I dreamt I was a butterfly

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.

Caterpillars

I am appalled by your apathy. When Professor Das delivered this statement, we were sitting in the verdant lawns of Delhi University on a pleasant October morning. That itself will give you a fair idea about how long ago it was. For can they sit outside in verdant green lawns (are there any left?) in Delhi anymore? Is October pleasant? However in this case the setting was perfect and to give Professor Das due credit thoughtful too. Even at 9:00 AM not many possess the moral fiber to be pert and snappy especially when discussing ‘The Elements of Semiology’. Barthes at any time of the day requires a certain kind of aptitude. In us it was clearly lacking, regardless of the hour, even with the added knowledge that this will “come in the exams”. The setting though kept us alert, and occupied otherwise.
 

The cause for the comment was the fact that being diligent scholars we had carefully read to the last page, even the last alphabet exactly the portion that had been prescribed for the current tutorial, the introduction and first few chapters, not a page more, though in hindsight probably a few pages less. So when in the discussion the good Professor started talking about the ‘non-prescribed’ portion, the blank expression on our face was a pretty accurate sign of how clueless we were. And so the Professor with her crisp accent, and that certain tone because of which quite frankly everyone was a bit terrified of her, delivered the fateful line.

Unlike her, Professor Baviskar probably had very accurate information regarding our mindset. She always ended the announcement of the reading list with the words, “And don’t just read the underlined sentences. Make an effort to at least read complete paragraphs.” But then she too not so long ago had attended similar tutorials, even borrowed the same books from the library, and knowing that certain streak in her, probably with a twinkle in the eye even underlined the least important passages.

However it’s the words of Professor Das that became immortal. In the days since that tutorial I have whispered them many a times, in many different circumstances. I don’t know about the other four in the tutorial group but for me they have become a connotation. My limited reading of Barthes is probably flawed but these words and the circumstances they were uttered in have come to signify something much greater than a tutorial discussion many moons ago. That belief that it’s necessary to only know enough to “pass the exam” or get a promotion or achieve a certain level of success in life. That inability, widespread and on constant display, to read. That lack of curiosity to look beyond that, which concerns us. Aren’t these all manifestations of reading only prescribed portions, without making an effort to even glance at the next page? Epitomizing the appallingly apathetic culture of clearing exams without any concern for acquiring knowledge. Chasing lifestyles without any empathy for life. Of living in cocoons blind to everything else beyond. 

Postscript: Caterpillars aren’t blind. They have six pairs of simple eyes (ocelli) that can detect changes in light intensity, but cannot form an image.

After writing this post through a strange combination of Google searches (lets just say it’s something I do) I suddenly came upon this: “The caterpillars in distress, starved, shelter-less, chilled with cold at night, cling obstinately to the silk ribbon covered hundreds of times, because they lack the rudimentary glimmers of reason which would advise them to abandon it.” (The Life of the Caterpillar by J. Henri Fabre, 1916)

A sparrow, a vulture and an evening in Delhi

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

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

In the decades to follow they will realize that their choices weren’t as far apart as they had thought sitting on the stone bench close to the Champa tree. And that both sparrows and vultures, in the years to come, just like the innocence of their interactions, will tether on the brink of extinction in India. And most importantly, they will realize that there are no differences, no matter how far and wide apart, that time and the mere act of continued living can't reconcile. Even obliterate altogether.

Misadventures in Social Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 Red Rose

It is probably some year at the end of the last century. Evening, a pleasant Delhi evening. The kind we often had before Delhi became this ugly, smoke filled, bellowing monster devouring all pleasantness from life. She, you and me are walking back from Kamla Nagar after the usual stroll to "kill" time.

A creature comes upon us bearing a red rose. Or is it a gigantic cauliflower. While he tries to offer it to me she berates him, in her inimitable fashion. It is a long, extremely eloquent diatribe. Flustered and frustrated he blurts out, “I don’t understand your British language.” And throws the flower and goes away. It is a red rose. We collapse beneath the burden of our irrepressible laughter.

How young we were. How unimaginably cruel we were. And how completely, unquestionably happy.

(For Bulbul and Nidhi, hope the latter still holds true.)

Going back to C/22

It’s January and winter in Delhi. There is no hot water on the second floor. You either can go to the ground floor or forgo the idea of a bath altogether. You choose to forgo. For, it’s cold and foggy and you have just come back from home. And then there is a shout. C/22 phone call.

First one than several voices till it’s an incoherent cacophony and you can vaguely make out your name or the room number. Wrapping yourself in a shawl and slipping on the trademark hawai chappal over your socks you rush out blindly. For, you know if you delay even for a moment the call will get disconnected and so will you from the warm, comfortable world you left behind when you caught the train back to college.

At night well after the 10:00 PM deadline you sit huddled over an illegally procured electric heater cooking Maggi with onion and tomato in the background a discussion rages on about anything and everything. The latest hit film, the course load, a special meal enjoyed at home, the general elections, or how one is horrified to realize that parents too have had sex, the proof being our presence in this world. Nothing is out of bounds for we are eclectic and free.

As the hours progress, so will the need to converse, to discuss, to reconnect, to slowly get back in the groove. Some will choose to talk away the night, others tired by the long journey or simply of it all will retire to their rooms and you at last will sit together with your mate and speak of things you can’t talk about in front of the others. Thus the world inside C/22 will once again become warm and comfortable. And you will feel welcome and at home.

The Bitter Half

As N, I and I hitched a ride from Surajkund to college hostel one evening in a tempo, that had transported chicken to what my imagination always recollects as some sunny farm, little did we know our passage was marking the end of an era. It was a transition that affected all the people living in Delhi and those yet to live there but not many had such a memorable image to mark the event. True, we still had some meaninglessly hitched rides to Kamla Nagar left, a few on a dare but most because no one had anything better to do that particular evening. But the ride from Surajkund to North Delhi was epochal.

Flash forward to Delhi of today or even of five years ago or even twelve year ago (yes, I was in college ages ago) and try imagining three teenaged girls doing what we did and surviving to tell the tale. Just two years later on graduating the three of us shook our heads at our incredible stupidity. What were we thinking! That is how suddenly Delhi changed to such an unimaginable extent.

One night you could return from a SPIC MACAY concert at Delhi College of Engineering when it was still housed in some derelict buildings at Kashmere Gate with no one in the bus giving you a second look and the next morning you hear of someone in a DTC bus to IIT Gate getting assaulted. That is how low respect for women in Delhi fell in such short a time period. And then there was no looking up. Ever.

As far as I can recollect the city always had open and porous borders but life for women once they stepped outside the four walls of their houses wasn’t so fraught with danger. We could still walk all the way to North Campus from Pandara Road on a not yet chilly but pleasantly cold November morning unmolested. Or go out to get a bhutta with nimbu masala after sunset without people at home worrying how we were faring on the streets of Delhi.

So, life moves on. A City changes. A Nation imagines itself to be a superpower. And a people applaud their new found sense of well being.

But when not yet teenaged girls start walking to school with safety pins and chili powder in their pockets someone somewhere surely must know that though the lark’s on the wing; the snail’s on the thorn- still all’s not right with the world.