Urban poetry

 The metro station is familiar territory but it is cold and impersonal. It’s all shining steel, hard stone and bright lights. It is also arms, legs, heads, hair, skin, breath and sweat. But it is here that some fleeting moments of sheer beauty are created by chance. Right here, in the spaces between bodies, stone and metal.

Walking into this cavernous underground labyrinth stuffed full of flesh and things, I am drawn to this couple. Their hands are moving, but their mouths only just. It’s as if someone filtered out all the noise and what is left is pure communication – stretched mesmerizingly thin around them like the rainbow-surface of a soap bubble. And in this bubble around them the space seems to expand with each gesture-for-word. Theirs, I realize, is a silence, which in the absence of words is more than just a lack of sound. It’s an abundance of calm. They talk without speaking. And all around them are words being spoken, yet nothing is being said.

And then there is me.

Smiling like a fool, overjoyed at this urban poetry being written a few hundred feet under the earth, set to music by trundling trains of gleaming silver.

So what is it about a mundane metro commute and two people talking to each other in sign language, that is so unspeakably poetic? It’s like a missed heartbeat in the racing pulse of life in the city. Exhilarating, this precious pause.

If less is more...

If less is more, more or less, do you want more or less?


There are certain questions that come up inexplicably, without invitation and make their home in the recesses of one's mind. While some of these questions border on the absurd some others are inevitable and universal. And anyone who says they do not know of them is lying.

What do you want?
How much do you want?
What do you need?
How much do you need?

It was an economics class and then a history class in school that I was first introduced to the terrible twins - wants and needs. That it was to be an eternal quest for some sort of amicable reconciliation between the two,  I could not have known back then. Karl Marx knew it but I didn't.

"I need you. I want you. Oh baby. Oh baby." 

Human greed is a peculiar thing. And by greed I mean real, unbridled avarice of the most material kind. It is peculiar because while human beings take to it willingly and with gusto, its prospects are from the start bleak and pessimistic. For while greed is an endless cycle of acquisition far beyond what need dictates, it is still desperately incapable of providing fulfillment. The cup of greed is never full.

"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse"


So why hasn't the 'less is more' philosophy become a life-choice instead of just an oft-quoted aesthetic principle? Is it narcissism - a firm belief that we are the centre of our own universe and everything must indeed gravitate towards us? Is it the curse of the information age to stare every day at an image of ourselves reflected on multiple screens  - only  prettier, fairer, richer, happier, thinner, sharper, cooler, more fun, more adventurous and more unlike our real selves?

"You talkin' to me? There's nobody else here."


Everyday we accumulate things. Surround ourselves with objects and noise - the noise of other people accumulating and acquiring more than us. The noise grows with every tweet, every post, every update and becomes a cacophony until the original voice in our head is barely audible. A mere whisper.

What do you want?

How much do you want?

What do you need?

How much do you need?

A Life Less Ordinary

Its been too long. 

But I suppose sometimes you just don't have all that much to say. And that too can be a good thing. 

I often find myself at a loss for words when people ask me that most innocuous of questions "What's up?" And I rummage through my mind for a coherent, robust answer worthy of this eponymous query. Sure,  I can tell the rhetorical what's-up from one of those probing, searching, investigative ones. But the discomfort I feel at the latter is becoming something of a social handicap. 

And I have never been more acutely aware of this handicap.

For this I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of that wonderful warm shiny gooey thing called facebook. My friends (facebook friends that is) all seem to have highly exciting lives peppered with occasional drama, lots of fun times and most importantly a definitive road map of where this exciting life is going to take them next. (Explanatory status message coming up...) 

I used to be one of those people in the pre-facebook era. Figured out, with much less self-doubt and anxiety about where everything is going to end up. Now here I am, wondering what will be while the rest of the world is sending me live updates of lives being lived (or so the facebook messiahs would have me believe) 

Never has the phrase "Get a life" seemed more ironic. Because now, you can! 

The cup of life that is social networking is always on the up and up, never rock-bottom low mixing with the dregs of yesterday. So when one stares into it , rarely do you get to see rock bottom. But when you do hit rock-bottom - and everyone does at some point - even a lame little "what's up" will make you want to punch someone in the face. 

