Tinkling bells that chime without the wind,
The to and fro swing,
Of slender hips,
That sound a unanimous cham-cham
On wooden floors and stone stages
The gleam of silver against the kesari sky,
The telltale sign of a dipping sun.
The skimming of toes across the bubbles,
Of a still lake,
The water rippled in semicircles
Of sound waves.
The unseen bangles of glass
Woven with the beat
Came to life
With clanging bells on the floor.
The kesari sky turned an alluring azure,
And turned darker and darker,
Till it reached a deep black
The music sounded,
In giggling, tinkling harmonies,
The glisten and gleam
Of stars on earth,
That adorned the ankle and the foot.
Eridanus ~ the river
They dusted the stars on my eyelids,
And coated my skin in the glowing embers of the sky
The drew upon my body,
A thousand stories
And once they had painted my limbs,
With the colors of the night and the shooting stars,
That seeped deep below the skin
Dying my veins and arteries
Silver, blue and gold.
They split my soul.
And let the silver that gushed out
Coat my skin like varnish
They threw me into an abyss
To light the way in the dark
And there I stayed suspended.
Whispering secrets of all that I could see
Of lover sitting upon my banks
Spinning cobwebbed grey threads,
Spinning stories and tales
For the effusive glowing rivers to engulf
They called me Eridanus.
Featured artwork : Sana Hassan
Muse
A caress of strings
That touched upon a humid loneliness
Broke the silence, in cheery reverberation.
An echo, on a crowded street
Breaking the hum and buzz of chatter
That lingered outside a stone cathedral.
Upon whose windows were painted,
Gospel women in tinted tessellation
Of rainbow.
Solemn countenance, that smiled
Not even at the angel hymns
Drawn with passion, famed beauty
Upon which stared 1000’s of dark eyes
And yet found that they had to leave.
Whereupon cobbled streets,
They hovered with the breeze
To listen to the strumming of a guitar.
Cups of coffee and whispered voices
That dance a salsa with the music
And find solace in the rhythmic beat
Of melody and harmony.
One that wasn’t embodied even,
In stone, glass and statues of a God.
The Evergreen Appeal of ‘Anne of Green Gables’
I read this classic (the complete version, that is) when I was twelve years old. And it has always been a favorite of mine, tying for first place with Pride and Prejudice, which I could read and watch a thousand times over. And as October dawns dragging in my favourite season along with it, I am reminded of Anne who first sprinkled water over my love for winter.
But at any rate, every October 1st, I pick up one of the seven Anne books, with Windy Poplars being my usual number one and Rainbow Valley an occasional read. And as I picked up book number 2, Anne of Avonlea this year, I couldn’t help but wonder why I am so attached to this series that I read as a child, whereas there are a lot of classics I have managed to outgrow (Pollyanna, Rebecca of Sunnybrooke Farm, etc.).
Anne is the eccentric protagonist of small town Avonlea, where everyone knows everyone. I recently started watching Gilmore Girls. And much of the reason why I love Anne is why I love Gilmore Girls. The world is an anomaly. The characters are vibrant and loveable, each has his or her own personality, rather than simply being just ships passing in the distant, they all factor into the story and the many episodes he protagonists feature in. Each bringing in a new flavour. There’s the strict Josephine Barry, who is a soft-hearted old woman with a hard exterior, a myriad of teachers who teach Anne and a number of students who Anne teaches, each coming with their own stories. My all time favorite is Rebecca Dew who is just so eccentric, that I adore every aspect of her, including her name. There are weddings and love stories, funerals and scrapes, from childhood all till Anne is a mother herself.
Avonlea and its people are like a historic Stars Hollow, and that’s one of the main appeals. In fact upon further research I’ve found a compare and contrast between the characters of the two worlds (personally I don’t agree with it, but it’s interesting to see that other people follow the same thought process.) Read it here!
Anne is the protagonist you can’t help but love. She’s got that dream like quality that endears her to you as a child. And yet the amount of scrapes she gets into is comical. Growing up as a clumsy child I found kinship in that. I was the child who slipped over nothing but air and who took action without thinking of the consequences. And to see that reflected in the perfect character of book you’re reading, creates a sort of bond between the two of you. As Anne would say it, made us kindred spirits. As a child reading, that remains the original appeal.
As a budding writer, I found myself attached to these books because of the way Maud writes. Everything is so descriptive. I can build up the meandering road of the White Way of Delight of the violet hues that surround Lovers Lane. Natural scenery reads more like poetry, and reading it at 17 now, allows me to appreciate the vocabulary, but at 12 it’s a cornucopia of beautiful, lyrical writing. Color pops off the page, trees come to life, the hills roll around you in 3D.
