Shakespeare and Company

?

2009-07-31T20:05:00.001-05:00

Did I open that bottle?

And did you break it to pieces? after it was empty of course.

It always was empty you just didnt see

the reflections

that fell on your eyes blinding you

Did I write last night?

Did you rip apart the pages, erase the words? after they were spoken.

They were drowned in yesterday's loud rain

run over on the empty streets

that you drove to find me

Did I have the same dream?

Did you sing through my reality? after the myth was shattered.

you always knew the whispers were loud

the pieces too many

for you to fix and make whole

Say I did it.

Say I did not.

Say I did it.

Say I did it all.

IF I WRITE THIS POEM

2009-02-11T15:48:00.002-05:00

If I write this poem,
Will you wonder what it means?
Will you peel away layers?
Or read between lines,
Or shine the light,
Of what was said,
On what was left unsaid?

It could be about you,
Or it could be a fabrication;
a meaningless invention.

See, sometimes I imagine myself,
In a relationship,
In a situation,
In some future hell,

(Or heaven for that matter).

Sometimes I dream:
I am in love,
I am in hate,
I am in lust.
I am distraught.

If I write about being distraught,
It could be a dark vision,
Or Cassandra-like thought
Of dire consequences;

But would it make you-
Pick up the phone,
Call me,
Alarmed,
Concerned,
Hurt,
Angry,
Betrayed,
Confused?

Would you believe,
it stems from a truant imagination,
that it’s nothing more than lurid fiction?

Where the protagonist is me
But the antagonist is never you?

A WORD...

2009-02-11T14:52:00.004-05:00

Unfortunately the site that was hosting the images that gave our blog the elegant look that we all loved has been shut down. We are on the lookout for a better design but have chosen the one you see now for the interim.

Pragya

SENIOR CITIZENS

2009-01-05T12:36:00.000-05:00

You can see them most evenings in the park,
Muffled and sweatered against the chill –
Or weathers decreed by peremptory wives.
The woollens, the odd walking stick mark
Them down as no terminal sentence will
As they shuffle through the tail ends of lives.

Perched or huddled like diffident crows,
You’ll find them in knots of threes or fours,
Bound by the final unuttered fear –
Which, despite their squawky petulance, shows
In the eyes of these superannuated bores.
You sense something wrong here.

Or at least curious. For given their ages,
There can’t be much more to anticipate
Than a quiet release of valedictory breath,
The desideratum of sages.
Yet not for these, for whom the killing weight
Of dread must leave little indeed for death.

***

A DRY HOSTILE ANTAGONISTIC PLACE...

2008-08-05T23:38:00.003-05:00

Just finished reading Salman Rushdie's "The Enchantress of Florence" and towards the end this is this passage which I find very relevant to India today.

Emperor Akbar is evacuating Fatehpur Sikhri as the lake has dried up and these words are his musings:

The future would not be what he (Akbar) hoped for, but a dry hostile antagonistic place where people would survive as best as they could and hate their neighbours and smash their places of worship and kill one another once again in the renewed heat of the great quarrel he had sought to end for ever, the quarrel over God. In the future it was harshness, not civilization, that would rule.

NOT SAYING ANYTHING

2008-08-05T14:17:00.003-05:00

Why didn't I realize that your silence
was not an accident but a result of my failure?
Words have been the cause -
'Cannot stay', 'no future', these once spoken
You took without protest. The unspoken, you used with deliberation;
They dripped bleeding questions
On gaping scars.

It is no big deal to live without
warmth and hugs, even Wills and Reserva
Thingschangefiredieswaterfreezes
andspacesindistanceandwordsbecomeknives
That tear apart memories and make one wonder
if they were imagined.

Strange to think that once addictive substances
are so easy to wean from, including your words
Once offered as promises. Easier still to think
All was a deception from the beginning.

Frightening to know this pattern for what it is,
in others silence and my own

Answer being a departure.

JAHANPANAH BAHADUR SHAH ZAFAR – The Last Mughal

2008-07-11T07:10:00.001-05:00

Jahanpana, Sahenshah Bahadur Shah Zafar,
Saw dust over the Bridge of Boats, afar,
Standing on the ramparts of the Red Fort,
With wives, courtiers, and consort.

His heart filled with despair and hope,
A mixed feeling he couldn’t cope,
His Hindustan will after all be free,
From the White Man’s sword, and decree.

To feed them where will he bring money?
Thomas Metcalfe refuses to give him any,
His powers are naught and so is his court,
Should he fight or befriend as they cross the moat.

No, he’s not a soldier fighting a war,
He’s a Sufi poet running beads of prayer,
Though martial blood runs in his veins,
For Timur’s cruelty he has much disdain.

He squandered wealth and kingdom lost,
To wine, poetry, blandishments and lust,
Too many late nights of poetry and pretence,
Had left a debt he couldn’t recompense.

Away to his chamber that night he went,
After a message to mutinous armies sent,
You are welcome if you come in peace,
Do not disturb our graces, or, our poetry disgrace.

But the mutinous army being common men,
Looted, pillaged and set on fire, and then,
Said to Jahanpanah, “Where’s all your wealth,
For us to liberate and live in comfort and health?”

To this Jahanpanah murmured a few words,
I will go to Mecca; send you to British swords,
I am too old and tired for this war you create,
Therefore to Nizamuddin shrine will I retreat.

“Call me coward, what you will, man,
But I am no traitor like Asanullah Khan,
My wife Zinat Mahal, or, Mohammed Baqar,
They will rot in their graves, those gaddar.”

“I have only done what a poet would have done,
Protected my people, poetry, wives, and son,
It’s greedy men who covet, steal, and fight,
I am but a bard; and poetry is my birthright.”

Glossary:

Jahanpanah - ruler of the world
Shahenshah – king of kings
Gaddar - traitor
Asanullah Khan – Zafar’s prime minister
Zinat Mahal – Zafar’s wife
Mohammed Baqar – chronicler and editor of Delhi Urdu Akhbar

THE ASTROLOGER

2008-07-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

Not knowing what brought me here –
certainly no wayward vicissitude of tide –
and not affirming or denying
the course he maps with the clear
authority of the sibyl, I bide
the familiar litany of prophesying.

Detachment comes easy to you, he says,
scanning the palm leaf. And age
will see you recede further
from the points of life, each phase
revealing the hidden stillness of the sage.
The final you will be someone other.

Perhaps. Except that I’ve always been that.
Never quite what was required to be,
or knowing even that presumed state,
the kind that the assured point at
(short of sainthood) with such certainty.
Someone else, somewhat there, approximate.

***

MEADOWS BARRACKS

2008-04-21T11:00:00.001-05:00

Not sure of a terminal ‘e’
I type it in on a whim, and there
It is on a wikimap, neatly boxed in a square.
I pan the image expectantly.

The blanks surprise me, for the years
Have seemingly left those grounds
Untouched, all mottled greens and browns
Dotted with a few familiars.

I pick them off one by one. First,
The garrison church. All Saints, or so
It says, although at five I didn’t know
It, being still unversed

In such things. A vague derelict, a bit
Of a halfway point to school and back.
A blur of blotched grey and black
Is all I remember of it.

East of it the Barracks, another pile.
Abode of one who fancied my arm
And left her teeth marks like a charm.
A fleet of summer, verandah and tile.

Below, the dense blocks of the MH loom,
Slightly ominous, commanding the grid.
And somewhere amid
Other frames, beyond the mouse’s zoom

Must lie a home, now doubtless blent
With ghosts and such like, and air.
Barely recalled or loved, but where
A childhood, as someone said, was ‘unspent.’

***

NARCISSUS

2008-01-23T22:48:00.000-05:00

The first time was surely enchantment –
or perhaps witchcraft, given the spell
he cast on himself. The pool stretched taut
in timeless stillness, as he bent
over the glazed perfection for which he fell.
That at any rate was how the myth was wrought.

It endured, and certainly (it must be admitted)
longer than the subject’s startled self-love.
The latter was ephemeral at best,
an infatuation: by definition unrequited,
since the image could not rise above
the limbo of that watery palimpsest.

Inevitably, the first wavers of doubt
rippled through his mind. He grew wan,
distrait, a shade walking through a curse,
given to hearing voices when he was out.
He sat down: a droop of brooding bone,
eyes sunk in holes, unseeing in mirrors.

***

IMPERATOR

2007-11-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

In the year of grace something or other
The new emperor was crowned
With a minimum of fuss. (A near thing,
For his predecessor had anointed another.)
As new emperors will, he looked around:
And saw the shambles staring

Him in the face, the ruin he was heir to.
The waste and ravage of the Caligulas
Was comprehensive; words failed him.
Shaking himself, he wondered where to
Begin the long slog back from this pass:
Briefly, fears assailed him.

Which of course was good. For it set him apart
From his forebears, who used the seeming
Infinitude of the empire’s strength
To plunder at will: fear played no part
In their relentless scheming,
Each milking his reign’s length.

But it’s bad for a ruler to be frightened
Into inaction; so he set about trying
To rebuild what wasn’t destroyed
In a day by decreeing a heightened
Sense of purpose for the dead and dying –
Which, as an entertainment, they enjoyed.

The dumb multitudes soon set him at ease,
And a pliant Senate endorsed his vision –
There were no Ciceros (long exiled
To the obscurity of the lesser colonies)
To question the mechanics of the mission.
And those that did were reconciled

To despairing silence: there was just
So much after all that they could do.
The deafness of centuries befell
Him. History moved in. Ages thence, his bust
Joined the marbled others. The face was true:
The eyes a dreamer’s, you could tell.

***

INCIDENTAL

2007-10-31T14:21:00.000-05:00

It is natural that you should cross my mind.
After all, by cosmic timelines, it isn’t
Very long since we said – or didn’t –
Our mixed goodbyes. You left behind

Bits of baggage, as I’m sure I did, even if
No more than shredded labels – places
Extinct as only pasts can be, with traces
Blotching a scroll or two, an occasional whiff

Now and then on my now settled course.
I don’t dwell, but register the fact
As a watch would at sea, a mechanical act,
Incurious about its source.

And consign the event to the morgue,
Unremarked: a laconic entry in a log.

***

POETRY PRIMER

2007-09-28T00:09:00.000-05:00

“I wandered lonely as a cloud…”
Hmmm…one squirms a bit,
though perhaps kosher for its time.
And that “crowd”
(line three), while we’re still at it
makes for rather awkward rhyme.

The oded nightingale and autumn
fare slightly better, though not
much. “My heart aches, and a drowsy…”
Well, so does ours: they’re tiresome,
laboured, overwrought.
One stops short of lousy.

The romantic died hard in fact.
Shelley unbeknownst, leapt
an age when he met
his traveller from that antique tract:
cool, Olympian, adept,
as spare as you could get.

Still, far removed from sweeping
winds, the sear of green to brown,
and arid acres that would kill
or mute the song of hearts leaping –
lovers woken up to drown,
and the distant lilac-breeding April.

***

A FUCKING ABSENCE OF

2007-09-23T03:06:00.001-05:00

I
Words.
Too many words, too many,
This is an addiction,
To spill the wrong words
Cupped in your hand
And let it baptize sinners
When all they needed
Was a fucking bath.

II
Drugs and alcohol.
Never too much, too little maybe,
All in the wrong veins
Like the legs and hands
Leaving blank pages
And empty roads
When all you wanted
Was to give your mind a break.

III
You.
Never enough, or too much
In my head and body,
Always flitting about
In these sanitized words,
Wine and substances, ingested
And rejected and now inflicted
On the general population who need a laugh.

LESSON

2007-09-09T03:37:00.000-05:00

And then there is death. Always.
Some of you have contemplated
It, in the active or the abstract.
On some the fear of it preys
Like a worm, unstated.
The flutter of the final act.

Unnecessary really, its terror
Made more of than it deserves:
The dark needs but light
To expose the error
Which ignorance serves –
Dawn to the louring dread of night.

One could be pragmatic about it:
See perhaps in its inner
Vacuity the blown up myth,
And with cold reason rout it.
As routine a chore as dinner:
Something to be got over with.

***

QUICKSILVER NIRVANA

2007-09-03T11:13:00.002-05:00

Quicksilver nirvana

I've come to a place
That's green and misty
Where joy is a pimple-ripe fruit
In a garden
That's taller than me.
Where purple fish fly peacefully
Across a yellow moon

That disrobes its light
Into an enchanted pool
Where I see a bright green lizard.
Its eyes bigger than the fingernail moon
Its smile cleaving its arrow face,
And beckoning me to step in.

I refuse.

I am in place
Where joy drizzles like salt crystals
In slow motion
Or perhaps snowflakes through a microscope
I can't really say.

Still smiling, the lizard
Comes undone, fading deep into
The starry blue pond
Leaving strains of a hopeful melody.

And for just an instant
In the circular echo of the pool
I see all I want from life
Written in picture-script
A little like Chinese.

A quick breath
And they disappear slower than they came
As the fading lizard drags away with it
All that I think I ought to know
In this life and others.

Sandhya
September 07

OH WELL...

2007-09-01T05:01:00.000-05:00

“Does it mean nothing to you?? Fame
I mean, accolades…adoring women…stature
Of a god, you know…Does all of that
Leave you cold? Why, it is in the nature
Of poets to hunger for a pretty pat
Or two, the heady wine of acclaim!”

The incredulous tones of a fellow-poet
Who’s known and seen it all, now dismayed
By my cheerful obscurity. Who knew,
Such indifference argued a shade
Of something other perhaps… A hue
Of conceit for those who’d know it.

But sloth – for such it is – has no lines
To read between, and inertia’s bland
Of meaning: both enough to keep me grounded
In my unfamous state. Hard to understand
No doubt, but reasons well-founded.
Poets? I suppose it takes all kinds…

***

Is This What We Have Come to?

2007-07-30T08:30:00.001-05:00

It’s raining black rivers from the skies tonight,
Incessant angry rivers of our sorrows,
We shiver, cold and wet like drowning rats,
In our warren holes, cracks, and burrows.

Is this what we have come to?
Then how far is it to perdition?

Around us the rhythmic Bollywood dancers,
Shake their legs; thrust their hips in motion,
We are like amorous dogs baying in the night,
For a touch of the idols we see on television.

Is this what we have come to?
Then how far is it to perdition?

Why do we live in constant, unfounded fears,
Of credit we have used, and loans unpaid,
To buy the follies that rot at home from disuse,
When Warren Buffet lives in a two-bedroom pad?

Is this what we have come to?
Then how far is it to perdition?

Have we broken our errant promises,
To our brothers who till the soil, grow grains,
Not to decimate forests and mine the hills,
So they don’t twist and turn nightly, for rains?

Is this what we have come to?
Then how far is it to perdition?

Instead we celebrate our borrowed money,
Indulging ring tones and crass downloads on the net,
Then we huddle and cry when the skies open up,
And nature weeps the black rain of regret.

Is this what we have come to?
Then how far is it to perdition?

The Platform

2007-07-16T05:51:00.001-05:00

On the platform the hiss of steel,
Is like hiss of snake; the clang of wheels,
It’s the 8.30 a.m. local arriving,
And, the 8.31 a.m. local departing.

Travelers, their faces expectant,
Thoughts of home and contentment,
Faces staring at the far horizon,
For trains to arrive to their destination.

The announcer’s trained voice,
Impersonal in its insouciance,
There are voices humming,
Insistent shouts and hurried running.

Tired-, haggard-looking men,
And sweet-, spent-looking women,
They walk, shuffle legs, and shift,
Churning; regimented mass of three shifts.

The bhel-puri is tangy and sweet,
Mixed with the vendor’s own sweat,
Eat we must, spit, and drink,
Of civic sense, we must not think.

Births, this platform has seen,
Deaths, when the lights turn green,
As bogeys trundle in in the night,
There are many a curse and a fight.

There are aimless people here,
Embarking, disembarking to nowhere,
The weak lights cast shadows everywhere,
The neon light’s glow is so bizarre.

Some faces tragic, some faces sad,
Some are bored, some are mad,
Some long to rest their weary heads,
On the soft comfort of their beds.

The platform is now empty,
And, now, full of girls pretty,
Their talk and walk fills one with hope,
But, age has caught up, you dope.

The stoic platform in the early dawn,
Look, how it reposes in the sunny morn,
It bakes in the relentless heat of noon,
And, at night it sleeps in the glow of moon.

J

-----------------
I work very close to a railway station, in fact, I can stare right into a platform from my office. So, I have been working on this poem and hope it works for you.

MINX

2007-06-16T13:29:00.000-05:00

Having dispensed with the honorific
in two days flat, she supplanted a softened
first name to take the edge off the former.
Still, it wasn’t strictly his own: all too often
he’d weighed against that hated misnomer.
The bloody thing was not even chic.

His given of course was no less detested –
(his kind being happiest without one) –
buried, save for the odd wifely exhumation
now and then. So what was begun
as a gentle jibe at their age equation
(a lifetime separating luscious and grey-crested)

suddenly sprouted, grew a soul and throve
as love’s surprising spur. The doldrums stirred,
her sighs bussed a sail or two
to life, a tentative swell answered.
Supremely assured, knowing what she must do
she added wile to wind and drove

him out of his wits: she was out to kill.
While he, long becalmed in inert seas
was unused to storms. Taken pleasurably
aback he marvelled at the unwonted breeze,
before being swept aloft inexorably
in the typhoon, gale, blizzard, what you will.

***

The First Rain Saudade

2007-06-06T23:44:00.001-05:00

First Rain Saudade

The first showers fall,
Syncopated percussions,
Like memory of first love.

It wets eyelids,
Brings out a drawn sibilant breath.
The rain paints sky with a gray brush,
Satiates the earth,
Slakes desire, like an absent lover’s kiss.

Slowly memory unravels,
Oh! How the nymphs came and went,
Spilling the air
With moist yearning.
Isn’t love
The desire of something one can’t have?

The upended trees, buildings,
Reflected in recent clouds,
And the skin erupting with goose bumps,
The wetness clinging,
As memory to soul:
A feeling of saudade.

She went away,
Forsaking love,
The memory lingers,
As first showers.
The smell of wet earth,
Brings back her musky spoor,
Wish she were here,
To hug and to hold.

The clouds make love to thunder,
The skies pour forth anguish,
It would be enough,
To know that somewhere in the world,
She is alive,
And watching a similar rain.

