Dec 3, 2015 Ramblings and Musings

When I think about writing novels, and publishing my poems, short stories and plays, my heart quails.  True, honest writing is like jumping off a bridge, with no harnesses, no safety nets, nothing.  It’s about jumping off, and enjoying the few moments of flight — if suddenly, one grows wings while falling, how wonderful!  If not, there are depths to explore, as long as one doesn’t hit the water too hard.
I’m hoping to get there, and not worry about whether people will judge me.
I’m still gathering my courage, though.

Tags: #On Writing

Oct 29, 2015 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Today, Washed Clean

©October 29th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

The backyard patio is swept clean of leaves, the steep flight of front stairs leading up to the house are swept, the bulbs are in (maybe I’ll plant more today, since I have more — I’m turning into a bulb-freak!), and the rain has wiped the world clean.

I’m sitting with a cup of coffee here, at my favorite spot — the cluttered, unfashionable kitchen table, and contemplating life.

The dog sleeps, nose to toes, curled in a C, on the white, cushiony single-sofa-seat, which I had originally intended for my/our use when we got it.  The dog simply decided that that was HER chair, and, without preamble, appropriated it.

Now that I see her in it, I see her logic.  I fits her form perfectly.  It’s C-dog-shaped.  It’s cozy.  Well-done, Holly!  (Call me a fond and foolish person for letting my dog rule me.  You are right.  I am fond and foolish.)

Today, my husband is heading out to his mother’s retirement community home, which is two and a half hours away from here.  He is preparing to move her to an “assisted living” facility.  This is going to be fraught with a tumbling mix of emotions.  We all knew the time would come, but hoped that it would not.  For, you see, my mother-in-law is a strange blend of a cognitively high-functioning, highly intelligent, intellectual person and someone who is losing her memory.  Add to this the fact that she is good at creating perfectly reasonable-sounding rationalizations for her lapses, and we have a very painful situation.  She does not want to go.  She called up my husband this morning and said that she would plead (plead!) with the administrators of the place where she lives to let her stay.

My heart breaks for her.  She’s my esteemed mother-in-law.  She loves me, and I love her.  She’s been very kind to me since I arrived in the US in December 1988, and she’s been very generous to both her sons and daughters-in-law.  And she’s no ordinary mom-in-law.  She’s been a scientist, psychologist, professor and artist in her earlier life.  She’s been a Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, been arrested in front of the White House, while protesting wars and inequities, been among the earliest to visit China, when the US and China reached a rapprochement in the 1970s.  She was the founder of the Minnesota Plan for the Continuing Education of Women in the late 50s.  She has a deep sense of integrity.  Yes, she has her negative points, but then, who doesn’t?  This is not the time for anyone to remember them.  Right now, she’s the best of herself (except that she does not want to leave — the place where she lives currently is lovely, and she loves it with all her heart).

It’s going to be the most painful wrench, both for her, and for my husband, who has to be the one to take her to the new place.  He’s not looking forward to it.  I can only imagine his mix of emotions — for, who can really tell what someone else’s relationship is to his or her parents?  Only we ourselves know who we are vis-à-vis our parents.  All other conjectures are just that — conjectures.  For him, as it is for many of us, a lifetime of interaction with our parents must follow some sort of pattern: Adoration followed by love, followed by admiration, followed by impatience, followed by strife, followed by more admiration, love, impatience and irritation.  For others, it’s much more, probably worse.  And, permeating through all this, must be a longing to be accepted, validated, admired and praised for one’s actions, choices, life, because ALL children want this.

I think about what it was like for my grandfather, who declined and died after six months following his fall from the stairs in my family home in India over eleven years ago.  I remember that it was my mother who tended to him, and cared for him, even more than my grandmother.  My husband was visiting India at the time, and he remembers holding his hand and singing softly to him at his bedside.  It made my grandfather very happy.  I wish I could have been there.  When my own father was diagnosed with liver cancer, his condition did not land him in a nursing home — mostly, in India, that does not happen.  He was at home, cared for, coddled and loved by my mother, and my close relatives (my Grandmother and Aunt).  My brother was there towards the last few weeks to help, and bore the pain of seeing our father in terrible agony.  My sister came over from California a week before his death to do the same.  I could not make until three days before he died, but at least I saw him, and talked to him, and all of us held his hands till the moment of his death.  In India, it’s a different kind of society from Western society, as far as I can see.  Old age, disease and decline are accepted philosophically.  It’s not easier, but it’s much more common to say, “What to do?  Such is life!”  Emotions are still emotions, and complex emotions remain so through the course of experiencing a parent’s life and decline.