As I grew I realized that Gilbert Blythe was a dream. He’s perfect and Anne and him were perfect today. It struck a chord in me to see, as Mrs Lynde put it, a woman choosing the nerdy, handsome boy who worships the ground she walks on. I found their relationship so relatable. It started off with Anne, being completely enraged by Gilbert calling her Carrots and from there a hate to friends to lover romance blossomed. The pacing was exquisite, where in the first book, the reader can see Gilbert falling helplessly in love with Anne, reading up to the soft infatuations as best friend in the second and finally the sweet acceptance with which they fall in love. The romance was subtle enough that it didn’t take over the plot, all of Anne’s solo scenes and friendships shine out, but now as an older reader who is a fan of romance, the Anne-Gilbert relationship is the biggest draws for me.
The series has everything. It’s an amalgamation of feel-good moments, romance, strong female protagonists, friendships and lots and lots of eccentricities. Making it perfect for readers of every age. It’s evergreen. Because as you read, you grow with Anne. You find a place for yourself in the world with her. You find friendships and romance and you do it all alongside a steadfast friend with fiery hair and an upturned nose. Anne ends up being more a friend than a character…
Doodling Dreams
The impossible seems possible sometime. And I feel it’s better to dream the abstract and the irrational rather than let common sense dictate life.
Flying is impossible.
Soaring through the sky on your own?
Isn’t possible.
That when a star goes supernova
It bursts into a black hole.
And though it slows down time,
If you fell into it,
You’d be stretched and ripped into pieces.
It isn’t possible.
But I looked on,
Up to where my arms couldn’t reach.
No matter how hard I stretched,
Or how high I jumped.
No telescope,
Of glass or gold
Did justice to fractured moonlight,
Indented craters,
And fiery shooting stars.
I wove,
The stars and the moons together
In a fabric of dreams.
And though everything,
Was supposed to be black, silver and gold,
I simply picked up colors
And redrew the tapestry of sky, space
And black holes
In a rainbow.
Featured Artwork – Nainika Shriram
Love Letter(3)
To read the previous installment: LOVE LETTER (2)
I often wonder, what life had in store for me, had I not met you. What orifices and crevices of her being would she show me. I can’t help but wonder whether you and I were ink on paper, a story penned down by destiny, or whether we were a chance meeting, just waiting to happen.
When I walk on the beach, wet sand collecting around my toes and sticking to my skin, I think of you. Wanting to hug you, tickle you, touch you the way the sea tickles the shore. That when I see a polished seashell, the flecked surface of light browns and gold reminded me of your freckles. And the smell of salted springs reminded me of your summer perfumes.
If there’s one thing I have learned after having met you, it is that love is unexpected and that it needs to be constantly expressed. That when I fell in love with you and didn’t see the stars in your eyes and the moon in your smile, I was disappointed. But when I heard your laugh bubbling in the air, the moment I realized I wanted to hug you even though you were awfully dirty, the happiness it gave me to see you satisfied and the hurt I felt for your disappointments I realized that I carried the sun in my heart and the stars in my hands, for loving you felt simply divine.
I ask myself now, when my heart stops pumping blood and my skin cracks over my skeleton, will you be able to find happiness? That when I die, will our love die with me? Will I be able to wait for you within the reaches of the unknown, unable to touch the stars, a dying fire burning my heart and butterflies leaving my stomach. And when the questions arise from my mind, I snuff them out like I do your occasional cigarettes and let the smoke leave my body so I can enjoy the here and now. For why think of clouded skies and burnt out suns’, when I fly with you now, skimming a lake of stars.
on suns, skies and constellations
The road to the stars: THE CONSTELLATION SERIES
When I drew the roads to my heart
And marked the paths,
With the shining constellations
προσπαθούν να βρουν πυξίδα
(Trying to find Pyxis)
I found that you,
Had already made yourself at home
Even though, I had barred my bones
And torn all muscled pathways
To stop you from reaching it.
When my breath
Felt like the ebbing winds during a sunset
And my soul drowned in the darkness of the night sky
I found the patterned stars
Shining through our entwined hands.
When the dusk sat upon my eyelids,
Coloring my skin in scarlets, yellows and golds
I would find the dawn,
Spring pink and baby blue
Waiting within your arms.
When our eyes met,
We didn’t need any language to translate our love
They glistened like stars,
And the language that gushed forth,
Was the river Eridanus.
Η κυματισμό ποτάμι της αγάπης
Featured artwork: Sana Hassan
Border Anthems
This was a piece I had done on request of my school newspaper’s editor for our Independence Day Issue that went beyond the borders, not only of the country but of time as well.
