Nine Years, I Wonder

An adventurer always starts out as an ordinary person. That day, you cannot call that person an adventurer. The first step across the threshold is tentative and heavy with excitement and dread. The next step is fueled by intrigue and curiosity. Then the next step and then the fourth. The feet become ever so light with every step as the long walk continues. As you walk along you recall the wonders that you read about, when you were immersed in the chronicles of other adventurers. You wonder, when you will face your first wonder. Events define an adventurer; not the intent. Not all adventures are made up of dragons, long walks along the ridges of mountains and fighting unknown beasts. Some are. And dragons, tall mountains and deep valleys have a way of manifesting themselves.

Time passes, you have taken many steps already but the canvas of adventure is a summer mountain-scape in the mountains of the Deccan. Sameness pervades and you wonder if it may be worthwhile to imagine a wonder that would be the first chapter of your chronicle. Stay true, you tell yourself; they will come, you assure yourself and plod along. You recall the long journeys of ancient adventurers across seven seas and seven mountains that were completed in a couple of pages – you remind yourself that the number of words or pages is hardly ever the measure of the extent, the breadth or the depth of content.

A tall mountain looms.

It’s filled with wonder, but you fail to recognise it as such. You make a note of it and it strikes you: this is indeed the wonder of my adventure. Without warning you have met with your first wonder. Does that make me an adventurer? You hope it does, but do not say it loud, lest you jinx it.

I wonder what lies beyond that mountain.

A long time and fewer pages later, you meet others like you. Some have set off on the adventure before you, some after you. You exchange chronicles and barter myths. Some seek to discover wonders together, some choose their own adventure. Not all wonders amaze everyone. From a seeker of wonders, you never realise when you have become an adventurer; till that day – when someone calls you that: an adventurer. Uncertainty and euphoria grips you on either side.

Am I?

But there is no time for you to debate and evaluate. You seek the wonders, and you walk along. You celebrate the wonders with fellow-adventurers; you speak of how long you have been a seeker. Sometimes it is not so wonderful. You do not move because you are laden with disgust and disappointment. You question the purpose and the value of what you seek. You question the authenticity of the initiative. There comes a time when you are trying very hard to stay true and you fall in a quicksand. You don’t drown because the Archangel of wonder-seekers watches over you; pulls you out. Scarred though you may be, slow though your walk may become, distress though may run in your veins, you pick yourself up. You walk. And though your eyes refuse to see clearly, the wonders don’t cease. Distracted though you may become, you keep to your path.

In the league of wonder-seekers, if you have been seeking for a long nine years, you are known as an adventurer. But, what they know you as, matters less, because after nine years you are inherently aware that the adventure is the biggest wonder of all.

To all the seekers of wonder out there, whether we still share the same wonders or not, whether our paths crossed for a moment or for years, whether you are still seeking or not – thank you – my adventure has prospered because of you.

It has been a wondrous nine years with you all.

Walking over Corpses

Happy Dussehra!

I almost know what you are thinking. He’s steadily losing it, choosing this title on such an auspicious day. For those of you who do not know Dussehra, it’s one of the big festivals in India; comes just before Diwali, which is a bigger festival in India. Dussehra is celebrated all over India and various states have a very specific definition about why they celebrate this day. There’s God, a king, a demon, a Goddess, some specific events and such. In glorifying the act of the God or the Goddess, we hold public exhibitions of the achievements of our immortal bosses, outdoing our neighbourhood representations by a foot or so.

Every third Indian will tell you that festivals in India are just a way to outdo the neighbouring festivities in height and decibel levels. The communal celebration of festivals was a pre-Independence phenomenon designed for awareness and political debate. Six decades later, all communal festivities have been reduced to an excuse for public display of alcoholism. The communal purpose has been abstracted and instantly made discrete to serve personal agendas.

Today is Dussehra. A festival to celebration the victory of good over evil; irrespective of the versions of the story that you will hear all around the country. It is still a celebration of good over evil.

Wait.

It is not a celebration. It is an annual reminder. To yourself. To identify the evils and your personal demons. Internal and external; a call to: first, identify them and second, to vanquish them. And you would do a disservice to yourself if you thought that the demons were out there. Those that you really need to fight and defeat are within. The challenge, to my mind, when you prostrate yourself before a deity is not to submit before a higher power, but to look within yourself and look into the eyes of your personal demons. Whether you can fight them or not, is secondary. To face them in an achievement by itself. The path becomes obvious after that. Indian history and culture is replete with rituals. Rituals were defined for those that couldn’t grasp the philosophical premise, and today we are slaves belonging to the lowest common denominator; further we have bastardised the ritual to street-class debauchery.

A while ago, I called it: Lost in Translation

Every philosophy, reduced down, is a call and a vision to live a happy, fulfilling life. That happy life lies some distance away – and to get there, we will have to walk over the corpses of our very personal demons, who inhibit us; make us live a lesser life than we deserve. Those demons.

Find them; vanquish them.

Sign/Post

It’s 23rd July. I update my Facebook status: A beautiful post finds a place in my head. Now to find the time.

Three people like the status; the post itself does not form, for a long and indeterminate while.

I am thinking of friends. Actually, I am thinking of their absence. The fact that I am thinking of their absence illuminates their presence. They are here, in my head or heart or whatever component, physical or spiritual – that makes them present before me. The make-believe is exhausting. I give up.

