What are words worth?

We always seem to feel a license to suspend the everyday disciplines when we're on vacation. I always wonder what that context would be where I am truly myself. Would I get up and dance, or run through the streets in my pajamas or lie on the beach...or simply sleep through the day? Why is it that I contain myself inside the bottled expectations of what we call "normal life"? I often feel I need to express myself in anticipated ways, to stay "true to [a] form" drawn by others (not without my own collusion of course). I find it hard to break free of that. And no one else to blame but myself. But there are also things you encounter in yourself on a consistent basis, those things that might be the "true form". Like the fact that one of my "essences" is housekeeper. I find myself tidying surfaces, putting things away, folding clothes, making neat piles of paper...you get the picture...no matter where I am. It is so easy to be away from th...

Holidays are meant to be happy. They are times for celebration and deliberate forgetfulness--of routine, of duty, of cares. They are about getting away from the despair that stares at us everyday from the pages of a newspaper and the big problems of the world: climate change, the care of the elderly, poverty and the arms trade, among many others. Some destinations might offer a true "getaway" but many of the more interesting places in the world are fascinating places just because they do not shut the world out, they draw it in. So here I was, in Istanbul, one of the more favoured destinations for travellers and tourists alike. Its syncretic culture, the links with a past that connects to so many strands of history, and the beauty of its mosque-lined riverfront make it a continuous journey of discovery. Not to mention the great food and the beautiful people. This was my second visit to the city, made more special because I was sharing it with my daughter. But somethin...

      --> In a pivotal moment in the film Still Alice , the protagonist, a professor of linguistics (played by Julianne Moore), desperately searches through her mind for the word "lexicon", and not finding it, deftly substitutes it with "wordstock." We're all familiar with that sense of not getting the right word at the right time, and most of us don't have the vocabulary (or presence of mind) for such a quick replacement act. I had a similar "elder" moment a few weeks ago when the word "traverse" escaped me completely, and made its way back into my head almost a full week later, when I least expected it. --> In the case of Alice, losing words was a sign of early onset Alzheimer's, but in most cases it is just normal (or chronic) forgetfulness brought on by having too many things in one's head. I often complain to friends that I feel like my mind is a basket full of unnecessa...

This morning I set off on my usual morning walk, at the quiet and beautifully cloudy hour of 6 a.m. and took my usual route, along a street I have walked on many times before, at different times of the day. Listening to one of my favourite podcast series, I must have had a silly smile on my face as I walked past a tight group of three dogs sitting (in what seemed to be a peaceable manner) in just off the road in a space that would have normally counted as a sidewalk. Quite mindful of the proverbial advice to let sleeping dogs lie I made sure to give them a wide berth as I walked past, thinking to myself that the large white female in the middle looked like she was happily pregnant. All of a sudden, the female dog began barking loudly and rushed at me, and before I knew what was happening, she clamped her jaw on my shin even as one of her two companions ran ahead barking and lunging at me from the front. I managed to shake her off and walk away quickly and fortunately they hung back, c...

Letters, birthday cards, notes scrawled on torn out notebook paper, entry passes and invitations...as I sift through the pile of paper on the first shelf I have decided, in my new-found resolve, to clear out, I find a messy mass of memories. Driving in to school, communing with other harried parents A wish and a dream, still unfulfilled The beginning of something, and something ended A bouquet of affection bundled into thoughtful gifts

I woke up this morning feeling a sense that my life was overflowing....in the wrong kind of way. Yes, it is full in many ways, in all the good ways, but in addition to all that love and friendship and professional fulfillment (please note: I do not include material wealth and that house by the lake), there are reams of paper of various description, sarees requiring starching and ironing, fabric lengths waiting to be tailored, forms of legacy media to be either digitised or thrown out, broken cups and other memorabilia that have outlived the memory...you get the picture. A recent conversation with a friend brought up the idea of leaving a "light footprint". We had seen others struggle with getting rid of their parents' and grandparents' things, and were assailed by these visions of our offspring sitting in the middle of all this (what they would most certainly consider junk) and wondering which things to throw away and which to keep, any possible grief they may be f...

