Two men

2014 - 103, 65, 62, 40 and 40! Wonder what these numbers are. The first goes without explanation. The other two are a riddle no one but me can solve. 103 is the age my father would have been today; 65 is Ranjan's - the husband - age today, 62+ some months is how old I am today and 40 and 40 are the number of years I have spent with the two men I love most. Papa and Ranjan share a birthday or almost: the former was born on August 15th and the later on August 14.

These two men undoubtedly made me who I am even if it took me long years to realise this and learn not only to accept it but to celebrate it as though they outwardly are as different as chalk and cheese, their heart and spirits are almost clones of each other. And today I realise that I have spent exactly the same amount of years with each of them with a few of them overlapping of course. Those would amount to 22 years! 

As I said these two men have a lot more in common than you may want to believe. First of all they both fell in love with me almost instantly. I took Ranjan a week to propose! And in spite of lots of ups and downs they never wavered no matter how many doors I banged or tears I shed, they waited unobtrusively for the brat to come to her senses. Papa or Tatu as I called him, made me from a crying lump of flesh to a caring and erudite human being. He patiently and lovingly moulded the raw material and taught me right from wrong as well as  the courage to walk the road less travelled. He let me make my mistakes and get hurt, sometimes deeply but was always there to wipe the tears, tender to the wounds and help me get up and run again. The day he left the world I think he, more than anyone else and most of all me knew that I was ready to jump without the parachute he had been.

But none of this would have been possible without another man who gave me the total freedom to  walk all the less travelled roads and also stood in the wings lest I fall, and fall I did. He simply picked me up without a single word of retribution or even counsel and set me on another course. If one moulded the raw material, the other allowed it to grow and bloom the way I wanted it to. And I would be unethical if I did not say that the road(s) I chose went against all the conventions and mores that we are meant to live by. He defended me like a knight in shining armour at every moment of my life. I must admit that I now realise that it must not have been easy for him but he never uttered a word. Just like Pa, I think he was and is proud of the person I am. It is now my turn to prove to him that he was right.

Today I want to tell both these incredible human beings that I love them and always will. May God bless them.

Happy birthday Ranjan and Ram. 

My heart is covered

in his nanou's shorts!

My heart is covered! Agastya my grandson flew away two hours ago after two joyful months with us. You may wonder what the expression 'my heart is covered' means and where it originates. Let me elucidate. This expression is part of my grandson's delightful lexicon that never ceases to amuse and amaze me and that I gleefully appropriate. He used it first about a week or so ago when he fell ill and nauseous. My heart is covered with the rice is what he stated and believe you me, we all understood what he meant. The ensuing days were terrible as the poor boy went through the nightmare of the famed Delhi belly! 

Today my heart is covered not with rice or pasta, but with an indescribable medley of feelings ranging from melancholy to acceptance laced with a tinge of fear as well as forbearance and even an imbue of  unease. The fear of course is transient but will choke the covered heart till all the planes land safely till their final destination. In the present scenario this means 6 unending days and nights as they break journey in Paris.

This bundle of joy has for the past 70 days and nights ruled my heart and my life and I have complied unabashedly. He slept with us - Nanou and I - as he has always done for the past 5 years irrespective of all the canons of child rearing and the initial barely expressed resentment of his parents were soon set aside as he was the one who decided on the matter. 

My heart is covered by the emptiness that greeted me this morning when in my half sleep, I extended my hand in search of my little foot. You see even the hands and feet are divided: one set being mine and the other his nanou's. I cannot tell you how empty the world felt for that instant before the heart was assuaged by reason and the emptiness translated into the realisation that he was gone! It had been just a few hours but they felt like eternity.

As I crept down the stairs to my burrow, the silence was palpable and overpowering, even for one who revels in solitude. My eyes refused to stray on the tiny objects left behind - a bright pair of crocs,   some cars his Mom refused to put in the suitcase and a tshirt hung on the banister presumably for drying and presumably conveniently forgotten for want of space again. I know that as the day enfolds there will be innumerable reminders of the little fellow's stay at home. My heart is covered by this deafening silence that will become louder and louder as I miss my agyTalk! 

