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?

Feverish

Sluggish head. Parched throat. Burning eyes. Lost appetite. Intermittent sleep. And worst of all -- a cranky mood.

It's so very irritating, I tell you.

But then, when you're feverish you have to bear with some unpleasant things. Otherwise, wouldn't everyone relish going down with fever on the slightest pretext!

So here I was, bitterness rising in me, as I helplessly watched my body staging a revolt against me. Yes, I know, I should have given heed to the early warnings. But till the time I'm up and working, why do I need to give it a damn, right? Well, actually quite wrong. But, let's forget the arguments for now.

Because, meanwhile, more sinister things were happening to me. I felt helpless, spent, and vulnerable. I craved for attention and care. And I hate to say this: I had this shameless tendency to flaunt my illness to gain sympathy.

But, of course, no one took notice of any deterioration in my health, however much I flaunted my illness. So, finally, I gave up behaving abnormally.

When alone, I tried to ignore the symptoms. I tried to get some sleep. (I believe a good sleep almost always cures me of anything. The problem, however, is that I cannot sleep when I need it most.)

Yesterday, late at night, huddled in my bed, watching TV in mute, I somehow managed to fall asleep. Or, maybe partially asleep. Because, I felt strange going-ons in my head. I felt disturbed by something I couldn't comprehend.

And then, I felt a cool palm rest on my forehead. Somewhat anxious and worried. Beside my bed, there was a rustling of clothes. And a lingering fragrance, long forgotten.

I woke up with a start. Just like they wake up in the movies, you see, after a nightmare.

I sat on my bed, silent and befuddled.

There was a breeze coming in through the open window. The eucalyptuses were humming outside. And I suddenly realized, as if for the first time, that fever was burning my body.

5:30 p.m.

On the terrace of the office, sipping hot tea, and looking over the rooftops and busy roads. It has almost become one of the daily routines now. Rain or sun, we come visiting here. It's one of the small pleasures I have invented for myself.

It's a nice wide terrace, dotted with potted plants and benches. And it's always windy up here. On a bright day, you can see the blue hills sunning at the far end. While on a overcast day, you can see the clouds nestling on the hilltops. In the lashing rains, the place comes alive with happy plants as well as beaming faces (some people cannot resist rains). But perhaps the biggest attraction of the terrace is the big open sky -- it brings joy and solace after a hard day.

I think we should occasionally look up at the sky. It has a therapeutic effect.

Dark and slow

There's something of a quiet melancholy about rainy days. They make us lonelier. Incessant all-day-rains, looming gray clouds, and damp windswept evenings (it's been like this for the last few days) have an air of loss and longing. Or, at least, so I felt.

No wonder, the profuse rains of the last few days have put me in a pensive mood. I scampered around the rooms, tried to read, stood on the balcony -- but something made me restless. It's as if the soggy air had slowed down time and there's no sound except the slow rhythmic pattering of raindrops.

And it became particularly unbearable during the last weekend. All day, listening to the sounds of raindrops and the swishing winds, I tried to sleep (so that the time passes away while I sleep). But in the semi-darkness of the rooms, cold and smelling of stale air, my senses became so sharp that I couldn't sleep.

But melancholy, despite the gloom and despondency, is also a source of subtle pleasure for me. Indeed, as Orhan Pamuk describes in Istanbul: Memories and the City about the melancholia of the city of Istanbul as huzun (a Turkish word whose Arabic root denotes a feeling of deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life): "a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating."

I'm all for pleasure and happiness. I want them. But I also want my share of melancholy. Because it is melancholy that helps me understand myself more intimately.

PS: A previous post on melancholy.

A trek

This was something I hadn't done in a long time -- to walk in the rain (not drizzle, mind you, pouring rain) the whole day. In fact, I guess, this was my longest period of getting drenched. And, that way, this was indeed a record, however insignificant.

We were trekking towards Torna Fort one cloudy morning in July.

The Torna Fort, which sits atop a steep rocky hill, was shrouded in dense and mysterious-looking clouds. There were green slopes, cascading waterfalls, fresh morning air redolent with wild fragrances, and the occasional chirping of unknown birds. Yes, it was picture perfect!

