It has been a while for this diasporic who has been moving from one locale to another these past few months which turned into years as I traversed the US searching for a new home. In 2020, I took an early retirement due to the Pandemic from Northern Michigan University where I taught for twenty years and within a few months, sold my house, packed up and left the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, saying goodbye with a constricted heart to my dear friends, my home and the most beautiful of all lakes, Superior.
I lived with my daughter Gina and granddaughter Karina in Marina Del Rey for a year--a year full of readjustments, looking back, aching memories of lostness, but also, a year full of love, joy, food and seeing the miracle of Karina growing into a fuller human being and seeing Gina as a caring, loving and wonderful mother. I learned to get reacquainted with the Pacific Ocean, as I would take early morning walks where hummingbirds, avocets, pelicans, plowers and gulls flew. A year went by and Karina began preschool. We, Gina and I, would roam Los Angeles, visiting familiar places while discovering new locales. We went to Palm Springs for a holiday and saw amazing cacti! We would stay overnight in Laguna Beach and saw brilliant sunsets. We ate amazing food, as Ken, Karina's father, exposed us to new Korean flavors! Life was good even though the gloom of the pandemic loomed over us. I was home for a year. Then, in the fall of 2021, I felt the old stirring memories of my lost home in Taunggyi, Burma, when we left for India in 1969 as refugees with only one suitcase each. New Delhi had become home for a while, a New Delhi that we found turbulent, foreign, massively sprawled, but exciting and full of new adventures! Our parents were left back in Burma, taking care of selling the house and tying up loose ends; they couldn't leave Burma for over three years as relations between India and Burma deteriorated and all refugees were denied entry. When we finally reunited in Delhi, my parents encountered Delhi girls, forever transformed from the Burmese mountain girls that they had sent to India. The lostness, the untetheredness, the floating sensation of a rootless diasporic took hold of me again in 2021, and, looking for a place to call my own, I "returned" to Oregon. It felt like a return, as it was where I had raised my children, my son Gautam, and my daughter, Gina. We had moved from North Carolina in 1990 and had settled in Corvallis. The six years that we spend in NC were left behind, as were the boutique that I had started and ran for three years, our cape cod style home with pine trees in the back yard, the barbecues we use to attend, and the friends that had embraced us and made us part of the community--all left behind when my then husband got a job in the Pacific Northwest. Here, in Oregon, I went back to school to get another masters degree at Oregon State and a PhD at the University of Oregon. Here, I nurtured my children and my garden, my community and my friends, became intimate with the mountains and ocean, here I became a scholar and teacher, here I saw the world anew with critical eyes, here I was no longer merely looking for a home, but a place where I could leave a mark, a place where I can share my accumulated knowledge, a place where I can grown into a full human, a place where I would no longer be a vine, but an oak, a place where my being will make a difference, in a positive ways, to others. I left all Oregon behind one more time when I moved away again, first with my daughter to Los Angeles as a postdoc fellow to UCLA and then alone, a single woman now, to Tennessee as an assistant professor to teach at an HBCU, Lane College. I rented a small place by a large estate, a place that looked like a gamekeeper's cottage, and found a small community of people from the college as colleagues, friends, and yes, lovers. But time has a way of taking familiar and loving things away from one, so in a year and a half, I was back on the road, driving all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to teach at Northern Michigan University. I was sure I would leave again in a few years from this beautiful but cold place. However, Michigan embraced me with a tenacity that was ferocious, terrifying but eternally welcoming, enfolding me into its topography and making me one of its own. Here, I came into my own, I came to be who I was supposed to be, I came to contribute to the world in a way that mattered, I came to be useful in a way I had not felt before. I became a teacher. I became a friend. I became a mentor. I became a writer. I became a poet. It didn't release its hold until . . . a pandemic changed my world--and once again, I lost my home, friends and world . . . Now months and years later, I found another sanctuary, a tiny home surrounded by trees, ponds, and hiking trails in forrest heights, Oregon, with an elevation of over 1200 feet, with beavers and