Aparajito

A few days back, when I was watching Aparajito – alone, late into the night – a strange sense of sadness came upon me. There was this particular scene where adolescent Apu, sitting by his somewhat dazed mother, is trying to explain a globe to her, and she looks at him with a look that is a mix of tenderness, awe, and happiness. Or the scene where the mother is packing Apu’s suitcase with much care, remembering to put all the things he might need for the journey ahead to Calcutta where he is going to study in a college – while Apu is eager and impatient to experience the new life of freedom and learning, his mother is concerned about the loneliness she feels to let him go away from her, which she comes to realize, is probably forever.

Aparajito, probably the least recognized of the Apu Trilogy, is an amazing film. It might not have the early lyrical appeal of Pather Panchali, or the later beauty and romance of Apur Sansar, but it’s a film of poignant realization – a film about growing up and growing apart, a subtle portrayal of increasing alienation from the one who loves you most.

Aparajito essentially is a story of mother-son relationship – a relationship that changes inevitably over time. It’s about a lonely mother who invests all her life to her son with the hope of a better future, only to realize that their futures can only grow apart, and about a son who is caught between the excitements of his dreams and his duty to remain close to his ageing mother. In fact, there’s nothing new to the theme, but the way Satyajit Ray crafts the film makes it an indelible experience to watch, almost emotionally draining.

It is a very difficult moment when you have to let go. It is specially so when you have to let go of something/someone you have nurtured all your life. You know it’s for better, but you can’t accept it either. Like Apu’s mother, who sees her son off with a vague smile, only to plunge into terrible loneliness the moment he is out of her sight.

Slowness

"There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."

- From Milan Kundera’s Slowness

I started reading Slowness a few days back. And either as a result of paying too much heed to the book’s title, or because the book contains some wonderful passages (which demanded pausing and re-reading and pausing again), I am finding myself still stuck at around the first quarter of the book.

But, of course, I am in no hurry.

P.S. Also, by the way, here’s a somewhat related piece I wrote long back, In praise of slowness, which is neither about Kundera nor the book, but about slowness nonetheless.

Up there

• Atop the hill, after a steep climb, the gate of the fort is a welcome sight. There is nothing very majestic about the gate – it's rather narrow and without any decorative curving – but it's still strong and sturdy, and it's standing there even after centuries of guarding and protecting. Before I enter, I touch the cold stones and wonder what all this gate must have witnessed.
  

• The clouds keep enveloping the rocky fort – hiding everything behind the veil of mist. Occasionally, the veil lifts and the valleys below are visible – tiny little villages, fields, waters of a dam, thread-like trails vanishing in the hills.

• We sit near an edge, sweat trickling down our face after all the climbing, as the cool moist breeze caresses us. The grass flutters in the wind and there is no sound except the buzzing of wind through bushes.

• Tall strong walls of the fort, once invincible, stand dilapidated. The stones slabs are covered with soft velvety moss, wet with the drizzle. From some cracks in the wall wild flowers bloom with abandon.

• A stray dog climbs with us and keeps our company, probably knowing that at the end there will be some food. We feed him crumbs of biscuits.

• There is a little chit-chat for a while, as we stretch our legs and take some rest, eat, and drink. But after some time everyone sits quiet, immersed in own thought. Only silence floats around us.

In the Mood for Love

It’s 1962 in Hong Kong. Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) have just moved into an apartment building as neighbors. They both lead a rather lonely life because their spouses are always away on business trips. Over repeated and prolonged absences of their spouses, they both come to realize that their spouses are actually carrying on a clandestine affair. They are both heartbroken as they realize the truth. And over time, out of their mutual loneliness and sorrow, there grows a tender relationship between them as they seek refuge in each other’s company. But they are so conscious and dignified – they don’t want to be like their spouses, they say, and they vow not to get carried away – that they refuse to acknowledge the love that they both start feeling for each other. Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love is about the subdued melancholy of love that both these characters experience, the tumultuous feelings they want to bury within them, and the enormous restraint that they exercise to avoid ending like their partners.

In the Mood for Love is a vibrant, colorful, and dizzyingly romantic film. It’s about love – unrequited and unconsummated. So when, near the end of the film, four years later, Chow, in the ruins of old temples in Combodia, whispers his secret in a hole in the wall and buries it up with mud in the hope of getting rid of his secret (it’s an old belief), it becomes a scene of extreme poignancy. And, of course, what heightens the mood of melancholy of the film is the impeccable acting, the dreamlike cinematography and the haunting background score.

I found the whole film to be available on YouTube (that’s where I watched it but probably it’s not the best way to watch the film). Incidentally, the film will also come on Zee Studio on 24th of August, just in case you didn’t know already.

At the dentist's clinic

I am waiting nervously at the reception of the dentist’s clinic. There are quite a few people waiting for their turn but looking at their faces I cannot tell if they are at all nervous – they just sit quietly reading glossy magazines. Which, of course, do not make me any less nervous. The dentist is going to drill my teeth today and all the while I am repeatedly asking myself “How painful it is to get one’s teeth drilled?” Obviously, the only way to know it is to wait for my turn.

I do just that – wait – when I overhear a conversation at the reception counter. A woman has come looking for an appointment with the dentist and the girl at the reception counter is asking her some preliminary question before fixing up an appointment.

“Name?’ the girl asks, the woman replies.

“Phone number?” the girl asks, the woman replies.

“Date of birth?” the girl asks. “Why do you need that?” the woman counter-questions, a little annoyed. The girl understands, smiles, and replies (with a mock apology) that she needs it because the software on the computer asks for it. The woman, somewhat irritated, tells the date of birth anyway – the date and month quite audibly, but just before she tells the year she leans over the counter and whispers in a manner reserved only for top secrets agents.

“Wow! You don’t look like it,” the girl says, excited. The woman is visibly pleased and mumbles something to the girl.

Meanwhile, I am much amused with all these happenings and am quietly smiling to myself, oblivious of the drilling thing I am about to undergo. And probably because I was sitting very close, or because I was unknowingly eavesdropping, I overhear the year that the woman mentions so surreptitiously. My head automatically starts calculating. But before I could calculate her age (I am rather slow at calculating) the dentist calls out my name and in an instant I forget everything else and run inside the chamber.

And now, while I am writing this, I have already calculated the woman’s age, but the drilling experience have made me so completely forgot her appearance that I cannot remember if she actually looked too young or too old for her real age.

Unread

"He is a man without qualities… There are millions of them nowadays… What he thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context – nothing is, to him, what it is; everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to a superwhole that, however, he knows nothing about. So every answer he gives is only a partial answer, every feeling only an opinion, and he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is."

– Robert Musil

For some time now, I had been literally struggling with Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. I knew I was being more than ambitious when I picked up this mammoth book – I’d heard that this book was notorious for challenging the readers’ patience – but didn't realize it'll make me give up so soon.

The first time I picked up the book, which was some months back, I couldn’t go beyond the first few chapters. So dense was the language and so varied were the thoughts running through the book, I felt like burdened with a heaviness that almost exhausted my mind. This was perhaps because none of the books that I had read so far prepared me for something like Musil’s way of writing. This is a book built on ideas – and for most part it leaves the plot (there isn’t much of a so-called plot, anyway, and the book actually remained unfinished when Musil died) to take long rambling pauses and expound thoughts/ideas that seems to go farther away from the actual plot. All these seem to leave the story hanging, leaving me all the more flummoxed at being taken to so many directions and yet not going anywhere. In fact, there’s not much of the linear story-telling that we’re otherwise used to in novels; there’s very little exterior detail about the places and people that inhabit the book; and the book is just a dense cloud of thoughts that grows thicker as it progresses. Obviously, it demands continued patience and lots of will from the reader. And, I must admit, right now I am facing a shortage of both.

I was again toying with the book last night when I realized that, perhaps, I picked up the book at a wrong time – for this is a phase when I am in a strange frame of mind, and I’m least prepared to commit myself to a book that demands such extreme attention.

