Immersion

And its a breezy night again..when the winds spoke to me..
told me stories of the enchanted..sang a lullaby to me..
The still waters have ripples on them today..
on them the moon light dances its way..
the leaves of fall rustle to break the silence..
and the ripples break on the shore..sharing their guilt in the offense..

I dip my feet in water...feeling the autumn grip me..
the ripples turn to waves..and judge the intruder in me..
I walk into the depths as the water welcomes me..
the breeze blows the hair off my face...reminds me this is maybe..not to be..
I defy directions..I defy words..I defy my breath..as the water touches my face...

In the distance...a lone bagpiper plays
a music just so alien..defying the rules of the night..
I open my eyes one last time...and watch the as the moon shines on me..
the words of the deep sound closer..as the wind plays the ripples..
And as I sleep the water embraces me...into the deep as I return to eternity...

Seasons of Change PART 8

Keith Hubbard, was born of English parents in suburban Miami, in the United States. He grew up as the eldest of 3 children who were educated in Florida and then Boston before moving on to attend medical school to become doctors like their parents were. To Keith, setting up his private practice in Manhattan was all he dreamt of and achieved till one Saturday night when he met his old schoolmate Stephen Roswell in a NYC pub. Stephen worked with a group called the ICare foundation which was traveling to India to extend their helping hands. Suddenly inspired Keith decided to take the trip and as he would put it ‘discovered himself’ in India. When he flew back to New York, he had donated a huge part of his savings to the orphanages he visited in India. The same year he established the ‘Edgar Hubbard Trust’ in the memory of his late father which tied up with ICare to extend financial and medical help to these institutions.

Keith managed to attract a huge number of philanthropists and other people who pooled in money to keep the trust running, which initially included his patient’s parents. Keith Hubbard MD, PhD was a pediatrician. In a few years time The Edgar Hubbard trust along with Icare extended its branches from India to other impoverished regions in the Asian Subcontinent giving life to orphaned and underprivileged children. Keith himself flew down once every year to follow up the working of the institutes. It is probably the company of children and the joy he shared by helping them, is what kept him forever young and energetic in his priming thirties, and this is what which helped him recover from losing his fiancé Marian to cancer some years ago.

Given all the qualities of the man, still, neither could I get over the ‘Mad Man’ tag I gave him from our first meeting, nor could I improve upon it in any of our subsequent meetings. Some people are remarkably molded in the first impression you have of them!

Seasons of Change PART 7

Such were the times when I met Keith Hubbard. Keith was a voluntary worker with a US based charitable group which supported various orphanages around the country. The foundation had requested our channel for coverage for a program they were sponsoring. Strangely, if I call it the ways of fate, the office suddenly wanted me to cover the story. From being a plain news reader I was now playing journalist, and that made me even more awkward and nervous. We had a staff shortage, and I was referred for the job since I had some experience close to it.

When the office manager called me to offer this job I had plainly said yes without many enquiries, just because it would mean a pay hike. But then as I waited in the lobby of the group’s office I felt my feet go numb. It was a warm afternoon in mid January and I could see Madras live the day through the glass window in the room. On the other side of the road sat a strange looking man with a parrot and some cards. Trying to read the future! I wondered with the progress in age how many people still believed the roadside astrologer. But somehow the man wasn’t without customers.

I was losing my nervousness to thoughts when a young girl entered the lobby and walked towards me. “Ms.Aruna, we are so sorry to have kept you waiting. Dr.Hubbard had hurried off for some urgent work and has just arrived. Please come along with me.” I mumbled something incomprehensible that fortunately was unheard, and I silently followed her.

I was seated in a fairly comfortable room which had few cosy chairs and a computer flashed its screensaver from across the table in a far corner. The walls were adored with crayon sketched artwork by children of the orphanages the group worked for, and an old air conditioner attempted to cool the room that afternoon. Regardless of the temperature, I could feel my palms sweating.

