Find and keep

(Also posted at Urban Babblers)

A couple of months ago the Guardian Poetry workshop had a very interesting exercise designed by a poet called David Morley.The exercise requires us to find poetry in nature or descriptions of nature. Morley says that very often even the most prosaically intended, quasi-scientific descriptions of natural things and phenomenon in such material as field guides can be astonishingly beautiful; he is very right.

Being a birder and Indian I naturally turned to Salim Ali. My difficulty then was to choose a passage; they were all variously lovely. So I opened a page at random as suggested. I just took most of what I found and placed it in a ‘live’ context. It (the context) happened to be the intended one and one I am most familiar with.

Here’s the result-

ID

Could it be

the unmistakable cousin of the Indian Pond Heron

Upper parts chestnut-cinnamon

Check

Stripe down foreneck

Strike two.

Female duller

A male then.

Resident

Solitary

Hmmm

Habits:

very similar to those of a Little Green Heron

Bookmark and flip:

When surprised

on its nest

or cornered assumes

characteristic attitude of the tribe

termed the ‘on guard’.

Ocular note:

Neck stretched perpendicular,

bill pointing skyward,

the bird freezes,

astonishingly obliterated

amongst its reedy environment.

That’s a wrap.

But just to know:

Nests – in the south west monsoon

Nest – a small twig platform

Eggs – four or five

White.

Note: Chestnut Bittern; nos: 1

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

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?

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

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.

Betaal ka sawaal

Oh! King and other readers, if you know the answer to this question and still hold your peace your head will split into a thousand pieces. (Or something a little less biblical sounding than that. Damn! where are those Chandamamas when you need them? In Usha Bala’s attic along with The Children of Willow Farm Again, for sure.)

Ok, the question is this – who wears Chirag Din shirts? First of all, is it a real company that makes real shirts? Are these really to be found in the open market? What? What is their consumer profile? What are those ads about? Does anybody ‘get’ them? Do you suppose some people are really beating down the panes of retail store windows demanding this product, as we speak? Or do they make inscrutable ads, with obviously time-warped men and women that nobody would admit to identifying with, for tax purposes.

These questions have buzzed around my head for more than twenty years; feels like more. So now it’s either your head or mine that is going to burst.

There you go!

Been tagged and maligned. (I wear the sweetest expression normally and don’t bear grudges.) But the tag is fairly simple and only requires me to rehash some of the old stuff.

Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Family: people in my family have a common failing. All of us talk constantly about our family. So I am sure there probably are several references to them throughout this blog, but this one features us all.

Friend: here – a record of a very fun time we had, my friend and I.

Myself: if you did a search on this blog, ‘I’ would probably throw up the most results. That’s how it is I suppose, never did pretend to be about anything other than me. So then, to choose just one…Hmmm…maybe this one?

Your love: is it a cop-out to do an “andha routaa?”? Why naat I say! So I give you – this.

Anything you like: who came up with this tag, da? Anyway – here. Because I am parched for a swig of rural India again and some lone travelling.

I tag Sheetal, Gayatri because they are sure to have interesting stuff for all categories, and need to update their blogs, even if only with a tag posts. Footloose to challenge her with subjects other than Africa and corporate angst. Australopithecus to see what he will do with this sweet innocent tag.

The We of sport

Written after the first flush of victory had dissolved into a dazed dense inward high. Hence the slightly drunk quality.

To be a pixel in a picture, stardust in a galaxy, synapse in a body, one of a billion cricket fans!

Not the banding arms of jingoists scavenging the ephemeral dust of human joy and despair, seeking to raise the spectre of a forced national identity, propped against a manufactured enemy – No, not that! Nor even material for the heart-high fences raised by the parasitic media in a bid to create more consumable identities. It is not to establish, or know, but to sense through the ether of sublimated emotion, that for the space of some moments there is more out there being exactly like me.

These individual lives we live, each of us born to life in an apparently unique point in a time-space, forging our way through a million milestones of resistance straining for independence from the blackhole of universality, for an identity, for a voice, for separation – to me always a little puzzling; on days like these, unfathomable.

Too much drama about a trivial thing, do you think? Should I be saving the rhetoric for a large tragedy or a private one? For societal revolution?

