tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67487706950333061502024-03-08T07:51:22.106-08:00The Painted Wall...My Canvas, where the music is a shade bright red...Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-63884823166621485382012-03-13T13:29:00.002-07:002012-03-13T13:33:24.349-07:00Lopamudra<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The tides washed away everything but not the foaming mouths of her wounds. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The yawning of her legs is the subject of my poesy. My unspeakable loneliness mingles with the blood running down her thighs; escaping into the turbulent distortions of that which doesn’t exist. Ripples of ecstasy erupt into piteous cries stifled in my presence as I feel her screams burning the back of my throat. She will not speak to me. We who were joined at birth are now separated by a taboo hemisphere of identities. But </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> must speak.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Who am I? </span></span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Poesy will not satiate the void of this utterance. Must I then slither into the seductive coils of prosaic nothingness?</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I am the centre of the circle. The coiled serpent that cleft the heaving ocean and milked ambrosia from poison is now twisting and transforming into a fountain sprouting new meanings –words for which are yet to be conceived. Simply put, I am that which is not.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And she is my beloved. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">How can I tell you of the night when I spoke to her underneath that ancient tree in her courtyard? Our whispers permeated the thick moonlight that hovered over the leaves and burdened them with a million drops of dew. The sound of water splashing on the cold floor disturbed her sleep and she woke in my anxious arms with a yearning for conversation. We spoke, as we still speak now, in that language of gestures and emotions that so perplexes our eyes. Soft stealthy words are meaningless when that which is corrosive inside you demands oration. I was spitting venom and she was gathering flowers and we were together for such a long time that one cannot remember when the dream ended and the day began as I opened my eyes to see him at his window with a cup of coffee in his hand. And yet she sleeps besides me now. She is draped in the flesh of my imagination but her unblemished form was forged elsewhere in some celestial catastrophe. She speaks my voice and sees my blindness; she breathes my oxygen. She is besides me, around me, away from me and yet inside me. She is me and I am her; I am Lopamudra and she is nobody.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times New Roman"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">*******</span></span></p>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-6791403807998755532011-12-27T05:39:00.000-08:002011-12-27T05:43:28.551-08:00Coughing up Blood<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Fear not, my love, for my love still breathes with me;</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Far have I walked these crowded streets</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">And far have I felt the solitary sun.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">A thousand fevers shiver in raging torrents</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">But the blood will not come.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">The sweet acid poured down my throat</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">The last time we made love</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Still lingers as an orgasm stuck in my throat.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Feather wishes are few and far between;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">but I wish the nymphs gave me Icarus' wings.</span></div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-26486546865031072872011-10-02T01:47:00.000-07:002011-10-02T06:31:16.634-07:00Six Seconds (in the life of a streetcar not named)<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Drowning in music </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">the highway stripper</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">turns the stereo up</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">unhooking his bra from the windshield </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><i>Take me for a ride</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><i>oh baby take me high; high</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><i>Let me make you rise; rise</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><i>make it last all night.</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">...and the teenage mustang </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">going from 60 to 80 over the highway</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">-arizona; the landscape of my dreams-</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">rolling, ever rolling</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">disappearing over the horizon</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">merging with the sexual landscape of clouds.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Underneath it all</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">the lonely old man</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">holding his starry skies up to the unrelenting sun</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">muses salvation.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Signposting barren nothingness</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">flashing thongs on widow sides</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">(our nameless adventurer</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">stares into the depths</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">of sandy clothes lying abandoned)</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">stripped clean of his flesh</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">(his heart racing; in his skin tight jeans?)</p>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-20904899568783559272010-04-12T10:32:00.000-07:002010-04-14T03:26:00.154-07:00Confessions on Camera<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">-An Ode to Dorothy Parker</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><br /><br /></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">Standing at the edge; a blur of blue,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">leaning over<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">adjusting her hair;<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">she is squinting at the setting sun.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">One awkward hand on the railing<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">and a knee slightly bent<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">betray her purpose here.