To the Impossibility of Cocoa

 

"So you think money grows on trees, do you?"

"No. I think you said chocolate grows on trees."

"Yes, they do."

"Then buy me one." 

"What?!"

"A chocolate tree.

I want to be able to pick chocolate from it and devour it as I please. You said you cannot buy me chocolate every day because we don't have money. Then you buy me a tree."

I danced around my mother in a wheatish pink frock as I tried to reason out with her, the sheer possibility of growing a cocoa tree in our yard. She, whose face had gone the colour of my frock due to the anger she bore at my chocolate obsession, looked at me as if she couldn’t believe she had given birth to this stubborn, unbending little person.

I was obstinate. While I could understand with a BIG heart that we did not have that kind of money to buy me chocolate every day, what I failed to understand is why they were being uncharacteristically strict about getting me a plant that would produce chocolate. I had heard all about it in school and couldn’t wait to perceive the wondrous sight of chocolates dropping onto our yard instead of the boring pink guavas. I automatically smacked my lips as simultaneously received a smack on my head from my mother for day dreaming in front of a Math problem.

Nothing had obsessed me to this extent before chocolate came into my life. It was almost like a sweet brown human who was a friend to this bespectacled nerd who had not yet won an actual human friend in school. And as any other child whose sensitivity flapped at her sleeves as she jumped and frolicked her way through her quiet and lonely childhood, she was determined.

“If you do not have the money to buy me chocolate every day, then get me a tree.” I said flatly at the dinner table.

Dad looked up in between his food inhalation, absolutely clueless. My brother hardly heard or cared. My mother turned her eyes wide as if preparing them to come out of her sockets, and pursed her lips. Bewildered now, dad decided to turn his head in my mother’s direction for help. In between her tightly clenched teeth, Amma said, “Your daughter wants to grow chocolate in her own tree because we won’t have to buy it every day for her.” Dad waited for her to complete or add any details to the same but none surfaced as Amma had gone back to her food with unnecessary force. So he cleared his throat, while attempting to clear his head as the thought, ‘You were right, your daughter is actually crazy,’ kept flashing across it.

“Uhm. Don’t you think it will be difficult to manage a tree on your own, Kunja?” he asked, tone resembling melted butter on a pre-heated pan.

“It’s okay. I’ll grow it. Rema miss says, you just need to water it and talk to it,” “My Science teacher,” I added as an answer to his confused look. “Also, it’s good for the environment, Acha. All those perfumes that you use? We’ll all die soon because of that. The ozone layer is going to be replenished by our tree,” the six-year-old me chanted. Dad remembered a little too well how his little one was such a pain as he put on his morning deodorant. She would stand in the corner and stare at him accusingly muttering something some layer, atmosphere, the Earth and finally, death. Hence, he was not very eager to open that book. He looked as if he really wanted someone to jump in and save him from the situation. Perceiving the space outside through our window and warily watching the barely standing guava tree, he gave a non-committal jerk. “Of course. Trees are good for the planet. I’ll ask around, okay? Let’s see.” I nodded and pledged to wait patiently, as he ‘asked around.’

My wait grew long just as a magician’s ribbon-out-of-a-hat trick. A month or two passed as I took all my patience and good-will and put it safely into the box with my desire to have my very own chocolate tree. A few weeks later, I saw my friendly faced neighbour and his wife, digging up the mud in their yard, with a little sapling by their side. Curiously, I doubled back waiting for their usual, “Hi Mole!” I received it shortly after my act was made quite obvious. To my delight, upon asking them they told me it was a cocoa plant. My heart couldn’t contain the excitement that my face did, in a widening and muscle crunching smile that spread across my face as I heard it. His wife was a round and kind-faced lady who gestured at the grandmother who was sitting on the porch. Their aging mother who had wrinkles in her face and twinkles in her eyes alike, said encouragingly, “Your mother told us how you’ve been waiting for a cocoa tree. Don’t worry, you can have chocolate from this tree too, just as yours.”

I skipped to my house, singing loudly and waking my disgruntled grandfather who had fallen peacefully asleep over his daily paper.

The amiable neighbours told me that it will take at least two to five years for a cocoa tree to bloom. Though I couldn’t figure the extent to which my tiny little heart could take the ever-prolonging wait, I decided to wishfully long for it, till the tree decided to drop a chocolate seed onto the ground.

However, the time span of two years only left one thing, unchanged. My desire to have my very own chocolate tree. The neighbour and his wife shifted to the States six months later to the tree-planting day, not before making me promise that I’d water and talk to the plant, watching it grow. But shortly after that, when I was walking back home after school, the grandmother who used to lovingly observe me talking to the plant, had the same peaceful smile as she lay shrouded in white cloth with a lamp near her head and a hoard of weeping humans around. She was carried away and along with her, the cordiality among her sons who suddenly decided to end their ties with each other by dividing up the land. A lifetime spent together, a childhood that bloomed as they played around while their parents watched, was not spared in the family feud that ensued. So, what chance did a poor tree stand against three fully grown men determined to fight?

