Author: Sreenath Sreenivasan (Page 5 of 29)

The weight of water

July 11, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

The rousing beat of the temple kettle drum awakened the village out of its afternoon siesta. Shantu, the elderly weatherman of the village could hardly contain his excitement. Standing high on the temple square, he summoned the villagers and announced,

‘Listen up my fellow villagers!
The days of suffering are finally going to end. Count this as the last day of summer, for I predict that we will get the first spell of rain tonight.’

The crowd cheered in celebration. Shantu had seen the most monsoons in the whole village, and people trusted the accuracy of his intuition.

The women were especially happy. It cost them two blisters a day to walk up to the pond in the village nearby to fetch water. Soon, the pond in their own village will have water, saving them time and effort. The kids rejoiced at the idea of showering in the rain to their heart’s content. The seedlings of rice in the earth too waited eagerly for the first spell. Startled birds expressed their surprise for the celebration of belated news. Only if humans had instincts as honed as theirs!

Amid the celebration, Shantu’s granddaughter Gauri walked up the temple stairs hurriedly. Her pet dog Kalu followed her as usual. As she heaved herself up to the top flight, she asked Shantu,

‘Daddu, Daddu, can I go to the pond to fetch water today? I’ll go with the other village women. Please, please…’ she wheedled.

‘You little child. You are 8 years old. You’ll break you delicate neck with a huge potful of water on your head,’ he said patting her head.

‘I will take the smaller pot. I can carry that.
Please let me go.’

‘Did you ask your Amma?’

‘No, she will refuse for sure. But if you grant me permission, she will let me go with everyone else.’

‘Okay, but Kalu must go with you. For your protection, okay?’ Shantu asked lovingly.

‘Yes, there is no way he can stay without me. He will follow me!’

‘Okay, go and come back safely.’

‘Really! I can go?’

‘Yes. And here, take this mango. Enjoy it on the way.’

Gauri pocketed the ripe mango and raced down the temple stairs. She headed straight to her little hut nearby.

She took a small earthen pot and followed the village women headed to the pond for the evening shift of fetching water.
This would mark her first excursion out of the village. She was jubilant.

Kalu sniffed the way forward as Gauri’s little footsteps tried to keep pace with the women who were growing smaller in size every time she tried to spot them.

‘Aye, Kalu, wait for me,’ she hollered as Kalu paced away on the path. He must also know of the impending rain, like the birds.

She met a village lady who was on her way back to the village. Effortlessly balancing two pots of water on her head, she walked gracefully through the sun-baked road.

On spotting little Gauri near the pond, she asked,

‘Aye, Gauri, what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to fetch water with Kalu,’ she said with an eye out for her beloved pet.

‘Go and play in the village little girl. You are too small to make this shift.’

‘ I want to help Amma in the household now.’

‘Does she know you’re here?’

‘Maybe, I told Daddu…He knows.’

‘Okay, go quickly. The pond is right beyond that bend you see behind the Banyan tree.’

‘Yes, yes… ‘ she said and rushed to keep pace with Kalu.

‘Kalu, wait for me….’

She reached the pond to find a few village women filling up their pots. One of them helped her fill her little pot as Kalu slurped away from a puddle nearby.

One of the ladies said,
‘Don’t carry the pot on your head. It is heavy. Carry it on your hip…Like this’ she gestured.

With a little help from the women, she balanced the pot on her hip and started her journey back to the village.

She measured the distance back to her village with her tiny steps…

‘Ek…Do…Teen…Chaar…’

She ran out of numbers within a minute. On the way, she started to feel a bit hungry.
She tried reaching the Mango her Daddu had given her from the pocket of her skirt while balancing the pot on her hip.

But just as soon as she managed to pull out the mango, she lost grip on the pot and it came crashing down at her feet.

The pot was shattered. All the water in Gauri’s eyes poured out.

‘What will Amma think of me for breaking this pot?’ she wondered amid snuffles.

She felt a heaviness on her head, as if she was carrying a hundred pots.

She sat right by the broken pot, with Kalu licking her face of tears.

‘Do you want to have Mango, Kalu?’

Kalu never refused food.

The best friends shared the fragrant mango while coming to terms with the loss.

The mango helped her relax. Meanwhile, the weather had begun to change, just as her Daddu had predicted.

She stared at the wet patch of earth where the water from the pot had soaked in.

