Rain in Gurgaon

Musings on a Monday Afternoon

    Trip to Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi, and other things:

Living in North India is like reading an incomprehensible poem where the first few stanzas are so painfully abstruse that you feel you are tackling an obliquely trailing ship with no nautical chart to assert its voyage. In many ways you are the frigate itself, straining at its moorings as you try to comprehend the current of social life that sets you in motion. For the last few months I have incessantly felt the pull of contrary currents; on one side I see plain simplicity, nothing idyllic though -- you can hardly expect that in this part of the country-- yet pedestrian to the tongue, a touch of earth, a feeling of life as it is. While on the other hand, I have experienced artificiality as we know it. Ostentation, a facade of rich and gaudy texture and sequined strokes intermingled to awful debris where in you could seldom locate the sapling of reality even if you have stuck your hands to the ovum of the earth. Such is life in Gurgaon; such is life in my New India.

Delhi and Gurgaon—one the Prima Donna, while the other the Nuevo capital of glamour and style; one carrying in its jorum the culture of centuries, the other a youngster denouncing with iconoclastic ferocity that substantial ethos. Gurgaon is undoubtedly the land of the New. It is perhaps the modern Byzantine stripped off its ancient elegance. Here you will find tall structures, buildings with distinctly regal names and manicured lawns, vehicles that only a few years ago had been objects of dream, shiny floored shopping malls filled with rich stock and many such luxuries. But if you are in search of some old-homey culture, you will have to cross the state border and enter the environs of New Delhi.

Last weekend we had a dinner invitation at some friends’ place in Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi. Chittaranjan Park, or CR Park, its popular sobriquet, is an urban region containing a large population of Bengali people. For years it has been a seat of popular Bengali culture in New Delhi. And once you enter this locality, you will feel that same ancient culture buzzing around you. On my way to this destination I had perused the roads and the scenery, and had observed how the pot-holed stretches with stray trees, dumping grounds, and skyscrapers on either side lead ultimately to constricted alleys with two and three storeys bordering the side roads. Modest shops and open-air flower sprees took over glass-fronted malls and labyrinthine arcades. The whole area seemed to be an anachronism, it was as if somebody had scooped out a chunk of Bengal and planted it out of sheer whim in the heart of North India.

Our friends live in a beautiful house in the epicenter of this awesome locality. Upon arrival we were immediately introduced to evening snacks of great succulence: bread-crumb coated deep fried chop, chicken patties, fried mishti (Bengali sweet) and a glass of cold drink. Our host and hostess added to this initial feast the spice of great conversation. The session of adda (kibitz) touched on all topics under the spectrum—politics, travel, personal updates, and many more. The cozy pink-walled living room with its ethnic Indian décor condensed our sense of serenity. Our days in Gurgaon have left us culture shocked, here we never speak our beautiful native tongue outside our house; in fact, even Hindi is rarely spoken in this area -- English is the (un)official language of Gurgaon. Hence, it was a pleasure dropping our guards and participating in the feast of reason and the flow of the soul and mouthing lovely Bengali.

We had decided to do the week’s grocery from Chittaranjan Park, and our host and hostess gladly acquiesced to the invitation of accompanying us to the shopperies. There was a well-spread fish market only a few steps from our friends’ house, which displayed in temporary scaffolds the catches of the day. The fish lay in arrays; their piscine skins shimmering under warm bulb light. My hostess and I refrained from entering the fishy establishment and stood outside as our better halves marched in with alacrity. The market in many ways resembled a famous souk in Kolkata called Gariahat Market. As I observed the surrounding and took in the human-fritinancy that whizzed through the bustling streets, I felt like home. My hostess drew my attention to a jhalmuriwala preparing in his steel jar a concoction of puffed rice, spices, raw onion, lemon, peanuts, mustard oil and thinly sliced coconut-crescents. This mixture is a Kolkata-special-dish, but we abstained from tasting it just before dinner.

After the fish market we headed for the mishtir dokan (sweet shop), the best in the area which had that quintessential sweet shop name on its signboard: Annapurna Sweets. We procured a dozen of their sugary Bengoli desserts coated with layers of khoya and dipped in running syrup.From the flower shop I got a bunch of their freshly-cut, which now marinate in a tall glass vase. My hostess being a gardening-aficionado herself gave me some awesome gardening tips I intend to follow, in good time, though.

The finale of our visit was announced after a sumptuous dinner of lovely Indian food and another round of adda in which the whole Ghosh family participated with élan. We left CR Park around eleven in the night with just as much space in our stomach as to allow our physical system to merely insufflate without any bodily strain. We reached home in twenty minutes owning to the otherwise busy streets being vacant for the nighttime. As I curled up with the reading material on my bed fifteen minutes before heading for the dreamless that night, I felt I heard time and again in the buzz of the air-conditioning machine the vignettes of open-hearted, pure laughter which had surrounded me that evening. 

                       Pictures from the Web. 

Reading "Phone Therapy" -- A Poem by Ellen Bass

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To Our Teacher, with Love

This afternoon as I sit for my daily writing exercise of inscribing at least a thousand words, the meaningless free-writing exercise start to take a tangible shape, the nebulous impressions solidify under the postmeridian lull, and I see before me the vignettes of the day past. Yesterday our creative writing teacher finished her allotted classes and bade us goodbye; her place would be taken by a new teacher who would finish the course.

It was an exceedingly emotional day for us and everybody was touched by our teacher’s presence. In her final speech our teacher stated that just as her students have been touched by her presence, she had also been touched by her students, and that she would always remember the faces. ‘Always,’ I cannot believe I am using it; she said we should jettison this word from our dictionary and leave a life without generalizations, since they do nothing to improve our writing.

