Because I can't hear myself think

The children at the playschool next door are getting an enthusiastic education... a live band is right now playing 'Summer of '69' and other nostalgic numbers that must make a lot of sense. Too bad most of them will be deafened before they pass out into kindergarten.

I wonder at them, the people who're doing the educating, I mean. They ruthlessly cleared every shrub and tree from the place, laid down plastic turf, covered the play area with plastic corrugated sheets and greenhouse nets. Having gotten rid of the teeming birdlife that lived here, they have paper birds hanging all along one wall in the hope that their charges may be charmed and inspired. And to create an illusion of the green outdoors, they now have a large photograph of a rainforest forming a backdrop to their newly renovated swimming pool.

I'm not suggesting the children aren't happy - they are, they are! But I notice they're happiest when they're left alone, not being harangued to come inside and dance to Justin Bieber's Baby every day of the week, or plagued to put up drill displays (it's a pre-school playschool!) or indeed, being subjected to horrendous concerts like today's.

A tangent. About this cartoonist who knows a bit about kids, and dispatches regular reports on her own with warmth, lots of funny and insight.

My neighbours should take this leaf out of Oormila's book, but on second thoughts, it's probably too subtle for them.

Cartoon copyright: Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad.
Her page, Adventures of the Renaissance Mom is on Facebook. Take a look, she's hilarious!

Tanhaiyaan

Youngsters won't remember but a few years ago, when blogging was the thing to do, we played many jolly games, one of which was to tag each other. My cousin Gayathri had a lovely 'master-list of lists' tag for me that I thoroughly enjoyed doing - though I can't remember if I finished it. The first item was "Nine songs I would pick if those were the only pieces I could listen to for the rest of my life".

In my response, at #9, I picked two ghazals: तुम नहीं, ग़म नहीं (Tum nahin, gham nahin), and कौन आएगा यहाँ (Kaun aayega yahaan). This was seven years ago (!) and the list would read differently now but I am intrigued to see that I am still very fond of these songs by Jagjit Singh.

I've always loved his voice - it's gorgeous - but have been less happy with his lack of versatility, even vivacity. Like many singers, Jagjit Singh wasn't a great composer and I thought he'd have better albums if he outsourced that particular skill instead of doing it himself. I don't remember now who set these two songs to music but the arrangements are lovely.

Tum nahin from youtube, where some enthusiastic, kindly soul has strung a series of images to assist the imagination.

वो करम उँगलियों पे गिनते हैं
ज़ुल्म का जिनके कुछ हिसाब नहीं

woh karam ungliyon pe ginte hain
zulm ka jinke kuch hisaab nahin



And Kaun aayega yahaan, from my own repository.

गुल से लिपटी हुई तितली को गिराकर देखो
आँधियों तुमने दरखतों को गिराया होगा


gul se lipti hui titli ko giraakar dekho
aandhiyon tumne darakhton ko giraya hoga

Play the song

Enjoy!

Mai zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya

Moving from winter to warmer times, now that the planet positions herself this way. A change of header:

thumbing a coat
      over my shoulder
cloudless sky 

This haiku by Christopher Herold draws an evocative picture of the carefree man, unburdened by baggage, stepping out into the world with very little. Even the coat he set out with is not needed any more although he holds onto it; there is a spring in his step, as few pesky thoughts in his head as there are clouds in the sky he looks upon. There is nothing holding him back, the world lies ahead... a faint air of adventure pervades the mood but his joy is not dependent on exciting happenings - this moment is enough.

The mood suits me very well indeed. It is a state that I aspire to but, needless to say, it is nowhere near accomplished. But we try, here and there, now and again, to drop our chains.

Also,  this haiku reminds me so much of our film heroes of the 60s. Graduation complete (first class, Ma!) and voila, there's an appointment letter to hand, giving him a plush sinecure as the manager of a well appointed tea estate. A bag in hand, and brandishing a guitar perhaps, our hero would set off, striding up the hill roads with pleasant dreams of a world waiting to be conquered. Love will come his way, he hopes, a love with red lips, thick black tresses that will shade and shield him from the harshness that life will bring.

