Showing posts with label 202210E. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 202210E. Show all posts
Fiction: Red-Purple Boots at Work
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| Anurag Sharma |
- Anurag Sharma
The announcement was loud and clear. Everyone heard his name unequivocally. The crowd applauded as they welcomed him. He was greeted by the company's chairperson, who said, "Here comes the employee of the year."
He had a long road to travel in order to go from "Mr. Nobody" to "The Employee of the Year," He never imagined it would ever happen.
Just a few months back he was invisible. Almost non-existent. Regardless of the issues he resolved, the amount of money the business saved as a result, or the size of the sale that resulted from his efforts.
He received no acknowledgement.
Everyone else around him got appreciation letters, rewards, gifts, bouquets, smiles, pay raises, promotions, handshakes, and embraces... and he? He never got nothing. No appreciation, not even criticism. As if he was invisible. He didn't exist. Nobody ever saw him. He felt like a transparent sheet of glass. People could see through him without ever seeing him,
Day by day, he sat alone on his desk and went out alone for lunch and coffee.
But then, something strange happened...
It was December. The day before Christmas. It started snowing. Hungry, and sad, he was in a hurry to go grab something to eat.
He was contemplating his life and feeling depressed about how useless he was. This is when the teenager came over to him.
"Need to buy food, five bucks, please, I am hungry..., can you get me something?"
"As a matter of principal, I buy only vegetarian food," he said with an intention to get rid of the pest.
"I love salad. Not a coincidence that we are in front of a salad bar."
"OK," he said reluctantly.
They had good lunch. While they were waiting for the bill, he went to the restroom. When he came back, he found a shoebox on the table. The boy was gone. The waiter told him that the boy had paid the bill and left the shoebox for him.
He was shocked when he opened the box and discovered a pair of red-purple boots inside.
He wanted a pair of red-purple boots when he was in fourth grade. At the time, boys didn't often wear purple, and his parents didn't have the money to get him a new pair of shoes. He therefore missed out on those at the crucial time. Slowly, the desire subsided. Up until this point, he had entirely forgotten about it.
He searched the restaurant for the boy, perplexed. He ran out of the restaurant carrying the box with him to find the boy who wasn't there anywhere.
He didn't go back to work that day. Instead, he brought the shoebox home and tried on the perfectly fitting shoes.
Next day at work, he was a little anxious that people might notice his red-purple boots. And indeed, that's exactly what happened. Ann noticed him first. She praised the shoes. When other coworkers overheard Ann speaking, they crowded around them and began to converse.
He wore his new red-purple boots to work the following day as well. This time, more people took note of him. He attained celebrity status in a matter of days. All of them desired to be his friends.
He never looked back since. He won employee of the month award twice this year, and now he is the employee of the year.
On Non-violence, Peace and Working-Class Writings
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| Sunil Sharma |
This month’s focus is on three things: Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy; contemporary British working-class writers and translations of some seminal texts into English.
Mahatma Gandhi---the Father of Nation---not only continues to inspire a grateful country but also a world going through war and climate crisis, apart from the ongoing pandemic that refuses to go, although tamed.
Gandhiji, the Apostle of Peace, continues to speak to those seeking Ahimsa and peace among the comity of nations and communities. Hatred never pays! That is the message of Bapu to the world.
Setu pays homage to the saint on his birthday that falls on October 2nd.
His legacy of truth, love and non-violence is relevant and will always be the inspiring heritage of humankind.
The mantra according to the man who led a slave India to freedom from the oppressive British Raj says specifically:
“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.”
And this one:
“Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
Three invited authors discuss their individual responses to the great soul and his universal teachings about love, ethical living and moral courage!
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The Special Section guest-edited by the well-known poet Paul Brookes is pure literary dynamite!
It is looking back in anger for the spiritual offspring of John Osborne.
The bare-knuckled writing that is angry, raw and on the edge; a bitter expose of the fault-lines of the repressive social system...and powerfully challenge the status-quo through searing words, your angry art.
Authentic!
Registering pain and anguish and rage for an unjust system that divides and exploits people.
This selection is powerful and clearly demonstrates how serious writing always functions worldwide---as a kind of subversion.
Of challenging the official narratives of power and control.
Textures and tones of these texts are at variance with the formalist and self-reflexive writings of these days.
Not abstract or wordy.
Rooted in immediacy of lived-in experience; full of moving imagery and an idiom springing straight from the protesting heart and mind of a working-class writer, painfully aware and self-aware of the inequities of advanced democracies.
Talking of his experience, Paul, himself a proud working-class author, says: "This project has made me research areas and poets I was unaware of. It has been revelatory."
For us also, Paul.
About the other side of living in unequal cultures!
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Translation as a section continues to be rich and fertile: Eminent poet Jerome Berglund translates another batch of Swedish poetry of Gunnar Wennerberg into English.
Senior poet and editor Atreya Sarma Uppaluri presents a careful selection of the important Telugu voices for our readers in his impeccable style and prose.
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October brought Diwali a bit early for the Indians and the huge diaspora.
Let Light prevail over Darkness!
Good over Evil!
That message of millennia still resonates.
With the hint of winter, Canada undergoes the seasonal change, confirming the cyclical wisdom: Nothing is permanent!
Please, enjoy!
With thanks to all the contributors and you!
Take care!
Guest Editorial: British Working Class Writers (Paul Brookes)
My choice is uneven. There are more men
than women. More Northern, than Southern. More able than differently abled.
More White than other colours.
When I feature writers I do not include
photos of them because I would rather their work speak for itself.
As the clich├й of a lower middle class author promoting working class writers I have asked another permission to use her incisive words on working class writers. Her name is Fran Lock. What follows are her words:
"A
post-war northern male version of working-classness is one of the few
acceptable faces of working-class identity permitted to proliferate across
mainstream media platforms. This is deliberate: the poetry's distance from the
material realities it describes presupposes and encodes a nostalgia, a looking
back that defuses potential threat (social or poetic), softens the language of
experience, and makes safe what might otherwise be challenging to the cultural status-quo…”
“Working-class
experience is, rather, characterised by its hybridity, its intersectionality.
It is a melting and merging of cultures and customs under the impetus. of
overwhelming economic and social pressure. It's what drives our creativity and
resilience, our flair, our beautiful shoe-string inventiveness with language,
with fashion, with music, with food. And it's this that's under threat; our
image of ourselves as capable of embodying all of these things, and our right
to know them and claim them as ours...”
“I will keep
going, because working-class people are waking up to the urgency of this
situation, because for the first time in a long time it feels as if we are
galvanised and primed to become the authors and the archivists of our own
experiences and stories. I am excited to be a part of this. I am excited to
show people the sheer breadth and depth of what we can do. I'm excited that
this could mark a genuinely significant turning point: no longer obsessed with
defining or defending some invented and illusory idea of "the culture",
singular, we're expanding, extending, exposing and evolving the notion of what
that might be. A gorgeous, shameless, hybrid beast...”
All quotes from
(from “Don't mention the word class!
