The Doctors Wife

 Most of the checkboxes, (after her mediocre life was thing of the past) was ticked and the grand plans too. (oh yes..always formed within the close circuit, not even the slightest wind, the slightest movement through the translucent gossamer had any right to expose the clandestine ruffles of silk.)

_Where am I?_

 She wondered as she staggered to the verandah overlooking a city tired and in slumber. The crystals were plentiful, the fine wine in opulence.The people who served, if she happened to fall, were ready within arms' length, ready to help her back on her two strong feet. But did they know her legs shook?

And so I stood looking down at city still with a palpable heart. There is some movement and I turn back. The prince and princess are here with me today for their father was always on the sea, and upon his return oft called to celebrate amidst others or attend pressing family matters before he embarked again promising all the love that he shall bring from Zeus and Athena of the underworld.

But I am mortal, though being a part of the upper echelons now I have my share of gold, but I hardly use them. They hoard the grains and I hoard the jewellery. Does it make us equally guilty?

I hold the muslin curtain aside....and there they sleep. Little Gods and Goddesses...their maids- in-attending who I hope will not turn against them . But it is just hope.

My daughter opens her sleepy eye and stretches out her hand and I dismiss the ones in attendance. I was the mother after all. They could look after security elsewhere. I held her little hand as she snuggled into my breast..and then quietude prevailed. With one jerk she looked at me with a pristine smile...that made me feel more powerful. 

No one had raised an eyebrow as I had ventured into the apothecary earlier in the day. I smiled. I am powerful but I care not for it.  One of my attendants had kept the decanter and the wine ready.. how thoughtful! I sat beside my children and opened that little brown box. Silence reigned...occasionally being punctuated by the moaning of the sea. I took some of it and a swig. I touched my son's head. He was in deep sleep, his hair silky....had he washed his locks for this momentous occasion? 

I shuddered: no. 

It was his natural beauty. I bent down and kissed his head.

I nudged myself up on the bed to be able to see two things I could still completely trust on- _the sea and the children._

The decanter which was  well filled, now stood nearly empty. Yet it was difficult to hold it up. Was it the high quality glass or was it my failing hands?

 She ,who lives in the shadows, came and poured me my last drink and I took the last of it.Ahh...The benevolent doctor's wife lies while her husband is performing good to someone near or far.

"Put me near my daughter, please." I manage to mumble politely and then I grab her head dress..."but before day break..." My eyed implore.

"Of course". She says 

"I would never scar the children." I caressed my daughter desperately looking for another cosmic smile. But they were never there. The children slept and I slumped between them in all my grandeur, a fleeting thought of how beautiful I still looked passing my mind before I passed out.

Sure enough the children must have missed their mother, dearly, but this type of a family is well versed in helping them propel ahead in life. 

I wanted my ashes in an earthen urn to grow a laurel tree out of it, but when you are pretty occupied you hardly hear the ranting of your wife...and requests also fall on deaf ears (inadvertently of course). And so some of me flew around nestled in leaved waiting for that one touch of those little fingers. Often I wonder about the doctor who married me out of love...but then again the HOUSES are such that more pressing commitments will be brought forth and slowly I will dwindle from his memory again and again.

My thoughts are already blurry now, I can see the last portion in my goblet, the box from the  apothecary that lay empty.

I slumped between my pillars of strength often cursing for being a failure where I should have excelled...and yet..and yet...they trust me so childishly.

Next morning must be commotion, confusion, the salty sea air, overcast sky. The white flowers blending with my gown. I hope I will still look beautiful. Many said I was. But none were close. So what?? This is no time... soon I will transition into an angel....no worries and   no fears...just a few years looking out for my angels. Will you look for me in the clouds too?

DILEMMA

  

Why is it that women cry?

Never really pondered, but I can sure try.

I guess they are born with a leaky eye.

 

Malfunction lies with most of them,

Stained pillows and dripping hem,

Can’t fathom from where the problems stem.

 

No exception is my wife

Seems to be crying her whole life

Can’t guess why when there is no strife.

 

If I happen to turn sides on the bed,

Often  I see her eyes swollen and red

She had been crying I figure that out, while I had been sleeping like the dead.

 

Hug me once; her eyes seem to beg,

I make a touch with my leg

My hands are kept on my chest,

That is my favourite position of rest.

 

She goes on working happy and gay

Not a moment’s rest- I daresay

Then what goes wrong at the end of the day?

 

I got her a towel which did not help

First it was silent now she began to yelp.

I told her, Talk to me, it may help”

 

She began to talk ..oh what a bore

Her troubles, her problems, more and more.

Tired and baffled I began to snore.

 

The perpetually dripping lachrymal gland

Life at this stage is supposed to be bland

I was helpless, if she refused to understand.

 

With a thoughtful husband such as me,

Demanding kids and family.

She should look at her own needs perfunctorily.

