Monday, November 22, 2010
You are so beautiful!
You are as beautiful as the dream,
Dreamt on a winter night
By a traveller, gaunt and solitary
Who had slipped into slumber land
Just as he was gazing outside his mullioned train window
At a distant speck of light, very dim.
It had pierced through the misty darkness,
And unexpectedly warmed his weary, cold body.
The chilly wind that had lashed at his harsh features,
Jaw and cheeks, comforted him no longer!
He was suddenly reminded of hot milk and cookies
Of a tender face, its loving gaze-sensations ancient, vague
He felt were astir in his heart, the traveller, sleepless and relentless
Suddenly pulled up his quilt and meditated upon the gentle face.
Before long, he was in slumber land and dreaming
Of the afternoon when he had cried because his mother
Won’t let him wear his sister’s floral frock!
He dreamt of his grandfather’s pet Doberman
Of his grandmother’s red, woollen scarf
Of his sister’s sketches and his mother’s songs
And of his own bicycle, books and bats!
You are as beautiful as this dream
Haggard and harassed, when I think of you
That love can never be lost,
And innocence never be corrupted,
And dreams never be dead, I know is all true!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Missing Bombay
It was raining here in Ahmedabad today. And i was missing Bombay today...
The cold, damp wind which touched my skin when i stepped out of home this afternoon and the lightning which i watched tearing apart the inky-blue sky at dusk reminded me of my life at TISS. Back then, the touch of the wind and the sight of the lightning were all that it took me to make a trip to the sea shore.I would get excited at the prospect of watching the menacing dark waves rushing towards me from the distant, cloud-shrouded horizon, of munching peanuts near Gateway of India, of getting drenched in the rain and of having Hummus at Piccadily, while listening to the din on Causeway, created by the rain. During one such trip to Gateway on a rainy evening, I and Swathi did all these things and in addition, were stranded for several hours at CST since traffic in the city had come to a stand-still due to excessive water-logging. How i wish now that Ahmedabad had a coastline too; how i wish there was a Band stand or a Chowpati here where i could go to feel the magnanimity of the Sea in sharing the charms of its beauty with me!
The cold, damp wind which touched my skin when i stepped out of home this afternoon and the lightning which i watched tearing apart the inky-blue sky at dusk reminded me of my life at TISS. Back then, the touch of the wind and the sight of the lightning were all that it took me to make a trip to the sea shore.I would get excited at the prospect of watching the menacing dark waves rushing towards me from the distant, cloud-shrouded horizon, of munching peanuts near Gateway of India, of getting drenched in the rain and of having Hummus at Piccadily, while listening to the din on Causeway, created by the rain. During one such trip to Gateway on a rainy evening, I and Swathi did all these things and in addition, were stranded for several hours at CST since traffic in the city had come to a stand-still due to excessive water-logging. How i wish now that Ahmedabad had a coastline too; how i wish there was a Band stand or a Chowpati here where i could go to feel the magnanimity of the Sea in sharing the charms of its beauty with me!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
On phantom-buses, neighbourhood goddesses and railway time-tables
In our house, there are lots and lots of books. In any shelf in any room that you turn your eyes to, you will beheld at least ten books. As a child, I took to the habit of trying to identify the owner of the book and the year of its addition in our family library by analyzing the book itself.
A tawny-hued book on an abstruse topic like Tropical medicine or Tribes of India’s North-East, could belong to none but my Dadu and it had to be at least a fifty years old. He was a doctor who started practicing in the 1940s in the-then NEFA front, a strict disciplinarian who considered reading as a mental exercise, as a tool of cultivating one’s intellect and was disdainful of fiction.
A racy American thriller with a dog-eared jacket or a tome on Vedanta philosophy with torn pages-and my guesses were inevitably always correct in this matter-belonged to my father; an avid but careless reader who read at bed and while traveling. And while on vacation. And while drinking tea!
A Bengali novel with images of vanity-purse flaunting women and suited men kept with great care, in some shelf had to belong to my mom. She loved to arrange and organize things and she ensured that all her belongings whether it be the-no-longer –usable fountain pen she had owned since she appeared for ‘Matric exam’ or her books, were always kept in their appropriate places. She loved reading romances by the likes of Buddhadeb Bose, Nabanita Debsen and the like but so did my grandmother. Hence, I had the toughest time in playing Sherlock, when I tried to figure who could the owner of Bengali romances be?
A Danielle Steel or a Sidney Sheldon title, if not torn, had to be my chotomashi’s. She sweared by the Readers Digest and sternly rebuked me whenever she saw me eyeing any of her books.
