Things Past

My mother is visiting us for a few months this summer - the first time since DB and I got married. The old and new in all of our lives are colliding randomly with unintended consequences. J has regressed a couple of years or more being the "baby" grandma knew when she saw her last. DB is learning how to adjust to yet another new person in his life. I am trying to balance being the daughter I have always been without making DB feel like he's the odd one out in the family. My mother is seeing me being a wife once again - there are some sad memories there for her mingled with happiness for me. We visit the past for different reasons and outcomes. 

My cousin M called me after ten years this morning - to say hello. She has trouble reconciling with the changes in my life and traipses around the subject of DB. Instead she talks of the last time we met - when R(my ex) was still around. She takes trouble not to mention him and the memory turns lifeless as a result. M treats marriage like a minefield and maneuvers her way around it for the hour that we talk. It leaves a strange taste in the mouth - I feel like a cardboard character with every sliver of life pared away from me.

In her anxiety to spare my feelings, M drained my life out of blood. After I got off the phone with her, I found myself thinking of the many uses of nostalgia - to rejoice, to recalibrate, to reminiscence, to wallow, to celebrate and much more.

Continuity Errors

I was driving DB's car most of last week. One evening, on the way back home, the radio station he has it set to, picked up a song I had not heard in a long time. I caught the last few bars, it sparked recollection but not recognition and then it faded out to headline news. I tried to remember when I had heard it last. It was so long ago, that it could have been another life. 

But again, I have a few different lives - the life in India as a young girl enjoying the independence that comes with her first job, a new bride who came to America full of romantic ideas about marriage and high hopes for the future, an emotionally devastated new mother who left that marriage to find her way in the world alone, the determined single mother who raced against the clock non-stop for eight years and now a woman who is trying marriage, husband and home one more time. 

Each phase of my life, I was a person that bore little resemblance to who I was before or after. Music and books have formed the tenuous ties between these lives, selves and phases. Listening to that unidentified yet very familiar piece of music was like watching a continuity error.

Comforters

Both my grandmothers and mother made a few kanthas for me through my growing up years. Even as a child, I was extremely attached these utterly comfortable quilts made from old cotton saris, layered and sewed together by hand to make qulits. These were labors of love that sometimes took months to finish and nothing comes quite close to being a "comforter" for the heart and soul as a kantha does. 

The last quilt my mother made for me was when I was getting ready for college. It was possibly the most elaborate one she ever made. Once it was done, I could not bear to use and ruin it. Instead, I used it sparingly as a bed spread. I knew she would never muster the stamina and patience to do anything like it again. It would my last kantha. 

Reading about how quilting has gone Web 2.0 thanks to technology, reminded me of those kanthas from a long time ago. Unlike a lot of things that have traveled around with me, the kanthas remained home in India with my parents. I miss them every year when the weather starts to get mild but is not yet very cold - that is the perfect time to bundle up in a kantha.

Creating Memories

There are special memories from childhood and youth that I want to share with J but cannot translate their signifance for me to her. For instance, there was the time when I first heard the song Jodi Kichu Amare Shudhao by Debabrata Biswas and a long time after than when I first understood the lyrics. So many ways and reasons to love the same piece of music. 

When I play that song for J, she grows wisful for reasons she cannot understand or explain yet. "Sometimes I feel that way when I listen to beautiful music" she says. It is how I used to feel once and still do. That and other music will mean entirely different things to us, evoke entirely different memories ten or twenty years out. It makes me happy to know that some of them will be the ones we made together - mother and child.

Wordia

A word can sometimes be imbued with so much personal context that it could well mean different things to different people - that may be the idea behind Wordia. The creators describe their mission thusly :

Over the years we’ve tried many ways to improve our grasp of the English language. We’ve listened, jotted and scribbled down words that have excited, confused and challenged us. wordia.com is our way of improving our own vocabulary and in the process, discovering what words mean to other people. Like most people, we’re interested in what other think and feel.

Some pretty bland words have come to acquire deep significance in my life

Likewise - When P expressed his feelings for me after a few years of trying, I felt both touched and tongue tied and all I was able to come up with was "likewise" to suggest the feelings were mutual. Since then using this word is has been a little difficult - like P owned it and it were consecrated to that moment from long ago.

