Ghost from the past ( by Sanghamitra Nath)

 

My association with my grandparents was for a very brief period of time as they left this world before I could grow up to tell  ALL of their stories. All I remember about those days is specifically about my grandfather who was very gentle, humble and used to give us his childhood books to read. He was very quiet almost in a mystical way. Since we lived far away from both our grandparents, we used to visit them only once a year that too for a few days and all that came to an end very quickly as they passed away too soon. 

My childhood days were  painted by the colorful antics of my elderly aunt. She  replayed the role of  my  beloved grandparents-in fact, she in a way  carried their legacy. I remember about my grandma's house, in which my aunt used to live after grandma's death...I recall the deep brown ceramic mugs (now lost forever, don't know where they are...), the deep green wooden reading/ writing  table , the colors started peeling off much before I could even begin to describe how it looks like...and of course the embroidered cushion covers, the crochet work...the backyard garden with lemon plants, big trees bearing local fruits...and the "family well".   The well from which we used to draw water...for bathing,  cooking, washing etc. etc. as there was no other source of water in those times... ( The well is called  "Kua" in our native language)

In that house, the smell that lingered  was that of the raw green mango pickles in bottles filled with mustard oil left for drying in the sun.

My aunt was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and used to quote him often.

So many years have passed by since then...now our entire family has changed...they no longer follow the quotes of Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps, with the death of my grandpa, grandma and now, with  the days remaining in the lives of my ailing aunty, an era has come to an end, an era that signified innocence and simplicity, truth and love.

An End of Innocence, perhaps.

I am not sure whether we can give as much love as they gave  or go through as much hardships as they went through...maybe it is simply not in us or is it because we have become too harsh with the changing times while dealing with life's brutalities ?

I do not know yet I know this much that an entire lifetime of memories will still linger in my mind....perhaps these memories, this attempt of looking into the past will force me to embrace that old, simple life into the folds of my new life until I feel satisfied that I have done enough.

Perhaps nobody will listen to the echoes of the ghosts from the past but they are still there if we care to listen ...so much love and wisdom is buried in these memories, if we care to find.

Beauty and Madness

 

For a long time, I have not updated my blog. That is because I have been dealing with a lot of events in my life lately. My husband has been transferred to a new city. We will move there as soon as he finds a new home for us. Meanwhile, I have left my old city for good, with bag and baggage and right now, I am living with my parents in my childhood hometown. 


My health is also improving though there is lot left to be desired. At my parents home, I am getting enough time to take rest, eat good food and soak in the sunshine, all of which is good for my health.

  

I did lose interest in photography, writing, blogging and other such creative pursuits because of my health and also because of the adverse reactions of the strong medicines that I have been taking for a while. However, in spite of all these events, I have been thinking of beauty and seeing beauty everywhere. I do not know how this happens, but I can just “see” that. Something about life still intrigues me…the fragrance of flowers, the wild plant that grows between the creeks, the voice of  certain singers ( Linda Ronstadt , Lisa Stansfield ), their soul stirring melancholic songs, their voice hitting a certain note at a certain point of the song…and a lot of other things like the play of light and shade through the window in a room at odd hours…certain colors, like the color pale green or white and the mood created by them.

  

Beauty is beautiful indeed. To live , to feel alive as if my face has been splashed with a sudden gush of water…rain water, forcing me to come alive at this very moment..like a newborn calf that wants to run just after it comes out of its mother’s womb…it happens. 



Life gets more mysterious as time marches on. It plays tricks on us, on our senses. We fall apart sometimes but there is something that pulls us up in the midst of nowhere….it takes us by surprise…it shows us the madness that is called life. Madness and Chaos. And Beauty in the midst of it.

-----
Photo Description: Flowers I decorated in a brass metal urli (bowl) filled with water. All flowers are from my mom's garden.

Never Let Me Go

( dear city of joy, didn't want to bid goodbye without a smile )


~

The leaves of the plants once put in our flower vase are turning yellow. They are going to fall off anytime now. In their place, new light green baby leaves are emerging ...such is the cycle of life...the new gives way to the old...and the old ? The old vanishes somewhere...into the folds of some memory that we once used to have, which is no longer relevant perhaps.

