banter and blah blah

Flip-Flop-Flap

2019-04-07T11:02:00.001+05:30

It's no mystery that I was absent from the Orientation Programme on Life Skills. I don't cycle, I don't drive, and yes, yes, I can't swim. When it comes to locomotion, I just can't seem to get going.

As most things go, I can safely blame this on Terrible Torments of Chandni's Childhood. Let me explain. Back when I was little more than a blob with four knobs as limbs (not much has changed ever since), The Family knew people who had a pool in their house. Terrible Torment Exhibit 1: I was too small to register this amazing information! The Family would swim there everyday –photographic evidence suggests that Man 1, swimming champion and self-confessed hydrophile took dives and swum lengths regularly. Women (1, 2, and 3) swum regularly – they'd all learnt some version of 'froggy style' or breast stroke and family albums are replete with them swimming around. Girl 1 also features in these pictures, complete with smart swimsuit and cap.

And then, if you peer closely, you see an orange blob floating across some corner of the pool. Unsupervised flotsam, forgotten. The Bobbling Blob. In Orange Splendour. Who is that you ask? Terrible Torment Exhibit 2: That orange blob is me, strapped up in floats, conveniently forgotten from the swimming saga, relegated to being parented by the capable clutches of synthetic swimwear. Later discussions on this have always ended suspiciously. "Why was I strapped into the orange floatey thing?", "Why did you teach me how to swim?"..."We thought you were too small to swim." "We thought you'd learn slowly." Uhun.

So with a head start like that, you can imagine how my swimming career took off. This story sunk before it started.

* * *

Years later, in that fine stage of life before you realise boys and girls have different bits, I found myself with access to a pool. An indoor, heated pool of Olympic proportions! The potential it held! Oh, I'd be swimming soon, I thought. I'd dream of doing froggy style. My moment in aquatic paradise was fast-approaching. Girls' timings were 3-4 pm and I gave up my treasured afternoon naps to go and swim [Side note: naps sound so innocent, I indulged in Kumbhakaran sagas that started with a frantic exercise in making the room as dark as possible on a hot Indian summer afternoon and included multiple polychromatic dream sequences]. Week 1 was spent getting excited about the fact that I could stand without drowning (yes, the shallow end was that shallow). Week 2 was spent agonising over what I was wearing –why did I wear silly shorts while others had fancy trunks? By Week 3, I could paddle my legs around furiously for all of 3 seconds and The Mother deftly left me to learn with the other kids as she swum around. Week 4 saw upheaval – I was packed off to boarding school (Terrible Torment Exhibit 4). And with that my float for 0.25 seconds and paddle for 3 seconds skills went down the proverbial drain.

* * *

And as I grew up, skipping past one teenage year to the next, discovering and discarding hobbies along the way, I never found myself near a pool. I'd enviously read about kids swimming in Enid Blyton books; listen to Nana's tales of swimming in the village canal as he was growing up; hang onto Woman 3's watery escapades growing up in a large family home in Kerala. I remained grounded on terra firma, a foot soldier unlike any other, relegated to the unenviable life of restricted locomotion – no cycling or swimming for me.

Adulthood came and brought no respite. Swimsuits were bought and forgotten in some corner of the cupboard, Delhi heat made sure they melted into plasticky puddles. As I waded into my 20s, along with a mediocre understanding of Botany and encyclopedic understanding of Delhi's DTC buses, I'd also managed to pick up a niggling fear of water. In the game of sink or swim, I was definitely not keeping up.

In one of those bizarre turn of events that makes you really applaud the haphazardness of well, everything, I found myself going from living in rural Rajasthan eating daal baati and gatte ki sabji for a year to staying at a fancy condominium in the urban oasis of Singapore. There, taking my swimming deficit as a personal issue (finally, someone in my family cared), Girl 1 bought me a swimsuit – it was bright red and actually fit me! I even got matching red chappals in a glorious moment (over)enthusiasm! If wardrobes could ensure skill, I was surely killing it. I descended into the pool, a resplendent ruby, promptly falling into my flail-flap-psuedo float routine. Over those glorious two weeks, I began actually believing I could bob my way to the other side; the side of casual swimmers, water lovers, who spoke fondly of dunking themselves in water and floating about (rather carelessly, if you ask me!). But as the days wore on, I realised how unequal the world was – there are the swimmers and the could-be swimmers. And there is me.

* * *

It's been so many years since my red swimsuit days. Okay, eight years, if you insist. Horizons have shifted, seas have been crossed, and my skills (in everything) have persistently deteriorated. Along the way I've managed to con a Co-Traveller to join me on my stop-start-stop, locomotively-challenged journey. The Co-Traveller...for all his own set of Terrible Traumas, can cycle, bike, and (insert tragic whoosh of deep, soul slicing sigh) swim. Nimble as a fish, he is the Phelp to my Flop. While he is happiest plunked in a pool of water, I teeter on the edge, unsure in that awkward, bumbling persona that non-swimmers seem to fall into as soon as they're near a pool. I have resisted buying what I call an 'aspirational' swimsuit - it did me no good dressing up my ineptitude last time around.

