A Penny for Sam's Thoughts

With or without you

I can not live without you.

You were meant to be the final arc in the circle of my life,

A materialisation of my lifelong decisions,

A reservoir of the knowledge I have reaped,

The redemption of my alienation from families due to blood.

But,

I can not live with you.

The Earth is dying;

I can no longer be in denial.

Doom is spelt, bleak future marked,

Uncertainty slowly seeps into my generation

Like toxins in the land.

Deciding on a future seems futile,

Only imagination is left fertile.

Amidst this grave inactivity,

How can I act on your birth?

How can I leave my light and happiness to darkness and dearth?

How can I be selfish enough

To condemn you to purgatory; eternal, perpetual?

How can I ask so much of you before you are even born?

So we’ll meet in my heart

Out in my imaginary meadow,

Or maybe in a book,

Vapour-like but not quite far apart.

This is how far I’m now willing to go.

In your unmooring lies my salvation.

(With Greta Thunberg’s speech, more than the realisation of my mortality I was confronted by the grave fact that all that I planned on doing were proving increasingly difficult to materialise. Like having my daughter. Growing old. Enjoying life. Witnessing how my age turns out.

P.S. I just loveeee Dickinson’s I can not live with you)

Meowlusive Three

Day and night, night and day

Your calls lead me astray.

But I hardened myself;

Promised to make my mind stay,

My heart to not sway.

Aren’t you meant to be a stray?

Then why do you flock in the garden below?

Why do you vex me so?

Why, that evening, did you look at me;

Stole, yet again, my heart’s key,

Made it pitter-patter

Only to later smatter?

Oh! Would it be so bad

If you pay my heart some heed

Call at my door instead for need?

The whole wide world is your home

So go bid me Shalom!

Just don’t leave me in this eternal lurch

Filling somebody, leaving me in dearth,

And turning me in an envious spy,

A misunderstood person; cunning, sly.

How to Train Your Dragon

Dissonance in viewpoints and ideologies form the basis of every conflict, confrontation, fight; and there is no war more widespread, pervasive and all-consuming than that between different generations.

In view of this, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by Dreamworks look at the fundamental issue (read hurdle) plaguing the elemental unit of society by dramatising the generational conflict between Stoick and Hiccup. Stoick, the father, the chief of the Viking village of Berk, belongs to the generation of Builders- those who unquestioningly know their place and role in society, who invest in its establishment by willingly sacrificing their personal aspirations. Their ‘collective’ goal is to build a safe, stable world. This aim for protection, safety and establishing foundations calls for rigidity and like-mindedness.

Stoick’s name and his position as the leader exemplifies the masculine principle of social order which the second generation imbibes. Any hinderances in the achievement if this goal would become the site of “evil” and would be eliminated with ruthless precision without the slightest involvement of ethics. The dragons enter here for they are the pests. The Viking life- harsh conditions, rough food, occupational hazards due to daily interaction with death and danger further cements this way of life and necessitates the continuation of brute force, stubbornness and orthodoxy.

As the society has already been built and a sense of normalcy and security exists, the second generation’s quest is the constant search for identity, of finding a niche for oneself. They are the Explorers who embody the fluid, flexible feminine principle. Crisis of identity and conflict for them occurs because the successful delineation of the masculine principle works on a prerequisite of no change. It restricts exploration because the different isn’t treated as an exception but an anomaly- something which can and should be fixed. The name Hiccup itself could mean how his personality, his physical fragility are themselves hiccups in the social order. There is a lack of knowledge of accommodation. The great public fare and honor in the killing of a dragon is the ultimate symbol and celebration of this social order.

Stoick and Hiccup’s relationship is fragmented and their communication is jaggered. There is no acknowledgement of each other’s perception and abilities, no understanding of motives and actions and no efforts, whatsoever, to gain the other person’s trust. They are merely members of a family and not family. Stoick feels Hiccup is different and indecisive (and we detect a sense of avoidance in him from handling Hiccup and his affairs because it would be a journey in an uncharted territory) and later respects him for what he thinks he is and not for what he is. Hiccup cowers in front of his father and never (read can not) speak his mind, never tells him that dragon-killing is neither lucrative nor morally right nor physically possible for him.

This leads to bitterness and resentment and a breakdown in sharing which seems to multiply due to the absence of the mother; who would have been a crucial point of communication or mediation (the revelation of her back story in the second instalment aligns her with the feminine principle and reiterates how rigidity drives the deviant in self-imposed exile, especially when the masculine principle is hegemonic).

The dynamics of Toothless-Hiccup relationship are completely different. Though initially united by a sense of helplessness this unusual relationship is based on mutual trust, communication and understanding. Both deviants’ (Night Fury because, well, he is a dragon stranded on a man’s land) shared dependency (physically equalised at the end) allows them to grow together and unfurl in this supportive, constructive environment. Their incompleteness helps them discover what makes them great. Their lack made them humble enough to ask for and accept help; this is the triumph.

