You will now be a reminiscence
Dazzling in beauty
No different from how you were when
you were my day-dream!
Songs will remind me of you
So would passages of esoteric novels
In solitude and in silence,
In musings and in reveries,
And in corridors you would never walk again
Alone, I will encounter you.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Produced on an unproductive Sunday
I never cease to think of this person
Or to care for her
To listen to her stories
And to allay her fears!
To attempt to make sense of her dreams
And to please her fancies
To tolerate her caprices even
Why? Just because she is called I?
Who is-am-I anyway?
Neither Sarah Woodruff nor Anne of Green gable
Just a common consumer is she
Of accolades, apples and electricity, besides maudlin songs.
No different or better than a million others
Then why can I not cease to care for her?
Might it be because I know that
for a quarter of a century now, she has been dreaming?
Of a history of the grand theories in her head
Foolish loafer you may call her, but I will call her a lotus eater
Of ancient tales told in the lost cities in her head
Crazy wench she may seem to you but to me a raconteur.
I cannot not like her, fragile
No less than her gossamer-spun dreams
Besides, she tries to figure why she exists
In her building, a city, a civilisation!
And so do I.
Or to care for her
To listen to her stories
And to allay her fears!
To attempt to make sense of her dreams
And to please her fancies
To tolerate her caprices even
Why? Just because she is called I?
Who is-am-I anyway?
Neither Sarah Woodruff nor Anne of Green gable
Just a common consumer is she
Of accolades, apples and electricity, besides maudlin songs.
No different or better than a million others
Then why can I not cease to care for her?
Might it be because I know that
for a quarter of a century now, she has been dreaming?
Of a history of the grand theories in her head
Foolish loafer you may call her, but I will call her a lotus eater
Of ancient tales told in the lost cities in her head
Crazy wench she may seem to you but to me a raconteur.
I cannot not like her, fragile
No less than her gossamer-spun dreams
Besides, she tries to figure why she exists
In her building, a city, a civilisation!
And so do I.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Poetry at the beach...
It is unbelievable that a year has now passed since the trip.
We had submitted the last of our assignments and had a month’s time before we received our degrees at the convocation. I had therefore nothing to do but even then, I was hesitant to agree when Swathi suggested that I should go to Goa with her and Sita and their friends.
I had never been on a holiday without my parents, I had woefully small sum of money in my bank account and I was rather ashamed of asking Ma to send me more money, I did not think too highly of Goa as a holiday destination, crowded and noisy as it would be-I had myriad of reasons for being unwilling to go to Goa. Moreover, there was one reason that I was scared of admitting even myself but which I knew was the main cause of my reluctance-for four long days, I had to be with people and talk to them! I must have bitten my nails for several nights, while wondering if I could tell Swathi and Sita that I did not wish to go with them, because I was unsure if I would want to be with them on all four days…
I eventually did go to Goa last spring. We had stayed at the Baga beach and traveled throughout north Goa in motor bikes; I have vivid memories of the hot mornings when we mostly went sightseeing to forts and churches and of cool, breezy nights when we sat in the beach till mid-night at least. I would invariably be uncomfortable for a while, each night at the beach because I could join my friends neither in drinking nor in their desultory conversations. But soon, I would cease to be self-conscious as with every passing hour, despite the presence of rowdy crowds in the beach, the sea would become increasing beautiful and mysterious. I would watch the silver slivers of the moon on crest of the waves and the distant trees and hillocks, silhouetted against the inky blue curtain of the night sky. In those moments, I intensely yearned that I had the talent for composing verses because I could have captured my impressions of those nights, along with all the ardour, exhilaration and wonder that I felt. Years later, I only had to read them and they would have, as powerful as incantations since they would have been, transported me back to the nights at the Baga beach. Convinced that no photograph could ever be half as effective, I did attempt to create unfading memories for myself at the beach by trying to write poetry but every time, I would give up mid-way, as none of the lines I wrote ever sounded half as beautiful as I felt I and the beach were, then.
A year has passed since then. Except for Sita and Swathi, I have not met or spoken to any of the other people who went on that trip. I have not ridden a bike either-it was in Goa that I last rode pillion behind Sita. I have not been to a flea market again. And, I have never felt so beautiful again.
We had submitted the last of our assignments and had a month’s time before we received our degrees at the convocation. I had therefore nothing to do but even then, I was hesitant to agree when Swathi suggested that I should go to Goa with her and Sita and their friends.
I had never been on a holiday without my parents, I had woefully small sum of money in my bank account and I was rather ashamed of asking Ma to send me more money, I did not think too highly of Goa as a holiday destination, crowded and noisy as it would be-I had myriad of reasons for being unwilling to go to Goa. Moreover, there was one reason that I was scared of admitting even myself but which I knew was the main cause of my reluctance-for four long days, I had to be with people and talk to them! I must have bitten my nails for several nights, while wondering if I could tell Swathi and Sita that I did not wish to go with them, because I was unsure if I would want to be with them on all four days…
I eventually did go to Goa last spring. We had stayed at the Baga beach and traveled throughout north Goa in motor bikes; I have vivid memories of the hot mornings when we mostly went sightseeing to forts and churches and of cool, breezy nights when we sat in the beach till mid-night at least. I would invariably be uncomfortable for a while, each night at the beach because I could join my friends neither in drinking nor in their desultory conversations. But soon, I would cease to be self-conscious as with every passing hour, despite the presence of rowdy crowds in the beach, the sea would become increasing beautiful and mysterious. I would watch the silver slivers of the moon on crest of the waves and the distant trees and hillocks, silhouetted against the inky blue curtain of the night sky. In those moments, I intensely yearned that I had the talent for composing verses because I could have captured my impressions of those nights, along with all the ardour, exhilaration and wonder that I felt. Years later, I only had to read them and they would have, as powerful as incantations since they would have been, transported me back to the nights at the Baga beach. Convinced that no photograph could ever be half as effective, I did attempt to create unfading memories for myself at the beach by trying to write poetry but every time, I would give up mid-way, as none of the lines I wrote ever sounded half as beautiful as I felt I and the beach were, then.
A year has passed since then. Except for Sita and Swathi, I have not met or spoken to any of the other people who went on that trip. I have not ridden a bike either-it was in Goa that I last rode pillion behind Sita. I have not been to a flea market again. And, I have never felt so beautiful again.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Dhyana at the Soiree
At the beginning, I was restless.
I wondered if it made any sense for me to be there when where I really wanted to be was the library, as I had lots to read. But it was a recital by the maestro who invented the Mohan Veena-Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and I was curious to listen to him play. So, at 8 o'clock in the night yesterday, I was to be found in a second row seat at the Ravi J.Mathai Auditorium in IIMA.
