Nurturing

Nurturing, caring, sacrificing,
Traded off experiences,
Constant satisficing.

Protecting, guiding, worrying,
Tenuously constructed identities,
Selflessly disintegrating.

Yearning, missing, longing,
Sensitive souls in fragile bones,
For some succor waiting.

Saddened, disheartened, frightened
Rheumy-eyed and hopeless,
Praying for a comfortable end.

© Pragya Thakur

Chronic Lateness

So, yet again, she drops her baby off at the babysitters’ place at 5:00 am and proceeds to get ready for the day. She showers, dresses, puts on her make-up and struggles with her unmanageable hair for about 40 minutes. She intends to leave home at 6:00 am but the road to her hell is invariably paved with good intentions and she is always11 to 13 minutes late in starting her 10 mile drive to the Park & Ride. A drive that almost always takes her 19 minutes on the nightmarishly creeping parking lot of a highway also known as Route 80.

Every single day she arrives at the same ominous traffic light at the end of the exit ramp and it is always such a "delayed green" that it seems like an eternity before she can cross the intersection and get to the bus that awaits on the other side and could leave any minute while she waits for the light to turn. Here she sits, hunched over the steering wheel, screaming "Green, dammit, greeeeeeeeen!!!" This is a routine event in her life. It seems as though her stress levels soar as soon as she rolls off her bed. She restrains herself from committing the major moving violation of blowing right through the red traffic light each morning and even this restraint and this punishable, though impotent, impulse is now routine.

She is late to work, again. She gets in at 9:30 am; an hour and 30 minutes past when she intended to get in. Her bus passed a jack-knifed tractor-trailer and a minor fender-bender along the way. They shut down two east-bound lanes out of the four. The falling snow and the creeping salt trucks ahead of her 5 mph bus, stole several precious minutes out of the rapid downward spiral of her so-called life.

As every morning, once again, despite her best intentions, she couldn't eat any breakfast at home, couldn't make herself the PB & J sandwich that she kept promising to bring to work for lunch and had no time to spare for her daily multi-vitamin or her glucosamine chondroitin, for knee-joints that were now creaking and always angry in the cold weather.

She knew she shouldn't skip breakfast, the most important meal of the day, but there wasn’t a thing she wanted to eat. She didn’t want an omelet, didn’t care for the ubiquitous bagels and cream cheese nor muffins. She only liked carbs in the morning but she couldn’t bring herself to eat because she was frustrated with the fact that she was stuck at this weight and was not able to shed the 10 additional pounds that would ensure a healthy BMI for her and make her look better. She couldn't stand to look in the mirror these days, she couldn't stand to be photographed. She hadn't believed she could look good, in months now, and her hair.....always her hair! She never knew what to do with it. It was dry, it was curly, it was frizzy. It didn't look good short or long and it took away too many of her precious morning hours. She felt like writing a book entitled, "The Old Lady and Her Hair", she was the old lady. The old lady who was always rushed for time and always late no matter how hard she tried.

Yes, she felt old and decrepit at 36. Every twinge in her knee joint reminded her of impending geriatric troubles . Would she eventually be late for her appointment with death as well? She wondered.

© Pragya Thakur

Illusions of Reality

Do they really care,
Or are they pretending?
Is this sincerity,
Or are they dissembling?

Is their extreme apathy,
Cloaked in sympathy?
Or have I struck a chord,
Could this be empathy?

Drowning in their shallow depths,
Spouting meaningless sophistry,
Disguising their disinterest,
In cultivated airs of mystery.

All talk, all the time,
Never free from duplicity,
Smoke and mirrors everywhere,
Breathtaking illusions of reality

© Pragya Thakur

Gustav Klimt's - A Kiss

http://www2.magmacom.com/~alexxi/klimt/1klimt.htm

His gaze intense, his mouth compelled,
His callused palms reach out, cradle your face,
His universe folds in upon itself,
Until there is only you

You close your eyes, face uplifted
You sink to your knees, no sense of self
You have no resistance, no hubris
Until you are simply you

Breaths mingle, no discerning,
Where he ends, where you begin,
Our eyes wide shut; we can only feel,
Until all walls dissolve, imploding within.

