Writing about Writing, Part I

For the last few weeks, every evening, I had been forcing myself after getting back into the house to write an essay – any short and succinct essay. Last year, barring a day in December which brought a surge of light for me, was so dark on the whole that I didn’t write in case I tempted fate further. I scribbled and made copious work-related notes elsewhere. And for some weeks I had had the gall to assume that I could just sit and whip out any piece dealing with matters about life which matter (part of my current work and workshops relate to the same after all). And then I don’t know when but I felt that I’d be wasting time if I wrote an essay. I wanted to write and felt guilty at the same time and my snapping-self said sharply, ‘And what possible good will your writing do?! Just work on your work and keep knocking on doors.’ In the evening there were no doors to knock on. I can’t play any musical instrument and while I do listen to music and read, even after doing some of the latter and walking and thinking and reflecting rather deeply in bouts and being unable to solve more than a few puzzles, I’d feel restless. I’ll stay quiet about my few visits to one local pool. Some very late eves I worked or gathered or hunted down material for work, otherwise I’d sit and scribble in my diary and talk quietly with Fimh – away from snapping-self’s words, which I couldn’t completely dismiss.

But Fimh would remind me that since I had to keep walking on with what I carried in between my two ears essentially and in me – it was useful to actually keep typing out an essay every now and then. It would keep my mind sharp, alert and watchful, for one thing. It would help to organize my mind and order my boxes of thoughts. I grumpfhed with what fimh pointed out and felt he was trying to make me feel better and said, ‘I’ll write later. I know what I need to know, don’t I? And others have written about these matters very clearly, haven’t they? I remember what I need to. I just need to put it into a different format. That’s my job…well, a good part of it. It’s about the mind, isn’t it? Mind and…behaviour.’ Fimh innocently nudged me to think about the mind since it fascinated me so much – something like ‘the mind matters and why’. I had ideas then and all the bits and pieces read and remembered and experienced fell rapidly into place and I started typing with gusto. But then the thoughts got jumbled and questions of old arose. Suddenly. For there were two thoughts I’d started out with – and suddenly the soul and the spirit had clambered into the picture. Fimh patiently said, ‘well, write about the soul and spirit then…they’re not disconnected.’ And as I started upon that and typed a few pages, I flung my hands up in the air, ‘how is this going to help any? I keep digressing. And quite frankly, the part about the Spirit and Soul sounds barmy...it comes across as fiction! And I haven’t even talked about why the mind matters. This isn’t working.’

My pesky-self however was malicious and had started telling me that I didn’t write because I had no thoughts anymore. That I had become stu-pid. My pesky-self chortled, ‘you’re becoming a walking-talking-doing vegetable!’ To which I retorted with, ‘I am NOT a vegetable!’ and upon pesky-self’s widening grin which threatened to split pesky-self’s face, I said, ‘Vegetable – gah-bah.’ And my pesky-self told me through a song that I was a sour beet and something about how I was a grum, irritating and utterly humourless bore. Sadly enough I couldn’t really argue with that for some very sharp and sad images of my being an irritating, very solemn, grum beet and a humourless bore who neither laughed upon an amusing line in the middle of a solemn conversation nor could get another to laugh with a repartee…rose to my mind. Fimh stepped in then. I won’t go through the whole exchange between Fimh and me however. But there are some realizations that emerged from the pot and so I’ll put a few on record.

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Writing – the ability to write – is something that I’ve never quite valued in myself. I’ve enjoyed writing – here and there and sometimes in my diary. But to enjoy something and to value something are not exactly the same, I think. Valuing implies and involves a more conscious process of thought. It’s only when across these last few weeks that I could not write anything that I started getting alarmed. I won’t go into the mixed reasons for my rising alarm. I have loved reading some of what I do and I’ve loved thinking and going ‘aha’ with bizarre connections and upon being able to see effortless connections made by others. I have felt the deep and evocative feelings (which sometimes go beyond language) which are conjured up by human beings in grand or great or insightful or interesting or stirring or vivid writing. I don’t mean these words in any casual sense. I know the kind of writing I am talking about. I have liked scribbling while on my own – of course. But I’ve never persisted in writing about matters unless it came to me very easily and without any hitches or when I’ve simply rambled along (and there is nothing endearing about rambling when it’s like an uncontrollable tic). But one of the things I realized upon long bits of reflection without losing my temper is that writing is an art. Of course I’ve known that. Yes. After all I can rattle off from memory substantial parts from a piece on ‘why we read and write poetry’ and I carry the rest in my head for one clear reason, at least, that before I read that piece I had never really known why I read (and even felt guilty sometimes for reading and re-reading some stuff while neglecting other stuff and for also not reading enough!).

I can say at this point in my life that I most likely had an affinity and even an aptitude for writing and language (I have never had an aptitude for Maths). I have had a strong relationship with writing but I never quite saw it as some sort of an ‘ability’ that I possess. I wrote because I could. I’ve noted in my mind and diary some of the things I cannot do and that is a mighty long list indeed. Yet I never quite comprehended that writing is a skill that I do have – to an extent – which I also love. I loved extended academic writing only during one phase of my life (and the topic had all to do with it) and enjoyed writing a few term papers when I got immersed in them for brief bits and I’ve not written more than a handful of stories. But I have loved writing about or writing in response to ideas and about parts of life which matter (and do not matter), events and incidents and ways and manners of humans (not excluding myself) other beings, great and small, and so on – for I have loved reading about the same. Such ideas and parts (which matter) resonate within me and get me thinking and reflecting and banish the dark and dreary mushrooms and sometimes give me room to smile and sometimes laugh and connect the variety of various experiences (with what I read) and to ‘hold on’ while walking along. In a few of the most important junctures of my life, writings by others which I have read and re-read has kept my head above water and has even got me to shift my course of flight, among other things. It isn’t reading alone that has done this for me – but it is certainly one central part. Reading and writing have more often than I can count kept my mental motors whirring.

In spite of the above, for all this time I never really equated my own ability to write as some sort of a creative activity as I would have say if I could paint or sing or sculpt or play the piano with a similar level of skill. On some very late evenings I had felt ridiculous because I could do none of those things and felt I could have come across as a being a better and more developed human being if I could have. Thinking, I have valued and enjoyed, loved, even felt guilty and angry and sad and confused about and even banished it sometimes. Writing as an activity that I can do – did not make me feel the same way unless it involved writing letters during a couple of light-and-shade filled periods of my life. And it’s considerably bizarre to have felt this way when among all the creative activities I’ve valued – magnificent, superlative and very high quality writing by others, to me, expresses an ultimate level and form of creativity. There are reasons for this which I know of and some of them I sense but I shall not get into them here. Not for once am I saying that I do not value the other creative activities; I value them extremely highly as well.

The whole bit of the sudden and somewhat slowly emerging realization made me wonder why I had such a mindless non-valuing of any writing skill that I possess. I knew one reason or a couple immediately but they do not need to be discussed here, personal as they are and most likely unique to me because I’m abnormal. But a few of the other general ones that came to my mind can be put down here.

Writing about Writing, Part II appears here.