Initially, once concert began, I simply watched the changing expressions on the musician's visage and his nimble fingers that gracefully played the Veena. I even turned back to look at the audience in the auditorium. But I was still too distracted to appreciate the music, rich and mellifluous though I could feel it was. Was I incapable of appreciating Indian classical music, I wondered but barely for a moment. After all, I had so immensely enjoyed at the concerts of Pandit Jasraj and Pandit Ajoy Chakravarty and I have few memories as stupendously beautiful as the one of the stormy, April night last year when I had sat alone in the balcony of our first floor flat until dawn, listening to a singleKhayal based on the raaga Megha Malhar sung by Sawai Gandharva, while it rained incessantly.
I presently realised that I have a flaw-I am a slave of words, written and spoken. I am incapable of appreciating any form of art or communication that did not involve usage of words and which my mind could not analyse rationally.
It was a stunning discovery, and disconcerting. All around me, people had their gazes fixed on the stage in front of them while a few-perhaps, the most ardent connoisseurs-repeatedly and vigourously nodded their heads, right and left. I could not do either.
I shut my eyes and listened; gradually I began to grasp the cadence of the music that was being played. Concomitantly, images kept fleeting before my shut eyes-the interior of a dark cave that had at a great distance, a very tiny opening through which entered a faint beam of day-light, the silhouette of a beak-nosed man on a dimly lambent window pane.
After a time, the images ceased to appear and all that I was aware of now was the music-the rhythmic flow of sound waves that reached the crescendo once in a while, and constantly weaved intricate, evanescent patterns in the darkness that enveloped me.
When the recital finally ended, I realised so only when the audience began to clap and applaud. I opened my eyes and found myself seated in Sukhasana; my hands were on my thighs in the lotus mudra and my mind was calm. I realised that for the past half an hour or so, not a single thought had crossed my mind and there was not a single human face that I had looked at. There had been nothing between the music and my auditory senses. During that period, I could have been anyone-a Maori woman, an eighteenth century English squire and even a dog or a pigeon!
I had ceased then to exist, as myself. During the recital , thus, I had my first real session of Dhyana(meditation). Thank you, Panditji.
I wondered if it made any sense for me to be there when where I really wanted to be was the library, as I had lots to read. But it was a recital by the maestro who invented the Mohan Veena-Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and I was curious to listen to him play. So, at 8 o'clock in the night yesterday, I was to be found in a second row seat at the Ravi J.Mathai Auditorium in IIMA.
Initially, once concert began, I simply watched the changing expressions on the musician's visage and his nimble fingers that gracefully played the Veena. I even turned back to look at the audience in the auditorium. But I was still too distracted to appreciate the music, rich and mellifluous though I could feel it was. Was I incapable of appreciating Indian classical music, I wondered but barely for a moment. After all, I had so immensely enjoyed at the concerts of Pandit Jasraj and Pandit Ajoy Chakravarty and I have few memories as stupendously beautiful as the one of the stormy, April night last year when I had sat alone in the balcony of our first floor flat until dawn, listening to a singleKhayal based on the raaga Megha Malhar sung by Sawai Gandharva, while it rained incessantly.
I presently realised that I have a flaw-I am a slave of words, written and spoken. I am incapable of appreciating any form of art or communication that did not involve usage of words and which my mind could not analyse rationally.
It was a stunning discovery, and disconcerting. All around me, people had their gazes fixed on the stage in front of them while a few-perhaps, the most ardent connoisseurs-repeatedly and vigourously nodded their heads, right and left. I could not do either.
I shut my eyes and listened; gradually I began to grasp the cadence of the music that was being played. Concomitantly, images kept fleeting before my shut eyes-the interior of a dark cave that had at a great distance, a very tiny opening through which entered a faint beam of day-light, the silhouette of a beak-nosed man on a dimly lambent window pane.
After a time, the images ceased to appear and all that I was aware of now was the music-the rhythmic flow of sound waves that reached the crescendo once in a while, and constantly weaved intricate, evanescent patterns in the darkness that enveloped me.
When the recital finally ended, I realised so only when the audience began to clap and applaud. I opened my eyes and found myself seated in Sukhasana; my hands were on my thighs in the lotus mudra and my mind was calm. I realised that for the past half an hour or so, not a single thought had crossed my mind and there was not a single human face that I had looked at. There had been nothing between the music and my auditory senses. During that period, I could have been anyone-a Maori woman, an eighteenth century English squire and even a dog or a pigeon!
I had ceased then to exist, as myself. During the recital , thus, I had my first real session of Dhyana(meditation). Thank you, Panditji.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Pagla Dashu rediscovered
Today afternoon, I discovered in the Vikram Sarabhai library at IIM A, a slim volume that transported me back to the soporific summer afternoons of my childhood when I, after returning from school, would lay on my grandmother's ancient four-poster bed and read about the antics of Pagla Dashu, an adorable character created by Sukumar Ray-maybe the first eccentric hero of Bengali children's literature.
The book that I discovered today is an English translation of Ray's Abol Tabol by Sampurna Chattarjee, which contained a story featuring Dashu. One paragraph of Dashu: The Dotty One described the beauty of Dashu's lineaments.
Everything about Dashu-his face, his behaviour, the way he talks-makes it evident that he is a bit dotty. His eyes are as round as saucers, his ear are bigger than necessity demands, his head is a tangle of unruly curls.
Another adumbrates his talent as a wit.
Once he suddenly appeared in school wearing trousers. They were as baggy and shapeless as pyjamas and the coat that went with it looked like a huge pillowcase. He knew just as well as we did what an absurd sight he was but for some reason, this seemed to him a matter of great amusement. we asked him,"Why the trousers?" He laughed and said, "Why, to improve my English!"
On reading the story, I was reminded of a childhood yearning of mine-how I wished that I went to the same school as Dashu did! What a marvellously 'dotty' dude he must have been to befriend...
The book that I discovered today is an English translation of Ray's Abol Tabol by Sampurna Chattarjee, which contained a story featuring Dashu. One paragraph of Dashu: The Dotty One described the beauty of Dashu's lineaments.
Everything about Dashu-his face, his behaviour, the way he talks-makes it evident that he is a bit dotty. His eyes are as round as saucers, his ear are bigger than necessity demands, his head is a tangle of unruly curls.
Another adumbrates his talent as a wit.
Once he suddenly appeared in school wearing trousers. They were as baggy and shapeless as pyjamas and the coat that went with it looked like a huge pillowcase. He knew just as well as we did what an absurd sight he was but for some reason, this seemed to him a matter of great amusement. we asked him,"Why the trousers?" He laughed and said, "Why, to improve my English!"
On reading the story, I was reminded of a childhood yearning of mine-how I wished that I went to the same school as Dashu did! What a marvellously 'dotty' dude he must have been to befriend...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Animals in the Meadow
The flower, a single sunflower, was blossoming at the edge of the meadow and I watched it with bated breath. With Kumbhak. I was almost lost in the refulgent yellow of the flower when suddenly a voice, distant yet distinct, pierced through the hue and caused me to open my eyes.
