Forking paths of the Imagination

A sudden musing on (the English) language

2012-02-02T12:49:00.019-05:00

Language is a strange and curious affair. I sometimes still get confused whether it is a tangible or intangible part of culture; I can’t make up my mind. Using language well can be compared to much. It can be like a dance, like a blend of dance moves mixed with precision movements drawn from the martial arts. It can be a war of legs, as in the tango. It can be the casual, almost limpid, lazy movements of a person with a sense of perfect rhythm, dancing to some music playing on the radio while doing this and that and the other. It can be like a body cutting through air and water and executing a breathtaking dive…it can be a painting or a picture capturing more than a thousand words, bringing to mind connected images and emotions. Used well, language transforms intangible feelings and invisible thoughts, brings back memories, gives them shape and form like a clay shaper, makes them real to the hearer or reader. It can be an audio and visual and tactile affair or just one or more. Sometimes it makes its way through and as a stream of silence. The words themselves may bring silence within the mind-space of a reader. Words may sometimes break into one's silent or noisy or chaotic or nonsensical world as well, and make strange and then abiding sense but to only the hearer. Language and writings translate words to pictures and images and thought... Language lets, it seems almost banal and terribly trite to mention, humans communicate.

I know only one language not-too-terribly-badly. I very badly wish I knew Bengali just as not-too-terribly-badly. I sometimes think that I must have spent many, many, many lifetimes utterly illiterate and uneducated. This is not a disjointed thought. I feel that way because I steadily realise sometimes in gentle spasms, in blissful showers that also ache, and sometimes like a cold shock that learning even one language well, understanding it well, and using it well (by which I mean superlatively well) is given to the rarest of the rare. I know that I sometimes don’t quite understand English when I read prose or poetry. And I don’t mean abstruse or badly written material. Neither do I understand much material that is read by many in Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, Political Science, History, Psychology, and so on and on. It’s one thing to digest and then dismiss. I can’t even get over the first hurdle of actually comprehending and following what I read. I don’t quite know how I understand what I do either. I’ve tried to understand this but I don’t think I’ve gotten intellectually wiser about this.

I learnt English at a very early age, and loved the language without thinking or even knowing that I loved it. I loved language and liked using it and liked playing around with words and sentences. I liked the sound and look of words. And I read in snatches and deeply and loved that too but never thought that that reading or writing which I stayed with was something that required thought or needed any justification. By 8, I had a firm and fast friend within me who was telling me constantly and insistently that I must never forget English, and that I had to master it as well as I could. It was something rather remotely similar to walking fast. That may sound weird. But it was a matter of compensating for other stuff that I didn’t have, couldn’t master no matter how much time I was given, and couldn’t keep up with. By Class XI, I remember that I had been maintaining a steady diary and other random note-books for sudden writing urges but stories I could not write. I was not a story-teller. I sometimes started but they never quite got to the end. Some faltered mid-way. I think there are some people who are born story-writers and others who are not. Maybe it is a talent that can be honed and requires a particular hungry and insistent and imaginative mind-set but I don’t have that and didn’t have that. My muse for story-writing is either lazy or non-existent or cannot think beyond what it has seen and heard and lives with. Not a particularly imaginative nor a particularly intense nor passionate muse then, I guess. Or maybe I have a monomaniacal muse. By the time I was finally doing my Master's, I became horribly arrogant and a little too obsessed in how I expressed myself and I was the same way in college. I liked the mode of expression and paid a keen attention to how I said what I did but there was very little I think in terms of content. I simply followed my thoughts. I don’t have any of my diaries or any old writings with me but I’m sure I must have sounded just plain convoluted. I think I had the tendency of adding too much sauce as well apart from sounding unnecessarily long-winded and unwieldy.

I do know though that other authors sometimes influenced how I wrote and terribly. I don’t know whether this happens with everybody but I do know that it happened excessively with me. I was determined by the style of the author I was obsessing over through my school years and in my college years, and I know Agatha Christie, P.G.Wodehouse, Roald Dahl, and Ayn Rand come to mind particularly. Then came the horror of realizing, and at 25, and without the earlier who-cares-about-that attitude that I didn’t know grammar at all. Not only did I not know grammar but I hadn’t followed the basic principles of grammar in my prose (or in the hasty and insane fit of poetry writing that probably all Bengalis fondly go through). And that was that. I taught myself grammar frantically while teaching a bit of grammar to others, but still don’t understand very basic rules and almost nothing of punctuation.

Language is a mighty strange thing. I don’t understand semantics or semiotics or linguistics or anything of that sort. I do know that I don’t like just form without content but sometimes I can see when I read what I do that the form blesses the content with an unusual beauty and tone and an uncanny depth. The only thing I started becoming obsessive about, and with reason, is the use of particular words and knowing whether I wanted to use a particular word in a sentence. I obsess over getting sentences to mean what I want them to mean but don't always succeed. It seems like a very basic thing but I fret over it in a rather paranoid way sometimes. I started pondering more and more about how words can mean something in a general way, given the common dictionary meaning, and yet words and phrases mean something specific to the user and the reader and the hearer and the writer. Sometimes I look up the dictionary to see what very regular words mean. Sometimes I need a dictionary thrown at me. Sometimes I don't look at a dictionary even when I should. Sometimes I think one should come up with a dictionary to give meaning/define words that can mean different things to normal people and to people who might have non-normal experiences.

Humans communicate through language, and the written or verbal way is the only way I've communicated for most of my life, and sometimes it is a beautiful and many-pronged affair….yet I sometimes can’t help wondering and furiously how we manage to communicate through language given that words, turns-of-phrases and even sentences so often have a double-meaning, triple meaning, and depend upon the mood and mentality and mind-frame of the people communicating; on what we choose to pay attention and what we choose to let pass during those moments. The common framework exists and so many layers and hidden layers and more and more emerge and wait to emerge through the dance and music of language sometimes. I can’t quite imagine a world where there is no language but and since I was suddenly exposed to the world of sci-fi literature so late in life, I came across the idea of communication in a 'language' but not in the way we generally understand it, rather late in literature. Only it neither felt like fiction nor fantasy and I didn’t understand the science behind it.

“First there was light”, was there, yes? But did the word come before or after or with the light? I have recently had wondering bouts very late in the night ‘bout the matter of language - physically alone but not exactly lonely, embalmed in a non-silence while carefully examining the red-orange glow of a cigarette, and with sometimes a half-hanging smile for company.

The golden deer....

2012-01-21T06:52:00.004-05:00

I've been somewhat quiet here which doesn't mean I haven't written anything. I even wrote possible shortish blog-posts - only they never got around to making the final cut. During the Christmas break (last year) a song liner from a short essay kept pealing out in my head. I had last heard the song while in school (in fact that was the only time I actually heard the song, and it was a friend who knew the song and she got frequent requests from me to sing it), and had all but forgotten about it until I read the essay many years later. I found the song on youtube sometime during Christmas. I realise I fill in some of my own worders for the song. Not that I can sing it.

Maybe a proper post will be put up soon, but for now, a rather belated Happy New Year and here's the song link, which is more than a joy to hear, no matter how many times one may have heard it. A rather stubborn song, it is too.

A little gift from the river

2011-11-13T22:30:00.009-05:00

The days I walk to the river - some days, if I remember to carry a plastic bag with me I pick up some bits of trash lying around. I picked up the habit from Joe (who'd go armed with plastic bags if he were going hiking; some stories there but another time). There's not a whole lot of it but one does find some, and it displeases me, and I like picking up the junk and dumping it while thoughts of different sorts wander around my head. Some days I've had to hurry over to the garbage bins lying next to the river trail having found and collected five cans of beer and a couple of empty bottles of whisky and rum just so that nobody imagines that I was downing all the stuff while sitting on the sandy banks of the river.

Today the wind was blowing furiously. It was a wind that was raising yellow, brown, and orange leaves into whirling dervishes. The blazing wind I thought was going to blow me off the bridge. I didn't really expect it to but just to make sure that it wouldn't, and just in case it did, I was walking near the rails. Just so that I could grab on to the rod on the rails if in case the wind got a little too playful. But it was warm too. Strangely warm for a November afternoon. And after walking around and a bit of climbing and racing down, and walking and looking all around the still overgrown banks, having a fairly huge and happy dog running towards me and barking merrily just when I was climbing up a sheer slope and all...near one section of the river where I decided to visit today, there were plastic cups and paper and stuff lying around. I scrunched up my face and went and sat near a bit of the banks for a bit. Did my usual stuff. Wrote a bit, smoked some, laughed a bit, and looked and listened. I got up after a bit, and armed with my plastic bag and another couple I found lying near the banks, I started stuffing all the plastic and paper and assortment of trash which probably was simply blown out of some open garbage bin. I had a merry time too. Walked all around, climbed up and down the banks and some of it required leaping around like a goat. I was talking out loud at some points too, and hoped that nobody was around to watch my antics. Found a discarded magazine in which I read about a young Purdue student, who started an I-Read program in Indiana schools, and it made me sigh and gulp at the same time. The magazine too went into one of the plastic bags...

But nothing compares to the delicious moment when I chanced upon a $5 bill lying there half-hidden under the carpet of leaves. I was so delighted, and I'm not quite so sure why....but it was lovely. I put that carefully in my bag, smiled widely, and surveyed my surroundings. The plastic bags of rubbish I deposited in a dumpster, and feeling quietly pleased I wondered what I would do with the completely unexpected $5 gift from the river and river banks....

On desires and on 'winning'

2011-10-17T11:50:00.037-04:00

Painting/sketch: Rabindranath Tagore. Untitled. Downloaded.

16th October - 11th November 2011: There are some liners from books, movies, and songs that sometimes play over in the head with greater frequency, and they keep one company even as one goes about one's daily life. Last year at some point I'd been pondering over 'if winter comes', (although I couldn't frame the thought). At some point when I was immersed in the first embalming shroud of a reluctant winter, and I was silent for the most part and doubting myself and there was nothing I could see particularly well, I felt like saying (although with far less excuse than Frank Slade), 'I'm in the dark here'. People fond of me were looking at me with not much fondness nor much hope almost like they were giving up on me, and there were some liners from Viktor Frankl's autobiography which made me say that if he could believe in his bit of hyper-reality, and in the midst of going through what he was and at Auschwitz no less before he was sent to Tϋrkheim, I had no earthly nor divine right to think I was in the dark. I couldn't really see much, and I do have myopia, and sometimes need new glasses without knowing it but along with Shaw's St. Joan I had to say within, 'By what other judgment can I judge but my own?' – although I wasn’t too sure what I was judging by my own judgment. Positive thinking however sometimes helps, even though one doesn't know why one is thinking positively but sure enough sometimes shining drops of much-needed hope come from other quarters, and also the everyday sort of joyous hope, which is just as important – and from older and younger friends. And sometimes that lit-up hope says that there are some other people too in this physically real world, others who live and smile...

Lately, it's been a defiant, accepting, disconsolate, and rather melancholic but proud liner, from the Abba song, 'The winner takes it all...' (and just that liner blaring out unless I’m actually half-listening to the song while doing other things). There's another line that sings in my head these days, Jo jeeta wohi sikander. Not entirely disconnected from the previous Abba liner. It's from a movie of the same title that I enjoyed watching in my school-days.

Is life a race or a game though where one wins or loses? It does seem to be a game sometimes, and a game where one gets to know some of the rules bit by bit, and a game that’s not particularly fair or square, and sometimes one isn’t so sure whether one is getting any better at actually playing the game. One takes a leap (of faith?) and seems to be racing through, and with smiles too, until one lands into a river instead of what one assumed would be a sand-pit. It seems peculiarly brutal too at times even if one is sometimes an observer to the brutality and the cruelty (which doesn’t always draw or let blood although that too does spill) and the banality. It seems hard and real at times especially in its drudgery, sadness, everydayness, bland normalcy, poverty and sickness (not just physical) but undeniably real in the sudden, sometimes fleeting, and somewhat translucent sense of mystery, magic, charm, laughter and serendipity. It also seems peculiarly individual, personal, private and even isolated but not-quite-so at times.

I sometimes wonder how we win or lose in life, and what determines winning or losing. Some great people say that it's the choices that define who we are, and not our abilities, and sometimes I gladly and stubbornly believe that and sometimes I can't help but raise my eyebrows to say, 'really?' And so, what if I make choices and I don't win or worse just seem to be losing time and with it the possible dreams? Who's going to say, 'well done' or 'well played'? And I do want to see the smiles, the satisfaction, and the happiness on real faces, and not just from the imaginary audiences who were once cheering me on in my head. One may raise the quiet question, 'what do you mean by winning though?' It's not unrelated, this question. Because we do say very sagely that life isn't about winning or losing but about playing well and hard and true. And it's also true that I don't want to win formal prizes at competitions, and stand on the number 1 spot for the Olympics 100 m race with Jana gana mana playing in the background. I'm not talking about winning races but I certainly strongly desire to be useful (as Janet Jeppson Asimov says) or to be of benefit (if that sounds better), before I pass off, and by playing well and hard and true and by making the choices that I make – that I won’t deny.

The root of life does seem to be '(hairy) desire'. This answer had erupted in my own head and upon a whispered question within from my fimh towards the beginning of the previous decade, ‘what is the root of life?’ I started reflecting upon the Buddha's second Noble Truth not infrequently, and only because of an essay written by Suvro da, which I read also towards the beginning of the previous decade. Desiring (or craving) for 'x', in some sense, is one of the things among other things which leads to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, pain and also possible and potential suffering but desire begets the experience of life itself. It seems almost like those self-evident things that one imagines that one always knew and one nods one's head and says 'yes, I always knew that' but it's one of those things that one wouldn't have known at all until somebody hits one with that question...'what's the root of life'? and until somebody also gently prods one to think about it, and earnestly and more than once. Desire, if one reflects upon it (and people can reflect upon it in different ways) can also be without the constant and insistent craving. I think it’s sometimes possible. And if one reflects upon life and living one can also gradually and quietly eliminate many things on the list of ‘things’ – material or non-material – that one seems to crave for or had seemed to matter with a ‘not this’, ‘not this’, ‘not this’. And if one engages in this enterprise there are certain factors that emerge:

It’s not a matter of repressing desires but it’s a matter of sifting through one’s basket of ‘desires’ and with directed help from the external world and one’s internal world.

It’s not a matter of an authoritarian stamping out of all desires.

It’s not a matter of being the fox who couldn’t get the grapes and called them ‘sour’.

And it's good to remember what Tagore, in his very matter-of-fact way points out, ‘mere renunciation of the world does not entitle one to immortality’.

Eventually, one may see what one desires - and it might not be terribly clear at the beginning - given the external world and reality as we know it and sense it, and from the deepest part of what we call a ‘self’. With that bit in place, one might think that one is enlightened with nothing really left to do. An exceptionally detached frame of mind or even an exceptionally aroused frame of mind may sometimes give rise to such a feeling. Genuine desires however are connected to one's purpose and meaning in life, and so one soon realizes that one is being an ass because one can't possibly sit and do nothing. So while the inequalities of life and the level of pain and suffering differ enormously – at the level of an individual life if one chooses to remain and participate in life as a regular human being and with certain desires and a certain attachment to the physical world still firmly in place (related to doing good/being useful/doing something beneficial/being happy and bringing some genuine happiness), the first Noble Truth sticks and makes its way felt through the second.

If one sort of even glances through some of the biographies of the great masters, one can spot a cardinal difference between the Buddha (in how he is depicted, at any rate) and the rest. The Buddha really did seem to have reached a state of 'imaginary grace' where everything and everyone counted but nothing and indeed nobody mattered (about the Buddha maybe some other day; I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a proper scholar on the Buddha, anyway), and yet that did not stop him from doing what he had to do (although there’s a story about that). He did what he could do. He became a teacher. Life then is not just a matter involving thought, reflection, and contemplation. Human beings aren’t just ‘floating minds’. Living, no matter whether it seems and feels like a game or an illusion or even a delusion or a drama or a stage-play also involves being, acting and doing along with the connecting within.

But how much and how far does one go into seeing and experiencing and connecting within with the ‘spinning wheel of life and death and what-not’ before one stops in one’s tracks (or is made to stop in one's tracks), and says, ‘that’s all I can take, thank you, and I’ll take what comes from making my choice because this is the only choice that I can and want to make given who/what I am and have become’? For as one participates in life and plunges into one’s own consciousness, one sees the glowing bits born of one’s own experiences with life and living and the relations that remain. One is reminded for instance of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha (also read towards the beginning of the previous decade), who travels far and wide, up and down and all around all kinds of paths, engages and experiments in much in his own search for enlightenment, and then finally finds his meaning in life, in and through his son begotten of a nautch-girl. I sometimes wonder where that story could go from there. This Siddhartha already knew that the choice he was making necessarily implied that he had ‘returned’ to be attached to life, and primarily in the form of his son. And through attachment then, this Siddhartha re-joins the cycle of life, and with it all the entanglements of life. Gives reason to ponder upon the Buddha’s principle of pratityasamutpada.

Space and time do not permit me to leap along this path, and so I bring my post to an end for now while having different liners floating around while returning to doing what I can (‘because nobody else can do it’), am able to, and have to even though I don't have the sure-shot prescience to know whether I'm winning or losing or doing any good or facing and engaging with life 'zestfully and with an earthy good sense' or whether that liner from a Miss Marple book, ‘Intelligent girls are so likely to become imbecilic if they are not careful’ fits me to a T. And since one doesn't know one has to say 'it ain't over till it's over', 'where there is life there is hope and light' and also a quiet 'Jesus Christ', every now and again, and hopefully see and hold on to one’s own radiant light blazing away, which is not (thank heavens...a 'Holy Moses' would be more appropriate) a speaking bush on fire in the middle of a desert.

My Cats

2011-09-29T13:46:00.007-04:00

'nother old un with some changes included. Written in Jan this year.

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Over the years I've grown fond of cats - at least some cats.

I've had a strange relationship with this particular feline species. I disliked cats intensely as a child and while growing up but in a very unreal way. I didn't like the idea of cats and I don't think I ever saw a real cat until quite late in my life, and if I did see a cat I don't remember it. Yet I also remember when I was 5 or 6 or thereabouts I wrote a half-page 'autobiography' about a cat and drew a cat as well. Why a cat when the pretend story could have been about anything? I don't know. Maybe it's because drawing a cat is very easy.

At some point - when I was quite old - I started hissing at them. I didn't ever dream of hurting a cat but I hissed at them and they hissed back at me and we were quite settled about our mutual dislike. And their eyes - unblinking and sharp and piercing and quite inhuman, so I told myself. I believed in this too. I also believed that they were not particularly fond of humans or of company. That they were not just solitary creatures, which I may have been able to accept and even admire, but also slinking, mean creatures and pleasure loving and pleasure seeking creatures in very narrow and self-centred ways. I saw them as nasty humans. Nothing like dogs, and I loved dogs - I was sure that I loved dogs and disliked cats, and that cats and I would never get along together.

The hissing at them went on for a while, and in one of the places that I lived in Calcutta - there were both cats and rats that ran around in the compound. The rats were bigger than the cats. I don't know whether the cats killed and ate any of the rats but I had the strong suspicion that some of the rats may actually have eaten some of the cats. The hissing and my deep dislike for cats continued until a young girl who used to teach at a college listened and told me, "read this". I read it. It was Jeanine by Paul Gallico. And I stopped hissing at cats. It happened - just like that. It was looking at the life of a cat from the cat's perspective (sure, it was written by a human)...who knows exactly what clicked. (Years later I was taken aback when a friend, no longer a friend, looked at me like I were an idiot and dismissed my point by saying with a tsk-tsk, "Shilpi, this is not an intellectual issue for me. It's not something that a book can change. It's a deep-rooted dislike and I don't like cats and I never will." Whoever said that books just made an intellectual impression on the human being though?).

I stopped hissing. But I still was extremely wary of cats. In the last place I lived in Calcutta there were many well-fed and seemingly happy cats that prowled around the complex. Their eyes I found just as lifeless and expressionless and yet unnervingly penetrating somehow. And all my "kitty, kitty, kitty" calls (and I did try every now and again) went unheeded. Some of them would look at me and then walk off with a look of complete arrogance and another one would look at me with an intense gaze almost saying, 'Good God, do you have to embarrass me and my friends?! You're a freak. And do you think we don't know? We know you hissed at cats! Just because you've stopped now, you think I'm going to walk over to you, softly purr and rub my coat against your legs? You've got to be kidding." And with that it would give me a long and sudden hiss and saunter off - and yes, insouciantly.

And so that was it until the last four years. First came the big grey tabby. I'm bad at figuring out the age of cats. I honestly assumed that he was a kitten and wasn't too sure about his sex either (which is a difficult thing anyway because most of the stray cats are neutered or spayed, given that they had an owner at some point). He came to the porch one day - somewhat scarred and scruffy and with one eye that was scrunched up and with one eye giving me the 'look' of what I cannot really say. But that look hadn't been expressionless. A glowing jade eye and he had spoken to me with that eye. A gruff, "Ah, I know you". But he turned around and off he was. I'd been leaving out food for him on the porch which he came and ate and he would, I noticed be on the look-out for me. If ever I made the mistake of going out to the porch, he would bolt. But he made fast friends with our neighbour, Kim, and he would sit with quiet Kim whenever Kim would be sitting on the porch on early mornings with his notebook and coffee. I would stare at the grey tabby, from the window, who would be petted by Kim, would settle on Kim's lap or settle amiably next to Kim - and sometimes the tabby would make a fat-face at me but he'd not stay for a second if I tried going outside. There was his pink flat nose, there was his alarmingly large but very well-shaped head (I don't know how he balanced it on his rather thin and battle scarred body) and his noble chin and that scrunched up eye and that amazing green eye which seemed to see, know, and observe. Guha came back from India after a month or so, observed the cat, and quite against his principle of not bringing in stray animals brought the grey tabby in as soon as the tabby came along hopping on the frost covered grass in November.

Then a little over a year, there was a kitten. Not exactly a tiny kitten. But a 9 month fairly chubby kitten who had had a temporary home but was now homeless. His mother and brother had run off and he was there out on the porch on a cold January very early morning, and he looked inside. I remember his look with his head slightly tilted to one side. The grey tabby now sitting on the table in front of the window saw the kitten outside and miaowed and said, "my hedgehog. That's my hedgehog. Please bring my hedgehog inside. I need to take care of my hedgehog." And so Guha very promptly went outside and brought that kitten inside. The kitten is now considerably larger and tubbier and far more mischievous than the grey tabby whose eyes are both in fine form.

Cats do not have expressionless eyes. The grey tabby (Barty/"Baati"), whose name should have been ideally, "Kettle", has the brightest, greenest and most beautiful eyes that I've ever seen on a non-human animal. They are bewitching eyes too. They speak. Sometimes he can make them go all liquid and big and keep making them bigger and he will look up with the expression, "are you going to pet me now? Plea-a-se?" Sometimes it's harder to figure out what he wants me to do when he gives me the look. Sometimes he'll be gazing out of the window with such a faraway expression in his eyes that it seems to me that he's seeing his own planet. Sometimes he'll be looking at me from his place on the counter-top with the regal expression, "I'm king of my castle." and yet at other times he'll shut his eyes tight and open them wide and do it again, and he'll expect you to do the same. It's called a winky-blink - a sign of love and affection. I'm not kidding. Sometimes though he can look quite unreal. His liquid eyes go all black....he never looks mean but he does look quite dangerous. Yet at other moments when I talk to him in gobbledygook, he looks at me with almost ancient fondness "These humans - I have to humour them." while at other moments he'll look at me with, "No, not now. Please not now. I'm having a moment here. Please don't talk with me if don't have anything important to say."

The Kitten (Max/"Ghoti") who should have been ideally named "Bundle" has grown up but never really seems to have grown up. He has his kitten waddle and doesn't know that cats are supposed to protect their tummy at all times. He sometimes exposes his tummy (much like a dog) and expects you to rub him down, pet him, and cuddle him. He's naughty too. Loves to jump on the counter-top and lick a bit of this or that that's been left out on the counter. He'll try and drag a bag of cereal that's bigger than him (although he hasn't done that in a while) and once he tried to take a whole loaf of bread back to his hide-out. Yet the funny thing with him is that he keeps turning around waiting to be caught. And he never tries doing any of the naughty stuff when I'm not at home. It's almost as though he's hatching his plans so I'll go running after him, "Max. Max. Drop that. Now." Or else, "Max. Max. Ekhuni pituni debo," ...and he's thinking "well it gives her some amusement I think, running after me and chasing me around". Max loves running and hiding into the wardrobe. He has a little shelf inside where he sits and waits and sits doing god knows what and all my asking him to come out doesn't work at times, especially when I tell the rare guest that he'll be out in a jiffy (I'm terrified I'll shut the door and he'll be there for half-a-day...one day he'd been trapped in the refrigerator for some minutes but that's another story). The kitten does have the grace to look quite guilty when he's scolded for real. His head drops and he still looks up from his eyes while somewhat guiltily pushing at the floor with his front paws...so I don't think that it's true that cats have absolutely no conscience either. They do. I remember the only time that Barty ever tried to take something with him was a big piece of chicken. He'd never done anything of that sort and later he looked like a sad and old gentleman who'd been caught in a frightfully embarrassing position.

And cats are not unsocial. They look forward to being petted and they make space for you on the bed and sometimes they'll come and snuggle right next to you...and that is one of the nicest feelings in the world. The grey tabby grooms me. He grooms my unruly hair and bites my head just the way he keeps the kitten clean. Sometimes he gets so focused in his grooming regimen - his eyes are closed. Even if I try to shoo him away, he comes back. He wakes me up in the morning or just keeps looking at me even when I try to snuggle under the blankets so that I get out of bed and get to work after feeding him and the kitten. The grey tabby sometimes becomes crotchety if you don't play with him or sit with him or spend some time with him every day and the kitten will refuse to face you if you ignore him for too long. He'll sit with his big bum facing your face. Quite rude but he doesn't care. The grey tabby sometimes does get a scolding from me because he needs petting right when I'm trying to work or getting something done. He sometimes gets quite clingy too....but not if he's given a bit of attention for bits of time...the chicken/kitten is actually a more self-reliant cat although he goes through his odd phases...and he still likes being picked up and carried around the house while he stares intently completely motionless and transfixed at the ceiling and the walls, and at my face for some seconds as though it's terribly interesting before squirming to get down to the ground and go about running off again. Kettle hates being picked up by me.

P.S: Sometimes I think that all they have is a roof over their heads and some water and food.

(Early Jan 2011). Edits October 2011.

On Knowledge: the wider and the personal II

2011-09-08T08:35:00.026-04:00

...There isn't anything wrong with having specialized knowledge as long as it doesn't make a human being wear narrower and narrower blinders...and as for the PhD, I don’t think that getting a PhD should be a joke. I think it should mean something. And I am sure I'm not the only deluded student who thinks that the process can be meaningful, that it can be a labour of love (no matter how slow and monochromatic one might be), and that no matter how much one tells oneself that it's 'just' a PhD, one cannot help hoping all the while that even the outcome should matter - that it should make a positive difference to at least one human being...

...To digress a bit, I am reminded of the joke in one of Asimov's books on humour. I think it goes something like this: There's a white haired and white bearded man - flowing white hair and flowing white beard....and he's standing and pointing to a spinning globe - a man and a woman and an apple tree and an apple and a snake...the earth, sky, stars, sun, the moon, oceans, majestic nature, humans, sentient life form....and so on...and out of the penetrating void comes a booming voice, "And that's all you did for your PhD!'

Being a sociologist I can’t help asking: if the PhD degree were seen to have some independent value then why is it that no university or college will hire a sociologist with ‘just’ a PhD degree any longer? Because that’s what it is. It is just a degree. Even colleges and universities (the very places handing out the degrees) know that the degree is merely a ‘necessary but not a sufficient’ cause to hire someone to even teach 17 year olds! There are other issues too but let me not venture too far.

..I probably sound like I'm complaining and I am. But to make it clear, I'm complaining against myself more than anything else however. I've taken a bloody long time to realise some things, and nobody else but I can be blamed for the same. And yet this too was like one of those many things that I felt I'd known for long enough. A very peculiar analogy came to my mind one day: ...to maintain one love, and then to go and be infatuated every now and again for some days or weeks in a row...Being in academia I knew I should have found one area of specialization and stuck to it, chosen some hoops to jump through with a smile, and I should have done so back in the first year of my Master's (while dabbling in this and that and the other), while not just writing quick papers but doggedly trying to get them published or at least going to five conferences in a year. And I had the chance to do precisely that. Dabbling in this, that and the other and having an exceptionally short-term memory for most pieces of facts and information and readings does not work one way or the other. Indeed most of my knowledge regarding academic sociological material that has been best preserved is the stuff that I read and learnt during my undergraduate days in Calcutta...close to two decades ago, and the rest of my knowledge that has held me in stead for this long did not come from academic books nor from stuffy academic articles nor formal classes.

I know I'm not gifted or clever or intelligent by any stretch of the imagination but if one decides to play within the system then one plays by some rules, and then some of the other rules may be bent a bit, bit by bit. If not - one stays within as long as one can and is able, and then looks for alternatives. And I'd thought I'd known this from the time of my undergraduate years in India (in fact when folks studying in college and the university used to complain about what a warped system it was, I used to raise my eyebrows: if you don't like it and are clever/intelligent/gifted enough - you can leave; but if you choose to stay...well, you must grit your teeth and get along with things; now look who's raising their eyebrows!). And even if it were in a completely different context, here I was complaining again, and recently that an Ivy League professor took so long to figure out that he couldn't talk with people from a different social class....well, at the very least, he has a job and has finished his PhD, and can now pontificate.

I remember some of the things that Rand talked about as though I read her yesterday (about Rand some other day). I know it’s not possible that every human being should or could become a myriad minded man or woman or be exceptional. But what can we say about a world where we lose the sight and senses to even be able to admire and value such men and women – no matter how rare and no matter how far out they lie on the tail-end of the curve in a statistical distribution. It’s one thing for us not to be able to reach the heights of the giants but what can we say about a world where we cannot even admire and value people who can and do? It takes eyes to see and ears to hear and the required senses to understand...

And this in the same world where some half-nude celebrity – whose only claim to fame is that she was born a rich girl – gets paid some million dollars to make an appearance in a night-club for crying out loud?! And this in the same world where we automatically sit up if a person has the formal ‘degrees’ and has received the formal accolades, no matter whether they know what they are talking about? And this in a world where individuals are requested to lend their expert knowledge into turning a nation into a knowledge economy (no less), and are requested to do so because they made some clever and smart moves in spreading the net of mobile phone communication?! And this in a world where a grubby software expert who has made some quick money is the one who manages to get his book published by a prestigious publishing company (most likely even that was ghost written) as he pontificates upon the social, cultural, political, economic and educational aspects of an entire nation and gets dubbed a ‘visionary’?! And this in a world where a certain kind of rhetoric gains enormous significance within academia ('critical...', 'communicative space', 'dominance', 'engaged activism', 'interdisciplinary interaction', 'democratic participation', 'protest and resistance', 'hegemony', 'marginalization', 'parochial', 'subversive', 'structures', 'silenced voices' ...and yes, I'll leave out the rest of the words in the academic dictionary), while we forget sometimes what 'knowledge' itself means or what 'thinking' means or that the world may not be explainable by our pretty and 'radical' little world-views or that our jargon-ridden parochial and increasingly fragmented theories that we so passionately hold dear are sometimes hopelessly ill-suited when it comes to understanding individuals of remarkable versatility and phenomena of non-quantifiable nature (which we then dismiss importantly as being socially non-significant or unimportant), or even how much pure grit (leave alone other traits) it takes to achieve some degree of emancipation while living in the real world as an individual and not within the safe perimeters of an institution or a specialized community where almost everybody solemnly agrees with everybody else and one's daily bread is guaranteed as long as one has got one's body through the door and doesn't rock the boat too soon. And this in the same world where millions of dollars are spent in researching different aspects of self-esteem...And this in the same world where we have closeted conferences and academic journals publishing articles regarding 'highly specialized' branches of knowledge which are being understood by fewer and fewer and fewer human beings and are accessible to only those who are tied to formal academic institutions, and which deal with such fragmented issues that they have incredibly little bearing ultimately, and for the most part - in the space of real living and living in the external world (and people think I am mad)....