The first showers fall,
Syncopated percussions,
Like the memory of first love.

J

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

Saudade, according to wikipedia (http://wikipedia.com) is a Portuguese word for a feeling of longing for something that one is fond of, which is gone, but might return in a distant future. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return. (Thanks “?!” for introducing me to the word.)

TRAVEL SNAPSHOT: TENT CITY

2007-04-30T20:47:00.001-05:00

She stood there watching, intent,
for hours, or so it seemed,
on a high rise balcony,
sipping the golden nectar of a
fruit from this land.

The sun beat down
and a child’s skin glistened
brown - the lather slithering
down - under mugs full of water,
extracted from a tiny
plastic bucket by his mom.

Her father soon joined her
for the engrossing balcony view,
and innocent, questioning eyes.

“Where do they live Dad?
The bathing child and his mom?”
For there wasn’t a ‘home’ in sight.

He pointed to the patch
of filthy plastic blue
sheltering a four-post home,
and a few others scattered
in the distance.

He christened it “Tent City”.

The cows on the road
didn’t shock or surprise,
the stray dogs were friends,
and a walk to the beach -
just a time to meet Sana -
a Tent City friend
now clutching a Barbie prize.

Pragya

JERUSALEM

2007-04-01T12:40:00.000-05:00

Written for Palm Sunday.

***

No victor’s entry this. And one must bide

one’s mount I suppose: it might have been worse.

At least the fellow’s uncomplaining, and a horse

would have been seen as pride.

The throngs gratify, though what understanding

they have must be left to conjecture or the ages:

do they know what this coming presages?

Six days to a crucifixion, palms notwithstanding.

***

Ambivalence

2007-03-12T03:03:00.000-05:00

Not crazy enough to run from street to street naked and stuttering just to be heard, not poetic enough to fill reams amidst drifting smoke, contemplate divorce, walk into a river with pockets full of shiny, round pebbles

Not louche enough to agree heartily or prudish enough to frown disapproval unequivocally and beyond doubt, not stymied enough to win the approval of fat-fingered, balding men who approve whole-heartedly of women who smile a lot and say nothing

Not stupid enough to give without taking, not clever enough to hold out the carrots one by one and hide the sticks away, just beyond the reach of the unsuspecting, the forgettable, the dispensable

Not pretty enough for fame, not ugly enough to incite ridicule the way the village idiot does from small, innocent children who never know any better

Not wronged enough for lawyers to hoist their trusty swords and ride into battle for the fated million or social workers to throng the streets wearing white, not entirely happy either.

MATUTINAL

2007-03-03T10:51:00.000-05:00

Mornings are refracted, a Nicol prism
shadow land, death overstaying its nightly
berth. The paling sky nudges it out,
in crumpled bedclothes, unsightly,
as it hurriedly gathers them about –
the start of another diurnal catechism.

Sleep layers the kitchen pane, grey
and pallid, a maid rudely shook awake.
It’ll be a while before its baleful stare
loses its blear, becomes less opaque
with the lightening air,
readies for the white implacable day.

I put the kettle on, mulling ghosts loath
to leave, bleak litany of a life’s course.
A flight departs for somewhere, cutting
briefly through the fog; till tea restores
routine, the familiar stir shutting
out debris, wrecks, ruins of youth.

***

LOST AND FOUND

2007-02-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

Odd spot to find a paperweight –
I mean, a windowsill in the office loo
is no repository for even the commonplace.
Yet there it is, with nary a clue
to its ownership or lack thereof, its glaze
winking sun perfect, smilingly ovate.

Still life: “Glass egg on ledge.”
In my mind the tentative title
forms itself, neat, un-dramatic;
a neutral, even recital
to stamp the perfection of the static.
For a moment I regard the image,

then pick the bauble up, not quite clear
what I’ll do with it, wondering too
at this curious epiphany:
loss, abandonment, a rescue
perhaps, in some funny
fairy tale where I play saviour

to vitreous birds in embryo.
Or whatever. For suddenly I’m fond
of the thing, like a schoolboy
and a matchbox beetle, a bond
of unaccountable, irrational joy –
as only another schoolboy would know.

***

Review of "The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai

2007-01-21T08:56:00.000-05:00

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss springs at you with the many-splendored colours of life in the North-Eastern part of India, Kalimpong to be exact. It is tragic, comic and a dark reminder of how insurgency, extremism is threatening to wreck this once-peaceful region of India. In fact, the threat of violence looms large throughout the novel, in the very words of characters that seem to have something lacking in them, just the feeling that their lives aren’t fulfilled.

Picturesque, but crumbling Chuo Oyu is the abode where young Sai is sent to after her parents’ death to live with her grandfather, the retired judge Bomanbhai Patel, who is living out the last phase of a life of a taciturn man who during his training in Civil Service in England didn’t speak to anyone for years and has painful memories of how he mistreated his wife to death, which he is trying to atone. He had sent his wife back home where his daughter was born. This daughter, a scientist, who never met her father lived all her life in hostels married Sai’s father, an orphan, who was also a scientist. The couple then go to work in Russia where Sai was born and both her parents die leaving her grandfather as the only caretaker and relation Sai has in the world.

Sai is being tutored by Gyan, in Chuo Oyu, who being a Ghurkha is sympathetic to the Ghurkha national Liberation Front (GNLF) which is violently demanding a separate homeland in this North-Eastern region. Gyan reports to his friends that the judge has two rifles in his house and one night they come and rob the house and humiliates him and his cook. The judge and the cook have a common bond that runs back to the days when the former was a district collector in a remote area where he went hunting for patridges and would write fake entries in his diary about the number of patridges he killed, whereas the truth was that he was a poor shot and killed none.

The situation in Kalimpong is shown to be getting worse as the militancy gains ground and the sisters Noni and Lola are coerced into harbouring terrorists in their house and they even come and poach on their property, building hutments over it. There are demonstrations where Khukri knives are brandished as the GNLF men demand a separate homeland. The irony of how they masquerade for what is according to them “a noble” cause, using insurgency and murder of innocents is brought out very well by the author.

Perhaps the most potent message that the novel conveys is of how a band of youth recruited by goons can threaten peace in a sleepy and peaceful haven and is only waking up to the new realities of life. These youth are inspired by re-runs of karate movies of Jackie Chan and the violent movies of Rambo. It’s a sad reflection of modern life. The novel’s principal comment, made lucidly clear, according to this writer, is how media can corrupt the youth and sow in them the ideals of violence and mayhem, manipulated by a few misguided individuals.

The cook’s son Biju is away in the US as an illegal immigrant, working in hotels run by shady Indian characters, being paid low, working all days of the month to chase his dream. But he finds that he hasn’t made any friends, and his relations are away in India. The idea of migration is well portrayed in these sections. Biju’s and Sai’s life become the leit motif of the novel with Sai being shielded from the childhood she hasn’t had neither in the convent nor in Chuo Oyu where she is a virtual prisoner and pines away for the love of the elusive Gyan, immersed in his poverty and ideals. There is a poignant section in the book when she goes in search of her absent lover and sees the depravity in which he lives.

Biju’s life is even more of that of a prisoner of his own conscience. Though he lives in New York he hasn’t the time to see the country, lives in poverty where he has to sleep in shifts, or on the floor of the hotel he works, and even has to serve beef which he detests. His friend the philandering Saeed Saeed is a colourful character from Zanzibar who is tormented by friends referred to him from his home country, as is Biju by his father the cook from India, who recommends to him stray wastrels who want to immigrate to the US from India. These “tribes” come to US for the first time and are desperate to make a living and like Biju is willing to undergo any torment to make ends meet. The novel truly depicts their sad lives.

The good father Booty who lives with Uncle Potty is found to be an illegal alien, though he has lived all his life in Kalimpong, trying to make it into the dairy capital of India. But he is thwarted by the ever present Amul brand of the original dairy capital of India – Anand. Father Booty is sent back to Switzerland for overstaying, and Kalimpong descends into mayhem with no food available, not even bread, and is overrun by terrorists and the military.

Much speculation has gone on in the media about the portrayal of Kalimpong, of how the denizen of the town hasn’t taken kindly to its portrayal by the author. But this writer feels that the novel has a valid point to make, of how an author can use artistic licence to make his/her point though it may be somewhat in the extreme. The author is primarily writing a work of fiction and not a factual account. It is a story of imaginary characters, though the settings may be real and the world he/she creates is unreal, and hints at his/her view of the truth.

She encapsulates the essence of Indian thought and thinking in this oeuvre of vivid colours of the literary spectrum. For example when the judge loses his dog and goes around asking if anyone has seen it, and the men whisper behind his back, “Sala, he is bothered about a dog, when people are dying here.” How typical.

A definite must read, even if only for Kiran Desai’s devastating wit, charming style, and the way she keeps the pace going. Desai is an author of the new breed who use multiple question marks “???” and multiple exclamation marks, “!!!” throughout the text. I think it jars and should have been avoided. The need is for subtlety and not overt exaggeration. What I also found jarring was the intimate description of the characters including some of the disconcertingly intimate habits of the judge and that of Gyan. Was the author following a stereotype here? Don’t now. However, given the Booker Award and all the salient points the novel makes, a not to be missed novel by a true artisan of the word.

Epilogue - The End of the Journey

2007-01-18T13:27:00.000-05:00

Cross posted from my blog: http://johnpmathew.blogspot.com

So final isn't final anymore. I have decided to extend my impressions of Delhi in a blog diary. How does it sound? Web log diary? Not nice, eh? But that's it what I want to call this series. I am writing this on the train back to Bombay in between reading Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss," as the coach has a socket to recharge laptops. Thank God!

I look outside the window and see the areas of the city that had remained shrouded till now. It is actually floating on a sea of multi-colored plastic. Plastic, plastic is everywhere. I see the equivalents of the slums of Bombay, juggies, they are called here. The masses living in them have come out to sun themselves and stand in circles, or huddle around a fire.

*******

On the final day in Delhi I have lunch with the pretty and smiling Smita (I bought her lunch when I was in Delhi last, so it's her turn), or "one who smiles," or, smilestop (her blog name), or, land of the smiling sun, a utopian land of her own creation. Verily, knowing her is like being a citizen of a land where there are lots of infectious smiles. I am a great smiler myself, and have found true friendship in this amazing woman. I owe a lot to her, and she is, in fact, all of friend, philosopher and guide.

It was she who offered to edit my novel when nobody would even look at it, teaching me the tricks of the book-editing trade. She is the one who helped me when I visited in May 2006, and again this time. This time she introduced me to her friend Asheeth who also has her quality of genuine concern and camaraderie. This is what Delhi is all about, I think, this lack of hypocrisy, this complete trust, this age-old mehman navazi. I may be wrong because I have seen only the kind and gentle members of the ryze.com community so far, except for my nephew Tommy (who, I am proud to say, has gone through a lot of deprivations in life and is now managing director of a multinational publishing house and drives a Chevrolet Optra), who is family.

Smita has found a job she genuinely likes and is so confident she will do well in it that I am truly pleased. The job involves, she tells me animatedly, in between her captivating smiles, as we have lunch, telecommunication projects, writing interesting content, giving presentations, which have made her super-confident, liberated, independent, and a new woman. I wonder why I don't meet her likes in Bombay. Or, may be I move around in the wrong circles. But there are Anita, Rekha, Sairee, Asmita, Annie, all making waves in their own ways. How do I classify and stereotype these new women? I can't. These women who are aggressively pursuing their careers and dreams defy stereotyping, and speak their mind which men tend to avoid. How does Smita manage to juggle a high-profile job, a family, a circle of friends? She says Buddhism has helped her to deal with the hurly-burly of life. I can see that it has from the glow on her face when she smiles. She really believes and practices what she says.

Asheeth, a friend I made through Smita, made sure I would attend the TC do on my first day in Delhi by picking me up from Connaught Place and dropping me back to my hotel. There I had the first karaoke experience of my life singing "Break out to the other side" and "Wonderful Tonight." I had arrived tired from my journey from Bombay and wanted sleep badly after sharing a seat with an underworld don, whose wild-eyed minions stood guard outside the door of the compartment and would touch his feet repeatedly to show their obsequiousness. They, the underlings, gave me a fright by their constant watchfulness and their distrust of all who were seated near their boss, the don.

*******

On the day I leave, I catch a taxi to Nizamuddin station. When I arrive there the cold is unbearable, seeping into my five layers of clothes like the tentacles of some cold, shivery sea animal. The station is swarming with people, the sort I have seen pulling cycle rickshaws that I had mentioned earlier. They have a variety of jackets, sweaters, mufflers, hoods, etc. on them. It all looks so surreal and Kafkaesque.

There are these incandescent lamps that shed their pale glow on a huddling mass, as if one big greyish black chunk of humanity, breathing stolidly, mothers pulling their children into the warmth of their bosoms, men shivering, teeth chattering, a few shouts, "Yeh, laundiye," don't know what that means. I also hear the mother profanity, but said in such low-key tenor as if it were a compliment.

What I think about is migration. Migration as from Pakistan to India, Bangla Desh to India, Central Asia to India, India to the US. They have these huge polythene sacks filled with their things, may be, pots and pans and even bedding. The floor is littered with tea and coffee cups, dirt hangs even on the incandescent lamps and no one is there to man the enquiry counter where I have to enquire which platform the Sampark Kranti Express would arrive. There are these eerie sounding announcements on the smallish public address system which instead of informing adds an amount of absurdity to the whole situation.

I ask a porter. Yes, they know such things. He directs me to platform number seven. Here the sense of migration is even more stark. People with their huge bundles cling to the doors as if for their lives. I think of the pictures of the partition of India and Pakistan where people are seen travelling on the top of trains. Hasn't anything changed? A wild-eyed man, his body covered in a bedsheet, only his eyes, nose and mouth showing asks a neatly dressed man whether the train stops at Mathura. They ignore him. Then he asks me. I don't know and say as much. It's his type that Lalloo should be helping not me. I can open my laptop log in to http://indianrail.gov.in and immediately find whether I have been allotted a seat, or, even make alternate bookings then and there on http://irctc.co.in.

True the new railway minister has brought improvements in tickets bookings, upgrades similar to airlines, facile changes, but is this still what it is like? Where are the courteous public relations staff to help the illiterate masses who do not know how to book a ticket on the computer? In this respect Lallooji's initiatives have failed. There is not an inch of spare space on platform seven. The whole place is littered with huddling masses of grey and black, a huge shivering protoplasm distinguished only by the moisture that wafts from their mouths.

I ask a porter to be shown where the two-tier air-conditioned coach would be. He takes me to the other end of the platform and deserts me pocketing the twenty rupees I give him. When the train comes, I find to my dismay that the two-tier air-conditioned coach is at the other end! So I have to lug my luggage back across the entire platform.

The cold is so unyielding that thought deserts me. I try to make notes about the great hulking mass that disappears into the maw of the train compartments. But the scene is so rife with the shouts of people, the wailing of children, the eerie announcements, the signature tune that goes "trrring tooong" after the announcements that I am thoroughly disoriented. I withdraw. I give up. No thought is possible in these circumstances.

*******

Yesterday after having lunch with Smita, I had walked in the environs of the colonial Connaught Place, eaten in Kentucky Fried Chicken (as I had done in Jeddah, when I had worked there), shopped, drank coffee at Cafe Coffee Day (where I did some of the writing of this blog post) and looked at the well-fed children of, may be, bureaucrats businessmen and executives. They seemed a different world than those that I saw on platform number seven. These people were very unlike the rickshaw pullers from whom the educated classes keep a distance, and only come together in the great equalizer of Indian Railways.

Shubhra, who has started writing poetry after nine years messages me to see if I am gone. I message back saying I am at Connaught Place and; can we meet? The reason is this poem (permanent link "To a Reluctant Writer") which I wrote to encourage a reluctant writer, which has inspired her to write after nine years. I am so glad I could help her. All my time on the networks is rewarded by the email she wrote me thanking me. She heads the human resource function of a large television network. She can't make it as it is a very busy day. This is what I mean. People in Delhi really care, and as Smita put it once, "It's our culture."

The poverty of the people I saw at Nizamuddin is amazing. They have no fancy branded suitcases. They use plastic sacks. And they carry their entire household utensils with them fearing that if they leave even their pots and pans in their hovels it would get stolen. Then it also comes handy for cooking in the villages to which they are migrating back, disillusion by the city. These are subsistence level laborers who dig the ditches, mend the pipes, make the furniture, and lay the bricks. I have worked with them in the construction projects in the Persian Gulf and their lot hasn't improved for thousands of years. They are people who lead lives of loss, I think, as I am reading Kiran Desai's, "The Inheritance of Loss." Many of them, with whom I had worked, had lost their everything in the process of emigrating to the Persian Gulf. This forms a constant leit motif of my novel (www.johnwriter.com). And they are still undergoing the pangs of the age-old system of migration, of armies invading, one people subjugating the other, the victors taking over the possessions of the vanquished. It's still going on. I am shocked and amazed no less.

This time the armies taking over surreptitiously are the internet-savvy, technophiles with their laptops like me. In Cafe Coffee Day I network with my friends on ryze.com and I can see another bunch on a computer with orkut.com on their screen. This online tribe can network as I have done in Delhi. In this city of the Mughals, because of my network contacts I could meet a lot of friends and even extend my agenda and my goals. They work in new economies like I do - telecommunications, Internet, financial services, ATM-driven banks. Yet they are a minority of the people of this nation, and this is the case of the minority taking over the majority.

The clothes the passengers that crowd Nizamuddin wear are probably the only ones they have, a polyester make that can be easily washed and used again. Where has Laloo Yadav's superfast trains and upgrades benefited them? Where are the clean toilets, clean services he promised? Yes, the two-tier air-conditioned compartment is clean and a fellow traveller lambasts the attendant who has given him a dirty towel. "They are all together, sab mile huye hain," he says meaning this is a result of corruption. But the sleeper and unreserved compartments which I have travelled often are dirty, stinking and waterless. On my way to Delhi a group of people, irate that their compartment didn't have water, had accosted the ticket checker, who showed his indifference.

There is pain here, there is dispossession, there is dissipation and loss of faith in democracy and democratic process. What is democracy if the huge changes that the government envisages cannot benefit these people? They don't even know what booking tickets on the Internet means, and if they go to the station to buy tickets they are told that the tickets are sold out, over the Internet, over computer terminals, by ticketing agents. So they don't bother to book tickets, they hang on for dear life, cling to the doors with big plastic bags full of their precious pots and pans.

