February blues

Soon February will become another forgotten page in the year's calender. Like the confused, short-lived spring that's happening at the moment. Like the fast-fading flickers of a mellow spring sun that doesn't know whether to shine or sleep. It'll be summer soon and we know how those go when one's living in the tropics. I'll be left with nothing much to share here except sun-dried rants and sultry silences.

In the meanwhile, basking in the spring mellowness, I'm taking a break. Or I was, before my editor hunted me down last evening for some issues that 'needed to be addressed'. A good, long break it was from everything—breathing quiet moments of 'just be', soaking in the quotidian, taking a sip of the everyday beauty which, in moments of worldly preoccupation, we often ignore. For a fortnight, it has been mostly books and tea, and lots of sky-watching—something which I'm very good at, if I may say so myself. It's fascinating, observing the ever-changing canvas of blue everyday, dotted with somersaulting birds and wind-propelled, moody nimbus. And the best part about watching skies is being able to love the blues, for there are these happy kinds too.

It was after a long time that I came across a brilliant read, one that grips you from page one. Having a thing for Irish literature and after many recommendations, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox lived up to every inch of its reputation. Not essentially uplifting like the fluffy, cheerful clouds I stalk, but Maggie O'Farell's claustrophobic Edwardian world and its people will slowly and surely pull at your heartstrings. And Esme will stay with you for a while, long after you're done with the book.

March musings

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image."

~ John Didion

March.
When the other side of the globe looks forward to signs of change, to pearly sprouts of spring hopes, this side has begun anticipating the reign of a brutal sun and the imminent decay of anything and everything. Life and Death, spinning the wheels of the world.

A few days back, an Instagram friend asked me to which place did I belong and if I still lived in the US since my posts are pretty random without any chronological coherence, and the quirky hashtags #upperleftusa and #northwestisbest are used a lot to caption them. My answer was: "I live in Hyderabad now, my second time in the city followed by an earlier four-years' stint as a student though I belong to the coastal state of Odisha... and yes, we were in the States for almost five years". To this the friend replied: "You belong to so many places!", and that got me thinking.
I do after all, don't I? I even belong to places where I have lived only for a week, places that I've just been to as a tourist. Maybe belongingness comes easily to me, it's the uprootedness that I have a problem with. And in the process I have given shape to absent spaces, claimed certain parts and people of those places as mine and in turn, made them a part of my little world. How effortlessly I belong to each one of them, ever so easily like wearing a new skin, partaking in their joys and miseries equally. And therefore, I cannot help but mull over these geographies from time to time, be it the fate of the people or simply the changing seasons.

These days I go back to Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City a lot, a book that I started reading some six months back and have been deliberately procrastinating to reach its end. It's so sensually rich in nostalgia and so brilliant is Pamuk's rendition of his city, that one immediately feels his aching love for the much-fabled streets of Istanbul. An acute sense of loss and melancholy hangs like a light but omnipresent fog throughout the memoir which is beautifully laced with black and white photographs of the city as Pamuk has seen and known it. One sentence that often comes back to me from the book is: "Life can't be all that bad," i'd think from time to time. 'Whatever happens, i can always take a walk along the Bosphorus."

Which is my Bosphorus then? The beach and the mango trees that I call home? Or the view of the misty Cascades that I know as home? Or the disarming smiles of the Himalayan faces amid whom I feel most at home? Or the dusty streets of an old city that I had once proudly boasted of as my second home?

   

Nostalgia

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you."

~ John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

A terrible green. A never-ending, unfurling sea of green. On the wet, mossy branches of dark trees. A dewy carpet of newly sprung grass. As tiny throbs of life waiting to sprout on slippery, naked boughs. I miss that green. That quaking, trembling, ubiquitous green. That terrible, terrible green.

In the pink of spring

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colours, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rilke

There's a dash of pink everywhere, punctuated by spots of yellow and red. The aptly named trumpet flowers announce a very short-lived spring, lining an otherwise lackluster, concrete world with some life and grace. Spring, only a year back and somewhere on the other end of the globe, used to mean something else. The pearly cherry blossoms and the regal tulips will always bloom in some nomadic, alpine corner of my heart. Every spring. Tropics have their own spring too, and so do I. One of pink hopes and green desires.

Tulips

"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."

