FLASH BITES (my flash fiction) now on KINDLE

My e book is now easily downloadable on Kindle:

FLASH BITES

Welcome and enjoy,
Abha

The Senses: Diverse Renderings

The following is posted as part of the Language/ Place Blog Carnival. Issue #14 is hosted by Stella Pierides and the theme is “Locating the Senses in Language/ Place”.


Putrid, festering, naked,
Your broken hand begs
I cannot drop round pennies.

A plump and orange offering
The petals of this flower
Street litter to step on.

Trees sway in shadows
Children huddle and stare
At ghosts within.

*

Wine spills, I watch
It spreads upon your heart
My signature of red.

Jasmine under my pillow
Dried and brown
Crushed memory smell.

Songs float outside
Scarves, strummed words
I wind around my neck.
*

In the village
Hot earthen ovens
Mother and bread.

In the city
Hot steel ovens
Factory filled sweat.

In the mind
Hot glass ovens
Smelting with dread.

© Abha Iyengar, 13th March 2012

CLASS ENCOUNTERS : Above the Roar of the Aeroplanes

So the final class with my IMC students and we are sitting in the ampitheatre in the sun. The aeroplanes continue their overhead noise, almost as if they are saying, “We will drown your voices, listen to us roar.”We listen, allow them to roar, and continue in the breaks in between. What we won’t do for SUN to infuse us with life on cold mornings. The first bit is a me-speak on what creatives need to be: they have to have an open, exploring mind, they need to be able to ideate using whatever information they have imbibed/collected, they need to pick and choose the best (and not get all over the place), and they need to believe in and push their choices. We then do a writing exercise: to end a story with a particular sentence, where “you feel a skeletal hand grasp your neck…” After that, only god and our respective imaginations know what will happen. The idea is to build up a story up to this point. So we have a sleepwalking girl in a college who enters a laboratory and puts her skeletal hand around the lab. attendant’s throat (she is anorexic too), a fellow traveller in the mountains who changes into a monster with a skeletal hand, a skeletal hand around the captain of Sindbad’s ship, a woman takes her child to a ‘safe’ town, but feels the skeletal hand around her neck… and many more. Imagination is running riot. The sun is getting hot but we prefer it to a cold class.

The next exercise is fun, developing a protagonist with an existing individual as a basis. One of the students becomes a symbolic basis of the main protagonist of a novel which the students are writing. And they have to begin with her at the centre of the page and draw out lines leading to topics such as her family, background, place of stay, career, ambitions, qualities, etc. and then bifurcate these headings further. They can use coloured pencils, different fonts, drawings etc. Again, the characters that emerge are diverse, from someone like a young MeeraBai to an unwed mother. One major things which came up is that almost everyone called the protagonist ’grounded’. I believe that stemmed from the original symbol (the girl who agreed to be the symbolic representation). So the take away from this is that what forms the basis of our meanderings affects the final picture, though the final picture will emerge as quite different. We had fun in the sun. Another set of students hopefully set on the path to becoming more observant, vocal , expressive and creative. And I am already looking forward to those who will follow. I watch the aeroplane soar in the sky and blow it a kiss.

Saraswati Puja

Today is Basant Panchmi, or Saraswati Puja, or the day that heralds the coming of spring. It also pays homage to the Goddess of letters and knowledge, Saraswati, wife of Brahma The Creator. It is a special day for me, for it fills my mind with memories of a childhood spent in Kolkata, where this Goddess is truly revered on this day. I do not think if I had had my early education in Delhi, I would look upon this day as so meaningful, nor would nostalgia fill my being with happiness. I actually see the huge white marble statue of Saraswati, that adorned the entrance hall of my school in Kolkata, in front of my eyes, with all of us schoolgirls gathered there. We  joined in the puja or prayer, and sang Bengali songs in homage to her. I can never forget her, she is linked to my school and childhood in Kolkata.

We  wear something yellow on this day, it is the colour of Spring. My mother says that my grandmother would dye their hankies and ribbons yellow for that day and they would wear them to school. And she would make sweet saffron rice  (for the orange yellow colour in food) with cashew and raisins. My mother herself made pulao for us on that day , with the turmeric lending the yellow to the rice. Since it is Panchami, my Bengali maid tells me that they prepare five  (pancham means five) vegetables today, and also a sweet kheer.

