Lustrous Lives

announcing a new home of the soul

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:56:00 +0000

Dear readers of Lustrous Lives,

It has been an amazing journey these past three years. I have babbled and you have encouraged me to do so. I have philosophised and you have accepted me as the naive philosopher. I have written and you have read.

You have given me an experience that I will cherish for a lifetime. You have helped me to keep walking in the direction that I think is my life. From checking statistics of page visits incessantly to having an underlying agenda to pocket more and more 'followers', I have done it all in my little lustrous life here. The stats clock still ticks. It shows 9000+ clicks from USA, India, Sweden, Russia, UK, Germany, Hungary, Nepal, Canada and Vietnam. I am amazed just as I was to see the first few clicks.

Thank you.

It has taken me a long time, almost six months now, to let this cosy home of thoughts be as it is, forever. Dear readers, I am letting it all go.

I am moving on to live the passion that has built over the past three years here - my passion for writing, for scribbling incessantly and trying to polish and share it with one and all.I still do not know how I am going to do that :'live' my passion of writing that is. I do not know if I will ever write anything worthwhile. But I have taken this leap of faith. I want to believe I am a writer who can write something that will remain long after I am gone. To really, truly, absolutely believe it, I need to rework my life. I do not know how I will do that, given that I am messy and pretty much live-in-the-pile-till-the-guests-are-to-arrive-in-20-minutes. Still, I need to believe that I can do rework this mess if I want to be a writer.

I have thought long and short of what happens if I live with Lustrous Lives forever. I am convinced that I will have a happy life of companionship and regularity.
But, you see, I am organically a mess in more ways than one; and, I love making new messes. I can't live my writing life in the comfort zone of this blog where every one of you make me feel a writer. I need to step out of myself.

This will be the last post that I write in Lustrous Lives. You are now invited to another adventure at Wordiculture : the new journal blog of the writing self.

Love dear readers

Susmita

Ritual nostalgia

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 05:42:00 +0000

the emblemic deity - the ghot
by Subhrangshu Chatterjee

This time of the year is drenched in nostalgia. Always.

Back in Kolkata, festivities celebrating several mother goddesses in the hindu mythology populate this time of the year. The grand opening with the Debipokkho ( Bengali word; debi = mother goddess, pokkho = lunar fortnight) brings to the hindu households festivals of the goddesses Durga, Lakshmi, Kali and Jagadhatri.

The development of different perspectives on religion since a young age was incidentally born out of the first knowledge of the solar system. Till before that, religion was only associated with the practices observed in the household. The science textbook that introduced the solar system opened up a pandora's box of questions and ideas.

How are all the planets so neatly arranged? Who makes them go in their orbits? Do the planets have mothers who scold them? Is the sun the mother and the planets in the solar system the children?

All aspects of the world that is so huge that it seemed impossible to comprehend was guided by the inquisitive look-out for a governing force, which seemed interchangeable to the concept of the mother and what the elders called the god. Religion since then is heavily matriarchalised in the blogger's mind.

Beliefs shifted to rituals and then again shifted to beliefs and selected rituals during the span of the last two decades. It is intriguing that ritual is also a technical term used in the field of psychology to denote a systematic repetition of particular behaviours to neutralise anxiety. It is indeed true that a religious ritual involving a systematised series of actions - cleaning of the worship area, lighting the candle/ a light, offering token food and water to the deity, ringing the ghonta (a kind of a bell), and doing the arati (worshipping the deity with light, water, essence, cloth and fan) does actually calm the blogger's agitated nerves during this part of the year.

aarti in progress - durga pujo 2008 at home

On the tenth day of the first lunar fortnight that begins with Debipokkho, the festivities surrounding the goddess Durga and her associated family ends. To mark the ending of the festivities, married women share sindur (red powder signifying marriage) with the goddess and with each other. Sweets are also shared. This act of the women of a household marks the continuous cycle of life. While the act of bhasan (immersion) of the deities mark the end of a process of festivities, the act of sharing the sindur seems to be the act of sharing support, love and care in the community. The grand celebrations end but the hope that the joy will remain in the mundane life is passed on.

This year around, the systematised ritual during the days of the Durga worship didn't work well enough to prevent the blogger from being depressingly nostalgic about a ritual in which only married women participate - the sindur khela ( khela = play) on Durga Dashami (tenth day of the first cycle of Debipokkho). As the social networking sites filled with images of women smeared in sindur exuding a calm celebratory joy, the blogger missed participating in this ritual.

Since then the blogger has been wondering why such nostalgia for only one ritualistic act?
She has possibly unearthed her personal reasons.

part of the ritual of sindur khela

To be continued

All images were shot in Kolkata, India in 2008 by Subhrangshu Chatterjee and Susmita Paul.

Pre-anniversary confession

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:36:00 +0000

You never know. You never know what beautiful rock, designed by the river will surface when the river dries 'cause of the dam (reference to this earlier blog post).

That is the beauty of a journey.

one by Susmita Paul

For quite a few months now, this blog has been unevenly maintained. Fellow travellers have queried about its well being. To their queries and to the self-generated queries, the blogger only provided an evasive answer - "Yeah, will be right back!"

When the blogger travelled enthusiastically, with her best friend, to a new continent, she left behind her familiar trajectory of living - a teaching job, dance lessons, painting and her families (plural intended) and friends. She had the option of continuing all but one of these. She could dance and paint and teach anywhere in the world. But, she would not be able to have her families and friends around her, literally that is.

The truth is, that, Lustrous Lives, was born out of this yearning to have the company of family and friends. It is incidental that the writing soul started surfacing in the journey to remain connected with human relationships.

Writing and companionship of her loved ones became inter-tangled in the process. It was all quite peaceful till the dream to be a professional writer started emerging from the background of life's activities. For a novice, it is difficult to maintain the balance between two equal loves - writing and family (now, the extended family of friends via social networking and this blog).

Lustrous Lives was, thus, not suffering from indolence in the past few months. It was in fact caught in the middle of a war of two true loves.

She knew that the intricate details of writing which she wanted to discuss would not always strike a chord to her Lustrous Lives family. The blogger herself wouldn't be reading an engineer's technical blog even if it was her brother! The balance was going haywire. This led to a steep decline in writing for this blog family. The decline in writing here was accompanied by an increasing and unbearable amount of guilt for not communicating with her extended family, as she focussed on several other creative writing stuff.

The last thing that the blogger wanted to say was, - sorry, this blog is no longer functioning. Maintaining two different kinds of blog was not her forte either. She had tried it before and ended up merging the 'film blog' with Lustrous Lives. (Click here to read her writing about films). So much for organising!

The opportunity to write about writing at The Unofficial Blog for Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere! created the essential segregation between writing about writing and writing not about writing, minus the need to maintain a separate blog. And, Lustrous Lives survived the familial versus auctorial war! The blogger will continue to post her opinion about everything in life and beyond writing life.

It seems to be a good pre-anniversary omen for Lustrous Lives. The first post appeared in this blog a little more than three years ago. The post was titled "I hope there's a fairy tale in her...". Click here to read the first Lustrous Lives blog post.

And if you are wondering, about the 'why' of the name of the blog, click here.

If you are interested, two posts about writing are up at The Unofficial Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere Blog! Click here and here to read them.

