The Green Envelope
Mom shuffled into the room with the filter coffee and sat in front of me.
I took the tumbler, inhaled the fresh smell emanating from it and smiled at the gastronomic pleasure it momentarily provided. There was something about the way mom mixed the decoction and milk, and made the brew acquire an identity that no other thing in the world could match. The froth lingered on the edges of the tumbler, eagerly, as if it had a story to spill. Each tumbler of coffee that mom made was an epicurean saga.
‘Is it OK? Is the sugar enough?’ she asked dourly.
It was a customary question that demanded a single response, ‘perfect’. In that one word lay her gratification. But her face was glum today and I knew. She was as loath as I was to broach the subject again. As much as I would like to stress it was ‘perfect’, in her view it wasn’t. It simply wasn’t perfect, this single life of mine.
She thought I was lonely. I tried to tell her I wasn’t. I was merely alone, and it meant being my own master, walking down the trail I chose. I was my own soul mate. I could sleep beneath the stars and fly with the wind. But she wouldn’t understand that.
She thought I needed a partner in my life and I must look for one. I tried to explain that you don’t look for partners, like looking for a house on rent. They walked into your life when the time was right. ‘Serendipity’, I said loftily, and she dismissed it as my fantasy.
She was concerned that I wasn’t settled yet. Flitting about in the name of work wasn’t her idea of a stable and satiating life. I was only thirty four and had a long way to go, and she didn’t believe in the joys of going solo. She was adamant the way only mothers can be with daughters.
‘Ma, what is it?’ I drawled, sipping the coffee and thanking heavens for the small blessings in life. I hadn’t had the pleasure of having mom’s filter coffee in three weeks. Visiting her frequently was getting difficult with my travel schedules and tight deadlines. I wrapped my hand around the tumbler to imbibe the warmth that was so unique to mom’s coffee.
Mom looked out of the window and sighed theatrically. All her concerns were distilled into that single heave. It wasn’t difficult to read her mind nor to understand her. I felt the same about her. The concerns we had about each other’s single life were mutual.
‘Okay, tell me, what does settling down mean to you, ma?’ I asked, breaking into her forlorn stare outside the window.
‘Why, have you found someone?’ she leaped from her seat and grabbed my hand.
I laughed at her sudden zeal and curiosity. It was as if I had seized a piece of her dream and planted into my heart.
‘Oh, Ma. Don’t get excited. I just want to know what you mean by ‘settling down’, I said, punching quotation marks in the air for accent.
‘Having someone to love. Someone to grow old with in your life.’
‘I have you for that, haven’t I? Then why worry?’ I quipped cheekily.
‘Who is there after me?’ Her voice fell as she asked it.
‘Ma…’ I clicked my tongue in disapproval. Her absence in my life was a thought I could never entertain.
I leaned over to the coffee tumbler on the table and put it away in disgust. I could never explain why the scent of brewed coffee turned rancid with time, and turned into an offensive stink. Like par-boiled love-affairs.
‘If having someone to grow old with is so important, why didn’t you find someone for yourself ma, after papa left?’
She shrugged. It could have meant a thousand things. As she looked away, I wondered if there was mist gathering in her eyes. She apparently didn’t want to answer my question.
‘OK, what if I want you to settle down now? Have someone to spend your old age with?’ I asked cautiously, knowing full well how sharply she might react.
‘What? Is anything wrong with you?’ she glowered at me.
I opened my bag and pulled out a light green envelope with a postal stamp sitting askew in one corner. The ‘to’ and ‘from’ addresses were neatly written in cursive style, reflecting a rare elegance. I was amused that people still used the old means to express feelings over long distances. Inside, there was a brown, crushed flower, accompanied by a note. The pigment from the flower had bled and stained the paper, imparting an ethereal quality to the envelope.
‘I am in the hills now and while here, I am remembering you. How much you love the pines and the peaks and the woods! I thought of sending you this rhododendron flower as a keepsake. By the time it reaches you, it will have withered. Yet, I hope you will like it and keep it like all other things.’
The look of consternation in mom’s face made me smile with sympathy and love. Mom had never mentioned the word ‘sacrifice’ to me in all these years. But I knew the import of the word in that instant and felt it was crushing my spirit with its immensity.
I was surprised that mom made no attempt to retrieve the envelope from me nor tried to respond to it frantically. There were no defenses to give. She didn’t even feel it necessary to question my trespassing into her life and unearthing its long held secrets. It seemed as if she was gracefully accepting what I had learned by sheer coincidence.
