Short leave

I’m sure you’ve noticed the lack of activity in these parts over the last couple of weeks. Work, a bad back and local travel are to entirely blame. And over the next couple of weeks, more work and long-distance travel will take over as the culprits. Will come back and make up for it with lots of pictures.

Puttandu vazhutukkal, Vishu Ashamsagal, Shubho Nabobarsha!

Sheep Art!

Quite amazing! And funny.

cheat

a second skin, strange
hairs. lighter than those
on you.

a different breath – softer,
longer. a dry, empty
mouth. straight

eyelashes, curved
clean brows,
a wide, flat hairline.

new rhythms, a few
surprises. quicker
smiles.

afterwards, a long
lie.

this is how i cheat
you.
making quiet love

to myself.

About a tree, actually two

I have mentioned the mango tree behind our apartment in an earlier post. In reality, there are two of them, growing next to each other in the same compound. They belong to an elderly lady, of remarkable spirit and physical will, who lives alone in the old house within the compound.

Neighbouring her plot is a house which has been extended several times and is occupied by several families. Among the many people in this strange house is a woman, K, who objects to the trees. She claims the leaves that the tree sheds ‘dirty’ her compound and cause her no end of trouble.

Three days ago, she called the city municipal office and complained about the trees. They promptly sent a few men over to cut them down.

Veena, a friend and neighbour, heard and saw branches falling and rushed out to talk sense into the municipal people and K. She begged and pleaded and even shed a few tears. The result was that the trees were spared, but all the branches extending over the compound were lopped off.

The trees are now precariously balanced, with most of their weight on one side. When the rains come, I won’t be surprised if they just keel over and crash.

The lady whose trees these are shut herself inside the house and refused to come out during the whole chopping up exercise. These are trees she has probably lived with all her life; they probably know each other as old friends do.

She’s well over 60, perhaps close to 70 even, and each week, she diligently sweeps up the leaves from the trees and either buries them (during the rains, for compost) or burns them (during the dry season to heat water).

Not all of us have the time and energy to maintain a garden, but I do wonder – to think of fallen leaves from a magnificent tree as garbage that ‘dirties’ one’s home, while being perfectly tolerant of the tons of un-reusable, un-recyclable plastic that we ourselves bring in daily, seems sadly warped, doesn’t it?

This is a picture of the old house and the trees around it from last year’s monsoon. The lopped tree doesn’t look too bad from my balcony, as the cutting was mostly on the other side, but still I can’t bring myself to take a picture of it now.

Crops and robbers

You are Mallesha.

A fifty-six year old farmer. You live in Maguvinahalli, a village on the northern boundary of the famous Bandipur National Park.

Every year, at the end of summer, you till your meagre 4 acres, sow some jowar and some sunflowers. For weeks you work in the baking heat. Once the monsoons arrive, you continue working, in the pouring rains.

Once the seeds have sprouted and you have a crop, you don’t relax, no sir, you don’t. You build a thorn fence around the field. And a machan (platform) on the peepal tree in your field for you to sit up on, all night. Waiting and watching for the elephants.

Yes, the elephants. They come from the forest, to feast on your precious crop.

Last year, your brother Murthy lost everything in a single night to a herd of 9 elephants. It happened at the very end of the season, a few days before the harvest. He still owes the moneylender 14,000 rupees.

So for several weeks you get no rest at all. Night after dark night you sit up on the machan, shaking your head and muttering to yourself to keep sleep away. They are eerily silent, these elephants. You have to be alert all the time.

You look out of the machan, moonlight outlines the distant hills. The silence is broken by the roar of a speeding vehicle on the highway. It used to be a small dusty strip when you were a boy. Now it is dangerous to cross with all the tourist traffic.

You have heard the tourists pay 3000 rupees for a day at the hotel at the edge of your village. You could buy seeds for a whole season with that! Why would they spend so much just to see some elephants? They could instead sit up in your machan, for free.

The gentle breeze lulls you into a dangerous calm. Your head tilts. You sleep.

Kttrrrrck! You are suddenly wide-awake, but it is too late. You fumble for the match and light a firecracker. The wick forms an arc of light, then bursts. Your hand is shaking as you throw another. It is louder than the last. One of the elephants lets out a cry. You can feel the earth shake under you.

As quickly as they came, they are gone. But the silence is not comforting. You sit numbly, not wanting to move.

Dawn arrives and reveals the damage. In the ten minutes they spent in your field, the elephants have taken half your crop.

Lead settles in your stomach, you can’t even feel anger. Slowly, you tuck the matchbox and firecrackers into the folds of your dhoti. And walk home.

Overhead fly an early flock of parakeets.

Costumes

Sometimes you have to buy
purple curtains
to see how the rug matches
your daughter’s too-short skirt,
making them kin.

A stately, petticoated aunt
for the clothes of your house
to gather around and gossip -
whose sweat is on your silk,
where your trousers really went.

Counter wipes may bond with underwear
(never mind the hygiene),
quiet jackets could embrace leggings,
damp towels might write
love notes to halters.

