Case of A Mis(interpreted)nomer
We were a group of tamil friends in a predominantly hindi- speaking campus. The language bonded us closer than usual and we knew each other so well that we were each quite a character for the other. We bickered, fought, loved and stayed put together as only family members can! We had Venkat the most idiosyncratic of all-Rajini fanatic, and a guy with one helluva attitude and
confidence. He had an engineering degree in Computer Science and was very comfortable with coding, softwares and actually anything to do with Information Techonology (IT). Then there was
Krishna-amazing singing talent, quickwit, and such an amiable character!
Our summer Project scattered us to different cities. I and Krishna were in Mumbai while Venkat was based in distant Coimbatore. Embroiled as we were in work and the leisure of our respective cities, we hardly spoke or even mailed each other for a month. And then came our term grades.
There was a flurry of mails across each asking the other's grades, consoling and congragulating and feeling worse or better at the end of the day. Krishna too sent a mail to Venkat asking his term grades and informing him his.
The eagerly awaited mail from Venkat, alas, was blocked by an Anti-Spam Software . An automated mail arrived mentioning that the mail was identified as a spam and hence blocked. Krishna was
asked to reply in case the mail was not a spam and was valid and personal. Krishna immediately replied that the mail was from his friend and surely not spam. The reply mail from the Network
Administration was a bombshell. It said, 'We are sorry to say that according to the Network Management Policy of this Company mails containing sexual content cannot be delivered to the recipients. We regret the inconvience caused. All the best in the future. Regards, Irfan Ahmed, System Administrator'
Krishna was flustered. Not only was he a very uprighteous guy; he maintained restraint and decorum in such matters that he found it very ironical such a thing should happen to him. He wondered what sexy mail could Venkat have sent in reply to a mail that discussed something as sober and grave as one's term grades!! He called me immediately to share his woes, wondering loudly over the telephone wires just what could have been the dubious content of Venkat's mail...I too listened with curiosity and interest. It was a sleepy afternoon you see, such interventions were very welcome.
I assuaged him that no one can do much about such spams and he should be treating this a minor issue. Krishna was worried of infamy. He said that it reminded him of the predictions of a
certain astrologer who coupla years back stated that Krishna shall lose face in his Company on a 'ladies issue' as he had delicately termed it. As I was wondering how to reason him out of this line of thinking, it suddenly struck me...
'Krishna which ID did Venkat reply from..?'
'From his yahoo id...'
'Oh ok,' I beamed 'the venkatit one..?'
'what...?'
This time I spelt the ID again, slow and meaningfully,
'venka-tit!!'
No wonder the automated software smelt something sexy in the id which actually should have been read as venkat-it. Anyway how could the software have known it was venkat's expression of his career interests and not of other shady fetishes! Krishna revealed a sigh. Sadly, my efforts to push the matters along the line of further fun by inducing Krishna into explaining this subtle matter to the Network Administrator failed though.
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Thursday, May 13, 2004
Friday, April 30, 2004
The Days we Coasted by...(Part 2)
As we disengaged our footwear and tentatively stepped into the river we discovered why it sported such a deceptive, dark facade. Its clear waters simply showed up the color of the pebbles that made up its bed. And this was indeed to its credit quite unlike what we had made of its dark colors. Agreed the water level was quite shallow, it could at best only come up to our shoulders but in contrast
to what we had imagined, the water was cool and crisp.
We undid our clothes and walked into the river in our underwears to scrub ourselves and enjoy the cool morning. At dawn the river looked like still waters. The flow was imperceptible. Vijay avered the river hadn't a flow, which sounded presposterous to me. I picked up a little leaf sticking on to a nearby rock and let it float in the waters. For a moment I wondered whether Vijay was right, the
leaf hardly moved. But ofter a clutch of seconds we saw the distance it had patiently accumulated.
We sung a few tamil songs that featured heroines bathing by some waterbody, gay abandon. Further our imagination careened to those in which some mischief-monger, a la Krishna, walks away with the clothes and belongings on the banks leaving those in the joyous dips of the river high and dry. Then our imaginatinative banter extended to us getting arrested for nudity and profanity in the town of Chiplun...because of us losing our dresses, the news getting flashed in Sun TV', 'Two IIM Students Arrested in Chiplun Town for Obscene Display..'; 'IIM
Students' Innovative Protest Against Joshi's Diktats-Sleepy Chiplun Enraged!' and so it went. We had such rollicking fun for the next hour or so that it made me think how delicately this tour was posed till the previous evening, its prospects swinging like a pendulum-shall we , should we, would we,need we, why should we...hmmm! Finally the pendulum just stood struck in the affirmative and here we are.
After an hour or the sun was out along with a few lads, upstream, to get its morning dip in the river. The river shone only a little despite the black pebbles that colored its flow. And the flow now turned quite strong. The water level rose rapidly and I had to relocate our belongings twice, farther up in the bank. We were wondering if the river was dammed somewhere upstream-that neatly explained the low water level which was growing tremendously. Soon after we finished our rendevouz with Vasishti, dried ourselves, and next headed to the hills nearby.
To be continued...
As we disengaged our footwear and tentatively stepped into the river we discovered why it sported such a deceptive, dark facade. Its clear waters simply showed up the color of the pebbles that made up its bed. And this was indeed to its credit quite unlike what we had made of its dark colors. Agreed the water level was quite shallow, it could at best only come up to our shoulders but in contrast
to what we had imagined, the water was cool and crisp.
We undid our clothes and walked into the river in our underwears to scrub ourselves and enjoy the cool morning. At dawn the river looked like still waters. The flow was imperceptible. Vijay avered the river hadn't a flow, which sounded presposterous to me. I picked up a little leaf sticking on to a nearby rock and let it float in the waters. For a moment I wondered whether Vijay was right, the
leaf hardly moved. But ofter a clutch of seconds we saw the distance it had patiently accumulated.
We sung a few tamil songs that featured heroines bathing by some waterbody, gay abandon. Further our imagination careened to those in which some mischief-monger, a la Krishna, walks away with the clothes and belongings on the banks leaving those in the joyous dips of the river high and dry. Then our imaginatinative banter extended to us getting arrested for nudity and profanity in the town of Chiplun...because of us losing our dresses, the news getting flashed in Sun TV', 'Two IIM Students Arrested in Chiplun Town for Obscene Display..'; 'IIM
Students' Innovative Protest Against Joshi's Diktats-Sleepy Chiplun Enraged!' and so it went. We had such rollicking fun for the next hour or so that it made me think how delicately this tour was posed till the previous evening, its prospects swinging like a pendulum-shall we , should we, would we,need we, why should we...hmmm! Finally the pendulum just stood struck in the affirmative and here we are.
