the-think

2008-08-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

On pets and the lack of one:

There is a skunk that lives in our backyard. Well, I call it a skunk because I know it's a skunk. But then the husband, who saw it first, isn't completely sure it is one. He first proposed the idea of a possible possum. That was soon ruled out because of the large white stripe on the back of the furry little thing. So it became a plausible possum. Then he said it's a giant squirrel. But there's a white stripe, remember? It's a skunk, says me. We hold off the discussion until the next sighting.

He saw it again, and called out to me so I could see a beaver walking in our backyard. Does it have large front teeth? No. So it's a skunk, I said. Oh, then it's probably the neighbor's cat that fell in a can of paint. Nope, said I, as the two of us stood gingerly on the first wooden step leading to our backyard, excited, and quietly watching a fairly large blackish animal with a thick white stripe running from the tip of its nose to the end of its large bushy tail. It scampered about, nose buried in the grass, oblivious to two curious humans watching it. Yup, skunk for sure, says me. Hm...says he.

And then the other day the back yard started smelling. You think it's the skunk? says I. Or hey, maybe it’s a Tasmanian devil!
Well, considering the time we've spent thinking about it and the names we've called it, I'd say we have a pet skunk!

2008-08-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Viscous, golden darkness slithered under the door and into the house while the sun was setting. Warmth slid out and spread into the dying dusk. Silence of the most bitter taste sat heavy in the room, quietly waiting, watching for a tender moment.

As night came on, she cried like a handful of simmering coals had settled at the bottom of her heart. She looked at the silence through her blurry eyes and wished it away. But as with wishes, they only made the bitterness stronger.

Night came on, inkly blue, distant and restless. Morning followed, shimmery white, tired and uncomfortable.

2008-08-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

On a sunny morning, she returned. With no announcement. Just like she had left.
The children danced about her white and orange robes, her sister smiled at the deep glow on her face, her mother held her hand, like one would, of a little child walking down a crowded street, her father started noticing the birds on magnolia trees outside.
She sang, she danced and she took over a bit of everyone's life. She always had some little tidbit to share and some tale of distant lands that we had only heard of. Every morning, she rose with the sun, watching the birds and singing the song of the winds. Soon, she became the patch of calm that everyone seeks, amid the obsessive clamoring after wild dreams.
They watched her with affection all day long and left home, waiting to come back to her joy.

And then one day it started raining. She packed the only five set of clothes she had, and walked out of home.
She left before sunrise. She left just like she had returned.
Now I don't know what is worse - the cold rain or her mother's hot tears. The whistling of the winds or her father's lost poetry.

2008-05-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid, my mom would always talk about a birthday card she saved from many years ago. Tinted a honey-gold, was the picture of a half-bloomed rose bud on a plant, among many other plants. Curly, fancy writing in a faded white said (something to the effect of):

As the years go by, people grow older
As time goes by, you only grow sweeter.

The love she felt for those words, were, I'm sure, associated with someone, and not the words themselves. And through association, I began loving the words too. The faded, honey-gold over light pink petals - so simple, so dreamy.
Today, I give you that birthday card, love.

2008-04-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

Ponni and his family were not really the fashionable type. When I met them for the first time, I was a child, on her evening walk with her mother. It was a deep dusk, finding its way into every cloud and bird in the evening sky, all vehicles on the street and every tree in the world.
"There's Ponni!" said my mother, as she yanked me across the crowded street, walking towards them.

I remember all four of the Ponnis. Mr Ponni, a nondescript man in this early thirties, wearing a well-trimmed beard, very large, expressionless eyes and a mild manner . Mrs Ponni, an almost-anorexic woman in her late twenties, painfully gaunt, with over-sized buck teeth. She didn't seem to bother about her teeth at all, smiling in wide, white, toothy smiles at me. The little Ponni girls were inconsequential, playing about their parents, sometimes stopping to stare at me like I had sprung out of the tar. And then forgetting the world as they played their little game around their mother.
We spoke for a while, I'm sure, but I fail to remember about what. Like with all children, I must have spent my time watching the other children and the adults with them. Ponni seemed so mild and unimportant. He had a thick cloth bag with the name of a bank I had never heard of. And from the bag, stuck out a bunch of curry leaves, the slender end of a snake gourd and some other vegetable I had never seen. They were obviously on their way back from a weekday-vegetable-shopping spree at the local market. Mrs Ponni must have chattered on in her soft, high-pitched voice to vendors sitting beside lanters in the dying day.

