Mumbai - ek kada dard

Fractals be damned. I have no patience with patterns too large to see. I find I can’t wait for revelations. I want to make sense of it now.

Even as I write, even as I grasp at the air-framed hour-glass of reason I find my faith ebb from me; along with it all my peace.

I look in other directions.

I look then not for answers but for empathy. I look for other times that have known our despair; other hearts that have winced in similar pain. I look perhaps for patterns.

A flicker of despair arrived at a coophole of memory. It revealed what had been well-liked but preserved unowned. Perhaps because only that which is truly known is truly owned. And when I had first come to it-this poem - I had not the resource of empathy to know it by. I leaned out to it today armed with fresh dry grief. I felt a linking of hands and a banding of arms. It was a sudden solace that you, I and Faiz are caught in a pattern that perhaps, is somehow beautiful from up there.

Hum Log

Dil ke aiwaan mein liye gulshuda shammon ki kataar

Noor-e-Khursheed se sahme hue, uktaaye hue

Husn-e-mahboob ke sayyal tassavur ki tarah

Apni tareeki ko bheinche hue liptaaye hue

Gaayat-e-sood-o-zayan, soorat-e-aagaaz-o-ma’aal

Wahi besood tajassus, wahi bekar sawaal

Muzmahil saa’at-e-imroz ki berangee se

Yaad-e-maazi se gameen, dehshat-e-farda se niDaal

Tishna-afkaar jo taskeen nahi pathe hain

Sokhta ashq jo aakhon mein nahi aate hai

Ek kada dard jo geet mein Daltaa hi nahin

Dil ke taareek shigaafon se nikalta hi nahin

Aur ek uljhee huee mauhoom si darmaan ki talaash

Dast-e-zindaan ki hawas, chak-e-girebaan ki talaash

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Update-

I did this translation of sorts at my mother's request. It is not literal or particularly lyrical but its there for what its worth.

We the people

Extinguished flames that line the corridors of my heart

Frightened, tired by the sun’s incandescence

Like the liquid beauty of a phantom lover

Shrouded, wrapped in an intimate darkness

Enormity of gain and loss, sequences of causation

The same gainless quests, the same useless questions

Depleted by present disenchantments

Grieved by the past, petrified in fear of tomorrow

Thirst-ridden unquenched

Scorched tears that don’t appear

An igneous grief that cannot melt in verse

Or seep from the heart’s lurid cracks

And a mired quest for an illusory panacea

Lust of captive wastelands, a search for madness

Nawab

Most people who have a day-to-day kind of association with me know of Nawab. Nawab is a tailor. I almost said my tailor but wasn’t sure of a right to the possessive pronoun. Nawab is capricious, taciturn and entirely unreliable, but he is a damn good tailor. I have sworn off him a dozen times but I always seem to return to him when everybody else frustrates me even more. The thing is that on the rare occasions that he bothers to work, Nawab works magic. He has a better understanding of the relationship between the fabric, the cut and the body than a lot of fashion designers I have known. He is not what you would call industrious but if an idea takes him, no effort is too great. We always thought that it was pity that a man of his talent could not be a bit more diligent and a tad shrewder, especially given the fact that he has a family of six to feed.

Recently, after a longish gap we managed to interest him in some work. After about a week of promises he came home and looked at what was wanted. I think he was feeling particularly inspired because he sat at ten that night to cut up three patterns. I was satisfied and I prepared to wait for him to turn up next. Thinking it was perhaps strategic to put in an occasional reminder, I called him today. His wife answered his phone and it turned out that he was in hospital. From what she said I gather that he has had some sort of retinal detachment; he had gone in for a check up because his vision had blurred and they admitted him immediately. She said that that the doctors had advised him not to sew because that was what had had caused the strain in the first place. I am not sure how much of that holds water but it was not the time to advance theories. I had noticed when he came home that he was wearing glasses with pretty powerful lenses and I thought he was having more than normal trouble threading the sewing needle. I had put it down to him not being used to his new glasses and that perhaps that he had also developed long-sight.

My mother called his wife again and asked if she needed anything. She said she had everything under control. I hope to god she is right. And I hope to god he is completely healthy soon. And I hope he does not have to give up tailoring either out of necessity or out of fear.

I had earlier written this, mostly to amuse Footloose, who had heard many tales of woe of my relationship with Nawab.

Today I write this for Nawab, in prayer.

