Splotched

I lie here – splotched

Grey skin on grey tarmac

Stretched – Like a cry

Limbs outstretched

Clawing a last appeal

Head smashed flat

Teeth sharp white

Spread wide

A grimace of death

Guts spilled out in

Soft pink coils

In the soft pink dawn

Blood – still warm

Spattered like

Rose petals strewn

On a new corpse

Eyes staring

Clinging to my

Last life



A few minutes back

I used to be a creature

With nine lives

Flowing across the road

Like a fluid moment

Of light

Now, here I am

Splotched

-by Rita Putatunda

blind mind block

turning back the clock a blind mind block
a pair of hoarded old socks a frog croaks under the rock
the cry of the peacock a crow rudely mocks
a girl in a frothy frock with her hands caught
red-handed in the forbidden crock full of ticks and tocks
the defendant sits in the dock justice is ad hoc
the room is filled chock-a-bloc rows of eyes wide in shock
knock knock a hammer is breaking the lock
thoughtless feet flock pocked faces gawk

-by Rita Putatunda

Still Life with Flowers

This one took me a while. Done in oils, and that too with thick layers, I had to wait for each layer to dry, or at least semi dry, before adding the next layer. Meanwhile, of course, I did get on with some other paintings I'm doing.

Painting white blossoms is great fun, because white is never simply white. Shadows and reflected light and colours from the atmosphere and neighbouring objects reflect on white. Yet, while adding those colours, one has to take care to make it look white. Which is challenging. And I love it when it gets challenging. Painting can become a bit of a bore if it gets too easy. Though, I must say, that with each piece that I'm finishing, the next one gets easier, in terms of manipulating the paints, creating special effects - do look at the leaves closely, I love the effects I've created on them - and general ease of something one gets used to because one is doing it regularly.

Though I'm really loving these still lifes - the adherence and discipline to creating realistic forms and structures, which I feel I need to go through at this stage - every time I start putting paint on my canvas, I keep getting visions of the abstracts I'm dying to do. I'm feeling so torn. Should I do what I feel is a necessary step on my art journey, or just give in to what my heart wants to do?

I met and made friends with a couple of artists this week. I chatted with them and they said certainly I should follow my heart :)

You see, She thought I cared

For Dehu bai – who did my daily chores for 15 years or so – who died after a second heart attack --

Sometimes she’d cut her finger washing the utensils

(she never was careful about that kitchen knife

though I had warned her a zillion times)

Or scrape her skin

Grazing it on some rough part of the floor or door

As she laboriously swabbed it or dusted it –

And I would absentmindedly

-- Almost impatiently really

 for she’d often catch me when I had the least time

for the likes of her --

Put a band-aid on her wound –

And she thought I cared for her --

And sometimes it would be a headache

Which would have me rummaging for an aspirin

-- just to get her off my back, you see,

irritated at the nuisance she was being --

And she’d think I really cared about her

I could see it in her eyes

I could see it in the smile

She’d give me

Sometimes she’d say Memsa’ab, I’m tired today

Can I just wash the dishes and leave the rest for tomorrow --

And I’d say resignedly, Ok, go home and get some rest –

More really to get her out of my hair

Than anything else --

(I suspected all she wanted was to play hooky

and dash off somewhere to merely gossip with the

other baais that she loved to chat away the day with) --

And she would think I cared for her

I could see it in her eyes

I could see it in the smile

She’d give me

In the fifteen years that she did my chores for me

She often played truant

Especially when she’d go away on her pilgrimages

To her beloved devas  –

And I’d throw a tantrum

And the cynical atheist that I am

I would taunt her silly worship

Of those lifeless idols of hers

And she’d smile indulgently

And keep working for me

And I’d let her stay

For it was too much bother really to look for another maid

And she’d think I let her stay

Because I really cared

I could see it in her eyes

I could see it in the smile

She’d give me

She was getting on in years, you see

And few others wanted to have her work for them

She was slow, her bones creaked

She would often stop to take a rest

Sipping her endless cups of tea

(took her time really

when you come to think of it)