“Ah! Please look at Aminura. Her knees and thighs are not an inch above the ground and this is one should ideally be sitting when performing Gomukh Asana.” The Yoga instructor said, gesturing her hand towards me. She nodded her graceful head in approval and said after a couple of seconds’ pause, during which several pairs of eyes turned in my direction, “I have not met many people who have her flexibility. It does not seem so improbable a thing to say that her body can be folded as neatly as a handkerchief and put away in a handbag.” I could feel that the gazes were still fixed on me but for the first time in my life, I was not embarrassed. Nothing has ever revealed my gaucherie so starkly as have the occasions when I have been commended for some reason. Whenever someone praises me, I involuntarily become stiff and nonplussed and if anybody makes the unfortunate mistake of commenting, even if in a casual manner, that I am ‘looking good’, I implacably turn hostile in the defense of my plainness.
Naturally, therefore, I was surprised that I could accept the generous words of Geeta, the Yoga Instructor, with such equanimity. In fact I forgot them the very next second when I shut my eyes again to search for the lush meadow, where I was a little while ago. I heard Geeta’s gentle voice asking us to stand erect and fold our hands to form the Namaskar Mudra. She said, “You are about to begin Surya Namaskar. Picture yourself praying to the Sun at dawn.” I breathed in deeply and found myself watching the Sun, a sphere aglow, rise from in between two snow capped peaks at the horizon. As the pale azure turned brighter, I too bloomed. I was the sunflower in the meadow in a mountainous valley, I realized.
The next very moment, I grew into a tree, tall and sturdy, when on receiving instruction from the voice to do so, I stretched my arms up and then, to the back while I stood on tip-toe. I next bent forward and saw myself shrinking into a shrub of some kind. I next saw myself morphing into a magnificent steed that galloped in the meadow (while performing Ashwa Sanchalan as a step in Surya Namaskar). I subsequently transformed into a mountain and a serpent. I also became a toad and a tortoise living in a pond in the dale while performing Mandup Asana and Kurma Asana.
Each and every creature in the meadow, picturesque and secluded, was I, myself.
As I finally laid on my back in the position of Shavasana, I visited the verdant meadow for the one last time. The dusk was settling in and a balmy breeze was blowing over it. Under a tree, I saw a little girl sleeping and smiling to herself in her dream, perhaps. I vaguely felt I had seen her before; yes, she is the girl in one of the photographs in my family album-she was me!
“Ah! Please look at Aminura. Her knees and thighs are not an inch above the ground and this is one should ideally be sitting when performing Gomukh Asana.” The Yoga instructor said, gesturing her hand towards me. She nodded her graceful head in approval and said after a couple of seconds’ pause, during which several pairs of eyes turned in my direction, “I have not met many people who have her flexibility. It does not seem so improbable a thing to say that her body can be folded as neatly as a handkerchief and put away in a handbag.” I could feel that the gazes were still fixed on me but for the first time in my life, I was not embarrassed. Nothing has ever revealed my gaucherie so starkly as have the occasions when I have been commended for some reason. Whenever someone praises me, I involuntarily become stiff and nonplussed and if anybody makes the unfortunate mistake of commenting, even if in a casual manner, that I am ‘looking good’, I implacably turn hostile in the defense of my plainness.
Naturally, therefore, I was surprised that I could accept the generous words of Geeta, the Yoga Instructor, with such equanimity. In fact I forgot them the very next second when I shut my eyes again to search for the lush meadow, where I was a little while ago. I heard Geeta’s gentle voice asking us to stand erect and fold our hands to form the Namaskar Mudra. She said, “You are about to begin Surya Namaskar. Picture yourself praying to the Sun at dawn.” I breathed in deeply and found myself watching the Sun, a sphere aglow, rise from in between two snow capped peaks at the horizon. As the pale azure turned brighter, I too bloomed. I was the sunflower in the meadow in a mountainous valley, I realized.
The next very moment, I grew into a tree, tall and sturdy, when on receiving instruction from the voice to do so, I stretched my arms up and then, to the back while I stood on tip-toe. I next bent forward and saw myself shrinking into a shrub of some kind. I next saw myself morphing into a magnificent steed that galloped in the meadow (while performing Ashwa Sanchalan as a step in Surya Namaskar). I subsequently transformed into a mountain and a serpent. I also became a toad and a tortoise living in a pond in the dale while performing Mandup Asana and Kurma Asana.
Each and every creature in the meadow, picturesque and secluded, was I, myself.
As I finally laid on my back in the position of Shavasana, I visited the verdant meadow for the one last time. The dusk was settling in and a balmy breeze was blowing over it. Under a tree, I saw a little girl sleeping and smiling to herself in her dream, perhaps. I vaguely felt I had seen her before; yes, she is the girl in one of the photographs in my family album-she was me!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
A ‘Lady land’, a day-dream and an early Indian Feminist!
I was reading an essay by Barnita Bagchi called Female Utopias and Narratives of Education, when I came across the name Rokheya Sakhawat Hossein. The name was familiar and I could vaguely recall that she was an early 20th century reformer who had written extensively about the multifarious oppressions that Muslim women of Bengal faced. In the engaging essay, Ms. Bagchi cites a work of fiction authored by Hossein in which she adumbrated a very radical female utopia. The story is called Sultana’s Dream and the utopia was named ‘Lady land’. Bagchi’s exegesis of the story as an impassioned protest against then-prevailing gender inequities, triggered my imagination and made me look up for information on Hossein.
I discovered soon that there had lived in this country from 1880 to 1932, a visionary who like the Renaissance Men who lived half a millennium before her, felt that education was the key to enlightenment and enlightenment led to empowerment of the silently suffering women. Hossein had herself, much against the wishes of her conservative father, secretly burnt mid-night oil for years to learn Bangla and English. Sultana’s Dream must have across to the readers of the Indian Ladies Magazine in which it was published in 1905 as a humorous tale, a light-hearted fantasy in which an Asian Alice lands in a Wonderland in which everything is rational and realistic except for the fact that women are at the helm of affairs and men have to live behind veil in their Mardana quarters. These two aspects made the story a ‘fantasy’ and the realm in which it is set, a ‘utopia’ yet as I read the story online on http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a1128.pdf, I could not come across a single argument or one circumstance that led to the establishment of the Lady-land that seemed incongruous or far-fetched. Sister Sarah, the inhabitant of Lady-land who befriends the wonder-struck protagonist Sultana and takes her there, explains to her how ridiculously irrational is the Purdah system which is foisted on women in India.
“Men, who do or at least are capable of doing no end of mischief, are let loose and the innocent women shut up in the zenana! How can you trust those untrained men out of doors?”
