Wiseacring for the Swing of Thought

Life with Books...

2012-02-09T11:22:00.001+05:30

Inspired by a stop-motion animation film, I decided to colour code my books...

While this makes it tough to find a book if I do not remember what colour spine it had.

I am also judging my books from their cover, which after all is not that bad a thing to do!

Kites

2012-01-14T18:24:00.000+05:30

I tried to fly a kite.

I learned how to string it.

I could lift it ten feet off the ground for 8 seconds.

I loved running with it in order to lift it in the air.

I like running - it is even better with both hands raised, holding a crackling paper kite.

Flying kites is as awesome as it looks in the movies.

The trick is to keep breathing

2012-01-14T10:22:00.000+05:30

I am underwater of sorts
And I have learnt to breathe.

I am startled...

At the vast landscape,

Which is now playground to me!

Magic Tree

2012-01-11T14:09:00.001+05:30

Rapunzel Rapunzel....let down....

Ummm... well!

2012-01-10T12:09:00.001+05:30

It lacks the sense of precariousness I wished for...

It is as busy as I wanted it to be...

Right at the bottom I later wanted to draw a child,

With her cat or dog and her book!

Engrossed in reading, dreaming and thinking...

While on her very shoulders, this mountain of a world rested.

Shelf-life

2012-01-09T10:42:00.001+05:30

I love colored Glass bottles...

Their sound is sticky sweet.

They hold light, hence look alive...

They are graceful.

Some are empty and can be filled.

Some can be emptied for lightness is good...

Whether full or empty, glass bottles will remain glass bottles.

I love them.

Bubble-Wrap

2012-01-08T13:23:00.002+05:30

I am not my mind...

It is so much more...

Myriad tunnels, playgrounds, cities, townships, canyons, oceans, caves, skies.

I will never scan the length and breadth of it.

Not everything in it is to be owned...

Especially the dark creatures that loom in its forests.

I have to know them all, observe them and befriend them.

I have to bubble wrap the tiny kernels of life that float around in that very mind.

With a bubble-wrap.

Co existence of dark and light, good and evil is a given.

But I can bubble wrap that which I want to keep pure and untainted.

Finding that, those tiny kernels, is life.

I am learning to make bubble wrap for a living!

Turn Around

2012-01-07T16:40:00.004+05:30

I am turning things around.

This way and that.

I am turning my mind around.

I am turning my world around.

Things do turn around...

It is and it isn't easy.

But it is the way with no two ways about it.

Things must be turned around.

Things are turning around.

Peaceful hours make Noisy sketches...

2012-01-06T10:27:00.002+05:30

Knots of the mind and Shards of the skin

"....I have all I need for loving and weeping, I know now what is going to close, and open inside me...”- Samuel Beckett

Working backwards...

2012-01-05T12:41:00.000+05:30

I wonder where it all started - my fascination with illustrated children's books, children's books for adults, dark fairy-tales and other illustrated children's wonders. I also wonder why I have to wonder about it - but maybe I do - for I need to wonder about any "fascination" and this one in order to know why and how exactly I got myself to this nook - one that inspires, comforts, amuses and entertains me - thankfully. Because not all my fascinations are like that!

I worked backwards from this fascination and I can trace a path that led up to it. Many things on the way make up that path that have contributed to this liking, nurtured it, encouraged it and allowed it to become bigger - to color my pastime, my thoughts, my conversations, my reading and well, me! I am sure I was looking for something like this - a fancy for my mind. I always am! I was looking for a new cave, preferably underwater, the way to which only I could find and that too if I was lucky. It had to be a cave where I could stay warm, light myself an oil lamp, sit down to find my treasures, play around in them on my own, lose myself and then let the right ones in on it. I wanted to read about complexity, simply! A minimalist explanation of complex with due respect to its complex nature without the adult like mess of words and thoughts I have become prone to attaching to most things. I wanted to think of me as a child who still had chances and always will and is much away from the barren and hopeless landscape currently surrounding me.

It all started, and I am sure it started before that, but to give it a time and place and a starting point because while we know everything started right at the start, we have to start talking about it from somewhere in the middle (because the middle is different for all of us)! So it all started when I was reading The Children's book by A.S.Byatt. It was evil along with the good and mean along with the kind and it did not veil life and it was for children and for adults and it made me realize the boundaries are blurred. It narrated stories of children, tales for children and stories of adults around them and how all these worlds existed just as strongly together because yes - it surprises me to realize that they do!

I continued reading about dark fairy-tales and stumbled upon various versions, compilations, illustrated versions and it was such a historically and creatively and culturally and artistically fascinating a world.

Also,

when we had to wait for, cajole or pull sleep to us on some nights while pushing away the unwanted stuff that occupied its place instead, bed-time stories came to my rescue. I would choose a tale to narrate and most of the times fall asleep in the middle of it. I wanted more tales and I searched for more and my search brought Brain Pickings to me - and Brain Pickings is the loveliest library of the rarest and zaniest and most beautiful of children's books - illustrated in some breathtaking styles.

I could spend a long time reading children's books and I am going to - and I want them to be honest books - hiding nothing from children and from adults. I want them to not be skewed by being all rozy and all kind and hence a little gory and scary and mean too. I wish to find children's books that write about what exists - of beauty and of ugliness - because exist they do.

And thus, here I am writing about this today because all this is my mind's "fancynation"... I am going to come across a lot of innocent books that have their heads firmly on their shoulders, yet speak colorfully and artistically and simply of the truths of this world and of life and keep us all eternally light...

The Hot Turd Paradigm

2012-01-02T22:12:00.000+05:30

I am gaining a reputation for silence.

I am back to blogging because I want to assure myself that I might not have stopped thinking altogether.

