Of good times: When an evening Went by silent and solitary When a song Played along soulful and yet sullen Like the melodies of The Flute Man Whose song Revolting and rehearsed His grief only cursed By strangers and men Who knew not Of his despair then His song yet grew Over the neighbourhood's Wretch and stench Filling voids Of other souls and time Cursed still Yet The Flute Man sang And sang Yet no one knew to the heart he sang.
Of the rains: A little later then Chased by evening lights and swift clouds The rains arrived The worry was if The Flute Man had survived Everyone looked, relieved Cursed still some men as His shanty delicate and damned Still stood, everyone confirmed For we all heard A song rising Crescendo disguising The Man's despair But Melody couldn't lie As the Man's Grief was lucid and asking for relief He sang along Even the monsoon's loudest attempts couldn't drown him, his song Which sang to the heart no one knew.
Note. It is inspired from Tagore's Flute Music. A favourite of mine.
I still remember you on that two wheeler . Our scooter was a beautiful green and I'd grin from the front for my mother to take a picture as if I was on trip to the space in a rocket. That vehicle holds a special place. For years, I was dropped to school in that vehicle and brought back the same way .
I've known many fathers, many many of them but none like you and this I say, without a bias. You've always been understanding, perfectly liberal and a support. I don't know of any other daughter who had a childhood like mine. I can never forget how you woke me each morning before school, picked me on your lap, placed me on that table by the basin and made me brush , then made me memorise table before exams while i did a little pee pee and else and then poured boiling water down my body and then made me wear my school uniform and ultimately pleated my hair ,while my mother fed me breakfast. And the three of us were so perfectly used to this routine and that if ever you travelled out of Nagaland, Ma would make me wear my right school shoe on my left and vice versa and I'd scream if she ever tried to run the comb through my superbly curly hair. No one could replace you when it came to getting me ready for school. You're a darling and I adore you.
And then came boarding school and I missed you much while I hopelessly tried to tie shoe laces each morning and make it to school in perfect time. There again, you were encouraging about everything and you supported me financially and otherwise through school conferences, exchanges and everything that made my school life so much brighter.
But you were never blatant,never obvious of your love. I suppose I take this quality from you, when it comes to expressing emotions for closed ones. Nonchalance would be the perfect word . There is this one incident which is still very lucid in my mind which I was greatly disheartened by at that time, of course now I only laugh at it. So a family friend who had built a new house and invited you over to go have a look and when you had a look at one of the rooms , you had said " I would love something like this for Shruti". I, of course later got the news from my friend who was shifting in and was she so thrilled by your statement that she was dying to tell me how loving my father is,poor girl was so touched if she only knew what you told me later. Much to my disappointment , when I confronted you about the same , you said to me in perfect nonchalance "I only said that because that room had so much sunlight coming in that I wont ever have to wake you up. You're getting heavy y'know". One can only fathom how disappointed I was when I heard that, but today, I cherish that and I only laugh at myself for being so naive .
Your sense of humour is invincible including your dialogue about getting a stamp when I wanted your consent on getting a tattoo. There are just a few things in life you've said no to, at least of those I've asked for , so if you've turned out the tattoo idea, I guess I just have to listen and give up on convincing because that's the wisest thing to do and the most respectable thing to do.
You were always in favour of my argument whenever I fought with Ma; at all times when Ma was away , you did your best at the kitchen and elsewhere. It's another thing that Ma and I have always admitted that you're a better cook than her. School finished and I landed in real world and I realised that I being your sole daughter was spoiled rotten by you, unconditionally loved by both you and ma and I realised how stupidly i would cry as a child thinking I'm adopted and therefore chided(this of course you might have not known). And how much you meant to me and I meant to you. For all the sacrifices you made including that mad day as a child when I made made you carry me through the hilly streets of Shillong although I was a walking -talking child then(not to mention disgustingly fat!) For being that bold man, who was proud to have a single daughter in a society which is male-child hungry society. For every little thing including that of believing in me always.You've dealt with every situation with perfect understanding ,a seasoned sensitivity and treated every mistake of mine with much reasoning and a thank you is what I owe you and most importantly, I respect you for being that father.
For everyday should be your day, I love you Baba.
P.S- I shall write a book one day as you've said that it's your ultimate wish in life.
I didn’t see her. She was hid, lost almost amidst an enormity of screaming voices, haste, disputes and just a splash of colour all over.
Her time had come. Just like others’, it was her big day, and the wedding was to be a big deal no matter what. Usually married off at the earliest age possible, eligible for a marital bond right after the attainment of puberty, this was a rare moment in the village which is at transition point as it approaches to be town-like. The bride was 30!
