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RSS FeedOctober 15th, 2012
Back Porch in Plunge
Moon lit backporch
next to the Baltic sea
where my soul lies
washed in the sea
and sometimes sleeps
in a hammock
swinging under its own weight.
The blemishless
reflections in the Plateliai
make it difficult to
distinguish up from down,
and God from the dead Salmonid
lying at the bottom of the lake.
We have very long nights
and sometimes we venture to the
inside of the house
where the TV sits and
watch movies through the long darkness.
My uncle tells me that if
I fell through the Earth,
I would end up right in his
backporch in Auckland.
Then I can stay there
for a few days
and then I can come back
very fast and create
a fishing hole in lake
when I emerge slightly drenched.
[A poem, that I wrote back in 2002, but then forgot all about it.]
September 19th, 2010
Flava and Albius (and Neruda)
Once upon a time, there was an emperor in Rome. He was an emperor, but he was also a person, and a father of sons and daughters. His youngest daughter Flava got sick one day and (as these stories go) only got sicker and sicker. The young Flava was also very dear to the chief poet Albius, who would often take the child on his walks around the palace.
When it was apparent that her end was near, the emperor made a plea to all his poets to create a poem so sweet and so real that the memory of Flava would live forever. The chief poet Albius was the one who knew her so well and was so in love with the child, that he was able to quickly write a poem in his sorrow. He wrote about how Flava would run around the palace, how Albius would often spot the sunlight in her hair from a distance, and how she would play mischief with her mother and the important visitors and sometimes torment the birds and sometimes hide some important papers belonging to this or that person. That afternoon when Albius first read alound his poem, the clouds appeared suddenly and transformed the sunny afternoon into the darkest cloudy rainless day.
The emperor didn’t like the poem at all and immediately instructed Albius to remove all the unfavorable mentions of Flava (playing mischief!) and focus more on the sunshine in the hair of her princess. But Albius’ poem was written and his sorrow had seen the outlet and it wasn’t going back. Emperors are usually just, but more so, they are just decisive, and in this particular case, he decided that Albius would hang for the transgressions against his dying child, and die before Flava. So Albius died, and all the poets were asked to keep the good portions and remove the bad references to Flava in Albius’ poem. The congress of the poets worked together for four days, breaking only for small durations until they all decided that there was no way to improve on Albius’ poem since no one could agree on what part was flattering and what part was a transgression.
So, as these stories go, they buried Albius’ poem with Flava and no one remembered her after a few years.
*******
In reality though, Pablo Neruda is not Albius and there is no emperor, and he can write anything he wants.
[Original in Spanish]:
Tú estás de pie sobre la tierra, llena
de dientes y relámpagos.
Tú propagas los besos y matas las hormigas.
Tú lloras de salud, de cebolla, de abeja,
de abecedario ardiendo.
Tú eres como una espada azul y verde
y ondulas al tocarte, como un río.[English Translation:]
You stand your ground, chock full
of teeth and lightening.
You propagate kisses and clobber the ants.
You cry from vitality, from an onion, a bee,
from your burning abecedary.
[From"Oda Con un Lamento" in "Essential Neruda"]
You can read the full poem in Spanish here, and in English here.
February 20th, 2008
The last teabag
“There is a certain guilt that you ought to feel when you take the last teabag to make your tea. Sure, there is more tea in the world, and likely in the pantry, but this is the last tea bag, for now.” Mr. Drew could have been the philosophy teacher just as easily as he was the history teacher. I am not really sure when and why he started telling me his story, but it is a marvelous story.
“And that happened every day?”
“Every single day. I would go make my tea, sometime in the afternoon, maybe at 2, maybe at 4, and there would be one, exactly one teabag. I took me a while to figure that out. Sometimes I would go there by myself, and sometimes with a coworker. I would take the last one. When I went in the morning to get some water, there would be no teabag. Guilt is accumulative. Every day you feel like you are taking a little bit from the society without being given a chance to give something back. So, I would wipe the microwave or the counter once in a while. But the teabag was there just for me.”
“When did you realize it was Caroline?”
“There were only four single women in the company. Two of them would go for client meetings some afternoons, and Joyce is much too older. And Caroline sits right next to the kitchen. So that was not a question at all. I used to talk to her everyday. She was seeing this dentist guy for a while. Then her high school sweetheart got back in town, but they didn’t go out.”
