from the muddy banks of my life

from the muddy banks of my life, i look towards the bottom, towards the bottom of the river. and what i see is what i have sowed… it is fruiting now….from the muddy banks of my life i look towards the sky and it has imbibed an intimidating shade of black. the heavens are not benevolent anymore..

 

from the muddy banks of my life, i look at the other side of the symmetry.the other side of this imperceptible mirror …. which shows not what i see but what i should… i look at the ground beneath my feet. from the muddy banks of my life i see that my feet do not rest on the ground. they float and take my whole being with them. they rest just a few inches away from the comfort zone. would i have been happy with the feel of earth below my feet? would i?

 

from the muddy banks of my life, i post songs to the heavens. not of hope or prayer. but of learnings and dialogues that i gathered while coming to these banks. i send visions that i had had once upon a time. that i thought were true but were only a figment of my imagination… nothing more than flakes of hope..nothing less than wisps of smoke…amount to a void that is as immense as the bottomlessness of despair and loss.

 

from the muddy banks of my life, i  take a dive into the river.. the river that is called ‘I COULD HAVE BEEN’. i take a dive into the river that could have been an assimilation of my essence if only it could have been. but it is a proof of my wishes and desires and the prospects that never materialised.

they greet me and laugh…laugh that they own my dreams and my happiness .. they laugh that they won against me.. they jump up and sit on the muddy banks of my life and laugh. 

 

and i fight the mire and the weeds…. i fight the demons and the imps… i fight the evil and the good…. i fight the walls that engulf me and strangle me.. the roots that hold me and the wings that bind me….

 

i think i go too far… the flow of water is damning.. the control is lost and i am no more than a dead insect controlling his fate…the current takes me where the fields are grey and the the crows feast on your heart first … it pushes me towards that oblivian that could have been a blessing… i try to counts the stars above but the canvas is devious… as i get goaded into the nothingness of my existence… and i see the muddy banks of my life slip into a stupor as intoxicating as mine..

my idea of india

 

 

i could lie that i was raised with the daily fodder of stories about freedom fighters and their bravado and that makes this country mean to me more than anything in this world.

 

perhaps, i was raised just like any other Indian of my generation. Stories about freedom struggle were a part of our lives but not the focal point.  Bhagat Singh, Mahatama Gandhi,Tipu Sultan, Lal Bahadur Shastri and so many others were a part of the folklore told and retold to us kids. we knew them well enough and yet they were people we were in awe of. they had achieved that greatness for which we can only wish for or dream about.

 

i do not say that i am very patriotic. I am not. I don’t love my country enough to leave my comfortable job and start engrossing myself in social work. I do not love my country enough that i join the poilitics or for that matter even the Civil Services to put it on track. Why should i dirty my soul for my country, eh? I do not love my country enough to become a scientist or an economist and accelerate its progress.

 

But i do love my country. maybe not enough on some scales- however, sufficient to make me live with myself. so how much do i love my country? My India? I chose to work in my field and do the best that i can so that in some small way i know that i contributed to its growth. I may not get  down on my knees and work in the slums or clean the roads but i would work hard to make  sure that the story i do brings either cheer or knowledge to the person who gets introduced to it.

 

I take up for my country when it is spoken against by people who come visting, be it foreigners or NRIs. Who are they to be saying things against my nation when they don’t even live here? Its not much i know but its better than hearing things said about India.

 

my special grouse is against the Indians who berate their country and claim rather proudly that they would leave the place at the first chance offered. i am sure it will be more fun living away from your roots and your land. i am sure it will be a great learnng experience in humility and forbearance when you will be treated like shit elsewhere. those of us who are strong-headed will even begin to agree with others about the futility of living in India. (for the uninitiated i  have been sarcastic after the 1st sentence in this paragraph)

i live for this country if you ask me. i live to see it compete and outsmart the americas abd the europes. i hope to see that day when illiteracy will be as uncommon as sighting of a mammoth. i wish to hear my national anthem not just once in 28 years in Olympics but every single day.

i want to see India dictating terms to the world and taking the major decisions. i want India to be the decisive fator in world economy.i want India to be a power to reckon with. Am i wanting too much?

 

I don’t think so. We have what every other nation desires. An intelligent human force who can do wonders if its energy is channelised in the right direction. we have proved it in the past. 61 years back we were a floundering nation. all we could lay claim to was lofty ideals that we thought we would follow till we made India the country we dreamt it would.

Ideals and Priniciples are a meagre resource to begin with for anything;leave alone the future of the country.  Perhaps hope and passion fueled the fire to make something out of this wreck that the Britishers had left it as.

