Mysoon

magpie robin
inspects the raindrop
on its wing

-

Clear and present duty

Jaanta hoon sawaab-e-taa’at-o-zahad

Par tabeeyat idhar nahin aatee

-Ghalib

Is there anything as perfectly designed to bore you to death and make you drum your heels in defiance and explore all other avenues of temporal occupation as the inescapable knowledge of what constitutes your present duty? Dear God, grant me some subuddhi before it is too late and I am sunk in a mire of guilt.

Doors of perception

There must be dozens of anthropology or behaviour science papers about this, skulking away in the ungoogle-able recesses of the internet, but I only began actively thinking about the evolutionary significance of the size of doors about an hour ago.

We have a cat that lives around us. This cat has had kittens and in the routine moving around they do en famille, one of their favourite pit stops is under the car. I was getting antsy because I have already sacrificed a brake fluid filter/pump (?) to the previous batch’s socialisation. I was thinking that it must be a bit cramped under there but also that they would be at a distinct advantage if I tried to crawl under to try and shoo them. So much easier to fly at my face.

From that, I started to think of all those animals and birds that chose to live in homes with impossibly tiny openings. Animals that will squeeze into minuscule burrows in the ground, crawl under rocks, birds with humongous tails that will undertake all manner of acrobatics to get into nests that have openings that are two inches lesser in diameter than their heads. One part of my brain is thinking “yes, yes, predators”; the other is wondering about this…what do I call it... gene for discomfort. Surely they live disproportionately uncomfortable lives for the degree of safety they are able to achieve on an average? In most cases, say, the snake’s jaw, the monkey’s paw, or the fox’s snout, are all counter-evolved to defeat these tiny stratagems. But it seems the less comfortable they are, the safer they feel.

Next of course I am thinking humans. Through societies, ancient tribes and modern urban cityscapes, almost evenly, we find that the humblest members live in small homes (even where space or building material are not a constraint) and even more significantly in homes with doors which they themselves have to stoop to enter. Small doors don’t keep out wild animals or more powerful humans. So it has to be a psychological need. Is it then an atavistic need in the insecure to be holed up? Is a small door a symbol of sociological submission, a crotch-covering device perhaps? Big doors of course are a symbol of power. Palaces and mansions have big doors, attention-seeking doors even. But of course they are always guarded. Security, guards or electronic anti-invasion devices – even the big man needs his defences. Who then is the king of the jungle in humankind? One who can live with open doors? Live without doors? Without walls perhaps? Without a sense of self to defend?
Do we diminish our minds with worry and fear to feel safe? Do we narrow the entryways to secure whatever little we think we already have? Perhaps we do. Of course we do.
Who is the predator?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Mind
Richard Wilbur

Man in his purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

_

Darzee ke dar par

This one’s for the footloose girl

That that lopsided grin might unfurl

A little tickle for the start

To funny-up the worry wart

दर्ज़ी के दर पर

लिए एक मीटर आस फिर उसी दर पर

तौबा कर निकले थे जहाँ से कल को

कल के चाक-ए-उम्मीद को कर के रफू

सब्र का देके नया सा अस्तर

होटों पे सी कर हसीं की गोटी

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

जहाँ हुआ था एक कुरते का कत्ल

और मिली थी एक सलवार की लाश

जहाँ मेरी भी एक नस फूटी थी

फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

देखो तो और चारा भी क्या है?

हर दर पे सद-रंग सितम सिलतें हैं

यहाँ से लाश तो बर-आमद हुई

कहीं कहीं थो वह भी नहीं मिलतें हैं

गुस्से को कर के दामन का गांठ

पोहुंचे हैं फिर उसी दर्ज़ी के दर पर

These heated days and nights of summer, one finds, are very conducive to thinking. Normally one could desist by asserting that over-taxing the brain is never a good idea. But in this heat what is half a degree more? So when I lie awake between dusk and dawn awaiting that precious half-hour when the old day’s heat has abated and the new day's heat is yet unborn, I ponder, dear people, upon life’s important questions.

Naturally then, I wonder what the factors are for success in IPL.

The bookies must have had something in mind when they went with the Deccan Chargers as favourites and gave the Rajasthan Royals the longest odds during the pre-tournament buzz. The light of bitter hindsight makes one wonder piteously what it could have been. But whatever potential or lack of it these teams had is of no consequence now. One must objectively analyse the Present Truth. The Rajasthan Royals top the tally and the unfortunate DCs and the even more pathetic Bangalore Royal Challengers are going “pehle aap” for the bottom slot in near Awadhi style.