Image: One by Susmita Paul 2012 ; two images taken on the Copenhagen trip with her best friend simply merged.

Learning to breathe - part 4: What life usually has in store is experience

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Sometimes when you get tensed, do you feel you can't breathe? Here is someone who does feel like that sometimes. She imagines the blood rushing through the veins and flowing into the brain, instead of the heart. And then dizziness sets in. Well, it was until she figured it out that all that she needs to do in such circumstances is breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in and breathe out. And, the heaviness passes, giving way to something that is a brilliant concoction of calm, confidence, excitement and inspiration (Share with me one word for this if you know. truly) .

Well, that is pretty much the thing that happened when the Lustrous Lives blogger found that a blog branch-out of Brit Writers, The Unofficial Blog of Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere! is looking for writers at all spaces and all places. The first thing she felt was exhilaration. The next was dizziness.

When she had breathed in and out, she managed to write and edit and send in her first blogpost for this amazing blog. Click here to read her first blogpost in The Unofficial Blog for Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere!.

She is breathing in and out, right now, as you read the concluding sentences of this post. because she is going to send her second blogpost in to the unofficial Brit Writers supported blog. Ew!

Learning to breathe - part 3: Some confusions are good

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:47:00 +0000

After reading the last post in the series, a friend of mine asked me: What was that!? The face shone bright with disappointment- this was not expected; especially, after the first post that was all about wisdom and knowledge, and, inhalation and exhalation. It is true.

At first this post was supposed to be the 'part 2' in the series. But then, the perspective changed. Instead of brewing the theoretical concept of breathing while breathing (meditation is another name of the same) in abstract terms of wisdom and knowledge and their Spanish counterparts, it was decided that Chris Powell's reality show would take centre-stage. But why?!, my friend asked.

Well, it's simple. We do not live in any abstract idea called 'life', but we do live with several abstract beliefs, notions and concepts. For instance, the concept of hope of something better than what is a distant notion for some to cheer their bad days, while for some it is a belief that forms the crux of their existence. Or, love. Or, happiness. Or, gloom. The abstract appendix to the real life is pretty long. There has to be a link between the 'real' world of action-filled descriptive life and the abstract appendix to it. I like to believe there is.

When we are looking for wisdom and inner peace we look for the sublime elements. We look outside our everyday mundane lives. This is because we think that there can be no way up in the tiers of consciousness through the grisly real world.

Imagine what happens when we stop breathing. We lose the connection with this action-filled world of ours. That was simple to understand, wasn't it? Now, try remembering all the details of the shop that you went to for coffee. Or, try remembering who was with you in the lift this morning? Or, better, try remembering the facial expressions of all the people you said : "Good morning!"

This appears to be a difficult exercise for me most of the times. It is here that the connection between breathing and our lives are lost. We do not think there is any action in the inactive moments. We look forward to the physical action. Our mental world channelises all its energy and ability towards it. Our mental world lives the way we do. Always on the go, always for something else but the now.

(To be continued)

Learning to breathe - part 2: Are transformations wishing wells?

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 07:09:00 +0000

So who's your Chris Powell?

The habit of watching real people living through ups and down die hard. The viewer-writer is always looking for more and more stories to inspire, to tell, to refashion into a poem or a non-fiction piece. Sometimes the lives of these real people whom she watches only from a great distance in time and/or place finds a seat in the corridor of characters she assembles for her novel that she will write someday. Either way, she can’t stop being a voyeur to life.

A character in a medical drama on a television channel once said that people watch reality shows in order to escape from them. That is but only one side of the coin. There are couch potatoes and then there are potatoes who want to be French fries. Okay, that was a really bad metaphor, but do you not agree that life is like a coin with two sides and the connecting joint that has no name?

Most of us flip that coin around all the while, unable to hold onto any particular face of it. Most of our lives are like the edge of the coin- connecting the heads and the tails and existing without an identity. What happens when we actually, I mean, really, really, truly recognize this fallacy of our lives? Either, we choose to live on in this in-between-ness with a sense of never even wanting to achieve either the heads or the tails of it. Or.

Or, we choose to push ourselves across the boundaries of this in-between-ness and into the domains of the extremes of either head or tails which in turn calls for an intense overturning of what we know of our existence. Ah! That sounds like the material of fictional protagonists!

The difference between the fictional protagonists that we usually encounter in films and novels and short stories, and us plebians, is that, they usually achieve a successful transformation, and the story ends there. We, on the sadder hand, always remain tangled; or rather, mostly remain confused and tangled in the matrix that is the process of transformation. So, what should plebians do? Here's a shortlist of choices:

Never venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
Forever venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
Think for ever and ever about what to do and hence remain indecisive forever.
Live a thriving life filled with ecstasy and injuries, choosing the opportunities of purposeful living over the ever-present fact of life being a wipe-out show of sorts. (another show I sometimes indulge myself with)

Chris Powell in the reality television show "Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition" urges his clients to choose option 'd'. They appear on the show with unbelievable amount of excess weight. During the course of 365 days, the client is shown to achieve a goal to lose whopping amount of fat from the body. Now, these are usually people who instead of dealing with some kind of personal issue, had chosen to not care about themselves and participate in binge eating. And then, this guy who introduces himself as the one specialising in transformations, appears.

This guy, Chris Powell, takes them on a journey of realising and facing some of their well-hidden emotions. Does this show have a fairy tale ending? It does and it does not. Some of these people do fail to keep up the motivation and falls back to old habits of binge eating and/or not caring about themselves when things get out of hand. You know old habits die hard. While some keep trying. They slip off their mark. They get up and they keep trying.

What does one do when one has a bad bugging old habit that die hard? What does one do when in spite of that habit one desires to lead a purposeful life, acknowledging the bruises that come along with the joys of life? Think of a rose, and, breathe. Sit up straight wherever you are. Feel your spine stretching down your back. Roll back the shoulder blades. Look up straight from your computer screen and breathe. Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Repeat till you feel profound as a wishing well.

And then, maybe, write a response to this post?

After-thought: A., my husband, sounds like Chris Powell when giving me a pep-talk . Hmmm.

(To be continued)

Learning to breathe (new series) - part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:25:00 +0000

Inhale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Inhale. An easy thing to do. To breathe. Or, so it seems.

Delving into the mythic universe of life and discovering the minute details about the workings of the human body is like living magic for all the moments in a lifetime. How hard can it be to run a machine? Turn on the switch, oil it occasionally and it will continue to work for the average tenure of its life. But, how magical is it to understand and acknowledge the almost artistic functioning of a throbbing life born out of a moment of pure joy? I am starting to believe that it is infinitely so.

There are two different verbs in Spanish which mean 'to know' - conocer and saber. The thin line of difference in meaning lies in the degree of internalisation of that what you know. It is the difference between you knowing that autumn precedes winter; and, seeing the change of colours of leaves, of the grass, of the skies as the year progresses from the time of autumn to the time of winter. The difference is in knowing and living what you know. The difference is possibly between knowledge and wisdom. It is one thing to 'know' that life is beautiful and magical. It is another thing altogether to have the 'wisdom-like-realisation' of the beauty and the magic of life.

