wits end

Rant

2012-01-21T13:31:00.000+05:30

As kids we heard the story 'Who Will Bell the Cat'. I was reminded of that as i read that the Dar-ul-Uloom is hailing Rushdie's decision to not attend the Jaipur festival 'a victory for democracy'; the Congress, playing safe as usual, says, "There are no restrictions on his visit."; the BJP blames the Congress govt in Rajasthan for not providing him adequate security.

Inspiration

2012-01-20T18:19:00.008+05:30

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

by Jack Gilbert

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Together

I cannot do without you I think,

as I listen uncomprehending to their words

tumbling out quicker than diamonds,
out of a bandit’s purse string.

Eager promises, stupid condolences,

Earthy philosophy they offer too.

I turn a deaf ear and cast my mind

To times when you were my sound.

Speaking on my behalf, knowing

their stares alone would bring a silence profound.

I was told it would be impossible

To live under the same roof.

Never once did you complain

As I read late with the light on,

When your speakers blared, not once did I frown.

Perfect harmony is made up
of two of a kind.

At the busy corners, my hands and lips,

Would beat a wild stacatto,

in sync with the tap of your stick on the ground.
As you held my hand,

Often I asked, ‘what’s on your mind’?

They asked me what did
it all amount to?

Sight and sound and amber

and incense and fulfillment and knowledge

that i was not alone.
Reading lips, fleeting touches,

The letters in Braille,

Such was our holy grail.

Ebar Ashi?

2012-01-16T20:38:00.002+05:30

One of the things I love about being a Bong is our language: the melodious, clean , rounded sounds of our vowels and consonants, the forms of respect accorded to each address based on one’s relationship with the addressee, and the meanings behind names. I find great beauty in my language, little that I know of it. Often these days, I meet people, both in mumbai and kolkata, who are ashamed of speaking in the vernacular, who stubbornly answer in english even when you address them in bengali. I find it annoying. Anyway, that’s not why I started this post.

One of the pet Bengali phrases that was once commonly used and is slowly dying is ‘ebar ashi’. Used as a signature at the end of epistles, and also in speech, its direct translation would be, “now, let me come.” But it is actually a form of goodbye and the ‘ashi’ or ‘come’ is actually a promise to ‘return’ soon. Whenever we Bongs bid goodbye, we never say ‘jachi’ or ‘I’m leaving/going’. It is always, ‘ebar ashi’ – ‘let me go now so that I can return soon.’ More beautiful still is the ‘ebar ashi?’ - the question mark lends a dignity and sanction to the addressee that should be at the heart of all meaningful interaction. I don’t know if similar forms of leave-taking exist in other languages but I have asked my marathi and gujarati friends and it seems that they don’t have anything like this.

I don’t know anything about the genesis of my mother tongue so it leaves me free to imagine how things came to be. I imagine this graceful leave-taking must have its roots in the young boys who had joined the Swadeshi movement and who touched their mother’s feet and bid ‘ebar ashi’ before leaving their homes for the eternal home. Or maybe, it was the only consolation a husband could offer his wife as he left home to eke a living in some far off land. For, poignant as these moments must have been, can you imagine a more hopeful and pregnant goodbye than this?

Not a Rainmaker

2012-01-13T14:43:00.003+05:30

I realise this blog is getting too dark; as I read my writing, I see it’s stopped breathing; the spark has vanished. The last time it took 6 years to reappear; I have no idea how long it’ll be this time.

My boundaries of self and other are extremely hazy. The fact is, I am fine and have suffered no great misfortune. But many of those who I care about deeply are not, and I haven’t been able to do a single thing to assist them.

My boss in Europe paid me a compliment after our first long meeting – rainmaker. Yeah, that was KV’s epithet to me when we were discussing a long, arduous project where I was wary of stepping in. He assured me, “You are the rainmaker; you and Lara will get this done, I know.” I was pleased; I felt cherished.

This tag of rainmaker is something that’s part of my psyche – it has got nothing to do with me being especially talented or smart. I somehow always manage to get things done and my family and colleagues know it. Getting the faulty electricity line fixed, taking care of the household chores, meeting demanding deadlines, teaching D, dragging my parents for their check-ups, helping my girl friends when they want me around, overcoming my fears abt losing people, I juggle and struggle with these daily. That is my life and I have always felt, I could make a difference and make life smoother for those around me. Occasionally I felt tired, but satisfaction never eluded me. It’s not so anymore.

When I talked to H after ages, I sensed the weariness in him and I know there’s nothing I can do to help him; R lies bedridden at 32 and her hubby, my cousin is jobless; I couldn’t do anything for them either. My aunt lies injured; not a day goes by when I don’t think of HP, but when I message her, she refuses to meet me. Her mother calls me up to talk about her but I haven’t been able to get past HP’s grief. My latest assignment is to prepare a communications package on ‘change management’. We are sacking close to 200 staff in our head office and I have to build ‘clear, compelling and compassionate messaging’ for my colleagues. I haven’t even written a rough draft yet and I don’t know how to begin. The truth is difficult and unprintable, yet we all know it. My draf can only be insincere and unauthentic.

I had managed to leash my horrible temper considerably, but in the last year I have seen it rear its ugly head. This stems from fear and a feeling of abject helplessness. I hate helplessness. Life is about active effort; efforts reap results –I believed in that. But all around me, I’m witnessing people whose efforts are not paying off; who are being punished for no ostensible reason. I feel anger and resentment at this. I know I’m not the only one and probably everyone needs to find ways to calm their mind. I will do it too. Eventually.

Our deepest hurts flow from people as do our greatest joys. I cannot end this post without talking abt AS who really surprised and moved me immensely. I had written about AS and P here earlier. Let’s just say, his recent behavior has caused a lot of pain to P and I was mad as hell. When P lost her mom last week, he did something that surprised all of us. His thoughtfulness has filled my heart; apart from my daughter, I don’t think I can think of a single thing that has brought me so much joy in recent months.

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Nobody

2012-01-10T12:04:00.001+05:30

I learnt I am nobody

Did you too?

Why the pallor? Despair not.

There’s a pair of us yet.

Don’t show it,

That you have me around.

They’d banish us, you know,

Bury us underground.

Relish the thought,

You are invisible,

Truly free,

Neither the volcanic ash,

Nor the minstral, can stop your departure.

Didn’t you find it dreary,

To pose for the camera the livelong day?

To perfect the collagen pout,

And colour the hair,

Modulate your clear voice,

And tone your skin?

I know you did,

‘cause I did too.

Terrible it is to be somebody!

How like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

2011-12-31T13:25:00.004+05:30

Just when you think the worst is behind you, something attacks you out of the darkness. It is this hidden, furtive, completely arbitrary and cunning aspect of life that I detest.

My aunt is a decent, god-fearing woman. Earlier this year, my uncle passed away, but she has coped fairly well with that loss. After all, he was ailing, aged, and his demise was anticipated. My parents and I have always been quite close to them and I have vivid memories of spending several vacations at their place. To my grade 6 sensibilities, Naihati with its moss-lined ponds, bamboo groves and wells attached to each home, seemed more rural than it really is. It is what you’d term as a small muffassil town. Whenever I think of their huge sprawling house, always I recall the cloyingly sweet smell of ripe jackfruit and guava. The orchard outside the main house gave us all kinds of seasonal fruits – mango, grapefruit, guava, betel nuts, pumpkins, jackfruit, and of course coconuts. These would be plucked and stored underneath the bed in the storage room with the black cement floor. The room was always dark, and very, very cool - in striking contrast to other parts of the house which received direct sunlight and were unbearably hot.

I also remember bathing in the pond behind their house, and drawing water from the well in a small blue plastic bucket which jemma (my aunt) had purchased especially for me because I couldn’t heave the bulky metal buckets traditionally used to draw water. It was all fun, the thrill of doing things I’d never done before. We moved to Calcutta when I was in grade 5 and this was my first encounter with a place where you had to take the crowded local train to visit.

One of my most vivid memories of those days was the elaborate Gopal puja that jemma used to offer. Gopal is the Bengali term for the infant Krishna and the rituals of his worship are quite different from those of the adult deity. First thing in the morning, jemma would wake him up from his slumber (shoyon bhangano) and take off the tiny mosquito net that she draped around his polished brass throne every night with loving care. From brushing his teeth with white toothpowder to sprinkling rose water over his small mattress before she put it away for the day, she did it all. Breakfast, separate bhog for lunch, purple nayantara flowers offered in the evening, changing his clothes for bed time, talking and singing to him in hushed tones, the routine never varied. I think I was more curious than skeptical of her preoccupation with Gopal. I recall that many of the other relatives and their children were a little amused at this elaborate ritual of care, but mom and me participated whenever we were there. Maybe it stemmed from something mom told me once.

My uncle and aunt are childless and part of this caring for Gopal stemmed from some deep-seated maternal instinct. Young as I was myself, something about this simple rationalization moved me immensely and I heartily assisted her in her daily chores whenever we visited them. The years passed but neither her love for Gopal nor the attentiveness with which she expressed that love, changed. I know the number of times I have shouted at her in recent years to reduce her fasts on Janmashtami and other auspicious days.

I am in touch regularly with jemma and was cajoling her a few days ago to stay with us for a few days in Mumbai. Yesterday, mom informed me, she has met with a terrible accident.

Last Wednesday she was offering the evening meal to Gopal when the prodeep (oil lamp) accidentally set her saree and her long hair on fire. No one knows much about what transpired immediately afterwards. She’s been hospitalized and has sustained terrible injuries to her back. My parents came to know about this incident yesterday when they called her up, and one of the neighbors informed them. They would have reached her by now.

Thoughts scurry about that I can’t shake off: society works because people care for each other, take care of each other especially in old age and sickness; how unfair then then that one has to lie alone in an hospital uncared and unasked; how ironical that the accident should strike her at the time when she was engaged in one of the purest acts of her working day; how unkind and uncharitable this year has been.

As this year fades, to you dear reader, I hope 2012 brings:

Good health to you and your family

A stable job, financial security

Enough kindness in your heart to help you steer at least one relative/friend/stranger who has lost their way

Stupid Stupid!

2011-12-30T13:45:00.000+05:30

I rarely blog from work but every once in a while i pop an artery at some instance of abject and complete moron-ness and it flows here.

Apparently Robert Downey Jr will not be visiting India to promote his film The Avengers. He has also magnanimously added, "I have watched a few Indian films and liked them." You're sure to have come upon such statements from these Hollywood biggies in the past too. My point is, why do our journalists ask these stupid questions: what do you think of Indian films? Would you like to star in an Indian production? How did you find the people of India? Teri toh! Unless these stars are as rude as i am, none of them state the obvious, "Well, you guys need to brush up your act since you're still making movies like Don 2 which should be titled Hollywood Recycled. As for visiting India, umm...let's see. I'll do it when I think it's time to stop paying my therapist and seek some ancient tantric sex. Btw, i hope you're aware we aren't even shooting for the Mumbai scenes in Mumbai. Dave, our spectacular CGI artist at Miramax, will create Colaba on a computer collage."

One Day

2011-12-25T07:37:00.018+05:30

How strange and limited the scope of modern medicine that it stops at a point and befuddled physicians are forced to throw up their hands in despair. Their intentions are noble, their credentials pristine, and yet they cant command nature. But love and art can, and always will. There is science and then there is Nature. Both vast and beautiful and full of mystery. One waiting to be solved, the other ever elusive. Where medicine fails, nature works miraculously.

*****************************************************************************
Watched an english romantic film after eons (i gave up watching those after Pretty Woman and Notting Hill). I'd heard good things about One Day and well, I'm glad i did. Anne Hathway is the life of this film; she lights up every frame she appears. The film actually sags in the scenes where she's not present.

Loved the idea of a love story playing out over 20 years; loved the words Jim Sturgess' father tells him after he returns home battered and bruised. He was also talking about 'As If'. Loved it when Ian says, "She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy, so happy, and i will always be grateful to you for that." Loved the teeny-weeny surprise at the end atop the hill. Loved the chemistry and the camaraderie between the leading pair; loved their tenderness and tentativeness around each other. Loved the fact that they are never comfortable around each other, and never more comfortable than with each other. Hell, if you ask me.

And no, those who feel that the ending is cliched, i don't think so. Love stories cannot endure, and must not endure . It ends beautifully where it does.

Loved the soundtrack. Soaring, elegaic, haunting. I'm hooked.

As If ...

2011-12-21T12:06:00.002+05:30

The only reading I’ve done this week is of tributes on and articles by Christopher Hitchens. One particular piece has stayed in mind. Almost everyone who knew Hitchens seems to unanimously nod their heads that the man was larger than life - everything about him vital, virile, articulate, bursting with energy, both pugnacious and kindly. That even esophageal cancer, one of the most painful forms of the disease, didn’t quite ‘do him in’ is a testament to the man and his almost God-like resilience. His literary output continued unabated, he attended parties (unless he was hospitalised) and till the end, he loved nothing more than a good conversation: "For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one." He also once said that smoking and drinking were stimulants in a conversation and he remained unapologetic till the end about both habits.

In one of his last columns Hitchens wrote, ‘Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs.” Here he is talking about the loss of speech. When the radiation started, one day he discovered that his “voice suddenly rose to a childish (or perhaps piglet-like) piping squeak” and he was no longer “able to stop a New York cab at 30 paces” nor could it like before, “without the help of a microphone, reach the back row and gallery of a crowded debating hall.” Despite the casualness of his delivery, his words tear you.

I’ve been wondering, what made the man tick? Suddenly, two scenes came to mind: one from Polanski’s The Pianist and the other from Milos Foreman’s One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

One way of accepting life is to look upon it as a series of gains and losses: as Divine retribution and reward; sometimes deserved, often random. He didn’t really deserve to be kicked out of his job; she got what she deserved when she visited him; they really deserved to win the award - that kinda thing. What happens afterwards? What went on in Hitchens’ mind as the nurse left after injecting the last shot of the day, after the drapes had been pulled, and his last visitor left with hollow words of ‘let’s catch up soon’. How did he pull himself up, and fight his way to the table and struggle with the keypad to produce those glorious last articles? What stuff is man made of? I can’t presume what motivated him; such men are special. Genius always is. But for the rest, the antidote surely must be in a state of ‘As If’.

The people in the Kolkata hospital who went to get well and encountered a sickening reality, what must be going through the minds of their family? Life is not fair; that’s the single, indisputable reality of our lives. The world which we permeate has the power to shape us and unmake us. When this familiar, comforting world crumbles, all known edifices of honesty and kindness disappear. This is when it is important we create a state of As If: to believe that the number tattooed on your wrist, doesn’t make you any less human, any less an individual, than the German officer who looks at you coldly; to believe that the death of your child makes you no more responsible than God who didn’t listen to your prayers; to understand that irrespective of it being labeled a flower without roots, it did change you forever.

The two scenes below describe this state of As If. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve viewed these scenes over this year. Enjoy.

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One Last Breath

2011-12-16T18:54:00.000+05:30

When certain events unfold, they say Nature joins in the mourning. Flowers bend their heads, birds forget their music, and the musk deer loses her fragrance. I'm sure something like that happened today, for as i suddenly looked up from the computer screen, i was startled by the darkness outside. Rainfall in December in Mumbai? C'mon! Then my eye caught sight of the news. Everything fell into place. Why not? After all, 2011 didn't spare many.

While I didn't always agree with some of his views, I couldn't help but be dazzled by the clear, cold logic of his reasoning; his wit; his unequivocal support for the values he believed in, and his unflinching commitment to calling a spade a spade, diplomacy be damned!

He was often in the news for his controversial views on Islamofaschism, his support of the invasion of Iraq, and his disbelief in God. I'd like to believe, the man possessed a heart too large and an imagination too liberal to accommodate our puny definitions of God. In his own way, he was a greater believer than either you or me.

If you haven't read him before, this would be a good place to start: where he knew the end had begun. And yes, do please read this too: a smack reply to all those who offer glib platitudes in the face of cosmic helplessness.

RIP
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Our Guide

2011-12-07T20:10:00.001+05:30

Something very beautiful and subtle happens towards the end of Guide. As Raju guide becomes the messiah of the people, a man of the masses, he moves farther away from the people. Nobody can lay their claim on him, nor does he need Suzie anymore; he has neither ego, nor attachment, and is completely at peace with himself. That metamorphosis is splendidly portrayed by Dev Anand. Now we all know that Dev Anand wasn't really the most gifted 'actor' of his time; he was the romantic matinee idol, the heartthrob whose picture our moms plastered inside their cupboard doors. But he did particular justice to this role probably because he'd come to realise such metamorphosis in his own life.

When i think of Dev Anand, two things stand out. His open confession of love for Zeenat Aman & how she rejected him to become a part of Raj Kapoor's Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Only someone who has moved beyond hurt and ego and accepted the idiosyncracies of the heart can proclaim love so unabashedly.

The other startling thing about him were the films he made during the last 20 years of his career - his mad joy in their filming, the passion with which he spoke about them at every award function, the zest with which he auditioned the pretties around the world. While the world laughed at him and cracked ribald jokes at his expense, the man was beyond caring. Again, no ego, only an undiluted devotion to a fiercely individual vision.

RIP

Notes on Great House

2011-12-03T18:05:00.002+05:30

I’ve never fought an impulse to abandon a book or film simply because it was wrapped in a brocade of endless gloom and grief. Nicole Krauss’ Great House is an aberration. I wanted to read this book when i learnt it was one of the finalist's in the 2010 National Book Awards, and also because her first work had swept me away. Of course, grief is as distinct from sadness as french fries from potato wedges. But Krauss’ Great House really tested my limits because despite the shining luminosity of her expressions, there were sections when I felt compelled to put my book down and move on to a James Patterson thriller! The reason I mention this at the onset is because this is not a book most people will enjoy.

Does that mean I don’t recommend it? If you have an ear for music, if you don’t mind solitude, and if you are not impatient with those who couldn’t make it to the finishing line, read it. You will discover an author whose sheer mastery of emotions and language will leave you blinded. After Arundhati R0y’s God of Small Things, I have rarely come across such aplomb & aptness in language. Try this: "In life we sit at the table and refuse to eat, and in death we are eternally hungry."

Like its delightful predecessor, Great House also revolves around an inanimate object and reveals how the lives of separate people in diverse locations are tied together through this object. In the former novel it was a missing manuscript, here it is a mammoth desk: “an enormous, foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited, pretending to be inanimate but, like a Venus’ flytrap, ready to pounce on them and digest them via one of its many little terrible drawers.”

The story is told by four narrators – Nadia in NY, Isabel in Oxford, Arthur in London & Aaron in Jerusalem.

Nadia, a writer, begins the story by recounting how the desk came her way. She addresses her story to a silent witness who she calls ‘Your honour’ and whose identity is only revealed in the final pages. We learn that she was left the desk by a young Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky who was leaving for home and needed a place to store his furniture. Soon afterwards Daniel falls a victim to Pinochet’s murderous regime and the desk remains with Nadia. Despite its foreboding presence, she forms a strange attachment with it as she continues to write at the desk. She remains unmarried and detached from any real human connection, and the desk and her brief encounter with Varsky seem to be the only milestones in her emotional landscape - "I'm embarrassed to say that my eyes actually filled with tears, Your Honour, though as is so often the case, the tears sprang from older, more obscure regrets i had delayed thinking about, which the gift, or loan, of of a stranger's furniture had somehow unsettled."If there is no great exhilaration in her life, there is also no deep sorrow. Until the day Leah Weiz knocks on her door claiming to be Varsky’s daughter and requesting the desk back.