This post is not that beautiful post that found a place in my head that I mentioned on Facebook.

This is a different post. It is, I think, still a beautiful post.

-*-

Of the many men who have contributed in creating the most definitive art are the ones who never signed their work. There must have been one, of many like him, that contributed to the construction of the wondrous fort of Sindhudurg. Of the men and the women who worked tirelessly at this engineering feat not a single one is mentioned anywhere. Not one of them felt the need to carve his or her name for posterity.

The brave Marathas built this fort.

Every identity was engulfed in the single identity, in that one single statement. We know of the architect, for that is documented somewhere. We know of the administrator, for that is documented somewhere.

Not a single person who contributed to the erection of this fort is known; documented  - to be precise. Not one of them ever felt the need to document his contribution. Where art has now succumbed to the identity and the pathos of an artist, this is a glaring example of art for art’s sake. A fort? As art? You would be right to question the construction of a fort as art. I will not argue on that.

*

If forts don’t convince you enough, consider Madhubani paintings or Warli art (Not the one that your cousin sells commercially; the ones that were the original)

*

A few hundred years later, young men in gaudy shirts hopeful of participating in popular love or similar such, exhibiting a deep identity crisis, have a compulsion to use chalk or whatever means to carve or inscribe their identity on the stones that an unidentified artist slaved to compose a masterpiece.

While the ones who built the masterpiece never felt a need for recognition, those that visit have a craving to inscribe their identity on a heritage that they are wretched derivatives of. Fie on those wretched souls!

Graffiti psychology has been studied enough, so I shall not even begin to make an attempt to discuss that further. Feel free to Google.

-*-

My best friend and I have a talk about this. She says  that I have made a wonderful statement in saying, “Those that built it did not feel the need to express a personal identity; those that visit someone else’s creation feel the need to display their inadequate identities.”

We – and no surprises here – move to a discussion on contemporary art. I do not know for a fact, where the concept of a signature on a piece of art came from. The need to sign art is a need to express a human equivalent of the God-complex. “I created this”. In contemporary times, to my mind, it is like proprietary software vs. opens-source software. Signed and unsigned. Belongs and doesn’t belong. Those that want to posses art are not much different and the symbiotic relationship between the artist and the audience is perpetuated through the signature. You possess a traditional unsigned Warli and I possess a Souza. Of a few square feet of canvas, my pride is often reduced to the few square inches on the bottom right of the canvas.

Not so long ago, my father used own a seal. A red sealing wax bar, burnt – their crimson simmering droplets on the lip of the envelope and ‘sealed’ with a calligraphic press of his initials. Nothing is more personal than that. Nothing more one-to-one. Only the recipient can see what’s inside the envelope. History is witness of seals. The question therefore is; if signed art is as personal? Unlike the geometric casts of tribal women of Warli, whose representation is available to all of us? Is signed contemporary art available to the privileged few? Not really – we know that. They openly exhibit their expression with gay wanton yet sign it for an unknown exclusivity.

This post has no conclusion.

-*-

That post about friends; I don’t think it will ever get published.

Mr. Chow

I saw Slumdog Millionaire.

I saw the Hindi version. We were five of us. I and two others worked as waiters in a suburban restaurant & bar in Mumbai. The other two worked as lathe machine operators in a shop in a suburb closer to where I worked. How we know each other is complicated; I wouldn’t want you to be entangled in that complexity. We were friends — you could say that, and let it go. Like you, I know that trying and defining friends is quite a big deal. I see friends gather every night at the place that I work.

But, yes, I saw Slumdog Millionaire.

Between the protagonist and me, there is one difference. His difficult life is speckled with adventure. Mine has been “only” a difficult life. There is, obviously one more difference. He has ten million rupees. I don’t. But, you know, I could have been him. I have learned more about this world as I served beer and poured a soda in a whiskey glass. Quiz competitions require facts, not knowledge. Except, that I did not have the sense to apply for the programme. But when you start thinking about it, there are many differences between the hero of that film and me. We are quite different — but one thing binds us together – I could have easily won a quiz like that.

This is a long story. So feel free to pause, take the beer (or whatever your poison is) out of your fridge, make your drink, and give me a patient ear.

A few kilometres north of Dharwad, there’s a village called Byahatti. There’s a good chance you have never heard of it, and I don’t blame you. It is not known for anything that you would care about. I am from that place. Twenty-two years ago, I was born there on the outskirts of Byahatti. To a mother who loved me more than anything else and a father who I seldom saw. When I think back, I seemed to be the fulfilling future of their life; a hope, almost. Lot of things transpired, which I will exclude from this personal history. But for the sake continuity, let me say that I went to school till the seventh class, I can read some English and do some basic maths. I do not how it works in the schools in the city, but, because I couldn’t see the blackboard very well, my teacher thought I was never paying attention. Much later, much much later, I realised that I had a defect in my eyes. We had a rich guy in the place where we stayed – and liked helping us poor people. He had got a doctor from a place called Bombay, which I had read of only in textbooks, to our village and had all children examined. We were supposed to look through a glass and identify letters. I was scared, at first — I thought it was a school test — but later, I found out that the doctor did not mind if I got it wrong.

I am probably rambling now, but feel free to open the next bottle or fill up the next peg. I can do it for you, you know, I work as a waiter in a bar.

