*Aaten hai gaib se…

I write as always to clear my head. It works for me like a good vigorous headshake; a bit like a dog juddering dry after a forced dunking.

I found Wislawa Szymborska on The Middle Stage recently (Many thanks CC!) and have spent quite a lot of time gluttonously trawling through her poetry. Redundant to say, I suppose, that I loved her. Her work I mean. Or her too actually. But in different ways and her work more. See, this is the reason I always strenuously avoid knowing too much about the people whose work I like. I have now reconciled to the fact that it is logical and efficient to make note of their names so as to increase the probability of finding another piece of work to enjoy, but I really wish I could always draw the line there. But it is incredibly difficult nowadays to resist something that will take (as Google unfailingly informs us) less than a quarter of a second. So it happened that I knew quite a lot of Szymborska’s life, opinions, and even a bit of her character even as I began to know her poetry.

Now I find that knowledge of her context informs my appreciation of what should have ideally been only me and the poetry. Suddenly the poems are no longer ephemeral shimmering chords of empathy altering their nuances with the colours of my mood; they are now loaded with political intent, carry baggage of time, place, personality and context. Now they are more solid and… lesser for that. No, too dramatic to say that the pleasure is gone, but diminished certainly.

The thing is, a piece of poetry or a work of art – the very best ones I mean – is always so much more than the sum of parts of the maker, even all the best parts. Nothing in a whole person can ever compare to that glorious event of inspiration that precipitates a work of art. Nobody is as wise as their work, as spiritual as their ideas, as wonderful as their paintings or as centred as their sculptures. Moments are what people cannot be.

I think it is unwise and quite misleading to seek for the root of art in the psyche or context of the maker. All real art has an identity quite individual of the artist. It is the artist’s curse and privilege to lend the use of herself to labour the weight of inspiration and birth a unique entity and then, her generosity that she offers it to the world to relate with as it likes. It is unrewarding, I say, to go dissecting the gene pattern of such offspring.

Talking then of inspiration, it is true that some people are visited far more often by the jinn than others and we have a name for those people. Genius! we say, and rightly so. But genius is its own reason, and we have no cause to analyse it further. But I find it fascinating that a lot of the acknowledged geniuses talk uniformly of intense industry. I wonder then if measure of genius is how hard you are willing to work to capture inspiration? I think perhaps, it is about giving yourself generously, wholly on a glimmer of a gamble that sometimes, just sometimes, pays off – beyond all expectation.

But why should I try my uninspired hand at explaining it, better just let Genius do the talking… so I’ll leave this with something I found so singularly inspired that in it there is no space for any falseness. It says what I’ve been groping to say, as if there were no other words to say it.

The Joy of Writing

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

*Another genius talks of inspiration:

Aaten hain gaib se ze mazamin khayal mein,

Ghalib sariir-e-khama nawa-e-sarosh hai

Mirza Ghalib

Me bags spot!

I was tormented by unsettling dreams all of last night.

I finally have the Book, all 600 odd pages of it. I am strenuously reading page after page of it and not a word sinks in. I am dying to understand, but I might as well have the Russian copy for all the good it does me.

As if this isn’t hell enough, I am being constantly disturbed, phone calls, old friends popping in and asking for addresses of tailors, people asking for their house keys, Mauzwala, and anybody with the slightest pretext walks in. The night is aging in and my eyelids are drooping…still got half-way to go…panic…the morrow will bring spoilers in the form of howlers and I have to finish tonight…

All in all not very pleasant, but of course we don’t need Dr Freud for this one. The thing about not getting the book is from my inability to focus on my revision; my concentration is shot, because with three days to go I am too excited to sit still, leave alone be able to painstakingly pick through for Jo’s randomly strewn clues.

Also there are other important arrangements to be made. In-house security to be tightened, Father to be warned hourly about the importance of keeping mum and scanning the papers for potential spoilers and warning us in advance. Arranging for a stream of nibbles to arrive on said Day so as to provide sustenance without requiring both hands of sustainee.

Also one needs to provide oneself with the Spot. The perfect spot to plant one’s bottom, providing light, air, privacy and atmosphere. My sister being the smarter one of us bagged hers before I had a chance to say Expelliarmus.

So I went scouting for my own. I haven’t done too badly I think, only it will be nice if the day is a bit cloudy so I wont have to wear a cap all day.