So, the plant mimics my life. Dear friends, I am leaving this city forever. I am leaving my place which I used to call my dear home in a few days. I am going to a new city. And ironically, this new city will also turn out to be like that plant in the vase...one day, we are going to bid farewell to the new city too and march on to another city...

People who get extremely and intimately too attached to everything that they meet on their way, people who are like me, cannot handle such a transition with ease. I get too attached to objects and people too soon. That is why I crave for some kind of everlastingness.

Something that will stay forever.

But as I am growing up, I am learning that everything including this life that you and I have do not last forever. Everything is transitory.

We love, we get attached and one day it is gone...be it your home, your loved ones or your feelings that  gave you some kind of security...even feelings and thoughts that we lovingly and tightly held since childhood are gone now...

I vividly remember the first day I arrived in Kolkata. After the flight landed in the airport, we took a taxi ...the taxi drove past rows and rows of slums... children bathing in the street with abandon...women drying clothes...the chaos, the noise, the heat and the dust..the big trees..cotton trees with big dark green fruits hanging over the branches...so many of them...people talking in loud voices because the noise coming from the vehicles around them are even louder...the rich and the poor co-existing with not much gap between them either in terms of housing or in their mental make up...I made a few friends among them...and today..

Today, I am leaving. From being a total stranger to an intimate friend, this city changed my life forever. Yes, that is a big statement to make, but it is also the truth of my life. I was never born in this city. None of my relative or family member live in this city. Yet, it took me up in its lap just like a new mother would take care of an adopted child. That an adopted child is capable of receiving so much love, I never had any sense of that before arriving in Kolkata.

I was only a human being before I came here. This city made me spiritual. You name any emotion- love, longing, caring, sorrow, loneliness, patience, sacrifice, happiness,melancholy, absence,  -any emotion worth experiencing was made to be experienced by me ...was forced into me ..by this city..in all its depths.

Only friends and relatives cannot make you human. 
The trees, the strangers, the sky and the air that you breathe in, day in and day out, everything has its role to play in your life....not only they make you and change you but they give you so much when no one else can give you...
I remember many a nights and days when I used to stare out of my window into the vast sky and into the big tree with many branches...I could find something that no human could give...at least in that moment of human absence, or lack- the sky , the tree and nature gave me company..

Now, I am leaving that very tree, that sky...and that home that I so lovingly decorated and caressed with my own hands like a mother would caress her own baby...for some it is just a change of place ...from one to another...but for me, it is like leaving everything that I got so used to, so attached to...

From now on, the mornings won't be the same forever. Neither the nights. And that tree which I used to look at everyday...right outside my window...

One day, I will come back, many years later to this same place and look at that tree once again. And the sky, my old house...Or who knows, I might forget it all...new memories will rise up in the place of old ones, forcing me to adapt and adjust ...like the plant in the vase, shedding its old leaves, giving way to the new ones...

But what about everlastingness then ?

Nostalgia. Looking back. Looking back with fondness or sorrow...

As long as these memories are tightly etched in my mind, even if new memories are forcibly pulling me by my hair and telling me to look elsewhere, they would be everlasting indeed.

Love

Today it is cold outside. A beautiful cold morning.

Today is also Saturday. Most offices and workplaces have a half day of work. Today is also Valentine's day. So, the young office goers will get half of the day to celebrate V day with their family, friends or their beloved.

As for myself, I am fortunate that I have a beloved in the first place. Celebration comes much later or not at all.

Everybody who has a beloved child, sister, relative or a husband will know what I am saying. We have a valuable gift. And those who don't have anyone, we have to give them our love. By our kind words and beautiful gestures, we have to heal the world.

Last night, I was talking with my 65 year aunt over the telephone. She, who never married and has no child of her own, she, who lives alone away from me in a faraway place,  it was her voice, her empathy and the kind words that she spoke to me over the telephone that reminded me of the power of love once again.

The power of love is that, love has the power to heal. No, not to heal that much, but to assure us that we are not alone in this universe. The power of love is that it allows us to belong somewhere...in someone's heart, in someone's home or in someone's thoughts...

The sense of belongingness that love gives, nothing can give. Love gives us the sense that we are not alone. That we are not left out. That we are accepted. And we are allowed into something...into the life of someone else and also allowed to be ourselves, I guess. No, not by someone's permission but by someone's kindness...the look  of love says it all...it says, you are allowed into my life...but more importantly, you are allowed to be yourself.

