There was a dream I used to have, it was set in my bedroom, the big old one in the block of flats, number 11. There were snakes on the floor, and scorpions. Not that I have ever seen one, but I knew what it was. And most of the floor was on fire too; everywhere you could step there was danger.
A was talking about Kukrail the other day, Lucknow’s crocodile park. How could I forget the dreams, the ones with ghariyals, little baby ones, like lizards, but so much more hardy, better survival skills, better teeth. Little ones in glass domes, giant covered petridishes.
Kukrail is famous for two things. This park, and a naala.
In number 11, where our phone number, I remember, was 611378, which later became 2-611378; there were lizards. There are lizards here too, in 3/42, but there is no me, not the same one who used to collect lizards’ eggs and watch them.
There was a little soapdish, the kind you get in fancy hotels (this one was from the Zürich Hilton, as it happens), in which I had some suds solution and would put in eggs and wash them.
There were weevils too, that used to breed in the storeroom. They had a home too, the flat sheet of sponge that I took to them.
We forgot how to live with critters everywhere. Nobody particularly enjoyed it, except me, I think, but we were never as overly bothered by creepy crawlies until now.
Yesterday there were ants. Everywhere. Crawling up your leg, drinking your sharbat, eating your lunch, sharing the bath with you.
I might have had nightmares; I’m pretty sure I would have, had I slept at all. Dreams of my retribution, death by ants, the man eaters that even Livingstone would have feared. Fifty or more carcasses underfoot and a hole full of Flit.
Urban memories have no depth; perhaps if I had lived in Kaladaikurichi or in Gangaikondan like my old Thatha, the ants might have moved me to put some aata out for them to eat. In this house that had begun to cave in many years ago, the ants are a false friend; crowds with no depth, only blackness. No quaint legends here. They can move you, yes; to call pest control.
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Memoirs: The One And Only work of mine that ever went into print
Click on images to read. Text not typed out for copyright reasons.
I wrote this short story for an on-the-spot thing in 2004, it got selected in a national contest and happened to win.
Sigh. I still bask in old glory. Drat it. No new glory!
And please excuse the couple of typos. No editing allowed, you see. Click on images to enlarge to readable size.
उन्होंने मस्जिद गिरा दी, ना
[
Much as I wanted this account to be as honest as possible, it didn't seem right to extend that transparency to the lives of those about whom I was writing. The details about my family are all true, anything marked with an asterisk (*) has been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned.
The issue of why I felt the need to make this change can fill many more posts!
]
Seher Khan* is a remarkable woman. I don't know her maiden name, in fact I don't know much about her at all; you wouldn't think she was anything special if you went to her house, because it just isn't done, talking about oneself, and one's experience(s) to strangers, especially if you are the lady of the house.
But even then, I know aunty is remarkable, because I know her daughter. To call Sabah* my best friend would be understating our relationship greatly. Sabah and I grew up together, both feeling slightly out of place in Lucknow; I had come from Lagos and she from Bombay. Our baby pictures look exactly the same, uncannily so; we were both born of displaced urban confusion, unlike most of our classmates here.
I knew some things: aunty knew how to make hummus, she used to watch Happy Days and The Bold and the Beautiful on TV, read novels before bed. When I went to their house for the first time I discovered a Turkish cook-book. She and her siblings had grown up in Saudi Arabia*, where her father was working then. As kids, things tend to become exaggerated in our heads, I always thought (until recently) that she was Arab*.
She was different, but not evidently so, she might have just been a cool mom. Meanwhile Sabah, her sister Sameera* (whom I have never managed to call baaji or aapa, she's just a year older than us), her younger sister Shazia* (who has played, literally, in my lap, when she was little) and I got to know each other.
I don't know how prudent it is to put up such an account on the internet, or whether I have any right to give details, but I cannot tell her story without her name, her identity.
[This post has subsequently been edited]
So let me put it this way; I know from Sabah's accounts (from the spoken or the unspoken?) that her mother has been a tower of strength and support for her daughters through some trying times as far as their education is concerned, and had managed to yet create and re-create herself: she recently finished her BA in Sociology by correspondence, she is more in touch with current affairs than most people from my generation or hers, she keeps herself on her toes, notwithstanding the trouble her back gives her.
Sabah is not home these days, she is in the second year of her BA at a reputed college* in Mumbai; we will not graduate in the same year, since she, like so many others, dropped a year to prepare for Medical. Needless to say, she is not in that line of work now.
Amma and I went to her house the day after Id, we didn't get a chance to go on the day of the festival. Aunty and Amma, we've always felt, (Sabah and I), have some connection - they seem to understand each other. Perhaps simply because two things not equal to anything else may be equal to each other...
On Id, your identity is so much more pronounced. It is not a simple matter of going to someone's house, Id milna for me (and I think Amma also feels this way) is a powerful statement, one that we will have failed in making if we do not manage to do. It was after the Delhi blasts too. I don't remember how the conversation started, or where it was heading, but she began to tell us of her days in Delhi right after she got married: she was talking about 1984, the riots. How it was unbearable, the stifling atmosphere, shops shutting at 7 pm, not a soul on the streets. How it could be me next.
We were in Nigeria when Babri Masjid happened, Appa had just been posted to Lagos, we had moved there in September, 1992. It didn't mean much to us, I think. I wouldn't know, I suppose, I was very young, but I think it's pretty telling that I hadn't so much as heard of the riots till I was maybe 14 or so, an certainly not of the demolition till a little later still. I saw Mani Ratnam's film Bombay I think in 2005, and couldn't believe my eyes. And Bombay is not, mind you, a very scary film, in that its ending is so very idealistic. Even Amma mentioned once that till they saw the movie, the magnitude of the massacre had not registered..
For the Khans, I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like.
I just phoned Sabah to ask her where they were in December '92, January '93, she remembers being in Bombay on vacation, they were living in Lucknow by then. They were at her naani's place, in Andheri. Sabah would have been about to turn 5 in a few months. She remembers talk of somebody's house getting burned down. She knows the stories of Hindus, the neighbours, going to camps at night, camps run by the Shiv Sena.
I don't know if I remember right, but I think Seher aunty was in Lucknow when she heard the news that the masjid had been broken; she and other women were supposed to stay indoors, at some safe place, in case things got out of hand.
In Saudia, she said, everybody was Muslim...your identity became "Indian". She never thought then that the kind of horrors that have been perpetrated in India now, were possible in India. It can't happen in my country.
When she heard what was happening, she thought, it can't happen in India, no, not if it's illegal, the law's in place, it can't happen.
उन्होंने मस्जिद गिरा दी, ना
It was a drastic loss of faith for me.
Later, she was talking about the visitors on Id, how they display their austerity, the stricter you are keeping every roza and praying religiously, the more your brownie points. You are looked down upon if the display in your house is less then that in your neighbours'. Tiny children are shown off if they keep fast.
I think my mother was a genius!
She says this laughingly, but the irony is not that her mother, Sabah's naani was a genius, but that she would never be ackowledged as one, not for her views. Her children were brought up learning the principles of Islam, they grew up following the tenets of Islam without knowing it. Then whatever rituals they choose to follow are that: chosen.
This does not mean Seher Khan is an iconoclast. I don't think she is. The customs in their house are not broken. But where is the scope for free thought within religion?
She fears she'll be next. My mother does too. They feel like targets, sitting ducks. Why? Because they are the liberals. They enemy within the home, the traitors. How does one have a balanced opinion without feeling threatened?
The Shiv Sena can catch me and put me in jail if I meet my boyfriend on Valentine's Day.
It seems to be hep to be an atheist. Or agnostic. Or one of those categories of unbelievers. What if I want to believe in GOD, and in a HINDU GOD, but still retain my relationship with my friends, people I love?
There are comments you hear, in your own house. There are BJP supporters in your workplace. There are Hindu children who know no better than to ape what they hear, and these children hate Muslims.
I remember a particularly self-righteous child, one year my junior, in school. I was in class 5, I think, so he would have been in class 4. We were in the choir group and the swimming team together. I was once (between song practices), describing दही चावल (dahi-chaaval, curd-rice, a quintessentially Tamil meal-ender) to somebody. Then for some reason I started saying that the South Indian Diwali is not on the same day as it is in Lucknow, because the culture is different there. In a way that only children can pronounce judgement, he said, snootily, "इनके तो cultures ही अलग होते हैं!"
Why have I never forgotten this? I know it is the nonsense of a ten-year old, but then I wonder. This is too silly to even be quoted, really. But I still wonder.
You are still a child at 14-15. There were children in the Bombay riots. Rioting. I'm not talking of the victims, although they are victims in a rather peculiar sense...it wasn't like only 50 year old पुजारीs (pujaaris, Hindu priests) were in the riot. It wasn't Hindu fundamentalists. They might have started it, but they didn't do it all. It was people like you and me.
Listen to your children. Watch out for what they say, because we often don't check ourselves before we make a prejudiced remark; we don't know we made it. Watch out for what they say, they say what we say. Catch yourself. Don't do it, don't look at the dashboard or the windscreen, from the inside of the auto-rickshaw, to see whether there is a 786 anywhere, or a Hanuman, a Jai Mata Di, or a Guru Nanak.
I don't know what my point is; or whether this was supposed to have a point.
The liberals, the fundamentalists, they're all the same. Bottomline, peer pressure doesn't happen only to teenagers. How far are we from being fundamentalists? How close to it?
I added this article [written by Samina Mishra] to my blog as an act of...solidarity? I don't know exactly how to say it. I didn't think the article was making any point. I told Sabah as much. But now I realise that it is incredibly difficult to make a point. To take a stand.
