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Friday, March 04, 2005
Here, Exit.
The pandal is coming up. The stout casuarina poles are stuck deep into the ground at regular intervals and more of them are tied tightly across them. They shall form the robust structure upon which the canopy would soon be mounted. After this is done we shall go in a long patient row, in shiny black and yellow gowns to collect our diplomas. I have passed by so many separations, I know the excess emotions during such occasions don’t mean much for practical purposes. Voids cause pain yet there are always fresh arrivals to fill up voids in our life. So I am wary of spilling tears unless and until they are absolutely necessary. I would like to choose my tears and sentiments more carefully than my smiles and laughter. Also, there is this thought that nostalgia and the pangs of separation from one’s alma mater is not so unwholesome an emotion-in its effect it comes close to the pleasures of vicarious tears from big screen tearjerkers and soap operas. Yet in saying and thinking all these too I am being hopelessly pointless. Because when the moment comes I have to live that lump in my throat.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Abba
You know what, I love Abba-now don’t you worry, its ok if we don't have too many things in common! Abba's tunes are nice and so vigorous! The group's two female voices complement each other so well-as if their voices were a package-deal from God, as if he hadn't conceived them individually but as a whole. However my original motivations for liking the band were different. Then (when I was in my first year of college and was getting introduced to western pop) theirs were the only lyrics which I could decipher easily. Added to that, the girl I liked a lot liked Abba a lot and I soon took a fancy. Hey, I am talking about stuff that happened some eight years ago.
When I think of those (gosh am I old enough for this usage!) days I am kinda overwhelmed at the rate the world has changed. My favorite illustration for this change is the following: When I was introduced to Abba by Rupa (ah, no rhyme intended!) I copied down a whole notebook of their lyrics by hand. Can you believe that! That notebook of lyrics was a legacy passed down to Rupa by her sister. Her sister had put together the lyrics along with her friends in the Church choir when one of them had stumbled upon a treasure trove of published lyrics in a second-hand book shop.
I had to resort to a lot of sleight to get that dear family treasure from Rupa’s cupboard to my cycle-carrier. Like letting my fingers over her smooth cheeks once and vouching for the efficacy of her Fair and Lovely and convincing her I was a die-hard fan of Abba by reciting fully, ‘Does your mother know…’. She had on that occasion played back that song and so many of my favorites in her own voice. Of course her mom did not know. Later, in that year’s summer-break, I transferred those songs from her delicate note book and its brown pages.
Does it all sound so quaint? It would, it would! That was the time I could still take pride in going around in my cycle and the internet was ‘a something called internet’. It was a new, strange creature just prowling the Indian shores. A year later I visited an internet cafe for the first time in my life on a free pass. I cut two morning classes in college and visited this parlor with our gang-Rupa wasn’t with us then. I was not greatly impressed with the Internet and obviously so. It hardly had any of the usual trappings-I didn't know what Yahoo! was, I didn't have a mail account, I wasn’t exposed to many of those personals sites I would later visit with wide-eyed fascination, and what the hell, there was no Google!! So it was like leaving a kid to explore a sex toys shop. It hardly meant anything to me.
So much water has flown thence! Rupa is long gone and settled in New Zealand, while the Internet has become my bread and butter. And cajoling anyone for lyrics doesn't anymore sound a plausible excuse for anything.
When I think of those (gosh am I old enough for this usage!) days I am kinda overwhelmed at the rate the world has changed. My favorite illustration for this change is the following: When I was introduced to Abba by Rupa (ah, no rhyme intended!) I copied down a whole notebook of their lyrics by hand. Can you believe that! That notebook of lyrics was a legacy passed down to Rupa by her sister. Her sister had put together the lyrics along with her friends in the Church choir when one of them had stumbled upon a treasure trove of published lyrics in a second-hand book shop.
I had to resort to a lot of sleight to get that dear family treasure from Rupa’s cupboard to my cycle-carrier. Like letting my fingers over her smooth cheeks once and vouching for the efficacy of her Fair and Lovely and convincing her I was a die-hard fan of Abba by reciting fully, ‘Does your mother know…’. She had on that occasion played back that song and so many of my favorites in her own voice. Of course her mom did not know. Later, in that year’s summer-break, I transferred those songs from her delicate note book and its brown pages.
