Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Conversation

Clitoris.
Oh! Oh no! read the apology on my face, my friend
It’s so common a word, I know
Yet I cannot, at this moment, recall its meaning
Yet I cannot, at any moment, claim I know its meaning.

Do not glare at me, do not
let me see disdain flicker in your eyes
So what if I have never used it in a sentence?
I know what lummox means and that you think of me to be one

I knew what procrastination means at thirteen when
I had mentioned it as my hobby in a class-mate’s slam book
And crepuscular was what I whispered to myself
Before I began day-dreaming during school recess.

Ah! Do I see a ghost of a smile on your lips?
Just like the one I had seen on my mother’s when
One afternoon I had asked if she knew who a valetudinarian is
And she replied that she did not.

Do not smother your laugh please
For I am not upset at all, I
Who slept with the lexicon by my pillow
Who called a bully curmudgeonly once in the playground

For I never have indeed looked up the meaning of clitoris.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Defending my right to a yellow summer!

Strange are the ways of the economy, and of the people who oversee its functioning. They would not let me engage in what I would like to describe as ‘quotidian activism’! On reading of horrors that processed food items with their innumerable artificial additives can unleash on human health, I decided to not eat packaged or processed food as long as I have other alternatives.
I thought it would be my way of protesting against being fed as ‘food’ items which have nothing save industrial chemicals as their ingredients. Fruit drinks do not have a gram of fruit in them and much sought-after ‘healthy’ snacks have dangerous transfats in them! I thought I ought to protest against this infringement not only of my right to nutrition but also of my right to information, awareness and free choice. To discover that what I have been consuming as ‘healthy’ crackers because they are advertised as edibles containing fibrous grains, are actually laden with artificial flavours snd fats was scandalous for me not merely because the stuff adversely affected my health but because I have been misled into believing that iit is good for me and eventually, into buying it.
It is this culture of influence and control over my food habits by the industrial food production system and its advertising mechanism that I wanted to protest against. But I soon realized that I would inevitably have to break my resolution, change my decision, desert my own cause. I would have become an apostate and not because, I could not resist the temptation of drinking diet cola on blazing afternoons despite knowing that it has been sweetened with artificial sweetner of questionable health impact, or because I could not overlook the convenience of eating noodles which can be cooked in five minutes. I knew I would have to break my resolution because my alternatives are all exorbitantly priced. Only today I paid close to hundred bucks for as few as three mangoes-back at home, when my ma served us mangoes every evening during the summer months it had never occurred to me to attempt to discover anything about the yellow fruit except its ambrosia-like taste. That is all that I had cared for but now when I have to buy it, I discover facts other than this that it is an expensive fruit. I now get an opportunity to brood over the question why is it so important to earn good money. Not because you are not particularly bothered by your conscience that hinders you from becoming a cog in the giant corporate machinery; not because you want a sybarite life-style and certainly not because you crave for the social standing that comes with a heavy purse. You want to earn money suddenly to be able to eat mangoes.
Yes, I just need to brush up my basic economics and I should know that prices of fruits and vegetables are high because presently, the country is smarting under the blows of high food inflation. But I still cannot stop scratching my head-how come the price of mangoes has increased because of food inflation but not the price of the mango-based (so-called) drinks? The cost of potatoes are spiraling upwards but that of a packet of potato wafers still remains ten rupees as it was fifteen years ago when I first began to get addicted to its ineffable taste.
There were other amazing discoveries to make-the fruit vendor on the street sold half a kilo apples to me for eighty rupees whereas at the neighbourhood mall, the same quantity of apples costs fifty bucks. Thinking that maybe my mannerisms of an ingenuous, wide-eyed(so appealing for vendors!) dolt must have convinced the fruit vendor that perhaps she can fleece me as and when she pleases, I decided to confront her if only to prove to her that looks can be deceptive. But alas! I soon squirmed with embarrassment because she explained to me patiently in halting Hindi that she bought small quantities of particular fruits whereas retail giants who run stores in malls bought the entire produce directly from individual farmers. Could she ever compete with retail chains in terms of pricing? No, she could not, she said nodding her head and then asked me how could I expect her to offer as low prices as the malls? I was reminded of one of the lectures in TISS on why is the small vendor or neighbourhood grocery shop badly hit by liberalization.
Thus, I am struck in an excruciating situation-I either, given my paltry income, give up my protests against being forced to become a consumer of processed food items or I continue my protests but end up in the process, becoming a mall customer where fruits are still affordable because the idea of buying greens and fruits from the sweet-faced, smooth talking and slightly condescending fruit vendor in my neighbourhhood, representative of India’s ever accommodating informal sector, is a very costly one for me.

