Slipping into Columbus | Art, Poetry and Finding the Community I Sought After

(I’ve been trying to write this in several ways and forms. I already two very different drafts of what I want to say but haven’t quite been able to coherently put together in word. I think I have finally written what I want to say. It’s a tad bit long but it’s directly from my heart.)

I’ve been making art, and mainly, been indulging in live-sketches for several years now. I have seen myself grow as an artist and a person, used art as a conversation-starter and indulge in discussions with people about community, tangible and intangible heritage, and what it means to have something so significant to themselves stand in a place as a testimony to their life experiences. Walking around the city and drawing places and buildings, making art is my way of comprehending how the city functions, how it lives, the styles and characters it comes to acquire, the way tangible and intangible heritage, people and stories morph to present an entire picture; it has been my way of connecting with the city and its people, to feel like I belong, perhaps? Art for me, as a process, is slipping myself into familiarity from the unfamiliar. It is my means of putting myself out there, vulnerable and in public eye; for possible criticism and rejection. Art means pushing the extents of my comfort zone to make it even bigger, to accommodate the new, and forge new connections. I’ve been doing these live-sketches for all those reasons in addition to actually wanting to document the tangible heritage of the city, its stories and what it means to the community to have a piece of them in something so physical- as a trained architect with a proclivity to support conservation and adaptive re-use of historic and community-inclined spaces.

With all that in mind and hand, I have been actively seeking community in the last two years of my stay in Columbus. I moved from Madras, a city I had lived in for two decades, a place I knew like the back of my hand. Community for me in Madras was a given. I has lived in the same neighbourhood all my life and I knew every other person in the area, and even as I moved outside in the city; or sometimes even across state lines. I’d bump into people on the road: classmates, friends, family, the grocer, the rice-merchant, the electrician, the flower-seller, my father's barber, the beauticians from the saloon down the road, the street-side tailor, the guy who fixes my bike, the mechanic, the auto-drivers in the stand close to my house, teachers, acquaintances, the dogs...community was a given for me. I was an established gymnast and athlete and I had different circles of acquaintances: school, training peers, music class peers, so and so forth. I could stop at any point in my city and never feel odd about wanting a glass of water from a local establishment or a public group. That, in fact, was the first thing that was offered when you walked through anyone’s doors: food and drink, if not anything- some water. It was a sign of inclusion. I was never an outsider to have to actively seek relationships, friendships or functioning people of the community because I acquired them in time—through school, through college, through friends and family. So, when I had to literally leave everything that I knew and built over the course of time behind in my coming to a new city and a new country to pursue new goals- I knew then, that this was my chance to actively seek community. This time, it was going to be different because America has a different culture than India. I had to make an effort to reach out, I had to decide who I was going to be associated with, what I was going to do and where I was going to start in this entire pursuit. I was excited in a way to be in a city where no one knew me—it’s a fresh slate. I was even a tad bit happy to be away from the sometimes prying eyes of the community I was a part of, in Madras.

I want to tell you to be careful what you wish for at this point, because sometimes you get it. My initial honeymoon phase with self-sufficiency and independence (different from Madras’s version of the same) was joyful. I loved the anonymity I had. No one knew me and I was completely on my own—in full, (Though was I complete? That was another question altogether) It faded soon though, not the joyful learning in independence or self-sufficiency but in the lacking of a strong foothold—a space to go to for more learning, support and sharing. I lacked a community outside of my graduate life the first six months I was here. I don’t want to beat myself up about it because grad-life is all-consuming. Every single bit of extra project, art or poetry I do outside school takes all the remaining energy and sleep I could have potentially garnered. But those interactions I’ve come to build is also sustenance I’m grateful for. With a brief interim (not in art though), I resumed going after what I have always wanted to do in this search for a good community to be a part of. I started exploring the campus at the time and started doing live-sketches. See, I’ve done this before—but with different end-results. When I used to work on the live sketches back in Madras/India, every single sketch had a story. I had local tea-masters give me free tea, watchmen who gave me his spare chair to sit on, a badass flower-seller who made me a makeshift chair from her carton boxes on a temporary bridge outside the railway station, a savoury shop owner who let me sit in her shop next to her-gave me water and food, little kids from school scattered all along, conversations with other street wall painters and church pastors...it's a huge list. I've almost never sat through a sketch session without talking to the people local from the area and that was wonderful because I love talking to people about these spaces, to get to know little anecdotes and share the process with them. I lived in that city for twenty years and I knew the place, I knew the people: I constantly kept running in to people I knew; and yet, every time I went out to sketch in a different area, I saw the city with a new pair of eyes and through new people. Coming back to Columbus and engaging in the same process here, I met with more nonchalant reactions. Campus is a bustling space with shuffling feet and no time to stop. I didn’t exactly get the community I was seeking in this space in those initial months of my stay in the city. Winter set in and so did the first phase of disconnect and unrest. I was also living with a roommate at the time with whom I was not on good terms with and had to return to a hostile environment every night. I spent long hours in the studio making peace with all the work I had but something was still missing. I felt like I needed to throw this net out further in the sea, while afraid of drowning.