Coming back to the Slumdog, my education has been very similar to his. See I wait tables. Different people come to the place where I work. Few of them are nice – they talk to me. The others, they just want me to get their drinks. Most of them don’t bother that I am around. If I haven’t mentioned it before – I don’t obviously, appear as a smart person. So they keep speaking, I cannot but help overhear. I am enriched. When they drink a lot — and even if I don’t make any mistake — they shout at me. I become the punching bag of their suppressed emotion. The captain and the manager have to intervene, sometime.

It must be my face and me.

I am short, dark, have pouting lips and I wear a geeky glasses. I have heard these words and I know what they mean. How else do you think Slumdog Millionaire got there. Not all my customers are rough drunks. Some, actually take the time to speak with me. I wonder what the difference is between geeky and dorky. I should ask that regular who comes often. He speaks a lot about computers and technology.

He was at our bar today. And he seemed to be at ease. I knew today was the day when I could ask him few things. Then a friend came along — someone I had never seen before, with him. Yes, I know who he comes here with. I also know which of his friends come with him at what frequency and leave at what time. He is a constant and the others are variables. You can always predict the behaviour of constants, and after observing for a while, you can predict the behaviour of the variables. Some leave at an exact time. Some stay back, with pressure. Some, you can sense – want to be elsewhere.

He ordered his usual, for himself and his friend. I kept a tab on his table, he has always been a good customer and treats me with some respect, even if the respect is from a distance. Every half an hour or so, I was replenishing their beer. All was good and I was waiting for the moment to speak with him.

As I served them their last beer, I overheard him and his friend put up a wager. On me. Both of them challenged each other to blog a character sketch about me. I was standing a couple of feet away from their table. They agreed that they will have a common title to a post while they independently sketch my character, and then compare notes. At first, I felt like a piece of furniture being reviewed. They paid they bill, and went away.

It is 3:00AM now. For the last 4 hours I have forgotten about them. As I lay down on this thin blanket I wonder about them. Our regular, promised to write about me as soon as he got home. His friend needed some time. I know people write things on the Internet — I have no way of reading what they write. As I look to this dark ceiling, I wonder what they have thought and wondered about me. Did they take me at my “face” value? Was I consigned to be a dork? Or a geek? Not that I know the difference. How will they ever know about my life? Is my unwrinkled face able to tell a story of a lifetime? Do they know of my ambitions that have been diluted as much by the soda I serve to the guests here? Do they know my mother? Will they say how much she loved me? How much I miss being away from her? Aspirations? My wages? What will they write about? I wonder. I wonder. I shed a slow tear.

And then, I think it is just amusement for them. A way to indulge in an activity that allows them to be far away from writing a character sketch about themselves.

Perhaps, my apparently empty, mission-less, menial life is some sort of an inspiration for them. Perhaps they can fill their lives with my nothingness. As I thought of this, I smiled, turned to a side and slept well.

My life is worth more than I thought.

PS: Title of this post has been borrowed from Red Dust And Spanish Lace, the first single, “Mr. Chow”. The wager mentioned in this post is real. When the other blogger completes his version, it shall be linked. Both bloggers agreed on the title, so that we can keep our independent opinion about this character sketch.

Dangerous Decisions

Michelle Martin has an excellent post (and I have contributed to it, yes) about dangerous things to do. She lists seven things – but as you read it – you will find your own. Add to her comments if you can think of one (or two, or a few).

There are quite a few articles out there that will tell you the scientific reasons for living dangerously. Frontal lobe thingies, adrenalin pumping, brain atrophy prevention etc. (See the TED talk in Michelle’s post, for example)

But all the scientific reasons in the world come to a nought, if you have been already consumed and further enveloped in the fear psychosis that governs our lives in these times. In such a situation, any list I point you to, may seem merely (and academically) romantic. It is not something that we will actually do, but a thin smile will cross our faces as we ponder and live each dangerous thing in our imagination.

And I’ll agree with you that your conviction, by itself, to live dangerously is hardly ever enough. It’s the family, friends, and environments that we live in that makes us hold ourselves back. There is said and unsaid convention to adhere. When (and of course, if) we break that convention and the recommendation of our environment – we may be left with no support system. I can assure you – it is a struggle from then on. But it is an immensely satisfying struggle. Newness abounds and there are interesting things to discover round every corner. Even things that you know seem fresh and abundant of perspective. Your instinct and intuition is fired up; highly sensitised.

The same environment in the new perspective will amaze you.

Lucky 13

My first real post about this day was on the count of 10 years. I evaded all means of being clear, meandered through the real point of the post, and engulfed it in a ball of emotions. Which, apparently, made for interesting reading, as most comments on that post will demonstrate.  It was the first time I ever wrote about this day – as such – but in spite of my deflective attempts, the post sounded out the day – loud and clear.

A year passed by.

You could have easily concluded that it took me a whole of 11 years to know that it was love, after all. The title, was such. But then, love is a many-fangled and often-mangled thing. Each makes his and her own meaning and assumes that the other feels the same.

Another year passed by.

Now that love was (apparently) understood, 12 years later was all about beauty. Not the visual kind, but the one that we experience and hardly pay attention to. And the thing of wonder is the experience of experiencing such beauty. The actual process of it – as much as I hate using the word in such a post, in such a context.

One more year has passed now.