Writing about Writing, Part II

Writing about Writing, Part I appears here

As I thought about the matter I realized that I had absorbed, somewhat unconsciously, the strange place that writing seems to occupy in the world. All literate people feel that they can write. All literate people at some point or the other have had to write a fair bit – if nowhere else at least in school and in college. Writing even formal or informal letters is something many literate people do (or think they can do) and there are others with a bit of education who write here and there (how well is a completely different matter and the same goes for hundreds of blogs and websites of folks who successfully conduct ‘personality development’ workshops or are ‘certified life-coaches’). Writing does have a utilitarian purpose in the regular world. No other creative activity occupies such a strange place, I think. All people do not have to sing and can get away without ever singing a note in public (if not in private). Nobody has to paint on a form or formally in the regular world. One can note that about most other creative activities. So writing and the use of language occupy an odd position. Almost any person who is not an absolute dullard can imagine that s/he can write while people are less likely to say that they can paint or sing or play a musical instrument (one can extend the list) unless they attain a particular level of competence or finesse. The few people of reason in this world who stand against these absurd and stupid ideas comprises most likely, the minority. In this demented age of ‘instant gratification’, writing is probably looked down upon by most or seen as being useless or having a purely utilitarian function and even people who claim to like it cannot endure it for sustained periods (among the general population) unless it’s floozy or casual or la-la writing like on facebook and God only knows of all the other instances which exist out there. Indeed regarding some of the things I’ve read: it revolts me to call that ‘writing’ – in terms of either content, ideas or style. And among people in universities and colleges I had noticed for years while being a member of academia and continue noticing as an outsider (working with clients from academia) an overwhelming reluctance to write their thoughts or about their experiences or feelings or of any connected ideas. Indeed many people assume/d it’s a waste of time to write unless there is some particular material utility to it – either one is getting paid for it or is engaging in academic writing for publishing more and more papers or it is directly related to the ‘job’ one does. And so if writing brings no material utility – it is seen as being ‘useless’. Some people honestly admit they cannot write and yet others do not see any purpose to it. I knew of more than a couple of erstwhile friends who had written very good essays once upon a time and yet graduate school had rendered them utterly unable or unwilling to write essays unrelated to their little fields of specialization. I’m not above reproach for I would have ended up the same way in graduate school and I know I had for not a few years in the middle but I know exactly why I didn’t end up the same way.

Also I somehow think that writing is a little different from painting, singing, playing a musical instrument, sculpting and dancing. Unless one ‘sees’ the whole picture in one’s mind and simply writes in a sudden trance, it is a process which intimately involves the mind, involves thinking, the process of ordering and arranging and selecting one’s thoughts and feelings and expressing the same through language suitable for human life-form. By the very nature of the activity it cannot involve the suspension of thought and it cannot simply involve only a rush of ideas and feelings or remain as intuitive insights and flashes of realization (which aren’t always experienced through words or normal human language). And there isn’t much bodily engagement in the activity….in fact it’s more of a disembodied experience. Folks who sing and dance and engage in playing a musical instrument experience something similar. But my point is that writing about ideas and about life requires the very active and very involved process of thinking clearly before the task of writing and sometimes while writing. It requires a certain predisposition towards wanting to unravel or being interested and in an enduring way about certain universal questions and issues. Even the writing done in a trance is sometimes so because of all the stuff that has happened and been processed and felt deeply by the mind and insides for a long while before that. Inchoate thoughts, all the co-existing ideas, the disjointed or strongly contrary and contradictory and even paradoxical boxes of thoughts and emotions might well all be in the head somewhere – from one’s readings, reflections, ruminations, experiences, memories and so on, and all of it might well flood through the mind at different points of the day or night and one might even know that all of it is there but that knowing is not the same as writing or even ‘being able to write’ about it or even speaking about it clearly. I’d felt this to be true some years ago. This is why even I have said upon reading a piece or even parts from pieces, ‘oh, that’s how I feel!’ I have had to say to myself later: but that is not how you think; the thoughts have been clarified, the doubts or the misgivings or the confusions have been cleared or the nebulous clouds of feeling have been dispersed to have illumination shine through them by the piece that you read while also raising other questions and because some exceptional writer with an exceptional mind has expressed in language and words to make the thoughts and the feelings real. This is why writing as compared to thinking and even focused thinking or idle thinking is so much more difficult. One has to decide on what to include and leave out and to voluntarily circumscribe oneself. And there are contrary ideas and feelings which are carried by the mind too – so which one holds good or do both or maybe three or more? Depending on what? And why? I am reminded of what my old friend told me and not once, ‘Thinking and writing are not the same, Shilpi!’ Writing demands a certain clarity of the mind. To write what one wishes to write. To engage in a process of selection and presentation. It is also a matter of patience, I think. Even writing about whimsical or amusing matters is not a joke and writing about matters related to emotion is not a matter of sentimental warbling. It is an art which like other creative art forms requires nurturing and it is different from the other forms because it is almost exclusively but probably not only a mind related activity. There’s something of the soul and spirit which enters – but let me not digress.

To actually write is to prepare and express the inner workings of an ordered mind. I’m not saying that thinking is unimportant. Not at all. But the act and art of writing and the acts and the arts of speaking and communicating (about which some other day maybe) require an ordered mind. They contribute towards creating an ordered mind and writing across years and taken together become manifest expressions of an ordered mind and more. Writing, I have noticed in myself time and again even though I forget or banish the thought cannot be substituted for this or that. If one has an ability to write – one should and must write otherwise one starts feeling stupid and vacuous and even becomes that way unless one is terribly careful and terribly blessed. And there is no excuse for stupidity or for being stupid. I frankly loath the idea of becoming stupid. And if I had one prayer last year apart from the handful of deepest prayers even when I couldn’t understand much – it was that I not become stupid and for countless reasons.

It is only people who think and have serious and myriad minds who are the ones who can write well and communicate well and depending upon the variations of quality – exceptionally well. Those who think intensely are also the ones to feel deeply both the shards and shots of brushing bliss and the terrible pits of pain, much of the in between and even some of the beyond. More than this I am sure now that people who think deeply are the ones who can feel deeply about another/others. I think that there are certain ways of going further along the path of being ‘truly human’ – a matter that has always been there tick-tocking away somewhere at the back of my mind through some years in a more and more conscious way than before because of one blog-post I’d read. Thinking, doing what one can and is able to, reflecting, feeling, introspecting and acting upon the various stages of the world constitute a few of these parts. And writing involves a particular form of doing. The reasons that people shy away from the same can be many but one reason is that people become stupid in the mind (or simply are stupid and never want to even try very hard not to be stupid). I have felt it and seen it in me – it’s not just a mental laziness or tiredness but a mental stupidity – and it has alarmed me. I don’t mean ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ in terms of ‘intellect’, as it is commonly understood. But then this essay is not directly about ‘the mind matters…and why’.

But to mention a bit: it is not for nothing that individuals who have fine minds and engage in life (work, relations, some inner/private world, hobbies) with a directed intensity and passion and involvement and are at high levels of self-realization have also felt the necessity to write down some/a lot of their thoughts and understandings and feelings and ideas and what-have-you. Not a few of such outstanding individuals have continued the same through their very long or short or medium life-spans. Even folks who have distinguished themselves in different fields of life have also sometimes felt it worth their while to write about their experiences and their insights.

I used to deeply think in a conscious way in college that the individuals who stand out from the crowd are the only ones worth admiring while I could with every neuron in me (for starters) attempt to reach better heights as a human being. And quite honestly, even as a mid-school girl, I couldn’t see anything good or noble about comparing myself to dullards and mental midgets and saying or even feeling that I was better than they were or that we were the same sort so I didn’t need to better myself as I saw important. And it is pertinent to note that across these 40 years, there is only one human being who has urged me to write. Yet I had never before even articulated the traces of guilt that used to hover when I used to write here or even elsewhere because there was the holier-than-thou-self (or would that be the materialist self?) saying, ‘is this really useful to anyone?’

I have many flaws and defects and carry even abnormalities. But I don’t and have never seen anything remotely nice about being mentally vacuous and stupid or common. It disgusts me. I strongly object to the line of ‘ignorance is bliss’. No, it is not. Even though the Old Greek teacher’s words of ‘the only thing I know is that I know nothing’ has not merely perplexed me but I know I have felt rather content in a doddering, senile grandma like way at certain phases of my life (imagining I knew all of what I needed to know and had nothing new to learn). I have also felt something similar to the Old Greek during periods of my life and I have also had to ruminate over the priceless distinction that my old friend made between knowledge (external to the self) and realization (happens within). And it is important to watch oneself and others and discriminate between the bad and disgusting and the truly beautiful and worthwhile and see why they are different and why the bad or disgusting repulses. It becomes vital to leave what is ugly behind and often without a second glance so that one does not fall into the gooey mind-numbing trap oneself by becoming dim or careless or because it takes too much of effort, persistence, unsentimental honesty of feelings (no matter how contradictory that sounds), ‘razor sharp perceptions that sometimes cut a little too deep’ (that’s from The Counting Crows), a refusal to become common in the mind or in behaviour while not losing one’s wit(s) or one’s lighter side and while walking on one's path. It is not an easy thing….

