happiness

The art of living

You were the obsession of my young years; the one who taught me much, with encouraging words; the one who listened to the secrets of this heart; you were the little that I had to give away in a season of silence.

You took time to listen; never saying a word even when you were bored. It was real, I know, your interest was not feigned because your heart was big enough to keep people in.

I was naïve pouring out my dreams of being a writer and you said in jest to dedicate my first book to you. When you went away, I was lost, for it was in your absence that I understood that I made a mistake in letting you go.  

You were no love; but a mentor; yet the songs speak otherwise; for in your absence, the heart grieved for you, made you its monarch, mulled over the alchemy of a bond that needed no words. All the songs were a way of coming to terms with a sad reality without you.

Yet you are an epic moment in my evolution; one who taught me an art of living in the moment and holding a mind like an open cup; so much that

I feel that I thank you more for what you were, in an amazing season of silence.

Reading between the lines

You felt strong when he was around; as if you could break down every rule and do whatever you please as long he was with you.

You never saw with what tenderness I had built up a dream adding years for detail across those moments of togetherness, more valuable than anything in this world.

Yet you broke my world, calling a devil of a decision, an Angel and pretended indifference to enforce what you wanted. You valued faith in god and what people thought of you.

You read too much between the lines based on the wreck that you were. But in a way, some of what you understood were misreadings, assumptions of events that never existed.

And I like the fool that I am listen to your words, looking at what might have happened if I had chosen my happiness rather than obedience.

Boomerang

You uttered your platitudes and filled this head with more throughout the years. It was as if you wanted love not to flow only in your direction than yourself.

You heard but never understood the muffled tears, the heartbreaks and the disappointments. You never bothered to see what these eyes craved for or what this mind longed for.

I who had modelled your acts of rebellion than your platitudes,see how you have wrecked lives through your emotional tugs of war, ruined any chances of happiness by your fixed rulebook and when it comes back, this boomerang of indifference, your tears at not being to handle a heartbreak surprises me most of all.

Endless

You live a life of hope that everything will turn out to be alright while I hold this mixed life with laughter and tears.

Your dreams stand apart like strangers who wait to be introduced while I plod on weary with the little that I have.

But some days when I really make an attempt to listen, I realise that you and I are not that different at all, only two names for the same endless quest for fulfilment.

Home

You have always held me back;  with your words, your written and unwritten rules, your opinions on everything, teaching me to lose again and again rather than win.

You have never given me breathing space; instead choked whatever breath I let out, holding me by the neck so much that in your absence, my words were like a fountain.

On days, when you are away, your voice enquire in subtle tones whether I have missed you day or night; and I answer that I have found my sacred space again.

Even the walls don’t hold me back any longer; the sunrises and sunsets looked splendid in the vantage point that I had, of being a demigod in my solitude.

But these days are past now; it’s again time to relearn your rules, your language and your way of thinking; do nothing except what you say; it’s time to go home.

Of Libraries and Library Books

For me, library visits mean a lot as can be seen from my trademark huge bags that can carry huge tomes and a slight damage to the right shoulder from carrying them around regularly. So are the constant mind-fogs that come from having too many things on the mind such as the home and the heart, the things to buy and the things to get rid of. 

Libraries and I have a long history of events- finding them, losing them, misplacing them and of reading them so much at the cost of eyesight and a sense of reality. When I was doing my M.Phil, I had placed a book on the Automatic Book Return Kiosk in the Central Library, only the find that the machine refused to read the book and it was a kind-looking staff who enlightened me that the book belonged to the College Library and not to the Central Library. 

I had my excuse that I was juggling a baby, a thesis and a household and that it was difficult to keep track of all the library books that I had taken. Those were the days of the late returns and heavy dues and mind-fogs resulting from having too much on my hands. 

It was in the same library that I had a spat with a guy who formed a new parallel queue for a pretty little thing and called my attention to it, when I have been standing in a straight queue for around fifteen minutes. However, I was too embarrassed after my mercurial outburst, that too in English that I had not gone to the library for a few months.  

For someone who spends a good deal of time in the library, it is at times a little disappointing to see a new notice on fresh arrivals: “Writing or marking on books is a punishable offence”. On seeing this notice the first time, I could not help thinking of my college days, when I was more or less an accidental scholar who found the right books at the nick of time, on the eve of the exam and gorged upon them as if there was all the time in the world to read them. 

Studying English literature was no fun as most people believe. I have had so many relatives and friends tell me, “Oh! All you have to do is read novels”. Sadly, it was not true as I discovered during the second and third years of my graduate study. Buying all books needed was out of the question as most of them were unavailable or way too expensive. So, hunting for books in the library was part of the routine and with time, I was familiar with most of the shelves and what they held. 