The theft of working-class culture” Culture Matters, https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/2901-don-t-mention-the-word-class-the-theft-of-working-class-culture )
Another important site is Peter Raynard’s https://proletarianpoetry.com/,
Both poets have work included here. I will let their work speak for
itself.
Paul Brookes
Guest Editor, SETU, October 2022, Special Edition on British Working Class Poets
Paul Brookes is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). He is Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews, book reviews and challenges. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and, videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions. Most recent is a poetry collaboration with artworker Jane Cornwell: "Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing", (JCStudio Press, 2021) , sonnet collections: "As Folktaleteller" (ImpSpired, 2022), forthcoming "These Random Acts of Wildness, (Glass Head Press, 2022)
Special Edition: British Working Class Poets
Featured Authors
Poetry: Brindha Vinodh
Parallel
connections and positivity
Brindha Vinodh
It is Autumn.
One by one, the leaves
f
a
l
l
of different
hues,
beetroot purple, olive green, mango yellow and pumpkin
orange,
yet the trees stand firmly rooted,
withstand the
changing weather, the cold wind,
with barren bodies,
let Winter slowly crawl into their arms
and allow snow to shimmer,
the same way poets disguise clotted blood as red
roses,
till all the snow begin to melt in the embroidered
warmth of the sun-
life is no
less dissimilar,
put to test
several times,
we emerge
again after inflictions
and wounds, we are warriors, we are survivors,
hope is the root
that keeps us alive.
***
Body, shape and meanings
My body is currently out of shape
and I wish I could contort
and twist and make it elastic,
like a rubber band.
But then my daughter suddenly
wants to draw, her brush beginning
to stroke gently the steering boat that
is my lower lip, commencing from
where the cascading teeth stop to flow,
downstream, flowing smoothly
through the waddling waves of my waist’s
stretch marks when suddenly
a reddish-orange sun
promisingly peeps in an East-West direction
through freshly fragrant
marudhani/ henna
leaves
of my palm and fingers.
Nearing the coast, there are black pebbles
of moles and blue birds perch
in assembled veins across
brown branches from outstretched arms.
It completes the picture.
All notions of shape and size disappear
into vacuum when I am the universe
to her.
***
The
stories of our lives
Every morning unfurls with the
mango-yellow
hue of a smooth sunrise,
tints of yogurt white good morning greetings
from
unbrushed teeth and half-sleepy eyes
unfurl eyelids, like petals of flowers,
pink-sugar crescent moons pasted on
cheeks from loved ones’s lips
add value to the day’s beginning,
polychromatic shades of blue
merge with the mundane routine,
an aromatic rice blended with
tinges of diced orange carrots, brown
potatoes, green peas and purple onions
saturate the starving stomach,
an apricot-orange sunset
tags an awaiting twilight,
on the way, someone in tattered clothes
crosses the road at signal, the tone of
dried-red cranberry his parched stomach
from the aching heat of hunger,
she gives the poor man a few currency notes,
that somewhat satisfies her bleeding
pomegranate-red heart,
two tiny girls, draped in old skirts and
blouses,
without slippers on legs, sell story books
at the crossroads, she buys them,
not just for bed-time stories for her
children,
but to add some colors to their lives,
every ten books sold could fetch them
money to cook a day’s meal, their
childhood dreams a black sky of moonless
night,
she returns home, cooks a simple meal,
spiced up green chilies, a bit of salt,
the white-sugar sweetness of her love, all
mixed up, the moods and emotions of the day,
some one else in the family has had
a bad day, an unpleasant auburn-brown
of a dried, crushed Autumn leaf,
with tinges of dull-gray grief,
she gets into an argument on
a moderate tint of bluish-magenta
translucent dawn,
then sorts it out before going to bed,
nightmares sometimes come in tones of
black, sometimes white dreams soft
as peaceful prayers-
this is the story of her,
she is me, she is you, she is anyone
you can relate to,
the stories of our lives,
and each day, different tones, tints, shades
get added, to saturate the day.
***
Bio: Brindha Vinodh is a poet, writer, blogger and a former copyeditor. She has contributed to several anthologies and been published on several international magazines, e-zines and journals. She has recently released her debut poetry book titled “Autumn in America & other poems” through Setu publications, Pittsburgh, Usa. Her recent achievements include commendable mentions in two categories, “Poet of the year” and “critic of the year” for 2021 in Destiny Poets’ International community of Poets (ICOP) Wakefield, UK. Born and brought up in Chennai, India, she currently resides in the United States of America with her husband and two daughters. Incidentally, she also holds a masters’ degree in Econometrics from the University of Madras.
Stonehenge Poems by Mitali Chakravarty
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| Mitali Chakravarty |
Wishful…
I will dance with the druids
at Stonehenge, walk with
ghosts of the past
from British Raj in the
cemetery at Park Street.
I will talk to the wind
on Himalayan peaks,
rustle with pines and
deodars, rush with
tumultuous waves
on Ganga’s banks,
swish across the Cape,
where Vasco and Dias
measured their steps.
Each land has lived a
different story, tied by
words that Lucy’s progeny
mouthed into languages.
Chameleon-like, her lineage
blended into hues of their
new homes. Then grew walls,
walls that splice life, living.
Is that why missiles fly,
despite a connecting sky?
Is that why incarnadined
rocks weep dead feathers?
Did the druids know? Could
they foretell? Will the stones
answer my soul as mesmerised
by strange murmurs, I wait…
***
Whispers at Stonehenge
Monoliths that stand tall
amidst the green, stretch
to the skies invoking a past
when tides of time had not
sealed borders; when threat
of arms did not bleed
mushrooms clouds.
They weathered the wind,
the rain, the storms —
but never bombs.
Did druids then dance in the
wilderness that still flows
unbidden in the long grass,
waving to tourists with
ocean-like undulations? Now
visitors sprout among ravens
and sheep dotting the green.
The ravens fly connecting the
the Earth to the sky, calling out
to the spirits of yore that
rise on solstice with camper
crowds. Do they all harmonise
at sunrise with ancient souls
to find distant peace?
Or are these just graves, as
the learned say, eons old?
Was history as bloody then,
before acid fields or purple-gold
skies rained destruction?
How are we to know — except
from the voices of these stones?
A draft whispers…
“What is the power of a few facts
to the magic that wafts from
these stones? The magic that
seals, heals all humanity…”
The monoliths were, are,
will be. Life ebbs and flows.
The rocks remain, a witness
of all times and tides.
Eons later, will they still remain
to recount more tales, adding
wars, weapons and then,
perhaps, an evolved, peaceful race?
My Experiments with the Youth and Bapu: Santosh Bakaya
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| Santosh Bakaya |
My MPhil
class was in full swing. I was going full throttle talking about Gandhi, Satyagraha, civil disobedience and non-
violence.
“We don’t need Gandhi. Gandhi has lost his relevance. Hitler is the need of the
hour. Madam, don’t keep harping on Gandhi. He was responsible for the partition
of the country. He was partial towards the Muslims, he was a casteist …”
Before the vain student, sheathed in an aura of unshakeable arrogance, could hurl more he was-es at me and use more derogatory words, I asked him:
“Have you read My Experiments with
Truth?”
