let the cut begin

note to self

2008-01-09T13:59:00.000+05:30

"I have come to believe over and over again, that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.... My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.... and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken."
~Audre Lorde

A sindhi poet and the story of India

2007-11-13T19:05:00.000+05:30

In the past, I have written about my ambiguity when it comes to religion and then about my urge to move out of the country. The former, as I realize today has become more and more persistent with time and the latter ever-transient. One day, here. The other day, gone.
Past few days, both – the persistent truth and the transient feeling – presented themselves in a series of two documentaries, hitherto unrelated but for me now.

The first documentary – the story of India is a 6 part series written and presented by Michael Wood and produced by BBC. These 6 hours is nothing but a series of revelations, of awesomeness that is India. From its genesis to its multi-diversity to its teeming pantheon, phenomenal riches, extraordinary culture to its fight for freedom and of course the biggest draw for me was the legend of Gautama Buddha. That such a man was born in India overwhelms me. That the Bodhi tree, under which he sat to think and changed the way the world thought, is actually just a few hours away from here, where I sit typing this post. That he found a religion that competes with Christianity and Islam in numbers and has followers as opposed to mere claimants. Osho describes Buddhism as being religionless and therefore free from malice and prejudices. Think of it, where did it all begin. In-dia.

The second documentary, Sufi Soul – The Mystic Music of Islam, written and presented by William Darlymple of ‘The Last Mughal’ fame, for a small part looks at closeness of Islam with Christianity (considering the fact that both the religions were born in the Middle East) and for the bigger part looks at why Islam has abandoned Sufism, which propounds no harsh rituals and doctrines of Islam but uses song and dance to reach God. The author/presenter travels to Syria, Turkey, Morocco, India… and Sindh in Pakistan.
His visit to Pakistan is of particular interest to me…when it comes to the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif, a Sufi Poet of the 16th Century. Darlymple reports ever since Shah Abdul Latif’s death in 1752, each night 6 Sufi Monks gather at his shrine to sing his words and play his music. The words I could not fathom, but the music played on a stringed instrument is played by clapping its surface and plucking its strings to produce a sound I had not heard before. That music piece didn’t last longer than a minute but had me so hooked that I can’t do without it for long these days. Naturally then I set out to know more about Abdul Latif. I discovered, much to my own surprise, that he was a Sindhi like I am. On further enquiry I discovered all the elders in my family know about his poetry and music. An uncle and aunt even recited couple of Latif’s verses on the spot. This brought to me, a unique sense of belonging to something I have been trying hard to unbelong to. It’s mildly unsettling to decide to want to forego what you have and then realize the very reasons you wanted to forego it for, are baseless. It's liberating to discover that the real reasons can always be found in acceptance.

a silver lining

2007-11-04T23:56:00.000+05:30

these days are hectic again. with a new job, diwali rush and life's other decisions lurking in the corner waiting to make themselves happen, i feel hurried. to top it, today i helped pack relics of our past in a blue bag. zipped, slapped, picked and tucked away for yet another year. or five, who knows. but we rest easy in its wake, knowing our past, howmuchever tedious, is safe. and accessible. all we need to do is look at one photograph and years of memories come flooding back, overwhelming us and pushing us into the future forward.

reminded me of tori amos' 'a sorta fairytale'.
on my way up north, up on the ventura, i pulled back the hood, and i was talking to you, and i knew then it would be, a life long thing, but i didn't know that we, we could break a silver lining

luckily for me, i don't break the silver lining. my affair with my past remains intact.

a time for drunken horses

2007-09-18T14:13:00.000+05:30

times flies so fast these days that it’s unbelievable how long i have held a certain thought in my head and not thought it through. and wasn’t yesterday the first day of the year and today it’s past mid-september!! what does one account this unusual time lapse to? in my case, it’s too many events, too many disappointments, too many surprises, and then of course way too many movies. i have never in my life been such an avid movie watcher before. of course, it helps when you have like-minded friends, some working in the movie industry, one even prompting me to write a screenplay myself. the idea appeals to me, but for the fear of not being adequately talented. i mean, the movies i have watched and analysed of late have ruined my appetite for any regular fare. i just can’t stand mediocrity in movies anymore. every movie hath be better than the best, or else forget it. i don’t forgive and i surely don’t forget.

lucky for me, i have managed to watch movies that qualify as not only absolutely must watchs, but also ones that stay with me for a long long time. like what’s eating gilbert grape wth johnny depp and leonardo di caprio. i re-saw it after several years now and saw it again and saw it again. its nuance-ridden (in particular when leonardo who plays a lunatic unwittingly climbs up to the highest water tank in the town and his shoe falls off making him yell: ‘my joota fell off, my joota fell off.’ yes, joota being hindi for shoe) script is such that once you get it, it’s difficult to get over it.

or the breathtaking a time for drunken horses by iranian/kurdistanian director bahman ghobadi. i watched his turtles can fly almost 2 years ago and haven’t stopped recommending it since. it moved me such. and not me alone. i have had one avid movie goer pronounce he’s seen it all, now that he’s seen turtles.
a time for drunken horses made before turtles can fly has a similar plot. of kids on the iran/iraq border trying to make sense of their ridiculous existence, working hard in dire weather and taking care of each other like their parents would. the parents in the meantime, are either blown up by landmines, shot in ambushes or have died during childbirth or due to poverty. so in short, the story has everything to make it dark and foreboding….but not for ghobadi. he says and shows it the way it is. no overt drama, no pretensions, no coloured views. is it a film, a documentary or life? you can’t tell. the lines are blurred. he makes the characters a part of your life, like the scenes are played out not on your tv screen but right there in your living room. like the one in which a crippled boy of diminutive frame sits in front of a guest, to play a little game. pick up a pebble, secretly put it in one hand, fold the fist, fold the other fist and make the other player pick the hand that has the pebble. the guest who is this huge man in front of the cripple is uninterested in the game, and therefore does not pick either. the cripple slaps his (the guest’s) hand with one of his and urges him to play. without realising that the slapping of hand actually gives him away. the hand which is used to slap is obviously not the hand with the pebble. the guest still uninterested, picks the wrong hand on purpose. that half a minute scene made me laugh out loud over and over again. the spontaneity and the innocence of that action blew me away. that is humour of the finest kind and that too in a film that is so far removed from any sort of light-heartedness. but that’s ghobadi and maybe that’s the story-telling tradition of iraq/iran. where people have had a raw deal. blame it on islam, blame it on bush, blame it on saddam, blame it on fate. but blame one must. because those beautiful people deserve better. much much better.

of placenta, pittsburgh and panic

2007-06-20T13:14:00.001+05:30

at the outset, the title of this post may sound clever, pretensious but i must clarify it's also fateful or rather fate-filled. that 3 Ps happen in a period of 3 months to a P can't be just so i, the P could frame a pretentious title. by this, i don't mean to say the Ps happened to me directly...that is to say i haven't developed a placenta. yet. nor am i moving to/visiting pittsburgh. yet. panic-struck, well i am sometimes but thankfully not the kind this one is about. yet.

these Ps are about 3 of my closest friends, ones i have laughed and cried and grew up with and how each one of them found themselves in an out of the ordinary situation in a matter of 3 months.

the one with placenta, quite obviously was pregnant, till she endured a whopping 10 hour labour to give birth to a pink baby girl. it disappointed me that she didn't ask to see the placenta before it was discarded, like i had instructed her. it infuriated her that i could ask so much of her when all she wanted to do then was sleep and preferably die. the baby of course, is pretty as hell and occasionally turns pink.

pittsburgh has 33 colleges and universities including carnegie mellon. it has art, music and culture centres. it has rivers and wayside cafes and exhibitions centers. it has oriental furniture that can be bought at ridiculously-low prices. it has this and it has that. at 7 in the morning, with a full bladder and groggy eyes, while still listening on the phone, i imagined being there. just like my friend, single and fancy free exploring the world all by herself. making a fantabulous career, away from the pressures of settling down and *this* closer to frank lloyd wright's legendary fallingwater. at the time of the morning, i recalled doing a small study on the architect for a electrical switches client, a few years ago. i remembered fondly how much the man rocked my world then.

panic. my least favourite of the Ps but inevitable nonetheless. leaving home, hearth, family, friends, exes turned friends, vipassana breaks and of course a business made successful by an assortment of overweight people from different walks of life, she decides to do something she swore she would never do. in fact, she is doing everything she never imagined she would. a. get married b. move away to a foreign land and a much much colder one at that. c. have a traditional wedding d. quit financial independence e. study again starting with the nightmarish GRE. f. cook and clean and manage a house and hubby. g. be a dutiful daughter-in-law who has the sane mind to already remember birthdays of soon-to-be in-laws and be there with surprise cakes and sleepy smiles at midnights.
understandly, the panic had to hit and it did. i was there, most times when it did. not a pretty sight that. but then days passed and panic seems to have dissipated under the barrage of activity. wedding bells will toll, precisely 4 days from now. and a new life will begin. :-)

the end of yellow glamour

2007-06-03T23:57:00.001+05:30

to submit a document to greenpeace by 12 noon tomorrow, i have been rummaging through their website for the past 3 days. what i have learnt specifically about climate change is nothing less than alarming. not that global warming and rising sea levels were alien concepts but getting this much more familiar is decidedly unsettling. especially when i realise the harm incandescent bulbs behind smoky lamps that i so love cause. now i dare not switch on another lamp/bulb unless absolutely necessary. for me, it's the white obnoxious lights from now on. but then i have been told there are yellow CFLs too. small mercies!
meanwhile, do go and sign this petition. please.
http://www.greenpeace.org/india/banthebulb/petition

viral marketing - have a look

2007-05-24T12:52:00.000+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7wAlHtKyg
www.killtheword.info

agency: JWT, New York
creative director: Jackie Hathiramani
art director: Jason Campbell
copywriter: Scott Bell

The poon pome

2007-05-18T16:14:00.000+05:30

There seems no better way of breaking in a
New word processor
Than a pome
to a pal.

She's thrown into one's professional life
And soon achieves
Permanency.
Quite a gal.

Her phone-laugh's quite commendable
Billowing joy-waves
An orgasm
Aural.

Different from most other beings I know,
Resides serene with brother
An arrangement
Novel

Half of her strives commercially,
While the other tries to
save the
World.

Is quite the abstaining teetotaler
Yet one believes
She’d like her
Alcohal

Frequenter of esoteric cinema
Eschews chicklit
A sindhi unconvent
ional

Ad groupie of the highest kind
Virtual kinship
With J***** and S****
and all

I hope she do find soulmate soon
But then ponder:
Will she be as
Accessibal?

I doff my hat to D******
May she achieve love
and home inter
national,

For our tired maze of humanity
Would be better
With more than one
Of this girl.

