As the Diwalis get quieter...

I have never been a huge fan of bursting firecrackers. I have always been governed by the notion that the soul of the Vodafone-advertisement-pug resided in every cracker that I set fire to, and so, every cracker would fly towards me and burst beside my body, showering affection and ash powder. 
I also felt very uncomfortable taking a walk on Diwali days because it made me pity the heroes of the games 'Temple Run' and 'Subway Surfers'. 
A lit firecracker there. Run left. A lit firecracker here. Run right. A small girl is about to light up a 100-wala. Run straight.  

But over the last few days, I have been setting out on uncomfortable walks of a different nature. 
The streets and the apartments around my house, in Bangalore, present a sight that would be any photographer's delight. The houses and their balconies have been lined up with lamps and little light bulbs. 
But it has been a very silent Diwali.
And, strangely, a part of me misses the non-stop noise of cracker after cracker after cracker. A part of me misses becoming a 'Subway Surfer' hero on the streets. A part of me misses the sight of colorful pieces of paper crowding the road.
I hear the adult in me saying that this might be the way to celebrate Diwali, going forward. For the sake of noise pollution. For the sake of the environment. For the sake of the street-sweepers.
But the part of me that wants a noisy Diwali recalls my mother's childhood stories, which she keeps narrating every Diwali with uncontrollable joy.
"From a week prior to the Diwali day, we would start bursting crackers. There would be intense competition between my house and the neighboring houses. Your uncle and I would be the representatives from my house. Every evening, we would ensure that we burst more crackers than the surrounding houses. The number of pieces of paper that lay outside our houses were the measure of our might. And we would never let my father or grandfather sweep the pieces away. Even if they did the cleaning when we were asleep, we would gather the paper pieces from the garbage and disperse them all around the house. Winning the Diwali-cracker-contest meant a lot."

I ask myself - Why the fondness for crackers when I am not exactly a fan?
My mind seems to be behaving like a college student on his farewell day, not wanting to leave the professor who had scolded him the most through his college years.

As I ponder upon the reasons for the reduction in the magnitude of bursting firecrackers, something which I had seen even in Chennai during my college years, I cannot resist the thought that my parents' generation had had a simpler taste in life. 
For them, going to the movie theater had been an event. For them, going to the restaurant had been an event. For them, bursting crackers had been an event. 
They seem to have led their lives listening more to their hearts than to their brains.
Which reminded me of the debate topic in the special talk show shown on Sun TV yesterday.
Which attains more importance in a home? Intelligence or love?
One of the speakers narrated a beautiful story to argue why she considered love to be the winner.
An old couple is seated on a park bench. The wife suffers from a memory disorder. She forgets her husband's identity every 20 minutes. But the husband remains seated beside her, holding her hand, and explaining every 20 minutes who he is. Why would the husband do this? Because he had had the smartest wife? Or because he had had the woman who had loved him the most?

I smiled after I heard this story. And I smiled now after I typed the story. 
I reread the entire piece above. I realize that most of it has come from the heart and very little from the brain. 
Maybe I belong more to my parents' generation. Or maybe I am just emotionally charged in the middle of a quiet Diwali.

A chore of compassion...

She entered the house after a long day at office. As she switched on the kitchen light, her eyes fell upon the kitchen sink. There lay a heap of unwashed utensils from morning. "Poor Rangamma! How exhausted would she be after all the work?" she pitied the maid about to arrive in 15 minutes, and she started washing the utensils. 

My every day Wonderland

After meetings that go better than expected
But worse than the manager's standard..
When a mail rests in my inbox awaiting a reply
That would result only in a midnight-damage-control session..
When the eyes start composing frame after frame of the coconut tree visible outside the window
Turning a blind eye to the overlapping charts in the dashboard report..
I walk to a corner and draw a magical pattern
A green hole in the shape of a word bubble opens up
"Did you respond to the client's doubt?", "Can you review this modified SQL query?", "Is the tracker tracking the daily tracker updated?"
I set up a barricade blocking these questions
And plunge into the hole, the hole of hope.

I wish everyone would get a chance to visit this world

This world where ghosts are lovable
This world where buffaloes are the most adored pets...
This is a place where ego evaporates in seconds but possessiveness persists for centuries to come
This is a place where conversations can be one-sided
Not because a partner is dominating
But because the understanding is so deep that an exchange is not necessary
Here, we blow up balloons to play with sleeping saints
And we ride behind baby bikers... Trrrrr....
Here, we worship Brain pickings and also a few nitpickings
We also fall in love with 'Aananda Yaazhai' and 'Ennaku piditha paadal...'
Rain is celebrated and so is Rumi
The Prophet is a Superstar as much as The Alchemist...
I wish everyone would get a chance to visit this world
This world where new words are birthed, and at times, poems
This world where a robot is transformed into a kid every day
Thanks to a guardian angel
A spirit who wipes away my pain and paints a widespread smile.

A proverb a day...

We tend to resurrect proverbs only when the days get difficult. Why don't we respect them even during the happy hours?

Freedom of Expression

Whenever I visit my maternal uncle's house, I make it a point to join my 13 year-old and 8 year-old cousins in finishing their homework, which they get to sadly, after cycling and cricket and carom board.
My 8 year old cousin starts making faces when she has to solve complex multiplication problems and at such times, I would want to tell her that life and society have a lot more in store than just multiplication. But I would stop myself, realizing I am not a news reporter releasing harsh realities of the world into every living room.
I would enjoy helping them out in all subjects but my happiest stretch would be when we got down to the English homework. I would go through the poems and short stories and envy all the English teachers. How fascinating would it be to recite a 'In the bazaars of Hyderabad' or narrate a 'The gift of the Magi' to a class filled with blossoming minds, and initiate a discussion about the thoughts birthed?!

