Tell me the truth Mommy...

She isn't fooled too easily. She is increasingly convinced that things that appear fictitious are generally fiction. She takes pride in providing the recently learned scientific explanations of things. So when this question penetrated my rather preoccupied consciousness the other day, "Mommy, tell me the truth, nothing but the truth!"

"Ok baby, ask!"

"Is Santa real?"

So I said to her, "No, honey, Santa isn't real. Usually Dads dress up as Santa and leave gifts under the Christmas tree."

After making my true statement I went back to doing whatever it was that I was doing. That is, until the silence in the room was interrupted by stifled sobs. I stopped what I was doing to pry away the hands that were now covering the tear-stained face.

"What happened, baby? Why are you crying?"

"You said Santa wasn't real!"

So much for "nothing but the truth"

"Oh no! I was just messing with you sweetie! Of course he's real! I was kidding! Now stop crying, c'mon, wipe away those tears."

And just as easily all was right in her world again, Santa returned to his rightful place in reality.

The next morning there was a letter written and addressed to Santa and the search for stamps and envelope was on.

The problem with the Santa bit and the Christmas tree and tinsels, ornaments, gifts etc. is that it isn't a part of my history or my traditions. I have nothing against Christmas, in fact I have no thoughts about Christmas at all! But now I need to try and not break her heart and think about putting in place some sort of Christmas/Holiday traditions. Then what about Hanukkah?

She made me a beautiful picture of the Star of David and a menorah and wrote a special Hanukkah message for me on it. I called it beautiful and tacked it up on the refrigerator, listened with great concentration and real interest to whatever she had been told in school about Hanukkah. Then somehow, the Hanukkah picture slipped off the refrigerator door and got lost and once again I had a sobbing little girl asking me what happened to her Hanukkah picture. We had to turn the house upside down to find it.

My thoughts naturally drift to how little we did for Diwali. There were no cards or pictures made for Diwali, not much mention of it at all except when we did a sort of Puja in the evening along the lines of what Mom had suggested. But not much else.

The teachers in her school didn't say anything about Diwali, and the little Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa celebrators didn't go home to their mommies and daddies spreading Diwali cheer either.

Should they? I don't know.

Is it important for her to know about Diwali? Again, I don't know.

There's a chance she'll grow up and ask, "what do WE celebrate?" or we might turn into this Christmas and Hanukkah celebrating family so that the questions about our celebrations never really arise and I don't know which I prefer!

So many days go by between writings, even with the noblest intentions of jotting something down everyday. Maybe I think about it too much, about what to write, how to say it. I really shouldn't, my mind in never blank, there's always some thought within, so why not write it out with some regularity?

So without thinking about what to write here are the things that weighed on my mind while I disgusted myself with inaction this past weekend:

• Between lazy Scrabble games played online; a pastime that is so boring that I stole catnaps between turns - and yet I played on, I did some channel surfing and looked up with interest as I listened to the instantly recognizable narrator's voice (George Clooney) in the documentary on Darfur called Sand and Sorrow. I was riveted, enthralled, in tears and ultimately ashamed at my laziness and inaction and even this armchair realization that I am sentient and possess a conscience but have done nothing or contributed nothing of substance to anything at all.

• The viewing of this documentary filled up the rest of my afternoon with researching the backgrounds, passions and motivations of so many who appeared in the film. Nicholas Kristof, for instance. He is a two-time Pulitzer winner and after just one afternoon of reading about him and his work I am moved beyond words.

• Environmental consciousness. It is a logical and moral imperative and yet my garbage sits unsorted into plastics, cans, bottles, newspapers etc. Japanese citizens sort their garbage into 19 different categories, I can't even manage 2 with regularity!

So needless to say, I am filled with disgust at myself, that has definitely been occupying my thoughts. I think of the times I say how blank I feel, how I can't write, how I am bored, listless, seeking a new thrill, these thoughts border on evil in light of issues that one could get passionate about and learn to care about.

Waiting for the muse....

I waited for you all day. I searched amidst the strings of lights hanging from the ceiling of this large atrium, that keeps the world outside, and I searched through the faux streams, bridges, waterfalls, koi ponds and equatorial and tropical simulations, but you were nowhere to be found. Even as I stared wide-eyed at this fantastic creation, a part of me absorbing the placid alligator slithering underneath the tiny wooden bridge on which we stood, while Christmas music streamed in from somewhere and while red poinsettias charmed our senses, I kept thinking about Tolstoy's description of an opera:

"The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.

First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.

After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned."

Perhaps you elude me because my thoughts involuntarily move toward an underscoring of my jaded viewpoint. You might seek an innocence, a freshness or someone who still thrills to the sight of rainbows, hearts and flowers and still sees shapes in clouds. Those are the things that in some ways add meaning to the cardboard cut-outs and fat girls in white silk dresses and people waiting to jump in at the beat. I know that's what you seek I have glimpsed your presence in a face that takes my breath away. You laugh there and you sing and you transform yourself into a radiance that blinds me and binds me in a hypnotic trance.

Entranced, yet sentient, I claw at the looming abyss and I fill my days with attempts at newness. I seek answers to questions I never had before and I lose myself in unclear answers and circular references that keep me standing, flailing at the same place. And through it all people come and go, smile a few smiles, that never reach the eyes where I've tried to search for your elusive presence; falsely believing that the promise of a connection would provide the enrichment and fecundity you seek for your prosperity.

But it is getting late here and I must end the search today, convinced of the sterility of this space where every surface has been wiped clean of all that brings you pleasure. I'll think about letting folks in here without scrubs and with shoes and we'll try again tomorrow-for hope lives on even as all else dies.

Whistle while we work...or hum

We’ve finally crossed over from the ridiculous to the sublime. I miss those days of yore when deadlines used to go hand in hand with deliverables. Now deadlines loom ominously over a weekend and threaten equanimity while we wonder what the deliverables are.

There’s uncertainty about when the break came, crept up like most things in life. Like a Pavlovian schedule where the dog starts salivating merely at the sound of a bell we are now required to scroll down and across a spreadsheet and back again with an earth-shattering intensity; it isn’t important enough for anyone to enlighten us about the mysterious thing that is due on a certain date, all we need know is that ‘a’ thing is due, that we might be working nights, days, dusks and dawns since the time crunch is IMMENSE.

The immensity of the time crunch will no doubt prompt required inanities from boss to subordinate and will sound like, “How is it coming?” A question that may be answered with a naively sarcastic “How’s what coming?” leading inevitably to a situation tantamount to an escort out the front door, coffee mugs, shoes, jackets and miscellaneously expropriated goodies stuffed in a little brown box...

...It's conceivable...or perhaps avoidable with a stoic approach to spreadsheet scrolling and trawling to the accompaniment of the slave song a certain six year old insists we hum as we do her bidding around the house.

Bring it on, je suis prêt!

Why Old?

But the rhythm makes a basic lattice on which the melody can rest -- it's a bit like a trellis on which a vine can grow. – David Israel

Here I am, once again, pondering the underlying structure of things; their basic framework. All current deliberations end up at the same place – what’s within?

I often wonder about the American fascination with the old, the ancient, which in this country is rarely more than 300 years old. But there is a certain segment of Americans, the ones whose great-great grandparents were perhaps the first to arrive at these shores. They like old homes, nay, they are fascinated with old homes. They are the polar opposites of people like me whose parents and grandparents were born elsewhere, perhaps in a country with a history that goes back thousands of years, in countries where a national identity can be summed up, according to some authors, in one all-encompassing word like husun (Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul) or saudade (a Portuguese word describing a collective feeling of something akin to nostalgia but not quite...nostalgia may refer to things long gone but saudade perhaps refers to things that appear to be long gone but there's hope of their return). It seems we get tired of carrying around these national identities and come to America to find newness. We like new homes in new developments and we can’t understand the fascination with the old. We listen in amazement as co-workers talk about resurfacing this, wainscoting that, stripping this, remodeling that and we take our deliberations to the next level of thought where it appears to not be just about owning something old; ones own piece of history, but it is also a desire to change old things to ones own specifications, to modify and recreate and make it over into modernity trapped within antiquity.

Questioning co-workers and friends about this fascination yields answers that range from the subjective – “I like old things, they have character” to “You don’t understand, it’s the structure…you’ve got to see the beams in this place, they don’t have the same eye for detail anymore, those structures were solid”. This latter statement brings my mind back to the rhythm, melody and trellis, vine analogy put forth by my eloquent friend David.

Perhaps it is the structure that is of the essence, it’s the rhythmic basis, if you will, of the melodies that a present day American homeowner wants to weave.

But even that may not be all. There is the element of back story, the fact that we believe older things possess character, a rather universal feeling. Most people believe age adds character. But what is it about age that adds character? It must be the back story. It must be about the crow's feet around the eyes that might hint at how much one has laughed over the years and the tiny frown lines telling of the storms weathered, should one care to listen, each etching marking a phase in ones life, a lesson learnt, a rite of passage or a badge of honor.

