The other side….

As middle class inhabitants of a metropolis (if we at all can call Kolkata that) we lead a deceptively fragile existence… every morning we jostle the crowds in the subway to reach our workplaces, eavesdrop on other peoples conversations, curse the muggy Kolkata heat and breath a sigh of relief on reaching our dank, air-conditioned offices …on our way back home we pack boxes of sweets for our family (maa likes ladoo, I prefer sandesh)…we board buses and consider the city around us…fleeting glimpses of less fortunate lives scavenging garbage dumps and drains make us shake our head in dispassionate ruefulness … "This is no way to lead a life," we tell ourselves…
Until providence plays a cruel joke on us … like the last weeks floods which inundated the "safe, middle class haven" that is Bangur Avenue …464 mm of rainfall that washed away the semblance of dignified life we clung on to… In the past week I have waded through neck deep filth to collect food and water…we have had to make do without electricity for over 5 days…the taps ran dry for more than 4 days…
In the past week I have seen my mum fight over a jerkin of water… I have walked to office covered in filth and shit and god knows what…

Yet, as I sit to jot down my thoughts down things are slowly returning to normalcy… the sun is beamin reassuringly… caking the muddy leftovers of the last weeks deluge… party members in hired autorickshaws are making rounds of the city announcing through loudspeakers their intention to “help us in ever way possible”… ridiculous white lines of bleaching powders are littered along the open drains as a preventive measure against any possible epidemic… families many of whom were displaced from their ground floor homes, are scrubbing their moss covered house clean with a stoic good humour that irritates me … “This is a blessing in disguise, the flat is getting thoroughly cleaned before pujos,” says nicher barir Mukherjee uncle who shared with us the past weeks horror…
Maybe we will reconcile to the comforts of our middle class lives…maybe this week will be nothing more than a distant memory for us… but I hope I do manage to remember the feeling of complete helplessness that overwhelmed me for that past week… maybe that’s how it feels to be in the other side of the bus

Of long shots and lazy Hyderabad afternoons….

The death of Bergman and Antonioni on the same day was a significant event for film lovers across the world indeed… but for an eclectic class of twenty people, who about two years ago shared lazy Hyderabad afternoons watching the best of European cinema, it was a time to share a few words and look back at what we had learned from that class…Much to the chagrin of our instructor some of us might have dozed off during many a Bergman long shot and giggled through Antonioni’s resolution scenes, yet, each of us took something back from the class…given below are the rough drafts (and when i say rough i mean ROUGH) of my assignment on both these filmmakers …

Winter Light is a story of disillusioned pastor, much like Sacrifice, which was about a disillusioned philosopher…but the difference lies in the way these two protagonists achieve a resolution within the self…while Alexander had to make a Sacrifice to be at peace with his spiritual self, the Pastor clearly has a more complex inner struggle…For he was in denial, denial of self need…
His repeated shunning of the physically tainted Martha and his longing for his marked wife shows that he clearly has not exorcised his own devils…
A priest who is supposed to be the representative of Jesus, the one who embraced the lepers, shuns Martha, because she is diseased . Martha on the other hand realizes that her completeness lies in being with him.
Jonas, the fisherman , who along with his pregnant wife , signifies domestic abundance is under threat too here (unlike in The Seventh Seal where Joff and Mia are the survivors).
Clearly Berman is a disillusioned man when he makes this film; he sees the threat of destruction of the humankind as an inevitable one.
But he never fails to hope, the scene where the wife of the fisherman breaks the news of the fathers death to the children in a warmly lit dining room , is a heartwarming one…fo life will go on, and there will be survivors…
The neurotic fisherman, Jonas, who kills himself because he fears that the Chinese will attack, brings in the greater concern to the movie… He enunciates what the world fears, another war…the constant threat of something drastic happening, is quintessential to most concerned European films…
In Winter Light religion is the only solace, not because of what it says but because of what it does…the pastor feels he is partly responsible for Jonas’s death because he couldn’t offer a helping hand to him…
At the end of the day the devout Christian in Bergman believes that the world will be saved by the milk of human kindness…

