Sad news, dear Diary. My mother-in-law passed away this morning. She was bed-ridden these past so many months and it's been heart-rending to see her steadily fading away, physically as well as mentally. Perhaps it's merciful that her pain is finally over...
Here's something I wrote about her a few months ago, but now there will be no more visiting her again tomorrow.
**************************************************
Now her days are no more part of the flow of time, no longer links in a chain of memories. Each day, each visit, is a separate occurrence, connected to everything before at best through the recognition of faces, an uncertain lighting up of memories.
Sometimes her eyes reveal nothing at all, not pain, not emotion, not even recognition. Other times all these are there, and on good days even crystallise into words. Then she smiles at her daughter and whispers, “I’m blessed to have you.”
she’s forgotten
yesterday’s visit
tomorrow
we shall go again
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Winter's arc
Dear Diary, you must have noticed that we've been having a bit of cold weather lately. The migratory rosy pastors at any rate have, and have turned up for their winter visit to do their rosy pastor thing. They're as flock-minded as a bunch of tourists on a group tour, and they particularly love to congregate on electric wires. But today I saw a flock of them patronising a bare tree, and the whole thing made for a lovely wintry sight. Of course I had to stop and get out the good old camera. Check out the accompanying photo...
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
ATM Power
There is something about ATMs. They exert this powerful effect on our nervous systems. Outwardly, they emit some kind of radiation that makes us nervy and restless. Step into this aura and you will immediately find yourself fidgeting, tapping your feet and making little exasperated noises. Your face will rearrange itself into a long-suffering expression. You will experience a strong urge to hammer on the glass door that separates the inside of the ATM from the rest of the world.
But pass through that door and everything changes. Your very metabolism slows down.It is an enchanted domain, the closest thing to Rip Van Winkle's Sleepy Hollow that we will ever experience in real life. You enter a torpid, trance-like state. Your movements become slow and cautious, every action appears to be the outcome of some long and complex process of deliberation and calculation. Is that really a 6 there on the keyboard, or could it actually be that a 9 has been cunningly stood on its head? Is that a 2 or has a treacherous Z sneaked in among the array of numbers? Others may get fooled, but you will not be taken in by any of this low trickery.
Despite all your caution, midway through this hazardous procedure you become aware that you have probably overlooked some particularly diabolical ruse to entrap you, and you search for the CANCEL key. Only after you have made sure several times over that you are not letting yoursel be tricked into pressing the wrong key to confirm the rip-off, you allow your finger to settle on CANCEL and, after a minute's further consideration, apply pressure on it. Then you start the whole procedure afresh, thanking your stars that you were alert enough to have evaded a devilish stratagem to rob you of your hard-earned income.
After fifteen minutes you emerge triumphantly with the thrice-counted money safely stowed away in a place where you would like to see even the most experienced mugger find it. Pleased with yourself, you saunter past the hostile faces lined up outside the ATM. The sunshine feels good and you take a deep breath.
It's strange, the power of ATMs. Surely a fit subject for serious investigation by parapsychologists.
But pass through that door and everything changes. Your very metabolism slows down.It is an enchanted domain, the closest thing to Rip Van Winkle's Sleepy Hollow that we will ever experience in real life. You enter a torpid, trance-like state. Your movements become slow and cautious, every action appears to be the outcome of some long and complex process of deliberation and calculation. Is that really a 6 there on the keyboard, or could it actually be that a 9 has been cunningly stood on its head? Is that a 2 or has a treacherous Z sneaked in among the array of numbers? Others may get fooled, but you will not be taken in by any of this low trickery.
Despite all your caution, midway through this hazardous procedure you become aware that you have probably overlooked some particularly diabolical ruse to entrap you, and you search for the CANCEL key. Only after you have made sure several times over that you are not letting yoursel be tricked into pressing the wrong key to confirm the rip-off, you allow your finger to settle on CANCEL and, after a minute's further consideration, apply pressure on it. Then you start the whole procedure afresh, thanking your stars that you were alert enough to have evaded a devilish stratagem to rob you of your hard-earned income.
After fifteen minutes you emerge triumphantly with the thrice-counted money safely stowed away in a place where you would like to see even the most experienced mugger find it. Pleased with yourself, you saunter past the hostile faces lined up outside the ATM. The sunshine feels good and you take a deep breath.
It's strange, the power of ATMs. Surely a fit subject for serious investigation by parapsychologists.
Ahmedabad
Dear Diary,
I don’t know how to begin, but here I am, coming crawling back to you. I can understand that you don’t even want to hear from me, I would have reacted the same way, but I’m a different person now, really. I think I was just too afraid of commitment then, and I didn’t know how to explain to you. Now I feel more settled, you have to believe me, we do all grow up, don’t we? Will you have me back, dear D? Okay, I won’t press you, I’ll give you time, after all you’ve waited this long. Please try and forgive, dear Diary, I won’t let something like this happen again.
