Moulding defragmentation

Stuff I have been reading and writing

2011-10-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

I found this lovely poem on the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore. Its inspired by a piece of sculpture, Saprid's Mother and Child at Play. I love the way the poem reflects the artwork, as well as the way in which it captures a moment of stillness while describing an activity that leaves one giddy with motion. My friend Arjun Rajendran has a poem there as well.

I am currently reviewing Anita Nair's collection of poems, Malabar Mind and a cookbook, Hemant Oberoi's The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine. I am going home soon, and I plan on trying out some of the recipes then.

I recently reviewed Isabel Allende's Island Beneath The Sea. Here's the piece. Also, a piece I did on the launch of Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020. Kapish Mehra, Rupa's MD, informed the audience at the start of the evening that the first day sales of the book amounted to 500,000 copies! While I have attended some book launches, this was the only one in which I saw the author getting literally mobbed by his fans. I envy his luck!

2011-10-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I have written anything. Ever since I have entered journalism full time, I haven't written a lot apart from my work.I am posting here a review of Akshara theatre's famous Ramayana. I did this for my paper, The Sunday Guardian.

RAGINI BHUYAN 8th Oct

Kritika Pande (left) as Kaikeyi and Jalabala Vaidya playing Dashrath

our decades after it was first written for and screened at the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatre in Britain, Gopal Sharman's much feted play,Ramayana, is back in a new avatar. Watching it at the Akshara Theatre, I marvel at the challenge this play poses, not only to the performers but also to its audience. Sharman'sRamayana is not a laugh riot, unlike his famous productionLet's Laugh Aloud, neither is it as accessible as the Ramanand Sagar TV series. Akshara's production is classical theatre at best — the characters speak in formal and elevated poetic language and the somewhat esoteric musings of the characters remind you of famous Shakespearean soliloquies. Vikalp Mudgal's Rama is no Brutus, but like him, he speaks aloud to himself of pain and the conflict that is tearing him apart the night before he attacks Lanka. Sharman's play is also allegorical; it constantly speaks of Lanka in terms of its seductive wealth, its materialism.

The play was almost abandoned amid production troubles, but was revived due to the enthusiastic support from Dr Karan Singh and his wife Asha. However, it returned with one very important change. Originally written for a full cast, the play would now be a solo performance by Sharman's wife, Jalabala Vaidya. The rest as they say is history. As a solo act, Ramayana went on to win accolades at some of the world's biggest theatre venues like Broadway and West End.

Now, the 76-year-old Vaidya has passed on the mantle to a much younger cast, four of whom are still in school. This new cast of young actors gives strong performances in demanding roles but it hasn't been easy. It took Mudgal 5-6 hours of training a day for 10 months to understand the character. "I am still figuring it out", he confesses. Abhinav Mehra delivers a convincing performance as Vibhishana, but the play's real star is Nisa Schette, Vaidya's granddaughter, who plays Sita. Convincing to the last detail, you actually feel afraid for Schette in the scene where Sita is abducted by Ravana.

Watching this play at the Akshara Theatre makes for an intimate viewing experience; the small theatre with 100 seats keeps the audience engrossed. During the interval, Sharman requests the audience to partake of some refreshments (excellent tomato soup and sandwiches). "It's an Akshara tradition," the ailing legend says, his voice almost a whisper. Vaidya is the play's katha vachaka or the narrator, but continues to portray the roles of Dasharath, and Rama and Sita in the last scene. Her strong performance explains why the solo-act was such a success. As you leave, Sharman and Vaidya personally meet members of the audience, giving everyone a Marigold flower as a token. From start to finish, Akshara's Ramayana is a labour of love.

Happy Birthday, idiot!

2011-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

So here it is!! Penning this entry is like swinging a big bell in a temple to announce the cause - I am turning 24. And this has been one of strangest birthdays ever - I am neck deep in work, staying up late with work, totally unaware that it is my birthday in a few seconds time, when I get a message wishing me, and then it hits me, I have hit the fated 24. Another milestone, another strange touchpost that reminds that I am ever so close or far from the goals I set myself. Time to pack it in, girl, time to wake up and walk the long road, and quicken that pace.

So, how has 24 years on this planet been? The good and the bad? It is the small serendipitous incidents that keep me alive - like a phone call now from a school friend I haven't spoken to in two years. We live in deeply unequal times and every day it hurts me a little to negotiate my way through the tough times, that you and me, all of us have to go through. But that's me - I bleed a little, and not really do much. Or maybe I will do something. Who knows?

I will always remember a moment when I stood on the shore of a lake some time back and felt really small and vulnerable (and very cold too!). That moment touched something in me. Vulnerability is not something pre-destined. At some point, you do manage to find a small pebble called courage inside you. You don't know what's in store for you, but for better or worse, you set yourself adrift from some things you really cared for.

Everyday brings new challenges for me. On somedays it's as petty as putting up with noisy, annoying roommates, or being given the cold shoulder by some socialite at a party (that's how complicated my life is!). Sometimes, it is figuring out how to handle your bosses, or your own habit of losing track of priorities. Sometimes, it is telling yourself to not shy away from the bright lights, or the shadows they hold in their wombs. Or to not get emotional or angry again about childhood episodes. Sometimes, I try my hardest best to walk that thin line where you have perfected a balancing act - you are focused, not jealous of others, not lost in self-pity, and you thank yourself for being lucky to be born with the few things that you have.

Yes - focus, and courage, I hope, will take me far.

This birthday has probably been the lamest ever - no midnight birthday cakes, my first phone call comes at half past 12, and I have gotten only two calls so far, but I am still very grateful to the few people who remembered me (of course, Facebook helps!). I am still happy. That's a first. And I shall not let anyone steal that away from me for a long time.

2011-03-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

24 is a difficult age to be. No, I am not 24, no, not yet. But a few years ago, I thought that at 24, one knew what one wanted to do with life, the direction in which one's life was heading, and that by this age, one had got one's bearings in order. When I was 19, I was in love with a 24 year old. I was very starry eyed and totally in awe of him, so I mistakenly presumed that by the time I would become 24, I would be as poised and charming. No wait, I would be even smarter, I would be doing even better in life - earning more, writing my novel, working in a satisfying job, and so on.

I am not 24, but I will be soon. Needless to say, none of the above things have happened. I have still not figured out my dream career. I have not even figured out what I will do after my PG. I have not written my novel yet, and I haven't yet found the love of my life (and already the dreaded M-word has begun making its rounds). On most days, I feel that I am only a slightly better version of my 19-year old self. And you have only my word on that.

But what are the things that have changed? I believe that I am less fragile. Sometimes, I am able to stand my ground. I have reconciled myself to the fact that doubt is a universal human condition. It is not possible to be completely self-assured all the time. I am only human, and I cannot hold it together all the time. I have also learned to be more pragmatic, to know a little better as to when I should put my foot down, and when I should discard my ego and be accommodative.

These are not things that I can quantify. I cannot write them on paper as proof that I have gotten better with age. Maybe these are things that I would like to believe because I have no tangible proof that my life has gotten any better than when I was 19. But still, I would like to believe that these things mean something.

As for the boy I mooned over when I was 19, I know better now. 24-year olds are not Gods!

2011-03-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

Life has been on as usual. The exams are dangerously close, the days are changing into summer, and already I find myself missing the brief Delhi spring - the season of Lohri, the riot of flowers in the garden...
I have fallen in love with the lawns in my hostel. As my course draws to an end, I am falling even more and more in love with the garden. I find myelf reading there in the evening, and sometimes I go sit there at night when I have had too much caffeine and cannot bring myself to sleep. I plan to buy some paints and brushes and sit there and paint the view. That way, I will always have a picture of it that I could carry with me wherever I go (and no, a photo would not do the job). Besides, I have not painted in more than a decade.

After the exams are over, there will begin the frantic search for a job. Readers, those of you who think you can help, please get in touch. I could use all the help I can get.

I leave you with a poem by Sylvia Plath - a favourite poem by a favourite poet.

Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea

Cold and final, the imagination

Shuts down its fabled summer house;

Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation

Dwindles in the hour-glass.

Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair

Tangling in the tide's green fall

Now fold their wings like bats and disappear

Into the attic of the skull.

We are not what we might be; what we are

Outlaws all extrapolation

Beyond the interval of now and here:

White whales are gone with the white ocean.

