sowparnika’s blog

April might have been the cruelest of months to T S Eliot, but to me it's been September. Every year as September approaches my heart fills with trepidation. It has been the month that has brought in almost every death that affected me one way or the other.

1996 September took away my grandfather. My grandmother, dutiful wife that she was, promptly followed him the next September. After a brief respite for a couple of years, 1999 brought in the worst of them all. My father. I still remember the phone call that Tuesday night. It was September 21^st. Curiously my husband shut the room's door when he took that call. I was having dinner and watching 'Something about Mary' on HBO. I thought the TV's volume might have bothered him. He waited till I was done with dinner before he told me. After that I always turn the TV off when that movie plays. I don't think I will ever watch it again.

 I'd just seen my dad off at the JFK airport 15 days back. The last I saw of him was just before he turned the corner behind the Kuwait airways counter on his way to board the plane. He turned back and stood there for almost a minute just looking at me till my mother urged him to move on. I can never forget the look on his face and that's the image of him that I carry in my heart. I never saw him after that. I didn't make it for the funeral.   Told them not to wait for me. I'd rather remember him alive.

I also learnt a valuable lesson that night. 'Never wish for anything too hard'. You just might get it and it might not really be what you wanted. The day my parents left, I remember thinking, "I'd give anything to go home for a visit." I got to go home. But the 'anything' I had to give was my father.

The year 2000 took away an uncle barely a week after the first anniversary of my father's passing.

2001 brought no death, but there was a setback of another kind. The twin towers came down in NYC and so did the new startup company in California that my husband had just joined. A few weeks later I made the most memorable journey in my life. I flew halfway across the world, racing across airports with my three month old baby in a sling over my shoulder, my five year old daughter in a stroller and my mom who had fallen sick (she had come to help me with my daughter's delivery) in a wheelchair.

The next three years went by with no incident. 2004 brought tragedy again. This time it was a cousin. One I had grown up with. He had fought with me, told me several tall tales and brought me plenty of books to read. A kidney failure claimed him. He was just 46. He left behind a 36 year old wife and an 11 year old daughter.

 The past few years again were uneventful and at midnight on September 30^th, as the clock's needle had edged towards October 1^st I had been able to sigh with relief. I usually hold my breath the whole month and breathe only when necessary.

However this September tragedy struck again. This morning I heard what must have been the most shocking death of all. My sister 'in-law's nephew whom I'd known since he was 7 or so. Played with him and fought with him, quibbled over comic books and teased him, when I used to spend a few days every summer vacation at my sister-in-law's house. I saw him last on September 4^th 2008, the day before I came back from India after attending my niece's wedding. This September 4^th, he is no more.

Just 35 years old. Too young to have a heart attack. I am still reeling from shock and my heart goes out to his bubbly and charming young wife and the adorable imp of a daughter who is just 3, and his parents whose grief I cannot even begin to imagine.

26 days more to go before the wretched month comes to an end.

Sometimes a simple conversation can throw you off balance. It can either turn your world topsy turvy or take you on a ride on a time machine. Sometimes it can come along at the wrong time and make things just worse. Or they can pop up at the right moment and pull you out of the dumps. It can put you in a totally different frame of mind. Take you back to those magical days of youth when u saw rainbows in shards of glass or to mundane days of reality when you view everything through  jaded jaundiced eyes.

Thankfully I went back and opened up doors I long thought were closed forever, awakened old memories, heady days of open rains and swirling mists of dust. It made me read again it made me write again. It brought back the songs I had forgottn to sing. Dusted off old volumes and rediscovered  Whitman and Neruda. Realized I once dwelt with the likes of Shelly and Keats. I smelt the fragrant earth after the new rains, heard the mountains whispering to each other and relished the liberating pleasure of a simple sneeze. Slowly the slumbering lover, the dozing romantic in me sprang back to life as I tore away the straightjacket from my heart and the veil from my soul.

In my desperate bid to play the adult I had smothered the youth in me. In a never ending quest to maturity, I had forgoten who I was. What was I but for my dreams, my music my poetry, my heartful of passion and unbridled joy? I looked at my love with new eyes and suddenly wanted to be me again. He deserved to see the real me, the one I don't think he ever knew.  I had been acting a role trying to be who I was not, trying to fit into dutiful roles.