After that, we met the Ponnis a few times more. And once we visited their home - a very normal, Indian house done up with the normal Indian stuff. A coir mat at the entrance, little brass plates as wall-hangings, a Kathakali dancer's painted face on the cushions, a red and black carpet that was too small for the room, glasses with flowers on them and mango juice in them, a wide-smiling Mrs Ponni, her incosequential, playful little girls. And Mr Ponni with his big eyes in the background.

Now I realize that we had always met the Ponnis at dusk. The sun was almost setting on us each time we met. And the Ponnis and their children would always be returning from a quick vegetable-shopping session. Mr Ponni with his big eyes that said nothing, Mrs Ponni with her big smile and the Ponni girls playing games that made no sense.

And then one evening, we met three of the Ponnis - Mrs Ponni and the two girls. But there was no similing or playing.
Mr Ponni had died. An unexpected health condition had taken him away.
On that last day I saw them, Mrs Ponni was at the bakery, buying her children some 'mixture', probably for school the next day.

Suddenly, everything about them seemed so significant.

2008-03-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

Not the typical 'you-are-so-good-you-can-change-the-world' post

Crouch down to a deep grey, overpowering sky filled with rumbling, rolling clouds. Cover your head with your icy-cold hands and close your eyes as the thundering storm whirls around in mad swirls.
Breathe in shallow, shorter breaths. Move in narrow, controlled spaces.
Grit, grunt, whimper...crouch and bear.
When the whistling winds start to die down, open your eyes and look up in the hope of seeing a clearing in the sky above.
When the hail stones stop pounding, listen for the relief from a roar that is dying down.

Heros in cartoons fly through storms and pick up a couple of mountains while they're at it. But us realistic readers weather storms by crouching down to them.
Do not stand up when you need to crouch, for the hero in you might just slip and suffer a giant bruise to the ego.

2008-03-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

The tires crunched over gravel, like little mills grinding stone into powder that rose in tiny whirlwinds in the woods. They cycled through patterns that the wind in the leaves painted on that sunny morning. Her light colored clothes quivered in the breeze; printed flowers shaking and waving among the trees. His shoes shared the tan of the pebbles they slipped and slid over, riding through spring-laden woods.
They stopped by the little lake nestled amongst tress that were still waking up from a deep, peaceful slumber. They watched blades of grass lean over the edge to see the sun in the pond…And slowly, the ripples began painting a picture. A picture of leaves and trees and a sunny morning. A picture of playful shadows on smooth pebbles. A picture of the sun sparkling in a forest pond…
…and she work up, looking into his eyes – and there swam a picture of them walking through those patterns.

Hush now, don't you cry
Wipe away the teardrop from your eye
You're lying safe in bed
It was all a bad dream
Spinning in your head

Your mind tricked you to feel the pain
Of someone close to you leaving the game of life
So here it is, another chance
Wide awake you face the day

Your dream is over... or has it just begun?

I- will be watching over you
I- am gonna help you see it through
I- will protect you in the night
I- am smiling next to you, in Silent Lucidity

- Queensryche – “Silent Lucidity”

2008-03-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

Small doughnut.
Really small doughnut.
Tiny, wee doughnut.
Teeny tiny, tweeny, twiny doughnut.
Doughnu-teeny!

Itsy-bitsy
Teeny-weeny
Brown and dotted
Doughteeny!!
Laa la la!

Miniscule doughnut.
Inconsequential, insignificant doughnut.
Microscopic, amoeba-food.
$6!!

Suddenly-not-so-small-doughnut.

2008-02-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

My head on your lap, we listened to music from years gone past. Songs we had forgotten about, and wouldn't have remembered if it weren't for a chance find.
You fell asleep while my fingers slipped and slid over yours, making little new patterns with the lines in your hand.
I tried not to shift my head on your lap - so you wouldn't wake up, so I could feel your warm breath on my forehead - while the rain and snow continued to fall silently in the late evening. Even the incessant New England winter wind died down and the impatient possums in our backyard stepped lighter on fresh snow.
You slept on while dreams drifted about, some of them falling loose and floating down to me.

Once again, through this blog where we found so much, dear husband - Happy Valentine's day.

Happiness to all my (two-and-a-half) readers too.