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"> </p></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">You and me, oh Dorothy,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">have been here a little too long;<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">you flick some ash, I look at my watch<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">and the camera just pans over us.<br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">She is speaking words-<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">pre-rehearsed and incoherent,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">alienating you and me further away.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">A script lies open on the tabletop<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">-off focus; and a pair of eyes<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">contradict a moving mouth.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"></p></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">I want to tell you Dorothy,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">that the tree behind you has new green leaves,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">and then perhaps begin to speak.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">But your eyes are fixed elsewhere,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">on this ensemble of everyday unreality<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">reflecting your exasperation.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">I look at my watch, you flick some ash,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">and the camera just pans over us.<br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">You make to leave- then hesitate-<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">and your eyes linger on me.<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">A stray thought erupts, teeters on speech,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">but its only a moment of unbecoming,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">swallowed in the crunch of a cigarette stub.<br /><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">You and me, oh Dorothy,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">were here far too long;<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">though I did want to tell you something,<br /></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:georgia;">before the onset of our cinematic erasure.<br /><br /></span></p>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-64301262214569618762010-01-10T03:35:00.000-08:002010-01-10T03:42:31.660-08:00Chaap Tilak<div align="justify">As all such frivolous metro chases end in tragedy and much heartache, I decided against giving in to this one. He was sitting there, in the seat opposite mine, wearing a red <em>kurta</em> and a grey-brown <em>bandi</em> with a thin shawl wrapped around his neck, reading a book whose name I was too distracted to notice. I don’t usually read in the metro. Words are often inadequate to express the intensity of the deathly pangs of boredom that one suffers in a metro ride alone. I had to consciously stop a full-scale colourful and extravagant hallucination of Khusrau and Nizaam’s love affair from playing out in the space between us. Thankfully just then a large crowd entered the train and snatched this moment away as their jostling limbs veiled him from my gaze.<br /><br /><em>Chaap tilak sab cheeni mosay naina milaikay;</em><br /><em>Chaap tilak sab cheeni mosay naina milaikay…<br /></em><br />Outside the cloudless windless day had changed. No nothing to do with the weather; the sun was still as bleak as ever. A certain something buckled under the guise of this ordinary day as I made my way through <em>Mandi House</em>. <em>Meera</em> <em>bai</em> was perhaps musing something similar, sitting under a tree outside NSD. I heard my name called out; I turned; and there she was. Cars were rushing past us and I was trying to escape. I didn’t want to be seen and there she was calling out my full three-piece name. I had come alone here because I was running away…<br /><br /><em>I was there, just as I am here now. I am here in the little crevices beneath flyovers where a pan-wallah is doubled-over in laughter. I am here waiting to cross busy roads on my endless path to nowhere. I am here underneath the leaking roof of my one room house half colonized by lizards and spiders. And I am still here, besides the fountain of wine sprouting violet ecstasy in the frenzied twilight of my youth.<br /></em><br />It only struck me what I was escaping from over a cup of coffee half an hour later in the unremarkable cafeteria at SRC. Him that I loved this month had eyes I could drown in but he was still standing at the edge of the shallow end surrounded by toddlers, fearing death. I smiled into my coffee. She that loved me had gifted me a gift of fire that had flickered out and I was to get it repaired today.<br /><br /><em>Yeh aag ka daarya hai, so you had better get your fire-proof swimwear.<br /></em><br />Yet another tragedy awaited the end of lunch hour at the ticket counter in NSD. Tickets for all the plays that I had wanted to watch were sold out, and others were to be issued later. Blinded by unspeakable anguish I stumbled out unto the entrance. A moth-eaten sofa sat pretty under the main portico of NSD and for a moment I considered the possibility of cheeky irony in the NSD building being an imitative miniature of the much grander Rashtrapati Bhavan. A wondrous feeling of solitary self-sufficiency was sweeping over me when I ducked under the shade of the tent and saw him again. There he was, legs crossed, elbow on knee, chin resting on a carelessly upturned hand and eyes closed in an expression of pensive calm. I just stared. That was ten minutes of my life I lost forever.<br /><br /><em>Bal bal jaaon mein toray rang rajwa;</em><br /><em>Apni see rang deeni, mosay naina milaika...<br /></em><br />I couldn’t take the metro again. It was just too crowded and I like my melodramatic space while travelling. The walk from <em>Mandi House</em> to Connaught Place was unremarkable. I tried enquiring unsuccessfully if the library at ICWF was open to everyone for membership and then took a few minutes to ponder if I would have liked studying in the ‘Modern’ school on that road. I decided it was rather vain an enquiry and I liked my own school campus much better- this one was just too green and red for me.<br /><br />It was a short walk back that took a long long time. I like walking, or as I told her four years ago in an unguarded moment, “<em>I like walking in the rain</em>.” Rain can always be imagined, and in a place like Delhi it becomes one’s second nature to do so. But walking back to Connaught Place was wearisome in its repetitive absurdity. It seemed to me in that moment that for the past four years I had done nothing but walked back to this place. The columned corridors all around me were acquiring a fresh coat of paint and I remembered how he and I had spoken of death together under these very scaffoldings a few days ago. I felt his hand on mine; I shivered; I blushed. I turned and stooped down to pick up a book that could have been any other. A strange memory of an Israeli tourist on a bus to McLeodganj suggesting that I read Rohinton Mistry led my hands to it as I skimmed the pages. Every time I have fallen in love has become a layer over another. This book (a good bargain for 150 bucks) would be yet another on it.