Posts Tagged ‘fiction’
Exploring my mother’s memory
My mom is an exceptional story teller. Lately, we have been talking about her childhood, a time that winds the clock back by 70 years. Even today, Bengal is landmass interlaced with extensive inland water bodies and river networks. In her days, access to some of these lands was by boats alone. And when you landed, your options were to walk or get on a palanquin. It wasn’t uncommon for her to accompany her mother or grandmother in a palanquin or walk 10-12 km to get to the destination.
Before this story, I had associated palanquins with rich people of bygone days or a ceremonial affair. But in my mom’s case, it was neither. It was just necessity, a mode of transportation in absence of any other. Sarojini Naidu’s famous poem, Palanquin Bearers, is about a bride being carried in the palanquin and the bride is described as delicate and light to carry “She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream“. My mom’s mother and grandmother were both petite and light women. But mom remembers that the bearers would get tired and rest up occasionally. Sarojini Naidu further describes that the bearers sing while they carry the bride “Gaily, o gaily, we glide and we sing“. Mom remembers their vocalization as rhythmic grunting.
Read the rest of this entry »If I were a potter
I have always imagined myself to be a potter.
Couple decades ago, I had access to a wheel on and off for a few years. It turned out that I could only ever make heavy bottom pottery. By that I don’t mean pear shaped, I mean clay that lays heavy at the bottom of the pot. And my lump of clay was the master of me. If I wanted the clay to turn into a vase, it would turn into a bowl. When I wanted a bowl, it would want to be a mug. At first it was frustrating, then it became amusing. How often do you get your life lessons on the wheel? Failure on the potter’s wheel was my first experience with failure. Up until that time, I had assume that practice makes one perfect. No, no, no…. Practice is just that, at best, it is a form of meditation. Eventually this protagonist learned that she is good at a couple of things and bad at a very large number of things. She is good at not letting failure come in the way of passion. She also has a great imagination that is not limited by reality.
In that imagination, I own a studio in the Napa valley.
Locomotoring 