As the moment of unexpected disclosure passed and sobered, she stood up, picked my coffee tumbler and looking staid, said, ‘It’s not about me. It’s about you. When are you settling down? I want to know.’
Her voice was stern and it demanded an answer. And this time, I didn’t intend to evade it. I knew what I had to say.
‘As soon as you settle down, ma. I promise.’
Two Warriors
Two warriors, one with might in his muscle and fire in his eyes and the other with a succulent spirit, met at the cusp of a passing decade.
‘Where are you bound on the turn of the year? You seem very steadfast in your purpose.’ asked one as they crossed each other.
‘Don’t you see? There is too much wrong out there that needs fixing,’ said the other, with a hint of depair. ‘I have rallied all my valour to fight the evils that I see in the world,’ he added, motioning firmly in the open air.
‘That’s an honourable purpose you have, mate. I admire your steely resolve.’
‘And to where have you set off? There’s no sword in your sheathe and you seem sober in your intent. Have you retired from the battle field and become a commoner? If yes, it is a pity. The world needs more of us to set it back in order.’
‘I am a warrior for life. And I don’t quit ever. There’s too much wrong in here that needs fixing. I have rallied all my values to fight the evils that exist in this mortal frame,’ said the other jabbing a finger in his ribs.
‘That’s lofty, I must admit.’
Wishing each other well in the New Year, the two men strode off into the cold night, and the earth beneath their feet quivered under the weight of their dogged spirits.
A Castle For My Princess
(Arts Illustrated Contest Winner. The story in based on the image of the above painting that was given)
‘It is said that this painting took a staggering 20 years to make. Is that true? Or is it just popular belief..? I mean…a myth…’ The interviewer asked the grey-haired woman in front of her, with an inconclusive pause. The open disbelief in her eyes was eclipsed by a child-like curiosity in her voice.
The 20 year claim deserved to be questioned, of course. Because it was an incredibly long period for a piece of art to come alive. The facts had to be fathomed and laid bare.
‘Are you asking me if it was a hype that I created for cheap popularity?’ The grey-haired woman asked with a derisive laugh and turned to stare at the painting that stoically sat on an easel, loving and hating it simultaneously. And then, sobering her eyes, she gazed at the young woman’s face in front of her and held her in her gaze for a while. The familiarity of the interviewer’s features first distracted her, and then it disrupted her faculties.
Distraction is different from disruption. The former merely makes one’s mind wander. The latter crumples it beyond recognition. And she was at that point.
Her name was Jacinta, with no surname. It was believed that she had a different desi name before she gained the present reputation. It was rumoured by her peers who envied her popularity that part of her fame came with the name, although they had no clear reasoning for the odd presumption.
The cameras zoomed in on Jacinta and waited for her to respond to the question about the painting’s long gestation. But in the silence that ensued, she began to zone out, slowly getting sucked into the vortex of a distorted impression from the past. As she scrutinized the interviewer’s face from her seat, an old memory flashed in her mind for a moment and died. A déjà vu flickered.
Those eyes, she thought, as she read the interviewer’s face. They were of the same colour – soft, succulent and brown like honey, fringed by long, curling eyelashes. And when the young girl batted them incredulously, like a child who couldn’t wait to hear a fairy tale, her heart leaped at the striking similarity. And the hair – the same frizzy curls that fell loose on her shoulders. Only the smile was different, and that too chiefly because the young girl didn’t wear braces like Anju did back in the time.
Behind her scrambled thoughts, Jacinta heard the interviewer repeat her question. ‘Can you tell us more about the painting and its genesis? I am curious and so are our viewers. What makes it so unique?’ she asked, quickly flicking a few curls away from her forehead.
‘Ah…that…!’ exclaimed Jacinta, more as a reaction to the endearing curl-tossing act that Anju so often used to do.
In a rapid second, she saw Anju sitting in front of her. She was convinced that her daughter had miraculously emerged from wherever she had vanished years ago and was now urging her to recount the story behind the blue castle that was auctioned at a record breaking price the previous week.
“I didn’t draw it. I built it for you,’ she said, slowly. The cameras that were focussed on her must have let out a silent gasp. ‘I put window after window in your memory over the years you have been away from me, Anju. Remember that day when you asked me how much I loved you and I said I would one day build a castle for you, that’s how much?
And you said, ‘only princesses can have castles to live in. Not ordinary girls like me. I don’t even have a new dress for my birthday.’
A shadow of dismay crossed your little face then and I was crestfallen.
What you probably meant was it was impossible that your mother who couldn’t buy you a birthday dress could build a castle for you.