It has taken me years to write this; I have been wanting to write about my relationship with Sabah for so long. Why has is taken so long for me to write it? I'm a writer, after all!
When we were about 10-12, our group in school (it was a co-ed, but groups are one sex only!) had me (Tamil), Sabah (Muslim), Mouli* (Bengali) and Chanchal* (Punjabi). We were really proud of this. We knew we were different. We are, naturally. But we were happy about it. How strange it sounds now.
Why is Seher Khan a remarkable woman? I don't know exactly, but she certainly inspired me to write this.
Much as I wanted this account to be as honest as possible, it didn't seem right to extend that transparency to the lives of those about whom I was writing. The details about my family are all true, anything marked with an asterisk (*) has been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned.
The issue of why I felt the need to make this change can fill many more posts!
]
Seher Khan* is a remarkable woman. I don't know her maiden name, in fact I don't know much about her at all; you wouldn't think she was anything special if you went to her house, because it just isn't done, talking about oneself, and one's experience(s) to strangers, especially if you are the lady of the house.
But even then, I know aunty is remarkable, because I know her daughter. To call Sabah* my best friend would be understating our relationship greatly. Sabah and I grew up together, both feeling slightly out of place in Lucknow; I had come from Lagos and she from Bombay. Our baby pictures look exactly the same, uncannily so; we were both born of displaced urban confusion, unlike most of our classmates here.
I knew some things: aunty knew how to make hummus, she used to watch Happy Days and The Bold and the Beautiful on TV, read novels before bed. When I went to their house for the first time I discovered a Turkish cook-book. She and her siblings had grown up in Saudi Arabia*, where her father was working then. As kids, things tend to become exaggerated in our heads, I always thought (until recently) that she was Arab*.
She was different, but not evidently so, she might have just been a cool mom. Meanwhile Sabah, her sister Sameera* (whom I have never managed to call baaji or aapa, she's just a year older than us), her younger sister Shazia* (who has played, literally, in my lap, when she was little) and I got to know each other.
I don't know how prudent it is to put up such an account on the internet, or whether I have any right to give details, but I cannot tell her story without her name, her identity.
[This post has subsequently been edited]
So let me put it this way; I know from Sabah's accounts (from the spoken or the unspoken?) that her mother has been a tower of strength and support for her daughters through some trying times as far as their education is concerned, and had managed to yet create and re-create herself: she recently finished her BA in Sociology by correspondence, she is more in touch with current affairs than most people from my generation or hers, she keeps herself on her toes, notwithstanding the trouble her back gives her.
Sabah is not home these days, she is in the second year of her BA at a reputed college* in Mumbai; we will not graduate in the same year, since she, like so many others, dropped a year to prepare for Medical. Needless to say, she is not in that line of work now.
Amma and I went to her house the day after Id, we didn't get a chance to go on the day of the festival. Aunty and Amma, we've always felt, (Sabah and I), have some connection - they seem to understand each other. Perhaps simply because two things not equal to anything else may be equal to each other...
On Id, your identity is so much more pronounced. It is not a simple matter of going to someone's house, Id milna for me (and I think Amma also feels this way) is a powerful statement, one that we will have failed in making if we do not manage to do. It was after the Delhi blasts too. I don't remember how the conversation started, or where it was heading, but she began to tell us of her days in Delhi right after she got married: she was talking about 1984, the riots. How it was unbearable, the stifling atmosphere, shops shutting at 7 pm, not a soul on the streets. How it could be me next.
We were in Nigeria when Babri Masjid happened, Appa had just been posted to Lagos, we had moved there in September, 1992. It didn't mean much to us, I think. I wouldn't know, I suppose, I was very young, but I think it's pretty telling that I hadn't so much as heard of the riots till I was maybe 14 or so, an certainly not of the demolition till a little later still. I saw Mani Ratnam's film Bombay I think in 2005, and couldn't believe my eyes. And Bombay is not, mind you, a very scary film, in that its ending is so very idealistic. Even Amma mentioned once that till they saw the movie, the magnitude of the massacre had not registered..
For the Khans, I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like.
I just phoned Sabah to ask her where they were in December '92, January '93, she remembers being in Bombay on vacation, they were living in Lucknow by then. They were at her naani's place, in Andheri. Sabah would have been about to turn 5 in a few months. She remembers talk of somebody's house getting burned down. She knows the stories of Hindus, the neighbours, going to camps at night, camps run by the Shiv Sena.
I don't know if I remember right, but I think Seher aunty was in Lucknow when she heard the news that the masjid had been broken; she and other women were supposed to stay indoors, at some safe place, in case things got out of hand.
In Saudia, she said, everybody was Muslim...your identity became "Indian". She never thought then that the kind of horrors that have been perpetrated in India now, were possible in India. It can't happen in my country.
When she heard what was happening, she thought, it can't happen in India, no, not if it's illegal, the law's in place, it can't happen.
उन्होंने मस्जिद गिरा दी, ना
It was a drastic loss of faith for me.
Later, she was talking about the visitors on Id, how they display their austerity, the stricter you are keeping every roza and praying religiously, the more your brownie points. You are looked down upon if the display in your house is less then that in your neighbours'. Tiny children are shown off if they keep fast.
I think my mother was a genius!
She says this laughingly, but the irony is not that her mother, Sabah's naani was a genius, but that she would never be ackowledged as one, not for her views. Her children were brought up learning the principles of Islam, they grew up following the tenets of Islam without knowing it. Then whatever rituals they choose to follow are that: chosen.
This does not mean Seher Khan is an iconoclast. I don't think she is. The customs in their house are not broken. But where is the scope for free thought within religion?
She fears she'll be next. My mother does too. They feel like targets, sitting ducks. Why? Because they are the liberals. They enemy within the home, the traitors. How does one have a balanced opinion without feeling threatened?
The Shiv Sena can catch me and put me in jail if I meet my boyfriend on Valentine's Day.
It seems to be hep to be an atheist. Or agnostic. Or one of those categories of unbelievers. What if I want to believe in GOD, and in a HINDU GOD, but still retain my relationship with my friends, people I love?
There are comments you hear, in your own house. There are BJP supporters in your workplace. There are Hindu children who know no better than to ape what they hear, and these children hate Muslims.
I remember a particularly self-righteous child, one year my junior, in school. I was in class 5, I think, so he would have been in class 4. We were in the choir group and the swimming team together. I was once (between song practices), describing दही चावल (dahi-chaaval, curd-rice, a quintessentially Tamil meal-ender) to somebody. Then for some reason I started saying that the South Indian Diwali is not on the same day as it is in Lucknow, because the culture is different there. In a way that only children can pronounce judgement, he said, snootily, "इनके तो cultures ही अलग होते हैं!"
Why have I never forgotten this? I know it is the nonsense of a ten-year old, but then I wonder. This is too silly to even be quoted, really. But I still wonder.
You are still a child at 14-15. There were children in the Bombay riots. Rioting. I'm not talking of the victims, although they are victims in a rather peculiar sense...it wasn't like only 50 year old पुजारीs (pujaaris, Hindu priests) were in the riot. It wasn't Hindu fundamentalists. They might have started it, but they didn't do it all. It was people like you and me.
Listen to your children. Watch out for what they say, because we often don't check ourselves before we make a prejudiced remark; we don't know we made it. Watch out for what they say, they say what we say. Catch yourself. Don't do it, don't look at the dashboard or the windscreen, from the inside of the auto-rickshaw, to see whether there is a 786 anywhere, or a Hanuman, a Jai Mata Di, or a Guru Nanak.
I don't know what my point is; or whether this was supposed to have a point.
The liberals, the fundamentalists, they're all the same. Bottomline, peer pressure doesn't happen only to teenagers. How far are we from being fundamentalists? How close to it?
I added this article [written by Samina Mishra] to my blog as an act of...solidarity? I don't know exactly how to say it. I didn't think the article was making any point. I told Sabah as much. But now I realise that it is incredibly difficult to make a point. To take a stand.
It has taken me years to write this; I have been wanting to write about my relationship with Sabah for so long. Why has is taken so long for me to write it? I'm a writer, after all!
When we were about 10-12, our group in school (it was a co-ed, but groups are one sex only!) had me (Tamil), Sabah (Muslim), Mouli* (Bengali) and Chanchal* (Punjabi). We were really proud of this. We knew we were different. We are, naturally. But we were happy about it. How strange it sounds now.
Why is Seher Khan a remarkable woman? I don't know exactly, but she certainly inspired me to write this.
Amreeka!
(So) how are we to free our selves from what the Pa rents said?
(The) Pa rents rule our lives when li ving; ev en when they're dead!
(A) me ri cans can talk to shrinks, and hosts of break fast shows;
(In) In di a we live with what we get un til it grows
(Un) bear a ble to des per a tion, and we mis con clude
(Ki) "Am ree ka hi theek hai, boss, this coun try is toh screwed!"
* * *
This was written on the spur of the moment, but these days I'm less and less inclined to believe that poetry (to misquote the greatest Romantic poet) is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and more and more that it is recollected (in tranquility, or not!).
Anyway, I wanted to play around with meter and rhythm, and was curious to see what happens to the scansion of the lines, especially the Hindi words, when they're exaggeratedly highlighted.
I remembered the book I was reading this summer, hunting for inspiration or direction while composing Wind, Sand and Stars:
Music Composition for Dummies. Yes, there such a book. The book mentioned natural speech rhythms, and I found it really fascinating: another thing I have always been interested in is mapping the frequencies of speech, not just "nervous=shrill", but a Speech Pattern Graph.
This little stanza is an attempt to capture the natural cadence of what is, I suppose, urban Indian speech.