The degree of freedom that people within colleges and universities get to experience I sometimes think and if they go along with some stuff sensibly is of an unreal level (given that one is within an institution), and there are some mavericks in the different fields still: those who know, connect, and remember moderately well….and yet, I can’t help thinking that the brightest stars aren't there within formal academia. They would not have been ignored if they had been here, and if such folks who see education as an inter-connected enterprise were around they would have received their due and done what they needed to, and would have been much appreciated, I think….but they aren’t here. It saddens me this, and every year it saddens me a little more and rankles that much more although I didn't think it was possible. It's such a waste - and with such fine resources...

...and I have been blind and exceptionally slow in seeing what I thought I had 'figured out' a long time ago: that if one chose to play within the boundaries of a given social system for a given period of time one had to jump through some hoops quietly and diligently and with minimum fuss, and with a smile - because it certainly isn't bad if people can do that and early enough, and I had the formal chances. And I wonder too how much time I wasted and what else I may have already lost in trying to find and understand matters (which I thought were of cosmic significance) while missing what was right there and in front of me and what was gifted to me...and these are the times when I wonder what came of all the introspection, reflection, reading, thinking, writing, wondering, and going inward, and the years of isolation...

So what exactly do I know ?....

... - if it matters, it matters no matter what...; fingers clenched over thumb, walking and doing and being while a being makes me wonder, smile, and be quiet while the sand runs fast and hard through the hourglass....and that's that for this and now.

On knowledge: the wider and the personal I

2011-09-05T12:40:00.036-04:00

There are a couple of thoughts that I’ve been having and they’re somewhat linked. There was Pupu’s blog-essay on knowledge and then there were a series of recent essays on Suvro da’s blog regarding human beings and their ways, the rise and fall of civilizations, and education, and there have been other essays, a couple of well-written biographies, and some academic articles that I’ve been reading and re-reading, and there was something that was bothering me but I’ve not had the attention required to actually organize my thoughts well but I was wondering and thinking about knowledge again, and in a formal way this time, and within academia.

Over this last year I realise something which took me a very, very long time to realise… although I felt I’d known about it for a long while when I read Pupu's essay on being knowledgeable: It’s not just that people do not know but it’s that people aren’t interested in knowing any longer; that human beings simply aren't seriously interested in anything, and knowing anything that matters. But this thought kept niggling me for this is what is even within formal academia and at higher and higher levels or so it seems to me. Knowledge: the sort of knowledge that I used to and still think and consider to be valuable, and the general mark of being educated seems to be rapidly losing its value. Knowledge of history in its many-layered connections, knowledge about the social world, knowledge of the natural sciences and the natural world, geography and the political and economic conditions of nations, of great people and their works, of philosophy, of humour, psychology, the environment, knowledge regarding works of literature and poetry and religion.....and the ability to meaningfully connect all that one learns, and to share some (not just collecting and reciting disconnected heaps of information or to spout some random bits of reading).... even these seem to matter less and less... Not only is knowledge of this sort being valued less there seems to be an invisible resistance to this sort of knowing…people aren’t even interested in such connected knowing any longer. And I'm not lying but I knew a couple of students - they were class-mates in school - who read more when they were in school and high-school than some of the people who are doing their doctorates. It actually embarrasses me to say this but even I read a wider range of stuff than most people in my department do.

I'm thinking of generalized knowledge and people who gather PhDs. It’s probably bad manners to say this – but it’s a joke. How can it be that a person receives the title of ‘doctor of philosophy’ (no less!) and yet is expected to know almost nothing outside the wee-bitty area of specialization, which is what a PhD has become…? (I won’t get into the questions of how much ‘research’ work is of genuine worth, meaning, and displays some level of originality). Now I don’t think it would be marvelous if all folks had opinions about everything – it’s better sometimes to have no opinions on things because one simply doesn’t know, and to speak only about that which one does know. But mere opinions and informed knowledge and the ability to build bridges amongst bodies of knowledge are not the same things. And I do admire highly focused scientists or workers who know not much about everything but simply focus with passionate intensity on their own area of work. Marie Curie, from the bit that I have read about her, was not interested in expressing her views on anything much, but – before people start thinking of her - scientists, social scientists, and other PhD pass-outs are not budding Marie Curies. So I honestly can’t see how knowing less and less and writing less and less, and being less and less interested about interconnected matters can be a great leap forwards …well, it might be a great leap for sure but into what exactly?

....I often think how professors could use poems, stories, anecdotes from the lives of great men and women, speeches, and quotations within sociology, and meaningfully along with all the regular 'items' that they use...Yet remembering these are not even considered to be particularly valuable any longer within education as a whole, leave alone within a social science discipline. Meaningfully quoting from memory, connecting it to the matter in hand is not really viewed as being something worthy of admiration or respect or of significance. It’s one thing not to know or not to remember – but when we say that it’s no longer even important or worthwhile, and this within an ideal-type portrayal of education (because memorization seems to be bothersome) that’s when I think there is something 'off'. And yet what happens? We also forget that memorization, and at different levels, is possible. And so it’s equally true that some Indian graduate students with their ‘amazing’ memories are sometimes venerated because people, on an average, seem to have forgotten that memorization is indeed something human beings are capable of doing. It doesn’t even matter what some of these students rattle off (sometimes it can be parroting senselessly and without comprehension from a text-book) but others look on with admiring astonishment as though the person were as marvelous as some rare prophet walking on water…

My own prof. who recently retired was exclaiming with somewhat restrained but visible anger and annoyance that sociologists don’t even seem particularly interested in history, and that we had decided at some point that knowing or talking about history was not considered to be relevant within sociological studies….

Even if I take the matter of social psychology – a specialized area …or let me re-frame that: it was considered to be an area of specialization, and with reason once-upon-a-time. Social scientists believed that a discipline that combined the understanding of the internal processes of the human mind and the external structures and processes of society would be a discipline that could draw from the best of both worlds. And now one needs to simply read what the long gone original masters of the discipline – like William James (on the varieties of religious experiences) and Maslow (self-actualization) and Mead (‘I’ and the ‘me’ and the ‘generalized other’) and Cooley (‘looking-glass self’) wrote, and even Erving Goffman (who wouldn’t be considered to be a dinosaur exactly) to what the new social psychologists are writing about, and how. Some of them even imply that James was too ‘broad’ and non-empirical, so now we split up the discipline finer and finer and finer till we have ten million people working on the head of a pin (and ten hundred of them are cited in every paper). So we split up the study of ‘self and identity’ (a sub area, or maybe even a sub-sub area of specialization within social psychology) from the study of emotions from the study of awareness from the study of personality from the study of motivations from the study of deviance…well maybe I should stop right there. Deviance is of course another area of specialization and of course the quantitative experts aren’t on talking terms with the qualitative experts. And one mustn’t even talk about cross-disciplinary flowering. If one starts getting into talking about the ‘self’ in philosophy – the social psychologists and the philosophers are not on communicating terms….in fact even the psychologists working in the field of ‘self and identity’ are not interacting much with sociologists working in the field of ‘self and identity’….

Knowing, remembering, connecting, and sharing are gradually being seen as impossible tasks for the meagre human mind, and so since people who can remember and connect and who do have large bodies of knowledge in their heads are such absolute and utter rarities – we’ve come to the smart conclusion that we do not need to remember ‘lots of stuff’ any longer. That recent study conducted – with some flaws – and the comment by the researcher, that remembering is not as important as building connections, and that 'knowledge workers' these days are somehow more ‘refined’ because they ‘connect’ amongst knowledge bodies (really? - all that connecting falls flat when one doesn't remember history but is teaching a course which requires and demands remembering, at the very least, world history far more than sociological theories of different brands...), that there is always ‘google’ to check up what we don’t know and can’t remember (that there is: I sometimes wonder how many instructors would be out of their temporary jobs without being able to access google), and that we are simply being more ‘sensible’ somehow by knowing ‘where’ to look to find what we can’t remember – that single study is an illustration enough of something more pervasive, and something that has been steadily accumulating over decades. And one can observe and look around, and people doing their PhDs too can look and see what is expected, and indeed admired within their own areas and from their own discipline and from their own disciplinary specialization...

An old un

2011-08-28T03:01:00.005-04:00

The following was written in January right after classes had begun for the semester. An old, rambling post but I don't have anything new for now.

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The classes are at 7.30 in the mornings (but not every day of the week...I'm too embarrassed to admit to anything else). I couldn't remember the last time that I had to be ready and out of the house by 7 in the morning. I tried recollecting this bit of information during the brief Christmas break that we had (they call it 'winter' break here) but my memory eludes me. I do remember the last time that I was waking up and getting ready and out of my dorm room by 6.45. It was a term when I was doing three or four things, and doing them fairly well - so I thought. Even if I wasn't doing them well - I was delighted about the prospect of waking up early in the mornings even on the days that I wasn't so sure where I was going.

I told myself to get into a strict routine over Christmas. That didn't happen. And as it sometimes happens when certain things simply have to get done, after a couple of nights of dreaming strange dreams - the day I had to make an appearance - I shot out of bed as soon as the alarm went off. I fed my two little pets, got ready like an army sergeant, and was out of the house at a reasonably early time. The snow had been falling gently and steadily through the night and through the dense, black liquid light there were the silver white sparkles that I love. And there was the silence. The snow hadn't been plowed as yet. I brushed off the car (there's no trolley that early, and I'd much rather go and sleep in the classroom the previous night than try and walk all the way in the morning), hopped in, worked the windshield wipers, and one of them (the one on the driver's side, no less) fell off. Rumpelstiltskin, blue blistering barnacles and all that! I hopped out again, warmed my hands on my jacket, looked at the wiper, looked at the one that was fixed, and then set the loose one in. Out it fell. Okay, nice. Really nice. I could still make it if I walked and I looked out into the darkness wondering whether I should boot it up the hill or simply run at a steady enough pace all the way.

I stuffed the wiper in my pocket, dusted the snow off the windshield, hopped back into the car, peered through one clear spot, drove along and halted in front of Jerry's coffee shop and requested my neighbour to come out and have a look. He did what I did with the wiper, and it stayed on, and Kim said, "Don't use it too often." I nodded and off it was.

None of the roads seemed to have been plowed quite that early and as I inched along I couldn't stop staring at the snow and gingerly pressing on the wiper button. I would turn the knob once and the wiper, with a mind of its own, would provide me with two or even three furious, speedy flicks and come to a rest. At one point I even barked at it, "Give it a rest would you? I clicked just once." To prove a point, the rakish wiper gave another half-flick, and I said, "I didn't even touch the knob!"

It's just about 2 miles to the campus from where I live and I knew I simply needed to cross the bridge over the river without going off course or banging into a car or something else. And so I cruised along with the maniacal wiper half-fixed on, and at a somewhat jaunty angle, giving rapid and smart flicks when I wanted only one. I just prayed that it stayed on because it was doing its job perfectly well when it was doing it.

A friend had very kindly offered her empty parking spot behind her apartment complex. Given the strange winter we've been having here - I'd gone over to check the spot the earlier evening. It seemed a regular spot and there seemed to be a narrow, unpaved lane which sort of meandered its way between two apartment complexes and came to meet the large parking space. I'd checked all that the evening before. Now as I finally crossed the bridge without incident I slowed down as I approached the narrow lane, and I didn't know what it was actually. I was quite sure that it was the same lane I'd seen the evening before but it looked completely different. Snow was piled high. There was no lane that I could see. It looked like a lovely snowy mound. A hill of snow...a desolate space leading to other-lands - maybe. But not a lane. I wasn't going to risk trying to get through that and have the car getting stuck with one of the maniacal wipers flying off and hitting someone on the face...I had though inched off the road to take the turn and I could see a steady progression of traffic right behind me coming off from the bridge. I stayed put. Let all the cars and morning trucks pass me by and I got back to the main road while sipping some coffee hastily. Now to find a parking spot. I refused to touch the wiper button, and the wiper sensing the urgency of the situation ("the nut, who's been talking with me, has to reach her class on time") behaved itself for a bit. It wiped when it was so bidden and held its peace otherwise. I hunted around for barely two minutes and then the wonderful sight of an empty parking spot met my eyes. No parallel parking required. No crossing of mounds. No parking metre. I could technically park for an hour but if the little van with the roving eyes belonging to the sharp human didn't come by right away - I'd probably miss the ticket as well. At least I was hoping I would because the class itself was over an hour....

I stopped at the parking spot and the wiper gave me two of its brightest and sharpest flicks. "Go ahead. We're not on the bridge now," I cheerily yelled. I leapt out and there was the walk from there to the department. Quiet, silent, sparkling bits of snow through that still liquid black met me, and the air wasn't even cold enough for gloves. I gulped and raised my eyebrows and gave a half-smile.

The class was...fun but this is not about the class.

I raced back to the car after the class and the office hours were done for the day, and there was no parking ticket on the car. I emitted my silent thank-you. I needed to move the car though and needed to go and get some paperwork done. So it was back in. I jabbed at the wiper a couple of times and it seemed to be doing not too badly. But it was hairy driving around campus. I never did quite realise before today how many students simply jump out onto the road without looking or keep walking across the roads as if they are in a trance (even though I know I've done it myself sometimes* missed the bus twice and a lorry once: but it wasn't my fault with the lorry; the truck climbed onto the curb - hardly my fault....). But today it seemed as though it were happening more often. At some point I wondered whether the car was invisible. I know it doesn't help with the snow sometimes blowing towards one and when one is trying to keep one's eyes shut while still walking around but I wish the pedestrians would look up sometimes when they're crossing the middle of the road. While I was having these righteous thoughts, one red truck nearly banged into me while taking a speedy turn and I forgot to yell or honk the horn. I just gave the driver a glare which he couldn't see anyway. The rakish wiper was working well though till I got to yet another car park when suddenly it went flying off and landed somewhere in the snow. No students around, thankfully enough. I stopped the car, ran over to it where it was lying in the snow laughing. Anyway, I managed to fix it on again, and then it was back home while telling the wiper to go slow. I reached my street and let out a sigh of relief. I would not have wanted to be driving out on the highway today - that's for sure.

And I've been talking to a wiper...I think the nutty wiper is also missing a nut of its own.

Weird weather and winds

2011-08-17T11:40:00.012-04:00

The weather here changed at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I was helping a friend for three days to move houses...not out of overflowing kindness of the heart but simply because there was nobody else. And sometime over the weekend the weather changed, and I noticed it yesterday noon or so for real. There's an undefinable breeze and sometimes a gust of wind, and it has a curious fragrance. It's not a fragrance of flowers or leaves. It's hard to say what it contains but it seems to be blowing in from other worlds and places and times. I can't even quite sense whether it's a warm or a cold wind. I mean that. I can't figure out whether even the air is warm or cool to the skin. My senses don't seem to know. There's sun. That much I can sense. And there's a sky shot through with a lazy blue. That much I can see. I know at other times a dancing, smiling if somewhat restless joy captivates me when similar weather saunters in. Now I just feel restive with nowhere to go, and those flickering, vague images make me want to run away somewhere for a bit. Yesterday after feeling the same urge to run off, to get out, to go do something - I finally left my computer and word documents alone, and got out of the house in the early evening, and wondered where I could go. I looked at the road. I simply went for a walk like every evening - just a more long-winded walk. That's all I did. A walk which lasted for two hours, and which took me to the river after a month. The river is in retreat and the sandy banks have green shoots and clumps of greenery. I walked around there. Sat for a bit. Smoked, of course. Went through a little pool of water with my feet sinking into the bottom making muddy whorls. The weather is distracting. Even now I can sense it while sitting indoors. It makes me go out but there's something missing so I come back in. I remember similar weather with strange winds even in Calcutta and in Durgapur. I don't even quite know whether there really was a wind or what those similar fragrances were. There used to be a missing, and I was quite sure that I was missing not being here, and that someday I'd be traveling a lot and that would take care of the feeling...maybe it's a feeling of wanderlust or of missing pasts long past or of seeing dead dreams playing out for real somewhere or of sensing imagined futures or maybe the weather is an accident: it comes in from parallel universes or something. Whatever it is it is entering my senses no matter how hard I try to avoid it. I can't think of a thing that I can do that would dispel the strangeness of the weather cutting into my senses. There's an emptiness, which shouldn't be empty. I feel like a dislocated self for every possibility, which sounds like a fine possibility is considered until I shake my head: go and sit in the library and work; work in the coffee-shop; take some print-outs and sit at a coffee-shop and read; walk around; go to a park maybe; watch a funny movie; go for a swim; go and sing on the hills (just kidding with this one)...so I stay indoors and do what I'm doing. Even fimh seems quiet, vague, and distracted, and lets me be. So there's nowhere within to crack jokes or smile or just be and let the strangeness linger while carrying on with things. Quite odd. I wonder whether this is like some other things, where one simply has to wait for the fever to pass.

I hate using my completely forgotten bits of french but there were a couple of phrases that I remember hearing, and which have since stuck. The weather now brings to mind one of them: that sense of je ne sais quoi...that's what seems to be skipping around within. Maybe I've just been here for too long a time and that's all there is to it. I don't know.

Lost Horizon....

2011-07-29T12:49:00.011-04:00

I finished reading a rather strange book some days ago. One of the strangest things about the book is that it is written by the same author who wrote the very real and not remotely surreal story about love in a warm, wistful, amusing, and rather lump-swallowing worthy, and matter-of-fact way - Goodbye Mr. Chips. I'll never quite forget Mr. Chips teaching Latin while shrapnel and shells are exploding and the guns are firing, and he's there gently urging his boys to concentrate while cracking jokes - 'you cannot judge the importance of things by the noise they make', before going on to remark about the importance of being employed with something appropriate if fate so decides that 'we are interrupted': the teacher who came to be regarded as a philosopher and prophet, and much in demand for his knowledge as much as for his witty one liners. It was a deep love story too, but one which ended too soon. It sort of makes my mind switch too many gears to think that it's the same author who wrote the book I just about read....but then again there are some writers who do jump worlds and with impunity, which always makes me wonder and blink some or stare or both.

The book is about Shangri-La and about one man, Hugh Conway. That magical place suspended somewhere between Tibet and India, and a man who went through the war as a young boy and worked not too rigorously nor too energetically but did just enough while working at the consulate later on. An unusual character once again but one whom I couldn't understand too well (although I harboured his head every now and again in different ways, and in an amusing way sometimes but maybe not too well). He too seemed suspended in that abnormally real and half elusive space of Shangri-La or to use two expressions - he seemed incredibly ordinary and incredibly extraordinary. I didn't know whether he was sane or not, whether he was passionate or not, whether he cared deeply or not, whether he did right or not, and he didn't share his thoughts too often and sometimes not at all - so it was difficult to guess. He seemed to be utterly unruffled on the surface and dispassionate and yet there was something underneath....quite what it was I couldn't quite get.

I didn't understand his reasons for doing what he did too well either. Indeed why he did what he did or why he even liked the young idiotic, annoying, simpering, pompous boy who was very seriously lacking any bit of substantial or likeable matter in the space between his ears. - I don't understand at all. It wasn't just the young boy. It was also about the young (ancient) Manchu girl as well who had eyes only for that young nitwit of a boy (she didn't have eyes obviously even though she could physically see quite well), and Conway did what he had to because as he said, right after he wandered around in a daze not being able to share a word of what he had heard and knew and about his own role in the world that was to come, in the whole wide world it was that stupid boy and the young (ancient) Manchu girl whom he cared for, and he didn't quite know how to explain it himself, it seemed! 'Course he had fallen for the Manchu girl. He probably even knew exactly what was going to happen but did what he did anyway. Not that his role had he stayed put didn't make me feel isolated, strange, unusual and in some ways it gave me the chills too. Now when it flutters by there is a strange lonely silence that fills me. In some ways Conway's possible role reminds me of Leto's role that he chose for himself....and regretted deeply, for the first time, in God Emperor of Dune...but that was bound to happen...didn't feel any better when it did though.

Very real in some ways and surreal in other ways and different. But unreal? That I don't know about. It felt quite real in that space and it didn't feel unusual. It was about different worlds, normal and perfectly regular ones and not-so-regular ones colliding and merging for a bit within the life of a man. I could almost perfectly sense Conway's sense of reality while talking with the ancient, ancient lama and feeling at ease in his presence, and a sublime feeling of tranquility while watching the young (ancient) Manchu girl playing on her harpischord...and then conversing quite normally with the other three characters all marooned in the monastery. None of it seemed to be particularly jarring to him until that one meeting with the lama....quite why it shook him up the way it did, I do not know. Because he had been expecting that as well. I didn't and couldn't figure out what Conway was going through when that bleating boy started bleating his head off when after Conway finishes conversing with the lama and paces around in a daze, the boy jumps on him. I just felt incredibly lonely and wished that Conway had one human being in that blasted place with whom he could talk.

Gives me an odd feeling: the book when it flutters around in my head. An eerie feeling too and a lonely one. White silence. But maybe that's not unusual given the vivid and beautiful descriptions of the place (I wish I remembered one off the top of my head). I wonder whether he went back to that world of Shangri-La or what he did. James Hilton doesn't quite say....

The book is Lost Horizon. I still can't quite believe that the same writer wrote Goodbye Mr. Chips. That really does seem to be the unreal part. Of course...if writers can't imagine what good are they?!....

Reading Three Comrades

2011-07-09T10:06:00.038-04:00

The utter senselessness and insensibility, insanity, incongruity, gruesomeness and despicability of war sounds in the background. It’s about the young men who serve and return from war, of friendship, of the ties that bind comrades-in-arms, of humanity, of remaining humane in the midst of a grey world, of struggling and battling and not giving in, of finding room for laughs with a car put together (a car named ‘Karl the Road Spook’), of a birthday and listing of years, of not really hoping, of having a friend and two who would not give a thought about laying down their lives and everything they could for the other, of finding sudden hope in the midst of that not-hoping, of finding life, of being touched by an inexplicable love, of touching a human life and of being touched by another human being through curious tentative beginnings, of a sudden ray of light, of a friend who drops everything to come racing down through the mist and rain with a doc', of wanting to take care of another, of taking care of another, of being made to feel alright, of make believing that things are perfect, of playing silly games while walking down a road lined with shops, of not having enough money, of the wrong kind of people who have lots, of listening to music on a radio and identifying music with the first bars, of wondering in an odd moment that one might have been a music teacher in another world, of telling stories to make the other laugh and being egged on by the other’s laughter even as life is dripping out drop by drop…, of falling in love slowly and deeply and fully, of the bliss of being, of utter despair, of a sudden cheeky hope that one might be going too, of a light gone out.

It wasn’t a book where I bonded with the characters – I became one of them, and felt through and lived through one of them and identified with the primary character and his thoughts most of all (and sometimes with the other primary character). Maybe it’s because it's written in the first person, maybe because one lives then and for those moments through the ‘I’ of the primary character – there is no hope nor help for it. But not all books written in the 'I' do that. Not all stories do that. Here I did and this book did.

I can’t know what it means to return from war nor what it means to struggle against the greyness that greets one on one’s return. These I could see only through the primary character and the others and feel only in a ghostly and nightmarish way (as a writer very matter-of-factly once said, maybe we carry imprints of cultural memories in us...). I do not know what it is like to have a friend especially like Koster and I never will, and I will never be able to be a friend like Koster either. And yet many of the thoughts and feelings I could feel viscerally - the return of life, the coming back to life - just as I could intensely feel the hope, the loss of hope, the playing of juvenile games to preserve hope even while hope trickles through one’s fingers. It’s a matter of playing against time, of making deals, of saying that something has to last, something has to stay...but really, what must and why? The feeling of gentle revulsion and the feeling of indifference towards the flat greyness of the world, and then the hard, implacable and frightful intensity with which one suddenly compares and sees everything in the light of what one has found – something incomparable, and then knowing – as a reader not as the character that something is amiss, the slow and accumulating dread of knowing and distancing oneself from the character then and then from the book, even before the hope barely hints at slipping away but to have the character calling out for some reason to get back into his world and to have him drape one, and to let out even little laughs because of the warm and funny and perfect conversations, the tiny incidents, the tenderness, the camaraderie, and also because the thoughts of the character and his little quirks and his sudden sentiments and the slow ones and some of his actions are like taking involuntary glimpses in the mirror, and all the other characters have grown on one too, and so one starts reading again, lets go, and starts all over again and knows that one simply has to read all the way through (with a quiet fimh in the background), and so one does while pausing to catch one’s breath, forgets to breathe and remembers only on taking in a sudden breath still walking through that haunting grey nothingness which is pierced with the laughter of the soul which holds so much promise that it doesn’t feel very real until, before one knows it, one has reached the final lap and has started hoping without intending to even while knowing that the long drawn-out ending up in the mountains can end only one way. There is that utter and final loss that hits one from within one even as one intently focuses on simply reading the last two or three pages and then the lines, even while one clenches one’s jaws, even while one wills one’s inner self not to cry out. And there is no getting over that loss. There is no getting over and getting on with things. I don’t know what he did after that. After sitting there. In that room. What did he do? I don’t know what Robby did. I was hoping he would die. That would have made it less unbearable. But what would Koster do and what would he do if and when Robby went back?

And those fine lines. The lines expressing a thought, a sentiment or a feeling that one knows one has felt and feels but has never been able to articulate nor express nor found the words. Very simply put. Without fuss and without going into a three page long passionate explanation. Remarque does that. Just a line. Or two. Finished off with maybe a smile. An emotion, a sentiment trapped in words and then one realizes all over again – even though one had almost started doubting the sanctity of language because of one’s own inadequacies of expression and utter hopelessness of ever getting anything to sound right especially in the midst of an argument or in the middle of writing – the beauty and the grace of language, of perfect words one following the other, of fine writing. For that’s what it is. Somebody has expressed in language the inexpressible thought that one could spend a lifetime fumbling around with or trying to explain and justify and defend (or feel too embarrassed or ashamed to even want to express in words). Maybe those trapped lines don’t mean that one is right. Maybe they don’t always mean that one is normal or particularly mature in feeling what one does…but one does know that someone (worthwhile) somewhere has felt the same and that somehow makes it better. There is an unbreakable connection and a bond and also a deep gratitude. (I have felt that, yes, but sometimes I start wondering whether some rare writers forget what they write or pretend to forget ...!). I could type out some of the liners from this book that gripped me but I won’t. That would be like sharing one’s diary of thoughts on public space.

I tried reading this book the first time while in Class XI or XII although I don’t remember from whom I’d borrowed the book. I’d read maybe twenty pages but I couldn’t go on. And for the last five years or so, I have tried reading it, at least, once a year (or Robby or maybe even Pat would call out from the book or God-only-knows who...)but I couldn't. I’d barely manage to get through the first 30 or so (yet again) and I’d feel the ghostly wrench. Nothing had gone wrong. There was hope, wasn’t there? But the chains would pull. There was something that was going to happen. Not just death. Something worse.

I got my current copy of the book from a library sale some 5 years ago. And I got it for 50 cents. This one, for some reason, is less widely available than All Quiet…, Spark of Life, The Road Back and Shadows in Paradise. The edition was brought out in 1958. It has a racy cover on the front (and Robby looks like a block and somewhat dimwitted and dull and somewhat cross-eyed and Pat looks like a shapely tart beckoning from an open window!) and a less racy one on the back. It looks like a cover for a cheap romance paperback, and it amused me in a dry way when it didn’t annoy me that the NYT book review blurb on the back said, ‘racy action and incident…’ and more. And it makes me laugh shortly when I see a comparison made between this and The Three Musketeers. Hmm (is it the 'three'?). Apparently this book '..is as racily written...'. Hmm. Makes me think that some things were the same back in the late 50's as far as selling books were concerned. And so no, the little blurb which talked about 'heartbreaking tragedy' had nothing to do with my own ghostly feelings. The print is fine and small and the pages are brown and of the sort that will not tear if not handled with care. The pages will break like a communion wafer. And inspite of all the gentleness with which I handled the book and while the book was held delicately by its binding when I bought it…upon one of my yearly attempts, the fragile book-binding – to my utter dismay – came apart. Down somewhere in the middle. And so I carried around both parts while reading it through this time. And as if that were not enough I made the mistake of carrying both parts in my bag just one day and a page came off and did break into two.

The book hits one in waves. I know I will forget most of it. But some of it will stay like very, very, very few books and writings and essays and stories have stayed within – even from the ones that I enjoyed reading when I did and have read more than once. There is something that gets absorbed from the book and gets absorbed within one’s being so that one will never forget an essence and some of the shards. They get implanted into one's being. And for now they and parts that I will forget later keep me company and gently rain or burst within while I go about doing normal and regular things that real humans do like walking (with fimh which might not be that normal).

Did I enjoy reading the book? I wouldn’t say that. I couldn’t say that. But one cannot not read it. I don’t know what may have happened if they had been together: would things have worked alright? Would they have been their quirky, not entirely comprehensible but strangely lovable selves who would have loved and lasted together? I don’t know these things (and there's little point in presenting the overheard arguments amongst the cynic, the mystic and the romantic in my head). Nor does the book tell me anything more about human responses to other humans. I’m just as utterly puzzled and sometimes laughingly or quietly puzzled as ever. People love and people like and people fall madly or slowly in love with and stay in love or fall more in love through time with those whom they do…and when they don’t – they don’t. And sometimes it all happens inspite of the reluctance and the accumulated cynicism (or marked scepticism) and wariness. There seems to be nothing terribly reasonable or explainable about the process. Why one and not another? Why those but not these others? Why that one and not this one? Who knows. And can one list off reasons? As Pat says at a point, 'If I knew all the reasons then it wouldn't be love'. Maybe that is so (still can't avoid prodding at it though). Maybe how humans love in the external world and whether they continue to love is a place where they have a choice...and human beings do love in different ways - that much (or little) I know. I don't quite know whether the book, for me, spells an absolute and horrifying loss of hope or whether it tells me that inspite of the horror and the loss there always is something that can be hoped for as long as people are living and alive and on the planet which makes its yearly swing around the sun or maybe both and some other stuff in between and besides. I know I’ll wonder ever so often, what did Robby do…?...and I'm not so sure I want to know.

...A dream lies dead here. May you softly go/Before this place, and turn away your eyes,/Nor seek to know the look of that which dies/Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,/But, for a little, let your step be slow....Dorothy Parker (from A dream lies dead)

A quiet 'Thank you...' to the characters from the books and other unnamed beings (human and otherwise) for egging me on to read the book.

Reminds me that I need to go back to the first 30 pages at some point....I didn't read them this time 'round. 'Night. - 28th June - 9th July.

P.S: This editing tool is driving me mad. It does whatever it wants to do with the formatting and then nothing looks right. I nearly deleted this post too!

A Storm

2011-06-20T22:14:00.015-04:00

A storm came through in the morn', and what a storm it was.