At 13, I think I am blessed. One theme has been recurrent every year – since the first one to this day. We ask each other one question every year this day – does it feel like these many years – and the answer is always resoundingly negative. We do not know why – even after thirteen years – why we don’t feel the stretch of the time as a strain on us. But we don’t care. I think, after a while the sharpness of it all blurs away, making understanding much easier. In the detail, is the strain that time imposes. In our lives and our work this sense has been growing beautifully on us.

 

Over thirteen years we have been able to let go of looking life in small detail, somehow. Apart from marking a conventional stamp on a calendar, this day’s significance has also begun blurring to a more meaningful abstraction.

Poetry’s Curse

It was a usually unusual day. Usual because a friend was at home as I would have expected him to be. Unusual because I broke a personal rule for him — but then if you wouldn’t break it for a friend – why make rules?

One thing led to another and we got listening to Marathi Theatre Music – if you will allow that as a genre. It is a genre. I am just checking if you will. Who else but the doyen of Marathi Theatre, Kumar Gandharva filled this short evening with wonder.

But I’ll subtract the story of the evening – because of what hurts me about understanding poetry. Like art, every Tariq, Devendra and Harry has an opinion about poetry. And I do too. But, to my mind, poetry is an exact art – exact in a way that I understand it – one that cannot be interpreted in two ways – the non-abstract one.  When Mangesh Keshav Padgaonkar wrote about “Bhatuklichya Khela Madhali” what was he talking about? There is an obvious element of separation in that presentation. What is that separation – is it death? Is it a physical separation? is it an emotional separation caused by an incident?`

We all have our views of what that poem/lyric is all about. For all of us who have already determined the meaning of a song or a poem, we are already wrong. A good set of words that are close relatives of an emotion (I choose to call it a ‘set of words’ rather than give it a name, because we will then automatically assume a default meaning of the words because of the structure they are put in) are a personal expression – no one will ever deny it. The choice of words however, is the determinant factor of poetry’s curse: you have to make your own meaning.

Allow me to explain. Kumar Gandharva has sung a song titled, “Prem Kele Kay Ha Zala Gunha” (loosely translated: “I have been in love; what crime have I committed?”) It is a heartfelt journey of the post-pangs of being in love. That is my pedestrian understanding of this masterpiece. Towards the end, in a stanza, he says, “bolke zaale muke.” Let’s jump into the beauty of it – directly translated – it means that those who could speak were silenced. The beauty of the language and the construction of this phrase also allows you to interpret it as – “those that were dumb – found a voice.” When a victim is looking for witnesses for his case, the interpretation of this phrase makes a world of a difference.

For those that looking for a Valentine-ish extract of this post – there is none – but may I suggest “Runanubandhanchya.” If you have the ability in you to love the way that this poet has expressed – you have my respect.

I have often felt a deep sense of regret that I cannot read and understand Marathi literature, due, in most part of me being brought up all over the country, in cultures, that have been divergent to my roots. Give me Hindi, any time. Whether by design or default, I was brought up as an Indian, rather than as a Maharashtrain. I happily and proudly blame it on my father.

It is like poetry – a curse and a boon at the same time.

The shortcoming of the default understanding of what art in this region has come to mean for those who have been taught in a particular fashion, is my very personal prowess of extracting meaning that was hitherto undiscovered. Friends of mine who have studied Marathi poetry in school and college offer their exact and specific understanding of a poem – the hand-downs from the doyens and the protectors of meaning.  They question my alternative interpretations. Some scoff at me – for they know my Indian ethos. A few, listen intently, for they know my ethos.

My arbitrary discoveries may easily be trampled upon; however – they live a life – even if for a brief moment.

What is the poetry’s curse?

It is not a curse that any poet can impose on you. Poets like you and me cannot do it. Only the smartest, the most emotional and the most accepting & sensitive poets can impose on you. This poet’s poem has myriad meanings. There is an obvious meaning – which you will hear in a large lecture room in your literature class, by the socially renowned critic. You can make that meaning yours; challenge and stand tall before me with its meaning. Your height, then is not yours. It is derived – out of your class and the academic and oft debated interpretation of what the poet, meant to say.

I am liberated.

I never studied poetry, or any art-form for that matter. I have capacity to make more meaning like the poet intended. I never studied poetry. I am crippled in that sense, like the non-poet-critic intended.

In my illiteracy, I choose the former.

A Non-Post

This one post is difficult to write: The only way I can write it is — to deny content, in the post.

This peasant of a post has only context to offer.

The emotions that wrap around you at a time when you are most vulnerable are the very emotions that cannot be expressed. If you bring your rational head above the water, you could find a few words, scourge the thesaurus, and express in words what that emotion really makes you feel.

This one, isn’t one of that.

Perhaps because it is the confluence of a million smiles and tears. And every intersection of a smile and a tear has a unique meaning, a unique context. It is almost a complete life.

Therefore I confine this one to the only higher abstraction that it is capable of.

With numerical markers like dates, numbers, counts, measurements, and time that unfortunately marks such moments. Unfortunate, because these moments within them hold a cauldron of boiling emotions that cannot be numerically expressed. Our education, comprehension and understanding however has been reduced to a numbskull slave of demanding science and unforgiving mathematics, rather than an a forgiving and an encompassing art.

I agree with you; this is yet another incomplete post!

An Aggressive Assertion

The earliest definition that I ever knew of assertiveness was a dictionary extract in a book:

– to assert is to state positively with great confidence but with no objective proof.

