BTS

 “There’s a heavy cloud inside my head”

  A line from Fool’s Garden - Lemon Tree.

The lyricist was spot-on; the song a timeless classic!

Rewind: Just when everything feels right, you think it’s going to be linear in pattern, you have to go back in circles, foggy concentric circles, so thick, looming large, threatening to shake you up; questioning your very capability to function as a human that very minute. No waiting allowed, for you’re already delayed due to the concentric circles bogging you down - a whole night’s sleep, and half a cup of coffee down the drain. Why did I even wake up to this day? All this feeling in less than 5 minutes. Welcome to behind the scenes. Only the sky is knowledgable of its own weight; so much so that it wants to pour down despite being semi-overcast, despite the silver-lining. Nothing else matters, no words of comfort, just NOTHING: The daughter feeling like the sky wanting to rain from time to time, that’s why perhaps it’s called - tearing-up, gathering the mighty force of everything that’s discomforting, for a subsequent outpour. Toddler brains function this way, and we just have to learn to shut up and not offer things in the name of consolation. If anything, it teaches me truckloads of patience with every interaction.

Fast forward: a picture encapsulating a smile; albeit with the weight of the clouds from behind the scenes - let’s call it “BTS” to sound ultra cool; as if nothing ever happened. 

If only we’re given grace for making the picture happen; instead of a loose remark - describing the outer… well, there’s no one to blame, for the vision is shallow and limited to theory and hearsay. 

2X fast forward: a message from the principal with the daughter’s photo attached, that read - Settled! Feeling bullish and bearish all at once. Well, the year has been such. 

While she had settled, I wasn’t quite - downing 3 cups of my thick dark black coffee, with the Apadhudharaka sloka (from the Phala Sruthi of Vishnu Sahasranamam), and a loud outpour of cry - the skies cleared up both outside and inside. The iPad near my coffee cup got me typing this - BTS.

Bread-winner

 A morning after I dropped the daughter off at school. Usual emotional turmoil of refusal to go to school. Regardless, I bit the bullet; hardened my inner-self and stopped for chai. Next pit stop… supermarket in our neighbourhood. Before I took the stairs to the supermarket; a person sought alms. Thankfully, I had some cash that I could offer.

It was a little after breakfast hour. So I thought the man could get himself a cup of chai; given the beautifully calm and cool morning it was; semi-overcast; with the rain contemplating on when it wanted to descend. 

I could feel the beauty of the day for I was full: in terms of tummy; with my turmoil slowly settling down due to the chai and the weather. This weather though, would not have made a difference to the man’s day; for he had different ends to meet; perhaps.

After parking this thought and my scooter aside, I went up to the supermarket. On my way back to the scooter, I spotted this man yet again: this time I told him that I had already given him something. He quickly acknowledged the fact and showed me a quick gesture of hunger : a palpable sense of wanting to eat something. Having crossed the hours of breakfast; I realized how hungry he could be. 

A packet of bread fell off my arms as I tried to fit in 2 packs of bread into the scooter’s storage. Even as I was picking up the packets of bread from the rack; I was debating 1 vs. 2.

Taking the cue, I handed over the packet that fell off; he answered in an affirmative, agreeing to eat the bread. I took his word and didn’t want to probe further. As I headed back to the scooter, I saw him getting ready to sit down with his meal: the packet of bread. A tear rolled down my eye, shielding my vision, as a cold breeze helped with wiping away my tears when I rode back home. 

STARVED

 A better tomorrow awaits.

A billboard at every step of the way:

A not-so-gentle reminder all along the length and breadth -

With a new portion getting added by the day: making it Greater Chennai!

Madras Nalla Madras is passé; 

With nostalgia just existing in e-commerce merchandise : magnets, tees and quick eats:

Satyam Pop-corn is a ‘souvenir snack’ like Thirunelveli halwa.

Every nook and cranny sells things that no longer belong to the local flavour.

Dotted with eateries that beg to establish their identity from another TN district.

The population on OMR - migrant:

Each one missing their native cuisine

Lo and behold, one restaurant after the other, ostensibly claiming to be either from Salem, Dindigul, Kovilpatti, Ambur and everything else, except Chennai.

Catering to unruly midnight cravings; dictated by an offer or two;

Made available in buckets - addressing the starved gluttons.

Justified by feel good factors; raising dopamine : secreting the so-called oxytocin - temporarily after all.

For when reality meets them, each one is browsing through an offer to kill time 

As they wait for a better tomorrow.

When the tomorrow does arrive, it connects better, yes:

For people to get closer to hospitals and therapy centres with serpentine bills;

An invisible tax that’s paid for a better tomorrow:

A compromise on fresh air, water and good health - above all peace of mind

Something that tier 2 and 3 cities offer for free.

Pure Luxury - where you can live in the present; instead of awaiting a better tomorrow.

Sarvam Maaya!

 A fleet of steps led to the temple pond where a school of fishes were playing around in swift motion - Black beings beneath green waters, we could get a fish spa done.