I hardly notice the hour long commute any more; the honking speeding drivers who whiz past me as if they are rushing to save lives, the sneaky two-wheelers that sidle by me in the narrowest of spaces  grazing my already bruised car, even the big burly RTC bus that pretends to be a slim sports car as it sweeps its way through the traffic. I owe to this to the treasure made accessible through my smart phone, those podcasts that keep my brain focused on the wealth of intelligent ideas that can still be found amidst the tedium of dealing with stupid or inconsiderate driving and the inexplicable rudeness of city life. Disclosure: I am one of those US-returnees whose nostalgia for NPR remains undiminished, and while I do enjoy the occasional show on AIR's Rainbow FM or my very own campus radio, Bol Hyderabad, I miss being able to tune in to a local public radio station and listen to smart conversation or good music or stimulating interviews done by an un-gushing radio anchor. I rememb...

March in Hyderabad Every so often I wish I were born In a simpler age (as if there ever were one) when one could lose oneself in the beauty of the purple haze offered by the lace-like blossoms smudged across the blue summer sky as I battle my way to work through the emissions of an information economy on the move. One wonders where the sentence breaks to accommodate the parenthetical pause for noticing such moments of transcendence in the midst of everything ongoing, never stopping (lest the traffic lights change on you). Big words like Climate Change Global Inequality Sustainable Development Communal Violence are allowed to fade somewhat into the background as the bright yellows and flaming oranges of the flowering trees demand that we retain despite those Everythings a capacity for happiness.

For the better part of two decades it bore fruit swung a hammock served shade in generous quantities while those mangoes, green covering rich yellow were pickled, pulped, sliced and pureed made a salad a bit saucier and a milk shake smoother. Yesterday I came home to find sun streaming into a kitchen that had known a dappled green light This year's Ugadi pacchadi won't be made with mangoes from my tree.

This is not a review. It is not an attempt to critique or summarise a film that many have been talking about in different ways. But yes, it is a response of some kind, to a movie that I watched in an serendipitous matinee moment. I found myself a completely willing participant, happy to be taken in by the melodramatic retelling of what is undoubtedly a motivational story, even without Bollywood's embellishments. I found myself choking at the appropriate junctures, shedding a tear and wringing my hands at others, smiling and cheering mentally when things went the right way for the protagonist. I found myself heaving a sigh of relief when the almost-moment yielded to complete victory. All sports movies finally do this, and Mary Kom was no exception. When the national anthem was played in the movie to her final win, the entire auditorium stood sharing the pride of victory, much like the way they clapped when the Chak De girls scored their goals or the boys in Lagaan beat the vill...

When a weekend begins with making a to-do list, it's a sad state of affairs. Especially when that list is overwhelmingly work related. I made the list Friday night and now, close to 48 hours later, I have done two and a half of the seven tasks I set myself--and mind you, that was a pared-down list! I suppose one can take some satisfaction in having spent time doing things that were not on the list--a habit I have mentioned before . But this time I really don't want to talk about the list itself but the tendency many of us seem to have developed of setting goals for weekends. This past week I've read more than one article exhorting us to eschew work emails when we're not at work, or limiting online time when we should be off, and so on. Reading, agreeing with, even sharing on Facebook is one thing, and actually doing what we have so enthusiastically liked, is most emphatically, another. (alert--moving to an ostensibly unconnected thought) A couple of years ago a s...

I open the cupboard and stare into its messy fullness, wondering where to start. I reluctantly take out a bunch of papers and begin rifling through them. A keychain falls out, begging to make the transition to the other side of possession, where it can rest peacefully among other trash. It is asking me to be trashed. I pick it up, my hand makes the short arc to the bin and then stops. Wasn't this the key ring I used to carry my first dorm room key? All of thirty two years ago? I pull my hand back and open my palm to stare at it and the images come rushing back. "Maa, the milk is boiling over!" Have to stem the memories and pay attention to boring details such as scorched burners and spilt milk. Ten minutes later I'm back and the keychain, fortunately, gets thrown where it belongs. But I find a picture frame with some stars pasted on it. No picture, but that's no matter, I know what used to go there. My daughter's kindergarten photograph, after she made th...