This meaning was taken from the Websters dictionary, I have been searching online to find this meaning on Websters Online, but haven’t. The meaning has been edited. They have probably revised it (the book in which I read this, is a ’75 edition)

This meaning has bothered me for a while; especially as I came to discover, that in this world there is little difference between being assertive and being aggressive. In most of the searches in dictionaries and thesauri, I found that aggressive is a synonym for assertive. Yet, for some reason assertiveness has a positive quality, while aggression is usually the darker disliked cousin.

So is there a difference between the two? Even if subtle? And are they twins, really separated only by the positive and negative connotations that have come to be associated with them over time? Or are they inherently different by lineage? Assert’s origins lie in Latin, meaning a claim, whereas aggression’s lineage (also in Latin) is a derivative of attack. Assertion has always got the good press and has come to mean something that most people understand as something to emulate, imbibe and reflect. Aggression and hostility, therefore became intimate.

I have however, yet to experience assertiveness as defined in a textbook. It does not exist, perhaps, because it is probably a guideline that cannot be productised. The equation that defines assertion also changes with context; Gender Mathematics, for example. Most “assertive” people are usually trying to please most people. (See note below). One interpretation of assertion is: firm, but polite (implying that aggression is necessarily impolite or hostile; I’d agree). When you start looking at the degree in which a person asserts, the gradient usually darkens towards aggression, unless of course the person is willing to let go of the firmness. This isn’t a case against assertion or a case for aggression. It’s just that it seems that beyond dictionary definitions and human interpretations, assertion has little meaning.

Assertion, then, is possibly a defence against aggression. And when assertion does not work, aggression, possibly its only escape

Note: I have stricken out that line, since it was out of context. That’s my mistake in presentation. It was  in reference to aggression, where the aggressor does not care about the person facing the aggression.

Poet for the Moment

There is joy in rediscovery. One such was:

तुझको मुझको जीवन अम्रित अब इन हाथों से पीना है
इनकी धड़कन में बसना है, इनकी साँसों में जीना है
तू अपनी अदाएं बक्ष इन्हें, मैं अपनी वफ़ाएं देता हूँ
जो अपने लिए सोचीं थी कभी, वो सारी दुआएं देता हूँ

This is an extract from the song, “Main Har Ek Pal Ka Shayar Hoon” (I am the Poet of Each Moment), from the movie Kabhi Kabhi, written by Sahir and rendered in the soulful voice of Mukesh.

Amit and I have this thing going about translations, (and it has been a while since either of us translated anything) so I’ll invite his comments on this average translation of the stanza above:

You and I have to drink the nectar of life with these hands
We’ll reside in their heartbeats; live in their breath
You bestow your grace on them; I’ll pledge my faithfulness
Prayers that I had once wished for myself, I grant to them.

(The “their” and the “them” are the moments that the poet belongs to.)

A few days ago, I had posted the stanza on my Tumblr blog, and said that it was possibly one of the best expressions of commitment to life. Having played this stanza a few hundred times, since then and having marinated it long enough with the context of events in my recent past, meanings for this stanza in particular and the song in general, have evolved. It’s not about a commitment to life or the moments, it’s an expression of commitment. Period.

One theme that this stanza insists on, is that commitment is full-duplex; not simplex. Which makes sense, and overthrows a traditional belief that you commit. There is always a “commit-to”. In that sense, the full-duplex makes complete sense. It’s almost like saying, “I give my commitment”, but it’s incomplete without hearing, “I take your commitment.” Can commitment be complete if it is not accepted; acknowledged at least?

Over a period, all that you loved once gets mired with cynicism and disenchantment; the clouds float low and obstruct vision. Without getting into the obvious complications of defining love, what goes amiss is the energy and the sense of being alive, we feel when we are in love. We look at the cracked walls and we doubt the foundations. The drudgery of everyday life and continuing disappointments wear off that sense and it is replaced with zombie-like state that isn’t easy to ward off. I believe it may be so, because the zombie has neither a head nor heart nor a soul. Somehow, we manage to pay more attention to the negativity. Without warning it becomes a habit.

 

Along comes a song – a stanza to be precise – that you always knew but never really paid attention to; awakens you to the state that made you love something in the first place. There were words that once poured of the angst and the ecstasy of being in that state. They come back to you.

And you become what you were – a poet – a poet of the moment – a poet of each moment.

Late in the Evening

There was a title and a thought that came to mind when I thought about this post. The title eludes me now; it may come somewhere, as I write this post. I hope.

The first thing I remember, I was lying in my bed
I couldn’t've been no more than one or two
And I remember there was a radio, coming from the room next door
My mother laughed the way some ladies’ do

Well it’s late in the evening, and the music’s seeping through.

It had to do something with posturing: the title. It was a nice word, that now escapes through the fine recesses of the mind.

But it had to do with a wonderful evening I had yesterday night, so let’s talk about that. The evening wasn’t a grand event. It wasn’t planned days in advance and there were no preparations around this evening. It was planned for the three of us and two showed up. Then we called up three others who were potentially perfect companions for the evening, but for various valid reasons, they didnt come, either.

The next thing I remember, I am walking down a street
I’m feeling alright I’m with my boys and with my troops, yeah
Down along the avenue some guys were shootin’ pool
And I heard the sound of acapella groups, yeah

Singin’ late in the evening, and all the girls out on the stoops, yeah.