A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack

Of kaleidoscope shells

Probing fractured Venus with a stick

Under a tent of taunting gulls.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone

That chucks in backtrack of the wave;

Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,

A grain of sand is all we have.

Water will run by; the actual sun

Will scrupulously rise and set;

No little man lives in the exacting moon

And that is that, is that, is that.

Random slice of "original" fiction

2011-02-01T23:28:00.000-08:00

He was getting late for work. It was those protests again - a new state, a new identity. No more drain of economic resources from their region, the placards screamed. No more wealthy outsiders feeding on the local people's wealth. Part of the anger of the crowd was directed at people like him, he vaguely realised. People like him born into middle class privilege, and imported from other states to man the companies sucking the lifeblood of the region.

The protesters had blocked the main road, and now he was stuck in a traffic jam with barely any space to maneuver his car into a different lane, hoping to reach office on time. I should call my boss, he thought, and avoid the main roads until this trouble blows over. Distractedly, he fiddled with his car keys. He knew he ought to change the key ring. Too often, it reminded him of Janaki, and the serendipity of that vacation in the Andamans where they had first met.

That vacation had been a gift from him to his parents, bought with the savings of six-months work at his first job. Growing up in land-locked Indore, his parents had always yearned for the sight of the sea. There had been that one memorable trip to Bombay when he was in Class VI. But the sea that greeted them on Juhu beach had been brown and sluggish, the sand littered with corn cobs and bits of oil-stained newspaper pieces. They hid their disappointment by gorging on Bhelpuri and spiced raw mango slices. They threw the refuse into the sand as well, their own bit of dirt to mark the fact of their arrival, before going back home to the blown-up posters of white sand and blue sea that graced the walls of their small house. Beauty on paper was preferable to dirt in real life.

Around him, a steady chorus of car horns grew, the occupants of the cars increasingly getting agitated within their air-conditioned islands. He cupped in his hands the white-oyster shell that was the key ring, felt its cool smooth surface, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

Jaipur literature festival, etc.

2011-01-24T04:26:00.000-08:00

Just read Pallavi Aiyar's Smoke and mirrors: an experience of China. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and complimented the author when I met her at the Jaipur Literature festival this year. The book is very insightful in the glimpses it offers into everyday life in Beijing, and the author's observations on the Chinese state, and how it compares to India.You must read the book.

Also, I am reading Anand Teltumbde's book Khairlanji: A strange and bitter crop, for a class presentation. The author makes the important point that recent atrocities on Dalits have been committed not by the Brahmins or the Kshatriyas, the two upper varnas (though the varna concept is hardly useful at understanding ground realities of caste), but by the rising OBC and the Shudra communities. This book analyses the Khairlanji massacre, but while reading the book, I was reminded of the recent Mirchpur carnage, where the dominant Jat community committed atrocities on the Valmiki community. Teltumbde is critical of the Indian state's policy, and cites the partially successful modernisation policies as the reason for the change in the caste equation, and the increase in atrocities on Dalits. I also recently saw the documentary film India Untouched, which engages which the reality of caste in India today. Caste is invisibilised in urban India, but it operates still the same.

I just returned from the Jaipur literature festival. I didn't attend the entire fest, and regret missing out on Coetzee, but I had a great time with my friends, and I enjoyed most of the sessions I attended. My favourite were the ones with Junot Diaz, Orhan Pamuk, the talk on fractious borders which had Nirupama Rao, Shehryar Faizli, Narayan Wagle and Sujeev Shakya, the Afpak session, the two sessions that Antony Loewenstein moderated, and which featured Izzeldin Abouleish, Rory Stewart, David Finkle, and Jon Lee Anderson. It was a very productive visit. I spoke to a few authors (it was quite something considering how shy I am), met my once-upon-a-time mentor, Manju Kapur, who introduced me to Paro Anand and Neel Mukherjee, and in general, had a gala time.

I hope to be there next year as well, and readers (whoever you are), I hope to meet you there as well.

2011-01-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

I have always had a difficult relationship with my father. It didn't start that way. He was my hero as a child. I loved him and worshipped him and adored him. I remember a childhood incident. I had seen a light far away from my house, and I thought it meant that a childrens' fair was going on. My father said there was no such thing. I insisted, and he took me on a walk to that place, and yes, there was nothing happening there. Those were the early years - me, a child with full trust in her father, walking back home at night, with him holding my hand.

Many things have happened since then, and I have spent the past few years thinking about myself, my childhood, and trying to understand myself better. I have done some stupid things, and this, along with an urge to be more at peace, has spurred it off.

Day before yesterday, the night before leaving home, he told me something that put to rest so much angst, so much of all the feelings that there are no words for. He said that it's not good that I hold onto my ego so much. He said he used to do that too, and he has suffered for it, and doesn't want me to make that same mistake. I knew that explained a lot of issues I had been having and why I have been so stressed for the past few years. But I also knew more. I knew that holding onto my petty ego was all I had because deep down I was extremely insecure. I don't want to sound simplistic, or conveniently wave away taking responsibility by putting the blame on my "bad childhood" or "dysfunctional family", but I do think that for any teenager or young adult, the above factors play a long role in one's emotional development.

Having said that, I also realise that parenting is a difficult job. As flawed as they were, my parents tried to do the best they could. I am where I am today because of them. So, I forgive them. I am putting some hurt and pain to rest as I write this. I know I have felt like this before, only to have been hurt again, only for all the anger and resentment to well up again. I know things are not perfect, and will never be perfect. But nonetheless, in writing this, I am making a beginning.

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The past few years have also seen me hung up on a friend. I thought he was a friend until I could no longer fool myself, until I had to face the fact that he knew I was in love with him, but had neither reciprocated nor refused.He had just sweet talked me and kept me hanging on an empty hope. There was no friendship.

For a long time, I lived on this lie. It takes courage to face the truth, and I didn't have it.

Finally I asked. Somehow I knew the answer even as I was asking him, but I had to do it. I had to have it from him. I got an apology.

That's all there was to it.

There's anger on my side, but surprisingly, little resentment. Maybe that's emotional fatigue for you. Three years is a long time, honey. He had done it to other girls and I knew it and yet I didn't see it coming, didn't realise that I was just another girl, nothing special.Men cheat women, some women cheat as well. This time, it was just my turn to be cheated. Such is life.

Why am I writing this? It's because I don't want to forget. My naivety cost me something - my happiness. Of course I could quantify it in terms of the time and energy I spent moping after him, but some losses run deeper than that. I remember reading about Nan Goldin in college this semester. I remember her self-portrait - One month after being battered. Goldin used photography as a prosthetic memory, to record events, so that she would never forget.

Goldin's pain was deeper than mine. But like her, I don't ever want to forget. I have none of her courage and originality. But I wish to remember some things so that I don't make the same mistakes again.

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2010 has been a difficult year. Nonetheless, I believe it has helped me achieve closure in some respects.

I don't know what 2011 has in store for me. But after a very, very long time, I am once again looking forward to life, and to all the good things and the vagaries it brings. Yes, it's a more cynical me, I am not anymore the little girl my father walked home that night, neither is he the same man. We all change with time, and such is life. But I am once again going back to the dreams I harboured as a young child. I have dreams, once again, and that's all that matters.

2010-12-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

A short, short, post to celebrate the new year. 2010 has been a roller-coaster ride, a very tough year, but it has been rewarding. Yes, there were times when I retreated to the cocoon that is my room to lick my wounds - from dengue, heartbreak, and such like. But there were also days when I bonded with new people, checked out a new place, read a new author, felt like I could hold on to the ground beneath my feet. Yes, I am going to push aside some memories and write that 2010 was a good year.

...............................................

What did I read this year? Blogs, cookbooks, newspapers, dictionaries, signboards, and other assorted stuff. It's too jumbled in my head right now for me to pick up a book I read and write a review.

What am I reading currently? Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe. Just a few more pages to go. It's a good read. I feel the writing could have been more economical. There are times when I felt like I was reading a history of the West Indies. The book is like a fictionalised subaltern history, but this is only one of the things that make this book worth reading. For a book about such a topic, it's laced with humour and irony. It never gets too heavy or boring. Pick it up, read it, or gift it to a friend.

Adios, and a toast to the new year, and to new adventures!

Twiddle dum, twiddle dee

2010-06-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

Try not to take everything in life seriously. Rather, try not to take anything in life seriously.