Sometimes I have to shake myself out of the ennui of keeping up appearances. Its not the harmless banter that bothers. Its the feeling of constantly being sized up. The whole idea of living your life like a roster of what you did-who you met-where you went.  It might be worth asking then - "How would you live your life if you knew no one was watching?" 

Its unsettling - this feeling of living your own life as if you had been for the longest time, merely an opening act in a great variety show. Always on the outside, waiting for the show to start. Stealing a glance every now and then at the audience from behind the red velvet curtain. And while we stare diligently at cursor on screen, tomorrow becomes today becomes yesterday all at once. 

And I worry more at this than my seeming lack of ambition, goals and road-maps-to-a-better-life..... because how will there be nostalgia, if I cant't even remember living? 

 

Winter Wonderland

Winter in Delhi is many things. Bitterly cold, sun-less and bleak for the most part it can be an unhappy time for many. For me though, the city shrouded in mist is a happier place. Happier than the Delhi of April and May – when bathing defeats its own purpose and the tarred roads melting in protest, stick to your shoes. Happier than the city in monsoon when complaints are rife of potholes and puddles. No. Winter is relief.

And what an entrance it makes! Easing its way into our lives with a shudder here and a shiver there. Not like spring that reminds of the oppressive summer heat lurking ahead. Long hot days give way ever so gently to shorter days when the cool air brings goosebumps on bare arms. Night sneaks up on the day and the light fades dutifully. The sun doesn’t hurt anymore – its warmth spreading deliciously over skin bare now but soon to be hidden under warm layers. Soon instead of the once-a-week Chocobar, it’s warm smoky peanuts and seeking out the un-earthly pleasure of cracking their crunchy shell under thumb and forefinger. The city is changes its hues – Tilak Marg will be flanked by a skeletal army of trees. Trees that jealously kept out the sun, now filter its rays and create winter ephemera.

Like I said winter in Delhi is many things.

It is the billowing white mist from my mouth. It is layers of wooly pleasure – scarves, gloves, multi-coloured socks, shawls, sweaters, stockings and neck warmers. It is going to lodhi garden to watch the dogs play and laze around in the fickle sun - just like everyone else. It is huddling in an auto sharing a shawl while the wind makes light of your chattering teeth. It is waking up in the dark (when we were young) to go to school. It is a bonfire of dry leaves that dies out almost as soon as it is lit. It is the haze that hangs low on the empty streets at night and the halo that crowns the tall lights along the way. It is dahlias and chrysanthemums. It is lumpy quilts wrap around frigid toes and a frosty nose. It is sun-kissed mornings and plump oranges with tangerine jewels. It is the smell of freshly washed woolens and their fuzzy warmth baking in the sun. It is fallen leaves crackling underfoot and the smell of wood smoke.

To me winter in this city will always smell of burning leaves. Perhaps it is because until a few years ago these autumnal-discards were burnt in neat little piles along the roadside. The pungent acrid smell tickled the back of my throat. But mixed with the winter air, it felt cold but smelt of warmth. A warm woody fragrance that would get into my clothes if I got close enough to these winter pyres.

R shares my joy for the cold season. And though hers is a sartorial obsession we were equally excited about the steadily dipping mercury. One evening as we sat in auto speeding down Siri Fort road, considering the nip in the air with apt concentration R said something…..wonderful.

Don’t you think people seem a lot friendlier in winter?

Hmm. Why do you say that?

All this road rage and rabblerousing….it’s because in the summer everyone is so hot and bothered. But in winter…it’s so cold that people can’t be bothered about sticking their noses out of their monkey caps, let alone open their mouths to say something vile.

….I think you’re on to something.

I can’t wait for it to get so cold that my knuckles get jammed! says R here eyes the size of saucers. Hey, move over so I can get under your shawl. My nose is cold.

As we cowered in oner corner of the auto almost cheek-to-cheek with bare chested Sallu bhai, I caught a whiff of wood-smoke from a park nearby. Winter had warmed my heart yet again.

