via Video: How do you raise a black child? A poem by Cortney Lamar Charleston
Author: Gayatri Devi
Has Kerala Always Considered Menstruating Women Impure?
In Kerala, every single man and woman who protests the entry of women of menstruating age at the Sabarimala temple has personally benefitted from the presence of a menstruating woman in their lives: their own mother. They were conceived because their mothers menstruated. The mothers gave birth to these individuals, so they can be out in the streets barricading women of menstruating age from the Sabarimala temple. Think of that for a second.
This current hysterical flap against youthful women is a good opportunity to revisit the relevance of menstruation in the human life cycle. Even though Monty Python sang that “every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great; if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate” inThe Meaning of Life, statistically speaking, men produce a vast quantity of sperm during their lifetime and shed several millions of them each month. Women have a reserve of about 400-450 egg follicles as they hit puberty with each follicle producing only one egg or ovum, each month. If it is not fertilized by meeting with a sperm, the body releases this egg through menstruation.
We have been told that the divine Ayyappan, or Sasthavu, as I knew him, does not like youthful women worshipping at his temple because of their menstrual pollution. However, the legend of Malikapurathamma, the goddess shrine at Sabarimala, Ayyappan’s alleged unrequited lover, and the customary recruitment of ‘Kanni Ayyappan’ (literally ‘virgin’ Ayyappan –young boys making their first pilgrimage) point towards Sabarimala as a homosocial space where women are intentionally not welcome. This ejecting of youthful women from Sabarimala is a manufactured exclusion to keep women out of a purportedly homosocial male space.
However, menstrual taboos among certain communities have assisted this pollution charge against menstruating women. Though the menstrual blood flow comprises of fresh blood, clotted blood and endometrial tissue from the lining of the uterus, it has become questionably “traditional” to assign a ‘polluted’ or ‘impure’ status to menstruating women among certain communities.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES SHOW ALMOST A TOTEMIC WORSHIP OF THE YOUNG MENSTRUATING GIRL AS AN ASPECT OF BHAGAVATHY OR DEVI, THE PRIMORDIAL MOTHER GODDESS.
The vernacular Malayalam word ‘theendari’ describes a menstruating woman with an ‘impure’ status. It forbids her from coming into physical contact with other members of the household, entering the kitchen, touching the cooking utensils, touching potable water, or entering the temple during her monthly period. ‘Theendari’ is referenced by informal terms like ‘purathavuka’, ‘veliyilakuka’, both connoting ‘being outside’ or ‘removed’ (from the daily affairs of living).
But ‘theendari’ is a cognate of ‘theenduka‘, a Malayalam word which means ‘to touch’ with the additional semantic intent of ‘to pollute’. We hear this meaning in the phrase ‘kaavu theendal’ for the ritual pollution of the shrine during the Kodungallur Bharani festival. Pollution was proxemic in application. The ‘polluted’ person had to keep an arbitrarily decided distance – 12 feet in some cases – from you not to ‘pollute’ you. 12 feet? Why not 11 or 13 feet?
Also read: The Vicious Circle Of Menstrual Taboos
All of this is ironic given the fact that up until two or perhaps three generations ago, in many communities across India, and certainly among the Nair community that I am most familiar with, the onset of menarche –the first instance of menstruation – was celebrated with great splendor.
Malayalam uses various terms for menstruation with each term carrying its own slightly unique semantic variance and valence. The clinical term aarthavam is for medical or formal registers. Aarthavam, a cognate of the word ‘rithu’, indicates in Sanskrit and Malayalam both seasons and the transition of seasons, hence, change. In the context of women’s reproductive cycle, ‘rithu’ or ‘rithukalam’ signifies the sixteen days from the first spotting of menstrual blood when the woman is most fertile to conceive. Thus ‘rithugami’ in Sanskrit and Malayalam is a man who has intercourse with a woman specifically for reproductive purposes. Somewhere in here is the semantic nuance of seed, flower, and flowering parallel to the processes of the natural world. All of those Malayalam film songs where the lovelorn male evokes and invites his beloved ‘rithumathi’ are sincere demonstrations of this mating instinct.
