March 17, 2016 - Vijaya Sundaram

A metal bird hanging on the side of it
Some dust on the very top, along with:
A tone drum, very beautifully carved
A pair of clay and goatskin bongos from Turkey (I think)
A handmade (by my husband) Kora
A fish scraper (percussion, that is)
An Asante (or Ashanti) kete bell for kids
Books by women
Books by men
Books on language
Books on education
Some Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Isabel Allende
P.G. Wodehouse (the best humor writer in the world, for those who haven’t heard of him – the best, that is, along with James Thurber and Donald E. Westlake! )
The Joy of Lex
Six Plays of the Modern Theater
Prego – Italian textbook which I got back in 1996, when I took six months of Italian, simply because I love the language.
Accent – French textbook (used, simply because it made me happy to have it; I’d already studied French for four years – two in school, and two in college).
Children’s books
A book on Rock n’ Roll
A book on Ancient Egypt
A photograph album
A book titled Stuntology
The Italian translation of Gibran’s The Prophet
Some Margaret Atwood
Some Anne Tyler
Some Jonathan Kozol
A book about Gauguin
A couple of Marion Zimmer-Bradley books, which I don’t much like (I loved The Mists of Avalon, but that’s on another shelf)
A couple of Cynthia Voigt books
A book about Twyla Tharp
A book about Shakespeare’s Flowers
The Book of Psalms
Some Ray Bradbury
Some D.H. Lawrence
Some Toni Morrison
Some Barbara Kingsolver
Some Gil-Scott Heron
A book about Astronomy
Spider Robinson Stardance
Tracy Kidder Mountains Beyond Mountains
Herbert Kohl 36 Children
Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ, and Zorba the Greek
A Short Treasury of American Humor
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (all of my other Gaiman books are on another shelf)
Virgil’s Aeneid
Tim’O’Brien – The Things They Carried
Spider Robinson – Stardance
A book about Oscar Wilde (all my other Oscar Wilde books – and I have MANY – are on another shelf)
Some Graphic novels, including Beowulf illustrated and reworked by Gareth Hinds, who has done some amazing work, especially his graphic novel versions of King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey)
The inimitable, but misanthropic, James Thurber
The recently-deceased Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
Ulysses (which I call somewhat grumpily The Great Unread) by James Joyce
A book on jazz
A book by Neil Young
A couple of books by Noam Chomsky
Several books by Jonathan Stroud and Philip Pullman
A beautiful book that my Parsee friend Perin Pudumjee (now Coyajee) made of her calligraphic art
An amazing and moving book called Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Journals which are mostly empty, save for a few pages here and there (I’m not great about writing in journals nowadays, unlike how I used to be when I was young)
Books on language – Italian, French and Russian, which I don’t need anymore, but I loved them when I bought them. I had visions of learning Russian. Perhaps, I still might – you never know!
An English-Portuguese dictionary given as a gift by my husband when I was in love with Samba Bossa Nova songs.
Oxford English Dictionaries

There are MANY more bookshelves in the house. We quip that our house is held together and held up by its bookshelves. We also quip that we’ll never ever move again, because the books were so heavy to carry up our 42 steps leading to the house on a sharp incline, that I sprained both my arms back in 2001, when we moved. We joke that the only way we’ll ever leave our home is feet first. (Sorry to sound so morbid here!)

I love our books! I love being at home!

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Tags: #Books, #Humor, #Languages, #Magic Realism, #Shelf

Climate Change is Real – And I Won’t Give Up

Mar 17, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Climate Change is Real – And I Won’t Give Up

©March 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

It was a pearly-gray morning, and the moisture in the air was gentle, not threatening. The sky was rich with bird-song and Spring-tones.

I woke up duly at 7:00 (feeling a little sad about having to wake up so early after a later night than I’d intended), and got ready to keep Warren’s “Climate Change is Real” vigil – I’d promised him I would keep the flag aloft, so to speak, and I wanted to be good about it.

I don’t know how Warren gets ready in half an hour. I could not. Made the coffee, let the dog out, let her back in, dealt with this and that in the kitchen, and was finally out of the house around 7:48 or so.

The morning air was still damp, but promised sunshine, and many (but not all) of the bulbs I’d planted in the fall were poking their heads out in the front yard, but they looked still sleepy, as did I.

A sense of déjà vu, came over me. About nine months ago, I was still getting up at 6:15 in the morning, and getting ready for school, which I’d reach between 7:00 and 7:20, depending on the morning. And I’d envy, but not begrudge, my husband and child their sleep (the former began dropping me off at school, since we have but one car, and he needed it, but I’d wake him up just before I needed to leave, to allow him some snooze-time).

