In a place of Art

Art has always been indiscriminate and beautiful to me. It has been brave and abstract, scattered in places you never thought you’ll find it. And it truly does make you look at life in a way more replete with wonder. Art is different for me: it is not just of pastel. It is of chalk. And paper. and poetry. And garbage can. And wind chimes. And an empty hose-pipe modeled into a stick figure. Art is how the water gushes in a fountain, or the formations of birds in your sky. Art is in the fluid ripples when you startled a lake, or how the wind carries these maples strewn uselessly. Art is of making beauty.

Of my recent addictions is the newspaper, the Californian Aggie, in particular. After every Statics class ends on a somber note with my grave and educated predictions of failing it inching closer and closer to reality, there is nothing like picking up the Californian Aggie in a modest attempt of cheer. And it informs me of a bigger world, less conceited and more varied than the world inside the walls of a lecture hall. It tells me of places to explore, fresher expressions to find and interesting things that reinstate my love for this mad environment, no matter the worries that heave my shoulders. Last week, it told me of the place of art.  

In a place of art, much is forgotten. In a place of art, there is that pure, revitalizing life to very real human expression: it is so raw and very uniquely human, not manufactured by machines but made by hand and imagination. There is so much of an aesthetic appeal to that.

And when I saw art—from just kids from various parts of the country and the world, it just made me stop in my tracks. In apparent awe. I love it when something so pleasantly awes me. I love the feeling.

 I love to feel what the poet felt when he penned something; I love to establish that connection with the writer, as a consciousness—for his name is of little meaning before what he wrote. And these little kids told me a whole lot that day.

I ate some cookies, and walked into this bustling place of art. Where I could only stop and admire the sincerity in expression—so innocent and so full of wonder. It’s beautiful to see art in that way. I spent a good two hours with pictures, making more pictures, with poetry, and writing more poetry. After the good two hours, as I stepped out, there was a simple smile of no reason on my face. Nobody asked, but if they did, I would tell them of a place of art.

 

 

My hands cradle a quiver as I look to you,

Delicate for touch, hair frizzy and fraying,

Doe-like eyes in mutiny,

Some guilt, you do not share.

There is something of you, child,

That mystifies the onlooker,

Such small observations,

I keep with me.

Perhaps when you open up and trust enough

To wear a heart on your sleeve,

I will listen,

Big eared and completely.

Assure me a Sylvan Sleeve

I want to touch the galaxies that explode into parrot-greens at the mere feathery ends of fingertips, being baffled at how there is a tinier world within a tinier world. They fold into themselves like pocketed secrets that you picked up on a summer’s day. I want to feel much more than the invisible winds, from sky to sky, from ochre to grey, feeding on all the colors that frame but not one horizon. I want to love. Not just the now, but the softer nights where I sit and come to like the sweet breaths of a few thoughts taking a stroll beneath the clouds so bloated, you would have to imagine their other side. I want to utter to you the lovely words that frame my life, before they speed away into another wasted daydream someplace else.  What a joy it is to be young! Passion sits quietly on brooding eyes.

How will I tell you, someday, when I am old enough, that I have discerned all the meshes that hold captive thought? Because when I am old, they would expect, but I would laugh and tell them I am younger still, more prone to being taken care of, and more imaginative on my wicker chair. The soul needs only time, you see. Contemplation is not the wildest wastes of the gift of time. Leisure is a precious thing of mellow beauty, and I intend to paint all that with the tall tales that I have unearthed within me—maybe buried at the end of that notebook paper in an attic of forgetfulness. I will have to spring-clean the corridors of my heart. That will be liberation, don’t you think? I don’t know how many more worlds will find me, and how many more I will adore. Who am I?

When I cannot think curved, I grow scared. Thinking straight means I am doing something terribly wrong. Explaining lucidly means I am making it far too easy a chore for you, because waddling in words is fun. Dip your fingers in the icy coldness of the sentences that shock you, and eventually you are acclimatized to the endless realm of anything and everything. Possibility tastes something like honey dipped in cinnamon, something like a naïve meeting of separated affections.  Never pace your thought accordingly.

Because when I do reach the age where bored granddaughters gather by a chair and ask a story of grandmother, I wouldn’t like to delve into importance of education or the culture that was survival to me so they may produce yawns of various levels of interest before a sultry doze and never endure an enquiry again. So, I shall not speak of what others speak.  I will tell them of fourteen and burning moon through the evening train, to whom I talked and who smiled back, of seventeen and watching the rocky mountains somewhere beneath me, cracking it’s extravagant spine, of being twenty four and eventually finding him in the tides of surging faces, falling deeply to the kindness in his eyes and the aliveness to that smile. I want to tell them of lifting my head and roaring. Cougar-like someday and not shriveled on a couch. You will see.