2008-01-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

The worst kind of ghost is one that's real. An ugly spectre that refuses to stop haunting the mind and makes unpleasant visits when one is least expecting it to. It lives in history - in painful words recorded to last forever. It leafs through pages recording love, pain, ecstasy, great passion and abandonment and throws little pieces to the innocent passer-by. Then it paints great sketches of times and people then - words, minds, lives, memories, fingers, bodies, smells, tastes - and isolates the reader into a dark corner with its grand and self-absorbed presentation. It mocks the reader, telling him of a complete and joyous world that existed before he was found worthy of being recorded in time. He finds his own history interwoven with the ghost's tale, a thread running on a parallel line, tangled in a messy web of words, but inconsequential in that old and beautiful time. And he is reminded that history had been created and experienced before him.

The present will never detach itself from its past which is what makes history and ghosts so real and torturous.

2008-01-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I'd felt like a large snowflake.

Today I feel like a utensil brush made of metal. Our maid back home in India loved those brushes - helped her get the grease off the pans that my mom would make some of her delicious fried potatoes in. It's an insane brush, full of scraggly wires, tangled together in a huge, confused mess. And it's quite crazy too - light and prickly - empty from the inside, but so noisy that you can't see through it.

2008-01-03T12:48:00.000-08:00

Thoughts

Yeah, it's a psychological sun alright. Bright and sparkly on a morning that's minus 16 degrees. It's white and shiny and crawls all over me, slides into me through my nose and mouth. It freezes inside like a sand-paper cake. And then gives me a cold, wet, grating kiss.

A little elf of an Italian man dressed in high, tanned leather boots and a woolen cap with ear flaps, drove us around in the bitter cold evening. His first story made me grin wide in my mind. There were two tales mixed into one - about cows that saved his life and bonded with him at a level so spiritual that it makes him cry even today. And almost cry he did.
I could almost feel the husband, very animal-loving and almost Italian in his romantic and forthright loquaciousness, being moved to tears himself. Oh! The cows, the bitter cold, Antonio shivering in the snow with the cows keeping him warm! *sniff*
Do I refuse to get moved by such things because it makes me look/feel gullible?

The new year celebrations procession in the evening was a let down in many ways. They didn't seem to have prepared at all - at least not like one would expect. I had imagined one of those lavish, crowded, bright sea of good-looking people in flashy costumes, expensive props, lights, music, the works. But this wasn't. I can't deny it was charming, though. One large golden Chinese dragon, a crumpled alien head made of aluminum foil with white streamers for snake-like arms, a gigantic air-filled dinosaur bouncing along on the shoulders of three huge men, streamers being shot into the freezing night, clowns (and some pretty women) on stilts, children throwing chocolates and little bead trinkets for the spectators.
All in all, a nice little impromptu procession - let's remove the 'Grand' from its name.

2007-12-07T02:40:00.000-08:00

I can't sing, but I can write it out...

Hyaff I toldchoo lately that I LOve you
Hyaff I toldchoo you theres no one helse above you
Yuh fhill my hhart with glaydnayss
Tchake away all my saydnass
Ease my throubles thats watchoo do

Hand at the hend of the day
We should ghive thanks and praaye
Tchoo the one, tchooo the one

Yuh fhill my hhart with glaydnayss
Tchake away all my saydnass
Ease my throubles thats watchoo doooo!

It's hard to believe it's been a year, sweet love.

2007-11-14T01:52:00.000-08:00

I was just reminded of (one of) the strange things that happened to me.
It happened while I was in the 6th standard, writing an exam. Now before I tell you more, I want to let you know that it was the English exam and I loved those. My point is, I wasn't in any unpleasant state of mind or something of that sort.
The school I studied in didn't have those fancy single desks for each student; we just had long "benches and desks" with around 5 childern sitting on each. This meant that bags, water bottles and lunch bags would all be lying by your feet.
Once silence fell over everything and I started writing, I felt something move under the desk. I ignored it the first couple of times, assuming it was the strap of a bag or a water bottle. But when the movement got worse, I looked under the desk and saw a parrot sitting by my feet - unblinking and calm.
For the first few seconds I went completely blank. What else does one do when one's feet meet a parrot under the desk on an exam day?
I watched it quietly and then moved the tip of my shoe to touch it's tail. On doing that the parrot got a little restless and turned the other way, so as to keep it's tail away from my shoe. Curious, I tried it again, this time, nudging the parrot on the side of it's plump body. To that, the parrot responded by straightening out, rustling it's feathers and walking towards me. I sat absolutely still, and the parrot walked under the bench I was on, and away from my sight.
Where it came from, I have no clue. And where it went to, I hope at least the parrot knows (for its own good).
If I had continued staring down at the floor, the teacher would think I was up to no good. So I sat up and continued writing, hoping someone would notice the parrot.
Funny thing is I forgot to ask the others if they saw anything strange during the exam that day. And I never really told any one about it.
Hm. And so it is.

