London: Some reflections

The Sage of East London

Three small pools of water and an occasional foray to the edge of the canal are the places where you can pay obeisance to the sage of East London. There is much to be learnt by the ardent followers of this humble sage. But to partake in that ancient wisdom one must forgo the concept of time and embrace stillness. And then watch as the universe moves.

Or in the words of Kabir,
still the body
still the mind
still the voice inside

in silence
feel the stillness move

friends
this feeling
cannot be imagined

Art thou the bird?

Art thou the bird whom Man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin;
The bird that comes about our doors
When autumn winds are sobbing?
- Willaim Wordsworth
The Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly

Rattle and hum

Red

Why the candle flame gutters

History is full of people who out of fear or ignorance or the lust for power have destroyed treasures of immeasurable value which truly belong to all of us. We must not let it happen again.

Our loyalties are to the species and the planet, we speak for Earth.

Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

(Cosmos Episode 13: Who Speaks for Earth?)

Skepticism has become the only thought that seems to thrive in this millennium often at the peril of scientific growth and sometimes even reality. Yesterday would have been Carl Sagan’s 75^th birthday. It is only fitting to reach back to the advocate of skeptical inquiry and scientific method to look for why the world appears so unreasonable. Or shall we say scared?

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

(The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)

Why the demons stir and threaten to extinguish all reasonable thoughts and arguments is a result of the way science and technology as a subject are divorced from science and technology as a symbol of development, in our understanding.

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements- transportation, communication, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting- profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things, so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for awhile, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

(The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)

So, while the world around us may quite possibly blow up in our faces in the not so distant future, despite what we may or may not believe in, the fight to save it from an early end is far from over. As Carl Sagan said, “Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

(Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)

To read an excerpt from Broca's Brain: Can we know the Universe ? Click here.

A sparrow, a vulture and one evening in Delhi

It is Delhi. Probably end August, maybe September. They sit on a stone bench close to a Champa (Frangipani) tree. The tree still has a few post monsoon blooms. They watch the girls, go in and go out. It will soon be dusk. And the main gates will close bringing to end all interactions with the otherworld. The world inside however, will awaken in the glow of the yellow light bulbs surrounded by the buzz of countless insects.

To keep the interaction alive in the dying minutes, he asks, “Which is your favourite bird?” For they are of that age when favourites matter and likes and dislikes don’t simply point to inherent contradictions. Without hesitation, for she is only seventeen, she replies, “Sparrows.” He is a tad disappointed, even a bit uncertain that maybe his question wasn’t taken seriously. For it is important to get accurate, honest answers to such questions otherwise how will he comprehend her? He is only eighteen. He continues, “Ah! That’s not fair. Why sparrows? Why not eagles or bats? My favourite are the vultures.” She only reiterates that she indeed does like sparrows the best of all. Both discuss their choices a bit more in the hope that the other appreciates the preceding why. And maybe their minds can meet at some convenient point.

In the decades to follow they will realize that their choices weren’t as far apart as they think sitting on the stone bench close to the Champa tree. And that both sparrows and vultures, in the years to come, just like the spirit that raged inside their hearts, will be on the brink of extinction in India.

To Autumn

Even if something is left undone,
Everyone must take time to sit still,
and watch the leaves turn.
(Elizabeth Lawrence)


October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnut, Oak and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand.
Miss Weather lead the dancing.
And Professor Wind the band.
(George Cooper)


Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
but only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down today.
Nothing gold can stay.
(Robert Frost)


In memory yet green, in joy still felt,
The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
We triumph; life's disaster are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new.
(Issac Asimov)


We cling to our point of view,
as though everything depended on it.
Yet our opinions have no permanence;
like autumn and winter they gradually pass away.
(Chuang Tsu)

What do you abhor: new ideas or bad poetry

People as bad poets. Just as bad poets, in the second half of a line, look for a thought to fit their rhyme, so people in the second half of their lives, having become more anxious, look for actions, attitudes, relationships that suit those of their earlier life, so that everything will harmonize outwardly. But then they no longer have any powerful thought to rule their life and determine it anew; rather, in its stead, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Man Alone With Himself)

Misadventures in Social Work

We graduated with dreams and tools collected over seventeen years of learning and unlearning ready to plant new seeds, germinate fresh ideas. We took our shiny new tool box and ventured forth confidently to tackle the weeds choking our national landscape. We chose our area of work and were promptly termed “social workers”. We believed a few tugs here and a few pulls there and we’d have cleared some of the mess, at least a small part of it. For we didn’t have illusions of grandeur, we just wanted to do good work. But there were some hidden pests we hadn’t contended for.

First we encountered them in the city of tinsel dreams where an institute produces a fixed quota of social workers annually. But not before subjecting them to intense scrutiny, pre-judging them because of the “fancy colleges” they got their social science degree from and berating them for harboring dreams of working for the UN and other national policy institutes. To think we naively believed that was a noble aspiration. No, social work meant being selfless, working for no ulterior motive, more like becoming a nun or an ascetic. Here we thought it was a profession just like being a doctor or a teacher. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

Then we joined organizations called NGO’s where for no ulterior motive, for we weren’t even getting paid, we picked up our as yet unopened tool box and looked to do some work. But at every step we were rebuked, laughed at for our naivety, and scoffed at for attempting to change things. You think change can happen so fast. No, organizations don’t work that way. There’s a structure, a chain of command, and an authority. We should have known for we’d cleared a paper worth hundred marks on structure and function of ‘Organizations’. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

One day when we had typed a hundred letters and a million pamphlets on how to do this and how to do that, we met an old man, a member of that fast vanishing tribe called the ‘midnight’s children’. He looked at us with our plans and proposals and laughed. ‘This is not social work,’ he said wiping his tears. 'Social work was what we did digging the ‘so and so canal’ as fifteen year olds when Jawaharlal Nehru asked us to’. We quietly walked out of the room before he could quote the ‘ask not what your country’ thing for we were ashamed, so very ashamed.

With deflated spirits and getting heavier to lug around tool box we went for another meeting. The gentleman with graying hair sitting behind a cluttered desk on a swirling chair with a printed towel at the headrest smiled a beguiling smile. He looked at us and said, 'so how much money do you make or will you make or hope to make? For aren’t all NGO’s corrupt? Isn’t everyone in it to make money?' And other such clichés we’d heard many times about almost every profession including the very noble one that the gentleman himself belonged to. But we mumbled something about being a part of society and corruption being endemic to a people not to a particular profession but our voices petered off for we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

Penniless, devoid of ulterior motive even ambition itself, working for what, to achieve what, we didn’t know but we made one last try. In a premier institute named after the above-mentioned Prime Minister we organized debates and discussion with our fellow kind, on issues that we felt were thought provoking or at least irksome for the generation that would inherit the future. All in the hope that maybe there is hope. But for most part they listened with a barely perceptible semblance of patience. One could almost swear they gave us a fair hearing because of our gender but the cynical questions, the doubts and reservations expressed at the end pointed towards something else. In course of their education they had learned something that we had somehow missed probably because we had been blinded by our enthusiasm. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

We looked at our once shiny tools getting rusted and blunt. We shook our heads. The unfathomable shame, the insurmountable guilt, the sense of inadequacy made apparent by every single person we had met for the last five years made us despondent. Some of us shook it off like a bad dream and took that scholarship from that University in the US, others started making assessment reports for those very businesses that would destroy the very thing they had fought to conserve. While the more sensitive ones among us can be found typing pamphlets and letters while battling their sense of shame. All because we naively thought social work was simply a profession.