I’ll conclude this with a couple of thoughts about writing. Writing, as a personal activity – quite apart from the strange pleasure it brings – is one of the means towards self-development and is an expression of the same. If life has meaning and I still cannot and will not believe it doesn’t, I cannot see it as being divorced from genuine and continuous self-development and from genuine love, which to (paraphrase?) the Old Bard's line, unlike youth – endures.

Written between 15th May - 9th June, 2015

Thoughts that walk and sometimes talk

There are some statements and thoughts that walk with one as one walks Life’s paths. The following are but a few of them. I haven’t resolved all the oddities which linger within the statements/thoughts for even the following ones and so this post keeps getting close to becoming a never-ending one. I started writing the following almost exactly a year ago and I've added/edited and refined bits and pieces while reading and re-reading what I do and ruminating sometimes. And I've been fussing over this every evening for more than a week after returning to my temporary stables. I’m not entirely satisfied with the following but I’m putting this up even though I can’t tie it up all neatly with a beautiful bow.

There are facts and one cannot – unless one is being an ostrich – ignore them in one’s journey of life. Yet the fox tells the Little Prince that the most important and the most valuable things in life are invisible to the eye yet felt deep within.  Through unusual experiences, one shifts gears from being a ‘reason and fact worshipper’ and starts holding onto this inner belief when seemingly contrary facts smack one in the face. Then it’s back to dealing with just the facts like a good soldier until one’s deep-within-being simply cannot be ignored unless one is tone deaf within and on-the-out. It seems a very muddled up affair: this tussle between measurable facts and what is sometimes ‘as invisible as music but as positive as sound…’.

There’s Sherlock who says that if the facts don’t fit the theory – throw out the theory. Strangely enough, Sherlock talks too about ‘intuition’ which he matter-of-factly claims trumps reason. And who can tell another about when to trust one’s intuition beyond reason and facts?

I have often in ‘times of trouble’ remembered (been reminded of?) the Lord’s Prayer of ‘Thy will be done’. In other times I’m reminded of the zen tale where the master tells his disciple about the invisible power that lies beyond reason. The disciple is taken aback with the other-worldly discourse. But they have a long journey through the sands of space and time and the disciple listens. Finally it is time to rest and the master tells his disciple to take care of the horses before retiring for the night. The disciple is about to tie up the horses but then reasons that his master is testing his learning and faith. Maybe he is supposed to trust the divine power? With this thought he lets the horses be and retires. The following morning the master is aghast for the horses are nowhere to be seen. ‘I told you to tie them up. What on earth did you do?’ ‘But master I thought you were testing my faith in the Higher Power. You said the Higher Power takes care of us!’ The Master interjects, ‘Yes, which is why the Higher Power has given you hands!’ And then he yells, “But He’s not likely to take care of a fool with hands who doesn’t tie up the horses at night!’

There are ideas/images which arise in the mind but they turn out to be crackpot ideas/images (God knows where they come from!). Yet doesn’t a good idea come from the same place? And if there is a congruence between a cherished goal and the blazing idea – then mustn’t the idea be tested? For otherwise one will never know whether the idea has any truth to it. Maybe it is only by testing out ideas, out of the ten thousand and one crackpot ideas one has – seven might work wonders? One can but keep at it. I haven’t learnt any surefire way of intuiting what will work. I sometimes wish I had infallible soothsaying skills (among other skills).

One’s inner- and outer-worlds sometimes tantalizingly and mysteriously not to say mystically glide into one another, breaking up the mundane and normal act of existence, and Life winks mischievously as if to say, ‘all is not what you think it is…’. They also, often times, nonchalantly glide off into their own directions as though they have no connection whatsoever.

In order to do/create something new – one must walk or make a new path. But one must not tread the path that angels would fear to tread or tread the path that is well-trodden by too many humans.

Life apparently is not about winning. It’s about playing well, hard and true. Yet if one doesn’t win at some point – why would another human being care or feel anything but ‘tch-tch’? This has not stopped bothering me although I know it doesn’t help being bothered.

Would anyone remember Edison if he hadn’t actually succeeded in making the light bulb? Would one have remembered Meera if she couldn’t compose poetry and sing? If s/he hadn’t 'accomplished' what s/he set out to do? Would we have been impressed about his/her being and about his/her failings? Failures seem to make sense only when at some point one can stand tall and say “Look?! I did it!”

We talk about ‘human beings’ – not about ‘human doings’. Yet if one doesn’t ‘do’ anything with all that ‘being’ – there is no external expression of the ‘being’. Yet what does a person like about another? The ‘being-ness’ or the ‘doing’? Maybe others will argue with me on this but I keep going back to the part of ‘doing’ somehow although the 'being' matters too in unique instances…but I can’t always give 20-point reasons for the same.

One is supposed to learn ‘to let go’ but not ‘to give up’. I pray that God doesn’t put me to the test on these grounds again.

Great things in life neither come cheap and easy nor do they come without ‘slow and hard and patient labour’. And while there are no guarantees regarding when one’s labour will bear fruit, if one doesn’t labour – there are absolutely no possibilities that one will achieve the sterling fruits of one’s loving labour. Yes, some/many people might roll their eyes and say, “that’s so-ooo obvious”.

One is not supposed to expect any fruits while pursuing a task…My fimh shows me the same but this has not made me immune to and dispassionate about expecting some rare and unique fruits.

Rome was not built in a day. True. And it’s always ‘better late than never’. Also true. But there’s also something to be said about making good in a few rare ways within the earthly span of life and before one becomes senile.

About missing the bus: I’m sure now, at my age and with my experiences – great and small – that there are some things that need to be done at a particular time. If one lets the bus go by – one has missed a chance. ‘Yet and yet and yet’ – for some things it seems that fate has a way of bringing one back through often impossible-to-fathom circuitous routes so that one can catch the bus even if one is running a decade behind schedule. I don't know when fate (and God?) doth decide 'for this - you shall get another chance; for that - nope.'

Obsessions are generally deemed as bad, sick and unhealthy – and they are. I’ve had enough of obsessive bouts to know this much. Yet isn’t the creation of anything good or great and beautiful fueled by steadfast, single-minded and mulish dedication and love? (I’m not talking of the Heathcliff and Snape sort of cruel and disgusting obsessions here) The young priest Emilio Sandoz when he says “let me hold fast onto one noble thing” is being obsessive, Arjun had his eye fixed on what and who matters, Vivekananda encourages single mindedness, The Buddha was single-minded about certain aspects while elucidating upon the middle-path, Tagore had his whimsical and not-at-all whimsical ‘obsessions’, Maharaj Kumar while engaging in much and thinking intensely had his deep and enduring obsession and I know of one exceptional teacher who has written that he has had a life-long ‘obsession’ with reading, thinking, arguing, knowing...Great and/or famous entrepreneurs and businessmen say similar things about being ‘single-minded’ (if not ‘obsessive’) as do scientists, sportsmen, artists, saints, politicians, prophets, musicians, writers, poets and teachers about ‘single-mindedness’ of purpose. But I haven’t really gotten any wiser about this. I’ve only grown sadder about it. If something works or clicks or connects then being obsessive is a creative and beautiful energy and if it doesn’t then the obsession is destructive, useless and ugly. But who can tell from the outset or during the middle stages whether something shall work?

I don’t know for a fact whether faith can literally move mountains. Sometimes it really feels that faith works miracles although this might not always be clear at first or second glance. Sometimes one even has evidence that faith works its inimitable charms. And then when one is oh-so-sure that one is finally close… – one runs into a sheer wall. A rope dangles down the sheer face of the wall when one is close to becoming a vegetable. Faith is mighty unpredictably unpredictable in how it works with one.

I have read that a man of God can be recognized at once. I have God-knows-how-many-miles to go before I get there.

Positive thinking actually makes one feel more positive sometimes. Yet being delusional is a ‘no-no’. Beliefs about what goes on in one’s bizarre mind (or within somewhere) or  the ‘meaning of life’ or about one’s mission in life or about communion that one so surely senses may be nothing but delusions. But if one is ‘delusional’, is it perhaps best to be delusional all the way when one is convinced that one is on one’s path? (I don’t know for sure but) I don’t know what else one is supposed to do but keep walking along while holding on…

The longer one walks along the journey of life, while one completely misses the boat at times, every now and then one gets tantalizingly close to the ‘arch’ which keeps moving a little further off and yet keeps beckoning to the traveler to walk on.