After an hour or the sun was out along with a few lads, upstream, to get its morning dip in the river. The river shone only a little despite the black pebbles that colored its flow. And the flow now turned quite strong. The water level rose rapidly and I had to relocate our belongings twice, farther up in the bank. We were wondering if the river was dammed somewhere upstream-that neatly explained the low water level which was growing tremendously. Soon after we finished our rendevouz with Vasishti, dried ourselves, and next headed to the hills nearby.
To be continued...
Thursday, April 29, 2004
The Days we Coasted by...(Part 1)
'Is this the river we came to bathe in, all the way from Mumbai', Vijay asked in a downcast voice. The Vasishti that was drawn in a promising blue color in the map was now a dark little flow which seemed to eke out a stark living and seemed ready to wilt further in the oncoming summer. From the bridge where we had just alighted upon, we could sense none of the grandeur we had imagined in its name. Worse,
instead of clear waters, a suspectfully dark river, banked by srubby undergrowth and smooth pebbles were all we could see now. Evidently this bank was once its bed-or takes up its old avatar under the river once an year if the monsoons granted the boons. Images of Cooum and Buckingham Canal, smelly black open-air sewers of Chennai, visited us. 'Here is the Cooum of Chiplun', we wanted to wail. The size, current, color-from this distance all the dimensions of the river tucked our conversation within dissapointment and deprecating humour.
'Never say aloud we came all the way from Mumbai to bathe in this river...', 'Hmm this is what the hotelwallah mentioned as where you can have a refreshing bath..ahem..', 'I am not bathing..whatever water making up this river would be displaced that I shall have to emerge dry anyways..' And so we went on.
We felt pity for the lone individual who was washing his clothes in those dark waters. 'Cleaning up the river', intepreted Vijay. I added, 'Why the bother yaar...if only he had been patient for a couple of years, he wouldn't have had a river to clean up...'
We went farther away from the bridge towards a parallel railway line that spanned upon a bridge the misplaced banks and the skeleton river. We saw a couple of other individuals bathing, in a manner we surely cannot mistake as a cleaning expedition of the river. We asked the last person if we can indeed bathe in the river. The man neatly srubbed and with washed clothes over his shoulders answered in affirmative and left the place for us. We opened our eyes for the first time to look beyond its dark and skeletony facade and view the river afresh. We dipped into its cool waters and came up with some of the best moments of our life...
...To be continued
'Is this the river we came to bathe in, all the way from Mumbai', Vijay asked in a downcast voice. The Vasishti that was drawn in a promising blue color in the map was now a dark little flow which seemed to eke out a stark living and seemed ready to wilt further in the oncoming summer. From the bridge where we had just alighted upon, we could sense none of the grandeur we had imagined in its name. Worse,
instead of clear waters, a suspectfully dark river, banked by srubby undergrowth and smooth pebbles were all we could see now. Evidently this bank was once its bed-or takes up its old avatar under the river once an year if the monsoons granted the boons. Images of Cooum and Buckingham Canal, smelly black open-air sewers of Chennai, visited us. 'Here is the Cooum of Chiplun', we wanted to wail. The size, current, color-from this distance all the dimensions of the river tucked our conversation within dissapointment and deprecating humour.
'Never say aloud we came all the way from Mumbai to bathe in this river...', 'Hmm this is what the hotelwallah mentioned as where you can have a refreshing bath..ahem..', 'I am not bathing..whatever water making up this river would be displaced that I shall have to emerge dry anyways..' And so we went on.
We felt pity for the lone individual who was washing his clothes in those dark waters. 'Cleaning up the river', intepreted Vijay. I added, 'Why the bother yaar...if only he had been patient for a couple of years, he wouldn't have had a river to clean up...'
We went farther away from the bridge towards a parallel railway line that spanned upon a bridge the misplaced banks and the skeleton river. We saw a couple of other individuals bathing, in a manner we surely cannot mistake as a cleaning expedition of the river. We asked the last person if we can indeed bathe in the river. The man neatly srubbed and with washed clothes over his shoulders answered in affirmative and left the place for us. We opened our eyes for the first time to look beyond its dark and skeletony facade and view the river afresh. We dipped into its cool waters and came up with some of the best moments of our life...
...To be continued
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Ode to my Old Pocket Diary (roughcut)
You were the receptacle for my
stray thoughts which would have
vaporised if not for your pages.
You held that yellow leaf I decided
for posterity to accompany and also
my dreams big and petty.
Do you remember my four minute mile
wish was first recorded within your realms.
Where are you this minute when I am nearing that mile.
You were the receptacle for my
stray thoughts which would have
vaporised if not for your pages.
You held that yellow leaf I decided
for posterity to accompany and also
my dreams big and petty.
Do you remember my four minute mile
wish was first recorded within your realms.
Where are you this minute when I am nearing that mile.
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Ha ha ha..
Finally, on the threshold of my first freewheeling journey.
It feels good to just plan as you go, take ferries or board buses
If all comes to naught simply take a walk or
swim along the currents of the river.
See faces, observe landscapes
and dip in a life that moves slower
and deeper.
Await, friends, lots of posts on places and travel. My mind is bubbling and my fingers
itch to bang it all off the keyboards.
Adieu for now. Back on tuesday.
MaheshC.
Finally, on the threshold of my first freewheeling journey.
It feels good to just plan as you go, take ferries or board buses
If all comes to naught simply take a walk or
swim along the currents of the river.
See faces, observe landscapes
and dip in a life that moves slower
and deeper.
Await, friends, lots of posts on places and travel. My mind is bubbling and my fingers
itch to bang it all off the keyboards.
Adieu for now. Back on tuesday.
MaheshC.
Friday, April 23, 2004
The Sundew Moments
My 'CubicleNeighbour' asked me to explain the story behind 'thesundew', the longstanding name of my email accounts(hotmail, yahoo, and now Gmail!). Though there isn't much of a story behind the name there are surely crystal moments.
Human memory is a mysterious instrument. It has its own laws, which rule what to remember and what to discard into the deeper recesses of our consciousness. Often it springs surprises by pulling up to the forefront, frozen pieces of our memory we thought have long vaporised. Hypnosis and various experiments on memory have shown that our memories are only fossilized, not vaporised. Field reports from Freudian psychoanalytic practice has also shown how intricately memory is linked with emotions. That which is painful we forget, hence the necessity for
techniques such as free association which can approach those sensitive zones tangentially.
But there are images that linger on, to recur and almost become leitmotifs. Some of these beautiful images I suspect are not moments in the sense they could have happened in a discrete time interval. Rather, I wonder if they are luminous aggregations like pearls are-layer after layer of related memories over a seed event.
