Do not hold on to me

    

In the reflections on Lent and the days that follow Easter, one of the central truths of life – or death – emerges. This truth is that we cannot hold on to those whom we love.

We are shocked when we see young lives in Goa mowed down by the scythe of Death, either through ‘self-accidents’ on the road, through another’s carelessness, or in the call of duty. This was not meant to be, we say as we join the state in collective mourning – that ritual we are so fastidious in observing.  

But the message of Easter is that death is the door to a different kind of life beyond death. And for that one needs always to be prepared.

One of the most telling scenes in post-Easter readings is the one where Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb to find Jesus. She does not find his body. She finds Jesus Himself who says ‘Do not hold on to me’ (Jn. 20:17). Jesus had saved Mary Magdalene earlier from being stoned because of her ways. Here she is racked with grief to see Jesus’ suffering. Mary, shunned by society, remembers to be grateful.

But Jesus points her to a life Eternal, now that He is no longer human any more. Mary seems attached to the dead body of Jesus, that earthly reality, that ‘frail bark’(Shelley) which has fulfilled its role. How many cling to the dead body of a loved one at funerals? When my mother passed on, I shrank from the cold entity that lay before me, the skin waning to a paler hue. This was not her who had loved me and whom I had loved. I preferred to remember the gift of her life to us -- full of laughter, spreading joy. The funeral was a ritual.

‘Until Sunday Teodisia was with us,’ the priest was telling us in Konkani, in his sermon for a funeral Mass. ‘Today her life has gone. Where has it gone? Only the corpse remains. ’ This moment seems irrevocable. But it is easier to cope with if we have cared for the person when s/he was alive. Copious tears to publicize grief are suspect.

Those whom we love never leave us. In fact when their earthly life is over, they inhabit a spiritual realm and intercede for us to make possible things they could not bring about in their earthly life. Blessings follow, and life becomes more meaningful through absence.

The relationship does not break. They have been returned to the Lord and we must relate to them now on a different plane, at a deeper level. Jesus tells Mary not to hold on to Him because He knows He is going back to His Father. And Mary instinctively acknowledges this lesson by calling him ‘Rabboni’ in Hebrew– which means ‘teacher.’ We too have to go. And we have to learn to let go. The ache will subside in faith. 

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Pix courtesy Greg Olsen. Published in Gomantak Times, Weekender, St. Inez, Goa, 14 April 2013 

Casa de Noventa

In Portuguese, when a person celebrates a birthday the person enters the house of the following year. If a person has completed an 89^th birthday the person enters ‘the house of ninety’ or ‘a casa de noventa.’ I always found it a unique way of expressing the experience of ageing. Each day of the year is like a brick which makes up the ‘house’ of that year.

A few days back we entered the casa de noventa. Sr. Michael was celebrating her 89^th.  I knew Sr. Michael since I was a child in school. Her booming voice was the same, the twinkling eyes, but most of all her laughter and her sense of humour. It just grew on you.

She recalled things I said when I was little – things even I could not remember. She spoke of mum and how she was a wonderful person.  She spoke of the towns we had stayed in, in the past, and common acquaintances.  Somehow she seemed to sum up life and all there is to it, i.e. that life is finite and we must try to be happy without hurting others.

When we ask her to come home for a meal she usually declines, preferring the solitude and prayer of her room. Unafraid of death – ‘the necessary end’ – she composes herself and prepares for it.  She told us she gets up at 4.30 a.m. to pray. Basking in the silence before dawn she reaffirms her surrender to Him.

There is a certain joy in being near the old. The life they have seen, one still has to see. There are many ‘houses’ one has to live in before one inhabits the ‘casa de noventa’ – if at all. 

The joie d’vivre  Sr. Michael finds in every day in an inspiration to all. She is not, like so many old people, ‘grimed by sorrow’ as Tanya Mendonsa puts it, in her poem ‘Spending Time with Old People.’  In the community of her own, she was cared for and at peace with life. Her inner strength propelled you to examine your own life, your values.

Firmly ensconced in her ‘casa de noventa’ Sr. Michael is the very embodiment of the past, the present, and the awareness of the future. Happy for the exercise, climbing the stairs gives her, she lives her routine  with grace-filled joy.  A keen reader and writer, she keeps the mind alive and is up-to-date on the latest world events.