Does it all sound so quaint? It would, it would! That was the time I could still take pride in going around in my cycle and the internet was ‘a something called internet’. It was a new, strange creature just prowling the Indian shores. A year later I visited an internet cafe for the first time in my life on a free pass. I cut two morning classes in college and visited this parlor with our gang-Rupa wasn’t with us then. I was not greatly impressed with the Internet and obviously so. It hardly had any of the usual trappings-I didn't know what Yahoo! was, I didn't have a mail account, I wasn’t exposed to many of those personals sites I would later visit with wide-eyed fascination, and what the hell, there was no Google!! So it was like leaving a kid to explore a sex toys shop. It hardly meant anything to me.
So much water has flown thence! Rupa is long gone and settled in New Zealand, while the Internet has become my bread and butter. And cajoling anyone for lyrics doesn't anymore sound a plausible excuse for anything.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
The Seeker and the Sought
My friend, you ask me how do I know, how am I sure.
You say, ‘shouldn’t you be giving it more time’, you say, ‘shouldn’t you wait a little more?’
But I am sure that I have found the answer! You ask how? I am not sure if I can explain but let me see if I can cook up something for you..!
One lonely afternoon, in my verandah, I got into a strange tussle with my memory. The wrangling was to unearth a word I had come across in the past but was now giving me the slip. I remembered a lot of its associations and feelings, but I had nothing concrete to show when it came to its meaning. The word I was looking for denoted some kind of desperation, a state that possessed your whole, an all-eating preoccupation. It perhaps also had to do with anger. It connoted confusion and desperation. It had the smell of a revolution around it-you know, that fervor and idealism; a romanticism about it. Or that’s what I thought.
But what was the word! Which of these associations were misleading me, which were guide-posts? I tried hard to focus on the vaporous raw material much like cigarette smoke in a still room. Imagine me trying to lock up the lazy blue smoke neatly in a box. That was how I felt, trying to lock up the myriad meanings neatly in that one magical word. Much of love, I aver, is such my friend. That one being to contain all our desires, needs, insecurities, and generosities-that’s what the search is all about.
I never doubted the existence of this word that shall neatly, wholly, without leaving anything behind or quite spilling anything, encapsulate fully what I was imagining. If I do plumb my depths and unearth that magical word, I shall never ever forget it again in my whole life. Yet what was the word!
I was paralysed because I couldn't quite figure out the way to go about it. Earlier experiences of recall (and those of solving a knotty problem) have not been completely under my control. Sure I used to break my head over a problem for hours together but the solutions for the worthy problems always hit you suddenly, unawares. I recall an incident involving mathematician Poincaire (as recounted in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) who left for a geological trip after having worked on a certain path-breaking mathematical problem with great intensity. As he stepped onto the bus that was to take him on the tour the whole solution hit him like a wave and he knew that was it. Without feeling the need to work out a formal proof he felt confident about the veracity of the solution. Of course without laying claim to any such greatness, let me just say that the creative processes in the greats and in the commoners seem to be the same. Solutions pop up when you least expect it. And you are surprised by your clarity about the right solution. You know this is it.
I have read somewhere that our mental faculties work like a magnet. Once we are emotionally and intellectually attracted or locked in with a certain aspect of the world we zoom in to anything that has to do with our attraction. Well I didn’t feel as confident as this auto-zooming mechanism suggests I should be. Sure I was all sleeved-up for a search but then felt like a young man who heads west and finds a whole valley at his feet but no shovel in his hand.
