The Spring I cannot see

(first witch hazel bloom in our yard - photo Preeti Gopalan)

 

The Spring I cannot see 

(150 words)

The problem with an adoring little brother?

He also adores you on damp, grey, suffocating days

where friends are glitchy squares on palm sizes screens

and friendships fade away with a button click,

when you can’t tolerate talking, let alone bubble games.

I’m sick of you! 

I yell and run outside,

unable to stand his silly puppy joy.

I dare the foggy yard to disagree.

The witch hazel waves something at me.

Her first orange bloom.

It’s still Jan, dumb tree. What are you happy about?

But staring at that orange in the grey,

I  admit, 

she knows of a spring I cannot yet see, 

can't yet believe.

I wish I had her wisdom.

I stare awhile,

then turn to the window, to the hurt eyes watching.

I’ll play soccer if you come out.

A smile. Orange t-shirt races out, ball in hand

His puppy heart more forgiving than I deserve.

As I pretend to miss,

I’m glad for the chuckling tangerine streak across my grey.

A Song of Light and Dark

 

My prize winning entry #FallWritingFrenzy 2020 

My silk pavadai, new this Diwali rustles as I rush to find mom. Jingling bangles add their song to festive Nadaswaram tunes. There she is, in gold jhumkas and an exquisite rust-colored Kanchipuram. So beautiful today. She has been a happy whirl of busyness this week. The rich smell of ghee thick in the air as she whips up delicious murrukkus and Mysore-paks. She’s not the mom who struggles out of bed at 9am and ends her day still in PJs.

Her spirits follow the seasons, sunny in summer, dropping with the fall leaves, leaving a homesick anxiety as winter shrouds Seattle. All thoughts then are of another home. When I ask if I need a jacket for school, she crimps her eyes , converting Fahrenheit to Celsius. At my smile, she sighs, “You don’t understand feeling divided, with your life of blessed simplicity. My memories of warmth are in Celsius. My past has no present, my present has no past.”

But today, an easy smile plays on her lips, at memories I am not a part of. I don’t mind. The diyas she lights chase away her gloom. Today she is whole. Diwali is her festival of inner light.

 

The Trailing Edge

Things are changing in India, and rapidly. It’s like getting on a highway with ever increasing speeds and stakes where you have to go as fast as the car in front. What will happen to the slower traffic that cannot keep pace?

In the local trains, when I am back home, I like to do business with the women that sell knick knacks. That’s my measly lame way of connecting with my past while travelling in the trains while entertaining myself. I tell myself I am injecting cash into the lower reaches of the Indian economy, so I am a pretty busy shopper if I have a seat in the train.
Last visit, I was in a Borivli slow local on my way home from Bombay Central after a very long arduous tryst with the visa office, another place, the boom has done nothing to improve. Perhaps the opposite. As usual, after I found a seat I smiled invitingly at a young woman selling hair clips. She was very nice looking, with very pretty light eyes, maybe recently married, because she had a lot of jewelry on. She returned my coquettish smile with a very pleasant cheery grin, a lot of very white teeth in her dark face emphasizing it. I looked admiringly at her jewelry that seemed in sharp contrast with her circumstance as she lowered her boxes for me to peek into.

Her father perhaps had saved a long time to get his daughter married well. Perhaps a village probably in the north, guessing by her looks. She and her husband had probably come to Bombay looking for opportunity. Of course, there could have been a myriad of parallel realities and explanations. But her cheerfulness made the cynic in me think she was either new here or she was a very special uplifting cheery soul in sharp contrast to most other faces in that compartment so late in the day. The same thing my middle class father did for his children over his life time, this girls father probably did for her. Probably it was as big a hunt for an alliance and he had married her off to the most eligible boy hoping for a better life for her, which was selling hair clips for 5 rupees in the train. If she sold 20 of these, she would make as much as I had paid for a cold coffee and sandwich outside the station. Plus she had to pay the price of the goods which probably was a good chunk! She pointed to a row of clips in the corner and informed me, “yeh acche quality ka hai, bahut tikega”(This is of good quality, will last a long time). I looked in my purse to check I wasn’t wasting her time and sheepishly told her I didn’t have change for 500 rs. She frowned for a minute touching her money bag but didn’t open it since she knew she didn’t have the amount. Then smiled again, handed me her other 2 boxes seeming to trust me completely and strolled to the other end of the compartment to ask another customer sifting through her ware whether she had change. She came back in a minute with the change and handing it to me with a triumphant version of her now trademark grin, said in Hindi, “ Ab jitna Jee Chaahe le lena” (Now buy as much as your heart desires) and so sanctioned my happiness! She looked completely honest, and happy. Yet how much time she had to spend making an amount that was mere change to most of us in that compartment.