I wanted to know what the gesture meant to Mr. Drew, but I didn’t want this to be an interview. It was clear that somehow the last teabag had become a symbol of love and caring for Mr. Drew.
He may have been infatuated with Caroline even before that, but after that there was no stopping him. He had mentioned that only after the marriage he had asked her about the teabag, but she had just laughed it off.
February 13th, 2008
Idle Talk
Omar is a funny guy. First thing he said when he met Umesh was that he isn’t against idol worship. Pete and I were just heading out to Smitten and a discussion on religion wasn’t exactly on our mind. Besides we knew it would be continuing by the time and if we got back around 3 am.
We ran into these guys at Hobknob. God bless Eric@Hobknob who still recognizes us the patrons before the cover era. Pete was shocked the discussion on theology had taken so little time. He still hadn’t gotten lucky at all – night was not turning out to his expectations.
Umesh is the silent killer at times. When he was gone, what the rest of us needed and had time to do was to discuss theology at McDonalds. Pete was especially optimistic that he may still be able to get lucky when engaging in an obviously deep and intellectually stimulating activity in full public view.
The two women sitting next to us were either sisters or cousins on a trip to downtown, both or at least one of them married, and at least one of them from out of town. Mediocrity is beauty to Pete’s eyes, and they were ravishing by that definition. Pete was at his best instantly.
“Look, even in Pagan religions, idol isn’t considered the God itself, it is simply a focal area to collect and channel your thoughts. Sure, the idol can be broken or desecrated or destroyed, all that does is take away that particular point of focus.”
My mind was still in Smitten, Omar was getting pretty excited, the two female focal points of Pete’s attention had slithered away and the McDonalds was getting pretty busy with Sunday 3 am crowd.
February 11th, 2008
Katrina
I had never visited Nashville before, so when Jake said that he had to drive to Nashville for a funeral, I could not resist. God bless his mother who pressed that he not drive alone. So, we drove from GW to Tennessee. I love saying “GW to Tennessee”. It feels like breaking a rule. I could easily have said “East coast to Trevecca Nazarene University”, and have just as much fun. Drown the listener in vagueness on one end and specificity on the other. Leave no chance for criticism.
An uneventful 12 hr travel later, we met Dr. Campbell, Jake’s uncle, an MD by profession who played sombre music on the home piano. Being the deceased person’s grandson’s friend, I had no real role to play in the visitation, except just give out my condolences to a few people. Then I slipped out and went downtown. It was a lovely September day, the person who had died was not an acquaintance of mine, and had lived a long, fruitful life, and just as importantly, I had never been to Nashville before. It was a lovely Saturday evening.
There is a certain air to Nashville downtown – it is full of clubs and bars, and also has a lot of “outdoors” feel to it. Now I just had to sit down and send the vibe.
***
Katrina’s point of view on the crisis in Serbia was quickly out. She is Macedonian, and much more knowledgeable on this topic, and much more opinionated. What her point of view was, I can’t remember, just as I can’t remember why my mention of The Grateful Dead had to show that I don’t give a damn about the world. Their lead guy had just died, or survived an OD or something like that. Anyhow, a discord isn’t the worst thing if it helps you make a new friend. The bar stools in the lounge had just become a bit more comfortable, and the city a bit more fragrant. The city had also become a bit cooler, but that was probably a routine occurrence for it every morning at 3:30 am whether or not a certain smell of Dolce Vita was enveloping its prey and whether or not the story of a certain city of Veles where every car was also a TV was being regaled to disarm an already surrendered soldier.
January 29th, 2008
Jake and Abraham
Jake just likes to sit with Mr. Lincoln. He thinks it is cute. I have a weird feeling he actually goes there to overhear high school kids. Every year thousands of high school kids visit DC to see Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Jefferson. They apparently have lots of fun. They sit on the steps of these monuments and have candy floss. Then they walk around, some of them sneak to the back sides of these monuments and smoke cigarettes. They are clearly the tourists. From Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Montana, 45 other states, and a few from abroad. They are like the free spirits. Sure, they have secrets, but they can also discuss them as soon as they find a place that has less than 20 people. Jake sits in such places. He pretends to read. Then he listens. He listens and he scribbles. Wacko.
January 28th, 2008
Jake, the player
Any 6’2 good looking guy can be called that without having any idea about the guy’s personality. But Pete started calling Jake a player only after he had a rather candid conversation with Pooja. She is a sweet, sweet girl. If you ever see her walking around the campus, say hi for me. Give her a peck. She knows I like her.
