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.

Reconciliation

Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Dui hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Teek hai
Ek hai

Perfectly powerless

In Hyderabad, we save our choicest gaalis for the electricity board in summers. We the general public and those few enthu-cutlets who write letters to the editors, all have well worked out theories and schemes to avenge ourselves on the wretched department. They in turn have specialised the art of tormenting us by giving us detailed lists of planned power-cuts for the day in our morning papers and then going right ahead and having a triple-dozen unscheduled ones as well. The ponging of the UPS is vying for top slot right up there with the alarm clock for a place on ‘Irritating Noises’.

But what I actually set out to say was that power cuts are not all bad. In the manner of- Daag acche hein, you get? I especially don’t mind it if they cut us out after dusk. I quite like the idea of a forced time out. It gives you time to do things you wouldn’t in general be able to slot without feeling guilty or silly or self-conscious. They are like train journeys, which are also, I think, perfectly delicious. Sometimes I have thought that if I could behave and feel in general, exactly as I do on journeys, I could live a perfectly Zen life.

The recent three-hour power-cut was enormous fun. I managed to record another half hour of my voice on tape. It’s surprising that nobody but me is able to discern any improvement in tonal quality or sur or anything, the few times I manage to pin them down and have them listen. Weird! Anyway…
While searching for material to put to tune, I laid my hands on Deewan-e-Ghalib. It’s fun to search for all sorts of tucked away things with a candle in your hand. Very medieval heroine-y. It inspires you to look for stuff you have been too lazy to find in broad daylight.

Ghalib was a delight as usual. But this time the atmosphere really got to me. A high moon and candle light…..ooooooh! So got out my Kagaz-kalam-dawaat… well, my note book and gel pen in any case and crouched down under the stars with a shamma in front of me to consign my heart to the paper!
I find myself obliged to warn anybody with deep appreciation for behar that you are not to look for such things here-

Us dar pe hajari jo meri laakh lagegi
Tab ho ke mujh pe uski nazar paak lagegi

Kyon kar na karoon arz-e- tamanna mein bar bar
Ek benaseeb ko jug ki nazar khaakh lagegi

Jo keh sako tho kar do bayan hal-e-dil use
Is bezubaan ki tumko duaa laakh lagegi

Vehashat mein jo kar bhi doon izhaar-e-tamanna
Ye dar hai ke usko bas mazaak lagegi

Asvi teri mushtaaq bathein kuch ajeeb hain
Chilla bhi do tho unko khabar khaakh lagegi


I wonder really if it’s not a good idea to hunt for a nice old escritoire, a quill and an ink pot on my next outing at the Charminar auctions? It would add just the right touch… hmmm

Foreboding

Rag-o-pai mein jab uthare zahar-e-gham tab dekhiye kya ho
Abhi tho talkhi-e-kaam-o-dahan ki aazamaish hai
- Mirza Ghalib

On a related mood

So far so good,
All under the hood,
But what if it raises its head?
Without my will or anything said.
What if I am caught unaware,
Wrapped in its dreamlike snare
Now I’m ok, next I am not
Tying me in – the Dementor’s knot
Loss of will, sleep pervades,
Quiet panic, goodness fades
The memory of it chills my veins
Might I wash it away next it rains?

Over Momin’s tumultuous grave

Humne socha ke mausam bhi hai, mouka bhi hai, ‘in’ bhi hai, hum bhi zara plagiarise karlein

Kyon sune arz-e-muztarib Asvi
khuda akhir sanam nahi hota

But I’m waiting…… oh! Pleaahase prette pleaahase. Make it happen.

Bada Bubbly Life Hai!