When we left she wished each one of us, told us to love each other. I raised baba up so she could bless him. She did so, kissing him tenderly. ‘Come again’ she said cheerily. The birthday cake and snacks we had brought were dismissed and consigned to the refectory. She did not even glance at the chocolate cake – her favourite -- and the lettering ‘Happy Birthday Sr. Michael’ with a bed of flowers, done in icing beside it.  Her detachment was so eloquent. A life being well-lived!

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This article was published in the Gomantak Times, Weekender, Panjim, Goa on Sunday 24 March 2013. I handed it to Sr.  Michael the next day. Pix source: dpc.org.au

World Poetry Day - March 21

March 21, 2013 was a very special day for us in college. Determined to celebrate World Poetry Day I set off to college in my new white cotton shirt I had picked up from Chennai airport earlier this week. I was returning from a national seminar on Indian women poets writing in English at Central University of Tamil Nadu, Thiruvarur, March 14-15.

Naturally I breathed poetry from every pore, and now here was the opportunity to read immortal  lines once again among students, staff and friends. I bounced the idea only a day before and after some wry smiles got a go ahead. 'Come with a Poem' offered one of my colleagues for the notice on the staff notice board, getting into the act.

Brimming with confidence I selected 21 books of verse from my personal collection, and 21 from the library. I set these down on the dusty table in the lecture hall designated for the event. I wished I had brought a duster, but never mind, the show must go on!

A valuable suggestion given by one of my colleagues was to arrange a cordless mike which the sound guys willingly provided. IT support set up the LCD. In my earlier calling I was always reading about 'white boarding' classrooms -   now I was actually doing it. In the precious minutes I got from 9.45 a.m. to 10 a.m. I prepared - or rather transcribed - some matter on 'World Poetry Day' I had gleaned from a useful site called timeanddate.com the previous night, onto  power point slides.

Come 1015, the scheduled time for take-off, there was 1 student and two professors before me. Undeterred   I took a book of Hardy's verse - 'Village Poem' - and began reading after a brief introduction. The audience trickled in, some curious,  some committed.

What followed was a 2-hour non-stop session of some of the most vibrant poetry ever written. A multi-lingual effort readings ranged from Tamil, Tulu, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, and Gujarati to English, French and Portuguese. Each reading held the audience spellbound in the clasp of poetry. Many scoured the net to bring fresh printouts of the poems they loved, to the hall. Others frenetically called up friends for translations of verses. I read 'The Homeless Can Sleep Anywhere' from my forthcoming collection of Delhi poems. One actually sang two poems in Malayalam and backed it up with a power point presentation.

Staff who attended in large numbers confided that the last time they read a poem was in school. Another fished out a poem he wrote in Konkani in the 10th standard. Students came milling round me imploring to be informed about the event next year. My simple answer was, 'If I am here, it will be on.'

I am seriously thinking of compiling these poems into a monograph. Ample photos were taken by me on my Canon camera. A photo to each of those who read a poem. Until next year.
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All pix by me. The first one of me reading from Habba Khatoon; the bottom one of a student reading a poem   from Edgar Allan Poe

Ishaan

One meaning of the word ‘Ishaan’ is the ‘bestower of riches.’  Ishaan was a dreamer – or so some have named him.  Along with his two friends he grew up in a small town in India, living each day with zest.

When others were working hard, Ishaan would be dreaming. About cricket. About inswingers and outswingers, about mid-on and mid-off. The whole cricket field was his playground. So he persuaded his two friends to begin a cricket academy for the boys in the area.

Ali, the young lad from the basti nearby hooked him for a six for each of his deliveries in an over. Ishaan decided to train him to play for the Ranji and then for India. This was his dream.

It was difficult. But Ishaan was a dreamer. So while one of his friends slogged away at being a Maths teacher (with a perpetual frown on his face) and the other’s jaw drooped even lower the more he involved himself in politics, Ishaan, like an idiot, was on the grounds training Ali. Once he even barged into Math professor’s class (because Ali was in it), rubbed the board of those dreary Maths equations, and drew the field –on and off – to explain to Ali the chinks in his armour and how to develop his game.