© Pragya Thakur

Blue Vacation - A Dream

Let’s walk on forever,
Into the distant horizon,
Where the sky, azure and amber,
Meets the sparkling waves of blue,
Blending all eternity together.

Let’s dissolve the blues within,
Diffuse them into the blues without,
Momentarily at peace, with a universe,
That reflects only the blues most serene,
Absorbing all the other colors diverse.

Let’s feel the grainy turf beneath,
Leaving sand-prints on the soles of our feet,
As we observe, in silence, the golden hue,
Of the morning sun, precariously balanced,
Upon the sparkling, tremulous ocean of blue.

Let’s remember the time, the turquoise afternoon sky,
Made everything take on a silvery sheen,
Rendering objects most mundane,
Bright and shiny, new and clean,
And precious moments weren’t lost; unlived, unseen

Let’s not awaken from this reverie,
Where the high tide now rolls in, at the behest,
Of a retreating sun and the full moon’s crest,
And a diamond-studded sapphire blue sky,
Gazes at the crashing waves’ musical revelry.

Let’s never wonder if tomorrow is another day,
That it usually feels as blue as yesterday,
Let’s forget how grayness persists, leaving us,
Always in a mist, morning through night,
When we leave home pre-dawn, and return past daylight.

© Pragya Thakur

An Epiphanous Day

Today while I was taking a walk in New York City I felt like I had an epiphany of sorts. Here is the chain of discontent that led to this feeling. I had been in a gray mood since last evening. I had been feeling out of sorts as if nothing was as it should be. As if everything was just a little bit off-keel or off-center.

What bothers me the most about my life is the lack of passion in it. Most people I know are passionate about something. They have intense feelings and emotions and are driven to do things. Where is my drive, where is my motivation? I feel I am not passionate about being a Mom, I certainly have not been a passionate wife, in any sense of the word, I don’t recall ever being passionate about any of my jobs. How can one live a contented life this way? It is not possible. A laissez-faire attitude gives one the false perception that one is a very calm and unperturbed soul. But it’s a façade. The fact that I am not feeling any pain, leads to my not ever feeling any real pleasure. Always comfortably numb. The quality that I envy the most in people is passion. I don’t “feel” enough. I have led a very shallow life. I can’t even remember the last thing that brought me extreme pleasure. I draw a blank on this every time I try to recall.

I have been happy, sporadically. These moments of happiness have never lasted too long. They have vanished in an instant. That is not to say that I’ve ever been depressed either. I have never felt intense sadness, nor do I ever want to. But I do want to be moved.

I have always whined about the things I wanted to do, the life I wanted for myself and I have always felt a sense of disequilibrium because I couldn’t get the things I thought I wanted. I thought I wanted to paint, I thought I wanted to sing, I thought I wanted to learn the martial arts, I thought I wanted to run a company and I thought I wanted to travel. I am not sure I want these things anymore. I just want to feel something, anything.

So, this was my epiphany. Something that has occurred to all wise men and women, through the centuries, at some given point in their lives. Learn to live for the present. Be passionate about all the people and projects that are in your life now. Don’t think about what was. Don’t think about what’s to come. Love your child the best you can, now. Do your work to the best of your abilities now. Be passionate about your marriage; re-align your priorities so that you are making a positive contribution in all areas of your involvement. This shouldn’t be easier said than done. This should be the easiest thing you’ve ever done because your present is the only thing you have total control over. “You” exist only in the present. The person you remember as “yourself” from a year ago, was a different person – thousands of cells have died and regenerated since that time. There has been total physical renewal. The person you are going to be tomorrow is a stranger. So you have to deal with who you are now. You have to take care of the person you are now, at this moment. Everything else will fall into place based on what you do now.

So I have to get more involved with Anoushka and her development. I feel like I’ve been on the sidelines with her. Simply fawning over her is not enough. I also have to spend more time with Anil. Our relationship needs something, I am not sure what. Lastly, my job: my personal feeling is that I have sleepwalked through every job I have had. The kudos I have collected along the way and the fact that most people get the impression that I always know what I am talking about makes me feel like such an impostor. I have just done the bare minimum to get by. In my heart of hearts I know this. I have never taken my work seriously enough. The fact that I’ve come as far as I have, and have managed to put myself in an enviable position, from the perspective of others, is a testament to my skills of deception. Until I start getting the feeling that I am giving my job everything I have got to give, the feeling of disequilibrium will persist. The moments when I have worked under a deadline and gotten things done, have, after all, been the most satisfying moments of my life. I need to repeat such moments several times.