(To be continued)

Ides of March - 2

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:17:00 +0000

When his friend met him after years, the friend observed with a smile, "You look sukhi". He was scandalised. Sukhi is a Bengali term that has no English equivalent, according to me. It is an adjective to define a settled-into-life state of mind and being. The comfort of having a pattern of life that one is well-accustomed to creates a sense of security and safety. When used to this state of being, a small attempt to step out of this zone of comfort (for instance, when the brand of shampoo that you use is no longer available in the market) appears to be very unsettling. There is nothing criminal in being sukhi; just that there is a little less opportunity to live vibrantly.

We often believe that our comfort zone is a compact territory. This sense of possessing a clearly marked out zone of being, makes the heart feel knowledgeable about the difficulties one can possibly encounter. And, in the process makes one feel in control of things, people and situations. Does it occur to us - to you and to the blogger- that there may be more to life than the boundaries within which we restrain our lives?? It does occur, doesn't it?

But what do we usually do when it occurs, like it occurred to the frog in the well in the fable? We usually make ourselves believe the world beyond the boundaries is too dark, too grim, too challenging for us to handle. And, we think - Oh! how sukhi we are in our own worlds!

This is the mentality that Smith challenges in his TEDx talk referred to in Ides of March - 1. We do not forget the 'What if ...' of going out in to that big world beyond our zone of comfort. We rationalise it and make ourselves believe that, we are not geniuses, we are common people with little potential and power. And in the process, live for ever with the deceptive notion that we had no choice in the matter. In reality, we always have a choice between the "road less travelled" and the road frequently stepped on. In reality, we make a choice, always.

The blogger will here diverge from Smith's talk because she believes that greatness is not glued to the career one chooses. Greatness is the way of life that does not deny the existence of fears crawling and clamping down the mind. Greatness is but a choice to face the fears, instead of living with them as an apprentice to life.

It is never easy for the fat kid, or, the nerd, or, the differently-abled kid in and out of school. You know that, don't you? To just squeeze in to the existing pattern denies the creation of new patterns. Greatness is choosing a path that will not make us the Smiths of The Matrix Trilogy. Greatness is but choosing to fly with the knowledge that gravity can have the final call.

Footnote: The speaker of the TEDx talk is a Smith too ;)

Image: "Looking for it" @ An Elephant Reserve in Bangkok, by Susmita

To be concluded in the next blog-post

Ides of March - 1

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 06:20:00 +0000

At a once-upon-a-time family gathering, youngsters huddled up to discuss our latest fads - the recent Aamir/ Shahrukh blockbuster that hit the screens (Indian superstars they are, but to death-do-us-apart fans, they are heart-throbs over whom there could be unto-death-of-the-vocal-chords debates!); or, the most recent 'hobbies' ... Which brings us to the point where the blogger can finally begin this blog post- phew!

There was a kid who had gained an interest in palm-reading. The blogger put forward her palm to be inspected and the kid-astrologer said - 'You act like a spring. Sometimes you are bugged down so much that you can crumble to dust, and the next day you can be jumping out of the pandora's box'. The blogger remained unimpressed since the kid was a cousin who knew her well enough to make such observations.

The blogger continues to remain unimpressed about the expression of the kid-astrologer till date. However, she has been intrigued by this peculiar springy character of hers. Like the millions of people across the globe, like you, my dear friend, she wanted to know herself better. But there was no light at the end of the tunnel as such. The truth is, there was no tunnel as such either.

There is this funny guy who gives a talk in an independently organised TEDx event in November 2011. He is Larry Smith. He is a professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo. More than being a regular professor, this man had advised the start-up Research In Motion (RIM) at its infancy. RIM will go on to survive on singular contracts for a long time. With the advent of the last decade of the twentieth century, RIM will rise to prominence and will finally introduce the Blackberry mobile email-solution in 1999. Well, that makes Larry Smith a true johuri 1(Bengali word, which has no English equivalent to my knowledge). He gauged the potency of success inherent in RIM at its infancy and encouraged its development. So, he is not really only a funny guy.

Now, in this talk titled Why you will fail to have a great career he talks about , well, about the reasons of failing to have a great career. In his ubiquitous stage presence ( that you can feel even if this is only a recorded video), he says it, all. He presents the comfortable package of a good career that pays well, a sense of being settled and taken care of in the oeuvre of human relationships, and a few interests in this and that, as opposed to being kind-of obsessed and passionate about that one thing that grips the mind, the body and the soul. Well, geniuses do walk the thin line between normalcy and insanity. But what about the common man and the everyday life?? Does that not entail greatness??

The truth is that many of us settle for that one package of a life filled with all the identifiable assets of achievement - a car, a house, fashionable clothes, a family. Aspiring for greatness is truly the flight of Icarus. Icarus wanted to fly out of the labyrinth in which he and his father was caught. But once in the air, flying, he just wanted to fly higher and higher and higher... till his wings made of wax melted as he flew close towards the sun. We are afraid to fly for we might fall. We keep our passions bound by what we believe would ensure survival.

That is the life of a bird in a cage. Born to fly, it will never survive in the open. This brings the blogger to another passage of thoughts. What are we, humans born to do?? Dear readers and friends of a life that seeks the true merit beneath the surface lustre, what are we born to do?

For the time being, the blogger needs to go grocery shopping, so you keep thinking. The second part of this blogpost will be here in a day's time. Till then ...

Ah! before I leave, a little spoiler. Guess who founded that RIM Ltd.??? Mike Lazardis, a drop out from the electrical engineering department of the University of Waterloo.

1 A johuri is an individual who can gauge the true merit of someone/something. The word is primarily used in the sense of a jeweller who can vouch for the authenticity of jewels and precious metals.

All information regarding RIM was taken from here. And, if you want to hear what Smith has to say, click on the title of his talk or here.

just telling-

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:37:00 +0000

Time flies, time crawls, time jumps up from behind and says - BOO! In all the cacophony of time that passed in the meantime, some songs were sung in the hoarsest voice possible. Some poems were stitched in the jamboree. Some written words were printed, some were not. This is just a quaint announcement that at the middle of the first quarter of this year, the outflow of blog-posts restarts, once again :)

Technological disasters and new year resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:29:00 +0000

2011 was a year of technological disasters at the home-front. Or, something like that.

The DELL, that was passed on from the elder brother, almost like a heritage, had to be put to rest because of an unintended forced feeding of 'dal' (Indian soup made of pulses). It was a sad day to part with it, and so the status update of her social networking site read : R.I.P. The DELL that had dal. There is a rumour, that,the DELL might experience a resurrection back in Kolkata. But that is still a rumour her in Ha Noi.

What isn't a rumour anymore, is that, another piece of handed down heritage, a NOKIA 2630, had its memory washed away in the washing machine. It just happened, unintended. The blogger washed her clothes with the mobile phone in one of the pockets. Earlier, she had washed clothes with cash notes, bus tickets, safety-pins and ... Well that's the list as far as it can be remembered.

The mobile phone was not much in use here in Ha Noi anyway.It was rarely used to make or receive calls. Ah yes, there were a few intense sessions of international calling and SMS-ing friends in Ha Noi. But that was it with regards to the facility a mobile phone is supposed to provide.

