Sunday In Berlin

Above,
the young couple tease –
a scream, laughter, tender murmur,
Thud, bang, cleaning, rapping, loving;
my apologies to them when I vacuum
away the resting load.

Yesterday,
they were kind, truly,
they listened with me to an aria;
labourer, waitress, gigolo, stripper,
Whatever,
Whichever,
Mine never.

This morning,
I left early,
breaking Sabbath,
dry nose bleeding.

looked at the mannequins in a café,
tempted, resisted, feeling princely;
queued with the rich and the free
to see photos, in vogue, trash porn art,
checked a great whosoever’s nonsense.

There I was,
alright, uneasy,
Scared
to look but I did,
vague, old video.

Imagination
seemed better.

Tried,
but there was no tale –
the Lover, the parents,
in cashmere, being chic.
Love, it could’ve been us –

Yawning.

returning to less regal address –
on the escalator
with a lady
from church,
weary, hurrying home;
a lady of the night at the light,
pretty, jeans frayed, leaning against
Me,
no, the pillar;

my day’s over.

Found & Lost (From The Scrap Shop: IV)

Found:

tears on the Gita,
old words -
Rumi,
Shakespeare,
Anon’s notes -
and,
Ophelia’s madness.
Lost:

a blank page
that speaks a lot –

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Notes from the photo (click the links given below):

1) Bhagwad Gita, II.45

2) Rumi, The Lover And The Beloved

3) Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene 7, lines 166-183

Suspended Animation (From The Scrap Shop: II)

I found this on a scrap of paper between the pages of “Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam” by Edward Fitzgerald:

---------------------------------------------

It is tough being on the middle of the road not knowing and not wanting to cross to either side because it is a stranger world out there. It is better maintaining status quo, waiting to be crushed between two speeding trucks – preferably the huge ones and I will be splashed on both like a cheap advertisement “End of someone, end too late.”

While I stood there precariously balanced on the barricade against loss of senses, I started losing memory of time, space and possibly everything unknown. Damsels walked past sure of flitting their skirts at the right moment, gays displaying boldness and promiscuous taunts, the old behaving like young, the young borrowing strange attire, lovers, dogs and the like strutted past. I held onto my territory. This was the last guarantee.

Forever in the middle. Never the child and never assuming full-blown maturity. Not the untouchable nor lynched by a sacred thread. Not poor nor rich to think about money. Wish I was an idiot and lived like a veggie in an asylum rather than being not-so-intelligent or not-so-talented. If I was pessimistic, I could have had deep furrows on my forehead or preached boldly about philosophy or communism or freedom if I was an optimist. If I had borrowed Western culture, I could have pretended not to have any and be happy. But I have been branded by a tattoo which I wish I could scratch off my body. If I was complaining, I could have been at least the anti-establishment guy but I am too happy for that. If I was a total virgin, I could have dreamed of being a saint but I know my sins do not even have the power to scare me with nightmares. I wish I did not have friends so that I could be a loner but I hang around on the fringe of parties hating the crowd. Any kind of music or story or poem thrills me but I am deaf, dumb and blind.

Should I cross?

Near-Death Experience

I never thought that the way would be like this: a clean brightly lit tunnel – decent mixture of metal and concrete. There are red lights on the ground. I wonder why they are there. The urgency that had lasted life-long is now a soothing patience till eternity. The air’s flooded with pleasant music – violin and organ. It did not make me sad nor happy, reflective neither; just peaceful. Life-long habits do change with death, I guess. I do not notice the others that walk by. At least that habit stayed. What if she walked by? No, I would sense her presence.

I am nearing the end of the tunnel – the destination? I come across the musicians. They seem to be unaffected by what they produce - mechanical and a little unnatural. There is even a begging bowl in front of them. Here too? I reach for my wallet. I leave the wallet in the bowl – why will I need that again? I want to sit over there and keep listening. Maybe, there are other pleasures further ahead. She - certainly?

I climb the steps to the platform. It is darker here. I search for her but she is not around. I do remember that we had not promised to meet here. All the promises were mine alone and that too, quite unconvincingly made after she had left. But surely, I had told Him to pass on the message. Maybe, He had not. Maybe, she found other company. Maybe, she had to meet someone else on their way down or up.

