Adieu!

The million slivers of moon
That laid scattered on the crest of the sea
Were counted fervently, with a mad glee
By someone resolving not to miss one of them...

The same person
During the last winter rains
Had wondered if she is sane
As she wept, thinking of old,mullioned windows,grim
And a child, who used to while watching pours,dream .....

Now the puerile idiot
Doubts about that you have need not
Has moist eyes again, for her noetic sojourn
Of a heart break, nay, a thousand heart breaks and frown
That comprised, will morph into memories
Soon.

Last Night.......

Last night.....
With lights switched off
In voices soft,
The quotidian ritual
Of baring bosoms mutual,
Was being performed.

Thoughts, giggles and chides
Exchanged were secrets till late night
Until one of the girls, the older
With an affectionate pat on her shoulder
Said her friend,"After ten years, i would like to meet,
Would like to know, when not at 20, will at 30, you be an adult?
And in what need?"

A chasm, a million miles wide....
Suddenly pushes the two away,far aside
The older is bemused,
The younger is reduced...
To being the possessor of a wounded bosom
For the truth gruesome,
Has stuck her that
Adulthood, strange, elusive
She seeks it never!

The Adonis and his tome......... On Siddharth Shanghvi

Had the lovers not possessed such skill and panache
Had their love, written about in interminable paragraphs, been
A bit flawed, a bit imperfect…..
Had the characters- the heroine, her man, her cousin, been
A little layman-like
And not demigods, astounding beyond imagination
Had I been a bit less dreamy,
A bit more admirer of magic realism A bit well, less addicted to poe
Then the Adonis would have bowled me over!

College Assignment put up as a post: umpteen doubts about its worthiness!

Parashuram: The icon of neo-Brahminism

News item no.1-
At the Brahmin Maha Mela organizedon June 5 last year by the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) in Lukhnow, Mayavati was presented by Sudhir Chandra Mishra, the Brahmin leader of BSP with a silver axe, the weapon of Parashurama, the warrior who vpwed to kill all Kshatriyas in order to protect the Brahmin community. As all these unfolded, the crowd shouted not only the BSP’s traditional slogan ‘JaiBheem’ (alluding to B.R. Ambedkar) but also ‘Jai Parashuram’.

News item no.2-
There has considerable pressure upon the governments of atleast two states , Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, to announce Parashuram’s birthday as an official holiday.

News Item no.3-
An all India Parashuram Association and Foundation have been formed to promote the economic, political and social interests of the Brahmins. Prior to the national conference of this association in June, 2005 at Surat, a Parashuram ‘Kalash’ (sacred pot) was carried in procession from the Somnath temple to the conference’s venue.

All these stand as evidences of the emergence of Parashuram as the new icon of Brahminism, at least in north India. The Brahmins in India are clearly no longer happy with their age-old image of being scholars, priests, teachers and ascetics like Manu, Vasistha, Panini and Shankaracharya. They would now prefer to carry the image of being intrepid warriors like Parashuram, the legendary Brahmin hero who exterminated the kshtriyas several times.
It is interesting to note that of all the illustrious Brahmins in history, Parashuram should be chosen as the icon especially now, when they are uniting to strengthen themselvrs economically and politically. It is well-known that in every part of India, the Brahmins are divided into endogaous sub-castes and sub-sub-castes. But, nowadays the Brahmins are forging unity first between the sub-sub-castes within the sub-castes and then between the different sub-castes within the Brahmin caste in various ways.
One such way of establishing unity adopted by the Parashuram Foundation is to encourage ‘love marriage’ between the various Brahmin sub-castes by organizing ‘marriage melas’ where boys and girls of the caste are given an opportunity to meet and mix with an aim at marriage. The association also provides scholarships and loans to students to encourage meritorious students of the community. The Parashuram association also organizes festivals, pilgrimages and pleasues trips, and several other activities to strengthen unity within the caste.
The association, in fact, has units at lower levels such towns which form a federation for the region , which in turn becomes a part of the all India association . The grass-root level activities of the organization has contributed towards enhancing its powers I the political arena. One may wonder as to what led to the formation of the brahmin organization and why has there been a sudden rise in its activities.
The reasons may be traced in the growing sense of insecurity amongst the Brahmins, as a result of reservations for the scheduled castes, tribes and other backward classes in educational institutions and government jobs. The feeling is particularly strong among the poorer Brahmins who feel that the while the false notion that the Brahmins always corner the high, plum jobs still remain stuck to them, in reality it is the OBCs(Other Backward Classes) who occupy the plum positions mostly. The Brahmins who eke out their living by working as peons, cooks, or bus-conductors feel that they, in spite of their economic backwardness are left out while even the affluent SCs and OBCs enjoy the benefits of reservation. This has been an important cause behind the formation of the Parashuram Association. In order to protect brahmin interests against encroachments by the OBCs, the Association is ready to align with the dalits. In Uttar Pradesh, the Brahmins have already established political alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which is essentially a party of the dalits. This naturally reminds one of the stories about Parashuram, which say that he had trained many a shudra including Karna of the Mahabharata as warriors. Hence the Brahmin alliance with the dalits who, now look upon the OBCs instead of the Brahmins as their oppressors, is in a way a silent revolution, which is smashing into bits the thousands of years old caste hierarchy.
This mutations go hand in hand with the declining influence of notions associated with caste such as purity and pollution, not only in towns but also in villages. The Brahmins are now competing with other castes in matters such as increasing their strength in educational institutions, employment market and the political arena. In order to achieve these, it is of utmost importance for the Brahmins to enhance their internal unity and bolster their economic strength. They feel that all these can be gained only by adopting the same methods as the other castes have adopted: the methods of militarism. In such a zeitgeist, when the brahmin community is endeavouring to transform itself, it has rightly chosen Parashuram as the new icon of this militant face of brahminism. However, whether they will be able to tread on his path or not and assert their socio-economic and political superiority over other castes, is a question the answer of which can be given only by time.