The emphasis, in decreasing order, is:
bold italics > bold > regular > (parenthesised)
(The) Pa rents rule our lives when li ving; ev en when they're dead!
(A) me ri cans can talk to shrinks, and hosts of break fast shows;
(In) In di a we live with what we get un til it grows
(Un) bear a ble to des per a tion, and we mis con clude
(Ki) "Am ree ka hi theek hai, boss, this coun try is toh screwed!"
* * *
This was written on the spur of the moment, but these days I'm less and less inclined to believe that poetry (to misquote the greatest Romantic poet) is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, and more and more that it is recollected (in tranquility, or not!).
Anyway, I wanted to play around with meter and rhythm, and was curious to see what happens to the scansion of the lines, especially the Hindi words, when they're exaggeratedly highlighted.
I remembered the book I was reading this summer, hunting for inspiration or direction while composing Wind, Sand and Stars:
Music Composition for Dummies. Yes, there such a book. The book mentioned natural speech rhythms, and I found it really fascinating: another thing I have always been interested in is mapping the frequencies of speech, not just "nervous=shrill", but a Speech Pattern Graph.
This little stanza is an attempt to capture the natural cadence of what is, I suppose, urban Indian speech.
The emphasis, in decreasing order, is:
bold italics > bold > regular > (parenthesised)
Standard Issue
[I would hesitate to call this verse. Khair,]
The drawing room is clean now
Little dolls' sofas
the mandatory glass-top coffee table
piles of scattered books have become
rows in a shelf
I know this house inside out
My mother phones me to find things
even with bifocals.
The first grating sound in the morning
is my grandfather's bathroom door.
Appa honks once, very softly , politely.
The doodhwaala and presswaala
are usually late
When Amma needs to leave
for work,
teaching at the school
where I spent nine years
searching for an identity,
learning stereotypes.
I can hear the squeal of the TV
before the sound comes on,
the yell of the Aquaguard.
I think I can hear dog-whistles too.
I could always hear better than most.
I conduct a choir,
is it a wonder?
But then there are places in the city
I have never seen
Places I have even heard of.
Places not too far either.
I know this house
(which belongs to our landlord)
inside out
But I managed to speak to
the boy next door
only this summer.
I have been
to the corner to buy bread, eggs, butter
to the chemist to buy an emergency dose
of sanitary napkins
to the shop to buy the supplies
that ran out,
noted on our tab; no cash required here.
I can count these times on my fingers.
One hand, mind you.
There was a boy in school
Whom I was not allowed to meet
My father was not posted here,
My mother ran the house,
In fear.
I still don't know why it was not allowed.
Last year
(which was my second in college)
I went out on Diwali
to meet face to face
a man from Hyderabad,
a Muslim I had met online.
On Orkut.
It was allowed,
a faute de mieux
(This is a fancy term I came across
while researching for a compulsory essay
on Jane Austen-
it means "a decision for want of a better choice").
That time, I informed my father,
I did not ask for permission.
That boy from school-
Now that the burden of years
is on our shoulders
he has been crushed enough to be permitted,
I suppose.
He has an off day on Thursday.
Ten years of confinement,
not solitary confinement,
maybe that would have been worse;
Now I can recognise stereotype
like a font size too small or too big
in which my sentence was written.
In India
(and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well,
I wouldn't know)
it is not when a girl starts
menstruating
masturbating
becomes sexually active
gets married
has children
runs a household
goes to college
goes to work
rebels
acquiesces
that she grows up
It's much earlier-
The day she begins to fear
is the day she becomes Woman.
The drawing room is clean now
Little dolls' sofas
the mandatory glass-top coffee table
piles of scattered books have become
rows in a shelf
I know this house inside out
My mother phones me to find things
even with bifocals.
The first grating sound in the morning
is my grandfather's bathroom door.
Appa honks once, very softly , politely.
The doodhwaala and presswaala
are usually late
When Amma needs to leave
for work,
teaching at the school
where I spent nine years
searching for an identity,
learning stereotypes.
I can hear the squeal of the TV
before the sound comes on,
the yell of the Aquaguard.
I think I can hear dog-whistles too.
I could always hear better than most.
I conduct a choir,
is it a wonder?
But then there are places in the city
I have never seen
Places I have even heard of.
Places not too far either.
I know this house
(which belongs to our landlord)
inside out
But I managed to speak to
the boy next door
only this summer.
I have been
to the corner to buy bread, eggs, butter
to the chemist to buy an emergency dose
of sanitary napkins
to the shop to buy the supplies
that ran out,
noted on our tab; no cash required here.
I can count these times on my fingers.
One hand, mind you.
There was a boy in school
Whom I was not allowed to meet
My father was not posted here,
My mother ran the house,
In fear.
I still don't know why it was not allowed.
Last year
(which was my second in college)
I went out on Diwali
to meet face to face
a man from Hyderabad,
a Muslim I had met online.
On Orkut.
It was allowed,
a faute de mieux
(This is a fancy term I came across
while researching for a compulsory essay
on Jane Austen-
it means "a decision for want of a better choice").
That time, I informed my father,
I did not ask for permission.
That boy from school-
Now that the burden of years
is on our shoulders
he has been crushed enough to be permitted,
I suppose.
He has an off day on Thursday.
Ten years of confinement,
not solitary confinement,
maybe that would have been worse;
Now I can recognise stereotype
like a font size too small or too big
in which my sentence was written.
In India
(and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well,
I wouldn't know)
it is not when a girl starts
menstruating
masturbating
becomes sexually active
gets married
has children
runs a household
goes to college
goes to work
rebels
acquiesces
that she grows up
It's much earlier-
The day she begins to fear
is the day she becomes Woman.
Leaving Home
To explain why I sing
may take (at the very least)
years.
The queen of the night is a flower
How can you expect me to forget its smell
outside the window.
Endlessly, we lived in this place that has
come to be called home.
Death, sickness, puberty. Children.
Loves.
We learned, unlearned
There are rules for everything.
We lived out of suitcases
cartons of unpacked magazines spawning new mice.
The bike does not run, the antiques are old.
Tradition did not give us longevity.
When she died they cut the gold bangles off her wrists,
with pliers.
I rode my bicycle (my aunt's, rusty)
through the cane chair
that was a wicket that day.
My memories are many,
Many kinds.
Six foot boy, scared of my grandfather at the gate,
Birthdays and custard-jelly.
The lamp is still lit twice a day,
even though she is dead.
He lights it now, having quit smoking at seventy, after she died.
I could have children by now.
The bread-wala will call me baby till the end of his days.
We came here, scrubbed the floor on hands and knees,
grew roots.
The city that (should have) meant nothing to me
or any of us
Tamil speakers, outcasts in Madras
The city I call home.
I sing,
I cannot begin to explain why
Unless you had seen the inside of the bathroom,
climbed up the rotting ladder to the roof
to find the carcass of a bird in the kitchen tank.
I can invite you in,
because I wiped the fungus off the sofas this morning.
may take (at the very least)
years.
The queen of the night is a flower
How can you expect me to forget its smell
outside the window.
Endlessly, we lived in this place that has
come to be called home.
Death, sickness, puberty. Children.
Loves.
We learned, unlearned
There are rules for everything.
We lived out of suitcases
cartons of unpacked magazines spawning new mice.
The bike does not run, the antiques are old.
Tradition did not give us longevity.
When she died they cut the gold bangles off her wrists,
with pliers.
I rode my bicycle (my aunt's, rusty)
through the cane chair
that was a wicket that day.
My memories are many,
Many kinds.
Six foot boy, scared of my grandfather at the gate,
Birthdays and custard-jelly.
The lamp is still lit twice a day,
even though she is dead.
He lights it now, having quit smoking at seventy, after she died.
I could have children by now.
The bread-wala will call me baby till the end of his days.
We came here, scrubbed the floor on hands and knees,
grew roots.
The city that (should have) meant nothing to me
or any of us
Tamil speakers, outcasts in Madras
The city I call home.
I sing,
I cannot begin to explain why
Unless you had seen the inside of the bathroom,
climbed up the rotting ladder to the roof
to find the carcass of a bird in the kitchen tank.
I can invite you in,
because I wiped the fungus off the sofas this morning.
Kutti Papa Part 2
I had started telling, about a month ago, the story of my liaison with the kids at Ehsaas, the NGO that SK and I volunteered at this summer.
We heard of it by word of mouth, it was SK's idea to go check the place out. We made an appointment with Shachi Singh who runs it, and turned up at the Charbagh branch. It was there that we really got to know what Ehsaas does.
Charbagh is where the railway station is in Lucknow. Like most railway stations in India, Charbagh is home to many who are homeless. Among those are hundreds of children, either abandoned by uncaring parents, runaways from homes they were better off without, or sometimes just lost. The kids are all lost, actually. Until someone comes to take them by the hand and lead them away from a place where their highest role is fetching tea and happiness is drowning themselves in sollusann [solution, whitening fluid solvent, inhaled to get a high].
Ehsaas is a four room outfit on the roof of the Transport Building, a strangely apt place to house these kids. This is a halfway-house for children literally hunted out (with the help of the Peer Group and those who can spot a new face soon) and brought to the NGO. Their final destinations vary.
By and large, they will go through some basic haphazard schooling here, then move to the Vikas Nagar branch, where they will have better food, clothes and lessons. stage three is joining the school system.