‘What will Amma say?’ she wondered.

Back at the village, Shantu had begun to get worried about Gauri. Most women had made their way back from the trip.

Shantu was as afraid as little Gauri now.

‘What will Amma say?’ he wondered.

With his walking stick in his hand, Shantu started walking briskly towards the pond.

The gathering clouds had painted the path all around in a gloomy light. For the first time in years, Shantu found himself running. He raced towards the pond in search of Gauri.

From a distance, he could hear Kalu howling back at the low rumble in the sky. He felt a bit relieved. Within moments, he saw the emerald of his eye and heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Gauri…Chalo.. Let’s go home!’

‘Daddu..!’ she cried out.

Shantu saw the broken pot and understood the whole story.

Gauri had mud all over her hands and Kalu had mango pulp stains on his face.

Shantu wiped Gauri’s tears. She held his hands and began to walk towards the village.
Kalu led the way, barking at the sky.

‘Gauri, don’t worry about Amma scolding you, okay?’

‘Hmmm…’ she whimpered.

‘Did you enjoy the Mango?’

She nodded.

‘Why did it take you so long to head back home?’

‘ I was digging a small pit Daddu…right where the water had soaked into the earth. Kalu helped me too.’

‘Accha? Why so?’

‘I buried the mango seed there.’

Her Daddu slowed down his pace a bit.
He turned to look into her eyes.

‘How could I let the water go to waste, Daddu?’

Her eyes were pure as love. Shantu had never felt more proud of his little granddaughter.

He hoisted her up and sat her on his shoulder. That was her favourite ride. Slowly, they headed towards their village.

Soon, it began to drizzle. Gauri smiled. Kalu howled in joy.

‘Daddu, the Mango seed will grow, right?’

Thunder roared in the sky. It was a resounding answer from heaven.

And every little raindrop said,

‘Yes, it will.’

What a butterfly says

July 10, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

I’ve lived up to witness the charming story
Sitting on a bloom of morning glory
The world, they say, slows down its pace
To watch me with a smile, on their face

When I prance around among fragrant things
With the bright symmetry of powder wings,
The traces of pollen in my flight
Bring one and all a supreme delight

Half my life was spent in a cellar
As the ravenous reeling caterpillar
Camouflaged in weeds in isolation
Unaware I’d be worth a celebration

But it isn’t just praise I’ve pandered to
My wings are often slandered too
When the ocean churns with climatic defect
They blame it on me as the butterfly effect

Do tornadoes turn, from the flap of my wings?
I’m too small to know of all these things
But in quiet moments of contemplation
I wonder if I can stir such a revolution

To you, I say, my patient friend
Life is but an enchanting blend
Of duality of oblivion and discovery
Of flying high and chewing mulberry

As children of creation, there are traits we share
Of longing to thrive in the hours to spare
Should you embrace the world with a loving might
You’ll know the beauty of a wingless flight

So let each little act, each tiny motion
Be an act of the deepest devotion
And you’ll taste dear life’s potent potion
And your awakening will usher
A revolution.

On cultivating a sense of wonder

July 5, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

‘Come out in the balcony mummy, right now!’

‘What’s the matter? I am in the middle of cooking lunch.’

‘Come out in the balcony, just for two minutes. You don’t want to miss this!’

The excitement in my voice was at its peak.

Eventually, she came and found me wearing a strange pair of goggles and staring at the sun.

‘Eclipse goggles? Is it a solar eclipse today, son?’

‘Yes! Here, have a look,’ I said and helped her wear the eclipse goggles.

For the next minute, I saw my mother smile for the longest duration I’ve ever seen in my life.

As she shared what she saw through those tinted glasses, I came to know she hadn’t ever seen a solar eclipse before.

It came as a surprise to me since she had devoted 35 years of her life in service to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

She shared how in her childhood, people in the village used to watch the eclipse’s reflection in a shallow puddle of cow dung, for eclipse goggles didn’t exist back then.

In that abiding minute, as I watched the sheer awe on my mother’s goggled face, I felt a sense of peace dawn in my heart.

I’ve often felt guilty about travelling far and wide on my bicycle trip, but never really taking my mother to any place for a tour. However, sometimes, you needn’t leave your home to travel.

Watching that eclipse transported us deep in a world full of wonder.

This incident left me thinking –

Exactly how far away does one find a sense of wonder?