I woke up fairly early and after a bit put the coffee on and gave my cats their food, and was looking out of the window thinking it looked different outside while prowling around the house wondering whether to go out for a walk. Lit an incense stick and was half-distracted but shut my eyes and said what I do, grinned, opened them, and walked back to check on the coffee when I could feel a golden haze filling the bedroom, and streaming out of it. I go in there, not knowing what I'll see, and through the windows there's this bright yellow streaming in - a bizarre yellow, which would be perfectly normal - but only in a paint-box. And it wasn't just the sky. The whole air was filled with this brilliant yellow-grey shimmery haze. Almost a liquid molten yellow and grey fuzzy light. I ran outside. It was warm, balmy and utterly motionless, and there was the storm. The smell of the storm. And it filled the air. After putting out some food for the stray cat, I hopped back in. It was barely 6.30 or so and I wondered whether I should race through the coffee and smoke, and race to the bridge. The lightning forks from the bridge look mesmerizing. One second there's nothing and then it's not a sudden flash of light that fills the sky but those unbelievably precise and perfect, sharp and random forks criss-crossing one spot in the overhanging northern sky, and then that crack and sometimes a crackle fills the space. And then another. And another. It's almost as if the skies put out an incomparable private show for any lone observer on the bridge. Today, I stayed put. Not so sure why. Got my coffee and not some seconds later the storm came, and I don't remember the last time I saw and heard a storm like this. Great mighty crackles, loud distant and near booms of thunderclaps rent the air and the rain when it came it came down like a straight and furious sheet. There was not a trace of the wind today, and the rain fell in thousands and millions of fast and furious lines. The windows stayed open. And the storm reigned until the rain became a steady murmur with the flash and some grumblings of thunder.

Finally, by the time I did go out for a walk in the morning - the storm had completely disappeared as though it had never really come. No sign of it. Not a drop of rain either. Just a sparkling lit-up darkish greyness draped the air, the skies, the roads, and the empty space, and the trees looked greener and richer. The rolling hills up east weren't alive with the sound of music though....I don't know whether they had come alive with the music of the stormy rains. I forgot to look. I meant to. I meant to wander around the trail in one weird little hill or the hidden one. But I completely forgot. I had already bought my cigarettes, forgotten to buy the bread, walked right past the hills, forgot to look but remembered to come back home.

P.S: Oops...I accidentally almost deleted this post while making some edits and in trying to add a P.S. Let the to-be P.S remain for another day.

A date in June

2011-06-06T13:39:00.002-04:00

Some dates here and there through the year rustle around in the head and sometimes even if I forget, something in me always remembers or sometimes tries not to (which is not quite possible).

Our ICSE results were declared on this date, 19 years ago. I got 5 points in Math (a 50%)and 1 in English (over 90), and everything in between. I’d thought I was going to flunk Math actually, and it’s good that I hadn’t bombed English because I’d been threatened with dire consequences, particularly since I’d absolutely refused to even entertain any discussions regarding English tuitions after one point. I’d almost managed a two-pointer in Bengali and it’s a good thing I hadn’t because a neighbourhood friend had let me know in no uncertain terms that she would have personally sent a note to the ICSE Board saying that they had a made an egregious error if I had managed an 80 with my non-existing skills in my native language. Pity still because I was so horrified with the mark-sheet that all urgings to go over to a friend’s place the same day fell on a locked door and deaf ears.

Unlike the ICSE results over which I had no control, I voluntarily chose this date as an option when I took the GREs so many years ago (Jesus Christ! I can't believe it's been ten years exactly). And with my luck I had two Math sections (which I'd been expecting so it wasn't a surprise). And even though other people will vehemently disagree, Math didn't go too badly (I had practiced sums like a possessed lunatic for two months and more - getting up in the middle of the night to solve the simplest of math problems, which flew over my head and which others would have solved in their sleep), and the verbals were about okay but it was the analytical section (which at that point had those lovely puzzles and logical games that one had to solve) that I bombed much to my amazement, and for an entire evening I sulked in the dark because my total wasn't what I had been expecting and was worrying for different reasons but was later on blessedly relieved when the person in charge of the coaching centre in Calcutta where I was all set to teach at that point said that of course I could come and teach as long as I could if I wanted to, and so I did until I was set to come here (for the first time), and had mistakenly imagined back then that I'd never again have to borrow a penny from anybody ever again.

Last year I was glum on this date without knowing why and a friend cheered me up by getting me to talk about a book-series that had caught my utter fancy at that point and so I’d rambled on and on about the book-series and forgot that I’d been feeling glumpy till later.

I had insisted that I would get married on this date some years ago – that almost but then didn’t quite happen. I did marry but on a different date....

There were some birthday parties I’d gone to too on this date it must have been that swing in. And memorable parties they had been too. And different from the wild uncontrollable parties that were the norm back then (put twenty or so girls in a room and they can break or bend a bed out of shape by the end of the evening and if nobody ends up with a pair of broken glasses or some bad bruises everybody can pat each other on the back).

One time there was 'Musical Chairs', and I had to win. I remember being fairly sick for that entire day with a raspy, swollen throat (even though I certainly didn’t smoke back then) but I wasn’t going to give my favourite friend’s party a miss. And when game-time came around I jumped up. And right till the last round it was my friend and I who were the last men standing (rather the last girls sitting, should I say?)…and in the very last round it was my friend who won…I actually think I cursed once and stamped my foot angrily before I saw my friend’s face and felt a little less bad at having lost and somewhat guilty too. I don’t know exactly why I’d wanted to win so badly and who knows whether the suspicion I have has any factual basis. But that was a nice party. In the evening though it was and there was a darkness there which hovered, which I don’t know how to explain (maybe the party unlike other times came to an end too soon for my liking), and I was quite sick late at night back in my room when everyone was asleep but still – a memorable party it had been.

At another quiet party there is only one memory, which has stuck on. This too is a dark memory - but I honestly think it's because the power had gone out and we were sitting in candle-light or maybe a lantern or something. The game of 'guessing the word' from the clue provided. A friend got to hear the word whispered to her, and I was supposed to guess. That didn't go as planned. She said, "of great height...' I looked up into the air and said, 'mountains'....which was met with quiet but not unkind laughs and smiles because I guess everybody else had already guessed the damn word. The friend hissed and said, 'a person of great height - ' to which I quickly responded with, 'a giant?' That was the best I could come up with. I gave up after that point. After mountains and giants my head wasn't going to come up with anything else, and I don't remember whether the friend had exasperatedly provided me with a third clue. It turned out that the word had been a simple 'tall'....I had grumbled of course but could come up with no better 'clue'.

One of the parties – I can’t quite remember whether it was the summer that we moved from Class VI to VII or from VII to VIII – is still the sunniest party that I remember attending (and I have attended a fair number of parties since although over the last some years I have not). There were party hats and eye masks and lovely games organized by the didi and dadas. There was the 'paper dancing game' (you know, dancing on a square of newspaper which you keep folding up into smaller and smaller pieces and the partners who manage to survive the smallest bit without having their feet off the paper are the winners), and it was accompanied by many giggles and laughs and fits, and I’m sure some of the partners were eliminated simply because they laughed too much and missed the spot. I still remember which pair won the game and of course I remember who my dancing partner was (we didn’t win though). There was the 'memory game', which I always thought I should be good at but knew I wasn’t. I got very excited when the tray came into sight and tried to remember a list of things instead of looking carefully, and so quite promptly forgot all I'd seen as soon as the tray was whisked away and I imagined things not there or things which seemed likely to have been there. But the word jumble. Now that was a different matter. And till this day I’m ashamed to say that I cheated in the game. I did. There was this word that I still remember on which I cheated. ‘Memsur’ it said. And my annoying mind kept saying something like, ‘haha…it almost looks like a form of addressing both female and male or a monsieur gone wrong ’. I could almost but not quite see the real word, got increasingly annoyed and yet nothing came to my head, and then while standing in the queue I remember nudging a friend’s sister (who was at least a couple of years younger and...well, sharper...), and she said, ‘that’s summer, Shilpi-di’, and I said ‘of course’ and jotted it down. I was even placed third in the game and by then I was too embarrassed and ashamed to say that I’d cheated in a game. But it was a very sunny party otherwise inspite of my evil act (the only thing I couldn’t do is bring home the prize gotten by dishonest means). And we had a perfect lunch and that lovely ice-cream for the first (and last time - I never did have it again!)…Dr. Frost’s frozen cake ice-cream for dessert. Boy it was good! - and not just the ice-cream. There were lots of laughs and some perfect moments at that party….even a couple of fights and tempers that flew around, I remember…but what I remember most is the rippling laughter and the dancing sun and the light wind flying around and bouncing around in that space.

A random thought comes wandering in: I sometimes feel like a very ancient, befuddled person caught in a time-warp even though I'm never given to feeling even the slightest bit nostalgic about my growing up years. I suddenly wonder what I'd see if I went to some party for a 13 year-old here or back in India, and I wonder whether the games I've talked about would sound to a regular 13 year-old of today as though they are out from the early Stone Age days.These days, I hear there are 'party-planners' for hire...

Anyway, so much for an old bag of memories - exams, an-almost-marriage-date, birthdays and birthday parties - regarding a date in June. They're not sad memories though - seen out of context, in a way - though they might not seem terribly relevant or important.....

...come to think of it the title is somewhat misleading. Ha-ha.

Selves....

2011-05-17T08:03:00.000-04:00

Do some of our selves die? I wonder. Do some just hibernate below? Do some lie dormant? Are we reminded of a self here and there - ones that we never knew existed until some random and a very mundane act like spilling some oil on the bathroom counter brings in thoughts of conquerers, monarchs, queens, emperors and rulers, and the spilling realisation of a very real but never-to-be-expressed self, which makes perfect intuitive sense and that which lies buried under the sands of time?

How many selves do regular individuals carry around, I wonder. And the thing is if one notices carefully one finds perfectly contradictory selves existing within this seemingly single walking physical self. Sometimes - or maybe most of the times - to remain a working and walking and regular human being one has to kind of raise one's mammothine eyebrows in a superior way or simply shoo some odd bits of a very odd self away. One doesn't associate with such a self, the one there can't really be, and there is no point in letting that other self express itself given the external world that one inhabits.

Sometimes, a self just seems to be at odds with one's regular socially quiet, indeed sometimes diffident and also awkward self. One doesn't just go and dance on a public dance-floor even if one can dance. No, no. Most certainly not if even one cannot stop one's feet, hidden by the table, from drumming on the floor.

And yet others seem sort of unfavourable to the cautious and nervy self....What?! Leap across that log there and the other one here and then go through those bushes and shrubs and those woods, and God-knows-what-else, and half clamber and climb, slither and slide up and down and up and down again some fifteen feet of an undulating slope of a sandy, crumbly and extended bank to get down to those rocks down below so that we can sit there and hear the waters of that tiny creek. Are you mad?!...well, sometimes it doesn't sound or seem that mad, after all. And one can do that. One is perfectly capable of doing the same, and there aren't strangers or wild animals wandering around, and it might be nice. And so one does. And it is.

And yet there are all these selves and even befuddling desires that live there/here somewhere....and some seem quite normal...

A self that wants to go exploring (physically real) places, the self that wants (even at the middle-age of 35) to learn how to ride a motor-bike (yeah right), the self that wants to fly a bi-plane once, the self that wants to pack a bag and go off to the mountains for a weekend, a self that wants to go for a long drive on the highway, the self that wants to walk into the waves of a sea, the self that wants to learn how to dance well (nothing but the tango will do), and sometimes wants to dance and slide along the dance-floor and end on one's knees (just for the heck of it), a self that wants to go and casually pick out a bottle of wine (not expensive - just a regular bottle of wine from even the grocery store will do), the self that wants to go spend a day wandering around at the Art Institute and along the lake in a near-enough city, the self that doesn't care too much if the rolled up jeans get soaking wet in the waters of the river, a self that wants to run with abandon and absolute focus and as fast as it can (just to see how fast it can run), the self that misses unheard stories, a self that wants to laugh, be funny and crack silly jokes, the self that wants to take a walk by the river after midnight and sit by it, another self that wants to listen to some music without thinking of anything, one self that knows it could learn how to play the piano if it went and learnt (makes me smile wryly this one), the self that wonders about stories that won't be written, one self that wants to read plays out-loud through an evening or two, the self that wants to splash water and tread water and swim through a stream or natural pool, a glimmering self that is at the very least quite wild and would gladly test the waters, and so many other odder selves and desires....

- Who knows where these and more come from (or why indeed some are still hanging around), and some of them have distinctly mad and odd desires - or maybe not. Maybe they're perfectly normal and ordinary actually - so they sometimes seem to be to me - and yet contradictory they certainly are. Some feel peculiarly masculine and yet others oddly feminine, some seem ambiguous, some indefinable. Whatever they are, they don't go away and one recognizes them, and if one is walking along the road when one sees the mental-image of one's self wanting or doing something that is unusual one can tuck one's head down and smile. Sometimes they quarrel and argue and fight amongst themselves and all, and all one can do is roll one's eyes and glare violently at the sidewalk and keep walking furiously while waiting for all of them to quieten or calm down or resolve the matter somehow. When the greatly unusual selves rain down upon one's senses one doesn't really know what is going on, and sometimes the mind very rationally reasons: it can't be possible to be this and that and the other; to want both this and that and the other. Choose. Make a choice. Even in your head, and if not, contrary choices must go out of the window. Throw them out but they come back in and then they stir. And oddly enough the older I grow the more I feel these strange selves, impulses and desires being sparked ever so often into life (surely, it can't just be mid-life crisis; surely, it can't just be my madness) - strange because one had either forgotten that they had existed or because one really had never known or because they are contradictory. And some will not be ignored, and after being reminded so many times over - one cannot ignore them; not all the time anyway, and they don't want to be forgotten.... Maybe one here and another there do happily disappear. The self that was convinced and had almost all the other selves convinced that it was born to lord over the rest of them and be an expressed messiah has not died a bloody death but has silently merged with a couple of other selves, and is certainly not complaining.

What gets expressed in the external world is another thing. I can see that. That is what happens. Through the course of living. Through everyday life. And sometimes a self pops out for a bit with great excitement and doubt as well, and then disappears because it doesn't make sense for it to hang around on the surface while another bursts upon the surface, and causes anger/annoyance/pain and then goes under, and bubbles. Others stay and on the prominent surface. The grim and grinning, tenacious academic self (why has this one survived this long? - but thank heavens it has and may it live), the irritant, the social hermit of a self, the nuisance, the quiet and noisy lunatic (the quiet one feels quite sane at times), the compulsive self, the desultory writer, the aggravatingly mindless self, the harum scarum reader, the fast walker, the incredibly slow self, the worrier, the introspector, the warrior, the distracted music lover, the thinker, the ascetic, the arrogant snob, the awkward animal, the nitpicking philosopher, the loner, the observer, the obsessor, and others, and they come with their quirks and all - sometimes they seem to be complete personalities. And some selves don't make too much profound sense really nor do some desires but they wickedly, playfully and/or gleefully gleam, taunt and tease one from under the surface, and others do (make sense) in bizarre ways. A couple or three or more or so when they're thrown at one - they end up catching one's breath and....raising a lazy smile even.

How does it work?

2011-05-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

"Some problems - read, pain and suffering of the human condition - don't go away". That visualized statement, which mushroomed in my head made my grim and solemn self chuckle some days ago. I won't even try explaining that most obvious sounding statement.

But that got me wondering about something - a couple of them being:

How is it that some people do not seem to care too much about the consequences or the outcome of their work (however defined...), and yet seem to have things working out well and nicely? And how is it that some people seem to breeze through life quite gaily without being attached to anything or anyone around them or just perhaps mildly?....Or is it that I'm brooding and looking at life through gloomy lenses? And discounting my nought but stubborn mind and my other loon(vel)y senses...?

And to answer a question, after waking up in the morn - would I really ha'e bin? Happier, *gay and merrier in them other folks' skin? My head may be *queer and it has a mind of its own, but when was the last time it felt miserably alone?

But my self's not happy for what does it bark?

"It's not just about you is it, unless you're a deep sea shark? Stuck in one place for ten years and more and you won't even walk out of the blasted door? You've known what you have for ten years too and you're thinking of things that deserve a 'moo'?! The world never changes and it with its real humans stays the same but you keep imagining away suffering and pain? Of six billion or of *one, what difference does it make? You need to do what you can - for heaven's sake."

...So much for a post which isn't twenty-seven miles long, and isn't about nature walks, or poems - not even a song.

P.S: and about the stars/asterisks: used in the 'original' senses. No other meaning alluded (to) or implied! And the third one refers to the Self/Spirit/Soul - call it what one will - not to 'one billion'. My crabby (and finicky) self insisted on mentioning these bits just to keep things clear and clean.

Easter Sunday: Past, Present....Future?

2011-04-24T10:26:00.002-04:00

Happy Easter.

And for Easter there shall be a post - it cannot be helped. And maybe even a poem link - that too cannot be helped.

Some years ago, 7 to be precise, on Easter Sunday a friend of mine Beth and I went over to a place - which at that point seemed to be at least 47 miles away from Lafayette. It's not that far off. It's probably 20 miles possibly from the other side of the river. A place called Wild Cat Creek. We got there very, very early in the morning and it was a mild spring day - a little cold possibly but only that tingle of a cold that comes with early dawn. We went there armed with huge cups of gas-station coffee and a doughnut each and some books in our bags. It's a quiet place, that place. A little creek flows through and on the other side there were the dark green sylvan woods. I had to splash around in the creek at some point but the waters were icy and cold and I hopped around in them still and then had to get out without venturing too far. Dense green - the woods stood on the other side, and I was about to say with a cabin that could be seen hidden by the leaves. But that's not true. I had imagined a cabin there. While sitting on the side of the creek I kept telling Beth that if I could I'd build a cabin and live there on that side and do not much else. I'd have to make sure that the cabin had good plumbing - that's all. I'd cross the creek and go to town to get groceries every ten days or so and I'd do not much else but live in the cabin, which I could see very clearly, and have a private sign to keep all trespassers out because, I think, Beth might have said what if people came to visit. And so there we sat, drank coffee, had our mighty doughnuts. Beth read. I don't know what I did very well but at some point I fell into a deep, deep sleep right next to the creek. I woke up to feel my face crusty and Beth when she looked at me burst out laughing. Beth is normally a quiet person but when she laughs, she laughs. And she did. My face had gotten sunburnt. For it was close to noon and I had been sleeping with my face facing the sun.

We spent some more time there. I don't know what we did or whether we spoke much or at all or whether Beth read her book and I scribbled in a diary or read or not but it was what it was. And later on we'd gone and had some sandwiches for lunch. The evening before we'd gone to a church around the corner from where I now live. The evening service hadn't begun, which was good because I'd just wanted to sit quietly and not listen to anyone speaking. Just look around and look at Jesus Christ on the Cross and so that's what I did. And I didn't want to ask for anything but I kept asking him to give me the courage on Easter Sunday. That was all. Although I kept thinking later that I'd told Christ that He must let things work out for the better right then and there. We sat there, Beth and I, for a long while. I had my own lack of thoughts but there were swiveling bursts around in my mind...I wanted to feel peaceful. I wanted to feel calm. I wanted to feel certainty. But none of that happened, I don't think. I kept sending Christ some happy messages though hoping that he was doing well no matter where He was. How on earth do human beings so matter-of-fact-ly nail someone to the Cross and so many of them and him too? It was 'round the same time that I was still reading The Last Temptation of Christ I remember and having a very difficult time...anyhow, we sat there and then got up and had a young priest come over and smiling with quiet restraint he told both Beth and me to come over to Mass later on or on Sunday. I think I may have answered or grunted or smiled.

It's an Easter weekend which always crops up in my mind now and again....and later sometimes during the year I felt bad not because things didn't work out for the better right away but I honestly thought that Christ, of all people, hadn't heard my prayer. But how could He not? But it wasn't that He hadn't heard....maybe He had heard a little too clearly - who knows. And at some point there was that song playing in my dorm room that year - Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.
_____

Yesterday, some twenty minutes or so past noon, I stomped out for a walk to a place I'm rather fond of. I'm glad I live in this town with a river so close. It's Spring now and we've been having a lot of rain lately and so the river is in flood and looks different every other day. A place now and then glistens, invitingly. So sometimes trails are found. Sometimes slightly hidden paths are explored with a grin sometimes and sometimes with curiosity and sometimes even hesitatingly. Yester' a new direction was taken up. And rises into vision?...

I'd lived near - right near the river for about a year - some years ago - and I'd never taken so many trips to it. I'd never looked much. I liked it. I felt it but didn't let anything seep in too much. The river yesterday had flooded and submerged the path that runs on the opposite direction to my normal route. I got to the point where the path had gone down under and I wished yet again that I had a working camera. But no camera and so hard luck. I turned back and then noticed that they'd built a proper deck for the canoes and the water boats belonging to the Purdue crew team. I walked out on the wooden planks. Some of them seemed to sway gently - probably my imagination - but out I went to the very edge and looked and looked and loved and grinned even though my heart felt the pangs but a different one from last year....I searched for a cigarette but I'd forgotten my pack! Ack! No point in sitting for too long without a cigarette...when lo and behold - a half cigarette emerged from one of the pockets of my bag. A silent smoke, some more shared half-smiles while looking out into the river and then a quick order: Time to get up and walking. And so I leapt up. I turned around running along lightly along the wooden plank I saw a young boy and girl standing near the deck towards the shoreline...they were waiting there with half-wondering looks on their faces. They grinned. I grinned. I realised then that they'd probably been waiting there waiting for me to head back from the far end of the deck before they went there. You know...it's one of those things. Giving folks some private space even on public land because one doesn't want to intrude. I was grateful rather...

Off to buy cigarettes it was and a trip down into the campus area, and near a middle-eastern restaurant, the pleasant and polite elderly owner was bellowing pleasantly at his sister-in-law's very young kid who was running around in the car park, "Miriam! Miriam! Go back inside. Go back inside." I looked up and he smiled his usual smile at me with the, "How are you?" greeting. He doesn't take no answer. An answer must be provided and so he waits. I nodded and smiled and finally replied and raised the question myself...which was fine actually considering nobody was hurriedly walking around building corners.

In the eve' there was another walking trip and I re-visited The Church, which now rests around my corner, for the first time since that Easter. But evening mass was already on the run and so I waited near the door. It was dark though inside the Church. Only a flickering candle could be seen and I couldn't make out Jesus on the Cross very clearly - only the form. I stood where I was and heard a hymn which I hadn't heard before and it was joyously sung. I waited for a little longer but then a young woman was reading out so badly from a section on Moses that I grimaced and turned around. She really should have practiced reading well. A flat monotone and stumbles over words are not somethings particularly inspiring on Easter Saturday. I wandered a bit around the Church. There was a statue of Mary. A calm statue it was and she was looking not towards the gazer but her gaze was lowered. It was a peaceful statue somehow. And there were three crosses of different heights draped with white cloth. I don't know what the three crosses really symbolized - maybe the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost? - but those three also seemed to fit there somehow even though the space around where I wandered was dark with only the fading natural light making its way in through the glass doors. There was not much else to see there and no other rooms to wander around and so off I went off for my second walk for the day.

I chant still. For every waking moment - I chant while doing whatever it is that I'm doing. I stare too much though, I still think. Stare away into space in front of me. Some shard here is much too precious in life and it is not a matter that brooks much detachment although restraint and balance are indeed matters that require much practice and failing and learning and practice and failing and hopefully some amount of actual practice bit by bit. I try. I do. And I'll try harder - that's an unfailing promise. Some weeks ago - maybe a month it was - it was near a particular stretch of the river that I read in peace a piece on The Buddha's words...who knows what is to be? One can but say Que sera sera...I guess with a half-grin and whatever else within while pausing for a bit to let the present be.

It's Easter and so a poem that once again, yes, my friend on the right sent me many years ago is something that I'm putting up here. Thank you. Maybe some who haven't come across it before might feel the same or similar throbbing within and the pins and needles like icicles on the out upon reading it - and those who already have might like re-visiting it. The poem is appropriately titled Easter, and is well, about the Resurrection. (I had earlier mistaken the poem to be titled Resurrection) and is by John Niehardt. A couple of his other poems that I bond with are 'April, The Maiden' and 'L'Envoi'....

God bless....

Once more the northbound wonder
Brings back the goose and crane,
Prophetic sounds of thunder
Apostles of the rain.

In many a battling river
The broken gorges boom,
behold the Mighty Giver
Emerges from the Tomb!

Now robins chant the story
Of how the wintry sward
Is litten with the glory
Of the angel of the Lord.

His countenance is lightning
And still his robe is snow
As when dawn was bright'ning
Two thousand years ago.

O who can be a stranger
To what has come to pass?
The pity of the Manger
Is mighty in the grass -

Undaunted by Decembers
the sap is faithful yet:
the giving earth remembers
And only men forget.

A Book Post but can that be?

2011-04-22T11:46:00.000-04:00

I haven’t written anything that can fill a blog-post and I haven’t written anything that I think can fill a blog-post without considerably alarming me some days or hours later and so I am scribbling usefully elsewhere. Yet I found the below, which I think can fill in as a blog-post. I have no recollection of writing it but didn’t mind re-reading it. From the time-line seems it was written sometime in January 2009 or maybe very late November 2008 maybe, although I can bet on neither. It seems it was written in February 2009 actually. Also, it seems I had an “exciting” time while writing a paper….so maybe such things are possible for some selves.

*******

I think it's time for another whimsical post. I haven't written anything over here in ages – partly because I haven't been able to concentrate on one single theme and carry it along till it's done. The previous post ended up being a little too self-centred than I had intended. There was another post that I had started writing and it was called “Many Hours Later”. I saved it as a draft, and there seemed to be precious little point going back to it for the “Many hours later” slowly became many, many hours and then days and it hardly makes any sense to put it up anymore. Although if truth be told that post, which never got put up and some other bits and pieces fit together to form a last minute paper in the previous semester, which I had an exciting time writing within the space of an eve’, so much so that I promised myself that I would polish it and send it off to some journal – but I haven't done anything of that sort.

So I must write now. Why I must is a road that is best not traveled along for now....

I'd been reading a book awhile ago that Guha had picked out from our public library some weeks ago. Neither one of us had heard of the author or the title, but Guha being so fascinated with fantasy picked it out of the fantasy section while I had been sitting cross-legged in the spirituality section (I never learn), first gaping at the books and wondering which one to pull out from the rack (thankfully enough all the books on Buddhism are on the lowest rack), and was then flicking through one of Dalai Lama's books when Guha came over and said “Look at what I found.” So saying he showed me the book, and said “It's either going to be a really good read or a terribly bad one.” I nodded. For reading the blurb, it seemed that the book had to do with an imagined history of the world, where the western world is wiped out pretty much completely by the plague while the civilizations in India and China flourish, as do the religions of Buddhism and Islam. The book seemed to cover an impressive period of time and it seemed that most of the book was based either in China or in India or both….

Once we came home with our goodies, Guha very kindly offered to let me read the book first because I was eying it wistfully. I immediately liked the author's style of narrating his tale, and he had a tale to tell, and it indeed was historical fiction, where he pretty much introduces the primary characters right at the onset (Temur makes an appearance and dies within the first ten pages or so). I bonded with the characters from the get-go, and they were very well-formed, and I could identify with them. There was a sense of grandeur and godforsaken loneliness as I traveled alongwith the primary character for pages when he was all by himself and when he didn't know whether he was alive or dead because he is within a landscape where all human beings have been wiped out by the plague...but then the author thankfully enough didn't just keep us hanging on near the borders of the twilight zone. Pretty soon yet another one of the primary characters enters the scene...the route of travel is rather vague in my head (that's not just because of my memory but it's also because the map he shows is all skewed)...but they do indeed travel a fair bit through Europe, and across the seas; the two primary characters are sold twice over as slaves, and finally after a particular gruesome incident they end up in China, where one of the primary characters – the younger of the two, has as his single mission to kill off the Chinese emperor. By this time of course I was absolutely hooked onto the book. I knew that my little sense of history was going to be forever warped, and had been ruing over the fact that I remembered so little of world history anyway (although I had loved it in school and in high-school, and one of the subjects along with geography…and weird, physics actually, I think, that I never flunked in), and even though I didn't recognize many of the names (some historical figures keep appearing and then disappearing through the course of the book) – none of that mattered. I was gripped by the tension and the sheer madness of this young black boy (who was the one who was put through something utterly gruesome) who was going to kill off the Chinese Emperor, and it seemed vitally important (!) that he do so, and I couldn't help siding with him and the other primary character who no matter what his inhibitions, had given his absolute trust to the boy, and therefore knew of the mad boy's plans, and was therefore an accessory. So there I was thinking “Oh, my God he's going to pull it off...! He’s going to murder the Emperor! How on earth…!” “…but what's going to happen after this...where are they going to go? What are they going to do? How are they going to get out afterwards?” When galuph! Both of the primary characters die all of a sudden even before I could figure out what was going on...they just die.

Of course I was taken aback. In fact to say I was taken aback doesn’t even begin to describe my emotional state. Sometimes while reading I have to stop. I need to pause. This was not a pause that came about. It was not a moment to let the events unfurl or to let the ideas seep or to let the thoughts collect through my slow mind. No. This was just a rude shock to the system. What was the writer doing? Why was he being so inconsiderate? The book has hardly begun and the two characters are now dead. And I, the reader, had gotten attached to them – need I remind him?...If these two characters were no more then was I supposed to still keep reading?...Anyhow, feeling quite frazzled and grumbling somewhat I got on with the reading…

And this is where the book got mightily interesting, even more interesting than I thought possible. It turns out that these two end up in the bardo. Now I remember reading The Tibetan book of Living and Dying (which is another story for some other day but I can tell you that it got me worried) some four years ago or so (which is another story)....but I don't remember too much about it. I remembered the bit about the bardos, and the stages that one goes through – so I knew what the author was talking about but I didn't quite expect what he threw out at me. Well there they were, the two characters. The older the more patient and quieter and the more balanced one explains to the younger boy how they are a part and have always been a part of the same jati. He scolds the boy and says that the reason that they keep losing him over and over again is because this boy simply refuses to remember or recognize his jati members when he sees them on earth. But the older man is gentle too, and he tells the young boy that he will take him through the different levels of the bardo, and that eventually both of them alongwith the other jati members will pop out into the real world. The boy is willing, unwilling, willing, unwilling, dithering and dallying although he is an exceptionally remarkable character, and at the final moment when they are being thrown out into the real world again – the boy runs away from his jati members because he finds a safe and secure spot (or so he thinks!) within the bardo. Bang. Boom. He's reborn as a tiger prowling – that’s his first memory. That’s his first impression. That’s his first remembrance – that’s where we pick him up...the other primary character does of course meet him...but that's another story.

I won't go through the whole book of course. Telling everyone what happens in every stage. Narrating the whole story from top to bottom. But I will go on with this post.

******

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) enough, that’s where the post ended. It didn’t go on. I didn’t go on with the post. What I was planning to write about for “the rest of the post” I have not the faintest inkling (it may have been to do with the bardos and the meeting and connecting with one's kinsmen). I chanced upon this bit by accident while searching for some soft-copy of an old document transferred from an old, hand-me-down and rather sturdy if somewhat whimsical computer, which croaked its last some years ago. I’d thought the document was something else when I saw the title, which simply said “The years”. I wish I’d had the patience to have written a bit more of the book. Bits of the book sail or fly by every now and again but I remember not much of it and it wasn’t actually the sort of book that one reads through twice….I can’t exactly pin-point the reasons. But yes, the tale does trail over into India…It really is a book worth a read, I think (although I'd have to read it again to figure out whether it should have a place on one's book-shelf). If people can locate it, I think they’d have an interesting time, maybe? It’s called, yes. The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. I have rustled through some of his other books while sauntering through the local library space but none of his other books seem or sound half as captivating.

So there's the Meaning

2011-04-09T14:18:00.002-04:00

I think this deserves a post all for itself: for one thing, I don't know whether anyone will have the patience and/or time to travel all the way through that interminably long blog-post. But that last poem I talked about in the never-ending blog-post (even I am alarmed at its length): the meaning and sense flooded into me on the 7th, right before I lit the last fag for the night. There was a somewhat perplexed and half-humorous fimh saying, "Don't you really understand the poem?...How can you not understand the poem?" and I said in my perplexed voice, "No, it's embarrassing...and it's not even about agreeing or disagreeing with what Graves is gravely saying...I just don't get it." Well not so many words were used through the course of the conversation. And then suddenly the meaning flooded in. There was a fair bit of laughter too, if I remember right, before I felt quite sombre for a fair bit. Now I can't believe that I didn't understand the poem for this long and after really trying to understand and now all of a sudden the meaning floods in/is given to me through the single rain-drop of an innocuous question. I think it's bemusing to have the meaning of the poem that has perplexed one for more than 8 years to suddenly be given to one. In this sense I have to say it was like one of those zen poems, at least for me. If I were feeling very buoyant and/or cheeky I would have said that maybe it's a reminder of the grace "Ask and ye shall receive"...but I'm not feeling that non-perplexed...but I certainly feel and express nameless gratitude and love for the grace and even though I understand close to nothing, which has nothing to do with being modest or humble.