Some who are lost are escorted to their homes, as far away as even Calcutta. Of course, some are too small to know their address or hometown. Like Ganesh, the new kid who wrote his name in Telugu while the others who could write all wrote in Hindi on the backs of their drawings. We drew a lion that day. I went crazy, it was a big clue they had missed, the people who had picked him up didn't know where he was from at all. Shabana and I then tried many versions of "Where are you from?" in Hindi, which he seemed to follow. After some teasing out, what he said was "Begumpet". I nearly died. For me, and my obsession with coincidences, this was too much. "Begumpet is in Hyderabad! He's Hyderabadi!" He didn't know Hyderabad, though. He did know his house was near a municipal school. I managed to find out his parents' names too, which he had apparently said before. Well no wonder he understands Hindi, and no wonder he can't speak it fluently like the others.
Ganesh is the most adorable child. He has that twinkle in his eye. Smart kid. Very smart. I stopped noticing his face and his feet after the first few minutes. He has feet that are curled, as if they were trying to make a fist. His head has some sort of little growth where a punk mohawk would be, as if he was born conjoined and then separated. He's what, five? Beautiful child. I brought Amma to Ehsaas one day, she wanted to make a donation and meet the kids and all. Since she speaks Telugu I wanted her to talk to Ganesh. She asked him where he lived, he said he lived at the station, in I think a shop with somebody, or something like that. When she tried to ask where he had come from, he only repeated that for a while, and then finally said his parents had left him there. He didn't cry, he didn't flinch. It scared my mother a little I think. God knows what goes on in a child's mind. He has a sister. And a grandmother in Bombay.
I was born in Hyderabad. It's always been to me like somewhere I need to go back to, like the place calls me home. My grandparents were living in Begumpet when we were moving to Lucknow. That flat in Mount Santoshi Apartments is the last memory I have of Patti (my grandma) in her house. She didn't live very long in Lucknow, in the house we waited six months to be allotted, because it has a garden. She loves gardens. She was dying, we didn't know it. Now if anyone tells me somebody is not eating at all, I'll tell them to rush to Oncology.
SK and I were in Lucknow only for a month or so more, Shachi didn't want us to get involved in the main teaching work. We were to do some craft, music, things like that. Maybe a little general knowledge, teach a little on the sly. I have no idea what we did finally, I doubt if we did any good that lasted longer than two hours every other afternoon.
One day SK brought a globe. We were trying to tell the kids how when it's day here, it's night in America. Yes, they know America. Amreeka. Like we know Elysium. They come up with the most random versions of the Universe, as it were. Well, if you've been fed only myth about how god (I forget which, N tells me Brahma) created the world, you believe that, right?
Then when I found some books in English on nocturnal creatures, one on dinosaurs. So strange, to tell them we descended from the apes, I could be Darwin incarnate. I felt, again, only too keenly, the acute language problem that had never let me be. Although I'm beginning to realise that language is not English, Hindi, Tamil, but the peculiar parole of your own unique experiences, which when they are so very different from your interlocutor, can be only a barrier to communication, instead of the common ground you hoped it would be.
Washim. Pronounced Vaseem. I know I should not have favourites, but I fell in love with Washim. He reminded me of my little brother. Not that I have one, nor was he like any of my three cousins. He really needed to go to school. Oh, I've slipped into past tense. Well, by the time we left, they were to join school anyway. But he is just too smart for the others. He's a Bumbaiyya, as they call him. From Bombay. Dry humor. Couldn't have been more than 11-12. He'd take my pen and sketch endlessly. He had already drawn all over the walls. I really wanted to be his friend. I don't think he wanted to be friends with anyone.
Of course, Congress (Kaangrace, more like; and no, I don't know why the name) was really not interested in making friends. Poor guy, he's very mixed up. I don't even know what to think...he must have been through something so ugly to talk like that. Navin was aloof, it was fine till they got into their maara-peeti vaale moods. With so much pent up energy, so little space, and so little love, they do start fighting often.
One day I took the guitar. Sanoj, from the Peer Group, he liked it a lot. He also thought I looked like an Angrejin, a foreigner. I think it was the skirts. Or maybe the short hair. I found it very funny. I told Sanoj I get that a lot. Sanoj makes great tea. The kids are a storehouse of outrageously inappropriate Bhojpuri songs.
They were watching Sasura Badey Paise Wala. How to translate this! Let's say Ma Homie's Got Lotsa Cash. My dad was really pissed off when he heard this. N also said, How can they subject the children to this? I don't know why, but even knowing that it's probably no kiddie movie, I didn't see the harm. I wouldn't give it to my kids to watch though. Why not? How are the kids at Ehsaas any different? Other than that they won't be rich, spoilt and living in the lap of luxury. Then why the difference in what they watch on DVD? I'm still trying to make sense of all these questions.
I tried an experiment one day. Four katoras [bowls] of poster colour, red, green, yellow, blue. I shut the doors, the room was dark. Made the kids calm down, sit and be quiet first. Then asked them to close their eyes. Lots of titters, peeping through one eye. Then when they ad settled down, I didn't want idly shut eyes to dream up something horrible. I asked them to think of a time when they were happy. They when they opened their eyes, I asked them if happiness has a colour.
They picked their colour. Washim was quite disdainful of this whole exercise. I'm sure he saw through me, I was just playing by ear.
Then I wanted them to play around with the colours, so I asked them if they had one thing to choose as their favourite in the whole world, what would they pick?
It was crazy. The kind of things the kids said were everything from the absurd to the profound to the dogmatic.
I don't know what I was doing there. Pata nahin. But it was good. I'll go there next hols I think. To see. Maybe it didn't mean anything, who knows. I worry about Ganesh, Congress, Gunja who was the only girl there. I wonder and don't want to contemplate why so few girls were found, and what worse fate might have come their way. Washim. I saw a kid the other day, on the road, he looked just like him. Washim being Washim, he might have run away. It might actually be him. Ehsaas. I can't translate that. Something between emotion, sensation, feeling, and responsibility?
We heard of it by word of mouth, it was SK's idea to go check the place out. We made an appointment with Shachi Singh who runs it, and turned up at the Charbagh branch. It was there that we really got to know what Ehsaas does.
Charbagh is where the railway station is in Lucknow. Like most railway stations in India, Charbagh is home to many who are homeless. Among those are hundreds of children, either abandoned by uncaring parents, runaways from homes they were better off without, or sometimes just lost. The kids are all lost, actually. Until someone comes to take them by the hand and lead them away from a place where their highest role is fetching tea and happiness is drowning themselves in sollusann [solution, whitening fluid solvent, inhaled to get a high].
Ehsaas is a four room outfit on the roof of the Transport Building, a strangely apt place to house these kids. This is a halfway-house for children literally hunted out (with the help of the Peer Group and those who can spot a new face soon) and brought to the NGO. Their final destinations vary.
By and large, they will go through some basic haphazard schooling here, then move to the Vikas Nagar branch, where they will have better food, clothes and lessons. stage three is joining the school system.
Some who are lost are escorted to their homes, as far away as even Calcutta. Of course, some are too small to know their address or hometown. Like Ganesh, the new kid who wrote his name in Telugu while the others who could write all wrote in Hindi on the backs of their drawings. We drew a lion that day. I went crazy, it was a big clue they had missed, the people who had picked him up didn't know where he was from at all. Shabana and I then tried many versions of "Where are you from?" in Hindi, which he seemed to follow. After some teasing out, what he said was "Begumpet". I nearly died. For me, and my obsession with coincidences, this was too much. "Begumpet is in Hyderabad! He's Hyderabadi!" He didn't know Hyderabad, though. He did know his house was near a municipal school. I managed to find out his parents' names too, which he had apparently said before. Well no wonder he understands Hindi, and no wonder he can't speak it fluently like the others.
Ganesh is the most adorable child. He has that twinkle in his eye. Smart kid. Very smart. I stopped noticing his face and his feet after the first few minutes. He has feet that are curled, as if they were trying to make a fist. His head has some sort of little growth where a punk mohawk would be, as if he was born conjoined and then separated. He's what, five? Beautiful child. I brought Amma to Ehsaas one day, she wanted to make a donation and meet the kids and all. Since she speaks Telugu I wanted her to talk to Ganesh. She asked him where he lived, he said he lived at the station, in I think a shop with somebody, or something like that. When she tried to ask where he had come from, he only repeated that for a while, and then finally said his parents had left him there. He didn't cry, he didn't flinch. It scared my mother a little I think. God knows what goes on in a child's mind. He has a sister. And a grandmother in Bombay.
I was born in Hyderabad. It's always been to me like somewhere I need to go back to, like the place calls me home. My grandparents were living in Begumpet when we were moving to Lucknow. That flat in Mount Santoshi Apartments is the last memory I have of Patti (my grandma) in her house. She didn't live very long in Lucknow, in the house we waited six months to be allotted, because it has a garden. She loves gardens. She was dying, we didn't know it. Now if anyone tells me somebody is not eating at all, I'll tell them to rush to Oncology.
SK and I were in Lucknow only for a month or so more, Shachi didn't want us to get involved in the main teaching work. We were to do some craft, music, things like that. Maybe a little general knowledge, teach a little on the sly. I have no idea what we did finally, I doubt if we did any good that lasted longer than two hours every other afternoon.
One day SK brought a globe. We were trying to tell the kids how when it's day here, it's night in America. Yes, they know America. Amreeka. Like we know Elysium. They come up with the most random versions of the Universe, as it were. Well, if you've been fed only myth about how god (I forget which, N tells me Brahma) created the world, you believe that, right?
Then when I found some books in English on nocturnal creatures, one on dinosaurs. So strange, to tell them we descended from the apes, I could be Darwin incarnate. I felt, again, only too keenly, the acute language problem that had never let me be. Although I'm beginning to realise that language is not English, Hindi, Tamil, but the peculiar parole of your own unique experiences, which when they are so very different from your interlocutor, can be only a barrier to communication, instead of the common ground you hoped it would be.