But over the past two years of The Humongously Big Step, I finally took the proverbial plunge. Ah, plunge sounds like such a plucky word for my tentative, teetering, toes-only approach. No, no I still don't swim, can't float, and in a cruel twist of my tragic story, have even forgotten my flail-flap-float routine. But I get in. And in some ways, I am still that Blob, bobbing on the edges of the pool, peripheral but persistent.

Things That Don't Go on Your CV but Should

2018-11-30T21:11:00.000+05:30

She: Journalist, teacher, storyteller extraordinaire, lithium warrior

He: Doctor, role model to fatherless niece

She: Illustrator, best drawer of dog poses, Malayali who can speak braj bhasha

She: Housewife, kindergarten teacher and swimsuit wearing Nani

He: Government officer, infects people with a love for nature, incurable spotter of silver linings

She: Editor, book chomper, plant poet with the biggest dreams

He: Teacher, most meticulous cleaner, stingy but super-skilled cuddle giver

That Time of the Year

2018-11-11T21:04:00.002+05:30

It's been a trying year. The epidemic that has been killing all the blogs I loved and read almost extinguished the bumbling here. Existential questions flew fast - should I write here? Does anyone read blogs anymore? Do I even have anything to say? Life has become more confounding, work more demanding, friends farther away...

And then, growing older has been Benjamin Buttonesque for me - the more I live, the worse I seem to be getting at it. I weep faster, read slower, and cook worse. Did I get adulting all wrong? But as the year winds down (yes, yes I know we've only just celebrated Diwali, I'm an enthusiastic New Year celebrator), I am happy to report I haven't succumbed. To the Great Blog Extinction. Uhun. So here's to the next year. Of writing and reading, of savouring and going slower, of less work and lesser impatience. Of rediscovering solitude and the therapy of a poem.

Happy Diwali folks!

क्यों?

2018-03-19T11:14:00.000+05:30

तुम्हारे शहर में चलने से कतराती हूँ

कहीं तुम

उस मोड़ पे ना मिल जाओ

मेरा हाथ ना थाम लो

और पूछो

अपने बेजवाब सवाल

क्यों?

क्या जवाब दूंगी मैं तुम्हे?

कायरता से खोखलाई हुई मेरी आवाज़

गिरगिड़ायेगी

क्यों? क्यों!

नादानी? बचपना?

झिझक? कायरता?

शब्दों में उलझी

मैं भी तुम्हारी तरह

घूमती रहती हूँ

कभी अचंभित

कभी परेशान

हमारे ख्वाबों के महलों में।

कितने ऊंचे छत थे!

और कितनी बड़ी खिड़कियाँ!

तुमने तो फूलों की चादरें बुन दीं

निशांत के कोमल रंगों में,

मैंने सपनों से कहानियाँ लिख दीं

अधूरे रात के काजल से।

पर

यकीन मानो

मैं खो जाती हूँ उन गलियों में।

वो गूंगी दीवारें

खड़ी रहतीं बेज़बान।

मैं चीखती, बड़बड़ाती हुई

ढूँढती हूँ जवाब पर

वो लंबी यादें, साया बन,

दफना देतीं हैं मुझे अपने शोर में।

शायद ये सब सुनकर तुम

मुस्कुराओ,

"अरे तुम तो बिल्कुल सीरियस हो गयी!

मत बहक जाओ

इन पछतावे के जालों में।"

मेरा हाथ छोड़ते हुए

शायद तुम कहो

"चांदनी तो परायी रोशनी होती है

भला किसने देखा है

चाँद की कायरता को

सुबह के यथार्थ में?"

Pillow Talk

2017-08-01T18:25:00.000+05:30

Image credit: Miranda Tacchia

The last heaves of love

have been wrung out of you.

You watch, with breath gnarled and gouty,

each thought as it leaves

your flatulent mind.

Those naïve words sit listlessly.

They've forgotten what they meant.

And your heart thumps

no rhythm, no song, no voice, no wish

lub dub lub dub, no skips, lub dub.

The memory of it all puzzles you these days.

Was it even there? Why?

How did something so pale colour you so?

Wondrous, you shake it off —

as a strange afternoon dream.

Short. Deep. Too fantastic to be true.

And just like that,

the last whispers of love have been

scribbled out of you.

