The Word

Last prompt. For now.

As I had promised, this is a companion piece to yesterday's prompt. So for today, please write a 500 word piece inspired by Tony Hoagland's "The Word" (below):

The Word

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

-- Tony Hoagland

This beautiful poem fills me with ineffable sadness at the thought of lives that have, somehow, disconnected themselves from their source, whatever they may perceive it to be. The recognition that the soul needs nurture, and that the inner self needs care, is a must.

Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?

I am inspired, a little facetiously perhaps, by the poet, Sumana Roy, to think of myself as a plant, and try to make sure to keep myself rooted and grounded, and well “watered”, and sunned. Sad to say, people forget that they are biological creatures, also a part of nature, and that their genuine well–being is closely linked to being as close to nature as they can be, and in not letting the vicissitudes of daily life disconnect them from the very core of their being. Even though ‘sunlight’ is written in a list in the poem, it is an acknowledgement of the need for caring for oneself, with time, and nature, and doing what makes you happy.

There was a book I read many years ago, called Cheaper by the Dozen, about life in the home of a couple who are time and motion study and efficiency experts.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheaper_by_the_Dozen). When asked what he wants to do with all the time that he has saved, the father concludes his reply by saying, “For skittles, if that’s where your heart lies…”    

The key phrase being, “where your heart lies”.

Life can be confusing and puzzling and vexing, and we often need a word or more to keep us going. Hoagland’s word here is sunlight. My go-to word is Desiderata, the title of a poem I first encountered in my early teens. https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html.                              Different lines from this have resonated at different times. Today, these do:                                       

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Universe no less than the trees and the stars: you have the right to be here. _____keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Being happy, and/or striving to be happy, are acts of gratitude for the bounty of this human life.

Sadly, there are many people across the globe who suffer conditions of all kinds, both innate and external, that preclude the presence of sunlight in their lives. The roles of parents and caregivers of children assume great importance in how they influence the child’s perception of the world. In order to raise happy children, it is imperative that the caregivers have support and nurturance for themselves, too, before they can be expected to do justice to their wards.                              In the timeless wisdom of countless flight announcements, ‘Please place the oxygen mask over your own mouth and nose before assisting others.                                                          

“The king and queen alive, still speaking to their children…”

Only listen.

There is No Word

 -- 500 words

-- Write a piece inspired by Tony Hoagland's "There is no Word" 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55650/there-is-no-word?fbclid=IwAR1_CQYIaSJxi_vpcqqAafvPM5jQ1dBc9w3Vt2Vf6L4aAYe8WjtmXzb_F5Q

            Which came first, the feeling or the word?

Babies know the answer to that one.
What they feel is what they express.
Words come so much later in the day,
But once they have come,
Adults give them precedence over feelings,
Invalidating that which cannot be expressed in words,
Which is so much of human experience.

Language, languid, lazy, feline, graceful, powerful
Often cruel, too, in its indifference.
Its inadequacies stretch our minds and hearts
To find a word for what is not broken, not severed,
But has declined, over time, from what we thought it was
To what, today, it undeniably is: meaningless,
A set of words spoken out of courtesy,
A history that was once shared,
Perhaps circumstantial,
Not really of the heart,
But pretending to be, for old times’ sakes.
Sadder when one party is warm and effusive,
And the other can’t get the tone right,
Leaving mutterings in his or her wake.
I wonder what’s wrong with So-and-So
Seemed so strange today…

And when you think of the thousands of people
you have known in your lifetime,
some hundreds closely, perhaps,
How many would you really care to know
Better, over the years?
How many do you really need in your life
As physical people
whom you really want to spend time with?

Today, they can only give you their words,
Apart from those who live in your house,
with you, during this period of social isolation.
This strange malady that rocks the world
Has made language the vessel of all feelings
Well expressed or otherwise,
Our minds reach out across the ether
We seek the words of friends,
and strangers who have become friends,
to sustain us in these difficult times,
to tell us that we are not alone
in the face of what feels insurmountable
with no end in sight

A world turned topsy-turvy
(delicious words, uncomfortable feeling)
All givens no longer constant
Everything re-written,
In a language not of our choosing.

I grew up in a very formal home
No cuddles after early childhood
I’d pretend to be asleep for the comfort
Of being carried to bed by my father
And on walks would slip my small hand into his
My mother holding my chin as she parted my hair
Before plaiting it, I hold that touch in my memory
I think most sibling fisticuffs in my childhood,
Were simply because we craved a human touch.

