The Shepard’s Woes

Such is his destiny,
To find the one lamb that he lost,
Leaving the other ninety nine behind!

His little black lamb,
How it whimpered at night,
And dragged tired  by twilight,
His little black lamb!

In search of his destiny,
He marched.
Between the sun and the sand,
The mountains he scaled.
Not once or twice, but thrice,
Over the precipice he fell.

Between anger and pain,
Between pride and shame,
Like a ship without an anchor he sailed,
Not knowing where to stop,
He is lost!

Runic is love.
For between sanity and insanity,
Between fixation and apathy,
Like a wick without a flame,
He is lost!


- Shilpa Ramesh Maiya (Sakshi)
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Dear friends, considering I am writing after a real long time, I thought I'd remind you all - I allow people with a gmail id to post their messages. Thanks a ton :)

Two things following me

There are two things that have been following me for some time now.

1. The word ITHACA. No, seriously. sometime back I read a book and so overwhelmed I was that I named my blog Ithaca. But seriously, its getting a bit too much now. I was surfing the internet a couple of days back and found myself looking at the University of Cornell Ithaca Campus. Hmpf! Didn't know there was Ithaca City in the US! Anyways, I am sure there are lots of Washington's in the US too. So that didn't bother me as much. But seriously, yesterday I was reading a paper on policy making from my favorite journal The Lancet and as usual I was going through the list of References. And there you go - Ithaca!! No ways, someone please save me! What's it with Ithaca?

2. For the past two years I have been bumping into cancer afflicted individuals. A few days back, my friend tells me his brother is now a cancer patient - Hodgkin's Disease. He wanted some help - since he has always known of my involvement with cancer patients. That made me decide the need to write on cancer and cancer afflicted individuals that I have come across for the past two years. So a few of my blogs will feature that henceforth.

The second is well reasoned and easy to slove. But the first? Any suggestions there?

Track Changes

The compartment was S4. One of the most 'heavenly' compartments that I ever got into till date, of course, during one of those many trips from Pune to Ahmedabad. And heavenly it was, since the compartment was just next to the pantry with two loo's standing sentinel between the pantry and the compartment. I was...well...the 'Sauchalay Dwarpal' so to say!

It was thanks to Ram Singhji, my agent, who did not book my tickets in time that I was travelling without a confirmed ticket: Waiting list 3! S4 was the compartment that the TC would board, I was told. I was trying my luck. And considering I have tried my luck many times, this was just another small exercise. There were two other guys with me, both of them travelling to Ahmedabad. There was another very Maharashtrian couple. The man had worn a 'dhotar' and the woman was wearing a 'navwari'. The guys were staring at me, awed that I was travelling without a ticket, I guess. I couldn’t care less. I had to go. There was no second thought on that. I have a job, I am answerable to someone and I am responsible. I just had to go.

I bid farewell to my mother who almost had tears in her eyes, seeing the way her pampered kid had decided to travel. I settled myself by the sink when the train started and waited for His Excellency, the TC, to come. In the meanwhile, the Maharashtrian lady opened her bag, and began eating roasted groundnuts. Her husband suddenly got up, went to the sink, and spat. There was this sincere flow of red liquid... paan, I thought. Ah, how I always despised that. After five minutes or so, he got up again, to pour out another sincere flow of that red liquid. He thus earned the name ‘The Spitoon’!

An hour later His Highness came. I showed him my ticket and asked him in Marathi if I would get a seat. And he replied, in this heavily Marathi accented English “Madam. If I find a seat available, I will definitely help you”. Huh? Didn’t I ask in shudha Puneri Marathi? But before I could ask anything else, he was off. I settled down on my knapsack doing nothing, watching the people enter and leave the loo and looking outside staring into total darkness.