Hasti apni habaab ki si hai
Ye numaish saraab ki si hai
-Mir Taqi Mir

This life of ours is bubble-like
A vast display mirage-like

No not getting maudlin and existential again, just that this sher has been eddying around in my head for the past few days. Simple because a substantial chunk of my time has been dedicated to creating bubbles.
It’s come back to me now that I used to spend inordinate lengths of time looking at bubbles on water, and other surfaces when I was really young and then the interest waned when life happened. And resurfaced quite acutely when I studied the laws of surface tension in (I think it was) Class 7. It was profoundly satisfying to have infanthood questions answered. Then of course more life happened.
Fast forward to last Sunday. Visit to Zoo after what seemed life a lifetime. Spotted a bubble-maker/contraption seller outside. Acquired one and also a bit of coaching from said seller. Came home and practiced blowing bubbles in a frenzy of fresh enthusiasm. Frightened Bashki instead of entertaining her. (Two-year-olds need time to work out their emotional responses; she is quite appreciative now).
Anyway, I was halfway through with the liquid provided when Sheetal asked me if I was wise to use it up so rapidly. I told her airily that I had the recipe from the seller and could always make up some more, but the seed of doubt had been sown. So I set about making some more, which as it happened was easier thought than done. I’ll list my attempts
1) Detergent and water - poohoosss, no good
2) Copious quantities of detergent and water - unstirrable after a point, not any better
3) Oil (the secret ingredient – or so I thought) added – an even more unyielding liquid

At which point, I began to doubt my good friend’s claim- “us me kuch tel aur soap dalte hai”. But adjuring myself not to be mataashed I persevered. Now such attempts as these were made-
1) Oil and detergent – singular lack of response
2) Add water? – whadya think?

I now perceived it was a matter of thermodynamics. The entire concoction was cast into the microwave- shrieks and recriminations from mother. No, of course I did not want to burn the house down. So I meekly took away my immiscible mixture and stirred vigorously in a bowl of boiling water. Well…
I need not tell you that I was now utterly downcast.
At this point, my kind sibling who hand held my hand through all of this (metaphorically of course! You do see that it’s impossible to do all that with one hand!) went off and bought me another brand new set from the Local Numaish. She had also managed to wrest the secret from the chap before he was dragged off by the security, for disturbing peace (I presume).
Chik shampoo! Good people, Chik shampoo! The one rupee sachet does the trick quite nicely. Emboldened by her success, the sister looked up advanced recipes on the net. Glycerine, we were told is particularly useful to enhance durability and strength of bubbles. That must have been what that unfortunate boy was trying to tell me at the zoo, instead of which he led me up the garden path with all his silly talk of ‘tel’. Hrmmph.
All’s well that bubbles well, I guess. We now possess three distinct liquids that offer us variety in size, flight and durability. Not so very bad, huh?

Worm tales

Why pray do they make these word verification thingies so worm like? It’s bad enough that I have to overcome excruciating levels of shyness, bone deep laziness, maybe-I’ll-do-it-later/never-ness. Is it necessary to have me do the squint/cock head and see/ bend-head and type/repeat jig as well. Ok maybe those things are useful. But why do they have to be squiggly? The blasted letters threaten to fly off the screen like Percy Jackson would say. It’s enough to give me a headache.
And what is worse is sometimes I have to do it twice. See, some time back I just logged on as anonymous and maybe signed the post, which I thought was a clever way of avoiding unnecessary typage. The sibling managed in a few pithy words to dissuade me and dispel illusions of cleverness. So I have now perforce to sign in. Not one to shirk discomfiting tasks for later I go the whole hog and complete the WV thing. Picture my dismay when I am now successfully logged on under my rightful appellation and I am asked to redo the cursed WV. Really it’s enough to turn one off the whole thing.

PS I have been thinking about it. Do you think it is to foil evil plans by cunning spammers with scanners, and such?

