CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE
from New York Times, 23rd December 2008
This article appeared in Hindustan Times today, back page; and got me wondering whether the usual sports news there was a better way to fill that space, or was this?
Why am I linking it here? What does that say about me?
My friend is doing a project on Islamophobia. We were talking about this prescribed topic and its appearance in a course on Conflict Studies;
Is discoursifying this making it worse or better?
More real or less?
It's all very murky.
But meanwhile, I don't think the average Big Mac-eating American would see this book as a good thing.
Comes to the North
Death comes to the North
by inches
Like frostbite
Turning everything black
Starting with the ear
That hears the news.
Far away from Coimbatore,
Where most of the family lives
and dies
In a place called Vanaprastha;
an old age colony,
very popular.
This stage in life
- and the next -
Is for meditation,
concentration,
renunciation -
In the forest, only bare essentials.
You mean
Concentration Camp?
We avoid eating tonight's meal
Lest our lukewarm sentiment
should make the food unpalatable.
Our roots died today;
We go on,
Like headless chickens.
Death comes to the North
at two rupees a minute,
relentless, like the cat
that tries every morning
to enter the kitchen,
warm milk.
Death comes to the North,
Briefly,
a syringeful of anaesthesia,
one prick and you go numb.
Death comes to the North,
then goes away,
flying south for the winter.
It is too cold here
for news of Death to cause a stir.
by inches
Like frostbite
Turning everything black
Starting with the ear
That hears the news.
Far away from Coimbatore,
Where most of the family lives
and dies
In a place called Vanaprastha;
an old age colony,
very popular.
This stage in life
- and the next -
Is for meditation,
concentration,
renunciation -
In the forest, only bare essentials.
You mean
Concentration Camp?
We avoid eating tonight's meal
Lest our lukewarm sentiment
should make the food unpalatable.
Our roots died today;
We go on,
Like headless chickens.
Death comes to the North
at two rupees a minute,
relentless, like the cat
that tries every morning
to enter the kitchen,
warm milk.
Death comes to the North,
Briefly,
a syringeful of anaesthesia,
one prick and you go numb.
Death comes to the North,
then goes away,
flying south for the winter.
It is too cold here
for news of Death to cause a stir.
A Day In The Life: Moving - 2
My parents were married in August 1980. My grandfather was in Sudan just before that, the next posting in line for him was Srinagar. His boss told him,
Dekho, being a South Indian you may not want to live in Srinagar, but that is the only vacancy just now. Your son is to be married, you take leave for a few months. I’ll sanction three-four months leave for you.
After the marriage, Thatha was restless, and unused leave is encashable. So he went to Srinagar, with my grandmother and their two daughters, one of whom went to school there then, at Presentation Convent, and the other, who had a Masters degree by then, had nothing to do at home till come next posting (Cuttack, in Orissa) and joining a B.Ed. and then a teaching job.
Thatha had promised Patti (Dadi) that he would take her to Srinagar when he got back from abroad. It was inadvertently prophetic.
The bulk of their saamaan was on its way, by long, winding roads up mountains and down them again. They had some ten-odd suitcases, and stood around at the busstop;
Saab, houseboat? Houseboat? Haan, saamaan hum le lenge.
Before they found the bungalow they later moved into, they lived in a houseboat.
God knows where they got water from, Anyway there was one tap... There is an island in Dal Lake. We were parked near the island. We were going to a Gujarati place to eat; after a few days a Kashmiri woman started to come and make roti for us, cook for us, on the houseboat itself.
Yesterday I bought a book of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry. For a change, I found a book I was looking for in one shot. Telling S, I find that a Kashmiri friend of his had discovered the poet a few years back, and was ecstatic by this find.
What is it that binds us to our roots? I feel a rush of oldworld pride when I say we are Palakkad Iyers, makes me feel like I belong to some ancient clan, older than living memory, older than time and place can say. I feel a tug, like the tug of a kitestring, when I am home, in Lucknow; to fly away and be tied down.
As I crossed a bridge today, on the way home
Flying over a sabji mandi
I spied a kite
Stuck flapping dustily
between two wires, power lines,
And below me a train flew into my line of vision.
Symbolism washed over me,
a wave to drown in;
Patang-baazi is this:
Being stuck gathering dust
between two strings.
