"X. Hard Against the Soul"

Then it is this simple. I felt the unordinary romance of
women who love women for the first time. It burst in
my mouth. Someone said this is your first lover, you
will never want to leave her. I had it in mind that I
would be an old woman with you. But perhaps I
always had it in mind to simply be an old woman,
then, I decided it was you when you found me in that
apartment drinking whiskey for breakfast. When I came
back from Grenada and went crazy for two years, that
time when I could hear anything and my skin was
flaming like a nerve and the walls were like paper
and my eyes could not close. I suddenly sensed you
at the end of my room waiting. I saw your back arched
against this city we inhabit like guerillas, I brushed my
hand, conscious, against your soft belly, waking up.

~Dionne Brand

"I Want to Hold Your Hand"

This is exactly how I fall in love:

"cycle"

when i'm awake, i never
want to
sleep;
when i'm asleep, i
never want to
wake

First Snow

For Azermi: "Superbly Situated"

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve

-- Robert Herson, “Superbly Situated” from How to Ride on the Woodlawn Express.

Metro music -- Paris

Singers on the Paris metro: here and here

Two Firsts

Two firsts this week:

1. First live concert in Europe!

The train ride on the way there was most entertaining because the Heineken Music Hall is right next to the arena where a match between Ajax and Real Madrid was being played. So the metro was filled with loud, happy Dutch men screaming. I didn't get to take my camera in, so I used my phone to take this video :)
I realized I'm more obsessed with documenting than I am with enjoying. I think it's because I want everyone at home (yes, you and you and you) to experience EVERYTHING I am experiencing. I miss everyone so much.

2. A Thanksgiving dinner in K-Straat!
Although I didn't really go for the dinner because I was pretending to study, I crashed the after dinner clear-up and ate some yummy pumpkin pie and drank some gluvine. I also heard what everyone thinks of Christmas :) Same as we at home think about Diwali -- it's a community festival more than a religious one. But it was nice to hear about how Christmas is spent in Australia and Canada and America and Croatia :)

"Living with a Killer"

i live with a killer
she walks around
pretending
like nothing really happened
like it was out of her control
and there was nothing more she could
do to
save him

if only she were less selfish
things could have been different
he could have seen her grow
from a girl to a woman to a mother

she sees him in trees
she sees him in the sky
she hears his voice through walls
and she chases him in her dreams

and there are days
when she's gutted
hopelessly torn
and i watch her and wonder
it's tough living with a killer

for stars will rise again

if someone could fall in love with someone else through a blog, i'd fall in love with her.

crow feet

by bednij -- from two of my favourite blogs on the same day

"Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72"

May there be an afterlife.

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.

May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles jump
to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to man-
hood as he chops you down.

And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be soon,
since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the Valhalla
he deserves.
May you—bleeding, broken—drag yourself upright.

May you think the worst is over;
You've survived, and may still win.

Then may the door open once more, and let me in.

~Charles Harper Webb

"Stop Crying Your Heart Out"

"Autumn"

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

~Ranier Maria Rilke (trans Bly)

Six Things to Know about DSLRs

Paris!

Was so nice to see Anchit again and be in Paris!



For descriptions, you can see the facebook album

"Verdriet"

November 2 was All Soul's Day in the Netherlands.
There's an old cemetery behind my building and we heard some singing and decided to go.

The whole cemetery was lit up with candles and you had groups of Dutch people singing around campfires around the cemetery. When we entered, they gave us each a poem and a small electric (but pretty) candle.

This was the poem I got. One group was just sitting around reading the poems as people passed by.
Another was chanting the names of the dead (you could write it and give it to them). "Johny" sounded so nice when sung. I hope he heard :) They also gave us some awesome gluvine.

You could also write a wish and hang it on this big beautiful tree.

