Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“When we press the thorn to our chest we know, we understand, and still we do it.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
Tara
I don’t know how I do it, how anyone could do it, but I keep stumbling upon something behind me, over and over again.
The sky was not the sky I knew. It was a grey doormat that had been well used and was beginning to fade. I must have been particularly droopy as she came up to me and said:
“Do you know why I like daisies so much” I remained silent as I knew she would tell me anyway…
She did. “I like them because although they droop in the rain, they are the first to rise and shine when the sun comes out”.
I made a mental note to check the veracity of her claims. I also wondered if this was an admirable trait. Didn’t the unassuming flower display a certain panache for being capricious?
Why was she telling me this?
Was I the daisy?
Or was it her?
Does it even matter now?
As I continue to look at the sky, that is no longer the sky I knew, I wonder, what will it feel like to move forward and not wonder about what we have left behind?
Raghav
Free will: fractal or limited I could never say.
The storm that had fractured some trees had made the grass even more green. I didn’t even think it was possible. That the grass could be any more green. But it was. Each blade sharp, crisp and alive. Things just happen, or so it seems. The natural world, they say, rests on the notion of balance. But no one warns that the balance might not appear natural at all.
I was told early on that I must save the best for the last; and one of the things I did best was wait; wait for the right moment, the right time and the right chance.
It eluded me however, this perfect moment.
And yet, I waited, even though it never worked for me.
I was told I must save the best clothes for a special occasion, for later. I waited. When it was later, the clothes didn’t fit me anymore.
This happened repeatedly; were the clothes in my own closet beyond my reach?
Not really.
I did have a choice, didn’t I?
Then why did I choose to be so doggedly practical, against my will?
And this is not even about clothes, or trees or the grass.
Maybe it’s just about being supple against the storms of destiny.
Maybe it’s about being prepared against the storms of destiny.
Maybe believing we are supple, or prepared or can change the course of our fate is just one of the ways of holding ourselves together.
Scarlett
The wave swallowed me like it lugged the entire sea.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, it swallowed my entire world.
The sea never rests, but it could easily fool you. The shades of blue, the moods of the sea, always the same, yet always different. Someone who was probably half in love with the ocean once said, ‘Waves are not measured in feet or inches; they are measured in increments of fear’
My foot was lodged in the sand and yet the sea pulled relentlessly.
My fear could not be measured. Feet, inches or even otherwise. Something snapped. My scream was lodged inside my throat. Later, much later, they told me to blink.
Once for yes
Twice for no
And I blinked no no no no no no no
The entire sea rose inside me like bile.
The Storyteller
Don’t look at me like I know what’s going on
And if I do get some ripostes, that’s usually towards the end or as Raghav says “later”. However, sometimes, depending on how closely you look, in the pauses, in between the rhetorical questions, rests the answer.
The grass and the trees, the sea and the sky
Are
Crisp Under my feet
Wet between my toes
And definitely over my head
As night softly gathers
The remains of the day
The treasures smell of dirt.
Tara
I should have said no. I should have said no. I should have said no.
The question seemed simple enough. Guileless, and at one point almost pleading.
What was I to do? ‘We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow’. I understand now why Hamlet procrastinates instead of rushing head on to resolve his dilemma.
I didn’t.
Yes, living with her should be okay.
Yes, it would help us financially
Yes, we would live in a lovely house
Yes, it’s quite simple really.
Yes, it was rather altruistic
Yes, we could move out anytime we felt couldn’t manage
Yes, we should give it a shot
As the answers float around my head, I’ve almost forgotten the question.
Raghav
It’s the right decision, even altruistic if you think about it.
I told her that.
Don’t they say an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered?
I have considered it.
We have considered it.
I’m absolved.
Besides it’s only short term.
We can walk out anytime… and definitely after a year.
Six months if it comes to that.
What’s there to lose?
Why all these doubts in the first place?
Yes, it’s the right decision. I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.
Yet, they say, sometimes even the right decisions in the right direction can take you to the wrong place.
Scarlett
Ironical,
How my name connotes everything I’m not.
Think Scarlett O’Hara
Think Scarlett Johansson
Larger than life stars on page and screen
Almost cruel to be called Scarlett
What were my parents thinking?
But that was before...
“Life happens dear, besides don’t both heroines fight against the odds?”
Yeah right! Fight against the odds- let me start by living on my own.
Was it relief I saw, lurking behind their concerned faces?
“Money won’t make living with yourself any easier dear”
Then I’ll just have to get some company…won’t I?
My name will just have to make up for everything I’m not.
The Storyteller
Someone mentioned daisies. Was it Tara?
Here are some Interesting facts.
In the first year of its life, a biennial daisy grows from seed but does not flower. It flowers during its second year just before dying.
Intriguing that in a Daisy two flowers combine as one. The inner section-a disc floret, and the outer section, petals- a ray floret. Since the two flowers come together seamlessly as one, a daisy symbolizes true love.
Also Intriguing, that according to a Celtic legend, whenever an infant died, God sprinkled daisies over the earth to cheer the parents up.
Life
Love
Death
And everything in between
Mingle in this earth
And to what God does,
We
add our own interpretations
Tara
I was scared as I held the universe, tentative and fragile in my hand, fearing that I’d drop it.
The novels I’d read had painted several images and now they sat one on top of the other; I tried to discern one, any one image, but they had all overlapped. I couldn’t pull out one from the stack without making the rest collapse.
I was going to America!
I had held it so close once, in my lap as I dozed off to sleep in quiet afternoons when the sun seemed to be on cruise control.
In the pictures I created of the landscape, the Deep South, the Great Plains, the Pacific Northwest and the prairies where literature left no territory uncharted and no heart unscathed.
