Serendipity and the Muse
The journey of the muse and all that it involves.
Dear friends,
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Once again, welcome to my place. Let the stirring begin.
I don’t know how it began. But that day, as I sat in my usual spot having chai, the cane sofa in the corner of the hall—the one familiar with the butt prints of everyone in our family started becoming something else. Perhaps it was the late evening sunlight streaming in through the windows, through the latticed sides of the sofa and falling in tiny drops on the adjacent shelf. Perhaps it was Maon sitting in front of the sofa— head drooping about to nap, or it was just the chai—ginger and cardamom, crisp and subtle leaving their trail on my tongue.
The cane sofa (henceforth called sofas for all practical purposes) shares its history with two other sofas—one the same size and the other slightly bigger (they call it a three-seater in our neck of the woods).
First a little backstory about me. I have been practicing the fine art of holding the pencil only recently. Okay, who am I kidding? I am only just beginning to learn to hold the pencil, clumsily, shakily with all the awkwardness of a woman at the fag end of her forties.
The sofas entered our lives at an interesting point in our lives. I had decided to move away from my parents’ home and set up my own place along with my boys who were little at that time. My new house was in the same locality, a couple of streets away. The boys and I would continue to have the comfort of being near my parents and yet we could do our own thing. Ah! The freedom. And all the double binds that come with labels. It's as though you are constantly doing the dance between conforming and questioning, one moment raising your voice and at another moment falling into a discomfiting silence. I was a single Mom, lost and confused navigating through a world that was equally confused and lost. But I had my moments of clarity. Like I knew I wanted something in cane wood for my living room. And when I returned home after an exhausting day at work, I wanted my home to smell like the vetiver root— grounded and fragrant in an earthy kind of way. For my other pieces of furniture, I had visions of maroon and crimson bursts.
The vetiver root fragrance was the first to arrive. It came in a small terracotta pot with a bamboo reed dunked into it. And it smelled just how I imagined it to be.
The other pieces of furniture also started to make their appearance.
The beds did.
The dining table did.
And finally, the cane sofas.
I now wonder, what makes a home, a “home”? Is it the walls? The furniture? The colors--crimsons and maroons? The fragrance, vetiver root and all? The people who reside in it? The nameplate on the side of the main door? Or the delicate web of relationships that holds them all?
The boys had always been grumpy about moving to the new place. At the slightest pretext, they would want to go to my parents’ place. It started from wanting to do their homework there to wanting to spend the night there. It was the year 2011; my older one was in his late tweens, the younger one was eight. They were past the age when I would dress them in matching blues and purples. Jyo would return home with baby geckos in discarded plastic boxes and Pra would order his younger brother around. And here I was—a solo mom looking for love in the strangest of places—in poetry, in the endless panipuri plates I would gorge on after work, in the rooms which refused to be inhabited. I felt let down not only by life but by the two rascals who had their own minds about what a home ought to be like. When we spent the night once again at my parents’ place again for the nth time, I put my foot down.
“No,” I said, “We are going to sleep here...in our home,” I insisted that night.
The boys stared back at me—angry, hurt, disappointed.
And then they started to protest. But what they said at the end stunned me.
“We HATE it here...we hate it,” spat out Pra in his just deepening man voice.
“We hate these new rooms. We hate all this new maroon furniture. There Gatatu and Ammamma wake us up in the mornings...”
“Why can’t we continue staying in that house?” he yelled.
Tears pooled up in my eyes.
“Chinna...the house has become too small for all five of us. Jyo and you have become big boys now.”
Pra fell silent.
“But this furniture...” he said sweeping his arms across the room, “Its soooo bad...”
“You hate this furniture?” I mumbled.
“YES,” he said with all the finality of a young man who had seen the world for a whopping 12 years. And here I was seeking validation for something as banal as maroons and crimsons.
“Amma, the sofa at Gatatu’s place is soooo comfy,” Pra said after a good 10 minutes.
“Yeah...we can sleep on it and watch TV,” continued Jyo.
“And do homework,” Pra finished.
“Yeah... Gatatu’s sofas
,” I said falling heavily into my newly purchased cane sofa. Yes, this one was not as cushy, or as soft as the one in my parents’ place. As I leaned back, I suddenly felt sorry for the hard edges of the wooden piece I was sitting on. I felt sorry for the hard edges within me. I felt sorry for the messy, chaotic parts within me. I was unable to manage the tantrum of a 12-year-old and here I was--desiring to set up a place of mine. Should I have involved the boys in the purchase of furniture? Perhaps yes. Perhaps not. Why did everything have to be soft and plush for it to be beautiful? Anyway, I was too tired to argue. All I wanted to do was start living in the house for which we were paying an exorbitant rent. Start living like a householder, and not as a guest. Cook in the kitchen here, let the boys’ voices fall into my ears as they talked, argued, fought here in these rooms, wake up in one of the beds, and go to the office from here.
I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards. But for the first time that night all three of us slept in our new home.
The next day, when I shared with my parents about the outburst that happened the previous night, my mother made a sagacious statement, “Let us exchange our sofas”
“Exchange?” I muttered.
“Nothing is more important than the children’s studies,” she continued.
“And there is a connection between their academics and your sofa?” I asked.
“Don’t you see it...it's only the sofa they want. The sofa is where they play, they sleep and do homework. The black sofa is what they want. The missing us part is just masala. All the rest is just masala.”
The rest is just masala.
