Time

Sometimes, when we talk to friends from years past, from times where the clock hands touched upon diamond studded digits that reflected the light of laughter that shone off our glistening teeth, the sharp hands of the clock, sensing the moment, move backward, back to those times.

Conversations that once could have been called banal, come back in foggy memories, and yet, are perhaps the brightest and only remnants of days that like lost civilizations are remembered through indecipherable scripts and can never be understood fully, only marveled at.

Perhaps this is why a text or a Whatsapp call consumes more from our data pack than is justified by its length, because it carries in it more than voice. It carries the sight and smells of the world that we once inhabited with the person now on the other side of the line. The "Hello" brings with it the dampness of the corridor of the house, the intake of breath, a reminder of the stairs climbed to meet.

When we reminisce that we were so happy with so less, was it because what we feel as happiness, as contentment and an ability to be satisfied with little, was actually the command and control that were given to us as we were Masters of our own Time?

சமூகம்

நெருங்கி கை நீட்டியவர்க்கெல்லாம் 
கொடுத்து கொடுத்து சிவந்த கரங்களை
வானில் உயர்த்தி "குளிரடிக்குது, காப்பாத்து!" 
என்று கேட்ட நெருப்பின் மீது, ஆறிப்போன 
அழுக்கு நீரை வாரி இறைத்து, ஆடி சென்றது சமூகம்.

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Sometimes the mind works as though it's on a blind date with a library shelf long forgotten to the dusty annals of the wheels of the rickety chariot of Time.

In the darkness of its blindfold, it retrieves images and shadows of images and tugs hard at the open ends of the Present to knot it with the smoky silhouette of a memory, as though that alone could call back to life moments mired in mud.

A slipped swara, the jarring off pitch note, coming out of the wispy vapours as abroken quaver whose hanging tail is tied to the trembling voice of the singer on stage, as though the throats were the same, separated merely by the illusion of space and time.

In the resuscitation of the memory, the broken note walks on the stave, although with a limp, carrying with it a newly formed thread, the sutra that binds pages of the Book of Life, hidden somewhere in the dusty shelves of the darkened library of human existence, that continues its search with the gnarled fingertips and blindfolded eyes.

Parable of the Train Engine

There was once a Train Engine, whom we shall call Thomas the Train Engine, for want of a better name. Thomas the Train Engine was an active although ageing, energetic steam locomotive that thundered down the tracks day in, day out.

Thomas visited several towns and villages in his journeys. He pulled with him a long line of carriages that carried fruits, vegetables, books, newspapers and even people who visited their loved ones. Everywhere he went, people gathered together to greet him with eager, happy faces. Thomas took in all the adoration he received and was satisfied that he could bring happiness to so many people who needed him. Oh yes, Thomas was indeed a satisfied Train Engine.

Little did he know.

Thomas was the leader of a long line of carriages that he pulled with him wherever he went. The carriages moved when Thomas moved, stopped when he stopped. They carried in them everything that the people, of the places Thomas visited, needed. Thomas with his eyes front, focussed on where he went, did not know how much of a load each carriage contained in itself. It did not matter. No matter how heavy the load, he would pull it forward. He was Thomas the Train Engine. He would never be found slacking on his job.

With time, as Thomas aged and could no longer pull as well as he once did, he started getting suspicious. He was pulling as hard as he could, just like he did all the time. But why weren’t things moving? The question haunted Thomas, even as he thundered about his work. There were still people gathering to greet him, to approach him and be seen with him, while he brought them gifts from lands far away, but there was the niggling thought in mind that something was missing, that more could be done.

Thomas thought and thought even as he trundled down the tracks. Could it be that the carriages he was pulling? Could it be that they are pulling him back even as he tried to pull them forward? Were they not able to handle the load they had to carry? But why? He was doing all the work, wasn’t he? He was the one pulling them forward and onward. What problem did they have simply carrying the weight? The faltering faith in the line he led plagued Thomas from inside. Even as he went about his work, Thomas was found huffing and puffing. The once-bright smile was nowhere to be seen. The face was contorted with irritation. The crowds that gathered may have noticed, but that did not affect their behaviour much. They still waited for him with expectant eyes and eager hands.