Sitting there by the aroma of the loo, by the soot and the vapour of the pantry, a gazillion thoughts were buzzing in and out of that not so idiot box up there. The song of the moment was one that Paul and Art have been singing since 1966, I think. The way they go hmmm….hmmm…homeward bound! It was just stuck in my head. It made me think of Ithaca. Ithaca, home, home, Ithaca…. home is where the heart is... Ithaca is more like your destination, the final destiny. The final destiny is what the heart yearns for. Then Ithaca is your home! I looked at the tracks, not really knowing where they were going or taking you, so to say. But I knew where I was heading. I was on my way to Ahmedabad. And yet, yet I didn’t know where the tracks were taking me. I mused over it for a while. I also knew some of the stops. Lonavala – Khandala - Karjat so on and so forth. But I still didn’t know where there tracks were moving. Sometime changing. But moving steady towards Ahmedabad. I knew it. And yet I was uneasy about the tracks. I was uneasy about those tracks because I didn’t know every square inch of the land that the tracks covered. If a frequent traveller like me felt that, I wondered what a first timer would feel. And most often, the journey to Ithaca is always the first. I thought what would happen if the train derailed. I mean, wouldn’t that mean a permanent damage to your journey to Ithaca? Now that was a scary thought.

And with so many thoughts buzzing, I lost count of how many people had used the loo, of the number of times The Spitoon got up to clean his mouth, of the amount of groundnuts his wife ate, or how many people came to wash their hands in the sink. By then I was inured to the number of cockroaches that were out on their mid night stroll and the nice, well fed, fluffy rats that would have made nice pets had they been soft toys! I learnt to shut my eyes to the illusions of those rats and cockroaches popping out of the rim of my folded jeans and then I drifted into a not so pleasant slumber.

Suddenly I felt a droplet on my face and I woke up with a start. Oh sheesh, someone dropped water on me while washing their hands! I tried to close my eyes again, but to no avail. Nidradevi had turned her back on me and so I began reading Shantaram. It was around 11 pm when I must have finished reading part one of the book. A young fair boy, a Bori I guessed, then came to wash his hands. I told him earnestly, “can you do me a favour please, please don’t sprinkle water over here after washing your hands”, “No I wont do that” he said. And I don’t know, out of pity for a girl, who looks half her age, he asked me where I was going. “Ahmedabad” I told him. He left leaving me on my knapsack. At around 12 he came back and told me that they had bought a seat from the TC. Aah….the man who told me he would help me SOLD a ticket that could have been mine! Anyways, he told me that I could have that seat and pay him Rs. 100. I jumped on the opportunity and paid to sleep for another six hours of my journey.

And when I got up at six in the morning, these words that I read were ringing my ears…

“Many centuries ago, a poet described the wanderings of a man named Ulysses on his way back to the island of Ithaca, where his beloved awaits him. He confronts many perils, from sand storms to the temptations of comfort. At one point, in a cave, he encounters a monster with only one eye. The monster asks hi his name. “Nobody”, says Ulysses. They fight and he manages to pierce the monsters eye with his sword and manages to seal the mouth of the cave. The monsters companions hear his cries and rush to help him. Seeing a rock covering the mouth of the cave, they ask who is with him. “Nobody! Nobody!” replies the monster. His companions leave and Ulysses continues his journey back to the woman who waits for him.”

Such is the story of Ulysses, the King of Ithaca, who had to burry his identity to be ‘Nobody’, so he could meet his beloved. Such is the journey of Ithaca that he had to loose his last identity, his name, his ego, so he could meet Penelope. My journey, Ithaca, the railway tracks, home, my destiny, and the one percent probability of being derailed from it all filled the void of my many thoughts. The journey to Ithaca leaves you in nothing but ashes, it flushes the bad, it leaves you with the good, it teaches you to endure pain, it moulds you. And in the end, I realised that sitting by the pantry and the loo, that my journey moulded me to look at the brighter side of life. I did what a lot of my friends never did, apart from the fact that I did what a lot of guys have not done. It taught me to stand tall in spite of the difficulties, to endure pain and to look at the fact that tomorrow I can do the same again, be it Ithaca or Ahmedabad or some other place. It made me stronger. It taught me that you are not derailed for life. You just stand still at a point, at those stops. And even if you dont know where you are going on those tracks, you are still moving towards your destiny. At that point, I could sing to Ithaca John Denver’s I’m bringing me home to you.

The tracks changed. Ahmedabad came. I got down at the platform only to find the TC waiting at the entrance. I showed my ticket. He looked up and stared… I wondered why. He gave me my ticket back. There it was written in hand “Waiting List 3”!

I smiled and moved on…. “Still waiting dude”!

Pandora’s box

"…And all that remains in her box is Hope!". Yuga was telling me Pandora's story as though Tanny and I didn't know it. We have known her too well to ask for any specific explanations. We just let her carry on. We could not make her feel better or worse anyways. In other words, We knew why she was suddenly telling us the story of Pandora's Box.

