Spinning Yarns

I learned knitting way back in school, in MHS, in class VII. I remember picking up the nuances of the craft quite easily and enthusiastically. A little too enthusiastic perhaps. We were all asked to knit a set of clothes for a newborn baby, as per instructions, to create a sleeveless woollen vest (the sleeveless part has always struck me as absurd), a bonnet and a pair of booties (socks). Mine eventually translated into one that when cheerfully displayed to our needlework teacher, Mrs Srivastav, struck her speechless with amusement. After her recovery from a bout of inane toothing, she managed a benign grin and said she was quite pleased with my performance but I needn't really have exerted myself to such an extent. Apparently, my creations were big enough to apparel a six-month old baby quite effortlessly. I packed my bags after the class, hurling imprecations against the world in general for not having offered me any opportunity to develop the slightest idea of the relative difference in size between a newborn and a six-month old baby. No wonder Siddhant struck me as miniscule in terms of magnitude a few months back.


There was a particular reason for my disgust. Salt Lake was almost an island in those days, in terms of transportation options. It did not help that my father is a doctor by profession, too busy to lavish much attention on our arts-and-crafts-related (and therefore entirely optional and futile, according to him) needs. Ma, though extremely street-smart and intelligent, was only courageous enough to venture bravely into the New Market shopping territory. Salt Lake itself suffered from a gigantic dearth of shopping destinations. Hence, procuring all needlework etc related raw materials was really an issue of sorts. After several sharp reprimands in needlework classes for my failure to produce the necessary knitting paraphernalia, I ultimately effected a showdown back home, threatening to boycott education until my needlework needs were taken seriously. Results were prompt. After considerable gnashing of teeth and directing of choice expletives against my hallowed academic environs, Baba took a trip to Gauranga Bastralaya in Gariahat and returned with wool in the brightest, gaudiest shade of chrome yellow imaginable. Even now I shudder when I care to imagine any newborn or even six-months' old baby being attired in clothes of that colour. I wouldn't want this type of misfortune to befall even the child of my worst detractor.


Well. That is my point. Baba excused his colour-blindness by citing the inability to procure so many yarns of such a ply simultaneously at the aforementioned store except in this garish hue. Mrs Srivastav's matter-of-factness therefore had every potential of triggering off any latent hysteria in me. To undergo such histrionics for all that knitting and then its being considered as superfluous. Well, no wonder I've been short tempered since.


Why return to knitting at such a belated stage of life, you're obviously wondering, when it's evident I've unresolved neuroses regarding this area in my unconscious. Turns out Tanima inspired me to re-tread dreaded territory with a very sacred purpose to fulfil this time. Namely, a muffler for K. I wished to gift him something that incorporated my signature and which, he would therefore, treasure for years to come. Maybe he'd show it to our children some day with a glow in his eye, reflecting all the warmth that it bestowed on him and the sense of his worth it distilled. So, though with quite some trepidation, I did buy some wool at Walmart and left him to shortlist the multicoloured yarn he wanted spun into a muffler. It wasn't the typical Libran indecision that he battled this time. The place does offer you exquisite colour combinations and left to me, I might have ended up purchasing more than what figured on my initial agenda. I called up Tanima and verified that I was getting the right raw materials. The needles did scare me a bit, being miles long (not literally, silly) and of Christmas tree ball hues: gold, purple and deep blue. I settled on purple (predictably).


On Monday, after K left for office, I downloaded a couple of DIY (Do It Yourself) knitting videos on YouTube and set about charging my knitting batteries. It took me a day to gain courage and finally embark on the decided project. When I did, I don't mind confessing that I had to unravel the entire thing thrice. The first time, I took too many stitches and then realised that I wanted a muffler, not a shawl. The second mishap was occasioned by my discovery that I was not doing the 'purl' correctly, forgetting to bring the yarn towards the front every time I changed from 'knit' to 'purl'. The third (and fortunately the final) setback was owing to my flipping through a couple of webpages and determining that what I actually wanted was the ribbed look for the muffler. Happily, I still had enough motivation to allow me to proceed. Even after all these unhappy incidents. Only goes to show how badly I wanted to get this gift going. For our sake.


Here's how it looks at this moment. Wish me luck (and no more mishaps) with the rest of it !



P.S. Here is the link to the 2 knitting videos that caused me to sally forth on this voyage, in case you too are stranded in deep waters and need immediate aid.

