Can a thing be staid and yet the most magnificent?

 When the mountains – stacked like an immeasurable disarray of Toblerone – appear at the turn, it isn’t the altitude that presses against the ears, silencing everything. It isn’t their enormity that draws the breath out. It isn’t their rosehip-studded, snowy cassock façade that makes one say a prayer. The Georgian mountains don’t beat their chests tempestuously, demanding devotion. They don’t preen or primp. In fact, they don’t care if one is in attendance at all. But, they arrest. They turn time into a minor detail and empty one of many feelings previously held familiar. Similar things can be said about much of Georgia.

 The under-researched tourist’s expectation of rustic views and gorgeous churches is quite quickly made obsolete by the variegated sensations that Imeruli cheese and shoti bread - procured at random by the wayside - supply. There is another table where cheese and bread are had with Georgian tomatoes that are of a distinct red… a non-shiny, distinctly non-coquettish red. The bread is made in a sturdy old torne oven, by a woman who can also be described thus. One should be hard of heart to not yield to this yeast-y peasant’s meal. Raptures are burst into and numerous ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ warbled, much to the complete neutrality of the farmer at the till. There is no art to the service industry in Georgia, and no artifice.

 There are also no shortcuts to the food here. No ‘2-minute’ khachapuris or instant khinkalis. Wait you must. As we did, for a good hour at a small establishment in a remote alcove in the mountains. The fare that arrives is almost always swoon-worthy (but maybe don’t swoon, because dramatic gestures find no audience here). Texture is not up for discussion. There are no smooth pastes or sauces – they are grainy, pulpy, hardy. Nary a ‘pillowy’ anything. Even the meats are robust, never once allowing themselves the travesty of melting in the mouth or falling off the bone. Kuchmachi is an elegance born of chicken liver and walnuts, and ojakuri dares you to not have visions of him when you liaise with his skinny distant cousin ‘fries’. In the Nigvziani badrijani, you’ll find a very non-Georgian sight of embrace… as slivers of eggplant wrap themselves cozily around a center of crushed walnuts.  

One day in Old Tbilisi, spent in a Tsinandali-induced haze is ceremony. Wandering around the city’s cobbled pathways, sometimes from cafes and almost always towards them, sights can be collected like souvenirs. Overpriced cups of alluring berries, multi-hued curtains of churchkhelas, pumpkins and all other manner of squash in tasteful pastels, functional wine shop fronts which are about wine and no jazz, soft stoles with pomegranate embroidery, the hardworking Indian man whose sole job is to beseech you to visit the Indian restaurant. Mother Mary graces churches and wine bottle labels with equanimity. People watching is a treat. Soviet-era fashion rubs shoulders with Euro-punk – fishnet stockings et al. Spot an outfit with color and you will have found yourself a tourist. There is a secret cache of cosmetics and clothes stores somewhere in Tbilisi – maybe some hapless tourist will stumble upon it one day and saunter out a spy. Mandatorily boot-clad young people pound the pavement on Europe Square with as much abandon as allowed, behaving themselves and minding their business. There are no sudden urges that are quenched with a quick kiss or sweaty squeeze. Is this because there is always an ancient church round the corner and the reverence it exacts? The city’s graffiti isn’t artistic in a way that pleases the eye – but it does carry an organic anger. Not misplaced, perhaps?

The churches in Georgia are cool, austere, and magnificent in a way that somehow reminds one of the Bronte sisters. A mandate to remain spartan. The caves are caves, and the canyons are canyons.

One almost doesn’t want to start with the mountains, because then one would have to end. The Caucasus Mountains seem to have many faces. Rocky in one region, angular as if chiseled by Michelangelo in another, bucolic, icy, rugged. Sublime fir and spruce, savage berries and peppers, wild mushrooms and lichen, baby pinecones tipped with dewdrops, the paddle of the local dogs’ feet and their promise to protect. Large lakes, smaller ones, a farmer’s cottage here, a flock of sheep and cows. The crunch of boots on gravel, slippery on autumnal twigs and leaves, sinking in rotting vegetation. There is powdery snow too, and the pleasant sensation of a cold nose. One’s fingers long to touch everything everywhere. Swallow the sights and hammer them into memory with a fleet of photographs that really do no justice. Walking towards a hike’s destination but in the knowledge that a minute towards is also a minute that has passed. Time sublimates. Where do the seconds go? Can one be overwhelmed by calm? Be hit in the face by content? There is a sort of yearning ache that comes with this kind of tranquility, because it is an alien sensation.