A nonsensical post this is gonna be, seeing that my life has now become reduced to apoplexy. Yes, there are only moments - moments when I feel that all that I want is possible, and moments when I fear failure and sink into self-doubt. It's worse when I look at older friends who are successful, and I am left wondering if I will be as good, or better. There are moments when I tell myself I will be better - I have age on my side. Then I count the years and my hopes sink.

Supremely self-obsessed, ain't I? Or maybe it's just that I am more alone these days, alone in this big bad city. Yes, Miss lonely heart - is that me?

As a child, I used to dream of what I would be when I grew up. I wanted to be a journalist. I think I was four or five years old when one random day, admiring myself in front of the mirror (Yes, my narcissism has a history!), I decided I would go to Columbia University, and study MassComm. It's possible that I had read about Bhupen Hazarika graduating from Columbia, or maybe somebody told me about it. Since then, for a long time, I grew up with this image of myself in my head - a figure standing/sitting silhouetted against the daylight streaming in through a large window, a young girl in a big city in her own apartment. The city would be LA or NY, and yes, it would be my apartment, and I would be on my own. Independent woman.

I knew I would achieve that by the time I would be 24. Of course, some details of the dream have changed. I am no longer as inclined to journalism as I was then. But the dream, essentially, remained the same. Now, I have around a year to go before I turn 24, and I am not anywhere near that. My results have been ****ed, and I don't know where I stand anymore. I still have a year to go, but I am running out of time, and hope...

Maybe I dreamt too much. Maybe I was just a highly imaginative child who didn't realise that her power of imagination would have its own pitfalls - the dangers of self-delusion, the dangers of loving too much of what could not and would not love me back, the dangers of not realising the costs of one's dreams, the pain of realising it at a point that might be too late in the day...

"Out of our ugliness, will grow the world's heart". I cling to this quotation by Andrei Platonov. Yes, cliches and quotes are all that I have left to cling to, to stop myself from slipping into the ever-engulfing spectre of cynicism and despondency.

This, is a melodramatic post. It doesn't solve my problems. It doesn't change anything.

Don't talk of love...it's sleeping in my memory

2010-05-31T06:49:00.000-07:00

So, I finally found a hole today to stash myself in for the next one-and-a-half months. Life, I tell you!

This is going to be another inane post. I just felt the need to write, just felt the need to vent my feelings out in typecast letters, though I would have preferred to write a letter to someone, anyone. There's nothing like writing a letter to a friend. Sometimes my diary entries are just letters to friends, letters that they will never read because I am too lazy to bother sending any.

I made a vanity purchase today - a "b.clean" (whoever came up with that name?) UCB deodorant. I love citrus smells. Growing up in Assam meant that I was never deprived of it - the smell of the skin of a lemon still attached to the tree's branch...

But now I am back in sin city, back from home. Home this time meant an assault of bright green colours on my senses the moment I landed from the plane. The monsoons have arrived in full swing, and the sight of foliage and flowers greeted my eye wherever I looked. It's difficult to believe sometimes that such beauty can coexist with much strife and killing. In that sense, being home is never easy. It's harder to read the newspapers there, harder to think about what you read and hear about your region...

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I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am staying with a friend these days. In her large hostel, I come across so many people I know, people from my college and other acquaintances. Yet, I have hardly felt the need to talk to anyone, to smile a smile when I see them, or to renew lost contacts - quite unlike my older self. Barnali, my friend, has taken good care of me, and I feel contented with having just one friend in a hostel full of 300 girls, many of whom happen to be old acquaintances. Yes, I have become a little less scared of being labelled a sociophobic. I don't care so much now about what I think other people are thinking about me.

I saw some movies over the last few days. I loved Julie and Julia. Meryl Streep's Julia Child is an immensely feisty woman, and an inspiration, to say the least. I loved Stanley Tucci's acting as well. I initially thought it was Hari Kunzru who played the role of Julia's husband. Then Barnali said that Kunzru is leaner and younger, and better built (Why do I have a thing for bald Kashmiri men?????).

But I have to cut this post short. I meant to write more, write about the angst that I have been wallowing in for the past few weeks (yes, yes, I know I sound terribly self-obsessed!). But it's not to be, not to be written today, for the lady minding the internet cafe I am sitting in has been telling me to leave. It's dinner time, and the cafe needs to be shut.

Sayonara then. Till better times. To better times.

Solo: a review

2010-05-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

After taking a deep breath, I have settled down to the onerous task of attempting a review of Solo.

Solo is by Rana Dasgupta, who in my humble and insignificant opinion, is the hottest Indian-writer-writing-in-English on the scene (move aside, Aatish Taseer!). Dasgupta's first book was 'Tokyo Cancelled', one that has invited comparisons with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and is seen as a tale of globalisation. I, however, didn't read it after a senior whose opinion I trust, read it and didn't like it. Nonetheless, I attended a panel discussion featuring the author at BCL (this was part of a series of discussions with Commonwealth nominees in the week running up to the 2010 Commonwealth Writer's prize), and was bowled over by his insights. The discussion was excellent, and was chaired by Shormistha Panja (a professor of English in Delhi University), and included another nominee, South African writer and winner of the best book award for Africa - Marie Heese (I found an interview with her here), and Jai Arjun Singh, a popular lit blogger. Needless to say, I went on to read everything about the author that I could find on the internet. I found his website, which has links to his other published writings (including an essay on Delhi's nouveau riche, that is a must read for all those of us who love and hate Delhi in equal measure).

Solo itself is a strange book, as the quotation by Rushdie on the book jacket loudly affirms ("A novel of exceptional, astonishing strangeness"). To begin with, the book is divided into two segments: First movement - Life, and Second movement - Daydreams. The first part of the book is about the life of a hundred year old Bulgarian man, and the second part is about his daydreams. Ulrich, the protagonist, loses his sight accidentally in his old age, following which, he increasingly retreats from the world around him and into his daydreams. When the novel begins, Ulrich is at his run-down apartment in Sofia. The narrator takes us on a journey through Ulrich's life and times, citing as a reason, the extraordinary story of a group of explorers who came upon a community of parrrots speaking the language of a society that had been destroyed in a catastrophe. The explorers cage the birds and send them home in order to record the language, but the traumatised birds die on the way, and the language is lost forever. This theme of loss - the loss of civilisations, ways of life, the changes that commerce and new technologies bring, the loss that's brought about by the changes wrought by powerful men, and the failure of ordinary men and women to hold onto and realise one's dreams when one is overpowered by change and loss, is the theme of the book. 'Solo', is literature as subaltern history, an attempt at capturing and preserving .

Ulrich's boyhood is marked by the ambitions of his father, a railway engineer, employed in designing and building railway lines connecting Asia and Europe. To his father, the railways are the biggest and most phenomenal invention invented by mankind. For him, the railways would connect and bring together entire countries and civilisations. Yet, later in the book, Ulrich realises the irony and perversion of his father's ideals when his wife and son board the train for America, leaving him forever. The railways, ironically, facilitate the separation of Ulrich from his most loved ones.

This part of the book is divided into sections with names such as Magnesium, Carbon, Barium, and Uranium, signifying Ulrich's profession as a chemist. If in his youth, it is carbon and plastics and polymers that excite him, then his later years are spent working in a factory manufacturing barium chloride, and being a witness to the Chernobyl disaster and the havoc wrought by all things nuclear. The section names are signifiers of different phases of his life.

The section names for the second half are a little more puzzling. I struggled to find a link between the story and the section names - Narwhal, Beluga, Ichthyosaur, and Manatee. They are all names of aquatic creatures, and maybe there is some connection between the theme of living in water, and living on one's daydreams. Maybe it's about the feel of floating that is common to both, or maybe the nomenclature is random, and is part of the book's strangeness. I wouldn't like to think it's totally random, though. I think there is sense to even nonsense.

Boris, Kakha, Irakli, and Khatuna, make up the central characters that inhabit Ulrich's daydreams. This is Bulgaria after the fall of the communist government, where state dictatorship has been dismantled and has given way to a reign of corrupt businessmen and crude power, a phenomenon that is embodied in the rise of Kakha, the former footballer-turned-businessman. In this world, only a cynical hard-bitten oppurtunist like Khatuna can survive and rise from poverty to become something. This is where the author makes another crucial point of the novel - that the meteoric rise and success of a few individuals is at the cost of the detriment of a majority. As Boris's star rises, Irakli's falls. Ulrich enters his own dreams to recount his encounter with Albert Einstein. When he had met the famous scientist in his youth, Einstein had looked into his eyes and said I would be nothing without you. Ulrich realises the full import of his utterance only at the fag end of his life. The lives of Einstein's near and dear ones were characterised by failure - his wife Mileva, the Nobel Prize money lost in the Wall Street crash, the daughter mislaid in Serbia, and the son abandoned in an insane asylum. Ulrich says, "Einstein...was surrounded by failure. The people close to him were blocked up and cut off...were prevented from doing what they hoped to do...How many stopped-up men and women does it take to produce one Einstein?...if we are to feel the thrill of progress and achievement, there have to be sacrifices elsewhere".

