Sisters

We are four, and I am the eldest - of all girls.  My parents were trying to have a boy.

I am told that I was once asked how many sisters I had, and I had responded " Many".

Recently however I have come to realise that this "many" is just exactly right; each has played a distinct and an important role in nurturing different facets of my human growth - by teaching me grace and compassion; by deepening and widening my reverence for art and beauty; and in challenging the frontiers of my intellect - respectively and combinedly.

I have always appreciated my sisters, and love them dearly. Now, I also know I owe them.  Even one less would have left me - less.

Footsteps

We were in France then - when I heard the footsteps first. We lived in a tiny apartment on the top floor of student housing - in a large sprawling university campus. It was about two weeks since we had arrived and we were more or less settled in our temporary home. We went to bed around 11pm - and it must have been a couple of hours after that. I was still awake, still trying the various relaxation techniques of an insomniac, slow breathing, accu-pressure points, counting sheep, when I heard footsteps above, walking the length of corridor, climb down a flight of stairs and come down our corridor. They approached with a firm step towards our apartment - and stopped. There was an ominous silence of a presence, right outside, at the doorstep  - waiting. I stopped breathing - eyes wide awake - frozen in terror, in the freezing room. He slept quietly and peacefully - within touching distance. I stared at him, trying to calm down, and don't remember when I fell asleep. Next morning I laughed off my silly fears, blaming it on my overactive imagination.

I remember that day well - it was cold, and brilliant. I went for a walk, spoke to family back home and painted. It was a good day. The disquiet began even as evening approached. Darkness spread outside and within. I told him about last night and was hugged and reassured - maybe someone was just walking past to their own apartment? and decided to walk quietly, to not disturb people? I gratefully accepted the explanation. In bed, I clutched on to his hand and decided to be good and get a whole night's sleep. Surprisingly I fell asleep, fairly soon.

I woke up - completely alert - with someone knocking in my head. The footsteps were slowly climbing down the long flight of stairs and making their way down our corridor. It was a little after 1 am. I quickly covered my head with a quilt and lay wide eyed in inky black blindness, covered with a thin film of sweat.  The footsteps approached firmly and assuredly to our door and stopped. The suspense became finally unbearable. I softly shook him and whispered "someone is outside. Being used to my theatrics, he woke up and went to take a look. There was no one outside. I felt foolish at disturbing him and held on to his hand and finally managed sleep.

After that I decided to not to wake him up. The footsteps however continued - till we left the place.

I had always prided myself on being a rationalist - but our floor had no flights of steps going up and there was no upstairs.

First Impressions:Images from Metz

First Impressions from France

We are on our way to Metz, France. At the Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, we have a four hour layover:
I sit - a speck in a giant and mobile patchwork quilt - of fractured people and voices. Vaccuous silent bands mark inviolable spaces dividing people of different colors, races, language, culture, religion and style; it is a study of high contrasts, and separations, lacking an artist's touch of synthesis to create a vibrating and a living, whole.

It is Sunday. Everything is closed in Metz:
We are on a deserted planet - with wide empty roads, an occasional racing car, bus or an unbearable  rearing motorcycle. We walk closer together, than we have done since our youth, bonded by our strange mooring in this silent, sterile and non-peopled world.

Nature, on the other hand, revels in our enchantment and blooms, many thousand times over. Leaves hint at crimson and gold, swans glide, and a hundred birds take off in chorused flight - just for us.  We are hungry on only chocolate bars, coffee and pastry. Would die to have sambhar-rice. I buy an extravagant potted plant - purple-black Calle lilies now bloom in our tiny and barren studio apartment. I sleep hungry, but with a smile......... 1 Sept 2013........

After a First Week:

The population of Metz is 2 lakh. We have seen people now. Most smile and say "bonjour" without making eye contact. Restaurants and beauty parlors abound - including parlors for kids, and pets. I must say that people are really interesting to look at; everyone is so interested in practicing a personal style - from the ultra sophisticated and refined, to really weird and funky. People do seem to care very much about how they look, to others, and that makes them interesting to watch. Yesterday, we sat eating pizza with a rose wine, at a sidewalk pizzeria and watched people. We might be the only boring ones in this city. Today, I have kohled my eyes jet black and no longer feel a drab sparrow.

One could never successfully have such street side cafes in US, but one could in India.
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I was stopped on two consecutive days by security and asked to open up my bags..I try to not feel bad. Their racial prejudice is part of their job and profiling it requires of them. Yet, I consider that I do not look like a thief or even needy, by most standards. Maybe because I am so thin...? and not because I am brown? Clive used to laugh and say I looked like a famine victim from Africa.

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I enjoy wandering by myself. Have a sense of their land shape, soil color and texture, the unexpected dense copses of trees with dark mystery, the deeply interesting and forgotten cemetery with ancient gravestones, stained glass, ivy and flowers. In a over-organised layout, I search for dirt roads and shortcuts, sniff out abandoned cottage and still blooming poppies in mowed fields. I search under trees for sweet plums warmed by the sun - and pop them into my mouth, unwashed..ambrosia! Pears weigh down heavily and knock my head; orchards are filled with apples that no one wants.
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I am tired of all things complex and human...and "too much mind".  Visited the Pompidou Museum for Contemporary Arts...seems like so much thinking and analyses of all human processes. All the western psycho-analyses seem to be mere fabrications of bored minds - and then others analysing the original analyses, and so on...really, societies with too much time and too little to do - a veritable devils workshop. All this thinking, and still they continue to wage wars on real human beings, based on duplicity, lies and for profit and power. What has all this thinking really taught anyone?

I sit meditating on "No Mind"                      ............9 Sept 2013