Unpresidented?
October 19, 2009
The latest Amul gem!
Broad Brush Paintings – Episode 2
October 17, 2009
Previous Parts: Episode 1
“Why do you keep on writing in this same, crime thriller genre?”, V asked Rakesh.
Rakesh is the author of four highly successful crime thrillers. He makes quite a bit through the royalties, and generally spends his time sitting in one cafe or another talking to his friends — when he’s not writing something that is, which is seldom. He doesn’t have to put too much effort in writing, because all his novel have the same blueprint, with details varied. Besides, the accuracy of the details is not important to him. Or to his readers.
“Because it comes naturally to me. I don’t have to take efforts to write that stuff”, Rakesh answered, puffing on his half-burned Marlboro Light. Then, carelessly, he threw it out of the window of the dilapidated Irani cafe.
V looked at the wastage, annoyed, but then it occurred to him that it was better than wasting one’s lungs. He hated cigarettes. Normally, he wouldn’t sit with someone smoking, complaining that the smoke gave him asthma. But Rakesh was an exception. He had soft corner for Rakesh, despite his (what V called) pedestrian writing. Rakesh and he went to the college together, and he was one of the few friends from back then with whom V could still connect.
“But what’s the point? Aren’t we writers supposed to get out of our comfort zones?”
Rakesh looked at V quizzically. He wondered if he should pick issues with the phrase ‘we writers’. V, as far as he knew, had wrote nothing that qualified as writing, not in the world he inhabited at any rate.
“Have you ever done a honest day’s work as a writer?” he asked finally, looking out of the cafe window, at nowhere in particular.
“What do you mean?”, V asked, trying to sound nonchalant, yet his voice betrayed a tinge of anxiety. Or was it reproach?
“I mean, have you written a single page of prose, keeping in mind who will want to publish the shit?”
“You mean, honest work in this line means taking other people’s judgment of what’s right and wrong, or suitable/unsuitable for publishing, as one’s starting point?”, V said, his voice agitated. He waited for the answer to his rhetorical question. As he expected, no answer came. For a brief moment V held his pose, in every sense of the phrase, and added in faked nochalant voice, “I guess not”
“I thought as much”, Rakesh said.
“Why would I want to be a writer, if I were to accept that as a starting point?”
Rakesh sighed. He didn’t have time for V’s childish questions.
“The trouble with the world of art is that people come here trying to escape the hard right and wrong judgments, believing they can redefine right and wrong”
For all his faults, V thought, I can still talk to him, because he at least understands the fundamental questions of life. Not too many people these days had time for those fundamental questions. They were so lost in the mundane facts, and problems. It was hard to even talk to them.
What about Chaitali? He wondered …
Long back, when they were dating, he remembered he could talk to her. She understood. She even had answers that seemed to align with his. Or was he too eager to find an alignment? Like the Indian pundits who would fix up any horoscopes. Not that he believed in horoscopes, but wasn’t that cheating? And sometimes, both the parties would do it, each believing that the other cares for horoscopes. Or was it that they wanted the other party to think that they believed in horoscopes — thus establishing their ‘traditional’ credentials?
But what about Chaitali?
He shuddered. Maybe he had cheated himself? Even before he knew there was alignment on things that matter, he had stopped judging? How much more ridiculous was that? He who hated arranged marriages, had he arranged his own marraige by the same methods, in spirit? Nah, he said to himself. Chaitali was okay. She still understood the questions, and their importance. It’s just that her answers had changed over the years, while his had stayed the same. Was it because he never had to taste his answers, in the real world, as opposed to all the imaginary worlds that he tried to create, while she had to?
And Rakesh? He looked at Rakesh, who had lit up another Marlboro light, and seemed to be waiting for him to say something. Trouble was V had no idea what it was. Then he remembered the thread.
“And?” he decided question was the best option.
“And soon they realize that unless they’re genius, they are more constrained by rights and wrongs as defined by someone else — and there isn’t even a way to resort to objectivity. Hell, those are random rights and wrongs, that can never be defeated”
Trouble with those who can think through other people’s shoes, V thought, is that you can never judge. You always keep the case open, for further evidence. He loved Chaitali, so judging was now superflous. There was a time and date for it. He had done it. The case was closed now. If he reopened it, it will just stay open.
“Unless you’re a genius?”, he suddenly said, picking up the thread finally. This was getting interesting.
“If you’re a genius, you can escape them in your lifetime, yes. But down the line, you become another random set of rights and wrongs. In a sense, you lose to the system by being endorsed by it. And worse: you can’t even fight, because by then you’re long dead”
“Do you think you are a genius, V?”, Rakesh asked suddenly.
“Ummm?”, V said, half automatically, half deliberate.
Rakesh laughed. “You do, don’t you? You conceited, arrogant bastard!”
