And then there was silence

Spring:
Crowded ward, a thousand face
Sweaty hands, a gruesome race
Shrieks of pain, of thrill and joy
Screams of relief, it was a boy

and then there was silence



Summer:
Sonny boy's days go by
Apple of his Daddy's eye
Growing up good and strong and fast
Left home for his dreams at last

and then there was silence



Rain:
A flame so high, a wind so strong
A love so right could never go wrong
He had found a mate and feelings rhymed
His was a perfect world as wedding bells chimed

Breaking all his silence.



Autumn:
Of clatter, chatter and countless matter,
A life of two of hopes and woe;
Cats and dogs and sleep and food
All their babies growing up good.
Gone the days of rainbow romance
Lonely decades now reeks of lies
Million nights of flawed plans, failed to blanch
Fifty years of sugar and spice

She just waited for silence



Winter:
Now he lies on a pale blue sheet
She hangs on to his every heart beat
'til a silver spiral rises up
In a cloud of smoke it disappears

And now its all silent.

Now look again and see it in Purple

Pretentious, wordy, overly embellished

and concurrently a total rebellion

….completely unorthodox and non-conformist

Imperial, royal, while being essentially the daughter of primary?

emerging from the marriage between red and blue

Blue peaceful turmoil and tamed red anger at the same time.

What’s bold and authoritative

and yet

essentially undefined, jumpy and well, free?

A prince turned runaway rock star?

I am. I am Purple. Psychedelic purple.

Unique, creative and charmingly eccentric… just how you and I like it

That’s Purple

Purple (ears)

Purple ears…My Pupu came home today. Age 2. estimated birthday April 1 2007. My brown eyed beauty. Playful. Maybe a little scared at present, a little skittish. Will take some time to call 725 home. And then it will be time for her to move again. Visit Baba and visit everywhere, Ma and Baba will go looking for peace. Changed the blaring Metallica disc in the car to something softer. Don’t want to startle her again. Taking turns at 5mph. (yeah!) Had the passenger view down, so I can see her hopping and rolling all over her cage. When I first picked her up, she licked me so much, I could almost see Khoru, asking me ‘what took you so long?’

So long. 13 years. A broken spine, bloodied white fur, he lied on my lap moments before he left us all. And I was amazed at how easily I had taken death. Shocked at my own composure, did that mean I did not love him enough? It was nothing like the August morning of 2008, when I got the call from half way across the world saying Ghotai was dying. After Khoru I used to think about him, but nothing stopped me from petting others. But Ghotai? No, I couldn’t bear to do that to her. She wouldn’t replace me, how could I ever replace her? That soul connection? That cant be beat. It will be so unfair to everyone, her, me, our mothers, her sister, not to mention the new introduction. Wonder why I can look back on Khoru and expect reincarnation and with Ghotai only trying to grasp her, asking her for courage and company and wisdom and peace…only holding onto her, trying to finger through the knots on her back, smoothing the wettish hair under her ears.

Or maybe it was just the feeling of guilt that I wasn’t around to see her go. I keep wondering every now and then did she think of me before she died? What did she think? That I left her because something was more important to me? Than her?

Driving back from the airport after a much sought soul vacation and one where I was longing to get back to my cave, I suddenly did not want to take the last right turn that took me where home stood alone, cold, waiting to remind me there was no one waiting for me. But they wouldn’t allow dogs and I would have to be less random about dog adoption… too much paperwork. Plus I did not want Ghotai to feel abandoned what I might have felt in her place.

Next day at work, someone was talking about bunnies, reminded me of Khoru. I had abandoned Geru. Mercilessly. Even before she turned gray enough to leave. Did not look back. Did not inquire. I ignored her for Kukee......

And then, in 3 years my playful puppy suddenly became a mother, a reflection of mine and gave me a reflection of me. Who I left behind for greener pastures. Left her to die alone. And only think of her when I have nowhere else to hide. Sweet child of mine.

This seems right in so many ways. Ghotai wont mind this. Khoru neither. I think. Geru will forgive me. This seems so right. 6 more minutes, before I leave for home, 15 to get there, carry the cage upstairs, heat my dinner, clean her cage, put the hay, set the litter box. Eat dinner with her. Watch Office together. Bliss.

I’ll be so tired after all this. I generally am most days for the last several weeks but not eager to go to bed…. Tonight I’m looking forward to go to sleep so I can wake up beside her. Also maybe because I am fiendishly sleepy.

Your fingers

Remember how you told me once that there is a bubble around me. That nothing ever could touch me. Harm me. Affect me. Remember?

I was old enough, I thought, to understand what you meant by the bubble. I always thought I was old enough to understand you and you had never led me to believe otherwise. You never told me like everyone else does, that ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ or ‘you’re too young to realize’. You had always encouraged my individuality even before I could spell it, encouraged my opinions and the fact that I was starting to have a stance in everything, you’ve quietly buoyed my self analysis, my self awareness, my feelings and my emotions. For as long as I can remember I have always had those grown up senses, I remember especially those of embarrassment, disappointment, anger, irritation and humiliation. You’d think I’d be done with my quota by now. You had always endorsed if not my opinion, but my having one in everything. I remember you dreamt of a year-old me lying on your bed with a bottle stuck to one side of my mouth and participating full throttle in some conversation you and Baba were having. Funny, you’d dream that. Funny I would remember it after something like 20 years. You will be amazed at all that I remember.