Literary Landscapes

I loved this post on this blog. And it got me thinking - if I could visit any of the places from the imagined landscapes of the books I've read where would I go. It's a charming thought really. And for me, that's what books are all about at the end of the day. About people and places that are so delicately imagined that by the time you're finished with the book they already seem familiar.

So here's my list of top five literary destinations in no particular order:

1) Macondo from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

2) Dehradun and Mussourie from Ruskin Bond's stories

3) Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series

4) Malgudi from R. K. Narayan's Malgudi Days

5) Istanbul from Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red

There are of course many many more like The Faraway Tree from Enid Blyton's stories, Miss Havisham's ruined mansion from Great Expectations, the fantastic cityscapes described by Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Mr. Biswas's house from V.S. Naipaul's A House For Mr. Biswas and Jack's Garden from his Enigma of Arrival, 1968 Prague from The Unbearable Lightness of Being to name a few. Even some not so pleasant lit-scapes like Orwell's dystopia from 1984 - Oceania, the Oklahoma dust bowl from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Limerick in Ireland in the 1930's and 40's from Angela's Ashes.

I'm tempted to list out fictional characters I'd like to meet (from literature and cinema), films I'd like to live in and and works of art I'd like to be! This could take a while.....

(....more later on literary landscapes.)

Delhi Times

I have a bone to pick with this city.

What is it about Delhi that makes even the most demure, polite,well mannered people whip out their claws and bare their teeth?

Delhi is not for the fainthearted. It is exasperating, infuriating and tends to just rub people the wrong way. A colleague at work told me that a man consumed by rage (in all probability due to an altercation over a near-invisible dent on his precious vehicle) started chucking mini boulders at other commuters, damaging a small cavalcade of big cars and even bigger egos. Where he found boulders to hurl on a main road is a question worth asking. (Although my guess is it was thanks to the BRT/MCD/PWD/NDMC or some other acronym that makes good use of the taxpayers' money by digging up every square inch of motorable road) And anyway, the fact that he found it in him to do such a thing is perhaps mundane and would draw less attention than the question of availability-of-boulders-to-throw-at-errant-drivers.

These are the times we live in.

A time when violence is the new normal
A time when we split hairs over whodunnits while a nation becomes a republic overnight
A time when we ask the most banal questions with utmost sincerity....

....and leave it to someone else to bell the cat.

Yet Another Inconvenient Truth

image via 'skineart by njlee

It floated into my stream of consciousness like a post-it tugged loose from cyber space. Cloaked in deceptive simplicity, the ring of truth is unmistakable in this charmingly lucid statement. So true and yet, somehow, so incredibly disconcerting.

To think that life will never make complete and total sense until it has passed you by............

*shudder*

I bet there is an appropriate Calvin-esque retort to this.

Until the next pit stop

Disclaimer: this is not a poem.

The tracks span length and breadth in the soil
over water, land, valley and rock
they leave a marked trail
the train runs snake-like
pregnant with the mass of humanity
lives in tow, trussed up in linen
or boxed up in cheap wood. The lives
dangle, they leap, they sweat
they sleep, they watch, they bore
they shit, they score, they cry
they scratch, they shift, they doze
they laze, they trace, they look
they cook, they eat, they wash
they give and they live
from one place to the next
forever in motion
no full stops no stopping for air
go sit on the roof if you can't
breathe inside where
the babies yell for their mother's breast
and the air is like glue
filled with the acrid smell
of pickle, sweat and soot
let your eye traverse the contours
of resting bodies - bodies in limbo
waiting to move - dormant
till the next stop.
the next stop
life begins anew
and so we play at the charade again
we move, we pull, we push, we shove
we lean, we stall, we, yell, we crush
we smile, we wave, we holler, we pale
we step, we hop, we skip, we jump
we lift, we heave, we ho and we hum.

Never too late?

The past few days have been - to resort to a cliché - an emotional roller coaster ride. To be reminded of the impermanence of life in the most jarring way, is to have a mirror held up to how you've been living it all this while. A spitting image of everything you didn't do. Didn't say. Didn't think of. Until it was too late.

