Poem #002: Blue Ticks

 

Blue Ticks

I wish you were like everyone else with a cell phone,

I wish you checked your messages at night.

Then blue ticks would appear beside your name,

To show that my messages had caught your sight

 

I wish you were like everyone else with a house,

A door bell and knocker was all it took,

To enter, come, and talk to you,

About everything, and see if you understood.

 

I wish you were like everyone else with a friend,

I wish you held hands, laughed, and talked,

Or simply ran amok in the fields,

Or lustily cooed back when the cuckoo bird called

 

I wish you were like everyone else with a plan,

I wish you would let me in on it,

So I’d know what was expected of me,

Then all the pieces of the puzzle could fit.

Short Story #010: The White Garden

 

The White Garden

“The problem is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil is interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.”

-Ursula K Le Guin

 

“W

hy do you look so glum child?” asks Mrs White of me. “I’ve seen you go about the house. You walk around with a pall of gloom over your face as if you’re in habitual mourning. Have you suffered some great loss I know nothing about?”

“Oh it’s nothing,” I say and quietly resume sipping my tea. I’m surprised Aunt White noticed.

“You mustn’t go about with a glum face, Carol. You’ll attract all kinds of other glum thoughts floating in the air. One after another they’ll come to roost in your head and soon you’ll have a farm of sadness.”

I think she means that as a joke so I give her a half-smile.

“Tell me dearest,” she asks again kindly, “Is there something going on?”

“You needn’t worry aunt,” I say exasperated with all the sudden attention, “I’ll be all right.”

This is the first time Aunt Katherine and I are sitting down to have a chat. Mrs. White—my Aunt Katherine—has been very busy over the weekend to pay me any serious attention. Today’s the first day since my arrival at her large country house that she’s at a loose end, hence the lecturing.

“How old are you Carol?”

“Thirteen,” I say.

“That’s too young to be looking so morose. Is there anything weighing you down child? I can help if I’m told.”

“There isn’t anything weighing me down. Do stop,” I say as politely as I can without sounding annoyed.

I’ve just told her a whopping lie. It’s just that it’s not my habit to confide in semi-strangers. Mrs. Katherine White may be my godmother, but she is still a bit of a stranger to me. Also Aunt White’s known to be quite eccentric in the family circle, which is why I don’t know if it’s okay to make her a repository of my secret troubles.

 “Joy, real joy is what mankind was made for. Look at my garden Carol! Isn’t it a joy to behold?”

I’ll give her that. She owns the most fantastic garden you’ve ever seen. It’s completely white. By that I mean she grows only plants with white flowers and nothing else.

I turn in my seat and look at her garden as instructed.

“It’s all right,” I say to her. I’ve purposely said this to rile her. I want to see if she’ll have an outburst or something. She must be so used to people raving about her fantastic garden all the time, she’s probably not prepared for a negative response like mine.

“All right Carol?” she cries, eyes almost popping out of their sockets, “Have you a heart of stone? Whenever I look upon my garden my heart is in raptures. It’s such a fantastic sight to behold! And you say it’s ‘all right’?”

She drums her fingers on the table as if she’s displeased.

“Sullen child…”she murmurs, “It’s a sin to go around being displeased with things of beauty.”

“Is it?” I query.

“If you won’t dance when they play wedding music for you or cry when they lament what is the use of giving life to you? Have you never been delighted child? So very, very delighted that you spent the whole day smiling to yourself making people wonder at what could’ve possibly happened to put you in a cheerful mood? There’s something so mysterious about a woman who smiles, quite like the Mona Lisa…”

I snort in my head. Mysterious like the Mona Lisa! I don’t aspire to that benchmark.

“I saw that!” she cries in a loud accusatory voice and I jump in my seat. “Insolent child!”

It takes her a while to be mollified.

“You’re quite the typical teenager aren’t you? So full of pent-up angst,” she mutters. “Why are teenagers so full of pent-up angst, do you know Carol? Any guesses?”

“No, it’s just the way the world is. It’s fashioned to make and keep a person eternally displeased. I don’t work to get sorrowful aunt,” I mumble.

