The Banyan Tree

She stands alone in the rain glancing off her immense form
Splashing into dirty pools at her feet and running away in rivulets
Even as the life giving moisture seeped into her
She felt defeated by the outpour that drenched and humiliated her
Mocking her empty shade and wasted haven.
She can remember a time when she was proud
Of her intense green that protected the stranded and weary
Enfolding them in a gentle shade when the sun beat down
Or blanketing them in relative dryness from which to see
The rain wash away all restraint and oldness from the world.
She remembers cradling boys and monkeys in her boughs
With the same sturdy care and firm support
Thrilling with the birds making families within her
Sighing with the lovers who carved painful love into her.
But once the rain stopped, once the sun lost its heat
They all walked away to their own worlds
Boys grew up, monkeys moved to the hills
Baby birds learned to fly off into the blinding blue
And the lovers danced into their futures hand in hand
Or quarelled, shed tears and went their separate ways
While she remained scarred by signs of their love forever.
Always she was left behind - welcoming more needy under her leaves
By the side of the road that seemed to take everyone but her
Around the bend and into a future full of promise
While she waited alone for her roots to become wings.

Excerpts from an interview with my father:

Me: Acha kutta - you look great! I see you haven't changed any from the day you...well..you know. If anything you look younger. Your dimples are deeper, your smile is more mesmerizing. Your voice reverbates in my chest like my own heartbeat and your eyes are sharper than ever behind your glasses. Is this what heaven does for you?

Achan: You see me as your heart wants to remember me mole - I will probably only get better looking every time we do this. (smiling lovingly)

Me: So down to the real business of this interview - I dont know how much more time we have and I dont want to waste a second of it. (deep breath) How does it feel...after so long? 17 years Acha! How do I look?

Achan: How does it feel? Like I never left, I stayed every minute watching over you. Thats what you wanted remember? Its what your mother wants - you know she always gets what she wants. (smiling again) How do you look? As beautiful as only my flesh and blood can look to my eyes. Remember - I saw you every day... but now with you sitting across from me, looking so earnest in your stylish clothes and impeccable make up...I see my little girl looks just the same. Eyes full of unquestioning devotion, a constant question on her lips, the same plump little arms always reaching out to hold on to me. You are still my little beauty - my kochu sundari.

Me: Acha - I am taller than you now you know. I think weigh twice as much as you ever did and I am so much older now. What do you think of the woman I have become?

Achan: Thats too broad - ask me specifically what you want to know.

Me: Ok - fine. (wrinkling nose) What do you think of the choices I have made so far?

Achan: You are a child my dear - you have made all the mistakes I knew you would make. And you have learned from them I hope. Always hold on to God's hand so He can lead you to the right decisions and choices every time and you cannot go wrong.

Me: What of my regrets Acha - will you forgive me? Can you forgive me?

Achan: I cannot forgive you your consequences - you dont deserve that, do you? But prayer works miracles - keep praying.

Me: I cry so many nights - I still cry myself to sleep. And the loneliness of my soul cripples me. Why dont you ever help me? Why don't you show me signs that are easier to read? Why dont you steer me away from the path that is going to lead me to pain and regret?

Achan: Are you interviewing me or God? Am I the keeper of your soul or are you? If you expect to grow from the spiritual seed that you are now, how can you continue to not take responsibility for your actions, your thoughts and succumbing to your desires?

Me: Ok - we wont go there then. I dont want you angry with me...smile Acha...please? Remember that night you were so mad at me because I wouldnt pronounce succumb correctly? I still LOVE that word Acha.

Achan: (Smiling) Idiot

Me: (Smiling as well) I feel much better now Acha kutta. So how do you like the new music these days? I think about coming home to you in a parallel universe and playing you my latest favorites, sitting in the dark in the drawing room with a drink in your hand and me at your feet getting your opinion on my musical tastes.

Achan: I think I would've been too grouchy to listen with any patience to ALL your favorites. But now - there are some songs that I can see why you like them as much as you do. I would much prefer sitting in the living room in the dark listening to you singing to me - in that parallel universe of yours.

Me: (Smiling widely) You know I got laryngitis soon after you...you know. I dont sing that much anymore Daddy dearest. If I had sung for you would you have called me your "little lady"?

Achan: You sing your little heart out in the shower though dont you? I hear you all the time!(winking). But I had no idea you wanted me to call you "little lady" mole

Me: Well you would call all my grown up cousins that when you were laughing with them or teasing them. I wanted so bad for you to look at me with that same smile in your eyes. I couldn't wait to grow up so you could treat me like a little lady.

