Sometimes I write, sometimes I am.

Look Up!

2012-01-31T12:45:00.000-08:00

Look up at the birds

they're making me laugh

making me cry some.

Look up*

The world of coincidences works inmysterious ways. At some point in my life I used to consider coincidences assubliminal messages, an attempt to jolt us into whatever it isthe conscience wanted/wants to jolt us into.

Some days back by some (subliminal?) quirkof fate I came upon a song. It was NPR’s Song of the Day, and the perfect gift.It has a beat as good as any to march forward on. It could be an anthem for thebeginning of a new year of new possibilities. It is called "Birds". So well, why not? New sun in my arms…

* Birds a song by Caithlin De Marrais. You can listen to it here.

The Bird, the Tree, the Monkey

2012-01-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

The story begins on a cold,pale winter morning somewhere in northern India. It starts as a simple tale andthen like all good stories grows up to become a fantastical allegory. Somethingyou heard on your grandmother’s lap or in my case something that my youngestniece told me one hot, intense summer afternoon when she was 4 years old. It isnot so much about where you heard the story but how and what about it youremember. And most importantly why it comes back from the unfathomable chambersof forgetfulness.

I see the reticent peacock,the benevolent fig tree and one defiant monkey and something like a storystirs in me. I say, but the story wasn’t about peacocks, or monkeys, or figtrees. And then the story in its entirety comes rushing back to me.

That is another magical thingabout stories.

Postscript: The peacock inthe first picture is a regular visitor to the rooftops where people leave itofferings of food grains. In part due to their religious beliefs and in partdue to the peacock's beauty. But the same people think nothing of dumping theirdaily garbage in the small wild patch that the peacock calls his home.

The tree in the secondpicture is the Ficus benghalensis or Indian Fig or banyan tree, known as bargad(in Hindi), our national tree, destined to be chopped down in the not sodistant future. For some human has claimed the spot where it grew for years asthe site for his house. Not a word is mentioned about the countless speciesthat will lose their home.

The monkey in the thirdpicture was a lone male, most likely shunned by the monkey troop, and indesperate search for food. It eyed the vegetable grocers cart with littlesuccess and settled for a meal of stolen roti and banyan leaves. The monkey too is revered in India but human's endless need for "space" is testing the limits of reverence.

This leads us to thereawakening of some other story, whether well-remembered or intentionallyforgotten.

The One That Got In

2011-12-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

(A short piece on Leftovers published under reader's submissions in The Rumpus, one of the top literary sites in the world.)

One would have had to lead as sheltered a childhood as Gautama Buddha to be oblivious to deprivation while growing up in India. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say leftovers aren’t a problem in my family. We finish what is on our plates and anything leftover is the next meal. But then we never start with more than we can consume. My mother, who never has to worry about leftovers, lives in a city that is thirteen hours “ahead” and a twenty-four-hour flight away from me. She, one could safely assume, has vastly different concerns. Grandchildren, weddings, rising prices, and the corporate-political nexus top the list. (Indians take pride in their general knowledge.) Maybe people and their concerns, despite geography and philosophy, aren’t so different after all.
Five years, four countries, three continents, and I am the one who has become most concerned with leftovers—the something that remains, that which is not used. What is left behind when we have established and dealt with how different we all are? What would Americans talk about if all pop cultural references were erased from their collective sub-conscience? Yes, imagine, not a word about or related to Star Wars. That has been my prime focus for the past year here. Depending on the company I am in, for example, at the local co-operative or among urban professionals, the answer ranges from very little to way too much.
My other preoccupation has been the things that are in surplus—things that are still left over when everyone has taken up their share or more. The one thing that seems to be inexhaustible, no matter how hard we try to expend (or ignore) it, is the kindness of strangers. Despite barriers of language and nationality it somehow keeps showing up. From the interiors of India to the shores of the Pacific Ocean there seems to be no getting over it.
That leaves us with the one other issue that dominated November but remains unresolved. How to cope with your family on Thanksgiving. On seeing all the articles one thought kept coming back: “If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.” Carl Sagan said that. At one point in time I used to think all Americans would be like him. All that is leftover from that time are some words.

Paris

2011-12-07T12:53:00.001-08:00

Everyone, it seems, haswritten or is writing about Paris. Yesterday, at the local bookstore, as I browsedthe travel section Paris it appeared was the place where most people wanted tobe. Will Self, in Psychogeography (the collection of hisPsychogeography columns from the Independent, illustrated by Ralph Steadman),writes, “Tourism is a search for a place that will embrace you”. Paris, Iconcluded, is the place most people want to be embraced by. Will Parisreciprocate the gesture? Well, that’s an entirely different matter.

Regardless of the embrace orlack of it, all the books on Paris were about the authors' ‘Paris story’ andeveryone had a story worth the telling. I, too have a Paris story. I think morethan a single story. The closest to my heart are the ones where I walk into Paris that is right out of a Mavis Gallant story. The stories of Mavis Gallant,in my opinion embrace Paris. You can interpret this statement howsoever youwant to.

As with every affair, boundby love or hate, it is the first memory that is indelible. That instance whenyou realize you have fallen in love, or in hate.

My first trip to Paris wasmarked by extremely propitious circumstances. A few days before the flight I gota call that informed me that the work I had been a part of had won a Gold Lionat Cannes. It was, but of course, exhilarating. But though I had been there towitness the work from its birth, to its growth and culmination. It wasn’t mybaby. My name appeared on the certificate just because I had been there. Thatis how it is with awards. I, myself, laid to claim to it. So, the exhilarationwas not for me but for the vindication of an undertaking that had been deemedimpossible. That is a story best told on some other forum.

It should come as no surprisethen if I say I too embraced Paris (and Paris returned the gesture) though itwas a circuitous embrace with detours to Amsterdam, Germany and Vienna. Allexcept the last not part of the initial travel plan. That is what ‘winning’entails. And that is why awards, especially in certain professions, are socoveted. That is till one wins an award. After the ‘winning’ is done one canassume nonchalance and indifference to all the shenanigans. But somewhere deep downwe are still a child dreaming of holding aloft a gleaming trophy, the proof ofour triumph. Does the trophy change anything? The answer is a complicated yesand no.

On the evening before theflight back home as I walked along the Seine after all the winning and detourshad been dealt with I knew life wouldn’t be the same the moment I would touchdown. In just under a month of wandering the street of Europe, life, as I hadknown it had ceased to exist. As I type these words the enormity of it all onceagain overwhelms. How little it takes to overturn the apple cart?

A few years have passed sincethen. And contrary to my concern (in the lines above) life never overwhelms.Sometimes the sun refuses to shines outside the window, sometimes it neverceases to give it a rest. In darkness, as in light, we manage just fine.

And Paris. Well, Paris toogoes on. People move in and out of its streets. Some devastated by itsindifference, others glad for its transient embrace. They too, irrespective oftheir experiences, get on. We all live to see what the next day brings. For,when it comes to life there is only one reassuring constant– it goes on.Unmindful of any particular triumph or loss.

Dawn Goes Down Today

2011-12-04T12:06:00.001-08:00

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leafs a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay a poemby Robert Frost.

It took Robert Frost justeight lines to give us, what Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, refers toas "a nugget of pure truth". Etched in our memory; we wrap our mindsaround these lines and it seems we can fill sheets upon sheets of paper tryingto fathom their depth. While Robert Frost needed only eight lines.

Like a piece of ice on a hotstove the poem must ride on its own melting...Read it a hundred times; it willforever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never loseits sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.*

Robert Frost referred topoetry as "a momentary stay against confusion"*. He elevated poetryto the level of science– as both deal in metaphors. Then went on to say,"all metaphors break down somewhere". His philosophy, where doubtfollows faith, and uncertainty follows certainty, is something thatpractitioners of Eastern philosophy, would totally "get" without theneed for sheets upon sheets of paper.

*Robert Frost, The Figure aPoem Makes

New Learnings: Round 2

2011-11-28T14:01:00.001-08:00

Some bits of advice picked up from here and there in the past year or so.

If you are serious aboutbeing a writer DON’T blog.*

Though this seems to goagainst the grain of what goes around as conventional wisdom these days– no truerwords have been spoken. Pause for a moment and consider how many writers(meaning people who write books– fiction and non-fiction) have a blog. And by blog I don’t mean a website thathas excerpts of their novels, links to their interviews or lists theirscheduled public appearances, where they may sometimes write a paragraph ormore on things of interest or some other mundane matters. But has anyone heardof a writer writing a blog to showcase, well, writing? Yes, writers do write for blogs of literary journals and magazines. But they are often published and well established writers, they get paid (that's why they do it to begin with) and not related to the issue under consideration here.

But one realizes the realwisdom behind these words when one considers what blogging does to writing. Bythat I mean the craft that goes into constructing a sentence.

As we are all strangers herewe can be honest and acknowledge the undeniable truth: Blogging makes one getinto the habit of, for want of better word, “lazy writing”. It makes writingseem way too easy because one is bolstered by the all too empowering beliefthat this is my blog and I canwrite whatever I want to, howsoever I want to. It is not hard to see what thisleads to. The subject is “me” and the audience (sorry to burst the bubble) isalso “me”. And the quality of the writing meh.

Then once the blog startsgenerating a certain number of hits one gets addicted, just like the seductionof “likes” on facebook statusupdates, the craving for hits leads to the inevitable– trying to replicate the success of the one post that became "popular'" or what is more fastidiously referred to as playing tothe galleries. And we all know how that story ends.

Yes, there are blogs thathave transitioned into books, mostly because they had ‘x’ number of hits perday. A majority of the resulting books are found in the bargain section (theone that is way back in some dark corner) at the local bookstore just monthsafter their release. However, there are exceptions to every rule, but in thiscase very few and very hard to find.

* A distillation of all that I have read in the past year or so. Online and in books.

Take care of your littlenotebook.*

Because your daughter maygrow up to become Diane Keaton, who on reading the 85 journals mom wrote willwrite a heart-felt and moving memoir.

That isn't reason enough?

Then I present *Charles Simic's essay in NY review of books: “If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsomenotebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil aremore preferable for philosophizing…”

I only refer to what thereviews says of Diane Keaton’s memoir ‘Then Again’. I have only read a few pageswhile browsing away the afternoon at the neighbourhood bookstore, as thebuilding was conducting its annual fire-safety drill. It fell into my hands becauseafter 3 hours of picking up a book at random and reading a random page I wasnot focusing; I didn’t even know where I was, let alone what I was doing.

Not focusing can free theimagination.

But To Do lists, especiallyif they belong to Leonardo da Vinci, are worth more than their weight in gold.

It is useful,"Leonardo wrote, to "constantly observe, note, and consider."*

He filled over 13,000 pageswith his observations and drawings that range from grocery lists and householdexpenses to compositions of paintings to detailed anatomical drawing andengineering inventions. He seamlessly glided from one topic to another oftenwithin a single page

It seems he could not focus on a single thread of thought. By not giving his complete undivided attentionto one thing he was able to pursue everything, so to speak. Or conversely, he could focus on one thing so completely and so exclusively to all the rest that he could carry more than one thought in his head. His knowledge wasnot limited by fields or boundaries. That made him a genius.