Washim. Pronounced Vaseem. I know I should not have favourites, but I fell in love with Washim. He reminded me of my little brother. Not that I have one, nor was he like any of my three cousins. He really needed to go to school. Oh, I've slipped into past tense. Well, by the time we left, they were to join school anyway. But he is just too smart for the others. He's a Bumbaiyya, as they call him. From Bombay. Dry humor. Couldn't have been more than 11-12. He'd take my pen and sketch endlessly. He had already drawn all over the walls. I really wanted to be his friend. I don't think he wanted to be friends with anyone.
Of course, Congress (Kaangrace, more like; and no, I don't know why the name) was really not interested in making friends. Poor guy, he's very mixed up. I don't even know what to think...he must have been through something so ugly to talk like that. Navin was aloof, it was fine till they got into their maara-peeti vaale moods. With so much pent up energy, so little space, and so little love, they do start fighting often.
One day I took the guitar. Sanoj, from the Peer Group, he liked it a lot. He also thought I looked like an Angrejin, a foreigner. I think it was the skirts. Or maybe the short hair. I found it very funny. I told Sanoj I get that a lot. Sanoj makes great tea. The kids are a storehouse of outrageously inappropriate Bhojpuri songs.
They were watching Sasura Badey Paise Wala. How to translate this! Let's say Ma Homie's Got Lotsa Cash. My dad was really pissed off when he heard this. N also said, How can they subject the children to this? I don't know why, but even knowing that it's probably no kiddie movie, I didn't see the harm. I wouldn't give it to my kids to watch though. Why not? How are the kids at Ehsaas any different? Other than that they won't be rich, spoilt and living in the lap of luxury. Then why the difference in what they watch on DVD? I'm still trying to make sense of all these questions.
I tried an experiment one day. Four katoras [bowls] of poster colour, red, green, yellow, blue. I shut the doors, the room was dark. Made the kids calm down, sit and be quiet first. Then asked them to close their eyes. Lots of titters, peeping through one eye. Then when they ad settled down, I didn't want idly shut eyes to dream up something horrible. I asked them to think of a time when they were happy. They when they opened their eyes, I asked them if happiness has a colour.
They picked their colour. Washim was quite disdainful of this whole exercise. I'm sure he saw through me, I was just playing by ear.
Then I wanted them to play around with the colours, so I asked them if they had one thing to choose as their favourite in the whole world, what would they pick?
It was crazy. The kind of things the kids said were everything from the absurd to the profound to the dogmatic.
I don't know what I was doing there. Pata nahin. But it was good. I'll go there next hols I think. To see. Maybe it didn't mean anything, who knows. I worry about Ganesh, Congress, Gunja who was the only girl there. I wonder and don't want to contemplate why so few girls were found, and what worse fate might have come their way. Washim. I saw a kid the other day, on the road, he looked just like him. Washim being Washim, he might have run away. It might actually be him. Ehsaas. I can't translate that. Something between emotion, sensation, feeling, and responsibility?
Morning: remembering last night's dream, 17.2.08
A dream with structure rich in detail, I could see all the smoke wisp away and hear the irony in the man's voice, ringing over his white hair and the distinguished din of his jacket. He put out his cigarette at the challenge. The children continued to fly.
Children I can never remember. Their faces are too soft, too new to make an imprint on my mind.
I felt his hard chest against mine, it was nothing, a hug. But I felt it in the dream and outside, a memory squeezing me, "remember, remember". I don't know who it was I have not had illustrious love affairs. There is only one person it could have been, and it was not him.
He was as tall, as broad and as passionate. But he would never have let himself touch me like that. Like what? It was only a hug. He's in love with me, he says. I think he is deluded. Years later and much bad blood cried, how can he be? How different was he from what I called love?
My fingers should speak, or my lips, or my skin which tingles and pulse that races even as I think back. Simon and Garfunkel were talking about two of me. To be in love, please don't kill your self; I cannot love despair, I have thrown guilt out of the window to the past.
There is the residue, a layer of double entendres and riddles below the memory of loving him, which surfaces sometimes and dies down.
But I still don't know who it was in the dream. There are the mornings to wake up to, with beautiful yellow sun on my face and an ache in the pit of my stomach, to want the familiar taste. Some twelve years, and it does not taste the same - that five minutes of childish ecstasy at the one recipe we have never been able to produce since.
I remember, boss, that is my strength.
Children I can never remember. Their faces are too soft, too new to make an imprint on my mind.
I felt his hard chest against mine, it was nothing, a hug. But I felt it in the dream and outside, a memory squeezing me, "remember, remember". I don't know who it was I have not had illustrious love affairs. There is only one person it could have been, and it was not him.
He was as tall, as broad and as passionate. But he would never have let himself touch me like that. Like what? It was only a hug. He's in love with me, he says. I think he is deluded. Years later and much bad blood cried, how can he be? How different was he from what I called love?
My fingers should speak, or my lips, or my skin which tingles and pulse that races even as I think back. Simon and Garfunkel were talking about two of me. To be in love, please don't kill your self; I cannot love despair, I have thrown guilt out of the window to the past.
There is the residue, a layer of double entendres and riddles below the memory of loving him, which surfaces sometimes and dies down.
But I still don't know who it was in the dream. There are the mornings to wake up to, with beautiful yellow sun on my face and an ache in the pit of my stomach, to want the familiar taste. Some twelve years, and it does not taste the same - that five minutes of childish ecstasy at the one recipe we have never been able to produce since.
I remember, boss, that is my strength.
Untitled, 27.11.07
I never fought in a war
I never even saw one
My life never knew hunger
Or having no roof over my head
I complain
No one understands me
The kid on the street
Asks me for my Pepsi
And I laugh
My children will be callous
More than me
They will be smart, though.
They will know all there is to know
And will not ask me
Loudly
"What's a condom?"
They will not grow up and say
"Every generation should have a War:
it gives you perspective, you know."
They will have learned
by then.
I never even saw one
My life never knew hunger
Or having no roof over my head
I complain
No one understands me
The kid on the street
Asks me for my Pepsi
And I laugh
My children will be callous
More than me
They will be smart, though.
They will know all there is to know
And will not ask me
Loudly
"What's a condom?"
They will not grow up and say
"Every generation should have a War:
it gives you perspective, you know."
They will have learned
by then.
Kutti Papa Part 1
My friend SK and I were pretty jobless these hols. Well, I had my opus to compose, but let's not count that right now, that merits a fresh post!
It's in vogue to work with an NGO, isn't it? Social Work.
What?
I didn't do anything last year because I was a big fat yellow liver. I was scared that I would not be able to change the world. So I didn't do anything at all. In the last couple of years, due to drastic changes in scenery, I'm learning, slowly, to shed inhibitions that I've had so long they seemed irrefutable. I've been trying to befriend the keerhe [insects] that my mind houses!
Anyway, SK happened to hear of an NGO in Lucknow (where our families are, where we come home for hols). All we knew about it was that it was called Ehsaas and worked with kids.
For the longest time, I've been terrified of kids in the same absurd, inexplicable way that you can feel about somebody you have a crush on. When my cousin A was born (when was that, now...1997?) I wasn't allowed to hold her. Heck, I was only 9 if it was 1997! No surprises there. When A was about two, I guess, that's when I saw her next and played and played endlessly with her, fell in love with her, the new sister baby, pretty little thing, smart as hell, making little toddler-quips all over the place. When we got back from Bangalore (where the Family Reunion had been), I couldn't remember her face.
For a while after that I tried to memorise faces; while going in a tempo with Amma to school sometime then, I saw a mountainous man with a craggy red-splotched face and sombre expression. I promised (myself?) never to forget his face. See, I can still remember it. Actually, that's not true. I can only remember my decription of his face. My mind also does useless things like attaching a likely red-and-white cotswool shirt to this person. Who knows, maybe it's not faces I'm good at remembering, maybe it's words.
Of course then there's the language thing. (Boy, I should be my own shrink!) When I came to Lucknow straight after Lagos, I spoke only English, and knew no Hindi to speak of, despite having begun Hindi at the Indian school I went to in Nigeria. I realised I spoke differently from the other kids, and so I probably thought differently too. I couldn't decide, at school, whether to try to mingle and become one of the crowd, or to be different. (I was chatting online with my oldest friend RR a few days ago; she is also an Indian whose early memories are of Lagos, and then the relocation from There to Here, to a home country as alien as any other. Funny, she and I both felt that we were so convinced we were oddballs that we never gave ourselves a chance to be normal!)
In senior school, during a free period, loitering around the grounds with other pubescent girls from my class, we'd often run into littler schools of small fry, scuttling along adorably to and from the swimming pool or the auditorium or the library. The other girls would invariably pet the little kids, coo in their ear, play with them. I wanted to sometimes, but never did more than once or twice ever, because I was convinced I spoke a language they didn't understand. For the record, by then my Hindi was certainly as good, if not better, than the average kid in my class who had trouble with comprehension, of any language, mother tongue or no mother tongue.
It's funny, when I think about it, it was only worse with Tamil-speaking kids we'd run into at big community functions that my mother and I would attend in those days; stuff like Ram Navami (the day Lord Ram was born, and the end of the Navratri fasting period of nine days). I stopped going to these things soon enough. When I discovered that you can be asked to sing. Bhajans, of course, what else. On a religious function obviously it's got to be a devotional song. I knew none. I knew only the school prayer songs. In Hindi. Which I was anyway not so confident of then, and would not be appreciated in a gathering of Tamil/Malayalam and the odd Telugu/Kannada speakers; a gathering which was the biggest Home Away From Home South Indian Social Reunion of the year in Lucknow, capital of the Hindi-speaking Northern Heartland.