The story is a celebration of the scientific ingenuity and industrious demeanour of women-qualities which they are never allowed to hone in the chauvinistic societies because they are made to believe that they are physically frail and vulnerable. Sister Sarah points out the inefficacy of the argument when she says, “A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves, and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.” The women in Her land run a government that does not stink of corruption, its universities her headed by women who have invented contraptions that can trap energy from the Sun and water from the clouds as well weapons that do not kill war-mongering enemies but manage to make them concede defeat. The ‘wonders’ that women are capable of are limitless and also, unimaginable in the patriarchal societies existent in the third planet of the Sun and that’s why those are to be termed as ‘wonders’. That probably was the message that Hossein wished to convey to her readers but for me, it had another meaning.
Sultana ‘was dreaming’ of Lady land; it revealed that in dreams is to be traced the inception of visions, revolutions, aspirations; of alternatives that our conscious thinking mind conditioned to reconcile to seemingly insurmountable realities, cannot imagine.
I discovered soon that there had lived in this country from 1880 to 1932, a visionary who like the Renaissance Men who lived half a millennium before her, felt that education was the key to enlightenment and enlightenment led to empowerment of the silently suffering women. Hossein had herself, much against the wishes of her conservative father, secretly burnt mid-night oil for years to learn Bangla and English. Sultana’s Dream must have across to the readers of the Indian Ladies Magazine in which it was published in 1905 as a humorous tale, a light-hearted fantasy in which an Asian Alice lands in a Wonderland in which everything is rational and realistic except for the fact that women are at the helm of affairs and men have to live behind veil in their Mardana quarters. These two aspects made the story a ‘fantasy’ and the realm in which it is set, a ‘utopia’ yet as I read the story online on http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a1128.pdf, I could not come across a single argument or one circumstance that led to the establishment of the Lady-land that seemed incongruous or far-fetched. Sister Sarah, the inhabitant of Lady-land who befriends the wonder-struck protagonist Sultana and takes her there, explains to her how ridiculously irrational is the Purdah system which is foisted on women in India.
“Men, who do or at least are capable of doing no end of mischief, are let loose and the innocent women shut up in the zenana! How can you trust those untrained men out of doors?”
The story is a celebration of the scientific ingenuity and industrious demeanour of women-qualities which they are never allowed to hone in the chauvinistic societies because they are made to believe that they are physically frail and vulnerable. Sister Sarah points out the inefficacy of the argument when she says, “A lion is stronger than a man, but it does not enable him to dominate the human race. You have neglected the duty you owe to yourselves, and you have lost your natural rights by shutting your eyes to your own interests.” The women in Her land run a government that does not stink of corruption, its universities her headed by women who have invented contraptions that can trap energy from the Sun and water from the clouds as well weapons that do not kill war-mongering enemies but manage to make them concede defeat. The ‘wonders’ that women are capable of are limitless and also, unimaginable in the patriarchal societies existent in the third planet of the Sun and that’s why those are to be termed as ‘wonders’. That probably was the message that Hossein wished to convey to her readers but for me, it had another meaning.
Sultana ‘was dreaming’ of Lady land; it revealed that in dreams is to be traced the inception of visions, revolutions, aspirations; of alternatives that our conscious thinking mind conditioned to reconcile to seemingly insurmountable realities, cannot imagine.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
While riding the rickshaw this morning, I realized…
My eyes are still swollen from crying last night, my heart still excruciatingly heavy, my mind still benumbed because I could not chide myself away from day-dreaming about you all night. But why should I so much be in love with you when maybe in Buenos Aires, behind the counter of a little book-shop or in Alexandria, in the curator’s office of a museum, there is someone just like you whom I never shall run into once in a while and look away, and hence, will never have to cry over? Why should I get distraught by the sight of huge, swanky automobiles on the same streets on which little children try to sell riff-raffs under the scorching sun all day when maybe in the verdant plains of Kaziranga or high valleys of Cherrapunji, there are still boys and girls who pray to the mountains and marvel over the mystery of the mist? Why should I dress well each morn when maybe, in a village in Ulan-Bator, there is someone who wears one bottle-green pullover every day, week after week? Why should I think that I am a woman, respectable woman with education, when maybe in the atlas, there are places where I would be treated as a man married to a forest? Yesterday night, Mr. Borges told me that I should not because he can help me ‘postulate’ my own Uqbar if I wish to.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Storm over the tea-cup
I
“The girl is too beautiful to be single.” I blurted out and immediately regretted it. “Oh! How could I say anything so unenlightened?” I ruefully asked myself. Just because a woman is beautiful, it does not mean she draws or desires to draw male attention to herself. “I am ashamed of you,” I heard an indignant voice in my head, chide me, “for letting the toxin of parochialism still persist in you.” Shamefacedly, I tried to change the subject matter. “Do you plan to have dinner in the canteen here or at home?” I asked.
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall ponder over your crucial questions as soon as I am done with it.” Anila replied with a grin. And at that moment, amidst the din of the canteen, I suddenly found myself imprisoned in a gaol of silence; it was the silence of her grin that derided me for once again failing to follow another of my lofty principles that I had ‘decided’ to practice. “No, no. Don’t make thoughtless comments about people ever again.” The indignant voice in my head spoke again.
II
Anila watched Padmasena as the latter’s face turned crimson and thought, “The foolish woman is too full of ideals and ethics for her own good!” Anila and Padmasena were in their office canteen having lunch and discussing about a colleague who had joined that very day. The girl was not merely beautiful; she was, in the words of Padmasena, feminine grace personified! Of Padmasena’s many irritable habits, the one that exasperated Anila the most, was her proclivity to praise people who caught her fancy in an exaggerated manner. But Anila could not laugh at Padmasena because there was something akin to unalloyed earnestness in almost everything she said which no one could be dismissive about, at least not on her face . Besides, the girl they were discussing about was actually very beautiful. Her name was Janvi and on her first day at work at the Düsseldorf Publishers, where she joined like Anila and Padmasena as an editor, she had been till lunch neither too gregarious nor utterly taciturn. “Hi!” she had said to them with a polite smile, “ I am Janvi and I am a Mumbaikar.” At lunch when Padmasena, unsociable and mostly solitary herself, asked her if she wanted to join them at the cafeteria, Janvi smiled politely again and said, “Ah, thanks. But I have brought my lunch from home. Remember, I told you I hail from the city.” At that moment, Janvi’s mobile phone began to ring and saying a succinct, “Please excuse me!” to Padmasena and Anila, she started to talk over the phone in a low voice, while they left for the cafeteria.