लिए एक झोली आस फिर उसी दर पे

दुआ कर के निकले थे जहाँ से कल को

विश्वास के कतरों का बाँध के सेहरा

चाक-ए-नाला का बुनकर अधना सा मंतर

होटों पे सजाकर ज़िक्र की लाली

पोहुन्चें हैं फ़िर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

जहाँ सिले हैं सब संसार के सपने

गिरेबान-ओ-कफ़न-ए-गरीब सिलतें हैं

अपनी भी एक अर्ज़ी दर्ज कराने

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

देखो तो और चारा भी क्या है?

बस इस एक दर पे रहम मिलतें हैं

उधार पे लायें हैं जो झीनी सी चादर

उसके रफू के सामान भी यहीं मिलतें है

उम्मीद को बनाके दामन का गांठ

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

Chhau!!!

I am going to feel every single cell separately in my body tomorrow morning, I know it and I am dreading it; but it will have been worth it.

There was a Chhau workshop in the city today; actually has been for the past two days, but thanks to The Hindu’s unconscionably tardy reportage I only knew about it today.

Now, I have only seen Chhau being performed live once. This was at the glorious festival of dance organised by the Sangeet Natak Academy on the theme of Sankhya - numbers zero to ten. Eleven dance choreographies in all, each interpreting a number. Wonderful stuff - some of it downright sublime. The Chhau performance was based on the number three. They used the concept of Trimurti as a platform to explore the number.

Chhau is an extraordinary dance form. It has been awarded status of a classical dance form in India but a lot of it I find is very modern in spirit; in dance terms I perhaps mean ‘contemporary’. What I am trying to say is that in Chhau a lot of the time the body does not ‘represent’, the body ‘becomes’. As against the symbolist and stylised approach of most other classical dance forms, Chhau attempts a sort of fragmented Modernist realism.

This attempt then, at becoming various things, is very demanding on the body. It is superb watch if done with control and involvement, but as I learnt today difficult, bloody difficult.

The workshop was conducted by Chhau exponent Pandit Gopal Dubey. Of course there is only so much you can learn in a day and we were only there to get a taste of what it must be like. But even that was hard on my normally unexerted poor body. Besides, everybody apart from me was a trained dancer, some in more forms than one. There were five others in all and three of them were dance gurus.

There was this one sequence which we learnt as an example - the representation of a wounded deer. The deer has an arrow right through it and it is writhing in pain and fear. The body is contorted in several ways while moving in a large elliptical locus while a hand each is to hold the entry and exit wounds. It was arduous. It was fantastic. I was thinking in my mind while I was doing it-

Koi mere dil se pooche teri teer-e-neemkash ko

Ye khalish kahan se hoti jo jigar ke paar hota

I am somewhat high with exhilaration as you must see, otherwise I wouldn’t be unwisely exerting my very sore shoulders any more tonight to write what I know is a jumble of unconnected facts and exclamations, but what the hell!

Into that heaven of freedom...

I write this in a state of mild embarrassment. I thought I was past this sort of thing. I have worked in the circumference of the Indian government and certain of its do-gooding tentacles for about a decade now. I know enough to know that very little good ever gets done. I have met scores of government officials who probably don’t even realise that they are corrupt because they know of no other way to be. I know that incompetence and apathy can be so bone-deep that it can seem to structure the system. I have been at more meetings than I care to remember where everybody knows what to say and everybody knows what will finally be done, knowing that the two are never the same thing. I have passed over stages of shock, disgust, rejection, defiance, and to detachment. I can usually work in this dystopic world determinedly doing what I have to, healing disappointment with amusement, fighting revulsion with rectitude and glossing pain with philosophy.

Not today it seems. Maybe I went in less cynical than usual. Maybe it was the five-feet tall tattered portrait of MK Gandhi I started at throughout the meeting. Maybe it was because they did not even get why I was refusing. Maybe it was because the auto back home had a faulty meter.