<br /><br /><em>Khusrau Nijaam kay bal bal jayyiye;</em><br /><em>Mohay Suhaagan keeni mosay naina milaikay.</em><br /><em>Chaap tilak sab cheeni mosay naina milaikay…</em></div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-54497109135017918902009-12-15T12:28:00.000-08:002009-12-16T08:35:59.800-08:00An afternoon affairA space;<br />a long winding staircase,<br />up and beyond-<br />over the terrace<br />tucked to the left- a room;<br />inside- on the right<br />A single bed<br />standing on many rugs<br />-on the other shore<br />a brown table<br />shouldering a wardrobe.<br />-in between, a mass of books<br />and a chair<br />-tucked in, while perched<br />above-<br />a television.<br />Facing the big window<br />On the other side<br />Covering the wall.<br />Moving still further<br />you will find, further left<br />The same door we came in through<br />but the one we never quite left behind.Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-16176029958010617602009-09-06T08:30:00.000-07:002009-09-06T08:49:28.824-07:00Untitled- A collage of distortions.<p></p><p align="justify">“You will listen to me.”<br /><br />Her voice was echoing along the deserted corridor. The windows that were supposed to let the outside breeze come into these dingy caverns were bolted shut many years ago. The damp reverberations of her voice are all that I have to keep me warm. I am staring into the emptiness of everything. I really have little else to do but to listen. And I listen.<br /><br />“You will listen to me.”<br /><br />I am not entirely unaware of what she is saying. Me and her, she and I- we have a similar sense of humour. She is speaking of Irom Sharmila and the blood splattered streets of Manipur. She is waving her hands frantically- trying to point at the place where there had been voices. The rumble of a passing jeep, a flash of light and the screech of braking tyres. She smells death and laughs and her body shrivels in cold sweat as a peculiar silence is restored to the night. But she is still laughing- telling me to look at the walls- the blood splattered walls. How do I tell her that I can’t? Is it now that I must tell her of my blindness? I see the shadows dancing on the wall making patterns too hideous for the eyes. But she only sees red.<br /><br />“You will listen to me.”<br /><br />I cannot listen to her. I cannot. She is speaking of too many things and I am speaking of nothing. I am a mirror reflecting her voice and she is a mirror reflecting my silence. We are entangled in a web of lies and deceit and they are coming to take me away as I know I have sinned. There can be no forgiveness for me; I know. And I know that they are coming.<br /><br />“You will listen to me.”<br /><br />Her voice is growing fainter by the second. She is drifting away into that numbness that comes with the fever of amnesia in which the horrors of all genocides are but a smile painted on a counterfeit Mona Lisa. Her voice carries no distinct words. A sublime emotion of pain is all that she conveys in her song about love and death. Words are becoming harder to find, and still harder to put with other words which are of course just that much harder to find.<br /><br />“You will listen to me.”<br /><br />I am perhaps only just waking from a nightmare. But mornings never come without conditions and contracts –without promises of good behaviour and nutritious diets. I wish only to wake up and find her someday. She is waving her hands frantically and pointing at the place where there had been voices. But then again, she only ever sees red.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p align="justify"><em>Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image</em>. [Wikipedia]</p>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-26612719543343017492009-05-19T09:12:00.000-07:002009-05-19T09:15:39.651-07:00Untitled [A prelude to the Hymn of Creation]<div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify">I was sitting by the window one evening, with a cup of coffee in one hand and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in the other, trying to bridge the gap between prose and poetry.<br /><br />I am trying to imagine that I am in a movie. I wouldn’t, of course, have liked to be the protagonist, or anything at all like that. You see, I don’t really like being in focus, and I had much rather have the –lets see– yes, I would much rather have this vase some six feet away from me be the focus than have the fuss over me. That is unusual, but of course it wouldn’t very much be any other way than that…<br /><br />I should perhaps tell you at the very beginning that this window isn’t mine. Oh well, its mine as much as I am sitting on it and looking through it, but it still remains a borrowed piece of imagination. It belongs to my mother and she had quite careless given it to me along with a whole host of odd little trinkets that are scattered all around this room. Flashes of memory and a blue wall are my most treasured inheritances. I don’t need the rest. I am quite horribly choosy but I think a jumbled montage of disjointed plots interspersed with elaborate song-and-dance sequences will do just perfectly well for my movie; the one I am supposed to be in.<br /><br /><em>He was walking up the stairs in the rain, with an unopened umbrella in hand. The alley was lit by a single light bulb dangling over the clothesline and he was so far away from it that I couldn’t catch a glimpse of his face. He was moving away from the tea-stall; he was in a hurry and he could have broken into a run any minute. Now he was right under my window; now two feet towards the left, now four, six, ten, a million… He was storming through the alleyway; he was barely a specter in a soaking wet shirt, and I was an invisible gust of wind following his trail; gliding right besides him. It came effortlessly. But soon, he would be gone, as he has now, having travelled so deep in the parched landscape of my mind.<br /></em><br />“You are far too apologetic”, she said, and that was that. The immense anguish of poesy had collapsed into a heap of rubble; into some scattered dust, and from it emerged a pair of eyes that beckoned the universe to stillness for all eternity. I was quivering with amnesia and she was shivering with fever. A distant snap of twigs and some secretive whispering amongst birds had alarmed her soul and I saw the fear in her eyes mingle with the melody of her gaze. But between us had fallen a veil. A blast of narcotic memories had inflamed my mind and yet she was dousing my soul with doses of sleeping pills.<br /><br /><em>I was dreaming of Ghalib,<br />in a sun-sheltered sky.<br />He had left the door open<br />and left me to die,<br />so I was dreaming of Ghalib,<br />in a sun-sheltered sky.