Man and the bike

A B-grade hollywood movie thief tells his interrogator: "Never take away a bike from a kid!" I learnt this truth the hard way when dad sold off his bicycle when I was a kid. It was a perhaps my first heartbreak! I had learnt to ride on a heavy metal A-Von cycle which dad had used for years to commute to work in Ambala. I used to sit on the front metal rod of the frame and my elder brother used to occupy the carrier seat in the rear. Dad is short (5 and a half feet or so) and he got on top of the cycle after running along it with one foot on the pedal. Once the bike gained some momentum, he'd hop on it. Bhaya would hop on shortly afterwords. Dad would bike merrily to office through kutcha roads of Ambala cantt. singing Kabir's couplet:
"Aisee Vani Boliye, Mun Ka Aapa Khoye
Apna Tan Sheetal Kare, Auran Ko Sukh Hoye".
I kept wondering why this was his favourite Kabir Doha when he and mom had squabbles nearly every day. Later, I realized that we had financial difficulties and parents were in stress to manage expenses.
That was 1978 and I was 9 year old. We returned back to Kashmir and our very first act at home front was to rebel against Dad! We went to our Taya ji's place at Verinag some 70 Kms south of Srinagar. Taya ji was a big business man in the entire Dooru Tehsil, he owned a rice and an Oil mill; he wanted our father to join him in the business and persuaded all of us (mother and us three kids) to sign a petition supporting him! It was fun to sign some officious looking document and we signed! So, in our minds, the matter was settled, we would stay in the land of plenty, of milk and honey. We'd live off the fat of the land! There was the shiny red coloured bike of my cousin and he'd let me pillion ride it as he rode cockily through the market and in front of the local high school.
Dad decided against us staying at the "village" and thought it best for us to attend city school in Srinagar. So we shifted to Srinagar, much against our will with a failing faith in democratic satyagraha. I was devastated! Mainly, because I never got to ride the cousin's bike.
During very first week of our arrival in the city, my (another) cousin brother stormed into our house announcing his new-found mastery of new bicycle. It was a second hand bike gifted to him by his dad. We rushed to Idgah in downtown Srinagar to try out our bike riding skills. En route we ramming into a cow, narrowly missed a cart and came to a dead stop between the legs of an elderly gentleman who was trying desperately to avoid us, but froze up at the last moment. There is something very sinister about biking, the more you avoid going into a direction, more you are dead set to go into that very direction. Idgah adventure didn't go well, we were bruised all over and I was convinced that bike riding is a black art that cannot be acquired in near future.
Years later, I met this sardar Ji at the garment factory where he was the Managing Director. His spacious office was full of garment samples, guest chairs, some photographs of the hills and he sat grumpily behind the flickering monitor. I thought he wouldn't like the intrusion of someone "wanting to bike", particularly during peak working hours. Contrary to what I was expected, he was a paunchy grey haired sardar ji sitting, as I mentioned: grumpily, behind the mahogany desk.
He lit up on seeing me! He called me to his side of the table and for next hour or so, he showed me photographs of his biking trips: Spiti valley, ladakh, Faridabad, Jaipur and so on. He forgot all about the business day and in no time I had a free gift of a red bike with me. his staff loaded it in my car and we promised to ride in the coming week.
Many rides have happened, I have had my shares of broken ribs and bruises. The garage door is awaiting the Trek to buzz out, I keep a meticulous record of the bike rides now. The sound of bike tyres over the asphalt roads, the quiet hum! One is a set of legs pedaling to the horizon, nothing else but, that humming of the tyres kissing the road, noisily. Sometimes, it sounds like a hushed dialogue between the tyre and the road plotting against me. Maybe, to pounce a pleasant view, a sudden downhill or a couple of squirrels haggling over a prized nut.
I take a sip from the camel pack and ride on. Sometimes, involuntarily Kabir's "Aisee Vani...." repeats in an endless loop in my mind. It makes pedaling-on an involution of me, the bike and memories of a lonesome childhood.

Colony cast

Palam Vihar is a quiet neighbourhood on the poorer side of the National Highway - 8, that connects Delhi with Jaipur. The "Vihar" is flanked on the other side by the delhi-jaipur rail line, so, the vihar is spread as a narrow strip of land starting at delhi border and terminates unceremoniously into older Gurgaon.
We moved into our new home in Palam Vihar about a year back and spent five months at home, introspecting, trying out new recipes and tending the garden. The neighbours are quiet retired defence forces officers, who like to introspect, try new recipes and attend to their gardens.
Every evening we have the kids playing at the neighbourhood park and I decided to profile these kids:
Geeta: This 8-10 year old girl loves to practice her "English" with me. Every evening she gushes forth with her "Good Evening Sir" and I ask her "Where are you coming from"? She jumps off her bike and is so excited that she mixes up her genders: "Mam, no, sorry, Sir! I had gone to science tution". The other day I asked her where she lived, she said 148 (the house number).
Me: The kaks?
Her: No, I am the servant's daughter.
Me: Good, take care, Bye bye.

Monu1: About 7 years old urchin, unwashed, always in hurry! This kid is the son of a maid whose husband abandoned her years ago. The kid is all bones, but has the best twinkle in his eyes I have ever seen. He has learnt the cuss words like "haramjyade" (bastard) and uses it liberally with other friends (Monu2, Monu3 and sometimes with Anusha, the elder sister). The kid can do cartwheels very well, but the somersault is his week point. I have been training him to do the cartwheel, though I could never do it myself. The problem is that he needs to stabilize himself before each wheelie so it looks like a cartwheel with hiccups!

Anusha: The girl is 8 or so, she loves to demonstrate her Taikwando skills. She does hammer, roundhouse and front kick, her punches are lethal and she is the "strong-quiet" types. I tried to teach her a "kata" (a series of karate moves) and she picked it up quite well. She is the daughter of the abandoned maid, sister of Monu1.

Sonu: The only Sonu, he is of a stocky built, can do cartwheels, somersaults and is learning Taikwando. He goes to the government school 6 days a week and on weekends he goes to the "Masti ke Pathshala", a special school. The Masti Ke Pathshala is an activity cum class room teaching school that is operated by volunteers. Sonu has learnt pottery, mask makings and can sing too! All courtesy the Paathshala.

Chand: Son of a security guard, he must be no more than 10 years old. He made my wife uncomfortable by asking her to give him her watch. He has this habit of begging for things. His father is a guard with private security agency and is child-like to the point of being a nuisance. He climbs walls, is forever fixing something or other. We had hired him for a month or so and one day we left the house keys with him and he went inside the house, picked the car keys and wrecked the car in the driveway. He was fired in the evening, but we refrained from reporting him to police or the security agency. My wife might have missed Chand!

Dheere se Hawa ka peecha!

