Oct 2, 2015 Original Poetry, Writing 101
Image by Cheri Lucas Rowlands
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Journey to the Heart of the Web
(In the Future — My Day 20 Post)
©October 1st, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
The future is now. And now. And now!
Half-way towards my Death, I lurch.
I see her lurking in the shadows. Her breath
So cold, her eyes so gray, her face silver
Like stars stretched across space.
She is patient, so patient! Spinning,
Spanning time, hanging beads of questions
On her web, and oh! how big those questions:
Who are you?
Where are you headed?
Why toil so much?
I am silent, thinking.
I am one among many
Unique to those I love,
And to those who love me,
Forgotten by the rest.
I have poems to write,
Songs to sing, a daughter to cherish
A husband to love, a dog to adore.
I have a garden and a novel waiting
For me to nurture them into life.
I have books to read, things to put away,
Flowers to inhale, birds to feed,
Snow to play in, a planet to explore.
This is not toil, though it is work.
And it is joy.
I say to her:
I am not ready for you. Hang back,
Step away from me!
And her voice, cold as glass, says:
I am always waiting. I will welcome you.
Not yet, I say, calmly, hold back.
I have plans. I do not fear you,
But I have a life to build,
I’ll create a tower,
With storeys* made of story.
In the future, just before you entwine me in silk,
In my future, I will write,
And sing, and teach my child.
I will love my husband and child,
And take them with me on
A story-journey. We will travel
Through my stories, and theirs,
Sing our songs, grow our minds,
Forget our fears, drop our bags,
And run through the fields.
And Death is silent. Then, she says:
I shall be waiting.
Her voice is like a desert.
I think: My stories will come to me
From the spring of stories
That encircles the world,
And brings life to parched places,
And I want to dip my cup
In that water, and drink deep.
So, I face my future,
Setting my face against that quiet
Shadowed form, that voice
That rustles, my Death so elegant,
So ice-quiet.
But her voice, cold as glass, says,
I shall wait for you.
I am always waiting. I will welcome you.
Yes, wait, keep waiting, I say.
I think: In my future, I will learn better
How to tell those stories,
And sing songs, and write poems,
I will strip ego, and listen, listen
To all the people I meet,
Sans judgement, sans fear,
Sans ready response. For, in their
Voices, stories live, and in their
Hearts, grow dreams and love.
I will see their hearts, and sing those songs.
And I turn to her, and say:
When you come, O Death,
I shall sing you my song,
And tell you my story,
And we will journey together
To the heart of your web.
And we will be as one.
But not yet, not yet,
I have plans, and
There is much to learn.
And Death pauses, sighs,
Rustles her robe, turns away.
And her voice, cold as glass, whispers:
I shall wait for you.
I am always waiting. I will welcome you,
And you shall tell me your story.
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*In the US, the word storey is not much used. But those from other English-speaking countries will know what I mean.
Tags: #Death, #Journey, #Learning, #Life, #Love, Family time, fear, poems, songs, stories
Oct 1, 2015 Writing 101
I have, during this period of being part of #Writing 101, seen some amazing writers and come across lovely thinkers in this course.
Oddly, for someone who’s not a programmer or computer geek of any kind, I was drawn most to the following two blogs, both of which are by computer programmers: GeekErgoSum and Anand’s Parodies & Caricatures.
It was surprising to me when GeekErgoSum chose one of my (least inspired) posts as one of the blogs he randomly chose to highlight — surprising and flattering, because I had been planning to highlight his post (which I came across only yesterday): Travelogue: Cruising Round the Med.
To give you a taste of his light-hearted style and skill with rhymes and half-rhymes (which I find highly appealing), here’s a little stanza from the poem he wrote on the topic:
To set sail we left the port,
On the island of Majorc..
..a, no time to wave to a farmer,
As we left from sunny Palma.
(Are you hurting yet? The English language is).
And I laughed uproariously over his (hilariously written) post about the Day 16 prompt about searching our stats for a post idea.
The other programmer with a secret blogger alter-ego is Anand, and his “quirky, snarky malarkey” is brilliantly funny. He parodies his family, his culture, himself and renders everyone in a comical, but not cruel, manner. I love his work. Check it out, but here’s a small taste to whet your appetite:
If we were having coffee right now…I’d tell you that I’m stretched to my limit and stretching me any further would break me into two. This of course will make mom and wifey very happy, because they’ll get their own halves to keep and smother with their love and affection. And yet, I foresee problems if the two halves weren’t exactly equal. The calipers and rulers are ready, I suppose, hidden behind their backs.
If we were having coffee right now…I’d tell you that my cousin has made an earth-shattering announcement. She’s going to marry a South-Indian boy.
Bua Ji (My dad’s sister) called us up last night and told us about it in hushed tones. “You know something. Honey ik South Indian munde de chakkar mein phanns gayi.” (“Honey has fallen prey to a South Indian Boy.”)
You may have surmised it already, but I’d like to clarify, especially for my international readers, This particular Honey is my Uncle’s daughter, and Honey is proper-type Punjabi name for girls. Bua ji wasn’t talking about her hubby dearest, who is straight as a ruler and has never fallen for any boy, South Indian or otherwise, ever.
There are others whose blogs I enjoy, because their personalities are revealed, and their goodness, and because they are out doing creative and good things in the world.
One of these is the Ria, whose site is Kokobookro. I just discovered her blog (how did I miss all these good people in this course? There’s so little time to read everyone!) — she has some lovely posts, and little thoughts and sayings, such as this:
Love first,
not on condition of what will be,
as the whole journey is a necessity.
Love first,
it requires bravery, exposes you naturally,
but has always been the key.
Love first – ria
A blogger with whose work I’m slowly becoming more acquainted, and which I am enjoying is Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha at http://acookingpotandtwistedtales.com. Jacqueline has a lovely sense of place and self, and her descriptions in this recent post relating to the map of our Muse in Writing 101 are very evocative:
Let us wander a bit down the red earth beaten path of this charming campus of academics which my parents were part of. I am doubtful if our GPS would work, but I can follow my nose because it knows …
The bungalows are only separated by well kept Cashuarina hedges, Queen of the night flowers, Purple Hibiscus, Honeysuckle plants or Bougainvilleas. The whistle of the swaying whistling pines pierces through the air frequently. It is also a breezy and cool town …
It is a town that reminds me of mango trees heavy laden with fat juicy fruits, of sweet sticky cashew fruits, of the best bananas this side of the planet, of lazy summers spent with friends, of the cold harmattan seasons when red dust curled up in the air painting us in light earthy dust and we glittered like happy urchins.
Another writer I have recently come across in this course is Tracey Rains. Tracey is, like I was until recently, a teacher of the English language in a public school. She has brilliant posts, wonderfully creative expressive turns of phrase, and an appreciation of the beauty of language. The following is from one of her posts, which is in a somewhat more serious vein, but full of wisdom and thoughtfulness:
As a teacher, unfortunately, I see children on a daily basis who were the result of a fanatical need to pass down DNA, thoughtlessly fulfill a societal imperative to reproduce, certain that they didn’t need to think about this prodigious responsibility. They did not give the same amount of forethought to their decision to bring children into their lives. It’s a classic Catch 22 situation. Those who truly consider the awe-inspiring commitment that having children truly may be those least likely to have them, their doubt helping them to understand what is required to be effective parents. I’m certainly not saying everyone who chose to become parents did so without thought. Obviously, many people are wonderful, nurturing parents; their children are happy and loved. Unfortunately, I see far too many cases of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.
