Poems, memories and moving past heartbreaks

Day 17. Today I wrote a haiku for International Haiku Day, using the phrase 'gibbous moon'. This was the prompt from the Instagram page Kavyajananipoetry. The prompt from napowrimo.net was quite cool, it was just that I wanted to catch up with some of my reading lists, so I wrote only one poem. But I did think about the other prompt, you know, the prompt not taken, as it were, and it brought back memories. So what was it? Dogs, All the dogs you've known in your life. The prompt was  developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you. Cool yeah?

I have never had a dog. When I was young, I was terrified that the neighbourhood strays would bite me and then I would have to take 17 injections (I don't exactly remember if the number was 17, but it was a big number). As I recall, the dogs seemed to bark a lot and always seemed angry, but the important thing was I was afraid, so my memory may have shaped it that way. The strays in our current neighbourhood often bark at each other, but they are mostly gentle and friendly. My mother's uncle had a big house and he had an Alsatian that was supposedly fierce. I never really met him, only heard him barking, because he was chained up when we visited. The other dog, the one that I had completely forgotten about till I saw this prompt, was this black and white dog that stayed in our school campus and shared its name, Loreto. Even now, I can't recall clearly what he looked like. All we knew was he was the pet of our Principal, Sister Cyril Mooney. Every morning, he would come running to meet Sr Cyril as she rode in on her creamy white scooter. Funny how someone who can be in the sidelines of your life for years and then disappear from memory.

I remember this sweet little puppy that followed me home once, till its mother dragged it back. I love watching dog videos now. When I have a  more settled life someday, perhaps I will adopt one.

But to return to my memories of Loreto Sealdah, it was my first school, the place where I learned to read and to count and multiply.  It's where I discovered Noddy and the Faraway tree, where I first read Pride and Prejudice, made my first friends and experienced the grief and heartbreak that comes with leave-taking. I remember my early teenage at this school. We were an all girls' convent school, so we spent all our newly charged, young emotional intensities on our girlfriends. Being someone's best friend was a big deal. There were even ranks, like first best friends and 2nd and 3rd best friends who were on wait-lists if the first best friends ever fell out. And there were such fierce falling outs, worthy of the messiest breakups in Rom Coms.

It all seems so silly in retrospect, but back then it consumed our lives. Anyway I changed schools in seventh grade, and it felt like the end of the world. I was never going to have friends again. I was never going to be happy again. The first heartbreak came with the leaving. The second heartbreak came a few months later, with my reluctant realization that the weekly phone calls and letters (yes, we wrote letters. I am old) meant more to me than they did to the friends I had left behind, that I missed them more than they missed me. But they were right. You are supposed to move on. In my own slow time, I stopped missing them. I even made new friends at my new school. At first it hurt a little to think forever friendships were over, to not miss them anymore, but then one day I discovered to my surprise even that did not hurt anymore. 

Funny side story. There was a girl I knew in my first school who was not my friend back then, but became my friend in college. And there were a couple of girls who I may or may not have befriended had I chosen a different college, but I ended up befriending them about five years later in another classroom. I think every friendship comes in its own time. We learn and grown, and perhaps give something back in return, being changed in small, subtle ways while changing others. I think it becomes easier as we grow, more secure in ourselves. 

Day 18: The prompt from napowrimo.net today based on Faisal Mohyuddin’s poem “Five Answers to the Same Question, ” which is an absolutely beautiful poem.  Our job was to write our own poem that provides five answers to the same question – without ever specifically identifying the question that is being answered. The prompt from Kavya was to title the poem 'Poet's Garden' and go from there. I took the title to mean the things that inspire and drive a poet to write, and I guess my five answers are firstly answering the title,  but there's also another question that is not specified that I was hoping to answer. I really loved writing this one, and I hope you love it too.

Day 19: Prompt from napowrimo.net: Begin your poem with a command. Prompt from Kavya: "Use your clipboard as inspiration". Things on my clipboard were, firstly,  my wordle block today (0/6 because I kept getting the 4th letter wrong through all my options ),  the poems I share everyday and the Spotify link to my EP. So, here goes nothing. Tried to keep the haiku stanza structure because it's fun to try and fit our truth in the space that is given to us, and isn't that what life is?

If you like what I do, please consider streaming my debut EP, Timeline, on a platform of your choice. Links are available here.