Morning started with "Chupke se sunn" number on the radio. The music has the background sound of the "chappu" splashing in water as a "Shikara" is paddled onwards. The sound brought instant swelling of tears. Suddenly I felt so alien in this land. A truck in front proclaimed:"Hawa ka peecha mat kar" in bold yellow letters on a grey double door.
Almost two decades have passed since we left homes, never to return. Forced out, afraid of our own shadows and afraid to clear our own throats as we swallowed the humiliation within. The "chappu"s in Kashmir are made in the shape of hearts and typically pained red, yellow or parrot green. The paddling sound when one is lying in a shikara is like a million pearls falling quietly on crystal surface. If you ever hear a song "Tche kamuu karne taaviz pan" to the rhythm of the chappu splashing in water, the melancholy will tear at the heart as the view tugs at your being. Zabarwan hills are like benign monsters that watch over my vale, every other day I sat the steps going to the roof and watched the snow on the top of zabarwan hills.
Hawa ka peecha mat kar!
Gurgaon!! The city that is summed up by two very potent symbols: The Pig and the Qualis! A city that came up from nowhere, almost overnight! There is little thought to its administration or aesthetics. The city emerged from a overfilled belly of capitalistic greed. As real estate in Delhi became unaffordable, out private enterprises setup shop in this city. A city which was famous for its farmlands, became home to may be 20 lakh or 30 Lakh people, who knows! The transition from sleepy farms to city took less than a decade. The administration is still scaled for a mid size district. The mini-secretariat is an unimaginative La Corbusier style brick and concrete building which houses the governance. The staircases are pained sickly red with spit all over. The dingy offices with broken windows house the elaborate setup that deal with our "files". Gurgaon, house to many fortune 500 companies has a lane called "call centre" lane, which houses call centers for MNCs. There are no functional street lights and the road has a Peepul tree in the middle of the road. The traffic is a mix of handcarts to BMWs, all vying for that elusive inch of road space. Well, the road disappeared in the rains. The most beautiful thing that you can see in Gurgaon is probably a small farm in bloom, specially in spring at the time when mustard is ready to harvest. The city is a no-city or call it: uncity, not meant to be! It is like thousands of small towns in India which didn't know how to grow. So, they grow like warts!
Gurgaon is home too! The lakes and water bodies have nearly disappeared. Once there were small valleys, rivulets and wilderness around. Now we have malls, ambience islands and kingdoms of dreams. The dreams are gone, long live the kings of greed.
I guess I am chasing some elusive "minimum dignity of life", it is possible only when you have a clean, organized environment. We have chaos and can live only if we are prepared to live with the rough and tumble of this city. We can live only if we compromise with the Pig and the Qualis.

eyes wide shut

On certain nights when the sky is awash with magh moon light, I experience a flight over placid turquoise lakes. I am light as the long legged white bird; my flight and white feathers reflect on the surface of the lake as the decaying lotus leaves define the separation of the dimensions.
I often carry myself over the bright soiled grassy slopes of hills of my valley and chance upon solitary travelers.

I saw three wise men on their tricycles sitting hunched and concentrating hard to maneuver the toboggan like tricycles. The road seemed to be the one on the Pir Panjal range separating Jammu from Kashmir. I must have traveled on this high road many times when the harsh winter of Kashmir froze the lakes and the air smelled of burnt chinar leaves. On other occasions when returning from harsh dusty plains one crossed the Jawahar tunnel to face a white wall of snow on the other side of the tunnel. It was home.

The three bearded men looked up to see me a swooning bird or a human? I think they were as confounded as I am when I take to skies on these magh days. We Kashmiri’s can be quite superstitious as we are quite used to people dancing to music we can’t hear. I swooned on one of the wise men on the toboggan-tricycle and he seemed to have lost an eye to chicken pox. I stopped him abruptly as the other too riders too stopped suddenly as far away from us as possible. I asked him an abrupt question: Are you a Kashmiri, Maharaj! (Toh chee mahara kaishur? – the question pre-supposes that the other person is a Kashmiri Pandit). The wise bearded man opened his bad eye, it wasn’t bad. It reminded me of the one legged birds, who seem to be cheating your senses by standing on one leg and playing lame! The wise man was somehow afraid.

I asked him frankly if he was a Kashmiri Muslim, to which his cryptic answer was: Maini vaise us’ne saathe! (I wasn’t born under the right stars!). His answer reflected the deep intercultural threads that run across two communities, fear of a large flying human and the guilt of a closed eye.
I let him go. Not yet.

I caught up and asked him his thoughts about our tahreek and music. We talked for some time till the sun dipped over the rolling hills of Pampore, our saffron fields. I must have been a long conversation as we seemed to be quite near to Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir. We discussed the lack of music in our lives for last decade and I argued that we had lost music even before that. Even our martial slogans were weak kneed and apologetic in verve. Inquilab zindabad is not a Kashmiri slogan, it couldn’t make our rose cheeked men to put their hands over burning light to swear of swaraj and azaadi. We missed our poets during our tahreek. A “Ya muoth Ya Kasheer” could have fired our men to revolt against every adversary, against Indian soldiers and against alien Islamic Jihaadees from Sudan and Afghanistan. I discussed with the wise man about where our Tahreek got hijacked and we were left with keeping a good eye closed.

Yesterday, I picked a few dusted musical shreds from the loot and plunder of last one and half decades of violence in Kashmir. Three young lads and three shy girls have formed a band and have churned out a harmless, folksy “Sweetie Sweetie Dray duty”! They have put it up on youtube and it seems to be very popular. A fine arts teacher based in Srinagar has been talking of “washing his fingers dipped in the scarlet lake”. He has managed to record pieces by fast vanishing generation on Bands their musical instruments like “sur nai” and "dhoul". It seems our music, dance and maybe our rich culture is undergoing a thawing and rediscovery. I have met a couple of Kashmiri Pandit musicians playing rabaab and organizing "bach nagme" at Kashmiri weddings. We are picking up the pieces and moving on.

On Social responsibility of Indian Corporates - A cynical comment

At the start of my professional life, I was a firm believer that all one needs to make this country better place to live in is to do your job and do it quite well. All else will follow. If all of us follow this professionalism and a search for excellence in our work, we would complement each other. Imagine an enthusiastic traffic policeman in the morning doing a good job of directing traffic, the municipal workers cleaning up the roads quite well, the public buses cleaned up and driver driving for your comfort (and not as if he is herding sheep to office!). We wouldn't be petty, we'd smile and open doors for each other, say thanks and good morning more often. This is what Ayn Rand envisioned for a capitalistic society. A decade after, I have learnt that very narrow pockets of our country have experienced this change while most have been left behind. Centuries of dark ages, suppression and fatalistic culture has left our people with no hope, no ambition and no sense of excellence. A day's bread earned is "excellence" for most of our population!

A breed of business leaders started changing all that with liberalization and end of license raj. Industries came up which could beat public sector ones hands down (check out the production of Reliance Refinery at Jamnagar and compare with BPCL, IOL etc.). IT leaders created unique software services business model - brains for hire! This was followed by Business Processes for hire! and here we are with our billions of dollars of revenue, great jobs at air conditioned offices, but still 6-10 hours of power cuts, water woes and a shame of a public infrastructure. Something has failed, failed deeply. These billions of dollars are worth nothing, when no decent basic service or goods are available, except luxuries of fancy cars, overseas vacations and overpriced real estate. Your millions won't buy you clean air or a aesthetically designed city. Masses contribute very little value to economy (on individual basis) and expect very little! So there you are: your excellnce is reciprocated by mediocrity and sloth of 600 million strong and it is not entirely their fault.

We cultivate sheep!
In 1927 when Lindberg flew solo across Atlantic, we were mired in dark ages, we were slaves and couldn't have done a pee pot design by ourselves. Do you wonder why some people in San Diego spend 800M of their own money on developing next generation technology, because that's "creative leadership". It is the spirit of the St. Louis (built in SD) that motivates them to dream, to lead and change their future. Indians are great followers!

The leap that Indian companies have to make is this leap of leadership, our president spoke of this "creative leadership" at the FICCI function recently (http://www.ficci.com/media-room/speeches-presentations/2007/may/may5-sedf.htm). I don't deny that corporates can supplement their contribution to economy by direct intervention in social sectors as well, case in the point being Infosys hiring of 100+ SC/ST candidates recently or support of schools/social causes. Someone shared an interesting artice of "social entrepreneurship" sometime back, which was how you can create profitable enterprises doing social work. Grameen bank is an interesting example and so is our very own Amul, which crossed a billion dollar mark in revenues recently.