I ask a woman standing nearby “Where is He?” She looks at me blankly, not comprehending my language, I presume. I stand there waiting; waiting for something or someone to come from the dark tunnels on either side; waiting for an answer.

The U-Bahn arrives on time.

(P.S. I can’t recollect the name of the U-Bahn station in Berlin; strangely, the photo in my album is also missing. But, you do know how that place looks like, don’t you?)

Fare Thee Well (Or, After Reading Larkin Before Breakfast)

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
(from Aubade)

I wish I had a hangover when I read these lines – not at four, but at a healthy six after four hours of sleep. I do not have time to think of death. Each day, I procrastinate and postpone my rebirth. A confirmed anti-social in social networking sites – I love it. A click works faster than cyanide - I can vaporize from the Net into jumbled senseless bytes.

The narcissistic Net! It is freedom for the middle-class – biggest revolution after the all-purpose nightdress; cure for mid-life crisis, release of angst, to forget snail mail to agony aunts and/or editors, to cook up news (damn it, the quizmaster says that it is not North East West South but Naughty Entertainment Woolly Stories) and, of course, to contact old best-forgotten pals and compare visiting cards.

Aubade means “A song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak.” Or, “A poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.”

Enough of that, I flipped the page.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(from Annus Mirabilis)

Each generation prays for paradigm shifts! But, it is usually as Yogi Berra said “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Science and technology might have paradigm shifts. But, in human thought? We will not allow Hussain and his naked goddess; fortunately, we did not have to create Ardhanarisvara. It would have offended some manoos and a gutless government would have been ready to ban. After all, for longevity and success, it is better to be “nice people with commonsense”. If you take MBA (hurry, you can still appear for the CAT tomorrow), they will teach you to be that minus ethics. As for me, I vaguely remember Isabel Allende saying in a TED talk “Nice people with commonsense do not make interesting characters – they only make good former spouses.”

For those who really long for longevity and success, there are two things to do in life: create a new word and compose a memorable epitaph. Nothing else will remain. Learn from quantum, boojum, defriend, tweet, blog, skype. If the word is really good, you can bring out an IPO. If not, you can always blame your parents with:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
(from This Be The Verse)

I have procrastinated enough for a day. I have a version of the old Hindi song which starts something like “angrezi mein kehta hai ke fare thee well”.

Freedom in China & Nilekani’s IUD

“When the Chinese get freedom, this depression will end,” my great-uncle Hosappan paused with a dramatic sigh, shifted the home-rolled beedi from the left to the right molars after relighting it with his ancient Zippo lighter, and continued, “and that’s why Obama met the college kids in China and told them that information should be freely available. Which information? Whose? Glasnost. Perestroika.” He chuckled and refused to say more on the topic – every story has to stop before the end, that being his ambiguous motto.

Till the Cuban missile crisis, everyone in my village used to call him “Fibbu” for some now-forgotten reason though his name was Jose (pronounced with a J). Around the end of October 1962, he told everyone that he should henceforth be called Jose (pronounced as Hosay). Decades back, he baptized me by whispering roughly in my ear “Call me Hosappan." He seemed a nonagenarian then and still does – bald head, clean shaven, strangely black hair sticking out of his ears and nostrils, thick mat of white hair on his chest, wizened face with deep-set unblinking dark brown eyes peering through bushy black eyebrows. In my worst nightmares, I see him as the Grim Reaper.

He was a communist then – in 1962. Two shelves on the left side of his library store his collection of those days. When I was a kid, I borrowed two books from that side: the first called “Relativity and dialectical materialism” (mistaking dialectic and dielectric) and the second, a censored version of “The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer” sent to him as a wedding gift by a Jana of Brno, signed and sealed by a Party member (which I assumed then to be a sign of authenticity). It was much later that I discovered the I-love-you scene with Becky Thatcher in an uncensored copy of the book. Though Hosappan might still not know about that scene, I doubt whether that stunted his love life in any way.

He converted to capitalism in 1973 – before his second marriage. It was after he saw Godfather, some claim. The postmaster of that time confided in many that it was after the twelfth letter (without reply) to a Jana of Brno. All I know for sure is that his second wife was a spendthrift. He changed his wife once more but remained a capitalist.