But I didn’t care

If she pottered around all day

As long as my work was done –

And she thought I cared

I could see it in her eyes

I could see it in the smile

She’d give me

I could see it in her eyes

I could see it in the wan smile she gave me

When I visited her in the hospital

(she looked so frail, so feeble) –

Perhaps she saw something in my eyes

Or on my face

For her to give me that smile again

From her discoloured hospital bed

Wedged in a corner of the crowded ward

Which told me that she thought

I really cared --

And on the way back home

In the sunshine that blinded my windshield

I wondered how and where and when I’d find

A replacement –

(maid servants are so hard to come by

these days, you see…)

At seven in the evening

The servants in the neighbourhood

Came and gave me the news

Dehu bai was no more

A second attack had taken her swiftly –

And they sat on their haunches

(as they’re wont to do when

they settle down for a long gossip)

On the landing outside my doorway

And reminisced -- chewing their paan

Looking solemn and sad --

About how Dehu bai had of late

Stopped working for everyone else

Except for me –

You see, apparently,

She had told these women,

(when they had asked her why she persisted

working for me in her advanced age)

That she’d work in this house (my house)

Until the end of her days

Because this Memsa’ab (that’s me)

Really cared for her

You see, she really thought that,

That her Memsa’ab really cared for her –

I saw it in her eyes

I saw it in the smile

She’d give me

-by Rita Putatunda

In these green shades of Madhuban

(trying my hand out on a completely different genre - not easy for me since I'm so convent educated anglicized)

Radha O Radha, my lovely,
Why don’t you believe me,
I am your dark lover,
Your Kanha, who loves you
With all his heart,
Come my sweet Radha,
Wipe those sulks off
Your fair face,
Come, your Kanha will
Play a tune just for you
On his bansuri,
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

Kanha O Kanha, my dark lover,
You say you love me,
But I’ve seen you play
With the gopikas in
These green shades
Of Madhuban,
I’ve heard you play
The same tunes for them
That you play for me
On your bansuri,
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

Radha, O my lovely Radha,
You know I merely dally
With those gopikas,
Look into my heart
In my heart there is only one,
Only one fair face,
And that is yours,
My sweet Radha,
Come, come, come to
Your Kanha,
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

Kanha, O my dark trecherous Kanha,
You whisper your sweet lies
Into your Radha’s ears,
Like honey dripping
From the bees’ hive,
But like the bee you sting me
When you dally
With the gopikas,
Laughing and cavorting
With them
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

O Radha, my lovely Radha,
Can’t you hear the sweet
Tune I play for you,
Can’t you see
How I long for you,
How my arms ache
For you,
How my heart swells
For you,
Come, my lovely,
Your place is here,
On your Kanha’s
Dark breast,
Within his loving arms,
Which long for your
Lovely charms,
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

O Kanha, my dark dark lover,
You whisper in my ears
Like you whisper
In your bansuri,
You play your fingers
On your Radha’s
Tender longings,
Like you play
On your bansuri,
And like your bansuri
That bursts into sweet tune,
Your Radha bursts
Into song,
O Kanha, O Kanha, O my Kanha,
My dark dark lover,
In these green shades
Of Madhuban

-by Rita Putatunda

I am your friend hailing from India (edited)

a tribute to Ezekiel –


Oh hello hello jee

Good evening jee

I am very very much happy

You are dropping in

To my humble home

Think it is your home only

Relaxing relaxing


But saar I am very very much not happy

you are not coming everyday, you are not talking

you are not telling

you are liking or not liking me

you are understanding na why I am anger


but still I am telling you

ok ok

but is not ok ok na

why you are not liking me?

