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:

This day, that age

My mother had been excited about turning 60. She always had a shrewd head for money matters and she had been looking forward to the better interest rates she would get as a senior citizen. Luckily she did turn 60 if only for a couple of months. This day, two years ago, she knew she was dying. She had a cake, friends around her, close family visiting, a beloved nephew who flew in to see her, a music system gift from her brother that distracted her from pain in the final weeks ... it was a good last birthday.

Happy Birthday, Maw! You know the prayers I have for you.

Tasmayi Sri Gurave Namah

New header for this day. A doha that keeps coming back to me, more often these days. Kabir describing, or rather, declaring his inability to describe the glory of the Guru. He is grandiloquent, almost:

सब धरती कागज करूँ, लेखनी सब बनराई
साथ समुद्र की मसीह करूँ, गुरु गुण लिखा ना जाए

Sab dharti kaagaj karun, lekhni sab banrai
Saath samudra ki masih karun, Guru gun likha na jaaye

Even if I made all of earth the paper, pens of all its trees
Sooty ink, the seven oceans... the Guru could not be described.


Clearly there is nothing to be said, except:

 नमो नमः श्री गुरु पादुकाभ्याम...

Ganapati Bappa!

It's Ganesh 'chanda' time again and I have just now not managed to shoo away the third set of donation seekers for the morning. We can't remember all the faces and have no way of knowing if we've paid this party before - but Rs 20 per group is not too large a sum for the entertainment they provide, so we're grinning and bearing it.

One bright, hopeful fellow yesterday prompted my father to return to his wallet and fork out more. I was about to fortify Pater's defence before I heard the rest of it: "21 rupees iyyali, uncul!" Chastened, my dad went back to the coin dabba and gave them a rupee more. Then, the group insisted that he should have a receipt. Father was embarrassed to receive a receipt for such a small amount but our donees were determined to be very proper.

My turn today to pay one lot. I wasn't sure if this was a repeat and squinted at the previous receipt for some hint of name or precise location of this pandal. It yielded no such information. A nice colour paper. The inevitable icon of Ganesha to one corner, 'Sri Ganesh Utsava Samithi' in Telugu and also, 'Chanda raseedu'. Signed 'Teesukunna vaari santakamu'. All very discreet.

Anyway, I gave them the usual quota, this time armed with the necessary coin. They waved the receipt book questioningly. I nodded. They spelt the name and amount out laboriously, didn't bother to sign at all under 'Teesukunna vaari santakamu' and tore it off with a flourish.

"Ee receipt books ekkada doruktayi?" I asked. The faces brimmed with satisfaction. "Marwari kottula doruktayi. 12 rupees."

Safai e qalb

The region of the heart is a luminous space, pulsing a pleasing cadence. Usually.

But here is let in inky fumes of red-black substance! Blinding, spreading haze. The creature darts in frantic evasion but the discoloration grows. Diffuses and grows till it gathers you up in its swirl. Rest quiet, if you can; do not flap about: a limp acquiescence may save you yet. But you won't, of course.
…
Once the black storm is done, you clean house. Pump in fresh goodness by way of sweet breath. Or by expelling the poison from the pores. But waiting is good – the muck leaches out eventually, leaving, if you’re lucky, no trace. The shrine is pleasant once more. Only, a little wary.

Khala ka ghar nahin!*

Header change. From this haiku

in a nut shell
there is never
enough room
-Yu Chang

I move to another:

walking alone —
my face
disassembles
-Hilary Tann

This little poem appealed to me whenever I read it. It is true, isn't it, that we are more sharply in focus in company, that we float at bit, blur about the edges when we are by ourselves, wake up sometimes not knowing who we are?

I jump to another thought now but there are invisible connections. When I was a young girl, I told myself that I was an individualist. That the West had it right - the person mattered, being subsumed in community as we run things here in the East was a scary idea. It was, of course, self preservation speaking. Over time there has been a volte face. I have come to admire the Eastern way. Did you know that the word dehaat (village) comes from deh, Hindi for the body? The village is seen as an organic entity, the people who dwell there do so like the many limbs and organs, all varied, all important, all integral. Of necessity then, the components must be more fluid, more malleable - less individual.

Swami Tejomayananda calls it sattvika jnana.

The hands, the head and the legs are all different, but in my understanding I know that all these form part of “me”... Suppose my finger accidentally pokes my eye, I will not cut off the finger because it has hurt my eye. I will use the same finger to rub my eye and console it. Also, if by mistake we bite the tongue, do we remove the teeth and punish them? No, because the teeth are also part of myself and are just as dear to me as every other part of my body. When there is a sense of oneness, there is love.

I have come to see that this letting go of oneself, this taking apart of 'me' as a highly desirable thing. It is easier said than done. Walking alone, my face might disassemble slightly, even better to sit with my face raised to the skies, then it does dissolve a bit.... but so difficult, so difficult!

In today's Deccan Chronicle, Sadia Dehlvi speaks about the whirling dervishes. She quotes Kabir Helminski, a reputed contemporary scholar and shaykh of the Mevlevi Order, who describes the state of the one who whirls: “There are many dimensions to this experience. Firstly, one has to be able to turn, and to do that one has to become empty inside. Empty, free from all internal dialogues, but fully aware. A state of balance is required to turn on an axis, so centred in one’s own being”.

Empty but aware. It seems to me, we can do nothing till we are able to hold contradictions comfortably, go nowhere till we transcend them.

___________
* From Kabir:
Kabir yeh ghar prem ka, khala ka ghar nahin
sees utaare haath kar so pasey ghar mahin

कबीर यह घर प्रेम का, ख़ाला का घर नाहीं
सीस उतारे हाथ कर सो पसे घर माहीं

Kabir, this is the house of love, not your aunt's that you may come and go
You must hand over your head; only such a one may enter