The next part of the story is told by Aaron, the recently widowed father of Dov, who he addresses through his monologue. Aaron is in fact the single character in this book who seems intent to redeem himself, who is aware of his severed connection from his own blood and is desperate to find common ground again with Dov. His anguish, his fury, his sense of utter desolation that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot scale the impenetrable wall that Dov has built around him, comprise some of the most beautiful sections of this novel.

We next meet Arthur Bender, who has only recently discovered (while caring for his Alzheimer-afflicted wife Lotte Berg) the extent of the secrets she kept locked within her self during their long marriage. It is in fact Lotte, who’d given the desk to Varsky. As these stories unravel, you realise neither Dov nor Lotte nor Nadia are ordinary people who look for and cherish concepts like stability, love or happiness. They are consumed by memories of a loss so immense that it makes it difficult to stand straight afterwards. Yet, what is truly painful is Krauss’ intuitive understanding of the unhappiness that falls upon those who are attached to these broken figures. As Arthur describes his long marriage, we realise the long periods of uncertainty, the endless doubts, and the effort required to silently accept the whims and silence of Lotte without ever voicing what it must’ve cost him to live like that. In many ways, Arthur reminds me of Tagore’s Nikhil from Ghare Baire.

The fourth narrator is Isabel, a student at Oxford who falls in love with Yoav Weisz, Leah Weisz’s brother. Like Arthur and Aaron, Isabel too soon discovers the pitfalls of caring deeply for someone whose entire life is in the thrall of something greater than himself – in this case the siblings’ unusual and disturbing closeness, and the presence of their domineering father George Weisz. George is a famous antiques dealer who specialises in restoring old pieces of furniture looted by the Nazi’s to their rightful owners. Needless to say, George wants the desk. As George explains his peculiar occupation to us, we seem to glimpse what lies beneath Krauss’ magnificent meditation on loss and grief.

George Weisz says, “Bend a people around the shape of what they have lost, and let everything mirror its absent form." His words are at complete odds with our commonplace understanding of grief and loss. We think (that’s what is taught and that’s what we witness in most around us) that time and life are the greatest healers; that with time, it is possible to overcome, or at least noticeably ‘move on’ from the epicentre of one’s great loss. This may be true of most. But the reverse is also true – that there may be some who simply do not have this faculty of self healing; who stand rooted in the quicksand of their loss and defeated by time; there is a kind of soil which no matter how much you water or fertilise, will yield no fruit. And this brings us to, perhaps, the book’s great existential question – if such loss is a definite possibility in one’s life, how does anything really matter? How do we lend meaning to the concepts and constructs that are purportedly meant to make life meaningful?

According to Joan Didion the answer lies in writing: ‘you write your way through it’ she prescribes of crushing grief. Krauss is far cannier and offers nothing. There is no hope, no comfort, no light at the end of the novel: just shattered glass.

As I read Great House I found myself impatient to see how the 4 stories would come together. Readers who expect neat endings will probably be a little miffed at Krauss for the manner in which this is done. I think this is also a deliberate ploy on her part because to search for meanings and connections in a merciless existential universe is perhaps as futile as trying to comprehend God.

On the badminton court

2011-12-01T20:49:00.058+05:30

His eyes focused on the black mole on her right foot - vivid, familiar, and enticing as always. Despite himself, he looked for the blisters which he knew had long healed. He daren’t look up for fear the others would see his eyes. He sat with his head bent, looking intently at the white hospital tiles, seemingly mesmerized by the pattern of 4 regular white squares interspersed with a lone brown; couldn’t wait for the entire ordeal to be over, and had it not been for her aging parents, the years that stretched between the two families, he doubted he’d be present.

It was strange but not once did he feel like touching her, that familiar pull to thread his hand through her thick hair & pull her close; or run his thumb over her lower lip with a slowness that’d made her gasp and look at him pleadingly. That there would ever be a time when he could resist reaching out and pulling her close, was something he’d never imagined. The touch was all they’d ever had; when the words had betrayed them, it was their skins that spoke eloquently; in her small cluttered apartment, on his terrace, in busy airports, and cramped changing rooms – they’d allowed the madness to overpower them and left traces of a love that had stopped breathing a long time ago.

Yet here he was once again after a gap of seven years. Seven long years of a furtive peace and thankfulness that he’d finally found someone else who didn’t make him feel haunted all the time; someone who didn’t always expect the world of him. Now, those seven years had come to an end – in a dirty hospital room where four patients struggled for an elusive peace and privacy.

Suddenly he arose and went over to stand beside her. As he looked down at her sunken cheeks, the sharp nose that he’d loved to tease her about, he wondered at the stillness that emanated from her. It was difficult to remember her without her nervous tic of pulling at the ends of the shaggy bangs that framed her face, to see her lying still instead of pacing restlessly, fuelled by nervous energy as she puffed on one cigarette after another. In all the years that he’d known her, he’d never seen her still. Now her chest was still; all was quiet within. The stormy turbulence of 33 years had finally ceased.

He sat down and couldn’t help his eyes travelling over the familiar mole once again. Her toes were unpainted – a sight as alien as her lying on the bed without trying to cram all her thoughts into a babel of incoherence. She had abhorred make-up, but nail polish had been her single vanity. Crimson, orange, pewter grey, and green – he’d reserved his usual scorn for them, but had secretly smiled at her exuberance.

Almost immediately his mind jumped to a particular evening they’d spent in a small hotel in Rishikesh. They’d travelled all the way from Hardwar where she’d had much fun floating the diya and flower baskets in Hadki Paori in the Ganges. Her squeals, her radiant smile, her childish excitement, the glow from the hundreds of diyas floating in the water, it was one of those rare moments when everything came together and was perfect. Later at Rishikesh, she’d taught him how to paint her toes. Despite his complete disinterest in the beginning, he’d soon come to enjoy it. It was in keeping with so many other things he did because his initial reluctance would soon be overcome by her enthusiasm. None of the other women he’d known, and there had been quite a few, had come so unfettered, so free. He still remembered the evening they’d first had sex.

You’re losing weight! are you fine?

Hey..hi…I am good.

No, I am good is no good. It is I am fine or I am ok.

Oh, I forget, you’re the English major.

It’s not that, at all. I am good sounds pompous. Let others decide if you’re good or bad. Smile.

Silence.

You’ve known me since you were a kid. Am I good or bad?

I think you’re very good. You’re the best. Shy smile.

Slow, lazy smile. Silence. Pinches her cheek.

Do you want me to pick you after college tomorrow? We could go pick up those goldfish for your bowl. I spoke to a guy at Manish market and we could check him out.

Flushed. You did? !! Of course I’d like to go tomorrow. Does he have the Indian variety or the Turkish? I have read that the Turkish ones learn to emote with you orer a period of time while the Indians are just dumb. I want the Turkish ones. Buuuutt, wont it be rather far for you to come all the way to college? I could meet you at the park?

Look, I just said we will check out what he has. I have no idea if they come from Turkey or Syria! And, if I said I can come, it means it’s no problem. Unless you have a problem with me picking you up?

I was only thinking about you. Why do you get so easily irritated with whatever I say?

I don’t. You imagine it.

Silence.

Why are you so silent? You want me to leave?

No baby. Stay. Just some things on my mind. Thinking.

Tentative. Have you been thinking about me?

Yeah.

Silence.

Do you want me?

More than you know.

Silence.

If I were to take you home now, you know it’d lead to hanky panky?

Laughing aloud. Yeah? And then what? You know I can’t give you anything. That works for you?

It does.

I don’t understand you….really I don’t at all. How can it work for you? How can you be so flippant? Voice rising now.

I am neither deaf nor flippant. You don't understand me, how can you even begin to understand my love? It doesn't matter.

And that’d been it. Not a word was exchanged & after a while, she’d beckoned to the waiter, paid the bill, gently taken his hand and brought him to her tiny apartment. He was in a daze, it was as if he was looking at her from amid dense fog. She’d caught him completely by surprise and the pleasure of her hands as they worked their way across his body, was a feeling he had never forgotten.

Yet, that was not when he felt protective about her. That had come much before.

She’d been three when their family moved to the quarters below in the steel township managed by the company their fathers worked in. Their fathers were colleagues and she’d soon become his sister’s best friend. The 12 years that separated them ensured she was never anything more than a pesky nuisance, a precocious girl with stubborn ways who always borrowed his cassettes without seeking his permission. He’d hated that about her. Later when they were married briefly, she’d raid his clothes. He pretended to be angry and smiled at her mockingly, but deep down he was always oddly touched. In the end, she’d been the one who protected him, not the other way around. Though, all he’d ever wanted was to shield her.

Ever since the incident on the badminton court.

During the summer holidays, the badminton court became a beehive of activity. Boys and girls of different age groups congregated there since 7 in the morning to make the most of the outdoors before the heat became unbearable after midday. While the older children played their game, their younger sibling sat on the clubhouse steps under the shade, enthusiastically cheering and clapping for their older siblings. She’d always be there with his sister.

He must’ve been around 16 then when the incident took place. He’ was engrossed in the game and was startled to hear a loud wailing. He looked around to find her rooted to the middle of the sun-baked cement court on her bare feet, wailing loudly as the heat scalded the tender insides of her bare soles. She’d sauntered over to him to tell him she wanted to go home and had forgotten to wear her sandals. Instinctively, several of them had rushed to pick her up, but by then blisters had covered her tiny pink feet. As he carried her inside, he’d been aware for the first time in his life, of a feeling of absolute terror, terror that he was solely responsible for something infinitely precious to him. Mingled with this terror was the awareness that he would do anything to protect the little girl in his arms. Never again had he experienced that same tenderness, that same terror for anybody else again in his life.

It had always seemed odd to him that she had no memory of an incident that was so deeply etched in his consciousness. Often when he worked late, he’d stand quietly for a few seconds in front of the bedroom door, at daybreak, or after a night when he’d promised to be at home with her; he’d stand there with a sore conscience knowing she had finally fallen asleep with disappointment in her heart. He couldn’t even begin to count the times. At last his tired feet would remind him that he had to go inside and he’d press the door handle which he knew would creak halfway down. And she would wake up, look at him with sleepy eyes, more angry than hurt, until he slipped under the duvet, snuggled up to her body and felt its stiff resistance melt. But she wouldn’t give in. She’d quietly turn he back to him. And then he would stroke her more, kiss and nibble at her, be her servant until she was sitting on him, no longer the queen in her slumbers, but purring and moaning, wanton and offended at the same time.

Later, lying beside each other in the darkened bedroom, he’d often recount the day on the badminton court. The script never changed and she’d fall asleep in his arms almost immediately afterwards. Now, he wasn’t so sure how much of what he remembered of that incident and used to tell her was actually true, and how much he’d made up to please her. Like she always assured him, it didn’t matter.

Red

2011-11-26T22:56:00.002+05:30

A colleague in Denmark who recently quit the company and relocated to Germany wrote me a mail describing the new workplace, travel involved, search for a house, etc. He mentioned, "I can feel this move will change me in several unknown, unseen ways but I guess it'll all be for the good in the end. I try and remain stoic but the prospect of all those dialysis machines leaves me wondering what good is life about anyway."

Dumb me jumped to conclusions and dashed off a mail immediately remarking that i wasn't aware he was relocating for health purposes and commiserating with his misfortune, et all. PL replied later explaining that the 'dialysis' reference was solely due to the fact that the Communications department of this huge hospital was located on the same floor as the nephrology section and he passed them daily on his way to his office. He thanked me for my 'kind mail' but assured me that he was in perfectly fine health.

If stupidity can kill, i would be playing the harp in heaven now. Aaaaargh!

Notes On Rockstar

2011-11-20T14:20:00.002+05:30

Some friends call me a movie snob, an assumption I don’t bother to correct. If not liking hits like Hera Pheri, Dabaang and Khatron Ke Khiladi makes me guilty of such transgression, I accept the charge. But frankly, none of these films make me see red – I don’t enjoy them, but I see that they remain true and committed to their vision of ‘masala’ entertainment. There is no clash in values or vision that I perceive in these films. But films like Rockstar, Dil Kya Kare and Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna really upset me because they deal with issues which are compelling and close to my heart, in a frivolous manner; it’s like you pick the best canapés and then shallow fry them and the end result is a half-cooked, soggy mess.

For starters, I have no idea why Imitiaz Ali named his film Rockstar, it might as easily be a film about a genius techie, a maverick investment banker or just some bloke who tries too hard to impress. Early on in the film we are told that JJ (Ranbir Kapoor) dreams of being the next Jim Morrison ( the only rockstar allusion in the film!). He is advised by his college mentor Khattarbhai (Kumud Mishra) that the one thing common to all great artists is their experience of intense pain and the ability to infuse that pain into their art. I don’t know if Ali is going wink-wink here, but I do agree that there’s a problem with the way we Indians define a rockstar. We are still so preoccupied with Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury that we cannot think of an alternate prototype – one who isn’t necessarily self destructive, one who doesn’t do drugs, one who turns up for his recordings on time, and doesn’t throw tantrums. We can’t acknowledge that artists like Zakir Hussain, A.R. Rehman and Shankar Mahadevan are rockstars too! Thus, I really found JJ’s naïve understanding of who’s a rockstar quite authentic in the context of India. In fact throughout Ali’s film, you’ll come across many such moments of resonance where he seems to be trying to delve into or reflect upon something that is of consequence in our lives. Yet sadly, he doesn’t bother to really stir the broth once the lid has been lifted. He’s simply content to let you catch a whiff of the aroma and then seal the lid back into place.

It takes a certain sensibility and imagination to make great love stories. When you really think about it, all love stories are the same. Boy & girl start from the starting line amidst much sunshine and cheering, later, clouds come in the way, and only one of them makes it to the finishing line. But the love story takes place only after the clouds darken the sky and therein the beauty. Casablanca, Dr Zhivago, QSQT, Walk the Line, Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind, & perhaps even Sholay – look at any of them and you’ll see what I’m talking about. That’s why these are the greatest love stories ever filmed. The saddest thing about Rockstar is that it’s neither about an eccentric musical genius nor a great love story. It compromises on both ideals because Indian film makers are wary of showcasing their heroes as absolute assholes. We make excuses for these jerks, we are a nation obsessed with explaining away our negatives. The only exception is probably someone like SRK who dared to make films like Anjaan and Darr.

Anyway, to return to the limpid love story, Ali shows imagination but again doesn’t pursue his vision through till the end. His JJ is more a retard (middle finger to political correctness) than eccentric or endearing. Though Ranbir tries hard to ape his grandfather Raj Kapoor, what he doesn’t quite possess is the innocence, naivete and endearing charm of Kapoor Sr. Frankly, I felt like delivering a tight smack across his face every time he opened his mouth or grinned.

About Nargis Fuckri's Heer, all I can say is that she elevates Katrina Kaif to the levels of Smita Patil in comparison. Every time she came onscreen, the audience broke out in loud guffaws! And I was like - was Ali doped when he signed her? Every time I raged and wanted to walk out, A gripped my hand and told me, “She’s the only Indian actress I’ve seen who has Peneolpe Cruz’s mouth’. As if that alone is enough. Grrr….

Perhaps the greatest disappointment is Rehman’s music. Forget the fact that this film is apparently about an unrefined musical genius, ‘ek bahut bada janwar’, who’s passionate about making music. This film cannot even be about an artist like Himesh Reshammiya! A.R. Rehman has always been God for me, and it breaks my heart to have to admit that his muse has probably deserted him forever. The fire is gone and it is we who are the poorer for it.

Is there anything I liked about the film? Tough one that. As stated earlier, there are 2-3 conceits that Ali employs which are an absolute must in a love story, but they all fall flat. The idea of the body not being able to keep up and breaking down eventually when separated from ones beloved because the heart has broken, and then miraculously reviving again, is something so magical, so fragile, that it cannot & shouldn’t be expressed in terms of increased blood count. No way! There are those who will laugh at this and dismiss it, and others who will nod with unshed tears in their eyes. That’s ok. But it definitely isn’t something you can explain in terms of reports and tests and walking down stairs as Ali does.

Again, the entire camaraderie between the two lovers comes across as completely make-believe. At no point do you sense that Heer feels JJ is an organic extension of her. That’s what the greatest love stories are about – about healing our fractured selves. The scene where they meet in Prague after several years could have been done so poignantly with an actress like Rekha or Kareena but with Nargis F, it is turned into mockery!

I liked Ali’s Ahista Ahista, Jab We Met, and I thought Love Aaj Kal had elements of a great love story. I still believe he’s a sensitive and intelligent director. But he doesn’t possess the soul of a lover – a lover of films. To be so, you have to throw caution to the winds, stop explaining and annotating emotions, stop playing to the gallery, and must learn to walk on coals. He still hasn’t done that.

Whimsy

2011-11-16T22:28:00.027+05:30

If you saw the smile, you might wonder what is so special about it. It's an ordinary smile for you, but it lights up my insides. Just like the Philips tagline goes - sense and simplicity. It makes perfect sense to me and it is really simple to understand. But he doesn't see it that way and one day the smile vanished. Almost in tandem, the flowers started to wilt, the dog dropped its juicy bone and the wireless signals went awry.

We moved out of the house a few months ago and the smile has returned. Let me tell you what i remember about it - it's surprisingly shy, it's quiet, and holds promise of unexpected gentleness, and it is usually silent. Rarely, when i say something truly hilarious, it is louder.

The ironies are not lost on me: there are things I must do to keep the smile in place. But i take comfort in them rather than despair. I cannot return to the house. It's no loss really; the smile is what makes my day.

There is a long road ahead of me and it reminds me of the road that stretches out amidst the fields in the Road to Perdition, as father and son travel to Chicago to build their life again after a great loss. The long, straight road resembles the clean parting on an Indian woman's head. It is like an arrow that pierces through the heart of darkness. If you come looking for me, you'll find me on the same road.

Empathy

2011-11-11T18:29:00.003+05:30

I don't think any of us is really capable of showing empathy to another. Empathy involves an ability to suspend judgement and not talk too much. How many can do that?

Recently, a friend of mine lost her daughter. The women who came to console her, offered reasons why the tragedy befell her. Of late, she's been completely unresponsive to our overtures and is often curt. The same women now discuss her rudeness, easily forgetting all that she's suffering. Their hurt at her curtness has become greater than her loss. Ha!

A long time ago, I'd written this and today i hold it closer than ever. We qualify and quantify grief and loss and pain. We are eager to tell others how wrong they are, how weak they are, how hopeless they are. What we forget is that the person we're alleging all this to, is all too painfully aware of his/her own frailties and is struggling to change. Make no mistake: everybody wants to move on.

AB is an alcoholic - he's been in and out of rehab, has severe health issues, and is today, slowly trying to fight his addiction. He has met someone who has obviously injected the desire in him to take this monumental step. I see many in our group pass snide remarks and recently we nearly came to fist fights. I have no idea if AB will overcome his addiction, but i do understand the circumstances that broke him and my feelings for him don't change irrespective of his overcoming the addiction or not. i hear people moaning and comparing their individual tragedies and how they triumphed ! Today, it suits them to forget their flaws and fallibility; they are afraid of introspection because who knows what the man in the mirror will reveal; they are above any reproach.

I can't comprehend this structure of grief-hierarchy.Sure, I wish AB well, but i am also aware that something in his internal wiring has gone awry and may never be right again. It's ok: I don't think he needs me or you or your dog to point that out.

Perhaps, grief is not meant to be shared. You process it, let it burn and die its own death, but don't expect others to comprehend it. They won't.

