Implications symbolising lives!
Rattling roofs, splashing water,
Croaking frogs, crickety crickets,
Buzzing phone, whirling ceiling fan,
Distant news reader, chirping birds,
Clacking keyboard, snoozing reminders,
Random voices, deluging conferences,
Humming notifications, pouring raindrops,
Creaking chair, and a fading music.
Kavitha kurikkuvan kaminiyayi, omanikkan ente makalayi,
Valsalyamekuvan ammayayi, nervazhikattunna thozhiyayi,
Pinneyen jeevante spandanam polum nin
Swararaga layabhava thalamayi. Arinjathalle nee arinjathalle…
Ninakkai… Aadyamai… Ormakkai.. . iniyoru sneha geetham!
I was probably 10-12 years old when East Coast Vijayan released his music album series – Ninakkai, Aadyamai, Ormakkai, Swantham (For you, For the first time, For remembrance, Yours truly). Music albums had only started being a ‘thing’ then, atleast in Malayalam. Despite how long it has been, I find myself humming these lines quite randomly even today. The image of the hero and heroine of the album and their poetic love have made a very deep memory in my mind. Though I’ve relished many other romantic poems and versatile lyricists, East Coast Vijayan and his trio series pop out of nowhere every time. Being the first has such lasting impressions. It is just not about music for me. I seem to remember an unnecessary load of things from the past that I just can’t get rid of. I remember my first (and only) dentist, first hospitalisation, first time of hearing about someone’s death, first burn, first conversation with my longest standing friend (it has been 24 years), first news of heartbreak (I very clearly remember how my mom broke the news to me – that I won’t be the only apple of their eyes – that’s 20 years again). Just too many of first time memories – all well before I was 10 or 12. There’s nothing really wrong about remembering things. I remember the good and the bad equally – from random conversations to life altering moments. But I wish a part of it just fades away. I don’t want to feel the pang of nostalgia every time I hear a music, see a person, be at a place or notice the date. Ah dates – don’t even get me started! You remember your birthday. Family’s. Friends’. Significant other’s. Some anniversaries. Some deaths. Maybe some more. Do you remember the birthday of a colleague you worked with barely for a year? Do you remember the anniversary of your distant cousin? Death anniversary of a relative you never really knew? Naming ceremony of your neice? Birthdays of classmates whose faces you’ve forgotten? Well, I do. And that is such a painful experience. You remember it’s special for someone today, but you don’t even care about it sometimes. It is an ugly reminder of some memories from the past and some people you’ve lost on the way. It’s just a memory of your memories.
By no means does this mean that I’ve a stellar memory. I forget routine stuff like a normal person. I can’t find a book I read and cherished just a year ago. I misplaced the title ‘Lessons in Forgetting’ by Anita Nair and it’s frustrating!
Voids. Those tiny little empty spaces between life and its monotony. There are way too many voids in each person’s life. Some get filled. Some may not. And some others, may even go unnoticed as they get filled without our knowledge or appreciation. I have been thinking of such ‘irrelevant’ voids in my life, say, for past two weeks. Now, two weeks is fairly a fair amount of time to spare on ‘irrelevant’ things!
I walk a decent distance of half a kilometer every morning, towards my bus stop. And one my way, I have quite a lot of ‘irrelevant’ details to look at and often smile at. The ‘petti-kada’ auntie, the ‘chechi’ by the corporation water supply, the repeated questions about my college and morning greetings from a acquaintance, and the occasional black dog and the dark faced man. And there are (scary) dogs and cats and scary hussle of bikes and cars. And there’s the occasional glimpse of the black dog and the dark faced man. Nothing specifically that I look forward to, but all the more a part of my mornings.
And then one fine day, I walk along and see a black flag by the black dog’s and dark faced man’s house. There’s death in the air, but no matter what, I get my daily bus. So I walk past the house, not looking out for anybody in specific. And so passed a week, and I wonder where the dark faced guy disappered, along with the dog! A death at his home and all I see are stangers around, and kids performing the final rituals. Funnily now, the obvious still hadn’t struck me. And on the seventh day ritual, ‘sanjayanam’, I walk by the place again. Dramatically, through the gathered crowd, I see the dark face photographed and framed, with a garland around it. The obvious finally occured to me. And for the first time, I gazed at the board that bore the dark face’s name and occupation. He was an LIC agent. The irony didnt stop me, but something else did. I was tansfixed for a breif moment, for an awkward amount of seconds.