“Dr.Hubbard would be here any moment”, said the girl and left the room closing the door behind her. I tried to divert my mind by observing the artwork hung around, and when it didn’t seem to work I closed my eyes and tried hard to concentrate. A good job at this might be a good career move. After all I wanted to make a good mark in media and moreover I needed the money. Maa’s medicines had to be looked after and I wished to reduce the load on Payal where she shuttled between a part time job,studies and taking care of the house. I didn’t realize how long I stayed this way, but when I opened my eyes a brown haired and grey eyed white man was looking at me quite intently sitting on a chair placed in front of me. I stood up startled unsure of what to say. The man stood up and flashed a big smile, “Keith Hubbard… I think I scared you!”

For some moments I was frozen and stood still, when suddenly the man started laughing. For an instant I thought he was insane, and the puzzled expression on my face made him laugh harder. After sometime he controlled himself and beckoned me to my chair, “I am sorry young lady, let’s get the story done!” He pulled out some loose sheets from a file and handed them over to me.

“Here are the details of the program we wanted you to cover. I have made sure I included all details. I hope this helps.”

I don’t remember how the interview went or the program details now. The camera team had arrived soon after and we managed to record the interview wholly minus any other maniacal laughter outbursts from Dr.Hubbard. But when I got up to leave the room Keith had an important question for me, “Ms. Aruna when was the last time you ever laughed?”

For some reason, I found the question weird and simply said, “Our office would let you know when we air the interview” and left in a hurry. When I left his office I had puzzled thoughts troubling my mind. It sure did have a lot of effect on me as I suddenly walked up to the fortune teller on the road side to make an attempt to know my future. The parrot picked up a colored card from the set the fortune teller spread ahead of him. It was a picture card depicting a hindu god. “You have troubles in life and today is not the end of it. But you have the strength to move on. A drastic change is awaited in your life, you will meet someone very important today.”

As I walked into my team’s van to get back to office, I was thinking, “Someone important…Keith Hubbard??.....bah…the madman affected my brains! Why did I even walk to the fortune teller…and why the hell am I pondering over his predictions!”

The Walk I Remember

Pain talks to me through the night,
and keeps me awake when my body cries for rest.
Time sets me riddles while emotions test their might,
to ask my dead heart if it still beats in my chest.

Its all so strange when they say u r strong,
or mistake your strength for apathy.
I am still finding the place where I belong,
when destiny has no space for sympathy.

I walk ahead coz I know not how to stop,
I walk the road I know not where it leads.
In the journey of finding love and life,
I walk on as my body bleeds.

No memories help me heal anymore,
No happiness can make me dream like before.
Its this moment which shall linger in my mind,
I remember this walk, not the one before.
Its etched in my destiny now I know,
that immunity to pain comes when ur hurt the most.

And all the people who come and go,
are plain memories now washed ashore.
They are shells I pick up and lay to rest,
they are dead, like my heart, they said!

Seasons of Change Part 6

There comes a time when a single incident changes everything in life. Anand’s departure from our lives had shrouded my family with gloom, something which never changed ever in my living memory. The silence which had lulled over the dead remains of my dear brother had now carried on in our lives…Maa never spoke to us again. We heard her voice sometimes, in those moments in her sleep when she kept talking to the abstract son who was now no more. Her voice never spoke to us, it was lost in transition between the ladders of life and death…a place where it had lost itself searching for her first born child. Many a times I dreamt of Maa scathing an alien land calling out for her son…a nightmare which reflected my helplessness in pulling my mother out of the sea of sorrow that she had immersed herself in. When doctors, quacks, saints , advice, prayers and all that we ever tried didn’t work, we began accepting the fact that Maa’s mourning may never be over. She dwelled in an abstract world, completely ignorant of the passing time with memories of her lost son.