After those initial six months, I decided to seek what I had on my list of things-to-do when I arrived at Columbus: attend poetry open mics, ‘artist’ and be self-sufficient. One Wednesday night, I picked myself up and went out to the closest poetry night with a poem in my pocket. I didn’t know how this was going to pan out, but I had to try. It might have been my best decision and venture ever since I came to Columbus, hands-down (more on that later). Another day, I hopped on to the COTA bus and went Downtown, randomly walking the streets with a flask full of chai in my hand. That felt in-sync with who I was as a person: to seek encounters and spaces, to go after what I want once I knew that it was what I wanted.  I sought this in the most intimate way I knew: through art.

It’s been an intriguing journey: to explore a city I’ve moved to and making art of and in these spaces. It’s been funny too, sometimes, because I would be standing around a building and sketching it while someone from the locality would ask me why I was doing it and if I knew the history of the place. It baffled me that they would ask me, an outsider, about the history of a place that they have lived in for so long. I had the answers but I still did feel like an outsider. I was still looking at the city as an outsider,  I was still not belonging despite being a part of two different communities here. I belonged to the community, but did I feel like I belonged to the city? I wasn’t quite sure of that. So, I kept doing what I did because most often, art has a way of revealing thought processes and our seeking in repetition and constant pursuit. I must say the poetry community in Columbus was an amazing place to have started this journey. I have found some incredible people I dearly love and a community that has been nothing short of supportive and in equal parts jestful- they take the time to explain cultural contexts I don’t understand, have long discussions about the greatness of PB&J sandwiches (I’m still not convinced of that combination) or apple ‘sauce’, be there when I have features somewhere else in poetry or at art exhibitions I’m a part of, a bunch of people being willing participants in my Masters research, and of course—making fun of my accent that I didn’t think I had, but in retrospect, what was I thinking! These were people that supported my art too, and suggested places I could go out and visit, and how to possibly get there. They are people who are more than willing to drive me to places should I need it, though it’s not something I am comfortable asking of everyone as I have always been the kind of person who took care of herself (I don’t always like asking for help or feeling inadequate, especially when it lies within the fringes of coming in the way of my perception of being ‘self-sufficient’).  

Columbus has its communities intersecting intimately: I run into people from the design community at poetry readings or art shows or interesting lectures/talks around the city. Columbus is a large city with a small sense of Madras that I grew up with, while I still felt like I didn’t entirely fit in. Columbus was that pair of gloves that had me cozy and warm, though not completely comfortable. By virtue of many poets being artists themselves or organizers, by them being interested in a wide range of artistic pursuits; I found my circle expanding—and still do. I started learning new things about myself in the way other people perceived me: someone called me a ‘mover and shaker’ last month. I had no idea what that meant and when they said it meant I was good at networking, I laughed because it was the last thing I thought I was good at. I am good with people- but at networking (You should see me at professional networking events; I’m the one sipping on my lemonade in the corner of the room)? But I also realized that now, I attend events and know people there, and they know me. The recognition and friendship was validating. I realized my art was rooted in physical, tangible means that later translated to larger conversations and intangible ideas. I learnt that I was trying to combine worlds in this process. With some people, I learnt to be vulnerable and open; it’s not my usual way of being. I like being collected and together at all times, but I have a select few that I go to when I need to be my raw self. I have seen friendships and a bunch of my relationships in India drift away, and I am finally at the point where I have let it all go. I no longer hold on to toxic relationships, I extricate myself from conversations that barge into my mental space. I have started learning to take care of myself. These were all discoveries and learning.

Now, I write this as my new apartment lies like a lava-floor-obstacle-course-pit. I have moved three apartments in two years adding pieces of furniture, potted plants, photographs, memories, art and poetry with every move--life is a tad bit different now and, in this difference lies my growth; in the quality of these experiences and all the learning- I have seen myself evolve as an artist and as a person. I enjoy this transition in its occasional turbulence. But until about three weeks ago, I still felt like an outsider to the city, though not quite to all of its people.