दिल्ली

2017-06-24T16:43:00.000+05:30

Photo credit: Steve McCurry

अरे अजब शहर है दिल्ली

जहाँ धूल घूमे अलहड़

और औरत

है कैदी।

To Another Year

2016-12-31T11:00:00.000+05:30

Things on this blog have gone steadily downhill. Adulthood came and disrupted my readership. Marriage. Babies. The works. Working Life managed to dry out my Wondrous Fount of Creativity. So that instead of verse and voice, all I have to share is Blank Pages, Life Lessons, and Vitamin D Deficiencies. For a year that saw me take a Humongously Huge Step, it's time I look back before moving ahead. The year has been generous and brutal; stimulating and exacting; indulgent and confusing; but most of all, humbling as always.

And now is when I explain why (cryptically of course, 'cause that's how I roll):

To Sopho: Thanks for taking the Humongously Huge Step with me. I would've been too scared to take it all by myself! Some days, I feel like Calvin and Hobbes on that makeshift sled of theirs. Wheee...
To Family Folks: Another year of realising my words and music, body and thoughts, dreams and roots, are all from you. How terrifyingly beautiful!
To Bangalore: You've gone and done that thing when a place becomes a person to me. Damn.
To Rin: Soulmate extraordinaire, we carry on, leaping from one conversation to the next. How relieved I am to see distance and contexts haven't sharpened their knives on us. Yet.
To Academia: Thank you for letting me publish those papers. Trust you to make me measure my mind with your foolish metrics. They don't matter and still...
To CPC: For forgiving, as only you could.
To ABB: For being a surprise teacher. From you I've learnt, we never stop going to class.
To Books: Thank you, for letting me carry on our love affair.

It's not been an easy year and its ravages show on my body, in my eyes, on my yellowing brittle soul. In my envy, and my broken smile. And yet, and yet, a bulleted list of thank yous, not one but two exquisite diaries to write in, a renewed urge to write and blog, and the thrilling and somewhat terrifying prospect of taking an Even More Humongous Step in the near future. How can I but look forward to the new year?! Happy New Year people! :-)

Dollars Colony to Bannerghatta Road

2016-12-27T23:32:00.000+05:30

In cities,

I encounter

Incomplete stories.

A girl standing in a mint green sharara

Wearing makeup far beyond her years

Weeping

Weeping inconsolably. In the breathless choking way of the young.

And my shared taxi moves on

Another frame floats in front of my eyes.

A boy sits at a bus stand.

It is all steel and he sits exactly where the previous owner sat

The steel is warm and slightly forgiving there.

His legs dangle, the bench is too high for any Indian

Another copy paste

Of the West

His cloth sneakers are fashionable

His jeans hang sufficiently low

But neither his swagger

Nor the colourful laces hide

The ripped soles

And broken zips.

There, I see a blue tempo

Full of three boys and two vacant-eyed men

They lean against the usual fare of migrants

A striped gadda rolled up, utensils,

a broken cooker, ragged bundles of clothes

Two phavda, every workman needs his tools after all.

Three girls take a selfie there

Near the man who sits on the footpath sellking helmets

shaded by a rainbow-coloured umbrella.

A government building decomposes

in its own apathy

While the raintrees indulge with their canopy.

Shanthi Kitchen Slabs Works sits next to Bosch

Another new app is quietly announced

And the city flits past

contradictions marry cliches

As I close my eyes

to unsee the sounds

that drown me in an anonymous

unseeing

wave.

Sum of Parts or Guess Who

2016-10-02T22:37:00.001+05:30

From him, I stole my love for the colour orange. From her, my favourite flowers. Nasturtium and amaltaas, hydrangea and gulmohar. From him, I accepted the strength to be vulnerable. And the hypnosis of silence. From her, I learnt my love of reading. From him, I caught this love for nature. And walking. From her, I learnt the value of solitude. From him, I won an idol. From her, I learnt the release of art. And hard work. From her, I understood the humility of unconditional friendship. From you, I learnt the impermanence of applause.

Hands

2016-07-12T00:55:00.000+05:30

I remember her hands.
Fingers, so sure in their symmetry.
I'd enviously marvel at their painful perfection.
Then glance down at my stubby fingers —
each one a rogue character
from different stories that didn't fit.
Nails bitten, skin peeled off
cuticles pulled back in a painful grimace.
But I digress.

I remember her hands,
and that afternoon in Delhi.
A sharp cut splintered our chatter!
Blood plopped, staining the
chipped marble floor,
the red oozing out
as I stood, transfixed.
"Get me the dettol!"
I, anxious to help,
soaked a wad of cotton with the brown liquid
and eagerly I wrapped it on her cut thumb.
She screamed, I held on.
Sure I was doing the Right Thing.
First Aiding my way to a Heroic Deed.
Many months later she'd show me her scarred thumb
the Dettol had burnt the skin
a shade lighter than
the rest of her fair hand
and I'd squirm
guilty I'd ruined The Perfect Hands.