Someone who writes and is well respected for that skill the world over - whose name I do not recollect - said that when someone says he or she is unable to express, it is because they don't really know what they are thinking in the first place! I examine the things I wish to express or what is left of them, hardly a trickle - and I wonder if I might be one of those who do not know what they are thinking in the first place.

When we lack something, for instance, not knowing what we think - we either accept the lack of it or we overcompensate. Some people are quiet and some are talkative - and the reason could very well be that neither of them know what they are thinking. Expression does not necessarily stand as evidence for thought.

Thinking and expressing exists and yet does not in a person at the same time. There is never a complete cessation. There may be momentary immobility, in some areas of life, of a few hours, days, months or years.

And the immobility could also be because we are learning to think and express in new ways.

Charles Bukowski has said and I recollect that he has said it, "Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out". To which I say do not let anything hurt like a hot turd except a hot turd... and yet if something does, for life will work in its own way and not seek permission - then it is worthwhile to express it.

I call it the hot turd paradigm and the next time I poke myself for not being talkative, social or witty or funny or engaging enough - I will plainly remind myself - the turd is just not hot enough!

Oddiences...

2010-11-27T20:48:00.000+05:30

I am back to theater in a way I used to be. Having seen about 5 plays this year, Marathi and English I have found Sunil Shanbag's "Walk Into the Sun" the most striking of the lot.

Marathi theater has not changed since my brief stint in it 7 years ago. The jarring cheapness (in the so called best of plays today) of sets, clothes, music and dance cannot be attributed to nor justified by the apparent "lack of good production money". This sort of absolute ugliness comes from somewhere deeper or somewhere very shallow. Each play I have seen and I have seen 3 Marathi plays this year I am only too glad I am not a part of it and also glad that I will be someday again and differently so...

Not to mention, disturbances caused due to people blabbering on their cellphones have increased a lot over the past years...each Marathi play (not exaggerating) I saw, witnessed a brawl between the audiences...

I do not say that cell phones do not ring while I am in the Prithvi theater...they rarely do and at least people get jolted the first time it happens having the good sense to not let it happen the second time in the same show.... and at least they don't answer the call to say, "I am watching a play...I will call you later". The point of their being "considerate" to the audiences and the artists by not talking at length in that moment and hanging up is lost anyway....

Circus...

2010-11-25T14:46:00.000+05:30

Realized as I half awoke from sleep last night that it is necessary to shake out of sleep in order to continue sleeping quietly...

Precisely in between shaking out of it and re wafting into a fresh batch, this time minus the noise of previous dreams, remembered Kafka who said something like, "One needs to un crumple in order to go back to being creased as before.."

I am, in about two hours, going to a circus.
Circus is a bowl of custard that is no longer cold but tastes sweetly custard powder ish....

2010-11-23T19:14:00.001+05:30

Bookstore romances are a kind of storybook romance...

Andaaz-e Bayaan

2010-11-19T13:32:00.002+05:30

Bah Qadr-e-shauq nahin zarf-e tangnae ghazal,

Kucch aur chahiye vusat mere bayaan ke liye

In porportion to my fancy, the tight alleys of a Ghazal are too narrow...

I need something more spacious for my expression...

-Asadullah Khan Ghalib.

Who reads our thoughts really...

Great Expectations

2010-10-22T12:10:00.001+05:30

It was never Pip! It was the convict first and then it was Miss Havisham who had me rattled into a curiosity that will never be satisfied. Great Expectations speaks about what became of them. I want Charles Dickens to tell me who they used to be...

Especially this shriveled old fruit of a lady still clad in her wedding gown increasingly getting cocooned by the growing cobwebs around her...
She sits in a room in Satis House, a room boarded up to not allow sunlight nor the passage of time to show. With all the clocks stopped at that hour when she was abandoned by her lover at their wedding altar, Miss Havisham stopped the passage of her life and remained...

I have referred to another sketch for this one and hence will not claim it to be entirely original.
Or maybe I will to the extent that its originality goes only as far as the fact that i can claim to have stroked every stroke of black ink herein.

A tribute to Miss Havisham and how she left me rattled...
I sm still wondering Who she used to be...?

2010-10-12T12:04:00.001+05:30

“I could never have imagined!” is not such a meaningful exclamation after all. While at times our imaginations have surpassed the situations occurring around and those that will occur, there are times when just as simply and strongly, situations have and will surpass our best and most vivid imaginations.

Imaginations are both wild and limited at the same time, each time.

There really is not any big deal in a situation one was not able to imagine the occurrence or appearance of.

2010-09-27T10:45:00.005+05:30

Rapunzel Rapunzel let down....

And let not a fear amply feed
The dark waters that already run deep.
Nor stretch it too wide and thickly so
That it eclipses all of life.
As worse will be to stoke its embers wild
For until we breed the fear....we have the fear defied...

2010-09-03T14:14:00.001+05:30

A ball cracked bat shaped holes in a window

Ronger Rabindranath

2010-08-25T17:58:00.002+05:30

I have been searching for a few days for articles and essays written by Tagore especially those elaborating more on the nature and importance of art for man and the world which he inhabits.

While at that I happened to stumble across an interesting article that took me into a unique and as yet unknown aspect of Tagore; his vision and his private world of colours triggered by a “partial colour vision deficiency” he had since childhood.

In the book: ‘Tagore of Colours/ A Study of the Use of Colour in the Writings and Art of Rabindranath Tagore’ Ketaki Kushari Dyson and Sushobhan Adhikary (Ronger Rabindranath/ Rabindranather Sahitye o Chitrakalay Ronger Byabahar) explore the impact of this colour deficiency on Tagore’s paintings, on his language and also provide beautiful evidences of how the man wove his “deficiency” into unique perceptions that manifest into fabulous words and poetry that evoked an imagery like none other…

You can read the complete article here:

Some excerpts:

If Tagore was a protanope, then he was arguably the greatest protanopic creative genius the world has ever seen.
I learned for the first time in my life that Tagore had probably had a partial colour vision deficiency, the kind known as protanopia, in which the wavelengths of light that we see as the colour red are lost to the eye, and there is confusion between red and green in perception. It is not an illness, just a genetically inherited condition. There is no ‘cure’ for it.