As the train moves smoothly over the rails, I think of these things, write them on my laptop. My job is to record and I am recording what I think is a crucial aspect of life that I discovered, rather epiphanically during my visit to Delhi. They say travelling broadens the mind. But if it also does broaden the minds of those poor huddling masses with their blankets around their heads and shoulders, who are indistinguishable from the floor on which they huddle, I would be more than happy.

Final Installment - Blogging on Delhi

2007-01-12T01:21:00.000-05:00

Lots of things to write about Delhi, but don't know where to begin. Wonderful friends met online become flesh and blood realities, Vijay, Rekha, Sairee, all disembodied names in the networked world become living persons, with personalities of their own.

When I called Vijay he said he was in Connaught Place and can wait for me to have lunch. I am something of a Metro expert now as a boy comes and asks me for directions. I board the metro but lose my sense of direction and go in the opposite one. Chavri Bazar? What's wrong? It should have been Rajiv Chowk. Slightly disoriented I get down and walk to the opposite side and board the next metro to new Delhi and Rajiv Chowk. Metro expert, indeed!

Vijay Nair, carries his lawyerly success with ease. He is dressed in a natty black suit and carries two mobile phones, one of which is a Blackberry. He shows me some of his poems on the blackberry. Yes, a lot of poetry is happening on blackberries these days.

We have Darjeeling tea, which reminds me of Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss" which I am reading now. There are a few Brits around, obviously attracted by the name "Oxford Book Stores." Vijay, a corporate lawyer, tells me that the prices of property has increased many times over. It's not only the backoffices that are shifting to India but the front offices too, he says. He should know, he deals in corporate law.

Vijay is unassuming, humble about his beginnings, and we have a common background in that we have been educated in English-medium schools run by Malayalees which have Malayalam as a subject. That's why we both can appreciate the Malayalam poetry of Sachidanandan, whom Vijay translates for the literary network Caferati. He tell me that Sachi lives in Delhi, which is news to me.

Vijay drops me to Greater Kailash II where I have an appointment with a publisher for my book on Kerala. I wait in a Barista coffee shop nearby as I am early for the appointment. I overhear the conversation, as is a habit with me. A man says he wakes up at 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays as he spends the whole night chatting. I wonder how much the internet has changed people's lives as I am here myself because I booked rail tickets on irctc.com, booked hotel accomodation, and even fixed up appoinments by email.

A group of girls sitting nearby turn out to be young moms discussing their first-born children. Their skins are soft and blemishless (what creams do they use?), and their excited chatter is about things like, "They are little budding flowers," obviously referring to their children. I am shocked, they don't look like moms.

Appointment over, I call Rekha. She is in Saket and says she can come to her Greater Kailash I office to meet me. Anita, Asmita and Sairee also work from that office, so I think I can meet the three of them. I while away some more time, as Rekha would be in the office only by 6 p.m.

Finally I catch a rickshaw after bargaining the fare and is left at Greater Kailash I M block market. Here I am at a loss as I am directed here and there for the address. I cross several lanes, all lined by neat bungalows of Kholis, Khannas, Gargs, etc. Some have watchmen guarding the door who seem helpful but are confusing.

Rekha, statuesque beauty that she is (we have been chatting and emailing for a long time now), is an interior designer and makes exquisite home furniture. Sairee is busy on her computer. Anita has left for the day and Asmita is in a client meeting. Rekha and I discuss family, Kerala, writing.

I ask her why she is not on the networks, and she says she writes for websites on interiors but do not get paid for it. I tell her to at least ask. She has been to Lebanon, Greece, Turkey and Italy and a website wants her to write about her "budget" travels in these countries. Of course, she doesn't expect to be paid for this. But I say "you must insist that they pay even a small honorarium which most publishers do." The joy of receiving a cheque in the mail for something you have written is unbelievable, I tell her.

Rekha gives me some tasty apple tea she has brought from Turkey. It is such a wonderful blend of tea and apple that I exclaim in delight after the first sip. Then I talk to Sairee who is still busy on the computer and tell her what a wonderful network NCR Delhi (which she manages) is. She says its the members who make it so and she wanted a network where members' questions are answered.

Meetings over, I walk in the chilling cold and am directed by a kind man who tells me it is safer to take a rickshaw and not a bus, as the bus stop can only be accessed through a jungle, "Kya jaane kaise log milenge wahan par."

A rickshaw driver takes me to Rail Yatri Niwas for Rs 60. The roads are bordered by trees on both sides and I can't see where I am going, as there are no landmarks. It's a bit like Jeddah, I mean, the well-laid roads and the absence of clearly visible landmarks as in Bombay.

Delhi is an affluent city with spare income and spare time, I reason, compared to Bombay. People spend less time commuting and waiting. I pay Rs 5000 for a first-class pass and commuting to work for which I can easily have a car and fill it with petrol and meet a lot of friends and participate in social activities in Delhi. Not so in Bombay. Even after spending that royal sum of money I am hard up for time, waiting for trains and buses and rickshaws, and generally fretting all the time.

Bombay is a planner's nightmare while Delhi's circular structure is a planner's dream. The posh Greater Kailash I visited is well spaced out and there is none of the clutter one sees in Bombay. New Bombay comes close to Delhi but New Bombay also suffers in infrastructure, activities and entertainment.

Young moms who discuss their wards over coffee, a man who chats the full night on the internet, a karaoke night consisting entirely of ryze.com members, conversations and friends who are politeness personified (people drop me back home after every do I visit), all constitute Delhi.

But lurking somewhere is poverty and dispossession that remain neatly hidden somewhere behind the trees and parks, signs of which can be seen in the rickshaw puller laboring on his pedals on the slight incline of the road outside my hotel room. He is only dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, trousers with a bedsheet thrown over his shoulders in this bitter cold. A photographer clicks me as I stand making some notes at Connaught Place and moves away before I can talk trade with him. He is apprehensive I would snatch his film roll or something. I am a photographer, too, you see, dumbo, and want to ask what techniques you use.

All said and done, Delhi is happening, and this being the twenty-fifth year of my first visit to it, I would want to come back, again, and again, and again....

Blogging While Drinking Coffee in Connaught Place

2007-01-10T05:12:00.000-05:00

Cross posted from my blog: http://johnpmathew.blogspot.com

Am blogging while drinking coffee at Cafe Coffee Day in Connaught Place, New Delhi (yes, technology makes it possible!). It is bone chilling cold. A cold wave is going on the temperatures are hovering around -2 degree C, close to freezing. "Wear four layers," a friend had said, "Carry sweaters, mufflers, gloves, monkey caps, wollens, anything that will keep you warm." I am wearing all these and am still cold. I think I am not used to the cold.

Rail Yatri Niwas, where I am staying, turned out to be a disappointment. But at Rs 450 a night with breakfast what did you expect? The door doesn't have a handle, paint is peeling in patches, the curtain rod has been torn off and hangs bent crookedly, the bulb in the bathroom hangs by the wire, the electrical sockets do not work (I had to hunt around for a socket that did, which is down below a table, so, good exercise for my lazy bones), and there is only some slim glass windows shielding me from the cold outside. So it is as if I am in the open, well, almost.

At night I can't sleep as I am close to New Delhi railway station and the hooting wakes me up in a dither, frenzied. Last night my leg had grown so cold it was numb, so I had to get up and walk around. There is no hot water so the precious liquid without which I can't take a bath has to be fetched by the attendant, who is as lazy as they come. I have a habit of oiling my hair before a bath, but the coconut oil has frozen, and no amount of coaxing would make it yield. So I cut the neck with a knife, my trusted swiss knife, and had to rub the oil in my palm to transform it from a goeey paste to something remotely resembling oil.

I first travelled to Delhi in 1982, on business, of course. I was working for Chemical Age of India and being the man-who-dons-many-hats I was sent off to supervise the printing of our magazine, which for economic reasons was in Delhi. I was raw and my boss was so worried that he insisted that I phone him first thing after I reached Delhi, and had the press owner come and see if I was comfortable. I loved working in CAI, it was as if I was a member of the boss's family. Until today the very word "boss" evokes memories of JPdS. Don't know where he is or what he is doing now. Forget, as I do most disturbing things, long story which I might write about sometime.

A lot has changed about Connaught Place. Brand showrooms have replaced the quaint shops selling shawls and saris. Yesterday I walked around Palika Bazar which is all glitzy, the touts are still there, and bargaining is a dream! You can get away with quoting half of their price, and can get away, too. People are much more well dressed than before. There is money, don't know where it comes from but there is a lot of greenbacks out there. There are many discount sales of winter wear, and I regret buying a jacket from Bombay. There is such a wide variety available here, and cheaper, too.

Delhi girls are still beautiful, though a bit filled out. I don't mind. I guess the cold makes them eat more and the calories stick to them more than in a humid city like Bombay. The roads are a dream come true! So what if the driving is a bit aggressive. Scooterists come at you on the sidewalk where they aren't supposed to be. Delhi people are much more polite and civilized than Bombay denizens. Don't crucify me for this, dear Bombayites, but I am yet to hear a sister... mother... or sistermother... profanity.

Attended a karaoke at Turquose Cottage organized by Subbu and Asheeth Manu. Mostly ryze.com member turned up. Garima, Smita, Sachin, Bobbin, Umesh, Shalin, Shashi, Richa, Bohemian Rhapsody, besides Asheeth and a lot of others turned up, and a good time was had by all. I sang "Breakout to the Other Side" and "Wonderful Tonight," my first karaoke experience.

Makes me wonder whether online communities are THE trend of the future. I can't imagine a website programed and hosted in the US can make all this happen. Amazing! More in future instalments.

Christmas with Cheriachen

2007-01-03T04:08:00.000-05:00

Cheriachen is sad. It is Christmas, a season to be joyful, and none of his children are around. It’s a day to be happy and jolly but he is not the least happy. He invited me for lunch on Christmas as my family was away and I went, as I am an acquaintance. We are related, yes, but a very distant relationship, in fact, he is a cousin four times removed.

The afternoon is a wintry cool, not too hot, not too cold, the plants in Cheriachen’s balcony dance in a complicated rhythm weaving patterns on the roof of his plaster-of-paris roof where Christmas baubles and streamers hang forlornly.

“There is no future in India. You know something? You should have gone abroad long ago,” he says morosely, “there is no happiness, no future here. Only sadness.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“See I could have gone. My brother is in the US, my daughter is in the US, a daughter is a nurse in Ireland, I can go and live with them even now, but I am comfortable in my life here, though I am not happy, I am not very unhappy here,” he says chastened.
“The same with me. I have learned to adjust. But I read there are guns in schools, violence, and racism, in fact, color discrimination, ten times that we have here.”

“What color discrimination? What are you talking? My daughters are as white as milk, put them next to the white Saiyips, you can’t tell the difference,” I forgot that Cheriachen and his children, though they were a darker shade of beige, considered themselves white, as white as an Occidental.

He pauses as his wife enters and offers me a cool glass of some colored water and Christmas cakes.

“How are you?” she asks me perfunctorily to which I give the standard answer. There is great tiredness and deliberation in her voice, as if she is not feeling too well.

“We were corporate employees. Our lives are gone. We get a pension, which is enough to make ends meet. Our children are enjoying the fruits of our labor.”

I remember, Cheriachen and his wife would walk the three kilometers from home to railway station every day, and not waste money on rickshaws. They would scrimp to the point of starving themselves, but they would save every extra Rupee. They taught their three daughters the value of thrift, and the children all grew to be responsible adults who knew the value of money, and, most importantly, how it is retained and not frittered away.

I know his routine nowadays as I live nearby. He goes for a walk in the morning, comes back exhausted, looks at an animated picture of a waterfall with sound effects, birds chirping, water falling on rocks, which the company he worked for gave him as a retirement gift. That’s all the nature he can afford in the concrete building in which he lives. The building is part of a complex named “Sahyadri,” in Vashi, New Bombay. Then he sleeps the whole day before he goes for an evening walk for purchasing groceries.

The phone rings insistently.

“Lillykutty, pick up the phone, it may be Jessy,” he says from where he sits. He has arthritis and a lot of other illnesses of old age, and is slumped in his chair, his chest collapsed into himself, his stomach protruding, and his face sagging with tissues that were once taut and healthy. His eyes have large circles under them due to sleeplessness, or, due to extra sleep. He sleeps all the time.

“It was difficult,” he reminisces, “bringing up my girls, the work was hard, I was a storekeeper you see, and if something is missing you have to take the rap. I slaved all these years.”

“Jessy is on the phone,” his wife Lillykutty says, “she wants to wish you.”

He gets up heavily from the chair and waddles to the phone re-tying his loose loin cloth around his waist. It had slipped.

“Haaaan, happy Christmas,” he cackles, “how is Shinymol? Fine? How is Joji? Fine?”

Static and an excited metallic voice at the other end.

Yes, he is happy for some time. But the happiness doesn’t last. His face droops again, his eyes again take a haunted look, he sinks into the chair.

“There, I mean in the US, they work only five days. And they don’t have to work like the company has bought our souls. They do their work and then go home. On weekends they go to beach resorts or holiday homes. If you don’t have a job the company pays you five hundred dollars a month, imagine. Around Rupees Twenty Thousand for doing nothing, just sitting at home. It’s not like here.”

It seems he is very upset and disgruntled, “Is that so?” I prompt.
“My other daughter, Jomi, who got married recently to a doctor, she is luckier,” he says pompously, “she is in Ireland and only works three days in a week and rests for four days, and draws a handsome salary, unlike here, you work six days and… all the harassment…,” he groans and shakes his head.

“And free healthcare, do they have free healthcare?”

“Yes, everything is free, absolutely free. Even education. I remember the difficulty I went through to get my daughters admitted to nursing school. I had to pay the hospital fifty thousand rupees. Then the fees, and after passing the miserly stipend they get for two years. Then for the passport, I had to bribe the officials. Yeverywhere corruption. God, it was so awful, but now they are enjoying a good life. God bless them,” Cheriachen says.

“Jomi took her doctor husband to Ireland, and he has a job in the same hospital where she works,” Lillykutty says from the kitchen. She sounds morose and depressed, too, two unhappy people in an empty two-bedroom flat. She is preparing our Christmas lunch. The smell of mutton and assorted curries fill the flat in Sahyadri housing society.

“Jessy’s daughter Shinymol studies for free. You should see her photographs,” he fishes out some photographs from the bottom of a pile of newspapers on the teapoy, “she is so fair, chubby, and fat, anyone would want to take her in hands and kiss her.”

“I guess it is the food they eat there. I read it is full of fat.”

“No. Not that. They don’t have to exert themselves, no? All they walk is inside their houses, from this room to that. To go anywhere they sit in a car, to go to school they sit in a car, to go to church they sit in a car. Not like we used to do. When I was a boy, I would walk five miles to our school, in Kerala.”

So that’s it. The number of empty, wasted miles spent walking is making Cheriachen a bitter man. He should have been in another country, sitting in a car, I think.

The phone rings insistently again.

“Lillykutty, it must be Jomi from Ireland,” Cheriachen says from his chair. He doesn’t make an effort to get up. He can’t.

Lillykutty comes into the room. Picks up the phone and says the usual “Merry Christmas.” She sounds happy.

Then she say “What?” into the phone and listens for a while. I can see her face fall, her body sag. Then she says, “Why do you want to do that? God, help us! God help us!”

Some static from the other end, a distraught voice. She motions towards Cheriachen.

Cheriachen comes to the phone, smiles joyfully, says, “Merry Christmas,” his sagging face muscles stretch, up, up, as he listens. He is imagining in his mind the heaven from which his daughter is calling him, free of worries, free healthcare, in fact, free everything. He is about to cackle when the whole muscles and integument of his face drop like a stone dropped from a height.
“What?” he says and looks at Lillykutty. Their eyes meet. There are tears in Lillykutty’s eyes. She sobs. Cheriachen puts down the phone. His eyes glaze with tears.

“Now, why would she want to do that? She has everything, works only three days a week, has around two lakhs salary per month, a good-looking husband, has everything virtually free, everything free….”

“We found the best husband for her, imagine, a doctor, handsome, too. We arranged the best wedding for her in the community. Now she says she wants to leave him, and she can’t get along with him,” Lillykutty says.

I look away. The rest of Christmas with Cheriachen was a torture, for me, at least.

DECLINE AND FALL

2006-12-27T20:56:00.000-05:00

Afterwards, the history books quietly tapered
references to it to paragraph mentions or less –
though an eminent name had once laboured
two decades over a work of crushing dryness,
a commissioned job that suffered from an excess
of statistic. But he was much favoured.

The later chroniclers, however, didn’t err
in their parsimony: they merely mapped
words on to public memory, as it were.
The frugality was no more than apt
for an empire’s demise while it napped,
and its foes made the most of its slumber.

Yet there were portents long before the fated
dismemberment. Sadly, the few who saw them
went unheard, unheeded; their voices grated
against the stern chorus of the anthem,
the lumpen Gloria they couldn’t stem.
Hubris soared. Patiently, nemesis waited.

The enemy cared little. With no past
nor glory to weigh it down, it went
openly about, colours nailed to the mast,
unwavering of intent;
while from afar rattled Neros sent
vain shibboleths to the outclassed.

In the end the Cassandras were proved right,
if only Pyrrhically. All the doom
foretold came to pass, as the final blight
descended in crepuscular gloom,
and sombre conclaves met to decide whom
to blame for the dominion’s shambled plight.

Little left now, little worthy of recall.
A few toothless proconsuls survive,
with bleached memories, versions of the fall:
blind to the last, they still connive
at lies they keep doggedly alive.
An aqueduct mocks; elsewhere a derelict wall.

***

Cultural Awards? It's All a Cultural Thing, Isn't It?

2006-12-21T06:11:00.000-05:00

Cultural awards? makes me think. A post I had made on a literary network made me gloat a bit. What isn't cultural these days. We are swamped by cultural shows, dance shows, award shows, all these have the same set of beautiful culture-vulture people smiling for the crowds, that's us, the receipients of culture.

