The scent of memory

Warm and brittle, it crumbled beneath my fingers, its freshly baked scent teasing my nostrils.

“Appa, I want one more”

We were at a tea kadai, the one on the road opposite the SIET college, tucked away on the platform, beneath a cluster of trees. He bought me two more butter biscuits, flat, round and delectable.

It’s enchanting how some objects have the power to provoke specific memories, with the scent, place and people intact. Butter biscuits will always conjure up the memory of my father and I lounging at a roadside shop by the side of a busy thoroughfare, with vehicles whizzing by, and shafts of sunlight from the overhead canopy pooling at my feet.

We sat there outside the dusty blue tea kadai, him on the two-wheeler, me balanced precariously on the seat in front of him, devouring the biscuits, relishing a nugget of time that was ours alone.

My father was an unusual man in many ways, but even more so because he liked frequenting these roadside shops- with a five-year-old child in tow. Maybe he found more interesting people there, or probably he found the atmosphere better, I will never know.

There was a rickety shop- part handcart, part tea kadai- opposite the Park Sheraton, by the side of a busy intersection, where the elite mingled with the everyday.

Sizzling hot bajjis, rusty brown bordering on the reddish, were strung out in quick succession on a row of plates. I remember the shop owner/ cook leaning against a brown brick wall, and I remember craning my neck to look up at him (I barely reached his knees). I remember the blue of the cart, and forever juxtapose it with the image of the swanky hotel standing opposite to it.

Many years later, I looked across the road to see if the kadai was still there. Only the brick wall remained, looking exposed and vulnerable.

My father was an unusual man who loved Madras, while it was still called that way. One more reason why I still prefer calling it that, for it conjures up a placid, laid-back city with numerous tea kadais, molaga bajjis, fun rides on two-wheelers, sunset-tinged skies, the Marina beach and butter biscuits.

You will probably not hear this often, but butter biscuits taste divine.

Her spectacles

Brown spectacles. Big, round, and made of plastic, they lie nonchalantly on the table, a sharp contrast to the dull white of a once-pink table.

Her spectacles.

Like a trip wire that sends you crashing to the ground, they lie in wait, a painful reminder of that unrelenting tide called time.

Her things lie scattered around the house, like land mines, each one sending thought after thought juddering into the abyss of memory.

Death is an oft discussed topic, its ramifications have been experienced, dissected and debated upon so many times that it sits on an elevated pedestal in the collective consciousness of the society.

But what of old age? That treacherous threshold that makes children of adults who’ve lived, loved and seen it all.

Like childhood, old age refuses to cooperate, refuses to listen, and balks at orders.

How do you react when you offer her food and all she says is she wants to die?

You look into her deeply-lined face, and try to remember when you lit up her world.

What do you do when she lashes out at you because you offered to do the dishes?

Beneath the scorching anger, you seek the person that did everything in her power to make you stop crying.

The years sneak up, ambush and annihilate her, and then unforgivably erode her so much that you are left looking at the mere shell of a warm human being who once existed.

Old age is a thief. It steals the essence of those you love.

Puts you through tantrums and hardens you so much, that you fail to see the vulnerability beneath it.

Reminds you forcibly, against your will, of the inevitability of time, of what was and what could have been.

Of love, loss and endearment.

Of endless cups of coffee.

Of dolls made from chocolate wrappers.

Of band-aids on skinned knees.

Of a comforting presence as solid as a wall.

Of a safety net coming loose.

Her spectacles lie on the table. Inanimate, mute, yet capable of evoking crushing sadness.

Release

I was sixteen when I first read about a girl who cut herself. She said it helped her give vent to the “confusion that was killing her from within.”

While I failed to comprehend how inflicting wounds on oneself could alleviate the roiling angst that threatened to derail one’s existence, I understood the concept of release.

A few years later, I watched in horror as a young woman cut herself on screen. As her blood turned the pristine, white floor crimson, I watched fascinated, enthralled, transfixed.

I decided to bleed, too.
And so I did.
On paper.

I bled the way only a teenager could, propelled by a deadly mix of angst, despair and anger.

I riled and rallied against the world,
And bled righteous anger.
I coaxed, cajoled, and bled some more, to make sense of the cacophony that smothered me.

