Prison Stories

Counting bars 

Counting stars

Fleeting rays

Empty space

Ceiling dance

Stealing chance

Freedom lost

Freedom gained 

July 7 2026

Memories

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 of folks

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

'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. 

Lines from books

The prison wasn't the place. It was the perspective. (The Midnight Library, Matt Haig)

Some lines from some books stay with you. This seems to be one of those. 

Mind over matters

A dark cloud often passes

Bringing rain at times 

A heavy presence at others.

The fog lifts from time to time

Revealing blue skies 

For hours at times, days at others. 

 

Mahua Magic

I bit into a ripe Mahua flower (left), goaded on by eager women. It's the 'tribal grape' one said. The other added that it would be sweeter than jaggery. The experience definitely was bitter-sweet. The intoxicating smell of the Mahua flowers carried through the wind to my expectant nose, promising more than it could deliver. The women harvest around 10 quintals of Mahua a season and earn Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 by selling the dried Mahua flowers (centre). They save some for their own consumption. They explained how they make sweets with it and how they add it to the vegetables they cook. A man was more forthcoming. "Do you know when there was no food to eat, we would consume the wine made from Mahua and work tirelessly?" he said. The others insisted that they did not make any alcohol with it. This may be because I was accompanied by someone who bit into the Mahua flower and wrinkled her nose saying it tasted of alcohol. It's interesting how narrative and knowledge shapes our senses and our experience of things. Thus Mahua 'tastes' like alcohol even for someone who has probably never consumed alcohol. Because alcohol is commonly made from it and is seen as taboo. Someone whose experience of alcohol is through films, would probably have a whiff of alcohol and start swooning, because that's is the commonly Bollywood-certified response to alcohol. Most tribal communities these days do not openly admit to making alcohol from Mahua. They would rather keep it a cultural secret than talk about it and have it disparaged in public by 'outsiders'. Often civil society projects end up vilifying any consumption of alcohol as a blanket crime. The cultural significance is thus marauded and shamed until even the children of these communities internalise the criminality of drinking and proclaim taking action against alcohol consumption with pride. It goes to add a moral reputation to alcohol consumption, not addressing other dimensions of why alcohol is consumed, why it may lead to violence, why excessive consumption can impact many things, including health and well-being. This is done through a careful juxtaposition of alcohol consumption and domestic violence. Often, going into the root cause of domestic violence can lead to uncomfortable questions, upending status quos and open social wounds that cannot be closed. Is it all the Mahua talking? Or the deep dissatisfaction with the way some questions are repeatedly broached and addressed regardless of geography, community, or custom? One wonders, but for those few minutes, the Mahua magic brought me together with the women of a small tribal hamlet somewhere in Odisha.