Zen and the art of midnight blogging

A very wise sage I know told me yesterday that I should write. Because I'm emotional and confused, frustrated, and hurt and very lost. What do I do, tell me! I begged him. And he said, write. Because you can't do anything about this. Because it is your talent and your grace. Because it makes me happy to read it.

And you know, barring that post below, he's right. Writing helps me, it always has. I've wondered a lot of the past year if I made the right decision making this a non-personal space. But then, reading Namaste, I realised it is possible to be personal and not at the same time, and the craft of writing is no worse off for having been executed in the articulation of something personal.

So let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, my best beloved, in a jungle far away or near, depending on where you live, there lived a clan of monkeys. Now these monkeys were like most monkeys: tails, limbs, teeth, fur, all correct and accounted for. But something made them different. They would leap and dance from branch to branch, crossing tossing jumping hooting whilring around in a flurry of partners - no one knew what would happen from one moment to the next. Most of the other clans shook their heads in bewilderment, and very rarely, once in a blue moon, a monkey gasped in awe and shyly asked if they could join the clan. Because they could see that what the monkey clan was doing was not the mad dance of a dervish, but a ballet.

When babies were born into the Ballet clan, they grew up being tossed from aunt to uncle, tree to tree, and they marvelled at how exhilarating it all was. Wheeeee I'm so glad I'm a monkey! they thought. But then, the day would come when they would have to meet other monkeys. They would leap and reach to be caught, only to crash through the branches to the forest floor. They would whirl and twirl and spin and grin, only to find all the other monkeys had drawn away in horror. Slowly, the baby monkeys learned a lesson - not everyone can dance the monkey ballet. This was the power of the clan - only they could understand that intricate dance. But this was also the curse of the clan, for they had to endure incredible hardship when they began to seek mates. Some of them learnt to forget the dance. Luckier, some found monkeys who could see the ballet and not be lost. Luckier still were those who found one who not just saw it, but appreciated it. But the rarest and luckiest of all, were those who found ones who could dance it.

to be continued...

The House of Bernada Alba

The house is dark. It lives in the middle of a teeming city – and it’s a nice neighbourhood. It is set back from the street, which makes it feel like it is an island of tranquillity amid the chaos of the mad rush.

It is night. A piano plays in the darkness; scales, up the scale and down the scale, and up the scale and down the scale, endlessly.

It is a house of women.

In the tower, all alone surrounded by gadgets, lies the visitor. Her body is curled under the sheet, and her hands shield her head – from what it does not know. She has only been there a week and yet the soft, yielding, enveloping mattress carries the imprint of her body from every night she had lain there. How does she breathe, wonders the house, wrapped in all those layers of mattress? Her sleep is sound, however.

On the ground floor, on the ground, lies the woman who helps. Tiny, and enveloped in her shawl, she could be a bolster that’s been tossed off the bed.

In the bedroom sleeps the injured one. Her broken leg is propped up on a cushion, and her sleep is broken and restless from the confinement of one position. The bed around her is piled with clothes and bags, almost as if she too were a parcel waiting to be put away in a cupboard.

And in the living room, at the piano sits Bernada Alba. Hers is the force that holds the house together. She is the spirit who rushes through at unearthly hours only to collapse in sleep for many more hours. Her hair hangs around her face, streaked with grey, as she plays the piano in the dark.

Scales.

Up the scale.
Down the scale.
Up the scale.
Down the scale.

And the house sleeps.