The rumours had begun quite some time ago that she’d die a spinster, there was not a single man who’d want her over a nymph; delicate and young but as fate would have it, and much to the delight of her family and embarrassment to those ‘talking’ women of the neighbourhood, her man was found. A village school master, simple and earning just enough to afford meals on the table.
There was excitement, an unbelievable sense of solidarity for this family not capable of pulling off a grand Indian wedding yet trying its best and a key role being played by the bride’s brother to gather finances. Thus the preparations began, materials brought in for her big day, and the jeweller given orders, gold being an important aspect of Indian weddings.
Nothing was to be left incomplete and I stood as a spectator, on the bride’s wedding day with a much discerning yet accepting eye and watched the women indulge in small talk to their best capability while I stared into nothingness and engaged in conversations with close and distant relatives trying to keep it as short as possible lest I shall make a blunder of not recalling names or miss silly details of kinship or simply commenting on things I find ‘ugly’ or appalling at the wedding.
Now by ‘ugly’, I’m not putting decorations and dressing into consideration but merely the absurdity of some of the traditions that we haven’t got rid of-one being the ritual of giving the bridegroom a bed, mattress, cupboard and a wardrobe and more or less everything needed to start a basic household. Now to me and anyone else, who should be considered a modern, rational, thinking man, will find it nothing but dowry veiled as something purposeful.
Leaving aside criticisms and perceptions and perhaps realizing that the greater bliss lies in celebrating the truth that I saw, I would like to revert back to the pristine tenet of the bride’s big day. It was a wedding indeed, an occasion of celebration, with loud shrills of ‘Sheila’ echoing and the spirit of the neighbourhood attaining a new high. Such calm on the bride’s brow was curiously beautiful and as the night grew highlighting the colourful bulbs with the garlands draped around walls much to the appeal of the village community gathered, I began to feel rather different. Perhaps a realization as to how much of a misfit I was, being clad in a simple, cotton salwar suit unknown to most people there while my father was busy engaging guests and others in ‘khati cillati’ conversations about disappearing sense of community living in the cities and how the wedding expenditure is not the true identity of a wedding pure and beautiful.
It was nice to watch the village folk chattering away to their heart’s content , little children finding themselves at quite a pedestal for everywhere they’d go and be introduced to family and friends. They would be given a minimum of two minutes of added attention and on a rare introduction, perhaps even a bar of chocolate. Of course, certain observations were unusual but funny such as those comments during dining that women made on the mutton curry or a sudden enlightened moment as one of them claimed to have noticed that in nearby, bigger towns, the buffet system was followed which she believed was more hazardous and she hated having to stand in a queue and preferred screaming out at the serving men at this wedding and most others, to fetch items she wanted at an immediate call. What irony! For I almost died of excess on my plate and couldn’t manage the dal, fish curry, ‘muri ghonto’ all being poured into my plate with or without my assent.
Ceremonies were completed rightfully according to the Hindu rites and rituals and I watched the bride shyly hold the bridegroom’s hand taking each circle around the holy fire in anticipation of a new life, perhaps a new being. Now of course, this particular wedding was not over that night, for, the following afternoon, what was left was ‘ bashi biya’ which translating into English would mean ‘stale wedding’. Hilarious though it may sound, it in my esteem in an absolute lengthy process and even more troublesome for the guests who can’t now wait to go home but instead are spectators to utter chaos, sluggish progress of work and a pound of make up taking up more than an hour to be done for both the bride and the ‘jamai’ (bridegroom) . The simple ceremony which was getting painful due to the scorching sun for everyone including the bride, who of course, was drenched with tears all over face and her makeup spreading made her a hideous proposition to look at.
And thus this not-so great, grand affair, after its tumultuous ending brought some relief over my brow although there were silent tears and unhappiness written on everyone else’s face as they saw another of ‘their girls’ find her path into establishing a new married life with a man little known if not a complete stranger. She must now fulfill personal, societal and all other needs that she is typically expected too. Her failure will bring shame to her home and the support of her new husband through encouragement of her efforts , will be a proud moment for me, for somehow that would not only mean an end to chauvinism but also , a transition from stern traditionalism to rationalism.
A month is of gone by, typically for many, however quite uniquely for me, here I recount moments usual and unusual.
Most interestingly I decided to get active after my first semester examinations in college and through a kind friend I found myself ingesting , transcribing and in the posh bungalows of every celebrity Rajdeep Sardesai needed on his prime time show. Thus was my month was spent (well or otherwise) at the CNN-IBN office at Lower Parel.