There is a sepia-tinted image of my childhood in which I am walking down an avenue of tall Ashoka trees, my fingers tenuously linked to my mother's palms. It is dusk. The place is littered with seniors chatting, laughing and walking down the avenue in groups. My contention is that this moment probably never happened as I cherish it. Many such evenings would have been picked, chosen and pickled for an everlasing flavour; crystallised for an everlasting radiance.
Ofcourse most of these images do happen to be vivid, definite moments too. I consider them granted boons, by God if you like it that way. They can't be contrived. They can't be waited for. If you are lucky you catch these as they come by, like whiffs of a distant kitchen in the air.
Have you seen the American Beauty? The film has a name for these. It calls them 'the plastic bag moments'-the seemingly commonplace stuff of our lives which can parent extraordinary beauty, if only we want to. The final frames of the film are that of a discarded plastic bag sauntering in the breeze, rising and falling, dancing in slowmo-lovingly, if you may.
The elements of a Margazhi dawn in Chennai are faint mist, dew, and the sun. Alas the ascent of the sun rapidly kills the former two. So much so I could arrive at that magical slot of 6. 15 to 6. 30 when all of these coexisted after only weeks of determined observation. And why did I want them on the same stage? Because of thesundews! During one of my jogs I had chanced upon the dividing median a crop of grass crowned with glassy spheres: dewdrops charged with sunlight. With
a slight shift in my angle they disappeared. So there they had been, shining within the delicate, tremulous angle between me, the dewdrops and the sun. They hadn't existed in my earlier lap. They didn't in my next.
The magic of angles lies in the fact that it is a single parameter capturing the relationship between three entities. Let me give an other instance. While in the memory described previously two of the elements were on terra firma, in this two are right up there in the early morning sky's blue. Me, an early morning jet, and ofcourse our sun. For most of its observed passage it flew dully, silently. At the magical angle I caught its affair with sunlight. It shone like a broken shard of mirror in a placid sky.
During my 6. 00 O' clock fast train to ChurchGate, between Vile Parle and Santa Cruz, an aeroplane usually made its flight, towards the setting sun. The velocity of the train, factored by the huge distance, looked as if it was equal to that of the aeroplane. A kid would have shrieked in excitement about how a plane hung suspended, resolutely stationary, as if a supermechanic went about fixing its snags midair for many minutes!
Sometimes we end up observing each other like the multiple reflections of a mirror hall. Once, in office, our group of four made its way for a refreshing cuppa. Suddenly he broke away making his way towards her at her workstation and cajoled her flirtingly to join us. She, next to me, staring at them, stomached the sight of cooings. My eyes travelling from the pair to her was caught by him behind
me, who like an omniscient being oversaw all the flicks before him. He, had the last smile!
Once, in the terrace, over the same kind of cuppa that we had ambled towards in the previous paragraph, we made small talk and pointless laughter in a closed circle, each in different postures, all at obtuse angles to each other. A joke went around which I didn't quite understand as didn't Radhika next to me. The other three were emitting enthusiastic peals of laughter that I sought her eyes for some solace. But she was looking intently at them. 'Hmmm..!', I cast my sight downwards and immediately thereafter, it occurred to me that she just then suffered the same fate as I had a second before. So I again turned up to her but she was no longer looking at me and I thought I had been wrong and started to turn away. But right then she too must have felt, quicker than I had felt last time, that she had missed me in a snap and hence caught the tail of my turning away. Now she lingered on. I knew that she knew and I knew too she knew that I knew. With that unconscious knowledge hardly verbalized even to ourselves, we finally locked eyes. We erupted into a laughter as if the tension resolved was that of a joke.
Such is life I thought yesterday when I was catching the whirlwind generated between our 8 O Clock fast and another fast train on the adjacent track: In the twin strings of the call of duty and the search for love my life is a necklace of sundews.
My 'CubicleNeighbour' asked me to explain the story behind 'thesundew', the longstanding name of my email accounts(hotmail, yahoo, and now Gmail!). Though there isn't much of a story behind the name there are surely crystal moments.
Human memory is a mysterious instrument. It has its own laws, which rule what to remember and what to discard into the deeper recesses of our consciousness. Often it springs surprises by pulling up to the forefront, frozen pieces of our memory we thought have long vaporised. Hypnosis and various experiments on memory have shown that our memories are only fossilized, not vaporised. Field reports from Freudian psychoanalytic practice has also shown how intricately memory is linked with emotions. That which is painful we forget, hence the necessity for
techniques such as free association which can approach those sensitive zones tangentially.
But there are images that linger on, to recur and almost become leitmotifs. Some of these beautiful images I suspect are not moments in the sense they could have happened in a discrete time interval. Rather, I wonder if they are luminous aggregations like pearls are-layer after layer of related memories over a seed event.
There is a sepia-tinted image of my childhood in which I am walking down an avenue of tall Ashoka trees, my fingers tenuously linked to my mother's palms. It is dusk. The place is littered with seniors chatting, laughing and walking down the avenue in groups. My contention is that this moment probably never happened as I cherish it. Many such evenings would have been picked, chosen and pickled for an everlasing flavour; crystallised for an everlasting radiance.
Ofcourse most of these images do happen to be vivid, definite moments too. I consider them granted boons, by God if you like it that way. They can't be contrived. They can't be waited for. If you are lucky you catch these as they come by, like whiffs of a distant kitchen in the air.
Have you seen the American Beauty? The film has a name for these. It calls them 'the plastic bag moments'-the seemingly commonplace stuff of our lives which can parent extraordinary beauty, if only we want to. The final frames of the film are that of a discarded plastic bag sauntering in the breeze, rising and falling, dancing in slowmo-lovingly, if you may.
The elements of a Margazhi dawn in Chennai are faint mist, dew, and the sun. Alas the ascent of the sun rapidly kills the former two. So much so I could arrive at that magical slot of 6. 15 to 6. 30 when all of these coexisted after only weeks of determined observation. And why did I want them on the same stage? Because of thesundews! During one of my jogs I had chanced upon the dividing median a crop of grass crowned with glassy spheres: dewdrops charged with sunlight. With
a slight shift in my angle they disappeared. So there they had been, shining within the delicate, tremulous angle between me, the dewdrops and the sun. They hadn't existed in my earlier lap. They didn't in my next.
The magic of angles lies in the fact that it is a single parameter capturing the relationship between three entities. Let me give an other instance. While in the memory described previously two of the elements were on terra firma, in this two are right up there in the early morning sky's blue. Me, an early morning jet, and ofcourse our sun. For most of its observed passage it flew dully, silently. At the magical angle I caught its affair with sunlight. It shone like a broken shard of mirror in a placid sky.
During my 6. 00 O' clock fast train to ChurchGate, between Vile Parle and Santa Cruz, an aeroplane usually made its flight, towards the setting sun. The velocity of the train, factored by the huge distance, looked as if it was equal to that of the aeroplane. A kid would have shrieked in excitement about how a plane hung suspended, resolutely stationary, as if a supermechanic went about fixing its snags midair for many minutes!