P.S: Needless to say, now that I actually understand the poem - I do not agree with the poem, and for multiple reasons too!

A long time thread of a few Poems

2011-04-05T21:21:00.003-04:00

I re-read the following through last night, and I was wondering whether to delete the post: it's one mile-long self-obsessed post to write about a handful of poems, and I'm no poet. Anyhow, it's one of the few things that found it's way here and so it'll stay, I guess. At least I changed the title: now it sounds like an honest description for it's not a long poem post but a very long time-thread about a few poems and Julius Caesar pushed its way in...nothing I could do about it. I have made some edits too and I've gone and re-read some of the poems (I had made a mistake about how many soldiers there had been in the Light Brigade and had forgotten the poem's title - most fervent apologies. I also added a joke from the net...). 7/4/2011

I've been wondering what to write about today since I have some time. Many thoughts have come in ....but then I've been thinking of poems for some strange or not so strange reason through the flurry of academic writing that has kept me absorbed in a strange and unusual way for a couple of weeks.

Now poems. Okay. One of the first poems I remember memorizing as a kid of Class II was Home They Brought her Warrior Dead by Walter M. Scott...(No! Tennyson. Tennyson. Lord Alfred Tennyson - gulp. I just about checked days after the 7th). I don't know why I had memorized the poem but it had something to do with school, and I had chosen that poem to recite. We had a fair bit of nice intra-class competitions back then. The poem had made perfect sense to me too, which is what I find rather alarming now. I remember there was a girl, a kind and well-read neighbour, who was probably in high-school back then, and I recited the poem in front of her (so that she could tell me whether I was reciting it right) and while reciting the whole poem in a very sombre tone for the last line "sweet my child, I live for thee!" I had smiled very widely and had at some point thrown my arms around her and she, even though she may have been perplexed, had smiled too. Now the poem when I'm reminded of it (I certainly cannot recite it any longer - I don't remember all the words all the way through) gives me the nightmares, even though right until college I could "see" the sense in it.

There were some other poems in Class II from a Bengali text-book on Vivekananda. I liked the poems: four liner poems which were as clear as day. Remember nothing from them now although one had to do with "saptarshi..." and Vivekananda...

Not to boast - but I could memorize poems when I was a child without any problems. I remember that bit quite clearly. I had to read them through a couple of times and then I really could rattle them off. I must have been a different human being back then (and then from Class VI, my memory started degenerating and rather rapidly...). I remember being scolded too as a kid, once, for not having memorized a poem and so I simply said it out-loud and so that was that. Next came Abou Ben Adham in Class III. I recently got to know (during the writing of the previous post actually) that that poem too is by Leigh Hunt. There were four girls who were practicing for a school performance, and they had been reciting the poem for rehearsals in class everyday. One day I realised I knew the poem myself after listening to them so many times and so I went up to the teacher (who really made no bones about how much she disliked me) and told her that I knew the poem and could I please be in the performance. I rattled it off with a couple of mistakes and to her credit she put me in the play-cum-recital immediately. I was pleased but the poem itself has always perplexed me. Why hadn't Abou Ben Adham's name been on the list in the first place...I never quite got that.

(*Got to read on the net (7/4/2011) that upon the question being raised in an audience: "Why indeed did Abou Ben Adham's name lead all the rest?" Asimov, from the audience, raised his hand, waved it wildly and yelled, "Alphabetical list! Alphabetical List!")

I won't go through the entire list of poems that I learnt but actually there weren't too many...But I remember in class-IV I had an odd book of poems I had gotten from Pondicherry (a couple of years before that). It had this strange assortment of poems. One was called Father Neptune and his Daughters (it felt like it should be a song and I could never recite it for in my head I used to sing it)...and other poems too (the one about children being born on different days and the sort of temperaments that they would have...and so the liner "Thursday's child shows in his eyes that he would soon be very wise" made me quite quietly smug for I had been born minutes past midnight on Thursday, I had been told)...but I don't remember any of the others and neither do I remember the poets. For the next five years for elocution whenever we had to recite a poem - I had my favourites and I used to read poems - funnily enough. There was an old I.C.S.E copy of the Panorama, with many fine poems and I liked reading quite a few of them. I learnt almost all of them in Class V. There was O, Captain, My Captain, A Solitary Reaper and ...Into the Valley of Dead rode the six hundred... The last and the second of the lot I used as my arsenal for elocution exams all throughout my school days when I hadn't prepared anything specifically (which used to happen ever so often and not always with any good reason).

In Class VII, I remember for some reason not remembered I learnt one of Mark Antony's famous pieces...Not the ultra famous one but the one that begins, "O, pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth..." A friend who had the whole Shakespeare collection, if I remember right, selected that piece. I knew nothing of Shakespeare back then or nothing that would fill up more than half a page anyway. I had been quite absorbed in learning that piece though...and was quite solemn too about the whole process but all of that was spoilt with the belligerent yells of either my brother or my friend or maybe both - I forget whose - which let me know that I was pronouncing "butcher" wrong. "Buh-cher!" What's buh-cher?! You're boochering the word!" Showing me a dictionary didn't make any sense because I didn't know how to figure out the pronunciation...but I relented and said the word the way it was supposed to be said (never been able to make peace with it) and all was well (I know I learnt the butcher, the baker and candle-stick maker poem way, way back...only nobody had heard me say it out-loud, I guess...).

In class V, at some point I remember I wrote a very nice poem - even though I say so myself. It was about a playground...and a happy and content and delighted playground it was too, at the beginning at any rate, because there were lots of children who used to come and play there, and there was a merry-go-round and a couple of swings and a slide and some grass and a sand-pit....but then there was doom and the sad playground contemplates upon how none of the children come by any longer....the poem remains no more (and after a bad experience here and there not a single other person knew or cared of what I wrote and stored back then) but the thoughts of that poem remain with me. Another poem begun at the same time never got to the end. It was about meeting a gypsy-man (shows the very hard impression that Enid Blyton had hammered into me with her books and stories...never having met a gypsy-man in my life...) and it rhymed and all and it was about the gypsy man and how he had come in a caravan and how he had deep eyes (don't remember whether he wore a ring in his ear...), and had a delicious secret....and he almost told me about it....but the thing is I couldn't ever finish the poem. I couldn't think of a secret and the poem with the dialogues kept going back and forth and so on and then there was nothing I could think of even when I was scratching my head and so I stopped. That note-book/diary was there for a long time and the half-finished poem kept taunting me, teasing me and just plain annoying me. Why didn't he just tell me what it was and get on with things!

In Class VIII, A Slave's Dream joined the three other poems that I had in my mind although by that time O Captain had fallen from his pedestal....why did the captain have to die for heaven's sake and it had joined, for different reasons, the other poem (which a girl in class would recite with much passion and I had heard her recite it in Class V for the first time and she had also won the first prize in the recitation competition), "The boy stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled..." Fine, it's all about following orders but that seemed a little too extreme...although strangely enough "The Valley of Death" poem (The Charge of the Light Brigade) always, always brought the shivers, made me feel like I was in the middle of a battle zone where I had to keep going, and the poem has kept me hooked even after so many years. While reading George Orwell's collection titled "Unpleasant essays" some/many months ago, a liner in one of his hilarious essays brought back the poem to my head...

No more poems were learnt while in school although I think I remember learning Ulysses at some point and the memory of that line about the "arch" sort of shimmers in my head every now and again. In Classes IX and X we had Julius Caesar and I realised that all I needed to do was read through the Acts and the Scenes as though I were each of the characters. I'd do that twice through right before the exams and I could remember everything and although I did read the whole play (in fact that is the only whole unabridged Shakespeare play that I've read apart from The Merchant of Venice...it shames me to say this but it's better admitting to the truth. I keep thinking I'll read Hamlet and Macbeth at least and I have them now at home...but I never get around to reading them...) that double-reading before exams was what I enjoyed the most - funnily enough. I could never do the "enacting" at other times....I tried once but I sounded fake. One of the reasons I was sad that I couldn't go in for the Delhi Board for my +2 (instead of the West Bengal Board) was because I couldn't read/enact The Merchant of Venice the same way and I never have been. In Classes XI and XII there was Lucy - which always brought in two dominant double emotions (among others) of "ah-sigh" and "deep (minus expletive) annoyance"...and The Ancient Mariner, which haunted me and gave me the goosebumps and made me dream strange dreams for the longest time. I was in that man's skin...under his skin and some vaguely remembered liners haunt me still...and I'll never forget what an albatross means...it's not just any bird and it will never be just a bird for me. There was a bit from Paradise Lost as well but that is not something I very clearly remember partly because of yet another pronunciation gaffe I made with a friend over the phone while we were discussing the poem. It was to do with the word "Whilst"....I pronounced it as a soft "whistle" and her cackles of loud laughter and her explosions are all that I carry with me from that poem although I know for a fact that the some liners we had had had made an impression on my mind till that moment.

There were some Bengali poems and some songs that I learnt through the same point in time and some liners were learnt later....but about that - well let that be.

And then through the college years and through my Master's in India and for two years in between when I got myself stuck in my Bachelor's for longer than I thought I would - there was not a single poem I read or learnt or memorized. Absolutely none. Between 18 to almost 27, I read no poems...well actually, come to think of it, I'm reminded that I read a couple of Tagore's poems and then later on, close to 27 I did start reading poems - with new curiosity, however tentatively - but that's another story. Poems worry me - much like jokes - I always wonder worryingly whether I'll be able to understand them (and feel relieved and sometimes just rested when I do) but the thing that really saddens me is that even the few poems I like/understand (which can't be more than a handful) do not remain in memory.

In conclusion for this post: Some weeks ago while browsing the net, I chanced upon something that clicked. I have no idea about anything else or indeed who Fulke Greville is or what he was thinking - and I haven't looked at google at all for writing this post- but the poem liner makes sense...

I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft.

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (England 1554-1628)

All I know is that I understand it as I understand three of Dickinson's (and more than 9/10th of her poetry I do not understand) poems,

Much madness is the divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense is the starkest madness.

Or the other one, which the friend whose blogs appear on the right had as a quote in a piece on poetry that he had written, and had sent to me,

This world is not conclusion

A Spirit stands beyond

Invisible - as music - but positive - as sound...

To guess it puzzles scholars

To gain it men have borne

contempt of generations, and - crucifixion shown....

And the other one (- other bit actually fits in the middle of the previous one....pointless now to provide an explanation), which I love too, which appears in the post on music on the same friend's blog on the right:

It beckons and it baffles

philosophy - don't know

and through a riddle, at the end, sagacity must go...

while this other one, which once again, I came across for the first time in a piece (which read like a poem of sorts - sort of timeless inspite of the angst - which one could clearly and closely identify with) written by the, yes, same friend (well - what can I do?!) , makes no sense to me.

Love at first sight, some say,

Misnaming the helplessness of twinn'd souls

'gainst the huge tug of procreation!

I've pondered on this one, scratched my head, pondered some more, thought/imagined that I "got" it...and for more than 8 years now but I don't get anything about it. Maybe it's like an abstruse zen poem or something. It baffles.

Anyway, so much for this post. Night-time, night-cap, and cigarettes et al beckon.

Leigh Hunt's Poem and Time

2011-03-15T22:51:00.000-04:00

I didn't know about this poem till last year, I think it was (or maybe the year before that?...), till the friend whose blogs appear on the right told me about it.

I started feeling rather jubilant about the poem after reading it the right way and I can't help let out a wry grin and a happy one as well (unless I'm staring away....) because I feel like both Jenny and Leigh Hunt...if that makes sense.

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss'd me.

The poem suddenly came back to me even though it's been wandering around in my head for a while. I think some memories do seem utterly priceless - within the space and the time of the now - even when one is staring away at the computer screen and thinking and worrying and blinking about writing what has to be written as work and hoping that it sounds as it's meant to even while knowing that it has to, and about the other...I found out today that Holi is around the corner...and here I was wondering whether the Bengali New Year was about to be coming around this month!

Spring Break is on the run and my sense of time has gotten somewhat messy. We have also sprung forward by an hour since Sunday but I obmutaciously refuse to set my clock straight. The only clock in the house which reads the right time is the computer clock!

Space: A Space

2011-03-07T03:26:00.000-05:00

Spaces affect me in a peculiar way. Inhabiting a bit of closed space for too long and letting my mind travel in and out and back again makes me feel that that bit of space that I inhabit is not entirely real nor unreal and time honestly does become fuzzy. However this is not a rambling piece on space and time.

For almost a year I've been wanting to re-paint my bathroom. I know not whether it is kosher to talk about one's bathroom on a public blog but it is a western bathroom with a propah shower stall and all other regular amenities and my bathroom is a curious space where time and space and imagination and reality have collided on multiple occasions, and very often I sit (on the cool and sometimes warm tiled floor), think, talk within, read, drink drinks of various flavours and hues, smoke and listen to music. And so my bathroom has been a rather special space for me and I spend time there.

On Saturday while sitting there and looking at the questions to put in for an exam I was gripped by the intense need to paint it and I finally got around to painting it and all through the night. I had a big tub of white paint and some small jars of coloured paints. The tub of white paint had become leather-rubber - having spent the better part of last year in the cold storage room which houses odds and ends and the dryer. I waited for it to resemble paint but since it failed to become a miracle I set out to buy some white paint and I did (alongwith a quart of red paint). And then in the night there were three walls all painted and done and the ceiling as well, and in close to an hour. But then a single shelf, the door, and the archway (yes, my bathroom has an archway - a rectangular archway...) took almost four hours (I'm telling you - something funny happens with time in that space). I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the clock. But being adamant and stubborn sometimes has its benefits. No sleeping till the bathroom was painted and cleared of all junk that it has been housing because I've been storing it. As I looked at the archway I got out the new red quart of paint (which had a fancy name to it: Liquorice. The white tub simply said, "Frost"), and so the archway - parts of it were slapped and coated with a vivid red. Another coat of paint was applied to the walls and all, and a fair spray mists and streaks of paint I realised later had flew onto my head while doing the ceiling (which thank heavens was low enough for me to just about reach with the extended roller brush). That done the bathroom was scrubbed down clean and the junk removed. (A bit of fine-tuning with colour and space is what remains, which I will attend to in bits.) Later on in the morning I lit lots of small and medium candles and was feeling quite pleased...it now dazzles. That space. But there's still something funny that happens there. Something with space and time and God-knows-what-else...

Blossoms after separation

2011-02-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

It's strange how Guha's car (passed on to him by his sister, which he signed over to me) has been steadily wasting away ever since he's gone over to Rockville. First (fu-h-st) it wouldn't start one day right outside Gerry's. I'd gone in to get my morning coffee before going over to teach. It simply wouldn't start. I turned the ignition key but a loud ponderous silence met my ears. I turned the key again and was met with the same. I wasn't in a mood to hear the weighty silent thoughts of Blossoms right then. Thankfully enough, I saw the trolley turning the corner and so I leapt out of Blossoms with my bag and key and coffee along with my packet of cigarettes and ran over to the bus-stop and flagged down the trolley. I called Gerry as soon as I was on the bus and let him know and he said, "I saw you. Good work there." I returned from the class and Kim (my neighbour) was there. He came out with me. Got into the car, turned the ignition key and Blossoms brrr-ed into action. I was puzzled and Kim gave me a look which seemed to say, "now what were you saying about the car not starting?"

After that I started taking the trolley in the mornings (and stopped doing that after a week or so and started walking to and fro). I still used Blossoms for groceries. That was nailed in the head when one day, Sean, another neighbour, informed me that one of the window's had been shattered. It was some sort of an accident, I guess. So one window went missing. I tried taking Blossoms out one evening (minus the shattered window) when the car door got stuck. It simply wouldn't close shut. The lock was tweaked and that was that. There was nothing I could do. I put the plastic sheet back in place and went off walking and bought a movie from Borders, My Cousin Vinny, had a nice cold sandwich by myself while grinning in glee and walked back home.

Now I'm not sure what state Blossoms is in. I've been worried that she'll be losing bits and parts of herself with every passing week. However, my very quiet nice neighbour and his nice wife (Senthil and Madhu) also wish to go grocery shopping today. Hopefully Blossoms will be in fine fettle today and not in her state of silent sepearation. Let's see.

P.S: I'm happy to report that Blossoms is doing perfectly fine. She happily "brr-ed" along yesterday. And did not give me the silent treatment nor does anything else seemed to have happened to her. She's behaving herself well in front of strangers and other friends.

Amazing Grace

2011-02-16T09:09:00.000-05:00

Some days ago - a couple or maybe more I was marching down to Panera - a bakery chain, which lies across the river. I had my cloth bag and it's been a strange winter but it wasn't particularly cold but I had my (fairly new) white coat (which Guha nagged me to get and then simply bought) and a (fairly new) black hat on (which for those readers who may have come across the book series, made me look a little like Paddington Bear...at least I'm quite convinced that I looked like a "Detective Paddington Bear"). I was walking and marching along when all of a sudden a cycle whizzed by me on the side-walk and something I saw landed right on my right. I was somewhat vaguely startled out of my happy blob of a reverie to see that a grey-blue baseball cap was lying on the ground. I picked it up and there was a breathless little voice saying, "Oh, thank you, thank you." I turned around and I saw this bright, bright very young boy who was reaching out his hand for his cap. I handed it to him and said, "Jesus Christ I was terrified there for a second that you'd crashed somewhere." He gave me a brilliant smile with his eyes glistening, and I very beatifically blessed him. I don't know whether bear look-alikes are allowed to bless - but I went on ahead for my evening jaunt feeling quite serene.

That's that for the post today.

P.S: I went outside for a bit. The sun is here...the mushy ice is slowly melting...Spring is bouncing around in the air and The Cross on the Church (Immaculate Conception) steeple around the corner was all shining and just 'there'!....Hmm.

Hmmm...

2011-02-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

Funny-funny: with all my memory for odd dates, which stick to me even when I apparently forget - I completely lost my sense of time - today is Valentine's Day. Should I say 'Yippee'?

Well I'll go ahead and say, "Happy Valentine's Day" and make wishes all the same. No harm in that.

Here's a song link and another one by The Beatles, which I've loved for a fairly long time - ever since we were in school...and some of us would get together and sing it quite lustily too, back in those days. A couple of young folks or more? might like it, me thinks (if they haven't heard 'em already, that is).

Riding on the Bus

2011-02-09T09:31:00.000-05:00

I take the bus back and forth these days. Yesterday something pricelessly sweet happened. Normally I glint and glare and keep a dead-pan expression on my face although I do greet the bus-driver and he greets me with a cheery hello and so on. And as far as I have observed (and Guha when he was here is the one who got me communicating with bus-drivers although I can never be quite as garrulous as he used to be) - the greetings are genuine. One bus-driver indeed had remarked that it was always a pleasure to see Guha or me because we always smiled and said 'hello, how are you doing?' The young bus-driver who told me so was a young girl herself (younger than I am for sure) and she was so breathless when she told me the same and more - about how rude some of the passengers were - I would have tried giving her a warm hug if I could have.

Anyway, yesterday I was somewhat distracted while on the bus. Thinking about this and that although I had noticed that it was a "toddler day". So these very young children are taken to the public library some days of the week by, what I think, are basically rather elderly and somewhat portly old women. Who takes care of whom, is a good question. They're a lovely bunch - that's for sure but most of the times I simply glance and look away. Yesterday was no different at the beginning. I was lost in my thoughts and at some point the bus came to a halt in front of the public library. At some point jostled out of my thoughts I looked up to hear one of the elderly women trying to tell one of the little girls to keep walking. Now something needs to be said. The bus was completely empty apart from the three women, the brood of little children and me. And the bus has some stairs towards the back. When I looked up a strange sight greeted my eyes. There were these young children all standing like darling little lambs. Right at the front of this standing queue was a little girl dressed in pink pants and a pink jersey and she was just standing there, waiting. The rest of the kids were also just standing there. The elderly women were unable to move ahead of the kids. There was no space and no amount of coaxing the little girl had gotten her to budge and walk on through the length of the bus. I smiled in my head very broadly. It was like they were little children for sure....but like little lambs. I got up from my seat without thinking and smiling at the little girl in pink, I took her hand and said, "Come along. Come along. Keep walking and you'll see that the rest of them will be following you." And she let me take her little hand in mine and sure enough the entire brood of little kids started following the girl and me. The bus-driver was so grateful that I felt terribly embarrassed. I got off the bus and picked up the tiny tot and put her on the sidewalk and all the other kids followed (and no, I didn't pick up each kid and deposit her (they were all little girls yester') onto the sidewalk! That would have been most time-consuming and quite unnecessary. They were very, very young - maybe 4/5 but were all quite capable of getting off from a bus, thank you!). The sidewalk was a tad slippery and so I kept a watch on the kids. And of course the three women were gushing their kind thanks and I was smiling gently and feeling terribly embarrassed or a bit at any rate but saying, "Oh, it was my pleasure. Really." The bus-driver thanked me again and once before I got off the bus and I grinned cheerily and got off. Back to thinking furiously and reading and pondering on other matters but it was a lovely little incident that filled my heart for those moments for me....

I remember a friend telling me that I could write about life here but I didn't know what to write about....this seems to be something lovely enough...

That's the post for today.

On comments and reviews and accents?

2011-02-07T10:28:00.000-05:00

This post would fit better on my other blog....but I've become reticent on that blog for different reasons and so I'll fit this here.

I've received a variety of comments and reviews on my ability and competence as an instructor. Some of the comments are funny and some are strange and some are just mean (she's a racist!) and some although seemingly mean I can recognize the facts in them (she writes on the board and I don't know what the arrows and arrows and more arrows mean...strangely enough the arrows and the writing have also made sense to some students; she gets flustered in class and talks about too many things and goes off on tangents).

However one comment is so funny and delightful - I have decided to share it. I laughed when I read it. I have got all sorts of comments about my accent: where do you come from? Where did you do your schooling? You have a different accent...I personally think I've got a mongrel accent. I can modulate it a bit when I'm careful and when I'm teaching but it lapses sometimes into a hotchpotch of an accent which it is anyway.

Anyway, one student: a very sweet young boy with a very disarming smile had written words to the effect of, ....has got a lovely accent. Her accent reminds me of Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music" !!!! Very embarrassed I was indeed.

I could write a mile long post here but I'll get going for now.

The bird bunch and the cat

2011-02-05T12:55:00.000-05:00

It's definitely the middle of winter here and a very strange winter it's been but there's something stranger....there have been six or seven black birds that have been flying onto my porch for the last couple of days. I have no idea why....did they imagine that Spring had arrived?

It's the same bunch of birds (I hope it's the same bunch) that's been visiting my porch for the last couple of days. There is a stray cat who lives on the porch (a cat - whom Guha christened 'Minimus' - who still assumes that I'm going to catch him and turn him into a winter muffler; he sometimes forgets and approaches my extended fingers but then runs away; I don't know whether both of us are a little scared of each other because sometimes I am a little worried that he's going to bite my fingers off....and sometimes he'll be engaging in some form of communication - with longing looks and all exchanged across the window - with my two cats who live inside; sometimes he miaows for them when they are elsewhere; and then sometimes he'll be miaowwing furiously even when he has his food and water and both Barty and Max are sitting near the window - I know he's being a "cat" then; I rush outside still - like the human fool I am - and then he'll go scampering under the couch and sit there very comfortably and look at me; so I'll be sitting on my haunches and he'll be sitting there looking immensely pleased with himself and honouring me with a kind look every now and again but he'll not come anywhere near me; so I'll be yakking for a bit while sitting on my haunches; he has no intentions of coming any closer but he sometimes has an almost smug look alongwith a sort of forlorn look - the little dear - which seems to say, "aha. I got you to come out and sit with me." He looks perfectly content and after a while I go back in). The first day I saw the bunch of birds swooping down I thought I was seeing things until Barty (my cat) started chittering and chattering the way cats do when they see birds. I looked and they went for the little stray cat's bowl of food...at least I think that's what they did after chattering amongst themselves. So out I went and put some more cat food into a plate. The plate of food was gone in the eve' - so I'm assuming the birds had their fill. They came down again just some moments ago. They look a little confused...as much as I can make out and somewhat ruffled too - going by their feathers. I don't know whether they are rattled but I believe they might be for one of the birds with its feathers sticking out suddenly pecked the other one whose feathers are also sticking out and the second one pecked the other one back for no reason that I could see; it all seemed quite unnecessary - and rather rude - although I don't know whether they were exchanging fond gestures....

But what are the birds doing here in the middle of winter? Guha, the vet, has let me know that I should give them some moong dal and rice - and so I've put both on a plate out on the porch.

Two Cats...

2011-01-23T13:40:00.000-05:00

.....Spotty on the prowl when it was warmer and he was feeling better....

Many years ago when I was living in Calcutta at my parents' apartment I was running up the stairs when I spotted an abandoned cat and my breath went out. It was a kitten. Curled up and sleeping on the window-sill with the pale light from the sun streaming onto it. It was twitching its nostrils every once in a while and if anyone has seen a kitten sleeping they'll know what I mean when I say that this kitten was really curled up with its head tucked under a paw. It was this spotted little ball. Black and white. More white than black. I brought my fingers close to it. It didn't budge. I stroked it. And it grunted (not purred) a soft grunt. I went up the four steps, rushed inside the house. Went to the fridge, got some milk, warmed it a bit, got some bread and dunked it into the milk - put it all in a bowl and ran out again. The kitten was still there. And at some point he (I don't know whether it was a he - I think it was a he) woke up, blinked and looked a little dazed. It let out a yawn that made its head disappear. I placed the milk bowl in front of his face and put my finger into it, brought it near his mouth, and he licked my finger. He was a bright kitten for he soon lapped up his meal and looked at me with a mighty satisfied expression on his face. I couldn't take him home although I would have if I'd had a place of my own. Later on in the day or maybe the next, he came miawowing piteously over to the door. I petted him and he brushed along my leg. I gave him a bowl of milk and bread and he lapped it up. But that was the last bowl I ever did give him. I never saw him again.

The year before last - there was an abandoned cat. For the better part of the year the cat had been abandoned by a girl whom if I see again I will not waste my time exchanging pleasantries. The cat was black and white. More white than black and for most of the time he wandered around the terrace trimmings (as only cats can) and perched itself near the edge of the terrace, looking up and down and miaowwing. It would try getting into the apartment that had been his home before he was kicked out by the girl who had decided to move houses and leave him behind. For a good couple of months I didn't realise what was going on till Kim, our neighbour, pointed out that the Black-and white tabby had indeed been abandoned. We started keeping some food and water outisde and the white and black tabby was not unhappy with the food but was always more delighted with some attention. It was summer, I think, at that point. So he would lap up some milk too but the thing he loved best was being cuddled. He would settle on your lap and sit and try and sniff your face and roll over and sometimes he would just sit in companionable silence and we (Kim Guha, and I) wondered about and barked at the absent girl who could have abandoned the cat. I named him "Spotty" (I'm not very good with names and the uninspired name fairly stuck to the cat). Sometimes I'd watch him and he'd go prancing across the road (although he never quite really pranced - he seemed to be a rather dignified cat...but I guess dignified cats too have their moments); sometimes he'd very silently approach squirrels, and believe it or not he never did pounce on a squirrel but simply chased them up a tree. And sometimes he was cranky....loving but quite cranky and while he did give Guha a hefty nip one day - I got a hiss and a sharp bite on one occasion...but there was a reason. When one has a growing tumour, which eventually grows to the size of a golf ball by the time it's discovered, I don't think one is feeling particularly good inside and most likely does not want to be petted on its head...

He wasn't well and that came to light in Fall and especially through winter. He was fairly wasting away and was looking scraggly and wasn't always able to groom himself but we didn't know what was wrong with him back then. He would always come and sit on your lap and get petted and comforted and comforting the one who'd be comforting him, and by then there was no hissing nor biting although sometimes I swear he had a rather sad look in his eyes...(there's much I could write about that magnificent cat but only some of it can I write about here). He wouldn't come out of his make-shift house for the food. He would sit there looking at it. Yet if Guha or I went out, he'd leap out of his little house and settle on our laps. There were some days though that I felt like I couldn't go out and sit with him....I don't know how to put this in. It felt like a bloody wrench leaving him and coming back inside. And Spotty would so firmly be sitting there and sometimes he'd fall asleep on your lap...all curled up.

This and that transpired. He was treated by our very kind vet. One of my professor's gave him a home since Guha and I could not take him in (Oh, and I was mad about that but there's no point in being mad about some things....As Guha reasonably pointed out with two little/big cats of our own we couldn't bring in a cat with mood swings...). But just before Christmas Day, I knew. I was visiting Spotty (Spotster) at the vet regularly where he was kept for observation and when all the tests came back negative and my vet told me that I could take him with me...I was there looking and talking with Spotty, and I knew.

He did have a home for a week or so (the exact dates, I have now forgotten). My professor named him "Soccer-Ball" (much more appropriate...although he was all skin and bones mostly...). He slept in the warmth and found some lap to settle on or found someone in the house to cuddle up to. My professor had grown very fond of him too. And yet I knew. And sure enough three days after I went over to meet him one Friday, my professor sent an e-mail. Guha and I went over. We took Spotty over to the vet one last time. And our vet ran some final tests and for most of the time the brave cat sat on my lap somewhat disconsolate but unprotesting looking incredibly fragile - and with the smell of death hanging around him even as I held him close....and when the results came in we didn't flinch when our vet said that it would be better if Spotty were euthanized for he had bone cancer. Our vet did it of course. Told us exactly what would happen and Justin - one of the assistants who was there as well - comforted the little cat as well. I kept patting Spotty on the head and stroking him. Spotty put up a fight though. He didn't go down without letting out one nice loud miaow. I stroked him on the head, called out to God, and by then he was gone.

Guha wrapped him up after some minutes in one of my old grey sweatshirts, which I'd had for a long time...and he was cremated along with that old grey sweatshirt.

And so there went another black and white tabby. There are lots of memories I have of Spotty - but these will do for the nonce. I'm glad though...that I was there when I put him down. That's one thing I am glad about.

Two disconnected bits

2011-01-18T22:56:00.000-05:00

The School newspaper, The Exponent, used to carry really bad cartoons but it's one of those things that I always read and groaned over whenever I read the paper. However, today's newspaper carried one by a new cartoonist. (When I read the paper I also read the astrology section and nod my head or shake my head or wonder or worry - not very seriously, but still. I can't help it: I was one of those Linda Goodman fans when we were growing up in school. I had also been a Cheiro fan and read lots of palms through my college days and university days [nobody threw gold coins my way though I did get some delighted "How did you know that?" to my delight as well back then...] and even now I can't help trying to look at people's palms if I can...so if there were a palmistry section - I would have read that as well).

To get back. Today's cartoon tickled my funny bone. The Cartoon Title is: Why We Can't Have Nice Things by Ellie Broughton

One college kid says: Oh, no. My horoscope says today is a bad day for me. I can't take two in a row.

The second kid, with a wry look, says: You've gotta stop procrastinating. That's yesterday's paper.

(*Very often I've looked at the previous day's paper and said the same thing. "Insipid day yesterday and today. Great. But wait. That sounds like what I read yesterday. Ohhhh......"*)

Completely disconnected tale (even my batty head can't come up with however remote a connection):

Two phone calls in a row today: one made to the shuttle service that runs between Chicago and Purdue and one received from the cell phone company for a bill payment.