 

I do not say that we have done a great job. Much has to be accomplished before we can sit back and relax and feel proud. But what has been achieved is no mean feat. We have been attacked four times in a matter of 6 decades by our neighbours. That takes a toll on any nation that is still trying to find its hold. couple this with natural disasters and well one finds the nation in quite a soup.

 

One could argue that this does not amount to much. Probably not. But it is an added expense; a step backward any which way.

 

I believe that you don’t have to fight wars and be a martyr to prove your love for the country. You don’t have to shout it from the rooftops either. All you have to do is, just remain true to your purpose and your work. If each of us begins to do just what is expected out of us, one can imagine the degree to which our country would have progressed.

 

If one has the desire thee is a lot that one can do for the country. Apart from singing the national anthem, a lot can be achieved with enthusiam and pursuit of a common goal.

 

I have loved this poem by Rabindranath Tagore since the 3rd grade when i  had first heard it:

 

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

where Knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Wheer clear stream of reason has not lost its way

into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into THAT heaven of Freedom, my father

Let my country awake.

dealing in lies

I had promised that I will write about Shantaram is my next post. I think I will leave that for some other time. Shantaram deserves every bit of reverence and the hallowed status that I esteem it in.

 

The post is about the simple joys of life…. HA HA HA… don’t run away people… don’t worry I wont bore you with all the philosophical shit that has vowed to follow the trajectory above your head as mine. So, what the hell the post is about? It concerns itself with the fact that I am a shameless liar.

 

It is not something that I am proud of but somehow lying comes rather naturally to me. Let me put it on record though that I DO NOT LIE about the big, important stuff. It’s a little quirk. I am saintly honest about financial dealings. About other people’s stuff. I can NEVER cheat in an exam. I JUST can’t bring myself to do it. Though you will never find me preparing for a class test. I strategise to cheat in a class test to the best of my abilities but in an exam I never entertain the disgusting thought to cheat

 

I can lie to my parents about having eaten my meals or about my daily juice consumption. Perhaps the thing I lie to them most about is the time I woke up in the morning. I hate to own up that I was asleep till late so end up making preposterous stories about having woken up at 5.30 am or sometimes even 5. I mean which sensible person in their right mind would wake up at such an ungodly hour…on a holiday.

 

Even when my friends call up or turn up at home and if I was sleeping I will lie through my teeth that I was not sleeping… I deny it vehemently….  All the while when my groggy eyes and the dried up drool are telling a tale of their own.

 

Invariably I am the receiving end of the jokes that my friends choose to crack.. Denied accounts of me having been found sleeping are aplenty. But there are other instances that make for rather amusing party/get-together stories, all at my expense.

 

For example, an oft-repeated joke is about something that happened in the class one day when we were in college. I had entered the class late and when the teacher asked me where had I been? Me being the liar that I am, replied rather smoothly that I was talking to on of the other teachers. To my peril the moment I took the name of the certain teacher, I was dished out an unfriendly and malevolent stare. Everyone was looking at us and I knew then that I had committed a grave faux pas. What it was I did not know. It is then that the teacher confirmed my deepest fears. It was she who was with the named teacher and not me, unless I was invisible. 

 

Billi, nicknamed for reasons unknown, never forgets to laugh at me till date whenever we meet. I have lied about assignments having been torn by my dog. (Yes I am that cheap!) I have promised work to be delivered complete when I am yet to begin on it. I have feigned sickness and grief when required. I have lied about many things.

 

My friends though tell me that it is not something unique to me. They too have supported their stories fabricated at a moment’s notice with untruths. They believe that it is required sometimes and if it doesn’t hurt anyone, its ok. They, however, find it entertaining that I am the smoothest liar that they have known. I wish it were an insult. I take it as a compliment. And that alarms me as then I have no real chance of improving.

 

 

 

 

 

why God of Small Things should be made as compulsory reading?

 

for those who are as greedy for books as some people are for more mundane things like power and fame, it comes rather naturally to us to organise the books in our head. the categories are as vast as the books and the people who read them.

 

I usually categorise books on around 5 principles.

1)How often will i read it?

2)what time of the day a particular book must be read?

3)which book goes for what mood?

4)how has a particular book influened me?

