I See: Ramblings before heading for the dreamless

As I lose myself in the rigorous, demanding prose of routine livelihood, the pure joy of writing, the dessert of the day that unwinds and purges the dirt and grime of quotidianism, is missed like rain in the arid pastures of North India. Yet, I am forever cognizant of a stifle in the cardiac region; something ceaselessly repeats inside me words and sentences. Every day as I leave my house and as the vehicle strides in its jolted journey toward the destination on the other side of the town, I see and hear noises of the morning-eyed India, and all along the way the meta-voice chirps happily freshly-baked expressions.  It almost nudges me to reach for my notebook and start scribbling, as I had been normally doing for a time out of mind upon waking up and only recently stopped owing to the Nuevo academic schedule. And it pains me, even disturbs me, the thought of turning down something that comes naturally to me.  It is almost impossible to write something on the way since the road conditions are seldom conducive to creative squiggling.

The not-writing-down-my thoughts, however, does not hold me back from observing and delighting myself at the various random images I come across; the leitmotif of humanity is presented with such variety that every day I am awed like a child at the  miscellany I observe on the roads. Somehow writing sensitizes you and you feel like a youth at heart observing and regaling at the physical and internal beauty of the world. Although appreciation is temporal since an ordinary day’s experience eventually hardens you such that at the end of the day you find that the voice inside you is enervated, if not absent altogether. We must accept the drudgery of existence nonetheless and customize our creativity around it. So I have allowed myself one hour every two days and fifteen minutes every day to write down my impressions.

Right now, I sit at my desk possessed by the knowledge of a typical day, inflamed with the wondrous and sensational fantasies dreamed up during an automobile ride. The first sight that entranced me was that of a stretched out sheet of cloud and a lump of the same on the opposite side. I seldom check out clouds, but this morning I did; there was something awkward in the flocculent blanket  that drew my attention. I have of late been making a study of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and have been intrigued time and again by the vastness of imagination of the blind man. I could not say if it was the result of my lucubrations, or something else entirely that made me think that the nebulous patch on the face of heaven was that of a stretched out god, sleeping, peaceful. I could make out his nose, slightly snub; his toes, two of them missing; his puffed-up coiffure, and two tiny cloud-bodied cherubim just abaft his knee area. A car, a cloud-made ambassador, to be precise, was heading towards this sleeping divinity. I wondered if the archangel had restrained its majestic pennons and was driving the four-wheeler in question. How he would look behind the windshield: goatish, profligate, meretricious, or insane? A concatenation of honks from different motors forced me to give up my thoughts half-way and concentrate on the earthy attraction. By this time I had spent almost ten minutes inspecting the dome above. What was funny was that the driver having divined that I had been inspecting the airplanes sundering the sky at regular intervals (we were close to the airport at the time) asked me whether I liked flying. Imagine my consternation when my solemn thoughts of a straightened-out god on the bed of clouds were taken as review of aeronautical parts by this pilot in the front seat!

Anyway, after this aforementioned incident, I looked up only once or twice to check out any new cloudy figure that might catch my attraction; but there weren’t any. In the meantime, I observed the earthy world on the streets, a universe unto itself, a microcosm of the young India vividly platted before me. And all I had to do was look. I observed shinning cars, reds mostly followed by whites, and a handful of blacks; women sitting in the front seats of their cars wearing earphones; people on the streets walking toward bus stops, their lunch boxes oscillating as they paced up the pavement; a golgappa seller pushing his cart, his wide-brimmed brass water pot covered with a pink and powder blue Rajasthani dupatta, his oiled, mehendi-colored hair shinning.

We stopped at several traffic signals, and these intersections were great places for me to inspect humanity. As we stood lame at one such stop-signal I looked to the left and noticed a small expanse of trash-littered landscape tailed to the front wing of a high building. There was a low barrier, a cement wall of some sort, barricading this area from the blue-glass-fronted-building. A couple of women with their heads draped by the pallus of their disheveled sarees picked up empty soda bottles and milk packets from this trash-scape and gathered them in  wicker baskets. They had very small backs and one of them wore paste nathni and metallic hoop earrings.

Another sight that caught my attention was on my way back in the subway. There was a woman standing before me on the train back clasping two blackberries in her left hand. She was around thirty, neatly clothed in red and green salwar kameez, her hair tied up, a spectacle hanging down on her nose. She looked modest in every way. It was, however, the quirky nail-paint she sported—red paint dotted with bright green polish—that made me examine her closely. Her nails were very long, clean, but the paint somehow gave her an untidy air. Occasionally she talked on the phone in a corporate tone advising the receiver on the other side on business policies and ways to behave in an interview. She seemed knowledgeable and bright, but all my attention was drawn by her nail paint. I wished I could ask her the reason behind the choice. She did not look like one wanting to hide her age, the wrinkles around her mouth region were prominent; I could see some of her grey hairs too, then why? Alas there weren’t any answers from her side.

The final image that drapes my eyes right now and that which I think is the best image of all is of the spouse reading the newspaper with a genial resolution. The comfort in this motif is beyond belief. The peace that the drooling air condition machine generates at the epilogue of one long day erases old imageries and rejuvenates the vision. And thus, having finished my daily writing exercise, the contended me is ready to bid the liana of her daily sightings adieu in the hope of another fresh start tomorrow.