When my father died of cancer, he was in the hospital for only three or four days, and ALL of us were there with him at his moment of passing away.   And when my mother-in-law passes away, I hope we will be there for her, as well (fortunately, she is in the best of health, at age 92).

At the moment of death, all complex emotions will be swept aside.  Only love will prevail.  The pure and simple will remain.  At the moment of death, all can be wiped clean, if we let it.

Much like the rain on the patio this morning.

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Tags: #cognitive decline of a parent, #Death, acceptance, Indian society, nursing home, old age, parents and children, Western society

Oct 25, 2015 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

Coddling The Hod

©October 25th, 2015

By Vijaya Sundaram

Fifty-nine more bulbs went into the ground today, in between my running around, doing various other things. (Someone give me a blunt object so I can knock myself out!)

My dog, Holly (aka, The Hoddles, aka The Hod) gave me a reproachful stare when I came back in after that. Actually, she’s given me several
reproachful looks today.

I could read her mind plainly, which telepathed these questions at me:
WHAT could be more important than me? Why did you go out with your daughter this morning where I couldn’t follow you?
(Answer: Holly, I took her to her kathak dance class!)
Why did you not play with the stick I proffered you when you stepped into the backyard?
(Holly, I was cleaning up the mess in the back yard!)
What were you doing messing about in the front yard where I couldn’t get to you?
(Holly, I was planting tulip, crocus, daffodil and narcissus bulbs.)
Why did you go out AGAIN this evening?
(Holly, we had to go to our Agbekor and Ashanti drum group at Tufts.)
I tried to answer her thus, but all I got were sad, reproachful looks.

My dog does NOT care for all this human activity. All she knows is that I was not there for her today. Sure, I take her on very long walks on practically most days, and when I don’t, W does. But her whole attitude is one of: Sure, but that was then; this is now. What have you done for me LATELY?!

So, I did the next best thing when we got home tonight — after greeting her ecstatically, I made her a big omelette, and followed it up with fresh yogurt. AND I gave her treats.
It’s not the same as “quality time,” yes.
Call it bribery and corruption.
Call it a foolish coddling of The Hoddles.
Call it whatever you like — but she was happy!

And that’s all from me today/night, folks!

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Tomorrow, the Fells beckon us. I’m sure she’ll forgive me!

Tags: Dog needs, Dog telepathy, Human activity, planting bulbs

Oct 24, 2015 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings

I am sitting with a cup of coffee at my kitchen table on this chilly fall day, listening to the late great Hindustani vocalist, Padmabhushan Gangubai Hangal singing Raga Prabhat Bhairav.  Her voice is raw, uncompromising, full of pain and triumph, and not at all like the very high, pretty, curlicued vocalisms usually practised by classical female singers in India.

And I am in tears.

Here is a woman from the shudra caste who rose from outright poverty and deprivation to the heights of fame later on in her life, a woman who’s sung in front of Mahatma Gandhi, a woman who lost her beloved teacher (Sawai Gandharva), then lost her Brahmin husband whom she served devotedly and supported, who, despite his being a lawyer, lost any jobs he held, and was not financially capable.   Then, she lost her daughter, Hindustani vocalist Krishna Hangal, who succumbed to cancer to 2004.  In 2007, aged 97, Gangubai Hangal passed away after pledging that her eyes, still good, would be donated to the Eye Bank run Dr M.M. Joshi Eye Institute.  Her wishes were carried out by her remaining family.

I have to thank my husband, Warren Senders, for playing this recording, and of reminding me of her.  Here is his post on the life and times of Padmabhushan Shrimati Gangubai Hangal:  In Memoriam: Gangubai Hangal, 1913–2009

Warren is himself a great and impassioned vocalist, musician and teacher in the classical Indian vocal music called Khyal.  (He’s also a jazz bassist and composer of Indo-Jazz fusion, with the group called Antigravity, in which I played guitar — sadly, we don’t perform much anymore, being too caught up in the nowness of our current life, which is full of music at home, and homeschooling our daughter).  He is also a huge and highly informed Climate Change activist.  You can read more about him here, and about the blog he started to further Climate Change awareness (through the use of music from around the world), here.

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Dreamer of Dreams

Tags: #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Warren Senders, Gangubai Hangal, Khyal

Oct 22, 2015 Ramblings and Musings

Happy Dussera, Indian homies out there!

Okay, so … have I turned into a trad.Tam.Bram?

