I have been trying to post my responses to the comments I have received on my current post, but cannot do so. I get a message which says, "your timed request is out. Try request again". I have no idea what this means. Does any one know what it means? Has anyone come across this alert before?
I sure would like to know.
It was late in the evening. Everyone was watching some show on the television. She sat in the corner and was doing embroidery on a comforter. All was quiet except for the white noise of the television which was dulled by her senses. She just didn’t care to watch the tube or sit and stare at it for hours.
The ringing phone jerked her out of her hypnotized movements of her hands doing the embroidery. She picked up the phone.
Hello?
Hello, may I speak to Arundhati?
Speaking!
This is Arundhati?
And suddenly the voice became a person. She recognized him. Twenty seven years slipped by. He was standing in front of her, telling her he wanted to take her for a ride on his motor bike.
He was not handsome in the text book image. He was wiry, a natural athlete, and he held her heart within his own. He literally kissed the ground she walked on, unaware that he was doing it. When they went on a date, he would bring a bag of rose petals and shower them over her head. How she had laughed. When she tried to avoid stepping on those flowers and petals, he said, “those petals would complain if your feet didn’t touch them. Honor them, my love, by walking on them.” Such insane love, so pure and so humble.
Hello are you there Arundhati?
Yes, I am here.
The voice was the same. She had let it hang by the tip of the waxing moon for so many decades. It resonated in the chambers of her heart for so long. And now, when everything was way past, and dust had settled on the passions of youth, that same voice echoed and reverberated.
I am in your country, and not too far from you. Will it be possible to see you?
She looked around her. The children were sprawled in the great room, her husband absorbed in the movie on the tube. She ached to see him. She knew that she was beholden to someone else. How acutely aware she was of that. But she wanted her children to meet him. She wanted him to see them.
Yes. Sure, it will be a pleasure to have you here and meet my family.
Have you changed a lot Arundhati? My hair has gone gray, but I still hold your picture in my eyes. You will see that when you see me.
How long had it been?
How long did he keep talking on the phone? She was visualizing the walks along the beach, prayers whispered to let wishes come true as the waves touched the ankles. Silly prattle of this and that while they sat in a small café at the end of campus, laughing, talking, listening to old Indian music, and laughing some more.
Do you remember me Arundhati?
Yes.
Did you miss me when you left the subcontinent?
Yes.
Do you still miss me?
What a silly question that is! How could she voice her thoughts and her desires that were imprisoned in her being. The flames of devotion and longing that had gnawed relentlessly for so many years, and which she had tried to dowse year after year, were now trying to wake up, stretching out of their slumber, feeling something, wanting something.
She saw her husband standing in front of her, his hand extended, saying, “let’s call it a night!”
Yes~~ she said to both of them, while a single tear escaped through the dam she had built around her languished eyes and lonely soul; she told him she would call him back and allowed herself to listen to the voice of reason and pulled herself out of her chair.
ZSA. 3/23/2016
I am always asked about my posts and articles that I write. People ask me why I live in the past so much. Why I talk about my youth and childhood, and why I always bring the Indian part of my life on to these pages.
How can I not live in the past? It is here, in my heart, always. It beats in my chest and runs in my blood. So what that I left my beautiful land and moved onto another lap of the same earth? So what if there are thousands of miles between this and that? So what that this land is called the Land of Opportunity, and wealth and opulence?
The land I came from, did not view color as the make or break of the human existence. The land I belonged to, had peace in the hearts of the people it cradled. It taught respect and genuine humility. It taught love. And love came naturally. When you look into the eyes of the people in India, you saw compassion, you saw longing to understand a different culture, you saw hospitality and you saw a mother’s and a father’s love. Men and women who ran for various Government posts, recognized their limits; I am sure there was corruption to a certain extent. But no one insulted another human being for his disability, or color or race or religion.
Today I sit here and watch the treasonous speeches by so called moguls of the nation, and I cringe. And I wonder, why did I come here? How could this land be the land of love and compassion and understanding, which I grew up with? I cannot even begin to compare the two lands. I want to go back to my land of the beautiful green paddy fields, and large shady trees, where travelers sat and rested and shared each other’s food.
Do you know now why I live in the past and write about the other land so much and so often? Come live within the four chambers of this old heart and feel what it feels, and then you will know the reasons for all the why’s of this land!
March 16th 2016.
I don’t know how many of you have read any of Salman Rushdie’s works. His writing is very different. People either cannot stand his writing, or just love him for the way he writes. Saadia and I like his work a lot. I agree that a couple of his books are not on my best read books list. ANYWAY,
He was in St. Louis on Saturday. He was speaking to the Opera Theater of St. Louis, which was producing his book Shalimar The Clown. This World Premier will be held in St. Louis in June of this year. Needless to say, Saadia and I were enthralled by the way he spoke and read passages from his book. And now we are so looking forward to going to the Opera in June.
Rushdie is seen seated second from left. He is the man who has written The Satanic Verses, for which the Iranian government has issued a fatwa that he should be killed for the blasphemy. Whatever!
I thought he was fantastic, very well spoken, from my neck of the woods in India, and I loved listening to him. Saadi was beside herself. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a photo op! 
It would have been nice if there was time to autograph the books. But we already knew that that was not possible, so we didn’t take our copies with us. This is the name of the book which will be premiered as the opera in June.