:P

(this pome came in the mail today. written by a friend for me...:-)
the little asterisks just to protect names of real peoples.)

please circulate this widely

2007-03-24T01:28:00.001+05:30

http://www.indrasinha.com/masks.html
done in response to
http://customepk.com/dowhucampaign/

parsian connection

2007-03-02T16:08:00.000+05:30

kaevan is the most detached (his own term) person i have ever met. yet quite ironically, he is touched by many things - the plight of his rapidly dwindling community, for one. and then of course, there is a certain joy in knowing him as a friend, a fellow ad writer and an avid movie buff. his own films can be seen here: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=kaevan

feminismysticism

2007-02-19T02:35:00.000+05:30

coming back to writing here after a fairly long break is like being presumptuous. as if i still have people waiting to read what crap i dole out. but then again going by the site stats, this really seems to be the case. this page, by some stroke of mad luck, still manages to garner some little bit of interest…but of course only from people i stay interested in. so there, presumptuous thy name is me. and now with introductions out of the way, i shall resume writing.

a month and a half into the new year and i am still to get over the newness. while this new year has been as new as they come, it has brought along about a fair amount of newness too. for starters, i have at last found what i have been looking for. focus…that elusive little bitch….this time there is no way i will let this baby slip by.
with that, came a lot of other things - new perspectives, new interests, new purposes and of course newly renewed goals… but that’s not the theme of this comeback, as it were.
the comeback is more about an event, a stream of consciousness kinda thing that didn’t exactly leave me elated in its wake but then did too….bit by bit i would think, as the days progress.

here it is:
a municipal school in suburban santacruz; a small group of activists, writers, journalists, filmmakers, anthropologists and a renowned feminist – gloria steinem, talking about women’s movements across the globe, bin laden and bin bush, original cultures, dalit’s movements, the power of radio, reproductive hour happy hours inNYC restaurants, gandhi’s influence on the women’s movement and/or vice versa, the hype about marriages and the dynamics of divorces, need to bear children and above all, feminism. i sat there, listening to all thoughts, applauding several of them, celebrating even but simultaneously also thinking where do i fit in these scheme of things. am i a feminist? no. do i understand feminism? certainly not. if i ever bother to comprehend it to the best of my ability, would i partake in the ideology? i think not. i have opinions on women’s rights alright, but they don’t necessarily mean anti the opposite gender. maybe i am myopic, maybe i miss the larger picture but then again, going by my personal experiences, women can and have been perpetrators too, and really dangerous ones at that. so where does that leave strong, biased ideologies like the one stated above to function and sustain a full course. not too far, i thought. and just then ms steinem said the best quote of the day: i hate conflict, which also tells me i am in the wrong line of work. ha! world’s best known feminist is a self-proclaimed pacifist. this year is good, i say. :)

sudden love

2007-01-19T00:30:00.000+05:30

almost 2 months and nary an update. even this is not one, expect that it is. the page is becoming rusty and it is a cold winter night. work is torrid today and nostalgia just filled the air. now i care very little about an old fleet of aircraft or even the safety regulations for wheel chairs on board. i have an unlike hero for the night. a lesser known artiste – eric andersen. his husky, country vocals brought me a sudden thrill...
“we must have touched before we even met.” :)

braille-enabled cards

2006-11-22T00:36:00.000+05:30

there is a popular advertising legend that talks about a blind beggar who would everyday sit at a corner of a street with a slate that read ‘i am blind.’ one fine morning, an ad guy passed him by and offered to add a few words to the slate to effect more donations. the blind man agreed and the slate read, ‘it’s spring and i am blind.’ just two words and donations poured in like never before.
while this, to me, is the shortest, most effective example to prove the power of advertising, it also goes to show how much blindness is, as an issue closest to our hearts.
think about it. while the thought of being blind is totally unacceptable, it is the easiest to relate to. shut your eyes and try moving about familiar places to get a feel. haven’t you done it already? hasn’t it scared you already?

years ago, i visited NAB here in bombay with a mind to do something for them. life, as it is wont to, came in the way and i didn’t so much as begin doing things i could have. not that i am anywhere closer even today. and it hurts! especially when i keep spotting the blind here in bombay. vulnerable and very child like, moving about the city with extreme caution. making sure they don’t slip and trip and fall and lose more than they ever had. some of them work, quite ironically selling books... drawing books, colouring books, recipe books and the like. or railway pass covers, little toys, naphthalene balls, toilet freshners, safety pins and what not. others beg. how much they make is anyone’s guess.

what amuses me the most is why is that there are so many blind among the poor. or so it seems. i couldn’t get hold of any statistics but instinct says that just might be true. i have yet to come across a blind who is not in rags, has more than a diminutive frame, gets his way and commands an equal place in society.

now, that is an utopian thought, but an attempt to achieve is well in order. a small little way was found by nidhi kaila. nidhi is an IIM grad who started esha. a non-profit org that works to make the blind self-reliant, while sensitizing individuals and corporations towards the blind.
the idea is simple. get orders to braille-enable visiting cards of execs of corporations for a rupee per card. in simpler terms, it is nothing but putting the person’s name in braille. the brailling is done by the blind and the money goes to them. for the exec, it’s more value. his card becomes a thing to flaunt, over and above the written content in it. knowledge that he is sensitive towards the blind therefore a nice human being becomes common and known across the board. and most importantly, it provides a sustainable means of livelihood for the blind.

when i met nidhi through a common friend who also works for esha, and learnt to type in braille, i remained fascinated with the entire language. when amit – the common friend, showed me his braille-enabled card for the first time, i read more than what was written in it.

till date, esha has managed to rope in several multinationals to get their cards braille-enabled but there is need for more. a lot more. for anyone who’s interested in:
getting their cards Braille-enabled for as little as 1 rupee per card or volunteering for the blind, log into http://eshabraille.wordpress.com/about/ or write in to nidhi at esha_braille@yahoo.com.

for more
http://www.outlookindia.com/mad.asp?sid=1&fodname=20060529&fname=making
http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/2006/11/braille-enabled-visiting-cards.html
http://jace.livejournal.com/434670.html
http://jace.seacrow.com/archive/2006/11/12/braille-embossed-card

p for pee

2006-10-30T23:42:00.000+05:30

the last post on trains got me more than a couple of responses, and all of them found it queer that i could think even this much about public transport. i would think it queer too, if i had not been the one experiencing it.

i think it is a bombay phenomenon. while it sucks to live here, the city provides much unique material to document a middle class existence, as unabashed, as honest, as irreverent as they come. a bit like q2p – a documentary on public toilets which i finally managed to see.

the documentary though not completely irreverent, had its moments. and not surprising when you know the filmmaker is a woman who had the mind to request the audience which included shyam benegal, to put our cellphones on silent mode and then further add: 'i am going to be a bit puritanical by asking you to not even check your smses. the movie's only 55 minutes long.' this caveat of hers only furthered my belief that this woman knew her stuff.

the documentary had an underlay of many thoughts that glared straight at issues of gender, of class, of religious importance, of paucity of space…all through public toilets.
what it revealed is interesting definitely, but also mildly shocking:
it showed us that sulabh is a worldwide organization and bigger than you and i thought.
that the scavengers of public toilets usually come from one community. they are the low caste shudras.
that a slum in bombay inhabited by muslims had its commodes rearranged immediately after installing them because they realized that when they sat to crap, their backs would face the wall which faced the mosque nearby. so to not mean disrespect to allahtala and still manage to make sense of the pipes already laid, they reinstalled the commodes in a diagonal direction.
that sometimes the authorities made only a men's loo in public spaces and not women's because women's loos demand more space.
that some municipal schools have such dirty and unhygienic loos that the girls who study in such schools either stop using them unless on days they menstruate or quit education altogether.
that bombay may actually have more number of public toilets than many other cities in the world.

watching the very many toilets in the film, made me nostalgic about the community toilet i used for a few early years. it's true, my mornings for the first 17-18 years of my life were a scene straight out a sai paranjpe movie of the 70s. packed out with an opportunity to explore life's deepest meanings in the simple act of defecating.

it is only now that i realize how much character that one morning ablution can build, depending on where one conducts it. then it was an embarrassing act that made us indignant, every morning when the sun rose. and rightfully so. anger is never out of place, when the loo is. but what makes me think this through is the fact that someone, somewhere once thought it was ok to not include toilets in homes. like the state thinks it is ok sometimes to not have public toilets for women. strange. :)

let down

2006-10-11T16:38:00.000+05:30

i hate arriving at conclusions about certain things like why haven't i yet upgraded to travelling first class in the suburban trains here. i should have done it many years ago but haven't. and when this close friend asked very pointedly about it, even suggesting that he will buy me a monthly pass, i got thinking. there is no way i'd let anyone buy me a first class pass. not for the fact that i can afford it myself, many times over but for the fact that i'll feel betrayed. of what and why, i don’t know.
it’s a silly complication that has sprung up from nowhere but it has taught me a little about myself. a. i am stubborn b. i am silly c. i seem to have the ability to decide first, act second and reflect the last. at least in this matter.
outside of first class compartment, i am every vehicle-happy. i do not think twice before hopping into seemingly unsecond class modes of public transport and therefore lesser affordable ones like rickshaws, cabs, planes even. but second class compartment is something that has a place for itself in my life, like it has in lives of millions and millions of people of bombay. while the camaraderie strangers share in these trains day in and day out is legendary, there is something that makes the entire travel, a culture of sorts. also alternating between being endearing and frustrating but experiential anyway.

for me personally, it has rarely been the camaraderie bit...primarily because i cannot relate with working housewives. the ones i can relate with are the ones who like me, rarely talk with fellow passengers. we are the kind who are rabid cellphone talkers when not buried in books or listening to music throughout the journey. if nothing of the three, then it's time for reflection. often about how long will this struggle continue. the fight to get in the train balancing your bag in one hand, other accoutrements in another and sanity overall. once inside and having acquired a precious little place to sit or stand, begins the endearing bit of the journey.
like how indescribable it is, the feeling when you shut your eyes and let thom yorke croon 'let down' in a suburban bombay train for you at 9 30 in the morning. you’ll know your moment of truth has arrived when he sings "let down and hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground." you open your eyes and see a hundred women jostling for space not bigger than your cube at work and you know he is so right. we are all let down and we are all hanging around, crushed like a bug in the ground.
or how exhilarating it feels, when dave mathews pleads, “hack up your skirt a little more and show your world to me.” you look around to count how many of these women will agree that vaginas are meant to be looked at and admired too beside being a place of business. you realise you have more fingers than there will be women who’d agree.
or how freaky it gets when a bunch of women discuss how it is forbidden to wash hair on a saturday, to which tori amos gets angry and out of no choice ends up bitching about women on the extreme end of the spectrum “...those demi-gods, those pretty girls with their nine-inch nails and little fascist panties....” what you feel then? every bit exotic, i assure you.

