Last year I joined an interesting poetry writing movement, called NaPoWriMo, where the goal was to write a poem a day during the month of April. It seemed like a good way to get back in touch with writing. Creative writing was the easiest thing for me, back at school. And I started by writing poetry. Mostly stuff that rhymed. Things that, on retrospect, seem rather self conscious about rhyming. Then completely out of the blue, I wrote one that did not rhyme and had no conscious pattern. For some reason it had to be the way I wrote it. Since then, I mostly only write free verse whenever I write poetry. Here are the poems I wrote last year, for NaPoWriMo. Here are some of the other bits of creative writing that I have done over the years: Humour/Humor, Fiction and just random stuff. I must say I am better with prose than poetry.
This year, I have signed up again at the NaPoWriMo site here.
Not sure how much I can do this year, because I will be busy dealing with some of life's toughies for the month of April. But who knows, may be poem-ing will be just what the doctor ordered to de-stress. Or may be not.
Finally hit the gym after a gap of 20 days, yesterday.
Worked out the right arm after 4 months.
Humbling experience!
WOD:
Some general warm up,
reverse squats;
95lbs squats;
20 lbs Bulgarian squats;
27.5lbs (per arm) seated low rows;
10 lbs(per arm) bicep curl on a bosu ball;
7lbs straight arm pull downs;
tried the reverse rows, right elbow screamed -- so quit after 3 tries.
Seated Flyes
seated chest presses (20lbs per arm).
Some other stability work.
a little mad "running" on the elliptical.
I am glad I went!
Was hoping to go back to the gym tonight to soak in their hot tub-- chlorine smelling, but ohhhh soooo good to the muscles. But, I don't think there is going to be time for that... Oh well....
What seems like an early start to spring just means that things that are not normally blooming at this time of the year have already started to bloom.
The magnolia is already beginning to shed its flowers
But I did manage to snap up a few pics before its all gone
Not bad for a phone camera huh?
The hyacinths have been in bloom for a bit now. In fact they were the first ones to make an appearance. Nothing like these happy white faces to cheer you up.
I even had one planted right by the front door and I remember being so surprised when I saw it bloom.
I like this for its clean simplicity
I brought more of the other guys in as well and added some pebbles in the vase so the petals wont touch the water
Not quite as pristine as the first one, but the fragrance more than makes up for it
I think aesthetically, some black and white pebbles and those white flowers only would have looked a lot more striking.
Meanwhile on the seedling front, the methis (fenugreeks) were all ready for a transplant.
9 green methis, happy in a pot! One green methi accidentally flops!
The thyme surprised me with the speed with which they have germinated. No real leaves yet, though
The little army of thymes!
The basil is making larger and larger cotyledonous leaves but no true leaves yet.
Basil in the plastic egg carton
Samiyaar and his pet (yes, he has a pet) watch all this action from the comfort of their favorite ring side seat!
And the over wintering elephant ears are begging to join the party!
Can we please, please go out too?
But I am not sure that there wont be a surprise winter storm, so I am not letting them out yet!
"Look at me!" I cry impatiently, turning her face towards me.
"No! Look at me!", cries my sister, pulling her face towards herself, instead.
"Aiyyo! I am not looking at anyone. Please just let me look at the ceiling!", cries my grandmother wrenching her face from the two warring siblings lying on either side of her on the bed and staring straight up.
"Paatti tell us a story" say I.
"Yes, Paatti, tell us Ramayanam", says my sister knowing fully well how much I hate Ramayanam because Sita always gets abducted, and Rama always sends her back to the forest when she is pregnant, no matter how many times you hear it!
"No Paatti! Tell us Krishnan kadai (stories of Krishna)", because he is more fun and he does silly things and is never too snooty and pious.
"No Paatti, Raman kadai"
"No Paatti Krishan kadai!"
"Kokkolam ponnundo kolagathey? (Does the King's palace have as much gold as the crane)?" sings Patti, taking off on a complete tangent in Malayalam!
"PAAATTI! Don't sing", scream the sisters in unison, for once in accord with each other!
Paatti dissolves in a paroxysm of giggles, expecting exactly this reaction from her two annoying granddaughters. Completely ignoring our pleas, she continues singing until, despite ourselves, we are taken in by the song of the taunting crane and the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses King. One thing leads to another and before we know it we are lulled into sleep by a whole compendium of story-songs that are cunningly woven around important morals including don't fight with your sister!
Everything was an adventure and a curiosity to her. Even the squeaky white rubber elephant toy my mother bought for me. She affectionately named it Ayiravadham (Indra's steed) and told us a story about him. Then she promptly eviscerated him to see how it was that he managed to squeak every time he was squeezed! She was only mildly disappointed when she realized that she could not put him back together again. It was impossible for her to be put out for too long about anything.
She found humour in the most impossible of situations. She giggled uncontrollably even when she related how my grandfather, her husband, was imprisoned by the British colonialist for making free salt under the leadership of Gandhi. She found it so funny that the British could not put any of the women behind bars because they simply ran out of room in the jails. Listening to her you would think that the salt satyagraha was a big mela like the Ganesh Chaturthi and that the British were just some bumbling local policemen, ineffectively charging against an over zealous crowd of drunken revelers.
The only thing she liked more than smiling was singing and relating stories. Once when we were in Delhi, I caught her intently conversing with another woman her age. They were laughing, chatting, singing and vigorously agreeing with each other. Moving closer to them I discovered that while she was talking about Krishna, the other lady was talking about Durga. More importantly, one was talking in Tamil, the other was holding forth in Bengali and neither of them understood the others' language. It didn't matter much either, because they were both a bit hard of hearing! They each picked a word from the other's narrative and built their own from it! Truly. It was possible to be entertained without Facebook and the Internet, back then!
Oh yes, and flowers. She loved flowers. She was up at the crack of dawn plucking the five different jasmines or the mandarai or the arali (oleander) to make yards and yards of garlands that were used to garland all the pictures in the home, sported on every woman's head, donated to everyone in the block and then distributed in the temple!
In the final year of her life, even when she had lost her language completely, somewhere in her mind remained her love for flowers. She still managed to go out at the crack of dawn to gather her beloved flowers and bring them home. It was heart breaking to watch the person who could not be paid to stop talking become overcome with frustration at not being able to even articulate a single word to convey what she was thinking. By the time she departed, even her incoherent verbalizing had stopped and it was not clear if she understood anything at all. But she wove the fabric that is my childhood, there is almost no memory of my childhood that does not involve her in some way.
I had been meaning to write about her for a long time, but Kissan's Real Blogger Contest reminded me of it!
