Ruchira's Ramblings

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 ...

Sorry, it has been a while. Things just pile up on one another, you know. But here’s the main news. The thing I’ve been waiting for since last December finally happened. Last month, on the 16 th , I got my TARDIS driving license. Which is to say, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. What? I’ve been waiting to make ‘Doctor’ themed jokes for a while now. But you know the strangest thing? Happy as I was (and still am) about the whole thing, the immediate aftermath of it felt a bit deflating. Like, what am I supposed to do with myself now? I mean, I have enough on my plate, don’t get me wrong- classes to teach, scripts to evaluate (how is about 80% of my life consumed by examinations and grading? I seem to remember these being a lot less frequent when I was a student myself!), data to collect and enter into endless excel sheets (did not sign up for this, smh) and then order and reorder, supervising student drama rehearsals, organizing intra-college poster contests and so on and so forth....

  I have a folder full of grading to do. Just the grading. Put a number against the white, no evaluation required. I am paid for my signature, not my opinion. I have four different excel sheets to fill up and I can’t bring myself to open my laptop. I keep wondering when you reach the breaking point. I keep wondering what tells the straw it’s the last one. What if the camel’s back gets so used to the pain it doesn’t realize when it finally breaks? Maybe it broke years ago and we just carry on out of habit like the coyote chasing the roadrunner across the air before it remembers to look down? So anyway, as an act of rebellion, I have been holding off listening to those voice messages and reading poetry instead. And there are words so simple, so casually written that shake you up. Like, how could they know? These strangers? And why couldn’t I write it? Or maybe we all wrote our poems and wove them into our collective dreams. And who knows,  maybe someone has read them too. And on...

  I’ve been looking for things to say.   I have been afraid of staring at blank pages. What if someday I have nothing to say anymore? What if nothing I say interests anyone anymore? What if no one hears me? What if they hear me and laugh at my naiveté? So what am I going to write about? Like most of my recent posts, this too has been weeks and months in the making. I’ve been running away from saying the things I want to say. What if I say too much? Share too much? What if they laugh and roll their eyes, muttering about my presumptions? What if no one says a damn thing and I fall through the rabbit-hole of silence once again? On some days, I listen to one song on loop, willing it to weave a story in my head that transports me from my present. On other days, I run through my playlists, discarding old favourites like a moody teenager picking at food, too distracted to allow for the distraction of music and rhythm. Somebody perhaps I’ll sit down and write songs again, feel the...

Isn't the Mercury Retrograde over yet? Everything seems suspended in a strange sort of stasis. We return to our lives that used to be with the shadow of a fear. I just want us all to be happy again. In the room where I got my vaccine doses, the lights on the ceiling were soft and dreamy, and the rows of cushioned chairs slanted down a steady slope. I looked around and realized we were in a movie theatre, although the screen was covered up by the make-shift cubicles where the nurses met the unvaccinated. The realization hit me like a slow ache, bringing back memories of movie dates and lunches and friends I hadn't seen in ages. When our biggest festival came round, I spent the time in my room, flipping through facebook memories, recollecting a decade's worth of plannings and anticipations and picking out dresses and mad traffic and melancholy evening goodbyes. This is an old bereavment of mine, this traveling home after a happy hour or two, the crowd somehow always flowin...

  16 th June, 2021 . Bloom’s Day. I mark the date because it’s my blog-anniversary. This is my space to think aloud without judgment and prudent advice, to ramble my heart out, to find my way as all who wander lost may someday find theirs. It’s been a strange world, a strange time. Where would you wander when paths were closed? And the people died, without help, without love, without dignity. And the world carried on, in light that was always eight minutes late, as moments turned into memories, as memories faded into dull, half-forgotten heartaches, as all aches blurred into the fog of the blank spaces. And the light was always eight minutes late. We woke, opened our eyes, saw the world in delayed light, tried to make sense of it all, and no wonder we got it all wrong. When the darkness came, we looked up and said our prayers, pinning all our hopes on God. “Move him into the sun”, we said. And God was eight minutes late. I wonder, if tomorrow, in some moment of inexplicable co...