These are the elusive and irreplaceable elements in a person or a thing that often lend "soul" to it. The lived in, settled in feeling that one doesn't get in a squeaky clean and new place with sheet rock walls and Corian kitchen counters...like the music one would hear from a keyboard synthesizer rather than the rich tones of a real piano.

This is the settled in feeling I crave everytime I feel each day swept clean behind me; leaving no etchings, no cave wall drawings behind at all. It may be why I feel mild annoyance at the pride in a voice thrilled at having acquired something old. It may even describe the twinge or spasm (depending on my mood) at the lack of traditions in our fledgling lives, the lack of routines or rituals of any kind. It is an unstructured existence, and we often declare its nature with pride and with a hint of rebellion stating, "Oh that's not us at all!" A friend, a newlywed is ecstatic at having started a Diwali tradition and keepsake ornaments are the bestselling items at my employer's corporate parent...keepsakes and heirlooms and things passed down through generations...Christmas trees decorated with antique earrings, for a lark one year, and then ever since...while I lament the absence of a trellis around which I can try and weave some melodies. The presence of said trellis or lattice that eludes me in all things I venture as I resign myself to the notion that invertebrates live a life as well.

I am at the end of this free-flowing stream of thought that acknowledges no framework of thought, or beginnings or ends. It started as a questioning and a wondering and is ending with an attempt at understanding the initial question and the consequential angst as understanding dawns at a permanence that I continue to fail to create.

Everyone needs to settle in.
That lived-in feeling, a must.
The rust, the dent in the couch,
the scratches on the door,
the wrinkles and,
the chipped mug,
all quite indispensable.

Like water, like melting ice,
seeping through every
cranny, every
nook
from first sight
to last look,

Everyone needs to settle in

to new shoes - old shoes
until they caress, stretch, give,
or perhaps lose
their prime condition, replaced
with comfort

and adjust to constant change,
invention
specks of dirt and layers of nacre,
that leave
nestled
nurtured
naked
settled

...a pearl.

Sunday, November 4th

Woke up this morning wondering how to anchor this day and to not let it vanish wordlessly and soundlessly in the long chain of Sundays of the past that have been folding up on themselves behind me.

The answer soon came in the form of the little lady waking up, freshening up and then proceeding to preen before the dresser for a very long time, trying different hairstyles and different clothes on and asking how she looked. Mommy's lipsticks were surreptitiously retrieved and applied and the hair was artfully moussed with an excess of mousse. Then the pretty face smiled up at me and asked how much it would hurt to get her ears pierced.

Now the hubby and I have something against piercings and are horrified daily by cashiers in book and music stores, baristas at the bookstore cafes whose every facial feature is studded with something and we had decided a long time ago that if we ever encounter a daughter who wants something pierced we'll deny the request with vehemence and then concede to each ear being pierced. We had imagined this would happen sometime during the teen years, not at six.

But the young lady wanted to start wearing earrings and my heart went "awwwww". So we headed for the mall today and got the ears pierced. She looks like a beautiful young lady now and I hear the dinging alarm in the back of my head at how precious and ephemeral these moments really are.

Well, the preening in front of the mirror has temporarily abated as the bed started looking appealingly trampoline like to our princess and now she's airborne, and falling backwards and forwards, screaming how she feels like a yo-yo!

One baby step forward

The backseat of the car, what a strange and unfamiliar place, offering up a different perspective on the world drifting by. I rarely get to sit there but after a long day of work where I was really seeing Anoushka awake for the first time in 12 hours, I couldn't bare to have her be alone in the back. So I decided to be with her.

She made herself comfortable in my lap and I buried my face in her hair for an instant flashing back to Patna, the only place where I remember sitting in a rickshaw - the quartet, Mom, Dad and the two of us (my brother and I) sitting on their laps as the rickshaw wended its way through Shri Krishna Puri to our aunt's place or to various other parts of Patna - Pataliputra, R-Block, Bailey Road, Punaichak, Frasier Road...visiting relatives or shopping or headed for Hotel Rajasthan...our favorite in those days - the flashback happened a the instant when I buried my face in A's hair, I remembered that's what my Mom used to do.

There was an indescribable feeling of wholeness, tinged with sadness, feeling her curled up on my lap, slightly drowsy, her arm casually thrown around my neck...sad because my recollections of my childhood are still sharp, almost as if they just happened, yet several decades have gone by since those rickshaw days...how fast will these years of a curled up child sitting on my lap fly by? Not a unique thought by any means but a potent one all the same.

There was another little thing she did that I remember doing as a child: I was holding her lightly around her tummy and then as the car ride progressed my hands naturally fell away. She didn't miss a beat in retrieving my inert hands and placing them back on her tummy exactly as they were before. What was an unconscious action to me was actually a thing of which she was very aware. I remember missing a constant pressure of a touch that suddenly disappeared as well, I remember putting a parent's hand back to where I was being patted and put to sleep again. History repeats.

Well, that's what I'll remember of this day other than the following:


We have finally left Raag Bilawal behind and have started exploring the Teevra Ma in Raag Yaman...progress! Finally!

The highlight of the day...a pat on the back from my music teacher, an endorsement to move forward in this musical quest.

Music, lucid dreams and other weirdness...

I have been able to write on this blog, bake sugar cookies, play costumer and make-up artist for my little Super Girl and practice Raag Bilawal for the umpteenth time as well as the violin (mental note to self: next time record it just to see how awful you sound). There isn't a single song in the Suzuki Violin Book 1 that I've ever heard before, I'm amazed at that. It would be so much easier to gauge how I sound if I had ever hummed or heard the song before!

But it is definitely getting easier to read music and to glean from staves the information about the key signature, the tempo, the whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes...so on and so forth. If the teacher doesn't get tired of teaching a stark beginner like me we could probably keep proceeding at an andante pace.

Not so with Indian classical where we seem to have encountered a rather long period of rest...the pace being set by someone who prefers infinite rest at the 'Sa' (Do) pitch to steadily ascending higher pitches and octaves. We have been singing the same composition for over a month now because the pace-setter is facing pitch and rhythm confusion. Let's see what tomorrow's class brings; I am hoping that during this two week hiatus she'd have befriended "Soor" (spelling modified to suit the teacher's accent) and "Taal" so they march lock-step...at a steady walking pace.

But before considering the things I am hoping tomorrow will bring, I must mention some of the things from my very recent past...because some strange things are happening...

The word andante above, brings me to the Mendelssohn's Op. 64's andante movement and lucid dreams. A friend asked me once if I ever had lucid dreams...I said no - at that particular moment I didn't remember any, but I do have them and when I do they always shake me up and turn me inside-out, like my bus dream posted here over a year ago.

Anyway while I listened to the andante one morning in the bus and reached a semi-awake, trance-like state, with my orange-hued, shut eyelids acting as a screen of sorts, I clearly remember seeing a silhouette that might appear something like this:



The dream was over almost as soon as it started as the bus made a jarring stop at my destination. I was shaken, nevertheless. The image came out of nowhere, the music was the only explanation since my life and my thoughts are devoid of such images or thoughts for the most part.

Music certainly has inexplicable effects on people. I just read somewhere that all his life Freud maintained a disdain for music. He is known to have said something about not wanting to devote any time to something that could affect him in strange ways...ways that his deductive reasoning brain couldn't fathom.

Wonder what he would have to say about the image from my music induced lucid dream? He would perhaps explain it away as a deep-seated desire of some sort that had nothing to do with music. Yet I feel certain it was the music...the effect is consistent.

The other bizarre dreams happened on Friday when I stayed home from work. I had told the As that I wanted to sleep late...I had said I would dress little A for school, get her ready, and then crawl back in bed while big A took her to the bus stop. And that's what I did...

The next thing I knew, there was a lot of noise outside the house. I got up to explore. There was big A, standing outside fiddling with his car while the little one stood patiently in the garage, waiting to get in the car. I glanced at the clock it was 8:10 AM, her bus usually leaves at 8:05 AM. I was yelling and screaming, asking him what he thought he was doing and how could he be dawdling when he knew the bus was about to leave? For some reason he didn't answer, making me feel like the kind of a nagging wife that husbands learn to ignore as the marriage matures.

Then I looked around and noticed that all the kids in the neighborhood were running around and playing as if school was out that day. I was very confused. I stepped back into the house to check the school schedule tacked up on the refrigerator...it said nothing about school being out. I walked back to the garage where she stood with her backpack watching her dad fiddle with the car. I asked her whether she was sure she had school. She said she did and that she wished Daddy would get her to school soon. Just then our neighbor, who is also our housekeeper, walked in and started chastising me about the bus leaving without A...her homework missing...my head was reeling now...and then there was a loud ringing noise...that woke me up from what had apparently been a dream! I turned around and noticed that big A was back in bed. I asked him when he got back and if he had taken little A to the bus stop. He said he had.

All was well with the world, there were no screaming kids outside, no hubby fiddling with the car and ignoring me and no neighbor charging in with accusations.

And so I closed my eyes once again...or I thought I did...

