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.