This year as the autumn leaves were falling, I said goodbye too soon to two great friends.

To Sylvia and Donna:

AUTUMN

The leaves are falling, falling as from far

As though above were withering farthest gardens;

They fall with a denying attitude.

And night by night, down into solitude,

The heavy earth falls from every star.

We are all falling. This hand is falling too—

All have this falling-sickness none withstands.

And yet there’s one whose gently-holding hands

This universal falling can’t fall through.

Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn”

Postscript 1

Words of one of my favourite Sufi mystic poets Saadi of Shiraz :

‘No one throws a stone at a barren tree.’

Artists Residency, Sketch outside the Artists cottage.

XIII

g, peered at the painting she had seen downstairs. Cerulean blue dots had been added —for which I was to blame. I had got Renee a 250ml tube of Cerulean Blue Winsor and Newton oil paint from Australia, knowing she used that colour— and that Third Eye (which should have been at the glabella according to the chakras) stuck in the middle of the forehead. Maznah turned the handle of the penyapu and pointed to it, Yang ini? She asked, puzzled at God’s gift. We cracked up and clattered down the stairs laughing. I mean, with that God-given painting, one would have to re-define the entire concepts of light and beauty. If I hadn’t known her, I would have thought that Renee was poking fun at herself. I realised I hadn’t laughed since the end of June 1995. Laughing was such a relief from the fear of speaking out. My mouth seemed clamped shut in discretion for fear of being misunderstood and mis-represented and of being the cause of everyone’s unhappiness in a place where discretion is taken as smug arrogance guaranteeing unpopularity; a place where gossip is valued.

VIII

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