Precious - I have associated this word with J for as long as I have been a mother. No the two are so entwined that I cannot think of them as apart or return the word to its original meaning of context.

Attempt - A word with more than one bad memory - attempting questions on tests I was not prepared for during my under-grad years, attempting to save a marriage that could not be, attempting to stay strong when I felt more than ready to give up. I still find it hard to associate this word with anything positive

Forgive - A word I grapple to fully understand. What does to forgive really mean ? Does it apply the same way in all situations ? Are all transgressions by those who matter in your life candidates for forgiveness. There is possibly no other word that confuses me quite as much as this one.

Dream - Possibly my favorite word. A placeholder for things that might be even if they have not so far. Waking up from a pleasant dream and remembering vividly while completely awake is such a wonderful feeling. I am in the here and now and yet so far removed that nothing can touch me. It is a short-lived and magical time.

Libra Earrings

The signs of impending decay in marriage can sometimes come within months of having exchanged vows - it had in mine. R (my ex) was a very attentive man. He would  notice what I wore, how I did my hair and remember the smell of my perfume. In the early days, I found this rather charming. Then one day as I was combing my hair to tie it back he asked "Is that your favorite earring ? You seem to wear it a lot". I said it was. "Was it a gift from someone ?" I said it it was not. I had bought it years ago. "Isn't it the sign of Libra ?" I said it was. "Why do you wear the sign of Libra ?" It was neither his sun sign nor mine.

That was also the first time I withheld the whole truth from him. I told him I liked the design which just happened to be the sign for Libra - it was cheap costume jewelry anyway. R could tell there was more to those earrings and that I was not willing to share.That incident as trivial as it was, made for the first fracture of many others in our marriage. I realized R wanted to own me in my entirety and a past that did not include him could have no room in my life -it would need to be expunged. He would wear me out with his probing, until my most beautiful and precious memories turned raw and hurt. Unconsciously, it steeled my resolve to hold on to and hide away things I may have otherwise forgotten.

Libra was P's sun sign. I had bought those earrings the day I got a letter from him that said "It's a balmy day here in Bombay and I was listening to the mixed tape you gave me before I left. The music is so beautiful and soothing. It brought back many memories."

This was before the time of email and we wrote letters to each other instead. It would be impossible for me to explain to R or anyone else, how I felt when I read that particular line  How after light rain that evening, the skies had been sparkling blue and I went out to town with friends and the whole world seemed happy just like me.

And then in a shop window, I saw a pair of earrings that magically completed the orb that connected P and I in our thoughts. I have them to this day and wear them when I want to remember what it felt to be in love for the first time and experience what would make no sense to anyone else.In a cruel twist of fate perhaps, I have R to thank for this.

Forgiveness In Dream

Last night, I had a dream about P again. Months and sometimes years go by between dreams and each time I think this will be the last time. I see him sitting in a crowded public place - perhaps an airport departure lounge. He is talking to someone (I seem to know this person) and when I look at P, his face lights up with a big smile - a smile I would recognize anywhere, it is what had the power to brighten the saddest day - it is still just as radiant.

P is a shadow of his former self. He looks worn out. As he walks over to me, I notice he  limping a little. I ask him about it and he mentions a recent injury. I ask him why his face looks like he is in pain and he says it is a tooth and the medication is starting to wear off. I notice he is wearing a ring with a bright green stone - P was never the kind of guy who would wear any kind of jewelry except perhaps a wedding band. I don't ask him about it.

He takes me somewhere that looks like a residential area in a big city. There are tall buildings everywhere. He hands me a bowl of food and asks me to eat - he tells me that he has cooked it himself. The food is lovely -  it reminds me of prasad you eat at a temple after prayers have been offered. We talk about a lot different things but the past does not come up. We appear to be trying friendship - something we had never done before.

From the time P and I had first met as teenagers, it had been a romantic interest. He struggled for years to articulate his feelings and I waited for the day when he would be ready. I want to see the food as a peace offering - P's way of undoing what he had meant when he said nearly fifteen years ago - "I hope you fall in love with someone just as difficult as you are and then you'll know how much I have hurt". It is not as if I had not hurt along with him but I did not say it.

Then the dream is over and always I am no closer to closure than I was so many years ago. I still don't know if I have been forgiven. I wake up and pray for P to be happy where ever he is and for him to be at peace with himself and me.