“You’re too grown-up for your age,” she says and sighs. “I was like that at your age. Why am I being hypocritical? I used to question every single thing under the sun.”

I lower my gaze and eat another cucumber sandwich. I don’t believe my eccentric aunt. Everybody loves to believe they can empathise with a teenager but in actuality very few can.

“Come on then, if you’ve finished your tea we’ll take a walk around my garden. It’s breath-taking this time of year.”

The time of year is summer. I roll my eyes when I know Aunt Katherine can’t see.

*

Aunt Katherine’s garden is vast, almost an acre I am told, and completely built from scratch. Mum said she built it herself, with the fountain at the centre and the summer house at the back, but I find that a little hard to believe. So I ask her.

“Mum said you built this place by yourself, is it true aunt?”

“Yes,” she says, “Excepting the summer house everything is put in its place and installed by me, the fountains included. Why, are you amazed at your old aunt?”

“Yes,” I say. It’s quite a feat. “How old were you when you started?”

“Around forty. The land belonged to my father, your grandfather. He left it to me to take care of and I wondered to myself—what shall I do with it? Strangely, Carol, the idea to build a white garden came to me when you were born. I saw you in your tiny white clothes at the hospital and I suddenly thought of what your wedding bouquet might look like. I don’t know why I thought that, but that’s what I thought—this little mite will get married one day, what will she do for flowers? She should have her pick of white flowers to choose from. That’s when I decided to set this place up. And now I’m the supplier of flowers for marriages all over the country.”

I’m mildly touched by her story but I act like I don’t care. To think it was my birth that started her off. Capital!

“It’s a pity you hardly come to visit me,” she mutters under her breath.

We begin our walk down from the porch on a pebble-covered path. Both sides of the path are lined with white periwinkles and large white gerbera daisies.

“Periwinkles and gerbera daisies,” says Aunt Katherine pointing them out with her walking stick, “Plants that require the least care.”

The path is narrow. There isn’t enough room for the two of us to walk abreast so Aunt Katherine walks ahead while I follow behind.

Beyond an arched gateway covered with profuse white bougainvillea there is the bulb garden. Gangly white spider lilies and starched stiff white tulips flutter in the morning breeze. Surrounding them are delicate calla lilies and singular peace lilies. My aunt has categorized her garden well.

“I don’t know why teenagers go through this “teenagey” period, Carol. It’s like a rite of passage I think. You want to do certain things a particular way, nobody understands why, nobody understands your way of thinking, nobody understands you. Or that’s what you like to think. I think I learnt early on in my life, Carol that it pays to be happy about everything. Don’t make me beg you to tell me what’s wrong with you. Go on! Spit it out!”

“There’s nothing to say,” I protest. I don’t want her to label me as “typically teenage”. I don’t know why but I just don’t like the term.

“If you say so,” says Aunt Katherine, “Remember, dear, I offered to help. I can sense things others can’t. And I sense you’re full of rage. Only I can’t understand at what.”

I feel like I’ve been a little exposed so I steal a quick glance at her face. She looks very serious.

We walk on.

*

Beneath a canopy of frangipani trees we continue our garden tour. White magnolia and hydrangea bushes line the winding path. I like hydrangeas for their sheer volume. My mom compared them to the size of my head once.  

“Next up is the rose garden,” says Aunt Katherine.

I lag behind a little.

“When I was a little girl I used to be very protective of your mother. She’s ten years younger than me. I would never allow our mother to grow roses in our garden at home in case your Mom pricked herself.”

“And fell into a deep sleep?” I ask and laugh a deeply cynical laugh.

“Full of sunshine aren’t we?” mutters Aunt Katherine and later, “I’m trying to get you to talk to me Carol.”

“I don’t want to talk! Don’t push me,” I shout back with sudden force. Big mistake. Aunt Katherine turns around and gives me a stare.

“Oh,” she says. And then silence.

We keep walking through her white garden without saying a word to each other. Aunt Katherine pets her plants and talks to them in a lovey-dovey voice. I hang back a little and glare at her. I know I shouldn’t have yelled, but I wish she would stop snooping. I made it quite clear to her as politely as I could that I didn’t want to talk. She should’ve taken the hint.