After the conclusion of the class we took pictures and when our teacher finally left, I sensed a deep sadness in her pupils, a look of a fond-somebody leaving behind a thing she adores. And it was those slightly red eyes together with the collective algo we felt in our minds as we wished her well that made me think about the vastness of the human heart— an universe unto itself able to gather under its wooly blanket all the allotropies and homologies of mortal existence. There is so much goodness and brotherhood in the world and it takes a singular incident, one divine alchemic touch hailing from the deep recesses to transform the quisquiliae to solid gold.

I don’t mean to say that the world is a better place now than ever, but yesterday, I felt, albeit momentarily, that differences are creations of the human critical self, that underneath the death and pain and ugliness, we are all good. In many cases, however, the layers of sediments are too deep to be disentombed, and we end up never discovering the good in us partly due to apathy, and partly due to a closed-up emotional life. But to me emotions are the S and P of existence, the building bricks of my creative life. And I am always fascinated by the depth of human emotion.

It’s amazing that the people I have met only four weeks ago are now an intrinsic part of my social life. We have had confrontations in class, have criticized one another, displayed vivid evidences of the algedonic polarity of existence; and yet, at the end of the day, under the brooding light of a pedagogue, we unite, huddle and smile at a camera. I thought that yesterday I had seen the basic constituents of the human mind, the organic anti-normal part we hate to show. After the flash we all went back to our customary self, but the capture stored in its vial the truest and the unstained of human sentiments.

I will remember the goodness of these faces oft seen in the last few weeks, faces that will soon be lost in the trifle of time and the bustle of life. I agree that my differences with many of them have precipitated unkind sentiments in me; I had often opted for the negative prescription that I ought not to have been part of the class after all. I was dubious as to what I learned from my class, I was undecided on the average pedagogical exercises and their improving my writing skills. But now, I feel the brain cells are inflated to the point of bursting with wisdom gained from bi-weekly classes at a British establishment in an Indian town.

The bonds we strike over coffee or over a casual conversation have the sinews of ivy, they tie you; and even though several social bonds never bear sweet fruit and we are often forced to give-up friends or acquaintances for differences of opinion, we do remember the good ones. And on certain solid afternoons when the sky is covered with a cumulous sheet and the room smells of perfumed candles, the crop up, and you feel happy that you had the pleasure of their company.

Terror Strikes in Mumbai Raise Security Questions in India

Barnali Saha

Every time it is the same—a newspaper cover graced with howling faces, intimate albeit hazy pictures of mangled corpses or half-dead men, women and children being hauled to some medical establishment, and a series of listlessly aggressive reports posted under red-banner like headings dictating the failure of the governmental institution in preventing another terrorist mayhem in India.

Following 26/11, after only a short period of metabolic depression, terror raises its head in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, once again. A series of blasts in principal locations in the city, including the crowded Dadar neighborhood; Zaveri Bazaar, a popular jewelry market; and near the Opera House, ripped through the city at the height of rush hour traffic on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people, injuring 141.

The sophisticated IED explosives with a timer mechanism and the discovery of an unidentified body with an embedded electric circuit, at Zaveri Bazar have triggered speculations of foreign hand behind the attack. A day after the serial blasts the conspiracy theories are being unleashed in no uncertain manner and the finger is pointed once again at the intelligence agencies, and their failure to protect the people.

"Whoever perpetrated these attacks has worked in a very, very clandestine manner," Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said. "It's not a failure of intelligence." Yet the growing resentment of the public against the government and the politicians is well evident. And even though Chidambaram added, “we will find out who is behind these attacks," the citizens of the terror-struck city seems to know better.

 “This raises a series of serious questions about the effectiveness of our intelligence and the level of coordination between the central and state agencies. I bitter and helpless,” said Panchali Sengupta, a homemaker.

 “It is the same Home minister, who was responsible for 26/11 and he is there still now; coalition Ministry in Maharashtra killing my dear state. It is now most corrupt lethargic state, said Chanchal Chakrabarty, a long time Mumbaikar.

After 26/11 the government had announced well-platted plans about rebooting the country’s security-system. But the 13/7 attacks have evidently laid open the fact that the governmental agencies have been unsuccessful in recalling the lessons learned during the past season of bloody carnage.

As investigators struggle to find clues to the identity of the terror-group that perpetrated Wednesday’s serial blasts and the government plays the blame-game, the people in India who need to commute everyday feel threatened and insecure. As recently as in May 25, 2011, a series of low intensity blasts outside the Delhi High court have raised the possibility of further outrage in Delhi too. "Living in the most troubled neighborhood, every part of India is vulnerable,” Chidambaram said. And the people of India know what he means.

Is the constant breach in security ultimately the result of deep-rooted corruption in the Indian political system, or is it simply that India has ultimately accepted the role of itself as a subservient high-school kid used to being bullied by powerful anti-parties? Or that the measures the Indian government plans are balked from application by such in vivo political issues like the Lok Pal bill and the recent 2G scam?

Whatever the case may be, life in India moves on nonetheless, and people get used to sudden periods of spasmodic high-security followed by a lull, and then another terror-attack just boosts up the campaign only to fall back once again. As the list of unresolved terror cases in India gather fresh records, we, the people of India, are at a loss as to our future in the trouble-torn ground of the Indian Republic.

Acknowledgements: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/world/asia/15mumbai.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Day-after-serial-blasts-cops-clueless-as-Mumbai-seethes/articleshow/9229588.cms  

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/14/india.blasts/index.html