“Well I don’t know if I’m a genius, but I don’t think I’m ordinary, at least”
“No one thinks they’re ordinary, dear. Welcome to the club”
Diwali Musings
October 17, 2009
Trying to figure out where the festive mood has gone. Tamaso ma jyotirgamay. May the light shine within — each and every soul 'enlightened'. Let the lives brighten from within and without …
Happy Diwali to everyone. Note: Image from ( covered under Creative Commons — see the link)The Secondhand Reader
October 10, 2009
Of course I have left Ayn Rand alone, in that corner of my mind where a confused youth is looking for a seemingly coherent world view. Some find it in religion, some in philosophy (again Rand dismissed religion is a primitive form of philosophy, while others might have dismissed philosophy is a primitive form of religion — being non holistic). But the shoe, over the years, stops fitting, as it should even. No one, in their teenage years, has enough exposure to the world to choose a world-view that will encompass everything that their ever widening experience of the world throws at them. Almost no one, I believe …
Still, even then, in those wide-eyed, ready to be amazed years, we have already wrestled with a few questions, to get it partially right — the search (or left — if you allow me that cheap humor). One of the recurring theme in Rand's writings is that of the creators vs those who live secondhand lives — those who consume, those who follow, those who live through others … Well with twitter, I'm a certified secondhand reader. I hardly discover anything these days, it seems. I hardly get to keep pace with a bombardment of articles that keeps coming from some voracious readers, the netizens of the higher rank. I hardly choose what to read next. Not even the subject, it seems … I wonder if in few months everyone will be reading only what some have been sending their way? The fast, voracious readers, net-scrapers, will send us ten articles before we could read one. And we'd be drawn in the ever increasing list of starred, to-read-later'ed, bookmarked, tabboed, articles. We'd stop our own searching. Google will be dead. And we'd have a breed of second hand readers? Soon. Pretty soon — if it hasn't happened already …Broad Brush Paintings – Episode 1
October 4, 2009
Chaitali could not tell how long she was awake, or why she had woken up. She checked the clock; it was showing 2:30 AM. As far as she could recall, no nightmare had woken her up. Generally she was a sound sleeper, and wouldn’t wake up at all, till just a few minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. The thought of being woken up by an alarm did not appeal to her. Alarms can never replace a gentle human call for wakeup because there is feedback loop involved, she thought. A person waking up another person, unless she’s a sadist, will start with stifled whispers first, and if need be, change to nagging, louder calls.
A thought of alarm clock reminded her of the old Swiss clock her grandfather had bought from chor bazaar for the precious sum of 10 rupees. It must have been quite a pinch, then, she thought, wondering what will she get now for the same sum? A tea in a decent restaurant will be more expensive! But then, for all the pinch, her grandfather’s clock had been worth every single paisa, and more. It was an old style, mechanical clock, that needed winding, of course. And it had survived a full fifty odd years, through her school-days, even college days. She would keep it by her bedside, when she wanted to wake up early in the morning to study. After the first few days, when she was jolted to a wide awakening due to the monstrous, steely alarm of that Swiss clock, she had rarely heard it. She didn’t want to wake anyone else in the house, not even her mom, who would get up anyway to prepare a hot cup of Bournvita flavored milk for her. Her scholastic success meant more to her mother than it ever meant to her, then or now.
It was that terror of the jolt, and the fear of waking others in the house, that had stayed with her till this day, when there weren’t that many people in the house to wake up, except for V (or Vedant, but no one ever called him that), who was as sound a sleeper as any she had known. Besides, the alarms these days tried to mimic human waking up, with the frequency and pitch going up, ever so gradually.
She looked at V snoring besides her, his back turned towards her. His legs were cuddled up, and he was sleeping almost in the womb position. Men, she thought, never really come out of the womb. Then she scolded herself for generalizing. I should say most men, she reminded herself.
No alarm, she knew, would ever wake up V, not even the one in her grandfather’s clock. Where is it now, she wondered. She made a note to ask her mom about it, the next time she called her. The thought depressed her. Lately her mother was getting impossible to talk to. How long can she keep on blaming it on her mom’s menopause and excuse her, Chaitali wondered. But then, lately, lot of things depressed Chaitali. V’s dead sound sleep hardly made it to the list.
Now that she was awake, she didn’t know what to do. She was so not used to getting up at such god-forsaken hours, that she couldn’t just go back to sleep. She was thirsty too, and the bottle she kept on the small bedside unit was empty. V had this (annoying she noted) habit of finishing off the bottle on her side too. Since she woke up only early in the morning, it didn’t bother her much, but it bothered her that he never refilled his bottle. She knew it was no use talking to him about it (as about anything else), for he’d just point out that she never drank water in the middle of the night, so how did it matter if he just drank from that bottle too?