Baba continued working for sometime, and slowly his days were spent outside the home than with any of us. In grief of his dead son and ailing wife seemed to be taking a toll on him. Life went on for me and Payal, as we struggled to keep the house running. Her part time job at a school and my meager salary of a news reader supported our lives when Baba’s income stopped aiding us. Silence now inhabited the house which was once teaming with life and happiness. We never knew what happened to Baba when suddenly he came home and announced he quit his job. A week later someone from his college came with a cheque saying it was our fathers savings when he quit work. We tried talking to the man who was once our dear father but never received any proper answer. He would leave the house at dawn and would return late at night, sometimes gone for days together. No one knew where he went or where he returned from. In a single turn of time we had almost lost both our parents along with our brother.

In our times of grief Arjun became our biggest support. They say in life when you have lost everything there will always be a true friend to stand by you, he was that strength in my life. He lent his personal as well as financial support without asking. Many a times he stayed up nights with the police or searching the streets of Madras when Baba went missing for days. Orphaned at childhood, he seemed to understand the pain we went through now. He filled the gap which Baba’s anonymity and Anands absence made in our lives.

I never asked Payal where she was the night Anand left us. I never questioned Arjun how he found her. Somehow with the responsibilities doubling on with time, the question lost its significance. It was a relief to see everyone home somehow alive after a day back from work.

In days that progressed, pain kept dragging on and nothing in life seemed to change. Relatives and friends pleaded with Baba to return to normalcy for the sake of two young unwed daughters at home. Nevertheless, me and Payal had realized long back that it wouldn’t work. In our prayers, a complaint was silently registered wherein our parents had walked away from us, and lulled away with the memory of duties.

Then one rainy evening that year, Baba went out of the house with his umbrella, never to return. We searched for days and weeks, and then our father was found only in the police records of missing people. I still wonder where he went, a frail hope beating somewhere within that a day would come when he would return to us as our old Baba who doted on his children. However in depths of my heart, an empty feeling told me that life was to move on beyond, much beyond this pain. I had my ailing mother, little sister and a search for my father to aid. My weakness would mean the end for my family.

SEASONS OF CHANGE - 5

That moment of silence still lingers as a part of my life. That moment and beyond, everything changed. It is a nightmare still etched in the depths of my memory, for I followed every second and every step...stunned and noiseless when my mother lifted the white covers of what came in the vehicle. I was a silent spectator to my father’s wails of agony over his dead son’s body which he got home. My mother however remained silent and expressionless, staring numb at the mortal remains of her beloved son.

A variety of people gathered at the scene…faces known and unknown came to steal glances at the visions of the maimed family. Then came policemen and other people…they told us Anand fell off the train. The details didn’t matter anymore, my brother, my parents son was gone…never to return again or let the family celebrate his homecoming. I looked at the stiff and pale body which had once been my brother. He wasn’t his Maa’s beautiful boy anymore with cuts and stitches sewn across his face. He used to be scared of the hospital as a child…phobic to needles. I stared blankly at the maimed body…this had once been our Anand. Tears blurred my vision and I moved off the scene.

For what it seemed like hours I could still hear the cries of Baba as I sat numbly on the doorstep, my back turned against them, unable to face the reality. There still wasn’t the slightest noise from Maa and I feared turning back and looking at her. I wanted to hear nothing, see nothing, nothing at all…everything seemed so frightening and I doubted my strengths.

A light hand touched my shoulder, but I was stiff, unable or maybe unwilling to respond. A familiar voice spoke, “Di, are you Ok?

It was a realization that I had forgotten about Payal not being there and a sudden pang of guilt cast a knot in my stomach. She was there standing beside me looking at with eyes of concern, eyes now puffed red and tear filled. I stared back, unable to react. She knew the moment and threw her arms about me as we hugged in a silent expression of grief.

Seasons of Change 4

I peeped through the window overlooking the road… there was no sign of Payal or Dad. I broomed the pieces of shattered glass into the bin. The time was nearing 7 in the grandfather clock. I looked through the window again… still no one. Ma was still sleeping in her room. Somehow the look of blankness on the dusty road and the silence of the moment gave me an eerie feeling. Before the clock struck seven, I put on my slippers and tiptoed out of the house.