Corporate sector needs to excel in whatever they do, responsibly. It needs to set global benchmarks, demonstrate leadership of the grandness of Lindberg and not just be good followers. We need leaders that create industries that have a good "trickle down" and wealth creation effect on a greater scale. We need creative leaders to make money by building infrastructure, by helping people to live better lives. We need cunning leaders to "make" money in the truest sense, not collect dollars which won't buy you a bucket of water to wash in future. Intervention in social causes is a small byline in what corporates can do.

gender of courage!

An old rejoinder....

The first one is the "gender of courage", which you think is more female since (true courage is) wisdom, by definition means the strength to “give and nurture”. About the origin of this strength:
We need wise men with their sad tales when the collective wisdom of our contemporary wisdom fails to answer the tricky questions or we run into an entirely new mode of thought or a new viewpoint. We become wiser when events force us to think outside the neat box of our prevalent kitty of notions, be it a 9/11 or the news of the new age Buddha. Wisdom, in its essence, lies in assimilation without destruction of any of the elements. I guess, in many cases, it is not possible and a churn happens to destroy parts of old thoughts/practices. Sounds pretty Darwinian, but this is what is affected by wisdom. I often go to Mehrauli (Near Qutab Minar, in Delhi) area and look at the magnificent Quwat-ul-islam mosque, it is a beautiful open courtyard mosque built out of pillars plundered from temples in the Rai Pithora fort, you can easy see the plunder that must have gone in to building this, now, a national landmark! Wisdom is in its preservation, it is the symbol of our nation of diversity and assimilation. Of multiple failures and successes, of having fallen so many times to tyrants, yet assimilating these tyrants into our own folds, who knows which one of us may build a Taj Mahal.

Secondly, defining wisdom as a handmaid of altruistic nurturing of diversity may be bit limited in its definition. I think there is a genuine attempt to search for the “truth” in various areas of thought and “purpose” in human affairs that makes our wise men suffer, perhaps, consequently making them write sad little tales! (see my sad little tale at http://www.mawa.blogspot.com/ ) The classic example is the ages old problem of “ultimate purpose of human life”? Simply put: do we as individuals have a purpose in life besides leaving maximum replicas of ourselves?? In absence of an answer to this vital question, the human condition is pretty “nauseating”: to use an apt existential term.

frapper

Book Review: HIGH EXPOSURE: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places - David Breashears and J.K

An old one:

This year in May, Indian Air force expedition lost Sqn Ldr Chaitanya, who never returned to the summit camp and my colleague from NIM (Nehru Institute Of Mountaineering) - Uttarkashi, Anupam, returned frost bitten from 8600m as his oxygen mask malfunctioned. I was following the progress of the expedition on a daily basis and even though IAF team managed to put three of the team members on the summit, the expedition was shadowed with loss of Sqn Ldr. Chaitanya and failure of the team to find him even after a prolonged search operation. I was so involved with the expedition, that it felt like a personal loss. I had either Camus or mountains to turn to. I headed to hills and did my "dealing" there and brought a copy of the "High Exposure" by David Breashers while returning back home.

"If I could be one tenth of the man that Beck Weathers was on that day, I'll be a very proud man", writes David Breashears about Beck Weathers, who after being given up for dead, not once, but thrice. He was still jovial and calm, as Breashers and Ed Viesturs, were getting him from camp 3 to 2 on Everest after the 1996 tragedy on Everest. In 1996 eleven people perished during the summit attempt at Everest. There has been a series of publications capturing the impressions of those who saw the tragedy unfold on that fateful day. "High Exposure" reveals Breashers view of the tragedy and so far is the most detached account of what happened on that day on the Everest.

David Breashers was brought up in Boulder, Colorado and discovered the love of climbing there. Growing up as a kid in 70s with a prodigious talent for climbing earned him the nick Kloberdanz kid early enough. While he honed his climbing skills in Yosemite, David was slowly unfolding his own vision of climbing. Working in Oil Fields, living in shacks, just to make enough money, such that he could keep climbing is as inspiring as it can get. David entered the Mecca of mountaineering, the Himalaya, as an assistant cameraman and realized that he had a love for both climbing as well as filming the mountains. The unique combination earned his keeping with various filming crews and he could be in Himalayas, mountaineering.

The high exposure covers a lot of space and time, from being raised by a violent short-tempered father and a caring mother, to the climbing whiz kid, an oilman, and a filmmaker to an acclaimed mountaineer. The journey from Colorado to Himalayas is written in an easy and candid manner of a mountaineer. Mountaineering is a very personal adventure, it is to see "how far can one go" having assumed that going "too far" is not universal. Moving on this edge of far and too far is what keeps mountaineers moving, the summit is a pause between these journeys.

David Breashers summited Everest for the 5th time last year at the age of 49, most recognize David from his 1996 IMAX movie on Everest. He resides in Boston, MA-U.S.A.

I resolve that...

I’ll explode in a million pieces and sparkle on the robes of Nanda Ghunti . I’ll climb up this mountain even as the mist and sweat cloud my view, as my beloved breaks down in tears. I shall keep climbing even if it breaks my back today, not till my love and I cross the last smooth stone ledge to the meadow with the silver streak. I shall not be cowed down by the dark clouds rushing down to meet us as we setup our home; I shall thrust my chest up and breathe the snarling wind.
I’ll learn to dance a waltz of passion or a thumb down thrust of a rapper with my heart and soul. I shall have the courage to look silly in the dresses that fancy me. I shall live in my country of chaos, of stray cows and honking drivers. I shall not embalm myself in antiseptic courtesy. I shall tell you that I hate you as passionately as I love you. I’ll break your bones and drink your blood, I shall be alive. I’ll wage war and I’ll wage love and passion too. Let me run till my lungs explode; jump till the trampoline rips apart on the crescendo of Rachminoff 3 . I’ll give it everything.
I resolve to drink absinthe, wander bare headed to look for Mayaa , find her and shoot myself in chest. I shall not listen to white robed saints or gurus teaching me the art of living, I shall live as a coward, as a hero and all in between. I shall cry as my people excel, as they jump, run and shoot. I shall wander on the lawns of Princeton and chuckle on Adam . I shall soar and be plundered like a kite.
Let me do those 33 steps of Jion as my master does, even if takes decades of pointless practice. Let me be pointless, let me blast your linear chains and sword into a million bits and piss over it. Let me bite you as I make love to you, hurt you with my love and hate too. Let me paint a storm in a storm in Arles; let me sing a Pavarotti for you or no one. Let me melt your clocks and grow a hornbill mustache. Let me act in the face of the plague, defy it, defeat it or be annihilated in the way.
Let the water lap my bow, break my stern, let me steer my timbers to new granite islands where woodthrush calls through the fog. The valley of Garud, where the Trishul towers like a lonely gendarme in fog and our Camerzind lies looking over the corn field.
Let me sit quietly at the Ghat in Banares as azaan calls the faithful and my shehnai’s caress is fresh on my dry lips. I’ll spit tobacco on the streets on this land, the land of my ancient civilization. I shall not moderate my hate or mellow my love. I’ll celebrate the animal as well as the human animal in me. I shall sing the songs of love and hate too. I shall experience greed, jealousy and much more. I shall fall in love many times with you and without you too. I shall not be afraid to hold hands; I shall jump into the river and cross over to islands. I’ll keep traveling and I shall keep living. I shall be human and not make a monster out of myself. I’ll not celibate or forgive you for pain you gave me. I’ll make you and me suffer till our graves, if I don’t move on. I shall not be an unperson, I shall live with cadence.
I shall know the colours of rainbow is not uniform white, a million colours makes up my sky and I shall live each one, in breadth and in depth. Like a blade of grass I shall be forever alive.

