Gah!

Cats and cockroaches- two of God's creatures with absolutely no proper respect for the Human species. Totally gets my goat.

Some days go - good indifferent - a mosaic.

Mounds of turmeric
Inevitable catcalls
A small town market


Newspaper advert
Sadder than an epitaph
Be my valentine

Ten zillion stars
A soul to each and spare
Poor lonely God

Truck honks at its nose
Scampers off in surprised fright
A dumb urban dog

The sun sets so large
As if by magic today
Inside tinted car

Say Hi

This squint-eyed creature here is my key chain. I only acquired her recently; about four months ago. I had to replace that crumpled scrap of leather that had served me for six years. I found her, thought she was really cute, cuter than all the rest of her friends in the display basket, and in spite of pretending to carefully view my choices for about ten minutes, I came home with her.

But there is a reason she’s getting all this sudden attention.

Recently, I’ve been travelling a lot past the clock tower. There is a petrol bunk there which is wickedly convenient (wicked because I am not too sure about the quality of their petrol).

The petrol attendant there loves my squint eyed girl. The first time he looked at her and grinned, looked up at me and grinned and handed her over reluctantly. The next time he recognised me (because of her I assume) and actually showed her off to his colleague. This is a man who must see a hundred key chains in a day’s work and if he likes my squinty, she must be special. And so like a parent whose offspring has just become the star of the colony function, I’ve suddenly decided I have a treasure. And this has prompted me to present her for display.

But it does occur to me that I might be mistaken. It’s possible that the attendant does not represent the discerning masses. For all I know he is perhaps only a kindred sprit? And perhaps we are the only two people who find anything of appeal in my squinty.

Which of these would I rather?

What are the things of worth? To be one in the world? To be one with the world? To be the one in a world? Kinship? Acceptance? Absolute value?

What do I know of those…

Salaam Nikhil

Watched Salaam-e-ishq today.

At last a film Bollywood can be proud of. Isn’t it amazing that Nikhil Advani has emerged from the shadow of his mentor to emerge, as … well Himself! But one must admit that the subtle tribute to him was touching. Also, it was only one of the many creative touches in the film.

From start to finish, this film is a statement in style. Six love stories - each amazing different in content, each told at a different pitch. Each narrative is put forth with the broad brush strokes of an artist sure of his craft. Not for Nikhil the expected atmospheric detail and depth of characterisation. The characters and storylines are so everything we have been used to, that the director wisely leaves us with only a hint, and invites the discerning audience to fill up the rest! This is perhaps what they mean by spaces in art.

I always like an artist to respect and engage with his audience.

It’s amazing how he manages to hold together all the different threads of the narratives without once getting involved. Clever editing techniques, with constant description of time and space in legible lettering so that the viewer is with the film at all times.

The stories are moved forward in unison quite like a master charioteer moves his team. And at every crucial turn we are shown how the protagonists are faring (there are twelve of them, a commendable feat) in a cunning mosaic of images.

The alternately funny and poignant climax brings together all the characters and the various storylines.

I cannot but mention the team. The editor who would never have been given such a job in his life- this clever man must surely thank his stars that he was born into an era with technological possibilities and word processing. The art director- it’s the case of who needs a character when you have an art director. For instance, we are never told anything about Akshaye Khanna’s character, but the set created for him leaves us with such astounding possibilities that indeed we are glad to be kept in the dark, or rather the blue. The palatial prussian blue koti (with a 20 foot elephant mural and acrylic crystal door knobs) speaks of unspeakable aesthetic versatility and is by itself worth the prize of your ticket.

I did not notice the music too much, it was alright I suppose, I was trying to grasp every intricacy of the narrative.

I’ve gushed enough, what can I say?

Go watch!

God how long this took to upload!

Sankranti has been gone a week (more! Eeks!), and all this is from then. That’s how late a Lateef I am. Bah!

But if I don’t put up these pictures even now, I will lose them to the innards of this computer. They will then acquire the patina of the forgotten, confabulate subtle self-deluding lies as they lie in isolated ignominy, and if they are ever discovered again, they will (half blinded by the unaccustomed spotlight) croak up a long-forgotten spiel of spurious romanticism.