In the characters I knew so intimately, yet could not distinguish in features
And now, as I looked at the itinerary, I wondered, was reality robbing me of my fantasy? Would my journey to America take me away from the America I knew?
Was I ready? Had I overlooked something?
Ma always says; no matter how careful you are, something always gets left behind.
Were the constellations in my eyes my blind spot? I couldn’t say for sure.
I didn’t know then that the universe would drop anyway. It kept expanding and my hands didn’t.
Raghav
She is my wife and I barely know her.
But there will be plenty of time to remedy that.
I know they scoff at arranged marriages here, but it just took a moment. I knew the answer in a flash. I wasn’t sure about her.
She didn’t look and seem particularly demure to me. Eyes curious and the face just about to break into a smile. Only the clasping and re-clasping her hands gave her away. Nervous?, a little lost maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t look, couldn’t look at her long enough. Her face took on a glazed expression when she said yes. But her eyes smiled.
And she reads American classics, listens to American music, and even likes American food.
My galloping destiny! Later, when we were allowed to be alone for a bit, she even mulled over my strange suggestion, drew together quizzical brown eyes and said yes. Most girls wouldn’t…would they? I wouldn’t know about most girls anyway. But to be willing to start married life in a new country in the situation I propose would take courage for sure, or just naivety? Perhaps both. Aren’t both connected?
It might seem like I’m asking for too much, but I’m not just thinking about myself alone. It’s for the both of us. Just a year down the line and we’ve saved enough to put a down payment on a home.
Besides it’s not like we have to do anything. Scarlett has a nurse and help besides. Strange name Scarlett. I much prefer Tara.
And Tara said yes!
Scarlett
It was an awkward moment.
Or probably it was just Raghav. He sat at the edge of the blue accent chair, the one placed by the window and one of his feet tapped a rhythm of its own.
The chair was set against the light of the sun and I spoke mostly to his profile.
He said his name meant ‘God’ in Hindu Mythology.
I don’t know why I asked.
He shifted in his chair, looked at me oddly, like there was something obscured from view. Like I was a particularly abstract piece of art; life arrested in three dimensions. What did he expect? Deformity of the face as well? Sometimes saliva collected and dribbled from the side of my mouth, but I could say with some surety that at that moment my mouth was dry.
Is everything alright? I asked, that rattled him even more. The tapping increased.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was rethinking the entire prospect, his decision.
Would I be disappointed if he did change his mind? I don’t think so.
“My wife is coming to the States in a week, we will move in then”
Okay- I said, but the word came out wrong. Almost nonchalant. Like I did not care, like I did this all the time.
Okay- I tried again and this time it sounded resigned.
I gave up.
“Is there anything else you wanted to ask?”
Gingerly, from his pocket he took out the list.
The Storyteller
There are people I know who are perpetually on a monkey bar. Struggling to hold on because they refuse to let go. They clutch the bar even harder when I tell them the weight threatens to drag them down.
Gravity isn’t known to be kind.
Don’t look for yourself
In what you’ve left behind.
The space
between the bars isn’t much
But the
expanse of the mind is such.
Between
letting go of the known
And embracing the unknown
There is a moment
Where even I hold my breath
Take the leap
Don’t look below
You must let go
You must let go
Tara
The clouds dotted the sky. The sky; more white than blue, reposed smugly beneath the clouds as if to say you come and go, but I stay on forever.
The view outside the window of the plane was static. Only at Heathrow, halfway into my journey did the sense of taking off intensify. This was really happening!
We were to stay for the first week in the apartment Raghav was renting and then move into the raised ranch with Scarlett. Scarlett, the name stayed for longer than required in your tongue,a little heavy but I didn’t mind. Despite the oddities, the errors, and manipulations didn’t Scarlett ‘O Hara stay lovable until the end?
A slight dip in cabin pressure and the perspective shifted. I could get lost in my reveries.
She would obviously stay on the ground floor and we had the first floor to ourselves. We had to pay no rent; just be there to see that she was alright and keep her company as and when she required. She had a nurse, two actually, who worked in shifts to ensure that she always had one of them by her side. Given her circumstances, it was rather audacious of her to stay alone. Where was her family? I asked Raghav and he said it didn’t matter and that this setup suited us well.
I wonder how the meeting between them went. The AC roared like a cub; tentative and sporadic. How long would it take? I slipped into a question mark.
My dreams were dreams that stay in the periphery of consciousness and unconsciousness and cannot be recalled.
My neck was stiff, and the little mirror in the little toilet showed a red mark slashed across my cheek.
The seam of my sweatshirt.
A stale odor permeated the plane as the airhostess prepared the plane for landing.
My stomach dropped.
Raghav
Scarlett was older than us, by how many years exactly, I couldn’t say.
Maybe five. Probably less.
She was definitely not what I had expected.
She made me nervous or maybe it was just the surprise. She seemed so normal.
Surprise?
Well, whatever the feeling was, it was rather pleasant.
My nervy questions were checked with composed responses.
Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?
But I’ve told you about nature seeking balance. Maybe in the imbalance rests the balance.
I barely saw the house, even less the first floor. I glanced at it as I pulled the car from the driveway. The fading light of the sun was kind on the exteriors. The shutters indolently kept all of it from seeping inside. As the shadows played hide and seek, I felt like the fox in a story who saw his shadow in the morning and wanted to eat a camel, and later in the afternoon, after seeing his shadow again, he knew he would have to be content with a mouse.
There was some unrest. Something small was stirring inside, however, there wasn’t enough of it to give it much thought. Sufficient cream is required before you can churn it for butter.
What would Tara think of the house?
This was the first time I thought about the house.
And about Tara.