I took a pen to my psyche and made an incision,
and the razor- sharp words gave me release.

I bled freely.

Anticipation

The insecurity of not being able to pull off 
what you think you do best, 
what you want to do,
what comes easy 
in fits and bursts.

What dries up, and drives you crazy,
tears you at the seams,

Makes you come apart at night,
when the blackness is real and unyielding.

When you struggle to make sense of what is and what is not,
When panic throttles you,
Looms up life-like in your psyche
riven with doubt,
Careworn and absurd,
straddling a line that may or may not exist,
between here and make-believe.

Where words dance beyond your reach,
to a tune of maddening familiarity,
that teases your senses, 
calls out to you, 
from the wings of a stage
hosting a play non-existent.

Torn with the need to set them in stone,
Give them the immortality that they seek,
You sink further and further into the abyss 
that you and only you are the master of.

Fall, 
splinter and deteriorate,
pull it together and make it work,
with what’s left.

Scripting with your senses,
Down a blind alley,
Footsteps tracing an outline 
Already left behind,

Break free,
To taste a freedom new,

Can you, with what you have?

Osmosis

“Conversations are like osmosis.”
He looked at her from across the table. Her sun-flecked hair hung in a loose mass, while her right foot beat a soundless tattoo; her eyes, preoccupied, as always.

“What?” he asked, knowing it was a futile question.

She turned her glance to him briefly, as if scanning him. “You know, from loquacious to laconic.”
That was it. No further explanation sought or received.

He looked at her. She seemed still. Elsewhere. Far away.

“Shall we leave then?” he asked, tentatively. She stirred the last dregs of her now- insipid coffee, and rose in answer.

“Where to?”
“Let’s go to the beach.”

“What? Now?” He looked up at the sky. It held the promise of rain. He didn’t like rain much.

He looked at her as she flagged down an auto. “Anna, beach.”
Strong, confident tone. What were the thoughts behind it?

She sat still, her head against the railing, mass of messy hair getting messier still.

“What are you thinking of?” he asked. She turned her head ever so slightly. “Nothing”

He gave an exasperated sigh.

The sky was a steely grey, reflected on the sea, where foam-tipped waves crashed the shore and dusk settled quietly.

She was near the water, skipping along the edge, dodging the waves.

Suppressed exuberance.

His phone vibrated. He turned it off.

She came back, having robbed dusk of its quiet.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“What happened? ”
“Nothing!”
“Really?”
A tinkle of laughter this time. “Really.”

“You seem sad. Quiet. You can’t be this way all the time! Why can’t you ever *talk*!” he fumed, unleashing his anger on her.

A smirk pulled up the corners of her mouth, while her eyes held a quizzical expression.
“Why does it discomfort you?”

He went home. Strains of conversation reached his ears and tried to make their way round his flummoxed mind.
“How was your day?”
“Are you hungry?”
“Did you know what happened?”
“Listen, no!”

He swatted away at the questions, irritated.

“Why don’t you ever talk?” asked his exasperated mother.

He looked at her, startled.

An image of a smirk pulling up the corners of a mouth flitted through his mind.

Osmosis.

The dogged persistence of unhappiness

Unhappiness is the patina that hangs over familiarity.

A slow, choking mist that engulfs, permeates and takes over.

An intense cry,
Of stubborn frustration,
nagging regrets and doubt.

A cold, stark emptiness that conceals the chasm between that you yearn for, and can never have.

A slow festering of wounds inflicted by anger,
The sharp edge of a word,
a cry for help.

Unhappiness is the imprint of expectations.

An acquired taste that you keep returning to.
a want,
a need,

a necessity.

Unhappiness is growing up.

It is as much an uphill climb as it is a downward spiral.

The sterile hollowness at the end of a weary day.

A work in progress;

Stillborn Epiphanies

Past quiet lanes that hum with light,
Replete with pitfalls, past tense and sorry sights.

Resolute steps first take you forward,
But later falter, crumble
and push you down.

In the midst of epiphanies that lie stillborn,
remnants of words lie dormant,
frozen in their attempt to burst to life.

Taunting,
Wilting,

Waiting.