<br /><br /></em>The lights are out. In the dark the silhouette of my beloved is a tantalizing mass of transmission lines and graying skyscrapers. She is basking naked under the moonlit bridge over the river and I am waiting for the old man to come looking for his lost letter in these waters beneath the invisible bridge. The sun and the moon are arched over the voluptuous hemisphere of my words and I am wooing them with my ungainly offering of aesthetics. Lopamudra is dancing in my balcony and I am waiting for the night train from Dehradun to carry me home. The rush of the wind brings to me the tinkling music of her anklets and I am mesmerized by the vacant expectation of this night, and it is then, in that moment suspended by the creaking of the door that it dawns on me that the power-cut tonight is her frivolous conspiracy. I am at once her enemy, her lover, her playmate, and the confidant of gossip-loving crickets. They are watching me from the window, and I am once more a specter of their imagination. I am restless with the weight of everything unwritten; chaos around me is a swirling storm of desire and I turn over to the other side and surrender to the moonlight singing.<br /><br /><em>There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep?<br />There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond.<br />Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning; with no distinguishing sign, all this was water. The life force that was covered with emptiness, that one arose from the power of heat.<br />Desire came upon that one in the beginning; that was the first seed of mind. Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom found the bond of existence in non-existence.<br />Their cord was extended across. Was there below? Was there above? There were seed-placers; there were powers. There was impulse beneath; there was surrender above.<br />Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?<br />Whence this creation has arisen- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not- the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.</em><br /><br />(10.129; the Rig Veda)</div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-16199495165542679412009-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:002009-01-20T08:51:02.276-08:00Ode to dreams forgottenThe ebb and flow of words<br />within the silence of time;<br />heavy-headed, I sleep<br />in yellow dreams<br />At nine.<br /><br />A space,<br />a kaleidoscopic sea;<br />as a passive smoker shrugs,<br />inhaling monotonic hours,<br />sweeping down with cartoon prophecy.<br /><br />I am of course still sleeping,<br />rolling over ever-stifling time;<br />steady-footed, I sink,<br />in tender amnesia<br />At nine.Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-60001334319025939292009-01-18T08:04:00.000-08:002009-01-18T08:11:12.589-08:00What is Indian Literature?<span style="font-size:85%;">The attempt at categorization</span><br /><br /><div align="justify">Our relentless effort to establish order cannot be better illustrated than by our peculiar yet untiring attempts to categorize the world around us. Disorder puts us in a very tricky situation, for if nothing is fixed and nothing determinable then our egotistic assumptions on the knowable world –and our possession of that ‘knowledge’- hangs precariously, since the universal and the general –upon which knowledge is structured- is replaced by the chaotic- manifest in arbitrary individualism and defiant subjectivity. We like to organize things into neat little boxes that make us feel good about ourselves and reassure us that we know what is where; we like to think by categorizing them we have conquered them and subdued them into those neat little boxes we find in biology books and anthropological studies.<br /><br />Academics and Scholars, naturally, have therefore an even greater zeal in categorizing and then theorizing such categories. In Universities teaching Literature you are likely to encounter whole Papers and Blocks like ‘Australian Literature’, ‘African Literature’ and the new arrival ‘Indian Literature’. Deeply political as it is to define ‘Literature’, for present purposes let us say it is the mass of all literary work within the category imposed upon it; hence ‘Indian Literature’ is representative of all literary work that may be termed ‘Indian’. The complexity of defining the second word, for once, pales in comparison to that of the first. What is ‘Indian’, and what constitutes its literature? The category seems to defy categorization. So how do you do it?<br /><br />It’s easy if you are Warwick or Oxford; you just need to mix Tagore with Shobha De, add a touch of Vikram Seth, a dash of Salman Rushdie, and you have made yourself the perfect Indian curry. Unsavory as that might sound, it is perhaps not as ‘wrong’ as it seems since a Cambridge definition of ‘Indian’ is purely their perception of the Indian and unsurprisingly the books selected are the books that have made the westward journey and got there. But the problem at hand is -if we must- then how does one define Indian Literature?<br /><br />One can either look at ‘Indian’ as implying the political India, or the more elusive cultural ‘India’. Political India –as the geographical chunk encompassed by the international border- in terms of an Indian Literature would imply an aggregative approach where every literature within India – Hindi, Maithili, Marathi, Telegu, Bangla and the vast many language-literatures of India- together constitute Indian Literature. This statement itself makes obvious the lack of any unity in such an approach and, to put it as Aijaz Ahmad does “A ‘national’ literature… has to be more than the sum of its regional constituent parts, if we are to speak of its unity theoretically.” India, as a nation that never existed as unified entity till two centuries ago, and a nation that has never, till date, spoken one single language, has a culture that, if one follows the tourism brochures, revels in this diversity. But even in this complexity let us attempt to try and salvage if we may a unified culture that is Indian, and which may aid us in understanding what Indian Literature is or could be. It’s not just cliché humor to say that India exists in Cricket and Bollywood movies. To look for Indian culture –and subsequently Indian Literature- we must look at what surpasses the distinctions of demographics, ethnicity, religious groups and language clusters.<br /><br />In terms of language it comes down to what language does an India think in, or rather in what language can one envision an India? Languages specific to certain regions are often limited in conceptualizing the vastness of this problem and are often geographically restricted in terms of market-audiences. Hindi, in spite of sixty years of aggressive (and expensive) state promotion and propaganda, has failed to become the medium of our national consciousness, severely restricted and loathed as it is in the South, the North-East and various other parts of the country. The most politically scandalous thing to do now would be to suggest English as a -if not the- language that can conceptualize an India and subsequently be the vehicle of Indian Literature.