It seemed obvious to us, however, that a colour vision deficiency was bound to ‘colour’ a person’s entire psychology of perception, and if that person was a poet, a writer, an artist, it would surely have important consequences in his writings and art. Perception is indeed a private process, each person being his or her own processor, but when the perceiver is also a compulsive communicator, we are inevitably allowed innumerable glimpses into that private chamber.

He tends to refer to reds in a roundabout, often anomalous, manner. When describing sunsets and sunrises, he frequently feels frustrated and helpless, and concentrates on the colour golden. He talks about the leaves of the krishnachura (the gulmor, about rain on them, sunlight through them, their branches at night, but never about the dazzling beauty of their red flowers. Red, which he probably perceived as a darkness, as an absence of colour, is used by him regularly in negative associations and contexts.
In Tagore’s colour symbolism blue is existence, blue is rup,blue is lavanya,blue is ananda.Red is often unknown, unseen, a-jana, a-dekha,associated with duhkha and vyatha.Indeed, once we delve into the depths of his mature texts we realize that Tagore is often acknowledging his problematic vision of red, but only obliquely. “Tomar ashoke kingshuke/ alakshyo rong laglo amar akaroner sukhe” - “In your ashok and kingshuk an invisible colour touches my happiness without reason” - so he says to Phagun, the first month of spring.
My purpose here is to whet your appetite for the details, which will enable you to look at Tagore’s themes and images (both verbal and visual) in a new light. If you allow us to take you on a conducted tour of the colour-world of the man who wrote: “Aaj shobar ronge rong mishate hobe”- “Today I must blend my colours with everyone else’s colours”, many lines of Tagore with which you are already familiar will reveal new vistas of meaning.

With a wishbone as a backbone

2010-08-11T17:39:00.002+05:30

Have a wish…

keep wishing…

Have some things wished…

Be wishful…

Err wish full…

Or wishfool!

Maybe even wish-wash.

The trotolla will do its job

Spinning wishes in the mind

Some tickling down the spine…

With a wishbone then

As a backbone when

Walking wet miles

In an in-between land

Of wet kisses where

Waters meet the sand

No footprints to find behind

With a trotolla in the mind

Spinning wishes down the spine…

A trotolla spinned it all...

2010-08-05T19:16:00.002+05:30

I wish for life in satin, ribbons of living greens.

I wish for a cool lump of clay, dug out of the brown earth.

I wish for a glass melody, water breaking into a thousand shards.

I wish for an oily darkness, dancing around my flickering lamp.
I wish for living glass bottles,in the sun on the sill.
I wish for a flutter of worlds, in books lying open.
I wish for glowing skin, from the burning mettle within.
I wish for soft tresses, spewed by a smiling mind.
I wish for scents and a bath, merging in vaporous trails.
I wish for melting meat, mouthfuls of tender joy.
I wish for dressed up toe nails, brazen in glossy red.
I wish for goldfish streaks, vibrant in my head.
I wish for a wall screening of the dreams I will dream
I wish for glowing butterflies to paper from my ceiling.

I wish for a child who will plant a future with me...

Weak are the realities that stem from illusions....

2010-07-28T01:11:00.001+05:30

The first time that I am repeating a post written exactly a year ago....because it fits the context even after a year! I clearly have not moved on and yet I did...
I got back today from Ladakh last year.
It was my tryst with peace after chaos and before chaos...it was a peaceful bridge!
Not the peace I imagined or conjured up.
The peace that truly existed!

I remember coming back differently...

Not because I was done with my holiday.
Not because I went to work.
Not because I was home.
Not for these obvious reasons
but for those unknown!

They are still unknown after a year...
When I was in the mountains
I did not forget to remember,
To gaze at the night time skies
Gaze at the myriad falling stars
Lodging stardust in my eyes.

I did not forget to remember
To crane my neck until it hurt
At mountains sculpted by the winds
Indescribable in words!

I did. I did it to the fullest. Craned and strained. I am carrying sore memories in my neck....even after a year!
I have shed the tan and the hair has grown back. I got back with lesser shackles but then they grew again....the questions are always more than the answers, but there are answers!
Stargazing is not my thing in act, it is in its idea.
I cannot tell constellations.
I cannot tell Venus.
I can tell the moon and that's more than enough!
It was cold and windy and I was clad in 4 layers of clothes while the sun burnt my nose. Nosequake!
Mountains are life rehabilitating. (Rehabilitation: The process of restoration of skills from an illness or injury so as to regain maximum self-sufficiency and function in a normal or as near normal manner as possible. For example, rehabilitation after a stroke may help the patient walk again and speak clearly again)

They rehabilitate. They detox.
The pressure to stay clean is high.
But I succumbed.
I am still resistance dyslexic...

Reality is overrated.
It is nothing but the slowest of illusions that could not escape our clutches and was chased, caught and tamed by us....
But it never ceases to be an illusion just like things do not really lose their true nature...
Our realities our nothing else but weakling illusions that fell into our trap!
I chased one, caught one and made it my reality....but its screaming to be an illusion again and I have to set it free...forsake my reality at the altar of illusory smartness...

The sandwich tasted bitter

2010-06-15T18:27:00.002+05:30

Stared at a girl who kickstarted a pink TVS wearing a pink helmet. Also noticed before she wore her helmet the single pink hair-clip on the right that clipped back a few tresses from falling on her face. Saw her ride away with what I thought was aplomb for her feet barely touched the ground.