This theme of the cost of development is emblematic of the times we live in, I think, and we have seen enough debates surrounding that in India. Solo, is a book about failure, about those who didn't ride the tide of fame and fortune, those who couldn't ride it because they paid the price for the ascent of others. Solo takes its readers through a world that is kaleidoscopic and traumatic. Spanning industrialism, communism, and capitalism and its globalisation from Eurasia to the US, the sheer scope of the book itself merits reward.

To be fat like me - The strange case of Shoaib Malik and Ayesha Siddiqui

2010-04-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, suspended Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik's alleged marriage to Ayesha Siddiqui has been doing the rounds of the TV channels and the newspapers. Anybody who is somebody is not losing this opportunity to get some soundbites on air, and really, who could do this job better than our daddies-in-saffron? For those who have missed the fun, I suggest searching for Pramod Muthalik's priceless, gem-of-an-interview on TV where he wonders aloud as to how Sania couldn't find a groom among 150m Muslims in India, and that by shifting to Dubai, Sania is betraying both Pakistan and India. Seriously, he cares.

Now, I couldn't care less as to who Sania marries. All the same, I thought I too I will jump in the cacophony that is the 'Shoania' union and add my bit to the noise. Trust me, I have good reason to.

It seems that Shoaib had married another Hyderabadi girl, Ayesha Siddiqui, in 2002, back in those days when he hadn't made it big. Then our lad here becomes a success, and suddenly, decides his wife is not hot enough for him (This is roughly what Ayesha alleged in a TV interview. Just google her. You will find lots of dough on this). He dumps her, without even giving her a divorce. Now of course, we can debate whether a telephonic nikaah is valid or not, but the Siddiqui's are ready with their 'proof'. And we might as well believe them, for given the cultural context that is India and that the Siddiqui's belong to a minority community, it is unlikely that a family would otherwise go to such extents to vehemently and publicly demand only a divorce and nothing else (No, they aren't sueing him yet).

He dumped her because she was overweight. Siddiqui alleges that she really tried to lose weight, even underwent surgery, but no, it wasn't enough for him. Remember they got married in 2002. So it's been eight years since then. For eight years, this guy has kept this poor girl in limbo, no, a siege, neither acknowledging the fact of their marriage, nor granting a divorce.

What got my goat was that despite these facts being around, some people, and yes, young, educated, cosmopolitan girls, (yes, one of us, don't squirm!) could say things to the tune of 'I don't blame the guy. His wife looks like she could do with a few tennis lessons'. Being overweight or plus size is not a choice. 'Fat' has become the new age insult word. If you are not thin, then everybody, even random people, think it's their right to come and tell you that you are fat and that you should do something about it - join a gym, diet, worry about it (that will help you loose weight, right!).

Fat has become like some kind of prejudice. And woe betide you if you are a girl, for surely, nobody in their right minds would want to marry you then. And that's all we girls want, don't we? Like we were born dying to get married. As if it wasn't enough that we grew up being called 'fatty' (or 'moti' or 'petli', as the case may be. Every language seems to have a name for fat boys and girls). As if it wasn't enough that 'fat' became our primary identity.

Anybody who thinks fat people are fat because they are lazy, or do not make for good life partners because they are fat should know that losing weight is not for everybody. Some of us are born big, and it's in our genes. Some of us choose not to be lured by the beauty and fitness industry's promise (which is just a mirage) that losing weight will bring instant happiness and success into our lives. Some of us would rather be a little on the heavier side and enjoy our food and our lives then spend our time obsessing over waistlines.

This post might seem like a rant. This post might seem like I am taking the high moral ground and lecturing and lashing out at people. This post might make me unpopular. But really, I couldn't care less. I am shocked and angry at the insensitivity and carelessness with which we can casually sympathise with a man abandoning his spouse on the grounds that she is fat.

As if being fat is a crime. As if it justifies eight years' worth of mental torture, humiliation, and social ostracisation.

Journal entry for February 13, 2010

2010-02-13T04:37:00.000-08:00

The days are getting busier than ever. Weekends are a blur; week days are worse. At this rate, I will be 50 before I know it, and I will wonder how the years passed by!

I got back in touch with my mentor, and was overwhelmed by her encouraging reply to my email. Yes, in the midst of everything, I have tried to continue writing. One of my big problems is that the story or the poem is right there inside my head. Inside my head, it's all perfect. But when I sit down to write, it takes ages to get it on paper. I feel overwhelmed, and get impatient.

Another problem is my terrible sense of insecurity. I am perennially worried about whether what I am writing is making sense, or will it scandalise people, or is it soppy, too sentimental, blah, blah, blah, and so on. This terrible sense of insecurity translates onto my social life as well. I have always been a terribly, terribly, terribly, insecure girl. Big time socio phobic. I was always the little girl who in parties would sit in a corner and either feel terrified of all the people around her and what they were talking about, or would sulk because she had been dragged to the party against her will. Sigh.

I can't say I have changed much. I still feel terribly lost in big gatherings. I still freeze and go all awkward and dumb if I am with someone I like very much. I still worry if people are talking about me, and what they are talking about me.

But maybe, the very fact that I am writing this and putting it on a blog is proof that I may have hopes of improving. My friends have advised me to not think too much and be myself. Executing the former will take time and practice, I think (no, don't think. Shut off that thought process!). Executing the latter is even more problematic 'cause I really don't know what it means to be myself.

I recently read Ardashir Vakil's second novel, 'One Day'. The female protagonist of the novel, Priya Patnaik, asks her mother as to what is the most important thing in the world. Her mother replies, "To be absolutely yourself. Absolutely true to the things you care about. Don't ever let anyone take that away from you."

I understood the latter part of her reply - to be absolutely true to the things you care about. As I sprint down the road that's my life, I hope I will cling to the things I really care about. I hope I will have the career I want. Most of all, I hope I will never stop writing. I hope that I will always have things to write about, and patience to hone my skill. I hope I will find an audience, that I will be able to engage that audience, and find a space for my writings. I hope I will always be able to create space for what I want to do.

Childhood town

2009-10-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

In my dreams,
The houses are bent with anonymity,
The bazaars are emptied of noise,
The town is a photograph in the negative,
Its roads and homes are a white heat,
And I am a shadow in its vacant passages,
Walking down its streets of
Asphalt framed in wilderness.
My wild dreams of this town,
Seek refuge in its wild trees, wild flowers.
But in my dreams, the wilderness is a white sheet,
And the flying foxes and the hornbills
Are lost amidst a blinding whiteness;
Only, the palash blooms a shocking red.

Sweet town of my childhood,
Each dream that walks your lanes
Stirs the dust, the heat, the barking dogs,
The frenzied walk of the walkers,
The speech of its women, the old, the infirm.

I wake to your enormous memories.

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

2009-07-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

The title of this post captures all the reasons and all the needs behind my move from Hyderabad back to Delhi. It was simply time to leave. It was the right time to leave, I had completed a year at work, I had learnt some part of what I had set out to learn when I bid adieu to dear old Delhi. Yet in essence, Hyderabad was merely a chapter, a chapter I had to close in order to continue with the larger narrative.

Waking up from a dream at 4:45 in the morning: July 17th

Has it ever happened to you that you wake up from a dream and you are left wondering for a couple of seconds where you are? Not like those dreams in movies where they sit-up on their beds in a sweat gasping from fear and shock, but more like the ones which are bad enough to wake you and you are just awake, and your half-open eyes take time to register whatever amount of light is there in the room? This happened to me today. The first thing I was trying to make out was as to which of those numerous homes from my childhood was this (I just calculated and realised that since I was born, my parents have shifted-house seven times). My mind also went over quickly if I was at my maternal grandparent's place, and suddenly the TV rooms of all my grandparent's houses were alive for a moment, were possibilities, before I finally realised the two red peering dots of light in front of me were the LEDs from the TV's stabiliser, and then it hit me that I was at the guesthouse, a strange place, not my parent's place, not my grandparent's place.