My mother tried to slam the windows shut glancing worriedly at me as I stared wordlessly from the top of my textbook at the electric axe that cut down the cocoa plant, at the middle of its growth phase, just a couple of more years from blooming. I hadn’t abstained from when I had waited for the tree to rain chocolate. I used to have it whenever I got it but not without reminiscing the time when I would have it from my very own tree which would not only give me my favourite brown friend but also save the world from being a desert. The sadness that spread in me as I traipsed around with my unfulfilled wish, was similar to the one that you feel momentarily when you see a sick puppy and which visited you at intervals whenever your thoughts decided to take a difficult walk. A few days later to my Cocoa-Cut-Down-Day, I heard my father arguing with my grandfather about cutting down the guava tree in our yard due to constricted space, so that he could plant a cocoa tree for me. The image of the cruel axe was still fresh in my mind; hence I told my father with a thoroughly dejected but calm demeanour that I’d wait until our yard is free to grow the tree. My eight-year-old face reflected disappointment like foam washed over the seashore as each wave hit the land.

As years sped by and life smiled at me in different ways, the ten-fourteen-sixteen-year-old me gazed at the strong guava tree stand suddenly tall and unwilling to yield its space to the next in line. It did not seem to believe in the concept of successors, I would say. When I was eighteen, I left home for studies, declaring defeat before the guava tree and wondering if growing a cocoa plant is one of the impossible tasks on the planet.

As I watched the guava tree being cut down, ten years later as part of my uncle’s renovation plans for the house, and the space for my cocoa tree being cemented and designed in varied aesthetic patterns, I wondered where all the unfulfilled desires go. Would they bloom in a different universe, away from our eyes, swerving tantalisingly out of our reach? In my head, my cocoa tree bloomed beautifully, showering my light pink frock with chocolate seeds as I swirled around it.

I am thirty-one now and I smile, rather grimace at this hardly possible wish, I want to fulfil, someday when I get a land and a house of my own. It just seems to simply get away from my fingertips every time, I believed I got near. I still wait around to find a space for my cocoa tree, I still wait to honour the dream of a six-year-old girl who wore flowers in her hair and smiled with chocolate teeth...

In Memory of Miss

 

The lamp posts beside the gate had bent and fallen over a little. Some of the broken pieces were covering the gateway. I walked carefully to avoid the sharp-edged pieces. The gate was a dilapidated one, too withered to be true to its purpose. The railings had outgrowths in them and were yellowing in the steady sun.

Once I got inside, a sudden familiar breeze lifted my hair fringes up. Slowly I made my way through the creepers welcoming my touch and brambles who tried to cling to my clothes as I walked past. The place was unkempt as if permitted to grow wild, probably because it held just one grave and its secrets. Wild berries had shed its fruits onto the ground. I trampled on some and they squished themselves to death under my feet. As I walked, the ground became bushier and thicker. The breeze that had invited me in like a friendly host when I entered the graveyard, never left me alone, though she flew onto sudden moods. I could see a little of the singular grave in the plot from where I stood. It was hardly visible because of the creepers, purple berries, and a mixture of lavender and white hues from the flowers that were hugging her, each probably attempting to tell its own story. I smiled to myself as I remembered how much she loved to listen to stories. Her mother would weave a narrative out of anything and everything like the neighbourhood cat and its family or the ants who went on an industrial visit to the sugar jar. These narratives her mother painted for her made her come alive in moments of boredom. She grew up listening to stories all her childhood. As she grew up further, she yearned for more of them.

***

It was her senior year in college. When her lecturer allotted the group assignments and presentations, each group huddled into a corner to devise their strategies. Literature graduation usually included summaries, notes on the author, themes and motifs in a presentation. Here, there was an extra fifth task designed by her teacher. The fifth and the last person who would present in the group would have to take a related poetry to the one already presented by the others and had to inspire the class to read it. Her constant fun in picking out particularly difficult tasks for herself made her choose the fifth task for herself. She drowned herself in poetries, searching for the unique note of inspiration that would make her audience come alive. She could find none in any of the poetry she read. As she waded through Larkin’s Church Going, she remembered her mother’s undeterred skill in creating narrative inspiration out of anything. She decided to use it in her presentation. The next day she stood in front of her classmates and teacher, and began narrating how her best friend steadily complained about showing up every Sunday for the church service. The girls laughed with her as she delved in and out of Larkin’s modernist techniques and observations of the church, through narratives. She ended her presentation with Larkin getting to sneak out of an empty church and her friend never succeeding in getting to do it. Her lecturer stood up immediately and said, “We want to listen to the poetry right now.” The class backed her up while she smiled widely at her student who created poetic inspiration out of nowhere. Before leaving the class, the lecturer asked her in a whisper away from the class din,

 

“Ever considered taking up teaching for a living?”

 

My feet got terribly scratched by a thorny bush as I tripped and fell forward. Finding a huge stone nearby, I got up and sat on it, wanting to rest more than anything. I started plucking out the thorns fiercely kissing my leg, one by one. All of them left a bead of blood on the spot where they’d met. I watched the blood beads stick onto my calves, rigid and thick without flowing down.

***

“It’s these new recruits. They think they’re better. She’s rigid, that’s what she thinks. She’ll learn how to hold on after a few blows.” The Head of the Department scoffed to his colleague. It was 2019. She had been working for the past six months in the College that appointed her immediately after she gave the interview. The Head of the Department was a sixty-year-old lean History professor whose forty years of academic experience crowed in fear under his towering ego. He looked back at her scathingly and said, “So? How was I supposed to know what exam they had today?’