It was however used for one other thing. For recording suddenly sprouted moments of poetry in the form of drafts. When standing at the red light, when travelling in the bus, when waiting for a train, and more regularly, for saving the last poetic thoughts that occur just before she fell asleep. The last instance had become a regular phenomenon almost. It was discomforting to lose any poetic phrases or verses, or even whole poetic pieces in the darkness of the night. The blogger was too lazy to put on the light and scribble them onto the scrapbook at least. She used to half-open her eyelids (often of one eye only) and grope for her mobile on the side table and save the poetry as a draft message in it.

Though all the data in the DELL laptop was safely recovered, she has little hope of recovering the lost poetries saved as drafts. Drafts they were, but to lose a bunch of words that had appeared in the most potent moments of silence grieves the blogger. However, ironically, this seems to be the perfect start of the year in which she has a resolution of living each day as it is, each moment as it is (read about the magic of new year here).

it is the tide :)

Each day has its own sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonfade. Some poetries are best washed away, while some are lost in that washing. But today is another day. And life is about keeping the doors open. The blogger plans to stitch a welcome poem for the new arrivals this season.

What are YOU welcoming this season??

Image: a half submerged boat in Phi Phi Islands, Thailand © Susmita Paul 2011-2012.

New years = Magic?

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:53:00 +0000

The new year wishes popping up in the inbox and the social networking sites remind me of a scene from the film The Runaway Bride. The 'runaway bride' of the groom who truly loves her sits in front of him, after quite a time since she ran away from the marriage ceremony on the day of the wedding. She tells him that she loves her and proposes marrriage to him. Further, she guarantees tough times in marriage. She also guarantees that if she didnot ask him to be hers, she will regret it for the rest of her life.

The list of resolutions are hung up on the virtual walls already, or, in our internal spaces. That is how it usually is. We promise this and that, to ourselves and to the world. To give up a bad addiction (of chocolates and chips, for me). To get up early from bed. To study way before the exam dates are announced. To relax and destress from tensions in the office.

The list is endless. At the end of the year, we usally can't remember the promises tht we had made to ourselves 364 days ago. And, so, we make another list of promises.

My list of new year resolutions have consistently been as varied as 'I will be less lazy' to 'I will make new mistakes'. But this year around, my primary new year resolution is, to remember to live each day, one at a time, and, live each moment one at a time. This way, I hope, I would guarantee myself to remember the promises I have made to myself. Guess, that would be magic for sure!

What about YOU?

Here's wishing all the readers of Lustrous Lives a new year filled with possibilities to outshine the you, that was in the previous year, in mind,in body and in spirit.

Happy new year to you, my co-walkers in this road of life!

walking through

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:57:00 +0000

The steady absence of new writing in Lustrous Lives has kept me thinking over the past few weeks. Failing to mark out the exact reason has been disturbing too. Because I prefer all things neatly laid out on the table - be it the cutlery, or, ideas. But as you may have guessed, it never happens that way. In fact, as a student, my study table got a clean up once every six months only. My mother was exasperated. And I had a confident reply to her agonising pleas of tidying up: "People who truly study, have no time to tidy up." (usually followed by a big smile) The ways of the world didn't change but the circumstances I were in, did. Once the onus of family responsibility launched, the cleanliness freak checked-in in me. Now, I was at the receiving end of the trick "no time to tidy up". I freaked out. I took oaths that I wouldn't care to tidy up. I freaked out. Took oaths. Freaked out. And .... the swing continued.

With the new life here in Ha Noi, the swinging between the extremes have been nauseating. It is not at all fun! And so I planned to kick myself out of the pendulum of to-clean and not-to-clean. I need to jump of to something addictive, I thought. Something that would be too engrossing for me to have the time to suffer the swinging. I did. I took to watching television. I watched how the horrible persons strived to stay in Hell's Kitchen because they were great cooks. I watched three films in a row and slept till late evening. I fell of learning to ride a bicycle (yeah! at 28, am trying to learn how to ride a bicycle!!). - Well, this was the only exciting part to the entire thing I guess, but that's another story, for another time.

So, I was getting sucked into an addiction while trying to kick off another addictive habit. It was not good at all. Writing was taking a back-seat and so was living a healthy and happy life. It had never occured to me that turning off one switch and turning on another can be so tough. Sitting there in front of the television, the obsessive thoughts about cleaning were nowhere in my cerebral horizon. But, that was the only good news. I sat there, sometimes not even noticing what was happening on television. But I couldn't get up. I couldn't switch it off. The bruised knee from the fall didn't help either. But I also knew, it was not about the painful knee. I was afraid what I would do once I kick off the habit of watching television.

The feeling that you have too much time at your disposal can be harmful more than being productive. Keeping oneself busy is the motto in such circumstances. But, once in a while, one can make a wrong choice too. As I did. The freak-out-and-don't-care pendulum for cleaning, the addiction of watching television - these were the wrong choices that I was making to keep myself busy. I was waiting for one door to close and for another to open. I was waiting for the old habits to die and, the new habits to be born.

But I forgot about the twilight - the zone where there is light and darkness simultaneously. A zone where one has not yet died and the other is already being born. Once, while listening to my life plans, my father had made an observation - You can not always wait for one chapter to end, to begin another one. I thought he was talking about multi-tasking. I know, now, he was telling me about the twilight zones that fill our lives.

Lustrous Lives is passing through that twilight zone. Regular postings are not happening. But, I hope you will be there when it comes out of this phase of twilight.

Thank you for being with me all this while.

Love to you ...

what remains ... in the meantime

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 03:15:00 +0000

In between, time has flowed. Bags have been packed once more. Goodbyes have filled the air of the airport. And, bags have been reopened in a new city. A new home is settling in to the familiar chores and music of life. The grand festival of the Goddess Durga happened in the bustling city in the mind. The entire batch of Puja Chronicles have been brought to life.

The sameness of the events, the sameness of the memory of the days, have surprised the self that consciously attempts to live in the 'now'. The fun and the frolic of the festival days seem to come back, each year, with a strange sense of familiarity. And yet, the familiarity does not breed boredom or contempt. It is like a self-sustaining fountain - the same joy that drops at the pool of regular life below the fountain of festival, rises again. With a new force. With a new vigour.

Nothing amazes the mind more than this cycle of re-formation, of re-vitalisation. Except maybe, the cycle of new goodbyes that we have to bid. Last year, on dashami, the final day of the Durga Puja, or the festival of goddess Durga, the family had bid adieu to a well-loved human being. This year, on the same day, the world bid adieu to Steve Jobs.

For many, Jobs is an entrepreneurial icon. For many, the man is an exceptional case of achievement. For some, he is a demi-god. For some, he is not good enough as a human being. For this humble blogger, he is none of the above. For the blogger, Steve Jobs is the man who gave a speech, at Stanford University in 2005, that changed the blogger's life, forever.

His speech involved stories from his life and the realisations that emerged from them. The blogger remembers the words, just as many of you do. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." Trust in what the heart says. Listen to its voice. More so when it directs towards the difficult road.

Two and a half years ago, the blogger had found these words. Then she lived with the ignominy of an unfinished academic degree, that she supposed was her passport to the future. An unbearable agony of incompetence had set in. In a foreign land, she cribbed about what will never be. And then, the most beautiful and powerful thing happened in her life. This blog was born. "You've got to find what you love." She realised her love for words anew.

