Cirque Du Soleil

"A girl in a rainbow sky", puts a description to this painting, the kid.
In her sweet voice she enquires, "Does my hair look a little old, Amma ?"
Little old ? What do you mean by Old ?
"Old in the sense poor", she apprises me.
Her forehead; molded like the sun-
my soleil,
comes to my mind even when she is away
in the other room
Everything runs thin like skimmed milk these days. My inability to read and smuggle words.Time.
Days breathe as slowly as they come
Like memory.
Even love is a debt i learn to pay off these days
To survive. no, to live.
Why doesn't the sun get tired of being the golden orb, ever ?
Even the coruscating iridescent skies the kid drew take a break from their concerts. Don't they ?
i measure a sky's emotion in the billowings of the window curtain in my room but
How can i gather fidelity from all the sun love - the first love i receive every single morning ?
Some allegiance, this !
We don't need love, mused a woman i paid my ears to once.
Why do we need it anyway, what good is it came her rhetorical questions to me.
i see now that they are birthed from pain, an inner churn of grievance and fatigue....
All i meet is dejection these days
Dejections that curdle to resignation
Even a sky seems to be shaking me up in Kochi evenings with god kindled flashes encroaching our spaces
Surround sounds richer than Dolby
containing some heaven sent cipher
And i find myself asking again and again
How many times do i undo the stitches of my patchwork heart ?
How many times do i relearn to receive, to become part of the sun again ?
If everything i knew and felt and memorised were to be effaced from memory
surely the kid's forehead sun bulge-
my soleil,
i will remember. always.

Mohabbat as an address

I scratched my hair in raving fury as
we lay in bed
Side by side
Enough distance between us...
One coiled into a pillow while the other flat on back awaiting in the patience of a dog
Side by side
Breath wise.
Our selves facing the open french windows to an April evening's alluvium winds-
hungry as the rains-
whipping the naive room fan air out of its living daylights.
Snapping from the universe of her mind she gazes my way
and announces tentatively
"I want to cut your hair. It will help you get rid of the lice like you did to mine."
i smell the petrichor in the air and say nothing.
She gets up from bed, advances toward me in careful steps
And just as slowly as she arrives
i growl upon her with a sudden pounce
To this drops her plan and her face and she runs away with pure cry in her voice
A dog barks somewhere. Incessantly.
Portending something ?
She returns a few minutes later with a huge bed cushion- a shield
Like an ambivalent warrior on formidable terrain.
"Why did you do that to me", laments she
A benediction i offer to her spirit, her pluck. To return.
"I wanted to strike fear, no, caution into your heart so you never bother me with that idea again", i reply with a kind maliciousness.
i become the serpent one seeks out to court.

But the beautiful girl falls on my lap, laying her hair black sea tangle
Always and again and says," Why did you cut my hair. Look if you hadn't done that i would have had this much hair."
There is sorrow in her voice as she states this.
Stroking her wild curls gently, i hear the thunder and i remember her.
All this while all the skies could do is dream up cameo lightenings like
madness descending upon us sometimes.
Inevitably.
"God spoke to me yesterday Amma. And I don't know what god told me but I want to cut your hair"
No you cannot, i say one last time with my eyes
This is when she mutates into a storm goddess,
a little goddess,
casting a wrath tossing the cushion, stomping off  in seared steps with a gale close on her heels
from my room to hers.
My ears catch her stirring watercolours in jars- elixiristic potions, under the aegis of the
rain which marries the Kochi earth outside.
i recall that her eyebrows smell of incense sticks because she believes they will help thicken them.
With the tempering of time, she makes an appearance with a spiritual toughness and offers me-
"I am not your friend because you are love", a libation.
Always waiting on my breath
Forever knowing our breaths are interdependent
In other words, Mohabbat....

Into the break of waves

INTO THE BREAK OF WAVES...

In these times, dystopian, it becomes clear to me that
its all about tracing hearts
Like the sigh of the Ha in Mohabbat.
Ha, so singular
So luscious with breath
So contained
encompassing love.
Love, made from the cloth of god
And yet Ha is just another fibre
in the Maha weave of Mohabbat;
Like the Alif.

