Author’s Note:

This started as an attempt to write about my father — a man of quiet strength, straight talk, and unswerving loyalty. What it turned into is part recollection, part confession.

I wrote this, not because he needed to hear it, but because I needed to say it, while he is still here, in his living years, doing sudoku somewhere, still standing guard, even if a bit quietly now.

This is not a perfect tribute. It’s not meant to be. It’s simply a small note from a son, still trying.

I’ve been meaning to write about him
for a long time now.
Years maybe.
Don’t know why I never did.
Did I take him for granted?
Someone who would be around.
Always?
And I could write whenever?
After this? Or that?
Maybe I thought of negotiating
life’s other dares first?
That they seemed more testing
than the aplomb
of his steady bearing?
Or maybe because
I thought he couldn’t be written.
Perhaps, if I tried,
I’d mess it up.

It could also be
that I never felt ready to face
how much I fall short.

Well he is 3 inches taller,
but on a serious note,
it’s the rectitude too that’s loftier.

And if sloth counts as character,
he’s always been the more agile one.
I mean when I was 15 and he 42,
he could run up to a bus,
that had begun to crawl out
of the terminal
and get my huffing self a seat.

He’s 84 now.
Walks a little slower,
one foot dragging a tad bit,
like it forgot something.

But still, very much the same man.
The same quiet strength.
Still smiles quietly like
he knows something
I don’t.

Growing up, I used to watch
how he handled things — 
not with big speeches
or drama,
I mean that too, when needed,
but mostly with a nod,
a straight look,
and words that didn’t wear
any blushers or concealers.

No sugarcoating.
No niceties — to sound nice, you know.
He just said what he had to.
And that, somehow,
made people listen.

Families, especially fathers,
stand up for you.
He did too.
What’s funny is
sometimes we didn’t even know
we needed standing up for — or against what.

He did all the usual stuff
that I now find painful
to do on my own — 
paying bills,
getting broken things fixed,
answering silly questions,
sitting through our nonsense,
and not complain.
Even once.
Or maybe once.
He isn’t superhuman.
No one is or needs to be.

Sometimes I think
why is it always so easy
to fall asleep in his home.
I guess ⁠the mind knows — 
he will take care.

He’s been with my mother
all these decades.
no side stories,
no drift.
just… loyal.
And not because someone asked him to be.
Just because that’s who he is.

I was a scared child.
But this is not about me.
So, let’s just know
I was intimidated easily.
By situations. And by peers.
I remember once,
neighbouring boys came calling
with some score to settle.
I was seven or eight.
Hid under my bed. Covering up.
When I asked dad for protection.
he said,
“Come out. Fight. Don’t hole up.”
and walked away.

That line stuck.
Still does.

Though, if I’m honest,
I did run, try to escape
more than once.

That’s the thing.
I wanted to be like him.
so badly.
Still do.
But I don’t think I made it.
Not quite.

Too emotional.
Too self-doubting.
Too… me.

And now I sit here
in a Mumbai hotel room,
trying to write this,
and he’s likely solving sudoku
or gridlers
1,011 miles away
exercising his evenhanded mind
like a calm, unruffled wave.

I wonder if he knows
what he’s been to me.
Probably not.
He’s not the type
to ask those questions.
or expect answers.

But as Mike and the Mechanics
play back in the mind,
I go ahead
and write this little note
in his living years.

If he reads this — 
I hope he sees himself
in these lines.

I hope he knows
I tried.

Still am.

The Anchor was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

© Chandra S., 1995

The Ancient Immotility was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every hard earned victory
once immaculate and pristine
succumbs to frivolous, birdbrained apathy.

The slick sheen gathers blemish
in barren whispers of ungracious hearts
silently, stolidly, surely
for once at the apogee
desire — the very impulse to aspire — furtively departs.
It is present during the ascent
but when the apex is won
the brio is swiftly defunct
subverting the very fuel to be peppy -
leaving us all bled, spent, petty.

There is simply no mystery or intrigue anymore
as passion fizzles out and gives up the ghost.

The lustre peels and withers
forsaken, enervated, tattered.

No wonder then
that it is baffling to be thankful
for something so ostensibly chipper
…yet dreary, hackneyed, ephemeral
under those glowing amber covers.

❉

Pursuit, on the contrary
is thrilling -
buoyant, snappy, racy.
Powered by desire
all consuming and fiery
it spurs us on
but then fretting comes easy
with every little mis-step
or importunate want.

We grieve in sleep as well
dreaming and planning
about what we lack
instead of wakefully celebrating
our sublime bounty
and prized treasure stack.

❉

Despairingly lost in notional worlds
we then innocently rue:
Why life is not distributed normally?
Why the negative skew?
Why is gratitude more arduous than it is to accuse?
Or why winning seems spurious
and loss disproportionately true?

Know then that desire is the architect -
creating and perpetuating
us and our countless worlds -
A crackerjack industry
of solutions, hopes and warranties
with inevitably concealed and crafty
toxic downstream corollaries
that make success seem pale and phlegmatic
somewhat moony, a little tepid
while failure looms conspicuously
snarling viciously in fervid agony.

© Chandra S., 2020

Downstream Corollaries was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Being logged in to it for a little over eternity,
this is exactly how I have felt:
intense, steamy
 …maybe a bit frenzied.

