Passion for Plants

Mornings have become surprises for me. Chirps, flapping of wings, and the bright summer sun snatches away sleep from tired eyes. Sounds of scratching, someone moving with heavy thuds on terrace accompanies the noisy chirps. My mother is seen engrossed in her beloved plants on terrace or in the backyard. Her little world of plants. It is a beauty to see how plants become as lively and beloved a pet an animal. Their greenery, flowering, fruits, above all the need to be care sprouts out in their bloom, their colour, their dangling leaves. She adjusts potted plants everyday: moving pots form one place to another, readjusting positions, frame, colour; like a painter brushing away the existing colours repeatedly with new colours to get the desired model, effect. Every touch on the plants, plucking off dry leaves, scooping out mud, soil and refilling with new soil, cutting rough edges, watering are the caring touches of brush or scalpel on the canvas. Fingers tenderly caressing the leaves, guiding the tendrils, digging in the mud creates a silent music that attracts birds and insects. Sparrows, Mayna, Dove, Tailor bird (Tuntuni), Bulbul, oriolr, Woodpecker, Cuckoo are regular visitors in the garden. The Guava, Neem, Papaya and Coconut tree welcome them with their luscious fruits and room for shelter. Squirrels have made Neem tree their home. City rain, city breeze nurtures the budding leaves, the smiling flowers.

Sweat trickling from every pore, mud and dirt kissing the skin, unkempt hair, my mother is another of those lunatics souls burying er heart in the tumultuous waves of creation.

Need to Connect

I realised it again today. I realised that my sweet little brain resides in a world of its own... distinctly remote from the happenings all around. I realised once again that I can connect my life, my philosophies, values with handful of people.... yes, selected friends, chosen people... I realised that without them I could have died, may be I wouldnt be born or created as i stand today.... I am talking of a very simple thing, an abstract one though or mostly abstract... I am talking of .... feminist consciousness?... lesbian consciousness? feminist lesbian consciousness?    .... I still dont know how to hold my feelings in words, no word suffice... and strangely, very strangely I have never been able to cut lesbianism and feminism apart or rather feminist and lesbian thought apart. perhaps because both are intricately wrapped in my making, my day to day existence. This realisation journey was quite long, to be able to know myself was quite long.... but through that process I also realised that the world around functions in a very limited, caged fashion, where I have to struggle to find like minded mates... yes there were inspirations... inspirations in finding poems, fiction, theories by forgotten or famous writers, by scholars. But whenever inspiration in the lived world grew dim, the bond of trust, friendship, love flickered, books and films flew far away... that is where there was craving to associate with more people, to search for more people, who believed and practiced like me.

Today's realisation is just a knot in the old chain of realisations. But today, I feel very strong. A strength acquired through time, through associations. My consciousness somewhere linked up with a terrain, landscape of other consciousnesses makes me feel strong. It has always been connection with similar consciousnesses that I have re-enforced my growing identity.

Always living in the world in me, most of the time I am unaware of the world outside. My lesbian feminist consciousness progress in its own fashion, but how much of it can i or do i share with the world? This is the question I confront, each time I realise my world is entirely different from the world the society lives in, from the consciousness of anyone, who never had time, interest, leisure to think in my fashion. ... Why, its necessary... well, why its necessary to ally ourselves and share our worlds, is something that i must not elaborate upon.... it is something that many of us know, many of us acts upon, many of us ignores or is indifferent... The question why can be answered as we share thoughts, while peeling off the layers of inhibition, loneliness, insecurity, experience and knowledge... 

It is my stake, a stake that I feel from very deep within, that makes me plunder into the blissful ignorance, blissful violence, blissful discrimination, blissful silence, blissful indifference that hang everywhere... it is only by shaking the blissful web of 'as it is' that one can create something new, something that spontaneously germinates form the same soil... a consciousness that springs from inside, where rights language is not only spoken or heard but internalized.... that is where my stake aims at.

Evenings

Evenings have a very distinct characteristic of their own. I tend to remember my evenings more distinctly from many other times of the day. May be this time of the day seeps very well in our brains. And may be because it definitely influences mood, whether one is outdoors or indoors. I remember so many evenings of school life, college life, recent days... even some of childhood.......

Afternoons too. Its a sensitive time... or may be human minds are sensitive to this time of the day... there is always a melancholy woven with evenings, twilights, in the most optimistic and pessimistic situation... 

......

Chaotic chirping of  birds in Tiss Campus, Azan at the nearby Mosque... from campus to Flat 303.. Eden gardens heights ... Kites in the distant sky out of the windows of Flat 303... people in their evening outing, back from work, in an evening 'adda'... excited voices.. laughter.... serious discussion... slowly blurrrrrrr.....  ..........

Evening sky in Calcutta hang with floating grey clouds over the entire metropolis... from Swinhoe Street to Triangular Park... crowds, traffic, sweat, hunger... 

 

A : "I hope Raktima Aunty finishes early today... there is such huge traffic on the way to Garia everyday.. and with this rain..."

B : "Hmm... Dont worry, it won't rain.. even if it does, u will make it... the sky isnt that alarming...." 

.....................

The solitary bat came everyday and hung itself in the fig tree... almost every evening since we have been living here... C said they are fox bats... they are large, very large... it dines on figs each night... i have never seen a bat so closely... it looks quite hideous.... "Do you think the FC exams will be scheduled early? The classes are taking off at a good speed...."

.............................

........

12 Angry Men

The film 12 Angry Men last night left me with a serene state of mind. It highlighted so many aspects of human behavior. There are ample times when we just grab a brand name, grapple with terms without understanding whether their usage is required, judge a person with his/her ideologies, as if they are orthodox and conservatives ideologists who are blindly following their dictum... 11 men in a jury blindly voted that a convict (an 18 yr old boy charged with the murder of his father) was guilty, while one dwelt on the possibility of  not being guilty. The possibilities of the convict not being guilty were of the same weight as the facts in the court that  found the boy guilty, but yet each of the 11 men at first were swayed to vote that the boy was guilty. each had their own reason. Some was troubled by a personal emotion, some was a meticulous follower of the facts, some was prejudiced against the background of the boy, some were indifferent, some afraid, some didn't want to contest, some did not understand and others were blindly ignorant. only one man started with a 'reasonable doubt' that slowly got spread in the jury and with time, one by one started having their 'reasonable doubts'.

Sidney Lumet's film made in the 1950s takes a dig in reasons, emotions, humanity and comments upon human callousness. An introspection makes everyone realise the strength of a judgement or a verdict, but how many will to do so under the strong play of egoism, selfish interests, prejudice, indifference, ignorance... People are so given towards judging that it ultimately harms or become meaningless. They take for granted certain behavior, issues, certain debates... they take shelter under terms, concepts, theories, ideologies.... they don't realise that everything at operation in the world are processes connected with each other, it doesnt have two poles, good or bad, rich or poor, capitalism and marxism, men and women, guilty vs not guilty....

The film falling mainly in the genre of social psychology (so it seemed) is an all time favourite of people, because no matter how much the world changes with time... how much developed it is.... these are human traits, they can be bettered, but cannot be wiped off. 

Finally with a quill or a pen or a keyboard...
The muse never struck me, never came to me,
But I always wanted to write,
Write to share, write for myself...
Write to store my thoughts.
To visit memories, to churn ideas,
To calm down mood swings,
To dig the unconscious...

And to think more..
And anchor my fleeting thoughts.