5)what is the first thought that i get when i lift a book?

there are some books which can be read at anytime of the day. like the Interpreter of Maladies or any Jeffery Archer book. they dont need an occasion. whatever mood one is in, the book moulds itself to it.

there are a few, very few books that i have vowed i will never gather courage to pick again. The Inheritance of Loss is one such. i am shocked at how it won the Booker. it was dull and very stiff. YES, there was very exceptional attention paid to details. YES, the book struck a cord somewhere. BUT the story fell flat on its face. i have read many books where you keep waiting for a twist in the tale and it  does not come. that leads them to gain a certain flavour like an after taste of tea. its nothing new and yet we click our tongues again and again to experience it. it was unable to hold the interest of the reader. Kiran Desai had tried hard to sound like someone else.. she tried hard to sound intelligent but failed.

some books can be read at any time of the day. i believe that every song and each book has its niche moment during the day when it is pregnent with possibility and burdened with expectation. i can never read a robin cook in the afternoon or start my day with a Thomas Hardy. i love to start my day with a  Pearl S Buck or a Richard Gordon or even Rudyrad Kipling.

 

Papillon is one book thats fills me with fear everytime i glance upon it. The story i have heard is good, even fantastic… but somehow i am jinxed with it. i have tried reading the book atleast five times. and every time i have failed. somehow i have always reached half and then i lose theard and never pick it up again..untill three months have passed and then i have to start all over again. the cycle is ..well a cycle so there’s no end…or a beginning.

its high time i get to the point. well have read The God of Small things recently. Yes, after 11years that it was released, i FINALLY, read the book…. and i have been kicking myself since then. the reason? why did i not read it earlier?

there are some books that are destined to change your life FOREVER. of all the books that i have read, only 3 fall in  that category.

1. Ayn rand’s —————-The Fountainhead

2. Arundhati Roy’s———–The God of Samll Things

3. Gregory David Roberts–SHANTARAM

 

the most radical of these books is Shantaram, of course about which i iwll talk in my next post. The god of small things may not have changed me as a person but it has made me tune in to the things around me. it has heightened my senses…. somehow elevated my perception to a level that i feel the gratitude of gift of sight, smell and hearing. houses seem to have floppy hatted rooves; dreams have skeleton, autumn shaped leaves bring monsoon on time.

 

the book is poetic; its prosaic; it has style and substance; it takes you through  a maze of plots and reveals in the end the beauty of the journey. you know the end cant be pretty after you have figured out the author’s style. and yet ,you dont care. you wait to reach the end of the book only so you can go through the various layers that make the book what it is. somehow you want to just continue reading the book endlessly. you feel a tug at your heart when it ends; similar to the one we felt when chandler moved in with monica and left joey’s apartment. or when rachel tells ross its over. or when FRIENDS got over.

the book weaves a melancholic web of love and sorrow. the book refrains from any mention of joy or happiness. the instances when such has been done are few and rare. the tale about Estha, Rahel, Ammu and Velutha is dark and foreboding. It is sinister and omnius. it leaves you aching and angry. it makes you delve deep into your own psyche and ask questions about what you would stand up for. it makes you wonder.  it makes you think. it makes you dream.

The God of Loss.. the God of Samll things…velutha..monsoons…Spohie mol… Paradise Pickles somehow become a part of your thoughts. the story points out the problems that ail our society. loss of culture…death of folklore and folkdances…our movement away from our traditions.. our greed… our remorse..our destabilised families…our losses and our gains where we end up losing anyway.

Arundhati Roy has created a masterpiece. i wish i had got a glimpse of it earlier…my life would have been more enriched and more dimensional.

of the fit and the unfit

a hesitant beam of light premeates through the crevice between the curtains. uncertain and shy. a peep here and there and then it hides blushing like a new bride.

a gentle swaying breeze rocks the window to sleep. like a boat that bobs up and down on the crescent of waves. the dog curls up against the master’s feet. should he rest his head on the depression where the ankle connects with the tibia? feelin too lazy he continues to lie where he had planted himself earlier.

the master is lain on the ground, below the softly rocking window. the sound providing a beat to his breath. both playing games, dancing wth each other in tandem. a little frown playes upon his brow. it too wants to be a part of the music—the music provided by the rocking window, and the breath. but they wont let it…. their friend is the smile that shines upon them and the brightens them up. not this fiend, who calls himself a frown. where has this stranger sprung from? some nerve he has to come barging in like an uninvited thunderstorm.

smoothly, they exclude him out of their play, their lenient teasing. the frown will not give up. it rests on the master’s brow while he sleeps.

the brazen sunlight pushes through the curtain. it tries hard to stop the onslaught. tries till it can and as soon as the day breaks its defenses weaken; its resistance dilutes. with a blush that partly has to do with his shame-faced embarrassment and partly the result of the glow of the triumph of the sunlight, it stands against the window with the head bowed low.

it is the law of nature. survival of the fittest. and then he thinks otherise. he may have lost the battle against the light which was more powerful. but he has not lost his pride. he fought valiantly like the soilders of the yore who sprung from the fire and melted in the dust. nevertheless, on lives their legacy, the bards of their bravery are still sung, hummed in cold freezing nights. they are like the lamp that burns faintly in the temple at night. it may not be a source of warmth but it provides radiance to the lone traveller. to him it gives the warmth of an encouraged word; to him it gives a sigh of relief. who cares if the fittest survive when it is the unfittest that move the world?

you give….