<br /><br />We may shy from it but it isn’t incorrect to say that India is the product of colonialism, and that our colonizers, for better or worse, invented an India. English, therefore, was the first language to adopt ‘India’ into its vocabulary and even NCERT textbooks concede that the rise of English speakers in India not only united the country but gave rise to a sense of pan-Indian nationalism. But it is not as easy as saying Indian writing in English is what constitutes Indian Literature.<br /><br />Indian Literature, if we must, has to be that literature which is able to recognize this India as a united entity, and speak of this unity. It is perhaps largely due to lack of alternatives that Indian writing in English constitutes a large bulk of what I may term ‘Indian’ Literature. It is also not to say that since India is a product of colonialism Indian literature cannot speak of anything else except our colonial experience. It is merely to state that Indian literature needs a broader scope of national understanding and at the moment only English seems to be doing that.<br /><br />An interesting point to note is that the India that is producing, reading and theorizing this literature is hardly representative. An elite wealthy English-speaking minority is hardly the average Indian, but oddly, it is perhaps the only India that cuts across other religious and linguistic divides. For most of this country there simply exists no Indian Literature since there simply exists no one India. Every language group has its own India, one which cannot be translated into another language, which in turn has its own India. In that sense, the Indian literature which is in English is representative of only one of these many Indias that exists today, the only difference being that the audience –the readers, writers and scholars- of English are spread across the country and cut across all other language groups in this country, though limited nonetheless by economic barriers.<br /><br />It is indeed tempting to jump to conclusions regarding this situation, but one needs to understand the latent complexities of this problem before branding it good or bad. The concept of an Indian literature is just as arbitrary as any other attempt at categorization. The need for this categorization perhaps arose out of the mere necessity of creating something new in the curriculum of a University, one possibly far removed from all such concerns of actually defining an Indian identity. Perhaps the real purpose was mere scholarly discourse and academic debate, where the emphasis is on posing questions, not on eliciting a single answer?<br /><br />However, there really is no need for there to be a single answer to this question –and that precisely is my conclusion. </div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-89081616009483765332008-11-09T07:27:00.000-08:002008-11-09T07:30:16.146-08:00The Last Delirium<span style="color:#c0c0c0;">We<br />who had gathered<br />unknown, amidst strangers<br />witnessed the first signs.<br /><br />The distant noise<br />-a murmur,<br />riding the waves.<br />Rising; raising ripples in the music.<br /><br />One by one<br />we came, one and all,<br />we, who were what was the crowd.<br /><br />Unaroused<br />we gathered around fires,<br />little circles shielding the light,<br />melting numbed joints.<br /><br />We, who had gathered<br />brandishing machetes<br />and books and tools,<br />suffered the first Loss.<br /><br />Thronging the streets,<br />littering the halls -the temple steps,<br />we could not see it coming,<br />submerged as it was<br />underneath our clamor.<br /><br />You and I,<br />who were there, on that fateful day,<br />stared at its face<br />and met those pitiless eyes.<br /><br />Blazing fire<br />in sudden spiteful fury,<br />beating in ecstasy the drums of doom.<br /><br />A toppled mountain plunging into the streams<br />the tides rising like never before,<br />the thundering steps<br />growing louder,<br />over and above apocalypse.<br /><br />And we, who were there<br />saw in its face<br />the unrelenting power<br />of creation that no longer submits to any creator<br /><br />We, who had gathered<br />rushed out to see our nemesis.<br />One so bold to smite us.<br /><br />It was then, perhaps<br />that you and I,<br />in the scattering crowd<br />of the unraveling world<br />were struck by its force.<br /><br />We stared at its face<br />helpless,<br />you and I,<br />who had created this monster<br />flesh and blood, and bronze,<br />But now, we can only gape<br />at our creation<br />sounding the music of the final delirium.</span>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-56249144869504209202008-09-07T10:44:00.000-07:002008-09-08T11:03:09.039-07:00AfterwardsThe shingle stones;<br />the shroud<br />of golden butterflies<br />hovering over the edge of my dreams.<br /><br />You were the glazen mirror;<br />the glinting sunshine<br />ramming through nothing<br />was the poetry etched on your glass.<br /><br />We were clouds;<br />once upon a time-<br />we were clouds.<br /><br />An endless fall;<br />a hunger<br />of jagged knives<br />claws at the bottom of this desire.<br /><br />You are a picture still<br />still enough a picture<br />-you are my picture still.<br /><br />But the twilight;<br />the distant storm<br />of unprovoked tamarind lust<br />has washed these tides with words.<br /><br />You are the blazen mirror;<br />The vastness<br />of your presence;<br />and I must step back to capture everything-<br /><br />that slipped<br />back, beyond the edge of this cliff.Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-73604464958085425132008-03-23T09:44:00.000-07:002008-03-23T09:47:22.385-07:00-untitled-<strong>-untitled-</strong> (or <em>‘A very blue memoir of a rainy day on sixth street’</em>)<br /><br /><div align="justify">She said she wanted to be free. She was walking in the rain, under a clear sky that betrayed no hint of the coming blue. It wasn’t very clear- it was raining quite heavily- and I couldn't see; maybe it wasn’t really her.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen of the Orchestra, is the music too loud. No it isn’t a question, not quite. Yes I know you cant hear me, and of course, there will still be cheese for dinner.<br /><br />She was still talking when she got into the cab – sorry, I mean the rickshaw. Did it change anything that she didn't have a bag with her, no rosy lipstick and no sticky business in the corner shop?<br /><br />No the mirror didn't crack as she left- as he left- or whatever. ‘It’ left me alone in the street. I took maybe the subway home, and in any case I don’t recall how I came home. I read sometime in the newspaper that our city will soon have a subway- or a park, where there will be people.<br /><br />Of course you cant hear me, child. Go run in the rain, I would have done so if I were you. Am I not you? How can <em>you</em> say that. Oh yes, I couldn't quite see that it has stopped raining. Very good, you will make a good citizen someday, my brave boy. If not, you will definitely make a good doctor.<br /><br />So yes, we were at the moment when she left me. She said she wanted to be free. She had the most awful air of unsaturated indignity around her. She was sitting next to a microbiologist. She was the microbiologist. No no no, you are getting it all wrong- you had dated a microbiologist sometime next Wednesday.