There is something very comforting about a hot cup enclosed within almost freezing hands. I love my cup of tea. Or coffee. All I have to do is hold it in the palm of my hands and the world just seems so much more comforting and inviting. If I’m sad and feeling very forlorn, the cup in my hands warms me. It reminds me that irrespective of how cold and grey I feel within, there is always a way for the warmth to seep in.

Few people understand my almost religious experience with tea. Not many can understand how a cup of infused water can transport me to a different place. But it does. The fragrance pulls me out of my clamoring thoughts and ferries me to a world of clear crisp mountain air and the scent of the soil intermingling. It takes me to a place where life doesn’t whirr past, it walks along sedately. It makes me feel like even if I rest for just a tiny while, I’ll still be able to catch up.

The flavor of the leaves bursts onto my tongue and with each sip, I taste a new component. My favorite part is when the tea tastes a little bit like the soil it grew in and you can almost taste the various spices that enrich the soil. They say that tea is affected by the soil it grows in. It’s as capricious as wine….I think I have to agree.

I am from a city that thrives on drinking tea. Every alley in my city has a famous tea shop with its regular customers. You’ll see all strata of society intermingling at a corner store where a man in a ratty vest and a blue (or red) checkered lungi is preparing tea. They’ll sip tea in earthenware mugs and dip their naan-khatais and khajas into it. Every tea-stall will have a chhotu and your best shot of getting immediate service is to befriend the boy. He’ll change shops in a few months…so it makes sense if you have 2-3 chhotus that you’re on good terms with. Sunday morning would start with friends gathering at tea-stalls. Bunking classes occurred at the tea stall near the college, never the canteen. Writing or contemplating occurred in tea cafés within bookstores. Life revolved around tea and everybody loved it.

I never was much of a tea person. I couldn’t figure out why someone would want a steaming cup of tea as a pick-me-up. I was always a coffee person. And I could never stomach the concoction of tea leaves, milk, spices and sugar. It was just so overwhelming. And then, one day, when I was incredibly sad, my dad made me a cup of tea. I’m not quite sure which one. He made me a cup of amber liquid with no sugar, no milk, no spices. It was just a cup of steaming amber liquid. The flavors of the earth burst onto my tongue. There was a faint tannin-like taste right at the end and I remember that the tea tasted a little bit like berries and a multitude of other faint flavors that my palate couldn’t identify. I didn’t exactly fall in love, but I found it comforting. Bit by bit, I learnt to love it. Coffee became a means of cheering me up. The strong taste of chicory became a means of banishing thoughts I did not want. It became a means of running away and tea became a means of voicing my emotions. I’d have a cup of tea under the evening sky, on the side-porch with a view of my garden. I’d sigh and mull things over. And then…I’d sit down to write. I’d put words onto paper and I’d get it out of me.

When I’d read about writers writing in cafés with a cup of tea or coffee to get them going, the idea was incomprehensible. How could a beverage be a source of inspiration? And then, after sitting at tea places for hours at a stretch, I realized that something binds us together. In a bustling café, food is the only common thread. People are different and their actions can send you spiraling into a train of thoughts and that will ultimately get you to feel something. And that something is what you translate onto paper. It’s the segmented actions of people in a unified area which makes one come up with ideas.

And so, I’m now one of those clichés. When I’m stranded for ideas, I go to a tea place and I people-watch. I see little kids running around a bustling area and asking for maggi. I see old couples sharing a cup of tea and lamenting on the sights they see. I see young couples holding hands and weaving dreams…I just see. And I think.

And then, when my cup of tea grows cold, I put it aside and put a pen to paper and write.

These books act as my personal guide. I don’t ever completely read Coelho when I plan to. It’s always unplanned and always at just the right time. I read The Alchemist at a phase in my life when I didn’t have much to believe in. I had always believed that life lets you know what to do and it ached harder that I had lost touch with that system of communication. I was dissatisfied and directionless. By the end of the book, life was beginning to make sense. I didn’t have an epiphany or even a flash of insight. What I did have, while reading that book, was a massive headache and a compulsive need to weep. I won’t even pretend that all of it made sense. Yes, the story is lucid but it is in no way simple. It took me a long time to digest it and I still understood it only in parts. For that time, however, parts were sufficient.

I’d been so clueless as to what I was going to do, that my brain had shut down. I’d been trying to listen to my heart so concentratedly for so long that because it wasn’t using words, I wasn’t grasping a whit of what it said. Somewhere along the book, I stopped trying to listen or to figure anything out. And that is when it all made sense.

