Sreenath Sreenivasan
Thriving Mindfully
Find Your Self Yourself
We live in times strange, of false claim
Of calling all we own with our own name
How far have we strayed from who we are
No we aren’t our jobs, we aren’t our car
A layer of garment that’s fit to size
Becomes a part of elegant lies
Until fickle fashion changes its way
And those perfect dresses are cast away
Isn’t it the same with that gadget too
How it brings you a thrill and becomes you
Until they come out with a newer range
And make you believe it’s time for a change
With changing trends, it only gets tough
When they say what you own isn’t you enough
And we retire our respect for all good reason
Lest we commit an economic treason
If your identity is determined by all the rest
Your power will be the easiest to divest
And if all this tamasha feels odd and absurd
The time is ripe to steer your course inward.
Beware of that hypnotic popular call
You feel momentarily big, but, forever small
Seek instead that priceless core
Set out, discover, and bring it to the fore.
It won’t be easy as all forces seek conformity
As your deviance is deemed a deformity
But follow you must, beyond all fuss
The undeniable light of your inner compass
And though you might wear an old-fashioned dress
And wield tools that might fail to impress
You will shine in glory, and get way far
In the journey of discovering who you really are.
Inspiration
There is a bird I’ve known for far too long
Only and only by its silken song
As much as I’ve tried to find her perch
I’ve ended up with a fruitless search
It sings melodies like a bamboo flute
While picking and eating berries and fruit
A nameless friend that brings such joy
Yet I know not if it’s a girl or boy !
But one fine day when it stopped singing
My voice, my words, they went missing
For all the penmanship, everything I wrote
Was a quote of the birdsong note for note
With a longing ear, its song did I seek
I waited for a sign many a week
In agony I wondered ‘Did I lose my muse?’
And in mourning I penned down my blues.
With that outpouring, painful and tragic
Emerged an element of elegant magic
I heard its voice note for note
The bird sang the blues I just wrote
It said, I am sorry to have disappeared
I grew afraid of thoughts you too feared
Was my spirited song, a daily drivel
Was there meaning at all in tales I tell?
Bird, I told, you are timeless art
Each of my word is a dipping dart
Aimed at pinning the essence in your song
The pursuit of all artists all along
As bright as you imagine my feathers to be
Your words are light that invite me to see
The silent surrender to art in pursuit
The beauty in song that’s beyond refute
And so we mirrored each other’s thought
Together did flow past the creative clot
We traded our thoughts as we must
And never argued about who stopped first
And we found a vision along with our sight
The bird sang aloud, fearlessly did I write
To tell tales in tandem became our resolution
And I named the nameless bird,
Inspiration.
There are times when I have got nothing to say,
And nobody to share that nothingness with.
The sun hides behind the clouds.
The rain falls, pitter-patter.
There sits a lonely dove on the cable
Awaiting someone.
I fly to that brooding bird
And proclaim,
All the truths she knows already
Again and again,
I speak
Of that feeling,
Of silently sauntering in the shimmering summer sun,
Of a restless retreat over raging rivers on a run
Of tumbling like a torpedo towards the tarmac turf
Of soaring in the sky on a slow, shy surf
Of the festive fervor in foraging for fruit
Of loving lentil left by the lintels to loot
Of picking the perfect twig for a nest
Of the relief in repose, of relishing rest
Of being in love yet being lonely
Of being lonely yet being in love
The curvy cable eavesdrops
On our candid confessions
Coated in collegial camaraderie
The wire weighs down with
the weight of two birds
It hangs low between posts,
As if smiling
The sun shines,
The rainbow smiles back
At the smiling cable
Upside down.
We,
two birds
Fly away,
alone still,
Lifted in spirit
Melded in meaning
Buoyed by
Fleeting flirtations
Of those two
silent,
sinuous
symbolic
smiles.
A tale of two sisters
Two pairs of worn out slippers cushion the brisk onward march of two petite girls.
Sudha and Radha, dressed alike in maroon polyester sarees are on their way to work.
Sudha used to help with household chores at her employers house earlier. Now, she works as a hospice for her employer’s wife who is terminally ill, lying in a comatose state at home.
Radha is a cook. A pretty good one in fact.
She has been the in-house cook for a wealthy family in a posh locality for a year now.
The sisters ended up in Delhi in search of work a couple of years ago. Sudha was just 16 then and Radha a year younger.
They decided to work so that they could send their little brother to school so that one day their family could finally climb out of the valley of poverty they’d dwelt in ever since they’d known life.
And life wasn’t easy for the young girls. They slept in a little makeshift room in the workers ghetto behind the railway station. They would spend the majority of the money back home for family.
They could afford only one meal a day,
a dinner.
But they were happy, for they were working for something larger than themselves.
Radha would often feel tempted to eat the food she cooked for the family. She had great culinary skills. The whole locality would be able to guess what was cooking whenever she cooked.
But since the food was so delicious, there would never be any left over food for her to enjoy the next morning.
Sudha’s employer (who she calls Sahib) was a hopeful man. He always believed that his wife will spring back to life and vitality the next morning.
He made sure Sudha prepared a bland Khichdi for his wife every single day,
Hoping that when his wife wakes up, she will savour the food.
But for the past one year, the woman has been on the bed, not blinking, not moving.
Sudha cooks with hope everyday still.
But her hope is different from that of her Sahib.
At the end of the day,
When she’s heading home, she gets to carry the uneaten meal of Khichdi which she prepares for the patient every morning.
That khichdi is the meal both sisters share in the evening as their solitary meal of the day.
Their lives have been running on the monorail of this monotony for the past year.
But something changed in both their lives in the past 24 hours.
Yesterday, Radha’s employer had a party at their home. She was asked to prepare a Biryani with Raita for the 30 odd guests expected. Radha, adept at her skill, cooked up a fragrant Potful of Biryani with a delicious Raita to go with it.
Today morning, when she went to work she found the aroma of the biryani still lingering around.
She checked the pot to find some leftover Biryani from yesterday.
She scraped the whole pot clean and filled up a polyethylene bag with the Biryani.
She scrubbed the pot clean and got to her usual work.
Singing to herself as she worked, her happiness knew no bounds. She couldn’t wait for dinner time when she would finally be able to share a good meal with her sister Sudha.
She had had enough of the bland khichdi Sudha used to bring every evening.
After finishing work, Radha quickly headed to her quarters in the workers colony. She heated up the biryani over a kerosene stove, laid out a plate and waited patiently for Sudha to come home.
‘Sudha! What took you so long !’ she cried out once Sudha entered the room.
‘Come , sit, we shall have something different for our dinner today !’ Radha exclaimed.
Sudha sat down solemnly.
‘What happened Sudha, you look gloomy’
‘Let us eat little sister’ Sudha spoke feebly.
Both of them took a morsel each of the fragrant rice. Radha waited in anticipation for Sudha’s appraisal but she wouldn’t speak a word. She ate quietly.
‘What is the matter Sudha ?’ Radha enquired comforting her with a touch.
‘Sahib’s wife passed away last night.’
There was an unsettling silence in the room.
Both took another morsel of the delicious biryani.
But all they could taste,
was the hunger that awaited
the next evening.
Source the words from the head
Yet don’t mistake the head for the source
Don’t let the words get into your head
For the source is beyond all words said
© 2020 Sreenath Sreenivasan
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