Life in a day


He would be like them, he decided. It wouldn’t be difficult, he could be casual… "I will be casual,” he said to himself… he would be lost in the music and walk down the subway like they do… he will be young and reckless…”It is not difficult to be reckless,” he repeated…trains will hurtle past… the city will entertain itself … the air will be heavy with promise…

“I will be like them,” he chanted as he showered… he stole a glimpse at the mirror as he lathered his chest … “This is me,” he said “short, balding, yet youthful?” …. His large head was a sort of imposition on his slight body, at times comically so …

As he dressed himself, he could hear the piano piece build up in his mind… he was anticipating the crescendo … it will come with a sweeping surprise, taking his breath away, tearing the last shred of happiness away … he will drop on the bed, his face ashened … he will cry , theatrically, mourning all of life’s little disappointments….surely they add up to something bigger …something bigger than death??
“Why is everything wrong? Why can’t I be like them,” he asked himself as he watched the tears roll down his face in the mirror…


A young man’s whole life in a day… a day from his life….

Anandi'
Female,
43,
India

Middle age suddenly happened to me. It was almost as if I woke up to it one fateful morning. My features suddenly took a severity that often I used to admire in my mother’s weathered face…
I was not as much alarmed by the occurrence as surprised. For years ago, after toiling through house work, when I would sit down to a fanciful ritual of applying an assortment of lotions on my face ( 10 revolutions clockwise, 10 anticlockwise, always massage in the upwards direction), I would wish away my wrinkles with an incredulous humour that only youth can afford… I was never serious about the implications of old age, ignoring my gynecologist’s strict instruction of watching my diet and taking calcium pills…dismissing it as something that happened to other people…

And now, here it is …staring at my face... eyeball to eyeball… and I can only laugh…

Thats how I deal with everything, my husband feels… I laugh at things…a dry, nervous laugh, which seems more like a query than an assertion…
Sex for instance…a queasy obligation more than anything else to me …when Ashok comes to me hungry and aching with desire, I submit to his lust with an almost comical resolution…pondering at his expanding midriff and ungainly technique… stopping myself from breaking into peals of laughter as he adjusts himself over me …ending it with a dry, nervous laugh….

Souresh
Male
21
Kolkata, India

I am not a morning person. Even though I push myself out of the bed quite early, the world that stirs itself to vitality around me seems like another person’s reality. I’m a passive observer. Tea, biscuits and the morning paper are consumed flimsily, without the grandiose of a ritual. As if I were an indifferent guest in a hotel. Considering my lodging, never committing to it.
She always deems it fit to barge into my room every morning. My mother. I could have been jerking off. Or be in the buff. But she never seems to think about these things. Though I never really was walked into. Maybe she knows me too well. Maybe its the other way around. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
Privacy in our house is frowned at disapprovingly. Doors are never shut. Curtains never drawn.The unspoken rules of conduct were probably laid by my mother ages ago. Maybe before I was even born. My father, an unremarkable man with a remarkable jawline probably succumbed without so much as a whimper. He probably thought it was easier that way. To let someone take the reins of his life. Prone to occasional bouts of helpless anxiety, my father lives his life “on the surface”, complains my mother, as she greedily snatches the unfinished work away from him. He always seems only too relieved to surrender. I wonder if they ever have sex…

Since my obstinate decision to move back to Kolkata last year I have often asked myself if it was a wise decision …. After all moving back in with mum is not the ideal thing to do when you are 25(heck I were in the States I would be considered demented or gay for taking such an action , come to think of it that wouldn’t be too far from the truth ) … my journey from the quaint Secunderabad station to the chaotic melee of humanity that is Howrah was in many ways symbolic of the confusion driven turn my life was taking…
After negotiating my way through an army of coolies, as I drove away in a taxi (the rusty non-electronic meter of which gave me anxiety attacks) the sight of the grotesque but familiar Howrah Bridge was like a confident hand on hesitant shoulders…