I have to use the present moment, where I have full knowledge of my verve, vigor, energy levels and brain capacity, to forge my destiny. This is the only moment in time that manifests itself in certainty. So here it is. I am hoping that this moment in time, this epiphany, this realization, will be the lever along which the rest of my life hinges.

PASSION – I’ll find you yet.

A Year Old Blog...

Just got back from a three-day vacation in Vancouver. It is an amazingly beautiful city, a shining jewel in the Northern Pacific coast of Canada. I felt like calling it home. The people looked so peaceful, so relaxed. Not a single brow was furrowed with stress. In Vancouver people's lives didn't seem to be passing them by in a blur. Why would anyone want to live in the New York tri-state area after seeing places like Vancouver?

I took some time off from work last week. I spent the first half of the week escorting Munna Bhaiya around from Niagara Falls to New York City and the second half in Vancouver. It was an enjoyable week although I really missed Anoushka. I am never going to take another vacation without her (that is, as long as she is a child and doesn't want to cut her poor Mom out of her life!). I want to spend so much time with her. I am missing out on so much. I should really try to find a way to clear all my debt and then learn to live on one income, for Anoushka's sake.

I don't know how long I will be able to carry on this way, working the hours I work and living through so many moments of loneliness where every member of my family is in a different place. It is a very trying period. I feel like I am growing old very fast and precious moments of my life are spiraling away, unlived. The sad thing is that I don't even know what I would do to "live" these moments if they weren't disappearing so fast. I can't make a move in any direction until I find a way to define what I want for myself. It is easier when you are younger you think all you want is money. Then you grow old and find that money is not enough, money is not anything and happiness is not enough because it is a cliche. What is happiness? I think that is the biggest unanswered question. If it is-"wanting to laugh, or smile"- then I have that. I have a great husband, a wonderful daughter and a great sense of humor but I can't call it my life's goal. I still need a tangible, yet-to-be-defined goal and when I get there I hope to get there with my happiness and joie de vivre intact.

I keep thinking back to Steve's speech. He asked the people he was addressing to be passionate about something. I am still giving that a lot of thought and haven't honed in on any one thing that I am passionate about, that I can immerse myself in. I am certainly not passionate about this job. I love my family but everyone does and I am sure Steve didn't mean love for one's family when he urged to people to feel passionate about something. I am not devoted to any cause. I haven't given any thought to what issues I could feel strongly about. I don't have any all-consuming interests or hobbies. Yet I don't really think people would find me boring or uninteresting. I am interested in several different things all at once. I want to be a photographer, a painter, a writer, a singer, a linguist, a small business owner, a golfer, a world traveler, a collector, an interior decorator, a gardener and even a gourmet cook. People who know me know that I am notorious for taking classes to learn new things. I have taken art classes, Yoga classes, Pilates classes, Judo classes, music lessons, French lessons, the list goes on. But I don't excel in anything and I am not impassioned enough to pursue any of these interests in a single-minded fashion. Any single-minded, dedicated pursuit would bore me to death. I need to be interested in several different things at once. Then I end up frustrated because there is never any time to do anything and if I made time to do these things there wouldn't be enough money to do these things. And so the loop runs on an on - running to make life worth living and consequently living a life where you are always running. No wonder people in the 1960's felt that the best thing to do was to tune out, drop out etc.

Latent Exhibitionism

That's what this pursuit is all about and I am guilty.

It is a form of narcissism. A desire to see one's words immortalized. The ever-present, heart-rending refrain that one is not understood. A desire within people at all ages and all stages of life to open a window into their lives, their souls, to send out an open invitation to total strangers. It is almost akin to sending out an S.O.S. from the deserted landscape of one's being.

So why then do people maintain hidden selves in their daily lives if their innermost desire is to show themselves as they really are, without layers of pretension? What drives people to hide in plain sight and emerge undercover?

I can't really answer that. But at this moment this is the most self-indulgent thing I am doing.