Venky uncle’s shop had a telephone booth. It was just across the road. Uncle was sitting on the steps, enjoying the little bit of relief the evening wind provided from the summer heat. He could read the look of worry on my face.

“What is it Aruna Ma, you look so tensed?”

“Nothing much Uncle, actually, Payal and Baba haven’t come home yet. I needed to make few calls .Our telephone is not working”

He understood the urgency of my voice and led me to the old black telephone without further questioning. I picked it up to dial Baba’s number. The phone rang. No reply. I tried again. Still no reply. Maybe Baba had left the office. Maybe he is on his way. But…

I took a deep breath. Everything is going to be all right…I assured myself. I turned around to have a look at the road… No signs of Baba or Payal. Old Venky Uncle stood behind me wearing a questioning look on his face. “Baba left the office...I suppose”.

He gave a difficult smile and sat down on his chair in the shop. Now it was difficult to contact Payal. Though I had the Institute’s number she worked at, the phone usually was never received or stayed out of order. I decided to give it a try. I dialed the number and the phone rang. Someone picked up the call…and click…the line went dead.

My fingers went numb. Tension gripped me. I dialed the number again, ‘the number which you have called is busy, kindly try again after sometime’..and the melancholy voice went on repeating it in three languages. I tried again…and then again..still the same answer.

The wind outside was getting cooler, but somehow it made feel worse than good. Venky Uncle rose from his chair. “Aruna, I guess they are on their way. Don’t worry so much Ma”.

I could only nod my head. It was unusual for Payal to stay out this late, she was usually punctual. I decided to call my classmate Arjun. Arjun stayed a few houses away from institution where Payal worked. I dialed Arjun’s number. When he picked up the call I went on with my story without listening or making sense:

“Hey Arjun, Payal… home...late…can u…what will ..oh god…baba also not !”

“Shhh..Aruna…relax. Breathe. Whats wrong”. I controlled my tears and took a deep breath. I narrated him my worry. “that’s all naa, don’t worry. I’ll check out and bring her along if I find her on the way. And you get back home and stay with your mother. I shall check out on Uncle too. And for God’s sake Aruna…Relax. Everything will be fine.”

I wiped my tears and placed the receiver down. Venky Uncle offered me a glass of water and escorted me home. The time was seven thirty, Ma was awake... “Arunaa, where had you been. I was so scared. Where is your Baba…where is Payal..” Her voice was subdued in the noise of a vehicle which just arrived. Everything went silent…..

Seasons of Change 3

First rains will have three of us dance on our terrace, paying no heed to Maa’s scoldings. Later on she would join us in the celebration, enjoying the rains than worrying about the repercussions. Days changed to months changed years. After school, Anand, the oldest of us three left home to study in Trichy. He was the brightest in his batch and Baba Maa were beaming with pride when he got through a top college to finish engineering. I took up English Honors in a local Madras college.

Those were amazing days, I would walk to the local train station early at six thirty and get down at the station closest to college and walk to my classes again. My friends Madhu and Arjun would give me company. Days changed to months changed to years and things were getting better. I was considering a course in Mass Communications, loved doing radio and T.V. shows for my college. Anand got a job in a top firm. Payal took up part time studies and took up a job in a school for mentally challenged kids. That was her dedication to the social work and none of us had any objections on her at times tiring herself out doing her self accepted duty.

Somehow life was about to change and none of us were aware of the fact. I would never forget that summer when everything changed...forever.

Maa wasn’t very well that evening. Both Baba and Payal hadn’t returned for work. Lot of work needed to be done. Anand was completing his degree and returning home the next morning. Maa and Baba had organized a puja on his homecoming to thank the gods for the good luck their son got home. I was home, exams done, now I was preparing for job interviews. The telephone line was dead. Maa was getting jittery and kept pacing the house. She asked

“Aruna, why isn’t your father back as yet. Payal should also have been home by now. They are delaying stuff. I need to arrange everything for the Puja tomorrow. Its dark already, can.t send you to fetch stuff and my headache wont spare me.”

