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.