Wildflowers

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Life with birds

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

How to be a bad bird watcher

How to be a bad birdwatcher by Simon Barnes

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

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

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

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

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

(Afterthoughts on books: part 10)

Forgetting to start again

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Crack-Up

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

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

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

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

The parallels between the early years of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century run so close together that beyond a point they seem to be mirror images of each other. And the development of human societies appears to be trapped in this endlessly ride over the waves of a boom followed by a bust. Whereby we end up with letting go of more than we collectively gain.

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

(Afterthoughts on books: part 9)

And I'm a Rose!

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

(Emily Dickinson)

The Triumphant

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

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

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

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

And so reason died

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

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

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

Friendship

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

Reading Saki

The Collected Short Stories of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

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

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

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

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

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

(Afterthoughts on books: part 8)

Beauty

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

(Emily Dickinson)

The Madman

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

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

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

Thus I became a madman.

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

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

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

Rashomon

Rashomon (1950) Directed by Akira Kurosawa

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

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

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

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

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

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

(On cinema part 2)

The Enkindled Spring

Acrylic on cardboard

The Enkindled Spring
D.H. Lawrence (1916)

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

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

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

Reading Roald Dahl

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Afterthought on books: part 7)

Joan Eardley

(View some more of her work at National Galleries of Scotland)
If you want experience and understanding of beauty envy me now but if you want happiness then don’t envy me because these things don’t bring happiness - Joan Eardley (1921-1963)

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

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

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

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

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

Marcovaldo

Marcovaldo or The seasons in the city by Italo Calvino

In a sprawling metropolis where the temperature within and without is always a constant some pleasant degree centigrade where do the seasons go? Caught up in the 9 to 5 or whatever the present state of existence is categorized as, is the change in seasons only visible in the mall windows advertising the “this season” or the “end of whatever’ sale?

What happened to the Marcovaldo in us? One who as Calvino writes, “…would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a feather trapped by a roof -tile; there was… no worm-hole in a plank, or a fig-leaf squashed on the sidewalk that Marcovaldo didn’t remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of the heart, and the woes of his existence.”

When did we become an overwhelmingly city dwelling species so detached from nature that even a speck of mud on our clean shiny shoes makes us recoil in disgust. Nature; every living being encompassed in that one word, the one thing that makes this pale blue dot unique in the entire galaxy. How did man become so disconnected from life?

Or do the Marcovaldos belong to another world? Stuck here where “The night lasted for twenty seconds, then came twenty seconds of GNAC. For twenty seconds you could see the blue sky…the gilded sickle of the waxing moon…and the stars…to the sprinkle of Milky Way…in great haste…because twenty seconds quickly ended…GNAC took over...part of the neon sign SPAAK COGNAC.” Always looking for that lost something only to realize they are the ones on the verge of losing it all.

The Marcovaldo of the book exists during the early 50’s and mid 60’s Italy when a very poor nation starts gaining illusions of economic prosperity. Time to conserve the remaining Marcovaldos before they become an extinct species in a world peddling delusions of wealth and well being.

(Afterthoughts on books: part 6)

Walking in Delhi

(To learn more about walking in Indian cities click here)

To ask someone to walk in Delhi sounds preposterous and is often dismissed with a laugh. That was the reaction we got from our friend when we walked for the last time in Delhi. It was 2004. The event wasn’t so momentous that we’d record the date but it so happened that we left Delhi after a few months. So the stroll from Saket to Aurobindo Place Market on a winter afternoon is the last time we walked purely for the pleasure of walking in Delhi. The soft afternoon sun, the smell of roasting peanuts, small thelas piled with cheap woolens, even the languidly moving traffic seemed to add to the pleasure probably because we could navigate it so easily and quickly. We would have loved to say that the skeptic friend became a convert but in reality he too remembers the walk for precisely the same reasons as us.

Another memorable walk was some 10 years earlier when the IIT U special didn’t turn up and the three of us, all girls, decided to walk to Pragati Maidan from Pandara Road to catch the Noida special. That too was winter and Delhi looked so beautiful in the liquid sunlight that we ended up walking all the way to Miranda House for we were only nineteen and Sociological theory wasn’t something we looked forward to first thing in the morning. And what a wonderful walk it was. There were a few strange looks but for the most part we completed our journey unmolested, which is commendable considering one can’t walk a few steps without fending off unnecessary comments and unwarranted glances these days. The fact that we had clearly demarcated space to walk for the most part too helped. We tried to recreate the journey in the opposite direction but it was monsoon and that year safety of women was a major news item. So we caught the bus back home from ITO.

