Moments and Diwali

I can now quite appreciate Einstein’s example of relativity. I’ve had the experience a few rare times in the past, and I’ve had enough such times speed by or unfurl to know that it really is true. Time does fly by faster and even warps in strange ways when one is where one wants to be. From quite some years ago, I also remember how long one minute can be in the final minute of a twenty minute run on a treadmill, and I wasn’t even aiming for the four minute mile record. I have other far less humorous examples too, but I’ll let those lie buried. I sometimes wonder these days whether one can feel bliss from one’s own point of view. I did think I was experiencing bliss as a confirmed lunatic quite some years ago, and on multiple occasions, but that was all in my head and there was very little connection to what Somebody else was feeling.

I had the best Kali Pujo of my life and a rather tantalizing dream-like five days preceding that. I don’t want to call November a grim and brooding and glaring month full of cold ice and sleet after the first leg of November, this year. I even strung up fairy lights for the first time in my life, courtesy Suvro da, and I flicked on the switch as soon as dusk approached. Even Suvro da said a real and loud ‘Nice!’ when he saw the lights. Pupu was there on Kali Pujo. She found the ghuronto/strobe light and some more twines of fairy lights stored so high in a cupboard that I hadn’t even been able to reach the door handle of the cupboard while perched on a chair and standing on the tips of my toes. We strung those up together and Suvro da fixed the strobe light which shimmered and cast magical light - rather psychedelic, I'd say while dusk melted with twilight. For quite a few years I had wondered about the Rangoli and how Pupu made delicate and beautiful colourful patterns with the dust-like abir. Well, I got to see it for myself and on Suvro da’s insistence and Pupu’s encouragement I even made about ten round dots, of different sizes in bright blue, magenta and red, that Pupu had etched out dexterously with a chalk. A bunch of Suvro da’s cheery and lively boys came around in the evening armed with their fire crackers. Pupu and Suvro da had already gotten a little store of fire crackers earlier on in the day. So for the entire evening the braver boys burst the colorful and noisy firecrackers in the street. I blew up a few Kali potkas with great glee and a great grin on my face. It must have been after more than a quarter of a century! One of Suvro da’s students, Swapnayu, was kind enough to hand me a handful. The firecrackers were over a little too soon and Suvro da handed out some more dough for the boys to get some more. I was almost going off on one of the bicycles myself to get a bit of abir that I thought we needed for the Rangoli but chickened out in the last moment. The bicycle seat was too high! One of Suvro da’s students when he saw me wobbling with the bike cautioned me and simply asked me a straight forward question of whether I would stay on the seat or fall off. I wasn’t worried about falling off but the shame and horror of it if I fell off on the road right in front or somehow damaged one of Suvro da’s students’ bicycle made me go back sheepishly and park the bike and slip out quietly on foot. Back in Purdue in the Fall of 2003, I had borrowed a bicycle from a senior and with grim merriment cycled around the campus for a bit until I remembered that I couldn’t get off a very high cycle….so I had started yelling at random passers-by as to whether they would please get a hold of the cycle while I leapt off. I remember there were at least two nice young undergraduates who tried running after me while I sailed by on the cycle. When it didn’t work after a couple of rounds, I told them not to worry while one of them smiled back at me. I went back to the spot where my friends were rather impatiently waiting for me. I yelled at them to grab a hold of the bike – which they did and I leapt off. I don’t think I could have tried such tactics here. But I felt like an idiot later. Modesty Blaise would have tut-tutted me. At the market I spied all the boys who had gone to get the next batch of firecrackers – or else they spotted me and yelled cheerily and I yelled back equally cheerily. The gulal – the particular colour that Pupu and I wanted was not to be found and so I walked back sadly but Pupu didn’t seem the least bit disheartened. A substitute had been found which worked well enough. Pupu lit the candles around the decoration – and the Rangoli looked beautiful. The candles, which Suvro da had gotten resembled chocolate cups. I don’t know whether, in some other lifetime, I belonged to a tribe which believes that photographs trap the happy souls or memories of people…but post 2003 – I have always been a little circumspect about taking photos…but how I still wish I’d taken some photos. There were still lots of firecrackers that the boys were bursting and burning and the light filled colours and the noises were met with ahhhs and a few ouches. A few of the boys had gone inside to click photographs of themselves and I couldn’t help but poke a bit of fun at them as one of them was beautifying himself for the photo-round. In between, we ate some delicious warm chicken patties, courtesy Suvro da, who else? I was telling Pupu an incident of when we’d been in high-school: I’d lit a chocolate bomb on that very road just before carefully putting half a coconut shell on top of it and I’d been scolded a bit by her grandfather and her aunt had complained for at least half the evening that she couldn’t hear properly with one of her ears (I forget which one). Suvro da was telling Pupu that his boys were angels compared to what he had been at their age – he described himself as a ‘goonda’ (thug)! at their age...At some point, I forget when, Suvro da’s boys went back and complained to the shop-keeper from where they’d gotten their second supply of fireworks that a few of their main ‘canons’ had not gone off properly and so they returned with their second supply of ‘free' canons very proudly and they set those off as an encore for the evening’s proceedings of pure fun and delight. While watching the lights, one bright floating lantern that skimmed the skies and the showers of lights from the near-by PCBL display I was thinking with a sense of sudden surprise that it’s very rarely that I’ve ever wanted to be nowhere else but right where I am and this was one of those rare moments. Even Fimh, who was right there so to speak, seemed to be quietly content. I’ll skip over jealously-guarded parts in between but at some point, while curled up under warm blankets I raced through the last few chapters of Christie’s ‘Crooked House’ – a book I last read in school. I think of all the murder mysteries that Agatha Christie came up with – this one is the creepiest. I’d been reading it in a serialized format every afternoon for exactly a week and I finished it late on Kali Pujo.

Fimh insists that I write a bit about human motivations. Human motivations and why people do what they do. The question of ‘why’ is an interesting question, and quite often it’s far more interesting and intriguing than the question of ‘how’. If one persists with asking the ‘why’ then one does, I think..., move to a better place in the hierarchy of being human than before – if one wants to, that is. I’ll write about this soon enough, I guess, because Fimh has been prodding me to for over half a year. But this is the post for tonight.

Happy Children’s Day….if you’re not a kid, biologically speaking – it’s for the kid that's there inside you. May it live for as long as you do!