Tag: #newyear

Pause calmly ….Selah!

Much to un-think here, @ a 3 hour drive from Bangalore city, into tiny growing town.

That cloud sits on thatch? …. its an untouched blue sky with no malls or smog.
At Kuppam’s local market, one or two women are speaking fluent English, their eyes are warm. I meet a beautiful lady at the Railways- she mans a 2ft iron wheel that lifts railway-cross gate. There is no time to take her picture…..
want to wish her a Happy New Year like we wished some others, but Railway lady in blue sari is busy; she turns to give me another look, then surprises us with a wide smile, white teeth and laughing eyes. The woman must be somewhere around 3o, 40? I send a small hand-wave. She waves back, laughing like a school girl.
On our next visit to Kuppam, we simply must get a pic with her.
Good holidays are also those when you’ve no time for a good photograph?
We stay almost a week here.
That lovely Gate is under repair. There were lesser sheep this time at Kuppam: no it’s not a farm for animals, just us humans+ cuddly paws.
My sis sculpts her fav words into woodwork, grills….
She’s an Eye Doc in this town, border to three south Indian states. Li loves the precious simple life here with a faithful househelp and furry princess.
Like Trees planted by Springs of Living waters; there’s backyard Date palm, bougainvillea, guava, papaya, mango, occasional monkey ….
Bonfire woodies. Such memories here with Mom&Dad in this space by Christmas tree, Gulmohar, shoeflower, a baby tamarind tree. Time has flown by ‘like smoke through a key hole…’ (Movie : The Bucket List)
Honey!
Li’s exquisite cuisine
That new double road used to be a rough path to Kupz’s lake. There are more people, cars, school buses, buildings today….
Floors, tiny christmas lights asleep
Meshed safety front grill to keep away esp. mosquitoes. That door lock has seated one or two friendly frog. Very tiny ones. They look like Kermit to us, but Li doesn’t think so. She says(with shudder) they (her leapy frog) wait for her with sly grin.
No, they’re not ..!” is her horror response
to my Q.”What if they just want a kiss, and will turn into your Prince?
Li loves her Prince of Peace best.


The road back…. miles off city limits: goatsherd!
Thresh time! We must gingerly drive over their sheaves, this helps them? (Green lid sohmph my new travel mate from Li’s kitchen).
You can’t see this well enough, but that’s a Church steeple over local temple, rerouting past Kolar gold fields.
Sunset over another gorgeous day; Joh is quiet this past hour. Bangalore city is closer from this long stretch, after brief stop for Lassi.
Back home @Greenview, our feathered granddaughter Tina has two ugly blonde chicks… soon they’ll grow fine feathers. One must wait. And watch.
And did you know Pigeon can be trained to recognize every alphabet?
Tina’s mom is our second daughter Kitsy:) Tina herself was hatched here (also mothered by Kit, so). Complicated!

All this in our little garden which will be busy this season. Phew!
Wishing 2020 Vision for us all.
Peace, Shalom :
nothing missing, nothing broken.
And if there is ‘missing- broken’, may each fit in a whole new way, causing Peace beyond belief.
Selah: meaning, Pause calmly & think of that.

Angel unawares

She found us on a railway platform, Bangalore East; was fascinated by our daughter’s phone and finger ring. Then she wouldn’t leave us; half hour later I was curious to see her family, was she alone? Were there more pretty eyes like hers, gold amber, dark with long lashes….

Photograph Vihan

You could get trapped between tears and soft rage. The child was not hungry for food, she was hungry for things she couldn’t have, not with her lifestyle on the pavement. I looked away hurt that I felt irritation, hurt that I could be repulsed. Somewhere in all that, there was (is) horror that 23%? (according to 2012 census) live below our poverty line. Somewhere in all that is the voice of Sakshi Malik a Facebook friend who said Poverty exists more in the human spirit than anywhere else.

So I follow Amber girl, past a glass bangle seller who also sells heart shaped balloons. He wears kohl in his eyes and one earring. Any other day I may have returned his smile but today the mother in me wasn’t amused. What has happened with us all, that children like this child, must stay in railway platforms? She’s speaking my local Kannada, she is chatty, street smart. If she went to school she’d be in front row full of pep and silver/gold paper stars in her project work.

She points me to her Ma with five other sibling, all their amber eyes on fire. The mother has infant at breast under thin cotton sari and green blouse with safety pins all down opened neck line. Words still fail me, what does one say?

Amber, she grinned at me, her face turning into one big heart. This was ten years ago? She was some kind of angel in that transit zone: we were shifting cities, just about getting used to our third child’s blindness, we were between jobs, it felt insecure, tiring.