*Robert Krulwich, in this piece, asks us to join him in slipping into Leonardo’s mind for a moment. Howwill we do that? All credit to learning number 2: Leonardo’s well taken care ofnotebooks.

Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce,Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barthes.*

Curiosity. Acrossdisciplines. About many things. About any and everything. That my friends, isnot just the code that opens the gates to the world inhabited by Leonardo da Vinci, or the world ofcreativity in general but also the code that opens the secret pathway to a life welllived.

* Charles H. Traub, TheEducation of a Photographer

The future is not uniformlydistributed.*

Thanksgiving weekend broughtup a host of images of deprivation from around the world with the tagline, “Consider how blessed you are. Be grateful. Walk a mile in their shoes” orsomething to the effect. My first thought: People who can barely walk tall in their own shoesshould not even consider trying to walk in other people's shoes. Especially, ifthey have no idea to whom the shoes in the photograph belong.

It also reminded me of Good WillHunting (again). The scene in which Sean MacGuire (Robin Williams) says to Will(Matt Damon),

You're an orphan, right?Do you think I'd know the first thing about how hard your life has been, howyou feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you?

Books too aren’t of much helpbeyond a point. No, you can’t understand anyone unless you begin with trying tomake sense of yourself.

In any case, you can spend anentire life without having a clue about yourself or the world in general. It isnot just plausible, but possible. And as far as I can tell what many believe the short cut to alife well lived.

But there are always thosewho want to know.

Kurt Vonnegut said: Becareful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. So that gives us someplace to begin this journey oftrying to discover ourselves.

But if you are able to makesense of what you are and who you want to be and you realize that it issomething that no one else ever was or wants to be. Take heart. For the future is not uniformlydistributed. There is space for multiple stories, each with their own specificplot lines and unique endings.

What an uplifting andliberating thought! The future is not uniformly distributed. Everything is possible.All at the same time.

* From an interview with TomWaits in The Guardian. Oh! Yes, I do consider him a sort of modern day prophet.

New Learnings round one can be found here.

Faith versus Rock

2011-11-22T13:17:00.001-08:00

Faith

Some days back I wrote a poston my experiences with blogging, especially the one outcome that I was alwayscertain was inevitable. Any human with half a brain knows that when people haveaccess to stuff, which is offered for free, they resort to what we shalleuphemistically refer to as ‘lifting’. As in lifting stuff and taking it fortheir own. As they cram their pockets with free stuff, a corner of their eye ison the look out to ensure nobody catches them while they are at it. That isbecause deep down in their heart they know that what they are doing is not“right”. Some unnamed and hard to pin down fear nags their conscience butsomething much more audacious holds that fear by its neck and twists it till itsubmits. Or dies.

However, I neither care forthe fear nor the audacity. For a human being, even though we like to believe itis so, is not perfect– nor the pinnacle of evolution but just another organismthat has to constantly evolve and improve itself in order to survive anotherday. In fact, the one thing I do care for is that millions of years from nowwhen the sun will be a dying star, humans, as we exist today with all ourillusions of grandeur and superiority, will not be the most "advanced" form oflife on earth. And if some way into those million years even if the entirehuman species dies out, something not too hard to imagine given the way we areheaded– each and every one of us as dead as the dinosaur, the universe will beindifferent.

So, how does it matter ifyou– yes, I am addressing you– pick up "free stuff" from my blog, embellish ita bit, add your name at the top and even get published in a national weekly. Itmay make you feel good about yourself– your friends may call you "awesome"– butyou know what– it won’t make you immortal, no, it won’t even make you"world famous" in India. And frankly my dear let alone the universe,or the world in general, or the “world of art” that you desperately seek heck!even I don’t give a damn!

However, why is faith hangingin the middle of the first line? Yes, what about faith? If hope– in theperfectibility of humans, one of the reasons for the ‘why’ of art– is a thingwith feathers, then what is faith– it has a song– does it too have a wing– anda sting? I know Emily Dickinson said that about fame. So what do we have to sayfor faith?

If fear is the root of allevil in humans then shall we say faith will deliver us from evil. Amen.

Well, I won’t be foundlighting candles to celebrate the good I see in my fellow beings anytime soon.But I am certain I have enough faith in myself to fly off and away even if itis only to alight on the nearest shrub. However, do I too have a sting?

Rock

There’s much ado about therock. Hard, insurmountable, immovable, undefeatable– in short, it is impossibleto get around a rock. The rock lies in the middle of the path and all we can dois look at it in fear and awe. Helplessly. Does one go forward with faith orsubmit to the rock?

While we are stranded letsplay a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’. You laugh in astonishment. Rock, paper,scissors isn’t just a mindless game one plays to control a car full of niecesand nephews or to kill time in between gossip sessions in the hostel. Wikipediatells me that the game dates back to the Chinese Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE)and now is a part of programming competitions for algorithms. And if anyoneplays real time strategy games they know how important it is to have a modicumof skill in this seemingly simplistic game. For how does one choose if one hasto make a choice between two things that appear to be equally good?

If you have played this gameyou know the possible outcomes are:

Rock blunts or breaksscissors: that is, rock defeats scissors.

Scissors cut paper: scissorsdefeats paper.

Paper covers, sands orcaptures rock: paper defeats rock.

I always choose paper. For Iam willingly to risk getting cut but I shall always overcome the rock.

On Books

2011-11-17T14:58:00.001-08:00

This year there has been justone post on afterthoughts on books. It is not for the lack of reading. On thecontrary, this has been a very good year for books. But to have someafterthoughts one needs to wait for a sufficient amount of time and see if onehas any thoughts on the book. Sometimes it is difficult to even recollect theplot of the book. But with age this is becoming a rare occurrence. Lets justsay one has become more discerning in choosing what to read. There is nopressure to read something just because the entire world and their aunt isreading it. In fact, that is often a good reason to give the book a miss.

Then there are those booksthat are never far, within reach by the bedside, and alive in the mind. Acursory but perceptive glance at the blog will yield the favored authors, ifnot the names of some of the books themselves. There have been times when onehas found it easier to give up on a friendship than give up on any of thesebooks. In any case, if a person does not appreciate ‘To the Lighthouse’ at ayoung age then it holds very little hope for any kind of meaningfulrelationship in the any kind of future.

Had there been an axe handy,a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast andkilled him, there and then, James would have seized it.

One vividly recollects thatstrange emotion that gripped the heart when one came upon this sentence on thefirst page of the book itself. An emotion so rare that one can still find nowords to express it. It was akin to something felt a few years ago on readingthe first lines of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’,

Many years later, as he facedthe firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distantafternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

And it takes one all the wayback to the first day of summer vacations when, as a young girl, one read thewords, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.*” The same indescribableemotion gripped the heart and one had to, but naturally, stay up all night tofind out more about Manderley and the dream. That too was a good year forbooks.

Then there are those otherbooks that may never get mentioned on the blog but hold a similar grip on theheart.

The much battered but evenmuch better loved ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’ would feature close to the topof the list of books you wish you had if you were shipwrecked on a desertedisland. The book is a peek into the inner workings of a super creative mind. Itdemonstrates the basic truth about creativity– it is a way of life. And yes, itsubsumes everything; the eyes, the ears, the hands and the imagination allalign in the pursuit of creative excellence. The mouth too has a role to play.It keeps silent for if one is creatively inclined there is no need at all toshout so from the rooftops.

‘The Art of Looking Sideways’was one’s first and most formative education in visual intelligence. Some yearslater when well past midnight one sent Darth Vader shopping for books, thedepth and impact of that education was realized.

Another is ‘The Way We Live’,though it may not figure on the above mentioned list. For it is very heavy andif one is given such a huge weight allowance then one could carry a few morepaperbacks and feel that much less lonesome on the deserted island. But eversince it has been a part of the family 'The Way We Live' has taken the place ofwhat people refer to as ‘comfort food’. Especially on days when one is inclinedto say to the world at large,

Society, you're a crazybreed.

I hope you're not lonely,without me.**

Ironic as it may seem butlooking at pictures of the way we live actually makes one empathize with one’sfellow beings. Every image in the book breathes. Every object in every room– itscolour, shape, place, and use– holds up a mirror to people’s most intrinsicideas, beliefs and hopes. Every year, as one gains newer perspectives intolife, the stories behind the images too evolve, and one begins to see a bitdifferently. Perhaps even a bit better. Therein lies the comfort.

And then sometimes whensociety is being way too crazy one simply reaches out to Saki. And that’s howthe light gets in.

*From Rebecca a novel byDaphne du Maurier

**Society a song by EddieVedder (Into the Wild)

To the Lighthouse a novel byVirginia Woolf

One Hundred Years of Solitudea novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Art of Looking Sidewaysby Alan Fletcher

The Way We Live by StandfordCliff, Photographs by Gilles De Chabaneix

Afterthoughts on Books: part16

The Human Seasons

2011-11-10T12:53:00.001-08:00

Spring 2011

Autumn 2011

Four Seasons fill the measureof the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, whenfancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, whenluxuriously

Spring's honied cud of youthful thought heloves

To ruminate, and by suchdreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn,when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness—to letfair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of palemisfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

The Human Seasons a poem byJohn Keats.

The Bird Hours

2011-11-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More birds

These are a few minutes of the many, many hours I spent watching birds over the last few years. Just outside the window or out and about the trees near wherever I lived.

Click on the image to expand and read this e-book.

Fall, leaves, fall

2011-11-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

Fall, leaves, fall a poem by Emily Jane Brontë.

The squirrel friend of mine

2011-10-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

There is always a squirrel ona tree. In our move from house to house, from one far off town to another,after all the boxes had been unloaded, after all the rooms had been explored,one would go out into the ‘lawn’, which was often a rag-tag mix of some oldtrees, a patch of grass, some ‘borders’– everything generally unkempt and in amess that in a mater of weeks mother would turn into a garden of many delights.And from somewhere within that ragged patch a sharp greeting would sound,“chip, chip, chip” with the “p” often sounding like “ch”. It was the squirrelon the tree.

Calling out, perhaps, to me.Though anyone who has lived through summer in India knows the call is far froma greeting and more of an alarm.

In probably 6th standard, allthose who have Hindi as a subject, read a story called Gillu Gilhari (gilharibeing the Hindi word for squirrel) by a famous Indian poet Mahadevi Verma. Thestory is wondrous and even though one doesn’t remember anything about it,except for the fact that it is about a squirrel named Gillu, one is sure itmust have been magical to have left such a deep impact that till today everytime one sees a squirrel one’s mind automatically calls out, “Gillu gilhari”.

Which is often followed byMrs. Lahri calling out, “A–, prastut panktiyon ka bhavarth batao (explain themeaning of the following lines).” But that is the subject for another post.

Coming back to the squirrel.Years later, even now when all our boxes have been unloaded and one surveys theview from the large double glazed windows, for where is the luxury or time forgardens, especially when one is, every few years, packing and unpacking boxesthat slowly decrease in numbers*. And sure enough in the tree outside there isa squirrel. Often not as chirpy as the childhood one but more than matching in daring what it lacks in the sound department.

