A Girl in the Morning

“Molle…, Wake up, it’s already past 8’o clock” came the shrill angried voice from downstairs.

There was a murmur that followed but she did not catch that neither was she bothered to. She was lying on her bed with her eyes fixed on the ceiling, there was an old rickety fan spinning and suddenly she was conscious of its rhythmic noise. She wondered whether it always sounded so mechanic and artificial. Soon her thoughts shifted to the day, it was a day she was long waiting for, she did not know whether to be happy today or to be sad, but she definitely was anticipating the day for some time now. This time tomorrow…

Her brief reverie was broken by her mother’s voice again, this time it sounded closer, louder and angrier. She decided that it is time to move on and reluctantly moved out of her bed with great pain and visible stress. She longed to be back in the bed, the bed that has for always been a solace to her, A friend who was their when she was getting cold and when she was sad. Her longing was only aided by the fact that the bed looked so warm and cozy in the chilly winter morning. She looked out of her open window and she could see the brief outline of mountains far away, clad in mist. Her own little garden was looking beautiful today.

Lazily she walked in to her bathroom and started searching for her brush; she found it in its usual place and slowly pressed out a bead of tooth paste on to her brush. She took a deep breath and started brushing, in one giant leap of energy after some thorough and well-practiced moves she was done with the brushing. She washed her mouth and threw a handful of water at her face. As the water receded from her face and as she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at her reflection. The next instant she was lost to this world once again.

She was beautiful, her eyes were big and suited her face, in another face it would have been ugly but not on hers, they were simply made for her. Eyes moved over every feature in her face and slowly rested on her nose, she had a pointy nose and on her small faced looked pointier. She gave out an involuntary chuckle as she remembers him teasing her about her nose. He always teased her and she would always turn her face away from him and pretend to be offended. It was just one of the many quirks they entertained. 

Yes! He, he was the reason for today’s dilemma. She knew she was to be sad today but for some reason she was not and even felt guilty sometimes for feeling excited and happy thinking about today.  She would reach there by tomorrow and he would be there, h would shake hands with her father and smile at her mother and skillful avoid her only to stare at her a moment later. He was such a sucker when it came to her, stupid almost always. There was a smile slowly creeping on her face and colour flooded her small cheeks. She wondered whether he would notice that she had become a lot healthier these days and her bony appearance was replaced with a healthy pinkish glow. She though he might, and he would be happy seeing that too. She wondered how he would look, she had seen him on Skype a million times but she wondered how ...

She suddenly stopped and started feeling guilty for feeling too happy today, she should be feeling sad not happy. She was to leave her parents today and go to Chennai by the evening train. She quickly finished and steadied herself, she took and deep breath and exhaled sharply. 

Moments later the door in the mirror snapped and closed, but her breath was still left on the tiny mirror slowly evaporating and moving away. It would be sometime before she would come in the mirror. The mist slowly turned to dew and tickled down the mirror, For a moment it almost looked as if the mirror was crying.

This post has been written for the "The Character" Contest by Harper Collins in Indiblogger.in

In association with Jacob Hills.

Why do we Ditch a Book by Goodreads

So some time back Goodreads.com came up with a very interesting info graphics as to why we ditch certain books like we do.

So when I came across it I knew I had to republish it here. There are two benefits, , firstly I can get one article published for a pence worth of effort and secondly you guys who have not scene it before can get to see it. Though I would insist that the second one is my prime intent, I know none of you would believe me. But guys really that was the case and it did not have anything to do with the apathetic state of my creative part of my brain.

Thanks to the good people at Goodreads :)

Forever a Malayalli

Under the green trees whose shadows she rested I grew up playing, in the very rain that drenched her I bathed, by the bank of the many rivers that nourished her I learned of heritage and culture. She was the mother that I seldom had, the father that I longed, a friend that I cherish. She was everything that I wanted and she is everything that I am. The life that I lived every second of every hour I lived in her cradle is the life that I ever want to know and wherever in the vast expanse of the globe destiny decides to take me my roots are forever claimed and every moment lived is but an attempt to be back in my mother’s lap. 

The spicy scent of the wet land, my grandmother is to say that beautiful scent was mother earth burping with satisfaction after her thirst has been quenched. How beautiful it smelled, like the scent of fresh Thulsi leaves. How beautiful was it too see the dark monsoon clouds come rolling in from the sky, It was said that the clouds had the colour of lord Krishna and just like the little Krishna they brought great joy along with them. My Kerala, My mother was a beautiful sight to see when she was drenched in his blessings. Everywhere there was just the vast expanse of green and from every leaf dripped many a million drops of rain. The trees rained down after the clouds and as a little child, dressed in nothing but a little black tread by waste I would go below the many creepers that grew in our garden and give it a shake. I would squeal with delight as the cold droplets hit my then tender body and I would smile with absolute pleasure. Of course I was too young to remember it then but my lovely grandmother had painted for me such vibrant pictures of my childhood that somehow they seem more part of my memory than a part of her narration. Everytime I think of those moments I feel them, the emotions of the little me rather just a detached memory.

I remember though the many hours I have stood by the many windows, each time a new one and watched the endless rain and I remember being overjoyed at the mere sight of it. To me each drop of rain now is a part of my mother and her endless beauty. They in their watery way tie me down to the land and the land in its muddy way tie me down to the sky and. They together in their symphony tie me down to my mother. There in that adobe of love I started talking root and every monsoon my roots grew just that much larger and deeper and tied me down a little more to the land. 