Anila was not too fond of her room-mate Padmasena-eccentric, incorrigibly idealistic and incapable of accepting or rejecting anything without critically analyzing it. She was self-avowedly in love with Philosophy and literary philosophers and once when she said that she could not have an extra helping of boiled vegetables because she felt that she was becoming gluttonous, Anila had wanted to hurl invectives at her of the worst kind. Presently, they reached the canteen and Anila was about to place an order when her companion said, “ Janvi is so well attired. Her trousers and blouse are both so classy.”
“Hmmm, yes,” Anila was laconic in her reply as she did not wish to afford to Padmasena another opportunity to begin singing paeans of their new colleague’s beauty. Then something happened that abated Padmasena’s excitement rather unexpectedly. Staring at the sky , she said, “The girl is too pretty to be single.” Within an iota of the next second, Padmasena blanched and flushed and her exceedingly expressive face looked woefully remorseful. Anyone unacquainted with Padmasena’s ways might have assumed that she has perhaps, suddenly fallen ill but Anila instantaneously figured that Padmasena looked so utterly guilt-ridden because she made a comment that was not based on ‘reasoning’ or ‘empirical evidence’.
It was one of those not-so-infrequent moments when the otherwise haughty and constantly philosophizing Padmasena was nervous; in an embarrassed tone, she diffidently asked, “ Do you plan to have dinner here in the canteen or at home?”
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall start to ponder over your question as soon as I am done with it.” Anila retorted and continued eating Paratha while Padmasena morosely stared at her glass of fruit juice. When they returned to their office ten minutes later, they found Janvi eating her lunch that comprised of Rotis and what seemed like Alu-bhindi. Padmasena awkwardly asked her,” Hey! Your lunch looks inviting”
“Would you care to have some of it?” Janvi asked with her now familiar smile.
“No, no!” Padmasena cried out, nodding her head vehemently. “I mean thank you but I have to, I am afraid, decline your kind offer as I have just had lunch. I only wanted to say that your food, by the virtue of being home-cooked, looks very mouth-watering! Ammm…you said you live in Goregaon, right? Now since it takes close to two hours to travel from that locality to this part of the city by road, your mother probably had to wake up very early in the morning to make this for you. It must have been quite a lot of hard work for her.”
“I am not sure if it was much of a hard work for mom as it is I who made these stuff for myself and for the twelve other people who form my family.” Janvi replied nonchalantly and then turning to Anila, said, “ Hey Anila, in case you are not too full why don’t you try the alu-bhindi? I have been told I make this dish very well.” Anila walked past Padmasena to Janvi’s cubicle while Padmasena stood in the middle of the room, staring incredulously at the wall opposite. A good minute elapsed before she uttered, “Omigosh! You really cooked all these before coming to work? Do you do this every day? God! Did you-do you-wake up at dawn, then?”
“Yes, I do.” Janvi’s reply was laconic, too engrossed as she was in munching a popaddum to be interested in chatting with Padmasena.
“But how do manage to do so much? I wake up at 8 in the morning and have never cooked for anyone at all.” Padmasena almost supplicated Janvi to reveal an amazing secret.
“It’s no big deal, really. I have been cooking since I was thirteen and in fact, girls in ouf family are expected to start familiarizing themselves to cooking once they turn ten.” Janvi said with an air of-what seemed to Anila to be-studied insouciance and once again turned to Anila to ask, “When did you join this place?” “Oh, I will complete three months here day after tomorrow, on the 16th.” Anila replied sweetly and cast a glance at Padmasena. She still stood with her mouth agape and her eyes wide open, as if entranced. “Poor, little fool,” she thought of Padmasena and felt a little pity for her. “ Who ever gets astonished to know that a woman can cook at 24?”
III
I could hear Janvi and Anila converse but I was too amazed and suddenly, ashamed after I discovered that Janvi woke up at some freakishly early hour to cook for her entire family and she yet managed to come to work on time, dressed in an impeccable manner. Back at home, in the distant frontier town of Itanagar, I never do so much as to make the morning tea for the old, loving couple I have for my parents. I was overwhelmed with affection for ma who never asked me to do any household chores, guilt at my ineptitude and a faint admiration for the girl I just met. Choked with emotions and also confused by them, I slowly walked back to my seat. After all, I could not keep staring at the office holiday list, struck to the wall behind Janvi’s cubicle all day, could I?
“The girl is too beautiful to be single.” I blurted out and immediately regretted it. “Oh! How could I say anything so unenlightened?” I ruefully asked myself. Just because a woman is beautiful, it does not mean she draws or desires to draw male attention to herself. “I am ashamed of you,” I heard an indignant voice in my head, chide me, “for letting the toxin of parochialism still persist in you.” Shamefacedly, I tried to change the subject matter. “Do you plan to have dinner in the canteen here or at home?” I asked.
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall ponder over your crucial questions as soon as I am done with it.” Anila replied with a grin. And at that moment, amidst the din of the canteen, I suddenly found myself imprisoned in a gaol of silence; it was the silence of her grin that derided me for once again failing to follow another of my lofty principles that I had ‘decided’ to practice. “No, no. Don’t make thoughtless comments about people ever again.” The indignant voice in my head spoke again.
II
Anila watched Padmasena as the latter’s face turned crimson and thought, “The foolish woman is too full of ideals and ethics for her own good!” Anila and Padmasena were in their office canteen having lunch and discussing about a colleague who had joined that very day. The girl was not merely beautiful; she was, in the words of Padmasena, feminine grace personified! Of Padmasena’s many irritable habits, the one that exasperated Anila the most, was her proclivity to praise people who caught her fancy in an exaggerated manner. But Anila could not laugh at Padmasena because there was something akin to unalloyed earnestness in almost everything she said which no one could be dismissive about, at least not on her face . Besides, the girl they were discussing about was actually very beautiful. Her name was Janvi and on her first day at work at the Düsseldorf Publishers, where she joined like Anila and Padmasena as an editor, she had been till lunch neither too gregarious nor utterly taciturn. “Hi!” she had said to them with a polite smile, “ I am Janvi and I am a Mumbaikar.” At lunch when Padmasena, unsociable and mostly solitary herself, asked her if she wanted to join them at the cafeteria, Janvi smiled politely again and said, “Ah, thanks. But I have brought my lunch from home. Remember, I told you I hail from the city.” At that moment, Janvi’s mobile phone began to ring and saying a succinct, “Please excuse me!” to Padmasena and Anila, she started to talk over the phone in a low voice, while they left for the cafeteria.
Anila was not too fond of her room-mate Padmasena-eccentric, incorrigibly idealistic and incapable of accepting or rejecting anything without critically analyzing it. She was self-avowedly in love with Philosophy and literary philosophers and once when she said that she could not have an extra helping of boiled vegetables because she felt that she was becoming gluttonous, Anila had wanted to hurl invectives at her of the worst kind. Presently, they reached the canteen and Anila was about to place an order when her companion said, “ Janvi is so well attired. Her trousers and blouse are both so classy.”