I remember her hands.
Pinching my ears
as I tearfully discovered undone homework
A green velvet fish
sequined, no less!
Those fingers snarled, pinching my ear.
I trembled under their wrath,
sticking sequin by sparkling sequin
my tears making them twinkle
in the endless night.

I remember her hands.
Turning the pages of Little Women.
I'd pretend I was Jo. Never the others.
Somedays it was My Experiments With Truth,
And as she'd read a page or two,
I'd feel drowsy,
waiting for the hands to stop
turning to another page.

I remember her hands.
whipping up biscuit cakes and crêpe suzettes,
ringlets in my hair and billowing frocks.
They conjured up exotic things those hands —
things I could barely pronounce
or understand.
But I'd dance along,
thirsty to be thrilled.

I remember her hands,
knitting needles flitting clickety click.
And as if by magic,
out came sweaters, caps, socks
made to order, "Amma, I want one with pockets"
"Amma a loose one to sleep in".
And those hands would oblige,
weaving me memories
woolly indulgences to my every demand.

---

I try to unsee these hands
now riddled with marks.
Veins too tired to
take in another needle.
She gasps as Sister pokes and prods
there are no places left to draw
any blood
that had once flowed so freely that
I'd drowned it in Dettol.

I try to unsee these hands
that recognise me not.
I hold them now,
willing them into remembering my face.
But they wilt long before they reach me.
They stand blotchy and bruised
ugly in their amnesia.
"Rotate the wrists,
Five times clockwise
Five times the other way."
As I instruct, they tremble
Unsure of my demands.
they collapse, lost and weary.

Whose hands are these?
I wonder, adrift.
Silent they sit
vacant and uncertain.
Desperately, I clasp them
turn them around this way and that.
Whose hands are these?
Something shatters as I scream
Whose hands are these?
Whose hands are these?
And then, as if sensing my anguish,
she points to her thumb —
The Dettol mark
stares back — slightly paler than her blotched, bruised skin.
And for a moment,
I remember her hands.
Yes, once again, I remember her hands.

Who am I today?

2016-05-23T20:44:00.000+05:30

I spoke to no one today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that. And it was ok. I swept and swabbed today. My sweat flowed into a river of grime and I carried on, melting into the day. I watched a movie and washed my hair today. I watched a boy and girl sitting beside me snuggle up today. I smiled a them encouraging them a little further today. I walked past the shop that sells animals in little cages today. Two emaciated kittens lay sleeping, their fur matted and dirty. In the cage below, two puppies slept - thin in a way puppies shouldn't be, sleeping in a way only puppies can. I saw a man pick up used Pepsi bottles today. He opened each one and sipped the remains. And then I bought a pen that cost 75 rupees today. I saw potato wafers being fried in a massive kadhai of oil today. They simmered a golden yellow, glistening with what could clog my arteries one day. I ate a burger today. The pongamia tree showered its blossoms on the road today. I felt the little buds get crushed under my feet as I walked. I stared at screens a lot today. I remembered a time I used to write. And quill. And sing. And bake. I am not that girl today.

साँस तो ले लो

2016-01-21T20:44:00.001+05:30

मन करता है कहीं छुप जाऊँ -

अम्मा के पल्लू के नीचे

उनके पेट की ठंडक पे

सेहलालूँ थोड़ी देर

अपने मन के सलवटों को।

और धीरे से वो

मेरे माथे को सहलातीं -

"बस, बस, रुक जाओ,

कहाँ भागी जा रही हो?

साँस तो ले लो।

मैं सांस लेती हूँ - लम्बी -

और कुछ देर ही सही,

मेरे चिन्ताओं के गाँठ

उधड़ते दीखते हैं

उनके हाथों में

मानो ऊन के गोले।

(P)haiku

2016-01-12T21:59:00.000+05:30

Loneliness gnaws

and I respond

in an orgy

of apathy

That time of the year

2015-10-18T19:52:00.000+05:30

Every other autumn

you pale

at the colour of our love.

Sullenly, you pluck

at the last remaining leaves:

ochres and oranges

swirl down

confused, let down.

It will take another

bitter winter, and

the breathless vigour of spring

to breath back some colour

into our story

and compassion

in our hearts.

La Sagrada Familia

2015-05-30T19:35:00.000+05:30

[La Sagrada Familia or The Holy Family is an unfinished Roman Catholic Church in Barcelona, Spain. Its architect, Anton Gaudí, was a Catalan architect who significantly contributed to Barcelona’s modernist movement and built several iconic structures during his life. Construction on this grand church, often considered Gaudi’s masterpiece, began in 1882 but its design is so complex and ambitious that even today, it is far from complete.]