How far does one need to go to find a silent rush take over their being?

Most likely, it is just one person away.

The distance between a sense of weariness and a whirlwind of wonder is in the breadth of our openness for a fresher perspective.
And considering the fragile state of the world within us, isn’t sharing those fleeting moments of fascination with the people around us, an act of compassion?

And, as a corollary, doesn’t opening your mind to perspectives of others offer an avenue to understand, and at some level, love the people in the world around you?

Have a friend who’s frustrated with the rising binaries of political narratives worldwide?

Share with her how a binary language helped us achieve a technological revolution.
If she’s still vexed and the discussion ends with her saying, nothing will ever change, perhaps bring her a goldfish named Nemo, or a cute bonsai to keep by her windowsill.
When she finds herself tending to those, despite proclaiming that nothing will ever change, she might find some answers in those quiet moments spent still caring.

What if you find a foreign element in your morning cup of tea? Take a deep breath, spare your maid the usual reprimand, and share with her how a little grain of impurity has its own place in the world. How a minuscule amount of cobalt helped your chai-cup gain that royal blue hue. The emerald chandelier on the roof owes its splendour to strains impurities of iron oxide. Perhaps with that joy of learning something new, the maid will be more careful with cookware and your chai might be tastier in the evening.

Want to feel truly alive? Remove your earphones, don a stethoscope, and hear the sound of your child’s heartbeat. Help her listen to her throbbing heart.

Isn’t that a picture-perfect moment?

And while you are helping people see the world differently, be generously open to the perspectives of people around you.

Maybe that story recited by a child, that’s teeming with imagination yet happens to never end, might help you be at peace with the idea of writing a story, even if you don’t have the end in mind.

Before you dismiss the devotion of a village lady as superstition, try circling a banyan tree thrice, sink in its grandeur, and see if you feel a sense of gratitude that’s worthy of worship.

The way we see anything is the way we see everything.

We often forget to realise the magic in our world, its breath-taking complexity, its delicate balance, its poetic perfection beyond our perception.

Once we begin to see the world around us with a shared sense of wonder, we begin to accept our own existence with a similar sense of awe.

Lend me your lenses and let me lend you mine.

For once we learn to do so, we will only be kinder to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We will realise the value of the time and space we’ve been graciously leased out by dear life.

Keep your mind open to perspectives, and an eye out for the skies.

Maybe when you hold your head up high, with an eye for wonder, it will rain a thousand blazing meteors.

The fakir with the flute

July 4, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

It was another bad day at work.
After all these years, I couldn’t understand whether it was the work that was bad, or was it I who was bad at work. Nevertheless, the pay was good, and that had kept me going.

My mind was a scramble since morning in my cubicle and I couldn’t wait for that hallowed half-hour of repose – lunch-time.

After a hurried lunch, I walked up to the chai shop across the street for the sake of maintaining at least one habit unfailingly.

It was a cloudy day and the usual clamour of the street was a bit subdued. As I sat under the Neem tree, rationing miserly sips of hot chai, a faint, evocative melody fell upon my ear.

Happy to have heard some music on the street, I looked around to find its source. Soon, I saw an elderly flute-seller walk up the street with a playful air.

He wore a black turban, a faded yellow kurta and flowing black pyjamas. A stick that leaned on his left shoulder was festooned with a bunch of flutes of different sizes. His traditional leather footwear curled back in at the front, much like his sinuous moustache.

With an easy, graceful gait, he approached the chai-shop. He played a familiar filmy tune that most of the generation on the street had grown up listening to. We measured our age with the breadth of the smile that the prized piece of nostalgia brought forth on us.

He slowed down his advance near the chai-shop and with that timeless melody, he slowed down the pace of the street.

Once he finished playing the tune, the hum of the traffic resumed, as a poignant, practical applause.

He gave himself the reward of a content smile.

Having subconsciously judged his petty life at first glance, I felt perplexed by the quiet complacency in his demeanour. Or should I say, a bit envious.

I waved at him and asked,

‘Aye, bansuri-wallah, chai?’

He nodded as if he saw the invitation coming.

As I offered him a cup of chai, I asked,

‘What’s your name?’

He gently swayed his head, like the topmost branch of a young tree, as if in no hurry whatsoever.

After a sip of chai, with a nod of approval, he said…

‘Kanha…My name is Kanha…’

‘Kanha, tell me, why is it that you keep playing this old filmy tune? Is that the only song you know?’ I asked with a hint of disparagement.