Having lived for over 12 years in Delhi we walked in all kinds of weather for all kinds of reasons. Along ruins, in gardens among chrysanthemums and roses, under Peepul trees with their leaves turning pink, up and down the Delhi University campus eating bhelpuri, on Prithviraj Road with bats for company, in Sanjay Van with the twisted Vilayati Keekar creating a mini Mordor, along roads densely packed with cars honking and the auto rickshaw we had abandoned getting swallowed by the smoke, on Kamraj Marg when the Amaltas colours the sidewalk gold, in Tughlaqabad with the moneys watching us even as we watched them, in JNU under the trees singing in the rain, to Khan Market to Aurobindo Place. A million walks in a city that seemed to be best explored on foot to enjoy its timeless beauty. But that was before Delhi became the city of a million roads and nowhere to go.

The only regret. Never being able to enjoy a walk along the Yamuna to truly appreciate the city that was built beside a river.

Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev (1966) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

It has to have a beginning. In our case it was Andrei Rublev. There were before that stray snatches, a scene, a visual recollected from the late night show on Doordarshan long before there were 357 channels and nothing on. Later we’d wonder where does one go to watch these films. For we were too preoccupied with the obvious to realize that in far off reaches of India, in small towns of Kerela there exist Andrei Tarkovsky appreciation societies and such like. Till an honorable member of one such introduced us to Andrei Rublev.

The moment the rope is cut and the man shouts, “I’m flying, I’m flying” gliding over the beautiful Russian landscape with the horses running wild till the inevitable thud and the horse rolling in the grass rising to trot off and reveal the broken man and his tattered balloon something in our lives changed. We were drawn into the world of Andrei Rublev with his vow of silence, painter of breathtaking icons in an era devoid of spirituality. The jester dances banging his drum, pagans carry torches in the mist, the birch trees in the forest crawl with life and the river yields a decomposed swan, the cavalry marches through the snow, the snow falls through the roof of the ransacked church, the mad woman chooses to go with the Tartars, and finally in an inspired moment overcoming the fear of death and lack of knowledge the young man casts the perfect bell and as the bell tolls Andrei Rublev regains his passion. While we watched the horses standing in the rain at the end unnoticed by us something inside us too got reborn.

Andrei Rublev became the moment when we began to ‘see’. We developed a cinematic conscience just like a child records what would go onto become her first childhood memory. And life has become so much more enriching ever since.


(On cinema part 1)

The brief wondorous life of Oscar Wao

The brief wondorous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

How many people would know what is the capital of Dominican Republic? Or its neighbouring country? In just a few years one forgets everything that was learnt over long, sleepless nights.

How intrinsically is an individual’s life history connected to the history of his country, his people? In a highly globalized world can there ever be a global citizen? At what point in time does one stop being an immigrant, an outsider?

Or as Yunior, the part narrator says, "You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest."

Think of a third world country. Any third world country or especially one that you can’t recall the capital city of or locate on the world map and chances are that it has a very violent history and not surprisingly the first world has played a not too insignificant role in it’s past and present misery.

Or as Junot Diaz puts it so eloquently, “They say it came first from Africa," the novel begins, "carried in the screams of the enslaved … that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fuku americanus, or more colloquially, fuku – generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World…No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of the Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed the fuku on the world, and we’ve been in shit ever since.”

Time to open that atlas now.

(Afterthought on books: part 5)

On Blogging

“I write fiction. Every incident that I have ever put down on paper is imagined. Also I am a compulsive liar. So now ask what it is that you wanted to know,” she says with a beguiling smile while moving her bejeweled finger as if conjuring up this entire rendezvous out of thin air.

“If only my life was as interesting as my words. If only the people I knew as enigmatic. If only…Ah! It is these ifs that probably made me a writer,” she continues as a tiny ting echoes when she picks up the cup. She must be at least eighty a faint voice seems to whisper.

A few hours and many such exchanges later she says, “One would think writing is as easy as snapping one’s fingers. Look at all of us. Are we all writers or what? Margaret Atwood, in a NY Times interview says of the flood of new writers ‘It’s like everyone’s blogging about how they brushed their teeth this morning.’ Though Margaret, the realist that she is, does say, ‘The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.’ That probably explains 147 followers for someone who confidently misinterprets simple cinematic plots and if challenged hides behind the, ‘it’s my blog.’ defense line. How lovely.”

“Friends honour each other with awards and collectively feel creative and accomplished just like that. And to think it took Gabriel Garcia Marquez seventeen years to write The Autumn of the Patriarch. Mediocrity applauding mediocrity. Must be very comforting.”

“Oh yes! I would love to blog.”

