Category: Articles

Monsoon

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

The rain is welcome. The summer is over. Heat has been defeated. I leave home with the kids and stepping out of the air-conditioned house I realise it is raining. Come back home and in a few minutes, the rain dies down, and I take an umbrella (to hold off the drops falling from the line of tamarind trees down the rain, and an occasional shit fall from the herons roosting high in the thin leaves) and ask the kids to follow me down the lane.

There is lightning far up in the clouds and the thunder calls back a second later. Xena is scared and looks around wide eyed. But she follows me as does Zach with his ambling gait. A minute later I see a scared stray, black with a splash of white on his chest, run past. He is not from the area and has obviously been scared away from his by the thunder. I call out to Xena who means to chase him, and he takes off down the street. I scold the girl, and then look up to find him but he has sprinted away.

Halfway back, the rain starts. I thank my brains for they asked me to pick up the umbrella and I trot back to the compound. Xena thinks it’s a game of catch and cook and gallops ahead with Zach on her heels. Of course, Zach is running from the rain, too, just like I do. I come back home, just as the rain begins to form a deluge. The day has been muggy and my partner predicted rain fall by night. Sure enough, here it is.

The whole night sky is filled intermittently with light and the resounding rolls of thunder as the gods fight up in the night sky. Rain falls. I hear the territorial dogs attack and I cringe. The pretty black one (I assume) yelps. I run to the window as does Zach. He owns the territory – in his head, at least. But I cannot spot the black fellow from our window. Lightning doesn’t help. Rain falls in sheets.

The city looks up to the sky, like a thirsty man opening his mouth to a cascading ripple of water. I will not think of the problems today. I will merely look outside the window as I type this, see the cracked edges of a lightning sliver slice the sky, see the black silhouettes of the trees filter the rain onto the lamp bright street and relax.

Morning is here and so are the monsoons.

Fade

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

All relationships start off with so much fervor. Each of them is based on confidence as they start and as time passes, the confidence wears onto faith. Then faith quietly turns to hope and most people who are in relationships don’t even realise this progression. Finally, comes the acceptance, if logic and reason is applied. Otherwise, despair lurks like a predator in the shadows.

I have had friends by the dozens over the years. They have come and many have gone. A few have stayed around. But eventually everyone realizes their own inadequacies and the relationships falter. Distances help. I always wondered how they could. But they do. Familiarity really does breed contempt. However, I will say the strongest relationships pull through time and space constraints. Most do not have the temerity and or the will to stick on.

We all begin with so much care. Ambitions seep in and miles get interlaced between hearts and the desire to continue. We think we will keep in touch. But what happens is that the heart is morose when alone. The moment other people step into lives, the older ones get pushed back in the queue that happens to fall into place. Even the most fervent and intense relationship gets tested by time. Feelings remain, I suppose.

Feelings. A quaint noun. They signify all the shades of grey. From the darkest to the faintest. That’s how most of life’s heart goes. Dark to light. When you meet someone and find them fascinating, feelings grow intense and vibrate in their blackness. As time goes on, and it flows onto them, the colour fades. It depends on how dark they were to see if they last or fade into nothingness.

Then there are other colours merging into them. It is an ebb and flow. Like the tides upon rock. It is all a matter of time when the hardest rock corrodes and falls away into the sea. But that doesn’t mean the sea isn’t the better for it, or that the rock while it lasted never lent its support to land. Its entity changed and it went from dark to light.

Fangorn

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia2 Comments

‘When winter comes, the winter wild
that hill and wood shall slay;
When trees shall fall and starless night
devour the sunless day;
When wind is in the deadly East,
then in the bitter rain
I’ll look for thee, and call to thee;
I’ll come to thee again!’

Since the past two days I have been feeling sick to my stomach and generally in a state of being low. The nation is gripped right now in the turmoil generated by two brutal incidents, of people, by people, against people. I followed them as most do in the news, but sometimes the cases aren’t one of many, some speak to your jaded humanity, they make you move out of the darkness that experience and tired wisdom have harboured. They shake you and that cocoon of grey that has covered your life as you grow into not wanting to believe in blacks and whites. Sometimes, the mantle of lassitude brought on by the intellect is shaken from its own self-imposed fatigue and you are pulled up by the collar and shaken and shaken and shaken.

It’s an age-old metaphor I have fallen into. Having tried to reject the world’s problems –
because of all the inanity and cruelty that I have seen in it – the world tells me that she isn’t quite done with me just yet. I feel like Treebeard. I have lived and I have seen and I do not want to participate, but here comes Merry, frowning and demanding to know, “you’re a part of this world, aren’t you?” And I, as Treebeard, am stunned into empathy – something that I do not want to feel anymore. But I must.

I call onto my partner and speak about how I see his community, and my partner reacts by calling onto mine. We both stand offended. And I realise in that moment, what it means to be divisive. What it means to stand on the pretext of religion or faith or family or love or revenge and believe our actions are justified. If we love each other so, and even so, mention a divide and stand affronted, what if we didn’t know, or worse, disliked the other. How quickly could a warmonger get to us… will it be just a matter of time before we descend into violent thought or violence, or will our sanity and erudition prevail?

Am I so different because of the education I received and the Masters I earned? Has education created my mindset or was I always prone to open ended thinking? Was it my upbringing? My experiences? What I was told or taught? Am I rational? Am I emotional? Am I now being divisive?

I lost my faith and my hope over the course of 2013. I felt bewildered and lost. I looked at the cruelty of nature. I tried to understand it. Then I looked at the mean attitude of the justice system and was let down by those who are supposed to be unbiased and fair, within the confines of structured society. But then I learned that life, of course, isn’t fair, and never promised to be. We like to think we are civilized, but civilization is just a very thin veneer that can be torn down in a matter of seconds… Of all the times, I believed I felt ten times the fool. If I moved from humanity to animal welfare, I shuddered at the deepening futility – for if eight-year-old girls aren’t spared torture, rape and bludgeonings, how and in which tattered aspect of this society could I find a hope for an animal?

Humanity is hungry for blood and in so doing, has lost out on being humane. The ones who preached the word of tolerance, restraint and forgiveness are now part of a small mythology that no one seems to acknowledge. As I grow, I have no anger left in me to be passionate, I have no hope left in me to wait for justice, I have no conviction left in me to stand upright. Everything is grey now. Everything except love.

The thing that stands out in books and movies and themes and music – it does linger. The paradox is: the horror sets in because I can still love. Love makes me empathise. What if the girl was someone I loved? The horror of those four days. The confusion. The pain. The smells. The terror of knowing and yet not knowing. The utter horror. And then the horror of knowing that the ones who are capable of this terror did not feel the horror themselves. Did not feel the pain, did not understand what it means to be human.

The mind cringes. The heart wilts. I am lost.

“I do not like worrying about the future. I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me…” But something has to give. I cannot be Treebeard and wait to rally others and wage war on Isengard. I cannot be Treebeard and let the fires of Isengard reach the ones I love. But one thing I know for sure: “The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.”

‘When winter comes and singing ends;
when darkness falls at last;
When broken is the barren bough,
and light and labour past;
I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee,
until we meet again:
Together we will take the road
beneath the bitter rain!’

‘Together we will take the road
that leads into the West,
And far away will find a land
where both our hearts may rest.’ “