This mutual dependency becomes the key to eventual victory. Stoick learns to let go his constricting control and give space to Hiccup, and his Otherness, which enables him to come out of hiding, while he too learns to understand and trust the motives of his father’s actions and decisions.

In the end Hiccup says, “While other places have ponies or parrots, we have … dragons!” Being different might be difficult but that’s okay cause rules and regulations are meant to be broken, and changed.

Still moewlusive

In this long, lazy week,

Cool draughts of motivation

From my window I seek.

So against it I lean

And lo! Spy my tabby orange

In lush forest green.

Past incident hath proclaim

No love is required.

But I’m a much desperate dame

So in a cup I pour

Milk, hot as my longing,

To soften her cold ignore.

The cup, I plan down the stairs,

Hot like my burning desire to love,

Would be my offering in this affair.

Gently, steadily, I tip-toe behind her

To take her by surprise; thankfully

She looks relaxed enough to consider.

But then she hears me,

Turns her head

And cold contempt decree.

And flees the scene,

Without leaving a beckoning trail,

Among another forest green.

So I’m there on the road

With its milk and my desperation

Alone, and now, really cold.

All exposed, I turn back

And empty the whole cup-

I wanted no token of this hiccup.

And slowly treading the stairs

Rose the question- was she elusive

Or was I too desperate for care?

Meowlusive

Four bodies.

Sixteen paws.

Innumerable claws.

Stripes and splotches; auburn, grey.

Hazel eyes, pink toe beans.

Stalkers in forest green.

Assured steps,

Cautious tail

Strong emotions curtail.

Focused eyes,

Bodies arched,

Tongues for flesh parched.

I held them once

As fluffy jellybeans,

Now they haunt my dreams.

Neither meows nor pets

Nor milk stout,

Draws them out.

Where is their love hidden?

In squishy beans,

In squinted eyes,

Defenseless belly,

Satisfactory purrs,

Or simply in my imaginative blur?

July- A Month for Volunteering

Children between 6-14 years trudge the fine line between childlike curiosity and glee bordering on innocence and fiendlike devilry. If they are capable of inciting deep love one moment, they are equally skilled at producing intense frustration in you.

I was browsing through various internships on Internshala when I came across an ad by TFI calling for volunteers for teaching for a month. After going over my resume, and a telephonic interview, I, along with about 60 other people were selected and invited for Induction at the TFI’s Green Park office. TFI aims at providing quality education across India through its Fellowship program and the extensive 6 hour session not only debrief us about our work and how to go about it, but also focused on bonding, learning behavioural strategies and brain-storming about common issues concerning child education and abuse and how to effectively tackle them.

The Fellowship training takes place in two phases and thus they either join at the beginning or end of July. Consequently, volunteers are either assigned to or in substitution of a first-year fellow. I was assigned to Navyug School, Moti Bagh to class VI-A.

I had always wanted to try my hand at teaching (I guess everybody does after going through our education system) and not break the momentum of exchange of knowledge but the prospect of actually doing it, especially in a co-ed school, where the kids might or might not take me seriously, intimidated me so that despite the school team’s encouraging words before my formal joining on the 8th my apprehensive would not go down.

But thanks to Amit, my Fellow, the school team and two other volunteers, time accelerated its pace and July came to an end. If the Induction taught me what TFI aims at, my experience at school taught me how it was implemented. Amit and I set up the classroom culture- knowledge and values you want to impart over the session. We deliberated with the kids on class rules and class manners. Spearheaded by Amit’s enthusiasm we conducted class elections for various posts. Behaviour was checked through a system of rewards and punishments. I also learnt a great deal about the TFI way of teaching- starting with the objective of the lesson to its imparted values and a general incorporation of audio-visual resources. The teaching was not only unconventional but quite interactive and innovative too in which the children weren’t mere passive recipients but active participants.

Being a teacher simply doesn’t end here. Cold, formal, pragmatic relations are never long lasting or effective. One must get personally involved with students to better deal with their problems; personal or otherwise. With maintaining the class decorum being one of my primary duties, I was usually driven to frustration. But dealing with kids is an art (and I learned it the hard way) – you mustn’t be so liberal so as to let go of your position of necessary authority and you mustn’t be so anarchic so as to stifle their growth and exploration. Plus, TFI sternly believes in an abuse-free environment through its Child Protection Policy. Additionally, strategies taught and daily reflection by the school team helped me reinforce my resilience and look forward to yet another day.

Education isn’t just a heartless imparting of facts but a method of finding a path which will ultimately lead to finding oneself. It’s a shame that over time a rigidity has set in the education system, making it hegemonic and monotonous. But this is what Fellows and volunteers at TFI aim to reverse- they try to infuse life and zest and hence meaning to learning.