I am not expert writing

But very very much I liking you

very much I am trying

everyday poems I am writing

from my head only

I am not understanding

strophes apostrophes catastrophes

I am very much confusing

I am breaking my linings

I am not realizing

what all my wrong doing

what you are wanting

I am not knowing those

but I am not neglecting

my education making me better person

everyday I am reading

history geography politics

improving my self - good for nothing

I am always believing

self improvement of myself only

so that you are always liking me

you are teaching so many things

I not knowing at all

India is my country

I am proudly saying

I am watching on TV news

I am improving my gk everyday



so when you are coming

and showing what mistake I am making

then I am correcting myself only

then you are liking me, no?



I say, saar, you are going? so soon, I say?

no commenting? I am writing and writing

but you are no commenting I am feeling so sad

you are not liking or what?

when you are coming again? you are coming again soon, no?

you are commenting next time, no?



I am your friend hailing from India

Only

-by Rita Putatunda

The Empty Canvas

The empty canvas – a fathomless void

So blank it engulfs even thought

It swallows every glimmer

Of imagined conceptions

Knowledge and revelations

That the mind can grasp

In that void – this blot

A dot, a tiny spark

Beginning to revolve

Meandering drunkenly

In the expanse –

Not yet a manifestation

But about to be

A maiden flight

That is about to spring into life

The silence surrounding the sound

At the birth of the countdown

A motionless womb –

Then the resounding boom

A flash of blinding light

Illuminating the endless vacuum

A devastation of fire white heart

Melting exploding in shards

Of multihued gaseous grist

Seed atom molecule particle

Swirling supernovas coalescing

Clotting into swirling consecrations

From within this vast womb

Of revolving bodies

A tiny being of flesh and blood

Looks in awe at this vast creation

Of germinating births and deaths

And makes a tiny dot – a spark

Meandering drunkenly

On a blank canvas – and leaves marks.

An infinitesimal fraction of a heart beat.

-by Rita Putatunda

Still Life with Vase and Fruit

Ha, finally made myself colour the fruit and vase, although in a new painting! I did it by just eschewing the underpainting.. I know I would've become so enamoured with my underpainting that I just wouldn't put the colour on. It's important to work with colours for me at the moment, just to get back the feel for them, their behaviour, so to speak. Painting is much like any other skill, as I said in a past blog. So it gets rusty or wobbly if you don't do it regularly. When I restarted my painting after the long gap I stupidly gave it I would often tear my hair out in frustration - simple things which came naturally to me eluded me. But now, I'm feeling quite upbeat - it's all coming back - what joy! But the thing with something as obsessive as painting is that one just doesn't have time for anything else in life. Your canvas, paints, brush just take over your life.

Every time I finish a painting - although I'm wondering if I should add put some flowers or a plant in the vase, so technically this is not done yet - I feel a sense of emptiness. One enjoys the process so much, one gets so engrossed in it, with heart mind soul, that suddenly when you put that last stroke of paint and realise it's done, there seems to be a yawning gap in your life. Of course there is the next painting to do, that's not the point. The point is that your love affair, your obsession with this one is over, and you feel the lingering waves of nostalgia for it.

I think I shall keep doing more of these vases, fruit, flowers stuff - enjoying them so much. Though I do have a sort of a darkish landscape forming at the recesses of my mind - saw a picture of it in the National Geographic, which I want to adapt to the one my mind is creating, based on that.

Unruly

Yep, I think "Unruly" is a befitting title for this painting. Although oils still remain my favourite medium, every time I try out acrylics, I enjoy it anew. So I think I'll just let it rest. Enjoy both and be at peace with myself.. LOL.. Bought myself a packet of oil pastels, which I used to play around with in the past. I love the soft textures one can create with them.. will probably do a similar flower painting with them.. if I'm still in the mood.

At the moment I am in this flowers, vases, fruits mood. These are basically practice pieces. This one, for example, helped to practice painting loose, while exploring tonal applications to create a feeling of depth. Flowers and fruits offer me the best opportunity to explore tones. One of the biggest challenges is of course trying to create a three dimensional illusion on a two dimensional surface.. depicting changes in tone helps to create that. It's always fun and exciting to explore this aspect of art, whether one is creating it or views it in others' art works.