Nowadays, it’s Warren who gets up early, while I snooze. In any case, after seventeen years of not sleeping, I haven’t learned my lesson still. You’d think I’d have stopped being a night-bird, but alas! That was not to be.

So, here I was, climbing up the median hill-strip, to cross Roosevelt Circle, and take up position at what I like to think of as “Warren’s Intersection.”

I was a little nervous, never having done this on my own (the few times I did stand there in the fall of 2015, I’d been with him, so it had felt fine).

In any case, I didn’t have to worry. Nothing really happened. Great!

Cars drove by indifferently. I got a thumbs-up from a Bernie supporter, some smiles and waves from some YMCA girls in a YMCA car, a smile from some pretty young women in a sleek car, a couple of unintelligible shouts from young men in a truck, and curious or indifferent looks from others. Nothing much to report, thank goodness!

Drinking my steaming hot coffee in 45 degree weather, I found myself relaxing after a bit.

Singing is what we all do at home, so, inspired by Warren’s example, I began to recapture my Hindustani vocal musical self, harking back to the days in the 1990s, when he and I would sing together, and take lessons with our Guruji, Pt. Shreeram G. Devasthali who would teach us in his rich, mellifluous voice for hours on end.

I have to say this: I had sorely neglected this side of myself for the past seventeen or more years. Multi-tasking school work, house-work, writing, running a Drama Club, then a Poetry Club and an Environmental Green Team at my school, and bringing up our daughter, nurturing her fully, and home-schooling her when I got home from school – all these things took it out of me, and music suffered. Yes, I sing every night with my family, and used to play guitar and sitar quite a bit up until the time my daughter was a year old but even those took a back-seat as the years went on.

Now, music calls me back.

I remember our Guruji expressing some regret that I wasn’t practising in the few years before he died. He reminded me to sing, and reiterated that he was very happy that I was a teacher of English (as he had been a teacher of language in India), and that he approved. He was anxious that not just Warren, but I would keep the music he gave us alive.
I tried for a while, but could not keep it going during my school-teaching years.

Now, it’s time. I have to keep a promise to our Guruji and to myself.

Sohini is a beautiful, but simple raga in the Marwa thaat, full of soaring uttara-ang angst, full of inexpressible longing. I’ve always gravitated to it, even before I sang Hindustani khyal music (when I was a young teenager, I used to love singing the Hindi film song, “Kukoo, kukoo, bole koyaliya,” and later, I played it on my sitar. (I studied sitar in Chennai with Pt. Janardan Mitta, who is a disciple of the late great Pt. Ravi Shankar – and yes, I plan to practise my sitar again, now that I’m getting back into music. Thank you for teaching me sitar, dear Guruji – Pt. M. Janardan!).

So, I sang Jiya so lagi peeta tori, a beautiful Ektaal composition. I followed this with Guru charana sharana kara manu jaye, which exhorts the mind to surrender itself at the feet of the Guru (which was so apt and fitting at that moment that I felt tears welling up). After that, I sang Kaise beeti sari raina, piya bina, also in Sohini. Kaise beeti sari raina piya bina speaks, very aptly, about the lover saying, “How will I pass the night without my beloved? I sit here without rest, counting the stars.” (Come back safely home, Warren!) And as I listened to our vocal teacher teaching us, and hearing our voices blend together in this miraculous device, I was grateful for my semi-new i-Phone, in which I’ve stored some of our music-lessons that we recorded back in the nineties, and which Warren transferred to our computers (magic!). It’s at times like these that I am utterly grateful to technology in general. I ended with Rum Jhum Barase Meherwa, which is a romantic song about two lovers getting drenched in the rain.

This last moisture-steeped song seemed to match the damp morning, but thankfully, there was no rain. It was hard to believe on a morning like this, a perfect March morning, which is getting sunnier by the minute, that Climate Change IS Real, but Real it IS! Just check your Boston’s weekly weather forecasts going back a month. It’s scary. But I shall not dwell on that for now. Today was my first day out there (since the fall when I went a few times with Warren), and it was the music which dominated.

The cars crawled by at our overpass Intersection, and flashed by below on the Highway, and I was self-conscious and awkward at first, but soon found I didn’t care what people thought, or what they might say, or do. It’s extremely liberating, in case you’re thinking you might want to get out there with a sign of your own.