"Verdriet" (translation below)

Huilen is een van onze
vele wonderbaarlijke
ingebouwde
genezingsmechanismen

Als we de kracht
en moed hebben
om onszelf met onze emoties
te confronteren
en ze als een deel
van ons zelf te zien
dan kunnen we
onze onverwerkte zaken verwerken
en een voller
en gelukkiger
leven leiden

Een mens is pas in staat
om werkelijk hulp te geven
als zijn opgedroogd
en de storm
van zijn woede
is gaan liggen

"Grief"
(loosely translated)

Crying is one of our
many wonderful
inbuilt
healing mechanisms

If we force ourselves
to have courage
and confront
our emotions
and as a part
of seeing ourselves
we can
move on
to a fuller
and happier
life

Man is able
to really offer help
once his tears have dried
and the storm
--his anger--
has settled

"462-0614"

I get many phonecalls now.
They are all alike.
"are you Charles Bukowski,
the writer?"
"yes," I tell them.
and they tell me
that they understand my
writing,
and some of them are writers
or want to be writers
and they have dull and
horrible jobs
and they can't face the room
the apartment
the walls
that night --
they want somebody to talk
to,
and they can't believe
that I can't help them
that I don't know the words.
they can't believe
that often now
I double up in my room
grab my gut
and say
"Jesus Jesus Jesus, not
again!"
they can't believe
that the loveless people
the streets
the loneliness
the walls
are mine too.
and when I hang up the phone
they think I have held back my
secret.

I don't write out of
knowledge.
when the phone rings
I too would like to hear words
that might ease
some of this.

that's why my number's
listed.

~Charles Bukowski

"Eclipse"

I don't know why
they get so excited
about eclipses
eclipses happen
every day
depending on where
in the universe
you are sitting

Translation of Letter from IND

I received the letter to pick up my residence permit today and it's all in Dutch!
Here is the translation for reference:

Dear Sir / Madam,

Here we inform you that your residence permit has been received.
You can pick it up from the following address

Het IND Rijswik, Sir Winston Churchillaan 293, Rijswijk

We are open Monday to Friday, from 09.00 to 16.00 hours.

Who will the residence permit be issued to?
This document should be personally picked up. A legal representative should accompany minors.

What papers should you bring?
- This letter
- Your passport
- If applicable, the previously issued residence document or police report if the document has been reported missing.

Finally, you have only two months after the date of this letter to collect your residence permit.

Sincerely,
de Staatssecretarus van Justitie
on behalf of
The head of the Immigratie -en Naturalisatiedienst (Immigration and Naturalisation Service; IND)

Astronomy so far

Astronomy so far has been nothing what I expected it to be.
No looking through (optical) telescopes. No lying on the grass in some isolated area of Europe.
Not so far at least.

At first I was completely bummed and thought -- what the fuck have I got myself into, but then I decided to change my attitude and learn.

So I've spent the last two months learning really interesting things (and I complete two months today!):
I've learnt calculus -- never really knew it in all those years of college
I've taken a course on interferometry -- so I'm learning how all these giant telescopes are built. And as my prof. says all of interferometry is physics. Really brilliant shit.
I learnt that when a wave (in the ocean) moves, it's not the actual particle that's moving, but it's the energy.
I learnt that everything is energy and everything is light.
I learnt about the brilliance of the electromagnetic spectrum.
I learnt that astronomical images are not pictures, but they are data on flux and energy and some guy sits and assigns colors to make a pretty picture
I watched each and every video that's a part of the Cassiopeia Project and felt inspired once again to make science simple
I've taken a course on the origin and evolution of the universe and am learning about all the mathematics that went on in the first three minutes -- and think it's all so unreal
I learnt about how frivolous science can really be and why it's so important that more people question everything that scientists come up with
In my course on radio astronomy, I actually handled raw data to create basic images
I learnt that I could never be a researcher
I learnt that I could be a good educator. And I've come one step closer to what I want to do when I go back to India
I learnt that the universe is only 14 billion years old. Seems young right?
I learnt about so many more coordinate systems -- like how the earth rotates around the sun and the sun rotates around the galactic center and that we are actually "moving" at speeds of 10,000 km per hour if we count all the rotating around everything.
I learnt that age is a mindset. It really is.
I learnt that being Indian now is in my blood. It's in my pre-conditioning and I never want to change that.
I learnt that linux is an awesome OS and said bye bye to Vista

Netherlands on the other hand has been much more than I expected (and the pictures speak for themselves :)

Pre-history

Today I attended a lecture "The Prehistory of War and Peace: When, Why, and How Did War Begin" which is a part of a lecture series on "Aggression and Peacemaking in an Evolutionary Context" which is being held at the Lorentz Center, which is part of my university.