In these live-sketches I do of the city, I learn about Columbus one neighbourhood at a time. I slowly make my way around localities; learn street names, bus routes and food joints. I do this as a traveler, as a resident of the city instead of holding on to tourist-y eyes. It makes me feel like I belong, I suppose with that last pang of being an outsider to the city still tugging away on the inside. About two or three weeks back, I went into a new neighbourhood in this exploration, to sketch a building suggested by someone at the poetry community—as I threw open the question to them on Facebook. I wanted to sketch an old, closed building in the Near East side and I had not been there before. It is an area that is facing gentrification in the city and I thought it imperative to process what was happening in ways I best knew how to. I hopped on and changed two buses and got there. I found the building and stood across the street and later, sat on a patch of grass and began sketching. About ten minutes in, I had a lady demanding questions about why I was on her yard. I hadn’t realized I was trespassing and so, I stumbled with my answers. I told her I came in to draw the building and I didn’t realise I was sitting in her property and began to move away when she asked me why I was doing what I was doing. I have had that question asked a few times in Columbus with hesitation and curiosity but none that demanded answers. The rightful questioning of the woman to know why I am doing what I was doing in her neighbourhood and space was interesting and largely protective. I loved that. As I gave her my reasons for my process, she said I could sit down where I was and keep doing what I was doing. “You do you”, she said. I had someone scream from a car, at the intersection that the building I was drawing was going to be sold, probably to the city. There were no inhibitions or pleasantries in that exchange—they spoke to me like I had to know what was going on. Minutes later, a man pushing his baby in a pram crossed the road and came up to me to talk to me and go through my work. He was an artist, too. It was a pleasant conversation in the middle of a hot day before he left. An asshole from another car scared the crap out of me by jolting me with his loud scream, and laughed in my face; which I have to say is also very reminiscent of India. The woman whose lawn I was sitting on came back to me as I was finishing up and asked me if I wanted water. I told her I had some and appreciated her gesture but I came prepared with enough water that day. I had finished sketching by then and crossed the road and stood outside the bus stop waiting for my bus to take me Downtown from where I’d go to campus, and then on- to my apartment.

As I was standing there, waiting, an elderly gentleman broke my thoughts and meekly demanded—“What did you draw? I saw you drawing. What did you draw? Show me!” I opened my sketchbook and extended it to him as he took it in his hands and thumbed it between his old, wrinkled fingers and said-- “Come in.” He didn’t wait for an answer; he didn’t even think I was going to refuse. It has been two years since anyone asked me to come in to their space like that, especially strangers. I nimbly and yet slowly, opened the door and saw two other men sitting there to whom the elderly gentleman started showing my work to. One of them was in an apron. I looked around and that’s when it hit me—I was in a barber shop. I have listened to conversations surrounding the conversations that begin here, poems about it from my friends and I was there, in a barber shop. The men there were extremely sweet and looked through my sketchbooks as I looked at the space and spoke with them. The space also strangely reminded me of the time as a child. Growing up as a gymnast, I didn’t have a say in my hairstyle; my coach did. His solution to easy training and practice sessions was a closely cropped boy-cut. You know where I got this haircut back in those days, for a good part of about five or seven years? At the local barber shop. I’d go there with my dad and get almost the same haircut he did. That space wasn’t too different from this, in Columbus. The men in Madras at the time welcomed me when I was seven. I never grew up feeling odd in spaces mostly reserved for men because I grew up in those spaces, as a girl, I never felt like an outsider in that barbershop I went to with my father. I hadn’t been to that shop with my dad in almost a decade—and now, I had re-entered one after all these years and it felt perfect, a wave of nostalgia and familiarity washing over my senses. The owner of the shop asked me if I wanted water, too—something no one in Columbus had asked me in my past two years of sketching here across the city. And suddenly I felt like an outsider no more.

I had finally slipped into Columbus: the community, art, poetry, and the city. All of it. I have slipped into  a familiar comfort I had missed the past two years.

I love and thank everyone who has been instrumental in that transition.

All my love,

Hemu 

I Stand a Cyclical Step Away from Being Everything Else

I am tucked away in a niche on the highest floor of the campus library where no one can find me. No one can directly see me or at the least, I can’t see anyone but for the tree tops slowing changing colours in the fall of the summer, now gone by. I am amidst everything that is me: changing colours, a dot of an existence in the infinite and everything transient. I am also everything that isn’t me: gable roofs, sweaters and a partial slice of these surroundings. I am removed right now. I am listening to Chopin’s nocturnes as the sun shines outside the curtain wall spread of glass and wondering how being stuck in such a turbulent and delightful place can be expressed in words. I am going to try anyway.

