The Last Leaf

“If words were leaves, would you prefer fall or spring?”

― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not For Sale

It was the winter of 2007. 11 December, 2007 to be precise (thanks to the time stamp on an old digital pic). Srinagar was freezing and we had less than a day to take a look around. Needless to mention, we had a packed schedule as we hopped from one stunning destination to the other. I remember the Shikara ride on the Dal Lake and the Kahwa we had. It was like a page from a book of paradise and too beautiful to be true. Today when I look back it appears just as dreamy as it did back then and sometimes I begin to doubt if the passage of time has indeed led to mingling of memories with illusions. I had forgotten pretty much all about it till a random thought brought it all flooding back to me and also the 'interestingness' of the stories associated with this random day in the book of my life.

Whiling away time early morning one day and feeling nostalgic about the days gone by, I remembered making random hand crafted cards for some of the 'dearest' people in my life and shooting those handmade treasures off to them all across the world. One such cherished memory that remains unfazed is that of the Chinar leaves I collected back then at Nishat Bagh in Srinagar on a sight seeing tour of the city. How I wish that the story was as simple as it seems. Not only did I find the sight of  a few leaves lying in water truly mesmerizing, but also that I lost sense of time and space and slipped into the fountain while trying to capture that dazzling moment forever in my camera. While I still remember the pain of spending an entire day in wet jeans and shoes in the biting cold of Sringar, I also treasure the pair of woolen socks I had purchased from Lal Bazaar as a replacement for my wet ones. What I valued most however were a handful of dried  Chinar leaves I had picked up that day while most people in my group were busy getting their pics clicked in the idyllic surroundings and I wandered lonely and aimlessly about. There were tons and tons of these leaves all around and yet I wonder why they appear so precious to me now..

The sight that I have never been able to forget

Soon upon our return to the Academy, I had taken it upon myself to preserve those leaves in the form of cards and send them across with love and wishes to those who meant so much to me. The cards were appreciated by each of the recipients and as a dear friend Y puts it today, "it was the only hand-crafted card he ever received". My intent of sending those particular leaves was to let these fabulous people know that they were remembered by me in both good and bad times alike and there was never a moment when they weren't with me in my thoughts and prayers. It was my own designed souvenir and as I write these lines it occurs to me that it must precisely be the point of any souvenir!

The leaves of Chinar are too beautiful to be wasted in one opportunity and I decided to keep a few for myself (in my quiz diary!) for all times to come. Over time the wealth of my leaves dwindled for a multiplicity of reasons and I could do little about it. Yet as in an eponymous story, it was the last leaf that brought me the greatest happiness and fulfillment. Each time I gave a leaf away or lost one, a tiny bit of my life and its stories went away with it. But it was only as I gave the last leaf away that I realized the long journey that the leaf in turn had made from growing on a distant tree in a distant land, accompanying me on innumerable journeys and finally finding its way to the one 'it had been trying to find' all along. As I write this story on an arbitrary note, a lot of things still remain unsaid. Nothing could have summed up the journey of my leaves better than the borrowed lines I reproduce below:

Har sukhe patte ki ek kahani hoti hai,

Barish ki har bund ko koi khabar sunani hoti hai,

Wo to hum unka ishara nahi samjh pate,

Warna har musibat ki chahat hamari Zindagi asan banani hoti hai...

House This!!!

House This!!!

All these days I have been trying to take some time out to be able to pen down a few thoughts for my blog but the election fever in the state, A's posting to Odisha on Observer duty and my own transfer on the day he left meant little respite for days to follow. Little N has shown understanding well beyond her years (she's not even 14 months as I write this!) while Mamma discharges the election duty and stays away for hours on end. Once again as I find myself in complete solitude after the day's work and as little N sleeps peacefully after chasing peacocks all day, my thoughts wander back to the days when A was still in Tripura and I endlessly pursued a zillion hobbies to keep my hopes from fading and my energies creatively channelized. 

I had brought along with myself M-i-l's book EASY EMBROIDERY by Lis Paludan and had wanted to start on some work of my own too. The way her book is written, it seemed like a matter of patience and practice before even a novice could embark on embroidery project of sorts. One of my two initial choices was the embroidered houses which seemed simple enough to begin with.

