Summer

This seems to be the season for remembrance.

Gulmohars are blooming; those bright, alive, orange bursts of colour are a sight for sore eyes. They remind me, and others here, of how we used to invent vampire nails and fangs out of the gulmohar petals and run madly around the house announcing the descent of Countess Dracula (No, that wasn't me! I was Pirate Snaggletooth. Rawr.) in red cloaks fashioned of Amma's saris.

And then there were mangoes. This, back home, is that glorious season when all mango trees (and every house in the neighbourhood had at least one) erupt into fruits and perfumy blooms. Daily schedules were invariably characterised by forays into neighbours' orchards, armed with stones and conspicuous long sticks, and down would come some two dozen mangoes. The next few seconds would be spent in frantically gathering the mangoes and rushing out, almost always chased by irate 'ungles' and their 'aalsashian' Tommys. And breakfast, lunch and dinner always, always had mangoes - mangakoottaan, mango pickles, manga pachadi, fruit salad... You name it; we had it. Dad's favourite summer refrain was: "There is always space for one more mango."

There were always sudden, unexpected showers too, as though Earth herself felt too hot to not want some cooling off. Always towards the end of the day, and always on the hottest days, we were caught unawares in raggedy outfits while out on on ruffianly cycling trips. The rain always cheered us up extra, and made us living horrors for Amma to deal with.

***

This is very much a nostalgic post. I really do miss those days. Not because "they will never be back again", but because those great, comforting grandfathers of trees are gone now. There're huge buildings of yuppies looking to move to the suburbs now - the orchards and the traditional ponds are long gone. And so, it seems, are the rains. They're never predictably unexpected anymore. They just come and go, like postmen on the street, leaving traces of their presence, but never coming in.

Those are the things that aren't going to come back - those trees and the open field and the green, unchoked rain and the smell of the wet, red earth.

I mourn their passing. And laugh about the fun we had then.

Indian

Questions are everywhere, even on harmless bus rides.

I was on a bus back to Bangalore, and had the good fortune (or otherwise) of having a chatty neighbour. She was elucidating at length about the vagaries and the various vices of Bangalore auto drivers, and at some point, made a statement that I find disturbing.

She said, "Most of my friends were foreign nationals, and there were a couple of people from North-East, but I was the only one who looked Indian."

Oh yes, we could argue that the people from the North-East look distinctively Chinese or Nepalese or whatever. But what I wonder is: Suddenly we have a distinct facial characteristic; some of us "look Indian" while others don't?

What is this idea of "Indian" that we have built in our heads? How come, for someone as normal as you and me, the Indians in the North-East just aren't Indian enough? How is it that such a thought is so deeply ingrained in us that we never realise the import of what's been said?

So who is Indian, now? What are the criteria to be? Religion, income, class, caste, region? Who is to decide all of this?

What is it that we have to do, or be, or not do to be Indian?

Believing

Tup. Ttup. Tttup.

There is a woodpecker outside my window. I cannot see it, but its conversation with the birch breaks into my stuporous consciousness like a bomb into silence.

I can't see the birch now. My worktable isn't near the window. It used to be, looking out from that tiny perch onto a world exploding with colour and form.

That was the issue, of course. There is that part of the brain, which has heard it all from them, that tells me all of it - this splash of colour, this multitude of form - is... what is the word? Wrong. No... That's not it.

Unreal. Yeah. That's the word. All of this is unreal, they say. All that is tangible, all that I can see, taste, touch, smell and hear - everything unreal. It doesn't matter that I can see it; I must believe. Thinking is dangerous, you know.

And that is why my table was moved from the window, of course. If I were to see so much colour, I would have trouble believing what I am told. To believe that so much beauty is an illusion, that all of it is like ghosts in the netherworld, would be sacrilege, blasphemy... and well nigh impossible. The wall helps. It's stark white, and rectangular.

There are moments, naturally, when I wonder if this premise of unreality isn't too farfetched. But then, they wouldn't lie to me, would they? They said it's all for Truth - and what would one not give for Truth?

I'm still trying to find it, of course. It is a difficult path - it needs me to forget that I know so much, needs me to be blind to so much. But it'll be worth it, you know, in the end. Truth = happiness and everything you've ever wanted, they said - and how can it not be?

Meanwhile, I believe in what I am told.

The world is full of colour, but my wall is bare.