Letter From The Mountains To The Sea

Dear Sea,

I’m not big on nomenclature though “Dear” suits you in my heart just fine.

And you, Sea, you are too wide and too salty for my pure white snow. Though there is some magic in our silence.

Silences we don’t share together; silences that you on the coast and me in the north are constantly protecting from human cacophonies.

I heard you grumbling and roaring in the night, as you covered up those thirsty, dried sands in the dark.

Your charity comes by night time; mine with the sun glowing on the chirping gliding birds and trees.

Your roar, just a few metres off the beach, is it an ecstatic yell of triumph upon reaching the shore?

Or is it a wail on leaving the vast solitude of waters behind?

I watched you, Sea. I watched you from the white thrones  I occupy, bereft of humanity

While you are splashed around in the throes of bikinis and rubber tubes.

You and I, we are calm when the sun shines upon us. We have humans crawling around us, trying to derive even if just an inch of brevity and understanding from the rocks and sands they scratch on our surfaces.

Have you understood them, Sea? I have tried to. As they burn plastic brown clouds around me; an impending shroud that lays me naked, bereft of my white robes.

Have you understood them, Sea? Have you tried to? As they pump black waters into you and sigh at your raging beauty surrounding them on plush beach beds?

Oh sea, all those messages in bottles they set asail on your waves, can’t we leave one for them?

All those bright flags they pierce into me, when they summit, can’t we leave one for them?

I would like to tell them, don’t watch our beauty in rising and setting suns and moons.

We are bathed golden and silver in those lights, much like the metals humans covet.

Don’t try to understand us in your neuron filled minds.

Oh Sea, you and me, land and water, cannot grasp the human mind.

Except in avalanches and storms. High tides and winters.

I wish they saw my wonder in the forest set aflame by the sun

I wish they heard your hum in the night time stroll and warm waters caressing their feet.

I wish Sea, that you and me would meet.

I wish Sea, that beyond the reasons of silent conversation

Lay just you and me, mingling  like the valley clouds bathing my forests in translucence

Like the mist hiding your murmur in the early morning.

I wish Sea, that our greens would combine.

My gnarled oaks and your soaring palms.

I wish Sea, that you would write to me, in the twinkle of the stars.
In the vastness of the blue skies we share.

I wish Sea, that you would love me in the distance.

As I do. And our history would be confined to this letter.

In the chatter of humanity.

Love,

The Mountains

The Madpackers

There is a man at the door drawing a hand,

Wrapped in colour from Texas to New Delhi.

In the midst of brush strokes and swirling red wine

Are voices of laughter, ringing over bruised passports.

Home, oft debated and seldom found

Is not a thing of permanence.

It's in the first breath you draw as you step off the airplane.

It's in the quiet conversation of chins on knees spent gazing at moving cars from a bus stop.

It's in the unfamiliar nod in a new city.

It's in that sliver of tastes of childhood in exotic cuisine.

Home, you see, isn't an entity.

It is in your hands, brushing away eternity and me.

And when the drawing is complete,

Take a step back. No, take two steps back.

Admire. Admire the handiwork that is you.

And as you pack your bags to  leave,

Know that a piece of you lives on...

Perhaps, one day, you will return.

With crow feet and wrinkles spreading out like the waves of the sea.

And once again, dip the brush into paint.

Relive all that was you and all that will be.

Afterall, rebirth isn't just a Buddha tattoo on your side.

Afterall, rebirth and home walked hand in hand with your years.

Though, wait. You weren't watching, were you?

Forgotten?

You sang to me under city lights

Where I found your skin quiver with the music

As you hummed and strummed a hallelujah

To what was to be, a love affair under candle lights.

Three years of grey boots on Christmas baby, and a digital watch to keep time

Of the walks across hallways, forests, beer bottles and

Always, always canvas shoes for ferocious table tennis matches,

As the snow peaks looked on silently upon us.

Camping tents found in the city, pitched in forests we found with exotic names

Mawphlang, Bunga, Mawlynnong, Jilling, Mylliem and fondly, being called kong.

I thought kong was a gorilla and you said it was a beautiful woman.