I stared at the lawn as I walked to my car. If it didn’t rain in the next couple of days, the green would turn ochre.
The meeting ended the way it began- with a question mark.
Scarlett.
My defiance amazed me. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t their fault, I needed to get back at someone. Anyone.
They were the closest when I hurled back what I had unwittingly received. It must’ve hurt.
Mom and Dad didn’t like the idea of my opening home to strangers. Indians at that. A newly married couple? Why not someone I knew?
Because;
There were people I used to know. But that was before.
Now, (and this is euphemistically speaking), while I was getting worn and tarnished their lives continued to gleam and shine. I was an extra piece and their puzzle was already complete. I didn’t just not fit in, I wasn’t required.
Even Aiden turned away. He said it wasn’t the accident and what it did to me. It was who I had become.
I said I understood, but I didn’t.
Like the two could be separated. Everything finds a way to connect to everything else.
Even the Saharan dust found its way to the Southeastern US, linking the unassuming sand to the spectacular sunrise and sunsets.
The Storyteller
Luckily, there are no extra pieces in the puzzle that is the universe, everything fits in; each small piece contributing to the big picture. The bigger universe. And in the bigger universe time begins to align with the stars.
The wounds that cannot be seen
Overwhelm the other senses.
Their rumblings can be heard from far
Their putrid odor permeates the air
They leave a bitter taste
Where words should have been.
As one gropes in the metaphoric dark
The heart and mind on a wheelchair
In the bitter stillness
Time seems hard and stagnant.
And yet
It flies
It flows.
It laughs
It looks you straight in the eye
And does not flinch.
Tara
Raghav picked me up in his beat-up Sentra. He looked a little tired. A little shy. Although my body threatened to give in to jet lag my mind kept racing, I’m here! I’m really here!
The tidy maze of lanes, interchange roads and highways criss crossed towards our apartment.
The apartments were shabbily put together, fraying at the edges. Almost like cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.
Raghav looked at me intently, bachelor’s den no more, he smiled as he ushered me inside.
A curious mismatch of furniture and other assortments put together by a child.
A faint smell of onions and a lemony room freshener.
Something melted inside. Home.
The basement apartment allowed half of the earth and half of the sky to reach our window. The old leathery bark of a tree from the living room and some dappled, slanted sun through the leaves in the bedroom.
My eyes danced from wall to wall. At the center of every room stood Raghav.
Raghav spoke before I could say anything. Tell him how much I loved it.
He said this place isn’t fit for you.
He said we’d be moving out in a week.
He said I’d love the new home.
Raghav
Tara looked bemused. And beautiful. And so out of place.
I had cleaned up the old place for her.
I cooked.
I had even drawn the blinds to ensure that she did not see the pavement. She opened the windows! The basement apartment didn’t promise any views, but she smiled, hugging herself. She deserved better.
She could take what she liked from here. Nothing big of course. The first floor of Scarlett’s house was furnished and there was nothing much to take from here anyway. “MultiGen” Scarlett had called it -with a little kitchenette on the first floor.
We could have guests, but we needed to inform her first.
We could not have parties.
Tara and I would have to help her if required. We could not, however, encroach upon her privacy. No pictures of the home, of her, no smoking…
I still thought it was a good, if odd idea.
Only later, much later when the night kisses farewell and pulls at dawn, Tara whispered in my ear “Can we just stay here”?
She slept almost immediately afterwards, and I tossed and turned till the beginnings of a luminescent dawn nudged me into a fitful sleep.
Scarlett.
Ava (the nurse) took the news well I thought.
No comments.
They are to come home tomorrow. Raghav and Tara.
I quite like the name Tara. A star. When Raghav told me that he smiled.
Arranged marriages!
I don’t even want to think about it. How can two people decide their entire future based on a moment or a couple of days?
You’d say, look who’s talking.
My entire future was wiped out in a moment.
Me and Aiden? What happened? Every poem he wrote about me was now a haiku; heightened pauses, reverberating silences, and the spaces between the words lost to time.
Mom said even the best relationships fall out after a tragedy like this.
Is that what I am now?
A tragedy?
A fall out?
Is that how Aiden sees me? Like a crumpled draft, he’s forgotten to throw away.
I need to move on. Move out of the 17 syllables. Words were rearranging themselves. My world is colliding with theirs.
It would be interesting to see the repercussions. The outcome. The dissonance.
Would I marry someone I just knew?
Would I agree to stay with a diplegic?
No
No
Tara did both.
The Storyteller
How others see you does not matter. The essential question is how do you see yourself?
The virgin canvas
And the artist feels
The blush of the pink
The bruise of the purple
The wisdom of the yellow
The pain of the blues
The passion of the red
And responds
Why is the picture beautiful you ask?
Has the artist given himself away?
Has the canvass brought to light a secret?
The outside is only a manifestation
Of the inside.
The big and small, almost painful
Details of your life
Change colors into sense
Tara
I must get used to this. This silence, this space. My mind, a bridge - builder now, immediately thought of India, where there was always some displacement, some commotion as one entered a new environment. But here, there was barely a rustle as we parked the car.
Scarlett’s home sat in the dappled sunlight. The interplay of sun and shadow hiding as much as it revealed.
The golden oriole is a small class of bird found throughout Europe and western Asia. The male bird is astonishing with prominent yellow and black feathers. Both the male and female, however, are hard to spot in the awning as they are not only camouflaged among the leaves but also by the golden rays of the sun. How extraordinary to be camouflaged in and by the sun!
What was the house hiding?
Or was it just playing safe?
Raghav did the introductions.
Scarlett.
A juxtaposition of light and dark. Features animated on a soft face; Catherine reposing on a chair after Heathcliff returns to break hearts once again.
The moment seemed fragile, held together just by the tick of time.