Thatha spent ten days in Jammu once, long ago. The river, he says, is cold; it comes from the mountains, from frozen peaks. And Jammu is hot in the summer. This is what you do in summer in Jammu, he says; you sit on the riverbank, buy a mango or two (there will be people selling mangoes right there, just for you; and you can take the office car and go with the Assistant Engineer for company), wrap it in a handkerchief and toss it into the river.
Cold mango, hot day.
I don’t live in the part of the city, or inhabit the world of patang-baazi, kiteflying. I am an urbanista, it seems.
I opened a book of poetry by Anurag Mathur, of all people; having read only The Inscrutable Americans, I was curious.
It's not a new sentiment. In 2006 or 2007, I was writing:
Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter that much to me, in real terms where my family, “split establishment” lives, since I don’t live at home now anyway.
It's never a new sentiment; but a story only becomes your own when you've worn it for a while, broken it in, and had corns on your feet to remind you.
Dekho, being a South Indian you may not want to live in Srinagar, but that is the only vacancy just now. Your son is to be married, you take leave for a few months. I’ll sanction three-four months leave for you.
After the marriage, Thatha was restless, and unused leave is encashable. So he went to Srinagar, with my grandmother and their two daughters, one of whom went to school there then, at Presentation Convent, and the other, who had a Masters degree by then, had nothing to do at home till come next posting (Cuttack, in Orissa) and joining a B.Ed. and then a teaching job.
Thatha had promised Patti (Dadi) that he would take her to Srinagar when he got back from abroad. It was inadvertently prophetic.
The bulk of their saamaan was on its way, by long, winding roads up mountains and down them again. They had some ten-odd suitcases, and stood around at the busstop;
Saab, houseboat? Houseboat? Haan, saamaan hum le lenge.
Before they found the bungalow they later moved into, they lived in a houseboat.
God knows where they got water from, Anyway there was one tap... There is an island in Dal Lake. We were parked near the island. We were going to a Gujarati place to eat; after a few days a Kashmiri woman started to come and make roti for us, cook for us, on the houseboat itself.
Yesterday I bought a book of Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry. For a change, I found a book I was looking for in one shot. Telling S, I find that a Kashmiri friend of his had discovered the poet a few years back, and was ecstatic by this find.
What is it that binds us to our roots? I feel a rush of oldworld pride when I say we are Palakkad Iyers, makes me feel like I belong to some ancient clan, older than living memory, older than time and place can say. I feel a tug, like the tug of a kitestring, when I am home, in Lucknow; to fly away and be tied down.
As I crossed a bridge today, on the way home
Flying over a sabji mandi
I spied a kite
Stuck flapping dustily
between two wires, power lines,
And below me a train flew into my line of vision.
Symbolism washed over me,
a wave to drown in;
Patang-baazi is this:
Being stuck gathering dust
between two strings.
Thatha spent ten days in Jammu once, long ago. The river, he says, is cold; it comes from the mountains, from frozen peaks. And Jammu is hot in the summer. This is what you do in summer in Jammu, he says; you sit on the riverbank, buy a mango or two (there will be people selling mangoes right there, just for you; and you can take the office car and go with the Assistant Engineer for company), wrap it in a handkerchief and toss it into the river.
Cold mango, hot day.
I don’t live in the part of the city, or inhabit the world of patang-baazi, kiteflying. I am an urbanista, it seems.
I opened a book of poetry by Anurag Mathur, of all people; having read only The Inscrutable Americans, I was curious.
He who belongs everywhere,
Belongs, I fear, nowhere.
Where do I belong?
It's not a new sentiment. In 2006 or 2007, I was writing:
I belong everywhere
And so I belong nowhere.
Who am I?
Meanwhile, it doesn’t matter that much to me, in real terms where my family, “split establishment” lives, since I don’t live at home now anyway.
It's never a new sentiment; but a story only becomes your own when you've worn it for a while, broken it in, and had corns on your feet to remind you.
A Day In The Life: Moving - 1
It was 5° C in the morning today. I didn’t believe Appa when he told me, but then at 10:00 am the thermometer outside said 8°C and there was no denying it.
Yahin itni thand ho rahi hai toh Jammu hi na chale jaayen?