Yesterday was a strange day. Agastya, his grandad and I were protagonists of an unwritten play, or should I say a play that enfolded from the heart to alleviate the pain of each of the three characters. Even though I had been telling Agastya about his leaving late night on Saturday and making plans for the rest of the day, he woke up in a quaint mood and stated he wanted to go to to the airport NOW and wait for the plane. Was this his way of telling us that he was OK leaving and actually quite happy about it. Then how do you explain the fact that he spent most of his day lolling on our bed and treating us to unexpected hugs and kisses, making sure that each of his grandparents had the same amount? To his performance was our counterpoint. Though our hearts and guts wanted to tell him how much we would miss him and how much we would have wanted him to stay and how lonely everything would be without him, we spent the day talking of his trip, of the treats that awaited him when he stopped over to meet his other set of grandparents, and then the delight of being reunited with his Dad and all the things he would be getting back to and of course his new school. While he filled the day with caring gestures we choked it with words, comforting more ourselves than him. I think all that needed to be said was what was left unvoiced.

The love between a child and his grandparent is unique and blessed. Sadly I never met my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother died when was a little older than Agy, hence the illogical disquiet. In those times there were no phones let alone Internet and Skype. There were letters that came in the diplomatic bag once a week and the home leave that happened once in 3 years when papa changed postings. So do your maths and you will see that I must have spent not more than a few months with my Nani, but she filled those with so much love and laughter that a sense of warmth and loving chokes me each time I think of her. I just hope that I can do the same for my darling boy. 

Once again we will have to learn to live without that bundle of joy zipping through the house and through our hearts and fill the enormous void as best we can. I guess I will get back to looking after my other boy - the husband - who was a tad neglected when Agy was here. You see Agy takes all the place. I will cook Ranjan healthy vegan meals. Now that should take some time with hunting for recipes, shopping and then the actual cooking. Maybe I shall stop stocking up and buy for the day. Then of course there are my Pilates classes, and my swimming and hold on I am planning to buy a bicycle today and start cycling around the park of the colony. The last time I cycled was when I was 14! Then I have promised to set 2 hours everyday to get on with my book about project why and then the usual work should take some more time. I guess books will come to the rescue. 

But I know that all this and more can never fill all the void in my heart. That will only happen when he walks into my room a year from now and gives me a hug. You cannot hug on Skype!

Long due update

the latest punk 

Last year on August 1st we were balling Sir Hodgkin and wading our way through the mystery of upmarket hospitals. Those were chemo days and learning days and worrying days. I would write numerous posts on this blog and share my terrifying angst. Then, as always with we humans, we set in a pattern and all the chemo, juices, etc became a habit. When chemo ended I really thought that life would never the same but I was wrong. For a few months tree still blood counts but everything was normal or as normal as one can get in our 7th decade. Everyone, except yours truly, seemed to have forgotten than cancer is not a viral flu that ends but is an elephant in the room for the remaining days, even if the elephant has been made so tiny that only I can see it.

This picture was taken 2 days back when Agastya decided to celebrate his Nanou's birthday before he left and so party it was with balloons an streamers and the birthday cake of course. I had seen some coloured wigs at the friend's shop and thought we needed some fun. My friend kindly lent them to me as I would not have bought them at the price they are.

So here is Ranjan version 2014. I love the look and I love the man. May he remain this way wig and all. 

A self to suit society

Beijing April 1954

I guess we all along our lives have to create a self or many selves to suit circumstances. They could family circumstances or social ones. To survive you need to adapt even of what you are compelled to create us someone you do not like. Survival of the fittest said Darwin, and here the fittest means the one that is the most compliant. But there comes a time when you can, if you so wish, abandon that self and try to go back to the real one. It is not easy believe me and can have calamitous consequences that can hurt you and your loved ones beyond repair.

The little girl in the picture is all dressed up for her second birthday. She feels like a princess thanks to doting parents who love her unconditionally. She will live in the warmth of this love for some time till the first hurt that cannot be wished away by a gentle kiss from her mom or a hug from her pa. Sooner or later she will learn that she has to bear the brunt of blows and work her own solutions, some of which necessitate altering ones self. This is a survival lesson she will need to accept but what she does not know yet is that there may come a time when the multitude of band aids and masks that she has been compelled to place on herself will render her unrecognisable. That is when she will wonder whether there are still some pieces of the little girl left in some crevice of the mind that can help her retrace the journey she had to travel. The catch is that is she decides to do so, she may open old wounds and create new ones that may never be healed.