I am bi-lingual. I am actually tri-lingual, so to speak. I am quadruple-lingual if I consider pieces of other languages I know enough to have a conversation with a Tea Master for a cup of chai across almost any state in my country and yet, I need my American friend to say ‘vanilla’ for me because my accent is somehow incongruous to the barista who can’t understand when I say ‘vanilla’. Vann-nila Milkshake, I say.  How do you read an Indian woman saying ‘vanilla’? The word itself seems weird to me now that I have repeated it over and over again. But do you know what is comforting? Vennila. வெண்ணிலா, is the bright, white moon. The bright moon under which I sing and write, that which is everything comforting to me, that which is midnight stories from my mother, books I read under dim lights on the terrace and a constant companion. We hear what we want to. We listen to our own projections and inner-most calling, cravings and demons.  Every time I hear words, I don’t see just one meaning. I see its mermaid sisters in other languages, swimming by hand-in-hand. I seem to have gills for pores and wings for fins. I am familiar. I am unfamiliar. I hold them all in my fist and I can easily switch between at the least three languages within the fraction of a second and yet, I am not understood when I say ‘vanilla’.  What then, is my proficiency with these languages?  I’d go one step further, what is proficiency itself? What does it mean?

I urge you to listen to Chopin’s nocturnes in broad daylight. Throw yourself in my shoes, out of context, out of everything comfortably known. There is nothing as vibrant and melancholic as these compositions. What do you hear when you listen to a solo piano piece? What language pops up in your head? You’re surely thinking, aren’t you? What language do you think in?  What language do you think in when you close your eyes and see your mother’s face? When are those times your parents call you by your full name? What are the words that accompany the oddness of being referred to by our entire name by the ones we love, and if it is a language that you know, go deeper. Do you know the language or the inward surge that comes with it? If you had to tell the story of that inwardly gut, a wrenching pain or an excruciatingly beautiful joy, what are your words going to be?  We are a race that vastly identifies itself with linguistics, one’s mother tongue and inflections of a language’s voice and yet, for most things that strike us, we speak in silence, in pauses and in breathing; in being understood and experienced.

I talk to you from this place. The whole globe is cyclical and I am at the edge of one of the poles. Should I slip, I fall straight south. With a single step upward, I go down.  I am walking a tightrope on the horizon. With each step, I am seeking a balance. I am slack-lining; dipping up and down, trying not to fall. I am looking for a word in English that comes closest to கண்ணம்மா. I am amazed at how the word ख्वाब sounds in my mouth and its lyricism in poetry. One of my closest friends in this country said I was an effervescent personality whereas an angry ex-roommate called me a 'bad person' and that is interesting, someone else's words/descriptions of me: I like that added to the many pieces of who I am. I like these little bits of donated words to make me anew and changing but I am also everything I grew up with and devoured ,by myself. I grew up with கண்ணம்மா, with கண்ணா resounding in my ears. I can’t quite read anything as quickly in my own language as I can in English. I am auditorily attuned to the nuances of my language; it’s a meadow with rivers and the sounds, words come with memory, with nostalgia, with my mother’s face, my grandmother's smile and hot playgrounds. There is comforting familiarity in knowing what I am hearing and what it means to the one saying it, in my mother tongue. And yet, I can read English better than any other language I know. I know what I am looking for. Both of these languages now, hold me at an arm’s distance in one way or another. I am in-between languages, I am in the middle of explaining myself to people on either sides. I am no one story. I am too many of them and based on which side you ask me to tell you the story from, my narrative is going to change.

I want to layer my stories with the words you don’t know when I tell them. I want to know what you think they are and what I think they are and what they really do mean. I can’t translate for you what I viscerally understand. I read an interesting article with the term Shaman in Spanish (by a bi-lingual writer) and I am automatically thinking of the same word in Urdu. Oddly enough, these words mean close to the same thing in both these languages- one connecting the spirit and visible worlds. What do you think connects me and you? What connects a Spaniard and an Indian speaking a language that is a mix of Hindi and Farsi? How did these words travel? Like me, I’d like to think that language is cyclical too. It is stuck between familiarity and unfamiliarity. A language is one step away from falling into another and becoming one or something new. I am all these missteps; I am something new, something old and a confluence.