I couldn’t agree more with ALL of what Ms. Rains said above. My husband and I have thought the same, almost in the exact same way all through our married life. However, despite that, we went ahead, and decided to have our child at a much later age than most. We’re thrilled with our ten-year old daughter, who is a truly beautiful spirit, but we understand those who wish to remain childless in this complex and complicated world.
As a teacher, I am attracted to other teachers. I discovered another gem in this class: Leannenz, who is a teacher from New Zealand who now teaches in Japan. Her posts are lovely, detailed, informative, thoughtful, beautifully written. Please check out her work. Here’s an excerpt from one of her posts:
I have to admit now, in my late 40’s, my skin care regime is better than in my 20’s, that is to say I have the semi-semblance of one and I do think about my weight and how to get it down and then maintain it at a healthy level. That is a work in progress. However this is not a “Dorian Gray” scream for attention or an effort to be “Benjamin Button” rather it is an effort to stay healthy so I can enjoy and look forward to all the wonderful things life will have to offer me on my journey.
Aging is a fact of life, it doesn’t scare me. I find it quite intriguing. The grey hairs are beginning to appear. I am not that keen to hide them with dye. I am kind of interested to see if I will go that kind of “salt and pepper” and then one day realise my hair is white like my dad’s.
So, there it is — my Day 19 assignment: A tribute to fellow-bloggers in this course. Hope you enjoyed checking out their work!
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Note: I have some other favorite people in this course, with whom I’ve had entire post-post conversations on my blog or theirs, and many of whom I’ve not mentioned, alas, to my regret. I tried to make this a more varied group of people from different parts of the world, and heeded the recommendation in The Art of the Roundup to keep things “tight” — to quote the post, “ten links or fewer (and five are better).”
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Sep 30, 2015 Daily Life, Writing 101
Homing Instinct, or: The Long Way Back
©September 30th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
So, I’ll keep this brief.
I was about five years old and completely fearless (except for my irrational fear of Dracula and Mini-Cula, a character made up by my uncle who told us scary stories which made me whimper at night).
I was at school — Hutchings High School (which, despite its name was a k-12 school) in the city of Poona (now Pune), India.
I was up in a tall tamarind tree, gorging on tamarinds. Everyone who knows tamarinds knows that they are sour, but the unripe ones are green and even more sour than you can imagine — they make your taste buds squeal in squirmy ecstasy, like someone tickling your toes. I loved plucking them and sucking on them, screwing up my little face into a rictus of comic joy, no doubt.
Other children were there too, on different trees, but I don’t remember them.
Lost as I was in sour bliss, I lost track of time.
I noticed after a long time that the whole playground had suddenly gone silent. I came to myself, and looked around. There was no one there, not even my elder sister, who would usually wait for me (I shall ask her tomorrow why she didn’t), and remind me to do stuff.
Panic must have stricken me. I don’t remember. All I remember was calmly thinking about HOW I was going to get home. We had no telephone. My family was of modest income at the time. Home was quite far away. My father would have no idea of where to begin looking for me. I think I worried more about them than about me.
So, I thought rapidly. The mists of late evening had fallen. I remember the darkness pressing down on all sides.
I thought and thought, and light dawned on me. I knew what I’d do! I’d take an auto-rickshaw home.
Now, those of you who know the city of Pune know that it is the proud home of Bajaj Autos and of scooters, motorcycles and the like. I imagined my route home. And I knew I could make it there.
I hailed a rickshaw. I don’t remember anything about the driver of it, except that he was kind and patient. In rapid-fire Marathi ( a language of which I do NOT remember anything now), I outlined my situation to him. I told him confidently that I knew the way home, and that he should take me there, and that my parents would pay him when he delivered me.
He must have smiled to himself, but he was very nice. And I led him through a torturous route, which he followed patiently (I could not remember addresses and such, but I knew how to get home).
A rickshaw ride that should have taken about fourteen minutes took about an hour — but he took me home, and delivered me to my thunderstruck and frantic parents.
Now think for a moment about this. In a world where children are routinely abducted, sold into slavery, molested or killed, I made it home safely. My driver was a good man. I bless that man, and wish him well, if he’s alive. May his children and grandchildren grow and prosper.
For he was a trust-worthy man, and I trusted him. We always have to trust in the kindness of strangers, but in today’s world, it’s better to verify as well.
My mother must have wept, my father must have laughed in relief, my sister must have sobbed ((I have no memory of their reactions). The rickshaw-wallah reassured them, then laughingly told them something that my parents reminded me about for a long time, and which I still remember: I had led him home on the longer, slower school-bus route, and had pointed every house, every pole and every landmark along the way.
Perhaps, that has been my route in my life, too. I have always taken the longer way — it’s not always been efficient, but I’ve met good and wonderful people, and it’s been fun.
It still is.
I was plain lucky. And I had an unerring homing instinct. I still have it. Put me down anywhere, and I’ll make it back home. I have the map of my world imprinted on my nerves, I think.
And I love coming home.
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Tags: homing instinct, Hutchings High School, North Indian Classical Music, Parvati Darshan, Poona, Pune, rickshaw ride, rickshaw-walla, school-girl's odyssey, tamarind tree, the kindness of strangers, the long way home, trust, trust but verify
Sep 30, 2015 Original Short Story, Writing 101
For my Day 17 post, I searched my old blog for drafts, and found these two things. The first was a draft (ADDENDUM: I found out after checking my private blog just now, that I had published that piece with a different title and opening — so I just took the draft form of it, and added 39 words to it).
As for the second one, I added 2,453 words to its already long 1444-word long draft.
The first (to which I added 39 words):
Refuse to Comply
©June 6th, 2013
By Vijaya Sundaram
With apologies to M.K. Gandhi ( who said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”), I humbly state this:
First, they notice you.
Then, they respect you.
Then, they woo you with an offer you cannot refuse.
Then, you lose.
Refuse to comply if it insults your intelligence and your aesthetic and moral sense.
Refuse to comply if it is false.
Refuse to comply if it belittles others.
Refuse to comply, especially if untold wealth is promised you.
Refuse to comply, if it diminishes you.
Refuse to comply if it goes against righteousness.
~ Dreamer of Dreams
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Below is the second piece, a draft of a story that I began on June 10, 2014 (on my other blog), but never completed, and never published, and to which I added 2,453 more words today:
Teddy’s Roses
©September 29th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Fat Teddy Marino was a fat, jolly old man of sixty-five, and hopelessly provincial.
He had no real concept of a world beyond his very small, narrow one. He didn’t believe in Climate Change, drove a big red SUV, spent winters in Florida, grew hydrangea and roses and other flowers (all of which he fertilized with industrial fertilizer) in his immaculately kept front yard that was covered with weed-killer-sprayed grass. He grew tomatoes and beans, bought from Home Depot, in his back yard, kept a house cat who looked with baleful yellow eyes at passersby from between the dark drapes of their living room window, and had a wife who never seemed to step out-of-doors. He sported a cheerful grin, though his eyes scanned everything inquisitively, as he sat on his deck, and watched the cars go by.
He had always been known as “Fat” Teddy, even since he was a little boy. He didn’t seem to mind, though perhaps, long ago, he might have minded. He might have run home, crying from elementary school, when the other kids teased him for being plump. He might have been ingratiating and a bit of a gossipy tattle-tale in middle school, when he learned that some teachers liked the carriers of tales and gossip, He might have nursed grievances and grudges against all the athletic, slim guys who got all the girls in High School.