The Matter of Writing

An art teacher once told our class that if we were to use our imaginations and sketch a human face that it would most closely resemble our own face. Even if we were not consciously trying to make a self-portrait.

The same must hold true for writing as well. Granted one's writing could get blatantly autobiographical but even if one attempted writing something that wasn't about themselves it would inevitably be colored by their own experiences, drawn from their own memory banks. So an autobiographical slant would be inevitable. No matter how hard one tries.

If my writing was not about myself then it would end up being about Anoushka, Anil, my father, my mother, my brother or anyone whose life has been separated up to six degrees from me. So if I write about people I know then I would still end up with something autobiographical. So what's the key to avoiding this?

I once read John Irving's interview where he was asked if his writing was autobiographical. He answered that it was, no doubt, because it couldn't possibly be anything else. One could give their characters other names, different lives but in essence the characters would essentially behave as the writer himself would have in those situations.

I have been turned off by my writing lately because it reveals inordinate self-absorption. Then I saw this commentary going on on Caferati about V.S. Naipaul's comments regarding the autobiographical nature of all Indian writing. That this in essence reveals perhaps a lack of imagination. Perhaps it does.

"Mother's Little Helper"

I have always been concerned with the golden years, and have been silently preparing myself for those impending years of decline. But when I heard those two ladies talking last night, at the party, it really shook me up.

These women were seven or eight years older than me. Their kids are either approaching or are in their teens. They work full time and are stretched thin in all directions possible. Shammi and Shubha. Shubha is a scientist at a major pharmaceutical company and Shammi is a professor of architecture. Every single moment of their day is dedicated to either keeping their employers or their husbands or their children happy and their homes in order. Tall order for one woman. Most women I know are capable of complex multi-tasking. It seems it is our lot in life. But is it too much to ask that the members of their family or their employers show some appreciation in return for draining every life-affirming moment out of these women's lives? Why must they always give and give and then give some more?

Shubha started telling us about the rough spell she went through last year. At parties, during random conversations, we always share our private woes and slices of our lives with others, however, rarely has the telling driven the narrator or the listeners to tears.

Shubha was in tears as she relived the horrific moments of her life from last year. She was talking about how hard it seemed to get through her days, the work was demanding, the house still needed to be cleaned, the kids still needed attention and she just didn't seem to have the energy. There was constant and chronic fatigue, the crushing weight of universal demands and the haywire hormones of any woman in her forties. She went though an episode of heavy and uncontrolled bleeding, so much so that she was afraid to get out of bed or to go to work, she ended up soiling her clothes with blood at work and did not feel like getting out of bed when she was home. But the chores didn't go away. The kids never asked how Mom was, the husband was too engrossed in his job, the employer is not in the business of caring. Yet if she had simply stopped, all these other lives would have come crashing down. People like to say that no person is indispensable and even if there is a ring of truth to this saying, even if life does seem to go on when someone makes an exit, people like Shubha would never believe they are indeed dispensable and that their loved ones would find a way to function if they were to take a break. Her conscience would not allow her to take a break. So they carry on, stressed beyond endurance, with no succor from any quarter. She wasn't comforted by anyone. No one understood what she was going through. Shammi echoed Shubha's problems. She too was facing health issues and apathy from all the lives she touched.

The Rolling Stones immortalized the mothers' plight in a song written in the late sixties. This has been going on for years. Over the years, a woman who starts her life as a frolicking daughter, grows up to be a desirable girlfriend, a coveted wife, an extremely productive executive and a happy mother ends up becoming a very useful object, nothing but a"Stepford Wife" whose opinions don't matter and whose sorrows are irrelevant. She absorbs the joys, the sorrows, the trials and tribulations of all and reflects nothing of her own. She loses her identity and any sense of self. She is just a shell now, a mere shadow of her former self.

What could be a scarier prospect than the one described above for someone nearing her forties? What can one do to maintain ones vitality and meaninfulness in a society that has a tendency to render one so completely forgettable? Are "mother's little helpers" the answer, the medium that would deliver her to an oblivion that is infinitely more preferable to the alternate, terrifyingly shell-like existence that beckons?