“Sir, please, do not forget that you’re the Head of the Department. I reminded you yesterday. You called the authorities up in front of me. You expect me to just stand here and accept that you simply forgot the right details?” she asked, standing as rigid as he had mentioned to his colleague a few minutes back. “Don’t take it so personally, ma’am. They’re students. They’ll panic easily. Tell them it was a management failure. Cover it up, for your sake.”

“I am leaving now because it’s impossible for me to look at your face right now. On no account will I tell them that it’s their fault that they did not prepare for the exam. Good day to you, Sir.”

Students were waiting outside expectantly. She took a moment to compose herself before turning to face them. Taking a deep breath in, she said, “You’re going to write the exam you did not prepare for. But the fault is not yours. It is ours. Unfortunately, you need to bear the effects of the irresponsibility. I apologize for this mishap on behalf of everyone responsible and urge you to do the exam to the best of your capability. Ill make sure nothing befalls this way, in future. Thank you.”

They were disappointed, of course. Nevertheless, some of them came forward and held her hands, others said a word or two and thanked her for the honesty. Rest just gave her a nod and a smile as they departed to the exam hall. I am doubtful however, if they realised that as they walked away dejected, a little piece of her broke as she had to disappoint her students for the first time, that too for none of her fault.

I stared. The last rains had left patches of green algal outgrowths on the head of the tombstone. There was a perceivable crack in the middle. I wondered if four years could bring about this concrete degradation, though admittedly it was abandoned and unmaintained. I had no right to complain or even be concerned about the dishevelled nature of the place. I had not bothered to visit even her grave even once after her death. Maybe because I did not want to accept that she was gone. I took a stone and started scrubbing the algae patch. It made a scratchy noise that echoed all the way through the graveyard.

***

There was a construction site right next to her school. Hence all the secret exchanges in the corridors of the high school section needed to be held at a higher decibel for fear of being unheard. The screeching noises poured in all throughout the day and made an already upset fifteen-year-old her, more irritated. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to ignore the noises as she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw her teacher. She barely succeeded in giving her a wan smile. The teacher put her arms around her and said, “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

They walked amidst the crowd chattering teens while some stared at them half-stunned and half-jealous. A girl walking unflinchingly beside her English teacher who is also the Vice Principal was not met with normal responses in a school corridor. Well, she was always like that. She felt home among her teachers. It felt like a familiar and safe space for her. Maybe that was why she was keen on creating a space akin to that for her students too. Once out of the class din, her teacher asked her, “Why do you think you’re an outcast? Why do you think people are shunting you in everything they do as a group? That’s the problem, isn’t it?” She nodded. The teacher waited for her reply.

“I don’t know. People always say I attract trouble, I talk too much, I talk too loudly, I ask a lot of questions, I don’t just let it go sometimes, like I feel a lot. They say I am different. I don’t gel. People feel uncomfortable around me. But I don’t do anything special for them to feel this way. I am myself with them, too.”

“That’s the issue. You’re yourself with them too.”

“But how can it be a problem?”

“That’s a problem because people when in a group, expect you to be like them or maybe like the majority in the group. You don’t do that. You stand out.”

“Outcast….”

“Precisely.”

“So what happens to people who stand out? Does any body ever come to be friends with them?”

“Yes. Some people seek you out. People who are outcasts, themselves. They will come to you because they need someone who can listen. Someone who can understand what it’s like to be, to be left out of things.”

The fifteen-year-old smiled at her as she asked, “So, you’re an outcast too?”

“Yes. I am. Let me ask this, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“An outcast. And a teacher like you.”

***

Arjun was waiting for her outside the staffroom. She came out, hands laden with answer sheet bundles to be distributed to the class. They started walking towards the class. He was one of her very special students, among the endless list of special students. Arjun qualified himself to be an outcast in every manner. He came from a challenging and traumatic family background with strained parental relationships. He had to fend for himself at a very young age, even manage a household of three while he tried to complete his degree. Echoing her teacher’s words from around eleven years back, he sought her out to share his story after the initial months of acquaintance. He never accepted her offer of financial aid but he shared every bit of his struggle with her. He knew she could pick him out of his lowest lows to embrace a dewy morning. She had been a listener to many stories that way, during her short tenure of one year. Arjun informed her that he was finally invited home for Christmas by his father. They had been going through a rough ordeal for a few months. She was overjoyed in seeing his eyes light up as he said this. She asked him the details about his journey before leaving for class. She planned to meet him the next day before left. She packed him lunch and also got a surprise gift for him, a Christmas star. He was overwhelmed on seeing it and fell short of words. She just patted him on the back and said, “Thank you for sharing your story.”

“Thank you for being my teacher, Miss.”