Good nightJ

  Back-to-School: Part 1

The journey begins

Experiences are probably the most precious fragments you assemble in life. Though I won’t go to the absurd length of calling them jewels or rubies you find by the Indian Ganges’ side, I would definitely call them intellectually fortifying and remarkably unique. It amazes me the amount of experiences we gather in one lifetime: good, bad, actual, intangible; it takes only a few years to fill the jorum, and then layer upon layer of add-on experiences sediment such that in one given time you feel almost stacked to the brim if you open the archives. Anyway, the point is that your perspective of a certain situation, a certain experience, is liable to change after you walk away from the scene and observe it objectively under the solid canopy of logic. The stripping off of emotions, intimidations and other attachments that may have blindfolded you when you experienced something greatly helps in analyzing the deposited data acritically.

For years my dream of being re-initiated after an educational hiatus to the vaulted tenements of some scholastic establishment has propelled my actions in life in no uncertain manner. This drive became an idee fixe with me such that for years I labored under the impression that life would cease to exist for me if I did not get back to school. And now that I am back to academia, officially, the feeling of accomplishment and mental peace that I thought I would be experiencing are conspicuous by their absence.  The initial ecstasy of winning a battle where I was both the protagonist and the adversary, where one side of me reflected truth and optimism while the other mocked and derided my ambition, is gone for good. May be the mind is maturing after all, taking in the banal and rather than idolizing it and poring over its hidden intricacies is accepting school-life the way it is: a routine. At least that was what I thought after my first two days in class. Today I will write about my impressions on the first day of class.

The first day of school began like the initial chapter of a novel: full of promises. The day preceding this inauguration started and ended in a flash; I could never recall another day which traveled so fast. It seemed as if I was caught up in some strange fast-paced reverie which none of my deliberate actions could slow down. Hence I allowed myself to be wafted and rested mechanically and finally found myself the following morning around nine am before a classroom with likeminded young scholars waiting with bated breath for the classes to commence. We stood outside a moderately sized climate controlled schoolroom to which we were directed by the security personnel. We exchanged pleasantries and wished each other good morning while the janitorial staff prepared the room for us. We waited in the corridor and watched the podium being cleaned and dusted with a grass-headed broom and then a trash of Parle-G biscuit packets and empty coffee cups swept with the same besom. We were dubious at the time, all six of the waiting souls who were admitted in the first counseling to this prided course of Masters in English and Communication. We felt uncertain as to how many students would be there in the class after all, how long the first day orientation would last and many more. We shared our speculations and doubts and felt more uncertain. 

The room finally cleaned, we were allowed to walk inside the compartment and park ourselves on the wooden benches. I cannot tell about the other girls, but the moment my derriere touched the wooden b, I felt my heart expanding with satisfaction. I realized at that specific moment that I was back-to-school, finally.The initial satisfaction was brief though since in a few moments our seniors, second and third semestrial students of the same course, walked in with ample gravitas and ishytle. They perched atop their desks in turns and laughed and talked while a handful of freshers’ observed them and chucoted among themselves. They knew we were inspecting them and directed their actions accordingly. All of them tried to look smart and confident. Finally, the teachers and the other first year students arrived, and the orientation officially began.

In the first stages of this orientation we were given an overview of the course by the professors. The professor who began the rigmarole was a mild, happy looking academic. Following her the other professors went to the podium and presented their statements. We were given the regular details and were strictly warned about the importance of daily attendance on final results. Such talks penetrated from me a genial smile since the presentiments sounded much like the ones I heard on the first day of my high school. I kept my merriment to myself though and decided to listen on.

Among this group of pedagogues one academic took it upon himself to warn us about the “torturous” ride that waited for us in near future. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that it ain’t a jolly ride. But by the time he had ventured to issue the caveat, we had somehow understood the truth by heart.

Following this professorial counseling session we were asked to come to the platform one by one and introduce ourselves. The freshers’ walked in silent trails to the dais and presented themselves. Some talked about their hobbies, some about their future plans, all talked about their academic backgrounds. The general lack or oratorical skill was evident. I wasn’t much impressive either in my speech, still, thanks to the BCL creative writing class, which required me to open my mouth in public; I managed to get on well.

The preliminary exercise continued for an hour or two before it ended with a couple of seniors embellishing our expectations of the course with adulating phrases. We were encouraged and motivated with talks of festivals and cultural programs and seminars and other academic packages that would be part of our two year service at the school. When the professors ultimately got up and informed us that the official orientation was over it was nearly one-thirty.

The finale of the grand opening was announced with the recitation of a lovely poem called The Soldier rendered by one of the kind-hearted instructors. It is a poem about a cavalry-person returning from some battle. 

It took me a solid one-hour thirty five minutes metro ride and a subsequent fifteen minutes rickshaw ride to reach home. As the rickshaw stopped at a traffic-light glowing red, I looked around and observed a man crouching in a fetal position and sleeping, his face was covered with a cloth that had once been white or some such monotone and now looked like a sticky blackened piece of fabric. His slightly heaving body and total unconcern to the bustle of the busy city somehow made me think of this soldier in the poem our professor read. I wondered would the soldier himself be aware of his destination; do we ever know where we are heading in life? We may lie unconcerned ignoring the reality by covering our faces, we may fool ourselves with wise presentiments, with pretenses of perfection and satisfaction, but the truth is we never know where we will be tomorrow; and no poet's warnings could prepare us for this voyage. Hence, to think that life’s endless episodic puzzles could have some decipherable equation that just needs a certain amount of skill to solve is tomfoolery in itself.


P.S. : Picture from internet. 

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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