Freeze’13:-

The last quarter dear 13, has indeed been the best chapter
Yearn for a freezing machine, I do,
To Freeze: time, memory, actions.
13, you’ve been the antidote to debilitation:
Loud and clear the bells chime;
Singing hymns of love in chorus.
Love has an all new language
Guiding one to dimensionless terrains
Aids in unraveling from arid crevices
Exhorts: Be yourself, in every form: You, Yours, Yourself...
Sprinkling torrential rains over expanses of aridness.
Dear 13, hate to see you depart,
Wagons of gratitude you deserve,
Preserved, and seasoned with time and love.
Happy 2014, nay, not there yet,
Before I am smothered by wishes and messages;
There’s more to go...
December, ended you have not
For 13, I still see you up close,
I’d date you all my life
Things shall ever remain rustic and timeless
For I detest brand-newness...
All nice things are old: like wine...!
A bottled toast to you dear baker’s dozen, my dear 13!!!

From the Bay of Bengal to The Arabian Sea

The wavy ebbs look still from an aerial semblance

Bordered with a froth-like silver line.

A horizon so long; as though meeting the clouds on the skyline.

Far across the distance the Wright brothers’ invention takes off,

Leaving the city behind.

The flight sways to the tunes of the breeze,

Floating above the clouds,

Sometimes bumping into them;

Right below, the blue blue Marina is all aglow;

Resplendent with the rays of the sun.

Past the gleaming expanse of the sea,

Are dots of gentry

Roofed by patches of clouds.

Traversing across the skies of yonder;

The Bay of Bengal recedes

The Arabian Sea succeeds…

The blue expanse with mitigated sand-horizons.

Tilting past the scintillating breeze of the lush green coconut meadows,

Strutting above the dotted greenery,

The flight finds its runway to make its descent on god’s own country…

(Well god’s own country???)!!

P.S.: This piece was penned by me on the flight to Kozhikode from Chennai

Time

Time, you wretched, double-edged sword

How you stab all the time!

Unexplained silence: waiting time...

Testing and Trying

All the time; what have you in store?

The world loves you,

Crazy about you;

Brandished you are with different brands

Notwithstanding, You are still the same:

Needling the very same minutes, seconds and hours!

Raising hopes,

Infusing dreams,

At the end you churn out an imbroglio

A big ball of imbroglio

Scaffolding: that takes up layers of Time!

And then you do a viva-voce:
Getting mortals to race against you!

You just fly,

Fly so high,

Soaring into abysmal heights

Defying gravity

You just reluctantly choose to pass by

Without even a damn concern!

You leave so much grime

That can’t be cleansed with brine

Deal one needs to with their might

Making one squirm in angst

A new day dawns with a remote hope

Dawn, day, dusk, night:

Scope is tucked in somewhere deep within

Beyond human vision!

You wretched Time, you make one go berserk

Irk you thus do, for we are bound by You:

Time, you bloody Time!

Redness atop the hill:-

Come December, just as how we have people gearing up for Christmas celebrations, we have crowds of men in all earnestness, readying for their pilgrimage uphill: The Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple. Having grown up in an orthodox Iyer household myself wherein I have my uncle and his team of friends and acquaintances visiting the Sabarimala each year, I am fully aware of the austerities that one faces in order to get that one glimpse of Lord Ayyappan. I have been admittedly gifted to have had this divine experience; I was about 8 years old then. Nonetheless, what does any mortal know at that tender age unless he/she is armed with some supernatural power and has descended on earth with a jolt from the blue? Luckily, I have a vivid memory of my one and only trip to the temple atop the hill. I still recall the policeman who stood guard at the gate of Lord Ayyappa making way amidst the crowd and din just so that I could get a quick darshan of the celibate Lord! So as women, we are confined and restricted to just some memories of this divine experience. Of course I could do a retour when I turn 50 plus years, by all means! 

Albeit, a question that any common woman would want to know the answer to is: what if I want to visit this temple when I am a mature adult who has realised a sense of godliness and spirituality? Why is redness so much of a taboo? It is just a part of the metabolic and hormonal change that any woman goes through. Both as a child and adult, I have always incredulously asked my mother, “Amma don’t goddesses menstruate?!” Poor Amma, who is equally a victim of this religious prejudice, used to be appalled by my interrogation! In any case, we have the Maligapurathamman (considered as Adi Parasakthi Amman-Goddess of Shakthi) who sits right there within the same premises. Within city limits, there are other Ayyappan temples galore too that are not bound by any such dogma. God is supposed to be the same force throughout, for his presence is ubiquitous and pervasive. Then there is this reasoning of women not being able to withstand the arduous trek and brazenly walk past the dense forests. If that is true, then how is a 50 plus year old woman expected to muster all courage and physical health to set out on this hilly pilgrimage? Yet another cantankerous quibble is about women serving as a distraction to the men who have observed celibacy and are there to get a darshan of Lord Ayyappan at the end of a 40-day penance. It is unnerving to find out that when the scriptures actually extol that true spirituality springs out whilst in the midst of the maddening material milieu; we have these saffron clad MEN who are made to believe that they are stalwarts of unalloyed religious and spiritual orientation! Due respect to the men who visit the temple with absolute devotion; however we do have a flip-side too, the most common statement made is, : “Wait until I get back from the temple, for I don’t want to end up speaking foul language whilst I am in the 40-day penance!” Whatever happens to their solid austerity that was observed then? The divine sojourn is purported to rake a fillip in the individual’s life and act as a cleanser that makes the mind non-greasy. One certainly cannot be devoid of all malice for we are still mortals battling life events day in and day out. The most we could do is to try and iron out a few creases and live life, upholding some spiritual values.