But I came home and bawled like a baby.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

That was yesterday. One good thing seems to have come out of it though. The matla of this ghazal which has been evading me for a month finally eased into me. So here-

Tabiat-e-imaan-o-taa’at fizool ho chala jaise

Muazzin -e- deen-e-bazaar ab rasool ho chala jaise

Koi na guzraa zakhm taazaa kiye bagair

Tohfaa-e-khaar ka kuch usool ho chala jaise

Duaa na sahi salaam qubool kar jao

Keemat-e-taaluq vasool ho chala jaise

Koi larzaa tho chale koi lahar aud le mujhko

Koi nishaan duaa qubool ho chala jaise

Hairaan hun aaj zharf kaise lafz-e-bayaan

Khamaa bhi dil ka tool ho chala jaise

Usko kyaa dhoonde jo chup ke baitha Zoya

Apne khaaliqi mein kuch bhool ho chala jaise

My name is Rose

This got written a couple of months ago since I saw that a solitary sher was lolling around. Also, note new takhallus. The old one was phonetically tricky apart from meaning gollyrot. But think I’ll use them interchangeably, after the best tradition, what?

And while I was at it, my tiny tribute to the master in the matla.

________________________________________________________

Ghar na raha bana rashq-e-iram ab ke

Hai khabar unke aane ki garam ab ke

Gaye sarme jo odhaa behisii ka chadar

Ek barabar humse eid-o-muhharam ab ke

Dast-e-naseeb dast-e-dua kyonkar ho

Zabt-e-waqt mein bahe abd-e-dharam ab ke

Gile pe gila kareinge na keechad ko roenge hum

Bade minnato se barsa hai abre karam abke

Kuch naa-saaz se rehathe hai zehan-o-dil in dino

Adoo se kaho karein waar-e-naram ab ke

Kambakt hi sahi zoya kuch us kee bhi hasti hai

Waqt ne has-has ke toda ye bhi bharam ab ke

The Suit

This play by the Chandigarh-based company - The Company was what saved the Hyderabad Hindu Metroplus theatre festival 2008 from being a complete dud.

The play dramatised by Surjit Patar and directed by Neelam Mansingh Chowdhary is based on a short story by the South African Can Themba. It is easy to see what attracted Neelam Mansingh Chowdhary to it; it is a powerful story. A young couple’s extremely loving marriage begins to disintegrate into a sadomasochistic struggle of guilt and blame. The husband (Bunty) comes home one day to find his wife (Minna) in bed with her lover. Even as he struggles to deal with the shock he sees the lover’s discarded suit. He decides to use the suit as a weapon of revenge. He compels his contrite guilt-ridden wife to treat the suit as an honoured guest. No explanation is sought or given by either of them. From then begins a stressful grappling at normalcy underlined by the ever-present fear of blame and punishment for the wife and memory of betrayal for the husband.

The suit, in Bunty’s words, becomes the third presence; ubiquitously rearing its head in the most intimate of moments. Minna begins to crumble under the stress of not knowing when next it may destroy her peace.

Mansingh’s treatment of the material is imaginative as it is raw in a way that is pure Punjab. The play itself is in both Punjabi and English. Poetic Punjabi is always a strongly sensuous experience; it was particularly so in this play. There is a scene (highly stylised) played out in verse, in which Minna is applying for membership at the local social club. She has just sought Bunty’s blessing and now wants his help to fill the form. Minna begins to read out the usual biographical queries of the form which Bunty turns on their head to general and specific accusations and philosophic questions. It was of the stuff Punjabi was designed to do. Exquisite.

This production’s finest accomplishment is perhaps the bubble of intimacy it manages to create around the protagonists. It is a bubble that excludes all other- the extended world, society, the erstwhile lover, the audience. This bubble breaks and reforms in an increasing taut tempo leading up to a meltdown where Minna adopts her guilt by donning the suit herself and calling it her skin. Whether it is an act of defiance or surrender, it empowers her and wrests the initiative from the oppressor.

Vajendar Bharadwaj who plays Bunty is a wonderfully supple actor. He moves from joyously happy to wretched to ominous seamlessly. Mansingh has chosen to use elaborately stylised movement and choreographed elements in her rendering of Bunty. It helped enormously perhaps that Bharadwaj is such a beautiful man with extraordinary grace and a remarkable lack of stage-gaucheness.

Ramanjit Kaur as Minna was competent and seasoned but far more effective in her Punjabi lines that the English ones. It is perhaps difficult for female actors not to tug at their clothing if constantly required to dress and undress onstage, but one wishes she had desisted.

It is galling to nitpick at things that give you pleasure but unfortunately it is annoyingly easy.