One is astonished to realize:How little it takes to experience the joy of being at home.

*it's the result of learning,accumulated over the years, to carry along only that which one needs the most.Also in part a result of learning to appreciate, what Pico Iyer discussed in,The Joy of Less.

The squirrel in thephotographs who consented gladly, or at least stayed still long enough, for itsportrait to be taken is a resident of my mother's garden.

This post is the result of acomment on the blog from another fellow friend of the squirrel. You can visither blog of many delights here.

Who can live like the flowers

2011-10-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

It was wrong to do this," said the angel.
"You should live like a flower,
Holding malice like a puppy,
Waging war like a lambkin."

"Not so," quoth the man
Who had no fear of spirits;
"It is only wrong for angels
Who can live like the flowers,
Holding malice like the puppies,
Waging war like the lambkins."

"It was wrong to do this," said the angel a poem by Stephen Crane

While you were stealing

2011-10-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter. - Confucius

The Ugly

It starts innocuously. They casually take the links and repost them, without acknowledging let alone thanking you. Then they innocently re-tweet your words without mentioning it. Then they inoffensively post links of your blog to facebook without informing you. Then they blandly start writing posts that are suspiciously similar to something you had posted earlier. But that’s ok. It’s a fluke, you say. It’s even possible that the 100 monkey syndrome is an undeniable reality. What one monkey sees a 100 times, monkey inevitably imitates.

Then they start taking photographs that would be failed photocopies, if only they had not been so busy unsuccessfully trying to replicate the subject, the frame, the composition, the colours: that reflection, those trees, an entire facebook album on autumn. A photo here and an image there would be coincident, maybe even inspired, more likely derivative but entire albums; that’s taking inspiration a little too far, no?

But that’s the ugly side of life, not just the internet. We constantly experience it in some form or the other. We all are also to a large extent defenseless against it. And as with everything else in life, in this too it is the motivation and the intent that is paramount.

So, what motivates people to copy? With links, it’s often simply to be able to say they saw it ‘first’ and pretend that they still are ‘cool’ and ‘in’: in short the same petty emotions that motivates high school kids. That’s especially true for posts on facebook. But in some cases it is something slightly more pathetic. It’s the vampire syndrome: feeding on someone else’s lifeblood so that they may live to see another day.

But one can take heart from the fact that they must not be getting much sleep at night.

The Bad

Some students in New York took excerpts from my rant on an article on Hindi movies in the Guardian and used it as an ‘Indian’ point of view while discussing the overdose of ‘unreality’ that is Indian (Hindi) cinema. They somehow failed to note down my name and referred to me simply as “He”. Even after it was pointed out that they had made an erroneous assumption regarding my gender they failed to make amends. In their defense, it was most likely an inability to ‘see’ and read. While they were overdosing on cinema and Bollywood dreams, I had unfortunately pointed out something quite mundane.

Then there are those who use IP blocking services to troll the blog going back and forth through the posts. Who are they? Well, I’d just say:

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

Bob Dylan, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

The Good

In the early days I posted some sets of photographs on Flickr and a few days later got a mail. My Amsterdam and London photographs were to be a part of Schmap iphone travel guide. It signified all that is good about the social media.

Mr. Pritish Nandy on seeing my photographs for the first time via a tweet (he didn’t even know my name) said, “You are a very good photographer. Never doubt it.” It’s been some years since. It still feels good.

A blog post I wrote on protests among urban Indians, in particular ‘Meter Jam’, generated a lot of discussion online, another on walking in Delhi got posted in Down to Earth, a post on the dark side of ‘pub bharo’ and the pink chaddi campaign got published as a letter in Tehelka. The posts on books, poetry, movies, Joan Eardley, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins are helping some students with their term papers, I suppose from the views they generate: though I must add what Dr. Malvankar remarked in the first year of graduation itself, “She writes very well, but her answers will not get her many marks in the exams.”

Most importantly despite being separated by age, nationality, culture, time zones, I have met people who wept at the arboretum, felt akin to the winter bird and had empathy for the worried cows. They were almost like me! That has been not just the good but also the best part.

In The End

There’s a famous scene in Good Will Hunting where the grad student Clark, regurgitates text he has read in some book while trying to embarrass Chuckie, a construction worker, before some girls in a bar only to meet more than his match in Will, a college janitor and the main character in the film.

Will: See the sad thing about a guy like you, is in about 50 years you’re gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin’ education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.
Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree, and you'll be serving my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.
Will: [smiles] Yeah, maybe. But at least I won't be unoriginal.

That brings me to the final point. This blog isn’t about me, in as much as any novel isn’t about its writer or any photograph isn’t about the photographer. By that I mean the “I” in the blog posts often isn’t me. The “you” most definitely never is I. And the ‘they’ in this post are all people I know.

So, how does someone justify co-opting someone else’s unreality?

Just like people have different motivations for imitating others, other people have different motivations for not being like anyone else. Sometimes the motivations of the two sets of people overlap. Often they don’t. Somewhere overhead swings the sword of Damocles called mediocrity.

White

2011-10-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

Colours: part 4

Black bird

2011-10-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Jet-lagged, heavy head, I wake up and try to concentrate hard– where am I? The room seems unfamiliar. The sheets, the duvet, the curtains are all white. Then it comes to me. I am some hundred miles away from home. Home? Wherever that may be? Light filters through the curtain. Did I sleep right through the afternoon to the next morning? The clock by the bedside issues a little tick-tock. It is 9:00 PM!

A bird calls. It isn’t even 12 hours since I got off the plane. The bird appears to whistle a little tune. Here we are. And so it begins. The bird on the trees somewhere across from the patio sings a slow, melodic song.

I recollect the opening bars. The mind clears. A blackbird sings in the dead of the night. And for the next few years it will sing from the rooftops, hiding in the hedgerow, while looking for grub among the decaying leaves, from trees across the patio, in summer, in autumn, in spring. A blackbird will always sing.

The Playlist

2011-10-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

Come down now, they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now but we'll stay*

There is a playlist for riding the Amtrak past gigantic warehouses and grain silos, past the heap of crushed metal and glass– junked cars and computers, with barges going up and down the rivers, bridges with arches and bridges suspended by cables, the red and white oldsmobile waiting for the green light, the far away solitary house winking through the clouds, the cows out to pasture, the kayaks out in the lake, the cyclists scrambling up the hill, the horses running in the fields, the Canada geese grazing on the golf course, two pink plastic flamingos seeking company out in the yard, the man and boy walking to the quayside, the yarrow flowering by the rail side; yellow, white and pink, the grasses going to seed, the petunias, blue and white, tumbling down from baskets, hanging from lampposts, in one town and then the next and then the next and so on, the waves trying to outrun the train collapsing in exhaustion just short of the tracks, as another train rumbles by with carriages marked Vancouver and Santa Fe; the bald eagle completes a circle and starts to circle again. The sun goes down, the clock reads 8:30 PM and home is not yet within sight but not that far away. The songs have come to an end. And one presses replay.

Yes, there is a playlist made for every such train ride. Each song a perfect story to accompany the sights. Each playlist made to order for each and everyone. It makes one wonder, why don’t more people take the train in America?

Oh, what melody will lead my lover from his bed?
What melody will see him in my arms again?**

*From the song 'Such great heights', as sung by Iron and Wine.
**From the song 'Cliquot', by Beirut.

The coming storm

2011-09-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

In some subway

In some town off the road

In some autumn afternoon

The rain dribbles on

Wet coats, the sheep huddlecloser

Boats argue. Rising waves areimpenitent.

Wordsworth wanders: lonely. Acloud swarms with intent.

Walls begin to speak. The stormis imminent.

One life, three poems

2011-09-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

Edgar Allen Poe, "Alone", written when the poet was only 20 years old.

When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings

of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less

than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up

with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices

like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle

passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.

I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away

from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.

How I am, a poem by Jason Shinder.
Copyright© 2005 by Jason Shinder. First published in The American Poetry Review, November/December 2005.

An open door says, “Come in.”

A shut door says, “Who are you?”

Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.

If a door is shut and you want it shut,

why open it?

If a door is open and you want it open,

why shut it?

Doors forget but only doors know what it is

doors forget.

Doors a poem by Carl Sandburg, from The Sandburg Range.

Wren

2011-09-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

The song outside the window is familiar. There is only one tiny bird that can sustain such a long and complex song– after all it is the most complicated song performed by any bird. The females of the species must be complimented on their exceptionally high musical standard and the near impossibly perfect singing ability they seek for in their future mates.
The song of the winter wren brings back memories of another wren and a poet who once wondered, "is my... verse alive." Her poems not only breathe but are daring, original and melodic just like the song of the wren.

We have had a new visitor to our garden; the few pots on our second floor apartment for us are our ‘for the time being’ garden. Blue tits and great tits visit our bird feeder daily. And the chaffinches too come by to meditate upon life, universe and everything. While the blackbirds have occasionally felt compelled to put in a show. But this new visitor, diminutive with its tail cocked upwards, has recently started stopping by once every few days to skip up and down our Fuchsia ‘Mrs. Popple’. And without disturbing a twig leaves as it came - very quietly. For a bird that’s supposed to have an ‘astonishing loud song’ for its size this one for the time being seems, regretfully, to have nothing to sing about.

But I write about our honoured guest because it always symbolized for me someone who famously described herself as "I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves." Scholars have debated these few words ad nauseam. What did Emily mean by ‘like the wren’? Theories have filled many books lining the libraries of many colleges. Probably many scholarly careers have been celebrated and ruined just by ascribing some appropriate or erroneous characteristic to the bird of choice - the wren.

So, here I sit on an exceptionally cold December morning watching our little wren move from twig to twig and I too recall some more of Emily Dickinson’s words:
Shall I take thee, the Poet said
To the propounded word?
Be stationed with the Candidates
Till I have finer tried –

The Poet searched Philology
And then about to ring
For the suspended Candidate
There came unsummoned in –

That portion of the Vision
The Word applied to fill
Not unto nomination
The Cherubim reveal -

The Winter Wren's inimitable musical repertoire can be sampled here. It is magical!
First posted as The Wren, Mrs Popple and Emily Dickinson.

Thinking, Tangling Shadows

2011-09-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.
You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.
Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,
burying lamps.

Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!
Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,
taciturn miller,
night falls on you face downward, far from the city.

Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.
The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,
running free, mad, in the sea-spray.
The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.
Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.

You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane
of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now.
Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.
Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.

It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire.
And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.
Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?
Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.
Hour that is mine from among them all!
Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.
Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.

Shaking of all the roots,
attack of all the waves!
My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.

Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude.

Who are you, who are you?

XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows...) a poem by Pablo Neruda from: Twenty Love Poems And a Song of Despair, (1924).

there's a bluebird in my heart

2011-09-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.*

For most Indians the first bird that comes to mind when someone says bluebird is, but naturally, the peacock. For me, the bluest of blue Indian bird is the Indian Roller. Just a flash of its wings and even the dullest, most drab and monotonously brown landscape gets drenched in a shade that can't be called anything but brilliant blue. However, the blue bird in my heart is a much more diminutive one– but it can sing and it feeds hanging upside down. Who would be so hard-hearted to not allow such a little blue bird into one's heart? And then sometimes the bird in my heart isn't blue at all. It is red.
And here is *Charles Bukowski reading Bluebird– the poem that started all this rumination about birds in the heart. Blue and otherwise.

