deepavali deafavali

Diwali.Autumn. The cirrus clouds and swirling leaves.Early dusk and the nip in the air.Diwali.The flickering glow of the diyas, the mango leaves in the doorway and marigolds at the altar. The boxes of sweets piling up,fridge bursting at the seams with stuff.( I could also add 'the irresistible aroma of sinful things being prepared in the kitchen'. But I have managed to wriggle out of that this year citing unavailability of LPG :-)) And Diwali...the shopping! Ah, but what i would do without shopping? Also Diwali, when you wake up at 4.30 in the morning with your heart in the mouth because your neighbours, having had the ritual bath, have decided to advertise the fact and usher in Diwali by bursting crackers right below your windows.

And thereon, it's totally downhill . Crackers for morning tea, crackers at breakfast,afternoon crackers, and of course all through the evening till the wee hours.There is a continuous rumble of firecrackers punctuated with the frequent eardrum shattering blasts.And this is not just for one day, but at least for one week,though to a lesser degree, or till the children and young adults run out of their stock or Tulsi Vivah, (another festival that comes a fortnight after Diwali); whichever is later. One cannot go out anywhere and it becomes outright dangerous to walk the roads because one might suddenly find oneself in the middle of a crossfire or whatever, or in the path of a rocket. Accidents do happen with a fair amount of regularity. But all the pleas of observing Diwali as a festival of lights and not as a festival of noises, fall on deaf (literally and metaphorically)ears.

One cannot expect the children to understand the concept of silence and we, Indians, do not understand the concept of noise pollution.( I am not even talking about concern for the elderly and the unwell.) So perhaps it is too much to expect that a beautiful festival like Diwali be observed in quietude, with just the lamps, sparklers and silent fireworks.But maybe we could exercise some restraint?
Perhaps the lawmakers could restrict the fire crackers within a time limit, say 6 to 9, and enforce it strictly?As far as i know, there actually exists such a law as well as a law on the sound decibel limit of crackers, but the cracker enthusiasts don't let such a small thing as a law spoil their fun.And who cares to monitor the decibel levels? So the next best thing is probably to have a specified cracker zone away from the residential areas where you can go and burn crackers any time of day and night.Though i doubt very much anybody would be willing to take the trouble to walk/drive to such a place when all they need to do is stand on their balconies or maybe walk a few steps down to their neighbours' doors, in order to indulge in their whims.
Unless the people themselves realise it and take some initiative and the few peace-loving people raise a voice against this menace and also until some stringent measures are taken , we'll continue to face this auditory onslaught every year and Diwali will continue to remain a festival of noises; noises not to drive away the evil spirits, but to wake up even the corpses.

Until then, happy deafavali to my Indian friends. To all others, happy deepavali (diwali)!



O insects
don't you complain too!
this autumn

-Issa

these days

These past few days have been very unproductive. Things haven't really gone well and in spite of the positive mantras I keep on repeating; somewhere along the way, my confidence has taken a beating and any creative streak I might have had in me, has hit an all-time low.

Perhaps this is the time I should take a step backwards, take a deep breath and let go for a while.

Perhaps I should let the world pass by and just be content, watching.

Perhaps I am trying to gatecrash in a place where I was not meant to be.

Perhaps I should concentrate on other things that need my attention.For example, maybe this is the time to tackle that unfinished book that has been by my bedside for months now. Or maybe, I should clean one kitchen shelf instead. Or perhaps, just perhaps I should go shopping...with Diwali closing in, I should do that, anyway and that is a guaranteed and time-tested way to perk one up, though only temporarily.

Have you noticed the materialistic bent of my mind, the direction my thought takes when under duress? This is why I doubt I was meant to be a poet...least of all, a haiku poet!
I should restrict myself strictly to reading them, at least for a while.

And talking of reading,these beautiful lines from a blog I love to visit, perhaps best describe my feeling now:

i fear it's too late
like starlight
i should have set out earlier

-Mark Holloway

The week that was

Last one week has been extremely erratic for me. Every body else has been writing beautiful poetry and creating amazing artwork while I have been away...! To a place I must have visited some 383 times before (well, I am exaggerating, but not much), and where I spent all the time gazing at sea and stuffing myself with all kinds of delicacies (mostly Goanese preparations of fish and desserts from all over the world) and have, at last, come back richer by a few inches. Also with an armload of photographs. Which was the saving grace, because i thought they would be wonderful raw material for my haiga project.