During the recent visit to my parents' house in Delhi, as I looked at the houses I had made, I reminisced about the winter evenings I spent confined to my Agra house all by myself and doing embroidery for hours on end. My dear friend P made an interpretation of the same work too and if it were not for the countless happenings in her life these days, I could have showcased her work too.

The work comprises of 11 houses stacked in three rows of 3-4-4 respectively. In the bottom row for example, the outline of the houses is done with black running stitch, the rooftops are done in pink asymmetrical running stitch, blue satin stitch, yellow chain stitch and dark pink and red chain stitches respectively from left to right. The doors are mostly in chain stitch while the daisy flower petals are done in french bullion knots. The marigold flower and the windows of the second house from left are done in buttonhole stitch.

The Bottom Row

The Middle Row

The middle row too comprises four houses done in outline black running stitch. The roof of the first left house is done in a mix of buttonholes and french bullion knots while the windows are outlined by chain stitch in two colors. The chimneys of all the houses are done in chain stitch. The roof of second house has a double outline done in chain stitch and filled with satin stitch, windows are filled with buttonhole circles and double chain stitched door is adorned with french bullion knots. The third house from left is a classic example of chain stitch and buttonhole stitch while the herringbone roof of the last house lends a real touch to the depiction.

The three houses in the top row are largely a mixture of chain stitch and buttonhole stitch used in tandem.

The Top Row

While I truly hope I have tried my best to preserve the beauty and color scheme of Lis Paludan's work,the unavailability of certain colors' threads and my own lack of discipline coupled with the fact that the project was completed in over six months in different cities with different states of mind, meant a melange of ideas on the fabric. The left panel is my work and the right is the original depiction as given in her book. I really hope my sister M loved her long promised gift when she saw this!

Of friendship and a dear friend..

As a student in JNU, our economics class and our hostel community were more like an open family and I thought one could nurture close association with a number of people. Partially true, but in prime in particular and in life in general, one's vision is often myopic and one fails to appreciate how time takes it toll on us. Today life has taken the members of the same 'open family' to all parts of the world and at times one even realizes our paths may perhaps never cross again. It does not feel good to know that because the warmth we shared still remains, but one suddenly realizes how much was left unsaid and how much more there still is to be shared. Yet the pulls and pressures of our professional and personal lives often leave us with little time and energy to reach out for people beyond our immediate milieu and its only sometimes one decides to go an extra mile to see someone we knew all along. Even if that genuine warmth and affection remains, the possibility remains that we could have drifted so far apart in temporal and spatial terms that it might be difficult to relate to each other's lives.

This sad realization did dawn on me but only much later when a 24x7 job, marriage, home (read household) and now a five month old keep my hands more than full. Much as I would have loved to live in the old times forever, its always been a task for me to explain myself endlessly and with the kind of uncertainty one lives with in our profession, much of our social interactions could be left to luck and chance. If there's somebody whom we still warm up to, could speak uninhibited to and we know will always be there, I think that special somebody has indeed passed the litmus test of friendship and more importantly time!

Am dedicating this post to such friends A N for being two of the most wonderful people I have ever met. Its surprising how some people we never knew for the better part of our lives come to win our trust so much that at times one instinctively reaches out for them even before one's own siblings. And with this kind of faith, the intervening time, distance and circumstances cease to matter. In other words,  that there could be a thousand miles separating us or that we grew up in two entirely different social milieu has never  been of any significance. One doesn't always necessarily need words to communicate and silence is not met with innumerable questions either. Can not thank them often and enough for making us feel welcome and comfortable into their lives and for being part of one's 'charmed circle' of people who make life truly meaningful.

I wish and pray that life offers you the very best of everything there could be, forever and always. Much as I wish I could give you all that you aspire for, could not think of giving you anything better than the 'Tree of Life' itself. Hope life will treat you gently in its course and we will build many more memories and dreams together. But most importantly, just as I was about to commit the folly of saying we-stay-the-same-forever, I would rather say, life has given us a wonderful opportunity of knowing each other and even if times are hard for us and hope is even more scant, all that matters today and always will, is that we will try to appreciate each other's circumstances, will not be hasty in our judgement and remember each other in our thoughts and prayers. May the Force be with you, Always!!!