I woke up because of a dream. In the dream, I don't realise it, but I am at my old school, the one I attended between classes 5 and 10. I only recall the last bit of the dream, which seemed to me to be such a strong force, so vivid, that I physically felt like there was a log of wood placed in my heart. And no, I wasn't sleeping with my hand on my chest, I woke up sleeping on my right side. In the last shreds of the dream, the place I am in is in chaos, there are people everywhere, and in a room painted a pastel shade of light green, which I later realised to be the principal's office, there are lots of people, lots of things. I am with my mother, and I am talking with her (which is unusual, she doesn't appear very often in my dreams), and we have just reached the room after a circumambulatory walk around the school's compound. The walk is not intended, it seems we are more being jostled and we wander along with the crowd. The crowd is scared, there is a sense of urgency, there is a vague realisation in my dream that there is a bomb in the premises, there is police speaking over the microphones, shouting instructions or information. Mother and me are talking, and as she is telling me about some incident, the figures of the people she is telling me about, their faces, float up in front of my eyes, float up and dissolve. The walk is completed, and we reach the room, after which point, my mother disappears. We are in the room now. The one person I remember from the room is an old man I talk to. I wake up to realise that that man is my maternal grandfather, and he has been dead almost a decade now. The other thing is that in the dream, there is a snake in the room, inside a white polythene, and through the somewhat thin polythene, I can see it. Its a long, strong snake, and its reddish brown. We discuss the snake, me and the old man. That snake doesn't look safe, we agree, and I indicate some packages of my own lying between us. One of them is a white polythene too, and it has something moving inside it, fishes, smaller snakes? We agree my package looks more secured.

This is the point where I wake up, the snake the last image in my mind, the dream disrupted by my waking. My mind takes a few seconds to register where I am. The awful fear of the last two images hits me. Is there one in the room too, is there a snake in the room? The man, I realise, is none other than grandpa, and grandpa, Kaka, has been dead for almost nine years. Is he there in the room too?

Why doesn't he tell me in the dream that I am his relative, his natini, his beloved first grandchild? Why don't I recognise him? Has he been dead so long that I don't recognise him in my dreams anymore? Why does he treat me casually like we have never met before, treats me just like any other old men I might meet on the street, genial, distant, and whom I don't know very well?

But I am thinking these questions as I am writing them now. When I wake up from the dream, I only think one question. Is he there in the room too?

For a few seconds, I am scared to move. I am afraid the unknown will sense my presence, my exact location, and will strike. It takes some time to steady myself, to finally switch on the bed switch. I realise my bladder is full, perhaps that's what has necessitated the bad dream. I turn, and I wish there was someone lying next to me. I would have felt reassured. I wish I could call someone, but who? It's still dark, despite the cawing of crows that I have just heard. Not my parents, I don't want my mother's helpless concern, nor my sister's sleepy voice on the phone dismissing the incident. Not my grandmother. I do not want to tell her again I dreamt of Kaka. I think of a friend, only to dismiss the thought of waking up a tired person. I wonder, if this is the kind of dreams I have, what must his dreams be like, he who had a harrowing time growing up in a strife-torn state. Then I sit up. I tell myself there is no wild presence in the room. There is no snake. As for my grandfather, maybe he is there in the room, maybe not. Dead men are dead men, I tell myself as I make my way to the bathroom, pausing to look at myself in the mirror.

On religion

2009-06-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

I was a believer, then an agnostic, and now I am an atheist. Atheism makes more sense to me, in particular when I see that the roots of many current political conflicts lie in religious differences, or in the way religious differences have been manipulated and hyped. Eclesiastical religion rarely offers women any space in its formal hierarchy, another reason why I will always feel an outsider to any religion. Religion, when it does offer women any space, only does so in symbolic roles, in 'non-threatening' roles like that of a mother or the 'virgin' mary. Religion abhors female sexuality.

I will not totally agree with Dawkin's strict atheism. I have a father who is religious, but not orthodox, and having heard the 'Gita' from him, I know that the Gita contains useful philosophical insights, and I have found them to be practical. I know religion has helped many people, such as my father, in coming to terms with the vagaries of life at a philosophical level. At the material level, though, religion is not the solution to address injustices. It only helps the powerful to delude the meek into believing that "the meek will inherit the earth".

The poet William Blake was perhaps one of the few who successfully used religion, or the figure of Christ, to try to address the material inequalities of life. Check out his poetry and his artwork.

That aside, religion has been the site for the contest of power, money, and politics. It has spewed many evils, the caste system in India being one among them. And increasingly, in today's globalised world, religion has become the site for contesting identity politics. Certain strands of Christianity seek to deny women the basic reproductive right of abortion (I do not know about the stand on abortion in other religions), and if the ongoing pro-life, pro-choice debates in America are any evidence, religion continues to make women's bodies the site for enforcing religious and cultural labels.

Sociological theories (Auguste Comte's being the first) have argued that societies progress in 'evolutionary' stages. Belief in the theological, in the powers of ghosts, spirits, and natural phenomenon like thunder, lightning, marks the first 'metaphysical' stage, according to Comte. The belief in a God or 'gods', a higher power, comes next, and this phase is characterised by a formal religious structure with priests and other godmen working as intermediaries. This is the religious stage, which is then followed by the final stage of a lack of belief in a higher power, i.e. the 'positivist' or the scientific stage. This last stage highlights rationalism and man as a rational animal. This is only a sociological theory, and other theories talk of different means of 'evolution'.

I know that a discussion on religion tends to be heated because people can get defensive and aggressive with their respective takes on religion. The easiest way to dismiss a debate on religion is to say that it is a matter of personal choice, that it belongs to the realm of the personal. Yet, religion has entered the political space like never before. The emergence of Hindutva politics in India, and the debate surrounding abortion in the US are two glaring examples of this.

Why am I writing about religion? The debate on religion is something I have always thought about. Over the years, I have seen myself drift from being a believer (due to my parent's influence), to questioning the existence of God (agnosticism), and to finally cheerfully resigning myself to the belief that 'There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.' (from the Atheist bus campaign. Read more about it here). Also, a friend's recent blogpost on religious zealots (saintelmosfire.wordpress.com), and another friend's response to Dawkin's 'The God Delusion' (noopalvia.blogspot.com) spurred me to put pen to paper and jot down my thoughts.

I was fascinated by Nieztche's "God is dead", as I was with Marx's take on religion as the "opiate of the masses". I can relate the latter to the ritualistic aspect of organised religion, which at some level discourages critical questioning, instead focuses on giving oneself up to a higher power. I know some people find rituals comforting and reassuring. I think this is because rituals signify some kind of continuity, a thread linking the past to the present. It is probably also a feeling of having 'let go' that seems to define the comfort derived from rituals. Also, it is indeed reassuring think that there is a higher power, a father like figure somewhere up there who is looking after us. Yet, once again it irks me that the first image that comes to one's mind when one hears the word 'God' is that of inevitably a male figure, an old patriarch like figure.

I believe in tolerance. If it helps someone to believe that there is someone up there to take care of them, so be it. What bothers me is the way religion has become the site for power politics, and the fight over 'my god is better than yours'.

2009-04-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

This shall be another rambling post that no one will read :)

Gone are the good days when I would only post poetry or prose that I had worked hard at chiseling. I am still proud of two or three of my poems that i wrote in my final year of college. But final year was an amazing time. It was a difficult time, but it was also a time when I made friends in hostel (I am still in touch with them), when I channeled my angst into writing, when Manju's workshop happened...

I am digressing here, but I met her niece at a book launch the other day. Himani Dalmia just launched her debut novel 'Life is Perfect'. Its a good read, and I would recommend it. At 200 bucks, it is also easy on the pocket (I was quite surprised to see the book so reasonably priced). I enjoyed the book launch, though the arm-chair discussion by the Hyderabad page three elements pissed me off a bit. I expected something more intellectual, more academic. But I was most shocked to find that Himani was so pretty, she looked like a model. Perhaps it runs in the family, Taru Dalmia is quite a hottie :)

But where was I? Swati, Debarchana, if you are reading this, then thanks for making my last year in hostel a memorable one. It helped that my laptop was there. I will remember our post-movie discussions that stretched into 3-4 in the night. I will remember you guys knocking at my door for tuck at wee hours of the morning. I will remember myself seeking refuge in your room whenever I felt lonely or needed someone to talk to, which happened very often, I know, and I am sorry if I annoyed you guys (I know I did!). Lashili, thanks for literally dragging me out of my shell. I am really proud of you for making it to IR in JNU, and for being so good that they had to put you into the general quota. You haven't answered my last few calls, and I wonder if something is wrong. I hope you are all right

But enough for now. I am sleepy. I wish I had posted some poetry or something that I had worked on a bit. I do still attempt a bit of verse. But its much lesser now, with time being at a premium and with me being occupied with other stuff. But hopefully, after five-six years, I should be able to sort out the mess in my head and sit down and write. As of now, I am still confused as to what I should do for bread and butter for the rest of my life. You know, what is euphemistically termed as 'a career'. Sigh.