So, right now, I am keeping the book at an arm’s stretch, just to allow myself to flip through the pages at times, and remind myself that it is lying there, unread.

Tagged, again

Plain Jane tagged me to:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

Now, there are a few books lying around, unread. And, looking at them gives me a guilty feeling.

So, I skip the unread ones and from the table I pick up a book I read long back – Milan Kundera’s The Book of laughter and Forgetting. On page 123, after the first 5 lines, I find:

“A novel?” asked Banaka disapprovingly.

Bibi corrected herself evasively: “It won’t necessarily be a novel.”

“Just think about what a novel is,” said Banaka.

Now the thing is, I don’t know what is being spoken here, although I claim to have read this book. So, curious, I want to re-read the book (which is good enough since I’m not reading anything these days, not even newspapers).

Coming to the last part of the tag, I realize that I don’t even know five people whom I can tag. So, all of you who read this, consider yourself tagged.

During the rains

The rains are here. Sometimes it’s a heavy shower, sometimes just a drizzle. But, most of the times, the sky is overcast, the air is humid, and the signs of monsoon are just about everywhere – from the hillsides that are turning greener to the mud stains that are appearing on the clothes. And now, if I get to hear frogs croaking somewhere one of these days, the monsoon picture will be complete.

Indeed, if you ever pause and think about it, each change of season seems truly overwhelming.

The onset of rains, however, did nothing much help me come out of my present state of disorientation. If anything, it made me more of a sloth. I kept passing my time in usual idleness. When it rained, if I happened to at home, I would stand in the balcony, leaning on the railing, gazing at the dark monsoon clouds as they filled up the entire sky. Sometimes, waking up from sleep, if I found it to be raining, I would keep lying on the bed listening to the sound of rain, and allowing my mind to wander. Occasionally, coming out of office, if I found it to be raining, I would wait for the bus under the gulmohar tree, and watch the raindrops dripping from its leaves.

I know I have this tendency to go gaga over rains, but I sincerely find it worth going gaga.

PS: I have to admit that I didn’t have much to write anything of late. Or rather, on a more honest note, I couldn’t really bring myself to write anything. Many a times I sat down and typed a few lines, only to delete them later and wring my hands in despair. It seems silly of course, how this inability to put up a post, was affecting me. I hope, with this post, I break the barren spell.

PPS: This post is the result of a comment from Plain Jane.

After the rain

It rained yesterday. While going home, in the bus, I sat watching the windowpanes blurred by the splattering raindrops, and it made me happy, like always.

The rains, however, also brought about too many difficulties -- clogged drains, flooded roads, traffic jams, power cuts, slushy pavements, and much chaos in general.

I somehow dodged the troubles and reached home safe. But, of course, when I reached home the electricity was out. On another day, I might have cursed badly. Yesterday, however, I managed to keep my outrage at bay, and lit the candle that was lying unused by my bedside for far too long. And I contemplated, later in the evening when I lay in my bed reading by the flickering flame, that this was indeed a fine evening, that the power cut was quite tolerable, that the crawling lines of printed black words in the yellow light looked pretty beautiful, that the shadows in the wall looked dreamlike and mysterious, that there seemed nothing amiss at all.

And, then the lights came. Everything suddenly came to life. The small flickering candle-light started looking inadequate and my interest in the book started waning. Finally, I snuffed out the candle, shut the book, and opened the laptop.

By the time I finally closed the laptop I realized, much to my chagrin, it was already quite late and I had just wasted away my evening.

Just read

He sets aside a weekend for his first experiment with prose. The story that emerges from the experiment, if that is what it is, a story, has no real plot. Everything of importance happens in the mind of the narrator, a nameless young man all too like himself who takes a nameless girl to a lonely beach and watches while she swims. From some small action of hers, some unconscious gesture, he is suddenly convinced she has been unfaithful to him; furthermore, he realizes that she has seen he knows, and does not care. That is all. That is how the piece ends. That is the sum of it.

From Youth
by J.M. Coetzee

PS: Sometimes, you happen to read something and, unknowingly, you start liking it so much that you want to read out it to someone sitting next to you. Since I don't have anyone sitting next to me right now, I'm posting it up.

From the mountains to the sea

Whoever was happy with the thought that this blog is dead already should be ready for some disappointment.

I’m back.

Well, I had a short vacation recently, and I thought it appropriate to use my vacation story as a come-back vehicle. And, additionally, this time I have a few snaps to tell the tale.

… on a bright day, on a small train…

… winding through the slopes of mountains…

... gazing at the horizon...

… long winding dusty tracks that get lost in the woods…

… panoramic view at the top…

… one old bungalow named Mon Repos…

… abandoned in the wilderness…

… sitting by the sea…

… collecting colorful shells…

… watching the sunset…

… lying under a green canopy…

… boat ride to a sea fort…

… old cannons on guard….

… the road back …

Excuse me for putting up so many photos. By now you must have realized that this is just a shabby effort to hide the fact that I could not write anything worth putting up here; hence, the profusion of photos.

Filmy evenings

The past few evenings were spent at NFAI – sitting inside a dimly lit and freezing cold theater – among eager crowds, loud laughs, and hesitant whispers; among teenagers with their hordes of chattering friends; among aloof and not-so-young people with a grave air; among the hustle and bustle of somewhat unruly crowd and the harassed staff; and of course, among the eclectic mix of films. These were enjoyable evenings.

Except for a day, when my glasses broke and my eyes were rendered practically useless, I went everyday. Everyday, after office I would head straight to the venue, quietly slip inside the auditorium, wait for the films to begin, catch the fragments of conversation floating around, look around the sea of unknown faces, and generally try to fend off a feeling of loneliness induced by all these goings-on around me.

I don’t think I got tremendously affected by any of the films on offer. They were either mediocre, or good, but not great. Of course, this is just a personal feeling. There is every possibility that I missed the points altogether.

Still, a few films come to my mind as I write this.

• Long Weekend, which is a hostage drama. But more than suspense, it’s an exploration of relationships.
• Bye Bye Blackbird, which is period drama with a traveling circus in the backdrop. The only things I remember of this film are the dizzying, and dreamlike shots of trapeze performance.
• After the Wedding, which is a drama around a family’s secret. It’s a bit high on melodrama, but is a good watch anyway.
• You and Me, which is funny and breezy. Marion Cotillard and Julie Depardieu, both, are treats to watch.
  

Before I finish, I should as well talk about another film. It wasn’t part of European Union Film Festival and is therefore somehow unrelated to this post. But, I’d specially like to mention it because I found it much more satisfying than all the films that I watched in the festival. Yesterday, NFAI showed Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati, a short film based on a Munshi Premchand story exploring the the deep-rooted caste system in India. Satyajit Ray refuses to view the story simply as a oppressor versus oppressed, and brings out the complexities of class dynamics, which, over years of unquestioned practice, have affected the psyche of both classes. Sadgati is short, solid, and shows the assured touch of the master film-maker.

Six stories

If you are not averse to digital storytelling and do not mind reading an interactive story, you can check the site We Tell Stories and read the six stories listed therein.

I somehow stumbled upon it today and have already read The 21 Steps and Fairy Tales, in between my work at office. Both the stories, I must admit, I enjoyed – The 21 Steps, for being funny and intelligent; and Fairy Tales, for letting me shape the story my way. Needless to say, I’m eager to read the other stories as well; but, you see, one also needs to do some work while at office.

Anyway, if you have got some time to spare, you can read them.

Enjoy!

They said

• Something I considered the biggest asset of yours… was your lazy attitude.

• Though you can do hard work, you prefer doing that only when the problem knocks on your door.

• I had always confided in you with my problems, like many of us, and it is the trust you command that has made us do it.

• You have enough capabilities. Yet, the way you make use of it (rather, don’t make use of it) is puzzling.

