Pune

Mother-Daughter gardenshoot

We made Oni take the pictures, and we hurried home from the studio to catch some natural light. 

I'm still waiting to select the pictures from the actual exhibition to share with you! (:

Eye tests continued

My mother just under went an eye surgery. For two days and two nights she has reluctantly followed all instructions - no phone conversations, no computer screen, no reading, wear dark glasses all day and most importantly - REST. She patiently lets me give her her daily dose of three different eye drops five times a day. I cant explain how hard this is for her. She is a workaholic, addicted to her phone and computer - all day and for most parts of the night.

Tonight she is finally very irritated and in a bad mood. She wants to start reading and driving her car and making phone calls and swimming in the vast ocean of the Internet.

While she is sulking, and we are both lying on the bed, she makes me read to her 'postoperative precautions' from the hospital's website. She wants to know how soon she can leave this exile. The website says "Rest is important for healing". I tell her this and she gets more agitated - its certainly not what she wants to hear.

I then remember Sindhu's essay and read out the last paragraph to her.

Ma says "I like the last line - 'But sadly with both eyes, I began to dream."

After a second thought she adds "There is nothing sad about this part."

She shuts one eye, looks at the wall and says it looks greenish-yellow.
Then shuts the other and says the wall looks white.

Amber turns 30

Aai and Daddy (my grandfather) ran a studio together, which Aai runs by herself now, since he's no longer around. The studio turned 30 this year, so she organized a small Hindustani classical music recital for about a hundred people downstairs at Amber.

Her name was Manjusha Patil and she wore a white saree and smiled very graciously and familiarly at me and Aai. She looked much younger than I'd imagined. I looked at her till she disappeared upstairs to tune her taanpura.

They started a little later than these things usually start at Amber, and that was when the rustling of sarees and the adjusting of hearing aids and switching off of phones finally came to rest.

She started very, very deep at first. I loved her since then, for that, and for whatever followed.

Her voice stayed with her, never leaving her, and when she sang you could trace the pattern of the note in her frown, in her cheeks and in the tight, loose strings of her neck when she stretched it out.

You could almost touch it, what she was singing.

It lasted three hours, one Raaga after another; everything faintly reminiscent of something you've travelled before, some like the ones you've completely forgotten and some like people you knew before you thought you knew anyone.

She sang as if she had an audience, not as if she was alone in a room. The tabalji and the man on the harmonium were watching her closely, watching her sway and steady down, watching her voice as it climbed and fell, and reciprocating as if in waves. They looked like lovers on a string, each one responding with the slight lag the first one left behind. They were clicking on stage, jamming every once in a while and seeking a nod, a small tilt of the head, and otherwise operating on pure musical instinct. I felt no wonder that evening at how people fall in love with artist(e)s.

I need to listen to more classical music and on a general note, more live performances this year. It's a promise I've made to myself for feeling how I felt that evening.

Love to you both. This year is going to do cool things to us.