Achan: (Sighing) I didn't think I would still have lingering bitterness about not staying with you all after so long, but sometimes the sorrow is as fresh as if it was November 1990 all over again.

Me: (blinking back tears) So do you miss us Acha? As much as we missed you?

Achan: I think I miss touching you all the most - feeling your mother's palm when I ache to hold her hand, the curve of your cheek when I want to soothe away a tear, Achu's stubbly new beard when he is looking in the mirror willing it to grow. You have held on to each other in your sorrow mole - I watched alone, always close but just far enough away to never be with you again.

Me: (Crying) Can you forgive us for living, loving, laughing without you for so long Acha? How do you bear it - knowing I actively think about you only once a day when I pray in the morning? How do you not want to scoop Amma up in your arms and protect her from all the sorrow and pain she is facing alone?

Achan: (eyes glittering with tears) Its what I wanted - to hear myself in every laugh, in every tired joke you all kept repeating. I stayed with you in every silly, important, funny, sad, painful, scary moment that you lived through - I don't - would never want your hearts to have stopped with mine.

Me: You know we have wished we could have all just gone with you? We wanted nothing more than to see you, kiss your cheeks, smell your unique fragrance of incense and cigarettes, hear your soft laugh, hear your teasing, even sit through your sulky silences. We wanted it with every particle of our souls Acha. Poor Achu - he perhaps is the unluckiest of us all - to have so little of you in his head and his memories.

Achan: When he would make up stories of things he and I did together or muddle up one of your tales of me in the retelling..remember that?...that would break my heart all over again. You must love him enough for me as well. Your Amma is fragile - she needs you and so does your brother, your duty is always to them first. You must do what I would have done for them as much as you can. It is not just your duty, it was what you were born to do.

Me: How can I fill your shoes?? How do I even dream of doing what you could have done? I am only a shadow of you, a weak imitation. Acha - I am a candle to your sun - you expect more than I am capable of being!!

Achan: But you have me silly! - always in your heart. I am the whisper of conscience in your soul. I am the smile on your sleeping face, I am the slight movement you feel in your heart when you hear your mother laugh. I am the sharp hunger you feel when you think of India. I am the anger that whips you when you fall down in your esteem. I am the quiet strength that seems to seep in from nowhere when you think you are up against a wall. I am in you Muthe - where do you think I have been so long? Always remember - inside of you, in your heart and soul - thats where you should search to find me.

Me:Inside me? All along Acha? Wait....dont leave Acha - are you leaving? Was that goodbye? When will we talk again? When do I get another chance like this Acha....please dont go yet! We have a little more time dont we? Why is your image fading on the edges Acha - why is your voice starting to sound only like my own? No - I wasnt finished, I have so much more to ask you, so much more to tell you. Please....

Is it just the natural human predeliction for greener grass on the other side that sends my thoughts careening through paths that I feel my life will noe never be able to take? Or have my eyes opened to the fact that what I have fought for and now slyly acheived is far less than my fertile imagination had promised it would be? Perhaps this is fitting retribution for the selfish lies I have said to feed that fantasy. With my hands wrapped around a dream, I floated too far away from the familiar, the safe and the accepted to ever come back. And yet as that dream slowly crystalized into reality, I realized that I was falling at a fast clip towards a lifetime dedicated to disappointment and self-recrimination. I am heading there now - the hard truth of my choices rushing up to meet me with deadly force. And rather than face that spectre, I want to anchor myself to another dream - this time even more prepostrous - of returning to my roots, of cocooning myself in safety, familiarity and acceptance. I struggle to remind myself why I had scorned that in the first place, but all my stubborn mind wants to bring up is the satisfied smile on faces dearly beloved, the warmth of a choice well received, the slumber of one not riddled with myriad guilty secrets. There is a part of me that screams in warning - telling me to not dare forget the hollow emptiness of dreams discarded, the climbing frustration of sacrifices made at enormous prices taken for granted - almost demanded, of the possibility of a far from story book ending of which I have already had a poisonous taste. The venom of that experience must be fading from my blood, for I no longer can use my righteous outrage and sorrow as a sheild against the entreaties of those whom I have never denied before. And yet - when I followed my foolish dream to escape the system, I unwittingly made commitments to a life I now find myself afraid to lead. While I no longer beleive there is much pain to be suffered by another - for a lot of the emotion had been as much a figment of my imagination as my "happily ever after" - I still quail at the thought of looking my mistake in the eye. And once turned back, what if my stupid mind trows up roadblocks and regrets again? Perhaps I am fated to forever stand at the mouth of the crossroads alone - undecided and fearful of each, yet coveting both destinations.

