Elusive regions of the mind.

Blue or green?

I couldn’t decide.

Blue morphing into green

Or green into blue?

Bur the thought returned

Or was it feeling?

Thought morphing into feelings

And Feelings into thoughts?

The blue green waters of the ocean

Taking the colours of the earth

As they approach the shore

Only to return

To its never ending pursuit

Of blue or green

Or both?

Once again

That strange sensation fills me

Every cell in my being

As they did

Ever since I remember.

Sitting on the steps in the evenings after shower

Waiting for amma to complete the ritual

Of dusting with rasnathi podi

The line where my wet hair parted

At the center of my scalp.

It was gloaming, almost

And the coconut trees stood large

To my five year old eyes.

They seemed to touch the heavens

And beckoned me to come

With the breeze that moved them.

I watched the birds trail across the heavens

And envied them

As some disappeared into the trees

So close to the heavens.

And that strange sensation

Of thought morphed into feelings

Spread in my chest

Creating a sadness

Or was it joy?

I do not know.

But it purges,

That sensation

And transports

To an unknown region.

I get the feeling

Or is it thought

That strange truths inhabit that land.

The blue green sea merging with the distant horizon

The sky and the swaying palms that shelter the birds

awaken in me

thought or feelings I cannot fathom.

But tell me

I have in me the elements of those regions

I long for a glimpse of - - -

The return of the enemy

When the dreaded foe resurfaced

My heart crashed against the ribs

Knocking me down.

But soon I picked myself up

And the ground steadied beneath me,

And I faced the foe.

The apparition which had petrified me

Was now but a shadow of what he was

The first time

He’d been demystified.

His cards were exposed

And my reserves I’d discovered.

I mocked him.

You can kill only me

You can’t touch my spirit

abandoned

my muse deserted me

leaving behind a vacuum

which grows and grows

and engulfs.

how did I frighten it away?

will it ever return?

dwelling in a vacuum

is no fun.

thoughts drift in

and drift away.

like a yo-yo

with the string snapped

i roll away

and stop in some corner

till the cleaner sweeps me off and dumps me

in the waste bin

to be trashed.

The Downpour

Earth holds its breath
while light withdraws
at noon
slowly but steadily - -

strange silence charged with routine sounds of noon
awaits it
in the air thickened by the pall of monsoon cloud.

And then it comes

The downpour.
Sheets of rain lash the earth
Pleasant smell of the soil
Warms the heart
As the watery assault slackens its attack
And darkness withdraws
And noon returns

Like joy reinstated
After emotional decongestion
In the wake of heartbroken sobs.

Adios Amigo

Did you blow your brains out
To set it free
From the tentacular stranglehold
Of dark despair?

I understand
And weep for you
Siddharth, my friend.

Parukutty Teacher

Clad in white

Starched white

Unironed white

Indigoed white

With thin black border

Or thinner red border

Eyes brimming with contempt

And hate and disgust

Set below sandal paste streaked forehead

Set below salt and pepper parted in the center

She taught me the language that gave birth to my thoughts.

Eyes flash

Sheer fury

Tongue sneers, spews

Vitriol

“Christians step out

Kneel

You do it in your church

We don’t kneel in temples”.

Mind still soft

Yet to set in position

Wails silently

Cursing its faith.

Worse

Grows estranged

From the language in which it feels.

Chaos

Distortions

Incomprehensible emotions

Self submerged

In the rubble of thoughts and feelings

Gasps for words that describe.

In vain.

Clad in white

Sandal paste furrowing hideously

She cackles in glee.

(My previous post -Confessions of an alienated Malayalee - is a prelude to this)

Confessions of an Alienated Malayalee

(This is a post from my pareltank blog.I wrote a poem more than 3 decades ago which i have hesitated to post on account of the venom it has. This post explains why it is so venomous.I still haven't decided whether to post it or not)

yes. that’s me. I call myself that ’cos of my indifferent competence in my mother tongue. I think in Malayalam, but have no confidence to write in that language. I sometimes think if I could write in the language I think and feel in, I’d become the Shakespeare of Malayalam literature. Don’t laugh. this is how I console myself when I fall into one of those fits of depression at my inability express myself comprehensively – thoughts, feeling s and their nuances. The English language does not have corresponding terms to express malayalee feeling. Or, I am not competent enough in this angrezi tongue. So there is a huge gap between my sensibilities and the only language I can write in. Frustrating, isn’t it?