In the rose garden Aunt Katherine cuts a bunch of roses to take back to the house in perfect studied silence. I offer her no help.

Here’s the thing about me. I’ve become very cynical about the world lately. I don’t believe, and I’m too scared to say it out loud, but I don’t believe there is a God, a good and a kind God at least, one who watches over our troubles and wants to help us out of it.  

I don’t believe He exists because I prayed really hard, like crazy, about something, and my prayers weren’t answered.

And no, I didn’t ask for a doll.

So I figured either God doesn’t like me very much or He doesn’t exist. How do I tell her that?

She’s a staunch Christian. She’ll be sure to give me the same old platitudes—‘God’s ways are higher than our ways’—‘Even though you don’t understand it now, you will later’—‘Don’t question God as if He’s your playmate!’.

And I don’t want to hear stuff like that.

*

When we get to another section of the garden I see some very beautiful flowers. “What roses are these, Aunt?” I ask pointing to the flower that looks very much like a rose.

“They aren’t roses. They’re ranunculi. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Ranunculus singular?”

“Yes, dear. Ranunculus.”

That sounds like a spell from Harry Potter.

“Ranunculus?”

“Yes, ranunculus. Aren’t they pretty?”

I quite like the flowers so I nod assent. Aunt Katherine whacks her cane against some myrtle bushes. She needs the cane because of the arthritis in her knees. I look at her in wonderment. Why would she do something so unlike her usual plant-loving self?

“I heard from your mother that you were sick, Carol. She told me to make sure you took your pills. What are the pills for?”

I don’t believe Mummy. She was the one to tell me not to tell anybody.

“Tuberculosis,” I say.

“Oh dear,” she says and a furrow forms on her brow, “that’s terrible news. Where do you have it? In the lungs?”

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully, “they couldn’t find it anywhere in my body though they are medicating me for it. That’s why I had to go to Vellore. To get tested.”

My aunt looks at me puzzled. “Is that why they had to drill your spine? To test your bone marrow? To rule out cancer?”

“Yes,” I say and suddenly it’s too much to hold in. I burst out crying.

*

I don’t believe Aunt Katherine.

I expected her to tell me to get over my pain and not be a wuss, but she comes over to me and gives me a hug.

“That must have been the most painful thing you’ve ever endured, wasn’t it?”

I don’t say anything.

“Honey,” she says when I’ve finished sobbing, “Is that why you’ve been so under the weather?”

“Yes! You don’t know how painful it was! The pain was enough to drive me out of my mind. I think I’m going to die because they can’t find out what’s wrong with me. Nothing makes sense, Aunt. I prayed so hard. I thought if God really loved me He wouldn’t let me go through that kind of pain but Aunt, He did! Why did He do that?”

Aunt Katherine’s grip on me is tight.

“I heard your mother couldn’t stand to hear you screaming when they were drilling your spine so she left the OT. She told me all about it, Carol.”

This is something I didn’t know. I thought Mummy was outside the whole time.

“You didn’t answer my question. Am I going to die?”

Aunt Katherine doesn’t answer me immediately.

“No,” she says after some time, “You’re not going to die. When will the test results come out?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble.

“Carol, are you holding onto that pain and not letting go?”

I gape at her without answering.

“That’s a wrong thing to do. I have arthritis in my left knee and I go through excruciating pain every day. I don’t blame God for it. I believe God lets these things happen to us for various reasons. He does it to get us to call out to Him, to seek Him, to understand that Jesus died in the same painful manner to free us from the power of eternal Death.

That’s why, no matter how much pain you face, Carol, you should always be joyful. Because the eternal life God has purchased for you is worth letting go of all the pain. It is joy that mankind was created for.

Come on, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

*

Meekly I follow Aunt Katherine as she hobbles through her garden to a gate in the wall.

Taking a key out from beneath a rock she opens the gate and invites me to enter.

“There’s a dance I do this time of year. Come in. I’ll let you see me.”

I enter through the gate in the wall and the sight I see is astounding.

In a vast field, thousands of kash flowers are beating against each other, swaying gently in the soft breeze. Wave upon wave of silvery white flowers and green grass are bent and made upright.