There are many examples but at this time it would have to be Joy Mukherjee from Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hun. Not the tea estates but the gardens of Srinagar. RIP, Joy.

Back! and minutiae

This last month has been hectic. Shweta and I were away at Isha Yoga Center to attend a series of events - the opulent Mahabharat, the magnificent all-night Mahashivaratri party (which is attended by lakhs of people) and another rather austere program to round it off. An eventful, whirlwind of a month.

Now we are back with several bags of unwashed clothes, a rather daunting water shortage situation and the summer stretched out in front of us. And once more, the familiar problem of bursting cupboards and not having a thing to wear. As the washed clothes come off the clothesline and are folded, I am having to thrust them into the shelves and bang the door shut... and put off the problem of tumbling clothes till the next time I open it. It is quite dreadful. I need to cull and I don't know where to start.

Hyderabad is nice and hot. And dry, thank heavens. It still feels a bit odd because it was cool, even cold, when I left here and now that I return to distinct summerness, my sweatshirts are still handily located, whereas the shorts and singlets are still packed away. Tomorrow, it will ALL be done. ALL of it.
Today, we blog.

Tech niggles

Blogging is, for me, mostly an impulse. I remember that I own a blog, visit it with distant but burgeoning affection, and then, if I have something to say, I click on the button for a new post. At least,  I used to, but now even that is denied me because I have an ad blocker that puts these blogger buttons under that category and leaves my page bare of such easy conveniences. I must now take the trouble to go to the dashboard and formally apply to make a post which is akin to touching my nose like so:

As I tried to upload this doodle, I discovered yet another problem - my Ad Blocker blocked the upload window and, like a overzealous terrier, wouldn't let go till I disabled it.

But an ad blocker I must, must have. Because I'm being haunted by a particular website that I happened to spend substantial periods of time on when I was required to review it. And I committed what the site owners no doubt consider a heinous sin - I lingered at the 'sign up' page and eventually didn't. Now I am being bombarded, harassed by advertisements of this site every direction I turn. The Ad Blocker recognises this site most thoroughly and I am most pleased with it. But in the meantime, what am I to do with its inimical attitude to blogger?

Against a deadline

Sixteen minutes to go to my 7pm soap. What can I say that's worthwhile? Incoherent again.
Thoughts - dark ones - on definitions, labels, the desire for solidification, self-aggrandisement. On how self worth often stands precariously balanced on an assortment of sneers.
Sonu Nigam, Chetan Bhagat, Paulo Coelho - easy targets for anyone. Free potshots for anyone at all who has only learnt what is cool and what is not. And yet, these guys are sturdy enough to prop people as they haul themselves up whatever ladder it is they want to be high up on. Easy, isn't it, to tell everyone how well read you are, how refined your tastes with one look of disgust and a mention of Paulo Coelho? 

Anyway. A link.

Deep thoughts

sleepy.
sleeeeepy.
sleeeeeeeeeeepy.

Thoughts on Rockstar

I saw Rockstar last week. Late night show at the local theatre after a busy day – we were tired and in that strangely receptive stage where the mind doesn’t interrupt too much, butt in to filter, analyse or slot. The viewing left a few swirling images in my head that I have been trying to coalesce into a blog post, but it wouldn’t happen.

I liked it, I think. I’m still not able to write about it coherently but a few points:

• First, very happy to see Imtiaz Ali back – he had lost it, I feel, with Love Aaj Kal… had become too bemused by his previous success but the sureness is back. Rockstar is a very different movie from Socha na tha or Jab we met but the theme – success and satisfaction – which he had touched upon* in Love Aaj Kal is back.
• I found Rockstar to be a rather touching story – Jordan’s that is. Intense but not knowing it… seeking, desperately seeking – not success but maybe fulfilment. Finally success comes, and with it, fame – a many fanged beast. Ranbir Kapoor was a revelation. I liked him in Rocket Singh and I loved his projection of Jordan in this one – angry, vulnerable, nice, spiritual, unwise, urgent, desperate, frustrated, unhappy, explosive. 
• The love story, which I later learnt from an interview, was supposed to echo the Heer Ranjha saga, was a let-down. I felt annoyed that it hijacked the second half, dragging us away from the singer’s transformative journey. Nargis Fakhri, though pretty, simply didn’t hold. Some shots simply shouldn’t have been okayed.
• I see now that Heer was necessarily required to be married to keep with the love story it was shadowing, but I thought her character annoyingly vacillating. Unaware, unfair in that despicably cowardly way, that typical portrayal of femme fatales – the ‘Jules et Jim’ variety, Shweta calls them - capricious, wilful, unreasonable, stupid, destructive.
• I loved, simply loved the Hazrat Nizamuddin sections. How amazing, how liberating to live like that, learn like that, be like that.
• The music was disappointing – it held in the movie but I don’t remember any of them, which for AR Rahman is very surprising. I think he needs to return to melody. Urgently.
• And then, of course, Shammi Kapoor, who in a brief role, so nicely deepens our understanding of the Rockstar’s inner quest.