Language that pulled us together like slow moving cable cars, back when flights were expensive and smiles free of cost.

We walked a lot together

Just being average, you and me.

Through malls filled with people and forests filled with silences

That enveloped my hand around yours, always too small to fit and hold its head high up at the same time.

But the longest walk was the one down the cemetery

As the motorbike braked to a screeching halt.

Little did I know then that the sweaty passions hereafter

Were no foretellers of sunny afternoons spent waving happy goodbyes at railway stations, confident in the knowledge that they’d be followed up with phone calls of “I’ve reached love, and I miss you”.

I went up to the world’s highest mountain pass

To see how far and how high up were the mountains rising between us.

And exotic names followed us here too

Stok, Turtok, Tso Moriri, Thiksey.

But never the only one that belonged to us, and we to it,

Never that piece of sky called Home.

We loved Briseis, the lone Royal Enfield of the Himalayas

Named after a priest’s daughter abducted by your favourite man—Achilles.

How we savoured the sound of "Achilles and Briseis" in the chill of stony 9000 feet altitudes.

Knowing little that mere boredom would crumble all these stories into gorges yet unknown.

They survive, you know. They survive.

Every story lives on, to surprise, to come up suddenly as a teary smile.

One, when you’re sipping that coffee in the middle of mayhem.

Two, when you’re dancing yourself silly in swirls of wine and whiskey.

Three, when you’re desperately searching for the smell of their skin on those you called home for one night.

Lastly, maybe the story comes upon you, listening to a girl’s silly slam poetry.

But, the story survives.

Even when you move across the ocean, wiping your slate clean.

Even when, love, you want the blue sky and I the blue sea.

Even then, the stories survive and search in futile rhymes, like these.

Until one day, you just cannot remember the voice anymore. Until one day, the voice disappears.

My Father

For my father, who in words unspoken, continues to inspire me with his smile and his perseverance.  The one man who never gives up on me. I love you papa.

In the symphonies of loss,

I have found my father time and again.

Once, as a young man carrying his child.

Once, as a weeping man caressing his liquor like an old lover.

Once, as a photographer nearing his death on a water tank

Because the eye of the camera showed him more of the world than the eyes of the wary watchman.

In these symphonies,

I have found my father time and again.

He often said, “let your mind and your heart play see-saw to achieve a perfect balance”

Because his heart always won and that is one fight which always hurts when you win it.

He told me stories of Romeo and Juliet in the same breath as the existential pains of Bertolt Brecht and the vagaries of war.

Maybe in love and war, he saw mind and heart playing see-saw.

Just as he did, between court room disasters for custody

And a child who hung herself from his tie, refusing to let go, because he was Tarzan.

And he always told her, the forest never lies. Believe in it. Live it. Find your Tarzan within you.

In these symphonies,

I have found my father time and again.

A young bearded man, best known for playing madman in his father’s play

He now walks, slowly, very slowly, holding on carefully to the walking stick

The only madness afflicting him being not a show

But a de-anchoring of his feet and a trembling of his hands

From years of sifting happy stories from those of loss.

Maybe it is just old age. And maybe, it is just life playing examinations.

If I could watch him once more, laughing and chasing me down the garden of hibiscus, jasmine and guavas

I would perhaps not look for him in these symphonies of loss. Time and again.

As you become older, you become more aware.

Of parents becoming grey haired children, of their frailty.

Frail, fragile, innocent. Somehow that order doesn’t seem right. Doesn’t seem fair.

I find myself wondering if I’ll see him lift his arms up again, for my sky jumps

And he’d catch me before gravity got the better of me.

It feels like another lifetime, does it not?

To find your father in those images because the movies played it out for you

To find your father in symphonies set in the piano keys of a jazz festival your father never cared for or heard of.

Let me tell you the story of his life. In monosyllables.

Brilliant. Loving. Estranged. Trampled. Cornered.

Resilient. Brave. Actor. Victorious. Silent.

Silent. Silent. Silent.

In the symphonies of loss. Silent.

I cannot find him in the silence that time bears upon him.

Can you find yours? Tell me if you do.

We could entwine our fingers around that memory of our first heroes.