Again, the questions were simple enough.
Yes, my jet lag was much better.
Yes, I was excited. Yes, I miss home, India.
Yes, the house was lovely, and I would like to see the first floor.
My past and the present merging, unfurling around us.
It wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
I’m not sure what I said, but all of a sudden Scarlett’s jaw dropped and something like a smirk slanted across her face.
Sunlight through the blinds.
Raghav looked uncomfortable, I didn’t mind, I knew it was meant to be a smile.
Raghav.
Tara looked outside the window of the car as the scenery blurred into a kaleidoscope of suburban colors.
I thought she was unusually quiet. Like a butterfly on the windowsill, romanticizing, wondering at its own transformation.
But who was I to deduct anything? How much did I really know her?
“So, what do you think?” I asked nonchalantly, trying to find a radio station she would like.
No response.
Was my agitation evident? I wanted to know what she thought of me, of the situation, of Scarlett. In fact, I needed to know what she was thinking. Beginnings bother me. They can be rather sly, make you believe they are soft and harmless, yet scratch your face at the least provocation. I thought the meeting went well, but I wanted to know if she felt the same.
Should I ask her again?
I tried to distract myself by making a mental list of all the stuff we still had to pick up from the apartment. Instead, Scarlett’s home flashed in the mind’s eye. Tenuous smiles, nervous laughter, different worlds colliding and three of us in the intersection of the venn diagram.
Almost like no time had elapsed between the question and the response Tara spoke; “Reality is always kinder than our imagination”.
Was she quoting someone?
Was she answering the question?
She looked at me and smiled. A million answers rained on me.
I wasn’t going to probe further.
Billy Joel crooned ‘I go to extremes’ as I parked the car in the parking lot where the rain and oil had made rainbows in the asphalt.
Scarlett.
I threw up after they left.
Nausea usually hits me in the morning, but excitement can cause spasticity and dizziness anytime. Ava runs through the record of the day, the pressure, urine output, sores …
My body is now an entity of its own. No longer in my grip, it moves at random; Although it fits in a rather neat wheelchair, it occupies so much place in our minds that it often feels like there are three people in the room when it’s only me and Ava.
Like now.
I do a reasonably good job of rolling my eyes. Ava is not impressed, mumbling something to herself which I know is along the lines of; Raghav and Tara moving in should help me with depression, not make me puke…
I pretend I haven’t heard. Because I haven’t. Not really. Besides, Ava is kind. She relents. Mary is ruthless. It’s good she comes mostly at night when I can pretend to be asleep. Small mercies.
Speaking of which, Tara is not really a star. Her dazzle is softer.
More like the moon drifting in on a tide. Bringing with her things from the deep bottom of the sea, from another world, beyond the seven seas and then carelessly, tossing those things onto the shore where they will probably remain long after the tide has waned.
I have not come to terms with the ocean yet.
And Raghav! I met him only a week ago, but it seems like I had met someone else entirely. The self-assured Raghav I met today wasn’t the awkward Raghav of the old. He told no one in particular that they will be using the other entrance to the house. That the lawn needs watering. That he was grateful I had decided to share my home. The smile came naturally to him, almost without his knowing.
What had happened to him in just one week?
Tara!
The Storyteller.
.
You’d be crushed,
if i told you beforehand
the effects
of your actions, your words, your silence.
Now,
it might seem
everything is transient
People, places, time itself.
And you glide
from moment to moment,
believing you can fool them
leave them behind.
Build something new
from what you did not stack?
But the world spins on an axis
And time is a spiral
People, places,
actions,
words and
even silence
will come back
either in the front
or behind you
but never beside you
and you will look back and ponder
and you will look ahead and wonder
and maybe you’ll finally understand
Why I never told you beforehand the effects of your actions, your words, your silence.
Tara
Recently, I’ve often found myself looking over my shoulder.
At the iron gate during ‘Vidaee’, when I left my childhood home after my hasty marriage. At the airport where in the new family that came to bid me adieu, I searched for the old. And even now, as we close the door to the apartment that was home for just a week, I look over my shoulder wondering if someone just might ask me to stay.
Some say, nothing of significance is ever learnt, it’s only remembered. Am I looking back to remember? Or to forget?
Raghav is crisp in his movements. Is it that easy to forget? To move on?
I hide behind his actions. Packing, checking, cleaning, closing.
Almost as an afterthought, he comes and hugs me. My nerves quiver, Gillette, Pine-sol and a little bit of anxiety.
Am I alright?
Excited?
He looks at me intently, I see a little boy wondering how far he must go.
He looks around at the disheveled home. Asks me again. Am I ok?
His voice was low, honey colored eyes were probing.
Definitely not an afterthought.
Yes, I’m alright.
Yes, I’m excited.
Now, I hide behind my own actions. Touching, remembering, looking over my shoulder.
The America of soggy cardboard boxes is left behind.
The rest as they say is suburbia.
Raghav.
Is it possible to get attached to a place in a week?
Tara kept looking back as we left the apartment. I assured her I had double checked; nothing was left behind.
As we walked up from the basement to the pavement, the squinted light from the sun illuminated her face. She looked reassured. Light fools us into showing what we want to see, into thinking we know who we are and what we are doing. Only in the absence of light we are forced to look beyond the colors- for truth. I didn’t. Besides, I had just read in a journal that pupils can dilate or expand in response to mere thoughts of light or dark.
So, it’s complicated. What if all this is just my imagination?
At Scarlett’s home, our home now, I guess, we took the other entrance, the little gate next to the garage. The lawn had been watered or it had rained. Scarlett had been listening! The kitchen and the utility area were spotless and gleaming as we took the stairs to the first floor.