hummingbirds near me while downtown Portland, where my son Gautam lives, is a mere 3 to 4 miles away. My bother's family live a mere 12 miles away. I get to spend time cooking with my sister in law. I get to eat out with my niece and nephew along with my son on a regular basis, testing out new cuisines and new restaurants in Portland, which I am slowly rediscovering from my decade long domicile in Oregon during the 90s. I am back in touch with my friends from Corvallis and my university years. I love the mist. I love the rain. I love the sunshine. I love the coast and the mountain. I love. And now, I just launched my website where I announced the upcoming publication of my poetry book, Exiles and Pleasure: Taunggyi Dreaming which is being published by Finishing Line Press by the end of the year. I am so exited to share this news with you! Also, so thrilled that I can share my stories, once again, from my new nest in Forrest Heights. Here is a poem I wrote about Oregon and the rain a few days ago. Oregon nights mirrored roads refracting drops of diamonds splintering into million shards enclosing you and the mossy trees in mythical mist. Thank you for reading and being part of my world.
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The last few weeks have been hectic, to say the least, as I began preparations to wind down my stay in LA with my daughter and granddaughter and move up North to Washington State to finally find a small space to retire to so I can gaze at the stars (when its not raining) or putter around in a small garden (if I could find a place with a backyard) or read or write or any number of things retired people look forward to. But just the move, leaving my daughter and granddaughter behind, packing my small worldly possessions, getting the car reading for the three-day roadtrip (as my brother, who was flying down to LA, and I, were going to drive back to Vancouver), loading the car, and booking various hotels on the way and so forth totally consumed me and left me exhausted emotionally, mentally, and physically for a few days or more. However, it felt like something was happening, that something that one is supposed to look forward to after retirement, particularly on the roadtrip when we made some stops for sightseeing-- like a movement, a moving forward. We were on our way to Big Sur from LA and took the 1 highway, but near San Luis Obispo, I made an error and instead of staying on 1 I took the 101 and drove for almost three to four hours through green farmlands and dry brown landscape and when we eventually reached Selinas, I felt like we were closer to San Francisco then to Big Sur or Monterrey (where we were spending the night), so we finally looked at Google Maps (we were too busy gabbing to pay close attention to the maps, as I was quite certain I knew my way to Big Sur, having done it a few times) and realized we will have to take a longer route to Big Sur, which we did, adding a few hours to our journey. Big Sur was all that I remembered it to be from my two trips from before—years ago--awe-inspiring and beautiful. After stopping for a while, taking in the breathtaking sights, driving on curvy and dangerous roads, taking a few fun photos, we continued on to Monterrey to a historic hotel in the heart of downtown which, although interesting, turned out to be old and musty, so we moved to the Ramada for the night. We opened a bottle of pinot noir—Meiomi— from CA which was delicious—smooth and fragrant— and then we went out for some delicious Thai food in town. So, the first day was somewhat eventful and fun. We were in high spirits, my brother and I, catching up, sharing stories, telling tales of Burma and our childhood, planning trips for the future when Covid will ease up . . . The second day, we left early to go to San Fran, see the Golden Gate bridge, eat some amazing food at China Town, see the celebrated red woods on the way and make it to Redding by early evening for a leisurely dinner, but as in most cases, time got away from us, so we were able to see the Golden Gate Bridge, first during misty conditions as it slowly appeared in the filtering sunlight, and then in the morning sunlight, which was aweinspriing, as always. My brother couldn’t get over the marvel of the suspension bridge and I couldn’t get over the sun hitting the bridge and revealing it slowly to our gaze. We decided to skip China Town, as we didn't want to head into the busy city. Instead, as we were headed to the Muir Woods National Monument, we took a detour to Sausalito—oh, the view from above!!