These poems were part of a call for submissions by Prakriti Foundation in early 2013, a collection titled "Not Silence but Verse". Some Tanka and some Haiku. But all born out of an everyday anger. Breaking glass cuts through skin, teeth, hair, mind, to settle deep, in memory. ... Fingers filter sleep letting it escape for good like the child’s blanket that was slid off silently to reveal my growing pain. .... I could give a damn about outraged modesty when it is my self the totality of me into which rage has been poured. ... The sound stuffs itself out of hearing range; one law, that’s all it would take to quiet the fear and turn the panic to peace. ... His gaze unzips me from bus-stop to work and back wreaking possession.

"They sell fish and buy cars," said my friend and host, most matter-of-factly, as we watched a shiny white sedan draw up by the dusty track outside the house. She was referring to the rapid replacement, over the past decade, of lush paddy fields by aquaculture ponds that brought quick riches for a large number of entrepreneurs in the region. Of course, there are also several stories of those quick bucks making an equally quick exit, but there's no denying that West Godavari is one of the most prosperous areas in the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh. But I wasn't really here to engage in an economic analysis of the district. I was, in fact, here to disengage from analysis and simply take that much needed break from a non-stop series of deadlines. It was the first step in taking my own advice seriously (ref: my previous post). So, here are a few moments from that pause in my city-fied routine. I find myself, an unlikely pilgrim at the Ramana Kendram in Jinnuru ...

It's two weeks into the year and it already feels old. This year crept in on slow legs, carrying on its prematurely aging back the burden of false promises and stillborn ideas, dressed in a new veil of shiny hope. From time to time this covering slips off to show us that underneath, there is little that is new. It is just the inexorable passage of time. Yet we accept the fiction. We choose to be intoxicated by the effervescence of the market and charmed by the seductive ringing of bells of various kinds. We wake up on a day marked as the beginning of a new calendar and believe that we are changed. That the world is changed. Yes, I received my share of phone calls, emails and text messages. I stayed up till past midnight and colluded in a round of hugs and handshakes. I posted a post on Facebook and responded to others' posts as well. I willingly contributed to the conspiracy of expectation and excitement. After all, ritual is an important part of our lives, and the ritua...

Sometimes, one is assailed by a hopelessness, a frustration born out of the fact that one cannot do anything about the way one feels. You open the newspaper and are bombarded by a dozen stories that speak to the horrible things that go on in this world. Anger, disgust, sadness...and despair. Of course, there are also the many stories of hope and survival that cause one to smile. So we retreat from the assault of the news into a space that is our own, cushion ourselves in conversations about this and that, surround ourselves by the tedium of everyday decision making. Which outfit to wear? What to make for breakfast? Should I do the groceries today or tomorrow? And what about that meeting I need to prepare for? Should I call the electrician to come fix the stairwell light that's been out for weeks? In the middle of all this, when (and if) we allow the consciousness of the world to intrude, we run the risk of being blanketed again by that old feeling of " what can I do about i...

This morning I spent a full fifteen minutes changing one cushion cover. Here I was, full of housekeeping energy, determined to finish all those boring things one just has to do to keep a house looking somewhat in order (now, I do realise that 'order' is a loaded work, what is perfectly acceptable to one is reason for high tension for another). The first sign that things were not going to go quite in the manner planned was when I found I needed to sit down to get that cover on the cushion. It wasn't one of those easy slip-on-and-fold-over jobs. It needed quite a lot of pushing and pulling to get the thing on, the good fit that it was. This took all of five minutes. And then came the zipper, which, I understand, is also called a slide fastener, because (yes, I get it) it slides along the toothed tracks to fasten or unfasten something. This one was a pretty long zipper--all of 18 inches, which meant some maneuvering to get the fastener to slide. Which it refused to do. It w...

I've reached an age when I'm no longer anxious about age. Well, not in the same way as I was when I was 16, or 30, or even 40. Beyond a point it is no more than a number and the concerns have more to do with the processes that accompany the passage of time rather than any preoccupation with chronology or the idea of "getting old" (or "older").  At 53, I feel fulfilled, yet excited. The fulfillment comes from the aggregation of goodwill that I suddenly become conscious of, in multiple-mediated ways--through cards and texts and whatsapp messages, emails long and short, people suddenly dropping in, unexpected and expected people at the other end of a phone line. The excitement comes from being in a place that I love, doing what I enjoy, looking forward to the possibility and the promise of discovery, at having continued access to the minds (and often hearts) of young people. That's really what keeps me learning--and what better way to live life than to be...