Random Meetings

Why do certain people cross our paths for fleeting moments? On buses, planes, trains, in lines?We may never know their names but they make a permanent impression on our minds. Their lives touch ours for a brief moment in time and if you aren't struck down by Alzheimer's, their essence will always remain with you. Is there a larger relevance or significance to these meetings?

The passenger sitting next to me on the plane ride back from Tampa turned out to be extremely engaging. A chemist, working with the paint-enhancing qualities of cashew nut shell extracts. A fact that is of no consequence to me but will stay with me forever. Now I know that cashews aren't just a delicious nut, we paint our houses with it too!

I will never know this person's name, but I know he lives in Jersey City. He moved there from Tennessee. I know he is well-traveled and well-read (which is why we got talking). We exchanged our paperbacks. I learnt about Donna Leon - a mystery/thriller writer - apparently quite famous and I introduced him to Scott Turow - an author he had heard about but never read. I know he is going to be vacationing in Bulgaria next year and he knows I'll be spending two weeks in India next year. There was an easy camaraderie between us. I just love it when that happens, when you can just talk to someone for hours and enjoy it.

If he has a good memory he'll know that there is a woman of Indian origins somewhere in the US who took a rather circuitous route to establishing an American life for herself, crossing two continents twice in her life. A useless factoid for him but forever a part of his memory banks.

Just like the imprints in my memory of a Scottish man I met at the airport eight years ago, who lived in Guam and worked in an aquarium, or the woman whose husband is a pastry chef, or the sad-looking woman who sat next to me on a plane, spoke only French and was from Guinea-Bissau, a country whose name I've only seen on her passport.

Why are these people in my life without being in my life? This goes for the cast of characters I see everyday on my bus ride back home from work. There's Roger the attorney. He loves Matrix and all its sequels, he is a criminal law attorney, he drives a red, two-door Lexus, he just got married and he can't stand the slightest scratch on the DVDs he lends to other people. Then there's Mary, a very affluent person who travels to exotic locales several times every month. She has a teenage son who she never gets to see. She is out working and her son is out partying. She doesn't see him for months at length. We also have Kathy who is always complimenting Mary on her hair or her clothes, asking about her travels, her shopping experiences and lamenting the lack of adventure in her own life. I could go on forever. I have learnt so much about their lives, simply by sitting behind them in the bus and inadvertently eavesdropping on their conversations with the bus driver. They know nothing about me and they would be shocked to learn how much I know about them. Their trivialities are so much a part of me!

Random meetings then, are probably the condiments, the ketchup, the pickles, the herbs and garnishes that make life interesting!

Who is an Artist? Why do we need them?

Someone asked and I crafted the following response:

Someone with the gift of expression, someone who can take us beyond the obvious, someone who, by sharing with us their unique insight into this world we live in, helps us find meaning where we felt none existed and someone who can find a myriad, imagery-filled ways to throw open the barred windows of our innermost thoughts and desires and behold what we were previously missing.

Their function is to get us in touch with ourselves, peer into our souls, help us reach out beyond the limits we impose on ourselves and break the shackles of convention and dogma that bind us.

That to my mind is an artist.

Laughter and Art

The following passage from a book titled “Immortality”, written by a Czech author I admire greatly, gave me some pause and I have been thinking an analyzing this for days until an engaging discussion on the difficulties of writing when ecstatic appeared on Ryze.

“A face is beautiful because it reveals the presence of thought, whereas at the moment of laughter man does not think. But is that really true? Is not laughter a lightning thought that has just grasped the comical? No, in the instant that he grasps the comical, man does not laugh; laughter follows afterward as a physical reaction, as a convulsion, no longer containing any thought. Laughter is a convulsion of the face, and a convulsed person does not rule himself, he is ruled by something that is neither will nor reason. And that is why the classical sculptor did not express laughter. A human being who does not rule himself (a human being beyond reason, beyond will) cannot be considered beautiful”.

Could this be true? Is this the reason we cannot create magic with words, with colors, with clay or stone in those cyclical periods of ecstatic joy, or in those fleeting moments where we are probably so “convulsed with laughter” that all rational thought has left us?

Our muse deserts us and forces us to choose between joyful creative impotency and melancholic fecundity!

