Spring evenings, a balcony, and lockdown

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Glimpse of my balcony as I vegetate on the couch

Orange-gold flush of evening light against a slowly darkening indigo sky. Like tea swirling in my favorite navy blue ceramic mug.

These are days of the lockdown. Roads are (near) empty. Anxiety is palpable. Numbers and curves are scary. Touch is forbidden. Gloved. Masked. Wrinkled, dehydrated fingers. Dead people. Sick people. Hungry people. Jobless people. People away from home. It is too much to take in if I stop and think for a moment. About the enormity of this crisis.

Yet, for those of us privileged to have a roof and a job and access to food, the experience is surreal. Dream-like. Slow. Days blur into one another. The air is clearer. More stars are visible. Solitude is the new normal. A dream-like existence. In between. A familiar past and a very very different future. The world has changed. Is changing. The one we came from is not where we will return to. Friends call up more. Families talk more. Conversations are back. Long ones. Plants are tended to, leisurely. Cookbooks are recovered. So, are board games. Puzzles. Some days are for vegetating on the couch. ( Obscure) Movies are devoured. So are books. Reading and rereading. Consuming less- media, shopping ( what did I even use to buy?). Colours fascinate me. So do my partner’s every movement. Afternoon naps, with the blinds down, are a thing.

Routines have become vital. Drink water. Journal. Read. Chores. Rearrange wardrobe/ desk /sofa cushions/ bookshelf. Cook. Shower together. Breakfast. Work. Lunch. Paint. Lounge on the balcony. Water the plants. Go for a walk. Cuddle. Cook. Study/ webinar. Dinner. Read. Coffee. Maybe write. Netflix. Sleep. Wake up early. Or sleep in. Bake on weekends. Life as usual. But slower.

Apart from my beloved desk by the window, the tiny balcony has become vital for my existence. Mornings and evenings are spent here. Even if for a few minutes. Like coming out for the first gulp of air after a deep dive. My plants are here. And a curtain of vines from the apartment above. Also the spring breeze, the flowering trees, the stars and an occasional glimpse of other people. And yes, it is a space bathed in that magic light at dusk.

There was a thunderstorm tonight. A delight to watch from the balcony. But somewhere, not so far away, migrants are walking home.

Smorgasbord:Weekend Read, Orange Afternoons, Jethro Tull

My reading life covers a broad spectrum of fiction and negligible non-fiction that includes only biographies. I read purely for the joy of discovering new stories and newer insights, and the continual amazement of how words can be stringed together to evoke varied emotions. But i want to do a little more than flip pages to find the next twist in the tale; and want my reading to enhance and diversify my perspective of the world around me. I want to develop critical thinking and form sound opinions of my own rather than inanely agree to those of others. Not long ago it was a painful realization that i had only inserted ‘packaged opinions’ in my mind. Writing (or blogging) had changed that as I can gather and give some shape to my thoughts when I write them down. Despite the participation in numerous debates in school, I am unable to formulate convincing arguments and raise essential questions about the things I read and hear. So this weekend, two decades late into my reading life, I have picked up ‘How To Read A Book‘ by Mortimer J.Adler in the hope of getting more out of the books I read and increase my curiosity and understanding of a variety of topics.

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Nowadays, between four and six pm, the day takes on a warm orange hue. Outside my window, the leaves are yellowish-green and the warmth encompasses the red-brick houses too, converting their shabbiness into a rustic charm. The faces in the crowd has taken on the warm sheen of freshly baked biscuits. The sun lingers in the sky suffusing it with orange arteries and the impatient sliver of  a pale moon is already visible over the distant grove of trees. A pair of crows fly soundlessly, spiralling around the coconut tree adjacent to the window. Somewhere just beyond my field of vision the cuckoo melodiously leads a noisy lot of birds. I take in the unassuming and quiet beauty of this orange day; and you come in and reverberate in the sudden tranquillity of my thoughts.

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A friend, who knew my penchant for soulful and understated lyrics, had gifted me Jethro Tull CDs a few years ago, citing that they are lyrical gods whom I must hear. I wasn’t an immediate convert. But lying awake in the dark and still hours, the words and the flute grew on me. Here is one of my favorites:

‘Fire At Midnight’ by Jethro Tull

I believe in fires at midnight
When the dogs have all been fed.
A golden toddy on the mantle
A broken gun beneath the bed.
Silken mist outside the window.
Frogs and newts slip in the dark
Too much hurry ruins the body.
I’ll sit easy, fan the spark
Kindled by the dying embers
Of another working day.
Go upstairs, take off your makeup
Fold your clothes neatly away.
Me, I’ll sit and write this love song
As I all too seldom do
Build a little fire this midnight.
It’s good to be back home with you.

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Personalized Spring

I am aware that the first day of spring is seldom the first spring day; the sky is overcast with dull grey clouds, and if not for a lone cuckoo’s call one can almost call it early winter or the late monsoon. Yet when I woke up this morning I couldn’t help the anticipation of something serendipitous around the corner on this first day of spring. Not long ago I was told that I manufacture reality without any basis, and maybe today’s anticipation was a classic example of it. Maybe most of my hopes, dreams and yearnings would thrive only in the world of wishful thinking and never in the real world. This uncomfortable realization is not the serendipitous thing I wanted to happen today. So much for the joy of spring! 

But I have a weird problem. No matter how many skies fall I can’t sustain an appropriately gloomy mood for long. It was only the anticipation anxiety that troubled me in the past, but a depressed mood rarely lasted beyond a few hours. I always find something to occupy myself and create my own happiness; a task I had mastered since childhood.