This time I found myself in a house that resembled the one we had in Delhi, the bathroom with the pink walls, attached to the bedroom downstairs. However, there was no privacy here, just a curtain separating the bathroom from the bedroom. I was freshly showered and wrapped in a towel, trying to apply lotions and creams, except servants, aunts, uncles and friends kept interrupting my routine. I yelled at a servant that walked in with extreme nonchalance, telling him to get the heck out! And then I heard some older aunts mumbling in the background, excoriating me under their breaths for the verbal abuse I inflicted on the poor servant. I yelled, I screamed in frustration... and then...

I found myself in my bed in Hackettstown, NJ, sleeping the morning away, with nothing unusual going on...except in my head!

Violin Class

It was one of my better violin classes, I thought. There was some interaction with the teacher. He said my playing of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” sounded good. He even said the rhythm, the bane of my existence, in any musical experience, was fine. So I was thrilled.

We spent some of the class time discussing the latest violin book I had finished reading, Guarnieri String Quartet’s first violinist, Arnold Steinhardt’s book – Indivisible by Four. Mr. Steinhardt’s writing has the power to hold the reader’s attention through over forty years of recollections. I enjoyed every vignette, conveyed with a light touch, about the group dynamic that developed over the years, the democratic decision making that went into the formation of a group of equals. There were humorous episodes about fans thinking of the group as an individual entity presenting them with a single bottle of wine and other gifts that they then wondered how to divide equally. There was a humorous anecdote about a brain surgeon who collected violins for a living and had invited Mr. Steinhardt to take a look at them. The brain surgeon remarked at how he was unlike other collectors and actually spent five minutes each day with each one of his precious violins. Mr. Steinhardt writes about thinking how he felt like telling the guy that he devoted five minutes of each day doing brain surgery as well!

So my teacher and I talked about my latest readings and impressions. I mentioned how much I liked Mendelssohn's Op. 64 and he confirmed that it was one of the most popular orchestral violin works ever written. I was glad I learnt to appreciate something even before I knew it was a universally acknowledged favorite. It was a surreal feeling to sit with a violinist who has been training since he was nine and talk to him about major violin works since I am such a bottom rung novice. But hey, I know what I like and like what I like.

The next step is “The Song of the Wind”. I wish I had heard these songs before or knew the tunes, but somehow these nursery rhymes sat out my childhood.

So, to make up for this deficit, I am trying to see if I can develop that rare skill of sight reading. I can now read C#, C# B A A| B B C# B A| E E D C C|B A B C# A and sing it. I thought this was because I have been playing the tune on the violin and perhaps that’s the reason why I can read the music and hum it. So I tried doing it with “The Song of the Wind”, something I have neither heard nor played on the violin or the piano, and I was able to hum a ‘tune’. Later, when I got around to playing it, it sounded like the tune I had hummed!

Now that music is front and centre, everything I hear and see around me is music related. My attention is drawn to books on music, magazines, newspapers-all seem to be reporting more on music. Either the musical reporting levels have changed or they are the same as they always were and my antennas are picking up more signals.

I flip open my October 29th copy of The New Yorker and I am staring at Alex Ross's article, "The Well Tempered Web" which talks about how the web is helping classical music. A few blogs dedicated to music and musicians find honorable mention in his article, the most impressive of them all was concert pianist Jeremy Denk's blog. Alex quoted a passage from Jeremy Denk's blog that simply took my breath away. These are his words that were quoted in The New Yorker:

Somewhere toward the middle of the last movement, I began to feel the words that Messiaen marks in the part, I began to hear them, feel them as a “mantra”: extatique, paradisiaque. And maybe more importantly, I began to have visions while I was playing, snapshots of my own life (such that I had to remind myself to look at the notes, play the notes!): people’s eyes, mostly, expressions of love, moments of total and absolute tenderness. (This is sentimental, too personal: I know. How can you write about this piece without becoming over-emotional?) I felt that same sense of outpouring (“pouring over”) that comes when you just have to touch someone, when what you feel makes you pour out of your own body, when you are briefly no longer yourself—and at that moment I was still playing the chords, still somehow playing the damn piano. And each chord is even more beautiful than the last; they are pulsing, hypnotic, reverberant . . . each chord seemed to pile on something that was already ready to collapse, something too beautiful to be stable . . . and when your own playing boomerangs on you and begins to “move yourself,” to touch you emotionally, you have entered a very dangerous place. Luckily, the piece was almost over. . . . When I got offstage I had to breathe, hold myself in, talk myself down.

A musician who expresses himself through his music and expresses how the music makes him feel in words such as the one above! I crave to reach this height of expression, this state of passion.

But I'll probably die craving because my actions always fall short of achieving the thing that would make me the happiest. I don't spend enough time practicing the violin, I neglect my urge to write, instead I spend a lot of time complaining about not writing anything. The fact that I haven't practiced, that I haven't written, that I've wasted too much time, keeps me awake most of the night and this lack of sleep seeps into the work day where I wake up late, I get stuck in traffic that just doesn't move, I am late to work, I hate myself for losing my temper or for showing stress and then I come home, waste more time and am never able to break out of the vicious circle.

So something has to give...perhaps it all starts with writing something down. It should keep me focused and happy!

Feeling slightly uncharitable

I do dislike certain types of people, what a surprise! Since I like to think I am relatively unopinionated, tolerant, free of dogma and non-judgmental but then how would I explain these dislikes:

1) People who put on a beaming, beatific smile as they tell me they love the changing of the seasons, especially after I've just finished saying I hate winters.

2) People who nod their heads in apparent understanding of everything you're saying to them and then turn around and ask a question that indicates they haven't heard word one.

3) People who just don't know how to listen and spend conversational time just talking about themselves.

3) Perfectionists or people who put unreasonable emphasis on minutiae. Life is too short for that.

4) People who pay absolutely no attention to details.

5) People offering up opinions on how one could be a better parent.

6) People who refuse to believe that it is possible for multiple points of view to exist harmoniously, that there is such a thing as agreeing to disagree.

7) Lastly, opinionated people, in other words people just like me!

Pragya

From now on this blog...

It pains me to see this blog not being updated with some regularity while I await the muse's return.

I realize that I need to write. It doesn't matter what I am writing but I need to write something everyday or else there is a domino effect of unpleasant events that gets triggered and seeps into my work and my personal life because not having written makes me cranky and sleepless and it just isn't wise to mess with the circadian rhythms.

So I am going to write something here everyday, isolated readers of this blog beware. When you stop by you'll see something that resembles a daily journal or an expressionless, uninspired recounting of the days events...simply words on white space...starting today.

Wow...just scribbling that bit of nonsense makes me feel better!

Woman with Violin

A Solitary Afternoon Drive

It would be presumptuous of me to call myself a writer. I like putting down some words every now and then. It makes me feel better. I know that the next couple of days and nights following the night that I’ve written something go rather well. I feel good; lighter somehow.

The muse is elusive if there is such a thing as a ‘muse’ for someone who claims not to be a writer. I shouldn’t need a muse. When I write it’s about things that make an impression on me. I seem to want to anchor these impressions somehow so that they never leave me, so I know for sure that I’ve lived through a time and not just skated past. Some folks like to get tattoos to commemorate an occasion, an event, a love, a belief…unless they’re doing it so they can feel the sweet pleasure of pain that convinces them that they are alive and in the here and now (I’ve heard that proffered as a reason once) …but perhaps I ground myself or find a way to get settled into this life my marking up empty spaces with my words.

Why I do this, I don’t know. I do it for the reasons noted above, but I still can’t answer why I feel the need to anchor an experience or impression with words in the first place. Nothing changes our status as a fraction of a speck in the universe, after all. I will never understand or be able to get at the roots of my compulsion to write but it does make me feel good and I have nothing against trying to feel good every now and then.

Back to the elusive muse…I suppose even non-writers need muses. Is the muse governing the words I’ve written so far? Don’t really think so, these words don’t appear blessed by a muse. But whenever the muse or whatever it is that compels me to write is absent or is sunning him/herself in the Greek Islands somewhere I feel miserable. That’s when ‘The Imp of the Perverse’ emerges and manifests itself in various forms, prompting me to recall the long forgotten words from some short story I read a long time ago, “Lie thee down oddity” (if someone remembers which story, which author etc., please remind me).

And so I make a promise to myself to find a quiet place, free of distractions, where I could play archivist to every thought I’ve had and every banal experience that seeps through my consciousness. I marvel at Kerouac’s writing his “On the Road” on a single scroll of paper…did he take breaks or did he fill up this scroll in one sitting? And what about the writers, who find a quiet place in their home where their desk faces the wall instead of a window, so they can write, or take undisturbed dictations from an intravenous muse?

Perhaps non-writers don’t need such arrangements or rearrangements of their physical surroundings, what do they need - a richness of experience, friends, dramatic lives, a purpose, some direction?

I am afraid I lack all of the above. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I treat life…the richness of experience bit. I think I never open myself up enough for the entire spectrum of colors to come flooding into my consciousness; a puritan at heart perhaps who looks longingly over a tall and insurmountable fence at all the life that’s being lived on the other side.