I propped up Warren’s sign, “Climate Change is Real,” and felt that I was contributing to the cause in my way. Warren’s idea of being the lone person out there since September of 2015, braving the elements, hammering away at his message is consistent with everything he does – which is with single-minded devotion, including his devotion to us, his family. He left for India last night, and we miss him.

After an hour or more had passed, I wended my way back home, and though I’d slept little, I felt refreshed. Spring was in the air, and a spring was in my step. It’s hard to feel gloomy when it’s beautiful outside, and the birds are in full-throated vocal mode.

And I refuse to give up hope. Call me Pollyanna. Yes, there is awful news about the planet every day. Yes, Climate Change is real. I still believe we can do something about it – not change it back to how it was, obviously, but do good work to impede its hurtling route towards disaster, and preserve our beautiful planet, its beautiful music, its beautiful creatures, and its beautiful (but not always so) people.

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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #For the Planet, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Keeping Vigil, #Man with Sign, #Singing, #Sitar, #Warren Senders, #Woman with Sign

Travels Without the Dog

Mar 17, 2016 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Holly is sad. She doesn’t know why my daughter, husband and I drove with her to pick up my husband after he’d finished teaching his class. She doesn’t understand why we drove together to a fancy street in the city, and left her in the car, to clearly partake of a delicious dinner, because she detected it in our breath when we returned. She doesn’t understand why we all drove together after that to a mysterious place with many cars on many levels, and left her for a little while in our car. She doesn’t get why my husband gave her an extra-special hug and loving words, telling her he would miss her. Even more painful and puzzling to her is the fact that after we left her in the car, only my daughter and I returned, having apparently mislaid my husband.

She squeak-whined a little, and looked dismally at us, but cheered up when we left the car-ridden place, and got on the tunnel that led to another road – a highway, really, that she recognized, and which led us magically home. We got home, and she ran up the stairs, and into the house after I unlocked it, and looked around for my husband, then at me. I spoke kindly to her, letting her know he would be back in thirteen days. Of course, she didn’t understand the exact meaning of what I said, but like a very young child does, she picked up the soothing tone that told her that it was going to be all right. Trotting up with her small, fluffy toy lammie in her mouth, she asked me to toss it around around the living room, which I did. After I gave her a good dinner, plus yogurt, which she loves, she appeared to be satisfied that it was all going to be fine, after all.

To be a dog means having to deal with the mysterious comings and goings of her human pets; sometimes, we’re all together; sometimes we’re in clumps of twos and threes. She’s a family dog. She needs us all there. When one of us is missing, she’s sad at first, but always philosophical, I think, because in her doggie mind, it’s clear that we’ll all eventually be there for her.

I always it a point of saying goodbye to her, and so do my husband and daughter. And I always tell her, “We’ll be back,” or, “I’ll be back,” (just like I would tell my daughter when she was a baby, and I left the house, leaving her in my husband’s care – which worked for her, because my daughter has turned out to be reasonably sanguine about such things, thank goodness). Back to our dog, however. I think what comforts her the most is that our home smells like all three of us and her – she has everything she needs right here.

It must be very upsetting to be a dog and note the many arrivals and departures of her pet-humans. Fortunately, the immediacy of life grabs a dog’s attention, and any sadness that dogs feel dissipates in the face of a well-placed squirrel with a taunting tail. Of course, it’s night-time right now, and there are no squirrels about, worse luck!

Right now, she’s lying on the couch, with her chin on my husband’s sweater, which he handed over to me before he went into the Emirates security check-in for his flight to India – he won’t need it for the thirteen days he’ll be there (apparently, it’s 81° F in Mumbai right now).

I had placed his sweater near my dog’s favorite pillow on purpose, and she is happy to be near the scent of her beloved master.

There’s no such thing as fear of disaster, or fear of loss in a dog’s mind – everything is the eternal Now. Every experience and every memory, every thought, every image, every sense of being loved – all of these are in her nose, her adorable, sensitive, eternal Nose. So, this sweater’s Daddy-smell, here, now, soothes, protects, consoles, and wraps its arms around her.

Soon, she’ll trundle up to bed, for I’m turning in for the night at an hour that’s unusually early for me – it’s midnight now – the night’s absurdly young, but I’m feeling absurdly old from too many late nights. In ten minutes, I hope to be wrapped in dream-clouds.

I hope my husband’s flight and India-trip are safe and wonderful. I shall be happy when he returns. So will our daughter. So will the dog.

Home is where we’re all happiest.

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Tags: #Dog and Family, #Holly Tales, #Travels Without the Dog

Vijaya Sundaram

Poet, Musician, Teacher, and Amateur Visual Artist

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