In these times, unsettling,
Like the earth closing itself in
with a Covid virus and other many ecological synonyms-
(past, now and tomorrow)
it is for us too, to close into ourselves-
To draw oneself out.

i understand you, O' Goddess of waves, only because i begin to understand myself.
i learn the tenderness we need to plant into our soft selves
for ourselves
for others.
Because we are alone
And because we are still together
Entwined
Interlaced
Fluid like the intricate Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, in the vicissitudes of life,
i write epitaphs in gold
on our insidious invasion (by whom i wonder)
And as i do,
i who lived to survive the curse,
await it.
The waves.
No. i do not mean to thrust myself into its searing beauty
the blinding waves of nirvana.
i simply wait, hope, remember
as the wave comes, eventually,
To draw me out
that there is no need to seize me
For i am here.
Waiting, hoping, remembering
like the sorcerical Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, when everything may seem innocuous tomorrow
Our hearts will still remain
Waiting for memory
for love
To exercise it to strength
You see we are pieces of waves
always on the edge of an impending doom
But while we are at it
Take care to remember
that we are birthed in a continuum
where the waves can be us
where the turquoise cerulean becomes us.
Is us.
And like all other matters of the heart
this too is impalpable
yet discernible with that hidden passage from
the eye to the heart
Like the Sun golden Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, now and tomorrow
when all that the waves want
is to meet the earth,
to hug it
for the sea;
Always interceding on behalf of one or the other,
To meet
Again and again,
in Love.
To further harvest Love
like the mystical Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, when all we want is
to extricate ourselves from
becoming the wave
i greet the wave, the Great Pralayam,
Writhing with life to take on me.
Because nothing can anchor one like the waves
Reteaching my heart the ways
of Expansion and contraction
Reteaching me attention, creation and release
Reteaching submission and letting go
Reteaching me on how to oxygenate
Reteaching the sublime threads we all are
a part of the alchemical Maha weave of Mohabbat
Reteaching myself that this all Me.

i've had my Proustian moments in life.
Now to see new ones
in a world that is briefly illusory,
briefly godly
briefly gorgeous                             
briefly malevolent
containing nothing but
invisible love

Undestroyed by time
Because i love more than my own self , me.
And so i am retaught,
even if it were for a moment,
that we are truly mirrors to each other
Always helping one another,
showing one another                                            ways
to remember ourselves.

Toward me come the paving waves
A pure exaltation.
Waves, translucent like life
Coming at me with a sound that shimmers like laughing stars
i listen like a being learning how to Be.

With pleasure, i too shall be that brief wave.

~

Illustration by a dear friend, Kripa Bhatia

Arriving

What happens when a thought/question invades your mind and then gradually unveils a mystery of your self; deep or otherwise.

I was hounded and rather bewitched for the longest, last year, by the one question in my mind, 'Why do I send her to school?'

It came to me because the child herself took the question out of my mouth.

Our life, since the start of Grade I, the beginning of primary schooling, had led to a disarray in the very meaning of schooling. I, for one, was faced with this question- stark and solid before me. Being a pro-unschooler, I was beaten to brutal guilt and remorse over having made the decision of sending her to school. 

I was advised to not take matters too hard upon myself or complicate things than they really needed to be but to allow the kid to just figure it for herself.

But what if the kid demands such a response, an acknowledgement from you? What if she is looking for genuine help as she is lost in all the concreteness and rigidity of a school? What if, all she wanted was to see me try? But try how, I'd wondered endlessly on all those nights for a whole six months.

And she for once, although a lover of community, togetherness and sociality, didn't at all buy the idea of following a protocol that came with an institution.

I began to see that we place school on a very high pedestal when it came to the child's childhood. But why, I wondered ? 

Everything centred around the school and then I came to realise that her school wasn't enforcing that kind of obligation upon us as long as we're both honestly trying to nurture a beautiful relationship with each other.

That was all that I needed from a school. 

Striving in its own growth with the children and at the same time allowing us- parent and child- their essential independent fortification. No umbilical cord here. 

School is merely an element of growth and learning in our existence, I believed and still do with all my heart.

Although, I was pretty clear on all this about the school I've been sending her to and her and myself, I was gripped with self-loathe and a feeling of inadequacy for not being a capable mom to a kid who is competent enough to stand on her own feet, vivacious and passionate on matters she truly feels for.

So when the question, 'why send me to school?' invaded our intimacy and persisted on staying; I began the natural process of searching. For what ? An answer? A reason to console myself and perhaps extend it to the child.

I decided to plant a seed of empathy into her, for her teachers while saying things like,' Your teacher is not always shouty, you know? She can also crack a joke, laugh, cry and do other things. She is a human with feelings just like you.'

The kid absorbed it all with admirable wisdom for her age but how does she apply empathy when I'm feeding it to her externally? It doesn't work that way. She must see it for herself, begin to grow it in her heart of her own accord and then release it. 

Empathy is self-taught. So I stopped trying.

But then, a crucial turning point arrived- December.

Funny, how some months of a year define your life however trivial they may seem later to you.

Drama rehearsals were on full swing for the upcoming Annual Day celebrations later that month. I saw liberation. I met liberation and a form of solidarity face to face that month.

'The rehearsals must have done it,', I thought to myself.
Things must have loosened a bit during the time and she began to see her teachers in a new light. They had several shades to them than she thought they did. At least, that is how I think she thought.
But it was only a thought I saw. She said nothing of the sort to validate it. She only showed.

