The same sun

 

A corner cabinet where a chipped vase resides

and the afternoon sunlight hits the crystal such

that it explodes into a small rainbow of light

and flowers bloom on the wall, the plain paint is touched

with colour, drab erased – metaphors as disguised

concrete. Often the broken edges are the ones

that make the more intricate, interesting blossoms.

 

Yet you often look away, wandering outside

in an instant – your attention span isn’t much –

you search for broader, deeper, more meaningful, bright,

a different sort – combined sunlight and dark mud

growing steadily in a pavement crack despite

the trudge of endless feet, casual cruel, tiresome.

As if the one inside isn’t made by the sun.

~~~

As November closes, the stocktaking does too. It's been a challenging year but a good  birthmonth. Strange but true.

November has been kind, lots of catch ups - a close friend from our Bahrain days, now settled in Canada, flew in and made time to come home. So did another dear one from Cairo, now in Dhaka - she came met us with her family. Much fun and laughter and reminiscing ensued. 

The Exposition of the Gita at Kurukshetra. Lord Krishna explains the principles
of the Gita to Arjun before the battle, to motivate him to take up arms in a 
righteous war against his own kinsmen. Ivory. Rajasthan. 18th century CE. 

Since I last posted, I've managed to finally go visit our local museum - the Indian Museum, something which I'd been planning since I came back in 2023. It has an absolutely jaw-dropping collection of prehistoric, ancient and medieval artifacts. A coin of Alex the Great, an Egyptian mummy 4000 years old, an illuminated Persian folio from Shirin Farhad dating from the 15th century, are among the many things I oohed and aahed over. There are fossils dated to some 3200 million years back, a tree trunk 250 million years old, but history moves me more than natural history, so... I saw a lot of Buddhist and Vedic/early Hindu stuff which dovetailed neatly with what I saw in Nepal. 

Makara, a mythological aquatic beast - a combination of boar, elephant,
crocodile and/or serpent. 11th century, basalt. Makaras are often
depicted as guardians of temple gates. Also carved into
waterspouts. Saw many of these in Nepal too. 

The building itself has a history of its own - it was completed in 1875. Very impressive, humongous colonial style architecture.   The Museum was set up much earlier by the Asiatic Society in 1814, the oldest and still the largest multipurpose museum in Asia in terms of the number of collections. It doesn't get millions of footfalls or make any waves anywhere but is totally worth visiting if you happen to be in the vicinity. 

However, the flipside of being the oldest is that the displays are stuck in that age too, labels with the object, material, period and location, that's it. No elaboration on context, no story telling, no interactive audio-visual exhibits, minimal viewer engagement. I had visited last with kiddo when he was quite tiny - quite a few years back, things haven't changed much since then, that aspect's a bit saddening. Indians have always been, and remain, super casual about their own heritage, I can't fathom why...

Anyhoo I had a great time nosing around, especially in the textile gallery, which for some baffling reason is tucked away out of sight in an obscure corner behind the aquatic animals gallery. Yes I know, makes zero sense but 'we are like this only' and 'it happens only in India.'  Seek and ye shall find. The whole place is a life lesson in persistence and problem solving.

Once one manages to track it down though, it has 18th and 19th century handmade real gold zari-work Benarasi brocades and Bengal jamdanis and Balucharis and Kashmiri pashminas with work so intricate that it defies belief. And this gallery opens into another somewhat larger one where 'decorative art' objects are housed, some breathtaking miniature sculpting skills showcased there in wood, ivory and stone there as well. The paintings gallery is equally impressive. All in all a very satisfactory visit. 

The Wish-fulfilling Tree. Red sandstone sculpture from 2nd-3rd
century BCE. At the entrance of the Museum. 

That tree has done a superlative job for me this month. Hoping it's done the same for you too.

Blended

Kathmandu, Nov 2025.

You snap suddenly awake, just before dawn

and spot the sunrise, in a sky tinged pink

as dark and light shade into each other,

cross hatched and blended like a pen and ink

image, vaguely familiar, drawn upon,

drawn behind what passes for another

day - happiness and grief stop being distinct. 

Did you guess it will come to be a series

of golds and coppers and lilacs blending,

fading in, fading out at the horizons?

Day containing night in a never ending

loop. The shapes of flowers, leaves, entire trees

coalescing into a sharp remembrance.

The screen, the house, emptied yet upright, standing. 

From Nagarkot.