End of story is to not immediately kick-start a crusading movement against the hilltop temple, what I do want to exhort is, do spare a thought!

The property bubble: A continuum

Adverts in all formats:  print/electronic/social media are replete with property bubbles lathering perennially. Owning a house is a self-imposed ultimatum for most of the populace. Everyday, I am woken up by at least one text alert that carries a property ad. Places that hitherto remained joyful hinterlands emerge the best places to live in. Of course to make everything look plausible, we have banks and real estate companies proffering eye-candies, conjuring up a property-bubble. By all means these offers sound attractive, made to lure every commoner. This injects a latent complex thus resulting in the never-ending quest to own one’s-own so called ‘permanent’ space. 

Right from peers to elders amongst family and friends, all seem to be lost in the property nexus. No one even cares about one’s financial stability, for there are schemes brimming with tags like easy-on-pocket, no-hidden charges, X% cash back offer, early bird offers, and what not! Despite all of this, it is very unnerving when we have our own family members putting us on the quizzing table, taking us on an ‘unreal-estate’ ride: “You have been in Chennai for almost a decade now, and what do you mean you’ve still not bought your own home?!” They would unabashedly enlist the EMI offers available in the real estate market. Little do they realise that most of these offers run on for a lifetime, making us debtors for life! I would rather pay a regular rent and still remain content. The most I would face is the threat of relocation. Nonetheless, there is a battery of brokers waiting right there to accommodate every citizen in a fully-furnished house! For not all constructed homes are necessarily filled with its own owners! Some of them buy homes only out of sheer peer pressure.

Then there is this real-estate concept of gated community which ends up translating into a jailed-environment. Granted that these communities are all plush with lush-green meadows and crisp landscaping, but the idea of having all daily needs in the best degree of proximity does not sync into the scheme of affairs. Eg., we have promising adverts that boast about the child’s school being at a stone’s throw, the supermarkets, nay hyper-markets situated within the apartment complex, needless to say, gym, spa, recreational rooms, library, all within the same palatial complex! By all means these are breezy locales that offer some concrete tapestry tucked with some greenery. Yet, even if one were to have the wherewithal to plough into such opulence, if one comes to think of it in the long run, wouldn’t it be stale, with luxury begging for some change and breathing space? Where’s the element of fun? Didn’t we travel to our schools in cycle-rickshaws and buses? Our schools were at a must-travel distance yet not once did we crib about the distance. We still did not really mind the peak-hour rush and the occasional stampede in our ubiquitous green public transport buses where we at least had a person or two stamping on our neatly polished white canvas shoes!

It’s indeed the ‘instant-world,’ moving on an upscale direction with no looking back. If everything is readily made available in a platter, we would be digging our own grave of insipidity. It’s ok if we have to travel for work or to school; we have cabs that do the needful. All one needs to do is sit back and take the ride rather than abnormally race against time; for it would not be too long before we become silent victims of contemptuous familiarity living in a sky-scraping high-end society.At the end of the day, owned or rented, we just need some living space with a renewed energy to reboot on a daily basis.

Selfie Galore!

The word ‘selfie’ has been doing the rounds in newspapers and social media; even more so after it has made it to the Oxford dictionary! Thanks to all the front cameras on all those wonderful smart and I-phones. If you notice, even the names ‘smart and i’ associated with the word phone eventually boils down to the smart self!

Some spin-offs (my selfie views :-)) of the word:-

Candids= Candid clicks of oneself whilst in the confines of one’s random comfort.

Candid’ise’/Candid’ising’= To randomise self shots, and present in an unabridged manner.

Candidness: Just randomness sans any wanna-be looking make-up!

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“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance...”: Oscar Wilde

Quoting Oscar Wilde here, who nursed thoughts on ‘selfhood’ way back in the mid 18^th century, it is absolute, soul-gratification with the ‘self’ being coaxed and cajoled. Photographs, clicked or posed for, writings/columns that bear our names, titles/designations displayed on identification cards, name boards, labels on schoolbooks neatly handwritten in fountain pen with our names,  and of course the ‘instant grand reception and felicitation’ of the ‘self’ in the world wide web of social media; it’s a celebration and propagation of self all the way!

There is a Freudian profoundness to this just like his ‘looking glass self theory’ which today’s new-age social media thrives on! The idea is that, primarily, one needs to love oneself in order to even sense anything close to love for another soul. If you are not in unison with yourself, we cannot even remotely be of help to another self. We are not ascetics who are on a yogic mission in the mountains of peace; we certainly need to rummage through all the worldly austerities. A great deal of dogmatic self-pampering does a whole lot of feel-goodness! So lo and behold! Enjoy in some self-ness, no way selfishness, which would open up the Pandora’s box :-)


P.S.:

Post-scripting the post with a random candid!