In two weeks VI-A became my class, its students became my kids. I committed their names to memory like I never could, or did. I learnt about them, their friendships and quarrels and when 31st came I vacillated between feeling morose and elated.

Separation was heart breaking. Their ardent hugs spelt me out as their own. I wanted to make them mine forever but love and possession, too, are separated by a fine line. So I let them go. They weren’t mine to keep. They were to have innumerable teachers shower their love upon them. Who was I to stop it.

I go over their photos in my phone sometimes but still end up undecided on whether to visit them or not. What I am sure about is submitting my application for the Fellowship, secretly hoping to see them again, for a whole year, everyday; and also that summer vacations shouldn’t have gotten extended.

Running

(School, in retrospection, seems so cloistered. There’s such fixity and assurance in its routine that you never expect how much life will make you run.

When I ran in my younger days, I did it because I wanted to- to wrap myself in its sheer exuberance. So invigorating it was that I never felt tired.

All I seemed to do till my last semester was to run. And this running tires you out because you are being forced to participate in it.

And then another kind of running is a friendship’s race against time. Gosh! I think this is the only running I want to be inexorable. )

The running I did before gave wings to my flight,

The little girl who looked up and soared in the light,

Who glided with her friends amongst fantasies utterly wild and crazy,

Which still were believable,

And probably, possibly achievable.

Then next when she awakens to this running

She finds herself in college burning.

Burning her health, her sanity, her peace away

Still burning even when her father say,

“You are a student! You have all the time!

Its not as if you are taking care of a family or working for each dime!”

I say nothing. I turn over and sleep.

“No! Im not free as you take me to be.

This semester which starts one day,

Doesn’t end but disappears in a repentant mist of strikes, seminars and festive cheers..

And all I’m left with is this huge guilt as big as my 12 core books and two more subjects in the rear.”

This guilt of incompletion swallows me, and in my wallowing,

I forgo my tiredness, I ration my sleep,

I stop thinking, I stop retrospecting,

I stop taking a moment for myself and wondering sans specs how beautiful the fairy lights of the sun through the trees be.

And so I run.

I run everyday in this mindless race.

When I see a thousand others like me I feel pity for our shared pathetic destiny.

But when I see the other thousand, the thousand with the better resumes,

I mistake avoidance for preservation

And train myself not to look up at people

Lest they make me self-conscious and doubtful.

I stop my mind from churning

From the fear of falling over negative criticism.

I teach myself to forgo tiny moments of human contact

For I am now willingly labelling them as useless.

Every night I went to bed, the exhaustion was so high

That I prayed for eternal slumber with the heaviest of sighs.

But neither heaven came nor even hell

Just the same cream-coloured wall and the alarm bell.

Half of my friends have already left

And who knows in the future where one will be kept,

But a graver surety awaits me when my best friend

Shall leave me all alone in this 1.2 billion blend.

And so I enter (yet) another race to do all that we want to do together,

To meet and greet to the point of saturation

So that in our times apart we don’t repent for things left unsaid or undone.

The end is bleak and lonely without his presence

But I’ll take this one head-on oh! You shall see!

Because this is a race against time, this is a race for affection

And it’s for the rails and roads of Delhi, not the destination.

Somebody

Somebody gave me his heart-

All blood and red and no gore,

Not bits and pieces, but in whole.

Not a floor in a building,

But the whole plot

With love, affection etcetera of the lot.

And I, I just couldn’t

See myself deserve the magnanimity

And so returned the country, freed for an eternity.

Then he gave me his bag-

As large as his heart proved to be,

As empty as his heart has been for the love of me.

But it felt odd, heavy on my back

And proved to be too big to savour,

So I returned the bag, got rid of the favour.

His affections proved too big to repay.

Too selfless for this mould of clay.

English Honours

When XII got over and I was researching for college I had to choose between Political Science and English for my undergraduate. I had a knack for both and wanted to explore them at a deeper level. I finally chose against Political Science because it would have been a dead end for me- given that I had no aspiration for civil services.

I was optimistic and exuberant more for my course than for my college life. The syllabus was rich and frankly after CBSE’s limited and garden-variety literature my interest would have been piqued by any combination of literary texts.

We were an excited lot; so high on sorority and learning and future prospects. And this high quickly gave way to such a low that self doubt crept into each person. Our year and bonding started with our shared, extracurricular interest in reading novels; our need to not stop reading; our desire to not rely entirely on our textbooks for knowledge. We repeated the names of the same popular books and series over and over again. We exchanged views and reviews. We promised each other to lend books and read the ones recommended. Our lectures for us were a cornucopia which would nourish our souls and enrich our lives.