Perch

2011-09-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

The Amsterdam Scrapbook

2011-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

Tot morgen meneer

The eyes catch these words onyour wall and life becomes a paper boat floating down the canal. 80’s discomusic being optional. The mind asks, “Hoe gaat het met u?” as the boat glidesby Lauriergracht passing under the bridge with baskets of red geranium hangingon the rails. There will be snow. Then there will be school children walking inpairs. Then there will be families dining out; the tables with fine cutlery setoutside their houses on the curbside along the canals. All the time the cootswill be patrolling the canals. Everything will be gezellig.

De appeltaart

There’s you, there’s me,there’s F and there’s D and we are always looking for something. Or moreprecisely, many different thingsbut often they can all be summarized in one simple word– food. This Saturday wecome looking for de appeltaart (metslagroom). Yes, the one. We find it somewhere near Noorderkerk. And wefeel akin to the little golden haired boy on the back seat of a bicycle shakinghis head in the gentle breeze, and the sun gets in our eyes.

Not the last supper

There are twelve of ussitting down to dinner. And that’s where the similarities begin and end. Later,in the early hours of the morning, I write in my diary– no two people (besidesus) were of the same nationality. Isn’t that incredible! English is not thelanguage of the world. Though it is English that in a large part helps ourevening flow along.

M is flying back to Sao Paulothe next morning. N is going to ride his bicycle all the way to Barcelona. FromAmsterdam to Barcelona! Someone is handing G a Heineken coaster. She flips tothe plain side and in a few pen strokes sketches the gist of the night. Chickenand conversation. Food and friendship. Soon all the art people join in.

Some hours later whileclearing the table the waitress places the upturned coasters side by side. Theyform a square 4X4 grid. There’s a story in it somewhere. She stares at them fora few minutes. But the opening sentence, that all too crucial beginning, eludesher. She goes back to wiping the tables.

I look at my plate. Stilllife with crumbled feta and asparagus. J too is looking at my plate. In facthas looked at it more than once. Aren’t you going to eat that? His Swedish sideasks a question that is a precursor to another more pertinent one that hisArgentinean side is waiting to ask (or is it the other way round?). But itremains unsaid. Go ahead, I smile.

We will meet again a few dayslater when the city is painted orange. Compelled by who knows which side, he’lltry to push me into the Prinsengracht. But that’s a different story altogether.

The Bench

There is wine, there are twowine glasses, there is takeaway in paper bags, there are three swans glidingpast the houseboats, there is the canal burnished gold, there are the seagullsflying above the spires of the Westerkerk, there are boats and more boats,there is the sound of bicycles going down the cobbled street, there are girlsin heels on the bicycles, there is a young man whistling a song that one hasheard many times before, there is a glorious day coming to a close; it issummer in Jordaan and a hundred steps away from our front door a bench, thebest seat in town, waits.

The Moonlight

Tiny bulbs sparkle along thearches of the bridge. The water is pitch black. Tiny yellow drops of light dripsoftly and melt into the dark. The streets are full of people. The people, thestreets, the gingerbread houses all meld into black. Just to the left of theWesterkerk tower the moon hangs like a silver bowl. An enormous silver bowl.Unreal. This could be a dream. This is a dream. The bells of the church chimethe midnight hour.

End of Summer

2011-08-31T20:54:00.000-07:00

An agitation of the air,

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.

End of Summer a poem by Stanley Kunitz from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz.

Cyclamen

2011-08-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

What mortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy delicate symmetry?

Nothing

2011-08-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

He asked her, “Tell me what is your most priced possession?” He meant, of course, an object– a thing. Spring came by and went away. The blooms of summer are turning to dust. Autumn is primed for its grand entrance. Winter is starting to prepare its brooms of steel*. The earth shifts on its axis, as it has done time and again, and still her answer remains nothing.

She sends her quotes in the mail. “We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust”**. And she sends her poems.

The world is not Conclusion
A Species stands beyond-
Invisible, as Music–
But positive, as Sound–
It beckons, and it baffles–
Philosophy– don’t know–
And through a Riddle, at the last–
Sagacity, must go–***

She sends essays on Parmenides, Sartre’s être-en-soi (the brute existence of things) and être-pour-soi (consciousness), and Śūnyatā: Phenomena are śûnya or unreal because no phenomenon when taken by itself is thinkable: they are all interdependent and have no separate existence of their own****. She quotes conversations between Ananda and Buddha, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?" The Buddha replied, "Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.”

She sends her all this and more. In reply she gets nothing.

She runs her fingers through sheaves of paper, clicking back and forth through tabs, Google searching her name; there are figurines in gold and silver on the bookshelves. There are no diamonds in the mine. “What have I got to show for it all?” she slowly mouths the words. The reply is heavy in silence. It sounds like nothing.

My mother dislikes the dark, not because of the things she can’t see but because of the things she can. My mother likes to be left alone. She is happy when there is nothing.

He looks at himself in the mirror and tries to frame the question again. What do you want? What are you looking for? Every question begs something in reply. He looks in the mirror again. This time he imagines the vast blue sky. Someone far away seems to be saying, “Was there anything you wanted to ask?” He can come up with nothing.

*Like Brooms of Steel a poem by Emily Dickinson
Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street –
**Rumi
*** The World is not Conclusion a poem by Emily Dickinson.
The world is not Conclusion
A Species stands beyond-
Invisible, as Music–
But positive, as Sound–
It beckons, and it baffles–
Philosophy– don’t know–
And through a Riddle, at the last–
Sagacity, must go–
To guess it, puzzles scholars–
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And crucifixion, shown–
Faith slips– and laughs, and rallies–
Blushes, if any see–
Plucks at a twig of Evidence–
And asks a Vane, the way–
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit– Strong Hallelujahs, roll–
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul.
**** Eliot, Charles (1993; author); Sansom, G. B. (edited & completed). Japanese Buddhism.

Kerouac

2011-08-20T00:18:00.000-07:00

And I am an unhappy stranger
grooking in the streets of San Francisco–
My friends have died on me...

If I get drunk I get thirsty
–if I walk my foot breaks down
–if I smile my masks a farce
–if I cry I'm just a child
–if I remember I'm a liar
–if I write the writing's done
–if I die the dying's over–
–if I live the dying's just begun–
–if I wait the waiting's longer
–if I go the going's gone–
if I sleep the bliss is heavy–
the bliss is heavy on my lids–
–if I go to cheap movies
the bedbugs get me–
Expensive movies I cant afford
–if I do nothing
nothing does*

*From Mexican Loneliness a poem by Jack Kerouac. You can listen to Matt Dillon perform it here (It is one of the best poetry readings ever.) Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness is a must listen/buy for anyone whose mind has been "blown away" by Kerouac.
The first three photographs are of Jack Kerouac Lane in San Francisco.

Who art thou?

2011-08-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

Mystic shadow, bending near me,
Who art thou?
Whence come ye?
And – tell me – is it fair
Or is the truth bitter as eaten fire?

Tell me!
Fear not that I should quaver.
For I dare – I dare.
Then, tell me!

Mystic shadow, bending near me a poem by Stephen Crane.

Click

2011-08-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Or on seeing one too many cell phone photograph with burnt-out pixilated skies and yellowy clouds.

Or the camera may or may not be the issue, but your photography just sucks. Period.

Or "Don't do it. There are way too many photographers."*

I’ve heard there is a (not so) secret code

That Bresson, Capa, Adams put on record

But you don’t really care for photography, do you?

It goes like this

You gotto take your pick

40 fans on Facebook

Or 40 hours (or years) to get to that place, that light, that look–

There’s no other way, that’s how it’ll be for ya.

Baby, others have been here before

Felt the same way, gone through all this before.

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself,

not of proving or asserting one's own originality.**

It’s not that “awesome!” or that “like”

It’s not as if you’ll get any real insight.

True photographs can’t be explained or contained in words***

I just wanted to be the one to tell ya.

Maybe Photoshop is your saviour and God above.

But all I’ve learnt and seen in the real world,

If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough****

And no God can then ever hope to save yea.

You may post it on Facebook, or tweet it all night

200 comments on Flickr but you do know the next line:

It doesn’t mean a thing, if the photograph isn’t good.

That’s all there is to say to ya.

I tried my best to tell you what I know

Even though my words are always easy to ignore

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

And I know it will all go wrong

The seduction of the "likes" on your Wall

The ego lift, the inevitable (painful and lonely) fall.

You’ll stand alone before the mirror one day

And then whom will you look up to, to save ya.

After Hallelujah a song by Leonard Cohen with apologies.

*Nan Goldin in Guardian– Don't do it. There are way too many photographers. Try to draw or get politically involved in something that matters. And unless you need to make art to stay alive, you shouldn't be making art. Read the rest here.

**Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

***A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. – Ansel Adams

**** If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough. – Robert Capa

In Which Everything is Illuminated

2011-07-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

On looking through the camera I often recollect the moment when I really looked at Monet’s paintings for the first time.

If it must be told, it was a dinner, in some year when I was barely in my twenties. The main attractions of the evening were mutton and beer. Being vegetarian and a borderline teetotaler my mind gladly drifted to other things. As it is the mind needs very little provocation to do so. Framed on the wall next to the entrance to the kitchen was a photocopy of one of Monet's gardens. The painting shall remain unnamed to protect the identity of all those concerned. My eyes fell upon it. Thankfully I was not under the influence.

In that unforgettable instant I had an epiphany and everything was illuminated to me. Objects appear as they are because of how light falls on them. As the nature of light in Delhi, where everything seems to exist behind a thin layer of dust, is miles apart from that of light in the Pacific Northwest, where the clouds reflect as much as they absorb, this fact gets reinforced constantly. More so when taking photographs. So one starts to read light all over again. And, in my case, fall in love with a entirely different color palette.

However, just because something isn’t illuminated, it does not mean it is not there. As Goethe observed: Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. But more importantly if the eye does not want to see it, neither light nor glasses will help. * Thus light can take us only this far and no further.

*German proverb

The Hint of a Heron

2011-07-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Owl and the Pussycat

2011-07-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

Deep within the arboretum a napping owl is woken up by the crows. They circle the branch it sits upon cawing their disapproval. Without skipping a beat the owl looks up, looks down and looks around. Except for a couple of uncomfortable crows there is no one in sight. The wind gets entangled among the branches and whispers a garbled song about a boat and a ring. The leaves flutter sympathetically. The sun peeks from behind the clouds to offer a warm word but it melts away on the tall shoulders of the trees. And all are silence once again. The only sound that penetrates the silence is a distant, incessant buzz. Cars and more cars slicing through great lakes, chopping through the forests, gurgling and puffing but never quite making it to wherever it is they want to go. Will they ever go? But this is not what the owl awaits. It closes its eyes and goes back to sleep.