My friend, in a conversation yesterday, told me that all art is political. This turned up at a time when I independently wonder of the personal and the political in my art, writing and stance. Everything I write, say, make, or sketch is a manifestation on some level, a piece of my socio-cultural-linguistic environs. You are partaking in a bygone memory or incident that shaped me, now, across time. It is in the way I say ‘vanilla’, it’s the way I draw the moon, it’s the way I write a poem about my mother’s and my மூக்குத்தி and how I have embraced what it means to me now… to see her in myself as I move away from her, into being someone else. What do you think மூக்குத்தி is, anyway? I implore you to trace the form of these words that you may not understand. Try to write these words you see and write what you think they mean. They have a story that is me and you have one, too. Do you think these stories can fall together, find some link, a tear to share or a smile? Stories are what make and break us. Micro-narratives stitching up a whole picture full of holes: tears sewn up with the sun shining through them.  

I seem to belong and flit between everything I know and don’t know. I fall freely everywhere. I belong nowhere. I talk to you from my land of in-between's where everything is a simultaneous existence, one cyclical step away from being something else. I am everything you know and everything you don’t.

வாஞ்சை கதைகள் தரவா?

Hemu 

Art  ©  Hemalatha Venkataraman: Please do not reproduce without permission

References:

Borderland: Gloria Anzldua (A book that I actually started reading when I told someone I consider my mentor that I feel like I am in-between worlds)

Sommers- I Stand Writing

Waking Up Every Morning | My Fondest Everyday Memory from Childhood

Mosaic floors embedded with broken bits of colourful tiles stuck into its grounded stature at 254/4, Pioneer Colony, shone with the perfection of a man clad in a tuxedo on his wedding day. They held some chillness in its flat owing to the modest winter setting in, in the humid city; bearing the silent imprints of the footsteps walked around, in the house. Big, Appa-feet shuffling around the hall whose ever-searching eyes pored through the morning newspapers. A pair of slightly smaller, heavier feet previously adorned in silver anklets whose sounds resounded through the enclosed walls, now roamed around bare; making short trips between the kitchen and the dining table. The sari-clad mother, Amma, held in her hands tiffin-boxes and vegetables for the day while the wrists bore plastic bangles of red, auspicious. Oh, then there were these feet one couldn’t see as they were slipped within white canvas shoes gleaming in the tweak hours of twilight, of a young girl in two plaits whose morning smile was as heavy as her black school bag; whose prints followed her in a momentous memory till the balcony doors before she wheeled her bicycle out through the hall and into the lobby of the ground floor. The un-oiled, rustic lock of the balcony’s grill-doors smiled at her, a hard smile visible only to observant eyes. Appa stepped out into the dark of the eons a little before sunrise till the hallway to shoo away any wild stray that might smell the porridge off the teenager’s scalded lips in an ironed uniform of blue, and waved her an affectionate bye as he saw her riding away into the dark void before the first rays of sun could reach her. Perhaps, she could have waited for the world’s embrace of translucent golden love before she starts on her journey. Things seem so much simpler then.

His steps traced back with a tiring embrace of the names of his favorite gods for the good filter-coffee from his wife and, the black and white papers of the nation. It posed, waiting for him on the teapoy and the teak sofa by the window. Appa made his way into the house though, keeping his parched throat in a wait for his nerves had to be satiated with the taking out of the trash, arranging the empty boxes on the teak-wood table, bringing down the clothes from the vibrant nylon ropes now that they are dry while calling out to Amma for the coffee in all obviousness of his day-to-day activities.

‘Be right there’, she hollered and then began calling out to the early winged visitors of the crow community for breakfast in the backyard, on the concrete luxury of a water motor sump room.

The hues of the sky changed. The sun decided to wake up from another world, a unanimous decision of millions of people who took the big source of life for granted. Life, in their terms always got better when the orange ball ascends. There was App sipping his coffee from the stainless steel tumbler, relishing it with words of the morning papers so far favourable. Amma had begun the string of chants and prayers that would go for at least the next forty five minutes calling out to all the ancestors and gods to protect her family. Gods. Lots of them. Ones with animal heads, ones with human heads and a divine halo. Gods with several hands and hour-glass figures. Lovely goddesses in sparkling diamonds on both sides of their noses and some with matted hair. Amma knew them all, as They walked into the house, supposedly with an assuring note to kick-start her day.