I decided to finally acknowledge the incessant grousing and poetic laments she had made over the past months and made an appointment to spill my heart with her Principal.

Once I'd confronted her, it felt like such a surge of release. She was forthcoming and compassionate about the matter and promised to have a word with her teachers for whom she has such utmost faith in. And I, for once, decided to plant faith in her convictions.

I went home feeling jubilant and victorious that day, relaying everything to her once she'd gotten back home as well. But things didn't seem to change so much with the kid. There was no glimmer of hope or gratitude in the kid's eyes. The ingrate !

 

She is a tough nut to crack so I gave her time. I gave her school time as well.

Things began to come clean post the drama rehearsals. I began to recognise, with a blinding awareness, that I was hoping to see her be herself in her present new environment (given time 
) like she was in her kindergarten days. Her alteration during the initial months to survive school broke my heart. 'Why cloak yourself when in class?' I would ask her without really asking her.

But one cannot fool oneself for long and so the facade began to disintegrate. The restlessness of 'wanting to just be' grew to intolerance and impatience all the way till the drama rehearsals in December. 

I allowed her the intolerance she very much needed to see the unfairness she was inflicted on, as a child, a student in class. To not give in to a certain authoritarian experience she (and class as a community) was enduring.

I know it was that intolerance that brought me all the way to her Principal's office.

I became her voice. So that one day she becomes her own voice.

But then, there was a marvellous shift. Change was happening at a glacial progression but it was happening nevertheless and only last week, she declared, 'I think I'm okay with school now'.
She comes home with snippets that give me a peek into school, her feeling more in her skin now than I'd ever thought possible will be achieved soon. At least, I know for a fact that she is getting there. It is only a matter of time.

May be she is finally being herself. Just being. And that makes her happy.
And that to me is a major triumph of the year, a triumph she's made over herself by simply reclaiming space for her in school and allowing herself to include others around her- as possibly as she can.
She's redeemed herself. And that is enough.


As for me, I'd been through a rather hyperbolic learning period during the later half of last year up till now, when it came to these matters and where I stood on these things.

It dawned on me, earlier this year, that the true reason in the decision to school her is for her to be able to comfortably exist in the very fibre of her being ANYWHERE, weathering any form of environment- congenial or otherwise, spilling her molecules as she grows gloriously onward and upward.

When school is an idea

'Do you know why you're going to Achan's office today?'

"Yeah because he'll miss me."

'Ah ! That is a nice way of putting it.'

But not quite, I told my self.

It was a school morning and I knew I'll be holding on to the last straw if the usual talk around 'going to school vs not going' came up.

I've given it all I can. I listened and listened, talked and talked, hugged and hugged.

And finally, in order to acknowledge her words, pleas and sometimes the spoken poetry that slides out of her tongue, I went ahead and had a very satisfying talk with her principal.

We spoke for half an hour, in which time I presented her concerns and my understanding of her case for her and for me.

'Does she know that 6 1/2 year olds are still little. That they're not different from Sr.kg / Jr.kg children? Does she know that?', I mimicked my girl while paraphrasing her to the principal.

I also went to the extent of sharing her heart's wails from another night :

"Teachers don't know we are alone in pain when they yell at us. When these teachers yell at my friends, my heart burns and my eyes have fire in them. We're alone and we cry in our hearts in class."

I tried to identify with the teachers for P. I told her just because they yell at your class, they aren't that one person. They're so many people on the inside like she is.

She listened, silently, to my words and said nothing.

Empathy is self-taught. I realised.

I bared it all to the principal.

She was a very attentive and patient listener. She promised to convey what'd then said to her teachers. To allow them to learn to yell less and talk more.

I promised her time. Time for the teachers. Time for P.

But that night, like all the other nights before, we talked of school again. I didn't want it to go in circles. Oh no, not again.

"But I don't like sitting like that in class, Amma ( gestures folded arms). You know that? And talking silently. You know that?"

'But your teachers are ready to try. Why don't you give them a chance?' I ask her.

But the real questions wailing in my head were, 'Why aren't you grateful that I had this talk with your principal? Why aren't you tolerent enough to let your teachers a chance? Why don't you try along with them?'

All that effort seemed to be going out of the window.

"We can make schools in our houses. I can learn at home. You can teach me. Achan can teach me. I can teach myself. You know that, Amma !"

Her words were muddling with the very idea I've been silently endorsing. Homeschooling.

But all I say is, 'You must give your teachers another chance.'

"You know, when I have a child I won't send my child to school. We'll both learn at home !"

Why does she have to defeat me with a child's conviction?

So concrete.

I was silently amused at that reasonable, moral voice.