There is not a day I don’t dream of going back to her, I have not been too far from her yet every moment spent away from her is sheer agony and the desire is that much more deeper. My mother had loved me and I have loved her back just as much, the truth is you never realize how much you love them but at the moments you spent away from her. Rain and monsoon are that much deep rooted in me and every one of my memories does have a tinge of it somewhere. Be it the times I stared at the rain from the safety of the local sweet stall clinching to my grandfather’s hands or be it the moments I have immersed myself in the bliss as it fell down over me. Even when I grew up I was in love with the rain and every chance I get to be with her, I took, every excuse I could make to be with her I have made. I love the rain and the land after the rain. I love the land before that rain that is both ominous and sensational. The thunder and the lightning, the cold and freezing breeze that comes just before the rain and then as the drum roll reaches its finale you hear the hear, the sizzle before she comes and rains down on you.

How could I be anything but her beloved son, How could I ever dream of having a mother that is not her, a home that is not hers. I belong there I belong in her lap and I am to be at home curled up in her laps and listening to her wonderful stories and dream of the wonderful world that it draws in my mind. I belong to her both in this life and the next, I came from her and into her wet soil I must return as ash. In her many rivers must I lay my final rest and in her lap I must lie dead the same way I was born into hers. Forever I will be hers, A malayali.

Mistakes and Regrets

No matter what you wish and how hard you think, there are times you inevitably end up making a mistake. What can e done about that? It just eats you up and consumes you in regret and despair. The whole thing is a much bigger mess if someone else has to pay for your mistakes, when someone else is the bearer of your ineptness. Furthermore it is devastating when they decides to be noble it. Frankly I wouldn't mind being bashed and abused, because I know I made that mistake and I deserve to be shouted at. You can never get to forgive yourselves for the stupidity that you have displayed. You curse yourself for not thinking thoroughly and not making sure that the little details were right.

You do not know how down and lowly I feel now, may be do. Whatever be the case it wouldn't hurt anyone by me making it clear can it? 

Every time I think about this ordeal, I think I have not learned my lessons yet. I did what I did because I thought at that moment that I was saving them from a potentially disastrous decision but all I did was make them do another blunder that the previous one. All my decisions where based on my belief that I had actually learned something something from my own previous bad experiences, but now I know I was wrong and I was wise enough to make those decisions. I might have acted in haste and  might have not thought out the whole plan of action carefully. But the truth is I do stand by my primary decision, the reasons for the action I took was valid but what I did as a result of it and in order to correct it then was actually not the worst of choice. 

Fate or whatever it is called has made me regret those decisions that I was proud of making at the the time I made it. The circumstances changed and all on a sudden the decisions that I took looked almost short sighted, not  just almost, almost completely short sighted. And these decisions cost some of my friends dearly and that is what affected me mostly and disturbed me. I look almost deranged and lost.

I know this all sounds confusing and muddled and illegible and incomprehensible, that is only because I feel like that and my mind in a state of muddiness.  

May be I just have to come clean and own it up, I do not know whether it will absolve me of the responsibility I feel about this whole business. But at this point I feel that writing a couple of cheques would make me feel better whether they accept it or not.

I hope I do not regret this one.

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To Burn a Man Alive

“If you had been on that jury son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man. So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s Jury, but you saw something come between them and reason.”

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I by accident came upon this piece about the lynching of one Mr. Jesse Washington, a 17 year old boy way back in 1916 in a then little known town called Waco in Texas during the height of racism there. A 1600 strong, so called civilized mob cheered and celebrated the vindication of a boy. Who is to say whether he was guilty or not? They never cared. Their ears must have been where filled with the wax of racial hatred and their minds biased. That was the society then, there, apparently civilized and highly placed. Are we any different today?

We may have come far from burning people alive and conducting witch hunts, at least in principle we have. But deep down our society is the same, flawed and diseased. We may not be impaling people anymore and we definitely are not pushing widows to be burned along with their dead husbands, but that is where the buck stops. We do still engage in some very sinister things, don’t we? We murder our daughters before they are even born and we do that with more ease that the slaughter of a cow. We beat up our wives and abuse them. But these are normal things in our society today not as audacious as the lynching of Jesse Washington.

What we do in our day to day life is in no measure what we are capable of and it does not provide a true picture of the malice that lurks within the conceited society. In order to know what the society is truly capable of we must look what they do at times of great anarchy, when they are no longer a society but a mob, when they are nothing more than a bunch of rapid dogs on the hunt. They rape and they slaughter, they rip apart human life and bodies in the most disgusting manner possible. The discontent and instability that so lie in the depths of men manifest into its worst at such times. It is at such times, when the bonds and bondages enforced by the chains of society breakdown that the society becomes vengeful and disoriented. It is not even imaginable what a society that consists of murderers and rapist at the best times would disintegrate into when they come face to face with the darkness that lurks inside.

What we may now do in the name of justice be only the sinister things of tomorrow, may be generations next will speak of our barbaric ways with as much disgust as we speak of our generations past. Let it be the holocausts in Germany or the Lynching in Waco, the agitated ‘civilized societies’ has in there moment of folly written onto the face of sons and daughters a scar. A scar that for all the time to come will forever remain. May be nothing can be done about, may be that is the way of life, but I believe different. Many a great men have in the past opened our eyes and held it open just long enough to see our folly and prevent it in the time to come. May be at times of great peril will rise great heroes and they will save as times of great despair.