*PS. Just an aside about this song from Love Aaj Kal, which leaped outside its context for me (I rather disliked the movie). About the things we think we want and what happens when we get them. It’s not very subtle and very few of us go that spare at the first sign of boredom but hey, well, it’s one song.

The listener, who listens in the snow

Moving from the eternal:

sab dharti kaagaj karun, lekhni sab banrai
saath samudra ki masih karun, Guru gun likha na jaaye
- Kabir

to the seasonal again. Haiku poet David Caruso saying:

snowflakes . . .
no two winters
quite the same

I have held this poem close to my heart for a couple of years now. That we don’t actually get any snow here is quite beside the point; the reputation of the snow flake precedes it, the very word brings up a fragile, ephemeral pattern of irreplicable beauty.

Snowflakes. The poet throws in the word – and the world of the poem. Then as you settle into a generic mind of winter, he reminds us that no two are quite the same. He is very right. I can remember the winters of at least four years past, and I fancifully find myself in a tableau. In something like a snow globe, perhaps. Standing stock still in the middle of winter, and the events drifting around me – one year’s events nothing like another’s. And I, filmed in gentle time-lapse, every time caught up in new insights, losing and gaining, dissolving and building, changing, changing, changing.  

The winter of 2009 comes to mind again, brings not quite pain but the memory of pain:

a nursing home blanket
over all her sharp edges —
midwinter

- Jennifer Gomoll Popolis

This winter is going to be different too – it may even be beyond words.

Tailorbird Update

We were late with bringing in the clothes from the clothesline and the buckets, and I have frightened Mr India away.

Of course, you know India from here. We hadn't given him a name then, not quite realising that this was to be such a long relationship as to require these niceties. But he has been visiting regularly, putting the back verandah out of use for us every evening. The name was bestowed recently by my 7-year-old niece who caught sight of him and then asked to see the species properly in the book. 'Oh, he's green and white and orange,' she said, 'I think you should call him India.' So we do.

Today, he was alert but stayed as long as I moved about some distance away but I was too ambitious - I reached for buckets less than four feet from him and he flew off. He'll be back, of course and, what's more, bring the missus with him. (Yes, our bachelor has settled down and our hopes that he would leave to make his adventurous way about the world have evaporated, for he brings her daily, and we will probably see their fledgelings too.) Now that winter has set in, he comes earlier every day. It used to be 6.30pm, now he's settling in by 5.45pm. He gets very bashful if we catch him at him - awkwardness at this shameless infringement, no doubt - but by eight or nine, he hardly notices us unless we are very loud.

Restless

Koi baat karo, koi baat karo...
koi kushboo jaisi baat karo

Poorna chandrama gagan viraaje

full moon
my monthly loss
for words
-Yvonne Cabalona

Moon-struck today. It is the season of Sharad... the dark, thick blankets of cloud that hid it from view these past months have been swept away, the moon now has only some wisps attached to it, framing it for artistic effect.

I am more receptive to the full moon tonight than I can ever remember. It seemed the perfect, the absolutely perfect occasion to share this gem from Veena Sahasrabuddhe as she cascades rippling moonlight through the ether.

Raag Madhukauns, I understand, is a creation of Ustad Salamat Ali Khan sahab and I have had the immense pleasure of hearing a magical rendition of it by him and his brother Nazakat Ali Khan. But tonight, you must hear this bandish: