Faces

FACES

We never meet,

Yet we are together.

We are not the same,

Yet we are inseparable.

We will never see,

Yet we hold hands.

We decide chance,

Yet we don’t partake.

We get spent,

Yet we never own.

We are two faces

of the same coin

Daughters of Felicity

You walked along,

When I walked a lonely road,

 

Your warm embrace,

Melted my cold world,

 

You loved in entirety,

When I hated myself,

 

You chastened me,

When I went astray,

 

You listened,

To every word I had to say,

 

After rains of tear,

Your smile on a drifting cloud,

Made my world,

A waking dream.

 

My angels in disguise,

You came to me,

Like it’s your calling,

And watched over.

 

You,

Bore me, fed me, weaned me.

Void is my world,

Without you in it.

 

I salute,

You. My harbingers of felicity.

Indeed, Heaven rests under

Your frail feet.

 

Happy Women’s Day!

Caustic Trance

From the valley of wild poppies,

Fluttered thy pristine fragrance,

To my pining heart as an,

Overwhelming intoxication;

But your opium ain’t,

Panacea for the torment,

You inflict on me,

My blood hued poppy!

Akin to your scarlet petals,

That gets crushed pitiless,

I stand drenched and torn in,

The callousness of this cold rain.

My poignant heart,

Its whining to kismet,

This ravine of celandine,

Why it ain’t forever mine.

Eternal Flame

The Eternal Flame,

It chose itself to guide,

To keep me mighty,

Sheltering from adversity.

When I think of my flame,

What it means to me,

I think about the beauty,

That it has let me see.

The flame so became,

A part of me,

But little did I intuit,

That it’s bitterly growing apart;

I’ve now flushed out the grime,

And my kernel of its germ,

So that the sanctity,

Glinting inside me,

Blooms anew,

With eternal resplendence!

Divine Deliriums

The shade beneath this,

Beautiful solitary tree,

Is my cherished recluse.

Far away from the isles,

Of counterfeit smiles,

It’s balmy to sit here,

Besides thee,

My beloved tree.

I long to hear you sing,

Thy ever honeyed, sweet nothings,

playful, loving, soulful;

Feed my spirit,

With thy cured poems,

And my body,

Thy mellow pomes.

My solitary tree,

I long so much to sit here,

Forever gloating in silence,

On your coquettish nonchalance.

I long so much to not bid adieu,

to watch the tall swaying grass,

And the impish twinkle in your eyes,

that dilates with the setting golden rays.

11 things I love about Kerala

1) We are a bunch of people who are as unique as our geography – Sedate, unhurried and welcoming.

2) There is hardly any city-village differentiation here. Villages have telephones, electricity and roads. Cities have the virtues of a country-side.

3) The climate is almost uniform, maritime type throughout the year (barring the March-April summer heat! phew) with almost seven months of rain. So save the annual drill of stowing away the winter clothes and taking out the cottons.

4) Tourism, IT and Spice exports are the major industries. No effluents. No toxic gases.

5) Our movies. Although they cater to a limited audience, it has a cinematic language of its own.  Where else can we see mainstream, commercially successful movies shot as early as in the eighties dealing with subjects as varied as surrogate motherhood (dasharatham) and retrograde amnesia (Innale)? Not to mention the great names like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ramu Kariat, MT Vasudevan Nair, Santosh Sivan and Satyan Anthikad who now head the juries of several international film festivals. Love triangles are still considered passé here.

6) Our film music. It’s mostly raga-based melodies that give equal importance to poetry. Probably why we have more of poets and less of lyricists in the Malayalam film industry.

7) We are always a Malayali first and then a Christian, Hindu or a Muslim. Hindus eat beef(no Malayali can resist beef & porotta; yeah its not parantha), Christian ladies often spot a saffron tilak and Muslims celebrate Onam. Religion is always a personal thing and there is immense respect for other faiths (I was amazed myself when my mom’s aide, a pious Latin Catholic in her late forties once asked me  to put the TV on “mute” because the call for prayer was being sounded from the nearby mosque). Rest of India can take a lesson or two from here on multicultural pluralism.

8) We truly love our daughters and consider them equal to our sons. Why else would there be this astounding sex-ratio of 1058 daughters for every 1000 sons?

9) Our gene-pool seems to be the most varied with Arab, Aryan, Dravidian, Dutch, Jewish, Portuguese and Syrian immigrants settling here and intermarrying with the native Malayalam speakers.

10) The geography – Rivers, backwaters, rivulets, waterfalls, beaches, canals, estuaries, freshwater lakes, pristine forests, luscious plantations and abundant greenery; you name it, we have it. What is unique is, lined up on the eastern side of the spine-shaped state are the Western Ghats and all along the west-side is the Arabian Sea. So wherever you are in Kerala, go eastwards for a hill-station or go westwards if you’re in a mood for some beach fun.