“No.” A vigorous shaking of head.
“Have you read Hind Swaraj?”
“No.” More vigorous shaking of head.
“Have you read Mein Kamph?”
“Mein Kamph, what, madam?”
“What do you know about Hitler?”
“He was great.” A glow on the young
face.
“Really? Any great deeds you know of?”
“Well, he was brave.” The face sparkled.
“Brave! Was he?”
A vehement nodding of the head.
“You patronize the WhatsApp University, cannot differentiate between fake news
and the truth, go hoarse in the throats discussing photo-shopped pictures of
Gandhi, I am not sitting here listening to your vile words. If you have to
criticize someone, first read about them and then criticize. ” Saying this, I
left the class, fuming in rage.
If I had eyes behind my back, I would
have noticed twenty young faces running the whole gamut of emotions-
bewilderment, confusion, anger and indignation.
As I raced out of the classroom, I could also hear a babel of voices behind me.
Strident. Shrill. Satirical. Squeaky. An
admixture of good and bad.
“How can Gandhi be relevant in this new
age of computers, mobiles, and social media?”
How could his charkha spinning solve our problems ?”
“How would he have dealt with all this violence all around us?”
“He was idiosyncratic.”
“Do you even know the spelling of this
word? Had he been around, he wouldn’t have allowed us to mutate into robots.”
This was the voice of a girl who was holding her own against the nineteen
other naysaying students.
I was in no mood to give my rejoinders to them, so I did the next best thing –
kept silent- with the intention of coming back later with my robust counter-
arguments.
Deep in my heart I felt, it was my
responsibility as a teacher to make Gandhi and his simple philosophy simpler to
the confused students, who were inadvertently reading complexities in his
simplicities.
On my way back to the staff room, there was a churning in my head. There is a
plethora of Gandhian Studies Centers, where, Gandhian scholars are invited to
deliver lectures on different aspects of Gandhism, where I have seen the
audience, not just students, but also teachers, waiting desperately for the tea
break. It is indeed a paradox that the
more books are written on the moral icon, more and more cynics and naysayers
are born.
“Gandhi is dead, why revive him?” Boom
the detractors.
In thoroughly researched papers, in international and national conferences on
Gandhi, highly erudite scholars reiterate the relevance of Gandhi, frothing at
the mouth, using complicated and convoluted vocabulary for the ideology of a
simple man, who listened to his inner voice, was perennially experimenting,
candidly confessing his mistakes, and evolving every day.
“ When Martin Luther King Jr, American Civil rights leader visited India [10
February – 10 March 1959] after the enormous success of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, which had been inspired by Gandhi, he famously said, ‘to other countries I may go as a
tourist, but to India I come as a
pilgrim’.
“Really, madam?” One of the
students asked me when I said this in another of my talks.
“Can you tell us something about The Montgomery Bus Boycott and his India
Visit?”
“If I tell you everything, what will YOU tell me? I am also a student, on a
perennial quest.” The student looked askance at me for some time, and then
smiled.
When he met me again after some days, I
was pleasantly surprised that he had not only read everything about the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, but could also draw similarities between the Dandi March
and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
“The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the first large scale demonstration against
racial segregation in the USA; it started the Civil Rights Movement in the
United States. They said that the great man, Gandhi had inspired them.” He
talked on and on, his eyes beaming.
Agreed, Gandhi had some quirks, he could be idiosyncratic, fastidious, and obstinate
– but we shouldn’t forget that he was an ordinary man who rose above the ordinary,
through his moral gumption.
I remember telling one of my students, not very long back:
“You are obsessed with the latest brands, try becoming obsessed with the Gandhi
brand- the brand of truth and nonviolence.”
He looked at me as though I had gone insane. It is not easy for a student of
the present capitalistic, brand -conscious society to find some commonalities
with Brand Gandhi. How to identify with the
soul- force that he so soulfully talked of?
Gandhi walked the talk. But, we, teachers just talk. And talk.
All of us know that he was a great walker and even laughed at the youngsters
who felt exhausted after walking a little. But he was always trying to learn
from his mistakes, trying to become a better version of himself by walking the
talk.
“You know the Salt march appealed to everyone. During the march, many had
blistered feet, many became tired, but not the sixty one year old Gandhi who,
considered walking twelve kilometers child’s
play.
I told some school students in a talk on Gandhi one day.
“Did this really happen?”
“Leaning on a lacquered bamboo staff, he and his seventy -eight followers
walked two hundred miles in twenty four days, treading on winding dirt roads,
uneven terrain, peasants kneeled by the roadside as the pilgrims passed, during
the Dandi March.”
“ Is this true or just heresy?”
“Why did he choose salt as a mode of protest? Salt is such a small thing. ” One
youngster wanted to know, his curiosity triggered.
“You know, Subhash Chandra Bose compared
the Dandi March to Napoleon’s March to
Paris on his return from Elba.”
“But wasn’t he Gandhi’s staunch critic?”
“Read for yourself and find out. You need to know things on your own, so Read a
lot. If you read you will come to know
many things.” Things grew curiouser and curiuoser for them.
Then they tried to satisfy their curiosity- by reading and reading.
What the students are in dire need of,
is not scholarly essays, but random incidents from his life narrated to them with
a raconteur’s delight, in a way which makes them yearn to know more. In many
workshops in schools and colleges, I have related incidents from his life, and
made the students perform skits based on those incidents. They later told me that they would never
forget those incidents, because by enacting them, they had become a part of
them. Some youngsters even called me later to inform me that they were reading
more and more books on Gandhi, and many cobwebs had been removed from their
minds.
I believe that we, the teachers need not have stiff upper lips while discussing Gandhi with students. Getting our papers published in reputed UGC approved journals is only going to add to our academic achievements; the students will not even read them, unless they are in their syllabus. I am speaking from experience.
Believe me, I have seen students arguing against the idiosyncratic man, and
then the same students arguing in favour of the magician in loincloth. I always tell my students that we should not
put him on a pedestal, because like all of us, he was not without his fads and
foibles. Many were the times that his best friends bantered with him regarding
his points of view which they found na├пve and impractical.
It was Gurudeb Tagore, who conferred the title of the Mahatma on him. Both respected each other tremendously, but also
differed on many ideological issues. Tagore penned the essay The Cult of the Charkha, [an essay by
Tagore, September 1925, Modern Review]
critiquing the importance of the charkha,
but nonetheless was firmly convinced of the authority of the moral colossus,
considering him the very embodiment of Shakti.
Sarojini Naidu once quipped, “Do you know
how much it costs every day to keep you in poverty?” Undoubtedly, a tongue- in- cheek remark by his feisty,
frank friend, which was taken seriously by his detractors. It was this spunky friend
who remarked ‘Hail Deliverer’, when
on 6 April, 1930, at 8. 30 AM, Gandhi picked up a piece of salt in the coastal
town of Dandi left by the waves of the Arabian Sea, breaking the British law which made the
possession of salt, not made by the British, a punishable crime. It marked the
beginning of the civil disobedience Movement, dealing a blow to the ‘nefarious
monopoly’ of the British to make salt.
