hmm

Returning from a whirlwind-wedding, mid-air over Delhi, wayy over Delhi, i looked through my window, squinting hard to make out a shape in the blackness. Then i thought i was doing what i often do back on terra firma.. and maybe you do too. Like the rhyme i inadvertently look for in 'you do too'. And ever so slowly a clear horizon emerged, and divided the black from the blue. Then I saw something marvellous. But i wasnt looking.

Here we go round the mulberry bush

For all that one discovers about life, people, oneself, the questions that make us vulnerable never quite disappear..they just seem to appropriate new forms, dimensions, lyrics. Fools or heroes, what we are seems not-so-significant in comparison to what we seem. At the moment what i seem to myself is hovering woefully close to the embarrasing side of the spectrum. And it does just when i'd convinced myself i was venturing, in all-weather gear, towards horizons previously visited by Ulysses or the likes. Sigh.

Ode to JP

Bent
Bit bummed
but
Bequeathed
Baton
of Bearing
Bold

the city within

I’ve been visiting Kolkata nearly every year since I was born, yet all I knew of the city was my grandmother’s house, where we lived a charmed existence, oblivious of the life outside. To shoot the city then, presented not only a rather daunting challenge, but an opportunity, to see what I’d been missing. And the discovery was nothing short of magnificent.

The grand structures of BBD Bagh are supremely photogenic and yes, Park Street seduces you with its heady energy. But to savour what they call the magic of the city, one must go to the ghats, the local markets and the by-lanes. In this part of Kolkata, the inhabitants don’t ask to be photographed, all they ask is that you drop your touristic guise, sit back, perhaps have a little chat over a cup of tea and accept the contradictions that constitute life. In north Kolkata, this is more pronounced, with huge crumbling mansions that stand testimony to a non-existent glory, or in Kumartuli, where sculptors work assiduously in cramped quarters to produce divine images in clay that they know must ultimately rest in the bed of the Hooghly.

I knew I had a book to think of, closely followed by thoughts of what-boss-expects but the feeling that rushed over me every time i took a picture was 'this is a place i know yet dont..whatever power i have over its representation, it still doesnt make me an insider, only the wish to come back to it'.

Even through my thus-far blinkered vision, I note that change has come to Kolkata. Not just the name. There are swanky malls and hip youngsters and screaming adverts like all other metros. Yet there continue to be pockets that seem to be in a time warp. What then is the real Kolkata? Is there such a thing I wondered and can it be captured? Ultimately I am inclined to believe there is, just as there are over a hundred poets, dead and alive, who it inspired and continues, if not to inspire, then to vex.

He can see lights bobbing up and down in the distance. Of course, he knows those aren’t gaslights carried by horse-backed man. That would have been nice. Train journeys always fuelled nice thoughts. He peers again at the glass. This time something else is bobbing up and down, but it’s not a light. No, egad, it’s a spider. He pats the glass with a light hand hoping to set it scampering in the other direction. No scampering. Instead, bobbing becomes more pronounced. A primal fear grips the heart and clutching the evening daily, he brings it down on the leggy arachnid with a smash.
Shit, why did I do that?

He picks up a tattered Wodehouse but the words don’t unravel to produce coherent sentences; the ‘what-hos’ aren’t funny. He looks up. Two accusing eyes sunk in a skull of a face stare back.
I didn’t mean to do it, what would you have done?

He isn’t able to do justice to the exceptionally well-cooked dinner. He tries to sleep but
Something rotten will happen,
He just knows it. Why? Well, there was the time that he barked at his mother and she didn’t live long enough afterwards for him to take back what he’d said. Then when he stole his flatmate’s savings, he got mugged and couldn’t report it as theft. The spectre of retribution haunted him now as it did then and there was no getting away.

So now, seeing as sleep is eluding him, he gets down from his berth and walks out to the vestibule. There’s a washbasin with a mirror in which he catches a glimpse of his listless face and shudders. Tell me I look better than that. Standing at the open door, he lets the wind ruffle his hair and sting his weary eyes.