In the heart of Haight-Ashbury a white cat maintains its lonesome vigil. Without skipping a beat it looks up, looks down and looks all around. Nothing is happening here. No change. All the voices are from a past that is all but dead. Only the ghosts are smoldering. The ghosts piss on the sidewalks. The ghosts spit on the doorways that disgorge shining eyes and bright smiles. Eyes that flash plastic and lo! Dreams come true. All is happiness. Or so they believe or they dream. Those eyes and what is behind them. The cat doesn’t know. The cat doesn’t dream. It only awaits. But has almost forgotten what. It’s been that long. There were so many roads. Which one was taken? Which way did they go? Without blinking its eyes the cat waits and watches.

Dark star crashes

pouring its light

into ashes

Reason tatters

the forces tear loose

from the axis

Searchlight casting

for faults in the

clouds of delusion

Shall we go,

you and I

while we can

Through

the transitive nightfall

of diamonds *

*Dark Star a song by Grateful Dead.

Sunday

2011-07-11T14:01:00.000-07:00


A blue, blue sky to sail on for ever after.


A fistful of clouds–to blow on, blow off and blow in again.

Timed to a sparrow's gentle serenade.

Sprays of grass–summer's sweet scent.

A butterfly's invite to siesta and sun-kissed dreams.

A wreath of wildflowers for the greatest glory of them all.

The breeze carries the hymnal–The ocean whispers Amen.

A point upon a map of fog

2011-07-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

Careful now.
We're dealing here with a myth.
This city is a point upon a map of fog;
Lemuria in a city unknown.
Like us,
It doesn't quite exist.
– Ambrose Bierce

Summer on my windowsill

2011-06-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.*

*from Mother, Summer, I a poem by Philip Larkin.

Wonderland

2011-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding,
But when I walk I see it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.*

For Virginia it was a pencil. For me a pint of milk, a freshly baked baguette and a box of cherries (that almost elusive fruit, a few days late and you miss its short and sweet season) are a good enough reason for putting on your shoes and going out for a walk. The art of writing maybe becoming redundant but food, especially good food, never will. Two blocks and a short climb up the hill is all it takes to reach the local co-operative. But it seems like journeying into another world.

To the tamed eye it is nothing but some modern apartment buildings, a handful of independent homes, a couple of restaurants and lots of cars parked on the roadside–a staple in American cities. However, it’s not quite American suburbia with all its attendant horrors. It is the 21st century version of big city living, with a glimmer of hope.

To the untamed eye it is, well, a walk to remember. After saying hello to the neighborhood pugs, all three of them, one takes a left under the watchful eyes of our resident crow and past the blooming rhododendrons and walks right into a wonderland- two “unkempt” gardens playing host to all sorts of wild things. There are masses of blue, white, yellow and orange wildflowers dancing cheek to cheek with giant peonies and poppies. There are bees, butterflies and hummingbirds darting from plant to plant. The house sparrows are feeding their young; the robin comes to take a look-see and whistles a tune. The chickadees are heard but not seen. The worms are busy digging and the creatures too small to be observed by the human eye are doing what they do best. Ten steps are all that it takes to move in and out of this world. Timed well it is ten steps enough.

Further ahead smoky-white clouds hang above the mountain tops that dwarf downtown's towers. Two young girls are picnicking over a bowl of salad on a patch of grass by the roadside, pink and yellow ribbons tided to their bicycle's handlebars. Stapled onto the wooden pole is a poster of a man with a ukelele held before his face. A little girl is discussing, what one supposes are, her big plans for the summer with her grandma, as she pushes her wagon along. A couple walk by hand in hand carrying a pot with a flowering tomato plant. The graffiti on the petrol pump wall reads PREPARE. For the end of oil the mind adds. There's a party on the second floor across the street. A kid on a skateboard swerves to the right. The cashiers from Trader Joe's are splitting a can of beer while the homeless man straightens his dog's bandana, smiles and asks, how's it going? It's 5:16 PM. The sun is at it's highest position in the sky and a walk is always well worth getting out of the house for.

*Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things

When I paint my masterpiece

2011-06-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

Someday, everything is gonna be diff’rent
When I paint my masterpiece*

Until then I spend hours at an end
watching light play tricks...
And it's not too bad a vocation. Until then.

*When I paint my masterpiece a song by Bob Dylan.

The Reading List

2011-06-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

A book is opened that hadn’t been touched for some years and out falls an old reading list. Here is a select sample, in no particular order,

1. Levi-Strauss, C. 1986. The Raw and the Cooked
2. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice
3. Trautman, T.R. 1981. Dravidian Kinship
4. Taussig, M. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
5. Saussure, F.D. 1966. Course in General Linguistics
6. Focault, M. 1971. The Archaeology of Knowledge
7. Barthes. 1967. Elements of Semiology
8. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer Religion
9. Beteille, A. 1977. Inequality among Men
10. Braithwaite, R. B. 1953. Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Functions of Theory, Probability and Law in Science

The first thought that crosses ones mind is: wow! Did one really read all these books? Then comes the second even more amazing thought: All in the span of 7 days! The third is a quiet little thought that sneaks in and out of ones head even before one can fully get hold of it. The fourth is almost redundant and not worth pointing out. The fifth is what one might address here.

Carefully considering all the evidence and taking into account the present state of affairs one is almost certain that these books were read. Quite simply because they had to be read. It was mandatory. No
matter what Prof. Uberoi said during the only lecture one remembers from that point in time, despite being volunteers, by virtue of choosing to join the course and then further on choosing to attend the
lectures, when it came to the reading list one had to complete it before the next tutorial; that dreaded event when a handful of us, like the proverbial three blind mice, ran after the farmer’s wife, so
to speak. What followed was in accordance with the theory, probability and law of science or mythology or proverb. The only difference being that we didn’t get to run around much and the farmer’s wife, though her knife was quite sharp, didn’t manage to cut off our tails. Everything about that exercise seems to be so dispassionate and far removed that one can safely declare one has no memories about it. But that wouldn’t be quite truthful, would it?

How did one do it? One may have been a volunteer but that was simply a manner of speaking. The reading list wasn’t voluntary. One had no right over choosing what to read and when to read it. The books were prescribed and were to be read within a certain (insanely inadequate) time limit. Sometimes it felt that even the sentences, the words that people walking up and down the corridors uttered, were also prescribed. There was a formula and the one who followed the prescription was sure to master it.

So, how did one do it? Nothing is impossible, in the world of speed reading at least. Anne Jones took 47 minutes 1 second to read 759 pages of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. No mention is made of whether her pleasure of being the first to finish the book equaled the pleasure (she had 47 minutes before) of having another Harry Potter book to read. Well, speed-reading can be put to other mundane uses too. But the sixth and final question still remains: did one enjoy reading these books?

Fade I unto divinity

2011-06-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

"Twould ease – a Butterfly –
Elate – a Bee –
Thou'rt neither –
Neither – thy capacity –

But, Blossom, were I,
I would rather be
Thy moment
Than a Bee's Eternity –

Content of fading
Is enough for me –
Fade I unto divinity –

And Dying – Lifetime –
ample as the Eye –
Her least attention raise on me –

'Twould ease a butterfly a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Rainful Days

2011-06-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

Outside my window it rains. A thin, wispy blanket blows across the hills, the airplanes approaching land, the tall towers named after men long gone. Everything is melting into little droplets sliding down the windowpane. Pandora skips to Beirut softly playing:
All these saints that I move without
I lose without a name
All these saints, they move without
They moved without again
Well, all these places will lose without
They lose without a name*

Nice. How everything ties up neatly.

Five years, four cities, three continents and I could be an expert on rain. And umbrellas. Only I have traded all my umbrellas for a sturdy rain jacket.

There is a silence that accompanies the gentle rain. I have known this rain before. This rain that is not like the Indian monsoon, which tends towards extravagance, but much quieter. There are no peacocks dancing or children splashing around in the puddles or young men and women rushing to meet the giant waves with only an umbrella in hand. This rain isn’t a short-lived heady celebration. It is the thing that remains when all celebrations are over. Here there is a kind of certitude, not like that of London, but something that comes when one understands what this too shall pass really means. Or, maybe because just yesterday this rain soaked view was bathed in a beautiful light that exists only in spring. And there is always a chance that it may happen again. Even today.

I hear the chickadees call from the blue house next door. The rain has stopped. No, this is merely a pause. And this too shall pass.

I reach out and pick up the book closest to my hand. I open a random page it reads: The beauty of a fleeting moment is eternal.**

*St. Appollonia from The Flying Club Cup by Beirut.
** The Monster Loves his Labyrinth: Notebooks by Charles Simic.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

2011-05-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Georges Perec (1975)

On the last day of our first time in Paris I sat on the grass watching the lights turn on the Eiffel tower noting down all that I observed. But as it was our first time in Paris, I was easily distracted. Observations of the yellow lift going up and red lift coming down are punctuated by recollections from the days before. Dotting the margins are words, sounds, scribbles perhaps inspired by Paris, or perhaps by Vienna our previous destination. My attempt to note down the “non-touristy” details of life in Paris was naturally not the intended kind of success. Had I put thought to it my choice of place would have been much more conducive to the task at hand. Though I suspect watching Paris with “non-Parisian” eyes would have still lead to certain unintentional biases. But then, can one ever really observe a space in time in its totality? Can we ever exhaust–describe everything?

On Saturday at the neighborhood bookshop my eyes caught a slim volume in a white and grey cover. In a year before I was born George Perec set out on the quest of the “infraordinary”: the everyday or as he puts it, “what happens when nothing happens”. For three days, in a square in Paris, he sits behind Cafe windows making a note of “that which is not noticed, that which has no importance”. He progresses from strictly visible things, to conventional symbols, to slogans, to objects, to the color of things, to buses going back and forth, to gestures and conversations between people, dogs running, pigeons flying all at once across the square, people carrying things, the Japanese tourists in buses, the apple green Citroen van.

However, even though he is sitting in one place every coming and going of people or buses and cars, even within the field of his vision, which in itself is limited, is marking the passage of time. Every event or rather nonevent is altering that which is being observed. From merely observing things before his eyes Perec moves on to noting the differences: what has changed from one day to the next? Though seemingly nothing has changed, in essence life has moved on.

This unimportant, humdrum nothing that we barely record is what fills up our days and years. However, when we start focusing attention on these nonevents they become unreal, almost surreal, and even poetic. Here’s a random sample:
A bird settles atop a lamppost
It is noon
Gust of wind
A 63 goes by
A 96 goes by
An apple-green 2CV goes by
The rain gets fierce. A lady makes a hat with a plastic bag marked “Nicolas”
Umbrellas sweep into the church

Moments of emptiness

Passage of a 63 bus

The resulting effects of attempting to exhaust, or observe in totality a place, can range from mere unease at the near impossibility of the task being undertaken to an overdose of reality, which in turn may alter our understanding of the nature of reality itself. Leaving us with a sense of melancholy that comes with the acceptance of the fact that what we consider to be extraordinary is merely a collection of ordinary acts. And that something will always remain indescribable no matter how detailed our observations. Even when we think nothing is happening time is taking away second after second from our lives.