During my last visit, he expressed to me his displeasure with Nandan Nilekani with hot-blooded capitalist fervour “Social security. Healthcare. My arse. It’s going to be like during the Emergency if not as in concentration camps. All names will be deleted and instead, everyone will get a unique number. It has something to do with contraception – man or woman, everyone will get an IUD.”

From Developing To Developed Without Being Nouveau Riche

Hans Rosling says that income per person in India and China will overtake that of the US and the UK by July 2048. Headlines in the print media never include error bars associated with data points even though Rosling himself hints at probable sources of error, for example, read the interview in the Economic Times. But, the common man on the street knows that Rosling must be right. Give or take a few rupees, onions at Rs 35/kg, jeera rice at Rs 50/kg, a sovereign of gold at Rs 14000, a cent of land in a Tier II/III city at Rs 1000000, a 25-year old with a half-baked degree earning enough to stay in a 1 bedroom flat and keep 4 servants (to wash the car, to clean, to cook, to walk the dog or the baby). In most Indian cities, if you talk about the great divide, the reply is “It trickles down” and you hope that it trickles fast fearing the birth of urban Naxalites. At least 100 years after independence, we should become developed, right?

We have nearly 40 years and there is plenty to do – for us and the government. The list is long and it is quite meaningless and too tiring to be complete here. As far as the government is concerned, they should first stop devaluing the education system. It is the most important infrastructure project and to stretch the metaphor, relying on quantity rather than quality is like building a bridge without concrete. Secondly, the government should listen to people like Enrique Penalosa (the former mayor of Bogota – read this article from the Hindu in which he says “Footpaths make all the difference”). Some time before we are developed, we will learn to walk, we will stop wanting to be a manager and we will take a degree to be educated on a subject we love.

Before we are developed, there are a few things we can do to be prepared. First, consider the case of Rahul (name changed). He was a VP in an investment bank in the US (graduate from IIT, postgraduate from an Ivy league school in the US). He faced a slump in his career out there and was given an opportunity to relocate to the Indian office and build a group or leave the firm. He made the obvious choice to be the successful “expat” in India. Within a year or so, he had nearly a dozen or more IIT graduates working for him and he was on the “fast-track”. He came and went in a posh sedan, with a driver who carried his bag from the entrance of the office to the car in true British Raj fashion. Back in the US, he must have used public transport along with his boss and probably his boss’ boss. Sure, there are snooty people out there but they are usually pea-brained or super-rich and mentally challenged. With more and more people becoming crorepatis (I am still a few zeros away from that and do correct me if that is a low denomination these days), it is important to avoid the problems of the nouveau riche (NV). In the old days, the NV were sent to prep schools to be educated on how to pretend to be born with blue blood. These days, the NV should learn from people like Obama (he might bow low to the Emperor of Japan but none, with sense, will doubt that it is due to low self-esteem). The lesson seems to be: try not to be nouveau riche.

Secondly, we should be ready for the pains associated with the developed world and the list includes higher rates of suicide, divorce; fierce competition in a meritocratic society; and, a view of being either a success story or a loser. Here, I would like to recommend a TED talk by Alain de Botton on a kinder gentler philosophy of success. He stresses that we should always allow for the haphazard in our lives – random events that could make or break us (hopefully, just for a while). For example, on Monday, if the Dubai debt crisis triggers the next wave of defaults and a black swan waddles into our life saying “I am back.”

It’s About Sex, Right?

When did she ask me that – fifteen years back? Or, is it twenty? A few days back, I saw a clip of the movie “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being” which is based on the book by Milan Kundera. And yesterday, I picked up that book from a lending library. Probably that triggered this chain of thought.

I had given that book as a birthday present to her. Two years later, I gave her “Love In The Time Of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was when we met a few years later that she asked me the question “It’s about sex, right?”. I did not know how to reply. That year, I got her an omnibus edition of Daphne du Maurier’s novels. I did not know then that that would be my last gift to her.

The next time I heard that same question was nearly half a decade later, and from a friend from erstwhile Soviet bloc. A mutual colleague had given to her Philip Roth’s “Sabbath’s Theatre” which I had read around that time. And by sheer coincidence, we were reading the latest from John Irving “A Widow For One Year”. Must have been around 7:45 on a winter morning, temperature well below freezing point, while we warmed our hands with a cup of hot coffee and before we got on with our work, and we were discussing the books we had read recently. And she asked me “It’s about sex, right?”. I did not know how to reply.