If I could write novels and poetry for a living, then I would start doing it today. But something tells me I have to see and learn much more of human nature and the world-at-large before I can get down to doing that well. At the back of my head, there is still this concern that I haven't seen enough, do not know enough, that I have to learn a lot, lot more in order to write something insightful.

To my readers (I still have readers, right?), goodnight and enjoy the Friday and the weekend! To my peers, good luck with all the bread-and-butter issues. If you need any help, or you want to talk, do call me ( or comment on my blog!). Its a tough time, and the recession doesn't help.

Kiran, my lovely new flatmate, you have to comment on this post. And you too, Mr. lovely-new-flatmate's boyfriend!

Naina, all the best for the next innings (You are getting married, aren't you? :P). You will do very well, and yes, we can swap husbands (kidding!)

Harpreet, I am pissed with you (You figure out why, I am not telling you), but yes, you have to comment on my blog too.

Amit, Sumit, wake up, you are celebrities! Your humble names have found mention on my starry blog! Yes, wake up, and pay your pretty new neighbours (where are you looking, I meant us!) a visit, now!

Those of you who voted, how was your first time? Do tell me about it.

Sayonara!

Random musings

2009-01-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

It seems the months have flown by. I last wrote something on blogger nearly three months back. Maybe that happens when you start working. Maybe I have just been too lazy, perhaps a little too tired.

As much as we embrace change or try to walk into territories new, I think there must always be a part of us that wants to dearly cling onto familiarity, even when we know that evolution is essential to our growth. My need to overcome my social phobia has seen me push myself into socializing, or attempting to socialize. Like the other day when I attended a speed networking event in office, and where I was told about a trick or a nuance of social interaction, namely the 'hook and the spin" theory. The 'hook' is a topic, a common ground that the two strangers share, and once you find the hook, you should 'spin' the rest of your conversation around that. The rationale behind this idea is that it is not necessary to squeeze one's entire life story in an introductory conversation, but rather that it is more fruitful if the two people discuss something that they share in common.

Some of my attempts in socializing have worked out fine, some have backfired. Like, with men, I have found that being pally can be sometimes misconstrued as being flirtatious. This is more true when you take the initiative to get to know someone. It helps in such a case if you have good instincts, like my friend Naina, who can read body language and is good at handling such situations. I guess instincts and the ability to read people's body language is something that requires practice and takes time. She is better at it since she has always socialised more than me, having grown up in a boarding school. For my part, I think I need to be more observant and sensitive to what the other person is thinking or feeling or assuming. On the other hand, it has also happened that men have gotten friendly with me, and then distanced themselves when they realize that I do not have any intention of being anything more than friends. It has just seemed weird to me.

Part of the problem arises from the fact that I work in a 9 to 5 job in an office which has a very small percentage of women employees, about 24%. This means that I have to mostly interact with men. Being a fresher also means that most of them will be older than you. My friend Naina feels that the nuances are different when it comes to interacting with older people, even if they are just 4 or 5 years older. Often work requires me to stretch beyond the mandatory 8 hours. Adding that to 5 days a week, it means that my social circle gets further restricted to the workplace.

Nonetheless, I am trying to change and develop in different directions, or 'widen my horizons', as the cliche goes. Yet, part of me still sometimes wants to go back to my older, more inhibited self. I find this tendency most manifest in my dreams, where I often dream of school, or childhood, or people I knew when I was a kid and with whom I have lost touch. I do not know what this tendency of regression means. I know that I need to take steps to come out of my shell. I have been taking baby steps in this direction ever since I felt the need to evolve, and grow. The decision to change has been a concious one. Yet sometimes, I feel like curling up inside a cocoon, drawing my knees upto my chin in a foetal position. I feel small and I feel the need to retreat into a noiseless womb. But it is usually a temporary phase. Some minutes later I go out of my room, chat with my friends.

Poem on a series of bad dreams

2008-10-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

"Awaking,

My dreams linger in the laburnum of my head,

My thoughts suspended by a thread of imagination..."

There is an insane country of dreams

That continually beckons me.

That like hands kneading dough, continually kneads

My cranial chaos to phantasms of pure bewilderment.

I try to avoid them, those hands.

I try to run away from that country.

Yet each morning that hangs

Cold over my waking body

Draws me back to that riot-realm,

The dream reduced to the stale taste of

Night in my mouth.

Madness

2008-06-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

Racing like a train across the countryside,
Glimpsing the lights of estranged homes,
Mad mind of mine,
Meanders through hilly roads,
Searches in her dreams for your face.

Strumming a foreign lute,
Singing a song haunted,
Flickering like a pyre’s flame,
Mad mind of mine,
Burns up a somber evening.

The Moon and the Sun

2008-05-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

“Come into my parlour”, said the spider to the fly

For many years the moon bloomed
Rooted to festering alluvial soil
That sprouted slick lazy snakes.
The moon spent its time
Trying and crying for the sun
To caress her and kiss her
Trying always to lock lips
With those yellow teeth
Those yellow, yellow eyes.

When people saw the moon’s scars
They thought they saw an old man.
They saw it all right, it was him
Of course. But no one knew
That old, old man.

The sun rose everyday.
Every morning that began with him
Made the moon hide beneath the soil,
Curled in the labyrinthine folds
Of snakes- those thick, thick
Umbilical cords.

The sun terrified her.
Without the sun, she wouldn’t shine.

It was a humiliated moon that rose at night
Waxing and waning every month
Disappearing into nothingness.
No such thing happened with the sun.
It went on shining dutifully
Uncaring and unaware of its heat
Burning scars onto her face.

The moon hid its shame
Amongst creatures that crawled with
Their bellies in the dust.
The moon rearranged its scars
To make a funny old man.
And still when it looked at itself
It saw his imprint, a slap, on her face.

Red streaks, white snow

2008-02-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

15th December 2004*

Today in the evening, I saw a car go up in flames in front of my home. I asked daddy what happened. He told me it was an accident. I overheard the crowd of people gathered around the burning car saying it was an ULFA attack. A hand grenade had been flung at it by another car that drove past. That burning car belonged to my neighbours. They were driving to a party. They got burnt. I know their little boy. He is eight years old, three years younger than me. He wasn’t in the car. I heard him crying and I remembered a friend.

Around 3 years back in Kashmir, there was a little boy. Aasmaan, a word that in Urdu means heaven, was the name of his hometown. When I met him, he boasted that his dad’s dad and his dad’s dad and his dad’s dad (and so on) had been evangelists. I was a small girl then, so I didn’t know what this big word meant. He swelled up and told me that it meant they were preachers. They were preachers from Iran- Persia, land of gold, palaces, beautiful princesses, sheikhs, dervishes, fakirs… Those great-great-great granddads of his must have had long beards, worn long white robes, traveled for days across hot desert sands. Then they reached Kashmir. They settled down there and went about their business, spreading the word of Allah.

He would never have been born if his ancestors had stopped walking through the desert. He, a seed in some 13^th century Iranian preacher’s blood, had made that long precarious journey. So he loved his little legs. He didn’t have legs like those of a gazelle. He had short stubby legs. But he ran like that maniac runner Forrest Gump. He never missed a chance to show off the cups he had won in races in school. They stood proudly lined up on the shelf above his little blue study table, beside his Winnie the Pooh pen stand, crammed with multi-coloured pens, and a photograph of him with his parents on a trip to Srinagar. Walking back from school with his cousins, he always managed to leave them far behind, never bothering to listen to his Uncle’s admonitions to walk with them like a good elder brother. But he also sometimes patiently sat in a corner, his forehead creased, trying very hard to understand the story his Abbu was teaching the class X students, all the while dangling his legs, which were yet too short to reach the floor.