‘I can only play what people are ready to hear, Babuji.’

I felt I heard a part of me in his answer. How I had learned to sell what people were willing to buy, thinking that was the only way.

But what separated him from me? I couldn’t remember even a fleeting instant from my life when I was as content as this flute-selling fakir.

‘Why don’t you play something new, something original for me? If you do so, I might buy a flute,’ I said.

He smiled.

‘I have been waiting for a pair of ears that pine to hear a new message through music.
Do you think you are ready?’ he asked in his throaty voice.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said on the behalf of the street.

They say that the value of any thing is in the way it alters your perception of time and space. Whoever has been in love, has lived this truth first hand.

As he began to play, perhaps it was love that he weaved in those ennobled breaths.

The whole street stood entranced. All involuntary work suddenly lost its relevance. Hawkers, pedestrians, spent cows, orphans on the street; felt magnetically drawn to the caress of that tune. The wind flowed with a gentler hiss and the sun peeped ever so little to shine a spotlight where it was due. Just as lost as the street was in the music, so was Kanha, the seraphic source of those mellifluous moments.

The thousands of questions people had in their mind were answered, all the pain in their hearts was soothed, and everyone, for that hallowed span of time, learned to smile again without longing for a lasting reason.

As he held the final note on his bansuri, the clock began to slowly tick again.

He opened his opal eyes and invited me to lose all my guards. I looked into his eyes, those fabled tunnels with a blinding light at the other end.

I submitted to a hypnotic spell, and let him read the maze of my mind.

He blinked twice, and I began to sense my surroundings again.

‘Did you enjoy the music?’ he asked humbly.

‘Yes…Yes…It was… the truth…’

‘To answer the question on your mind, Babuji…
That music…
That’s the value of my breath.’

He had read my mind like a book. And I was glad he could read the script that I’d begun to forget.

He reached his hand to one of the other flutes in his collection and pulled out one with a pink thread at its end.

He handed me the flute and lovingly said,

‘Go find the value of your breath.’

I took the flute in my hand and looked at it with a hope that I’d thought I had given up on long ago.

Slowly, I looked up. Kanha was already walking away with his easy, nonchalant stride.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask him,
How much I owed him.

The Mother Asks

July 3, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

The air that the Buddha exhaled
When he realised enlightenment

The molecules that plankton infused
In the air since genesis

The final gush of breath of hunted gazelle

Is the air that you and I breathe
At this moment.

The bead of sweat on a farmer’s brow
The ever-dancing droplet on a lotus leaf

The wayward clans of vapour
that ride on the wind

Have reached our glass as water,
at some point in time

Each grain, each sediment,
Each fossil, each stone,
Every discovered gem
Was born
Out of degrees of temprament
Of Magma,
That Mother earth shelters in her womb

The water,
the earth,
the wind,
the fire
the sky

Have been the same
On Earth
Across ages

Humans have only tainted them
With the rationale of a greater good
Across generations

The water tastes of humankind’s
Cluttered chemistry
The sky coughs from the gathering haze
The Earth chokes under concrete
The wind and fire
Have gone haywire

Our collective derangement
Our spirited defilement
Is perhaps
A fleeting moment of discomfort
To the wholesome, ever-complete Earth

She can cure herself
She’s been through worse

The question she asks is,

Do we want to be the generation
Of hostile antigens
That she must fight against

Or are we ready
To be a remedy?

The Mother will do just fine

She asks us still,
Witholding a teardrop with patience,

Can we be worthy children
And aspire to live another
sliver of a sliver
of time
To dwell on the miracle
Life is.

The highs and lows of being a Crow

June 28, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

We have always imagined birds to embody a debonair charm. Being capable of elegant flights, birds have access to an aerial view of the world, a vantage we earth-bound bipeds deem to be divinely endowed. The lightness in their swooping motions, their aerodynamic group acrobatics, bring an uplifting feeling to every patient spectator.

Life on earth is blessed with a breathtaking diversity of these dinosaur descendants.

Tiny swallows, sailing swifts, hummingbirds, weaver birds, pastel-colored parakeet, ogling owls, saintly swans, flamingos, the flightless ostrich, emu, penguins…the diversity is immense.

