On "Inception"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what is it measuring?

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

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

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

To take some specific examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do re mi" with a difference...

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

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

Laughter...grace

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Oddly Addictive Song...and one other.

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


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


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


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


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

The Flower

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

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

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

"Where is it? Where is it?"

"What?"

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

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

"What?...Why?"

"She wanted it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any bandwagon will do!

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

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

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

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

I’ve noticed different sorts of people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(*There is great merit. I agree.)

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

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

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

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

Trifles, Tales, Tubes, and Manners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Country?

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

has no unemployment;

has very decent minimum wage;

has no more than an optimum population;

is honest, quiet, clean, safe, protected;

harps on progress not in just economic terms alone;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

never uses violence but as the very last alternative;

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

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

appreciates the merit of humour and music;

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

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

On anger and sins of the mind

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

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

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

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

A sociologist mother

Yesterday I heard a story.

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

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

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

What a world...

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

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

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

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

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

What a world...

Charlie bites

Ouch, ouch. Oh, Charlie!

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

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

Knowing...what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet another Spring Break

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

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

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

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

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

Bertrand Russell's Three Passions

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

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

Talking...

A thought to consider-

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

II: Musing on Writing....

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

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

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

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

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

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

So much for my musings....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*******

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