Notes on The Sense of an Ending

2011-11-09T19:23:00.002+05:30

I read 2 magnificent novels recently – this year’s Booker winner The Sense of An Ending and Nicole Krauss’ Great House. I’ve never felt more intrigued or taxed as I did while trying to join the dots and weave the threads in these novels and arrive at a satisfactory ending. Even now I’m unsure whether what I understood and interpreted is really what happened. This ambiguity is part of being alive, as also part of the narrative tradition, of hearing and reading about other people’s lives, of history, and of recalling the past. Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending is about these ambiguities - the impossibility of ever arriving at the truth about certain pivotal matters in our life because the truth has long ago been distorted and destroyed. As one character puts it early on in the novel, “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation". That is why this novel possesses that rare punch to change the way one has been interpreting one’s life or going about it. That alone should quieten all those murmurs which ask whether it was a deserving winner or not.

The novel is narrated by Tony Webster, a 60-year-old retiree, who recalls the events of his life, only to discover that what he remembers and what actually happened don’t always concur: “What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.” As Tony works his way towards an epiphany, we realize that, even at the end, one cann whot be sure that what Tony now understands, is the penultimate truth. I think that’s why this is one of the most befitting titles I’ve come across – it hints and mocks and alludes to a veil, to a mirage, that upon closer examination will cease to be and reveal a darker truth. Very few of us have the courage to actually seek an ‘ending’ to our affairs; instead, most of us are satisfied with the ‘sense of an ending’ that matters have been peacefully resolved, mortgage payments met, P/L accounts closed, children settled, and daily vitamins taken.

The narrative is prompted by Tony’s sudden receipt of a lawyer’s letter informing him that the mother of his ex-girlfriend, Veronica, (whom he hasn’t met in more than 40 years) has left him £500 and a diary. The diary belongs to Adrian Finn, a brooding intellectual schoolmate-cum-hero of Tony’s and his 3 friends who later went to study at Cambridge and shortly afterwards committed suicide at the age of 22. At that time he was married to Veronica who started dating him soon after she split with Tony. She now has the diary and though she meets him after a lot of persuasion, she refuses to give him the diary. As he probes and pushes, what he gradually discovers upsets the cart of his peaceful existence and challenges the substance of his memories.

The first part of this thin novel outlines Tony and his friends’ days at school, the simultaneously repressed and restless energy in a typical 60’s boys school, the advent of Adrian in their midst and his unique and logical way of looking at things, Tony’s brief affair with Veronica and the ill-fated weekend at her place with her family, her mother’s odd gesture under the window and even odder warning to not let Veronica get the better of him, the eventual break-up with Veronica and later knowledge that Adrian was now dating her. As he recounts these sections, he continuously retracts and casts doubt on whether he remembers things correctly and raises doubts in our minds about his reliability as a narrator. For instance, was he really snubbed and looked down upon during that long-ago weekend at Veronica’s house or did he simply project his own feelings of inadequacy onto others? Was Veronica’s mother really kind or could her behavior be ascribed to something darker? Most importantly, what role did Tony play in Adrian’s eventual suicide and the larger tragedy that unfolds in the last pages? As the novel develops, these questions haunt Tony and he seeks Veronica, who now has her husband’s diary, to find some degree of understanding and closure.

Not only this, he is forced to re-examine and reinterpret his vision of Adrian – the school chum whose intellect had always enthralled Tony. He’d earlier romanticized Adrian’s suicide as the truest manner in which one can exercise his choice in life; later, as he uncovers facts, he is forced to consider whether Adrian’s death was nothing more than a cowardly act, an inability to face up to the truth about one’s moral decrepitude.

As we veer towards the end, it does seem that the ‘ending’ is a tad contrived and one can’t be faulted for imagining that Tony’s final reading of his own role in the grand tragedy that has enfolded all their lives, is perhaps a little far-fetched. I know readers will quibble with this. I’d like to imagine that Barnes shapes his ending in this manner precisely because he wants to sow the doubt – does Tony really ‘get’ things in the end? Did things really happen the way he imagines them in the end? There’s no way of knowing and Veronica’s single stubborn accusation throughout the novel - ‘You just don’t get it’ – continues to resonate in our ears.

Perhaps the best thing about reading a writer like Barnes is the complete lack of sentimentality, and his dry and mordant wit that pervades even the most poignant sections. Notice the characteristic brusque way in which he captures the essence of what it meant to be a school boy in the ‘60s, “We were book hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchic.” One can’t help laughing as he describes the dating scene thus, “This is what used to happen: you met a girl, you were attracted to her, you tried to ingratiate yourself, you would invite her to a couple of social events - for instance, the pub - then ask her out on her own, then again, and after a good-night kiss of variable heat, you were somehow officially ‘going out’ with her. Only when you were semi-publicly committed did you discover what her sexual policy might be. And sometimes this meant her body would be as tightly guarded as a fisheries exclusion zone.”

But always beneath the wit and even tone of his prose, you come across passages which enthrall as when he writes towards the end, “And no, it wasn’t shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.” To me, this along with another passage is perhaps the key to the novel – the distinction between guilt and remorse and regret. A distinction we forget too easily.

Tony is a kind of Everyman – just one of us. In the beginning he tells us, “I had not wanted life to bother me too much.” He’s the kind of person who, like you may, claims, “I recycle; I clean and decorate my flat to keep up its value. I’ve made my will; and my dealings with my daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and ex-wife are, if less than perfect, at least settled.” Sounds familiar?

Yet, it is this very man who says in the end, “You get towards the end of life: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have i done wrong.” Ever since i read the novel almost 2 months ago, i’ve revisited this passage not less than 17 times and it never fails to bring the tears despite my resolve. There’s such immense empathy for mankind in his assured ‘what else’ and not ‘what have i done wrong’, that it cannot but shake you. The very idea that we are all aware of our mistakes, that we try and make amends, and yet there’s so much that we are blind to, is the keenest reminder of our frailties. This novel serves that reminder.

Notes on A Serious Man

2011-10-25T10:06:00.001+05:30

I’ve always believed that the good things in life come to us at particular moments when we most need them or are most ready for them. The best books, the best music, the best people – none of it is random; it has a sacred significance which perhaps reveals itself much later when you’re able to connect the dots. With these thoughts it’s a lil difficult to write about a film that is basically about randomness; about a hapless soul’s search for meaning in a universe that will do anything to strip every object, every individual, every event of meaning. To search for meaning in such an existential, absurd universe is akin to the endless wait for Godot.

A Serious Man tells the story of physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose world is slowly disintegrating. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) is leaving him for a someone who is little more than a lecherous pontificating creep; to add insult to injury she wants Sy to move in and Larry to stay at the Jolly Roger; his overweight, mentally-challenged brother Albert (Richard Kind) sits on the couch all day and attracts the attention of the local police; his son Danny is doing drugs and owes money, while his daughter wants a nose job. Typical cozy picture of dysfunctional American suburbia, huh?

Every scene is treated with the Cohen brothers’ trademark irreverence and humour. Be it Danny’s bar mitzvah, or the encounters between Larry and the rabbis who he meets to try and understand why he’s being singled out for such treatment. The thing abt the Cohen brothers is that they, apart from Woody Allen in parts, are the only guys who can show you a film abt a man losing everything or a bizarre murderous psychopath and yet make you laugh. Sure, it’s an uncomfortable laughter, one which is accompanied by the feather-touch awareness along your spine that you wouldn’t want to inhabit the universe he’s describing, but the laughter is there. You laugh even as you feel sorry for Larry. I could particularly empathise with Larry’s puzzlement when a long & circuitous conversation with a senior rabbi ends with the devastating words, “We can’t know everything.” No wonder he retorts, “Sounds like you don’t know anything.”

Though this film was made after their Oscar winner No Country for Old Men (NCFOM), I’d like to see this as a prelude to that story of relentless, needless violence where the flip of a coin decides a man’s fate (the coin flip scene in NCFOM is one of the best scenes in film history ever.) The usual rules, promises and tokens are rendered hollow and ludicrous in these films. Why so many people die in NCFOM while the sheriff survives in that other great Cohen brothers’ film - Fargo - can all be attributed to their singular vision of this existential universe where everything is accidental.

I’m sure we are all disturbed by randomness, by chance, by events unfolding one way or the other because a coin flip changed the direction of our lives. We’ve always been led to believe that this isn’t so – that we shape our destinies, that no wrong ever goes unpunished, blah blah. It is to the Cohen brothers’ credit that their nihilism is appealing. I can even say I find it oddly comforting sometimes – just fuck the universe and do what needs to be done.

But while Larry is a victim, there is something profoundly moving about the manner in which he struggles to lead his life even as it’s coming apart at the seams. He just does what needs to be done, doesn’t crib or moan, seeks wisdom from those he supposes can help him and goes abt his way. And when all fails, he claims quietly, “I’ve tried to be a serious man, I’ve tried to do right.”

A Serious Man begins with a prologue in which a married woman stabs an elderly man whom she believes to be a dybbuk (malicious spirit who enters a living person and controls their life.) The story bears no relation to the main story which follows. To look for a connection is as absurd as Larry’s attempts to rationalise his predicament. That’s the singular beauty of this film: nothing is ever proved, nothing confirmed and no solace offered. There’s no way of knowing: the film is full of characters who talk about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, whether or not actions have consequences, and the need to “accept the mystery”. And so we go on about our sorry lives – naïve, unsuspecting, unprepared, fearful.

In the end I was left with just one thought – we are angry when we can’t find the reasons, but perchance we found the reasons, would grief have been any less?

Belated

2011-10-22T11:00:00.001+05:30

There are enough reasons and seasons to break down in life. But certainly not on your bday. Naah! That day should always bring a smile, wry or wide; the thrill of anticipation and planning; it should be accompanied by thankfulness and the comforting knowledge that life hasn't been so bad after all. There’s nothing sadder than breaking down before your 41st bday.

I could gift you a shiny Corvette or a bottle of 1811 Château d'Yquem, but we'll save those for another year. The bonus hadn’t been all that healthy this year. :) I give you something else instead.

You asked me in disbelief, “What has been your serenity prayer?” Today I share my own lil serenity prayer. Like all best things in life, I chanced upon it by accident.

Close your eyes and listen to the lyrics closely, they have a story to tell – timeless as the lustre of money and the beating of the wild heart. Embrace its comfort for you’ll need it in the years to come.

Redemption

2011-10-10T22:04:00.001+05:30

Though my soul may set in darkness
It will rise in perfect light,
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night.

Sarah Williams

***********************************************************************
For some reason, this day a year ago is etched clearly in my memory. Almost everything that could, has gone wrong this year. Even as i write this, I'm aware a few more months of 2011 remain. One can go crazy trying to look for reasons and trace causality. I was one of them too. The same folks will credit a lot of factors for him pulling through this past year. Maybe they're right. For me, this blog has always been about the misfits, the amoralists, the ones who teeter on the brink of darkness groping towards light. They are my heroes. I can avouch R's the only one who redeemed himself in the past year; the only story worth writing about.

The side wall of my bedroom is a sheer glass façade. In the late evening, the lights outside look gorgeous. Often when I sit there, I recall R’s triumph and it fills me great joy. It really does.

From tomorrow I can start bingeing on sweets again. Cheers to that!

Salude, Sir

2011-10-06T11:37:00.002+05:30

A few weeks ago when Jobs announced he was stepping down as Apple CEO, A did something unusual. I entered our room and was surprised to see him sitting with D on his lap, showing her something on the laptop. He was speaking softly and at first i couldn't make out what they were talking about. Gradually, got a drift - he was taking her through the trajectory of Jobs' career, explaining his genius as best as you can to a 6-yr old, telling her this remarkable man was also responsible for running the company that produced some of her (ours too) favourite films like Finding Nemo, Wall-e, Up, etc. A has been a huge Jobs' fan much before it became fashionable to display one's ipads and iphones. I remember our conversations in Japan where he actually inducted me to the myth of Jobs, the magnitude of his achievement, his ouster from Apple, his turning around of Pixar's fortunes and his second innings at Apple.

I sat down on the edge of the bed listening to the 2 of them talking and suddenly, A's voice cracked slightly & he said, "Beta, you know, he probably won't be around much longer. They should teach you in school about him." After D had left to play, i went up to him and hugged him silently. Not a word was exchanged. Honest, i couldn't fathom why A would take the possibility of Jobs' demise so hard, but then, life is all about caring for things you cannot always fathom.

This memory stood out as i read the news today.

As an aside, the front page of NYT's digital version is displaying some really touching quotes from people who lament his passing away. He is being touted as the Michelangelo of our age. I can sense genuine grief and poetry in some of those quotes. To have touched so many people so closely, can there be any greater achievement than this?

RIP

Alice in Wonderland

2011-10-04T19:45:00.005+05:30

There are a lot of difficult things we have to do as we go through life, but few things can beat explaining to your 6-yr old daughter that her best friend is no more. How do you explain callous death and germs overcoming the body when her definition of death is still ‘has become a star in the sky’. Only 6 and she’s already had her first taste of loss. God is preparing her for life.

People talk abt guilt – it’s always in the restrospect - most feel guilt after the act is over. I rarely feel guilt; I’m usually fairly stubborn abt my sense of right & wrong; also i am fairly immoral. The antitheses of 'good' you could say. This year I did feel guilt abt a few things but it was nothing in comparison to the guilt I felt last night as I held HP. We are close friends, our daughters were best friends, and it was simply a matter of random chance that her daughter was picked and not mine. I haven’t done anything to deserve this grace and it certainly wasn’t on grounds of morality or right that she’s had to bear this. Perhaps that’s what she wanted to hear last night and I told her so. All the others were talking nonsense and knowing HP closely for the past year, I know she wouldn’t buy such nonsense.

D’s school staged Alice in Wonderland for their annual function this year and Aarya Patel was chosen to play the role of Alice. How could she not? She was bright, cherubic, exactly the kind of Alice we’ve all imagined. Understandably enough D was a lil upset that she hadn’t been chosen. We spoke, I explained things and the girls went back to giggling and shouting. Actually, as I write this, the first thing I recall is the loud noise whenever the 4 of us met up. D and Aarya would get hysterical with joy, HP has a loud domineering manner and often I’d be too tired requesting each of them to speak softly. The girls would climb atop the brown recliner and unable to maintain balance, would topple down together, often dropping the mobile phones and ashtray that sat alongside.

I remember our last meeting as I do Diwali last year. It was around diwali last year that HP and I first started getting friendly – me tentative and unsure as always, she hasty and generous as always. I have few friends and I think the reason I drew close to HP, or even gave her a chance, was purely selfish – she was good to my daughter. D went to their house before Diwali to paint diyas and that was how I first started interacting with HP outside of school. Soon I’d be giving her lifts in my car, she would Xerox worksheets, we would chat while picking up the girls from dance school.

Both mother and daughter were larger than life – boisterous, brave, pretty, outgoing, friendly, with huge hearts. I remember at least 3 occasions when HP dragged me home as I was unwell and made me Knorr soup and forced me to talk. Kappi, her hubby would always return early in the evenings and he was surprisingly easy to talk to too. Sometimes the 2 of us would pull HP’s leg for always being hyper and demanding. He’d tell me, ‘Yaar, you start drinking beer. I hate it when you girls have soup and I’m having Fosters.”

We gradually started talking abt a lot of stuff – work, career, disciplining kids, safety for girls, what we wanted to do in 15 yrs’ time, absent husbands and dying dreams. Yeah, it was routine mundane gal-pal talk but it was a rarity for me. I don’t do this too much and it was surprising. Recently, I’d screwed up a job interview with my controversial views on social media and recounting the tale to HP and Kappi one evening, we had a long discussion on HR practices, how Facebook has become a medium of background check on candidates and both would push me to join Facebook. So much chatter, so much laughter. God must've been with us then.

I remember the last time we met 3 weeks ago. They’d just returned from a much-discussed trip to UK. Aarya always wanted me to carry donuts from MOD for her. We fed the kids some pasta and donuts and then they wanted us to put some loud music. I can still see HP, D and Aarya dancing to ‘Senorita’. The kids loved her and would always request me to join them while dancing. I usually declined. This time I did and they were all astonished that I danced fairly well. We were laughing loudly, I was tired and started coughing and HP stopped the music and said she’d take me to a doctor if I didn’t see one soon. I remember that evening 3 weeks ago. God hadn’t abandoned us then.

It’s the thought that those evenings will never come back that’s making me mad. There was nothing wrong we did. I am trying to look for reasons but this is sheer randomness. I don’t like things which happen without a reason; I cannot be meek; I cannot condone this. I don’t know how to end this post.

RIP, darling.

On the canyon

2011-10-01T17:54:00.022+05:30

Los Angeles is much like Mumbai, a city of contrasts, where showbiz and glamour exist alongside illegal mexican workers, where the seediness of the city's underbelly is only matched by that found inside the homes of big stars and studio executives. To find a house in this urban jungle that one could look forward to returning to at the end of a long day, was a prize fit for the kings.

The house was a simple split structure, with creme exteriors and dark pinewood. The living room, kitchen and study covered the bottom floor, while the top floor housed the 2 bedrooms and a hanging patio. It's beauty was its location. To come to it, you'd have to take the long, winding road that hugged Mullholland drive, its narrow streets curving along a world of corvettes and mustangs and people who sunbathed in the Bahamas. The road eventually gave way to a deep gorge that stood like a huge bowl amid the gorgeous mountains of LA.

It was a small house that stood on the lip of the canyon which he shared with the red-tailed eagles, coyotes, deer, skunks, possums and rattlesnakes. Frankly, he minded the skunk far more than the rattlesnake. More rural than possible in LA, coming home always felt like healing, a place of refuge where he could forget for a few hours the unnaturalness, the sickness that marked his daily life.

His favourite place in the house was the deck - he had invested nearly as much in it as people did in the best master bedrooms. It had a Braun barbecue grill, the floor a deep reddish wood which was 100% stain free, the best Yamo sound-deck was fitted over the small bamboo cane chair that hung on the western side of the deck. To stand at the deck and watch the sun going down behind the mountains, was a sight to die for; to stand by it at night and hear the animals in the canyon below perk up for their nocturnal activities, was to understand habit and ritual; to practice his yoga on its polished wooden surface as the sun broke out at 7 am in the summers, made it easier to bear the loneliness that was now his life.

Today was not an easy day. To even imagine that he'd made such a big error which had led to the tragedy, was a nightmare that he wouldn't wish on anyone. He took a bottle of Budweiser out of the fridge and stood sipping it at the deck. A coyote cried out into the distance and something rustled in the shrubs below. Must be dinner time. His stomach rumbled and he remembered he'd not eaten anything since breakfast. He was still standing at the deck listening to the winds rustling the tree tops when the phone rang, and her quiet voice came on the speaker phone from 2000 miles away.

He immediately felt better, felt at peace.

Is this my favourite policeman?

Hi, how're you doing?

I know you're not doing so fine. Talk to me. Sunny called.

Sunny called you?

He said you could use some kick-ass conversation.

Silence.

Now will you tell me about the victims or will you?

There wasn't much he could deny her anyway; he told her the whole sordid story.

Listen to me. Are you listening?

Yes.

Even if the worst is true, what happened is not your fault. You acted on the evidence, you were only doing your job. And no one does it better than you. ok? If this terrible thing is true, do you know what you will do?

He nodded but didn't answer.

You will man up and do what needs to be done now. You will get to the bottom of this. I will personally fly out and hold you? Dyu hear me?

You're holding me now, baby.

I'm not finished. Have you been drinking?

I miss you.

Shuttup and listen. I want you to listen to me.

I'm listening.
He was hanging on to her every word.

Now, gimme an Adam Sandler dialogue.

C'mon! Not now.

She raised her voice.
Say something funny!

Something funny.

Bad one. Try again.
She snorted.

I love you.

Only as a friend. ok?

Can't I see you?
He prayed silently.