Even now, I wish I knew/know how to reply.

What happened to the postman?

A few days back, I was at my friend’s place watching an old Malayalam movie called ‘Midhunam’. In one scene, the hero who is trying to cope with grave problems concerning business and family is exasperated with his wife-cum-childhood-sweetheart who reminds him of his promises mentioned in old letters all of which she has saved.

My friend and I exchanged guilty glances. No, we were not thinking about any promises made to old sweethearts or anything embarrassing, and definitely not scandalous. No, we were not in the habit of going through those searching for nuggets from the past knowing that most of them were less than flattering. No, though those letters are not lost, we do not remember touching them in the last ten to twenty years. But yes, we still kept old letters.

I studied in an obscure college in an equally obscure village hidden in the innards of this country. It took two to three days to reach that place from my hometown. It took a letter a little more than that. We got access to telephone in the final year but it was not a viable option since a call was as expensive as a cassette of Doors or Jethro Tull.

I used to know how many sheets of paper I could stuff in an envelope without requiring extra stamps. Life was usually boring then but some transient selfish desire for attention with a modicum of affection and care managed to fill up those pages in that age before cynicism - with music in the background along with the rustling of paper and the scratching of an ink pen. Then, the agonizing wait and close scrutiny of the reply - reading between the lines and trying to decipher those words which were blackened or crossed; finding more meaning than there ever was in those letters. In the course of a semester or a few semesters, one could see the ebb and flow of each relationship in those letters. With some, the letter degenerated to a compilation of tweets written at various places and times, just fillers; some who erased or were erased without reply; and, there were those which were special and will remain so.

The postman used to come to the hostel around one o’clock. These days, the postman delivers tattered annual reports and pristine monthly bills. But, even though my inkpot is nearly empty, when the postman does not turn up I still ask “What happened to the postman?”

Before going (2001)

The restaurant at Charlottenburg was nearly empty. There was a family of five in the middle of the room. And the two of them near the window away from the street. Apart from the usual formalities, they had not said much till the dessert was served. His eyes had a glazed look while he stared at the plate for a while. Then, he turned his head away, looked outside at the sky, at nothing. She looked at his grey hair and weary eyes. She was still looking at him when he turned his face to look at her. As per habit, his eyes tried to adjust and change the expression quickly to the smiling carefree one. But he gave up that effort and just looked at his companion’s dimple and deep dark eyes. Companions in steady flight, with farewells that merge with welcome, a relationship never defined.

A: Were you surprised?
S: Not surprised, just trying to figure it out.
A: What, Swapna? Figure what out?
S: Why?
A: I need a partner. I need a life.
S: Yes, I know that part. But that is not what I am thinking about. Why now?
A: Why not now?
S: Are you tempting fate? You know about your luck now.
A: Yes. If I fall, let me fall heavily. Is that what I am thinking? Am I being selfish and not thinking twice about dragging a faultless girl with me down into the dumps?
S: What about having a job before marrying?
A: What if I have a job and got smashed by a truck?
S: But Arjun…
A: No, Swapna. Can’t you see what I am doing? Forcing a rebirth.
S: And, are you ready for the personal change?
A: Can one be ready?
S: Arjun, don’t change too much…
A: I have to, Swapna, I have to. The old style just doesn’t work.
S: But, I can’t picture you as the patient unperturbed insensitive lover.
A: Well, will you like a demanding excitable oversensitive guy?
S: I don’t know. And the rage and pain – all that which makes us?
A: Will I put up a charade? Is that what you are asking?
S: Will you stop asking for total loyalty? Will you stop yourself from giving totally? Will it be just pleasant decent stuff?
A: If the woman is successful and free of trouble, does she need more? Will she appreciate the look in my eyes? Will she want a letter or a call? Will she feel thrilled when I kiss her hand? Will we hold each other and feel totally uninhibited?
S: Arjun, will I have to go?
A: (nodded)

10 People To Meet At The Coffee House

· Ingrid Bergman
· Caravaggio
· Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
· Nadine Gordimer
· Aung San Suu Kyi
· Vanessa Paradis
· Ayn Rand
· Arundhati Roy
· Erwin Schrodinger
· Oscar Wilde

These are not people I revere (if there is such a list). These are the people who affected me – maybe, with character, with elegant writing, with an image or a style, with their philosophy or the way they pursued their philosophy. I might not agree with them but I would like to sit across a coffee table, to have a brief discussion and to recollect that which shaped my life.