So what did she tell Pete? Simply that she’s got the hots for Jake. I knew that before she knew that. To be precise, I knew that in 88, about 7 years before she (we) met Jake. It has got something to do with the fact that we went to same middle school and same high school and she knew a tall guy back then. So, she has got the hots for good looking tall guys. I never said she is utterly creative, did I? I said sweet. Sweet sweet girl. Give her a peck for me.
(Umm, yeah, we are related too, but don’t tell anyone.)
January 27th, 2008
Napping Before The Night Out
One thing that the self-confessed party animal Pete would swear by is the nap before the night out. In his so many words, “we must nap before the night out”. There was a slight problem with his nap theory. He would often wake up at 3 AM after starting his nap at 5 PM. Sometimes around at that time, if we were coming back and Jake saw him up and brushing his teeth, he would ask “Had a nice nap and ready for the kill, mate?”. If Pete saw us first, he would ask “Had a good time boys?”. I usually said nothing, since I still had that dreamy look in my eyes and the smell of perfume around me. I wanted to be around people at that time, and still not have to talk. Jake and Pete were perfect for that matter. They could talk and talk. Umesh was not good for that matter. He could talk and talk, but he also wanted responses. Its not that I would be totally silent or speaking just in monosyllables, but I usually did not want to discuss the night out.
September 3rd, 2007
The Bread wala bhai
When I was younger, like seven or eight, we used to be visited by the “The Bread wala bhai”. He would go house by house, with a large green box fitted on the pillion seat of his bicycle. He would stop gently near our house, and as he dismounted from the bike, he would make sure his leg go over the front handle bar of the bicycle. Mom would always buy a bread, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger bread. On some days she would buy eggs as well as some rusks, on other days, just the bread.
Me and my sister had a simple arrangement with him – we could buy a bun, and we wouldn’t have to pay anything. He would simply note it down, and get paid at the end of the month for everything we bought from him. It was a tacit understanding that we would only buy at most one bun a day. We could buy a 25 paisa bun, a 50 paisa bun, 1 Re bun (and later a 2 Re bun), but I can not remember, ever buying two. Mom would not pay for her purchases on a daily basis either. It was just too inconvenient with small change on a daily basis. End of the month was the way.
He would always come around dusk, when the children had, or were about to quit playing. We would be hungry, but still sweaty and tired, and not ready for supper. We would buy the bun and still run around eating it. I am sure he went through many houses and many streets, but the timing that he would hit at our house was very much the best. I think it also served him to be at the same place consistently as people would expect him. Though he had a very distinct air horn on his bike that he would press and play as he went around the street, still it might not have been well heard by us at times other than dusk.
He would pick up the goods at the local bakery, and deliver them from house to house at a small profit. We were never taught any compassion or pity towards him, nor were we taught that he is an overcharging monster. We never felt any pity or any negativity towards him. To us, he was just the bread wala bhai.
—–
For better or for worse, the bread guy had no name for us. He was significantly older than us – the name would do us no good. The choice of the address was between “bread wala bhai” and “bread wale uncle”. The latter would undoubtedly be reflective of a higher respect, and a higher social stature. However, he was stuck with the former for good. I don’t think we meant any disrespect, but we also did not think he was in the social equivalent league of our neighbors.
So many concepts that people study in business schools, I am sure the bread wala bhai had to just learn in life. Profitability, cash flow positiveness, those were all the concepts he was familiar with. He knew he would give out goods, not just to one family but to everyone for the entire month, and only then get paid. The last day of the month was likely, but not guaranteed to be the pay day for him. If we were going to be traveling, then he would get paid later. If it ever happened that mom did not have money that particular day, he would get paid next day. In all likelihood, he got paid around the last day, and likely never after the 5th of the following month.
And yet, he was more thankful for our business, than we were for the buns.
—————
Then, at some point of time, he stopped appearing. I am not sure how he fared. It is possible he moved up the chain and bought his own bakery, and didn’t have to go street by street on his bicycle. It is also possible he simply became ill and couldn’t do the rounds anymore. If indeed he did become ill, how would he get his money back, and what else could he really do?
As children, we did not think about these things, nor did we feel pity. Perhaps, this agreed with his entrepreneurial spirit – we were lovable little children, but customers first. Perhaps, our respect to him as a seller was all he needed to go on with his rounds.