It is irrelevant, isnt it? Someone I haven’t talked to, have had no association with, whose name I didn’t even know while he was alive! It was just a ‘someone’ who died. But suddenly, it gave in for a large void and deep flow of thoughts. Thoughts that took me in for two weeks or more, and I have been thinking of the dark face and the black dog that suddenly vanished. I wanted to ask around. Did he have cancer? Did he die of a tragic accident? Did he commit suicide? I wanted to ask a lot of things. Almost a month, and I have been still thinking on it. And finally today, I got the answer. He just fell in the bathroom, hit somewhere and just simply died! A plain simple death!
It’s not the death. But the absence. The sudden void that shook me. I am not even sad for him. Come on! I didnt know him at all! But I miss some presence in that road, in my mornings. A haunting feel that makes me realise how many such irrelevant voids make up our lives! Or my life atleast. I missed my acquaintance’s queries and greetings. He too passed away, but the absence wasnt felt this intense.
It’s often not how much you talk or how much you know, but simply if the absence is noticed. I choose to believe my presence may go unnoticed but not my absence. For me, I have always mourned upon absences even when I missed to relish the presence! To go back and look at someone else’s life, and see if your absence is felt, may be a crazy thought. Dare not to do it, anyway. It hurts like hell when the realisation strikes hard! Most presences in life are unacknowledged. Even more, most absences are unnoticed. Voids are, after all, irrelevant by nature!
Can silence echo? Does silence take a form of sound? I am wondering. How do mute people think? I mean, I think in English when I communicate in English, or Malayalam or Tamil, or whatever is relevant. How does a mute person think? Aren’t thoughts associated to words? And words to language? And language to syllables? And syllables to sound? Don’t we all need sound to think?! Obviously, no. I know. It’s not the knowledge. It’s the amazement. It’s the sheer marvel of life around you. I see a lot of mute people here. In bus. In the road. Mostly, coz there’s some school/institute for them nearby, which I haven’t come across with yet. So my awe is not totally out of place. I always see them communicate with each other in those crowded buses. They want a seat to sit down so that their hands are free to communicate thru their gesture. I used to feel bad. But then thinking about what might they do in the dark, I often let the thought just pass by and close my eyes in silence.
Ganesh chathurthy. Grand procession was on its way from the heart of the city, to the beach nearby for the auspicious ritual. Huge statues of Lord Ganesh would be thrown into the sea in reverence. The festive mood had stricken the city and the crowd hustled in the backdrop of deafening audio systems. Devotion was at its peak, with the blaring woofers. And I was to get a phone call exactly then, as I maneuvered myself out of the chaos, of noisy people and shrieking sound systems. I could do nothing but to put the caller on hold until I was out of the vicinity. On the way, I spotted two people. Probably, somebody whom I have already met but hard to recollect. The one thing I could connect, however, was that they were mute. They were talking. Calm and uninterrupted. The deluge of the sound systems hardly made any impact on their conversation. Life stood still. As the moment passed, I walked away, turning back at them once more. They were still talking. Unaware of the deafening sound. Unaware of the marvel. Unaware of the admiration.
That’s where I often am, these days. A zero zone. Zero emotions. Zero problems. Zero dramas. Zero people. Zero activity. Zero time. Zero place. Zero change. Zero thoughts. Zero. Like division by zero. So meaningless and futile. What can possibly come out of it after all! Being at the zeroth zone, the one thing I can’t help is falling out of it. Now and then. Whether or not I want it. The trouble is, why do I even have to fall out of it. It’s become more like my comfort zone these days. Its just so easy and light, to float in there, like zero gravity. It’s not even a compulsion from anything that I do get out of it, but more like an unmistakable cycle of things, as they are. It feels like a chain, all wound up around my entire self, dragging me in and out of it, not out of compulsion, but more as a chain of cyclic process. It just feels normal to be this way. Zero explanations coz there’s zero demand for it! As the better half once remarked..zero cause, infinite reasons! (Or the other way round?!)
Posted from WordPress for BlackBerry
Living thru dates, with dates, by dates, is a difficult task. And by dates, I am not talking about the fruit, dates. Nor am I talking about the dates people ‘go out’ on. Oh good lord! How many definitions do dates hold already! As if it is not enough, we have this-day, that-day, not-this-day and on and on, celebrating all kinda dates. And ofcourse those fancy dates. 01-01-01, 02-02-02…..12-12-12. Thank god its over by 2012! And as if none of these are enough, I have my fancy associations to dates! The day I first I joined this school. The day I met that person. The day I left this place. The day I last met some person. The day I first had some experience. The day with this and that and too many such stupid associations. Its funny how I remember so many birthdays that I don’t even want to make a wish on, too many anniversaries I don’t even care to be bothered about, too many days with no relevance to me as a person, still etched in my memory. Like, not even a brain damage could actually wipe them away. Every morning, getting up and actually waking into my senses, the first involuntary thing is to register the date in my memory, and then search for a matching item that corresponds to the date. And each day, has associations. Pleasant, unpleasant, moderate, and I-dont-give-a-fuck kinda dates. And as I pass by each such date, the one thing I so wish, atleast by next year this day, let me forget its stupid cooked relevance in my brain. I don’t want to remember so many pointless stuff. And today is one such day. A date I am trying to forget. Not coz its unpleasant. But coz its irrelevant in the life I currently live. An anniversary I choose to forget, but still reminded all the more, as I am the only one even thinking about it, even at this hour, as the day closes down.Ridiculous dates! Etched down the memory lane!