I know.
I was single. I had a job that provided for us just enough. You saw through my incapability. It made me feel inadequate and useless as a mother. I felt failed in your eyes. It ripped my heart.
That night as I tucked you in bed, I said, ‘You are my pretty little princess, and I will build a castle for you, no matter what it takes. Don’t you believe your mother?’
You merely nodded. Your smile was unconvincing, yet you held me close as we both dreamed of a castle that night. You in brick and mortar, and I, in pastels.
It was the night before you went missing on your way back from school.’
Jacinta suddenly grabbed the hand of the young interviewer and said, ‘Look, I kept my promise. I made this castle for you, my princess, in your favourite colour. Building window after window, through which I peered every day, hoping to find your trace somewhere within its tall walls.’
The young girl froze. She had heard that Jacinta was a maverick artist who was fast losing her bearings in the recent years, but this was unexpected. She considered wrenching her hands off, but was too intrigued by the narrative to snap it mid-way.
‘When they couldn’t find you for several days after you disappeared,’ Jacinta continued, ‘people said weird things. Kidnapped. Trafficked. Sold. Even dead. But I was steadfast. I knew you had escaped our mundane, unprivileged existence to go and live in the castle that I was building for you on the canvas. It was just that I couldn’t spot you inside it with my inept eyes. So I made new windows through which I could let light fall in the dark corners and searched for you. And I wasn’t wrong. Look, I found you after all.’
The cameras were still rolling, the people behind it too wonderstruck to stop them from capturing the bizarre story. The blue canvas in front of them wasn’t just a random picture; it was a deranged artist’s fractured reality.
Light – Karthika Deepam
…To eyes that are open,
what is there but Light?
Darkness is a fallacy
of the concealed sight.
An eclipsed phase
of shadow over the soul,
It will pass. It must.
Light alone will remain…
Book of Life
(Published in Khaleej Times, Dubai, dated 28th Nov, 2019)
These are exceptionally difficult times for us all. The world isn’t becoming any friendlier nor is life getting any more benevolent than it was yesterday. Yet we are putting up brave fronts, displaying our best attitudes and trying to be chivalrous to beat the instabilities.
What’s notable about these everyday battles is, more often than not, we are waging it all alone. Except for a few who have a safety net of extended families and friends, most of us are ploughing a lonely furrow. We are rooted in the belief that nothing serves us better than our own hands.
‘Help’, which used to be a given and taken generously in the past even without asking, now sounds like a word out of an old wives’ tale. Think about it without being smug and dismissive. How often have you felt distraught at not being able to find a crutch to lean on in times of struggle? More often than we may like to admit.
We are closely guarded in our confessions about our vulnerabilities, admitting less, and owning up little. We reach out short when in need. We are so puffed up with our self-reliant posturing that we believe seeking help is a sign of weakness and helplessness. We delude ourselves by insisting that self-help is what will take us across the Rubicon. Is that why self-help books sell the most these days, I wonder as a joke.
I have often asked myself if our ‘helplessness’ is a choice we make. Can we do with some advice when we have run out of ideas? Can we stop and take directions when we suspect we have lost our way? Can we ask for help when we need it? Of course, we can. What stops us from putting the reluctant hand out and asking for help? Why is seeking help such a big deal?
Now let’s get this straight. No one here is getting through this life drill smoothly. Our deficiencies are endemic to our existence, and therefore, to pretend that we are perfect and beyond the need for reinforcements in life is absurd and self-defeating.
What’s more, we have fears of not just being judged for our inadequacies, but also of being slighted and snubbed outright. I have lost count of the number of times my requests for help have been met with either stony silence or abject alibis. And how many times have people made promises that are made to sound like gospels, but fade out like a dream! These instances are common, and one must leave wide margins of errors for them.
Moreover, I have realised this: Seeking help and support doesn’t expose our powerlessness. On the contrary, it reveals our confidence in finding ways to beat adversities. Problems often don’t go away on their own. They persist until they are booted out. Solutions don’t emerge if you fight the problems secretly. They surface in different ways when you are ready to shed your pride and request for help.
So ask when in need. Unabashedly. Regardless of whether people understand or not, whether they are willing or not, whether the answer is in the affirmative or not. Help might be closer than you think.
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The Story Behind the Stories in After The Rain – 1 (The Disguise)
More than 15 years ago –
it was in Tirupati, a renowned temple town in South India that I found Ramayya, the protagonist in my story, The Disguise, in the book ‘After The Rain’.