The living room had a couch, a love seat and a TV stand. I thought of the TV in the car held between the cushions Tara had insisted on bringing along. One of the two bedrooms had a bed and the kitchenette was sparse but tidy. On the mezzanine floor, overlooking the garage and the hedge was a tiny study. The ground floor was certainly more attractive, but I had no complaints. This suited us just fine. Compared to the basement apartment, this was luxurious.
Tara looked around uncertainty, like she was only half way inside.
The voice of emptiness ricocheted between the walls, suddenly filling up the space between us. I closed the distance in two steps, the gesture a profusion of desperation and love.
With my arms around her shoulder we walked again from room to room.
There was no way of knowing then that Tara was already looking beyond the colors, beyond the walls, beyond what light had to show.
Scarlett.
I could hear the few trips to the car and back, and then nothing.
Were they upstairs? I could ask Ava, but she’d wonder.
The silence had never bothered me before.
Time stood on one leg, precariously balanced. I’m not sure for how long. Then, there was the sound of something dropping on the floor, followed by laughter, hesitant at first and soon spontaneous; for once not laced with irony.
The kind that this house had not heard in a long time.
My mind flooded with dream-like sequences, short but very real. Real, like when time had stood firmly on its own two feet.
The red frisbee on the tree
The trampoline groaning with weight
The grass stains
The endless meadows
And the laughter, always the laughter
When did summer end?
I longed to add my voice to theirs, but it needed to be resurrected. It needed a connection, a medium to shape concrete words that could fill the void.
Besides, Chaplin says, to truly laugh I must be able to take my pain and play with it.
I haven’t learnt to do that yet.
As the house expands to accommodate new sounds I shift into the shadows with the old.
The Storyteller
The universe changes,
even as we speak.
Galaxies both known,
and unknown
are moving a w a y from us,
no matter what galaxy you happen to be in,
other galaxies are moving away from you.
(Or maybe towards you but you don’t know.)
Moving in space,
that itself is kinetic.
In a universe that has no center;
everything is moving away
Or so it seems, because we can’t see,
that far into
time and space.
After enough time passes,
this plexus will expand,
galaxies will spread,
some destined to run in circles,
the end too close
to the starting point,
yet they will never know
If they were ever close enough
Some will collide-
Shooting stars...
Stardust.
Tara
Time never moves in a straight line.
Sometimes it’s a curve, an arc, an intersection, sometimes it zigzags, meandering as it weaves a story and sometimes it comes full circle.
Time can never really be understood as a straight line as there is always something to read in between the lines. The meaning continuously changes as we shift perspectives.
Where does one start?
Scarlett has a collection of audio books. “It feels like eavesdropping” she says “It does not feel the same”.
Never having heard an audio book before, I didn’t know what to say. But as I felt the weight of an actual book in my hand, I felt the heaviness of guilt. These were her books that she would probably never hold for long or read.
“Let me borrow an audiobook, I’ll listen to it, we could compare notes then” I relent.
By design or otherwise, Scarlett’s world was crisscrossing with mine. I spent a couple of hours with her almost every day. Mostly at a time convenient to her. I could always excuse myself, but I never did. With Raghav busy and sometimes away, she was my gateway to the new world. Her responses were often non-committal, the expression on her face difficult to construe and her eyes could look through you even when she looked at you. Although we spoke a lot, I usually left her company feeling I had said something I shouldn’t have.
My gateway to the new word was intercepted at best.
Through a tactic, unstated agreement she never spoke about her past and I was cautious to not venture in that direction. Even the present, the current happenings were not discussed much, as if it was a map, too close, too sharp and the destination a hazy uncertain future.
It was not the past, not the present and certainly not the future I remember living in. We were suspended in the curve, in the arc, in the zigzag motion of time, and it is only later I realized that we were running in circles.
Raghav
I was considering my choices but then realized I didn’t have any.
Scarlett had asked us to dine with her today. It wasn’t part of the deal. I mean yes, she wanted company, but dinner?
“Why not dinner?” Tara had been excited, but then she finds most things either stimulating or romantic and/or strangely poetic. Even the last leaf falling. Especially the last falling leaf.
Well, leaves were falling from the fork as Scarlett attempted to eat something that looked like salad from a bowl.
I couldn’t help starting at the fisted hand that held the fork in its center. The white knuckles, thin fingers, the strain, the epicenter of the room.
The scattered sound of conversation pooled near the ceiling. Thick above Scarlett and Tara. Thin above me.
It was an early Autumn evening, summer dragging its heels, when the air is still uncertain, a little confused. When a ray of dying sunlight on your neck can cause a chill down the spine. Sitting on the dining table, I began to feel like an outsider in my own life. Why was I observing things instead of living them?
Tara’s talks of Scarlett had colored my perception. I was looking at her through Tara’s eyes. My thoughts were as confused as the young autumn air we breathed.
Scarlett asked me about work, about other mundane things. I answered, not quite looking at her in the eye. My gaze still focused on the fist and the fork. I wonder why.
It was Tara who held the evening together, who melted away the awkward silences like butter on warm toast, who ignored the food that Scarlett had dropped around her plate, who overlooked my internal turmoil that manifested itself in staring at a woman’s clenched hand.
Afterwards, I curled around her. The darkness that had begun to drop during dinner fell in earnest. Tara spoke, I wished for two things;
I wished she would not talk about Scarlett.
I wished she would talk about Scarlett.
Scarlett
I should not have avoided physiotherapy today. I could feel my muscles spasm. My arms limp, exhausted from the strain of the evening.
A physical manifestation of an emotional state says Ava.
“It’s time for you to go. I’m already in bed” I say in response.
“I’ll wait for Mary” says Ava and busies herself with arranging paraphernalia on the dresser.