We've been over this before. I will always be your best friend. I need to run now. Call me.

Call you what?

She smiled, he knew from 2000 miles away that she was smiling. Then her voice came on again - as soft and gentle as always.

You are the best. Dont you ever forget that. Dont you ever let me down. Bye.

****

Integrity

2011-09-30T09:19:00.042+05:30

Maybe it's the time of year or hormones or a test of integrity. A memory resurfaced and i lost my balance. Some are saying its CS while the wise man says it's BPV. It was like riding the 'California Screaming' roller coaster at Disneyworld. While you're on it, your heart's in your mouth, time loses all meaning and you discover thrill and fear, agony and ecstasy. When i realised time was up, i thought i'd had enough memories to last me a lifetime. i really thought so, i dont fib. i didn't want to be stuck in time, one of those Ms Havisham-type relics who are stuck in time while the world has moved on. Yuck, not me, I resolved.

This morning, i am not so sure.

I am certainly not the epitome of integrity but i value it when i witness it; you could say i have a radar for it. Was watching something on TV last night which boiled down to integrity. Not saying & doing things just for the heck of it or to please others but because that is the most honest representation of who you are. This begs the question - what if i'm a thief? How do i show my true face and integrate myself into the world which will shun me if they knew who i was?

Way i see it, only one way left - beat stealing out of yourself; try, try, try till your heart stops beating. It will work.

Thoughts on the Booker Shortlist

2011-09-28T21:35:00.002+05:30

He sang ‘The more I know, the less I understand’. That seems to be my story as well. So many issues/matters I find myself sitting on the fence, unable to make up my mind. There’s a mini controversy brewing over the choice of the Booker shortlist for this year & once again, I find myself unable to take sides with any real conviction.

Ever since the judges of this year’s Booker committee announced the shortlist on Sep 6 with those fateful words, “We are looking for enjoyable books. I think they are readable books”, a sort of literary outrage has engulfed readers and book enthusiasts across the world. Most are unhappy with the shortlist, perplexed by the exclusion of such authors as Edward St Aubyn, Hollinghurst, and Anne Enright from this year’s shortlist. Of the 6 shortlisted entries - Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, AD Miller's Snowdrops, Carol Birch's Jamrach’s Menagerie, Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, Patrick De Witt's The Sisters Brothers and Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English - I’ve read only two (no. 1 & 5). I definitely don’t think this is Barnes’ best and while the De Witt novel is hugely entertaining and well crafted, I am unsure I’d like to get back to it after a few years, dust it and read it again. Both are good books; I’m afraid they are not great.

Reading forms one of my earliest memories but I still don’t know how I’d define a great book. Perhaps a good book changes something changes something intrinsic about you, and it is a book you gravitate towards over and over again as the years take their toll. Dunno.

Now, coming to the debate: the purists are disturbed because ‘readability’ seems to have scored over literary merit. Thing is, while The God of Small Things or Wolf Hall might carry huge literary merit, not too many people would be willing to traverse its arduous pages. I almost gave up Hillary Mantel halfway through! This means poor book sales for the author and losses for the publisher.

The judges have a choice: either to encourage people to buy, read and enjoy a slightly wider selection of books than they normally would, or to go entirely for what they believe are the most worthy books, even if not too many people are willing to invest in those books. And we all know what happens when we pick up a first book by an author and don’t like it. Enjoyment may seem like a obscene word in literature but it does affect marketability.

Having said that, there is something to be said about the level of literary maturity, taste and personal leanings of a society that cannot be bothered to look beyond ‘enjoyment’, that refuses to engage in a book unless it offers immediate gratification, that rejects books simply because they challenge the mind and the intellect and push the frontiers of the imagination. It is sad for the authors of such books no doubt, but it’s sadder still for society.

As I said earlier, I can’t decide which parameter should hold water. I am a rabid anti-marketing person so can’t really trust my instincts. Nevertheless, a memory lingers – I just couldn’t get through Faulkner’s ‘Sound and the Fury’ the first 2 times I tried. For those of you who haven’t read the novel, the first few chapters don’t make sense because they are being narrated in first person by Benjy, an adult male who has the mind of a retard. It was a critical text in my optional American Literature paper in MA. Once I’d trudged through the opening chapters, I discovered a dysfunctional world where the basest motives survived alongside the noblest emotions, where beauty and ugliness were woven inseparably. It is one of my favourite novels.

p.s. Formatting nightmare above. Blogger has gone berserk :(

JLT

2011-09-25T19:36:00.000+05:30

Though I'm a voracious reader, i am partial to particular authors and poets. A few days ago, a fight or rather disagreement arose over some poetry. I was hurt and i did something i never do - i insisted that i was right. I think i was angry. Now, looking back, it feels wrong. There are no imperatives in poetry, i'd studied that in college. How could i forget this lesson?

In Awe

2011-09-25T19:17:00.005+05:30

This post has been on my mind for a while but things have been hectic and i couldn't quite collect my thoughts. A lot of the time, you've heard me rant about people, their callousness, irresponsibility, etc. But once in a while i get to meet or hear about someone who doubles my faith in humanity.

I’ve blogged before about this friend who’s been having a rough patch of sorts. Let’s call her S. She's been unwell for several months. She is seeing a v.famous specialist, who lives in another city, as well as a local specialist. Today I want to tell you about this v.famous doctor from another city who we shall call NT. NT is a famous surgeon, recipient of the Padma Bhushan & the Padma Shri, a US-touring celebrity who these days no longer sees patients unless they come with references. How he agreed to see her is a story for another day.

I know S & she usually abhors such people and she didn’t want to consult someone who was based out of another city and would probably be away reading a dissertation in Honolulu when she needed him most. But she did consult him finally and as strange as the world is, today the two have bypassed a typical doctor-patient relationship. Recently he offered to not charge his mammoth consulting fees any more unless he was satisfied she was showing improvement!

We got talking the other day and some of what I heard was so fascinating that I decided to post here. Despite her treatment for over 4 months, S’s condition hasn’t improved substsntially; this is unusual. NT has now advised her meditation and she complained that when she sat down to meditate, a host of thoughts entered her mind and she couldn’t forget them. His response: “Let them come. When you visit a railway station to pick up a loved one, your face scans a hundred other faces before it finally finds the one you’re looking for. Similarly, if you persist in calming your mind, at some point you will be able to find a centre amid all the other thoughts which keep distracting your mind.”

According to NT, there are no wins or losses in love. He has advised S, "People should think of their love as a sick child. Just like you would give extra attention and care to a sick child, hold your love close to your chest. One day you will see that what others say about it will hardly matter for love will only be yours and it will give you strength.” When will I learn to think like this?

During her last check-up, some of her test results were not too encouraging. She says that it was the first time she found him a little exasperated. When despite extensive examinations and medicine, her heart still showed abnormal increase in size, he said: “I think science doesn’t have an answer to your condition. You are one of those rare people who are truly large hearted. How can its size be managed by a mere physician like me?”

None of the anecdotes I’ve shared above come from the Bible or from some sage’s parables. This is the essence of how a physician’s mind works. We hear of corrupt doctors and lawyers and politicians. There are also people like him. I am truly awed.

The Rose that Grew From Concrete

2011-09-16T18:29:00.002+05:30

I've been putting in really long hours of late. Sometimes the endless tasks, meetings and finger pointing, gets too much. What i usually do on such occasions is sneak away for 10 mins or so and find a corner or my regular rock boundary, and quickly read a few favourite poems. It seemed only appropriate that i read some of his poetry today. After all, this week marks the 15th anniversary of his untimely death.

People swear by rappers like Emimen , Dr Dre or Snoop Dog. What most (outside the US) dont know is that he's hailed as the father of rap. He was also an acclaimed poet, crack junkie and part of an LA street gang. I cant say i love all of his poetry or that it's very refined. But he is the voice of a militant black consciousness that seems to challenge mainstream American racist complacency and complicity. I love some of his poems where he seems to be prophecying his early demise (Letter to my unborn, Upon my demise) or where he seems to have realised the difficulty of staying clean in the midst of muck, or the oddity of finding beauty in the midst of ugliness and mayhem.

Two of the my favourite poems by Tupac Shakur follow. The second is one he wrote for Jada Pinkett Smith, one of his closest friends and whom he considered his soulmate. Enjoy.

The rose that grew from concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared

Jada

u r the omega of my heart
the foundation of my conception of love
when i think of what a black woman should be
its u that i first think of

u will never fully understand
how deeply my heart feels 4 u
i worry that we'll grow apart
and i'll end up losing u

u bring me 2 climax without sex
and u do it all with regal grace
u r my heart in human form
a friend i could never replace

p.s. Even as i write this i am aware that i prefer my heroes to be imperfect - Randy the Ram, Milton's Satan, Faust, Uxbal, Henchard, Charles Strickland, are just some names that occur. I am always inspired and moved by the endless striving to be better, to improve, and do it all with a simple faith. These are the heroes who prove 'nature's law is wrong.'

Improbable

2011-09-14T19:56:00.004+05:30

When you knocked me over

For serving the burnt crust,

When we dated and you

returned to find the tyre’d burst.

When your house was flooded,

And you cursed the rain and my stormy passion.

When wishes made on eyelashes didn’t come true,

But reprimanding me seemed the latest fashion.

When the milk turned rancid,

And the puppy went missing,

While the garden turned barren,

Long nights you spent tossing,

Cursing my rotten deed.

It strikes me as odd,

Not once did you think,

I could be harmless.

Rolling Eyes

2011-09-07T18:14:00.010+05:30

A lot of people don’t get it when I say ‘rolling eyes’. Is it an expression of disdain? Humor? Disbelief? I guess I can’t quite explain what it implies. But Woody Allen does. And man, how brilliantly he does it!

Manhattan is my favourite Woody Allen film - a film I haven’t written about before not because it didn’t dwell on my mind. Rather, because I was afraid I would be unable to adequately express everything that I experience every time I watch it. When I first watched it way back in college, things stirred inside and I knew I’d been privy to something that would resonate at different moments in my life.

Manhattan is Allen’s meditation on the nature of adult relationships, and also on what it means to be an adult. Is innocence the antithesis of adulthood? Is it possible to be wise and retain innocence at the same time? Is innocence an invitation to people to walk all over you or simply the inability to give up faith despite being walked on? Manhattan asks you all this and more.

Manhattan is the story of 4 people - Issac (Allen), a successful 33-yr old writer of television comedies, Tracy, his 17-yr old high school gf, Miles, his best friend who is having an affair with Julia (Diane Keaton), a sophisticated writer much better suited to Issac than young Tracy. From the beginning you sense that while Issac is fond of Tracy, he hasn’t completely bought into the idea that he might be sharing something precious with her; life has jaded him & taught him too much and he knows that there can’t be much in common between a cynical 33-yr old man and a slightly overweight high school kid. As a result, the relationship is always something of an amusing distraction, a ‘time-pass’, so to speak. Instead he pines for his best friend’s alluring gf Julia and when fate provides an opportunity, he doesn’t waste any time in dumping Tracy and rushing to Julia. Appropriately enough he breaks the news to Tracy at a soda fountain and as she wipes a lonely tear and says, “I don’t feel much good’, you know that this is a line this kid will have to repeat many more times before it ceases to matter anymore. Like it has for the 3 adults in the film.

After a brief affair with Issac, Julia realises that she still loves Miles and goes back to him. Rejected and lonely, we see Issac spread on his couch trying to recall the 10 things that make life worth living - Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, Cezanne’s painting, the crabs at Sam Wo’s. And Tracy's face. He adds that almost as an afterthought and then realises something and runs to meet her. What happens next is perhaps the most beautiful scene I've ever seen in the movies.

I don’t know if his return to Tracy at the film’s close is to be construed as a too-late realisation of what he has lost. Issac is the epitome of a successful adult - someone like you, dear reader - popular, witty, incredibly smart, and though geeky, he possesses something that endears him to most women. So, no, I am not sure he has or will ever learn to value someone as rare, as unadorned, as Tracy. But there is something that happens in the last scene and it is the zenith of Allen’s vision as a director as well as his range as an actor that he shows us what is happening to the adult inside Issac.

If you see the video below, you’ll note that he rolls his eyes upwards – a clear unuttered ‘Oh c’mon! How naïve can you be!’expression on his face. At the same time, something softens inside him, and his eyes start to smile and then his whole face undergoes a change and it seems as if he is aware that this is the last time he’s seeing her and all he wants to do is capture forever her youth, the radiance and hope and innocence that makes Tracy who she is. As Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue breaks out and the end credits roll, you experience a bittersweet heartache.

And what exactly is Tracy? In a film where every character is seeking love in relationships, she is the embodiment of that love. But it is an embodiment that doesn’t really concur with our adult version of what love should be like, hence, Issac keeps dismissing it throughout the film.

Every time I watch ‘Manhattan’, I’m left wondering at the end – do they meet again? What will happen if they do? Is Tracy changed so irrevocably that she can’t share herself with Issac anymore? Then I remember: Tracy will always be one of the ‘innocent’s abroad’ because her capacity to mumble embarrassedly, ‘Not everyone gets corrupted. Sometimes you got to have a little faith in people’, doesn’t stem from blindness or naivete but simply a nature that makes her different from others. It is neither stupidity nor dumbness. Though we may roll our eyes.

Why Write?

2011-08-30T21:26:00.001+05:30

A.L Kennedy is that type of writer who always leaves me feeling drained. She enjoys a certain critical acclaim, but isn't really a literary heavyweight in the sense of a Martin Amis or Ian McEwan. There's barely much plot in her stories. Her's are stories exploring the sad inevitability of everyday life.

Anyway, was reading a few of her columns in the Guardian today where she explores the reasons why a writer writes. Really, despite the loneliness, the doubts, the turmoil of repeated rejections, why does one write? While the fears plaguing all writers may be similar, I'd like to think there are hundreds out there who never taste success at the end of this painful process. What about them? Do they stop writing? How do you stop doing something after you have been repeatedly rejected when you haven't figured out how to stop doing it? That's the question she explores here. It's a question all of us face.

Writing a book is supposed to be simultaneously traumatic as well as cathartic. In the end it's worth it. Here's what she says in another piece:
And yet: you're a writer. You have written. There's a book out there with your name on it. Imagine that. You did imagine that. Every word of that. And in the moments when you're undistracted, you can feel that the other books are waiting, the ideas that will come to you to be expressed. This is a vocation – it called to you and you answered and now it calls in you. If you are quiet enough to hear, it always will. You have that and you are lucky, beyond lucky. Which is – I often have to remind myself – nothing to complain about. Onwards.

Catch 22

2011-08-29T22:52:00.002+05:30

If it is about her, it is painful.

To discover, it is about someone else,

Is worse.
Two favourite nightmares,
One must be true.

Justice

2011-08-26T22:18:00.004+05:30

It's after 10 and I'm waiting for a colleague across the Atlantic to complete a conference call that I am supposed to be a part of. It's been a long week and I'm tired. Really tired. She must be tired too of the unending, unchanging cycle.

Despite my love for mush and poetry, I’m a tough nut and nothing fazes me much these days. So it was a wonder of sorts when I was badly rattled by the way the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair ended. Of course, it was unthinkable at any point that DSK would face rigorous imprisonment but I did believe that he would pay – right through his fat fucking French nose. Out of court settlements are known to have set up victims for life and I thought at least it would entitle Nafissatou Diallo and her daughter to a lifetime of security and comfort.

For a woman who is an immigrant housekeeper in a NY hotel and one who’d escaped from a life of gruesome poverty, civil war and genital mutilation, you couldn’t ask for more. But it was not to be. And no, I don’t think Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is at fault in this case. Vance is absolutely right in dropping the charges when he knows they would be difficult (more likely impossible) to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in front of a jury. Nowhere has he stated that Diallo was not the victim of a wrongful sexual assault; no, he’s simply saying that certain omissions and lies in her past behavior would unduly influence a jury’s decision and make it impossible for them to convict DSK.

So, who the hell am I mad at, you may ask? Certainly not DSK who was seen smiling as he emerged with his wife and daughter after dinner on Wednesday. He is a predator and acted according to his nature – prey upon those who are most likely to keep silent. Nothing out of the ordinary, if you ask me. I am mad, indeed exhausted, at the truth Vance points at – the jury’s verdict, the truth about us. The jury is made up of people like you and me, people who demand that a victim of rape have an impeccable history, who demand that a victim of rape should be a model citizen, who think a victim of rape is sure to be lying if she has lived with multiple partners, who swap a person’s past with her living present. Because dear reader, when you think about it, that’s what Vance’s decision is saying. He writes that she lied on her application for asylum in the US. Ok, so she made up a story of having been raped by the militia in Somalia. How many of us would consider fleeing to an alien land, whose language we don’t speak, unless there are compelling circumstances? And if the circumstances are compelling, wouldn’t all of us lie? Hell, we lie even when it is not required! How could her lie be any greater than ours?

The second blot against Diallo is her association with Amara Tarawally, an illegal immigrant now behind bars on drug charges. I am sure, given a choice, the poor woman would no doubt have preferred lighting cigars for the likes of Bill Clinton but choice is not something that’s the prerogative of a penniless, black, immigrant single mother. Whew! As I was writing this I became aware of the number of things Diallo was actually guilty of: 5 counts to be precise. Poor/Colored/Immigrant/Single/Woman. How could any jury on earth have believed her story?

Justice has been done.

Click the Shutter

2011-08-25T22:01:00.013+05:30

To be a good writer,

you must never be satisfied loving only those who loved you in return,
you must learn to paint beyond red and sing beyond the seventh note,
you must learn to balance hopeless fatalism and fragile hope as you burn,
you must click the shutter when people reveal themselves,
you must be ready to grant forgiveness when the wounds turn scabrous,
you must learn to stand tall in the midst of lies and dead leaves,
you must enjoy the power you wield,
to quicken the pulse as Cinderella returns,
to wipe unshed tears as Othello learns,
to unshackle dystopian myths,
to teach them that we are the breakers of our own hearts,
to help them find words for all the things they left unsaid.

Rant

2011-08-23T18:05:00.035+05:30

Just came up and despite my attempts to calm myself, i cant. I'd gone down for a smoke and also because I needed to buy a pack. The chai-sutta shop is always a bee-hive of conversation & activity which i avoid. I use the nearby rock boundary to enjoy my smoke in solitude. Was sitting there as usual when i became aware of a loud commotion behind me. Turned around to discover a flock of moms with their offsprings. I soon discovered that the reason for the commotion was that a class 6 boy who was going to his tuition alone was being abused by the autowala because his mom had given him only Rs 11 while the meter reading was Rs 16. The minimum fare is indeed Rs 11 and I assume his house would be barely 7 mins away, but in the evenings, due to the jam around Galleria, the meter reading can shoot up. The autowala could easily have forgone his Rs 5, or the 6-7 other moms who'd accompanied their kids to the tuition class could easily have paid the money! Honestly, i don't see any of these as monumentally tough tasks. But everyone seemed hell bent on asking the boy how much money he had left for the return fare, why his mom wasn't there to drop him, etc etc. The poor thing looked stricken. Finally, I lost my temper.

Later, i felt stricken. Not because i spoke rudely but because the kid looked acutely embarrassed as he thanked me and entered the lobby. Just wanted to squeeze him and tell him that we don't thank people for such small things. Just wanted to get it into his head that those women out there were the aberration, and he had nothing to be embarrassed about.

When i see such behavior, i don't understand people at all. No, i don't. All i want to do is bash their skulls against a rock or something.

*********************************************************************
I love this song and was listening to it all day before i went down for the smoke. Used to make me cry. Every line still packs a punch. Maybe i haven't changed at all; maybe it is a great song. I'll hum today, 'You're all i hoped you'd become'.