Friends…now I have no idea why that particular ship sailed by without unloading any passengers of note…acquaintances aplenty but friends…not sure. Of course there are certain acquaintances who feel like friends and I wonder why I am not being more wholehearted in calling them friends. Perhaps I am as mixed up about the meaning of friendship as I am of love.

I repel drama in my life, I like keeping things even-keel and inert; there are fewer disappointments and upheavals this way. Every now and then drama rears its ugly head but I greet it with stoic and stony silence until it beats a passive retreat. For instance in a certain car conversation with DH, my sanity was preserved with my non-reactive posture.

Lastly, direction…this one leaves me completely clueless and baffled. It implies a goal orientation, a sense of ambition perhaps or a smoldering passion that lights a path.

So what can a non-writer write about when faced with such emotional dearth?

Perhaps she can write about some random thoughts that pass between her ears, en route to the ether, about the solitude she craves every now and then, the time to be herself. Perhaps the solitude in her mind is like nothingness…no cares, no responsibilities, no demands on her time…so she can do what she wants.

She gets it, she gets her solitude and she takes herself on a long drive, listening, really listening for the first time, to the songs that she’s heard a million times before…the voice of Paul Simon talking about the train in the distance and the thought of a “happier” life being woven indelibly into our hearts and brains. She thinks of all the things she has and the things she’s desired, including this much anticipated solitude of hers and realizes that something is still missing that would make her happier. If happier is always the ideal then whatever becomes of happy?

The long drive still isn’t over and the CD changer in the car moves to the next CD in the line up of six CDs…her favorite old Hindi film songs in the golden voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. She wonders why she likes old songs so much, why she is so closed to the new sounds that emerge from the next generation of musicians, why does she refuse to yield. The image of Frankenstein comes unbidden to her mind…a lot of the new music is a remixed version of the old and no one ever thought reanimated death was beautiful. One wants to preserve memories in their pristine form and not taint them and warp them into something barely recognizable.

As the drive continues the conversation with DH is still fresh in her brain, after all it happened during a car ride. She thinks about a dinner with ‘acquaintances’ ten years ago at an outdoor restaurant in Cannes with a childless couple who had long since decided they didn’t want children and one on the brink of expanding their family and in the throes of associated decisional dithering. The childless couple, especially the lady, liked to punctuate her sentences with the word, “why?” This interrogative stance usually left the people she was conversing with progressively dumbfounded until they were left blubbering, “Because!” like an ornery child. The question at the heart of our conversation was, “Why should one have children?” Her belief was that it was out of selfishness that one had children.

Ten years hence and one child later, the words, “It is selfish”, still echo in her head, especially in the context of her recent conversation with DH…one where it does seem that the reasons for having a child are selfish; an assurance of some form of illusive and minor immortality; a way to leave a mark…once again, like getting a tattoo, like filling up empty spaces with words…a way to convince oneself that one was present, one was around…even if the brain that benefited from such a form of convincing will be as extinct as the convincing and determined action one took.

And then the drive is over, she arrives at the destination of choice…a bookstore/café…where she’ll try to observe people, overhear snippets of conversation, sip a latte, leaf through some new-fangled magazines and the ‘classical’ section of the music aisle, looking for something to be passionate about or finally a direction in the jumbled mess of crossroads she faces.

Beach and Cliffs

Drawings

What Have We Here?

I am reading about the strangest things these days, sparks of enlightenment in the most unexpected areas. First there was the surprising and strangely heartening news item about Iceland, sometime in September last year, when they picked a "lights out" day. Everyone was expected to turn their lights off -the municipal organizations, several cities all agreed to turn out the lights in an coordinated effort. All this at the suggestion of a Andri Snær Magnason, a poet, on the eve of a film festival so that people could enjoy the best film show there was - the Aurora Borealis - in a dark night sky.

Whenever I come across news items like that I feel strangely and inexplicably happy and contented, overwhelmed at people coming together for beauty, for sharing a collective sense of awe. That news was unforgettable to me.

Then just recently I read about the people who are dedicated to the cause of controlling light pollution. Apparently John Bortle has come up with a scale that measures the darkness of our skies and I was so surprised to learn that there isn't a single place in the United States that would get the highest dark sky rating of Class I.

Last year when I was flying back from my trip to the Grand Canyon I thought I saw the darkest and most desolate areas of southwestern United States. I remember thinking how dark it must be there at night and what a sight it would be to catch a glimpse of the Milky Way in all its glory, just as it appeared on the postcards they were selling at the Canyon gift shops. But now I learn that even these darkest of all places in Arizona and Utah may only qualify as Class II.

We have flooded ourselves with indoor lights, outdoor lights, floodlights to such an extent that the night skies have dimmed and the stars and planets that Galileo could observe with his naked eye or even the most primitive telescope aren't visible anymore with more powerful optical devices. How sad is that? It is certainly sad enough that we can't look up to the stars anymore and feel the overwhelming sense of awe and wonder or realize the speck-like nature of our existence...one may say stargazing isn't really of consequence in the grander scheme of human existence, that it is something that can safely be relegated to the realm of poetry and philosophy... but then shouldn't we at least worry about the fast diminishing energy reserves? That's if that is of larger consequence in the grander scheme of human existence?

The other interesting thing that appeared on the widescreen of my internal plasma TV was the vigor with which some New Yorkers fight for and defend their right to a bright, sunny and green Central Park. They offer up resistance to the construction of buildings that could cast a long shadow and snatch sunbathers' stretch of sunshine. There are all kinds of shadow casting measurements and petitions to the city whenever a new tall building threatens with its dark shadow.

We have people fighting for light, we have people fighting for darkness and today I find there are people known as freegans who routinely fend for themselves in garbage cans to make a point about wastage. In countries like the United States, where food is cheap, enormous quantities of food get discarded simply because they are a day past the "Sell By" date. I can't sound self-righteous here, I too am guilty of such wastage.

There are those of us now who are ashamed at our behavior and there are those of us who are dedicated to shaming us offenders, the freegans, the crusaders for dark, the crusaders for light, the ones who are rejecting the fruits of capitalism and unchecked hubris and embracing all things natural and green and then there are those of us who give these souls the thumbs up in their endeavors but refuse to change our ways, we are hypocrites in the sense that we are the ones - the 'vice' - who regularly pay our tribute to 'virtue'. But there's a third set of people, those who still aren't convinced that after several centuries of wasteful overheating perhaps a mechanism somewhere needs to act as a philosophical or intuitive 'thermostat' that could once again restore balance and order.

Maybe one day these sparks will come together as a brilliant flame and light our paths again

The Sparrow Whisperer

He wore baggy shorts and a skin tight, white undershirt. He sported several frightening tattoos on every inch of exposed skin. He wore glasses, they were as thick as the bottom of old-fashioned Coke bottles and yes, he was muttering, like so many New Yorkers found deep in meaningful conversations with themselves or perhaps with the other within.

I stood a step behind him, waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street, but the traffic was gridlocked and when the traffic is gridlocked and pedestrians can't cross the street with ease, they turn to look at each other and exchange glances in unspoken commiseration before collectively deciding to walk between the gaps in the cars to reach the other side.

I exchanged just such a meaningful glance with this tattooed man in front of me as he turned around and, as he did, I caught a glimpse of his outstretched arm and extended thumb. The man wasn't alone.

I stared at his traveling companion and then at him as an involuntary smile formed at my lips and threatened to spread across the boundaries of my face. But New Yorkers don't smile. They are focused. Smiles detract from focus. There were no smiles forthcoming from the man with the interesting travel companion.

He faced forward again, ready to cross the street in long strides, never taking his eyes off his outstretched arm and thumb. I stayed right behind him. My destination happened to be in the same direction. The man was a head-turner alright! Every vendor, every walker, every shopkeeper looked up at him and his passenger and tried their best not to smile.

He was whispering and carrying out an intimate conversation with an audience of one; a deep understanding exchanged through frequent nods and head bobs with an audience that appeared more captivated than captive in any way.

There have been books written about horse whisperers and dog whisperers, what I witnessed this day was my very first sparrow whisperer.

Why Crows?

So once again I am reading about crows. It is a good thing that things that hint at concepts like ‘recurring motifs’ don’t impress me much. I might say, “Hmm…now that’s interesting!” But I don’t then start thinking about what if anything it could possibly mean.

However, when something happens 3-4 times over 3-4 weeks, one wonders why. It is possible to go through one’s life without noticing or being aware of certain things. But then there’s the moment when awareness does hit. It could be the most banal thing, like a car with an unusual color, one you’ve never seen before but once you’re exposed to it you see it everywhere, it makes for a permanent fixture in your line of vision. Wonder if something like that is going on with the crow business.

First there was Ashish’s unfortunate crow menace that we all read about. Then I read Louise Ehrdrich’s novel – The Painted Drum – where a character is constantly taunted and laughed at by ravens (I am not aware of all the distinctions between ravens and crows – in my mind they’re the same). The following week, on Facebook, someone asked the question – “What if you were a crow?”