To & From & In Transit

The clinical psychologist placed three photos on the table and asked me to tell him what I saw.

At breakfast,
I tilted my head,
Slowly,
To the left and the right;

By lunch,
I gathered my thoughts,
On paths of subjective loneliness,
On certain objective materialism;

For tea,
I stalled time’s direction,
Without disorder,
Without To-From-In transit;

There’s dinner,
I will pray for love, farewell, etc.,
With mounting insecurity & faith,
I will fear & forget to live.

I placed the three photos on the table and, told him what I saw – nothing.

Going Insane (1991)

See the star and the fire within.
A drum
With no drumsticks
But throbbing beat.

Tearing me down.
How long does it go on
As long as the stars
Or just
Till
Death…

To Eros : II (1993)

The fair back, tense and straining,
The brown blouse bravely exposed
Was it so in front
An enticing décolletage?
Sheer flimsy bodice
Or straining jeans about her hips
Swaying maybe in artificial effect.
Is it an effort to be smart
Or to create an itch in the crotch?

Brave couples in open embrace
Rather smothering
As if the senses fail to reason
With just a touch.
How frail or encouraging or caring
Does she look at the theatre steps
A hand firmly gripping
Her partner’s arm “Touch me so”.

That middle-aged woman
And her translucent sari
Encapturing the glance
At her bulging bosom
Straining and above
Her fair blouse upon fairer skin
And how dark would it be
At the mount, flaccid or tense,
Does she seek pleasure
In such curiosity,
And the chapter closes
With hereditary proof,
Her daughter too,
Promises such beautiful holds,
With purchase of clips or bags,
I purchase them too.

To Eros : I (1993)

Memory tarnished
by time’s
inconsequences.

The lady piously sheltered
Beneath her sari’s hood,
So young, yet with child
And for that matter, a bald grey husband.
Does she not wish to glance
With timidity, or adolescent curiosity,
Does she not wish me to stare
And let my fingers stray
Beyond the bus-seat’s bar
Onto her sheltered slender neck
And below, I guess, to caress her heart?

O look at that pregnant woman
In straining kameez
And bulging protuberances, so inviting,
Yet with a child (never there be none)
And a bucket, straining above a water tap.
She knows not I exist
But the reaching hand
In silent prayer
For the tap to transform into a helping hand,
To hold the bucket and the child,
And another still clasped at her waist
(to the many-handed One),
Sharing the ten months’ weight (or is it wait?)
And togetherness, as at ecstasy
Or was it mere release
Of a disinterested mortal?

Alone upon the hotel’s white sheets,
Wishing they were rumpled, stained and wet,
Is there such reality across the flimsy wall
Or another soul probably pounded
Wishing for another’s company,
“O why don’t you see how we are,
The tremors and the surge restrained,
And in realization of its cause, use me?”
Does she not cry so?

4 points in the library

Each time, it is a different route in the library. Along with the familiar, I try out random selections. I usually start and stop near the beginning. Wish I knew what takes me further at times.

Match the following lists:

(1) Introduction:

…(devotion) is defined as ‘absolute love’…to distinguish devotion from the several shades of relativistic love, such as in the cases of conditional appreciations, sentimental affectations and blind infatuations or various kinds of obligatory relationships that are cultivated between people of the same family, tribe, clan or other closed groups.

(2) Epigraph on the title-page from A Tale of Two Cities:

‘You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?’
‘Long ago.’
‘You know that you are recalled to life?’
‘They tell me so.’
‘I hope you care to live?’
‘I can’t say.’

(3) Introduction:

…philosophy of enlightened laissez-faire…liberty which was based on self-knowledge and responsibility.


(4) Introduction:

No index has been prepared for this book…as treated here is so entirely a matter of combination that no index which would be of value could be compiled. It is for this reason that it is omitted.

(A) Letters to Penthouse
(B) The Laws Of Scientific Hand Reading by William G. Benham
(C) Love and Devotion by Nitya Chaitanya Yati
(D) Recalled To Life by Reginald Hill