“Hmmm, yes,” Anila was laconic in her reply as she did not wish to afford to Padmasena another opportunity to begin singing paeans of their new colleague’s beauty. Then something happened that abated Padmasena’s excitement rather unexpectedly. Staring at the sky , she said, “The girl is too pretty to be single.” Within an iota of the next second, Padmasena blanched and flushed and her exceedingly expressive face looked woefully remorseful. Anyone unacquainted with Padmasena’s ways might have assumed that she has perhaps, suddenly fallen ill but Anila instantaneously figured that Padmasena looked so utterly guilt-ridden because she made a comment that was not based on ‘reasoning’ or ‘empirical evidence’.
It was one of those not-so-infrequent moments when the otherwise haughty and constantly philosophizing Padmasena was nervous; in an embarrassed tone, she diffidently asked, “ Do you plan to have dinner here in the canteen or at home?”
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall start to ponder over your question as soon as I am done with it.” Anila retorted and continued eating Paratha while Padmasena morosely stared at her glass of fruit juice. When they returned to their office ten minutes later, they found Janvi eating her lunch that comprised of Rotis and what seemed like Alu-bhindi. Padmasena awkwardly asked her,” Hey! Your lunch looks inviting”
“Would you care to have some of it?” Janvi asked with her now familiar smile.
“No, no!” Padmasena cried out, nodding her head vehemently. “I mean thank you but I have to, I am afraid, decline your kind offer as I have just had lunch. I only wanted to say that your food, by the virtue of being home-cooked, looks very mouth-watering! Ammm…you said you live in Goregaon, right? Now since it takes close to two hours to travel from that locality to this part of the city by road, your mother probably had to wake up very early in the morning to make this for you. It must have been quite a lot of hard work for her.”
“I am not sure if it was much of a hard work for mom as it is I who made these stuff for myself and for the twelve other people who form my family.” Janvi replied nonchalantly and then turning to Anila, said, “ Hey Anila, in case you are not too full why don’t you try the alu-bhindi? I have been told I make this dish very well.” Anila walked past Padmasena to Janvi’s cubicle while Padmasena stood in the middle of the room, staring incredulously at the wall opposite. A good minute elapsed before she uttered, “Omigosh! You really cooked all these before coming to work? Do you do this every day? God! Did you-do you-wake up at dawn, then?”
“Yes, I do.” Janvi’s reply was laconic, too engrossed as she was in munching a popaddum to be interested in chatting with Padmasena.
“But how do manage to do so much? I wake up at 8 in the morning and have never cooked for anyone at all.” Padmasena almost supplicated Janvi to reveal an amazing secret.
“It’s no big deal, really. I have been cooking since I was thirteen and in fact, girls in ouf family are expected to start familiarizing themselves to cooking once they turn ten.” Janvi said with an air of-what seemed to Anila to be-studied insouciance and once again turned to Anila to ask, “When did you join this place?” “Oh, I will complete three months here day after tomorrow, on the 16th.” Anila replied sweetly and cast a glance at Padmasena. She still stood with her mouth agape and her eyes wide open, as if entranced. “Poor, little fool,” she thought of Padmasena and felt a little pity for her. “ Who ever gets astonished to know that a woman can cook at 24?”
III
I could hear Janvi and Anila converse but I was too amazed and suddenly, ashamed after I discovered that Janvi woke up at some freakishly early hour to cook for her entire family and she yet managed to come to work on time, dressed in an impeccable manner. Back at home, in the distant frontier town of Itanagar, I never do so much as to make the morning tea for the old, loving couple I have for my parents. I was overwhelmed with affection for ma who never asked me to do any household chores, guilt at my ineptitude and a faint admiration for the girl I just met. Choked with emotions and also confused by them, I slowly walked back to my seat. After all, I could not keep staring at the office holiday list, struck to the wall behind Janvi’s cubicle all day, could I?
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
On a game of Football!
(Written in imitation of the style Mr. Oliver Goldsmith employs in On Dress.)
It was a gloriously beautiful evening. The twilight of dusk had rendered the firmament kaleidoscopic-it was azure in the centre and saffron hued at the horizon. A balmy breeze blew, flocks of chirping birds flew over my head and at some distance away from the tree-lined avenue on which I ambled, on a lush field a group of young men were playing football.
It is a marvelous game undoubtedly though I cannot recall from my living memory, a single instance when I have kicked a ball. But the sight of men, single-mindedly running after the wonder that is this circular piece of inflated rubber which goes by the name of football, is ubiquitous enough. Being the kind of person who would, on reaching a picturesque Alpine village, be not as much bewitched by its beauty as much prone to reminiscing about Sherlock Holmes’ spine-chilling encounter with Moriarti in the outskirts of one such hamlet, I was naturally reminded by the vista of a game in progress, of the paragraph in English August, which described how young men playing football who most enthusiastically hollered for the ball, were usually the ones who secretly dreaded the occasion when the ball was actually kicked in their direction. Presently, however, I brushed aside my thoughts on the novel the protagonist of which I had misguidedly hero-worshipped as an adolescent.
I halted in my walk and watched the players, who were scattered all across the manicured ground but had their eyes set on the ball. Being no connoisseur of the sport, I could not infer if these men were playing well, these men in jerseys, but the keenness in their lineaments and the jauntiness in their strides, seemed to bespeak of their supreme, unalloyed devotion for the game. And suddenly, as quickly as the flash of lightning, it occurred to me how absolutely different did the sport render its players from me. While I was perplexed and aimless in my ramblings, these men literally had a goal to hit! They sweated for a purpose while I had none. I suddenly yearned to strike the football but it was too. The cerulean was now dark and a sepulcher for the day, another day, that had just died. Besides the men were utter strangers even though the silhouette of one them seemed in the waning light of vesper, a little winsome. But their game was coming to an end and I hurriedly resumed my promenade. I moved away from there but actually, did I? In the field that was desolate after the players dispersed, my desire must have still lingered-my desire to hit the goal!
Monday, January 10, 2011
On this New Year's Eve Night!
It was the last night of the year-dark, chilly and windy. She lay huddled on an uncomfortable, alien bed that she was sharing with two other people. Every now and then, she would sit up to cough; her face was red from repeated coughing and forehead was burning hot. The two people on her both sides cast anxious glances at her; they were worried about her deteriorating condition-one of them asked the other, ‘Do you think we could find a doctor in this unknown city if her fever aggravated later in the night?’ She was too exhausted from intermittent bouts of coughing to protest or to say anything to assuage their disquietude but she wanted to do both.