She and me would step out of the compartment and be consumers in the same city with our vastly different means. With the current boom, and skyrocketing prices and salaries to match, how would this girl cope? I worried and frowned about this but this didn’t seem to bother her… at least, not yet! It seems like there is a fabric in Indian society that has survived till today at least in the towns and villages. Our way of life. A father earns for his family, the wife magically makes do within the small means, they save up for their duties as parents to get their daughters married and then the daughter starts the same cycle all over again with her husband for her children. The rich and the poor do the same duties with their vastly different means and the two worlds co exist in parallel with minimal intersection.

But a city of traders and business first like Bombay has the tendency to expose the contrast starkly. Wouldn’t the inequities here grate at her? If I saw her again, in 5 years, would her face be lined with care or would the sunny disposition survive? How would she feed the kids she was doubtless going to have? Would they join the bands of beggar kids in the trains or would she have found some way to better her lot?

I picked 3 clips and handed her a 20 wondering if that was too few I had taken ready to tell her to keep the change. But she handed me a 5re note back. There was no disappointment at the size of the transaction, the same brilliant smile playing on her face in thanks to her customer. She was doing business, not begging. I hoped as I watched her that I was the pessimist and she knew or understood something I didn’t about handling this city and world. The current boom is pushing people against the wall. Do we have enough in our fabric to prevent a corruption of our souls? Or is that asking the trailing edge to be superhuman.

Resident Non Indians or modern Indians

Read a column about RNIs : Resident non Indians. That’s a term in the article coined for the youth of today that drive about blasting Bollywood Rap, not caring much about NRIs like they used to about anything ‘phoren’ and stirring their ire by scant interest in the sound tracks of the NRI’s life, aka Rafi and Lata and the songs of the 70’s. As I read this, I wonder: if blame has to be ascribed here at all, where should it go? To the new youth that’s “chasing” the west back home or the NRI that’s trying to cling on to an image of India he is familiar with, the one he left with and is unsettled by the rapidly changing scenery every time he visits? Afraid of becoming a stranger to the land of his origin. Someone who cannot fit in perfectly anywhere?
It is true that the youth are increasingly westernized for better or worse. But they are just a product of their age. And the energy that’s running through Bombay and India, whatever causes it cannot be all bad. The energy to me is intriguing, heady and intoxicating. I go from the bland ordered life in greenback country to Bombay to recharge, to feel life is refreshingly chaotic and full of possibilities again. I am trying to carve out a third category for myself. The NRI who is home with the INRs or RNIs and NRIs. I love the new rap coming out of BollyWood. I could not stand the melodrama upto almost the late 90’s. I am a willing consumer of BollyWood today.

We probably stand to lose a few things: the most harked about one is the loosening morals around relationships and the divorce rate. I read a stat that said 2 out of 5 marriages in the last few years has landed back in the divorce courts. 40%! But then, before I decide to get alarmed, I wonder: how many of those are people that 20 years back would have just slogged through a bad relationship but are now deciding to get out? I am sure part of it is the price paid for capitalism and chasing prosperity but part of it is also us calling a spade a spade and doing what needs to be done to preserve ourselves first. The women are less all-suffering and self effacing. That part cannot be all bad...

So will the predictions of the moral police come true and decadence reign? or will there just be a new order with just different morals? in becoming the fast paced achievers with instant gratification within our grasp, will we lose the knack of being happy with little that previous generations had? Will we be able to meld the new influences with the old and make something uniquely Indian again?

Gundopant does Taco Bell

A jumpy jalopy trundles to a stop and pulls in line behind another car at the Taco Bell drive thro. It is about 12.55 am. At the wheel, Gundopant is not very sure where to go it seems. It is his first month in America and he has not done it before. He decides to ask the guy at the window.

G: Where do I order food?
Taco Bell guy: back near the menu (giving him a withering look)
Can I order here?
No, you'll have too go back there.
But I know what I want, see... bean anything.
No Sir, we are not taking orders here.
Ok, Can I just reverse to the speaker then?
No sir, you'll have to go around.
Ok, says Gundopant a little annoyed, drives around and stops near the menu, his old car dies when he pulls to a halt. tries to start it with not too much success. Decides to take care of food first before they close. orders and walks to the window. The attendant puts his head outside and is surprised to see Gundopant sans car.

Sorry , Sir , this is a drive thro. Cant serve you food if you dont have a car.
Gundopant looks at the guy incredulously.
G: But you know I have a car, see there it is.
you need to be inside it sir. Please, I am really hungry.

5 min later, Gundopant is seen pushing the car to the window. He gets in and honks sharply. The guy pokes his head out and gives Gundopant a scathing look and the food. Gundopant pays and they both exchange money and a look of as much condescension as each can muster.