Sometimes...

Sometimes, not always, there’s a clear dancing shaft of light that pervades one and makes one feel hopeful and cheery. Maybe I’m delusional but one does actually walk with a lighter step and almost hums a tune as one goes about doing minor and major tasks, takes joy in the mindful tasks, reminds oneself, for better or worse, of ‘ma phaleshu kadachana’ and yells out to one's trusty fimh just to make sure. Maybe it’s because the very short winter has departed and the Spring breeze is what has lifted one’s spirit? But that’s not the reason. One can almost risk laughing without worrying frightfully over whether one will have to sob or be stoic even in private until one can’t help it. One has gotten to be more circumspect and cautious with age and experience. One has gained a piece of wisdom. If the sudden laughs do arrive utterly unexpectedly like the first sudden Spring showers or as words from a tale or a voice known – then take joy in that. Close your eyes and soak in the bit of bliss and say ‘this and the cause of this, which I know of and realize, I will not forsake’.

A couple of eves ago, my old friend reminded me that there are 3 stages of ‘doing’ something – like a piece of work (a project or a mission or a vision that one is giving tangible form and shape or some mix of work where one is introducing pre-existing material but presenting in a different box). There’s the ‘yeah, I’m going to do it’, there’s the actual ‘I’m doing it’ and then there is the loud ‘see, I’ve done it?!’ feeling which beats almost every other feeling. It’s not very often that that feeling comes about (and even if it does, it might not always last a very long time) for me. But when it does, by God, it justifies every bit of agony that one might have gone through or even imagined (there was a great and famous scientist who said and without apology that ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ – so I shed my feeling of shame, in this instance, at least). My friend didn’t put it in quite like that – but that was the gist. I was grinning suddenly and almost interjected but held my troublesome tongue and foghorn of a frog-voice in check. But his brief exposition reminded me of more than a few funny pix I’d collected off the net almost a year and a half ago.

The first pic reminds me of my school-days. The others have memories and more. The pix made their way into some powerpoint slides. It feels, by God, like an age ago and also, like a great part of last year didn’t quite happen or was a journey through limbo although I travelled more (to physically real places) and met and talked with more human beings than I had in a decade.

And four years have zipped by since I made my last New Year resolution upon being suddenly inspired by my then-young friend. When the last year melted into this one, there was a gong and repeated gongs in my head – no matter how hard I pretended to ignore them – for it meant that I’d officially spent four years since that year. And that year was significant (if in a somewhat bizarre way, to put it in mildly). Even my fimh reminds me sometimes of the same. That carefully put-together earnest New Year list got completely topsy-turvy and that made me merrily shift tracks in work and life. It was an experience which I somehow suspect is not granted to too many people, no matter how many people, on the surface, have engaged or are engaged in a similar-looking task. That’s just a superficial similarity. I failed, at least, at a hundred of other things and some make me feel like an absolute wretch – but there’s one thing I did indeed experience through more than many months – and not just in my head either. I’d meant to emit a visible and audible ‘yay’. I felt I deserved to emit a ‘yay’ but I actually forgot to emit the ‘yay’ once I was done because my trusty fimh (friend in my head) probably told me my time to emit my ‘yay’ had not yet arrived. The ‘yay’ should be used judiciously – not in a casual manner. I had argued, most likely, saying, ‘if not now, then when shall I emit my yay?’ But as luck had it – I forgot. After it was done, I had walked the walk and heard music in my mind and looked around a full and yet empty auditorium and had a real but virtual conversation. It seems now that it happened to someone else. The humdrum of regular life, an inexplicable and sometimes faintly familiar hollow, the terrible and incessant worries returned like hobgoblins broken by the then-regular sparks of life – and that whole experience, which lasted about a year and a half from the middle of a snow-sleet and black ice winter became something of the stuff that dreams are made of. The ecstasy, the slow delight, the agony, angst, the doubt, the serious wonderings of whether one or perhaps another was an absolute loon, the incredible and deep delight, the surprises beyond comparison became a part of one’s memory capsule but not merely one's imagination capsule. Sometimes I wonder, and now, while walking back and forth and in between meeting and talking with general human beings, what the real difference is. Early-ish last year too was memorable for me, if in a different way. This is because a book, which I happen to carry around, like my personal King James Bible or my very own The Little Prince (even when I’ve felt grumpy, dejected and disbelieving of almost everything) was published. Once I can tick off three to-do things from my to-do list of life – I sometimes wonder with audible chuckles whether ‘my pilot’ and ‘maker’ might even dub me a saint. Ha! Of course it doesn’t matter whether I tick off things from the list and Somebody disagrees. That’s another piece of learning I’ve gotten knocked into me and that is purposeless cheating anyway. And in any case what will beat being dubbed a ‘saint’ is to see my old friend clapping (and not just in my head)…

Last year, at some point, while making notes and putting things in powerpoint slides in a military fashion, I was browsing through a translated version of Ramkrishna’s teachings and in an entirely, ‘now, what can you tell me that’s useful to my predicament?’ frame of mind, I opened a page. The page and subsequent pages went on and on about how work was merely one way of getting close to God. No really sensible person, according to Ramkrishna, could see ‘work’ as being anything else. As it often happens – the pages which I needed to read did hit me – only I neither knew nor realized that. I merely ‘grumffh-d’ and said ‘this isn’t helpful at all. I don’t know what he means. How is that of any help to me and my situation?’  The ‘…get back to doing what you need to do now’ sort of made sense. I simply went back to plodding on what I was doing. And so it goes on…

There was a line from a Baul folk song that had been playing in my head for more than a week some weeks ago, ‘tomay hrid majhare rakhibo – chherey debo na…’. The song lyrics brought to mind a quote that has been jumping around gently in my head every now and then. It was a quote from Hari Vansh Rai Bachchan, ‘mann ka ho, to achcha hai, man jaise na ho toh zyada achcha hai.’ The first part isn’t confusing but the second part was bringing the deep furrows to my forehead when the meaning was clarified by Amitabh on the documentary I had been watching sometime last year. Apparently it had confused him too until his father had explained it thus: if things aren’t working the way one’s own mind wishes or desires – things are working according to God.

From experience I know that it’s alarmingly easy to believe that things are going according to God’s plan when things seem to be going according to some broad plan of my own understanding if not active machinations. I remember particularly sudden and unexpected experiences especially from my early twenties and even rather late twenties and well, even early and mid-thirties...There were/are certain surface differences in the experiences while the kernel started glowing more deeply over time. But at the very extreme end of such a scale everything comes across as a gleeful adventure or is laden with great meaning. Even the unpleasant stuff seems to be mere fluff in a tale. Ghastly fear grips the soul but is plummeted away. Even pain is seen as leading to greater awareness. Peak experiences become a part of everyday living. What cannot be understood or comprehended is seen as being a part of the ultimate puzzle that will be clear by and by. One’s mind makes millions of lightning fast connections out of which some actually make sense when recollected later or when one reads something later that reminds one of one’s own experiences. Some parts of the self undergo distinct transformations. One feels both young and ancient. One experiences a profound love.

But by God - when one is shrouded in an incomprehensible, meaningless, soul-wrenching greyness – it’s impossible to believe that there is any plan in place. I feel abandoned. I fail to keep doing everything with unflinching and cheerful stoicism. I fail to keep moving along holding onto the laughing belief that after all is said and done there is the ultimate truth, love conquers all, that the whole game unfurling on the worldly stage is lila…unless there’s a clear light for me that pierces that evil murkiness.