And then there was trouble in the city. One community was at the throats of the other. Leaders were inciting the sheep to spill blood. Ishaan and Ali were from different communities.

With the mob at the door at night, Ishaan spirits away Ali and his father to the terrace. One of the mob – his friend, now a politician – surges through and chases Ali. But young Ali is Ishaan’s dream. So he shields him with his body, protects him from the bullet which his friend fires at them. Bang. Ishaan is history. It’s okay. He was a dreamer.

Years later, Ali plays for India. Every stroke, every defensive move, is textbook Ishaan. Ali remembers. The nation forgets.

How did a dreamer produce such results? Why was he stupid enough to be so bold? Did he not know of another dreamer who had a similar name as his who met the same fate?

Ehsan Jafri, also helped people and had to pay for it with his life. He was burnt alive in his own home with his family watching.  He was 73.

Ehsan was an Urdu poet, Ishaan Bhatt was a top class cricketer. They dared to be human beings. All they did was to help someone in distress. Kai Po Che was released at the same time of the year the riots happened. Ehsan left us on 28 February 2002.  Here is his daughter’s favourite couplet by him:

Kaam mushkil se hi aasaan banaana hoga

Husn-o-tadbeer se imkaan banaana hoga

Yun to bhagwaan bana daale hazaaron ham ne

Ab har ek shakhs ko insaan banaana hoga.

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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on 17 March 2013

Pix source: milligazette.com 

Men-talities

Despite the market's attempt to cocoon souls in their self-enclosed mesh, men and women are actually meant to love, not hate each other. They need each other to foster nurturing relationships  

Brian Mendonca

RELATIONS between men and women, if tenuous before, are even more fragile today. With the hype on individuality and the consumerist boom promoting a panacea of possessions, more men and women have been seduced by the spiel to end up single, unhappy and lonely. Rather than realising that men and women need each other to foster supportive, nurturing relationships, the sexes have widened the abyss between them in the 21st century. Marriages are floundering due to lack of adjustment. Many who are not married as yet don't want to get into it. Ostrich-like they bury themselves further in their work.

There have been protests demanding justice for women. Many men hitting middle age will avidly discuss incidents — almost vicariously — but balk at joining in a silent march for women's rights. "It’s a women's issue," some men feel — the same men who are conspicuously absent in rallies for gender equality.

On Valentine's Day, students in a women's college in Goa danced for the online movement "1 billion rising." Earlier on a rally was taken out to protest the Delhi rape. In both cases the activity was sans men. One gent actually ran out of the room during V- Day protesting that the music on the intercom was too loud! Is this apathy endemic? The irony is that participation by men at women’s rallies may itself be seen as suspect. So what are males to do? How to bridge this trust deficit? How to overcome the unwarranted generalisation, though seductive, that all men are predators?

The skirt walk in Bangalore, promoted on Facebook, raised awareness to contest the view that women invite violence for what they wear. The 25 men who donned skirts were all young professionals who cared a damn for what people thought. What they wanted was change and believed they were agents to bring this about. Social networking platforms were the new mantra. Can this new brigade turn the tide for India? For today’s youth, it would seem sexuality is out there in the open. The brazen display of the illicit on a ramp walk, gives men, and women, confused notions of what it means to be "with it" or left behind. Do women want intimacy, or sex, or both?

What is most important is appreciation for each other. We were in a tizzy to catch a sitar recital of Ustad Chhote Rahimat Khan at Carpe Diem Art and Learning centre, Majorda, Goa. I disappeared for a bath. When I had finished Queenie was still combing her hair! "Oh, come on, ma," I said, but meant "Is that all you were doing all this time?!’ A pause followed. Then Queenie said something like, "I kept the food out for dad; changed baba's clothes; packed his baby bag, prepared his meal and hunted for his sipper."' After doing all these things she had resumed combing her hair. As I gratefully scooped our two-year old tot in my arms, I felt infinitely blessed for the gift of Queenie in my life.