***

I sat on her grave, tired from the scrubbing of the algal bloom. I placed my hands slowly on the centre of the grave. Arjun’s story was one among the thousands of stories she lent her ears to. She believed that stories were the pathways to getting to know people. If a person decides to tell you their story, it’s because they want you to recognize a particular element in it, that’s them. According to her, once you get hold of that element, you hold onto that significant part of the individual that’s left with you. It helps you get through to that person; helps you to help him grow. She listened. She spoke on it. She gave them her shoulders to sob. She gave them her hands to hold onto while they tried to stand up. Meanwhile she told them her stories too. She made them laugh and cry through them while she quoted Aristotle’s purgation above their runny noses. To any question she’d face, she told them humans needed healing. Healed humans have a better chance of saving the world. She believed in helping her humans (her students) heal. She lived the ideas she professed in College. The irony was that the story-lover in her never listened to the stories about her in the campus. She never heard the students’ stories after they left her side, hands full of books, brains full of perspectives and mostly, stomachs full of her lunch. I picked a flower from the grave and turned it over in my hands, wondering if she ever forgave her students. Her own students who sold her off for a few grades. Her students who came to her with wide smiles and planted the seeds of hatred underneath her table.

***

Githin’s story was one of the last she had heard before she left. Githin shared his story during her last days in campus, though she was unaware of the fact that her time was marked, herself. One of her good performing students of the final year, he started showing subtle signs of disturbance as they worked on his project together. Never missing a less-energetic nod from her kids, she picked out Githin and made him spill out his story. The world she had stepped into in 2019, as an Assistant Professor of English Literature, had changed by the. There was a scent of betrayal in the petals of the flower kept on her table. She moved amidst the sea of her students, not noticing their changed faces as she passed. Githin hailed from a dysfunctional family, undergoing severe trauma throughout his childhood. She could sense an invisible rope tied to his midriff pulling him hard as he made to run forwards. She wanted to simply untie the rope and let him breathe freely. She succeeded halfway in it too, though by then, she was nowhere to be seen.

I got up from the grave and went to the white bougainvillea tree nearby the grave growing wildly, just like her. Picking the nearest flower bunch from the tree, I laid it to rest near the foot of the grave. While watching the off-white flowers rest against her feet, I thought about the day it all came toppling down.

She had received an anonymous call while she worked on the dream catchers to be given out as souvenirs for the final years’ farewell. The call informed her that her job was in jeopardy and to contact the principal immediately. Though the news left her aghast, she was disbelieving at first. Something in her mind signalled an abrupt closure. She tried to argue with herself thinking that her students hadn’t even received her signature on their final year projects. ‘Surely they wouldn’t do this to her. They wouldn’t.’

But they did.

The principal informed her that she was terminated. Later that week, she met him and demanded a reason for her termination. He said there was just one reason for her dismissal from the College.

“Your students certified that you were of no good. I am sorry you had to hear that.”

As she walked down the huge winding staircase, a sense of chill made its way down her spine. Questions boomed in a harrowing and hollow voice inside the dark innards of her head, wondering many things at once. She remembered the principal’s friendly smile on a morning when he saw her making the entry an hour before college time. She remembered his admirable pats when he learned about the special coaching hours she provided for her students after official college time. She even caught sight of him more than twice as she ran to catch the bus. All these came gushing back to her. She tripped on the steps and almost fell as she couldn’t see due to tear-clouded eyesight. As she glided through the gardens of the College, her hands started shivering. She started getting flashes of the hours spent with her students, their projects, discussions and their dissertations that were crafted together. She wouldn’t get to sign them. She wouldn’t get to say goodbye to them. And moreover, did they ever want to say goodbye to her? Her eyes burned. It was like she was hit by a truck from behind without warning, thrown up in the air and fell down on the bare ground from a hundred feet above. She hit the floor as blood oozed out of her, staining the grey road, deep red.

Githin met her outside the College as she stepped out of the gates. There was no one in sight to apologize to her ‘on behalf of anyone’; no one ‘to take responsibility for’ what happened to her; to give her a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold onto. The road was empty and the area was deserted except for Githin who was the one who saw her last.   

A trickle of a tear escaped from my left eye and made its way to my cheek.

“I wish you wouldn’t forgive them.” I whispered to her.

And I turned back from her grave and as I did, I heard my brain repeat the lines I’d heard four years before.

“It’s just a job.. you’ll get another one.”

“What? You’re upset over losing a job? Come on. People don’t have enough to eat. What are you complaining for?”

“Really? Couldn’t sign? I mean, is it bad?”

“Ammu, I told you teaching is a stupid job. See? Why do you want this so badly anyway?”

I walked past the thorny bushes, trampling many sharp thorns under my bare feet. As I neared the gate, I saw a four-year-old me in petticoat waiting for her mother to dress her up. She danced on toes with excitement as the mirror was too high for her. She was beside herself with happiness as she would get to wear her grandmother’s saree to pre-school. She couldn’t clearly understand why. She just knew she would be acting like a teacher today for the fancy dress competition. Half an hour later she stood in a faded blue saree and a hang-me-down blouse before the mirror while her mother rammed her grandfather’s thick-rimmed black spectacles into her tiny face. Her father lent her a huge stick with which she made her presence in school. A stick in her left hand and a chalk in the right hand, she made her way onto the stage as I made my way outside the graveyard. I turned back to the grave one last time as I closed the worn-out gates. I wish I’d given her more love before she passed. I wish she didn’t have to pass either. But some people, the sooner they’re gone, the better for them. They receive better justice in the grave than when alive.

The four-year-old smiled widely at her audience and chanted,

“Gooooooood Moooornnniiiinnnggg Children….”

And as the audience comprising of all the parents and teachers of the pre-kg section chanted back good morning to her, I wrote on the wall of the grave, “In memory of Miss…”  

Blurs and Blues

 Carrots shimmering. Wait, what?!

