A Bend in the Lane

My sister, who lives somewhere in an undisclosed town in the Great Mid West, usually gifts me a sack full of beauty products every time she visits me. Subtlety was never her forte I suppose. A week ago, I opened this exquisitely packed set of 'body butter' that she gave me this Feb. (Note to all boys who are reading this post: body butter is a schmanzyfancy name for moisturizer, which is something we women rub on our skin to prevent it from drying among other things) There were six medium sized tubs packaged in pastel colours and sleek black lids, quaint seeming words printed in fonts evocative of a bygone era. Each tub had a separate name, for e.g, the tub I first opened was labeled "Warm Ginger Bread". Other labels were, "Vanilla Pound Cake" "Caramel Something Something", "Crabapple Eatable Thingie" and "Vanilla Yada Yada". And, just below the label was an old school recipe for warm ginger bread or vanilla pound cake ...

Think happy thoughts Harika! The tang of blueberry marmalade on sour dough pancakes, dripping with salty butter reminds me of the evening when I walked up to a 4o something man at IHOP (International House of Pancakes) and said, “Hi, My name is Harika and I was wondering whether you could marry me?” Without a batting an eyelid, without a pause, he asked me, “When and where?” I was mortified. While the group of rogues I was dining with in the IHOP dissolved into raucous laughter, hooting and clapping. I fled back to the table to punch a couple of noses and refused to continue playing the silly game of Truth or Dare. While leaving, the man gave me a friendly Texan wink. America is full of cool people like that.

Where have the years gone? Have they tumbled into the cracks in the cuckoo clock, or leaked away through that fissure where the skies and earth meet clandestinely? Or have they died with the last echo in the vales? Did they fly south with the geese for the winter and never returned? Or have they taken off in a huff as I hadn’t paid much attention? Time, could you not have been patient and lingered for me ? I still have Africa to wander through, to fly an aircraft, and bungee jump. I have to be on that trapeze and row that boat along the Amazon. I have to dive in the Great Barrier Reaf. I have to go to Timbuktoo and be back. I have to walk up the Pyramids of Egypt and float on the Dead Sea . I have to build a home, plant my patch of roses, see my elms grow, finish the classics, run a marathon, become wise, bathe in the Ganges, journey in a hot air balloon, elope to Pitcairn Islands, walk among the giants of Easter Island, understand Theory of Relativity, speak on the BBC Worl...

Why do we leave the acacia tree lined street s in which we ran with naked feet? The house that watched over us with quiet patience? Why do we walk away from that swing in the garden that carried us? The coconut tree that listened to whispered secrets on many a lazy afternoon? Why do we forget the wall we sat on to tease the boys that cycled past? Why do we forget the comforts of the cot in the backyard on moonlit nights? Why don’t we remember the dancing marigolds and the sulky rose bush in our mothers’ flowerbeds? Why don’t we see the red hibiscuses beside the West side gate? Why don’t we recall the sweet papayas from the tree in the East garden? Why have we forgotten the taste of parrot pecked pink guavas in the evening? Why do we walk away from the cool shadows of the ivy that screened the Westside balcony? Why have we forgotten the swinging black gate that took us to Paris and back within a swing? Why cant’ we remember the thrill of hide and seek around the house in the gatherin...

I was at Borders couple of nights ago. I caught sight of W H Auden’s Dyer’s Hand. His self-edited lectures, talks and criticisms – mostly delivered in Oxford when he was the Oxford Professor of Poetry. Reading one of the essays, standing in Borders, with the smell of new books, and the faint whispers of conversations, I was no longer there. I was walking on the icy bridge over the Cherwell, by the St Cross Cemetery and finding my way to the wooden bench below the solitary crabapple tree that groaned with the weight of death’s tragedies among the graves. I heard its groan many an evening in my sojourn in that City of Dreaming Spires . While dons cycled past home for dinners, and students scuttled to reading rooms, I sometimes, read gravestones. They hold many tales. They also hold peace that cannot be found in life.

Do you sometimes go back to re-read your very own “great works” - essays you penned, papers you wrote for classes, etc? And when you do that, are you frequently let down by them when you discover that they are not as wonderful as you remember them to be? Usually I am. But there is one exception. Well yesterday was one of those Long Nights. I had nothing much to do. So I decided to post excerpts of this paper that I am very proud of. I wrote this paper for an English class (American Myth and Oral Tradition) in my sophomore year at Rice. This class was taught by Dr XX, who is notorious for being measely about giving ‘A’s (gives an 'A' once every two years to one or two students). After not being successful for two semesters, I took his class (you basically have to kill to get into his class). To say the very least, you could say, I slogged for this class. I used to take long walks around the campus loop at 1 am to agonise over the next word in the sentence. And I wrote like the D...