I celebrated Saraswati Puja yesterday — in my own style, at night (which I found out is frowned upon). Terribly busy day yesterday, everyone’s schedules were different, so …

Tags: #Dussera, culture, Durga Puja, Saraswati Puja, Tamil Brahmin culture, tradition

Oct 20, 2015 Ramblings and Musings

Right now, while the washing machine is sloshing clothes around, and the dryer is roaring away, I’m listening to a recorded lesson given to my husband and me by my (late) teacher of Indian classical vocal music, Pandit S.G. Devasthali.  He was a teacher of Hindi at Loyola School in Pune, India in his professional life, and a vocal teacher of unsurpassed genius and generosity in his after-school private time.

Listening to him and to us singing with him, I am overcome by a nameless emotion. I left singing seventeen years ago to become a school-teacher.  Now, I’m slowly trying to reclaim my roots in music. Oh, on the surface, I look like I know it, because I sing as a matter of course, but not in a deep way.  Knowing is not the same as doing.  In the practice of a discipline lies its power, its beauty and its truth.  Leave the practice, and you have its shadow.

My teacher’s voice is the voice of utter beauty and power, urging, pulling us along in its wake, but singing in that deep way now … it’s not as easy for me as it was before.  For various reasons, I walked away from the practice of it.  Now, I want it back.

I want it all back.

Music is in my blood and bones and feet and hands, even in the clicking of my teeth when I’m trying to not outwardly reveal that I’m tapping a beat to a song.  My mother sang to me in her womb, and I began singing in tune at age two and a half.  South Indian (Carnatic) classical music is part of my heritage, sitar and Hindustani vocal music is also part of my heritage.  I am Indian in my music — Pan-Indian.  And the West claimed me early on, as well.  The Beatles gave me dreams about playing guitar in a band and singing in harmony.  60s and 70s rock, jazz from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, R&B, Motown, music from Turkey, Persia, African countries, Asian countries … they’re all in there roiling inside me.  I wrote songs, played guitar, sitar, composed music, led bands, performed my own and others’ music.

Now, I want to go back to playing my guitar in a more serious way than I have done these past seventeen years.

I want to dust off my sitar, restring and tune it – and play it.

I want to dust off my voice (okay, so I sing every day, but not in full voice, and not with the power and energy I used to have — that comes with practice).

I want to sing again.

How can I do that AND write short stories, poems, a novel?  How can I do that AND continue to do all the other things — home-school my daughter, take my dog out for walks, grow our own food in the garden, tend to the garden, do laundry, clean bathrooms, sweep the floor?

I’m not as young as I was.

But I’ll take it a day at a time.

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Tags: #Pandit S.G.Devasthali, #Singing, music is life, North Indian Classical Music, The practice and discipline of music, Western music

Oct 17, 2015 Ramblings and Musings

A Girl Gets Her Period And Is Banished To The Shed: #15Girls – An NPR article.

Please read the linked article above.

This is my comment upon reading it:

This happens not just in Nepal.

In South Indian Tamil Brahmin culture (at least in the Iyer caste), this is called “Duram” — literally “distance.”  Something similar happened to my sister and to me — the not-being-able-to-touch things or people part, or not being able to go into the kitchen, where the Hindu Gods are usually housed.  (At least, we could sleep in our own rooms in our own houses still, and not be relegated to some horrible shed, like these poor girls.  And fortunately, we weren’t blamed for anything if we touched something or someone by mistake.)

Still, I hated the custom of the three-day (always three days) segregation with all my heart, and argued with my mother, and stormed against the custom.  I didn’t argue against it at first, though.  I simply accepted what I was supposed to do, and felt truly afraid that if I touched a plant or a tree, I would kill it or harm it.  I never told anyone about this fear at the tender age of ten.  I simply kept it within.  I was truly afraid.  There is no basis for this, except that one is young, and one accepts one’s parents’ dicta about such matters.  I hadn’t begun rebelling, yet.

When I got older, I said, “How come I’m allowed to go to school and mingle with everyone?  Couldn’t someone else be on her period?  I mean, shouldn’t I have to have a ritual bath (which one takes on the morning of the “fourth” day) EVERY day, if you consider menstruation to be impure?  If we go on buses, and mingle with people, shouldn’t ALL of us have this ritual bath, because *someone* might be on her period?  And how is it being impure, anyway?” (Or words to that effect)

My mom simply waved all this away, and so did other older female relatives of mine.  I had no choice.  I had to obey.  And because I was an obedient child, I DID obey, while resenting it with all my heart.