As the rays of the sun now streamed and penetrated through the curtain-less windows of the bedroom windows open to fresh air, a child twisted her bare body to shield them away from its small self. Her tender feet had yet not met the cold floor and were still within the flimsy covers of the big bed. Tousled hair fell over her eyes and the beginning of the nape and no more. The skin shone with exuberant gold as the radiance bounced off the naked back beginning to now extrude glistens of sweat waiting to be trickled off. Tossing for air, the child rolled, calling for Appa (who had switched off the fan) in soft tones that her morning energy could allow. Laying still and waiting for Appa got to the little one in all the heat the humid city could bundle up. Blankets were then kicked in slow motion and those tiny eyes tried to blink through sleepy vision for the initial staring of the day. The thin, half-naked body in just a navy-blue underwear with yellow hot air balloons for a print lay still, breathing. If one saw her from the door of the room, they wouldn't know for sure if that child so cherubic is a girl or boy, at the first glance given her tiny frame and short hair. But I know her more than she thinks she knows herself.

She’s a little, little girl, and I've travelled through time to see her non-conforming looks, innocence and happiness in the eye, again after all these years.

The placid walls and heavily descended golden transience opened her to an unintentional cosmos of what seemed to be real to the rest of the world. She got down with every whim of a child and stood up on those short legs. Her pink lips let out a yawn and her hands broke into the air, fighting with the angels and pushing them against the rooms’ loft that she now stood under. She then adjusted her ballooned underwear, imprinting its elasticity on her delicate navel to view the pink band across its existence. Pouting and pushing her hair away from her face, she took slow steps with me into the long hallway; past the long oval wooden dining table and into the living room.

  

Appa hadn’t seen or heard her tiny stature pull herself out of imagination and dreams onto the cold winter morning until she knocked on the leafy portal wide open between his brown hands. He pulled them close to look at the fair girl with a radiant glow rolling her fist into her eyes. As her hair set about scattering when it met with the morning breeze from the window by the sofa, she sluggishly mounted onto his strong laps. Appa collected her into his magnificent arms as she twisted and turned to finally roll into a riot of a ball, legs hanging down his lap; a hand around his back against the red cushions of the sofa, and her round head resting on his chest. He held the tiny, little bundle of a girl who is all tenderness and love as she swiftly fell into abyss, sleeping to the creaky, fixed journey of the living room fan in the ceiling, throwing at her, tufts of air.

Image Source: http://www.thefeministwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/bampw-bed-bedroom-black-amp-white-black-and-white-Favim.com-326537.jpg

This image DOES NOT BELONG TO ME 

 Hemu 

Living in the Land of In-Betweens

Today marks a year of being away from my family in India, having embarked on a fiercely turbulent and beautiful period in my life: full of learning, leaving and living. It's been a year since I moved to this country to pursue my higher education. I can safely say I've grown and learnt more outside school than within classrooms as a student or teaching one as an instructor.

Leaving the streets I grew up in full of mongrels that know me, extended family living a stone's throw away, best friends on the next street, wrestling with brothers, standing about predominantly male occupied spaces like that roadside tea shop where the Tea Master knows exactly how you take your tea but never feeling threatened by any of them, and never feeling lost: this has been a crazy ride albeit momentous. Cultural shocks were always in the little things for me: neighbours whose living room I've never seen, the people who walked away after 'How you doing?' as I was knee deep in replies and, the absence of street dogs and terraces. Not knowing anything was one of the best things that happened to me and I thoroughly enjoy cracking jokes inside my own head, the intricacies of my language playing in my head, and meeting new people.

Is it all sunshine? No. Living with my parents all this time was a choice I didn't question or think twice about. It was a natural state of affairs. Living like that, I never questioned what home meant. If someone from my own city asked me where my home was, I would give them the name of my neighbourhood. If I was in a different state in my country, I would say 'Tamilnadu'. There are so many layers and social constructs to this sense of home that I never introspected upon. All these variations of answers thus far to 'where is your home' were never unsettling and never did not feel right. They were all culturally and socially understood. Now, in the midst of these versions, I have zoomed out into thinking about those terms across mere geographical entities and into a question of who I am and into a deeper sense of what the term could come to mean.

There are things I miss about India in this country and that is easily a cultural condition. The sense of a community here is constrained in my world simply because I have only been exposed to one version of what community means. I wonder now, if I miss knowing people on the road I happen to walk on. One of my best friends was forever skeptical to go on walks with me because I usually am familiar with the people on the streets (and their dogs) and I kept stopping to say hi to all of them, and that irritated her to no end. There should have been some sort of familiarity here by this point, I reckon but I am not sure if I have located any. On the other hand, I enjoy slinking away into the background and not being known or recognised. I live in-between ends like these two, swinging between sides and not feeling comfortable staying on either end. There are aspects of living in India that I adore, enmeshed parts of my life here that I am grateful for and enjoy; but neither of them fit anymore. Rather, I don't fit into either of these societies completely. I can't stay in one because I have been in the other, they're different moulds. This has led to living in a land of living in-between worlds. I could call it that or a feeling of not belonging in either of these places. All that said and done, this is not necessarily a bad condition either.

