Sightings

It’s a stunningly bright day…the kind of day which can only signal impending doom …I am walking down Park street, inhaling a fragrant westerly breeze (or isit a whiff of Flurys)… and I’m telling myself —I'm in my early late twenties, my academic career is over and I still live with mom— such are the thoughts flooding my not-so-tiny head when I notice the new McDonald's that was blown up just a few months ago (or was it a year ago).. my God I deserve a break today, I sigh, all I ever get is the unhappy meal…
and that’s when he walks out of the plastic sheathed rubble that is McDonald’s now, like a phoenix rising from ashes… this guy, who is me… I mean who looks like me, so much like me that I'm breathless…
he looks at me for a startled moment and looks away… this guys, who is me…is he my other half? does he have what I don't? did he get the luck? the love? were we destined to meet or was I unwittingly trying to fight destiny by following him down the narrow Mirza Ghalib street? were we really separated forcibly or did he just run off with the good stuff? or did I? will this person embarrass me? will we indulge in awkward, silent sex? Is that how we put ourselves back together again?
Such were the thoughts flooding my not-so-tiny head when I lost the sight of the guy, who is me…

Differences …
So ma decided to renovate our "old" bathroom, you know the ubiquitous bong old bathroom—a cavernous, damp, water stained mess where we do all our laundry (maashi kapor gulo purono bathroom e dhuye nao) and which we surreptitiously guide our guests away from (no, no not that way, the bathroom is this way)… well she decided that it deserves a new lease of life…
bye, bye pink, chipped wash basin and hello gaudy glass basin and glazy blue tiles…
I try not to interfere with ma’s dealings and be judgmental about them, but what do you do when you bathroom looks like the setting of a lurid Sanjay Neela Bhansali dream…
My ma is so …baroque… and I’m so… not baroque… I remember the time ma insisted on hanging this elaborate painting of a waterfall which when plugged to a socket made "soothing waterfall sounds" *shudders* in my room and I relented simply because I wanted to avoid a showdown (we don’t believe in talking things out in the Biswas household)… it just hangs there and I avoid looking at it…the "soothing waterfall sound" however, proves to be a great distraction for my high-strung four-year-old nephew…
I hate the blue, glass basin… I hate washing myself on/in (?) it … I hate the way my foamy spit dribbles down its sides when I am brushing my teeth, it’s like spitting on your dining table…
Sigh…

Eyes...

Let me share this... of recent, i have become a collecter of what i call the "but you could have been so much more" looks... you know , the kind of look people give you when you say or do things which are not in keeping with their perception of you ?the kind of look which leads to a change of attitude? I've been plagued with those...
no matter what i say or how i say it, the shadow looms... today, after losing a battle against invincible forces that subject me to such looks i have decided that i will become a connoisseur of the "but you could have been so much more " looks... i will accept them, and grade them according to the level of intensity...
After all, all forward motion counts...

Life…
As years pass by, my doubts are confirmed… life is designed to be like a Cameron Crowe movie… a bittersweet balance that's funny, melancholic and romantic :-)

Family

They settle down in the next table… the family of three… the mother clearly the decision maker… a stately, middle-aged woman in a black salwar kurta (or was it a sari)… the husband seems defeated- both by age and life (they arent the same thing) … he bends towards his wife, displaying his dandruff-infested shoulders…black is not a colour to wear when you are fighting a losing battle against scaly skin…
The pubescent son is the object of my attention, for obvious reasons :P…he is plain really … hollow-cheeked and lean, like most pubescent boys are… he betrays a strange impatience towards his mother…he almost flinches when she reaches out in her purse to give him some money… shifting his weight from on red canvas shoe to the other…What a strange family, I tell myself… and how disconcerting it is to see them in a coffee shop at this time of the day …
Sitting there, witnessing an awkward family moment, I realise that I'm alone, not in the way this family would recognize… yet, at this moment, I yearn for the familiarity of this dysfunctional family...