I talk for five minutes on each call, with the respective woman in charge, and at the end of both calls I thank them and I'm thanked in turn with a very cheery, "Thank you Sir."

New Year List

2011-01-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to those who read my blog.

I have been inspired to put up a list of my New Year's resolution. Not having made one in God-knows-how-many-years - it will be very short. I have to thank Pupu for this exercise. So Pupu, when you're reading this, many thanks (I had thought I was too old for this exercise...).

1. I have decided to stop being snooty and send in a paper for the sociological conference for this year, and if the paper gets accepted I'll present a paper within the section of Sociology of Education (including a bit about values, beliefs, and morals). Never done that before and I'm having a good time so far getting my notes in order and refreshing the most important bits before I start looking into what the sociologists have been saying.

2. I have decided not to do anything but laugh about the fact that the venue for the conference this year is in Las Vegas (one of the very, very few places that I'd very loudly said, I will never visit). This does require a point to itself. For if I manage to make it, there will be some poetic justice to it!

3. I am going to get my degree some time this year. Maybe it's the Concorde fallacy. But I've spent too long trying to get a mere degree and making it into a mountain. (That's what I'd done for my undergrad degree too - come to think of it!)

4. I'll also continue to write on the side, send something to the literary competitions this year around and not worry too much about whether it is grand or great enough; try and be sane in my responses towards things that cannot be changed and about things from my imagination, and try and change the bit that I can; brood & obsess less too but not stop thinking or reflecting; keep the sense of humour alive (with some help); laugh some; share some laughs; nurture my sense of empathy; be a little more disciplined and a little more organized and a little less lazy, a little less fearful, and give back something positive to the people and beings around - essentially be a bit "sharing, giving, and loving" - and especially towards those I claim to care for and love.

5. I'll also have fun while teaching in my last semester here at the university while also teaching to the best of my abilities.

6. I'll exercise and walk regularly instead of doing both in erratic starts and fits.

7. I'll save more than I do and get a proper job - however humble.

8. Talk with the few people I do and not complain too much; be a patient and mindful listener and thank God every day that they put up with me.

9. Hope and work towards seeing that the points on my list are being fulfilled bit by bit; dream a bit too and share some dreams!

10. I'll pray in earnestness, and with love.

There's my list at 35. I think I must have made my last list at least 20 years ago.

Happy New Year once again. Good luck, joy and peace.

P.S: Reading and listening to music don't appear on the list for more-or-less obvious (but not identical) reasons. I was reminded some days ago, from my old diary, about a poem that had caught my attention because I'd come across it in a book-chapter: Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost. Knowing my memory I'd very carefully written down the last four lines of the poem hoping that I'd reflect upon them at a later point. So maybe I'll try reading some more poems as well this year?...

So what do I expect?

2010-12-29T12:07:00.000-05:00

Sometimes one can be rather mystified on days when one really gets going with the walking and the thinking...it is not an unpleasant thing even though one wishes that one could solve some of the puzzles and say, 'a-ha', and then go and share them with some folks (without sounding like an unhinged bat). Without sharing some of life's puzzles there's absolutely no meaning in the 'a-ha' moment.

It's been said that one must expect nothing. Not goodness nor kindness nor commiseration nor gratitude nor respect nor praise nor rewards, and certainly not - God forbid - love in life. I'm sure this makes absolute sense at some level and if nothing else one can be assured that if one doesn't expect anything one will never wonder, even if one is a fairly average person, about some of the things that pass for sanity and one will very rarely wonder whether one is growing silently but surely madder and slower and stupider with every passing day and for sure one will never be saddened or hurt or feel lost or lonely or disappointed or restless. But as a friend once said in a different context, I can intellectually accept this but emotionally I resist. I know that one must expect nothing when living in the world and when I think of it (as I do) I think that it is but a stroke of luck or karma (or something else?) that I have, for the time being, cigarettes to smoke, enough to eat, clean water, a roof over my head, and functioning limbs and physical organs and a temporary job that lets me pay the bills - so how can I expect for more?

But if truth be told: after accepting or at least resigning oneself to the idea that one is more or less an average person - with seemingly common desires and tries as honestly as possible to do minimum harm - it seems impossible to expect nothing.

For one thing, there are some very mundane expectations. One realises at some point that the very least that one expects (and sometimes with no feeling attached to the expectation and sometimes with great annoyance and sometimes with liquid joy and sometimes with a matter-of-factness and sometimes with a listlessness) is to wake up the next day when one falls asleep at night even though one does know that one will die one day. Bizarre example it may well be but how many everyday expectations then are simply hidden and how many are we blind to simply because we don't really think about such matters? We don't expect to suddenly be in the middle of a violent war. We don't expect to be brutalized. We don't expect to get into an accident and be maimed for life. We don't expect to lose the ones we love...regular middle-class people don't expect to go hungry at night and don't expect to be without clean water and don't expect to not have a place to sleep at night. And all of these are expectations, and rather big ones too. And these just barely skim the surface of our pot of expectations. We know very well (or at least some people do) that things might change in the snap of a finger and we know that for countless people and lives these things are real but we are able to, for the most part, not think about the same happening in our own lives (which includes the lives we love). In short - we don't expect such things to descend on our heads.

It is also true that some people worry and some people brood and some people go mad when they start keeping a tab on even the very basic expectations that we carry around like an invisible cloak...yet other people wonder and worry and brood and enter God-knows what dark chambers and are still able to maintain their wits about them, and some of us pay no attention because maybe not questioning the basic expectations is the way to get on with this and lead at least a somewhat normal life, and the only times that we sometimes realise that we hold certain expectations is when some of our expectations are violated, and this can happen at the real and at the surreal level.

And to make a leap but not an unreasonable leap - we also expect some things from our own selves (we expect to be honest, we expect to be civil unless otherwise provoked, we expect to enjoy meeting some people, we expect to work well, we expect to be punctual, we expect to love some people and to be annoyed by others...). And one also expects certain somethings from others (similar things actually: we expect other people too to be basically honest, we expect them not to be gratuitously rude, we expect them too to be punctual for meetings, we expect some people to love us and some others to be annoyed by us...).

We expect some things from, of, and for ourselves and we expect some things for, of, and from others and we even expect others to expect some things from us. And the specific expectations may differ depending upon the relationship we share with the specific others.

So what is it that I've had to accept (and somewhat reluctantly)? Do we expect certain things in life? Yes, we do. Do we expect certain things from others? Yes, we do. Does the expectation itself mean that it will be granted? No, that it certainly does not. But as one writer said, one should learn to expect the unexpected ! - and that goes for the good, bad, and beautiful.

I have not been able to understand the ebbs and flows and the turning of tides in the lives of creatures great and small even though I have been affected by their mysteries. In some other age and time I may have gone around singing around the countryside, and have people chasing me out with stones. Sometimes, in rare moments and in flashes, the nature of life has made perfect sense. God only knows why. I know this only in terms of recollecting the feeling. The feeling came and it passed leaving only a couple of remembered points, and those are the points which glowed harder. Yet the points themselves expect me to act upon them. It's one thing to gaze upon mysteries and these odd points and be utterly fascinated and captivated by them and it would be fine if I were satisfied doing just that (while my monthly bills magically paid themselves or if I could live in a barrel or a tub, eat, and drink what I could find with no other requirements needed nor wanted among other important things!) but I am expected to act upon the bit of knowing that stays. I expect it of myself.

And I think that almost all (if not all) human beings have this sense at some points: a knowing, and a knowing that is peculiar to each human being and a knowing that is unique to a particular human being, and a knowing which is related to (a) do-able expectation(s). And there are do-able expectations although difficult ones that float through or appear as dots. Whether one will fulfill these expectations is a different matter. One cannot predict the future and sometimes by the time one gets to untangle the mess from the meaning one seems to have less and less time left - but one still can't give up without doing one's best. It's one thing to never know what one expects of oneself but to know and then to say that there's nothing to be done about it is somewhat imbecilic.

One can't even say, "I was completely ignorant". One has to stand up on Judgment Day and say after the first round of questions, "I'm sorry Your Honour but I knew a bit but was too lazy and too despairing and kept thinking that time was running out by the time I was 16, so I didn't ever want to try and do the bit of good that I could have. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to impress you by being truthful - since You know all there is to know. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. No, Your Honour I'm not giving you excuses. I'm actually trying to explain what happened. No, Your Honour I realise this is not a confession box. I thought I was on the right track...Yes, Your Honour, I realise I did do a lot of navel gazing. Yes, Your Honour I wasted time even when I knew that I wasn't meant to. Yes, Your Honour I kept wanting to keep my cake and eat it too even when I had the suspicion that that is what I was doing. Yes, Your Honour, I did get very tired sometimes. No, Your Honour I didn't think that I had created the world - oh well, Yes, sometimes I thought I might be able to until I realised I was hopelessly incapable of even fixing the whole world - leave alone creating one - even if I were given the power. Yes, Your Honour I did think I had a role nonetheless. No Your Honour I didn't do everything I could. No, You're absolutely right Your Honour I didn't do my best and give my best...Yes, of course Your Honour You're never wrong..."

So there is this obmutacious expectation which lingers...

30th December, 2010

December 1st

2010-12-01T08:50:00.001-05:00

Today is the 1st of December. And since somebody reminded me that the first decade of the new century (and millennium) is about to come to an end...I might as well add: Today is the first day of the last month of the last year of the first decade of the twenty-first century and the second millennium, and I can look up and thank God for a working sewage system in the place I live...among other things.

And to be less facetious: it snowed today, and I couldn't help but smile and smile and smile some more in spite of thinking that it was a little mad to feel so ridiculously happy.....

P.S: Today is the 4th and the silent snow is really coming down. I would have taken a photo or two if I had a working camera. It doesn't look real and it doesn't feel real and when I'd gone outside early in the morning it didn't sound real....

Silence and Solitude...

2010-11-18T15:41:00.001-05:00

The first time I heard of this word was when I was in Class IV. Solitude. It was a three word moral science exercise - silence, solitude and prayer - and I still remember how quiet I felt inside while doing the exercise. Among other images - I see the tops of very tall trees swaying in the wind and their green leaves are silently swishing...there is a forest. An image of tall trees in a forest. That's one of the things I see when I hear or contemplate upon the word solitude.

I find it both gratifying and disconcerting that so much now is being made of silence and solitude. I haven't looked lately but I'm sure even social scientists are talking about the benefits of solitude and silence and "being alone" and I'm quite sure that we'll be reading a fancy article in Science or Nature one day, not too far off into the future, extolling the virtues of silence and solitude.

I'm all for silence and solitude, and so it's not that I find the value placed on them as odd. What I find odd is people talking about them. And of course I am too. When we have to start talking about some things as being valuable and as being essential and when we have to harp on their value not by re-affirming their value but to state that such-and-such has value to begin with - I start wondering whether their value has already been sullied and how it is that such invaluable aspects of life started losing their significance. I've been deeply curious about values and the things that humans and different humans value (but about that another day) and I'm back to wondering how some parts of life can be made to be seen as being valuable. If a human being has never really been alone or has hated being alone or has been deeply distressed by the experience or has found it discomfiting or unbearable or useless or mind-numbing - I wonder whether there's anything anyone can do or say to make the person suddenly see silence and solitude as being valuable.

While I'm on the topic maybe I'll ramble a bit about how I see silence and solitude. This is biased. I can't talk here about the millions who cannot afford silence or solitude because they are busy everyday trying to get food and water and basic amenities or are merely trying to exist because of terrible life-circumstances. That would be a different question requiring a space of its own. But there are people who even though they have the possibility of engaging in quiet moments, don't want to be alone....not that being alone or the ability of being alone automatically makes someone superior or better or deserving of praise but even that is something to think about.

One may argue as I often do (with myself) that being alone can be a precious experience only if a person has certain likes which go well with the experience of being alone. Reading - unless one is reading out aloud to somebody else (which has a time and a place, and that too only if one can read well!) must be done alone. Related to reading, I do have some reservations and some strange musings....but about those, another day.

Painting is something I used to engage in quite often at one point. Now, almost never. If I were an artist with some skill (not too much - only some) then maybe it may have been like writing but as it stands I cannot paint much and if I am able to paint something that looks like what it's supposed to - it's more often due to sheer luck than any aspect of skill or talent or ability. Yet when one does paint, and this is about great artists and sculptors - from the bits and pieces that I've read about them - they liked and indeed required solitude in order to work; and even people who paint well but are not great and/or famous artists like the time spent alone with their easel, paint-brush, paper and colour palette.

I've noticed that I cannot read as I would like to nor paint (as haphazardly as I do) unless I'm non-fidgety inside. There has to be some semblance of a non-chaotic mind and non-chaotic innards to be able to focus in order to read a piece of writing as it is meant to be read. But there is something not quite black or white about the whole process - at least insofar as reading is concerned. For sometimes I search for a piece of writing - an essay, a story, a book - because my mind is blowing around aimlessly or very purposefully but without any release or relief, and reading the half-remembered piece provides some clarity. Sometimes coming across a piece of writing at the right time somehow pacifies the mind in giving it a fruitful path to pursue rather than just letting it toss and turn on nothing. It may be a delusion of calmness that is evoked and the fruitful path sometimes may not turn out to be very fruitful. Nonetheless there is something that happens that makes one feel less fratchy and somewhat less hopeless inside. Sometimes one chances upon an amusing piece and one is able to laugh, and so laughing one may realise that one is taking oneself too seriously. At other moments one may be able to read something which simply and eloquently speaks to one like a blood-and-bones human being responding to a question....and sometimes it's impossible to read. It really is.

Then there's listening to music. Different kinds of music can be listened to when there is company but sometimes I cannot listen and do not want to listen to certain pieces when there is company. Some pieces must be heard alone sometimes. I'm not dismissing the possibility of experiencing the fullness of music in company - but in most instances and on an average - I'd say listening to music too is something best done on one's own. I don't play a musical instrument - but people who do, whether gifted or semi-gifted, like playing on their own to themselves. I've seen that in one close friend. He used to play his violin whether or not anybody was around, and he didn't like being bothered when he was playing. Musicians might like and even love playing for others but if nobody's around, that's perfectly fine...and even when musicians play with people around - they seem to not really notice. I'm not talking about noisy rock musicians, here.

Then there is walking around a forest (provided there is a relatively safe, quiet forest or a wooded area or some trails where one can go for a walk). Sometimes one needs to go on one's own, by oneself. Walking briskly, taking one's time, listening to the trees rustle, hearing the river or the stream for a long time before actually going and sitting near it or sticking one's toes into it...listening to the mighty babble of birds (which I would be hard-pressed to identify when I'm by myself) and the trees swishing and swaying - trees that one can hear in fall and in summer with the wind - even before one sees them. Can be lovely with the right company. That is true. It can be sometimes. But I cannot bear walking with people who insist on talking nineteen to the dozen at the top of their lungs when they're walking with me through a forest. The voices bear down on my head like a helmet. I think I'm an auditory person - maybe that could be the reason - and while I'm quite sure that I'm hard of hearing I also have sensitive ear-drums and auditory nerves (which is why I've entirely stopped singing to myself), so while a walk through the woods may be a lovely or a joyous or a beautiful experience with the right sort of company - whether real or imagined - the walk is completely spoiled and soiled with company that yaks.

Now all of these above mentioned activities and some more - like going to an art gallery or going to hear live music or going around a city to visit historical sites or a temple or a cathedral or a monastery, or the mountains or a book-shop or a library or a quiet sea-beach or even having a quiet meal...and other activities - like gardening, carpentry, cooking, and so on can be potentially very fulfilling in select company, although some people really do enjoy doing some activities on their own and by themselves. There is also a time and a place for silence even when in company...there is the aspect of companionable silence. There is a stillness. Although these days, companionable silence and stillness probably means five people sitting around the table with everyone fiddling with his or her phone and sending text messages to god-knows-whom.

Thinking, for the most part, is a personal activity requiring one to exert one's own mind and to gather one's own thoughts and to be with oneself. Introspecting, reflecting, looking over, and wondering have to be done on one's own with one's own mind. One can argue with other people later. One can ask other people later. One can have conversations and discussions later....yet there is a time and a place where one has to sit with one's own thoughts, one's own images, one's own consciousness (or lack of the same), one's voice/many voices, one's own acts of omission and commission...one can argue with one's many selves or just sit and be with oneself or be appalled with oneself or be very confuzzled or be quiet but the activity has to be done in comparative silence, and there is no substitute for this sort of thinking. And it has to be done - for better or for worse. In sickness and in health till death comes in and takes one away. Maybe there will be no enlightenment at all and at no level. Maybe there will be less and less that becomes clear. Maybe one will stubbornly hold fast to one's tiny bit of light and know nothing more. Maybe one will be no better than what one has been or maybe one will be the same. Maybe one will be a better and balanced human being, slowly and steadily and gradually. Maybe one will, at least, not forget what one needs to remember. Or maybe one will die a dolt. Who knows....but it's still something that has to be done, and done alone. And I know how difficult it is to be silent inside. It's a madhouse in there. One can hardly listen to what's important because of the mindless, senseless, idiotic chatter.

I can't talk much about meditation. I have tried it many times over but there is very little I understand about meditation. I don't know whether I am doing it right or what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm assuming that it's something one has to do by oneself and on own's own and in silence...

What else? There's writing. One can show the written bit to another later. One can ask for a response later. One can push it into someone's face later. One can be embarassed about showing it to anyone...but when one is writing - that is what one is doing. There really are no other thoughts, no other feelings, no other anythings really. Painting for me is always a matter of being able to gift the hopefully recognisable and not-too-bad finished product to someone else. Writing however is not done with the solitary intention of sharing every bit of the written word. Maybe if I could write fiction....I'm quite sure I would have loved sharing the tales but most often when I write what I do, even when I'm writing for no clear reason but that I need to write, I have a strangely fulfilling time. While writing one lives in another world and in another state-of-being for those moments. One is quite alone and not even with oneself and somewhat disembodied. Maybe that's the reason that one sometimes experiences an equally intense need to communicate with some human being with whom one can relate to after something is written.

I am quite convinced that somewhere inside one always knows what one is...it's a matter of following the course if one can and if one has the motivation and the drive and the discipline to do what one is. As I keep reading the experiences of those writers whose writings I enjoy reading I am still surprised and somewhat alarmed to note how prolific and at how disciplined they were in their work (i.e. writing) habits by their late teens. That's when I raise my eyebrows at myself. My interesting seeds never got planted and now they have, as somebody once prophetically and rather poetically predicted, been blown away by the wind or have been pecked at by the birds. It's true. If one doesn't follow an idea for whatever reasons - it really does disintegrate at some point. But I digress...

Then of course there is dying. I don't know too much about the experience of death but I'm assuming one dies alone. I hope one isn't lonely while dying but it's something one does alone.

I know I've missed listing all the different sorts of activities that people engage in when alone but others are most likely to have their own lists...

The loneliness and meaninglessness that one experiences are other matters.

On Haitch-es and...maybe Mr. 'iggins?

2010-10-28T13:18:00.000-04:00

Hullo. 'ullo?

Here's something from last week that may be interesting to some and may even bring a couple of laughs and/or raise some eyebrows - both the article and the video-clip. The boy on the right in the blue shirt reminds me of someone I know and the woman is priceless. The clip and the news story brought my own mongrel pronunciation home to me.

In the third school that I went to (and remember of) as a kid - I'm almost absolutely sure that "h" was pronounced "haitch". I used "haitch" in my head, dropped it after a point and then forgot all about it, and at some point I started raising my eyebrows when people said "Haitch" instead of "aitch". "H" is never pronounced in "history". This I learnt very late - sometime in middle-school. I always see the Wren and Martin when I read something to the effect of - "an historical examination of some of the theories demonstrate...wugga-wugga-wugga". Back then I'd chewed on the pencil and stared at the example on the left page of the book until I realised why the example used "an" instead of "a". (Even after "history" had been sorted out satisfactorily, I used an 'an' for "iron is a useful metal" for a class-test). How on earth is the pronunciation of "harass" changing though ? It can't be "arass"...!

I've got to say I don't remember ever hearing "ate" being pronounced as 'et'. Whoever's heard of "I et a biscuit?" Whoever says that apart from the very propah gentleman in the little clip? I can hallucinate "ate" rhyming with "bet" in "I 'et' an egg with toast" but I don't think I would ever say "et", and if I did I'd quickly correct it to ryhme with "bait". "Says", in my book, should rhyme with fez, and as the gentleman points out "there is no 'i' in mischievous" (between the v and the o, that is)! I'd have gotten all the pronunciations from 1928 incorrect apart from "pristine" (only because I know I used to pronounce it otherwise just a decade ago). I remember though a friend telling me in school that "house-wife" was actually pronounced "huzzif". I used that for a bit but I never could get used to it. And "cumbat"? It can't be "cumbat"! And why "respit"? Respite should rhyme with despite, shouldn't it?

I had assumed that "wrath" was pronounced the same way as "cloth"...But I'm not sure what "off" and "north" and "wharf" are supposed to rhyme with. Is there something missing in the sentence or is it me who's missing something.

I am reminded of my squabbles with Beth (a friend who is now a proper professor). She pronounced "soot" as rhyming with "foot" while I rhymed "soot" with "boot". I'm reminded of Bean who used to growl every time he heard someone say "or'njyoos". "It's not one word." He would say. "There are two words. Orange-juice." And then there was the little incident when a student from Greece told Bean, who was from the U.K, that Bean was mispronouncing words.

Grammar, pronunciation, spelling - at some point in school - became one garbled heap. I had a sense for idiomatic English and I had a sense for grammar - I'll give myself that....but for the latter - my senses weren't always right. I didn't know any grammar and I never did learn much of grammar while going to Carmel. I taught myself the fundamentals of grammar - including subject-verb agreement - when I was 24. I never quite understood punctuation or the phrase-and-clause bit...I still make subject-verb errors and dangling modifiers are sometimes left to dangle if I'm not carefully re-reading what I'm writing and re-writing, and I can't even quite spot the problem with the clause and phrase bit even when I sense that a sentence does not quite sound right.

And what of words which I didn't know how to pronounce? I simply pronounced them how I thought fit or "bleeped" over them, and went on reading. This reminds me of a lovely little cartoon that I found on the net but wasn't able to download. There's a boy who's snuggled up in his bed with a book, and he looks all comfy but he has a bemused look on his face, and he's looking up from his book. There is a blaring "announcement" from within the pages of the book: "Alert: you mispronounced a word in your head. Would you like to hear the correct pronunciation now or hear it later?"....

It would have been nice to to carry a pronunciation-perfect guide in the head even if one didn't have the luck to meet a Mr. Higgins everyday.

P.S: November 7th - and here's a link that Beth sent me....

Winter and Fall

2010-10-04T23:10:00.000-04:00

With Giant Spruce. From Last Winter.

Last weekend the temperature was hovering at 36 degrees Celsius. And now it's dropped. It's some 3 degrees outside. It feels like winter has come. And I am not complaining about the weather. I love the cold even though I feel somewhat strange inside when the cold first descends. One winter, when my nose was freezing and tears, which had nothing to do with my emotional state, were streaming down my eyes and I had to give in and wait inside a building for a few seconds to get out of the wind, I still said out-loud, "I love winter."

I know that it's not really winter that's come. It's just the sudden and abrupt cold that's going to give way to some warmer and startlingly clear, crisp, and sunny days with the leaves changing colour but in my head it's already white and icy and snowy and windy...

The giant spruce outside my apartment died a couple of months ago. It was a stunted tree, people say. This time when the snows come I won't be staring at the miniature tree and pretend that I'm looking in on a snowy landscape with nothing but a giant blue spruce.

The sudden chill triggers off memories of a haunting story, one piece of music, of other times and other places and sometimes of other times and of the same place. I realised some days ago that I've been in this town for a long time, and have hardly left it. Considerably curious is that I never quite feel that I should visit other places because I still feel like a traveler or a visitor somehow. I've been to the airport about four times to drop off and pick up friends over these last some weeks, and every time I've been gently startled by the fact that there are other places and real people on this planet....

P.S: Over the last couple of days the leaves have started changing colour.

P.P.S: When winter really comes, this year - maybe, I'll put up a proper post on the season.

Oddities

2010-09-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

This post here, by Suvro da, reminded me of some gaffes I've made and still make and also of some other assorted oddities.

In small towns here, people smile, nod and sometimes even ask another "How are you doing?" The first time that happened, when I was out on a walk, I stared, looked behind me, all around me, and had passed the friendly stranger before realising that the greeting had been meant for me.

The "how are you doing?" is something non-committal. It is a polite way of saying "I've noticed your presence and now it's bye-bye." The question itself, spoken everywhere, is not really something that demands or requires an answer...nothing more than a "fine, thank you. How about you?" is expected. How non-committal is this very polite question? Sometimes one will hear the question while half-running down the corridor. The other person too is half-running down the corridor. Nods and smiles are exchanged. Maybe even a very quick "hi" by the time one is within five feet but nobody is changing his pace. Nobody has any intentions of stopping. Then suddenly the other person will raise the discomfiting question, "How are you doing?" or "How are you?" By this time both people have crossed each other. So it is a feat of speed to lodge in one's "I'm fine. How about you?" before the other person completely disappears around the corridor. Nobody turns his head. Heads are still directed ahead. Eyes are looking ahead. And every now and again, one might just hear the disembodied, "I'm fine, thank you" coming from the corner around the corridor.

I have to say I have not mastered the art of this quick exchange. First, I can never quite say "I'm doing fine" when I'm not. Secondly, sometimes I'm known to have said the idiotic, "I'm good." And that does stop the quick exchange in its tracks and stops me in my tracks while I berate myself in my head, which makes the other person do a quicker march than otherwise. Thirdly, even if I manage to get a non-committal "I'm all right, thank you" out of my mouth fast enough - I have never been quick enough to raise the question, "How about you?" in that single sweeping graceful motion. I have already passed the person. The person has passed me. The only way the person can now come up with his "I'm fine too, thank you" is by hollering across the space that now separates us. I don't mind the smile and the nod. I think both are civil. Even a "Hi" is a fine thing...sometimes the "Hi" turns out to be a mish-mash of "Hi", "Hey", "Hail", and "Ho"...but the "How are you doing?" in these speedy encounters still leaves me feeling rather sub-human. Less sub-human than what I felt in the first semester when I actually told people "exactly" how I was doing but still somewhat stupid....The "how's it going?" also puts me in a bind but in less of a bind. I believe the "it" refers to "life in general" so I simply say, "It's going" although I'm sometimes tempted to say "I have not the faintest clue".

One student from India, so I heard, while taking the driving test had come to a stop at a road "Stop" sign. He waited. And he waited. The examiner finally wryly enquired, "So how long are you planning to stay here?" The Indian student very earnestly replied, "Four years. I'm on a student visa. Five years tops."

At coffee shops and at most of the fast-food places the typical question one encounters after one places one's order is "For here 'r to go?" One student on hearing this rather odd question for the first time replied, "I'm here for five years. I'm on a student visa. After that I'll go back to India."

At coffee-shops and bakeries there are free and sometimes plentiful samples of cakes and other goodies. One sunny day, two hungry students had had some coffee and for once decided to try out the plentiful samples that had all been arranged in a basket. The arrangement did look a little odd because normally the samples come on a platter and they are small bite-sized pieces (which would still be larger than the size of a good sized sandesh) while the basket in question contained gargantuan muffins and cakes and cheese bread rolls. The two hungry students simply shrugged. They got a muffin the size of a human head and shared it. It was very good and they wondered whether trying out a cheese roll would be pushing the limits of civil behaviour. It was at this point that one of the students knew there was something definitely odd about the basket. Quite what it was - the student wasn't quite sure. So instead of trying out another sample - both of them went up to the counter and asked the young cashier, "I say, those free samples in that basket, there - we got a muffin from it." The cashier's face fell and the colour went out of her face. Horrified, she replied, "Those are day-old goods. They're only for display. They're not meant to be eaten." The two students were duly embarrassed and one of them said, "Oh, we're so sorry. We'll pay for the muffin." The cashier waved her hands and said, "No, no. You don't need to pay. They're day-old goods....they're not meant for eating....you ate the whole thing?" "Yes, a muffin. It was a blueberry muffin." The look of horror was still pasted across her face when the apologetic students walked off. Never again has that particular bakery in question displayed its basket of goodies.

At another coffee-shop, a student once saw a bunch of perfectly good bananas about to being thrown away. Horrified the student leapt up near the counter. The student knew that the whole bunch could not be saved but said, "I'll take one. I'll take one of those." The cashier said, "but the stem is missing." "Yes, but it's not the stem I'll be eating." The cashier shrugged and handed the banana to the customer and charged the said student for it!

...Hmm...there are some others. But some final thoughts. I hate it when I let out a demented, "Huhn?" when I can't quite hear what people say. I wish I could get rid of this habit and say a civilised "Beg your pardon?" The other horror-habits I have is either to yell or to mumble. There's nothing in between. I am happy to say though that I have never used the word 'cool' unless I am describing the temperature or being sarcastic. And I will never use the word "awesome" - not to describe anything.

It's not that bad...

2010-09-08T20:44:00.000-04:00

For three months now, I've been wondering whether to write something but I haven't. But this latest article from the BBC is something that rankles something else in me. The only thing this article doesn't actually come out and say is that it may not have (had) adverse effects at all....(if any). Mind you, it's "devilishly hard" to answer whether 4.9 m barrels of oil spilling into the ocean, might actually just have been really bad, and the question is whether it's the worst one yet, see ....and it's upto the "vagaries of the winds and tides" now, and new green stems are sprouting, see?

I don't know whether this above article is better than another one by an expert in which he compares the spill to buying some iffy chicken tikka masala from a supermarket store and getting an upset stomach. Who is responsible? Do I hold the supermarket responsible or the company that made and sold the iffy chicken tikka masala?...Same things, see? Iffy chicken tikka masala and an oil spill.

In the early 1920s, a sociologist, W.I Thomas, came up with the Thomas Theorem, which states, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." I don't know why but I never quite got the hang of this during my undergrad days wondering how on earth something could become real, at the social level, just because people believed it to be so.

And BP has come out with another over-200 page report...not surprising that. And no surprises as to how blame is assigned either. There were other corporations involved, see? And who can blame BP really when back in May they pointed out that they needed to drill? There is a demand for oil. They are merely satisfying the rising demand.

And we talk about future generations, our moral responsibility to nature, to animals? How can we even begin to think about these with the commitment required when we aren't even thinking about ourselves ? Where are we going to be/go when our planet becomes inhabitable? Even if we were seriously concerned about ourselves, wouldn't we stop and think some before acting or saying what we do? Or does that never really matter? We can push the limits with our new-fangled technology, not really understanding what we are doing, cut some costs here and there (how much are the piddly amounts that are saved when we are talking of over $400,000 a day for the leasing of an oil rig?), never bother about criminal negligence, and keep ourselves well-fueled and if there are some disasters here and there (and share prices fluctuate) - we can talk about the costs of cleaning up, assign some blame, and then keep walking along while making plans of where to drill next. And of course we must never get into slightly deeper or more uncomfortable questions. Never question the need for more and more oil. Never question whether we can do something about how much we use. Never question whether we could have, by now, switched over to renewable sources while clamping down on our consumption.

For an almost forgotten chemical disaster, some of the people affected were paid some $500 and the PR of the company responsible for the disaster is noted to have said that the amount was more than enough. BP, early on had gone around trying to sign agreements with local fishermen promising $5000 if they would promise not to sue BP.

Some two years ago, I was wondering whether human beings, as a whole race, have some in-built way of forgetting what horrors we wreak. It increasingly seems to me that maybe there's no reason to forget anything because we can convince ourselves that what we do isn't that bad....

I might as well not talk about this. I've been sickened by the whole thing and most of all else that comes as news these days.

P.S:

Here's something amusing....

And here....