This panel discussion was a mixture of anthropology, primatology, and psychology of war. Not so much focusing on the politics of it all. So I liked it.

One interesting point of debate was how do you identify if war is in our pre-history, if we can't find evidence. So one speaker said something quite nice "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." So we can't know -- we can only make theories.

Another guy did a study on the correlation between population density and the incidence of war among hunting-gathering tribes. Surprisingly, there was no direct correlation, but he did find a correlation between incidence of war and a new variable called "population pressure". He defined population pressure as a demand and supply relationship vs. population density. For example, if a particular region had a growing season of only five months, then the people of that region are more likely to suffer a food shortage and hence start fighting.

A third guy asked us to close our eyes and imagine that we were a soldier at Auschwitz, hacking away at some poor women and children. And to imagine the act of hacking and then to imagine the blood. Certainly, most of us find the thought appalling. So if we find such thoughts so revolting, then how could another do it.

Psychological studies show that most of us are ambivalent and it's the triggers and society that controls us. A 1999 study in a journal Military Review showed that a major's job was to find just 5% of the platoon who are ready to kill, and the rest would just need to kill to defend themselves (which is somehow more justifiable).

And today, most of us have evolved inhibitions towards aggression.
There were arguments both for and against aggression being in our genes.

I liked one argument on if there were no males, then there would be no "dominance drive", and there would be no war :) But if there were no males, there would be no mankind -- shucks!

My favorite musing in the talk was go back to the point in our evolution when our thoughts found a language. And we were able to think about our thoughts. That's a turning point we don't really think about too much. And I try to think now, if I weren't thinking in words, what would I be thinking in.

You can find the names of the speakers here.

Antwerp (October 2010)

"In the stump of the old tree..."

In the stump of the old tree, where the heart has rotted out, there is a hole the length of a man's arm, and a dank pool at the bottom of it where the rain gathers, and the old leaves turn into lacy skeletons. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees, where the hearts have rotted out, there are holes the length of a man's arm, and dank pools at the bottom where the rain gathers and old leaves turn to lace, and the beak of a dead bird gapes like a trap. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees with rotten hearts, where the rain gathers and the laced leaves and the dead bird like a trap, there are holes the length of a man's arm, and in every crevice of the rotten wood grow weasel's eyes like molluscs, their lids open and shut with the tide. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees where the rain gathers and the trapped leaves and the beak and the laced weasel's eyes, there are holes the length of a man's arm, and at the bottom a sodden bible written in the language of rooks. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are holes the length of a man's arm where the weasels are trapped and the letters of the rook language are laced on the sodden leaves, and at the bottom there is a man's arm. But do not put your hand down to see, because

in the stumps of old trees where the hearts have rotted out there are deep holes and dank pools where the rain gathers, and if you ever put your hand down to see, you can wipe it in the sharp grass till it bleeds, but you'll never want to eat with it again.

~Hugh Sykes-Davies

"Lights in the Sky"

"more or less"

The problem of more or less
I'd like to have more of you with me
And less of me without you

"Rainbows"

I already met you
You already stole my heart
And willingly gave me yours
I'm coming for you
Open heart and broken heart

Leiden Ontzet

Crazy three-day festival in Leiden to celebrate the Relief of Leiden!

with one hand waving free

Radha freewheeling in the courtyard ;)

merry

Girl in Window

"How To Be a Poet"

(to remind myself)

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

~Wendell Berry

in holland #2

"Lines"

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

~Martha Collins

"Stations"

Some women love
to wait
for life for a ring
in the June light for a touch
of the sun to heal them for another
woman's voice to make them whole
to untie their hands
put words in their mouths
form to their passages sound
to their screams for some other sleeper
to remember their future their past.

Some women wait for the right
train in the wrong station
in the alleys of morning
for the noon to holler
the night come down.

Some women wait for love
to rise up
the child of their promise
to gather from earth
what they do not plant
to claim pain for labor
to become
the tip of an arrow to aim
at the heart of now
but it never stays.

Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcome
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted
to visit
to be repeated.

Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something
to change and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves.