None of this is associated with sadness in its entirety. These are phases of growing and coming to terms with certain aspects of life that was buried underneath layers of a false sense of security at various points. Right now, to truly be in turbulence is interesting as it helps me let go of weights that make me feel put otherwise. I can now cast some over my shoulders and move a step on (just threw out some toxic atmosphere I had to live with for the last year, there is that progress). I have a wonderful local poetry community to be a part of since the start of my Spring and numerous acquaintances from there to be thankful for. My vulnerability has always been a calculated venture, a fort from my own past but aspects of it see tiny differences. My summer months have turned around to have me encounter some really interesting experiences. I learnt to be vulnerable on a slack-line with a great person, garnered some wonderful friendships (well, three to be precise) that has its own period of waxing and waning, forever plummeting and flying. These relatively newfound but truly close and important relationships have their own roadblocks that I am trying to break through in ways I best know how to. I wonder how they are going to turn out, but here is to hoping only for the best.

The land of in-between is every man's subjective land, I assume. We all battle with our own sources of discomfort, freedom and independence. I recently had a conversation with one of my childhood friends who is also abroad and she admitted to feeling the same way, though her version varied a little from how I feel at this juncture. We are all lost here. We are all trying to grapple away at the fray ends of the first thing that feels like home, like familiarity and relationships that remind us of our loved ones back home before it manifests into itself. These new experiences shape me as I encounter them and I'm learning of the many ways in which someone loves and prioritizes another.

It's been a year since I arrived at Columbus. I'm not precisely sure of what I learnt in the last year but that every moment has been a form of growth even if it comes with sadness or pain, every relationship a lesson, and also that I am three truly honest and genuine friends richer with whom I can talk about anything.

Also, home is no longer a place.

Home after all this, is a feeling. Whether I shall find it and acknowledge it the way I envisage it, however, is not something I know of. I can't control that.

Until then, from the land of in-betweens,

Hemu

High

I’ve never lived in homes with ceilings low,

breathing on me

like the open windows don’t belong

within the walls;

they’re too stumped,

buckling,

falling,

pressing.

I live now in an old apartment

and it seems like yesteryears were full of people like me

who didn’t want buckling walls ,

let tall lovers graze their homes with no apprehension,

believing in the power and beauty of them high ceilings:

untouchable bases of everyday living,

a space that lets you move.

It lets you explore.

It lets you jump.

Jump because I jump sometimes

in joy,

I shoot up when someone tickles me

an involuntary happiness that I can’t contain

it just spills and reaches out of my body.

I shoot.

Shoots, yes.

I want a lot of them, green from the top

hanging from my indoor skies,

vines filling for the veins of the walls,

pots and plants scaling my thoughts,

upright striving

and a safe space for their flowers to bloom.

I love high ceilings and I can’t lie,

not in houses alone

nor at work or that breakfast diner on my street

but at the psychiatrist’s office

or that bar that was once a bank

and in funeral homes.

The soul needs space to leave that body,

an outworn piece of clothing

the music needs to bounce,

it needs to echo, to want to dance in the presumed void;

it lets me dance with my beloved I bring home

and should he want to carry me high up

straddle my soul on his hips,

breasts at his lips

I want nothing to touch, no ceiling to hold on to

except the high cheekbones of his face.

I can’t be put in places with low ceilings,

they make me seems bigger than I am,

a giant,

an illusion of being free to accomplish goals

and I am not sure that is me.

The high ceilings are a friend

long lost

walls holding them up for me.

They meet me with open, blank slates

my art has the space to breathe,

the poems are up on my walls

living in sprouting light,

shadows incarnated.

When I’m head flat, water in my ears

in the bathtub

naked and suspended of social intrusions

I like looking at the light playing with the blinds

behind my back;

a fresh canvas

not breathing down on me or pressing me,

coercing me to be big

but a tender look that allows my insignificance to manifest.

The crown moulding looks at me like a lover,

the walls let me touch them

slow, I write in the air.

I once read this story about a man who filled his walls

with art, poetry and words,

ceiling resplendent with the words of others

until he hung himself from the fan

and I can’t help but think

how high his ceiling was

because these words can float,

they need no tethering,

they are little free lives in themselves

and if you put them in a box

and throw a person like me in it

I can never make peace with those words

and art, arrogantly mine.