What Jobs initiated in her soul, a supremely magnetic lady sealed it this summer. As she sat with the blogger on the couch in her sitting-room, she listened intently to the blogger's plans of doing a doctorate. She heard the blogger's ecstatic descriptions of her creative writing adventures. She shared her joy and appreciation at reading one of it. And then she put forward a question. Why do you want to spend all your energy and time in redeeming what didn't happen? The blogger realised something she has been avoiding all these years - that, the unfinished degree was the reason she was pitching for the doctorate. Not for the love of literature.

"You've got to find what you love." And when you find it, you simply keep doing it. The blogger realised, at that point of time, what the speaker meant when he said, "There is no reason not to follow your heart." Death comes in so many forms. The fear of failure is possibly the most potent one in our everyday lives. "It is Life's change agent." It truly is. It is a finality that you can despair of and wait for all your life. Or, you can use it as charger to charge up the batteries of true potential and love that lies in each one of you and go on to live a life that made you feel good about yourself.

Steve Jobs may be missed otherwise, but to this humble blogger, those words at the Stanford University in 2005, will remain forever as true and as powerful as it was in 2005.

You can listen to the speech here. Or, read it here.

Image: a flower that fell to the ground, and is still blooming. Taken at a monastery in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. 2011.

Melodies : heard and 're-heard'

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:59:00 +0000

does time freeze?

Taking cue from time that is past, from time that created words, time that produced the last blog post is as difficult as one can not imagine. The flow of ideas have passed on to a stream from which this mind is a long way off. Trying to cross the distance doesn’t make sense, since there is much flow in this stream itself.

From managing to pack one and a half years of life into twenty-three kilograms of checked in baggage, to taking out two kilograms from the backpack in front of the servicemen and piling them back once away from their view; from reaching the sweltering, humid hometown and running into its warm familiar arms, to dressing up in the best silks for the wedding at home, getting drenched in the rains and the sweat, staining the sarees with both – phew! life has been busy ever since the last time fingers were put to the keyboard!

Amidst the familiar smells, the familiar loud laughters and unending adda (chat) sessions, the familiarity of the keyboard, the blog-roll, the interaction with you, the social networking sites have been missing. Action in the social arena sapped away all the time one could manage between maintaining the unabashed eight to ten hours of sleep per day, in spite of continuous encouragement from all quarters to improve upon that inappropriate scheme. But that is not what this post was meant to be!

Monday, 8^th August, was 22^nd of Srabon, the fourth month in the Bengali Calendar. It was the death anniversary of the Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore is written as Thakur in Bengali. This surname of Rabindranath literally means ‘god’ in Bengali. The deification of Rabindranath, though a reality in the intellectual life of the Bengalis, is not the topic of discussion here. The topic is the almost impromptu celebration, on the evening of 22nd Srabon, with songs and poetry of Tagore and thoughts on his vision and works. Some of us sang with the melody of our voices, some of us sang with the melody of our hearts; some of us recited from memory, while some recited in silence; some of us danced, breathless without practice, while others swayed to the rhythms rising in the soul.

Women who are busy with household chores day-in-and-day-out, some on whom age has begun to sap away the youth, women for whom Tagore is sometimes a name in the distance, sometimes a song in solitude, sometimes the face that stares down from the framed image on the wall, were soaking in the Tagore as a realisation in their daily life. From the bounty of innocence in Sishu (The Child), to the voice of change that resounds in the poem “Africa”, to the voice that spoke about freedom, women and nationalism, to the vision of life that spoke of continuity in spite of the natural course of decay, our discussions were marvellously amateurish and intensely passionate at all times.

As we sat haphazardly across the room, and, as Tagore’s side-face looked on from the cover of a Bengali magazine, the name of which was hidden by a garland, the only thing that kept occurring was steadfast outbursts of life. What better way to celebrate the death anniversary of the poet who wrote “Sesh nahi je / Sesh kotha ke bolbe” (Since there is no end/ who can announce the end)?

When memory ... 2nd part

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Tue, 24 May 2011 18:42:00 +0000

Emotion is, one assumes, non-existent in times of war. Killing and dying, being lucky enough to survive, and other such primal instincts that humans have carried forward, from the lower ranks of the Darwinian ladder, seem to be the sole truth. Truth of a war is, however like truth of memory - nothing is either this or that. Absolutes don't exist in the memory of devastation. Neither is there one dimension that defines completely what devastation is like. Neither is there one emotion that exists during a time of death and devastation. Neither is there a massive shift in emotions from fear and hatred to love and compassion once the war is officially over. What takes a fraction of a second to destroy needs a lifetime to rebuild. And no, the destruction referred to is not structural destruction. It is the intimate, personal, covered up hopes, ambitions, desires that are more fragile than the concrete structures and life.

While watching the War Trilogy of Roberto Rossellini - Rome, Open City (Roma, città aperta) , Paisà and Germany Year Zero the above articulated thoughts occurred.

It is difficult to express responses to images and incidents that seem to nullify all meaning in existence. The long silence since the last post When memory... was because of that difficulty in thinking about things that the 'cultured' mind assumes to be gross. But then, it is interesting how the eyes see the things that it assumes it doesn't want to see; how the mind locates the things that it assumes it doesn't want to know about. This post is an interlude about how the need to remember brought this second part of "When memory..." to life.

Memory is synaesthetic, meaning that one sensory perception automatically stimulates another sensory perception. The memory of a gashed wound that you hear about is translated into a visual image by the power of words used to express it. Such is the case. A link to an article on a social networking site led to an editor's blog. A particular link in that blog led to the article The Falling Man. Before the article begins, the image of a man, who had jumped from one of the towers hit by the terrorist-driven aircrafts in the USA on 9/11, stares back.

The truth about why or how this particular man appeared to be calm and at a perfect perpendicular position during his fall in this particular photograph, unlike the photographs of the other 'jumpers' that surfaced since the tragedy, remains unclear. And that is not what the article was about. The article addressed the issue of silence. Of forgetting deliberately. Of selective amnesia for something that the 'cultivated' mind identifies as gross and inhuman. As if the end of the 'jumpers' was any different from the people in those aircrafts. As Tom Junod writes in the article : "But now the Falling Man is falling through more than the blank blue sky. He is falling through the vast spaces of memory and picking up speed." ("the falling man" refers to the man in the photograph)

Accepting the brutal truth of the inconceivable ways in which death can happen is difficult. Silence seems to be a better option. As if forgetting is a way to heal the wound. The most quoted proverb - "Time is the best healer" is possibly not a restorative idea at all. It encourages 'falling' through memory, from memory into those spaces that gradually become too dark to see. It is anything but healing. It is an attempt to bury the moment, the emotion, the incident. As some languages are being lost in this globalised world of ours, so will some memories be lost. Choosing to remember seems a mammoth task, an impractical thing to do some would say. But then, what has this slipping through the cracks of time done for us till now? We read about historical incidents; no understanding emerges from them it seems. Such is perhaps the folly of forgetting. So what happens when we choose to remember, to acknowledge and to heal?

To be contd.

When memory ...

