Like the circles that you find...... In the windmills of your mind....
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Name: Dharini
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Member Since: 7/12/2005

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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Dear sea-of-my-city,

I've known you – perhaps better and longer than I've known anything else. Your fullness, your precise shade of grey.

Dipped littlefeet into pools of night. Placed fingers, hesitant, by your waves. Whispered things, things-I-cannot-tell, to your tides. Emptied myself – tears, questions, recriminations, panic – all of it – into greywater, knowing, trusting, with fiveyearold trust, that you'd hold it. Hold me.

Today, sea-of-my-city, keeper of my soul, custodian of all my secrets, I give you my grandfather.

You may not know him like I do. Seeing, as you must, but a fistful of ash, an urn of charcoal, milk and dust.

Let me acquaint you then with the man who is. Who was. It's only fair.

He was tall, very tall – ninety-one years, ninety-one feet of remembering. His face smiled, and his wrinkles, soft folds, said that he let life touch him. His hands were soft, as soft as your waters, and his voice, when he had it, was resonant, sure, and for the most part, unselfconscious.

You should know too that there were things that changed in the last month. He seemed taller somehow, almost as though he had moved past scales and integers, and his wrinkles, always deep, became cups of light. He was luminous, a glowing orb, shining the way fading-stars-of-the-milky-way do. So on the last day, when he said, sans dentures, with large, baby eyes – clearly, all too clearly, with just the hint of a lisp, "Doctor. D-o-w-n-h-i-l-l. It's all downhill", I sensed: he was leaving.

And he left.

Beloved sea of my beloved city, first among all I love, he's with you today. My grandfather.

My grandfather, you must remember, loved music. Travelling with him meant cranking up the stereo. And if there was no stereo, he'd sing – ancient ragas – darbari kannada – his favourite. There was a tune for every mood, a note for every God, a melody for each hour of silence.

Not that he minded silence. No. For, his second love was altogether quiet – the little garden patch, those pots of plants by his windows. He pruned them himself – their leaves, their stems, watered their roots, urged them quietly to blossom. So each morning, his most-adored of flowers, purple, no, pink, would greet him, wordlessly. On tiptoes.

More than pink-stillness though, beyond even song, my grandfather loved my grandmother. All four feet, ten inches of her.  There were no grandiloquent gestures in this relationship, nothing obvious. Yet, on mornings when my grandmother slept too long, my grandfather would nudge her gently, walk to a tape-recorder, and play for her a singer she has always loved. And my grandmother would smile, rub her eyes. Wake up.

Sea-of-my-city, treasured friend, you hold in you a man who believed in perfection. When my grandfather would write, each alphabet would be exact, each flourish, decidedly measured. When he'd speak, he'd say, with a firm nod, that it was always the Queen's English. Impeccable. And even as the tubes criss-crossed through his chest, he asked the nurse to keep his pink shirt buttoned.

Sea of my city, collector of Orions, today you have the father of my mother.

Let your waves be gentle, deliberate – never awkward or tangled, never cluttered. Let them blush violently, turn pink. Let them hum to him, high then low, mournful, like a stereo's raga. Let them tell him of my grandmother, and my grandmother of him.

Most of all, dear sea of mine, tell my thatha – my only thatha – tell him I miss him. Tell him to come back home.

 


Saturday, March 15, 2008

Currently Reading
The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)
By Homer
see related
Pics from Paros....




    














The view from the aircraft....


Thursday, February 28, 2008

Currently Listening
Chutes Too Narrow
By The Shins
Pink Bullets
see related
To Paros....

:D


Monday, January 28, 2008

Greece will be my new home :)

To: paint and write and learn art history....

Visit, if you're around :D


Tuesday, December 25, 2007

I haven't posted online for a while.

There's nothing to say.

There's too much to say. Too precious.

***

But it's a new year (well, almost.). Perhaps, I can make allowances.

***


What I learnt in 2007


I've learnt that....

I need happiness, like I need the night, or hot-chocolate, or a set of songs that I listen to over and over and over again on loop.

I can spend a lifetime pursuing happiness. Or I can pause. And be happy.

Happiness is a risk. Sometimes (Oftentimes), I lack the courage for it.


I've learnt that.....

I must choose. There is stability. And then, there's a dream. One must grow at the expense of the other. Initially.

Stability can buy me sleep. But the dream is what makes waking worthwhile.


I've learnt that.....


Life untangles the knots and unravels itself, luscious and beautiful (look!), when I quit interfering.
 
I must quit interfering.


I've learnt that.....

I cannot be someone's concept. I cannot be one thing alone -- a woman-child, or a creature-with-stars-in-her-eyes, or a-proof-of-happiness. Sometimes, my skin sags; sometimes, the stars seem distant, very distant-- unknown and unknowable. Sometimes, I must curl up and cry like the earth is splitting. Sometimes, I am real.

It's not easy being me. I change too fast. Far too fast. I do not know the person I was last year. Next year, I will not know me.


I've learnt that....


I'm not exactly a people's person. I cannot socialize. I eventually snap. I need to withdraw into silence. All too often.

I cannot network either. I cannot make conversations-- bargains, and people-- tools. I find that-- it belittles the sanctity of human contact. If I talk to you, it's because-- you are beautiful to me right now. That is all. The rest is secondary. Or irrelevant.


I've learnt that....


I need to keep moving. Because there is something out there. Something bigger. Something beyond the here and the now. There must be (yes?). And I must know it.

The earth is tiny, frightfully tiny.

The earth is just not enough.

***

Cinema: 2007:

These are films I've re-watched this year (for the nth time), or have only just come across.... so here goes, the list of films that made 2007:

1. Garden State (because there hasn't been another film, quite like it. Because there will never be another film, quite like it. Because of the soundtrack. Because of the script. Because.)

2. Amores Perros;
Y Tu Mama Tambien;
Lucia Y El Sexo

3. ALL of Ingmar Bergman, without exception (the seven I've seen are magnificent, anyway).

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

5. Hable Con Ella (the Almodovar that I'll cherish most)

Literature: 2007:

My personal favourites: One each:

Prose: Ian McEwan (almost all that I've read of his writing)
Poetry: Robert Creeley.

***
The Language:
~ Robert Creeley....

Locate I
love you some-
where in

 

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

 

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

 

much so
little. Words
say everything.

 

I
love you
again,

 

then what
is emptiness
for. To

 

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full

 

of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.



***

New Year Dreams: Greece, for a while. Who-knows-where, after :)
Also, the book.

***

And here's to a new year-- any colour you like :)



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