Brush work also needs constant practice, and flowers are one of the best subjects to practice that, I've found. And then, the subtle colourings.. Oh, I love it all - the sheer joy of painting :)

I am Creation

 (I think this needs some more work, but keeping it here for the time being)

I am that wild thing that races in the wind.

I have spit out the bit. I have shaken off the bridle.

I cannot be harnessed by mundane punctuation grammar structure syntax.

I’m the laughter in a child’s eyes, I’m the wing in the bird’s flight, I’m the call of the wild.

I’m the chaos of erupting lava. I am the abstract in the rainbow colours.

I am music without harmony. I am the incongruity in nature’s wanton.

I am the river in spate that obeys no binding boundaries. I gush. I rush. I break my banks.

And spill all over. Swirling. Gouging. Devouring everything in my path. Yet creating new life.

I am disorder. I am revelry. I am the rejoice in the birds’ chorus. I am the undomesticated in Mother Nature. I am the child of liberation. I am celebration.

Not for me the well ordered gardens of governed minds with neatly trimmed hedges. Give me weeds. Give me gorse. Give me thickets. Give me undergrowths where creatures wriggle struggle survive die.

I am the voice that blunders in Life. I am the burst in the star’s birth. I am the lucent remnant in a celestial death. I am the cosmos whose motif cannot be contained. I am form without form. I am song. I am Creation.

-by Rita Putatunda

Flower Pot and Three Oranges

I just don't have the heart to colour those oranges orange, or make the flower blue, or the flower pot a brick colour, as had been my original plan when I began painting this. It just looks so perfect and intriguing like this, at least to my mind.

Woman Wanted ; Woman Found - (Edited)

An Internet friend of mine sent me this poem for some laughs.. My reply follows below his poem :)


Woman wanted

I’m looking for
a pleasant female.
Looks and size,
don’t give two hoots;
more long than wide,
usual attributes;
two of them,
one of those,
tapering legs,
diminishing toes;
b-flat voice,
not f-sharp,
some hair on top,
no moustache;
mustn’t guffaw,
a normal laugh;
call me love,
rather than honey;
old,
poor health,
bedridden,
no benefactors,
is ok ...........


....accompanyed
with
lots of money.

- by my Friend


My Reply:



Woman found


I’m pleasant most times, except when I’m not

I’m long most times, except when I’m wide

I have diminishing those and tapering that

So their numerical counts do fit your needs

My voice is flat, except when it’s sharp

I have plenty of hair, but most of it not on top

I laugh normally, when I don’t guffaw

Honey, I’ll always call you love

Glad you don’t mind my dentures

And my crutches

A moustache I haven’t,

Except when I forget to shave

And I’ll get lots of money, honey

When I dig into your till


So, hon, come on over

And have a look,

And don’t forget that

cheque book.


- by Me :D

Strange Still Lifes

Every morning starts off with such great potential. The sun is shining, the birds singing and the sky seems to be waiting. Unless I’m in the middle of a painting that I’m engrossed in, every morning begins with the question ‘what am I going to paint today’, which fills me with great excitement and anticipation. By mid morning, I realize the day is moving on and I haven’t put a stroke of paint on my canvas. I wrack my brains – what is it that will excite me enough to actually motivate me to put it on canvas. You see, unless I get enthused about a subject, I just don’t feel like painting it. Some of my artist friends say they don’t break their heads about this – just take a flower or a bush or a mountain and paint it, they say. I can’t. I have to be in love with my subject, I need to find joy in it, to want to explore all its mysteries with my brush, paints and mind.

Anyway, desperate for something to paint, I decided I’ll just do some still lifes, you know, fruits, flowers, vases and jars sorts of things. And suddenly now I’m fascinated by them all, because, even though I begin with the idea of painting them as realistically as I can, they are ending up in these strange still lifes.

