Fifteen Years Old Today!

 Yes, Of This and That has been around for the past fifteen years, for better or worse. Nowadays I often see it as just a repository for my musings on Facebook, but nonetheless, it exists. My intentions towards it are always honourable. Perhaps I will do you justice before you turn sixteen, Blog.

These fifteen years have been transformative in so many ways. Many warm friendships in the real and virtual world. An opening up of worlds hitherto unknown. Friendships across the globe. Babies and small kids who featured in their parent's blogs are now grown up, or almost. So much has transpired in these fifteen years. I had the support and love of so many during my parents' last years. Travelling to the USA for the first time in 2007. Subsequent visits, for my son's wedding, for the birth of both my grandchildren, just for fun. Travels to Australia, Singapore, Thailand, England, Europe: some featured here, some ignored due to inertia. The wisdom of so many others, the poetry of many poets, my introduction to some absolutely fabulous authors and poets, movies, theatre, all began in the blog world.

I am so thankful to the technology that has brought so many close to me. I grieve for the misuse of the same technology. I remember Forster's wise words, Only Connect.

Yes, that is what we have always tried to do, me and my blog. Only connect.

Happy birthday, Blog.

August musings, (with a little July)

My duranta is in bloom.

A lone balloon on the lawn

A skinny kitten eludes the camera

Whitey perches on the guestroom

window sill

A few fat drops of rain

That do not keep me from

Completing my last round.

Happy morning!

26th July, 2022

The insomniac's wife is majorly sleep deprived.

He sleeps whenever sleep comes, like a baby.

Like a small baby's mother, she is advised,

Sleep when he sleeps.

It didn't make sense then,

It doesn't make sense now

There's the household with its rhythms

And its help, its particular timings.

And morning walks are possible only

In the morning.

Breakfast merges with lunch.

Leftovers get leftover again,

Then are given to the help.

Each snore is an onslaught upon her brain.

She prays that he sleeps through the night

And life gets its rhythm back again.

28th July, 2022

Betrayal

Who was the betrayer,

The one I always loved

Who now refused

To be good to me?

Or the vicissitudes of age

Which led to problems

Between my beloved and I?

No longer were we in harmony,

Once made for each other, but now

Troublesome, painful in the extreme.

My beloved, favourite arhar (tur) dal,

Tell me why I can no longer digest you?

31st July 2022

Random thoughts on Independence Day 2022

We were brave enough to move house last year on this day!

Our "own" apartment, as 'permanent' a residence as is possible in this temporary world of ours

Which fact many forget in their hubris...

We are only guests on this planet, not permanent residents.

We, humanity, haven't been good tenants on this earth of ours

Leaving it in a greater mess than before

While Nature wreaks havoc in despair.

My mind leaps from thought to thought

Is it not a strange coincidence that our housing societies are governed by RWAs

Which seem very Right Wing in their practices?

The polyester flag is statutory this year.

You have no option but to pay for it

And have it installed in your balcony

While poverty, ignorance and disease

Run rampant. Huge funds spent, and collected, on shiny polyester flags.

Symbolizing perhaps our synthetic patriotism, in a country where huge power

Is held by descendants of the polyester baron.

And yet, my heart sings songs of freedom

'Jhanda ooncha rahe hamara

Vijayee vishwa tiranga pyaara'.

Though I despair of so much that happens here

My love for my country is visceral.

Happy 94th birthday to my mother.

She was already mother to a toddler then,

And would go to Gandhiji's prayer meetings

With my father, all those decades ago.

Our independence was truly hard won, something to cherish and preserve forever.

Happy 75th Independence Day, India.

15th August, 2022

The Archeology of Dentistry

Every single new hairdresser I've ever been to

Complains of the lousy job the one before them did.

Similarly, dentists.

When you get to my age

And have lived in several cities

And have had several dentists

You are asked strange questions

To which you don't remember the answers

If you ever knew them, that is.

Because once pain is over

Treatment is done, and you feel half human again

You blank out all memory of visits to the dentist of the day/month/year/city,

And what was done to what tooth when.

Which dentist was responsible for which root canal, which crown, which implant...

Impossible to remember.

While having a very long overdue cleaning session today, with my very competent and charming young dentist, I recalled an ancient fantasy of mine:

To be wealthy enough to have a dental chamber at home, with my personal dentist brushing my teeth for me every single day,

So that I would never have to go to the dentist!

24th August, 2022

Catching up!

The French window is open

The plants I watered this morning

Are enjoying the rain

The lights are on

The son is home

Breakfast done

The country is unspeakable

But

We have rain today.

30th June, 2022

Mr. Beagle

Seems to think

That the walking path

In our green belt

Belongs exclusively to him

So he stands in front of me

And howls at me

Until he is leashed

And taken away.

I have to break stride

For him, annoying,

But I know that we are soul mates:

We both claim that path

As our own!

15th July 2022

The rainy day

Had the dryer

Justify its existence

A thunderclap:

Pigeons panic

flying to shelter

The airconditioner

Has time off.

And we go for a long drive.

17th July 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjqeoenXXQo

I am introduced at approximately one hour and ten minutes.

Of course, it would be wonderful if you have the time to hear the whole programme.

Right to Life: Powerful indeed

 SAILLE: Right To Life

A woman is not a pear tree

thrusting her fruit into mindless fecundity

into the world. Even pear trees bear

heavily one year and rest and grow the next.

An orchard gone wild drops few warm rotting

fruit in the grass but the trees stretch

high and wiry gifting the birds forty

feet up among inch long thorns

broken atavistically from the smooth wood.

A woman is not a basket you place

your buns in to keep them warm. Not a brood

hen you can slip duck eggs under.

Not the purse holding the coins of your

descendants till you spend them in wars.

Not a bank where your genes gather interest

and interesting mutations in the tainted

rain, any more than you are.

You plant corn and you harvest

it to eat or sell. You put the lamb

in the pasture to fatten and haul it in to

butcher for chops. You slice the mountain

in two for a road and gouge the high plains

for coal and the waters run muddy for

miles and years. Fish die but you do not

call them yours unless you wished to eat them.

Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.

You lay claim to her pastures for grazing,

fields for growing babies like iceberg

lettuce. You value children so dearly

that none ever go hungry, none weep

with no one to tend them when mothers

work, none lack fresh fruit,

none chew lead or cough to death and your

orphanages are empty. Every noon the best

restaurants serve poor children steaks.

At this moment at nine o’clock a partera

is performing a table top abortion on an

unwed mother in Texas who can’t get

Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die

of tetanus and her little daughter will cry

and be taken away. Next door a husband

and wife are sticking pins in the son

they did not want. They will explain

for hours how wicked he is,

how he wants discipline.

We are all born of woman, in the rose

of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood

and every baby born has a right to love

like a seedling to sun. Every baby born

unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come

due in twenty years with interest, an anger

that must find a target, a pain that will

beget pain. A decade downstream a child

screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched,

a firing squad is summoned, a button

is pushed and the world burns.

I will choose what enters me, what becomes

of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,

no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,

not your uranium mine, not your calf

for fattening, not your cow for milking.

You may not use me as your factory.

Priests and legislators do not hold shares

in my womb or my mind.

This is my body. If I give it to you

I want it back. My life

is a non-negotiable demand.

—Marge Piercy, from her 1980 poetry collection The Moon is Always Female