It was left to the two of us to what we could make of the late evening. With withered thoughts of not having the people we would have liked to have around us, we began a slow start. There was the usual drudgery of daily dole that we could gossip about; we have learnt the heard way, that it quite doesn’t serve any purpose. After dispensing with formal gossip, we were ourselves again.

Friends.

What has become of us, we both wondered, if you allow me the guessing of his mind as I remember mine? One problem that friends face is the lack of topics. When you know everything, what’s the need to talk about anything?

Then I learned to play some lead guitar, I was underage in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a J
When I come back to the room, everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play

It was late in the evening, and I blew that room away.

We talked of how we have been interacting in the virtual worlds. What would be a good way to interact? What would be a better way to interact? What was the next gadget that would make us believe that our life was worthwhile? One thing led to another and gadgets gave way to the goodness of our lives. It took us a while. Perhaps it was the warm-up.

First thing I remember when you came into my life
I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
Well I guess I’ve been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
But I’ve never loved no-one the way that I love you

…and I love you

It took us six hours and a whole load of chit-chat to say just that — I love you, without ever uttering those words. Between friends, only three words matter; only three make sense. All the other million words that we use to converse, are pure foreplay or a tease. And a foreplay without the need for the final act. Twitter and Facebook. Email and SMS. Chat and phone-calls. When you reduce them all, all you want to say is — I love you. The Foreplay is the Act.

Richard Bach was perhaps right in saying that after God, Love is the most mangled word in the English language. I say — perhaps — only because, we haven’t stopped saying the word. Our choice of words has changed. The number of words that we use has increased. We now believe that a straight expression of emotion is uncouth; untoward. It has to be tempered. In our heads, love has narrowed in meaning.

The original title I had in mind still eludes me. So I shall title this post the title of the song that Paul Simon sung for me: Late in the Evening. For various reason, which, my dear reader, you are now aware of.

And it was late in the evening, and all the music’s seeping through.

PS: Right-aligned content in italics is a song by Paul Simon. Copyright and such belong to whoever has claimed it and owns it.

Remains of the Day: 003

The idea was to crunch every month in a claustrophobic post. Last time I did it, it was in May. And I have done only one before the one in May this year.

There’s a problem.

If you try hard, use a magnifying glass to see the divider between two months, you may not find any.

And in any case, if that’s the idea, these posts should be called Remains of the Month. But, I have often being accused of being a rebel against structure. I have never known how to react to that accusation; for often I have been accused of being a slave to structure.

It amuses me to no end.

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

Some of you may have seen (or been a part of) the recent Facebook experiment. The status message that asks your friends to dig up a memory of you that is at the tip of your brains. After only a few bothered, it seems my memorial ethos (pun, accidental), would be: conversations, and having them, under the influence or not.

Mighty chuffed, I was, after I read through the memories. There are a million others, which didn’t make it to the experiment’s venue, which however, I treasure with all my might.

These days, it is difficult to have a conversation going; haven’t had one for a while now, except with my artist friend. I don’t quite count IM chats as good conversation, though they tend to be interesting if you can manage the multiple threads caused by the delay, and suffer the typos caused by the difference in the varying speeds of thinking and typing. One such good conversation ensued a couple of days ago, unfortunately on an IM chat.

He and I usually talk of movies. We have had other conversations, like  “ethics of prevalent business models in the mobile communication services industry”, but, he fails miserably at those and it usually becomes a lecture series from us after a while, when he gives up, and we continue to talk of movies. So, after a moot argument about identifying a movie that excelled in (a) the art of film-making, (b) the presentation, and (c) the story-telling and wafting though elements of photography, lesser known Marathi film directors of yore, influence of critics and analysts on art, we ended up at “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey“

It was a lazy Saturday, three years ago, in London, alone, when, with the intention of spending the autumn afternoon at Trafalgar Square, I gingerly made way to the National Gallery that overlooks the square. I always thought of myself as a misfit in art galleries. I don’t understand art a lot (the technical parts), and I have a peeve about critics and analysts who usually tell us what to look for in it. I usually don’t see the way they do, if, I can extract meaning of the words they use to describe what it is all about, i.e. I like things because I like things. But being with an artist for long, certain thoughts and knowledge permeates through and sharpens your vision. In the aimless wandering around the Gallery, I was suddenly flush in front of this huge painting:

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, Paul Delaroche, 1833. Source: Wikipedia Commons

It was overwhelming, to say the least. It told a long and intricate story in a single still image. When I wrote to her about this, I could not tell her anything about the painting. How big it was, the play of the light and such details. I could only tell her what I felt — and that I couldn’t explain it well, either. I only wrote that I was stuck on the bench looking at it for a very long time, and I cried.

This is a life changing painting for me. I am still the same as I was on that Saturday afternoon, however, what I have always believed about art became true that day. Art has a very personal meaning and good art is that that touches your soul. To be able to travel to 1553, the painting becomes a portal of sorts. Since then, I have been able to brave an entry into museums more often than I would have. Willingly. This painting opened a world of experience to me. I read a lot about the British history, especially Lady Jane Grey. I saw many other paintings, and found many, from different times, that made meaning. At the same time, I found many that didn’t.