I smiled to myself. A slow lightness began to envelop my being. Trust Amma to zoom out and see the big picture immediately.
The exchange of sofas happened within a couple of hours. As days passed, the boys started to spend more and more time in our new house. After returning from school, they would flop here and watch TV for hours. At other times they would leap on the sofas and chase each other. On most mornings, I would sit on the black sofa and have my morning tea. I would journal sitting on the sofa. The sofa was perfect for my afternoon naps...and binge watching. Life unfolded in myriad hues on Gatatu’s sofas.
Gatatu’s sofas followed us into our new home—our own place this time. As the years passed, I had to get the sofas re-upholstered multiple times. The tiny terracotta pot with the vetiver root fragrance disappeared. In its place arrived clay urlis with floating marigolds and chrysanthemums. They resembled tiny ponds in forests—the one where the parakeets and sparrows come to quench their thirst.
In the throes of the pandemic, Maon entered our lives. He slept on the sofas and turned them into his personal scratch posts even as we brainstormed upon the other riveting aspects of our life as to who would do the dishes, make the beds, load the washing machine etc.
I can go on and on, but I sometimes wonder what if the furniture pieces in our homes had the ability to think, how would the stories be then told, and remembered? Would they remember the time when the brothers had the worst quarrel of their lives vowing never to speak to each other? And how did they hold on to that vow for several weeks, sending their mother into pits of despair? And how they becoming brothers again was not an epiphanous moment in history but the everyday moments coalescing together mundanely, surreptitiously, warmly?
Would Gatatu’s sofas talk about Maon and his Maon ways of getting startled even when a plate fell in his vicinity?
If the sofas, chairs, tables and beds in our homes could talk, how would they talk about love, loneliness and hope? How would they talk about the fragility of the human touch? Or the pawprints of a tiny beast? How would they decipher the symbols of lostness? Of discovery?
I don’t know. And with this sense of “I don’t know”, I once again stare at the cane sofa in front of me. Yes, they are back at my place—the cane pieces. Once again after almost 12 years, my parents and I got into the “great exchange”. The boys are no longer “boys”. They have beards on their faces which they refuse to trim. They tease me when I use “big big” words such as serendipity. I tease them back. We shapeshift between being playmates and parent-child. There is laughter in that and a teeny-weeny drop of grief. But that is okay. One has flown out of the nest. The other one will do in a couple of months. Then Maon and I will have the whole house to ourselves. I have plans for what I will do with the empty rooms. The possibilities scare me and fill me with excitement.
For now, I pick up the pencil and paper and continue to stare at the cane sofa in front of me. My hands shake. I begin to draw. The sketch on my paper resembles a curtain. I laugh. Draw again. It looks like another curtain—twisted beyond recognition. This is becoming hilarious now. I start again. A story whispers itself in my ears—a story which my mother would tell me when I was a kid, a story which she collected from her mother and her mother’s mother and all mothers before her: “Long, long ago, once upon a time there lived one Mamma Sparrow and one Mamma Crow. Mamma Crow built her nest with twigs and Mamma sparrow built hers with cow dung cakes. One day there was rain and hail and Mamma Sparrow’s nest collapsed. Knocking on the door of the Mamma Crow’s nest, she starts to sing, “Mamma Crow...Mamma Crow, My nest has been hit by rain and hail. Pray open the door.”
Mamma Crow...Mamma Sparrow
Crow Mamma...Sparrow Mamma
Sparrow...Crow
Kakamma...Pichkamma
Bird Mommies with wings and feathers. They with their own tree politics, nest politics and other winged politics. Sigh!
The whisper has turned into a tune now. I hum along. It has turned dark outside. Somewhere not far away a tree fills with the squawks of mynahs and parakeets. I pick up the pencil and paper again. Maon leaps on to the table and snuggles his tiny head against my feet. Outside the air is cold with the promise of an impending rain. Inside, it is warm. I inhale deeply and begin to draw again. It is going to be an evening of many serendipities.
Notes:
Gatatu: The terms used by my kids to address their grandfather.
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Other references:
The Sparrow and Crow Story
The sparrow and the crow story is commonly narrated in Telugu households. It has many versions. In the version we were told, during one storm, the sparrow’s nest collapses, and she knocks on the door of the crow for help. The crow, after making the sparrow wait indefinitely (because well she is giving her son a bath) finally opens the door and lets the sparrow in. The sparrow turns hungry during the night and polishes off all the snacks that the crow had stacked for her son. In the morning the crow discovers all the empty boxes, becomes angry with the sparrow and shoos her out of the nest.
The story does not contain any “moral”, but it is usually narrated in a sing song voice, in lilting tones by mothers and grandmothers to make their children eat their meals quickly and without any fuss. The story was born when the sparrows still visited the homes of people, and children would gleefully clap their hands gleefully at the sight of these tiny birds. We don’t see much of the sparrow these days but on the days that she makes that rare appearance, my heart fills with gladness and on such days, I remember this story from my childhood.
(C): Sridevi Datta
"The black sofa is what they want. The missing us part is just masala. All the rest is just masala"
How utterly wise and profound! What an exquisite piece of writing! How brilliantly you have evolved as a writer with such a distinctive style. I have so much to learn from this and now I'll be looking at all my furniture and asking them for their stories. btw why did you repeat the exchange? Is it because you wanted your cane stories to come to you and share the stories they gathered at your parents' house to fill your empty nest? I love all those nest analogies, the knocking on doors and moving in and out of resources. I will go into my day energized!
beautiful writeup.