Yes. Carrots shimmering in a haze of orange hues. I blinked. A thick liquid made its winding way through my woebegone lashes to my cheek and hung onto my chin for dear life. I went to the mirror and stared, barely able to make out anything through my cloudy vision of 4 am. A puzzled Aathira stared back, only this time with the right eye resembling a large, yellow, thick, dotted football. 

Around five hours later, I was thrust with a sheaf of prescriptions and a carton of tablets, all well-advised for a good call of viral conjunctivitis. An eternity that involved tonnes of sticky yellow wet cottons and a well-decorated eye with ornate patterns of dried pus around the borders, a lot of actual tears of the person whose face was so swollen she forgot how it looked before the infection later, I was declared fully recovered from the virus who found a fascination for me.

But you see, carrots were still shimmering. The normal but blurry faced Aathira tried to smile back from the mirror though with very little effect. After another round of rubbing, fretting, crying which resulted in an even blurrier eyesight and a frustrated series of consultations, I was informed I am suffering from the condition of corneal abrasion. 

Have you ever had to sit through a movie that was so disturbing and painful that it was torture to see it in the first place while even hours after it ended it still refused to vacate the insides of your head? This was such a condition. After going through a terribly painful and infuriating ordeal of a viral eye infection, the virus left in me a scratchy souvenir. My cornea had been scratched and maimed like a blackboard taken over by children after school hours. 

I did not know if I should have been thankful because the condition was not permanent. The garment of doubt worn by almost all the eye specialists still left an unanswered question; the time frame of my recovery. Embracing the uncertainty of my impending healthy cornea, I walked out into a blurry world. 

My moons had a rim of pale light around them and all the traffic lights carried a halo in them. Halo-less objects and people swerved tantalizingly above me as I made to reach it through my chubby fingers in vain. It was the first Sunday that I had the time to attend to the details of my blurred vision since the weekday mornings were more or less a blur in itself with all the scooter horns and train announcements. Sunday morning I woke up slowly and made my filter coffee in a whiff of brown and white haze. 

After I tenderly made my way out onto the terrace I watched the shaky squirrels playing around in the yard. I tried blinking twice with no effect on the quality of my image. My standard low resolution (72*72 pixel) picture quality remained adamantly unchanged. A little noise distracted me and I moved nearer the palm tree of my mysterious neighbor, to see a hue of sky blue and red perched upon the strongest of the branches. The woodpecker chose that moment to decide and fly to a more private spot where a crooning coffee-holding snob wouldn't distract his daily affairs. Once I turned to look at the squirrels again, it was then that I noticed something. 

The visible world of mine was divided into two. One with no filters, clear and crisp, maybe extra sharp in the effect of the second one. And the other was a painting with no definitions. Here, the deep and mellow greens of the trees blended into the blues of the sky. The blues were intruded by the bright yellows and browns of the wide-terraced houses of Tamil Nadu which tapered along the grey walls of my terrace and the contrasting red tiles of the floor. Standing there, I didn't think I could ever explain the feeling of having two light weight, oppositely ordained and starkly contrasted cameras in you, to another soul in this planet. This was just my world, a world only I could perceive beautifully cut through the middle, to expose the well-defined and the chaotic other half. 

Post these realizations, I started to play around with the colours of my chaotic eye. If and when I found the crowd overwhelming, I would close my proper eye so that all faces and heads would become a blur. Few times it resulted in me ignoring my acquaintances too, though that had some serious side effects. Slowly I began to like the fact that people would eventually walk toward me in a blur and as they get nearer to me they become clearer; though even then some sides are left to the shady hues. 

It has been seven months now and maybe I can say this is how I have managed to embrace my condition. No. I don't think I am embracing the condition. I shower my chaotic vision everyday with fresh new insults without stop. But somehow I have come to realize that sometimes it is good even to make out the known faces only when they get a little closer to you. It is okay sometimes to not know what is making its way towards you. It is good to be surprised. 

Some days in life, I have trodden along familiar paths with unfamiliar sensations of perceiving a person who I thought I knew well, in a strange light. The shock that surpasses you then, is because of your ardent belief in their familiarity. And familiarity in itself, can be deceiving most of the times.

Now when I blink thrice and slowly the fog on the borders of my vision drifts off and I perceive a previously familiar object in a newer light, I genuinely feel people should come with a known filter. A lens that shows you the obvious features at first but leaves a patch of greyish-white lining on the edges which takes its time to lift. Just so that, you know you stand the chance of being surprised at any point. 

Is this my way of fantasizing my nagging post-infection eye condition? 

Maybe yes. 

Anyway, y'all only have to bear with the pain of reading it and NOT THE ONE THAT MAKES YOU SEE TWO MOONS INSTEAD OF ONE. 

  

Culture Shocks and Heritage Classes

When I say I don’t find cows interesting, I don’t mean to offend cow-lovers or animal enthusiasts on any level. What I mean is that, cows never induce in us, sudden shocks or surprises. Like, ‘oh my god, look, there’s a cow!’ You might do it with a peacock, more so with a white one, stretch it as far as a fox or probably, a chameleon or a snake. But cows? These passive beings are just there, showing up miles before they get near you, huge boring reminders to a monotonous life. Hence, when I say that cows have never posed as mysterious pathways to exciting adventures before I looked out to them through the wooden barred windows onto their shed on those Sundays, you’ll probably get a minute indication on the events happening inside the room with the windows.

