A tale of three afternoons
Dear Mrs Kamala Das,
We are destined to meet in words, you and me! Be it our shared lingual franchise, our roots, the ruminations of the society we have inherited, the philosophies we grope around with in our lives or quite simply our gender even. I came to know you on a sunny little humid afternoon as I worked out my laziness at an aunt’s house in the very Malabar you grew up in and made eternal through your words.
I began reading a manuscript of Indian poets. It began with your poem. It spoke of your fatal seduction by your husband. Within minutes we were on an intimate journey, you and I. To say the least, I was first alarmed and quickly piqued at how as a 20 year old I could sense your sense of detachment yet ardour of your complaint on what should be ‘conjugal bliss’. I moved on pleasantly to explore Jayant Mohapatra and Nizim Ezekial, whom I thought quite impressive in his metre as well. I must say that I held together in a couple of typed photocopied notes; some of India’s finest contemporary writers. And Madam you did make an impression on me.
That was years back, but the memory lingers. Today you have played a vital role in how I connect with my mother. Years back, as a child I had written an essay for an essay competition on ‘My mother’. A typical classroom exercise that exacts from students studied answers, socially well meaning and clichéd concepts in repetitive stanzas that would fetch you a grade or two in class. Commonly cows or homes or holidays were conjoined with a possessive noun by an elementary school teacher and plied on generations of students with generous bouts of boredom.
On such a day, I was suddenly very keyed up by the prospect of writing about my mother. I mean I was like other kids, thinking of my mother in much the same terms. The one who cooks, cleans, looks after me when I’m ill and who scolds me for not eating my tiffin and such. But here the opportunity presented itself, and it called on me not to trivialize the entity yet democratize the latent persona within. Albeit thinking of one’s mother was a gamine enough exercise but writing about her was uplifting her from the pits of the mundane pool we all dump mothers in.
So it transpired that I turned the exercise on its head and put my mother in a place that was rock solid. Nor did I write her off in the pits of her mundane role or apply to her hyped caregiver status but wrote about her as a school of thought with her reality. As a middle class, working woman with a strong mind, a dexterous personality yet weaknesses even she wasn’t aware of. I felt good writing her up. By writing her, I had conquered her once more not as a daughter but as a writer and this time she was mine with ‘a possessive noun’.
I came from school, befriending a different personality than the one that greeted me at home behind a litany of chores and instructive facade. I got a third prize no lessin the essay competition, though my mother who got the copy of it thought it worthy to merit first place. It was perhaps the second time in my life that perhaps I was to hear halting praise from her unyielding mouth.
But there you have it! Two afternoons twisted and squeezed for their worth by words like lemons. A lemonade flavor attributed to those afternoons. Today I finished reading your book ‘My story’ just like my mother had many years back. Our sharing notes on you, was akin to us discussing a neighbour we both knew intimately. You occupied our mind’s balcony with the fortitude and honesty of your pen. In a way your words have linked us back as two readers in a preordained bond.
I’ll be darned if someday I don’t come right upto heaven or hell to meet you, or both.
Madam Das, how can you so well apply your life to like and seal them with dots and dashes on paper? How do you manage to write poetry that stirs odd locks in the mind and unlocks one’s senses? How can you make our gender so seamless with your life that we can claim so much of it viciously as if our own? At the same time, how can your story be so unwittingly yours that we get under your skin within minutes of reading what you wrote? How do you create disparate yet whole identities with experiences and stimuli you bespoke of in the book, that is sometimes plenty of us yet many more of us? How is it that my story perhaps begins with your story?
Today I take a leaf from your book. Henceforth I shall have brief flings with the writer in me. I shall meet her often and chat. And sometimes even mention you in the passing.
I think you will like that Mrs Das.
Let the stories begin!
Regards,
Impressionably yours,
We are destined to meet in words, you and me! Be it our shared lingual franchise, our roots, the ruminations of the society we have inherited, the philosophies we grope around with in our lives or quite simply our gender even. I came to know you on a sunny little humid afternoon as I worked out my laziness at an aunt’s house in the very Malabar you grew up in and made eternal through your words.
I began reading a manuscript of Indian poets. It began with your poem. It spoke of your fatal seduction by your husband. Within minutes we were on an intimate journey, you and I. To say the least, I was first alarmed and quickly piqued at how as a 20 year old I could sense your sense of detachment yet ardour of your complaint on what should be ‘conjugal bliss’. I moved on pleasantly to explore Jayant Mohapatra and Nizim Ezekial, whom I thought quite impressive in his metre as well. I must say that I held together in a couple of typed photocopied notes; some of India’s finest contemporary writers. And Madam you did make an impression on me.
That was years back, but the memory lingers. Today you have played a vital role in how I connect with my mother. Years back, as a child I had written an essay for an essay competition on ‘My mother’. A typical classroom exercise that exacts from students studied answers, socially well meaning and clichéd concepts in repetitive stanzas that would fetch you a grade or two in class. Commonly cows or homes or holidays were conjoined with a possessive noun by an elementary school teacher and plied on generations of students with generous bouts of boredom.
On such a day, I was suddenly very keyed up by the prospect of writing about my mother. I mean I was like other kids, thinking of my mother in much the same terms. The one who cooks, cleans, looks after me when I’m ill and who scolds me for not eating my tiffin and such. But here the opportunity presented itself, and it called on me not to trivialize the entity yet democratize the latent persona within. Albeit thinking of one’s mother was a gamine enough exercise but writing about her was uplifting her from the pits of the mundane pool we all dump mothers in.
So it transpired that I turned the exercise on its head and put my mother in a place that was rock solid. Nor did I write her off in the pits of her mundane role or apply to her hyped caregiver status but wrote about her as a school of thought with her reality. As a middle class, working woman with a strong mind, a dexterous personality yet weaknesses even she wasn’t aware of. I felt good writing her up. By writing her, I had conquered her once more not as a daughter but as a writer and this time she was mine with ‘a possessive noun’.
I came from school, befriending a different personality than the one that greeted me at home behind a litany of chores and instructive facade. I got a third prize no lessin the essay competition, though my mother who got the copy of it thought it worthy to merit first place. It was perhaps the second time in my life that perhaps I was to hear halting praise from her unyielding mouth.
But there you have it! Two afternoons twisted and squeezed for their worth by words like lemons. A lemonade flavor attributed to those afternoons. Today I finished reading your book ‘My story’ just like my mother had many years back. Our sharing notes on you, was akin to us discussing a neighbour we both knew intimately. You occupied our mind’s balcony with the fortitude and honesty of your pen. In a way your words have linked us back as two readers in a preordained bond.
I’ll be darned if someday I don’t come right upto heaven or hell to meet you, or both.
Madam Das, how can you so well apply your life to like and seal them with dots and dashes on paper? How do you manage to write poetry that stirs odd locks in the mind and unlocks one’s senses? How can you make our gender so seamless with your life that we can claim so much of it viciously as if our own? At the same time, how can your story be so unwittingly yours that we get under your skin within minutes of reading what you wrote? How do you create disparate yet whole identities with experiences and stimuli you bespoke of in the book, that is sometimes plenty of us yet many more of us? How is it that my story perhaps begins with your story?
Today I take a leaf from your book. Henceforth I shall have brief flings with the writer in me. I shall meet her often and chat. And sometimes even mention you in the passing.
I think you will like that Mrs Das.
Let the stories begin!
Regards,
Impressionably yours,
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