It didn’t matter now. Fat Teddy, from working in his father’s convenience store making a small income, went on to undreamed-of riches. He had come into an inheritance when he was twenty-three, the lucky recipient of a reclusive uncle, who had made a small fortune in scamming the gullible, and decided that the least-regarded of his nephews would receive the full benefit of his generosity when he died.
So, Fat Teddy didn’t work another day in his life, except that he would tell you that he was always hard at work, taking care of his home, his yard, his flowers, his finances. He had become something of a financial wizard, multiplying the money that he had inherited, playing the stock market. He spent his afternoons tending to his roses, or hydrangea, or lilies, or daffodils, hyacinths, irises and tulips, according to their season. He put up a large, white fence around his large, two-acre backyard and a hedge running around his property at the front of his house. He always had his curtains drawn, so that no one could look in. He had his many-roomed house and property properly secured with the proper alarm systems, surveillance cameras, and so on. He had a gardener who came once a week, a cook who came every day during the week, but not on weekends, and a succession of maids, who always left in a hurry, after not tendering their notices.
And he had a wife, whom he nursed with the utmost care and love.
For Fat Teddy’s wife was wheelchair-bound, debilitated by the unrelenting progress of a cruel disease. Fat Teddy loved her dearly, and would do anything for her, despite that she had turned into a horrible shrew, who screamed curses at the maids and threw things at them when she was in a truly desperate mood.
Fat Teddy’s provincial nature was known to all in the neighborhood. He believed that his town was the best, his church was the best, his religion was the best, and his politics were the best. He gave to his charities, to his church, to his political party, and to causes he believed in. He believed that he would need to protect himself and his wife from intruders, and had a burglar alarm installed. He also owned a gun, for which he had a legal license, and in the use of which he had been schooled.
His neighbor, Kevin, who had just moved into the neighborhood a few months ago, would politely say “hello” to him every morning or evening when he saw him in the front yard, which was near the sidewalk, and would try to jog on. Fat Teddy would look up, if he were clipping roses, smile a beaming smile at Kevin, and immediately engage him in chat. Groaning inwardly, poor Kevin, a tall, gentle, beautiful man with the slightest hint of epicanthic folds in his eyes, and elegant eyebrows, would stop and allow himself to be assaulted with a few minutes of absolute stupidity.
“Neighborhood’s going to the dogs, isn’t it?” Fat Teddy would say, cheerfully, not seeing a glassy look come into the eyes of his interlocutor. “First that slant-eyed Chinese couple moved in, and then that Indian family, and now, it’s these Mexicans and Haitians! What happened? I thought America was for the Americans.”
“Mumble,” mumbled the trapped Kevin, himself a product of a mixed marriage between an “American” Englishwoman and a “Chinese” American, as he was forced to listen to his diatribe against “un-American Americans.” He’d gesture at his wristwatch and try to make a quick getaway.
“And what do you think of our President? Seems that we’ve got a bunch of jackasses running the country. What I think we need is a better armed citizenry, don’t you?” Fat Teddy would say, oblivious to the resentful and mutinous look on his listener’s face.
Mostly Kevin couldn’t get a word in, and it didn’t matter that Fat Teddy was wrong — Kevin couldn’t get him to engage with actual facts. He would try to explain about white privilege, or tell Teddy that America had become rich on the backs of the black slaves, or that “‘Mericuns” had come to this country as greedy fur-trading, land-seeking interlopers and had wiped out whole Native American populations, while taking over the land.
Fat Teddy just rode roughshod over Kevin, paying no heed to his weak rejoinders. Kevin would say, “But … have you considered that we stole the land from the Mexicans down in Texas?” or, “The Chinese built much of our railroads on the Pacific side in the 19th century.”
Fat Teddy would stop his torrent briefly, look dismissive, and then continue, “So, what do you think of the weather, huh? Hot enough for ya? I don’t mind telling you, this past winter was so cold, I thought I’d freeze my nuts off the minute I stepped out. How’s that “Global Warming,” for Christ’s sake? That’s Global Freezing. These Climate guys, they’re all in some sort of conspiracy — all ’cause of that ‘oBummer guy, him and his “clean energy.” Bet you a million bucks, they’re planning something.”
“Think my cellphone’s buzzing. Listen, I’ve got to take this one. Nice talking to ya — but I gotta go. Bye!” Kevin would say, as he pulled out his cell phone, pretended to check it and look absorbed, as he walked away, waving his hand.
One day, after hearing Kevin complain for the nth time about Fat Teddy, his wife, Susanna, a well-known newspaper columnist, beautiful, blond, curly-haired, brilliant and very “American” looking (notwithstanding the fact that she had a blond Jewish father and a brown-skinned African-American mother, something Fat Teddy would never understand), said, “Why don’t you tell him directly that he’s driving you crazy with his redneck shit and tell him to shut up? The guy’s a racist bigot, for Pete’s sake. Don’t give him the time of day!”
“I can’t,” protested Kevin, weakly, chopping some basil, as he helped her with the pasta primavera they were making for dinner. “He doesn’t listen to what I say.”
“Be a mensch,” she said, tartly, while decanting the cooked pasta into a bowl. “Just butt right in, and tell it like it is.”
“Nah! Not worth it. I’ll just avoid walking down that way, when I go walking in the mornings,” replied Kevin.
Kevin tried avoiding that route, but knew he couldn’t avoid it all the time. Besides, he liked that particular route. The flowers cheered him up.
Neither he nor Susanna knew about Teddy’s wife being wheelchair-bound. All they knew was that Fat Teddy had a wife and that she was ailing and reclusive. The maids who had come and gone seemed to be South-East Asian, and didn’t speak with the neighbors. The cook came during the hours they weren’t home, and the gardener who came once a week was … Mexican.
One hot summer day, Fat Teddy was outside, soaking up the sun, clipping his most favorite rose-bush, pruning a little here and a little bit there. He liked playing gardener, and it gave him a quiet sensation, which, if he had been pressed to describe it, he would have compared to happiness.
He loved this rose-bush. It gave him solace. He would never speak of it, but here was where his heart had found its peace.
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Continued below on September 29th, 2015:
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Today, as he clipped, and watered and tidied his beloved rose-bush, he felt a strange pain in his chest. Out of breath as he always was, he thought it’s just a stitch, and sat back on a large, smooth rock on which were inscribed the letters RM, next to the rosebush. His mind was vacant, and his mouth hung somewhat open at such times. His large, bulbous grey eyes mirrored the sky above him. Looking up, he saw thunderclouds.
The pain increased, like a vice squeezing him. He made a low moan, and slumped over the rosebush, holding his chest, breathing stertorously.
Rose, he thought.
It was a Saturday at 8:30 in the morning.
Kevin came up, jogging, ear buds on. He didn’t hear Fat Teddy. He passed by with a wave of the hand. Fat Teddy did not see him.
It didn’t strike Kevin as odd that Fat Teddy was slumped over until he had gone about twenty-five feet. Then, he stopped abruptly. Without thinking twice, he ran back, shoving his ear buds in his pockets as he ran, and called out to Fat Teddy. A faint groan came from the man. Kevin whipped out his iPhone, called 911 and the local Emergency Medical Services. By the time they arrived, Fat Teddy was unconscious. They put a mask on him, applied CPR, and got him breathing. His eyelids fluttered open, and he held out a hand to Kevin, who immediately went over, and took it. Fat Teddy said, “My wife … tell her, please,” then closed his eyes. Kevin asked the ambulance driver where they were taking Fat Teddy. They named the hospital, the best in the country, told him he had done everything just right, called him a good citizen, and drove away.