There is a despair in me that I cannot explain away with all my inventive genius. I can't put my finger on whether it's guilt at the consequences I have now chosen to add to lives other than mine with my selfish needs or if its pure wishful thinking for utopian win-wins. Maybe its a sorry mix of both - yes that's most likely it. I find myself praying silenty for a miracle - for it will take one for all parties involved to come out unscathed. And when I pray that I be the ONLY one to suffer the aftereffects of my mindless decisions, I am aware that it is neither greatness of character nor magnamity of my soul that drives me to want to fall on my sword. No - rather it is plain old cowardice. I could not live with the thought that the cost of my loves will be paid in someone else's tears. Every second of that pain they undergo will drive my guilt into me like a thousand white hot blades and the agony of knowing I wrought this disaster will choke me of any desire to breathe. I did not come this far, lose this much, hurt so hard, work so long to go slinking into the night as nothing more than a disappointment or a betrayal. But even the Almighty will have to execute some pretty fancy footwork to work out the tangle of knots I have inadvertantly woven into my life and those of my dearest ones. If my prayers are answered retribution will be a lightning shard that incinerates my very being to ashes without harming a hair on the head of those I dragged unwittingly into my perdition. Its funny how the least deserving of us are the ones to ask for the biggest miracles - isnt it?

From Another Life:
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Stillwater, OK

Can a girl regret a good impulse? OH YES! In many ways there is a part of me that sighs with smug satisfaction at what I just did. Thats the part of me that wears a blinding white saree with a blue border and magically removes crusty stains from clothes, always smiling, big red bindi gleaming on her forehead like a beacon of her morality and the victory of her upbringing. The other part - the one that..if she had washboard abs..would be wearing a cut off tee and torn denim, smoking a ciggy at the bar- that part is whacking her head on the shiny bar counter and yelling unmentionable obescenities. Though, much to my saree clad self's chagrin, it wasn't so much my dedication to polishing my halo that finished something I had myself unwittingly started. It was pride. I mean yes, who doesnt like to think that respect makes up for the lack of ..well many things. But the truth is, respect is a cold bedfellow. The truth is it was just pride - the kind of pride that wrinkles its nose disgustedly at me when I know I am being undervalued, and I am willing to take it in lieu of abject boredom - that pulled me up short of folly, or perhaps from truth - who knows!. Even when I could do better - I'd chosen not to..for various better reasons, but basically boredom. But sometimes 'almost' just doesnt become 'enough' anymore. You see, I know what perfection feels like, I have tasted it, felt it settle into my marrow before I learned to search for flaws, seize them eagerly,flaunt them and then to transplant that transient perfection with ever-lasting mediocrity. Now, when even mediocrity has sloughed off my slick skin, I realize - what perfection exists, other than in divinity, that is not fleeting? Too late, too late! Perfection - even its fickle beauty so tainted, by my own knowing hands, does not wash clean - all my Lady Macbethian efforts wasted. And knowing that, accepting my incompleteness, resigning myself to my self inflicted wounds it seems has not taught ego to knuckle, kneel, break in supplication. Some part of me - and I dont know what she likes to wear, I dont know if she sports a bindi or if she smokes - rejoices in my imperfection still.

Someone I know sent me an article the other day - about the weight of an employee being in inverse proportion to their career and remuneration growth. Instantly I felt myself filling up with hot rage, drowning in so much anger and outrage. Most of it was directed towards myself for associating with someone who would forward something like that to me. But I was admittedly shocked that a person's weight would affect their professional lives in such a significant manner. I don't buy that productivity BS about fat people being more prone to disease and therefore time away from work. Thats like justifying that women should be paid less because of the possibility that they will at some time avail themselves of their maternity leave. I don't think the productivity benefits based on an employee's potential health condition is a serious consideration with employers. However I do beleive one's appearance has a lot to do with opinions made on the so called dispassionate professional level. Being overweight is associated in most minds with a weak will, sloppiness, lack of personal pride and discipline. While I do not personally subscribe to that view, I can see why that opinion might exist and how it can influence a person's ability to make a favorable FIRST impression. But shouldn't someone's proven track record of hard work and talent be sufficient to overset the effect of the prejudice? But then that is the nature of prejudice - it is never reasonable and therefore can hardly be reasoned away with logic. If even a friend cannot see the forest for the trees, maybe reforming a close-minded associate from work is close to impossible. The sad part is that most likely the author of the article and the 'friend' that sent it would congratulate themselves if they knew that I went an extra half hour at the gym, skipped another meal - afterall its just tough love right? What it really translates into for me is another time I cry in the shower, another person I cannot trust to look at me and see any quality in me beyond my weight. What is boils down to is in all the planes you exist on - among friends, with a lover, in a boardroom - nothing can make up for an imperfect body.