The benefits of childhood as I know it : You mostly always know what you're supposed to be doing and you do it.

The benefits of adulthood as I know it : You very rarely know what you're supposed to be doing but it is good to do what you're supposed to do even if you end up not doing it.

Although we reconciled with a story reading and sleep, the morning after seemed to have changed nothing.

I've had my fill of this talk which has been going on for six months now.

I decided to give it an ultimatum.

'You can stay at home but this will be the last time you'll be missing school. And you won't talk to me the entire day, today. I'll be in my room working. Ok?'

Kid seemed pleased and worried at the same time.

I felt jittered on the inside. As much I loved to spend time with myself, nothing seemed more significant than her running footsteps thumping across the floor boards, her squeals, her little animated talks while her Barbie waves in the air. Nothing seemed more significant to me than a child's unadulterated happiness.

Surely, Achan (the father) offered a solution I'd been begging in my heart for him to give.

Moonrise mat

Yesterday was magical on several notes

And the night ended, for us, no less sublime.

We opened a book to begin our night

And

to found ourselves

craving to create a face out of shells;

inspired
by the book, ofcourse!

The shells we have

carry a piece of Dubai in them.
In them contain my childhood,

I tell the kid.

We tried several faces and ended up building a heart.

I closed the Ferrero Rocher box of preserved shells from the past,
curated into a heart.

We settled in our bed with the lights turned off.

Content.

I always count on the moonshine swelling
with its luminiscense.
Into our room.
Into our hearts.
So we be soul happy.

Last night, I noticed a silver drowning
of the moon
on our bedroom floor.

I called it the moonrise mat.

When my girl ate the 'my little pony'

I first came across the 'my little pony' series as a little girl because of my sister. My earliest memory was of pink and blue ponies sliding the rainbow thronging sweet green meadows but I don't recall watching the episodes with such intensity of heart. My sister did.

That was 20 years ago !

My girl, P, stumbled upon a new, revamped version of the 'my little pony' on TV when we visited my birth city last year on a holiday. Twilight sparkle, rainbow dash rang a vague distant bell in my head as my ears caught them. But I soon came to realise, after we'd gotten back to India from the holiday, that the series entertained the very forest of her being.

Nearly a year later, P and I had this conversation out of the blue.

"Who do you like in the 'my little pony'? Midnight Luna, Cadence or Celestia?", she asked
I'm familiar with the names as I've watched the series with her more than a couple of times but not with an intensity of the heart as she did.

I replied, 'Well, I like black and blue. And the stars and the moon and the night.'

"Ok, ok. Do you know why it is ok to like Midnight Luna?"

She didn't wait for my response. She needed none.

"Because she sometimes changes into nightmare moon."

'Ok. So?'

It sounded incredulous to my heart but I silently looked forward to something deep or metaphorical that would whisk my brain in a storm like she usually does. With her words. With her perspectives.

I wasn't disappointed.

"See, when she becomes Nightmare moon, she wants everyone to appreciate the moon. And then Celestia (a powerful pony that brought in the Day) would say, 'Nightmare moon, can you please stop making just the moon be there? There should be night AND day!' So only when she turns to Nightmare moon will she understand that there must be a night AND a day."

I see where this is going.

I identify the wisdom soaked in those words. These ponies have overtaken her very soul these days. She is creating an abundance inside of her by sucking the very cosmos of their philosophy into her bowels, changing the coordinates of my understanding of this cartoon series.

I always knew fantasy was sometimes her only conduit to wrap her head around reality.

When times were desperate in school at the beginning of Grade I, I could only reach out to her as Eeyore. I had to become this fictional character for her school stories to surge out of her.

She rambles on.

"And sometimes, Twilight Sparkle also gets to teach Nightmare moon to be understanding."

I was all ears now.

"She uses her five elements of harmony to do that. The cutie marks from Twilight Sparkle and her friends (marks present on one side of their rears that defines each pony) become balls and a sixth element turns into a crown. The magic when they all get together will spin and cover Nightmare moon. Celestia will come down and turn Nightmare Moon to her real Midnight Luna."

'But why would Celestia wait till then? She could have descended before that, right? I mean, the ponies are so small, they could use some help.'

"No, Amma! If Celestia were to come then, these ponies will not see the power of their friendship. Nightmare moon will not understand the elements of harmony and friendship!"

'Ah, I see how it is !', I thought to myself.

All this is worship. And with worship, we stay near beauty and enlightenment.

How her heart peers into the hearts of her beloved ponies, I shall only understand if a great gusto of passion were to swirl inside of me.

"Amma, can we watch an episode of my little pony together? Then, you'll see."

I sat beside her and typed the words into the search bar. I clicked on an episode link on the results and eagerly awaited to see what she saw.

Although, I already saw it with a heart in my eye.