O hell, I’m out of ciggies. He turns back to head inside but stops suddenly. There’s a pack of Malboro lights on the basin.
Hey that isn’t mine, how come I didn’t se it before?
He looks around furtively and lights a cigarette.
‘You’re welcome’.
He turns around to find a curious figure. A girl, or woman, you couldn’t tell, with a wreath of straw instead of combed tresses on a peculiar head and two huge discs where there should have been eyes. Her wispy frame was draped in a purple T-shirt and something lycra that hung loosely about her skinny legs.

‘Hey, you ok? You look really tense.’
He ignores the question, taking a long drag.
‘I don’t mean to pry… just too nice a night to waste on some insipid worry, don’t you think?’
‘How insipid it is will depend on what happens tomorrow.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Hmm.’
‘I mean you’re young, healthy, it would seem not too badly off, so…’
‘Are you on steroids? Really, you seem insanely optimistic.’
Pregnant pause. ‘No, but one of us has to be somewhat optimistic and I’ve learnt the hard way.’
He looks at her hands, holding the door handle with a grip that would put a gym instructor to shame. He asks, a little hesitantly, ‘What do you do?’
‘Well, this and that. Not important.’
‘That’s a bit unfair don’t you think? You get to ask all the questions and also get to be delightfully vague when I ask you something?’
‘Do you smell that?’
‘What?’
‘Distrust.’, her eye widening and a hint of a smirk flashing across her peculiar features.
‘Heh.’
He puts out the cigarette and folds his arms as close to his body as he can. Looking at the moon, he says, with considerable effort,
‘Do you ever wish you were someone else?’
‘ Well, you know, there’s not much point. I mean, what can you do about it? Like there’s marzipan or boybands, just wishing won’t send them away. Similarly, who you are.. its there to stay.’
‘ But I mean, what about destiny?’
‘ What about it?’
‘Well what if you could change it?’
‘If - much virtue in if. If you knew what tomorrow looked like, would you perhaps not be here talking to me? And even as you contemplate that possibility, a few seconds of the present are slipping away quietly, repenting a choice you’ve already made.’
‘Well I don’t know if I’m repenting it entirely.’
‘Oh. I’m grateful to know it.’ She smiles, revealing a third of a set of awry though very white teeth. He is momentarily disarmed and doesn’t know what to say. And then he does:
‘Do spiders have souls?’
She laughs, almost noiselessly. He feels like laughing himself. They talk, counting stations, till the sun begins to peep over the silhouette of the trees. He smiles, and yawns.
She looks up and says ‘Do you need a smoke?’ He rubs his eyes and nods, going over to the washbasin.
‘Woman, you and I smoke the same brand. Isn’t that…?’ He turns back and starts.
‘Hey where did you go?’ He looks out, but the fields don’t have a trace of purple. Only a spider bobs on the handle.

The words, like his lovely silken hair, cascaded like a mountain-brooke. I didnt understand what they meant, but i could tell they were saying something that gave him a sense of purpose. The poignance hit harder by virtue of the fact that i found i couldn't relate.I thought i had moved away from an academic understanding of the world. Probably. But to lull oneself into a stupor of living-like-you-are can't be right. If I can shake out of this, I know I'll understand Spanish.

Some of the people we call friends are no more than facebook profiles when it comes to the real thing - sometimes the distance makes that inevitable. We laugh and cry with other people but if we are asked about our 'friends' we talk about them. If we laugh and cry with ourselves we feel wiser and lose the compulsion to maintain friendships of the facebook variety. Yesterday i was listening to something fabulous - its called space sounds - sounds of actual debris free-falling through space. Initially it feels like being inside a womb, then you listen closely for a rhythmic chiming sound. Strangely it didnt make me feel alone. On the contrary, facebook makes me feel alone. I think its who we are when we are free-falling that defines us, not when we are on seemingly steady ground, surrounded by many people. And if we cross paths with other free-falling bodies, cushioning their fall or vice-versa, yay us.