Aunt Katherine plunges into their midst.

“Come on, Carol. When God created the world the sons of God shouted for joy! Shout for joy because you have the gift of eternal life.”

I look woodenly at her as she jumps and shouts in the field of kash. She prances and dances a curious dance with deft movements of her hands, as if she’s a bird and her arms are her wings. She mimics a stork in the way she walks through the field of kash blossoms. Over all, I wasn’t expecting her to be so comical.

I look at her and a weak smile breaks out on the corners of my mouth.

Aunt Katherine is very amusing, to be sure.

“Why are you standing there, Carol? Come and dance with me!”

I obey the command and plunge after her into the sea of silvery white. She takes hold of both my hands and gets me to dance with her.

“I can’t dance!” I protest but she hears none of it.

“I’ve got a secret to share with you Carol.”

I limply follow my Aunt Katherine’s movements.

“Do you know why Christ thought nothing of the pain He felt when He was being crucified? I’ll tell you why. The joy of being with His Bride was nothing in comparison to the pain He endured on the cross, which is why He could endure it. He knew that the joy that awaited Him would last a lifetime.”

Her words sink in to my soul.

“And you and I are that Bride Carol. Don’t hold on to the pain as if God betrayed you. Let it go and be free in the knowledge that you are loved.”

I don’t know whether I should believe her and be so easy. I was planning on giving God a rough time for putting me so much pain. I didn’t think that Jesus had endured similar pain on my behalf—without giving me a rough time about it.

“Come on, what do you say?”

I think about it and nod. It’s easy to become bitter at God for the things He makes us endure without realising that Jesus endured the same kind of pain to set us free from the grasp of Death.

I grab onto Aunt Katherine’s hands and together we dance our funny stork dance in the field of kash.

Poem #001 : Thirteen Verses on Murder

THIRTEEN VERSES ON MURDER

Who is it that I see there,

Supine, on the flagged floor

Gore all about him,

Bleeding through every pore?

 

Who is it that I see there,

Cassock rent in two,

A silver dagger through his heart,

His face a bluish hue?

 

Who is it that I see there?

Motionless – eyes open wide,

Garrotted by his girdle,

Is that the Friar who has died?

 

Who would kill the Friar?

A man so kind and good,

And shed his blood in the cathedral,

Who is the dog that would!

 

Who plays at the organ?

Choral music fast and quick,

Each note sharp and pellucid,

Distinct, as the tower clock’s tick!

 

Who bangs the cathedral windows?

Dear wind, is that you?

Quieten down, I beseech!

My nerves might snap in two!

 

Who opens the Book on the lectern?

And reads from the pages where,

Judas betrayed the Holy One,

With a kiss and silver to spare.

 

Who lights the seven candles?

Up there on the altar high!

Which lonely choirboy sings

The dirge for those who die?

 

Whose footsteps sound in the side chapel?

Who pours wine into a glass?

And holds it to my trembling lips,

While chanting the Confessional Mass

 

Awaken monks! Awaken!

A terrible deed’s been done,

The cloister doors creak open,

Rub your eyes! Oh be quick and run!

 

Who is the murderer amongst us?

Which face betrays no sleep?

Who has plotted all night

With Evil to commit this deed?

 

Whose is that glassy apparition?

That walks on the cold stone floor.

Why does it look like the Friar?

With large eyes full of sorrow!

 

Can the spectre speak?

Then all will know what I’ve done!

Oh sweet, sweet, gentle Friar,

Hold your incriminating tongue! 

 

Short Story #009: On Cloud Nine

 

On Cloud Nine

I’d like to think that I’ve beaten depression once and for all. Let’s hope for the best, as my therapist likes to say.

The victory isn’t at all my doing. I think God helped.  

He was the one who helped me to figure out all my burning questions, like, why are we put on this earth? (Answer: to worship Him), what am I supposed to do with my life (Answer: Do everything for the glory of God), and what happens after I die (Answer: There will be eternal life for those who believe in Christ Jesus).