--and had delicious seafood by the harbor, but the true existential event was visiting the Muir Woods National Monument and seeing ancient grove of redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) and feeling the sacredness of being in the presence of ancestors who have been around for generations--which was overwhelming! My brother and I spent more time with the trees than we realized, meditating and breathing deeply, touching our foreheads to the wood, so when we finally left, it was late afternoon. As we reached Redding around 8:00 pm, we picked up some Chinese food and made our way to the hotel and saw smoke rising in the horizon. The sunset was fiery. The next morning, as we were re-loading our car (we were unloading and reloading our car every evening and morning, as my brother’s car had been broken into at a parking garage when they stopped for lunch and robbed when he was moving his daughter to Seattle to attend the university there), we saw a number of people with pillows and blankets in their arms leaving the hotel. One of them asked us if we were being evacuated. She then told us that they had to leave their home in a hurry last night and stayed at the hotel, but now they are unable to go back to their homes due to the fires. It was heartbreaking. As we drove out of town, we saw the mountains surrounding us in flames and dense smoke rising to the skies. There were roadblocks. It was scary and sad driving around the area, as the landscape was devastated and blistered due to the fires. I can never get over the feeling of being in an apocalypse at the sight—which, as we all know, we are currently in in more ways than one. We drove to Shasta Lake on our way home and saw that the water level at the dam was really low. Mount Shasta was without its shawl of snow, apparently the first time ever. I remember it from years ago, driving to LA from Oregon with my daughter when we moved to live in Santa Monica in 1998. I was going to be at the James S. Coleman African Studies Center on a post doc at the Institute for the Study of Gender in Africa, UCLA, and Gina was going to attend school at Layola Marymount. That time, there was tons of snow on Mount Shasta. A few years later, when I went on a roadtrip with Gina, Gautam and my cousin, Kaki to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, San Fran and LA, there was snow on the top of Shasta. When Nikki, my friend, and I drove past it on our roadtrip to Yellow Stone Park, there was tons of snow on it. But now, many of the trees were brown and the mountain was bald—leaving an ache inside me. I have been in Vancouver for a few days now. We, my brother and his wife, drove to a couple of waterfalls, Lucia and Sunset, for a picnic, and where I swam in a waterhole, the water freezing, but I felt renewed. We had Burmese food last night—chicken noodles soup—and had pumpkin cheesecake baked by my niece Shireen. Before he left for his rotations, my nephew, Sahil, who is studying to be a DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) cracked my back and settled some of my bones, so I slept peacefully last night. After two days of brilliant sunshine and amazing weather, I woke up today to rain. I reminds me of the days when I first moved to Oregon in 1990 from North Carolina. I used to look outside the window every morning to see if I should hand umbrellas to my children--son Gautam and my daughter Gina-- who were on their way to school, one to elementary and one to middle, respectively, but it never stopped raining, so then, the next year, I simply handed them one every morning. It feels nostalgic, somehow. I have been reading Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong and I highly recommend it. The reading is inspiring me to someday write my “minor feelings” of being a South Asian Indian in the US and feeling the “dissonance” of being a minority in the US, but for now, I am concentrating on my poems. I wrote one a couple of days ago and added it to my manuscript, which, I am happy to say, has been turned in to the publishers. Here are a few photos of the trip. I hope you enjoy the reading and the photos. Thank you, dear readers, for your time! Temperatures are cooling, but it is still beach time in Cali . . . Some days, it feels like fall must be imminent, particularly on cooler Marina Del Rey nights, but for the most part, particularly in Cali, days are warm enough for beach days and for jumping in the cool waters of the Pacific. It was so on Labor Day. I rolled around a bit in the huge Venice beach waves, and it was super warm, but my granddaughter Karina, who used to love the water, seems now more like a typical Cali girl who mostly play on the beach, building sandcastles and making friends. I have not been able to write much, as I am wrapping up my life in Cali with my daughter Gina to go find a place I can call my own to retire. Or, even a town. Or, even a state. And for how long? For the next five to ten years? Longer? So many questions at the turn of my life’s journey. I have not asked many questions the last year or so about this part of my life; I had simply retired from a job I loved, sold my house by Lake Superior, said goodbye or until we meet again to my dear friends, got rid of my worldly possession as best I could, packed up a few boxes and had moved from the Midwest to the