The Gifts of Time

The Gifts of Time
pile neatly around my soul
not the Christmas
and birthday time gifts
but the abstract fruits
of kindness, harmony,
friendship and trust;
the Invisibility Cloaks
of a lucky lifetime.

And what about the little regrets?
The unbought thing
the unvisited place
the unspoken, unwritten word?
All tuck away neatly
in the Great Pockets of Time
awaiting another explorer.

The songs I have not sung
stream merrily from another's lips
And dreams someone else has spun
dance a tango on my hips.

The Gifts of Time
are the funny miracles
of quick escapes and
quicker encounters
down narrow lanes
and atop mountains;

there the voices speak
there the souls gather

and sing.




I wrote this poem on my last night in Sing. I read it to Dad a few days ago, here in Shelford, and he said it captured his own experience exactly. He had been feeling regretful, of all the things he had not seen, the places, the people's faces. The holiday he could have had, if the fates were different, had been playing on his mind. Then this poem, and suddenly he seems to have relaxed. It is not the nature of regret that he dwells on anymore, but the gifts that were his. The dancing! He danced with my mother on the first day we arrived and he never really stopped. Now that is a gift of a lucky lifetime.

Jodha Akbar

These images are taken from a film called Jodha Akbar starring Hritik Roshan as Akbar, the great Mughal Emperor of 1555-1605, and Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as his wife Jodha, a Hindu Rajput princess. The marriage was allianced for the sake of a peace treaty between Hindustan and her Mughal rulers, but the Princess, in true Rajput style, had two pre-nuptual conditions. The first was that she must never, under any circumstances be made to convert, and secondly, that a temple housing her idol of Lord Krishna be built within her chambers. Akbar, a little stunned, and very impressed, acquiesced. The mutual respect, trust and devotion between Conqueror and Consort sowed seeds of racial and religious tolerance all over India.

Today, 25th of January, is my parents' 34th wedding anniversary. Theirs is a Jodha Akbar story for our times. Marriage with a Muslim, no matter how handsome and splendid a doctor, was no easier for my mother, a true Zoroastrian, to agree to, than it was for the Rajput princess five centuries ago. It was a leap of faith that I for one, am very glad she made!

Today, inspite of the media hungrily devouring stories of racial and religious intolerance, I breathe deeply into time, and remember love that conquers all.

Happy Anniversary Perveen and Chotu!!

Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow

I still have not removed the wrist band from the ward. I always forget, and then cut it off in a dramatic symbolic moment of recognising freedom. Since returning from hospital, I have been watching television a little too avidly - escaping, travelling miles - Gilmore Girls, X factor, Friends, Cary Grant in An Affair to Remember and Antonio Banderas in Take the Lead. The last is a film based on the true life story of Pierre Dulaine, a Palestinian who has brought the art of ballroom dancing into the hearts of inner city school children all across America. Changing ambitions, introducing etiquette, creating gentler connections.

Walking down the corridor past my father's study today, I heard laughter and music. I opened the door to find my parents half-waltzing, half-swinging around the (very small) room. "It's Magic Mix on the radio!" my father grinned, and I watched with a cheesy smile, as I have always done, since memory began. My parents, talking in a dance, just walking in a dance, through this thing called marriage.