Oh, must tell you.. one of my non-artist (haha, he'll love that when he reads this) friends read the 'what's the point' post and chided me, saying, you artists are such spoilt brats, I wish I could draw/paint like you, I would have been the happiest person and never ever complain. To which I retorted, well, you can. Anyone can draw and paint. Children draw and paint instinctively. Only thing is most children don't get the opportunity to develop the inborn skill further - in our country because of the pressure of studying in order to get a job taking precedence. But, given a chance, it's a craft like any other craft or skill, which anyone can train herself/himself on. Look around you, practically everything you see can be reduced to their basic shapes; cylinder, sphere, cube, cone. Draw the basic shapes, getting the proportions as accurately as you can, which is also easy to learn, and put it on your paper or canvas. As for the colour, they're just basically various compositions of the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow. A little practice and you can create a huge variety of hues with these.

The question then of course is when does a drawing, a craft, become art. Will talk about that in my next post. I had wanted to upload another strange still life, but it's just taking too long today. I need to paint.

Well, I decided to add the background to this one and also coloured the flower pot. Still pondering whether I want to colour the flowers or not. Trying to upload a couple more still lifes I've done over the past couple of days - taking very long.. slow internet today :/

BTW, this has been painted on an unstretched canvas, hence it has been stuck on a drawing board to keep it in place. Once dry, it will be mounted and framed.

Nirvana Moksha Paradise Peace

I live in my foul breath
I breathe in my fetid fumes
I walk on my stumbles
I bumble over my hidden treasures
I’m humbled by my wonders
I fall into my potholes
And break my bones
I deafen in my din
I’m enthralled by the intricacies
Of my soul’s ragas
I writhe in my aches
I ooze in my untended wounds

I rejoice in the gathering clouds
I drown in my monsoon tears
After I burn in my summer blaze
I shiver in my tattered winter blanket

While I warm my hands and feet
On the fires I build in my throbbing heart
I fling the colours of holi
Into the green leaves of my spring season

I pay obeisance to my Gods and Goddesses

Krishna Rama Durga Kali..too many to name

While I flow in the slime of my gutters
I choke in my clouds of dust
I wrap myself in my flies
My garbage my rags
My stray dogs my beggars
My famished children with
Their empty hands and empty eyes
Staring from my staring eyes
But I teach my children
To unshackle their hands and minds
I put wings on their feet to fly free
Even though my holy rivers flow with black refuse
Littered with leftovers from my venerating masses
Bits of flower petals mingling
With plastic bags industrial waste
And half burnt dead bobbing up and down
Refusing to leave my banks
Over which fat dogs snarl and snap
And yet my waters flow with life giving green
Where striving people dare to dream
My crowded streets are death traps
Yet flowing with smiling faces
Mixed with sweating people
Belching cars crapping crows pissing cows
Dogs trucks rats buses hovels
Brown bowel movements
Withered fornicating flesh
Left on broken sidewalks
Over which incessant
Unseeing feet walk by
Tossing me a few coins
Without even a sideways glance
Where I sit cross-legged
My eyes shut tight
My street crawling through
My grime encrusted eyelids
Into my gritty eyeballs
Erupting into leaking blisters
My crowded lanes swarming
All over my filth coated limbs
Festering with pus-filled sores
My flesh infested with
Living breathing biting things
Laying eggs in my knotted hair
Hatching out into tics lice worms
Maggots mosquitoes monkeys monks
Speaking the language of 

Sadhus saints corruption
Festivals funerals roadside
Cursings laughings bickerings
Squabbling human flotsam
Caressing killing kicking screaming
Whispering jostling gouging
Juggling shoving thrusting
Shopping malls street stalls
Their ware hanging out
To be fingered fondled fought over
Factories fortunetellers fundamentalists
Ecclesiasts eclectic non-conformists
Conforming conformists philosophers
Human traffickers women’s abusers and libbers
Rising concrete constructions