The testosterone-fueled buggy ride to a spot in Gudauri on the mountain with swathes of snow. The Wrangler ride on another day to a spot in Borjomi where paradise resides. Mere vehicles to a means. For some, a means to experience something unreally pretty. For others, a means to something a little more profound. A conclusion that utter stillness can be had.

eternal horizons

Between the cross crashes of the mid-month waves
The noisy disquiet attempts to recapture,
The five tempestuous elements that have been left for dead,
Goes forth to pull me
Toward the night’s foaming, expansive exhibit of desire
… Don’t try so hard;
I’d gladly yield

Who is that?
A rhinestone ring on a rotting toe
Beams at me
The back of the foot lined,
Designed to delight an astrologer of feet
Destiny that he and I meet?
The raw boat of planks with a solitary light;
That hangs from a decomposing rod?

Would I sail into salt and serenity?
Lands of pure serendipity
Perched on a stranger,
Who nods gently;
Clothed in fossil weed,
Cloaked in the wisdom of disappointing history?
Into the land of air,

And eternal horizons?

ocean walking

The weak 6 am sunlight streams in through the ragged red curtains, transforming her brooding boudoir into a mysterious chamber of rust. And as she teeters at the edge of wakefulness, she feels herself sucked into an ocean of lust. Crows bray, donkeys caw, children cry, milk vans yawn down the road outside. Entirely immaterial, terribly mortal. The familiar cymbal-ic taste of metal spreads across her tongue; puts a silencer on her tympanum. Jazz hands, shiver, shiver, shimmy. A tireless tingling rolls down her chest, like lightly warmed wild honey; it reaches for her belly button- the holy trail of sensation. Invisible fingers trace a waltz around this powerful button- second in command in the quest for O, second only to the holy grail of ecstasy located further south. But to get there, one must cross the district where pelvic personnel hold fort, guarding the throne below with calcium caution. They allow only the purest, most persistent of passions down the valley of crevices, into the receptacles of wild oats. There they may partake of an affair that is as sweet as Japanese sticky rice, sour as young plum, fiery as hot sauce, rhythmic as a slow rumba. 

Winter fortress

All manner of riff, raff and trash

The unholy, the ugly, the unintelligent

They flock the church

In a procession of silent adoration

Hopeful hymns forming in their hearts

That never dare leave their lips

It isn’t a beautiful structure, the church

But it beguiles in its solitude, in its lack of apparent beauty

Leaves the viewer in the lurch

In a land of excess in the way of gleaming glass tower

This tome made of the earth stands like a warlock in power

Written to completion

With bricks of contradiction

Particles of dark secrets, so fine they’re almost colloidal

Collide with sterling specks stolen from the Nephilim 

Ancient gums of tempestuous love

Piece them all together

Giving the institution a stench that

Altogether cannot be ignored

Like dogs drawn to a bitch’s piss

They come sniffing greedily

Put off in the gut, turned on in the gonads

But the unholy, the ugly, the unintelligent

They’ve been deceived wholly

For, the church isn’t a church at all

It is a winter fortress

A glacial manor

Closed for renovation, go away

Twins

Twins they may be, with diaphanous DNA strands that beat with the same helical heart. The strands float like jellyfish- empty and packed with sting all at once- in a bloody ocean through which echoes a steely whisper, 'They are but the same, they are but the same...'. In every way an exact copy of the other. Identical, down to the purple moles on their left earlobes, the Roman noses with Parisian peaks.

Destiny has deemed their faces disparate. For, their sorrows haven't cried the same tears. Their cries haven't plucked the same heart strings. Their hearts haven't sung the same bird songs. Their songs haven't painted the same love stories.

Therefore their faces, as science insists, are but the same. Their souls, however, paint a coat of varnish across their visages. An invisible paint that trumps science. An invisible paint that is more blatant to the keen observer than the purple moles, the Roman noses with Parisian peaks.