The vernacular choices for menstruation were ‘prayamavuka’, or ‘vayassariyikkuka’, both of which may be translated to mean ‘to come of age’, or the girl approaching reproductive maturity, and not necessarily sexual maturity. ‘Maasamura’ is roughly the equivalent of monthly periods. ‘Theraluka’ or ‘theranduka’ literally indicate a form of increase, or growth. All of these terms connote a positive valence for menstruation.
Indeed, the word ‘therandu kalyanam’ signifies the celebratory aspect of this liminal event in a girl’s life. Kalyanam in Sanskrit, Malayalam and Tamil indicates the most auspicious phase of a phenomenon. While not that long ago, Nair men and women engaged in ‘sambandham‘, a low-key selection of a conjugal mate, the young girls still celebrated ‘therandu kalyanam‘, or their menarche. Specific customs of ‘therandu kalyanam’ vary from community to community, but a common denominator was the marked positive familial and communal attention given to the young girl during this celebration. The young girl was ritually bathed by elders and presented with sparkling new clothes; special food was made for her, including sweet meats; and she was ceremonially set apart, not in pollution, but as a material expression of her state change. Her menarche was announced to the community. Anthropological and ethnographic studies show almost a totemic worship of the young menstruating girl as an aspect of Bhagavathy or Devi, the primordial mother goddess. The young girl now shared her female body with the goddess herself.
WE ALL KNOW SIMILAR STORIES OF WOMEN WHO FOUND THEMSELVES WITH THEIR MENSTRUAL CYCLES ON THEIR WEDDING DAY AND REGARDLESS WENT TO THE TEMPLE FOR THEIR MARRIAGE RITUAL.
In Kerala, we have a Bhagavathy temple, where the goddess menstruates each month. In the legend of the Chengannur temple recounted in the Eithihyamala, goddess Parvathy was menstruating when she and Sivan arrived at Shonadri or Chengannur to visit Agastya rishi right after their marriage. So, they observed her ‘rithushanthikalyanam’ or menstrual celebration right then and there, which then became the site for Chengannur Bhagavathy temple. We all know similar stories of women who found themselves with their menstrual cycles on their wedding day and regardless went to the temple for their marriage ritual. No god or goddess has punished a woman because she menstruated inside a temple.
Chengannur Bhagavathy’s ritual menstruation or ‘tripputtarattu’ is celebrated in Kerala to this day. The goddess is confined to a special shrine during her periods to respect her power and not to punish her pollution. On the fourth day, the goddess is brought back to her main shrine with aplomb after ritual bathing in the tributaries of the Pamba river. Women (and men) who desire children, women who suffer from infertility, women seeking a good marriage all pray to Chengannur Bhagavathy. The goddess is real to her devotees because she menstruates.
Watching the mayhem unleashed at the protesting women in Kerala, though, I am reminded not so much of the power of Chengannur Bhagavathy, but the burning anger of Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavas in The Mahabharata. Draupadi was menstruating when she was dragged by her hair into open court after Yudhishthira, her gambling husband, stakes her in a game of dice with the Kauravas and predictably loses her. Yudhishtira had been on a losing streak, but that did not stop him from staking his wife in a gamble.
In the Sabha Parvam of the Mahabharata, the menstruating – rajaswala— Draupadi stands in the open court bleeding in her single robe and trembling in anger and helplessness in front of her five husbands and all the kinsmen. Dusshasana pulls at her singlet to disrobe this bleeding woman. But an epic is an epic is an epic, and just at that moment, Draupadi’s cousin and god Krishna steps in and extends the length of her singlet to infinite yards of clothing. Dusshasana is unable to strip her naked.
Also read: The Sabarimala Protests: History Repeats Itself As Progress Is Met With Violence
But there is no god Krishna in 2019 to step in and counter the attack unleashed against young women asking to worship at Sabarimala. So, another Draupadi comes to mind: the great Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi, or Dopti. After the Senanayak of the Indian military and his deputies rape the tribal woman Dopti suspected to be a Naxalite and leaves her for dead, she revives herself and walks towards them. She pushes the Senanayak with her “two mangled breasts”, and asks them with a terrible laughter, “What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man? . . . There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed.”
At Sabarimala, only the unbreakable will of the decent and progressive collective of men and women can stop this groundless assault on women’s autonomy to determine their social participation in all spaces.