No, no, no can’t let that happen! They will go up now, fresh as daisies, as fresh and innocent as my memories are. They will speak honestly and impartially without the gloss or the sentimental film of time. They will recollect to you and me the precise measure of the fun we* had at the Kite festival, at the People’s Plaza. They will tell you with stirring exactitude, of the blazing afternoon sun, of the not so sporting breeze, the fabulous big kites and the hundreds of small ones. They may not tell, how great it felt when that hundred kite ladi took off, or how parched our throats were, how determined we were that our kite would go up too, how I nearly blinded myself because our kite was finally up and in direct line with the sun and I was too afraid to take my eye off it.

These pictures also do not carry images of our two teenaged champions, both students of Ashray-Arkruti, the school for deaf children, and how fun they were. But since in some things there is room for sentimentality, I’ll just carry them in my mind.

Just for you and posterity, here goes-

*By ‘we’ I mean Footloose and me, but since that creature does not actually have a relationship with its blog, I assume this task.

Shauq-e-safar

I think I‘ve mentioned this in another form, but apart from all the usual reasons, there is another very good reason I love travel. Every time I return home, there is a certain feeling that comes, which would make it all worth it even if it hadn’t been all that much fun in the first place. I suppose I would have to call this feeling contentment (because I can’t think of anything else that fits) but it is more a certain certainty of being in exactly the right place, at the right time and doing the right things. A fleeting Zeness settles.
Baths assume ceremonial importance on days like these. Travel leaves many kinds of stains; it feels good to clear them.
I have a hierarchy of choice for my bathroom singing playlist and really special moods usually get “kaise chupaoon raaz-e-gham” the way it was sung by the King. My theory is that if I sing it a thousand times I may learn to infuse about a thousandth of the Ruh of his singing.
Well, I was singing it today and I found myself singing a new sher, and I discovered that it was on the lines of my favourite sher of the ghazal.
Here’s them both-

Gum ka na ho koi asar, vasl ki shab ho yun guzar
Sab ye qabool hai magar kauf-e-saher ka kya karoon


Iske sivah na koi ghar, tera hi rukh dekhoon jidhar
Teri talaash mein magar, shauq-e-safar ka kya karoon

Another journey
Usual toiletries bag
Needs repacking now

Raichur - signing out

These boys here at the cybercafe have Aahista-(Kunal Ganjawala), Don't touch me soniye, Kya mujhe pyaar hai, Dil laga na dil jale se, and Tere bin kaise jiyoon on a loop on their system, and sometimes, like now, when there aren't too many people they sing along. I haven't tired of the loop in all this time; I love what it does for my screaming neck muscles at the end of each day.
I 'll probably have to say goodbye when I leave here today. I don't know if it’s strictly necessary. But when people anticipate you everyday at five minutes past six, wonder when you don't turn up, try to keep your favourite system for you, stop being business people and become just people, you tend to want to say bye. I always find it very embarrassing and a little difficult, but I do it anyway.
I'll probably have to say bye to the elderly waiter who has made it his business to see that I account for very meal and coffee I have and see that I am really eating well. And the gap-toothed watchman who helped me photograph the butterfly on the hedge and was so delighted to see it on the display screen. And all the people I am working with. Everybody is already starting to look a little despondent. I hope it’s not too bad this time.
I feel like a fraud every time I leave to return to my real life. But that’s silly and ridiculous. And I suppose it is just a smaller fractal of the larger pattern.

