Cremains
cremains (plural noun)
: cremating the remains of the day
moonwa cactuswa
chlorophyll is absent from the cells of the moon cactus. the absence of chlorophyll in a plant’s “body” reveals the beautiful true hues of the cacti fruit. orange and yellow to magenta red, the fruity peachiness of the graft reminds me of my mother’s tomatoes when they become rasam, and before it is picked from the vines with their green stocks jutting out in patterns quite unbelievable, i am reminded of the mojave desert, layered. the desert could have been gandhinagar once upon a time. dry. chill dry. layered. peeled peas lining brown loops of jute and blue plastics. polythene on poly. the greens gnaw the sensitivity in my tamarind rind-stuck teeth. the stuck tamarind reminds my friend of my periods when they come three months too late, too soon, and i show her the toilet proudly, exclaiming, i am not pregnant. i go sit on the toilet, and instead of a phone or a book in my hand is the white sheet of pristineness that demands attention in black and red striations. the prints read out to me something having to do with cysts in ovaries and how my life is layered.
so, when my period comes, i have to buy a moon cactus to prove to myself that it’s possible to pattern in bulk. all this pain and all the albino days when my panties wanted to be stained, layered with pads and prayers, now is proof that i am waiting for a father before a son or a
the ruby moon cactus had set its roots in the 1940s. way back. that was back when japan was in power. and nobody in india cared about japan much other than the fact that the workers in japan were more organized and far more productive than workers in india. i discovered this fact when i was seven and spent–madly, running around–all the excess energy in me bloodcurdling. my great-grandfather dusted portraits of him with sarojini naidu and jawahar lal nehru. i would ask so many questions, always curious, while the old village slept beside me, ruthless in the unknown, layered in coals and windswept farms. all the answers pointed to where food would come the next day and which land would be sold for the marriage of the seventh daughter in the family of nine. one dead. it is said that plants can influence us in our sleep too. they can envelope dreams like vines creeping in october. creeping in
japanese dreamers dreamt of colourful cactuses and decided that the duty of a cactus enthusiast was to amass collections of exotic plants from all over the globe and graft, with precision, in layers. bartering with food, land, or sleep, sometimes. this precision was/is repetition. a plant starts recognizing patterns and habits, solitary or abrupt. they have minds and souls. the hand of a worker that waters the dream and musters the courage to water in a drought is just something, i tell my brother, who is laughing at me, for i am painting a colorful cactus with pearly beads on it, a rare sight. dressing the cactus as if she is a bollywood heroine. pearls on a cactus, i resume my dream. chal chahaiya chhayia plays on spotify. my dadi’s white satin shawl lies stained. with earth, with blood. the same worker walks out of a small, dingy, dark factory, his trembling, bony hands waiting to water his exoticism. he goes home. to his laila. this majnu. what does this highly organized and highly productive worker dream of at the end of a weary
watering his colorful cactuses, for they wait with desperation, more accustomed to perishing than his own self. a beautiful layered needling. the water is sex. mela dilon ka atta hai, ek baar, aake chala jata hai. . .plays in the background. it plays
somewhere, about ten million seedlings of the roygbiv ball cactus were sent to japan from germany by one of the local farmers who subsequently discovered many mutations with red dots. so, he began breeding them together to produce an all-red specimen. i heard this somewhere. the plant’s spherical shape and fiery hue make it a fitting metaphor for japan, the “rising red sun.” i point to the sun blindly, swaying my hips and staring at the golden abyss on the kind of hot march day when you wish you were not poor and sing, o badra bahaar. . .i sway my hip. . .sway it like a mad dog till i see my neighbor peeking. kangna ranaut was recently slapped at the airport by a cisf jawan. the sun was so red, i tell you, i amused my family downstairs when asked what i was doing so late on the terrace all by myself. i was watching it set. i say it looked like an hour of an evening in downtown tokyo, and my father breaks the paper fan with ‘sayonara’ scribbled in two. i am tattered in layers of wool that belong to no country and to no one. i have never visited japan. i have never
you may transplant plants for use or aesthetics. it is so easy to talk about growth, but grafting? that requires experience. and layers of layering. layers of dreaming. the song man o to plays in the ear pods. you have to see it, do it, and feel it to be able to comprehend it. trees may be planted, grown from seeds, or appear naturally, as aristotle said. some plants are somewhat wounded before planting, while others are transplanted straight from the root, stem, branches, or seed. the wounds are anti- and post-mortem. sometimes, both. some are planted directly in the ground, while others are grafted onto existing trees. parasitic loving of the dying. dil ko teri aarzoo hai. . .. plays somewhere on the radio of my dreams in vavol. the end results are rather bleak but if done with some resultant thinking. i think about me growing in my mother’s womb and my brother a few years later. i was the cactus; he was the graft. i was the growth; he was the moon. a cacti sister with a moon for a brother. back in patna. in rasalpur, i am
the greatest results are achieved when grafting is exacted and measured. i used to draw figs on figs and pears on pears. acrylic on cloth, torn. one torn part for pads when the month ends, and blood runs everywhere. the other for editing my fantastical dreams of rainy bombay in charcoal on cloth. rim jhim gire ssawan. . .plays on the tv. my mother cut okra on her wooden stand while on the sill of our balcony, in the sun, grew a moon. an apple on pear, fig on fig, or fig on pear. pigeons and many pigeons.