But there were difficulties beckoning us, as we soon realized. We battled steep climbs, slippery rocks, sheets of rain, and howling winds. We were wet to the bone and our bodies shivered uncontrollably. Occasionally, the wind blew with such ferocity that it almost toppled us over. And the raindrops, aided by the wind, pricked our skin like tiny arrows.

But, it was all worth it. We made it to the top, ate a lunch of paranthas, roamed around the ruined fort, and made a swift descent.

And before I end, I must also say something about the team. We were a team of four, and I was the only male member. P1 was my colleague (who coordinated and organized the whole thing), P2 was a friend of P1 (who had been a wonderful companion), and S. (the frail-looking girl, who was a veteran trekker and, in fact, our guide and mentor and who was climbing Torna for the eighth time!).

And I used to think, trekking was not really for girls!

Small happenings

• Each morning as I walk for office I pass by this leafy gulmohar tree, its vibrant red flowers scattered on the pavement, and I think "Why this name gulmohar?" (The Wikipedia entry, though informative, does not explain the name.)

• I'm caught in a drizzle as I'm walking home. Tiny droplets float in air and fall on my specs, blurring my vision. But I keep walking, not bothering to wipe my specs clean. The world looks different through blurred glasses and I'm happy.

• The elderly and affable gentleman at the shop introduces me to his granddaughter the other day. "She sometimes come to help me after her school," he says pointing to the little girl standing behind the cashbox. I nod, grin, and ask her name. "Sunayna," she says, rather embarrassed at being introduced to a stranger. "That's apt," I say to myself, "she indeed has very beautiful eyes."

• Lonely evening. Sipping beer and reading Pankaj Mishra's An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World. The book is quite engrossing and I'm lost in the times of Buddha, centuries back. I take a happy swig and wonder what these things -- 'renouncing the world' and 'detaching from desire' -- are like.

• Fresh uniforms, neat shoes, water bottles, schoolbags. Shuffling impatiently on their sprightly legs the children wait for their school bus in the morning. I smile at them as I walk by. Most of them shy away and look elsewhere. However, the other day, for a change, I found one of them making a face at me.

Today

A day of rain clouds. A day of unruly winds. A day of dormant memories. A day of faint yearnings.

Today is a day of waiting. For the rains to fall on skin. For the winds to ruffle the hairs. For the memories to come uninhibited. For the yearnings to go away.

Lies

Wanted to leave office early today. If not early, at least on time, I thought. Really, this is unhealthy -- this habit of staying late in office just to kill time. But, and there is always this big BUT, it's evening now and I'm still sitting in my cubicle, typing these words on my keyboard. Things like will-power and determination, alas, are not my cup of tea.

Whatever, I kind of like to go home late. I like the late evening breeze upon my face as I come out of office. I like to sit by the window of the last shuttle back home. I like to watch the bright evening lights of shops, malls, and restaurants. I like to walk back home through the crowded roads. I like the sudden silence of my apartment after a noisy evening.

Well, you know what, I always invent reasons to comfort myself even when I'm in a big mess.

I deceive myself to to be happy. I bury my head in sand and dream.

By the sea

Harihareshwar, May 2007

Just when I was showing serious symptoms of acute boredom, some of the well-meaning colleagues came up with this idea -- a weekend by the sea. Well, this was more than welcome for someone whose weekends were becoming excessively dull and lethargic. The concoction of 3S -- sea, sand, and sky -- was inviting enough for me.

So this weekend, four of us went to this little village in the Konkan coast, where the sea stretches to the horizon, green hillocks dot the shore, and fleecy clouds roam overhead in a perfect blue sky. We walked around the wonderfully deserted beach (there were only us when we went to the beach early in the morning), stood in knee-deep water, watched the waves crushing at our feet, heard the roar of the waves, felt the salty air on our face, and were generally looking happy beyond measures (the numerous photos in crazy poses are testimony to that). And of course, there were also those mandatory sea-bath and frolicking, some shouts and giggles, and some shining specks of sand on our skins.