Wanderlust

2011-08-19T18:33:00.002+05:30

I've been following Bruce Weber for the past 5 years. In the beginning I'd no idea the man who had the tone & verve of a college graduate in his 20's was actually pushing 50! He understands the necessity, the thirst, for occasionally venturing out alone. I corresponded with him briefly when we started our 5-state 4000 miles carathon in sweltering July. I remember him as extremely gracious and polite, generously sharing suggestions and advice. This piece is dear to me for a special reason.

He speaks about a part of the US that I've always dreamed of exploring but haven't managed yet. He says something which i completely agree with: wonderful as NY is, (even Chicago and SFO for that matter), it's not representative of the country. These cities are vertical while the US is horizontal. You need to touch the ground as you travel, with your feet or hands, while you're camping in Yosemite, or while you're trying your best to avoid your tent from being uprooted as cyclone Ike attempts to rip you from the ground in West Virginia. The feeling is visceral, almost something that ripples through you.

A perfect day spent reading Bruce's anecdotes from his earlier '93 adventure, listening to Thomas Newman, and wondering why people find it so hard to believe that I do eat well.

JLT

2011-08-17T18:08:00.021+05:30

Those of you who follow this blog even sporadically will be aware that I’m facing issues at work and have been looking for a change. It’s been about 2.5 months that I’ve been actively applying, scheduling calls with recruiters and meeting HR resources from different industry. In this time, I have attended 2 interviews, 1 of which I failed to crack after dual rounds. There are things which I said and issues which I responded to in a manner that, several people told me later, may not have gone v.well with people looking at a prospective employee. I accepted their word and resolved to learn from the experiences. The second interview was with a famous infrastructure development company & the first round must have been more than 45 days ago. After 3 rounds – during which I have made presentations to their entire marketing & communications team, travelled to their office thrice, even presented a plan to their key sales director – I was informed that I was finally through & was to come to collect the offer letter as well as complete a final round of formalities with their HR.

Early in the morning I trekked halfway across town for this meeting where I was informed that ever body worked 6 days a week in this company. Of late, more and more companies are embracing the working-Saturday culture and I have always made it clear that I will not consider such corporations. I remember clearly stating this to their head of Corp Comm. during my initial interview where he’d assured me that only the ‘Operations’ team worked on Saturdays. When I mentioned this to their HR today, they said that since he (GM, Corp Comm) was a new joinee, he may have been unaware of the company’s policy! Now I’m thinking -does that mean he has been working on Saturdays without being aware of it? Or has their policy changed since the time my first interview took place? Had I suddenly developed herpes or grown a second nose that they'd changed their minds? ! I am still lost.

For a few minutes, I felt everything go cold. I was afraid I would burst into tears right there. After a while he trooped down from his cabin on the 6^th floor and apologized for the misunderstanding explaining "these things happen you know, I have so many things on my mind since we are trying to develop many new modules together with the marketing team. Anyway, during our conversations you have assured me that you possess a deep emotional connect with your work so I would say give this a shot.” I realized that this man who had wasted so much of my time over the last 45 days was being absolutely flippant, was not even aware that he had behaved irresponsibly, either through misinformation or some other reason. The realization of right and wrong is a deeply personal one and one of my oddities is that despite my temper and sharp tongue, the times when i am really disappointed or stunned by someone's callousness, i am unable to retort. There wasn’t much to be said after that & I left.

As I sat in the car, I don’t know if I was more livid or sad or just indignant. Yday had been a hell of a day as well. I’d had a huge argument with someone I’ve unconditionally supported over the years. Let’s just say that she said things & behaved in a manner which I would never have thought her capable of. I felt let down and I’d been trying my best to keep that incident at bay since I knew I’d to get the offer letter today. In the car it all came back – her words, other’s words, some lies, people leaving without a goodbye, as also the fact that I hadn’t collected the offer letter finally. After giving it some thought, I decided, “Let me see how I can get through today without thinking about these things?”

I had almost the whole day ahead and it’s evening as I sit writing this. I am not sure if I succeeded entirely, but it was better than what it would have been in the past, that I know. I came back to office and worked steadily most of the day. In between, kept recalling a friend's advice regarding what I should wear for the final meeting. I was very touched when he'd offered his views and in an odd way, it felt like I'd let him down too by returning empty handed.
Maybe what they say is true - the people who are born to let you down, will always let you down – at home, outside, in the workplace, everywhere. While others will stand by you. The trick is to not to care too much about such things.

... a joy forever

2011-08-14T20:25:00.000+05:30

RIP

Random Thoughts on Reading Nordic Crime Fiction

2011-08-09T20:02:00.003+05:30

Erlendur. Gestur. Sigurdur Oli. Finnur. Arnaldur: I am in love with these Icelandic names. I had heard that there are words which when they roll off the tongue, arouse an almost sensual pleasure. These names arouse similar feelings. I love the repeated rhyme of the 'ur', as also the fact that they are far removed from the Kay Scarpetta or Inspector Rebus or Dagliesh or Dan or Adrian-like names I have grown accustomed to. Like the cold, barren, sparsely populated country they inhabit, these names are also a mystery to me. When you have read any crime fiction writer's books, you get to know their pet inspector or detective or lieutenant closely. You know Kay Scarpetta relaxes by cooking elaborate Italian dishes just like you know Inspector Dagliesh writes poetry in his spare time. But because this is the first book by celebrated Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason that I'm reading, I have no idea about his stock characters. Part of the thrill of reading his book is the finely plotted mystery as well as the novelty of discovering life and geography, politics and culture about a nation I know little about.

There is another thing I notice these days, rather I should say I first noticed it when i read PD James. It is that the action in crime fiction has become largely 'internalised' and there's less of the random serial killer or drug peddling imbroglio like in the earlier novels. Rather, the premise of the basic crime is used as a tool to dig deep into those conflicts that we prefer to keep under wraps - racism, the reformed paedophile, unhappy marriages, abused childhoods, prejudice, irrational phobias, etc. These may or may not be connected to the main crime but they pose morally imperative questions about right and wrong. In fact, to read certain passages from PD James is akin to reading a meditation on religion.

As I write this post, I also realise that i love flawed characters - the inspector who wages a secret battle with the bottle, the past-his-prime wrestler who tries to make amends with his estranged daughter, the obsessively reclusive forensic medical examiner, the Edinburgh inspector who tries hard to stifle his loathing for criminals so that he can give them a fair hearing. Point is, we are all like that; battling our private demons. Some succeed better than others, that's all. I find it easier to identify with one who is 'striving to do right' than one who 'is always right'. Perhaps that's one reason why Wodehouse's immortal Jeeves never appealed to me. In life, as in fiction, I find myself imperceptibly but surely disengaging from the perfect models.

Time To Go Home

2011-08-08T19:55:00.005+05:30

Late and starting to rain,

it's time to go home,

We've wandered long enough,

in empty buildings.

I know its tempting to stay

and meet those new people.

I know its even more sensible

to spend the night here with them

but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places

with signs on them saying

This is His house. That's seeing the

grain like the ants do,

without the work of harvesting.

Let's leave grazing to cows and go,

where we know what everyone really intends,

where we can walk around without clothes on.

by Rumi

*****************************************************

The scissor went snip snip today. Perhaps it was on account of a badminton player, or overhearing a long distance call, or a big heart, or a long history of lies, or it was simply time. The reasons are immaterial. It is time to go home.

Reading, Writing

2011-08-04T17:58:00.000+05:30

Read GB’s splendid exposition on God and a Godless state and all week thoughts have been in a scramble. There is nothing new or unknown that he reveals but I like his usual lucid style, the staid, rational way his mind tracks the logic of what the piece eventually leads up to – that there is no answer or causality to the things that happen to us; it is futile to seek such answers; all that matters is how we condition our responses to such events and what we can do to lessen its impact when it befalls others.

It is on reading his essay and later mentally masticating it that I became aware of two things – why we read books and what does it take to be a gifted author. This post is about these two questions.

First, we have all been schooled to believe in justice and fairness - in academics, on the playground, in politics, in matters of gender, wages, and opportunities. These are just verbal constructs we use and discard as per our convenience. But real life is something different altogether. Fact is, the moment you try to explain human life through these worthy constructs, you’ll fall flat on your face. That’s when you catch your first glimpse of ‘nothingness’ – the same nothingness that Josef K experiences in Kafka’s Trial, the same nothingness that drove Kurtz crazy in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the same nothingness that kills Joan of Arc in Shaw’s celebrated play. To accept this nothingness is impossible, unless you are an enlightened soul like the Buddha. Books are the only way to tackle this dark and threatening nothingness.

Because tragedy is universal, we dismiss each others’ misfortunes; we are impatient with those who grieve long and hard; we advise them to ‘move on.’ Stalin said, "The death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of millions is only statistics." This death can be physical, perhaps more painful is the gradual perishing of the soul. As you grow older and witness such decay, you wonder: is there anything I can do, is there any way, by which I will be counted as an individual and not a mere statistic?” Again, the answer lies in books. The only times we matter and are counted is when we see people similar to us struggling through the same or different odds and lending dignity to their lives. Mind you, I’m not talking of emerging victorious – neither King Lear, nor Josef K nor the Whisky Priest can be called victorious in the end of their individual narratives. But they all manage something that others cannot – they rise from being a statistic to being a name with a unique identity. In doing so, they show us small ways in which we can be the same – not necessarily by leading a revolution or being burned at the stake – but simply by a stubborn refusal to give in to the hideous machine whose only intention seems to be to crush that which is uniquely and intrinsically mine – my spirit, my dreams, hope.

I guess that’s why we read books.

Let’s come to the second question – who is a gifted author or what does it take to be one? I’d say anyone who does not forget easily, who respects the memory of things and events, who hasn’t known what it is to ‘move on’, who believes that human beings with their complexities and aspirations and ordinariness, are worth writing about, can be a gifted author. I still remember Pamukh’s haunting words about how the writer is writing about his life and memories and thus connecting disparate people who may or may not share those memories. In this, I’d also say, gifted authors prepare us for events that we are yet to encounter. You don’t need to be part of a merciless civil war to feel the anguish in Half of a Yellow Sun, you don’t need to be a pet owner to feel the loss of one in My Dog Tulip, you don’t have to be a jealous lover to understand Othello’s demons. We are and become all these characters because they are the creations of these gifted authors.

A reverence for the sacredness of memory, be it happy or sad; a willingness to sit quietly and engage in the deeply personal experience of putting down that memory in words; an ability to look beyond memory and imagine alternate endings; a stubborn refusal to imagine defeat - these must be what makes a gifted writer.

Begaraz

2011-08-01T18:33:00.001+05:30

I’ve been listening to this song regularly for almost 8 yrs. It sums up this day. I love it - the guitaring and the lyrics. You can’t comprehend this day if you don’t get the meaning of the one word that has been used so effectively and definitively – begaraz.

Koi toh, ho razdaar,
Begaraz tera ho yaar,
Koi toh, ho razdaar.

What a beautiful word. Contains so much, yet leaves so much unsaid.

I loved both Delhi Belly (DB) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD) – both completely different in style and spirit and entertaining in different ways; both exploring the limits of friendship in different ways; both showing how begaraz such friendship is. DB cracked me up in totally. By the time, the 3 lunatics dressed in burqua, burgle the jewelry store and one of them shifts his position to shield the CCTV transmission which reveals what is happening inside, I was nearly hysterical and hooting like crazy.

Liked ZNMD much more than I’d expected. It had one thing that’s so missing in films these days – soul. Katrina was a delight and I can’t imagine anyone else to carry that role of easy camaraderie with so much ease. Only someone who is completely hassle-free and unpretentious in front of boys/men will appreciate the wholesomeness of her performance.

Loved in particular two of Javed Akhtar’s verses which are read out in Imran’s (Farhan Akhtar) voice-over. The first one when Hrithink has just parted from Katrina and his heart is heavy. The lines evoke his sadness and state that though he thinks his sadness is a secret, it is as palpable as the fragrance of a flower; it is as obvious to the world as it is keenly felt by him.

The second one when Imran attempts to console his broken heart after meeting the man who fathered him. He gently rebukes his heart for being sad when such sadness has been allotted to every man’s fate. At the same time, the realisation also strikes that day must follow the darkness of the night and that is also every man’s due grace.

Finally, a quiet realisation that’s been nagging along with all the rest – IT is often imperfect, inconvenient, unreasonable, untimely, and unfortunate. But it is never less than precious.

Happy friendship day to all.

Tracy's Face

2011-07-29T16:57:00.004+05:30

******************************************************************

****************************************************************

A lot of people think that I don’t respect ‘marriage’. Perhaps it is because I have never felt that a relationship achieves a place of reverence by virtue of its been consecrated over holy fire or a court document. Or perhaps, marriage means much more to me than to most others. Or maybe, I'm just fairly immoral. Most folks judge marriage from within a well-defined frame & ask their questions accordingly: Does he earn enough? Does he drink too much? Is he cheating on her? Does she blow his hard earned money? Can’t she cook well? Do they have sex regularly? And so it goes. They never ask the other questions. They never ask the 2 most imp questions – Will they be able to live without each other? Are they helping or damaging each other by staying together?

Life is changing too fast and often I find myself unable to keep up. But some old principles stick. A is indeed my 'Tracy’s face'. And like Isaac's, music is also one of the things on my list.

Stoned Immaculate

2011-07-27T17:15:00.001+05:30

That girl with the big voice apparently succumbed to drugs and alcohol. Obituaries are simultaneously mourning & gleefully reporting her addiction and her formal induction in the '27 Club'. In our own way, many of us are addicts - to money, the means of making money, to power, sex, cars, gizmos, love. Everything else you can buy, but the last one will kill you. We hang on to the thin of edge of sanity, we carefully navigate our way even as we realise these addictions are waiting surreptitiously to overpower us. That's the only difference between us and the lost causes. So no, she isn't one of the 'lost causes'. She is simply one of us.

I first heard her last year and loved that song. Later, intrigued, i youtubed her music and discovered one other number that caused that all too familiar feeling of discomfort inside. I tried to imagine: what was going through her mind when these songs were composed? Is the pain imagined or real? How does one imagine, 'You love blow and I love puff', glibly dismissing the heartbreak of love and betrayal in the hazy smoke of crack unless one has really tried it? No, this wasn't imagined.

The saddest thing about her life? It isn't that there wont be any more of that bold bluesy voice. Nor that she brought it upon herself. Not even that she leaves several distressed fans behind. The truly and only sad thing about her life is that in 27 years she could not find one person, one reason, among the 5 billion people who inhabit this planet, who could give her a reason to figure out how to live.

That's the only tragedy, really.

Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we IS stoned
Immaculate.

RIP

The History of Love I: Loss

2011-07-21T20:20:00.004+05:30

I'd heard good things about Nicole Krauss and had been meaning to check out 2 of her novels. Started The History of Love (THOL) today and am at a loss how to label it - a love story? a tale of loss and redemption? a quirky tale about how the only way to grapple with loss is to loosen the imagination and seek refuge in words? I know not.

The weather cleared after ages today, read some mails, and suddenly i felt a furious impulse to go for a walk. It's been ages since I've done this kind of thing and I realised too much time has passed rather quickly, unnoticed perhaps. Bunked office and walked around, picked up THOL and after a while settled myself at Aromas where the owner was kind enough to leave me alone for almost the entire day. Something I wouldn't have expected in India.

To read Krauss is to feel vivacity and joy and emerging hope amidst deep sadness. That's her beauty. She's also someone who weaves words like magic - while some of it may read like Hallmark card sentiments, they fall into place in the novel's landscape.

THOL tells us the story of 3 people - one of whom is Leo Gursky - an old man whose greatest fear is that he will pass away unnoticed. We meet Gursky, an old man as he's preparing for death in a shabby Manhattan apartment. He's a Jew who escaped from Poland after the WWII. When we meet Gursky, he seems to be bereft of any reason to be alive. While in Poland, he'd loved a girl called Alma for whom he'd written a book named The History of Love. Alma moves to America before him and having assumed that he has died in the holocaust, she married someone else. Gursky entrusts his novel to his best friend who tells him that it is lost. The story is published later though in spanish and events unfold involving other characters and another young girl named Alma.

Though Gursky survives the war and finally reaches America, he has nothing left of him - the woman he loved is gone, the book which chronicled the only memorable incident of his life, is gone. You cant get through the Gursky portions of the book without wondering, "How and why does a merciful God impose such cruelty?"

There are two other sections and they all come together, but I dont really want to talk about the entire book here. Thing is, Gursky is such a great hero that I doubt I've read a more gripping fictional character recently. Alone in his apartment, estranged from his son, he reminds me of the protagonist of Rana Dasgupta's 'Solo' another brilliant novel about old age and loss and memory. Perhaps what is most compelling about Gursky is his complete inability to get over Alma, to 'move on' as they say. He stays as much in love with her when she's an old woman dying in the hospital as he did when he was 11. When the old Alma is dying in Manhattan he goes every day to sit at her bedside in the hospital after hours. "She was tiny and wrinkled and deaf as a doorknob. There was so much I should have said. And yet. I told her jokes."

Consider the wonder of Krauss' language as she writes, "She was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it 'was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without Alma. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it." This has got to be the best description of loss, of void, I've read.

Or this: "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. When they were ten he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven he kissed her for the first time... For her sixteenth birthday he gave her an English dictionary and together they learned the words."

Thoughts on re-reading Lolita

2011-07-18T21:53:00.004+05:30

People make a big hue and cry about retaining their ‘inner child’ even in their adult years. I think it’s a tad hypocritical because the same people crucify you when you give in to the first instinct of childhood – self fulfillment. Frankly, they are not wrong, just hypocrites as I mentioned. You cannot replicate a time gone by, you cannot refeel impulses felt long ago amidst adult roles and responsibilities. And if you do, more shame to you.

To discover romance in later years, to experience yet again the mad thumping of the heart as you see the beloved’s no. flash across the phone screen, is supposed to be a blessing. It is not, it cannot be, for it is a subversion of nature and you can’t subvert nature without disastrous results. Young love is always tinged with innocence – innocence about the ways of the world, innocence about how unkind people can really be, innocent that first love soon gives way to last rites. To attempt to either duplicate or even genuinely experience it later in life is a tragic perversity of the kind we see in ‘Lolita.’ We love during our youth, and spend our later years trying to remember what it felt like.

Towards the end of the book, Humbert is walking along the sea when he hears the sound of some children playing. He says, "Reader! What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic–one could hear now and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter…and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from the concord."

Not only has he lost her forever, he is the single reason she has lost the 'vivid laughter'. You cannot appreciate a writer like Nobokov if you fail to grasp the air of elegiac mourning in these lines; of a regret coming too late.

In succumbing to an absurd infatuation in his adulthood, Humbert perverts the capacity for 'love superior' which resides in all our hearts. Though he’s often despicable in Nobokov’s work, he also arouses our sympathy. Here is a man who has been chasing a dream (nymphets) all his life and who, when he realises his time is running out, attempts to translate that dream into reality through coercion and murder. It is not only a betrayal of trust, but also a betrayal of his purest instinct for love. Humbert's tragedy is that he cannot differentiate between a futile obsession and the centering of 'love superior' in his life.

Some dreams must not be chased, some dreams are simply meant to be held close for they define the people we become. Nobokov’s novel is about these dreams.
*********************************************************************

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. "

Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov.

In Bombay

2011-07-14T07:22:00.001+05:30

The city looks pretty much what it does during heavy rains - dark, flooded, bloated. If we haven't been able to protect bby from terrorist attacks, we haven't been able to protect her from overflowing drains as well! Nothing has changed.