I was reminded of a poem, which I was compelled to look up for I do not have an eidetic memory about too many things. The poem is by John Gillespie Magee Jr. (1922-1941) and one can find more about the poem and the poet on the Wikipedia link. It is called ‘High-flight’ or ‘The Airman’s Ecstasy’. The poem appears in a film The Man without a face that I watched for the first time when I was in school and then in high-school. I rented the video cassette more than a few times because the film had made a mark on me, for reasons that I won’t go into here. The film, back then, had made me think intensely, escape the manifest ‘bonds of earth’, swirl the ‘skies on laughter-silvered wings’, and had led me into the realm of high imagination and romance. It was all great fun in the mind until one very late eve’ I had the sudden and sharp thought: what would I give in return to ‘the man without a face’ (or to the man with one…) or to my imaginary friend who loved me? I didn’t have a thing about me that the other would consider valuable. I wasn’t even like the little drummer boy who could sing a song. And that was that. I was determined that I wouldn’t dream silly dreams. But I couldn’t really help but dream some even if I felt rather silly for a long time…

If anybody told that 17 or 18 year old me about where I would be now, I would have told the person to buzz off. Yes, it's true that not all dreams come true but it's true too that strange things happen in life, a few dreams if dreamt hard and long enough do come true even if they don't quite click in the exact way that one had envisioned, a few rare ones come about in very odd ways (and who can speak of what shall be in the future) and there are within the earthly space even, lo and behold - miracles! The years have come rushing through while in the midst of ‘doing something’ because of my clear note of light and I put up this post because I know that ‘once I was lost…and then I was found…’. In fact, I've gotten lost and then been found quite some times. The ‘how’ is a different matter. 

I’ll sign off for this post with 'The Airman’s Ecstasy' by John G. Magee. I wouldn’t tell every person that I have ‘done a hundred things You have not dreamed of…’ and no, I never did get around to learning how to fly a bi-plane even but as for the rest….

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth 

   And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

    Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth 

    Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things 

    You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung 

    High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there 

    I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung 

    My eager craft through footless halls of air; 

    Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue 

    I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, 

    Where never lark nor even eagle flew; 

    
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod 

    The high untrespassed sanctity of space, 

    Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

"...bhumaiva sukham." Part II

Love is related to what and who one values. If one asks oneself whether knowledge or creative work or spouse or family or friend or child or others or lover or Self or God is what is most valuable – then one also knows who and/or what one loves. It normally could be and is a combination. And along with love and the being-ness that comes with every human being (the being-ness being what a human being contains and is like and as s/he appears to us: what we normally like or dislike or love or are repulsed by, and sometimes on first sight) – there is the matter of doing. This, I believe, is set early on in life. Of what and who matter and of who and what make life meaningful and what sort of work can make life a joy. Or conversely, of what does not matter and what cannot make life meaningful in and of themselves. If one also feels strongly, early on in life that life must have a meaning and a purpose for being; that one’s life must make an absolute difference somehow to the world (by leaving a creation or an invention or a discovery in the widest sense) or to someone – otherwise one wouldn’t be here – then one keeps working and searching until one finds one’s reason.

For some, it might be one or the other - here relations can come and go and even one’s husband can die – but one’s work remains: Marie Curie was of this sort. For Joan, it was her work as a warrior and her inner voice. For some it is one’s God, no holds barred – as it was for Meera. For William, it was working and living and fighting and competing and laughing and jousting and loving and being with Phillipa; when Phillipa was gone – there was no life; ‘love was done’. For some it is a combination thereof. Other examples come to mind – but these will do for now.

Maybe some people are blessed to find their reason very early on and maybe many people are not. Sometimes, one is rather old before one gets to know (and especially if one has an awkwardness and contradictoriness about one’s character) what one can do in concrete terms. But if one persists in and with love, one can act on that knowing if one hasn’t become too senile or too deranged to act or think or be a human being and one then finds and is ‘given’ different ways (through what feel like miracles - and for those who might find that peculiar - well, there is something called serendipity no matter if some numbskulls find that stuff airy-fairy) such that a few of one’s deeply felt ‘desires [can be] coordinated in the light of knowledge’ (that’s another quote that’s been wandering around with me for awhile). One can’t go back in time to fix anything and one doesn’t become utterly fault free or even all-knowing and knows not much more than what one felt in the soul at 11, but as in terms of acting upon what one knows - one can indeed try with everything one has got.

If one lives life by one principle of what one can let go of and what doesn’t matter and what is inconsequential – and if death isn’t too keen on paying one a call and through time as one sees death in different ways - one is left with who and what one values and loves. This may not entail cutting off everything and everyone else certainly – it simply makes one very clearly and consciously and rather dispassionately make certain choices - and it doesn’t force anyone to live like a hermit, but it does entail a clear hierarchy in one’s mind and within. At some point in time, one finds oneself echoing Khshana, “naalpey sukhamasti, bhumaiva sukham.” And sometimes adds, to the universe, when one is being cross-questioned by one’s deepest friend - “but, but, and but - how can it now be otherwise?!”

**About the header quote and of what it means - and for those who don't know what it is about - this is what Suvro da had told me quite some time ago: the sage Khshana had been asked by the king, who was impressed by her wisdom, of what she would like as a gift. She answered with those lines: ‘naalpey sukhamasti, bhumaiva sukham.’ ‘Trifles don’t interest me – so let me be. Nothing barring the universe in entirety will make me happy.’ I don’t know whether Khshana indeed did get what she desired but I have the feeling that she must have. And different people would have different ideas as to what comprises of one’s universe and the matter of happiness, cheer, joy and suchlike. This post is connected to Einstein's words as well as Vivekananda's and more - but so much for this very long post which I split up in two.

"**...bhumaiva sukham" Part I

Said the ancient sage. It has been a part of a sentence that has stayed around and about for quite some time. No prizes for guessing who told me about the quote. The title of this post is connected to a question, which barring a few months of my life and very early years has stayed with me – ‘why is one not dead?’. Some weeks ago when I visited a dentist to get my teeth cleaned for the first time in my life, and the dentist was telling me that if I did not take care of my teeth – they would rot and fall out, I couldn’t help but say (while having funny memories of Florentino Ariza among some other images tickling me) that I was hoping not to be around for that long, and she shushed me. Back in my college days, I used to say that I didn’t know why I didn’t kick the bucket instead of kicking the stone on the road – and nobody much cared for that line.

The question that floats around or comes barging in sometimes is, “why is [one] not dead?”. It is connected to the question - “why, on earth…is one alive?”. Sometimes while walking and feeling strangely disconsolate and discombobulated – the same thought strums in “well you’re not dead – so, there's a reason.” Through the rushing of time and the dripping of time in the hourglass and the motionless of time, if one looks at life – one can see patterns if one is old enough (and feels much through sometimes faultless intuition when one is very young). One can observe patterns – no matter how impossible – and one can take note of many mundane and not-so-mundane incidents: people encountered, people remembered, off-beat experiences, a person remembered, career choices not made, relationships which suddenly caught spring showers and came alive, relationships which died sudden and sometimes slow deaths, professional awards, places seen, career setbacks, realizations which stayed, roads taken and not taken, risks taken and avoided, knowledge growing like a dream and meeting sometimes with realizations, fate tempted, fragrances forgotten which on their return shoot out jumbled (and sometimes maybe conjured memories), songs that send a pang, writings and stories which send a jolt through one’s being, poems re-read, waking and sleep dream-images remembered, coincidences repeated, love encountered... If one threads through and very insidiously and watches the pattern as best as one can while being a part of it and sometimes from a laughing and sometimes dispassionate distance, one can find an answer to why one isn’t dead as yet. One goes through a steady process of ‘not this, not this, not this…’ as one subconsciously and consciously and sometimes even rather desperately and in despair searches for reasons that one is not dead. It is in the eye of the storm that one sees what one needs to.

How one chances upon the ‘this…?’ this…?’ ‘Is it really this?’ ‘Can this be the reason?..’ ‘this has to be it’ - is probably a unique experience for different individuals – but I am convinced that most people can find out their reason/s for living  – whether by digging into the reason that they are not in the grave or by asking themselves: ‘what makes life worth living?’ ‘What makes overarching sense in life - no matter the pain and the heartache and the greyness and the loneliness and looniness and incomprehensibility that linger like a fog as one walks…?’ – One would have to make a list then. One would have to see what makes life feel like an almost completed jigsaw puzzle or like a steadily clearer one and what are mere flirtations or in fact silly distractions or simply choices that go only thus far and no further, no matter how one tries. One would have to make a list of all that makes life meaningful for one – indeed all that comprises Life. One would have to think of the sparks of joy that one feels and when that is ignited and why...