<br /><br />I have a dream. I didn't like it much but I always have the same dream. I am in a blue room, with fifteen chairs and fourteen tables.<br /><br />Of course blue is my favorite color, how did you know?<br /><br />Ah, I am tired. It has been a long time. She took such an awful time to leave. I wish she hadn’t. I wish he hadn’t left with her. I wish they had stayed over at least for coffee.<br /><br />I don’t like drinking alone- or with more than three people. I always go to a bar with three chairs. The fifteen chairs had a gilded lion on them. Funny, I have never seen a lion!<br /><br />She was my most romantic soulmate. Yes I am aware that the dictionary says ‘soulmate’ is not a single word and no, you may not run after the kite in south park, or west park, or any blue park for that matter. Yes blue is my favorite color.<br /><br />I had given her a blue cigar on her nineteenth birthday. She believes she has smoked it away. I never found the ashes, and I know she is lying. She gave it to him under the darkness of a summer noon in Palermo. My dear lady, I <em>saw</em> he was Italian!<br /><br />Don’t play such somber tones- I am still alive and happy and singing. But you cant hear me, and you cant see that my red coat is drenched in the rain.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen of the radio station, you blissful angels playing music so late in the night, you must be tired. If I had a telephone I would also work for the radio- and sing for myself and others and my two sweet next-door girls who always pester me. They are all four years old and they already believe I am an air force pilot.<br /><br />I think I need sleep. I know what dream I will have, so there is no suspense- the same reason why I stopped going to the movies- they simply have no dreams.<br /><br />Yes dear, the cheese is cold, but the bread will make it better.<br /><br />I think I sometimes cant say things right. She said as much, when she slammed the door on my face. But how could she slam the door? She went, poor me, in an innocent rickety rickshaw. But she slammed something. Maybe her invisible bag or her passionate love for me.<br /><br />I think it was still raining when I said I am sorry. But she didn't hear it. I didn't hear it either. The gravel on the road was dry as bloodstains and the mud on the pavement as wet as my heart. My heart is perfectly fine, thank you. The doctor had checked just last leap year.<br /><br />Sleep is after all coming over me. I have a room with only one bed. It’s a triple bed. Sometimes I used to go to bed with her, sometimes she with me. It had been quite well, but off late she brought him too, and we all went to our obviously triple bed.<br /><br />It was stuffy; there were too many legs, too many hearts and too many aching breasts to nurture. There was also the fact that the windows in the room all faced the wrong side. She left me on the day the windows were taken out and put on the right side. Now the sunlight and the moonlight come from the right neon signs.<br /><br />They left me in my misery, and carried away all my vintage wine. But wait, I never had vintage wine, I never could! But they took something vintage, some grandfather clock which never worked perhaps. The triple bed was far too crowded, and one day when I discovered myself on the floor, I knew I had had enough. I told her to get out, and then I screamed and then she screamed and then it rained.<br /><br />Ladies and Gentlemen of the Orchestra, I am quite tired, and I dare say I need some sleep, and I would like it very much if you could play something special tonight. She always sang so well, and even then, in the rain, she was singing; good lord, singing! She sang some ballad or some ode or some jazz as she slammed the door on my crumbling face.</div><br /><em> --(untitled and quite incomplete; rejected for the lack of coherence)--</em>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-49691651814991752432007-03-22T08:28:00.000-07:002007-03-22T09:01:07.120-07:00Early School Memories: A name, a trick and some numbers<div align="justify">I didn't know. In fact I had no idea. Staring at me was the white of the paper that seemed to mock me. I thought I could hear it cackling madly at me, though now that I think of it, there might have been a tinge of sympathy in that mockery. I felt miserable, and foolish, and confused. I couldn't believe that they would ask such a difficult question on the very first day. I had walked into my new classroom quietly. It was the second door to the right on the first floor. I couldn't read very well at that time, but I have come to believe there must have been a board that said ‘Class I – C’ on that door. <br/><br/>“What is your name?” my new teacher asked. <br/><br/>I looked at her. I remember her smile; it somehow seemed to make her face glow with some unknown joy. I remained quiet. I could feel the eyes of my classmates inspecting the newcomer.<br/><br/>“Son, tell us your name. Don’t you want your new friends to know who you are?” she said, still smiling. <br/><br/>Someone laughed, or barked, or at least made a noise distracting enough that it gave me a moment to think of what was in front of me. What was my name? Well I was sure I had heard that question before, but strangely, I didn't recall ever having answered it. My Dad, or my sister, someone was always around to answer that question, saying words whose alphabets I was yet to learn. <br/><br/>I looked up to see my teacher. Something behind that smile had changed, though I couldn't say what. Maybe she looked concerned.<br/><br/>I just stood there, unsure what to do. I didn't know. In fact I had no idea.<br/><br/>I came back home. I told mum about what had happened at school. I put to her the question that was puzzling me from when I first heard it.<br/><br/>“Mamma, what is my name?” I asked her. I don’t know why but I felt that somehow knowing my name was rather important; something I <i>should</i> know.<br/><br/>She looked amused. She too smiled, but somehow for a child yet to know his name I could now distinguish different smiles. Her smile was different from the one I saw on my new teacher. I remember wondering at that moment whether a smile can perhaps be rude sometimes. <br/><br/>I asked mum again. She told me my name. I told her it was too long. She then wrote it down for me. I couldn't spell much at that time. How was I to remember it? She taught me a trick. <br/><br/>“Look at the cover of your books. I have written your name there. Just copy it.” <br/><br/>That was the first trick I learnt.<br/> <br/>I went back the next day with renewed confidence. I was ready to answer anyone who wanted to know my name, and what’s better, I could spell it, given enough time. On my way, I made it a point to tell the second door on the right that I had a name.<br/><br/>But no one asked my name. The teacher had proceeded to the next lesson. Number-names. I remember feeling indignant at being replaced by numbers. My name was discarded to yesterday, now everyone just wanted to know the name of numbers. But numbers turned out to be slower than me when it came to divulging their names. To begin with, each number had a different name. Some sounded similar, others completely different. And the names itself were peculiar. I recall thinking to myself how sorry I would feel if my name was ‘eleven’, or ‘thirty-two’. Thank god it wasn’t.