No amount of Gandhi- bashing, effigy-
burning, mud- slinging, idol desecrating, assassin- glorifying, murder-
glorification, can bash or burn or desecrate the values which Bapu stood for.
It is time to remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Over the bleached bones and jumbled remains of numerous civilizations
are written the pathetic words ‘too late’. We still have a choice today, nonviolent co- existence or violent co- annihilation.”
If we do not uphold the principles of truth and nonviolence, the day is not far
when humanity will find itself hurtling down an abyss, and it will be too late
then.
Why should we wait for it to be so late, when hatred, bigotry and intolerance
sharpen their claws to attack the vestiges of humanism and love is gobbled up by
the capacious mouth of hate? Reminds me of what a thirteen year old, his face
wreathed in utter perplexity, asked me in a workshop on Gandhi,
“Madam, itni saari nafrat aati kahaan sey
hai? [What is the root of all this hatred?]
Yes, exactly - From where? And why?
On King’s death, The New York Times said, “A man of peace, he died violently. A man
of love, he died hated by many.” The
same can be said about our Bapu.
Peeping from the sepia- tinted pages of history, we can still see images of the
Dandi Marchers, led by a frail figure, leaning on a staff, walking briskly,
giving the youngsters a complex, rousing
a comatose nation out of its centennial stupor, casting his hypnotic spell on his
awestruck disciples, the champion spinner, spinning and smiling toothlessly, people
running pell- mell to catch a glimpse of this extraordinary man, the half- naked fakir of Churchill, lying on
the funeral pyre fully clothed in the garment of love, compassion and non-
violence, while devastated people hung from precariously creaking branches to
catch the final glimpse of a man, the likes of which visit the earth just once.
Matagarup Bridge: Shernaz Wadia
A ‘coming together of diverse cultures
My
first visit on this current trip to Perth was to the bridge that brings
together ‘diverse cultures’ – the bridge of goodwill and inclusivity. We reached it after walking from Queen’s
Garden, down Nelson Crescent toward Nelson Avenue, passing the iconic WACA
Stadium. We could have taken the Redcat bus but we preferred to walk though it
was a chilly, windy day with the sun playing hide and seek.
The
sight was stunning! With its eye-catching architecture and towering height, the
Matagarup suspension bridge spans the Swan River in Perth, WA. "Matagarup"
is the Nyungar name for the whole area – waters included –
around Heirisson Island;
it means ‘place where the river is only knee
deep, allowing it to be crossed’. It recognises the cultural significance
of the immediate Swan River area to the local Whadjuk Nyungar community.
The
Nyungar or the Noongar is the name for the
'original inhabitants of the
south-west of Western Australia'. They are one of the largest Aboriginal cultural blocks in Australia. Traditionally, the Noongar culture governs the use of fire, hunting and gathering, and behaviour regarding family and community. Noongar lore works with nature to protect animals and our environment. Noongar people abstain from eating animals that have totemic significance with their names. The terms ‘lore’ and ‘law’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but ‘law’ refers to written European law. Lore for Noongar people is unwritten and refers to kaartdijin (knowledge), beliefs, rules or customs. Their lore and customs relate to marriage and trade, access, usage and custodianship of land. Noongar lore is linked to kinship and mutual obligation, sharing and reciprocity. And so the symbolic bridge that signifies ‘coming together of diverse cultures’.
With its Whadjuk (Noongar) association and audio art installation sharing cultural stories, the Matagarup Bridge is already much more than a walkway; a lot more than just a pedestrian bridge it is a brilliant access statement providing a direct pedestrian link between the city centre of Perth and the new multipurpose 60,000 seat Optus Stadium, Burswood and the public parks around it.
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| Optus Stadium |
Parry and Rosenthal Architects assisted Melbourne architect firm, Denton Corker Marshall to design this bridge. The construction work was started in November 2015 and readied at a cost of $91.5 million it was opened to the public in July 2018; but prior to that, Premier Mark McGowan, Transport Minister Rita Saffioti and other officials, as well as bridge workers, walked across the bridge on 4 July and from 7th to 9th July, hundreds of volunteers walked across it to help engineers gauge the movement of the structure and tune the bridge's mass damper (also known as seismic damper) to reduce vibrations. The total length of the pedestrian crossing is 560 metres (1,840 ft), inclusive of a 100-metre (330 ft) ramp at the East Perth end. It has a 3-span steel cable-stayed bridge, with two piers in the river bed. The central bridge arch is made from two 'wishbone' structures, rising approximately 72 metres above the water at its highest point; the steel and concrete deck stretches 370 metres from bank-to-bank with a steel cable-stay span of 160 metres at its centre. Having become an icon of Perth it appears nightly behind newsreaders on the ABC’s 7p.m. bulletin.
Apart from its central arch, flowing gracefully are black and white arches that resemble a pair of flying black and white swans native to the river. Alternately the arches can also represent the Wagyl, a water-serpent that is of immense importance to local Nyungar culture. The Wagyl (also spelt Waugal and Waagal) is the Noongar manifestation of the Rainbow Serpent in Australian Aboriginal mythology.” When the Waugyl tunnelled west towards the ocean, creating the bilya (Swan River), he became stuck in the mud flats and had to shake his scales off in the mud to get through to Buneenboro (Perth Water)
900 metres (3,000 ft) of multicolour LED lighting cover the bridge, illuminating it every night round the year. It is lit up according to an ever-changing yearly calendar to accommodate community event days, colours and interactive animations ensuring that the visual range is always different and refreshing. For instance from 19 - 25 September 2022, different colour lights were scheduled for different days. It was magenta on Monday 19, as a tribute for the Queen; Red on Tuesday 20, for HIV/AIDS awareness; Pink/Teal for breast cancer care on Wednesday; magenta once again on Thursday for the Queen; on Friday it dazzled purple for purple bra day and on Saturday it twinkled green for mitochondrial awareness.
And
it is not a bridge for walking alone. If you are bursting with the spirit of
adventure and are an adrenalin junkie you can experience
the thrill of soaring through the sky riding the 400m zipline back down at up
to 75km/hr. First, one has to descend the bridge on the city side of the main
arch. On a 35m high launch platform a guide will safely prepare you for launch,
before you take off and are brought in for a safe landing on the eastern
banks.
 |
| Shernaz Wadia |
With the average gradient of the climb at 45 degrees this is
not for faint-hearted people like me!!
It is a tough climb in which you don’t simply climb; you have to shimmy,
slide and squeeze through tight spaces to reach the SkyView. Once up though one
is rewarded with a fascinating 360 degrees panoramic view of Perth City!
Starting from AU $169 one can even combine the Climb and Zip tours under the beauty of a Perth night sky, and be regaled with Perth’s history past and present, plus all sorts of fine points surrounding the bridge and the land it has been built on, by the amazing, knowledgeable tour guides.