Yuga's life has not been the same for some time now. She lost a lot of weight in a couple of months. I suspect she has not been eating well. Although, she complains about the bad mess food. She has suddenly got dark circles, something she never had even during our 12 th exams. Her lame excuse for this is "that's what happens when you constantly work in front of the computer". Fool's we are to believe it, isn't it? She smiles a lot less these days. Not that you'll notice it. She hides it too well. Sometimes I think she hides a lot from herself too. Sometimes I think she prefers suffering alone. I guess it is about not showing how vulnerable she is. When you know she is not keeping well, you've just touched the tip of the iceberg. That is all she will show you, if, you are privileged. Sometimes I think she wants to prove him right. "You are too bold", he had told her, the first and the last time they had met. "You are too strong. No, strong is too strong a word. You are too tough." And she will be, even if she breaks up into pieces at the end of it. I can feel her cracking, breaking; inside. And yet, she wont let us help her.

If it had not been for Tanny and me, I wonder if she would ever open up. Having grown up together, the three of us knew each other in and out. We knew when to ask questions, when to keep our mouths shut, and when to ask for explanations. This was the time to shut up. We knew she had a lot of venom in there, and she had to get it out. And the best way to do that was to let her talk, uninterrupted.

She had severed ties with her family friends. There was some marriage talk there. She had almost said yes to the guy…well almost. Before it all broke into pieces. There was a lot of ill feeling. What hurt her the most, was that because of her, the parents also could not look at each other in the eye. What hurts her now, I think, is that in spite of all that happened, she still likes him. "The truth comes in strange disguises" she had told me once. This little piece of truth, Tanny and I found out when she said, "I wish he had broken up with dignity. I wish he had told me the truth that his mother was not impressed instead of trying to provoke me the way he did". That one statement told us what we needed to know.

Knowing Yuga, I cannot blame her less. We were just in standard 6 back then, 12 or 13 years old I think. She had not knit the scarf. And she told Ms. Martin that she did not knit over the weekend. The bad habit that Ms. Martin had when she was scolding, "…your parents…" she said something. And right then and there, Yuga got up, looked straight in her eye and said, "Don't get my parents in between. It is my mistake. And I admit it. Just don't get my parents in between". Yes, we were just 12 or 13 then. We are 24 now. And she has not changed one bit. What aunty (his mother) did was exactly the same. She blamed Yuga's parents. And Yuga, for who she is, gave back …if I can put it that way…right, left and center. Yuga will tolerate anything said to her. You only vex her to the point of no return when you say something to her parents. That is when she shows no mercy…

"And hope is not such a good thing you know…" she continued "it stops you from thinking logically." She went on.

Out of nowhere, I remember Tanny worrying that she will loose it soon if she continues this way. And then on another occasion Tanny told me that "she could take all this only because she was strong." With contempt in her voice Tanny once told me in her flawless marathi; "To jar majhya samor ala na, tar mi tyachya pekatyat ghalin" (If that guy ever comes in front of me I will kick him in his butt). "I am not sure Yuga would like that" I had told Tanny then. And Tanny shut up with a smile on her face. "Yeah. May be she'll kill me instead." And we burst out laughing.

"Then why do you still hope?" Tanny's sudden interjection brought me back to the conversation.

"Because loves labour is never lost." Yuga answered. "Neither mine, nor his. Neither my parents, nor his."

"Now this is annoying me Yuga." I said. "That ass hurt you. And you are still saying things like this. What the hell are you made of?"

"Yes. I am still talking like this. You know why? Because love is stronger than pride."

That was all she said. And she walked of looking back just once and repeating…. "Love is stronger than pride!"

Tanny was shaking her head, aghast.

"Pandora's Box" I sighed!

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Coming up next: Missed Calls

Gabrielle’s Shaft

‘Thak thak thak’, I made that noise while walking down the corridors of the campus. It actually reminded me of those ‘gurkhas’ that stroll at night 3 a.m. That was the noise that they make. ‘Thak thak thak’ I still continued. I then walked the same way on the streets. And suddenly, I was conscious of the whole world around me. I met a Kaka from the institute “Aap hume marne nikale ho?” he said looking at the stick in my hand. “Na kaka, hu tame kem vadhu?”(No kaka, why would I hit you?) I said in my broken Gujrathi, just to make him feel comfortable. “To kathi kem?” (why the stick?) he asked, “Kutrao mate” (for the dogs), I lied, I didn’t feel like explaining a lot. “Kutrao mate?” he laughed and walked off.