 

So per my advice, what you need

Is to be happy through your own deeds.

I suggest you get a job, work hard and hard

But keep a check on your ATM card.

Stop feeling tired, have some tea

Sit with everyone, stop longing for me.

 

The golden advice, for the words I say,

At night be good, you have to pay.

 

Companionship, emotion, sentiment..you see

Are nothing but total blasphemy.

Expect nil, serve till you die

Nothing more to it than meets the eye

 

So I deduced, and swear I did try….

The most useless question is “Why women cry?”

THAT LITTLE BIT OF SUGAR IN THE COFFEE CALLED LIFE

I was putting my five month old to sleep a while back. As I patted him on the back with a rhythmic regularity he held my nose in a tight grip. I didn’t put away his tiny clutching fingers. He looked at me straight with those large liquid eyes. I could tell he was drifting off to sleep. His hand fell slowly on my cheek bone and he too was patting my cheek with more or less the same rhythm. I woke up 10 minutes later on his little pillow. He too was asleep on my arm.

They cut down my Tree

The first time I stepped into this room switching off the lights was a mixed feeling. The walls were terrible shades of blue (5 in fact) experimented on by a man who did not live here for half the year and rest of the half...he spent it in other rooms of the normal parts of the house or were hanging out with his friends. In short, it didn't matter to the bachelor whether the walls were electric blue, whether the room was furnished by a single chair and a gawky looking furniture that uncomfortably boasted of the ability to station artefacts of different shapes and sizes. I switched off the light and settled in the corner of the bed. It was my first night at this new place, an unsure future which I was locking myself in with irrevocable surety. Nothing matched with my life except for the colour of the ceiling, with the lights turned off. I comforted myself into a foetal position and closed my eyes. I guess I was too tired as I had not really realized when I fell asleep. I woke up with a shiver. There was a storm outside and the first thing I noticed was the terrifying shadow of a huge tree dancing madly to the chaotic rhythm of the wind. I froze in my bed. Hypnotized I kept looking at it for a few minutes before I could not take in the terror anymore. I decided to get out for it was impossible to stay in that same room with the dancing of the foliage.

  Unaccustomed to the new ups and downs I bumped a couple of times and finally reached my father in law. (No..it was waaay before the era of smartphones) Too desperate in my fear I woke him up and expressed my predicaments trying to overcome the language barrier. I still can]|

not fathom what he must have thought of my brutal honesty, but in the absence of his wife at that particular time he left the bedroom and permitted me to sleep on his bed. I comfortably settled down in the dark room drawing the sheets over my ears to cut out the sound of my first andhi. I pressed myself hard against an enormously fat pillow still left on the recently vacated bed and drifted off to an uncomfortable sleep where the shadow of that huge tree haunted me throughout.

The next day I stood at the edge of the staircase and stared at the looming tree. It must have been over 40 feet. The leaves were slender and beautiful and the trunk was brown with darker striations. It did not look scary. A light wind was blowing and the leaves shivered against the blue sky. My journey with the tree had started.

 It slowly grew to be a part of my existence. It was kind of a reassuring presence. The dancing shadows did not scare me anymore. In fact, my sleepy eyes would look for its movement in case my sleep broke in the middle of the night.

My husband is stationed abroad for most of the year and upon his return pressing matters and commitments kept him busy. The bride and wife in me grew up steadily accompanied by the presence of the tree. To me it seemed to have all the answers and the passive comfort that it could provide being rooted to where it was. I found that rather intense. It could in fact hand hold me..but not make me completely dependent on it. It was making me self-sufficient.

Yet, life, as they say is not a bed of roses. For me it had its more than fair share of ups and downs. It was one such sultry afternoon. Life was at its lowest ebb. Being a weekend, I did not have the privilege of drowning myself in work. I sat on the stair case idly looking out on the desolate road. Something bothered me and my eyes welled up. I went up to the terrace. The heat was scorching. As I rested against the walls, my knees buckled and I sank to the floor crying. It was just at that moment that I heard the sweet cry of an oriole. Being an avid ornithologist, I could not ignore the call. It made me get back on my feet. The bird called again. I knew that the bird was hidden between the thin leaves. I could not camouflage. It was too bright for that. Wiping my tears, I looked out intently, and with a sudden gust of wind I saw it. As if the curtains had been drawn apart and the lead cast revealed himself in all his glory. It was not the usual black headed oriole. In fact, it was my first Golden Oriole sighting. It was brilliantly golden in the blinding heat of the north Indian summer. I smiled. This was the first time my evergreen had literally wiped my tears and made me smile.