Since we were in St. Louis, we decided that we had to go to Saks Fifth Avenue where I get my perfumes. Me and my perfumes! Those ladies know me and my taste so well. Saadi and I had a wonderful lunch at the Zodiac in Niemen Marcus, and shopped a little before returning home.
What do you think of these blooms. God, I love orchids!
That’s all. Good night.
Received this as an email this morning.
I changed my car horn to gunshot sounds. People get out of the way much faster now.
Gone are the days when girls used to cook like their mothers. Now they drink like their fathers.I didn't make it to the gym today. That makes five years in a row.
I decided to change calling the bathroom the John and renamed it the Jim. I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.
Last year I joined a support group for procrastinators. We haven't met yet.
Old age is coming at a really bad time.
When I was a child I thought “Nap Time” was a punishment. Now, as a grownup, it feels like a small vacation.
The biggest lie I tell myself is, "I don't need to write that down, I'll remember it."
I don't have gray hair; I have "wisdom highlights." I'm just very wise.
Teach your daughter how to shoot, because a restraining order is just a piece of paper.
If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would've put them on my knees.
Why do I have to press one for English when you're just gonna transfer me to someone I can't understand anyway?
Of course I talk to myself; sometimes I need expert advice.
At my age "Getting lucky" means walking into a room and remembering what I came in there for.
Some days, I go to Andrew’s school and pick him up and bring him home here, to spend a couple of hours with us. He gets so excited about that, and I love having him here and tending to him. I get some snacks for him and a glass of milk. We play Checkers or Hungry Hungry Hippo. He loves to watch Tom and Jerry cartoons on the TV. Most often the television doesn’t have them on at the time when he comes over, so I have ordered several DVDs from Amazon and any time M goes to Big Lots or K-Mart, he looks for them and brings them over. Here he is watching one of those episodes. He is so focused and enjoys
the cat and mouse antics a lot.
My orchid plants are just going to town. I have so many of them full of buds and blooms. I love them, and each time a bud appears on the stem, I get so super excited.
I am so grateful that in the thick of winter, something as beautiful as this blooms inside the house. And guess what, I saw yellow crocuses blooming out in the yard yesterday. Forgot to take a picture. The poor plants are so confused. Last two or three days were wonderfully warm, but today it was bitterly cold. So I am not sure if the crocuses will survive the 20 degree temperatures of tonight.
I will keep you posted.
Perhaps you are thinking of me. Perhaps you are humming the tune we loved so much. Perhaps the wind is whispering to you that you should let your hair down, and make the sunshine disappear behind the darkness of your hair.
A million ways of wondering, perhaps this, and perhaps that, and each time I look down and tell myself, “she was a mirage!”
We don’t get to choose our journeys,
sometimes we think we do
sometimes perhaps we do chose
to travel on roads that are not clearly marked
and we trudge on them, without maps
that are useless in the outskirts of dwellings
where humanity and life disappears through
time and chance, and we stand at the
end of the circle, looking everywhere
looking and listening, to some forgotten tune,
some elusive thoughts, carried on the wind,
wondering--
perhaps she really was a mirage!
ZSA_MD February, 2016.
Tonight, CBS is presenting a murder case on 48 Hours. The defendant is an attorney, from here, an assistant State Attorney, etc etc. if you are interested, you should watch it. It leaves a huge hole in the fabric of this beautiful community, and a healthy all American city.
I stared at the rain soaked sky in the monsoon of the year. The streams of water rolled all over the windows like thin rivulets, as the car kept creeping like a snail along the famous Marine Drive in Bombay. I saw the face of the drowning sky, and thought of another kind of river, one that runs through every one of us, regardless of our origin, all over this earth. It’s the river of the heart. It is the rhythmic pulsations of that muscle trapped within our chests. It spells the desires of the heart.
Long ago, decades ago, I had danced in this same rain. The ankle bracelets in my feet had kept their rhythm to my dancing feet. My hair clinging to my face and back, and my arms outstretched. The sound of the rain falling on the broad leaves of the Banyan tree sounded like an orchestra. That sound, still mesmerizes me whenever I visualize the image of the rain falling on those leaves.
Today, as I drive in this rain, my heart knocks at the threshold of my soul and asks me where I was headed and what I had become. It asks me why I had not stood up and faced the powers that be, about their harsh punishment which subjected me to this life with someone I knew not, and didn’t care about.
My heart had broken on its shame and sorrow. The torment of a life lived in the mire of pretext, blamed me for what I had not done and what I had become. I could not respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. I learnt to accept. I let my vagabond spirit lay still, and didn’t question. I let myself be sacrificed to someone else, and didn’t complain.
And now, when these rains come a pouring and knocking at my threshold, the sleeping spirit awakens and keeps nagging me, “Why, why did you do this to yourself?
ZSA Feb 2016.
Sayeed and Shelley danced in the "Dancing with the Stars" locally to benefit The Corner Stone organization for abused families etc. They danced the Tango. It was such a beautiful dance and they did it so elegantly. Their movements were so fluid and elegant.
Shelley's mother and her husband came down for the event. I loved the performance and the evening. There were eighteen couples who danced, and Sayeed and Shelley won their division for the International performance. Here are some pictures.
Xanga is screwing with me with regards to posting the pictures properly and in order of performance. I need to take care of this.
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