I closed my eyes and the evening floated in the mind’s eye.
It is said that the feathers are instrumental in helping a duck float; not just by circumventing the water but also by holding captive the air. The tiny barbs in the feathers latch together, creating a ballooning effect that traps the air between the feathers and the skin, giving a natural bounce to the duck.
I had to float, but my feathers were clipped.
Raghav was repeatedly glancing in my direction, his face deep in concentration as if searching his memory for the right word and coming up with nothing.
What did he see?
What did he think?
I didn’t want him feeling left out. I did not want him to grudge the time Tara spent with me. I did not want him to think the situation was weird. It was to be just a normal dinner, like between family and friends.
Except that we were neither family, nor friends.
My hip was beginning to throb. Although the bones protruded in my all too thin body, it was my hip area that was most affected due to my being in a sitting position for a large chunk of the day. Ava had checked. There was no chafing... yet.
Tara seemed oblivious to the strains of the evening. A bridge between Raghav and me. A bridge between me and everything else?
The Storyteller
The duck syndrome-
Appearing placid,
calm and composed,
on a superficial level.
While,
frantically,
making attempts to cope,
with the demands made
by life and time
Failing.
Where everyone else is succeeding,
looking at you,
testing your performance,
judging you.
And you redouble your efforts,
underneath
where no one will see them,
covertly hoping
the suppleness of the water
will hide the ripples of your heart.
But water knows no deceit
And you are left to the mercy of your feet.
Tara
The evenings were beginning to get nippy, but the gently reposing homes, the carefully clipped hedges and the manicured lawns seemed friendly enough. The roads were obliquely illuminated by the golden light filtering through the windows. As Raghav and I walked in the hushed neighborhood, the crunching of dry leaves under our feet was the only sound we heard. Just as I was beginning to feel that we were the only two people in this world, Raghav spoke- almost to himself. “So much better than my previous locality”.
The spell was broken.
I told him about my day.
How the wheelchair neatly glided through the ramp into the van.
How we drove around the college town that Scarlett thought was intent on garnering the interest of the students rather than meeting their requirements.
How I walked around the second hand book store, where books were at ‘half price’ but still too expensive.
How Scarlett asked Ava to stop the van in front of the hospital where a long time ago she had overheard the doctor say;
“No messages will come down from the point of injury”
How window shopping was done through double windows; one of the cars, and the other of the store. Little knick knacks and accoutrements lost in translation.
“I wish I could go with you instead of Scarlett. I mean it’s nice of her to take me along, but I’d rather explore the town by myself or with you”
“We could always do that Tara, I think she is just trying to be nice’
“Well, I don’t want to be mean either, but I’d rather lean on my own experiences and I’m unable to do that when I feel someone is leaning on me”.
Raghav continued to walk as if he had not heard me. As we turned towards Scarlett’s home he said;
“You could always say no, besides, I thought you didn’t mind”
“I don’t mind, it’s just that...”
“Just what? Okay, we will go to the town together this weekend?”
I continued to walk like I hadn’t heard him.
“Okay?” Raghav asked again and then said, “You can lean on me”.
“Okay.” I answered.
It didn’t seem okay though. I still wanted to say something but the night grew silent, flattened by the footfalls, the leaves no longer crunched, lights from the windows dimmed and I hugged myself as if to shield against the raw wind.
Raghav
I know the answer, but as I wrap my head around it, the words get warped. Even to me they sound distorted.
You can lean on me? I don’t think Tara appreciated it.
We had just finished dinner when the intercom buzzed. There was a slit on the slide board and Ava needed help with Scarlett.
Why is it that the most crowded room is also the loneliest? The Hospital bed, the wheel chair, the dresser, Ava and I were all poised for Scarlett, who was clearly uncomfortable having me in her personal space. That is if you could call a room like that a personal space.
She was stiff as we maneuvered her from the wheel chair to her bed, and flinched when we put her down.
Did we hurt her?
Her angular body didn’t weigh much, yet my arms and hands felt the weightiness. Scarlett looked away as she said thank you. As I walked out of the room, a little disoriented, my foot hit the leg of the dresser. Something rolled down, and Ava rushed to put it back on the dresser which was already overflowing with equipment, and bottles and pills and things I knew nothing about. For no reason at all I looked back at Scarlett, who looked at Ava, who looked at me. A sense of responsibility, acute and unbearable, akin to burden jumped on my shoulders as I climbed up the steps to Tara.
Was I using her vulnerability?
Had I created the storm or was merely caught in it?
Was I talking about Tara?
Or Scarlett?
When do things finally lose their gravity?
Scarlett
Ava has propped me up on the side of my bed. She agrees with my decision to stay in bed today. My ischial tuberosity, basically my sit bones are beginning to bruise the skin and we are both worried about a possible infection.
I felt Tara come down, hover around the bookcase and then go back up.
I felt? I probably just heard her come down.
“Didn’t she ask for me”? I asked Ava.
“What do you think?” was Ava’s reply.
I know Ava wasn’t too keen on the set up, but Tara? Did she not like Tara?
“I said I wanted to be in bed, I didn’t say I wanted to be alone”
I’m here, Aren’t I?” and with that she left the room.
What attitude! I made a mental note to talk to her when I felt less tired.
I must have dozed off listening to ‘Never let me go’ by Ishiguro. Tara had recommended the book. I’ve learnt she can communicate strangely at times.
Would she recommend this book to anyone? Did she recommend it especially to me? She does that sometimes, asks me to read a particular book or passage replete with food for thought. Like little headlights, what she made me read illuminated the path for a bit, up to a point, after which the road turned dark again.
She knows that I wasn’t always on a wheelchair and she should know that the notion of time moving on despite the losses we face cannot be lost on me, so why this book in particular?