2007-09-07T00:02:00.000-07:00

They drove by the deep, bubbling, dying marshes of Salem on an evening soaked in the dull orange of a sad summer sun. Against a darkening evening sky, gnarled trunks of ancient trees drew black, sinister patterns of pained faces, bruised hearts and lonely lives. As rushed rubber razed the rain-washed, muddy tracks, small patches of brown splattered the deep green, thick leaves of old plants.
She sat on the back-seat, watching the glitter of beach sand on her toes, thinking of the tiny translucent thing she had seen in the water. She had accidentally stepped on it, then picked it up and thrown it into the ocean.
They had spent an evening together, most parts of it in silence. Strangely, strangers stranded together but comfortable in their own worlds.
She had walked along the shore, watching children play in the freezing cold ocean. They picked up little crabs, only to be bitten by little claws. But they wouldn't stop picking them. It was almost as if they wanted to feel the pain. She had watched them with a distant joy. And on a particularly lonely spot in the cold bay, she had stepped on the tiny translucent thing.
They had watched the sunset together - standing many many meters apart, smelling the salt from the ocean mixed with the heavy fragrance of vegetation from the marshes. And the more she thought about it, the more she imagined that beach as a small, lashing pond in the middle of a thick jungle.
As they walked away, she found herself left with the memory of only a giant ball of freezing fire sinking into an icy horizon. And a tiny translucent thing.

Somehow, she forgot there was ever a sunset.

2007-07-05T03:14:00.000-07:00

Looking at a curly, twirly mint and cream candy on a polished brown table, I wish I liked the flavor. It looks like the perfectly rounded mouth of a pot that suddenly froze while the candy was being stirred. Cleverly curving candy contours. Neem-green lines lying lazy and liquid on a creamy white bed of sugar. Plump, round edges like a ceramic-finished pot glistening under the blue tube-light. Crunchy water-hyacinth in a tiny, sugar-sweet pond of ice…

He gingerly picks up my little pond, absent-mindedly smells it and pops it in his mouth.
“You’ve been looking at it for too long.”

2007-06-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

Where has the writing gone?
Though not admirable, there used to be a writing that acted as a medium for what one comfortably called creative expression. And that came out of a steady graph of crests and troughs that the mind traveled through.
Is it strange that I find writing the most elusive activity these days? Like a little grey butterfly that flits about in a garden when I look out the window and disappears when I walk out to take a closer look?
I have learnt to never sit down saying, “Today, I will write” because I will not write that day. Or the three days that follow it.
Because today, I am not a still person. There might be rises and dips in the graph of being, but the writing has gone, however little it used to be.

So
Today, I will not write.
Today, I will begin learning to just be.

2007-05-28T00:55:00.000-07:00

DAMN! I was just about forgetting it, when the stupid i-Pod decides to play it straight into my stupid ears.

Up in smoke you've lost another love
As you take a hit off your last cigarette
Strung out, burnt out
Yeah you're down on your luck
And you don't give a... huh!

'Til the best part of you starts to twitch…
Ain't - that - a – bitch ! !

FREAK OUT! I'm alone now.
I feel just like I'm losin' my mind
'Cause love is like the right dress
On the wrong girl
You never know what you're gonna find

You think you're high and fine as wine
Then you wind up like a dog in a ditch
'Cause love is like a wrong turn
On a cold night...yeah
Ain't that a bitch!!

Oh, the rasping and the groaning. Oh, the highs and the lows! Oh the wonderful speed, oh the smiling laziness.
OH!! The voice.

2007-05-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Words. Like pine needles that prick and pierce through tough skin. Needles that pierce and lodge themselves, thick and unmoving in flesh, raising a dull, undying ache. Viscous and warm, like the blood that gushes out and warms the face in tense bouts.