***
Bio: To Shernaz Wadia, reading and writing, means an inward journey. Her work has been published in various anthologies and e-journals. She sometimes dabbles in short Japanese forms of poetry too.
Being God’s Wife: Nandini Sahu
 |
| Nandini Sahu |
and try to feel the
warmth
of my father’s eye.
His grave exists
nowhere
but in me
and
I am his epitaph”
Baba. Father. My Gandhian father, who incarnated truth. Such a calming, heartwarming, touching, euphonic word.
Sometimes, nay, most
of the times, I address my son as ‘Sonu-baba’. Baba lives in my blood’s
flow. Baba lives all over my home, he follows me everywhere—to the university,
to the libraries, to my lecture halls, to my TV sessions, to the interviews, to
my book launches. And even to the kitchen, when Sonu, my son, looks and talks
like him while eating. In my basic habit of keeping things spic and span, Baba echoes,
replicates. So does he, in my edginess, ambition, motivation, sentimentality
and optimism.
There have always been speculations vis-├а-vis a likely historical assembly between present day genetic findings and classic mythological characters, who are Demigods. Its main attention could lie in tell-tales by exploitation of myths to analyse any such unique character around us. To understand my father, I read, re-read last five years many ancient texts, under a new light, trying to find new directions for explorations of his character. Objectively thinking about him, not as Nandini, but as a devotee of the Deity, or as a seeker, I can draw a hypothesis that Demigods actually do exist and I can prove that. The upshot of hybridization between Baba’s ancestors and progeny, of modern girls like us and imaginary people of the past who could have been Demigods like Baba is a curious concern for me now. The hypotheses talk of beings of mixed human and divine origin, often in the milieu of an ordinary family like ours. Telluric hybridizing between my Baba as an ancestor of us modern humans and the daemons that supposedly existed somewhere, in some far-off land, would appear to be an elucidation of this story. I would rather talk in harmony with my present state of knowledge about a Demigod incarnated as my Baba.
Baba constantly wanted to push the envelope towards progress, as anyone can put it. He stood for women’s empowerment. In a rural household of six daughters, both parents as simple government school teachers, living most of their lifetime in rented houses so that they could educate their daughters, and no luxuries for themselves—who could have thought of this kind of a life except my Baba? Baba had a big heart, he was so popular, virtuous and pious that people called him a ‘Living God’. Baba smiled to such appreciations as he was above human emotions like flattery, jealousy, greed, possessiveness—in fact any such negative emotions. He lived life of a saint, he was innocent like a five years old child even when he was 75. Education and food for all, kindness for everyone—these were the goals of his life. When my parents bought a house towards the fag end of their lives, after we six girls were settled, people named that colony as ‘Krushna Nagar’ in the small town Udayagiri, after my father’s first name.
Baba had a peaceful death at home, on the lap of Maa, the love of his life. He was diabetic, and unfortunately he contaminated psoriasis in a saloon when he was in his early forties. He lived with it lifelong; his blood sugar didn’t allow the wounds to heal. He was very fond of us, his daughters, and he never missed having a son. In a rural Odisha villages, where everyone around was worried about a school teacher having six daughters, and their prospective marriages, Baba was relaxed, because he had six ‘worthy daughters’. He believed in educating his girls, making them independent, self-reliant. We lived in a narrow, train kind of house of five rooms, with relatives always around. When he could afford to buy his own house, we had flown the nest. During the last few years of his life, Baba was left alone as he got his retirement and Maa still had a few years of service. I was teaching in the local college for a few months before I left Udayagiri.
Every morning after Maa left for her school, a petha-walla came discreetly and handed over a few sweet pethas to Baba, which he guiltily consumed, and skipped the hot lunch Maa kept for him in a large lunch box. He wasn’t hungry when Maa wasn’t around. Maa was six years younger than Baba, and those six years of her service period made Baba lonelier than ever. He got high blood sugar and acute psoriasis due to those pethas and unhealthy lifestyle. Soon, he took to the wheel chair. The cruel truth was, all of us had to leave the small town for our careers and marriages. Two sisters left for the U.S. Two of us left for Delhi and Chandigarh; and the two in Odisha got busy with their jobs and children, with less time left for parents. We insisted that our parents should live with us; in fact Baba used to be very happy to live with me in Delhi. But Maa had her job for a few more years, and then she did not want to leave the house she had built for herself and Baba after all those years. It was her dream home, which is understandable.
The worst part about the health care system in India is, we are so conscious about physical health, but no one talks about mental health. Baba started dementia a few years after all of us left Udayagiri. He went back to his early youth with six small girls playing in the other room. He addressed Maa by my youngest sister’s name most of the times and asked her to fetch a glass of water. He spoke to Maa as if she was one of his little girls, and pretended that we were around. Maa and the maids used to smile, thinking Baba was childlike. But I found it alarming. Some treatment was also done for it, but nothing helped. High sugar took over, and he had a brain stroke at 76. He was in the ICU when I met him. I couldn’t control my tears, I couldn’t imagine the tall, fair, handsome , ever-smiling man lying helplessly in the hospital, his mouth wide open, eyes fixed on the ceiling. My heart broke. We stayed in the hospital with him for more than a month, holding his hand, caressing his forehead.Sometimes he tightened his fist, smiled, made weird sounds like a child. Most of the times he held Maa’s hands and Maa talked to him incessantly, as if he was listening. I was heartbroken to see Maa talking to Baba like we talk to normal people. After a few days, he slept peacefully on Maa’s lap and died a silent death.
Memory of the virtue and gullibility of Baba makes me smile. His eccentricities were far from being commonplace. He was rather childlike in his behaviour, but rigid like a mature adult. I am reminded about an incident from 2006, when I came to Delhi as a Professor of English. He was proud of me. I asked him to visit us, and he promptly agreed. I sent him flight tickets, e-tickets. He didn’t consider that as a ticket, and insisted that there should be glossy papered, coloured tickets, like the “real-real tickets”. Everyone told him that he can take printouts of the e-tickets I had sent; but he was unbending. So I went to the Airport Authorities of India office and asked the officer for colourful, glossy-paper tickets, the “real tickets”. He laughed. I too laughed with him. But Baba was happy receiving those by speed post. He showed those tickets to everyone. “See! My daughter has sent air tickets!” And then, in the flight, he created a tough time for the Airhostess. Initially, he asked her to open the windows once the flight took off; they thought he was joking. When he insisted on it, the girls explained that it’s not possible. He was obstinate, as ever, and insisted on getting down midair and taking another flight that would open the windows for him. Poor Maa had a hard time, pacifying Baba and apologizing the crew. Once they reached my home, Maa fought with him. But he was nonchalant, he knew that he was right.
Poor Maa had several
such occasions when he put her in difficult situations. Before the wedding of
my second sister, Maa called the goldsmith home to take orders for the wedding
jewelry. Before the jeweler arrived, Maa gave some instructions to Baba.
“Goldsmiths are clever people. He will ask us to make the entire payment before
he delivers the jewelry, but we will not accept his conditions. He may even
disappear after taking the money. So we’ll pay him only a small advance amount
and pay him the whole amount after he delivers the jewelry. Ok?”