contrary to this, first class is full of women who are as ordinary like us, the ones in second class but with a smug look. agreed the air there is cleaner, that is to say less polluted than the second class but not half as interesting. apart from supreme capabilities of providing amusement on a daily basis, second class is a moving (figuratively not speaking) reality check. it shakes up you to core about your existence, brings you to a brink but never lets you fall. first class in that respect is a false notion. it camouflages the reality that the cost of one’s smugness is really little. the difference is never more than rs 300-350 for 30 days. that’s approximately rs 10-12 a day. i can either buy me smugness for that little or stick to having fun.

note: i got carried away but i don’t really mind it. ;)

IPC Section 498 A

2006-09-28T17:03:00.000+05:30

it was past 9 30 in the evening outside prithvi theatre when we spotted each other. exchanging notes on his upcoming plays and poetry-readings, i couldn’t help notice even in that semi-darkness, the sadness in his every move, the way he held his cigarette and how his loose shirt flipped flopped with the breeze.

a few months ago, at a recording studio, he was doing voice for one of my AVs and we argued over the pronunciation of the word: devotees. his version was correct but i feared the client’s stubbornness. i also knew coming back to the studio to rerecord one word is a bloody expensive affair. in the end, we made peace; we recorded both the versions, the correct one and the client-friendly one. while the voice was being laid on the music track, i discovered he worked with ngos too, leading him to promptly ask me if i knew of any institution that works for men against domestic violence. told him i think i have, only i didn't realise he meant men who need protection against domestic violence. my expression turned askance. you gotta be kidding me! he said no and briefly gave me his story. while i had absolutely no doubts about the legitimacy of his story, i feigned ignorance for a bit. as if i didn't know such a thing exists. don't know why i did that, i think i wasn't ready to acknowledge the truth, without any prior notice. am not sure whether my ignorance hurt him in some way or he was just indifferent, but i quickly tried to rectify. back at office, i set out to research…google, yahoo groups, phone calls to activist friends but to no avail. not only did i find no such institution but even the idea of one did not seem very widely acceptable. i suspect all of them were doing what i did. pretend to be ignorant and look the other way, as if doing that will change the reality.

human rights is a thriving industry in india. quite ironically, india is also among one of the most prejudiced societies. we are in fact the maha land living off prejudices…political, social, personal…all kinds, at all levels, among all communities, all people. and then comes a code (among how many or none…i don't know) that challenges the laws of nature so unchallenged in india. it turns the tables in favour of the discriminated and how. that's IPC section 498 A. it is a law that allows women to report dowry harassment and other such grievances, just by walking into a police station and registering a simple complaint. no evidences, no proof, nothing is asked of her. the police just lazily get their butts off their seats, make their way to the inlaws and take their case, as it were.

and while all this happens, from what i know, an alarming majority of women who report such complaints do so falsely and when done, they stand by the side and snigger. their law-sponsored witch-hunt accomplished, for now.

i have no reasons to doubt the good intention with which the law was brought into practice, and by god, i know it was necessary too. we know women are the more battered, more harassed and less privileged of both the genders, but we also know how sinister they can be, when they get down to that. sometimes, i feel that the saas bahu bullshit that runs on tv may just be the case of art (?) imitating life. but am not willing to believe that the law-makers did not preempt such misuse. it is likely that women's rights lobby is pretty powerful here....why recently the domestic violence bill was revised to give more power to those battered women (which in other words would mean, screw the men more). it smelt of vengeance when i learnt that the new bill allows right to home to the complaining woman. which means, one complaint and the husband is homeless, just like that. how arrogant can a spouse get. how baseless then does this institution of marriage seem.

by saying all this, i am not, even for a moment shying away to acknowledge women who actually are victims. but it doesn't take much to realize that it takes a hell lot for a victim to stand up against her perpetrator…she is the victim, remember? even if she does muster courage to protect herself, she will start with small, minor ways. 498 A is huge, it is a sureshot, fastest way for the marriage to fall through. and then 498 ends up being nothing but a big nuisance, used quite cheerfully by the ill-intentioned, merely to harass. And it is worthy to note that the conviction in such cases is abysmally low. Due to lack of evidence, proof and primarily because in the out of court settlements, the wives get what they set out to get. Cheap thrills and a few extra lakhs added to the alimony amount.

i could go on and on about the code and its dastardly trappings but this is getting long and i need to fill in more pixels about the root of this all – failing marriages and a woman’s role in them.

i am a great believer in the power of women and it hurts to see them behave the way they do. i may be wrong but it seems every thing that is quintessentially woman - innocence, femininity, frailty are taken as weakness and therefore disowned altogether. it’s like women are trying to reverse the laws of nature to become every bit a man. behave like one, think like one. while it does serve some good, there are many ways that it imbalances the natural equation. to my mind, strength by way of coercion or manipulation can never be a direct and conclusive opposite of frailty. there is lot of strength in frailty like there is a lot of wisdom in innocence. and there is a lot of man in being a woman.

at this point, i am reminded of an old clichéd adage about it being in a woman’s hand - to make or break a home. i have seen it manifest in my own home for the worse so know it to be true. outside of home, i see it at work, at play, at life in general. the way women have emerged from the shadows is commendable but on closer look, it becomes clear that most of it is overshadowed by an underestimation of their powers and misuse of what that is not theirs. seems like we are suddenly a very action-oriented lot with a nasty agenda and prejudices galore.

this apart, failed marriages have a ridiculous pattern of their own. and many partners don’t make it any easy. i fail to see why contesting divorce is an option. contesting is in fact an act of severe self-depreciation – why should anyone want to live with another when he/she doesn't want to. like why should one wanna marry the one who doesn’t. also, don't these men and women who end up mud-slinging and finger-pointing often in public, know of the theory of self-preservation. self-preservation is the biggest duty of each individual to oneself. bending your back to suit someone else’s prejudice or twisting arm to prove a point are all futile. a marriage or even a prospect of one ought to be based on love and companionship. any other emotion is a compromise. won’t it be great if men, women figured it all right out? won’t we end up creating a better society. maybe a world full of successful, meaningful marriages can go a long way in creating a better society. think about it.

p.s. i think i lost some coherence in thoughts somewhere towards the end, but hey what the heck...i never claimed otherwise :)

threshold

2006-09-25T02:29:00.000+05:30

it's 3 am in the morning and i am exhausted with work and other happenings. when day breaks and night sets in, i know not...at least that's how it has been the past week. my usual introspective self is being jolted to face realities and act, which i am doing with all vigour. and then in mid of all the activity, it occurs that i may be at a threshold of sorts. where i can, not only perceive a few tangible changes in my life but also expect changes in the way i have perceived other things. like my constant disdain, that unrelenting sweeping cynicism for the people in my industry may afterall be slightly unfounded.

i attended a workshop on friday and it took me 1.5 days to arrive at the defining moment in the workshop. not that i was looking, it just came. the workshop happened on a boat, which we all figured is definitely not one of the best venues to hold a talk in, especially when it's high tide. the queasiness never left anyone of us, some puked, some quit, some lied down, some prayed, some walked up and down. i attended most of talk, with my eyes shut or when open, looking away at the distant seas. the speaker was a man known for his madcap antics at presentations. one of which include climbing up the table in a presentation to a big insurance company with the head of the company seated at the helm of the table and other executives dotting the sidelines, and marching towards the head only to pounce on him...just to sell an idea: 'life is unpredictable, are you prepared?' the head is known to have not taken it too well, but our speaker made his point. like he made his point about the power of images, when during the workshop he spoke of his visit to vietnam, to the exact road where that little girl was photographed running naked during the napalm bombing. and he said: "i went there and kissed the fuckin' soil." and then there were tears in his eyes, a lump in his throat. if it were not for our upturned stomachs, i think those words and the feelings behind them demanded applause. my perceptions took a slight beating, nonetheless.

2006-09-15T16:30:00.000+05:30

we have often told each other imperishable things.
~ anais nin

9/11 and other randomness

2006-09-12T15:02:00.002+05:30

it may be of some worth to note that i met a social worker raised in kabul on 9/11 (or 11/9). he spoke about a stadium in kabul where he played as a kid, hanging by a pole doing some acrobatics and later the taliban used the same pole to hang aghani men. for a slight moment, i had trouble believing myself. that i was sitting across a table to a guy and listening to this kind of stuff first hand. what the hell am i attracting to myself.

i may have a certain affinity for social work and all that, but i still have trouble putting things in context of my recent part-philosophical, part-quantum physicistic find – the law of attraction. by that law, what you are, what you experience, what you feel is what you have attracted to yourself. thought is all, it says. says even wishing something away is afterall wishing. think about it. it maybe true. oh hell, it definitely is. while there is a certain joy in discovering that thought is all it takes, nerves wrack on reflecting upon the past. what have i made of myself.

speaking of attraction, i think i attracted (not that way) her too. no wait, she called out for me when i was buying fruit. she offered lift back home. we live in the same colony and she wears a nose ring which i like. we never said more than a hi before and then that day, she tells me she is a vaastu consultant and a commercial artist. she is also an astrologer for 15 years. how did she know i am a sucker for knowing the future? what to do, i am full of questions. but that’s not all. on discovering that i do a bit of reiki, she tells me she sensed it. i am the healing kinds and it shows. hope she also knows what that bit did to my ego can only put all my ‘healing powers’ to shame.

i have a nutty friend who keeps me giggling helplessly. a writer like me, only he is for real. he is just the kind who can, in midst of a prudish talk about hemingway and ad workshops, bring in wild horses. i text back: huh? he says ‘get used to my half-assed phrasing. for eg: gunga din translates into he is a better man than i am.’ and many many such little inanities. what’s funnier is, he claims i keep him in splits. on a serious note: it’s nice to have such friends around, they make life easier.

ok, now for some bitching. really.
am somewhat sensitive about public service advertising and get mad when someone who has been bragged about in my face more than once, ends a tedious long copy ad with ‘comfortably numb’. for a supremely serious cause. what did the writer miss here? but he made sure we don’t miss that he is a pink floyd fan, like most of the world is. incidentally, the bragging party is one fan himself and silly enough to take up cudgels for a misplaced comma. say why don’t you, mr ears with feet (others, go figure!) and your friend worry about getting the emotion right before worrying about transitive verbs or some such. ok, and am off my soap box too.:)

speaking of public service advertising, this moves:
although it may seem that writing for a charity is easier than for, say, a peanut, it is not really so. there are after all thousands of charitable causes, millions of suffering people, and a great weariness among givers. charities are underfunded and under-resourced, struggling against the weight of public apathy, yet they are the custodians of vital causes, doing the most important work there is. all charity advertising has ultimately only one task: to force people to make a decision about whether or not they will take responsibility for the way things are in the world. the difficulty is that people know this and armour themselves against it. piercing their carapace takes every ounce of your courage, ingenuity and strength. charities are founded in pain. you have to feel this pain, and struggle with your constant failure to express it, because you will fail. words will fail you. pictures will fail you. there will seem to be no way to convey the anguish, the desperate need, the importance, of your cause. after your best, inadequate, effort has run, the only thing that matters is how well it has worked.