I am

the Sagrada,

unpolished, rough cut,

a work in perpetual progress.

I started

with one architect,

but I have become

a trencadís¹ of different artists.

Every person I meet comes and

carves another pirouette in stone.

A thousand workers

mould and polish me;

they chip, chisel and hurt me

taking more than they can give

hammering me hollow as I powder at their anvil.

Some paint me

the gentle swishes

of their brushes lulling me into love.

they put another coat here, one there,

hiding the uglier blemishes, painting new wounds.

I start and stop thus,

some days growing tall –

a glorious castell² well-balanced, proud.

Some days a pillar is pulled down,

And I start over, dejected but never outdone.

I thrive thus; a back and forth of sorts:

A continuous creation; unendingly unborn.

^{1. Trencadís or pique assiette, is a form of mosaic used in Catalan modernism, where broken pieces of colourful tiles are used to build intricate patterns.↩}
^{2. A castell or castle is a human tower made during festivals in Catalonia, which has an intricate process of assembling and dissembling. ↩}

Ineffability or What I feel When You Open the Door

2015-01-13T18:33:00.000+05:30

My breath is caught

between the ringing of the doorbell

and the moment before

the door creaks open.

when your face, so familiar

peers out,

a funny flip flips

the space where

my mind meddles with my heart.

it is beautiful to me, your face

in ways no one (not even me)

will understand.

and we ignore this minute miracle

in the hope of larger marvels.

You nod imperceptibly

my arrival acknowledged by

a flicker in your eyes

an unformed smile skirting your lips.

I answer by walking past

Disintegrating into the mundane.

Drop bag. throw off shoes. gulp water.

and only then do I

exhale the day's triumphs and tragedies

in the refuge of your embrace

yeh lo mera saamaan.

In the space between us

nestled near quiet acceptance

and indulgent gaze

I, sagging spirit and slumberous sight in tow,

uncoil.

Minimalism

2014-06-11T18:18:00.001+05:30

We live in a time when 'green living' has become fashionable. We call ourselves ecotourists. We travel to rural India and are suitably impressed by farmers using mobile phones. 'How we have progressed!' we exclaim. We buy unpolished rice to ease our conscience and can spend on a meal, money equal to a person's entire monthly income. We are conscientiousness and concerned; we are educated and restless. We want to make a difference and we don't have a clue how.

"His (Gandhi's) nightmare was a machine-dominated industrial society which would suck India's villagers from the countryside into her blighted urban slums, severe their contact with the social unit that was there natural environment, destroy their ties of family and religion, all for the faceless, miserable existence of an industrial complex spewing out goods men didn't really need.

He was not, as he was sometimes accused of doing, preaching a doctrine of poverty. Grinding poverty produced the moral degradation and the violence he loathed. But so too, he argued, did a surfeit of material goods. A people with full refrigerators, stuffed clothes cupboards, a car in every garage and a radio in every room, could be psychologically insecure and morally corrupt. Gandhi wanted man to find a just medium medium between debasing poverty and the heedless consumption of goods."

p.197, Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

At the Movies

2014-04-10T19:03:00.000+05:30

Friendly Bear Via Sarajea

She stuffed her bag under the seat, fidgeted till she found her spot in the seat and then without notice, slipped her hand into his. He was still undecided whether he liked holding her hand or not. But while he was deciding, he didn't mind doing it anyway. Her hands had a needy quality about them. Always wanting to be held, sweating into a clammy mess like awkward teenagers, the stubby fingers and chewed nails unsure in their ugliness.

On Writing and Identity

2014-01-04T13:30:00.000+05:30

The first time I encountered Orwell I was 13 years old. I picked up Animal Farm thinking it was a story of a farm and finished it with that notion intact. All undertones, subtle and otherwise, were lost on my teen brain. Thankfully, over the years I revisited Orwell and unpeeled layers, igniting my fascination with his writing and person.

Why I Write is an intimate book in which he elegantly elucidates his motivations to write. It is a collection of essays, but I will talk of two here: Why I Write, and England on England. In a manner so honest and personal, the reader is almost apologetic for being allowed into his mind, Orwell questions what it means to belong to a country - what does it mean to be English - he reasons that belonging to a country is so closely tied to one's identity that it naturally affects any artistic endeavour. I pause to wonder whether such an exercise is possible for me, or even prudent? But as Orwell says:

'Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.'