A year and a lifetime later I am still plagued with such questions… was letting go of the offer to move to Delhi a bad career move….wouldn’t I be happier being a lifestyle magazine reporter in Pune? Isn’t Hyderabad the place where i will get to be unapologetically me, what with the city teeming with friends who love me and understand me for what I am … Doesn’t Mumbai promise me everything that I could ever dream of ? Does my sister’s persistent proposal of moving to the gold laden city of Dubai make some sense, after all it has everything that modernity has to offer…
Maybe ….but life isn’t ever about answering questions is it??My being, I have realized is in many ways attached to this city…pragmatically speaking, that would have been the case had I been brought up in any other city… but the romantic in me likes to believe it’s a tumultuous love affair which has weathered many a storm (my 2 year stand with Hyderabad included)… Often, when I look out of bus windows and take in the sights, or walk the hallowed lanes of BBD Bagh ( there was a point of time when me and my sister used to presume that the “BBD BAG” emblazoned on the sides of the ubiquitous red Kolkata minibuses was actually an advertisement of a brand of bags) lined with spectacular buildings , bearing mute testimony to the changing fortunes of the city, I feel blessed … blessed to be a part of a community which has nurtured a way of life for centuries now… no matter how inconsequential and in the fringes I am...

P.S. thank u Kama for the snap

In the early nineties, when we moved to Kolkata from what now seems like almost virginal terrains of Kohima, life offered of a labyrinth of experiences…. Everything was new and dazzling… city life was sampled by us in small installments during brief summer interludes… everything used to fascinate us….the tiled bathroom in our grandma’s as opposed to the cemented one in Kohima …the overhead shower as opposed to the tin drum which was the receptacle for regulated water supply… The paper Kwality tubs of vanilla ice cream which we used to lick to the last drop with an equally fascinating wooden spatula like thing... the spatula like thing in turn would be chewed to a pulp to extract the last drop of vanilla essence….years later when I were to see Durga Puja pandals adorned with those very spatula like things stuck on the walls to make various decorative patterns (the ubiquitous Indian paisley included) my first instinct would be to chew them up …

Me and my sister were a capitalist lot…identifying experiences with brand names… hot sultry afternoons were associated with frantic glugs of gold spot ( the zing thing )… comfort was a bite of Cadburys milk chocolate ( Cadburys , interestingly was so ingrained in the Bengali/Indian psyche that it became synonymous with chocolate …so one had to ask for Cadburys when one wanted a bar of chocolate….chocolate was a generic term for all kind of lozenges … things that took a long time to seep in)…
The clammy Kolkata weather ensured that my bar of golden foiled “Cadbury” (poor Amul catering to a thankless market even after it’s innovate marketing campaign displaying cute amul looking couples on the wrappers) was always melty and messy leaving a trail of sticky brown spots of my summery shirts and shorts…evenings meant darkened rooms enveloped in the blue shadows of the Weston colour television…the drawing rooms were animated with coming of age tales in Star Plus… beaming the American way of life to our collective psyche …oh how I identified with Kevin Arnold and his teenage angst though I couldn’t follow half of what he said in that cute American twang…

Sigh ….how I digress… where were we? Oh yes the dazzling city lights…Gah have completely lost thread now ….funny how I start saying something and inadvertently end up saying something else…

Laladom…

Singledom is fun methinks…not that I have ever been in any other state of being, but increasingly for the past few years the bitterness and an incredible sense of longing that I felt after seeing my friends cozying up to each other or doing couply things (you know taking sips of each other’s coffee, casually sprawling on each other, completing each others sentences, placing each others orders in cafes, or just being with each other, happy and satiated) has waned… maybe its the city which is turning strangely moody nowadays, overcast, fast paced and incredibly unreasonable. So caught up am I in the city’s mood swings that i hardly have the time to negotiate with trivialities …maybe its my job which in a very feeble way challenges my intellect…

Gah …who am I kidding…Being single is a habit now and am not complaining…

Gawd …have been feeling listless and bored lately…it probably has got something to do with the clammy Kolkata heat which leaves you feeling drained out and for some odd reason fat… maybe its the shirt sticking to your body syndrome (you know wet with sweat shirt clings to your body and highlights the hitherto unnoticed lovehandles )… but then my friends will point out that everything makes me feel fat…maybe they are right ....
But I wonder what will life be like without my weight to obsess about … I am done being the blithe one who doesn’t care about what goes in and how it comes out …now every morsel that goes in has to be accounted for …