The transfer order was long due. We moved to Lucknow in 1996. The first posting that made Appa move away, and made us a “split establishment” (which is what Amma says when she’s talking about buying home-supplies, groceries) was a transfer to Ranikhet. Baba’s board exams that year. I was in Class 8, so close enough to my own first boards for the folks to not want the kids to change schools. That was in 2000.
Since then Appa has had a series of postings in Inspection and Management Audit, which made his travelling light even more spartan than usual. These were postings of a few months each, sometimes even a few weeks only, taking him upto Trivandrum and back as far north as Kufri; from Calcutta to Surat and everywhere in between.
Last Sunday, he had nothing to do. Rare, since when he’d come home between assignments there’d usually be some repairs or the other to be done, some pending doctor’s appointment of my grandfather to attend to, car insurance payments; the list is long. Last Sunday, he made lunch early, called the car, and took out one of the older model airplanes, a Cessna, to go flying.
Chalo, chalte hain.
He and I drove to Butchery Ground which is on the way to the airport; in between he says, pithily,
Hum yahaan ’82 se aa rahe hain. Yeh sab chhod ke kahin aur chale jaayen?
I was walking around in the mall yesterday, desperately looking for a familiar face. What does Lucknow still have that holds me, like a promise cracked already, about to be broken? There are no reasons, perhaps; at least none stronger than the irrational love that one can have for the smell of the fog.
Kohre ki khushbu, if you can call it that, I’m told.
The other day V came over. We started counting the years; with V now so much of the leap that my heart makes every time I see him (even days when I want to see no one, least of all someone like him, whom I can no longer talk to) is the sheer childish joy that comes from seeing a memory, alive. He counted up to 12, and we were suitably impressed with ourselves. I cannot talk to him like I can talk to my friends in the hostel, but this is of course stating the obvious. Even if our meetings are now a mixture of excavations into a shared past (which sentiment is turning apocryphal) and a floundering attempt to understand the divergent, alien present, my heart still leaps.
The long overdue transfer order has come;
Chandigarh Circle, it says.
Where in the circle? we ask.
Jammu.
Yahin itni thand ho rahi hai toh Jammu hi na chale jaayen?
The transfer order was long due. We moved to Lucknow in 1996. The first posting that made Appa move away, and made us a “split establishment” (which is what Amma says when she’s talking about buying home-supplies, groceries) was a transfer to Ranikhet. Baba’s board exams that year. I was in Class 8, so close enough to my own first boards for the folks to not want the kids to change schools. That was in 2000.
Since then Appa has had a series of postings in Inspection and Management Audit, which made his travelling light even more spartan than usual. These were postings of a few months each, sometimes even a few weeks only, taking him upto Trivandrum and back as far north as Kufri; from Calcutta to Surat and everywhere in between.
Last Sunday, he had nothing to do. Rare, since when he’d come home between assignments there’d usually be some repairs or the other to be done, some pending doctor’s appointment of my grandfather to attend to, car insurance payments; the list is long. Last Sunday, he made lunch early, called the car, and took out one of the older model airplanes, a Cessna, to go flying.
Chalo, chalte hain.
He and I drove to Butchery Ground which is on the way to the airport; in between he says, pithily,
Hum yahaan ’82 se aa rahe hain. Yeh sab chhod ke kahin aur chale jaayen?
I was walking around in the mall yesterday, desperately looking for a familiar face. What does Lucknow still have that holds me, like a promise cracked already, about to be broken? There are no reasons, perhaps; at least none stronger than the irrational love that one can have for the smell of the fog.
Kohre ki khushbu, if you can call it that, I’m told.
The other day V came over. We started counting the years; with V now so much of the leap that my heart makes every time I see him (even days when I want to see no one, least of all someone like him, whom I can no longer talk to) is the sheer childish joy that comes from seeing a memory, alive. He counted up to 12, and we were suitably impressed with ourselves. I cannot talk to him like I can talk to my friends in the hostel, but this is of course stating the obvious. Even if our meetings are now a mixture of excavations into a shared past (which sentiment is turning apocryphal) and a floundering attempt to understand the divergent, alien present, my heart still leaps.
The long overdue transfer order has come;
Chandigarh Circle, it says.
Where in the circle? we ask.
Jammu.
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