A little gift from the river

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'

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

'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

...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

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

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

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....

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

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

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

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.