Life According to Birds

Chapter 63: Marching to your own beat by The Moorhen

Revisiting Wordsworth

Yes, there is holy pleasure in thine eye!
- The lovely cottage in the guardian nook
Hath stirred thee deeply; with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky!

But covet not the abode -O do not sigh
As many do, repining while they look;
Intruders who would tear from Nature's book
This precious leaf with harsh impiety:
(Admonition To A Traveller by William Wordsworth)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
(The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth)

Wordsworth viewed man as a part of nature and not in opposition to it. He reflected at length on how this relationship could be comprehended: Man appears insignificant in the presence of nature. The towering mountains, lakes and forests appear motionless but they are also alive and vivid, when the clouds move, the lake ripples, the branches sway but still nature is always aloof and incomprehensible. Or is it that it is man who through awe and wonder makes nature come alive?

Wordsworth opposed the construction of a trainline from Kendal to Grasmere (the train till today doesn't come to Grasmere). He wanted the Lake District to become some sort of a National Park, which it eventually did.

For as a man who wrote most of his poetry, in the time of the Industrial Revolution, walking along the lakes in the company of nature he very well understood how man's culture of "getting and spending" would disconnect him from nature, making him lose his sense of wonder and eventually lead to dire consequences. In that sense he was a visionary.

They are back in town

The air feels crisp as you lift the coat collars and tighten the knot on the scarf around your neck. The sunlight has a quality of gold reserved especially for an autumn day. Brilliant yellow, olive green, orange, rust, red and brown are the dominant shades the trees flamboyantly display.

And the sky is filled with black-headed gulls in their winter plumage overpowering the street sounds with their sharp kek, kek as they meet and greet their cousins who have recently moved south from Europe. The solitary gull that patrolled the canal in summer is now a part of a large pack that goes krreearr and dives at the sight of the smallest morsel tossed by a passer by. The gulls are back.

So, begins a new daily ritual. After clearing the breakfast table you stand with a handful of breadcrumbs and play ‘toss and catch’ with them. Till they hover just outside your balcony, squabbling and swooping even before the tiny piece leaves your fingers. Someday maybe they’ll care to come in and join you for a cuppa.

Blog Action Day: Choices

Whenever we are asked to question our habits we run and hide behind that enigmatic word ‘choices’. Choice is a decision to choose a course of action when presented with two or more options. And then our choices go on to produce consequences. That is in fact, one of the most quoted laws of physics.

So we can choose to make our choices, refuse to accept the responsibility of our actions and ignore everything that brings to notice the consequences of our actions. That is indeed one of the options available to a few of us. Not surprisingly, as a consequence they are largely concentrated in certain parts of the globe.

So while a billion of us are obese, a result of the "English malady" whereby they "have ransack'd all the parts of the Globe to bring together its whole Stock of Materials for Riot, Luxury, and to provoke Excess ... Is it any Wonder, then, that the Diseases which proceed from Idleness and Fulness of Bread, should increase in Proportion...?", a billion of us starve "even though food output per person is as high as it has ever been, which suggests that hunger isn't a problem of production so much as one of distribution."

Can one just dismiss it as a choice they make? They just chose the wrong option didn’t they?

And what about the Dongria Kondh? They choose not to let their way of life be destroyed by a mining company. However the real question is do they even have the right to make a choice? And who arbitrates that some choices are more important than the others?

On this blog action day as we debate and discuss climate change maybe we also need to look at the choices we make because for some people in the world the only choice that is left is one between life and death.

In broad daylight

The blue tits are busy at play. The goldfinches are scurrying in the hedgerows. A blue and yellow dash here and a red and yellow there. The robin sings its ‘wistful’ and ‘melodic’ song while marking territory. The spotted woodpecker has chosen to visit our balcony. The autumn sun filters through the trees catching now a yellow, now a red falling leaf. Anthony hasn’t come today to spend his afternoon following the birds and taking pictures. The feeders hanging in the park are unguarded and empty of all activity.

And then come the squirrels and what follows is the most daring daytime robbery. Ever. In a few minutes the feeders swing lightly emptied of all weight. And the cheeky robbers can be seen fleeing hither and thither while carrying away mouthfuls of bounty to some secret den.

Only a few pictures remain to tell the tale of their audacity.

Slowness

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared? Ah, where have they gone, the amblers of yesteryear? Where have they gone, those loafering heroes of folk song, those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another and bed down under the stars?”

What would the present generation, and I mean it in a broad sense, as the generation savouring the fruits of technical advancement, be defined as? As the slave of speed, worshiper of instant gratification or as 'a generation of ‘dancers’ that is people wanting to be seen, for whom life is a perpetual show emptied of every intimacy and every joy?'

We decry rampant consumerism, the destruction of our environment, the vulgar display of wealth that is becoming our national culture, books written by foreigners that present a perspective alien to ours and a comment made by a stranger that rankles us. We rant and rage about it all on our blogs, on FaceBook, on twitter; opening multiple tabs while cursing the slow broadband speed. And the rest of the time we are busy uploading photographs of the sushi we ate last night, the taxi we took to the airport, our cluttered office desk, the holiday we had in Greece, our baby who is a few hours old. In fact, our entire day is consumed by performing a series of quick dance steps flitting from one move to the other while watching our friends, fans and followers performing a similar dance of their own devoid of not just intimacy but also meaning.

Why are we consumed by this need to display every mundane incidence of our lives? And why this hurry, this rush to upload it, tweet it, blog about it? What will the world do once it has heard about every minor detail of our day? What will we do with the hours that we save? Hurry and rush through life some more? What is it that we are hurrying away from?

In his book Slowness, Kundera writes:

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.

Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time.

The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

Maybe it is time to usher in the cult of slowness. A deliberate, well-thought out act of slowness in this mad rush of show and tell that threatens to obliterate all thought and all memory and all intimacy and all joys.

There is a Czech proverb that describes this easy indolence by a metaphor: “They are gazing at God’s windows.” A person gazing at God’s window is not bored; he is happy. In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing: a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for the activity he lacks.

And in this time and age most likely to be surfing the internet in a futile search.

(All text in Italics from Slowness by Milan Kundera)

Passing by

It can happen at the oddest of places and time. You are crossing the Millennium Bridge contemplating Barceló’s art that you glimpsed at in a book at Tate Modern with your hands pulling up the coat collars in a vain attempt to battle the winds that rush across the Thames. Or you are in a Blue Line bus winding its way through Delhi’s summer traffic flipping the pages cyclostyled from a book on Weber’s essay “Politics as a vocation” contemplating the ‘iron cage’ of rational control with one eye looking out for the men and their usual antics in the buses of Delhi. Or with your chin resting in your cupped palms you stand at the balcony of the apartment in Vasant Kunj or Bandra or London on a wet and cloudy day. And then they pop in from nowhere.

Three girls walking briskly and speaking it seems all at once. Describing in less than the time it takes for them to overtake you the splendors that lie beyond the bridge across Thames. They move away even more rapidly than they speak. And you are left listening to their words. The child asks his mother a question. The din of Delhi’s traffic drowns half his words. Two of them “Dekho” and “Papa” stand out, and you look out of the window and see a man on his scooter with two kids, the boy standing in front and the girl sitting. And many years go by but still you wonder. The five of them rush across the street. One of the boys rides a bicycle that he has long since overgrown. Another, when he gets off his, has a slight limp in his right leg. Two of them seem destined to be friends for life. Or maybe in a few months they’ll all drift away. Or maybe you'll meet them again in pictures and articles while browsing the internet.