Ms. Shazia Singh, leant heavily upon her walking stick, her daughter under her arm as she stumbled over the threshold of the old home. It was her mothers death anniversary in 8 days. She was returning to clean up the last of her possesions. 11 years had passed since her death in 2036 at the ripe age of 94. She was now 65, and she missed her mother dearly. She shuffled through the photographs and old documents silently, while her daughter, Harlene, dusted the windows lightly with a cloth and opened up the drapes. Her hand falling upon a withered yellow paper, blank ink staining it. She opened it delicately reading the familiar handwriting that she had read so many times before.
14th August 2029 New Delhi, India
Dearest Farah,
It has been a long time since we last spoke and I miss hearing the amusing anecdotes and stories that you tell me about your life back in Karachi. I miss hearing the laugh that you bring to my lips and the smile that you stretch across my face, it is perhaps the uniqueness brought about by the relationship of two sisters.
I am writing to you today because a strange reminiscence has settled upon me. Like a thick fog sitting upon my shoulders, thickening in front of my eyes, I am feeling nostalgic. I don’t know whether it is because I am writing to you upon the brink of a new day of importance to me or because it is a day of importance to you, which is now ending. I am writing to you on the brink of independence. You sit in Karachi and I sit here in Delhi, and how I miss you my darling sister. I am an old maid now, 88 years of age and you are 85, I haven’t seen your face in 82 years and the memory of your three year old face has vanished from my memory. We do not share the relationship that most siblings share. You with our mother and I with our father, separated at childhood and never reunited. Our rela- tionship has been forged upon phone static and bad signal. We have lost each other to a broken sisterhood of two countries, too scarred to move away from our own comfortable settlements and I am saddened by the fact that I know your wrinkled smiling face only through the black and white of pictures.
This is unlike most of my rather formal letters to you because today I had a startling realization. It was brought about by a line of skipping school children outside the bungalow in the narrow galli, making faces at the wrinkled darzi and mustached paani-puri seller. They were singing patriotic songs, and I wondered why they would sing on the 14th of August instead of the 15th. So I draped my shawl around my head and slipped on some chappals before hurrying behind the wavering line of noisy children. When they finally stopped, I was panting with the exertion, for as much as I may boast of my still slender body and strong bones I am quite unfit. So I walked, bent over, breath catching in my throat and asked their teacher why the children were singing these nationalistic songs on this day instead of the next, the actual day of Indian independence. She gave me a warm smile and beckoned over a little girl to answer my question.
Now to add to the drama of my letter, I would say that this girl shared the face of your three year old self, toothy and pale, but I would not know for I do not remember your face except in flashes. It is the curse that old age brings. She had a head full of thick air, lovely dark skin and a full set of teeth. And her answer startled me. It is hard for me to explain her words so I shall quote whatever I remember.
‘Madam ji! Hum aaj aazaadi ke gaane isliye ga rahe hai kyunki aaj India kee behen Pakistan ka indeependens hua! They are also our seester no madam ji!? Aur Bharat kaise behen hogi eef she does not sing for her seester’
I bought that whole group of children ice cream. The chaos of a partition has separated us both from each other. We Indians consider you to be another world altogether, yet we are forgetting that the same mother gave birth to your nation as she did to our India. A sisterhood separated in their childhood giving rise to a chaos that clouded or senses. Just like you and me. We behave not like sisters should but like distant relatives. Separated at childhood. We are a sisterhood torn asunder much like our own two nations. It is but our folly to treat you as though you are a distant world not worth our time, patience or respect. I remember loving the cities in Pakistan, running around as a young child of 6 in the crowded streets not too different from Delhi. We were wrongly torn apart, the same way you and I have been snatched away from each other. A wall has been put up between us and our nations. A border.
We are a sisterhood torn asunder much like our own two nations.
Still they fight. It has improved greatly since fifteen years ago. Yet still they spit at each other. Hindus and Muslims, the many exchange programs and Kashmir campaigns going futile with a few dirty words and stares. I so hope that one day, I will get to see this rift being stitched back together. One day soon before the breath ebbs from my body and my eyes are unable to see anymore.
And so in hopes of that dream, today I too sang patriotic songs and donned a white and green kaftan. The way we sing on the birthday of our loved one to convey our respects and our love, I will sing both today and tomorrow. I will sing border anthems to show my love to my nations sister torn away from her in her childhood. I sing these anthems to strengthen a sisterhood that I could never experience, this anthem if sung in unity could forge a relationship so strong nothing could ever break it. I will sing in remembrance to our relationship. On the brink of independence I sing for you and your nation and me and mine.
Love Always,
Yasmin Aapa
Shazia controlled tears. She wondered why, her mother had never sent the letter to Farah Khaala. And she smiled, in times of crisis and the current plebiscite, she could see the end of the turmoil her mother and aunt had lived with all their life. The scars of partition constantly being opened with the knives of religion and the strife in Kashmir. She was envisioning it end, and she smiled knowing that her mother and aunt would be reunited far above somewhere in the world in 2047, a hundred years since they had last seen each other. Holding hands cradled by the joint contentment and peace of two sister nations…
Yamuna Yatra 2016
A journey in every sense of the word. I’m putting this up now, because it was an important period of my life. It represents more than just a road trip. This is a tribute to all of us who undertook the journey together.