I didn't know enough grammatically adequate Tamil even to speak a few sentences to the Tamil kids. So that was that.
Meanwhile, I loved kids!
After Nigeria, I don't remember going out to play with the neighbourhood kids (yes, there were some) or going to friends' places to play, barring a few stray playdays with NR or with that girl I didn't like, who stole my Hamley's toys and whose name I think was Anam.
Anyway, I really don't know why I am delving so deep. All I wanted to talk about was my relationship with children now.
Last year, I had a bright idea. I wanted to give back to my juniors in school all the musical gyan [knowledge] I had gained in the year I had been pert of the Western Music Society (WMS) in college. And I had learnt more in that year than I had in the last two or three put together. So I went to see my ex-Principal with my proposal. I had printed an ad and all, nice and catchy. For amateur voice lessons in the summer vacation, at school, free of charge. I was just something I wanted to do. I was really excited to teach 13-15 year-olds the next level of harmony; I remembered the laboured two-parts that we would devise when we were that age, and I thought it would be great to show them what real, beautiful, rich melodies could be woven together.
The Principal thought I was planning to teach primary school kids. I don't know why, it was just a miscommunication. She said, Ok, shall I put you through the In-Charge for Class 3? I just agreed. I'm not such a wimp now, but even a year ago, I was pretty wimpy. Ok was all I ever said.
Suddenly, my target age group went down from 14 to 8.
I had a class (a parody of one) of a floating population (literally, they went swimming and then came for Music Class) of five, plus minus two. And it wasn't always the same five either.
I was bugged at first, but then I was ok when I realised the only thing different is that I can't teach music to them in the same way as I had planned. What the heck, I was no slavedriver. I like to let kids play around. So after finding that trying for discipline in a random vacation camp-type environment was just stupid, everything went just fine.
So I pretended to teach, had fun with them. One day I saw a little dog of some pomeranian-esque yappy breed in the arms of a lady who had come to drop off her charges, two sisters (ages 5 and 7) at the Music Class. By the time I could ask her to wait, she had left. I asked the seven year old (I don't remember her name, but boy do I remember her face! And her voice, a very sweet voice. Very conscientious kid. Always looking out for her 5 year old sister, and, I later found, her baby brother as well) to bring her dog the next day, after asking for permission at home, of course, and laying down the disclaimer (that if her parents said no, she shouldn't get me in a soup).
So the two sisters turned up the next day, with this dog (a bitch who was called I think Lucy) that was very fit and frisky as hell, and what d'ya know, a St. Bernard pup called Rex, bigger than his full-grown friend, and a lazy lump. Then there was the baby brother, a sweet three year old who tried to lift the lumpy Rex to his feet, and was shorter than the puppy held up by its front paws.
We had our great Lessons in the empty auditorium, a veritable heaven for music, it has the most stage-y echoes when it's empty. I've spent countless lunch-breaks alone on that stage, imagining. I have always loved the stage. We go far back, you see. So when this dinky circus turned up, it was Play Day. We raced around the hall, slipping on its smooth floor, Lucy finally outrunning the overweight singers-to-be who were my pupils that day.
Another character showed up when it was time to go; she was a girl who looked my age, but I wasn't sure. So I used polite speech; she was the girls' aunt, just out of first year college, like me. She said now she understood why the girls liked my classes so much. I couldn't even believe it. It was such a strange, wonderful feeling, to realise that these kids could take to me.
It's in vogue to work with an NGO, isn't it? Social Work.
Yeah, you know the prerequisites for that scholarship aren't specific at all, they just say the applicant should have a well rounded personality and care for the welfare of his fellow being. That means NGO work, yaar. Kuch kar lena idhar udhar, likh dena [Do some little here and there and then just write] Worked with so-and-so for two months.
What?
I didn't do anything last year because I was a big fat yellow liver. I was scared that I would not be able to change the world. So I didn't do anything at all. In the last couple of years, due to drastic changes in scenery, I'm learning, slowly, to shed inhibitions that I've had so long they seemed irrefutable. I've been trying to befriend the keerhe [insects] that my mind houses!
Anyway, SK happened to hear of an NGO in Lucknow (where our families are, where we come home for hols). All we knew about it was that it was called Ehsaas and worked with kids.
For the longest time, I've been terrified of kids in the same absurd, inexplicable way that you can feel about somebody you have a crush on. When my cousin A was born (when was that, now...1997?) I wasn't allowed to hold her. Heck, I was only 9 if it was 1997! No surprises there. When A was about two, I guess, that's when I saw her next and played and played endlessly with her, fell in love with her, the new sister baby, pretty little thing, smart as hell, making little toddler-quips all over the place. When we got back from Bangalore (where the Family Reunion had been), I couldn't remember her face.
For a while after that I tried to memorise faces; while going in a tempo with Amma to school sometime then, I saw a mountainous man with a craggy red-splotched face and sombre expression. I promised (myself?) never to forget his face. See, I can still remember it. Actually, that's not true. I can only remember my decription of his face. My mind also does useless things like attaching a likely red-and-white cotswool shirt to this person. Who knows, maybe it's not faces I'm good at remembering, maybe it's words.
Of course then there's the language thing. (Boy, I should be my own shrink!) When I came to Lucknow straight after Lagos, I spoke only English, and knew no Hindi to speak of, despite having begun Hindi at the Indian school I went to in Nigeria. I realised I spoke differently from the other kids, and so I probably thought differently too. I couldn't decide, at school, whether to try to mingle and become one of the crowd, or to be different. (I was chatting online with my oldest friend RR a few days ago; she is also an Indian whose early memories are of Lagos, and then the relocation from There to Here, to a home country as alien as any other. Funny, she and I both felt that we were so convinced we were oddballs that we never gave ourselves a chance to be normal!)
In senior school, during a free period, loitering around the grounds with other pubescent girls from my class, we'd often run into littler schools of small fry, scuttling along adorably to and from the swimming pool or the auditorium or the library. The other girls would invariably pet the little kids, coo in their ear, play with them. I wanted to sometimes, but never did more than once or twice ever, because I was convinced I spoke a language they didn't understand. For the record, by then my Hindi was certainly as good, if not better, than the average kid in my class who had trouble with comprehension, of any language, mother tongue or no mother tongue.
It's funny, when I think about it, it was only worse with Tamil-speaking kids we'd run into at big community functions that my mother and I would attend in those days; stuff like Ram Navami (the day Lord Ram was born, and the end of the Navratri fasting period of nine days). I stopped going to these things soon enough. When I discovered that you can be asked to sing. Bhajans, of course, what else. On a religious function obviously it's got to be a devotional song. I knew none. I knew only the school prayer songs. In Hindi. Which I was anyway not so confident of then, and would not be appreciated in a gathering of Tamil/Malayalam and the odd Telugu/Kannada speakers; a gathering which was the biggest Home Away From Home South Indian Social Reunion of the year in Lucknow, capital of the Hindi-speaking Northern Heartland.
I didn't know enough grammatically adequate Tamil even to speak a few sentences to the Tamil kids. So that was that.
Meanwhile, I loved kids!
After Nigeria, I don't remember going out to play with the neighbourhood kids (yes, there were some) or going to friends' places to play, barring a few stray playdays with NR or with that girl I didn't like, who stole my Hamley's toys and whose name I think was Anam.
Anyway, I really don't know why I am delving so deep. All I wanted to talk about was my relationship with children now.
Last year, I had a bright idea. I wanted to give back to my juniors in school all the musical gyan [knowledge] I had gained in the year I had been pert of the Western Music Society (WMS) in college. And I had learnt more in that year than I had in the last two or three put together. So I went to see my ex-Principal with my proposal. I had printed an ad and all, nice and catchy. For amateur voice lessons in the summer vacation, at school, free of charge. I was just something I wanted to do. I was really excited to teach 13-15 year-olds the next level of harmony; I remembered the laboured two-parts that we would devise when we were that age, and I thought it would be great to show them what real, beautiful, rich melodies could be woven together.
The Principal thought I was planning to teach primary school kids. I don't know why, it was just a miscommunication. She said, Ok, shall I put you through the In-Charge for Class 3? I just agreed. I'm not such a wimp now, but even a year ago, I was pretty wimpy. Ok was all I ever said.
Suddenly, my target age group went down from 14 to 8.
I had a class (a parody of one) of a floating population (literally, they went swimming and then came for Music Class) of five, plus minus two. And it wasn't always the same five either.
I was bugged at first, but then I was ok when I realised the only thing different is that I can't teach music to them in the same way as I had planned. What the heck, I was no slavedriver. I like to let kids play around. So after finding that trying for discipline in a random vacation camp-type environment was just stupid, everything went just fine.
So I pretended to teach, had fun with them. One day I saw a little dog of some pomeranian-esque yappy breed in the arms of a lady who had come to drop off her charges, two sisters (ages 5 and 7) at the Music Class. By the time I could ask her to wait, she had left. I asked the seven year old (I don't remember her name, but boy do I remember her face! And her voice, a very sweet voice. Very conscientious kid. Always looking out for her 5 year old sister, and, I later found, her baby brother as well) to bring her dog the next day, after asking for permission at home, of course, and laying down the disclaimer (that if her parents said no, she shouldn't get me in a soup).
So the two sisters turned up the next day, with this dog (a bitch who was called I think Lucy) that was very fit and frisky as hell, and what d'ya know, a St. Bernard pup called Rex, bigger than his full-grown friend, and a lazy lump. Then there was the baby brother, a sweet three year old who tried to lift the lumpy Rex to his feet, and was shorter than the puppy held up by its front paws.