Now, I don't really want to get into the details. I think you've already got the idea, right? We mostly acted like dumb and happy fools.

I doubt, with this happy trip, I've expended my quota of happiness for the time being. I've a premonition that gloomy days are ahead.

On boredom

The last few days had been wonderfully boring -- everyday I woke up in the morning, glanced the newspaper, came to office, worked a few hours, read some mails, sent some mails, went back home, ate a bland dinner, read a few pages, tried to write a post, gave up, and fell asleep. Yes, this is pretty much what I did. As you can very well understand, even for a comatose person like me, this sort of routine can sometimes get on the nerves. No wonder, these days I appear somewhat lost, subdued, unsocial, gloomy, and aloof (it's a bit difficult to convince, but actually, I'm none of these!). And perhaps the worst thing is, I do not even seem to make any effort to appear otherwise -- I'm blissfully ignorant and happily ensconced in my boredom. Friends, when I tell them about my present condition, shake their heads in disbelief and mutter some words of consolation as if I'm a hopeless case. Well, for once, I do not really have anything to prove them wrong.

But boredom is a strange feeling, I've realized. I do get bored by this loneliness at times, but I can stand this boredom. What I really fear is the occasional boredom I feel in the company of people. I really feel terrible when I have to endure that. (Just for the record, I should say here that I always pride on my ability to endure the severest boredom. It usually takes a lot to bore me. Any lesser mortal, faced with the kind of nondescript life I live, would raise his/her hand and surrender to boredom. But not me, I've grown resistant over the years.)

Anyway, so I'm mildly shocked to find that what I was feeling for the last few days actually bordered on boredom. Maybe, I over-estimated myself, after all.

Whatever, a good dose of reading and I hope to recover soon. The problem is while books give us company and food for soul, they also make us acutely aware of our deepest feelings, loneliness and boredom included.

Sigh!

A house for pranabk

So, this weekend, I moved, once again, to a new house.

Even as I write this, bags, books and a whole lot of other paraphernalia lie strewn in my new apartment. But thankfully -- and I pride myself on this -- my belongings are not much. In fact, until very recently I could stuff all my stuff in two big bags and move anywhere within an hour's notice. In that sense, one could say that I literally lived out of my bags. (Things, however, are poised for a change now as I am contemplating on buying a few more household luxuries -- a television, cooking gas, fridge, etc. But I repeat, I'm just contemplating and most of the time my contemplation does not necessarily translate into action.)

Anyways, after I shifted all my belongings, and was left alone, a strange sense of loneliness gripped me. I paced around the empty rooms and the balcony, inspected the taps and the sink, switched on and off the light bulbs, watched the dust and cobwebs. But all the while, my mind wandered off to a place thousands of miles away -- the only place I still call home. Well, almost a decade and four cities later the word 'home' still reminds me of only one place on earth -- of bamboo fencings, tiled roofs, red hibiscus flowers, branches of guava trees, mango shades...

Now, no one knows this better than me that I cannot go back home again. I cannot go back simply because, I know, my idea of home is rooted in a certain time period and not the physical place itself. My home lives in my memory.

So, I try to convince myself that home is a place where one lives, wherever it might be. I know the earlier I accept it, the better. I know all these, I understand, and I hard try to accept. But somehow, each new roof I sleep under unsettles me for some moment and reminds of a faraway home.

Bête noire

You smiled mischievously.

"What?" I asked.

"What?" you retorted.

"Don't give me that crooked smile of yours," I said with bitterness.

"Who said I was smiling at you?" your voice raised a little.

"Who else is here? Besides, I know that smile of yours. I know when you smile that way," I said accusingly.

"If you already know everything, why ask me," you hissed. "There's nothing I can do if you keep imagining things in your head. That's really your problem, you know, you imagine too much."

We stared at each other for the next few seconds. Then I averted my eyes and moved away. I could never really face your eyes for long. And that made me even angrier.