Posted from WordPress for BlackBerry
Lately, I’ve been complaining too much about boredom. To myself, to people who care enough to ask, and to myself again. Like, I’ve never been this bored in my whole lifetime. So much bored that, even saying out that I’m bored is a tiring boring exercise. But, as a matter of fact, I’ve not sat down for a minute, idle and relaxed. All day, I’m on a cleaning spree. Like my home is never swept or cleaned. Like, nothing is organised here. Like, my home is a total mess and that I’ve to start from the scratch. But none of that is true. I’ve a moderately neatly maintained home and clean surroundings. May be it’s my boredom kicking my ass, and making me toil like I’m to do something ‘big’ about my cleaning activities every day. Like, I’ve co authority to report to. Even before bed, I’m not getting the usual retrospective times. I’m busy blogging, making up to the challenge.
So, I’m busy like an ant. And Yet, unmistakably bored. To the core. I’ve more assignments. You want your home cleaned, or book shelf organised, or furniture re-arranged? You could contact me. But then, I’m kinda busy here. So next time may be?
Of all the cleaning and dusting, there are some special things I’m so proud of. One, I got an awesome and elegant setting for my books and the library they constitute. Two, three, so many in between. The last and the most special thing is this old picnic table that climbed all the way down the attic to my balcony, with this welcoming umbrella shade! I’m so worked up that I still haven’t found an ideal moment of peace to go to the balcony and relax on my umbrella chairs!
She turned to his side of the bed. The spread was wrinkled and still had his warmth. She rolled over, awake the rest of the night. When did he leave? Did he say anything? She couldn’t think straight, still caught in the unfulfilling sleep. Wasn’t it obvious he’d leave anyway! But somehow, she wished otherwise. It has been a tough time thru this. And she couldn’t handle it anymore. The yellow light shimmered.
She loved the light. The yellow light. The dim flickering filament bulb. And the yellow glow. The best part, as she saw it, was that, when you shut your eyes close, the light just stays off. It doesn’t penetrate thru eyelids and poke your retina to acknowledge its presence. Unlike what the fluoroscent tubelights do to your eyes. And when you open your eyes, it still stays there, causing no difficulty to your eyes, adjusting to the brightness. The yellow light shimmered.
When was the last time she had the yellow light? Was it way back at home? The only apartment her parents rented was so dimly lit. She could recollect faint glimpses from there. Everything had a yellowish hue. The glow of the yellow light. And the yellow flame of the candles during the ‘power-cut’ hours! Again. The yellow light shimmered.
She never liked the yellow frock her parents got her. The only one they bought together. She despised the pineapple jam coz it was yellow in colour. She adjusted with the mixed fruit. She didn’t like yellow coz her aunt died of jaundice, all yellow and pale. She didn’t like the sun, coz it was yellow and hurt her eyes. She loved the moon. Is that how she turned into this night person? But at all times, she loved the yellow glow and the filament bulbs. The yellow light shimmered.
What did he wear last night? Was it a yellow shirt? And the same yellow pants? She doesn’t remember. It needn’t matter anymore coz the night is over now. The yellow sun had risen up. But it still bothers her. Did he actually wear those yellow things for her? The yellow sun disturbed. She pulled the blanket over her head and went back to the slumber. The yellow light shimmered.
The yellow sun gave up and the moon came back, welcoming the yellow glow. The bulb was turned on, once again. The yellow glow spread all over. The room had the yellow charm back. And she silently sneaked out of the blanket. He was at the door. Wasn’t he better looking than the guy from yesterday? Rather, wasn’t he the most good-looking, of all the men who stood at that door? She was mesmerised by his glow. And she let her hands open in a huge embrace to welcome him into the bed. Before he could move, she let her hands go asked him to leave. His head hung in apprehension, he turned away and walked in silence. He didn’t wear yellow. His glow wasn’t yellow. She wanted yellow. She embraced only yellow. She kissed only yellow. She could please only yellow. She loved yellow, perhaps. The yellow light shimmered.