In the meantime we do what we've always done. Sms those who are dear to us, assure ourselves that e'body is fine, and go about our miserable lives. An impossible deadline, a sick person being swindled by her insurance company, cranky kids and aching backs. And yes, hearts that still haven't learnt to be numb. We go about our ways.

Frivolous

2011-07-12T21:45:00.021+05:30

In one of his articles for TOI Salil Tripathi wrote, “Coming to Mumbai on this visit, I was able to arrange several meetings and appointments, including with old friends, by e-mailing them in advance. But was I able to have a meaningful conversation with them on the internet? Can any chat site ever replace two hours of conversation over cona coffee at the Sea Lounge?” Though I agree with the main thrust of his piece, these particular words made me think – do most people tag their association with others as meaningful or frivolous because of the medium over which it evolved?

My association with several imp. people in my life has developed over long-distance. Even in our marriage, A & I have lived apart for long periods and during those periods, I found solace in typed words on YM rather than verbal conversations over Skype. Probably that’s why i find it hard to believe that people cannot have a ‘meaningful conversation’ unless they meet face to face.

Early last year, an old friend suddenly lost his job in UK. It was a frightening & depressing situation. I hadn’t met him in ages but it was never easier to pick up the ropes again and start off from where we’d left. Most of our conversations then would revolve around his job search, options available, notice period, compensation, impending interviews, etc. As time passed, we spoke frankly about the state of his finances, how much his immediate family was aware of, support pillars and all those things that I’m sure I could’ve never asked him had we met.

Even with P years ago, there would be those interminable talkathons he so excelled at. He would rant and rant. Some nights I’d be too tired to say much, just sit and listen to him and drop the occasional comment. Other nights, I’d ask unpleasant questions – was his forehead less swollen, when was the last time he’d called his mom? Sometimes I'd tell him openly how much of an asshole he could be and point out his faults. The amazing thing was that he listened & often agreed. I am sure that wouldn’t have been the case had we been having these conversations in a hospital lounge.

With yg, it's been nothing but words, endless conversations connecting me with fleeting glimpses of a life i know nothing about, about joys that bring a smile to my face, and people who i imagine must be as wonderful as the tales i hear about them. That's frivolous?

Would any of these conversations have been meaningful had we met at a nearby café? Were they any less important because they didn’t happen face to face? More than ever it seems that any iota of grace, any hint of blessing, no matter in what form it comes, is significant. And must be valued.

But i can also understand that i may comprise the few who do think this way. Tripathi doesn't buy this. The internet is a maze and having 200+ friends on FB seems a more meaningful mode of communication than striving to reach across to someone who's miles away.

Notes on In a Strange Room

2011-07-10T14:12:00.000+05:30

Ostensibly touted as a travel book, I found it hard to label Damon Galgut’s ‘In a Strange Room’ as one. True, the protagonist, a white South African named Damon, travels through, first Lesotho, then Zimbabwe and Kenya, and finally India, but these travels are just a framework to support his basic theme of travel as a means of taming or countering an endless restlessness, a relentless craving for ‘home.’ This search for home is atavistic – from Moses to Yasser Arafat to Hamas – mankind has always looked for that which it can claim as its own; it is rooted in our deepest impulses to claim and to be claimed by another. It is not a stretch to read all these undercurrents in Galgut’s novel.

Obliquely, the home also becomes a metaphor for stability, for the 'other', for our unrealized dreams. After all, aren’t we all chasing that which we believe will complete our fractured selves? But Galgut seems to be saying that this search is self defeating, his novel shows the futility of searching for an idea or chasing a dream because the dream, by its very nature, will always be elusive, escape realization and bring about endless misery. So, is it all futile? Is this another sad novel? Wrong. In the end, it is kindness that brings relief from misery, it is the strangers who pass through our lives who give us the strength to go on, it is compassion and unasked for consideration that lessens our burdens. It is as Damon says, “Without love, nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.” This is as true of Damon’s life as it is about your's or mine.

The book is divided into 3 distinct sections where the section titles indicate the role Damon will play therein. In the first section titled ‘The Follower’, Damon meets a mysterious German named Reiner in Greece with whom he later goes on a walking expedition to Lesotho. While the section is charged with homoerotic currents, the reader realizes that in Damon, the longing is also for something more. But there is a Hamlet-like quality to Damon that keeps him from making the final move that may provide him, albeit fleetingly, with what he’s seeking in life. Even when he and Reiner are thrown in close contact, there is always something that stands tall between them: ‘Would you like some, he says, holding out an apple, I found this in my bag. The two of them pass it between them , solemnly biting and chewing, the one lying propped up on an elbow, the other sitting with his knees drawn up, all it will take is a tiny movement from one of them, a hand extended, or the edge of the sleeping bag lifted, would you like to get in, but neither makes the move, one is too scared and the other too proud, then the apple is finished, the moment is past, Reiner gets up, rubbing his shoulders….”. Reiner is a sharp contrast to Damon and this contrast becomes more and more evident as the novel progresses and we see Damon in different roles. Reiner is insensitive, a megalomaniac who wants things to be always be his way and Damon bends to his superior will until things come to a head and in a curious reversal of his previous behavior, Damon rebels and walks out. This is where Galgut introduces the following exchange:

“He turns. Reiner is walking towards him. If he offers one word of apology, if he concedes even the smallest humility, then I will relent. But Reiner is too rigid and too proud. Though what he does do is even stranger.
Here, he says. You’ll need this.
He’s holding out a fifty rand note.”

This is completely unexpected from a man as selfish as Reiner and just proves how little we know the people around us.

In the second section titled ‘The Lover’ Damon back-packs across Zimbabwe, Kenya & Malawi before finally landing up in Switzerland and London. He teams up with a group of European tourists – twins Alice and Jerome and their friend Christian. To me this was the book’s weakest section, not only because of Damon’s reluctance to accept what he desperately longs for and that which Jerome seems to be ready to offer him, but also because this reluctance seemed a trifle forced and rang false. What I liked about this section, however, was its title - one becomes a ‘lover’ simply in the act of loving another silently, not by making love. Like the preceding section, this also ends in tragic separation.

It is in this second section that we sense Galgut’s concerns as a white person in Africa, his self-conscious cringing at the white man’s callous response to poverty and filth. Contrast the white tourists in this section who is not only callous but wholly removed from the squalor and destitution that pervades sub-Saharan Africa, with Caroline and Sjef in the last section, two other white people who also operate amidst much squalor and chaos to go beyond the call of duty. This is the beauty of Galgut’s novel – repeatedly you come across people who are willing to do so much for nothing in return; these are the carriers of Wordworth’s famous words ‘little unremembered acts of kindness’ & they make the entire journey memorable.

The third and perhaps most vigorous section is title ‘The Guardian’ where Damon is called upon to play a role he is not only unwilling but also unsuited to play. So far we have seen that inaction is Damon’s favourite past time. He travels, he seeks, he broods, but he never touches the hand that’s extended towards him. He travels free, uncluttered and unrestrained. To me this freedom was wholly at odds with his deepest impulse to belong and it seemed completely natural too. Here he travels to India with Anna, a friend who is also like a sister to him. Anna is deeply depressed, an alcoholic, a suicidal psychotic, “It’s obvious that something in her has come loose from its moorings and is sliding around inside.” She comes on this trip, not to recover as Damon is led to believe, but for other more fatal purposes. This is the strongest part of the novel, hurtling us ahead as Damon and Anna confront one crisis after another. First she runs off with a stranger – Jean; then she loses her bag of medications, and then comes the final axe blow. This section abounds with the love of strangers, from the aged fellow passenger Mr Hariramamaurthy who retrieves Anna’s lost medicines, to Caroline and Sjef who silently support Damon during those grueling days in the Goa hospital. None of these characters ring false – at different times in our lives, we have all witnessed such strangers.

Galgut’s excels himself in this section with his intuitive understanding and depictions of the workings of a sick mind, the endless bureaucracy and filth in an Indian hospital, the ever shifting dynamics between Damon and Anna where he’s alternately frustrated and ready to kill her and again willing to do anything to save her.

Last but not the least is Galgut’s unconventional style where he eschews punctuation & voice in order to tell his story so much so that you don’t know initially that the omniscient narrator ‘I’ in the beginning is also Damon the protagonist. This may come across as jarring but is not so and it is a sign of how sure Galgut is with his material that he can pull of this stunt so successfully.

As I read more, I am discovering more and more writers like Galgut (Toibn and Trevor come to mind) who seem to be exploring a life of limited happiness, of failed chances and lost dreams. There is nothing spectacularly angst-worthy about their works, no high notes, but a quiet hum of sadness, not despair. Much of life is perhaps like that.

In a Strange Room II : An Eternal Search

2011-07-08T22:22:00.002+05:30

"His life is unweighted and centreless, so that he feels he could blow away at any time. he has still not made a home for himself …………………………………………………. something in him has changed, he cant seem to connect properly with the world. He sees this not as a failure with the world but as a massive failing in himself, he would like to change it but doesn’t know how. In his clearest moments he thinks he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much. In this state travel isn’t celebration but a kind of mourning, a way of dissipating yourself. He moves around from one place to another, not driven by curiosity but by the bored anguish of staying still."
******************************************************************

"There is a moment when any real journey begins. Sometimes it happens as you leave your house, sometimes it’s a long way from home."
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"By imperceptible degrees, then, he accepts the notion that the journey is over, and that he’s back where he started. The story of Jerome is one he’s lived through before, it is the story of what never happened, the story of traveling a long way while standing still."
******************************************************************

What i did after finishing IASR is that i went right back and started reading it again. I was once again struck by passages of startling simplicity and deep lyricism. It is quite obvious Galgut is using the 'travel as a metaphor' device here - a metaphor for an eternal search, an endless longing. But a longing for what? Home? Security? The other? An anchor?

Maybe it is a search for 'completion' - a futile search to heal our fractured selves.

2011-07-06T18:24:00.002+05:30

People often criticise that I only write about sad things, people and events. It's not quite so. The way i look at it, i must have an inbuilt-radar that picks up not-so-happy news - a 'sad-der' device. Yuck, what a pj! Anyway, just wanted to share two small things that brought a smile recently.

I have often wondered: it takes years of hard study and dedication to crack the IAS exams, what happens to those who qualify, that once they join the services they too become prototypes of the corrupt, inefficient and complacent members of India's massive bureaucracy. What goes wrong? Is it only greed, or are there more insiduous reasons? Do they all struggle for a while and finally give up when they see their well- meaning gestures bite the dust? I have spoken to, debated and often argued with some such civil servants. Most of them come across as pompous, making lame excuses. It makes me mad.

Reading this was so refreshing and i completely agree with Rao's assessment that individual freedom has no meaning in the face of any atrocity. Society has to first attain a level of maturity before it can claim freedom for all. Till such time, let us have intervention, as long as it translates into some empirical evidence of improvement.

*********************************************************************
I do not watch TV at all, just stop and skim channels everyday for maybe 15 mins or so. In the midst of such a session recently, a programme caught my eye – X-Factor on Sony. Now, I'm hooked.

X-Factor is essentially a singing competition where the participants do not really sound like nightingales. In fact, truth be told, I don’t think any of them can hold a candle to the likes of some previous Indian Idol/Sa Re Ga Ma Pa winners/ contestants in terms of sheer melody and some are quite crappy. But what these guys have is sheer chutzpah , tremendous lung power and an uncanny ability to imagine and interpret a song in novel ways. These interpretations work splendidly and week after week I am hearing old songs in a new flavor – a bluesy version of Intehaan Ho gayi intezaar ki that suddenly soars and brings the roof down; a crazy rap version of Choli Ke peechey kya hai; a thundering version of Chalat Musaphir Ho Jeeya re pinjare wali muniya. I remember mourning the lack of this innovativeness in an old post and it’s heartening to see the 3 judges – Sonu Nigam, SLB & Sreya Ghoshal – always appreciate and encourage these endeavours rather than sulk and scold like Javed Akhtar and Jagjit Singh are known to. My personal favourite at this stage keeps changing from week to week.

In a Strange Room I : Unrepaired

2011-07-03T23:21:00.006+05:30

"Jerome, if I cant make you live in words, if you are only the dim evocation of a face under a fringe of hair, ……………………if you are a names without a nature, its not becase I don’t remember, no, the opposite is true, you are remembered in me as an endless stirring and turning. But its for this precisely that you must forgive m, because in every story of obsession there is only one character, only one plot. I am writing about myself alone, it's all I know, and for this reason I have always failed in every love, which is to say at the very heart of my life.

He sits in the empty room, crying."

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut made it to last year's Booker shortlist. Now that I've read a couple of others who made it to the list and also The Finkler Question, which finally won the Booker, I am clueless why Galgut's book didn't win. Haven't read anything as sublime, as internalised, as lyrical as this in a long while. Will keep posting some extracts I found magnificent and try and finish with my usual notes on a,b,c kinda post.

*********************************************************************
The best songs are those you picked to listen without much expectations and then they hit you somewhere in your belly. For anyone who feels something inside is broken beyond repair, listen to this one.

In an odd quirk, the lines above and the song come together in my mind. I can imagine the protagonist listening to it as he sits weeping with his head in his hands.

Anger

2011-07-03T08:35:00.002+05:30

Anger seems to be our only weapon against perennial insignificance. When anger or outrage is bleached out of us, we are scarecrows - filled with straw and empty symbols of what should have been. The unpleasant fact is that while the world is filled with wonderful people, they are all looking out for themselves. Not you. The entire chore of looking after one's well being is an individual role, society can only contribute the means, not the ways. Thus, you may have the best medical equipment and technicians, but the responsibility of securing insurance cover is yours.

To be in relationships where anger has a viable scope is far better, far more nurturing than one where your spirit has been so crushed that mute resignation has become the norm. To be without anger is to be without hope. This is why the hungry farmer does not feel anger; you don't feel anger when you're lying strapped to the hospital bed.

To be without anger is perhaps the worst form of nihilism. To be without anger is to perhaps be like this:

There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

Anniversary: Nunca Mas

2011-06-30T18:05:00.001+05:30

Of late I have been reading a lot of 'gay' literature – novels as well as essays – some as old as early 20th century and some quite recent. Most of it is interesting, some of it appears perennially outraged and detrimental to the cause it is supposedly espousing. All of it has one thing in common – the pain of forbidden love. The same pain that Alice Munro explored with such intuitiveness in Brokeback Mountain.

However, i also realise it is not quite as simple as that. The pain also stems from the knowledge that for the rest of your life, all your social interactions, the labels being attached to your name, the impressions people form about you will largely flow from the single choice of how or who you chose to make love to. Anal and oral define you, not what skills you have, or what piano pieces you can play or which soccer team you support. If i was younger, i'd be full of anger. Now, i just feel sad.

I came across this poem written by a 28-yr old gay crusader for a magazine. I liked its simplicity.

The Boy Scout Pledge

I Solemnly Swear,

Never to tell the Scoutmaster.

Never to tell the others. Never to let such

Knowledge leave this tent, Never to acknowledge you

Again, Never to tighten your handkerchief again, Never to

Look in your eyes again, Never to race soapbox derby in

The sand with you again, Never to read Whitman as you

Cuddle till you sleep, Never to creep, carefully to the lake

With you again, Never to take wildflowers

To your tent again, Never to cry for you again, Never to tie

Knots in each other’s hair,

Never to breathe your air,

Never to touch your inner thigh,

Never to catch your stare.

Never to be two boys together, clinging.

Never to dare.

By Michael Glatze

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Notes on The Year of Magical Thinking

2011-06-23T06:42:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: Long, deeply personal post ahead.

There are some important books in our lives. Not all books we love fall into this category – only the ‘important’ ones. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (TYOMT) is an important book.

Reading it was a little like watching Peepli Live & Millon Dollar Baby or reading Moon and the Sixpence – all works of art that I believe left me subtly altered. Not happier or sadder, just changed like the landscape changes after the parking lot has been reduced in size to broaden the sidewalk. Perhaps that’s why my response to this book is so visceral, so urgent, so intimate. In writing this post I was aware of a feeling of self-consciousness that my response to it may seem maudlin, or extreme & melodramatic. Then I thought – aren't these useless labels which we use when we cannot bring ourselves to feel things the way the other does?

The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion's 13th book which she completed in Dec 2004 (in 88 days flat), 10 months after her husband, celebrated writer John Dunne, collapsed from a fatal coronary attack as the couple were having dinner. The suddenness of the incident, the suddenness of any deeply-felt loss, no matter how prepared we think we are, is what is expressed in the repeated refrain - “You sit down for dinner and life as you know it changes in an instant.”

John Dunne died in Dec 2003 while their daughter Quintana was in the ICU of a NY hospital fighting pneumonia and septic shock. The first half of the book is interspersed with references to her 40-years’ married life with John, and the present circumstances where Quintana suffers one setback after another. At the end of the book, Quintana is slowly recuperating. Yet, little did Didion know at the time she completed this memoir that she hadn’t seen the end of it all. Some 7 months after the book's release, Quintana finally succumbed to a last bout of fatal infection and died in August 2005. This is a difficult book to read because from the onset you are privy to a knowledge that the author is unaware of as she tries to cope with her grief. The reader reads every word soaked in the knowledge that Didion has suffered a double bereavement but Didion herself was not aware of that as she wrote TYOMT! I found this the greatest travesty.

To one who hasn’t read the book, it may seem that TYOMT is maudlin or a tear-jerker. Nothing can be further from the truth. Didion is foremost an essayist, not a novelist, given to writing precise, well distributed verbal arrangements that make their point strongly without betraying any hint of subjectivity. The temperature of her prose is always moderate, her tone composed and even, yet you know she is screaming. You know it because it is not possible to bear what she has borne and stay poised and articulate like she does mostly.

TYOMT may be read as a sort of warning, a handbook to prepare us for overwhelming grief – grief as opposed to sadness. As I was reading this book I remember thinking that how strange it was that the parents, schools and teachers who teach us so much about life, fail to teach and equip us to deal with grief – such a fundamental life experience. Such grief is always rooted in deep loss and though here, it is ostensibly the loss of a much-loved husband of 40 years, it could be the loss of your dog or the ability to sing anymore. Irreversible loss is loss after all.

One of the reasons I found her memoir compelling was because almost everything that Didion writes she did in the days following Dunne’s death, I remember having done at some point in my life. It is a strange mix of paranoia and superstition where you believe giving up your favourite food, will accomplish this, or not watching films for an entire year will accomplish that. I am sure such rituals of punishment are familiar to all of us. In Didion’s case they manifest in a slightly different manner. She refuses to give away John’s shoes wondering what would he wear when he returned. It is as if, by not entertaining certain unpleasant facts, she can avoid their eventuality. Almost obsessively she also avoids certain places and people, who she refers to as ‘vortex’, that she is afraid will trigger painful memories of John. This is the ‘magical thinking’ of the title – a clinical condition Freud refers to where we compulsively do certain things and avoid others to influence the outcome of a potentially hopeless situation .

Another reason why the book resonated with me is because like Didion I usually feel compelled to ‘act’, ‘to do’, ‘to understand’ when disaster strikes. Not for me the passive mourning. The ‘act’ is the only means I have to thwart disaster, it is the last defense in a callous universe. If I can analyse the roots of disaster, I can prevent them and maybe crawl out of them. It is like asking your lover, without breaking down, as he’s about to depart forever, ‘What do you think are those three traits in me which would keep a man from returning my love?” This is exactly what Didion does in the year following John’s death. She pores over autopsy reports and previous health records, and reads up extensively to ‘understand’ why what happened to John happened. We are told that she had been taught from childhood to “go to the literature” in “time of trouble,” read everything she could get her hands on. The aphorism ‘Knowledge is power’ never had a more avid disciple than in Didion. Didion’s first instinct after John's fatal heart attack in their apartment had been to try and "master" the event by doing everything she could to understand it. If she could marshal the facts, then surely she would be able to explain them. As if the explanation alone would lessen the suffering; as if loss can ever be explained.

