Share the pain.....

We have often heard and read that it helps to talk to someone about negative feelings and experiences. We do not hesitate to share good tidings with all and sundry. But when it comes to aches and pains that life throws at us, we are very choosy about sharing it. Most times, it gets buried without finding expression.

There are rare occasions I vent out. And I now realise that it has helped.

When Sid was very small and I was still working, I landed an opportunity for an overseas assignment, albeit a short one. Since we did not want to leave him completely at the maid's care for the entire duration, we decided to leave him at my parents'. I went to Coimbatore, left him there and returned to Mumbai by flight. Ahh… this whole event is easily covered in just a sentence. But leaving him and returning alone was hell. The wait at Coimbatore airport was unadulterated misery. I do not remember the rest of the journey, I still remember the terrible wait at the Coimbatore airport. 

From then on, every time I stepped at Coimbatore airport, the same misery would rise up like bile. Even when Sid was with me, I would still tear up at the association. 

After several years, in one of my chats with Appa, I narrated the whole thing, stressing upon the pain I felt every time I went to the airport. And now, I suddenly realise, Coimbatore airport is no longer an evil place in my mind. It is like any other airport. 

I can attribute this cleansing to time. I would rather attribute it to expressing it to a person, who was in tune with what I said and felt what I did. Or it is a combination of both.

Do you have such experiences? Or do you feel it is cathartic to just live out the pain and emerge clean after.

The Levellers

I remember reading this poem long back, during school. I was mighty impressed then with the thought that there is this great equaliser to which everyone must bow. I quote this poem here

Death the Leveller

By James Shirley (1596-1666)

---

THE glories of our blood and state 
         Are shadows, not substantial things; 
There is no armour against Fate; 
         Death lays his icy hand on kings: 
         Sceptre and Crown 
         Must tumble down, 
         And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

Some men with swords may reap the field, 
         And plant fresh laurels where they kill: 
But their strong nerves at last must yield; 
         They tame but one another still: 
         Early or late 
         They stoop to fate, 
And must give up their murmuring breath 
When they, pale captives, creep to death. 

The garlands wither on your brow, 
         Then boast no more your mighty deeds! 
Upon Death's purple altar now 
         See where the victor-victim bleeds. 
         Your heads must come 
         To the cold tomb: 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. 

____________________________________________

While death is the greatest leveller, I can think of a few more. 

Seen a school while the process of admissions are on? Anxious parents and well prepared kids. The blackberry toting father has left his baggage of ego and aggressive demeanour back home. Parents are their humblest selves at the schools of their kids.

Hospitals? A sick person, however high and mighty, has to experience the pain. He cannot escape the course of the disease. At best, he may manage to get the most effective treatment, but still cannot escape the side effects, the pain.

I am in the process of renewing my passport. For those, who haven't seen the system in India, I can succinctly say, passport office is extremely crowded, but not chaotic. There is an order and its only the sheer numbers that increases the wait time and not the process by itself. So yes, the passport office is yet another leveller. There was this uneducated, elderly man right before me in the queue. There are couples with very small babies, mothers with several children in tow. There are those who are patient to wait and those who manage to get irked at the smallest imagined slight. You wait with all of them.

It is at such places one is reminded of the ground under their feet. Such places jolt one's head out of the clouds. 

So what other experiences can you count as levellers? Any thoughts?

What are we missing!!

A particularly long and stressful day when everything happened to need immediate attention and when every single task had to follow Murphy's Law (if something can go wrong, it WILL), had me desperate to relax and wind down by the end of it.

Reading a book was out of question. I was too stressed to even read, come to think of it. Mindless iPad games did not do the trick either and hence I found myself take a walk when the boys had dinner. Halfway through my walk, a cat startled me by jumping out of the mini-tree on the pathway and we both looked at each other straight in the eye. Neither of us broke the gaze, and I actually liked looking into the clear eyes of the cat. It would be presumptuous of me to say that the cat communicated something or that it showed me a large depth. Naah....