As if the third corvid mention wasn’t curious enough, as I was browsing through The Guardian, I see Madeleine Bunting’s review of Kathleen Jamie’s new book – Findings – which appears to be mostly about…what else…crows! The review starts thus:

Here's a slim book to squeeze into that last corner of the holiday suitcase. It coins a new word for a new enthusiasm - corvophile - and it's guaranteed to ensure that you never look at a crow in quite the same way again.

Why crows everywhere? What could it possibly mean? Why does Madeleine Bunting call corvophilia a new enthusiasm? And the scary thing for crazy Internet addicts like me is that after all this crowing about crows I might end up following all kinds of links to learn about crows and what makes them tick!

I keep forgetting I was recently tagged by Ashish. I am rarely tagged, my blog is more like a journal of sorts and hides in the backwaters of the blogging world with an occasional random reader, so I am not too aware of tagging protocol.

I suppose it calls for me to list six of the weirdest things about me. That's a tough one! Only six? That is oh-so limiting! Here's an attempt then:

1. I firmly believe approximate is good enough and I routinely ignore the devil that lies in details.

2. I can wiggle my ears.

3. I am delicious mosquito food.

4. I can sing songs backwards.

5. I'd rather eat my hat (if I owned one) than go to a party of any kind.

6. My brain doesn't work sometimes...like when I got entangled with a blind man's stick instead of anticipating the range of his long stick and skirting around it. I suppose I thought the stick would sense me and the blind man would go around. Well that's what happened...his stick found me!

And I suppose now I am supposed to tag 6 (?) people and tell them they've been tagged? Ok, so I think I'll tag Ranjini, Jyotsna, Ratna, Richa, Smita and Sruthi. Forgive me ladies!

Pragya

How Is It Possible?

I sat at the piano keyboard this morning practicing the notes of Raag Bilawal, the first raag that my Indian classical teacher taught me since I started the lessons two weeks ago. I practiced the notes on the piano keyboard and the violin, making every attempt to make it sound pleasing to the ear. But there was only so much of it I could do. I wanted to see if I could try some things on my own.

The song from Shor - इक प्यार का नगमा है - was playing in my head so I decided to try and see if I could figure out how to play it on the piano and I could!! And I still don't understand how I was able to, with such ease and with no prior knowledge. I am amazed and in a strange state of excitement. Child's play to many but it's like learning to walk, or read, or write, for me! I see how excited my daughter gets when she can read a difficult word or spell it unassisted. My level of excitement is comparable. I couldn't have imagined being able to do something like this a couple of weeks ago!

Last week I was able to piece together all the notes to the Do-Re-Mi song from Sound of Music
Although it is easier there, it is more like filling in the blanks.

Makes me wonder what's next and if my teachers can lend some direction to my unstructured experimentation.

Just the other day I was conversing with a friend and telling him how lonely this state is. I don't have anyone around me who can share my excitement or be proud of my achievements (such as they are). Most people my age will wonder at what would seem to be a madness of sorts because they will see it as a futile exercise with no results waiting at the end of the journey. But it isn't a results-oriented exercise for me, it is simply fulfilling and satisfying in a way that nothing else has ever been. But one can't explain that to anyone or hope to meet someone who understands what I am talking about.

Then again, why worry about that? Most of our quests are lonely ones.

Humming Bourrée

The title of this post has nothing to do with what I am going to write here today. I am just humming bourrée because it is an irresistible tune. I thought it was Jethro Tull's and what a surprise...it was originally Bach's.

Must keep slashing at the musical cobwebs.

Speaking of Bach...it has been a year since I read this passage in Daniel Mason's book Piano Tuner.

The piece began low, in the bass strings, and as it increased in complexity, soprano voices entered, and Edgar felt his whole body move toward the right and remain there, a journey across the keyboard, I am like the puppets moving on their stage in Mandalay. More confident now, he played and the song slowed, and when at last he finished he had almost forgotten that others were watching.

….And so he began again, now D major, now D minor, and forward through each scale, moving up, each tune a variation on its beginnings, structure giving rise to possibilities. He played into the remoter scales, as his old master had called them, and Edgar thought how fitting a name this was for a piece played into the night of the jungle.

That book had moved me beyond words and so had this passage within the book. My knowledge of music was even more rudimentary a year ago than it is now; if one can imagine such a lack of knowledge possible. But this passage where the protagonist is playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in the jungles of Burma was appealing for some strange reasons.

Soon after reading this book I remember investing in an iPod and the first thing I downloaded to it was Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Since then I have listened to it with some regularity and have even been humming some of it (even though this work is often criticized for being a technical masterpiece with zero hummability). But humming it doesn't mean one understands what is going on.

A year ago the only thing I knew about music was the Indian solfege. I didn't understand the configuration of the keys of the piano keyboard and had no idea what anyone meant when they said C major or D major and so on. It was dark and impenetrable terrain. Now there appears to be a tiny clearing in the woods. I know about scales and octaves and major and minor scales, I can attempt them on the piano keyboard and the violin and the Well-Tempered Clavier is as clear as clear can be! I usually let it stream into my ears through the iPod and never know which one's playing and today, for the first time I noticed it started with C Major moved on to C Sharp Major then C Sharp Minor and I could predict that the next one would be D Major!! I was beyond thrilled at the realization! I stumbled a bit when where the D sharp major was supposed to be next but the title said "E flat major" but the stumble wasn't long-lived as soon as I remembered that D sharp and E flat were one and the same.

Now I know what Daniel Mason was referring to in the passage above when he said, "...and Edgar felt his whole body move toward the right and remain there, a journey across the keyboard..."

Now I wonder why I didn't start exploring music sooner...maybe there is a time for everything. Even though all conventional wisdom suggests five is the right age to start exploring music.

When I read Daniel Mason's book any interest in music was still over a year away. But now that I usually have a violin in my hand at least for a half hour every evening, all my bookstore adventures lead me to books on the violin.

The first such book I read was Eugene Drucker's - The Savior. Eugene Drucker is a violinist of renown but The Savior is his debut novel and an amazing one at that. One feels no compassion or sympathy for the protagonist here. His every action, leading up to the primary events of the novel, and as shown through reflective recollections, are laced with deep-seated cowardice in the face of evil. One wonders if he will ever act with conviction. But he is also an accomplished violinist, one who is conscripted for service within a concentration camp to be a part of a cold-blooded experiment...something akin to a predator playing with the prey before administering the lethal blow. As any retelling of the holocaust the inhumanity leaves one stunned and speechless, but the novel takes this one step further by showing how even something like music could be perverted.

Drucker uses the following Shakespearean lines from Richard II, Act 5, Scene 5 as an epigraph to set the tone for his work:

How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

Saying anymore about the novel would make this a spoiler, so I won't.

But the reflections and associations that the novel sparked in me left me staggered with the realization that if one had music in ones life then one would need very little else to get by. There would be no moments of indescribable loneliness, no depression, no desire to seek any other forms of distraction. We would move onward from "Aum" and strive for every fractional representation of that one sound and its various combinations and representations as notes swirled and came together, rich with meaning.

The Sound of Creaking Bones in C Minor

Today was my eighth violin lesson. A session that made me forget all my woes from the previous week – the brutal relentlessness of work pressures, the maniacal working habits with results or resolutions nowhere in sight and a rather severe allergic reaction to stress. My fellow student wasn’t with me, summer vacations and grandparental pampering having proven too tempting; the temptation outweighing any interest in producing music.

So I was soldiering on alone.

When I chose this title for the piece it was a random decision, reflecting a certain fascination with the alliterative element. Little did I know it was more appropriate than I imagined; for if bones were to creak as a sad old person sawed away at a violin then it is quite plausible someone could be inspired to compose a musical tribute to this brave soul written in a minor scale!

Funereal music, sadness, depression, wistfulness are all emotional elements for which the minor scale in various keys is the scale of choice: just sharing another little tidbit to further underscore my musical illiteracy and my complete fascination with the things I am learning that I never knew before. I can’t resist documenting my sense of awe even as I picture anyone who stops by to read what I’ve written rolling their wise eyes and saying, “Oh brother, what a nitwit!”

I wasn’t very comfortable at my last violin lesson. The first eight lessons had gone well as I learnt:

The names of each string
How to hold the violin
How to bow
How to tune a violin
How to play a scale
How to play – Mary Had a Little Lamb
How to play the rest of – Mary Had a Little Lamb
How to play – Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

These are the things that the teacher taught me and my daughter. I did some playing around with the instrument myself and I was able to figure out how to play the rest of – Mary Had a Little Lamb and got up to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star…how I wonder what you are. My excitement knew no bounds when I realized I had just completed the song without being taught how to.

I have been trying to supplement my classroom learning with readings and practice sessions of my own where I regularly try to go beyond what I have been taught (I wonder why I never thought of doing this during my student days with things like Physics or Chemistry or Sanskrit for that matter!!)