Afterthoughts on books: part 15

Sunday evening, 5 PM

2011-05-15T23:18:00.000-07:00

Do look back

2011-05-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

It is mandatory to keep moving on. For life is elsewhere and that elsewhere is somewhere in the time yet to come. Or is it? There comes a moment when one realizes maybe this is all that there is to it. At times that moment comes more than once in a lifetime. So, sometimes, especially when the mind has taken leave even though the rest of the body is immersed in endless work, one needs to stop and look back. Here is one such occasion from the not so distant past.

One rainy day at Hyde Park seven young people, lets call them friends, were brought together by randomness of fate and contrivance of chance. Caught in the oft-cursed ‘unpredictability’ of the London weather they sat and sipped their coffees and beers. Casting desultory glances at the ducks in the lake while mouthing customary inanities that pass as conversation these days.

The lake framed by the dark clouds, the trees gently persuaded by the wind, the raindrops softly passing by-the intricate play of nature fell apart before this unappreciative audience. The words framed within neat categories, the gently falling level of the beer in hand, the softly approaching time to get up for a refill-this intricate balance of social convention was silently appreciated by all. Maybe more so by the one sitting alone at the table by the window. Lets call him the old man in the grey coat.

He could be seventy or eighty years old. The point being of an age when no one especially not the individuals concerned care much for years and birthdates and time. Or even for how they look or what they wear. At least that is how it seems to people who are young and by that I mean not yet thirty. So let us not get into descriptions and just call him the old man in the grey coat. There was nothing exceptional about him (again I mean from the point of view of the abovementioned youth) except that on that one evening in Hyde Park he happened to be listening to seven young people blow words in circles in time. And not even notice the years fall by.

For today you are twenty-eight and the next thing you know you are thirty. “To have reached thirty,” Reginald* said, ‘is to have failed in life.” And anyone waking up on the fateful day to acknowledge the agony of turning thirty would, if they have any enthusiasm left for life, wholeheartedly endorse his sage words as they watch their world rapidly turn to a miserable shade of blue right before their eyes. But one has to live to be thirty to experience this brutal truth, which can’t be revealed to the innocent youth. And since our friends are young and carefree and not yet thirty let us let them contemplate their half full glasses.

Instead lets turn our attention to the old man in the grey coat who has lived more than twice that fateful age. But showed no sign of wear and tear to those who cared to look. Finishing the last of his lukewarm coffee he got up to leave. Then stopping by their table he softly said, “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.” And silently slipped away into the gathering darkness. Almost unnoticed.

Seven days later no one remembered the old man in the grey coat's words except for an old man sitting down to write the story of his life and a young woman celebrating the thirtieth year of her life.

(For Mr. Jamshed Mirza living somewhere in London. Maybe we'll meet some evening in Hyde Park.)
*Reginald on the Academy a short story by Saki.

First posted titled as 'People you meet in Hyde Park' here.

A memory

2011-05-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

A memory a poem by William Allingham.

Feeding time

2011-04-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

Once there was a time when bird song heralded the beginning and the end. Of days and nights. As resolutely as the hands of a clock, but much less painfully. All that remains now are ghostly wisps. And a memory slowly unraveling, thread by thread. Did the robin sing that tune? Did the titmouse sit on this branch? Once we were so young and green. Where did the time go?

It is not quite an attempt to catalogue what time has done to us but a measure of what we did in our time.

Sunshine

2011-04-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

Arboretum

2011-04-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger.
Not needing, anymore, even to make a contribution.
Merely wishing to linger: to be, to be here.

And to stare at things, but with no real avidity.
To browse, to purchase nothing.
But there were many of us; we took up time. We crowded out
our own children, and the children of friends. We did great damage,
meaning no harm.

We continued to plan; to fix things as they broke.
To repair, to improve. We traveled, we put in gardens.
And we continued brazenly to plant trees and perennials.

We asked so little of the world. We understood
the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves:
we were correct, we were silent.
But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely.
Our hands, folded, reeked of it.

How did we do so much damage, merely sitting and watching,
strolling, on fine days, the grounds of the parks, the arboretum,
or sitting on benches in front of the public library,
feeding pigeons out of a paper bag?

We were correct, and yet desire pursued us.
Like a great force, a god. And the young
were offended; their hearts
turned cold in reaction. We asked

so little of the world; small things seemed to us
immense wealth. Merely to smell once more the early roses
in the arboretum: we asked
so little, and we claimed nothing. And the young
withered nevertheless.

Or they become like stones in the arboretum: as though
our continued existence, our asking so little for so many years, meant
we asked everything.

Arboretum a poem by Louise Glück.

I spy an Oriental White-eye

2011-04-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

April

2011-04-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

In the tiny corner of this tiny part of that tiny speck suspended in a sunbeam* April is celebrated as the National Poetry Month. Which is absolutely marvelous. We need not just one day but 30 days at a stretch to bring to the frontal conscience of the world at large, that which is important. Well, a tiny part this maybe but it does think it’s the edge (or is it the end?) of the world and of all western civilization. So February is devoted to Black History and March to Women’s History and then comes April. And with the advent of spring comes poetry. But naturally.

Most people have a difficult relationship with poetry that is if they bother to have any relationship at all. But that’s just because they read bad poems or more likely they don’t read enough poems. Or even more likely because they don’t know how to read poems. But those concerns for a month at least are laid to rest. Every publication worth it’s weight in ink is publishing poems. And for those who read all (and any kind of poems), read a lot of poems and often enough know exactly how they ought to be read this is marvelous. Ah! But I already said that.

When confronted with so many poems, and so many unheard of poems you know what is even more marvelous? Coming upon one that echoes something you felt in the not so recent past. And if that happens before you have emptied your cup of coffee in the morning it is beyond marvelous.

K. 453
Karl Kirchwey
(from The New York Review of Books)

On May 27, 1784,
   as he followed Vienna’s back streets home,
Mozart paused, startled, by a pet shop door
   and listened to the allegretto theme

from his own piano concerto in G-Major
   repeated by a starling in a cage.
He’d written it only five weeks before—
   had God given them both the same message?

He counted out thirty-four copper Kreutzer.
   Pleasure was like the iridescent sheen
in the dark plumage: an imagination livelier,
   perhaps, more fecund and ready than his own!

He entered this in his new quarto accounts ledger,
   but where the price should go, he wrote the tune
instead—transcribed it a second time, rather—
   and then, in his small hand, wrote Das war schön.**

*For me April till now has been about Carl Sagan for no particular reason at all except there are times when he is sorely missed.
**that was beautiful

I hid myself within my flower

2011-03-31T12:00:00.000-07:00

I hide myself within my flower,
That fading from your Vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me–
Almost a loneliness.

I hid myself within my flower a poem by Emily Dickinson

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.*

2011-03-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."*

A young woman's life can be divided into two stages; her life before and her life after she has read "A Room of One's Own". More so if she has vague illusions about being a writer. Also if she doesn't mind being branded a highbrow (which is just another word for uncool) by 21st Century society, where Sex and the City shows how far we have come as women. And free speech is the most prized possession of those who have nothing to say. Those who are afraid to speak their mind.

In a letter to her friend G. Lowes Dickinson, Virginia Woolf explained the reasons for "A Room of One's Own" : ''I wanted to encourage the young women - they seem to get fearfully depressed.''** It was 1929. It still works in 2011.

70 years ago on this day Virginia Woolf took her own life. She lives not just in her books but in our minds.

PS I always have one of her books or essays on my bedside table. For some it is P. G. Wodehouse for others, Virginia Woolf. That's the way it is. I often walked the streets of London waiting to come upon a scene from Street Haunting. Sometimes when I am alone I read some random paragraph wishing I was accompanied by Tom Waits. Or Patti Smith. Often when life seems disgusting I am rescued by the beauty of flowers, the antics of birds, or a perfectly constructed sentence by Virginia Woolf. Not necessarily in that order. I don't keep a picture of hers. Roddy Doyle's rule number one (from ten rules of writing) works well: "Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide". And in over two years I have mentioned her only five times. This being the sixth.
These are random facts. Somewhat interesting. But is it the truth? If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.*

* from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.
**from an introduction to A Room of One's Own by Mary Gordon.

Chidiya

2011-03-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

The house sparrow is the first bird that every child encounters. In India the special relationship that we share with house sparrows is reflected in the Hindi name for the bird- chidiya*, which is also the Hindi word for bird.
20th March is now celebrated as the World House Sparrow Day because house sparrow numbers are declining across the globe. As I watched the sparrows become comfortable in the few square feet that was the balcony of our home in Bombay it seemed unthinkable to imagine a time when no sparrows will visit our houses. What a sad world that would be.

*the other Hindi name for house sparrows is gauraiya.

What you choose to see is what you get

2011-03-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Illusion is the first of all pleasures - Voltaire

If you live in the “first world”, drive around in a SUV, shop in the malls and try your best to be as Roman (or American or British) as the average Roman then naturally when you go back home (to India) you’ll be amazed. Amazed by the full time servant or as the politically correct will say “help”* (24x7xnearly 365 days a years for peanuts compared to what you’d pay in the other world for someone who comes maybe twice a month), who probably is a migrant from some remote corner that you can’t even spell the name of, let alone point out on a map. Amazed by the “fresh” fruits and vegetables (lets not mention the 67 banned pesticides being freely used in India) available round the corner or coming straight to your house via the sabziwallah, who probably is also a migrant from some place where they took his land and livelihood so that you can get electricity for your air conditioners. But you have to, no need to, be amazed.

Amazed by how along with all these great things you can continue to drive a SUV, shop in malls, send your kids to “International” schools and when it gets too much hop onto a flight and go away for a few days to where you came back home from– that illusionary place that you are trying to recreate, even better. Though right now you can’t see it.

But you know what you are actually doing? Simply perpetuating clichés– tired and well-worn ones. Spitting on and polishing a myth, a pathetic illusion. Kipling in 1889 put an end to such clichés (and cliché makers) forever:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet;
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!**

So be strong for a change. Try to live without a car in the ‘first world’ or without domestic workers in India. I guarantee you’ll never pen another clichéd image of the West or the East; you’ll renounce clichés forever. Chances are that the insights and pleasures you get will be worth savoring (even worth sharing). Though at the moment they might seem improbable, and somewhat illusionary.

* Start calling them domestic workers, for only when you will acknowledge that they are doing the work that you are incapable of doing yourself, will you truly appreciate their help. Otherwise they are nothing more than overworked, underpaid slaves.

** The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling

A rainy day

2011-03-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

My tree

2011-03-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

My bare branched tree speaks in silence
forlorn and longingly–
it is not another spring that it seeks
but a mild breeze–
to sway its unburdened arms
in abandonment–
simplicity– is free.

Generation next part 1

2011-03-03T12:29:00.001-08:00

The first in what will be a series of posts on the young ones of birds that I have photographed at some point in time. With a life span which is a fraction of time that humans and trees spend on this planet, I suppose, the little blue tit on the feeder mimicking another from a generation ago must have paused to think:
Behind Me — dips Eternity —
Before Me — Immortality —
Myself — the Term between —*
*Behind Me – dips Eternity – by Emily Dickinson

Why we don’t talk much anymore

2011-02-27T15:42:00.001-08:00

Did you know that I am inspired by the trees? It broke my heart to leave London not because of the birds, as some believed, but because of the trees. In fact, while waiting to get onto the flight trees were the first things I wrote about and drew in my diary. If ever they ask me what inspires me the most, I will probably answers trees. Also, I love the smell of mint, it calms one down and invigorates the senses and that’s the only reason why I always drink mint tea whenever we meet. Now you know.

