Railway Lines Here, There and Everywhere
Lines that never meet yet
Connect
People, places, things
Intersecting, punctuating
A journey's premise
Promise
Of something that will shift
A rift
Between what you were and
What you become
Like lines that never meet yet
Connect
June 8 2025
Diwali is one of those festivals which brings back tons of happy memories. Childhood Diwalis in Kolkata began with preparations a day or two before. Making yummy bakshanams (snacks) helping mother out particularly with sieving the flour for whatever sweets or savouries, cutting the designs of the matris / namakpare, tasting (a big and essential part of Diwali as it was one festival where you didn't have to wait for any puja to start munching, and of course running around to the neighbours to check what was on their menu list and comparing it with ours, then running around again on Diwali morning to distribute the goodies. Diwali mornings started with the eldest in the house - dad, grandmothers, mother applying oil on the head. Nallamma's was gentle, Appa's steady and firm, Amma and sometimes Pati's was full of brutal love 😃; the bath and eating the Diwali essential - the marundhu. The firecrackers (I sheepishly admit) was a big draw. The neighborhood dadas in Kolkata would go a few days prior to buy the fireworks from Luni and then would put us to work to sun them for better performance. In Coimbatore, all cousins sheparded by Annaji and later my eldest cousin would go to Townhall exhibition to buy fireworks. And then Diwali morning started early. In competitive spirit. Who wakes up when, bursts how many crackers, wakes up how many people. Much later, Dilwalis started becoming our own - with lots of lights, friends, food and of course Diwali snacks (one sweet, one savoury) and the Diwali essential - the marundhu. After finishing unbelievably long days of work, coming back home to start preps (invariably going on until midnight). 'Early-morning-bath' was replaced by 'whenever we wake up bath' calls to family and friends. Now while spending hours in front of stove / airfryer (sorry, pati!) slaving away over bakshanams, all these memories brim over. So much love, warmth, friendships, feels like a tight hug for the aching heart. Growing older comes with this bittersweet emotion I guess - deciding what we hold on to or what we let go. This year, as I will not be calling so many people (especially pati), I'll hold tight to those memories and hug those around tighter.
October 20 2025
The dining table holds pride of place in memories of places I close hold to heart. A place of conversations, a place where stories are traded and a place where newer memories are made. The intricate web woven by the warm tales spun by people held together by the silken bonds of deepest thoughts shared. At my grandmother's house, when we visited every summer, relatives would gather for evening tea and snacks. While most would make space around the large table, drawing up chairs from around the house, a few of us cousins would be perched on the staircase, hanging on to the gossips. As streams of bajjis would keep coming in from the kitchen, animated, loud, boisterous family members would keep up the music playing off the sound of potatoes and brinjals dunked in besan touching the hot oil. The smell of hot sesame oil in which bajjis have been fried are one of the pervading memories of my maternal grandmother's house. It wasn't always only fun. Intense arguments, emotional fights, grief and longing, all came together around the dining table. No matter how big the house, how big the drawing room and how comfortable the cushioned couches in the living room, we all eventually came back to the life centre of that house. That big oval dining table with chairs tottering under the burden of the stories they held. After sitting around the dining table at my parents' home in Coimbatore, either the four of us, or the six of us, or the many more who join us every now and then, the conspiratorial glare of the morning sun bouncing off the glass top seems to call out longingly to share one more story, one more memory, one more anecdote. Friends, family, friends of family and families of friends have all seated around this table, bound together by the invisible arms of its embrace. Even today, no matter where I go, I seek the comfort of that dining space which is the fireside of the homes I have been brought up in. Some my own, some that have become my own.
Counting bars
Counting stars
Fleeting rays
Empty space
Ceiling dance
Stealing chance
Freedom lost
Freedom gained
July 7 2026
The photo came silently, innocently, unceremoniously. To herald the return of the prodigal grandson.
The furniture cleaned and arranged neatly. The dining table resolutely standing in the middle of things. Like her, proudly. Refusing to let the isolation of the last year and more show.