Soulmate

Clearly, we are meant to be together… like Jonathan and Clare in A Home at the End of the World…half in love and half seriously contemplating a life together…
Both pilot and captive of the impossible sequence of events that keeps us away…But there she is, inert in a dusty corner of Hyderabad (a city which seems to be hell bent on discarding its glorious past and become a place where grotesque granite and concrete structures are considered to be man's highest form of artistic expression) surrounded by orange t-shirts, empty nutella bottles and walls of chick lits, and here I am, a hapless victim of vanity, pretending to read important books in empty Barista Cafés …

From the archieve...

a post from the Dubai days...

I am male. Wit and charm will only take me so far. What I need is to affirm my maleness. My primordial instinct demands it. A throwback from the time when men like me ruled the plains and hunted everything to near extinction. Fortunately, household chores are a perfect platform for this. So I seek out the big games in my house. Pursue the laundry. Stalk the dishes. Ambush the unmade beds. Corner the garbage bag. Prey on dust bunnies. And I do all these with such poise that it makes alpha male of every species green with envy…

Tra la la la
It goes tra la la, my mind, when I walk down the stretch of wonders that connects Kolkata’s shopping district (Esplanade) to it’s office para (Dalhousie)… It really does go tra la la, maybe the fact that I have my earphones plugged in helps…but tra la la it is… For, armed with a Barista take away cup in one hand and bag of dieters’ sandwich in the other, I play the part of the protagonist of this elaborate American soap opera that I have created for myself, and walking down that stretch, surrounded as it is with some of the most impressive colonial structures you will see in India, is the high point of the episode…and it has to be the title sequence-me walking down, unconcerned, attractive and desired, everything that I am not in real life, and the city being itself, chaotic, inquisitive and probing…sigh ...
Eventually, life happens….

Hours

So here I am then, a man in orange kurta, typing out his feelings. Nothing more, nothing less.
And there is the city outside, blazing under the April sun. Nay, throbbing under it. Everything glowing and pulsating-cars, men, women and buildings. No respite, only greater and lesser degree of brightness.
And there you are. My reader. The powerful one. Armed with the discretion to dismiss me, applaud me or simply flip through.
And we all make sense in our own warped way.

Desire…

It’s a fact most of us refuse to recognise — that you become heartless the moment you are desired. You flinch under the person’s adoring gaze, you feel suffocated by the attention. Then you consider yourself, in all your flaws –the receding hairline, the height, the stunted torso,the incessant need to be heard- and conclude that the person will be disappointed as soon as he or she gets to know you better.
Or maybe you will find the person unattractive for no logical reason whatsoever- there is nothing as repugnant as want in someone’s eyes.
You might kiss that person and it wont matter…it will be a pity kiss…something which will soon become difficult even to remember…
And inside you will feel cold and remote…

Smoke...

I gave him a prissy schoolteacher look…the urchin so brazenly puffing on a cigarette… he is hardly 13- years-old and already smoking, I tsk-tsked …is it laced, I wondered…unaffected, he took another breathy puff… his cheeks hollow… his hair matted… and his lean and hungry body sprawled on the pavement…I could feel the blood rushing to my groin …my lips parted in desire…I considered my erection…it was harmless really…the pitiful lump in my trousers…of no consequence whatsoever…I will not work on it…
But how dirty I felt…

Tears…


At times, when I push her over the edge, I see maa tremble…she is breathing, frothing, rage from head to toe …her mouth opening to say something but overwhelmed by a gush of saliva… it does pain me to see her so … helpless, pathetic and angry…
Yet I push her…waiting for her to collapse… both yearning and dreading the spasms of tears and saliva…like the time I used to take our neighbour’s 4-year-old kid for walks and pretend to abandon him in the middle of the road…he would invariably break into tears, his arms stretched out in a helpless plea… I would rush to him, and promise everlasting companionship only to repeat the trick…
How traumatic it must have been for his tender four-year-old soul…how traumatic it must be for maa’s 54-year-old soul …to be so offended by her own flesh and blood…to be reminded of all the wrong decisions she made in her life by her own son…how unnatural it is to be chastised by one’s own son …
But there is something wonderful about tears I think…there is something so cathartic to see them roll down her cheek…

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…