References
1 “Draupadi,” Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi
2. Puranic Encyclopedia by Vettom Mani
3. Eithihyamala by Kottarathil Sankunni
Gayatri Devi is an Associate Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Pennsylvania. She can be reached at gdevi@comcast.net.
Featured Image Source: Mythri Speaks
Translations from Kamala Das
I have been reading an edited anthology of Kamala Das’s writings called Pranayakaalathinde Album (Season of Love: An Album) edited and with an introduction by Arshad Bathery (Calicut: Olive Publications, 2005).
These are short haiku like entries — not syllabically speaking — taken from Kamala’s stories, poems and non-fiction writings pertaining to love. An interesting idea, to be sure. Here are a few that I translated. Rough translations. They need a lot of work, but you can get a sense of the tradition in which she writes. Many of these with their insistence on the materiality of the body for memory ( and thus for writing) validate the comparison between Kamala and the great French writer Marguerite Duras. All of these are prose excerpts in the original Malayalam. But you almost feel like putting in line breaks. Enjambment seems natural in some others.
1.
Your eyes are wild streams.
They flow over me
leaving me cool and refreshed.
2.
Love carries an unknowable weight.
Lust
light like milkweed
blown by the wind.
3.
In the mysterious morning light
fused together
like an egg with its white and yellow dissolved
my fingers move towards your body
without hesitation and with right
to recognize
that we are destined to be mates
through innumerable past lives.
4.
For whose embrace is this body waiting
For whose kisses are these lips opening
This poor body these poor lips
that will soon turn into a corpse.
5.
Spring filled me.
Eternal, imperishable love.
When you entered me
this body became your home
this soul your bed chamber.
6.
God was a lover who could not get up to embrace me.
7.
At other moments
it became clear to me
that this body is a barrier to loving.
What will my lover love if there was no body?
What will he caress?
The unseen soul? The inaudible breaths?
The mournful dirge of the sea that lies underneath
the foam and froth of smiling?
8.
My love was his wine.
I saw with great tenderness
how he droned and flitted restlessly
from one tree branch to another
like a drunken blue beetle.
9.
What links the heart with love?
Love is thought, a brain thinking.
Do hearts think?
10.
You are the poem to end all poems.
A poem complete like a tombstone.
ഓര്മ്മകളുടെ ‘പെരുവഴിയമ്പലം’
Como se dice Hair Dryer?
In 2006, a bunch of us faculty members went to Spain for an international workshop. We were in Madrid and we were in Ronda: two beautiful cities where we met faculty and students in our sister schools there. While we were traveling in these places, my friend Nic Nicole Burkholder and I shared a room. Everybody speaks English in Spain, mostly. We were told that definitely everyone spoke English in the hotels where we would be staying. And it was true, the staff at the hotel in Madrid where we stayed all spoke perfect business English. And then we got to Ronda where we stayed at this gorgeous moorish looking hotel. So Nic and I went up to our room. Nic went into the bathroom and immediately ran out with a concerned look on her face.
There is no hair dryer here, Nic told me.
This was not an issue for me, as I have no hair or very little hair. But Nic has long beautiful thick hair. And it takes some work to dry it in the early mornings before our busy work day started.
Let me call the front desk and ask for a hair dryer, Nic said.
I had changed into my pyjamas and was getting ready for bed. Okay, I said.
So pretty soon I heard Nic on the phone happily asking the person at the other end–“Could we get a hair dryer for our room?” or something along those lines.
There was a brief silence and then Nic turned around to me and said, “He doesn’t speak English.”
Nic put down the phone. She was dejected. She really wanted a hair dryer.
So since I was from Texas, I said, no problem, let me go get you a hair dryer from the front desk. I am sure they will give us one.
In Texas, where I had lived before moving to Pennsylvania, I had heard demotic Spanish all around me. I did not know the Spanish word for “hair dryer” or “hair.” But I thought to myself, how hard can it be to get a hair dryer? I knew the verb “querer” in Spanish meant “to want.”
Tell them what we want, what we really really want.
So, still in my pyjamas, I went downstairs to the reception to ask for a hair dryer. I was expecting to come right back up with a hair dryer.