January 24, 2007
Wednesday

I think I might have redeemed myself - atleast a little bit. Though I am still mortified at thinking I might have unwittingly led someone on. I wonder if it has to do with how I talk - the interest I take in the other person- that almost always gives the wrong impression about my intentions? I genuinely like people - I enjoy spending time with them, getting to know their stories, their personalities. Lately though I think I have been so frantic to engage my attentions anywhere but on certain other events that my enthusiasm is easily misunderstood. I have had one friend tell me its the way I look at someone fondly, another tells me its the way I smile. I hate to think my body language is unconsciously inviting people to think I am more interested in them than I really am. But the source of this problem is obviously me since this has re-ocurred often enough. Everything one does though is so open to interpretation and I am so impulsive that I don't stop think if my actions have an implication I am not prepared to deal with. Who would think always being ready to talk and listen to someone sends out a message of more than concerned friendship? I mean every moment of my work day I am chatting with Kavi - she doesn't assume that I am sending her secret signals of whatever. Excuses apart, I guess I am responsible for the impressions I make and now have to learn how to discern what subconscious messages I am sending and curb my impulses, be more controlled and less spontaneous. What a fun prospect!

Vampires
The beast is rearing its head again
In the pit of my stomach I feel
that familiar burning
I ready myself to take off running
Always one bare step ahead
Of my horrors nipping at my heels
The fear of being swallowed whole
Spurs me on - giving me another spurt of speed
I never know if this time
Will be the one where it outruns me.
Dust to dust - what really is there to fear?
That slow slide down to the belly of darkness
Oddly comforting to not fight any more
Afterall there is no defeating hopelessness
Finally in the silence
In that blessed last divine betrayal
There will be no further to fall
And at long last my soul will rest in peace.


Copyrights belong to Ambika Nair

Aftertaste
Unwittingly, even unwillingly
I have devoted my heart to memories
Of you.
I seek your face in all my new sorrows,
I fear the same ending
Of all my new hopes.
Unseen smiles reflect only you -
Ill-hidden longings to find my lost,
Mourn my un-dead love.
All the music my soul makes -
Sacrificial lambs at the feet of the man
That filled ten years of my story
With empty silences.
So many beginnings…
So meaningless unless you end
With beginnings of your own
What I never mean to start.
Only that which causes limitless joy
Can offer boundless pain -
I hear you smiling in your sleep
Your tongue wrapped around sweetness,
And rising from my charred insides
Is the bitter aftertaste of you.