I feel really happy that we have this festival honouring letters and learning, for to me, education is the most important weapon to fight darkness. And as the strong yellow sunlight bathes the world around me, and the mustard fields sway in the breeze somewhere in my land, I know that winter is disappearing. I feel the joy of Spring and song, both in my mind and in my step. 

Assumptions of a Culture

The class had a brief. They had to prepare a story where a parent disapproves of his/her teenager’s  dress, but when s/he sees the brand, s/he suddenly changes his/her view in favour of the outfit. This brief was the way it was because this was no simple creative writing class. It was creative writing geared to students who belonged to the advertizing and marketing stream, and we had been talking of brand loyalty and brand obsessiveness etc.

The stories that emerged were of course, as usual, unusual and wonderful, some more so than others, but creative nonetheless. Reading out her response to the brief, one student talked of how Sita wondered what Ram would wear for the evening party he was to go to, and it was half-way through the rendition of the story that another student piped up, “Oh, Ram is Sita’s son?” and the incredulity was evident in her voice. “Yes,” shrugged the story maker and teller of this tale, and continued.  

And so we come to what struck me as the assumptions of a culture.  Since we are so steeped in or aware of the Ramayana, we automatically assume that to every Ram, every Sita can only be a wife. Of course, a modern Sita can name her son Ram, and maybe her husband is called Ravinder or Manoj or some other name. The point is that for a long while into the story, some of the students had to make a mind shift to think of Sita addressing her son  Ram, and scolding him for not dressing in appropriate clothes for a party, and later saying, “Oh, it’s a …….shirt, then wow! I adore this brand, why didn’t you tell me this was their latest…” etc. J

So changing what is ingrained in our minds takes time, even if it is a simple story that shows this. And of course, to a non-Indian, or one unfamiliar with the Ramayana, Sita and Ram as mother and son would not have a question attached to it. Or an incredulous response.  

Heart on Fire

One cold winter morning, this experience set my heart on fire, and the flame will burn within me as long as I live.

It happened just around this time, the time of Christmas and good cheer, when people are lighting fires and drinking warm things to banish the cold of the world outside and some of the darkness that visits everyone inside their hearts on lonely winter nights.

I was in Berlin in a hospital, and recovering slowly from an illness that had almost taken my life. The room was white and stark, well ordered and clean, gleaming like only hospital rooms can, since everything has to be germ-free. Outside the room the world gleamed under a weak winter sun and there was no snow. It was a surprising winter in Berlin when there was no snow, the first of its kind for many years. For the first time in many years too, there was sadness and loneliness in my heart. I was alone in a strange country, away from my loved ones, and my husband had yet to come, to be with me and hold my hand.

Any given day consisted of thermometers inserted under the arm to take temperature, injections pricked into skin for blood samples, the swallowing of prescribed pills, and the continuous visits of doctors and nurses. It was a non-stop if well-meant invasion of me and my time. I had to lie on my back and accept it all with good grace. I had just enough energy to be thankful for the care and attention being showered on me, the best of Indian hospitals lack this degree of concern. But the view outside was bleak, and though I am pretty spunky, I was feeling rather tearful, wondering when I would be home and enveloped in familiar warmth.

It was Christmas Eve, just like it is today, when early in the morning, my doctor walked in. She was a package deal in herself, but I found out all that much later when I got to know her better. On this day, she was just my doctor, dressed for Christmas with red lipstick on, black eyes snapping and her short hair gleaming. She smiled as she looked at me and said, “’ello, Abba.” That is how all of them pronounced my name and I had given up on the ‘h’ factor soon enough.

I smiled wanly. “Hi,” I said.

“And how are ‘du’ today?” she asked. She said the German ‘du’ instead of ‘you’, still it was close enough for me to understand. She was learning English and it embarrassed her no end to flail in front of me. So I did not correct her. Anyway, I was not up to it.