It is a common ploy with long-running plays to try to create a certain immediacy and locality by using contextual elements of time and place. These methods are usually adopted to build a connection with the audience and set the play as close to them as possible. With this play such devices were not only unnecessary but highly unsuited. This play was about two people caught in their own very intimate, bizarre tradedy. It is not made more intense by bringing it closer to the audience, only less so. So then, when Bunty reads out from that morning’s Deccan Chronicle or talks of walking along Banjara Hills it may induce a few local smiles but at the cost of breaking a spell. In the penultimate scene where the couple are throwing a party and the two protagonists had managed to construct a superb atmosphere of brittle bonhomie with their beautifully - orchestrated air-talking, Bunty’s walking down the stage to the press section and offering an apple to a journalist in the audience came in the manner of swatting the fly on the wall.

Also, in a play which is powerful because so little is explained (Minna’s taking a lover, Bunty’s whimsical character) it seemed like a lukewarm cop-out to try and explain Minna’s submission in terms of a social dilemma instead of an emotional compulsion. She talks of not being able to leave and return to her parents which only worked to dilute the tension that had been so lovingly built up. It softened the texture of attrition which emerges during negotiations of power within physical and emotional spaces.

However, like Neelam Mansingh Chowdhary indicated during the post-play discussions, such plays are works in progress. The very fact that so much is unstated leaves you with fascinating possibilities. It is the kind of play I would want to see again after its hundredth show. It is bound to have evolved and it would be exciting to chart its growth.

Nukraee ghantiyaan si...

Been tagged by Ozman.

My oldest memory:

Being very very angry. It was a winter night in Delhi. My mother who was carrying me in her arms hit her head when somebody opened the window just as she got up from a chair. It was good thing perhaps that I did not have too many words on me those days.

10 years ago:

I was in Delhi with my life altering all around me.

My first thought today morning:

“Shit. I did not turn off that weekly prayer thingie”. See, for some reason the alarm clock in my phone does not work. I discovered instead something termed the ‘mobile prayer’. I found that a programmed prayer works just as well as a ordinary alarm tune. So my god of choice is Hanuman and the last time I needed it was apparently last Friday at 6. am.* My father who is always up at unearthly hours was, I think, a little intrigued.

.

You built a time capsule today what would it contain?

I thought about this one for a bit. A little induced panic and I was coming along just fine. My initial list included tiger DNA too. But see, ultimately (why baulk at words - deep down) I seem have a boringly Indian mentality when it comes to recording history. I don’t really believe that we ought to try.

But if I had to sneak past these principals and be tempted to freeze-preserve something, it would be the one thing that I am no end grateful has been preserved into my time in some form - The Upanishads. Whatever the laws of karma it would be a great pity, I think, to have to re-invent that particular wheel.

This year:

Has been somewhat unspectacular for me till now. But I hope I know better than to chafe at unspectacular these days.

14 years from now:

I have no idea. I hope my knee does not hurt.

I tag Floozieloo.

* I started to do this tag on Friday.

Kerala - 3

Kozhikode has a Hillarious Chit funds among several other hilarious businesses.

Kerala - 2

The sea is something else, nai? We land-locked people never know.

-

Kerala - 1

I am planning to set up as a Malayalam translator when I get back; I am getting that good.

-

I am tired today. Too tired to move. Too tired to think. I have been waiting for a decent hour to sleep. Even TV seems like too much effort. I wanted something really nice before I slept. I looked in the right place and found it. For now and again –

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

_________________________________________________________________

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

_________________________________________________________

I’ve liked these before tonight, you know, but I find that to find joy in Wallace Stevens a really quite mind is dead useful.

Sib

They were showing The Apple on WorldMovies just now. I had been told about it but never got a chance to see it. As usual I had forgotten what I had been told about it, but since I’ve liked God, Construction and Destruction by Samira Makhmalbaf, I sat down to see it.

I should have expected it perhaps, but when it hit me that the actors were not actors at all, it turned my stomach. Now I‘ve turned off the TV and read the whole storyline and reviews on the net and am sitting here feeling slightly ill. Young ambition, artistic or otherwise, can be a bloody ruthless thing.

Moon blues

Oooooooo I would go and do something like this! Of all the days in the year to go and admire the moon, it had to be today. Most years I make it a point not to get out after dark on Vinayak Chauthi. If I do, I assiduously study the paving on the road. This year I plain forgot. After about thirty seconds of contemplating the lovely things clouds do to moons, a nigglet crept up. With a slap of the forehead I had it.

My mother who should have rightfully warned me in advance says she did not do so because it might have Freudian-pressured me into doing exactly what I should not.

Anyway it was done, and what cannot be undone should be remedied.