Gah… lesson no 99999….never force myself to blog just for the sake of blogging …

Good Morning Kolkata

Even before the first crow can caw for its breakfast,
Montu will bicycle his way through the narrow gullies of Shovabazar,
And throw the world rolled into a bundle, to eagerly awaiting bhodroloks in their verandahs ,
Sometimes the bundle will miss its target and roll down the moss covered walls
To fall into a puddle of yesterday’s rain
But that wont deter Potol’s father from sending the ever handy Minati masi
To go and collect it…
For his morning cup of cha and marie bishkoot is eagerly waiting on the plastic covered dining table….
So is a tall glass of lovingly made isabgol…
A few windows away little Minu is gobbling maach bhaat before bending in front of the thakur ghor and rushing out , water bottle in tow, to catch the bus…
Minus maa will follow her soon to school after finishing her chores,
Waiting patiently outside holding a tender coconut ,
As if her daughters future depended on the fateful sip of the nectar of the gods...
Minu’s Maa will also chant a silent prayer looking at the young college girls walking past
Praying that her daughter doesn’t turn out like these eye brow pierced freaks,
One of the freaks, Rhea, for a few fleeting moments, will reminiscence her tender coconut sipping days,
But quickly go back to worrying about the contraceptiveless sex she had the last night…

And before you know it my city will stretch herself awake…

Life…in a Metro

Metro on Sundays is transformed inexplicably to a domestic zone….not that it is the office goer’s domain on weekdays, being the quieter and a relatively inflexible mode of transport of the city , Metro is clearly her most underutilized infrastructure (next only to the monstrous red over bridges that loom incongruously over the most quaint crossings)…
Sigh I digress again ….As I was saying, Metro on Sundays are characterized by the couples in various stages of matrimony or pre matrimony…as you listlessly make your way through moody electronic gates who greedily gobble up your ticket only to blink a vexing red cross and therefore you have to shout for the blue shirted metro guards (“ei dada please come na” … “ki holo ?? kothar theke uthechilen…ek minute daran”)…by the time you convince the dada to open a manual gate for you, the train you could have comfortably slipped into is missed by a whisker...but since it’s a Sunday you can afford to shrug and find a pillar to rest on … I always wanted to be the sort who is oblivious to the crowd and is lost in a book…but people always distract me…men , women children…faces , idiosyncrasies, and hidden agendas…shirts , trousers, duppatas and saris…talcumed backs, transparent blouses highlighted by black bras, damp sweat patches, flaring nostrils jungled with overgrown hair…shreds of chicken fibre caught between yellowing teeth, entangled hands, bulging pants….
Everything is noticed, smelt and felt… sometimes with disgust sometimes with morbid curiosity…
But on Sundays things change…everything is bathed in the hues of domesticity…squealing children, men and their wives, young men and their wives, old men and their wives, men with their soon to be wives and more squealing children...
Categorising these various stages of matrimony will be an easy job for even the most casual observer …
You have-
1) The just married type…bangled hands and blazing sindoor …great bodies contoured with great sex …tight jeans…flimsy duppata… arching backs…sweet nothings…
2) The soon to be married type…entangled hands…furtive glances…need for a room…clingy girlfriend ….irritated with desire boyfriend…parted lips…unspoken words…always jeans and sequined tops…
3) Married with young children type…tousled hair…inept hapless father…efficient, irritable mother…pinned synthetic sari…dark circles…contended eyes…chocolate ice cream stained shirts…
4) Married for decades type…talcumed and cottoned…sparse yet well nourished hair plastered into neat plaits and plates…lazy nods…comfortable distances…

Sigh…how I wish I could ever fit in …

P.S. incase you haven’t noticed my imaginatively titled post is my little tribute to the soon to be released Bollywood film with the same name…it has some great nos. by composer Pritam …pliss do check out :-)

A year ago I used to think all that’s wrong in my life can boil down to a singular problem…my weight…
If and when I lose weight everything will fall into place … life will be easier…people will like me… I will be admired and lusted for…no one will think I am a lazy lump… I will breeze through my interviews ,confident and happy… I wont have to stand tiptoe all the time to appear taller coz when you are slimmer you look taller anyway…I wont make a sorry sad figure when I gobble up my third brownie….and most importantly I will have a lovelife…
A year and 16 kilos down the line I still stand tiptoe ….I still don’t have a lovelife….