Sometimes we end up observing each other like the multiple reflections of a mirror hall. Once, in office, our group of four made its way for a refreshing cuppa. Suddenly he broke away making his way towards her at her workstation and cajoled her flirtingly to join us. She, next to me, staring at them, stomached the sight of cooings. My eyes travelling from the pair to her was caught by him behind
me, who like an omniscient being oversaw all the flicks before him. He, had the last smile!
Once, in the terrace, over the same kind of cuppa that we had ambled towards in the previous paragraph, we made small talk and pointless laughter in a closed circle, each in different postures, all at obtuse angles to each other. A joke went around which I didn't quite understand as didn't Radhika next to me. The other three were emitting enthusiastic peals of laughter that I sought her eyes for some solace. But she was looking intently at them. 'Hmmm..!', I cast my sight downwards and immediately thereafter, it occurred to me that she just then suffered the same fate as I had a second before. So I again turned up to her but she was no longer looking at me and I thought I had been wrong and started to turn away. But right then she too must have felt, quicker than I had felt last time, that she had missed me in a snap and hence caught the tail of my turning away. Now she lingered on. I knew that she knew and I knew too she knew that I knew. With that unconscious knowledge hardly verbalized even to ourselves, we finally locked eyes. We erupted into a laughter as if the tension resolved was that of a joke.
Such is life I thought yesterday when I was catching the whirlwind generated between our 8 O Clock fast and another fast train on the adjacent track: In the twin strings of the call of duty and the search for love my life is a necklace of sundews.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Yaaron, Apun Mumbai Mein Hain ..!!
Its happening frequently nowadays..I start to write a piece-of shortstory, of poetry-and hold back from updating the blog until it is completed. Then I find I am sitting on it for too long and on the other hand there are so many other things that urgently want to be voiced. So shelving the stance of 'update-the-short story-what-may-come', here are my reflections on my current muse: Mumbai!
This city is big and at times, overwhelms. Like its train travels, the nattily dressed gents and sexily dressed ladies, the sights of Marine Drive, the amazing clockwork that the railways are, the explicit ads for innerwears you can't excape at the busy Church Gate station, the worklife whose timings seem to extend into wee hours of the night and whose travel, to and fro, could stretch beyond 100kms a day, ...so many things: this place oozes enterprise, sexuality, and energy.
Chennai is in comparison, what do I call it, innocent, preadolescent...? These constrasts are worth atleast a 15 min film, I say!! I even came up with a longish title for the film: Various are the Ways the Waves lap the Shores.
The title takes its inspiration from the contrasting beachlines of the two cities. For me they seemed to reflect the lifestyles of the two cities. Here sitting at Marine Drive on a full moon night I see the waves slap the rocks and crash against the concrete structures that bulwark the reclaimed land against the sea. In Chennai its as if the sea and the sand softly cradle against each other..!!"
I guess this is how commercial capitals all over the world shall look like. Always on the go, with a set of values that are designed to further commerce than anything else. Cities that are the lands of promise to the brethren from the hinterland. Cities that have enough moolah to support lavish cultural activities. Cities that are big enough to allow space for the different types of mainstreams, and hence for various fringe elements at its circumference. Cities busy and hence granting anonymity. An anonymity amidst the crowd that comes so close to freedom, because the others are too busy minding their livelihood!
As I am just into my third week I guess my eyes are still fresh to catch the nuances in my daily life. The city still feels like a dope and I like to absorb, through my eyes and in lesser degrees through my other senses, its wares. I travel from ChurchGate to Andheri by train and from Andheri to MIDC (East Andheri) by Bus. These account for most of my observations.
I have never seen such ferocity in people trying to board trains. Believe me, even the wretched crowd of Jallianwallah Bagh would have acted in a less frenetic way on their route to escape. Last night I and my friends were badly mauled at Dadar station and emerged with hurt ears.
We were wondering why people do this because there is always enough time for everyone to get in. Vijay who was accompanying me said, 'Simply, there isn't enough space for everyone to be seated. People travel long distances, nobody wants to stand the whole distance...the fight is for the seats'. Everyone in this country fights for some sort of seats I thought wryly-politicians, students, train commuters..! 'Vijay...I feel it has almost become a sport for them..I have seen
people doing the same even when the train had been empty and there were only a handful of people trying to board the train. Even then the behaviour was the same...to beat others into boarding the train first. Maybe people simply get a kick out of it or simply have got habituated to it, that they keep doing it irrespective of the change in the situation. Maybe this is an ocassion everyone can legitimately show aggression and who wouldn't want to let some steam off after a hard day's work. So the few seconds madness of train boarding becomes an alibi for agression...'.
It was evident Vijay, and Krishna who was with us then, were hardly convinced by my alternatives. We simply wrung our hands that this was one of those inexplicable things and shoved it into the deeper cellars of our mind for future cogitation.
To be continued...
Its happening frequently nowadays..I start to write a piece-of shortstory, of poetry-and hold back from updating the blog until it is completed. Then I find I am sitting on it for too long and on the other hand there are so many other things that urgently want to be voiced. So shelving the stance of 'update-the-short story-what-may-come', here are my reflections on my current muse: Mumbai!
This city is big and at times, overwhelms. Like its train travels, the nattily dressed gents and sexily dressed ladies, the sights of Marine Drive, the amazing clockwork that the railways are, the explicit ads for innerwears you can't excape at the busy Church Gate station, the worklife whose timings seem to extend into wee hours of the night and whose travel, to and fro, could stretch beyond 100kms a day, ...so many things: this place oozes enterprise, sexuality, and energy.
Chennai is in comparison, what do I call it, innocent, preadolescent...? These constrasts are worth atleast a 15 min film, I say!! I even came up with a longish title for the film: Various are the Ways the Waves lap the Shores.
The title takes its inspiration from the contrasting beachlines of the two cities. For me they seemed to reflect the lifestyles of the two cities. Here sitting at Marine Drive on a full moon night I see the waves slap the rocks and crash against the concrete structures that bulwark the reclaimed land against the sea. In Chennai its as if the sea and the sand softly cradle against each other..!!"
I guess this is how commercial capitals all over the world shall look like. Always on the go, with a set of values that are designed to further commerce than anything else. Cities that are the lands of promise to the brethren from the hinterland. Cities that have enough moolah to support lavish cultural activities. Cities that are big enough to allow space for the different types of mainstreams, and hence for various fringe elements at its circumference. Cities busy and hence granting anonymity. An anonymity amidst the crowd that comes so close to freedom, because the others are too busy minding their livelihood!