How did this happen? it’s a long story. I was born less than ten years after Independence. So guess I can call myself post independence generation. Those were days when people believed that future belonged to people who received education in English. I was a victim of that false notion. But, I did have Malayalam as a subject till 4th standard. But the Malayalam teacher took a dislike to me for a reason I don’t want to go into here(I have written a poem on that – so intense was my resentment towards that teacher who alienated me from myself). Unfortunately, along with me, that teacher was also promoted to the middle school. As soon as this news was confirmed, I went home and wept and wept till my mother agreed to switch my second language to French! With that, my connections with Malayalam text books, therefore literary Malayalam, were severed forever and ever.

Thus it is that my imagination was shaped completely by the angrezi language. They say if you learn a language, you tend to identify yourself wiith the culture of native speakers of that language. So my childhood imagination was filled with Jack and Jill, Polly putting the kettle on (I used to go around our kitchen looking for the kettle I saw in illustrated nursery rhyme books- found none), sixpence and pocket full of rye (thought that rye was the higher denomination of sixpence). Must say I used to be fascinated that the English could bake blackbirds in a pie and still keep them alive. Fortunately for me, I had a lot of neighbours, cousins from whom I picked up kakey, kaket, koodevidey?, Omana kuttan, govindan, ayyappandey amma, neyyappam chuttu. I sang these with full throated ease and felt I belonged. But when I sang the English rhymes, my imagination got activated and made me yearn for things I knew nothing of. Like they say, unheard melodies are sweeter. As I reached primary school, Enid Blyton was my staple food. and also all those comics – Three Stooges, Totem, Tin Tin, Classics, Richie Rich, Little Lotta - - - - . my horizons widened and without my quite knowing it, I moved away from my roots into a world I had never experienced. Along with it, an attitudinal change crept into me – a feeling of superiority over those who didn’t know the Famous Five and Captain Haddock!!

Soon, I started reading romances. Mills and Boons told me how the westerners fell in love, how hostility was an imperative prelude to love! How men had to be dark and tall ( I didn’t know then that, that dark was not our dark), that when men fell in love, they snapped at their lady loves for no reason. But i didn't know how people in love behaved in my culture! I soon got tired of Mills and Boons but Georgette Heyer remained my favourite for a long time. How she fired my imagination! her novels transported to a still more remote world - the Regency period, Victorian age - - -and I moved with wide eyed wonder among powder and patch, frills and gloves, lords and ladies and fops - --- Humour so pervaded her narration that I fell in love with the English language! My alienation from my own language was complete.

My estrangement from the imaginative world represented by Malayalam literature is the saddest thing that has happened to me. As I grew older, I moved into the world of English classics and poems. The breathtakingly beautiful paddy fields of Kerala skirted by beckoning coconut trees made me search for Wordsworthian terms to describe them. No muse works that way and the poet in me died. So did whatever creativity I had. Now I realize that one can create only in the language one thinks in, feels in - in the language that shapes one’s day to day life. I was trapped between two worlds – and was not resourceful enough to find a way out of this trap.

Today, I feel like a half baked creature. I fully realized what I lost when I got my first employment in a college in mid Travancore. my colleagues seemed to be at home with such a rich literature and culture. Jokes had to be explained to me and I didn’t find them funny. The humour was lost in the translation. Philosophical ruminations in Malayalam seemed part of the daily diet of my English department. And my colleagues felt guilty when they saw me trying to pretend I understood. Fortunately for me, my spoken Malayalam was extremely good. so I belonged as long as the conversation did not move into higher planes. But it did. too often. That is when I wrote that vitriolic poem about my Malayalam teacher who was instrumental in uprooting me even as I remained physically rooted.