I've been travelling - first to Mumbai to visit the senior-most family members remaining and then to Kathmandu to visit the Himalayas. November is an introspection month, as the year draws to a close, I am prone to stocktaking - a habit leftover from my working days Every year comes with its own mix of challenges and triumphs, it's got increasingly harder to classify each one into neat compartments of great and not so great. The older I get, the more the contentment bleeds into grief and vice versa - the not so great is surrounded and subsumed by the great. 

We all come to an understanding of these blurred boundaries  in our own individual ways - the Himalayas seem to be my definitive route. They've taught me over the years that the sums are difficult to tally, to not even try. That I am myself just a mish mash of discrete memories stacking up year after year, but they cannot be toted up to give a firm quantity, positive or negative, this much or that. Some equations are best left unresolved.

Bhaktapur

In Nepal, I saw exquisite wooden carvings on buildings ancient and contemporary - windows and door shutters, struts and columns. And I immediately thought of my father, who was an architect and insanely fond of teakwood and sculptural art of all kinds. I saw a stone idol of a deity and my mother came to mind, her voice chanting her japa mantra. I saw a wildflower blooming on a slope and remembered a lost friend.  None of it felt sorrowful or heavy, on the contrary it made, no makes, me strangely happy that all those who've gone before me remain so much a part of myself that they pop up at random moments at places to which they've had absolutely no connection whatsoever. I think I've come to like this blurring of all lines between the sorrowful and contentment and thankfulness, this slow seepage and blending of happiness into grief. Or is it the other way round? Who knows? Ennyways.

I hope your month is going well and some top-class blending is happening at your end too. 

Not forgotten

I often think of her, though we'd never met,

I know her only through our mails and blogs.

Not someone you could easily forget  - 

some strange sort of magic in the words she left

like velvet petals delivered to your inbox. 

She could weave you colour and calm, joy and peace

from the wonder in the mundane everyday,

in vivid autumn skies, in spring blooming trees,

lacy ice crystals frosting compound leaves.

Proud and glad she called me friend. What can I say?

Each of us is defined by those we love

and each of us is shaped by the ones we grieve.

She's gone, but her words are here and prized above

pearls and rubies, and maybe they'll be enough

to still spin calm. To cherish and relive.

I for one am firmly resolved to hold on

to the residues, the stardust of her words.

She'll never be forgotten though she's gone.

She lived deep and wide and truly extra strong.

I'll keep seeing her in vivid skies, blooms and birds. 

The night before Diwali, which was observed  last week, flames are lit in
honour of departed souls. Sue loved flowers. And light festivals. 

What can I tell you about Sue Goldberg? 

I’ve known Sue for a long time, over a decade certainly, though I’ve never met her face to face. We found each other through our blogs, it was so long ago that I forget exactly how and when and who found whom - I think it was through WEP, Sue read each and every entry there whether  or not she participated in the writing. We then proceeded from there to share poetry, postcards, a love of nature and skyscapes and above all, a sense of connection that transcended physical and cultural distances - she was from Australia and I was an Indian expat living in the Middle East at the time. We briefly shared a hemisphere too when I moved to Fiji and she offered to send me books as I discovered the lack of good bookshops. She herself was a voracious reader of both blogs and books and horrified at the thought of anyone being stranded without adequate reading material. She was invariably kind and she gave of herself without stopping to check the returns.

She blogged over at Elephant's Child - the title came from being insatiably curious as she said herself. She once told me she was a huge fan of Kipling's writing and I always thought she personified his poem If. 'If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue/Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch'...She had the common touch, an indefinable knack for connection and empathy that she used so well in her volunteer work with suicide prevention - a cause she was passionate about, which she shared on her blog as well. Read about her work at Lifeline here in this post  detailing her participation in the Out of the Shadows and into the Light suicide prevention awareness walk just a couple of weeks before she passed. Sue walked for the cause while battling her own terminal disease, because 'this may be my last year' she wrote - she must've known. 