<br/><br/>School used to get over by one in the afternoon. My aunt came to pick me up. I coaxed her into buying me some candy from the vendor outside school. He made such beautiful patterns with the sugar candy. Others had also noticed his craft, and he was much in demand. He was smiling too, reminding my of my teacher; they smiled quite alike. Numbers fresh in my mind, I strained to hear the price, but was disappointed when he just said, “<i>Dus Rupaye</i>”. <br/><br/>My homework for the day was to write number names from one to hundred. I didn't know them. I promptly asked my mum to help. But this time she didn't have a neat trick to overcome this problem. All evening I tried to complete my homework, but simply could not. I went to sleep without writing anything. I was nervous. I think I even had a nightmare involving some numbers. <br/><br/>“I don’t want to go to school.” I said the next morning. How could I face that smiling teacher without doing my homework?<br/><br/>My mum and my aunt tried to convince me to go to school. It was a routine thing for them. I was never fond of school.<br/><br/>“What is the matter?” my dad called from the other room. A minute later he came in. I was crying by then. Everyone finally gave in. I didn't have to go to school. I spent the day playing with the watchman. The same happened the next day.<br/><br/>In the evening, I overheard my mum and dad speaking about me. They seemed concerned.<br/><br/>“Now look at what your idea has done. He doesn’t like school now. He just refuses to go.” My dad was telling my mum, who looked worried.<br/><br/>“I know. It wasn’t a good idea. I thought….”<br/><br/>“Well, what’s done is done.”<br/><br/>The next day my mum came with me to school. She told me she was taking me to her office, and I believed her. But we went to school. I wasn’t all that worried. I was not in my uniform and it was well past the school hour. We met another women in the school who was “Principal ma’am”. She was smiling too. I fought hard to suppress a yawn in return. Smiles were boring.<br/><br/>I waited outside her room while my mum spoke to her. She came out and took me to another room. We met another women. She had an abnormally big nose and had a very peculiar way of dressing her hair, something like a ponytail. I laughed when I saw her. I stopped laughing when I was told she was to be my new teacher. She smiled. She just thought I was a very cheerful kid. <br/><br/>The next I came to school. I was curious about my new teacher. I think I came to think of her more as a clown than a teacher. The watchman was old and he couldn't play very well. I decided school wouldn’t be that bad after all. And I turned out to be quite right. No numbers, no names, no number-names and surprisingly no smiles either. It was back to business. We started with the alphabets. Now <i>this</i> I knew very well. <br/><br/>A few years later I came to know that when we had shifted to Dehradun, my mum, ever so hopeful of my genius mind, had put me in first grade a year before I should have, skipping prep grade which she thought unimportant. “Thank god for that”, I thought after I came to know, “I thought I <i>was</i> unusually slow at school!” <br/><br/><br/></div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-59514925415435850742007-03-12T09:56:00.000-07:002007-03-12T10:01:58.799-07:00Something i wrote long back....I dont remember when exactly i wrote this... seems ages ago... i left it unfinished then... and now i cant complete it... <br/><br/><strong><i><span>If I must eye the sunset, and to earth I must fall,<br/>robed in lives woven not by my hands; and beckon<br/>the fire within, will the ice around melt and fall?<br/>For my shoes were never meant to tread the clouds.</span></i><br/><br/></strong><br/>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-50928267575008406072007-02-10T09:52:00.000-08:002007-02-10T09:59:39.475-08:00The Last of the Bangaloreans<div align="justify"><em>2nd November '06:</em><br /><br />I lived the past nine years of my life in a city, which, officially, ceased to exist from yesterday. Strange.<br /><br />I remember my arrival in Bangalore; it was a lovely evening (our train having arrived four hours later than scheduled). I was only nine years old, but I still remember that it was quite pleasant for a June evening, having just escaped the furnaces of Madras (now Chennai) and Delhi (which, come to think of it, might become 'Dilli' any day now). In nine years I saw, heard and felt much of the city, at the same time growing up and being shaped by silent forces at home, at school and on the streets. All this time it never bothered me that I was in a city called Bangalore; what mattered was the feeling of being in the city itself. Clean roads, lush greenery and a quaint lifestyle in the quiet suburbs form my first recollections of Bangalore nine years ago. 'Pensioners' Paradise', 'Garden City', 'Silicon Valley of India' and 'Pub City', all living side by side, in perfect harmony. That, statistically, was the Bangalore of three million people, while today, it's a city of six million, and things sure have changed.<br /><br />Chocked roads, polluted air and fast disappearing greenery, coupled with spiraling crime rates are what the media today uses to describe the Bangalore of today. I don't know how much of that is true and how much propaganda, but one look at Bangalore and one can feel that there is something wrong. I don't intend to scrutinize government policies and development projects (or the lack of them) to point out to the root of these myriad problems ailing the city. They are simply too complicated. But when you are gnashing your teeth in hour long traffic jams in a city that is the economic sensation of the world, you wonder what went wrong. A long overdue international airport (replacing the bus adda look-alike terminals of today), an always just-about-to-start-but-never-quite-starting metro rail project, and sometimes even basic amenities like drinking water and electricity are the pitiable demands of a city that is the pioneer of the new economic boom of this country. It is a time when everyone in Bangalore is frustrated with the lack of progress and wants change. And there was change. The government decided to gift the city something they believed it needed the most: a new name, Bengalooru. Thank you very much.<br /><br />I don't intend to argue with the leading minds of the day who thought this over and decided the change to be necessary. I believe, in my little scope of thought, that in rewriting history, in going backwards, there is nothing we gain. It is high time for us to broaden our minds, discard our colonial baggage and accept what happened as a learning experience in retrospect. In this regard, it is not the matter of whether we call it Bangalore or Bengalooru; it is what we are doing to it. After all, we can't complain over the change, since most Kannada speaking inhabitants have always called it Bengalooru. But I wonder how many of the educated English-speaking urbane 'Bangaloreans' will have the courage and confidence to speak of their new identity as 'Bengaloorians' without smirking and adding how 'ridiculous' it sounds. They are perhaps the same people who would buy Nike and go to McDonalds, even if their Indian alternatives were cheaper, better and healthier.