 

give me a pen

and you give me my life

give me a thought

and you just gave me food

give a plain sheet

and you gave me a canvas to paint my world on.

give me an idea

and you gave me a sensibility

give me a picture

and i shall write a poem

give me a prose

and i will tell you why it is great

give me a heart

and i will tell you why it beats

give me a life

and i will tell you why it is worthwhile

give me the freedom

and i will show you the world beyond.

the parallels

 

where does one draw the line between boundless joy and mania? who are we to decide what that line will be? do we understand everything or like most things about humans, do we fake it?

what leads me to this train of thought is nothing in particular. it is a moment of inspiration to scribble something that has me sitting before my computer in the middle of the night. i have just finished speaking to two of my closest friends ever, billi and liks, who unfortunately are coping up rather well without me. i should be happy and i am and yet it gnaws at me that well we are together no more and may never again be like how we were in college.

 

but what i had set out to talk about was the fine dividing line that seperates anxiety from depression and happiness from mania. if tomorrow, i am informed that i am to meet Gregory Dvid Roberts, would that be mania or joy?

 

we consider ourselves the sane ones. I mean, after all it is the people who reside in the mental asylums who are insane, right? my question is, and it has troubled me for sometime now, what if they see a reality that we do not and they UNDERSTAND it while we can not? Who is better off, them or us?

 

what if they see the most simplified version available of the life that we, the sane ones, complicate? what if they see everything, ghosts, spirits, angels, even God? for somehow they seem more at peace with themselves than us who are supposedly NORMAL people.

 

i am yet to see one mentally ill patient who is unhappy. of course i am not talking of unipolar or bipolar disorder or even schizophrenics, though the last ones are wonderfully interesting people.

 

what ever is majority, has a way of denouncing the beliefs and convictions of the minority. So is it just because, we cannot comprehend the limitlessness of imagination we denounce those who possess it as Mentally Ill.

 

I fear the same imagination, the opened gates of perception.  not beacause of its limitlessness. that does not worry me. what ails me is what if it is true, explainable(it may not be a word), something so simple and pure that its simplicity becomes its nemesis.

 

My worry is that how would i deal with it, if that gift of imagination and creativity is bestowed upon me. would i allow the world to trample upon it and throw it in a bin? or would i make myself into a Virginia Woolf or heavens forbid, a Van Gough? would i be another stastistic or another name that changed history? time would tell.

my ride of glory

Not many of us are fond of public transport. I mean why would anyone want to travel in the soaring temperatures in a bus where every one is out to paralyse you positively by either knocking their elbows on your jaw or shamelessly climbing on your toes and then giving YOU dirty looks as if it is your cruel intention to plant your foot right under their heel.  Wonder if third degree is the same.

 

What is worse is the evening time ride. Everyone’s fuse is short after having dealt patiently with nagging bosses, complaining secretaries, insignificant lunch hours and a whole lot of workload. So when anyone is climbing the footsteps of the bus, signals are being sent to everyone inside, ‘don’t mess with me…. I have had a hard day.’ The trouble is that each commuter is sending out similar signals and in the confusion is not receiving any.

 

God save you if by chance your bag touches someone. Blatant glares, loud noises like ‘UFFFFOOO’, and sometimes even physical punishment is dispensed like getting stamped on your foot or elbowed strategically in the stomach or worst, not being given place to stand and whichever side you go, you are pushed back. You end being a grilled sandwich marinated in the sweat of the many people around you.

 

And god forbid, if a seat gets vacated around you, you can be assured of a tussle around you. While one lady will smartly put her bag on the seat, another will jump across to reach before everyone, one more like a lioness will hold the seats in front and back and not let anyone pass through. The one who finally gets it is going to be screamed at by the others ladies who now are members of a Sisterhood—-“we tried but failed to get seats”

 

However, I may be found complaining, I love my bus rides. You get a feel of the city that you will surely miss out on if you travel on your own. Sometimes, a knowing smile you receive when you lose your seat, or a kind gesture when someone offers you their seat or an argument you had together against some one who unfairly pushed you both, they all add up to enrich the day and make you feel happy about the kinship you share with the common man. You are not yet removed from the fabric of this country. You can feel it, touch it, and share it with someone else. You are accepted, sometimes hated sometimes adored, yet ACCEPTED, as one among them, that class of toiling people who work hard to earn their bread and butter. You still possess the common touch and that’s a lot to thank god for. 