I remember Amber today, not as representing the invisible population of a country unable to tackle its vast tribes, but as a bright faced young one who could be beautiful in her spirit and gift us a smile like that, no matter what her circumstance.

When Healing comes

No alarm bell, no burst of glory. It tiptoed in ‘neath my gate. It wouldn’t hold my hand, It couldn’t. I was cold cold cold, every leaf in my garden shrivelled, ashed; Ivy & dust layered the ground and walls of my address.

When Healing came It bled into me. It Crossed boundaries I had built. It broke Itself like Bread over my hunger and poured Itself out like Water over my drought. New metaphors crowd my space. This had been desert with no oasis. Now, this Healing-

growing me into things I do not want to recognize:

a Garden of Shadows where a Lone One prays. Prays as if for me. What’s this. He breaks on two planks where He hangs, I hate this like a personal wound. I’m screaming words with no decibel: He’s saying it for me. Two words, three- I will never forget. “IT IS FINISHED.” He said, smiling stars in His eyes as if we were in Paradise being made over again.

Wait,

wait. He takes my buried memoirs of habits of pain.

No, wait!

But I can’t have them back, He says. Healing takes it all away. I’m blinded by an emotion with no name, Its a Light falling careful in my blind eyes. It grabs my poison ivy with new strong Vine: It inhales me, slamming my dying dead inside, don’t ask how. I have no Theory, no Words wise or pretty. All I know, when Healing came to me I was dead blind, now I see:

I see Scars, Its Body broken. Healing has scars, you get this? I don’t and maybe never will, not till we go Face to Face past that proverbial Glass darkly in the way. Now I peer through Reason, Logic, Theories, Rule. Oneday when we have crossed our rules, we will see the host of things that see us now. Oneday we will break through gravity bound toes: on that day we will see what we question these days. Oh when Healing came It broke Its news gentle to me. It knew I’d be suspicious,afraid,disbelieving…

When Healing walked into me, It spoke things I believed I couldn’t know…..

that gain came in via loss, true I knew, but what else could a human fight for? We needed this. This War for Survival was our one socially acceptable behaviour; it united man and woman and child and nations and bazaars and gangsters and priests, it fed global talks and need. If I didn’t do Survival what tell aunty Maya I was doing ? Or Pastor Sahil. Or neighbour Bishhy. Or Karu Harben my brilliant corporate cousin. What tell Didi Grey my mentor..or art collaborators… that I didn’t care anymore how I’m being received;

who could I be, what of my ‘me‘?

When Healing came It talked into me – sacred syllables of the Father Son and Holy spirit, groans not uttered by the carnal 5 senses: we are heart and mind and spirit soul, beyond flesh and sensor. I had territory within that must heal first*, my Healer said, it began in the acres acres acres (deep in my core where we live or die, there we heal, there we host our virus, our sickle cells, our warrants of life, our predictions of peace. If we die there, how could we survive in the peripheries?) ..

Healing took me to an impossibly narrow dizzy path. When I began to heal- one tiny step at a time, It unleashed me to run my feet like a deer’s in cliff edge sheer mountain. Fear rose bitter gall in my throat and I killed it like a beast is killed with bare hands: something I’d tried an entire lifetime, now it happened with one rapid wish;

here was this desire to thank every mean thing that had ever come my way, hey yes those nasties I’d crumpled over? Them. They were my helpmate, they now proved my brick and mortar needed to build foundation of this impossible route. “Forgive. Go on higher,” The Healer pled with eyes of deathless Love, and the Light of that gaze scorched my last defense, over and over like with birth pangs. How could I have known this detail if I hadn’t needed healing ?

Why haven’t You been here earlier- how much went in wasteland of my nothing. My Healer replied as if I had spoken, He said,”You are more than all this. In these deserts more Gardens could grow, if you go. “

Say what, why? There’s more folk like me, why would I care, but now I did.

When Healing came to me It rained and Its Tear whetted my thirst for Its fact. I used to think with Healing I would be strong again to return to old strengths, I’d be a pillar of fortune, a wheel of Change. Oh look- see how nice healing is, but that is not Its way. It told me things I couldn’t know.

When Healing began I leaned my core on Its Strength. No more great burden of goodness to bear! I was still a torn leaf garden but with new shoot- as if I had wing, the Healer said,”Never mind your Self. Rise..”

When Healing came It did not give me wings, that’d have scared us all.

It is much more than we show and tell, it’s in the way grass grows o’er and o’er and wise men die and babies born will oneday grow to know more than you or I confess. When Healing can, It will come to you and the Light you see will be outside of our incapacities, then perhaps you too will say to another, “…how else could I have known…?*”

..

Inspired by our son(& little brother Joh) as he heals.

@innerdialects.