Tag: Joy

VERSE| CARPE DIEM

On By Mahvash K. M.In Joy, poetry, theGuardian, TheNews, TheNewYorkTimes, verseLeave a comment 
I sit here, encircled in my routine,
My safety net spread around me like a bright yellow blanket.
The sameness, the everydayness keeping it close, gently embracing.
I’ve gulped down the first half of my mug of coffee
So now I’m surrounded also, by a warm cloak of caffeine.
I stretch inwardly with the languidness of a just-fed, just-loved cat.

I look outside at the recently blue sky
Where the clouds have now gathered in heavy eskers of grey
The suddenness of the assailment, the eclipsing of the sun,
Breaking the spell of my Constancy Ritual.
I sip on the second half of my mug of coffee, rhythmically bolstering my caffeine haze
Even as the sudden coolness of the breeze loosens my other subliminal layers of warmth.

Then the rain begins to fall.
Free, fluid, gleaming,
Skipping down the sidewalk; dancing in eddying pools on the street below.
And i stand up and stretch with the lustiness of the Alive and the Kicking.
I reach out and catch the falling raindrops in the trough of my open palm;
I reach out and seize the day.

De Khudai pe aman.

PANDEMIC 2020|For Whom the Curfew Ceases

On By Mahvash K. M.In Fiction, fictionlog, Humanity, mustread, theGuardian, TheNewYorkTimes, thereset, writing3 Comments

(A soapbox on Breaking Free, the Outdoors and Vegetable Markets)

In my Book of Life in all its quirky fullness, May 11th, 2020 will probably go down as some version of a post Pandemic Independence Day. After almost 8 weeks of an almost spirit-breaking curfew, I, albeit briefly, embraced the great urban outdoors again; and it was absolutely sublime in all its beloved mundane glory!

The infinite visceral pleasure of the excursion has so hit me in my cardiac periphery, that to log it, i feel compelled. Just so i can re-read it on endorphin-challenged days for a good old pick-me-up! Re-connecting post facto with such fortified bursts of creativity bests any number of synthesised mood enhancers, said someone astute, I’m sure, at sometime!

I woke up with the lark….well… with the happy go lucky larks in my circadian world, which means at just a little past 9am. With a spring in my step, i got ready, passing the Lipstick Test with absolutely tripping colours! I felt the anticipation building with every indoor step taken to finally reclaim the outdoors; of finally stepping on real asphalt after 2 whole months in absolute time, and a couple of millennia on the psychological clock.

A similarly curfew-fatigued friend was going to be my partner in crime. We left our bacillus-sanitized footwear inside, put on our microbe-fighting gear and thus bolstered, ventured forth on Day 53 of the curfew.

The feeling – it was climactic, it was thrilling, it was invigorating, it was emancipating – it was absolutely momentous!

We drove down Galle road, taking in everything that was so familiar and yet so removed from what our lives had now become. The nearby hotel, the adjoining mall, the normally bustling Colpetty intersection flanked by it’s imposing trinity of superintending lions. Now looking forlorn and….hungry even! We gave them a cheer and a wave and i’m sure, a touch of our rhapsodic certainty of better times to come!

Our first stop, the vegetable and fruit market, was a sight for lockdown-sore eyes! More than half the shops were open, displaying rows upon rows of colourful plenty! Their vendors beaming happily, radiant smiles reaching conviction-brightened eyes on otherwise masked faces. It was all the beauty of hope springing eternal! I gave in to the knee jerk reaction born of shopping from the much awaited, not always optimally stocked fruit and vegetable trucks that we’d been relying on for our daily sustenance such as it was! And so on the 11th of May, 2020, I picked up enough perishables to stock a mid-sized vegetarian restaurant for a fortnight. My fridge now, is filled to capacity, it’s compressor groaning in censorial remonstrance, while my left ventricle dedicated to all thing vegetarian, swells with joy at every glance inside.

We next blazed our Freedom Trail along the 2 main roads traversing the city; looking, sighting, exclaiming as we saw timorous but intrepid signals of our urban paradise coming back to life: Little shops already open, leading the charge on the city’s sojourn to normalcy. Bigger establishments showing their own preparation with winking reflections of brooms, mops and buckets gathered in blithesome groups behind glass facades. Then back towards the homestead along the sea circuit; just for a while though!

Our Independence Day celebrations spilled blissfully into the evening too, as we then headed for the Racecourse. It had been 2 months since I had last treaded those much-loved flagstones. The track lay ahead of me, almost shimmering in all it’s cardio potential; and my mind was flooded with all the dramatic epochal music accompanying all the transcendent events in all of celluloid history! (My high energy playlist could have had something to do with that adrenalin rush too!). And so, those 11 brisk-walked circuits of the Independence Square quadrangle are now etched in my memory quite in the iconic manner of the one small step for a (wo)man but a giant leap for all of (wo)mankind!

The catharsis was finally complete as we drove homeward, into the curfew-bound arms of our current reality.

The feeling – It had been rejuvenating, it was heart-warming, it was calming and even a trifle funny as Farrokh Bulsara* reminded us of the fickle nature of one-off days of freedom….

“So baby can’t you see

I want to break free…!

I’ve got to break free….

I want to break free…!

De Khudai pe aman.

*Farrukh Bulsara: aka Freddy Mercury of the 70s British rock band, Queen.

VERSE|Thank you for the Joy

On By Mahvash K. M.In alphabet soup for the soul, Joy, Nostalgic musings, poetry, verse4 Comments

They say the creative types produce their best work while in the throes of incredible happiness, or while in the savage, unrelenting grip of immense anguish. Much like the perpetually conflicted Michaelangelo, who while being devoutly catholic was also inimitably homosexual. The constant inner conflict arguably served to inspire his best work, lesser known of which is the “Prisoners” series of sculptures.

And so (on a much more modest scale!) the below came about while I experienced an extraordinary time of tremendous joy 2 years post my mother’s passing away after a protracted and distressing illness. I share this heretofore very private memorialization in the hope that it may bring a few moments of comfort to folks going through something similar.

THANK YOU FOR THE JOY

I saw you in a dream a few nights ago
I had your gold bangle on - the one you always wore
And I felt you near me
I closed my eyes - so afraid I’d lose the thread.....


And then I felt my heart beat fast
As I felt you closer still,
Eyes closed, I whirled around the room
And then I felt my hand grasped lightly 
And I held my breath, Mama
And I whirled with joy - I whirled and whirled
And then YOU held my other hand
And you were there! And you laughed!
And I laughed! And I held on to your beautiful hands
As we whirled together in joy and laughter!


You were well, and you were happy - and you came to me;
In your infinite compassion, wisdom and love - you came to me.


I tear up as I write this not because I grieve this time,
But because I’m overwhelmed; I’m overcome with knowing you’re healed and happy,
And that i danced with you in extraordinary bliss.


I ask just one thing of you today Momsy,
For us to grieve a little less and to celebrate you so much more
Just once, every year, let me and the girls dance with you in joy.


Until we meet again Mama.