But only the most sublime artistic temperament can find in great grief the detachment required to truly find the quivering life of it. The lesser people need a device of distance, the obvious ploy of playacting to help be both within and without a moment. To us – the ordinary people – give us sport. In sport, through the ardency, the anguish, the allurement, the elation, there is always a subliminal cognition of its fantastical nature, of its being removed from the real and the core. This luxury of distance affords us the opportunity to vibrate at a comfortable pitch. Sport can make a world resonate in fine-tuned orchestra of a million minds; it is altogether breathtaking music.

Whew! That wasn’t so bad!

This morning before the start of play, in the lead-up session, Harsha Bhogle was taking us down for the pitch report when he said, “Is it a pitch? Is it a trampoline? Will the keeper have to stand near the ropes?” Something queer happened to me just then. I think I tried to laugh but it came out like a shudder. Ten days of nervous anticipation had left my system somewhat battered.

Really, there has been so much said about the Perth pitch, I had begun to supplant it in my fevered dreams with the moon’s surface. The darned pitch was more talked about than Gopal’s hilsa. Plays, concerts, readings, home, hearth and Hyderabad... no place was safe from assault. You could be talking of Jazz, infants, modernism or aurekaal sambar the conversation would veer in the most eerie fashion to the pitch. And move forward in almost choreographed lines:

First somebody would express regret that Sydney was our one real chance.

Then the group would sigh.

Then somebody (quite often me) would open and close their mouth in a frustrated show of naïve optimism.

At which somebody would waggle their eyebrows and say ‘Perth’ in wan tones of wisdom.

This would be the cue for the most statistically inclined of the lot to tell us in traumatizing detail why a score of 78 for 8 would be cause to cheer.

There would then be a moment of silence.

Followed by a half hopeful half petulant, “yes, but on a good day… “

Embarrassed laughter by all concerned would put paid to that particular segment of the conversation.

As a result, such horrific visions had I drawn up of whizzing missiles and bouncing bludgeons that I woke up in a cold sweat one night wondering if they made the helmets sturdy enough and if increment tonics could possibly work on thirty four year old men; this, despite the fact that I had been assiduously practicing my hooks and cuts with nightly regularity before dropping off to sleep.

So I can’t express to you what a relief it is to find that the Perth pitch is not in fact a missile launcher but a nice regular, if somewhat bouncy, cricket pitch. 297 for 6 may not be the best first day score in test cricket, but stap me if I complain.

Taare zameen par

What I wrote yesterday immediately after watching Aamir Khan’s Taare zameen par was emotionally garbled. After several attempts at writing myself into a semblance of balance I gave up in disgust. I hoped I would be more lucid and less churned up after an entire normal day and night. But it seems that the hangover will not abate so easily.

Flower child

There is this kid who brings my mother flowers every Wednesday. He has been coming for about three years now; he used to accompany his parents earlier, now he comes all alone. I don’t think he can be above ten. He comes with a pre-packed polythene carry bag in which are the assortion of flowers he has decided my mother should have that week. My mother and he seem to have some sort of understanding and she is quite happy to let him have the decision. She and he invariably find much to talk about. She knows, I think, most of what is most important to him. She usually does of most people.
He is really a very engaging child; a bit taciturn, very conscientious, and has such a sweet air of duteous self-importance, that I am always tempted to tease him out of it. He came today when we were having tea; he rang the doorbell and called out. He sounded so delightful that I spontaneously uttered some cooing noises that must revolt any self-respecting ten year old, leave alone this rather superior one. To make matters worse I had a Bourbon chocolate biscuit in my hand which I had just been about to surrender to. Naturally I offered it to him, naturally he refused. So how to press him and save his pride? The big guns were called in and duly had their effect. He wasn’t to say he never ate biscuits?! Oh! So he only doesn’t when people offer it to him? Did he always maaro so much style? And finally the biscuit was popped into his pocket. He grunted something about looking silly on the roads and trotted off.
During the monsoon this year (we had a considerable one) we were a bit worried for him. He used to come in soaked to the skin each time with an ineffectual plastic cover draped over his head around his ears. He looked a little pathetic and determined not to show it. He said quite prosaically that he could not afford a raincoat and an umbrella was a nuisance. I hoped his constitution was as resilient as his spirit and let it pass. In some cases sympathy is always an insult.
But today after our silly tussle over the refused biscuit, I was stupidly choked. There is such a thing as too much pride, and it is invariably born of necessity. A child should not need it.