“Um…uh,” I said, not wanting to make a big deal of how I was feeling in front of her cheerfulness. She walked over to the window and ran a finger along the ledge to check. These doctors are finicky, very finicky. A smile almost crept along my mouth, they needed to come to India and smell the dust. And then my heart wrenched a bit more at the thought of my country.

She had a bright red coat on under her white doctor’s coat. I did tell you she was a package. She put her hands inside one of the pockets of the coat and took out a little white plastic flowerpot, the size of a tea cup. It was ridged. And in its centre there bloomed a single red star-shaped flower. I recognized this flower, but did not know its name. I found out later that it is called a poinsettia. She placed this flower pot on the window ledge.

“Merry Christmas, Abba,” she said, and her eyes crinkled.

Suddenly there was fire and warmth in the room, love and the sharing of it. I have not forgotten that flower, and it burns like a flame in my heart. It set my heart on fire that day and every time I looked at it, I knew I would return home.

*****

Encounter: A Different Set of Students

It is not all about fiction…

I am teaching a group of students who are studying marketing and advertizing as their main subject. This batch belongs more or less to the age group I usually teach, i.e. post-graduate students aiming to hone their writing skills. The difference here is that their aim is not to become 'writers’, but to have such a skill as an added advantage when they sally forth into the business world.

Well, I geared my talks keeping their interests in view, and as they learn from me, I also learn that each group of students is a different kettle of fish altogether. Delightful, yes, but quite different in their selection of waters for swimming.   

For example, there is great bonding in this group because they are exactly the same age, give a year here and there. They are interested in marketing, advertizing and public relations. Creativity and writing is a part and parcel of their greater pursuits. Despite the bonding, they come from different backgrounds, some have studied literature and some have studied commerce. They are dead serious about the classes, and almost everyone is present.

As we sit  in the sun in the ampitheatre (the cold chill of the class had prompted us to move out and it has been a good decision), the sound of the airplanes that fly overhead often disturbs us. So does the carol singing of the young kids,  preparing for the Christmas show, in the garden above the sunken ampitheatre. Despite the constant noise of some kind on the other, we manage to communicate and are happy in the warmth.

So we discuss books. What kind of books do they like to read? The feedback is revealing. One does not read at all, another watches 'only' movies, a couple of them read 'only' biographies and autobiographies. One of them says she does not like fiction at all, and then says she enjoys reading books by Amitav Ghosh! Turns out she is mixing fiction with fantasy.  So she likes reading fiction but not fantasy. Not one of them like any kind of fantasy, and all of them hate Harry Potter (especially the books). Now that is shockingly revealing! There is one book-worm amongst them who reads everything from Chetan Bhagat (all the novels) to the new breed of young Indian English writers (“ I Hate to Love You” and “I Too Have a Love story” types) to Sidney Sheldon and more. But she is the only one. A couple of them like ‘Sybil’ and recommend I read it, and one of them mentions "Love Story" and how passe it is. Someone asks me about "Catcher in the Rye" and what it is about.

In totality, the impression I got was of students who do not read a lot. And they acknowledge it with grinning nods. And ask me about the books I read. Hopefully, and I can see the hope reflected in their eyes, they will read some more now. At the moment,they are aware but not absorbed…regarding books. But ask them about advertizements and they will roll them off their tongue. We like the “daag achey hain” and  “get lost” and “jid karo, duniya badlo,”advetizements but we can’t understand the logic of this one and hate that one and so on. They are pretty vociferous about advertizements, so I guess they are in the right program. The ‘Creative Writing’ student groups (and there have been several) were into creative writing and reading and mentioned books they had read like flipping coins one after the other…non-stop. Much like this batch does regarding advertizements.

I love their smiles, enthusiasm and willingness to absorb and learn. They pay attention despite the distractions. They are a close-knit set with pen drives and netbooks and tight jeans and a certain degree of cockiness. And I just love to connect with them as they talk after class about a game called ‘sun’, ‘moon’ and ‘home’ and jump up and down the steps of the ampitheatre, playing the game and laughing like a bunch of school kids. Books are the furthest from their mind as they begin talking about a marketing survey they need to do.

I head out to lunch with my mom where the sarson-ka-saag, makki-ki-roti  and adrak-chai is waiting along with more of this sun and laughter.

*****