It could be a delusion. But if it is a delusion which cannot be knocked out no matter how hard one has tried and in spite of how hard one has resisted and doubted and despite all tradition and convention and established knowledge – even unconventional but established knowledge – it is not a delusion then. If in the deepest part of one’s Self there is an incessant call which is backed every now and then by an external knowing of what/who matters (and does not matter) and of what/who is important (and unimportant) or of what makes sense only in a particular context – it can’t be a delusion. It is a personal journey and it can be a terribly lonely journey too sometimes – when everything and almost everyone in the outer world says that one is wrong and deluded - and one cannot sometimes make sense of what is real or merely imagined or is a mix of both and one makes horrible errors but one can keep walking, knowing that for whatever one is –  one does indeed walk with one’s God within and for crystal clear bits of time in this world as well, and even if one does not know or understand all as how one would like to, one senses in an unshakeable way that there is a reason that one is walking along. When one stays close to one’s deepest and highest love/s – one knows that for better or worse and no matter how strange or unusual or lonely or dark or plain puzzling the going seems sometimes, one is walking the path that one is meant to…

Unusual ads about reading and writing, and odd memories

I have been seeing/hearing songs on youtube every now and then, and an advertisement came up. Normally I wait for the 'skip ad' button and click it immediately and yet I watched through two ads. They're on Neil Gaiman, made by Blackberry (!). I've never read anything written by him. Now I have. I read a very well-written short story, thanks to somebody who told me to 'go read the story'. which will stay inside. Here it is.

...the ads are a quiet delight for what he says about reading and about books and the way they've been made. I don't even know what the whole idea is about behind "A Calendar of Tales" and haven't found out as yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7-15KQQS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc8TEZvMJFk

It got me thinking again of whether it is true that the longer one lives the more life becomes a matter of memories, the quiet ability to see the patterns and emerging connections in life and the matter of one's life showing a pattern - and a determined pattern at that even though one can't see ahead. Almost like this is how it could have been given some of the choices that one made early enough in life and yet without the matter of complete "knowledge" at hand, and so one waits...

Not to get too absorbed in memories but the two ads reminded me with a low exclamation of a very odd bit about "missed careers" again. No regrets but it is somewhat amusing to think that by the time I was in high school I was fairly sure that I could work in the ad world unless I became, maybe, a psychologist... I was probably one of the few nuts who used to wait for commercials. This was long before the day of cable TV in India. I waited for good ads, made notes in my head about them and used to keep a track of them the way I used to make written notes about "movies to watch" or which had been watched when in school (with books I was more flexible - I tried to read whatever looked good and what came as recommendations). And then came cable TV a long time later. I think the ads of Shell (yep - the oil company with beautiful music playing in the background; I think it was Dire Straits' "Local Hero"), Nescafe and Titan watches (which made that piece by Mozart something that anybody could hum) came with cable TV. And yet there had been Gold Spot and Mazaa and Amul and also some ad on a soft drink with George Benson's song ("Nothing's gonna change my love for you"...Jesus, it's been a long time) playing in the background before the explosion of cable TV. I was hooked on to ads because they felt like mini movies with a story-line, conversations and/or music. I even kept a note of nasty and stupid ads, and as a child I had embarrassed a whole room of people, who were watching a movie and talking during the commercial breaks, by yelling out why the ad didn't tell us what the specific product was all about.

And then came college. And I was still sure that I could work in the ad world and make little movies. There was a TV program called "The Dream Merchants" and I watched it with as much enthusiasm as I watched docs on Discovery and "The X files" and "Picket Fences" and "Chicago Hope". I was studying Sociology on the side, of course, but thinking more about Sociology than actually studying it. And I can't remember any longer when the slow wave of realization hit: that normal and regular ads always sold a product. No, more than that. Ads sold a particular brand of a particular product. I didn't see that before. The purpose of ads and what they were designed to do. It felt most peculiar to realize that those sometimes lovely, charming, beautiful, breathless, naughty, mischievous, and even risqué little movies were actually all geared to make us into loyal consumers of a particular brand. And with brand names becoming some sort of a status symbol (it was the same way by the time I was in college but not quite as bad) and a very market-driven idea or at least a very gross and superficial idea of what matters in life and that happiness can be purchased at some price or with a product (no matter if it's a glorious ad like some of the ads that Coca-Cola came up with or funny ads that Pepsi came up with during the cricket season or the Visa ad) - I couldn't imagine that I had missed this central bit about advertisements earlier.

Quite some years ago, there was a qualitative sociologist who gave an open lecture in the university and quite a few of us had tramped over to hear him speak. There was free food too. The expert went into a long account of how sociologists could bring about happiness by working in the corporate world and with the media and in the advertising world too and how sociologists had the great power to bring about good and positive change. One of his examples rankled terribly: about a little child in India smiling after using a particular brand of toothpaste. I'm not kidding. I waited for him to finish his long lecture and there was the applause and then the usual "any questions". I shot out questions and gave him a sound drubbing. There were no follow-up questions. The then Head of the Sociology and Anthropology department later on admitted to me in private that somebody had to tell the guest speaker that he had gone-over-the-top and he was glad that it was me, and he asked me what my field was in anthropology. I had looked at him and grinned and said that I was in the Sociology department actually.

The story doesn't end there. Later on a friend and I got into an argument. She didn't think there was anything wrong about ads or that a sociologist or any social scientist was any better than somebody working in the ad world. Her piece was that education was the same as the world of advertisements. That teachers, educators, professors, researchers were "sellers" or at the best, were trying to sell whatever they wanted to and therefore were in the same league as advertisers; that teachers and professors were no better than admen and adwomen - not even in the ideal type. The ugly argument - and the first one with that particular friend - from so many years ago still stays. So much for that. Yes, of course, teaching and being a teacher in the ideal sense are just the same as being an advertiser selling some brand in the market and brainwashing people into believing that "things" and "brands" can buy happiness. Right. I wonder at odd intervals whether when she is teaching and researching and winning many academic accolades whether she remembers what she said that evening so many years ago or whether she even believed in what she had said or was simply arguing with an in-fashion cynicism or whether the fact that she herself had worked with the ad world and the corporate world for a few years made her see things without much discrimination or whether it is faintly possible that she was merely tired with the way average academicians are. Who knows. I never found out because the discussion became an argument that got out-of-hand. I knew I was right then and I know I was right all along: no teacher, worth his name, is an adman.

Anyhow, the two ads that I linked - and they did turn up as ads seem and sound to be ads with a difference, and I liked them.
P.S: Here's another ad I remembered - from a few years ago. It's one I used to show in class every semester once I chanced upon it from the worldchanging website, which I used to visit from Suvro da's blog.

Damascus Nights

Sometimes I carefully choose books and pieces or conversations to read or re-read and sometimes I don’t know what exactly I want to read and sometimes I know exactly what I would love to read but know I can’t right then, and sometimes I cannot read much because the head doesn’t really follow written words the way a head normally does. Sometimes when a book or a piece of writing comes with a recommendation  or a reminder – I find myself unable to resist the call, and so run out to the library or try to wait for the book to turn up (sometimes it does) or click on a button to place an order or simply read the piece if it is readily available. 

Sometimes a book or a piece jumps on me and tells me that I’m supposed  to read it. This happens every now and then – and especially when I badly want to read something but not much is pervading my reading consciousness, and I think sadly that there is nothing that I will pick out because I won’t be able to read it anyway. 