West to be with Gina and Karina. To spend time with family. To survive Covid. But while surviving, one must continue to live, to dream, to plan, to ask questions. What a paradox! And so, yes, I am going to drive, along with my baby brother, in my trusted old Camry, from LA to Vancouver, Washington. I have another ten or so small boxes. A few suitcases. A couple of small carry bags. My computer. Keyboard. Backpack. We will drive through Big Sur. Stop a night in Monterrey. Then, by the shadows of Mount Shasta for another night. Just going to take it slow. I will stay in Vancouver with my brother and his family for a few months while looking for a place for me to stay for a year or so. To be near my son. To stay. To stop. To think. On the way to somewhere else. I finished reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’ve Briefly Gorgeous last week and it brought back all the memories of being from Burma, being in India as stateless citizens, being in Iraq, and being new immigrants in the US. It is so beautifully written. It hurts so wonderfully. It writes about love and loss and pain—beyond the mundane everyday experiences of surviving but also about discovering oneself and about desire and about maternal love and so much more—on this earth where we are “briefly gorgeous.” Now I’ve just begun Honoree Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and am already having another wonderfully immersive experience—the poetic prose slows one down in a delicious way. Both the books are written by poets, so reading their poetic expressions about everyday experiences of just living, loving, and surviving becomes transcendental moments in my life. Here are a few photos of the past week or two around LA with my daughter and granddaughter. Thanks for taking time to read. For being present in my life. Next time you read, I will be elsewhere. I hope you'll come along . . . Days morph into weeks and weeks into months when one’s days are no longer regimented with teaching schedules—getting books, writing syllabi, getting a bit more travel and summer fun before fall—but then, when you live in California, the sun always shines and it hardly ever rains, so you are not sure of seasons changing since the hummingbirds always appear on all the brilliantly blooming flowers—although, of course, the wild flowers are no longer blooming as they did in Spring when I drove to Charmelee Wilderness Park on Encinal Canyon Road in Santa Monica Mountains and saw a different landscape filled with unusual flora and fauna on the hills. So, yes, as seasons change and time flies, I realize I have been having fun spending time with my daughter and granddaughter and visiting beaches, restaurants and cooking home foods (both Punjabi and Burmese) while eating all kinds of foods at different restaurants but have also been writing and revising poems and stories that I have been working on. I completed a long poem titled “Disparities: Working Towards Global Justice and Human Rights,” which got me excited but then, I think it is moving away from some of my recent writing about family, home, diaspora and so forth, so what does that mean? Whatever the case maybe, it got me motivated! I have also just finished reading an amazing novel by Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longings, and now long to write like Swarup—“A promising debut novel sweeps through a series that join human lives to the natural world . . . . Made up of four linked novellas. Their titles--Islands, Faultlines, Valley, and Snow Desert—suggest the book’s emphasis on how people connect (or don’t) to their planet . . . The book vividly recounts their other humorous, sometimes surreal, and intimately touching relationships” (Kirkus Reviews). To think like Swarup! To write like Swarup! So, yes, I have become obsessed with the novel and her writing style and find my writing pedestrian and boring, at least just about now. Still and all, I am being productive and have plowed away and have written quite a few pages about my great-grandmother and grandfather, so let’s see where it leads me. One thing I will share: A new character came to me and shifted the whole focus of the timeline and story arch. So, there! In the meantime, and yes, the all-important “in the meantime” phrase, I have been having fun with food and family. We went to this amazing Korean Barbeque place called Shilla—the second time since I have been in California. The last time when my son came to visit LA, we took him out and there was so much food on the grill that we almost couldn’t finish it, so this time, we ordered only a few courses and they were delicious! I love Kalbi marinade on the California ribs! I love Kimchi Soup! So, here are a few photos for you. Also, I had the best desert in a long time: Macaroon ice-cream sandwiches: photos included. Also, a few days ago, Gina, my daughter and I drove to Cerritos to shop for some Indian groceries but more to eat at Surati