I indeed did feel like Gabrielle walking with her shaft or like ‘hunterwali’, ready to hit anyone in my way. I could actually laugh out loud. The amount of stares I was drawing to myself! The vegetable vendors were staring at me. A group of guys turned back to have a second look probably wondering ‘why is she walking with a stick’? I wanted to avoid those stares, so I decided that I’d walk on the footpath. But no, seeing a stick in my hand, the dogs started barking! Phew! So much for a hot water bath!

Yeah. For a bucket of hot water bath! I never thought that a hot water bath was so tempting. But of late I have started believing in a lot of things that I otherwise would not. Ahmedabad gets cold at night, its like it is in the deserts. The wind is strong, real strong and cold, real cold. And so, the water also gets cold too, real cold. I would die but never ask the Kaps (more on them later!) to fix a geyser in my bathroom. So what’s a stick got to do with hot water? Naah, not Birbal’s khichadi!

I was cribbing about the cold water bath to a friend of mine. And she said in the granish tone of hers’ “Duffer, can’t you buy a water heater?” Oops, that never clicked me, did it? The next hour I find myself buying an electric water heater rod. I smiled to myself. Now I wouldn’t have to rush to my room after office hours so as to get water just tepid enough for my evening bath and still find myself shivering. Now I can have a bath morning and evening like before. That is more important to me because of my daily pooja routine. But I still had a problem. I needed a stick so I could hang the heater on it.

My quest for the stick began in the campus garden. Thankfully for me, I found Amit, my ex-colleague, who helped me find a bamboo stick. I was taking that back to my room. But when I reached my room, it was a thought came across: Have you ever wondered how a caterpillar feels when he is just out of that cocoon of his? Raw and stark naked? Stripped off of every cover he had and exposed to the whole wide world? But that is just the beginning. Life has a lot to teach the caterpillar for sure before he becomes a butterfly. That was exactly how I felt at that moment when I was placing that stick on the bucket trying to balance the heater on the stick. Life had turned topsy-turvy in the last couple of months. I can still feel the thorns. My landlady and her obnoxious dealings, my job and its challenges, my colleagues and their eccentricities and God alone knows what else. Staying alone is difficult, I agree. You stumble and fall. You are hurt. You try to get up and yet, you fall again. You know you won’t ask for help, simply because you think you are grown up and think you should face your problems yourself. But even in the cinder, comes a sweet pleasure in facing the challenges that life throws at you. Of having grown up a little above the foibles. Of correcting yourself. Of facing the people you otherwise would not like to look at. You learn to take snide remarks without them getting into your system. Life teaches you all that. Not because it wants to, but because you have to and because you have no way out! There is a slight difference there. And when you are ready, slowly but surely, you come out as a beautiful butterfly, just like the caterpillar. And then, before you’ve known it, there you are… a beautiful butterfly!

And while I was waiting, heating the water, while I was enjoying my hot water after over a month, life’s little pleasures came back to me.

That day, after a long time, I also enjoyed washing my clothes … in hot water. Wonder what the Kaps will say if they know I’m using hot water to wash clothes! Oh their electricity bill... And I am laughing, to myself!

Ithaca

A travellers Tale - Ithaca

What man of you, having a hundred sheep,
if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety
and nine in the wilderness, and go after that
which is lost, until he find it?
Luke 15:4

But isn't that what love is all about? Find the one that's lost? And rest only when you've found the lost? And the journey is long and tiring...with the fear of loosing an already lost battle. But you still carry on because you want to...for all that you have done...for all that was there...you carry on to Ithaca...Ithaca

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
Pray that the journey is long,
Full of adventure, Full of Knowledge,
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
The fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
If you do not carry them within your soul,
if your heart does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long,
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at the Phoenician markets,
And purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind,
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do the hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
And to anchor at the island when you are old,
Rich with all you have gained on the way,
Not expecting you that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given yo the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you,
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
You must have already understood what Ithaca means.

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
Translated by Rae Dalven
From: Paulo Coelho's The Zahir