I finished reading a book late the night before last. Only it already seems such a painfully long time ago. Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami. I had some quiet moments just sitting on top of the heat vent with a blanket on my legs thinking about the book and not thinking that I needed to write about it and feeling sadly that I’d probably even forget I read the book some months down the line or not be able to remember the book anyway. The book had practically jumped out of the book-shelf at me and I didn’t know the writer nor had heard about the book but the title and something about the blurb which I suddenly had no problems understanding made me pick it out and it seemed to be a tiny enough book, which could be read and finished within a space of an evening or two at the most – no matter what other tasks one needed to finish. The tiny tale had me transfixed and the best way to put it in is to say that the book had me enchanted as I sat for a bit late in the night wondering about life and the matter of life being a matter of places, people and of stories involving places and people... There’s a quoted line in an essay I’ve read often, ‘The universe is not made of atoms – it is made of stories.’ And recently and very often a line from the first Hindi movie I watched – a line by Amitabh about ‘unfinished stories’ makes me feel not only wistful but terribly sad, and yet makes me feel equally sure that for some stories one must simply walk and wait to see where they go. Some stories from books and some stories within the space of life simply cannot be predicted the whole way through and one has to simply turn the pages. I didn’t think I’d be writing about this book today, and I won’t digress any more but I resisted the feeling of having to write about the book saying I had a few things that simply have to be finished and can’t write about books too well anyway – but there is the nagging prod to write about the book, and so I shall save time and write some.

I’ll try not to give away the tale – and the odd thing is that one cannot really give away the tale anyway. For the tiny book must be read to be savoured. It is done in the style of the classic 1001 Nights, in a way – maybe that’s why I picked the book when it jumped on me instead of putting it back firmly in its place on the shelf. The book has tales running through it and nestling within and some of the stories have to do with the life of the main characters and some of them are simply narrated tales living within narrated tales ensconced within the main tale about the unlikely hero – a very old and odd coachman who decided to be a coachman in Syria and traveled far and wide (but not that far and wide really) because he couldn’t stand the idea of being anything else and even though being a coachman in Syria was not safe nor the most respectable profession to join (people used to avoid it if they could) – he didn’t give two hoots about it. The coachman is the teller of tales, and he realizes at one point that that is what keeps his travelers hooked to his coach. This is but one tale and the book unfurls in a peculiar way for it is about friendship and how seven of his friends who gather together and every evening – seven odd and old friends who are clear characters in the book too, from the genial but poor barber who sells songbirds and is known as a miser but isn’t really one but who cannot help counting every head of hair and bushy beard as money for his family and he too has stories to tell and stories to hear which make his clients come back to him for their next haircut or shave in spite of the nicks received sometimes….to the coachman’s best friend who simply cannot tell a tale when it comes down to him to narrate one and so he brings his wife to tell a tale among the gathering of old men…and so the book takes the reader through a strange collection of characters and stories wrapped in stories with the number seven occupying some significance - and the most beautiful tale within another springs in the middle of the book: of a red star following a silver white one and the young man Shafak who lives partly in a dream world and the real world and yet tosses a pearl back into the sky and disappears, and one is convinced that he finds everlasting happiness – for that is what he was searching for. 

The book is placed in real socio-historical and political time in Syria between 1959-1963, and the political disturbances and the dark horrors and the shuffle in dictators, of neighbouring states, of the secret spies and the young boys who disappear and families which are left to be, pensions which are not received, soldiers and policemen who wait to overhear suspicious sounding words, poor orphans who are given a  home and treated as family, noisy and nosy neighbours, unpleasant people too…all fill the tiny book too and yet with such a laughing and easy grace and sometimes naughty and mischievous humour that one simply runs with the flow and the dark shadows aren’t allowed to hover over one’s shoulder – it’s almost like the book and one’s mind and watchful thoughts pursuing the tale carefully don’t allow one to sit and brood. The old men are cantankerous, querulous, sometimes even suspicious, and they argue a whole lot, and they are unpredictable, not always likeable and not all of them equally and yet they are friends of the coachman and they want – more than anything else in the world - him to be back in his old form as the teller of tales, and there is a camaraderie and love that simply cannot be defined in words. They are not rich at all nor are they all so poor that they cannot laugh or commiserate or love beauty and they come with their eccentricities and their obstinacies and yet all of them love the coachman and they are human beings and one cannot help liking them as they argue and quarrel and show their genuine concern and drink their cups of coffee or tea and cogitate and meditate on their water pipes. 

One gets to read about ‘hakawatis’ who are the narrators of tales and who frequented the cafes of Damascus and who tempted the clients by the old ruse of leaving a hanging tale so that the listeners would come back the following evening. One reads about a woman, Leila  – who nobody could keep tied to a place, not the prince who loved her and nor her husband who loved her because she wanted to roam the world and tell stories – and she stays in Damascus only to give birth to and bring up her daughter and then leaves without saying too much once the daughter is 18 and is married. The old coachman’s wife who visits him in a vivid sleep dream in a blue velvet dress after he falls asleep in a full-bellied fuzzy state and in a mosque after an interesting but curious day right after he receives his pension suddenly (I started feeling a bit like the old coachman through his day long wandering around his town). His wife tells him that she didn’t have a choice but to die first because she couldn’t stand being without him for she got bored without him and had never been able to stand being bored; and she goes on to say when he is looking hurt that yes-yes she knew that he had always been so much in love with her all along but for her, life with him had been worrisome yes, tension-ridden yes – but boring – never, and so she had loved life with him…, and his wife in her fine way reminds him in a hilarious scene that the oh-so-beautiful-platter that he just about bought is ‘errr – missing?’ and so he shoots awake – the old man. Being scolded by his beautiful muse in another dream because he has the tendency to ramble and forget when he’s rambling. The little boy who loves the coachman and hears the thoughts of the coachman because the old coachman shares even his thoughts with this little boy (who is the official narrator, I guess of the whole tale) even when the coachman is not speaking with anybody else…. Oh, how does one begin to write about a rambling, spinning book like this or even say much about it.

The book charmed me and at so many levels and in so many places and just when I needed it and was ready for it. It enchants for it makes the reader see and yet again just why one loves companionship and also through stories and tales even though they feel like such personal and ‘non-useful’ deep delights, and loves to both hear and tell stories and tales and share stuff by the fireside and through the changing seasons. The book talks about the power of the imagination to seduce when one is least expecting it or believes one is far too old (if not wise) to be seduced and its power to run through and chase through life – life, which could come across as nothing but dreary and being a drudgery and a drag and a bore unless it feels and is frightening and somehow meaningless and in its chaotic flux or stupor – as it slips in to take us higher in its magic, just so as to make a couple of dreams or more come real, and the book blurs the line between dreams and reality, and very gently and very easily and sometimes sharply and suddenly and yet so divinely and therefore naturally. It speaks about the power of different kinds of love, and also of easy and unconditional love which both demands nothing and demands more than one knows but one senses, and precisely because it becomes unconditional – the ‘why’ is a matter which never stops perplexing one. One keeps guessing about more things than I can write and till the last page and never really stops guessing but even that is part of the joy which fills one soul and the trusty friend in the mind seems to get even sprightlier while egging one on to laugh without feeling bad or sad and keeps saying, “See how a tale develops? That’s how one needs to weave a tale…”…and so one sees the tale yet again in little movie clips: the old, laughing and somewhat mysterious coachman who is a teller of tales and who stops speaking altogether, and his friends…, the old coachman who had another incomparable gift – of healing sparrows and making them fly again, the tale within tales of fables and myths and magic, and a couple of shared dreams that might just become real within the given space of now and the sand left in the hourglass...

I’m not sure sometimes about life and sometimes I get panic stricken while life keeps running at a maddening pace through the hour-glass and yet sometimes I am told to look at it from a distance and in its meaning and sense evoking moments which are sharp and clarified and it would seem then that one simply must play as well and hard and with whatever gifts and goofs that God and one’s creator and one’s pilot has armed one with and take some moments to be a human being and then walk with renewed faith that life connected is a mix of darkness, reality, light and winking magic and certainly a few mysterious miracles even though one knows one errr...is a crank and even a sinner but no saint – not by a long shot.

Words again

Language still confuses me and words too, and sometimes I utterly fail to understand human language when my senses are terribly woolly or heightened in a peculiar way. I muddle over using the right words and use wrong words and especially when feelings are evoked through a particular word. I use words and interpret them in the way I see a word. "Law" for instance. It can mean the law laid down by an individual man in the world, by a community, law as ordained by the courts, the law of the sun and the moon and the stars and planetary motion, and the law of the universe, and even beyond - of the endless and the infinite - by the laws of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love which individuals feel keenly like a divine law and irrespective of what the laws of a land might say. I will pursue the post possibly while pondering upon other words too. So much for now.