Farsan—golguppas, dahi puris, khandvi, jelebies, bhelpuris, and kaju katris. I was in heaven! I also bought kari patta, bitter melons, some dals, toor and channa, and tons of cardamon cookies! I’m adding a few photos for you. I stuffed the bitter melons with crushed garlic, ginger, green chili, tamarind pulp, and tons of red chili and spices and slow cooked them until brown; I also stuffed red onions and slow cooked them until translucent—and served the whole shebang with freshly made rotis! Too good, I swear! I’m also adding a link to one of my published videopoems--"Diasporic Search" for you. You may have seen it before, but just in case, here it is again. It took me months to learn how to use imovie to create this video, and thanks to Patricia Killelea, my mentor and professor, I completed a few videopoems under her guidance and have been making more on my own lately. It is fun, fulfilling and visually pleasing, I think, plus the words add so much to the overall message. Let me know what you think. Link to videopoem: https://indd.adobe.com/view/49d3899a-9721-4fcc-9014-afbca1ac00ab Link to the issue; go to page 70 and see "Diasporic Search" and click on the image: https://www.superpresent.org Do share a poem, a short story, or the title of a novel you are reading just now and tell me why you love it. Thanks for reading and do continue to read, write, eat fun foods, and reach out to touch someone you love today, for today is all we have for now. This week, too, went by fast, as I counted the days according to how many wonderful sunsets and morning walks I could pack into the week. Walking by the Marina Del Rey beach in the morning, doing yoga and meditation, along with seeing the amazing Cali birds fill my heart with wonder and, then evenings, when the sun sets in fiery tones keep me mindful throughout the week. Spending time with my daughter and granddaughter is always the paramount wonder, as I cannot get over the fact that I am indeed a grandmother now. In all these activities, I got a bit of writing in, especially about my grandfather Meher Singh (born around 1872) and my grandmother Laaj Kaur. They both migrated to Burma during the British colonial era as young people--grandfather at 17 and grandmother at 13--from the district of Peeyan in Chakwal District, Punjab, in what is now Pakistan but was then British India. Farming was going poorly due to the arid location that they were living in with taxes being so high, so the promises and lures of faraway land of rice and plentiful produce was calling to them. Meher went to Burma with his uncles to work with them as a young boy; when he was old enough and could save a bit of money, he came back to Punjab and married a young girl named Lajwanti, who he then renamed Laaj Kaur. Lajwanti was from a Hindu family and after she married Meher, a Sikh, she took the new name bestowed upon her by her new family--a Sikh name. They worked and lived in the interior of Shan States with hardly any other Indian people when they moved there, but as their children grew up, they moved to the city of Taunggyi. They were petty traders in the beginning but by the time of independence from colonial rule, when their first son, my father, Prab Joth, was in his early twenties, they opened a shop on the main road of Taunggyi. This was a simple affair of a wooden building with tin roofs, but a real improvement from their little place in the village. My family went through multiple migrations, as they left Burma in 1946 to return to Punjab due to the Japanese occupation of Burma and due to the incessant bombing of their home and the cities by the Allied Armies during WWII. Weeks of being on the road, first in a truck, then rail, then ship, then rail, then truck, they made it back to Punjab. My mother was pregnant with her second child. Then, after mere months in Punjab, when another daughter was born to my parents, they had to leave in the middle of the night during the Partition of India with two small children due to the partition violence and returned back to Burma with only their clothes on their backs and a few items of value. It took father 5 to 6 years (after I was born in 195i, their fourth child and a third daughter), to get a new shop with glass counters and new shelves in the new and modern Mya Tu Kha building in Taunggyi. They started all over again with barely anything to only have all of it taken away from them due to the military coup of 1962 when their shop was nationalized and became the property of the "people." When I look back at their lives and attempt to write stories of their odyssey, I feel a sense of inadequacy to really capture the momentousness of their existence. Therefore, I try to write short vignettes to only capture certain moment. In the meantime, here is an essay--"Uncomfortable Truths"--I recently wrote and published with the Journal, Philosophies and Global Affairs, which, I hope you like. https://www.pdcnet.org/pga/content/pga_2021_0001_0001_0046_0060 