Summer for starters


Peppered with early morning walks
Marinated in long lazy afternoons
Sautéed with sweaty evenings
And garnished with chopped nights
Summer is served to me

I will take in a long deep breath of spring
Before I take my first heady bite

Traveling alone almost always ends up a being reflective exercise for me …more so during the night time…so in a short 8 hrs train journey from the intimidating Howrah station (with its orange halogen lights and melee of sights and sound) to the bustling yet quaint Puri station (dotted with pilgrims carrying matkas of camphor smelling sweet rice and adorable grass boxes of delectable gojas) I ended up mulling over the same thoughts that make my train journeys what they are… I thought how when we are snugly tucked in our beds when we are home we never think of millions of people hurtling across the country in train ( I keep telling myself that I will try and think about people in trains when am home but I never manage to do that )…and about how vulnerable, curious , helpless ,disoriented and oddly comfortable one feels to wake up in a strange brightly lit station animated with the squalling hawkers and tea vendors (the ubiquitous, nasal “chhhhhay garam” )… and of course the mystery of fellow passengers , I don’t think anyone spends as much time as I do wondering what/who are they ? Where are they from? Why are they so obnoxious/pleasant/indifferent? What did they have for dinner? Do they take their clothes off when they go to the toilets? How do they manage not to soil them when the toilets are wet and stinky? Why do they think its ok to brush their teeth with germ infested train water but insist on drinking bottled water?

Sigh …mysteries…

Different...

My courage is in the form of tears
My resolution takes the form of hesitance
My hope lies in my despair
Yet you say I am different…

Your acts of courage will never be tear washed
You will never hesitate at being resolute
You will never learn to hope the way I hope
You will never understand me ….

Katra Katra...

It was not supposed to be like this … it was not supposed to rain today …withdrawing winters are about crisp mornings and summer scented afternoons…not wet newspapers and soaked-to-skin crows…
Yet it rained today…damp, cold and gray …rendering me hopelessly sad…causing my sweatshirt to smell like it smells in monsoon-mothy and wet…and those depressing puddles…infested with gasoline…with rainbow hued layers…they make me sick…
And children…wet raincoated children clinging to their mother’s mud stained synthetic saris…helpless and happy…couples sharing umbrellas and sipping raindrop diluted tea…uncomfortable and happy…rickshawpullers with conical plastic caps…exhausted but happy…
And its still pitter pattering…fills me with the dread of a deluged morning…
No wonder am unhappy….

well a song in the head which refuses to go away ...
(i havent translated it though, someone called shubhi gupta from bangaloer has done the needful quite competently, if i may say so )

