A stolen afternoon

The creased bedspread undergird your sleep, a sleep I do not want to disturb and have the magical spell and magical run that I have had with my writing, halt like it has arrived at an unexpected dead end. 

But you wake up and open those black eyes that I love so much. I realise my luck has thinned as I cajole sleep to curl into you. I cram in the last keystrokes, allow the sulci and gyri of my cerebellum to form thoughts as clear as possible and click the right buttons before I shut my work for the day and tend to you like I tend to the hidden desires in my heart.

Flash Fiction

A piece of flash fiction that I wrote is up at https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-writing-responses-maria-izquierdo. Thanks for reading! 

Efforts at home schooling

Krishna is now two and a half years old and at home, thanks to the pandemic. Much as I try to slot the days into neat little compartments of learning, art and outdoor activities (which has reduced to a bare minimum), I have not been able to. For, the mind of a two year old is as playful as the flitting butterfly that refuses to get bogged down by the rigors of discipline. 

I try to cram in as many activities as possible for him, into the lone hour that I get, before leaving to office. Ten minutes of which, gets spent in cajoling him to arrive at the table to read. I finally abandon my futile attempts and get him to sit on the soft duvet, a bowl of raisins in one hand and his favourite water bottle in another. He uses both of them as distractions to suit his whims, once every two minutes when he finds the process of listening, tedious. I carry on like this for the next fifty minutes in the solace of the knowledge that we are 'making incremental progress towards a meaningful goal', a la Earl Nightingale. 

And then I hand him over to my mother to carry off from where I leave and proceed to office till I return in the evening, hoping to read to him but never actually getting my exhausted self to do it.

One of these days, hopefully, things will change. And hopefully the process of learning will get to be more fun for both of us, actually all three of us - my mother and me, as educators and my son, as a diligent learner.     

Buddhist Poetry Review

 My poem titled 'The Destination' has been published in Buddhist Poetry Review. You can read it here at https://www.buddhistpoetryreview.org/archive/vol-three-issue-three/preeth-ganapathy 

Two Poems and a piece of micro fiction

Hello,

Happy to share with you a couple of my recent publishing successes.

Willawaw Journal published a poem that I had written - 'The Flourescent Orange Swimsuit' in their Fall Issue. You can read it here - http://willawawjournal.com/category/journal/fall-2020-issue-10/page/3/

A piece of micro fiction that I wrote was published in one of my favourite magazine - 101Words.org. https://101words.org/divine-justice/

A poem that I had written in response to their prompt - 'Figures on a landscape' by Bertram Booker has been published in The Ekphrastic Review. It's up at https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-writing-responses-bertram-brooker.

Happy writing! Happy reading!

In the lap of nature

 Today is the last day of my three day mini-break in Coorg.

I must say that this time, I got to see a completely different face of the land that I belong to, the land whose beauty I just can’t get enough of, I just can’t stop raving about.

We arrived on Saturday morning after a short detour to KRS(Krishna Raja Sagar) dam. Our car tootled on the cement pathway to our home in tune to the light beats of a thin drizzle, when I caught sight of the patch of clouds hanging delicately on the tip of the distant hillock, a hillock I had never noticed before. They bowed low like hosts, eager to please, folding their palms.  

It has not stopped raining since the time we arrived. The volume of the rainfall varies from time to time, alternating between heavy and light, but never stopping altogether. This sound of pattering rain is a pleasurable change from the constant din of honking horns of a dreary city life.

During the past two days, Krishna, with his outstretched palms, has been sampling drops of water dripping from different surfaces – from the red petals of wild hibiscus, from the tips of green unripe coffee berries, from the eaves of the two dog kennels, from the edge of the porch – all while we entertained ourselves to some outdoor carrom, a game at which I fare very poorly and would have happily joined my toddler in his adventures instead. Nevertheless, we did have some great moments of family bonding, ones that will remain in our mind for a long time to come.

Today morning, we visited the kere, a small pond which serves as a natural well of irrigation to the estate. It was as green as the leaves of coffee shrubs themselves and Krishna was pretty excited to see all the different birds that hung around the pond. We tried to match them with the birds we had seen from his book, but practicals are always a different ball game when compared to theory.

Otherwise, I’ve been trying to nature-watch, bird-watch, insect-watch, flower-watch from the comfort of a sheltered porch trying to soak in as much as possible.

With a book on my lap and a fountain-pen in my hand, on our first evening here, I remarked to my husband who was sitting beside me, sipping from a cup of hot coffee, ‘This is my dream life, you know. Writing in the lap of nature.’ Like one of my favourites, Ruskin Bond. And another favourite, Shivaram Karanth. But now at the end of the third day, I realize - I was so lost in her beauty that, in three days, I could only squeeze in a short poem in her praise.

The days and nights have been cold, a kind of cold that lulls you into sleep and prevents you from getting on your toes to make yourself a cup of coffee, to take a bath or to reach for the phone that lies on the table a few feet away from your bed. ‘Lie down for some time more,’ the cold seems to say, a wicked smile playing at the corner of its lips. The only other place that reminds me of this kind of cold is Mussoorie , which happens to be another favourite.

‘The chill in the weather is much better these days. When we were young, we would find it difficult to even have a change of clothes,’ my mother used to say. But today, when I call her up, I will tell her about the rains, the wind and the cold. This pleasant kind of cold.

And hope against hope that this is the beginning of a reversal of climate change.  

Perspectives

The world seems to be changing everyday. Tiny small changes.

Of course, I'm sure change was a constant earlier too. It's only now that we notice it, thanks to the pandemic, thanks to the time to reflect and thanks also to the desire to get back to normalcy.

I've noticed that the more fussed and obsessed I am about change, the more intolerant I grow towards it.  Whether its work picking up pace, not picking up pace, change of inclement weather or even letting new people, new friends into our lives - the slightest of changes seems to evoke disproportionate behavioural reactions.

But one thing that I have found that offers solace and a sense of rootedness is spirituality. Meditation, chanting, yoga and pranayama are practices, that I can say, by experience, should not be forgotten. And of course, please add writing to the list. And blogging. And cooking. And spending time with loved ones. The list seems to grow longer and longer !

Well, looking at life, there seems to be plenty of things that seem to be a source of spirituality. It's all a matter of perspective - finding constancy in change and change in constancy.