She had a powerful writing voice, a searing honesty that was awe inspiring - I remember she wrote for one of the WEP prompts ('Unravelled' I think it was) where she talked about her relationship with her mother with a lack of self pity, a level of unflinching courage and frankness that totally floored me. She revealed her diagnosis this past July with that same unwavering strength, without a trace of bitterness.  She was a super special lady. A rare gem. 

She enriched my life and my blogging with her thoughtful, grounded wisdom, her courage, humour and quiet grace in the face of her health issues, her extraordinary ability to find beauty and calm in everyday life. Her Sunday Selections were a bright spot in my weekend reading, her amazing photos of birdlife, garden blooms, public artworks, sunrises, kangaroos, light and balloon festivals dialled down the noise and bother of my own life and invariably lifted my mood. She injected a dose of positivity into everything.

With her gone, my world is a whole lot dimmer, my weekends are not the same, my inbox decidedly less sparkly. No one is going to come across 'The Best Poem Ever' and think 'right, Nila will love this,' and plop it into my inbox on a random morning and transform it from drab to quietly dazzling...With her gone, entire blogland I suspect will be less sparkly. 

Today marks a month since her passing. I’m so very grateful that I was part of her virtual circle. Grateful for her friendship, support  and many kindnesses through the years. 

I will always cherish your memory, Sue. You will be deeply, deeply missed. You often ended your mails with 'buckets of love' - I'm carrying them with me now and wish you endless beauty and colour and peace. Rest easy, my dear friend. 

View her funeral service here. This will be available for the next 6+ months. 

A Strange Celebration

 

Image from Freepik

How quiet the house feels, how tidy the room!

Only your bedroom slippers still lie askew

as if they were abandoned, switched out mid run

exchanged for strong and closed from flimsy open –

airport security scans every shoe.

 

Makes sense to keep the footwear light, the sole

limber, the ties simple. I’ve told you this –

chances are you’ll have to snatch at things you want

without breaking stride, instantly pull on

your boots, be travel ready without notice.

 

Have I ever told you? - that motherhood

is an entirely strange celebration

from first baby steps to that last slip-on

each step’s a stepping away, each milestone

an emptier room, slippers flung off mid run. 

Too much has been happening, all good albeit super strange. The offspring left home for the second time yesterday so this is empty nesting 2.0...hmmm...does practice make this perfect? I'm thinking not.  

For those who may be interested, he's reached his destination safely. Which is closer than NC but still a couple of oceans and a couple of dozen borders away and well, the time zone management is marginally less challenging but I'm older and less nimble, so it all cancels out. 

It's been a monthful of celebrations - family reunions, the Durga Puja and then this sudden relocation magicked itself in exactly a week. Stress and exhilaration combined in a mindboggling mix. Strange celebrations indeed. Uber thankful for all of them. 

Hope you've got ample cause to celebrate too this autumn. 

Home and Garden

 

'Aparajita' or unvanquished. Blue pea.

 

I.

You plant something and you think – this is mine,

this bougainvillea, this blue pea vine,

this periwinkle and dwarf screw pine –

in time I’ll be calling them home.

 

Home’s a garden, a chair, a balcony,

a particular drape of a fig tree,

the end of the road and tranquility.

But bear in mind nothing’s your own.

 

The annuals bloom as per their schedules,

and the blue pea doesn’t follow your rules,

it puts out shaggy tendrils, minuscule

protests against the frame it’s grown.

 

You know the perennials – the neem and lime,

if they take root, they’ll be here a long time

and they’ll outlast you, even the blue pea vine

will grow back in springs when you’re gone.

 

Home is where my plants are – that’s what you think.

But know in the end, the red, blue and pink

will fade and regrow and you’ll leave with nothing –

there’s no garden you can call home.

This is the first part of a three part poem, 5X3, 15 stanzas in total, each with a 5,5,5,4 beat and an aaab slant rhyme scheme, with b being repeated throughout in monorhyme. I don't know why I am telling you this, because it shouldn't matter a jot to the reader anyway, however important it might feel to the writer. It's taken me two weeks to complete. Its symmetry feels like an accomplishment, it's pleasing. I'm hyperaware that it might feel boring to someone else. What do you think?

I'm still afflicted by the same old same old bee in my ancient bonnet - the prompt for this one floated up on my feed somewhere, it was one of those framed-text wall art and it read - 'Home Is Where My Plants Are' in a squiggly decorative font,  suspended over rather a lush container garden. 