Lowly corrugated dwellings
Trading haggling buying selling
Human blood bank notes rice dal roti
Struggling stragglers warring waking dying
Me myself bursting
Into my gasping windows
In through my gagging doors
Right into my retching
Bleeding heaving room
The walls of which are painted
With the rainbow colours of
Hushed heavenly hibiscus hues
Burning incense wafting wispy perfumed smoke
Bird song papaya fruit jackfruit
The mangoes of my childhood
Narayana Allah Buddha Christ

All seeking --
Nirvana moksha paradise peace

-by Rita Putatunda

The "Guruji" (according to some)

(the other day that lump of lard, that fathead, who is paid obeisance to as “guruji” plonked himself into my favourite evening news show, thenewshour, and spouted his usual mindless inanities, which is regarded as great wisdom by some. He began with “this is surreal” – wonder if he actually knows the meaning of the word, but phonies like him like to impress their slavering acolytes with highfalutin sounding words. As he screeched “let me spik, let me spik” I composed this little gem.. heh heh heh! Sure had fun writing this one!)

As the sun sank into a dark horizon
The ants and the termites emerged
The centipedes and the millipedes
The roaches and the crawling maggots
Creeping worms and flurries of fleas
All with deadbeat brains as large as a pea
The crawling denizens of the dimwitted world
Lead by their leader 

An ugly flabby ignorant vile creature 

Also referred to as "Guruji" by some
Who thought he had the wisdom of the sages
Little did he know that with every word he uttered
All he displayed was the vast emptiness of his tawdry fat head
Filled with rudimentary inanities and boorish bullshit
He was the one who held aloft the flag of their realm
The kingdom of fawning flatterers
And lead the way to gorge on the squished butterfly
Tearing her delicate diaphanous wings to shreds
Like flies converging on putrid flesh
They engulfed the gasping dying butterfly
And after crushing her to death
Went back to their kingdom of Foolsland
Deep in some dank dark daft interiors of a cave  
Rejoicing over their conquered bounty

-by Rita Putatunda

brown flowers in a brown vase

Oh God.. what a dilemma this is! Here I am, have been working on this painting for a while now. I put that reddish brown background base and the base blocking colours of the vase, the flowers and the stem. And then I painted that patterned table cloth... and now am struck with this dilemma - I like it as it is. I don't feel like putting the layers of colours that I need to, to finish the painting. This feeling strikes me often. For some reason, the incompleteness seems complete to me.

Without a backward glance

(a little something from something I’m working on, in fits and bits, about me, my life, sort of)

The first class compartment of the Southern Indian Railways in the early sixties consisted of a whole bogey – that was how the Brits used to travel, and changes hadn’t begun creeping in quite yet. The same carriage today, with an increase in the length – if it’s the first class, is divided into several cubicles which have upper and lower berths. They are still far more comfy and certainly far roomier than the second class sleepers, but nothing compared to those bogeys of the sixties.

The two seats were long, stretched lengthwise along the two windows on either side which had maroon painted bars, a glass drop-down window on the outside, and a slatted wooden one inside, for privacy. The seats had cushioned upholstery covered with dark green leather which had leather covered button things stitched on it all over with I.R. (Indian Railways) embossed on them. The two seats had a couple of berths on top of them. At one end of the bogey was the fairly roomy little bathroom (enormous by today’s standards) with a mirror over a stainless steel wash basin, and an English style (as it was called) commode – white with a black seat. A nice, comfortable room on wheels for a family of four to travel in.

The best thing I liked about that bogey was the little reading lamp that was provided, fixed to the compartment wall at the head of each long seat – which of course became a bed at night. These days they’ve simply done away with that feature in the sleepers I usually travel in. In the night, when the other occupants slept – we used the train to travel often to Calcutta – you could turn it on without waking anyone, and get engrossed in the convoluted intrigues in your favourite mystery book, engulfed in a cocoon of velvet, yellow light, as the train rocked and swayed through the night outside, lulling you in its snug, steady clickety-clack clickety-clack.