Passion is also a sudden, swift salvo.
On many a fleeting occasion, ergo;
I have come perilously close
to suggesting my maudlin ardor
and poetically propose
an incredible romance,
which if you dismiss;
shall break my heart in two
and if not;
shall break a home or two.

It is like this therefore,
that I have come to feel
like an outlawed fugitive
and as if in the wink of an eye,
a million lonesome nights have passed,
sorely bruising and tearing me apart
between the hearth and the heart.

Tonight:
the first one after those million;
I am transcribing my thought
to tell you that I am hooked,
as though in a playback loop -
a weary, age-old vinyl record;
pitching forward, skipping backward
in a pestering, irksome Xerox
of scratches, static and blips;
all in the same little sector
where there was once music.

❉

Maybe that is why I surprisingly realize
the pain of passion, and slowly capsize
into a drifting, dry sleep

devoid of all dreams

of you.

© Chandra S., 2013

The Pain of Passion was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So dear Chandra:
here is a congratulation:
It must be awesome -
this imminent privilege of geriatrics
and this stolen bit of transient freedom;
the real laissez-faire to yearn
and to die for.
timorously cajoled
from time’s exacting, puritan dictum.

Laissez-faire was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People come, see the fallen one.

Not a soul seems to be concerned.
Zero, zilch, nada, none.

They don’t remember
those cloistered, sizzling infernos of June
those solitary, shivering nights of witchy new moons

and those

sodden, sultry volleys of pouring monsoons

when they, like sprayed bedbugs, ran helter-skelter
with the beast of disarray at their sorry heels -
snarling callously at all their jet-set culture,
structure and order

and

when all and sundry went slapdash
…haphazard

that stalwart of timber
gave them reassuring shelter.

…no fine print, no strings…

❉

Today, when in the aftermath of storm and rain
her generous framework lays mortally drained
there is no one who would even stop
to look for a while
let alone bestow a precious drop
of life.

❉

In this progressive society –
dynamic, forward-looking, revolutionary –

each enterprising personality
is interred beneath umpteen layers of conceit
and on the assay of fulfillment
estimates the value of the being.

Assay was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And I fail to write too
about the colossal confusion
in my mind’s realm.

To be free must always create glee.
And freedom, consequently,
must incontestably be
the loftiest of all bounty.

✽

…But then they say:
Do not run away from your instincts
…of survival, love, anger, sex…
for if these instincts were not of value,
nature would not have given them to you.

And I muse: Is it true?
Is it?

this incomprehensible link between being free
and the ineluctable visceral slavery?

Won’t it rather be that no sooner than you begin to try
to attach (or detach) value to this view or the flip-side

freedom…would indubitably fly

…away?
And then they say that one must surrender.
And thus I agonizingly wonder:
when the mind doesn’t wish to unwind
…to let go…
and you bully it to do so

you still cannot be set free

for it is only they who say:
Whatever you resist
shall persist.

✽

And I fail to grasp, I really do,

the cryptic intent of this concentrated glue
of chaotic desire and cardinal instinct
inherently inbuilt
by nature’s very own inscrutable mechanism
in (wo)man’s puppet-like plight

and then making salvation
the sole noble right
of a free spirit.

✽

An afterthought mulishly survives:
Why?

© Chandra S.

Afterthought was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On counter-days, everything winds down….
sluggish, sleepy….

Either way, the delight is missing.
No, I am not morose.
……just bored.

In search of delectation, therefore;
I have traveled far and wide,
and have tried to buy some cheer;
with credit-card swipes.

A brilliant movie, an enchanting melody, an excellent treatise,
long walks, treacherous treks and adventurous hikes;
All of them have eventually lost spice.

People seem wonderful but only for so long.
Jokes and puns are fun but not all along.

This or that, now and then, anywhere , everywhere,
the boredom beast thrives.

*

I am reasonably creative. I can think, imagine, read, write,
even come up with ideas that sometimes seem erudite.

And yet my pet, snoozing quietly at my feet
regularly embarrasses me with a look of unmatched content.
There is that unadulterated gusto in pursuing the tail-ball-cat-car,
an innocent glee in not letting the fly-on-the-nose flee too far.

And of course, the envious boon of deep, alert sleep.

The noxious notion of boredom does not exist in the animal kingdom.

*

Then there is this gentleman from the yore,
Nanak-Buddha-Krishna-Christ,
who appears very much in the now, for sure.
I often look at His picture-in action and in silence,
there is no real going-doing-speaking.
There is no somewhere-something.

What is there, is just a hint of a smile and a calm, amiable being.

Boredom?

What is that?

*

Boredom then, must exist between ends,
for neither the animal nor the enlightened
seems anywhere close to being glum.

Only us humans-the in-betweeners-
are privileged to suffer.

All this apathy and lassitude may be the persistent clue
that we are still (d)evolving and for all I know,
we may all well be:
homo-sapiens regressing or God…..in the making!

God in the Making was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They
usually take us away
from the home base
and we are lost
in the mores
of colourful
or colourless
(but elusive nevertheless)
illusions…
of gods,…
of heroes
or simply pictures of people
we have met on the internet.

We do not understand it
for if we did
we would cease to seek.

…that the seeker might be the sought
and that no wars need be fought
for that which can be
calmly identified on the inside — 
- is something we repetitively miss
and while we all magically have it,
it is in and through the other
that we ignorantly solicit
our abiding congenital bliss.

Congenital Bliss was originally published in Slices of Perception on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.