No wonder it's liberating to think of yourself as a mere speck of dust on the face of the earth. Without the weight of responsibility, relationships and the rigour of living, as a speck of star-dust you are free. How cool would it be if you could zoom out at will and look down at the earth from space, and watch your troubles disappear to leave only a great big ball of blue-green? Rationalists can come running with their pitchforks of reason and yell "escapist!" but I am at the moment reveling in the (mis-guided) pleasure of denial.

To try and fudge over the hurt and guilt of not having been the person I should have been.

But I know I cant bury my head in the sand forever. So when I'm ready - when I've healed a little - I'll look up and face reason, reality and all those other things I'm avoiding right now. After all how hard can it be to pick up the phone and call someone you haven't spoken to in years? Or to write that story you've been meaning to write for the longest time? Or to tell someone that you wouldn't be the same without their quiet presence in your life?

Not all that hard. For sure.
And anyway, life is too damn short for me to believe otherwise.

Universal Truth on NGC

The other day, while watching a bewitching series about the birth of our planet Earth on National Geographic Channel I had one of those moments when you realise something and knock yourself on the head for not having thought of it before.

As I watched a make-believe earth hurtle through a make-believe universe I figured that...

The earth is big.
The universe is bigger.
Humans are small.
I am smaller.
My issues are wee.

Life is that simple.
Really.
It is.

Flotsam I Am

So many times I've felt exactly like this. Going somewhere.....reaching nowhere. I haven't yet made up my mind if this is a good thing or something that is to my detriment.

Pre-determined destinations have never been my friends. I continue to drift among strands of thoughts that don't tie up to form a web and ideas that melt as quickly as they form.

One tends to float or amble towards a general destination with no road maps in hand. Reaching nowhere is not exactly a dead end. It's more like coming to a clearing which stretches as far as the eye can see.

So the best thing to do I suppose is to walk on....

List-en to this...

I adore making lists. It gives me an absurd sense of purpose and the (often false) feeling that there is order where there appears to be chaos. But my lists are not always functional. Quite the contrary actually. Riffling through old notebooks, journals and the innumerable pieces of loose paper I hoard (I'll get into that subject some other time) I found list after list of things, names, activities, places, people, words and thoughts. (I was reminded of the film Pillow Book (1996) by director Peter Greenaway. The film had a fascination for lists - lists of a more 'bohemian' nature.)

I was going through the Top Ten section at sensesofcinema.com. Random lists submitted by readers of their top ten favourite films. Thats what got me thinking about lists in the first place. I have never succeeded in making my own "top ten" list of films. It's horribly tempting what with film magazines, e-zines and TV shows throwing lists at you from every direction. Best Directors, Best Films, All Time Greats, Top Ten Film Noir, Best Musicals and so on and so forth. Sight and Sound had asked renowned film directors for their own lists. One of the directors said "I won't put Citizen Kane on that list just because every list in the world tells me to!' Fair enough. And I don't blame said director for the outburst. Lists are sensitive things. You have to be careful what you put on it. When I tried making such a list I felt so burdened that I had to abandon the venture. How do you decide the criteria for such a list? And why only ten? Why not five or fifteen? Since then I have stuck to making lists that come with far less responsibility and where the criteria are not as important as the making of the list itself! It's been good going so far.

A list is ordinarily prioritised. Some things are more important while others are not so. Some things demand immediate attention while others may be content to wait a while. But then there are the lists that are simply there because someone felt like making a list. An idle mind is the perfect source of an odd little list. And the possibilities are endless!

My own lists include:
My favourite words with each letter of the alphabet
The books I simply must read before I die and a list of all the books I have ever read (it's a work in progress)
The films that I think have changed the way I look at cinema
'Indian' English words that I think are indispensable
Names for my dog when I do get one
Hindustani Classical Ragas that give me goosebumps and/or make me cry
Possible subjects for a research paper tracing the material history of an object (e.g. paper, cotton, salt, indigo etc.)
Overrated film classics (next in line is underrated film classics)
Credit lists for my various film projects
Thank you lists for various things
Things I learnt from Mumbai
Words to look up in the dictionary (obsequious, eponymous words like that)
Things to do when hopelessly bored
A list of my most vivid childhood memories

And now......A list of lists! How fitting!