11) Last but definitely not the least, is brand Kerala. Koodiyattam, Kalaripayattu, Ayurveda, Kathakali and several firsts in literacy, healthcare and education. Why wouldn’t I be proud that I belong to this land?

As I write this, the summer showers are here. I guess I’ll take a walk in the rains, enjoy the happy sway of  water-glazed leaves and  devour that smell of wet earth. Good day!

Women & We Men!

“Do men really respect women?” popped the question in my chat window. I didn’t have an answer. My fingers waited to scramble across the keyboard, but the neurons weren’t firing. What I knew, however was that I respected her, my friend on the other end of the entwining worldwide web. For being a woman, for being able to say “No” when she wants to, for being the person she is. Out of that respect is why I enjoyed chatting with her, even if it happened only once or twice a year.  But that never did really answer her question.

The Cobbler’s Hajj

Intro

The Pilgrimage to Makkah, is one of the essential elements of the Islamic faith. It is obligatory on all believers provided they have the financial capability and physical ability to endure the challenges of the pilgrimage.

According to Islamic tradition the Kaaba, a simple square cube structure in Makkah, was the first house of worship established to remind humanity of the One Supreme God. The structure was reconstructed by Prophet Abraham and his son Prophet Ishmael.

Paper Planes

Moulana. That’s the surname of my maternal grand-dad. Not that his parents named him so. It came from the hotel he owned and ran for almost all his eight-decade old life, starting from his teen age, right till the morning he died, while getting ready for another day at the hotel. Broadway was to Cochin, what Karol Bagh and Connaught place combined is to Delhi. His hotel stood right there, as a landmark of Broadway.

Miss Haridas,Malayali Manka & Male Psyche!

Prologue

Miss. Haridas is a musical reality show anchor, and is seen as the face of the show, starting from the show’s season II. She was born and brought up in Cochin, and did all her school and college education from the same city. After her graduation she went on to work in Bangalore and later to the UK for her post-graduation, but returned leaving the course halfway. When it comes to the English language, she speaks it with proper attention to pronunciation, but the same cannot be said about her diction in Malayalam – her mother tongue, and also her primary language of communication till age 21, after which she left to Bangalore.

Happy Erasing!

Once while stationery shopping in Delhi, an 8-year old boy came hurriedly to the shop and asked for three Political practice maps of the world and two Physical practice maps of India. Astonished how specific he was in his requirement, I walked up-to him with a ‘Hi’ on my face and stood at the counter till an opportune moment came by to ask him: “Do you know the difference between Political maps and Physical maps?” “Yes I do” came the reply in a wink. For a moment, a stream of thoughts spurred through my mind. About the kids of today, how efficiently they are educated, how smart they are to know so many things at a young age and so on. I was unrelenting, though the boy looked like he left an interesting game of cricket half-way and badly wanted to join back without missing too many overs. “Ok, tell me the difference”. Without even pausing to think, he said: “Political mein lines hota hai, physical mein lines nahi hota hai” (A Political map has lines in it, a Physical map doesn’t have lines in it). Simple! He ran away grabbing the loose change, leaving me heartily smiling at his  innocuous reply.

Laughter in the Rain

To the world outside, my dad was a well-read, serious and knowledgeable gentleman. But to us kids, he used to reveal another beautiful trait of his. He was a thorough romantic at heart. He would read romantic classics by day and listen to Mehdi Hassan by night. And if it rained, he loved to watch endlessly.

In Pursuit of God, in God’s Own Country

Dear Chief Minister,

The other day I, Kuttappan, urged my newly-wed friend and her husband to spend their honeymoon in Kerala. Kuttappan is so happy that Kerala figures in the list of sought after destinations for honey-moon, not so honey-moon, sugar-free moon, reality-dawns moon, damage repair moon and break-down moon. For firangis as well as home-bred traitors alike. The newly-weds found Kerala living up to its brilliant marketing gimmick, probably coined by some clever under-secretary in the department of Tourism – “Daivathinte swantham naadu” – God’s own country.  “Oh! What a carpet of greenery”, “a zillion shades of green!” The adjectives started flowing even before they set their foot in the land that is now Kerala, which arose from the waters when the warrior-sage Parasuraman threw his axe from Gokarna into the Indian Ocean.

À la carte

A dear friend once attended an ‘art of living’ session and the presenter there, in the course of his discourse, stressed the importance of being vegetarian. “Even bata chappal  would taste like chicken if you cook it the same way” said the presenter raising his right footwear in his left hand. Two immediate thoughts: One, the presenter claims himself to be an alumnus of IIT and IIM. Would anyone with such an academic background and someone who is a (self-proclaimed) swamiji use that kind of histrionics? 

She…

She is every writer’s dream,
She is every nightingale’s hymn.

She is every poet’s melody,
She is every treasure’s key.