Times are changing. The world is not what it used to be when I was young. But thank God, Love is. In this foreverchanging world, love is perhaps needed more than ever before.

Whenever you feel sad, down, or betrayed by life remember this :

We have the power of love to change the world. So, go out and reach out, even if it is a single soul, a single person or a single plant...give it a part of your soul ..who knows maybe it is the only thing that it was craving for so long....

~

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

That myth is more potent than history.

That dreams are more powerful than facts.

That hope always triumphs over experience.

 That laughter is the only cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death.

~Robert Fulghum

I Can Feel

                                                                                                     

My  face is twisted and I have sharp pointed teeth. In fact,too pointed. I wonder" Do they look at those teeth first, or at my face ?"

I look in the mirror and I think," I look so different from them".

--------------

Some of them suggest corrective surgery while all the while they must be thinking that I look like a little devil incarnated as a human. Some of them feel pity at me and lament about how hard it must be for my parents to bring me up like that. Some of them think that my body can be fixed with the latest developments in medical science. Some just break down in tears after meeting me.

And some others might think to themselves that oh how lucky they are that at least they don't have to deal with anything like me in their lives.

Sometimes, even my parents get frustrated with me. They get angry if I go into a repeat mode and ask them the same question again and again. But I understand their anger. After all, they are human beings too. They also have a certain level of tolerance.

---------------

 Yes, I can feel all these ...and I can see too...

I can look outside my window with my blurred vision..although I wear a high powered spectacle.

I can see that tree and those green leaves. Oh! I love that tree so much. I love greenery, the outdoors! And inside my body, I feel that feeling that everyone must be feeling everyday...the feeling of unexplained desires, of love and lust..

--------------

Some people simply avoid me. Some keep wondering how to deal with me, what to talk with me...some are so kind to me. Among these people, I get attracted to some but they must be feeling pity for me all the time.

---------------

I can feel the silence in your hearts,

I can feel the strong winds blowing outside my window,

I can feel what you feel towards me even if you don't speak up...

The meanings that lie subdued in my heart, I cannot express by words because when I try to say something, it seems that it will take a lifetime for me to compose a perfect sentence through my twisted face and my pointed teeth...finally what comes up is a cluster of jumbled up words that my mother tries so hard to understand but can't.

So, I held myself back.

Yet, I can feel..

The roaring sea waves crashing in the shore,

The love that is in the eyes of a couple falling for each other,

The hurt that cuts through my barren chest...

---------------

I am often afraid. Without my mother and the support of my family, would I be able to survive ?Why do God make people who "need" others to survive ? I want to able to do things on my own.

I have read somewhere in a medical journal that people like me don't survive for too long anyway. Sometimes, I just wish that it comes true. But sometimes, I just want to enjoy an ice cream and look outside my window for hours. I love to look at trees. They are so beautiful. And I like the rains.

------------

All by myself, and all alone, perhaps, I am nothing.

But then, I wonder, this beautiful world is also like me.

All by itself, this beautiful world, the trees and the seas, the wind and the water...is nothing, nothing at all.

This world needs a certain entity called "me" to transmit and convey  all that it wants to convey. Everything that I see and I do, I feel and I write, comes through "me" and goes to me.  I am there for you as much as you are there for me...this world would be a morbid place if not for me and my feelings...Without "me" and without "myself", would those thoughts and feelings about this beautiful world be there in the first place ?

But then, why not ?

Who can prove that trees cannot feel ?

------------------

                                                                                       

{ This is the second short story that I have published in this blog. You can read my first short story here }

In this short story, I have raised some questions that often comes to my mind : "Can the 'observed' exist or have any value without the 'observer' ? Can a person be enough all by herself ? Does she needs the society to feel valued?

The answer to all these questions is subject to our perception and according to my perception, a person can indeed have an independent existence.

Here, in this story, the (differently abled) woman in question is both the observer and the observed.

Towards the end, she tries to make sense of her "being" by trying to understand her relationship with this beautiful world where the beautiful world itself becomes the observed and she herself, the observer. Although she mistakenly thinks that this "observed" entity {beautiful world) has no independent existence of its own, and that it gets a meaning only when someone /the observer defines it, she also gets increasingly aware of the power of her feelings and emotions which she uses to define herself and her relationships.}