A newspapers (I think the Guardian) called the Booker Award as a cultural award. If a certain author wins the award several times over the years, it mean the award is cultural. It's so natural. When the judges sit to confer an award, they say, "Oh, so and so is excellent in this novel. The also rans lack the touch of this genius, besides it is safe and politically correct." The publishing industry minders, the leeches who live sucking blood from the system are also happy as it helps with sales. The many deserving writers, who should have won an award, or been given a break in writing, don't get a foot in the door. The ones who are queueing after them, well, forget them.

Likewise if an actor, say Shahrukh Khan win the Filmfare Best Actor award five times, then it is more a cultural award. It shows the "industry" is in awe of him, his dimples, his acting prowess, his promotional skills. Those four awards out of five could have gone to more deserving debutants. But, no, it's a cultural thing, isn't it? We have a lot of talented actors who aren't recognized. Arjun Ramphal for one. I have admired his skills for long, and he manages to hold on, but never wins an, erm, cultural award. Is it that he is a bit reluctant to cultivate the culture vultures?

This fame business, methinks, works like a conveyor belt. If the top ones don't fall from the belt the smaller ones do. If the top ones don't gracefull exit the small ones don't make an entry. So the ones on the top make every effort to stay on top, or, sort of jam the movement of the belt, and that's a cultural thing. Merit gets side tracked for popularity and visibility.

The same thing happens I guess in matters literary. Poor writers (such as the humble me) have been trying in vain to get established writers to recommend their (our) work. This is established practice. Where would RK Narayan be without Graham Greene? Where would Arundhati Roy be without Pankaj Mishra? But, no, how could they? What would people think? How can they recommend a writer who may be a dud or a future competitor when they themselves are so desperately sucking up to the system? Make it a leeetle difficult for them, or, better ignore them, they would naturally fall off the conveyor belt soon.

Ranjit Bolt, a translator of classical European theatre who lives in the UK gives another jolt to the Booker as culture discussion by the statement that being brown helps to win the Booker. More the reason to believe that the Booker is indeed a culture award. Political correctness would have it that the awards go to the previously oppressed classes, incarcerated in their color, wanting desperately to come out. But Bolt forgets that one must be brown and female to win culture awards. Aw, look at Arundhati, Jhumpa and, now, Kiran. What flawless skin, what smiles, what teeth. But that is the cribbing of an unpublished, grumpy author.

If culture is what awards are all about society is also not far behind. Kalimpong has raised the flag of revolt claiming that it has been wrongly represented by Kiran, and likewise Brick Lane. Who says novels are for woolly headed nerds? Shows that people do take novels seriously. But the culture-vultures of the genteel literary world meet in discreet eating houses in New York and New Delhi and exchange notes on who is "cool" and who is not. What styles could likely win culture awards and what styles are most likely not.

These self-appointed guardians of culture can be seen everywhere. At award shows, art shows, movie shows baring their fangs (sorry, teeth). Visibility is what they are after. And the media, ever in awe of the Page 3 culture is only too willing to oblige. Culture rules, long live culture!

Do You Believe It?

2006-12-15T08:40:00.000-05:00

“Three in one, three in one. Three movies for the price of one.”

He looks tired, his hair has not been dyed for a long time, white strands show under the black color that has been washed away. His voice grates. The evening is hot. The junction is clamoring with vehicles.

Pakya spits, drinks the glass of water in the smudged tumbler, gargles. Sweat beads, and drips inside his shirt.

“Which picture?”

“Loot Gayee Laila, Don, and Unkahee Chahat.”

“What?”

“It’s a hit. Laila’s honor has been looted. Genuine movie, what acting, just like real.”

“How much?” Pakya asked.

“Rupees fifteen for three movies, aree, baap, no sisterfucking theater will show you three movies. This Javed Kanya guarantees.”

There’s a poster of Amitabh Bachhan and Zeenat Aman, stars of Don, and a lurid poster of Loot Gayee Laila. Laila shows a lot of smooth, chubby thighs, and a heavy bosom. It is dark and Pakya can’t see too well. The tea stall is clamoring with people sipping tea. A stove hisses below a steaming vessel, the stall-owner adds to the cacophony by banging his ladle loudly on it.

Should he go in? The so-called theatre is in a slum, there is a dark room that opens through what can be called a door, some seedy looking characters lounge near the door, suspiciously looking like murderers or rapists or both.

Pakya takes the glass of tea and sips it, downing it with the slow deliberation that wants to make the sweetness last.

The night is young and Pakya badly wants something to happen. That would include a visit to the dance bar, which is expensive, or this dingy, ugly little room in a slum that shows X-rated movies for Rs fifteen on a big LCD screen.

But he doesn’t like the look of Javed Kanya, who is dressed in white shirt and trousers, which were white once. That was long ago. Now it is a shade of brown. He is one-eyed, he squints. His long-sleeved shirt isn’t buttoned. The shirt front is open and the sleeves flaps about as he moves. His mouth is masticating betel nut, and when he speak the red juice runs down the corners of his mouth.

“Don, we are showing the old Don, starring Amitabh Bachhan, not the new Don, starring Sharukh Khan, baap,” he wipes his mouth with his hand, and afterwards scoops his private parts with the same hands and kneads them, balls and all. He shifts his hands and legs around a lot, in a sort of filmy style.

“What’s the difference between that Don and this Don?” Pakya asks.

“Old Don, Amitabh Bachhan, new Don, Sharukh Khan. What is Amitabh? What is Sharukh?” He ends his sentence with a derogatory lowering of his jaw.

********

Pakya looks at the inviting posters and imagines the bliss of seeing it all. At least the mystery of Laila’s taut thighs and bosom would be solved when he sees her on screen. Pakya drools. The sensation of lust passes down his head to his toes, pausing at his crotch. He craves some entertainment, the crasser the better. His works in an automobile spare parts shop doesn’t offer him any satisfaction. He is constantly fetching parts for his corpulent boss who sits, and sits the whole day smoking, and ordering him around. The work frustrates him so much that he needs to escape every evening.

“Make up your mind fast, fast. What? Or, you won’t even get a ticket for Rupees Thirty. This Don is the best movie every produced. I can dare anyone to contradict me. Even our real-life Don grew up on this movie.”

“Which real-life Don?”

“Arree, what Don, you don’t know. He grew up here. Have you ever heard of Chota Chetan?”

“Arre, that Don? Who doesn’t? What, you know him?” Pakya is amazed. Chota Chetan is the country most wanted man.

“Know him? We played cricket together, he and I. We sold tickets in black market together. We were close buddies once.”

“And you?”

“Fate. He makes movies now. He controls a criminal empire. I am still a hustler of movie tickets. He sits abroad, I am here.”

So sad. But he could be lying.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it or not, it’s your choice. Tell me do you want tickets, kali fokat, don’t be too smart, what?”

He turns away to hustle some more.

“Hey Kanya, I will buy your ticket, huhn? But tell me your story. I mean, your story and Chota Chetan’s,” Pakya beckons.

*******

Pakya hands him the money. Kanya wets his fingers with spit, tears a ticket and gives it. There’s a long time for the show to start. The evening is getting warmer. It must be hot inside the theatre.

“Then listen. First buy me half a glass of cutting tea.”

Pakya looks at his face, a million finely etched wrinkles crowd it like spider webs. He has only a few teeth left in his mouth, his speech is rough, disjointed.

“He and I were friends,” he says blowing into his tea, “why, we are friends even now. If he came here we would have a drink. He is from these parts, we grew up together, played cricket together.”

“Really?” Pakya is incredulous. His mouth hangs open. He had only read about Chota Chetan’s exploits from newspapers and television channels. That this ruin of a man knows, or knew, the real Don, the real real Don, not the Don of the films, fascinates him.

“Yes. And we sold tickets of the old movie Don together at the local theatre.”

“What does he look like?”

Javed Kanya tries to remember, but his memory isn’t that sharp. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve and leaves a long stain on it.

“Short, long hair just like you. He always used to toss it off his eyes. And yes he used to walk very fast, his rubber slippers flopping after him.”

“How did he become so big a Don and you are left in this dump?” Pakya asks motioning towards the dilapidated theatre made of tin sheets. Some Hindi music plays inside. It seems odd, but life can be odd.

“I can make a picture with that story. Tell you a secret? Chota Chetan was inspired by this movie Don, the old Amitabh Bachhan movie, I mean.”

“How? You mean the movie Don created a Don in real life? You mean he became a gangster because of this movie? Tell me how.” Pakya asks incredulously, his jaws dropping further.

“Listen, words have power, they are sharper than any knife, can penetrate you more than any bullet. Javed Kanya knows.”

“You think I am a chootiya, a fool to believe you?”

“Abey, don’t call me Chootiya, what?”

Then Pakya remembers he is a friend of the real Don, and shuts himself up and listens.

“Those days… what a life we had. We were only small children, innocent of the ways of the world. We thought selling tickets in black was fun. Chota Cheta was a youngster like you. We did it for want of something to do. Just like that. It would fetch some money to buy clothes, a bike, and we could see movies for free.”

He is silent for a long time. The clamor of traffic around the junction is getting louder. More people are anxiously gathering around the theatre. Javed Kanya seems too engrossed in his story to care.

“We used to sit in the back rows and whistle and clap as Amitabh came on screen. Chetan would be too engrossed in the movie. His eyes would light up, he would jump on his seat, clap, whistle, and throw money at his hero. He was a bit too involved. Remember I told you words have power. ”

Finally, Kanya drank what was left of the tea and spat on the road.

“You know this dialogue, ‘Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi namumkin hai’? To catch the Don is not only difficult, it is impossible.”

“Yes. That’s my favorite dialogue.”

“His favorite dialogue too. Those words… that snatch of movie dialog… they have such power… it was written by fire in his soul. He has been on the run for so long and believes nobody can catch him, not his enemies, not the police. I doubt if they ever will. I know him.”

“Aree, your mother’s! What are you talking?”

“Yes. Only he believed in those words so strongly, so strongly, they have tried everything, the police, his enemies, the Interpol, the spy rings, they still can’t arrest him.”

“What? I can’t believe it. A mere dialog of a movie can’t turn a middle-class boy into one of the country’s biggest criminals.”

“Believe it or not, it’s up to you. But this is his story. He believed. I didn’t believe in anything. That’s why I am here, and he is where he is. Now I have to go, got to sell more tickets.”

He ambled away, a broken, decrepit aging man, his hair like wisps of candy floss.

******

After the movie Pakya looked around for Javed Kanya. He was there lolling against the makeshift table that had a cash box and a bossy-looking man sitting in a plastic chair.

“Do you believe me now?” Kanya asked.

“No, I still can’t,” Pakya says shaking his head. He could never believe that a mere movie - floating pictures and dialogues on a screen - can create a real life criminal as powerful as Chota Chetan.

But who knows? He is one of the disbelievers like Javed Kanya here who don’t believe in anything, and drift aimlessly as a leaf in the monsoon wind.

“Disbelief cannot alter the truth,” Kanya says wistfully. The night is hot as Pakya walks home. He fervently hopes he isn’t inspired too much by the movie to become a criminal.

DIVERSION

2006-12-14T12:34:00.000-05:00

“The only person KVK doesn’t know is himself probably.”

- Colleague at work to others, in response to an apropos remark of mine.

***

He’s profoundly unaware of what he’s said.
He’s part of what I call canaille, not my kind;
I indulge his inane jokes and grin
inanely back, hiding distaste behind
a forbearance wearing tiresomely thin.
But this once I widen my eyes instead,

stopped short by the remark’s unwitting truth:
“Out of the mouths of babes” – the image
sits grotesquely with his frame,
and is quickly discarded as sacrilege.
Still, wondering whence his wisdom came
(for the chap is nothing if not uncouth),

I essay a tentative bow, an awkward nod
at humility. Uncondescending, I pat his back,
smiling more at circumstance than at him,
while he, confused, senses a different tack,
mumbles a thanks, ascribes no doubt to whim
this strange indulgence (distinctly odd),

and moves on to wonted worlds where he’s
at home. Alone again, I take two drags, flick
the butt in an arc, missing the bin…Damn.
Somehow never quite learnt that trick –
as indeed many another, making me what I am,
whatever that may be or is.

***

HOSPITAL VIGNETTE

2006-11-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

I watch the doc and intern discuss the ‘case.’
The drollery escapes both – or maybe the joke
in this slightly absurd farce is beyond them.
After all, they must be saying, a stroke’s a stroke,
even if the cause was someone dumping him
to marry. The wife knows, puts a face.

Is it face, I wonder, that makes her nurse
that uncouth hulk, rude and petulant as a brat
as she cajoles meals and medicines in
with bully or banter: no more than that,
surely? For she can’t hope to win
what the other had, what never was hers.

Soon he’ll go home, wheeled out by hands
now duty bound, strangers to love: and back
in his dreams or cups will rue and pine,
and snap at table at some imagined lack
or other, while she humours his whine,
cheerful victim of his crippling romance.

***

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri - A Review

2006-11-20T07:46:00.000-05:00

I have just finished wading through “The Namesake” written by Jhumpa Lahiri. “Wading” is the word I use because, though Lahiri is an engaging writer, she fills her novel with too many details, over which I stumble, ponder, wonder (hmm, now why would she have had to say that?), genuflect, and then straighten myself. Her paragraphs are uniformly half a page and in that, too, these inconsequential details of everyday life, some cultural vestiges lie around like stumbling blocks.

I am constrained to mention this here because the flow is hampered, I lose track, and finishing the book was a great effort. I don’t like to be exhausted reading a book; I like to be entertained. I guess this applies to most writers of the Diaspora and, our own homegrown variety. We are so much anxious to impress with our knowledge and our articulation that we overdo it, consistently, constantly.

Now, I may be veering into the rant mode but this is something Lahiri does through this excellent novel. If you are through the first hundred pages, it becomes a little better. You can safely ignore the details and go ahead, come what may. But getting over the first hundred pages is the toughest part. When Lahiri describes each item in a house, or, a rented hotel room, you have no alternative but to sit up and cry, “Whoa! She is so perceptive, she gives me a complex.” Yes, she does, to all pretenders, such as I, who think they can write. But one also thinks, “There she goes, why would she include all that? Is it significant, a leit motif, for the rest of the story?” But disappointingly it isn’t.

It’s the story of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Ashoke is told to leave the country by a man he meets during a train journey. The train in which he is traveling is derailed in the night and the compartments are smashed and thrown off the rails. Ashoke is injured in the accident but has a providential escape because he happens to be clutching a novel written by Nikolai Gogol which he was reading at the time of the mishap. So, obviously, Nikolai Gogol has a prominent part to play in Ashoke’s survival and he names his first-born Gogol, probably to record his thanks to the Russian story teller.

He immigrates to the United States with Ashima, gets a job raises a family of two. Gogol and Sonia are the two children he raises the Indian, sorry, Bengali way, protectively, always apprehensive, always paranoid about security. The children are happy-go-lucky American kids and they do not know from where their parents’ fear comes from. (They do not know that the fear originates from India where anything left untended is summarily snatched away, or vandalized.)

But Gogol resents being named thus, and is not flattered by his Russian name, that too of a writer thought to be a maniacal genius. He militates against his father’s choice of nomenclature. He has his name changed to Nikhil but the original name sticks to him like a ghost from the past, and haunts him. The teaching of Gogol’s writings in school is a big embarrassment to him, and he cowers from any association with Gogol, the writer.

Ashoke and Ashima does a heroic job of raising a family, protecting a culture in an alien land, in which they are recently emigrated strangers. They have a very close-knit community of Bengali friends in the US and their interaction is restricted to this group who meet for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and other social dos. The urge is very strong among migrants to maintain their cultural identity when they are in an alien land, and Ashoke and Ashima would like to pass on their Indian-ness to their children.

But the children are drawn towards the mainstream White culture. Gogol has affairs with white girls/women and nearly marries one much against the wishes of his parents. The Indian girl he marries eventually, through the persuasion of his mother Ashima jilts him for a Russian. Sonia marries a white man, and therefore Ashoke’s and Ashima’s dream of propagating the culture they have so assiduously cultivated in an alien land collapses. So, in that sense, the emigrant’s strict phobias seems trivial and unfounded.

The most poignant part of the novel is the sudden and unannounced death of Ashoke. Now, this is the best part of the novel. It is narrated in such deadpan prose that it rings so true, so authentic and life-like. Death is the most unexpected of visitors. The reader is shocked beyond disbelief, and can understand the emotional turmoil that Ashima, and her children Gogol and Sonia go through at this juncture. It is to Lahiri’s credit that she has handled this evolving drama pretty well.

Gogol falls in love with Moushumi, the girl his mother has picked for him, and who is trying to get over a broken engagement with her White boyfriend. They marry, and for sometime all is hunky dory. This section of the novel is well handled and the reader is shocked that Moushumi would go off with another man, a Russian professor, leaving poor Gogol. But that is life, and that is literature, so authentic as to be stupefying. Lahiri handles these passages really well, one is awed how naturally it happens, and how her story lends the incident so much life-like uncertainty. This is Lahiri at her best, delivering a deadly punch in the narrative when the reader least expects it. This is as shocking, or, was as shocking to me, as was Ashoke’s death.

The novel is a chiaroscuro of images, experiences, some sad, some elevating, all written in the author’s perspicacious style, with much detailing. Much as I had enjoyed “The Interpreter of Maladies” I relished this one that promises to be a watermark in the annals of literature produced by the Diaspora.

JOURNAL

2006-11-18T14:03:00.000-05:00

It is possible, perhaps even reasonable
to tell oneself that this alone is real,
the one grim truth ineluctable.
Purgatory or hell, it’s immaterial.

Not Dante but Bosch, this: the stylised fright
of ether, smells and swabs, and groans
punctuating the strip-lit night,
unspared by strident insistent phones.

Outside cars, neon, flights overhead –
the whole damn business of living in fact –
cavalcade past the varying dead
like dreams against this waking act.

***

Sonnet for a Stolen Mobile Phone

2006-11-12T00:51:00.000-05:00

Sonnet for a Stolen Mobile Phone

You were cuddlesome and oh! so cute,

Full of lively chatter and, sometimes mute,

Hours I would spend waiting for you to ring,

You were a universe in the joys you bring.

You spoke to me in several lingos,

Mallu, Hindi, English, Bambaiya patois,

Yet you departed so abruptly, without feelings,

Nary elations, greetings, or glad tidings.

Then one evening, I know not,

Who stole you from me, my Camelot,

Are your rings dead, are you still alive?