I could sense worry in her tone. I looked at the grandfather clock I the drawing room. It was plain six thirty, not that late. Baba and Payal were usually back by this time but they did strech limits due to work. Somehow the issue was different.

“Maa, it isn’t that late. Why are you so worried? They would be on their way back. Why don’t you lie down, you are already unwell.”

“Its not that dear, I don’t have a good feeling about today. Anxiety is filling my mind. If they are back soon I’d be relieved. Did Anand call? Has he boarded the train or bus already?”

“No, Maa. He hasn’t , the phone is not working. He would have called Baba’s office. Don’t worry Maa, get some rest. I am sure things are fine.”

Maa kept complaining but somehow I managed to get her to bed. I walked her to her room. A light summer loo was filling the house creating a slight unrest due to the heat. Maa lied down on her bed and held my hand, “ I don’t have a very good feeling Aruna”.

“Don’t worry Maa, you are unnecessarily tensing yourself!”

It was weird to see Maa so anxious and it was beginning to race my nerves too. I checked on the grandfather clock, it was nearing seven in the evening. A gust of wind allowed my dressing mirror to fall of the table and the glass shattered. Now I wasn’t superstitious in general, but the glass shattering did somehow made me feel weird. I dint want Maa to get up and worry about this now. I ran to check her room, she was sleeping peacefully. I picked up the telephone receiver, it was still dead.

Seasons of Change 2

It was foolish of me to depend on the rain, I had to realize...nothing was to help, nothing at all. I had to move on this moment all on my own. But then suddenly, this moment was all I had. Life

seemed to begin and end here…in this one moment.

Things had been so different eight years ago. These first rains…I had been in love with them. I lived in the outskirts of Madras, not one of the places where rains were usual. The first showers of the year were welcomed with gaiety and immense celebration. I remember people coming out of their homes, on the roads on the terrace welcoming the cooling droplets of water which quenched thirsty earth and air. The monsoons came here in late October, the retreating monsoons. By that time of the year most of the other parts of the country start winters. Madras enjoyed its uniqueness in the untimely monsoons.

Ours was one of the few north Indian families inhabiting the sleepy little colony at Murali Nagar. With time and the bonding with the place, the general discrepancy of being from the north was lost. We were more used to the Rasam Satham diet than our native dal chawal. Baba along with his parents had moved in here when he was six years of age. Grandpa’s north Indian eatery, ‘Delhi Dhaba’ worked well to fuel the family to grow three well educated sons and two daughters. When he died, his sons sold the eatery and went back to serve more intellectual institutions.

Baba was the professor in an Engineering College in Madras and met my mother in one of his official visits to Lucknow. They were married after a year of courtship and set up their family in Grandpa’s old home in Murali Nagar. That is where me, my brother Anand and sister Payal were born and raised. We grew up in the blended traditions of north and the south. Payal and me would set up Golu dolls at Vijaya- dhashami and flaunt Pattu Pavadais during Pongal and other festivals. All three of us spoke fluent Tamil and found our identity more on the narrow streets of Murali nagar than visting Maa’s parents in Lucknow.

Seasons of Change 1

A gentle cold wind blew the hair off my face. The scent of wet mud in the air indicated that there had been rains somewhere close. I looked up and saw the gathering of the black clouds and filled my lungs with the rain scented air. I spread my arms wide..eyes closed I wished I could fly. I wished i could scream my heart out, I wish i could shout out what held my mind. all that escaped was a gasp...I sat down on my knees, unable to walk any further. Tears escaped my eyes blurring my vision..the thunder in the sky shrouded my gasps. As the rain fell..in drops and then in showers..I wished everything would wash away. The pain, the agony, the memories....