~Audrey Lorde

"Sham"

shaam bhi koi jese hai nadi, lehr lehr jese beh rahi hai
koi an-kahi, koi an-suni, baat dheeme dheeme keh rahi hai
kahin na kahin jaagi huwi hai koi aarzu
kahin na kahin khoey huwe se hain main aur tu

ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain khamosh donon
ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain madhosh donon
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen
jo kehti sunti hain yeh nigaahain
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen, hai naa?

suhaani suhaani hai yeh kahaani, jo khaamoshi sunaati hai
jise tu ne chaaha, hoga woh tera, mujhe woh yeh bataati hai
main magan hun, par na jaanun, kab aane wala hai woh pal
haule haule dheere dheere khile ga dil kahin to

ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain khamosh donon
ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain madhosh donon
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen
jo kehti sunti hain yeh nigaahain
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen, hai naa?


yeh kesa same hai, kesa samaan hai, ke shaam hai bigar rahi
yeh sab kuch haseen hai, sab kuch jawaan hai, hai zindagi machal rahi
jagmagaati jhilmilaati palak palak pe khuwaab hai
sun yeh hawaaen gungunaaen jo geet laajawaab hai

ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain khamosh donon
ke boom boom boom ta ra ta ra, hain madhosh donon
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen
jo kehti sunti hain yeh nigaahain
jo gumsum gumsum hai yeh fizaen, hai naa?

~Amit Trivedi, Nikhil D'Souza (for Aisha)

From "The Castle"

“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”

~Franz Kafka

"Something Good"

[Maria:]
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somwhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth

For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

[Captain:]
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should

[Maria:]
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

[Maria and the Captain:]
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could

[Maria:]
So somewhere in my youth
[Captain:]
Or childhood

[Maria:]
I must have done something . . .

[Maria and the Captain:]
Something good

"Eating Together"

I know my friend is going,
though she still sits there
across from me in the restaurant,
and leans over the table to dip
her bread in the oil on my plate; I know
how thick her hair used to be,
and what it takes for her to discard
her man's cap partway through our meal,
to look straight at the young waiter
and smile when he asks
how we are liking it. She eats
as though starving—chicken, dolmata,
the buttery flakes of filo—
and what's killing her
eats, too. I watch her lift
a glistening black olive and peel
the meat from the pit, watch
her fine long fingers, and her face,
puffy from medication. She lowers
her eyes to the food, pretending
not to know what I know. She's going.
And we go on eating.

~Kim Addonizio

"The Workers"

they laugh continually
even when
a board falls down
and destroys a face
or distorts a
body
they continue to
laugh,
when the color of the eye
becomes a fearful pale
because of the poor
light
they still laugh;
wrinkled and imbecile
at an early age
they joke about it:
a man who looks sixty
will say
I'm 32, and
then they'll laugh
they'll all laugh;
they are sometimes let
outside for a little air
but are chained to return
by chains they would not
break
if they could;
even outside, among
free men
they continue to laugh,
they walk about
with a hobbled and inane
gait
as if they'd lost their
senses; outside
they chew a little bread,
haggle, sleep, count their pennies,
gaze at the clock
and return;

sometimes in the confines
they even grow serious
a moment, they speak of
Outside, of how horrible
it must be
to be
shut Outside
forever, never to be let
back in;
it's warm as they work
and they sweat a
bit,
but they work hard and
well, they work so hard
the nerves revolt
and cause trembling,
but often they are
praised by those
who have risen up
out of them
like stars,
and now the stars
watch
watch too
for those few
who might attempt a
slower pace or
show disinterest
or falsify an
illness
in order to gain
rest (rest must be
earned to gain strength
for a more perfect
job).

sometimes one dies
or goes mad
and then from Outside
a new one enters
and is given
opportunity.

I have been there
many years;
at first I believed the work
monotonous, even
silly
but now I see
it all has meaning,
and the workers
without faces
I can see are not really
ugly, and that
the heads without eyes---
I know now that those eyes
can see
and are able to
do the work.
the women workers
are often the best,
adapting naturally,
and some of these I
made love to in our
resting hours; at first
they appeared to be
like female apes
but later
with insight
I realized
that they were things
as real and alive as
myself.

the other night
an old worker
grey and blind
no longer useful
was retired
to the Outside.

speech! speech!
we demanded.

it was
hell, he said.

we laughed
all 4000 of us:
he had kept his
humor
to the
end.