Later, attempting to understand her own response to grief – the sense of disorientation, the physical symptoms, the feeling of fading away – she refers to medical journals by eminent psychiatrists and even an early 20th century book on “funeral etiquette,” by Emily Post where people tending to those who’d suffered a loss should “prepare a little hot tea or broth and it should be brought to them . . . without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it.” Didion endorses this book because, as she says, “There was something arresting about the matter-of-fact wisdom here. [Post] wrote in a world in which mourning was still recognized, allowed, not hidden from view.” Today, we inhabit a world where it is ok to talk of celebrity break-ups and corporate bailouts but a social taboo to reveal the soul’s ravaged centre.

A good book is supposed to change something intrinsic about you. As I read TYOMT, I resolved I’d have to stop crying about the things I usually do – films, books, street kids, personal matters. Somehow, it seemed a travesty that my only response to grief had been saline water. As a reader, I owed it to Didion to stop them. Strange, but true. Every time I approached a section where I felt their threatening presence, I’d put the book aside and force myself to think of something else, like she frequently does.

Towards the end Didion writes that this is the first book she has written after her 1st one which Dunne had not seen and commented on in the draft stage, hence it felt like a kind of betrayal and she wanted to get it off her chest as fast as she could. As you read, it becomes obvious that wise and old and privileged with a great imagination as she is, Didion never really imagined life without John. This is not just about grief, it is also about marriage as it should be.

One of the things that she says and I nodded to fiercely was that grief is nothing like what you expected - “"Grief when it comes, it is nothing we expect it to be" - therefore, you can never be prepared. Grief is intrinsically tied to loss and we are powerless to sufficiently anticipate and replicate loss until we are actually ravaged by it. To know grief is to experience meaninglessness. No wonder she says, “Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.”

How do you face life after you have witnessed meaninglessness? “You write your way out of it,” Didion once said. Perhaps, she is correct. In a world where nothing remains and everything is meaningless, perhaps it is our words that offer any hope of salvation.

2011-06-20T18:37:00.005+05:30

"This happened on December 30 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you. And it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you.
That's what I'm here to tell you.
You see me on this stage, you sit next to me on a plane, you run into me at dinner, you know what happened to me. You don't want to think it could happen to you."

'The Year of Magical Thinking' - winner of National Book Award, 2005.

Grip

2011-06-15T20:10:00.029+05:30

An assorted group of smart, wise folks were discussing his current predicament. I know some, not all. While expressing their concern and love for him, they were all equally angry too. Angry because he hadn’t managed to get a grip on his life, angry because he was a loser. I nodded like I usually do at such moments. After nodding for some 20 odd mins, I wondered, “As much as we all wanted him to get better, I’m sure he wanted it more than any of us.”

Fighting something that has taken over your entire life is not easy and yet these other, saner people, keep making judgments with a callous shrug or in anger. What is it in the nature of the happy man that makes him so complacent? How do success & contentment make you oblivious to the fact that things could easily have gone the other way?

The smarties say that such things could never have happened to them because they possess a much stronger will. Well, good for you. Some of us don't, so go away and let us be in peace.

Though there is a glimmer of hope for police inspector Mathur (Rajiv Khandelwal) at the end of 'Shaitan', i couldn't help feeling pessimistic about his character. He has two traits which separate him from most men - he's completely lacking in the instinct for self preservation that we are blessed with from birth. Plus, he's in the grip of something that's beyond him, that's much larger than himself & ‘will’ is secondary to that thing. I have often heard people scoff or express contempt for people who have lost their way due to alcohol or a broken marriage or lost wealth, or simply a broken heart. The point is, we often dismiss that which we haven't experienced or managed to overcome. If you are prone to a quick temper and have learnt to master it, you will never empathise with Mathur as he visits the thug who can get him off the hook for throwing the municipal corporator from the roof. It is the only scene in the film that moved me, the only scene that strummed something within. Watch his face as he sits, body tense, trying his best to control the wild raging beast within him. Do watch him as he slumps against the wall dejectedly as he comes down the building. As he gives in to his anger, i felt a deep sadness that this splendid specimen of what a man should be like, is fated to lose the battle in life. No obituaries are written for losers.

Desolation Row

2011-06-14T18:49:00.004+05:30

It feels terrible when the door's been shut in your face without any fault of yours. The least they could have done was announce this before so that we could be prepared or launched a campaign to communicate the new policy to oldies like me who have been faithful followers. Damned mercenaries!

Desolate quite doesn't cover this.

Poetry

2011-06-12T22:02:00.002+05:30

I developed a taste for poetry rather late in life, despite having read it extensively as part of the curriculum in university. What I mean is – for recreational reading I’d always gravitate towards prose and not poetry. I rediscovered poetry during my stint abroad. I remember reading Deborah Ager and Michael Burch as the sunlight outsight the Union City library streamed over the pages of the hardbound volume.

There is quite nothing like discovering an unknown poem and sharing it with others (who , like you, also enjoy poetry) and knowing that your faith in that piece of verbal wizardry was not misplaced; that even though salvation through words remains an illusion, they are our last defense against transience.

We often disdain what comes naturally to us, so it is with poetry or music. Our grandmothers didn't value the folks songs that were composed when they worked in the kitchen together or the lullabies they sang to their children and those of their neighbours. Those have been lost forever & the saddest thing is that those who composed them never knew their value. But others did & therefore those ancient tales and songs and poems remains alive even today.

So it is with poetry. You may dismiss it with a shrug for it comes easily to you, you may smile with disdain when you fail to gain anything from it. For you its meaning will remain forever obscure because it was never yours to begin with. You were merely the font it sprang from. Poetry always belonged to people like me and my friends who read it without seeking anything from it, who learnt to love it even when they didn’t quite comprehend it.

Death is Not The End

2011-06-10T19:48:00.003+05:30

So MFH is dead and the entire world has suffered a loss so severe that Sinhead O’Connor is now composing a follow-up to her 90’s hit ‘Nothing compares to you’. First, it was the Jai-Veeru duo of Anna and Baba Chaukanna who dominated the headlines for weeks and yday it was MFH & the shabby treatment meted out to him by the government, sundry Indians, & even the local milkman who refused to deliver milk at his doorstep. I watched the segment on 2 channels – Times Now and NDTV – and was astonished at the utter hypocrisy and cluelessness with which ‘eminent’ thought leaders lamented his passing away. I’m-still-sexy-at-60-Shobha De alleged that MFH ‘would have lived and worked for another 5 yrs but actually died from a broken heart’. Oh, what a shame! Pritish Nandy, Jatin Das, Shabana Azmi and every Lefty loony lamented the government’s treatment of MFH.

Now, the way I see it, there are 2 things we are discussing here – one, whether MFH deserved the treatment he got; second, whether the government failed in its fundamental duty to protect its citizens. On the first, all I can say is that any artist who craves unrestrained freedom of expression is living in a dream world. From Socrates, to Galileo, to Ayan Ali Hirsi, to Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen – they have all had to pay a price for the controversial and audacious rendering of their thoughts or creative process. Sure, in an ideal world anybody could paint, write or direct whatever they wanted but this is not an ideal world and parts of India & its citizens seem to belong to a different world altogether.

It is also juvenile to compare the fatwa on Rushdie with the protests and non-bailable warrant issued against MFH. A more apt comparison would be if Rushdie was a citizen in Saudi or Yemen or Iran or even progressive Egypt & continued to live there. He offended the sentiments of muslims and lived in a country where they constituted the minority. MFH offended he sentiments of hindus & lived in a hindu nation.

Furthermore, it is myopic to compare India with developed nations like the UK or the US. While I also appreciate their culture of pluralism and diversity, it is just not possible to replicate the same model with 1.5 bn people, most of whom haven’t been to school and don’t have access to two square meals a day. What plurality, duh?

Second, what was the government’s role? Rather, is there something more the government could have done? Definitely, yes. For starters it could have issued a strongly worded statement against the Hindu Right who were waging the protests against MFH; it could have arranged for security at his exhibitions. But i have to say that as a tax paying citizen, i would appreciate if my money were spent for other purposes than providing security to such controversial figures. I do hope i have a say here just as Shabana Azmi and Pritish Nandy do?

I am also reminded of something that happened in Bengal when Taslima Nasreen sought refuge there in 2003 & the minority community erupted in violent protests. The Left was caught in a bind – they couldn’t go back on their secular credentials, yet they couldn’t isolate the minority community, their largest vote bank in rural areas. In the end, they asked Nasreen to leave and I supported that decision. The reason is because, I believe, the government’s first role is to maintain law and order. Sure, it should protect the rights of individuals but not at the cost of law and order. Not an ideal situation, but most often choices in life are not ideal. If Hussain’s presence in the country endangered law and order, then the government would be well within in rights to ask him to leave the country, which it didn’t do. MFH’s decision to leave was an independent choice which he made after due consideration of the situation.

Again, I’m not questioning his love for India or respect for Indian culture since that is not moot to the discussion here. I am not a gifted artist and it is not possible for me to comprehend or share his vision. But I do think it is irresponsible citizenship to blame the government for actually doing what it is supposed to do!

Inside

2011-06-07T20:09:00.004+05:30

All day he asked what she was hiding inside.

She stayed silent - that old familiar evasiveness he found so exasperating. This time he wouldn't stand it, he warned. She couldn't speak, only hoped he'd see.

It was only after the door shut silently that she whispered dry-eyed, "You. It was always you inside."

2011-06-05T18:44:00.005+05:30

In the past two years i have stood by helpless and watched several close friends and ex-colleagues lose their jobs. These folks come from disparate strata and backgrounds - only 2 of them managed to secure a job eventually & both were 'helped' by their respective contacts. Now, my cousin is in the same state and i may join him soon. That this could befall either of us - A or me - was always at the back of my mind, but it seemed like death - something that happens to others, or the elders, not to you. Now, I have to accept that it is happening to me. It's happening to L too & there's nothing i can do to help her.
Work sustains me. The solo fact that my existence on earth is vindicated comes when i deliver the goods at the workplace. I derive immense satisfaction from that. It's like a soul mate who you can always count on. In a fast changing world, there aren't too many things i can count on - parents are growing older and feebler, friends always drift away, very few films excite me these days, money i cant manage well and always lose - the job is the one thing that has never abandoned me. Till now.

I was discussing with A & as usual he's been a great support. I'm told that we will still be able to buy books from Amazon & drink single malt if i lose my job. A few days ago I'd gone for an interview which i couldn't crack. Needless to say i was shaken. Not he, though. He still believes any company would snap me up. Funny guy. Moments like these, i feel a deep gratitude swell within me that goes far beyond love or marriage. To have someone who reserves their faith in you when others don't, perhaps that's all that matters.

Damned if you wear, damned if you don't!

2011-06-02T20:44:00.004+05:30

It is bad enough when people in India’s cow belt still talk of bahu, beti, cow and land - all in the same breath. What makes it worse is when people echoing the voice of a modern & emerging India exhibit the same feudal attitude, albeit in the guise of arguing in favour of women. It makes me see red. I’d rather live with the knowledge that I have to fight a posse of chauvinists than be let down by those who have always sworn by gender equality. Anil Dharker seems to be one of the latter.

While I wouldn’t care two hoots what our female badminton players wore on court as long as they returned home with a few medals, I find the Badminton World Federation’s (BWF) dictat that its female athletes ‘must wear skirts in all tournaments from June 1, 2011’ to ‘increase the spectator appeal of the game’ odious and personally offensive! As usual our Badminton Association of India (BAI) has gone about objecting this issue in a completely irrelevant manner, dragging in everything from our ancient kala, sanskriti to heritage and perhaps Hazare (who knows?). It has also aligned itself with those (Pakistan/Indonesia) who have equally loathsome ideas about what constitutes womanhood and how a woman ought to dress.

My problem is that irrespective of which side you’re on, no woman can emerge a winner from this argument. If wearing skirts and flashing panties won’t work, the BWF will probably insist next that its female athletes start posing topless on court to grab a few eye(balls). After all, it’s all in the spirit of the game.

The thing I find galling about Dharker’s views is that he seems completely oblivious to the fact that he seems to be endorsing a view where appearances make up for lack of talent; where commercialization needs to be promoted at the risk of sacrificing personal freedom; where our “athletes (should) at least look the part, even if they aren't quite the part.”

This is a defeat after fighting for over a century for equal rights, a defeat for the suffragettes, a defeat for those who were burnt at the stake at Salem, a defeat for those African girls who still bleed to death due to genital mutiliation, a defeat for those girl infants who are drowned upon birth in the remote villages of Rajasthan, as well as a defeat for all of us who struggle daily to instill in our daughters the wisdom that what matters is who you are inside, not the layers of pancake you can smear across your face.

JLT

2011-05-28T08:42:00.001+05:30

Watching Chris Gayle massacre Abu Nechim in the first over of the RCB innings yday, I wondered that Gayle must be the most feared batsman in the IPL today. As the bowlers came on one by one, they all looked like the roman slaves in the lion pit in those old Cecil De Mille movies. There was nothing anybody could do in the face of Gayle’s power. What do the bowlers, especially the greenhorns, feel when they face him, I wondered? What goes on in the mind when you know that you’re powerless in the face of something that’s much bigger than you? What do you do when you realize that your best was not good enough and so you flunked? There can’t be anything worse than this. Isn’t this what forms the core of our saddest & most enduring stories?

Personally I don’t like Chris Gayle – he has cold, mean eyes. Compare him with someone like Pollard or Malinga, both of whom have such refreshing, guileless smiles. Even when he’s been hammered, Malinga remains a delight.

*************************************************************

I’ve been working on a huge marketing project, rather integrated programme, since the past couple of months. It accounts for a good chunk of our marketing budget for 2011 and has been under abundant scrutiny. The global launch of the CTP commenced yday over 2 sessions. Overall there will be 5 sessions covering VPs and Sr. Directors spread over 53 country clusters. This was the first time i was hosting a launch as big as this & I was pbably as nervous as that Nechim boy when he faced Gayle. First, I’m not too good at public speaking or speaking to a mass audience of unknown identity. Gimme a small group & I’m fine. Second, I am scared of things going wrong which are not in my control. For ex., broadband fluctuations which may stall the webex, IP phone disconnection, sudden power outages. Call me paranoid or whatever but I have seen these things happen a few times and I don’t fancy rain on my parade.

I knew that I’d be launching this programme many months ago. Life was different then. Certain people who I’d thought would be around, weren’t. Some others were. Again, there was nothing I could do. V & G were perfect colleagues & friends - guiding, assisting, laughing and trying to soothe me. I wonder - what is it in the nature of things that makes some people like this and others different? Do they breathe a different air?

In the morning, I met a strange autowala. I’ve never seen an autowala with a cigarette dangling from his hands. Have you? Anyway, I’ve been suffering from a horrible dry cough for the past 2 months and the darn thing’s taken quite a fancy to me. It’s a continuous irritation and I was coughing in the seat when the autowala turned around and asked me if the smoke was bothering me. Despite my assurances that I was fine, he threw the cigarette away after a few minutes. Now, I don’t know what kind of a smoker you are but I’m a cheapskate. The one thing that I abhor is throwing away my well-lit fag before its time is up. I refuse such sacrifice for love or nation. This guy amazed me. We talk of etiquettes and courtesy. Where does a Mumbai autowala receive his lessons from?

It all stems from the ‘kind heart’ I’m sure. That’s the key. People like V, G & my autowala, you may think me foolish for blogging abt them. The more I grow older, I realize that with all the things that have changed and will change about me, I don’t want to lose this ability to appreciate kindness when I find it, to appreciate beauty, to appreciate innocence & to appreciate the rainbow.

David versus Goliath

2011-05-24T19:17:00.002+05:30

Of all the Biblical stories, David versus Goliath remains my favourite. Not because it showcases individual triumph over adversity or fortitude or anything like that. Many other tales do that. At the simplest level, it is a story of insubordination, of taking on authority, of challenging the popular and the established, of breaking away from the herd to make yourself heard.

Came across 2 such examples recently and thought i'd share them.

When I read Ratan Tata’s comments in the above story, I was pleased. The article has two moot points – Mr Tata’s criticism of the exaggerated and vulgar opulence that’s evident in Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey Antilla abode and the poor work ethic displayed by the management of his UK-based company – Jaguar Land Rover. Both comments should be read in the context of the larger issues he is talking about – developing a social conscience amongst India’s rich and the abysmal work ethics of UK-based managers who are not willing to go an extra mile when the occasion so demands as opposed to their Indian counterparts.

Now, you may agree with Mr Tata’s views or formulate your own counterview. Indeed, I harbour my own reservations about the work ethic part since what’s seen by him as a valuable precedent can also be read as the Indian disregard for work-life balance and scant respect for an employee’s private time. But that’s not the real issue here.

I find Mr Tata’s remarks commendable because in the current climate of political correctness where every truism, every sentence, has to be endlessly pondered and edited before it is fit to be echoed in public, it takes courage to voice such thoughts. If Mukesh Ambani has a right to build his house according to his tastes, so does Mr Tata to criticise such tastes!

In the second instance, a nice forum has grown around Umberto Eco's comments in the Guardian. I am mostly ok with whatever he wrote, save for the last paragraph where he seems to be justifying his not reading those books. What surprised me was that most of the commentators didn't seem to get the slight insult, or rather the pomposity inherent in his those words. Until I came upon this comment (copied below.)

"Dear Mr. Eco,

I am a reader and not a writer.
I hope you can understand that we are different.

When you ask "Who has actually read Finnegans Wake – I mean from beginning to end? Who has read the Bible properly, from Genesis to the Apocalypse?", I understand that you are asking rhetorically, and with some incredulity, if not also with some defensiveness, as i can only assume that you have not, or else your question would be more dismissive of readers than it appears.

I have read both of those books, several times.
I have taken great enjoyment from them, as they are central to the Western tradition of narrative.
But, i am not a writer, and if you, as a writer, have not read them, as you may be suggesting from your provocative question, then i am concerned for you.

Several of your books make reference to the Bible, and make use of some of the devices that are central to what is groundbreaking in the Wake.

If what lurks behind your question is the admission that you did not understand the very material that you were using in your own writing, then i feel an obligation to let you know that i will not be reading any more of your books.
I am not a writer.

But, as a reader, what i expect from a writer is that they are in command of their work, and that they are aware of what they are doing. I do not expect that they have read everything. Nor do i expect that they are able to talk about what they do not know, but i would hope that a dismissal of a work because you could not finish it at that point in your life is not used as a dismissal of the work.

This is not an unreasonable pact between readers and writers. Readers need to trust that writers are writing something that is structurally sound, and that will be worth our time and effort.

Also, as a reader, there are books that i have read, and books that i have not read, but to make a value judgement on the work that i have not read, and am ignorant of, or to make a value judgement on the nature of reading in a world of such wondrous variety is insulting.

A dismissal of books that one has not read is selfish, solipsistic, and cynical toward any audience.

Please think of the readers when you are cashing your cheques from the employment that you have gained on the back of your success in the field of writing and publishing your work. From this day forward, it will be slighly lighter due to those you have turned away with your posturing.

No longer yours,
David"

Ah David! How I love thee? Let me count the ways ...