So, getting back to the last class, I mentioned being uncomfortable. It was as if I had hit a solid wall, an insurmountable mental block. I had taught myself the rudiments of reading music. So when the teacher asked me to open up to the song “Lightly Row” in Anoushka’s Suzuki Violin Book 1 and he started explaining what the ‘#’ sign on a staff meant I thought I would do well with it.

‘#’ means that the key it appears on is played sharp. I could read the staff and tell that the C and F notes were to be played sharp, however I had no idea what string and what finger placement on the violin produced C Sharp! I kept asking my teacher but I felt as if I wasn't clearly stating my concerns, as if he just couldn’t understand my question. I was more than distressed.

I kept practicing at home, starting with the G major scale and then repeating the finger placements on each string. I mistakenly believed that the G that was actually an octave higher was perhaps G Sharp… I had no one to correct me, quite the musical moron.

But these doubts vanished in today’s class and were replaced by ecstasy mingled with fright. I now know that while the piano can get a sharp or flat note by striking an adjacent black key, the violin achieves that effect by playing a natural note higher or lower; by sliding the finger slightly higher or lower than the natural note - altering the pitch very slightly. The ecstasy then, is about understanding the concept, the fright and utter stupefaction comes from contemplating the enormity of this insight. If a piece of music calls for a C sharp how will I ever know where the sharp is and how it’s supposed to sound until I can get the C natural finger position worked out?? The teacher assures me that it will come with ease soon. I say to myself, “Yeah right!”

I learnt how to play the scale in two octaves. I had learnt how to do this on my own but the thing I had been doing now had a name. He also had me practice the G major, D major and C major scales.

I don’t have the words to describe the thrill of learning just a tiny little bit more at each class. The thrill remains even as I realize how roughly cobbled together each new bit of musical learning is in my brain; how it’s coming together - but not seamlessly. Each fresh insight seems brilliant in itself like points of light flashing without any recognizable pattern. I wonder if things will ever really come together for me or if I’ll ever develop any kind of musical intuition but if I don’t it won’t be for lack of trying.

Perhaps it will come with a relaxed stance, a stance that isn’t reminiscent of rigor-mortis-violin-in-hand-warmed-over. My teacher commented on my tense face, pursed lips, a claw like grip on the bow and a short range of motion in the last class. He wanted to know why I was so tense! Is there any way for old bones to not be tense while thinking through the notes that need to be played and where each finger needs to be? It might be a little like walking and chewing gum at the same time and many of us have trouble with that little bit of coordination!

But in today’s class I was complimented on a marked improvement in my stance, my bowing and the development of some ease. Perhaps there’s hope for my creaking bones yet. If the slight improvements and minor adjustments in fingering, bowing and intuitive leaps continue unchecked perhaps the next piece will be about the Gleeful Gliding of the Bow in G Major.

Coming Up for Air

Last week I worked like a maniac. I have never spent so many hours on the job. I was working round the clock and every milestone I thought I achieved ended up being a mirage, an illusion. The powers that be changed their minds constantly and the work I was doing appeared to possess a built in obsolescence. I didn’t see how I would ever get ahead and I was seriously questioning my decisions and the choices that have led me here.

Reading this, one might notice the past tense. My near and dear ones, those who are sympathetic to me or have missed me while I had my head buried in the sand would be relieved at the use of the past tense in this writing. But it’s the optimist in me that has chosen to relate it in this manner.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I am trying hard to believe it won’t be more of the same. I am hoping a prickly sensation won’t spread underneath my skin at the sound of a word like “scenario”. I have to tell myself it is just work, nothing more, nothing less and it shouldn’t under any circumstances suck the joy out of life…like a dementor!

Before The Fiddlers Have Fled...1

A friend insists that my pursuit of musical literacy is an experience worth documenting, so here’s the beginning of a documentary.

My daughter, who is five, can carry a tune and shows an avid interest in music. Five is the right age to start musical training, I hear. So when a friend does an Internet search for a violin teacher in my neighborhood and finds me a number to call, after tolerating my whining about how far I live from anywhere and how impossible it is for me to sign my daughter up for any extracurricular activities, I am left with no excuse but to call up said teacher. I do want her to acquire the musical literacy that I have always craved.

Except, as I am discussing her lessons with her teacher, something makes me inquire if the teacher will take me on as well, my question is couched within a nervous giggle and an intention of sounding as if I was only joking. In reality, although I doubt I knew it myself, I was dead serious. The teacher assured me that it was possible to learn at any age while the cynic within taunted with a quip that a tutor’s optimism is perhaps directly proportional to the promise of income.

The next step was the renting of violins, the short and sweet one required the tiniest violin I’ve ever seen – an eighth size. This is the only size that allowed her to touch the scroll of the violin with a ninety degree bend in her elbow. The taller musical troglodyte required a full size violin.

The mother and daughter duo have now been taking lessons for six weeks. We have learnt to play a scale and the nursery rhyme – Mary Had a Little Lamb. We practice the tune religiously at home. Thank God for our remoteness and unshared walls with neighbors; although we are probably sending many a deer from the woods all around us scampering away to their doom.

When I am done with my daily chores for the evening, and have finished practicing what little I know of violin playing so far - the one nursery rhyme - and when it is time to get online again, I check message boards and hunt and peck on the keyboard till the early morning hours, trying to find some assurance that it is indeed possible for a creaky jointed person to learn to play an instrument that needs the dedication of a lifetime. No such assurances are forthcoming. There are concerned eighteen year olds on these message boards, imploring, asking if they can hope to be respectable violin players one day. They are bluntly told that they have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being any good. One is up against people who picked up the instrument when they were barely out of diapers! How is it possible to hold ones own against someone who has been doing it since they were in kindergarten? “Holding one’s own” should really be the last thing on the mind of an old person trying to learn. The wizened ones need to be doing it for the love of music alone!

So there appears to be some hope for my kindergartener and I need to tell myself that it should all be about her now; that I need to stop feeding the hungry monster that keeps pushing me towards a quixotic quest for “I-don’t-know-what”. I need to find indescribable joy in teaching, guiding and shaping a young person who can face the world with knowledge that I didn’t possess. Anyway, that is what should be happening. But it isn’t. It helps to have an “upper limit” – something to “tend to” as one learnt in Calculus. Doesn’t mean it is going to happen. Instead it seems like I have found the entrance to a cave of treasures similar to the one Ali Baba found.

In the past few weeks I have hungrily scoured every musical resource on the net, every book I could lay my hands on and tapped every person who possesses the tiniest bit of musical knowledge to help me feel less lost in the world of flats and sharps and majors and minors.

My five year old goes around saying. “Mommy, I think I know how to spell ‘STOP’ as we stop the car at a stop sign, she can also read ‘NO TURNS’ or ‘EXIT’ or ‘DEER CROSSING’ or almost anything that she can sound out phonetically and register sense. I feel like I am musically at the same level as she is with her alphabets…I can be found exclaiming, “Hey that curly sign that looks like and ampersand is a treble clef!” I now know the differences between the black and white keys on a piano and am developing a vague understanding of pitches and octaves, of equal temperament and just intonation, of the circle of fifths which anti-clockwise is also a circle of fourths.

I am thrilled that I can read music now; that is if I stare at a staff for 15 – 20 minutes while feeling the onset of a headache and red-rimmed eyes, but I can do it! It was a mysteriously alien thing just two weeks ago and now it’s getting demystified.

Whether my ear will ever learn to follow along trippingly and transcribe what I learn to the strings of the violin remains to be seen. The hope is that the different pieces of the musical jigsaw will come together someday and culminate in an “aha” moment of sorts. After all if one sets out on a path it is bound to lead somewhere. How my friend’s bow seemed to magically hover over the strings, producing the most delicate of notes and how our violin teacher’s hands move so swiftly over the strings remains something from the realm of fantasy, a mystery that seems so out of reach. A mystery that I am sure my fellow student will have better luck resolving if I can do my job of sustaining her interest.

In the meantime I’ll keep plodding away at torturing some form of consonant notes out of my instrument while taking baby steps toward the all important CORRECT note - the one that seems to be so conspicuously lacking from nearly all aspects of life; the one exception being the one she uses when she calls out my name and asks me if it time for us to practice what we’ve learnt.

I wonder what makes me think of her luscious tones as ‘plummy’. Have I ever heard a sound described that way or is it my own invention? I am not sure. We collect impressions and sometimes it’s difficult to tell acquired thoughts apart from original ones…but when she calls out my name I picture a round, juicy plum and I sense richness…it’s as if I can hear, taste and see the rich outlines and hues of all her words. When she calls it seems like the only correct note I recognize is the sound of her voice. It travels through my inner reaches and hits the spot where it can give me utmost satisfaction.

Perhaps one day we’ll both come close to producing a similar note from our instruments, or perhaps we already have.

A Dream!

A dream! Finally a dream I remember!

There are familiar characters - like my very sweet,very cloyingly insistent and driven boss. She has a chart with her that needs to be diligently maintained. The maintenance of this chart, which seems to be nothing more than a recording of the daily sunset and sunrise timings, is to be our highest priority for the upcoming weeks. It has to be updated and analyzed at all costs.

