Month: Jun 2020
The way of Light
Everytime I break, You spill Your Light through e’en the tears in my eyes.
Compromise
He took it and took it, then he didn’t. The last time we met he showed us his telescope with Saturn rings and Jupiter all in his panelled rooms with fresh flowers sometimes, and a dog named Bin. He ate sunflower seeds and loved the colour yellow. S.J was your regular above average looking superman that fixed bicycle tyres and switches. He baby sat your kids and took out your trash. He was handsome and brilliant, he talked to you as if you were gorgeous; he wasn’t a flirt, he was nice, dependable. When SJ walked out his terrace and died of depression they said, he was not compromising anything anymore, he just couldn’t take it nor fake it. We’ll never know, but as more and more people get nooses and poison concoctions, more people fall to depression and even heart attacks, I’m wondering that we cover our sadness with the laughter we ache for. I wish we could talk out loud, ask for help. I wish. I wish.
Doodles from a blind guy!
They said the world would end yesterday?
Never mind. Mayan calendar, Julian’s calender. Dec2012, and another earthlike planet rearing to have crashed here: though after all we’ve gone through recently, anything feels plausible! I did fervently look at sky now and then.
And maybe ‘they’ were right. The world as I knew it has ended. If there’s a day left, perhaps we should consider giving voice to people who wait to be heard; our arms and feet for the thing God birthed us for.
I wonder what your day is like.
Monday seems chilly, overcast here in a city multiplying its Covid count. Deep within is a hearth that whispers ‘All is well’; the trees outside look the same with more birds in them than I ever saw: green winged red heads, who are they? Brown feathered white spotted falcon family bird flying down at squirrel.
I haven’t been able to blog last week, and mayn’t be able to till I finish interviews then manuscript for a book on burns’ survivors- their past tragic, now, stunning amazing, post-reconstructive surgery and counsel by some fantastic humans here in Bangalore, India.
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So I will be away a bit; cannot say more here. It is going to be risky traveling in and out of lanes now being triple watched for ‘community – transmuting virus..’ : venturing out is something! I saw people with no smiles because of masks, saw a young man completely drunk on a Hero Honda and he revving that bike like a maniac, eyes and mouth working deliriously.
The worse life gets the more we value its worth. I’m grateful for every bit of sun and work still left to do among a mass of humanity still beautiful.
(Will be @ comments section, so do write in. Apologies for times I’ve taken off there)
Happy Fathers Day
To all the dads everywhere and here: have a beautiful meaningful one.
And this ones for you my very own Daddy Robert David:
pics taken by my sis.
( photo below)
Silly banter it went on and on. With only you I could go that way, with decades between us, you were the little brother I never had, or the big brother, but thru it all you were and are and will always be that block I am the chip of: my father my dad my bestest Friend.
Miss you terribly Dad today. Where you are, can you see this? We talked about heaven and how we’d love there forever. You asked if I’d know you? I said ofcourse I’d know you. You said we’d be ‘Ray’ and ‘Robbie’ … but would I be your daughter? I laughed and said how nice it’d be to have you as my brother …. haha! You weren’t amused as much as I was; and I realised a daughter was something too precious to exchange, or a father. And I want to hug you close and say … God who gave you to me as my Dad wouldn’t take that from me/ us. And that in heaven our tears will be sweeter our love richer for the presence of God who brought us closer.
I love you, love love you my Dad.
Do not weep for the wounded
but look to the Wounder, how low he falls.
My brother who died at the feet of evil? Everyday his children rise stronger strong;
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but that one with hell as his mentor: weep for how he was low, so low.
My slain brother lives tall eachday, his children rise, watched by the heav’ns of his Maker.
The Wounded weep but they sleep sweet at night; ach! they weep yell at the hell in ones who steal the very thing that could’ve made their own children rise,
nah today I did not weep for my brother, but for humans who go low so low they must murder their own eternal life,
for these, weep.
Where now?
Just park. Lay your handles in the wall, stay in. It’s not impossible to do. It’s the way it is now. How do we do this:
The park and Lizac stores, they’re half open. Garim Mall and Ooga’s kitchen, Lily House plants and Maya’s Stop for groceries, they’re all there. No one’s left. They’re quiet. Raghu the frig repair man called to say his Ma disappeared yesterday. Then he called now to say she still hadn’t returned.
My throat feels sore, hmm. Quarantine my heart Lord God, let me get off my highways a bit and lean in on You.
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My daughter a grandmother at 20!
Yes, our second daughter. Sits stunned Cross legged in bed, her entire person shocked, electrified; every ten minutes she goes,”Ma, how do I come to terms with this?”
We’re stunned too. Ivory, our daughter’s daughter hadn’t shown. Last week when we met at the gate, her shaggy white ears and tail all waggly with joy, she didn’t show! Though Kitsy says she did. I couldnt tell. Now what… I’m a great grandma??
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Borrowing my human daughters words, “I must come to terms with all this!”
While our world battles fresh batches of this and that, life goes on.
Don’t go..
Innocence, Joy, Laughter, Honesty, Gentleness, Strength, Peace,Love all these, stay. Don’t go. Please
“Heart sick…yet hopeful..”
I had to haul in 👆above title and a quote below from Frank Bruni (of New York Times) article that stopped me mid-sentence in my random thoughts on the world at large.