Growing up, I learned to hug my friends
And my children knew that hugs were available
And they had words to ask for them
(I learned this from my nephews,
from when they were small enough
to need a “cuggle”)
And today, I crave the hugs
Of my children, those both near and far,
and of the little grandchildren,
who were supposed to come this winter
Until our world got up-ended…

So much to be grateful for, though,
We see them all on video chats,
All are safe and well.
Gratitude needs to be
My favourite word…

                

Not Foolproof!

Today's prompt:
A first-person narrative in your or any other assumed character's voice, telling an anecdote into which is woven a recipe. Woven is the operant word - not listed. 500 words.

Being newly married, enthusiastic, over confident and absent minded can lead to interesting results, particularly in the kitchen, particularly in the pre-Internet, few phones era.

I thought I could cook.  There were things I could, and things I couldn’t. I had never cooked ridge gourd, for example, so the first time I made it in my mother-in-law’s kitchen it was extremely watery. She gently told me that it gives off a lot of water when you cook it. Lesson learnt.

We were in Thailand, sharing a flat with a colleague whose wife and son hadn’t yet joined us. (More staff flats were under construction). So it was a point of honour to serve good food to both husband and flatmate. I had overheard my neighbours talking about their recipe for gulab jamun. It sounded simple enough. There was a locally available Molly Milk Powder, a cupful of which you mixed with two tablespoons of maida, a large pinch of baking powder, and you kneaded a soft dough with a few spoonfuls of milk. I took out my steel paraat, (brought from desh, along with two thhaalis, pressure cooker, and rolling pin, and sundry other essentials) and did so, and made two dozen small balls which I covered with a damp napkin.

I decided to fry the balls in desi ghee, since I was making a sweetmeat for the very first time. (It was Australian, but ghee nonetheless). I planned to serve these as dessert, after lunch, which I had already prepared. Those were the grand days when the plant hadn’t yet been commissioned, the men were working a general shift, and came home every day for an hour’s lunch break. Once production started, we had to get used to the regime of morning, afternoon, and night shifts, all rather unkind to one’s body clock. On one side I made a syrup of two cups of sugar and three cups of water, into which I crushed a few of the precious cardamom pods my mother had given me, and on the other side I fried the gulab jamun on a slow fire.

I was humming to myself as I laid the table. Each batch was fried and immersed in the syrup. The men came home and we ate our lunch. Then, all eager and excited, I served my precious dessert. But…

Their spoons didn’t seem to be cutting the sweet. Both men smiled politely, and said, very nice, very nice, and managed to eat one gulab jamun each. I served myself, now full of trepidation. It was as hard as a rock. Oh no. What had I done wrong? I rushed to my next door neighbor, and told her exactly what I had done. To my chagrin, I learned that I had forgotten about the critical two tablespoons of ghee that the dough required.

I didn’t let that defeat me. I ground up the cannon balls in the blender, dry roasted some atta, and made some really delicious gulab jamun barfi.

The Family Jewels

--500 words
-- Tell a tale fictional or otherwise in the voice of a "sutradhar", not so much in the manner of a puppeteer as a not completely dispassionate, but a slightly detached yet empathetic observer and know-er of the mechanics of this tale
-

The Family Jewels
Bahurani is crying her heart out, it seems. My son has been working in his study: these lockdown days means he can happily work from home. No tiffin–shiffin lafda. No outside food. Better for his system. Not so good for his maharani. Three hot meals every day, without fail, and no maid to help. I do chop vegetables and clean the rice and dals, but the flat is big, hard to keep clean. Poor Prem has just finished for the day, but instead of having a tray of tea ready for him in the drawing room, Bahurani is busy with rona–dhona. Let me go and make the tea, then maybe I will get to know what has upset her so much.
I told you not to send her to the hostel, Prem. I knew it wouldn’t be good for her.
Rama, what on earth is the matter? Reena’s fine, isn’t she? She’s also staying in her room, I hope, not stepping out? Covid 19 is so unpredictable and scary. Woh thheek toh hai na?
She has gone and got the craziest idea, Prem.
She’s okay, na?
Haan, but I think she’s gone crazy.
She hasn’t eloped with anyone, has she?
No. Maybe this is worse.
Arrey Rama, just tell me what the matter is.
Poor Prem. Having to deal with so much suspense. I put the tray on the coffee table and move towards the door, but Rama stops me with a gesture:

Mummyji, you should also hear what your precious darling wants me to do.