Irrelevant but vicious in their existence, preserving emotions of a precious time. Holding close, rudiments of lost people. Saving every element of time, thought and action shared.
Shredded bits of feelings that once flooded and lashed through every vein, every cell and every particle of momentary existence. Bearing witness to every now-morbid detail.

Words like the silent, painful choke that grip my throat as I read them, hate them. Written in smoky patterns and etched deep into your memory.

2007-05-07T03:36:00.000-07:00

She stood small and shiny, on the windowsill overlooking the little pear tree. Little brown streaks of an old-forgotten bar of chocolate, licked at by a tiny pink tongue ran all over her fan-like skirt. Her head was tiny and pretty, marked with a “KERS”, with the first “SNIC” neatly folded in metallic waves over her wrapper-skirt. Someone had loved her mild chocolatey taste many many years ago, and had decided to immortalize that through her flimsy, shiny existence. Pig-tailed head, twisted neck, crumpled face and fan-like skirt.
She stood leaning against an old photograph – a browned, old picture of a little girl with bright eyes and a black curly mop on her head. She had mud and paint streaking her tiny skirt, just like the paper doll. Little curls fell over her brown forehead, looking into the bright pools of her curious, smiling eyes. How pretty that face was, staring silently out of the old photograph!
Their little skirts flapped in the wind, their hair tickled their foreheads in little playful giggles and their feet pattered on the mantelpiece in the blue night. They stood there, one not knowing the other. Leaning on each other, angel faces, brown streaks, pig-tails and wide, smiling eyes. Memories of chocolate, paint, mud.
And then the wind blew hard through the branches of the little pear tree. She fell off – like a little paper doll in the wind. And lay there – quivering and shaking on the floor. In pig-tails, chocolate and streaks from a time long forgotten.

2007-04-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

This is to let you know I can still whip up a treat (as good as one can get, of course). This one's for you, sweet love :)

Rain on me like a million kisses
And wash away the colour of the sun.
Trickle down me like a cloudy river
And wake me up when it's done.

2007-04-10T00:39:00.000-07:00

By the fast-receding shoreline of optimism, they swing and sway about like boats thrown in a salty tear-filled ocean. Boats that swing and sway about, drawn together by threads tying their small lives. Lives dreamt about for a very long time but painted with new little things a little too late.
A little too late, but changing a little too soon for the paint to dry and set.

2007-03-15T02:37:00.000-07:00

Random excerpts from My Spring Dictionary

Night queen – fluffy, rabbit-tailed, pink and white fur; found awake and swaying in the sun
Flame of the Forest – large plasticky, orangish red cups lined with flimsy, droopy petals; found burning with morning dew

Yellow Flower Tree – yellow tree – so yellow, and full of thick, juicy, custard-yellow flowers, it can make your eyes hurt
Pink Flower Tree – pink tree – so pink, and made of dense clusters of flowers, they look like little cumulus clouds made of strawberry ice cream

Little green thing by the stone (not to be confused with a Martian) – flimsy, translucent, aching-green seedling that sprouted its leafy limbs the previous night. Growing quiet and bright green, next to a stone.

Tiny sunflowers – small droplets of the large sunflower; exact look-alikes only 5 times smaller – imagined to have fallen off from the larger flower when it shook itself awake one Spring morning

Grey Spring Butterfly – restless, flitty, splitty patch of grey found flying in random zip-zap patterns, not looking for anything in particular

That bud-like flower – soft, dull-green bulbs full of what is Spring is made of, with petals lining its top; usually found where Grey Spring Butterfly flits about

Sigh, the blue sky – liquid copper sulfate blueness dotted with blinding white bits of fluff – sigh

Welcome, Spring!

2007-03-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I watched this girl walk around in an ill-fitting shirt; ill-fitting but pretty. It was a little something her soon-to-be-fiancée bought for her while traveling by himself. He'd said something like "I really don't know if this will fit you, but I just wanted you to have it - because I just want you to"

True. What do you do? With some people, you cannot help but make that effort. And without it, things just wouldn’t feel right.
There aren’t too many people one would really want to make that effort for. But when that does exist, one has to make that effort - and do it, one will. Get up, act and do something just for that person. Something that says,
“I remembered. And I know it will make you happy".

How simple.
Sigh...

2007-02-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

Here’s the morning sun
Rising red, roaring, ringing
Like this paper cut

She nursed it all night
Deepening, daring, droning
With a sinking gut.