B.Wordsworth...

Years ago, i once read a short-story by V.S.Naipaul, which perhaps falls in the gamut of his least-known works.

It was called B.Wordsworth.

And it was the story-narrated by a boy- of a man who
'felt like a poet but could never be one'.

B.Wordsworth-the 'B'is later revealed to stand for black-was a kind of tramp in one of Caribbean islands, who after befriending the narrator tells him that he was writing the world's greatest story or poem, i dont exactly remember. The boy who had found in Black a kindred soul, very different fro his nagging monther,much later realised that Black had written zilch.....

for he was some one who 'felt like a poet but could never be one'.

i had then and till today, wonder as to which is more painful?

To be endowed with no poetic spirit at all or to have the spirit but not the faculty to give it a tangible form on the paper?
i think its the latter.

English August and some fantasies....

(Upamanyu Chatterjee and a scene from English August)

Upamanyu Chatterjee's fourth book,Weight Loss has just hit the book shelves and all national magazines,whetther it be India Today or The Outlook,have carried articles on the book in their latest issues.As i read these articles, i felt certain emotions resurging in my heart, certain memories resurfacing in my mind. they are ineffable but what i can do say about them is that i first experienced them nearly five years ago when i had read Chatterjee's debut novel,English August the first time. needless to say,like hundreds of other seventeen-year olds who have read it,i fell head over heels in love with Agasthya Sen, the most famous fictional bureaucrat of india.so many years later, when i once again felt that adolescent excitement and elation, the thought struck me that maybe, my euphoria wil be heightened if i allow my fancy to go wild and write about what was missing in an otherwise absolutely rivetting and adorable novel:Agasthya's love life.
imagine- i told this to myself-what shhould be thenature of the girl who would win August's love? he has been an anglophile since his school days in Darjeeling, for him indian country side is nothing more than 'miles and miles of familiar bt unknown hinterland',he has the appearence of a porn film actor,he says lies without an iota of hesitation, he is at times irreverant in the most outrageous ways and hence, as a character in the novel describes him, is 'the English type. yet,if he was to fall in love in the novel-and i have brooded over it myraid of times-it would be with some one whose trysts with and admiration for the intellectual as well as the popular cultures of the West has not turned her cynic of everything indian.
She had to be a bureacrat like him other wise how could they havemet in the novel which was such a brilliant crique of Indian Babudom,babus and their whims and caprices.
Except intellectually, she had to be,for literary excitement, an antipode of August.Reticent,truthful and innately simple,she would have struck August as someone so different from all the pretentious and hum-bug spewing friends he had had in life.

She could have never been someone astoundingly pretty. Had she been so,then there would have no scope for describing how August's initial insouciance for her gave way to admiration for her subtle charms and dreamy dispositiion.

Naturally, she would have been liked by both the gentle-hearted father of August, the Governor and his irascible and cynical but idealistic uncle, Poltu kaka.

She and August, in my fantasy, would have met in Madna itself at some government function where in the midst of insufferable shameless hangers-on and equally pompous babus; they would appeared to each other as exceptions.
Finally, what would have been the name of this woman with whom an unrelenting cynic and -i feel- even iconoclast like Agasthya Sen aka August aka English would have madly and perpetually in love?

Well,.....i would like Mr.Chatterjee suggest one. ihope he approves of young August falling in love. He needs to understand that girls will be girls and i am a girl who cannot bear to think of her favourite literary character and first crush leading a life devoid of true love!

This is me, doing what August inspired........