Baba nodded like an
obedient child. Maa was right, the goldsmith requested them endlessly to pay
the whole amount, but Maa said we have to take the amount from the bank which
will take a lot of time. Baba kept quiet. Once Maa went to the kitchen to get some
tea for the goldsmith, the clever man pleaded before Baba for the whole amount.
Baba said, “Beta, we cannot give you so much money because goldsmiths are
clever people, and you may disappear after taking the money.”
“Who said that to you Sir!!”
“My wife.”
“Exactly! I was thinking that. You are such a fine
person, you are pious like Gods, only Madam can think such things about us.”
Maa was standing there by then with a cup of tea. She kept the teacups on the table with a jolt and left the room, banging the door from behind. She had to come to her daughters’ room to cry.
The goldsmith left with only the advance money. But then, Baba had a hard time handling his wife and giving an explanation to his feminist daughters. But at the end of the day, they were always together, my father and mother. If someone asks me the definition of love, I’ll simply take their names. By the way—we used to take their manes jocularly as ‘Meera and Jeera’, though their names are Meera and Krishna. Who says proper names are non-connotative!!
We have never seen
our parents having their food separately. They were always together, except for
the times when they were at their workplaces. Baba would call ‘Meera, Meera’
round the day for every small thing, and we were assured, reassured that life
was good, life was beautiful, watching Meera-Jeera as a team. Not that
they had no differences of opinions—but both of them were ready to reconcile,
resolve, reunite after an argument. Probably they never said ‘I love you’ to
each other, during our childhood, parents never said those things to each other—we
understood that. But ‘love’ defined them, and their love protected us.
Years back, when I was in B.A final year, I asked Baba about being a strict disciplinarian, when it came to studies and cleaning the house. Baba has a ready-made answer. He said, only a disciplined person is successful. He had anecdotes galore and quotes from classics. He said, “God helps those who help themselves”. Our slippers and shoes were kept under the bed by drawing lines with permanent markers for each one of us, with a specific number assigned to each girl. We didn’t dare to put our slippers even an inch beyond the specified block. He put circles and dates on the calendar for every small thing, including a reminder for him to shave his beards or reminders for us to submit assignments. When we wrote letters to our eldest sister living in a hostel in Berhampur, our letters were read aloud, they were a public affair, Baba having a red pen handy to round up, underline wrong spellings, if any. That was the time when I precisely developed a tremendous love for English language. I learnt the art of writing from him, with a clear understanding of “quality, quantity and contents”—as he put it. Once I wrote my sister, “please get a nail-police for me”. Baba laughed and underlined that, and corrected it to ‘nail-polish’. I felt insulted and cried the whole day, my feminine ego was hurt, and I behaved in a way as if my kidney was given away to someone without my permission—today I remember that and laugh. Old habits die hard—today I find myself strictly following the values and the organized way of living—perhaps that is what makes me what I am.
During my childhood, I kind of loathed my name; ‘Nandini’ perfectly rhymed with the word ‘kanduri’, meaning a ‘cry baby’ in Odia. I wanted to change my name to ‘Pallavi’. I beseeched Baba to change my name if he wanted me to stop being a cry baby. Baba took my hand in his hand and told, “Maa, you are born to be Nandini. Sabko aanand dene walli Nandini, you see!” I was convinced. I loved my name, I loved myself, and I took the responsibility given to me by Baba very seriously.
Baba wanted me to be everything that he couldn’t be, due to family responsibilities. He wanted to be a Professor, a writer, but he was trapped into multiple responsibilities. Being the father of six girls (three of his boys died early) was no joke. Still, the center of gravity of our household was love, Baba never regretted having six girl children. He stood for women’s education in rural Odisha, as I already said. He was the harbinger, almost the founder, of the local college at G.Udayagiri—he ran from pillar to post to convince the Collector, and then the Government of Odisha to introduce a college in that sleepy, small town where people had not imagined about women’s education. Even today when the senior teachers of Kalinga Mahavidyalaya meet our mother or anyone of us, they have a word of respect for our Baba.
In a house of six girls, birth of a son was more than any celebration, which Baba accomplished nonchalantly, because he loved all his children equally. When my younger brother was born a couple of years after me, the entire focus of the family shifted to him. I was sent to the school way too early so as not to disturb the boy, and Baba had to get me admitted in class-I by increasing my age by thirteen months as I was not of the eligible age to get admission. Such things happened in villages, no one cared about people’s age, future or career, for that matter. Anyway, my brother passed away at a tender age, even before going to school. Maa was devastated, so was Baba. An old woman, Phulabudhi, who used to get flowers for our daily supply, commented, “Gosh.. any one among the six girls could have died today, why the only son!! This is terrible!” Even on the worst day of sorrow, Baba hated her statement, shouted, drove her away. My sisters vividly remember that morning, and we feel so grateful to be the daughters of such a father who loved and respected us for who we are. But as it was fated, two sets of grandmothers and most other relatives held me, the crying-asthmatic-fretting-fuming-bookish-girl, responsible for the sad, untimely demise of the only son. They commented whenever I coughed or cried or fell sick. I wanted a place to run away, a place to escape, to hide myself. Baba understood. I was hardly eight years old when he offered me his school library, he made it accessible for me, Rest is history. I spent my childhood in Hubback High School library, cataloguing, sorting, arranging books—reading each and every book luxuriously, with a Quixotical interest. My world was flooded with books, more books every single day. Today when I look at my enormous personal library in Delhi, I close my eyes and visualize Baba and me sitting on the floor in his school library, and discussing every book.
Tears roll down.
Baba had a typical sense of humour— but of course he didn’t know about it. There was a Sanskrit teacher in his school, Hubback High School, who used to get drunk every so often, and tried to blabber with people. While everyone avoided him, Baba was compassionate; he even invited him home and counselled him. Once the teacher got drunk and closed his doors, excreted in the middle of his house, put incense sticks on his shit and waited. People knocked his door, but he didn’t pay any heed. Finally he opened the window when Baba called him from outside. Baba was taken aback and asked him what was going on—his answer was, “Sir, I am trying to see what happens when we combine bad and good odors, Sugandh and Durgandh.” Baba managed to open the door, get the house cleaned up and from that day, he took his responsibility. After a few days, to the surprise of all, the Sanskrit teacher became a teetotaler.
I was ‘Daddy’s Girl’;
I was proudly my Baba’s beloved daughter because I was a bookworm, and I spoke in
English with clarity, conviction, and because I stood for justice. I remember
one such queer incident. When I was in Class X, my menstruation started in the
school. I rushed home. In my typical Drama Queen demeanor, I ran to Baba to
show him my frock, shouting, “Baba, Baba, see I have Blood Cancer !!” (unfortunately
there was no awareness, no sex education in villages at that time, and of
course no Internet to keep the girls informed.) We used to watch movies where
characters having Blood Cancer coughed restlessly, spitting blood into a white
handkerchief. I suddenly romanticized my bleeding, though I was in pain. Baba
was at a fix; he asked the domestic help to make me sit patiently till Maa came
back from her school. I was traumatized with all that warm blood between my
thighs, seeing my school uniform blood-soaked. Baba took the Bhagavat Gita,
read out five chapters to me aloud-- on serenity, penitence, dedication, commitment
to duty and detachment to life in an attached way. That kept my mind engaged
till Maa came, though I was sipping warm water and sobbing. Today I realize why
Baba did that, though I wish he had explained a bit about human body,
menstruation as a normal phenomenon for any woman, hygiene and health.