gulzar

2006-08-31T10:06:00.000+05:30

so i missed the screening of Q2P (from the previous post). i reached 20 minutes late to find out all seats were taken and they won't allow anyone to sit on the aisle. this is not the first time i have missed stuff. there was that time when no direction home - martin scorcese's documentary on bob dylan was running at a venue 2 minutes away from my office and i was in a meeting discussing fragrances and noses.
last week though, something came really close to make up for this loss. last wednesday, at a book launch, i met gulzar. well, i didn't meet him, meet him….i was just in the same room as him. he was there to launch the book, i was there cause the book was dedicated to my boss. how such things happen, i don't know but i do know gulzar. after the ceremony, i was nudged, persuaded, even threatened to walk up to him, use my connection and have his undivided attention, if only for a minute or half. i didn’t. i just didn’t know what to say. i was not ready to use my own words in presence of a man whose words have kept me in awe and hell be upon me if i use them for him. too much rhetoric i know, but this time i really can’t help it.

on the way back, i played out all his work in my head…all the movies he's made, all the words he's written and all the mirza ghalib he made accessible to urdu lovers like me. i suspect, most of us who count ghalib as an influence have to hand it to gulzar for this wonderful initiation. without gulzar’s tv series on ghalib, getting through or even relating to ghalib’s complex words would have been difficult. in fact, i would even think he is the modern day ghalib, only much less esoteric and more mainstream. at the same time, the intensity of gulzar's ‘woh shaam kuch ajeeb thi’ is no less than ghalib's ‘hazaaron khawaishein aisi, at least to my mind. i also do understand ghalib was from a different era and genre too and there is embarrassingly little i understand (i have figured out three entirely different interpretations for 'kaun jeeta hai teri zulf ke sar hone tak' and am still unable to place one of them in context satisfactorily) of his work, yet i love it totally. his words demand too much interpretation but when you have figured out what they mean, you are nothing short of exhilarated. gulzar though promises exhilaration, almost always. he manages to compensate the joy of discovering hidden meanings with his simplicity.

exhilaration and joy aside, i am still to know how to avoid heartache with
'mein jaanta hoo mera naam gunguna rahee hai woh
nahin khayal hai mujhe ke paas aa rahee hai woh'
or
‘dil behal to jayega is khayal se
haal mil gaya tumhara apne haal se’
or
‘is mod se jaate hai, kuch sust kadam raste, kuch tez kadam raahe’
or
‘dil dhoondta hai phir wahi fursat ke raat din’

maybe these are the men who used words that stretched beyond their means, like words are wont to. or these are the men who have understood and lived mature, meaningful romances, which if you think about it, is such a rare phenomenon today.

i read gulzar wrote his first song for bimal roy’s bandini. he wrote the very sweet 'mora gora ang layiye, mohe shaam rang dayide’ in 1963 and today when he is 70, he has the nerve to write ‘namak ishq ka’ – an item song from omkara which has me terribly enthused for the past 3-4 days. it is sensual, raunchy, desperate...all in one.
while i stay in awe, i know there is so much more to explore in urdu and sufi poetry. rumi, bulleh shah, khusro et al but it is gulzar who has opened many doors. his work may not be mind-boggingly genius, but it is such that makes an evening of it.

bombay

2006-08-15T23:04:00.000+05:30

for a very very long time, i have tired to suppress the truth that living and working in bombay has filled me with an odd kind of vengeance. not me alone, that possibly is the case with everyone whose day’s first worry is whether i will get that 9 04 fast or will have to cab it half way if i get the 9 24. this is life for us. a constant struggle to get to work piercing through a sea of people, maneuvering our time schedules, our modes of travel, weighing multiple permutations and combinations to reach one place and eventually mess up somehow cause the unpredictability of the city always catches up with you. monsoons are clearly the worst time of the year. potholes the size of craters, muck in massive abundance that somehow manages to gnaw at you even when you walk inside your clean, warm little cube at work. 8-10-12 hours later, you know the rigmarole will be repeated when it’s time to get back home…at 8 in the evening or 11, the struggle remains unchanged. this was not the case till a few years back, but the downslide has been so alarmingly quick that my vengeance does not contain in my self anymore.

and then last week, there came a time when i got invited to visit aamby valley with a clear agenda that if i care enough, this could be my place to live and work in future. nothing exceptional, just the fringe benefits of being in the industry i am and having a spend-thrift boss with dense ideas and no simpler partner. i had heard dollops about the place so readily accepted the invitation even when it meant leaving home at 5 45 on a monsoon morning. the moment 4 of us drove out of bombay, there was a sense of excitement. on nearing lonavala, thick fog set in and the heart beats hastened. it was monsoon, the way it ought to be appreciated.
what we saw next was stuff dreams are made of. at least the one bombay denizens dream. sprawling green, landscaped pathways, boutique villas, chalets, infinity pools, golf courses, artist villages, fine dine restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, sports academies, amphitheatres, fascinating looking dams, lakes, swings on big stonehedge-like structures, metal sculptures, hills, waterfalls, plush business centres, fisherman’s wharf…the works. to check all this out we were taken on a guided tour, hopping from plush SUV to another, having car doors opened by uniformed chauffeurs and other doors opened by uniformed staff. calling it a fairytale would be an exaggeration but it was nice indeed. 3 hours of continuous awe exhausted me physically and dwindled my excitement levels considerably. i didn’t find time to think why, until over lunch i rattled off: i don’t know how my life will pan out. the partners who were looking for an affirmation just nodded in acknowledgement. and just like that, i declined a lavish lifestyle (if there was to be one at all) which on one hand assaulted my middle class sensibilities, made me painfully aware of my current standard of living but on the other hand made me miss home, like i always do whenever i am out.

bombay is like a damned addiction that once you are afflicted with, there is nary a cure. it runs in your DNA. it’s the thing about it’s inherent character of tolerance, of containing, of absorbing which threatens to be wiped out but never really has. i still spot in unusual places, at unexpected times. it’s the sheer fight for survival that makes it the place to endear, to feel belonged to. the language, the streets, the history, the cultures, the social environment…it has all contributed a lot to people’s lives over and above what it takes away. some may think this is an overstatement but no. bombay is truly a cosmopolitan and there is much about it that separates it from mere places to live to a place to belong. anyway, i am at a loss for anymore words now, so will end with an invite i received, a tidy little sample, a representation of what bombay plays out every single day in multiple ways and vast portions. and then again the lines blur, you don’t sieve the good from the bad, you accept the entire package. having said that, i am definitely waiting to do cold turkey on bombay soon but in the meantime, i am excited about the film below and wouldn’t mind yet another fight to get to the theatre on time. :)

Q2P
(Documentary, 55 min, DV, English, Hindi)

LOOK AT THE TOILET ...
....SEE THE CITY

Director: PAROMITA VOHRA Producer: PUKAR Camera: AJAY NORONHA Editing: JABEEN MERCHANT Sound: ANITA KUSHWAHA, SAMINA MISHRA Animation: SHILPA RANADE Music: TARUN SHAHANI, NIRAV GANDHI

WHEN: August 18, Friday, 6.30 pm
WHERE: NCPA, Little Theatre

ABOUT THE FILM
Q2P peers through the dream of a futuristic Bombay and and finds... public toilets... not enough of them....

Q2P is a film about toilets and the city. It sifts through the dream of Mumbai as a future Shanghai and searches for public toilets, watching who has to queue to pee. As the film observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, we begin to also see the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape, the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space; we learn of small acts of survival that people in the city’s bottom half cobble together and quixotic ideas of social change that thrive with mixed results; we hear the silence that surrounds toilets and sense how similar it is to the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of those answers are questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.

2006-08-14T08:57:00.000+05:30

and then it happened again. yesterday afternoon, i checked mail and saw pankaj offered to help ketki. with transfer of funds worked out, i retired for the day pleased...only to find out later, pankaj upped the donation by a good 50% between the time we chatted and he transferred. wow, pankaj and thanks a lot.

remembering nietzsche in ajmer

2006-08-07T00:39:00.000+05:30

very recently, i got introduced to a set of brief audio sessions on 100 world's greatest thinkers. having spent many hours listening to brief bios of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, artists, religious leaders coupled with other happenings have revived my sometimes active, sometimes flagging interest in religion and its purpose of being.

once a friend had asked won't it great if the world was unisex. i did not think it was a great idea or even a novel one but taking a cue from it, i thought won't it be great if the world was religionless. in my naïve mind, i gave myself affirmative nods then. today, i feel different. religion, despite its mass scale misappropriation and catastrophic effects on countless lives, seems necessary. it seems like it was meant to be a well-intentioned attempt to bring man some order in his chaos. it was meant to be a way of life, a sort of discipline to curb man’s dangerous fetish to do things inhuman. ironically though, it is religion only that has brought about the most injustice….the genocides, the massacres, the inane doctrines, the violations. but should this all really be alarming. i mean doesn’t good also beget bad somehow. but then again i don't know...i haven't read enough or introspected enough to make confident statements on a public forum and get away with it.

so yes, i continue to be confused about religion and such thoughts hardly clear my muddled head but they most definitely prompt me into believing that belief is tangible. i mean one cannot base centuries of events and millions of hearts and minds on an intangible and pull it off so brilliantly. making up happens in smaller doses, not gargantuan. on some saner, peaceful days, i myself judge this idea as escapism. on other harsh days, when belief works, i let it. at the end, what matters is whatever stops that weird feeling in the pit of the stomach.

now the question for a self-professed believer like me is what am i to believe in. in the idea that there is God? that He is benevolent? that He caused me all my tragedies as a way to balance off my karma of previous lives. and that beyond that He means no harm. He doesn’t care what religion i follow, what prayers i recite, what rituals i conduct, as long as i am just and right.

or do i just believe in my religion…the one i was born in and follow the diktats they set eons ago. but then there too, i am confused. i am a sindhi, that technically makes me a hindu, but i feel affinity for islam (even sindhi script bears semblance to urdu…the language koran is written in). on the other hand, we follow sikh rituals. we recite sikh prayers, worship gurugranth sahib, celebrate sikh festivals and visit gurudwaras. and then personally, i find more solace in a church than in a temple. so where does this leave me and my urge to believe?

i think this ambiguity helps me…it helps me find my order in my own chaos. it leaves me religious in a non-religion kind of way. it is like an idea i like, i bow to its genius but i don't follow it. instead based on it, i develop my own ideas…ones that are little, nameless and not as influential, but at least they are not withheld by diktats. they don’t force belief on me, they make me feel it, in whatever i can….a religious text, a lover, a child, a pagan even…anything. maybe they make a believer in the idea of belief. maybe they make me believe there is God.

