Kadale

Here we go again. 

I wait, for her to arrive.

It will take another half an hour or so I think. It usually does . 

My heart beats with anticipation and I am troubled with the remote possibility of the thought doodles in my head becoming louder and everybody hearing them.  But the waves will make sure that my silly thoughts  are swallowed before  reaching the prying ears . So I have nothing to worry in  that sense.

I notice that  I have  been drawing heart shapes  from my big toe, in the sand.

Very soon now , she will be here and  she will hold my hand . And my Pushpa  will talk …. She will talk about her Anoma missy’s latest face makeup fiasco . Nandini missy’s  new hair style or her affair with the manager,  Mr Albert  , who is old enough to be her father.  Or about the big robbery in Watsala missy’s neighborhood.

She will talk .she will talk

You see , my Pushpa works in an office  . She  goes at six o clock in the morning and cleans the office , makes tea for all the Mr’s & Missus, run all odd errands , and is off by four thirty . Then she comes to the beach to me and to spend her evening with me and the setting sun .

(As for me I am a ….an entrepreneur ..That’s what Mr Sam ,who walks the beach in the evening,  called me . …I think it means "the one who sells kadale" in English. )

 Mr Kumar will come up in her conversation too. His film star like hair style . His walk . Will be all repeated. How she puts extra sugar for his cup of tea..”Paw ne Ane “  she says. 
I nod in agreement, but  in my mind I run again and again how he gets hit by a lorry , carrying a full load of sugar . Now that’s Irony for you..

When she talks ,I run dumb . I am scared that if I open my mouth , my usual cry  will leap thruogh my lips “Kadale Kadale …Badapu Kadale” . The ocean will go silent and the whole world will start laughing. Louder and louder, the laughter will grow.  Pushpa will stare with tears welling in her eyes for a moment before she   runs away in shame. Leaving me alone on the shore .

So I just keep gazing at her . How her mouth moves . How she pauses , taking a short breath . How her chest heaves gasping for breath. How she adjusts the stray tresses dancing in the breeze.  I just keep on looking.

May be today I will  come up with something to say. May be I will tell about the couple who were caught by the police in the morning ,behind the watakeyya  shrub  and marched down to their jeep. 

On second thoughts……. that will be not be  appropriate and will be a definite  mood spoiler .

A crow is  trying to pick a stick half buried in the sand .  It  flies back to the land when the waves come ,  returns to continue digging,  when the salt form regresses.   

I contemplate on all the couples who buy  gram  from me , how they pick one or two grains by their fingers and put in to their mouths, like the crow picking with it's beak,  and how it seem to make the sweet nothings flow . How they feed each other gram and snuggle more in the shade of their umbrellas.

But  here I am, with a whole cart of Kadale fried with neatly cut squares of coconut and chilly pieces  ,  dumfounded . 

10, 000, 000 th

Apparently 10 million songs have been downloaded via Itunes. Hmm.

I find it an ironey the 10 millionth one being "guess things happen that way"
And also the most sung line in that song being " I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way"

Thought I'll share

Have a good weekend

Taut shoes theory of Bliss

A friend once said , when things are not going for you , when it has not  been your day , month or year  and you feel like letting go ….you need to buy a pair of shoes one size smaller. 

That way , he said , at least when you remove them at the end of the day , (or multiple times if you choose to),  you will experience a moment of relief . Of bliss. 

Now reflect on it for a moment. 

Don’t we all have our “pair of tight shoes” that we feel as a prerequisite to feel blissful. Be it buying a Ferrari or a house . Career progression or your children’s achievements . There exists a goal,  one needs  to reach , for one to feel happy. 

Don’t we all have a special place, be it a beach a park or a café , that we need to be in , to feel tranquil . 

Yet the more I ponder , it dawns to me that  happiness is a state of mind and not a reward for attaining an end. So it is with tranquility . 

So may it may be , that the tight shoe method is not so inane after all. All you have to do is to condition your self to feel content …just like that…and you will be

Sand castles

Castles of sand

we build

on the beach of life

sand-blinded that  life is the shore

only sand

nothing more

Nearer to the water

the sand holds best

that is where the biggest of castles

we build

letting slip from mind

that life is

waves too

Serendipity

I am here where it all began . (Well more or less) . Living two days of serendipity .  a dream . Then again a dream is nothing but a flickering of thoughts . Mixture of chemicals in your cortex .