Raichur- It's a dogs life

These dog shows are unnatural things, I tell you, unnatural.
They’ve had banners hung up all over Raichur announcing the 2nd grand dog show and I’d never been to one, so naturally I had to go. I hadn’t given it much thought except that it would be interesting to see what breeds Raichur had; and it seemed Raichur folk must be really serious about their dogs to warrant a full-fledged dog show.
But what madness it is to bring together about fifty thoroughly pampered top dogs into one small enclosure and then not have the bloody sense to keep them apart or at least start the damned event on time. I had harrowing time for the hour and a half I waited for this thing to start. Dogs straining at their leashes, marking territory chair, pole, and fence, aggressive, intimidated, all kinds of excited and generally manic. My heart must have skipped approximately three and a half dozen beats but the owners were inexplicably unperturbed. They just lounged around calling languid ‘stay’ and ‘sit’ commands exchanging details of pedigree and trainers (I had a tough time believing any of those deranged specimens had had any training) source, cost and number of awards. All of this is interesting enough to overhear, if one is not strung like a violin string. One of them did not move an inch till her dog almost had its tail bitten off. You’d think they would look after award winning dogs better, huh?
Then the priceless part. There was actually a free anti-rabies vaccination camp on the grounds where the dogs were taken for their shot - Before the show! Now I don’t know too much about dogs but I would imagine that their nerves would be a little strained by being hauled off for an injection apart from all the madness.
At this point I’d had enough and I needed to leave in any case. So I did not actually get to see the show, and now I’ll never know how that woman with her Dalmatian pups (whose Doberman won some prize last year) fared this time, and if Prince cleaned up in time, if those Boxers were any good and if the Great Dane I was rooting for did well and what a dog show is really like.

Raichur ramblings - 2

Raichur's landscape is pretty much Deccan stuff. Dryish, with lovely dusks. But it has some beautiful rocks! In fact the entire stretch from Hyderabad has great formations, but the ones I saw this evening close to this old old Shiva temple are something else. Next time my instinct tells me to go fetch my camera I will listen to it even if it means two flights of stairs. (Raichur’s hospitality doesn’t extend to elevators.)
I am happy to report that my lethargy is a thing of the past. In fact right now with an ounce of tadaka filter coffee in my system I am feeling decidedly perky. After three days of anemic, wimpy coffee at the hotel, I decided to try this stand-up-and-serve-yourself-type joint. Rs 4 for an extra strong decoction with a dash of hot milk thrown into miniscule steel tumbler and Davara. Aha! Happiness. Porcelain is all right for tea but there is something about real coffee that demands steel.
As you can see, when I am away from home it is the mundane things that make me merry.

To continue-
Milne ke vaade se tasalli ho padi hai abke
Ke ye manzar mere hone mein hoga, yakeen nahi hota

Raichur ramblings - 1

I write this from a net browsing center. This is a first for me! I am into the one hour slot because I shot the 30 min slot by few minutes. I am yawning my head off but I like to be productive.
I usually get like this, all dazed and a little blown on the first evening in any new place. Too many things too many people, and every manner of assault on the senses. I fear sometimes that I must be a pretty weak poor sort of creature. I seem to need more brain-rest than anybody I know, aur nateeja kya nikalta hai? Khuda jane because I have the awfulest memory. One good soul, a behavioural scientist, told me that there is nothing actually wrong with me I just happen to have a semantic rather than an episodic memory /understanding of events. Oh How I cling to that!

Hmmm aur?
Aur bhi bhut kuch tha yakeenan yaad ke kabil
Ke tumse juda bhi waqt guzre, yakeen nahi hota

Hazaaroon khwaishen aisi…

That’s one long-standing entry ticked off my wish list. I took a never-ending ride in a Giant wheel and I was the sole occupant! I have no clue why it made it to the list in the first place; I have no head for heights and practically no stomach for anything. I suspect it might have something to do with numerous romantic Hollywood images of the protagonist riding poignantly alone at dusk in a desolate amusement park that had perhaps bustled all day and now is forlornly empty. In those, the person involved is always gloriously alone, sitting artistically lopsided on the swaying perch, staring into space working out life’s problems or having an epiphany or two. Now I can’t be certain, but it is possible that all this led me to believe that as far as spiritual stimulants go a lonely Ferris wheel ride is matchless.
All in all, if someone had decided to film me on my ride they would have had some interestingly different footage. What they would have got is a person sitting rigidly upright, in the precise centre of a cage-like contraption, with her arms braced like steel against its walls. Also (because she happened to be on her way back from a particularly boring government meeting) between her knees would be vigorously clutched a folder full of papers. Her eyes screwed tightly shut, only opening each time as she passes the glowering operator.
Coming to think of it – who operates those wheels in Hollywood?
Anyway, after the first ten rounds I actually opened my eyes at the top, and Secunderabad was quite lovely, really. By the twentieth, I felt a strange kinship with the person in top floor of the building across the road who was drying his clothes. By the thirtieth, I began to suspect that I might be having my spiritual moment after all, but I could not be sure if it was my Kundalini or the contents of my stomach that was rising.
Anyway, around this time the operator must have decide that he had had his fun, because he brought me to an unspectacular halt.
How is it, I ask you, that when they have a wheel full of laughing, screaming happy people they don’t give them more than ten rounds, and then they have a single green-around-the-gills occupant they are suddenly so generous? Perverse I tell you.