Catcher In the Rye

Reading about J.D Salinger's death, brought back memories of the time when I got my first opportunity to read Catcher in the Rye and just as quickly lost it. I was twelve then and was visiting with Uncle D and his family. In my sleepy little town, his bookshelf was the best stocked library I could have access to. His tastes were eclectic and he always made great recommendations. On this particular evening he asked me "Didn't you just have your twelfth birthday ?" and I said it had been a week ago.

"Great. No time like now for you to read Catcher in the Rye" he said handing me a well-worn paperback copy of the book. Even before I could flip through it, his sister scooped it out of my hands reprimanding Uncle D as she did so. "Do you have no better sense, D than to give a child this young Catcher in the Rye to read ?" she asked him.

Now Uncle D's sister visited them sometimes and was a formidable woman in every way. She had several master's degrees and taught English literature at a fancy Delhi college. Anyone who knew her for any length of time knew better than to mess with her. Uncle D protested feebly that he had been about my age when he first read the Catcher and she retorted "That would explain a lot !" and walked away in a huff along with the book leaving him more than a little embarrassed.

I may not even have read the book had it not been snatched away from me under such dramatic circumstances. But now, I simply had to check it out if only to see why it was so inappropriate for a twelve year old. I was able to get hold of the book a couple of years later and loved it. Thanks to that incident, I became very curious about books that had once been banned. To that end, I made sure I read Lolita, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Fanny Hill, Flowers In the Attic and much more well before I might have been considered old enough to read any of these books.

Uncle D and his sister taught me a valuable parenting lesson early on. It is usually safer to hand kids books that might be objectionable than to take them away because kids will find a way to read what they have been forbidden to. Having an adult in their lives to discuss their understanding and reaction to the book is very important and to deny them that opportunity is to distort their emotional growth.

It never ceased to surprise me that a highly qualified woman who was an educator herself, would choose to take the approach she did with the Salinger book. Uncle D was an engineer who had loved literature and had the good sense to introduce kids to it as early as possible. I am grateful to him for that and his book policing sister for sparking my curiosity about non-conformist literature.

Inspirational Teacher

My grade school classmates have had me on their mailing list for a while. Most of the members are like me - silent receivers of communication who rarely if ever have anything to say to the group. An active but vocal minority have kept this list going for as long as they have.

Recently, one guy K commented in reference to an on going conversation about how much they owe to that one teacher who made the most lasting impression. In his case it was Mrs. P (who would have guessed). He wrote "If she had not kept nagging at me for my sloppy grammar and spelling I would never be where I am today".

When we were in our early teens, I remember K making remarks about Mrs. P that were decidedly tasteless. She was tall and slim ; wore silk or chiffon saris that flattered her shape but in a dignified way. Her makeup was always understated as was her perfume. Mrs. P was one of my style icons growing up and I hated it when K and his buddies said the things they did about her. Apparently with age, K has had a change of heart and attitude.

In her essay Teachers Are Key to a Successful Economy, Michelle Obama writes :

"We all remember the impact a special teacher had on us—a teacher who refused to let us fall through the cracks; who pushed us and believed in us when we doubted ourselves; who sparked in us a lifelong curiosity and passion for learning. Decades later, we remember the way they made us feel and the things they inspired us to do—how they challenged us and changed our lives"

That is certainly true for both K and I,even if in very different ways. Decades later, K has realized that Mrs. P was indeed special and a very positive influence on his life. Mrs. P was not the best or the most influential teacher I have had, but there is a lot I learned from her example about being a feminine, confident and attractive without sacrificing dignity. That is an important lesson for any young girl and determines the choices she will make as a woman. Learning that was no less important than learning to construct readable sentences.

Created Memories

Photoshoping has traditionally had a negative connotation - not unlike airbrushing models on glossy magazines to make them impossible perfect and plastic. In this discussion on the cultural impact of photoshopping, it is described as a neologism :

The term is sometimes used with a derogatory intent by artists to refer to images that have been retouched instead of originally produced. A common issue amongst users of all skill levels is the ability to avoid in one's work what is referred to as "the Photoshop look" (although such an issue is intrinsic to many graphics programs).