• I should not give you advice as my case is also hopeless.

• … All of us seem to be infected with optimism disease (to quote Rushdie) that we’ll meet some day. But, practicalities are insurmountable and however good friends we may be, I know that you won’t catch a train to Mumbai if you feel like meeting me and neither would I do something that impulsive. Except, optimistically speaking, through serendipity, we might be at the same place at the same time. But then what? I know so many people, good friends living in the same place who haven’t had the time in years to call up and say hello.

• Rest is laid unspoken.

These are lines extracted from one of my old diaries. Years ago, while we were parting after four years of staying together, my friends in college wrote them down for me – reminiscing, thanking, advising, admonishing, and generally asking to ‘keep in touch’.

Except for occasional phone conversations or emails no one is really ‘in touch’ these days. And even if we end up talking on phone sometime, the conversation becomes tedious and forced. The lively banter of yesteryear is now replaced with more important talks of career, money, investments, marriage, etc. (which, I admit, are definitely important, but somehow doesn’t really make up for stimulating conversation).

But, why exactly this sudden spurt of nostalgia, you may ask?

I blame it on summer heat. Besides making my days dull and lethargic, it is also giving me sleepless nights. And on sleepless nights it is only natural to find yourself crowded with old memories. Old memories – they come to you in the quiet of the night, keeps you awake, only to fade away in the bright daylight.

Once

The fiery red flowers dot the roadsides, announcing the onset of spring with a sudden youthfulness. Oblivious of the dust, smoke, pollution, and the scorching Sun, the gulmohars are in bloom again, driving away the drabness with a vivacious display of colors.

But, sadly, the gulmohar tree I used to walk by last year is no longer there. Don't know when it vanished. Maybe, in the process of road-widening it has been chopped off and disposed away. The place where it once stood is empty now. There is nothing to suggest that there once stood such a beautiful tree.

Disquiet

Saturday afternoons were a quiet time in the campus. And now with the semester exams around the corner it took an even deserted look. The leisurely crowds that thronged at different corners of the campus and indulged in endless gossip were nowhere to be seen these days.

“It’s like one of the fairy tale cities which have been put to sleep by some evil magician,” she thought as she walked past the co-operative building, where on other days she always found boys sipping cold drinks and gossiping. But today was different. Even on the road towards the library building she didn’t find a single soul. “Maybe, I should have remained in the hostel room,” she thought, by now feeling a little depressed over her own dismal preparation for the imminent exam. But she didn’t feel like going back to her room, where, she knew, she’ll inevitably find her roommate taking a nap. It was a method most of the hostelers used during exam season – sleeping in the afternoon and doing a night-out, studying all night long. She detested it. Moreover, she knew, even if she goes back now, she would neither be able to study nor sleep, however hard she tried.

Absent-mindedly, she walked past the empty classrooms and entered the library. The reading room on the second floor was nearly as deserted; just a few final-year students scattered around the tables with their heads buried in books. For a few moments she just surveyed around the shelves, without knowing what to do. She picked up a Taub & Schilling, flipped through a few pages, and put it back. No, she won’t understand a thing of digital integrated circuits at this moment.

Finally, she picked up a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica and sat on a table near the big glass window. Opening the book, she turned the pages, aimlessly, and pretty soon got bored again. “What if I break into a loud song now? Or scream with all my might?” The impossibility of the situation amused her much, and she turned her head to look out of the window, trying to suppress a giggle. Outside, the last rays of the sun were slipping away. A leafy silence spread all over the campus. Soon, the streetlights would come on to usher in the evening.

She closed the book and rose to leave.

On her way back to the hostel, she stopped by the lake. There wasn’t the faintest of breeze; the waters stood calm in the twilight. For a few minutes she kept gazing at the serene surface, lost in her own thought. Then, just before she was about to walk away, she picked up a pebble and threw it on the lake. Tiny ripples filled the surface, spreading in ever-widening circles.

Tagged

They say, you always remember your firsts. I don’t know if getting tagged for the first time counts as one of your firsts. But I’m worked up, nonetheless.

I’m talking of tagging memes, which keep doing the rounds in blogosphere. I’ve seen them before, and have also enjoyed reading some of the quirky memes. But, well, I never thought I’ll write one myself. To me, it was a silly thing to do.

But, ahem, you sometimes have to eat your own words. And here I’m doing exactly that. (As an afterthought though, I think, it was probably a case of ‘sour grapes.’ The truth was, nobody ever tagged me before.)

Okay, now let’s come to the tag. Plain Jane has tagged me asking to make a list of things that lay by my bedside.

To begin with, I should tell that I don’t have a bedside table or closet. So when I say bedside it actually means the bed itself, except for a few things which lay on the floor but within such close proximity of the bed that they can also be listed as bedside objects.

And now, without further ado, my list:

1. Three candles, which lay on the floor, waiting for a chance to burn on a night when there will be a power cut.
2. An electric iron, which keeps shifting between the bed and the floor.
3. A mosquito repellent and a cell phone charger, either of which I plug into the electric socket before going to sleep.
4. Two books borrowed recently from British Library – Rites of Spring (a collection of short stories) and Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (an anthology).
5. Nalini Jones’ book What You Call Winter, which I’m currently reading. And My Own Country by Abraham Varghese, which I’ve kept as an alternative read.
6. Illustrated Oxford English Dictionary, which I’ve kept at me bedside for two reasons. One, because it can double up as an extra pillow at times, should I feel the need sometime. Two, as a ready reference, because on many occasions I’ve found myself spoiling my precious sleep trying to figure out the meaning of some silly words.
7. A few desiccated stalks of rajanigandha, lying on the floor, and still giving off a faint fragrance.
8. A pen and two old diaries.
   

Library

A few days back I got myself a British Library membership. Well, honestly, I was a bit disheartened to find that the size of the library was rather small, and the membership fee was rather high. But then, I haven’t been able to locate a decent library in the city so far. So, I decided to give it a try anyway, exorbitant fee notwithstanding.

Anyways, it’s not British Library that I want to write about. I want to write about a different library, a place where I spent much of my childhood and teenage years, and which comes to my mind whenever I browse through books in any library. It was a place which initiated me to the world of books, and gave me an escape from my own boring life. For a nondescript small town, the District Library I frequented was indeed a well stocked library, although a bit carelessly maintained. My adolescent eyes, however, found it to be a place of mystery and dreamlike serenity. Rows and rows of books stacked in tall shelves, almirah-full of hardbound books with golden lettering on their spine, damp dark corners where frail and forgotten books lay among cobwebs and dust, a musty smell of old yellowing pages hanging in air, lengthening shadows stretched across the floor – all these made my visits to the library, often on quiet drowsy afternoons, a sort of dream and adventure.

I could borrow two books at a time, for a fortnight. But often, I’d go back within a week, having read the books back to back. In my early days, however, I didn’t go beyond the children’s section, from where I picked up fairy tales and detective/adventure novels with flashy covers. My reading was further limited by the fact that I didn’t have the confidence to touch the English books – I could read only Assamese and Bengali translations. It would be many years later when, with my teenage restlessness, I would venture out to the books on other shelves, and discover different shores. Those were exciting times as I’d find love, betrayal, conspiracy, pain, and myriad human emotions knocking me over. Sometimes, a book would keep me awake late into the night, with racing heartbeats, and confounding my mind with doubt, guilt, and embarrassment, as if I had tasted a forbidden pleasure.

I often wonder, what I’d have done during those rather boring days of my adolescence, if I hadn’t found this treasure-trove of books, where mysteries unfolded, adventures happened, and dreams took wings.

EUFF '08

Just a small piece of info.

Someone looking for information on European Union Film Festival landed up in this blog. Well, I didn’t have any relevant information here, but this query prompted me to find out if there was any info available somewhere else.

Which made me dig out this link.

The 13^th European Film Festival is indeed here. Pune will have it from 24 to 30 April. Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Kozhikode are the other cities where this festival will be staged.