What was it he said…? “…ke har khwaish pe dam nikle.”
Indeed.

The person I choose not to be; dies.
Every moment as the sceptre of choice brings to life a new me
The person I could have been is already in her grave
Among those dead, are there those that I might admire, envy, disdain or resent…?
In every case they are dead and I am not.
Would they have been a finer me, I wonder
Did they have a better right to life?
Perhaps, but I am glad the choice was not mine
And now I will go through the motions of my script
With the best will I can muster and as much heart as I can spare
And when that moment of choice arrives I will be strong and secure
In the knowledge that however I choose, I will not live to regret.

Omkara

Watched Omkara yesterday. Found it shatteringly beautiful. I usually decide about a film by the quality and intensity of the hangover it leaves me with. I feel like I’ve been at a rave all night.

Can a good music director turn into such an extraordinary filmmaker just by wanting to? Seems he can. Must be that thing they call talent.

The quality of sleep is not strained
It is not to be had by the strength of will
It will not be cajoled, nor planned with reason
Nor is logic or necessity ever its envoy
A tired body may crave and not have it
The righteous might deserve and not find it
It is a fine thing, fragile and elusive
Its temper is lost with coercion or guile
But if you will have it still and are determined then
Go travel to lands that are not your own
These travels- they could be of a varying kind
Happy or arduous or peaceful, with every manner
Of luxury, bring great pleasure and pleasantness
And still it would not come…
Travel homeward then, unpack the baggage of the journey
Or a lifetime and turn to bed
If then on that day sleep does not afford you her that rare quality
She will have been mean indeed, or you not at home.

On rereading and not reading

There are few things as pleasant as rereading. It is especially nice for someone like me with conveniently dismal powers of memory. I only ever retain the sense of a book; mostly remembering just the mood it left me with or the ways in which it excited my imagination. I invariably forget whodunit in a whodunit. I can pick up an old book absolutely secure in the knowledge that I will love it but really know little else. Also being somewhat pernickety about satisfying my mood cravings, with an old book I have a hole-in-one instead of having to suspiciously poke through the first chapters of several.
Which is why I was dismayed a while back to find that somehow a sense of guilt had begun to creep in at the idea of rereading. I examined the matter and I put forth to you my findings.
On an almost daily level I am faced with fresh evidence of some extraordinary new talent or the other. Publishing is now more aggressive a business than ever before. Books get talked about, styles get dissected, new genres get heralded, and so much so that even a reasonably insouciant reader gets primed like a 400 ft bore well motor. There is now a weekly must-read and the ever more common you-cannot-show-your face-in-society-without-having-read-this. Lists of ‘the most important writer of the century’ and ‘quite the most exciting talent we have had this decade’ are soon threatening to make it into a good sized book themselves.
Instead of igniting in me the thirst for evermore inspired literature all this is leaving me oddly defiant. Mostly because of that niggling guilt I mentioned before. Now every time I skim for an old favourite, visions of all the books I ought to be reading swim before my eyes. With so much new territory unexplored what careless stupidity to eddying around in old waters! It feels depressingly like a duty to constantly present myself with newer delights, like the over anxious parent who enrols her ward in all the latest summer camps.
I find myself completely idle for a few minutes and any number of books from the current-books shelf insinuate themselves onto my attention. It has begun to make me feel unaccustomedly resentful. I have only known having to steal time away for books, never from them! Instead of the comfortable old friend they are supposed to be books now are glitzy new acquaintances you meet at cocktail parties to be talked to suavely and have to be painstakingly kept in touch with. To me somehow this is more effort than I like. It seems to dilute the intimacy and the one-on-oneness of a reading experience. It’s no longer just a book and me. With previews, book-launches, celebrity-quoting blurbs, reviews and a zillion bytes of opinion and information it feels like I have a whole community peeping over my shoulder. It’s extraordinarily hard nowadays to approach any book with a mind innocent of some manner of prejudice.
As a consequence, natural perversity is keeping me from fully enjoying anything new, and stupidly misplaced guilt wont let me reread in peace. Even staring into space, my all-time favourite pass-time has lost its charm under the stress of awareness.
When all this began I thought it was a passing phase, now I am a little worried. I am thoroughly irritated with myself for letting external factors interfere with my personal pleasure. And of course I know that loss of innocence and resulting guilt are never anybody else’s fault. The first may not be easily remedied, but I am damned if I don’t work on the second.

