Sunday, March 23, 2008

Indigo- a kind of blue

Heavy rains in Hyderabad. It stared off looking like some regular conventional-response-to-summer convection rainfall. Now suddenly in the past twenty four hours it has poured non-stop and the depression in the Arabian Sea has seeped insidiously across the drenched states and into me. It is a heavy somnolent sense of uneasiness. It doesn’t help that a lot of work lies pending in other opened files on this very computer. Of course, that is a sure-shot situation to make you want play mutinously at trivial pursuits, no?

So to entertain myself I am going to carefully select from the pictures of my frog ‘Tattoo’ from yesterday and S papa’s birthday party. It is an amazing thing how parents of young children will know so many others with children of the same age. S and S sure know at least a quarter of the folks with children under the age of nine in Hyderabad. At least that is how it seemed when I waited politely for my turn while child after young twerp queued up for their poster colour tattoos. I gave them all a slip after dinner (and my dessert unfortunately) to go and corner the young artist. Nice chap, fine arts from JNTU, graphic/web design artist, does this on the side. Painted me, as you will see, a nice attitudy frog. I liked. It is a good thing we always have plastic gloves in stock in the house; will stretch it for as long as I can.

Here-


















As I said, you have pressing work, you will do all sorts of other stuff. Among that other stuff is this-


Kismat mein nahi nuks apne fitrat mein mila
Ye ilm ru-ba-ru-e-ruh hokar fursat mein mila


Taa-umr-e-daanishi ne woh lazzat nahi bakshi
Jho ek naagahaan saaat-e-jahaalat mein mila


Tang-zunjzadah raahon mein dab ke chhut gaya jo nafas
Doob kar us zahan-e-aazaad-o-salaamat mein mila


Ehsaas-e-saleeb-e-zeest kaandhon pe hotaa hi nahi
Woh kuvvat-e-eitbaar tere ibaadat mein mila


Tu hai to rang-e-jahan ghulta hai tere aab mein
Jab nahi tho zauq-e-berangee tere furqat mein mila


Tere naqsh-e-paa mein chal ke dekha hai har dam
Chal ‘Asvi’ ab ke nijaat bagaavat mein mila




Monday, March 17, 2008

Stumbling upon delight



The thing about living in an old fashioned little colony in a largish city is the lazy familiarity it breeds. Not so much the intrusive intimacy of village life, but a mutual mapping of life’s highlights. You know a lot about people with whom you may have exchanged no more than a hundred sentences in twenty years, because of the jobs they have held, their stand on garbage disposal, the periodic renovations of their houses, the kinds of women their sons have married etc. You live around them for so long that if there are no serious ripples in the facades, you think you have them pegged. When suddenly somebody manages to shake you out of this complacency, by revealing an exciting secret life, it is very thrilling, and makes you really wonder how much you are probably missing.

I got back from Devarakonda yesterday and felt like stretching my legs in the evening and so towed the mater along for a walk. There is a little dead-end littered colony adjacent to us that has quiet streets but is home to packs of jealous dogs. But we felt brave and ventured forth. I was in the middle of an animated sentence when something caught my eye. Too deep into what I was saying I took another dozen steps before I knew I just had to go back and investigate for my own peace of mind. On a very small section of the bottom of an otherwise ordinary building was an extraordinary mural integrated into the building, all with drainage pipe and beam structures. Intrigued, I walked closer to see that a little pathway of textured cement paving led up to a door. It was entirely inviting and no harm could come of just popping my head in. I was fully prepared to explain myself to strangers, when I walked into the darlingest room/artist studio you ever saw. Instead of a stranger, the man who stood before me was a man who I had thought of as salt-of-the-earth kind of banker for close-on twenty five years.

I just said Namaste and barged in and it was quite obvious that I had thoroughly discomfited him. But I was a little stunned by all the visual stimuli around me and the implications of it, and anyway I was too fascinated to be able to do the decent thing and leave quickly. Instead I stood there and gaped and asked questions. How long had he been doing it, what mediums does he use, does he exhibit and I jabbered on all the time staring at the walls – the man had talent, this was no keep-yourself-busy-after-retirement kind of outfit; quite obviously it was the real thing.

I think he was desperately tempted to pass off the whole thing as a something belonging to his friend, a very young man who was standing by watching us. But that man was even less interested than me in accommodating my neighbour’s obvious desire for secrecy. He showed me specifically to all the most interesting pieces and told me how they met at an art gallery and immediately struck a rapport and started a partnership. My head was reeling a bit by now and so it was lucky that my mother came to check if I had disappeared into a time-portal. This was not so lucky for the poor man who probably thought I was bad enough without having to contend with my mother too. Anyway she managed to draw me away before I could beg to be shown above stairs through that incredibly delightful yellow painted stairway. With repeated threats of visiting again, I left.