at this point i am reminded of a quote from the book i am currently reading. snow by the famed turkish writer – orhan pamuk. it's a story that details out effects of islamic traditions on its believers. in this one, a muslim teenager boy asks: 'if God does not exist, how do you explain all the suffering of the poor?' reading these words, alone in the train to jaipur, i smiled and had a small moment of truth. and then again amid lakhs and lakhs of devotees in ajmer at khwaja moin-ud-din chisti's dargah during the urs festival, last sunday at 10 in the night. watching them kneeled down, with cupped hands, tired shoulders, eyes half open, half shut, lips frantically muttering verses from the koran and the entire being trying hard to reach Allahtala, i thought this can't be unreal. and i remembered nietzsche, one of the 100 thinkers. he had said 'God is dead'...his quote was misconstrued and considered blasphemous when all he meant was people have ceased to believe in a cosmic power, they have ceased to believe in God and that's what makes him dead. after the fervour i witnessed in ajmer, i am not sure neitzsche was right at all, quote misconstrued or not. there are believers and too many of them. that day at the dargah, the atmosphere was so charged up, i could have wept. and i am sure if i had cared to look around longer, i would have found at least a handful of instances of something a little bit unordinary to put my confused head to rest. all in all, it was an experience not to be forgotten in a hurry.

silent all these years

2006-07-14T00:58:00.000+05:30

so a colleague got hurt in the tuesday’s bomb blasts. standing at the door, he got throw out with the explosion and hurt his right hand, enough to set him back by a minimum of 6 months. so we, at work – a small bunch of people suddenly became the affected lot. there were wise observations, calculated talk, sometimes harsh opinions and more importantly questions from otherwise supremely indifferent people. i tried to steer clear. i have little knowledge about the politics of it all, which i believe is fairly twisted and deep-rooted. but i understand enough to make it a point to be neutral in sensitive times as these. and surprisingly, i don’t feel rage either. i don’t feel the need to ask: why innocent people? i don’t want to point fingers and bring to fore totally unconnected things of a certain religion and its practices, somehow link them up with the current happenings and then claim to have a eureka moment.
see? they asked. no, i don’t.
on the other hand, there could be some answers to these questions when they are asked to the ones who’ve lost their kin. ask them, do they feel rage. tell them there was not even a remote possibility that their loved one who got killed, knew the one who killed him. let alone the possibility of having done him bad and deserve to die, this way. ask the people who lost their limbs whether they will set out to revenge with the remaining parts of their body. question a victim’s family whether they will move court to seek justice for the cold-blooded murder of their son, or father or brother. their answers will be seen in their blank eyes, their hung heads, their drooped shoulders. if this doesn’t convince the question-mongers about the futility of their questions, not much else will.

going by history, we know events such as these are part of the cause and effect equation. something, somewhere, somehow triggers something else. we will never be able to play back on this chain of reactions which in our country runs back to decades ago. someone even spoke about partition yesterday. so where were we headed with this by looking back, with not even half knowledge. today i was telling a friend about this same thing and asked him if he wants to accompany me in a ladies compartment in a burqa and hear the conversations…sometimes utterly shocking ones. where unimaginary things are thought-out and expressed with much drama and then brilliantly bound to the larger issues. and then a halo develops around their little heads. my friend, a wise man that he is, reciprocated by saying ‘women abhor conversational vacuum.’ i’ll have to agree. now imagine these ‘duly filled’ conversations happening in public places, in loud volumes and with much fervour. now imagine a fanatic in the vicinity, or a fanatic in the making, an impressionable one with an evil bent of mind and much worse conditioning. imagine what he'll carry with him. i remind myself, something, somewhere triggers. i’d any day prefer a vacuum, a mouth closed shut, a silent voice.

politics of the stone

2006-07-09T15:10:00.000+05:30

the shops are shutting, a bandh has been called for. why? cause some person in humour or vengeance threw some dirt on the sena supremo’s late wife’s statue. so i am stuck at home, my schedule for the day gone awry. who do i blame? there is arson, a bus burnt. the headlines read 'tension in mumbai'. newschannels are having a field day. and i reply to ram who had written about the recent sabarimala fiasco. brahmachari lord ayyappa’s aura is found effected 19 years later by rather talented priests who conclude that a menstruating woman must have touched the idol when no woman is supposed to and caused ‘it’ distress. why do the priests forget that it took a menstruating woman to give them birth. and then no woman chooses to menstruate herself, so why discriminate against her for something she didn’t bargain for or has no control over. coming back to lord ayyappa, a lord that he is, he is not very forgiving. and more surprisingly, so fragile. a mere touch effected his aura and that effect continues till this date, years later. then i think what does one make of the shiva lingam, which is nothing but lord shiva’s penis resting on a vagina. what kind of confusing and twisted religious beliefs do we follow in this country? isn’t it time already someone told us where to get off!

2006-06-30T01:13:00.000+05:30

two posts and a few weeks ago, i put up an appeal not expecting much. got nary a response until one fine morning when mohite called.
joji, thank you.
couple of years ago, you had sent ogden nash poetry and now you have sent faith. in an envelope. i am not going to forget any of this in a hurry.

2006-06-21T00:32:00.000+05:30

just 17 pages into a book of essays by anais nin and i am kind of overwhlemed a bit

"so we’re here to celebrate the sources of faith and confidence. i want to give you the secrets of constant alchemy that we must practice to turn brass into gold, hate into love, destruction into creation – to change the crass daily news into inspiration, and despair into joy. none need misinterpret this as indifference to the state of the world or to the actions by which we can stem the destructiveness of the corrupt system. there is an acknowledgement that as human beings, we need nourishment to sustain the life of the spirit, so that we can act in the world, but i don’t mean turn away. i mean we must gain our strength and our values from self-growth and self-discovery. against all odds, against all handicaps, against the chamber of horrors we call history, man has continued to dream and to depict its opposite. that is what we have to do. we do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art – we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones."

life ii

2006-05-21T01:35:00.000+05:30

the day after i wrote about the purple cloth bag, it was taken away. the ground, on which it was kept finally breathed easy. how did that happen is still a small miracle for me. now in its place is a blank, empty void, ever so beautiful. a few days later, a phone call came. the phone screen displayed a city code which is not a happy-news code, in my experience. i stepped out of my cube for some fresh air, clutching the phone and my sanity. the next 14:56 minutes, i heard a couple of months old mother whimpering, trying hard to make sense of the act of her fingers, that dialled my number. if the caller herself was as confused, imagine the state of my clarity. it was worse than beaten. more so, when half hour later an email arrived. it was her again. telling me how she was touched by my simplicity. makes me wonder, if i really am as uncomplicated as i am made out to be, then why do such phone calls happen in the first place. why do i get embroiled in casualties i didn’t even know existed. then i need to conclude: i am nothing but a magnet for all things convoluted. others mess-ups are resolved at my time, in my space. i am mad. don’t tell me i don’t have the right to.

***

“look at him, isn’t he adorable?”: i said, looking at the colony’s retard. she looked straight in my slightly squinty eyes: you weirdo, you! don’t you find everything and everyone that’s gone wrong appealing? aren’t you the one who can actually sit through a long 15 minute film scene in which water drips lazily from a tap into a metal bucket, trying to feel the burden of each drop on your own masochist self? aren’t you the one who brought out a cam in a jampacked bombay train and requested a handicapped eunuch for a photograph, just like that? where do you get the heart and the mind from, to do such idiotic acts? is it not possible for you to stop meddling with others affairs and look into the sorry state of yours? i have no answer to my own questions. i am mad at myself.

an appeal

2006-05-06T02:50:00.000+05:30

Ms Ketki Mohite, the 21 year old daughter of someone I know, has been suffering from renal failure for the past few months. Both her kidneys have stopped functioning and she has been undergoing dialysis since then. Dr Vishawanath Billa of Bombay Hospital has advised for kidney transplant to save her life. The father has been identified as the donor. But unfortunately, the operation is getting delayed cause the father does not have the necessary Rs 5 lakhs. He has managed to collect only about Rs 2 lakhs till now.

This is an appeal for anyone who can help with funds or with information on institutions who can fund.
For the monies, you can call Mr Mohite on 98922 86777 directly.
For the info on institutions, I will take the numbers and/or names on paareo@yahoo.co.in.

Thank you.

life

2006-04-29T18:18:00.000+05:30

another birthday. another raise. old disillusionments. new meanings. a purple cloth bag with belongings of one’s past life. a wedding saree in it, to be given to charity. hope it carries no curse in its threads. being a bride ought to be bliss. no more ruins please. more money. less happiness. richer dreams. poorer means. friends, new and old. uncertainties unfold. what lies ahead, i know. future, is all. a thought: soulmates, fact or fiction? an uncle's going senile. we watch the show, sitting in the front row. the duration is not known, the end is. who's to blame, being a widower does not come with a how to cope manual. a text message with my mum’s name, asking do you know who this is. sure as hell! but just replace the c with a k and the e with an i. nonetheless, what a poignant reminder it was. while there is still 30% vision to be restored, there is an entire 100% life running ahead. somedays it’s seen well, most days it’s hazy. i am out of breath already. it’s tiresome to keep running behind. my legs ache. i sleep less. i think more. i read less. movies unwatched. ideas unthought. words unread. life unlived. all for that one moment when the desires are behind me. then not an issue more. i feel spent already.

2006-04-04T00:18:00.000+05:30

just heard, the marine drive rapist got 12 years. this is terrific news. i mean this event was almost like a beginning of an era when we ignorant masses, came face to face with the reality, that bombay is after all not as safe for women as we think. surely this verdict will send out a stern message to the ill-intentioned.
also, public outcry works like magic. :)

2006-03-15T17:07:00.000+05:30

a post on polioman's up

2006-03-07T03:03:00.000+05:30

thank you anon. made my day!

ik onkar

2006-03-05T20:01:00.000+05:30

i am in awe. saw rang de basanti yesterday but hey wait, i am not in awe of the movie. it was strictly ok, contrived in parts but the music did it for me. especially, ik onkar. no, mostly ik onkar. for those who don’t know, it is a sikh prayer which we sindhis recite too. since childhood, everyday whenever i can, i recite it under my breath - in the train, on the road, in between meetings, even during parties. i really don’t care about religion or anything like that but ik onkar has become a part of my daily life, a part sometimes i forget exists. and when it happened in the movie with the golden temple in the backdrop, i wept. have heard it like 30-40 times since then, but i am far from getting over it. ar rehman’s very gentle track and the voice he chose...he has done it again. first, it was his piya haji ali for a movie called fiza. for a saint called haji ali, who has a mosque named after him in bombay. rehman made me fall in love with the mosque all over again, and now this. the man likes me or what...;)

a better resurrection

2006-02-27T17:28:00.000+05:30

i have no wit, i have no words, no tears;
my heart within me like a stone
is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
look right, look left, i dwell alone;
i lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
no everlasting hills i see;
my life is like the falling leaf;
o jesus, quicken me.