So what makes a team tick? The mother has a theory. She thinks success at IPL is indirectly propotional to the level of bravado in the teams slogan. The unstoppables – indeed, what’s to stop? Duniya hila denge- definitely it is a shaky little world the Mumbaikars inhabit. And let us not even get started about the wretched professors of Jeeteinge hum shaan se.

All in all the theory sounds good, but is it rational? No, I’ll give you mine.

I think it is about back support. Not some spinal appendage but about how much your backers Chadao you. See , I’ll give you empirical evidence. Opening match – SRK turns up amidst the greatest hoopla we’ve witnessed since the Abhi-Ash wedding. To New Zealander Brendon McCullum who is probably unused to such herds of humans it must have seemed like the whole nation was there with the king in attendance. He must have felt like a gladiator performing for some roman emperor, because his glaze-eyed innings of 158* was definitely 90% charged by the adrenalin pulsing through his veins. Then SRK goes off to view his wax statue and guest-edit the Delhi Hindustan Times supplement and the team experiences a slump without their shahi patron.

Ms. Zinta’s team is performing consistently under the warm gaze of her approval, her beatific smiles and possibility of a hug. All well there.

The Mumbai Indians (what a silly name!) started off with injuries, ill-tempered outbursts and dismal performances. I hate to give him credit for anything, but ever since that terrible Ambani man has started turning up in a show of supercilious solidarity, the teams seems to be jumping through hoops to please the big man.

And the leaders- The Rajasthan Royals- the team that can do no wrong- what inspires them? I say blue and beige nylex saris. (or I suppose they are pure chiffon or something, but you know what I mean) Surely if the Maharanis of your host-land would condescended to wear uniform saris with your team colours, and come cheer with regality intact, that should give you an exalted opinion of your own importance? Not to mention the palace tours, the Rajasthani hospitality, photo-sessions in Rajput warrior ensemble, sword and all.

Basically I am saying, treat them nice, tell them they matter; works for children, works for cricketers.

And on the other side of the spectrum is an ace idiot like that intolerable Vijay Mallaya. Hasn’t the sense or the thaheraav to appear gracious. No sooner had they lost a couple of matches his whining and whinging began to be heard. A few more, heads had to roll. Now he has the gall to criticise Dravid. The stupid man would have been better served to just grin and bear it. At least could have salvaged some dignity all round. But no! Had to have his toys or a pound of flesh. Has single handedly destroyed every vestige of morale! Right now, I don't care if they don't win a single other match. Sometimes the face has got to be spited.

Again I find Swati Muthyam provides the theme song-

Andaa-dandaa untaadani aa vijaya malyanu nammu kunte

Gunde lenee manishalle ninnu kondakonalaku vadilesada?

Muthyala vana

Fell asleep last night wondering what had made Sreesanth bawl. Sheetal woke me up at the crack of dawn by announcing in my ear that it was Harbhajan. So the theme song for the day has been “chinnari ponnari Sreesanta ninnu yavaru kottarrayya? Bhajji nannu kottadu baaboi, Bhajji nannu thittadu baaboi!”

Find and keep

(Also posted at Urban Babblers)

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

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

Here’s the result-

ID

Could it be

the unmistakable cousin of the Indian Pond Heron

Upper parts chestnut-cinnamon

Check

Stripe down foreneck

Strike two.

Female duller

A male then.

Resident

Solitary

Hmmm

Habits:

very similar to those of a Little Green Heron

Bookmark and flip:

When surprised

on its nest

or cornered assumes

characteristic attitude of the tribe

termed the ‘on guard’.

Ocular note:

Neck stretched perpendicular,

bill pointing skyward,

the bird freezes,

astonishingly obliterated

amongst its reedy environment.

That’s a wrap.

But just to know:

Nests – in the south west monsoon

Nest – a small twig platform

Eggs – four or five

White.

Note: Chestnut Bittern; nos: 1

Indigo- a kind of blue

Heavy rains in Hyderabad. It stared off looking like some regular conventional-response-to-summer convection rainfall. Now suddenly in the past twenty four hours it has poured non-stop and the depression in the Arabian Sea has seeped insidiously across the drenched states and into me. It is a heavy somnolent sense of uneasiness. It doesn’t help that a lot of work lies pending in other opened files on this very computer. Of course, that is a sure-shot situation to make you want play mutinously at trivial pursuits, no?