A crowded day

'Koi mila tho haath milayaa kahin gaye do baatein ki

Ghar se baahar jab bhi nikalaa din bhar bhoj uthaayaa hai'

-Rustam Sahgalwafa

Last year, when we were on our trek around the Sahayadri ranges we stayed one night at a huge gufaa. When we explored around in the light of candles we realized that the cave already had an occupant; an old happy looking Baba who was rather nice about the invasion of his privacy. He brought us extra light and guided us around the cave. When we retired it was calming to know that he slept in the chamber next to ours.

I wondered about him as we said goodbye the next day. Just things like, how did he come to live in such queer isolation? does it really suit him so well as to give him that wonderful aura of contentment? What does he do for food? Does he ever get lonely? Were a bunch of high spirited holiday makers a welcome change or an unavoidable irritation to be borne? Or neither?
I remember I felt a pang of envy.

And I know that was pure rubbish. I know for a fact that I would be driven raving mad inside a month with such an existence. So why the inappropriate envy? But we will crave the things we don’t really want…

But today out of the blue I have been thinking about him. Well of course there was a trigger, there always is.

Most people cannot avoid people (I mean large numbers of them) for the first quarter of their lives. But later if they choose carefully and work very hard towards it they can manage an existence of minimal contact. When I started down this path, I had not thought about it in those terms, but this is the kind of life I seem to have achieved and for the large part I am content with it.

But sometimes I take a fancy for certain activities that are necessarily social. And I think to myself, it's only people! How bad can it be? I am reminded every time.

Nothing depletes me a much as boredom. And nothing is as boring as having to present my social face to a group of people who will only give me theirs. And this kind of boredom is far worse than the kind that is associated with standing in the snake-queues of a reservation office or waiting out two-hours in a dentist’s anteroom. In those situations your mind is entirely free to wander and entertain itself. But if you are an adult and cooped with a bunch of other adults determined to be social you find yourself in a stressful situation where a wandering mind will be construed as a sign of great rudeness or worse shyness; which will only attract even more well-intentioned and resolutely surface attention.

Today I voluntarily inflicted upon myself such a situation. I came back so exhausted that I have uttered less than half a dozen sentences to my bemused family. I write this for therapy.

I admit I sound like a very poor sort of creature even to my own ears and I suspect I have indulged myself far too much over the years.

But I find it impossible to handle groups of people.

My mechanical smiles hurt my cheekbones.

The social glitter off so many polished surfaces hurts my eye.

The always palpable insecurities of people in groups hurt my nerves.

Restraining the desire to escape hurts my muscles.

Please give me people, I know I need them. But one at a time please.

Little by little we grow…

One has acquired one’s first long lens and one is thrilled to pixels. A couple of stray remarks by the Mater and one’s own reaction to the same had one worried that one may have also inadvertently acquired the NAS*- a deadly condition that those in the know say is a degenerative disease. But when one recollects that one was the kind of vichitra प्राणी that worked with a fully manual camera and a single lens for a decade before going digital somewhat kicking and crying, one is able to laugh away those fears. One feels quite sure that the long-standing habit of parsimony will prevail over epidemic passing fancies.

The first 1MB has been gobbled up by creatures and things around the house- so just nice ordinary pictures there, nothing great in content or form. But something needs putting up to mark the occasion. So kindly indulge.

*Nikon Acquisition Syndrome

The Mind of the Maker

I borrowed ‘The Mind of the Maker’ by Dorothy Sayers on an instinct at the British library recently. This edition was published as a part of a series – The Library of Anglican Spirituality. For some time now I had been meaning to get hold of some of Sayers’ Christian writings just to see what kind of theologian she was, so I was quite happy to have found it but I was a little afraid that I would be disappointed if it turned out to be a bit propagandist in nature.

I needn’t have worried. However devout a Christian Sayers was, her writing is brilliantly detached and superbly incisive. Plus she writes about my most favourite topic, the relation between Art and spirituality. God! That sounds hopelessly inadequate, but I imagine it is because ‘spirituality’ is such an abused term these days that it is impossible to use the word without it dredging up a hundred common connotations. But that is without help.

In ‘The Mind of the Maker’ Sayers uses a compelling analogy of the creative artist, more specifically the writer (of The Word with all its Biblical implications) to elucidate the doctrine of trinity. Or perhaps it would be righter to say that she uses the statements in the doctrine to explain the creative processes that converge in an Ideal work of Art.