Even the most mundane of feathered creatures, the ubiquitous pigeon, are accepted as one among the bird folk.
The classification of birds might seem like an open, all-encompassing idea at first thought.

But there’s one class among them that we have been subconsciously ostracizing for ages.

The crow.

The crow is seen as, well, a crow.
It feels weird to associate any avian attributes to it. Now that it’s been brought to our attention, one wonders why it is the case!

Perhaps it’s a function of the reputation they’ve built for themselves over the years.

They aren’t exactly the neighbours you’d pray to have. If you despise a rooster’s call in the morning, well, wait until you hear the auditory atrocity the crows inflict at daybreak.
Their rousing cacophony at the crack of dawn can awaken even the deepest of sleepers.
Perhaps it was due to the persistence in its cawing that we, in India, have named it after the sound of its call. In Hindi, it’s called the Cau-wa (The one who caws). It’s called a Kaak in Sanskrit, Kaagdo in Gujarati, and Kaka in most South Indian languages.

Unsurprisingly, it’s presence has permeated into our language and culture.

We’ve been tainting its physical attributes since childhood. Haven’t we grown up teasing a dark-skinned peer form the neighbourhood as a Kaala Cauwa, black as a crow?
And how about the way we discouraged people from singing in their Cauwe Jaisi awaaz. (You sing like a crow!) We’ve quashed the confidence of so many people with such slanderous simile.

But beyond the physical aspect, crows are known to exhibit remarkably sophisticated group behaviour. These gregarious beings in their jet black attire look much like a council of advocates perched high up on a towering tree. Why they haven’t sued us for defamation yet is a point in question.

Shifting between clamouring speculation and meditative reflection, they certainly seem like evolved thinkers.
In fact, crows are known to gather around a dead comrade and investigate the cause behind its demise.
Perhaps that influenced a philologist to name the collective noun for a group of crows as ‘murder’.
A murder of crows investigates the murder of a crow – a neat mnemonic device to remember that fact!

Crows have a noxious way of demarcating their dominion. They mark their territory not by aggression but by inducing a repulsion to the stench in their collective droppings. Early-morning-joggers are known to run a bit faster underneath trees colonised by crows, always with a prayer on the lip, wishing to be spared being an unlucky target.

Blackness envelops a crow to the extent that even its eyes are completely black.
It’s this pervading blackness and the negative white space that together fashion the poetic, yin-yang nature of its life.

There’s an inherent dichotomy in the way the mind of a crow works. Kids across the globe have grown up with stories of the clever crow who managed to drink water out of that pot that had too little water by dropping stones into it. We’ve been introduced to the potential in a crow’s intellect fairly early on in life.
And experiments have proven the amazing ability of a crow for logical thinking.

Yet, we all know how, for generations, it’s been fooled by the koel into bringing up its offspring. How such a sophisticated mind can be fooled in broad daylight is a deep mystery of nature.
Whether there is a connection between this congenital emotional folly and the fact that we always assume a crow to be male is up for debate!

Elaborating further on the dichotomy, crows have been traditionally seen as a bad omen in India, yet, we also see them as the reincarnation of our beloved ancestors and offer them the first morsel of food cooked at home.

But that tradition is slowly disappearing in cities as we disrespectfully drive our reincarnated ancestors to the outskirts of the city, where they scavenge in squalor at the landfill.
With the broad range of foods they can stomach, they still provide a vital service of consuming much of the organic matter that would otherwise rot.

The other day, I had the opportunity of witnessing the genius of a crow first hand. We had placed a bowl full of water in our garden for birds to quench their thirst in the summers. While many birds came and enjoyed the oasis in our garden, a crow-couple kept coming back to the bowl of water for an interesting reason. They’d been soaking parts of their nest one by one in the bowl until it became saturated with cool water. Then, they would take it back to the nest, place it there, and come back with another few elements of their nest. This way, they managed to keep their nest cool, humid, and habitable.
In another instance, I saw them soak dried up rotis in the water to make them chewy and digestible again.
How creative are these beings!

Having witnessed their wit first hand, I’ve begun to see crows in a different light. There’s so much we could learn from them.

Apart from their harsh-toned singing (which a majority of us learn quite naturally), we could also learn a lot more from these birds.

We could learn to sing our heart out despite the harshness in our voice. We could learn from their enterprise, inventiveness, and creative thinking. We could develop an immunity to disapproval and believe in our ability that’s beyond the apparent appraisal.
We could learn to be entirely comfortable in our skin (feathers in their case!). And most importantly, we could accept our capacity for blind emotional folly.