Languid Afternoons

It is one of those languid afternoons. The Delhi winter ones. The two rods of the electric heater glow orange and then red in one corner and we all along with our books and huge mugs of tea and tiny plates piled with chocolate Bourbon biscuits are scattered around the room discussing language. Not a leisurely meditation upon tricky linguistics ala Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry but the more mundane one on semiotics and semantics and the inevitable death of the old unwieldy ones. You know the kind when minds are full of books and theories and postulates. When everyone tries to sound much more solemn and profound than they really are. And everyone is so earnest.

And then it happens. A sentence or maybe a word casually placed among a group of words and we are suddenly reciting “Khub ladi mardani woh to Jhansi wali Rani thi” and before we know it someone starts singing a Dev Anand song. Yes the same one about the forlorn moon and sleepless nights. And the kettle is empty.

No one can quite tell exactly when twilight obliterated the hazy afternoon. But when the singing stops the sounds of the crickets seem to testify to the rueful end. A kind of melancholy descends upon the room. Suddenly the conversation becomes awkward. People start mumbling about dinnertime, tutorials to finish and so one by one leave. And all is quiet except for the crickets.

Almost fifteen years later the possibility of a languid afternoon wiled away in intense discussions and cheerful banter seems almost preposterous. What can we possibly talk about? How superficial we all are. And how utterly banal.

The faint smell of jasmines and oranges

When you finally had the conversation with her she was almost ninety-five years old. But as always inquisitive and eager. There was so much she wanted. To fly in an airplane that she had seen only on a screen. To visit Bombay. To learn to swim. To wear a gigantic diamond ring. To find a pot full of gold coins. But that was mostly said in jest. What she really wanted to do was sit on a cot under a tree and recollect each and every day of her life.

But her memory had its own personal agenda. Sometime it would fixate on what she was wearing when she wanted to in actuality concentrate on remembering what he was saying. Sometimes when she would try to recollect her childhood, her memory would instead stray towards the power games she had played as an adult. Sometimes it would force upon her the visions of ghosts. People whom she did not want to remember. People long gone, who had no impact upon her life except for this occasional haunting that seemed to thrust her own mortality into the forefront, when all she wanted to do was recollect how beautiful she had looked as a young 16 year old bride. The memories kept pushing her in this and that direction. Till she simply had to accept she had no control over her memories.

Then a gentle breeze had risen mixing the smell of jasmines with the smell of oranges that you were peeling for her. She had sighed and looked right into your eyes and said, “Honestly, all that I want is peace.”

When a few months later the phone rang you knew what everyone had been expecting for the past six months had come to pass. And she had at last found what she had wanted the most. Trying to remember the last meeting all you could recollect was the faint smell of jasmines and oranges.

Of smoked eels and a happy life

So you are at a party. It’s an after dinner affair where you get to drink red wine and nibble on cheese, savouries and in this particular one, a huge chocolate cake. It’s August in Amsterdam and so naturally everyone is joyous and extremely sociable. And you are enjoying a pleasant conversation with two affable Dutch men. The interest and appreciation on both sides is mutual. And the talk moves across places, cultures and ages touching upon many a wondrous thing that would be better chronicled in a well-written book not too long maybe around 300 pages.

Among other marvelous things the conversation dwells upon the subject of eels. Smoked eels to be precise. Beside the smell and the flavour the word invokes a vivid memory. Visions of little Dutch villages, windmills, tulips and other such clichés and buckets of eels. Caught by the father and cleaned by a neighbour for 10 cents per eel and later smoked in the backyard under the father’s strict supervision. But that was some sixty plus years back. Now the seventy four year old sister climbs four flights of stairs with a small 500 gm bundle of smoked eels. And when he opens the door she offers him the package and almost out of breath whispers, “Happy Birthday.”

And then the two men start chuckling. “I hate smoked eels,” the one who is the brother says, “had too many in my childhood. Now I just want to have a long life.” And so the conversation pleasantly moves on along the Lauriergracht.

The Inevitable

Once again you find yourself inside a plane and looking out of the window you watch clouds floating over an undistinguished brown and green landscape. You could be anywhere. But you are here. Inside this plane. The man seated beside you is sleeping. Oh! You know him. In fact, you are travelling together. And it has been a long, strange trip.

The yellow pencil in your hand taps the open page. Annoyed by the sound you close the dairy and catch the small print. Wood-free. Recycled. Handmade paper. How pretty the golden zari border next to the binding looks. It reminds you of your mother’s maroon sari with a gold border that you wore to the “Hostel Night”. How pretty we all were then and how naive! But that was long before we’d search for each other on Facebook and send friend requests and then promptly ignore each other after the mandatory, “You look just the same.” A chorus begins to chime these words in a not too melodious manner.