5 years ago, I wouldn’t be caught dead sitting at a coffee shop and watching people. I would think of it as rude and creepy and I was obsessed with allowing people their privacy in public spaces. And while I was reading the book, I started watching people. I’d sit somewhere and just look- never really trying to understand what I was seeing. I’d come home and sit down to write and that was when I’d hear the Universe talking and that tiny voice in my heart would start whispering. That is when my belief in signs was reaffirmed. All the bedtime stories, where mum said I had a guardian angel looking over me, were beginning to sound true.

I honestly don’t know if Coelho is just *such* a brilliant writer that his fiction, if it were fiction, could alter my perception so much. Or even if his writing isn’t all fiction and if what he speaks of is something he experiences. Both the scenarios work for me. I have always believed that life talks to us. I have also experienced a few of the encounters he mentions. I just didn’t know what to make of them. And what I thought the experiences meant didn’t earn me a good night’s sleep. I felt like I must be delusional coz I certainly wasn’t on crack. It felt comforting to know that someone had experienced somethings similar. Or, at the very least, someone could imagine such experiences. I guess I could always argue that I was just seeing things the way I wanted to see them, but I’d be lying. I don’t believe that life has any whims or even that it indulges in coincidences. It’s too refined a system for that kind of error. And so, what I’m trying to say is that I don’t mind having an author reaffirm my faith in symbolism or showing me more techniques of thinking of the Universe as an abstract entity with a lot of loopholes. I don’t even have an issue if it’s a whole lot of goop and I’m just letting it overwhelm me. What I do know is that books don’t just transport me to the lives of the characters. Sometimes, a book will alter my life in the way a teacher introduces a child to a new subject. It won’t always start as fun or even become enjoyable, but it’ll become a journey worth having.

Why am I saying all this?
Because today, I had a sucky sucky day. I didn’t know why I was dissatisfied. I was in the middle of a good book and I started reading another of Coelho’s works for absolutely no reason. Aleph had an uncanny resemblance to the frustrations I was feeling. I had 9 other works of Coelho on my shelf and I picked this one up unthinkingly. That’s how I seek my answers.

That is how I’m finally writing an entire text after months of incomplete writing.

Today…I wish you a day of ordinary miracles
A fresh pot of coffee you didn’t make yourself.
An unexpected phone call from an old friend.
Green stoplights on your way to work or shop.

I wish you a day of little things to rejoice in…
The fastest line at the grocery store.
A good sing along song on the radio.
Your keys right where you look.

A rainbow ahead of you.
I wish you a day of happiness and perfection,
little bite-size pieces of perfection that give you
the funny feeling that the Lord is smiling on you,
holding you so gently because you are someone special and rare.

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
 
. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fll
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon

I’m a big Audrey Hepburn fan. Ever since the day I saw My Fair Lady, I’ve been completely enamoured by her. As a kid, you couldn’t get me to shut up and not sing “Wouldn’t it be luverly” at the top of my lungs. Oft, I’d end up spraining my ankle or falling as I was trying to emulate her move and failing coz there wasn’t anyone to hold the see-saw while I tried. I was so in love with the tune that my tiny little head couldn’t figure out that the Britannia Marie ad that played was on the tune and not the same song. Being the accommodating I child I was, I’d happily sing both and sometimes, I’d even jumble them up to make up a ridiculously meaningless new song. And so, this Sunday, I got down to watching Funny Face simply because she starred in it. I didn’t read the reviews or anything else. I simply picked a movie off of her works and got down to watching it. I didn’t really care if it was one of her good works or not. And I certainly had no idea why Fred Astaire is worshipped the way he is. I’d heard him being mentioned often enough. But, I had no real clue as to what he was so famous for.

I was fully expecting to love the movie. And I did. What I wasn’t really expecting to do was fall in love with the magic of Astaire. Here was a man who looked old and pretty regular. But he had such charm!

I love men who can dance. There is something incredibly enchanting about men who can move about so gracefully. I also love men who can sing. A soft crooning voice is just so perfect. Now, Fred Astaire is a man who not only sings like a dream or moves like one, he does it so effortlessly and so nonchalantly that it seems like he’s humouring you. It’s like he’s in on the secret of how everyone finds him incredible and yet, he finds it funny personally. He epitomizes twinkling eyes and joie de vivre.

It’s been a long time since a movie made me forget all propriety and just giggle and clap and jump on my seat. Okay, so well, it’s been a long time since a non-animated movie did that. Here was a movie that I was watching because of my favourite actress and this man completely overshadowed her. He stole every little scene. And let’s face it. Any guy who can dance like he did in the dark room and sing “I love your funny face” with such sincerity can totally lay claim to my heart. I’m a 22 year old who lives for such cotton-candy fluff.