As I am just into my third week I guess my eyes are still fresh to catch the nuances in my daily life. The city still feels like a dope and I like to absorb, through my eyes and in lesser degrees through my other senses, its wares. I travel from ChurchGate to Andheri by train and from Andheri to MIDC (East Andheri) by Bus. These account for most of my observations.
I have never seen such ferocity in people trying to board trains. Believe me, even the wretched crowd of Jallianwallah Bagh would have acted in a less frenetic way on their route to escape. Last night I and my friends were badly mauled at Dadar station and emerged with hurt ears.
We were wondering why people do this because there is always enough time for everyone to get in. Vijay who was accompanying me said, 'Simply, there isn't enough space for everyone to be seated. People travel long distances, nobody wants to stand the whole distance...the fight is for the seats'. Everyone in this country fights for some sort of seats I thought wryly-politicians, students, train commuters..! 'Vijay...I feel it has almost become a sport for them..I have seen
people doing the same even when the train had been empty and there were only a handful of people trying to board the train. Even then the behaviour was the same...to beat others into boarding the train first. Maybe people simply get a kick out of it or simply have got habituated to it, that they keep doing it irrespective of the change in the situation. Maybe this is an ocassion everyone can legitimately show aggression and who wouldn't want to let some steam off after a hard day's work. So the few seconds madness of train boarding becomes an alibi for agression...'.
It was evident Vijay, and Krishna who was with us then, were hardly convinced by my alternatives. We simply wrung our hands that this was one of those inexplicable things and shoved it into the deeper cellars of our mind for future cogitation.
To be continued...
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Hiya folks, somehow not able to turn out poems however I try. Many of em in various degrees of incompletion are resting in my computer and on untidy sheets of paper. Following the wisdom that it is of no use yanking a dry udder I thought, let me treat you to some prose.
I wanted to write something on the various shades of joys and sorrows I have had the good luck to pass through. So starting with...
Pink, the Color of Joy, Seeped into my Fingernails
If I had to give joy, mirth, and fun gay abandon a color it would be pink.
I had a friend who used to question what reason what sanction one needed to celebrate life. He was an apologist for birthdays, New Year celebrations, Diwali, Krishna Jayanti, Independence Day, Republic Day, Valentine's Day...I strongly suspect he had gone around wishing 'Happy Good Friday' to all his Christian friends in his younger days until someone not quite politely stopped him on his ebullient tracks. He used to say, 'All festivals are great excuses to rejoice because to do so all alone and without a reason shall look a wee bit crazy. Imagine how would it be to burst crackers on some odd tuesday, to throw colors on each other on a nondescript saturday, or to ask your Dad for new jeans on some godforsaken day that is not your birthday!'. 'I can't feel happy just because you are supposed to be celebrating a certain date. It seems to me as fakery, plain and simple.' He would theatrically retort, 'Though it is sad that celebrations too have to be institutionalised it makes me shed tears of blood to see you question their logic instead of grabbing the opportunity to be gay abandon'. So, when he pranced on Diwali morning guiding kids quarter his age in exploding 'atom bombs' and 'hydrogen bombs' of Bijili and Sparrow brands I would spend my time on my balcony breathing the smokey sulphur fumes that rose from the streets.
I had my own reasons ofcourse. My personality came dressed up as reasons-a sobriety supported by a overdeveloped sense of skepticism when it came to human nature. I couldn't digest the fact that wishes kept pouring to no end from people who on other days would only extend a cursory nod or at best a smile. Bear-hugs, salutations, endless greetings that people could say in an unthinking 'Hey...Happy Diwali, Hey...Happy Christmas, Hey..Many Many Happy Returns of the Day' tone like a turbaned door-keeper employed to bend low in grace for every customer. I thought people smiled incessantly without investing it with any amount of responsibility. I compared it to what alcohol could effect in people. On a high, people become super-friendly, forget their petty troubles, jealousies and self-centredness, and apparently become so gregarious. Festivals seemed to have the same numbed pleasantess about them. A transitory intimacy. Automaton joy on an appointed date; friendliness for no rhyme or reason. Only to vanish the next day like crowds after a cricket match leaving the stadium littered with a loneliness (known only to the ragpickers). Is that why I have always felt the day after Diwali to be the most desultory?
I held that tokens of love held true meaning only among one's beloved ones and closest friends. They mean it. They shall bear the cross love may entail-if it comes to that. Others-acquaintances, fellow workers, batchmates, society-can't but remain shallow. But where I smelt insincerety or at best the unthinking habit of ritual, my friend held that the fact they atleast smiled, hugged, and opened up on these days was a real gain. He had then pleaded, 'Is it so difficult to be affectionate to a fellow human being, acquainted not even a total stranger, without tying him into deals of love and responsibility...No doubt these festivities are oases in a desert. But would you refuse them because they are a passing phenomenon? The stretching deserts are reasons enough to have our fill of the oasis whenever we stumble by them. Don't you think so?'. I wryly replied, 'I think they are mirages'.
I wanted to write something on the various shades of joys and sorrows I have had the good luck to pass through. So starting with...
Pink, the Color of Joy, Seeped into my Fingernails
If I had to give joy, mirth, and fun gay abandon a color it would be pink.
I had a friend who used to question what reason what sanction one needed to celebrate life. He was an apologist for birthdays, New Year celebrations, Diwali, Krishna Jayanti, Independence Day, Republic Day, Valentine's Day...I strongly suspect he had gone around wishing 'Happy Good Friday' to all his Christian friends in his younger days until someone not quite politely stopped him on his ebullient tracks. He used to say, 'All festivals are great excuses to rejoice because to do so all alone and without a reason shall look a wee bit crazy. Imagine how would it be to burst crackers on some odd tuesday, to throw colors on each other on a nondescript saturday, or to ask your Dad for new jeans on some godforsaken day that is not your birthday!'. 'I can't feel happy just because you are supposed to be celebrating a certain date. It seems to me as fakery, plain and simple.' He would theatrically retort, 'Though it is sad that celebrations too have to be institutionalised it makes me shed tears of blood to see you question their logic instead of grabbing the opportunity to be gay abandon'. So, when he pranced on Diwali morning guiding kids quarter his age in exploding 'atom bombs' and 'hydrogen bombs' of Bijili and Sparrow brands I would spend my time on my balcony breathing the smokey sulphur fumes that rose from the streets.
