Your Art
I was 4; I loved scribbling and making stick figures in
notebooks. I could draw the sun and stars, daisies and apples
too. My tools were pencils and paper, but thanks to you, I knew
of the astonishing world of easels, oil paints, brushes and
palettes. Never did I miss a chance to watch you as you worked
for hours on a stretch, etching new realities on canvas, making
bizarre shapes in outrageous colors, sometimes giant flowers
too. I would stare at your brushwork to derive meaning out of
it, my mind soaring in a million directions. Time has sped since,
but all it takes is visits to museums to conjure memories of
your art, colors rioting in my mind, the smell of turpentine
flying in to drench my senses, a zillion unanswered questions
cascading me towards exorbitant possibilities. In introducing
me to art, you introduced me to myself.
Her Mango Stew
The kitchen window opened to a young mango tree; it would
burst into yellow flowers in the spring. Come summer, the
blooms would make way for glittering green mangoes. Every
so often, I would pluck a couple and she would cook them into
stew, the aroma of jaggery and roasted cumin infusing the
enclaves of my childhood. Barely would she have pulled the
sauce pan off the fire that the two of us would pour ourselves
heaping bowlfuls of the stew, gulping it down ecstatically with
toast, glazed mango slivers melting in our mouths, euphoria
seeping our senses. Many years have flown since then, the
house is lost, she is dead, her mango stew a perennial
reminder of all things fleeting - summer, childhood, human bonds.
When Grandma called the Old Tailor In
When Grandma called the old tailor in, he took everyone’s
measurements and got working in the verandah. Day after day
after day for two weeks, he stitched clothes for the
family, the clunking of the sewing machine slipping from the verandah to
resonate through the house.
He was focused and diligent, seldom did he talk. When he did,
his words were clever. Succinctly, he’d offer insights on careers
and marriages, family feuds and bonds, success and failure, life
and death. I was in my teens, precarious and perceptive; I
drank it all in - his wisecracks and anecdotes, old sayings and
grim jokes.To this day, they sit lodged in my mind, springing
from the blue to counsel, console, encourage and inspire.
Grandma, did you ever know that when you called the old
tailor in, a messiah walked in to aid me through life.
Oh for those Boy Bands
If I could revert to seventeen, I know exactly what I’d
do - I’d take a gap year from school, travel back and forth in time,
following boy bands around. From Beatles to One Direction,
Rolling Stones to Eagles to Coldplay, I’d jump right into their
space, mind and millennia, tap into their rhythm and energy,
drink in those high notes, dance my way into the cosmos. And
yes, I'd tell Niall Horan that he really is fantastical - singer,
songwriter, hunk and that I’d wait forever for him to tweet me
back because a tweet is a sliver of reality in the metaphysics of
music where sounds shimmer like moonbeams
and symphonies swirl in stardust, illusions rising, colliding,
dispersing, melodies swaying past Jupiter and Neptune, boy
bands sustaining through cycles of moon and dust, more real
than quantum mechanics. Oh for those boy bands!
(Simrita Dhir is a California based academic and novelist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel “The Rainbow Acres”.)