Eggs and vegetables

It’s after weeks that I go to buy some vegetables from the old woman who sits around the corner with her baskets spread around her. She feigns surprise at seeing me after so long, and asks in her funny broken Hindi, “Arre, kya khaya itne din?”

Now, maybe, she’s not genuinely interested in what I ate all these days; she is probably more concerned about whether I’m buying vegetables from somewhere else. But, she asks it with such a big grin that I have no option but to grin back.

After I paid, she drops a free lemon in the bag of vegetables. Well, this again might be her marketing trick, I assume, but it makes me happy, anyway. All I can think at that moment is I’m going to make a lemonade when I get home.

Next, I go to the small grocery shop from where I buy eggs. This grocer is a talkative man, and sometimes, when he’s in a good mood, he tells me how he went different places while he was serving in the Army; or how the prices of eggs have fallen because of Bird Flu scare; or how he once saw a reckless bike accident (he told this one when he saw a few scratches on my face). Well, he can be irritating at times; particularly when I’m in a hurry. But, some days, when I haven’t talked to anyone the whole day, his talks amuse me much.

Sigh!

I know. I know I am a boring person.

Some rain and a book

Several good things happened this weekend. I’ll mention two of them.

First, it rained. On Saturday evening came the first rain of the season, catching most of us unawares. I was riding home and was on the University Circle flyover when I saw the dense dark clouds looming large. The wind was catching speed, dry leaves were fluttering around, and everyone looked up at the sky and hurried up to reach their destinations before the rains started. I too sped up. It started drizzling while I was still on the road, but it was only after I reached home that the rains came down in torrents. Reaching home, I opened the windows wide, dragged a chair to the balcony, and sat with legs stretched on the railings, ready to watch the show.

Second, I read Ruskin Bond’s autobiography Scenes From a Writer’s Life, which I had been wanting to read, but couldn't find anywhere. Then, this weekend I got a call from Landmark Bookstore informing me that they have brought the book, for which I had put a requisition earlier. I bring the book home and finish it at one go (except for a few hours of sleep in between), which is rare because I’m generally a slow reader and I amble through a book for weeks and months. But, there’s something about Ruskin Bond’s prose that makes me read non-stop. And this book was no exception. I liked it right from the Dedication page, which reads ‘For you, my gentle reader’. (How can you not love a book which is dedicated to you?) Anyway, I had been familiar with most the events in Ruskin Bond’s life by virtue of my previous readings of his books, but as he says, ‘the autobiographical element is present in much of my work, but there is really more fiction than the reader may realize.’ So, when I read this book, bare of all the imagination and fiction he creates around him, his story looked more forlorn, more heartbreaking.

Indeed, after reading Scenes From a Writer’s Life you realize why V.S. Naipaul says, ‘I have read nothing like that from India or anywhere else. It's very simple. Everything is underplayed, and the truths of the book come rather slowly at you. He is writing about solitude, tremendous solitude. He himself doesn't say it. He leaves it all to you to pick up.’

At NFAI

Summer afternoons are getting rather dull. And in the hope of livening up a little, on one of these particularly boring summer afternoons, I decided to pass my time watching a couple of films that were being screened at NFAI, as part of the Pune Film Treasures Festival. They had been showing films there for the last three days, but I somehow couldn’t catch up with any of them. There were two reasons, actually. First, I got to know about it pretty late. And second, I wasn’t really interested in the films they were showing. But as I said, when summer evenings get rather dull, you really want to do something. So, yesterday, I forced myself out of office and walked into a cozy nook of the NFAI auditorium quite ahead of time. The auditorium, with its rather cool interiors and dim lights, was very sleep-inducing, and I would really have dozed off had it not been some chattering ladies at my back, who kept talking till someone walked up the dais to introduce the film to be shown.

The first screening was Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris, which I found rather disappointing and baffling. Well, maybe it was my inability to understand the film, but I couldn’t really grasp what the film was trying to say.

The second film, Fritz Lang’s 1953 film noir The Big Heat, was much like a typical good vs. bad story, where an honest cop investigating a case goes a little too far and pays with his wife’s life. The Big Heat is a story of his vengeance. Gripping and fast-paced, it doesn’t waste a moment. Of course, I won’t call it a great film – the film feels rather simplistic and uni-dimensional – but it sure had the charm.

It was good fun.

Fragments

Once in a while there comes a book which opens the windows to the heart of its characters with such honesty and finesse that you don’t even realize how and when these characters leap from the pages and become real images, complete with their own voices, mannerisms, and eccentricities; their innermost thoughts lying before us, unwrapped of all the nice coverings.

Anjum Hasan’s debut novel Lunatic in My Head is one such book.

The book begins on a drizzly Shillong afternoon and goes on to traverse the lives of the three protagonists – Firdaus Ansari, the middle-aged college teacher who is trying to negotiate with her unwritten PhD thesis and a much younger fickle-minded tribal boyfriend, both unsuccessfully; Aman Moondy, the twenty-three-year-old who sees life through the music of Pink Floyd, is infatuated with Concordella, and is preparing to attempt IAS for the second time; and Sophie Das, the eight-year-old girl who realizes that “it was incumbent on her to lie, that the truth was often so shabby and unconvincing that she needed to embellish it merely in order to have something interesting to say.”

Anjum Hasan’s observation is sharp and her understanding of people and place is through. But more than anything else, I liked Lunatic in My Head for its language. Be it when Aman “on the bed with its clean sheet smelling of detergent… lay on his side crying, his tears running across the bridge of his nose and down the side of his face into one of his ears”; or when Firdaus “occasionally look up from her reading and stare at the wall, trying to form a sentence or two in her head, but then inevitably dismiss it as weak and unoriginal, and continue with her reading”; or when Sophie, punished by her teacher to stand at the rear of the classroom, “stood at her new position in silence, flaking off the plaster from the wall with her thumbnail”, I paused many a times while reading, overwhelmed by the images portrayed.

I think this is where fiction triumphs – despite all the disclaimers, we know that the book, taken as a whole, might be an act of imagination, but when broken down to fragments, each piece is a reflection of our own lives.

And Anjum Hasan has collected these fragments with much care and has given us a wonderful book.

Wayward

You are sick of this idleness. You want to do something. Maybe, write something. And, whatever it is, you want to do it now. Yes, now.

All you do in a day is go for a 9-to-5 job and cook your dinner. Okay, there’s some amount of TV and books as well. But that’s pretty much it. Sometimes, when you lie idle and keep staring into the ceiling, too many weird thoughts come to your mind, and you realize, with a sigh, that your mind has indeed become a devil’s workshop.

You pause here. Hmm, you have begun well, but now what. How to take it forward?

You look around. You try to gather your thoughts. You remember that you’ve recently read an article where the author has warned, “Writing Fiction is not for the faint-hearted. The mortality rate is higher than that of Test pilots.”

But you are not to be deterred by such warnings, of course. Writers are a funny breed of people, you know, they love to say funny things. Not to take them too seriously. After all, the above-mentioned author, by the end of the essay, advises, ‘Never listen to older writers.’

Well, that’s all fine – these writers and their funny quotes. What annoys you, however, is that all these unnecessary readings that you do, affects you adversely, and pulls your thoughts to multiple directions, muddling you further.

Oh, see where you began, and where you’ve reached! It’s always like this, you realize – the thing you begin with, end up as something utterly unrecognizable, as if by some magic.

You give too much liberty to your thoughts, you realize. You are too lazy and lenient to achieve anything, leave alone writing.

You pause here again. A few minutes later, you find yourself counting how many paragraphs you’ve written – eight already! Not bad.

Suddenly, you feel content and happy. You don’t want to calculate where you began and where you have reached.

You’re a hopeless piece, no doubt, but you don’t care.

The stalker

She stops walking suddenly.

My heart skips a beat.