I think about all the twists and turns this journey of life has taken me on and I’m humbled that I made it through so much and lived to tell the tale. It is only the grace of God which has sustained me so far. Glory be to God Our Father in Christ Jesus!

I first began my battle with depression as an eight year old child. It started with me hearing voices.

I can clearly remember the day it all began. My mother and sister were teasing me about something and being a hyper-sensitive little tyke I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. That’s when I heard a soft, sweet voice say to me—“I’ll be your friend” and I assumed it was the voice of Jesus. Soon I began to have merry conversations with this voice.

Turns out, the voice didn’t belong to Jesus, but it took me eighteen long years to figure that one out.

This is my first time writing about this particular incident. It may sound super funny in the present but just think about the seriousness of it. I shared my life with a disembodied voice for eighteen long years under the impression that I was talking to God. That’s how lonely, isolated, and deluded I was.

The depression began soon after this incident.

Even as a child I was very private kid, and till this day I am still wonderfully withdrawn as a person. With a sullen gloomy expression, I look as if I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders (I’m a bit sociable now because I’m done answering most of my burning questions). I seldom shared things with even my closest friends. I have no one to blame except myself and my need to be super secretive about all things.

My motto was—the less people know about you the less they can ruin. It ultimately led to my degradation because the less people knew about me, meant they knew next to nothing about me, and it became a problem because they filled in the blanks however they liked.

*

I’ll tell you what depression is really like.

It’s nothing.

And by that I mean you feel absolutely nothing—no joy, no sorrow, no grief, no ecstasy, no throes, no highs, no lows, nothing. It’s a flat line at zero. And that’s the scary part. It’s like staring into the pitch black unable to feel your way out of the abyss you’ve fallen into.

It gets worse on some days, and on some days it gets better. But don’t let that fool you. When it goes, it comes back with a vengeance and that’s the stupidity of believing one sunny day means the cloudy days are over. So do the cloudy days go? Yes, they go. Once you’ve felt your way through all the questions that are bothering you, and there will be some questions that are bothering you, the cloud just lifts and shifts. That’s the root of depression: unanswered questions and secret sorrows.

There is usually a whole host of reasons: long standing social wounds, childhood grievances, loneliness, worries about the future, plain old angst, just to name a few.

But I call depression a blessing in disguise. I and my fellow sufferers are mentally much stronger than those who don’t go through depression. We question life from the bottom up. We rip everything we know down to its most basic entity and then try to make sense of it before we put them back together. Personally, it led to me discovering a lot of answers about God and the world in general, and about what I’m meant to do with my life.

In a world which is fast losing its raison d’etre, it’s important to take time out to understand where you are heading as a person. 

*

You’d be surprised by how thin the line between giving in to depression and fighting it off is.

I was struck by how powerful I really was. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was all it took to either spend the day doing something productive or simply lying in bed. I was that much in control of my life and I really felt the burden of my free will. I was free to mope or not, lie in bed or not, cry or not, and I didn’t like being in so much control.

That’s what left me stumped, and I’m still a bit stumped till today. You’re so free you just don’t realise how much of a weight that freedom is on your shoulders. For some it may sound like I’m crazy to be complaining about being completely free to do whatever I like, but that’s what I felt. What was I supposed to do?

Was I supposed to A) write a book, B) get a Master’s degree C) get a job?

There were so many options to choose from and I was confused. At times like this you really wish your future self would come to the present and give you advice. There’s no way of knowing which road leads to success.  

The scary thing about life is that you make mistakes as you go and they cost you heavily in terms of years and money. No wonder people go to fortune tellers.

Having a perfectly functioning free will without the necessary manual on how to use it, is a recipe for disaster. So Jesus says—“the yoke I put on you is light.”—all we need is that yoke on our free will, if we’re meant to do something productive with our lives. And it’s important we go to God to find out what his will for us is.  

*

Middle of this year, I started fighting back. I told myself enough was enough. I would regain lost territory. I started plaguing my family with questions about life and God and what would happen once we died. They weren’t always able to help me but the answers did come.

They came through my own working out of the problems. Through trial and error I managed to make sense of the world.