If I sit down to think of a current leading man getting away with the song and dance routine by the church (and in that blue sweater!!!)  or the song “Let’s kiss and make up;” none come to my mind.

And by the end of this incredibly corny musical, the only words on my tongue were “I love your funny face…” and the only thought in my head- Why don’t they make them like Astaire anymore?

I’m not a morning person. I don’t see the joy in waking up when the first rays of sunlight streak a dark sky and bit by bit, change it from a deep dark hue to one filled with vivid oranges and reds. I don’t understand how people will sleep with their curtains open so that the sun can peek in from the window and the fresh rays of the sun fall on their eyes as a good-morning wish. I don’t smile in joy when I hear the first strains of a bird’s morning song. I don’t breathe in the fresh, cool morning air. I don’t like waking up.

However, I love mornings in general. There is a quiet sense of sanity that seems to be shared by everyone. The slumber of the night dulls our defences and hides the facades we use all day. I love the tune of the birds and I love how the earth seems to yawn awake. I find the muted morning sounds of a milkman on a bicycle or a priest chanting in the neighbourhood temple to be uplifting. I love watching the sky change colour and I love weaving stories about it.

But I’d much rather sleep AFTER seeing and sensing these moments than wake up early to relish them. Make sense?

As a friend very aptly put it today, I like waking up when the sun is over my head, not playing peek-a-boo with me.

I don’t understand how people can be at their jobs at 6 or 7am in the morning. Do you like NOT sleep the night before? And what really do you have to be chirpy about at 7am? You wake up when everyone else is snuggled into their cosy beds. You make yourself a cup of tea/coffee and breakfast, munch it down alone and get to work. You drive, walk etc to work on deserted streets where even the homeless are sleeping. Sweet!

And what’s with the RJs in the morning? Why are they so fake-happy and excited to be hosting a show which people are listening to as they groggily make their way from their bed to the bathroom till the time they’re stuck in a gridlocked traffic jam? Really, where is the joy in being the person who drones on and on while the world would just like you to shut up and grab 5 extra minutes of shut eye?

When I wake up in the morning, and it doesn’t matter if it’s early 6:30am or late 9am, it’s still torturous. Even if I slept at midnight, I still wouldn’t be fresh at 9am. Doesn’t happen. And then I see mom being nice and cheerful and daddy making me a cup of chocolate and it makes want to curl up in bed and sleep the cheeriness away. How, just how is someone cheery in the morning??

And then there is he issue of how my brain doesn’t function (at all) when I wake up early. I could wake up at 6:30 or 7 or 8am, and yet, for the next 2 hours, I’m sleep-walking. You could pick any topic and all the response you’ll get is Hmmm and an occasional Uh-huh. Also, even long showers don’t pop my eyes open. Imagine having to get to a morning class to study math, my favouritest subject in a zillion galaxies, when my eyes won’t open and my brain won’t work. Peachy keen I tell you. Peachy peachy keen.

And the absolute torture of early mornings? The absolute? There isn’t a single good Coffee Café that opens before 11am. Where is a coffee junkie to go if she wants an Apple Pie Latte or even a nice Dark Roast Cappuccino to sip on? Before 11am, it’s a world without coffee. Wake me up when that ends.

Kids these days never cease to amaze me. It’s like ever since we got out of one stage of childhood, the new kids took over and completely rewrote the game. They’re sharper, they speak their minds and they know exactly what they want…right down to the toppings on their pizzas. Usually, I’d fret over how quickly kids these days grow up. But when I saw this little boy, I didn’t see him as one who grew up too quick. He had the babyishness most babies today seem to lack. This little chipmunk was good old naughty. He had a throw-your head-back kind of laugh. He ran with a wobble. He was pudgy and rosy to boot. Here was a kid who was indulging in the purest kind of joy there is…that of being impish.

I’d gone to get myself a cup of coffee coz it’s hot, fuzzy happiness in a cup. It calms me and makes me feel that things will improve. But this tiny tot took me back to a time when I was young enough to act naughty and get away with it. I remember mum not letting me run around crowded places so I’d always hold daddy’s hand and he’d let go occasionally and I’d use that to embarrass mom into getting me a chocolate or a book or something. It didn’t matter what the thing was, I didn’t even want it badly. It was just about bothering mom.

This one tiny, easy-to-miss event made me feel fuzzier and happier than a cup of java could. It completely diverted my train of thought to all the peccadilloes I indulged in with my cousins. I was carefree again.

And so, my sweet lovable friend who’s reading this when times are tough, go out for a change of scene. Look around at all the fun moments and smile. And if you’re one of the lucky ones with a kid around, go play a while.