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:09:00 +0000

This was in the days when you didn't know what the picture would look like until the entire roll of 36 shots was used up and you sent it for development. Uncle joined a photography class, working out his homework of painting a glass, half filled with water, in the evenings, as the niece and the nephew and the daughter scrambled to see what was it that was being done. There would be some interesting words floating in that room - 'perspective' being one of them.

As the course advanced, the three kids followed him around, bewildered at all the machinery and the set up that was now being put up in that little room above the garage. The glass was being covered with black chart paper. There was something sinister in it, the kids thought. Uncle suddenly talked about what was it like when there was a war. To keep the houses drowned in darkness, for the sake of safety, the lights were put off in the evenings, the glass windows were covered with thick black clothes when a lamp was lit. It seemed to be a story to the kids, like the one they read in books.

Years later, the story of the war is suddenly re-lived. The numbers of the dead, of the injured, of the demolished , the heroes and the villains, the sounds of the guns and the bombs - are returning to the consciousness. This time around, there are no popular names, no popular faces, no history text books analysing the primary and the secondary causes of the war. This time around, there are only faces of people who could have been an acquaintance, a friend, a lover, a family.

*****

It all began with Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August.

The musical name and its soft vowel sounds betray the unease that permeates this film. While their parents visit a newly found relative in America, the kids spend their summer holiday at their grandmother's country-side home. The long lost and the newly identified relative is supposedly one of the grandmother's brothers. The grandmother doesn't remember it however. The kids spend their time speculating how wonderful it would be to go to America.

They attempt to remind their grandmother of her past, so that she would accept the invitation of her 'brother' to visit America, along with her grandchildren. In the process, they unwittingly have a view of a war that is only a story to them. The ripples of the devastating atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 touch their hearts for the first time in their lives.

In the sun and the rain of their summer holidays, they come to know their grandmother as they have never known before. Her silent ways perplex the kids at first. They do not understand why their grandmother sits, face-to-face with a woman, for a long time without uttering a single word. The silhouette of the two silent old women, with white light flooding in from the background creates an uneasy frame even for the viewer. Later on they come to know that, both the old women had lost their husbands to the atomic bomb.

A distant past, untouched by the children, returns as a newly realised emotion in the now.

To be contd.

Does Spring spring out of nowhere?

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:16:00 +0000

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia Britannica, the timing of April Fool's Day is directly related to the arrival of Spring, when nature 'fools' humans with erratic weather.

as if spring arrives on a date that you can mark in your calendar! as if, till the 31st of March, the buds are trained to remain shut and at the dawn of the 1st of April,(amidst the twittering of the birds) they march to full bloom, as kids dressed as flowers would do in a performance as the teacher animated the movements from the side-screen!

Spring doesn't really sprint into our lives, does it?

In hot and humid Kolkata, spring makes it presence felt through the soft winds blowing through the thickly populated city. It is in the air that you can smell the arrival of spring. In such times, our neigbour's mango tree brings in the smell of the juicy mangoes that will populate its branches a few weeks from now. The 'mukul' (the flower which will become mangoes) have a tantalising smell.


mangoes-to-be ... 'mukul'

The kids passing through the lane look up with expectant eyes. The mango tree's human neigbours looked at it with longing. Maybe one summer storm called 'Kalbaisakhi' (since the storm usually happens in the Bengali month of Baishakh, it has gained this name - the black storm of Baishakh) will make several seed-flowers to fall (unfulfilled mangoes ... sigh!). The owners of the mango tree, their neighbours and all the people passing the lane would mourn for the untimely loss. Spring is also such cruel times.

flowers that bloom from the soggy earth

In countries which suffer devoid-of-the-sun winters, spring arrives with sogginess. As the snow thaws, (and doesn't return anymore, thankfully), the soil becomes soggy - wet and dirty as mud. The few green stems and leaves that had been covered with snow all this while looks maligned. They lie in a wet heap. And then, suddenly, you see flowers blooming out of nowhere.

flowers that bloom in light

The flowers appear because of the increase in light. Or, it seems that the soil, that was suffocated with snow for so long, feels relieved as the weight of the snow melts into life-sustaining water. If you look at the muddy, soggy soil for long, you can have the feeling that the soil is quenching its thirst, soaking in the pleasure of being able to breathe freely once again.

so, is it spring now?

May be, the true arrival of spring happens as the new green shoots appear, the new leaves curled in sleep appear on the branches that have been starkly empty for long.

up above in its

The birds too have returned to inspect the branches that can be used for making nests. They hop around the trees and shrubs, identifying the perfect branch, swiftly breaking it in its beak and flying off to where it plans to have its nest.

Perhaps, the vitality of all things natural is the actual harbinger of spring.

With not much ado, Lustrous Lives too seeks vitality ... in words and patterns. Hence the new look.
Please do stop by to share your opinion on the same. Please share your opinion on whether the posts are reader-friendly in appearance, or not. All opinions (both favourable and unfavourable) are heartily welcome.

Wish you all a vitality of the mind, the body and the soul this spring :)

Images: "mangoes-to-be ... 'mukul'" by my uncle Subhendu, a few years back. Copyright retained by him. The rest of the images are shot here and there in Lund by the blogger. spring 2011.

Colours (the concluding part)

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:40:00 +0000

Another dream it was in a series. On the plain black screen figures appeared. The language was unknown. It meant "Mount Fuji in Red".

Since the geography project in which the nine year old had presented the 'land of the rising sun' as best as a nine-year old could, Japan became the land of dreams. Internet was still a few years away. Scourging through books in libraries, Japan unfolded in its mystic charm. The kimono, the island country that feels the sun first - so to say - every day of the nine-year old's life, the eyes like little arcs on the face, and Mount Fuji, the dormant volcano, pristine in its silence, against the backdrop of the aqua sky - enchanted the mind.

Mount Fuji as the nine-year old found it

Ah! It was a land of dreams; it was a dream in which the music from the string instruments always flowed on, as can only happen in dreams.

Mount Fuji was standing tall. It was changing hues - red, orange, blood red. There were a series of explosions behind Fuji. There was a mad rush of people. The middle-aged man in black and white formals mused : "Japan is so small, there is no escape." The woman, holding on to the hand of a child, another child secured on her back, spoke as a living being speaks till s/he is dead. She said, "We all know that! No way out! But still we have to try. No other way! "

Akira Kurosawa stepped into the world of coloured films towards the end of his directorial life. After directing films in the black/white medium for about twenty-five years, he used colour for the first time in Dodesukaden in 1970. The film was a financial disaster possibly because it was unlike any film that Kurosawa had done. Along with the explosion of colours in every frame, the camera was used almost as a detached observer, with no desire to create a causal narrative. It was simply watching things, people, places.

It is truly an experience to observe the use of colours by a director who has worked for long in black/white.

Dreams (1990) (accompanied by Ishiro Honda in direction) presents eight 'dreams', that, critics argue are Kurosawa's own. However, it seems that Kurosawa travels from the personal to the universal in them; as dreams usually do.

Dreams are never what they seem. They never tell the whole story. They hold un-uttered fortunes in them. It is here that the psychoanalyst and the viewer of Dreams gain a space of existence in disturbance, like volcanic islands in placid lives.

Mount Fuji, the landscape from the land of dreams, appeared in a macabre splendour in Dreams. In spite of the fact that it was still dormant, there was absolute chaos. Something tells you that the scene is progressing to absolute annihilation. This dream titled "Mount Fuji in Red" is actually a nightmare of a nuclear meltdown.

