Human vs Ants

The army stands in a single file. Fierce, determined, strong. In all their dark glory, the tiny black ants march into the battlefield. My kitchen floor.  

An evil giant awaits them. Waiting to quell the army.
Little do they know that the giant has horror in her eyes and fear in her heart. But enough with the drama, already.

Flashback to two weeks ago.

A young lady stands outside my door.

“Due to the construction up the hill, there has been insect and mice infestation in the neighborhood. Luckily we’re here in the neighborhood today.”

She looks at me closely. She realizes she has repeated the same lines to me before. Quickly she changes tactic.

“There’s a wasp’s nest above your garage.”

The tactic works. She notices the alarm, probably apparent in my eyes. In my defense -- our friends in the neighborhood recently had a hive of twenty thousand bees. Yes. Twenty thousand.

I follow her. She points to an itty bitty hive. I seem disinterested.

“There are more, you know.” She points to others – equally itty bitty. She works her fear-inducing-spiel on me.

I ponder. It’s a busy day. There are other things I’d rather be doing. I decide she is using fear tactics she has been trained in. Considering that politicians do the same… but I digress.

I decide I spend far too much time being scared of impending doom/s and just generally being scared. Even if I’ve had reason to be scared, even if I may have always been somewhat of a scaredy cat, (no matter how well I hid it,) I decide that I am tired of being scared, of what may happen, fearful of that which has not even happened yet. Even if there are times, that my mind doesn’t want to be scared, my body goes into a guarded space…

I decide this time, however trivial, to not succumb to the fear. 

*****
Today, I decide it is an unwise choice as I look down upon the army heading in a thin trail towards the pantry counter. It’s so hot outside, they must know I have the air on.

Last week, I notice a few squirmies near the pantry and feel the made-a-wrong-choice pang. I refuse to feel bad, stay strong and sprinkle dried neem leaf powder. That seems to do the trick.

I figure they will either stay away from the bitterness or develop fantastic immune systems. For you see, an Ayurvedic doctor has suggested the neem powder (ahem.. for me). I use it in my vegetable garden instead, and now to keep away ants.
My mother would buy a year’s worth of rice, storing it in bins, crushing and sprinkling dried neem leaves to keep away bugs. I remember running my fingers through the rice, pulling out the delicate, shriveled leaves, carefully, so they wouldn’t crumble into a thousand bits, before rinsing the rice.

Today, as I kneel down and watch the army attempt to capture new lands – the counter, I stand armed with neem leaf powder.

I sprinkle some on the counter and the floor following their trail. I see the ants squirm about. I swear I see an ant conferring face to face with another ant. They’ve got to be discussing, one ant debriefing the other of the danger and the giant ahead. I swear they turn around and change course. Their system seems intelligent and very evolved. And yes, I seem to have far too much time on my hands.  

I return, a while later, to find a few more on the counter. Tenacious, refusing to retreat, they’ve found a path to circumvent the neem powder. I watch them climb the more difficult path. They know it is going to take a lot more, they refuse to give up. They remind me of me. I wonder who the giant is, in my case. But I digress.

I follow the trail, stuffing neem powder in the crevice of the wood floor, till I get to their point of entry. I seal the tiny crevice between the wood floor and floor molding, and all the way across with more neem.

Hopefully there will be no part deux of humans vs ants. If there is, I should probably look into ant baits or perhaps call the insect lady and ignore her smug look and the “I told you so” song that she will be singing in her head. Sigh…

For in the end, even if I do call her, I will have decided to use her services based on need and not fear.


 

Is limited humanity, still humanity?

The other day… I give a few dollars to a homeless person. It makes me uncomfortable. It is not something I do often.

What comes in the way, I wonder. Is it idealism, my view of how the world should be, my capacity to not want to stray from it, my inflexibility?

To some extent, this is expected, I suppose - for each of us. But does it keep us trapped?

I am reminded of a day many years ago... I walk out of a grocery store I rarely frequent. I am very pregnant and must have watermelon. I notice a woman with a little girl, in the adjoining store -- Pay Day loan or some such store.

It is closed! She exclaims, visibly distraught. By now, I am right next to her. I must waddle past her. My heart goes out to her. In tears, she clutches her girl’s hand. Damn pregnancy hormones, I seem to want to tear up. I struggle to maintain composure and ask if she’s okay.

“Do you have any cash?” she asks me. Mental sigh. This is outside my comfort zone. I really don’t like to give money when I’m worried it may go towards drug or alcohol.

My judgmental mind wonders if she is an alcoholic. I don’t know whether or not I have cash – I often don’t, but I don’t check. I seem unable to find the flexibility to stray from my dogmatic rigidity. I tell her, I don’t.

