A lament about lost love: K R Meera's novella Meera Sadhu

Love is like milk, with the passage of time,it sours, splits and becomes poison.

The novel portrays the tragic life of Tulsi torn between duty and love and she chooses to run away with Madhavan instead of marrying her classmate Vinayan. She finds that though she loves Vinayan, she gets carried off her feet by the kind of love that Madhavan gives her.

She runs away with Madhavan on the eve of her wedding though she knows from his own mouth that she is his 27th girlfriend. Soon, she recognises that she does not have a role in his life and the story is a lament about lost love.

Through lyrical passages that describe the desire that Madhavan arouses in Tulsi, the author captures the beauty of love buy equally descriptive are her details about his treachery in love, the countless women that he has relations with. This wounds her and she grieves how she sacrificed her career and her life for the sake of the man she chose to be with in life.

The novel details the transformation of Tulsi from a loving wife to Meera Sadhu grieving her life and serving others in the ghats of Varanasi. The frequent shifts in time cleverly portray her memories about her marital life including the good times and the bad times.

Time

The ancient coils of time stretch endlessly, 
With its various names that are held sacred,  
While we go by the measures of the calendar,
Amidst the changing trends and the seasons. 

Good memories that flood your mind, 
Your thoughts fly to the innocent days
Spent near the River Green's placid waters
And the days of youth bring back life. 

You learn how to treasure the moments of joy
And meditate over them in times of strife
And you learn the art of distancing yourself 
From thoughts that destroy your happiness. 

You learn to lose yourself in the secrets, 
Whispered by the unending coils of time. 

Song of the Summer

In the rising heat of the season, you dream of the monsoons, the waterbodies that give you comfort and tall glasses of cool and tasty drinks that offer you solace. You read up old lores on how the ancient Indian musician Tansen made rain with his raga Megh Malhar and the power of music to bring about change in nature. And, there you are lost watching a video online of an Indian musician sitting under a banyan tree singing this raga and in ten minutes, it starts raining all of a sudden. 

On the way back from work, you look with longing at the river nearby and long to immerse yourself in its soothing waters till you no longer remember the sizzling heat of summer. In the orchards, you watch how the waterspouts drizzle the plants to prevent them from turning wan. And, you long to play in the water like you did in a long lost childhood near the River Green. 

The fruit heaps on the wayside shop beckon you with their fragrances-guavas, watermelons, lime and mangoes. When you look at these and think of the cool fruit juices that you can make with crushed ice and some mint leaves. Yet, sometimes when no fruits are available, usually resort to your traditional summer drink of buttermilk that you enjoy making at home mixing the right amounts of buttermilk, shallots ginger, curry leaves, jeera powder and salt. And, you wonder how some simple ingredients available at home can create a magical drink that makes you forget the woes of this scorching season. In the lazy evenings, you smear yourself with turmeric and sandalwood in a routine to beat the heat. The sun shows on your face and in the exposed parts of your body way too much and the paste cools you down and helps you sleep better.

In this summer tedium, one longs for the beats of the monsoon,the warm smell of rising earth during the first rain, the lazy mornings when one sleeps in when you don't have to go anywhere and just like that in this between time of twilight, when the lamps are lit for prayer and prayers chanted in the temples, one dreams of home, of being one with you and one longs for the comforts of cool water and refreshing drinks.

#summer

My Dream Book

I have a dream book inside me named Journal of a Female Quixote. I want to record the daily thoughts and habits of an eccentric idealistic female and want to give it the form of a journal. I want to look at a few models and give it form by starting to write. I have carried this dream for a long time and published some posts in my blog as well but I haven't made much progress. 

But I don’t know when I will write this book and even if I don’t write the book, I want to say this dream aloud to somebody so that I might feel the need to put the dream in the form of words. So, my aim is to compile some posts I have written and start working on this project named Journal of a Female Quixote. 

honour

Comfy

Happy

mushroom cottage

Dear Diary

self love

life

choice

Fairies

Female Icarus

Your soul was a huge flame—blazing bright, leaping toward the sky in its effort to stand for what you truly wanted. You fought for your dreams until the end. But after many ups and downs, your soul grew weary. In the struggle with life, you lost the joy of living, and your spirit began to feel the heavy angst of existence.

