Hullo!
I’m on the road yet able to send this out because your girl planned well this time. Improving my writing is also in one of these plans. For which, I’m taking all kinds of writing workshops. Not just prose, but poetry. I’ve grown further attracted to the delicate art of reading & writing poetry. There’s something magical about it.
I’m sure we all have read or heard or even recited the famous words by Robert Frost where he says, “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”. It sounds dreamy and those who have unlocked the door to this less traveled road have some secret sauce to share which isn’t documented enough. It’s been about 3 weeks since I've returned from Dharamkot and my mind has been minding a lot. It’s the discomfort of moving from one way of living to another. Another that’s not been much written about, there’s no guidebook, FAQ to refer to. Taking the road less traveled by is a first to me at the age of 32. It’s intimidating, scary and I want it to become settled sooner than its due course, in this another. The taste of this unknown caffeinated road is more bitter than sweet. But I still want to choose it. The absence of conventional life’s discomfort is freeing.
Before stepping in the world of this chosen discomfort, I took some leisure time out and headed to Dharamkot last month. It initially felt reckless and also felt like a word I don't know of. From one of the poetry writing workshops I attended this month, there’s the one wherein we had to pen a poem from the prompt, “I wish a word existed..” which somehow captures how I feel about trudging the path less traveled by.
I wish a word existed
For both excitement and scare
Something more than a tingle
Less than a thrill
Easy on the tongue
Clear like a day
I can feel it running through my veins
It’s a composition of
Glee, discovery, pain & disappointment
It’s roaming around in streets unknown
Unwilling to settle but also
Looking for a home
I can give you a piece of my vein
If you find me a word for
Both excitement and scare
Now after almost a month when I read it and thought of opening it up to this tiny community of readers, I’ve realized that in writing poetry, there’s no scope of lies. No matter what kind of a notion or ambition you carry for your poem to look, feel or sound like.. It will become only what you’re truly feeling and experiencing. Tell me if you resonate?
It’s only April & ever since I came back from my skiing trip in February, it feels like I’ve lived a lot. I can only wonder how fulfilling the rest of the year would turn out to be with more bird song falling over my ears, sudden spotting of diverse terrestrial creatures, identifying a variety of trees and flowers and plants, listening to new music, learning the tunes of songs that caress my soul.
My days in Dharamkot would start with me sitting in the balcony with a cup of tea overlooking the little garden of my abode and green hills covered with pine trees. Everyday I would catch sight of a variety of birds ranging from bulbul, yellow magpie, blue fronted redstart, dove, pigeons, sparrows. One day I also spotted a mongoose with the help of the cat that lived in my homestay. My balcony was jeweled with five kinds of flowers in little pots. I found out that the pink flowers with leaves that look like a lotus leaf are called geraniums. The pretty flower with very many petals spread around is called some kind of daisy. They get back into the buds at night, reopen in the afternoon and go back to sleep again. I feel lucky to have observed them in their natural state for two weeks straight. Then there’s this yellow colored flower which has a big round brown stain at its center called garden pansy.
Dharamkot will invariably be a place where many extraordinary firsts happened.
“I’m about to make pasta for dinner”, I told a friend I was on a call with. For someone who could cook only to save their life, at that moment, it struck me as a never known before kind of joy. One afternoon, I cooked bhindi while being on a video cooking date. Made chapatis to go with it and topped it with amul butter as a replacement for ghee. I ate it all in one single serving. It was one of the best bhindi I’ve ever had. And no, I’m not here to simply praise myself because I also attempted to make an omelet many times which ended up as scrambled eggs on my plate every single time. So the bhindi was REALLY tasty. Made lots of tea, sometimes good, sometimes drinkable. Cooking happened as an extraordinary first in all its flavorful glory. Glad that I had all the time to go buy the vegetables, hunt for already present cooking ingredients in the kitchen and make a mess in a kitchen of my own.
I washed a lot of utensils. A LOT. A lot. And turning the kitchen into a squeaky clean sparkly nice smelly space gave me exponential amounts of endorphins.
This was the first time I took Stevie along so technically it wasn’t really a solo trip. She got her own volvo ticket. Slept peacefully during the bus ride, enjoyed being carried around to the hills, delicately so. Such a special first. I remember being worried about carrying the guitar along with my travels and raised the same with my teacher. And it was she who told me to think of it as one of my limbs. Wherever I go, she goes. So far, it has been wonderful!
There’s a song that I was listening to on repeat just before traveling to Dharamkot. It’s called Sweet child of mine, the Captain Fantastic version. I asked my guitar teacher if I’m at a stage to learn this. With a lot of enthusiasm, she said yes. And there started a journey amidst sweet misty hills learning the most beautiful song that touches the chords of my heart in just the right places. I practiced it endlessly. Mostly in my room, then with some inhibition I would take the guitar and sit in the balcony and practice. Passerbys would look up, smile and nod along. Towards the end of my stay I could be seen singing at the top of my lungs at the terrace of my homestay. I wasn’t interrupted or shushed once during this while. To learn something while being around public gaze is a sweet little tick to this list of firsts.
The owner’s cat, Linti (took me a long time to come around with this name), visited me every morning for milk. She bonded with me for food but also visited in the evenings to simply hop on to my laps while I practiced playing the guitar. A first where a cat chose me. Big win!
It rained almost everyday during my stay. At sharp 9 in the morning, I would go for my yoga classes which were held at the terrace of someone’s house covered with canopies. Yoga amidst the outlandish rains felt refreshing, sometimes cold. People would bring their large jackets to cover up during the Shavasana. I attempted my first headstand without any support, a first I celebrate & a first I want to be more familiar with in days to come.
I made postcards out of a book on birds which I bought from a local grocery store for a hundred bucks. It became a week-long indulgent activity involving emptied Amul milk cartons. I would go to a cafe that smelled like cake and sit there with all of my postcard making equipment & spend hours cutting out the carton into postcard shapes, pasting the birdy images over it, foraging the right words and writing curated messages. Day 5 is when I went to another sweet little cafe owned by a woman my age who’s been living in the hills for about 6 years fostering a whole new community for herself. The dream! She let me borrow her sketching pens to illustrate at the backside of the postcards. The plan was to make 10 postcards and five days were enough to shake me back to reality because I ended up making only 2. I purchased the rest from the same woman who sold her beautiful illustrations in the form of postcards.
The postcards were ready to be dispatched by Sunday. But the post office remains shut on a Sunday. :| and even though the lady who owns the little coffee shop volunteered to post them for me, I couldn’t let go of the fact that I’ll miss on this final and important step of posting these cuties by myself. So I extended my trip by a day and posted them all by myself. It rained as I walked towards the main city the next day. The post office folks were stereotypical post office / government employees. Told me to visit at a later time and made me wait a little more at that said later time. I asked them to give me better looking stamps but there were none. But well, none of it matters as the postcards have started reaching their homes already!
Rings! I purchased two quirky looking rings for myself.
I stole. :P No details shall be given.
I’m inching towards liking stone and metal (literal & musical). Getting poked and pierced in the skin (cuz that’s what’s left, jk). I’ll be gentle with myself in ways a new trunk grows out of the primary trunk. Be leisurely as three old women sitting at a park, chatting. Be colourful, because enough being on a hunt looking for that invisibility cloak. Drink more yellow paint. Listen intently when someone’s talking even if their story doesn’t interest me. This also means to make myself even less available.
so much to learn & to be, no?
sending sounds of a wind chime
riti
Absolutely love to see your writing become delicate and detailed and ornate after every Sip!