And to tell them how wonderful the night was for her-she was sleeping with her parents, or rather in between them, for the first time in twenty years or so. She was reading Shosha for the first time in three years. To be ensconced in between a couple she loved the most and to have for company, another couple she related with the most, was a dream which she never dreamt without feeling like Amelie the next morning-ready to embrace the world with all the tender affection of her heart. Every muscle in her body was aching and throat was so sore that she felt as if a thorn had been struck somewhere along her gullet. Traveling from Ahmedabad to Mount Abu to Udaipur in the span of a single day had taken its toll on her, her mother had concluded. But she did not mind the pain, the fever or the exhaustion. She was in a state of bliss, reading Shosha, while her parents fussed over her. Her father wanted to go the other room in the hotel where her brother was sleeping alone but she begged him to stay back. And she pondered.
Shosha’s love for her Aaron was selfless-she was too simple to comprehend his personal perversions and his intellectual disappointments or ever to have any expectations from him; Aaron Greidinger, the philosopher-playwright, was too fatalistic to not to be aware of the impending doom that awaited him and his fellow men in the form of the Holocaust or to have any expectations from his illiterate, ‘infantile’ sweetheart but they still loved each other, fearing no dictator, no political turmoil or penury.
And she loved her parents just as much. She realized that just as Aaron and Shosha could be themselves only in each other’s company, she could be herself-she who felt no anguish, no hatred, no envy, no discomfort-only in their presence. That did not make her love for them exactly selfless, she reasoned this out in her febrile condition. It is, however, an exquisite state of being, she told herself as she dozed off to sleep. She knew that on this new year’s eve night, she would dream that she is announcing to her parents that she has written her first book called Shosha Revisited. Too fanciful a dream it is, she heard a voice within her as she entered slumberland. But another voice replied, ‘But it is a beautiful dream, a beautiful night, a beautiful state that would last only until the day breaks in!’
And to tell them how wonderful the night was for her-she was sleeping with her parents, or rather in between them, for the first time in twenty years or so. She was reading Shosha for the first time in three years. To be ensconced in between a couple she loved the most and to have for company, another couple she related with the most, was a dream which she never dreamt without feeling like Amelie the next morning-ready to embrace the world with all the tender affection of her heart. Every muscle in her body was aching and throat was so sore that she felt as if a thorn had been struck somewhere along her gullet. Traveling from Ahmedabad to Mount Abu to Udaipur in the span of a single day had taken its toll on her, her mother had concluded. But she did not mind the pain, the fever or the exhaustion. She was in a state of bliss, reading Shosha, while her parents fussed over her. Her father wanted to go the other room in the hotel where her brother was sleeping alone but she begged him to stay back. And she pondered.
Shosha’s love for her Aaron was selfless-she was too simple to comprehend his personal perversions and his intellectual disappointments or ever to have any expectations from him; Aaron Greidinger, the philosopher-playwright, was too fatalistic to not to be aware of the impending doom that awaited him and his fellow men in the form of the Holocaust or to have any expectations from his illiterate, ‘infantile’ sweetheart but they still loved each other, fearing no dictator, no political turmoil or penury.
And she loved her parents just as much. She realized that just as Aaron and Shosha could be themselves only in each other’s company, she could be herself-she who felt no anguish, no hatred, no envy, no discomfort-only in their presence. That did not make her love for them exactly selfless, she reasoned this out in her febrile condition. It is, however, an exquisite state of being, she told herself as she dozed off to sleep. She knew that on this new year’s eve night, she would dream that she is announcing to her parents that she has written her first book called Shosha Revisited. Too fanciful a dream it is, she heard a voice within her as she entered slumberland. But another voice replied, ‘But it is a beautiful dream, a beautiful night, a beautiful state that would last only until the day breaks in!’
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Ode to eccentricities…
Why do I like to dream?
Of living in a tiny cottage with a huge library
In a desolate plateau on a distant mountain
Why do you dream to like?
Or be in love, with the bibliophile-
Yoga-loving, peregrinating, young since 1965
Why does he attempt to whet his magajastra?
So zealously just as did his 19th century forebear-
Cocaine injecting, ratiocinating, eschewing society
Why do they care for foibles of grey matter?
Rather than of heart, why do we mull?
Over the aesthetics of their care and the beauty of our solitude
To be able to brush aside the fly of spleen
From the face of our sense of wonder
To be dazzled by the maverick within, how did we manage?
To remain undaunted by the edifice of reality?
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Amdo’s near NID: Reflections on an iconoclastic inn!
There stood before us a little, non-descript shanty,not different from the several others that stood in proximity in any way save for the words ‘Momos’ scribbled with chalk on its wall. Yet, I instinctively knew that this place would be like no other eatery I have been to in Ahmedabad. As we entered the shack, I took a second or two longer than usual to open my shoes-customers are to leave their shoes at the threshold here-because I was enthralled by the view that greeted my sight. I am no good with measurements and I shall, therefore, make no attempts to convey how small the room that housed the restaurant was. In the waning light of the dusk, I could not read the name of the eatery on the hand written menu card stuck on the farthest corner of the wall and it is my friend who read out the name of the joint-Amdo’s. It had no furniture save for the pieces of wood that were placed in a horizontal line along the walls to serve as tables for the customers who ate sitting on the floor. There were some unusual paintings or sketches on the azure-hued walls which, I guess, I could have appreciated better if I could figure out if they were drawn with oil paints or charcoal but the state of euphoric enchantment that I was in, had rendered me too nonplussed to try doing that. There was a little kitchen in one corner of the room where sat a wiry person of Mongoloid features, taking orders, cooking and watching some Hindi film on a tiny television set.
It took me no more than a minute to discover that the place had nothing to offer my palate because it was not serving vegetarian momos today but it was barely anything more than a trifling disappointment for me-my mind was in a state of excited frenzy at having discovered an inn like this one in Ahmedabad.Maybe, there are several others like it but for me who had, during the past five months of stay in the city, been wont to the sight of plush outlets of corporate chains of restaurants in ubiquitous malls and to smaller eateries which proudly flaunt ‘pure vegetarian’ signboards, discovery of Amdo’s was, to use the cliché, like discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb- there was a possibility of experiencing immense excitement. And so I did. As I sat at Amdo’s, staring at the back of the cook or rather at the message printed on the back of the his t-shirt, ‘I support free Tibet’ while my friend ate beef momos with a beatific expression on her mien, I decided to blog about the restaurant the existence of which is apparently not known to shop-keepers running stores at a distance that is less than a five minutes walk away.
I wondered, as I sipped lemon tea in the tiny restaurant, feebly lit by the weak streams of light of the setting sun at the hour of vesper, why am I feeling so ecstatic at this moment? If there is anything to feel, it should be anxiety because there is a great deal of work which I had left unfinished in order to be there. But unalloyed exuberance is what I felt-maybe because the sight of momos made me a bit nostalgic about my home town Guwahati, where every little inn in every neighbourhood have momos as a fixture on their menu-cards. Or maybe because, even when I woke up this Sunday morning I had not expected to find myself in so unusual a place at so beautiful an hour- a visit to a bookstore was what I could imagine as the most absorbing weekend activity until now. But there was another reason too.