Baba firmly believed in justice and fair play in examinations, in fact in the entire education system. A spoiled brat of a rich businessman, politician in the village requested Baba to allow him malpractice in the examination, but Baba put his foot down. Maa had to bear the consequences of facing a few Memos at her work place. We grew up like this.
After Baba’s retirement, Mr.Ratha, the Head Clerk of his school, expected some bribe to prepare his pension papers, but didn’t say that openly; he came to our place to settle the matter. He said, “Sir, Chai-Paani ke liye kuch chhahiye”, (I need something for my tea etc!). Baba simply requested Maa to make some tea for him! He was annoyed and said, “Don’t pretend. You have to make me happy by giving ten percent of the amount you will get, I’ll make you happy by preparing the papers promptly.” Only then Baba knew that he was asking for bribe. Baba delivered a long lecture to him about ethics, morality, quality of mercy, as expected. But then, Mr.Ratha was incorrigible. He said, “nothing doing. I am leaving”. Baba lost patience, said, “This is my lifetime’s hard-earned money which will be used for the education of my girls, and you are asking me to get into unfair practices? How can I give away that money to you?” Mr.Ratha misbehaved, and said, “Do what you like, you foolish, impractical man”, and he was about to leave. Baba got up from his chair and gave him a tight slap. Coming few days, we saw that Maa had to face the music. She arranged some money and discreetly gave it to Mr.Ratha. Only then the pension papers were cleared. All the while Maa griped, but could do nothing to change Baba, her Demigod.
After a few days, the wedding of three of my sisters was fixed and Baba went to the State Bank of India to withdraw a few lakhs for the ceremony. The Branch Manager neatly packed, handed the money in packets and Baba came home. Maa and Baba sat together on their dining-cum-study-cum-multipurpose table and chairs to count the money. Lo and behold! The Manager had actually handed over a wrong packet to Baba with three lakhs extra. In 1997, three lakh rupees were a lifechanging amount! Baba got up, asked me to accompany him to the Bank immediately when everyone was whispering to each other. When we reached the bank, the Manager was already rushing out of the Bank with two police personnel. Baba returned the amount to him, dispassionately. I practically saw the Manager and a couple of other staffs touching Baba’s feet, sniveling, telling him “You are God incarnate Sir!” My eyes were beaming, teary though, and Baba told me, “Maa, if we take any money from people which is not ours, it’ll ultimately go to the hospital, right?”
“Right.”
Till today my Gandhian father’s invisible eyes follow me, protecting me from any kind of unfair money.
Baba watched films and TV with great interest. He was the most faithful fan of Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Manoj Kumar and Rajesh Khanna. Haathi Mera Saathi was his all time favorite movie. We used to sit cozily in the hall, watch Doordarshan while Baba explained us the programmes, including Krushidarshan. We watched award programmes on New Year nights, when Baba applauded to Dharmendra, Hema Malini receiving awards. Decades later, when Sridevi, Madhiri Dixit, Shahrukh Khan etc received awards on the award functions, Baba protested stridently. He would say, “Meera, see these bokka(foolish)people, they are not giving awards to Dharmendra, Hema Malini!” We tried to explain it to him that with changing times, new actors come up and they too deserve awards. But no! Baba never was convinced.
Dussehras and Diwalis were celebrated with aplomb at home, thanks to Baba. Baba was very cautious that we played a safe Diwali. He had kept six neatly cut bamboo sticks where he fixed the crackers (Phuljhadiyan) in the carefully made cracks and handed over to us, while our neighbours laughed at us. It created a scene—six girls holding the crackers sticked to sticks in a row, while Baba carefully scrutinized and ensured that no one actually touched the Phuljhadiyan. It was so embarrassing for us, but then, there was no other choice for Baba’s girls. Now whenever someone sends a Whatsapp message, ‘Safe Diwali’, on Diwali, I go back to the memory lane of playing a real-safe ‘Safe Diwali’. Dussehras were full of celebration, with Baba reading out the Bratkatha, (the scriptures) while Maa made pithas( rice and flour cakes) in massive amounts day long. We tried to focus there, but our mind wandered to the distant drumbeats of animal sacrifice rituals by some clans, some sects, that created awe and fear. We sneaked to Baba and Maa if it was too much—and they never told us how much was too much.They were always available, never busy when their daughters needed them. In the evening, we dressed up in new dresses to go out with parents, similar pattern frocks with same fabrics for six girls, sometimes even Maa’s blouse was stitched in the same cloth, if there was excess amount of cloth. One month before the celebrations, all of us went to Sahoo Vanijya Pratishthan with Baba to select one whole rim of floral cloths, maybe fifteen or twenty meters, same print same colours, and handover the cloth with measurements to the tailor, in a queue. When we grew up a bit, my third sister protested this and ensured that the patterns and the clothes were different for each one of us—to Baba’s great dissatisfaction.
Baba believed in secularism, to the true sense. Baba and Maa were with me in 2014 to celebrate Diwali in Delhi, in my university campus government quarters. Baba didn’t like to see that Sonu was holding the Phuljhadiyan in his hands, without the help of a stick. I tried to explain it to Sonu, but he couldn’t understand how on earth a Phuljhadi can be fixed to a stick. He dismissed my explanations, laughed at me, and ran away to play with his friends—to Baba’s displeasure again. So I tried to engage Baba elsewhere. I used to invite all my friends home. We cooked a lot of food with the help of female colleagues, friends. Baba was excited to see that my Hindu, Muslim and Christian friends celebrated Diwali with me, cooked in my kitchen. Baba patted my shoulder with appreciation and gave the example of Mrs.Indira Gandhi’s family where there were people from all religions, truly secular. A Muslim colleague’s wife, Mrs.Khan, was frying Puris in my kitchen. Baba asked her to sit beside him for awhile and told, “Beta, see my daughter, she believes in sarva-dharma-samanwaya, she is secular. That is why, even if you are a Muslim, you are cooking in her kitchen”. The lady couldn’t get the essence of his innocent words, felt offended and left. I had to go to her house, leaving the guests, and explain it to her that it was his simplicity to say so, and he was actually appreciating our togetherness. Well, she never understood. In fact, everyone misunderstood his words, misinterpreted his intentions. Late evening when everyone had left, I reprimanded Baba, “Must you, must you, always deliver a long speech on every occasion?” Baba kept quiet. He was absentminded, thinking about solidarity and secularism.