Well dear Diary, you’re silent, I guess I have to make all the running this time. It’s only fair, I guess. So let me tell you about something that happened way back in 2004, that I never got around to talking about the last time. That was a couple of months before I took a two-year break from Baroda - oh, I hadn’t told you about that either? Well, this is what I’d written at the time:
Ahmedabad
Of late my claim to the status of an urban limpet, firmly attached to the ebb and flow of life in one city, is being undermined. In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to make repeated trips to Ahmedabad. All this for a passport which will enable me to travel even farther.
My first trip disabuses me of the notion that the larger a city, the fewer camels per square mile it will harbour. With a population of six million, Ahmedabad has more than its share of camels. They’re all in the cart-pulling trade, but when I get there early in the morning a goodly number of them are not yet in harness. Next to the tea stall outside the passport office, a camel is lounging beside its cart. At the same time that - seated on an empty paint tin doubling as a stool - I get my ginger tea, the camel's owner plunks down a bucket-sized pot on its cart. The camel lumbers to its feet to eat its breakfast of chick peas. With each mouthful, it raises its head towards the sky, and I’m not quite sure whether it closes its eyes in ecstasy.
A couple of hours later I’m through at the passport office. My job only partly done ("You must make an affidavit before a First Class magistrate in your city”), I hit the road a little despondently. But there are the camels to cheer me up. With their supercilious air they wait at traffic lights, hold their own against trucks and buses, and look down on the puny cars. Even more slowly than the camel carts, I drift with the traffic till I reach the bridge over the Sabarmati. The river which, nearly a century ago, lent its name to Gandhi's ashram. The river which two years ago divided the old part of the city, wracked by violence and death, from the newer part of the city going about its business as if nothing unusual had happened.
Today the Sabarmati's sluggish water sparkles in the sun. As I look across the river at the dead smokestacks of extinct textile mills, a bell tinkles behind me. It’s an elephant with a load of banyan leaves.
I walk across the bridge beside the elephant.
slow river
a bus rumbles
across the bridge
I don’t know how to begin, but here I am, coming crawling back to you. I can understand that you don’t even want to hear from me, I would have reacted the same way, but I’m a different person now, really. I think I was just too afraid of commitment then, and I didn’t know how to explain to you. Now I feel more settled, you have to believe me, we do all grow up, don’t we? Will you have me back, dear D? Okay, I won’t press you, I’ll give you time, after all you’ve waited this long. Please try and forgive, dear Diary, I won’t let something like this happen again.
Well dear Diary, you’re silent, I guess I have to make all the running this time. It’s only fair, I guess. So let me tell you about something that happened way back in 2004, that I never got around to talking about the last time. That was a couple of months before I took a two-year break from Baroda - oh, I hadn’t told you about that either? Well, this is what I’d written at the time:
Ahmedabad
Of late my claim to the status of an urban limpet, firmly attached to the ebb and flow of life in one city, is being undermined. In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to make repeated trips to Ahmedabad. All this for a passport which will enable me to travel even farther.
My first trip disabuses me of the notion that the larger a city, the fewer camels per square mile it will harbour. With a population of six million, Ahmedabad has more than its share of camels. They’re all in the cart-pulling trade, but when I get there early in the morning a goodly number of them are not yet in harness. Next to the tea stall outside the passport office, a camel is lounging beside its cart. At the same time that - seated on an empty paint tin doubling as a stool - I get my ginger tea, the camel's owner plunks down a bucket-sized pot on its cart. The camel lumbers to its feet to eat its breakfast of chick peas. With each mouthful, it raises its head towards the sky, and I’m not quite sure whether it closes its eyes in ecstasy.
A couple of hours later I’m through at the passport office. My job only partly done ("You must make an affidavit before a First Class magistrate in your city”), I hit the road a little despondently. But there are the camels to cheer me up. With their supercilious air they wait at traffic lights, hold their own against trucks and buses, and look down on the puny cars. Even more slowly than the camel carts, I drift with the traffic till I reach the bridge over the Sabarmati. The river which, nearly a century ago, lent its name to Gandhi's ashram. The river which two years ago divided the old part of the city, wracked by violence and death, from the newer part of the city going about its business as if nothing unusual had happened.
Today the Sabarmati's sluggish water sparkles in the sun. As I look across the river at the dead smokestacks of extinct textile mills, a bell tinkles behind me. It’s an elephant with a load of banyan leaves.
I walk across the bridge beside the elephant.
slow river
a bus rumbles
across the bridge
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