Last September, my first class

Today, I start my Masters course work. My son insisted I take one more pen and my daughter placed three well sharpened pencils in my hand yesterday as the three of us organised our bags and binders yesterday. After a day of doing nothing and a dinner for four, I went to sleep with memories of my first school days at Shishuvihar coming back to me, also Mary Immaculate in Goa when I was still the only child when I started grade 1. I did not speak a word of English in my grade 1 class and sat through the whole day peeking to see if my rain coat was still where Amma had hung it, salmon orange with large yellow daisies, Oh I loved it so. Sister Angela spoke to me in Konkani the first week and then miraculously forgot how to do it, so I had to learn how to speak English.

So much has happened since then: utaar chadhaav of fortunes and the twists and turns of life. Today perhaps 41 years after I first started school of any kind, I am off again. This time to complete my Masters as a step towards my PhD: I am now a dreamer where I was then a runner. I still want my Amma, just as I did then. Except then, I could run out of the school building with my teacher and EA in hot pursuit as they cut me off on the way home (did I even know how to get there?). Today there is nowhere to run to, I can find her in my heart and I am still getting used to that. And I yearn to hear her voice.

Rez ready

In less than three weeks, my daughter is going off to university.

The feelings and sensations are amazing and extremely overwhelming at times. This is a person I have known as a thought first, then as little flutter. Every steps seems to be guided by my decision to invite this child into my life, although of one thing leading to another there was never a guarantee.

I remember falling in love with the name first and the idea of having a daughter in 1988 long years before I even had a father in mind! That's all it boiled down to in the end I suppose: the courtship as we socially know it, is then perhaps just a mating dance to pick the right DNA. Candid? That's what I'm thinking right now!

And now it is time to sit back and wonder about who this child is and what she takes with her into the world. What she has inside of herself as experiences, desires and aspirations and a unique quality of seeing the world with her own eyes.

Simple tasks such as bringing out her passport and health card and leaving them for her to pack, buying a toilet brush for her to take with her and helping her do laundry or use her ATM card are as poignant as teaching her to walk. Because this is what it is: I am teaching my daughter to walk into the world, knowing some things, not knowing others. I am also teaching myself to walk in mine.

And as my vision blurs, I am aware that she has what it takes to create her own destiny with the tiny hands that had one tapped me from the inside. She is still here, in every fiber of my being.

My daughter, my friend, my Guru.
Khudha hafiz.

Monday

the backyard is verdant,
blue jays, the avian kind, beckon
guess who's dragging her feet
Ah, another work day: mixed blessings

The long road of mindful activism

Dear Fellow Traveller,  Those who stay within the boundaries of professionalism for the greater good of communities are not sheep. Those who work tirelessly without fireworks are not sheep. And because they are not sheep, they do not follow mindlessly. If that understanding were true then all of us who are within the system who are working in our own way would be sheep. There are times to nod and smile and there are times to forge ahead.  Both have to be planned approaches, therefore strategically used. From my experience, I know that when I stand up for people, I am not popular.  When I stand up for core beliefs and issues, I am challenged.  That is part of the learning and growth for me.  All I know is that if I keep issues in focus, things begin to make sense.  And I have to learn to trust somebody, sometime. Else, the loneliness in activism is deafening.

Rainy Friday

drenched peonies and

rainy day, hot samosas,
chai, weekend un-plans

Set me free

Knowing what I do
that when I reached out
I clawed into empty spaces
searching for someone
to reach out
and hold my hand

Isn't it the law of Karma that
I do not find it in my heart to stand
and wait
for one more needy grasp
of one more SOS
of one more false scare
each one, a shackle
on my dancing feet?

all these years
all those times
all those ignored moments
all those, "later maybe"
and "when I have a moment"
and "why can't you do it yourself,
"if only you tried harder"...

One question here:

where were you

when I needed you

Afghan Sister

I remember her vividly, from a life long past. She was all over the media, whatever little there was then. The National Geographic photograph of the riveting gaze. And the intrusion of the photographer's gaze not unknown to me, as a Mumbai girl. I knew only too well.

You cannot live in Mumbai and notknow the Colonial Gaze. We, young folk then,  scoffed at the camera toting tourists clicking away at the faces, the urchins, the pigeons, the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Gateway and streedside squalor as I nimbly side-stepped the puddle to get to the bus and go home. Even as I write this, I am transported to Kala Ghoda and the dusk rush to the train or the buses that belched out smoke and people in my beloved city. I wanted to stay back in the City, walk along Marine Drive a while, but home beckoned with its dutied lined up neatly row after row. Mothering work for me started earlier than expected, long before I was a mother.

I forgot about her for a long time, went on to live my life and do my mothering work. Then suddenly she came into my life again, this time with a weather beaten face, a middle aged woman, with the gaze still strong yet the lines telling stories I could not imagine. This was perhaps the time of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns and I admired the resolve and the lives, much like the ones I had left behind. One has to eat, I chose to eat here, in my adopted home. She continued to live where she was placed, perhaps until someone does a 25th anniversary special.

Then yesterday, I met her again, in both her avatars: on the pages of my soul-brother's assignment. I read the first few lines of his paper and admired the fact that at such a young age, he had the resolve and untainted courage to know the heartfelt good of his own people fromoft- repeated "truths". We went on to work together and finish the seminar presentation. And at the end of that 14 hour day, due to the mad pace from the work day to the school day, I was hungry, very. Although I have a Bamiyan Kabob right beside my home, I had never been there. And here it was on my path. So in I went and I just sat there. And looked around me.

The laughter and conversation of the family members working together in the kitchen and at the counter were welcoming. The recommendations impeccable, the smiles genuine, the lines, the eyes honest.

As I sat watching the purple twilight descend on the university campus in front of me,  I looked lovingly at those beautiful photographs:  enlarged and framed in heavy wooden frames they told a story of a people from their own eyes. The intricate carvings inlaid with azure and ochre, the curved dome of the mosque, the resolve of the devout as they walked towards their faith.

One thing is certain: media tales and one sided stories do not do justice to these ancient cultures and the true stories: they are inadequate, and unidimensional, bland and biased.

I sat there, surrounded by people yet quite solitary. I remembered the wonderfully ancient statues of the Buddha carved into the hillside, the historical twists that shaped the unreality of so many lives. And I stayed with that thought awhile. How our lives are indeed interconnected, how late we realise it.

All I could think of, pray for: please let those beautiful marble walls never be destroyed, or become pock marked.

May the Azaan never fail to call.

May the roses still bloom in carpets and gardens.

May hearts remain open to understand that all ways are possible.

May there be peace.