~ Ansel Adams

When Downton Abbey and The Big Bang Theory weren't diversions enough, to the tulip fields we fled. The annual festival at Tulip Town has always been a much awaited one, where the plump mountain air mingles with the faint, lingering smell of the tulips, a combination potent enough to numb the worldly worries for a while. As we neared the valley, it became cloudy and somewhat unexpectedly cold, but then the fields emerged like the unfurling of a hundred multicoloured flags. Row after row, wave after wave of breathtaking colours - fat yellow, feisty red, shy pink, seducing violet, rusty orange - all ending in a stunning kaleidoscopic blur, inching towards each other in a strange unison, till the eye could not say which is which. 

To tulips then, the invincible, undisputed queen of spring.

Change

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

~ Anatole France

I wish I could frame and structure my emotions better than what the great poet has already said, and how beautifully. Achingly beautiful, actually. How very ironic it all seems - when the whole world around me is undergoing a spring makeover and getting dressed in the splendor of a newly sprouted green, inside, I am groping for ways to embrace this whole other kind of change.

Change, however insignificant or huge, has never been my forte. An annoyingly stubborn creature of habit, I can crack and burst under the slightest of pressures, a trait I have continually loathed. Last week saw the beginning of the much dreaded goodbyes - bittersweet dinners and parting gifts - and as much as I would wish this all away, I know it's out there lurking around the corner.
However this time, I'm still in one piece and that is quite unusually strong for someone like me. The feeling is yet to sink in, although the countdown has certainly begun knocking at the back of my head. I don't know if this is good or bad but trudge on I must, belting my emotions for a proper unleashing, for some day quiet and befitting. Whether this is being brave or just wallowing in denial, let it just be. It's only a handful of days anyway.

The sparrows have come back in flocks and broods. The bird-feeder, never left a moment alone, swings in joy from the dance of their communal meal. Jostling for space while eyeing that next precious morsel, the patio fills in with their noisy chatter. The furry little guy has returned too from his long winter sleep, scurrying up and down the mossy branches, sometimes even hanging upside down in the most precarious of positions. Plump, promising buds on my potted azalea stir to burst open, the full-bodied May bloom of which I won't be here to see. Unfamiliar birds grace the berry tree, just like new future residents will inhabit this apartment. Chocolate-pecan scones, the last of the homemade goodies to come out of my oven here. And thus, the temperamental baker signs off. Of course, for the time being only. 

Cherry blossoms

"What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms."

~ Kobayashi Issa

For the past few days, I have seen them grow and mature from tight pink buds to shy white blossoms. Entangled in the mossy labyrinth of twigs and boughs, they emerged suddenly one day like blessings from heaven. I walked closer to the trees and touched the tiny throb of life in the petals. The late afternoon sky, a perfect blue against their quivering pearly bodies. Some strewn on the black twigs like giant pearls, while the others in plump, star-like clusters clung to the wet green boughs.
As the day stretched towards its end, the daylight outside the pearly grove faded into a waxy twilight and there - they changed, and just like that. It was a surreal moment in an altogether different world. A perfect, pastel hued world. Enraptured by their overwhelming presence, it sure felt strange to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.

April

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

~ T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Although we here, where the mountains are just a sneak peek away, continue to see flashes of unpredictable weather, it sure feels like it. A quick walk and some hurried shots in the nearby park told me that. And spring rain is what we are blessed with for the weekend - one of the many reasons why I couldn't resist this Eliot piece. There's a lot that could be captured both in words and sights, but as much as I would like to, I hardly have the time for longer ruminations these days. Despite the brooding intertwining of 'memory and desire' at the back of my mind, life's banalities demand the chunk of my time now.
We are already past the first quarter of the year and it only seems like yesterday when I was getting all slathered and choked up on emotions regarding our move back home. Strange, how time flies, and even stranger how it continuously fortifies you till you are left with not even so much as a whimper.

To time and blossoms galore then. Happy April.

Spring

"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A maple grove ablaze in the nearby park. Furry, red blossoms in strings and clusters. The bride-like adorned tree. The never-ending treasure of daylight. Blue skies with whimsical, cottony clouds. The unmistakable spring in my steps. The unstoppable song in my heart. Dots of colour here, there and everywhere. Spring has sprung, at last.

Here's to new beginnings then. Happy spring to one and all.

Spring signs

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself."

~ Bashō

It's almost there. I can smell it. Bouts of lightheadedness and meaningless giggles. The ticklish ache of life stirring to burst out of the tightly closed buds. The awakening of tiny blades of grass with gentle, dewy paws. The restless robins join the impatient, hoarse calls of the crows. One less layer stripped from the confused, stuffy mask of clothing. The more than usual spell of blue sky, even here, in the perennial rain abode. 
Spring sure is in the air. It sure is about to spring somewhere. 