“Shit!” I mutter with disgust and quickly hide my face behind the long strips of gutkha pouches hanging down from the roadside paan shop.

Why does she stop like this today? Could she sense that I was following her? Did I make any mistake? She did seem to be walking a little self-consciously for the last few minutes – too many thoughts come to me simultaneously.

I wait with bated breath; my heart thumps vigorously. What if she walks up to me now and confronts me?

I peep at her – she is bending down and taking off the shoe from her left leg.

I freeze like I’ve seen something ominous. I almost feel like fainting. My head goes blank. Is she actually going to charge towards me with that shoe in her hand? Well, doesn’t seem plausible, but how can one be sure.

I peep again – she now stands on one leg (the shoeless leg bent slightly above ground). I eagerly wait for her next movement. She takes a few seconds to balance herself first. Then she upturns the shoe in her hand and shakes it. A pebble drops off.

Ha! that's it then.

By the time I've recovered, I see her walk away again.

I take a few seconds to decide and then ask the panwallah, "One Navy Cut."

I light the cigarette and watch her walk away.

March-ing

Almost a week into March, and I've not come up with a post. Not that it’s absolutely important or something (it’s just a self-gratifying exercise, as I’ve admitted before). It makes no difference anywhere, anyway. And most probably, barring a couple of people, nobody will even notice if I stop this blog today. Which is justified because I cannot claim that anybody might gain anything by reading this blog. There are better things to read and better things to do in this world than to come here and read my ramblings. But if you still come here to read, you’ve got patience!

But anyway, I think I make a post because it makes me happy. That’s the simplest reason. I cannot straightway tell what makes me happy, though. Maybe I get a faint feeling of accomplishing something when I put up a new post. I know it’s silly to think that way – writing a stupid post and comparing it to accomplishing something. But how can I help if I feel just that way? Silly me.

Oh, too much rambling already. Okay, now for the actual post – which, by the way, is nothing but a bulleted list of stray thoughts (you’re familiar with it by now, I suppose).

• I see people going places. To different parts of the world. To places faraway and unknown. I admire them. (Maybe, slightly jealous too.) I too wish to go away like them. But all I do is sit alone and dream.

• I come home early and stand on the balcony. It’s dusk and the children are shouting and running in the smallish park outside. In the gathering darkness, their shouts of joy fill up my empty apartment.

• I get the news of a death. He wasn’t someone I knew personally but Sheelabhadra was an author I liked to read. Incidentally, when I got the news, I was reading one his books, which I picked on my recent visit to my home town .
  

• I see a change of season taking place. The days are hotter now; the wind is drier and dustier. Walking home in the evening I think of rains. It's not yet time for rain, of course. Pre-monsoon storms are still about a month away. But in my mind, I make it a point to see when the first rain arrives.
  

On another day

I think I need to tell this – that despite the inclination towards all things sad and melancholic, I'm essentially a happy person. As happy as I can be these days. If you thought that I sound like a poor depressed soul all the time, you were obviously mislead.

Just as there are days of melancholy, there are days of plain happiness as well. Days, when I wake up to something happy, without even knowing what it is, without finding any apparent reason. I become happy for something I cannot quite fathom. I don't know what prompts it. Maybe, it is the quietness of an early morning, the cold touch of steel railings in the balcony, the shaft of sun's rays near the doorstep, or just the whiteness of the ceiling I keep staring into.

I don't know. I can't tell.

But I find it nothing less than magical. How and what constitute such a moment of pure bliss?

Perhaps, I'll never find out. Perhaps, I should not even try to.

I'm just thankful for these fleeting moments. Moments, when I feel that everything is well with the world, including myself.

Of course it doesn't last long. But it is worth it while it lasts.

One of your days

There are some days, you know perhaps, when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you feel is a strange sense of melancholy.

It might be a rainy day with a slate-grey sky when you want it to rain all day long, and looking out of the window you watch the trees drench quietly, all alone.

Or it might be a hot sunny morning when you wake up to the sound of your old noisy fan, and coming out of your room you wonder how swiftly the world passes you by.

Or it might be one of those chilly winter mornings when your warm bed feels like heaven, and when the thick curtain of fog outside reminds you the days that has disappeared somewhere.

Or it might be a pale day of autumn when the roads you take are full of whispering dead leaves and dusty winds.

Or it might be a day just like today – when, after a long day, you fall back to your room with an empty feeling. You listen to your favourite music, you pick up your favourite book, you stand before the mirror and smile, but you cannot drive that emptiness away. And then you open the window, an evening breeze gushes in, and you see the moon rising, which only reminds you, however hard you try to forget, how lonely you had been today.

Coming back

In case you haven't noticed, I had been away for two whole weeks. I was on a impromptu break.

During this time I went to my home town, visited a few other places and people, and generally passed my time at home doing nothing.

It was a break from the routine I follow here. I had no work, cellphone, computer, or newspaper to occupy my time.

I had a feeling I'd have a good time without any of these. But, strangely, all my time I was missing these things there. I was thinking about the things I do here, when I was there. I had a feeling that I might be missing out on something. That there might be important things happening in my absence. That I might be wanted here.

But, obviously, no such thing happened. And now that I'm back, I find that nothing really has changed. Things are still the same on my desk. And nobody has even noticed that I was away.

So, it's back to my old routine. And I'm back to the things I missed.

But now, suddenly, I feel like running away again.

Isn't life disappointing?

Weekend watch

Whew! Lots of films happened this weekend. Well, not really chosen with much care and judgment – I watched rather indiscriminately – and I must say I liked every bit of it.

I began with Gandhi, My Father, which explores the tumultuous relation between Mahatma Gandhi and his son Harilal. I liked bits of it, even appreciated the performances, but remained unmoved at the end.

Then came Chashme Buddoor, the early 80’s romcom. It was a delight to watch Faroque Sheikh and Deepti Naval, the melodrama notwithstanding. Maybe, I won’t want to watch this film repeatedly, but while I watched, I could not suppress a smile on my face – the cuteness was absolutely infectious. And yes, I always liked the song ‘Kahan se aaye badra’ from this film.

Lakshya, the third on my platter, was a film which I had watched earlier on TV, but always in bits and pieces. So, when I watched it this time, at one go, I could not help but admire the film – the beautiful shots, the understated performances, the believable actions. Okay, the film is not perfect – it does not go beyond popular stereotypes – but it has an earnestness that is difficult to shake off.

The time I chose to watch Charulata was perfect – a languid Sunday afternoon. Incidentally, the film also begins on a lonely afternoon of Charu’s life. Charulata has been regarded as one of the most exquisite and flawless of Satyajit Ray’s films, and it’s easy to see why – the film is beautiful, subtle, and poetic. The rest of the afternoon, after I watched Charulata, I lay snuggled in my bed, enveloped with a feeling of subtle melancholy.

I ended my watching spree with Sleepless in Seattle, which was on HBO last night. Not much to say about this one, but it was a good company on a Sunday night.

Well that was all to my weekend.

P.S. Oh, I have one DVD still waiting, Jab We Met, which I’m going to watch soon.

Snapshots

• The lone banyan tree stands amidst the vast green paddy fields. In the hot summer afternoons, when unruly wind comes rippling through the top of the paddy fields, nobody goes near the tree for fear of disturbing the spirits that dwell there. Only a few sparrows hop around in its shade.

• The mango flowers are in bloom. Buzzing bees, queues of ants, and chirpy birds swarm around the tree all day. A mild heady scent stands in its cool shade.

• It rains all night. Rainwater leaks in through the old tin roof and forms a puddle on the floor. Somewhere in the dark outside, a bunch of frogs croak in unison.

• The wide river flows quietly. On its banks, fluffy white kaash flowers dance in the breeze. In the midday sun, the sand on the river bank shines like silver.

• Shy and delicate, the tiny white flowers bloom in the evening, give fragrance all night, and fall off at dawn – it wilts away in the sunlight. The flower of sadness, they call it.