Teachers

2010-09-05T16:31:00.002-04:00

For the longest time I’d held as a basic assumption that no other person could really teach one anything. Nobody could teach another how to live, how to think, how to see things, how to understand. I was quite sure that teachers could teach one facts in better ways (facts in terms of numbers and figures, and how the human body works or how light is refracted and reflected, how to do a litmus test in the lab). They could teach one math in interesting ways or provide one the space to do math by oneself. They could teach one grammar rules, and how to write a language correctly. So I'd maintained that teachers could teach one the technical stuff, and the better the teacher the better they were at teaching one how things are in the world. Every now and again I wondered about this fundamental belief that I had because I did have very clear memories of the Headmaster of an old school and a teacher in high-school who had a significant effect on something more about myself than merely having an effect on the way I learned technical matters or facts or how things were – but I was able to brush off these instances as being unusual and they didn’t last for long enough, and I was never really sure as to what sort of an effect these teachers had on me or whether it was simply my own hare-brained imaginings that had me thinking that they had had an effect on me beyond the pale of the normal.

It took me till college to realise that a good teacher was one who got one to think effectively. And sometimes not effectively – but still, never to stop thinking and most importantly, to keep thinking. Never mind if it helped nobody else for those moments. A good teacher was one who got one to think about an interesting problem. Observing and thinking were better balanced by reading what other people had written. It was in college that I came across a teacher who stressed the importance of understanding what one was learning and/or thinking over. It wasn’t that the teacher told me to do badly in exams but he didn’t come and teach in the class so that we could sit for exams. I’d never not taken a class where one didn’t have to take notes unless (one were not paying attention, which happened often enough) or if it were the Bengali class in school (and only in specific years) where I could simply take joy in the class because I loved the class and maybe it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to claim that I most likely loved the teacher as well. But there in college I knew I was wasting my time completely in trying to write down without thinking – because it actually made sense to listen to what the professor in class was saying.

It’s been said before that when one is going through a lived experience, it’s very difficult to see what exactly is happening. It has to do with being too close to what is going on – and one can’t really understand what, if anything or everything, is happening. It was obvious to me by the second year in college that I was not making any significant contribution to my society. I was also utterly convinced that there was absolutely nobody on this planet who could teach me anything that was worth knowing or learning. And if there were anyone around – there was no chance that I was going to come across such a person. And really, if there was no way of contributing significantly by one’s own merit and if there was nobody around who could teach one something worth knowing – then there was very little point in sticking around for many, many years surviving only because one was too stupid and mentally challenged to do anything else. Deep down I’d always felt that people who’d had the advantage of having some material security in their lives owed it to society and to themselves to do better than just surviving. They had to do something – in a little way or in a medium way or in a big way if not in a great way – to make the world somewhat better than what it was when they had arrived. While in college the thought that struck me, and not on infrequent occasions, was that a lowly crocodile living in the Sunderbans was doing much more good for the eco-system while I, being a human being, with a conscience (apparently) was contributing nothing significant. I can’t say that this thought has disappeared – it has merely changed form.

This and that happened in the meanwhile - nothing earth-shattering. What I did find out all of a sudden though was that I had some excellent teachers.

They came from books or they were dead (and were certainly wiser than I was), and for the most part, therefore, did not exist in the real world. They weren’t just teachers in some detached and impersonal sense either. I got quite furiously attached to at least a couple of them and they showed me certain parts of myself that I didn’t think existed. They showed me, and rather unhesitatingly, the different things that a human being could ‘want’ or ‘desire’ or ‘experience’. They made me see myself, other people, and the real world out-there, and the shock of seeing was not something that I could always sanely absorb. For many times since, I have wondered about the extent to which “regular” human beings must blunt themselves or numb themselves or train themselves to think of only certain things, to see only certain things, to feel about only certain things, to know about only certain things while inhabiting the everyday world. It’s not possible to function normally otherwise, one may argue - although I wonder.

Then there was one who not only got me thinking but got me thinking and seeing myself and the world from different angles. It was seeing that a human mind is somewhat of a microcosm of all that exists on the outside. I seemed to carry parts of the world in my head. Even parts that annoyed me and irritated me and horrified me. I even realized that I harboured many beliefs not because I really had any good enough reason to believe them – but simply because I hadn’t thought them through. Are there any axiomatic values for living life?....There may well be (not without some ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’) but unless one is sure that it is an axiom that one has reached – maybe one should keep thinking and reading and reflecting over them as much as one can. And if the matter is something that is simply a matter of taste and preference maybe one should admit to that too and not try to make it into a universal matter of morality…

The interaction apart from other things, eventually involved what I wanted to do and with my life. Did I have any ambitions? Did I have any dreams? Did I have any realistic do-able dreams? It was all right to have fantasies about beautiful worlds and beautiful lives but what about the here-and-the-now? It wasn’t enough to be tormented by the world with its living horrors and its capacity for beauty - what did I intend to do in the real world? So it wasn’t just about things beyond or about the delightful and the bizarre in some fantasy land. It was also about seeing the world and to keep seeing myself and to be incapacitated by neither. It’s not a terribly easy thing to do and I know that I have still not succeeded in doing this but I don’t know whether people would say that it’s an essential thing either. I know what my response might be for that but a more justified question might be – “so what on earth did you do with all this ‘seeing’ that you are talking about?”

And in the meanwhile I remember there was other stuff that came up – stuff like Marxism, Feminism, Socialism, individualism, the environment, the economy, poverty, problem-solving, education, teaching, learning, time-saving, reading, laughing…and also literature, poems, stories, The Buddha, God and love….and about each of these things – my views shifted. Seemingly they didn’t. But they did.

Whatever the reasons may be – I know I’ve changed, and not insignificantly in the way I think about the world and its people and (even?) myself. I’ve realized what an exceptional teacher does – and does so charmingly and innocuously and with the Holy Spirit. The teacher quite gently gets one into choosing the way to think or to see. An exceptional teacher is one who makes one think, and he makes one think differently about things – but most importantly the teacher helps one see the many paths that seem to co-exist within one's mind, and gets one to choose the way. An unusual teacher gets one to purge oneself of the many bad habits – of the mind at least – and by asking questions, and sometimes through a series of questions or by making a statement which hits something very deep. It’s a curious feeling. The moment something hits – it is absorbed either in a flash or else so gradually that one starts believing that that is the way that one did indeed always see ‘such-and-such’. And one believes that one had always harboured a balanced view of ‘such-and-such’ or an open view of ‘such-and-such’ or a careful view of 'such-and-such'. But that’s not true. One never would have seen if it hadn’t been for that statement or the series of questions or the lengthy conversations with the exceptional teacher.

One changes within. One’s way of thinking, one’s beliefs, one's fundamental way of seeing is what is affected by such a teacher. The teacher lets some of the chaos be….The swirling questions remain. Some of them may be satisfactorily sorted out (and some may not be), and yet unerringly, the teacher, picks at the things that need to be picked on and fixed. Yet all along one is quite utterly convinced that one is doing it all on one’s own until one realizes one day that one isn’t. It is the teacher. And one hadn’t even seen the individual as one’s teacher. It takes a lot of humility to be able to acknowledge that there is finally one being who does know more and knows more about what matters and can sensibly transmit this knowing - no matter what else, and the nicest thing about all this, at least for me, is that the teacher is also wholly real (although sometimes I wonder about that too). Maybe it is only one’s own batty perception of how the interaction unfolds but what cannot be discounted is that one knows that one is hooked and doesn't want to be unhooked.

Can changes within change how one deals with the world and the real-world independent of one’s inner projections?...I am stumped here. I don’t have an answer for this, not even now - sadly enough. But if an exceptional teacher can’t make a difference – then maybe one really can’t be any better. If one cannot be the best one is capable of being even with a teacher who cares, who listens when nobody else does, who loves wisely when nobody else knows how, who scolds when everybody else has given up, who talks when the world is silent – then maybe one can never live how one is supposed to live. One then does become a loser and a pitiable loser at that. It's something like the horse and taking the horse to the water stand. Gently, innocuously, and yet firmly the horse is taken to the water-stand, and the horsey thinks he got there all on his own…what happens then? Does the horse drink or not?

One has to live one’s life. Even if one knows very little one still has to engage in living life – mistakes and all. There’s no way around this. And there are holes that I can’t fill, and don't know how to fill. For when it comes to living life I honestly don’t know whether reading, writing, thinking and reflecting and thinking hard, and all the dialogues within and without can make one live better and run with all one’s got. I don’t know how else one can do it but I don’t know whether engaging in all of these activities makes one regret any less. For when mistakes are made they seem to be made inspite of what one knows…I’ve never been able to understand this.

I don’t know too much about God but I’ll take the exceptional teacher who also happens to be one’s best friend. Cranky, moody, unpredictable, amusing, witty, brilliant, bright, sensible, knowledgeable, whimsical, temperamental, balanced…and with warts and all and one who is profoundly human. What happens in the ever-after is something I have no idea about, and that can wait. In the meanwhile, one realizes that one owes a debt. Not because it is imposed upon one by anyone else or by outer mechanisms or by some external agent but because it is imposed upon one by one’s very own soul. And in the meantime, one trundles along with a weighty albatross (or maybe a couple) and with some walks during dawns and dusks and noons along some paths not frequently traveled and keeps walking and running into an uncertain future.

Outer Space and...flying....

2010-08-31T11:25:00.001-04:00

Ever since I can remember, the universe has fascinated me. As a kid, I spent long minutes "contemplating" on the universe wondering about this apparently infinite expanse of space and I loved looking at different pictures of the universe in encyclopaedias. I learnt the names of the vegetables about the same time as I learnt the names of the planets - but the former didn't seem half as captivating (something I've mentioned elsewhere). After that initial burst of enthusiasm and the initial excitement of learning and seeing what I could about the bits and pieces - I've forever scratched my head about outer space. Now my fascination isn't what anyone would or could possibly call a scientific understanding. I would have loved to understand more of what they talk about these days - I really would - the physicists with their big bangs and the black holes and the point of the beginning or the moment of beginning. I've tried reading but little of it do I understand. Once upon a time, I fantasized about being an astrophysicist. And not one who just understood the physical and chemical properties of the universe. Oh no. Not a piddly one but a great one. I knew it was never going to happen so it was nice to fanatsize about. Anyway...

Outer space seems to be a world far, so far away from the here and now. And what I harbour for it is still a fascination mixed with a deep and silent awe. The thought of the universe sometimes trickles in when I'm sitting in a somewhat noisy coffee-shop working on something peculiarly mundane, over-hearing one young girl telling another that she's going out for dinner, a group of people talking about different matters, someone laughing softly, another noisy one talking loudly into his cell-phone, some sort of music playing in the background, people walking by the coffee-shop. In that sudden moment - time freezes. I look around and peer and stare and I wonder what it is that we humans are doing here. I can't help it. Sometimes I want to burst out with a laugh or a cry or a shout - "Look. Look at us. We're here. We're on a planet in a very modest solar system of this Milky Way, floating around in the Universe..." Of course I don't do anything. I just sit and peer and stare and go and look at whatever it is that I'm supposed to be looking at with a grim look of determination. Sometimes then I might think of a snowflake or something else, and smile. The breathtaking beauty and the grottiness and the staleness and the surreal - I don't know what to make of it all when I think about the universe and our world....How is it all possible? - for one thing ! One of the side-thoughts that my meagre mind sometimes wonders over is, what (on earth?) happens to those astronauts when they get "lost" in space... "And why should it be any different?" - My brighter self retorts. They end up the way any and all human beings do. But it must be different living and looking and breathing and dying in space somewhere. Being able to see the Earth as a "pale blue dot". Please watch this video with Carl Sagan's famous speech in the background. The sound on this one is a tad unclear though....I show it to my class every semester and the students are silent for some seconds after it is over.

Sometimes a strange emotion fills me when I hear of those scientists working and living and researching in the Antarctic and Arctic...they come up with these little news clips on the BBC every now and again. I don't know whether I've ever seen myself doing any of that - although when I first read about the great explorers of the early 20th century, in primary school, I did think that they had indeed been heroic. Once when a friend asked me, via e-mail, where I was and what I was doing I had told her that I was in Alaska (that's about as far North as I can see myself...). I also said that I was working on animal-human interactions (reindeer - what else) - or maybe I didn't but I told her that I was in one of the unusual places (not Fairbanks nor Anchorage). I got so absorbed in the telling of my tale that by the time I sent off my e-mail I honestly believed that I was in Alaska, roughing it out - and felt rather sad that I wasn't. I've never wanted to be an astronaut though. The idea of actually living in a tube with some 7 others and living in those smelly body suits for months on end - doesn't appeal to me now and never did.

But I rather like the idea of flying...and some minutes ago, while outside, I got a wistful little jolt after many months upon seeing one of those bi-planes flying low. I got wondering about Amelia Earhart, that rather amazing woman, who was a visiting prof/career counsellor at Purdue in the mid 1930s. In fact she was on a leave of absence from Purdue when she made her "final" flight in 1937. In the first semester that I was here, a friend, who also lived in the dorms with me, used to egg me on to take flying lessons because I would whoop every time I'd see those bi-planes flying low. The only thing that I didn't do was physically run "after" them. While these and some other aeroplane-related thoughts and images were swiveling around in the morning, a thought caught me by surprise. I really could join the Purdue flying school for some flying lessons. It may not be a bad thing to watch the Earth and be suspended in air somewhere while actually flying a plane....Don't know where I'll be next. We'll see...back to the real world for now.

P.S: A hundred thanks to google. I didn't even know about Matilde Moisant. She was born in Earl Park, Indiana, and she was flying around in 1911...Here's a link.

9/11/2010

Another Fall

2010-08-22T18:40:00.001-04:00

Another Fall semester is going to begin from tomorrow, and I’ve been feeling somewhat nostalgic, in spite of my "cold, fratchy, and unfeeling self", and in sudden bursts (with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy playing in my head and Ami Keboli Swapano playing from my comp. every now and again) because I’m reminded of the first year that I came here. That’s the only time of my life that I feel happily nostalgic about sometimes. When I first came here and for some long months after.

There is no point in brooding over the past but giving a little time for the good memories does no harm. In fact letting in the good memories might even make one feel better and more hopeful about some of the good things that may come to pass still. And in the end – well, there will be an end. But in between there may yet be some good laughs and some bliss-filled times.

The first time I came here I was filled with an unearthly, trembling, delicious and divine hope. I was convinced that good things were going to be done by me. I can’t think of anything good that I did but one good thing, did happen. If anyone scoffs at miracles – I can shove one in his/her face.

It was 8 years ago that I first came here. Eight years is an awfully long time. Eight years in school in India would have been between classes 2-9. Yet sometimes it feels that only two years have gone by or maybe two and a half considering the things that I’ve done and not done and un-done. Calling myself stunted does no good – but it isn’t an entirely misplaced label. Last year I was convinced beyond doubt that I was going to be done here and get on with things. Now I’ve gotten alarmed about still being here.

I wonder whether time passes differently as we grow older or whether our perception of time changes. Does it slow down or does it speed up? I know in some ways, I now measure time by the seasons (and sometimes not too accurately) but that’s because the seasons are discernible. Otherwise there are only clumps of time in my head. In school, every day seemed different. Every day was a different day and I could remember what had happened a month ago or even two months ago. Now I remember nothing of some years and some other months seem to have been stretched out to cover large expanses of space in my head.

Wonder what this year will bring. Some good luck, like during that first year, would be nice along with some military discipline. A couple of laughs, here and there, might do no harm but I don't want to push luck too far.

I harbour the greatest admiration for writers who can write seamlessly, articulately and dispassionately even with billowing mushroom clouds in their heads...I’ve been reading in snatches, from here and there, and from very lovely pieces. Some lovely bits that I read in recent times come from a letter that Tagore wrote to Jagadish Chandra Bose – unstinting and unfettered in his admiration, praise and love, and unabashed in expecting nothing but Bose's love in return – and, another some bits from the many that he wrote to his wife. It’s one of those visceral experiences that makes one laugh sunnily for those minutes, no matter what else one is feeling. Come to think of it, more than a couple of the lovely bits that I've been reading are snatches from letters.

Do we change, I wonder. I don’t know whether I have changed very much. I like to think that I have in some ways. I have to say that for most things I can’t see how I’ve changed, and for other things I don’t see how I could not have. Not just in the last 8 years but from the time that I was 5 or thereabouts and through school and all…Sometimes I feel I haven't changed a whit and in other ways I feel like a different person to myself. Been putting the little scraps together in between this and that, which appear, in no rigid order, in the previous never-ending post.

Bye, for now. God bless...

Colours, Numbers, and Letters

2010-08-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

They talk about people seeing 'things', normally neutral, in colour. This 'process'/'condition' is known as synesthesia (other connections are also made amongst things that are normally seen as being disconnected). Days of the week are always a particular colour and so are numbers (unless numbers are seen as characters), among other things. Some see these and other 'things' in colour. I was reading this and that and I was wondering whether all people possess the trait - like most things - to a lesser or greater degree. I have a feeling that this is one of those 'traits' that run along a continuum rather than existing as a binary (yes/no) trait/condition.

I don't see each day of the week as being a definite colour but some days are filled with a hazy or a lime-green air and other days are filled with a pale wispy mountain blue or a deep, dense blue. Some days are a shimmering and dazzling grey. Some days are grey puffy mushroom clouds - polluted and polluting and ravaged (or maybe it's me who is the walking smog-cloud?). Other days are filled with white light else I am the one immersed in an expanse of silent white light. Never had a rose coloured day although some days come across as greyish-pink and others as reddish and angry and bruised. There are pale lemon days with grey specks and some are lavender. Some sure are colourless. Sometimes washed out, sometimes translucent, and sometimes transparent and liquid (with or without colour).

Numbers aren't imbued with any specific colours in my mind but they do seem to be characters, and these don't shift but only 'grow' (as characters do). Double numbers are characters of their own. I won't go through all of the numbers (haha) but to take some -

7 is serious, quiet, brilliant and somewhat shy, and thoughtful and quick-witted, and given to a sudden somersault, and is boyish.

9 is a little like 7 here and there (...actually 9 is 7's elder brother), and has a temper and broods and is given to deep laughter ( '9' should never be written with a curvy end but should end in a long and straight line).

6 is graceful, fast, is musically gifted, and is a blithe spirit.

5 just sits there, and is slow, and lazy, and dreams too much and is rather pudding-y.

2 is alert and quietly bright, sometimes noisy and sometimes quiet and lonely in a corner near a window.

1 simply is - observant and smiling - either it's enlightened or high or maybe both...

and the 0 is as it should be - perplexing. It is everything or nothing or both or what? The 0 feels empty and feels full.

...Some of the numbers make faces.

Letters don't seem to have specific characters for me (nor are they filled with any colours) apart from the usual sharpness or 'curviness' or in-between-ness that comes with each letter - especially when hand-written and the colours of a day become blurred when I think too much of them. They seem clearer in the passing or in one sudden blast when I'm in the day. The numbers are the sharpest and remain constant in that sense, and have well-defined personalities and come with their quirks and manners and all. They remind me of people.

Each year is always set as it should be - in an *elliptical circle (*and sometimes like a horseshoe), and one travels around with it (and one is sometimes 'late' in 'placing oneself in the right spot) and the cusp between one year to the next is arranged like a spiral....there is a mini-leap between one year and the next and then begins another one and another one (*wonder what I saw when human beings believed in/followed the geocentric model). But take decades and they are stacked but stacked in shelves that slant downwards to the right (the centuries all merge in my head, I can't deal with centuries. No wonder I have difficulty remembering dates, I say). One's own age and that of others come arranged in neat columns.

There is, I'm sure, some sort of a nice story that has to be lurking around amongst these numbers and days and colours...but I can't find it. Not even with my poking forks and prodding prongs.

Talking of colours, I'm also reminded of that interesting experiment on coordination where you have one colour written in another colour. So for instance - for the following list one has to rattle off the actual colours and not the words that are spelt out.

GREEN,

YELLOW,

WHITE,

BLACK,

PINK,

GREY,

ORANGE ...

It's not impossible but one does trip. It's apparently to do with one part (of the brain) being more involved with reading (and all our linguistic abilities) and one part being involved with visual perception.....

The River

2010-07-28T19:33:00.000-04:00

The river near-by, is less than a mile away. I used to go there in the very first semester that I came here after discovering it by accident, while out on a long and winding walk. I would have found it anyway. It is hard to miss. I've kept going back there - through magical times, good times and other times and it's seen me many-a-times and in many-a-mood, and over too many years. I think it's fair to say we have an understanding of sorts. It's there where I went again.

I've claimed a spot for myself.

Somewhat hidden, dipping down the banks into the edge of the river. Off from the main trail. I tramp over some soft sand, half-slide down the slope of the bank, and find a place to sit. It is quiet here. I settle my bag. There is an odd shaped mound of concrete. I don't know its purpose. It slopes and it too is broken, here and there, like so many other things including the bank. It is right next to the river bank of sand and pebbles and loose soil. The concrete slab disappears when there is a flood. I move away from it and go down closer to the river. I sit there on the sand. I look and I can hear. The breeze - it rustles through the trees. The sudden wind gusts through. The water rustles. It rustles over pebbles and the stones and the rocks. There are soft splashes as big fish jump out of the water and leap back in. The sunlight reflects off the surface of the ripples. The ripples are radiant. I close my eyes for a second. The sounds rush through. The murmur of the river. The murmur of the breeze playing lazily with the ripples, and the water lapping against the shore, against the bank of sand, and over the pebbles and the rocks. I smile and open my eyes.

The trees on the bank opposite cast their reflection on the ripples. I used to go to the other side at one point, especially when the river was very low. The bank on the other side merges with the river and one can sit very close to the waters and walk along the sandy and "shrub-y" stretch for a while. I was looking at those banks now from this side. It wasn't the same spot - not even close - but I was wondering what it was like on the other side. I had to chuckle at the thought. Were there people a bit like me with more courage and initiative who made boats or rafts to go exploring? I could only sit on this side, looking at the pulling currents and wonder what lay beyond that particular stretch of the forest on that side.

It's awfully peaceful here. One can sit and sit and smoke quietly, and drink some coffee. I know I could. I don't think any brilliant idea would come, no matter how long I sat - sad that - I'd probably grow woollier in the head and forget almost altogether how to communicate with people but I could sit and sit. Sometimes it's nice to think about somewhat more pleasant what-ifs while sitting near that bit of the river or not think at all - which is very difficult.

Maybe I am somewhat of a "regular" misfit - not good enough to be a rebel with a cause and please some non-normal folks and neither normal enough to fit in placidly and smilingly and normally. Maybe that's part the reason that I sometimes dream of living in the middle of some forest with a waterfall. I'm sometimes more wary of human beings than of wildlife of the raccoon and the wildcat sort. Bears, I'm not so sure about. I don't particularly want to meet them face-to-face and I hardly think I'd be living somewhere where there might be any mountain lions left. This is not the 'more pleasant' what-if though...

Thoughts come in and leave only to return when I'm looking and listening. The sun shifts. The ripples glow silver and gold. The reflections of the trees grow longer. In my head I can see masterpieces of paintings of golden green trees falling into the rippling river. A couple of songs play in my head...I do give one a try. But there's the gruff hiss followed by the flat note. I can hear it perfectly well in my head though. How can it not come out the way I hear it? What breaks down between a tune in the mind and it being released by the vocal chords, I wonder. I chuckle in the breeze and shake my head.

There's a silent long-legged graceful heron flying almost slow-motion over the river. A noisy and heavy duck on the other hand arrives not a second later, making that strange desolate gawking that those ungainly ducks do, swoops down and skims the surface of the river and starts 'sailing' along and bobbing up and down at top speed - still gawking away and rather frantically. Another heron and another duck join the graceful and the rather frantic. Some favourite dreams have been swirling around in the air, and for the time that I've been sitting there...

Now it's time to go.

I look down at the waves lapping the shoreline. The shoreline is deceptively safe. The slippery shore, however, takes no weight whatsoever. The waves are always a little cheeky just when I'm leaving. They sort of draw one in and before one knows it - one is splashing in the river, and trying to drag oneself up a slippery and slipping muddy slosh. I stay away this time wagging my finger while the cheerful innocuous little waves slosh teasingly near the banks, saying "Oh, wet your feet. Oh, wet your feet. Just wet your feet. You know you want to do it." I wag my finger again, saying "Oh, no. You got the better of me the other time. I know better now." "But you liked it. You liked it. It was exciting." So it was. I couldn't argue against that. "Yes, that it was but I don't want to slip all in again. And I nearly didn't get out." "Oh we'd spit you out. What would we do with you? Wet your feet. Wet your feet. You're wriggling your toes. You're wriggling your toes!" "Bye". I holler. "Cowardly custard." Say the waves. "I'll be back again." The waves have gone silent. "I'll be back again." I say a little softly this time, crouching near the shore-line, keeping a safe-distance... "Gmmfh." That's all I get in response. "Well I'll be back all the same!" So saying I let my fingers skim the waves, turn around and start climbing the river bank.

I walk back. I come back. I don't know what good the river walks/'sits' do for me. I have absolutely no idea. I don't see what would have changed in anyone's life if I were unable to go and sit beside and walk next to the river. I don't know what changes in my life with the sittings. I miss the river. I go to the river. The river calls to me. I go to the river. And I stay away sometimes till I run all the way to it. That's all I know.

P.S On some days the river doesn't want me near it. Some days ago, I went down to my spot. The river was heavy, sluggish, slow, stagnant, smelly, and scowling, and it shooed me away. There were hundreds of little flies/mosquitoes and I couldn't sit for more than ten seconds. I'm glad though in a way. That means, on other days the river does want my company, which is gratifying to know...

9/11/2010

On "Inception"

2010-07-22T21:04:00.000-04:00

I've been itching to write about a movie I watched yesterday in a movie theatre after a very long time. I can't write reviews - and never having written a movie review - so I'll just write a bit about the movie without giving 'anything' away (now that can't be done so that's a lie). And here's a solemn warning: my friends in school and a couple of my cousins were always wary whenever I said that about a movie or a book that I'd greatly enjoyed. In my enthusiasm - I would break my word. I would tell them all about it and finish it off with: 'err..well, I guess you don't need to read that anymore...it's much better though than what I narrated.' This is a habit that I have not gotten out of. I did that a week ago with the film 'About Jane' (and I didn't even enjoy it 'greatly').

The film was Inception (but of course). I didn't know anything about it not having watched any trailers nor having read a word about it. A couple of friends urged Guha and me to come for the show, and so mid-week though it was - we met and watched it. I haven't much cared for the previous Christopher Nolan films. (I did know it was a Christopher Nolan film because my friend told me). I have watched The Following, Memento, and The Dark Knight. I have to admit that I liked that last movie for about two weeks and then 'saw' through it. (I watched it with jaws gaping and then found it ridiculous when I thought about it two weeks later). In fact this happens to me every now and then with movies and sometimes with books, which is why I don't like talking about them unless some time has passed. Memento had one fatal flaw in it which I wish I had jotted down, The Following I barely remember and I remember not thinking too much of it when I watched it, although I did like ...the movie with the magicians (not The Illusionist but the other really good one).

The movie is worth a watch. Not because of the fight sequences and the special effects and not even because of the 'central' plot of getting one man (played by an actor I admire - Cillian Murphy) to break up his father's empire but because it travels through dreams and 'shared-dream-space' and explores the idea of being able to create and control one's dreams, of people sharing and controlling dreams together and of traveling through multiple dreams in layers (the idea of a dream within a dream within a dream...), and of influencing others through dreams. There is one innocuous scene in the movie where di Caprio's character and the diminutive architect roams around in a 'dream sequence', and there's something unnerving about the scene because it comes across as being very real - not the physical bits - but the other part with the people.

Makes one wonder about real life, it does, and about daydreams. Do we "live" them somewhere when we daydream or are they just bits remembered/bits missed or do we "dream" them because they are "happening" somewhere? Do we "choose" the people that we meet in life? Do we decide that we will meet? Do some people barge in without the permission of others? Do some people on seeing a stranger simply remember all of a sudden 'oh, I know that person. Need to go and talk with so-and-so.' Is it because we already know some strangers that we think they are familiar while passing them on the road and exchanging, on cue, a sudden and rather embarrassed smile? Those "dreams" unfolding somewhere - are those that fill us with sudden and unbearable and sometimes lasting longing and yearning? (I have to improvise since my regular dreams are as mundane as my regular life and terribly uninteresting unless they're annoying or frustrating, and I have never quite gotten the hang of "lucid dreaming" - which Nolan was/is capable of - so there's nothing in it for me to ponder over my non-volitional dreams).

To return to the movie: there is the neat bit of 'extracting' an idea/information from another while in a dream but there is the even more intriguing bit of planting an idea into another's mind so that the unsuspecting person wakes up from the dream thinking that it's his own, and also acts upon the idea. Thankfully enough (for me) this was more about planting an idea that wasn't a demonic idea or a purely evil one (although there is one instance of 'planting' an idea which doesn't have a happy conclusion at all), for one of the ideas that Cillian Murphy's character walks away with was, most likely, far more precious to him than the purported idea (which was somewhat weak as the central plot around which the movie revolves but strong in its execution) that was planted into his head. And as a viewer, one can run with that idea somewhat further...was it actually his 'old man' who from the other side 'implants' this idea into the 'heist' organizer's head?....

The film is made along the lines of a 'heist' movie (so I later learnt) but it's much more than that. And for me there was some satisfaction in that the end wasn't left completely unfinished and 'unresolved'. The ending is left somewhat loose but not so loose that one wonders which side is up. There was some resolution and it depends on the viewer which way s/he leans. Some uncertainty is fine - but the Memento like non-resolution just leaves me feeling unfulfilled, and the unresolved circular ending from 12 Monkeys leaves me feeling distressed.

The film reminded me of The Matrix, and like a good sci-fi gets one to question reality itself. It's not particularly bizarre to walk out of the theatre feeling somewhat discombobulated because the film jolts one into thinking of the question that one has been trying to sit on: 'what really is reality'?This dominant theme is there (whether the director intended it or not). Is life but a dream? How does one wake up? Can one wake up? What is the 'kick' that wakes one up in real life? Could it be a lasting kick? And the all too delicious question: what would waking up mean?...and to run along with the idea "implanted" by Nolan - has one received one lasting kick, at least, if a kick can also symbolise 'remembering'/not forgetting?

That theme of the film is wrapped up in the 'cultural' elements of the times. The Matrix was made in the middle of the computer super-world with computer viruses and 'codes' and the theme of 'how far the rabbit hole goes', and the questions regarding reality and 'the illusion' were grounded against the backdrop of computers (replacing the machines of earlier sci-fi stories). The illusion was broken only with the courage to see the truth. There was also the oracle and the notion of 'destiny' and the will to act on what one believed in even though one did not believe that one was 'The One'. (Only the first one from The Matrix trilogy is worth talking about...) Inception, being a film of the 21st century is grounded against the backdrop of a corporate 'empire' that needs to be dismantled (appropriate one may say. This part was somewhat airy-fairy...but that is not too terribly bothersome given the other themes) and it's against this bit that those questions regarding reality and layered dreams (illusion?) are brought in. And films of this sort make me wonder: will one wake up? Is one awake? Are we awake? How many dream layers need to be peeled off?....and how long will it take?