Bahu, she’s a sensible girl. She’s twenty six. She’s a PhD scholar. She won’t do anything stupid.
I sit on my easy chair with the extra high cushion.

Reena wants us to sell all the jewellery we had got made for her wedding and donate the proceeds for feeding the homeless migrant workers.

What is there to cry about, Rama? It’s a noble thought.

Noble thought my foot. Has she forgotten how we struggled and scrimped and saved to buy those sets? How we’ve dreamed of seeing our only daughter adorned as a bride? She even says (huge sob) that she doesn’t plan to marry, anyway.

Rama, she has never asked us for anything. She’s been a scholarship holder throughout her college years. She obviously can’t give anything much from her stipend. How much does she actually want to donate?

And she said to keep Nani’s and Dadi’s jewellery for Nannu’s wife, the ancestral stuff, for whenever he gets married.

Chalo, good she didn’t ask you to dispose of those heirlooms.

Mummyji, what should we do?

Listen to your daughter, what else? What else can you do, anyway? Do what makes her happy. Who knows what will happen tomorrow, especially these days. If you bought it for her, it is hers, wedding or no wedding.

I smile to myself. At eighty-seven, I am my granddaughter’s confidante. She has told me that she is in love with her roomie, Priya.

Old photographs

Tuesday, 28th April 2020


-- 500 words
-- Divide your age by half.
-- Rummage old computers or cupboards or annals of memory and find a photograph more than (insert number = half your age) years old that does not have you in it -- can be public memory from internet photograph also
-- Tell us a tale about said photograph
-- Post scan of photograph with your piece

Ancient person that I am, halving my present age takes me to the late nineteen eighties, a time when the spouse and I had three school going children,(the fourth arrived in early 1990), a second–hand Ambassador, and very little money. As soon as I read the prompt, I knew what I wanted to write about today. I also had a memory of photographs of that day, that place. The problem was trying to locate them. Ours is an old household. We have thousands and thousands of photographs of various vintages, kept in various levels of order and disorder. Albums have been raided by marauding daughters, others have been inherited. (Today I discover myriad college time photographs belonging to the older son). The lockdown and current maidlessness and spousefulness of my life leaves me with less time than ever, so Marie Kondo-ing the house remains a distant dream. I had actually, after more than an hour of fruitless searching, given up, and had decided to use pictures from the Internet. I was desultorily flipping through the last bundle of photographs when I struck gold.

Our eleven years in Lucknow had a charm of their own. Although we lived across the Gomti, in a much newer part of the city, Lucknow had more than enough history and historical buildings to remain eternally fascinating. (My grandfather used to work in the Allahabad Bank Chowk Branch once upon a time. On one memorable visit, my father tried climbing up the stairs to the flat above the bank in which they used to live until he was summarily stopped by an irate bank employee).

 One fine Sunday, perhaps in 1987 or ’88, we pack selves, camera, picnic, and assorted kids into the trusty Ambassador. I see my neighbour’s younger son in one photograph. Did our older daughter bunk? Or did she take the photographs? (She has always been a keen photographer). Was this our second trip to the Residency? In family lore, it has become a space of spousely strife. Apparently we fought whenever we visited it. The Residency in Lucknow is one of the saddest places I have ever seen. The Residency consists of a group of buildings, now mostly in ruins, that were occupied by the British Resident at the court of the Nawab of Lucknow. The gardens are beautiful, but the tales of violence it holds are most distressing. Whether you call it the Indian Mutiny or the First War of Independence, the Residency was under siege for months and witnessed a great deal of bloodshed. Scarred walls, bullet holes, walls shattered by cannon balls. It was fascinating, no doubt, but somehow the very walls seemed to hold the cries of the dead, including women and children. It was a terrible, violent lockdown for those families. Our children were happily exploring the ruins, clambering over the huge cannon, now a plaything, once a source of violent death. These photographs hold memories of joy and of profound sorrow, of many lives lost…

Another day in paradise

-- 500 words
-- Write a fictional/non-fictional piece about/ around/ a dinner party
-- Tone of a gossip column (Think Stardust and "Nita's natter" or Mayank Austen Soofi's Delhi-walla blog and "The Netherfield Ball")

Paradise Times, April 27^th, 2150

Grand Hall, Paradise

By our Special Correspondent

It’s not just another day in paradise, folks. We are having a special evening hosted by The Delhiwallah, in which some of his favourite literary figures are special guests. If you have read his writing you will know that he has been enchanted by the writings of Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson. Since he lived in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and the ladies belonged to earlier, different periods, across centuries, Paradise seems like a great place for these kindred souls to finally meet. Yes, dear readers, in paradise it has to be a meeting of souls. Who else can live here?