Terms:
Nanda Gunti - A Himalayan peak.
Rachminoff #3 - Piano Concerto no. 3.
Mayaa – Illusion.
Adam - Adam Smith
Jion - A Kata – Karate sequence of steps.
Pavarotti - Luciano Pavarotti
Trishul - A Himalayan peak
Ghat - River bank
Azaan - Muslim call for prayer
Shehnai - Wind Instrument see Bismillah Khan

A quiet rustle

  


shapes in spaces removed
essence of chisel on marble
often what is left broken
wasted at the feet of gold

the centre remains outside
as my love in three quick steps
tuck..tuck-tuck!
pants for breath at the feet of gold

what one desires to be and what is
one amorphous stone
till one seeks a chisel
one fine cold winter night

a rickshaw pauses
near a chai shop
while cold fingers lit a cigarette
in celebration of the night

the days deeds are done
whispers have cut through the breath
hurried feet have rustled the leaves to a mocking laughter
a quiet march followed to my
tuck..tuck-tuck!

an old post about kashmir

Hi Kavita,
Have resisted baring my Kashmiri memories on this forum for quite some time given you folks doing such a beautiful job of it! Let me give it a try now:

A few Glass beads:

Memories have a strange way of creeping up on you when you are least prepared, like the early morning snow after those dry gray cold days of Autumn in Kashmir. My autumn was always spent in Srinagar, as the days became shorter and people started deserting Kashmir for warmer Jammu. My valley was left alone for the chinar leaves, a gray sky and me. Often I would wear my duckback shoes, dress myself in multiple layers against the cold and start going up the Shankarachariya hill, I would stop at the point on the stairs where you could see the entire Dal Lake with its toy house boats and majestic hills at a distance. There, I would meditate and knowing that Vivekananda had perhaps meditated at the same place, I’d get goose pimples! My gaze would sweep across the expense from the serpentine Jhelum on my left, to Pari Mehal on my right; my mind was spread out in azure.

The walk down was actually a run, a flight, a soaring Johnathan Swift with duckback shoes! Even now, a few decades later, I still dream of that flight, a light hop off the rocks and a soft landing as I eye the roof of the Burn Hall School. I used to walk over to Shri Partap Museam Library and to the “elders section” where an elderly pious Muslim gentleman explained the allegory of “fever” in Tagore’s Geetanjali to me. I was a teenager with no friends, I was, as Naruda says, a soul clenched with sadness.

Kavita, I was born and brought up in Kashmir and spent 20 long winters there... I was the pink-cheeked urchin you may have seen in the streets of downtown (ZainaKadal) with a torn “pheran” (a kind of winter gown) and the plastic shoes. It was me who jumped into the Jhelum for you to click a nice photo of the river, Shah Hamadan sahib’s khankhah (Shah Hamadan brought Islam to Kashmir in the 13th century / a common shrine of Hindu’s and Muslim’s in downtown Kashmir) and the old wooden bridge itself.

I felt one with the streams, the river at Pahalgam, the snow covered slopes at Gulmarg and those endless Shikara (a small boat) rides in Dal Lake was my temporal expression! I studied at the banks of Dal Lake and during the month of Ramazan, we’d walk down to the Hazratbal Shrine to idle away our time as our Muslim friends prayed.

”You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.” – Neruda

So, my friends, one fine day we left our home, the home where I learnt my roller skating in the lobby, where my mother planted those Marigolds and I tasted my first icicle. I read my first Russell (“on Education”!), Gorky, Tagore, Marquez and Tolstoy. Those where the heady days! I fell in love and rose in unrequited desire. I wrote those long love letters in verse and smeared a few pages with the white rose and my blood. We didn’t have red roses in winter and I was reading Oscar Wilde. Those were the days of greatest hope and that was the winter of despair – 1990. It was a very plain “Leave within 24 hours, you traitors – Area Command - Hizbul Mujahideen” note. It was very economical in its expression, unlike our valley, which was overabundant.

Malyiva Nagar is a quasi slum in the southern part of multiple extensions of Delhi. A small service lane led to a heavy blue door with no door bell as you could knock at the window to draw the resident’s attention any time. A dented can of coke served as an ashtray and we discussed Darwin’s missive on love and our own interpretations of the glass bead game of life. Hesse or Plato, Neruda or Marquez, Naipaul or our own free verse, we were spoilt for choices to get drunk on... till we discovered Van Gogh ( letters/Irving Stone/prints..everything!)... a new bible was found for us Dubliners..

So I submit to you, the jury, an incomplete defense of our lives, you, the honorable ones! Of powdered wigs, authorized to judge and condemn with the shiver of a quill.

The prosecution has asked us the question: Why do u live? Kashmiri Pandits in exile...in nauseam...

Honourable members, our case begs no mercy, but we beg understanding and warmth. It is not a cry for help nor a Abdul Gilanesque “Free Kashmir” slogan. Our split lives may have the iron of your warmth in our souls, as we bleed.... anywhere...



addendum:



Dear Gilani sahab,
Kashmir is our shared homeland and I respect your viewpoint and sentiments. Part of my family is still in Srinagar-Kashmir and with God's grace are safe and doing well.

Last 15 years or so have seen a lot of bloodshed and it has been a continual pain for both residents of Kashmir and armed forces who serve there. You do know that Kashmiri ethos is not 700 years old, but predates it by thousands of years. Islam came to kashmir is 13th century and people readily embraced it. As a result we still have "shared" places of worship in most places (Khaniyaar, Reshpeer etc.). My point is that we need to start formulating the "Kashmir problem" in terms of our unique identity, isolation and finally political mess up, in that order!

From identity perspective, Gilani sahab, it is not a Muslim or a hindu issue (unless u happen to be a paid member of interest group), even now, my aunty visits AashMukaan every now to pray for peace. I know of many Muslims, who had a great respect for hindu shrines and our shared sufi traditions. Need I remind you of Nund Resh (Sheikh Nooruddin) and Lal Ded??
Now we come to the isolation bit: with hardly any interaction with the outside world, Kashmiris have traditionally been very closed community and have had a little inkling of changes happening all over the world. The xenophobia is a result of that isolation.
Third is the political mess: you know the facts, lies and in-between of all of it! You know that the living standard in Kashmir is 2nd best (after Chandigarh) in whole of India, not because people are very enterprising, but because government is flush with "appeasement" funds and corruption is rampant.
IMHO, the kashmir problem is an identity crisis, a problem of isolation and political mishandling by Kashmiris. I guess we need to wake up and educate ourselves for next few decades, breathe fresh air of globalization, nourish our traditions and not destroy them. Freedom is our choosing, let us educate our kids and hope they are not as blind as we were to elect blind leaders. Let's give "Kashmir problem" a break and open our minds to the world. Let us shut up and listen, for a change!
Gilani sahab, in closing this writeup, let me mention that you indeed are my big hope, at least you are reading this blog and hopefully would listen more than talk. Just look within yourself and make an honest assessment, what do you *really* want for our people. I, for one, want "azaadi" (freedom), freedom from dogma, freedom from manipulation of petty sloganeering masses, freedom to learn the magic of this natural world, freedom to make an honest living and freedom to access the world of information.
I know that world has been unfair to us, but we have been unfair to ourself for too long...
best regards
-rakesh mawa

marrow of the matter

A flurry of forwarded calls catches me at the completely inopportune moment. “So! who is this gonna be?”, I wonder in my most happening language. A completely relaxed voice on the other side clears up its vocal camp, sniffs, snorts, chortles and asks: “how long?”. “What the hell!!”, I continue in my chaste happening monologue. The mousy librarian shhhhs me up. An apology and a pause later, on phone, that is, I retort:”What is it?”. The familiar voice continues “what time?” and light dawns upon me!