The cast was interesting. There wasn't much acting required from the cast - I don't think - although most of them 'looked' (very) good and 'fit' their roles. I started liking de Caprio (for his acting ability) after watching The Basketball Diaries, and he isn't too bad in his role (even with his extra chin that's come from God-knows-where and his voice which sounds somewhat rusty, which would have been fine, but also a couple of notches too high). Ken Watnabe (who reminds me of Chow Yun Fat) fit his role to perfection, and had a couple of amusing liners (although not many people let out a chuckle because his accent and his inflection need some getting used to). I did grin in delight and let out a happy 'Oh' when I saw Cillian Murphy in the role of Fischer. I was also pleased to see the little boy from 'Third Rock from the Sun' (a TV series I used to watch every now and again while in India), who played the part of Arthur. He's grown up very well (although he still looks like he's stuck in a particular age). Then there was the amusing 'Forger' and of course Michael Caine who plays the part of the understanding father-in-law (de Caprio's). There is one amusing and appropriate line in Ebert's review regarding Michael Caine (normally I don't care too much for Ebert's reviews to be honest, but this liner about Michael Caine got me chuckling). The two women (one looks like a tiny slip of an animated school-girl actually; and the other looks very beautiful, I would think, and does have a major role but she somehow didn't come across as being very real...) I didn't recognise.

I will say that some other American actor of Indian origin (I believe is the correct way of putting things in) may have been taken for the role played by Dileep Rao (and notice he does not appear in the 'cast' pictures - sadly enough) just as the pretty woman may have been replaced by some/anybody else.

If I sound vague about the special effects - it's because I don't know too much about such things. I either like them or think they're over done or badly done. The special effects are all right here, and some are bizarre (but interesting, for instance -a city folding over, a city crumbling against the sea, time slowing down, the Escherian bits with a 'paradox') in their execution and I did gape. They were well-done and were not misplaced. The time-line/dream/reality bits are messed around with furiously but always kept 'clear' (so you do know where you are at some point and at other points you simply have to keep running around with the members to know where you are) and there were indeed more than a couple of places/times where/when I was hanging from the edge of my seat - wondering even before they had traveled through a single dream layer how they would or whether all of them would ever get back to the 'real' world or whether one or more would be trapped in limbo. And that's one thing about the cast....one gets fond of all of them - so one wishes for the whole lot to "get back" to planet Earth.

Where a couple of them end up - as I said - is left to the viewer to an extent. For me, insofar as the film was concerned, there was a certain bit of peaceful resolution and I came out of the theatre blinking rapidly and staring at the milling crowds, feeling disoriented, and quite 'unresolved'.

P.S: And sure enough I've given away every bit of the movie worth giving away!

I've changed my my mind about di Caprio. He was quite, quite bad in this movie but that didn't make a difference.

I still like the movie when it crosses my mind, in brief flashes, as it does. It reminded me too of an interesting book I happened to read a year ago. The title was 'The Years of Rice and Salt' by Kim Stanley Robinson. It wasn't about dreams but it was an (alternative) historical fantasy with reincarnation and the bardos and it captured the intuitively appealing idea of human beings belonging to a group of connected kin-folk who keep meeting over and over again across life-times....towards the end of the book and in some of the parts it got a little tiring as far as I remember but I found it an interesting and unusual read on the whole.

And what is it measuring?

2010-07-12T13:01:00.000-04:00

Here are the results of the Greendex for 2010 on the National Geographic website. The first time I saw them I was surprised but in a suspicious sort of way - sadly enough. India at the top of the list in 'environmentally friendly behaviour (and consumption patterns)' in a 17 country survey? I would like to see India at the top of the list of some survey which isn't looking at population explosion or the highest incidence of some deadly disease but the idea that Indians, by and large, are engaging in behaviour that is environmentally sustainable seemed to be a little improbable. A look at the details of the study reveals some basic problems in the study design. It embarrasses me to point this out because this study has been conducted by a global organization alongwith highly trained specialists from the National Geographic.

The detailed report from the Greendex 2009 survey states that it is a 'comprehensive measure of consumer behaviour in 65 areas'. The major areas that the survey covers are questions on/related to housing, transport, food, goods (everyday items and big items). I'll not go into the details of every category. The report mentions that through 2008-2009-2010, rising costs were reported as one of the reasons that individuals engaged in environmentally friendly behaviour. But over and above that - the report states and repeatedly states that rising costs alone were not the only factor. People engaged in the behaviour they did because they felt it would be less harmful to the environment.

The 2009 study report states (as does the 2010 overview) that consumption is measured by the Greendex in terms of 'choices that consumers actively make' and 'choices that are controlled more by circumstances'. Even this distinction poses to be a problem. Choices actively made include: 'repairing rather than replacing items, using cold water to wash laundry, choosing green products rather than environmentally unfriendly ones'. Choices controlled by circumstances include: 'climate [consumers] live in, availability of green products, and public transport.'

To take some specific examples:

Repairing items: in the United States as far as I have seen repairing is not feasible. One, most of the times I can't even find a repair-shop or an individual who does repair-work (unless it's on a car) and two, more often than not it is cheaper to buy a new product than to fix what is broken (I won't go into the details of this). So 'repairing' is not really a choice that a 'consumer' can actively make.

Then take washing laundry with hot/cold water: I'm not sure who the respondents were in India - but it's a rare thing, even now, that houses have running hot water (I'm not sure which houses have running hot and cold water), and somehow I think the idea of filling buckets and buckets of hot water to do regular laundry (unless it's a bucket of whites or clothes that need to be germ-free) will most likely make people raise their eyebrows. It's not even a matter of choice (even if/when the possibility does exist) because the choice itself doesn't make sense.

Take transport, and in no distinct order: One is the matter of availability. Two is the desire. Three is the convenience(in terms of time)/costs. Fourth is the idea that using my own car and using bigger cars and 'better' cars and newer models means a perky feather in my cap. So is this a matter of choice or a matter of favourable/non-favourable circumstances? Does it not go back to the issue of what is being valued and by whom? And these issues exist just as much in India as they do in the United States although the problems are indeed of completely different levels. Whatever the 'choices' are or whatever the circumstances are - it's certainly not just a matter of the distance.

And then take all those aspects, such as, running hot water, heat appliances, and constant air conditioning? How does it make sense 'measuring' these in India? (Or in Brazil for that matter?)

Using personal lawn mowers? And other small engines? Indians don't use lawn mowers and what small engines are they talking about?

And finally to take one last item: 'choosing' to live close to places where one needs to travel? People, in India, live where they do/where they can and go to work....to specifically live in a place to minimise one's impact on the environment? The problem with the question is not that it measures/does not measure environmentally friendly behaviour - it indeed may do so in a country like the United States (where some aspect of choice does enter the action depending upon one's profession and class) - but raising this question, as far as I can see, does not make any sense in a country like India.

In fact the basic problem with the study (apart from the sampling issues) is stated in the study design itself. 'No allowances are made for consumer behavior that is determined by geography, climatic conditions where respondents live, culture, religion, or the relative availability of sustainable products. The Greendex is intended as an overall indicator of one's environmental footprint.' (And if this is the case what do they mean when they say earlier on that they measured consumption in terms of choices that are controlled by circumstances?)

And if none of those above-mentioned factors are going to be taken into consideration - then how can they say that the study is measuring 'environmentally friendly behaviour'? In order to measure environmentally friendly behaviour, a study would have to be designed keeping in mind the culture and the region and also, like it or not, the levels of economic development and poverty and also distinguish between the sort of behaviour that can be practiced/is practiced because of climate/availability of certain goods/services and because of an element of real choice. Now if people have no choice but to engage in behaviour that is less harmful to the environment there is no problem with that - I am all for it as long as it's wisely thought out - but there is a problem when one obtains the figures one does simply because of the levels of poverty in a country or because the questions do not measure what it claims to be measuring, and because of the problems (related to the environment - for instance - littering, waste disposal, terrible pressure on land with the ever increasing population and no strict means of legalizing birth control, over-congestion in cities, the problems of increasing gaps between classes just to mention a handful of factors that do not appear on the list) in one country that are of a very different nature from the problems of a wealthy first world nation. And secondly, and more importantly, my suspicion lies in that the high figures for India (and for two years running) in 'environmentally friendly behaviour' is on the whole not because (the 1000) Indians (interviewed) were/are particularly environmentally conscious but more likely because they are aspiring for the big car, the big house and the running hot and cold water. It's just that they haven't 'gotten' there yet.

Now if the study were measuring one's environmental footprint - that is the impact an individual has on the environment in terms energy use, consumption of different types including food, travel, housing, and also the amount of garbage produced by an individual - it would then have made sense to be asking the questions that the survey asked. The page which gives an introduction to the study does mention that the 'Greendex is intended as an overall indicator of one's environmental footprint.' And that is the truth. That is what it is measuring. And if one looks at the mini questionnaire - here - and if one reads the basic details of the study - one realises why the study lacks validity insofar as the study claims to be measuring 'environmentally friendly behaviour' of consumers. Also, by interviewing 1000 people from each of the 17 countries (no matter the sampling method, and it seems that the survey was conducted on-line), I cannot see how the study can be taken seriously.

And take the issue of 'environmental footprints'. That the 'ecological/environmental footprint' will be 'larger' in terms of resource use, energy consumption, and general consumption in more developed countries - and especially in countries that were driven by large appetites for consumption is not something that is unknown. It's been much talked about since the 1970s, at least (if not earlier), alongwith the problem of the bursting population of Third World and developing countries - and even now the two groups that argued about the two perspectives seem to be at loggerheads for the most part.... The Greendex indeed does courteously point out right at the onset that the study 'reminds us' that people (who are renamed 'consumers') in 'wealthy' countries have a larger impact on the environment. Do we need more reminding though?

And the point remains. If the study is measuring environmental footprints - that is what it should say that it is doing - and that is all that it should say that it is doing. What it is not measuring is environmentally friendly behaviour.

The 2009 report concludes on the upbeat note: 'The message to those that supply the products and services that [consumers] consume, and to those that make the rules about how they behave, is a clear one: Make the right thing, provide the right opportunities, and consumers will do the right thing.'

Nothing that I read from the Report leads me to believe the same. I don't understand how the results of the report lead to this conclusion. And what does 'right opportunities' mean? What does the 'right thing' mean? Do more things have to be made?

The 2009 report, which is available here is 14 pages long. The 2010 report, which I wasn't able to open until now, is 230 pages long (although it's been formatted into slides). For the most part, I can't see any changes between the basic study design.

However, there are a couple of interesting results in the 2010 report: a whopping 140 Indians from the 1000 Indians interviewed said that the environment was the most serious national issue; 370 Chinese felt the same way whereas not a single American believed that the environment was the most serious concern. For most of the 'global' concerns (economy, cost of energy/fuel, air and water pollution, global warming, loss of species/habitat, war/terrorism, spread of infectious diseases) close to 500 of Indians interviewed seemed to be 'very' concerned (measured on a 5-point Likert scale) about all of the global issues (apart from the spread of infectious diseases) and about 200 Americans seem to be 'very' concerned....unless the matter was regarding the economy(and Americans should be concerned about this) or rising costs of energy and fuel or terrorism. There one notes that 740, 470 and some 360 Americans are 'very' concerned about these matters. I don't know whether it's just me but terrorism in the list seems to be a very odd choice. And if one looks at the Indian response rate for all these items close to 50 % of Indians think all of the specific issues are of grave concern. I don't know whether the concern itself is being taken as signs of 'environmentally conscious/friendly behaviour'. And that number of 1000 individuals from each country...that remains quite distressing.

According to the report - Americans seem to be at the bottom of the list and yes, the Indians are at the top (now I can't say I'm too terribly surprised about the Americans being at the bottom but it's the Indians being at the top of this bizarre survey that is unsettling) of whatever it is that this grand survey is measuring. I somehow think that the specialists designing and chalking up the survey were going along with the idea of sustainable behaviour and resource use as measured and as relevant within the American context with less of an eye to the facts that plague a nation like India. When one considers the fact that just the rising middle-class in India accounts for almost the whole population of the United States, and that our 1.3 billion is living on land that is approximately 1/3rd the size of the United States - one has something to think about....

Note: There are lots of interesting articles and stuff though on the website for sure.....

"Do re mi" with a difference...

2010-07-09T18:24:00.000-04:00

I received a link today. It's lovely to see that things of this sort happen, and at a railway station no less. Do visit the link - if you haven't watched the video already - the video really does say it all.

...I guess it's impossible to ignore some 200 people who take it into their heads to make life livelier....

Laughter...grace

2010-07-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

It suddenly struck me why a good laugh is so important to me. I had suspected the reasons for sure but this is another level of knowing.

Laughing - a good bout of laughter - lets me hope. It clears out the dank mushroom clouds of ennui, listlessness and restiveness. It strikes out at the oppressive claws of fear. It clears out, for some glorious moments, the claustrophobic bouts of despair, and infuses me with an absolute laughing and buoyant love. It revives flailing hope. Laughter revives my spirit. It nourishes my soul. It's a feeling of grace. A short and sudden laugh because of an old or young friend and when least expected - is something that cleanses my soul. Those seconds - and those crucial seconds - strip off the veil and I can live in those moments with nothing else mattering. The meaning is all there - contained in that lived moment. Music, it is.

How do some people do this? By a word, a gesture, a couple of statements, a look, a glance, a story, a seemingly solemn comment...by their presence? I don't know but I am utterly grateful that there are in this world those who can make me laugh even when I experience despair. To make another laugh by something said - an anecdote, a funny narration, a deft turn-of-phrase, a witticism, a whimsical comment - is an incomparable gift.

...Or to make another feel happy for some glorious moments by one's sheer being. To make one feel that all the worries and the nigglers and the fears - for now - are unreal and don't matter. To make one feel that what matters is that inexplicable yet divine feeling of bliss, a wholeness, which is the only anchor, and the only thing that matters and is real. It feels absurd that such a state as this that I describe can be - but I have felt it myself. I know it is real. The state exists. The universe makes sense in those moments, like no other. It is a pause in the cycle of time or maybe it is a moment of timelessness. It is like music. This laughter. This smile. Those moments. They touch the soul.

Laughter - the grace of giving and receiving laughter, joyous and pure - is, I'm beginning to think, like the 'quality of mercy' as Shakespeare had so fittingly put it in.....

I'd like nothing better than to be able to make some real being smile or laugh for real...and have them feel that same unfettered bliss that I have experienced. I'll say an 'Amen' to that.

One Oddly Addictive Song...and one other.

2010-06-28T13:05:00.000-04:00

Very unlikely Pop-stars
Been playing this song and humming and/or singing it all morning while walking all around the house in between typing stuff and dancing in my chair - I don't think I've made a thousand miles as yet. And I know I'm not a man - but still.

I can keep listening to the same song for days together but it's a harmless (as long as no other human is being subject to the ordeal and my cats don't seem to mind at all) and a not uncommon practice. I think I may be doing the same with this song for the better part of the day. So I'm sharing the song with those who most likely haven't heard it. Some young people might just like the song....

Wonder what it is about the song. There is that lovely Scot accent ('ewe'? 'eoou'? 'eeooeue'? 'goooes'? 'looonely'?). There is that upbeat music which makes me want to break into a sprint (or a dance?). And there are the crazy lyrics. Hmm...walk 500 miles, and 500 more. So that's a 1000 miles and it's some 5000 miles by the end of it. Not too bad. I've often wondered how far I can walk if I just keep going.

Some other day I'll share some other songs. Not today. Hmm. Maybe I'll share just one other one, which I'm reminded of. It was one of my favourites some 20 years ago (and I would sing it, too, and lustily). It's the '500 miles away from home' song. Very different from the first one. And this reminds me of ---- but let that be for now.

P.S: Sorry about that previous post which doesn't turn up. I'm wondering how much of it to put up...it will be up again soon, I guess, minus the 'haver-ing'.

The Flower

2010-06-22T09:42:00.000-04:00

A memory from the past while looking through some National Geographic photo-spread of flowers, which I'd forgotten but now makes me smile and sort of chuckle, fluttered in this morning.

We were in Class VIII. I can't say I was in love with flowers back then. I liked them enough. Drooped lazily here and there. Some growing underfoot. Others nodding on the trees, and I also liked watching fat cows eating them. Every now and again we had these 'flower decoration' deals for the Creativity exam. I had one set decoration. A 'basket-case'. A wicker basket, in which I'd otherwise store pencils, erasers, pens, pins, an old compass, an old scratched ruler, loose paint tubes, and everything else which I didn't know what to do with but didn't throw out, would be brought out into which I'd drop a bunch of straggly flowers and leaves. Every time we had a flower decoration - that would be my masterpiece, and then I'd be yawning or reading something or dreaming while staring out of the window or into outer space while fiddling with and flinging some beads of water onto the fast drooping and limp flowers.

And then for a Bio class one day, a friend of mine brought in this ravishing dahlia. Of all the flowers that I'd seen, I'd bonded with dahlias the least. But this one was something-else. A wine-red so deep and liquid drenched it and the starkest white limpid spots flecked the petals of that gorgeous beauty. I was staring. There were oohs and aahs all around. And for the whole while I was staring at the flower. My friend and I would share a desk every now and again, and so for that entire day - there I was staring dreamily at this beautiful thing. Bio class was over at some point. I'd gone out for a little walk and came back to see my flower gone.

"Where is it? Where is it?"

"What?"

"The - . The -!" I said pointing frantically to where the beauty had been.

"Oh, I gave it to so-and-so."

"What?...Why?"

"She wanted it."

"You gave it to her because she wanted it? But I'd ..."

"She asked me whether she could have it. I gave it to her."

"But I had - I had wanted it too." Out of me before I could take it back.

With the smile in in her eyes I knew so well she said,"But you didn't ask for it, Shilpi."

"But I didn't even think you'd give it...to anyone."

And with the smile now playing around her lips she said, "You should have asked...."

What I did some seconds later (which I'd also forgotten but it sauntered in now and none-too-clearly for the memory is a fickle item rather) as I went stomping off while fuming is something I'll keep to myself.

Do have some of the best memories from times spent with that friend - through school, high-school, and through some good, bad, and ugly college years...

Any bandwagon will do!

2010-06-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

It's this post that I've been wondering about off and on while going about my daily days, and I couldn't figure out why I wasn't writing a comment, for it is a practice among others that I genuinely admire...I was simply feeling reluctant.

Two points: 1, Not all of my musings are directly connected to that original highlighted post although it got me articulating my thoughts. And 2, I very strongly believe in cultivating good habits.

So without poo-poohing biking, using public transport, or simply walking, and adopting other good habits, about which I will write soon but on another day, I would like to muse from the other side.

Why does decent, sensible, and sustainable behaviour have to be promoted as 'cool' or be battered into people's heads with senseless slogans? Why does making sensible life-style choices have to be promoted with a slogan "Be Cool. Go green."? And if that's the way they have to be battered in - is this something that can last?

I’ve noticed different sorts of people.

I know there are many elderly/old folk who have cycled in and out - fair weather foul weather and for more than half their lives. And I respect them as I respect the young people who cycle to work every day (or walk) without making a big song and dance about it or about any other life-style choices that they engage in, which simply are a part of who-they-are.

I know of elderly professors – kind and gentle and very matter-of-fact human beings – who say with a twinkle in their eyes, ‘It’s surprising how much of your grocery shopping, including a six-pack beer, you can fit onto a bicycle' (and this was definitely before the time that cycling was being promoted as being the new-thing-in-town).

I know of men who habitually recycle, compost (instead of using that wonderful garbage disposal that’s fitted to modern kitchen sinks which sucks up any sort of organic residue and sucks it down into its sewagey depths), walk as much as they can, eat non-factory produced meat, buy vegetables from the local farmers’ market and yet are not rabid nor dogmatic nor fundamentalist about their beliefs or their actions, and will even listen carefully when I express annoyance regarding people who do not put their shopping carts back into their proper places but leave them strewn around the car park outside grocery stores.

Then there are the other groups. Anything that’s doing the rounds – anything that is coolly radical, is seen as being coolly hip they will take on to with a gusto that is somewhat tiring if not sickening. Be that smoking or non-smoking, smoking pot or not smoking pot, getting a tattoo or not getting a tattoo, exercising or not-exercising, doing yoga or not-doing yoga, eating healthy or not eating healthy, being thin or being fat, being spiritual or not being spiritual, being religious or not being religious, having sex or not having sex, being a leftist or being another-wise-ist, wearing designer clothes or buying used clothes, driving cool cars or zooming around on trendy motorbikes or using a cycle or two-feet, supporting women’s rights or not supporting women’s rights (or whatever the new group is in town), supporting homosexuality or bisexuality or whatever-sexuality humans suddenly decide to label some years down the line as though it were a matter of life and death or not supporting you-name-it-sexuality, supporting a war or not supporting a war….it doesn’t matter what the issue is. Jump. Jump. Leap. Leap. Tear your shirts off. Wear arm bracelets. Wear T-shirts proclaiming your stance, slap on them bumper stickers and woo-hoo. Shout. Yell. Scream. And then lose your steam because you don’t really know what you’re blabbing about anyway or keep screaming about the same thing till you're 90 years old and have forgotten what it is that you’re screaming about. (Or else write academic papers that nobody can understand while some say ‘hmm, interesting’ while you read their incomprehensible papers and say ‘hmm, insightful.’)

When it comes to long-term, everyday habits (and more about these some other day) I will be suspicious and sceptical about the people who seem to leap and dance about and are all gung-ho about 'cycle to work day' and hand out flyers and are in-your-face and cycle 70 miles or more and then two days down the line you see them whizzing by in their humongous gas guzzling vans or else you spot them going into a coffee shop to get their morning coffee while leaving the engines on their stylish hybrid cars running . Otherwise you get the freaks who will not have a shower for a week (and, please remember, they use only toilet paper after shitting, as the author of the blogs on the right so eloquently put it) because they are ‘saving’ water or they will pee in the alleyway because they are saving ‘toilet paper’, or else you may get the 'whoever said that it was only men who can pee in alleyways' response. Or you might have the misguided and cruel animal lovers who go and release all the animals (who are being experimented upon in hideous and cruel ways and for many-a-times for making useless products too) from a science lab because they want the animals to ‘have their freedom’. Otherwise you come across very, very fat and not entirely non-nice people who are adamant about saving the environment (what about yourselves?)….plenty of other tales but these can do the rounds for now.

I am reminded, and it's not a disconnected thought, of what Gopal, and not non-humorously, muses in Anurag Mathur's The Inscrutable Americans, 'Certainly there was great merit in seat belts*. But typically the Yanks had made such a fetish out of it, that it annoyed every thinking person. It was like cigarettes. Gopal, who smoked very rarely, found himself defiantly lighting up in rebellion against the implicit national demand that he not smoke in public. It had come to a point now where he only smoked in public; he felt it was a democratic protest against the forces of fascism.'

(*There is great merit. I agree.)

And true enough after contemplating on these different aspects, sure, I agree that different sorts of people jump on different band-wagons - and more about that maybe some other day – but it’s still the same story.

I’ll write a post one day maybe about people I do admire and those who, I think, make a positive difference. For now as I keep wondering and saying over and over again: this muddled world of ours keeps ticking away simply because there are pockets of people and some lone individuals more like it – and some not famous by any worldly definition of the term – who are soldiering along and carrying the rest along no matter where the immediate winds blow.

It's a fine thing (probably) if some smart, brainy, clever, and directed individuals can foster good habits and/or practices by promoting some things in a mega way. And I’m sure there are some sensible people who are able to adopt practices in a balanced way after being told because they are able to view a habit/practice in a particular way, which is helpful, useful, beneficial, or good – to self and to others. Countries are different in some ways (and terribly similar too in other ways). People in countries – not so much but what irks one specifically is what one is exposed to every day or every other day, and it’s this violent, in-your-face extremism that’s been getting to me. My rising grouch is that very many times (in the U.S at least) some practices either become nothing but short-term fads or some sort of a one-day wonder or is drilled into the minds of people with some do-this-or-die hyper-mania or else when other idiotic practices too are promoted as being 'cool' or ‘not cool’ – different bunches of non-discerning people will jump onto it and go neighing around about town.

P.S: I'll be the first to admit that there are certain things that I too am absolutely picky and finicky about and there are some things I'm undecided about, some things about which I wish I were an extremist, and some others that I don't know much about. I absolutely admit to all that. At 35, I am an extremist and a fairly rigid person when it comes to certain habits and certain practices but they are not a woo-hoo bit of a mindless or thoughtless (no matter how intense) passing fancy.

Trifles, Tales, Tubes, and Manners

2010-06-10T22:44:00.000-04:00

P.S: Beth, my professor friend, sent me a link for this story otherwise I may never have gotten around to reading it.

There was a quirky piece in the BBC magazine section yester'. I don't know whether anyone wants to read the whole thing but it was about the dilemma that folks have been facing in the tube: whether to offer their seat to the standing woman...yet is she pregnant or is she just fat or is she wearing baggy clothes?

The article is an amusing read and ends off with some tips for the uninitiated but the funniest bits were made up of some of the comments that came in.

One man had once offered his seat to a woman who wasn't pregnant, had offered a seat to a woman who was but she wanted to stand, and didn't offer it (didn't see her standing) to a woman who was and wanted it and got 'tssk-d'.

One man , unable to decide got off at the next station.

A woman who at an aerobics class while sitting next to a fully bellied woman asked her when fully-bellied woman was due. Full-bellied woman gave her an icy stare and said that happened six months ago, thank you very much. The commentator says that she never returned to the aerobics class.

One man pondered on the advantages of being plump. If he were a plump woman he says he wouldn't be offended. He'd just take the seat and keep rubbing his belly for good measure while saying 'aaah'.

One woman who wonders why a perfectly normal exchange, "Would you like to sit down?" "No thank you I'm fine" or "Yes, thank you so much" makes grown-up men and women shrink in fear and cringe with embarrassment. If someone seems to need it - she says - offer it. If they don't take it - she says - it's their loss.

A woman who overheard a man telling a girl, "If you're pregnant you can have my seat. If you're fat - just stand." The girl quickly took the seat and replied, "I'm a good liar and I can sit. You're a *******, and so you can stand.

A man narrates how he cherishes a response he overheard. A girl gave a commuter a mouthful because he offered her his seat (not knowing whether she was pregnant or fat). The man replied, "Madam, I do not offer you my seat because you are a lady. I offer it because I am a gentleman."

A Country?

2010-06-10T01:31:00.000-04:00

I don't know of any country which can take glowing pride in that it -

has no unemployment;

has very decent minimum wage;

has no more than an optimum population;

is honest, quiet, clean, safe, protected;

harps on progress not in just economic terms alone;

emphasizes that acquisition of material goods does not lead to greater measures of happiness;

respects private affairs as long as they do not violate individual rights;

acknowledges and accepts the fact that all human beings cannot and will not be equal - no matter what the opportunities, and realizes that human beings differ greatly in terms of talent, natural aptitude, and interests (apart from certain other attributes) - that these differences neither mean that some human beings can be used or abused or disregarded nor that some human beings who possess qualitatively higher attributes should suffer;

fosters a system of education which allows children to learn and master the basics while teaching them the value of reading, thinking, questioning, introspecting, understanding, retaining, connecting while also teaching them the value of ultimately being able to make their own choices;

'cultivates the Good, True, and Beautiful' in humanity' (Albert Einstein);

sees science as a means of knowledge building and uses technology to make life easier - less cumbersome, more reliable (when that’s possible) while delegating more and more unpleasant tasks to machines (cleaning sewage systems, disposing garbage, working near furnaces, building or fixing of roads in extreme weather conditions are some) - yet also full-well knows that science, medicine, and technology can never fix everything;

respects the arts and the sciences and is able to see the genuine value in both;

has strict laws for the maintenance of peace, security, cleanliness, and civil behaviour;

fosters communication and engages in communication for what it is meant and not for purposes of obfuscation;

never uses violence but as the very last alternative;

understands that the environment while it needs to be protected at a material level also needs to be protected and preserved because of reasons that defy material and even purely aesthetic reasons alone;

protects animals, and as many as it can, because they exist...;

appreciates the merit of humour and music;

acknowledges that there are matters of the mind and heart which must be dealt with as a society but that some parts must be left well-alone for they are private and personal and individual;

recognises that there are matters of the spirit, which we, the common people, can only sense sometimes in fleeting bits or as a continuous yet unnamable presence, and can articulate very little of, yet also realizes that these aspects make them no less real…..

On anger and sins of the mind

2010-05-27T10:03:00.000-04:00

One gets to know something new every day...or as in my case, at least once a week or maybe once a month if I'm careless and forgetful.

I was surprised to find that at least three people I know (and I'm on talking terms with maybe 7, and I couldn't ask the rest of them without them feeling very uncomfortable about being around me), here in the place I stay, have never mentally engaged in murder. They have never killed anybody in their head-empires, have never banished anybody from their head-empires, have never temporarily ostracised anybody from their head-empires, have never told people off....leave alone anything else. I found that quite sobering in a way - in fact they looked at me peculiarly when I was asking them the question. I wouldn't have because I'd assumed somehow that most regular people must have engaged in some form of violence inside their heads but one very early morning while in the middle of a conversation inside my head it struck me that maybe, no matter how hard it is for me to contemplate, there are people who are absolutely non-violent even inside their heads - so I had to go and ask the people I knew. I haven't killed any babies, children and animals I know - not in my head that is and it seems outrageous and ironic to me that I actually worry how I can save and protect children and animals and babies - but grown-up human beings I have indeed demolished inside my head....and I've felt so much unmitigated anger against or scorn for or irritation and/or disgust for more than some that I have felt hot lightning sparks and forks zig-zagging through my head.

I'm not really sure as to what I'm supposed to do with this piece of self-knowing and other-knowing. It's like having a set of clues and not having a clue as to where it's supposed to lead to or what one is supposed to do with it. Not the first time that I've been in this pot. When I chanced upon this bit of knowing I was in a quiet trance but now I know not what I'm supposed to do although I know I'm supposed to do something. Kill fewer people in my head maybe? And stop trying to chop off the heads I've already chopped off maybe twice in a row? Maybe stop yelling and chasing people and asking them to 'get out'? It's difficult though and there is nothing that I can do about the hot shooting sparks - even breathing deeply does not help. It just makes me blank and misty for some hours or for some days before I get mad again. Yet there is the bit about 'Right Thought' after all and not for nothing is the Eight Fold Path so elegant in its simplicity and yet so difficult to put into practice. And there is the dodgy bit about experiencing non-channeled violence and non-channeled passion - even if it is just in the head at one point - if for no other reason (and there are others) that some of it will threaten to burst the dam or burst it.

P.S: I guess a part of me was annoyed about painting myself in bad colours - so it wanted to remind me that I can't, at least, accuse myself of being a hypocrite. I have killed myself a number of times and jumped out of my own skin in shock and with sharp disgust.

A sociologist mother

2010-05-26T12:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I heard a story.

A woman, who is a lecturer in a reputed New Delhi college with a Masters degree in sociology and quite 'brilliant' (knows all the theories and the theorists and the right jargon and would be able, no doubt, to impress people with her knowledge regarding the finer aspects of post-structuralism and post-modernism and critical theory...) and the mother of two school-going kids was looking to do a doctorate because it would advance her career in sociology.

In the meanwhile, when her local ward (who was studying in college) came over to visit, the 'brilliant' lecturer would tell her children "Didi can do your homework. Let didi do your homework. " Now she quite literally meant "let didi do your homework" for the children would object and tell their didi to help them with their homework and not do their homework at which the mother would intervene with, 'No, no - let didi do it. You will get a better grade.'

I'd be the last person on the planet to talk about good parenting and motherhood but that said the above story left me feeling sick and tired.

What a world...

2010-04-20T13:07:00.000-04:00

There's a lot about the world, which makes me splutter and wonder how mad it's getting. Yesterday, in our school newspaper there was a bit of news on a 53 year old woman from Texas (I think) who 'likes' doing her gardening in her pink thongs and pink gardening gloves. The community reported her, and the Housing Corporation wanted to throw her husband and her out of their apartment unless she wore some clothes while gardening. The case went to court, and unfortunately enough the Housing Corporation lost the case....the husband was reported to have said that he was happy with the fair and sensible decision, which protected his wife's freedom. He was glad that his wife could be comfortable while gardening.

For a week or so, a piece of news that's been doing the rounds is of a student at Boston University who had the appalling indecency to go around grabbing some women by their asses while he went by on his bicycle.