Tbh, that statement in my case should read home is where my books are. Ennyhoo. My own container garden is anything but lush at the mo, incessant rains and the painters' safety tarps hung for months on end have taken their toll, but I'm happy to report the plants are now recovering. On reflection, I find that I've unconsciously put in the plants that I've seen around me growing up - hibiscus, the blue pea, periwinkle. Recreating in miniature on my balcony what was once planted in and around our home in Maiduguri many yonks ago. On further reflection, hibiscus  has been a part of my balcony/garden/home in every single country I've lived in as an adult as well. Neems and Flamboyants have been part of my microenvironment too in some unobtrusive way. Some flowers/trees just define home even when one thinks it is better defined by books or something else. 

The second and third part of the poem get into the ultimate garden, how unpossessable it is and how expulsion/exile is its defining feature. And then humans spend all their days longing for it and trying to get back in.  I guess for most of us with ordinary childhoods, that is our eden which we try to recreate and of course we fail - the past is past, there is no recreating it, there is no selective reliving it in any format whatsoever. There is only the present and the planting. And if successful, someone will enjoy the show down the line after one is gone. 

Hope you and your plantings are defining beauty, tranquility and whatever else you want them to. Have a brilliant week. 

Colours

 

The colour of distance was a kaleidoscope –

glass shards, shiny dreams mixed in with river gravel,

wildflowers flattened by raindrops, dusted with hope,

a lone evening star pierced by a mountaintop,

the primordial rhythms of footsteps, sands and travel.

 

Everything isn’t a journey, there’s standing still

to observe the intent rain trickle down your nape.

Everything isn’t colour. Endless climb uphill.

It’s picking up a seashell too, and watch it fill

with rain and ocean, reflect you and the landscape.

 

The colour of home, in contrast, was more specific

tending to terracotta – burnt clay pots and pans,

a mud-wide riverside, a wall of exposed brick,

my father’s wedding ring, my mother’s old ceramic

mug of clear black Darjeeling steaming in her hands.

Everything isn’t home and home’s not everything.

There’s being alone, a stranger, under vaster skies,

the thrill of unknown earth, unknown paths beckoning,

the bone deep peace of trees, the flash of a birdwing,

feet firmly on strange tracks with nothing recognised.

I came across this book title and a quote from it - 'you can't go home again' by Thomas Wolfe, a famous author from North Carolina. The quote's been buzzing around my head...it has permeated everything I've written subsequently, home and away, the various shades of homecoming and unhomecoming. Someday I would like to get my hands on this book. 

Amazon offered me a free audio version - but you know me, my neural pathways are paved in concrete and it's too late to change their preferences - audio isn't remotely as satisfying as a regular printed book with that crisp papery feel between thumb and fingers. It might work for a short story, but don't see how I am to manage with audio for a 700+ page novel. Hubby keeps extolling the various virtues of audiobooks - no shelfspace requirement apart from being practically free, no stress on eyes etc etc, but the heart wants what it wants. No arguments possible with that.

Which do you prefer  - audio or printed? Hope your week is filled with colours and books in your preferred avatars. Have a blissful one. 

Palace of Dreams

 

Didn’t you always crave a lemon tree,

a mango or two, the smell of summer?

A clematis trailing the exposed bricks?

Didn’t you always dream what this would be?

Less concrete and curtains and more runner

beans, citrus suns, hiraeth edging homesick.

The tides of jasmine covering for the sea.

Halfway to a sonnet, half a bit firmer

and freeing itself of every metric 

to lace into an amorphous canopy.

An empty sparrow’s nest in one corner.

A bare bulb somewhere, nothing idyllic.

Rain filling up the sky and rusting grills.

The paving dusted with hibiscus pistils.

July has run into August and I'm pedalling furiously to catch up somehow but always falling behind, always out of breath and vaguely puzzled as to why this is happening. The idea is to post the first and last Sundays/Mondays but I think the first one has slipped by without my realising it. Oh well, what's done is done, or rather what's left undone cannot be done retrospective, only done late. Anyway, better late than never.

August is always a busy month - lots of family and personal milestones, apart from the big national holiday coming up on the 15th. So offline life will muscle in and shove aside the online one - guaranteed. A few years ago this would have upset me, I'd have scheduled stuff and not missed a single Sunday...but one evolves - I no longer obsess about things I can't help, I don't know for sure if that's a good thing but it doesn't feel like a bad one. 'Do what you can with as much as you have and let the rest go' - I'm still internalising things I should have done years ago. Better late than never...