Two boys who waited for their sandwiches must be 15 years old.
Wondered how they will look buying sandwiches as young men...if they will hi five the same way and if they will even be there together.

Some things make other things bearable.
But other things become unbearable because some things exist in the first place.
Now what about it....?

Issues with Facebook. I it is terrifying albeit innocently.
I too am writing in my innocent fear.

Being on Facebook = being late for an afternoon appointment one wants to be on time for on a very hot summer's day when one is already taking care to keep all movements to a minimum in order to sweat as little and just then a glass vat of oil (make it RED) slips out of nowhere and comes crashing at my feet and spills on my polished white floor and turns everything slippery = irritation, self-loathing, getting late, sweating, more self-loathing, darkening of complexion, stubborn grease, beautiful day at risk = Oilspill = being on Facebook!

So why do you want to be on Facebook?
It keeps me lightly in touch with others on the face of it.
But is a hard blow to my bandwidth.

It also allows my blogposts to be read as "notes".

Fishing

2010-06-07T16:51:00.003+05:30

To hold an agitation in the mind…even in its wildest flutterings and beyond…while it goes on a rampage clawing, scratching, biting, twisting and wriggling…to dissect that agitated state and not cut up a person in the frenzy!

…although the puddles of muddled minds are murky…to draw into light the elusive monsters hiding in it… so that they become bright silver fish that are possible to spot, nail and fish out…

And in the pool elusive fish play
Argent and gules they slither away
Against the green against the grey
They flash upon a rainy day

And in the depth of murky puddles
They exist open eyed and bright
Silver and red, a shadowed light
Veiled and going out of sight...

-Mostly Byatt

To let people be more than the hurdles they get along…either until all hurdles truly seem small or experience asks you to get real!

To know that doubts will dance around each written and unwritten word…yet to know there is a vague hope that still lives on!

Rides...

2010-05-24T13:20:00.001+05:30

Mute tolerance of the impudent blast of cold air from the air conditioner in the bus - a realization that goosebumps out of excitement make my arms look prettier than goosebumps due to cold - and right then settles next to me a lady with her hair recently washed so that the water is still dripping from its edges onto my goosepimpled arms causing the temperature to drop by an extra inclement degree...

Light - it pours forth from the sun, is slashed by the branches of trees and structures - only to fall on my book in pieces - broken light the cracks within which are filled by shadows - their mottled play on my book makes the words dance and I feel dizzy!

Jelly belies substance - it looks full and stickily thick - but tastes all water.
A lot of things are jelly -like.

Covering Ground

2010-05-22T21:50:00.000+05:30

Usually - 15 minutes and 50 rupees later I am at this happy place.
Today - 1 hour 40 minutes, countless fleeting thoughts, few thoughts presistently appearing countless times and 35 songs later, I am at the happy place - having felt the ground beneath every step!

Ankles are delicate! It is a miracle they don't just snap like twigs only quivering a tad under pressure. I felt my ankles today they way I do not even when I dance! When I dance I feel my soles...

More than my legs, it is my hands that hurt! They hurt out of having nothing to do I guess...relatively nothing!

Some people walk leaning slightly behind...as if there upper body was sitting on their lower backs...

Kafka's generous peppering in his diaries of names such as the likes of Wiegler on Hebbel,
Reiseschatten, Die Strasse der Verlassenheit, Eheleute blah jabber jabber jabber make me want to read (read - read as- understand) German. Tagore makes me want to talk Bangla! I am not as thirsty about talking German as I am about talking Bangla...thirsty and hungry as if the sugar levels in my body have dipped an all time low and Mishti is Must.

It is one thing to read writings that are descriptive and descriptive of an active social life bursting out of which, occassionally, is the underlying mindspeak...

But it is entirely another thing to read writings that are all mindspeak..through which fleetingly peep references to this and that of life...and that too only for context's sake...Such are The Diaries of Kafka! They are what he felt rather than what he did...

I want to get closer to how I feel, what I am doing I can see...

The flip side of getting too cozy at a cafe is that I have an urge to pick up my own mug of coffee and plate....

Sparkling splinters of the mind

2010-05-17T23:53:00.002+05:30

It was the closest I had come to experiencing "limbo" with my body. The life jacket kept me afloat in the icy cold waters. My head bobbed on the river's undulating current, sometimes lifted way above the water when I would gasp good lungfull of air and sometimes the water would rise resulting in forced suffocating gulps! But I stayed afloat my arms a little sore from the rafting exercise. I realized I was still holding them stiff as if they were the ones helping me not drown. Trusting the life jacket, I had finally let them loose and along with them my neck and legs and feet. That is when limbo happened! There was nothing beneath my feet the river bed being a few feet below. I was standing on changing waters. I had only the swift current slipping through my clutches like only water can to hold on to and it was a watery emptiness I was trying to grasp while my feet flailed in it below! But I was afloat with no ground beneath my feet and it was the closest my body had come to my mind in "feeling" limbo!

A nameless feeling I cannot nail thankfully manifests itself into a visual. A visual that ideally deserved my pretty paint bottles and a crisp, white nobel looking canvas. I cannot nail feelings always but I can nail the visuals they spur and somewhere in the beginning, middle or end of this process, closure happens. The feeling colors its way out gloriously wet, creamy, sometimes bleeding, mixing and merging and then it settles and dries inorder to be looked at and then tucked away! It is quick and it is intoxicating. It is engrossing and it is unfailing.

I know I will make them wrists delicate even though they cannot be seen. They are hidden under glass bangles. 100 of them on each hand. Each! A total of 200 glass bangles making muted melody. Not a shade repeats itself and not a shade stays itself as each bangle bounces light off the other! How would I have painted those many shades? Painstakingly! The hands are heavy but not still. How will I show them come crashing down with the strength with which they lifted themselves and with the weight that is dragging them down? Stubbornly! They crash on the grey stone wall accompanied with silent screams. A million splinters fly and I will fill its color in the air. There are cuts and harmless bruises I will have to paint because they will be there. But it is a small price to pay for the million tiny color shards I will watch flying about! Why glass bangles? Why not a big blue glass pot on a white wall in an empty room? Because bangles I will wear and I will lift my hand again and bring it down again and do it until the last of it falls off with a final glassy, fragile gasp and the last of the screams trickles out, like do the beads of sweat!