I had my own reasons ofcourse. My personality came dressed up as reasons-a sobriety supported by a overdeveloped sense of skepticism when it came to human nature. I couldn't digest the fact that wishes kept pouring to no end from people who on other days would only extend a cursory nod or at best a smile. Bear-hugs, salutations, endless greetings that people could say in an unthinking 'Hey...Happy Diwali, Hey...Happy Christmas, Hey..Many Many Happy Returns of the Day' tone like a turbaned door-keeper employed to bend low in grace for every customer. I thought people smiled incessantly without investing it with any amount of responsibility. I compared it to what alcohol could effect in people. On a high, people become super-friendly, forget their petty troubles, jealousies and self-centredness, and apparently become so gregarious. Festivals seemed to have the same numbed pleasantess about them. A transitory intimacy. Automaton joy on an appointed date; friendliness for no rhyme or reason. Only to vanish the next day like crowds after a cricket match leaving the stadium littered with a loneliness (known only to the ragpickers). Is that why I have always felt the day after Diwali to be the most desultory?
I held that tokens of love held true meaning only among one's beloved ones and closest friends. They mean it. They shall bear the cross love may entail-if it comes to that. Others-acquaintances, fellow workers, batchmates, society-can't but remain shallow. But where I smelt insincerety or at best the unthinking habit of ritual, my friend held that the fact they atleast smiled, hugged, and opened up on these days was a real gain. He had then pleaded, 'Is it so difficult to be affectionate to a fellow human being, acquainted not even a total stranger, without tying him into deals of love and responsibility...No doubt these festivities are oases in a desert. But would you refuse them because they are a passing phenomenon? The stretching deserts are reasons enough to have our fill of the oasis whenever we stumble by them. Don't you think so?'. I wryly replied, 'I think they are mirages'.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Monday, February 09, 2004
Runner's High
Lungs cry out for breatherspace,
My limb are a spent force.
In the funnel of a consciousness
that is left amidst a beat-up heart
and beaten spirit,
the chatter of the birds
and the orange orb of a sun
filter through as godsent
gifts.
My limb are a spent force.
In the funnel of a consciousness
that is left amidst a beat-up heart
and beaten spirit,
the chatter of the birds
and the orange orb of a sun
filter through as godsent
gifts.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Saturday, January 17, 2004
No, no one's There Calling at Home
The traffic is usual and the path is far.
Lorries wham past, and roads are potholed.
Some rain has fallen, and so it slips.
My tyres, their tread gone, skid.
Crowded buses lunge,
And the bikes' beelines make a maze.
My brakes are weak. None can
hear my horns.
I have to whizz past.
No, no one’s there calling at home,
which is as empty as the roads here.
But I have to push the needle
to the speedometer's limit-
Perfect my cuts and smoothen my
drivethroughs-Knife through
the maze and be one with
the breeze. Beat time to a second's
section and find purpose.
A kind child's sorrow smile bloom up the sidewalk.
It’s a flicker of a look and a bump in my consciousness-
In the intersperse of a fishcart and a heading lorry,
and a waterslick on the road and brakes that fail.
The traffic is usual and the path is far.
Lorries wham past, and roads are potholed.
Some rain has fallen, and so it slips.
My tyres, their tread gone, skid.
Crowded buses lunge,
And the bikes' beelines make a maze.
My brakes are weak. None can
hear my horns.
I have to whizz past.
No, no one’s there calling at home,
which is as empty as the roads here.
But I have to push the needle
to the speedometer's limit-
Perfect my cuts and smoothen my
drivethroughs-Knife through
the maze and be one with
the breeze. Beat time to a second's
section and find purpose.
A kind child's sorrow smile bloom up the sidewalk.
It’s a flicker of a look and a bump in my consciousness-
In the intersperse of a fishcart and a heading lorry,
and a waterslick on the road and brakes that fail.
The Longing and Losses of this World
The stars with no journey made.
The rain splattering on concrete faces.
The flowers smelling of sorrow
as their fate is to fall to the ground, crushed.
The birds coo, get mated and feel joyous.
But the river and the sea; you and me
separated by a lifetime's journey
feel blue and anarchic.
We discover that interesting person
At the end of a desultory vacation.
And feel the romance bloom
when dead end deadlines loom.
The sun looks great just before it sets
And leaves memory alone to feed ourselves.
The moon shines well when we are tired
and with sleep are we all drunk.
The stars with no journey made.
The rain splattering on concrete faces.
The flowers smelling of sorrow
as their fate is to fall to the ground, crushed.
The birds coo, get mated and feel joyous.
But the river and the sea; you and me
separated by a lifetime's journey
feel blue and anarchic.
We discover that interesting person
At the end of a desultory vacation.
And feel the romance bloom
when dead end deadlines loom.
The sun looks great just before it sets
And leaves memory alone to feed ourselves.
The moon shines well when we are tired
and with sleep are we all drunk.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Rainbow
I understood I lost my first love-
at Delhi Haat, an ordinary autumn day.
Thereby I lost my greatest entertainment,
my greatest companion and my soul turned gray.
I cried profusely that afternoon.
For myself, nay. For her, maybe. For us-I ain't sure.
But tears ran down and under a summer noon
they shall have glittered like a silver fall.
I began to run-my sobs grew embarrasingly loud.
I ran afar from her-she pulled away in a bus.
I wailed and my heart broke down against my chest.
Like a rocket's charge the release fueled my legs.
Staring down from a window seat a Delhi that passed by
I felt romantic, broken and a hero. I felt
beautiful in tragedy and momentous in grief. A thousand
violins sprang epic accounts in melody.
But I lost my capacity to love another afternoon-When on
sighting my old love after many years I had gasped
and bit my tongue too late: 'eeek I never knew she
could grow so stout'. A life's illusion died that day.
I understood I lost my first love-
at Delhi Haat, an ordinary autumn day.
Thereby I lost my greatest entertainment,
my greatest companion and my soul turned gray.
I cried profusely that afternoon.
For myself, nay. For her, maybe. For us-I ain't sure.
But tears ran down and under a summer noon
they shall have glittered like a silver fall.
I began to run-my sobs grew embarrasingly loud.
I ran afar from her-she pulled away in a bus.
I wailed and my heart broke down against my chest.
Like a rocket's charge the release fueled my legs.
Staring down from a window seat a Delhi that passed by
I felt romantic, broken and a hero. I felt
beautiful in tragedy and momentous in grief. A thousand
violins sprang epic accounts in melody.
But I lost my capacity to love another afternoon-When on
sighting my old love after many years I had gasped
and bit my tongue too late: 'eeek I never knew she
could grow so stout'. A life's illusion died that day.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Evocation (Completed..!)
Dead leaves light, ready in frolick,
crisper than the best of chips.
With a crunchy sound you are crushed
into a thousand flickery pieces.
In a nice cookie's dark brown tone you
invite. If my sense hadn't meddled, my
sensibilities would have had you
popped in, my throat shall have choked!
Dry leaves on cobblestone paths
and on brown earth ready for the frosts.
Falling from tired branches with an ease that
fail with the words I have tried to wrought.
I pity you this autumn day for there
are no breezy winds to saunter you away-
To those cosy nooks you had sought
when fluttering, shivering from branches above.