The obscure location of Amdo’s, its unostentatious surroundings, its sinewy-looking host and its unusual menu all reminded of the coffee-house of My name is Red. The novel, in its vivid elucidation of the milieu at the coffee houses of 15th century Istanbul, portrayed them as a hub of dissidents, as a place where its patrons drank the socially and culturally forbidden coffee and in doing so, expressed perhaps, in the most idle manner, their protests against the existing socio-religious straitjackets. Maybe, I am being a little too maudlin in drawing parallels between Pamuk’s Turkish coffee house and the little Tibetan restaurant, tucked away in one remote corner of Ahmedabad; there is no blasphemous poet or recusant raconteur of tales of rebellion here unlike at the coffee house. But there certainly is something ineffable about the place that makes it redolent of iconoclasm-perhaps that ‘something’ is the beef on my friend’s plate which is not something the most-renowned and well-established of eateries serve in this city. Given the demigod status bestowed upon the bovine creatures in this land, it cannot be easy for these people to serve beef. Or maybe, there is another reason which makes this place so unusual,a better and profounder reason that I am yet to fathom. But I hope to be able to do that, in the course of my subsequent visits of Amdo’s. Amen!
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Poster Perfect!
Every morning-well, almost every morning-I have the pleasure of traveling to work with Rani, Katrina, Kareena or Priyanka. Once in a while, I get male company too when I have Imran or Salman or John or even, Mithun as my co-passenger but it is the rendezvous with the girls that I look forward to. Their company animates me and inspires me to discover myriad of critical hypotheses to debate upon; when with them, I can very easily set aside my saturnine, brooding self and be almost as vivacious as these lovely ladies are. On the silver screen.
I cannot coerce myself here to reiterate the names above along with their owners’ surnames for the simple reason that there cannot be a human being on the face of this planet who offers flower festoons to the gods in temples, and also to local politicians at functions, who can claim to not recognize the people I am talking of by their first names.
These are the names which have beguiled me over and again to enter a theatre only to call myself a nincompoop, fret and eventually to daydream about Caesar salad or baked pasta. These are the names of matinee idols who sell a hundred goods, kindle passions, arouse awe, and inspire the auto-rickshaw drivers of Ahmedabad to ply with elan, their noble vehicles on the streets of the city on the banks of Sabarmati!
Yes, every time, I step into an auto-rickshaw, I eagerly-and now, instinctively- look to my left and my right to find out which film star is accompanying me on my ride; whose posters adorn the sides of the passenger seat? This is something peculiar to Ahmedabad autos-almost all of them have garishly bright hued pictures of Bollywood stars, mostly female stars, on their inner sides. Earlier I used to wonder aloud every time I stepped into an auto-rickshaw, but of course, only if I have company, as to what on earth made these silver screen sirens to agree to get photographed in such costumes which are bound make people suspicious of the refinement of their sartorial sense? Quite contrary to the chic, urbane attires, in which they are usually found draped in the pages of glossy magazines and on the broadcasts of television channels, in these posters they are invariably donning outfits which seem to be out of some pot-boiler that had grossed lakhs when released in the late 1980s but since then, has never been watched by anyone who did not sooner or later, suffer from a serious bout of indigestion. In one poster, Kareena Kapoor is wearing blood-red salwar kameez with refulgent golden embroidery and in another, Katrina Kaif is dressed in a turquoise lehnga-choli with wonderfully matching red-lipstick!
I found the answer to my question when once I came across a poster of Rani Mukherjee garbed in a scarlet wedding saree, and appropriately, gazing coyly at me. There was something odd about it, I thought. It took me a few seconds to notice the source of the oddity-the ghunghat which covered her mien, was a painted one! It left me with no option but to admit to myself that a misprision has been committed, a grave one, by me. What I had nearly attributed to the poor sartorial taste of actresses has probably been caused by the wonderous technology which enables morphing of photographs.
This discovery gave rise another reverie-why do auto-rickshaw drivers prefer to have their favourite ‘heroines’ dressed in so antediluvian a fashion?
Can relativism in fashion preferences, not be frowned down upon-if this is what the auto-drivers like, who can dismiss their taste as tawdry, publicly at least? More importantly, can these posters be considered part of popular art or do they represent a niche cultural preference ? Well, I shall endeavour to investigate these questions, even if in doing so, i expose myself to the risk of being asked, ‘Absolutely jobless, are you not?’
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!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Swami and friends and nobility!
It is past eleven thirty at night and i have just finished reading,Swami and Friends by RK Narayan.I have read it umpteen number of times before but it occurred to me to now that the last time i had read the classic which Grahame Green had so fondly described as 'one in ten thousand', was over a decade ago. Ten-twelve years ago, the work had left such an indelible impact upon my young and ridiculously innocent mind that I could never help getting lachrymose everytime i read or mulled over the scene in the last chapter in which Swami, the protagonist goes to the railway station at dawn to bid adieu to his best friend and idol, Rajam who is about to leave the town of Malgudi forever. Swami is overwhelmed with utter despondency at the thought that never again shall he get to see or be with Rajam again but the latter, in sharp contrast, is unfazed and even nonchalant to the plight of his friend. In the end, he deigns to accept a parting gift from Swami and even though he exchanges no words with the crest-fallen hero, the latter is hopeful that perhaps Rajam has forgiven him for his mistake...
The story of Swami and Friends with its simple, unassuming narration never failed to make me yearn for a friend like Swami or to entrench my view that true camaraderie is greatest of possessions in the whole, wide world. But these were my feelings years ago, when i was not yet capable of critical analysis of literaray texts, when i did not comprehend symbolism and its role in shaping the characters of the novel. I did not then know that the playground of the Albert Mission school was a microcosm of the colonial Indian society nor did i realise that how idyllic the life of Swami was, replete with innumerable heartbreaks and acts of revolution and bravado.
When i began to read the book again three days ago, I averred cynically, "Try to use your critical faculties in interpreting the droll antics of the ten years old Swami and you will not have to reach out for your handkerchief." But, here i am on the verge of tears again, having made a very unexpected kind of discovery. It, the book, enlightened me that why we-I, atleast-always seek to cherish friendships is not because in this ego-driven, treacherous world, it is wonderful to know people who wont unleash their egos or treachery on you but because-and my cynical self blanched at this discovery-friendship inspires us to be noble!
Swami had foibles galore yet his devotion and love for Rajam was the source of his salavation, enabling him to overcome his apprehensions and meet him; Rajam inspired him to be noble. What would you call me if i said that i desire to feel the same way for my friends? A maudlin fool, perhaps. Or a pretentious wastrel. But never mind those adjectives and nouns, i still want to feel that way. Thanks Swami!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)