I would have never thought of all this and gone happily to my grave were it not for the insistence of a loved one to get answers twosome things that I agree look incomprehensible if not placed in a proper context. I have spent some sleepless nights trying to make some forays down memory lane and ask myself what the consequences of airing the past at this moment would be and it did not take me long to realise that no matter how much I am badgered to reveal my reasons, I would not succumb as it will bring more hurt than healing. So I may for my own self unravel the knots but simply to assuage my conscience and see whether I could have done a better job. Life as we know gives us one chance at a time, and a lifetime to regret it.

I have an example that would validate my point of view and it comes from no less than my mother. For the less than 4 decades I spent with my parents, my strength came from the knowledge that my mother and father were happy as that is what they both seemed to be to me in my childhood, teenage and adulthood. I basked in that warm feeling and could live my life with ease and insouciance. Had I tried to delve deeper and found the reality, my life would have been shattered. But my mother must have felt the need to share her pain with her only child as she wrote a rambling diary in the penultimate year of her life, before she lost a part of a memory. In those pages she shared her innermost feelings.

I found that diary more than fifteen years after they both died and by that time I was mellowed and matured and could look at things with a distance and with my heart. Had I read that diary when I was not ripe for it, I could have even hated one of them. But far from that. What I read in those lines was how much my two parents loved each other but how inept and clumsy they were at showing their feelings. I will not say more.

The point I am trying to make is that every action we take has a reason that needs to be respected. When the time is right, in some serendipitous way, truth will be revealed and will be a healing experience.

the before it's too late crusade

I do not know what is the right age to start making a bucket list as we all know that the word 'bucket' in this case comes from the expression: kick the bucket! Now that is if the bucket list is yours. However I guess there must be the ones of 'others' who are connected to you and that is when things become difficult. Ones own list often consists of finishing pending agendas, making wills, clearing debts - the financial ones - if any, ensuring to the best of your ability that things you have begun carry on smoothly if possible but here I think there is a tinge of hubris as how can one forget the age old adage: the King is dead; long live the King. It is us foolish humans who believe that we are essential to the game called life. The other extreme is the course followed by the likes of my father who believed that nothing happens without the will of the almighty. In that situation bucket lists seem quite futile.

However a list can be fun if it includes things like learn swimming, driving, flying should you make it in your sixties and such an exercise could add some spice in your life when your bones creak louder by the day. By the way swimming was NOT on my bucket list

When I look at a bucket list I made in 2010, I cannot but smile! Then came another one in 2013 after Ranjan's cancer that I still stand by and guess will, adding to it whatever else should come my way. This I presume will go on till exit time.

There is another list however which is not easy if not impossible to make and that is the one when your loved ones ask you to heal supposed past hurts. Easier said than done. As a dear and wise friend says: complicated lives are not always open to retro-fitting. She is spot on as you it is impossible to know what is really asked of you to slay inner demons you are not privy to. That is not all, there are part of your life that you have locked for ever as should you find the key, the result may be more devastating than silence. Our lives ware filled with coping strategies that we have evolved along the way and made so much part of our lives, that trying to find your way back may just be impossible. We are no Penelope and have not mastered the art of unravelling to perfection the piece we have woven through our lives to protect ourselves from hurt. The process of trying to do so may result in more hurt than healing.

Things have to be heard at the appropriate time and rather than play God, let us leave it to his wisdom. I remember how I found a diary written by Kamala my mother a year before her death and found by me 15 years after her death at a time when I was going through a rough patch and needed most of all my mama's lap to put me back on track. It was not her lap, but pages written in a yellowed diary that had survived many a spring cleaning waiting to be picked up when the time was right. How she had seen what lay ahead was uncanny and comforting at the same time. But more than that, she revealed a part of herself she had held carefully concealed as it might have rocked my boat and shattered the image of the perfect life she had conjured for me. At the same time, I guess she felt the need of sharing her pain with her only child and must have hoped that I would find these pages when I was strong enough to read them.

I did and felt the need to answer each page this remarkable woman had written. My answer was my way of celebrating not the wife or the mother, but the woman. I hope I did herb justice. Should you want to read this lengthy missive you can here.

Mothers do want the best for their children but often fall short not because they lack love but because they are so blinded by it that they are unable to see what is right.

My bucket list will remain blank but for this touching poem by George Bernard Shaw.

True Joy of Life

This is the true joy of life.