And then the lights are turned off. Damn these forced bedtimes on airplanes! But your fellow companion doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he hasn’t noticed a thing. Blissful are the ignorant or is it ignorance is bliss? And so another day crawls towards the inevitable just like everything else around you.

Defying the stern announcement you push up the window blind and watch twilight gather the dying rays of the sun. And for a brief moment the window is illuminated gold. Could this be the moment? Could this be the day when luck changes? Pushing down the window blind you sigh. Maybe that too is inevitable.

All that wooing

It's that time of the year again. Lots of wild chases, incessant quack, quacks and some nudging and shoving.








(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera)
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All's well as long as it ends in a meadow filled with daffodils and bluebells leading to shall we say a happily ever after.

Bombay

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Then they ask, “You never write about Bombay. Why?” And you mumble Delhi, the present, London, childhood and other such suitably enigmatic words. But you know they have lost you at ‘Why’. So like millions of other moments this one too passes into oblivion, even before it has had its moment. Nothing learnt, nothing unlearnt. All appropriately reduced to nothingness but for a flutter in your brain caused by the two words ‘Bombay’ and ‘why’.

It isn’t the first time that these words have been juxtaposed. And neither is it hard to write about Bombay. Bombay encompasses everything that connotes fantasy and reality. The word itself is infused with innumerable tales and adventures, so much so that one can’t utter it without summoning multitudinous visions shared by over a billion people. And even if it is whispered in the most intimate recesses of the heart all it’s associations and summations are a part of our private folklore. Our grand history. The simple story of our life. Oft repeated in moments struggling to hang onto this side of oblivion.

All that remains are discarded fragments. A certain shade of orange, the bark of a tree, the moon swooning behind Haji Ali, the flap of bat wings, a golden chariot drawn by seven horses riding huge black clouds, a window and sparrows, four kids and a little black dog, hens on trees, more clouds, yellow flower and red car, breakfast and sunsets. So on and so forth. Someday when it’s time to empty the dustpan we shall see what does the word Bombay really convey.

Words

When she said,
“Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies,”
I cried she was deaf.*

Every time your phone rings it plays these words and it is rather fitting. Though you, as you often say so yourself, aren’t a misanthrope for you don’t mind the presence of humans it’s just that you hate it when they try to converse. It’s this process of passage of clean fresh air through the vocal chords and the resultant production of noxious, inane blather that gets you every time. But what irks you even more is that perfectly enunciated words, beautifully connected together to produce an uncomplicated sentence to elucidate a simple thought get subdued by the above-mentioned process. And all we are left with is 'idiot wind'. But that doesn’t mean you are a misanthrope or for that matter a hater of words or speech.

As proof you point out how you can often be found spending time with words of humans, albeit of those whom you are pretty certain you’ll never be able to meet in person. And you further point out how much faith and consideration you put in the thoughts and words of complete strangers although you are pretty sure they too won’t grace you with their presence. So you conclude it’s not words or speech that is at fault it’s just you who is unfortunate to be saddled with people who are inept at handling them.

But what you find most fascinating is when the blathering hordes eat your cake and drink your coffee and wiping the crumbs from the corner of their mouths say, “Just because you are good with words doesn’t mean you can say anything.” Made even more fascinating, you add, by the fact that while they were busy stuffing their faces you hadn’t even uttered a single word.

*Bob Dylan, 

Signs of Spring

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In search of a grand theory

Sheets of paper are scattered over the table. And more sheets upon cyclostyled sheets are scribbled all over in pencil, with some words and sometimes even complete paragraphs underlined with a heavy black line. And on smaller pieces of paper there are random words, names and dates scrawled. Arrows are marked here and there to demonstrate how ideas are built thought upon thought endlessly. Until we end up absolutely perplexed by this eternal creation and destruction of theories and ideas. And somehow the world never ends up prettier or wiser. That is what the flower sprouting from the y at the end of bounded rationality seems to indicate.

But you soldier on. For even if everything doesn’t fit or rather your brain isn’t able to comprehend it all and build a grand unified theory it’s all right for this is just one exam and there are 5 more to go. So you rush through Malthus, Weber, Parsons, Sartre, Foucault, reductionism, social alienation, and as you reach cultural dissonance you hear your father in the room next door get angry because he can’t find his shirt. An anonymous impulse, that you can’t quite pin down as you are still dealing with anomie and nihilism, passes on the information that they are neatly piled up in his cupboard just as they always are after they have been washed and ironed. And as the voices and the indifference grow louder and harder to ignore you conclude that the world has gone mad. But almost instantly realize that it is only your family.