Didi

2011-05-19T09:22:00.002+05:30

V asked me yday how things would evolve in WB now that the Left had been unseated from their throne. I told him that the Left would go back to doing what they do best – throw a spanner in the works of any and every developmental activity Didi planned. After all, that’s what she did too, right? That’s the beauty of multi-party democracy.
Anyway, the topic meandered off to Didi & how she’d mobilized the movement for change so much that even avowed Didi-critics like V and my dad claimed that they’d voted for her because they were sure that even if nothing changed, the party in power had changed. Now I’m the odd one out here for such change doesn’t mean anything to me and I abhorr her. But after the conversation I tried to evaluate her achievement as neutrally as I could and something struck me – Didi’s victory means nothing to me politically for I’m that jaded old cynic who has given up hope things will improve in WB. But her victory means something to me as a woman, as a mother to someone who will grow up to be a woman.

Of all the other female politicians in power in India today, Didi is the only one who hasn’t reached the position of CM by climbing on the back of a man or a familial dynasty. Be it Sonia Gandhi or Jayalalitha or Mayavati or Rabri Devi or Renuka Choudhry – they have all either had men who were entenched in party politics mentoring them and granting them a platform to enter the political fray or come from dynasties that were in power. But not didi.

Eccentric and irresponsible as she is, she nurtured a dream long ago while in college, like many of us. Unlike most of us, she didn’t let it die, nor did she trade it for false Gods. She did it all without the support of a man. This is the only aspect of her victory that makes me happy.

My Left Side

2011-05-18T14:42:00.001+05:30

If you live in India & own a vehicle, chances are slim that you’ll be able to get through life without suffering a single accident. I’d been lucky all this while but things changed this Monday. An inattentive driver of a Tata Winger minivan rammed into my tiny Zen Estilo and broke off parts of its front left side, my phone and my resolve to be charitable towards those who cause me harm.

The reason I write about the incident is because upon looking back I am a trifle ashamed at my conduct. It has been a while since I’ve expressed such thundering rage. A friend once joked that he loved my ‘gully manners’. I realise that he was right.

What followed was an endless nightmare of towing the damaged car, filing a non-cognizable offence complaint (apparently you can’t file an FIR for such cases), visiting the insurance guys, X-rays and consultations. I hope it all ends soon. This was my first visit to a police station to file a complaint and 2 of the things that surprised me were: there are no computers there still and everything is handwritten, and people recruited to sub-inspector rank are completely illiterate and I don’t mean this in any patronising way. I don’t know how they qualified for whatever exams one has to take in order to join the police, but they must’ve definitely cheated. I’ll tell you why.

The sub-inspector who wrote my report – Tukaram Aaldar – kept referring to an earlier complaint to check the spelling of every effing word. For words which were not present in the earlier complaint – details of the present vehicles, our names, etc – he kept scribbling till we helped him out with the marathi spellings! I had to wait an interminable 75 mins with a throbbing arm before the 2-pager complaint was ‘written’ & we were free to leave.

And we dream of turning Mumbai into Shanghai?

Another thing – I don’t have any issues with someone ogling me. I mean, it’s your prerogative. Personally, I’d rather ogle at Chitrangada Singh or Kareena. My single point is – do not let the ogling interfere with your work. That gets my goat. The police constable who escorted us from the scene of the accident just didn’t seem to comprehend that my eyes were set somewhere upon my face and not on my body while he was asking me questions. He took about 20 minutes to copy my address. Again, what strikes me as strange is that a human being could summon his worst lascivious instincts when he saw another human being in distress. That’s the part I don’t get. I just don’t.

Such accidents reveal unknown, surprising facets about people. If the police personnel were obnoxious and inefficient, the hospital staff at Fortis OPD were really fantastic.

In a strange quirk of fate, my left side has been under some assault since January. First there was an injury to the left leg, some other lefty business and now the left arm. What is surprising has been my response to these 3 incidents. In the first two instances, I was absolutely calm and tolerant. This time I all but beat up the driver of the Winger. Much later when I was sitting in the hospital I wondered at my response. I realised that I’d no scope for fear as anger had overtaken every other feeling. Anger at callousness, anger that people can get away with blatantly irresponsible behavior, anger that I was alone, anger that I’d have to pay through my nose for this mess, anger that some moms don’t take proper care of their kids, anger that I couldn’t avert his loss, anger that A’s client was giving him a tough time, and anger at a whole host of other things.

In the end, I don’t know if the anger helped.

Long Overdue

2011-05-18T14:26:00.001+05:30

I've been following Rick Gekoski's columns with bated breath ever since the shortlist was announced almost a month ago. Like most avid Roth fans, i was afraid he'd be passed over yet again. i read his recent novel Nemesis in January while on vacation. I didn't think it compared to his best work like Portnoy's Complaint or American Pastoral or The Human Stain, but then no novel by Roth can ever be called bad.

This is more well-deserved than any literary award i've come across in recent times.

Congrats!

In Memorium

2011-05-13T22:15:00.001+05:30

So, 34 years of Left rule finally came to an end in WB & A finally got the phone I wanted him to buy. In the end, none of this mattered. The heart of the matter was that 2 little girls were left bereft today as their dear ajja passed away. Thinking of them, the little girl inside me that still remains, felt crushed. Some losses mirror the ones you have experienced and also warn you about those to come. Anway, this post isn’t about me.

I was searching for words, something I could borrow, something that’d rightly reflect this day when I looked back upon this post a few years down the line. I could have chosen the right words from Auden, or Tennyson, or Elizabeth Barett Browning, or Tagore – they have all mourned death so aptly in their works. In the end I settled for the words of another little girl. This was written when she was only about 7 and she’d lost her grandfather. I’d told her dad that one day I’d post her poem here. Here it is:

Grandad

A long time ago

Grandma said to me,
“You never miss the water

Until the well runs dry,”

So, now that you’re gone

I miss you.

He used to like bright sea colours:

Bluey- greens and turquoise

Brown clunky Clarke shoes,

That made too much noise.

I remember an indigo jumper.

But what does it matter today?

I’m remembering the marks of a dead man,

Because death took him away.

And now I remember:

“You never miss the water

Until the well runs dry.”

He used to tell short stories,

But fall asleep before the end.

About snakes and mighty lions,

With royal kingdoms to defend,

I used to jog and shake him,

He’d open one eye and say:

“I’ll finish it sometime tomorrow,”

But then death took him away.

Because, a long time ago,

Grandma said to me,

“You never miss the water

Until the well runs dry.”

Come back, Grandpa,

Because I miss you.

He wore huge, wire spectacles

That magnified his eyes,

Left round tea stains on tables,

And then made Grandma cry:

“Use a coaster, won’t you!”

He’d smile and turn away,

His eyes shining like bright stars,

But then death took him away.

Because, a long time ago,

Grandma said to me

“You never miss the water,

Until the well runs dry.”

So now that you’re gone,

I miss you.

RIP

Salt

2011-05-10T12:10:00.003+05:30

It is not unlike salt,

My love for you.

It ‘s fine grains season and garnish,

But a lil extra, does spoil the trick.

It is even willing, for your sake,

To brave the skillet and flavour your life.

It stands proud and tall,

Behind mine eyes.

When you clasp my hand,

It breaks out in a cold sweat.

You tasted salt last,

When I passed it during supper,

Our fingers brushed askance,

I never felt happier.

Family Matters

2011-05-09T19:10:00.004+05:30

We have messed up most things in the country but if there remains one thing that we Indians have gotten absolutely correct, it is in the way we maintain our families. Or at least, the way many of us do.

A few friends met up yday and went out. I had fun, laughed and shopped but thoughts of P were at the back of my mind. As is usual these days, V & P didn’t join us. Ever since V’s dad returned from the hospital with tubes stuck to his body, their entire life has almost come to a standstill. They couldn’t attend any of the gatherings in the past 2 months. Uncle has to be fed, washed, turned over and watched after, and while they have a full-time nurse for him, i understand that they just don't feel like gong out. They even cancelled their trip bookings to Thailand recently. I hear fatigue in her voice when we speak, but never a single complaint from P. She amazes me.

In another corner, a friend has been suddenly taken ill. It is amazing to see the way her family – husband, parents, uncles – has rallied around her. So much love? They amaze me too.

In yet another part of the world, I see another friend & his family caring for their ailing father. And also his brother. Again, what’s amazing is the dogged tenacity with which I witness him doing what is required, without a single complaint. He also amazes me.

Some of the prayers and efforts will be rewarded, others won’t be. But as a bystander, it moves me to witness so much unconditional devotion, such sincerity in the face of so much bleakness. No matter how it all turns out, I know they have gotten the most important parts of their life right.

The title of this post is inspired by Rohinton Mistry's splendid novel of the same name.

Rant UnLtd

2011-05-05T21:24:00.002+05:30

There is a reason people like Sathya Sai Baba and Anna Hazare manage to enthrall us. We Indians are completely bereft of imagination which is essential for a basic modicum of sensitivity. We do not understand that breaking queues at a toll booth will only impede the flow of traffic, not hasten it; we don't understand that driving garbage trucks around with their hoods open will strew the streets with rotting stench and dropping garbage; we definitely don't see how smashing a few fingertips while swinging through doors is in any way wrong. Toh kya hua ji?.

The building which houses our office is being painted. Today as i was leaving work i noticed that the paint dripping from the workmen's brush had coated the entire flower bed which lay around the right side of the building a stark white. These are beautful peonies, daisies and marogolds. The flowers could be recognised only by their shape since all of them seemed a uniform white. In all likelihood the plants will die soon. In Fremont i recalled, the painters would first take care to cover with a light tarp any plants that were likely to be smudged with falling paint when the external walls of any structure were being painted. It wasn't a matter of a great investment, just some simple steps. I spoke to our security staff and when he called the workmen's supervisor, his whole attitude was that i was the one who was out of my mind. The whole while that we kept arguing, he refused to accept that it was absolutely simple to cover the flower beds while the men were at work and remove the cover in the evening!

This is why we will never win any Nobels, never get anywhere while China will build nuclear power stations and SEZs and the US will keep inventing cheaper and better antiretroviral drugs. You need imagination, you need sensitivity to do those things and we lack both.

Good Fun

2011-05-05T17:48:00.001+05:30

The Guardian has a nice article about a particular website which retitles famous books in accordance with what they are really about. According to Dan Wilbur, the Brooklyn-based writer and performer who runs betterbooktitles.com, "This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!"

Check the comments on the Guardian story as well. Some of the commentators have suggested really wacky names. My favs:

Pride and Prejudice - How to Marry a Millionaire
A Farewell to Arms - The Amateur Bombmaker's Guide
Lord of The Flies - Children Are Vicious Bastards
Great Expectations - Greater Disappointments
Lady Chatterley's Lover -- Shagging and Ranting
Anna Karenina -- Men are Bastards, Buy a Dog

I'm thinking up some of my own. Why don't you too?

The Price Tag

2011-05-04T10:30:00.001+05:30

I have a fundamental belief about professional success and those who achieve it – they are largely governed by empirical facts, are quick to adapt to diverse circumstances, are not overtly emotional and predominantly use the left brain. This is not to say that they are cold or callous or evil. Just that you cannot be an overtly emotional person who views everything from the coloured prism of the heart and carve success in an environment where dog-eats-dog is the mantra, just like you cannot have diabetes and consume sweets with impunity.

Within my own circle of acquaintances, I have witnessed this stereotype; the chasm becomes more defined when you meet people who take on leadership roles or run their own enterprises. I am often thrown into a debate with them about a book, a film, or a particular situation and I’m flummoxed at the way their mind interprets these. It is often refreshing, sometimes alarming, always fills me with dismay.

Now we all know that the IPL is not as much about sports as it is about running an enterprise, garnering endorsements and winning the big meal-ticket. Therefore, though I’m a crazy Ganguy devotee, I saw nothing wrong when SRK dropped him from the KKR team this year. As the owner of the team, his sole duty is to increase returns for all stakeholders and that’s only possible when he gets a winning team in place. In order to do that, he should be free to make whatever changes he feels fit. He did just that.

But the players who play in these teams - and here I’m talking of the icons – are not owners, but stars in the galaxy. They have already scaled the heights of stardom, amassed great wealth and fame and frankly, have nothing left to prove. Neither a Kallis/ Warne/Tendulkar/Ganguly/Dravid are at a make-or-break stage in their careers. Each has a distinct identity – Warne, the naughty playboy & brilliant bowler from down under who has magnificently rallied the Royals; Tendulkar, unassuming, master of the bat, can-never-write-him-off stalwart from Mumbai; Ganguly, reticent & a little arrogant, great batsman and even greater leader of men hailing from Kolkata; Dravid, calm, assured and dependable guy from Bangalore. Like it or not, they are all deeply entrenched in the regions from which they hail. You may say that this is not how it should be, but this is how the world works. Hence, it is blasphemous to even imagine that Sachin would play for any team but the MI or Dravid for RCB or Ganguly for KKR. But two of them are doing just that! I don’t see myself sitting in Pune and cheering for Ganguly in a PW versus CSK match. I just don’t!

Plus, I don’t see any real motivation, save money, to induce them to join franchisees other than their home teams. So yes, if you ask me, Ganguly should have announced right after the IPL auctions that he would not play for any team other than KKR.

Ganguly’s decision to join the Pune Warriors is a let-down for fans like me for it displays a certain mercenary quality in a hero. We are not accustomed to flawed heroes. It disappoints me because it reveals that, fundamentally, everything in this world has a price tag and can be bought – skills, loyalty, commitment, truth. This is not about Ganguly and the IPL alone but about the world we have built. Previously I ranted, but today I see nothing wrong in the protagonist of a film like The Social Network.

Even as I try to divorce my feelings from pure business wisdom, I feel that the decision was also wrong on account of the stage at which he’s entering the team. The IPL is more than half-way through, the PW are a beleaguered team at the moment, Ganguly has been out of ODIs and T20 for ages and his form is debatable, expectations riding on him are high and all eyes will be on his performance yet again. Let’s see how it all unfolds.

JLT

2011-04-30T22:09:00.002+05:30

It is so strange that we behave in entire different ways solely on account of our gender. This is perhaps God's greatest injustice. H & i today face somewhat similar circumstances. His response to it has been markedly different from mine and definitely more admirable. I am sure there is a lesson for me; i hope i can learn.

*****************************************************************

What is the duration of a relationship that's built on the expectation of a 'yes', i wonder? Yes-terday.

*****************************************************************

Watched young Oliver Bartlett and Jenny Cavalieri's today after nearly a decade. An age old story, full of mush, yet it still moves me as much as it did then. Andy Williams' 'where do i begin' still haunts. My friend Chandrima introduced me to his music. Brought back wonderful memories of GDB School, playing pranks, leching at the computer science teacher, match making between friends, heartbreak and college fests. A time that's never gonna come back.

Dolls

2011-04-29T10:42:00.001+05:30

I’m sure you were thinking of that crappy novel ‘Valley of the dolls’ when you read the title of this post. Never mind, I read it too ages ago. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today is a very specific type of doll/s. I usually squirm at banal endearments like honey, dear, doll, dudette, etc etc. I see too many people throw them like a used dish towel and I stand fuming. I prefer reserving such endearments for the telecallers offering me free personal loans, credit cards and nirvana. Yeah, you’re right - I am at my bitchiest best then.

So, it was somewhat of a surprise when I called yg a ‘doll’ yesterday. I don't recall doing that ever before! We’d been talking and he said “Woke up at 5 and watched Harry Potter since there was nothing to do and was missing my daughter a lot. Watched it imagining her sitting next to me.” I don’t want to digress into the reasons why his words moved me so deeply but I immediately told him, ‘You’re a doll” – much to his obvious displeasure. Now, I still find it annoying that people should be so stuck up about gender-specific endearments, but then that’s men – they can’t be credited with much more than testesterone. He he..

Which brings us to the question of who or what is a doll, really? I am bad at definitions but lemme try. To me it is someone who exibits at a particular moment such sweetness of deed or word, such pure, untarnished act of affection or integrity, that it moves bystanders simply by the mere act of witnessing it. More accurately, it is like soft cream fondue or perfectly baked beef wellington. It requires years of painstaking practise before you can produce any of these and almost always something will go wrong – the beef won’t be medium rare or the fondue will be too gooey. But when they turn out right, there is nothing you’d want to change or correct about them. They are 'pure' moments. They are a labour of love, of integrity - 100 per cent heart. And yes, they are never expected, they take you completely by surprise.

Now, I want to play a lil tag game. I want you, dear reader, to list down your top 3-5 ‘dolls’ - they don’t have to necessarily do with you, but could be something/someone you witnessed or know about or experienced. Mine goes like this:

Subbu, April 2008 – Subbu was A’s boss in the US. The two had major differences at work and things were so bad that A decided to move to the east coast on a different project. A was due for a promotion but we were both pretty sure Subbu would try his best to screw that up. It was just something we were certain about. When the letter came, we saw that he’d been given the promotion and Subbu had in fact, recommended it. I was taken aback. He was a doll. I have worked for over 8 years and I know a bit how things work in the office. Very few people have the ability to divorce their personal grudges from professional ethics. Such integrity is rare, such maturity is what makes a person a doll.

A, February 2002 – I stopped taking money from my dad since I moved to bombay. I was making about Rs 9000 as an editor at the Express. I was going to Kolkata for vacation & A had come to drop me at the station. We were close but there hadn’t been any talk of marriage or even a serious commitment. He had offered me some money so that I could have a nice vacation which I refused, of course. It was only after I boarded the train that I saw he’d put his debit card into my purse. I had helpless tears rolling down my cheeks and I didn’t even have the words to call him and thank him. It takes a special kind of person to hand over your debit card to someone you haven’t known for long; it takes an even greater sensitivity to imagine that a friend going for vacation may run short of money. I am sure there was affection in his heart; what I’m surer is there was more – courage, faith, trust, integrity and more than a dash of foolishness.

D & L, 2010: We’ve been friends since before I can remenber. Last year I was quarantined with swine flu. Both of them offered to fly down to look after me. D was in the midst of a big civil project (he’s a hot-shot UK-based architect) & I’d asked him to not come. One morning I woke up to find him waiting beside my bed. Surprise is a mild term for what I felt. This was a time when I was not even allowed to see my own daughter. You don’t see dolls like this too often. D doesn’t live in India but somehow, strangely, he has always managed to visit me when I’ve been seriously unwell. His presence, our arguments, his unconditional affection, always works like a miracle and I’m back on my feet.

P, 1998 – P was a very close friend. The reason I think of him as a doll is because I have never met anyone more grounded, more considerate, less bitter about his misfortune, more of a man at 28 than anyone else I’ve met since. He was blessed with everything one could ask for – drop dead good looks, family wealth, heritage, connections, a sharp mind, amazing soccer skills – the works. He never let it all go to his head, never spoke slightly of others, never laughed at the young girl who was absolutely smitten by him. I got to know him closely, but he never ceased to surprise me. There was kindness – complete and absolute. A big doll.

I have listed my 5 dolls. Now it’s your turn. I am not gonna tag individuals but I have a few tolerant souls who comment here. You could play this tag game at your blog or just list them in the comments space for those of you who don’t blog.

It is Tuesday

2011-04-26T08:40:00.003+05:30

From room to room
after you left
I wandered a while
in the hours
as instructed
I have cooked
the mushroom soup
picked up a paperback
I have read
but forgotten
had some coffee
it is quiet
I don’t know why
all afternoon
I think of you
in the traffic
the rain
peacefully falling
like some plastic beads
from the ‘70’s
when they took all the doors
off the closets
and our parents smoked
all night downstairs
and laughed too loud
we couldn’t hear
what they were
and what they knew
if you hate me
it must be
for ancient reasons

by Matthew Zapruder