And so it happens. Frequently enough to not be merely dismissed as a coincidence. In fact, so often that you start to unconsciously look out for them even though you know the encounter will always be unexpected. And more rewarding and long lasting for precisely that reason.

Introducing the long-tailed tit

Ever since it sneaked into the tenth position on the RSPB’s garden bird watch we always wondered why we never got a visit from one. Some of the reasons were obvious like we don’t have a garden and also the fact that blue tits, robin, chaffinch, great tits and blackbirds have often visited our second floor balcony in itself is some kind of good fortune worth celebrating. So why overstretch your luck? But still we wondered and sometimes looked out to the wide world and, for no reason, sighed.

Then one day something felt a bit different. There was no special zing in the air or chime of distant bells but just an odd flurry outside the window. And lo and behold! Wishes do come true and all the sighs sent out into the wide open do find a benevolent ear. Yes, it was a long-tailed tit. Finally. It sat on the ledge and watched the birds on the peanut feeder. Flew across the balcony once or twice and then off it went. But that was time enough to take a few photographs as proof of the great event that had taken place.

After that first spotting we have spent countless evenings with countless long-tailed tits, cause they never travel alone but in flocks of 10, 20 or more and have found the neighbourhood park a good enough spot as any to spend their time in. And every time we see one, we always remember that thing about wishes and the benevolent ear.

On a winter morning, perhaps a traveler.

Goodbye, blue sky

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie-
True Poems flee -
(Emily Dickinson)

London Diary: Bleaker than the bleakest day

Oh damn! It looks bleak. Bleak enough to evoke a thousand curses on the way to work. So, bleak that it inspires many FaceBook statuses moaning the bleakness. Bleakness that is grey-black clouds and cold steely rain. Bleaker than the bleakest day remembered from the years long gone. But the world outside my window is green.

I watch the rain and wind command the trees through a cycle of impossible calisthenics. As the misty blanket engulfs and obscures the towering grey man-made giants. Till all that is visible is the trees and the lone grey heron waiting and watching, as is his destiny. No sign of humans; even the drone of traffic is subdued by the shrieking gusty wind.

Outside my door the geraniums and petunias revel in the rain. Birds flock to the lone feeder hanging on by a black shoelace. A blue tit impatiently awaits its chance to get a footing on the mildly swaying feeder. A blue and yellow speck dashing among the magenta fuchsia while the others nibble. Amidst the vague calls of tea-cher, tea-cher and other sihishishishi’s. Finally as the rain falls down by the fistfuls and the hordes fly away, the tenacious one grips tightly onto the perch and merrily pecks on.

Yes, the world outside my window is quite the opposite of bleak.

The Good Daughter

When people timidly proffered banal opinions about good and evil. Sometimes gathering enough courage to quote from Richard Bach or Reader's Digest. Expounding more clichés than one’s brain can consume in a lifetime. A cacophony of mindlessly droning human voices going on and on about nothing. In that summer before our last year in college you gifted me ‘Summer in Algiers’ by Albert Camus. You said I’d like it. I knew about Camus, had read about Camus but had never felt it essential to read a single word of what he wrote. But that is what after school education does to you in India. You know everything related to the subject except the subject itself.

And you were correct. I loved the essay. I loved the vivid description of the people and the place, almost real, mostly nostalgic like some faded Polaroid. For days I ruminated over, “…Algiers (together with certain other privileged places such as cities on the sea) opens to the sky like a mouth or a wound. In Algiers one loves the commonplace: the sea at the end of the street, a certain volume of sunlight, the beauty of the race. And, as always, in that unashamed offering there is a secret fragrance. In Paris it is possible to be homesick for space and a beating of wings. Here, at least, man is gratified in every wish and, sure of his desires, can at last measure his possessions.” And I ruminated over what it was like to know. To have knowledge that comes from direct experience, knowledge that is ‘sure of its desire’, and knowledge that is lucid - self-expressed.

Just like today I ruminate over you and the books and thoughts we shared. And wonder how you are. Hoping you have managed to come away unscathed with your intellect preserved. Though somewhere in my mind a tiny voice offers some nameless misgivings. And when I look back to that and other such terrible summers in Delhi I can’t help but wonder how did you manage it even then. You, who could quote from Plato and Nietzsche, stuck in a quagmire of familial ambitions squeezing every last bit of oxygen; making all the books and quotes fall lifeless. Become meaningless. Feel homesick for space and a beating of wings.

Could we have known it then? Do you know it now? You could have been an artist, an intellectual, anything you desired if only you had not chosen to be the good daughter.

Yellow

Life According to Birds

Chapter 83: Dance me to the end of love performed by The Woodpigeons

Kindness of strangers

All that remains is two glasses on a vacant table. One half full and the other empty. And the echo of parting words, “Enjoy the best years of your life.” They are gone. Poof. They almost vanish in thin air and you wonder did it really happen, where they even there. And then you see the two glasses on the vacant table. By and by the entire interaction, even the minutest gestures walk in to firmly establish their place among the memories of people you meet for a few minutes in some obscure corner of the world never to forget again.

They travel in the bus with you. Or occupy the seat next to yours in the airplane. And sometimes they are just people whose conversation you eavesdrop upon as the train whistles past vast blue skies filled with fat cotton ball like clouds while the hay bales roll by. They could be talking about the trenches of the first world war revisited and the horrors relived while the border collie travelling along struggles to get up onto the girl’s lap to press his nose against the window pane. Or they could be debating the finer points of theoretical physics in a village pub only to pause for the young waitress to serve them their pints. And sometimes you meet them as you struggle for breath at the end of a long trek to the top. With a smile, a laugh and a nod they admit you into the communal experience of shared emotions and exhilaration.

So you stare at the two glasses, one half full and the other empty and recollect a man amused by his struggles with his memory and a woman joking about warmer climes and appreciate a life fulfilled. The culmination of all tribulations and happiness. That elusive secret passed onto two complete strangers who wait for dinner to be served. Invoking a blessing. May they enjoy the best years of their life.

This random kindness of strangers and moments of bliss shared with people unknown. This sudden uplifting of spirits and the calm light that enters the eyes. Hope makes an elegant entrance and chooses to grace us with its presence, even if it is only for a while.

London Diary: Summer's last stand

It filters through the leaves


It colours the skies


You can see it reflect in the robin's eye


As the great tit contemplates the days gone by


The grass sings it isn't time, as yet, for goodbye


It is still summer: it's summers last stand with its head held high.

Life According to Birds

Chapter 76: How to make a perfect circle by the young Mallards

A pause to think

Student of clouds

(all photographs by Anvita Lakhera)

Student of Clouds
by Billy Collins

The emotion is to be found in clouds,
not in the green solids of the sloping hills
or even in the gray signatures of rivers,
according to Constable, who was a student of clouds
and filled shelves of notebooks with their motion,
their lofty gesturing and sudden implication of weather.

Outdoor, he must have looked up thousands of times,
his pencil trying to keep pace with their high voyaging
and the silent commotion of the eddying and flow.
Clouds would move beyond the outlines he would draw
as they moved within themselves, tumbling into their centers
and swirling off at the burning edges in vapors
to dissipate into the universal blue of the sky.