Bird chirps wake you up and the strange soundtrack of bird songs , trishaw engine revs and bicycle bell tinkles greet the dawn . As I sit in a planter’s chair (How corny is that) , my eyes feast on the blue skys , hues of deep green, bright red and the velvety black blue of a humming bird . Yet …as it is with all dreams , the reality seems a discounted version  of the fantasy .

I  buy in and embrace the paradisic  charm of the land , do not get me wrong.

Yet I ponder on the reasons I would not want to live day in day out. Is it because the distance makes one’s heart yearn more. Or may be the surreal image in my mind is what I love more.

In the metro I live in , money rules..  there is no denying it  .. People are  interested in  earning it and spending it.

For  some reason , the baseline in Colombo still holds  something different . The lines are a bit blurred , Money , or rather lack of it is perceived as an inconvenience at the most. A fact of life .  Through it the brightest smiles shine.  

There seem to be something more to life here.  We would go hungry yet hold on to the our political ideology securely.

Is it that while commercialization has wolfed in to all the values , and mutated them,  we are just  holding on to the empty shell that is the label. I wonder. 

Lavinia

Sunset. Clouds. Waves. Sand. People.

08Feb10- 2315hrs local time (SL)

It has been sometime since I have been on a Sri Lankan aircraft .  7 long hours  and an fascinating conversation with the young man in the adjoining seat (a deportee)  later, here I am.  On the tarmac,  famously touched by MR .
I ponder about that image and the sentiments  that sprang from there onwards  .

The welcome to serendib has been both familiar and alien.  A few moments ago the iron bird has hovered from Kandy to Colombo . The twinklings in the inky black still makes me wonder about the stories behind them. 
May be somebody’s house with only a porch light on.
A young girl studying late in to the night. Her mother closing up the kitchen before she retires for the day.
May be a lad doing the night shift guard duty , in front of a factory , reading a letter from his sweetheart in the village.
Stories.

But now running down the tarmac , I notice the change of the familiar ( haunting) sight ,  MIG jets perched  at the far end.  The recognizable, and annoying , Nokia start up tone  seem to be invading the whole sound space .  That’s a new thing.

Past Seeduwa the balmy air whiffing past me, the scent  of Colombo night seem to surround me . Of Spices , Salt and  relief . 

Half lit by a street lamp I notice a fading bill board.

“Beware , Bombs have no mercy”  it reads

That was another life time ago, yet it was just yesterday.

The "F" word.............

It has been 62 years, apparently. 

Leading to it , there have been bloodshed and struggles , surely. From the beheading of Keppitipola to numerous peasants killed by Her majesty's government.

 Subsequently too, there have been many scarlet blotches in the time line of freedom.

But one thing for sure,  in 1948 , freedom was given without any cost to us . Yes I said Freedom . (That is what Nidahas means , in my humble opinion …not independence .)

May be that was the fad at that time , may be the empire did want to incur the massive overruns. May be it was a business decision. Whatever the cause it was just handed over.

If you ask me ,whether it is not due to the many years of blood sweat and suffering of our forefathers that  chipped the wall bit by bit and finally causing it to collapse. Well that's just one perception. 

But let's get one thing straight , in 1948 when the lion flag was hoisted for the first time , the rope that raised it, was imported.  So to say.

Anyway from that point onwards various people have interpreted the "F" word in many ways. Many lives lost, many fights fought.

Let's not get in to the blurry discussions that go nowhere, of what freedom is at a conceptual level. 

Let’s ponder what would freedom means to an individual.

From the freedom the leave the Manik farm camp, to sing a Tamil song out loud in streets of matara. 

From to have your Google search not censored or not to  have Facebook accounts monitored. 

From having the right to think, write and scold people. And the for the others to do the same as well.

From having the right to have street signs in a language that one can understand , to having the right to learn the language the street signs are  written in

To feel that there is no advantage or disadvantage because of the religion you believe in or your race or creed.

To have the freedom to earn as hard as we work . And to spend on anything we want 

Forget what the politicians & media tell you ...forget the fancy advertising..... what would it mean to you ?

Are our notions of Freedom our own ? or are they imported , influenced , inserted.

Are we still hoisting the flag of freedom with a rope that is made in China, UK, USA or India.

After all

Freedom sounds so nice

Rolls nicely in the mouth

And melts like Kandos chocolate 

slowly

Freedom 

has a tangy smell

like Kohomba soap 

uplifting your spirit

For hours

Freedom tastes nice 

dipped in sweet plain tea

like Maliban Marie 

Freedom 

Is 

a state of mind ..An acquired taste.....