The man at the reception desk downstairs was about 80 years old. He was a small diminutive old man with thinning white hair and sparkly eyes even at 10 o’clock at night.
I began my demotic Spanish.
“Por favor, senor, yo quiero hair dryer,” I said. (which I thought meant “I want a hair dryer.” )
“Ah, senora,” the old man said with a bow. “Qué?”
Clearly, the man had no idea what I had just said. And I did not know the Spanish word for “hair dryer.”
So I tried again. This time, I pointed to my hair, ran my palm over my head in a sweeping motion, and said, “Quiero hair dryer, por favor.”
The man lifted one finger as if to indicate “just a minute” and went to a room behind the front desk.
I was feeling pretty good. It was so simple. He was going to come back with a hair dryer.
The man came out. He had cupped both of his hands together . With a big smile, he opened his hands on the desk in front of me. About a dozen small bottles of shampoo and conditioners–the hotel size– fell out on the desk. He stood back with a beatific smile on his face.
“No, no, no, senor,” I said. “No shampoo. No conditioner.””
“No shampoo?” the old man asked. His smile was gone. He looked worried.
“No shampoo,” I said. “Quiero Hair dryer.”
I said very slowly and loudly clearly enunciating the word in English.” H-a-i-r D-r-y-e-r, por favor.”
The old man stared blankly at me.
So I thought I would try something else. I bunched my thumb, index and middle finger together and pushed it into my hair. I was trying to signify a machine. I said, again, very slowly, “See? Hair dryer.”
The man again indicated with one finger that he would be right back. I prayed that he would not come back with a gun.
He came back with a handful of small shower caps this time.
I began to laugh uncontrollably at this point. But I thought to myself, well, I am here and I am not going back without a hair dryer tonight.
Then I suddenly remembered that at UTD, where I used to teach, after the custodial people mopped the floor, they used to put a yellow sign that said, “piso mojado” in Spanish on one side and “wet floor” on the other side. As a linguist, I knew that in Spanish, the modifiers followed the nouns, instead of the other way around as in English. So I knew that “mojado” meant “wet” and “piso” meant “floor.” I knew I had one final shot at getting a hair dryer.
“Por favor, senor,” I began again, “Quiero la machina por mojado–” and here I pointed to my hair. I was making things up.
I did not know the Spanish word for “hair.” I prayed that the old man would put two and two together and understand that I was referring to a machine for wet hair.
I was right. The old man broke out with the most wonderful smile.
“El secador de pelo, senora!” the man exclaimed in total happiness.
“Yes, yes, Si, si, senor,” I said. I hoped that meant a hair dryer.
He again showed me “one minute” with his finger and went to his antechamber.
This time he did come out with a hair dryer.
“El secador, senora,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He put down a hair dryer in front of me tenderly like a mother putting down her baby.
I was overjoyed. I thanked the old man profusely. I walked back up to our room victoriously and handed Nic the hair dryer. Here is your hair dryer, I said.
So, I might know nothing of Spanish, but I will always remember that “el secador de pelo” means a hair dryer.
When Dayani was a Little Girl
These are the notes I took of Dayani and her friends between the ages of eight and twelve years. I used to write them down when they happened. All names have been changed and initialized to protect the innocent.
24 Sep 2008
“D.’s stream of consciousness.”
“Mama guess what I finished my homework already you know what N. did today he put his booger on my napkin yes his booger the germs from his nose on my napkin and I told him I used I-care language and told him N. that is personal hygiene you know what mama I am using big words now I know what hygiene means it is keeping your germs to yourself and mama I was drawing a picture today and I thought it looked nice and I said this big picture looks more like you B…. ha ha ha …and B. was really mean to me and she said ooh Dayani it looks bad she is so mean sometimes and Mrs. B. told me that I should use I-care language and tell B. not to be mean and mama our caterpillars have turned into butterflies we have six or seven butterflies now and mama do you know what penicillin is it is a life-saving drug I read it in the guided reading book you know mama I am not allowed to bring the guided reading book home anymore Mrs B. said that she lost all her guided reading books last year because people brought them back and then they showed it to the teacher and then OH MAN! MY DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK AND and they had chocolate chip cookies and dog spit on them and guess what mama E. kissed J. and now E. wants to kiss B. and it is disgusting and mama can I watch t. v when we get home my brain is tired and I can do my guided reading later it is very easy it is like only three words or something and mama I am the technology person because we have a Mac just like ours in the classroom and Mrs. B. asks me to help her with the mac because I know how to use a mac and mama I am really hungry can I have some strawberry cream toaster strudels when we get home can we go to Weis and get some donuts I am really hungry.”