Has he de-SIM-ed you, do you still survive?

Please come back to me, I miss you,

Without you, I am not me, nor would you be you!

NOVEMBER 11, 2006

2006-11-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

Your dust lies scattered in alien lands,
and the ones you thought you died for
have whelped unhallowed seed.
The wreaths mock the souls we cried for;
and your silly simple hearts would bleed
to see your graves profaned by unclean hands.

***

Today is Remembrance Day. The poem was prompted by a photograph of Sonia Gandhi laying a wreath at Ypres.

2100: The Long Commute

2006-10-28T03:50:00.000-05:00

2100: THE LONG COMMUTE

The year 2100. Another morning, another commute, I groaned. I parked my mini electric car at CBD Belapur station and saw my friend Shashi N emerging from the thick yellow-tinged morning fog, wearing a heavy jacket made of bullet- and bomb-proof material. He is a technical writer and so am I, and, moreover, he is the only friend, and relation I have in this world. We are close.

We work in Bangalore, only a two-hour ride on the 500 kmph train from Beloved Leader Sharad P. Railway Station, the erstwhile Vashi Station, Bombay, named after the last of the great Marathha politicians. The former island of Bombay was totally destroyed in the great flood of 2047, and the then New Bombay, nearby, had assumed the identity of Bombay, for commercial and historical reasons. All that is left of Bombay is a few islands where the hills were, inhabited by the die-hard hill tribes who once used to boast that they were a superior race as they lived on Malabar and Pali hills. The CBD Belapur station hasn’t been cleaned, Teflon coffee cups and dazed sleepers lie around in careless disarray.

“Hi Shashi N.,” I greeted him. Surnames weren’t to be mentioned as religious fascism had peaked and religious mercenaries were everywhere planting bombs, shooting through small, light-weight, rapid action Mauser pistols. One could get killed if one’s surname was known.

“Hi,” he acknowledges morosely.

“Late again?” I ask.

“Yes,” he said mournfully, “I reached home at 2 a.m. this morning, and slept for hardly three hours. I had bought a thousand units of electricity and didn’t know I had let my computer on through the day, and when I reached home there isn’t even a single unit to light a bulb, or even heat some water for a bath.”

He looked shabby and unwashed, his hair matted with dust and dirt, as if he had slept at the station like the P.O.O.R. people lying around us with their impact-proof blankets. Electricity was strictly rationed and had to be paid in advance. No electricity meant nothing would run in the house, everything depended on electricity, and there was such a big scarcity. Gas and petrol was the privilege of the super-rich who owned cars run on fossil fuel, a scarce commodity.

“What’s that you are licking?” I ask.

He was licking the last slobs of a gooey liquid from a tube, shaped like a toothpaste tube.

“My breakfast. It contains enough nutrition to last me till I reach the Goohoo canteen.”

Goohoo was formed when Google and Yahoo decided to merge in 2085 when the Lin-Baden-run Vironi Corporation operating from Babylon unleashed deadly viruses on the networks that almost destroyed all World Wide Web servers.

I was wearing my bullet- and bomb-proof jacket and an old-fashioned helmet with a radiation-proof visor. Violence was common after members of the parliament fought with automatic weapons inside the law-making body and the Consortium of Corporations (called CC, in short, dominated by Goohoo) had taken over the legislative functions of the country. The transition was overseen by Beloved Leader Sharad P. who maintained that instead of corporations funding the government it was better if the corporations took over and gave politicians a percentage of the profits. There would be less wastage. Politicians drew a handsome salary sitting at home. The executive authority stayed in the hands of the policing machinery, now controlled by the Consortium, or, CC. They are the ones who introduced high-speed trains between Bombay and Bangalore. It was a big success.

“Nice Jacket,” I say.

“Five million rupees,” he says, “even after a special discount to Goohoo employees.”

Around us are a milling crowd all wearing hooded jackets and helmets. A small mean-looking person pushes us apart and scurries toward the platform. He is skinny; his walk is jerky, but fast. He is wearing a computer screen on one sleeve of his jacket and on the other has a keyboard. He is typing something on the keyboard even as he is cutting a neat swathe through the hundreds of morning commuters.

“Did you see him?” I ask.

“Yes, he is a Code Devil who works in Goohoo. I know him.”

Code Devils are the elite programmers trained by corporations like Goohoo. In a world totally dependent upon programming they are the new stars and idols, as movie actors used to be at one time, in another century.

The train arrives with a great sonic boom. It is bulging with commuters, all going to Bangalore, the technology capital. There are people clinging to it everywhere, even some mysterious hooded forms sitting on the roof. Life would be hell for them, what with the cold and chilly slipstream.

I close the visor of my helmet and Shashi zips up his jacket. Entering the train would be like squeezing through a fruit juicer.

A posse of women surrounded by heavily armed women police arrive and the jackets of all the desire sensors worn by the men on the platform light up and shimmer with desire. The rare creatures were escorted inside the train even before there is the possibility of Cupid aiming an arrow or two.

“Hey, to think that once they used to mingle with us!” I say.

“Blame skewed sex ratios. If they mingle they would be raped and killed. The CC did the right thing. At least, they have security now,” he says wistfully.

He knows. He has a girlfriend and is in love, a feeling the CC has patented and copyright controlled. Due to a variety of reasons including the population growth the CC legislated that all love should be a copyrighted commodity, like a program, and any use should attract a heavy Love Tax.

Therefore these desire sensors were mandatory. Anyone not wearing it could be sentenced to the Love Dungeons and anyone found coveting the opposite sex would immediately be arrested and confined for breaking the copyright code, unless Love Tax was paid.

For procreation the CC’s Ministry of Love had arranged for exclusive hospitals where a woman could walk in and have a sponsored baby and donate it to the care of the Consortium which would train them to be Code Devils. The consortium needed only programmers and the risk of casual flings upsetting the genetic engineering code was terrifying.

“How is Sangita?” I ask.

Shashi’s girlfriend’s name is Sangita. He had written and posted a love poem to her on the online forum Neterati. The Ministry of Love’s detection department had sensed this in their latest Love Audit. They also found that Shashi hadn’t paid Love Tax which should have been deposited in advance before a man and woman can fall in love.

“I feel so hopelessly torn apart. I haven’t met her in a week though we work for the same corporation. She is in a glass bubble across the lawns but I, I am so helpless, I can’t meet her. I fear for my life and hers, they are monitoring my thoughts, I can feel it, and I am broke, I can’t afford to pay Love Tax,” he says as we find a convenient corner inside the door of the train.

“Then give her up. Break up and tell her you can’t afford her.”

“It’s easy for you to say that, yaar. We are way too much involved.”

“But the most they could do is ask Goohoo to pay on your behalf, since they have the controlling interest in CC, and are represented on the governing board.”

“No, stupid, that won’t work. I get these fainting fits. When they monitor you they fill you with fatal love thoughts that almost kill, just testing us. Of late, it is happening frequently. I am afraid for my life. Even you are at risk if you are found with me.”

The CC had embarked on a Total Asexualization Drive to curb the sexual instinct that they hoped, rather vainly, would boost productivity in the workplace. This was fully supported by Narayana Premji and Azim Moorthy (grand children of the two pioneers, the second generation having inter-married) who had all along maintained that corporate goals should be above personal goals.

“Then what about all the books, novels, films on love and longings and the love poems that existed and still exist in libraries on this mysterious feeling called love. I don’t understand; I am lost,” I say. I haven’t felt any love for a woman since I haven’t been near one in years. I don’t even know who my mother is, or, rather, was. May be Shashi could explain what it was all about.

“Ah, that was the twenty-first century you are talking about. That was the time when Neterati was still an online forum of free expression for writers. I remember, a lot of love poems were posted there, a few of them were really atrocious, some were even spelt, ‘Pomes.’ Now they are underground. I still attend their meetings, though, surreptitiously.”

Shashi and I are wedged closely, inside the door, almost out of the train. The wind is howling around our ears and the sound is deafening as the train levitates within the field created by two powerful magnetic rails above and below it. I think of the hooded men I had seen sitting above the train. They would be shivering and their hands would be almost frozen by the cold.

We pass the Project of Outcasteing Religion (P.O.O.R.) areas between Poona and Bombay. These are the areas where the religious zealots live. Areas are marked by communal flags and their extreme poverty is obvious from the shabby hovels in which they live. They are all uniformly greyish, probably, the soot emissions from Alliance’s giant petroleum refineries in the area.

This is the dark space I had heard about, I mean, the P.O.O.R area. There is no electricity and life is as it was in pre-1879, the year the electric bulb was invented. They can’t afford electricity. The police ignore the denizens of these slums, they are afraid for themselves. Killings and riots are quite common and the CC is quite content with letting them decimate each other. After all, the Consortium assumes, it is their mistake that they didn’t learn to write programming code, or even understand computing algorithms, preferring to sow the seeds of religious hatred.

“So how are things at Goohoo?” I ask.

“Bad,” Shashi says, “at least for technical writers,” he has opened his jacket hood a little so that I can see his sleep-deprived eyes.

Poor man, I think, squeezed from all sides, not able to meet his girl friend, and, somehow, to add to all that the insecurity with his job.

A series of staccato explosions shake the train as it speeds across the vast arid land, still under a thick fog. The heavy rains had cut fissures through the landscape and the recent heat waves had all but burnt the earth to a greyish-black.

“Cluster bombs,” Shashi mumbles. The sounds grow distant. CC has instructed the train driver to disengage the compartment if there are any explosions in it. “Production should not be affected,” was the sole mantra. The rest of the train hurtled forward.

“Why is it bad?”

“It is bad, bad, bad, so bad I can’t tell you. My very existence in their mammoth air-conditioned bubble is at risk.”

“Why? Tell me no, why?”

“You know what those Code Devils have gone and done?”

“No.”

“They have written a program to author help manuals. They don’t need technical writers any more in Goohoo.”

“What?” I am so astounded I knock my helmet against Shashi’s head. He curses me in choice Malayalam invectives I won’t mention here.

“Yes, a bloody program writes help manuals. It writes stuff like “For p=p+1, next p” for something as simple as ‘turn to the next page’,” imagine, and the managers are happy with it. ‘After all, who reads help manuals,’ they say.”

That’s a holler. It is real bad news, without writing jobs both Shashi and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go, I think, as I look at the cold morning transforms suddenly into a hot mid-morning with temperatures hovering around 95 degree Fahrenheit. Presently we all are sweating.

“Global warming,” Shashi says, loosening his jacket, “they don’t seem to care. They have their climate controlled apartments in the Goohoo campus, and their minders and managers to assure them nothing is wrong. Why, even their television news channels are doctored by the Consortium. They only see the news CC wants them to see. They never travel in trains, and if they venture out, it is from their roof-top helipads to their private jets. What do they know about the long commute?”

“So if a program writes help manuals we writers would be out of jobs, what would we do?” I ask.

“Good question, dumbo! Even I don’t know,” Shashi shakes his hooded head, “What do they care? They say product life cycles are short. Before they can finish reading the help manual, the product is obsolete; the next model is in the market. So why write product help manuals?”

I shake my head, too. My career as a creative writer hasn’t taken off. Most of my manuscripts come back with form letters wishing me “all success in finding a suitable publisher.”

One publisher even said, “If you want to be published, become famous first.” That means if you are a woman, get laid by a famous man and write about the number of moles on his private parts, or if you are a man, well, the only alternative is tell all about the idiosyncrasies of corporations like Goohoo. But that could put my life in danger.

This could be the end of me. I would end up in a call center, after all, something I dreaded all along. I would be measured each day by the number of calls I make. I hate call centers. I hate them for being so uncreative, unoriginal, and so mechanical. There is software that senses and blocks all calls but they still persist.

Zap, zap, zap! Everything seems to spin around me. I am feeling a lot of love, er, feeling of being loved excessively. Though I have never been loved, I have sometimes fantasized about a queer feeling that came over me sometimes, and had given in to its frenzied rhythms.

Suddenly epiphany strikes. Am I also being monitored by the Love Auditors as I am with Shashi? Shashi is reeling, he holds on to me. His face seems a blur, so also the faces of all the hooded forms around us. The train, or what is left of it after the cluster bombs have struck, is hurtling along a vast desert that once used to be the Deccan Plateau, now laid waste by periodic meteor hits, as the outer atmospheric shield around the earth has mitigated to a very thin layer around the earth. The wind howls, the hooded forms, unzip their hoods, and I can see their eyes bulging, as they stare at us.

“You are Love Offenders. Get away from us,” their eyes accuse us.

I recover. Consciousness comes back at once. It was one of those Love Audits, and they seemed to have exonerated me. But what about Shashi? Shashi is slumped against me, his hood askew, drool at the corners of his mouth. I shake him, slap his face. No response.

“Is he dead?” I ask the man standing next to me. He has a red cross sign on his jackets and “Goohoo” written below it, apparently, a doctor working for the world’s biggest corporation. He is familiar with such situations as he has ministered to many employees who have died on their computer workstations.

“Yes, your friend is dead, you must throw him out now,” the doctor says.

“Should you be so cruel?”

“CC policy 11.13287.9840 on corpse disposal states that dead organisms could disturb the creativity index of the Code Devils who are travelling to Bangalore, and further, that dead bodies of Love Offenders should be dispensed of immediately.”

“But can’t I give him a funeral or something?”

“No, the body could putrefy by the time we reach Bangalore in this heat.”

I knew it was no use arguing.

Slowly he and other Goohoo employees, there seem to be quite a lot of them in this train, say a company prayer written in C--, nudge Shashi N, my only friend and acquaintance in the world, towards the door and push him out. Helmets, bullet- and bomb-proof jackets watch as the body disappears from sight into the fast-receding landscape outside the speeding train. The blazing afternoon is a blur. I close the helmet visor and say a prayer for Shashi. I must phone Sangita and tell her, if at all she is alive.

ESCHER'S "DRAWING HANDS"

2006-10-15T23:01:00.000-05:00

Surely there must be release
from this timeless maddening gyre.
A link falling off perhaps, a limp cuff
come loose, or a gnarled arm entire
that’s about had enough
and flops to welcome knees.

Or will the smug board descend –
not gently let down but torn
from its skewed four-nailed cross
by hands that will not mourn
its tyranny’s loss:
a perverse passion’s end?

I watch with awe undiminished
an incipience finely pencilled
(a curve at commencement’s verge),
the mind circumscribed and stilled
as countless worlds converge:
an incompleteness so subtly finished.

***

Older

2006-10-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

a green-burn howl works its way into the road
and slips along the quiet, night pavement
under the cassia, slithers
like an asp at a queen's breast
exciting her last megalomaniac gasp

my father's corpse was dragged unwilling
in an ambulance across these streets
dry as a winter sheath or autumn leaves
when they crackle dull brown underfoot
and leave a stale smell

the walls of his house, formerly sparkling
turned grey-pink over the years
the blood slowly seeping into each crack
whispering in the wrinkled crannies
starting up at dusk to sigh sometimes

city of hiss and shout
and resigned fatigue
and quiet headaches,
I wish I could leave.

~ N

"FOR US, THE POOR..."

2006-09-26T02:50:00.000-05:00

No willed or ordained martyrdom awaits us.
Yet the end must seem the same, swift
with swords or stretched to common tedium:
laboured prize or relenting gift.
Only the silence sports a rarer idiom,
a canonical gloss that separates us.

You die as you live, in the bored channel
of your use, with neither royal favour,
nor fated fallout of its frown –
no subject for the engraver,
or hallowed mascot for a town.
Nor – least of all – a stained-glass panel.

***

The Amitava Kumar - Salman Rushdie Controversy

2006-09-25T01:46:00.000-05:00

Read this article on Amitava Kumar's Blog. Can't say that I agree with him totally, being a die-hard fan of Rushdie. But, it now turns out that Rusdie has, some how, read Kumar's blog articles (some excerpts follow) and has threatened to cancel a lecture at Vassar College if he was introduced to the audience by Amitava. This may have the potential of blooming into a full-fledged literary controversy, me thinks.

"What Rushdie did was not exactly new in Indian writing in other languages or even in Indian drama, but its intensity and range was novel in the tradition of English writing that had been inaugurated by the likes of R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand. In a land allegedly in thrall to babu English, here was someone who was having fun with the English language. Reading him was a bit like coming across a giant ad for Amul butter on an Indian street—except that Rushdie was in command and kept doing it for five hundred pages."

"The trouble is that despite all his invention and exuberance Rushdie remains to a remarkable extent an academic writer. He is academic in that abstractions rule over his narratives. They determine the outlines of his characters, their faces, and their voices. Rushdie is also academic in the sense that his rebellions and his critiques are all securely progressive ones, advancing the causes that the intelligentsia, especially the left-liberal Western intelligentsia, holds close to its breast. This is not a bad thing, but it should qualify one's admiration for Rushdie's daring."

"There can be no doubt that the threats that Rushdie faced and also the book-burnings and other protests were shameful and unacceptable. But I do not for a moment support Norman Mailer's assessment (Norman Mailer wrote Rusdie after the Fatwa "Many of us begin writing with the inner temerity that if we keep searching for the most dangerous of our voices, why then, sooner or later we will outrage something very fundamental in the world, and our lives will be in danger. That is what I thought when I started out, and so have many others, but you, however, are the only one of us who gave proof that this intimation is not ungrounded."). I don't believe that Rushdie has even found his most dangerous voice. In fact, I don't believe that Rushdie's is the most dangerous voice writing today. His is no doubt a powerful voice; often, it has been an oppositional voice; but it is a voice of a celebrity promoting commendable causes; more seriously, in some fundamental way, it is the voice of a metaphorical outsider, and therefore incapable of revealing to ourselves, in an intimate way, our complicities, our contradictions, and our own inescapable horror. I don't deny that it is a voice that can engage and delight and of course annoy, and yet it is very important to make a distinction: what Rushdie writes can easily provoke, but it is rarely able to disturb."

Kumar's grouse seems to be that Rusdie is being used as a milestone in Indian English literature as when we say "he writes like Rushdie" and "he doesn't write like Rushdie." But Rusdie opened the gates to the flood (or is it a trickle?) that followed, didn't he? Admittedly Rusdie criticized and parodied Indian life for a western audience, but he did it with considerable charm and wit and even we tend to nod our heads and smile when we read what Kumar calls "academic" writing. Here's what Rushdie says about migration, as quoted by Kumar, "To migrate is certainly to lose language and home, to be defined by others, to become invisible or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul. But the migrant is not simply transformed by his act; he also transforms his new world. Migrants may well become mutants, but it is out of such hybridization that newness can emerge."