Dear crow, notwithstanding your annoying cawing, I do strive to be like you in many ways. I am not writing this for amusement or taking a dig at you.
I really mean it.
And dare I lie, for I know that if I do, I’ll get a fitting punishment from you.
As they say ‘Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaatey’. (If you lie, you’ll be bitten by a crow!)

Rags to Riches

June 27, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

There’s a mountain that has been growing steadily over the years in the outskirts of the city. Marooned in a corner beyond sight, this is where all of the city’s discarded things live. Welcome to the city’s ever-rising landfill, where unwanted people rummage through the unwanted refuse of a million people to make ends meet.

This burgeoning arena, is the pit stop on the journey of garbage, en route the mystical place called ‘away’ where we assume we throw our waste. The stench is unbearable, yet, should you ask a rag picker if it bothered her, she’d ask,

‘What stench?’

People have lived their entire lives here, picking and sorting waste. One among these indistinguishable many is Fareed. He celebrated his 60th birthday a month ago, and there were pastries to go with the celebration. After 5 decades of living in the rubble, he knew where exactly to find what. Finding the place where the garbage from the bakeries was dumped was a piece of cake for him.

He still had a few childhood friends in the dump-site. Most were the lucky ones who hadn’t succumbed to occupational hazards over the years. Many of his friends had while working at the landfill. His father died when a dump-truck accidentally buried him under a pile of garbage, muffling his screams forever. A woman he’d fallen in love with got poisoned by lead at the site. He still remembers her blue face, her lifeless eyes, when they took her away for cremation. It all felt like yesterday. But between yesterday and today, he’d lived his entire noxious life.

He loved to talk. Being one of the seniors at the site, he’d often find a huddle of young rag pickers around who’d plead for stories from ‘back in the day’. He didn’t complain of the sporadic bouts of attention he’d get in an otherwise punishing life.

Often, he would be heard saying his signature quote to youngsters,

‘Remember, half of the waste that comes here is still good. It’s usable. Yet under the weight of this labyrinthine landfill, even a good piece of ripe fruit starts to emit a foul odour.
Half of every person’s heart is good too, yet in this damned place, if it starts to rot, you should learn to forgive him and save the part that’s still good.’

The people found his unlettered wisdom and undeniable honesty endearing. Despite the resignation to fate, he still worked with pride, for he worked hard to earn a dignified living.
But in his quieter moments, away from it all, he still latched on to the hope of finding a treasure chest buried in the mound, a ticket to retirement.

Who can stop a man from dreaming?

Two days before, on a typical day at work, he had climbed up to the corner of a narrow stretch of the peak. On either side lay steep valleys that led deep into the whirlpool of waste. He sat down on an old computer monitor with his plastic bag of collected waste and took a good look around the place.

Generations of scavengers flew in circles over the landfill, as if waiting patiently for him to die. Flies preferred to perch on putrefying organic matter nearby, sparing him the discomfort. His mismatched shoes oozed gunk. For as far as he could see, it looked like a museum of the failure of civilization.

He narrowed down his vision and looked around to find anything he could sell for a good value. Magnets from speakers, metals, IC chips…

Scanning in this way, his eyes fell on a shapely hand jutting out of the mass. An eagle let out a shrill scream as if expressing Fareed’s horror. Amid the disgusting pile of garbage, the hand of a beautiful woman buried in the rubble only added to the wretchedness of the surroundings.

‘Who could she be? A victim of a drug war? A pregnant teenager? A trafficked girl from the village?’ he wondered.

Gingerly, he stepped closer. He saw a gem-studded golden ring on one of the fingers.
His eyes lit up. It was mid-afternoon and there wasn’t anyone around. He knelt and pulled the ring out of her finger. Her hands were cold as an ice-cream cup.

He quickly pocketed the ring. He looked around again. There wasn’t anyone within sight.

He thought,

‘Maybe she’s wearing a necklace too. Perhaps this is the jackpot I’ve been working towards all my life.’

In his mind, he had already pictured himself in a tuxedo, away from a lifetime of filth.

He held that cold-lifeless hand buried in the garbage and tugged on to it. He pulled as if his life depended on it. But the weight of garbage doesn’t even let the living people loose, what fate did the dead have?

