God, this month seems to have whizzed by on certain
weeks and seems to have passed by in the slow lane in a week in the middle, here and there. Fimh has been
prodding me for two weeks to write a post and now I’ll write a bit. It beats
being obsessive over a brochure outline or a new website or a workshop powerpoint presentation or sitting and
brooding over what is to be in the coming days and weeks and whether I will or
will not get any calls for workshops or worrying over other stuff or puzzling
over the last month. The last month makes me wonder actually – which makes me wonder all the more in a way, because a little over four months ago I was sure that my sense of wonder was broken and quite lost. Strange sleep dreams and different waking ones even came about in this month. But I don't think people will believe this. They'll call me abnormal or strange if not unhinged and loony. Anyhow.
Strange with a beat...
And then on a Sunday after a rather whozzy morning
when I wandered around my place like a ghost that walks with lines from the above song playing in me 'ed, I took out the paints
I had bought a few of evenings ago. Not water colours or acrylics or oil
paints. I cannot paint like an artist but I can paint walls, doors and windows.
So I got out house paints. I had been looking at my place through objective
eyes for about a week. I’d looked around and said that the apartment I stay in is
hardly The Ritz but that aside the doors needed fresh paint. So I went about
painting the doors. I’d completely forgotten how nice it feels to paint with roller
brushes and a big fat paint brush where the only aim is to cover the piece nice
and well but not too thick and not too thinly. I was reminded of scenes from
the original The Karate Kid where the Sensei teaches the kid the master
strokes of the ancient martial arts through the art of painting walls. I didn’t
master the strokes of the martial arts but I had a rather meditative time painting
the doors in the contained anticipation that a particular Somebody might just
come and visit, if even for a bit. There was a bit of a mishap when what I had
seen as being a soothing saffron turned out to be a shrieking yellow but then a
mix of white did the trick. But the painting, among other things, got me
wondering: I’d much rather quietly paint doors rather than do the ten hundred
things that people seem to love these days. That goes for socializing to
pub-hopping to gobbling huge quantities of food every weekend to coyly flirting
and facebooking their ten hundred pictures to show how pretty or ‘cool’ or
‘hot’ or good looking they are or being 'busy' with 'work' that neither brings in a lot of money or any prospects of more money nor
fulfills some meaning or purpose in life. I was also reminded of a news piece.
I don’t read newspapers regularly. I keep meaning to and sometimes I manage to
buy a paper when I’m outdoors but otherwise apart from two years in college when
I read the newspaper cover to cover every day – I don’t regularly read the news.
However the news piece I read was commented upon by both Suvro da and Pupu and
when I’d been glancing through the papers – the piece had indeed caught my
attention because it was so ludicrous but so apposite for the times: it was
about a bored and depressed billionaire. If I were to go along with that bit I
would digress too much. But to keep it short: I couldn’t help thinking that the bored and depressed billionaire would have a good
time if even he decided to paint his doors and walls or buy a piano and get
tuitions on how to play or take music lessons or painting lessons or take some special friend out
for a thumping good vacation or...well, let that be. I was reminded of one conversation between Pat
and Robby in Three Comrades where
they rue over the fact that the wrong sort of people seem to have so much of
money and about Modesty and Willie on how they use money to good ends –
well, to be honest, Modesty has very clear ideas on that and about money;
Willie, while he does have crystal clear ideas about one aspect of life, he isn’t very
clear-headed about the money part till Modesty spells it out for him. So much about house painting and life and living. One more
thing: I wouldn’t recommend distemper for new timers (I've tried that) but plastic paints are
nice to paint with. And these days, they have pretty and different designs that
one can try out on walls with pre-made stencils although I think people can
make their own designs too.
Would I recommend the translation of the lyrics that appear on the screen? - nope. No. I love the whole version without the translations. That goes back to a memory.
Then it was in the middle of the week and I’d
been loping about the house – doing this and that. It was one of the random
days that I was in the house, and I got a surprise that didn’t even belong to
the box of my often-times fantastical imagination. In the midst of hunting for a
work-file, from 10.30 in the morning the day changed into one of those
exceptionally rare and perfect dream sequences, which is like a unique
snowflake. I ran out of doors making sure I had my phone and was wearing decent
clothes. Before I knew what was happening – I had a perfect tour of the
Jadavpur University campus. One of the finest moments for me was looking in on
a classroom where Suvro da had taught a class as a Master’s student, which he
pointed out to me. I’d been wondering about that class and scene and for more
than a couple of years. Suvro da wondered about one professor and how he could
be still around. The professor’s door had a lock and it did say ‘Out’ but there
was his name in its real presence on the door. We stood around one balcony in the Economics department, talking, which overlooks one section of the campus which has a small gazebo. I wondered whether that structure had been there thirty years ago. Suvro da's car, in one of those strange co-incidences, was parked right across from where we stood and seemed to be winking at Suvro da. A little later, we crossed the road for some
tea. And even I could see that the place couldn’t have changed much in thirty
years. There was a feisty dog there which insisted on standing in the middle of
the road and barked noisily at a car which had hardly touched it. I scolded the
dog while Suvro da grinned and remarked that the dog liked to live dangerously.