How will I paint the scattered splinters? Abruptly!
How will I clean up after this painting? I wont.
I will walk cautiously the next morning. My pretties are colorful and they are sharp and they are still on the floor.

बिन्नी

2010-05-06T13:43:00.005+05:30

सारा शहर परेशान ही कि बिन्नी, बिन्नी क्यू है...
सारा शहर दुबला जा रहा है कि बिन्नी, बिन्नी क्यू है

जहा महात्मा गांधी रोड पर बिकती शराब है...
वहा सिर्फ मेरी बिन्नी कि वजहसे इस शहर का आसमा खराब है?

बिन्नी जैसी भी है, बिन्नी है, वो मेरी है!
उसमे कोई खोट नाही, वो पूरी है!

अरे जिस शहर को इन्सान होने की तमीज नही
उस शहर को शिकायत है बिन्नी के बारे मे?

अब मै शहर की उम्मीदोन के हिसाब से बिन्नी को काट छाट कर छोटा कैसे कर दू?
बिन्नी आखिर मेरी बेटी है, कोई कमीज नही...

कमलेश पांडे I think
थोडा सा रुमानी हो जाये...1990

Frostnip

2010-05-05T16:12:00.000+05:30

There is only one death and only one kind of death, the last one, the physical!

There are no smaller deaths inside of a life.

Where there is life, there cannot be death.

We cannot have parts of ourselves dying while we are alive.

What life may have are “Frostnip” phases of minds and souls. There is loss of sensation, numbing, and coldness. These maybe periods with a semblance of death –a freezing of very human, very innocent and very primal abilities! Ability to feel, to emote, express, to relate and flow freely …

It is absurd to use words such as “dead” or “bringing back to life”.

But “thawing” out of a Frostnip is possible.

We can warmly, slowly and surely thaw or unbend. We do not have to come undone….

Pecheeda...

2010-05-04T15:04:00.001+05:30

It was not the most enjoyable of sketching tasks but I did persist and did so voluntarily as it did offer something to "do" in particular moments.

The following words, woven into preciousness by Gulzaar, do not describe my sketch in any way nor does my sketch commit the folly of wanting to capture their essence. The sketch is far too barren than the vivid imagery and feelings the words evoke. The two will show on one plane here simply because the words were shared about the same time as I completed the sketch and the first line resonated with what I had put on paper...

Irrespective of the fit/misfit, the words are worth being shared:

’Ballimaran ke mohalle ki wo pechida dalilon ki si galiyan...

The lanes of Ballimaran are convoluted that they are reminiscent of the criss-cross nature of a lawyer's questioning.

Samne taal ke nukkad par bateron ke kaseede

Right ahead in a corner there's a teak tree on which birds chirp and they seem like they are singing paeans of praise.

Gudgudati hui pan ki peekon mein wo daad wo wah wah

People can't get enough of listening to Ghalib's poetry. They are consuming Paan and smoking (gudgudati) hooka while they go wah wah on the verses...

Chand darwazon par latkehue boseeda se kuch taat ke parde

The place also has a few old and tattered (boseeda) jute made (taat) curtains

Ek bakri ke mamiyane ki awaz

And there's a goat which bleats

Aur dhundhlai hui shaam ke benoor andhere aise deewaron se muhn jod ke chalte hain yahan

The evening is devoid of light and the night too is not in its full glow. It's twilight. And if you notice closely, the shadows are slowly embracing the doors and the windows of the area. And soon they'll be gone...

Chooriwalan ke katre ki Badi Bi jaise apni buhjti hui aankhon se darwaze tatole’

... And while the shadows are merging with the night, In the little space of Choodiwalan, there's an old woman who is straining her dim eyes to scan the area, to scan the doors

Isee Benoor andheri see gali kaasim se Ek tarteep charagon ki shuroo hoti hain

Right here in this dim lit locality named Kasim, there's a series of lanterns

ek Kurane sukhan kaa safaa khultaa hain asadallah khan Ghalib kaa pata milta hain...

And here, the Kuran is recited like it never has never been recited before and right there is where Ghalib stays....

Remains of the Day

2010-04-20T09:42:00.000+05:30

It took me a month to read Remains of the Day. An impeccable, English description of a butler's 6 day sojourn into England's hamlets during which he reminisces on a good twenty years of service he has engaged in. The book inches into the future from the present like the butler's ford, leisurely trudging ahead on empty roads. While that happens, it takes big leaps backwards into his past...it moves back more than forward. While "time" moves ahead and the present moves ahead allowing the future to join it...and become present, people do not move thus! They flow against the flow of time...inching forward but leaping behind.

This book is the first of its kind for me. Staying distant and outside my sphere of empathy until the last 15 pages...after which it comes so close it twists everything inside!

Enjoying Knopfler one night....and sketching it another...

2010-04-12T16:08:00.002+05:30

Knopfler's song with a reference to two curvy creatures that are such a delight to sketch.....

Patterns, of papers and birds!

2010-04-04T20:47:00.001+05:30

When a tub of water is filled and left alone on the terrace, the first birds that come frolicking are the crows while the pigeons sit perched at a distance awaiting their turn. Once the crows have had their heart's fill of drinking and waddling, the pigeons take their place, resulting in another round of frolicking and splashing. This is the time when we hear birds differently, not through their calls but through their movements. We hear a heavy sound as they beat the water with their soaked wings, we hear a gentle bobbing sound as they dip their heads underwater and we hear them flap their wings dry after they have daintily jumped out the tub. They ruffle and smoothen their own feathers using their beaks. They shudder at last putting every stray feather in place, ready to take flight!