After a few years, after all of us were married and had left the village, Baba became kind of detached from us; his TV serial characters and their issues took over our issues at home. When I was going through domestic violence, miscarriages, both my parents were offhand. ‘He doesn’t romanticize sorrow’ -- Maa put it this way if I was angry with his callousness. Whatever might be the issue, I was broken. I hated Baba for being so apathetic to my pain. That is when one of the books that Baba introduced me in his library, came handy. I felt connected to this poem:
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal…
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.(Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”)
I developed an acute love-hate-relationship with Baba after losing two girl children to marital-rapes, just before their birth. I looked at the fetuses both the times and wanted to hug Baba, cry aloud. But he maintained a stony silence, as if I had merely lost my toys and was crying mulishly. Baba had a weird detachment to my snags. But now I guess I should have understood, during his last few years, he remained nothing but Maa’s husband. He had Dementia, fractional Alzheimer’s. He traveled back and forth to our childhood after his six girls got married and flew the nest. Now I remember how he longed to check our Maths note books, ask us spellings of difficult words like ‘pneumonia’, ‘psychology’(he always said, ‘p’ silent here!). Playing ‘spell-the-word-so-and-so’ was our favorite pastime. Baba longed for those games with me during his Dementia days—I wish, I wish I had given him some more time. I wish I would not have been running the race of life at that time as the single mother of Sonu, searching for a central government job and doing PhD, while struggling to run errands for the two of us with just a Junior Research Fellowship from Santiniketan. I wish I could have told him loud and clear—Baba, I need you now! Save me from drowning into this bottomless pit. Hold my hand. In return, I’ll hold your hand and take you happily to the lanes of childhood through Sonu’s infancy, Sonu’s juvenile joy. But lot of things remained unspoken between me and Baba.
During his last few weeks after a sudden brain hemorrhage, I was with him in Apollo Hospital, Bhubaneswar, where he was in the ICU, his mouth agape, eyes moist, where he was waffling the quotes he had mugged up from the Books of Wisdom. It was therapeutic for me to take care of him there -- I don’t know if he understood that. Even I heard him whisper, “God is in the heaven and all is right with the world.” I wrote a poem for him in the hospital and read it aloud to him, I don’t know if he could hear that.
That Foot
(for my Baba)
That foot that has walked
on thorns
all through the day for you.
That foot which has shown
you foot-steps to follow.
That foot.
That foot behind the orange sun
has walked through arches
bare foot
on fire, on water
near parapets
has cracked doors and windows
for you to enter safe.
That foot.
That foot walked, crossed the
never-ending roads
when you aspired for the colossal.
That foot. Your passport
to utopia, to dream of
new truths, passport to planets uncharted.
That foot, is walking away, weak,
parting with fantasia forever.
Will you join?
‘Poetry as
therapy’, ‘literature as witness’ , ‘art for life’s sake’ are concepts that
Baba had taught me. He was a happy man, with zero understanding of
adulterations and ways of the world. After months in the hospital, the doctors
advised us to take him home. He was sent home in an Ambulance, that was the
last I saw of him, touched his feet.
I was told, the next morning he looked happy, talked to everyone. In fact, he spoke to me and Sonu over phone, asked me to read more, write more, take care of myself and Sonu. By then he had performed all his duties, educated his daughters and married them off, built a big and beautiful house for his dear wife. That morning he had spoken to everyone over phone. So he decided, it was time for him to leave. His duties were over. He knew , he had lived a good life.
I could never gather myself to visit our home at Udayagiri after Baba; I made it a point to meet Maa in Berhampur or Bhubaneswar all these years. Last week, in mid-June 2022, I visited Udayagiri, after five years, and saw Baba’s wall clocks, watches, books, clothes, tables—all in place. Maa hasn’t removed anything (Baba never liked if his stuff were misplaced!). I cried to my heart’s content the whole night, I roamed all over the lonely, eerie house till the wee hours, I tried to talk to Baba. No, I couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere. There was just an uncanny silence and deep, dark, intense pain in the air.
The next morning I had to be normal for Maa’s sake. Poor Maa, she has been learning to live alone, and I felt she is good at it! She is doing well, and I felt proud of her. She finishes her daily dose of missing and crying for her adorable husband in the morning. Then she cooks a healthy meal for herself, takes her vitamins and supplements, wears nice cotton sarees and watches TV serials, calls her daughters regularly, reads Grihashobha and Katha, gossips with her five happily-married daughters about their in-laws and feels contented.
Over breakfast, Maa and me started telling anecdotes about Baba to Sonu. I didn’t allow her to cry, I teased her, tickled her, pinched her and made her laugh over Baba’s innocence, simplicity. We remembered a few incidents related to our domestic helps. Sukamaa was a delectable woman, she took care of us when we were very small. I have written a complete poetry book about her, Sukamaa and Other Poems(2013). After her death, there was Zarina, who stole massively from our house with the help of her brothers; she robbed us of everything precious. Then there was one Pushavati who tried to seduce our handsome, gorgeous Baba (my sisters always say, ‘our Baba looked like Dharmendra and Manoj Kumar, that is how our pedigree is so rich!’) ,and how Maa threw her out. Then came Tintumaa. She was this clever woman who used to take advance money from her salary every month, but never bothered to return the amount. At the end of the month she would plead for her entire salary. Baba wrote the advance amount in a note book, but paid her the entire salary which Maa didn’t approve of. Maa had a point, Tintumaa had been cheating us. After more than thirty months, one fine morning Maa decided to be very strict with Tintumaa and she put her foot down. She asked Baba not to pay her any salary for a couple of months so as to adjust the advance money. Baba was too kind-hearted to deduct the domestic help’s salary. At that time Tintumaa was crying foul in the veranda. Maa picked the note book and showed Baba angrily, “See! See, how much money she already has minted from us. We have our limitations, how much more can we pay her!! After all we have six daughters to feed and then marry them off.”
Baba found a way out. Yes, Tintumaa was too much. Enough was enough. She was too much of a disturbance at home. Something must be done about her! So he simply took the notebook from Maa, tore it to pieces, and said, “Naa rahega baansh, naa bazegi banshuri. Meera, now Tintumaa’s tension is over. We have no idea, no evidence as to how much money she has minted from us. Now happy?”
Maa created a tough time for Baba the whole day, but at the end of the day she had to come to terms with whatever had happened. She had to make peace with Baba, because she only loved him, and she loved only him.
Sonu laughed aloud when Maa and I narrated this incident to him.
I saw, Maa
had moist eyes. I asked her, “What happened Maa? You ok?”
She sighed deeply. And said, “I had a great life with your Baba, your Gandhian father. I have seen it all – being God’s wife!!”
………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Prof.Nandini Sahu, Amazon’s best-selling author 2022, Professor of English and Former Director, School of Foreign Languages, IGNOU, New Delhi, India, is an established Indian English poet, creative writer and folklorist. She is the author/editor of seventeen books. She is the recipient of the Literary Award/Gold Medal from the hon’ble Vice President of India for her contribution to English Studies. Her areas of research interest cover New Literatures, Critical Theory, Folklore and Culture Studies, Children’s Literature and American Literature.
www.kavinandini.blogspot.in
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