But Thomas wasn’t satisfied. He wasn’t alone. The huffing and puffing from Thomas was passing down the line he led. The steam he threw back was getting loaded more and more with soot. The carriages behind began to take note.
Thomas pulled them all forward, but they had their hands together, pulling each other forward too. They knew, unlike Thomas, that the expectant eyes and eager hands were not for them, but for what they brought. Therefore, even as Thomas pulled, they had to hold themselves together to ensure that nothing they carried fell out of the carriages. All carriages, together, ensured that their movement was only forward and not side to side. They moved forward as Thomas pulled, and also pushed downward to stay stable and grounded. Thomas did not mind or even notice when he was young. But it was different now. They all knew Thomas was getting old. They all knew that they did the best they could. They all knew that Thomas’ irritation was misplaced. But none told Thomas. They respected him too much.

As Thomas spewed black soot in his irritation, the mute carriages began to take it on them. And now, the effect was visible on those expectant eyes that waited for Thomas. They still waited, but the eager hands now carried wipes and water buckets. The fruits were fresh, but covered in soot. You could barely see the real colour until you drowned them in water. The news was hot and new, but barely readable with the printing ink coagulating with the black soot.

This only made things worse for Thomas, who with his front-facing eyes, did not bother to see the impact of what he was doing to the line of carriages he led. But as the eagerness in the eyes of the people faded, he began blaming the carriages even more. Maybe they were not taking enough care of their constituents the way he wanted them to. Maybe they did not have the experience to understand their task given to them. And he huffed and puffed even more.

All the huffing and puffing turned to sheer frustration. It was the seventh day after the new harvest. For almost a week, every day Thomas and the line of carriages had carried full loads of fruits and vegetables to the villages far from the fields. Thomas had pulled and pulled. The effort was starting to show as his breathing was getting more ragged.

The seventh day dawned dull and gloomy. The carriages were packed so much with fruits and vegetables that they could barely hold them all from falling out. With the weight pushing them downward, they stabilized themselves to be able to move forward when Thomas pulled. Thomas was more irritated than usual. The hardship of the week had made him tired and cranky. He was ready to blow his steam off at the slightest provocation. “I’ll show them. I’ll show them how fast I can pull today. And if they can’t keep up, so be it. I will take with me only those that can handle the work given to them” he told himself. He spat a few coal cubes as the warming up caused him to cough. At the anointed time, he rumbled and pulled with such a force that it took the combined strength of all carriages to ensure that they stayed on the rails and stayed connected to each other.

Thomas pulled on and on, faster and faster. He was out of breath and frothing at the mouth, but that did not stop him. Despite the best effort of the carriages, the goods were falling out, all through the sides of the track. But any further effort to stay stable was responded by Thomas with a loud siren that deafened them. So, they ran with him. Thomas felt himself going even faster, as the carriages shed their loads, in order to keep pace with him.

“Yes, now they’ve learnt their lesson. Thanks to me, now we will never go slow.”

With hubris fuelling him, his speed increased as he ran down the last fifty kilometres to the first station. The carriages were slowly losing control. Some of them had shed so much of their content that they were wobbling off the tracks without any stability. As Thomas gave one mighty tug, the connecting hooks keeping the carriages together came apart. They started falling off, one after another. Thomas felt himself going faster and credited it to his feisty temperament and pulled again.

By the time Thomas reached the station, there were only two carriages attached to him, from the twenty he had started with. He could not understand the shocked look on the faces of the villagers. The few that jumped on the carriages gave an enraged shout on seeing them empty. The carriages closest to Thomas, those that had stood by him through all the journeys, had discarded all their constituents in their loyalty to him.

Thomas was trying to catch his breath as the first stone hit him. Before he knew what was happening, a volley of stones had found their way to him. Blow after blow followed. Thomas was in a trance unable to understand how his admirers and fans were now pelting stones on him. The frenzied crowd booed him. In a moment of unexpected unity, they got together and pushed Thomas and the two remaining carriages off the tracks. Thomas lost his balance and rolled on his side, taking down with him the two empty carriages that had stuck with him.

The carriages that had broken loose, the ones that Thomas had blamed for being not capable of handling their task, watched all this from the distance. Sadness overwhelmed them, but there was nothing that they could do. Thomas would run no more. And neither would the line he led. It was over.

Yoga on a Frozen Lake

Question: What do you do when the world’s largest freshwater lake freezes?

Answer: You spread a mat and do Yoga.