And on the way back to the temple, a cup of Vibhuti was affixed to the wall of the temple pond - right above that, a picture of Bala Murugan : symbolically reminding devotees to get the Vibhuti on their foreheads right after a dip in the temple pond. I didn’t notice the cup of Vibhuti when getting down the steps to begin with. The Bala Murugan and the cup affixed to the wall drew my attention and sent memories of Appa as a boy, perhaps getting some Vibhuti after a nice fish spa and a dip in the pond, right behind his maternal home at - Thayamkulangara, Cherpu, Thrissur. 

I stood there for a moment and gazed at Bala Murugan, embracing the amazingly calm and quiet environment around, taking it all in, breathing in the air, yearning for being able to live at least one moment with Appa and talking through the experiences of his days at his maternal home. 

Sadly, visiting Appa’s maternal home ended up being after he left. I’ve passed through Thrissur for the umpteenth time, yet, haven’t alighted at that station in the faintest of memories. 

I don’t know why, it just didn’t occur. No fancy reasons to cook up, it’s a plain negative, that I hadn’t visited this place before - as simple as that, despite being so easily close to Thrissur district. 

A recent visit to Cherpu was simple and pleasant, that the Thayamkulangara Murugan temple was at a stone’s throw from Appa’s maternal home in an Agraharam setup, explained the fact for his reason to choose an apartment in an Agraharam, when it came to purchasing our own, at Kalapthi, Palakkad. The strong magnetic pull from the temple adorning the road at the end of the Agraharam, is compellingly beautiful. I reeled through the memory of how Appa would have walked the streets during his younger days, bathed in the temple pond - perhaps even stopped by the Vibhuti cup affixed to the wall…smearing some on the forehead, and silently making his way to the Murugan temple. 

This visual was possible from a super close distance - from Appa’s very maternal home, where we got the chance to sit down and down a quick breakfast - what are the odds of being able to do this, right?! With every piece of idli going down my throat, I blamed myself for not visiting when Appa was still around… missing the opportunity to visit a place so close to the heart and in terms of distance. Sarvam Maaya! 

A neighbor who accidentally hosted us for tea after we ate our packed homemade podi idlis; let us know that the house was bought by the director of the movie - Sarvam Maaya! 

Sarvam Maaya indeed…

Point of view

 The point really is, the view was muted. Slowly turning into a cockroach from a human form, the stinging loneliness that Franz Kafka describes in his Metamorphosis was something I certainly considered during this time.

Rewind to the wired days - where phone calls were the only use for a phone, quite a matter of fact way of putting that device to work - except in 2026, Siri was asked to dial the contacts : I wanted to avoid even the slightest screen-view.

There is our transistor that still does its work very effectively of keeping me current with news and added a flavour of entertainment through its chosen playlist.

Reading was out of question too, there is only so much the right eye could humbly sustain and offer as assistance - asking for it be able to read and demand additional favours was sacrilege!

Quite literally confined to a corner akin to COVID-19 quarantine, the eye had to be nursed from a state of being shut to opening slowly each day like a famished crop. 

Rewind to the incident that led to the quarantine: an infectious conjunctivitis virus in the eye that severely extended beyond the cornea, impacting the eyeball: eye in discussion: left. Unlike the hands, the eye cannot be isolated with the exception - oh thank God, it’s just the left eye. For we cannot possibly differentiate which eye is used most, after all.

The infection certainly decided to get the worst of me - tearing the eye even without being instigated to cry - at one point in time, there was no difference between shedding tears vs. the discharge from the infected eye. Tearing up was better because only I would know it and wouldn’t be asked anything about it.

What if someone made a green chilly paste and used it for medicinal administration instead of the actual eyedrops prescribed? That’s how the left eye burnt and stung agonisingly, quite literally. The eye had to work its way through the worst before it could get better. 

Through sheets of paste-like formation almost blinding the eye, it’s better it remained shut for maintenance. From being blurred to attaining clarity, was a journey that would go down in my mind for the rest of my life. 

For retrospective and reflection to happen, there’s no requirement for the eye to be open: muted view was rather favourable: fewer things to see, meant lesser distraction. Thinking of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and a work he wrote later in gratitude - Paradise Regained if I recall right - a poem from school days, was a natural mental mapping. Each time there was a hot flash of discharge pouring through the eye, Rama Nama and Apadhudharaka Slokam was the guiding force to help me stay put in patience without complaining or even a word of mention - for this was quite an examination for endurance, patience, resilience and at the end of the day, test on my belief in the power of Apadhudharaka Slokam during times of distress.

The eye thus took its natural course to get back into being functional. Lessons learnt were aplenty - particularly on patience and resilience - for it isn’t just about waiting, it’s the attitude that you keep through the thick and thin. Rightly so, on Vishu day, the “Kani” felt like a reward for my patience: queues snaked through the premises of Dhanvanthri Temple (God-form of Medicine): without a doubt we had possibly the quickest entry to viewing Krishnaavatharam form of the ruling deity there - Dhanvanthri Himself! Hantha Bhagyam Jananam (how fortunate I was)!