All my childhood Sundays were devoted to diligent ingestion and continuous assimilation of what is called ‘the spiritual route to fulfilment through The Cultural Heritage Classes’. I cannot wipe out your confusion on the term ‘cultural-heritage’ as till date, I have no idea what historical facts or cultural enlightening were we expected to imbibe from there.  Let’s not dwell upon that for now.

The place that I have ‘not-so-fond-memories’ with, is an orange hued ashram situated in an inner village of my hometown. Now, when I stress upon orange-hued, it doesn’t simply mean the walls of the ashram were painted orange. So were the highest order people who walked inside, not so much as glided, due to their spiritually awakened physical selves, did so in orange kurtas and orange sarees furthermore, orange dhotis and sat only on orange-cushioned chairs (insisting on the colour specification in every situation, irrespective of the emergency) and used orange handkerchiefs to wad off their orange phlegm, probably. As a stupid kid I used to wonder if they had only the fruit orange, for their meals? Plausible, right? Or maybe they’d use a masala that’d give the same colour to their food. The heritage classes gave me ample opportunity to let my imagination run wild and nonsensical. Those boring and inane hours of a weekend taught me nothing but how to visualise oneself sitting in the clouds as they whisked past and how cows and their chewing could be entertaining for an eternity.

Speaking of the inhabitants in the ashram, the first and highest order was the orange-fevered ‘Round-Bald-White-haired-Heads’ who spoke in their deep voice, as they emitted an air of base quality humming to their speaking styles to grant a saint-like quality. The second lot, under them were the ‘Less-Round-Still Bald-Almost White-haired-Heads’ who wore the pristine white to indicate that they were following the orange musketeers. Their voices lacked the deep quality and was not very good with the ‘humming effect’ either, but practice could go a long way, as we all know. And below these two, were the Reds, ‘Deep-Young-Reds’ who had nothing to do with spiritual awakening or orange-peeled pathways of self-actualization. Their wine-coloured skin and tanned arms placed them further away from the austerity of the Orange-White Clad folks, somewhere along the noisy din of the working class. They cleaned the orange chairs and washed the white clothes, brushed the brown floors and swept the mud-smeared verandahs for the O-W Clan to walk barefooted, as they delivered talks on spiritual re-awakening of a man to the dawn of independence.   

Reverting to the divine purpose of my weekly visits to the ashram, me with a group equally confused and clueless kids sat on the sparkling clean floors, like that of the closets in the Harpic Toilet Clean ads, of brilliantly lit rooms with fresh air choking our nostrils as agarbathi-infused positive fumes made its speedy route to our sluggish hearts. As our brains slipped into slumber punctuated by the valiant stories of Harishchandhra and Prahlada, our stomachs eagerly waited for the ghee-coated mysurpa that made its regular guest appearance at the climax. I must admit that one can make their peace with the clean-fresh domestic air and the artificial sweetness-loaded mysurpas of the mid-morning. The tiny frown in my face peeped out of its hiding place for the first time when I saw the white saree clad long haired woman, or fashionably referred to by themselves as, Our Guru, had an unwavering and never-faltering smiles constantly stuck on her face to such an extent that sometimes there was no difference between the real person and an oil painting of the same person showcasing their best fake smiles. Even more bizarre thoughts crossed my mind as their optimism-plastered faces started speaking the strangest and most confusing of ideas and called it ‘food for thought’.

Nothing resembled food nor even mediocre food in anyone’s thought in any of their lessons. While I noticed that these ‘qualified-but-retired-teachers-turned-gurus’ never seemed to dwell upon significant historical dates and data when it came to classes, they exhibited a remarkable capability in measuring the size of your breasts each month after puberty hits you so that you could be prepared for the ‘beginning-of-the-shawl-wearing-phase’. Cultural Heritage, as these classes slowly progressed, started to mean things like being aware of your own gender to such an extent that being a girl included the constant fear of your virginity dropping dead as soon as a guy looks at you, concealing your body at its ‘extras’, probably a bigger hip or a full-round breast fits into the condition, being aware that crimes of the highest order included sex as the first one, which would land you in a place more heinous than hell. The unmarried one though; the one that happens after marriage would make you pregnant and give you the Mother-God privilege as it included God’s or society’s blessings. No. I am not done yet. Also, to include some very tricky stuff aimed at confusing us is, “Don’t eat the food, let the food eat you.”

Now let me revisit our old friends, the cows. The shed was located outside the well-lit halls in the backyard of the ashram with around four to five fully grown cows and two calves. I used to wander around there as I tried not to curse dad for appearing late to pick me up, thereby leading to a full loss of a Sunday. Almost a quarter of my beautiful and most-awaited childhood Sundays lay famished and dried up under the large hovering foot of heritage. Cows were my escape into a dreamy-imaginative torpor amongst the piles of garbage on culture learning. After the episode on the comparison of premarital sex to the projectile vomiting of a two-month-old baby and being chided for not waiting to be eaten by a banana I was given for lunch, rather sinking my hungry teeth into it., I succeeded in finding reasons to skip my avenue to ‘heritage awareness’.  