This is my couple of friends who want to find out: how soon can I leave from my office. Well! the agenda is quite simple, my friends would arrive at my office in their old fiat car, which has just two usable doors. They would be waiting with wide grins awaiting the “start” of the evening. The one who drives is a movie director and the other bloke is an “assistant director”. Together they weave stories and create sitcoms, tragedies, hilarious situations and countless moments that leave a lingering aftertaste like the orange candy does on your tongue, when you are a kid. The only difference between their professional and real lives was that they created all these in real life and not on the editing table. So, as you can imagine, life was a roller coaster ride with a melting ice cream in your hand.

Our responsibilities as the three carefree directionally challenged youth were clearly spelled out: we'll not only live as free as possible, but we'd squeeze the last drop of emotional highs and lows that life could throw at us. We'd debate on dialectic materialism and we'll celebrate our slavery to Darwinian evolution. We'd shine the moonlight through the prisms of life! We'd laugh our heads off on director sahib's flamboyant clothes; our eyes will fill up when someone said a few kind words on a lonely night on a lonelier road... Those were the days, my friend..

“I'll do what I did a year back, if you don't call me NOW”. That was the junior (the assistant director) threatening to slash his wrists, as we (yours truly and the director sahib) had been playing truant with him through the evening. One look was exchanged and we knew we have someone who truly was our pal, but a stupid one! Ever since then, we never treated him an equal!

He was the one with very clear role and responsibilities. His salary was reserved for cigarettes and vital emergency expenses, such as bread and eggs. My salary had a well stated agenda of meeting up the patrol expenses, beer and food, in that order. Only director sahib knows what his salary was contributing its financial muscle to. The junior and I were too awestruck to ask, since director sahib was the only one, who could drive!

On a rare day, when returning from our beer session at “Princess Garden” bar in South Extension, director sahib would slur: “wanna drive”, this was always at the same location, when you turn from ring road into Malviya Nagar. I used to take up the wheel of honour position and try to steer the unsteerable into the intended direction of our one room apartment in Malviya Nagar. My respect for director sahib would always increase manifold after such driving lessons; if he could steer it, he was the real man! Junior didn’t even exist on this plane of manhood (to be considered for a driving lesson, not that he cared to drive anyway!).

The evenings were the time when we used to spread our wings and take flights of freedom into the chaotic world of passions, mostly unrequited and a few fulfilling ones. We were like unloved mongrels for ever chasing the hands that pet us a little; come to think of it, we even looked like one.

Director sahib called up on Monday morning: “guess what?” I nearly lost my poise and almost toppled over the table to the mousy librarian (who shhh’ed me again): this could mean only one thing, D.S has fallen in love. They (D.S, J and sundry sitcom crew) had gone to Bhopal for a shooting and D.S had fallen in love with the leading lady, who was an oomph.

I brought a pager and the established protocol of love birds was: She pages the messages on my pager, D.S reads the message and if he feels like it, he goes out, makes a call to her, comes back grinning or grave, the cycle continues. The protocol was necessary and quite appropriate, since the “baby doll” was married and they had returned from their honeymoon a month back.

The evenings became quite lively now, we used to get invited to Baby Doll’s home nearly every day. Her husband would play the graveyard shift music on the FM, while D.S would “help” Baby Doll with cooking. I endured countless evenings with the graphics artist listening to the graveyard shift music and yes, the evergreen, “only for broken hearts”! Junior would always be somewhere in the background nursing a drink, fixing this, getting that. Progressively, I noticed that I was seeing lesser and lesser of D.S and Junior together! Either of them was “helping” the baby doll with errands.

Junior was in love the Baby Doll too and she started paging for him on my pager! So there were three of us waiting for pager to buzz and when it did, no one could guess who needed to respond. Sample this: “call me now, I need to tell you about him”; so both Junior and D.S suspected that it was for other one! I couldn’t care less, as long as some fireworks were in offering! Both would tell each other that the message must be for him, quicky go out for a leak and call her up; there was so much love and passion in the air.

Baby Doll landed up in my office on a windy, rainy day and held my hands for a long time! She gazed into my eyes and a throaty “Raaakaish” took my breath away. I felt her fingers tighten on my hands, fat plump ones, which I was so unused to! I lingered my “friend only” grip and she relaxed hers. I stroked her hand and muttered a dry throated, ambiguous: “I understand”

Months passed and D.S would hide her photo in his diary, her hairpin and other precious stuff from Junior, who was intent on building his own collection. On certain days, I noticed that she had visited our apartment (as it was cleaned up and either D.S or Junior was hiding his glee). We managed get her a decent job and she realized that the best place for a married woman is her man’s castle.

It was a long day at office and I reached home quite late, the door was opened by D.S who was swerving back and forth trying to focus his eyes on me. Junior looked quite plastered. They had been to a party thrown by Baby Doll and she had dumped both of them. They had been drinking, supporting each other and had spend part of the nights sleeping, waking, getting sick at multiple places on the ride back home and here they were. I’d never forgive them for the horror they induced in me that night.

It took a great deal of sensitive handling for yours truly to convince Baby Doll to suspend all communication with D.S for the greater good…

If there is one author that we owe our well wasted evenings to, it would be Jim Corbett, without doubt! Well! it was actually his “Man Eater of Kumaon” that was object of our DS's scrutiny and research. “Baba, main corbett par story karna chahta hu” (“Baba, I would like to do a story on the life of Corbett”) was the definitive assertion that spun the wheels of mechanization that lead to quite a few unpredictable results. As they say: there are wheels-within-wheels and DS setup the first cog with the above assertion!

Corbett became our mantra which DS would invoke at any office emergency and saunter out of office. The AD would follow, for him, the modified mantra would be “DS-corbett”. Countless evenings were spent in the name of going to Cannaught Place to buy the famous book. DS would invoke this towards the evening and in about 20 minutes, DS and AD would land up at my office ready with plans, excitement, a grin and nothing else! (no money, no plans and no food).

We'd go to our place through the narrow service lane and make omelets and tea. The feast would energize us and add air to our wings, our imagination, plans would soar as DS would light up the solitary cigarette. The act of lighting would do poets proud, the grace of lighting up after having consumed eight eggs, half a loaf of bread and copious quantity of milky tea. DS would lie full length like a mogul in the harem, waiting for the show to begin.

On other days, during monsoon, when peacocks spread their plumes and shriek with joy; on lonely stretches of roads, a couple would get down from their bike near a “bhutta” (skewered corn cob ) wala to share a moment. Our hearts would leap to our mouths, when we watched drops of rain perched on someone shoulder, as she waited under the tree. We were the lonely romantics whom the world had forgotten in its service lanes. It was sickening, the passions were unbridled with nowhere to go.