Only to find, that now I don't find them so interesting. I want to do haiga, using clip art like Alee, (Alee Imperial Albano at Jornales), but cannot find anything appropriate and cannot come up with anything decent.

Meanwhile, as i said, all the poets are doing great things! Johannes S.H.Bjerg has posted a fantastic haiga, created using some layering technique, on NaHaiWriMo.

autumn moon I take it on face value

To see the image you'll have to visit the NaHaiWriMo page on Facebook.

And two weeks of fabulous haiku on Dailyhaiku by Claire Everett and Michele Harvey. They have such contrasting styles and yet both are such superb poets.

I am going to quote here just two, one from each of them, but I'd suggest you visit DailyHaiku if you don't do it already... and read the whole lot.


So here they are:

mehndi
from wrists to fingertips...
last of the swallows

Claire Everett


summer fling -
strands of twine
litter the hayloft floor

Michele L.Harvey

(For the non-haiku reader of this blog, please note how in the 2nd poem the lines hint at something beyond just the image of a hayloft floor littered with twine. Again, it could be just that, only a hayloft floor and nothing else - who knows? And in the first poem, how wonderfully the image of a mehndi ritual ties in with a season in nature, the 3rd line being the key-line here.)

As for me, maybe I should go watch the match between MI(Mumbai) and CSK(Chennai) that's in progress as there's nothing like a dose of cricket to calm your restless mind. And boost creativity as well (at least, I hope so) !

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Siesta

The rain has eased off in the last few days. After four months of downpour (most of the time), torrential rains (some of the time), heavy shower (at other times), non-stop rain (at all times) and drizzle ( almost never) ; the sun has come out, clothes are dry and warm at last, the resident squirrel is back to its usual noisy ways and there are pockets of golden yellow at unexpected corners of my house.

The cat had been observing me closely for quite sometime, but after realising that I really bear him no ill-will or grudge,( we are at loggerheads most of the time, the reason being our similar tastes in food) he has stretched out on the window sill and gone off to sleep. There is so much to do, mails to write, calls to make, reading to catch up on...but at this moment all I want to do is to emulate the cat, curl up in this pool of sunlight on the recliner and snooze away! Everything else can wait!

siesta time -
a gentle tide washes over
the shingle

Wait a minute! Did i just write my first haibun?

Weekend ennui

Feeling lethargic since morning.

Skipped workouts/yoga and didn’t feel much guilty about it; it’s Saturday, after all!(Hope my daughter doesn’t read this though! Nah…she would be busy with her own stuff right now.)

Must, must, must write something if I am to meet the submission deadline for the Sketchbook kukai, the last day being today. But what with the exploits of Anna Hazare being aired/blared loudly over the TV all day, the husband trying to educate and update me about the current political scenario, the maids’ excited chatter about the imminent good times and my own weak efforts at running a household…it doesn’t seem likely at all.

Wait a minute, the deadline says, 20^th midnight and it’s not yet 20^th midday there, we in India being ahead of US. Ah, thank god, so I have time, after all!

OK, let me then quickly tell you about this post--Dragonfly dreams in Melissa Allen’s blog “Red Dragonfly”which doesn’t need any introduction to anybody in the haiku community. But for my other readers, here’s the link:Dragonfly dreams. And this new post is really a dream. Superb poetry and why not, considering both Pamela. A.Babusci and Paul Smith, two of my all-time favourites are there, apart from beautiful haiga by Rick Daddario, Polona Oblak and lovely poetry by Margaret Dornaus, Kirsten Cliff, Angie Warren, and Susan Antolin among many others. I, too have a haiku there and am happy to share the space with these amazing poets! But it is the photography by Jay Otto which leaves me speechless. I don’t know how he managed to capture those shots. I’ve gone there like about 10 times just to gape at them. All in all, I’m going to look at dragonflies with new eyes after this amazing post.

And finally the poem, a tanka which matches my mood today.

deciding
I am going
nowhere
the day passes
pleasantly

Not sure who is the author, most probably Michael McClintock. Or is it Tom Clausen?

My sincere apologies.I’ll find out and let you know.

And to compensate for this morning’s lassitude, I’ve decided I’d go for a long walk in the evening…! And come back with a carton of icecream , to reward myself for the walk.