Thereafter, he opened up a whole new world in front of me. As if on that day I had bared my soul to him and told him of my passions. In the period of the next few years the list of spottings were enriched thus: an owl couple, multiple palm squirrels, red-vented bulbuls singing melodiously, a hornbill, a shikra couple, a roofus treepie couple, swarms of bee-eaters, the seven bablers, oriental white-eyes, the alexandrine parakeet and the sunbirds that used it like a transit point. Some of the couples I could even study for their behavioural pattern. They became so easy for me spot as if the leaves were made of gossamer just for me…to look through the veil and gaze on the beauty that lay hidden beyond. We had established our bond for life.

The evenings were beautiful as the melting rays of the sun put the final stokes of gold on the verdure before the sun settled down after a mighty day’s work.

When I had children, they too grew accustomed to the closeness that their mother shared with the tree. They, too would shriek with delight pointing out the running ‘skugil’ that darted on the spread-out branches. Just as dotingly as a father would allow his offspring to play all over him. They learnt to identify at least seven bird species doing their practical bit of spotting the birds in the green mesh of the huge tree.

The tree had not only helped me to evolve but it was also helping my children grow adding that finesse that only Nature can.

It must have witnessed a lot. For it held its head high and its roots penetrated deep. The stormy evenings were incomparable in beauty as the tree lurched and fought the wrath of the zephyr. It indeed was scary, but I had grown partial towards my forever-companion and my heart danced with a heady delight as I saw my soldier withstand all odds and emerge victorious. The after math of the storm would be broken branches and a carpet of green dismembered from the tree. It too, as a sight to behold.

But sometimes too much beauty becomes too much to behold. People start confusing between the Gaia and the Gorgon. And then one day they declared my tree to be threat, for its looming height as well as its deep roots.

Despite my protests, drowned by the timbre of the elders that justified why the timber should be put down. I could only extricate a false promise that they would spare the tree as much I measured, and I am no basketball player.

This promise too, was not honoured. They cut down my tree nearly from the base and then spared a couple of feet as I rose to action, leaving me bewildered. My confounding passions were shared by many birds who came to perch on the branches they had known for years but were confused to find that it simply did not exist anymore. They flew around and flittered before settling down on the wires or other trees.

 I am not adding any spice to a write up I want to have a dramatic ending. Two things I have observed since the day my daughter came and stood in front of me, declaring with a slight annoyance in her voice: ‘Mother, they cut down your tree.”

I was not keeping well my medication had to be increased. Secondly a sharp change in the behavioural pattern of my children who had become curt and obstinate all of a sudden. I pray to God that I am putting more than two and two together. And I pray to God that one day I can see green sprouts from the sides of the trunk that is left…just like a holocaust survivor who decides to testify against his tormentors and demands they be put to justice.

Illusions

I feel I have integrally known love. Physically felt its presence. When I close my eyes I can see him...in different ways. Sometimes I see him at a distance, a dark silhouette again the reddish lavender sky...and I can't figure out whether it's dawn or dusk. I observe him looking ahead, a lean thin fiigure discounting the toll that age took on the observer and her subject, likewise) looking ahead into the stretch of water. The sun making the background look like molten gold and giving me the pleasure of looking at the detailed contour of his physique. The wind that blows making me shiver and I see him again... Now through the panes of the glass hazed by rain...I observe him on the green grass clad in white and denim and I wonder, darting back to the present....why do our lives dwell in the memories created in the backdrop of the past...I wipe the pane and I see the top two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. I can see the smoothness of the skin a bit too clearly. It's raining and the water drops from his hair..it trickles down the nape ...down the throat...further....down the chest...I wish to touch him...and then I can feel the cool rain drops on my self as I step out under the beautiful grey sky....I am near him...and I stretch out my hand to touch. And the moment my fingers touch him the silhouette becomes smoke, the water drenching my hand trickles betwern my fingers...I can't hold on to the falling drops as they escape my clenched fist. My eyes, my hand and my being all left stooping in the rain or shivering as the wind suddenly becomes too chilly. It's after all a vacuum....love!!

Prayer

 Sometimes my soul desires to be liberated from its carnal cage.

When inebriated it seeks solace diving into the emerald green waters of peace.... 

to rediscover itself on the paths of the necropolis built by the pieces of uncertainty sewn together.

The day I left home full of fallacious fantasies. to this that I roam as a vagabond in the desert..... 

My weary soul prays it has sinned less enough to be liberated from its carnal cage. 

Towards the 'spotless sunsine of the eternal'...

The Lover

Drugged sleep that refused to overpower the faculties An imaginary conversation with a not so imaginary person A dire need to realise the futility of fostering emotions that in the deepest crevices of the mind the protagonist knew would have proven not so soothing or profitable to the heart and the hearth... .......or would it??? The darkness had forever, in a disturbing manner, been a catalyst to the thoughts... and now more so in this self inflicted lonliness... It harboured itself like an acceptable disease. If there was yet another time...yet another conversation...intrepid and well framed....the person was convinced of irrefutable victory. .....but then it was all in the mind and the stars in the sky....well probably they were not crossed after all. In memory....till in memoriam.