I need the volume to love and it’s important that I love

because that is when I

and the colours

and the words I string

are most beautiful

and should you come to my funeral when I am gone,

I don’t want these words haunting you:

making you cry, kissing you against your will

but makes you rise and pluck words from my space

creating your poems from mine already dead,

streak it with colours

to later tell people about me

with a smile:

That funeral was hauntingly beautiful

and then,

Remember to look up

because

I am probably still there. 

I do not own this image. Collected from Pinterest.

Hemu 

Home?

I woke up one evening to a late summer sun that lives far beyond

its days of regular hours of light

to be situated in movement, in dynamism,

flitting between my lands of illusion and perceived reality.

I searched for landscapes that I’ve known to see by virtue of comfort

in between content sleep and momentary awakenings.

When I travel,

there are reassuring dim lights outlining mounds of back-lit mountains

with their own gaudy colours and early night's chatter.

My father in the front seat:

awake and seriously holding a conversation with the driver while

the speakers float in a language 

I comprehend at the most intimate level.

I woke up in a car racing back ‘home’.. Or what I should call home.

It took me three whole minutes to realise where I was

after the remnants of deep slumber

resting itself in the nooks of my breasts awoke

to transience.

Ten months in this city

and I still wake up from every deep slumber

to unfamiliarity.

Why, the dogs here never stop. 

They don’t have the time to stop.

They’re smiling and following the tug on their leash

following their human who has taught them to sit up straight and act like a dog,

to not lick the faces of people they love and act like a dog.

Don’t jump on her, those clothes will get dirty! Act like a good dog!  

They apologise for their furry companions sometimes,

‘I’m so sorry, He loves people.’ they say

and I want to just strip free of the collars round my neck,

strained attempts to ridiculous decorum

and roll by their side and fight in the mud;

because

familiarity to me is turning into my street

and whistling to have five street mongrels at my side.

They jump, they paw, they lick

and I could wash their freaking ticks away if I ever contracted any

But their love stays on across the seas for all the times they've listened to me

with crooked ears and curious eyes.

And so,

every single time I see a well-behaved dog outside my window

after a slumber so deep that I don’t realise where I am,

I miss being home where chaos was more unruly with herself,

flirting with the orderliness of monotony...

I finally understand what homesickness really means.

But now, I'm not sure I know what home means.

-Hemu

Home

  How could I forget that night? It was exactly ten days since my grandfather had passed away. I was close to 1400KM away from home at Bombay, unable to sleep; merely staring at the wall a little before midnight. There was a sense of melancholy and wishful dreaming over my head. My teammates were fast asleep, heads buried in makeshift pillows. It was January; the floor was as cold as ice but yet, vaguely comforting.

  Silence screeched as the wall suddenly lit up to life, reflecting the warm hues of an oriflamme presence somewhere. The sound of the crackling rose up to the second floor apartment where we lay as the fog lifted, disintegrating into nothingness in the face of the bonfire built out of all which held people back.

   Bhoghi, the harvest festival, had dawned. It was midnight as heavy drumming began to sound, awakening the sleeping souls to stare out into the dark; where below, there lay a mound of light and lilt. Smiles cast invitations even when we couldn't see. We ran, our flip-flops slapping the bare mosaic flooring. The sound of the dholaks and laughter intensified with every step of ours, the excitement building. I rolled out only stopping to a reckless halt before the fire. The flames, a feet away leaped about, taller than I was, a fourteen year old girl in disarray. A Sardar, otherwise camouflaged by his beard and black turban smiled through it, holding out sweetmeats to me.The flames blazed higher, smoke spiraling into the vast sky charring the past and ready for the future.

    Slowly, the other state gymnasts descended the stairs and gathered around smiling, laughing and chattering away. Girls who would otherwise be dressed like dolls before the floor exercise performances began to dance in baggy pajamas and disheveled hair holding hands. My hands slowly slipped into theirs, strangers I didn't know in a place I wasn't really acquainted with. All I knew then was that the sound synced with my heartbeat and that the dance came from within.

It didn't matter that midnight in a strange place that I was holding hands and dancing with strangers. It didn't matter how close I was to the fire that night because I didn't feel any heat, only the warmth. It didn't matter that night that my grandfather was dead. I learned to laugh out loud again after a ten-day hiatus. It didn't matter that I was celebrating the festival away from home because, that moment in the dark when all our eyes met lingering with joy, shining in untamed light, I felt at home.  

Source: GOOGLE IMAGES. I do not own this image.  

~Hemu