In today’s terms - Just my POV! :) 

Rs. 140 - clean chit

 

 An empty purse stared yet again; even bereft of coins. Mindless sad guilt trips ensue. This is now habitual. To feel better, UPI is used so that the pinch isn’t directly felt like that of the empty purse situation - until an SMS arrives reminding you of the account balance.

This is a story of the constant alternation between cash and UPI in the name of having control over expenses. Well, it was time to withdraw for some domestic expenses that Amma had been reminding me of… and then I realized I hadn’t cleaned up my room for a while. Decluttering has a way of turning - “Alakshmi” into “Lakshmi…” quite literally and figuratively. Physical clutter can break your mind beyond imagination, making it into a spider’s web - going round in deep circles… hard to get off. 

When things around you are in order, neat and tidy, it directly reflects in your mind, giving you absolute clarity. Multiple tabs aren’t open in your head, tabs that you think may be useful, and later forget. It’s like doing an End-Task in Task Manager…ah! the pleasure of closing something that’s non-responsive! If you’re thinking how this is possible as you read this, try it the next time, and you’ll know what I am talking about.

And so, how did my “Alakshmi” turn in to “Lakshmi” today post cleaning?

2 trips to the scrap dealer in the neighborhood… Old newspapers, cartons and other things part of scrap had rented the room like a parasite. It was a simple decision to clear the clutter…. Not with the expectation to earn anything…but for some space in the mind.

I rode to the scrap dealer twice so as to be able to balance the largeness of the weightless. I asked the scrap dealer to wait for a few minutes before he could begin weighing… so that I can bring the next set on for weighing… not that there were heaps to be weighed, I didn’t want to lose out even by a few grams. 

The joy of seeing the measurement on the weighing scale is unmatched… it’s the price of cleaning up. It’s almost like a barter system of sorts… Scrap Dealers are kind of like your neighbourhood option to make some change - both at your home, and in your purse, quite literally. And so, with 7+ kgs this time, I got Rs. 140 in return, as cash - the prize! 

Back in the days, I recall going to the scrap dealers’ to get some quick bucks and in turn use it to buy some treats for myself. With growing up, the enhancement has been that of doing all the cleaning myself. The feeling of accomplishment though, has remained intact!

Places where you don’t usually stop:

 What if you stopped at all places that the gps featured? The places typically appear as dots with names against them; as you zoom out, you see the bigger picture, and you see more places named - they appear like the branches of a huge tree…

That’s what travelling in an inter-district train such as MEMU feels like; vs its counterparts that don’t have a stop in every station along the way. You begin to notice every place.

Just as how out of sight is almost out of mind, you don’t really take note of the places unless there’s a stop. Travelling in trains that stop at every station remind you that there are other places, very much existent, thriving with life, with an identity of their own. 

What’s otherwise just a quick shuttle past these places, with name boards at the station panning out of your view within the blink of an eye: you don’t get to read the board to know the names of places; unless you know the topography like the back of your hand, by looking at just the first couple of letters you could guess the place right away. 

There are so many times that I’ve had my eyes glued through the window just to catch the name of the station … I would look till the very end, but in vain as the yellow board will vanish from my sight in no time… thanks to rail apps, they tell you the names of stations that are going to follow suit… the flipside though? You don’t look out… you don’t make an attempt to physically read the letters in the board… if not in English, at least in Hindi or any other local language in which the names of these places are written. For example now: I missed the yellow board which bore the name of the station, yet I caught the name of the station from the wall… it had Pudukkad (a place before Thrissur when you’re on your way from Ekm to Palakkad) written in Hindi. Thankfully the Hindi reading ability is still in tact, given the fact there are so many avenues to forget : due to memory erosion caused by screen-time.

There are so many such places that make for interesting pictures … with houses right near the station, fields and water bodies that are inspiration to the Windows screen-saver gallery. While they’re a breeze when you travel in a train that has limited stops, the trains that stop at every station remind you that everything matters: nothing is insignificant… Why can’t a college-going or office-going person board the train from a lesser known place, that otherwise isn’t major enough for a long-distance train that has limited stops? This is exactly what dawned on me when I was onboard the MEMU from Palakkad to Ernakulam a couple days ago. A ‘possible’ teenager, quite modest yet modern looking, jean-clad, with basic makeup: lipstick included, got in from Parli, the first station after Palakkad, enroute Ernakulam. Now, I didn’t expect this from Parli. But don’t they have a life too? This is how profiles develop from the deeper pockets of the society… This is their daily life… after all.

Roads less travelled still take you somewhere, there are times we just need to break the pattern and broaden our perspective by travelling. For any form of travel, will make you more human than ever. It brings people and cultures to light… they were never non-existent, just that we didn’t notice.