I hated you because I knew you knew. You knew every little thing that I desperately wanted to hide. You knew every embarrassing detail, every deception, every weakness. And now, the way you gave that mocking smile, I knew, you already knew what I was trying to bury so stealthily.

Needless to say, I'm exasperated.

One of these days, I'm sure, I'll break your head when you give that crooked smile from the inside the mirror.

In the moonlight

Around midnight the clouds parted and the moon, shining brightly, flooded the silent night with a ghostly radiance. The brief squall of early evening had left a few puddles, which now shone in the moonlight. The trees, still wet, gave off a soft scent whenever a faint breeze rustled their leaves. And the lonely roads wound around the sleeping houses before disappearing at a distance. Occasionally, the shrill cry of a night bird pierced the silence, and then everything was quiet again.

A swarm of fireflies played under the shadow of the bougainvillea bush, their tiny bodies blinking rhythmically. On the edge of the veranda the money plant crept silently, its shadows making strange patterns on the moonlit wall. And near the closed door lay a modest pair of mud-caked slippers, solitary in the joy of flowing moonlight.

A few wispy clouds, soaked in moonlight, still wandered about. The stars, however, were outshone by the bright moon. And the moon, alive with its blue veins and pockmarks, looked like a forlorn artist, sad amongst all the beauty it has created.

It's understandable why they say it's not safe to roam around on such moonlit night and gaze at the hypnotic moon. You run the risk of being a lunatic.

While he's away

He lay in his bed, sleepless, thinking about it. But none of the ideas that occurred to him so far look befitting, or promising -- they fizzled out even before he could phrase them in his head. So he waited, paced around the room, stood by the window, stared vacantly into the night -- but to no avail. Words and ideas eluded him tonight.

Already, I found out, he has discarded multiple possible ideas -- about the midnight stroll he took the other night along a quiet road with rows of sleeping houses (he found it, well, a bit gloomy) ; about the funny little incident that happened the other night while he was eating a lonely dinner in a cheap restaurant where a television blared non-stop (he's not sure if it will make a good post, he says) ; about the books he was reading (writing about books was an easy way out, he didn't want to piggyback on others' thoughts); about films (but he hadn't watched any recently, he argued); about his last few days in a training (he found it quite insipid and summarily rejected); about his repeated attempts to come up with a post (he was unwilling to admit that).

Now, to tell you the truth, I think he is failing because he's trying a little too hard. Of late, he has found a few comments in his otherwise unnoticed blog and I wonder if it has led to his assuming an air of self-importance, which has made him somewhat more self-conscious about the way he writes. He seems more eager to write some brilliant stuff rather than writing about his whims and fancies of everyday life. Growing readership, it seems, has made him go nuts.

So, meanwhile, when he's away banging his head to generate fresh new ideas, I thought of sneaking in with this little post -- just to keep things going.

Hope he comes to his senses soon enough.

Amen.

Bordoichila*

It came as suddenly as it should.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, while engrossed in a book I suddenly realized that the lights were fading rather rapidly. Surprised, I looked out of the window and there I saw it coming, in all its magnificence -- great masses of dark ominous clouds piling up in the distant horizon, preparing for the onslaught.

It was the first day of Baisakh and in the eastern and north-eastern regions of India, where I grew up, this is a common sight during this time of the year. But here in the western part of India, thousands of miles away, I was not too sure that I'll sight this, and that too at such precise timing. Needless to say, I was thrilled. I tossed my book away and came near the window, ready to watch the imminent show.

First came the winds, carrying dust, dry leaves, twigs and an assortment of other little things. In a few minutes, the winds caught up ferocious speed, and went about on a plundering spree. Sensing trouble, a few sparrows flew past for a safer spot. A dog and a few puppies also ran past, looking for a shelter. People went inside their houses and shut their windows tight, to avoid any sort of nuisance. Only the trees stood, swaying but not surrendering.

And then came the rains, escorted by an army of thunder and lightning. Large droplets came hurling down, making pattering noise on the tin roofs. The air became deliciously cool and heavy with the aroma of wet earth. Dusts settled and trees came to life. And I, standing by the window, oblivious of the occasional sprays of raindrops on my face, found myself flooded with a torrent of rain-soaked memories.