Monsoon time was fascinating and Corbett was invoked to escape office and rush to the girl's hostel in saket. A.D had graduated to passions of youth, the rite of passage followed a narrow lane from Malviya Nagar through khirki village. On valentine day, A.D got her to Princess Garden restaurant basement. Our regular waiter (“Jule”) greeted us and we settled down for an introduction with “bachhe” (our kid girl – that's the term of affection). DS handles complicated situations in his unique ways and is never predictable. Within five minutes, DS excused himself and vanished. The burden of conversation when it wasn't needed, fell on me. AD was flushed with passion, his face crimson, dried lips and shivering hands. He was sick with love, I could sense that. DS returned with a bouquet for our bucche! AD was shocked out of his wits and I was surprised too. DS being so thoughtful and actually moving all of his 100+ Kgs to do something in a non-emergency situation. Beware of the energy of the lazy; he was the cause of a flash strike at AIIMS (All India Inst. of Medical Sciences), but that, me dear, is another story. AD's heart must have missed a couple of beats, he knew that as long as he had DS with his 4 Kgs denim jacket on, we had an invincible, sexy team. We were invincible, we were the best thing that ever happened to mankind and we were blessed with whatever it takes to squeeze the last drop out of the life's orange! A few months later, our bachhe introduced AD to her fiance, who noticed the broken cigarette in AD's shivering hand and remarked...
AD's world came apart and we landed up in “Krishna Continental”, if you visit PVR saket and notice a dilapidated hotel near a dirty disused fountian, you'd also notice that it has a pretty strategic location. The hotel had a multilevel bar called Jharokha, we, naturally occupied the basement on most days. Deeps was our man at large there. He promptly got six bottles of beer, peanuts and our AD told us about it. If only DS was around, AD could have laughed at the whole world, stomped on its ambitions, materialistic values and maybe I could have cut my ear and gift it to bacche there and then. AD has graduated that day, we felt a bond and I felt that he had found a trail of his own. We felt the tragedy in our veins, together. DS went on the offensive and AD felt better. AD had known the fine play of desire, passion, lonely waits and a broken cigarette. He had known well-earned tears.

Bharat ka mess: chaos ya cosmos?

Posted this on intentblog to an overseas visiting friend who carried back home fond memories and some bitter ones too....



Give us one more chance dear!

India lives concurrently in multiple ages starting from dark to 64nm chip design one. Dare I say, you may have had a taste of it all in a very short time.

Personally, I feel mentally numb after a few weeks when I travel to US or other 1st world countries. The systems work so smooth that you stop noticing them after some time! (running potable water, right out from your tap!). The systems let you focus on your chosen vocation and keeps you free, as long as you conform to certain behavior. You can get complacent quite quickly if you aren't in love with your chosen vocation.

Life out here is a continuum of challenge! I am on my toes mentally, all the time! Crossing a busy street is a task, driving , parking, buying, selling, eating, sleeping.. all of it! You need to be smart to even survive , because the rules of interactions/interplay keep changing. The diversity of this country itself it overwhelming. Most friends have chosen to move to US or Canada to pursue their dreams of a “better life”, while we chose to thrive on this chaos! The India that I see right now is that of chaos and opportunity! A million opportunities at every corner! From an amateurish media to a speculative stock market, from rural employment schemes to socially sensitive corporates, the place is throbbing with opportunities. As they say in the MacD ad “I am loving it!”.

We need imaginative dreamers; we need young novelists like Rahul Pandita, missionaries like Anouradha, rugby players like Rahul Bose and of course, our ambassadors like you and Gotham (happy birthday pal, wish you stronger knees!). We are breaking through thousands of years of cultural continuum and adopting a new consumerist model. Ashok Khosla is worrying about its sustainability and we are thinking about it too. We are experimenting, please bear with us while we fix our Airports, roads, water works..

I watched the 35 probables of India's under 19 women soccer team practicing at the local stadium. I didn't even know that India had a women soccer team! I saw kids of all shades, shapes and colour, kind of full spectrum flag of India. Chinky kids from North East, huge girls from Punjab/Haryana, petite Keralites and dusky southerners. I spoke to the coach and he informed me that the Football association budgets about Rs 50 ($1) a day for diet of each of these kids! That brought a lump in my throat, I do “high end” technology consultancy for my organization and get paid by hour. The contrast. I offered a juice “treat” for these kids and was shyly avoiding their gaze when I heard them shout in one go “1,2,3..Thank you sir”...
I haven't exactly recovered from that. Our national team doesn't have a sponsor; most don't have proper gear, but can they kick a ball! We are learning to bend it..please bear with us...


regards
-Rakesh Mawa

incomplete one..

Nabokov's “dismantled moon in the courtyard” resound in my mind as the sweep of my eye is interrupted by the comma of a single white hair on the cuff of her T-shirt. A clock somewhere strikes a half hour pertaining to an unknown hour, Nabokov is haunting me today. “Gnostic turpitude”, a friend sms's helpfully to my rippled windy heart. A storm is soothsaid on my tarot card. My tired eyes rise over her bare arms to the face; a plaintive face of a teenage boy with the hint of a coming manhood. It is the nose that is impressive! An exaggerated motif on the basic canvas work by an enthusiastic artist who was keen on signing it off. It reminds me of the negroid excess of curvature in anthropological studies or maybe it is just too much of Nabokov today.

She is my friend and co-warrior, we deal with revolt during the day and reconcile to a fatalistic destiny in the evenings. She is my wife and suffice to say, my significant half.
My friends are a treasure trove that I hoard. Those nasty bunch of folks who wouldn't let me lie in my misery. My wife is my “best friend”, as I'd have loved to mention, if I was in my 2nd year in school. But we have just added three decades to the 2nd form. What is the equation one has, aspires or needs to have with one's wife?

Nietzsche mentions that marriage is a “torch to light you to loftier paths”! “Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul”. I find him profound and unimaginative at the same time; myopic to the extent of losing the peripheral vision. Lots of depth.

Who wears the pants!!

My significant half (Deepa) shoots a yan (yet another nag): "you should check if the toaster is really ON when you press the lever!" She means: we are delayed by another 1.5 minutes to office and that’s because of me. I sip the morning tea at leisure, as the clock chases the deadlines, the stress mounts, and my wife is directing the maid all over the house. I turn to the cartoon section and giggle quietly so as not to upset Deepa, who is already quite touchy. To be fair to her, she likes Calvin as much as I do, but not in the mornings. Well, after some hot words are exchanged, I reluctantly finish my morning ablutions (or skip them in extreme hostile conditions!) and proceed to kitchen. That is my territory!

I can do close to 16 variations of omelet, some innovative ones like chanterelle/salmon filling and some pricy ones, like a plain sunny side up with a hint of truffles. Deepa likes her omelets runny, melt in the mouth type with the aroma of Oregano taking you to hills as you bite into the double decked omelet burger! (I invented it recently). Before you think I am being immodest, you just need to tell me: how long you intend to stay awake and I’ll make a tea with real “character” to keep you awake for “exactly” that long! My friends still miss that character in their wife’s tea. Kitchen is like my battlefield, I can do twenty different things the same time and still serve you a piping hot breakfast on a clean sparkling white plate, taking full care of the presentation, colour, aroma, texture of the food and temperature of the drinks! I ensure that the kitchen is left cleaner than I found it! I can marshal the gods of gastronomy at will and cooking is like conducting a symphony. Pass me the baton, please, any time.

Even After eight years of marital bliss, my wife still can’t cook rice! She’s tried pressure cooker, electric rice cooker, Microwave, pan, yet no luck so far. Her “I’ll make rice” day is strictly a red/white wine day for us (red for burnt rice, white for half cooked). So we have come to a consensus, she takes care of the clothes (I can never fold a shirt correctly) and manages my loo cleaning schedules, besides making sure that our kitchen is adequately stocked up.

So what does this lucky lady do! Well! She writes software for a living, earns a salary as fat as my modest one (well, nearly…). But, she is a very good rock climber (5.12 feature last week!) and an avid mountaineer too. She is a long distance runner with a couple of half-marathons under her belt. She is a martial artist and has the standing record of 300 ab crunches at our local gym!

The traditional roles of women and men are changing, I guess! Not that I wouldn’t have liked a petite wife waiting for me at home and pressure cooker whistling its evening music! All I get is a wife who shouts “under-cut on right, overhead hold on left.c’mon you can do it”, while I suffer on a warm-up boulder…

Are the good ol’days of male glory over?

Harmonica completed..with a mezzo piano march

Harmonica...

Someone said that a manual of happiness must start with a resolution of death as its first chapter. As the year ends, I think it is the time to write the manual of the entity that we call “happiness”.