He goes on to talk about 'emotional unity' in the face of moments of 'supreme crisis' and my thoughts turn to

Republic Day in 2001. I had, the night before, painted my keds with white paint. It had dried unevenly and in places, the paint had cracked mournfully. We had gotten up early and prepared for the parade. Left right left. Left right left. After marching in the sallow winter sun, we got the standard treat. One besan ka ladoo, one soggy samosa (I only ate the cover, Lee faithfully ate the aaloo for me in exchange for her samosa cover) and a handful of ber. We hurried back to our hostel, planning to while away the rest of the day. I was at my cupboard when I felt the tremor. 'Did the ground just shake?' I asked, excitement making my voice quiver. 'Eeeeeeee earthquake!' someone screamed and we ran out of our rooms, shocked and suitably awed at the possibility. Later, we sat subdued, as news of death tolls trickled in. Next days papers narrated tales of destruction and loss. We contributed money, clothes, and we made cards, unable to understand the import of losing one's home, loved ones and all possessions to an idiosyncrasy. We heard of people coming together from across the country, united in grief and comrades in compassion. Yes, Orwell's words do make sense in retrospect.

He ends the essay in a subdued yet hopeful tone,

'It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children's holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.'

My mind turns to the transitions and transformations shaping India. The plough giving way to the tractor and Ladakh becoming 'the' place to travel to, Nana recounting the lost glory of Allahabad University and mountains being mined of their serenity, never learning how to make Ammaji's famous हड़ का अचार and clothing becoming homogenised - Delhi or London, boots becoming ubiquitous. But like Orwell, I am naive and optimistic enough to believe that India will still be India - an everlasting consciousness in my identity. And as I change my shape with it, I remain who I am, and yet so different.

The Next Big Step is coming to a close. I'm looking forward to a homecoming : )

2013-12-31T21:32:00.000+05:30

Another year of growing up. Of letting go and ~~learning~~ trying to say no. Of nurturing old friendships. Of redrawing personal boundaries and delving deep. Of reading binges and Orwell. Of calm and confusion. Of completing a degree and promising to never stop learning. Of inspiring travel and blue days. Of silences and conversations. Here's to the Great Unknown. Happy New Year!

All Pitter No Patter

2013-11-06T16:34:00.002+05:30

Radha Pigtail followed Didi Pigtail:
a puppy dog shadow
pitter no patter she went.
Little Radha Pigtail - one legged she was.

Didi Pigtail sat reading
cross legged at the door
and Radha Pigtail would watch shyly –
hidden in an envelope of curtains.

Earlier, Didi Pigtail had tried:
sharing her raggedy dolls
pointing out pictures;
fairies and a Petite Prince.
But Radha Pigtail would run away
blushing in her shyness,
a hesitant smile
frozen in silent alarm.

Just how did she run? You exclaim!
Oh tiny Radha Pigtail could run
in a hobbled lopsided stride
Her frock – with its little toffee buttons –
flapping against her good leg
and her bad crutch.
Unnerved, Didi Pigtail would hurry away
fast and strong
anything to get away from
that pitter with no patter.

One day Didi Pigtail,
hurried to the jamun tree
the promise of its dark inky fruit
stained her imagination a glorious purple.
Pitter patter her feet sang
against the ground
in urgent impatience.
Radha Pigtail caught her shadow flit by
and followed, as fast as she could
pitter, pitter, no patter.

She watched Didi Pigtail climb the tree nimbly
monkey-like and lithe,
toes curled around the trunk,
then hopping onto a branch up high
and clutching at the dark, swollen fruit.
She watched Didi Pigtail
sucking and chewing
her mouth puckering into purple astringency.

Didi Pigtail suddenly stopped
peered down and saw
Radha Pigtail looking very small indeed
far far below,
and Didi Pigtail flashed a triumphant grin
her teeth, a frightening indigo.
"You can't follow me up here",
those teeth proclaimed.
And terrified, Radha Pigtail, bolted
All pitter, no patter.

Rejection

2013-09-07T20:41:00.001+05:30

'They' say I have not read enough.

If I want to write poetry,

They say I should read

Cavafy and Armitage.

Ruth Padel’s “52 Ways to Read a Poem.”

Yes that will teach me how to write better.

- - -

Should I also retreat into a Writer’s Retreat?

Will the rolling hills and flurries of fog,

fawn over me,

in creative outbursts?

Bukowski, on the other hand instructs:

I shouldn’t write unless

it ‘bursts out of me’.

- - -

Words have burst forth in a panicked hurry

staining the sheets,

in monsoonal splendour.

I lie spent now,

mutilated by my latest offering.

Already a bystander.

In the after-throes of my affair,

I tentatively send them forth –

Exposing them to prying eyes –

a gavel’s stroke punctuating my dreams.

I quiver, breath-held

parched-lipped

as your pronounce your judgement

with placid bored eyes of one who has read too much.

And in a voice jaded beyond redemption,

You bellow your answer

(or do you breathe a yellowed whisper?).

Plucking the petals off my art,

you desecrate it to a doodle

And hand me condolences

For having lost myself.