In photographs we can stop all this movement now
long enough to tag them with their Latin names.
Cirrus, nimbus, stratocumulus -
dizzying, romantic, authoritarian -
they bear their titles over the schoolhouses below
where their shapes and meanings are memorized.

High on the soft blue canvases of Constable
they are stuck in pigment but his clouds appear
to be moving still in the wind of his brush,
inching out of England and the nineteenth century
and sailing over these meadows where I am walking,
bareheaded beneath the cupola of motion,
my thoughts arranged like paint on a high blue ceiling.

(Constable's Oil Sketches and his study of clouds can be viewed here)

London Diary: A year in Music

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera)

It actually starts in Amsterdam with tickets to two shows: Mark Knopfler and Gogol Bordello. But the move to London coincides with both. A day after we fly out Mr. Knopfler performs at the Heineken Music Hall. Damn! But we manage to catch up with Gogol Bordello in Hammersmith. Good band. Bad venue.

How can you sit and listen to “Start Wearing Purple”? Clearly someone had not heard the music before selecting the venue. A more appropriate setting would have been Victoria Park. Radiohead plays at Victoria Park. It’s a stone’s throw away from home. Love the Park. Love Thom York’s commitment to the cause. Then there is the music…

But next came Leonard Cohen. A man after my heart. A concert that will be remembered for ages. Or at least for as long as all those who attended it walk this earth. The grace. The dignity. The voice. The words. And an atmosphere resonating with all that is good and hope inspiring about the human race.

Naturally when he came back we were there again. And sang along with an audience that broke all age barriers, “It’s time we began to laugh and cry and laugh about it all”.

Then came the big one. What would be considered the biggest event of a musical lifetime. Bob Dylan Live. But we had been amply forewarned. Big venue, moody singer-well prepare to be disappointed. And so we were. Disappointed.

That coupled with the fact that the big screens were covered and so most people didn’t even get a glimpse of the man…much like listening to Dylan at home but with people going out to get another beer every few minutes.

Then Pearl Jam. And what a contrast. What a concert. Everything that one expects from music and musicians. Great songs. Good, solid performance. Interaction with the audience. Love. Humility. Respect. Gratefulness on both sides. And a minor act of protest.

Plus the fact that Eddie Vedder is the coolest man. Ever. And you can't find a better man.

The fear of questions

As you put down Emily Gravett’s ‘Big Book of Fears’ and look at the white mouse peeping through the mouse-chewed hole in the cover I see the look of worry enter your eyes. I ask, putting on my most sickly sweet voice to keep the situation light, “So, what is your biggest fear?” You answer automatically in a tone devoid of all emotions, “The fear of questions.” And immediately add, “Especially those questions to which I have no answers.”

I try to imagine snarky classmates and sadistic teachers and cold steel striking boney knuckles. But am assaulted by the fear of the next question waiting in line to which I honestly have no answer, “What is the fear of questions called?” And a flush of embarrassment, the kind that momentarily and involuntarily comes over when one is confronted by the unknown, starts to colour my face.

Putting my hands on your shoulders I say, “Remember what the book says, ‘A Fear Faced Is A Fear Defeated.’ So, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. Maybe people will laugh at you. Maybe others will call you a fool. Or maybe there are other people asking the same question too. And maybe someone has the answer. But how would you know if you don’t ask?”

And I smile as we share our special look, “Do you know what the fear of questions is called? Well, neither do I. Come on let us look for the answer together.”

Another day that is not Sunday

The wind surges through the trees. The leaves gush and bubble. The dandelion seeds quiver clinging to tiny white parachutes ready for adventures unknown. A ladybird flies right into the center of the flower. A bold explorer. A deep red jewel enclosed in a lacy white box. The bee finds succor among the lavender. Gossamer like wings glinting in the sunlight. The heron silent for an eternity suddenly stretches his wings. First left, then right. While the mallard scratches and shakes and preens. Then starts all over again. And in the pond a lily cracks open its first petals. The air gets electrified by this magnificent debut.

Meanwhile you pass by thinking today is just another day that is not Sunday.












(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera)

Everywhere to fly to

I've got a strong urge to fly
And I've got everywhere to fly to









(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera)

1/2 kilo bhindi and everything else with it

“This place is crazy but I love it,” enthusiastically proclaims the impossibly tall guy in an olive green trench coat while his equally tall companion dreamily puffs on a cigarette. Your reverie on the usual 3 km walk back home in East London gets disrupted. You are standing at some weird point where Brick Lane meets Shoreditch High meets Hackney Road meets Commercial Street meets Bethnal Green Road while the two guys smoothly glide by. Suddenly you focus on your surroundings.

Your eyes fall on the two French girls carrying bulging garbage bags as they drag a large stroller and keep talking rapidly without breaking their stride. Someone is moving house you think and then think no more. Then the boys on their bicycles doing wheelies ambush you. School is out you think as your eyes spot a saree. The woman deftly crosses the street and you are still thinking about the blue and white thread pattern when a man coughs right in your face. For a moment your eyes flicker with irritation and your mind dwells on the horrors of viruses unknown.

The young man channeling Mark Ronson in a 60's button down suit, skinny tie and yes, even the hat for no reason smiles at you. And in reaction as you smile back something brushes past your legs. It is Bo or Dolly or whatever this particular mastiff is called you wonder as your eyes notice the face at the other end of the leash. You spend the next few seconds contemplating how owners start resembling their pets and come to a dead end. Few baby buggies, shopping trolleys, squealing girls and old people, in a move that is every choreographer’s dream, at the same moment come to a halt right in front of you. Weaving your way through this mini jam you mouth a few excuse mes and sorrys and rush to cross the road, as the light turns red.

You swiftly overtake the couple shuffling along carrying plastic bags filled with burger patties, white bread, toilet roll, sausages and onions. Then you spot her- the shoe shop girl. And you slow down. Of all the people you rush past she is the only one who commands attention. In her black trouser, white shirt, dirty blond hair tied in a ponytail there is nothing remarkable about her you think till you catch her eyes and her expressive face. And you are captivated. Something about her fortitude, her dignity, dare you say her life itself flashes through your mind. Though you can’t pin it down. She’s neither sad, nor happy or bitter. She just is. You imagine a vague Charles Dickens like story. And wonder should you go and talk to her. Though you immediately know that you never will. You are still thinking about her when your senses are assaulted by the smell of korma and you know you are nearly home. Quickening your steps you wonder whether the local grocer will have fresh bhindi today.

July

July passes away. Just like a candle snuffed July shines no more, it will trouble us no more. And we watch the wispy black smoke dissipate and sigh goodbye July and not a moment too soon. With this July neatly folded and stored in the recesses of our brain all that is left is nostalgia for other Julys that have long gone but not entirely forgotten.

That July of the return to college at the start of a new session. The lukewarm, watery tea and oily samosas like mana from heaven nourishing and enriching conversations and memories forever more. Almost painting a luminous halo all golden and shimmering around them. Or the wonderful July of power cuts and endless meaningless drives late at night in Delhi’s sweltering heat looking at the clouds that pass by promising no respite. Ah! The joy of those late night trysts with orange bars and empty roads. Could there be a July more beautiful! And then there is that enchanting July when bucket full of rain fell and the grass sang at its touch. But the doctor’s warning rang ominously, “Don’t let the child play in the rain. The scars will get infected.” Heedlessly the tiny feet kicked and splashed, the wounds got infected and the doctor livid. Nonetheless that was a July bar none. That brings us to that peerless July, too perfect to be true, among the mountains when we…

So all the Julys come tumbling through memory’s back lane. Each beyond compare. Flawless, with a hint of sparkle, those wonderful nostalgia tinted Julys. Forever nullifying the present and glorifying the past.