Part(y)ing

We sit together on a big table and talk loudly while we wait for the lunch to arrive. We have already scrabbled with the menu, discussed at length about the dishes we want to order, and kept talking all the while. The restaurant is full and the food is late to arrive. But nobody seems to mind today -- we are more than happy to go on chattering.

"Maybe this is the last time we all are eating together," someone says, perhaps trying to remind us that something is happening for the last time.

But we ignore the thought. We all have new things coming up in our lives and we don't seem to have the time to pause and ponder. Or, even if someone wants to, nobody wants to show.

Someone clicks photos, someone poses, someone pulls someone's legs, someone plays with the cutlery -- we all are happy with the moment.

The lunch arrives, we eat with relish, pay the bill, and move away.

"We all might not be together again. But when we were, we were happy. At least, that is what I would like to believe," I say to myself and go my own way.

January

This January has definitely managed to surprise me.

First, there are these upcoming changes at workplace. But let's keep workplace out of this, for the moment.

Second, I've managed to acquire a few scratches on my Activa and myself. You see, the mandatory accident has already happened. But, I'm not going to give you a detailed description of that either.

Third, I decided to let go the Film Festival this time. Well, it has got something to do with the accident, but had I wanted I could still manage. But somehow, for some strange reason, I didn't want to.

Fourth, I read Vikram Seth's novel in verse, The Golden Gate, which I found rather witty. To read a novel in verse -- it didn't sound interesting -- but, at the end, I liked.

Fifth, I found that I can be particularly talkative, nonsensically talkative, and can be a pain to your ear.

At Karla Caves*

"Wow! This is awesome."

"Stand near the pillar. Yes, a little closer. Ready. Say cheese."

"This cave is hewn out of a single giant rock. This used to serve as a prayer hall..."

"Where's Pinky? Pinky?"

"Can you imagine what it would have been like to live in this place, centuries back, amongst the reverberating sound of sacred chants..."

"Look at the details of this sculpture. You can see the ornaments she's wearing. Whose face it might have been, who knows?"

"How long it'll take us to reach Bombay?"

"It's amazing how they found this big rock on a hilltop, and working with chisels and hammers for centuries, could carve this magnificent structure."

"It's a pity! They should maintain this site in a better way. The authorities..."

"The signboard says it dates back to 2nd Century B.C."

"Look Maa, the elephant's trunk is broken."

"Let's go now. I'm hungry."

"... and we talk of patience!"


*At Karla Caves, some talk with awe, some remain quiet, and some others just overhear.

What's new

The new year began on a little shaky note.

A few unforeseen things, some lurking uneasiness, along with a little apprehension and confusion thrown in.

However, on the positive side:

• I'm riding on a new Activa. No more haggling with autowallahs, hopefully.
• I'm going for walks in the mornings. Don't know how long I'll be able to continue, but I feel good that I've made a beginning.
• I'm waiting for the Pune International Film Festival, which begins on 10th January. Hope to catch some interesting films.
• I'm proving myself to be a decent cook.

Year-ender

I don’t think I have any reasons to write a year-end post. I don’t have any lists of books or movies. I don’t have any learning to share. I don’t have any important events to talk about. There’s really nothing to fill up a year-end post.

Yet, I think I owe a last post for the year that was, to sum up, indeed a happy year. So what if I don’t have any achievements to show off, the joy and contentment I found this year, more than compensates that.

I had a laidback and pleasant year. Just the way I would have liked it to be.

Have a happy time ahead.

Happy 2008!

Another realization

One of the most romantic things to possess is a secret pain. We somehow like this idea that, unknown to the world, we secretly carry a pain deep within us. There’s something utterly romantic about suffering alone. We like to believe that there’s more to us than meets the eye, that our pains make us special, that there’s something heroic about our efforts to endure our pains secretly. If we have a secret pain, we supposedly acquire more depth. And who would not like to be described as a person of some depth, after all?

To possess a secret pain is also helpful otherwise. There are ample evidences that, fuelled by their secret pains, people have written books and poems, created immortal sculptures and paintings, went on voyages around the world, made amazing discoveries, reshaped history, and became famous in general. Every artist worth his/her salt needs a secret pain as a muse, it seems. The more the magnitude of your pain, the more is your chance of doing something prolific. Plain happiness has never really created anything noteworthy, isn’t it?

Of late, I have realized with some regret that I don’t really have a secret pain in my life. Leave alone happiness, can't I even have a secret pain? What a pitiful life I live, indeed!

Realization

It is a painful moment when we realize that probably we don't have the talent to do what we really want to do. (I mean, of course we can always dabble into something; but I'm talking about the real talent here.) It is also a very lonely moment and nothing in the world seems to ameliorate the excruciating pain that comes with this realization. We struggle between hope and despair, we struggle with all our might to come to terms with it, but nothing seems to fill in the enormous emotional void.

Faced with such a moment of crisis, not everybody can accept the cruel fact with a sane head. Indeed, some even try to find an escape with guns, drugs, or alcohol. (Remember the motto "it's better to burn out, than to fade away"!) But, thankfully, these people are few in number; and most of us, with time, quietly accept the fact without much fuss. "Let's not take our life and work so seriously after all," we seem to remind ourselves and move ahead. Of course, at some weak moments, we lament at not being born a genius, but we do overcome such moments soon enough.

The age-old Indian philosophy says that we only have the right to do our work, and not on the outcome of it; so work your part with detachment and don't desire for a result. Maybe, it's not a very practical thought. Or maybe it is. I really don't know. As for me, I'll occasionally keep writing a few stray posts, even though I've already realized the truth. After all, a race is never a race without those who 'also ran'.

I think I'm getting too wise for my age! Or maybe I'm plain lazy. Who knows!

Walking home

• The old woman sits on the pavement, in an obscure corner, with two baskets of vegetables. She's chosen the most unlikely place to sell vegetables, it seems. I wonder who buys vegetables from her. I've never seen anyone buying.

• In the chic coffee shop, a bunch of giggly young girls are enjoying the evening over cups of coffee. Their faces are flushed with laughter and their eyes are brimming with happiness.

• The new swanky mall that has recently come up, is a buzzing place. As I walk by, I remember that when I came here last year, it was still an empty space.

• Two migrant laborers, probably from a nearby construction site, are walking home with their daily provisions. It's the end of their day and they seem relieved. They chatter animatedly in their native dialect and walk past me.

• As I turn left and enter the building, I see an old lady sitting quietly on the watchman's chair. Which is very odd, because I have previously seen the watchman, and he doesn't remotely look like an old lady. Probably this old lady came down for a walk and feeling tired sat down on the chair, I assume. I know it's an uninteresting assumption, but the most likely.
  

Each evening, I walk the same path to reach home.

And each evening, I find it to be different.

Ignorance

I just had to sign a cheque. When I finished signing, my colleague suggested, "Cross the cheque."

Without knowing what exactly I had to do, I put a cross mark on the cheque. I mean, a put a cross mark (×).

He almost fell down from his chair, laughing.

“To cross means, you have to mention Account Payee on the cheque, for safety reasons,” he informed me, with good humor.

I must say, there are so many things you learn in a day.

There is no limit to ignorance, really.

The last few days

• I decided to devote some more time and effort to improve my culinary skills, which, I must admit, is very preliminary at this moment. As a result of this unusual spurt of enthusiasm, I found myself experimenting in the kitchen each day after I got home from work. And the weekends were, of course, the ideal time to push the limits and try out something totally untried. While some results of these experiments were moderately palatable, some others were absolutely disastrous. But at the end, to paraphrase Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found several combinations that won't work."

• I found a dirt road the other morning, near the hillocks behind my building, that goes all the way to the highway. It was more of a trail than a road -- dusty, deserted, and mostly unused. The air was cool that morning and I just walked without caring to reach anywhere. Sometimes, it feels good to walk on a road without knowing where it might take me to.