Amid his desperate act of pulling with all his might, he managed to loosen the body out of the rubble. Suddenly, the garbage under his feet loosened out and he fell back and rolled down into the valley, still with the dead woman’s body in his hands. Both bodies fell as lovers in a romantic movie, deeply attached despite the illegitimacy of their bond.

And then there was suffocating darkness.

Hours later, Fareed woke up to such blinding whiteness that for a moment, he felt he’d died and reached heaven.

As his eyes adjusted to the lights in the hospital room, he saw the face of Sabi, a young rag picker who’d been working nearby when he fell.

He tried to speak but he found himself unable to. His head felt heavy from all the bandages. He blinked constantly.

Sabi wore a crescent smile on her face and said something, but Fareed couldn’t hear her.

On Sabi’s right arm, he saw a small bandage. Sabi pointed her eyes towards the pouch of blood hanging high on the right side of the bed. In moments, Fareed realised that he was being administered Sabi’s blood.

Old Fareed felt a sickness inside. He found a rotten part of him that had become selfish merely with the thought of a possible escape from his life at the landfill.

But he remembered his own quote that he would share with young rag pickers often –

‘….Half of every person’s heart is good too, yet in this damned place, if it starts to rot, you should learn to forgive him and save the part that’s still good.’

Somewhere between deep sighs, he found the heart to forgive himself for that lustful moment of pure selfishness.

With great difficulty, he moved a bit and felt the left pocket of his pants. The ring was still there.

He peeped into Sabi’s eyes as if asking for forgiveness.

Fareed pledged himself to give the ring in his pocket to Sabi.

He smiled. Sabi did too and held Fareed’s hand gently.

Sabi’s hand felt as warm as life.

Fareed remembered that the last thing he had held before his downfall, was a cold, lifeless hand.

Deep inside, he felt recuperated.

Little did Fareed know that the ring in his pocket was a cheap piece of imitation jewellery. He also didn’t know he had fallen from the top of the garbage pile, holding the hand of a mannequin.

But, in Fareed’s story, a fake gem and an ever-lifeless body, helped him find the jewel in his own heart, the gem of a person Sabi was, and, in some way the good part of in both their souls, that was still worth saving.

A quiet fire

June 26, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Two bees
Suckle
A spout of nectar

The lavender flower
Blushes
In a tender surrender

And I watch
And wonder

Have I ever been a bee
And droned my arrival
To the elixir of life

Have I ever been
the lavender bloom
That summons the buzzers,
That surrenders
with a silent passion

The wind whispers
With its motion,
An emotion
Of being comfortable being invisible
As long as it makes itself felt
As long as it is in motion

There is a world
Right in front of our eyes
That informs us
Of a quiet fire
A resilience
Untouched by aggression
Unblemished of pride
That works silently
Solemnly
Each moment
Forever

That I can witness this
In rare moments
Of reflection
Is enough to kindle
A fire within.

The Art and Science of Learning- Semester 1

June 21, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Syllabus for Semester 1 : Duration : 21 June 2020 to 21 December 2020

Domain 1 – Developing Existential Awareness

Subject chosen – The study of Vedantic Literature

Reason of choosing the subject:

To understand the philosophical concepts on Vedanta and develop a world view, a raison d’être, with the awareness of the timeless wisdom contained in the scriptures.

SYLLABUS – Scriptures to study in the semester

The Bhagvad Geeta

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Isha Upanishad

Kena Upanishad

Kathopnishad

Mandukya Upanishad

Mundaka Upanishad

SUBMISSIONS

1) A series of essays about the vedantic philosophy
2) Two videos outlining the concepts developed through the course

STUDY PLAN – 30 mins of study of the scriptures everyday

DOMAIN 2 – Developing Linguistic Aptitude

Subjects chosen

1) Better Writer 101

This will be a recurring subject every semester since I wish to develop my writing skills and that is an ongoing endeavor.

SYLLABUS:

a) Read one essay, one short-story, one poem everyday (create a publically accessible archive of the same)

b) Write and Publish one essay, one short-story, one poem every week (follow a sacred weekly publishing schedule)

SUBMISSIONS (Weekly)

Friday – Poetry
Saturday – Short-story
Sunday – Essay

2) Study of Malayalam Language

SYLLABUS : Half hour study everyday

INSTRUCTOR: Rema Sreenivasan

SUBMISSIONS : A video featuring the progress in language ability across 6 months.