Monday, May 09, 2011

A day in Calcutta

I was relieved after the wedding. It was a lavish affair, and a noisy affair, besides being a crowded one. I enjoyed it as much as a tacit person can enjoy at a friend’s wedding-I chiefly was engaged in observing people through out the evening. But as I said, I was relieved after the wedding and my first trip to Bengal all alone, got transformed from a grueling exercise in desirable social etiquettes and mannerisms as it was at the wedding in Durgapur to a memorable sojourn when on the following day, I went to Calcutta.I had only half a day at my disposal and I was amazed that despite all my wooly-headedness, I could tell Namrata at the Howrah station where she came to receive me, that I should very like to go to a place where I could shop for Bengali books and music. She had nodded her head significantly. We traveled across the Hoogli river in a ferry and then, we walked along the avenues of Dalhousie on our way to a Chinese restaurant where she had wished to take me for lunch. On our way, admiring the colonial architecture of the buildings I commented, “I wish I could stay in one of these buildings!”
“Well, you can. All that you need to do is to find for yourself a groom hailing from any of the old bonedi families of North Calcutta; they live in such ramshackle old mansions.” Namrata said and I scowled in reply. It is very unpleasant, I told her, to hear jokes about one’s own marriage just after one has attended a friend’s wedding. We ate in a seedy restaurant where there were men drinking at 2 in the afternoon. I must have stared at them in amazement for long because Namrata reprimanded me, “Ai takash na obhabe. Tor Ahmedabad e theke ekdom shobhab kharap hoye geche.” (Don’t glare at the men who are drinking. Ahmedabad has clearly ruined your good habits/manners). I turned away self-consciously and that was my only awkward moment of the trip. Thank Heavens! We next went to Park Street and there, at the Oxford Book store, Namrata must have had to undergo a most difficult test of her patience as I quite shamelessly(am I being too harsh on myself, Namrata?) forgot her existence and squatted on the floor of the shop with piles of books. I began going through a Sunil Gangopadhyay omnibus, and also works of Sukumar Ray, Ashapurna Devi, Narayan Gangopadhyay and Shirjendu Mukhopadhyay. In a state of excited fervour, I had also picked Calvino, Mc Luhan, and Roberto Calliso. The book shop is one of the best that I have ever been to and unlike any other book store, has the books in its fiction section arranged in an alphabetic order after the names of the authors!
I could not allow myself to overlook the fact that I had only a thousand and five hunded rupees to spend on books and that I should be rather ashamed if I did not buy a book for my dear, old Baba who always buys books for me whenever he visits any place. It was a difficult task; a grave responsibility. I spend the next hour or so in a state of unbearably sweet agony, meticulously going through each of the tomes, trying to decide which of these works were absolutely essential for my existence. I figured Baba would like Shirjendu Mukhopadhyay’s wry, ironic humour as I much I do and that this could be one author whom both of us could read (unlike his favourite authors Bankim Chandra Chatterjee or Sharat Chandra Chatterjee whose classical style is beyond my power of comprehension given the fact that my Bangla vocabulary is rather limited). I also picked a volume of collected works of Narayan Gangopadhyay, a Calvino book called Adam, one afternoon, a couple of Tapan Sinha movies and a copy of the latest edition of Biblio, which I had last read a year ago in the TISS library! I finally stood up to realize that I have not spoken to Namrata, my gracious hostess in the city for over an hour now. Shit! I hurriedly looked around for her almost expecting to find her, mad at me for making her wait for so long But fortunately, she was reading something herself.(Was it not a book shop that we were in? What else could she have been doing?)
From the book store, we went to-because I hollered in excitement at the sight of the delicatessen- Flurry’s. I told her that I know of this place from the movie Parineeta, and that I also knew that it’s a very old pastry shop. In reply,she smiled indulgently. As I entered it, I had a deja-vu; I was reminded of Causeway in Bombay and its brightly-lit restaurants housed in old buildings.
Finally, when we boarded a local train at the Howrah station to Joka to go to Namrata’s house, we were both pushed and shoved so badly that I almost lost her. It began to rain soon and by the time we got off the train, it was pouring heavily. It was the most unexpectedly beautiful end of an unexpectedly pleasant day-when I had left the blazing city of Ahmedabad a day back, I had not hoped to get drenched in a downpour! Namrata was now looking for a cycle rickshaw to take us home….