Gushing on

Ya ali yaar pe hain loota dun mita dun mein apni khudi
Aha why does it all seem so much more, just more when Shiny’s face fills the screen? That song on that Man, the Bhatt gang knows what it is doing sometimes.
I and (a thousand others I daresay) would have said that Shiny is a very silly name for a grown man. Not anymore. Now you can say Shiny to me in the manner of BOO, and see my face light up. I tell you, that man lends dignity to a name. Oh! Shiny, Shiny Shiny.

BTW Gangster’s oookay, Shiny’s fabulous. I desperately hope he does not develop his tendency to overact. He is just perfect when he just is. Thought he was good in Kal, waiting to see Hazaaron khwaishein aisi. Spitty it has to be on small screen now.

Would you hold on a minute while I buy this tea?

Pause, not judge, nor focus, just let me be

Can we pretend please that it’s the only brand on the shelf?

I just like tea and so I buy it to please myself

Can we please not create a lifestyle around a thing

Build a life around associations and belonging

It’s not the books I read, or the views I hold

Not my religion, my geometry or my mould,

The things I like or those I loathe

I could love two people and hate them both

It’s not these things that make me me

It’s not my thoughts that are my key

If there is a me, she’s strewn between

In the lag of reaction, in the action unseen

Not in the raging moods, poses and attitudes

Not in my considered arguments or my platitudes

It’s not in what you get or even in what you see

But in the second after I wake before I am me

So if perchance you do really want to know

Can we just travel together with a coffee to go?

Xakhe Jauhs

It is difficult to describe Xakhe Jauhs. Apart from saying that he was clever, there is very little else that can be said about him, that is perhaps because there is very little else to him. What is a person of no qualities called? Do you judge qualities by reactions in situations? Let’s try that then. Let it be said - he never initiated conversations and very rarely replied. It was not easy to say if he was happy or sad but it was suspected that he was never bored. There was a little blobbing nerve at his temple that would become a bit more obvious if he was not usual. But exactly what could by discerned by this is not known.
XJ was used to being alone. He saw his parents a couple of times a week and they always smiled at him kindly. They left him secret messages about what food was available and where. He enjoyed treasure hunts, we think.
XJ was up to very important work some of those days. He was trying to develop an improved variety of elves that were good at scrubbing out shirt collars.
XJ was usually eleven years old unless he was being fifty-six. Sometimes, rarely, he was about a year and a half. If his parents came in unexpectedly and found him like that they would smack their heads for not thinking of leaving some baby food. They were kind that way. They would go away again grinning together. They always did everything together. They were like a split zygote or something.
Once, many years ago, the parents had lost XJ for three days. A gypsy had thought him very pretty and put him in her crystal ball. He had been a baby when they got him back. But the parents recognised him immediately.
When XJ once averted a very important international crisis, his parents were very proud of him. They ordered a very handsome tombstone with the legend “Clever Boy” and had it installed on his grave for all the neighbours to admire.
Did I tell you that when he died at age eight, the minister said he was a Clever Boy?

Love Hope

When I fear neither distance nor nearness I may reach for you my love

When I absolve me of guilt then I may deserve you already

When I grab no more I may find I have that instance- you

When I am no more I may be you my love

Until then, then I have my love, it is not fearless, or guiltless or other than mine

But I have it and it is yours and it overwhelms me and gives me hope.

Until then, then.