She got up and dragged herself to the kitchen. Besides the sink, she saw a plate with crumbs of bread and left-over ketchup. V’s late night hunger pangs, she sighed. Was it the early dinner that was the problem, she wondered. After all, early dinner is only a good idea if you’re going to sleep early, like she did. But he had never complained, just as he rarely complained about anything. She knew he hated routine, and yet, it was routine that she excelled in. Her life was an endless progression of routine.
She sighed again. Her life looked like that of some extremely dissatisfied heroin in V’s numerous unfinished stories. Yet V seemed oblivious to it. She thought she might have been better off as some character in his stories. She’d at least get more attention. But then it wasn’t the routine that bothered her. It was routine that made her successful. It was routine that had brought her the security in life she was looking for. What is security if not another routine, she wondered. What bothered her, was that V wasn’t bothered by it.
She walked into the living room, and switched on the light in the corner. The room was illuminated by a dull, orange light, owing to the colour of the lampshade. She felt content. It was a long time since she had enjoyed such a peaceful space for herself. Not that V would ever encroach on her space. But he needed so much of attention, that she never got the space, and that too had become another routine in her life.
As she slumped in the couch thinking if she should just switch on the television, she saw V’s old writing folder on the coffee table. It was open. V must have been sifting through his early writings, she thought — something he did quite often. Wasn’t that also a routine of sorts, she wondered. How come he loves that so much, when he hates the routine? She picked up the folder, and started browsing. V, she knew, wouldn’t mind a bit. In fact, he would be delighted.
AutumnYou left
leaving behind a trail
of crumpled leaves
fragments …
of memoriesAutumns are never pleasant
they’re the premonition
of cold, merciless winterThe nature is kind
for the winter
however certain
ends too
certainlyThe autumn
you left behind
is the final season
I fell for this? She wondered. This kitsch! She was no snob, and her exposure to literature, and especially poetry, was quite basic. But this? I’ve married a failed kitsch artist, she sighed!
Even V couldn’t have created a better failed heroine himself, she thought as she switched on the TV.
Some fiction, some rambles
October 2, 2009
In India, anyone can be your health advisor. Even that neighborhood marwari shopkeeper is no exception. Sometime back, I went to a shop to buy Amul Butter — that quintessential Indian icon of sorts. The shopkeeper nonchalantly passed me Amul Lite – the low cost low cholesterol breadspread (according to the official description).
I asked him if he has the regular butter by any chance?
“yeh jyada achcha hai”, he assured me (it’s better).
“lekin yeh butter nahin hai”, I protested (but it’s not butter)
“wohi to, sehat ke liye accha hai” (that’s what! it’s better for one’s health)
Now, if I wanted to eat less butter, I would eat less butter, not more (or same amount of) non-butter! Please, keep those margarines (reminds me of migraines for some reasons) and butter-like-bread spreads (which incidentally have almost no milk fat, and have vegetable fats in large quantities, according to the packet) away from me. I’m happy with less of my butter (even Amul butter — ther utterly butterly delicious!).
Not that I told the shopkeeper that. I just walked away. I’m getting more and more weary of what Michael Pollan calls “reductive nutritionism“. I know, I know … call me a follower of Pollanism!
—
Lately, I’ve been reading a bit too much of Alexander McCall Smith (no not his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I found not even close to his best, rather on the opposite end of the spectrum). In fact, my last fictional attempt — A Blind Date — was inspired from his collection of short stories (although not from any specific one): Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations, which I had read just about then.
Now after reading his Corduroy Mansions and now one of his 44 Scotland Street series (book 3, to be precise), I’m bitten by the ‘episodic writing’ bug. That it might make me write more ‘regularly’ is just one aspect of it.
So here is what I plan to do (they say making your plans public makes you little more serious about them — almost make them obligatory — and if they haven’t already said it, I’m postulating that): write at least one episode of the (yet unnamed) episodic story every two weeks. If I do more, I’d live with that, but I ain’t kiddin myself …
I Plan to post the first part over this weekend, and not to mention, name the damn thing. Watch this space 
The Musical Language
September 24, 2009
When Carl Sagan, the scientist guy who was better known for his efforts to popularize science, in billions and billons of ways, shortlisted music from around the world to go on the Voyager Golden Record — from diverse cultures — of all the recorded music from India he picked up Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar’s Jaat Kahaan Ho.
Kesarbai Kerkar, although well known to the connoisseurs of Hindustani Classical music, is hardly a household name even back in India. Not many would have heard the bhairavi, for instance, and many like me got to know about it in the context of the Voyager Golden Record! Make no mistake about it: I’m not contesting Sagan’s selection at all. I doubt many would, after listening to the piece. I’m in fact marveling at Sagan’s selection — from a rich, diverse tradition that Indian music (classical and otherwise) is, he’s picked up an absolute gem, that’s as alien to many on earth (and the country of its origin), as it would be to any passing alien who might happen to listen to it (in whatever way, the word listen makes sense, in an alien context).