The Character of Rain

The Character of Rain by Amelie Nothomb

My first clearest childhood memory is from when I was three years old. Though I know most people remember stray instances from an age much earlier than that. In Japan it is believed that children until the age of three are gods, each one an okosama, or “Lord Child” and at the age of three they fall from grace and join the common humankind. If one is born in Japan one too would probably remember the first two years of childhood with such clarity as displayed by Amelie Nothomb’s prose.

Partly autobiographical and completely philosophical Metaphysique des tubes, the original French title is more suited than The Character of Rain, evokes the secret world of a toddler filled with wondrous moments. From the time of ‘cylindrical serenity – filtering everything in the universe, retaining nothing’ to the ‘leap of faith’ to bite into white chocolate and thus develop a conscience to the age of two and half years when, ‘choosing between my parents, who treated me like the others, and my nanny, who treated me like a god, was not a real choice. I would become Japanese’ the child narrates a tale about the beginning of a life that is both fantastical and sublime till the final fall from grace that is both tragic and inevitable.

Twice a year on the eighth and ninth day of Navaratri, the nine nights devoted to the worship of the supreme goddess Shakti/Devi, young girls in India, at least in North India, put on their festive finery adorned with gold embroidery and tiny mirrors and enter the realm of the divine. Nine young (and of course virgin) girls symbolizing the nine avatar of the goddess are worshiped in a ceremony called kanya puja that celebrates the purity and the power of creation that is vested in girls. The older women perform aarti, and offer special treats like halwa-puri-chana and present new clothes and press small coins in their tiny hands all in an effort to appease the goddess.

And then with the onset of puberty these girls suffer a fall from grace and are no longer invited. Girls much younger than them take their place on the pedestal. But their pain is as real as that felt by a child being bought up in Japan even though they were divine only twice each year.

This fall from grace marks every childhood. The transition from the time when the world revolves around your every whim and fancy to the moment when you become answerable for every ‘what are you doing’ and ‘where are you going’ is a common destiny shared by every child. But more tellingly this fall marks more than just the end of the state of infancy. As Amelie Nothomb puts it, “Turning three brought absolutely nothing good with it. The Japanese are right to see it as the end of the divine state. Something is lost, something more precious than anything and yet beyond recapture: belief in the goodness of the world.”

A day with Emily

Too happy Time dissolves itself
And leaves no remnant by –
“Tis Anguish not a Feather hath
Or too much weight to fly –


I stole them from a Bee -
Because – Thee –
Sweet plea –
He pardoned me!


To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or I,
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!

(All poems by Emily Dickinson. All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

A lazy summer evening

I took a walk in the park and this is what I did see.

A bee on a flower buzzing along the well-worn trajectory.


The heron framed by leafy finery, mimicking ancestry.


A bunch of daisies nodding to display inimitable harmony.


A blackbird among green leaves singing a sweet memory.


The grass and the trees exchanging mystical messages
with an invisible emissary.

Eternity summarized here and now just for me.
(All Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)

Unbounded Reality

Sweltering in the heat of Delhi you revisit your mountain idyllic. The house set among the mountains and meadows. The smell of burning wood. The old man with blazing eyes, his wife of many years and the friend. The potter’s wheel obeying the perfect synapse between your brain and fingers. The pears nodding shyly among the branches not yet ready to be picked. The fresh grass, the dog, the voice of Tom Lehrer; images flashing through your brain.

While in a flat in suburban Bombay the mouse gets ready to gnaw through the mattress, visible due to the hole he has chewed in the bed sheet, and curses his luck. Human folly and grave miscalculations on his part have distorted his idyllic vision. But now that he is here he will make the best of it.

Meanwhile I read about Jane Austen and the tiny table she sat at to write her masterpieces and marvel at ‘the modesty of genius’. As the blue tits on the balcony outside jostle for pecking space on the overcrowded feeder. The high-pitched notes: pee-pee-ti sihihihihihi, pee-pee-ti sihihihihihi fill the air with their silvery trill. While the bee rushes about from the fuchsia to the lavender before settling gentling on the verbena. Even as the wind begins to lead the trees in a dance of ecstasy under the brilliant blue summer sky. Only to be joined in by the shrill sirens of the passing police cars and ambulances. Just then the phone rings. It is my mother. And a moment passes away.

Reality once again refuses to get bound. Time, neither a moment nor eternity appear sufficient. Leaving us with at best a perception. Subjective and inadequate. Just a little short of untrue.

The perils of indignation.

You read a totally irrelevant comment on some link posted somewhere in the World Wide Web and feel a need to react. The fact that the author of the comment is a simple-minded moron so self-absorbed in his (yes, it had to be the male species) insignificant little existence that he rushes where angels fear to tread and ends up defending something that is not even being attacked. He may choose to worship false gods and chase hollow ideals but why does he feel the need to impose his stupidity on everyone? What makes him think that he is so smart that he can challenge well-established facts? And with every word typed one grows angrier and ones thoughts build up to add to the raging bonfire and everything is on the verge of burning to ashes.

But then just in the nick of time one recollects Virginia Woolf and is reminded of the perils of writing in indignation. As she notes when discussing the fate of women writers in general and Charlotte Bronte in particular, “She will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?” All characteristics exhibited in the opening paragraph.

So instead one does the sensible thing and picks up A Room of One’s Own and makes peace by accepting the fact that “Life for both sexes—and I look at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are, it calls for confidence in oneself.”

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

It is 17 August, 1988, a Hercules C130, the world’s sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan’s military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq, several Pakistani army generals, Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan crashes and all of them perish. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Isn’t the scenario perfect, just like a deliciously ripe Alphanso mango, for conspiracy theories?

So here comes a book that probably does what no other book from the subcontinent has done better, explore all the possibilities ranging from the usual mechanical failure to the CIA’s impatience to a blind woman’s curse carried by a crow (remember how people shoo away the crow that sits on the rooftop and caws) to well, a case of exploding mangoes to present an outrageously funny look at what has become one of the most persistent riddles of our lifetime. I mean Gen. Zia’s death and not why the world keeps referring to Pakistan as a ‘failed state’. Though if one reads between the lines hidden beneath the satire is the tale of why politics in Pakistan is such a risky business.

But what the book really excels in is bringing to life the man who ruled Pakistan with an iron fist from 1978 till his mysterious death in 1988. Readers are warned you’ll never look at General Zia ul Haq, “…a much photographed man. The middle parting in his hair glints under the sun, his unnaturally white teeth flash, his mustache does its customary little dance for the camera,” in the same way ever again. Especially, after his little escapade on the bicycle and when he encounters a certain verse in the holy Quran.

But much like the usual suspects in the subcontinent’s conspiracy theories other character too put in an appearance. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, the army generals, the Arab Sheikhs, the famous female foreign correspondent, the Secretary General of the All Pakistan Sweepers Union, the oft ignored First Lady of Pakistan, the gentlemen who work for the Pakistani intelligence and of course Ali Shigri, an Air Force cadet, commanding the Silent Drill Squad and narrating this extraordinary tale. They all come together to produce a dark and acerbic recreation of the events that lead to 17 August 1988. And also shed light on the factors at play even today in what will go on to become another episode in Pakistan’s tragic history.