All it made me think of was that animals are colour blind. They do not see colour. They completely miss out on the blue sky and green grass and pretty flowers and everything else. I assume they see things in blacks, whites and greys? But then, a cat sees much better in the dark than we can ever hope to. It can see in the dark, so what if its all grey? A bat can emit sound waves at a much higher frequency than our ears can ever comprehend. A dog can smell things that we cannot. Our intelligence helps us understand that there are things we do not see, hear, smell. But that will never replace the experience, will it? Maybe we are built only to see seven colours and their combinations and not more. May be there are more colours. Yes, we know about infra red and ultra violet, but we do not see them anywhere do we? And may be there are colours of a totally different dimension than below red and above violet? In which case, we don't know what we are missing? Just like the cat will never know that it cannot see colours.

This train of thought humbled me and so it happened that the eyes of a stray cat did what no other activity could. I went back home, my normal calm self.

In the Shadow of the Banyan

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is rare to come across a book that jolts you and makes you weep. I am more than glad that I came across this one and read it.

This is set in the time of 1975-79 at Cambodia. The period of Khmer Rouge, the killing fields, the systemic breakdown of the fabric of the Cambodian society.

The story is that of a young 7 year old Raami who is forced to flee her home with her loved ones barely packing up what could be a few bundles. It is the story of loss, tribulation, of a seven year old who is forced to understand things that even adults would not want to. It is also a story of dreams, hope, beauty and the human want to survive at all odds.

When her father is taken away by the Khmer Rouge, the young Raami beseeches with him to not go away. She begs him to tell her one last story. If that doesn't break your heart, nothing will.

Her mother's fury at what she felt was abandonment at the hands of her husband.  In just a few lines of a story of a family of birds, the author gets the reader to feel what this woman goes through.

Only when she finally manages to flee her country, not knowing what had become of her father, what his last moments were like, does the child dare to take his name.

There are too many poignant moments like these, too many for me to list down. If you are looking for historical facts, or if you want to understand what the genocide was like, this book is not for you. But if you liked the Kite Runner or The Thousand Splendid Suns, I would seriously recommend this one.

This is one book I am sure to read again and again.



View all my reviews

The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling

I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. I have read the series thrice and surely think will read again and again in the years to come. I had put off watching the movies for quite sometime and watched them only in an attempt to get my son interested in reading the series. But that is another story.

When I heard that J K Rowling was coming up with a book on a completely different genre, to say I was intrigued would be an understatement. How could the creator of the world of Harry Potter think outside that world!!!

I felt the initial interest in the book would be because it was authored by J K Rowling. It might even make it to the best sellers list, but may still be a not-so-good book. So even when I had got hold of a copy, I pushed off reading it for a few months. I was both right and wrong. Right on understanding the initial interest and wrong to think that it could be a not-so-good book.

So, when I began to read it was with trepidation. And for a long time, hundred pages or so I was lost. A small village of Pagford with this petty politics and average characters. A bunch of kids, a few dysfunctional families and on and on in the same vein. I simply couldn't understand what the whole point of it was. I continued plodding maybe because I did not want to give up on her yet, or my nature to finish a bad movie or book till its end and pronounce it worthless, or she managed to hold the reader in some sublime way.

I do not understand at what point and how, but the story got under my skin. I kept thinking about Kristal and Andrew and Cubby and Kay. I panicked for Kristal when she felt trapped by her circumstances. It is very easy to denounce the addicts and their problems saying it was brought on by themselves. I wanted to hold Parminder by her shoulders and shake her "Look at your daughter!!!" I was completely puzzled with Stuart Walls' actions and never understood why he behaved like a prick.

I could go on and on, but will not summarise the plot here. But I will tell you this. This book makes you think. Think about others and their unique set of circumstances. It will make you pause before you get judgemental of your neighbour. It will make you understand that there is no clear line distinguishing the good and the bad. Its like a giant microscope on a small sample of the human race and shows what you see everywhere. Racism, drug abuse, bullying, the frustrations of the middle class, what obsessive compulsive disorder actually means, what really happens in an abusive household. You will relate these to things that you see around you. The book also shows hope and is not all gloom and doom.

I read in an interview of hers that the initial name of the book was to have been 'Responsibility'. But if you ask me, I would name it 'Empathy'. Or maybe that is my takeaway.

I rate it 4 out of 5 stars. It could easily have been 5 out of 5, but I really needed to plod on those first 100 pages with determination and that cost it one star.