Also, a few photos from the weekend around town. Thank you for taking time to read, comment and share my post. It was not an ordinary weekend for me, as my nephew and my late younger sister's son, Nik, was visiting me in Marina Del Rey. We all, my daughter Gina, my granddaughter Karina, and my son-in-law Ken decided to take Nik to the beach for a swim in the ocean. I love to swim in the Pacific as well, as the cool water reminds me of Lake Superior's water's temperature. I used to swim in it every summer until late in the Fall. We drove to Laguna; we walked by the beach. We attempted to swim but the waves were pretty rough, so just waded in the cool water. The hot sun and the cool waves were just wonderful! We stayed the night in Laguna Beach and had dinner at Salerno; the food was divine, although I found my gnocchi a bit too rich, but Gina's scampi ravioli was beyond compare. Walking around the town at night and window shopping was fun; Nik bought me three pairs of Frieda Kahlo's socks. I had been looking for them for years, so it really pleased me to have them. The day turned out to be perfect. Next morning, we had brunch at The Cliff restaurant overlooking the bay in Laguna. I took a few pictures, which I will share here with you. The view was, of course, breath-taking! We then drove to the Thousand Steps Beach. None of us had been there before, so when we got there, we did indeed have to walk down thousand steep steps to reach the beach! For some reasons, I thought maybe it was a tiny beach--a mere thousand steps! The beach was a gem! But the water again was rough with huge waves. Nik and I attempted to swim. I kept getting knocked down, so I stayed close to the beach, but Nik, who is only a 33 years old strong young man, made it over the waves and swam for a good hour or so. There were so many family enjoying the beach and the waves. I though how a few months ago all these beaches were shut down due to Covid and felt a tug in my heart, as Covid cases are going up again in California. We really are only sure about today and the now. The color of the ocean seemed bluer and the feelings of the waves on my body felt extra healing today! Tomorrow?--we shall see. On the way back in the car, we talked about my sister's passing at the age of 61 due to lung cancer four years ago. Nik was just 28 when we all found out about her lung cancer which was already stage four or what was considered terminal. She had been sick for almost a year--pneumonia and then diagnosed as walking pneumonia. We (my siblings and Bina with her husband) had all gone to India, Burma and Thailand in 2014 and she had been ill, but everyone thought she was sick from traveling. She went back to India in the fall of 2015 for a month. She was still feeling unwell. She called me on the phone and left a message, saying, no one cares! Why are you not visiting me? So, when my friend from South Africa came to visit, we went to Pittsburgh to see her. She know my friend Rajendra, as she has met him when she visited South Africa in 2009. Nik was doing an internship in Engineering there. I was at a conference in Cape Town. We travelled to Zambia and went white water rafting in the Zambezi; we sat by Victoria Falls and meditated. It was a week of bliss. So, when in 2015 she was diagnosed with lung cancer, we were beyond shocked! Now, we have just a few months with her, we thought; but she fought hard and lived for almost two more years. The first year, she remained strong even after every chemo knocked her down and she kept getting up, but the second year she got weaker and her indomitable spirits couldn't keep her going. I miss her every single day, as we were inseparable companions as young girls and women, first in Burma, then in India and after we moved to the US, we made sure to visit each other a few times a year. Nik's face and eyes remind me so much of Bina, so gentle with an underlying strength in their demeanor. When we were little in Burma, Bina and I and our siblings used to pile up in my father's Zephyr car and go to Hopong Ye Thwet, a spring about an hour or so away from our home in Taunggyi. Ma would pack groceries to make chicken curry and rice at the Spring and sweet tea and pakoras after the swim in the Spring. We would spend hours drifting in the water while father would swim in the deep, sometimes disappearing under water to suddenly reappear by our bodies, pulling our legs, and we would scream and laugh and splash in the cool water. Sometimes, father and my uncles would forage for fresh mangoes, sometime sweet and sometimes sour from around the Spring. We would sun ourselves on the boulders until our long uncut hair would dry and our brown bodies would be warm again. The food then tasted so good! Ma's fresh mango pickle which she would have brought from home would add another awesome layer to the curries! Bina, so little at that time, was my shadow, always sitting by my side, always getting