Spring Renaissance

"My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms - will it return to my body when they scatter?" ~ Kotomichi

"Spring? And now?", will be probably your first question. I know it is quite late into the year for celebrating cherry blossoms, particularly when the leaves are about to turn and set the earth's canvas ablaze in fiery, feisty hues. But what the heck, there's no time for spring! We carry it in our hearts all the time, don't we? When happiness is perched on green leafy branches, oozing with the fragrance of love and joy... When long forgotten emotions waltz through the air and bring back a basket of ethereal moments... When that sudden realization of being alive stirs up a little throbbing storm inside... When dormant hopes rise up from their dank beds to bathe you in sunshine and desire...

So, disobeying chronology and upsetting nature's scrapbook, I thought of talking cherry blossoms today. Cherry blossoms and their revival in me.

Back in the real spring, I had come across an achingly beautiful quote by the eighteenth century Japanese author Kotomichi, which I had fallen in love with the moment I had read it. How it couldn't make its way into this blog I do not remember, for it had touched me a great deal. The coming together of the fairy-like delicate cherry blossoms and the transience of human happiness in the lines is beyond poignancy. And so I want to preserve it somewhere here, which has become a sketchy memoir of sorts. This further led me meandering to one of the most popular and oft cited poems of Modern American Literature - In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound. Taking birth from intense emotions and composed of a handful of just fourteen words, the poem is Imagism at its best. To do justice to the renewal of spring, I married off these beautiful lines with some photos that I had clicked earlier this spring. And what gorgeous couples they make!

"The apparitions of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough."

~ Ezra Pound

Virginia is for lovers!

Cherry blossoms from our living room window

So it is that time of the year again when happiness just blooms and spreads its roots inside you because mother nature is on a song. I often lamented about never having the chance to experience a spectacular North American spring. When I arrived here first, on the land of opportunities and ambiguities, it was too late. It was June and I could see the spring blooms withering away with a very few exceptions. That was when I first met the rhododendrons or as the Seattleites would call their state flower, the "rhodies". My heart leaped and jumped and bounced as if I had never seen anything of such remarkable beauty. Now there is this 'thing' about me and those who know me would understand this. I am an obsessive nature lover and at times like these I become this absolutely incomprehensible person as if my life depended on that single moment. Most of Sam's techie friends must find me rather daft when I ramble on about how the Mount Rainier is actually an active volcano or the different kinds of maple trees or the hundreds of wild Himalayan flowers. Not that I mind their uninvolved air, but I just feel that there is so much more life in these marvels than watching detestable modern television or going to shopping malls and killing time by mostly window shopping.

Getting back to my spring euphoria, last year we were in Texas during spring and there was nothing much on the platter except a few desert willows and Mexican buckeyes bursting out in their white and pink glory. Fortunately we lived in the Hill Country area which is home to many little charming German villages that are nestled on higher altitudes and host the wildflower festival every year. We did get to see vast stretches of red poppies, bluebonnets and cornflowers, and being a wildflower buff I loved every bit of it. But all the while I longed to see some typical spring queens like tulips and daffodils which are exotic to my tropical eyes. My friends back home would often ask me about the American spring and I would be at a very sad loss. But this year luck has smiled upon me and we have recently moved to this quaint little place called Charlottesville in Virginia. Apart from getting to live in the eastern part of this huge country, there is another aspect that quite thrills me. The state of Virginia that got its name from the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the 1st is culturally rich and is home to historical sites like Colonial Williamsburg, which was the first British capital. The stately red brick buildings and the gastropubs here are a classic example of the once flourishing British rule. This is also the land of the legendary Indian princess Pocahontas. So I do feel pretty regal in a strange fashion! And to add to all this, there's spring here. There are pearly magnolias on naked, leafless branches and vibrant forsythias that ring the word basanti in my mind. During my solitary walk yesterday I could spot clusters of wild daffodils here and there, some upright and the others still sleepy. There is a certain untamed beauty in things of the wild which is wanting in carefully, patterned landscapes.

Till date I was unaware that the prim garden daffodils also had wild cousins. Then the thought struck me, "of course, Wordsworth must have seen these wild ones in the Lake District"!

My next agenda is the national cherry blossom festival that takes place annually in Washington, D.C. After almost a complete month of being buried in brutal blizzards, the time has come to venture out and celebrate nature. This is that sort of place where I could wonder around like Ophelia, wearing a crown of wildflowers and throwing my cares to the mad world. And why not, because as they say here - "Virginia is for lovers"! Or for incurable romantics. Or a bit of both?!