We had our great Lessons in the empty auditorium, a veritable heaven for music, it has the most stage-y echoes when it's empty. I've spent countless lunch-breaks alone on that stage, imagining. I have always loved the stage. We go far back, you see. So when this dinky circus turned up, it was Play Day. We raced around the hall, slipping on its smooth floor, Lucy finally outrunning the overweight singers-to-be who were my pupils that day.
Another character showed up when it was time to go; she was a girl who looked my age, but I wasn't sure. So I used polite speech; she was the girls' aunt, just out of first year college, like me. She said now she understood why the girls liked my classes so much. I couldn't even believe it. It was such a strange, wonderful feeling, to realise that these kids could take to me.
Where association stops and synaesthesia begins
Where does association stop and synaesthesia begin?
While listening to music, something often experienced in isolation (as with headphones on), it seems to me a natural reaction to imagine the video which should go with the song. When I saw American Beauty, I was very young, I don’t remember much more of the film than one scene in which a misfit boy is showing his girl a video he shot. There’s a polythene bag swirling around in a shifting whirlpool on the sidewalk. That’s all. That video was, for years, my definition of the ultimate in cinematography. It was like there was music coming out of it.
A few months ago, I had the good fortune of being able to watch the renowned Maria Pagés and her Flamenco troupe perform in New Delhi dance which was all at once of cobblestoned streets and the furnaces of hell. Maria Pagés dances to unfamiliar beats, I am a musician, but I could not keep time; the language is alien, I do not speak Spanish.
And yet as she danced, words were rushing out of my mouth; no, not words, formless ghosts burst out of me as if my soul would explode. The only form I knew to put them into was word. If I could recall what I thought (if you could call it that), faster than my own mind could process, at the time, I have no doubt that it would have produced some of the best I have ever written.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata always conjures up in my mind the image of afternoon sun coming in through a window. Nothing to do with moonlight at all, actually. I heard Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor for the first time recently, and that day I listened to it at least thirty times, again and again. To me it sounded like a man in a battered overcoat, in a grey scene, walking at times briskly, almost breaking into a run, and at times shuffling; always hugging himself tight, trying fruitlessly to keep the driving rain from running down his neck and onto his back. I asked my friend S, over the phone, to tell me what it looked like. “Looks like or sounds like?” he checked. But I knew what I meant. Anyhow, what he saw was totally different. It was a man arranging for a birthday party outdoors, in a garden. It’s strange to reconstruct what was described, phone conversations force one to colour them with one’s own perception. But there were sepia flashbacks in his picture. The music lends itself to flashback, going distinctly from minor sounds to major sounds and back. S saw it as a filmmaker would, a structured and bounded view. I saw it as a torturous road; I was like the wildlife cameraman, following my fellow, not knowing what he would see next. He saw children playing. He saw destitution. He saw despair. He saw survivors. But overall the scene was never released from the grey downpour.
Even the distinctions between minor and major chords or scales seems to be questionable. I can certainly feel the sadness of minor notes, but I really wonder what the average non-musical person hears and feels. I tried this with my roommate last year, she has no particular musical inclination except the intermittent interest that all teenagers must have. I played her Romanza on the piano (electric keyboard, actually) and asked her if she could see where the mood changed. She could, it’s a good piece to start out with, very easy to pinpoint the changes (I don’t know if these are what are called movements). Even so, a hundred per cent statistic on a one person test is not exactly a fair sample. I was not convinced.
I really don’t know where normal associations end and synaesthetic ones begin; isn’t, say, BLUE=COLD or RED=HOT? Or are even these associations culture-specific? When you’re decorating a room, you are advised to choose colour schemes wisely, appropriate to the feel of the room. You wouldn’t paint a nursery red, would you?
You feel happy when you see/hear something, sad when something else. But wait, that’s not a synthesis of senses at all. I can’t figure this out, though. Is seeing in the mind’s eye seeing?
Sometimes I feel like I’m cheating. Is it all in my head? Does synaesthesia even exist? Or is it because I have never felt the real thing that I am a sceptic?
It’s tough being a sceptic and also being creative and a romantic. And considering that every synaesthete’s experience may differ vastly in strength and nature from the next, it makes it even harder to explain.
Great. One more to add to the identity crises.
While listening to music, something often experienced in isolation (as with headphones on), it seems to me a natural reaction to imagine the video which should go with the song. When I saw American Beauty, I was very young, I don’t remember much more of the film than one scene in which a misfit boy is showing his girl a video he shot. There’s a polythene bag swirling around in a shifting whirlpool on the sidewalk. That’s all. That video was, for years, my definition of the ultimate in cinematography. It was like there was music coming out of it.
A few months ago, I had the good fortune of being able to watch the renowned Maria Pagés and her Flamenco troupe perform in New Delhi dance which was all at once of cobblestoned streets and the furnaces of hell. Maria Pagés dances to unfamiliar beats, I am a musician, but I could not keep time; the language is alien, I do not speak Spanish.
And yet as she danced, words were rushing out of my mouth; no, not words, formless ghosts burst out of me as if my soul would explode. The only form I knew to put them into was word. If I could recall what I thought (if you could call it that), faster than my own mind could process, at the time, I have no doubt that it would have produced some of the best I have ever written.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata always conjures up in my mind the image of afternoon sun coming in through a window. Nothing to do with moonlight at all, actually. I heard Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor for the first time recently, and that day I listened to it at least thirty times, again and again. To me it sounded like a man in a battered overcoat, in a grey scene, walking at times briskly, almost breaking into a run, and at times shuffling; always hugging himself tight, trying fruitlessly to keep the driving rain from running down his neck and onto his back. I asked my friend S, over the phone, to tell me what it looked like. “Looks like or sounds like?” he checked. But I knew what I meant. Anyhow, what he saw was totally different. It was a man arranging for a birthday party outdoors, in a garden. It’s strange to reconstruct what was described, phone conversations force one to colour them with one’s own perception. But there were sepia flashbacks in his picture. The music lends itself to flashback, going distinctly from minor sounds to major sounds and back. S saw it as a filmmaker would, a structured and bounded view. I saw it as a torturous road; I was like the wildlife cameraman, following my fellow, not knowing what he would see next. He saw children playing. He saw destitution. He saw despair. He saw survivors. But overall the scene was never released from the grey downpour.
Even the distinctions between minor and major chords or scales seems to be questionable. I can certainly feel the sadness of minor notes, but I really wonder what the average non-musical person hears and feels. I tried this with my roommate last year, she has no particular musical inclination except the intermittent interest that all teenagers must have. I played her Romanza on the piano (electric keyboard, actually) and asked her if she could see where the mood changed. She could, it’s a good piece to start out with, very easy to pinpoint the changes (I don’t know if these are what are called movements). Even so, a hundred per cent statistic on a one person test is not exactly a fair sample. I was not convinced.
I really don’t know where normal associations end and synaesthetic ones begin; isn’t, say, BLUE=COLD or RED=HOT? Or are even these associations culture-specific? When you’re decorating a room, you are advised to choose colour schemes wisely, appropriate to the feel of the room. You wouldn’t paint a nursery red, would you?
You feel happy when you see/hear something, sad when something else. But wait, that’s not a synthesis of senses at all. I can’t figure this out, though. Is seeing in the mind’s eye seeing?
Sometimes I feel like I’m cheating. Is it all in my head? Does synaesthesia even exist? Or is it because I have never felt the real thing that I am a sceptic?
It’s tough being a sceptic and also being creative and a romantic. And considering that every synaesthete’s experience may differ vastly in strength and nature from the next, it makes it even harder to explain.
Great. One more to add to the identity crises.
Phaalse Hain Kaale Kaale
If you've never lived in India, or, to be precise, north India, somewhere not urban enough to exclude pushcart-toting vendors (various wallahs, as our English masters used to call them) from the landscape, you have missed one of the most sublime joys of the Indian summer. It goes by the humble name of phaalsa and is a tiny little bluish-reddish-purple bruised-looking berry that grows on trees in clusters.
I Googled phaalsa but as often happens with phonetic spelling, it didn't throw up much. Then I went to the ole' Bible at home, Amma's ancient copy of Nutritive Value of Indian Foods (1976 Reprint), by C. Gopalan, B.V. Rama Sastri and S.C. Balasubramanian (yes, apparently Tam-Brahms got together and made a joint effort!) first published in 1971 by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, under the National Council of Medical Research. This book was part of her curriculum while she was studying to finish a B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) in Home Science, and has long been my polyglot family's way to cross-translate names of fruits, and spices between Tamil, English, Hindi, Malayam and occasionally even Gujarati, Assamese, Oriya, Bengali or Marathi (my grandad spent some time in Orissa, Assam and Gujarat; the rest is stuff picked up from here and there over the years ).
The phaalsa is just as much a part of living in Lucknow as travelling in a rickshaw, Hazratganj, chikan and the bad shaayari that all kids learn in school here.
// The pictures were taken in my garden. The voiceover is my mom! Must try to record the real thing sometime!
I Googled phaalsa but as often happens with phonetic spelling, it didn't throw up much. Then I went to the ole' Bible at home, Amma's ancient copy of Nutritive Value of Indian Foods (1976 Reprint), by C. Gopalan, B.V. Rama Sastri and S.C. Balasubramanian (yes, apparently Tam-Brahms got together and made a joint effort!) first published in 1971 by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, under the National Council of Medical Research. This book was part of her curriculum while she was studying to finish a B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) in Home Science, and has long been my polyglot family's way to cross-translate names of fruits, and spices between Tamil, English, Hindi, Malayam and occasionally even Gujarati, Assamese, Oriya, Bengali or Marathi (my grandad spent some time in Orissa, Assam and Gujarat; the rest is stuff picked up from here and there over the years ).
