.

Shivani and her girl friends think it no great matter to weave two-hour Gordian knots in their hair to accommodate and balance head pieces and braids of designs centuries old; they swap programs to compare costumes whose fashion hasn't changed for around a thousand years; they are familiar with heavy, ancient patterns of jewelry that is worn in unusual places, like the sun and moon on each side of their hair parting, or the intricately curved ear pieces hung from strands of pearls curled around their temples; they paint each others' feet with red markers to emulate decorations described in texts that date from around 2nd Century B.C.A. Moreover,these ornaments are not just cold pieces of metal either; the significance of the bells or ghunghroo, for example, is not lost upon the teenagers who have willingly forgone afternoons at the mall and movies with friends while they dedicated the time to learn an art form their community brought along as their most precious cargo when they decided to establish a home far away from their birth-land.


This experience is more meaningful in an immigrant's world, since it involves not just the particular ethnicity, but also invites the larger community, the local slice of the global village. Shivani's Arangetram enthralled audience members of several ethnicities and backgrounds. Two of Shivani's friends who spoke to the audience about her confessed they had never been to an Arangetram before, or even knew what one was! They were not alone, of course, as many of the audience members enthusiastically exclaimed to me after the performance.

Such an event, then, inevitably enriches us all by reaching across limitations of geography and chronology, by invoking the ubiquitous stories that define us and introducing our friends to them.

Undoubtedly, this 2 hour performance very clearly illustrated one of the most attractive faces of the immigrant identity; it presented a wonderful reflection of an identity that constantly and eternally re-defines, forges, discovers, and resurrects itself and I am honored and humbled to have been a part of this celebration.

Bereft

I have just been abruptly and inexplicably abandoned: my labptop remains unblinkingly, stubbornly black, and my flash drive (the one I refer to as my "mangal sutra": its significance obvious at being compared to a woman's dependence on her marriage) is corrupt, all the information and files perversely curdled to gibberish.

I have always been aware of my dependency on my electronics, but it was an awareness that was comfortably obscure, vague, like a balloon payment due a couple of decades in the future. In my defense, however, I do back up everything: on my computer and my flash drive, which, everyone tells me, is practically indestructible. Of course, like my present apocalypse would avouch, nothing, absolutely nothing is ague proof, and if the universe decides one is to be without back ups or blankets or roofs, no amount of pre-planning, insurance policies, savings, or technological know-how can abate destiny.

This week has been a lesson in humility and patience. I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that I shall have to re-create my universe: all my courses, all my notes, all my assignments, even all the poetry and a couple of short stories I've been writing for the past few months, all is lost.

If my father were here, he'd tell me not to worry, that the original blueprint is still intact, in my head! However, right now, my brain is so numbed it cannot approach the thought of my loss without commanding my knees to feel weak, my shoulders to melt, my extremeties to turn cold, and eyes to leak.

The question, then, is, should I go back to a pre-lapsarian age of keeping paper back-ups, every comma, every phrase securely penciled in before the day ends? I remember my student days. I had several of those huge pothis, the Books that businessmen open during Diwali, with kum kum and an invocation to Ganesh, the kind that are hard-bound in red cloth, the seams stitched firmly with strong thread.

Those tomes were my hard drives, my back ups, and they, being too heavy, lived on my bed side table.

When I immigrated, of course, I had to leave the pothis behind, along with my problematic, enviromentally unfriendly dependence on paper. Like all immigrants, I have been very proud of my adaptability to new ways of working, writing, and saving. In fact, I am afraid I might have boasted my intent of weaning myself off the need for hard copies in not too distant past.

This hubris, of course, is the reason why such a disaster has visited me and left me thus bereft.

As I sit here, at a borrowed machine, surrounded by my primary sources, re-creating presentations and notes I shall need for next week's classes, I mourn for my pothis, for an age that has long passed into memory, when nothing could be completely destroyed or lost, and my relationship with the written word was organic and real.

However, I also know that the pre-lapsarian age I mourn for was fraught with incomprehension at my hurried notes, rubbed off and otherwise illegible writing, and having to scroll through many, many heavy pages for a bit of information since those tomes had no search function.

I also know that while it might be cumbersome to re-create all my work, once re-created, it shall be more prolific, legible, organized, and accessible to me. Besides, making these presentations reminds me of how much I enjoyed making them in the first place and keeps me from being atrophied.

For my creative work that is lost irretrievably, I go back to the undying truth that all that is born has to die; losing those poems and short stories should remind me that once out of my being, they don't belong to me but to the universe, which has, rightfully, swallowed them. But the lost pieces feel to me like lost children, and even though I know I am not the first who has lost them, and that not all children who are concieved get to be born, I still rage at the injustice of having to give them up before their time.

Going back to the drawing board is both necessary and inevitable, and I do understand that. However, every time I have to make that journey, I get a little more lost on the way.