On the morning of the festival of colours, a peculiar scene from this 'dream' kept coming back amidst the waking life: the scene of the coloured clouds gradually shrouding Mount Fuji as the middle aged man in formals explained

Radioactivity was invisible. And because of its danger, they coloured it. But that only lets you know which kind kills you. Death's calling card.

The different radioactive elements had been coloured so as to identify them. The man in formals, a man who had worked at the nuclear plants that were exploding, named one radioactive element after another, specifying how it affects human beings. The woman with two kids was increasingly becoming horrified. Her words seemed to come from beyond the cultural calm that Japan was showing in the waking life, faced with the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. She screamed as she held her kids to her bosom:

They told us that nuclear plants were safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That's what they told us.

As I remembered all the clouds of colours that we created on Holi, a prickly sensation passed through the body. As I remembered how we used to run after anyone who wanted to stay away from colours on Holi, I shivered. The memory of faces smeared in red, in yellow, in purple made me feel weak in the knee. The stomach curled up, trying to expunge the nightmare of the dreams that can be tangible and real in the crudest manner possible. How horrific it seemed, that, on a day celebrating the vigour of life, the terror of colours was engulfing the mind.

Mount Fuji looked as if it was a glowing hot iron. And then, there was no one around except the woman with her kids, the middle aged man in formals and a young man in jacket. And then, there were only the woman with her kids and the young man frantically waving his jacket at the coloured clouds - red, yellow, purple engulfing them.

I do not know what numbed the mind more - the possibility of a nuclear meltdown or the truth that human beings, like you and me, had chosen to develop this power on which they truly have no control.

You can watch "Mount Fuji in Red" from Kurosawa's Dreams here.

(Special thanks to Arijit for discussing the films and enriching my understanding of them)

Colours

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:48:00 +0000

Waiting is ennui, it is patience. Both being true simultaneously tumbles the logic gates of either/or, still in use in computers and human brains. As science creeps and crawls and suddenly stands up to barge into a hitherto not-chosen path, it will perhaps become less weird and more normal to have simultaneity in existence. Waiting will then be both ennui and patience, without the need to explain why it is so.

The laptop screen is covered by leaves - yellow and green. Beyond the glass windows, the trees sobered by winter chills are yet to see the leaves return to life. The leaves on the screen are yellow and green all through the winter. The thin light brown stems that hold them to the branches, are tinged with a dull red, the colour of blood. Blood is never the gorgeous red of vitality. It is always a few shades deep, a few shades dull. Almost as if, it doesn't care to live up to the attribute of vitality that we have endowed on the colour red. To us red is the vital colour of all things passionate and fierce. To blood, red is a colour it happens to have, mixed with a tinge of brown, a little bit of dull black too.

As the old laptop slowly comes to life, stretching its limbs, waking from a night of closure, the leaves look at me. Often, I watch one leaf, its curve, its colours blending into different shades, the angle at which it hangs; I breathe in a leaf at the beginning of a day.

No mornings are really different from the last. Each has its own taste and texture. It is new altogether, not different in degrees of how much less similar it is from the last. You can not compare the sky and the buildings that seem to touch the sky, can you? They are unique; not merely different from each other. So are the mornings in the laptop screen covered with leaves in yellow and green.

It was Holi, the festival of colours, a week ago. The mythology behind the festival is varied. Simply put, it is the day celebrating the vitality of spring, in all its denotative and connotative meanings. The onslaught of colours that ambush you, smearing you with the different hues, is like a celebration of revitalisation. A promise of another exuberant beginning after the winters slide by. Red and pink; yellow and green; blue and black. It is a carnival, a unrestrained day lived in vigour. On the morning of the festival, I woke up, waiting for the yellow and the green of the screen to smear me. In a land where abir (the colour used to play Holi) is nowhere to be found, the imagination creates the carnivalesque.

The earthquake, followed by the devastating tsunami had visited the shores of Japan on 11th March 2011, a week before Holi. A natural disaster, that no man could have averted. News of the stoic Japanese people, news of the devastated towns and cities, news of people dead, injured and lost, news of the shift of the tectonic plates thousands of meters deep in the sea flooded the internet. And still, life moved on. The nuclear plants in Japan were affected. People were evacuated from the nuclear plants. A handful of people stayed on at the sites, trying to prevent a nuclear meltdown. In lands as distant as this, we watched in horror, in pain, in anguish, hoping, praying, believing that all will be well. And then there was the news that blasts in the Fukushima Nuclear plants have been reported. Till before this, nature was the undeniable wrecker of havoc. The blasts at the nuclear plants signified the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.

On the morning of the Holi, as I browsed the news bulletins to check out the latest condition of the nuclear plants in Japan, a memory of a dream came back to me.

To be contd.

On why all things change and yet none do

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:46:00 +0000

There is nothing that is the absolute truth in this temporal world of ours. When you and I hold a day old baby in our arms, and touch its soft, smooth skin, you and I are in the here, in the now. You and I do not think of the bruises and the wrinkles that time will bring upon it, though time will, in its own sweet pace. The truth of the child is in the now. No other truth exists at this point.

Often we meet people, in social gatherings and in mirrors, who feel their lives are a lost cause. They think their dreams are too late to be awake. Sixteen, twenty, forty years have passed since they had this dream. It is not sympathy when you and I say, under our breaths, that we know how they feel. We really do, because you and I have felt like this, at some point.

You and I may have walked through those stormy zones of the mind. You and I may have been drenched and left dripping like a crow in the storm. You and I really know the weight of wet straw and the eventual loss of it. One of us may have picked up fresh, dry straws and stuffed the scarecrows with them, creating them anew. The possibility of another rain and another storm washing it away didn't stay longer than a breath in the mind. It is at this point in our lives, you and I were there and then. You and I were in the here and the now.

Life rarely lives up to the blueprints we create at the beginning of our lives. At the beginning, you and I were childish, full of dreams, full of confidence that all those seemingly absurd dreams could be made true. As we walk down the road, the blueprint doesn't seem to match the route. You and I still hold on to it, for some time more. We still have some hope left in our youths. We take a few risks here and there, make a few abrupt jump cuts. For one, maybe, the blueprint now seems visible in the road that lies ahead. For the other, the blueprint seems to be a distant truth, as distant as the truth that years ago, the mature body was a lump floating in amniotic fluid. The blueprint ends up in the dustbin by the road if we can retain our composure. If we are struck by rage, the roads are strewn with bits and pieces of something that you and I once called a dream that we believed in.

As the pebbles and the boulders seem to lie right at the place where you and I intend to place our singular foot, we laugh at the childishness of those dreams. You and I share the joke all along the way. Our laugh thunders through the journey, maybe. And yet, something within feels like the empty place left by the oil drilled out from the earth's core. A collapsing empty space, away from the eyes. You and I are nowhere. We are not in the here, we are not in the now.

Are our blueprints of dreams truly an outcome of a child's play? What about the potential you and I felt as we tapped our earths? Was it a dream, a fantasy of the child who can create universes out of nothing? But, was life not born from nothing that can be tangibly called 'living'? Our dreams, dreams that you and I nourished, can not simply be a passing toy! Even as you and I tear it apart, from our bodies, they stick to our souls. You and I can't find anything to loosen the adhesive.