Now, with the flashing lights and banshee siren of the ambulance dopplering away from him, he found himself shaking. His heart raced, and he found himself thinking, I hope the old geezer doesn’t die. I’ve become fond of him. Recollecting himself, he remembered Teddy’s wife. I wonder why we’ve never see her, he thought, and went up the steps to Fat Teddy’s house,which was perched like an eyrie high above the others in the neighborhood.
He rang the bell. There was no answer. He pounded the door. There was no answer. Turning the knob, he went in cautiously, now wondering what he would find.
He didn’t have long to wonder. A loud, accusing voice assaulted his senses when he entered the room whose windows were completely draped in deep red curtains, shutting out the loud morning light. His eyes took a moment to adjust, and he saw near the back wall a thin, resentful-looking woman with startling blue eyes, and ice-white hair sitting in a wheelchair.
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house? Where’s my Teddy? Get out of here!” All of this was said in an uninterrupted stream of vitriol.
“Ma’am, I’m Kevin from down the street. Your husband is seriously ill — they’ve taken him to the hospital. That was what the noise on the street was a few minutes ago.”
The old woman took a deep breath, and said, now weakly, “My Teddy is ill? What happened?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you sure someone didn’t beat him up or something? Those blacks moving into the neighborhood, and those Indians — can’t trust those brown-skinned savages!”
“No, Mrs … er … what shall I call you?” he asked, mentally shoring up his indignation against the onslaught of her horribleness.
“You may call me nothing. And I haven’t had my tea yet. Teddy should have thought of me first. And the maid isn’t in on the weekends. Who’ll take care of me?” And she moaned, rocking to and fro in distress.
In spite of his rising dislike of her, Kevin felt sorry for her. He said, “Tell me the maid’s number, and I’ll call her. Don’t worry. I’ll pay. Please don’t distress yourself.”
The old woman pointed to a little black notebook near the telephone. “Her name’s Evangeline Mendez — she’s one of those Filipinas the Agency sends me every time I need a new maid. The number is on the front page, not under “M” — it’s for emergencies. And mind you wipe the phone with one of those wipes from this box on the table. I can’t have your germs all over my telephone.”
Kevin called the number, suppressing his irritation. He was willing to overlook people’s intolerant attitudes, unlike his sharp-witted, impatient Susanna; he loved that about her, though — it balanced him out. Besides, Susanna was kind. If she had been here, she’d have done the same as me, only with a lot of back talk, he thought.
As he listened to the rings, he scanned the mantelpiece, on which were photographs of a young woman and young man, looking proud and happy. Upon second glance, he realized it was a picture of Fat Teddy and his wife. There was another picture of them with a baby in Fat Teddy’s arms. Beside that was a photograph of a radiant young woman.
An accented voice answered on the fifth ring. He asked for Evangeline. It was she. He told her what had happened, and promised to pay her twice her daily wage if she could come and spend the whole of Saturday with the old woman, and leave on Sunday morning. Even as he spoke, he laughed at himself for doing all this, and for what? Still, one cannot ignore one’s conscience.
The person on the other end hesitated for a long time, chatted with an unseen person on the other end, then said, yes, she could come in half an hour. He hung up.
“Evangeline will be here in half an hour. I’ll wait with you. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes, about time! Yes, a cup of tea. One spoon of sugar. Milk. And get me a cookie from the jar near the kitchen window,” answered the old woman.
Kevin went in, found the tea, sugar, milk, started the kettle, and called Susanna, letting her know what had happened, and where he was. She was completely silent for a minute, and Kevin found himself getting nervous. Then, he heard her laugh and laugh.
“You’re a complete idiot, you know that? And I love you for it! Do you want me to come over, and protect you from the old harridan? She sounds quite terrifying,” she said.
“No, I’ll manage, sweetie! Thanks for not getting mad at me for doing this. It’s a pain, but there it is. They’re our neighbors.” He told her he’d return once the maid got there, told her he loved her, and hung up.
“What’s taking you so long?” yelled an angry voice from the other room.
He didn’t answer, just put the mug of steaming, milky, sweet tea, the cookie and a napkin on a tray and carried it to the old woman, who glanced at it, didn’t thank him, and began sucking tea in great gulps from the mug, her eyes never leaving him.
Kevin gestured to the picture on the mantelpiece, and said, “That’s a lovely photograph of you and your husband. Where was it taken? And you have a daughter?”
“I’ll thank you to keep your questions to yourself, mister,” snapped the old woman, but he detected her eyes filling with tears.
Tactfully, he looked away, pretended to read texts on his cellphone, tried to block out the noise of the woman crunching on the cookie, and waited for Evangeline the maid, who finally arrived, duffel bag in hand, flustered and upset.
She also looked a little apprehensive, he thought.
“Do you need help?” he asked Evangeline at the door, after he’d said goodbye to the old woman, who had merely nodded, and muttered something that might have been Thanks!
“No, it’s just … she yell a lot, and accuse me of stealing things,” whispered Evangeline. “I plan give notice on Monday, and now … this!”
He told Evangeline his address, and said he’d bring her money over in the evening. He told her he was going to visit the old man at the hospital. She thanked him, and said, “You’re a good man — not many like you.”
Then, he left.
He went home, where Susanna was waiting. She put some coffee on, while he wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her over and over again. She tasted of honey and caramel, he thought. They danced around the kitchen for a few minutes, and he inhaled the fragrance of her curly hair, thinking how fortunate he was to have her in his life, and how glad he was that she was not an old shrew. And yet … that old woman had once been a vibrant, lovely young woman once, and her husband still loved her.
He told Susanna what he thought. She laughed, and said, “And what if I get a horrid disease, and become ugly and mean. Would you still love me, and cherish me?”
He raised an eyebrow, and said, “Is that even a question?”
Then, she got serious, and said, “You know, the old coot doesn’t seem like a cartoon character any more, does he? I feel bad, somehow, for him. And I wonder what happened to their daughter? She probably couldn’t stand them, and left.”
“It’s not for us to speculate, sweetheart, you know that,” Kevin said.
“Why ever not?” she tossed back, but they moved on to other matters after that.
He showered and called the hospital, but they told him that the old man was undergoing an Emergency Angioplasty, and would be able to receive visitors for six hours. He sighed, and hung up.
Later, he couldn’t concentrate on anything that afternoon and early evening. Susanna was out with one of her newspaper buddies, and wouldn’t be back until later that evening.
He watered his garden, and tried to read The New York Times, but gave it up. It bothered him that the old man was in the hospital and there was no one but himself to check on the old curmudgeon. It bothered him that he hadn’t known until now that Fat Teddy’s wife was in a wheelchair. It bothered him that she hadn’t told him her name. It bothered him that they had a daughter whom they didn’t acknowledge.
He checked his watch, called the hospital, asked for the old man who had come in for an angioplasty that morning, and was told that Mr. Marino was awake ,and ready to receive only family members.
“There’s no family! His wife is wheelchair-bound. I’m his neighbor. I’m the one who called the EMT guys. Can I visit, or not?” he asked, somewhat snappish at having to go through all this.
There was some chat off-phone on the other end, and a perky woman’s voice said, “Yes, of course, Mr. Lee, you may visit.”
And so it was that around 6:00 that evening, after paying the maid, and making sure that Mrs. Marino was comfortable (she was less grouchy now that she’d had her needs attended to), Kevin Lee found himself at the old man’s bed. Fat Teddy gave him a two-thumbs up, and a wide grin, and said in a somewhat weaker version of his booming voice, “Come sit down, sit down! Good of you to visit. That was a scare, hahn? It was good that these guys got workin’ on me right away. If it hadn’t been for you …” and his voice trailed off, and a little fear crept around his eyes. He resumed, “I cannot die, I cannot. My wife … did you see her? Did you talk to her? What did she say?”
