Stitches

Posted on by

Did you make sure to hear some music last night? I did.

Of course, IÂ’m one of the lucky ones. I wasnÂ’t on any of those trains that set off from Churchgate. I knew no one on them, not directly; though my dear friendÂ’s wifeÂ’s cousin was on board, and he escaped unharmed, and his friend merely needed some stitches.

Doubly lucky, because I could, after a long day of small frustrations, step from the sticky street into a room where there was taking place, in a relaxed off-night way, jazz.

Quiet. Sound.

Could it have been more apposite? When Rez shifted to his hybrid guitar, the one with sympathetic strings, and Kiran stood at the mic in her kurta top, and they launched into their song called “Pearl” – as in, homage to Daniel?

As she worked through the scales against the organ and hi-hat, intently pulling the notes from thin air, by hand, in that geometric way Indian singers have, there seemed a moment of formal lamentation. Sorrowful, and wise.

Later, with two desi sistas – cousins, in fact – we spoke of mosaics of hundreds of tiny shiny tiles that make up, if not life, at least a livelihood. Of missing chunks, ripped out by invaders or worn away by time.

Testing the metaphor, we imagined a workshop where we – I – stay up late, polishing new pieces, some to partly fill the gaps, others to extend the composition.

I remembered that IÂ’ve struggled, albeit in small ways.

The sound filling me still, I remembered: the possibility of tiles, the necessity of stitches.

8 thoughts on “Stitches”

  3. I’m sad and I mean it:(

    Yeah, me too. My family in Bombay is safe, as I expected. But there is still a dull ache, and an almost dizziness that comes from my mind swirling around and around the too few facts, trying to stitch them together [to mix metaphors] into a whole.

  4. I hear ya Siddhartha. Hang in there. I read so many Maharashtrian names and it just brought me to tears. It’s actually unfortunate moments like these that remind me of my roots. As American as I am tragedies like these in India remind me of my roots more then anything else. It hurts a little more then if it were elsewhere. Mumbai is resilient and will simply rise and move on.

  5. we imagined a workshop where we – I – stay up late, polishing new pieces, some to partly fill the gaps, others to extend the composition.

    fabulous image, thank you for it. there are many choices for how we fill some of those spaces and extend the composition, and of course, how we choose to do so matters deeply for what our reconstructed mosaic ends up looking like. i hope we all make those choices with care — for once made, they may not always be so easy to undo.