Just so that they can be recognized easily, all our souls appear clad in simulacrum of the garments they wore during their life time. Jane Austen appears in a high-waisted, Empire style gown, and The Delhiwallah bows deeply to her.

My dear Miss Austen, I have been so enchanted by your writing that I have taken your surname as my middle name, he says.

Jane Austen simpers. My dear young man, if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

Emily Dickinson floats in, and nods curtly at Jane Austen. Did you know, dear Jane, that he has read all my poems several times over, and carried them with him all the time?

My dear Miss Dickinson, your poems are now part of my very soul:  Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.

Miss Austen glares at Miss Dickinson, and picks up a glass of ambrosia, from a tray proffered by a  hovering cherub. The Delhiwallah tries to soothe ruffled feathers.

A grand feast is laid out in the annexe of the Grand Hall.

Many of The Delhiwallah’s contemporaries are in attendance too. The writer Arundhati Roy has just come in. He has, in his earthly life, taken some wonderful photographs of her and for her. Their matching grey curls gave them a twin-like vibe when they inhabited the earth. She is draped in a glorious handloom saree. Delhi denizens, Sadia Dehlvi, in a gorgeous gharara,and Nini K.D. Singh,in a quiet salwar kameez float in, followed closely by Rakhshanda Jalil and William Dalrymple. Laila Tyabji, and Ellen Tomaseo wonder about the dinner menu.                                                           I hope there’s a good biriyani, says Ellen.

The Delhi souls form a little clique, looking restlessly at their host trying to pay equal attention to both the senior guests.

He should have called just one today, mutters Sadia.

How could he have chosen only one? He worships both of them, says Nini.

That’s true, says Mayank Austen Soofi,The Delhiwallah, as he simultaneously manages to hug all his old friends. Let me introduce you all to the ladies, and then we will see what heavenly delights await us in the dining room.

He smiles happily: Now this is truly Heaven.

Stuck in Traffic

Sneha’s prompt:
-- 500 words
-- "Stuck in traffic" - Interpret as you will

In what feels like several lifetimes ago, the eternally broke spouse and I splurged on tickets to a concert by Lobo. Yes, the same person who gave us Me and You and a Dog Named Boo, and Baby, I’d Love you to Want me, A Simple Man, and so many more. We were fans. We lived in a small industrial township near Ang Thong, about an hour and a half away from Bangkok, where the concert was being held. This was back in late 1979 or the early nineteen eighties. I do not remember what he sang, and whether or not I was pregnant at the time, and if not, what had I done with the infant son for that evening. What I do distinctly remember is his crack about the infamous Bangkok traffic: it was supposed to be the only thing that could prevent the Vietcong army from invading Thailand. (The war was over by then, incidentally).
And then, when I watch movies like the fabulous original Golmaal, the absolutely crazy car chase towards the end, and I wonder at there being such a time, when cars ran freely on the road, unfettered by others of their ilk.
There was this unforgettable cartoon of a road full of cars, unmoving, with space for one single car. A helicopter is about to drop a car into that space. The End.
I do not drive. (Not any longer, barring a very brief period in my life when I did.) City distances are measured by time taken. You have a general idea of how long a particular journey will take at a particular time of day. Getting to the airport, a moderate distance of thirty-odd kilometers, can take anything from forty minutes to an hour and forty minutes. You keep that in mind while planning your journey. If you are like me, you drink a quarter of a cup of tea to wake up with, and a tiny sip of water with your post-breakfast medication, just so that you do not die of loo desperation before you reach your destination. Have you been in the awkward position of charging straight to your host’s facilities even before you can say a proper hello? I often have. My only comfort is that most other women feel my pain. Especially when you live in the National Capital Region, and often drive in three states to reach your destination.
Before smart phones became ubiquitous, I would read books at traffic lights and traffic jams. I managed to read a lot.
Before Covid and lockdowns came and put an end to traffic, traffic had, in Delhi, become a deeply political issue. The anti-CAB protests at Shaheen Bagh involved the closure of one of the major roads between Delhi and Noida. Whatever we felt about the protests, and given that the NCR had horrendous traffic at the best of times, it often felt simpler to just stay home.
Stay home, stay safe, and beat the traffic as well.

P.S. : The spouse clarifies, the baby attended the concert with us.