• I took part in the city marathon. The first ever marathon of my life. (well, it's true that I just ran the first few kilometers. But the fact remains that I ran.)

• I realized, to my amazement, that one year has passed by since I landed in this city. And so far, it's been so good.

Meet Charlie Brown

"Charlie Brown wins your heart with his losing ways. It always rains on his parade, his baseball game, and his life. He's an inveterate worrier who frets over trifles (but who's to say they're trifles?). Although he is concerned with the true meaning of life, his friends sometimes call him "blockhead." Other than his knack for putting himself down, there are few sharp edges of wit in his repertoire; usually he's the butt of the joke, not the joker. He can be spotted a mile away in his sweater with the zig zag trim, head down, hands in pocket, headed for Lucy's psychiatric booth. He is considerate, friendly and polite and we love him knowing that he'll never win a baseball game or the heart of the little red-haired girl, kick the football Lucy is holding or fly a kite successfully. His friends call him "wishy-washy," but his spirit will never give up in his quest to triumph over adversity."

From Peanuts.

Misleading

I'm told that lack of social interaction has brought about telltale signs of a chronic loner in me -- I'm terribly tongue-tied when small talk is in progress, I goof up even when I have to say 'hi' or 'bye' to people, I make excuses to avoid crowded celebrations, I sleep away my weekend, etcetera, etcetera.

In short, I'm told that I should get a life.

Well, I don't tell them that I'm actually having the best time of my life. It will kill the fun, you see, if I reveal it. So, I carry a rather helpless/glum/morose expression on my face and enjoy all the 'oh-you-pathetic-soul' look from others.

It's good fun, I tell you!

Metamorphosis

We used to laugh at his stories; sometimes, even at his face while he was still narrating them. "Why do you have to keep telling these made up stories?" we used to tease him, "We don't even find them funny." But he never seemed to mind our sarcasm. A queer fellow he was.

Years later, we heard that he did manage to write a book or something, and also got it published. A strange book he wrote -- about talking animals, walking trees, humans with horns and tails, and all such bizarre things. We wonder how he got a publisher.

I saw him in the market the other day while he was buying tomatoes. "Hey," I said to him, "Why did you bother to write that book of yours? It's total trash." Hearing this, he paused upon the pile of tomatoes, picked up one and hurled it at my face. Then he chased me all through the market. It's only because I regularly go to the gym that I could outrun him.

Well, you tell me, how am I supposed to know that when you become a writer (an established writer, with your books published and all), you get the creative license to throw tantrums, and tomatoes as well.

Recent read (and watch)

Etgar Keret is my latest find. Keret's collection of short stories One Last Story and That's It, which I read during the Diwali holidays, contains some very clever, bizarre, and arresting short stories. As the title of the book suggests, the stories are indeed extremely short (on an average, running at 2-3 pages each). But within that short span, Keret is able to create and evoke moods -- often with a unique style laced with humor, fantasy, and unusual insights -- that remains with us even after the story ends (or, rather, the way it does not end). Keret's voice is urbane, his descriptions are sharp but detached, his characters are fantastically imagined, and his stories are full of craziness. Dark and disturbing at times, his tragicomic characters and plots are so terse and taut -- you end up finishing the stories even before you grasp it, and then you keep wondering about what it all was.

If Keret's book is slim, A Suitable Boy, which I'm reading for the last six months or so, is mindbogglingly voluminous, full of numerous characters, elaborate descriptions, countless plots and sub-plots. with 1349 pages, it is also the biggest book I've ever read. But the size, surprisingly, isn't a deterrent; rather, one almost feels that it shouldn't have been told in any lesser pages. Vikram Seth, the author, weaves a sprawling tale, set in a nascent, independent India, describing not only the people and places associated with the four main families in the novel, but also goes on to describe, perhaps in immaculate details, the traditions and festivals, the nitty-gritties of law and political undercurrents, the customs of courtesans and common man, the caste equations, the conficts within universities and boardrooms, the characteristics of urbane and rustic milieu -- in short, he writes about a whole way of life, with a pace that's unhurried, and with a style that's pleasingly old-fashioned. The book is easy on the reader; it almost turns into a companion, humoring and entertaining you, when you need a respite from your own boring life.

Now, as for watching, besides the junk I watched on TV, I watched Majid Majidi's Baran. Iranian films, of late, seems to have captured everyone's attention, with their flair for saying complex things simply. Baran is also a simple story; a simple love story. An Iranian boy Latif, who works at a construction site, resents the intrusion of Afgan refugees who, he thinks, are a threat to his own job. So, when a young worker Rahmat, who comes to work as a replacement for his injured father, eventually takes over his tea-serving job, he is furious. He makes every effort to thwart his opponent. Until, one day, he finds that Rahmat is actually a young girl in the guise of a boy. Suddenly, Latif is filled with tenderness for this girl, whom he now wants to guard and protect in every way. The film ends with Latif watching the girl's family moving away to Afghanistan on a cold rainy morning. As the car moves away, Latif stands watching the footprint of the girl, which is now getting drowned in the falling raindrops.

On a Sunday

It's a bright sunny day of November -- a brilliant blue sky; fluffy white clouds; pleasant breeze; fluttering trees. You open the windows wide, sunshine streams in, and you break into a happy chuckle.

It's a day you want to spend alone. Lying on your back, with a book in your hand, occasionally looking out of the window. You don't have anything particular to do today; you can spend your time as you wish.

Lying still on the bed, you let your mind wander. You can also take a nap, by the way, probably hoping that you'll be taken over by a pleasant day-dream. But even if you have to keep awake, you might be pleasantly surprised to hear -- a few twittering birds from somewhere on the trees, a rhythmic hammering sound coming from a distance, the diffused sound of vehicles coming from the road outside, the faint shout of children playing somewhere, the hiss of a pressure cooker from a neighboring house, and many other indistinguishable sound -- a lot of which you do not catch on a busy day. You feel happy this way -- lying down, doing nothing, while the world passes you by.

There are a bunch of people who are compulsively active. Their calendars are always packed, they always have to rush somewhere, and they always need to keep doing something. To be idle, for them, is the most difficult thing to do.

And then, as if to balance things out, like all laws of nature, there's an exact opposite bunch of people -- those who can lie on their back for hours, simply do nothing, and still enjoy it.

On the road

The bus I'm travelling on comes to a halt amongst the din. The roads are blocked due to a strike, we're informed. No buses are going farther.

It's always horrible to get stuck up midway. More so if it's a obscure place and you don't know what to do. The crowds thronging outside the buses were of no help. They only added to the confusion and frustration.

Amidst all the suggestions that were flying around, I found two worth consideration. One: We cross the river by boat and try catching a bus from the other bank, where the strike is not effective. Two: We hire a cycle rickshaw at an exorbitant price and go cross the river by the bridge, which is a few kilometers away.

I decided for the second option. To cross the river Brahmaputra on a boat is not for the faint-hearted.

The cycle rickshaw takes us on a bumpy ride, through lonely winding roads along the bank of the river. We also traverse a few hillocks on our way and at times, when we're going up a particularly steep slope, we get down and push the rickshaw uphill. Needless to say, I curse the whole world and am angry like hell.

Finally, when we're up on the two-kilometer-long bridge (Naranarayan Setu), it's almost dusk. The setting sun is reflected on the flowing water below and the darkening hills on either bank looks eerily quiet. The river breeze, damp and heavy, touches us stealthily.

All these, to me, seem grotesquely fairytale-ish. The setting, although indescribably beautiful, invokes in me a feeling of gloom and fear.

To ease myself, I try to strike up a conversation with the rickshawallah.

Circle

There are times when self-doubt looms large over my life. You know, the time when one is unnecessarily troubled by questions like: "What am I doing?" or "Where am I heading?"

I'm going through such a phase.

And to add to my woes, everyone I talk to these days, talks about 'future plans', 'financial planning', or 'career advancements'. Or, some such meaningful stuff.