Not that she was the only one to reprimand me for being curious to read ‘boroder boi’; I was told in strictest of terms that I should stick to reading my own books and that I should not get inquisitive about titles which I was too young to read. I, being an obedient child of the first order who also happened to be scared to see frowning countenances around me, never ventured to touch ‘their’ books but read the ones which they bought for me or let me buy at the book fairs with great relish and gusto!
When I was ten, my Dida bought me ‘Chotoder Golpo Shanchayan’ an anthology first published in the 1920s. I had barely learnt to read Bangla then and was not familiar with any of the names included in the list of contributors. It was a winter afternoon and on our way back from the book fair, where she had purchased the book, my granny explained to me, “This is one of the first books I had read as a child. A copy of this book was there in my father’s house. I am so glad that they have republished it; may I read it first, dear?” I had ignored her sentimental request and instead asked her, suspiciously, “You had read it when you were a kid? You are so old yourself.Is it possible that this book was written so long ago? And if it was, are you sure its in Bangla?” My dida had laughed at the question but indeed most of its stories were not written in the Bengali which I could comprehend. They were written in ‘sadhu bhasa’ which was used actively till about the 1940s, I guess. I was disappointed to discover that I could not read the stories myself which had been categorized under different headings such as Horror, Fairy-tales, Historical, Social, Humorous etc. but my granny decided to initiate me to the charms of the book and to refresh her own memories, by reading out the stories to me.
There was ‘Iicha puran’ by Tagore, the now oft-told tale of a middle-aged father who is rueful of his wasteful habits as a child and yearns to amend the mistakes of his childhood by being a child again like his son and of his mischievous son who, fed up of the restrictions imposed on him, desires wholeheartedly to become an independent adult like his father so that no one can scold him for having candies all day! A goddess who was passing by their house, does fulfill the wishes of the father-son duo and the story chronicles the ensuing disastrous consequences. I had laughed my heart out after listening to this story and had marveled if goddesses still ‘pass by houses’ as do vegetable vendors and carpenters?
But even more hilarious was the story ‘Time-table’ by Sunirmal Basu which narrated the story of the misadventures of a group of boys who decided to visit their friend in Bihar during their Christmas vacations of 1928 and ended up traveling by the wrong train and knocking at the doors of a stranger in a different city because they had referred to the train time-table of 1926, instead of 1928! I was so thrilled to think that people traveled by trains, or visited friends, or disobeyed parents in 1928. Yes, yes. it does sound like an utterly silly line of thought to take up but when you are a ten year old with a penchant for fantasising about life and habits in bygone eras, such a reverie is indispensable for you.
On one yellow, soporific winter afternoon, I had found myself crying silently after listening to the story ‘Srikanter nisith abhijan’ by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay(better known as the author of Devdas) about the rite of passage of a boy during his adventures of a single night with a friend. In the story, Srikanta, the protagonist, makes a heart-searing observation about his friend which roughly translated, would be something like the following-
“Oh God! You have bestowed your bounties on all and sundry-you have gifted mortals with intellect and beauty, wealth and power. But upon how many have you bestowed the gift of courage in the manner you did on------? Why did you make him so brave that unlike the rest of us, he did not, could not, fear even death?”
The other stories had memorable lines too; the one called ‘Pagoler Mela’ by the master of short-stories, Premendra Mitra was about the impoverished kingdom of a worthless king whose courtiers and ministers have nothing better to do than to bicker with each other all day over trivial matters. I had, even with my little appreciation for wit at the age of ten, gloated over the originality of the lines like-
“The powerful army of the vast kingdom has innumerable fine horses. They make their presence felt every day by neighing whenever they are not fed, such fine horses are they!” And there was another one, “The king is so mighty and formidable that there are no thieves in the kingdom. The robbers complain that they can never earn their efforts’ worth there!” All these tales left an indelible mark on my mind; that literary stalwarts of Bengal had contributed to the anthology is indicative of the fact that children literature was considered a serious genre in those days. The greatness of these stories lies in their timelessness; no matter what one’s age is, she cannot but appreciate their riveting plots and the fact that they all enriched the readers' imagination. For instance,the horror story called ‘Konkal sharothi’ revolving around the spine-chilling experiences of a young man who boarded, in a state of fever, what he called a phantom bus, articulates the umpteen sounds which can be heard by a pair of keen ears on a desolate, silent night, is bound to fire a child’s imagination and teach him to not to be scared of the darkness. The best thing about all the stories in ‘Chotoder golpo shanchayan’ was that they treated young readers as intelligent, sensitive beings with strong power of rationalization and a stronger sense of imagination. Never did they tend to be simplistic. Hence, never did they lose their charm for me!