You might have heard that Kashmir is a very beautiful place, but it also happens to be a dangerous place. Aasmaan wasn’t spared. His mother’s younger brother, his uncle got shot. His mother’s family had come all the way from Afghanistan a long-long time ago. That particular great-great-great grandfather had fought many battles. Finally the King tired of it, made peace, and gave him land to settle down. That was ages ago, but perhaps, some of that hot blood still remained. Now his mama had been shot by militants. He was afraid that his uncle had become like those bullets ridden blood-stained bodies he had seen a year back. They had lain mangled on the snow in front of his colony gate. The white snow was stained- red streaks, red drops. After that, he avoided his favourite white cream pastries that had thin red jam lines running across the top.

He heard later that his uncle wasn’t hurt so badly. But all the same, it’s still very bad, isn’t it, to be shot in the leg? If you don’t have legs, how will you walk? How will you run? How will you stand on your feet? How could his great-great-great-grandfathers have ever reached Kashmir if they couldn’t have walked, if it hadn’t been for their legs? Camels alone would never have been sufficient.

Everyday, he heard his mother and father and close relatives talking in low voices late into the night in the drawing room. One night, he sneaked out of his bed, stood listening at the door, hiding behind the curtain. But his mother spotted him. She got up from her seat and picked him up in her arms.

“Beta, it’s so late. What are you doing hiding behind the curtain? You should have been asleep long time back. Why did you get up from your bed? And where is your sweater? Why aren’t you wearing it? Allah, I don’t want you catching cold in this bitter winter.” She said, stroking and smoothing his untidy mop of hair.

“Ammi how is uncle? When will I see him again? And where has he gone?” he asked

“Your uncle has gone with Shameem aunty and Rizwan uncle to Vellore for treatment,” she replied, carrying him off to his bedroom.

“Vellore? Where is that?” he asked.

“Vellore is at the opposite end of India, exactly opposite to Kashmir. India is a long country, you know. If Kashmir lies at the head, then Vellore would be at the tail”, she replied, putting him down on his bed.

“You mean India is like a lizard? And Vellore is at its tail?” he asked, faintly recalling the India map that hung beside the blackboard in his father’s classroom.

“Yes, it’s exactly like that.” she said.

“But uncle is so sick and it’s so cold. Why did they have to take him so far?” he asked.

“The doctors there are the best, darling. Your uncle’s case is a little serious. We don’t want his legs to be amputated”, she said, tucking the covers of his pastel purple coloured blanket with the Pokemon on it under his chin.

“What is amputated?” he asked.

“When your limbs have been hurt very badly, when it has become incurable and the infection can spread to the rest of the body, then doctors perform an operation to remove that sick limb. That is amputated.”

Amputated, then, became a new word to mean something he already knew about. Amputated meant his neighbour Jaleel auntie’s eldest son who had lost his left hand, his classmates older brother in eighth standard who had lost both legs and needed a wheelchair, the neighbourhood grocery store shopkeeper’s nephew who had only one leg, but still kept store for his uncle. They had lost their limbs in bomb blasts. He didn’t want his uncle to become one of them. He didn’t want his uncle to become an amputated. What would happen to Shaukat and Ali? Who would pick all of them up from school everyday? Who would buy them those chocolate pastries, play cricket with them on Sundays, take them to the only video game parlour in the main town market? His own father never indulged him.

People without limbs are sometimes called crippled. Would his uncle become one? Like that beggar in the market near his school, who was called a cripple by everyone; even children. It was great fun to shout “Cripple!” at him and then shriek and run away when he started cursing. It had seemed a funny name. Now he was frightened to discover that cripple is an ugly word.

Saying his prayers before bed had seemed such a hateful chore. He said them only because he was afraid of his father’s strict eye. But now, his prayers lingered on over the minutes. He had dreams where he saw his uncle on a wheelchair trying to climb a mountain, failing and rolling down each time. Then he saw his house turning into a video game and men in fatigues with big guns chasing him, cornering him in his room. He would always wake up at this point. Those dreams got frequent and he had to sleep with the window open, so that he would remember in the dream to escape through the window. It was the coldest month of January. It was snowing. The trees in the park were bald, black. It wasn’t very sunny, just cold, wet.

February dawned. The skies cleared. The snow melted, revealing brown earth, green grass. News arrived that his uncle’s legs had been saved. The doctor was very competent. Everybody couldn’t thank her enough. Everybody was relieved. Everybody was grateful.

His uncle wouldn’t become an amputated. His uncle wouldn’t become a cripple. His uncle had been saved. He had to do something for the person who had caused this miracle. So he sat down on his table and wrote a letter to her. It was a simple letter. It didn’t say much. He wrote, in a careful big fat cursive- Thank you Dear Dr. Anita Valmiki for saving my uncle’s legs. He signed his name at the bottom. Then he carefully folded the letter and put it in a white envelope that he found lying on his father’s desk and asked his mother to post it. That was his first letter. Not really,

his first letter had been to the pretty girl in school who was a year older. At recess, he had sneaked it into her schoolbag left unattended. He was so scared, he forgot to write his name. But, that didn’t matter.

Assam, where I stay, is a far country from Aasmaan, but violence, like a serpentine river, runs through both places, through both of us. Its waters seep beneath our clothes, into our skins, underneath. Here where I live, there are bandhs, curfews. Sometimes there are police checks when we are driving. Dad keeps his documents in order. When we are driving in the countryside, we are driving behind Army trucks. Everyday in the newspaper there is something or the other. This is what all my elders talk about - ULFA, government, AASU, other groups, other names. It’s like the damp of the monsoons that soaks through my school shirt on a five minute wait for the bus.

Two months back, it was my best friend Barnali’s birthday. She lives in Machkhowa. There was a blast there, the day before her birthday. So her birthday party was postponed. We restricted our movements for the next few days. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, just school, and back.

The fire brigade has arrived. The flames, doused. The black smoke billows towards the sky, heaven, aasmaan.

* The ULFA claimed responsibility for the bombing in Guwahati, stating that it was in protest against the flushing out of their camps in Bhutan that had happened exactly a year back on December 15^th, 2003. It was the one year anniversary of a highly successful Operation ALL CLEAR carried out by the Bhutan government with the support of the Indian Army, where in total 13 ULFA camps, 12 NDFB, and 5 KLO camps were uprooted.

Loss

2008-01-03T22:12:00.000-08:00

How can I be so sure I am letting you go?
The cigarette on my breath
The mole on my breast
Just as inseparable
Just like you are
Just as me

How I hope I will forget you,
Not pine for your voice
Not wait for your call
Your touch
Your kiss
Your love

I shall morph into a bird,
Like Philomela, like Tejimola,
Like mythical women in lore.

I shall sing of the raw wound
Rotting in the hollow of my skull.

Singing on a bald tree in a water flooded field
Singing in the dusk to an empty sky.

At the end of the corridor

2007-12-26T22:33:00.000-08:00

It stands caught between two doors,
The dustbin around my corner.
Pregnant with garbage,
Stationed at the corridor end
Of this girl’s hostel.
To its left are the toilets.
To its right is the room of preeti and nupur.

At midnight, the dogs come to thrust their teeth in.
They invade its belly. They drag out entrails.
Among the rubbish, is a plastic bowl-
Bikaneri Namkeenwala, Ambala stamped on it.
It contains remnants of a pickle
Lingering on its bottom like bloodied slime.
And over it, a dog runs its runny tongue,
Licks up the red oil.

The bin is tipped over, its night-old contents spill out.
The dogs forage-bite the stale parantha,
Sniff through the plastic bags, run away,
Hunt through other bins, assault, mutilate.

In the morning, didiji gathers its aborted mess,
Stuffs them into bags, puts them at the bottom of the stairs.
The bags huddle together like illegal migrants waiting in transit.
They will soon be disposed in a wheelbarrow.
Every morning I walk past them on the way to breakfast.

Now that the bin is emptied of its life,
Didiji swirls its insides with water,
Wipes clean its cover in the sink.
Then back it is to the corridor end.
Soon, a girl will come,
To throw away rotten breakfast,
Sanitary napkin covers
shampoo bottles, papers, wrappers.

2007-11-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

(Continuing with my last prose entry)

My birth had made my mother’s mother a grandmother. I recall fond visits from my maternal grandparents. In particular, I remember my grandfather.