I have underlined "invisible" because in "Midnight's Children" he calls the people who live beyond posh Neapean Sea Road area in Bombay as "Invisible People," or the migrant people. This is something I can identify with as I am of second generation migrant stock, living as invisible people in an extended suburb of Bombay. Here's a poem I wrote in my blog about how indigenous people hate migrants.
Tags: Amitava Kumar, Salman Rushdie, controversy, R K Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Norman Mailer, Neapean Sea Road, Invisible People

Reality Show to Sell a Book? Quite possible!

2006-09-23T01:06:00.000-05:00

Saw the James McGreevey interview with Larry King on CNN. Now, for those who came in late, James is the former governor of New Jersey who has made a public admission to having a homosexual affair and to having cheated on his wife, as a consequence of which he had to give up his office. He has also come up with a book on the affair titled "The Confession" and may, me thinks, have been desperate to get publicity for the book. The confession includes trysts in anonymous truck stops, crawling into bed with his wife after escapades with his boy friend, etc.

What I found unusual was the handsome McGreevey was squirming in his seat while answering King's pointed and, rather, blunt questions. Several times he fumbled for answers, and on occasions he seemed as if he wasn't telling the truth, at least, fudging some. Larry King asked him if he had sexual encounters before his marriage, and he said, "yes," the next question was, "was it pleasurable?" What does he mean by asking if a sexual encounter was pleasurable? Why would he go for an encounter if it wasn't pleasurable. Come, come, now, Larry King!

To make matters worse there were also interviews with his cheated wife, and his boyfriend (no, he says, life partner), whom he kissed on the show. Yes, kissed on the mouth! All through the interview I was conscious of a brave show being put up, all that was wrong with such displays became quite obvious. I mean, the reality television kind of programs showing people embarassed, crying, shouting, and kissing.

I felt that this was the movie trailer to goad people to buy the book in millions to delve into the secret life of the handsome governor. Also, who knows, movie rights, and may be, a movie role (seeing as to how handsome he is!). Oh, the pits to which people can descend!

I may be terribly old fashioned (my blog says so), not to talk of getting old, but couldn't these emotions be handled a bit more discreetly? All through the show the interlocutor Larry King had a cynical set to his mouth, and conducted the interview with great detachment, as is his wont. But all this drama to sell a book? If this genre of publishing is so desperate to sell their books, then why don't they call themselves "The Celebrity Business" and not publishing at all.
Tags: James McGreevey, Larry King, The Confession, Reality Television, Homosexuality

Beirut

2006-09-18T07:38:00.000-05:00

Beirut

Oh! Beirut,
Nameless, faceless,
Besieged, bombed,
Occupied by militias, armies,
It's unbelievable, once,
You were the Paris of the East.

Now you are rubble,
Bombed debris,
Lying in a mangled haze,
Your hospices filled with the dying,
Death still waits at your doorsteps,
After the Jordanians,
Syrians and Israelites have gone.

The Cedars of Lebanon are bereft,
Alleys are filled with twisted steel,
Your people are not given -
A chance to survive, make peace.
In you there are enemy streets,
Where children fear to walk,
Afraid of hidden gunmen.

Will you rise from this debris?
Rebuild your proud monuments,
And foliate your naked Cedars,
With the leaves of verdant summer,
In the shades of which women don't wail,
Of kidnappings, shootings, and ransoms,
And of crazed, fervent militias,
Of which they are no part.

Oh! Beirut, Oh! Beirut, I mourn you!

Beirut was once known as the Paris of the East. No more. Now, militaries of Israel, Syria and Jordan enter and leave it at their whim. Its streets are full of bombed buildings and its citizens live in fear of being killed. This is a poem to its brave inhabitants. "Cedars of Lebanon" is a reference to a passage in the Bible.

A Day in the Life of Me, Myself!

2006-09-16T02:21:00.000-05:00

This is a scenario I wrote today, just common events from my life. I might use this in a short story or novel, in future. So do not discount its literary value. Ahem!

Today is Saturday and I am thinking of finishing some work. I thought it was romantic, working in my pajamas and round neck tee-shirt working when you feel like, that is, until this morning.

Then they had to spoil it all. My neighbor is getting his house re-constructed. Re-construction is a harmless word when he is breaking it down with sledge hammers, and most of the debris is falling on my house with thuds the equivalent of minor bomb explosions, or, earthquakes. The houses in Artist Village, are independent dacha-type houses, which were constructed by a government housing scheme, and are packed too close for comfort.

Now something like a war is going on with frequent unannounced masonry falling on my house. "Oh, God," I say and run out and shout at the workers, who, are, huh, workers. For some time the earthquakes stop. They do what they are told to do. And my neighbor is nowhere in sight. See, he has moved to safe environs already. Good!

And then they resume all over again. Then I again run out and shout. Then they commiserate. And this goes on for some time, till the power goes off. I sit fretting in the dark with the debris of my despondency falling over me, darkly maligning. No, I won't ask, "Why does this happen to me? How can I get my work done?" No, that would be taking it badly.

Then I go to get some bank work done. The day is sunny and hot and sweltering, and I put on my dark, "cooling" glasses. The bank is crowded, and there's another bank I have to visit nearby to finish my transaction – actually I am making a draft to pay my son's yearly college fees. The deposit in this bank isn't enough to cover the transaction. So I have to withdraw money from another bank account across the street and come back. I didn't know that I hadn't eaten and suddenly hunger pangs strike.

I walk into a South Indian restaurant and am served by a nondescript uniformed waiter who reels off a variety of dosas from memory. I decide to have a Masala Dosa, which, I think, would be filling. Then I turn around and there is a family of beggars, the type who appeal to your religiosity to make a living, sitting next to me and eating rather boisterously. Food is spooned into wide open jaws, and the mastication is done in between loud talking. I find this particularly nauseating, eat my dosa, and leave.

At the other bank, a sales spiel keeps me engrossed. They have a unit-linked plan that would give me a pension for life, provided I invest around Rs 1.5 million now. Imagine having that kind of liquid cash lying around, I smirk, while coolly watching the earnest salesman making his pitch. Then I say I will consider his offer, and leave.

Then I take a rickshaw to the other bank with all the money for my son's fees and a helpful girl who hardly glances at me makes the draft. That done, I decide to visit an old church acquaintance who is indisposed and has been ordered rest. He and I have worked in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and we talk about old times. I guess company would keep him engaged.

And then it begins to pour, and pour. "Thulavarsham," he says listening to the rolling thunder. "Yes," I say, "It is thulavarsham, the rain that falls around the month of "Thulam." We speak of human foibles, church politics, and a priest who isn't as holy as I had considered him. Who is?

On the journey back, I am totally drenched by the downpour and my umbrella offers no solace. The sunny afternoon has transformed into a dark, menacing, darkly forbidding rainy evening. There are gangs of youngsters, college kids, at the bus stop. They talk and laugh loudly, wearing their unwashed jeans that have these ugly pockets, bulging out at the most unimaginable of places. I am wearing cargo trousers, but, it has pockets at the logical locations on both sides. I notice that they all have long hair, and acne on their faces. I too have long hair!

End of scenario.

The Booker Short List is Up!

2006-09-15T13:02:00.000-05:00

The booker short list is up. Kiran Desai made it for "The Inheritance of Loss." Those who made it:

"The six books shortlisted by a panel of judges are: "In the Country of Men," Hisham Matar's semi-autobiographical first novel about childhood in Moammar Gadhafi's Libya; "The Secret River," Kate Grenville's tale of life in an Australian penal colony; "The Night Watch," British writer Sarah Waters' novel about characters whose fates intertwine during World War II; "The Inheritance of Loss," Indian writer Kiran Desai's cross-continental saga set in New York and India; "Carry Me Down," the story of an unusual boy, by Irish-Australian novelist M.J. Hyland; and "Mother's Milk," a portrait of a rich but dysfunctional family by English writer Edward St. Aubyn."

Those who didn't make it:

"Some of the biggest names on the 19-book longlist did not make the cut, including David Mitchell, whose "Black Swan Green" had been a favorite, and Australia's Peter Carey, a two-time Booker winner longlisted for "Theft: A Love Story." Andrew O'Hagan's "Be Near Me," another critical favorite, also was omitted."
Tags: Hisham Matar, Kate Grenville, Sarah Waters, Kiran Desai, M.J. Hyland, Edward St. Aubyn, Man Booker Prize, short list

MINUET

2006-09-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

“Your pressure’s fine,” the doctor says,
unwrapping the velcro. A ritual for a fever,
and I’m done. “How’s the sugar?” he grins –
an old joke, knowing I don’t much give a
damn one way or other. “Paying for my sins
Doc,” I smile back, “you know my ways!”

We go through this vaudeville, he and I,
each time some nuisance knocks me flat.
He writes his stuff, I do mine, both assured
in our certitudes, both aware of what we’re at.
It’s been long enough for us to be inured.
Well… at least it’s a harmless enough lie.

***

Munnabhai MBBS (MMBBS) and Rang de Basanti (RDB) – Flawed Beyond Recompense

2006-09-02T09:13:00.000-05:00

Both are, in a manner of speaking, super-duper hits. Both are targeted at the Indian youth and makes pretenses to be different cinema. Both have captured the imagination of the Indian youth who swear by the originality of both movies, not realizing that both movies are flawed beyond recompense, at least, to me, a minority of one.

RANG DE BASANTI (RDB)
RDB was shown on Independence Day, probably to incite patriotic feeling in citizens. Patriotism? Is killing your own father – as one of the protagonists does, although, the subject is a corrupt politician – patriotism? The message here is that murder is good and that would include parricide. Are we back in the dark ages? Amir Khan in a scene from the film is clearly shown giving money to a policeman to stay off a fight that his friends had started. The message here is that bribery is also very good and worth emulating.

In another scene which I found very objectionable, the character played by Amir Khan is shown standing on a high wall bending backwards and drinking beer, a hit song sequence, I guess. Drinking while bending backwards down into a precipitous pond is a juvenile and dangerous exercise for a youth, of that everyone is aware. But the movie is absolutely insouciant about the wrong images it is sending to the youth. Firstly, the impression created is that drinking is good, and drinking and doing risky things are even better.

What sort of message does this convey to the youth? I will summarize: Parricide is good, bribery is good, drinking and doing foolish stunts is good. How can such a movie not even be panned by critics who rave about its great qualities and even confer awards on it? How can a censor board – which has been constituted for this purpose – not object, at least, where the politician is shown as being bad and killed by his own son?

There are many more flaws in this supposedly youth cult film which I am not mentioning here. One of them is lewd remarks made to a white girl which she cannot understand. It is clear that there is sexual harassment involved. The movie left a bad taste in my mouth. Are our youth so cynical as to applaud all these bad qualities in themselves? The stereotype here is youth of the north somewhere around the Punjab. Do they behave so grossly, if so, what can the nation expect from these citizens? Peace or violence?

This is over the top, way too exaggerated, and made with a view to appeal to the baser instincts of viewers. Is it an ironic reflection of the state we are in that this movie is a huge hit?

MUNNABHAI MBBS (MMBBS)
Here's another flawed film that is a super box-office hit. Here the protagonists are Central Indians, most notably Bambaiya, and talk the language of the Bombay hoodlums. The character played by Sanjay Dutt is admitted to a medical degree college to train as a doctor. There is a shortage of bodies to be dissected and the hoodlum phones his sidekick to bring him a body from somewhere. The sidekick played by Harshad Warsi clobbers and kidnaps an oriental-looking man and brings him to the dissecting table.

Okay, okay, what went wrong here? Raju Hirani, in an interview said the film portrays some of the problems that MBBS students face during their training. Yes, there is a shortage of bodies in medical colleges, but, can it be solved by clobbering a foreign-looking oriental and bringing him to the laboratory in a sack? Again, what message are you sending across Raju Hirani?

Munnabhai doesn't know a single letter in the proverbial three "r's", even to spell or sign his own name and forces a doctor to impersonate him in the medical college entrance examination. And, surprise, surprise, he is admitted. He is doing all this to take revenge for some slight against his family's honor. Message: cheating in exams is good for your family honor.

The irony doesn't end there. Munnabhai becomes a doctor in the end. That means cheating, lying, impersonating, threatening teachers; all are accepted behavior in Indian medical colleges. Believe me when I say freaky messages are being conveyed here, messages full of bitterness, insubordination, deprivation, and the use of violence.

Would the people of India trust the medical fraternity after seeing such gross exaggerations of their profession? Why didn't they speak out? Is that again an indication of some malaise at the root of the medical system that extracts millions of rupees from students seeking admission into medical colleges?

And this film too is a box office hit. It raked in enough cash to encourage the director to make a sequel with the same theme. The sequel goes a bit further and hints that hoodlums should be treated on the level of national figures – with pictures of them printed on currency notes. What an insult to the nation's leadership! I can only say, what guts and gumption these directors exhibit to the public, and that when it comes to exaggerations Indian films recognize no boundaries.

As they say, "Whither, Indian Cinema?"
Tags: RANG DE BASANTI, Amir Khan, sexual harassment, MUNNABHAI MBBS, Raju Hirani, Indian films, Bollywood

An ode to Qana

2006-08-15T06:21:00.000-05:00

Further than proximate fires
and natal storms
We bury innumerable open hands
into the pollen smell of
unconciousness.

Into the womb of this cold earth.
Hands that no longer seek warmth.
Shut in.

The invisible shadow of missiles lurk
Hungry. Arrogant, cascading on thickets
and thorns.
And a hush falls on yellow eyes,
quiet bodies.

Leaves wilt into shadows of green.
No winds resurrect them. Neither water.
The Sun does not sing in them
the galvanic rhythm of seasons.

The black hands of death break
into secret sounds
of a simoom.
And our mouth lies caged in
hypnotic threads
In our ashen breast
whispered into untamed disregard
to
life,
to the earth and the sky.

Loneliness

2006-08-13T07:45:00.000-05:00

I pause midway in the in the whirl,
Of deadlines, things undone,
And averaged the sadness and joys -
There remains only loneliness,
Of which I see no cure,
No bitter palliatives, no anodyne.

We remain in life’s journey,
Like loners sitting depressed,
On solitary park benches, or,
Staring at people from balconies,
Loneliness gnawing at our minds,
As hungry ants at a grain of food.

Often in life’s vicious lanes,
In lonesome moments,
It’s our failures we ponder,
Not the joys and victories; both,
We have given and earned;
Not others’ courage, but faults.

When in each passing lonely moment,
I count the millions of seconds,
I was alive to witness this world, and,
Mimetic thoughts that pass into eternity,
My loneliness vanishes, I shout,
“I live; I am alive this lonely moment.”
(c) John, August 2006
Tags: Loneliness, poetry

ENIGMA

2006-08-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

No one really got the measure of you,
Not all your biographers, who erred
On one side or the other. And the film –
Predictably, one would think – deferred
To the image, meant to overwhelm
With landscape and legend. And the few

Slightly wiser lapped it up like the rest.
After all, the public pieces were there
In splendid scope, and true more or less.
And since a hero was intended, only fair
The treatment, even the slight excess.
The director certainly knew best.

But there was more to you than fancy
Dress, or driving flags and crescents
To some private Acre of your own –
That was a sort of crusade in essence
Anyway, whose seeds were sown
In Oxford probably, or your infancy

Cutting teeth on castles. Still, that came
To nought, save as happy windfall
For venal masters; in the event,
A foregone outcome you couldn’t stall.
Yet there was more to disillusionment
Than that drama in a three-hour frame,

Beyond the lens’s circumscription
Or the boards of books: what romance
Was it that so irrevocably soured –
Caught in that brief backward glance
But inadequately – what powered
Your effacement into almost fiction?

***

Nocturne

2006-08-06T15:15:00.000-05:00

Let me speak in grasshopper hazes
if you want to be green
Let me fade in the chime of fireflies
if you need to feed on fleeting darkness.
And tell you all there is to know about
arriving storms and earthquakes.

Burn like the soft fiery moon
if you shall lose your way among shadows.
A desertwind if you forget
the tongue of water.
and tell you stories about absent tides.

A raindrop falling quietly
into the kohl lined sea.
A sliver of moisture
wrapped in your silence
forever between petals
and you can sail me to some obscure sound
stringed to the lashes of summer breeze
every night.

Fire

2006-07-30T21:47:00.000-05:00

Ignite then
slowly inside
deep.
Without the song of smoke
or crackle of splinters.
Like an obscure
splash of water
in the womb of aged rivers
born from butterfly-oars
sailing through nameless fogs.
Before

Kohl snows,
dreamful,
dark.
from ashes
burnt.
Awake wide,
magic brimming,
windswept.

Carried through maritime
sand dunes
Aflight on
desert’s wings.
As the monotone dusk sits licking
blisters,
hollowed
out
to memory.

Of storms and related things

2006-07-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

Each day winds blow,
cocoa dark
from north to south
east to west
and wherever they go
unwithheld.
They bring the
youth of flowers
to some
and fable of death
and wars
to strangers.
Aged winds from hushed wildflowers
frenzied and burnt.
Long lived.
Some from the sea, moist,
tranquil.

Each day a night grows,
naked
unkempt and wistful
on the tender mesh of swansong laziness.
feeding on the echoing madness
that is left behind.
The moon only rises to mold it.

Each day we falter
to speak
of hopeless causes
and long lost reasons
but the world still spins
through some cannibal spell
that makes not a pause.

And each a day distance grows
From the fallen leaf
to the absent ear.
And we do not hear
the sepulchral skies
that the tree sings.

Each day a fire dies,
behind the wooden heart of logs
and barks
ashes to ashes.
Flesh, blood and bone,
And another ignited.

Bombay

2006-07-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

Bombay

In your bosom I wake up with fear,
In your sky there’s only unending tears,
You always roar, but within,
Hangs silence like a shroud of death.

You are rocked, periodically, by bombs,
Yet, people go about their business,
As if nothing happened, all’s well,
Are they too dazed to protest?

In your hungry, convoluted entrails,
Lies paupers and millionaires,
Separated only by the whimsy,
Of your very partial caress.