The doggy poo-poohed a biscuit which was given to him but went over to the
other side of the road to gobble up some food that was laid out for him. I
liked my biscuit. The very young chap manning the tea-stall, upon Suvro da's chatting with him, said with a smile
that it must have been his grand-dad who had been manning the counter thirty
years ago. It was back to the campus and I could almost see the place in my
mind’s eye and in sudden scenes from more than thirty years ago with the
students just a year younger telling their batch-mates to move aside because ‘Suvroda’
was coming in. I had been worrying like a worried hen about the hour and a half
and yet before I knew it – it had zoomed by and rather too soon. We sat under a
tree chatting, watched the students and their doings, the walls with posters
and messy graffiti, had a Pepsi, saw the dark thunderclouds spread across the
sky and took shelter under the roof of what is called ‘Worldview’ when the
rains came down for a bit, and chatted and chatted in-between in bits and
pieces and some more little bits which needed some more pieces to fill in more bits of the 'over-sized brain twisting jigsaw puzzle'. But maybe, so Fimh claims, I can look forward to some other times. Pupu came in soon after her exams were over with
her new friends. A couple of her friends were more talkative than the rest and
Suvro da rattled off all he knew about Pupu’s friends and they looked delighted
and a little amazed that he knew and that Pupu had told him about them. I grinned with a quietly blissful contentment inside my head. It
was off to have lunch after that. I had one of my favourites – momos. It was one of the nicest momos but I think that was because of the company...One of
Pupu’s lively friends dubbed me ‘Pishimoni’. Pupu didn’t miss out on remarking on that with a laughing spark in her eyes. That certainly was a first. We visited one part of Pupu’s department. I
was looking at the posters. We walked around and I tried not to worry about Suvro da and his straining his leg, which made me somewhat like the boy from Aldous Huxley's tale of the boy with the 'magic carpet' and the purple cow. I didn't nag him too much, I hope. In some moments with the way he was moving around, I might have almost forgotten that he had a leg which was still hurting. There was an insistent man, I remember, on the ground floor of Pupu's department who
was selling hand made cards and coconut sweetmeats. In a sing-song voice, he was telling folks about his ill mother and about being an ex-student of Jadavpur. He latched onto Suvro da and Suvro da bought some stuff from him. The very discomfiting man rather reminded me of the Sherlock
Holmes story of the man who used to pretend to be a beggar. Some kids who were trying to raise money for some political cause had also zoned in on Suvro da much earlier, I remembered, and Suvro da had talked with one of the kids and handed out some money to one who had smiled hugely and seemingly gratefully. Pupu admitted to buying lots of joss sticks from another such sad sort of seller because she had felt terribly sorry for the person and then distributing the joss sticks amongst some of her friends later. None of Pupu’s
friends wanted to have coffee after our lunch and look-around, but I always do and when Suvro da asked me
whether I did – I said a huge ‘yes’. So we sat around with some coffee and I
suddenly told Pupu and her friend about the great big husky that I have
encountered across the last year and more on my work-trips down South. And then
the snowflake of a day walked on a bit for a little while longer in a most unpredictable
manner.
Then there was the superb trip to Durgapur on
Friday with Suvro da in the front seat and in his car, Earl Grey. The very
relaxed and competent driver, on a couple of occasions, raised even my
heartbeat with his overtaking tactics. I almost got up from my seat once and
the only thing that stopped me was the image of Suvro da telling me not to engage in
back-seat driving! But God be blessed – Suvro da told Feroze, his driver, to
take it easy. The highway which I have encountered on more than a few occasions
on the bus looked completely different in Earl Grey and it was fairly free of
traffic. It looked beautiful and my eyes were fixed on the highway, for the
most part, almost like I were the one who was driving. The highway reminded me
of those highways from the US apart from the lorries which insisted on driving
left of centre. I think the only other difference might have been is that I
would have been driving…and the kaashphool which I spotted in one sudden beautiful
moment – the first of the season. With his eyes, Suvro da wondered aloud about the trees on the left-hand side which weren't as lush as the ones on the right - I was willing to overlook that till he pointed it out. Suvro da pointed out to the stretch that he
normally drives, and I could visualize that quite clearly. I didn’t even notice when Earl Grey had turned into Smoky and
was doing over 75m/hr. Suvro da cautioned the driver and I looked at the
speedometer and did a calculation and cheered Smoky and patted and petted him in my head. I was reminded of a trip across the Appalachians while driving a truck, somehow. I won’t go into the reasons. Sometime in the middle, I pensively wondered aloud to Suvro da about the goats on the divider of the highway who were busily and happily chewing grass and Suvro da
pointed out very seriously that the goats knew about the road-signs and could
read them. I was in fits while in the back-seat and tried to stop the noisy
laughs. Every now and then I could see the mountains loom in the distance. I
was almost expecting them to appear but that didn’t happen this time. It was
perfect nonetheless. At Shaktigarh, there was a mini-stop and I debated about
lighting a cigarette. I debated about it too long. We got tea. Suvro da chatted
with Pupu on the phone while I was trying to encompass my sometimes bizarre
trips to and fro and this one and observing Smoky and contemplating objectively
about some other stuff. Before I knew it – it was time to
get back in Smoky. I tried getting a few puffs of a smoke in between – I might
as well have avoided it. The last stretch passed by in a flash – even Panagarh
went by in a blur. I’ve never missed the Airforce base – this was the first
time that I did. It was also the first time that I didn’t doze off and wasn't in any mood to doze. And there it was – the Muchipara crossing rose
into the distance and we were back before too long and after lunch and not without one round of impassioned scolding. Suvro da was clearing out cobwebs from his classroom even before he gave himself time to sit for a bit. I've been kicking myself for forgetting I had a working camera for the various trips.
The monsoons are over but this is one song which insists on edging its way in: it was dedicated to a person who survived in spite of being hit by lightning more than once.
The monsoons are over but this is one song which insists on edging its way in: it was dedicated to a person who survived in spite of being hit by lightning more than once.