But the purple curtain, only she
knows of a too-short skirt
kissing
an unknown green turtleneck.

On bees dying

Yesterday, our neighbours smoked out a bee hive that had come up on one of their window shades. They had some pest control people hired for the purpose. Kerosene was sprayed on the bees and then smoke of some sort used to drive the more persistent insects from the hive.

Within a few seconds of the operation, our balcony, which is located right below the hive, was covered with writhing bees. When they die, bees do a strange thing – they spit out honey. While thrashing about, they also manage to get stuck in their own sticky spit. Watching them do this fills me with a sort of horrified fascination – purging honey in their dying moments seems like a final renunciation of everything they have lived for. Almost as if they were saying: this honey is what defined me all this while. But I don’t need it where I am going.

Stranger still was what I found this morning. Bees that had managed to escape the kerosene were hovering around, flying from dead bee to dead bee. I wondered if this was an apian homage of some sort, but suddenly I saw what they were doing. They were collecting honey. Did this qualify as stealing from the departed? I think not – bees are unlikely to be weighed down by the same false morals we burden ourselves with. They were probably making the best of a bad thing. No more.

Here are some pictures.

Hundreds of dead bees on my balcony

Drops of honey between them

Bee flying towards a dead cousin

Sipping honey

Dead bee stuck in its own honey

Sita sings the blues

Is a brilliant feature-length animated movie by Nina Paley who ties her own experiences in marriage with the story of Sita.

Watch it here.

Ahem

When I lie
to you, you cough

Not a hacking,
accusing bark
outraged at the
untruth
but a gentle,
gentlemanly ahem,
properly done
into a clean
handkerchief.

As if to say-
Excuse me,
I didn’t quite hear
that.

~

related.

Second home

Varali now has another blog. Named for one of her favourite trees. Into which she’ll throw some poems and perhaps prose she doesn’t want to post here, for complex reasons.

But this new blog she wants to keep private. WordPress is a delight in many ways but doesn’t allow passworded blogs. So she won’t link to it here. But if you ask nicely (on email), she’ll give you the link. And hope you won’t share it.

Conversion

L, the lady who comes to help my mother with chores around the house was crying today. I asked her why and she said her daughter had converted to another religion. Her daughter works at a small scale factory, making some plastic ware. She discovered the religious pendant on her daughter’s chain yesterday.

When confronted by the family, her daughter told her that everyone in the factory had been coerced into converting. Refusal meant losing the job. When I suggested she could find work elsewhere, L sobbed louder and said all factories were the same. They all wanted you to convert.

I am not particularly religious, and don’t see the problem if the whole world were to convert overnight to one or another religion. What does bother me is the use of coercion. Forcing anything on anyone, whether a religion or a food habit or a clothing sensibility, gets my hackles all raised and my neck bristling.

I feel helpless for L, because they need the money her daughter brings home desperately. Buying their religious allegiance is blatant exploitation. Being told if you don’t want to convert, you are free to quit the job is clearly giving you a false choice. But I don’t know what options she has, considering her daughter did not even complete class 8. If anyone reading this has something to suggest, I would be happy to hear it.

untitled

All this talk of blood
and bruise, scars
and abuse, blackness
and swollen blues,

Closed rooms, muffled
cries, public lies, disguise,
bound ankles, burnt wrists

Nooses, shorted fuses,
kerosene, gasoline,
hush money, gunny
sacks and broken backs

Is real. And makes
for something worse
than bad poetry.

Birds from my balcony

Come winter, the mango-tree in the old, crumbling house behind our apartment building becomes a very interesting place. White-browed Fantails, Brown Flycatchers, Orioles and on one occasion, an Indian Pitta, turn up either for season-long stays or just for one evening.

Other birds regularly seen on the tree include Purple-rumped Sunbirds, Great Tits, Pale-billed Flowerpeckers, Common Tailorbirds, Red-vented Bulbuls, Coppersmith and White-cheeked Barbets, Rose-ringed Parakeets, White-breasted Kingfishers, Brahminy Kites, Black Drongos, Common Koels, Jungle and Common Crows and Common Mynas. There are surely more, but these are the ones I can recall off the top of my head.

I haven’t made more than a couple of very lazy attempts to photograph the birds. But here are two pictures, both taken about two months ago. The yellow one is the Black-naped Oriole and the other is the Brahminy Kite.

Post some Pink Chaddis

The Pink Chaddi Campaign kicked off on 5 February 2009 to oppose the Sri Ram Sena. The campaign is growing exponentially and that is not surprising. Most women in this country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with their bully-boy tactics. Of course, a lot of men have joined the group as well.

The first part of the campaign is to gift Muthalik and his goons with pink underwear on Valentine’s Day. Everyone is invited to mail in their pair of the pinks!

Am sending off a large parcel first thing tomorrow to:

The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road (opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka

Contact persons:
Nithin (9886081269)
Jasmeen (9886840612)
Divya (9845535406)
Nisha ( 09899228060)

A sunset

Divakar is no more.