Apr 2, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry
Elegy for My Father
©April 2nd, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
I try and try to remember
Everything, everything about
My father, who spent
His life unravelling, like
A gaily-coloured ball of yarn
Tumbling down a steep,
Unforgiving slope.
When my little brother,
Eleven years younger,
Would watch the sky with round eyes,
Point out planes with toddler fingers,
My father would name them.
Avro, he’d say, Jumbo Jet.
And my father would burst into song,
Always the same one,
He’d croon in his soft light
Baritone, musical and innocent:
Avara hoon (I am a vagabond),
And sing, Avro hoon (I’m an Avro),
And we’d laugh, like clockwork,
Predictable, precise,
Delight permeating us.
He loved flying, and planes,
(despite his dreams of becoming
a pilot thwarted by this and that)
And flew everywhere, fleeing
His debtors, leaving wife
Grieving, kids conceiving of life
Without a father for a long,
Long time.
Reality was a game to him,
And he played it recklessly,
Grimly, convinced he would win.
Yet, back at a time when
He was still around at home,
His children rejoiced,
Found his bulk reassuring, solid,
Hardly ephemeral, eternal –
A man with weight, jollity,
Benevolence, levity, jokes.
Picchu chitti aathilé
Chaapaatu pandhilé
Chappati chappitane,
He’d say, more and more rapidly
And we’d repeat them,
Tripping over his water-falling
Tongue-twister, and get
All knotted-up, laughing.
Punning in three languages,
He’d make our sides ache,
And we never stopped to wonder:
Did all dads do this?
It was no big deal to us –
That’s what a father did.
I wish I could remember.
I try and try, but my mind
Falters, and I cannot bring back
His word-play, his heaving belly
Rippling with mirth, his strange
Obsession with tidiness, his urge
For control, for so much
Had been taken from him:
His worth, his wealth, his daring,
His promises to himself, his
Poor lost left leg,
Lost to a crushing train.
I try and try, but I cannot
Remember most of his jokes – just one,
The one he made when we,
Weeping, surrounded his hospital bed
Nineteen years before his death,
When he, with amputated leg, said:
“Now, your mother can truly say
Naan ottha kaal la nikkaren,“
(Since standing on one leg
Was what stubborn people did –
In Tamil.)
I try and try to recall
His humour, but a shadow
Falls over it, the shadow of his
Chasms of pain, craters of loss –
He didn’t speak much of that;
I do. I have lost his voice,
The one that chuckled
And guffawed, rocking the room.
I have forgotten his puns.
This is a small loss, and a great one.
When he was cremated, a shape
That resembled him lay
On the mound at the cremation-grounds,
A shape of ash, a shape of dust.
And the priest who presided
Collected the main part of it,
Placed it in a brass pot, covered
It with something (a cloth?
I cannot remember), draped
Lovingly wound garlands
Of beautiful flowers around it,
Handed it solemnly to us.
My brother, sister and I
Carried it in a rickshaw
To a river outside the city,
And dropped the pot,
Ashes, flowers, my father
Into the waters, and we
Watched, as it floated away
Bobbing in the waves.
We didn’t say much.
Where did all his words go?
Did they fly up, like birds
Released from his frame,
When his breath escaped,
His eyes fixed on a spot
On the hospital walls
Beyond all of us, who watched
While he left us, his cancer
Eroding his insides, the pain
Matching the brightness
In his eyes, as we held his hands,
And the hospital staff filed in
Silently, with bent heads?
Did he pun one last time?
Did we not hear it?
For he couldn’t speak, then.
The words had flown,
And he couldn’t catch them.
His breath fluttered out.
He left us yet again –
This time, to a place
Beyond our imagining,
Probably transforming himself
Into an Avro, flying into the sun.
He imagined us all.
And we remain,
Scattered remnants,
Of his tattered life,
Eddying in his wake,
As we gather ourselves
Into an illusion of self-hood.
I shall try to remember all this
When my breath flutters,
And my words vanish in
A puff of air, and my eyes
Fix on a spot somewhere beyond
Those gathered around.
I shall follow my words
And escape the shell
Encasing this world.
And who knows? I just
Might meet my father’s
Puns spiralling down.
_____________________________________________________________
This is my poem for Day 3 of NaPoWriMo. The prompt was to write an elegy (I chose to write an unrhymed one), and to “center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned.”
Tags: #Elegy, #Father, #NaPoWriMo2017, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram
Jan 25, 2014 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Meditations Upon Walking on Solid Water
©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: #Daughter, #Father, #Memories, family outing, illusion, mother, permanence, Time as thief, walking on a frozen pond, winter walk in snow-covered woods, woods at night
May 12, 2013 Kitchen Table Anecdotes, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes
Morning Silliness (A Kitchen Table Anecdote)
©By Vijaya Sundaram
May 12th, 2013
(Cross-posted on my FB page, because I really didn’t have time for a special blog-post this morning, nor any yesterday, it being a morning-to-midnight full day out of the house yesterday):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few minutes ago, at the kitchen table, a scene that was strangely satisfying to me (as you can see, my life is seriously lacking in entertainment!):
W (my husband, after I teased him about something): You never let me have ANY fun. You mock me in my infirmity.
(S, our daughter, is watching seriously, not sure whether he and I are being serious or not)
Moi: Never. I never want you to have ANY fun. And besides, (randomly) you cannot say “miaow” like a cat.
W (in a horribly deep, stentorian voice, because he REALLY cannot mew): MERWWOWW!
Moi (Collapsing with laughter): Choke! Gurgle! Snork!
S (getting it and joining in the horrible hilarity at poor husband — I know, I know, we’re terrible!): You sound like a begruddled cat, Dad!
Warren and I, not in unison: Wow! That’s great! Disgruntled and befuddled.
Moi: Get me to the InterTubes!
W: Our child is a neologist!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Daughter, #Father, Family silliness, kitchen table anecdotes, mother, neologisms