So for the fourth or fifth time in my life I reminded myself that-

The Lion killed Prasena

Jambhuvantha killed the Lion

Thus the little boy need not cry

He can have the Shyamanthakamani

This is an additional precaution: I would remind all my acquaintance that Krishna did not kill Prasena and I probably did not do any of the wicked things you might imagine I did this year. Remember 'twas only the moon.

P.S You do all know that if you look at the moon on VC you will probably be suspected of some horribly thing of which you are entirely innocent, right?

Monsoon Medley

an ocean came down

today

in a drizzle

The sun bright

The rain right

Stars in puddle

cocooned in the

window seat

till the roof dripped

Geele pe gila karenge na keechad ko kosenge hum

Abde minnaton se barsa hai abr-e-karam ab ke

Coming to a formal feeling

Na leke jaao...

Do chaar zulm gar aur kar kahin ho ke ho mera guzar

Hun jo jaan-balab ye chaaragar, tere hunar ka asar

Nigal gayee jinhen raat woh sawaabit kahin aur ke

Ab unke ghar mein dhoop hain na apne ghar hoga sahar

Kal tak jo tha hara-bhara jo ped tha yahin khada

Aaj dekha raakh-e-tar kahan yakeen huaa magar?

Jo sheesh mein dikhe mujhe woh main hi hun ya aur hai?

Jo sawaal ye khadaa kare mujhi mein hai ya digar?

Ye masaaib rozgaar ki ye shikan ye naraazgi

Shikaar-e-Dahr-e-talab huaa asvi tera mera shehar

Dry grey clouds

Ek do harf yun hi likh ke mita dena tha

Zahan Maa’oof bhi rahatha hai bataa dena tha

-Zaahir Gaazipuri

You know what they say about accepting the things you can’t change and changing the things you can? I am usually very sorted out about it. Most things, apart from morning coffee crises, fall into the not-mine-to-change category and as a result of this I manage a reasonably blame-free existence. Now suddenly I can’t seem to make the distinction.

I am overwhelmed by a feeling that the world is falling apart bit by gigabyte and my resolute non-involvement is anti-dharma. I - so sure that I had not an activisty bone in me - am alarmed by this unseasoned agitation of spirit. Since natural good sense does not seem to be doing its trick, I am going to attempt a little bit of systematic logic here. What are the issues at hand? Lists always help.

• We don’t have rains. The Karimnagar guys came and married two frogs at the municipal office. I don’t think they achieved anything apart from a tiny wrench in my heart. But what can one do for rains? Tried our little patch of conservation and harvesting (sort of!); what else? They say and I believe that larger issues are involved here, which are even more horrible to contemplate...
• We don’t have too much electricity or petrol for that matter and what we do have is horrendously expensive. The CM appears to be panicking and I am panicking with him
• The central government which is trying to get us some alternate energy looks like it may fall. I was ambivalent about this deal (not knowing too much about it), but now I think – someone determined to do something about something is better than nobody doing anything about anything.
• We have a HUGE garbage problem in our colony. Ours is the only garbage bin in about ten colonies and the cantonment does not have disposal trucks. We discuss the problem over breakfast every morning. I have no ideas.
• I have indigestion.
• They have taken away a bunch of children from Jubillee Hills by raiding homes where they had been employed. Is this wise? What is this transit home anyway? What about their families? I seriously doubt that the follow-up action is going to be all that it should. I am worried and I am only piping up in this ineffectual way on this blog.
• A news anchor was pretty bitchy to Katrina Kaif. She is a good kid and does not deserve it. Everybody is talking about the news. The news is that news is news. They should not be allowed to use reactions to their horridness as news. I hate this meta meta post-modern world.
• All the Hyderabadi autowalas are sad. They are especially disgruntled around Persis Takeaway. All that animosity for the consuming public ruins the taste of Biryani.
• Avva is feebler by the day. She found it difficult to sit down on the side-walk outside our house today. She said she hadn’t come for the past few days because of the pain in her back. She must be around ninety and I fear for the circumstances of her death and those of my life.

I am not at all sure what this list has achieved. I am not feeling lighter, just groggier. I also think this post should probably have a content warning. My sister will probably say that I should not be harassing the general public with depressing material.

But what this post will get instead is a disclaimer.

- The author is not responsible for any communication of ‘the blues’. Neo-Delhites in particular can wave away most material as not pertaining to them.