I remember offering a slight resistance and expressing some barely concealed annoyance at the idea. I'm telling her how difficult it is to actually be awake at the precise moment of sunrise. I ask her if she really expects me to be awake and ready with pen, paper and clock to observe the break of dawn and she answers in the affirmative.

I switch to my ‘reasonable’ mode and tell her that it wouldn’t be that difficult to record the precise time of sunset but that she needs to bring in some other experts or consultants to do the recording of the sunrise.

I even comment on how unreasonable the whole project is and she answers by saying she has something to share with me. She then tells me that the company is planning a softball event in which participation is mandatory. She says she has been assigned the task of picking the team and ensuring practice sessions. Therefore, she says, it becomes important to keep track of exactly how many hours of daylight we have in which to work effectively.

I react by saying, “Wow! Ok! That makes complete sense! I get it now!” She reacts by looking pleased and telling me how she always wants me to express myself freely so that she can share things with me so I don’t get a sense of being left floundering in the dark.

I tell her then that since we were talking freely she would need to know that I have never been good at baseball or softball and that she shouldn’t have high expectations. She looks surprised and asks me why I think I can’t play well. I tell her about my school where students were required to play baseball, starting with Grade 5. I remember being told to hit the ball with a bat that wasn’t flat like a cricket bat! I didn’t see how it was possible. And that I could never connect ball with bat. She reassures me that I would do fine.

My dream takes me home then as I ponder the problem of the recording of dawn, now that I know what it’s for. The problem keeps me awake half the night (yes, I seem to be an insomniac even in my dreams!) and then I have a “Eureka” moment where I decide that it’s really so easy, that there is no problem at all: there are a million sites on the web that offer us sunrise and sunset timings. I kick myself for not thinking of it sooner.

I fall asleep in the dream then as I wake up in the real world, relieved that there isn’t such a project afoot.

Not only did I dream but I was actually blessed with one whose precedents are so easy to trace back to two things: JJ’s poem “Discourse” and recent interactions with the boss!

Or are they really? Is something else going on that isn't so obvious?

No ends, no beginnings...just thoughts

Most days are dull. I know I won’t remember them when I look back from a vantage point of twenty years hence. Some would stand out. Some for no reason at all and some for the richness of the moment or for the depth or intensity of feeling they inspired.

I have always liked this program of old Hindi songs on satellite TV called “Abhi to Main Jawaan Hoon”. The presenter of the program is so humble and self-effacing that I still haven’t learnt his name, even after years of watching this program.

Unlike the video jockeys of today he projects the idea that this program is not in the least bit about him but about the gems of music that have emerged from the work of Indian lyricists, musicians and singers in the first half of the twentieth century. And gems they are. I can get so absorbed in these songs that nothing else around me would register. It is the only thing that would make me understand why the musicians on the Titanic played on even as the ship broke in half and sank.

The selection today was mesmerizing and included Akele Akele Kahan Ja Rahe Ho, Deewana Hua Baadal, Dil Cheez Kya Hai and Chupke Chupke Raat Din among others. They have been my favorites for a long time; from the time when they appealed to me at the most basic level; the universal language of beautiful music. Now in the fourth decade of my life, as I contemplate the words “break it down”, every time I hear a rock band perform and the lead singer utters them before giving each part of the band an individual turn, or when I return to fundamentals as I try to solve a problem, or thinking of Mr George Mayer*, who always talked about getting back to first principles, I hear these songs and watch the accompanying visuals with closer attention. I notice each part, observe and marvel at each nuance. Nuances that have me drifting, free associating, making connections to recent events in my life or in the lives of people I know

There’s the song Chupke Chupke Raat Din where Ghulam Ali effortlessly emotes with his voice and then I listen to the words…Kheench lena wo mera parde ka kona daffatan, aur dupatte se tera wo mooh chupana yaad hai…those words speak to me about the essential difference between a man and a woman in any relationship. The man wants to uncover the mystery, the woman wants to conceal, as long as possible…when one curtain comes down, another one must go up; they must be kept guessing. Whether she knows it or not her very existence depends on preserving this mystery, to sustain it, for when the mystery is gone nothing remains, just a void that seeks to devour everything within its dark expanse.

Then there’s the line about the girl braving the blistering of her feet on a sun baked roof on a hot summer day to call out to her beloved…she didn’t want to lose a single moment, not even to slip her feet into a pair of slippers, so eager was she to get to him. How often have I felt that way myself? It’s a sense of anticipation unabated yet secret; one that begs disclosure as much as it seeks concealment.

The song is of course a reminiscence of a remorseful lover, of the things he failed to appreciate and the tenderness he destroyed and these thoughts instantly connect with a synaptic glow that revives a heart-stopping quote from someone who said, “Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled…”

The song from Umrao Jaan…Dil Cheez Kya Hai…has me marveling at Rekha’s performance, the Kathak moves all seem significant and meaningful (something I had always failed to notice before), not a single wasted or extraneous motion, nothing to detract from the significance of the song to the movie and its contribution to the story.

The tabla is an instrument that I can’t say I never noticed before, I did, but I didn’t pay it much mind, and now watching this song I think of the ‘taal’ to which Rekha, playing Umrao Jaan, takes several steps forward while dancing for an audience, toward her audience, and I know this moment will be memorable for me when I look back from the future.

Twenty years from now, when I am thinking about my disgust at my monochrome days of yore, these sepia toned moments of colorlessness will show a splash or two of color, of my absorption with every scene I watched on this program and every song that led me to close my eyes and sing along in sync and with perfect timing. I’ll remember my desire to be able to play these tunes on the violin (perhaps by then I will be a respectable player of the violin, there’s always hope). I know I will remember this otherwise dull day…I think.

Although there are moments I remember now when nothing happened: I don’t remember every single day of my past, most of it went by in a blur but if I am ever in a position to see my entire life flash in front of me, I wonder which moments will be the chosen ones.

I wonder why I remember the moment from 1989 when I was walking from my basement apartment in Riverdale, MD to the parking lot, before leaving for work. I remember the feel of the day, what I wore and even what I thought. It was something as mundane as, “I guess Mr Nagendra won’t be giving me a ride to work today.” I still can’t remember why that moment is memorable. Perhaps the moments we remember are not the most significant ones or perhaps I fail to see the significance of that particular moment and it will either appear to me in a dream or in some moment of déjà vu where I am similarly attired or the morning has the same feel to it as that morning 18 years ago.

The biggest set of questions that arise out of this piece of writing, or free associating, which isn’t really trying to say anything at all, simply a chain of words with which I am trying once again to hammer in a peg, or lay down an anchor of some sort, so that the past isn’t as blurry, is this – Why the fascination with the past? Why does it seem so important to avoid a blurry past? Why does it feel crucial?

And as I ask myself these questions I wonder why the words – home, roots, the rounded spoon (a relic from my childhood) – why do they come to mind? There is the obvious answer – because I am thinking of the past. But why am I doing that? I am still young enough to gaze into the future instead but I rarely do.

I often wonder why the people of this very young country are willing to pay any price for an old home, the older the better, the more dilapidated the better. They often change the old place, renovate, rebuild, add amenities and then stand back and observe their handiwork with immense pride. The insides of such homes are always new, always modern so why then is it all important to have a foundation that’s centuries old and to have four walls that can tell a story.

All in all a realm of constant wonder with connections that are not entirely obvious but exist all the same in a world of old favorites in music, old relics from the past, fascination with old homes, and the palimpsest like insights in all things I’ll accumulate in a long and ordinary life.

* Mr George Mayer - Our much respected principal who recently passed away.

PS: I considered it Prufrock, but didn't find "lightening up" enticing! :)

My Australian Visitor

I notice you visit this blog several times a day, at least that's what my sitemeter tells me! But it doesn't seem like you spend much time here, one view, rather several views a day, and you're gone! I wish you'd stay and visit sometime and maybe leave a few words behind!

Masochistic Choices in In-flight Entertainment

In the throes of childish cruelty kids often use magnifying glasses to concentrate the rays of the sun into a beam that leaves a poor ant squirming and eventually burning. Babel - my top choice for in-flight entertainment - left me with that image in my mind. I was the ant in the audience, left squirming and increasingly anxious in the concentrated beam through the director's magnifying glass.

On the news, the day before, I had heard about a seven-year old boy whose parents had let him walk into the mens' room of a department store, unaccompanied. A few short minutes were enough for a sexual predator to molest the little boy.

On other days one hears about razor blades embedded in meat and left in a park where people walk their dogs. Several dogs have taken the lethal bait.

Every now and then there is a school, university or office building shooting, even in peace loving Amish neighborhoods.

In London a 21 year old woman named Zara Care was tried for goading her toddlers into something like a dogfight, encouraging them to pummel each other to the point of serious injuries while her sisters cheered.

These incidences are scattered and cause deep momentary anguish and wonder at the sudden rise in their frequency followed by immediate disbelief and denial as we move on feeling superior, thankful and sane.