What do you reckon? Magic enough?

Hands of my family

It is commonly agreed that my father has the most interesting hands. The father can be regularly heard protesting that he has no concept of beauty and that he is tone deaf and all art to him is unfathomable mystery, but this doesn’t stop people from regularly attributing all sorts of artistic virtues to him. That is mostly because of his hands. If truth be told I myself have a few not-so-secret ambitions for him. I am constantly dropping random hints about late bloomers, and gifting him art supplies (which are gathering dust among old Ananda vigadans and lecture material) and always finding some secret merit in his telephone and bedside doodlings. What’s to say I won’t be rewarded yet?

Father's hand in drama (actually he was just impatient to get to his mosaranna, because there was a power-cut and only two measly candles were guarding the rice in the kitchen against the creatures of the night)

I cannot be objective about my mother’s hands. I doubt if people can. I never could apply the usual standards to them, because of course, to me, they are unique. And so how to present them? I’ve been a wee bit sly and cut out a picture from a larger one to present her hand in a very well known avatar- the hand that wields the power. Here the remote is only a symbol of power because to be factually correct, the lady is not terribly fond of the remote unless it’s sporting season.

My sister has my father’s hands and his feet. Which we all think is a good thing. This picture is out of a slightly crazy-lazy half-hour one afternoon, when we were trying to freak ourselves out. Hands, I mean hands without a context are such weird unnatural things…
I have chosen the most normal looking of the lot because I don’t fancy a very lethal Mottekai the self same hand can deliver.

That leaves my hands. For some reason (I don’t know if this happens to all children) I was really fond of my hands when I was a child. They had identities separate from, individual of each other. I always considered my right hand to be the bully, and I remember rooting for the underdog. But now I am just glad to have them (godkeep). Grateful and glad. I am genuinely content when I work with my hands or even when I am just watching somebody use their's well. I like things made by the hand. They seem alive. My happiest memories are associated with busy hands and aching back. So then presenting - Happy Hands!

Against rationality in art

I happened to read an interview of Mallika Sarabhai in today’s paper, in which she talks of how she can’t dream of performing something like the Geet Govinda or what she calls ‘the simpering woman’ in the present atmosphere of gender politics. She adds that she understands the spiritual significance of submission. But it is obvious she cannot stomach the more ordinary associations. Sarabhai is quite a prominent feminist and what she ‘thinks’ obviously effects her art.

Of course Mallika Sarabhai is entitled to her outlook and her particular stance but it brought me right back to something that always bothers me. It is a general question especially compelling to me in a post-modern world. (I don’t know but we may have turned post-post-modern while I wasn’t looking)

Where should art emerge from? From our sex? From the gut? From the heart? Is it a form of expression then? A product of our minds? Or do you let the spirit guide you?

Most ‘what is art’ essays raise these questions but it seems to me that in the main, ours is the epoch of the mind, and to my mind that is a shattering pity.

For a longish time now the western world and hence with grating promptitude the whole ‘civilized world’, has set the Human Mind on a ridiculous pedestal. The ‘thinking person’ is the highest creature, ‘thinking art’ then is most superior. Art as defined now needs a context, a history, information, and the scent of activism thrown in for good measure.

Any connoisseur worth his champagne wants to be made to think. Give him food for thought; make him wonder what you could possibly mean, keep a tally of the number of allusions you have made, let him count all possible symbolic references, throw in a signature style, make sure you have a surgically dissectible form – he will probably proclaim you a genius. If as a byproduct he has been aroused, or moved or uplifted, he will probably shuffle a bit in embarrassment or perhaps proceed to diagnose the exact ingredients that produced the effect.

All this I think is not only incredibly boring it is also reeks of a state of self-important adolescence.

Of all the faculties that we have been afforded the one in which we have been shortchanged the most is the Mind. It is self-deluding, very inaccurate, ineffectual, disastrously limiting and has an unfortunate tendency to smugness. And to choose this one power (if power it is) to bank so heavily on – that just seems plain stupid. Rationality really is the millstone of transcendence. With art we have our one of the few real chances of transcending our limitations and to lug it with the burden of rational thought…

Apart from this well-developed allergy for rational art I haven’t really been able to make up my mind where I like my art to come from. But one of the best takes I have ever come across is Ken Wilber’s. He talks of Integral Art, and I really think he has something going there. Very briefly, Integral Art is one which spawned by our sexuality and winds its way up through various levels of our consciousness to be distilled at every stage. If this is an Ideal-the most refined form, then there could be equally appealing raw forms directly springing out of either from say -the heart or the gut. Whatever the source, the impulse needs to be both ‘real’ and spontaneous. And pure rationality is anything but spontaneous and its realness is extremely suspect.