Year after year, on the New Year eves, I used to sit quietly, guiltily, near a bonfire in hills reflecting over the year that has been and making up half-hearted resolutions for the coming one. The first time we had these magic surreal nights, we sat cross-legged facing the fire like devout Brahmins. Pankaj, our real estate friend was the bartender for the day. He made stiff, badly measured drinks, and was our unanimous choice for the New Year Eves. The friends and Tau Ji (our Uncle) formed the core group of new age fire worshippers. The fireplace had a very detailed hierarchy! Being the master of the house, Tau Ji occupied one side of the fireplace and then it was the other side that was up for contention! The person sitting on the other side of the fire was like the chief “fire officer”, alpha pyrometry artist! The job entailed deep knowledge of pine smoke aroma, burn rate of oak, rhododendron, birch, dry twigs, spread, ember distribution and such. This was the position of honour! The lesser mortals were content to put up their feet near the fire and lie on the oversized cushions, nursing their drinks and memories of the nearly bygone year.

The conversation and silences were very well understood and more conventional, the better. Sartre, Camus and Jiddu were liberally quoted and simple words like “love you” were said on face without flinching! Many a times, I saw the fire leaping into my friends eyes, the silent one, whose hands shook during day and steadied only after the first “old monk”! How lovely to see the leap of fire in my friends eyes. Many a times, I caught my wife’s swelling tears of joy as we sat around the fire and our Tau Ji. The tears welling up, for heart can only hold so much of joy. I reached for another sip of the copper coloured light. Pankaj served another round.

Year after year, we did the purification rites in the little cottage overlooking Garud valley, just where the shadows of Trishul and Nanda Devi play in daytime, just near the place where our Peter Camerzind looked down into the valley. Where I played the Bach Minuet on my recorder, as he stole those kisses!!

Tau ji was a self-proclaimed “progressive farmer” and took special pride in introducing strawberries and other high value cash crops in the area. His story shall be told someday, but you’d lend me your attention for a while, dear reader for matters of “death and happiness”, won’t you? A fire was lit some eight years ago, when we did a hundred mile journey from Haldwani, up through to Almora and reached our little cottage in the hills, some thirty miles further up. We saw the snow covered peaks sweeping the entire panorama, flooded in moonlight! We forgot our tiresome journey and the fire was lit...

Abheek quotes Li Po talking of Tau Ji, when I caught him other day with the pavlovian, “what are you doing for the New Year”:

“My friend lives high on East Mountain.
His nature is to love the hills and gorges.
In green spring he sleeps in empty woodland,
Still there when the noon sun brightens.
Pine-tree winds to dust his hair.
Rock-filled streams to cleanse his senses.
Free of all sound and stress,
Resting on a wedge of cloud and mist
”

Tau Ji died in my arms....as Abheek struggled with the oxygen cylinder...There were the the devout fire worshippers in attendance, no one cried. Tau Ji loved life and died struggling to live, to breathe, to hold on to us! He died alive, clutching to very last breathe.. Pankaj disappeared into the pine grove, Abheek dug a deep hole to bury Tauji’s dentures, specs and his collection of Playboy! Deepa and I organized the house for relatives... We sat quietly with his body towards the dusk and his best friend remarked: can we have a drink?

A baritone..”Bhai Lal Singh, bar kholne ka samay ho gaya hai” (May the drinks for the evening be served)..reverberated somewhere deep within me...as tears welled up...

A mezzo-piano march..

One reached the new cottage by carefully stepping down those seventy-two steps into a bare garden with two tea bushes on the right and an inviting long lobby in the front. That day we kept Tauji’s body on the floor, in the lobby, as somber villagers came to offer their condolences. Balwant Singh ji, Tauji best friend in Kausani is a former soldier with a wrinkled sun burnt face and very dignified manner. He was busy offering tea to visitors and barely looked at the body. The fire worshippers were huddled in a corner, as the house had been thrown open to the whole world with its soul lay bare on the floor of the lobby. The house was dead and so was the fire.

It was a damp cold day as we took our Tauji up the steps to the main road; we marched through those eighteen measures of “Ram-nam-sat-hai”, in common time. The body was laid on top of a truck, Abheek and I clamoured up to the roof and sat holding the body from swinging from side-to-side as the truck wound its way on the serpentine road to Bageshwar. We held onto our lives and the body between us. It drizzled and we were wet to the bone, the scent of burning pinecones and the sights of abundantly green fields held us in its tight embrace. We didn’t cry. We were drained of all feeling, of pain, in one go. We had been humbled into numbness as very respectful hill folks did a “Namaste” to the body, whichever village we passed through, in sympathy, and fear of their own mortality.

Bageshwar is a confluence of Saryu and Gomti rivers and is a tranquil place where Kumaoni folks cremate their dead. The funeral pyre was set very efficiently by the villagers accompanying us. I was entrusted with carrying Tauji around the pyre a couple of times and then placing him on the pyre. He seemed so heavy that day or I was drained. A setting sun, two rivers merging into a hushed gurgling stream, and four of the fire worshippers were in attendance. Balwant Singh ji made sure that his friend’s body was properly consecrated to flames. At one point, he set the head in the right position to burn properly, the head of his best friend, with a six feet pole. I asked Abheek to remove the “Disneyland 2000” jersey, which Deepa had brought for Tauji from US and threw it into flames. I was done.

We reached the house, our former home, quite late by hill standards. The five of us, and Balwant Singh ji.

Morning saw the relatives pouring in, there wasn’t a “Will” to be found, He had not anticipated dying at such an early age. Within hours, we saw the whole house ransacked of its goods, even underwear weren’t spared, and they were duly distributed among the contenders. In a few hours Tauji was made a un-person! He often spoke of setting up a trust for “progressive farmers” like him and primary education in Garud, but we had nothing left in ourselves to defend his wishes.

In a day we were disfranchised.

His wife came some six months later to visit us from London. A very petite woman, we recognized each other very easily at the airport, as I wore a unique “fluorescent tiger” T-Shirt and she had a six-foot gorgeous friend with her. A few days later, I accompanied her to the cottage with those two tea bushes and we quietly cried sitting down in the lobby, facing a morning sun over Trishul and Nanda Devi.

We walked up towards the Dak Bunglow and reached Tauji’s old cottage, the cottage, which, as per Abheek, has the best view of mountains, better than anywhere else in entire world. We heard kids reading their lessons aloud, inside the main hall; seems there was a school operating from the premises. Two young girls, apparently teachers, stepped out and said Namaste.. I requested permission for us to step into the cottage and we went to the main hall, where we had spend so many new-year eves, marriage anniversaries, Holi, Deepawali holidays. The fireplace was cold and drippy kohl coloured on the sides. I turned to students and said Namaste, and told them a story of two city birds eloping to a cottage like this, or this very cottage.

The butterflies would not fly away as we sat in the garden, the sparrows do not fly away alarmed, in the garden of that cottage. Often, I saw him under the lime tree, there, with sparrows on his chair’s armrest, playing hopscotch on his legs and he would keep looking towards the walnut tree.

The city birds discovered their first nest and invited other city birds too and they kept on feeding on the early worms in the garden, hopped on the rocks over there and sang songs all day. One day the little city birds saw the huge just bald eagle and flew up towards the garden behind that peak...Which one’s that???

Kids shouted in chorus: “Trishul, aapko Itna Bhi nahi malooom?”

( “Trishul, You don’t know that?”)

I couldn’t finish the story, the stories do not finish in real life..they feed other stories, the world is organic, alive, fertile, feeds on its own elements and regenerates on its own death....

One fine day a sapling looks up, vulnerable and green, hairy and soft as it tosses it’s head in the morning sun.