The next day, each is spotted with his friends regaling them with the nights adventure. Of immigrants from another planet and the developed country which is the victim of its own rules.

The drive back

Jo looked out at the foggy football fields lining the now vacant highway as she slowed the car down in anticipation of the exit that would take her home. This was one of the rare days she was going back so late after forcing herself into the gym. Immediately, as she knew it would on looking at the fog, her mind went back to a night many years ago when she had just moved to the city and had driven that way to go to a friends house and had marvelled at the thick fog that made everything around it look surreal. It is funny, she thought, that she had driven that way a million times now, at every time of the day, but it was that one drive one foggy night when she was new to the city, whose memory bubbled up over all others. Back then, every ride was special and an exploration of the unknown. A mild sense of adventure accompanied the most mundane activities. Listening to her thoughts, she wondered if it was time to shake things up again. She was not sure she liked the word "settled". That just meant life became unchanging albeit comfortable. She never thought of herself as wanting either. Ok, that just means I need to go out on an adventure before I get trapped in someone else's life, she thought as she neared home. And she left it at that for the time being. The finality of that thought told her she would do something about it without consciously reminding herself. Hmm, that was a good drive she thought as she parked her car outside her house. Funny, how the same activity on some days is much more memorable than on most others...

Middle Class

just heard that one of my neighbours of 30 years died a few hours back.
They were Goans. As was true of middle class Bombay, we had a few people from a lot of different corners of the country. Malayalees, Maharashtrians, UPites, Kannadigas, Palakad Iyers all of whom were only once removed from the states of their origin, so that those were not just labels but relevant descriptions of them. My friends and me grew up sort of bastardized, to varying degrees, in that we were second hand citizens of our mother states, tamilians and kannadigas by indirect association with the land of our parents.

They were our family in some sense, the kind you get used to over the years, so much so that you know their ways intimately, much more than your own family sometimes. They were a constant part of our lives, familiar faces that never seemed to move. You knew the whole dance of everyday. If you got up early, you got to see the homeopathy doctor from the last buildling walking to work at a quick pace. A little later you saw another uncle from the opposite building start his scooter and go off to work. A little later the older kids left for school followed by the younger ones. Then some aunties from the next building went out to shop and run errands. Here there was more variety. In the evening, the procession reversed itself. The kids were out to play. The working people came home in batches as the bus stopped at the end of the lane. Seemed so unchanging. change did come but in small waves. The older boys from hte building cast of their short pants in favor of manly full pants. The older ones from the next building started college and went through the street very proud of having become extremely grown up. Then our turn came to leave the routine of school and go to college. the whole colony noticed, accepted it, some talked about it and we all got used to it. As a kid growing up, the constancy was very comforting. you grew up in the eyes of the whole colony. Your paretns classified some of them as the gossips, some as plain mean, some as nice, some as studious and clever and you followed their opinions to form the list of the people you greeted and thougt were nice too, the people you hero worshipped and the people you paid scant attention to.


The small changes accumulated over the years I suppose. All the kids I knew are gone from there though all the parents are still around. I have more chance runnning into one of them walking the streets of California than i do back home.

I am not sure if this is reality or thats just the truth tinted with my interpretation of it. the area was very middle class. Not many cars, people seemed to go to jobs that didnt seem that interesting, but that they went on a very strict routine anyway. Families disappeared to vacation occasionally to perhaps introduce their kids to the lives they left behind. The same story we are writing today in a differnt time and place. The distances on paper were shorter but relatives were always a day away since you made the journey by train which perhaps was an improvement over the occasional bus from a previous generation.

there is almost a sadness when i think about some of these ppl and how they lived. They didnt seem to ask for much. There were very few of them that allowed fun to be a priority. Duty , job and routine seemed the major factors. Is that just a side effect of being brought up in the indian middle class? I wish they lived so that I didnt have to feel bad for them, so that I could console myself thinking that they lived a good life while they could... This could just be me seeing their life through my biased eyes. Perhaps they were not unhappy. Biut I cannot understand this kind, and at the end of it, i am left feeling sad for them.

Indian "Americans"

Typing this as I listen to Jhumpa Lahiri on the radio. I am not torn between the 2 countries. The reason is that I am more willing to experience the rest of the world. I am more aware it is a big world and willing to try new things. My Indianness is not threathened by it. But I realize that my story would be pretty similar to the characters in the book perhaps had I come here 30 years earlier and felt so rudely torn away from my roots. All of us that are here now perhaps owe it to the first few Indians that came here to unchartered waters and established the signposts we are so usedto back home or even the need for the signpost, be it a Movie Rental place, restaurant or a grocery store. that enables us to not feel torn and willing to experiment without feeling torn.

