An Infinite Regress of Events Past Part 1

Just because I asked for it doesn’t mean it’s what I wanted, I say, dancing around the point.

Do you know how time moves?

Moves? my voice is strained.

Moves? I repeat, as something unravels.

Does it…flutter?

*laughter*

Remember when Aether was everywhere, I reminiscence.

We weren’t even born yet, you divert, as if it didn’t fill the space between us.

Aether, consumed by Gods, subtler than light, existing in the spaces between my eyelashes, in the spaces between all the planets and all the stars.

Once it explained everything.

And now it’s gone.

So how does time move, I want to ask you but I am sure there’s a catch somewhere and I don’t want to appear stupid so I say nothing and I never find out.

 

Goodbye Notes .1

When April ends, it’s the vertical sky that brings me joy. I have been craving banana ice-cream with sprinkles atop it. After all summer’s here. Well, almost.

L takes me to Jackson Heights and it’s surreal to be in a place so Indian (but unfortunately Indian insofar as it resembles the station parts of Mumbai, the ones I didn’t miss at all, although the food is an entirely different story) in this blistering cold. I had ventured into summer and have to spend the rest of the day (and the morning after) collecting pieces of charitable clothing from my friends. A scarf, a jacket, tights. But it’s hugging L’s cats (who are soft and fat and lovely dollops of delight) that finally brings me warmth. And later, it’s the burning sage. I am trying to come up with an incantation to invoke spiritual awareness, but all my mind wishes for is True Love, capitalized, singular, and dismissed if it’s anything less. My thoughts are beginning to amuse me now. Less a person and more a Disney Princess caricature. But maybe the sage is making me wiser, for soon, I start letting go of this childish covetousness. There’s nothing to wish for beyond courage and strength. I cleanse my spirit and everything is like honey, full of golden weight.

I spend most of Sunday in the library, with traces of external existences for tea (a perfectly brewed Kyoto Cherry Rose) and coffee (an intensely cinnamon-y Cappuccino) and am especially glad of my second outing because I stumble upon Louisa May Alcott’s old abode.

I am so excited when I learn this fact, already dreaming of her looking at the space I currently inhabit from across the street, as she sits at her desk before the second story window of 130 MacDougal Street, penning the last paragraph of the loveliest book (the only book to have a dedicated post in this blog). I feel like I am having difficulty expressing to anyone just how much this means to me. I am still giddy with joy when a sweet old lady stops by my table and offers the same piece of information. Do you know who lived in that brownstone? Yes, yes! Now I do! After more than a year of walking on MacDougal Street, I am aware that the author of my favorite childhood novel, Little Women, lived in the building that houses NYU’s law school. When I recount the encounter, M laughs, old ladies.

Later, we are engaged in deep intellectual activity, playing Lego Harry Potter on PS4. He is Hagrid and I am Harry. He is strong and capable and destroying Diagon Alley with his umbrella wand. I am magic-less and clueless and following him around as galleons rain on us. Even when we progress to the next level, and I’ve moved on to being Hermione, I find myself accidentally jumping right off the castle walls, falling to swift, unexpected demise. (There’s something to be said about the similar spatial transition involved in falling and flying. In both, I am adrift, free, finally and only.) Death seems to lack any meaning in the game for there are no consequences and I am always back, unhurt and continuing right where I had left off.

Summertime Sadness

According to reliable sources, I was eating the best New England fried clams. Golden bites of light indeed but the only thought I’ve ever been capable of while eating clams has been of summer.

An aching nostalgia for every single childhood summer to be exact. Summer mornings spent in the river (even thought I had technically never learned to swim), my feet digging for clams, the Konkan sun– simultaneously punishing and loving, hot on my head. Climbing out with my basketful of clams – victorious and satisfied, my hair and clothes already drying by the time I crossed the narrow road between the river and the fields. I would lie in the meadow, grass stains on my rough, handmade dress (this had nothing to do with the artisanal, handspun movement which was still a decade away from blowing up and everything to do with my grandmother’s obsession with sewing and crocheting and knitting and embroidering). Every trip to the riverside was unfinished without selecting the coconut I wanted from my grandfather’s trees. A local man would climb the tree with alarming dexterity (an in demand profession in my village, one can assume) and a few minutes later I would be sipping on its fresh water, calming my nerves, rewarding my morning spent foraging.

I can still feel the light of the sun on the back of my eyelids. This was my ancestral home. The thrum of atavistic longing running through the land beneath me.

Bombay didn’t have this sun, Bombay didn’t have this summer. Bombay during heat was wet and overwhelming. A city on fire.

Sadashivgad with its bounty of great-aunts and grandfathers and cousins, its endless, empty beaches, the honeysuckle sweetness of its air was a pastoral idyll.

I can’t find it anymore.

Maybe it’s the commercialization and industrialization sweeping across the coast, but more likely it was always a place that existed in a childhood mirage.

Tagore in 1882 wrote his poem Nature’s Revenge inspired by Karwar.

I often read this page thinking about the moment the hero ends his arc. There’s always a setting for any kind of dramatic narrative. I think this is where my childhood ends – against a backdrop of summer and a seaside town.

Now, (upon adulthood which is best described as constantly having a backlog of emails that need to be replied), the end of summer is both merciful (I won’t ever walk the streets of New York in this heat anymore) and tragic (Summer will never be this young again).

So here’s thanking sentimental mollusks and my overactive amygdala for always making it possible to take a trip down memory lane. There’ll always be summer.