Some of these words bestirs me. I chalk out plans in my head. I make my own to-do list. I set a target for myself.

Then, I do nothing. Until I'm overwhelmed by self-doubt, sometime again.

Thus, the story continues...

Useless updates

• From my balcony, on Sundays, I can see a group of children play cricket. They play with a tennis ball and instead of stumps they use a concrete slab. It's a small patch of land, and not exactly a ground. So, to exercise restraint, they have devised a rule that if the batsman hits the ball over the fence, he's out.

• The 'Lucky Bamboo' plant I got two months back is thriving, sitting prettily above the TV set. I got it not because I am into Feng Shui or something; neither do I believe the 'luck' part (the fact is, it's not even bamboo). I bought it for the same reason people buy pets -- a bit of company.

• I pass the evening watching inordinate amount of TV. And before going to sleep I apologetically look at the pile of books lying by my bedside. "Mabe I'm a lousy reader," I say to myself.

• There are some last-minute things to take care of before I go today. I'm on leave for the next two weeks, you see. But procrastination is an old habit with me. So, instead of doing what I actually need to do I get down to write this post. Last-minute things are meant to be done in the last minute.

• Waking up this morning I feel a mild dip in temperature. The first taste of winter!

Let's talk again

"Are you saying... ?"

"Yes."

"But why? I mean, what has changed so suddenly?"

"Well, nothing has changed, really. And that, precisely, is the reason."

"I don't understand."

"You know, I'm fed up of waiting for things to change. I'm sick of getting disappointed with you over and over again."

"And you think this is the way to get over your disappointments?"

"I don't know. But, at least, I won't feel sorry for myself, I'm sure."

"You're quite determined, it seems."

"Yes. More than you can possibly imagine."

"You're right, probably. I've never really experienced such absolute determination."

"And you don't even regret that, as far as I know."

"Well, you always knew this. It's not something new. And it's surprising the way you are reacting, really. It's as if you have suddenly discovered that I was lying to you all along."

"I'm saying none of that."

"What exactly are you saying, then?"

"Forget it. If you still couldn't understand it, you'll never really understand."

"Then why are we continuing with this talk, may I ask, if none of us is understanding what each of us is saying?"

"Because you had been asking all the questions."

"And you had been giving all the cryptic answers."

"Look, I did try my best to have a sensible talk, but it seems it's not heading anywhere now."

"When you are determined to go your own way, you can't possibly expect everyone to follow."

"But having your own way is any day better than walking through a maze, where you never know where you are heading."

"Isn't life a maze in itself?"

"Cut your nonsense, will you? Now you're talking like a loser."

"Huh, to be a loser!"



* This sequel wasn't intended to be written when I wrote the last post. The last post was written on a whim. However, I later found out, it was easier when I wrote whimsically than when I tried a more methodical (or, serious) approach. I labored to write but I knew, I've failed. And I didn't want to publish this post and make my failure public. But then I thought, what the heck, it's better to post any damn thing rather than sit and rust. Isn't it?

Let's talk

"Perhaps," I said, not too convinced by your arguments.

"You should say yes or no. There can't be a middle path here."

"There's always a middle path. At least, there's one, in this case."

"You're a spineless creature, a vacillating moron."

"Thanks you."

"You're pathetic."

"Thanks, again."

"Look, this isn't funny anymore. Don't you realize the seriousness of the situation?"

"I do, probably..."

"Probably? You're still not certain?"

"..."

"This is so embarrassing. It was so foolish of me to expect that you'll change."

"Coffee?"

"Go to hell."

"Please don't make a scene. We can probably sort this out more amicably."

"There's nothing to sort out anymore, really. And thanks, by the way, for making me realize that."

"Let me..."

"Please don't."

Loneliness

Miss Violet Stoneham is an ageing anglo-indian school teacher who lives alone in her two-room flat. Life, for her, chiefly consists of teaching Shakespeare to her class of giggly schoolchildren and a weekly visit to her her brother Eddie at the old-age home. Being a spinster, she worries about her lonely future but is unwilling to leave the country of her birth, despite requests form her niece Rosemary. The monotony of Miss Violet's life breaks with the sudden intrusion of a couple (Nandita, Miss Violet's ex-student, and her boyfriend Samaresh) who, wary of wandering on the streets and looking for some privacy, manipulates the old woman to borrow her flat with the pretext that Samaresh needs a place to write (after all, he claims to be James Joyce in the making). Miss Violet, oblivious of the real intention of the couple, happily lends her flat and welcomes the couple in the hope of a company she desperately seeks. Her happiness is, however, shortlived and she finds herself lonely again when the couple gets married and drifts away from her life.

Well, this is in short the story of 36 Chowringhee Lane, a film I was watching this morning. And I was, strangely, reminded of one of my school teachers, after I watched Miss Violet's character. Not that there was any resemblance in the story but, yes, I felt the same loneliness in both cases.

Anyways, What makes this film a poignant story is the way Jennifer Kendal portrays the role of Violet, a sensitive, susceptible, timid old woman who never speaks loud and who cannot even shout and discipline her own students. The details that show her lonely humdrum life is beautifully captured in the way she checks her letter-box everyday, the way she talks to her cat Sir Toby, the way she eats lonely dinners, and the way she cannot protest even when she's pained. There are many subtexts in the story as well: the fall of once-priviledged anglo-indians, the rise of dissent among them as they are losing out to a new breed of Indians, but Violet's life is tranquil and is untouched by all the turmoil. What remains after watching the film is the palpable sense of loneliness. And of course, there's the ending scene of Miss Violet reciting Shakespeare on a lonely street on the Christmas Night, after discovering that she's ignored and she's no longer wanted in the life of the couple.

The end of something

There are times when everything seems to be going fine -- no real tragedy, no impending bankruptcy, no severe illness. In short, a happy time.

If you've noticed that I've not written for the last few weeks, it was because I was having such a happy time. And one of the problems (at least with me) of happy times is that it spoils me and makes me utterly inactive. Not that I can claim to be active otherwise, but a little bit of unhappiness (like a nagging thought at the back of mind) helps me to be on my toes.

Now, I guess I might have offended some of you by boasting, in not such a subtle way, about my happiness. It's not my intention to show off, really. On the contrary, I wish to tell how this newly acquired happiness has adversely affected me. It has made me sluggish with its placidty. It has made my senses go blunt with its smoothness. You see, in my happiness, my laziness flourished -- I didn't feel like writing, nor reading. It was annoying to see what happiness has reduced me to.

TV channels and newspapers, despite all the hideous and ominous things they show and write, failed to suppress my happiness. I was impervious to the plight I saw or read. In fact, I started enjoying them.

I understand I'm taking this a little too far, but maybe, you can offer me some help by leaving a nasty comment or something. Who knows, it might actually do the trick.

Cynically

For a change, I'm a little busy these days. At work, as well as at home.

So my normal routine has somewhat suffered. I'm not keeping myself awake at unearthly hours to watch nonsense on TV. And I'm no longer eating Maggi noodles for dinner. Also, not reading anything (except newspapers) for almost a week.

Well, it took some effort to get accustomed to all these. No wonder, I was absent from blogging for quite some time. And even as I write today, I don't have any substantial things to say. (Did I really have any substantial things to say anytime in past?) It's more of a self-appeasing exercise.

Anyway, I think I pretended to be more busy than I actually was. For, as the saying goes, "A busy person is never short of time."

It's just that I was going through a phase when 'nothing happened.' Apparently, there were more things happening to me -- I was busier at work; I had more things to take care at home. But, somehow, everything I did, my mind drifted elsewhere. I think I'm indeed turning out to be a too difficult person, even for myself.

A saying comes to mind at this point. I don't remember where I read it, neither do I remember the exact words, but it expresses something like this:

"There are only two real grief in the world: one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it."

So, which one do you prefer?