The being used for a purpose

Recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

The being a force of nature

Instead of a feverish, selfish

Little clod of ailments and grievances

Complaining that the world will not

Devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life

Belongs to the whole community

And as long as I live,

It is my privilege to do for it

Whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly

Used up when I die,

For the harder I work the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle to me.

It is a sort of splendid torch

Which I've got hold of

For the moment

And I want to make it burn

As brightly as possible before

Handing it on to future generations.

Damask

Damask is a fabric using basic weaving techniques of the Byzantine and Islamic weaving centre of the early Middle Ages and derives its name from the city of Damascus, a city that is sadly torn and destroyed by conflict today and where one hears the jarring sounds of rockets and missiles instead of the soothing sounds of weaving looms. As Damascenes say: we don't know what tomorrow will bring.

This post however is not on the war in the Middle East but on the fabric damask in one of its favoured avatars: tablecloths, as you would have guessed by looking at the picture. This is a picture taken from the net but it could have been taken in my home when I was a little girl. Even the glasses, the tableware and the flowers look uncannily like the tables my mother use to set for the numerous parties that she organised in her 30 years as a diplomat's spouse.

Yesterday in one of the sporadic cleaning sprees that happen in this house, two rather used and yellowed plastic bags were discovered in the linen cupboard. They were stuffed with ma's old damask  tablecloths and napkins. For those who did not know their story, they were good for the recycling bin.  I was not party to the cleaning spree and happened to see the two bags in time. I guess my extreme reaction to the idea of throwing them away was incomprehensible to all present but I was in no mood to explain and say more than: you can throw them after I die!

They will once again take the place they have occupied in the cupboard and wait till my time comes. I guess I should have explained my feelings and thoughts but somehow I knew that no one would be able to understand them truly. If you open and look at them, they are a far cry from the beautiful pieces lovingly purchased by my mother. Today they have stains and even tears and have lost their sheen. But every stain and tear holds a childhood memory and I am sure many forgotten ones too.

I guess some of them must be almost 50 year old and it is a tribute to Ma's skills that they have survived in such a good condition. I remember how each stain was first handled and how each piece was hand washed under her supervision. Ma did not like cooking and I think the God's played their cards well when they selected her husband as Pa's passion was food and cooking. Mama's forte was the table decor and she did a great job. These yellowed pieces of cloth remind me of how well my parents dovetailed their talents.

It is around these now ugly tablecloths that my parents entertained what one may call the rich and famous but also a bunch of eclectic people that could range from painters, to poets and writers; royalty and nobility form many lands; diplomats and politicians but also the humblest of people that they met along the way. Around their table everyone was treated equally and probably that is one of the lessons their only child learnt very early: all humans are equal and need to treated and respected in the same way. I have never allowed myself to forget this lesson.

I also remember the number of times I was awoken hastily from my sleep my mama and asked to put on my best party dress and come down to the dining room as a guest had dropped out and there would be 13 at the table so I was to be the 14th guest. For a 7 or 8 or even 10 year old it was exciting beyond words. Never mind if I had already had dinner and had school the next morning. I could eat a meal all over again and loved the fact that I was doing so at the beautifully laid table talking to adults and important people. Being an only child born to middle aged parents, the adult world was a familiar one and somehow I liked talking to grown ups. My parents often told me that I could hold an intelligent conversation. I do not know if they were indulging me or whether it was the innumerable number of books I consumed. But sitting at a table with big people was as close to a fairy tale I could get. It was on these worn out tablecloths that these fairy tales were unfolded. I cannot recount each of them as there are hidden in deep and almost unreachable recesses of my memory, but the sight of these pieces of cloth bring forth collective memories that fill me with warm and happy feelings. How can one throw such memories in a trashcan!

I know they will remain in their ungainly plastic bags, but the memories tucked within their folds make them precious and unique. Once I am no more around, then I guess they will just metamorphose into yards of tattered cloth fit for the dustbin!

Too much energy

Agastya my darling grandson is a master of words and can come up with the most amazing retorts that leave you kind of speechless and totally zapped. Wanting to go straight to play outside by passing his breakfast he had to come up with something that would shut the old badgering granny down. When I asked him for the umpteenth time I guess what he wanted for breakfast, proffering all his favourites, he looked back and told me: I do not want breakfast Nani, it gives me too much energy! I wonder how he came up with that one. Anyway all the old biddy could do was beat a meek retreat.

Come to think of it I would like to be able to say the same words some day!