“Would you like my groceries?” I ask her. There are only a few bags with basic stuff – milk, bread, eggs, cereal, fruit… She is surprised, confused, she shrugs... I hand over the bags to her. I waddle my way back to the car, balancing the watermelon against my giant belly. I remember not parting with the watermelon. Hmm… 

I also remember not going back into the store. I remember wanting to leave the place in a hurry. I call my husband and ask him to pick up the milk.

I think of the little girl and am glad I gave her the groceries, and that her mother allowed me to. But it leaves me unsettled. What if she wanted the money for medicines, why didn’t I ask, how much did she need… I am unsettled, because I know I am trapped in my beliefs and my behaviors based on them. I don’t even know if they are truly mine or where I may have acquired them.

Who am I do decide what a person needs in a given moment? The truth is piercing. It leaves me unsettled, even if I am too young to understand it then.

Not sure I’m old or mature enough to understand it better now. Besides, in another decade, I may see the same incident yet differently.   

But is kindness, kindness if it doesn’t align with what the receiver truly wants and needs?

Another story comes to mind. But my page is up. Perhaps I will write about it, or perhaps I’m done saying what there is.

I do however, continue to wonder, that despite kind intentions, are we pigeonholed in rules that we create based on our beliefs.  Even when we want to help, are we held in a certain limited humanity? Humanity to the extent that seems right and within the boundaries possible for us?  

In altruism then, is there sometimes, discrepancy between the giver’s giving and the receiver’s receiving? I suppose limited humanity is still humanity since it stems from good, kind intentions.

Why then, does it leave me unsettled?

Ha! I’ll come back more beautiful…

My computer does its best to warn me. 20% battery left. I ignore the message. 12% battery left. I ignore the message. 6% battery left. I ignore the message agaain – arrogantly, foolishly, detrimentally.

The computer screen goes dark.

I stare at the black rectangle. Silence stares back at me.

Row and rows of lines swallowed by the dark void. I gulp. I had been typing away furiously. I had no time to get up and plug the cord in. For who in their right mind, would disturb the stream of thought – especially when on a roll.

Yeah right...  that’s what I tell myself. Too lazy to get up, seems more like the truth. But oh well, let’s not challenge muse and her/his (?) mysterious ways. Hmm…

I get up dejectedly and plug the cord in. Sigh… this is the second such instance in the past few weeks. Am certain the other piece I lost was the most brilliant piece of writing, ever. Yeah yeah…

I continue to mentally chide myself for the clumsiness.
Then suddenly I am tired of being disheartened. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of being discouraged – by this and everything else.

I turn back, look at the computer and say, “Ha! I’ll come back even more beautiful! Prose like you’ve never seen before!”

I laugh at my confidence that doesn’t generally abound these days. I am very amused and even impressed by this confident, and even somewhat arrogant stranger living inside me.

I like this stranger. I wish she would stay.  I wish she could stay.

I wonder how many of life’s drubbings I can say that to. I wonder how many of life’s drubbings I may have already said that too. Unknowingly. Unnoticed.

I wonder how many comebacks remain in store. I wonder how many comebacks I may have made. Unknowingly. Unnoticed.     

Highly unlikely, that I come out of them, “even more beautiful” (indignant, arrogant air notwithstanding). But looks like the intention is to comeback. And that may be a good enough start.  

In the meantime however, it may be simply more prudent to plug the computer in when it tells me to.

p.s. I was writing something altogether different. Funny thing is, I have no intention of returning to it. This seems just right.

 

Language: part deux

“When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds.”
~ Jhumpa Lahiri

This is where I left off yesterday, this is where I begin today. Taking you on a tour, inside our home, on the clunky, colorful vehicle with things dangling out – the metaphor for my language. 

I speak to my kid mostly in Marathi. She replies back only in English. She has done so for the past several years.

Yet in all her English sentences, there are certain words that she uses only in Marathi. She never uses their English counterparts (when speaking to us). She sticks them in English sentences with a happy effortless ease, even if they jut out forcibly – awkward and strange in the English sentence, grammar and context.

“After I do angol (bathe), will you get the zatta (tangles) out of my hair?”

I remember her at a year and a half old, mixing the two languages - adding “ing” to Marathi verbs or taking English verbs and adding Marathi grammatical suffixes to them.

A friend shares how her mother, a non-native English speaker, never spoke to her in her native tongue. She wonders if there remains a missing piece in their relationship since she never spoke her mother’s language. I sense her emotion and feel much empathy for a dear friend, who may have felt like an outsider to this part of her mother’s language (and identity?).

Determinedly, I continue speaking to my kid in Marathi, for most part. She is embarrassed when I speak to her in Marathi in front of her friends. I explain it is simply force of habit. I am ever so slightly hurt. Till she shushes me, takes me in confidence, and whispers, “they will think we’re talking about them”.