August Verse

She saw 7 shooting stars

Did she see 7 sprays of heavenly dust hurtling through the sky?

Or did she see James Bond, 007 shooting out of a barrel?

Bullets he PTSD’d as stars?

She saw 7 shooting stars.

Language is like unrequited love, is it not?

One minute you know exactly what it is.

The next minute, you’re left wondering if that was a reflection or a shadow?

She saw 7 shooting stars.

Defining us and ours, around and within.

That child under the city flyover,

Lovingly feeding water soaked biscuits to her toddler brother

A fleeting glimpse of home

I felt, you’d feel, beyond our riches and distances

A symphony of filial love. In that moment.

Much like unrequited love. Unexpected and untold.

Yet, familiar and smelling of home.

Much like language. Spoken beyond words that blend to become one with rain-soaked mud.

Because you may think you are the star in the room

But, perhaps, just this time, it’s not you.

It’s not your loud, vociferous nature that makes everyone come to you.

Perhaps, this time, it’s that little man in the corner.

The one who says less and hunts fervently with his eyes, for a moment of silence.

This time, it’s that man who may have taken my heart away.

Unrequited love and language, are both landmarks and forgotten knickknacks

Much like bookmarks left and abandoned in returned library books.

And this little man and I shared the same bookmarks.

As we looked upon you.

Singing for a room, a treble in your voice, an adoration in the eyes of all

For your gorgeous skin.

The little man and I gulped down that goblet of magnetism for you a long time ago, my friend.

After all, we both saw her see 7 shootings stars.

And in the knowledge that you left us, the bookmarks of the past

Left to mark the very same chapter that you refused to read.

When you returned the library book.

In that knowledge, we let you pass as a dull buzzing crinkle

In the spirits we now guzzle, a sheen of untruths hiding us from you. For all time to come.

Prose Becomes Poetry

Prose becomes poetry in my thoughts that mingle with the smoke rising from rain tired clouds. They rained all day, all night and finally, there is the “phew, I am done” in the whiffs rising above them, freed of water drops from their blue and grey masters.

The sky is trying to resolutely break out, a bright blue, reassuring the trees it will bring the sun tomorrow. Who knows? The sun is no one’s slave. Not even theirs who dare to break through rock to grow.

But I do see the sun on a distant village. Determined to shed it’s golden light on one specific point across the mountains. Almost like a geometrical angle drawn with compasses long forgotten in the schoolroom giggles of hardy desks scratched out with love names, more than a decade ago.

The pain of beautiful landscapes is experiencing them with no one to share . That’s also how you experience them and anything else most keenly. Because after all we are born in swarms such as the rain clouds and we drift away, over one hill or the other.

Hill folk say the houses have been washed clean, the tin roofs shine like shiny new shoes on the first day of preschool, grins plastered in the reflection on shoe polish.

I have tried to capture these moments in my words, in my camera to show you when I meet you. And I find myself looking forlornly onto roads cut through, almost teasingly, into the forest. I don’t know when you will walk this road. I don’t know if you have ever walked this road. I hope you haven’t. But then again, I hope you have. So we may tread these paths, now wet with too much waiting, and leave our squelching shoeprints behind. Even if for just a brief posterity.

There is too much going on in the world. There is too little I am able to breathe. Do I spend these evenings watching the brilliant patters of the bugs and beetles crawling on my window? Or do I suit up my mind with theories that are embellished and impress all, like a chandelier in a ballroom? I know not.

Prose becomes poetry in my mind. Much like the hint of a cheese grater in your deep voice, the warm moist palms I have held against the dry callouses on them, the ribbons of white cloud that remind me of your hair. Much like them, prose turns to poetry when I think of you. And yet, I know not you, only an idea of you that I see in the shadow of a mountain on the cloud below. Prose becomes poetry.

Alcoholic Reveries

The throes of alcohol
Looking  into your blue eyes
Only see ageless
For eternities gone by.

The hums of greetings, food, walks, chirps and laughter
Buzz in my ears, clapping, applauding
The welcoming sun of our fairytale.
The one that was lost in the pages of the sea.