Frigid Solitude

Born an outsider,
Always alone,
Frostbitten,
Frozen to the bone

Wiping frosty breath,
Off cold glass windows,
Longing for the crackling fire,
The warm ember glows

Seeking warmth,
Finding frost
Always stumbling,
Always lost

Invisible to the fold,
Watching, yearning,
Burning in the cold

© Pragya Thakur

Outsider - Asked In

Glass doors slid open,
Warm hands reached out,
Open in invitation,
Sympathetic no doubt

Come join in our revelry,
There’s room for another,
The more the merrier,
You no longer are a stranger

Stretched out before the fire now,
You watch the embers glow,
You are one with the crowd now,
With serene radiance aglow

So you think you belong now,
Did you finally arrive?
Is this what you dreamt of,
Do you now feel alive?

For soon the merriment ends
And reality intrudes,
Friends of the night,
Strangers, past brief interludes

© Pragya Thakur

Nomadic Winds

Nomadic winds
Whisper in your ears,
Come away, once again,
Don’t fret their tears

Intrepid climber,
Free bird of yore,
Freeways beckon,
Can’t resist their allure

You broke the rules,
Favored caprice,
Sought success,
But found no peace

Now she awaits you,
Beaming toddler by her side,
Gypsy of all gypsies,
Could this be the last ride?

© Pragya Thakur

Wondering

He wonders about the invasion of mind spaces,
I wonder about the indifference writ on these impassive faces,
He wonders about our dysfunctional display of emotions,
I wonder why they are only going through the motions.

He wonders about our need to comprehend cause,
I wonder why they drift along in haze without pause,
He wonders about our habit of picking an issue to the bone,
I wonder why they always leave well enough alone.

He wonders about the need for personal discovery,
I wonder about the impersonality of meaningless sophistry
He is not alone in wondering, I wonder too,
I wonder about rationality and reason, yes I do,

But I am not going to wonder anymore,
For I have been out there and have returned encore,
It is nicer here; it’s more familial,
Pleasures abound; the disagreements are trivial.

© Pragya Thakur

Dreaded Destination

Progression of life,
In an irreversible fashion,
Joyous ride,
Dreaded destination.

Unperturbed façade,
Calmness of demeanor,
Always unruffled,
To the undiscerning observer

A dormant volcano,
Not yet extinct,
Sense of impending disaster,
Unresolved yet distinct.

Peaks never scaled,
Depths unplumbed,
Life lived on a plateau,
Senses apparently numbed.

Appearances deceive,
Ostensible plateau,
Calm before the storm,
Heated lava below

The dread justified,
Release inevitable,
Deconstruction will follow,
Its magnitude unfathomable!

© Pragya Thakur

The Taste of Victory

She couldn’t taste her victories anymore.

She had a perfect record. District attorney Nisha had a well-deserved reputation. She had yet to meet a defense attorney who could take her on and win. Her sharp wit, unparalleled intellect, unflinching gaze, sleek, svelte and polished disposition left them gaping and invariably tied up in knots. She had put many a violent criminal behind bars.

She had been groomed by the “Prophet” himself. Her father figure, her mentor, the only guru she had ever known. He gave her an obsessive love for law, coached her in the elements of argument and whittled away her rough edges until she became a dreaded and deadly instrument of justice. There was a time when she looked up to him; ever since he took charge of her, in her teen years, up until the day she discovered his clay feet. Her eventual disgust with the Prophet was inevitable and he had foreseen it. Even so he had tutored her well, igniting the spark he had once seen in this orphaned waif of 13 odd years.

Nisha was ambitious and driven and, soon enough, his spotlight became hers and hers alone. They stopped assigning cases to him. He turned to alcohol. He lost himself in the twilight zone where life, death, drunkenness and crime were entangled in one indistinguishable continuum.

They led him in, handcuffed, the charge - murder. The defense didn’t stand a chance. They called the evidence circumstantial, his mental state - tenuous, they stressed his presumed innocence and declared his only crime – drunkenness, but all arguments collapsed under the intense, unwavering questioning directed at them from a seemingly all-pervading, all-consuming Nisha Alex. The defense was vanquished.Their eyes met as the jury ruled against the Prophet and the judge sentenced him to death.Nisha was victorious once again. But this was different. She could no longer taste the victory, its bitter aftertaste, ever-present.

© Pragya Thakur