Poornima Manco

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Mother

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Having lost another loved one recently, emotions that were long suppressed have been churned up once again.

Today is my mother’s birthday. Or would have been, if she were still here. Only, I lost her nearly fifteen years ago. At the time it was like a tsunami had devastated me. I sleep walked through an entire year, unable to comprehend the magnitude of my loss. Slowly,however, with the help of my near and dear ones, I regained equilibrium, and started to live life once more.

The death of a parent is a reality all of us have to face at some point in our lives. It is normal to feel adrift…rudderless. Mothers, Fathers, siblings…..these are the people who know you, warts and all, from the very beginning. They are your moorings. How does one pick oneself up once they are gone?

With great difficulty.

My grandmother said to me at the time, ” You are not the first, and you will not be the last.” Wise words from a lady who had been orphaned at a very young age.

And so, you put one foot in front of the other, and keep moving.

We are doing just that right now.

In love and remembrance of my wonderful, brave mother. And all the others we have lost along the way. God Bless you and keep you.

The anatomy of grief

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Once again I am face to face with grief. The sort that wrenches everything apart. The sort that shreds the fabric of normality.
When the dust settles and the pieces fall back into place, they are never quite ‘in place’. It is a different reality. One that requires another getting used to.
Grief changes people. I know that for a fact. But does it change our intrinsic nature, or merely our world view? Is it possible to go back to a time of innocence, before the fact? I look into my children’s eyes and think not. Even innocence is altered forever.

Gatsby-love thwarted (Spoilers)

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Saw the movie ‘The Great Gatsby’ today. Baz Luhrmann kept it quite true to the book, while adding his unique flair to it.
But it got me thinking about who or what Gatsby stands for. Here is a man who has a vision of himself. He has come up the hard way and through dubious means acquired immense wealth. His driving force is his love for Daisy Buchanan.
In his vision, he gets the girl, and they live happily ever after in his enormous mansion. That this vision comes to naught is a moot point.
Had the vision come true, would he have been happy? Probably not. Even as he holds Daisy in his arms, he starts to realise that the green light on Daisy’s dock is starting to lose its significance.

That green light symbolises hope & ambition. Is there not something that each of us aspires to? What happens when we fulfil that ambition? Do we not find that the goal post has moved again?
Gatsby never fulfils his dream, and therefore he becomes a tragic character. Yet the true tragedy of life is,that sometimes holding your dream in your arms is also not enough.
Are human beings by our very nature condemned to certain unhappiness? Is there a little bit of Gatsby in all of us?

Short stories: Yay or Nay?

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The Short story seems to be having a revival of sorts. I, for one, have always leaned towards this genre, simply because I am most comfortable with it. There is a certain beauty in brevity. I like the fact that something has gone on before this story unfolded, and something else will happen, after I have concluded it. Whatever that maybe is left to the reader’s imagination.

Despite, my love for it, I often wonder, if the short story is regarded as a poor second cousin to its grander rival, the novel? Invariably I get asked, “Are you working on a novel?” as though I need to move on, to graduate in a sense, to better things. The long and the short of it is: No. I love what I do, and intend to carry on for a while yet.

My question to you however is: What do you prefer?