Read the book if like any other person born in the subcontinent you too accept it as a given fact that behind every small political move there is a giant conspiracy. For though you can blame the people of the subcontinent for a lot of things, political naivety isn’t one of them.

(You can read Mohammed Hanif's article Ten Myths about Pakistan published in TOI here)

Birds being birds

"Is this what I think it is?" Chaffinch inspecting the seeds to
ensure they are organic sunflower seeds.


"If it's good to drink it's even better to dip your head in."
Blue tit at the bird bath.


"I am out of here." Mallard exhausted by the demands of her
growing brood (not in picture) decides to take a break.


"I told you to keep to your side." Coots politely settling their
territorial dispute.


"The view has to be seen to be believed." A juvenile Mallard
learning to do what a duck does best.


And this one is just for the sheer joy of watching birds
being birds.
(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

A Wimbledon Story

You say, “Why don’t you watch the Wimbledon? You should go and watch one match at least.” And I reply something about traveling and spending money on going to see places. But once I keep the phone down I think of her and I think of him and I think of them and Wimbledon. And naturally I smile.

It is 1992. Wimbledon quarterfinals. Andre Agassi is playing against Boris Becker. Though somehow my mind always recollects it as the final. Probably because that year Andre Agassi won the Championship. However I turn my thoughts back to them. He supports Becker and when inquired she replies Agassi. She watches the spark in his eyes dull a little on hearing these words. Becker wins the first set. Agassi the next two and then Becker the fourth set. With the final point earned Agassi wins the game, set, and match.

And he looks at her. For a moment. He who had been certain ever since the day they had met. She meets his gaze but she is the one who isn’t sure. And then Agassi wins the match. Did she feel it then? And even if she did, did she let herself believe that it was so?

Alas! We shall never know. For here the story ends. But I smile for I have faith in him. He who was sure all along. I am sure she’ll get there someday soon.

London: Some observations

Living in the City the first thing that comes to notice are bankers. Between five and six in the evening if one is anywhere near Bank chances are one will be surrounded by men and women attired in crisply tailored black. Quite appropriate for these times, considering the death of capitalism. Note to self not a good idea to wear a pink overcoat. But if one looks closely one will find that girl after girl in her black, whatever brand it is that posh people in London patronize (remember the pink overcoat), wearing running shoes under her formals. Probably to kick-start the economy though more likely for running down the escalator to catch the first train to escape this horrorscape filled with zombie institutions too big to fail devouring the life essence of this world. And by that I mean money.

Speaking of life essence brings to mind another hard to miss and probably more life essence enhancing aspect of London (i.e. if we follow Mr. Pico Iyer’s excellent treatise “The Joy of Less”), the parks of London. What are the chances that if one looks out of the window, if one is lucky to live opposite a London park, one will spot someone running or cycling down the towpath. I would say 100 percent. But the even more life essence affirming like thing is when these someone, for whom cycling is a means of transport for going from point A to point B and not just a hobby, dismount from their bicycles, pull out a bag from their backpack and start feeding breadcrumbs to the ducks. Or the two ‘rough-looking’ guys stop to sit on the railing at the edge of the pond, with the setting sun pouring through the gap between the buildings casting a golden glow on their backs, and watch the ducklings at play. The fact that they are feeding them potato chips is another matter. And at the moment we are focused on life essence so now’s not the time to bring up the effect of salt on a bird’s nervous system.

Parks naturally lead one to think of summer. And summer means girls in summer dresses trampling around in ‘chappals’. Suddenly everything is illuminated and one appreciates why Mike Jagger wanted to paint them black. At least then they wear running shoes. Seriously people in India you don’t realize the talent you possess to walk in a dignified or nonchalant manner (take your pick) when your toes are free to wriggle in the cool breeze. Thank your ma, your grandma and whomever else it was who shouted at you all those years ago to walk properly when wearing chappals.

But these same girls who can carry black formals with running shoes and not carry at all summer dresses with chappals have a talent that one could offer both eyes and both hands for. Often one find girls dressed as one has already mentioned a million times before walking down the street with their bags and dinners from Sainsbury’s in one hand and a thick book with the thumb holding open the page they are on in the other. They read a line, look up to see where they are going, read another line, and so on and so forth. Every action is so fine tuned and executed at such a fast pace that they appear to continuously keep reading while Saraswati in return for their exceptional devotion magically removes every obstacle from their path.

Then there are football fans who drink gallons of beer and eat fish and chips by the bucket full (I suppose) and sing or cry depending on the fortunes of their team and often have a golden Pomeranian named Rosie. When you meet them at the florists close to the corner pub they may even let you pet Rosie or say goodbye to her when its time for her to go home for dinner. However sometimes they may get arrested for fatally stabbing someone.

Wildflowers

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Life with birds

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)
The adventure continues here.

How to be a bad bird watcher

How to be a bad birdwatcher by Simon Barnes

Look out of the window.
See a bird.
Enjoy it.
Congratulations. You are a bad birdwatcher.

With these simple sentences Simon Barnes opens the doors to the most engaging and pleasurable of all human activities. Bird watching. Every human is a birdwatcher. Rather a bad birdwatcher. Ever since as a two year old you chased pigeons in the park you have unknowingly taken another step further down the trail of human fascination with birds as stamped upon this earth by your long-forgotten ancestors.

Why do we watch birds? Birds are colourful, they fly, they sing and they are about hope – that thing with feathers. How can any mere mortal be immune to such tantalizing charms? Which more than adequately explains Simon Barnes joy at spotting a “shikara - a jet-propelled Asian hawk - when covering a cricket match in Bangalore.” Everyone seems to have at least one happy memory that is indelibly linked with birds. Though it may not be their RSPB moment, as yet.

To appreciate why birds are the most studied and documented of all living creatures, why hanging out peanuts for blue tits is an act of revolution, how there is “something childlike about the best of bird watching”, how bird places aren’t important because bird watching is a nice hobby, how magpies are just being magpies and succeed very well at being that and how observing England footballers compares with watching birds you just need to walk through Simon Barnes authoritative tome on How to be a bad bird watcher.

And if along the way you begin to appreciate where humans stand in the wider living world and join Mr Barnes to sing a paean to the greater glory of life just think to yourself what a wonderful world it would be.

Forgetting to start again.

(All Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)
On an impulse we get off the bus at some village that we can’t even recollect the name of just because as the bus had twisted and turned its way up the mountains we had chanced upon that pond half obscured by trees with a duck house and the proud homeowner swimming blissfully close by. 20 Villa Duck 08 said the inscription below its roof. So naturally we stopped for a while and admired the housekeeping skills of the Mallard before continuing our hike back to Grindelwald.

Only to meet the Kleine Freuden Baume (Small Pleasure Trees) waving their multi-hued branches in the soft mountain breeze as the flutter of paper birds and gentle rattle of painted tin cans contemplated what a small pleasure really looks like. At least when seen from the eyes of young school children and aimlessly wandering travelers.

As life and light started to pack up for the day we sat at our hotel porch looking up to the overwhelming North face of the Eiger till it seemed to move inch by inch closer to us when our eyes caught the diminutive (in comparison) range at its right side, at least from where we looked. Quite appropriately countless seasons of snow and rain had carved into the thick, dark rock Winnie the Pooh with his nose tilted up seemingly mesmerized by the play of cloud and wind against the blue sky but more likely to be sniffing in search of honey. Watching him watch the sky we were almost certain at any moment he would ask, “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”

Around forty eight hours after spying Winnie the Pooh in the Swiss Alps we find ourselves in a Lebanese eatery in South Kensington surrounded by facile comments about the world economy, white wine and the Indian Navy budget while the lady who loves to dance blissfully but unsuccessfully matches the belly dancer step for step.