Bombay...

Nothing more to say about the events in Mumbai today, than: A senseless waste.
Civilians caught in the crossfire, in the war of words by irresponsible right wing politicians and the retort in such brutal ways by fanatics.
Why would someone think maiming middle class families is an effective way to achieve any cause claimed?

Anyway while we wait with endless patience for our politicians and zealots to grow up, the heartwarming thing is that Bombay does rise to the occasion. If terror is the intent, that is not really achieved. The population reacted indignantly rather than with fear. From an eyewitness account of events I got, people were thinking rather than panicking. Within minutes, volunteers had stations condoned off and had started rescue work. That is something special Bombay has, a spirit of its own.

This is an article from exactly five years ago, written in another time, another place, another style. Some facets of Bombay themselves have changed with the recent economic boom. But it captures some of what I would put down had I to write today. So instead, I will content myself rereading and revalidating it and put it here for others similar loyalties...

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This is an ode to a city that is the love of many while as many loathe it, a city like no other in the world, that is for sure.
I love it!
What about it do I love? The fact that it is my home perhaps? Yes, but then again, I think there is more to it than that. There are many things that are unique about this dear city. No denying that, at first glance, it is highly polluted -- smog seems to have settled on it permanently, the trains are crowded, the buses more so -- there is absolutely no place to even stand in the trains. Why, it may occur to you, do people have to run so much for so little?
There ought to be easier ways of living. It is a scary sight, how the hell does it work, one wonders. But it does, and that is one of the keys to understanding why the people who love Bombay love it passionately.
But first let's talk about what Bombay looks like to the observer. The city painted to be the glam town, fast life, easy women are just a few things on the list of pre-set notions of the people that live outside of it and think they know all about it from the movies that they have seen or the few visits they have made. This article is in no way trying to belittle them, they definitely can't be blamed, considering most of those movies responsible for those stereotypes were made in Bollywood itself -- like that movie Snip. Make a bad movie, add all the masala about bars and night life and the mafia and one hot number with Sofia Haque at her seductive best(or worst depending on your taste) and then say it all happens in Bombay. True, we have all heard that's what happens in Bombay more often than seen it.
However, a majority of the population leads a very different, possibly difficult life.
Women try to be Superwoman -- they have no choice. They have to be home makers and bread earners. Sometimes, women start their kitchen chores in the train itself -- chopping vegetables or trying to get that much-needed afternoon nap. It is all a game of whether you can get to bed 5 minutes early today to get up a little earlier tommorrow so that you needn't be late again. But Bombay is a place that offers weirder solutions. Instant solutions but Indian style. You have people that sell you pre-cut vegetables in the trains or enterprising unskilled poorer women who cook some goodies and are selling it to the women who don't have time to do it themselves. Our answer to Wal Mart and K-mart.
You may laugh, but the point is, I find it rather nice. The person who sells that stuff to you knows you by your name and you know something about her family too other than the fact that she sells good stuff. She is a face and an entity in your daily life. And you wonder about her on days that you do not see her. The people who sit across from you are the people that sit across from you everyday. They might have been the same people that fought with you for a place in the train on day one, but then you see each other again and again and you realize you are both in the same boat of routine, daily grind, co-travellers...
Friendships develop and you just get to know a lot more about the other person. Looking at it differently, it is a place where you get a unique experience of human kind. When they step out of the train, they step into the shoes of what they are in the outside world, be it a manager or a receptionist. In there though, it didn't matter, for some strange reason.
To me, Bombay is the crook in the movie you eventually lose your heart to -- the bad tempered, snarling guy who hides a heart of gold.
The Mumbaikars are a population so trapped in a city that lives so ridiculously that whatever else they lack, they definitely have a sense of humor about it. You can't survive without one. Like when you fight in the train to get place at the door and then the girl from the opposite train at the door smiles at you because she knows the two of you have been winners of a foolish battle.
Bombay says 'be yourself'. You may try to be sophisticated but it stretches you to the point that all your uncivilized ways are bared. Have you seen all those movies of the 50's and 60's where they tell you that they just can't help loving mean, bad, old New York? Ditto for Bombay.
Everything about it feels special like those skyscrapers, the sea face where you can walk munching peanuts, the beautiful southern tip of Bombay, the young cleaner suburbs, the older more majestic corners of the city... And you needn't be a party animal or pub hopper to feel this way about it. I don't know if I have managed of convey even an iota of the feelings I have for Bombay...but some places have to be lived in to be believed! And the people who lived in it shall continue to constantly talk about the experience but never fully understand what makes the city tick. It just does!