~Charles Bukowski

Cops and Rats

Ever since I bought my car (two years ago), I've been afraid that it's either going to be stolen or it's going to be broken into.

And sure enough finally today the latter happened.

I came to Goregaon last evening to give my car to my garage (Avinash Auto) but Avinash wasn't there. So we (V and I) decided to go back in the morning. I parked my car outside V's gate and got a good night's sleep.

We headed out in the morning (at around 10:30 AM) to see the passenger window smashed, and the deck panel hanging out of the dashboard. Like so:

Eeeeeks right!

So then we headed straight to the police station (which was in Malad) through narrow narrow lanes. Me fuming. V throwing water on my fumings.

We sat at the police station for almost two hours, "discussing" with the cop whether or not he should include the "stolen" deck in the FIR.

The senior inspector at the station insisted that we only lodge a complaint for the broken window and damaged dashboard because only that is covered by insurance. "Anyway you are not going to get any money for the deck." He was hell bent on saving his "investigation time." Instead he wrote about the stolen deck in a separate register. Though we don't really know the purpose of that register. When we did suggest (at least 5 times) that we don't mind a longer procedure, but we'd like the deck reported, he got really really belligerent. At some point, I called my cousin to ask him what to do. And he said, write everything right? Then the inspector asked me what my "dad" said (he thought I was talking to my dad), I said he said "write  everything" -- so the cop said -- "and he's what a police officer" -- oooh scary.

Either way, it was 2 now and I was hungry and wanted to get the whole ordeal over with. So we filed two reports. One for the insurance, and one for the stolen deck. 

Now for the most FREAKY part of the story. When investigating the car with the officer, V noticed a black object on the dashboard. And it was a black plastic cover with a SKULL face (danger skull face) on it! The mark of the robber. Oooooooooh - the plot thickens.

The robber was also a very neat robber. There was no damage to the rest of the car. My pretty blue stole was still in the car along with my headphones and my aux cable. But he did take my hamburger CD case (which Masato, my Japanese friend, gave me :()

So then V and I wondered why the autocop didn't go off.

But three days ago, my wipers stopped working (which is why I was coming to the garage in the first place) and so did the noise of the autocop. Did the thief-er know that?

So then we went to the Spark service centre to get the window replaced. But they didn't have any spare windows. We also reported the non-working autocop. On examining that, the guy said, the wire has been cut. So we thought the robbers must've done that as a preventive measure.

But then, some guy came to check the wipers, and he said those wires have also been cut -- but he thinks by rats! So that would explain the rats eating the autocop wire as well!

Rats? Really? This whole thing happened because some rats ate my autocop wires and wiper wires. Really!

Grrrrrrr.

Moral of the story:
1. Don't make fun of your autocop noise and don't wish that it would stop
2. Don't diss the rats

"the rainmaker"

it rained continuously for six days
as if the six days were trying to
wash away our six years of love

year 1, the storm
the year of whirlwind love
of uncertainty and not knowing
of mustard skies
the year that made everything bloom

year 2, beach rain
'twas twice that year
we beached in the rain
soaking our feet into the rainsand
with four droplets on your face and
and three in my hand

year 3, the drizzle
it was the year where everything was moist
(wink)

year 4, hail mary
then love started to hurt
stripping us of all things happy
despairingly

year 5, overcast
overcast skies gave way to
unstoppable fires
no rain
the year of waiting for something
to happen
end or begin

year 6, the downpour
and this is the year of the downpour
the year i'll drown
in thoughts of you
as the sea tears us apart

chor bazaar

the doors and windows of chelekara

the doors of chelekara (thrissur, kerala) were something quite special. each door was different. and each told a different story.

"The History Teacher"

Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,

while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

~Billy Collins

tree-love

i want to love you like the trees love each other in kerela

with their roots all tangled up into their shoots

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Day 1: Ernakulum-Fort Cochi



Day 2: Kumarokom



Day 3: Kumarokom-Thekkady



Day 4: Thekkady-Munnar



Day 5: Munnar-Nedumbassery (Airport)



Day 6: Nedumbassery-Chelakara



Day 7: Chelakara



Day 8: Malampuzha Dam-Alatur-Nurani



Day 9: Gurvayur-Chelakara



Day 10: Chelakara



Day 11 Chelakara-Athirapally-Nedumbassery