I have very distinct memories of that day.
Summers in Tirupati are harsh and unforgiving. When you are out there exposed, it’s like getting barbequed. The skin gets singed baking the flesh beneath, the throat swallows the fire emptily and the pupils in your eyes melt into gels. It’s slow attrition of the human body and spirit, in other words.
I saw this man on the first day from a distance, and it took a while for me to realize that what initially seemed to be a statue of the Mahatma was actually a man of flesh and blood. Amazed at first, and then a trifle distressed at how life was steamrolling him, I saw him again the next day. As I stood looking at him from several meters away, I felt a new form of respect rising in my heart for the man who had chosen to make a living by becoming an odd amusement to the pilgrims who came visiting.
People stood in front of him for a few moments and some threw coins into the soliciting cardboard box that was placed in front of him, while some walked away unmoved. Perhaps, they were too vexed by their own woes to care. Every time someone tossed a coin, the statue would bow and change its stance. I must have added something to that meagre collection too. I don’t remember.
The image of this man stayed in my memory and I felt compelled to immortalize him. To a myopic eye, his passive act might seem like unjustified idleness. A ploy to earn a quick buck without toil. I wanted to say it wasn’t true. That this man wasn’t a beggar. He was earning a living. I thought it was important to see the difference.
I gave him a name. I wove a story around it. I titled it ‘The Disguise’.
We have been to Tirupathi a few times after that. But the man who inspired me to write the story was never seen again.
What must have happened to him in the interim?
Despite compelling thoughts of foreboding, I concluded, to appease my angst, that life at some point must have given him good reasons for not being there anymore. He must have found a job. He must have won a lottery. He must be happy in some sheltered part of the world.
And his blisters would have healed.
Good writers will always find readers
(Opinion page column in Khaleej Times, dated Nov 14, 2019)
What sobers me the most when I spend time browsing in a large book store is the sheer number of authors that this world has produced and the amount of words and thought they have proffered to mankind through their works. It was the same humbling thought that came to me at the recently concluded Sharjah International Book Fair too.
Rows and rows of story-tellers from across the globe gawked from their book covers at browsers and buyers. Many of them popular authors backed by major publishing houses. And some, like me, self-published and less known.
Yes, I write.
I have a novel, a book of poems and a collection of stories to my name and I was an Opinion page columnist for many years. However, none of these credentials put me in the same segment as established authors because I am ‘self-published’. I used to cringe at that term for several years, secretly deriding me for not making the cut at the publisher’s table. For not being able to match their market-driven literary expectations. For not being sale-worthy in their estimation.
But now, I have broken free from that hopelessness. Not because I have received a signing amount from a publisher, but because I have realised that to be an author all one needs is high-quality writing and discerning readers who appreciate it. All the fancy trappings of the publishing world are irrelevant. It is as if a dandelion seed has burst and the pappus have begun to fly in my head.
It is this positive mental stride I took after several failed attempts that gave me my breakthrough as an author. The learning didn’t come easily, though. I took some hard knocks, wasted loads of money on vanity publishers and spent years writing persistently to get here – an independent author whose prospects do not rest on an editor’s power to accept or reject her manuscript, nor on hired promotional campaigns, but one whose success hinges on her unflinching faith in her work and perseverance.
What makes the tag of ‘independent author’ gratifying now is the fact that I have learned to get past even the vanity publishers. The ego boost that came with publishing a book that way wasn’t worth the money or the post-partum depression it induced. The day I decided I will not pay any money to get a book published was when I truly came of age.
It is not to say that the problems and pitfalls are over for me. Far from it. But with every hurdle on the way, with every stumbling block, I have learned lessons that will make me only better at my future endeavours.
Writers will know that ‘there is no greater agony than that of carrying an untold story’. The stories that we have inside us need to be released and for this we don’t need huge wherewithal. We don’t need to modulate our writing voice to suit the mass market or wait for acceptance letters to arrive.
What I have discovered is this. If, as an author, you can offer impeccable reading stuff, if you can invest every cell in your body into it, your book will be lapped up by readers aligned to your genre. It’s time for unrecognised writers of quality to step out of the shadows and make themselves count with their contribution to the literary world.
There is hope, if we look past the fences around us. And there is scope if we are prepared to go it alone, when no one else is willing to walk along.
I am reminded of Tagore’s song, Ekla Chalo Re. If there is no one responding to your call – then go on all alone.
Asha Iyer Kumar is an author and creative writing coach based in Dubai. Her collection of short stories, ‘After The Rain – Stories that bind us’ is out now
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