So to entertain myself I am going to carefully select from the pictures of my frog ‘Tattoo’ from yesterday and S papa’s birthday party. It is an amazing thing how parents of young children will know so many others with children of the same age. S and S sure know at least a quarter of the folks with children under the age of nine in Hyderabad. At least that is how it seemed when I waited politely for my turn while child after young twerp queued up for their poster colour tattoos. I gave them all a slip after dinner (and my dessert unfortunately) to go and corner the young artist. Nice chap, fine arts from JNTU, graphic/web design artist, does this on the side. Painted me, as you will see, a nice attitudy frog. I liked. It is a good thing we always have plastic gloves in stock in the house; will stretch it for as long as I can.

Here-

As I said, you have pressing work, you will do all sorts of other stuff. Among that other stuff is this-

Kismat mein nahi nuks apne fitrat mein mila
Ye ilm ru-ba-ru-e-ruh hokar fursat mein mila

Taa-umr-e-daanishi ne woh lazzat nahi bakshi
Jho ek naagahaan saaat-e-jahaalat mein mila

Tang-zunjzadah raahon mein dab ke chhut gaya jo nafas
Doob kar us zahan-e-aazaad-o-salaamat mein mila

Ehsaas-e-saleeb-e-zeest kaandhon pe hotaa hi nahi
Woh kuvvat-e-eitbaar tere ibaadat mein mila

Tu hai to rang-e-jahan ghulta hai tere aab mein
Jab nahi tho zauq-e-berangee tere furqat mein mila

Tere naqsh-e-paa mein chal ke dekha hai har dam
Chal ‘Asvi’ ab ke nijaat bagaavat mein mila

Stumbling upon delight

The thing about living in an old fashioned little colony in a largish city is the lazy familiarity it breeds. Not so much the intrusive intimacy of village life, but a mutual mapping of life’s highlights. You know a lot about people with whom you may have exchanged no more than a hundred sentences in twenty years, because of the jobs they have held, their stand on garbage disposal, the periodic renovations of their houses, the kinds of women their sons have married etc. You live around them for so long that if there are no serious ripples in the facades, you think you have them pegged. When suddenly somebody manages to shake you out of this complacency, by revealing an exciting secret life, it is very thrilling, and makes you really wonder how much you are probably missing.

I got back from Devarakonda yesterday and felt like stretching my legs in the evening and so towed the mater along for a walk. There is a little dead-end littered colony adjacent to us that has quiet streets but is home to packs of jealous dogs. But we felt brave and ventured forth. I was in the middle of an animated sentence when something caught my eye. Too deep into what I was saying I took another dozen steps before I knew I just had to go back and investigate for my own peace of mind. On a very small section of the bottom of an otherwise ordinary building was an extraordinary mural integrated into the building, all with drainage pipe and beam structures. Intrigued, I walked closer to see that a little pathway of textured cement paving led up to a door. It was entirely inviting and no harm could come of just popping my head in. I was fully prepared to explain myself to strangers, when I walked into the darlingest room/artist studio you ever saw. Instead of a stranger, the man who stood before me was a man who I had thought of as salt-of-the-earth kind of banker for close-on twenty five years.

I just said Namaste and barged in and it was quite obvious that I had thoroughly discomfited him. But I was a little stunned by all the visual stimuli around me and the implications of it, and anyway I was too fascinated to be able to do the decent thing and leave quickly. Instead I stood there and gaped and asked questions. How long had he been doing it, what mediums does he use, does he exhibit and I jabbered on all the time staring at the walls – the man had talent, this was no keep-yourself-busy-after-retirement kind of outfit; quite obviously it was the real thing.

I think he was desperately tempted to pass off the whole thing as a something belonging to his friend, a very young man who was standing by watching us. But that man was even less interested than me in accommodating my neighbour’s obvious desire for secrecy. He showed me specifically to all the most interesting pieces and told me how they met at an art gallery and immediately struck a rapport and started a partnership. My head was reeling a bit by now and so it was lucky that my mother came to check if I had disappeared into a time-portal. This was not so lucky for the poor man who probably thought I was bad enough without having to contend with my mother too. Anyway she managed to draw me away before I could beg to be shown above stairs through that incredibly delightful yellow painted stairway. With repeated threats of visiting again, I left.

I bounced the entire way back home. It was too delightful a revelation to credit. I am just a very tiny bit concerned that I have chanced upon the secret life of a person and that I should perhaps have slunk away without uttering a squeak. But since I doubt I was capable of it if my life depended on it, I shall not fret. And it is such a wonderful secret that surely just me knowing it can’t hurt?