Now Lower Parel was quite a distance from Nerul and the daily local train rides stopped being thrilling after a while when I traversed in rush hours and found myself saved from stampede each time I reached the Kurla station. It’s a world of its own there in that city where millions seek, and others simply remain just to watch .
Train journeys it began with and it ended with that as well. The interim had so much in store; some wonderous and others dull, yet everything is worth a mention. The rush in Bombay train is hardly news to you (who has heard about it with this mention a billion times now) and me, who just faced the crazy, just almost maddening mass of just humans and more human beings. As if the fact that stench of pitched arm pits were not enough, the women who took devil’s form every morning with their ‘tokri’ of fresh, but supremely smelly fish got a clear passage everywhere they went. Although I hated them for wishing me good morning in the most horrid manner, I envied them for getting a clear passage wherever they went.
Thrown into this sea of people, characters some from Shakespearean tragedies while others from that of Shaw’s, I found myself meeting not people but characters or I should say a mirage of outlook in all. Now I shall brood over the work pressure on days and the total lack of it on others, the latter being domninating. Of course, Prithvi, my fellow intern and a friend now told me that it was important for me to come up with things to do. Which I did, in time, while others engaged in long hours of Farmville(not that I was not on Facebook for a minimum of an hour a day).
However, boredom and idleness did have its merits too. Apart from some serious Facebook-ing ,there were also conversations of a different variety each day. Sometimes about absolutely ridiculous books that Prithvi read on International Relations, or about Kartick’s niece Cia whose tales were absolutely amusing or simply about the free evening snack I had missed in the canteen. It was funny , really, sometimes entering the office and I could already see from one corner of my eye Nirmal faking up names of places during our most loved ‘Atlas’ game. Nirmal, a person truly one of the atypical kind would need a different story altogether but what I found unusual was the ambition, the drive or some irrational and cruel thirst for success some people of our gossip group had. It is something I had never seen before. Just morally wrong and a basic misunderstanding of what really ‘doing good’ stands for. But that taught me something, difference of opinion, one in which there is no argument. And one which in which I didn’t share an understanding as others might have.
That by itself as if was not revealing enough, I found myself encounter somewhat strange but even somehow hilarious incidents. One such was the couple I saw decently cuddling behind the bus stop but a scenery to the residents of all the low rise buildings which fell on the rear but quite unaware, I chuckled a bit for I saw the ‘action’ on the footpath but they obviously were oblivious.
The hardest part was to balance all of that with the usual Saturday night dinners or a tiny walk after dinner for ice-cream for which I dragged myself after having reached home at some odd hour when everyone else was already putting on their denim, and I rushing to shower and tales of my office miseries and those somewhat better were shared not over my hurried gulping of rice and dal but during my tired walk towards the ice-cream parlour.
Bombay, Bombay and Bombay.
Maximum city, Slumdog Millionaires and I still feel the need to share about it. It spirit is almost contagious and sometimes daunting when you feel like you are about to be the victim of a stampede situation or even worse, lose your identity in a sense.
Strange stories I had heard often before and now I was getting to know more, some more believable now as they came straight from the horse’s mouth and this one was the queerest and I find the absolute need to share it. Now one of the most revealing moments for me in Slumdog Millionaire was when the children were blinded to get a better bargain when they begged for alms. Now this story told to me was another revelation as I heard that while the government did provide them rehabilitation, they chose to give out those on rent and continue to live in these dilapidated houses because this way they made a better earning. This shocked me and put some very significant questions forward. Are people wrong when they criticise the government? Somewhere perhaps they have done their job? Or is it perhaps right for these slum dwellers only do this for a better income?
OR the simple explanations of all: I simply just woke to reality.
Survival of the fittest –Darwin’s eternally true and applicable true theory was simply functional through every single day of my life. It still is. But who really is the fittest? It is us, who has needs to have each individual definition of the meaning of fittest lest we lose our individuality in this terrible trial for survival.
Full of idiosyncrasies and my office work, most of which was a farce, I will admit it was thrilling, all of it.
Hail Bombay.
You give me spirit.And I might have just fallen in love with you.
So we danced. And the rain aided in lifting spirits and melancholy was not part of the plans.
I made an early exit in the morning leaving everyone to only wonder. A simple goodbye was desirable was not quite possible.
I will miss. I should miss.
I find it hard to shed tears and sometimes,misunderstood as heartless.Only if someone knew how terrible it is not being able to express the best and the worst of emotions.