I was about 8 years old when we got our first refrigerator at home. It was a shining white, much taller than me and had a capacity of a hundred and sixty five liters. [It had two doors with the upper one beyond my reach and used to store chocolates and other attractions that were supposedly harmful for my teeth. It joined the family through the hands of two men struggling to carry to through the narrow doors of the house.] My mother explained to me that it was a big box that can hold ice. My mind always wondered why anyone would need a block of ice that big. A hundred and sixty five liters big!

As I got accustomed to using the refrigerator, one of my favorite things to do was to fill containers of various shapes with water, place them in the freezer and then carve out the ice frozen in the shape of the container. I fashioned myself as an expert ice sculptor. Among other things. Of course, living in tropical India, I did not see my ice sculptures last more than a few minutes.

When I first saw Lake Baikal from the air, it looked like the world’s largest refrigerator had been opened and the blocky sculpture let out to shine under the skylights of the sun. The Russian winter in Irkutsk touches temperatures that remain so low for so long that the surface of Baikal freezes over. Solid ice, for a depth of at least a meter, thick enough in places for cars to drive on. An ice sculpture that is made by the cold hands of the Northern wind and carved in the shape of the rocky rift of the earth underneath it.

The plan was not much. Finish off the work-related meetings to mutual satisfaction and travel to Baikal. But once I got there, the immensity of the landscape overwhelmed me. I couldn’t even describe what I was doing. I mean, come to think about it, wouldn’t it sound ridiculous if you said “I’m driving a car on a lake”?

The thing about Baikal is that you can walk on it once it’s completely frozen. But it does not freeze as a whole, in an instant. There are jagged ridges in the edges that look like they are the frozen remnants of waves that crashed on the coast. Looking through the ice is looking through a window into another world. There are vertical layers of ice that petal out like the pages of an open, standing book. There are frothy bubbles where snow froze with a layer of ice on top. Due to what we in school called the anomalous behavior of water, the water freezes in so many layers that looking through the ice into the depths, is looking at a mirror through a myriad of veils.

When I looked down through the glassy ice window of the lake’s surface, the layers of ice, frozen over the days and months of winter, reminded me of how our life’s memories are collected. For a moment, the brightness of the landscape dazzled me into a visual silence with my eyes blinded to all hues and shades.

An eerie calmness pervaded the very air that hung solid, frozen by the cold of the ice below it. A meditative serenity that formed the shore and bottom of this sea of tranquillity. I fished out the yoga mat I had carried in my suitcase, hoping perhaps, for just this moment.

Stepping into -22 degrees and a 10m/s wind, without a windcheater is an experience. It is as if the world has imported a pair of arms that had spent their lifetime in Pluto, and is using them to embrace you in a smothering, frigid hug.

After slowly undoing the layers I had worn to keep the blood flowing in my vessels, I began with Padmasana. After testing my balance with Vrikshasana, I let myself flow the way the Baikal would flow if it were warmer. “Be like water”, I told myself, “Take the shape of the container you are in”. So, I spread myself on the mat and let Baikal move me the way it wanted to.

As though wanting to contrast the white with the colors of the rainbow, Baikal gently bent my legs and thorax into a bow, Dhanurasana. Out of the bow, flew the pigeon in Kapotasana. Attracted by the snow, came an unlikely animal in a place with so much water, the Camel in Ushtrasana. Descending from the camel, the warrior stretched his legs in Veerabhadrasana. The stretched legs pulled the body into the wheel pose, Chakrasana. From Chakrasana, I moved into the Bhujangasana, the pose of the snake.

I wanted to wrap up the asanas, with the Bhujangasana, as the divine snake, Sesha, is what remains after everything else ceases to exist. But I found a solid block of ice, almost a perfect cuboid and almost exactly the length of my body. Unable to resist the temptation, I once again let the camel take over. As I returned from the Ushtrasana, I felt a sense of warmth flow within me. Even without the overcoat, the blood still flowed. Was this the Antaragni, the Tapas that Patanjali spoke about? Was the Bhujangasana not merely a pale imitation of Anantasesha, the endless snake, but also symbolic of the Kundalini coiled within us? With these questions, I rolled the yoga mat back into my suitcase, and bid farewell to Baikal.

Of course, my grumbling stomach told me that I had quite literally “burned” calories to keep myself warm. It was time for lunch.