DOMAIN 3 – Developing Musical Aptitude

SUBJECT CHOSEN : Learn to play the bass

INSTRUCTOR: Vishal Singh

SUBMISSIONS: 10 bass covers uploaded on IGTV/ Youtube by December 21, 2020

STUDY PLAN: 1 hour study everyday and weekly lessons with the instructor

DOMAIN 4 – Developing Naturalist Aptitude

SYLLABUS : Study Home-Science with my mother

INSTRUCTOR: Rema Sreenivasan

STUDY PLAN: Learn and document home science skills (cooking, essential life-skills, learning to run a household, wisdom of an Indian mother) in video and written format in an intimate and shareable way

SUBMISSIONS: A PDF document of recipes

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR THIS SEMESTER

1) Practicing – A musician’s return to music – Glenn Kurtz

2) Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century – Howard Gardner

3) Out of our minds – Ken Robinson

4) Writing for your life – Deena Metzger

5) Zen Mind, Beginner’s mind – Shunryu Suzuki

6) Mahatma Gandhi on the Bhagawat Geeta – M.K. Gandhi

Semester ending report: Create Abstract for each subject to discuss methods used, results, outcomes.

——————————————————————————————————

The Autobiography

June 20, 2020 / Sreenath Sreenivasan / 0 Comments

Little Samay had begun to feel betrayed by the weekends. Usually, these two days were reserved for playing with his father. But lately, his journalist father had been swarmed with work. The casualty – their play-time.

Gingerly, he stood near the door of his father’s study and peeped in with his puppy eyes. He waited to be noticed. But work had worked a spell on his father. He wouldn’t look away from his laptop, as if the whole world around him had disappeared.

‘What are you doing, Papa?’

‘Samay, I am writing a review for an autobiography.’

‘What is an autoto….’

‘Autobiography…say Auto…Bio…Graphy..’

‘Auto…Bio…Graphy..?’

‘Yes! Very good.’

‘So, what is an autobio…?’

‘graphy…..An autobiography is the story of someone’s life.’

‘Anyone can write an auto..bio…graphy?’

‘Good! Well, yes, anyone can write it. Usually it is written by people who have done great work in their life, so that people can read and learn from the writer’s life.’

‘Do you have an autobiography, Papa?’

‘No son, but someday I might write one.’ added the father, still clanking away on the laptop.

‘Hmm…Does Grandpa have an autobiography?’

‘No, son, why don’t you help him to write one?’

‘Yes! Good idea! Can I write my autobiography also?’

‘Sure. Why don’t you help Grandpa write the story of his life? And then you can write the story of your life too!’

‘Yes! Auto..Auto…Autobio….’ sang out the 7-year-old and ran downstairs.

After a couple of hours there was a knock on the door.

‘Mom?’

‘Yes, Samay, it’s me. Open up!’

The little boy hopped across the hall and opened the door for his mother.

‘Ah, mom, your hair is short now!’

‘Yes, I got a haircut.’

‘I also want a haircut!’

‘Okay, next week, I promise.’

‘I am writing my autobiography, Mom. I am helping Grandpa write his autobiography too..’

‘Oh goodness, who taught you this big word, Papa?’

‘Yes, but Grandpa fell asleep. We only wrote a little until now. We will continue after lunch.’

‘Hmm…he doesn’t sleep before lunch usually. Maybe he is tired after telling you his story.’

‘Maybe. But we only wrote a few lines”

‘That’s okay. Now go call your father for lunch.’

The family chose to not wake up the eldest member for lunch. They let him rest in his room.

After a hurried lunch, as Samay’s father was rushing back to his study, his wife said,

‘Can you check in your father? I think he fell asleep in his wheelchair in his room.’

‘Sure,’ he said and walked up to the room.

He tried waking his father up. But, he was past the earthly plane. Seated on the wheelchair still, the dead man had a peaceful smile on his face, as if he’d accomplished everything he’d aimed for in life.

There was a note that rested in his lap.
Samay’s father took the note in his shaky hands and tried to read the squiggly handwriting.

It read,

‘ MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY’

Yesterday, I was a little child.
I have grown up so fast.
I enjoyed playing in life. I am happy.
It will be lunch time soon.
I am going away…’

And the teary-eyed son couldn’t tell, if this was his son’s autobiography or his deceased father’s.