There was no direct line those days from Bellampalli to Hyderabad. The train, therefore after a four hour leg of the journey reached a junction at a place called Kazipet, from where we had to switch trains that would take us to Hyderabad, which took another four to five hours in those days of steam engines. A few years later that condition was improved somewhat, after the Singareni Collieries’ officers got after the railways to rectify the situation (the officers too needed to travel often to Hyderabad where they had their head office). The bogey we travelled in was thenceforth delinked from the train, fixed to an engine which pulled it – puff-puffing and choo-chooing – to a siding to wait for the train that went to Hyderabad to which it would be attached. Complicated? Yes. Fun? Oh, yes indeedy!

When the bogey was put in the siding, which was away from the main lines of course, it seemed like a microscopic little world marooned in the darkness, beaming out its feeble little yellow lights from its windows. The silence, if you stepped out, was profound. The stars shone like blue saffires in the night sky. And a midnight picnic was always spread out for us kids while we waited for the train – which could be a wait of anything between ½ an hour to a couple of hours – train timings those days being invariably erratic. But did we kids complain? Never. We loved every minute of it.

Not the boring oldies that accompanied us though – the parents. They complained and complained to the railways until finally by the time I was in the fifth or sixth class the main express trains that went to Hyderabad were routed through our small town to the city. By then diesel engines had also begun replacing those old steam engines – which of course cut the journey time down considerably. But somehow, losing that special magic too in the bargain.

When we reached Hyderabad station, we usually went first to the Taj Mahal hotel – a tacky South Indian hotel – despite its romantic, lofty name – which served the most delicious south Indian food, to wash off the layers of soot that covered us by the belching steam engine. That first time too my father must have taken me there. I don’t remember my first train journey to Hyderabad – to my boarding school – very well; I was just six years old. What I do remember vividly though was my first meeting with Sister Adele. My father and I must have spent a day resting in the hotel, for I remember like it was yesterday that dusk was falling when we entered the school precincts, my hand held in the warm comfort of his hand.

You entered the school through an arched wrought iron gate with the name ‘St. Ann’s High School’ moulded on the arch overhead. There was an expanse of paved ground inside the gate which led to a stretch of long steps which led to the church with its great arched doors. Which, when they were open, gave you a direct glimpse of the big Christ on his cross, his head encircled with thorns, his pierced chest, nailed outstretched hands and feet, dripping blood, at the end of the large church room down the aisle, with the pews on either side.

A narrow granite paved path by the church led to the parlour after turning right, where visitors had to wait to meet someone from the boarding after giving the nun who manned the little gate that you entered through, the name of the person you wanted to meet. The nun then proceeded to vigorously ring a round, thick metallic plate that hung by a thick rope just outside the parlour, with a short, stout wooden stick – which produced a dull, yet surprisingly loud, CLANG-CLANG-CLANG. Which, the girl, who had the duty to keep a sharp ear out for that sound, heard, and came running down the long narrow granite stretch from the boarding house proper to the parlour, to go back again and give the message to whoever the visitor was for. My father of course, that first time, asked for Sister Adele, the boarding mistress.

As the evening deepened, we waited outside the parlour, my hand still in my father’s hand. And soon enough, from the distance, we saw a nun approaching with brisk, no-nonsense steps towards us. As she drew closer I saw a white skinned, kindly face – her skin, I observed, was wrinkled like crushed fine wrapping paper, the kind that sweets came wrapped in – framed in a white nun’s veil, with a pair of smiling, bluest of blue eyes that looked down into mine. When she bent down and said “Hello” to me, I thought she spoke strangely – she was Italian, I came to know later. Without a second thought, I slipped my hand out of my father’s grasp, reached out and took hold of the bony white hand she stretched out to me, and without a backward glance, I walked away with her to the boarding house.

When we got inside the large hall, where a large gathering of girls sat at long desks with books opened in front of them, Sister Adele told them, “This is Rita. What a good girl she is, she didn’t cry at all!” At that moment I didn’t know why I was supposed to cry. It was later, when I climbed into the bed allotted to me in the long dormitory, with rows of beds, and realized that my mother and father would not be there with me, that I cried.

-by Rita Putatunda