A tawny-hued book on an abstruse topic like Tropical medicine or Tribes of India’s North-East, could belong to none but my Dadu and it had to be at least a fifty years old. He was a doctor who started practicing in the 1940s in the-then NEFA front, a strict disciplinarian who considered reading as a mental exercise, as a tool of cultivating one’s intellect and was disdainful of fiction.
A racy American thriller with a dog-eared jacket or a tome on Vedanta philosophy with torn pages-and my guesses were inevitably always correct in this matter-belonged to my father; an avid but careless reader who read at bed and while traveling. And while on vacation. And while drinking tea!
A Bengali novel with images of vanity-purse flaunting women and suited men kept with great care, in some shelf had to belong to my mom. She loved to arrange and organize things and she ensured that all her belongings whether it be the-no-longer –usable fountain pen she had owned since she appeared for ‘Matric exam’ or her books, were always kept in their appropriate places. She loved reading romances by the likes of Buddhadeb Bose, Nabanita Debsen and the like but so did my grandmother. Hence, I had the toughest time in playing Sherlock, when I tried to figure who could the owner of Bengali romances be?
A Danielle Steel or a Sidney Sheldon title, if not torn, had to be my chotomashi’s. She sweared by the Readers Digest and sternly rebuked me whenever she saw me eyeing any of her books.
Not that she was the only one to reprimand me for being curious to read ‘boroder boi’; I was told in strictest of terms that I should stick to reading my own books and that I should not get inquisitive about titles which I was too young to read. I, being an obedient child of the first order who also happened to be scared to see frowning countenances around me, never ventured to touch ‘their’ books but read the ones which they bought for me or let me buy at the book fairs with great relish and gusto!
When I was ten, my Dida bought me ‘Chotoder Golpo Shanchayan’ an anthology first published in the 1920s. I had barely learnt to read Bangla then and was not familiar with any of the names included in the list of contributors. It was a winter afternoon and on our way back from the book fair, where she had purchased the book, my granny explained to me, “This is one of the first books I had read as a child. A copy of this book was there in my father’s house. I am so glad that they have republished it; may I read it first, dear?” I had ignored her sentimental request and instead asked her, suspiciously, “You had read it when you were a kid? You are so old yourself.Is it possible that this book was written so long ago? And if it was, are you sure its in Bangla?” My dida had laughed at the question but indeed most of its stories were not written in the Bengali which I could comprehend. They were written in ‘sadhu bhasa’ which was used actively till about the 1940s, I guess. I was disappointed to discover that I could not read the stories myself which had been categorized under different headings such as Horror, Fairy-tales, Historical, Social, Humorous etc. but my granny decided to initiate me to the charms of the book and to refresh her own memories, by reading out the stories to me.
There was ‘Iicha puran’ by Tagore, the now oft-told tale of a middle-aged father who is rueful of his wasteful habits as a child and yearns to amend the mistakes of his childhood by being a child again like his son and of his mischievous son who, fed up of the restrictions imposed on him, desires wholeheartedly to become an independent adult like his father so that no one can scold him for having candies all day! A goddess who was passing by their house, does fulfill the wishes of the father-son duo and the story chronicles the ensuing disastrous consequences. I had laughed my heart out after listening to this story and had marveled if goddesses still ‘pass by houses’ as do vegetable vendors and carpenters?
But even more hilarious was the story ‘Time-table’ by Sunirmal Basu which narrated the story of the misadventures of a group of boys who decided to visit their friend in Bihar during their Christmas vacations of 1928 and ended up traveling by the wrong train and knocking at the doors of a stranger in a different city because they had referred to the train time-table of 1926, instead of 1928! I was so thrilled to think that people traveled by trains, or visited friends, or disobeyed parents in 1928. Yes, yes. it does sound like an utterly silly line of thought to take up but when you are a ten year old with a penchant for fantasising about life and habits in bygone eras, such a reverie is indispensable for you.
On one yellow, soporific winter afternoon, I had found myself crying silently after listening to the story ‘Srikanter nisith abhijan’ by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay(better known as the author of Devdas) about the rite of passage of a boy during his adventures of a single night with a friend. In the story, Srikanta, the protagonist, makes a heart-searing observation about his friend which roughly translated, would be something like the following-
“Oh God! You have bestowed your bounties on all and sundry-you have gifted mortals with intellect and beauty, wealth and power. But upon how many have you bestowed the gift of courage in the manner you did on------? Why did you make him so brave that unlike the rest of us, he did not, could not, fear even death?”
