Suruma Writes On...

On the other side of this sea, is soil. Thick, black soil, the colour of my oiled hair. I'll bury my stories in the soil across this tiring sea. The other day, she warned me against losing stories in the sea. Do you know of what happens to stories lost in the sea? Nobody knows. Maybe they'll end up in a fish's empty stomach into the nets they throw from their motor boats. Or if they're too light, they'll float and with the waves hit the shore ; and if they're too heavy and a little lucky, they'll manage to settle down. There are endless possibilities for stories lost in the sea. But I want my stories to be buried in the thick black soil, the colour of my oiled hair with the shards of paper that were once the letters you send me. Its hard to read them, now that the chai stains have erased some of that blue ink from your old Parker pen. But I still want them with my stories. I'll bury them deep and water them everyday. Maybe they'll grow, as you told ...

What is worse, the fear of being attacked or the guilt of being safe?  Numbness. It feels numb to live with a broken heart in a broken country that no longer cares. When just kilometres away, we are calculatedly butchered, classrooms of "liberatory education" still resound with lectures, tests, fests and talks with an eerie normalcy. Everybody laughs, jokes, eats, dances, travels and continues this monotonous cycle. From above the metro platforms in our area, the city behaves as if it's perfectly fine. And I don't know what is worse, the fear of being attacked or the guilt of being safe. The guilt of being able to at least temporarily laugh and eat food and erase the violence from my head, the guilt of being able to respond positively to frantic calls from my family who tells me not to go out anymore. The guilt of having a voice that is no longer able to speak. And I dont even know if this makes sense because I wanted to write this in polished poetic language. But I ...

എഴുതി മുഴുപ്പിക്കാനാകാത്ത കഥകളും കൊണ്ട് ഒരേ നടപ്പാണ്. ചിലതൊക്കെ എഴുതാതിരിക്കുന്നതാണ് നല്ലതത്രെ. മനസ്സിലെ വികാരങ്ങളെയെല്ലാം വാക്കുകളിലേക്ക് മാറ്റാൻ കഴിയില്ലല്ലോ. അല്ലെങ്കിലും ഏത് വാക്കുകളാണ് അവയൊക്കെ വിവരിക്കാൻ ഉപയോഗിക്കുക? മറന്നു പോകാതിരിക്കാൻ ഒക്കെ എഴുതി വെക്കണമെന്ന്  പറഞ്ഞു. എന്നാൽ എഴുതാതിരിക്കുന്നത് കൊണ്ടാവും ഇത്രയേറെ ഓർക്കുന്നത്. കണ്ണടച്ചു മനഃപൂർവം വീണ്ടും വീണ്ടും മനസ്സിൽ ചിത്രങ്ങൾ ഓടിക്കുകയാണ്. ഒന്നും വിട്ടുപോകാതിരിക്കാൻ സൂക്ഷിക്കുകയാണ് എന്നും. ചില ഓർമ്മകൾ എഴുതി വെച്ചു കഴിഞ്ഞാൽ നശിച്ചു പോകുമെന്നും പറഞ്ഞിരുന്നു. ഒരുകണക്കിന് ശരിയാണ്. മനസ്സിൽ കിടന്നു ഇങ്ങനെ പിടഞ്ഞും തിരിഞ്ഞും വികാരങ്ങൾ മാറിയും മറിഞ്ഞും ഒക്കെ വരുന്നത് പോലെയല്ലല്ലോ വാക്കുകളുടെ ചട്ടക്കൂടുകളിൽ അതിനെയൊക്കെ തറച്ചിട്ട് കഴിയുമ്പോൾ സംഭവിക്കുന്നത്. എങ്കിലും മുഴുപ്പിക്കാനാകാത്ത കഥകളൊക്കെ പൊടി തട്ടിയെടുക്കണമെന്ന ആഗ്രഹം ഉണ്ട്. എത്ര കാലമാണ് ഒക്കെ ഓർത്തു വയ്ക്കാൻ സാധിക്കുക? ഓർമ്മ നശിക്കുമ്പോൾ കഥകളൊക്കെ മറ്റാരുടെയെങ്കിലും ഓർമ്മകളിലേക്ക് കൈമാറണം. ഓർമ്മകളെ ജീർണിപ്പിൽ നിന്ന് കാക്കാതെ എങ്ങനെയാണ് പ്രണയിക്കുക? എങ്ങനെയാണ് പ്രതിര...