She closed her eyes, taking on last glimpse of the yellow glow, before she drifted back to her sleep. The yellow light glowed even brighter, noticing her looking at it. What colour would be the blush of the yellow light, you may ask her. And she’d say, what you see as flickering, that one moment of fading away, is my yellow glow blushing at my gaze! The yellow glow beamed. And she slid under her cover. The yellow light shimmered. And flickered. And faded. And was putoff.
She wakes up into the new red glow. She fits back into the routine. But this time, she doesn’t filter out the non-yellow-outfit men. All are welcome. All are accepted. The room no longer glowed in yellow. The charm was lost and the glow was stolen. The yellow absence filled the room. And her soul. She hates light. She is in love with black. Her face no longer seen in the dark. The glow disapperead into the abyss. And, the red light flickered at the door. Not blushing, but annihilating. The red light doesn’t shimmer.
Nah, it’s nowhere close. My birthday is way over. But looking back from this precise moment, that was one of the only best thing that happened to me recently, making me want to find goodness in every other thing! It’s like this one good day, promising you to give more, making you want more. I had cake! Yay! (Doesn’t matter I shared it with the cousin, whose birthday falls the same day! That WAS the fun after all!) I had midnight birthday wishes! Again Yay! I had wake up calls. Again Yay! I even had a total surprise birthday ‘mug’ with my photo in it. Gifted my cousin-childhood_friend-buddy-my-lechu! And yay is just not enough there! And the surprise birthday card, which technically was the only one this year! And not to forget, I had two full big yummy ‘chocolat’y ‘silk’y heaven, all for myself! Besides all, I had a surprisingly relieving conversation with an old pal! She didn’t talk much. But whatever little we spoke, the spirit of it stays alive to the moment and gives me a all-new drive to life! And there I said ‘Same to you’ to devi akka when she wished me! We missed it all these years perhaps! As if it wasn’t enough, I have aniecenow, born with me, 21 years delayed!
Birthdays have been more good to me in the past. Much better than this years’, where I was away from family and loved ones. But this one seems more special. May be coz it’s the 21th! May be coz it’s the one surviving 2012! May be it could be so many other things. But most of all, I think it was special, coz it was the only good thing, in a long time now. The most beautiful flower is the one that blooms in the face of a catastrophe! Symbolising survival! I survived. Yay!
P. S. Oh wait a min! Did I forget to mention the new Olympus 620! All thanks Vidya! Amma and appa just flipped me out this time! 🙂
All of a sudden, I say daivamundu. (God is there!) Not that I was an atheist. Not that I was disciple of any form of worship either. Was it like I was almost slipping down the cliff of agnostic thoughts? Well anyway, life has just taken me over and lifted me from the fall, with an amazing ease and splendor. Now, this moment, I am a believer. That someone is definitely watching over all the drama. I don’t pray yet. I don’t attend religious gatherings. I don’t make offerings. But I am a believer. I don’t believe in the give-and-take policy with God. God is supposed to be infinitely more supreme. When even I have the heart to help a total stranger held in trouble, wouldn’t God have the heart for it? When I don’t curse somebody for their ingratitude, why would God’s wrath may even be considered plausible? Nobody’s gonna make you ill if you forgot the 1008 thenga (coconuts) for Ganapathy! Come on, Ganapathy is not our villain. He’s the vignavinashaka (problem solver) of our lives! Why are Gods and Goddesses and all other form of deities picturised as scary, wrathful, scornful beings?
Faith is an over exploited commodity when it comes to religions and spiritual manifestations of it. You do the Navagrahahomam and the Ganapathihomam. If its breaking your financial stability, why do you still insist on the Bhagavathiseva too? Afraid that Devi would burn your life into ashes? What kinda faith is it, blindly performing the rituals, out of fear of condemn! I am not against religious rituals and activities. In fact, ever since childhood, that has always been the occasion of family gathering, lot of delicacies, lot of fun and frolic. Growing up, understanding the concept of the rituals, I am all the more approving of the nobility of the religious expressions. But things feel terribly awkward and ridiculous, when people tend to forget the fundamental idea that lead them to the initiation of such rituals.
Ah! All that seemed overboard for my scope of knowledge and experiences in such matters. Something triggered and I just couldn’t stop. Adding to the urge, the liberation of not having my parents around reading this, and prosecuting me for my spiritual ignorance, really boosted up the writing. Not to forget what I started off with, Daivamundu. But, Faith in fellow beings might speed up you revelation of it though! 🙂
Welcome to my utopia!
Dealing with the unconventional me..
floating through an unworldly pensive
Wanderer | Dreamer | Believer
A daily selection of the best content published on WordPress, collected for you by humans who love to read.
Implications symbolising lives!
Longreads : The best longform stories on the web
The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.
The Last Straw 