Let me be me, the true me, the unfetterd spirit, the dreamer, the lover, the poet, the idealist, the friend, the insufferable pain, the incurable egoist, the enigmatic non -conformist that defies description. Let me rekindle the fire that once burnt glorious in me. Let me be me let me be free…

can somebody please help me out with this problem i have? i am unable to leave messages in anyone’s guestbook. the guestbook opens, but the ‘leave a message’ box never does. so when i try to thank someone for the comments they leave on my page, i am unable to do so and i have to e-mail them instead. i’d rather leave a  msg in the guest book. i am woefully a non-techie and if someone technosavvy enough could clear this up for me, i shall be most grateful. the resident tech-support guy i have at home (read husband, who happens to be in tech-support ) apparantly is too busy to handle domestic tech-support issues. if this is the kind of customer support his company offers, hah, i wonder… so am left to fend for myself. thank you in advance for all your help dear fellow ilanders.

yeah i know. haven’t posted anything in a while. things have been really hectice here. anyway today is a special day and i thought i’d break my silence today.

yes, ladies and gentlemen…(fanfare..drumroll…) i am officially on the wrong half of the thirties today. i turned 36. (yes, i do share my birthday with bachchan jr.)yikes. surprised that a woman has revealed her age, that too one in her mid thirties (is that really me?). i don’t believe in being coy about it.
my age is my age is my age. like it or lump it. who am i trying to fool? whether i admit it or not, i am as old as i am.

that doesn’t mean i accept it. i simply cannot believe it. it wasn’t long ago that numbers like 30 and 40 were soooooo far away. those people were so old… now i am there myself, almost nudging the BIG 40, and do i feel old? nah! i feel just the same. my family still doesn’t use my name and the term ‘mature’ in one sentence. if age is supposed to bring wisdom well, my shipment certainly got lost somewhere along the way. 

i still believe that age is all in the mind and my mental age is still very very young. i just don’t feel old at all. i guess that’s what happens when you are the youngest in a family of five, with quite an age difference between your siblings. everyone still treats you as the baby of the family. though it can get annoying at times, it has its own advantages. no one really blames you when you goof up.
“after all isn’t she a kid,” is their magnanimous, forgiving, and indulgent words. nevermind that the kid is today 36 and herself the mother of two kids! believe me you can get away with almost anything.

my daughter asked me how old i am today and when i said 36 she was aghast,” amma, but that is OLD!,”
“yeah! so what?” i asked. i don’t blame her. i was there myself not long ago. when anything above 25 was old.

well, here i am a ‘thaikizhavi’ myself. and i have the grey hairs to prove it too. i have the whole set of stuff… crow’s feet, laughlines, and if i really try hard, on a good day, i can detect the faint beginnings of a turkey neck. but you know what, i will not acknowledge them for what they are. crow’s feet? why crows feet? i shall call them dove’s feet. that takes the harshness out of it and makes it sound softer and nicer. so its dove’s feet for me. i don’t mind the term laughlines though. suggests a happy picture, though personally i think its a misnomer. frown lines, more likely. ah, but i shall continue to call them laugh lines. and the best part. turkey necks. whoever thought of them? the more i think of it, i expect my self to burst out gobble gobble at any moment.

i hate those horrible grey hairs though. everyday, a close examination (i do try not to get too close) reveals a new grey hair. i tell you its just not fair. my sisters never greyed this early. nor i think my brothers. they were well into their late forties before the traitors started showing up. oh yeah, there’s a couple of decades between me and 3 of my siblings  but i guess i take after my dad. he had greys when he was 30.

i refuse to dye my hair, though my kids beg me to. because i think that would be the final blow. sort of like giving in to ‘age’. i shall hold off for as long as i can before i accept the fact that i am growing old.
after all, ,’i refuse to go gently into the night’ (with due apologies to dylan thomas). why should i age gracefully? i shall fight it tooth and nail  
meanwhile i shall just go on and have one helluva birthday!