Dangerous Mindfields

On my very first visit to Prague last February, our relocation agent while showing us around had mentioned as we drove over a bridge, ‘In the  winter many people jump from here.’
Naïve as I was, I had asked her if it was a tradition, a sport, like bungee jumping.

‘No,’ she had replied ‘they jump to die.’

I wonder now how many of them are expats trying to cope with their first winter in the city. Nothing drives home the hard reality of being new and alone in a place like extreme weather (Minus 18 to 22 degrees and being completely snowed in for weeks on end is extreme in my books).

I haven’t stepped out in two weeks and am living out of cans and tetra packs. All acquaintances have disappeared into their own caves to hibernate and with the husband and children gone for better part of the day, I find myself absolutely alone. The same city that had charmed me in warmer times now leaves me cold. Not even the pretty sight of Prague Castle covered in snow can salvage the bleak landscape. I can see now how total isolation can twist the mind.

I am of course steering mine away from all slippery slopes and high bridges by keeping it occupied. I have turned ‘alone’ time into ‘me’ time pursuing some of my interests like ancient civilizations and religions, world politics, the history of art, travel, distant cultures, movies, poetry, astronomy and quantum physics to name just a few.

I have been reading a lot. A lot, lot. Devouring books I have collected for years but hadn’t found time to read, scouring the internet for scraps of fascinating information, watching discovery and history channels into the night. It’s amazing how much there is out there to know once you set your mind to it.

Nothing wrong with a little broadening of the horizons you might think. My husband and children are not so sure. It’s not safe, they tell me, for them to talk to me anymore. I have developed an uncanny knack of changing even the most benign conversations into killer debates, ambushing the unsuspecting person on every turn in the conversation, with thoughts, ideas, arguments and counter arguments. No subject is too big or too small to tackle.

My husband doesn’t dare watch the telly around me anymore and the children have begun to hide their homework from me. But hey, I can give you the complete low down on the Middle East crisis with the possible solutions, talk to you about a wonderful tribe in Mali and the intricacies of mating habits of Jelly Fish, explain in great detail what entails a Tipping Point, expose the holes in the Big Bang Theory or give you an exhaustive list of books to read and movies to watch.

It’s a bloody mindfield, my husband says. Yes, but nowhere as dangerous as the bridge, I tell him.

In Verse

Two poems on  moving home and being displaced  which, ever since I first heard them have become my own. Perhaps because they are about moving to England or perhaps because they are so universal.

Grace Nichols,  Wherever I Hang

I leave me people, me land, me home
For reasons I not too sure
I forsake de sun
And de humming-bird splendour
Had big rats in de floorboard
So I pick up me new-world-self
And come to this place call England
At first I feeling like I in a dream -
De misty greyness
I touching the walls to see if they real
They solid to de seam
And de people pouring from de underground system
Like beans
And when I look up to de sky
I see Lord Nelson high – too high to lie.

And is so I sending home photos of myself
Among de pigeons and de snow
And is so I warding off de cold
And is so, little by little
I begin to change my calypso ways
Never visiting nobody
Before giving them clear warning
And waiting me turn in queue
Now, after all this time
I get accustom to de English life
But I still miss back-home side
To tell you de truth
I don’t know really where I belaang
Yes, divided to de ocean
Divided to de bone
Wherever I hang me knickers – that’s my home.

Jackie Kay, Old Tongue

When I was eight, I was forced south.
Not long after, when I opened
my mouth, a strange thing happened.
I lost my Scottish accent.
Words fell off my tongue:
Eedyit, dreich, wabbit, crabbit
Strummer, teuchter, heidbanger,
So you are, so am ur, see you, see ma ma,
Shut yer geggie or I’ll gie you the malkie!

My own vowels start to stretch like my bones
And I turn my back on Scotland.
Words disappeared like the dead of the night,
New words marched in: ghastly, awful,
Quite dreadful, scones said like stones.
Pokey hats into ice-cream cones.
Oh where did all my words go –
my old words, my lost words?
Did you ever feel sad when you lost a word,
did you ever try to call it back
Like calling in the sea?
If I could have found my words wandering,
I swear I would have taken them in,
Swallowed them whole, knocked them back.

Out in the English soil, my old words
buried themselves. It made my mother’s blood boil
I cried one day with the wrong sound in my mouth;
I wanted them back; I wanted my old accent back,
my old tongue. My dour soor Scottish tongue.
Sing-songy. I wanted to gie it laldie.

A Valentine’s Day to Remember

Some days have a mind of their own and if you let them flow they will take you to wonderful places. Yesterday was one such day.

It was of course the ubiquitous Valentine’s Day but a string of happy co-incidences tugged at its label till it came un-stuck.

It started off with an email from an old girlfriend who I hear from very rarely. It was just one of those forwards, which I generally tend to delete as soon as they land in the inbox. But I read this one all the way to end because it spoke of the other women in a woman’s life and the merit in holding on to them.