The city libraries were part of these book-hunting trips though most of what I read was books that were no part of the syllabus. Only at the beginning and the end of a semester did I think of text books; otherwise it was all Agatha Christie and all the readable ones. But at the end of each semester, on my serious visits to the library, I was always fascinated by the comments and notes on the margins made by some previous reader and at times, I even recognised the handwritings of my teachers in some books. 

Yes, I love it when my number is stamped as the first user on fresh arrival. There is certainly a pleasure in handling a new book: the fresh smell of crisp pages and the ideas that look new and inviting but a much-used and well-thumbed library book offers much more for a reader and student. Just like the books that I had seen in those days, the books left traces of the ones who had read them before- markings, numberings, explanations, critical comments and more not phone numbers as feared by present day librarians. The meanings written next to difficult words or the names of poetic devices with explanations, these texts were most probably used by teachers for their classes. 

In the present age and its demand of annotated editions (that say more than the writer), the ordinary library books on English literature could supply easy reading just by the fact that they were read through the minds of good scholars who could chew and digest the work by marking key words and underlining what was important. But I do remember a girl who studied with me, who had seen me underline a sentence in a library book and screamed “That’s a library book!” in the same tone as “That’s my boyfriend!” 

May be I am just a little zany; but as a teacher, I will be honoured if any day, if a student comes across my handwriting in the pages and recognises it as part of a painstaking but rewarding procedure of preparation for classes and feels the same way as I felt when I had seen those writings, numberings and markings against the margins made in a familiar hand. For someone, whose heaven is a library, whose dreams include having a coffee counter inside the library; finding a new book to read is a pleasure but reading a well-thumbed and annotated one is an even more enjoyable experience. 

When I was a teenager, I had read this story named “An Evening in Grand Central”, in which a man falls in love with a woman just from the comments that she had written in a book that he comes across. The book is a second hand copy of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and when they decide to meet she tells him that she will wear a red rose on her lapel. On the day of the meeting, he comes across an old woman wearing a red rose while a beautiful girl in a green dress walks by like “the springtime come alive”. But he decides to talk to the lady only to find that his love is none other than the girl in green dress and that she is waiting for him in a restaurant across the road. May be she was too shy to meet him in person, God knows!

The Strange Library

On his way from school, a boy visits the library. He is a dutiful reader and library-user as returns his book on time:

“I’m always on time, and I never hand things in late. That’s the way my mother taught me. Shepherds are the same. If they don’t stick to their schedule, the sheep go completely bananas.”

He wants to find out how taxes were collected in the Ottomon empire and because such a thought strikes his mind, he wants to find out more as his mother has taught him. On asking about this, he is directed to a special section of the library. 

He meets a strange old man who assists him by bringing him three thick tomes on the subject-The Ottoman Tax System, The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, and Tax Revolts and Their Suppression in the Ottoman Turkish Empire- and lets him read them on the condition that he should sit in the library and read them.

He tells the old man that his mother will get upset if he doesn’t return home on time just like the time when he was bitten by a big black dog. The old man is furious that the boy wants to go home in spite of the assistance that he has provided:

“When I was your age I felt fortunate just to have the chance to read. And here you are, whining about the time and being late for dinner. What nerve!”

The buy promises to sit and read for thirty minutes and he is taken to a “Reading Room”, an enormous labyrinth in the basement of the library. 

He meets  a sheep man who makes good doughnuts and obeys all the orders of the Old man. He discovers that the Old man wants to eat his brains and when he asks the reason for that the sheep man replies : “Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that’s why. And sort of grainy at the same time”. 

A girl comes in bringing him a sumptuous meal and he is struck by her beauty. She can only speak with her hands and she tells him that her vocal cords were destroyed when she was a child. He finds that the library has turned out be a prison and he is not able to get out.He finds that the sheep man and the beautiful girl belong to two different worlds; that the boy concludes : “Our worlds are all jumbled together- your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t. That’s what you mean, right?” 

He worries about his mother and his pet magpie. As if to make his fears true he is held a prisoner and his pet magpie is eaten by a dog before his very eyes.  What happens to the boy? 

A little Kafkaesque and absurd, the novel captures an atmosphere similar to The Trial and brings in a sense of terror to the act of  visiting a library. In spite of the  way in which it portrays the strangeness of life, this illustrated novella can make you feel hungry too!

Photographs

I have so many photographs of mine
In my cupboard, old and new,
So many faces that I once disliked
But with the passing years
I have come to see how
That me was so different,
So pretty and beautiful. 

Long-haired, wild-haired,
Short-haired, grumpy,
No two faces look alike,
The one on identity cards
Look even more grotesque,
Even taking a snap
Is like finding a new me.

But I wonder when will I ever
Get over all my self-doubts
Embrace me completely
Forget the self-critical nagging
And tell myself in the mirror,
"I am incredible you know,
Because I love myself so!"