In my teens, I said bitterly, “Just wait.  I’ll marry someone from far away, and not follow ANY of these customs.  ”

My mom said, “That’s fine.  You can do whatever you like in your own house.”

My mom has now moved on to more modern ideas, but she still prefers it if anyone who’s on a period stays away from the “god” room and the kitchen.

And I?

I did marry someone from far away, and I’m happy.

I am staunchly atheist.

I resist tradition.

I hate superstition — it has a way of infecting the young and innocent, and also the old and not-so-innocent.  It paralyzes our minds and poisons our actions.

I refuse to follow blindly accept someone’s statements about the way things work, unless those statements are backed by science / actual, empirical facts.

I am willing to change my mind about nonsense, even my own.

I make sure that my child can think for herself.  And if I hand down incorrect information to her, I make sure to correct myself and let her know.

I ask her to question me, and resist me (mostly, she does not — but that’s the way the young can be.  At least, she’s resisted me sometimes.  I’m happy that she does, even when I’m annoyed about it.)

—————————————————————-
More thoughts about this: 

The problem with tradition is that it’s also intertwined with culture, and culture is problematic.  So much is excused by others because it is “culture.”  Everyone is afraid of saying anything against any culture, because well … you know, we don’t really have the right since we’re not part of it, or some such thing.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love my cultural heritage, Indian music, the temple rituals (which, of course, I don’t follow), the festivals, the food, the ritualized forms of respect, the unthinking patterns of behavior, which look lovely from the outside.  I love it — it’s beautiful, it’s soothing, it’s predictable and it’s reassuring.  One doesn’t have to make any decisions on one’s own.  The culture decides it for one.

That’s great, if you like that sort of thing.

I don’t — not some of it, anyway.

And yet, I go back every year.  I seek the good, the beautiful and that which is inspiring in my culture.  I like the forms of respect (which this country sadly lacks), the customs, the kindness of relations and neighbors, the marriage, birth and death rituals which make it easier to deal with all three, because so many participate in making it so.

Still, I don’t think I’ll use most of such traditions (or at the most, I’ll use the essence of some of those traditions), if left to myself.

I still have a life ahead.  Who knows what I’ll do?  Perhaps, I’ll turn to the comfort of ritual and culture.  Perhaps, not.

One thing I will not miss, ever — and you know what that is.  It’s this custom of ritualized segregation during menstruation.

It’s time for India to break that custom, and crush it to dust underfoot.

It’s time for the Enlightenment.

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Tags: breaking free of tradition, customs and traditions, distance, duram, Indian taboos, menstruation, superstitions, Tamil Brahmin Iyer culture, women and girls

Oct 17, 2015 Ramblings and Musings, Writing 201

I guess I’m suffering from withdrawal pangs.

The past two weeks (ten days) were absolutely wonderful, intense poetry-imbued weeks, and I wrote my first limerick(s), ballad, odes, acrostic poems, found poems, elegy and sonnet.  I’ve read and written poetry for most of my life.  I even wrote rhymed poems, but this was my first attempt at these difficult, and occasionally unyielding, forms.  How wonderful it is to be pushed beyond one’s comfort level!  I’d like to stay in a state of discomfort for the rest of my life, because that my brain gets stupid if I’m not learning something new.  And I cannot allow stupidity to set in.

To learn something new and wonderful every day is the highest goal, and a most satisfying feeling.

I’m a little unmoored, right now, but I’m going to attempt a sestina in the next few days, and then, gasp! a villanelle, after that.  What have I got to lose?!  These forms force me to write about things other than my own feelings and particular experiences — a welcome change!  (Oddly, when it came to writing songs, it was the opposite.  I refused to write personal love songs, because they were too easy, and could tempt one into triteness.  Instead, I wrote strange, surreal songs that were difficult to write, and for which the music I composed was even more difficult.  Then, when I actually wrote a love song or two, I welcomed them as something wonderful and novel (for me), and imbued them (I think) with that feeling of newness, of wonder.

I have to go now.  It’s almost 2:00 a.m.  I’ve gotten used to typing at this hour, but I keep promising my husband I’ll change my ways.

There.  I’ve said nothing, nothing at all.

Goodnight, all!

Tags: #Writing 201, Going from formlessness to form, Going from the complex to the simple, poetic forms I'll try next, poetry and wakefulness, rambling at 2:00 a.m., song-writing

Oct 15, 2015 Culture, Ramblings and Musings

As a young teenager, I used to wake up to all the songs on this album, and this one always moved me deeply, both for the beautiful pentatonic scale (1, flat 2, 4, 5, flat 7, 1 – or, Do, flat Re, Fa, Sol, Flat Ti, Octave Do –for those who want to know) of Revathi Ragam and MS Subbulakshmi’s heart-moving singing.