April, 2013

Down and Out in Paris and London: George Orwell

2013-06-28T18:45:00.003+05:30

Poverty is a tricky notion; a state that cannot be empathised with or understood unless lived and experienced. Like hunger, it is often irresponsibly categorised (above vs.below poverty line?) but its experiential quality is perhaps never quite captured by such sweeping definitions. I have studied poverty, observed and documented it. But from lofty theoretical ideas, to my wide-eyed reflections of it, I have not known what it is to be poor. Drawing on his experiences of scavenging a living from dishwashing in Paris and shuttling from lodge to lodge in London in the late 1920s, George Orwell, introduces to his readers, life, as defined by poverty.

'It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty... You thought it would be simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping.'

In this semi-autobiographical novel, Orwell wades into the world of human depravity. He takes the reader on a journey through the painfully dreary life of a plonguer (dishwasher) in Paris. From the numbing routine of working in steamy cellars, washing dishes till the mind is subdued into blankness, he charts his journey through hunger, desperation and utmost depravity. London, where he moves to because of the promise of a job, is worse. Here he discovers the treacherous life of a tramp: bug-infested beds, bitter cold, counting pennies and twenty men bathing in a tub of water.

The best parts of his journey are his anecdotes about fellow workers, scraping a living through menial jobs, lies and often thieving. Through the story we encounter Boris, a handicapped Russian refugee who helps Orwell secure a job as a plongeur, the lowest rung in the unforgiving hierarchy of the Parisian hospitality sector. In London, we meet Bozo, a 'screever' or pavement artist, who inspires some of the most profound passages in the book. Orwell narrates how Bozo considered begging to be below him and made cartoons that were commentaries on current political and social events. However, like the life of the poor, the fate of these cartoons were in constant flux; erased either by rain or an errant police man.

Most critically, the story is not a mere chronicle of life and times in the poor of London and Paris. Orwell goes further and questions Society and its need for plongeurs and tramps. He breaks down the romanticisation of poverty and exposes hunger and boredom, hopelessness and a deadening of aspirations. He questions why money has become 'a grand test for virtue'. Almost a century later, we are still asking the same questions.

'You discover the boredom which is inseparable from poverty; the times when you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing...You discover that a man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs...The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually.'

An Ode to Ai

2013-05-04T13:54:00.000+05:30

Picture credit: Sunflower Seeds @ Tate Modern from The Gaurdian

[Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, often been prosecuted by his government for vocalising his dissent against some of the atrocities by the ruling party. He has, through his art and impassioned words, inspired thousands of people in China and across the world, showing that free speech and equality are not too audacious a dream. Disillusioned about the State of India, I find hope and heart in Ai Weiwei’s work. This is my tribute to him.]

Aye Ai Weiwei

We’re fighting the same battles you and I

You, warring hard against The Man of Ming

As my land oscillates between starving bellies and Ka-ching.

You’re hammering at the walls they’ve fenced you in Ai Weiwei

An artist bound by an imagination too free

I drown in the ideological barrenness of the perfect Democratic Dilemma

the nightmare of no choice: I sift through political debris.

You’re raging fire against the calm dragon Ai Weiwei,

That tramples free speech and ambition too high

We’re following stealthily; the crouching tiger

Rudderless, we taste death everyday with our morning chai.

They tell me that I (young and bright-eyed) am The Future Ai Weiwei,

oh yes, They give me rose-tinted glasses and then snatch away my view

What of this land they’ve tunnelled, the people they’ve pummelled

Don’t I deserve a hero to build castles on too?

It is a cruel desperate yuga we live in Ai Weiwei

And my soul is a-shudder, it truly is

Draw me a map now will you Ai Weiwei?

A less profane route out of this abyss.

Where is the Exit Sign?

2013-04-09T20:00:00.002+05:30

White. A plain white shirt was always the safest colour to go with. He squinted in the mirror, tucking in his shirt into his jeans, as he patted down his hair. He had a good feeling about this one. He had known Veena for a few months now. He liked the way she looked. Not like the girls who seemed splattered all over Delhi, the ones who couldn't stop pirouetting and pouting like plastic playthings. He liked that she spoke her mind, though sometimes she could become unbearably bossy. But then which woman wasn't?

He counted the cash in his wallet and swore. Being jobless in Delhi was to belong to a strange class of people. The capital reeked of money and consumerism, its wicked temptations pursuing his weaknesses unabashedly. Friends made plans to go to the latest club he could ill afford, most girls expected him to pay for their coffee and those horrendously overpriced muffins they’d nibble a minuscule bit of and discard. “Women’s lib was such hypocritical hogwash. They still want you holding the door open and paying the bills but not have an opinion, for thatwould be biased”, he thought to himself as he wore his watch. He was in a mood he couldn't place, but it wasn't pretty. He felt uncomfortable, as if he had been holding his breath for too long and needed to exhale. Slowly. But there was no time for such things. “Need to run and catch the metro. Thank god she’s picking me up in her car.”