Copyrights for 'Aftertaste' belong to Ambika Nair

I am dreaming of a hot week day afternoon in Chennai - the fan pointlessly stirring and unsettling the heat in the air as I lie on the freshly washed printed cotton sheets in Peetha's spare bedroom. I can almost feel the slow drag of my eyelids heavy with blissful siesta Zs that I am staving off simply to savor the anticipation. In the distance I hear a rickshaw put-putting along and I can smell the coals and the steam from the cart almost right outside my window where wrinkles are being ruthlessly ironed out of existence on a bright yellow churidar. My breath seems to be sighing out a song of absolute contentment and I fall asleep in the happy anticipation of waking up to hot tea and of vadas fished out of bubbling oil and cooling off on newspaper spread on the stone counter. There is almost nothing as enticing as that mental picture, especially as I sit at my desk in a gray cubicle looking out at snow coming down on Minneapolis. Its visions like these that get me through the loneliness, the cold, the mind-numbing lack of enthusiasm to live through another shivering, snivelling day of sub-zero depression.
Some nights I call and talk to my homie Srik who indulges me with Chennai-Tamil classes - has me in splits the entire time so much that I swear I giggle in my sleep. I love the Machis, Maamas, Sithappus that pepper the conversation. I love learning the correct inflection for saying Doddaaa :) or calling a hapless driver a Saavugirakki. I am equipped with all instances when I have to say "serippu pinjidum" - apparently any configuration of words ending in "--kattai" are worthy of this treatment. Harder to remember are the exact meanings of such marvels of the language as "Apeetu", "Dabaikeeriya", "Asalta", "Dumeel" - but all the more fascinating for its obscurity of meaning.
When I am praying with Hema, its an entirely different plane of the same language that soothes my senses and fills my heart with the golden light of God-love. I watch gazillions of Tamil movies and my untutored understanding is beginning to discern the dialects, the ways, the little mannerisms that differentiate say Madurai from Thirunalveli. In my enthusiasm for the language, I often attempt to stutter out a few sentences which are unfortunately mangled beyond all recognition by my strong mallu accent and ofcourse the unorthodox sources from which this entire knowledge base is culled.
I always think back fondly about staying at the YWCA in Egmore, walking the streets of 'Medras' with a borrowed Nokia in my sweaty fist and my I-card in its plastic sleeve hanging around my neck, hailing an auto and shocking the driver with my meager Tamil when he talks to me in his version of Hindi and tryies to fleece me of triple the fare. I remember being mortified that I was so visibly an out-of-towner, being elated when I drank a sathukudi juice and didn't spend the next day in the bathroom, being triumphant when I haggle down prices with vendors selling costume jewellery on Ranganathan street.
I have so many more little things I want to get the typical Chennai flavor of - hanging out with some cool Chennai folks at Spencer, going to a SuperStar movie at a theatre, loitering until dusk at one of Chennai's awesome beaches without having a little cousin or nephew to rescue from a dangerous tendency to throw themselves into the waves, ride pillion on a bike behind a tall,dark and handsome tamil man:) along ECR... I could go on forever. But I wont - instead I am going to go on dreaming my Chennai dreams.

Here and Now
Thursday, January 18 2007

Lethargy and shame are settling into my pores, weighing my eyelids down, making me drowsy with the inability to think about myself without regret. So much wisdom on hindsight - all the prayer in the world doesnt seem to keep me from making mistakes that clog up my senses and seep like a foul odour from my conscience. What I want, what I seek are so much more than what life is offering me right now. I can't make excuses without tripling my self-disgust, but all these dreams make it so difficult to turn away the little bits and peices that seem to be manifesting themselves in my day to day. I see now that the parts in isolation of each other don't add up to the whole. Hence the emptiness, the bitter silence of my inner judge - condemning my stupidity, my greed, my pitifulness. I can't keep grasping at straws that make my reflection in the mirror wane into a grotesque interpretation of the values I aspire to. I cannot survive more introspection if I can't dredge up more than the black refuse sticking to the walls of my mind. Too late, always too late, I see His greater wisdom at work and understand the very "cruelty" I had lamented had kept me safe from this very folly. I understand now why His approach to this thing has been all or nothing. Funny thing is, I had just been getting used to the nothing too and actually figuring out how to enjoy the anticipation. In my defense, I did think my time had come, my ship was setting sail. Premature - a tiny bit overeager and willfully blinded to consequences I knew were inevitable. Still only excuses that doesn't wash off the sorrow of having fallen down from my own estimation - again.

Here and Now:
Thursday, January 03, 2007
Saint Louis Park, MN

My heart is not broken. I am not even at an age where I can say that with feeling and not feel a blush of mortification color my neck. I have outpaced that state of perepetual emotional peaks and troughs - thank the stars! If I languish a little at the very end of my prayers and a few unbidden what-ifs run through my head - I write it down to the inability of the female mind to ever give up on its favorite fantasy. I don't know if I beleive in 'true love' anymore - I hate to sound cynical and embittered - but thats not why I dont beleive in that myth anymore. Its a bit like beleiving in Santa isnt it? - we all have to outgrow it at some time. Someone once told me a theory of chemistry, commitment and logic constituting what everyone wants to romanticize into love and I remember dismissing it as frigid and bloodless. But I begin to see the wisdom of detatchment - proof is in how we all love, lose, move on, 'love' again, marry, make babies and dismiss some of our strongest emotions as childish and fleeting. Its only my need to elevate human emotion above well thought out impulses and hormonal rushes that makes me balk at this definition of love. My own heart has managed to do this with consummate ease and as long as I dont dwell with the clarity of hindsight on what made me love the man I loved and why I took longer to get over him than him over me and why I have now managed to move on and want a new beginning, I can pretend that I loved, lost and my poor broken heart was healed in time and learned to want love again.