I made the first tentative effort based on phonetics. I ran through the whole list of alphabets, stopping by each character and trying to figure out if the consonant or vowel had anything to do with my word. With the belief that I shall know my word when it comes by, I scaled up and down the hill. A, B…F, G, H-no, no- J, K…stopping for a long time, L, M...arghhh! Then I stopped this futile exercise. I was growing impatient and it was not a right sign. I stood up and paced the verandah. The alphabets and sounds were not helping yet…
‘I examine that vaporous existence inside me- a certain helplessness, a grave all-consuming feeling, an anxiety of too great an import nibbling at one’s self. Ah..! I just have to focus on the feeling and I am definite the word would surely pop up-have to, sometime or other. It is inside me. I know it exists. After all I had once known it. Then, I must have ignored it, slighted it, shoved it carelessly in some corner of my existence and gone onto attend far more interesting things. Uh! Did I know its devils shall be afflicting me thus! Brilliantly conceived punishment ain't it, if at all I have to look at it as a punishment. I can't say I am enjoying the process. It is strange why I am still at it, but yet…maybe it is due to the reward at the end of the search. So plunge the depths, keep the breath, search intently and rush up triumphant with the treasure. Ain't this what pearl divers do? Using whatever…ha I am digressing, digressing from this A, B, C..business. Now should I just leave it and let this word bubble up on its own-It shall some time or other, wouldn't it…’
Yet that summer afternoon with nothing else to do my mind and pride fixated on this single act of retrieval. So without much ado, I forged on. I ran through the alphabets once again. I was searching for that explosive combination of phonetics, meaning, emotion-the wherewithal to trigger and shake loose my subaltern of memoria.
A-agony, anxiety, aggression, apprehension…
B-boredom, botheration, bomb, breakneck, blacked out…uhh
C-concern , no not c, not the ‘ee’ sound, it’s the ‘aa’ or the ‘a+e’ sound..
D-distress, disquiet, no the sound is not right…
‘Now why in the first place did I remember this word’s existence..! More importantly how did I? What did I do and what did I think that has led me to mull over this word and its whole network of meanings and emotions? Like a somnambulist I have gotten into a strange place I only vaguely recollect ever seeing before and one way to know its name is to travel backwards along the path I had taken to this place. Hopefully as I tread backwards, the more familiar neighbourhoods shall gradually reveal the identity of the strange place I am grappling with. Like someone on a treasure hunt game I am flogging my mind to go from one post to another post in search of vital clues. Will it lead me anywhere at all or just dump me into greater mire?’
With these doubts flickering in my mind I stopped in my tracks. I had unconsciously reverted to checking out the alphabets from the one back in a unconscious way to my A, B, C routine…this time I had decided to spend a lot of time on ‘A’ which I had earlier ignored!.
‘Agnorra
Angiform
Angle
Angel
Haa…what am I doing, spewing verbiage?’
Now hold, this is the feeling I want you to know. This is the answer for your question-how do you know if this is the one; how do you know u are approaching, that you are deliciously near? A few full moments before the word burst out like spangled sun...I knew the word was coming.
Angst, my friend is the word! Angst-it shall never slip from my mind.
And well that’s the feeling my friend, that’s how it feels. When I saw her I knew my search ends here, fullstop.
You say, ‘shouldn’t you be giving it more time’, you say, ‘shouldn’t you wait a little more?’
But I am sure that I have found the answer! You ask how? I am not sure if I can explain but let me see if I can cook up something for you..!
One lonely afternoon, in my verandah, I got into a strange tussle with my memory. The wrangling was to unearth a word I had come across in the past but was now giving me the slip. I remembered a lot of its associations and feelings, but I had nothing concrete to show when it came to its meaning. The word I was looking for denoted some kind of desperation, a state that possessed your whole, an all-eating preoccupation. It perhaps also had to do with anger. It connoted confusion and desperation. It had the smell of a revolution around it-you know, that fervor and idealism; a romanticism about it. Or that’s what I thought.
But what was the word! Which of these associations were misleading me, which were guide-posts? I tried hard to focus on the vaporous raw material much like cigarette smoke in a still room. Imagine me trying to lock up the lazy blue smoke neatly in a box. That was how I felt, trying to lock up the myriad meanings neatly in that one magical word. Much of love, I aver, is such my friend. That one being to contain all our desires, needs, insecurities, and generosities-that’s what the search is all about.
I never doubted the existence of this word that shall neatly, wholly, without leaving anything behind or quite spilling anything, encapsulate fully what I was imagining. If I do plumb my depths and unearth that magical word, I shall never ever forget it again in my whole life. Yet what was the word!