बावरा मन देखने चला एक सपना
March 26th 2016 – April 6th 2016
8 years. We’d been dreaming about it for 8 years. 2 words, 5 syllables and a hundred memorable stories before. Yamuna Yatra. A journey, a Yatra, a trip and so much more.
There are so many aspects to Yatra, we had all heard the stories that were precedent to Yatra, and yet nothing came close or did justice to the 12-day experience that is Yatra.
Yatra wasn’t just 12 days of staying with your friends, away from the nagging voices of your parents telling you to study. Yatra was a journey that was inexplicable or indescribable. It was more than sneaking a packet of chips onto the cars, just to be caught. It was more than looking out of the window of the car to be stunned by nature’s magnitude, more than cribbing about the bathrooms, more than being cranky about the daily dose of daal we had to eat, and more than learning how to shampoo your hair in the river while squatting over a rock using a mugga. The journey began from the dirty roads of Delhi from where we made our way to Musoorie and then to the valley of Lakhamandal. The river skips over shallow stones in the color of the brown and green pebbles covered in moss. It is so clean you can see schools of the tiniest fish swimming by trying to avoid the rush of water over large rocks.
Yatra was about trekking up five km from Janki Chatti to Yamunotri while having some of the most unexpected people pat your back and lend you a hand when you were out of breath. It’s about sliding people over and cheering your classmates on as they try and drag themselves down an ice covered cliff without flying over the edge to a bloody death. The view is stunning, despite the freezing weather. The air is cold and crisp and at the top of the glacier where the Yamuna begins to melt and run in rivulets it’s like watching the water melt from an ice cube, clear and glassy. The rugged edges of the Himalayan mountains shine gray and silver as you trek together or alone, forging a path that can only be described as unforgettable and when the journey ends you find yourself surrounded by friends. Yatra was about those 2 am gossip sessions where the teachers got irritated at our raucous laughter and the other times where you consoled each other and held the other while they cried.
Yatra was that time where you could recognize new friends and those closest friends who would be there to hold you when you were homesick, unwell or holding your pee when the loo was just too dirty to go. It was also a time where you realized that perhaps that one acquaintance, close friend or even best friend wouldn’t always have your back and were present in your life just so you could have a good time. It was having a heart to heart and forging relationships with people you once hated or never imagined you’d interact with.
Yatra was pretending to have a party in your vehicle while listening to the saddest songs so that the tenants of the surrounding cars were jealous of all the fun you were having. It was trying to change the music on the pen drive with a toothpick because the gaadi simply had no fast forward or rewind button.
Yatra was the hot Maggi and sizzling pakoda’s consumed after long treks and icy showers. It was posing for those ‘candid pictures’ and singing by the bonfire where even the worst musicians sung at the top of their voice. It was haggling at Paonta Sahib with the old lady who had extremely over priced goods and going with reverence to get second helpings of prasad in the gurudwara.
It was exploring intellect and a new multitude of opinions as we as a batch, as classmates learned about differences, development, rivers, friendship and so much more. At the same time it was popping in gol-guppas one after the other just so you could beat the record or savoring aloo tikki in Vrindavan. It was realizing that Yatra didn’t just end at the Taj Mahal, but was going to continue for a long time.
Yatra. The card games, be it Kot piece or Gulaam Chor. The tears, the giggles, the dirty clothes and the tempting ice creams and packets of chips. The car journey, the new friendships, the tiring treks, the music. The realization, the recognition. Yatra. In a synonymous word, Yatra was Discovery.
Written 4th April – 6th April 2016,
Deeya Biswas (fellow yatri)
Feature Image : Deeya Biswas
Hiraeth
‘a homesickness for a home you can never return to or never was’
Your eyes were a salve,
A soothing touch
Of ice
On skin of fire.
A blaze
Uncontrollable,
Distrust. Anger. Jealousy.
Until, I found a hearth
To call home.
A home that was the essence of you and me.
I miss:
The laughter that decorated the air,
When we were together,
The scents and smiles,
That sit within every mirror and every window pane
The reflection of subconsciousness and memories.
The sense of belonging
That only fit the two of us
The space between your hands,
Which is made to intertwine the space in mine
And now
Ravaging, destroying,
Burning.
Everything within reach.
Everything in vicinity.
Trying to burn
The longing within, the unfulfilled desire to come home,
Bound by unspoken, unseen chains
To stay exactly where I am
Away from the cromulent nature that was us.