I'll be the first to say that such incidents aren't common on university campuses. There is that creepy 'frat culture' on some college campuses, girls do indeed get raped and by boys they know, date-rape (even if all reported incidents should not be believed) has been taken to all new levels, and there is sexual violence but it's not, excuse me, the ass-grabbing and body-parts pinching sort - not on college campuses at least. So this boy on the bicycle - what he did - is probably uncommon. But people don't know how to respond it seems. Some people have expressed doubt as to whether such incidents as 'innocent' ass grabbing can be termed as sexual misconduct. What is it then? Apparently if the boy was out for some mischievous fun - the whole incident shouldn't be treated too seriously. On the other side of the frame - you have people baying and baying furiously while talking about the 'White man's privilege' (!) and equating the incident to rape and you have them blaming the patriarchal structures and the aspect of male dominance in U.S society, and the responses to such rantings are even more non-pertinent.

Now this bit of news comes up on the news about the middle-east. It seems when odd pieces of news follow one - they really follow one. Egad. What sort of a world is this? One can laugh though, I guess. Laugh a hollow laugh.

And the same world has given us human beings who created this ....this .... this ....this ....and there are other creations that make one silent, stop one's heart, make one gasp or make one cry. There are people indeed who have the same effect. I wonder...I really wonder whether all human beings belong to the same species.

What a world...

Charlie bites

2010-04-09T22:44:00.000-04:00

Ouch, ouch. Oh, Charlie!

Is it just me...or does every other Caucasian baby look like Winston Churchill....

It's not just me and it's not something new at all. There are some others who say the same.

Knowing...what?

2010-03-31T00:18:00.000-04:00

Reading, writing, understanding, connecting, remembering, framing arguments, and looking at things from different and sometimes alternative and/or connected perspectives. The way I see it, one of the purposes of education - in the ideal sense - is that it helps a human being to understand more of what he sees in the world around (and beyond) and to bring however much he can within a connected framework of comprehensibility. To know, remember, to connect, and to understand, and to experience a profound joy while engaging in such mental gymnastics. So much for education.

I realise fully well, and always have that degrees mean nought without the mental keenness that is required. Complete duds can acquire degrees. Nor have I believed that being within the framework of formal education somehow automatically confers intelligence - even of the plain academic sort - onto otherwise dull and non-probing minds. If anything being within formal academia, makes many people far more stupid, narrow minded, and more pompous than they would have been otherwise. But it may provide for them with the means of acquiring a livelihood.

In fact a decade or so ago I almost quit formal education altogether but after a couple of attempts I quit trying to quit formal education because I didn't see what abilities I could sell in order to make a livelihood.

I know that one certainly doesn't need to be within the formal academic system to know, remember, and connect. And it's not just detached knowing and objective knowing that I'm talking about. The most brilliant scientists were also humane and connected in that they were never far away from contemplating on the philosophical significance and magnificence of this universe and our place within it. But what is our place in it? Or have we all self-deluded ourselves into thinking that we have some higher, some other noble purpose than to just sit, drink, eat, and exist? I cannot and will not believe that (for one thing: it's much too bleak to think of). For what of the artists and composers, who felt and created? And what of the mystics, the saints, and the seers, the poets and the prophets? The Ones who knew? The ones who spoke about a love so profound? How did they know? And they lived and acted with what they knew. Nobody had to tell them that they were right or wrong, and some did not die peacefully for believing in what they did, and for valuing what they did. How did they know that they weren't just crackpots? There is a difference for sure between the crackpot and the saint!

And what is it that we have done with all our knowing? How is it that we still live in the state that we do? We still kill, maim, plunder, and if not that we spend our lives in a state of unthinking apathy, indifference, fear, an inability to communicate, an inability to focus, an inability to love or to make love matter....

If all the knowing proceeds along a single path one would think that at some point wisdom would emanate. Yet, and I cannot get around this, how is it that we humans seem to make the same mistakes over and over again?

I'm somewhat peeved that I don't seem to have answers to any of the really important questions - any more than I did when I was 17. At least back then I was cocky enough to believe with the fullest and most absolute conviction that I would know all there was to know, and clearly and consciously, and live with that knowledge - and act on that knowledge, and die wise and young. Ho-ho-ho.

I remember The Telegraph (or was it The Statesman?) used to run those fun pop psych. quizzes every week, from which I remember one question. It ran: If you were given a choice would you rather have fame or wisdom? I remember saying 'fame'. I'd reasoned that being famous was not something one could control but was something that one indeed could just 'have' through some accidental quirk of fate....but wisdom, I reasoned had to be gathered, had to be an experience, and had to be the fulfilling consequence of how one lived one's life. It was something that would have to be accumulated, and would have to be earned. One couldn't just 'have' wisdom or 'be given' wisdom (well one can argue that one could be blessed with wisdom). It was akin to greatness as opposed to mere fame of a popular and ephemeral sort. It was something that I would have to possess through my own abilities - however much or meagre, through my own conduct and through my own travels. Even knowing wasn't enough. Knowing but not acting out on what one knew meant that one was no wiser. Now when I look back on that response for a silly quiz I wonder whether it means that I was a smart alec or whether I really was sensible for at least feeling that wisdom wasn't something that one could just have just the way I'd felt about some other things: that old age didn't make one mature and that intelligence wasn't something that could be faked....or maybe it was a quirky incident set up for the purposes of reminding me some years down the line that one should never not truthfully say what one would very much like to have - even if it seems impossible and even if it is in response to a 'silly' pop psych. quiz question.

And so now with another 17 years added on I find myself knowing that knowing still matters, truth matters, goodness matters, courage matters, and humour matters. And when fear eclipses the senses and nothing seems to matter apart from the horror and the haunting nightmares - kindness, laughter, and love matter. These do matter otherwise, without doubt.

In the meanwhile, one earns a livelihood, gets a proper job, prays for those less fortunate, prays with earnestness for the health, happiness, joy, and peace of one's loved ones, and prays with desperation that somewhere, somehow, sometime love matters in an absolute sense.

Yet another Spring Break

2010-03-16T20:14:00.001-04:00

I did something that I've never done before. Nothing terribly exciting or adventurous. I went for a walk all by myself around Prophet's Town. I've walked all around town (well not along the highways or roads, which hardly have any pavements - I don't fancy getting run over by accident) but never in Prophet's Town. Come to think of it - I still don't know why it's called Prophet's Town or Prophet's Town for that matter.

This week is Spring Break. Every other year, I normally roam all over the world in my head during about the same time (unless I've gone visiting outer space - also in my head). This year I had no intentions of doing any terrestrial or galactic space-mind trips since I've never really learnt how to control the trips, and I knew that Guha and I weren't going to be travelling to real places, so I settled in quietly to pass the Break. I have been reading some books that I've been meaning to read for a while and browsing through others (some of which have been in my book-shelf since God-knows-when), writing bits and pieces, thinking about some things, not-thinking about others, listening to some music, driving, walking here and there around town, doing some miscellaneous stuff, and working when my head is stuffy and full.

So today I went to Prophet's Town. The creek was flooded. The forest was silent. The weather was sunny and cold. I walked from one end of the woods to the other, and then back again, and tried not to think too much about anything - but that didn't happen. I couldn't stop thinking. I poked my head out of the forest for a second. The prairie grassland stretched out in all directions. A soft yellow-brown field of swaying stalks. It's odd how this place is always the same yet feels different every time. I don't know how I would have felt if I had lived close enough to take a walk through those woods every day. Would have loved it most likely. May even have learnt how to swim in a natural pool. I broke off the trail only once just to go and splash around in the low part of the creek for some happy minutes. The current wasn't too bad, and I could feel the soft tug. The creek was burbling and gushing. I felt the water with my fingers. It wasn't icy - just about cool to the touch. But I knew it would start feeling cold in one rush if I pretended my fingers were fish. I looked down one way of the creek where the water from the lake was rushing out of a big circular pipe and splashing into the creek, and the mind clicked a photo.

I thought of walking all the way around the lake but all of a sudden, I didn't feel like it. With a gulp and some stuffed images in my head, I bounded up the bank near the creek, and headed back. Back to the car. Back into town.

P.S: The town I stay in is a lovely town in its own rights. I'd never say otherwise.

Bertrand Russell's Three Passions

2010-03-02T13:54:00.000-05:00

This is one of those pieces that make me stop a while, and for three different reasons, and for some in-between. The piece itself is enough for this post. And I'm not being lazy. I can ponder, wonder, talk and ruminate elsewhere till the cows come home or till kingdom come.

16th March; 20:18: I'd been saving this all this time wondering whether to write a page and a half, but I think not.

Talking...

2010-03-01T12:03:00.000-05:00

A thought to consider-

The old, homeless man talks with himself. I, on the other hand, talk with the very real friend in my head....

II: Musing on Writing....

2010-02-24T13:25:00.002-05:00

I don't have any personal problems with nice and happy but reclusive old men who write for themselves or even with crotchety old men who having become severely disillusioned with the world or simply disenchanted keep to themselves and write and keep writing. Salinger, in fact, had me quite infatuated at one point in time when I was in college and in fact for a whole year. I remember reading even a batty piece written by some young un’ who’d been living in with him for some time. The piece had come out in a Bengali magazine, and a good friend in college who knew I was at that point a little ga-ga over Salinger as did her mum, gave me the piece to read when I visited her place once. I never did much care for his The Catcher in the Rye. I never could figure out why it was such a cult classic. Yes, so he talked about alienation but there wasn’t much of a connection that I felt with the book or with Holden in his hunting cap…there was one bit that glared through right towards the end where I felt a bit – but it wasn’t anything to leap over the moon about. It was his short stories that had me hooked though, and his odd book called Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Franny and Zooey. I know now why I found those two books so addictive when I did what with their mix of crazy but alarmingly intelligent and perceptive characters and with their curious eccentric humour. In Franny and Zooey, Zooey tells his sister – Jesus came and sat with me at the table and we had some cookies and milk and a pow-wow in the middle of the night…or words to that effect. Sometimes I wonder, says Zooey with a dreamy expression in his eyes, what with all these suburban houses that look identical….I could walk into one of them and fit right in...nobody would even notice that I wasn’t their son. But it’s the short stories that I will re-read some day again. The other books – probably not.

Come to think of it, I’m sure I may have turned out to be a crotchety old woman sitting in a locked room writing away and mumbling too to no good ends in some lifetime – maybe even in this one. This lifetime I was captivated to learn that Marquez hooked himself up to his typewriter night and day while his wife kept him supplied with cigarettes and paper and coffee and food…if I remember right this was when he was writing One Hundred Years of Solitude(although I like to think that it was when he was writing Love in the Time of Cholera). He wrote and he kept on writing, and didn’t stop until he finished his book. I am also amazed by paperback writers who write well and keep spinning out books by the dozens – people like John Grisham for instance and Jeffrey Archer. I was never a Stephen King reader – but he too seems to churn out books almost once a month. I remember reading somewhere of Enid Blyton saying that it took her some hours in a day to write one of those Famous Fives. A whole book written in some hours in a day, and books which had me completely engrossed as a child. P.G. Wodehouse is one who has me rolling around. How on earth did he use the same basic thread and write and keep writing? And books, which leave me in helpless fits (apart from this one time when a book of his came across as being alarmingly sombre…and it was Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera that got me laughing so much that I cried). Agatha Christie comes to mind too. I’m quite batty about both Wodehouse and her (that’s the connection). She seemed to be a little touched in the head, and in a very creative way and it didn’t take her too long either to spin out those wonderfully thrilling psychologically rooted murder mysteries which demonstrated her sharp and penetrating insight into human nature – in all its pettiness, insipidity, wickedness, banality, and cleverness. And she did believe in calling a spade a spade. (Reminds me suddenly of Dumbledore who doesn’t mind calling some people ‘innocent nincompoops’. Chortle-chortle.) She worked as a nurse during the war which gave her a lot of background info on the means of murder. In fact it was her books, which first got me interested in explicitly theorizing about human beings. Her autobiography, which I read just some years ago after trying over and over again while growing up, is a book worth reading. One of her books, which had a peek-a-boo sense of humour running through it – even though it was a murder mystery called The Seven Dials Mystery – she dedicated to ‘my friend, P.G. Wodehouse’. Now if that’s not lovely in all of its dimensions – I don’t know what is.

Hmm...who's next? James Herriot is another author who comes trotting over. A country vet and how he filled his books with love, joy, and humour inspite of all the hardship makes me think that he was blessed with some unusual grace, while I as a reader can experience the reflected rays of the same. I read him for the first time when I was in Class VII. This bit I do indeed remember. A friend had lent me the first book in the series, and then over the years I managed to gather and read his other books. The last writer who saunters in for this completely random list is Roald Dahl. I read him much later – never even having heard of him when I was in school apart from reading one story. I think I actually read the story in a Readers Digest that a friend had lent to me - only I didn't remember the author's name at that point. It was about the the leg of mutton. I enjoyed reading his autobiographies – Boy and Going Solo – both of which, came in one volume, which I found at the Calcutta Book Fair. One day in college street I chanced upon The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. It cost some ten rupees, and that book has some of my favourite short stories. It has one which I love and remember. The one about the boy who could speak with and understand turtles….I didn’t read his children’s stories until I saw myself as middle-aged but I experienced a rare delight in reading Matilda as I did on reading a short story that another writer had written called A Little Bit of Sorcery. The same writer sent me a story called If Winter Comes – I’ve always called it Natalie - which is my favourite short story of all times. My second favourite is Asimov’s The Last Question. There are other short stories which are floating around - The Teacher, Teddy, So much unfairness in things, Old Love, P(n) uimacha, Chuti, Moru O Sangha, Phutki, and a haunting and somewhat frightening story written by a teen in The Telegraph from many years ago. I remember the story quite clearly but remember neither the writer’s name nor the title of the story. This lifetime I have also wondered how a writer can write on topics as varied as imaginary friends, fantasy, love, baby elephants, civilization, time, nature, beauty, poetry, and The Buddha's word, and ....Hmm.

There are some people who annoy me and irritate me and there are people whom I find silly and superficial. These are the ones who do get their work published, win awards and lots of money, and then claim that they've never written for anyone other than themselves. Right. Then why did you get anything published, or is that being intrusive? Just sit and write. If one really does write for one's own self and for nobody else in the world – then that’s what one should be doing. They even say that they never read their own writing for pleasure, and that they have never loved anything more than to “sit quietly in a room….imagining things”. 'Imagining, what' - I want to ask. And the icing on the cake has to be that the writer didn’t even know that she happened to be a contender for a major award. I am forced to say, “give me a break.” It doesn’t matter how many awards or how famous such a person becomes. I cannot and will not admire such people. The same writers “cringe at the thought” of reading parts from their book in a book gathering because they like their privacy, and yet with every book they have a larger and larger photo of themselves in striking poses. I don’t for one instant disbelieve the fact that some authors are genuinely shy and reticent and quiet people who both love writing and also like communicating with people and are both modest and yet happy with their work, and make it quite clear that they like their own space. I remember watching and hearing Vikram Seth in an interview from many years ago – and he came across as a very gentle, articulate, honest, witty, clever and likeable gentleman…..but people who claim to be shy and reticent yet have these huge spreads of themselves – I cannot help but raise my eyebrows…

What delights me is Asimov writing, "I'm one of those authors who a) likes his own books and b) has no qualms about saying so."

What enchants me as a reader and makes me ponder is when a writer writes, "I write because I want to communicate, and I want to draw like-minded people close to me, and I love to know, again and again, that there are many like-minded people in the world."

So much for my musings....

I: Musing on writing and such matters....

2010-02-24T13:01:00.000-05:00

This had started out many weeks ago as a mini-comment for a blog on the right...but I started messing with it and it kept growing and I kept writing. I wonder what I would have done with it had there been no blog...

At one point in time I was absolutely sure I was going to be a writer by profession. Now I know that won’t happen. Not only did I not have the required gumption, which would have been one thing, but I sorely lack(ed) the imagination and skill. And then when I discipline myself I realise that there are holes in the way I imagine things, and there isn’t much of a fertile, brewing imagination - no paths, forking or otherwise - with which I can fill in the gaps. I think it’s what Arthur Koestler pointed out in his The Ghost in the Machine (a book recommended to me in the first year I was here by the only mentor-friend I've ever had). The ‘things I see’ seem to be one whole fabric but then when I sit to put them down there are holes and I don’t know how to fill them. I know I can string words together - yet there is more to writing than stringing words. I know I can describe things but there is more to writing than mere description. Sure, I sometimes have grand ideas/images – but I concur with Asimov and with all other intelligent people who think the same way. It’s the writing that is the real thing – the ideas, well frankly – everyone has ideas. Asimov narrates that a boy once sent him an idea for a story and told Asimov that he wanted half of the royalties once Asimov published the story/novel. Asimov shot out a reply – I’ll give you fifty ideas. Write out the stories and keep the royalties.

I remember when I was in college there was Pakshi Vasudevan who used to write a column for The Telegraph. Little snippets of daily life. Not outstanding but sometimes quirky and sometimes amusing, often times thoughtful and observant, and sometimes uninteresting. I wonder whether I’d like re-reading the columns if I could find them now or whether it was just a phase. I think I would have been able to handle writing a column of that sort. Nothing too strenuous. Nothing too jarring. Just pleasant writing. How pleasant....?

A bird hopping by. An abandoned cat who is dying, but loves being near human beings. A stray cat, with one bad eye, who doesn't trust humans but has befriended the neighbour's black and white tabby. Two cats sleeping in one basket. A giant spruce that is supposed to be about 50 feet or even 70 feet tall but is less than a foot and seems to be growing by the millimetre every year since I've seen it, and how people in the neighbourhood fear that it's never really grown much in all the time that they have seen it. A creek with frozen water. Trees with icicles all over, which make everything around look like a scene from a fairy-tale with no fairies. Grey skies and a faint lemon yellow sun, a sweeping snowstorm, a remembered story, and a walk through the town and over the bridge with the river below, which is filled with happy ducks and flapping ducklings, missing people so far away.....

The homeless man near campus who talks with himself, and whom I've seen every year for every year that I've been in this town. The girl who looked like an 11 year-old who talked with me breathlessly one evening saying that she had run away from a foster home and that she wasn't going back and that they didn't want her back. The boy who had leapt from the 10th floor of a dorm room, and whose body was found half-hanging out from a garbage dumpster. A clever student who died in a car-crash just some hours after he had sent an e-mail with a question about an assignment....

What does it mean to know something? At how many levels can knowing happen? What happens inside and then that which happens again? How does one know that knowing can be trusted or believed? What is knowledge, wisdom, or awareness? Where does conscious awareness come from? What's truth? What's the meaning of life? Who brings/gives meaning? Is it all a mistake? Some kind of a terrible game? Can unkindness be done away with? Can fear really be banished? Where really is God? Whose God? What is life without love? What is anything without love?....

Anything that requires thought I don’t seem to want to write about any more. I won’t go so far as to say that I don’t think about other things – but why I won’t write about them is something I never can quite understand. Is it because I don't really have any thoughts? That I don't even know what questions to ask. Or is it because that real writing takes a lot of concerted effort and determination, and most of all it requires a well-ordered mind so that one knows what one wants to or desires to write about and writes exactly that. I guess the last one is useful while facing lots of things in life, and as Dumbledore pointed out, and beyond.

I don’t remember exactly when I read Fulghum’s classic – All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten. Was it in school? In high-school? It was sometime then. I don’t remember very clearly but I remember the friend who told me to read the book knowing that I’d love it. And I still do. I remember the friend and I still love the book. I would have been happy writing one ‘something of that sort’. I’d have felt quite smug too – knowing that I had made my contribution to the world in some way and for making the money – and I know exactly what I’d do with the money. Chickens and eggs.

I read The Little Prince on Saturday for what has to be the hundred and seventh time – and I know for sure that I would never be able to write something as simple, as magical, as imaginative, as real, and as bizarre as that. It takes a different mind to spin a story of that kind…

When I read Ursula LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea (because a friend had been pestering me to read it for months) some days before I turned 30, I experienced a similar feeling. She has spun a world with characters that is simultaneously unreal and real - and the manner in which she lays out her world and presents her characters as they grow makes me feel as though she has lived in the minds of these characters and in that world – it is a world that I carry around with me. Ged will be with me. And while it is a series written for young adults – she doesn’t seem to think that everything needs to end on a perfect note or at a point where everything is saved with The Chariots of Fire music playing in the background. It is a muted series where something terribly important, the most important I would say, unfolds and comes through in a subtle and almost ‘always known’ manner apart from all the adventure and the horror. Yet other things – some broken things, which do pain one, are never repaired. It’s a series that I would have loved if I’d read it in school but would have also known that imagining a world and its people in the way LeGuin does was beyond my ken. That now is imagination – yet I’ve never heard her thump any drums about it….

I write I now know because I have to. But I write only the minimum – the bits that I must. The rest stays inside my head mostly rolling around and getting mixed up with other things and sometimes when it reads something it recognises – it does some head-nodding and head-shaking, and then it goes back to what it was doing – rolling around. The bits that are written are written because otherwise I get crotchety. The bits written are something like coffee, cigarettes, and bread, and communicating with some real human beings, and the friend in my head…

I like knowing that some person somewhere likes what I write…and as self-centred as it may sound – I like re-reading some of what I write. I even like re-reading some bits that nobody else happens to like. I don’t like re-reading my gushy mails or gushing diary entries, which embarrass me to no end when I chance upon them later (and I have the unfortunate habit of gushing) and I dislike my academic writing, which never sounds smooth or informed enough or remotely interesting and sounds somewhat, excuse me, constipated. I don't think I write enough to like or dislike what I write - but still. Hmm.

Two blonde women, a little boy, and a '?'

2010-02-05T08:43:00.000-05:00

Something happened after 10 years yester'. Not the first bit.

Armed with reading and writing stuff, I went over to to a coffee-shop, which I used to visit for long hours during the very first year that I was here. I got myself a cup of coffee and settled down comfortably on a nice long couch made for five people, took out my stuff and started making notes in my head and wrote down almost all of them in my notebook, having a nice quiet and almost splendid time, which was broken every now and again by the very loud voice of a woman with an interesting accent and her sometimes loud hoots of laughter. She had curly blond hair, was wearing some bright make-up, and was slightly on the heavier side although she carried herself with a confident swagger. She was sort of gently flirting with her ex-students, treating them like her willing slaves, and sharing stories from her love life in an unnecessarily loud way. Sadly enough, deaf as I am, I couldn't pick up any interesting bits - and the harder I try to hear, the less I can - and so I just kept hearing her rather raucous voice with some clear words in between. I wouldn't have minded at all of course if I'd taken a liking for the woman but there was something about her manner and demeanour that I simply didn't like. She wasn't wholly unpleasant but I've known people of the same sort. After a while I went out for a smoke and then visited the restroom. When I was washing my hands, a loud and importunate knocking made me jump out of my skin. I always find it odd yelling 'Yes - who's there?' while inside a restroom (I don't need to know and I'm not letting you come in...so kindly wait), and I didn't want to grunt so I pulled out a paper towel to wipe my hands when I saw and heard the door handle being furiously manhandled almost as if someone were trying to break through the door.

I flung the door open, and a bespectacled woman of indeterminate age with a bright shock of blond hair looked at me, and with a fuzzled, frightened, shocked and somewhat righteous glare in my direction, she spluttered "...but...but..this is the women's...." I peered at her and stared at her with a stare (I actually could stare down at her for she was a rarity. Someone shorter than I happen to be). Her voice petered off. "I...I...knocked twice....there was no-no answer. Nobody said anything....So I tried the door-handle." She still stared at me not able to make out any longer 'what' I was. I gave her yet another 'look', swished my skirts and thumped off in my boots without a word.

I always got the 'looks' while in Calcutta - on the buses and on the metro - but I'd never before been mistaken for a member of the opposite sex while dressed in a printed blue skirt, an obviously female cardigan, and a bright blue scarf. Maybe she missed the billowing skirt or maybe she thought I was a cross-dresser. I don't know.

*******

In summer something completely different happened. One of those things that I'll remember with fondness. There was this charming little brown-haired, thin, bespectacled boy of 7 who had come for a barbeque hosted by our neighbour. Guha and I had gone outside for a smoke after almost everyone had left. I had earlier noticed that the little boy had been the only one who had been glancing at me with enormous curiosity and bright eyes, and I knew he would say something. Sure enough he came over to me and with a disarming frankness, asked, "How old are you?" I grinned and said, " I'm 679 years old." He fidgeted and mumbled and hanging from the stair railings, said "Nu-oh." "Really." I said. "What's your name?" he asked me. I told him, and he repeated it after me. I asked him his name and he answered. Then, a little more urgently, he demanded, "How old are you?" I grinned and said, "Okay...okay I'm 98." Guha ventured in on our conversation, when the little boy asked him, "How old are you?" Guha asked him, "...and how old are you?" "I'm 7", said he. "I'm 6", said Guha. "No, you're not. You look old." The little boy turned around and asked Guha, "How old is he?" Guha looked at him and then back at me, and said, "Oh, she's a 1000 years old at least." The young un pointing at me furiously said, "She? She? No, him. She's he. Not she." I looked at him with a huge grin, and said, "No, I'm a she. Really. I'm a girl." He looked at me and said, "No, you're not. You're a boy..." With the grin now threatening to split my face into two, I managed to say, "No, really I'm a girl, and I'm 33 years old." The boy looked at me, and with a terribly disappointed air, that made me want to give him a hug, he turned his back to us. His mum or dad called out to him at that point. He looked back at me and said, "Got to go. Bye..." "Bye Daniel, and take care..." "Grunt" came a reply.

Books are no fun....

2010-02-02T10:07:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, while on the road, Guha, directed my attention to an advertisement on the back of a van. The van was a University store van, no less, which proudly flaunted the ad:

NO books. Only Fun Stuff.

To drill home the message - the word 'books' was framed within a red circle and had a black line running through it.

A faintly ridiculous sport

2010-01-31T12:46:00.000-05:00

I think I'm more like a bear. Hibernating during the winter months would have suited me well but since there is no way to go into complete hibernation - I stick around physically but go to sleep inside my head, and then feel disgruntled for feeling so slow and sluggish in the head.

There had been some half-written posts but they still need work - so I'll leave those aside. Every time in the recent past that I've thought about writing a post - there is this one odd thought that simply clamours to be written.

I had a quiet Christmas, and some time during the Break - before or after Christmas Day, I don't know - I started thinking about different sporting events. Now many of them make intuitive sense. Running, jumping, even the hurdles race - they make sense, and are sensible sports I think (not the hurdles as much as just plain running - but still...)

Others, such as gymnastics, swimming and diving, inspire a sense of awe within me. To think that the human body is capable of such incredibly complex, lightning fast and smooth motions.

But then I got to pole-vaulting, and I stopped. Growing up when I did it’s hard not to remember the name of the gentleman most closely associated with this 'sport'. The sport itself seems quite ridiculous because it involves agility, coordination, speed, lightness and flexibility and must involve even a certain amount of grace, I'm sure - but to put it in mildly - it is not a graceful sport. Far from it actually.

Who are the folks who decided that pole-vaulting would be a 'sport that made sense'? Run along with this long pole at a great speed. Okay. Throw the pole? No. Keep running. Reach a maximum speed and then sharply, if not smartly, thrust your sturdy pole into the ground - and then use it to spring your body clear over a bar and then land onto a foam mattress.

Then one wonders about the evolution of the sport. Sure, I realise there is some history to it, and that history would not involve men being used as hailing pellets to squash 'the enemy'. One can find if one wants to, information on the net about how men used poles to cross canals instead of taking long-winding routes - yet those poles from so many centuries ago were hard and inflexible - and most importantly where did these brave men land exactly after springing over the barrier that they needed to cross? No foam mattresses were strategically placed on the other side to cushion their fall. Did they break their limbs? Did they break their backs? Did these men receive special training? Could all men perform stunning and ridiculous pole vaults? Was it something as natural as walking and then whistling and saying, 'oh yes, time to grab and run with the pole now and leap over the canal, and then land on my feet...'

Pole vaulting is something that should have been a part of circus performances. There are other sporting events that I find rather ridiculous - yet most of them seem purely ridiculous and little else. The thing with pole vaulting is that it involves the aspects of speed, agility, fluidity, and power - which normally make any other sport graceful and elegant....

Pole vaulting somehow reminds me of playing the harp. At which point does someone decide “My child shall learn how to play the harp.” When does the child say, “I’m going to play the harp, and be the best there is.” So many string instruments to choose from – why the harp? So many track and field sports to choose from – wonder when or why someone says, “Pole vaulting is the one for me.”

And following this most unsportsmanlike/ ‘sportist’ post, maybe I shall stop hibernating inside my head.

Growing Old

2009-12-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I had a conversation with good old darling Joe, who's in Flagstaff. Joe turned *41 this year, and he looks like he's 21.

A bit from the phone conversation:

Joe: Oh, Shilps. I'm growing old. I've been trying to get back into running, and my tooth hurts.

Me: Knees, Joe. You mean your knee hurts.

Joe: No, no Shilps. My tooth.

Me: Your shin? Yes? Your shin hurts?

Joe: My tooth, Shilps.

Pause.

Me: Ankles?....

Joe: The Tooth, Shilps.

Pause.

Me: What do you mean, Joe? You're not running on your teeth instead of running on your feet, are you?

Joe: No, but the tooth hurts when I breathe in the cold air while running. Remember the tooth?

(Pealing bouts of laughter on both sides)

Me: Oh, yes. The bad tooth. You couldn't laugh at any jokes during winter when we'd all be walking back at night...and you'd grimace instead and look like a snarling and rather hungry wolf.

Joe: Yes. (mini-giggle). That's the one. (very sober and sombre now).

Me: But that tooth of yours has been bothering you for fifteen years. What's growing old got to do with it?

Joe: I'm growing old. My tooth hurts. I have to keep my hand over my mouth while running.

Me: Why don't you keep your mouth closed? You don't need your mouth open while running.

Pause.

Joe: Oh...! But it's difficult, Shilps. I'm growing old. I can't breathe through my nose anymore. I'm growing old.

Me: You can't breathe through your nose because you're growing old? Well use a scarf over your mouth and breathe through your mouth then.

Joe: Yes. Ana gave me one. I have a ski mask too....

Me: Well there you go. Then you can keep your mouth open and keep breathing, laughing and running, but you won't have a painful tooth.

Joe: The tooth hurts Shilps. I'm growing old....

*Beth tells me that Joe has put up a note saying that he's turned 42 this year. So I guess I'm the one who's growing old....

Priceless Prayer

2009-11-27T10:45:00.000-05:00

I read the below just yesterday on a British website, loved it on multiple counts, and have to share it.

A local minister was walking past his church when the intoning of a prayer made him stop and then leap out of his skin.

What had happened...

The minister's 5 year-old son (John?) and his friends while playing around chanced upon a dead robin, and wished to give the poor dead bird a proper and decent burial. John hunted around and found an old shoe box for the robin's final resting place. The lads dug up a small hole and John, since he was the minister's son after all, was chosen to administer the last rites and say the prayer for the deceased robin. In an impressive, solemn and sonorous voice, John intoned his version of what he thought his father always said, "Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonn, and into the hole he gooooes..."

Reminds me of the time when I was about the same age as John, and said for four straight years, "Guard India 'n watch over us".....

Spotty

2009-11-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

I've done away with the original post because there was something that came up in a conversation some days ago. Subconsciously I rather liked the idea of wearing the halo, sprouting golden wings, and feeling righteous....but seriously - I was being a sham. I doubt that I would go out of my way to do anything for poor Spotty. I have never gone out of my way to help whole human beings I claim to care for nor have I ever done anything to make real human beings feel happy - so I dare say I should be a little more careful when it comes to publicly commenting on other people's unkind and offensive behaviour while making myself look like a docile angel with batting eyelids. I've tried to do 'no harm' - but alas, going by my record in terms of thoughts alone leave alone direct action - even there I haven't made much headway.