Kevin told him what he’d done, and Fat Teddy nodded and looked pleased. “I’ll pay you back what you paid the maid. You know, one of the surgeons who worked on me was one of them Indians. I wasn’t too pleased about it at first, but they tell me he is one of the finest in the world. What can you do? Well, I sure am glad he did what he did for me.”
Kevin leaned over and asked the question that had been burning him up, “You know, I’m curious. I didn’t know you had a kid. I saw that lovely photograph of her. Where’s your daughter now?”
Fat Teddy’s face grew dark, and his eyes filled with tears. He looked agitated, and his mouth trembled. Instantly regretting his question, Kevin said, hastily, “It’s all right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Fat Teddy said nothing for a moment, then whispered, “Rose, my Rose, why did you leave us? Why?”
An unimaginable tragedy hung in the air between them.
Kevin looked around, desperate to change the topic. “Would you like some water? Can I get you something?”
“No, no, it’s all right,” said Fat Teddy. “She died. She ran off and married a black man, and then, they got themselves killed in a car wreck. Stupid shit was driving too fast. I was driving after them. I was going to kill him with my gun. Good thing he died before that.” He stopped, looking a little shocked at himself. “Anyway, I don’t want to remember that. It hurts my heart. My daughter is dead. She was my Rose, our Rose, so full of life, so beautiful, and she left us.” He paused, and his voice shook a little. “Look, I want to thank you … and I don’t even know your last name!”
“My name is Lee, Kevin Lee.”
“What kind of name is that? Lee?”
“It’s Chinese, Mr. Marino. My father was half-Chinese.”
There was a silence in the room.
Mr. Marino looked around vaguely and said, “World’s changing, huh? All this melting pot stuff? It’s not bad, is it? I mean, I like you, and you saved my life, and you’re Chinese, for cryin’ out loud. And that Indian surgeon, and that other colored doctor who was there too. Mind you, I’d swear my colored nurse here’ll kill me if I’m not looking, but still. She’s neat, she’s clean. She’s good at her job. You know what? I’m glad you live down the street.”
Kevin rolled his eyes mentally, sighed internally, and said, “I’m glad as well that you live down the street, Mr. Marino. Maybe we’ll have you over for dinner. I’ll have to warn you though, my wife’s half-black, half-Jewish. Can your heart stand that?”
Mr. Marino laughed loudly, and set a machine beeping. A black nurse came running into the room, and looked stern.
He stopped laughing. She shook her finger at him, and said to Kevin, “Don’t excite him. He’s weak after surgery. You be good now, Mr. Marino.” She adjusted his sheets, patted him on the arm, and left. Mr. Marino looked rather shaken by all this kindness.
Kevin smiled to himself a little, waved goodbye, and promised to come the next morning, and take him home.
As he shut the door, he thought he heard the old man whisper Rose, my Rose!
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Tags: #Family, #kindness, #Life, #Love, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, devotion, disability, duty, neighborliness, Prejudice, racism
Sep 28, 2015 Writing 101
So, I did not deal with the prompt relating to stats pages, and such. Those things are too off-putting, because my readership seems to go up and down, and I don’t want to wonder why. I decided that I would work on one of the alternative prompts, and chose this one:
Overnight, you discover you’ve gained 50,000 blog subscribers. What would you write for your next post?
If I gained 50,000 blog subscribers, I would be instantly suspicious. I would wonder what had happened, and whether the universe were playing a trick on me.
While I write almost every day, I am not what you would call “popular.” It’s apparently not part of my style. I wouldn’t mind being popular, but I know why I won’t be. I don’t have lots of beautiful photographs (I own a dumb phone, and thus, am not immediately able to transfer pictures I might take), nor do I write about my personal angst quite as much (although I do post those types of things from time to time). The topics I choose are NOT about hobbies, politics, books, gardening, religion, spirituality, yoga, knitting, baking, flying, travelling (I’m using the older double-the-consonant spelling of travelling here, and spell-check can go take a leap), or other interesting, fun-to-read, people-attracting topics.
So, what do I write? I write stories and poems, and occasionally share a personal story. My posts are not in a popular, breezy, funny, sentimental or revelatory style. I wish I did write in such styles, sometimes, so that I could see my stats page shoot up a little. On my first (now private) blog, I got something like 170 views on February 10th, 2013, the first day I started the old blog (which was amazing), and then, it petered out after that (which wasn’t surprising). On this blog, the most number of views I’ve had occurred on Sept. 18th, 2015. I got 97 views — it surprised me, because, by my humble standards, that’s a lot. I did gain something from the Insights page on the Stats site — something about the most popular day being Friday, and the most popular time being 5:00 p.m. Not too surprising!
I find that the number of views goes up when I get chatty. At least that’s what I think the reason might be. It seems to me that blogs are about being chatty and engaging. When I visit a lot of sites and read other people’s work (always challenging, seeing that one has to also keep abreast of one’s own work, take care of family, and so on), they reciprocate. Whether they stop by once and never return, or whether they take a fancy to what I write is another matter. However, the number of viewers does increase the chattier I get, and the more I “put myself out there.”
Here’s the nub of the problem: Putting myself out there is hard for me. I am, simultaneously, extroverted and introverted.
This, alas, has always been the case with me. I used to perform a lot as a singer-songwriter, and as a band-leader of my rock-band in school and college in India I was good at it. I loved being on stage, and was able to work the crowds easily. I did NOT suffer from stage-fright. I could make jokes and raise a laugh on stage. I could deliver my music with style and aplomb. I was in my element. When I married my husband and came over to this country, I performed at the street level, the subway level, at the coffeehouse stage level and the concert level — all this while working at a low-paying job at a music company. And yet … I decided that that life was not one I wanted to lead. I didn’t want to hustle, to push myself forward, to put out all that schmoozing energy which the act of promoting oneself requires.
I wanted to teach, and be of some use in the world in a setting where I knew I could work some magic. And I did. I was the teacher to whom students came to share their creative writing, or poetry, or art or ideas. I was the person who, many of my students told me, changed their lives, made them dream of a world where they could make a difference, and pursue their dreams. And I taught with energy, with humor, with vision and kindness. I loved doing that. Many of my students are still in touch with me via Facebook and email, and they have gone on to wonderful careers. I love them, bless them, and am proud of them.
Then, last year, I found I’d had enough. I loved teaching, but couldn’t bear all of the politics that surround teachers and teaching. I didn’t belong to any teacher-y cliques, and — believe me — teacher-cliques are worse than student-cliques. I found I didn’t belong — anywhere. I found, on top of that, that I didn’t want to.
My husband helped me when I said I couldn’t bear to be in public school teaching anymore. He said, “I support your decision to leave. We can make it work. I want my wife back.” So, I quit teaching this year, after seventeen years of learning what it means to be an Indian teaching English in an affluent public school system in America. I had given too much of myself away to my students, my school, my work. The past three years have blurred in my memory. My child needed me, my husband needed me, my dog needed me, and I needed me! And so, I tied up all my loose ends, gave my notice six months in advance, did all that I had to do, got praised and feted, as one does, and left in June of this year.
This world of busy-ness is too much for me. All this achievement-oriented stuff bores me to tears, but I am a creature of my times, too. I know and admire those who achieve things — and wish I could. See? Contradictions abound.