2 Oct 2008
31 Oct 2008
8 Nov 2008
10 Nov 2008
A tortuous afternoon–I had to take D. to see High School Musical 3. I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. I have never seen a worse movie in my whole entire life. Give me Snakes on a Plane. Give me Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Make me rake the entire planet. Anything but this. This high school is not like the high school that you and I attended. There are no subjects being taught. There are no classes being held. The only class is music–I mean musical. And then there is gym. No periodic table. No French Revolution. No Differential Calculus. No Huckleberry Finn. There is no curriculum whatsoever. The boys and girls dress as if they are in a J. Crew photo shoot. And they like talk like this like its no big deal like you know its like whatever girlfriend she was like mean and all and I’m like and he’s like and he’s so cute like and she’s so hot like. It was incredible. And ghastly. I wished I had bought a large popcorn instead of a medium because I was eating it so fast –I had to do something to still my nerves.
So the premise is that these boys and girls are graduating and they are going to put one final show before they all go their separate ways. Some of them are in love with each other and this tension creates a couple of astoundingly bad song numbers one on top of some sort of roof garden. My brother has a theory that in a movie scene if a girl wears a white outfit and she is near water then the girl must get wet. If there is no body of water nearby it must rain in that scene. Why don’t you just water the plants instead of soaking the girl? The hyper-sexualization of teenagers is unbelievable.
Anyway they make their musical. They graduate. We have never seen them studying at all. But that doesn’t matter. Grades and SAT scores are needed only in real life. At this rate, in High School Musical 4 they all move to China to work in purple plastic factories! But wait. Surprisingly enough, one of them goes to Julliard, one to Stanford, one to UC Berkeley, one to University of Albuquerque.
But I guess this is a generational thing. D. didn’t see anything I saw. What did you like about this movie, honey? I asked her. Apparently Sharpay–that’s like her name–Sharpay was greedy and her songs show her as greedy and that was not good. Thank God there is a moral to this %&%^$^%!
31 Jan 2009
I took D. and her friend A. to the LHU women’s Lacrosse team’s pancake breakfast fundraiser this morning. I have taught many lacrosse players over the years–I like the Lacrosse girls. They are deadly athletes and excellent students. They are very good in sports and equally good in academics–wholesome and well-rounded kids. So, anyway we were at the pancake breakfast, and Dayani is a talker but A. is a talker to the nth degree. My student K. was serving us and A. just wow-ed her by telling all these stories nonstop–she has this little tweety bird voice she is very sweet-looking (she is eight) and she went on this incredible story about how the McGhee school is haunted: a custodial person died in one of the bathrooms and the ghost comes out at night and shuts the door to the girl’s bathroom and sometimes you see janitors walking upside down on the ceiling and one time the ghost shut the door to the stall from the inside and you have to crawl on the floor to get inside!
I wished I had a tape-recorder and could have taped all the things A. said today. So my student K. said, “A. you tell such good stories.” A. was very indignant and said, “I am not a story-teller. I am a truth-teller.” We were walking back from the Fieldhouse to the parking lot when a green car drove by incredibly fast. A. said, “that green car is trying to murder me. I will solve my murder.” I asked, “A. how do you solve your murder when you are dead?” A. said, “I am going to get out of my murder so I can solve it.” So there.
Other things A. said today: ” I wish Dayani was my cousin.” Is Dayani my cousin, Gayatri? she asked me. Well, she is, A., if you think so, I told her. Dayani is my cousin, A. said. We both have black hair. A. is spending the day with us and when we got back D and A wanted to play pet detectives. Naturally I am their first client Miss Dogloveski who has lost her dog called Sassy. Sassy got lost while Miss Dogloveski was making bacon for her, her favorite food. Detective D. and Detective A. found Sassy in no time at all. I think they just wanted to use the walkie-talkie for a while. D’s new favorite band–NRBQ. She thinks it is a children’s band. I can see why; they radiate such joy in their music. She makes me play them over and over again in the car.