tere bin / besides you
sanu sohnia / my love
koi hor nahio labhna / i shan't find another
jo dave / who'll give
ruh nu sakun / peace to my soul
chukke jo nakhra mera / and indulge me
ve main sare ghumm ke vekhia / i have gone and seen it all
amrika , roos, malaysia / america, russia, malaysiana
kittey vi koi fark si / there wasn't any difference
har kise di koi shart si / they all had some condition
koi mangda mera si sama / some asked for my time
koi hunda surat te fida / some were fascinated with my face
koi mangda meri si vafa / some demanded my fidelity
na koi mangda merian bala / none wanted my demons
tere bin / besides you
hor na kise / no one else
mangni merian bala / wanted my demons
tere bin / besides you
hor na kise / no one else
karni dhup vich chhan / shall shade me in the sun
jiven rukia / (the) way you paused
si tun zara / slightly
nahion bhulna / i shan't forget
main sari umar / all my life
jiven akhia si akhan chura / you said, looking away
"rovenga sanu yad kar" / "you shall weep in my memory"
hasia si main hasa ajeeb / i laughed a strange laugh
(par) tu nahi si hasia / but you didn't
dil vich tera jo raaz si / you had a secret in your heart
mainu tu kyon ni dasia / why didn't you tell me
tere bin / besides you
sanu eh raz / none shall tell this
kise hor nahion dasna / secret to me
tere bin / besides you
peerh da ilaaj / what druid
kis vaid kolon labhna / has the cure to my ills
milia si ajj mainu / i found today
tera ik patra / a note of yours
likhia si jis 'te / on which you had scribbeled
tun shayr varey shah da / a varis shah couplet
park ke si osnu / upon reading which
hanjnu ik duliya / a teardrop fell
akhan 'ch band si / what was locked in the eye
seh raaz ajj khulia / was revealed today
ki tere bin / that other than you
eh mere hanjnu / these tears of mine
kise hor / won't be kissed by
nahio chumna / none else
ki tere bin / that other than you
eh mere hanjhu / these tears of mine
mitti vich rulnha / will wither in the dust

Somewhere over the Rainbow…

So this is how it’s going to be …
Life…
Limbo, interspersed with entr'actes of hope
Albeit in the garbs of “how things could have been”…
Like those saxophone interludes in Nat King Cole songs
Beautiful… but sad …
And if life were a movie,
I would be the guy who got left behind …

From the Archives

tee hee...

Of farts and belches…

Some time ago I had commented on how I hate the sight male of the species indulging in something which comes most naturally to them …scratching crotch , yesterday I was subjected to another sight which I find very repulsive , a very pleasant looking middle aged man was digging his nose vigorously, with such concentration and singular devotion that one would assume that his life depended on it *puke puke*... have u ever been in a dinner table where u heard the person next to you fart (and if its really not your day you smell it too) and u didnt know where to look because you were embarrassed for that person while he happily went on eating his chicken tikka (filling u with the dread of being subjected to a chicken tikka flavored fart …ewww) and after that you probably never did see the perfectly respectable person in the same light again coz u heard him fart ...or the time when the teller of the bank decides to burp right on your face polluting the air with the smell of his/her lunch… now I m no prude and I confess of indulging in each and every one of these very “biologically justified activities” but then why am I (in particular) so squeamish about the public display of them???

Farting is the spontaneous expulsion of intestinal gas through the anus and is as common and important a biological process as say blinking…then why is there the stigma attached to it …maybe because of the odor it emanates …

Wouldn’t it be nice if we accept these biological functions as normal and stop attaching the stigma to them? A world filled with farters and belchers and crotch scratchers !!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Latchkey life

How perspectives change when u live alone...

somehow my idea of havin the whole house to myself was a decadent one of sleeping into late afternoons, occasional making out sessions with random strangers in different rooms and peace ....instead i find myslef wakin early ,worrying about the day, leading my usual chaste life and being subjected to the tension of the houshold help arriving late...i rush out of office before 9 pm so that i find the vegetable stalls open and can make throwaway bargains...even on a very very rare day when i am out partyin with friends i spend half the evening wondering if i have really locked the door before rushing out to meet a deadline...

however there is somethin quaint about walking into an empty apartment..., especially when i know this is how rest of my life is going to be...

when u turn the key to a satisfyin click on your door things somehow seem to be right...

Shey je boshe achche...

Alone he sits by the window knitting a scarf of colorful dreams …
His eyes belying his smile…
And old haggard clouds mock him with showers of tears…
A wet crow tries to waggle all hope away...
Yet the dream factory churns out hope of different shapes and sizes…
And the humming sunlight of his heart shines through the rain…

The Hours...

I remember one morning...
getting up at dawn...
there was such a sense of possibility!
You know? That feeling?
And...and I remember thinking to myself:
"So this is the beginning of happiness..."
"This is where it starts!"
"And, of course, there'll always be more."
Never occurred to me
it wasn't the beginning,
It was happiness.
It was the moment...