The distance between simplistic and simplicity is probably more daunting to ascend than soloing the Eiger North face in 2 hours, 47 minutes and 33 seconds.

We stop to think but prefer to forget to start again.

The Crack-Up

The Crack-Up with other Pieces and Stories
by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Of course all life is a process of breaking down…” thus begins The Crack-Up one of the most personal pieces ever written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Watching the world, as we know it collapse around us or rather irrevocably break down and searching for ways to paste together whatever is left of human civilization these words become even more poignant. For Fitzgerald, the voice and conscience of the Jazz Age, was chronicling a similar decline albeit of the 1930’s.

The pent up energy lying waste during the years of the First World War unleashed the ‘Roaring Twenties’ when the soaring American stock market obliterated everything that was perceived as traditional. It was an era dominated by Modernism, Art Deco and all sorts of new advancements like the automobile, air travel and the telephone, which eventually collapsed in a heap of insignificance with the coming of the Great Depression. Leading Fitzgerald to ponder over how and why he ended up “…mortgaging myself physically and spiritually to the hilt”. His scathing self-analysis leads him to a new dispensation however “…just as the laughing stoicism, which has helped the American Negro to endure the terrible conditions of his existence, has cost him his sense of the truth – so in my case there is a price to pay. I do not any longer like the postman…nor the cousin’s husband, and he in turn will come to dislike me, so that life will be never very pleasant again, and the sign Cave Canem is hung permanently above my door.”

Just like the The Crack-Up, the other pieces and stories in this collection deal with not just Fitzgerald’s personal experiences but with how an entire generation had to face up to challenges for which most were neither physically nor emotionally prepared. It wasn’t just a matter of adapting to a changing lifestyle but a far more serious issue of debating human values and what we would choose to paste together when everything around us gets broken down.

The parallels between the early years of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the Twenty First Century run so close together that beyond a point they seem to be mirror images of each other. And the development of human societies appears to be trapped in this endlessly ride over the waves of a boom followed by a bust. Whereby we end up with letting go of more than we collectively gain.

(Even Esquire, which first published The Crack Up in 1936, felt the time was opportune enough to republish it. However the fact that they linked Fitzgerald’s critical self-analysis with Britney Spear’s breakdown speaks volumes about the era we live in and what we’ll choose to preserve when it all comes down. You can read The Crack- Up here )

And I'm a Rose!

A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn -
A flask of Dew - A Bee or two -
A Breeze - a caper in the trees -
And I'm a Rose!

(Emily Dickinson)

The Triumphant.

“Who is your favourite Aunt?” A seemingly innocent question is posed but the air crackles with dramatic tension as these leaden words fall in place to complete the sentence. Even the voice initiating the probe is sweet, almost sickly sweet. The Aunts from among whom you have to crown a favourite are perched around you on a getting smaller by the second bed. Watching you keenly eagle eyed. They are smiling but you notice a glint behind the smile and can suddenly appreciate how the mouse feels just before it gets caught in the eagle’s talon.

You pause. Take a breath. Then another. But are mindful that too much time shouldn’t elapse or your answer would appear to be pre-prepared. To stall for time you’d like to ask for the question to be repeated but that would invite ridicule so you launch into your answer. One by one you name the Aunts in descending order according to their age and extol their virtue or rather what you think they admire the most about themselves. And so flatter their vanity. The eldest is a fabulous cook, the one younger to her has a fabulous brain, the one younger to her is a fabulous artist and the youngest Aunt is a fabulous storyteller. And they all are great fun to be with.

There your answer has now been recorded for posterity in the family history book. And judging from their gentle ribbing and laughter you are confident that you performed exceedingly well. Suddenly you appreciate how the mouse feels after he has made a daring escape just in the nick of time leaving nothing but a wisp of thin air within the eagle’s deadly talon. In this family drama quite appropriately after the culmination of unbearable dramatic tension now is the time for a light comedy interlude before the cast gets busy devouring the hapless mangoes cooling in a bucket of water.

However your triumph and elation are recorded only in your memory. For even you don’t fully appreciate the significance of this moment, just as yet. But little boy one day in the near future when people will pose questions only to hear what they already know, this memory will once again guide you to safety. For at the age of five and a half years you’ve learnt the skill to navigate the minefield where senseless questions are spread only for the purpose of flattering self-deluded egos. Where questions and answers are mind-numbingly endless echoes of nothingness. And therein lies your real triumph.

And so reason died.

And so reason died. Again it was the first to quit the scene. Mercifully this time there was just a gulp and a mental “um” before angelic wings carried it away to what one hoped was a safer and more welcoming place. Its spirits floated by right before one’s eyes leaving behind an inaudible sigh and a mild sense of relief, ‘At least it wasn’t tortured to death.’

Oh reason! Ye fool! Incorrigible optimist! Rising a million times like the phoenix only to meet the inevitable. You and your ‘rational’ always coming in the way of thought or rather lack of thought. Such a killjoy. Poking and peering and peeling through layers that encrust the mind. Those beautiful embellishments more precious than any crown jewels. Ah the reassuring embrace of ignorance!

Damn you reason. Damn your logic. Damn the entire gamut – judging, predicting, inferring, generalizing and comparing. Damn the mind that conjured the term. Damn the quest for knowledge and original thought. Damn enlightenment itself.

Friendship

…(T)his is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so that the person can contemplate his image from the past, which without the eternal blah-blah of memories between friends, would long ago have disappeared.
(Milan Kundera, Identity)

Reading Saki

The Collected Short Stories of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

Oh joy! Just the thought that you’ll get to curl up with your old tattered copy of The Collected Short Stories of Saki at the end of it all makes even the day especially created to torment and test your deepest emotions seem like a party. The hatred, for lack of a stronger word, you feel towards your fellow beings will receive just the right kind of comeuppance at the hands of Reginald and Clovis. Every hypocrisy and idiocracy will be laid bare and branded as such. Oh the tears of joy and laughter! And finally, you’ll bring another day to a close with that big smile on your face.

Ah! The sublime delights of reading Saki. You don’t remember when you first entered this wonderland for now it seems to have been always there; your hidden paradise. The much needed secret valley where you can escape from the trails and tribulations of interacting with human society. No wonder Christopher Morley in 1930 remarked, “There is no greater compliment to be paid to the right kind of friend than to hand him Saki without comment.” And rightly so. You can’t indiscriminately pass around the keys to the gates of paradise.

You may be living in a dump in some corner of this wide world. Your patience almost frayed beyond repair. You’ll have sipped tea in silence with many a people whom you are convinced “would be enormously improved by death”. Then Reginald on the Academy will say, “Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.” Or Clovis, The Match Maker, will coolly extrapolate, “All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's. A few gifted individuals manage to do both.” While Conradin will slowly chant, “Sredni Vashtar went forth, His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white, His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death. Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.” cajoling his wonderful god to do that one thing for him. Thus the gathering dark clouds of gloom and doom will lift and you’ll be safely home.