"How to date a 19-year-old, insatiable, up-all-night bombshell, by a 47-year-old, separated father of two" screams the title of an article (with sultry pix) in a recent GQ. Let's get real. Even if "House of Harlot" is an uber- cool brand name in Vogue. Life is not a fantasy. At social functions all the songs the young are dancing to valorize sex. "Sexy laidaaay" goes the South (?) Korean super-hit thumping away. Romance is passe.' Vacant tables for two yawned at us when we went for the Valentine's Day special hosted by a beach resort on a candle-lit dusk. The music was good, and the food passable and one could hold hands. Despite the market's attempt to cocoon souls in their mesh, men and women are actually meant to love not hate each other — or ignore each other for that matter.

— The writer is a Goa-based poet and writer

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Published in Spectrum on Sunday, Tribune, Chandigarh, India on  3 March, 2013. www.tribuneindia.com
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130303/spectrum/main2.htm

Dravida, Utkala, Banga

This 26^th I decided to avoid clichés. I got up to patriotic music wafting through the windows of my aunt’s flat in Marol, Mumbai. Uncle declared he was going down to the park in the locality for the flag hoisting at 1030 hrs.    

When R-Day or I-Day come around I think of A Peace of India: Poems in Transit – my second book of poems. Writing those poems in situ at all those places in India took time, money and energy -- but most of all, passion. Peace of India is my tribute to India – like Last Bus to Vasco is my tribute to Goa.

Buoyed by the idea, I put 10 copies of my book in my GALF bag and took the lift from the 4^th floor down.  Puddles of people greeted me on the lawn wet with yesterday’s dew.  I distributed my books for people to leaf through. Surely today some would buy a copy? But before the flag could be hoisted, one of the organizers, sensing disorder in the ranks, commanded brusquely, ‘Give the books back to him’-- and they meekly did. I stood alone in the gathering singing the national anthem.  Children performed ‘Hum Honge Kamyaab,’ and ‘Saare Jahan se Achha.’ Only one person agreed to buy a copy of my poems.

Yes I had visited most of those places they were singing about –Dravida, Utkala, Banga – and had written about them. So shouldn’t the patriotic fervor be translated into supporting a wandering minstrel of India? Perhaps, the response was confused because it was not a cliché. You don’t expect to go for a flag-hoisting and have a book thrown at you.

The next day, Sunday for a get-together, an elderly couple were in raptures about my mention of unniyappam and how my poem ‘Chingam I’ described Kerala so aptly. Another lady recalled ‘An Evening in Paris’ written at Worli seaface and said the words were ‘very nice.’  A week earlier in Kolhapur I had read ‘Avantika,’ my poem on Ujjain, for a girl accompanied by her father. They had come in from Bhopal.  The images of the place moved them. None of this praise translated into a sale. I should have asked them directly, I was thinking wistfully later. But I did not feel like peddling my poems.

Is the printed word so cheap? Does not poetry have a place in society? Worse still, people leaf through the poems, read a few ---enjoy the poems, and return the book! Where will self-published poets go? Sometimes I wonder what unites India.  How will the Samuels, the Chettiars, the Koitas and the Khans -- who live in the building -- speak about or articulate India apart from their respective ghettoes?  I have seen the fire of poetry igniting people. At my numerous poetry readings across India I have seen my poetry singe people as my poem ‘Praxis’ did recently. I only wish some of them would pay for it.

The author is a chronicler of our times.

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Published in Gomantak Times Weekender (Panjm, Goa) on Sunday, February 2, 2013.  Pix source: Electricity India

India

India is a land of diverse cultures and scenic beauty.  It also has flora and fauna.

India is my birthplace -- the place I call my home.

The decimal system originated here.

It's a nation that gives one a view of the entire world.

It has the finest historical monuments, and one of the wonders of the world -- the Taj Mahal.

But it pains me to see that our country is usually highlighted for all the wrong reasons. Poverty, discrimination, dirt, casteism, crimes against women, corruption -- the list goes on.

This is not to say that these evils don't exist.

What is your thought on this?

How can we change this perception?

The future of India depends on your answer!

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N.B. This blog was composed by the students of Carmel college Nuvem, Goa during an online demo on blogging for the English Compulsory class, Semester II (Written English). Pix source: google images