attention from everyone around due to her beauty--her round pick cheeks and her dark eyes surrounded by her Lucious curly hair! I was the skinny one by then, a bean-pole, they used to call me! But we were inseparable. Through the school years in Burma, through college years in Delhi--we were tight! Her friends were mine and mine her's throughout our lives. When I moved to the US, I lived in her home in Pittsburgh for six months and only her oldest, Tash, was born then. I came to the US with two children, a six year old daughter, Gina, and my fifteen month old son, Gautam. She taught me America. I miss her. Below are a few photos from this weekend's adventure at The Thousand Steps Beach. Have a wonderful Sunday, dear readers! Jaspal Why write poems? Why read? If you can see a flower and see the poetry in it, do you have to write a poem about it, or can you simply take the beauty of it in your heart and relish the moments in quiet times? Why write? If writing is a solitary experience, is it also not solitary to relish the beauty of the flower all by yourself, or does it enhance the experience if you share it with someone you love or someone who loves the images, the poetry, the art of it? I don't know. All I know is I am moved to write about the experience or the memory of the experience or the rememory of it, so that later--months, maybe years--I can still look at the piece of writing and feel the immediacy of the moment, relive it, re-relish it and smile (or cry, as they case may be) at the thought of writing about it--maybe I will share the poem, maybe it will be read by someone else, maybe they may experience similar feelings or maybe they will feel something totally different, but as Jeannine Hall Gailey says, after you have taken such efforts to write the poem, your goal should be to share it with others, to make an impact with your writing (PR for Poets 2018). After all, art must be shared, no?
So, as a beginning blogger (in many ways, a beginner, as I don't consider my forays into it about ten years ago serious blogging), I will share one of my published poem for today. It was written decades after the moment occurred. Some moments and their effects can last lifetimes, and this was just one such moment. It occurred in Burma during the times I lived there in the 60s after the military coup of 1962. I was nine years old. Within a few years, our lives had been turned upside down. My parents were born in Burma--father in Linkho and mother in Taunggyi. My grandparents had gone to Burma from India during the British colonial era to eke out a living as petty traders, as their land, Punjab, and their livelihood as farmer, were impacted by colonialism in adverse ways. After the coup, my father's general store was nationalized, as were out schools, banks and all other businesses in all part of Burma. For months and years, we didn't have enough to eat, as we were an extended family of 18. Father took to selling contraband goods--watches, makeup, etc.--at the night market under the very noses of the military, who kept a blind eye as they benefited from the sales in various ways. But for reasons we all know, Indians and Chinese people were targeted for special treatment by them. This poem came a short time ago after the second military coup of 2021. My memories and rememories of trauma are shared here with you in the recently published poem. The poem was published in Harbor Review, Issue 7, in June 2021 titled "1966: Burma Bureau of Special Investigations." Here is a link to it; scroll down to Jaspal Kaur Singh. And thank you for taking time to read it: https://www.harbor-review.com/page7?fbclid=IwAR1oGFgDml81FPyKwK2aDp-DEnu3KzO7qAh2pZ0YzvDwdo5Mtqnrlj4j7OY And here is a copy of it: 1966: BURMA’S BUREAU OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS (BSI) 1. Glowing from dark skies the night’s lips parted. The night’s eyes kohl colored half closed after the coup as rifles pointed at our collective faces buried thousands in shallow graves. Murmuring at the spectacle, the night’s lips whispered— don’t let them find your treasures under the tamarind tree. 2. They marched upstairs and downstairs of our Taunggyi home. BSI: Looking for contraband goods in our home. Father smuggled imported merchandise and sold it under their noses on the night market to feed us. Collaborators and adversaries. They knew.
and places it in Ma’s hands. Her storytelling power sheds light on terror in Burma. Her few pieces of jewelry sold to feed the family. 3. The world’s gaze is averted and rests on Mao’s face. Ne Win, the eternal shining sun of Burma, crushes Aung San Su Kyi’s voice. The moon picks up a pen and writes everything on a monk’s body floating in the Irrawaddy. JASPAL KAUR SINGH If you wish, please leave a comment; if not, I hope the poem made you think of the Burmese people on this day. Happy writing and have a safe and lovely day! Jaspal |
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