They have bathing patterns too.....some dive headlong, some cautiously test the waters, some take a few minutes to warm up to the wetness (I relate to them the most), some stand still, some are all over the place and some walk around! But all finally perch on branches to dry themselves....

Rabindra Sangeet

2010-03-18T20:28:00.004+05:30

I was introduced to Rabindra Sangeet by Sohini. All my workshops with her are memorable because their memories vividly float on the canvas of Rabindra Sangeet looped by her during our sessions. It was overwhelming to be in Kolkata, seated in a bare, sparsely furnished room, dancing and engaging in discussions on personal power and somatic healing while it got dark, foggy and pleasantly cold at 5 in the evening, Rabindra Sangeet floating around all day, accompanying us into twilight! It was all so soulful. Well it had to be, it was Bangla. I guess the unsubstantiated belief that I must have been Bangla in some century, some life, living in Kolkata stems from my otherwise inexplicably intense love (and longing) for all things Bengali.

I am discovering new melodies each day.
For a music lover to discover a new genre of music is like embarking on a melodious voyage of discovering harmony newly, sometimes in an unknown and yet soothing language that feels "one's own" and spending time looped in its beauty in myriad moments of deeply private joy that I, through this blog, painfully and inadequately undertake to share! I am looped and I fail to convey how...

Sukher Lagi Chahe Prem, Prem Mele Na (used in the end credits of Chokher Bali):

Old but just not enough...

2010-03-17T10:58:00.001+05:30

I do not remember him as someone with a shock of black hair. By the time I was born he was already 44. By the time I started recognizing him, he was older. The moments from which I have a conscious memory of him, he was maybe 54! I remember him as old, since I remember! At 71, I still know him as old but still not old enough...

His proficiency in the "sciences" and mathematics intimidated us children... because at least one of us, somebody, anybody was expected (implicitly and eagerly) to match up and nobody could.

I owe to him my understanding and gradual liking of those horrid Science I and II sums of speed, velocity, current electricity, heat and the chemical equations that were a part of the curriculum of my Xth year at school. Where I thought I was going to miserably fail and according to Baba spend my life selling उत्बत्त्या or अगरबत्ती door to door for the rest of my life, his visit one evening restored my faith that I was meant for other things (not using the word "better things" because I do not believe selling incense sticks is menial)! It must have taken a few minutes in his manner of explaining, for me to solve that which I had shed tears over and trembled at the mention of, for almost a year! After that evening I realized science sums fell into the category of things whose ass could be kicked out of this orbit!

He had a tiger cub as a pet in his youth and he sneaked to the Everest Base Camp in his mid 60s without the knowledge of family and friends! He clearly did not want words of caution and a reminding that he is a diabetic His record (which I need to double check because it might be more) is roughly 24 मोदक, the maharashtrian dumpling delicacy stuffed with jaggery and coconut which I must stress he started eating, "after" a "complete" dinner.

Over this weekend, we walked to Atya's house together. Clad in a smart striped Tshirt, well fitted pants, floaters and with his sparse silver hair neatly combed, he asked me if I can manage a kilometer's walk! I did not bother myself with a repartee because I lack the पुणेरी sarcasm just as I lack proficiency in science and math and just as he has both these proficiencies by the bountiful!!

He descended the flight of steps from his house cautiously. I noticed few things near the neighbor's wall which I swiftly pointed out, which he refrained from looking at while descending. He was cautious! He stopped a few feet away from a reversing car preferring to wait while it reversed and sped off while I extended my hand, my palm facing the car as if to stop it and skirted across without waiting. I saw numerous sights on the road I wanted to know about, point them out to him, show him a particular signboard or a structure (had to be the charming पुणेरी वाड़ा). Each time I had it on the tip of my tongue to say, "see this, look there, see that" I realized he could not turn as swiftly while walking in order to look around as he used to. It was getting tough to maintain balance and orientation. I deliberately slowed down lagging behind at times to watch him walk ahead. At times I deliberately walked ahead and turned around to see him walk towards me.

He is my dad's eldest brother, my uncle and the only family member who reads my blogs!

He also thinks they are utter utter rubbish! Yet he never denies my request for a read and graciously comments too...

It is one thing to know someone as "young" and watch them age.
It is something else altogether to get to know someone as "old", see them only growing older by the day and yet never see them get old enough...ever!

He is comfortably nestled himself in the "old people who will just not be old enough" category...
Rather I realized there can be a category like that because of him.

TaGore's PASsion PLay

2010-02-26T21:25:00.004+05:30

I do not know the art of writing about movies or what they call reviewing them.Just as I write about the Banyan tree near my office, veiled by a bright pink Bougainvillea or I do about Kolkata, I will write about Chokher Bali, the movie.

With this disclaimer, I shall also state that some movies do not yield to "spoilers". Chokher Bali is one of them. I will write about everything that happens in it and yet I wont be mistaken if I say it will not take away from what you will find when you watch it yourself. In spite of all my verbosity, I will not be able to truly expound on it and even if you remember my words when you see it, it will soon make you forget them.

Chokher Bali as a book in Tagore's words, is far more effective in evoking in the reader the emotions the story warrants. The movie is just a "trailer" of the characters' turmoils. The story sure unfolds on screen, but the anguish doesn't! It is complete yet lacking! Full yet hollow! Like Fermina Daza's letters to Florentino Ariza when they fall in love, she falls out, he remains during the time of Cholera! The movie, like Fermina's letters, is an earnest and honest yet pitifully inadequate attempt at grasping and expressing the nuances of Tagore's passion play. I guess every medium has its limitations.