So, when the day started going downhill with unexpected skirmishes and stubborn memories crowding my mind, I knew I had to salvage it myself. As night fell, the dull grey clouds finally started pouring out the first shower of spring, and I stuffed my sneakers into a bag and headed for the Pilates class after a month’s hiatus. After an hour of challenging previous limits of elasticity and flexibility, the mind was unable to focus on anything apart from a violent tachycardia, which was followed by laughter and the conversations that varied from mountain treks to (one-at-a-time, because it is so expensive) butt implants! The rush of endorphins returned the spring into my day.

The street outside was wet and gleaming, bouncing off the red and orange glows of the vehicles that plied on it. The night sky was a bewitching indigo and the dark silhouettes of trees swayed in the brisk wind. The rain continued. My favourite dishes were prepared for dinner (minuscule serendipity?). I have turned off the music tonight, I want to go on hearing the rain through the open window. I’m in bed now, snug under the covers, and a new book, The World According To Garp, lies next to my pillow. I can no longer recall the gloominess I felt earlier in the day, or be tormented by worthless thoughts.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened, no serendipities, and the day would end in a few minutes. I dug out my own spring on a day devoid of sunshine and cherry blossoms; instead it had a wild wind, ceaseless rain, occasional thunder, a new book, some camaraderie, good exercise and good (small portions of) food. I may “manufacture realities without basis” and look for happiness in the oddest and simplest of things, but it turns out quite well for me!

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Reading In Bed When Cold Rains Killed The Spring

“When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”

–Ernest Hemingway (A Movable Feast)

The bright spring morning and the promises it held was a deception; and as I bent over the sink washing my face and trying to rub off a pillow imprint, I could hear the first drops of rain. The sky was overcast with dark clouds; blotting out the sun and it’s tinseled rays, that had entered my window at dawn and had spread so unabashedly over my bed as I tried to hold on to the last remnants of sleep. As the downpour grew steadily, I looked longingly at my bed, overwhelmed by a strong desire to climb back into it, snug under a quilt and a book in hand. The human brain makes innumerable connections, and a certain stimuli can bring about the need to re-create a pleasurable ambience from the past. Rain for me meant being in bed with a book.

My earlier disappointment at a cloudy day ebbed off as I eyed my books, running my fingers over the spines that had seen better days and careful owners. I had picked up these books last winter, squatting on a footpath and haggling over prices while precariously balancing a dozen books on my hands. And now I stared at these dozen new books, trying to decide on a good volume of short stories. I’d started reading Hemingway’s ‘A Movable Feast’ yesterday, but today’s a ‘cloudy’ spring day, and I want to read short stories, and will get back to Hemingway when the sun comes out. I tried to recall the passage I had read before drifting off to sleep last night; about hunger making the senses grow stronger, as pictures seem clearer and writing more vibrant. I was yet to have breakfast, and my mind was quick to paint the picture of a foamy cup of coffee and homemade vanilla cake while leafing through the familiar writing of a favorite author.

The rain drummed on against the windowpane and the tin roof of the old shed next to my room. It was early morning, but it looked like dusk, as a bland grey suffused through the sky, the horizon, the trees, the buildings, and the silhouettes of people with raincoats and umbrellas. I turned back to my bookshelf where short stories of Chekov, Maupassant, O. Henry, Saki, D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Tagore and even Murakami vied for my attention; and Maupassant won. I took the fat, purple volume with the now yellowed pages and extremely small print, as I remembered the first time I had read Maupassant. It was a story called ‘Love’, about the love of a wild bird for its mate that had been shot dead. I was ten, and I remember the teacher squinting as he read out the lines, “I’m a simple man with simple tastes”, and he paused for a while and then looked so contented with himself, as if he were the inspiration behind these lines.

So the foamy coffee and two slices of vanilla cake and the stories of Maupassant and a warm bed and the rain with occasional thunderbolts, created my happiness on a cloudy spring morning. 

And as the sun came out, I went to gym, showered, studied for an exam, and crossed items off a ‘to-do’ list and at midnight returned to Hemingway, Shakespeare and Company and writing in 1920s Parisian cafes.

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Mornings

A watchman’s whistle clocks four,

I wake up on the familiar cue;

Flickers of consciousness stream in:

A dark room, the whirr of the fan,

A soft pillow, a book underneath,

The comfort of knowing-I’m Me.

Like a monk, reveling in solitude,

I sit at my desk, my nest;

Wrapped in an old, powdery quilt.

Impatient thoughts spill over,

A page fills, and then another,

In the light of a yellow lamp.

An hour passes, the ink dries;

I sit on the window ledge,

Damp from last night’s rain.

The first light enters my room,

A Monet Sky, A Van Gogh sky,

Crimson arteries of the sun.

The petrichor seduces, I give in;

Gypsy toes wriggle into shoes,

Steps into the mellow morning.

A dewy blanket leaks sunshine,

Breeze, birds, feet on cobbled path:

The dawn chorus greets me.

Mossy tree trunks, bamboo thicket,

A lazy dog, birds on electric wires,

Ripples of a pebble on a pond,

A leafy canopy sheltering anthills;

I watch  them as legs defy fatigue,

A meditative stride, a content mind.

I live from morning to morning,

Waking up to the delights of spring,

Where happiness is a bougainvillea.

The world awakes, solitude threatened;

And I walk on the road to home,

Coffee and conversations await me.

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