occasionally, grafting became a poem on my mother’s balcony that felt prosecuted in the summer’s heat outside and winter’s coldness inside. occasionally becoming
russians attempted a graft between two canine species in the 1940s. this was done for therapeutic reasons. there will always be someone who will forsake growth for grafts. forsake chlorophyll norms for colorful variants. a gospel all alone in the wild of some lonely writer’s desk. four other colors, different, for the company. madno maashuko. . .dilbaro. . ..
ancient chinese records from as early as 2000 bce describe the practice of grafting in detail with varied practices preaching in spasms. peach, plum, pear, and citrus trees were propagated by the chinese using the grafting technique in days of reproach and otherwise. they created “approach grafting,” in which the stems of two plants are connected without severing them from their roots. this approach was sweet. as sweet as enmeshed tendrils on my mother’s forehead. her dorsals full of flour and spices. a small fly buzzes near her ear, and her hands brush the fly away, almost. a speck of spice settles on the enmeshed tendril, coloring the dark black of the hair, turmeric, and ruby red. just like the moon cactuses when they first landed on a monsoon day on my hearth, my partner emptied his pockets at the florist as the florist ate a flour-spiced samosa, sharing a piece with him. saying this is from india. this samosa. my mother called that evening to congratulate
a painting of a grafted cactus sits in a study by a window that has a lush view of green pine trees and nuts strewn on the grounds. sparrows pecking at the grafted painting, their eyes wanting to meet the fruits of the grafts. i remember putting my feet down by the fire, a small wooden cactus magnetized on my didi’s fridge. my laptop not naked anymore—covered with stickers and enamel-sized caricatures of cactuses.
in many reconcilable moments, i have spared the prick of a cactus, to tell myself the fable of how cactuses talk with their pricks.
i try to smell the graft, finding a history worth of prickings and yields.
in both europe and asia, grafting was still often done throughout the middle ages and the renaissance. during this period, grafting was mostly utilized to increase fruit yields and develop novel cultivars. nectarines are a type of grafted peach; blood oranges are an orange; meyer lemons are a type of grafted lemon; seville oranges are grafted sour oranges; citrons are grafted limes; grapefruits are grafted pomelos; tangelos are grafted tangerines; clementines are grafted mandarins; marmalades are grafted quinces and almonds; cherries are
there is a notion that happiness multiplies and is a factor of progeny, yes environment for cacti. so if the clara (the chlorophyll) is happy, then it will distinctively flower. these flowers are always different and unexpected. they grow so fast, proud on a graft. someone told me when i was just a small girl that you can hug trees and they like it. i thought about how trees give themselves to ‘us.’ what ‘we’ decide to do to them is about ‘us.’ trees are the most vulnerable of beings. they never want those many branches or flowers on them. all they ask is that a few of what they have is kept with
so, i had been studying about siachen since the day the cousin who stalked me and groped me stopped talking to me. my mother had caught us kissing. he was to leave the next day for the borders to guard against ‘enemies’ on ‘disputed lines where human habitation isn’t possible.’ he had taken with him some seeds he stole from my sill. those were the only seeds remaining of the cacti that could grow anywhere, especially in desolate spaces on earth. i cried a lot for a few weeks, but those tears were mostly due to gaining weight and being mocked by my mother into eating oily banana chips that i gulped down, a handful every time i saw a bird the color of the
SHALINI SINGH’s moon cactuswa died the day this essay on her cacti got published. She since then believes in coincidences that happen for a reason and how they make sense.