The town in the East

Some memories emerged from the haze and smoke  – so I’d written a bit of what I do remember. I thought I had clear enough impressions but while I remember incidents – I don’t really remember how I felt. And I’m quite sure that my experiences since then have sort of erased what I found difficult or annoying or what I enjoyed. I don’t know whether this will fit the bill and I'm not happy with it but let me give at least a glimpse of some of the memories that did turn up upon digging. I lost one of the drafts that I’d written – so this jumbled one is all I have for now about the 'return of the native'.

I remember the cows on the roads. This should not mean that I had never seen a real cow – I simply do not remember whether I had before that, to be honest. The sight of so many cows and in so many shapes and sizes wandering around as free as you please had felt a little strange at first, and the fact that cow dung therefore was a regular feature. It was a lucky day if I managed to come back to the house without trampling some, and then managed to slink in through the gates without having a cow following me. They’d eat up all the vegetables and flowers and it was not uncommon to find a placid cow chewing on something at some point of the day during a holiday and I’d go out sometimes to merrily herd the cow out of the gate and would feel like a ‘rakhal chhele’. No dustbins outside the house was also something that raised question marks in my head. The first time was also the last that I visited a public latrine (till I was way into college)...The lack of pavements too made me curious.  And there were very different odours and smells and fragrances and colours….and the matter of language although this last one was not something I consciously thought about.

The neighbour-didi who used to teach at Carmel used to go to school in a rickshaw. I accompanied her for awhile before I started taking the school-bus. One morning while she was getting on to the rickshaw – she said, “catch my bag”. I got very nervous – and this, I remember. I thought she was going to throw her bag at me and I was supposed to catch it in mid-air and I didn’t know why she would want to throw her bag at me. I must have looked stupid because I was waiting and as ready as I could be while she was patiently holding her bag out to me with one foot on the rickshaw. I realized what she meant after long painful minutes but it stayed inside and gnawed away at me…why would somebody want me to “catch’ her bag when she meant for me to “hold” her bag. In school an incident occurred one day when the class-teacher asked me to say a nice prayer that could be used for prayer service.  I rattled off one from memory and finished it off with a, “guard India and watch over us”. The teacher – no matter how dim she was in some ways – said that that could not be. I insisted and very firmly that that is what the prayer was and how it ended. She looked at me with disbelief and that prayer was not used for assembly as far as I remember but indeed many years later I realized that I had pronounced ‘guardian angel’ wrong for all the years I was in England, and for that one prayer. Otherwise there was the ‘crisis of communication’ but in a very non abstruse manner. I started having the same problem with the inmates of the house but there I now know the breach had to do with the fact that nobody wanted to listen to anybody else  (which was the best thing that could have happened, I also now feel and with a quiet vehemence). I found a way of tackling the school problem myself. I simply started speaking the way I heard people around me speaking. For at the beginning if very few people understood what I was saying – I happened to understand very little of what others were saying even though we were ostensibly speaking the same language. And so one of the first words I mangled was the humble, earthy potato.  I pronounced it neither ‘puh-tay-toh’ nor ‘puh-tah-toh’ but I said ‘put-e-to’, and the Indian-isms (or what I’d imagined was Carmel lingo) such as ‘did you go there today only?’ ‘why don’t you tell me no?’ ‘open your shoes’ slipped into my conversation satchel until I raked some of them out but more than some remain and pop out in a most embarrassing fashion, while I have been reminded of quaint English phrases and words and idioms through the years, and not just from books  – phrases and words I’d almost forgotten.

School and home both used to bore me to the gills when both weren't scaring me witless especially during the first year of readjusting whether it was a day that the class teacher of Class 2 was either doting on me or was debating whether to give me five whacks with the ruler across my palm or ten. I was her pet, and she let me participate in every school and class competition and liked hearing me speak but she was also utterly exasperated with me - and so I can’t blame her for the whacks which I bore with no visible expression but a smarting palm. I used to dream all the time in the class in a lazy, vacant, empty and sluggish way and never finished classwork (although I was very helpful towards my bench-mate and others if they wanted to know the names of vegetables or what-have-you for making a list of ‘ten somethings’), and I didn’t even care. I must have come across as being annoying. I don’t know quite why I was so lackadaisical in the classes because there had been regular classwork earlier but I was  remarkably vague in the first year (and vague, slow and aggressive in the second) although I did fairly well for extempore and poetry recitals and liked reading stories. That apart I was very forgetful about organizing my affairs, and so every day I would leave something or the other behind – either at school or in the house so punishments and/or scoldings from both ends were not uncommon. It was a daily thing – forgetting books or exercise books or a water bottle or a tiffin box or a pencil or an eraser. Class 3 was even more horrific in this regard. I am very vague about breaks and game periods during the period of fitting in but I remember the smell that hung around in that primary school corridor – it was the smell of squashed boiled eggs. Maybe children hated the boiled eggs that they got for tiffin or maybe with all the running and jostling and shoving, eggs were dropped by the dozen and then squashed by running shoes…but that still floats in my head and it was anything but pleasant.

There was some exam or the other within ten days of joining school and I flunked almost all the subjects, and brilliantly. I didn’t even care whether I knew the answers and for the history exam, I remember having folded my exam script carefully and just sitting after 15 minutes. I can’t remember how many exams I sat for in class 2 but the exams were a painful experience; I did a bit better in the second one or whichever one it was but the Bengali teacher especially wanted me to be kept back in Class 2. Given my incredible feat of scoring what I had – I’m not surprised. Why I was sent up a year I have no clue but I made it to class 3 which is a different story, and with a terribly unpleasant teacher too.

Reading was still fun but more than that I read bits of what I could because I could read. I borrowed my second Enid Blyton from a didi who was a neighbour, and it was a Famous Five. I understood very little from the first reading actually and got very confused but I kept at it, and I read an assortment of different books and comics both in English and Bangla in the first year. There were two functioning libraries in the township, and I started borrowing books from there too, and sometimes books were bought. I had some ‘books on tape’ and I remember listening to the ‘The little Match-girl’ over and over and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ but I didn’t listen to too much of the old music, not until I was in class VI or IX…

I had a very interesting time learning Bangla from what I remember – and the initial experience was lovely. I learnt the language rather quickly but I didn’t learn it well (very much like swimming, learnt at the same time more or less). The script and everything about it came across as being very intricate and very involved and much more ‘curvy’ and undulating with dips and rises, an absolute lack of immediate edges and angles, especially in its sounds in relation to the script. 

Reading, writing odd bits, wandering around the neighbourhood where I had motley groups of friends with whom I’d play away the late afternoons and early evenings, enjoying the phuchkas greatly when I had them, playing with and trying to take care of the newborn pups that were born within a season along the street where I stayed for five years in the first house, E-47, joining the pool, learning to sing with the harmonium, watching movies at the local club are what I remember from the very first few years. School was a nightmare till I became a rowdy rebel from class 4. From VII, school was fun because of participating in every possible extra-curricular event (including singing) and then there were the plays a group of us used to put up through the year.

I did a lot of cursive writing in the initial years – writing in both English and Bangla – something I’d never done before, and the practice used to keep me utterly occupied. I’m quite sure that I practised more handwriting than I did studying anything, and practised more handwriting than did any of my contemporaries. I could have become a forger I sometimes think if I had been maybe street-smart and hadn't had a conscience which jumps on me or been hired as some ‘calligraphy-writer’ if they had jobs of such a  nature.

In those very first few years the times that I badly missed that other town far west (where a bit of me was probably wandering around) was when Christmas would swoop down. Then I couldn’t help it, and used to feel cranky, tearful, cheerful, garrulous, querulous and quiet in bouts – and it was the same way with sudden smells. I don’t remember any longer what it was that I so badly missed with the sudden smells but singing those carols in school made me feel incredibly nostalgic, and while I’d sing them with great fervour and with the brimming spirit of Yuletide there would be lumps somewhere jostling  but I had somewhat mastered the stiff upper lip if nothing else...

In a way, from what I can see now all the different experiences, hits and misses and the rest from then converge...to The Beatles' 'In my life' and Tagore's 'Purano shei diner kotha...'