Sometimes a few words will be enough to redress the balance.
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart. (The Unbearable Bassington)
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a lot of explanations. (The Comments of Moung Ka)
I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. (Reginald on Worries)
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally. (The Jesting of Arlington Stringham)
Whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another; no one seems to think that there are people who might like to kill their neighbours now and then. (Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped)

And so, when a new day will dawn you’ll sit and endure the same old circumlocutions about everything and nothing albeit with a secret smile for you know soon Reginald will ask the gathering of incomparable twits, “What did the Caspian Sea?’ thus clearing your secret pathway to happiness.

Beauty

Beauty crowds me till I die
Beauty mercy have on me
But if I expire today
Let it be in sight of thee-

(Emily Dickinson)

The Madman

(Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen -the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives -I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

(How I became a Madman, from The Madman by Kahlil Gibran.)

Rashomon

Rashomon (1950) Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Then came Rashomon. And it was not a moment too soon. We were in our mid twenties crawling towards the thirties- the age of cynicism. We had crossed the moment when reality and truth are enthusiastically, even euphorically embraced. Right or as we were soon to discover what we perceived to be right and good were passionately defended. And life was simply a struggle between the good and the evil with naturally the good always emerging victorious. We were suspended in that nebulous region somewhere between passionate adherence to our sense of right and the soon to engulf us unfathomable skepticism.

At that moment Rashomon happened. The rain falls incessantly and the three men take refuge under a gate and soon the monk and the woodcutter are narrating to the commoner a most incredible tale. A woman is raped and subsequently her husband is murdered. At the enquiry the woman, the accused bandit, the ghost of the dead husband and the woodcutter who chances upon the lifeless body in the forest narrate four versions of the story. Each version totally different from the other and yet each describing the same truth while dragging us through a labyrinth of trees and human deception with the dappled light hiding much more than it reveals. The sun peers through the dense foliage, the leaves rustle, the shade flickers, the shadows stretch across the faces and the rain refuses to relent. Even the elements conspire to obscure that, which should be self-evident. The camera seems to run to capture the truth that shifts shapes with every passing moment to elude it.

So, a simple story gets transformed into a philosophical treatise on the relativism of truth and the subjectivity of our perceptions. It becomes a film about, as Kurosawa writes, “…such human beings–the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are…this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave...Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem.”

Rashomon showed us who ultimately wins when reality and the ego clash. Therein lies the truth. And we think we became better humans, if only in our perception, just by becoming aware of that.

Another thing, Rashomon went on to win the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival and the American Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Kurosawa writes, “ Japanese critics insisted that these two prizes were simply reflections of Westerners’ curiosity and taste for Oriental exoticism, which struck me then, and now, as terrible. Why is it that Japanese people have no confidence in the worth of Japan? Why do they elevate everything foreign and denigrate everything Japanese? Even the woodblock prints of Utamoro, Hokusai and Sharaku were not appreciated by Japanese until they were first discovered by the West. I don’t know how to explain this lack of discernment. I can only despair of the character of my own people.” (Something Like an Autobiography)

If we replace the word Japanese/Japan with Indian/India the above thought would still hold true.

The Enkindled Spring

Acrylic on cardboard

The Enkindled Spring
D.H. Lawrence (1916)

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

Reading Roald Dahl

You were just a four year old. Tiny, almost too small for your age. At night you slept dreaming of Hanuman and Durga. And Mahishasura. By day you killed Ravana and Raktabeeja with your pencil strokes, a million times. And in between you heard stories of Roald Dahl read by whoever gave into your relentless persuasion.

First there was Charlie and Mr. Willy Wonka and the amazing chocolate factory with the eccentric grandparents and the hapless parents accompanied by your enthusiastic approval of all that followed. Then came Matilda, the child prodigy with her exceptional reading skills, something you are in awe of even today after all these years. The horrid Miss Trunchbull and the voice that read her part still echoes in your mind when you hear her name, making your blood boil.

The Witches profoundly affected your life. You went searching for them armed with the telltale signs described by the grandmother. For you were heart broken at the end when the boy gets transformed into a mouse. In James and the Giant Peach you met your doppelganger albeit with horrible aunts. Yours were charming, loving and everything you wanted aunts to be like. But you wouldn’t have minded to swap places with James for a bit of a surreal adventure with insects. You could never brush off a spider ever again without thinking about it’s young ones.

Fantastic Mr. Fox you simply loved. If you hadn’t been living in Delhi’s concrete jungle you would have definitely laid out a feast for hungry foxes ever night. Instead you fed the stray dogs bread and rotis. But most of all like Sophie you needed to find The BFG. For being friends with a friendly giant would have made the long, dark nights so much more exciting.

One day inevitably you had heard all the stories ever written by Roald Dahl and you hadn’t even turned five yet. Ah the life long regrets it would give rise to.

Eight years later you bemoan the end of childhood wishing you had never grown up. Wondering if life would ever be so delightful. I laugh at your words, echoing the usual platitudes but lacking the courage to reveal the bittersweet truth.

Joan Eardley

(View some more of her work here)

If you want experience and understanding of beauty envy me now but if you want happiness then don’t envy me because these things don’t bring happiness - Joan Eardley (1921-1963)

Who was Joan Eardley? Even the introduction to the book accompanying the exhibition Joan Eardley held at the National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh, begins with these words. A woman, a painter born in England living in Scotland, a social realist, Scotland’s answer to the Cobra artists or Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Where does she stand? As part of the London Kitchen Sink School or as an exponent of pure abstraction. Ah well! Let others well versed in the nuances of painting pare though this bewildering heap of categorization. For us it’s just another Sunday afternoon at the Tate Modern Bookshop. So lets simply indulge in the pure joy of her art.

Lets start with the children. Immensely engaging portraits of children residing in the poorest tenements of post Second World War Glasgow. Like sublime photographs discovered among old family papers. Look at their eyes, their expressions, their fragile beauty as they lean against graffiti scrawled walls and windows of derelict apartments. Look these are two friends. Look at this one’s right arm around the other’s shoulder, look at the other one holding her fingers, look at their smiling eyes. Look here are three children leaning out of the window with the two little ones covering their mouth with their hands. Here are Pat and Anne Samson with astonishingly distinct personalities for one so young vividly portrayed with chalk on paper. This little girl with a squint sucking her fingers lost in deep thought. What is she thinking? These children at play in the back street and these standing in queue for the Saturday Matinee. And look here is Andrew reading a comic. How did his life turn out? With a few brush strokes the life and times of an entire generation gets captured and reproduced here in these 96 pages.

Of course there is more. The shores of Catterline with the raging waves and the sky barely hanging in and one can almost feel the wind sculpt and transform the entire scene. Fields with birds, fields with daisies, fields at harvest time and something almost always giving away the presence of the wind. And the Sleeping Nude, which “was subjected to ‘shock horror’ headlines in tabloid press. One newspaper published her address, whereupon various men turned up volunteering to pose for her. Eardley never again painted a male nude.” The city councilors too weren’t keen on her depiction of the tenements in a rapidly modernizing Glasgow. In the last year of her life Eardley began painting flower studies.

There are also photographs by Eardley and others documenting life in Glasgow. And of Eardley herself. As a young girl, with her sister and a piglet, in Italy, at Catterline, on her motor scooter, in her studio. Joan Eardley who died aged just forty-two with the contents of her house at Catterline valued “…just 25 pounds, the paintings in the studio were valued at 1000 pounds...total sum of her estate was 19,881 pounds.”

There is enough in these pages about how she lived, painted and died to answer the original question. But as you turn the last page you know her art is answer enough, but now other questions all starting with ‘why’ suddenly appear to be more pertinent.