~ slyvia plath

:)

2006-02-14T01:50:00.000+05:30

been a while since this page was updated. no time, can’t remember when was it when i had a worry-free day. there are many deadlines lurking still and other unfinished stuff too. otherwise, the year’s been great so far. january started well, lots of work came in, some interesting, some not. met a few nice people too, including a yesteryear musician...he had been the rhythm arranger for the likes of rd burman and laxmikant pyarelal and of late, ar rahman too. met him at our radio spot recording (he was called in to play percussion), was touched by his humility. heard him play 5 instruments including a rare one called hudka and another one which was designed by him many many years back, sometimes called pedal matka. we chatted up about his music and now i hereby officially declare myself a hindi oldies buff. i knew every song he spoke of, damn it!

highlight number two of january was ram’s visit to bombay and our going around town to places that still retain old world charm. khotachiwadi (100 year old homes, one of which we were invited to), afghan church, an 1889 methodist church in colaba we chanced upon, banganga, haji ali and a quick trip to kamathipura and pilla house (my long standing wish came true, thanks to the ever-willing ram and a savvy cabbie. a post on sex workers coming up on polioman soon)

ran the goddamned marathon. 7 kilometers and i was limping for 3 days. i am hopeless.

remant mishra, a 23 year old artiste from bihar is the newest entrant in my ever-growing list of admirers (heh!) he was selling madhubani paintings at a handicrafts exhibition. my colleague wanted one, there was a bit of haggling, i stepped in, struck a deal. remant was mighty pleased, more so when i enquired about his village and life there. promptly, he gave me his (handwritten) card, asked for mine. dumb that i am, i gave him my card too. who knew he would call; not once, not twice, but thrice. once i was around and took the call, politely asked him why did he call. he said: aap ki yaad aa rahi thi. that does it. no more being inquisitive about villages and definitely no more card swapping outside work.

got introduced to sanskrit mantras. they work, believe or don't believe ;)

lurve tag

2006-01-21T00:58:00.000+05:30

arundhati tagged me and guess what, it’s one of those lists that others think i have come to specialise in. they almost hold these (non-existent) lists responsible for leaving me single till now.

so this is, believe it or not, my first list and i am in quiet a mood for it.
also ‘cos it’s ghalib time right now:
humko maloom hai jaanat ki haqeeqat lekin
dil ke khoosh rakhne ko ghalib yeh khayal achcha hai

the perfect lover: male
- great sensibilities: deep interest in books, music, movies, art etc is a given, but it would be brilliant if he has a passion for a certain place somewhere. i am a sucker for feeling belonged to a place. the closeness one feels for a place is an irresistible quality.
- honesty, kindness: major major major turn-ons.
- socially conscious: someone who looks beyond career, car, house, savings, holidays.
- he should be able to play at least one instrument and/or sing and most definitely dance: these are things i can’t do but terribly want to.
- strong-willed, quick thinker, a dreamer: i want to be awed from time to time.
- should have at least a handful of quirks: i need to be amused and irritated too.
- should understand urdu: i have been meaning to learn for years.
- should feel blessed to be with me, at least once a day: hey don’t raise those eyebrows, i promise i will return the favour. :p

tagging 8 bloggers is a very complicated task. my no-comments option makes things worse. so i’d rather all do it.:)

2006-01-06T02:14:00.000+05:30

last week, i had deleted two posts here. in lieu of those two, i posted one on polioman now. :)

2006

2006-01-02T01:31:00.000+05:30

not many words come to me anymore. i have been struggling, partly cos i was stuck with a lot more than i could handle in the past month or so. an accident, a head injury, 6 doctors, 2 hospitals, 1 surgery...no, none of this happened to me but around me which is infact worse. i was sleepless, anxious, vulnerable yet wise, strong and pragmatic, all at the same time. the family looks pleased with my performance. i was even publicly appreciated for the ‘gumption’ i displayed.
just when i had begun to feel good about it, my forecast for the entire year declared that i will have to continue doing that...show gumption, that is. it is like this quote i read somewhere, "life is just one damned thing after another".
by the way, happy 2006 to you. and me too.:-)

nature and me

2005-12-02T19:16:00.000+05:30

sunday, i got back from a week long vacation in karnataka. bangalore, belur, halibeed and chikmangalur, to be precise. came back with a few discoveries about myself. actually, the discoveries were made long back, this vacation just reiterated.

bangalore did not inspire much, except for a used books store somewhere near mg road. i think i expected lot more.
the other places were everything that a dream vacation is: valleys, flowers, forests, streams, skies, clouds, stars, birds, animals, even coffee plantations. the excitement on my travel buddies' faces was what good photographs are made of. the excitement on mine was missable.

to my own slight horror, i have come to terms with the fact that i am not a nature person as much as i would have liked to be. the silence and the nothingness do not work very well for me. i am more comfortable amid concrete (old, ancient), more attuned to finding spurts of nature in its little nooks and corners. these little surprises enthuse me more than an entire forest draped in sunlight or a field of sunflowers. i mean this is all good, but not enough. not bliss.

this rather uncomfortable discovery also possibly stems from the fact that i got incredibly aware that nature can be ruthless and unforgiving. at a lake in chikmangalur where the climate was not friendly, i stood nervous, shaken by the intense gust of wind and near zero visibility than amazed at wonderful sight of the lake covered with mist. today when i think of it, thoughts of tsunami come flooding into my mind.

i wonder, what's the deal really? on one hand, there is so much beauty, more than the heart can contain. on the other hand, there is destruction and anger in maddening proportions.

anyway, i am in no mood to contemplate any further. it is just too unnecessary. instead i will make good of it and rightfully so. i have good memories too, many of them. will write those down, possibly a guest post on a friend's blog. the link, of course, will be pasted here.

useless nipples and other things

2005-11-14T01:29:00.000+05:30

on being asked why women never reach the top in advertising, he said: because they’re crap, they wimp out and go suckle something.
in response to that, back home a woman creative director lashed out: motherhood is a part of life. men should learn to deal with it. or try suckling with their useless nipples.
hehe!

at the recent asian film fest, i caught 7 films, and one of the best ever. turtles can fly is an iranian/kurdish film about children in a village on the border of turkey and kurdistan, waiting for news on america’s ‘war on terror’. the kids were terrific, and the script outstanding but the film scored for its understatedness. rape, losing limbs to landmines, fear of war, fighting poverty....everything was understated to the point of being agonising.
i have to admit i learnt a precious thing or two.
i had an unlike partner to watch the film though. boss’s pretty nose-ring sporting, fab india wearing wife who on stepping out had only this to say: poonam, you know we have sent out 9 (ad) materials today. hope all ads come out well.
i swear, i wanted to resign that moment.

heard tori’s the beekeeper only recently, months after it was released.
fell for:
between rebecca's
beneath your firmaments
i have worshipped
in the jamaica inn
amused, i looked up the net and discovered the song titled jamaica inn is based on a book of the same name by daphne du maurier.

of the few snaps taken this diwali, one in particular makes me look like a muslim. maybe a ruksana or a shabana. even before that pic, i have had this uncanny feeling that i have somewhat of connection (can’t say deeper) there. everytime i visit the ngo for a meeting, i have to pass through a heavily muslim populated area. everytime i visited a close friend who is out of the country now, i had to negotiate my way through the many ruksanas and shabanas and their men. last year, i used to freelance for an elearning company and had to keep going to their office, taking the same route. sometimes, the handicrafts exhibitions that i frequent see me pass through that area again. for a short while, i volunteered for a school that taught underprivileged muslim girls. i even went to khandala with those girls for a workshop. in the train, many times i inevitably end up sitting next to burqa clad mums who gossip using words like intekaal, allah tala, hayat, bewaa, armaan and what have you. come to think of it, i wouldn’t have minded being a muslim at all (if one overlooks the madness that goes on in name of islam). being a sai and rootless at that, is no fun.

i recently received a mail from one of the commenters on polio man. the words in it made my day. also because it was déjà vu, such mails had stopped coming a long time ago. once again, it was a mail that kind of assured that the no-comments status on the blog is not a bad idea afterall.

the art of looking sideways is one helluva book. my guess is it will take me atleast a year to read it, if i were to.

new blog

2005-10-21T14:58:00.000+05:30

polioman.blogspot.com
i am excited!!!! :D

reality check

2005-10-06T21:42:00.000+05:30

only lately, as in maybe just a year or so back, i have begun to realize the follies of bombay. earlier i used to love it, it seemed a privilege to be here of all the cities in this country.

the strife, the struggle, the long distances, the population, the pollution all seemed incidental. i had grown used to it all since childhood, and anyway growing up takes so much of your time, you are rarely bothered about anything else.
the latest happenings, the marine drive rape case, the july deluge and a few more startling public incidents, plus meeting some hugely opinionated people – all have in a way introduced me to a whole new bombay. a bombay that i may not hate but dislike more and more. of course, there are many more realities like the ’93 bomb blasts to factor in but that’s another post.

after what happened yesterday with me, i am kind of certain bombay of today is partly to blame. yesterday morning, i took the bus to the station from where i take a train and then a cab to work. the bus is avoidable so i don’t bother with it and take a rickshaw on most days. yesterday, the bus came just at the right time and i decided to hop in. half a minute later, i regretted the decision. it was crowded with sleaze balls that bombay is so full of. there were two women ahead of me, also trying to keep the jerks at bay. a little ahead i spotted a man seated on a seat reserved for women. another woman stood next to that seat, clutching the handle bar and juggling with her bag. that did it. i walked right up to the man, tapped him on the shoulder with my newspaper and asked him to get up, leave the seat now. he mumbled something but did not get up. i construed it as a refusal to get up. i demanded he get up right now. he said his stop is arriving in 2 minutes. by then, i must have been red in the face or something, told him he can’t hog the seat till his stop while all of us women are struggling. he whispered something again, pointing to the letters ‘apangasathi (for handicapped)’ on the seat ahead of him. mad that i was, i failed to see what he meant. before anything more could be said, he got up. i did not look at him, just asked the other woman to sit. she wanted to get off so i sat instead. and only after i sat, i saw the man limp to the door. his legs were affected with polio.

throughout the day, i could not get the man out of my mind. felt terribly guilty for being nasty. to think of it, and am sure people who know me personally would vouch that i am not rude or uncouth. i can hardly manage to get mad unless majorly provoked. but when i set out for that one hour journey every morning to work, i am at my worst. it is the damned struggle to keep arseholes out of the way. it is a survival tactic. it is the thing about bombay. the lines blur.