Dreams are relative as is the truth about them. They transform as caterpillars do to butterflies or tadpoles to frogs. Yet, they retain the quality of dreams - that which can be a truth - may be in a different time; but truth it is nonetheless.

As you and I meet such individuals again, in conversations or in mirrors, let us remember to share this little joke of relative dreaming.

Image/s: Same tree, same time, just with two different application modes. In Lund, Sweden. By self.

Weird connections: the method in madness

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 14:31:00 +0000

After Amy Chua and Darwin one must be thinking what next? The connections seem to get weirder than ever since the time the discussion on learning began. That is precisely what is aimed at: To look beyond what the system tells us to think. To search for new perspectives.

We already have the perspective of the glass half empty or half full. What will we see when we have a bird's eye view of the same glass? The question is impertinent. Irrelevant. Unnecessary in our world. Or, rather we are cajoled into thinking so. Let's just get out of the overcoat of rational thinking and look around the real world.

Mankind is looking forward to creating inhabitable spaces in the moon. And this is not material for science fantasies only. The Indian Space Research Organization has discovered an underground chamber in the moon's surface where a human settlement could be erected.

The settlement would be protected from radiation, micro-meteor impacts, dust and extreme temperature changes by the lava structure that provides a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius (-292 degrees Fahrenheit) in its diurnal (day-night) cycle. (From this article)

At such a juncture in the history of the human civilisation, when change is the only thing that is becoming constant, do you still want to believe that all that we should be doing has already been apprehended and we just need to follow the blueprints?

These are the changing scenarios in this changing world. The more we accept the cosy couch of the factory mode of learning, the more we choose to look away from the reality of the existence in the now.

The argument that may peek out of your minds as you read this is: How can you plan to address these issues when faced with diversity and population?

May be all that we can choose to do is affect change in our little lives. Choosing to encourage questioning. Choosing to walk the paths not only with the purpose of material achievements. Choosing to make ourselves and the next generation thoughtful beings, aware of the needs, the changes and the possibilities this world and its inhabitants hold in them.

The question that occurs immediately in the mind is: Does this ensure any impact in the larger scenario? Well you never know what the n th number of generation from now will be thinking. But short-sightedness is not the natural vision; is it?

Weird connections : Necessity, Evolution and Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:25:00 +0000

What did those ancestors of ours thought when they drew bisons on the cave walls, perhaps in the light of a burning wood. Perhaps there were others looking at awe at this unique phenomenon of capturing, in a completely new sense, what they see running and throbbing amidst the landscape. Perhaps they were dumbstruck that something like this can happen. Perhaps the first artists in the history of mankind were shunned from the group. Or, perhaps the artists were hailed as supernatural beings. Perhaps it was at this point of time in human history that the idea of creation most poignantly emerged separately from the history of necessities that made man. Necessity is said to be the father/mother of all inventions. Necessity is also the reason there are discoveries. Had there been no urge to find new sea-routes, the landmass we call America would have never been discovered. (But that is another story altogether). What if we go a step further and say, necessity is also the cause of evolution?

Evolution is cryptically defined as the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest. It is not the survival of the strongest. It is not the survival of the most ferocious. It is a poetic truth actually. What can be more poetic than the radical cocktail of the element of chance (not so radical in the post- Quantum era though) and the primal urge of survival? Had the human ancestors not felt the radical urge to continue existing in a world that is naturally more powerful than humans ever thought of being, the history of mankind could have been lost in the voids of time.

As mankind trekked through its own history, Darwin's adage was seen as a scientific truth, detached from the reality of our worlds. Power became the stronghold of survival. And humans believed it; they continue to do so. Histories and myths of once great and thriving, and, now extinct civilisations are not very hard to find: the Harappasn civilisation, the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman civilisations, the native American civilisations. And yet, man believes that, that is different. Humans believe that they exist as a continuity of the past civilizations. In terms of genetics, it may be so. In terms of the basic science of Darwin, may be not.

In an Old- English poem, a refrain occurs : "That has passed and so shall this". It was a refrain in an elegy, a poem about loss, a poem of lamentation. In that context, this is a hopeful, stoical view of life. Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest seems to be a variation of this refrain. What has survived in pre-historic eras - the wide variety of dinosaurs, the mammoths, the Archaeopteryx (possibly the first bird)- is lost in this present time. What is in this time, may as well be lost in some future time. And yet, Darwin's theory is but a story in the history of science.

Does this mean we have a meaningless existence? Existence is the meaning we give to this present moment; what meaning it will have in future times we can only speculate. The most profound quality thatthis rather young species in this world needs is perspective.

Herein, interjects the history of the human civilisation and our ongoing discussion of learning. There are differences between what was done, what can be done and what can't be undone. The human learning process does not initiate the mind in seeing the difference between each of these. Education in this modern world is still largely something like the factory production system. There is no one better to explain this than Ken Robinson in his admirable light-hearted and yet forceful way.

(to be contd.)

spartan shots

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:33:00 +0000

A lone bird sits at the top of the thatched roof. Now and then, a few more black strokes appear on the roof. The black roof, the black silhouettes of the birds, the red bricks of the buildings and the sky smudged with blue and grey spread together on the canvas.

A woman, her head covered in scarf, her wrinkled hands holding on to the trolley, passes in front of the building. Every time she pauses, she bows her head for a moment and then looks up fixing her gaze on something in the distance. Her thick stocking-ed legs seem rooted to the ground whenever she pauses. The black shoes has the curve of the roots of trees that are visible above the ground. She pushes forward her trolley again. Her long grey skirt fumbling at her knees. She passes the gap between the two buildings.

You look back and see a lone bird is sitting at the top of the thatched roof, its head turned sideways.

Dreamscapes

noreply@blogger.com (Susmita) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 16:27:00 +0000

Her white sari is swollen with the wind. Her small round face moves towards you. The carvings on her face sit benignly together with her twinkling eyes. Her eyes are shining and yet seemed to hide some thing. You look into her eyes. Her glance is moulded in love. You feel that her love is different from all that you have ever experienced before. Her love causes a strange burning sensation. It is like the way you feel when the empty stomach experiences the acids - acids which feeds on food and gnaws into the walls in their absence. They are not angry when they hurt you. They merely live the way they are supposed to. By feeding on others.

You feel her love is not only like this.

Her love seems to create the same tickling of the senses as the fluttering of a mosquito on an open wound. Her love is sensational. It envelopes you like the fire that welcomes your body, retracing its origins among the elements in an old burning ghat of an ancient city. Nothing much has changed since the time Marquez first saw the girl rising with the clothes, flying in the wind, and then, vanishing into the elements. You feel comfortable and calm as she looks at you. To disappear is but a natural phenomenon, she says. Her lips move and you hear her, but nothing is audible yet. A few faces float by, chanting the song of inevitability. You can feel the glistening drops trickling down their faces. As her smile blends with the nowhere, like the smile of the Chesire cat, the last link becomes a myth.

It is now free and floating in the cauldron from which the visions of history arise.

Image: a bird in flight and a sun in the clouds, on way to Helsingor, Sweden. by self.