On your skyline of sooty chimneys,
Decaying concrete, bristling antennas,
Are the sad stories of fortunes,
Made and lost, just as lost loves.

City of gold, they say, which never sleeps,
Will you stay awake, tonight,
Wipe away our cascading tears,
And give our tired bodies some sleep?

So you're dead...?

2006-07-17T02:46:00.000-05:00

- In memory of Syd Barret

last night came a message from a friend:
'Syd Barret died'.
yeah, so? i am dead too, fending off masked people,
tracked documents,
words, words, words, too many words
...and yet, what is this feeling, this lack of feeling?

Another death.
The end of hope
for another song, poetry, image
strung on your Fender, end of a life
that was dead anyway,
except now there's something permanent
about it, 6 feet under
...no more music, no more words.

Shine now under red mud
or beneath blue skies, wherever you longed to be
paint under a willow tree
all the words you thought you lost in your haze
in colors that will enhance the black ties
your divided band wears for you
today, shine on you diamond,
in the darkness of our memories of you.

A Kind of Death

2006-07-17T02:40:00.000-05:00

when you feel like you contain nothing
except ashes, smoke and dust

when you stare at walls and realize
that you built them

when you stumble through ancient paths
and clutch only air

when you hear laughter bounce off the floor
and cannot remember how to smile

when you feel the rain on your face
like stings of poison darts

when you see visions of words
fade into shadows in a purple sky

when you know you cannot
give anything in return

when you don't know a thing
except that you can't live

this way

Monsoon Vignette [ekphrasis]

2006-07-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

How tenuous toys the world they say
like a dewdrop poised on a lotus leaf
a shimering noise in its quavering way
and all so brief

How wondrous blooms the world meseems
like a castle festooning the vacant air
it's spun from looms of lunacy's dreams
where foul or fair

Dumbfounding arrives the world indeed
like a field mouse dry on a puddled frog
astoundingly aye it upholds frail need
with rain agog

A cuckoo sky

2006-07-06T23:20:00.000-05:00

A cuckoo mind breaks loose
on the grasshopper wind
on borrowed wings of
cotton-light clouds.

As cuckoo silences get lost
in green grass fields like
skittering butterflies.
from one reticence to another.

The wayward heart plays with
the frenzied breath
across winter’s picket fences,
as I sit peeling
the orange sun in evenings lap.

And countless nights are born into autumn glaze
as sundown breezes, wild
in a desire to sleep, undone.
And right at that unfastened moment,
my cuckoo heart breaks open into
the green of rainforests
like the galloping hoof of an agile buck.

Communally hated!

2006-06-20T03:21:00.000-05:00

This is me, a martyr,
Bleeding inside, lacerated,
With a thousand wounds inflicted,
By all of you, strangers, whom I hate.

You who deprived me of my livelihood,
You who raped our women,
You who brought your skills and toil,
Where I was comfortable with my existence.

You should die for your sins,
There’s no forgiving your greed,
You who snatch our money,
And money order it to your kin, must die!

I am good, you are bad,
You have no right to exist,
A world without you is my dream,
You who manipulate my destiny.

You live on my soil, drink my water,
And don’t respect my culture,
You bring your alien rituals,
And pollute my environs.

You are people whose rages,
Have been compromised in smiles,
When you laugh, you do not,
Laugh with me, but at me!

For your transgressions you must flee,
For the harm you have done,
We must teach you a lesson,
And kick you out of our homeland, our state.

goodbye

2006-06-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. - Book of Lamentations 1.12

it takes only seven fragile letters
to hold the burden of moments about to
disappear...how i hate
the bottom-right corner of my laptop
that displays day, date, time;
how i hate my eyes straying there
(why do we follow those who slip away? tick tick tick...boom!)

it takes seven letters rushing in
to open a door and let someone hurtling out
without getting hurt...how i hate
the seas you cross leaving me on burning sand
that swallows what remains;
how i fear to stay, how i dread to follow
(remember what happened to pharoah? clip clop clip clop...whoosh!)

just seven letters remain observing
silence for the waste of space in emptiness
that is left behind...how i hate
my room, my music, the sky outside my window
that will soon become the center
of my life, my grief, my grave, how i fear
(who will remind me to breathe, to breathe? inhale exhale, in...)

seven letters, seven sins,
seven lines falling one over the other
without rhyme...how i hate
this feeling of containing just ashes and dust
in the absence of those who pass by
and disappear as if they've seen a ghost
(who am i in this burning bush except a myth? nothing else...)

seven letters
die stillborn in our throats,
stifled by the other words
we speak to build a bridge across silences;
seven letters
form cross-bars to lock and store
our tears.

CLEOPATRA

2006-06-08T20:57:00.000-05:00

All else notwithstanding (and it wasn’t much
by mores of time and place) history finds
for her. One can see her juggling brothers,
wooing Rome, looking for ominous signs
from the less kindly disposed others
who viewed Alexandria as a touch.

Not easy too her bit of cheek on the Tiber,
flaunting son complete with sire’s name:
that needed nerve. From their villas
the wives watched like hawks as she came
in triumph to shake an empire’s pillars,
silk and steel entwined in her fibre.

But she was doomed. Fate would intervene
with the Ides; and with her patron went
whatever Egyptian wind that bore her sails.
Actium did the rest. She was spent.
She came home to asps; and the tales
clung like unguents to embalm a queen.

***

POINTS OF VIEW

2006-05-29T22:53:00.000-05:00

Let’s put things down. There’s the man,
“Ecce Homo”- forget the irony for a minute
and be literal if we can.
Baptised, Jew, 33 as far as you can pin it,

give or take a year. Good looking too,
though the portraits are copies – unreliable
at best, and descriptions are few.
Only the charisma’s undeniable.

Attractive to women no doubt. The Son
of God could hardly be otherwise
than the nonpareil Perfect One.
Certainly the most arresting eyes!

And then there’s the Magdalene,
the most famous – no, forget the name
by which she’s so unfairly been
reviled, the object she became:

the man himself preached compassion,
remember? We shall do no more
than follow, and in our own fashion,
dispel the myth of the whore;

although, admittedly, the slander of ages
must take a while to die. Spare her
then the pious pulpit outrages,
the common urge to tear her.

Consider her instead as wronged –
there’s nothing empirical in scripture
to deny her what belonged
to her: she suffered by depicture.

Thus, no longer base, she could
be lover, wife, mother, all
in the fold of Christian good.
A worthy married woman withal.

***

Two Translations from Jibanananda

2006-05-29T22:42:00.000-05:00

Horses

We still are not dead- yet, ceaselessly, vistas are
born:
Mohin's horses graze upon moonlit autumn fields,
Like prehistoric horses- still grazing, grass-greedy
Upon the grotesque dynamo of this earth,
Stable scents drift in, in the crowded night-wind;
Sad hay sounds fall on the steel machines;
Tea-cups, like sleeping kittens-devoured
by leprous dogs
Go frozen in the restaurant over there
The paraffin lamp goes out in the stable
blown out by time's quietus
Touching the moonlight of the horses' neolithic
quiet.

Enthroned

'Rather write a poem yourself-'
I offered, smiling ruefully; the shadow-man did not
answer;
I realized- no poet he, but enthroned posturing:
Manuscripts, commentaries, footnotes, ink and pen
Make up his royal seat- no poet- undecayingly,
imperishably
Professorial; toothless- eyes impotent mucous
filled;
Wages a thousand a month - another thousand and
a half
Come from scavenging the flesh, worms of dead
poets;
Even though such poets had wanted the strange
comfort
Of hunger love fire - had surfed in shark filled
waves.

© Arka Mukhopadhyay, 2006

A Haiku....

2006-05-23T13:25:00.000-05:00

AD(double click on pic for higher res)

When Others Sleep

2006-05-23T08:03:00.000-05:00

others sleep
while you and i watch the sky
turn to various shades of blood alternating
between hot and cold and dead
in our heads

others sleep
while you and i dissipate words
to exorcise images of losses recurring
in the time and space and silence
of our hearts

others sleep.
we watch others.
and wonder why we've forgotten how.
others sleep.
we dream.

Delhi - A Revisitation

2006-05-17T05:14:00.000-05:00

Delhi - A Revisitation

It’s akin to visiting my foster mother, today,

That I am returning to you, mother city, after twenty years,

I look at your broad, bereft streets, mater,

Through which emperors, prime ministers cavalcaded,

In victory and defeat, through gates and triumphal arches,

That murmur of the pains of your rape and impregnation.

The sudden shock of your poverty upsets me,

It is evident in the desperation of the cycle-rickshaw puller,

His eyes intent on the ground, standing on his pedals,

He pulls his woes, as if there is no halcyon tomorrows.

Your grimy streets are dusty, high walled, impenetrable,

As if you wish to guard the gory secrets within.

Is this where histories, dynasties were made, and fallen?

A dynasty now rules by proxy the city of the great Akbar,

And a fratricide of a potentate now fills you with awe,

When you are the city of kingly fratricides and parricides.

Remember how Dara Shukoh was marched and beheaded, by his kin

In your own street of Chandni Chowk, of not long ago?

The secrets of the present and past mingle,

Where now stand glitzy malls, I know, blood had flowed,

In your dark corners soldiers, spies, princes plotted to kill,

You witnessed stoically the dethroning of emperor Shah Jehan,

And the ascendance of his wily progeny, Aurangazeb,

As you watched, your face covered in the folds of your veil.

Yet, now, mother city, your tears are dry, your sobs silent,

Slowly you die, spent and ravaged by your many lovers.

Though it is kitsch melodies that you hum today, you were once,

Serenaded by Tansen, and Amir Khushro Dehlavi,

In your parlor once, poets and artists did conclave,

Over the “daughter of grapes” and the smell of tobacco!

reflection of Blue

2006-05-09T12:54:00.000-05:00

He who fills the universe
and yet remains apart,
how could I fit him inside
a mere heart?

so I became a mirror and-
His reflection I caught
within me

now however big He is outside,
will also be so, forever,
within me

but unaware I was
of laws of reflection
until the moment of revelation

what was right, is now left
truths that I knew
have become untrue
black turned white
and eyes, Blue

© Rajendra Pradhan

untwined

2006-05-09T12:53:00.000-05:00

these days I remember
the stories you used to weave
and would ask me to believe

they make me aware
of breaths that we take
and venom that we spew
of lives that we fake
and lies that we live
universes apart

time is fine sand
and our untwined hands
make a coarse sieve

you should have stayed
when the world was conquerable
or so, I used to believe

© Rajendra Pradhan

VIEW FROM AN OFFICE WINDOW

2006-05-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

Like some ancient monument it pushes its head
above the trees. Under the massed amorphous green,
unsuspected, the city quietly lies unseen:
the dome might be a mausoleum to the dead.

Streaked with ages’ dirt, it doesn’t require much
to transpose it (if one is so minded) to some fabled
riverbank, a watercolour or engraving neatly labeled
Robert Orme, or a Daniell or some such.

But I who know it’s no cupola-ed tomb
wonder in what repair the ratchet is, the date
of its last greasing, in what dubious state
preserved the precious optics in that room.

Now no less a reliquary than the chapel’s own,
those old Jesuits who turned an eye skywards
would hardly credit this rookery of birds.
There, I see two now…no, one: the other’s flown.

***

interior monologue

2006-05-02T03:35:00.000-05:00

where do you see yourself four years from now?
Four? why not five? ten? I've been asked those before.
Four. This is new, what do you mean,
The seasons, the winds? I am in the doldrums,
All I hear is static, red sand whirling through my brains,
Four, four, what is this number? The trinity and I
Accusing each other, three times you deny Me,
Four you kill me.

Three minutes to die by hanging, four
For transit, four fretboard-scarred fingers,
Playing four beats a complete note,
In four minutes I complete this call, four
Corners in a page I tear out, where do I see myself?
Scattered life history no one wants to read
In a rational four-dimensional world.

Four years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds,
Time, ticking four, clanging bells, the wandering
Account of deserts in Numbers, wars with the Lord,
The unspoken Word and death wrapped in four,
Where am I in this? between the unread
And the undead, I float wraith-like haunting the
Doppleganger infinite in enclosed mirrors of four.

where do you see yourself four years from now?

In a cage making music within bars,
Beats of four and then silence for-ever.
Writing four octaves waiting for the curse of the ninth,
Dying fall and then deafening silence.
Gazing at the broken notes written on stars,
Bleeding from jagged edges an then
Four times four millenia of rests.

My Burning Tree

2006-04-26T05:11:00.000-05:00

you are my tree
the great big tree in the middle
of the road next to the restaurant
which divides those who burn their lungs
and those who get burnt anyway,
you shade them both

you are my tree
but you belong to other trees separated
by miles of winding roads
and I am just another passerby using you
not wanting to get burnt,
you shade me well

you are my tree
the great big tree that I want to
hold on to and take refuge in as I flee
the flames that follow me to the depths
of blank pages getting burnt,
you form words out of ashes

you are my tree
the tree I wish others don't burn and bruise
as they hurtle through life's fast lane
but I can only wish and pray
for you to stay thru fire and rain,
you keep me alive

Re-calibration

2006-04-21T01:53:00.000-05:00

Calibration:
1. A set of gradations that show positions or values.

2. The act of checking or adjusting (by comparison with a standard) the accuracy of a measuring instrument.

I'm here wanting to be there
and not sure if that is right.

I hear clocks chiming dark music
and not sure if the beat is right.

I look into a mirror
and not sure if I see me right.

I smell carrion rejected by scavengers
and not sure if they are right.

I drink poison from slashed veins
and not sure if it tastes right.

I sense a change in the wind
and not sure it blows me left or right.

But this much I know:

A check on my bearings to right a wrong
Is to wrong my right to leave what was right.

So right now what is wrong
Will be adjusted to what I assume is right.

Though an alignment to right what's left
May result in a loss of words once felt right.

So I'm left here wanting to be right there
and not sure if that is...

I Shouldn't Have

2006-04-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

I should've known better
After aeons of pacing barefoot
On cold spaces, counting squares,
That numbers bring no sleep but
A countdown to crash and burn.

I should've known better
After hours spent in silent darkness
And fears translated to silent screams,
That words spoken bring no relief but
Cause friends to fall apart.

I should've known better
Than to drag your head to this shell
To listen to raging seas
That splinter words
And ruptures your eardrum.

Baggage

2006-04-18T04:20:00.000-05:00

Nothing
Except suitcases, replicating
As you move from city to city;
Filled with shards from rooms.

You carry these:
Floors that transform
Into faces into words into sentences
Devoid of expression adjectives punctuation
(You travel lighter faster);
Ashes that flap around
Build columns of fire
Around soul standing still watching
partaking in self-destruction.

You throw these:
Papers that bleed on
Clocks you smashed to freeze a moment
That melts at a song bruise touch in absentia
(You travel lighter faster);
Knives that glint at night
Carve patterns
On walls cracking still defending
attacking for self-preservation.

Nothing
Except suitcases, replicating
As you move from city to city;
Filled with shards from empty rooms.

Written on Easter Morning, April 16th, 2006

2006-04-17T02:18:00.000-05:00

Have you seen my lord?
I sit by this grave by day, by night,
I wait, I watch,
For signs of life within
As it passes me by without,
And I stare and wonder
If walking sleeping waking without you
Is a kind of existence
Worth breathing for.

Have you seen him?
Been three days, a day
A thousand years,
And all is emptiness, darkness, silence,
Wordless, yet I keep you
Alive in my heart, allow you
To consume my
Body and soul with your fire,
My hell your grave.

Have you seen him?
I look back and turn to stone
And now fall apart
Shattered to nothingness,
I do this knowingly, for
To free you from within
I have to die a million deaths,
Become a myth of your past and leave
No traces on your resurrected body.

Do you see him?
Now he rises, breaks through my stone heart,
Consumes what remains of me,
Walks over my watery grave
As the storehouse of my tears burst into
Raging storms of longing;
He rises and walks away
Away from my grave,
Increases as I decrease.

Short Story

2006-04-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

“These are the latest”, she said as she flicked the envelope toward Josie. Angie’s cheeks were tear-stained and her fingers shook as she lit another cigarette. The packet had arrived in the mail today, another set of photographs that Mr Desoto, her private investigator had sent.. It was Joe assisting a long haired blonde woman out of the limousine. The picture was grainy but not unclear. There were other pictures of Joe holding the door open for the same woman or enjoying a meal at a sidewalk café. She had yelled at Mr Desoto for never being able to capture a clear view of the woman on film.

She had spent hours poring over all the photographs she had collected. She had scanned them in her computer and had invested hundreds of dollars in imaging software. It had become an obsession. She had suspected Joe of cheating on her ever since he had become more attentive in bed and had taken to having flowers delivered at the office every other day. Her coworkers were going gaga over the long stemmed roses, orchids and other floral arrangements that had made her cubicle resemble a florist’s. But this was highly unusual behavior. They had been married fifteen years and Joe had rarely showered her with cards, candy, flowers or jewelry in all their years together. She didn’t mind, she saw herself as a practical woman who only yearned for these things when she saw other well-loved women exclaiming with glee all around her.

“You have no need for artifice”, he liked telling her and she had laughed such comments away. So this was puzzling, to say the least.

She had also been noting his late work hours and the sudden proliferation of work assignments that required frequent travel. She has deliberated long and hard and then, on a whim, picked out Desoto Investigations from the yellow pages. Mr Desoto had been tailing Joe for two months now. She was convinced Joe was having an affair. She wasn’t sure who the object of his affection was, but she felt she was close and that the answer was there, staring her in the face, she just needed to concentrate.

Josie scanned each picture again. She felt the color drain from her face. She looked up at Angie and said, “I don’t know what to say Ange. These pictures are not very clear. You can hardly make out anything. Besides, I could never imagine Joe being unfaithful, especially after all these years!”

“Get a hold of yourself Ange, I can’t see you doing this to yourself!”

“I don’t know, Josie, I just don’t know! I really trusted him….never thought for a moment that he would do this to me! The saddest part is that our married life has really perked up! He has been so attentive, so sensitive. I am convinced now it’s guilt!”

Josie saw the tears brimming again and rested her hand on Angie’s, “Maybe she is just an acquaintance Ange! You are letting your imagination run away with you. And this Desoto guy is just making it worse. I think he is a charlatan, a bottom feeder. You have to cut him loose Ange! He is messing you up!”