No.We weren't taught to write words in their language, with the broken pens they gave us. Yet when we write, we write (hi)stories on their books with bloodied hands and wounded hearts;  in our words. And (hi)story that is, of existing, when like sawdust on old tables, they wipe us away. Of winter nights warmed up by women who write inquilab on roads, Of chai that tastes of the revolution, it's love, like blankets, comforting. Of children, inside packed school buses, learning to chant azadi , to the beat of the daflis on the road to Jamia. Of the crayons that colour their notebooks in hues of the revolution. Of women who write poems on their hijab And prostrate in worship, before yellow barricades. Of the paintings and poems that walked out of papers to the streets, in revolt. And the roads that became libraries telling our stories, when on fire, they set our books. Of guns that shivered at the sheer grace of  Shadabs walking to them, Of lathis that dro...

Ummumma's blue prayer rug was so soft that I loved to sleep on it as a child. But I never could. Just as I would make myself cosy on its velvet skin,  someone would almost always ask me to move away. When Ummumma was doing her namaz in her long silky white makkana, I would sit right next to her on her prayer rug and copy what she was doing. When she brought herself down and kissed her forehead on the ground, I would do the same, closing my eyes and smiling inside. But when I open my eyes from sujood, I am on my father's green prayer rug, shedding tears heavily. There is wetness on its green skin from my tears, right next to where the kaaba has been stitched on it. When I bring myself up to recite a few verses, my tears and breathlessness weigh me down, and I am on the ground again, crying. Ummumma's old metal trunk box with her white neriyath   and her old Quran with its black torn cover and her white makkana both wrapped inside her blue prayer rug remain. Her tears in p...

How do you tell the difference between coming and going? Can we all be coming to and going away from the same things at the same time? Can I not go away from me a little to maybe come towards myself a little more? Can I be going away from home when I'm actually coming home? Going away from the fragments of millions of thoughts I have about my home and the scent of it, the people in it and the stories I grew up with, the places I played in, the sea, the airplanes that flew across our sky. For coming home means going away from all of these thoughts of home; sometimes. Coming home, is living in it, devoid of its romanticisations; just plain and raw; just sometimes that it feels like I've gone away from it.  Maybe we're all somewhere,  going away from someone, when we're coming to them. Going away from their memories, to create new ones of new comings. Going away from the images of their scent, from the knowledge of their gestures, the rust of their smiles, just to find sm...

I realise we've never been there to begin with. We've never had those moments of silences with spaces in between to sit back and think of where we are. Where are we? Maybe it's the tea that's brought us this far, With it's flavours that intoxicated us with child like passions to grow up. I close my eyes for a sip and open it a second later and we have moved this far. I switch on the TV in the rain and Memories of the old antenna in the terrace that my grandfather painfully shifted to one side and the other to let the colours burst into the Tv come flooding into my mind. Now there's just the rust, and on an occasion or two, Those crows perch on it in waiting. And when it's time maybe we'll sell it to the ragpicker ,  for him to break it into fragments of metal. Old things. Misfits. Maybe it's just the rains that bring back those smells which comfort and haunt in confusing matrices. The sound of fried fish burning in hot oil every afternoo...

Silences. Isnt it in these moments of silences interspersed between broken words, that we actually talk?  Where my tongue runs out of words to tell you what it feels like,  my silence steps in.  Perhaps we should have our own language. Our language of  silences and hummings,  with words acting just as pauses in between. And when that silence steps in,  I listen to the cars that pass by in your city, the rattle of the plates in your kitchen and all of those small sounds around you,  and feel like I'm living it myself. I could keep doing that for hours. Listen to your life without the unnecessary interruption of our voices, and feel like I am in it,  here at the other end of the line. I smile, ecstatically.  Maybe you can see it. I dont know. 

Hiraeth. Thats what it is. How fiercely can places make you feel more at home,  than at home?  How do you then define that feeling of home?  Is it in those places that make you feel like you,  that bring you back to yourself,  after so long?  Is it in those places that suddenly wake you up with a jolt, shouting at your face,  that this is what you've been longing for all your life,  only that you never knew? Is it in people who  unexpectedly barge into your lives, taking you along journeys you've always wanted to go,  but have just never been able to? Or is it in finding people around you,  whose lives are so divergent, so different from yours,  each a story of its own,  yet you know that it is in these lives that you discover yours,  piece by piece. Hiraeth. That's what this place is. The longing for a home that never was. Lustful as it may. For the familiarity of the sound of the azaan that sets this place in m...