Tears sting my eyes now, as I listen to this, and it’s impossible to tell why — I mean I hardly know anything about this song, nor do I understand the words (it’s in Telugu, not my language).  What this song does for me is to recreate an entire way of life, along with the song itself.  It’s ringed about with devotion and quiet contemplation.  It’s redolent with the scent of sandalwood or champa, or amber incense sticks which my parents would light in front of the gods in the mornings on festival days.

It reminds me of when I was a two-braided student, ugly, earnest and geeky, worrying about the shape of my toes and fingers, and practically everything else about myself.   It was hot, hot as an inferno down South where we lived, and the air shimmered with salty heat.  Sweat and humidity were part of simply being alive there.  And we were SO alive, so full of vivid and vibrant energy!  My father was alive back then, my parents were happy, my brother was an adorably charming, beautiful little toddler, and my sister was at IIT, singing like an angel, and studying and making new friends.  And life was simpler, and I longed to grow up and face the world and make my own decisions, and … here I am now.

It reminds me of Tamil cultural events happening in my neighborhood, of the singing teacher next door, out of whose open windows would come the sounds of students earnestly learning Carnatic music, and being mostly in tune.  I’d sometimes go to the terrace, to play at being a schoolteacher, and talk at the top of my pre-teen voice to unseen students, while I waved a branch from the drumstick tree that drooped over the other side of the terrace.

It reminds me of my mother’s exquisite singing voice, as she sang along, while making Madras coffee (the best filter cafe au lait in the world), and our breakfast.  My mother’s voice contained in it (and still does, even if she doesn’t sing much any more) worlds of longing, of devotion, of pain, of contentment, of love and sacrifice.

On a more gustatory level, this song reminds me of upma, and dosai and idlis, and tengai chutney, sambhar, and rasam, and kootu, and porutcha kozhambu, of chakkarai pongal and venn pongal, and gotsu, murukku and ten kozhal, and patchadi, and  … and temple bells, and marigolds, and of starry-white clusters of blooming jasmine and other swoon-inducing flowers in our garden.

It reminds me of Sunday mornings, when I’d lie in bed and read Tennyson, or D.H. Lawrence, or Jung … for FUN!  Or, when I’d read the Oxford English Dictionary — for FUN!  Or wrote poetry — for FUN!   Or, played the guitar — for … well, you know.  (Yes, I had no life, I’m sure!)

And it reminds me of how music always, always speaks to me.

An entire culture and way of life, and I don’t have it here, in these benighted States!  And the sad thing is, I don’t even try and seek it.

Because, I say to myself, I’ve created my own culture — with our own music (Indian and Western), our home-grown fresh food, our own cadences, our own lovely day-to-day routines.  Because, I say to myself, I dislike following rituals, dislike tradition which forces me to do more work than is necessary (and yet, we celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas in a vegetarian fashion).  Because, Indian culture is hard to follow in a foreign land without getting together with a bunch of traditional people, and that has its own baggage.

And yet … I want my daughter to have it all, too.

All mothers want their daughters to have the sum total of their life’s experiences without the pain, or the sweat, or the tears, or the doubts, or the poverty, or the fear of what tomorrow might bring, or the heartbreaks and losses.

Ah well!  Someday (soon, I hope), I shall resolve this matter.

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Tags: A way of life, culture, festivals, Indian culture, M.S. Subbulakshmi, music is life, North Indian Classical Music, Revathi Ragam, tradition

Oct 9, 2015 Ramblings and Musings

I have loved many, many poets and poems since I was a young girl of eight or ten.  From Donne to Blake, from Shakespeare to Milton, from Wordsworth to Tennyson, from Eliot to D.H. Lawrence, from Wilde to Yeats, from Emily Dickinson to Robert Frost, from Gwendolyn Brooks, May Sarton, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez to Naomi Shihab Nye, from Sarojini Naidu to Rabindranath Tagore …
Here’s a poem by my favorite William Blake (of “Tyger, Tyger burning bright” fame) that just sprang to memory:

The Sick Rose
By William Blake

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

I found myself chilled to the bone when I heard a recording of this poem set to music composed by Benjamin Britten, and sung by his lover, the impeccable tenor Peter Pears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z8W177eCIY

Tags: #Writing 201, Poets I've loved, The Sick Rose, William Blake