I don’t think college was the best time of my life. It was good while it lasted but frankly I was glad when it was over. The "golden days" can carry the conversation only this far. Yes, there were friendships and some such but the status you (by you I mean the generic “you” as used by horoscope writers) and every other tween and teen has posted, sums it up succinctly- forget the people in your past there is a reason they didn't make it to your future. Which brings me to a minor point, do you even believe in what you claim to believe in?

Now we have Facebook. And it’s friendship in safe mode where “LOL” is considered an appropriate response. And everything else is categorized as “nice”. But then “what is Facebook Friendship, after all, but the unending quest for People Like Me, people who like all of My Favorite Things—a monument to mutually enabling narcissism, disguised as a Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name?)'* However, lets move on from here, in part because I am only writing this as I need to get stuff out of the way before I can get back to things that really matter like a latte and Leonard Cohen. And also in part because there is nothing I can say about Facebook that hasn’t already been said.

And that brings us to the question why we don’t talk much anymore? Because there’s nothing I can say that I haven’t already said.

*You can read more about ironic appreciation- “liking things,” rather than liking things, haters, lifebox, and other such stuff that makes you think here.

Of other snows, other continents

2011-02-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

A plastic bag hovers behind a garbage truck passing by. A futile attempt that is doomed to end in defeat by the roadside. The snow of yesterday garnishes the sidewalk and the hills beyond. The orange tabby springs from nowhere leaving scars on the pavement. The only birds signing are the crows on the prowl.

Photographs in folders dated and numbered wait to be opened. A year in the life gone by must be browsed through again. In the meantime disheveled thoughts scatter ideas, half-baked and ill-formed. The smoke cloud from the neighbour’s backyard hangs above the conifers undecidedly then moves to the skyscrapers. The person on the 34th floor looks out of the window and watches a fluffy white rabbit scamper by.

The church bells are muffled as it starts to snow again. The sea gull catches a snowflake and takes it past the sugar maples, leafless and forlorn. The cows on the windowsill watch the “herb garden in a pot” in astonishment. The fragrance of spearmint mixes with oregano mocking the whiteness outside. The blue tit carved in wood is pensive contemplating other snows, in other continents. And perhaps will say,
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. *

And that brings the mind back to the year gone by. Perhaps one would call it the worst year yet. Or perhaps one would say it was an experiment that went wrong. At least now it is known that this will
not work. But really it wasn’t a disaster?

*One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

In time of roses

2011-02-16T11:49:00.002-08:00

  in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me
 
in time of daffodils a poem by e.e. cummings

What kind of bird would I choose to be

2011-01-18T10:13:00.001-08:00

He asked me if I had a choice

what kind of bird

would I choose to be.

I know what he thought I’d say

since he tried to end

my sentences half the time

anyway. Something exotic

he thought. He thought

maybe macaw.

That would fit

all loudmouthed

and primary colored

he would think.

(He thinks too much

I always thought.)

But really at heart

I’m more

don’t laugh now

an L B J

little brown job

except except

I’m not the

flit from

branch

to branch type

such a waste

of energy all that

wing flap

and scritch scritch scratch.

Really now

can you see me

seed pod clamped

between my beak

like some landowner,

Havana cigar

clenched

between his teeth?

No I think not

I think

green heron.

You ask why?

Personality

mainly.

That hunched look

wings tucked to neck

waiting waiting

in the sun

on a wide slab of rock

alongside a slow river

like some old man

up from a bad night’s dream

where he’s seen his coffin

and you say to him

Have a nice day

and he says Make me.

Oh you want looks

I’ll give you

looks:

long olive green feathers

a trace of

iridescence

I could stand

going out iridescent

chestnut sides and head

a black crown

yes a crown

something regal

to flash when you get

too close

dark bill bright

yellow legs

and that creamy streak

down my throat and pecs

good

not great

but good pecs

just enough for a quick

hop to the next.

The best part

no sexual dimorphism

male female

both alike

endless possibilities.

Diana García, “On the First Day She Made Birds” from When Living Was a Labor Camp.

Can your bird sing?

2011-01-04T00:18:00.001-08:00

All is well with the world
When the day begins with the zeet zeet bird
Singing outside the window.
A tune without the words
Harbinger of hope– that tiny thing with feathers.

Where ever you maybe,
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.*

*Chinese proverb.

The Robin is the One

2010-12-21T21:30:00.002-08:00

The Robin is the One
That interrupt the Morn
With hurried – few – express Reports
When March is scarcely on –

The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity–
An April but begun –

The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home – and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best
(The Robin is the One by Emily Dickinson)

Charlbury

2010-12-14T22:03:00.002-08:00

Who lives in Charlbury one wonders. The train is stalled somewhere between Oxford and some-place-in-Cotswold. The train manager makes the solemn announcement. The one that ends with apologies. Outside the carriage window stretches the polite landscape– the rolling hills, fields ripening green and gold, honey coloured houses with grey roofs, blue sky with puffed up white clouds, some horses, more than some sheep and that tree maybe single or sometimes maybe in pairs but always large and magnificent.

So, where are we? Glancing at the name of the station as the train came to an unceremonious halt the eye had caught the words Charlbury. This is Charlbury one says. Who lives in Charlbury? What kind of people? What are their lives like? And the mind wades across Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Far from the Madding Crowd. It takes in Emma’s Highbury and even the gentle ladies of Cranford. But a small voice says that was then, this is 2010. And then another voice says but back home when a name like Devli or Peepli comes up (when one is inside a train or zipping by in a car towards Delhi or Bombay) one says, “My Godness! Look at it. It’s like some place out of a novel by Premchand!” And everyone nods sagely for that is that. These few words clearly bring forth not just the life and struggles of the people but even the worry lines on their foreheads. And the crinkle in the eyes that one gets by looking often towards the sky– in hope and in despair. One can even call them by their names– Anandi, Budhia, Ramprasad, Hori, Dhanpat, Bholi. Nothing has changed. Neither the physical setting, nor the people, neither the struggle of their day to day life. One almost blurts out what year is it?

But here in Charlbury- who lives?

I see sunbirds

2010-12-09T04:25:00.007-08:00

Work in progress

2010-12-04T00:55:00.000-08:00

As I sit working on my last farewell ride a voice from nowhere comes up and says,

You’re searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles.*

*In The Home Stretch by Robert Frost

Winter bird

2010-11-23T23:05:00.002-08:00

The winter bird is contemplative.
Unlike the bird of spring,
or even the bird of autumn
it is much less inclined to sing.

In winter there’s isn’t enough daytime to spare,
but all the time in the day to reflect. Winter is a time to prepare

For the ecstasies of spring
The headiness of summer, the enchanting rain
The mellow pleasures of autumn
Till winter comes visiting again.

And the winter bird sits down to comprehend:
Does a circle have a beginning? Is the beginning also the end?

Don't leave your room

2010-11-21T05:26:00.004-08:00

Switch off the cell phone, turn off the television, unplug the radio, shut down the computer, pack away your books and simply wait. How many minutes did you last? How many minutes could you spend alone in your own company? Is it true that we crave social contact? Is it really necessity that keeps us ‘connected’? Incessantly seeking the company of another human being to reinforce the fact that we aren’t all alone.

Or, does this need for constantly being bombarded by words, images, and sounds reflect something else? Thoreau said, “I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.”

In an age when even misanthropes become social media addicts, have we all become comfortable moving with the herd? Is it the end of solitude?

Or, may we try something different.

You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait,
be quiet, still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
--Franz Kafka, Senses

I Am!

2010-11-10T01:59:00.001-08:00

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest—that I loved the best—
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

(I Am! by John Clare)

The Usual Suspects*

2010-10-31T20:46:00.003-07:00

* Science, religion and leftists.

With nostalgia

2010-10-27T23:57:00.002-07:00

Suddenly you are missing Bethnal Green Road. The salwar-suit shops, the off license 24-hour grocery stores, the English Premier League odds scribbled in chalk marking what kind of a reception which team will get tonight from the dedicated fans, the half kilo bhindi and everything else. Imagine!

What could induce this acute sense of nostalgia, you ask. A slice of bad pizza, a conversation on the ‘poor PR’ being done by the guys behind UID, and the general sense of moroseness that descends when one is trapped in a shopping mall that is trying to be Oxford Street, London or Soho, New York anything but Pushp Vihar, Saket. Possibly. Or maybe it is the passing reference to graffiti in East London that someone mentions reading about in the inflight magazine as the plane soared to 30,000 feet.

And so, while the drinks are being sipped and the forks pick an indifferently diced cucumber now and a mercilessly torn rocket leaf then. The mind has already passed the Regent’s canal, has crossed the tube station and is walking straight down Bethnal Green Road towards Brick Lane. No, not the Brick Lane of the novel, or of the film based on the novel. More like Brick Lane of the Saturday nights- of the impossibly asymmetrical hairstyles, people spilling onto the pavement along with their drinks, the music, the organic food, the vintage cloth stores and yes, even the graffiti. Ok also, Brick Lane of the daytime where a slice of 1980’s India is preserved in the form of brass decoration vases, Manipuri and Bhangra dance dolls, the smell of rose incense and Mohammad Rafi (or Mohammad Aziz) songs blaring from what one hopes are Phillip cassette players. Where one goes to in the futile search for the “perfect” curry. That mythical thing every Londoner can almost taste but not quite grasp.

All this is nostalgic now! You might argue: It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back.* And one might say: Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.** Why should nostalgia always be equated with longing, when sometimes it is merely reminiscence; a pleasing reflection, a fond evocation? Something that gently lifts you up. You may end up hanging in a limbo but admit it- isn’t the view great?

*Bill Vaughn
**Robert Morgan

The fading

2010-10-10T23:03:00.004-07:00

Moments turn into minutes, days stumble one into the other, months
into years, and time, it is said, has passed. We say life has moved
on. Not realizing time and life are two independent entities. Mutually
exclusive. Rarely does one care for the other.

Rain falls on Bombay. This is Bombay with its ancient banyan trees and
chawls with pots of hibiscus flowering red and yellow on the
windowsills. And corrugated iron sheets hiding from public view the
gaping hole in the earth that will, in some days and months, turn into
a gleaming steel and glass monstrosity. Slowly, over days and months,
it will rise from the hidden depths. However, time will not wait. It
will lapse.

Shaded by umbrellas, small and inadequate, against the monsoon
downpour, there will be life, or something like it. And maybe at some
moment, on some given day, it’ll summon the courage to softly ask,
"But what is the meaning of it all?” Time will most likely not reply.
Life will try to catch its fading reflection rippling in a pool of
rainwater. Or maybe it will simply sigh. And pass on.