“…. in a lovely article that connected acts of kindness during the Spanish flu of 1918 to acts of kindness during the current coronavirus pandemic, Jim Dwyer, The Times’s New York columnist, wrote: “In times to come, when we are all gone, people not yet born will walk in the sunshine of their own days because of what women and men did at this hour to feed the sick, to heal and to comfort.”… for more on this by Frank Bruni, a must read. New York Times.
Was the famous Spanish flu also tailed by Migrant Crises and other havoc; why are we different from other Pandemics? Aren’t we more educated, aware, empowered? Yes and maybe that’s both the problem and the solution. My grandma could not have had the same support I as an Indian woman have today, or the same voice, or capacity to hope. We’ve seen good. We’ve received good. Bad as this century might be, we’ve seen some incredible goodness. The more bitter the pill, the sweeter the poem.
If Society ever had it’s own support system it could count on, its now. Yes we have our baddies but they far underwhelm the rest; though a bullet is a bullet, each bullet or act of dis-service reaps a harvest of righteous indignation. Each act of hate weakens itself. Each strike of violence wakens the conscience of Global communities: we shoot neck out of our rabbit holes like meercats. Look at us, we are more than nations, we are slowly morphing into one dialect: the sounds I’m hearing now are not hate but more brotherhood: the kind that would try raise an Abel back from the dead.
Elsewhere and in my own country, there are people praying for each other like never before. We are afraid but we love like never before. We are speechless at poverty and hunger, at homelessness and at new sins with names you and I mayn’t know how to spell. How little we become in the face of global illness, terminal intolerance. And yet, we are prisoners of hope. We are at our worst and at our best.
This lifts my heart,
Stay precious, stay blest.
June already 2 days old?
Warm sun and monsoon swaying in, last year this day what were we doing? Taking a road trip was easy, I remember even accepting a job at an Art Centre earlier last year, what a ride it’s been.
It is quiet,
have you watched a quiet India? Ever? Streets thick with discipline? People sanitised/masked? You can cross streets, shop anytime without dodging crowds. News of price rises rear its nasty head. News of migrant deaths and tragedies surface: a 20 year old walked near 2000 kms from here to another end of India, no not even a cycle trip like last weeks’ teenager who rode her handicapped father a thousand miles home, (yes, ofcourse now they want her in any team that might Olymp.); he got home to his ailing mother, he was bruised and weary to say the least. Then that evening he gets bitten by a snake, and dies?
There is much good too, an earth full of fantastic people who will never be seen because they choose invisibility. People who call to ask how you’re doing, happy cheerful voices full of contagious joy. This June I’m focusing on being grateful for every nice face or letter or call received. Seriously, grateful. Sad yes, but grateful. It’s a Cure all by itself.
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The Tipping Point
I just watched Trevor Noah on the recent horrific Floyd killing/ aftermath: and what struck me deep as I moved away from his ‘tipping point & domino effect’ is that
this is not just one isolated piece of reactivity or discrimination. This is the whole of Humanity reaching a ‘Tipping Point’ in a variety of ways and we are going to have to watch our reactivity like never before. All of us.
Saw this on Instagram👇
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I do not know what to think, leave alone say. This did not happen in my country, but this is our earth. When a scooterist got beaten up by two cops here (he was out at Lockdown) everything in us recoiled.
We scream out loud now and then at things we do not understand and something tells me our thresholds are being lowered like never before : courtesy Covid and all, we are maddening maddened. We are losing immunity to dis- ease and moral code. Something deep within our morale is losing Core social skills. We are raped of Reserves, of Goodness, Justice. Grapes of wrath grow well in our Vineyards grown for Peace.
There’s this though: it is in Times like these that perhaps most men women and children have sat in silence and stared at that thin fine line between Good and Evil. Here we as a Race see that the colour of our bones is the same ash, and too, that Human Conduct has no colour. No allow me to re-state that. Human conduct does have a colour, the colour of shame. It’s there where there are humans, and we must spend the rest of that decade in apology, because humans intrinsically know what is right and what is wrong. We know casteism and dowry are evil practices, that murder is sin. Female infanticide and Sati deaths, honour killings, these debase our society that so aches to progress.
If we are Dominoes just waiting for something to impact us… if we have zero foundation within that will hold us strong no matter the tide, then the Tipping Point will come easy, it will arrive real quick in ways we wouldn’t believe if someone were to warn us. People will kill each other for a coin, a loaf of bread, a glass of water, if that hasn’t happened already. Rage will become a norm, racism as common as common cold.
If we have no Soul Spine, we are in for a mega crash as a Planet. The killers we condemn out there, are perhaps in all kinds of intensity around us already. Or within..
I could’ve been another person
This is first hand from my mother who was there: I had just been born ‘normally’ but here was the thing. I was a third daughter, and one of our older relatives wasn’t happy. That aside…
…. the nurses weren’t happy for my Ma, and they were about to fix it.
My mother heard them discuss a baby switch with the lady next bed: she had just had a third son. So. The nurses were ready to start this process of switch ( before anyone’s husband got in the picture?) This is an absolutely true account; my ma was horrified and would not allow the discussion to proceed. What were they trying to do, strike a goodwill conscious baby switch between the two mothers? Was this the other women’s idea?
I cannot imagine any other mother than the one I have, have loved and been loved by. Gratitude Lord for the protection there.
Too many infant girls face untold horrors in nations that are subject to certain practices that involve dowry, etc.. why are people afraid to raise daughters?
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I am brimming proud of mine; of every daughter everywhere. God forgive our sins of murder, hatred, and discrimination.
Innerdialects 
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