Didn't I already say it somewhere, rains always do strange things to me.

* Bordoichila, in Assamese, means the pre-monsoon storms that are predominant in Assam in the month of Bohag (Baisakh). There is similar term in Bengali too: kaal-baisakhi (fatal storm of Baisakh, called so because of the violent destructive winds that often create havoc).

Summer siesta

It's summer now. And summer, with all its languorousness, is such a good time for lazy people like me. (Winter is, of course, even better. But summer is charming in its own way.) I can now squarely blame the heat for all my inactiveness and get away with being a sloth.

Yesterday being a Sunday, I decided to do my own bit to welcome the summer in my own inventive way -- by being a little bit more lazy. The only activity I permitted myself was reading. So, after a particularly heavy lunch I laid down on my bed with Ruskin Bond's Book of Nature by my side, ready to doze off while reading. An afternoon siesta is, I said to myself, a perfect way to welcome the summer. And a Ruskin Bond, a perfect lullaby.

I cannot say the exact page, but I must have been somewhere in the first chapter, Grandfather's Zoo, when I slipped into sleep. I didn't drown in sleep altogether, though. Rather, I felt as if I was swimming in and out of sleep. Also, I could feel that my senses were still functioning, although feebly. I could, for example, hear the whirring sound of the ceiling fan, the flapping of the open pages of the book I was reading, the rustling of mango leaves in the hot wind outside my window, the sound of a lone cuckoo singing somewhere...

When I woke up late in the afternoon, the sun's rays were already slanted. The day was about to end. I lazily looked out of my window at the wayward clouds floating in the sky. And, thus, the rest of the afternoon was spent in figuring out the shape of the clouds.

Well, so much for welcoming the summer.

Absurd post

It must have began when I strayed into Crossword (the bookstore) last Saturday -- no, not for an urge to buy books but just to pass the lonely afternoon. (I have a lot of books gathering dust, anyway. Moreover, I have recently promised myself to be more economical with my hard-earned money.) So before entering, I pledged not to buy any books. I just wanted the company of books, not own them.

As I hopped from one bookshelf to another, I carefully refrained myself from getting too close to any of them. But my resolve crumbled at the end when I decided, after much dilly-dallying in my head, to pick up Camus' The First Man. As I was coming home that night I kept wondering why I had chosen that particular book, especially because I was not much familiar with Camus' work. It was as if I picked it up on my whim. (Or maybe some absurd reason was driving me, I don't know.) The book is still lying on my table, gathering dust, and I don't even see myself reading it anytime soon.

But for some reason beyond my understanding Camus doesn't leave me there. I somehow keep bumping into something or the other that relates to Camus, each day. I pass the whole week under a shadow of unknown melancholy.

And this morning, again for some unknown reason, I dig out this (check the poem at the beginning, it is a favourite of mine). Simultaneously, my thought also wander to a long-forgotten poem -- a song in fact, the notorious Hungarian suicide song -- Gloomy Sunday. (This song was supposedly the reason of many suicides and was eventually banned. Rezső Seress, the creator of this song, himself couldn't escape its influence. He committed suicide by jumping off his building in a fit of depression shortly after his 69th birthday.) There had been many versions of this song. Read the translated lyrics of one of the versions (the most popular one, perhaps) here.

Now, there's really no need to panic. I'm not contemplating something as drastic as suicide. I was just wondering about the sequence of events -- spread over a whole week.

It all began with that visit to Crossword.

Does it now end here?

Birthday babble

30 March, 2007

Hail pranabk, ye all men and women
For he has, finally, turned twenty-seven

On the 30th day of March he accomplished this feat
So applaud for him, o people, he indeed deserves it

Overwhelmed by the cakes and balloons he did speak some nonsense
But his colleagues were generous, so they did not lose their patience

With age comes wisdom, that's what the whole world say
Let's wait, then, for the wise words of pranabk to follow day after day