“I don’t think so. I have really studied these pictures. The woman looks so familiar to me, yet I can’t place her. That hair, her style. I wish these pictures were clearer!”

Josie felt nauseous. She had an insane desire to leave the table at the restaurant where they had met for lunch. She wanted to bolt and was just about to excuse herself for the powder room when the waiter arrived. He smiled at her and said, “Ms Greene! So nice to see you again! Two days in a row. How fortunate we are!”

Angie looked at her as Josie flashed an icy smile back at the waiter, “Why John, you must be confused! I haven’t been here in awhile! Excuse me!” She got up and walked to the powder room while Angie stared after her, with a perplexed John looking on. She ordered herself a martini and told John that she needed a few more minutes.

But instead of reading the menu she pulled out the pictures from the packet again and flicked through them until she came upon the one where the restaurant awning read – Café Un Deux Trois.
That’s where they were today. The blonde hairstyle, the clothes, the shoes, were all pieces of a puzzle that suddenly fell neatly into place. She had been confiding in Josie for many months now, sharing her deepest, darkest secrets and more recently her suspicions about Joe’s infidelity.

She saw things with crystal clarity now. The music changed to a familiar old tune, “When you left me all alone/At the record shop/ Told me you were going out/For a soda pop…” A favorite oldie. She saw Josie walking back from the restroom, steps resolute, a decision reached.

“Angie, I don’t know how to tell you this. Actually I have told you about it, many times. I am hopelessly in love. It started that day at your fifteenth anniversary party. Remember when you had retired early, with a headache? Joe had spent a lot of time organizing the party. He was heartbroken when you left. I found him standing alone on your porch, drinking. He talked about that spark that was missing and one thing led to another….this is it for me Ange, I have found love. I am glad it’s out in the open. We should all try to move on with our lives now.”

The wrought iron chair scraped the floor and fell backward as Angie got up with a start, she walked out of the restaurant with whatever dignity she could muster as Josie picked an olive out of her hair and wiping the martini from her face looked on at Angie’s retreating figure. John was standing nearby, napkin in hand….

Fiction: Internet Embargo

2006-04-08T13:29:00.000-05:00

The message was blinking on the screen as she watched, transfixed. The words started swimming around on the page, drifting in and out of focus while she sat, paralyzed. They leapt out at her – HUMAN THOUGHT - growing bigger in her line of vision and taking over completely.

If they weren’t going to be thinking how would she monitor their thoughts? The Grand Triumvirate (TGT) had no tolerance for excuses. “Excuses” were a fascinating discovery. When humans were in trouble, when they hadn’t done or said what they were supposed to have done, when they broke promises or commitments they could use excuses and get away with almost anything. TGT had greeted this discovery of hers with great amazement and equal disdain.

Now they would think she had learnt the art of making excuses from her subjects of study. If the humans weren’t going to be thinking for an entire week how and what could she report back? This could jeopardize the whole project.

The World Wide Web had offered some amazing behavioral insights. She had seen them change and evolve and accept willingly the leashes that bound them to their laptops, computers and various hand-held devices. Laptops had replaced the bedtime book and people on the streets always appeared to be talking to themselves. They had little devices hidden behind their ears and a tiny microphones dangling around their necks. She had ridden with them on trains and buses, noticing their deep involvement with their gadgets. No one paid attention to their fellow travelers in this journey of life, it was a wonder they still needed to get up and go somewhere every morning! People didn’t seem to need or want flesh and blood people anymore. Why, just last night she had watched a news snippet on TV about the International Pornographers Convention and their optimism about the new phenomenon of Pocket Porn. Cell phones could now provide titillation on demand! Well, well! Back home she had learnt about the outcome of such utter dependence on technology. It had taken them eons to recover from its soul-destroying effects.

Her efforts to understand humans had led to her becoming an avid chatter. She chatted around the clock, interacting with people all over the world. Loneliness was rampant. Real relationships had deteriorated or were somehow standing simply because their dissolution was a nuisance that wouldn’t add anything meaningful to the their lives. Clean breaks were just as meaningless as unions. And now it was all virtual. People were virtually stimulating the same areas of the brain that got stimulated during the mating ritual simply by interacting across chat lines. She was very amused with the “a/s/l” inquiries that came her way each day as some lonely soul somewhere, on this vast blue planet, reached out to “touch” someone across high bandwidth cables.

So how was this world going to react to a shut down of the Web and subsequently human thoughts? It did cross her mind that this was perhaps a hoax, but her research validated its authenticity. She was worried for herself. The TGT would demand her return and immediate execution if she failed to send in her weekly report. They would never believe all thoughts were going to be shutdown for a week. They would think it was her ploy to take that vacation to the 12th moon of Jupiter. They believed human tendencies were contagious and disdainfully cited the example of a renegade predecessor of hers who had gone around sporting an S on his suit as he flew around making people wonder if he was a bird or a plane.

She needed to think and fast. The shut down would happen in a few hours. She decided to take a walk on the beach to clear her head. There still was time.

She walked along the shore watching the waves thinking about her future, when suddenly she saw it. It jumped out of the water, a gargantuan beast, before gliding back in. A plume of water shot out of its head. What was that? Could it be? This was wonderful! She had been reading about these sea creatures, there was some data that they were almost as, if not more, intelligent than the humans she had ended up studying all these years. It all came back to her now – The Discovery Channel - she remembered the Whale. They were even said to have a language of their own, a Whale song! Her problem was solved.

She summoned up all her energy, and saw the sands shift beneath her slowly disappearing feet, her legs turning into that mighty tailfin as she slid, smoothly into the calm waters.

She was going to be reporting on whales this week.

JUDAS

2006-04-07T21:01:00.000-05:00

The Gospel of Judas has just been revealed by the National Geographic.

***

JUDAS

All right, they found you. After two millennia
you’ll have your say, and that transmitted
through God knows how many mouths
and two further centuries, probably edited –
no offence, you understand, these doubts:
after all, your brothers have been here

much longer. Power, pelf, church all theirs,
to say nothing of a flock a few billion strong
whose faith – well, you know what I mean!
Four sainted apostles can’t be wrong…
And the eons have lent a certain sheen
to the tale… As for truth, who cares?

You saw Pilate wash his delicate hands
of it that day, the old fox, complete
with Roman jest - the chap had style. What
makes you think the multitudes will greet
your word? And it’s Lent now old boy, not
Christmas; not even a fighting chance.

But…I think you’re better off as you are.
Your brothers in Christ have done more
for you than they’ll know. A betrayer’s
the meat of drama, like Magdala’s whore:
and one with theatre’s famous slayers.
No less than them, you’re a star.

***

Sorrow.

2006-04-04T10:51:00.000-05:00

Sorrow is a wilted rose
sepia-tinted and crumpled up prose,

Sorrow is cold winter rain
slithering down cracked window panes,

Sorrow is dilapidated barns
in forgotten little villages,

Sorrow is love discarded
walking down deserted lanes,

Sorrow is softly sharp
cutting through sinew and heart,

Sorrow walks the streets
and spills through old news-reels,

Sorrow drowns mundanely
in unknown and anonymous tales,

Sorrow flies on broken wings
journeying through lands unforgiving,

Sorrow is young and old
lost in wrinkled yesterdays and yearning tomorrows,

Sorrow is not knowing
what you had today,

Until you've lost it forever
never to have it come back,

Someday.

wondering about dying

2006-04-03T07:28:00.000-05:00

You tell me about death,
I fear it greatly, I fear.

I fear it happening to you now
For no reason, as you question -

Why the diseased rot in beds, disintegrate,
Yet exist in too slow obliteration.

Why comforts metamorphose into demons
Piloting a trip to the whale's belly.

Why parents die without a will,
Without kindness, without forgiveness.

Why friends take a flight a bus a car,
And never return to us.

Why some hurtle towards darkness,
Drown in a sea and vanish.

I fear and you wonder why
We live and etch graves in our memories.

You ask all this and I fear, I fear
For I know the shadow that walks with me.

You speak of death, and I know,
I know you know it could happen to me.

The Sea II

2006-03-31T02:27:00.000-05:00

The sea is calm tonight
a subdued hiss of foam
lapping at black crag

Tangled seaweed lurks
where the water is large
and full of life

It's been a while
since we last walked here

I ran a tickle up your arm
softly, in the dark
and you shivered.

The stars stared down clear
a distinct shiny point, each one

Yes, it's been a while

Tonight, the sea is calm
I taste its salt.

© Anindita Sengupta

Rage

2006-03-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

Absalom to the King

There is no light here. Strange, I see fire,
Dark fire blazing, burning a black sky. Why is blood black after dusk?
There is a tree here. Strange, I hear its soul beg,
From its captive hairless acorns to its spreading roots.

Here are my reasons:

For one filled with words and songs, why do you
Choose to be tone deaf to my voice?
For one so blessed, why am I
Chosen to be your darkest punishment?

Oh how the mighty have fallen, from rooftops
To bedrooms to killing fields, leaving
Slaughtered minds, bleeding wombs, dead sons
And ravished daughters.

Old man, wear your scars proud,
The moon tonight hides her face in darkness
Reflecting my naked rage
As I defile your house that was once ours.

Oh how far the young have run, from cold hearth
To alien lands to burning fields, running
For the glimpse of a face, ravaged by guilt,
Yet yearning for forgiveness.

Old man, songs of remorse do not give
The right to vengeance, so sing another tune,
Remain still, be still and know,
My rage is your sword that will smite you.

This is my revenge.

There is no light here. Dark corners of rage rise from the pit
And ask you this Father: Do you still not fear the death vale?
For you will see me forever, burning forever,
Burning for you for you did not burn for me.

Lament

2006-03-20T23:58:00.000-05:00

A Dialogue
Come back, come back, come back.

Haunt my silence, break through
The roar of voices whispering
‘Move on’ and ‘Let go’

Come back, come back, come back,
Come back to me, don’t leave.

(Who cut the guitar strings?
Who burnt the pages of my black diary last night?)

Be my private wind
That fans the fiery fumes of my memory,
Scatters the ashes of my alveoli,
Breathes, oh god, breathes

Come back, come back, come back,
Come back to me, don’t leave.

(Did I cut them to be part of your silence?
Did I burn them to kill my voice?)

Be the teardrop in my black sky,
The wail in my silence;
Remember me, remember me,
Breathe, so I may return to you

Just Dead

2006-03-18T08:45:00.000-05:00

This poem is featured in Esther Morgan's short list in her Poetry Workshop for February in The Guardian UK. Here's the link:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetryworkshop/story/0,,1724956,00.html

***

So this is what it means to be dead.
Not much to it, save a certain lightness,
a vague nothing to get used to,
with the day an uniform whiteness
and nights not black but reduced to
a nondescript grey, the colour of lead.

But I know that’s wrong, even as I use
the settled nomenclature of the living.
Those quotidian certitudes must yield
to softer lines, an idiom more forgiving
of imprecision: nascent word revealed
in inchoate thing. And so I cruise

in this otherworld where meaning
makes no sense, without a name –
for ghost after all is earthspeak
like all the rest, and it’s not the same;
while time lies still over this bleak
landscape, beyond hope of a greening.

It suits me well, this strange vacuity
of place and purpose, my only quest
being one of definition: for words
are cognates no longer here, at best
fickle fingerposts pointing towards
a fooling spurious continuity.

Reason fails in this uncertain light,
and language gropes with tenuous roots.
And all the fixities that life defined
are no more than extinct truths,
an irrelevant construct of the mind –
and I’m not sure that mind is right.

***

The Sea

2006-03-17T04:29:00.000-05:00

After the voices,
lingers the malignant odour
of time
and the sickly-sweet smell of fear
and secrets huddled in closets
and shiny, patented self-doubt

This quiet journey into oneself
is muddy and breaking
as sea water.

I cannot do it
I must not do it.

Strip away the whorls
of should and must and have
and the raw, blinding cry of Medusa
remains

What you saw and learnt was false
What you heard and fought was false
What you loved and lost
was also false

A vacuous stare
lips slackly held askew
a tremble, a shudder

And after those layers,
a bony skull, two eyepits
where previously dreams danced

This is all it comes to
This is all it comes to
in the end.

*inspired by John Banville's book, The Sea

"In tumult" [boomerang poem]

2006-03-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

The days when I may wander in the evening are returning
I have perhaps some while yet to tarry on the earth
they say there's wondrous order in the play of death & birth
some claim the world is fashioned as a school for lovely learning
but reason's insufficient to produce the rhyme of mirth
for reasons under reasons hide like waves whose restive churning
describes a heart in tumult such a heart dwells in my girth
the days when I may wander in the evening are returning

Sin-city.

2006-03-10T05:22:00.000-05:00

AD.(double click on pic for higher reso)

She slithers
through the night
and hides
the grim grime
as the city glitters
and bears
a false smile
soul-dead inside;

A baby wails
behind locked doors
its business as usual
as the Limos roll;
Her mother's heart
trips, the tight vice
constricts;

'Its money
babe'!
He snorts at her.
'Get in the car,
do some bz'ness,
just part your legs
then you can go,
babe!'

And
the baby wails
behind
locked doors.

Tenebrae - Songs of Darkness

2006-03-03T07:34:00.000-05:00

Consumed by Fire

*Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina.

Every word an eternal fire
And yet you think I have forgotten
All dewdrops that fell from your lips long ago –
Oh but I merely long
For litanies, to alchemize these to icicles,
That I may burn my memories in this wilderness
With your light.

The Death of Fire

Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, mine acquaintance is darkness.

How desolate this place is
Yet no more than the space I left behind,
The fires lit by others I kill blaze by blaze -
Oh but I merely wish
Forgetfulness, to throw your face in shadows,
That I may quench all hopes of resurrection of lust and longing
In your light.

Broken Music

Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?

The canticle melts into the darkness
And the notes fall like tears from the night sky,
Lonely, gasping, torn asunder from the word –
Oh but I merely desire
The death of voices, to silence expression,
That I may hide behind veils, stone walls, and my eyes
Without your light.

Death

I have come into deep waters and the torrent washes over me.

The words I longed to tell you breathe their end
They drown in the tears you held in your eyes when I left,
They flit in the space that I imagined was you –
Oh but I will delude you no longer
There will never be a turning back, a return to you,
That I don’t repeat this loss, this dying of music
In the murder of our light.

*O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

Woman

2006-03-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

Vermillion
is the colour
of devotion.

Cover your head
This thin translucence
will protect you

Laugh softly,
and softly walk
like gentle rain

Pull a smile
across the thin lines
of your face

Wear modest pastels
Never scream,
my grandmother said

mother, barely twelve
with scuffed knees
and trees to climb still
laughed and jounced out
to adopt stray dogs

Forty years gone

Time sprints like
running water
or quicksilver
and disperses what it must

But some things remain.

Don't wear shorts, look down
slouch so your breasts
don't really show
tie your hair back
keep the boys calm

cross your legs -
Be cheerful always
please don't scream

I with scuffed knees at twelve,
dungarees at eighteen
and lovers lost,
reclaimed, discarded
like driftwood
by twenty one

could never listen
with exactitude

I wear red
My eyes are dark
Sometimes, I scream.

remains

2006-02-22T00:39:00.000-05:00

For R.D.

what remains free:
stories you wove in the cold breeze
as we sped down congested roads, a patchwork
strung together by laughter, commas and silence.

what stands firm:
stone churches, white churches, chapels
and flowers wired to pews and altars, as broken thoughts flew
and formed wordless prayers for strength.

what remains trapped:
A face in candlelight,
A touch that broke through my dark dream,
tears that fell on the road i wished i'd picked up
but feared i had no right to,
unspoken words
that translated into refrains of songs,
fear,
time.

and what do i do now?
sever etched pathways,
run through the desert, for the arrows
are beyond me, within me,
and wait for Orion
to open his portal and let loose
the angel of death?

For nothing remains...

MIDNIGHT COLLOQUY

2006-02-21T15:10:00.000-05:00

Long after the others have dined
you pad in on pussy feet.
Night’s your time, and your meat
the worried carcass of my mind.

***

Nurturing an Argument

2006-02-13T02:30:00.000-05:00

Turn your head just a little bit
You'll catch it out of the corner
of one hollow, ennui-swollen eye
Move nimbly towards it

Pounce quickly!
Before it slips through the doors
and out into the quiet night
where people linger with jazz
by firesides
and feel warm.

Pounce now. Hold it tight,
your fingers clenched around its
soft, prickly texture
like a ripe lichee.

It's thin now
but if you keep it warm
look at it many times,
touch it with warm fingers
before you sleep,
it will grow voluptuous.

It needs intense attachment to survive.

It may be your last chance
to be voluminous, to speak
your many words, like helium balloons
they climb air.

When it shrivels
your life will return
to the usual rhythms.

© Anindita Sengupta

Transluscence

2006-02-03T07:59:00.000-05:00

You did not tell me those were tear drops
that stained your eyes, you blamed dust
and told me it was normal. I believed
your lie and then joked about things
that made you laugh and forget,
for a moment, the terrible pain
you carried inside so silently.

I nearly guessed the truth once
but your explanations were clever
and so beautifully wrapped in evasions
that I failed to understand things
and did not probe deeper into the hardness
of your self-defence, and instead
remained comfortably gullible.

But if I only knew, would I have acted
differently or even changed the course
of events completely? Maybe or maybe not,
but who knows? Time makes conjectures
such an easy and convenient exercise
like the poetry we read and write to seek
explanations for the inexplicable in life.

But I do know that, if nothing else, the flowers
on this stone would have sung a different song
because you would be sleeping more peacefully.

6:30 a.m. 2nd february

2006-02-02T06:42:00.001-05:00

perspicuous poems or poetry opaque?

perspectival viewing with angles oblique?

snow falls so seldom here! who recalls a flake?

morn arrives too swift now like snow on my cheek

Silence

2006-01-31T04:01:00.000-05:00

Silence

Was what I craved
So I piled up some stones
And built towers taller than dreams
Then barred their windows with my weathered bones
Leaving no escape for my screams
And here I sit alone
In this depraved
Silence

an effort in Rictameter with symmetric rhyming (is it really called that?)

A Dog & Its Tail

2006-01-27T15:59:00.000-05:00

A dog
that chases
its own tail
is bound to
mostly, fail

But the one
that succeeds
will live to tell
How his own
arse does smell