I was paralysed because I couldn't quite figure out the way to go about it. Earlier experiences of recall (and those of solving a knotty problem) have not been completely under my control. Sure I used to break my head over a problem for hours together but the solutions for the worthy problems always hit you suddenly, unawares. I recall an incident involving mathematician Poincaire (as recounted in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) who left for a geological trip after having worked on a certain path-breaking mathematical problem with great intensity. As he stepped onto the bus that was to take him on the tour the whole solution hit him like a wave and he knew that was it. Without feeling the need to work out a formal proof he felt confident about the veracity of the solution. Of course without laying claim to any such greatness, let me just say that the creative processes in the greats and in the commoners seem to be the same. Solutions pop up when you least expect it. And you are surprised by your clarity about the right solution. You know this is it.
I have read somewhere that our mental faculties work like a magnet. Once we are emotionally and intellectually attracted or locked in with a certain aspect of the world we zoom in to anything that has to do with our attraction. Well I didn’t feel as confident as this auto-zooming mechanism suggests I should be. Sure I was all sleeved-up for a search but then felt like a young man who heads west and finds a whole valley at his feet but no shovel in his hand.
I made the first tentative effort based on phonetics. I ran through the whole list of alphabets, stopping by each character and trying to figure out if the consonant or vowel had anything to do with my word. With the belief that I shall know my word when it comes by, I scaled up and down the hill. A, B…F, G, H-no, no- J, K…stopping for a long time, L, M...arghhh! Then I stopped this futile exercise. I was growing impatient and it was not a right sign. I stood up and paced the verandah. The alphabets and sounds were not helping yet…
‘I examine that vaporous existence inside me- a certain helplessness, a grave all-consuming feeling, an anxiety of too great an import nibbling at one’s self. Ah..! I just have to focus on the feeling and I am definite the word would surely pop up-have to, sometime or other. It is inside me. I know it exists. After all I had once known it. Then, I must have ignored it, slighted it, shoved it carelessly in some corner of my existence and gone onto attend far more interesting things. Uh! Did I know its devils shall be afflicting me thus! Brilliantly conceived punishment ain't it, if at all I have to look at it as a punishment. I can't say I am enjoying the process. It is strange why I am still at it, but yet…maybe it is due to the reward at the end of the search. So plunge the depths, keep the breath, search intently and rush up triumphant with the treasure. Ain't this what pearl divers do? Using whatever…ha I am digressing, digressing from this A, B, C..business. Now should I just leave it and let this word bubble up on its own-It shall some time or other, wouldn't it…’
Yet that summer afternoon with nothing else to do my mind and pride fixated on this single act of retrieval. So without much ado, I forged on. I ran through the alphabets once again. I was searching for that explosive combination of phonetics, meaning, emotion-the wherewithal to trigger and shake loose my subaltern of memoria.
A-agony, anxiety, aggression, apprehension…
B-boredom, botheration, bomb, breakneck, blacked out…uhh
C-concern , no not c, not the ‘ee’ sound, it’s the ‘aa’ or the ‘a+e’ sound..
D-distress, disquiet, no the sound is not right…
‘Now why in the first place did I remember this word’s existence..! More importantly how did I? What did I do and what did I think that has led me to mull over this word and its whole network of meanings and emotions? Like a somnambulist I have gotten into a strange place I only vaguely recollect ever seeing before and one way to know its name is to travel backwards along the path I had taken to this place. Hopefully as I tread backwards, the more familiar neighbourhoods shall gradually reveal the identity of the strange place I am grappling with. Like someone on a treasure hunt game I am flogging my mind to go from one post to another post in search of vital clues. Will it lead me anywhere at all or just dump me into greater mire?’
With these doubts flickering in my mind I stopped in my tracks. I had unconsciously reverted to checking out the alphabets from the one back in a unconscious way to my A, B, C routine…this time I had decided to spend a lot of time on ‘A’ which I had earlier ignored!.
‘Agnorra
Angiform
Angle
Angel
Haa…what am I doing, spewing verbiage?’
Now hold, this is the feeling I want you to know. This is the answer for your question-how do you know if this is the one; how do you know u are approaching, that you are deliciously near? A few full moments before the word burst out like spangled sun...I knew the word was coming.
Angst, my friend is the word! Angst-it shall never slip from my mind.
And well that’s the feeling my friend, that’s how it feels. When I saw her I knew my search ends here, fullstop.
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