May 15, 2009 (Dayani’s Niagara trip note)
It was Friday. Right after school my parents and I went home to finish packing for our trip to Niagara Falls! After we finished packing, my mama quickly took my fish over to our neighbor’s House! Then, we got in my dad’s truck. I get hungry very quickly so I suddenly started complaining about having no food–I had lunch and a bag of popcorn, and an apple but I was still hungry. And my doctor says I’m underweight! While we were driving, we saw a huge wild turkey flying over the cars! My dad pointed that out to me! Then we ate our supper at Applebee’s! It was awesome! I ate mac and cheese, and then I had an oreo milkshake! Yummy in my tummy! Now we’re at our hotel. It is late at night very dark so we cannot see the water fall today. We will see it tomorrow. Guess what? My mama said that our hotel had a pool, but… THEY DIDN’T! Ha, ha, very funny! Then we went to our room, and I watched America’s Funniest Videos! A baby who horse whispered (by screaming his head off) won 10,000 dollars! That was funny! Then I surfed more channels but found that there were no good shows on. Now, I’m writing the present. (past,present,future) Then my mama asked me if I wanted to write about my trip here and I said, ” oh yeah, baby!” Then I started writing. Now my writing that I wrote in the present is equal with the present! I’m a pure genius! Oh, wait! Do you think this is done yet? Oh! My eyes are on you! Yep! Yes they are! BYE!
1 Jul 2009 (Dayani’s Indian trip – at my house in Trivandrum)
Kanmani–light of the eye in Malayalam–for that is what she has been named by the three musketeers–Ketaki, Dayani and Shambhu– is a stray cat that foraged for food in my parents’ backyard. But in the last couple of days, Kanmani, or Mani for short, has become as priceless as a a pedigreed Persian cat. Ever since amma told them that Kanmani is pregnant, they have been trying to make life very comfortable for the cat. The first thing they do when they wake up in the morning is to go out past the kitchen and to the woodshed to make sure that Kanmani is there, safe and sound. Maybe it is the lethargy of her pregnancy, but Kanmani has been enjoying all this newfound attention. She lies there on her side thick as a fish fillet all stretched out and her neck raised and positioned exactly for the kids to stroke it past the buttery stage. All three of them crouch beside her discussing her many beauties and virtues. Every sentence begins with a newly discovered awesome truth about Kanmani. Kanmani trusts us now! Kanmani is so fat she can’t get up by herself we have to lift her up! Kanmani let me touch her tummy! Kanmani is going to have four babies! Can we keep the babies please please please? Why does Kanmani love me so much? Kanmani is so beautiful! Kanmani’s babies need vaccination! They put a rope around her neck — she is on a leash now. The cat looks vaguely puzzled at all of this attention but is enjoying it nevertheless. Shambhu rubbed her belly and said “I can see her eggs. She has eight eggs.” “Those are not her eggs, Shambhu” my daughter offered, “those are her milk duds.” “Why are you calling them milk duds?” Luma (Ketaki) challenged. “Don’t you know what they are called?” D. mumbled unspecifically “I know what they are called. But I don’t want to say it. Nipples.” she mumbled. “The correct word is teats,” I said. “Teats–that is what we call them in animals.” Shambhu kept pulling at her teats insisting that they are her “eggs.” He is very hard to convince otherwise once he has made up his mind. They would like me to get a nice box for Kanmani, some clothes for her to lie in, some cat toys, a collar, a five star hotel mat, some sushi, some dead mice for the cat to play with–did I leave anything out?
7pm Kanmani update. Because of the acute attention lavished on her, Kanmani absconded a few hours ago. She has run for her life, I think. She probably needs a place to quietly give birth. Anyway, it is a minor calamity in our house. The mood is very sombre right now. And they have written a *Missing* notice. Maybe a policeman will find her and bring her back, Shambhu said. That is right, the police really have no work to do in Trivandrum.
MISSING
Name: Kanmani/cat
Reward: 500 rps.