Gone were the days of enjoying the cool comforts of Delhi’s modern metro, applauded as the best transport system in the country, the answer to Delhi’s clogged roads and saviour of all things jammed. Now as he squeezed into the compartment, he instantly regretted wearing his white ironed shirt. But then he hadn't been out with a girl for so long now, the utter tragedy of that realisation alone demanded he wear his favourite white. He looked down at his worn out shoes and grinned in satisfaction. He didn't want to look like he was trying too hard.

Painting from Marc Johns

Looking around he heard some men grunt over the recent introduction of a ladies compartment in the metro. They thought it was unfair. At the other end of the compartment, two young boys stood preening themselves by looking at their reflection in the window panes. They could pass off as twins with their gravity defying spiked hair and gravity kissing jeans. They were wearing those colourful shoes that were suddenly all the rage. He looked beyond them, through the window and saw the gigantic Hanuman statue rush past. Comforted by its familiarity, and disgusted by the utter redundancy of the useless conversations around him, he took out his iPod. Plugging in the earphones, he let Metallica take over. The restlessness around him for the past few months was reaching a crescendo. He had gone home to Kanpur a few weeks ago but that had done little to calm him. His father had disapproved of his giving up the well paying job to ‘do something meaningful’.

His father, usually aloof and taciturn, had suddenly found a voice. “God knows what has happened to you youngsters these days. In our time we would get a job and stick to it. We would work hard to raise our family, send you kids to school, and pay for Dadiji’s medicines. Yes, we often got bored but we had to take of our responsibilities. Not like you, just getting up and leaving when things get slightly uncomfortable.”

His mother, who believed that everything could be cured with a good meal, hovered around him, carrying with her, an air of silent tragedy. Whenever he tried to talk to her about his plans of trying to figure out his ‘direction’, her eyes would threaten to turn moist and he’d hastily retreat into reticence. The only time she would become animated and verbose was at the mention of matrimony, a topic he had begun to abhor. Seeing no way of finding any space for thought at home, he had returned to the dusty cacophony of Delhi.

* * *

What was he doing here? Looking at the high ceilings and indecipherable artwork, he wondered how Veena had managed to get convince him to attend the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art. She had gushed about circles and lines on the phone, how he would appreciate it if he really saw what the artist was seeing. Looking at the psychedelic patterns, he felt slightly cross-eyed and nauseous. Next, Veena wanted to pick up some books from Jain Book Depot. She ignored the broad counter with its bevy of somnolent salesmen, turgid with the ebbing heat of a summer evening, and made her way up to the little loft they had on top. He watched her as she gleaned through the bookshelves.

It was a tiny space filled with the apologetic air of unloved books, the ones no student wanted, the ones that fell off the best-seller lists, those that were worn and battered. Veena’s face lit up as she sniffed appreciatively at the book in her hands. Some strands of hair fell over her eyes, he guessed an expensive day at the parlour had orchestrated that look of casual messiness. Her jeans hugged her hips beautifully and he smiled at her curled toes. After some languid browsing, she decided on a book and finally moved onto the last part of the ‘date’. Drinks at that new (and more importantly almost affordable) place he’d heard about. He liked the place. They had a decent band that played songs on request and the drinks, though expensive, were not exorbitant. At least in Delhi terms. They ordered. He needed a rum and Coke. The noise in his head was giving him a dull ache now. She chose a beer and insisted on her favourite: crispy honey chilli potatoes, which she informed him in a very serious tone, were the best thing ever. She had a way of overemphasising some words which grew more annoying as the evening wore on.

They chatted of common acquaintances and insignificant going ons. He looked at her and felt his brain implode. Sitting in front of her, he couldn't hear any words, her mouth moved rapidly and he was reminded of a disturbing short story he had read about a carnivorous Venus Flytrap. Shaking his head to get rid of these murmurs, he glugged down his rum and ordered another. He knew he could ill afford it but with a meltdown seeming alarmingly close, he needed something to soothe his senses. The music was too loud now and he was feeling hot around the collar. He decided to concentrate on the conversation and frowned in mock attentiveness.

“Oh I have been talking so much! Why don’t you tell me something about yourself? I heard you quit your job! Who does that yaar, especially in these times when jobs are so tough to get. That too in Ernst and Young! E and Y man, you've got to be kidding me!”

Slowly, her words registered on the shifting sands of his mind. He smiled at her and made no effort to answer. He picked up his glass and took a large gulp. Then he closed his tired eyes and let the music wash over him.

[Dug out from The Drafts of 2010/11. Inspired by marigold boy.]