My Mother's Magic Madness

I remember London’s cosy underground more vividly than I do its drizzly above-ground. That was the trip… the one where I started inheriting her magic madness for travel.
When I was 15 years old, my mother insisted on spending an entire day exploring the London underground. We were on vacation and the nomad-at-heart, who had long fantasised about visiting said city, declared that the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Madame Tussauds could wait. Down under before all else, she announced. So, armed with a day pass, we got into our first train. At Paddington, we de-boarded and began walking around- never leaving the station itself (we’d cleverly packed sandwiches and fruits). Pierced and patterned stray buskers vended their electronic art, two men smooched, a homeless old man sang the blues... we took photographs of them all. When we’d exhausted all the entertainment options, we got into our next train, only to jump out at the next stop, regaled by the sight of a man who seemed to be reciting poetry. On closer inspection, we found the bard was crooning loony tunes. He began chasing us, angered by his own madness. We ran for our lives and right into an incoming coach, laughing our heads off, half scared. We kept at this flighty behaviour- trainspotting and hopping- until sunset. Then, it was back to ground reality and ground level.
The adventure was not to end yet, however. As we ambled onwards arm-in-arm, we chanced upon a wig shop decorated with plastic streamers and Moulin Rouge lights. She pulled me in excitedly. At this dystopic Barbie-land, we spent a good hour trying out a series of outlandish mock manes- blue, blonde, curly, poker straight, crimped, satiny, cheap, exorbitant. She looked like the most beautiful woman in the world, in a certain black silken wig that brushed against her hips. The amused shopkeeper wanted to gift us a smart bob. No thank you, bye. Skipping, conversing, cackling, we next made our way to an empty Indian restaurant that was dying to the tunes of an outdated Hindi film song, in which my dear vegetarian vagabond asked the waiter a million questions about the peas pulao before settling for a simple dosa. Back at the hotel, she tucked me into bed and secured all the locks. Together, we made great plans for the next day- riding a red bus, tickling the royal guard, posing by the Big Ben, a Happy Meal at Mc D,  waxing eloquent at Madame T- till sleep shut us up.
Such was the average day spent with my mother. And I inherited some of her madness.
In Dandeli, where I went on a short trek last year, I encountered a poisonous cobra. I near fainted but could almost hear my mom giggle and inch closer to the reptile, to stroke it. In Bangla Road, I knew she was ready to drag me back to the hotel as I continued dancing towards a tequila sunrise. She was the perfect company on my drive to Auroville- she didn’t change the music, she didn’t tell me how to drive, she left me be. When I held the pocket-sized Olive Ridley turtle in Hikkaduwa, I felt her blowing them tickly air kisses past my ear. In Melaka, I sensed her guffawing at the young mother who had her two tots on a cotton leash. In the Himalayas, she and I had great, wordless conversations as I trudged through snow, water, mud and silence. On my many train journeys to Bangalore, she tells me stories of my younger days, just as she always has.
Except nothing is as it always was.
The travels are many, the adventures aplenty, and I’d be a fool to grumble. As long as she’s there in spirit at least, I shall resist uttering words of complaint. After all, her magic madness is forever and inextricably entwined in my own DNA. 

Faded blue hat

The faded hat was once a regal, royal blue. The faded man who wears it now was a regal, royal boy when he first saw the hat on his pillow.

He was 14 when his mother left the striking new cotton helmet on his bed. ‘Wheee!’ he had cried, spotting it in repose on his pillow, when back from school. The pages of the much-thumbed magazine in which he’d first laid eyes on the royal headgear perched on a blond model’s crown gently rustled in the sleepy evening breeze, as if celebrating with the young man. In front of the mirror, the proud owner stood for hours, taking in his newly-regal reflection. The blue perfectly matched not his deep brown eyes but the depth of his determination. To be worthy of the hat someday.

Fifty years on, the boy, now a man of 64, twirls his hat absent-mindedly, till his eyes settle on the vanishing words etched on the inside…

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Love forever,

VA

So used is he to seeing those words, he merely regards them as a part of the hat these days. But today, the memory haunts him.

They studied in the same college and she was taken in by his wit from day one. He took his time acquiring a taste for her, but when he did, he wanted her to be his every meal. They spent all their time together. Reading, creating, loving, just being. Seven years later, she was taken by the Grim Reaper. The pain was acute and he buried his head in his hat, weeping endlessly. That’s when he noticed the tiny inscription from his lost love. He didn’t even know when she’d written it there- lines from her favourite poem. She’d loved him in secret between the shadow and the soul; now, between his head and his hat.

The years succeeding the death of VA went by in an OH-and-ho fuelled haze. Some of the drunken nights were really not too bad. His mates and he would hit the local pub and drown their respective worries in pegs and pints. The revelry was there; so was the occasional rivalry. The rust-coloured spray on the brim of the hat was testimony to the swipe he’d taken at his best friend who’d sneezed blood as a result. It was a silly fight and the swipe was meant to be light. The stain stuck; luckily, so did the best friend. 

His buddies, most of them collected during his school days, are just as faded as he is. Jaded as he is. And to think something as stupid as a food fight could excite them back in the day. The tiny stains strung together during those chip wars now present themselves as a necklace of persevering oil beads. A chain of good memories.

A memory he isn’t too fond of… the period when he’d abandoned his hat at the back of the closet, in favour of a shiny silk fedora. He was a successful businessman at that time. With a dog, a house and a trophy wife who’d picked the new hat out for him, to go with his newly-acquired invincibility. When it had all come crashing down two decades later, the vultures fed hungrily on the remains, leaving naught but the faithful blue hat. It was in quite a state, having been fed on by all manner of pest and pet, but came back to life after a wash- retaining only a few itsy-bitsy holes.

Wearing it, he ventured right back into the rat race, starting at the bottom of the pyramid- where the perks are few, but perspiration is aplenty. The streaks of sweat decorated the hat too, in the manner of an ECG, as seen through the eyes of a drunk.

It was stressful. The hat has the rapidly-falling hair to show for it. Brown hair, grey hair, even white hair sometimes. His hair is fading. The memories seem to be fading faster. His eyesight too. And his sense of smell and taste.

He hangs up his hat. On the steel bridge beneath which lies a sea of eternal solace.