Wishing you a smooth and tranquil week ahead.

 

Common Ground

 

I do not know your music tastes,

I do not know your friends.

Both you and I are short of space,

in between continents.

And you and I are being ground down

by the acts of governments.

We don't share any talking points

but likely the same ends. 

I know you, brother, even though

your language is not mine,

your home location is on a

different meridian line.

And nowhere do our orbits touch,

nowhere our lives combine,

yet they're exactly parallel,

yet they somehow align.

I know that resolve in your eyes,

that tremor in your hands

as the ground beneath us buckles

throughout our separate lands.

I know that grimness on your lips

as you rise to take a stand -

I may not know your music tastes

but the rest I understand. 

This one is for those who carry on, who don't get discouraged, who fight for a braver, better, more equal, more just and a peaceful world.

I hope the coming week will be better than the past one for all of us. Have a good one. 

Bookmarks

 

You used to remember the exact page,

now you find yourself reaching for bookmarks

and put it down to incipient age –

the wrists a bit stiff, the spines a bit dark,

the sense somehow vague, the words somewhat blurred,

and following the plot requiring more work,

the pristine white of leaves somewhat more weathered.

 

The eyes and the wrists instinctively know

where and when to rest, where and how to stop,

what to hold steadfast and what to let go,

which ones to explore and which to just drop.

The flesh isn’t weak – it can push its limits

but it’s just plain wise, it knows to give up,

to withdraw, shut down and blindly submit.

It isn't really about bookmarks now, is it? 

It's to do with not faffing around. It's about consciously choosing the growth path of the patience quotient. Becoming patient with stuff that matters but ruthlessly uncompromising with how the minutes, even the seconds are used. Zero waste. Tomorrow is not a given, it never was, only you were having too much fun to notice. And ignorance may be bliss but it is still ignorance and it certainly ends up being wasteful. Time's limited, space is too, you are more than halfway, oh, much more than that, to using up your quotas.  

Those few seconds you've just spent in locating the exact para where you left off? Nope, they are not coming back. Therefore, no harm in being lean and mean with how the balance is spent. A little more mindfulness in cutting to the chase and cramming in as much ___ (love, food, fun, laughter, hiking, skydiving, reading, blogging, partying, catching up with friends, etc. - insert as appropriate) as possible while you're at it. If bookmarks can help with that...bring them on!

Have a lovely week ahead. 

Low profile and no frills

 

I’ve had my share of heartbreak, so I know

that extremes of emotions don’t endure, 

the pinnacles of happiness and sorrow

we reach today are left behind tomorrow

and time’s a poor healer, nature’s more sure.

 

The heart has an innate tendency to veer

back to the middle paths – plain contentment.

Not as bejewelled as joy, not as austere

as grief, just a low-profile, no-frills cheer,

easy to wear and not as quickly spent.

Well, it's hard to hang onto that low profile cheerfulness right now, mostly because I'm stressed about my friends in Bahrain, the Fifth Fleet is located there and might be a target. Palestine, Ukraine, Pahalgam and now Iran. The whole world's a massive battlefront. Not to mention flights plummeting and places of worship exploding with terrorists and sundry other disasters. 

These too will pass, everything does, but there's little comfort in that if what they will pass onto is a trainwreck. 

No time like the present. To practice the deep breathing and count to ten techniques. Look at flowers blooming, walk on hill paths, listen to the water somewhere. And of course, write/read some poetry.  Whatever calms things down inside the head and heart and ensures they carry on in spite of the chaos all around. 

Wishing you a calm, stress free week ahead. 

Stranger Earth

 

I don’t know this city without your footprints

marking out the roads, buildings, the streetlights

glinting on your glasses, your voice mapping

the terrain of neighbourhoods, days and nights.

I don’t know this place, it’s strangely different –

the waters an acrid shade of grey and white,

the neon signs of advertisements pulsing

like a news ticker from a disaster site.

Everything is where it was, yet it isn’t

as if the ground has shifted, ever so slight,

as if the earth’s somehow lost its mooring,

as if the sky’s fallen from a great height.

Grief is a half done crossword by your chair,

an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs.