3 AM

It is 3 am, and the ghosts of insomnia arrive...floating around just out of reach, whispering over your shoulder, tickling your lacrimal glands...you can hear them, feel their presence, know their effect....but you can neither touch them nor feel them.

Apparitions glimpsed and stories whispered the night before Julius Ceasar's cataclysmic death...these are but small manifestations of the inhabitants of the wee hours. More terrifying still, are those you cannot see - voices hurling accusations, screaming lies a more rational mind could reason out as untruths, the loss of everything as it should be and everything as you know it is...And then, there are the disguises - Hideous creatures peering out from faces loved and known, complicated plots hidden deep within trusted advice, hatred and disgust seeping from the pores of hearts held close, cutting words hidden in some mental box brushed over on the surface with the powder of honesty and care - crawling out of the shadows and into your head...A masquerade of hooded jeering apparitions, circling round and round, crowding closer and closer, sucking you deeper and deeper into that dark whirlpool of inadequacy which lies dormant in most minds.

Finally, the knifing finale - the feeling of abandonment...that on a shelf lies rows of goodbyes, one for everyone you know; and tears, for the permanent departure of those you love. For once gone, they will never return, and everybody leaves in the end. Or so the voices menace.

And so, the tears keep falling, and the fingers keep typing...fighting off those incessant cries, vainly battling to block off their words, as the sadness and despair deepens, as mental walls weaken, and you feel your mind yielding. Somewhere, just beyond the rim of consciousness, you hear your own voice screaming, pleading for help from somebody...anybody!

But nobody can hear you. It is 3am and they are all fast asleep.

PS: It is easy to be a sunflower in the day, but when the sun sets, there is nothing to gaze at or follow, except the darkness around, and that is when the mind closes in on itself.

Little hands and a little salt.

I sit in the library right now. Outside the window, the golden dazzle of the evening sun smiles, dry trees barely move, dragonflies dart jerkily, trying to appear busy, yellow flowers fall to the ground...the lightest of breezes nudges my tightly plaited curls, and the wall fan in front of me appears to have stuck. But this post isn't about today, or the hot summer, or even about the virtues of curly hair....it brings back a summer, many years ago, when I was a wee goody-two-shoed lass, and a little building in the middle of the middle of my city.

Every so often, there used to be a lunch at church. Maybe there still are lunches there, but I would never know, as I no longer frequent that little building in the middle of the middle of my city. To come back to my story, ever so often there used to be a lunch. While the adults engaged in their segregated important conversations downstairs, the rag-tag bunch of little ones, this wee lass included, used to run up the stairs, and between the pews, and behind the pulpit, and everywhere we possibly could without reprimands raining down on us.

It was while we were energetically engaged in one such run (ah, the days when I was young and slim and could run!) when we came upon the salt.

Now, salt, for the uninformed, provides an important metaphor in the Bible...as Christians, we are to be like salt...a little of us spreading a lot of God in the unflavoured food. But, then, metaphorical salt isn't the topic of this post either.

So, to get back (again!!! How my mind wanders!) to my tale, we came upon the salt. There it lay, on a piece of dry paper, on the railing of the balcony of the first floor, glistening pure and white in the hot summer sun. Being valiant young adventurers, debate was the first thing called for:

"Oooh!! What is this??"

"Who kept it here???"

"Why doesn't it blow away?" (Retrospectively, this was probably the most important philosophical question.)

"Can I touch it?"

"Can I taste it??"

It didn't smell of anything in particular. It didn't feel like anything in particular. So six little hands stuck numerous fingers onto the paper, and transferred the tiny crystals onto six little tongues.

"Oh! It's SALT!!!"

But mind you, this was not any salt. And no, it wasn't pure religious sacramental salt or anything of the sort, but it did taste different. It tasted more exciting. Somehow.

So, we ate it all up.

It's effect on us proved to be very similar to yet another white powder I learnt about many years later in college. Every Sunday, we would run up to the balcony after the service. If the railing was bare, six little hearts would descend to the depths of depression for the next sixty seconds. And if the salt was there..?...Well, then we would eat it up, every last granule of it. Eyes bright with happiness, cheeks flushed with excitement. We would even lick our fingers at the end! After all, what were manners when confronted with THE SPECIAL SALT?

Looking back, I can never figure out what was so special about that non-descript white powder lying in its white paper. We never thought we were stealing, so the Augustine pears effect (go listen to the lyrics of St. Augustine's pears by Petra for the context) wasn't what drove us ("forbidden fruit has a strange siren song")....in our innocence, we always imagined that the salt was left there especially for us! I can never understand why the person who kept the salt out never learnt his lesson and continued keeping it out right upto the time the monsoons started. And most importantly, I simply cannot fathom why that paper was never blown away!!!

The Iron Lady...(and how she was melted)

If you asked me who was the person in the university with the most authority, the most power, the most control, and who commands the respect, or at least, the obedience, of nearly everyone in the college from the vice chancellor to the most wimpy first year, my answer, without any hesitation, would be, "The Cleaning Amma".

(For the colloquially uninformed, 'amma' is the term often used to refer to a woman older than you, who you would generally not, due to constraints of a caste, class, or societal nature, refer to by her name, or by other commonly used terms, such as 'madam' or 'aunty'.)

When it is time for her to clean an area, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, can come in her way!! It is a more than familiar sight to see her sweeping out a deskful of students - books, laptops and all; rushing away a professor just come in to conduct a viva voce examination; or even flushing out the boys standing in front of the urinals in the men's restroom! All this solely with a constant stream of words in the vernacular language (which 96% of her unwilling listeners cannot understand).

It is anybody's guess what it is that she says. I do know that she often asks for the time; but other than that, she could be lecturing me on the messiness of students, or the pressures of being a cleaning amma, or the weather, or her husband's latest exploits! You never know!!! Communication doesn't seem to be high on her priorities. But then, communication is only for mere mortals.

My story is set in a classroom. The fourth year classroom to be precise. I had cultivated the habit of eating good home-made healthy vegetarian food every lunch with one of my buddies. The classroom was peaceful, the company pleasant, and the food healthy. My only nemesis, and the only blot on my perfect lunchtime, was THE CLEANING LADY.[sinster music plays in the background]

Everyday, without a moment's respite, she would come in with her broom, and with scoldings and shoutings and naggings and finger waggings, drive me and my lunch buddy from one end of the room to another! It was such torture! And the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months.

Then, the day of change finally arrived. And it amazes me how such a simple thing could make all the difference. I was in a good mood (and I suspect the cleaning amma was too)....When she entered the classroom, before she could part her lips, I welcomed her with an "oota aayitha?" (Which is a greeting in the local vernacular language, roughly translating to "have you eaten?"). She seemed momentarily taken aback, and then answered sadly, (and for the life of me, I can't reproduce her words here, though I give you my word that I did understand her) that she hadn't eaten yet. This being the limit of my linguistic capabilities, I gave her a sympathetic smile, and then we both went our own ways.

But ever since then, things changed. Rather than sweeping us out, she started telling my buddy and me to sit and eat. When she did want us to leave, her tone of telling us to go, changed....it became gentler, and even, in some strange way, more maternal!...she even let my lunch buddy use the bathroom at a time when she had to finished cleaning it!!!

I must say I was shocked at how such a little thing could have such a great effect. But it did make me think...about how caste and class and social status influence our way of treating people...of how the loudest noise could often be an SOS for being listened to...about how little unconscious things can reap such enormous results!...and about how small rules of etiquette and manners are so often easily forgotten that daily life becomes rusty, and less pleasant, and far too self absorbed.

The Fledgling and the Risk

A fledgling standing at the edge of the nest, peering out at its first flight. I don't know much about bird psychology, but I can't help but wonder what goes through its mind.....Fear of falling? Fear of failure? Fear of death?... After all, in leaving the nest and trusting itself to untested wings, it is taking a risk....a risk which carries with it the chance to fall to a painful death, but also, the chance to spread its wings, and truly become a bird!!

The world today is watching a crisis unfold at the international level....a crisis which resulted from taking risks. The chances of failure were high, but the returns of success could be a dream come through!...And the economies of the world today know the effects of that risk.

So then, what does one do? Take a risk? Or play it safe.

Perhaps the answer to this lies more in considering the latter option. What would be the consequences of playing it safe in a particular situation? It could be that nothing at all happens, and status quo remains undisturbed, in which case, if progress or evolution of some sort was not your aim, it would be ideal to leave the risks on the street and close your door to taking chances.

However, if playing it safe could result in losing what you value most...well, then I'd say the answer is obvious.

The fledgling could stay snug. Stay safe. Stay alive...Never fly. And ultimately die. And so, though it may not appear so to the little bird, probably the best thing that could happen to it, is for circumstances (in the form of the ever patient mother bird) to push the fledgling out of its comfort zone, and nudge it over the wall of the nest.

Ramblings with a poetry book

I salvaged a book from the room of a certain graduating senior for whom I feel the greatest affection (yes, there is a chink even in my armour!), and felt a bit as if I was opening the door to Narnia. Many a minute have I invested in this book of poetry, and I know there are many more in store. These are snippets of two poems which I read, the night before Dee Pee Cee exam (I loved him , his rose-apple cheeks and his "harsh words" to death, but I pray that in all my life I never have to do another of those courses again! Dee Pee Cee Pee Cee Pee Cee indeed!!!). Completely different from each other, one is a light hearted one, which so perfectly describes the behaviour of my bedclothes at night, and the other....well, reflect upon it and see what you get from it.

So here goes:

NIGHTMARE
By Sir W.S. Gilbert

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire - the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles - you feel like mixed pickles - so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye-balls and head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking;

And so it goes on in a simmilar vein. I loved it because of the tongue-in-cheek humour, and because the words are so rhythmic and easy on the tongue.

In this next one, in the first verse, notice the calm of the settings, and then take in the cynicism,realization, and turmoil epressed in the last verse, in the background of the first verse.

DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.


Sourced from A Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams, published by Washington Square Press, Inc., New York. s

Job Search

Another poem which made it somewhere. Once again, it is non-secular in nature.


JOB SEARCH


Numbers of jobs were limited,

And candidates well qualified,

No godfather known anywhere,

No job contacts identified.



I must admit that I worried,

Watched peers get jobs from ‘papa’s friend’,

As I filled yet another form,

My despair, none can comprehend!



But that night I was reminded,

As I read the verse for that day,

The best job contact of them all,

Was mine! And just a prayer away!



This story has still not ended,

My career’s not quite begun,

But now it’s a wondrous mystery,

Surprises, after all, are fun.



And so, my job search has taught me,

To rest in His plan and His will;

The greatest Job-Finder chooses,

As he whispers, “Trust and be still”.

The Creation of an Alter Ego

I needed a new avatar! I required another personality...At least for the sake of a name at the bottom of my poem. The problem being that it was about work and a job, of which I had only had the limited experience of an internship....I was afraid that anyone who read it and who knew me would not take the poem seriously! And so, the search for my alter ego began.

Settling on the first name for my doppelganger wasn't too hard a task....it had to be, and could ONLY be "Claire". It was French, it was light, it was one syllable long, it wasn't unbelievable, and most importantly, I was in love with it!

The second name left me with a bit of a problem though......I tried going all Irish and taking on the name Connolly.....but Claire Connolly....?....hmmm...A bit too stylish...and maybe a tad bit corny too!

Claire Daniels....? Sounded a bit too much like some author I had already read....a bit too familiar!

Claire Paul? Claire Leonard? Claire James? Claire Kumar? Claire Clandestine? Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire!!!!
For days I drove friends mad! Vote on this set of names. Rank these in your order of preference. Compare this to that. Choose. Choose. Choose.

And as with any survey, I got very contradictory results, and in some cases, a funny look and an exclamation, "You've GOT to be joking!"

And then, for some inexplicable reason, when I was lying in bed one night, about to drop off to sleep, I remembered a baby I knew in church when I was a kid....his name was natty ('a' pronounced as in aligator, and 'ty' as 'tea')...he refused to eat his fruits, and just to show him that all good children ate their fruit, his mother had called me and fed me custard apple...and then I knew I had it!! Nati...short for Nathaniel! Perfecto!

Claire Nathaniel!

You problem wonder why I got so excited about this...or even bothered mentioning that inane and pointless story of the fruit. :-)

I wouldn't blame you. I don't know either. But I suppose that's what parents feel when naming their children....they name them for the weirdest reasons, after the strangest people....or the most ordinary commonplace ones....But they just know that THIS is the name for THIS baby. And similarly, Claire Nathaniel, and no other name, could be me.

Nathaniel is a Hebrew name. It means "God has given". As a bit of trivia, it was the other name of Bartholomew, one of the 12 apostles. Claire is French, and means "light" or "bright" or "shining" or "clear". It also means "famous".
Given the importance which I give to the meaning of names, I now think it symbolic and hopeful, even though I didn't realize it at the time of adopting this name, that Claire Nathaniel means "God has given light".


And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the rather off-beat tale of the manner in which Claire Nathaniel, my alter ego, the name at the end of some of my poems, was born.