Is she taking a stance on memory as a way of knowing? Knowing what?
Is this the reason why we doggedly hold on to memories? Perhaps even altering them in our minds; changing our past to make sense of our present.
Who are we... devoid of our memories?
‘Kathy’ in the book reminds me of Tara. I’ll have to tell her that.
Am I ‘reading’ too much into this?
If i am it’s probably the effect of someone else’s voice in my head
Did she come in and check on me while I slept?
I must have dreamed that.
The Storyteller
Memory is like a child
Walking along the seashore,
picking up pebbles and shells,
to keep among its treasured things.
Memory is like the young
Rising wave upon wave, rhythmic yet static,
dashing against the rocks of time,
returning broken hearted.
Memory is like the adult
A teardrop that stays in the eye,
It does not roll down,
no matter how hard you try
Memory is like the old
A brown leaf on a bare tree,
weathering the winter with nostalgia,
and refusing to fall off.
Tara
Summer like sand has slipped from our fingers. The air is now redolent of fall. The lawn, the yard and even the sky itself is a little windswept. Autumn, by now, is not a season, but rather a state of mind. A perfect blend of quiet contemplation, beauty, with just the right amount of melancholy.
Was it not Keats who underscored this binary opposition in his poetry?
Pleasure and pain.
I could sit by the window and look outside for hours. Like meaning could be derived from space.
I had felt like a thief when I crept downstairs for a book. The house was unnaturally quiet and I knew something was amiss because Scarlett had not stepped out of her room. Sundries of Raghav’s description of her room still hung in the air, like the last resistance of the falling leaves before they finally gave in to gravity.
A tug of conscience; I should say hello to Scarlett. A tug so gentle it was barely there.
The refrigerator hummed a tune to itself as I took the stairs back to the first floor. Where was Ava?
I didn’t say hello. If she hadn’t come out today, maybe she wanted to rest uninterrupted. I sat by the window unconvinced, losing my own argument. The unturned pages of the book on my lap proof that the stillness of the season had crept into my limbs.
Raghav had seemed preoccupied when he came upstairs last night. He sat next to me in front of the TV and both of us looked at the screen, each waiting for the other to start the conversation.
Raghav as usual went first; explaining why he had to go and what had transpired. Without waiting for a response, his thoughts shifted gear and took an entirely
different route; “If there is limited free will, then why does life dole out all these options to us?
If all we need to do is pass all these opportunities up, then why are we given them in the first place?”
Not quite understanding the chain of his thoughts I ventured;
“Well, you don’t have to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way”
“Too late” he said as if he was reprimanding himself.
Later, he hid his face in my lap. “Tara” he said, then repeated “Tara”, like it was not a name but a question mark.
What did he expect?
I couldn’t answer the question he had not posed.
Besides, was Stanley’s torment even real when he screamed ‘Stella’?
Silence has its uses, especially with windswept emotions.
Raghav
It is rather strange, but these days my mind often backslides to my childhood. I remember we would sometimes celebrate a special occasion in a peculiar manner. A DVP player would be hired for the night and adults and children alike would watch three movies back to back on a single night. Usually the three movies ended up having a similar cast, if not the same plot. In the morning you felt disoriented, not just because you had not slept the entire night but also owing to the fact that by dawn the movies had crystalized into a big profusion, a part of the night from which you could extract sporadic instances and scenes but no real story. The stories would not make sense if you tried to separate them from each other and from the experience of the night.
It’s hard for me to separate Tara and my story from the experiences we are having at the moment. Sometimes it feels like there is no Tara and me. It’s either Tara or me distinguishing ourselves from the composite we see before us.
She keeps going back to the segments that we have left behind. It’s almost like she is in two places at the same time, like a part of her has continued to live the other life, the life in the apartment, walking the road not taken. I lose her half way through a sentence and then realize, this is the other Tara, the one that lives a life that never was.
It takes very little to make her happy. A walk in the russet evening can make her spirit soar, but then it often takes almost nothing to make her absolutely quiet and withdrawn. We could be watching TV together, but suddenly she’d go miles away.
Like the other day, we made a strange trio seated in Scarlett’s dining room on a Saturday afternoon. It was Tara’s idea we play cards; Scarlett had been feeling a little unwell and this would cheer her up she said. Tara steered the conversation, nudging it in the right direction, anchoring it despite the uncharted territory she found herself in. I realized both Scarlett and I relied on her to make any headway in our communication. When she left the room, even to get water, Scarlett and I peered into our cards, our thoughts suspended in an awkward silence.
When Tara returned, if she found both of us staring at our cards a little weird, she let it pass. With her back, the conversation flowed like we instinctively knew how to pick up from where we had left off.
Then, all of a sudden, Scarlett put her cards upside down on the table.
Both Tara and I looked up questioningly.
“I can’t hold them for that long,” said Scarlett.
“Oh, ok” said Tara “we could stop now if you want to rest”.
Scarlett gathered her cards together, showed them to us and smiled. She would have won had we continued the game.
She continued to smile, but her eyes were sad.
Did I really notice that?
I could not protect myself from her sadness; it spread like smoke from a gigantic fire.
I sighed.
It must have been audible, because Tara quickly remarked;“We cough to clear our throats; we sign to clear our hearts”
I smiled at her, not knowing what else to do.
Later, when we were alone upstairs, I found Tara unduly quiet.
“What’s wrong”? I asked
“Nothing,” she said.
It sounded like ‘everything’.
Scarlett
I’m just a little bit envious of their evening walks. I mean, Ava would take me if I asked, but it wouldn’t be a walk.
It’s not just the walking I miss, I miss walking with someone. The sound of genial silence heard only by the pavement.
