The first rain on your final resting place falls gently in the early hours Not a pounding downpour but soft and light as if conscious of your fragility.
Calliopia's Canticles
My Write of Way
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
For my aunt
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Comin' on Christmas
I miss all that now.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
October
And suddenly it's October again.
The
dank dark damp will soon be gone
with
the slush and wet. Shadows
will
lengthen in the angled sunlight
we
shall warm our backs to
on
chilly mornings when winter sets in.
Morning
pools of cotton wool
white-wreathed
across valleys and mountains,
blue
skies piled with immense white clouds,
evenings
that explode with colour,
brown
confetti from the gulmohar tree
long
past its May days of glory.
The
dry and dust bring back childhood memories,
riding
homeward from sun baked plains
up
cool, winding highland roads
the
nuns at boarding school left far behind,
Father
wrapping a warm arm around one of us,
home
to Mother and the dear little house
at
the top of the dusty hill.
Season
changes worm out memories
buried
in time. And the more things change,
the
more things remain the same.
Lockdown Covid 2.0
I
am slowly beginning to forget the pleasure
of
waking up in the morning,
anticipating
what the day might bring.
One
locked-in day after the other,
pacing
within these four walls,
classes
over zoom, attempting to reach
confused
students behind computer screens.
In
these hills too, the second wave is harsher,
statistics
surge every day, nudging at five figures,
ambulances
scream under cover of the night
ferrying the infected to safe places,
and
patients wheeled into the ICU
do not all leave upright anymore.
But
life here is kinder than in the plains,
there
it’s a nightmare come alive,
swollen
bodies floating in rivers
washed
up on embankments
for
stray dogs to feed on,
a
desperate sister’s calls
of
Balaji, wake up, Balaji echo in the ear,
as
the summer sun mingles
with
smoke and fire from funeral pyres,
people
gasping for breath and finding
no
hospital beds, dying on roadsides.
I
feel a sense of survivor’s guilt
but
these lockdown mornings are so unendingly empty.
(May 12, 2021)
Sunday, December 27, 2020
The Silence of Sundays
One day, some day,
when the pandemic is over
and the world is back to normal
I will look back and miss
the quiet of Sundays:
the stillness, the peace,
the leisurely calm,
the silent streets emptied
of traffic and pedestrians
but for the odd two-wheeler or two
running an emergency.
The Sundays that kept us at home
from church, our social meetings,
the bells clanging at 10
in reminder of busier times.
For now, I will bask
in the soothing winter sunshine
and soak in this quietude.
Tuesday, January 08, 2019
Koorie
Friday, April 14, 2017
Long Weekend Musings
It's been another brutal week at work. Last week was the same. Being HOD may sound like a grand designation to throw around but in reality it's nothing more than being glorified clerks. The amount of clerical work we do is staggering. Mounds and mounds of paperwork. And crunching numbers. There's still some of it waiting on my table right now. I have to have it all ready on Monday but it's a long weekend ahead so I'm treating myself to putting it on hold tonight.
Good Friday and Easter week. Over the last three/four days or so, I've been hearing people continuously read Biblical passages over a PA system somewhere down the valley below. Young voices so probably a KTP project. I've been engrossed in my work (yes, been bringing it home, as well as slogging over it at work by day) so I haven't really been listening with any real attention. But it did pass through my mind how reading out loud can be both so banal and a treat. Most of us tend to just go through the words in a flat monotone. A to B to C. Boring, b-o-r-i-n-g. It sounds so much better when someone puts a little effort into it. Variations in speed, pitch and volume. A little drama, a little theatrics, and the page comes to life.
Excusa moi, I think I'll go practise a bit. Nothing like practising what you preach immediately.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
We Are Nostalgia
a motley bunch
and bouts of homesickness,
into the bushes (for Dutch courage)
but declare it time to get back to the hostel!
early morning risings to catch the hired bus,
long hours on winding mountain roads,
stopping for meals at little shacks,
rewinding cassette reels with a ball pen,
So much history forged together,