The other stories had memorable lines too; the one called ‘Pagoler Mela’ by the master of short-stories, Premendra Mitra was about the impoverished kingdom of a worthless king whose courtiers and ministers have nothing better to do than to bicker with each other all day over trivial matters. I had, even with my little appreciation for wit at the age of ten, gloated over the originality of the lines like-
“The powerful army of the vast kingdom has innumerable fine horses. They make their presence felt every day by neighing whenever they are not fed, such fine horses are they!” And there was another one, “The king is so mighty and formidable that there are no thieves in the kingdom. The robbers complain that they can never earn their efforts’ worth there!” All these tales left an indelible mark on my mind; that literary stalwarts of Bengal had contributed to the anthology is indicative of the fact that children literature was considered a serious genre in those days. The greatness of these stories lies in their timelessness; no matter what one’s age is, she cannot but appreciate their riveting plots and the fact that they all enriched the readers' imagination. For instance,the horror story called ‘Konkal sharothi’ revolving around the spine-chilling experiences of a young man who boarded, in a state of fever, what he called a phantom bus, articulates the umpteen sounds which can be heard by a pair of keen ears on a desolate, silent night, is bound to fire a child’s imagination and teach him to not to be scared of the darkness. The best thing about all the stories in ‘Chotoder golpo shanchayan’ was that they treated young readers as intelligent, sensitive beings with strong power of rationalization and a stronger sense of imagination. Never did they tend to be simplistic. Hence, never did they lose their charm for me!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
On discovery of notes from the underground, witnessing the fall of the house of Usher and living amidst optimism of globalisation.
The antithesis of the normal man is the man of acute consciousness who has come out of course, not of lap of nature but out of a retort…this retort made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis with all his exaggerated consciousness, he thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man…Apart from the one fundamental nastiness, the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it, so many other nastiness in the form of doubts and questions, adds to that one question so many unsettled questions that it inevitably works up around it a sort of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action…Of course, the only thing left for it to do is to dismiss all that with a wave of its paw and with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not even itself believe, creeps ignominiously into its mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking underground home, our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and ever-lasting spite.
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I am a mouse, a missy mouse and I have my ‘underground home’ to which I retrieve to escape the pragmatic world populated with successful ‘men and women of action’ for whom I feign contempt, all the while knowing that my Ma would have had so much less to worry over if I could be like them. That underground home of mine is my reverie, kaleidoscopic yet monochromatic as it is always sepia tinted! My reverie embraces me in its gossamer arms, treating me like Alice but calling me Amelie! I amble solitary on a beach on a stormy afternoon and watch with awe, the ardent romance of the ferocious wind with the picturesque but no less turbulent sea. Suddenly, I spot in a distance, across the heavy, sombre curtain of rain, a gaunt figure with dishevelled hair. I cannot see it well but I know that the figure has dreamy, melancholy eyes that are capable of narrating a thousand ballads of broken dreams and heart-break. I quicken my foot-steps so that I can reach the figure who I think is a poet, a kindred soul lost in the deserted beach like I am but the more I walk in its direction, the more distant does the figure gets. This figure never materialises in my reverie again, until one frosty winter morning, when am sitting by my favourite casement in the ancient public library of my sleepy little hill station and I-again suddenly-spot the same figure, gaunt and dreamy, walk past the mountainous path right under my window. By now, I only know it to well to expect anything from it. Thus, I, the missy mouse, sitting in my mouse hole, travel from mountains to beaches and back to my hole. “The longer you stay in there, the more enfeebled you will be.” They tell me, nodding their heads with concern. I know I should but some how i dont want to. I have reasons for my unwillingness-unlike Dostoyevsky’s 19th century mouse’s hole, mine does not stink. In it wafts the fragrance of the dreams I dreamt of the House of Usher last night and of radical revolutions against parochialism and injustice i read up about. Do i have to venture out of the hole to be able to contribute in them? Well, this is what cant figure out.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
On Confusion
What is it that I fear more?
The prospect of a jobless future or
The pigeon perched on the sill of my bedroom window
I cant say, preoccupied with the elusive facial glow
There is Kantian Deontology
And Gender Issues at Work; social anthropology
The Stakeholder Theory is vaguely attractive too
But there is literature of diaspora as well, that I yearn I knew
To love or not to love!
Myself, morality, men-suave or gruff?
To dream of insurrections of the intellect
Or to rue over missing the train to affluence, with its lights of ritzy effect
There is my mind and revolving in it
Are commonplace ambition and petty need
Which woods lead to the avenue of greatness?
Lucre or Barazovian ideals or a mind like mine that is a fine mess!
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