When you look back at the years that have passed, you remember that you are like Icarus at heart—always flying above your mazes in your quest for freedom.

There were times when this soul was too silent, too shut away, too withdrawn—unable to find meaning in life. Yet over time, you learned to read the mazes and fly out of them. This dash for freedom began to feel effortless, even natural.

Still, the soul yearns for those yesterdays—when, like Icarus, you escaped the maze and conquered difficult situations with courage rather than caution. You were full of ingenuity and bravery, and though it took time to heal your hurt wings, you eventually dashed into the wild skies once more.

 

A Summer Vacation

A Summer Vacation

The first thing I did when the vacation began was to make a list. I have this habit of making to do lists that tend to be useful at times. There is always a list at hand. Urgent tasks, pending work, small details that might slip away especially since the time I crossed thirty-five and seem to have acquired a talent for forgetting. It runs in the family. I remember my aunt who, in the pre-mobile era, carefully wrote down every important phone number in a notebook—only to forget where she had kept the notebook itself.

This vacation, I told myself, would be different. I thought of making healthy changes in my diet and starting to exercise. My body resisted, my mind wandered, but something in me wanted to persist. There were also reminders of limitations such as high blood pressure, thyroid issues, fatigue, the discomfort of summer heat, a lingering sense of mental unrest. I thought of becoming a fitter person by the end of this summer vacation.

Instead, I found myself immersed in four seasons of Never Have I Ever, caught up in the chaos of Devi Vishwakumar’s life. It may be a show meant for teenagers, but it stirred memories—how confusing those years had been, how uncertain I had felt. Some emotions do not age; they simply wait for the right story to awaken them. Around me,the TBR pile kept on accumlating: Young Forever, It’s Easy to Be Healthy, The 5 AM Club. I read about discipline, about transformation, about becoming a better version of oneself. The ideas were inspiring, but inspiration, I realised, is fleeting. Still, I tried.

Then my sleep cycles became disturbed with afternoon sleep. Sleep became erratic. The afternoons stretched long and drowsy, the nights restless. I thought about waking early, about the idea of brahmamuhurtham, that sacred quiet before dawn. I have always been an evening person, but I wondered if mornings might hold a different kind of clarity. One day, I managed it. I woke early, walked, read, and felt, briefly, a return of something I had once known—a sense of purpose, of alignment. It reminded me of another time, years ago, when I had first read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Back then, life had seemed full of promise.

There were interruptions such as travel, hospital visits, health concerns, unfinished work waiting quietly in the background. There were days of complete inertia, when even getting out of bed felt like an effort. Days when the question arose, uninvited: What for? Sometimes it is just a dull heaviness, a lack of direction, a quiet erosion of meaning.

My sole refuge was journaling and I tried looking at the empty page with a new understanding. It  became a habit and refuge by being a new way to make sense of inner turbulence. A way to remind myself that my story, however small it may seem, belongs to a larger human pattern. The days had blurred into monotony—sleep, heat, small attempts at discipline, small failures. I walked a little, ate a little better, tried to bring order into my surroundings. I thought about writing a book—The Diary of a Female Quixote—a collection of reflections shaped into something meaningful.

The desire to write comes in bursts and there are moments when you feel that you want to record every passing moment and narrate stories about your existence. In those moments, I am certain that I will write something worth reading, something that will endure. By morning, the certainty fades, replaced by doubt, by routine, by the ordinary weight of life.

I am half way through my vacation and I walk occasionally and try to eat healthy. This vacation did not transform me in any dramatic way. I did not complete my lists. I did not become disciplined overnight. I did not solve the deeper questions that trouble me. But I have made an attempt to write a summer journal and tried in small ways to care for myself. I hope that I continue journaling though not daily but at least whenever the burst of creativity reaches me.

 

 

anger

feel

good things

The Unsent Letters

Dear Sean

If you ask me what will you do given the same crossroads, I will give the answer that I will do everything differently, take a risk for you and will give everything just to get you I'm life. You will be my top priority and I will not think twice about it. For every day, this heart has longed for nothing but your return and I will never think twice before picking you from the choices that I am given in any life.

Love
Berry

Nature