7 minutes

2005-09-29T01:29:00.000+05:30

today, i did a few things:
went to the mantralaya.
there, along with 3 others stood witness to a friend's marriage that took precisely 7 minutes to happen.
he is single. now he is married.
was thoroughly amused.
met another friend and felt like it did 4 years back.
missed going to a music recording session.
ate my first morsel of the day at 6 15 in the evening.
checked weight. the weighing machine still screams.
saw a gorgeous gay man. his well-defined eyes were something to fall for.
watched bits of trainspotting, a clockwork orange and waking life.
the first two, depress. the third uplifts.
just decided, i am needlessly rambling.

the golden words

2005-09-12T18:08:00.000+05:30

the marriage between - & - solemnised on 22nd October 1996 is officially dissolved!
and the gavel came down.
bro's a free man!
oh hell, i want to celebrate! :)

2005-09-05T00:55:00.000+05:30

saw the motorcycle diaries at the press club on saturday.
it was beautiful and thought-provoking.
my heart broke every time that guy who played che guevara came on screen.
all the brad pitts and george clooneys of hollywood, bow. now. :)

grandmas everywhere :)

2005-09-02T18:47:00.000+05:30

patchwork quilt

2005-09-02T14:51:00.000+05:30

today morning i realised i have reached two places.
a new high and a new low.
new low: it's been over a year and i am still putting up with that piece of shit at work.
new high: i have become more tolerant. i care less and less about why people do the things they do, even if i fall in the line of those being affected.
so go on people, do your bit, see if i care. :)

ghalib

2005-09-01T21:30:00.000+05:30

i have noticed no matter what i listen to, i intermittently come back to ghalib. he is the great leveller. each time, he has managed to get me down to my knees. :)

'mohabbat mein nahin hai farq jeene aur marne ka
usee ko dekh kar jeete hai jis kaafir pe dum nikle'

2005-08-29T14:02:00.000+05:30

anil thakraney is an angry middle-aged man. if only bombay had more people like him.

anais nin

2005-08-22T16:10:00.000+05:30

"i want to live for ecstasy. small doses, moderate loves, all half-shades, leave me cold. i like extravagance. letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometers."

random musings

2005-08-22T00:29:00.000+05:30

- sundays are the days of god. the days of just being. nothing could pull me out of home today. not even the prospect of going shopping for corduroy bags at sale prices.

- i like arundhati roy, no matter what others think. just finished reading her interview in outlook (independence special edition). she has become a commentator of sorts. i don’t care if they think she feeds on all things wrong but at least she presents a behind-the-scenes view complete with varied perspectives and all, that other media mostly ignores. she says once someone told her, ‘if you had been in pakistan, you would’ve been shot by now’. and i recalled the time when i heard her at the world social forum last year, it took me a minute or two to spot her on stage. she is quite gutsy for a woman of her frame.

- i realise i have become quite a news-fiend. in my book, it's sacrilege to not read the sunday newspapers - all 5 of them.

- there is nothing quite like remembering one's own parents with one's own sibling. yesterday, after having witnessed the manic oddities of our extended family once again, we concurred, we are lucky, we got saved. we had the parents, we had.

- you feel odd when over a cocktail of bacardi and mint leaves, a dear friend (one who used to be perfectly normal till 2 weeks back) announces yet again, that her decision to go celibate is getting firmer by the day. i would have loved to think it's the drink. well, we'll see.

- my last weekend's highlight was meeting the scriptwriter of khamosh pani. for all of 1 hour and 15 minutes over coffee in her cosy pad, we spoke about a lot of things including her latest documentary (as a director) on community toilets.

- this reminds me, i've missed a chance to go to bucharest in east europe for a shoot. now only if the boss falls ill.

- i can be mean sometimes. :)

let the cut begin

2005-08-18T18:03:00.000+05:30

a little over a week ago, premjit asked: let the cut begin? sixpence none the richer?
i replied: yes, indeed!

a little over a week later, the song is still around me.

'the harvester is near
the blade is on your skin
to plant a new beginning
well...then let the cut begin'

there is something about 'let the cut begin'. it inspires, especially when you feel on the verge of something, all the friggin' time.
this is pretty much how i've lived the last many months. sitting on the fence is tiresome.

happiness is....

2005-08-09T09:37:00.000+05:30

when on a manic monday, after having worked all weekend, you unexpectedly receive a courier which contains a book you have always wanted to read and 4 movies you have always wanted to watch. thank you, ram. :)

the loot: demian by herman hesse. and 'requeim for a dream', 'memento', 'the shawshank redemption' and 'the emperor's new groove'.

fake plastic love

2005-07-18T00:49:00.000+05:30

it was only a fortnight ago when i got hooked to an international tv commercial of 6 years back. it’s a 2.05 minute black and white ad with radiohead’s ‘fake plastic trees’ playing in the background. the video has 2 little boys (age 6 - 7) on a ride (fake toy ponies that go up and down and simultaneously round and round). both these little kiddos are unbelievably happy – laughing heartily, clapping hands, flapping arms, sticking out tongues, making faces. one of them is a normal kiddo on the left of the screen and the other, a spastic kid on the right of the screen.
30 seconds into the ad and the supers appear.

jimmy goes to school everyday. his friend doesn’t.
jimmy goes swimming everyday. his friend doesn’t.
jimmy takes piano lessons. his friend doesn’t.

camera moves to the spastic kiddo.
super: hey, this is jimmy.

cut to the other kiddo.
super: this is his friend. he is homeless.

fade to black.
super: thousands of brazilian children need your help.
kids with down’s syndrome just need your respect.

one simple thought, two powerful messages. the images are so endearing, the kiddo with down’s syndrome touches the heart in more ways than you can imagine. he takes turns with his emotions: a second ago, he was joyful; a second later, somber. cut. he throws his head back and laughs, next he makes faces and his little eyes always shine.

also am absolutely thrilled with the choice of music. no direct correlation with the ad or the message/s but its radiohead…who would want any other connect. i have seen the commercial so many times that i have captured every little nuance in it. like when they show the close-up of the pony, we hear thom yorke crooning, ‘fake plaaasstic love’.
ends with a super: down’s. prejudice is the worst syndrome, with thom doing ‘wears me out, wears me out’.

in my extended family, i have a kiddo about the same age, who can barely hear or speak and that’s lead him to be slow in comprehension. his house falls on my way to work and out of habit, i look up to their second floor balcony each time i pass that road. i spot him all too often, rather i spot his eyes peering from behind the parapet, looking down at people going about their businesses, waiting for his own life to begin. those eyes even from two floors up, can wear one out.

music tag

2005-06-20T02:31:00.000+05:30

have been tagged. so here goes.

music has been a constant, right from childhood. my most fond memories of childhood include the time when i was in school. every morning, at around 6 – 6 30, my home would resonate with sounds from hindi oldies. it was a ritual dad followed, every morning for two hours, for decades. speakers faced the balcony overlooking the road, the old gramophone tuned and records played. from kl saigal to talat mehmood, suraiya, lata, shamshad, noorjehan, geeta dutt, sd burman, hemant kumar, manna dey, mukesh…you name it, he played it.

he acquired quite a name in the neighbourhood for his early morning indulgence, but when did he care. neighbours complaints’, mom’s incessant pleas – nothing worked. nothing was allowed to come between him and his music. the only time no music was played was when he would be out of town on a business trip which would usually last for a week or so. but then he wasn’t the only one missing the music. 2 days of no music and the early morning office-goers who became his regular listeners (my dad was a closet dj….hehe) would begin to enquire with the newspaper vendor who sat below our balcony. someone told me once that the shankar vilas chai hotel opposite of us, even witnessed a decline in sales on no-music days.

a kid that i was, i had let the vintage music pass and only later realized, i have acquired an inheritance. an ear for hindi oldies. infact, an ear for music.

80s, i began my years of passive listening different genres of music. music from the west, thanks to bro. started with the beatles and rolling stones in mid-80s, right to tori amos and radiohead today… with hundreds of bands and several genres in between. be it angst-ridden heavy metal, thrash, blues, rock, pop or alternative, i managed to relate to each one in my own modest way.

80s was the most fun, musically. my home used to be a battleground of a very unique kind. talat mehmood used to fight robert plant for hearing space. geeta dutt with tina turner. infact i lost count the number of times mukesh attempted to beat bob dylan with his vocal histrionics. :) many stood against each other, no one ever won. wounded they returned, only to come back the next day with more might. still nothing.

come 90s and i graduated, music-wise. thankfully, i did not let years of passive listening experience squander. slowly, i picked up music that appealed to my senses muchly and developed a definite taste…my kind of music that includes some of the above-mentioned and a bit of urdu and sufi. but i know i still have a long long way to go.

the meme:

total volume of music files on my computer:
technologically challenged is me. i have no clue. but am told it’s a lot and i can see it. oh yes, i can!

the last cd i bought was:
think it was 1947 : earth (solely for ‘raat ki daldal hai gaadi re’)

songs playing right now:
half a world away – REM. this one totally does it for me.

five songs i listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me
5 is a grossly understated number so i’ll do a bigger number, picking whatever comes to mind first.

watching the wheels – john lennon

tasveer banata hoo – talat mehmood

tu pyaar ka saagar hai – hemant kumar

ishq mein ghairat e jazbaat – jagjit singh/sudharshan fakir

simple together, purgatorying, ironic plus lots more by alanis morissette

sixpence none the richer – all numbers from their self-titled album

wahan kaun hai tera – sd burman

everything sung by tori amos

oh very young - cat stevens

lots of cranberries, dave mathews

don’t follow – alice in chains

piya haji ali – ar rehman (this one deserves more than just a mention. this song made me weep two days in a row, on my way to work. tears flowed, don’t know how. i like to believe i got a tiny sufi experience with this one. much like the whirling dervishes who believe the only way to reach god is song and dance. ;))

song bird – fleetwood mac

harvest moon – neil young

one more matinee – mark knofler

why georgia – john mayer

strong enough – sheryl crow

phir chiddi raat – lata/talat aziz/khayyam

tum apna rajon gham – jagjit kaur/khayyam

let it be – paul mccartney (one of the live versions has amazing imploring quality. 4th or the 5th time when he sings ‘mother mary come to me’, all i can do is sit down myself and imagine him going down on his knees in front of millions, looking up with tears in his eyes.)

all the ghalib rendered by gulzar and jagjit singh

tum pukar lo - hemant kumar/gulzar ('dil behal toh jayega is khayal se, haal mil gaya tumhara apne haal se' - this is gulzar at his best)

earlier songs penned by gulzar. works of kaifi azmi, sahir ludhyanvi, salil choudhary, shakeel badayuni, naushad

around the bend - pearl jam

drive – rem

bookends theme - simon & garfunkel

ok will stop now, else the list won’t. :)

five people to whom i'm passing the baton
anyone who wishes to. it's a super exercise where 5 become almost 30 ;)

to anumita: thanks a ton for making me nostalgic.