I grin in surprise. For I realize we do talk about people in Marathi. When a server bangs the plates, or seems grouchy, I may on occasion, have said, “Hmm… someone’s having a bad day…” not outside earshot, not in English, of course.

Tsk tsk… I suppose Marathi has sometimes been evidence of bad parenting. Since my kid does not always have volume control, or ahem… tact, I have sometimes whispered to her, “speak in Marathi, if you are going to make personal comments about people”.

Bad parenting or not, it does seem a safer bet when your kid is about to utter, “Is that guy wearing a wig?” Full volume, of course.

My husband and I sometimes wonder how monolingual parents parent without a secret language. She speaks and understands English and Marathi. But my husband and I also speak Hindi, which is our secret language to say things we do not want her to hear. It backfires quickly and we notice she is extra alert when we speak in Hindi. She understands the gist of the conversation, if not every word. Moreover it annoys her, so we drop it. There really is no outsmarting our kids.

There is no dearth of stories and instances about language, for we evolve, language evolves, circumstances around us change constantly. For most part, we continue obliviously, in our personal “evolved language”, sometimes we take notice.

The other day, my friend says deluge, as rain and hail rattle the car top. She pronounces it de’luge (day-luje) as in French. “Oh it’s not deluge (de-luje) in English?” I ask.

I laugh as I realize that I probably learnt the word first in French. Bringing it to English, I decide to pronounce it in what I consider the more American pronunciation. “How messed up, is that?” I ask laughing. I don’t want to sound too ooh la la…  and all francais and pronounce it the way I believe Americans would.

My kid corrects my pronunciations, she sighs and gives up – for it is a lost cause.
I find sentences here and there, which could be written better in English. At times I correct them, at times, I let them be. They are often literal translations from Marathi.

I let them be, because I am growingly beginning to understand my clunky colorful messy vehicle. For in the end, I need to write, and I need language to write. And if language is identity, why mess with the individuality – no matter how messy?

 

Language

Our words are our emotions, our thoughts, our fears, our motivations, and so many more things, so many more feelings… language is all but a vehicle.

Sometimes, I attempt to figure out my language. I don’t see clear lines – it seems messy, clunky, mixed-up – a strange vehicle of many colors, with stranger things dangling about. Okay, some people have vivid imagination, and see things in images.

Hmm… Matter of dismay for an erstwhile journalist, and a ‘maybe-writer’? Now which writer, in their right mind, would want to be a clunky colorful awkward vehicle, when they could be a zippy little mainstream car? For language is a sharp tool in the toolbox – chiseling out beautiful creations…

But coming out of the images, to explanations…

English is not my first language. Yet, I read and write more easily in English. I often think in my first language, Marathi and often find literal translations from Marathi in my English sentences. Sometimes I notice them, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, I repair them. Sometimes I notice them, yet leave them the way they are.

A few books I read recently are translations. As I start the one translated from Swedish, I am very aware that it is a translation. Yet, the many characters and the rapid chain of events keeps my attention on the story and soon, I forget it is a translation.  

I read a brilliant Neapolitan series.  I don’t know any Italian. Yet, in the English lines, I hear the melodious slur of the Italian accent.

I sense the ferocity of emotion and truth in the writing. I also sense that the translated lines do not carry the full breadth of emotion and beauty. The characters move to dialect in intense moments. The writer gives the gist, but points it out. I search for gaps, the areas I do not have access to, the entirety I will never be able to experience, the completeness that is elusive. I feel like an outsider.

Or perhaps, that is art in general. Perhaps, we are never able to absorb completely what the artiste intended.

The scope to which we are able to access what the artiste intended may depend on our state of mind, our personal experiences, knowledge, interests, emotions. Certain words leap at us, others go unnoticed, depending on our thought process, experiences, interests, emotions, on a given day.

No two people can read a page the same way.

I find an old French novel by Maupassant that we studied in college. I read a few pages. The language is difficult. I see my fading scribbles in the margins – explanations, in English and French and even Marathi. I don’t want to look at the scribbles. I don’t want to be explained. I want to feel the language. Even if I may not get too far.

I notice what I am doing. I wonder if it is simply stubbornness and inflexibility of old age creeping in. hmmm…

I notice it again. I realize I don’t want to break the movement of his words, the ebb and flow of emotions, settings, the starkness of humanity, woven into nature.

I want to read it as he wrote it, in the language he wrote. I don’t want my notes, my explanations, my teacher’s explanation, to break this Naturalist’s stream of words. Even if there is much I will miss from not knowing vocabulary or context, I feel I have more to gain. Or that is my frame of mind, that day.

My page is up. I realize I haven’t even started what I meant to write. I will have to return tomorrow and write more about the clunky vehicle in my day to day.

I will simply end with this quote I found the other day, scribbled in my journal:

“When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds.”      ~ Jhumpa Lahiri