I still cannot say that I am against learning the nuances of one’s own culture or brandishing pride in one’s own heritage. But to be honest, I found very little culture in the compulsive conditioning of gender roles and a distorted heritage in the subtly transferred caste prejudices in the functioning of the ashram. None of their thoughts, actions and beliefs set them apart from common people as their clothes did, with its sun-emanating hue and texture. Only one person won my sympathy though. My forever worried little mother waited for her divinely gifted and spiritually awakened daughter to appear at the gate every Sunday afternoon while all she saw, after twelve long years of weekly training is, a fully grown defiant rebel yelling at the neighbour as she kicked her shoes to the stand.  

Menarches and Monologues

Mothers who do not miss tiny specks of dust that settle on the rods of the window, like the toppings on your favourite ice cream, cannot be fooled when it comes to those tiny deep red blobs on your pale lemon-yellow frock, while you whirl around playing ‘Runner and Catcher’. I was rushed inside with unnecessary force, amidst a hush and a frivolously weeping Ammumma and bathed in cold water. I tried to mouth my genuine bewilderment while Amma scrubbed me vigorously with soap. She did not respond except for a curt nod and continued with her task (wiping now) while I sneezed a couple of soapy froth bubbles owing to taking in breath at the wrong moment. While I scrambled out of the bath, she said “You’ve become a big girl now.”

Never would I have ever imagined that a simple and an absolutely normal biological occurrence as periods could instigate chaos in a household. 

Well, it can.

Arrangements were made and I felt as if the house was heaving suddenly with a lot of people who came to visit Me. I was made to sit in a room where people sat around me and spoke about totally insignificant matters like the oncoming exam for their child or the extravaganza of next-door family weddings. I remember aunties and elder sisters pressing their fingers on me and looking at me almost pityingly (which I’d soon find out why) as they came in and squashed into the remaining space in the room, while uncles refused to meet my eyes and stayed ‘outside’ the room, embarrassed for some reason. None of this surprised me more than the fact that people started weeping unnecessarily when they saw me all decked in a traditional ‘pattupavada’ and wearing a flower garland that fell way below my actual hair. A relative who I swear I was seeing for the first time ever, came so close to plant a wet kiss on my cheek, that I could actually see her eyes fill up like a fountain before they spilled. Utter confusion and a complete disarray ensued in my brain on what was exactly happening to me and why was there a sudden shift of worlds due to a few negligible, probably washable, drops of blood stain?

Some of my marvel at the whole thing seemed to have clawed its way to my face because Amma pinched me hard and whispered, “Close your mouth and stop gaping like that.”

A momentary distraction came in the form of my brother and cousins who peeped in through the window. Their sincere worry had been that the ‘Runner and Catcher’ was still on hold and we were down by just two points. I wished I could give them a proper and credible reason for putting The Game on hold but I was too perplexed and all I could manage was that it was something serious as there were a lot of adult tears involved. 

Little did I know that the events that followed would be just as weird and strange as the others. A brown hard bound vintage copy of the Ramayana was placed before me as I sat facing the idols in the pooja corner. I was asked to retrieve a ‘Mirror with a tail’ from it and look into it and perceive my beauty while the crowd in my house stood and watched. I took the mirror from inside and stared at it trying my level best to ‘perceive my beauty.’ All I saw was a pair of bemused eyes staring back at me along with my identification mole (mentioned in my school diary) near my right eye.

Thankfully, the periods that followed later in life had been less eventful and surprisingly marked by a lack of concern. For one thing, cramps made their way into my monthly bloodsheds like stubborn pigeons refusing to go away even after repeated warnings. Spotting days after spotting days passed as Amma received calls from school informing I passed put in the assembly or the exam hall or the audio-visual room and the like. I’d be brought home where I lay in a pool of blood and my misery. Defying logic was one of the acclaimed qualities in Amma. The logic here was pretty simple too. Why not allow me to stay home on the first day of period? At this she strung a together words that made up a flashy multicolored mismatched chain, like ‘strong’, ‘giving into the pain’ and ‘bold enough to endure’. Finally, Dad decided to save his energy for a worthier argument and left the matter. 

One such day I was brought back from school and in between my emotional and bodily distress akin to your lower abdomen getting ironed so that it became wrinkle-free, I managed to ask her, wouldn’t these monthly auto tours gauge a larger hole in the money saving schemes designed by her. In response to this, she left me to my despair in the hall upstairs, alone and knowing I’ll have no one to rant to, which is the ‘worst’ when in pain. No doubt about it, fifteen minutes later I saw darkness creeping into my eyes and colour bombs exploding inside my closed eyelids as I clutched my stomach in agony. I slipped onto the floor allowing the cold to creep into the scorching blisters.  Some kind of a yelp came out of my mouth in the next contraction and I was hazily reminded of the same noise that Caliban from The Tempest produced in the excerpt covered by our teacher a few weeks ago. My exceptional liking towards Literature has come in handy quite a few times in life. This was one such moment when the lines of the Play flowed out of my head through the wails in my abdomen like a water out of a tap. As I twisted and turned and warped in convulsive pain on the cold floor, my throat shrieked the most gruesome and hollow-toned monologues by Shakespeare, though everything was punctuated through a scream. Half an hour later, I was put back in bed by a thoroughly shaken father, who kept asking my aunt, the family doctor, if period cramps could affect mental stability and turn his daughter into an English chanting 80-year-old. 