Independent Personality Disorder

No man in an island….. does this ring a bell? I happen to disagree with John Donne, the person who laid such a false claim and so confidently at that.Now i do not say that I know all about this world and its workings but if there is one thing that I have learnt from life, it is that, that at the end of the day, it is ‘every man for himself’.

We go on in life thinking and believing with our heart and our soul that the day we need people who matter the most in life, will be around us. However, conditions apply and there, my friend, is that little snag that snatches away all the beauty of this belief.

I have lived a good life till now and I do not really begrudge it for the not-so-merry moments.  I have learnt hard lessons even though i do not credit myself as being a good student. The critical thing that i realised was that many people are a part of our lives, some more esteemed than others. They are a major part of our successes and our strifes; like pillars of our lives and we draw our strength from them all the time. HOWEVER, at the end of the day; at the end of it all…you are on your own no matter what.

Many of my friends and most of my family disagree vehemently with me but we live in a free world so they can’t really do anything about it. But every now and ,they will start quoting examples, hypothetical and real, about how i am so precariously imbalanced in my opinion.

 

you tell me, do we not we live for ourselves first and then for others?  In moments of peril, I can bet, we will think of saving our ass first and then worry if our friend is fine. You have to be an epitome of virtue or a Bollywood actor to be otherwise. 

 

We are raised in a society where it is a sin to be selfish and yet at the end of all the Moral Classes that we had in school, we refuse to behave in any other way but self-centered to sugarcoat the term SELFISH.

 

I accept unflinchingly that I am that much feared word. Yes i am selfish and self centered. I think of myself before anyone else. I look out for me first and then others.  For i hold the firm and unshakeable belief that no one, NO ONE, in this world can love me like, well, ME. And at the end of the day, i am responsible to no one but myself for that is the only person who will stand by me when things turn sour.

 

This sounds like the words of a totally self-obsessed fool who can’t look beyond herself. To the point of being judged I accept that also. For I do not fool myself. I know what I stand up for and it is this that has helped me through many a rough patches. And if it serves me so well , then why not. If it gives me peace, then honestly to hell with you.

that one piece of freedom

I am a lover of books. Do not think that I am here to bore you with lamentations on my virtues; though the introduction would lead you to believe that. So, as I was saying I am a lover of books and so are a million others. After all, it may just be the most common hobby of the world.  Surprisingly, the things that attract people to books are as varied as the people who like to read them.

 

For instance, i love how each book smells. No matter how old or new it is, every collection of parchment has a fragrance individual to it. Oh! the romance of it all. the first thing when i pick up a book is to get a whiff of its singularity. And every time i get transported to that time when the writer was writing it; mind you it is a figment of my imagination. My sole interpretation but it does help me to get under the skin of the cover, you might say.

 

One more motivation to pick up a book is to see the world from a different viewpoint; to open the doors of my mind a bit more. to get my toe in the doorway and i do hope someday, no matter how far, i can transport my whole being to the other side of understanding. We all live wrapped up in our cocoon of thoughts, interpretations, our views. But to hold discussions with oneself, to argue for and against with the different perspective provided by someone totally alien, the adventure of it is unparalled.

 

However, one thing that endears EVERY book to me is that boundless energy, tremendous inspiration and discplined effort has gone into it. No matter, how boring, pointless or futile an attempt has been at writing, someone spent countless nights and days, mulling and ruminating ideas, hatching them and nurturing them and then reproducing them in the most common form of communiation—-through words. is effort may have been mediocre; even ordinary but it is preserved till eternity. Ho many of us would not kil for that????

 

For those of us who write, we belong to that fraternity, where we understand the often loss of creativity; the exasperation at not being able to produce at will a wonderful piece of writing; the much abused term—-WRITER’S BLOCK. Sometimes it is termporary; sometimes fatalistic. The angst, futility of it all.

 

We are quick to throw in the bin someone’s efforts but ask us to write anything akin to it and you will see us coming up with all fabulous excuses. Ask us to write and we FAIL.

 

I believe there is a certain and ABSOLUTE freedom in writing. And to ALL, those who do it despite all the ridicule and indifference, you are respected and loved. And even after it all, EVEN if all this does not come through, you have WRITTEN, you have experienced what we, lowly mortals, crave for—-FREEDOM. You own THAT ONE PIECE OF FREEDOM