an outsider

2005-06-11T19:33:00.000+05:30

only a year ago, anyone who asked me if i would go abroad to study or work, got an appalled look. i, leaving india or even bombay seemed like not my kind of thing to do. almost an impossibility. primarily, cos i was and still am a homebody. family and friends mean a lot to me. and going abroad usually is a lonely journey which i was never willing to take.

today, i feel just the reverse. ‘run away, run away’, my mind screams atleast once everyday :) things per se haven’t changed much. nothing life-altering has happened so far. every thing is taking its natural, regular course. people, events keep happening. some stay, some leave. but still it’s difficult to determine why has life come to such a head.

why is the west or any other country in the orient a place to live in after 30 years here. i dont know, all i am left with is nothing but to produce justifications for the voices in my head. i don’t know if these are the real reasons or mere substitutes till the real reasons come along. whatever they are, they seem partly-appealing.

bombay is bursting beyond its limits. it’s extremely painful to move around with 50,000 people surrounding you whenever you step out.

in india, if not bombay, then where?

here the system, the government machinery sucks. as a member of a family which has been doing rounds of the courts and as an individual volunteering with a non-governmental organisation on human rights issues, i see absolutely no recourse in the law and judiciary here, atleast not immediately. must admit, in both these capacities, i have witnessed only miniscule setbacks but i know, like we all do, what havoc this corrupt system is capable of.

ours is a fickle-minded society. people have very little commitment towards anything else beside themselves. sometimes, not even that.

the rich culture and heritage that we so boast of is practically inexistent now. in the city where i stay, i see very few traces of it. but there is much consumerism, too much for my comfort. there is regression. there is violation.
i cringe when i read bombay being called a vibrant city. vibrant in what sense? night clubs, page 3 parties, rapes, what?
only two days ago, i went for a show at the fabulous tata theatre at ncpa. the show was to announce the city’s girl child initiative. the person behind the initiative used much of his clout to get the police commissioner and couple of famous industrialists to be present; the ex-governor of maharashtra was called; they read out messages sent personally by the president and the prime minister; leading news channels covered the show; page 3 socialities were there. i say, thumbs-up for all of that. it must have taken quite a bit of effort. but now that you’ve got the attention, what next? i assumed something worthwhile would happen. those thick-skinned so-called cultural custodians of the city would be moved, their dead consciences tapped. but no. all the energies were expended trying to get them there. beyond that, who cares. was a single little girl saved, before the press came and commemorated your efforts? no.

this brings me to media. not a subject close to my heart but since i work somewhere on its fringes, i tend to react faster and rather emphatically.
what will happen of a country where its national daily, the oldest and the most powerful one at that, has a rate card for its soul?

i don’t even want to begin on the dowry, the infanticide, the domestic violence issues here. you know it all.

having said this, you would ask how is any of this going to be different anywhere else. people being fickle is a universal phenomenon. unjust law, soul-selling media, human rights issues, consumerism –all of this is present everywhere. but there i wont mind it much cos it’s not my country. being an outsider should have its comforts. :)

music meme

2005-06-10T01:40:00.000+05:30

anumita asked. will reply. my big task for the upcoming weekend.

of late

2005-06-07T07:49:00.000+05:30

i have gone through travails of running a household and trying to do it right. i know how painful it is to run a household and work simultaneously. years of this dual experience did not ready me enough for the mother task of it all - setting up a home. thankfully, i managed but what i gave up in the bargain was a whole lot of time. for the past i don’t know how many weeks, i seem to have lost track of time. i have been all over the town. have been randomly giving out my phone number to all kinds of men - from plumbers to carpenters, painters, contractors, electricians - just about anybody who is kind enough, despite all the haggling, to deliver goods at home at my time and convenience. and if this was not enough, there is mad rush at work too. i come to work at odd hours, leave at odd hours. and just when i was cursing my fate for such screwed-up timing, an opportunity came knocking. but realised that my competition is none other than the boss. both of us want to hit a better idea first. it's healthy competition but competition it is. i wish the timing had been better. if i lose out, i wont have entirely myself to blame.

today is not one of those days. after running errands including a hospital visit, tired and fatigued, i travelled to work. settled down in the window seat with music. tori amos came on (she did cover of bruce springsteen's 'i'm on fire'. not the most appropriate song but she's pure bliss) i sat up for those 3 minutes and 6 seconds and let the thoughts scatter. setting up a home when you are unmarried, steals away whatever little sense of belonging you have left. growing age has already eaten up most of it. you know you've got to go your own path. soon. plus the niggling day-to-day and other issues ask for more patience than you are willing to give. plus, the work bit. but strangely, it all feels nice. with tori on the piano singing , "sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby, edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul", it ought to. ;)

2005-05-06T20:47:00.000+05:30

when i first learnt about female circumcision and months later about female infanticide, i shuddered with anger and shock. but when i learnt about the marine drive rape case, it went beyond anger and shock. i felt numb. and over all these days, many questions come to mind. the primary one: how could this happen? how could a girl be raped in a police chowky the size of a small bathroom? in broad daylight, on a crowded street, by a policeman? how could the girl, however naïve and meek allow a drunk stranger mount her and penetrate her not once, but thrice? why did her friends desert her? is that friends are for? is that what male friends are for? get cosy at the slightest of chance and when get caught, scoot? is it time already when men are proving to be bigger nincompoops than we had imagined? how will the friends or friend or whoever the hell, live the rest of their lives? what's the future for the girl and her family?

the ngo folk, needless to say, have sprung into action. i am a member of two yahoo groups with members from media and social field, and have received a multitude of mails from various women in these groups. i tried not to read all of them, purely to avoid being taken over by the issue big time. one of the few mails that i read, had a demand to the chief minister or the joint commissioner or some such person, to do dna tests. it spoke of the vaginal swab and samples of pubic hair, nails and blood from the alleged rapist for the dna tests.

figured, it will get more and more difficult for the girl. first, the rape and then trying to prove it happened. this is insane.

what do you do for a living anyway?

2005-05-06T02:03:00.000+05:30

there are people who are content with their jobs; there are who are not and there are who have lost sense of contentment altogether. for them, it's just a friggin' job. as long as it keeps the kitchen fire burning, who cares about the fire in the belly.

think about it and on one level, it works just fine. no care, no heartburn. on another, it's quiet unsettling, wasting 8-10-12-14-16-18 hours a day just to feed the pit. next day, it’s repeat process.

***

one evening after work, a little over 2 years back, i was sitting in a dingy, dirty irani café type place below our agency, with N - a social activist. the irani café type place used to be the regular haunt for all of us, during work hours and after. beside us, there used to be a whole breed of weird people frequenting the place. lots of marwari boys from the diamond merchants’ offices across the street sporting their loud gold and diamond bracelets and then there used to be a gang of oddball people – sweepers, clobbers, beggars…all kinds. it was an open-to-all place.

from the agency, each and every one us spare the bosses, frequented the place. some for a cutting chai, some for a smoke, some to eat, some to merely take a break from the air-conditioned cocoons. the women from the agency frequented the place everyday and we came in all shapes, all sizes wearing clothes with varied hemlines and necklines.
there used to be a quite camaraderie amongst all us strangers… be it an aspiring model killing time doing ad layouts, the municipality sweeper or the marwari millionaire with atrocious dressing sense.

those were the days when i rarely introspected about the quality of my job. those were the days of just being. but that one session with N, in a way, made me sit up and think. N used to and continues to run a school in kurla for under-privileged muslim girls. she is a simple, determined, articulate woman who almost single-handedly brought about a kind of a mini-revolution in the one of the biggest slums in the city. especially for the women there.

that day, we sat discussing about some annual report and we got talking about the kind of lives these women lead and how they contribute in the household; beside cooking, cleaning, bearing and raising kids. N informed me that some of the women and sometimes even their children earn their livelihood by:

bringing home a big pile of shredded paper and spending hours separating white shreds from the coloured ones. once the separation is done, the white shreds are sold for a few rupees.

getting orders to fold little papers (instructions basically) and tuck them inside little cartons along with little injection bottles.

procuring lots of radial tyres from the junkyard nearby, placing the tyres under the hot sun for days. when the tyres eventually melt due to the heat, they are ripped open. inside, there is a very thin metal wire which is then plucked out and sold.

and many such unique but menial jobs.

after that chat, a few months later, i went with some of those women to khandala for a workshop and much to my surprise, found all of them to be full of beans. chirpy and lively.

and then surfaced a kind of a dichotomy in my mind. what’s the fuss about a career all about? i still have no answers, maybe ‘cos lately i have been doing fairly decent and have sort of managed to breakthrough in my own little way. but the question still lurks. what’s the fuss about a career all about? :)

do not resuscitate

2005-05-02T23:28:00.000+05:30

'do not resuscitate', said a young doctor sometime past midnight in the ICCU when mom was almost giving up. he was readying us in case the need arose.

it's been 8.5 years since and 'dnr' still reverbrates in my mind at all times of the day - whenever i read, hear, watch anything related. or recollect the eternally long nights spent in the hospital hoping against hope and watching her go minute by every minute. i wish i had no memory.

logic of the mind used to fight emotions of the heart. what's worse? 13 years of crippling, excruciatingly painful arthritis or the loss of the most precious thing the family ever owned or even imagined to.

the inevitable happened, like it always does. and we sat there like wide-eyed zombies unable to react otherwise, but thankful for two things. one, she was not in pain, she had no knowledge and two, it did not come to the point where we were asked to make a 'decision'.

pulling the plug off your loved one is definitely not one of the best ways to bid goodbye. what makes it worse is the fact that the person who is pushed into oblivion is most often not aware of it.

emotional dilemmas apart, i, personally am in favour of pulling the plug if the other option is life worse than death.

having said this, it's been my earnest sincere wish that no one, no family ever needs to go through this. things should happen in the natural course. passing away of every single person should be in the hands of a higher being, and not doctors and family. we humans are not capable to deal with more than we already do. we are not equipped to face death this way and continue to live as if nothing happened.

this post was not intended to be. it was my resolution for the new blog - keep the blues away. and so i stopped myself several times, rewrote a few times but couldnt rest without posting it. reason being this, absolutelee.rediffblogs.com. preeti is leela and my friend savio's sister. keep preeti in your prayers.

thank you.

i woke up and smelled the coffee!

2005-04-05T20:57:00.000+05:30

many asked me, despite the little explanation that i left on the old page, why on earth would i delete two years of writing. i made up excuses like ‘i don’t know’, ‘i needed a new beginning’ and all that bull. well, it’s time for some truth. there was too much mediocrity in there. not that i promise zero-mediocrity here but knowing that you don’t know enough is knowledge too. the fact that i knew there was mediocrity and my creation at that pushed me to an edge. there was no reversal, i had to plunge and that i did. it doesn’t matter if i replace precious and now clean electronic pixels with new garbage here but atleast the old one is out and the new one will take longer to stink. ah! what a refreshing new post for a refreshing new blog! ;p
more later.