By the end of that year I had not touched one single book out of my course. I read and read and read so much of my texts and about them that a resistance against foreign books overtook me. I hardly wrote cause I didn’t have ‘the time’. (English honours is an extremely time-intensive course, believe me!). Stagnation set in and I didn’t know what to do. I naively accepted this as part and parcel of pursuing the course and kept mum about it.

This got dragged into my third semester. I started getting genuinely concerned and told my friend to gift me solely novels so that I’ll be at least forced to read other things.

One day in my forth semester we finally broached this topic in the class. About the collective drudgery of our lives. About our lack of inspiration, or lack of time, or too heavy a presence of stalwarts. About how paradoxically deadening and reanimating literature was. About the daily struggle to come to college and sit in classes just for the sake of attendance. About how shitty some professors can be- professionally and otherwise. Everybody had felt all this yet self doubt and guilt ate us such we refused to confront it as a problem by talking about it aloud. Instead, we found it easier to simply give up on our hopes.

But English honours has taught me much. It has made me calmer… almost a bore you can say. On the other hand it has infused life in the arguments I believe in and given me the strength, language and logic to put them forth in a better way. It has enabled me to view the workings of this world from an elemental point of view, focusing on the how and why and not what.

But most of all it has taught me a word called disenchantment or disillusionment. Disenchantment is the crux of every Buildungsroman- a novel of growth, physically from childhood to maturity or mentally from innocence to experience. It is the process of clearing away the mysteriousness, mysticism of a particular thing. You grow out of your wonder and admiration and respect, and understand something as it is in its objectivity by gaining some distance from it and therefore a fresh perspective.

The Indian education system will always be haphazard. Most of the teachers will always be shit. The good teacher will always be the exception, never the norm. And that what you do and what you can do is the only thing you can and should rely upon. At the end of the day, it is what you do that matters.

Our Great Expectations did fall upon Hard Times (pun intended) but without that disillusionment and growth and thus a constant forward movement and self-reliance wouldn’t be achieved.

English honours isn’t that horrifying. It’s just that if you meet it with a lorry-full of expectations it’s gonna take you some time to accept the reality check it gives you.

P.S. in further news second year didn’t end so badly. SR, PJ, AD, IN and RS congregated to commemorate their achievements and to obviously receive awards and reminiscing over the year with their popsicles IN completed my observation of us having Great Expectations from our course and I can never thank her enough.

On ‘My Last Duchess’

(I read Browning as part of my 19th Century British paper last semester. When you first read his typical poems all you do is sit back with wide eyes and stare at them. They are so crude and unabashed about a man’s desire to control and encase a woman and its subsequent delineation.

Anyhow, I had to submit an assignment on my reaction to his speech. I love this poem because I don’t go for enjambment but because the original was so I thought why not!)

Envoy

If getting away came easy to someone

‘Tis the rich, powerful and depraved. They shun

Morality and confine it in bounds,

Held by devilish desire’s hounds.

What can I say of the Duke of Ferrara, Fido,

For I can say a lot- a man most given to libido;

And I shall, for your sake and mine

For that man vexes me such, that line

By line I shall dissect his inhumane

Acts, that ought to boggle your brain.

Killed his wife in cold blood, for said he-

“A heart too soon made glad had she.

That the same expression on each and every person was professed

By that same heart which was too easily impressed.”

So he stopped her heart and stilled her smile

But kept her alive in canvas and colorful vials.

And though he thinks by death he chains her

The stillness of the portrait can not encase her.

Deters the smile, which escapes from it for all,

His supposed triumph, his boastful call.

Here is your meat, Fido, now be still

And hark, for there is more to this bill.

He (as such) is not free, for in his inability

To chain her lively spirit in life, he

Chained her ‘still’ to his rigid heart and high

Ego and deliriously rejoiced in this lie.

For by thus keeping her alive

He tries to satiate his drive

Still unsatisfied- to control,

To morally guide, socially patrol.

Your control is delusional, sire, for

The preoccupation with which you adore

Her beauty, her memory; the portrait

Points to your mental and emotional mis-Fate,

Of being thus paradoxically tied

With the person who, for your agitated whims, died.

Stooping doesnt make you small, if anything

It makes you an ideal partner; one who is willing

To see the other as equal, who

Doesnt shy from making efforts, who

Does things for both’s sake. Such

Is the partner your new Duch’

Deserves. Curse her fate or her fathers mind

That in her lot fell your whims and her troubles combined.

I pity my Lady, I truly do

But her sequestered life can neither undo

I nor even her father. Now she

Either braves the world or be

Brave in the face of death, for this

Contract fixed is symbolic of her dry oasis.

I wished to say this to his face

But ‘tis an unequal world, Fido, in which case

My opinions seldom matter, and I’m bereft of any

Such authority that enables speech, except many

A commands to follow and oblige many an order.

Oh! Im pleased you live on the other side of the border

For men like these, they always get away

After all, everything is theirs which they survey.