Strewn around like warriors on a battle ground,
would you be turned into humus or fade off
like memories of kintergarden teachers
whose grandeur, age only seems to tear asunder?
Why oh crisp creatures do you with your
dark brown cookie colors wake up in me
a scent of Tragedy? Of no particular rhyme,
no reason but leave my full being lost and forlorn.
You are not to be blamed though as
Roschachs wouldn't be or a couple of
downed pegs couldn't be nor that simple strain
that made me cry alone in last year's rain.
Dead leaves light, ready in frolick,
crisper than the best of chips.
With a crunchy sound you are crushed
into a thousand flickery pieces.
In a nice cookie's dark brown tone you
invite. If my sense hadn't meddled, my
sensibilities would have had you
popped in, my throat shall have choked!
Dry leaves on cobblestone paths
and on brown earth ready for the frosts.
Falling from tired branches with an ease that
fail with the words I have tried to wrought.
I pity you this autumn day for there
are no breezy winds to saunter you away-
To those cosy nooks you had sought
when fluttering, shivering from branches above.
Strewn around like warriors on a battle ground,
would you be turned into humus or fade off
like memories of kintergarden teachers
whose grandeur, age only seems to tear asunder?
Why oh crisp creatures do you with your
dark brown cookie colors wake up in me
a scent of Tragedy? Of no particular rhyme,
no reason but leave my full being lost and forlorn.
You are not to be blamed though as
Roschachs wouldn't be or a couple of
downed pegs couldn't be nor that simple strain
that made me cry alone in last year's rain.
Monday, December 15, 2003
Saturday, December 13, 2003
Daddy's Tale
Sleep my pretty child, sleep deep
Days could grow long, this moon shall eclipse.
The night now is dark and sweet,
breeze and dew unfailing;
the dreams yet are fairytales,
mommy's lullaby accompanying.
Lock em safely in deep vaults child,
age them like wine.
Collect ye leaves and petals and
press them in your mind.
I wish your days don't stretch like mine
but someday you would see-
that dried petals and old wine
are certain cures for reality.
Sleep my pretty child, sleep deep
Days could grow long, this moon shall eclipse.
The night now is dark and sweet,
breeze and dew unfailing;
the dreams yet are fairytales,
mommy's lullaby accompanying.
Lock em safely in deep vaults child,
age them like wine.
Collect ye leaves and petals and
press them in your mind.
I wish your days don't stretch like mine
but someday you would see-
that dried petals and old wine
are certain cures for reality.
Choice
I itch to write long sentences
and track all my curious thoughts.
I wish to paint in oils the combinations
nature forgot. I ache to
to wander the green campus
and photograph against it beautiful nymphs
and to roam the city and graph its
sickly sweet sights.
But would I recognise the trade-offs,
find the will to stand by this life,
and turn blind to other petty ones
that constantly woo a baser mahesh.
I itch to write long sentences
and track all my curious thoughts.
I wish to paint in oils the combinations
nature forgot. I ache to
to wander the green campus
and photograph against it beautiful nymphs
and to roam the city and graph its
sickly sweet sights.
But would I recognise the trade-offs,
find the will to stand by this life,
and turn blind to other petty ones
that constantly woo a baser mahesh.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
I am posting the speech that was the fountainhead of the most popular definition of Democracy, Lincoln's famous Gettysberg Speech. Lincoln has been such a great inspiration for slow starts like me!
This speech was a non-event during the occasion for which it was prepared yet in due course its intrinsic value shined, illuminated by his solid ethos.
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
This speech was a non-event during the occasion for which it was prepared yet in due course its intrinsic value shined, illuminated by his solid ethos.
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION OF THE CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
The Fly
In my mind there is a memory of a fly. It settled against pale yellow furniture one night in the library. After a million-flutters abuzz-flight, it settled down peacefully near my knuckles. If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have known it. It pressurized not and its whole weight was too light to constitute even a touch.
The house fly same in Lucknow as in Chennai, apparently. Like the dozen others I have observed in my life time with primitive eyes that never get the differences right. The same grey exterior, the same transparent wings, the same way of rubbing its forelimbs together. I fancied it to refer to common leifmotifs that do not leave you even if you are not particularly obsessed by them-the house fly is one, the other is boring professors.
In my mind there is a memory of a fly. It settled against pale yellow furniture one night in the library. After a million-flutters abuzz-flight, it settled down peacefully near my knuckles. If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have known it. It pressurized not and its whole weight was too light to constitute even a touch.
The house fly same in Lucknow as in Chennai, apparently. Like the dozen others I have observed in my life time with primitive eyes that never get the differences right. The same grey exterior, the same transparent wings, the same way of rubbing its forelimbs together. I fancied it to refer to common leifmotifs that do not leave you even if you are not particularly obsessed by them-the house fly is one, the other is boring professors.
Friday, October 31, 2003
While we are still at it, one more from the same poet. This is an old Tamil song translated so effectively by A K Ramanujan. I am not very sure, but I guess the song is from the author's translation volume, Interior Landscapes, a translation of 'Aganaanuru', which deals with the courtship, marital love labyrinth.
What could my
mother be to yours?
What kin is my father
to yours anyway?
And how did you and
I meet ever? But in
love our hearts have
mingled like red earth
and pouring rain.
What could my
mother be to yours?
What kin is my father
to yours anyway?
And how did you and
I meet ever? But in
love our hearts have
mingled like red earth
and pouring rain.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Many stay puzzled by the name I had chosen for my blog. Maybe what follows shall be justification enough...
STILL LIFE by A K Ramanujan
When she left me
after lunch, I read
for a while.
But suddenly wanted
to look again
and I saw the half-eaten
sandwich,
bread,
lettuce and salami,
all carrying the shape
of her bite
(bold mine)
I am wordless to comment! Whatdya people say?
STILL LIFE by A K Ramanujan
When she left me
after lunch, I read
for a while.
But suddenly wanted
to look again
and I saw the half-eaten
sandwich,
bread,
lettuce and salami,
all carrying the shape
of her bite
(bold mine)
I am wordless to comment! Whatdya people say?
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
This is a poem I wrote almost an year back. I agree that it might not make much sense to
anyone than me. But I love it for its imagery. What would you love it for?
The Living Dead
In the obsolescence that is fast becoming life
The green of the grasses isn't yet white, yet
the sun is paler the moon darker, the raging
ebb and tide of the oceans a pittance to what's inside.
Seething in thy heart's recess and tides
there lie different beings waking in contrasts;
The baked surface cracks often when the
seed waiting for its fortune comes against the bulwark.
I said wow! The sun that so lovely mildly touching
the walls of the building: There was none around
and the orphan beauty made be lonely. Tis not the sun
alone, nor others blind. There is a hole in the heart: that's news.