The world, in general, is too much for me these days — and yet I love this life so much. I love nature, animals, books, music, my lovely family and — above all, I love being able to sleep and dream again. I love my quiet life now (it was not quiet for the past seventeen years). I love walking in the woods with my husband, or talking with my daughter, and teaching her things, or learning things from her, or playing music with my family. I like the obscurity in which I find myself.
How is all this related to blogging?
I guess it comes back to whether I want popularity and fame, or whether I want those few people for whom my work, my life, my words make a difference.
So, if my readership suddenly goes up to 50,000, I will be deeply, deeply suspicious.
And I would come to the following conclusions:
1. Either, I have tapped into the subconscious mind of the blogosphere, an entity in itself.
2. Or, I have accidentally written about (the gods forbid!) a popular topic.
3. No, wait, another option: A gremlin has decided to play fast and loose with my site, and invited all its gremlin friends to the party.
4. A gigantic entity from outer space has found me to be a creature of peculiar and arresting interest, and has (amoeba-like) indulged in reproductive fission to get past WP’s vigilant staff, and viewed my stuff 50,000 times, while subscribing 50,000 times.
In which case, I’ll have to decide whether to retire into obscurity (the kind I enjoy now) or stay in the limelight and bask in it (something I wouldn’t mind doing, which I even crave from time to time), and write more about other popular topics, and use my influence to change some things in the world.
Or, I would have to create a gremlin of my own to distract the subscription gremlins. I might have to hoodwink the entity from outer space into believing that I would love to have it over for coffee, crumpets and conversation, in my noble, self-sacrificing, valiant attempt to prevent it from wreaking statistical havoc on other bloggers’ blogs. After that, I will fall into “innocuous desuetude,” as the brilliant Mr. Nicholas Slonimsky puts it, and dash off morbid or magical pieces on my blog page in spasmodic fits of madness.
So, what would my next topic be? How Not to Get Popular and Take the Bouquets with the Brickbats? Butterflies in springtime? Dogs Amongst the Pine-Needles? Education Among the Bloated Elite? Gremlins in the Kremlin? My Eternal Angst-rom Units? Why I Wish to Turn Into A Statue And Not Utter Another Word?
Who knows?
And meanwhile, I ended up writing about stats pages and viewership, while skirting the main topic. Sigh. And meanwhile, the contradictions continue.
I do know what I’ll always do, what I’ve done since I began blogging! You know what that is, don’t you?
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Tags: #Contradictions, 50000 blog subscribers YAY!, Dreaming in the blogosphere, Popularity be damned!, Reveling in obscurity
Sep 25, 2015 Writing 101
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
- Tell us about a time when a piece of music moved you.
- Do you have an all-time favorite song? Why is it significant?
- Compile a playlist of 10 tracks that represent you.
While I’m not sure whether Nietzsche wrote those actual words, and had to check (since I’m not a reader of Nietzsche), I did find out this from good old Wikipedia:
Nietzsche wrote a fragment titled “On Music and Words”.[106] In it he asserted the Schopenhauerian judgment that music is a primary expression of the essence of everything.
In any case, I agree with this statement.
How can I write about my breath, my cells, my skin? How can I write about why my eyes are the way they are, or my feet, or my thoughts? How can I write about why music moves me to the very roots of my being, and without it, I would be a desiccated planet?
My mother says she sang while I was in her womb, and told me that I could sing difficult Carnatic (South Indian classical) songs in tune along with her, at the age of two and a half (alas, I don’t sing Carnatic any more, for I went on to Hindustani classical music, as well as western rock, folk and jazz songs all along the way).
Inspired by my mother’s story I did the same for my daughter while I was pregnant (sang to her while she was in utero, that is). And it turned out that my daughter, too, could sing in tune by the time she was about two and a half years old. Now ten years old, she’s intensely musical, sings all the time, and plays guitar (as do my husband and I).
Music is the blood in which I swam, and breathed. All through my life, I’ve listened and played and sung, and tapped my hands and feet. I got myself a guitar when I was about ten or eleven, and taught myself to play in Chennai at a time when I knew NOBODY else around me who had a guitar, leave alone played it — of course, I was influenced by The Beatles (who wasn’t?). Filled to the brim with it, I was still always thirsty for music, or, perhaps greedy for it, a glutton, really.
While many songs and pieces have made me weep from a strange unnameable emotion (music produces its own emotion, one that will remain nameless, irreducible), certain Indian ragas, like Darbari Kannada or Vibhas have made me weep when I’ve heard them sung. Certain songs have also moved me deeply, but they’ve faded into the mist of memory. All I can remember from my most recent emotional reaction to a song is when I wept over “Julia” by John Lennon, which is about his mother, Julia Lennon. “My Favorite Plum” and “Small Blue Thing” by Suzanne Vega also did that for me — though I didn’t weep. I just felt very moved.
I won’t go into a long description of all the kinds of experiences I’ve had musically, but I will say I have performed the following on stage, and at various stages in my life (zeugma!):
Voice and guitar: My own songs, folk songs, rock songs, jazz standards. Here’s a song from my (not very prolific) YouTube link: Bird Over The Water
Hindustani (North Indian) classical music: Sitar and classical vocal music
Vocal Ensemble music: With “Goddess Gospel” (an all-women vocal group that lasted many years, no longer active); Mandala (for a brief while in their vocal ensemble; they are also no longer active)
At the Ig-Nobel 2015 (see link to understand what this prize is about) awards this year as a member of the operatic chorus in the hilarious mock-opera “Best Life” based on Aida by Verdi and The High Executioner by Gilbert and Sullivan.
I’ve performed on stage in Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi, India (this was quite a while back — no videos), the UK (back in 2004 and 2005), and the US (mostly in Cambridge and Boston, MA). I’ve performed in the subways in Cambridge and Boston, and on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Some Music for You Today – September 24th, 2015
Mauritanian singer Dimi Mint Abba:
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Zimbabwean master musicians of the Shona tradition –Dumisani Maraire and Ephat Mujuru
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Beautiful singer from Mali, Oumou Sangare:
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Music from Bali, Indonesia:
Legong (Tobatelou) – Sanour Village
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Music from the Sunda Straits, Indonesia (Sunda Javanese Gamelan music):
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(The one and only Miles Davis on trumpet playing his exquisite version of Bye Bye Blackbird):
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Here’s the incomparable Chet Baker playing the same tune on his trumpet (I believe, but I’m not sure, that this was recorded in 1964, and the lineup of musicians goes as follows: Chet Baker on the horn,Jacques Pelzer- sax, Franco Manzecchi- drums, Luigi Trussardi- bass and Rene Urtreger- piano):
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Yulduz Usmanova is a well-known Uzbeki singer. I thought you’d enjoy listening to her beautiful singing.
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Sabah Habas Mustapha (of The 3 Mustaphas 3) sings this Indonesian-music-inspired piece:
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Eddie Jefferson sings “Sister Sadie.” I love Mr. Jefferson’s warm, fuzzy vocals. There’s humor and great musicality in all his singing. He generally makes me smile. (Although, I must say this song isn’t funny).
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When jazz icon Billie Holiday sings, she always makes me want to cry:
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The above piece is a composition by Warren Senders, who put Baul songs to music. The lead singer in this live concert recording from 1993 song is me (yes, I used to be a part of a group of women singers known as “Goddess Gospel” — founded and led by Louise Cloutier, formerly of Cambridge, now in Chicago). Hope you enjoy Three Baul Songs!
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One of my favorite pieces of guitar playing: Bach Cello Suite #1 in G, played by Andres Segovia.