As sane as the poor, overworked Japanese father of a deaf and disturbed teenager was portrayed in the movie. He had lost his wife and was steadily losing his daughter when he learnt that the radius of his problems wasn't a narrow and concentrated one but one that was diffused well beyond the range of his existence.

Sane because our own little lives are routine and placidly spent in some bedroom town, that sprawls further away from the city each day, to places where deer used to run wild. Our sanity clearly reflected in the hours we spend transporting ourselves over trains, buses and automobiles while reading articles on "extreme commuting" in the latest issue of The New Yorker. No Babel in our lives, just a steadily growing isolation and jadedness; an isolation that we draw around ourselves - one that is a direct result of our very own actions and yet feels alien and oppressive.

So much for in flight "entertainment"! There were other movies I could have selected from the menu, something light, a comedy perhaps? My daughter and my husband were wildly entertained by the antics of Spongebob Squarepants and his jaded buddy Squidward who suffers from a chronic case of weltschmerz but, seated between them, I scrolled over several light hearted options only to find yet another disturbing one - Notes on a Scandal.

For this movie Dame Judi Dench received a well-deserved Oscar nod for her role of an intensely lonely schoolteacher who commands the respect of wayward students simply because she is a self-described "battleaxe". But she is also someone who invites confidences. She invites an unburdening of the soul but the burdens people shed are the invaluable, darkly treasured and well-documented scraps of information that she believes will serve as the key to the eventual dissolution of her own loneliness and isolation.

It is a disturbing story but it bothered me even more than the director - Richard Eyre - would have anticipated. What scared me was my own propensity to attract confidences, to get people to open up to me and tell me their deepest secrets while I listen - sympathetic and non-judgmental. I wondered why I invited confidences and if it was some of the same loneliness that Judi Dench's character Barbara Covett displayed in her interactions with Cate Blanchett's character - Sheba Hart? There was a scene in the movie where she is contemplating her isolation and she states how no one knows what it's like to be "chronically untouched". Is extreme loneliness a condition then that could make a vicariously satisfied vampire out of one? That was a terrifying thought.

And as if I wasn't rattled enough on this very long flight with multiple doses of caffeine coursing through my veins and the tiredness of several days of travel taking their toll, something made me opt for yet another movie to finish the downward spiraling of thoughts that Babel had started - Running with Scissors - a movie based on Augusten Burroughs memoirs.

These are his memoirs; they must be grounded in reality, but what an unbelievably monstrous childhood! Just when we think things couldn't get any worse they do! And it was just my luck that the character of Deirdre Burroughs (Augusten's Mom), depicted by Annette Bening, had to be that of a writer/poet who dreamed of being published one day, who attended and organized poetry readings and subjected her young son to recitations of her work as he reassured her that The New Yorker would publish her one day! Talk about subliminal messages! Some mile-high supernatural power in the Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Newark had it in for me!

Needless to say, I was shaken to the core. Never again will I watch anything but episodes of The Office and Spongebob on transatlantic flights.

Back on solid ground again I feel thoroughly chastised and resistant to any and all forms of confidences or poetry writing urges as I contemplate the prevention of Babel in my life.

Travel Snapshot: Tent City

She stood there watching, intent,
for hours, or so it seemed,
on a high rise balcony,
sipping the golden nectar of a
fruit from this land.

The sun beat down
and a child’s skin glistened
brown - the lather slithering
down - under mugs full of water,
extracted from a tiny
plastic bucket by his mom.

Her father soon joined her
for the engrossing balcony view,
and innocent, questioning eyes.

“Where do they live Dad?
The bathing child and his mom?”
For there wasn’t a ‘home’ in sight.

He pointed to the patch
of filthy plastic blue
sheltering a four-post home,
and a few others scattered
in the distance.

He christened it “Tent City”.

The cows on the road
didn’t shock or surprise,
the stray dogs were friends,
and a walk to the beach -
just a time to meet Sana -
a Tent City friend
now clutching a Barbie prize.

Pragya

When Will It Be Spring?

It seemed like a daunting task. The snow was ten inches deep, my boots sank into a white mess that was well over my ankles. I didn’t know how I would get through it. I also don’t understand why it only snows when there’s no one else around to shovel it. It happens year after year.

I am usually the only woman on the block picking up huge chunks of snow in my little shovel and heaving it over to the untravelled side of the front of the house. They wave and say hello, they smile, I wave and smile back at the men in the neighborhood going about the business of clearing snow with their heavy duty snow blowers. They don’t offer any help and I am certainly not the type who’d ask for help or for anything at all. So now I am sleepless and exhausted. The lower back pain and my aching arms are making it difficult for me to go to sleep, or perhaps it’s just the midnight hour caffeine binge. I’ve never believed that caffeine can keep me awake, but here I am wide awake, typing incoherently while the screen casts an eerie glow over my unsmiling face.

Why I had to qualify the state of my face and call it ‘unsmiling’ I don’t know. It isn’t as if I am unhappy or angry or sad. I just don’t find much to smile about these days. But then automatons don’t smile either do they? They run through the preset programming in their complex circuitry and do what’s required of them each day as efficiently as possible.

I approximate an automaton. I had said somewhere that I am an approximist. I am not as efficient as I would like to be. I wake up at every hour to glance up at the digital clock, I squint as I try to scrunch the lenses of my eyes every which way possible to get an accurate read of the clock. The green digits get confusing when its 3 or 8 or 5 or 6, the 4s are easy, no other number looks like a 4. After I determine that it’s only 2 or 3 or 4, I go back to sleep telling myself I have another 4 or 3 or 2 hours of sleep left. And then at 5:55 I tell myself…ah, another 5 minutes. Sleep overwhelms me at this stage and by the time my befogged brain thinks back to the 5 minutes that were left, 17 minutes have gone by and it’s almost always 6:17 AM when I throw the covers aside and drag my feet to the bathroom. Yes, efficiency is sorely lacking. The rush that starts at that moment keeps me clock bound and inefficient till 4:30 PM.

A coworker or my boss always stops by for a casual chat at 4:26 PM as I smile and nod at their comments that are only reaching me in slow motion at that stage. Nothing registers as a voice inside my head tries to will them to stop talking, “Please stop talking, please stop talking, PLEASE STOP TALKING!” As soon as they stop I do a run-walk to the bus terminal, sweating inside several layers of winter clothing as my heart rate soars and then I look for a seat next to a skinny person who appears to be a non-dozer, a well contained person whose arms won’t fall on me as they doze or whose legs won’t sprawl across the seat as sleep takes over, or whose head won’t loll onto my shoulder. But I am rarely lucky and I suffer in silence for about two hours.

Whether or not the bus takes me to my car by 6:10 PM is always a bet I have with myself, a losing one. The next race is to the daycare center by 6:30 PM for if I am even a minute late they leave me little slips of paper asking for a $75 late pick up fee. I accumulated $375 in these little slips last week. So yes, I am certainly lacking in efficiency, not a very good automaton yet. The only thing I have successfully emulated is an unsmiling face.

So it’s Sunday morning now, 4:00 AM and I am still awake. See one of the things bothering me was that I haven’t been able to write. There are things I want to write, things people want me to write but there’s never any time. So I try to make time on weekends but it isn’t possible to summon the muse when one has made the time. There are no tales I can tell, no poetry within, no inspired commentary on my surroundings. This isn’t a bad situation I am in, but it is a situation all the same. And I have no one else to bother but myself in trying to think of a better way to deal with the situation.

You can only hear “this too shall pass”, “that’s life”, “things will get better”, “you’ll do alright” so many times, then it grates. People don’t realize how much. I am not a complete moron, I do know that this will pass and will only be replaced by something else. I know too that this is life and things get better sometimes and worse at other times. I have also learnt that it isn’t very useful to classify things as ‘better’ or ‘worse’; they are all events that trigger an appropriate or inappropriate reaction and each reaction has a consequence of its own.

One minute I am sitting at my desk worrying about the levels of snow accumulation and the sludge and slush on the roads of the city, the cold water that would seep through my footwear, the snow that I would have to clear from my car as the blizzard like conditions whip about my hair and face. I think about how impossible it all sounds, about yet another late pick up fee and in the next minute I am gingerly stepping through the slush, cell phone to my ear as I call a friend and beg for her to pick up my child at the daycare, while straightening an upturned umbrella. The bus gets there, I clear the snow off my car and I get home with my daughter, safe inside and immune to the winter weather advisory. Yes, ostensibly this too has passed.

It is meaningless to talk to anyone or to “share”; there is no help out there. And help is only something one needs when one is in dire straits, I am not. I am just rolling that big old rock uphill and back after it’s rolled all the way down. It does me no good to complain, this is my thing to do. I doubt Sisyphus was ever able to take a break. I can, if I stay awake, I can type all night and tell the hard drive of a computer that this isn’t making me smile, that it wears thin sometimes.

One gets better at every mechanical task, so will I. Continuous improvement they call it. It will happen I am sure. It’s something to look forward to. One day I’ll be a super efficient machine with high levels of productivity and tasks completed in record times. Then the machine will get old and rusty, as is their wont, and one day finally stop.