Schizoid's son. Melting cans. In the hot sun
the cracking fields. Thus runs the faultlines across my
heart. That the only love that I could ever feel
with welling tears is for the kid, the dog; the ants that tide across my path.
anyone than me. But I love it for its imagery. What would you love it for?
The Living Dead
In the obsolescence that is fast becoming life
The green of the grasses isn't yet white, yet
the sun is paler the moon darker, the raging
ebb and tide of the oceans a pittance to what's inside.
Seething in thy heart's recess and tides
there lie different beings waking in contrasts;
The baked surface cracks often when the
seed waiting for its fortune comes against the bulwark.
I said wow! The sun that so lovely mildly touching
the walls of the building: There was none around
and the orphan beauty made be lonely. Tis not the sun
alone, nor others blind. There is a hole in the heart: that's news.
Schizoid's son. Melting cans. In the hot sun
the cracking fields. Thus runs the faultlines across my
heart. That the only love that I could ever feel
with welling tears is for the kid, the dog; the ants that tide across my path.
Monday, October 27, 2003
The Blind Attractions of an Adolescent Cow
On Sunday I went to the city to get myself some passport-sized photographs. The place I had to wait to catch the bus back to the Institute belonged to cows and dungheap. I have read and seen in those stylised actions of the Spanish bullfighters how Bulls are inspired by that deep intense red. It is some amorous color for Bulls!
There ofcourse weren't any Bulls where I waited. There were a lot of cute looking beings which were somewhere between being a calf and a cow. I have always considered cows with a certain empathy, even a certain love. Manythings about them were beautiful. The way they ever so languidly walk-not the irrevocable, incurable laziness of the buffaloes-their big shapely eyes that seem to be richly outlined with kaajal-so much like those of deers...its difficult not to like them. Sometimes somewhere I see girls I can compare with these lovely beings.
Well as I said I was waiting. And there was this,lets say adolescent cow just hanging around the place. It was some time before it sighted me. Only after a few seconds could I notice that it was getting interested in me, making as it were imperceptible moves in my direction. I was in no mood to shoo it away as it did not seem to be agressive and as it yet hadn't grown any horns. So I just let it on its course and moved away graciously thinking that I was in its path and not the other way round.
I only expected it go its way. Yet it came resolutely, obviously towards me-as if I was a bunch of plantain or banana leaves. I pushed its head away from me. I egged its body away from me. It too persisted. Then I looked at myself and then I saw: dark green pants, a bright green shirt which for the should have been the most attractive color in the 7'O clock darkness and a very very apt dark green plastic cover in my hands.
On Sunday I went to the city to get myself some passport-sized photographs. The place I had to wait to catch the bus back to the Institute belonged to cows and dungheap. I have read and seen in those stylised actions of the Spanish bullfighters how Bulls are inspired by that deep intense red. It is some amorous color for Bulls!
There ofcourse weren't any Bulls where I waited. There were a lot of cute looking beings which were somewhere between being a calf and a cow. I have always considered cows with a certain empathy, even a certain love. Manythings about them were beautiful. The way they ever so languidly walk-not the irrevocable, incurable laziness of the buffaloes-their big shapely eyes that seem to be richly outlined with kaajal-so much like those of deers...its difficult not to like them. Sometimes somewhere I see girls I can compare with these lovely beings.
Well as I said I was waiting. And there was this,lets say adolescent cow just hanging around the place. It was some time before it sighted me. Only after a few seconds could I notice that it was getting interested in me, making as it were imperceptible moves in my direction. I was in no mood to shoo it away as it did not seem to be agressive and as it yet hadn't grown any horns. So I just let it on its course and moved away graciously thinking that I was in its path and not the other way round.
I only expected it go its way. Yet it came resolutely, obviously towards me-as if I was a bunch of plantain or banana leaves. I pushed its head away from me. I egged its body away from me. It too persisted. Then I looked at myself and then I saw: dark green pants, a bright green shirt which for the should have been the most attractive color in the 7'O clock darkness and a very very apt dark green plastic cover in my hands.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
How the Name Came About.
My friend Sonia named herself in MSN as 'Oh names what a pain!'. I felt so too when all my names were rejected one after another as aleady being taken.
My first choice (of salutation) was Phaedrus after that intense hero of Robert M. Pirsig's first novel 'The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.
My second attempt was to have thesundew my long-running hotmail and yahoo id. That came to naught too.
Then came to mind, frangipani, buoyed because I had found the name of a flower i had been in love for so long. Well, not yet lucky.
Then I keyed in confidently, 'theshapeofherbite'. I knew many people shall immediately imagine erotica; such it is common evocation. But the phrase has as its fountainhead a poem by A K Ramanujan titled Still Life.
My friend Sonia named herself in MSN as 'Oh names what a pain!'. I felt so too when all my names were rejected one after another as aleady being taken.
My first choice (of salutation) was Phaedrus after that intense hero of Robert M. Pirsig's first novel 'The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.
My second attempt was to have thesundew my long-running hotmail and yahoo id. That came to naught too.
Then came to mind, frangipani, buoyed because I had found the name of a flower i had been in love for so long. Well, not yet lucky.
Then I keyed in confidently, 'theshapeofherbite'. I knew many people shall immediately imagine erotica; such it is common evocation. But the phrase has as its fountainhead a poem by A K Ramanujan titled Still Life.
I am blogging inspired in great part by my college mates Venkat and Sabnis.
Especially Sabnis. I was pleasantly alarmed because during all my occasional visits to his blog I see him write things I thought only I had noticed, felt and thought. Like the funny negotiations with the water-sprinklers, his paean to frangipani (I am happy the flower hasn't just a solitary fan), his photographs of the oils monsoon created across the evening sky, his alarm at hosteliers stealing his songs during morning baths...I think my alarm is similar to that alarm of his! Oh...here are my thoughts, feelings, and observations which I had been so privately enjoying...so much so that I begin to have proprietary sentiments over them, and then here is Sabnis blogging them. Some jealousy...!
So I thought I shall say, here arrives a rival over almost the same 'subject-matters'.
Especially Sabnis. I was pleasantly alarmed because during all my occasional visits to his blog I see him write things I thought only I had noticed, felt and thought. Like the funny negotiations with the water-sprinklers, his paean to frangipani (I am happy the flower hasn't just a solitary fan), his photographs of the oils monsoon created across the evening sky, his alarm at hosteliers stealing his songs during morning baths...I think my alarm is similar to that alarm of his! Oh...here are my thoughts, feelings, and observations which I had been so privately enjoying...so much so that I begin to have proprietary sentiments over them, and then here is Sabnis blogging them. Some jealousy...!
So I thought I shall say, here arrives a rival over almost the same 'subject-matters'.
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