We look out of our tent into the lake

a neat four-by-four picture postcard

our world

our cottage

a place for some tired city birds to come to

this very place over yonder, besides the stream

as swallows make a nest in my lime tree.

Amen.

15 Park Avenue (Calcutta) visited...

How does one deal with rape of a schizophrenic woman traveling alone to report on post electoral violence in our badlands? I mean, how do you deal with it if you are a filmmaker? Do you want to convey the horror of the inhuman experience without pandering to masochistic viewership? Aparna Sen does this with sensitivity possible only to a woman in “15^th Park Avenue”.

One is queasy at the sight of the protagonist (Meethali, a schizophrenic, played by Konkana Sen) being gang raped in a hotel room, dragged into the lobby and her sandals being thrown at her, so callously, so very inhumanly. Yet, the visuals are not those of “in your face” rape or even violence, it just shows people moving about in the lobby, being deliberately deaf to the muffled cries, sobs and screams for help by the victim. The visuals are restrained, yet horrifying when Meethi is dragged to the lobby of the hotel and her sandals and a bra tossed at her body....

15^th Park Avenue is a lyrical comment on the nature of “reality” itself. It portrays different “realities” of its characters and the price they pay for their “chosen” realities. At the center of these realities is the Meethi’s; with her imaginary husband JoJo, five kids named NainTara, Vishal....a big cockerel Spaniel.. and a lovely house at 15 Park Avenue in Calcutta. The other real lives are of Meethi’s elder sister (Shabana Azmi) who has kept her life “on the hold” to take care of her sibling, Joydeep Roy (Rahul Bose) who is happily married with two kids of his own. The movie is a study in the contrast of these realities, the interplay of our perception. The cadence of the experiences we undergo and the truth therein, the music and the discord as well. The movie is doesn’t have songs, very little background music, yet the aural experience haunts for quite a few days. The visual imagery is mellowed down deliberately; even Bhutan’s hills look pale (easily correctable by adding blue tinge, but, I think, deliberately not done.), Rahul’s face looks expressionless as he closes his expressive eyes in too much ambient light! Aparna Sen remains true to raw expression, as is, not “touching up”, even the cinematic experience.

Meethi’s experiences are as real as anyone else, except that it does not pass the test of real life as voted by majority! Yet, the point is: how much she needs to suffer before she stops looking for something that isn’t there? Don’t we all suffer looking for something that isn’t really there, as Joydeep’s wife remarks in the movie? Don’t we have a “propensity” to seek the unreal? Poignant questions.

Next time you see those expressionless eyes staring at you at a red light or near your home, you know that they are looking for a non-existent address and maybe you spare a thought on what are you looking for?

On a very practical level, the movie raises questions on the way we treat our mental patients; even when Meethi sister is passionately explaining the evolution of Grand Unification Theory, Meethi is being beaten up by witch doctor at home to get rid of bad spirits. We are impatient with our own people in psychological distress, they need to be put out of our sights, we want to “un-person” them. As Meethi’s mother remarks, we are a very stressed family!

Another aspect of dealing with psychiatric patients is: how much normalcy in terms of day-today behaviour is expected from them. How does one handle an engagement or a marriage with such a person, who sees imaginary people staring at her breasts. Well, Aparna Sen’s answer is: “honestly, with sensitivity”. You deal with it as honestly as possible, even at the risk of being called a spineless bastard! When Joydeep falls in love with Meethi, he goes ahead, in spite of all the warnings by Meethi’s sister, and gets engaged to her. But, when Meethi recovers after being gang raped, he is just not able to reconcile to the violation. He just can’t feel any passion in their relationship. He walks out of the relationship, when she needs him most. He chooses to be callous, than being a phony.

Joydeep returns in Meethi’s life years later, when the meet accidentally while vacationing in Bhutan. She doesn’t even remember him, but he becomes her only confidant! He understands her, her world, her JoJo, their dreams that have been so deep rooted that they became a living reality in Meethi’s life. What more can lovers ever ask of each other? His understanding, falling short of love and her love surpassing the reality into what Van Gogh barely touched in his “Maya”. Sanity sucks!

Here’s to you, Joydeep! (Apologies! Rahul Bose, I am not a professional movie reviewer, just my 2 cents here).

-Rakesh Mawa

Harmonica...

Someone said that a manual of happiness must start with a resolution of death as its first chapter. As the year ends, I think it is the time to write the manual of the entity that we call “happiness”.

Year after year, on the New Year eves, I used to sit quietly, guiltily, near a bonfire in hills reflecting over the year that has been and making up half-hearted resolutions for the coming one. The first time we had these magic surreal nights, we sat cross-legged facing the fire like devout Brahmins. Pankaj, our real estate friend was the bartender for the day. He made stiff, badly measured drinks, and was our unanimous choice for the New Year Eves. The friends and Tau Ji (our Uncle) formed the core group of new age fire worshippers. The fireplace had a very detailed hierarchy! Being the master of the house, Tau Ji occupied one side of the fireplace and then it was the other side that was up for contention! The person sitting on the other side of the fire was like the chief “fire officer”, alpha pyrometry artist! The job entailed deep knowledge of pine smoke aroma, burn rate of oak, rhododendron, birch, dry twigs, spread, ember distribution and such. This was the position of honour! The lesser mortals were content to put up their feet near the fire and lie on the oversized cushions, nursing their drinks and memories of the nearly bygone year.

The conversation and silences were very well understood and more conventional, the better. Sartre, Camus and Jiddu were liberally quoted and simple words like “love you” were said on face without flinching! Many a times, I saw the fire leaping into my friends eyes, the silent one, whose hands shook during day and steadied only after the first “old monk”! How lovely to see the leap of fire in my friends eyes. Many a times, I caught my wife’s swelling tears of joy as we sat around the fire and our Tau Ji. The tears welling up, for heart can only hold so much of joy. I reached for another sip of the copper coloured light. Pankaj served another round.

Year after year, we did the purification rites in the little cottage overlooking Garud valley, just where the shadows of Trishul and Nanda Devi play in daytime, just near the place where our Peter Camerzind looked down into the valley. Where I played the Bach Minuet on my recorder, as he stole those kisses!!

Tau ji was a self-proclaimed “progressive farmer” and took special pride in introducing strawberries and other high value cash crops in the area. His story shall be told someday, but you’d lend me your attention for a while, dear reader for matters of “death and happiness”, won’t you? A fire was lit some eight years ago, when we did a hundred mile journey from Haldwani, up through to Almora and reached our little cottage in the hills, some thirty miles further up. We saw the snow covered peaks sweeping the entire panorama, flooded in moonlight! We forgot our tiresome journey and the fire was lit...

Abheek quotes Li Po talking of Tau Ji, when I caught him other day with the pavlovian, “what are you doing for the New Year”:

“My friend lives high on East Mountain.
His nature is to love the hills and gorges.
In green spring he sleeps in empty woodland,
Still there when the noon sun brightens.
Pine-tree winds to dust his hair.
Rock-filled streams to cleanse his senses.
Free of all sound and stress,
Resting on a wedge of cloud and mist
”

Tau Ji died in my arms....as Abheek struggled with the oxygen cylinder...There were the the devout fire worshippers in attendance, no one cried. Tau Ji loved life and died struggling to live, to breathe, to hold on to us! He died alive, clutching to very last breathe.. Pankaj disappeared into the pine grove, Abheek dug a deep hole to bury Tauji’s dentures, specs and his collection of Playboy! Deepa and I organized the house for relatives... We sat quietly with his body towards the dusk and his best friend remarked: can we have a drink?

A baritone..”Bhai Lal Singh, bar kholne ka samay ho gaya hai” (May the drinks for the evening be served)..reverberated somewhere deep within me...as tears welled up...