In such a state of mind, I opened my 13 year-old cousin's English composition notebook. After 3 exercises of letter writing, I came upon an exercise of paragraph writing.
"In no less than 250 words, write a paragraph about your family. Use words such as which, whom, whose in your paragraph."
I could not control my excitement. I had never gotten to know what my cousin felt about my uncle and aunt. I had presumed that he was not yet mature enough to discuss about family. So, I blessed my cousin's school for gifting me with such an opportunity, and eagerly started reading his answer.
"My father is a doctor and he practices medicine at Bombay. My mother is a homemaker..."
I paused. I was confused. My uncle is an industrial worker and my aunt, a school teacher. I closed the note book to check the name on the label, wondering if my cousin had brought his classmate's notebook for reference. But the label showed my cousin's name. I returned to the 'paragraph writing' page and continued reading. The family described in the paragraph could not have been more different from my uncle's family.
"Why have you written this answer?" I asked my cousin. "My class teacher wrote it on the blackboard and we all copied it down in our notebooks", he replied. "But why?" I asked him. He threw me a confused look.
I apologized to my cousin for wrongly questioning him instead of the system.
I felt sad for my cousin's English teacher. Despite a golden chance to get an insight into a child's thoughts about his family, the teacher had opted to train the students to score well in the exams. Why spoil the delight of evaluating creative answers with the routine of just checking for known spelling mistakes and grammatical errors?

I wanted to be different from the teacher and so, I glanced through my cousin's English text book and stopped at a chapter titled "On being an Indian". I looked at the 'Questions' section after the chapter and one of the questions excited me.
"Do you feel happy or sad to be an Indian?"
I read it out loud to my cousin. Immediately, he replied, "I feel happy being an Indian because India is a country that expresses unity in diversity."
I could not help but smile. I told him that I did not want the answer given by his teacher but I wanted to know what he felt. He was silent. I encouraged him to just speak out his mind.
"I feel happy", he answered. "Why?" I asked. "Because my mother and father and sister live here" he replied.
"What if your mother and father and sister moved to Australia? Which country would you like then? India or Australia?" I asked him. Without a moment's hesitation, my cousin shouted, "Australia!"

I fell in love with his answer that shone bright in authenticity. But I also realized that my cousin's English teacher is great and selfless.
Maybe she is in the pursuit of safeguarding her class, by stopping her kids from doling out honest opinions and unpatriotic thoughts in this country at this time when they might cost a person his/her life.

The things I cannot write about

One of my dear friends was texting me about his travel experiences from a trip he had taken the previous weekend. As he finished describing the locations, he moved on to the dishes he had gotten to taste on his trip. He started,
"The taste of Haleem - You really can never describe its taste to anyone. It's weirdly like that!! It's amazing! Trust me. Things just melt in your mouth and it's super rich in nutrients. Your body just craves it as you have it. All of what I said does not come remotely close to the actual taste though."
And then he added,
"But if someday you get to taste Haleem (don't dismiss the idea of tasting meat and keep it as a possibility in your head), do take an attempt to describe the taste of Haleem to me."
I could not help smiling. I considered the possibility of me tasting Haleem, or any other non-vegetarian dish, and it seemed very bleak. I felt sad that there was a very high chance of me never being able to describe Haleem to my friend. 

As I pondered upon this, my mind slowly moved on to other things that I have not been able to use in my writing, owing to my non-experiences of them.
The hangover after a long night's celebration. The slow-motion-universe after getting high. The inability to make a comparison that went '..it felt like the inside of your mouth after you had smoked the third cigarette in a row'. 
The thoughts gradually climbed the stairway to the next floor in my mind.
The smell at Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi. The touch of snow. The fear of flight. The waterways of Venice and the alleyways of Paris. The terrors and wonders lurking in nooks and corners of the Amazon rain forest. The never-ending stretches of Sahara. 
The thoughts climbed another flight of stairs.
The sleepless night in a fully bombed city. The slow acceptance of memories as reality post the death of a loved one. The joy / fear of having a life in my womb.

I realized that I still had a chance to experience some of these. But some were not under my control. 
The more important question was - Do I have to experience all of these and a lot more to make my writing wealthier?
Perhaps yes. Even if not my writing, my life would remain poor if not for some of these. 
Which led to another question - Do we not cherish art for this very reason?
Do we not devour paintings and photographs and books and music and films since everyone cannot experience every emotion and every relationship in every continent?

I understood that art served as a gateway to enter new worlds and to enhance one's own understanding of the existing world.
But in parallel, I remembered Robin Williams's lines from the park scene in Good Will Hunting.
"You’re a tough kid. If I asked you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more unto the breach dear friends”. But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.
I’d ask you about love and you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable, known someone that could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer."
The difference between learning and living, I thought. Or perhaps, the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Colors

I was thinking about the possible ways
Of making the world a more colorful place
Celebrate Holi at a global scale every week?
Turn every building into a kid's canvas?
Increase the population of butterflies?
Grow different flowering plants beside every streetlight?
Manufacture cars and motorbikes that changed colors at every traffic signal?
Design clothes that changed shades depending on our emotions?
I liked the last thought
Borrowing ideas from 'Inside Out'
I imagined a crowded street where the clothes turned emotional chameleons
Yellow in joy, Blue in sadness, Red in anger
How many faces would adorn a smile even when the shirts turned blue?
How many faces would show calmness even as the saris continued turning redder? 
I badly wanted to walk that street
Apart from the colors, for the emotional truth
But I told myself
I would walk that street only if black was assigned for pain
How else would I get to be happily dressed in my favorite color day after day?