I dreamt I was a butterfly

2010-10-08T00:35:00.004-07:00

I dreamt I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke.
Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a
butterfly dreaming that I am a man? - Chuang Tzu*

*Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream is a Taoist parable on the interchangeability between appearance and reality: Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

Transformation of Things proves that differences between things aren't absolute. Most meanings we seek in this world are bound up in apparent contradictions.

You can read more about Chuang Tzu's dream here.
And about how chasing butterflies is so much more than what the eye sees here.

Best advice ever

2010-09-30T22:01:00.003-07:00

Mind your head. The rest will follow.

Strolling the streets somewhere between Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water I had an epiphany. It was the same feeling that I had had almost three decades back under the neem tree in 10 Turner Road, Kanpur. The summer sun was out and about on both the days. Back then it was unbearable. Now it seemed pleasant.

I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.

Wake me up when September ends

2010-09-23T07:57:00.005-07:00

Laughing at the sky

2010-08-26T08:41:00.007-07:00

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky - Buddha

Thursday

2010-08-19T00:22:00.005-07:00

It is already Thursday! There is much to be done. Things to do– lists, yes there are multiples of them in a futile attempt to arrive at the best possible way to do everything in the least possible time. Prioritise. How can one do that? Wont it mean placing greater value on

one thing over the others? But they are all things that need doing, and each on completion will lead to a certain sense of fulfillment and other things to do. The choice isn’t simply between vanilla and strawberry. Though you may argue even that isn’t so simple sometimes.

Then there is the rain. It has been raining continuously for two days. How can one do anything but watch it rain? A river flows beneath the parked cars. Wouldn’t one like to find out where it goes? Shouldn’t that be on one of the lists? The sparrows are settling down in the balcony. There is much to “chee chee” about before they are all comfortable; organized according to their pecking order. Then silent and still they will watch the worst of the rain pass by. Time to pick
up the camera. But for the light.

And then while sorting through all these sensory impulses one looks back at the screen and there is Patti Smith reading from The Waves by Virginia Woolf. After replaying it three times one goes on to hear Dancing Barefoot because that’s how the mind works. Then the book Street Haunting is picked up and after reading a few lines from the first essay one starts to recollect the gulls swirling around the dome of St Peter’s at 10:30 at night. Such poetry. And one instantly whispers, “Send a philosopher to London; please God no poet!”*

A truck carrying construction waste blows its horn. Somewhere a house of cards collapses. Is this the butterfly effect?

Coming back to the desk and everything else it encapsulates one catches sight of the work to be done. And the lists. Multiples of them. Ah! But it is only Thursday.

*Heinrich Heine. More about this soon.
You can watch Patti Smith's performance here.
Or read Street Haunting– the complete essay here. Go on try it. It's only Thursday.

Tread lightly

2010-08-16T09:35:00.005-07:00

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle– Albert Einstein

Watch what your hand brushes past. That curled leaf is an origami nest housing the single egg laid by the female giraffe weevil. The mother has thoughtfully injected a chemical into the leaf, so that its tissues undergo a cancerous growth and the larva when hatched gets sustenance.

Watch where you put down your foot next. The water running across the trail houses tiny monsoon crabs. Soon they will get busy burrowing into the soil, bringing in oxygen and keeping the cycle of nutrients flowing. But right now they watch you closely (almost sizing you up) for a split second before scurrying to safety.

Don’t come too close. That is not a dead leaf. It is the master of camouflage– the blue oak leaf butterfly. Its underside mimics a leaf perfectly down to the midrib. Would you believe that its upperside is a vibrant indigo?

So, please tread lightly. Here miracles abound. The tarantula has built trap doors out of silk thread, another spider is mimicking an ant as it goes out to hunt them, and another is weaving a fine web between the branches of the Kadamb tree– diversification and
specialization are the hallmarks among spiders too. Then there are the trees, the birds and maybe even a pair of eyes watching steadily.

Every mushroom, every termite, every falling leaf– every breath that is taken in and every breath released demonstrates a miracle. So, tread lightly and don’t forget to keep your eyes and mind open.

Take birth on Facebook and die in the pages of mainstream media: The short and irrelevant life of protest movements in urban India

2010-08-15T09:24:00.004-07:00

Let me start by saying: I have nothing against “we the people” ensuring that errant citizens are brought to book or forced to comply with the laws of the land. That is worth commending. But I’d just like to add a caveat: Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at others.

Meaning, dear fellow citizens first learn to wear the helmet, drive in lanes, not jump traffic lights, not unnecessary blow the horn, not over speed– you know follow basic traffic rules, (that you are required to be aware of to get a driving license) before trying to force autos and taxis out of the roads. That the recent attempt to keep taxis and autos off the road in Mumbai failed miserably, no matter how people like us choose to spin it, is an entirely different matter.

Which brings me to the more important point. Autos and taxis aren’t the "villains” and autowallahs aren’t “chors”. The fact that the problem was framed in these terms is the reason why the solution offered was inappropriate, if not downright silly. In another India, educated (and might I add civil) citizens would first attempt to understand what does public transport mean? Then go on to wonder why don’t we have good public transport and instead have so many autos and taxis on the roads in our cities? Then find out who are these people who drive these autos and taxis, where do they come from, and why do they leave from wherever they have left?

When we have asked and sought answers to these questions we would (I hope) not come up with "protests" that only widen the gap between “us” and “them”. Instead we would concentrate our energies in ensuring that the real errant citizens obey the laws of the land and the real “chors” are bought to book. Okay, maybe simply start a social media campaign and get enough “likes” to make it to the pages of the mainstream media. But at least then it wouldn’t all have been so vain.

Meanwhile an educated and enlightened take on auto-rickshaws and the life of those who drive them can be found here.

Upon meeting old friends

2010-08-12T22:55:00.004-07:00

Recently we had a reunion. It was an almost unplanned coming together of old friends. Each had been busy in their own world, getting on with life, doing the best they could- being as unobtrusive as they could. There were no grand achievements to boast about, or pictures to brandish as proof. That we could once again come together for a few moments was enough.

But most importantly, no one said, “You haven’t changed at all!”

Wild flowers

2010-08-10T00:02:00.003-07:00

A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
(Having misidentified a wildflower by Richard Wilbur)

As I wander'd the forest,
The green leaves among,
I heard a wild flower
Singing a song.

I slept in the Earth
In the silent night,
I murmur'd my fears
And I felt delight.

In the morning I went
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy;
But O! met with scorn.
(The Wild Flower's Song by William Blake)

The good Will of a Flower
The Man who would possess
Must first present
Certificate
Of minted Holiness.
(The good Will of a Flower by Emily Dickinson)

Measure for measure

2010-08-08T22:58:00.005-07:00

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension.*

*Oliver Wendell Holmes

Away

2010-07-13T00:51:00.006-07:00

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,*

Even ideas to stay alive need fresh air. They have taken a holiday.
How can they be denied?

*Holidays by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fossil fools

2010-07-07T03:50:00.008-07:00

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

We all know them. The unfortunate among us meet them everyday. In offices, on the roads, in the queue standing before us. Even misanthropes who are social media addicts meet them online. There is no escaping them. Like cockroaches hiding in old, decayed woodwork we know they are there even when we can’t see them. The fossil fools. In the corporate world they are known as ‘middle management’. And everywhere else as those middle-aged men.

They have achieved a level of mediocrity– comforting and self-sustaining. Even though they may not rise any higher up in life, they know, as they occupy the ‘middle’, that those on their way up will have to go past them. And the rest will soon join them. So they are comforted. Somehow this makes them more than a little proud of themselves.

Due to the above-mentioned advantage they build an entourage consisting of other “middle men” and juniors who in a few years time will morph into them. The accolade from juniors flatters them. The support of others like them empowers them.

But their life is not without its unique pitfalls. For how long can these fossil fools last? The wheels of progress won’t grind to a halt just because they have achieved the pinnacle of their mediocrity. There will always be smarter, bolder and more efficient ideas waiting to take over. What do they do then?

Thus begins the vicious battle unimaginatively called ‘defend the turf”. The motto being– he who blows his trumpet the loudest wins, never mind if he is out of tune and giving everyone a headache. Ruthless missions are launched to shore up large ‘followings’. Every bit of mediocrity is not only applauded but also richly awarded. Every little spark that threatens to burn down the entrenchments is mercilessly rubbed out. All middle men combine forces and they are out to take prisoners. Those unwilling to tow the line are ignored. For what one isn’t aware of, doesn’t exist. If one can’t see it, surely nobody else can. So says the cat among the pigeons as it closes its eyes.

Watching these desperate attempts to perpetuate mediocrity, we should raise our fists in anger and howl. Instead we gently shake our heads and whisper,

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father’s tie there in secret,

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

–Men at forty by Donald Justice

New Learnings

2010-07-06T00:19:00.003-07:00

When misanthropes become social media addicts, and no one notices the irony, you know it’s the worst of the times. And the best of the times. A time when every day brings new “learnings”.

Here’s what I learnt in the past one week.

1. Missing classes meant copying notes and catching up with what had been taught during our absence. Lessons weren’t repeated for our benefit. If we had doubts we could discuss them after class. Unsurprisingly, the world too operates on this principle. You missed what’s going on; it’s your prerogative to catch up.

Even to become a contrarian you need to understand conventions first.

However, if you are under 40 and don’t know what ‘tactical media’ is, despite being active on facebook and twitter. Despite doing PhDs from Oxford or Harvard. Despite working for a media outlet. In that case, it is simply time to re-evaluate your ‘education’.

2. People tweeting from their blackberries shouldn’t accuse those tweeting from their iPhones of being Luddites. Please get a dictionary. Or open a new tab and type ‘meaning Luddite’. Same rule applies for comments on facebook.

3. If someone claims to be an atheist and a meat eater chances are very high that they are most obsessed with religion and vegetarianism. That’s the curse of assuming ideas based on negation. The anti-ideology.

4. No matter what meat eaters, who may or may not be atheists, choose to believe - yes, being an atheist also requires following a system of beliefs, there’s a reason why most men and women capable of reasoning are calling for people to consume less or no meat at all.

If you don’t understand the problem with factory farming, over fishing, or how eating a solely meat based diet is resulting in wastage of resources and is unsustainable, don’t make facile arguments about plants being helpless (plants aren’t helpless they have been on this planet since before humans evolved).

That is unless you haven’t ever laid eyes upon any biology text. In that case read more.

5. Everybody has to live with his or her own peculiar contradictions. No matter how ridiculous.
Richard Dawkins on Vegetarianism: “What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.“

6. Everything is connected. Often there is less than six degrees of separation. E.g. your desire for sushi for dinner once a week - extinction of blue fin tuna.

7. In the US, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, people think house sparrows grow up to become pigeons. This gives a clear idea of how much thought people put in before arriving at a conclusion. We see how deep the abyss is. We realize how much patience is needed to fill the gap with.

Postscript: Yesterday I realized bandhs are good for the country. Smashing public and private property, coercing people to stay at home through threat of violence, putting the country under an emergency like situation is the only way to get “people like us” to talk to the "poor" (okay just the taxi driver) and realize that inflation and price rise are badly affecting them. Shouldn’t we be calling for more bandhs?