Did Aiden and I ever walk?
No, we surfed, we ran, we swam, I don’t remember us walking. Maybe we should have walked.
Mom met Tara yesterday. She said she was pleasantly surprised.
I didn’t ask her what she meant.
I knew what she meant.
“What about the husband”?
“His name is Raghav and what about him”?
It was either my tone or my mom was tired. The conversation pretty much ended there.
I’m not sure I like her sporadic visits. The smell of the days gone by clings to her like cellophane around caramelized apples. She stirs up the memories when I’m trying to make them sleep.
It got dark soon after she left. The crescent moon hangs precariously at my window, as if searching for balance.
The house now waits silently.
For the memories to settle down.
For the sound of Mary’s car in the driveway.
For Ava’s silent, barely there nod before she leaves for the night.
For the stars to rain upon the trees.
For the moon to devise balance from thin air.
But mostly for Tara and Raghav to return from their walk.
The Storyteller
The moon
in a puddle of water
a celebration of rain
on a rough terrain.
weary lives
will float
or through windows will seep
still waters run deep.
The rain
will seep
deep into
the terrain
the seeds
will branch
from which
the moon will
hang
seeking balance
between what it is
and what it used to be
You will not be free
Tara
The stronghold of self pity. nothing can quite break through its armour.
Not even the hard knocks of truth.
For the first time in my life, I was trying to carve a pumpkin with no encouragement from Scarlett. It seemed she had dozed off reading a book. I smiled to myself remembering how often I would give myself up to a never-ending surge of feeling when I reached the denouement of a book. I would close my eyes and the rest of the world would dissipate. Scarlett’s eyes however, opened briefly in narrow slits, looked at the mess I had created and closed again as if satisfied with the outcome. The day tiptoed around us.
The grin on the pumpkin was more sad than sinister. I didn’t care. What is done cannot be undone, especially on a pumpkin that would give way at the slightest touch. I tidied the place, cleaned myself and very deliberately moved closer to where Scarlett sat on her wheelchair next to the window. Her eyelids trembled as I opened the blinds. I knew she was awake; and the air around us soon became heavy with unspoken words. I could sense that she wanted to say something, but it was as if the words came up to her lips and then evaporated. I made myself more comfortable on the couch, it could be a while.
“So, did you read about the Japanese art ‘Kintsugi ‘”? I found myself asking.
“Is that what you were doing with the pumpkin”? She replied with a straight face.
She actually tried to crack a joke! I laughed.
Emboldened, I pointed to the ‘Little book of Zen’ in her lap.
“Do you mean this part, where you had accidentally left a bookmark?” Almost on cue she pulled out the bookmark and began reading;
The Japanese believe suffering some kind of impairment, having a history,
a story to tell, augments the exquisiteness of an object. This is the reason why
when they restore broken objects, they glorify the impairment by filling the
cracks with gold. The object then becomes more valuable as it carries in its
realm a story, a lesson, a dignity, a scar that exhibits resilience.
She shifted in her wheelchair like her body didn’t fit in it, like it had suddenly distended. Her breathing was irregular, her eyes, unusually bright- like diamonds.
Her voice was cold when she spoke;
“What do you see Tara? What do you think when you see a broken body made worthless with time?
Wasted beauty?
A nuisance?
An imperfection in your otherwise perfect world?”
“These don’t sound like options Scarlett?”
“ Then what do they sound like?”
“ Like you are trying to answer your own question ”
“Don’t speak to me in riddles Tara, I’m tired of that. Why the hell did you leave me this book anyway?”
I could see that she was dying for an altercation.
It could have been anyone.
It could have been anything.
The book and I just happened to be there.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, or what I see. I left the book for you”
“Why?”
“For you to see that sometimes in repairing the object, in feeling the cracks and fissures, in putting it together piece by piece one could end up loving it even more”
Scarlett tried but couldn’t quite shrug her shoulders in response. “ This is either gross oversimplification or convoluted. Right now i can’t say which one for sure. You are not the one on a wheelchair”
“If i was, wouldn’t you do the same thing?”
“No I wouldn’t. You don’t have all the answers Tara. Besides, nobody likes a know it all”
“I know, but i can’t help it if you do”.
Raghav
In the pub, the Friday night jokes revolved around how I had not prepared myself well to live with one woman, leave alone two!
Lucky bastard!
I closed my eyes, the joke was far too close for comfort. If I discounted our time in India, Tara and I had spent only a week together in the US before we moved in with Scarlett. I tried to collect my thoughts as I drove home. I found they had deserted me.
A monkey is caught rather effortlessly in India by a simple trick. The ‘hunter’ places some peanuts in the bottom of a narrow jar which is then positioned in a small hole dug in the earth. The monkey puts his hand inside and gathers the peanuts in a fist. When he tries to pull the peanuts out, the fisted hand makes maneuvering it outside the bottle difficult. The monkey caught in the moment, believes itself to be ‘caught’ in life and time. The ‘hunter’ closes in quickly. The notion that it can at any point drop the peanuts and free itself is lost on the monkey. The monkey is essentially a prisoner of its own device.
For argument’s sake what would it take to drop the peanuts?
Tell Tara it was a mistake. Explain why.
Tell Scarlett it was a mistake. Explain why.
Scratch that. I don’t have to tell Scarlett anything.
I had no explanation, only a nagging feeling that the explanation was not yet complete. It was still formulating. Besides, whatever it was, I was too close to it; only from a distance it would become apparent.
Technically, I was out of options.
Summer had metamorphosed into Autumn while we weren’t paying attention. Winter was already knocking at the door. Maybe it was best that I let time negotiate this curve, this turn. Everything passes. Twists and turns of fate, seasons and with them regrets.