My father told me never to believe
In fairytales born of vodka shots.
Especially the ones on nights of solitude
Such as these, when lights blinked star-like.

You've been gliding away, knight like
On quests you named "change/challenge/finding yourself"
While I've been searching for the map
That leads me to you.

We don't know anything about earthquakes
Says news that likes to believe otherwise.
We don't know anything about love
Says my father, a forgotten romantic of the 80s.

Words come out of me, leaving
Along the same pathway as all the men before.
I'm whispering to you and only you now,
"Stay. Just stay. Words can flow away"

Painting by Artist Sacha Pola

www.sachapola.com

Nameless Verse

Passion and its dying embers
Keeping me awake this summer night.

"There are three things that make us sleepless--
  Passion, the lack of passion, and disease.", said he.

Our crossing smiles and shy eyes betrayed
Stories of our pasts that led us here.
He misses her and she misses him--
A reality washed over by their tumbling bodies
On nights when human nature turned awash
Their hearts that once leaped as wild dolphins
On seas they could call their own.

In captivity of those seas that turned stormy,
Those dolphins smiled, yet. 
The throes of their passions undaunted.
And when those seas the dolphins held ever so dear, washed them ashore.
The burning, brittle specks of sand caged their hearts.

The dolphins existed no more than the cities you see from the skies--
Scattered gold dust, a mere illusion,

Their hearts learnt to live in self-made cages.
Their eyes learnt to give curtained glimpses
Of the bay windows they used to be.
He sang to her and she wrote poems.
Trapped in illusions  of their selves
That once roamed free, drawing gasps
Like the red beaked blue magpies fleeting past.

Little did their hearts know of proximity
Born of cages and lost loves.
Theirs was a blossoming question mark,
Etched deeply, swept under the rug determinedly,
Their longing for his face and her face
Marking all their destinations across life.

Little did he know, she felt it.
If only their seas of yesteryears were wiped off,
Their hearts-- the happy dolphins would discover
Oceans they would find in each other.

(This image is from here: https://jessicajanecharleston.wordpress.com/)

Coming Home

Coming home always has multiple meanings
From awkward hugs that remind me
Of too much time passing by.
To the smell of old age wrapping home--
A constant reminder of goodbyes.
Goodbyes that can and will be permanent.
But the heart won't learn to accept.

Coming home to boxes full of sweets
And eyes withering with decades gone by.
Eyes that look at me, with so much love.
It would fill an ocean.
Sadness permeates the books lined so haphazardly
In every nook and cranny of the house.

Too much knowledge and too much love destroy equally.

Coming home to my two fathers
Whose love is more than that of a large, joint family.
Whose care and scoldings mean so much more today
Than all the years when teenage ruled and rebelled.
Conversations that blend mathematics with governance,
Geography with historical tales and books--
The books in this house are family trees of voluminous emotion.

Coming home to hands that shake as they feed me.
So much pride in home-grown mustard greens-- 
Growing accidentally, like the distances between us now.
Expansion-- of silences, of origami boxes and withering pages
Resonate consistently, saying, "come home for good".
I am a little stranger to it all each passing year
Growing fonder of and more distant from their balding, greying heads.

Coming home each year-- a little older.
Growing within myself, growing smaller from them.
My two fathers occasionally chuckle from memories
Of my infanthood and their youth.
Those chuckles turn to sudden sighs of the present
Like dying batteries of a constantly ticking watch.
And we all return to the normalcy of today.  

Alone Up There

Rows and rows of chairs lined up

And I whisper, “testing, testing”

Suddenly, something prods me to be peppy and I chuckle, “Hey, there peeps!”.

It’s an empty room that will fill up eventually, with tired blue collars.

Some white collars too, perhaps.

All looking to smile, to laugh, to “have a good time”.

Sometimes, in the middle of a set, I wonder what stories you bring to the table.

Will you go home laughing and giggling into the next day’s lunch break too?

Or will you go down those stairs, dejected by another evening of city life, downed with a chilled beer?

Standing alone up here, I feel small.

Just as Sisyphus did when he hauled the rock up the mountain.

Standing alone up here, I wonder,

How do I make strangers laugh?