Kaka, as I called him, was a man of energy. He had been born fatherless and poor. Yet, by the time he was in his 20s, he had traversed half of Asia and Africa. Then he left his civil services job. He had quarelled with his boss and resigned. He was an impatient man. But he was also a man of intellectual leanings, a Sanskrit scholar who wrote plays for the radio.

Kaka was enchanted with his first grandchild. He would spend hours near my cot crooning, winding the screw of the revolving toy above to make it whirl in a flash of rainbow colours, taking delight in my happy gurgles. It did not matter that I was a six-month old baby and he a successful lawyer, patriarch, an authoritarian man of years. At that moment, we were equal, and he was as much a child as I was.

I was told he had been a strict father to his children. He had bundled off his two sons to boarding school, left his daughter to his wife. I imagine that all the affection he never expressed towards them, now welled up like the waters of the flooded Brahmaputra, burst through its constraining banks, and poured its abundant affection on me.

But perhaps this is my imagination, crying with the greed of a six-month old child, seeking to claim the love of a man reduced to ashes.

Kauri pore…
The crow alights…

The day he died was this year. April morning was shattered by the shrieks of the black bird. It crowed frantically. I stared at its bristling feathers, bereft of comprehension.

Kaka, you betrayed me.

You took five years to die. You could have waited a month more.
Where did I fail you? Why didn’t you want me at your funeral? Don’t you know, it is your voice that speaks through mine, it is your wanderlust I carry in my veins? Don’t you know I am your ghost?

“I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?” (Electra on Azalea Path, Sylvia Plath)

Haiku

2007-11-07T02:35:00.000-08:00

Up in the sky, you
Are the harsh blue this June noon
Embracing my world.

And I would have you
Pick me up from this earth, eat,
Make me immortal.

Then I could with you
Roam the milky way at night
Shower stars on you.

See the world below:
Insignificant ant haunts-
And be assured

That no more am I
Cacophony, illusion,
But in heaven’s arms

I am pure as the
Gold grains rinsed from the waters
Of Subansiri.

2007-10-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

Kauri pore
Kalare patate kauri pore
Aglati sit murlore sore
Dumdum dabate kune kub mare
Aharar dawarar are are

Oooo jeuti tuloi mur monot pore
Oooo jeuti tuloi mur monot pore (By Khagen Mahanta)

(The crow alights
On a banana leaf, the crow alights
And my mind is restless, distracted…
I wonder who is beating the drums- doom…doom…
Under the clouds of this july month…

Oh Jeuti! I long for you
Oh Jeuti! I remember you).

As a child, I remember my father singing this song. Those initial years were in Digboi. I must have been two, three, four… perhaps five years old. It is a love song, about a young peon in a city office who is recalling his beloved in his village back home. Her name is Jeuti-meaning brightness, beauty.
Beauty. Jeuti. Jyoti. Jyotirekha-my mother.
She was married young. She must have been as young as I am today, perhaps a few years older. She had two older brothers. What choice did she have?
But I think, they were happy. They must have been. Because soon after, I was born, in Guwahati.

Small as a doll in my dress of innocence (Electra on Azalea Path, Sylvia Plath)

I was a month old when Dad got transferred to Digboi.
My mother bundled me in new baby clothes and because I was so small, Dad drove all the way to Digboi in his new Fiat Ambassador with her.
I imagine the small navy blue car meandering its way through the torturous serpentine highs and lows of the Jorabat road. It must have been dark when they reached their new house- the small black and white quarter bungalow. It was painted black and white and was a remnant of the British era. All the quarters and bungalows there were old, built by the British in that small Oil township.
Daddy had a car. This was 1987. Later, Daddy would tell me that not many people in those days had cars. Only the rich and the powerful had them.
Daddy was neither. So he was proud of it-he had one. To this day, he looks after his cars like babies. Like he must have looked after me then, I hope.

(P.S.- This will be continued. I wrote this as part of my creative writing workshop assignment conducted by Manju Kapur(of Difficult Daughters fame). We were told to write something about our childhood. Writing this bit was difficult. Halfway through it, I broke down, and had it not been for a friend's consoling, I would have found it extremely difficult to continue.)

Impressions on canvas

2007-09-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

Mundane mundane
Roses fall.
Its frangipani autumn
And the sun blinks.
Lemon drops
Are fresh this morning
And there are sarcophagi.

A painting
Of a summer day-
Young girl with locks untied
Caught your fancy.
Fancy passes and dying laughter-
Pauses, breaks.

The mask leers,
Seven moons are gone.
Remembrance and Prussian blue
Resurrect spirits and
3 a.m. mornings.

The whirl of the camera
And the photograph is out.
Self-portrait is a kingdom,
Hydel and pink.

Peace of mind
Was a face in the bin.

A Boomerang hurled
Sailing back- brown and exact.
A Science lesson
To be unlearned
On canvas.

Schizophrenia

2007-09-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

I saw the glass rise. A scene you rewind,
Pause.
A moment stretched itself to a light year.

Hanging in space, It was stubborn.
Try as I might
I didn’t see it fall, to pieces.

A hymen once broken could never hold.
Water- wouldn’t pass on,
Blood - a life’s worth of dignity….

A chalice holds,
But this was empty.
45 degrees, transparent.

Stem?

Long lily stalk.

They told me things do not hang in mid-air
Gravity pulls life towards its womb,
And a full moon
Snatches waves into its arms.

They said they could cure me.

But I think
It is frozen.

Mannequin

2007-09-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Last night
I lost so much blood
That I turned white
Like a mannequin in a shop window.

The assistant came
And took off my clothes.
He put a skirt on
And a tight-fitted vest.

Now my limbs stare
Through glass
And they are white and cold.

My face is bare,
And bereft of make-up
I look like death.

This is fashion.

2007-08-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

Calling to a moon
Running away on a chariot of green horses.

Judenrein; a love affair.
Ahead and above: deceased.
Sepulchral monument;
And hot afternoon.
Blue cobwebs spin:
Perfection, fecundity.
Green slugs – no broken hard spiral.
I move I move!
No song of rhythm.

Moulding defragmentation.
Time drops- grain and grain.
Robbed of language;
Raw shrieking beings whirl.
Round and round.
Siphon sanity.

Hot lava for leisure.
Insulate.
I touch I touch!
No doors close!
Wings soar:
A sun of harvest,
Sweet on a purple field.

I sing I sing!
Crescendo notes rise.
Harmony collapse.
The woman escaped!
She runs She runs.
Typhoons and insignificant
Beasts whip away.

In my place!
In my place.
Winged siren shuts and opens
Rare blue pearl
And a view wets and mists.
The wind shrieks!
Terra firma,
And an open arm.

2007-08-31T09:14:00.001-07:00

I am walking by the shore. Ahead and above me are the seagulls. They fly, they circle beneath the sky. They cry, for they are waiting to greet the sailors returning home. I hear them. I listen. Beside me, a crab ambles along. It is black and its shell is hard. You know how crabs walk? They scramble on their many feet in a sideways manner. So his walk forms a trajectory that moves towards me and beyond, onto the sea. It laps up the waters. The waves push him back onto the sand, and then pull him along to their midst. The sea covers up my feet and the waters wrench away the spaces: between my toes and the sand on my skin.
The sea is with me everyday. I put a shell to my ear and the waves rush and the wind blows. I don’t see the crab any more. Perhaps, it has gone on to another beach; beside many beings of its kind. I see them. From a distance, they look like black spots moving on the sand, playing with the waves. They have a nest somewhere.
I look up at the night sky. I’ve been told he is there.

2007-08-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

The bird has landed.
High on a barren tree it sits.
It looks around.
The view, the gaze, of a bird
On a treetop.
It blinks.
Ruffles its feathers.
Looks around.
Blinks again.

2007-08-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

A wet and broken strip
On a road of desires
Past the drifting coast
Foreign, with a glow unknown
Where a sage old fire burns
And a father's daughter
Is not the prodigal one
Anymore, she shall not weep.

But she shall not weep
Anymore on a day of brown salt.
The waters will break
And a dervish will whirl
He will call to the cosmos
And a songbird shall sing.

2007-08-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

My first blog post!
Finally, after months of hesitation, doubt, dilly-dallying, procrastinating, it has finally risen from the ashes to which it was assigned to be born a phoenix. My little baby, thou shall embrace to your warm breast the creations of thy mothers' strange soul.
The songbird shall sing once again, and the sky shall be an orange and a blue of a morning in March.
To celebrate this moment of rapture, I shall quote Christina Rossetti

"My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot:
My heart is like an apple tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me."