More fainting and seizure days followed while I resorted to my drama recital once within the confines of home. I still had no idea how it worked but somehow my energy alterations to the monologues reduced the impact of cramps on my head. This way, I’d be more concerned about the ensuing derangement of Lady Macbeth or Caesar or whoever depending on the text chosen by the school for the year. 

Maybe that’s what is meant by purgation in literature; how it purges you or relieves you slightly of your pain. Or the Cramps and Caliban share a secret code in life. Plausible. Later on, there were people (not the teary ones) who appeared to say, “Cramps are a passing phase. They stop when you’re fifteen, no sorry, twenty, or was it twenty-two? No. definitely twenty-four.”

Shakespearean texts work more than these unsolicited advices, everyone. Nineteen years later, cramps are still on, for your information. So are Caliban’s little monologues.

Rainy Strolls and Feigned Oblivions

 No. I am not somewhere far away from home, randomly reminiscing about the beautiful monsoons while I look out of the window at the lashing rains on the rooftops and the bewildered dogs on the street. Well, yes and no. Yes, I am away from home and no, I do not have a window here and hence I am not blessed with the sights of rain wrath over the neighborhood. I sit inside a rectangular cabin with wooden partitions for privacy with a fully working AC (sometimes giving you an unfamiliar sensation of a mortuary), a water cooler and a canteen, if you have the energy and will to take a walk of five steps. Whining, in any form is frowned upon here for the same reasons. What are you complaining about, exactly? Everything is so accessible. No tiring walks. No getting wet in rains. No distractions. Complete productivity. 

Funnily enough, sometimes, we realize the charm in something after we have lost it. Chennai rains, for me, have always been painful reminders of how everything around you changes except for a tiny sliver that adamantly remains the same. 

From 8b classroom, High School Section, Hari Sri Vidya Nidhi School too, you could see rains soaking the houses nearby, their cars and our own captains, running around without a rain coat or an umbrella. Some of the sprays hit my face as I leaned across to get a good look outside. Wishful it seemed to me, that, one would, sometimes, have neither rain coats nor umbrellas to shield you from rain. Enviously, I scowled at them while they playfully punched each other, laughing all wet and drippy.

A seemingly normal mistake of forgetting the umbrella was so unusual for me. Wait, was it really? For me or for my household? I mean, come on, you cram your breakfast, gulp down water, wash up, put on your bag and that's when Amma hands you the umbrella. There's no gap for a disgruntling sigh, let alone, refusal.  Once, in my desperation, I went the farthest you can go, in my house, by quickly slipping it back in the rack when she turned away. But she ran behind the car, yelling so loudly even the deaf neighbor grandma heard and looked irritated while I took the umbrella, accepting defeat. Forgetfulness is a rare quality, the 14 year old me, felt that day.

At 3:30pm when the school rang its final bell for the day, however, I stood quietly in the school porch, my umbrella hanging limply by the side, observing the umbrella-less kids go home unheeded and non-guilty. Well, a split second later, I tucked my umbrella neatly inside and wore the expression of a pretentious fussy idiot, cursing herself for forgetting the umbrella and walked ahead. 

All the water slushes and muddy piles with fish in them, aside, the best part was when you enter the narrow alley leading right up to my house. The alley was flooded completely and surprisingly with crystal clear water that went up till your knee, with no one but snoring neighbors in every house sleeping their way through the moody afternoon. I stepped into it and felt a shiver down my entire body due to the chilled water and took probably the slowest walk of a lifetime.

However, when I emerged after a while, remotely resembling a sea otter, with wet hair puckered to my face and teeth chattering violently, my sheepish face was met with a pleasant faced man, dad. He opened the car doors for me and I got in. Dad's usually irritating phone calls saved me this time as I could steal the umbrella out from my bag and put it under the car seat. 

Fifteen minutes later, when I sat down in a warm and clean pair of clothes with almost dry hair, thanks to the vicious hair drying techniques of my grandmother with the only risk of getting your neck cricked, I couldn't help but think of the half-amused half-confused face of my mother when she heard I forgot the umbrella. Thank God, she did not have time to dwell on it as she was pushed aside by a frivolous and positively alarming grandmother with a huge towel and a soap.  

Random Musings

 You know something we keep hearing about home. That home never changes. Home always remains the same. But right now, when I walk the paths which I've covered like umpteen times over, I think, 

..is it really that way? Does anything remain that way? 

Home does not have my grandfather anymore, frowning upon me as I walk outside the gate after 6pm.

The wide sky view from the terrace has been blocked a little by the new building on the next street. 

Pages have turned a brownish yellow in Kafka's Trial and Desai's Journey to Ithaca. 

Lizards play around in the verandah of the neighbour who moved out a few months back. 

Everything is different. Yet, something is so familiar. The odour. 

Odours filling the lanes, insides of my room, when the leaves rustle in the balcony and when ammumma fiddles in the kitchen. 

Even when buildings erupt, odour remains, I guess. 

When people move out, odour fills their absence. 

Muthassan's cupboard still smells like him. 

My books too. 

Wafts remain the signals to memories.