The world is created for the good pleasure and sole benefit of God. Everything with Him at the centre makes sense and has meaning otherwise human life is no different from dumb animal life.

During this time I understood the importance of worship. For those who worship, the spirit of heaviness flees before them. Joy fills their soul, the joy of the Lord which ultimately becomes their strength.

Getting out of depression was hard.

You’ll need someone to throw you a rope to pull you out of the mire. There’s got to be something to live for. Something worth striving for. Something you can look at on the dark days and think—“I’ve got You, You’re all that matters.” You need to find this golden Snitch then the game of Life is over and won.

What’s your raison d’etre? Ever thought about that?

If you suddenly find yourself struggling to find meaning in anything, that’s a problem. I went through a phase where nothing—and I can’t stress this enough—absolutely nothing, held any meaning for me. What was the point of living? It appeared to me to be sheer banality.

Why do we draw, paint, write, cook, eat, educate? There’s no need to. Sure we do it because we like to, but it doesn’t serve any purpose in and of itself. Everything is so transitory it isn’t worth the effort, or so I thought. I got educated to work at a career. I worked at a career to make money. I needed the money so I could survive. When I refused to survive that’s when my house of cards came crashing down.

What do you do with a person who refuses to survive?

I don’t know. You let them wither away and die, I guess.

But I do know why I behaved so defiantly. I thought I was getting back at God for putting me through some tough times. It was my way of “showing” Him who was boss. ‘You can’t make me live,’ I screamed on the inside. You can’t put me through a whole host of things and expect I’ll be willing to go on. It’s just not fair!

My argument is an argument that defeats the grace of God. I don’t know what God felt about what I did. I don’t think He was too pleased.

*

The mistake I made was in giving in. I gave in to the capital D when I ought to have fought it off.

Now, it’s time I made a little confession.

There were times when I enjoyed giving in. I gave in for the sheer heck of it. I wanted to cry, I wanted to mope, I wanted to lie in bed all day and not do a thing. There were a lot of things I hadn’t cried about when it was the time to weep, so now I cried with a vengeance. It was a very angst-ridden phase of my life. My frame of mind was such that I wanted to show God I didn’t care two hoots about life and I was just going to waste my time on Earth. I was angry at him because I believed He didn’t take care of me at the time when He should’ve.

One day I went out to lunch with a school friend of mine.

I believe God sent her in to my life at the right time to tell me something very important about the wrong attitude I held.

We met at a restaurant.  Over lunch I told her about my theory of “boycotting” life because I’d been wronged. That’s what I had decided to do. I’d decided (and it really sounds crazy in hindsight) I was going to stay locked up in a room and never live again. 

My friend heard me out and made a comment which left me gobsmacked.

“You’re daring God to send you to Hell!” she said, “Bad things happen to everyone. And there’s nothing that’s happened to you that you can’t overcome.”

I stared at her and regretfully realised that she was right.

I went through some rough years but nothing had happened to me which I couldn’t overcome. I was just stubbornly refusing to get over those incidents.

“That’s not true,” I replied in a little whine, miffed as I was.

There wasn’t much weight behind my response. It was like God had trapped me at my own game.

*

Post recovery I can’t say I’m on cloud nine all the time, but on most days I am jovial and eager to meet the day. I got a job as a content writer. It’s something I enjoy doing. I know I have good friends. I have a great, supportive family. It’s all you need really. You need to surround yourself with loving people if you want a fighting chance out of this mess.

I believe I’ve triumphed. I no longer feel that gaping emptiness I used to feel. I communicate better. I don’t lie about what I feel. I don’t prevaricate or obfuscate. I live according to sound principles I’ve found in the Bible. I know why I’m here and what I’m doing with my time. I’m not selfishly living for myself. I have never wanted to.

I wrote this piece in the hope that anybody reading it and going through the same ordeal knows and finds the right way out. Let me be very clear here, there is a right way out, let me leave you with no doubt about that. Jesus is that way.

Even though I went through depression after I was born again, I believe it was for a purpose. It led me to a closer relationship with my family from whom I was very estranged. It also helped me to speak up about all the hurts I went through in the past.

I can genuinely only thank Christ Jesus for my recovery.

Amen.