Instead, standing testimony to decades of conversations, food, laughter and fights. The floor was welcoming, as it has always been. The room well-lit. Reminder of the times when the curtains would always be drawn, to keep the light out. The light hurt her eyes. But why? Did it remind her of the final light that would come to take her away and she was not ready for? Did it seems to bright for her tired eyes? Did it remind her that the world outside had changed so much. The people around had changed so much and that she was unable to change along with it?
The bright red sofa replaced the low diwan that was there. Where many an afternoon I lay next to her. Sometimes her fractured body and wounded spirit kept me company and found some temporary warmth. Just lying down next to her, holding her bony fingers would bring in a sleep so deep that I often long for it desperately.
I wonder if the TV is there. Screaming out various things in succession over the years. From the Bold And the Beautiful, to films played on a VCR connected to it, Tamil serials about the natural, the supernatural and the unnatural, screaming news anchors spewing hatred, cricket and tennis matches, with a commentary outside to match the one inside and more recently, religious programmes, hymns and sermons.
The bookshelf where for many years somewhere in the last three decades a whiskey bottle shaped like a khukri adorned tested the resolve of the young and the old until it was emptied under the coconut tree behind the house. Ever wondered if the coconuts from our house are intoxicating? You may be closer to the truth than you think!
A story about Abe Lincoln, a woodwork of Krishna steering Arjuna's chariot in the battlefield, the rabbit made of white beads and the photo of that white bearded, man - sage-like visage - and a smile as mysterious as Mona Lisa's.
And two more recent additions - which sometimes worked and at most times didn't. One was a monitor reflecting flickering images from outside - a young couple caught canoodling on a bike parked outside, cat curiously peering at something, an auto zooming past, an unknown car blocking The gate nonchalantly, and more.
The other was a set of handphones. The receiver of her wrath, the bearer of many stories, the constant companion when it worked as well as when it didn't, a fixture, much like everything around, including her. Only it seemed to have outlasted her, at least in its physical presence.
If only walls could speak. So much would be said, including many salacious accounts that will not pass these lips, tragic tales of death and disease, conspiracies, stories of friendships, inventive abuses, naughty pranks and myths and mythology.
As if it is all not a myth. There until she was. Gone after she went. Did it even exist? Or was it just, like everything else, a chimera with a promise to last forever.
Kindness is one of those virtues that seem to be 'optional'. Not embedded as deeply as, say, honesty. Or say, faithfulness. So when there is kindness in places it is not expected, the tears do flow. Like while trying to push the wheelchair on the granite floor of the Meenakshi Amman Koil in Madurai, and a devotee hither-thither nonchalantly pulling it over the ramp or across a tricky bump. There was no need for that. There was no expectation. It was just that. A random act of kindness. Or asking someone if they could enquire about a medical equipment, and they going to another store in the maddening heat just to find out if they had it and organised that it be dispatched in time for use. It's just that kindness, especially from strangers, hits different. It kind of makes the world alright again amidst war, violence, pain and grief. It kind of momentarily feels like a balm.
'If' is one of those poems that have stayed with me. It comes back to me in times of pain and grief, offering hope and courage. Leaving cities is like breaking down pieces of a life you built to move elsewhere and start building again. It reminds me of something a friend said after interacting the designers of the Puja Pandals of Calcutta. When asked how they could bear to see their designs pulled down after the week-long festivities, one seemingly told her that unless it is brought down, how will the next year's Puja Pandal take shape. That is courage.
In small measures, I thought I had that wisdom and courage. When I made a list of which of my friends would get which of my plants when I leave the city - plants I had nurtured lovingly and also with great heartache, as quite a few of them seemed to wither in the heat, I thought it was that wisdom kicking into action.
Turns out the pain of parting is so much more when it's something you have nurtured for six-odd years with sweat and blood, at great personal loss, through some of the worst periods of my professional and personal life is passed on to someone to take care of. Someone who may do a better job, or may not.
From my high horse I am being judgmental. My plants, I know, will survive as they are fighters like me. But this thing, I am not sure. And the pain of that uncertainty is physical. The fear real. The guilt palpable.
And in times like that, the words of Kipling in 'If' is a reminder that there is wisdom in treating Triumph and Disaster both the same. Someone just help my heart understand what my brain knows.