The phaalsa is just as much a part of living in Lucknow as travelling in a rickshaw, Hazratganj, chikan and the bad shaayari that all kids learn in school here.
// The pictures were taken in my garden. The voiceover is my mom! Must try to record the real thing sometime!
Intermediate Technology
There ain't no such thing as Basic Infrastructure.
Infrastucture, by definition, is complicated!
Over twenty years ago, around 1981-2, in Kanpur, a decrepit town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, when my dad still held a pilot's license, he and my mother met a couple of slightly older, much more worldly folks called David Drury and Asifa Kanji, who had been married a few years, while my parents were fresh out of honeymoonland. I believe the story goes that Appa was giving joyrides down at IIT-K and they met there, victims, I guess, of mutual curiosity, and one thing led to another and my folks invited home two extraordinary people who were to my dad, I can only imagine, one suspiciously well-read Yankee and one terribly intelligent and lovely young woman of unascertainable extraction.
One of the more memorable things Uncle Dave (yes, he's UncaDave to me) did during that stint in Kanpur was write some wonderful songs (well he finished his Ph.D. on the side, but who cares!). One of these, one of my favourites, was called (or has been called in retrospect) Talkin' Memsahib Blues.
As Arlo Guthrie would say,
and so forth.
[I finally transcribed the lyrics from the CD that was made from the original tape recording from the 80s and found its way to us because we met David and Asifa last year (I met them for the first time, and finally heard live so many songs I had growin up listening to) after so many.]
Infrastucture, by definition, is complicated!
Over twenty years ago, around 1981-2, in Kanpur, a decrepit town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, when my dad still held a pilot's license, he and my mother met a couple of slightly older, much more worldly folks called David Drury and Asifa Kanji, who had been married a few years, while my parents were fresh out of honeymoonland. I believe the story goes that Appa was giving joyrides down at IIT-K and they met there, victims, I guess, of mutual curiosity, and one thing led to another and my folks invited home two extraordinary people who were to my dad, I can only imagine, one suspiciously well-read Yankee and one terribly intelligent and lovely young woman of unascertainable extraction.
One of the more memorable things Uncle Dave (yes, he's UncaDave to me) did during that stint in Kanpur was write some wonderful songs (well he finished his Ph.D. on the side, but who cares!). One of these, one of my favourites, was called (or has been called in retrospect) Talkin' Memsahib Blues.
As Arlo Guthrie would say,
"It's called, ya know, Talkin', 'cos it's a talking kinda song, ya know. And it's about this memsahib, ya know, so it's called the Talkin' Memsahib Blues. That's why it is that it goes by that name"
and so forth.
[I finally transcribed the lyrics from the CD that was made from the original tape recording from the 80s and found its way to us because we met David and Asifa last year (I met them for the first time, and finally heard live so many songs I had growin up listening to) after so many.]
Talkin’ Memsahib Blues
[D.D.: I'll try, we'll see what happens, it's the first time I've done the whole thing.
Ok, this is written from Asifa's point of view alright, this is her talking through the song.]
Ah yes, those happy hours I spent
When we heard about our research grant.
Six hundred a month is chickenfeed
But in India that means Memsahib,
Servants - cringing, crawling minions,
Gin and tonic on the veranda.
Well we made our home in Kanpore town,
The very finest place around
If you like dacoits, filth and thieves,
Flies and small-scale industries.
You mean you dragged me half way 'round the world to live in Cleveland?
Wouldn't you really rather study tourism in Goa?
Well I suppose if you have gone crazy m'boy
You'll need someone to take care of you.
Well we soon moved out from IIT
To the Bima Vihar Colony.
New red brick but just next door
Was the engulfed village of Lakhanpore,
The super-boonies:
Calling a goatherd to get your grass cut;
The milkman: the milkman brings the milk right to your doorstep
In the buffalo!
But life was never dull, you see
We had no lack of company
Toads and mice and fleas and slugs,
Lizards and birds and Kamikazi bugs-
Mega zillions of them
Dying gloriously in your food, your tea, your shoes, and your toilet-paper.
And like all fanatics, it's impossible to reason with 'em
To clean house, wash clothes and get to the station
You have to be a Master of Industrial Relations.
Bring your laundry in on Tuesday,
Pick it up again on Doomsday.
"Oh, you mean you wanted it this week?
I'll absolutely, certainly and pukka positively bring your clothes tomorrow.
Or the next day."
When the washerman quit and we fired the maid
My own two hands were all I had.
In my fondest memories I clearly see
The joys of Intermediate Technology
Like cooking dinner for fifteen people on a one-burner kerosene stove
Or whipping clothes off the line during a Monsoon downpour
Or turning on the tank so you can wash the pot to boil the water to put in the cooling jar to brush your teeth with.
I was choked to the gills with fear and trepidation
When the old man went out and bought his own transportation,
The old Lambretta he could barely get to run ,
And the author of the traffic code: Atilla the Hun!
Roads that look like they were recovering from recent mortar attacks.
We share the street with hand-carts, elephants, tempos, buffalos, camels and bicycles.
Kanpur has a zoo,
But the road is closer.
I'll give you a very useful driving tip if you're out that way, by the way:
Don't ever pull up too close behind an elephant at a long stop light.
Like life I could go on and on,
But what's the use?
And still I wouldn't trade that year for most I've had,
For a first time 'round, weren't too bad.
But you aren't about to hear me ask for a second round!
All in all, one good thing you've got to say about living in Kanpur:
It feels so good when you stop!
Of memories
I was looking, still, for The Elusive Curio that has dogged my footsteps snd haunted my days and nights.
I opened the plastic bag that housed the remains of my many years of solitary play in Barbieland.
Wow, that's it?
There were a million memories in there, the American Bazaar in Lagos where we bought lots of random Barbie accesories, which reminded me of the My Little Pony Shetland and stables bought secondhand there, and that quintessentially American shiny plastic carnival-balloon [it's called metallised nylon, thank you Wiki] that floated above my head all the way home.
At some point a few years ago - I cannot for the life of me remember when - there was a big chance that we'd have to move out of 3/42, Vishwas Khand, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow, that had been my address long enough for me to feel lousy about it. The toys were the first to go. It was time to put them away anyway - Baba I suppose was already at college, and I had outgrown them too. So I packed up everything. My stuff I wanted packed and ready, not lying around creating a nuisance for everybody.
Well, whadya know. We didn't move. I'm glad every day that we didn't need to. Who cares if this is not our own house, if it's somebody else's and we just rent it. We've spent ten years here.
So the Barbie bag was no little Pandora's Box.
Wow, that's it?
There were a million memories in there, the American Bazaar in Lagos where we bought lots of random Barbie accesories, which reminded me of the My Little Pony Shetland and stables bought secondhand there, and that quintessentially American shiny plastic carnival-balloon [it's called metallised nylon, thank you Wiki] that floated above my head all the way home.
At some point a few years ago - I cannot for the life of me remember when - there was a big chance that we'd have to move out of 3/42, Vishwas Khand, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow, that had been my address long enough for me to feel lousy about it. The toys were the first to go. It was time to put them away anyway - Baba I suppose was already at college, and I had outgrown them too. So I packed up everything. My stuff I wanted packed and ready, not lying around creating a nuisance for everybody.
Well, whadya know. We didn't move. I'm glad every day that we didn't need to. Who cares if this is not our own house, if it's somebody else's and we just rent it. We've spent ten years here.
So the Barbie bag was no little Pandora's Box.
That's how love is supposed to be, isn't it? I thought.
You open a bag you had forgotten years ago, and you feel that bittersweetness. You know it's gone, but so what? It didn't last forever, so what?
Forever is here inside me. Whatever else I have or do not have, I have this. The memories are mine.
Even love has no room for hysterics or maudlin [sic.].
We live.
I live.
Every day is a new algebraic sum of my life. It hasn't failed me yet, been positive ever since I can remember.
Move over Godot,Je suis comme ça. Je fais tous les deux. J'oublie tout de suite et je n'oublie jamais.
The Cow Paradigm
"Cow [sic.] is a useful animal. It has four legs, one tail. It gives us milk..."
Sound familiar? This is the beginning of the standard essay entitled "Cow [sic.]", which every school student, I think, in India has written at some point in English, Hindi or some other language.
The archetypal Cow was a saviour of sorts for me when I was a child. Of course, the whole theory was never really tested, but then we were taught to think first, then act. Thought experiments are important in my home.
The Cow Paradigm is a fanciful name given to this theory of Appa's that everything can be boiled down to this one Cow Essay.
Pick a word, any word. [Here's what my roommate came up with; this is a real-time experiment] Say the word "lamp":
Allora,
The lamp in our room has not been turned on because it has a 50 Watt bulb which can light up a 10 and a half foot by 9 foot room up like an oven on a cold day, and like a blast furnace on a day which averaged 40 degrees C in the shade (of the room!). What I wouldn't give to have no clothes on when I am outside in the sun; like the cows that sit in puddles all day, naked, listless. The Cow is a useful animal...[ad nauseum]And this, mon ami, is pure poetry compared to the crass ones we made up as kids! You don't believe me? Don't think it's a Universal? It's just the kind of thing the Diabolicals would love! But do try it, I'm just too bored to type one more now; I've done this with too many people too many times!
Londres!
Some old dreams of mine seem childish to me now; but some are still under the always-wanted-never-did category.
Busking in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.
Busking in Tottenham Court Road Tube Station.
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