The movie's soulful music by Debajyoti Mishra is to be missed if one were to read only the book. Twice in a row, i have heard music that has stayed looped in my mind long after I have seen the movie and both times the composer has been Debajyoti Mishra! First with his moving renditions in Raincoat, another Rituparno Ghosh movie and the second time around with Chokher Bali.

It was a happy coincidence that some neighbor chose to fry fish in mustard oil for dinner, while I sat watching Chokher Bali! Congruent ambiance!

Raima Sen as Ashalata, the newly wed Bengali bride looks resplendent in her finery! She is at once vibrantly red, more so on the day of Sindoor Khela, gracefully clad in cotton each day and she is glitteringly clinky and chunky gold even as she lies in bed asleep, the Kohl in her eyes a tad smudged along with the red "teep" between her eyebrows her Saree strewn over her bare body and that of Mahendra's. Ashalata is beautiful and at the same time repelling in her naivety! On the other hand is Binodini clad in a creamy, bland saree, devoid of all color in her clothing and her face that seemed to have accumulated and coagulated in her unfulfilled desires!

One of the most beautiful moments in the movie was when Ashalata and Binodini meet for the first time on the Haveli's terrace. Both are fresh from a bath, their hair wet and wrapped in thin cotton towels, a few wet strands escaping onto moist skin, bodies wrapped till the chest in a wet Saree, another towel strewn over their bare shoulders, putting clothes to dry on the clothesline. From behind a wet Saree peeps Ashalata and sees Binodini on the other side putting something else to dry. This is the only time when both are equal....the only ritual of their day when they are out in the open and equal...Ashalata equally a widow minus her Sindoor, color, jewelery, Kohl and Binodini as much a married woman as Ashalata, water drops on her supple skin and the fragrance of a fresh bath. However, at all other times, Binodini is dangerously seductive despite her blandness and Ashalata despite her resplendent finery is as ineffective as Binodini is seductive.

I pity Mahindra. I envy Behari his sorted ways. I am repelled by Ashalata's naivety.
Binodini is at once evil, innocent, selfish, sacrificing, wanting, relenting, fighting, bold, timid, scheming, blatant.....

I am still wanting to know more about why Tagore says he regrets the ending and why he believes he should be censured for it.

Earth Laughs in Flowers...

2010-02-19T12:00:00.003+05:30

I know a Banyan Tree on which play, curve, twist and wind blossoms of Bougainvillea....

The sight was my imagination come to life in form and shape, real and available to touch, smell, sight and taste. Embodiment of what beauty means to me...

The hanging roots ever so gently cupped the papery petals...

Each time the breeze blew, the roots would sway and they seemed like swaying garlands of bougainvilleas......Each time the breeze blew, a few loose papery pink petals would drop and go round in circles before winding towards the earth.... falling at the foot of the Banyan Tree.

The flowers shine like light bulbs.... the way only Bougainvilleas can....

The Earth laughs in flowers....

Shesh

2010-02-10T23:36:00.000+05:30

I finished reading Chokher Bali.

The reading was frantic towards the end. The guy who served me coffee and cake was worried about the mosquitoes hovering around my feet. There were so many! He was sweet enough to keep 3 fans whirring but it made me terribly cold! I requested for only one! I didn't want to settle inside the cafe on one of their cushioned sofa chairs. The way the book was twisting out and the way I was feeling...the glassy, cushioned, air-conditioned interiors of the cafe seemed anomalous. I preferred the hardness of the chairs outside, the breeze, the traffic sounds, the glimpses of the busy intersection through leaves of potted plants and the mosquitoes.
I was stooped much of the time over my book. The guy at the cafe would approach hesitatingly, move a chair or two, create noise and I would look up! He did that twice to know if there was anything more I would need. Much to my delight he asked me which book I was so engrossed in and having gotten to know that I intended to finish it, he wished me a good read and promised to not disturb! He didn't. No one did. No one!

And I finished Chokher Bali.
Shesh hoye gaecche.
No one could have been different.
Nothing could have been done differently.
The way I see it, they were all liberated from their weaknesses and liberated through what was lost to them.

Loss is liberating, the process of losing is what is tedious!

....Tagore regrets the ending and has said so himself.
Want to know more about that....

2010-02-09T18:01:00.002+05:30

I am discovering the joy of reading two entirely unrelated books and how they can unexpectedly run parallely to each other! It is a delightful connection if one was to make one, and I have, of how no matter where and in what age and form, human tribulations have remained the same and we battle the same demons and we will.

In Byatt's Possession, Maud and Roland are breaking the ice.....or shall I say Maud and Roland are melting! In Tagore's Chokher Bali, Binodini and Behari, seated under the shade of a banyan tree alongside a river, kept each other talking, not wanting to stop. LaMotte and Ash cannot stop their written corresspondence try as they might! Maud is no longer being icy and reserved nor is she being condescending towards Roland. They are warming up to each other and this is mostly happening as described by Byatt through Roland's glimpses of Maud's vulnerable self. Behari is catching glimpses of Binodini's softened features as she talks about her childhood. He sees her eyes for once without their daggerlike sharpness and sees them devoid of the dangerous unquenched desires he had spotted in them. Behari sees in Binodini a young girl with a chaste want to love and to belong. Walls crumble as Maud and Roland travel together talking about things other than La Motte and Ash although their literary mission continues to be the primary reason binding them together. Maud's hair is finally let loose and there are more smiles between them, even laughter!

Shackles are breaking all around.

Roland and Maud are trying to relive a journey once made by the poet Ash to Yorkshire, on which,speculations are rife, accompanying him was LaMotte herself! Maud accompanies Roland for the first time on a journey to Yorkshire. Maybe LaMotte accompanied Ash for the first time on his trip to Yorkshire. Binodini has accompanied Mahindra's mother for the first time to Mahindra's house!