Description: White, and brownish black with a white patch on the back. Has a rope collar with red tape. Has a big tummy.( pregnant)
Green eyes, has a very hoarse meow. Please find her.
If you do, please return to the address:
Number:
Sometimes seen with a peach colored cat with a very big stomach.
Note: If you see any kittens with the missing cat, or that look like it , please return it to us. ketaki, dayani, shambhu PLEASE FIND HER! Thank you
23 Sep 2009
D’s linguistic inventions
30 Sep 2009
22 Oct 2009
Dayani’s continuing story. Part 1 of Safe and Sound.
[I have left the spelling mistakes, original punctuation and unique capitalization the way they are — she is in fourth grade. But the story is all pure Dayani. And it has all the elements of a standard narrative — exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. And since it is continuing, cliffhanger suspense!]
It was the month of March, in Massachusetts. There was a family that lived by the sea. In that family, there was a boy called Elijah. Elijah lived with an oceanoligist. His favorite animal was the dolphin. One day, Elijah, was sitting on the beach slowly falling asleep. Suddenly, he heard a big splash! He looked, but he saw nothing. Then he heard it again. He looked, but this time, he saw a dolphin squirming in the sand. “That’s what made the noise!” He said. Then he quickly pulled out his towel from underneath him, and rushed toward the water. Then he soaked it wet. He wrapped the dolphin in the towel, and slowly but carefully rolled the dolphin back into the sea. “Why isn’t this dolphin swimming away?” Elijah thought to himself. He shook his head. Suddenly, he realized that the dolphin was saying thank you to him! They got to be somewhat of friends. Elijah spent a really good amount of time with the dolphin. Then, he had to go home. When he woke up, next morning, he found that he had the fever, and FLU. His parents wouldn’t let him go to the beach, because they thought that since the water was cold, and Elijah was playing in it, he could have gotten the cold and FLU. As you could imagine, Elijah was very sad. When he got better, he could go on the beach. He looked for the dolphin, but he could not find it. He found an old abandoned bicycle, lying around, so he picked it up, and went out to every place in the city. Finally, he came to one of his friend’s father’s marine park. He went inside. He found his dolphin trapped in a tank with other dolphins. “Oh no!” He yelled. He ran to the manager’s office and went in. First he said politely, “Perhaps you could let this dolphin out?” When the manager refused, That’s when Elijah got mad. “I said, could ya let the dolphin out PLEASE!” The manager agreed. Sure kid. Now go on home. I’ll have a boat take the dolphin to the beach. Perhaps you could tell me where?” “MY BEACH!” said Elijah stubbornly. Elijah got on his scooter and went to HIS beach. A couple of minutes later, he saw the boat with the dolphin. When they let the dolphin out of the net, boy did the dolphin scramble! Finally, they were back together. They became good friends. Sadly, Elijah’s family then moved to Texas. A wile past. One day, a kid named Sam, saw the dolphin, made friends, and made a BIG attachment to each other. TO BE CONTINUED.
22 Nov 2009
1 Mar 2010
Fourth Grade Casanova
26 Mar 2010
Grateful Daughter
Halloween Pulp Non-Fiction
22 Oct 2010
12 Dec 2010
Hey you guys, this is D reporting to you my new poem, The New 12 Days of Christmas. “On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me
12 rawhide bones
11 pork and beef treats
10 chewed up shoes
9 bottles of fish food
8 packs o’ gum
7 spoons of casserole
6 pairs of teeth
5 deadly canines
4 nails a paw
3 internally huge stomachs
2 big brown eyes
and a Big mouth full of white teeth.”
This poem is dedicated to our new and beloved puppy, Daisy.
8 Mar 2011
26 Jul 2011
Happy Mother’s Day
14 May 2012
Happy Mother’s Day to you all! My daughter opened up a fortune cookie this evening and shouted for me from watching television –” mama mama come here and look what it says — it is totally weird – I opened this fortune cookie and it says — “Pay attention to mother’s exhortations more!” — Isn’t that awesome? For Mother’s Day”? Then. “What does exhortation mean”? she asks me. Earnest, sincere advise, honey, I tell her. Never underestimate the fortune cookie’s exhortation on mother’s day, kids!
The Red Earth 