In fact I would imagine that art emerging out of any other level has a better chance of achieving its end that the art born out of pure thought. I am sticking my neck out a bit here but I really think toilet art is more honest and purely motivated than for instance Damien Hirst’s intellectual attempts at inducing whatever he generally wishes to induce or the entire gamut of niche-scoping ‘stylists’.

If all this sounds like I hate all things conceived by pure intelligence that’s far from the truth. The mind can be a fun tool, science for instance is a terribly exciting way to pass the time, and economy, planning and design are all damned useful things in ordinary life.

But art is about the extraordinary. What I am probably asking for is to be shaken and stirred beyond the limitations of my mind, not within them. I’d like to cease to relate to my world, however briefly, as a function of the mind.

Reasons Roger Federer will win today

• He’s due. The crystal ball at the edge of my desk is fairly shimmering with it.
• He has been playing his first gear/second gear act all through the lead up to the tournament and lately, all the better to bamboozle us, my dear! Today! He’s going to do his thing!
• That boy Nadal is quite quite brilliant, but all that aggression is just a little off-putting. Today is the day for subtlety.
• I’ve ploughed through the innards of the internet* and would you believe it? Not a single close-up of that incredibly sexy thing that is the neck of Roger Federer. So I’ve pulled out all the stops and the photographers of Roland Garros have been Imperiused to concentrate all their attention on that neck. And of course the perfect photo-op would be when he lifts that glorious set of sinews to place un baiser parfait on his first French Open cup

*for some reason the net threw up quite a few pictures of Marat Safin’s neck. I’m really not complaining…nope!

Mysuru

Mysore is terribly nice. The more I see of it, the more I like it. They (The Mysoreans) think that it’s going the Bangalore way, which is a truly depressing thought. The Infosys chief was all over the papers when I was there, so it’s possible they know what they are talking about, but for my part, I totally adored the avenues of trees, the wide clean roads, the markets, the buildings and the air. I only hope it all last as long as it can. I really would like to believe that they can have the best of both worlds. Why not? I say! A little forethought, a little heart and it can be done…no?

I landed a great haul this time, Raspooris that smelled of my grandfather’s home, jackfruit to die for, second-hand books at Landsdowne building, two mystery birds and a stork-billed kingfisher, a play full of imbeciles (which was a large part of its charm) and fabulous weather.

By the way, I think I’ve decided that Kukenhallinakere is my favorite place in the world, which they say, puts me in the company of Kuvempu, which of course I don’t mind. I was really torn between going there with phatte chappal and jhola and stiking an interesting pose on the stone bench, whipping out a tattered note book and writing potry or doing the more usual thing of lugging a half ton bag with field guide and binoculars and a dozen miscellaneous things which only tourists seem to find indispensable.

Of course, given how little time I had, it was the later- for which I was rewarded with frustration. I am secretly convinced I saw an Oriental plover (which the field guide tell me is a elusive vagrant) but have nothing to show for it. Bah!

For your eyes only then - a slice of my heaven:

Gawd! I have no more patience. I had a couple of other pictures to upload but thats got to be later. I think I must have the worst luck, blogger acts funny only when I have to upload stuff. Other people think nothing of uploading tendozen pictures a week

Torture on Rajiv Rahadari

I am usually quite excited every time I have to travel back from Karimnagar. The thing is they start running the video bus coaches towards the second half of the day, and I make sure I come back in those. It is one of those things, you know, that strike you as stupendously thrilling in childhood, and then somehow through all your acquired adult blaséness you can’t seem to throw off the impression.

Well, there I was at the Karimnagar bus stop determined to get the AC video coach this time because the Deccan is a furnace these days. I stepped on to the platform only to see just such a bus pulling out of its spot. I made a dash for it, but of course everybody else seemed to have the same idea because the bus was full-booked.