I discovered that a painting or a photograph or music or a book doesn’t do anything to you, as such. It doesn’t do much to change the world, acting as an external force. It only provides an option: to you, to allow it to relate to you, if you will. If the connection doesn’t exist, you will feel nothing about that piece of art. You will only see its colour, brush strokes, and the artist’s intention, if at all.

If the connection exist, it gently evokes a feeling that you need to experience to find a little bit more about yourself.

A Life in Between

There is a life we plan to make, and live it.
( )
Then, there is a life that happens and we tag-along.

Where I put the parentheses between the two sentences above, is that very small world, where we dwell; our reality. This world is a tense space, a continuing pulsation between the push and pull of the two sentences. Yet, somehow, that space never breaks, in spite of the pressures that surround it.

The space is an important separator between the two sentences — without that space, one of the sentences has to die. The two sentences cannot coexist.

We often threaten the second sentence. We sometimes ask the first sentence to go away. Nothing happens. We continue to live within the parentheses. More often than not, this is what happens with most lives.

But, some lives resign. They kill the first sentence.
And, some lives rebel. They kill the second sentence.

Their world becomes meaningful. Not just an empty bracket.

A Beautiful Prayer

दरारें-दरारें है माथे पे मौला
मरम्मत मुकद्दर की कर दो मौला।

A friend who doubles as my Urdu consultant and dictionary was not very pleased with the word for “repair” in this song. I was asking a question that wasn’t relevant to this line, yet she had to make known, her displeasure (which, of course did sound more like disapproval, then).

Why, I asked?

The word repair is so incongruent with the word destiny, she said. I ran far and wide in the dark corridors of my mind to find a response. She is very strong in her language and I didn’t want to sound Urdu-illiterate (though I am). Unable to find any argument worth deploying at that time, I let go.

Only to get back to her later, i.e today afternoon.

I asked her the proper meanings of the words मरम्मत (marammat) and मुकद्दर (muqaddar). Confirmed, that they meant repair and destiny, respectively. She added, vividly remembering our conversation from two weeks ago, that the choice of words came across as unsophisticated; it wasn’t incorrect and neither did it damage the context of the message.

I have come to love the song since I first heard it, on a promo on TV. This song, if you haven’t guessed (or do not read Devanagari or the font hasn’t rendered well on your browser) is the song “Arziyaan”, from Delhi 6 [IMDB] [Official]. Since the incongruent comment from my consultant, I have been thinking a lot about this song; the love for it, however, growing and the interest strong as ever, if not more.

Today morning, I thought about the song, and this line in particular. Whilst allowing myself broad and loosely worded poetic license, I thought:

Fissures, fissures deep, etched on my forehead,
Fill them, fix them; repair my destiny, oh Lord!

I was wondering of the person who approaches God with a damaged, broken destiny. I wondered of myself in places of worship. How I have prayed, other than the prayers and the chants I have been taught, when I really wanted to reach out. I remember, when younger, I wasn’t thinking straight, I once prayed in English. It was a request-prayer of sorts. All the way back from the temple, I was gripped by a cold doubt; would my prayers be answered? What if He doesn’t accept prayers in English? What if He gives preference to prayers in the local dialect? I have been to temples where I saw folks engaged in vigourous and involved rituals. The environment and the perceptive belief system that I grew up in, caused some sense of insecurity — till such time I stopped going to temples and places of organised worship for the sake of prayer (I now visit them as a student of architecture and a tourist).

I (think I) understand my friend’s mild annoyance at the choice of the words. This is a poem and in the language employed, there is infinite scope to make things beautiful – effortlessly. Part of the annoyance probably comes from what we are accustomed to listening. Asking the Lord to “repair your destiny”, I agree, is unconventional prayer. However, there is a raw, unconstrained honesty in the request. That, to me encompasses all the beauty possible in a prayer. Devoid of convention, bereft of formulations, empty of sycophancy. I also imagine the state of the devotee — the pain and numb helplessness, where only restoration of destiny will help. Imagine the state, also, when there is only one who is capable of the repair. In many ways, it makes you experience the same that the singer is expressing.

There aren’t many songs I pay attention to, but my good friend, caused me to dwell on this for a long while and forced me to find and make meaning of what I hear with such joy. That is, perhaps, God’s way of answering prayers, through friends. When reduced to their minimalist state, all prayers are questions and all blessings are answers.

There is much beauty in this song; made delicate and pure, because of the unsophisticated presentation.

Remains of a Fortnight

Sometimes we do things the other way round. It must have something to do with our training from writing exams. Answer the easy questions first. There’ll be enough time then to answer the difficult ones later, need not necessarily go linearly. It doesn’t work like that for all problems you face, however. Somethings have to be solved in a linear manner. If you skip steps, chances are that you will find a solution that doesn’t work for you. What’s worse, you may never know you have the wrong solution!

I’ve been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I’ve been John O’Hara’d, McNamara’d.
I’ve been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I’m blind.
I’ve been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, ’cause I’m left-handed.
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind!

There are times when you have to allow yourself to be defunct. In whatever function. Nostalgic criticism of how it once was, doesn’t help. When things stop happening as they used to, it either means that it should change or that you have done enough of what you have been doing and you should be doing something else.

I’ve been Phil Spectored, resurrected.
I’ve been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered.
Well, I paid all the dues I want to pay.
And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,
And all my wealth won’t buy me health,
So I smoke a pint of tea a day.