Btw, I discovered I'm not alone in knitting related fears. Check out this one, if you don't believe me.

Trailing Clouds of Glory Do We Come...

I just woke up from a deep and refreshing nap, glancing around sleepily, tantalised by what seemed rather pleasantly different about today. I sat up and wondered. All of a sudden, a wave of happiness swept over me, washing out all pains and pinpricks from my past. I felt young and light-hearted, frivolous and frolicky, cheerful and tender. And then I realised the source of the subtle change that had been wrought in my mood. I had opened my eyes not to coldness and darkness but rather warmth and wistfulness...suddenly it seemed summer again and I was the self I had loved and proud to have owned possession to in the early days of college, in the early days of school, in the early days of my life when spring and summer seemed the only seasons of life and autumn or winter myths that existed only in a book.

What had happened to me in between ? The pressures to perform upto the expectations of my peers ? The wilful wisdom that had been imposed upon me by marriage and its myriad implications ? The troubles I had brought on myself by brooding over too many relations gone wrong, too many tensions not worth the terror of self-mortification over ? My vain notions of achieving valour, Atlas style, in too many circumstances that were beyond my destiny and strength to set straight or reverse the course of ? Maybe one of them ? Maybe all ?

Who cares ? Who indeed ? So long as I believe I tried my best to choose the correct path at each crossroad, I can go to sleep with a guiltless conscience knowing I've always been consciously conscientous ; I shall still hope to see, as I did today, another bright bold flash of gold as the sun disappears along the breathless horizon, breathing benedictions on all those who blessed its way and even for those unfortunate enough to have stayed on napping and missed the clouds of glory that trailed alongside, timeless and tearless, in its infinite, iridescent trajectory.

Rabindrasangeet

When we want to have a quiet and cosy evening together, sit back and basically just feel relaxed and refreshed, K and I instinctively reach out to the Rabindrasangeet available online. Quite a few are available on YouTube, mostly sourced from old and recent Bengali films and telefilms or private albums by professional singers but sadly enough, too few to pick and choose from. Once I spent some time searching for a few of my favourite Tagore compositions online and was appalled at the limited number of websites that showed up on Google. That made me ponder. I would have thought that I'd be spoilt for choice as it usually happens when I'm googling anything else on that omnipotent search engine. I have to waste a whole lot of time just making random hits and hoping I'll find something that approximates my target. Rabindrasangeet alas seems to be a rarity of sorts online. And yet, folks back home tell me that there's been a boom in the e-media of late.

Anyway, all this means that we lament our not having foresight enough to carry some Rabindrasangeet CDs with us to the USA. Both of us are to blame, since music forms a very notable part of our everyday lives. Our tastes are markedly different when it comes to English music, where I'm notoriously fickle, moving from Tchaikovsky to Enrique to Dido to Philip Yon to the Beatles in one clean sweep, leaving K breathless in his effort to keep up with my tastes. He is more into multi-genre rock and Pink Floyd. However, we manage to embrace considerable similarity when it comes to Bengali and Hindi music, where we are both heavily into anything Kishore or A.R.Rahman, Sonu Nigam or Debabrata Biswas, Lata or Asha, Shreya Ghoshal or Sraboni Sen. And Rabindrasangeet is like our refuge. When we want comfort and cheer, trust us to curl up on our cushions with Rabindrasangeet and coffee (er well, tea for K).

It's startling, the effect Rabindrasangeet has on us. The long drawn out enunciation most professional singers sport is soothing, almost as slurred at points as it would take a teetotaller after a couple of pegs to come up with or even me, when the mercury drops sharply to minus 10 and below. We laugh at the drawling and affected accents when we are in the mood for jest and banter, but when you're far from home like us and sometimes, just nothing seems to work except perhaps tears (easy for me, tough for K) or deep sleep (escape from reality itself), Rabindrasangeet provides unimaginable relief. Just musing on the words, brooding on their meaning can lift you effortlessly to a plane of pure pleasure, when each nerve thrills to the melody and the spirit yearns to become one with the flesh.

I personally think my greatest influence in writing poetry has been Rabindranath. The blending of love and worship, pain and pleasure, word and meaning, wisdom and worth...why else would I learn to write each word as if I felt it walk my heart each step, arriving at a climax as one would stand ecstatic at the door of heaven, straining to reach for a few drops of peace from what little 'punyo' (godliness) I have gained from striving to please others on each day, in each poem.