I bounced the entire way back home. It was too delightful a revelation to credit. I am just a very tiny bit concerned that I have chanced upon the secret life of a person and that I should perhaps have slunk away without uttering a squeak. But since I doubt I was capable of it if my life depended on it, I shall not fret. And it is such a wonderful secret that surely just me knowing it can’t hurt?

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Treading Momin's ground

With one thing or the other Momin's masterpiece has been whirling in my head these past days. There is something about truly great ghazals (probably their familiarity) that makes their Radeef-Kaafiyaas resonate with an implusive energy. Well, I have been playing with this one, but crave pardon for the impertinence by paraphrasing Ahmed Faraz- (written originally as you might guess, for Ghalib)
'Momin teri zameen par likhee tho hai ghazal
lekin tere kad-e-sukhan ke barabar nahi hun main'

Well here goes-

Jinhe rashk tha mere roz-e-aaraam se
Unhe kaho ab raat ka savera nahi hota

Kusoor-e-naama-e-khushk naamabar ka hai
Varna woh dil hota naama nahi hota

Mere pindaar ko bakshaa hi nahi kadmon ne
kaash yun dil-kash tera koocha nahi hota

Jung-e-dil mein nihatton pe vaar kya theek?
Jadal-e-jazb ka ye saleeka nahi hota

And one in in butchered Dakhani because I am feeling homesick for Hyderabad-

Mereich naam ka koitho aur nikle tho achcha hoinga
Phir bol saktoon ye beikhtiyaar dil mera nahi hota




Friday, March 07, 2008

Devarakonda diary - 1

I am not trying here to run down the joys that we get dealt out in life, but the thing is, they do tend to be universal. Difficulties on the other hand have so much character. Sometimes they are so nuanced that they seem to come tailor-made for the person they afflict. It is possible to tell so much about a person from the kind of troubles they land up with. And it is a perfectly true cliche that people tell strangers their immediate troubles. It is one of the reasons I like travel. Not that I have some ghoulish fascination for human suffering; it is just that it gives me insights into lives other than mine. Perfectly whole viewpoints, opinions, lifestyles and minds - just not mine; it is very liberating. It is interesting to see someone's life, and then by an act of transference my own, as a construct of multiple elements and then view those elements individually.
And just because it will be nice to remember her by, I am putting down an account of a woman who travelled next to me on the bus to Devarakonda.

Returning home from visiting/nursing a probably pregnant daughter in Hyderabad. Desperate to get to Mallepalli before sunset because it is a ten rupee auto drive away from her home in a nearby village. She has a cell-phone but only has a few operations under control. She manages to call someone at the village to try and get someone to pick her up, but doesn't get through to the person she wants to talk to. There is a missed call. She doesn't recognise the number (she can't read), but we hope it is from the village and so she asks me to try and call back. Now I am the last person you need in this kind of situation and without knowing quite how, I connect to the very person she has been trying to avoid. A little background on this individual. He is married to her step-daughter and as a consequence feels that he is meted out step-mother-in-lawly treatment from her, despite her having been to excruciatingly conscientious pains to be perfectly equal in her behaviour all these years. My guilt mounts as he calls about seven times in the next hour trying to convince her to stopover at his village claiming her for his also sick wife. She turns him down with wonderful courtesy each time.
See, my lady has hens who have been handed over for safekeeping to neighbours. But neighbours never do more than their bare duty, do they? Then she is also worried about two other hens who have disappeared to lay eggs. Nobody to find and gather them. She also has to light the Tuesday lamp for the deity. Plus she needs to tend to her orange saplings which will yield fruit in about three years, hopefully. Till such time she depends on her sons'-in-law generosity, because her husband is a wastrel who obviously spends his time living and quarrelling alternately with each of his daughters.
The son-in-law (the one she has been staying with) has covered her bus and auto fare but for a meal she will have to get home.
My lady is tired and worn-out and somewhat offended for being treated in turn like a punching-bag, wet-nurse, provider and matriarch.
I think she is also a bit hungry, but she only plans to cook in the morning on account of the probability of finding snakes in the firewood after dark. She is very worried that she has possibily hurt and offended the only member of her family she is genuinely fond of, who does make unreasonable demands like the rest of them but does so probably more out of petulant affection than selfishness.
Mallepalli arrives ten minutes shy of dusk.