Owning a thing

I played a tape today that I have had for seven years and never played once. I’ve come across it several times in my search-for-music missions, appealing its appropriateness, but never satisfying me of its rightness. You see this tape doesn’t actually belong to me. It was my friend’s…. who gave it to me a month before he died. It is strange and a little cold that it was the first thing that occurred to me when they told me he was dead; guilt for not returning his belongings on time. It was a thought that preoccupied the entire dry, dazed day that followed. I contemplated the propriety of returning his tapes to his family. I did not think they would know what to do with them, they had hardly known what to do with him. I also knew that if he had willed it he would have wanted me to have them, but still I would have liked to be sure. Like all things in his life Pappu’s death was strange and dramatic. He was found run down on a railway track. All the usual speculations made the rounds and all the inevitable conclusions were drawn. Someone said he seemed very happy when they met him that morning. I like to believe that was true.

So I was left with those tapes in my shelf, and no tears in my eyes. I was left with a vague cloud of guilt for being an ill-mannered borrower, for wilfully understanding less than I did, and giving less than I could and absolutely no more than I should. I thought I had been wise and kind, his death made me feel rude and miserly.

I was clearing my cupboard today when I played his tape on an exasperated impulse. Mehdi Hassan’s ‘Shahad. The tears did flow now. Less easily than they would for say an episode of Oprah Winfrey, but nevertheless they were there. They felt viscous and heavy and strained out my eyes. To be expected I suppose. They were old tears these… seven years old.

I hope I have let you rest at last, Vikram, by owning what you gave me.

There is a constant flutter in my stomach these days

The butterflies of Manipura are all ablaze

A constant knowing that the wheels are turning

Direction unknown, in anticipation burning

It’s a little foolish all this adrenalin

A heady rush, an urge to begin

But what? I don’t quite know

And if I do, the knowing’s below

How then to talk to an elusive self

Cajole a siren to reveal herself

What do I know that is just hinted to me

Is it my hearts matter or a voyage at sea?

But my enchantress siren is wedded to time

Her loyalties were never, never will be mine

So I wait for her lord to give up the sign

To reveal to me the things in line

Until then I will play with patience

She is a dull child and we’ll stay right within the fence.

Bashki with her grand mom

Bashki is 3 feet tall
Which is a whole decimal more than her years
She is a tall baby
If her cousin Samhita were to hear this, she would be sure to correct me
She’s a toddler, she would inform me
In my time all this was the same
But Samhita is seven and has spent the first five years of her life in the USA where these things are quite important

Bashki this toddler/baby, like I said is very tall
When we talk of how lovely she is people expect to see one of those plump Johnsons’ babies.
No definitely not.
I’d be loath to slot her but if anything Bashki’s a Hutch baby.
She’s lean, muscly, and graceful.
She looks like she would be a great athlete… if she could muster the aggression
But Bashki’s too polite for aggression, she would probably think it awful manners
And she’s kind… Bashki is
Doesn’t like to see people unhappy
Have you known a baby who would stroke your hair?
She’s rather smart, knows who butters her dosas and when
What’s a baby without some survival instinct?
I could also tell you that she’s terribly sharp, has a better eye and ear for detail than most adults I know, multitasks amazingly, and is most aware of all that goes,
and when she is quiet and pensive I think she is having knotty philosophical discussions with herself, and I never know if I want to smooth that wee furrow on her brow or photograph it,
but you’ll probably think I’m silly
So I’ll tell you instead of how proud she is, and that she rarely asks for anything she might be refused and her expression of anger is so controlled, so adult that it sometimes worries us.
But Bashki’s quite little actually
She was walking away with her grandmother just now and she had to tip-toe to hold her hand
She was going quietly, more docile that usual
And I thought there was something desolate about her bare summery back,
I watched them turn the corner,
It was lovely
I hope she decides to stop on her way back.

nah tha kuchh to khuda tha kuchh nah hota to khuda hota
duboya mujh ko hone ne nah hota maiñ to kya hota
Ghalib

Same difference

Structured notions of right and wrong
These fractured notions they’ve been here long
Certain ideas of right and left
Certain proof of minds too deft
Fabulous systems to write and read
But do we indeed address the need?
We know a lot ‘bout rite and ritual
To please the many, but what of the one-the actual?
But then of course what right have I
To question the Ever-the flash of an eye