So you push aside the incomprehensibility of theories dealing with beliefs, irreducibilities, symbolisms and ideal types and march straight to the cupboard and pick up the pile of shirts and dump them in the middle of the raging argument. And walk back to the comfort of dualism and objectivity, as the voices in the background seem to fade to an ineffectual murmur.

In Vienna

As we walked towards Michaelerplatz on a European summer evening when the days seem truly blessed and radiate with the resultant warmth and glow, the sounds of the cello wafting from a dimly lit third floor room of an old building gave us company. And we imagined enormous crystal chandeliers, faded red velvet and the smell of antiquity encompassing it all. We were still a few minutes away from the appreciative audience of mixed nationalities applauding the Chinese girl on her tiny piano, perched in the middle of the street close to a Dolce Gabbana outlet, paying homage to Mozart while young men and women in powdered white wigs and ruffled white shirts tried to entice us to attend a performance of The Marriage of the Figaro or Don Giovanni. Or so we believed for our knowledge of Mozart and opera begins and ends with these few words.

But that was still a little way off because we chanced upon a bookshop. The tiny bells jingling as we pushed open the door announced our entry to witness the closing seconds of a farewell scene. A man was putting on his coat and then he picked up his hat and brown leather suitcase and kissed the lady goodbye with the words, ‘I’ll be back the next time I am in Vienna’. Embarrassed at interrupting an intimate moment between friends we began looking at books but much to our disappointment they were all in German. So we picked up a couple of Moleskines and quickly paying for them exited from the same door as we had entered.

As I opened my diary a postcard fell off. Inscribed on it were the words SCHREIBEN followed by a poem in German and a name signed below: Emily Dickinson.

I looked at you as we stood on the roadside surrounded by the fragrance of freshly baked apple strudels and coffee and horses and recollected every moment since you handed me a little volume of Emily’s poems just before those terrible exams, with a ditty about Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim and life, ending with the words ‘she’s so you’. And then once again the cello started a new solo and we walked on to meet up with the cheering, applauding crowd. Imagining why people always want to come to die in Vienna.

In a matter of minutes

(All Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)

Last light

(All Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)

If this is "fading"
Oh let me immediately "fade"!
If this is "dying"
Bury me, in such a shroud of red!
If this is "sleep"
On such a night
How proud to shut the eye!
Good Evening, gentle Fellow men!
Peacock presumes to die!
(Emily Dickinson)

On laughter

The toddler in the seat ahead of mine in the airplane laughs with pure joy. The sound possesses a rhythm and a flow and a memory. I recall neither Proust nor Kundera but that forgotten moment when laughter– abandoned and uninhibited– bound us together in an amorphous construct called family even as it set us all free. At least in that moment we were.

I scribble these words hastily while the pilot mumbles about altitude and speed or maybe he’s raising a toast to this and other such flights. But my mind is not quite focused on his words because I am distracted once again by laughter of two women in the row diagonally behind me. A quick turn in their direction furnishes the following details: female, around fifty, probably English, a little tipsy, going back home from an all women trek around Annapurna. The last bit I glean from the emblem on their T-shirts. But one cannot trust these conclusions I make for I am no good at such deductions and am often off the mark as far as age, height, and nationality are concerned. It is gender that I generally get right.

But there is still a good 7 hours to go and I try to obliterate all thoughts of the present and of the recent past from my mind. Of the long gone past I hardly have any concrete memories. And before I can complete that thought there is more laughter from diagonally across followed by more giggles from the front.

After 8 hours enclosed in a narrow steel tube, I gladly escape, and not a moment too soon from the manacles of laughter. Suffocating and all consuming.

After all has been said

Sometimes after you have finished reading a book, as you put it down while the last few words are floating through your mind another thought bursts forth and every other thought gets extinguished. ‘All that needs to be said has been said’. A strange mix of ecstasy and melancholy grips the heart. And you wonder how and why do people still go on writing. Dream of being poets and authors, think they have anything new or fresh to add to the countless reams published and read ever since humans started giving words to their thoughts.

I recently experienced this emotion after finishing Orlando. Actually after the first 20 odd pages itself I was stuck by the abovementioned thought. Only to immediately be stuck by another that this experience was neither unusual nor unprecedented. I myself have felt so innumerable times. After reading Steinbeck’s words, “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” Or Calvino’s, “Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” Or Saint-Exupery’s, “Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.”

Not to belabour the point I stop at just three random examples. Even as another thought crosses my mind for someone having nothing new to add already 276 words have been expended. Not to mention these.

(Afterthoughts on books: part 4)

Life According to Birds

Chapter 37: All in a day's play by The Blue Tit












(All Photograph by Anvita Lakhera.)