And yet, the longing that’s characterisitc of the bhairavi, is beyond language. Did Sagan, then, believe that even an alien, who has presumably no common emotional experiences to share with the human race, would be able to feel that longing (or did he actually believe that even aliens would share what we think to be very human experience)? For, one has to assume, that with the shared emotional experience of human race, Kesarbai Kerkar’s voice should easily be able to surpass the human languages barrier — languages that are hardly capable of capturing some of the finest human experiences, anyways.
We all are able to feel, even when we don’t understand a word of the song in another language. I was memerized by Nat King Cole’s Quizas Quizas long before I finally got around to reading the translation of its Spanish lyrics (which, are lovely as well). When a cousin introduced me to Magda El Romy’s Kalemat, it blew me over, and I never even checked out its lyrics. Or when I first listened to Meiko Kaji’s Flower of Carnage, after being numbed by the violence in Kill Bill 1, I was transported to another mind zone, where the violence faded away into oblivion, along with the numbness (not to mention, it gave me a premonition that the second part would be more nuanced). There will be innumerable examples, indeed. Much of music is even accompanied by no words, and lets us find our own meaning, without having to ever ‘invalidate’ it, or just surpasses what the words are saying, even when there are words accompanying it.
Many people believe the Vedas to be more than the words, and that with right intonations, anyone should be able to get them, even without knowing Sanskrit. That might seem far fetched to the rationalist in each of us (count me in, of course), but then, how do we understand the pain and the helpless (and yet dignified) rage in Beethoven’s Seventh symphony — particularly the second movement. Would anyone need to understand English to be soothed by Roberta Flack’s Jesse, or to feel the camaraderie in Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World or Hello Brother?
And then there is the issue (decidedly not minor) of divinity: of music surpassing all language and conveying to us the idea of divinity, or making us feel its illusory presence. The cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words begs a question: how much more worth is a piece of music, if it can transcend all that language can capture, or all that (even) the visual arts can inspire — although I agree that I’m not really a guy who is qualified to even begin to make that assessment. Undoubtedly, there is much that visual arts can communicate. But being a form, is it constrained when trying to communicate the formless? The perfection of form that Michelangelo’s David conveys probably would never be expressed in language either, but there are rare moments (or not so rare, when Kumar Gandharva is singing, for instance, or Abida Parveen) in music when God talks to atheists like me, and makes me believe that there indeed is the seed of divine in each of us. That formless, nameless, territory, at least for me, is ruled by music and music alone.
Partial Blindness
September 7, 2009
Things we take for ganted:
- The way your baby smiles at you when you look at him before leaving home
- The lovely overcast weather, drizzles …
- The lovely, haphazard, pickets outlining a large, yet unsullied, plot, and an imlee tree standing at the entrance like a guard
- Tree lined, pot-hole free road, punctuated by a garden here, a lawn there; somewhere a beautiful old stone quarter partially obscured by trees
- Little children, from not so privileged backgrounds jauntily walking to school, alone or in pairs, with no apparent care in the world
Things we cannot put out of our mind:
- A truck driver who won’t let you overtake all the while puffing greyish ugly smoke making you roll up your windows
- An erratic car driver here, bike driver there, who does something or the other to get on your nerves.
And then we blame the urban life …
Banal beauty seems to always lose to banal ugliness?
Shourie’s Catch 22
August 27, 2009
BJP High Command: Mr. Shourie, we’re deeply hurt by your remarks about the party president.
Shourie: So, are you going to expel me?
BHC: Err. No. You’ll have to clarify the remarks.
Shourie: But I wrote 7 full newspaper pages of explanation.
BHC: Oh that’s not clear. You need to ‘clarify’.
Shourie: I already did.
BHC: That’s not acceptable
Shourie: So are you going to expel me?
BHC: Are you saying that you refuse to clarify?
Shourie: No. I am saying I already clarified.
BHC: Then we can’t expell you.
Shourie: So what am I supposed to do?
BHC: Clarify the remarks, till they are clear.
Shourie: And then I can be expelled?
BHC: No you cannot be expelled then, for you’d have clarified.
Shourie:And what happens if my clarification is not clear? Can you expell me then?
BHC: No. If your clarification is not clear, we do not know if you actually said anything that needs desciplinary action.
Shourie: And what if I refuse to further clarify? Then you will expel me?
BHC: No. You can only be expelled for your remarks, which won’t be clear till you clarify.
Shourie: So there is a catch?
BHC: Yes. Catch 22. It’s the best that is there.
