The Little Brown Box

You know what celebrations are like. The music, the food, the "masti-masala and the dhamaka" ( ahem, ahem, we need to work on our Desi glossary soon)

This was 2005. I was immersed in Asian Heritage month work and everywhere I looked, on websites, school assemblies and newspapers: there was just that, the overpowering tribute to all that is superficial.

And I was angry. I had not yet mastered the art of the Zen of activism. I was floundering on the shores of my own angt which was swirling around me that evening.

The late evening light has a serene ability to clear melancholy. Kishore da immortalised this feeling in Safar:

Kah-een door jub din dhal jaye

Shyam ki dul-han, badan chur-aye

Chupke se aye

Mere kha-ya-lon ke aan-gan mein

Koi sap-no key deep jala-ye

Deep jala-ye

I had heard every Bollywood song there was popular, I had had enough of being spoken to LOUDLY so that I would understand, I had had enough of being packed in a little brown labelled box that screamed:

This is who I think you are

And that is who I think you should remain

Forever and ever and always

I was sitting in the staff room at Cedarood. I was perhaps one of the few people still left in the building.

The words started flowing and I scribbled. I did something I had never done before: I started writing inside a brand new book I was reading ( Storywalah: an anthology of South Asian fiction.)

As I wrote on, the pain started to recede. I felt better, bit by bit. And this poem was born. Did the grammar make sense that day? Surely not. I did not even bother fixing it. I just wrote on and I proclaimed to myself and to the world:

"My Indian-ness proclaims proudly,
everyday, head held high

I am Ramanujam, I am Arundhati Roy
I am Tagore, I am Gandhi, I am Kalpana Chawla

I am so much more
than silk saris and spicy samosas...."

( Lines from my poem " The Little Brown Box which apprears in my soon-to arrive book by the same name)

This is where I found peace.

Stay well