Something every woman who has crossed thirty and has had a good look at life would agree with. So it was sent off to a list of other friends who wrote back saying how true and thank you.

The husband was away so it was going to be just my daughters and me all day. A ‘mother- daughter day’ we call it. My six year old made me a lovely card with bunnies and hearts asking me to be her Valentine. When her older sister tried to tell her it doesn’t work like that, she asked “Why not? I love mummy.’ That card is going into my shoebox of special memories.

We played some games, watched telly and when they had had enough of me they went off to do their own thing.

I had a whole afternoon to my self, a rare treat which deserved another. A book. Without much thought I picked one I had bought last year on my visit to India, an anthology of short stories set against the backdrop of myth and folklore. The stories spoke of inspirational women in the towns and villages of India who imbibed the very spirit of the all-powerful, fearsome yet loving and generous Goddess. They were tales of the Devi in our time.

Before long the stories had transported me to a ‘no-man’s land’ as the author calls it. A difficult, mysterious, happy, sad and magical place. A place that reminded me of the many remarkable women in my life.

My grandmother serene and fearless, wise beyond words.  Her simple but beautiful life was reflected in the simple and beautiful way she passed away, completely at peace and in a manner of her choosing.

My mother who is neither very religious nor spiritual but has always believed in the general benevolence of the Universe and ‘God’. It is from her that I have learnt to find a silver lining to the darkest of clouds. There is always something good lurking behind the bad in her world. She is also my biggest champion; urging me on to do things I have always wanted to do, telling me it’s never too late.

My sisters and friends who inspire me with the way they live their lives even when their lives haven’t always gone to plan.

My maid in Mumbai, who herself an illiterate, threw her drunk husband out of their little house and raised her daughter single handedly. The daughter was well on her way to becoming a cost accountant when I last saw her.

I remembered the hot sultry afternoons at my grandmother’s during the long summer vacations when my aunts gathered in the coolest room to chat and laugh. They laughed a lot. It was a soul-stirring, happy laughter from women who had embraced their not so perfect lives completely.

There were many more, leaping from the pages like the many forms of the Goddess herself. For several hours I lost myself in their world.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the usual fare of chocolates and red roses and was even amused by the animated Cupid and a winged heart that was fluttering on the top right hand corner of my TV screen all day (Indian music channel). I am a hopeless romantic. But, yesterday was not so much about the man in my life as it was about the women who have graced it.

Of Festivals and Celebrations

‘Do you celebrate Christmas as well?’ my daughter’s music teacher is genuinely surprised.

He’d seen the oil lamps and tea lights sitting pretty on our door step and window sills just a few months ago as we’d tried rather awkwardly to celebrate Diwali in a new country sans family, friends and fireworks. We had chatted over tea and some traditional sweets about the significance of Diwali to a Hindu. Now a lovely Christmas tree sits in a corner of our lounge and fairy lights have replaced the tea-lights.

“Yes,’ my daughter replies, ‘we celebrate everything. Diwali, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New year’s eve and all the other Indian festivals.’

‘Really?’ he looks at me.

Really.

As all Indians will tell you, we love festivals. In a rather intense, full -on kind of way. In this case more is definitely more.

Growing up I remember mapping the year by the string of festivals running through it. There are too many to list here but if I had to pick a few key ones this is how the year went. It began with the different harvest festivals in January followed by the Hindu and Sikh New Years in February. Holi, the festival of colours celebrated the coming of spring in the March. In the monsoons the births of Krishna and Ganesha called for some serious pomp and gaiety and come autumn it was time to venerate the autumnal full moon and the Goddesses. This was closely followed by Diwali and then Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations. Somewhere along the way, depending on the Lunar calendar, we’d have the Muslim festivals of Id.

As a child this meant regular holidays and invites to our friends’ and neighbours’ houses to take part in a variety of festivities and traditions, enjoying good food and having fun. And just because we didn’t belong to a religion or community didn’t mean we couldn’t join in. My non-Hindu friends were as much a part of our celebrations as I was of theirs. I have fond memories of my Catholic friend helping me draw colourful rangolis for Diwali and of me helping her build the crib and nativity scene for Christmas.

It seemed only natural then that when we moved to the US we should join in with the local traditions. Hence, Thanksgiving became a time to gather around a feast-laden table with family and friends, not necessarily to thank the native Indians but just to be thankful. A beautiful tradition by all accounts. Halloween was simply a lot of fun. Christmas became even bigger and took on a more personal tone. Stockings, trees, gifts… we had to do it all.

When we moved to London a few years later we carried with us amongst other things these important additions to our long list of festivals. Now they’ve come with us to the Czech Republic.

As for celebrating Christmas here, a few details have been tweaked. We’ve been visited by Mikulas in place of Santa and Baby Jesus not Santa will come bearing gifts on Christmas Eve. My six year old tells me this is how it happens in Prague and so this is how it will be.

A bit excessive you might say. Well perhaps it is. But my daughters being almost Indian love every bit of it. And I believe are happier for it.