The most appealing aspect of Sayers’ thesis is that she doesn’t ‘argue’- she states. After a surfeit of academicians who use the ‘argue and withdraw’ tool to impress their audiences with the solidity of their academic objectivity, it was a rare pleasure to read an extremely well-ordered thesis presented almost as facts. I am personally convinced that that is probably the only valid way when one is talking of matters of theology or Art. Simply because in some matters rational debate will take you only so far till you reach a stalemate. A person who will rationalise life on his dying breath has got to be uncommonly foolish.

And it is an uncommonly good book that can find coordinates for the ‘Trinity’s Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Three Persons) in the Idea, Energy and Power – the three elements within a ‘maker’s’ make-up that together and simultaneously ignite, fuel and sustain a work of Art.

Through this schema Sayers guide us through the meaning of Free Will drawn parallel to originality in Art, Evil corresponding to Bad Art, Real love equaling True Art, and my personal favourite, what she calls very interestingly Scalene trinities – which correspond with the various types of Less-than-ideal Art, and she lets us in on how to identify what exactly is ‘wrong’ with such a piece of flawed Art.

Most, most fascinating stuff.

If you are interested in theology or Art, or the correlation between the two or just plain writing, this book will probably interest you.

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• I am struck repeatedly by how all the major religions of the world essentially say the same thing. Very often the kind of imagery and knowledge-constructs are so similar it really gobsmacks me. The Three Persons of the Trinity are crazily similar to the Bhramha-Vishnu-Maheshwara of the Hindu trinity or even to the Shiva-Shakti-Kundalini concept.

• Also I am tying myself into knots about this one: see the workings of the Trinity are very similar to the Hindu concept of Dharma. Okay, now the word Dharma comes from the root ‘Dhri’ which of course sounds like ‘Tri’ but actually means ‘that which holds or sustains’. We know that the Hindu theology holds the Trinity as the mechanism through which the world as we know it is sustained. Of course Dharma is a much much older word and concept. So I am thinking maybe ‘Dhri’ comes form an older form of ‘Tri’. What say?

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I have never had any deep knowledge of Christian theology, in spite of being educated at a convent for the first fourteen years, or probably because of it. I must have crossed myself thousands of times, and muttered the words “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” not quite knowing what I was committing. I think I had a grasp on the father and the son (often equated with Christ) but I wasn’t ever sure who the Holy Spirit was. Considering the fact that subsequently the subject of theology has become a prime favourite with me I am quite surprised that I had never explored the doctrine of trinity or in fact any other aspect of Christian theology until this recently. I blame this squarely on being subjected to the mundane peripherals of the religion too early in life, which made it familiar but somewhat uninspiring.

A master's voice

Have you heard Mehdi Hasan sing Ab ke hum bichde? He sings it like a dream. The first sher is okay and some others are really good, but you don’t think of all that when you hear him sing it – they all sound uniformly brilliant.

Today was a long-bath day (pedicure included) and this was my song of choice. The bath turned out longer than I expected and so I had to make up another sher to go along. It has the same khafiya as the maqta, but is different in content.

Ab na woh tu hain na main hun na woh maazi hai Faraz

Jaise do saaye tamannayon ke saraabon mein mile

Ahmed Faraz

Ye aane ka chalne ka jaane ka sabab

Ho ke seharaon mein phir ke saraabon mein mile

Another one happens as I write-

Aag-e-hijr mein jalaa di thi tere shumaar-e-khata

Shaayad tarq-e-ishq ki wajah tere hisaabon mein mile

Cleaning the closet

The eagle-eyed will notice that this blog has now been neatly filed under labels. Let me tell you that it has been the most arduous task especially when one realises that there was nothing ‘neat’ about the posts to begin with. As a result they have most of them been labelled half a dozen things.

But must say this labelling business is very self-indulgent activity. It has you going fondly over a couple of year’s worth of vomitorious verbing. Naturally I am ever indulgent because I have a policy against cringing for past selves. So I have resolutely ploughed through the archives of this blog with a grin plastered onto my face. I have valiantly resisted every temptation to hit the delete button. One or two things I have noticed which I will remedy now.

Reconstructing Faiz:

Sometime back I had a post up with an alternative take on Faiz’s Raat khoyee huee… Sheetal assures me that it is disgustingly lazy to put up a version of a poet's work without exhibiting the original for comparison. So that has been remedied here.