Bach: Cello Suite #1 In G, BWV 1007 – Prelude
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D.V. Paluskar (Hindustani Classical vocalist), whose voice is mesmerizing:
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The exquisite and ecstatic singing of Mallikarjun Mansur:
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And here’s Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar, and her soulful, lovely singing:
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Prabha Atre (Very soulful Hindustani vocalist):
Kalavati: Tana mana dhana tope varun
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Pete Seeger — America’s folk music Muse:
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“Julia” by The Beatles (John Lennon)
This, too, makes me want to cry.
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles (George Harrison)
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Song from the movie “Alaipayuthey” — music by that genius of current Indian film music A.R. Rahman:
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One of my absolute favorite songs from the same movie:
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“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is one of my favorite pieces by Charles Mingus. I used to sing a version of it (lovely lyrics!).
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The brilliant poet-folksinger-rockster Bob Dylan:
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And finally, my very favorite Suzanne Vega:
That’s all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed the music! I went WAY beyond ten tracks, but I enjoyed going back to some of my favorite music — and have been shaped by all of these, and more through the course of my life.
There’s plenty more where this came from, so if you like this, I’ll start a new weekly post of my favorite music from around the world!
Thanks for reading and listening!
Love,
~Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Suzanne Vega, #The Beatles, A.R.Rahman, Andres Segovia, Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, D.V. Paluskar, Eddie Jefferson, Indonesian music, jazz, Mallikarjun Mansur, Miles Davis, music from around the world, music from the African continent, music is life, North Indian Classical Music, Pete Seeger, Prabha Atre, Sabah Habas Mustapha, Without music life would be a mistake- Friedrich Nietzsche quote, Yulduz Usmanova
Sep 24, 2015 Daily Life, Writing 101
Sorry, I had no time to re-create a day today — so I cheated (sorry!) and am re-posting an old “day-in-the-life” post of mine) for this assignment
Meditations Upon Walking on Solid Water
(Reposted an earlier post from my other blog, which is now private)
©By Vijaya Sundaram
January 25, 2014
I had never walked on water in my entire life. Today, with quaking heart, I did.
It wasn’t too bad. It was lovely, in fact.
To think that there was a pond filled with water which teemed with possible life, which would, in springtime and summertime, have ducks and geese, and frogs and fish, which now supported my weight, and sang it’s safe, it’s safe to my internally trembling self!
(I was fine on the outside, although I wanted to get on it, go across and back as quickly as possible. For, despite all the assurances and reassurances by my husband, who said, “I grew up near a lake, don’t worry, this pond is frozen solid, look!” and jumped on it, all my cells shrieked, No! It isn’t. Don’t!)
My daughter, intrepid and impatient with me, said, “Come on, Mom! It’s great! See? And she walked on ahead of me, following my husband.
I knew that she was anxious for me to enjoy it like she did. So, I put on my brave face, and squared my timid shoulders, and did.
Something interesting happened then. I wasn’t afraid, anymore. I put my trust in my husband and my child, and walked on solid water. Ice is interesting. It has personality. It has stillness. It is mysterious, a presence that could be either kind or cruel. It was kind to us today. No betrayals lurked beneath its opacity.
Then, we went back to the main trails in the woods where we were walking. We walked in companionable silence punctured by occasional inconsequential chatter in the dark stillness of the night-time woods, lit by snow. We heard the creaking of an occasional tree, as we wound our way up to the very top of the hill in the woods.
There we stood on snow-covered rocks, and looked down on the intermittent shoals of cars, exotic fish of gold and red streaming towards us and shimmering away from us on the highways far below. The lights of the city gleamed jewelline in the winter night. A faraway airplane took off, glittering into the sky, from the distant airport.
Our daughter is a child of winter, and a child of these woods. The woods are hers, that hilltop and its tower belong to her alone (also to us, by extension), and that pond we walked on has been part of her consciousness since she was about twenty-two months. She gazed around and exclaimed over and over, “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it?” And she sighed and sat on a snow-covered rock, gazing into the night. My husband and I murmured in agreement, as we stood and gazed out, eyes saturated with the lights of the night.
Permanence is an illusion, I know, but I like to think that these words and that pond are part of the permanence of her memories. I want for us to build a universe of memories. These will sustain her (and us) through what is sure to come in the future, because the future is always jealous of the present.
And the present is our gift from the Lords of Time.
____________________________The End___________________________________
Tags: A Day in the life of ..., Family time, walking in the woods in the winter, Walking on ice
Sep 24, 2015 Writing 101
A Thousand Fragments of Self
(A very short story about brokenness and wholeness)
©September 24th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
She was one with the dark, all thousand fragments of her. She sat at the table, her glass of water, a cylinder of dim light in a shaking hand, catching the passing light of a moonbeam.
She gazed, unseeing, into the distance. Water flowed down her tongue, down her throat down her gullet, and into her roiling belly. She felt its coolness settle somewhere within, a pool of quietude in a vast, drying prairie. A memory of the evening swept over her suddenly, and the coolness was replaced by fire.
The glass of water and her shaking hand blurred before her eyes, while the darkness collected around her hair, her eyes, her shoulders, her knees, her ankles.
Suddenly, her solitude was too much to bear. She reached for the kitchen light, and the darkness retreated to the far corners of the next room.
In the harsh electric light the water glinted. She looked around at the pictures on the far wall, and at her yellow and white-painted kitchen cupboards, and at the simple kitchen island where she had placed a bunch of sunflowers, and she wondered how she could erase herself, how she could start over, how she could undo what had happened to her when she’d walked home alone that night, and how she had made it out of the attack alive, but scathed, beaten, broken within, collapsing on her apartment doorstep, shaking, dry-sobbing.
She was alone, all alone. There was no one she could turn to, not at midnight. The house was still, listening to her.
Somewhere below the pit of her roiling belly swirled a fire of pain, and the bile arose in her throat. All that was beautiful in the world had burned into a little ash-heap somewhere. This phoenix could not regrow its feathers.
She could not recall a single happy moment from her previous life in the horror of the here and now, but her glass of water, a cylinder of light in a shaking hand, glinting, distracted her, and she held it as a drowning person might, except that this was water, and she wanted to drown in it.
Gazing at her cylinder of light, she let her mind wander, a lost creature in a vast prairie filled with wolves.
And the glass of light glinting liquidly calmed her. She though briefly, in her grasshopper mind that leaped around to avoid dwelling on pain and horror, about how the shapes of things change with the containers they’re in.
She thought: I shall change mine.
With her shaking hand, her cylinder of glass-water still glinting, darkness still retreating at the edges of the pool of light, she reached for the switch. The darkness flooded back in, and she became one with it.
A glass of water spilled, and shattered into a thousand fragments.
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This short story is in response to the prompt for Writing 101 Day 13: Compose a Series of Vignettes
Tags: #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, Fragments of self
Sep 22, 2015 Original Short Story, Writing 101
Bidi, Bibi
©September 22nd, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Suresh sat on a little box under the makeshift shade of his fruit stand-shack. The sun burned high overhead, and the air was thick with yellow dust and smoke. Fumes from the diesel trucks and rickshaws plunged his senses into a nightmare of asthmatic cloudedness. From his greying blue cloth bag, he dug out the inhaler the doctor had prescribed, and took two puffs.