I was away from home for the first time, a little shy of 18. I was attacked on the street coming back from college right outside my dorm. I tried to scream, run, defend myself and by the time I could get any sound coming out of my windpipes, all I heard myself say was “Ma”. I still remember the rustle of his rain-jacket as he walked close behind me moments before. I don’t remember if I hit him, its hazy now that I have repeated the scene so many times in my mind at what I should have done and could have done and actually did. I think I ran and maybe I fell just as I reached the main gate. I don’t remember the name of the girls who helped me get in and to my room. I don’t remember what my roommates had to say about the incident. I remember though the same person had attacked a couple more girls from our hostel later that year before we all moved closer to campus.

Later that night I remember standing in front of the phone on the U-shaped portico looking out into the clothes spread out to dry when you told me to always remember that there’s a bubble around me. Nothing can ever touch me, harm me, affect me. I remembered wondering for a while then and intermittently thereon what that meant. Were you trying to give me solace, my trauma evident to the mother, with or without the details of the incident? Were you trying to make me braver? Or were you giving me a slice of the higher truth that you’d always been privy to? Or is it you who somehow created that bubble for me?

I remember, sitting on the red plastic chair and thinking about your fingers-- loosely entwined on your lap in the car next to me as we drove to school a really hot summer day in 2001, just a few months before this night's incident. That day I had let you down and Baba and some others. I don’t remember how you had looked at me then. I remember showing that I didn’t care and remember not crying even in solitude. I remember tasting failure, but choosing to ignore it, getting lost in my second world like I have so done so-so many times after that.

Sitting on that plastic chair I was thinking about your fingers as if they were weaving a bubble around me…

That other day in the car, were you praying? Were you just catching onto composure? Or was in another grain of imagination stuck in the convolutions of my brain?

I always saw you as a person who was always right, never scared, who knew everything, who had all the answers, someone I could pray to but not someone who would bow to another power. Because you were power. The sun doesn’t bask in sunshine. And this hierarchy of authority confused me. I tried to take momentary pleasure and strength from the fact that it’s well-wishing. But seeing you pray then and anytime after that or the knowledge that you did report to another power, wrecked me. Destroyed my morale. Shattered my belief (in you). I started treating you as a mortal, I began to think and judge you as an individual; choices you make, decisions you have taken. I started reprimanding you internally and externally for whatever I thought was wrong. Yes, you opened the floodgates to the fact that you could be wrong. It wasn’t teenage rebellion, just sort of a religious conversion. And yet once again that reprimanding decreased; I sometimes understood, sometimes accepted and meanwhile quietly mapped out my choices and decisions of my life, fully aware of your judgment about them. This was not revenge and it was not to ignore you like I had felt ignored once, I was not cooling off against you, just another conversion, better known in society as growing up.

Does it all make better sense to you now?

Well eight small years have gone by with that knowledge of the bubble and even without knowing any rhyme of reason, all I saw was that the bubble was always there; nothing really ever happened to me. I have cried myself silly for more men than anyone should ever hope to get involved with, I have been stuck in an upside down car in a ditch with no hope to be rescued and I have found myself fainted on the bathroom floor unclothed. I have felt humiliated and abandoned, elated and thankful, felt like an ace and in the dumps within hours, felt enamored and cheated, celebrated and stampeded, coddled and stifled, worshipped and ignored, young and old, scared and brave. I have lost, found and lost again. I have been in moments where I hoped I was dead and in those where all I wanted was to live. And I think in some of the harshest times I almost hear myself telling me, loudly enough for anyone to hear … ‘you’ll be okay’, ‘you’ll make it’, ‘stop crying’, ‘don’t panic’, ‘we’ll figure something’. Is that the bubble talking to me? The bubble that you wove for me that autumn evening? Or is that a part of you, that you put in me when I was a part of you? Is this bubble just an extension of your womb? Or the sheer well-known, well-tested, well-understood philosophy that 'life goes on' in a more personal, more decodable, strong-and-easy-at-the-same-time, ubiquitously familiar motherly language? --something we seldom use now. But do you still remember how that sounds? Remember, Ma?

Gemini

Bony jaw

And held up chin

How much longer girl?

Squinting eyes,

Split within,

Let the nails unfurl

Black and gold

That smells of sweat;

Polka dots of silk;

Storm of thoughts,

Sudden poise

And everything un-pink

Wounded on the shoulder blade,

The aplomb all but there,

Still she runs under raging skies

And dark gray clouds of fear

The sun is out in another land,

Warmth floats on the sea

The ice is gone, the mist is fading

And she suddenly skims at me

I look back into the midnight thoughts

Of lost composure and vain

And from the mirror, a thousand shards

slice open my pain

A gush of cold come storming out

I sink back in

And start to think

That finally she’s free.

Woman of joy, with a blue scarf around her eyes,

She feels no sting, she feels no pain; She sees nothing in light

Woman of joy, of dauntless ploy,

Fly with the blades of winds, fly out of that blind

Woman of joy, of rigor and coy,

Glide on that steel, without a heed

In my cave, behind the mirror, woman of joy, bury me in peace.