Treading Momin's ground

With one thing or the other Momin's masterpiece has been whirling in my head these past days. There is something about truly great ghazals (probably their familiarity) that makes their Radeef-Kaafiyaas resonate with an implusive energy. Well, I have been playing with this one, but crave pardon for the impertinence by paraphrasing Ahmed Faraz- (written originally as you might guess, for Ghalib)
'Momin teri zameen par likhee tho hai ghazal
lekin tere kad-e-sukhan ke barabar nahi hun main'

Well here goes-

Jinhe rashk tha mere roz-e-aaraam se
Unhe kaho ab raat ka savera nahi hota

Kusoor-e-naama-e-khushk naamabar ka hai
Varna woh dil hota naama nahi hota

Mere pindaar ko bakshaa hi nahi kadmon ne
kaash yun dil-kash tera koocha nahi hota

Jung-e-dil mein nihatton pe vaar kya theek?
Jadal-e-jazb ka ye saleeka nahi hota

And one in in butchered Dakhani because I am feeling homesick for Hyderabad-

Mereich naam ka koitho aur nikle tho achcha hoinga
Phir bol saktoon ye beikhtiyaar dil mera nahi hota

Devarakonda diary - 1

I am not trying here to run down the joys that we get dealt out in life, but the thing is, they do tend to be universal. Difficulties on the other hand have so much character. Sometimes they are so nuanced that they seem to come tailor-made for the person they afflict. It is possible to tell so much about a person from the kind of troubles they land up with. And it is a perfectly true cliche that people tell strangers their immediate troubles. It is one of the reasons I like travel. Not that I have some ghoulish fascination for human suffering; it is just that it gives me insights into lives other than mine. Perfectly whole viewpoints, opinions, lifestyles and minds - just not mine; it is very liberating. It is interesting to see someone's life, and then by an act of transference my own, as a construct of multiple elements and then view those elements individually.
And just because it will be nice to remember her by, I am putting down an account of a woman who travelled next to me on the bus to Devarakonda.

Returning home from visiting/nursing a probably pregnant daughter in Hyderabad. Desperate to get to Mallepalli before sunset because it is a ten rupee auto drive away from her home in a nearby village. She has a cell-phone but only has a few operations under control. She manages to call someone at the village to try and get someone to pick her up, but doesn't get through to the person she wants to talk to. There is a missed call. She doesn't recognise the number (she can't read), but we hope it is from the village and so she asks me to try and call back. Now I am the last person you need in this kind of situation and without knowing quite how, I connect to the very person she has been trying to avoid. A little background on this individual. He is married to her step-daughter and as a consequence feels that he is meted out step-mother-in-lawly treatment from her, despite her having been to excruciatingly conscientious pains to be perfectly equal in her behaviour all these years. My guilt mounts as he calls about seven times in the next hour trying to convince her to stopover at his village claiming her for his also sick wife. She turns him down with wonderful courtesy each time.
See, my lady has hens who have been handed over for safekeeping to neighbours. But neighbours never do more than their bare duty, do they? Then she is also worried about two other hens who have disappeared to lay eggs. Nobody to find and gather them. She also has to light the Tuesday lamp for the deity. Plus she needs to tend to her orange saplings which will yield fruit in about three years, hopefully. Till such time she depends on her sons'-in-law generosity, because her husband is a wastrel who obviously spends his time living and quarrelling alternately with each of his daughters.
The son-in-law (the one she has been staying with) has covered her bus and auto fare but for a meal she will have to get home.
My lady is tired and worn-out and somewhat offended for being treated in turn like a punching-bag, wet-nurse, provider and matriarch.
I think she is also a bit hungry, but she only plans to cook in the morning on account of the probability of finding snakes in the firewood after dark. She is very worried that she has possibily hurt and offended the only member of her family she is genuinely fond of, who does make unreasonable demands like the rest of them but does so probably more out of petulant affection than selfishness.
Mallepalli arrives ten minutes shy of dusk.

Betaal ka sawaal

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

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

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

There you go!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The We of sport

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whew! That wasn’t so bad!

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

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

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

Then the group would sigh.

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

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

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

There would then be a moment of silence.

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

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

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

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

Taare zameen par

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

Flower child

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

A crowded day

'Koi mila tho haath milayaa kahin gaye do baatein ki

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

-Rustam Sahgalwafa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I find it impossible to handle groups of people.

My mechanical smiles hurt my cheekbones.

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

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

Restraining the desire to escape hurts my muscles.

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

Little by little we grow…

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

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

*Nikon Acquisition Syndrome

The Mind of the Maker

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most, most fascinating stuff.

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

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

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

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