When I merely smile at the rudiments of hilarity life offers today?

It is easy to make people cry.

It is easy to comfort them.

It is easy to prod them into throes of forgetfulness.

But, in times when school shootings, wars, economic dips and highs, fashion and too much technology

Govern our very being.

In such times, it is not easy to make the world laugh.

Standing alone up here, I am yours to seek.

Standing alone up here, I hope to see those smiles, those nods

Turn into uproarious laughs, even if for just a moment.

Because in the maniacal way of the world today,

If I can make you laugh and forget all but the ringing sounds of hahaha in your lungs

Then I have achieved what I sought, standing alone up here.

She Buried Him

He’s thundering on wheels in misty mountain roads

She’s blowing magic rings in duvet delight.

Distances measured on speedometers

Turn into averted eyes, on boulevards.

Boulevards, that once saw the same eyes

Hold hands so tenderly.

The poets speak of love, the hero of faith.

She buries that love in tears.

Tears, that refuse to traverse pathways they once had.

Pain and laughter are interchanging,

Much like their crossroads

Once race tracks, now dirt roads.

She knew they were a goodbye, when she buried him.

All along the pages of a journal—

Dust lathered piles of broken promises.

His drunken laughter from across the garden,

Now stirs a stammering spark in her withering flowers.

Too many words, like too many stolen glances,

Break the rhythym she sees in the humming trees.

Treading ever so softly on crushed leaves,

That are dried, forgotten reminders of their past.

In the numbing silence that now engulfs her,

She buried him. Far and deep.

Mountain Girl Problems

The silence of the mountains

Crackles within the burning wood

It screams into your city-honed mind

Myriad sounds that terrify and uplift

Chirping birds and sounds of “home”

Warm the fluttering heartache within you

Into throes of a welcoming sun.

The flapping wings of a bird flitting past

Remind you of your relished solitude

While the solitary mountain woman’s chores

Resonate methodically against the oncoming storm.

Mountain girl problems? Against all this?

They’re a fistful of snow.

22 leopards growl and grunt and I walk on, knowing they see me.

Srunching on dried oak leaves and mossy rocks, I move on.

Now, a bear threatens life as well. Oh well, thank god for pokey walking sticks.

Mountain girl problems. Chopping firewood too hardy for soft palms, too brittle for a hardy mind.

Squeezing toothpaste from a frozen tube while whitened hands refuse to move

Much like you, when you walked away.

Leaving a frozen shadow of you behind.

Walking along forest trails that are my new friends.

The moss that looks like mistletoe, and I kiss a dying red flower under it.

The trees that quietly watch me pass, whispering amongst themselves.

The men, oh the men here. Puffing beedis, chewing paan and wondering

If this girl needs city doctor help. It is crazy to live alone in a tiny cottage

That gets snowed in for over 8 days after the first snow fall.

Mountain girl problems. Controlling the urge to eat when provisions deplete.

Controlling the joy of seeing new faces, wanting to hug them for visiting.

Trying hard not to thrash people who say, “you’re so lucky to live here”.

They know not, what solitude brings. They know not, of the hunger of wild animals.

Mostly, the problems involve strength and temperament.

Mostly, I spend days lifting bucketfuls of water for weight training.

And racing sessions with my dog.

Mostly, I spend evenings wondering what Delhi is up to, when I am in bed by 730pm.

Mountain girl problems, they are many and they are few.

In the end, my fate is decided by the Camus kaleidoscope that asks me,

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

A Song For You

For Jennie Elliot, who left us 17 January 2014, but will live on in my heart forever. RIP brother.

It ain’t a life without your smile

It ain’t a moment to cherish and rise.

Your voice showing me the long miles

Ahead, it ain’t a place in time.

Dreams and visions of laughter, of song, of smoke.

Vanish slowly into that time.

That time which is the future, which won’t stop.

That time which is the past, where you stopped.

Guilt feeds into my cheer

Asking, why do you lie?

Nights go by with your eyes shining

Starlike, timeless, into my unstill mind.

A song for you won’t make things right.

A song for you won’t stop the time.

A song for you won’t make me smile.

It’ll only freeze this moment, in time.