Neurotic therapy:

I realized during this labelling process that I used to have some remarkably healthy habits. People who know me will avow to the fact that I have never actively concealed my neurotic tendencies. But in the past I had developed a system of healthy release, which I seem to have misplaced along the way. ‘No fret all action’ is my motto so I am just going to annihilate my latest brain-bug by a few nicely placed bytes:

_________________

It was as usual a situation where my eyes were constrained to watch a certain frame for a prolonged period, and my hands were powerless to ease the pain.

It was the first play of the Hindu Metro Plus Theater Festival and I was looking forward to watching Love letters with pleasurable anticipation. It is quite usual in these two-actor psychological dramas for them to go real easy on the props. So no sweat there. In fact I was quite happy to see that instead of hanging around without a thing to do with their hands, the actors were in fact given the task of arranging a set of cubes* in various (quite inspired) formations that not only were used as furniture/props but also doubled up as symbolic and mood creating elements. So far so good. Each actor (Rajat Kapoor, Shernaz Patel) was give a ‘L’ shaped block and a solitary cube with different colour on each face. Shernaz’s character was an artist so her cube had one face with some nice graphic-type art.

I did not know if the original productions had used the same techniques or if it was a Rage productions innovation but I was quite impressed and looking forward to seeing exactly how many different ways these simple props were going to be used. Also I was seated in the balcony**, which gave me the best possible vantage to really appreciate the lighting.

If only is a sad phrase.

• If only the art director had seen fit to give Shernaz Patel a crash course in the critical importance of symmetry.
• If only Shernaz Patel’s LKG teacher had smacked her bottom hard each time she drew a Squiggly when she was asked to do a Standing up line.
• If only some good US uncle had thought to replace toddler Shernaz’s (haphazardly arrangeable) building block set with a Leggo set with GROOVES.
• If only Shernaz Patel had fallen off a couple of times in rehearsals from the top block because she persisted in arranging it lopsided instead of placing it EXACTLY on top of the bottom block.
• If only Shernaz Patel was not colour blind.

See, half way through the play I even tried to convince myself that the damned woman’s pathological inability to comprehend and execute a straight line is just a well-planned reflection of the character’s unbalanced nature. But she had to go and ruin it all by placing the blocks in a manner befitting a well-aligned space rocket for a couple of scenes. So naturally I relaxed and prepared to watch in peace for the rest of the time. Oh but the torture of hope!

She slipped, people, she slipped. No, not physically (which would have ruined the play for everybody) but back into her sloppy ways. She arranged and she arranged - letting show just that bit of beige behind the black, creating a nice little curve from two squares - and my nerves frayed just a little bit more... she had gotten on my nerves in Black, but that was nothing compared to this!

I am convinced that I came back from the play with considerably less enamel on my teeth than I had going in.

___________________

*A device which has come to be known as Pippin's boxes, the trusty internet tells me.

**Being possessed of a very superior intellect I had naturally chosen the Cheapest & Bestest option, which was not the fate of other unfortunate folks.

Tazaah tar

Qaid-e-zeest se fursat ka zariya nahi tha

Maine apna khuda tarasha nahi tha

Mehfil ke behlane mere paas us waqt

Rudaad-e-hayaat thi falsafa nahi tha

Waqt hi ke irade beimaan nikle

Varna imaan se woh shaqs bewafaa nahi tha

Nazar andaaz hotein hain jo ashnaa mehfil mein

Un mein hum bhi shumaar hain andaaza nahi tha

Umr bhar karvatein badle hain asvi

Neend jab bhi khuli savera nahi tha

Notes from a trek around Madhya Pradesh ( with update)

• Some sleep is more important than a lot of food
• From now and forever buses (long-distance carrier types) are always going to make me shudder in pavlovian response. I have been permanently scarred now; nothing can disabuse my mind of its belief that buses are chambers of torture

Sub notes-

1. In cases of particularly sadistic and disobliging drivers, one need have no scruples in dismantling the speakers and fixing the wires (the end entirely justifies the means as has been satisfactorily demonstrated)

Sub sub note:

Care should be taken not to lose the screws, lest a badly put back speaker lands on your head during the night

2. It is an inescapable fact of life that during a night journey you will require all of the things that have been securely packed under yards of tarpaulin on the roof of the bus, and none of the things that you have in your trusty rucksack

• Climbing up up up a steep steep hill is always worth it
• Spotted inventory: Item, two jackals, in particular beauty; item, a moonlit wolf, stuff of firelight tales; item, birds - treepies, paradise flycatcher, woolly-necked stork, more- in jungle resplendence. Point to be considered: does this compensate for not sighting a tiger at Pench?
• Kareena Kapoor has more spunk than I had credited her with. Has gone up a notch in my estimation (no nothing to do with Saif)
• Always check for Russell’s vipers before you dry clothes on tree trunks
• An 18mm wide angle lens is not nearly wide enough for god’s world
• Determined bonhomie is very nerve-grating; it is also to be mistrusted
• Hot springs are fantastic things; politicians are bores, no exceptions to be had; litterers should be super-glued to garbage cans.