Ellen, Ash's wife seems naive (yet)! Mahindra's wife Asha, is even more naive (she is)! It is difficult for me to identify with Ellen and Asha. Both these books make me abhor naivety! While on the one hand, Ellen contentedly tends to the house while her dear Ash is away on an intellectual expedition, possibly with LaMotte, Asha is adamantly and stubbornly trying to get Binodini, now staying with them, to befriend her husband Mahindra....not sensing the seething and smoldering chemistry between the two! Ellen is better off with a husband like Ash but Asha is not better off with an ill-tempered, immature Mahindra for a husband! It is easier to acknoweldge and accept Ash's feelings towards LaMotte inspite of him being married to Ellen....because it does not seem a confused, impulsive, blind plunging into loving another woman out of unbridled desire and unquenched carnal passions! Not that the basis for Binodini's attraction for Mahindra is pure carnal thirst...not at all. However its source lies more in her envy of Asha and Mahendra's married life owing to her being a widow. Binodini's scheming for Mahindra's attention makes their relationship seem full of innuendoes and schemings and many layered motives, even deceit. While Ash and LaMotte in spite of sharing what they do, do not seem disrespectful towards each other or conniving in any way towards Ellen, ....Binodini and Mahindra always end up looking uncomfortably covert in their feelings for each other. While Roland feels guilty about not being in love with Val anymore, Mahindra deals with the guilt associated with his growing impatience with his bride Asha on the arrival of Binodini!

Binodini's and Mahindra's interactions seem like "games" while Ash and LaMotte seem two people who have come into their own as people and hence seem equipped with slightly more clarity about why they are doing what they are doing. That precisely is the difference. In the wake of the storm that is love, Ash and LaMotte appear poised and knowing, even if not entirely, definitely more than Binodini and Mahindra who are more like leaves being tossed helter skelter! This is the impression yet.....and I am piqued!

As Ash and LaMotte toy with the idea of ceasing their interactions, putting a stop to their communication keeping the society at large, Ellen and Blanche in mind... but do so quite the opposite by not stopping but moving several steps ahead affecting the lives of their near and dear ones....as Roland and Maud through initial iciness are now becoming real people for each other inspite of Val, Binodini is not able to leave Mahindra's house in spite of her awareness that she isnt being fair to Asha, her friend and Mahindra's wife. Neither is Mahendra able to send Binodini away being fully aware that he is drawn to her and irresistibly so.

I wonder how they will twist out.....

What will stop and what will end!

And how?

GiFTed KaFka

2010-02-05T23:44:00.003+05:30

I was buying carnations from a florist today evening. It is a space where a small room meant to be a shop, hosts an ATM while the porch outside is shop to the florist and a bookseller selling second hand books. Flowers arranged in bouquets perch in a corner on shelves made of wood while some stand in a bucket for buyers who either like getting bouquets made to their taste or prefer buying just "a" flower. The air around it is fresh, dewy and scented. Amid floral scents book lovers can browse in the adjoining corner through heaps and heaps of books piled up one on top of the other to form precariously balanced literary mountains. That makes the air fresh, dewy, scented and romantic (not to underestimate the hint of practicality brought in by the brightly lit, uncomfortably cold and clinical smelling ATM).

(ATMs are practical.

ATMs are bright, cold and clinical.

Hence practical is bright, cold and clinical.

Entertaining deductive Logic!)

It is not to happen that I do not turn to the book corner. I do. The books are mostly old and tattered. I want to open them to see how many of them will have pencil markings, pen markings, underlined quotes, notes made, edges folded to serve as bookmarks, some having actual bookmarks the readers have left behind, receipts, bills, boarding cards and what not. What are books I read most likely to have? They are most likely to have underlined words with their meanings next to them!

As I bent down slightly to read carefully the title of a book, I accidentally touched another at the bottom of the heap with my foot. On impulse I picked it up and apologized to it. It was a thick white paperback. A white and brown cat sat forlornly staring at fish it seemed like it wanted to befriend more than prey on! But the fish appeared to scurry away from it! Forlorn indeed! It displayed the author's name, "Haruki Murakami" and the title read, "Kafka Pa Stranden"... Kafka On the Shore! It was clearly a translated version the language of which I was unclear about.

"ले जाइए, आपके लिये Gift है" (Take it, it’s a gift for you) the keeper said while dusting and arranging other books. I smiled even before I turned to look at him.

"क्यों? आपको नहीं चाहिए?"

"कोई नहीं खरीदेगा"

"तो मैं ऐसे ही ले जाऊं"?

"आपके लिये Gift है"!

"अगर नहीं ले गयी तो क्या करेंगे उसका"?

"पड़ा रहेगा और क्या".

"मैं अपने घर ले जाऊंगी इसको".

I picked up my gift! Clutched it close. I was taking it home.

Kafka Pa Stranden is Swedish as I found out after some research and it is my first ever book in Swedish.

The other books are going to love it. The Rushdies, The Rands, The Coelhos, The Frank Millers, The Roy, The Seth, The Burgess, The Ghalibs, The Rumis, The Khandekar, The Byatt, and the recent ones such as Love in the time of Cholera, The Time Traveller's Wife and Chokher Bali...and now this gifted addition, Kafka Pa Stranden.... that found me.

In an interview Murakami states that the secret to understanding the novel lies in reading it multiple times: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write".

Riddle me Kafka...
Well come indeed!

rumi, me, you, humor me you...

2010-01-20T21:25:00.004+05:30

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,

But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

-Rumi

In the middle of nothingness

Caused by evasive thoughts...

Absently sits a lost photo album smile.

I find colors and they find me unmistakably

Along come some words that are not mine...

Toolkit for a balancing act.

For the ground that has disappeared for a while.

PS: Any resemblance to any situation living or dead is purely coincidental.