<br /><br />Yet all this is frankly much ado about nothing. Mindsets will change, or be changed, and one can yet imagine a future where traveling from M.G. Road to Majestic in a plush AC metro coach in ten minutes would be a reality. But please forgive those of the generation like mine, which grew up in the Bangalorean identity, if ever they accidentally blurt out 'Bangalore' while going back to their roots. Maybe this transition would not be as hard-hitting as the partition of India during independence, when similarly the change of a name was a matter of identity, but I still cannot say for sure if I may not feel a bit betrayed at the prospect.<br /><br />And of course, I wonder if the American workers' nightmare would now like the sound of being 'bengaloored'.</div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6748770695033306150.post-61047455879745406222007-01-15T10:36:00.000-08:002007-01-17T04:40:43.425-08:00Traditions are made<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><em>“… Every written word is a part of the silken strands that a spider weaves inside the hidden box; its strength of steel binding fortune to the corpse of freedom, while the unwary seek their destiny in the webbings of time…”</em><br /><br />Tradition. Strange how the word resonates in our minds; its vibrations traveling deep down the path of time to string the cords of human history.<br /><br />I heard somewhere that spiders are symbols of fortune and love in Japan. Japanese women followed a tradition of keeping a spider in a box, which was hidden, and once the creature has spun its silken weave, the pattern of the web was used to interpret ones’ fortune. Perhaps it was some such spider that the forlorn king saw in a cave, untiring in its effort to climb the wall in spite of dogging failures. I don’t know if all this would have meant much to the spiders; they seemed to be carrying on quiet well with their focused task of spinning an endless web. How ignorant the little spider is of the web of intrigue that tradition has spun around its simple existence….<br /><br />With the onset of spring, the grand calendar of Bengali festivals comes to the auspicious day of ‘Basant panchami’; the fifth day of spring. Traditionally, the day is marked for the worship of the goddess of learning, ‘Saraswati’. The religious strictures associated with worship of deities are rather relaxed on this occasion, reflecting the benevolence of the goddess herself. The students take the initiative in the preparations for this festival, and I suppose this was the reason why students never got the time to study on this day, busy as they were with the festivities on the day of learning. Oddly though, I don’t seem to see spiders taking a moment off their labors to admire their own handiwork; they simply keep spinning. When I asked a friend why is it that nowadays no one seems to study on Basant Panchami, he merely shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, everyone does so. I thought this was the tradition.”<br /><br />I don’t know what exactly is the meaning of tradition, though I have often encountered it, suddenly springing on me from invisible traps as I view the world from my myopic spectacles of rationality. I once asked my dad why is it that during ‘Bhai Phota’ (yet another festival, one where sisters bless their brothers and pray for their long lives) that we sit on the floor for the ceremony, and not on chairs. “It only leads to a lot of discomfort” I remarked, knowing perfectly well that I was headed straight for some invisible wall of convention. “We cannot do that,” my father said, quiet helplessly, “That would be against tradition.”<br /><br />Perhaps it was from that day that I lost the innocence that cloaks tradition in the minds of the ignorant. The fast that I performed every year for the Kali pooja seemed to prick with the thorns of tradition, even though my reason for the fast was to merely do the opposite of what the elders had said: that no child be allowed to observe a fast. Now that they had quite settled with the fact that I would fast for the pooja, my new enlightenment refused to submit to mere superstition, and, rationality triumphant, I refused to fast that year, giving the elders yet another opportunity to condescend on the “ridiculous rebels that all young people are.”<br /><br />I cannot agree with the elders, and yet I cannot quite appreciate my friend, a certain Bengali, for whom that term of identity ceases to matter beyond the mere providence of his birth to Bengali parents. He was born in Bengal, educated in Bengal (in a posh Anglo-Indian Catholic School), and yet his broken Bengali, picked up from rickshaw-wallas brings me to fits of laughter every time he attempts to speak. Unabashed by the laughter, I remember how he always smiled and said, “What would it matter if I knew bangla? I speak English at home and school. I don’t need to know bangla. Why should I bother?”<br /><br />Perhaps in my college this will be operated upon as a post-colonial mindset, but to me it seemed perfectly rational. While I beg to differ with proclamations stating English as the ‘language of the future’ or the ‘language of progress and development’, I also acknowledge that in a world fast becoming a global village, this generation, this new millennium’s brood, has every right to have the freedom of choice over their identity, or as much as possible in this world where we all emerge with pre-conditioned identities. Gandhi only wanted his windows open, to let the breeze of other cultures permeate his home, yet he could hardly have pictured the coming storm of globalization, with its wild and uprooting ferocity. I wonder sometimes what great treasures have already been swept away from my house by this restless storm.<br /><br />This new storm banged open the door of my mind, and I spent my time pondering over this uncanny battle of the individual versus the power of globalization, with the wreckage of tradition hinged to the frame of identity. It was simply inconclusive, I concluded, but remained restless all the same. </span></span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;">The spiders in my room, largely unaware of my existence, captivated me with their endless weaving and the endless traditions attached to them. The same Japanese also believed that seeing a spider in the morning signaled the beginning of a romance. I see them every morning, and regret the romances I missed for my earlier ignorance. Perhaps I was in some such mood when I heard my cousin, who wanted to marry a Punjabi Sikh girl, against, as his mother claimed, all family traditions, saying, shortly before his grand wedding, “Ma, traditions aren’t simply followed; sometimes traditions are made.”</span></div>Abhishekhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12142346678801413760noreply@blogger.com0