I headed to the Enquiry a bit despondently fully prepared to use every trick in my bag to wring some useful information out of whichever monster was behind the counter. In my line of work I’ve had to deal with more than my share of the instrument of torture that commonly masquerades as an Enquiry officer. I braced myself and said in tones I hoped were polite and confident, adult enough without being off-puttingly authoritative, foreign enough to be of interest and local enough to put at ease “Excuseme Andi”

But I wasn’t prepared for the shock – the creature at the desk looked up and…smiled, and what a blinder it was! I tottered on my feet, but I recovered enough to make my enquiry. I needed only three minutes to ascertain that by some fluke chance I had before me an Angel.

One hour was how long I would have to wait, but yes of course I would be able to get on to the AC bus and yes, they did have a video on it. I made a ‘Spot Decision’* and asked to be directed to the nearest place that would serve me a hot meal. Assurances of speediness and a seat on the bus were exchanged and I trotted off.

I returned in about a half a hour with a bellyful of slurp-inducing Andhra food to find that my bus had already arrived. A slightly panic-filled dash to the ticket counter and what do I know? My Angel has reserved for me a seat, and of course he has made sure it was beside a Lady.

I thanked him profusely and happily took my seat on the bus and waited for the bus to move and the AC to be turned on and for them to play the movie. I must tell you at this point that my education in the filmmaking art of Tollywood has been vastly advanced by these Karimnagar trips. I can’t say even now that I actually ‘get’ most of the films, but I am beginning to have my own opinion of what they may be about.

Well, and so I waited. We took off and some ten minutes into the journey the teenaged bloke whose express job it was to turn on the film, still did not show any sign that he was mindful of his duty. Not wanting to appear unfashionably enthusiastic I sat on my hands, literally.

In retrospect I reflect that they were they only peaceful minutes in that entire journey and it would have been vastly better if nothing had happened next. But as it turned out several things did.

The Boy (of whose type I devoutly hope there is only one in God’s world) came into our part of the bus and began fiddling with the remote. This lasted (and I do not exaggerate) a full half hour. During this duration we had only the audio sound track of his chosen film which went by the name ‘Bunny’. Repeated requests for the other film fell on deaf years, (we {the Lady and me} figured that any film of Pawan Kalyan’s should be better than a film called Bunny.) And when I say Audio track please do not imagine that we had a stream of continuous uninterrupted audio from the film, ho ho ho no! What we had in fact were some three scenes of dialogue (which I can now produce verbatim) and one of those rousing rythu songs in a high pitched male voice. These were played in erratic order designed to play concertos on a being’s nerves. For visual effects we had our man the machine fiend punching away at the remote, TV and DVD player buttons in all possible mathematical permutations, at lightning speed and enough force to punch holes right through them.

I sat, you see, in the second seat, which was too far to spank the blighter’s bottom or snatch the remote from his hand, but close enough to get a blastfull of torture. Thirty minutes later I could take it no more; I did in fact get up and take the remote from him. I found the secret button panel on the TV but that was how far my success went. Disgusted I returned to my seat.

Ten more minutes ensued, similarly. A teenaged person walked up, just the kind of person who reads manufacturer manuals for pleasure. There was a palpable air of belief and hope in the bus. He came up with the idea of a loose wire. So much for Generation Z! I scorn now but I must admit I was ready to believe him then – something had to be done, you see.

I must describe to you the fiend’s behavior through all this because it added considerably to our suffering. The fiend could not be talked to; quite obviously he did not have ears. The fiend was imperturbably and entirely immovable; physical violence might have done the trick but I cannot be certain. The fiend was single minded and untiring. And the fiend wanted his audio ear-splitting loud; probably because he liked a reminder of his partial success.

I reached a point where I was going to fall onto the aisle and kick my feet in the air. But something flickered on the screen and we actually had some video. Only about half the screen was covered with menu options, but hell! We had some video. Oh! The torture of hope! I grabbed the remote again, more for form than with any confidence. Ten minutes later the fiend shot me his first half smile, he had managed to get rid of the menu.

Hallelujah! We said and sunk into our seats, resolved to enjoy Bunny if it killed us.

But if you remember I told you first off that this was the bus of torment.

Fifteen minutes into the film an extraordinary person from the last row who had entirely silent for the past hour and a half walked up to the partition and rapped on the glass and informed the fiend that he will not watch this film. What would you, a rational person, think the fiend did at this point? Send this weird person away with a flea in his ear? Remind him of past sufferings and ask him to kindly adjust?