And in order to tell them of the rivers of thought, I shall travel to the world within the world, every single time opportunity ominously sneaks to me. Such purity to this love for life, such a fair-minded curiosity….you know, maybe I don’t yet know who I am, but I do know…I do know this. There is no lack of worlds within worlds, and in this greening place where the gardens spill to every corner, in the yellow flowers rising beneath me, in the western scrub-jays conversing a forgotten memory, I share something of substance.

I will touch them, and they will explode into galaxies. They chime a song, unhampered and quite in the likeliness of me.  Assure me a Sylvan Sleeve. 

At the end of the day, at the end of the long chain of complaints that I prattle, I will take off my poisoned glasses and polish them at the ends of my dirty sweater that has kept me warm through many ungrateful dreary days. I’ll place the prince-nez at the bridge of my pinocchio nose and wonder anew.

The Whole Nine Yards

It’s like faraway parade, slow and ungainly. Muffled footsteps. She walked not but three furlongs on most days. Ajji’s dim presence was in evidence only because of the cluttered hallway, the heart of the house of many eccentric pillars. She was not untypical of south Indian grandmothers. Wicker chairs and incense sticks, short-sighted, judgmental, nose-ring studded and unconditionally loving. Thirsting to a fault with the Sudha Magazines that were stocked in corners, sometimes chronologically when ankle pains bothered her to extents she was unwilling to admit. Yes, she was only in evidence on the wicker chairs, in the conspicuously missing hibiscus flowers from the front yard garden. If you were pathetic enough to dismiss her presence, she would remain only a half-shadow, a mere incarnate of your mind. Until, of course, the resplendence of festivals remarked the beginning of newer seasons.

It is in this time that a robust and suspiciously new energy found its place, and her presence screeched so loud, ignorance was impossibility. She would overtake the kitchen with the sort of imperial territoriality of a connoisseur of a cook. The weak glimmers of a thawing soul would transform to a sweaty, fevered determination. Toranas on the front door, a nine yard saree maliciously crowning my pressed cloths: a pedestal to marriageability.  She was everywhere and preoccupied. It made me jumpy. It was no less than harassment. I would hesitate to term such strategies.  

The fabric repulsed me, I viewed it as oppressive. Maybe she expected me to adopt her submissive ways, serving and loyal. But at the height of youth, I had only recovered rebellion, riddles and why not’s in my volatile personality. My nose ring was wild and jarring as was hers a reflection of an undying bond. My kohl was coal-black and intense, and her unadorned eyes, gentle, watery, accepting. Her gold bangles, wearable gifts from her father, mine—a cult symbol. We were entirely of different states, and I wouldn’t allow sublimation. A saree? A saree for festival days? Wrapping me in layers and layers of historic oppression? I feigned the pseudo-feminist with a seething conviction. I will not wear the whole nine yards!

 ‘It is about the elegance,’ she quivered, ‘I never thought of it as submission.’

In ensuing arguments, I debated until she resigned, mellow and abiding, into cocoons that did not sprout wings.  

‘It is only a wish, my dear,’ she grumbled, ‘A nine yard saree is Lakshana, and that’s important. Prove yourself appropriate.’

The walls and the readers of the Sudha listened, I’d like to think.

Her own nine yards was impeccable and delightful (or so she said). It was like a delicious dream wrapped in neat pleats, carefully hiding age, emotion and attachment. She was neat with her saree, and she was happy in her perfected art.

Early morning would find itself cradled in turmeric and vermilion, auspicious awakenings of surreal lullaby. I one day found her by the Tulsi, ardent and devoted in her nine yards. She turned to me and oozed contentment, and it was hard to configure her: especially with such an intricate nine yards at five a.m. in the morning. I left her to her prayer, bemusing dedication.

I questioned her mind, to bring to her awareness, bring some light to a myopic soul. Can’t you see the oppression in the folds of your nine yards? No, it’s love, she said. Can’t you see discomfort in a fabric too old for wear? No, it’s memory, she said. Can’t you find stagnation in such an ageless tradition? No, it is legacy, she said. Can’t you see it as emblem of decay? No, it’s history, she said.

You will not see, I said. You will not see the sweat, the submission, the blatant slavery of the nine yards. You will not see the empathic frayed helplessness, you will not see the silk snake that chains you to your ways. You will not see.

She smiled. Yes, I will not see.

This early morning finds me cold and shivering. Sun is bleak in a signature watercolor sky. I test my blessed freedom with my bare feet, and touch extreme independence through my casement. Festivals are buried in three inches of snow. On impulse, I run my finger over the printed ginger on an old bit of cotton. Oppression. Slavery. Helplessness. Discomfort.

Love. Memory. Ageless. Legacy.

Whole nine yards.

A tapestry of thought, folded, unfolded.

Through the window, horizons break.

Tiger orchid eyes