After replacing the inhaler in the bag, he reached under his shirt, and pulled out a small bidi, which was in a little pack he had wrapped in a grungy handkerchief. This would soothe him, he thought. Then, remembering how his wife, Meena, berated him when he smoked it (it stank to high heaven, and burned a hole in his earnings), he paused, then shrugged. A man had to have something to ease the mindless monotony of the day. He took out a stick of agarbatti from a wooden box, where he kept his money, and lit it in front of a small Ganesha he always had in his store for good luck. Immediately, the fragrance of sandalwood and amber filled the air, and made his spirits rise a little. Ah, that would make things better! Then, he lit his bidi, and took a deep, satisfying whiff.
Who cared if his asthma would overpower him again shortly? Who cared if the diesel fumes killed him? He had his bidi, and was at peace with the world for the nonce.
He forgot his mother, who had coughed all day and all night long, and then given up the struggle a month ago — he was too beaten by her struggle towards the end to grieve. He forgot his twelve-year old son who had been getting into trouble at school. He didn’t care if the rich housewives, from the fancy apartments nearby, haggled with him over the price of mangoes or apples, or custard apples or bananas. He didn’t care if any dreams he had once had, had disappeared in a puff of smoke. He could ignore the nagging pain in his gut. He could focus on the here and now of the world before him.
With interest, he watched the pretty teenaged girls go by in their churidar-kurtas, chattering like parrots, and as gaily bedecked in beautiful colors. He shook his head when he saw them holding hands surreptitiously with their boyfriends, but a part of him envied them their freedom. He had had no such luck. Married at twenty-one to a village girl, he had no idea what romance was — sex, yes, but romance? He saw it in movies, and wondered at it. Would he ever weep over a lost love? Would he care? He was numb within. The bidis helped. The agarbatti helped too.
He stuck the bidi in a pot of earth near him, and turned to adjust the beautifully arranged towers of fruit arrayed in pyramids behind him. He liked doing this. To him, this was a sort of meditation, an art.
Suddenly, he heard a footstep in front of him, and turned back. His heart did a double-take. In front of him stood a golden apparition. It took him a minute to recognize her — Meena, his wife. Her hair shone like a raven’s wing, and her large, limpid black eyes, always expressive, but usually only registering tiredness, irritation or worry, were shining. She was wearing her wedding sari, a gold-edged red sari, with shiny spangles of gold. She looked happy (when was the last time she’d looked happy? Oh yes, at the birth of their son.).
She didn’t even notice the bidi stuck in the pot of earth (thank Ganesha, he’d stuck it in there).
“What are you doing here?” Suresh asked stupidly. A strange feeling was flooding him. He had no idea what it was. It could have been love. He was happy to see her — something he didn’t often feel, because of her constant tiredness and lack of interest in him.
Meena opened her fist and showed him the paper she was holding.
Suresh took a look at it, and the fruit-stand shack revolved around him.
A real-estate developer was willing to pay them fifty lakhs for their little plot of ancestral land on the outskirts of town — the land of his fathers, his forefathers, not much to boast of, but something that was theirs. He stared unseeingly into the crowds of people passing by, not saying anything for a minute.
Meena looked anxiously at him. “Aren’t you happy? Why don’t you speak? We’ll be rich. You won’t have to be here all day, and smoke that nasty stuff. Our son can go to a better school than the municipal school. You won’t have to haggle with those fat housewives who think they’re better than you and I are.”
He looked at her then, saw her shining eyes, and the strange feeling swelled inside him. And yet … the land, his land!
“Let me think,” he said.
With exquisite instinct, she knew not to press him. Together, they sat and watched the crowds go by. No one bought any fruits from him that afternoon. The sun beat down ruthlessly upon his little shack-stand. The agarbatti died, and was replaced by another. They ate the roti, dal and sabji that she’d brought for him and for herself. He drank some coconut water, which he bought from a nearby vendor, and offered her half of it.
And through all this, he was silent. Then, he pulled out the bidi he had stuck in the pot of earth, lit it, and smoked. Meena said nothing, nothing at all. She just looked at him. He made up his mind. He had fallen in love.
“Okay,” he said.
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Glossary:
Bidi: A thin, Indian cigarette filled with tobacco, and wrapped in a leaf. There is much more nicotine and risk of oral cancer in bidis than in cigarettes.
Bibi / Biwi: Wife in Hindi
Agarbatti: Incense sticks.
Churidar-Kurta: Leggings and long tunic worn by girls in Northern India.
Roti: Whole-ground wheat-flour flatbread (resembles a tortilla)
Dal: In this case, cooked lentils, usually moong dal.
Sabji: Curried vegetables
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(Note: The photograph featured here is from The Deccan Chronicle article: http://archives.deccanchronicle.com/130716/news-current-affairs/gallery/ap-and-south-india-pictures-16th-july-2013)
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Tags: #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, acceptance, Bidis, Fruit vendors in India, love story, poverty
Sep 21, 2015 Writing 101
When I don’t write, I do the following:
*Think about life, love, existence, light, the universe, nature, certain aspects of physics or biology that I don’t understand, but which intrigue and interest me anyway.
*Dream about an alternate universe where there’s a future for humankind.
*Do my everyday boring household tasks which somehow soothe me — folding freshly-washed laundry; cooking; picking beans, tomatoes, eggplant and green peppers from our vegetable garden, washing them, and cooking them with my favorite Indian spices; sweep the floor every night; pick up all the books strewn liberally around the house — that sort of thing.
*Take my dog out on very long walks in the woods nearby — it’s a beautiful place, with all kinds of trees, outcrops of rocks, a natural pond (dry right now, but usually brimming after lots of rain, and nicely frozen over in winter after our many blizzards and snow-storms), deer, birds, and brimming with a deep silence (broken only by the hum of distant cars on the highway) in the middle of the day.
*Think (see above)
*Dream (see above)
* Chauffeur my (home-schooled) ten-year old daughter to her various activities: Home-school chorus; home-school math; drama club; swimming at the YMCA; Kathak dance classes; play-dates.
*Read, read, read: I love all kinds of books, and am usually in the middle of at least three books at a time — right now, I’m in the middle of:
1. All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in recent years);
2. The fifth book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (By The Shores of Silver Lake) — oddly enough, I just finished the next book in that series, The Long Winter — and I was deeply moved by the struggles they faced with a smile and a song (there’s so much to learn about how to face adversity from the early pioneers),
3. Nation by Terry Pratchett (for young adults, but I enjoy such books a lot!).
*Think some more (see above)
*Dream some more (see above)
*Play the guitar and sing with my family (we love singing madrigals from the 16th century, as well as old folk songs together)
*Teach (English, and guitar)
*Think (see above)
*Dream (see above)
*Watch the birds outside my window, as I type at the kitchen table — blue jays, cardinals, wood-peckers, sparrows, tufted titmice; white-breasted nut-hatches, chickadees … so beautiful they all are!
*Make lunch and dinner (husband makes breakfast and coffee)
*Think and dream in between.
~And I make my escape into strange worlds where the light slants in and dust motes do their golden dance in beams of sunlight.
~I imagine that the butterfly bush in the back yard hosts a butterfly that turns into a fey creature (see my story here)
~I agonize over world politics, the refugee crisis, and climate change.
~I think deep thoughts about life, soul, spirit and philosophy, then shrug my shoulders and slide back into reality, because there’s real work to be done.
~I laugh at stupid cat-dog-bird videos.
~I read The New York Times, and the Guardian online.
~I get on Facebook, and post music (and other things).
~And then, I cannot help myself — I write! Writing soothes me, sustains me, reminds me about how reality can be captured in words (transmuted, no doubt, but still real), and how I need to be creative, or I shall waste away into a mere shadow.
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#writing 101