One or two pictures-




Sheetal and Shweta at Vulture point
















The Yogi

Update- Especially for Gaga’s edification

We went to the spot in Panchmahri where they shot for Ashoka. A lovely deep pool of water surrounded by rocks and the path leading up to it was treacherous. The forest guide who was with us told us that that for one scene Kareena Kapoor had to sprint along this break-your-bones-trail and dive headlong into the pool (she was supposed to have been chased by goons or whatever they called them in Ashoka’s time). I, who had gingerly made my way down, feeling for every loose rock and pebble and regaling the general public about my views about the unwisdom of getting your rubber footwear wet, was very impressed with the vision of Bebo blithely haring down the rocks.

Needless to say she was to be rescued in the film. The guide tells me they got a local boy to dupe in for Shahruk. You are seeing?

I am saying doodh ka doodh pani ka pani.

Blowed over

I was one of those silly people who turn their noses up at 20-20 cricket. I mean you know those usually gripes. Too bachha, all flash no technique, just a cynical little commercial idea and all that. Well then yesterday happened. And I don’t know if all the same arguments still hold good - right now I don’t care. Last night was kutthe ke maze.

The campaigners of 20-20 could not have had it better if they had staged it! Hell, what fun it was. Imagine an India-Pakistan match in the first major international tournament ending in a tie and then going on to be decided in the crazily football-like bowl-out. Like they once famously asked- who writes these scripts?

I don’t know if I was giggling so much because of the relief of India’s making it to the next round, or because it was late and I was possibly in some yet undiscovered sleep zone, or because Sehwag’s giggles were infectious.

We were watching (I think) the first ever bowl-out in the history of the game and nobody quite knew what to do. Both teams were transformed into sets of silly school boys both embarrassed and excited at the same time. But this bowl-out thing is really the silliest thing you ever saw and terribly fun.

All round too this tournament is turning out to be hugely exciting, spectacular fielding, fabulous batting, and desperate bowler-batsman clashes. Aha! Fun, fun, fun!

I don’t think that 20-20 is going to wipe out or even diminish the other forms or anything dismal like that. I reckon its going to spill a flood of options and we’ll have it all the better for that.

Whatever, I am game!

In the shadow of the crib

Dramatic sounding title and all, what?

The picture was taken in bright afternoon light and had such stark shadows that it was not to be resisted.

Sunita had just come to fetch it after work and I had to quickly take a few shots before she took it away. It must have been a long day for her but she waited patiently, indulgently even, as I took the pictures. She understood, I think, something of the sentimentality that had me going.

In fact I fancy that it stuck us both similarly when she helped me bring it down from the attic yesterday. Big, heavy, strongly wrought, old fading green – it weighed oddly of memories as we manoeuvred it out of the narrow attic door. It came down with pipes and cartons and old furniture. All to be sold for scrap. But we did not know what to do with the cradle. Sending it back to the attic, for another twenty something years, to be decided about later? Too foolish to be considered. Fortunately Sunita took a fancy for it. She has no immediate use of it – her own daughter is only sixteen, but she couldn’t resist it. It was that kind of cradle.

Objects do record life, you know. Some more than others, perhaps. A cradle, I think would do this more vividly than most. Emotions around a cradle are sharper, more lucid and somehow… universal. Joy, anxiety, pride, sleep. All basic, all intense. This cradle of my childhood told of all this and also of peace. For itself it proclaimed a solid dependability. It was a happy cradle.

My mother tells us it has rocked three generations of babies in our family and the first to own it is over seventy now.

But attics have got to be cleared. And overlarge wrought-iron cradles have got to go. But I am glad that it hasn’t gone to the Kabadiwala’s just yet. Its inheritance of impressions won’t be broken down to scrap just yet. Its good that the cradle managed to convince Sunita to take it home with her.