This heart-rending Mashable story about one man's request for someone with photoshop skills to remove the oxygen cannula out of a picture of him with his deceased mother who had been suffering from cancer, makes one think of photoshopping in an entirely different light. There are moments in life, that we can no longer relive or make perfect - specially it involved a loved one who is no longer alive. The only clear memories we have of our grandparents is of a time when they were past their prime and ailing. We are no longer able to remember them as they were when we were very young.

What would it hurt to create a memory of my grandfather who had a smile that could light up a room - before he was put on a dialysis unit and looked so fragile that he could snap any moment - with me and J as we are now. It would not represent the truth but it would be how I want to remember him always, how I wish J might have seen him. The past is always made more perfect through our successive recollections of it. In our minds we undo a gesture, say something we lacked the grace to say at the time, remove the many blemishes from the object of our affections. To photoshop would be no worse than turning our imagination into something tangible.

Mahalaya

It was Mahalaya yesterday. Had my parents not been visiting, I would have never known. Since they wanted to listen to the Chandi Path, I looked for the Birendra Krishna Bhadra recording we always heard back home on All India Radio, on YouTube. The familiar music from childhood nearly brought me to tears. It is associated with many happy memories of simpler more innocent times. The future (and adulthood) was a distant place and could be re-imagined endlessly.

The life I have today was certainly not something I had planned or wished for. While there is much that I am grateful for, there is much I wish would be different. The future is much harder to see or imagine than it was in those long ago days. The music made me long for the home I don't really have, a time that will never come back and memories that no longer have a place to live.

The town that I grew up in does not resemble how I remember it, the familiar landmarks have been obliterated, friends have scattered around the world. There is no one or nothing to return to - nostalgia needs the medium of familiar things to remain potent. That medium has all but evaporated for me. Yet the sound from the dawn of Mahalayas past returned to me in unexpectedly generous measure vignettes from childhood - a bounty I was completely unprepared for.

The School Yard

J's elementary school is just across the street from where we live. When my parents visit, we often take a walk to the school in the evenings, so they have the open space to walk while J plays. My mother loves to get on the swing set with J and her delight in the activity is no less than J's evening after evening.

They make a charming picture together - a petite gray-haired woman in a sari and a seven year old swinging joyfully in the school yard. My mother says, it takes her back to her childhood each time she gets on the swing. She grew up in Calcutta and the parks near her home were always too crowded for any child to get their heart's fill of swinging. They had to stand in line, wait their turn and then be urged to make way (altogether too soon) for the next child in line.

Having unfettered access to the swing had remained an unfulfilled childhood dream that is realized each evening at J's school - she can never have enough of it. Each time she is deeply thankful. When I see my mother in the school yard, return to her childhood for a bit, I think about my biggest unfulfilled dreams from childhood and youth. The thing that stands out most prominently is the desire to learn for the sheer pleasure of it without being tested and graded for ability to cram and regurgitate.I was never a good test taker but I always loved to learn - a combination that did not work so well for me in the Indian school system.

I am willing to wait any length of time to be able to return to school to be a full-time student and study one or more subjects I am passionate about knowing fully well there will be little to no return on investment. Like my mother, I may end up being the most enthusiastic grandmother in class of twenty year olds. When I picture myself in that context, it feels as if it is a blessing to have some dreams left unfulfilled - it makes the wait so worthwhile. Not every grandmother is able to become seven in a school yard.

Short List

Assuming the New York sidewalk hotdog is truly the apogee of one of the best things in the world, this long list of things that are even better is actually a pretty good one too. My favorites -

Your firstborn child - Holding J for the very first time is etched in memory. There is no other moment in my life that felt so overwhelmingly powerful or stirring. To this day (and maybe for ever) I can remember exactly how it felt.

Believing in yourself - Finding out that I had the courage to take charge of my life and J's even after having suffered setbacks, having hopes belied. Being able to believe in seconds chances, the inherent goodness in people and learning to be vulnerable without feeling like a victim

A kiss in the rain - The first time that happenend was the day after R (my ex) and I got married. We went visiting my grandparents - a whole bunch of relatives were waiting there to welcome him into our family. After a while, it started to drizzle outside and R asked me if my folks would mind if we went out for a short walk. I said I did not think so. We left quietly, my uncle tried to get us to take an umbrella but we skipped down the stairs too qucikly for him to catch us. The roads were quite deserted that afternoon and at some point he kissed me as rain fell on my face and his. We were a pair of happy conspirators when we turned home happy and drenched.