But does it really surprise the psychic in you when I say that the perverse fiend actually bounced up to oblige that blasted man?

We were NOW to have a change of film people!

I need not tell you, fortunate beings (you only read about this as against actually experiencing it) that the next ordeal lasted long, too long! At the end of which I divined that the fiend did not actually know how to eject the DVD which is why he was adamant about Bunny, but now emboldened by his recent success he was ready to do button-battle again.

This time he failed, with the result that we had to watch Bunny again – from the start.

He left us then. I crept up and turned down the volume to zero so as to halve the agony. Five minutes later, F decided it was time to sell us stale chips and Kurkure. You could of course trust F to notice that something was amiss. He promptly turned and turned up the volume.

Sometimes in life you have to recognize a superior force. Such a moment was upon me. I made peace with my circumstances and a strange peace ensued. I watched every scene of Bunny with a surreal intensity. But funnily the film drew to a close in less than an hour. I was surprised because I had never known a proper Telugu feature film to be so short.

It dawned on me that what we had been repeatedly viewing was the second half of Bunny. It was the DVD that was last put into the Player and F was naturally playing it.

At times like these a certain mist descends on to a being. And I suppose I did not mention that the AC in this bus did not actually work? But in spite of my state I recognized a familiar street and had the bus pull over. Somehow we had arrived in Secunderabad.

I walked home in a daze, dully glad of a familiar world.

* People from my long forgotten childhood will be familiar with this term. Without special significance it just mean what it means.

What is this life? Without a care…

I am not sure but this might be a crisis.

One thing doesn’t seem to matter anymore than another these days.

I grasp for gradations and emerge with nothing.

I wish for something that means more than another just so that I may want it more, or feel more.

Instead I am stuck with a vanilla detachment.

I miss the hierarchies that held me together.

A lucid sense of the things of value; that completely evades me these days.

So much opinion… all gone.

Now I am certain that a thing could be this or that or naught and it would be the same.

I don’t think it is melancholic – this loss of judgment, but it is a bit strange.

I try to analyze ­­– and I don’t think this is cynicism; it would be very embarrassing if it is existential angst, and quite lowering if it is just age.

This lack of clarity about self is also a newish thing. And I must say it ceases to be amusing after a point. As always with the inexpressible, Mirza Saab comes to the rescue:

Hum wahaan hain jahaan se hamko bhee
kuchch hamaaree khabar naheen aatee

Aage aatee thee haal-e-dil pe hansee
ab kisee baat par naheen aatee

Now that I have been actively thinking about it, with a cursor to my head, I think I may be able to give you the crux of the matter.

I have lost subject matter for my prayers.

I cannot think of what to ask for, no unambiguous desire, no stubborn ambitions, and no righteous demands.

Increasingly I feel as if everything is perhaps exactly as it should be… as it ever will be.

But you see that leaves me with very little do, and very little scope to be.

I talk about this probably because I feel a conflict. My generation has made an ideal of ambition. To know what you want and to achieve it – that beyond all things is desirable. Sure, there is a wide choice of ambitions: there is professional success, personal happiness, a great love life, money, fame, altruistic ambitions, a desire to be of service, or a need to fulfill a potential.

To have an ambition you need foremost something worthy of want. In this matter all ideas seem to have deserted me. Somehow without my contriving it, I seem to have turned out into the kind of person who is perfectly happy to watch the play, act after act till it unfolds its climax, or not.

And so I stand in the glaring spotlight of someone nobody is actually watching and ask myself, ‘Is this alright?’

I not sure how I’ll answer but I have a feeling I am going to say, ‘See how it goes’.

Gah!

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

Some days go - good indifferent - a mosaic.

Mounds of turmeric
Inevitable catcalls
A small town market


Newspaper advert
Sadder than an epitaph
Be my valentine

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

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

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

Say Hi

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

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

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

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

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

Which of these would I rather?

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

What do I know of those…

Salaam Nikhil

Watched Salaam-e-ishq today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve gushed enough, what can I say?

Go watch!

God how long this took to upload!

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

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

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

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

Just for you and posterity, here goes-

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

Shauq-e-safar

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

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


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

Another journey
Usual toiletries bag
Needs repacking now

Raichur - signing out

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

Raichur- It's a dogs life

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

Raichur ramblings - 2

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

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

Raichur ramblings - 1

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

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

Hazaaroon khwaishen aisi…

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

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