Frost is a master. No denying that. But this one, I think this is one of his incredibly haunting works.

Reluctance
             -Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

And if you’re interested, check out this link here. It’s a recitation of the poem. The site says Robert Frost but, I really don’t know or care. This is a beautiful reading.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
-William Wordsworth

I read this quote today and it stuck with me. It stuck with me because it reminded me of a time a few years ago when I only wrote poetry as a means of expressing my emotions. It stuck with me, because over the years, I’ve come to see poetry more as an art and less as a blurb about my feelings. It also stuck with me because, for all my critical analysis of poems and poetic techniques, I still feel like whatever we write comes from a place deep within our hearts.

A fellow writer once told me that each and every one of his poems or writings was a piece in isolation. That he didn’t feel anything that was projected onto his work. That his writing was devoid of his yearnings. I was younger then, more naive and very gullible. He almost had me convinced. Why wouldn’t he? I loved his work. He was adept at making things come to life. And he truly is a master of writing. And yet, I remember spending long nights fighting him on it. I remember telling him that he’d been writing for so long, he’d learnt to call it technique. I also remember him crapping my claims. And the discussion had only ended when he played the card of my immaturity.

Today, I’d like to think, I’m slightly less naive and gullible. That I have a scintilla of insight into the world of words. And as much as I’d like to believe his assertion that poems are merely technique, I can’t. Cause, if writing was truly, merely a technique; if it were simply a matter of stringing words together, I wouldn’t sit and stare at my sheet of paper unendingly without any idea as to what I wanted to say.

I remember asking one of my favourite contemporary poets how he channeled his voice onto paper. And he’d said that you have to completely immerse yourself in an emotion and feel it to be able to write about it. He told me that sometimes, you have to turn off the editor in your head and you just have to write. I remember asking him what he did when he’d felt a burning need to pen something but halfway through it he didn’t know how to say it or there was too much to say or too little. He smiled, and told me something that helps keep me sane. He told me that sometimes external factors contaminate our emotion to such a degree that we can’t really pen it down. He mentioned “Daffodils” by Wordsworth as an apt example. He told me that Wordsworth had seen those daffodils on the hill a long time before he got down to penning the poem. At that moment, much as he’d have liked to, he didn’t write it. But years later, when the extraneous factors had diminished in strength, he remembered that excursion for what it truly was and distilled that one emotion into a poem.

Now, I’ve heard this same advice in a lot of spheres of life. And I know it by heart. And yet, somehow, I don’t always accept it. I don’t know if it was the not-condescending smile or the fact that my favourite poet took the time to satiate my curiosity or the fact that he sounded sincere or simply a combination of all three, that made me understand, but ever since then, I’ve become ok at leaving something half-written. I get back to it later. Sometime it tanks, maybe the emotion wasn’t strong enough. Mostly, by the end of the poem, I’ve said all I needed to without it rambling.

And this neatly sums up my dilemma. If it were merely technique, writing shouldn’t be so gut-wrenching. And if it’s merely about penning a strong emotion, it should be easy to pen when you’re deep in the throes of the feeling. Sadly, neither extreme worked for me.

Now I didn’t have either side to pick. I was way in the middle. Then this article popped up. This man was trying to provide amateurs like me an insight into the art of reading poetry. He makes sense in a strictly reading poetry kind of way. But more than that, he answered my dilemma. Poetry isn’t just about technique or emotions. It’s a fine balance of the two. It isn’t just about having something nice to say, it’s also about saying it beautifully.

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility.”
-William Wordsworth

And what stands out for me is that this entire questioning of poetry took place over 2-3 years with numerous people and Wordsworth popped up everywhere. And it took me the course of these 800 words to make the connection.

I wonder what else Wordsworth had to say…

I can’t really figure out why it was so tough to do something I wanted to do so badly.

I don’t really understand me anymore. I don’t see myself working hard towards something. I don’t see myself pushing my boundaries; hell, I haven’t even made efforts to really figure out where it is that my boundaries lie.

When people say that at times, it’s easy to lose track of what one wants or who one really is, they mean that the phase is transitionary. That one shouldn’t fret and should continue to believe that it’ll pass. But when I fail so miserably at a not-so-herculean task, I have to force myself to face the fact that maybe I’ve changed. Maybe, I don’t have the drive anymore? Just maybe, this isn’t transitionary? Coz, if it were, it wouldn’t stick for so long now would it? And what makes me cringe even further is that if it is not transitionary, just how do I get myself to feel like making an effort when I’ve become so darn complacent?