i.
the first night passes, slipping away from my notice, but I have never met a better herald of fall.
ii-iv.
the leaves shiver, drawing close to their branches. I shiver with them and break out my leather jackets and scarves. the trees are on fire; so is my hearth. we take the warmth from summer and carry it inside like a candle, shielding it from the wind.
v.
panchami, my cousin tells me from thousands of miles away. it is the one time of year our weathers match.
vi, vii.
I forget, again, but something else within me does not; the smell of incense and clove lies thick in my dreams even before it pervades my house.
viii.
my mom cooks. my grandmother cooks. cardamom and clove and cinnamon, kheer and saffron milk, glistening fried papad and puri. it’s ashtami, the eighth night, and it feels as real as a beginning.
iv.
tonight is the ninth night; I think of Rama tiring over his battle, chakras broken, arrows bent. it is the night of hope; we know tomorrow he will win, and navratri is the night we are reminded of diwali, the homecoming, the day of defying the waning sunlight with electricity and candles and battery-powered tea lights. but that is weeks off, yet. today we sing. there was a fable I read when I was too young to understand it; a king found the greatest singer in the world lived not as a performer, but instead as an ascetic, singing only for God. my voice, my mother’s voice, my sister’s, my father’s, combine into one this night in prayers in a language I don’t truly understand but know, deep within. my lips stumble clumsily over the syllables, but my voice is surer and clearer than it will ever be otherwise. navratri is the night of hope; the darkest night before the sunrise, the night you truly realize how the sun is slipping away into winter. we create hope to warm us; the low-burning incense, the flame we circle with our hands, the heat of the kitchen and its spice, the love binding a family separated by two continents and an ocean. tonight, I can believe in God.
x.
dasra. Today our house fills with warmth and laughter of the family we have found here; my mother’s cooking can be eaten and our pumpkin spice candle can finally be lit. It is the day of celebration; the darkness has been defeated, and we take our bright hope with us even as we journey into the night of winter. autumn is remarkable because we defy death with our hope and love, and I can have faith in this endless warmth to last me until spring.

The rain plips

onto the gutter

plastic shaking with each gentle drip

slow and tender,

parted lovingly from the edge of the rooftop,

and plummeting to flatten into the stream below,

slithering through the roof-edge pipes

to tumble down in ephemeral grace:

a mayfly waterfall

to be sucked up into the clay earth

beneath the trimmed lawn

the sound is otherworldly

it does not belong in this desert,

where all water is an artifice of man

somehow, in this too-green spring

i hear the echoes

of the monsoon plopping steadily onto the thin metalwork of the steps

outside my grandfather’s bungalow

the ones that spiral up to a sharp balcony of slippery ceramic

the cool air wafts through the open windows

onto my forehead

the rain picks up, the thunder rolls

from one end of the sky to another

like a bowling ball; i laugh

the world is a riot of verdant abundance –

there is too much.

this is a land of salt and sand and redrock,

and it is not mine.

but today –

perhaps i have brought the monsoon with me

and it has escaped my heart

it sings of family and beauty and wet fairystools

it is a traveler, passing through,

telling tales of india and austria and bali

and leaving, just as soon as it arrived

there is a spider clinging to droplets between the mesh on my window

he is upside-down and backwards,

and black against the rainwater and the green –

oh – he has disappeared behind the slats of my window

he is gone, now

hotel rooms should be bigger. It’s calming, to be in the midst of chaos in an average Holiday Inn suite with nearly ten girls huddled inside, laughing and talking and just living. Jenny is in the corner wowing siani and angie and jenni with her card tricks and belen and inakshmi wrestle while sheila does hair and izzy looks on. the room is loud and filled with laughter and conversation, the green walls and dark furniture form a little bubble of the universe and it feels like we’re the only ones in the world. it might be enough. bags litter the floor; shoes are haphazardly tossed off, we sprawl over the chairs and bed pillows and striped carpet. this is comfort and feels like home as the tv runs in the background with no one paying attention. i’m happy. i have no reason to be, particularly, but there it is. there is so much going on, and yet, we are one. i soak in the company, the camaraderie, and i feel like i can breathe.

When a piccolo is the drummer on metal rooftops, when the sky itself is the taut grey skin of a great bass timpani, being struck by lightning in tune to Nature’s thoughts, when the air is electric, conducting a symphony of sound, changing on a whim the dynamics and power of the world outside my window – I know that Nature is giving a concert, and the best thing to do is to stop and listen – in the most wonderful case, to fall asleep and let the air conduct your dreams with the sounds of a thunderstorm.

Worn bolts complain of cold,

while Winter drags the roof apart.

Her icy grip is bold

because the gutter won her heart.

Squinting fisherman

The sun makes him young again

While the mountains age

Have you ever fallen asleep to the smell of an overheating laptop and the sounds of a sleeping house? The clocks are too loud and so are your fingers on the backspace key, echoing, because there is only one person to hear them. Your eyes are unseeing and your mind is locked in a hazy cage of insomnia and early alarm clocks, but your fingers tip-tap with a nervous energy fed by the incessant tick-tock of the nearest timepiece, counting down the amount of attention you will be able to offer to class the next day. The fan in your laptop whirls with your brain, so constant that you will not realize how loud it really is until your computer – with you- finally settles down to hibernate. The fan shuts off with a low sigh, warm with the knowledge of work well done, and you nestle, asleep already, in the cozy duvet.

 

Shabdanabhatle is the Marathi term for “words of the sky.” This blog will be filled with poetry and random musings, words I have tried to arrange into pictures and mosaics, like stars scattered through the night sky.