A process is not an alternative for applying intelligence or even common sense. Processes are glorified check-lists. A guide is not a textbook is not the practical. There will never be a substitute for your own understanding or comprehension or intelligence. No process can include every variable that makes up an interesting life. All possible variables incorporated in a process are retrospective. But by then some damage may have been done; some variables are transient, even.

I knew a man, his brain so small,
He couldn’t think of nothin’ at all.
He’s not the same as you and me.
He doesn’t dig poetry. He’s so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain’t got no culture,
But its alright, ma,
Everybody must get stoned.

Reputations can be dangerously destructive. They work as blinders on people who seek to have an open mind. When popular reputations crumble, there isn’t enough scope for resurrection. New-formed beliefs will blanket your reputation in darkness. Even the lingering respect of yesterday can’t do much.

I been Mick Jaggered, been silver daggered.
Andy Warhol, won’t you please come home?
I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled,
Been Roy Halee’d and Art Garfunkel’d.
I just discovered somebody’s tapped my phone.

Folk Rock
I just lost my harmonica Albert

Text in italics, (c) Paul Simon, A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission) About the Song

My City is Hurting

My city is hurting, but seeing a politician’s (or a bureaucrat’s) car stuck with you in the damning traffic that you endure everyday, provides you with a very weird sadistic pleasure.

My city is hurting. And after a while, it ebbs — the pleasure — it is transient. A hundred and forty-five minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic is something you wouldn’t wish on your enemies. For Only Thirteen Kilometres, No way! But a politician? A bureaucrat? I’d think twice. Thrice. Four times. And more. After all, I have nothing else to do while harsh red brake LEDs imprint a permanent glow in my eyes. I resist, I relent, I don’t wish this on anyone.

My city is hurting. I sense the groan of the roads and streets that take me to work and back. I wish them peace. I wish God-speed to all morose vehicles who once looked beautiful in adverts. I wish them the existence they deserve.

My city is hurting. Reality has been sidelined. The cost of progress is what we are paying for. The most volatile currency in these times is time itself. And it is at a premium. Yet we have ample time for divisive politics. To read about it, to forward arguments in favour of regionalism. We have time to remind our recipients to read emails in favour of regional protectionism.

My city is hurting. There is a tear in the fabric, and thread I have none.

For now.

Coincidence’s Cousin

I drove to Pune today. It was a hurried day trip; driving back in the evening, I am a couple of kilometres away from my home. A car is crawling on the Western Express Highway beside mine. It has the same last four digits on its license plate as mine. It is registered in Pune, where I just came from. My car goes ahead a few metres, then his overtakes me for a few. We do this a couple of times over the next kilometre.

After a while, the driver of that car has rolled down the window and asks me for directions to a location that is nearly the place where I stay.

Does coincidence have another name?

Contemporary Casteism

The father of the nation worked hard to eradicate caste system in this country. He wished for a place where all would feel equal. On his birthday, a new system of inequality was introduced. So draconian, it makes you feel that the US is a smoker-friendly country.

When the ban came in effect, I was away, in the UK. Obviously I expected change when I came back.

And what a change! It is now seen in the eyes of every person who watches me smoke. What would have been perceived as simple disgust before, has now changed to complex hostility. And I am no exception. There may be a few good reasons why the ban was called in — one purpose it has served however, unfortunately, is the creation of two classes opposed in personal choice.

The response to my previous post, for example, is an insignificant example. You’d almost think that one side was avoiding commenting on the post to discourage any further attention on written matter related to tobacco.

I am drawn to Asuph’s post about Homosexuality: a meta (or non) normative take. The last piece in that post — the “no rules” are the most interesting. While he writes that with a specific context, it is fairly universal. I would add a fourth category to Asuph’s post:

D. De-normalisation through legislation.

I have observed the ban being brought into force the world over, the initial reactions and eventual resignations. The moment these things are legislated, there is potent belligerence in the air. For example, even some of the tolerant non-smokers have been swayed to extremism (and thankfully, both sides of the extremes — but those are negligible) by these bans.

Someday, you will be on the wrong side of the legislation according to the Recurrently Dividing Set Theory. To borrow and build upon Oscar Wilde’s thoughts, even if I disagree, I’ll defend to death your right to choose; question is, will you?

Of Imagination

A friend on Facebook ponders “if consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative?”

In a broad sense I agree. Except, if it was me, I would replace “consistency” with “routine”. Words, as treacherous as they are, permit a chameleon-esque nature to meaning and interpretation. Consistency somehow, for me, is a more about character than behaviour. Consistency and lack of imagination, therefore are not necessarily opposites, or in a cause-effect relationship.

Routine is behavioural. It is a safe-house of sorts. And, unless you are willing to cross the boundaries of routine, there is no scope for imagination. Discipline, for example, though more respectful than routine, has the same effect. If you do not cross boundaries, there is no way to explore.

Role models, unintentionally have the same effect. Seldom do you find anyone willing to explore he essence of what makes a role-model a role model. Most people choose to emulate the act of a role model in hope of achieving a similar status. In doing this, they never consider the insignificant variable that was applicable to the role model that may not be applicable to them. That one insignificant variable that had a significant effect.

Imagination is possible in a mind that is not bound by routine or role-model emulation. A bound mind always knows the path to its destination. Imagination, then, is not necessary.

Imagination is an adventure. Those that live by acquired rules and precepts need no imagination.