Puri Subzi

I realize it after sitting for 20 min in the enormous waiting room: there is no immediate...

Mon, 28 May 2012 11:55:20 +0530

I realize it after sitting for 20 min in the enormous waiting room: there is no immediate viscerality to anything around me. The hospital is clean, almost fully silent with sombre people looking healthier than they really are. The muted, diffused light from a mid morning sun is bouncing off beige blinds. The edge has been taken off.

It is a most disconcerting feeling.

Where are the hacky, coughing people? Where are the people with fractured limbs? Where are the people with dried blood on their bandages? Where are the people who are grieving for lost loved ones? Where are the normal hospital people?

********

Gangamma is sitting beside me.

“You don’t look sick, young man. Why are you here?”, she asks in an accent that I immediately recognize. Deccani. Bidar. Gulbarga.

“You don’t look ill yourself!”

“Ah, but I am a 76-yr old woman. I am ill.”

Strangers brought together by a common thing: an illness that is almost invisible. I have no scar to show for my migraines. Except for a difficulty in recalling the name of her village, she has nothing to show for her Alzheimer’s.

“I travelled for almost three days to get here. At least it is cool here. The bus from Bidar to Hyderabad was terrible. I had to stand for so long in the heat. I thought I’d die.”

“You came alone?”

“No. My grandson came until Raichur, but he had to go back because his wife did not give birth properly. Curses on her!”

”..and you came from there by yourself?”

“What else to do? No one gives me free treatment except for this hospital in Bangalore. I don’t have enough money.”

Almost 800 kilometers from home.

She leans across as she says that. Breath redolent of onions, tobacco and betel.

“I don’t like this hospital though. No one talks to each other in the room. Everyone’s quiet. It’s like being in a place full of ghosts. Living ghosts.”

A nurse walks towards us.

“Gangamma! Gangamma!”

“She’s calling for you, please raise your hand”

“She’s not calling me. I am not Gangamma. Also who are you?”

My name is called. I get up, look back at a confused Gangamma and walk towards the corridor…

Sonder

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:34:01 +0530

Sonder:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

(via dictionaryofobscuresorrows)

A morning

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:34:00 +0530

Bombay looks beautiful in the morning, I whisper to myself. The view from seventeen floors high is spectacular. First rays of the summer sun are slanting across thin, tall buildings. In the far distance, the mangroves are already simmering. A pigeon flutters into view, it’s peculiar whitish grey feathers offset by an outrageous twin striped forehead. Is this a pigeon at all? Down below, the temple bells are signalling the cacophony of the day ahead. An autorickshaw pulls up to the entrance of a building across the road. From it come three people, two of them alive. The other draped in white, shoulders and upper torso stained in red. Three women wail and beat their chests. A crowd gathers but soon disappears. No time for the dead. The 6.29 fast to Churchgate waits for no one.

On an adjacent roof, eight people are still sleeping. Sheets in all hues, wrapped right over their heads. The temple bells are now roaring. Pigeons are fighting for sitting space. Bombay affords little of this for even them. Two women, one of them wearing a bright orange salwar kameez, come up on the roof. Both of them carrying brooms. One walks to the edge and starts sweeping. The other uses it liberally wake up the still sleepy. I can hear silent howls as the sheets are parted and eight people suddenly come to life. Inevitable pulling and pushing at the staircase. One person hurriedly pulls up his slipping underwear.

I can smell coffee.

One express train whizzes past the station. Staccato blasts from the horn telling people to get off the tracks. A slow, local train too starts. A push cart seller of papayas rounds the corner and disappears. His dark, swarthy appearance contrasting the bright blue shirt and white cap he is wears. One middle aged man, with a large belly, on his morning walk pauses for a breath. Hands on hips first then hands on knees. A red towel to wipe the sweat off.

The coffee tastes just right.

Reading Thomas Keneally now. Out in the living room, a mother and daughter are tickling each other away. Short giggles with loud guffaws from both of them with a protesting “Mamma?” from the child thrown in between. A moment across walls.

It will remain my favourite memory for a long, long time.

"She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:42:47 +0530

“She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.”

- Albert Camus

Thud

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:20:30 +0530

The cab of WDM-2 locomotive, at its best, is not a comfortable place to be in. The seats are hideously designed with minimum back support and there is practically no leg room - the emergency brakes take up whatever stretchable place there is. Heat from the V20 engine behind is soul sapping.

But Bharucha Kaka, as he was fondly called, was in his elements. His thick, Gujarati accented Hindi was in full flow.

“Nothing like a long stretch of green signals, no? I can jam the throttle and just enjoy all of this.”, he points out towards the vast orchards of haapus mangoes that follow the track. The speedometer shows a steady 109.5 kmph. His assistant driver, with whom I am sharing the tiny seat, pours everyone a cup of hot, sweet, tea. I pass around a pack of Marie biscuits. It is a moment I savour intensely.

Dahanu approaches. The assistant stretches out a little and pushes the high tone horn. A few people squatting near the track, playing a card game quickly scatter. About three hundred meters ahead, I notice a young woman standing still. She’s wearing a bright pink salwar-kameez and carrying what looks like a school backpack. She takes one step forward and stops. The horns are blaring continuously. Bharucha Kaka is talking on the radio to the station master for all clear. She takes another step forward. There is hesitation. My hands get clammy and tight. Instinct and experience pushing the pulse. Another step forward. Bharucha Kaka ditches the radio, the assistant howls, “No, no, please don’t”. Her knees give away. I notice she has long wavy hair, almost brunette. Kaka jams on the emergency brakes. The neck is on the rail. She twists it slight upwards. I catch her eye. She catches mine. Fear. Guilt. Help me.

The inevitable thud.

Half a kilometer later we shudder to a halt. There are already half a dozen people at the spot. My knees are weak. Sweat pours down my neck. Her face keeps flashing in front me of every nano second. I shouldn’t be here. Where’s my air conditioned cube and the comforting colors of the Windows task bar?

“Oh god”, shouts one of the bystanders, “there is no head. Oh my god, oh my god”.

Bharucha Kaka is the bravest here. He clears the crowd and squats underneath the coach.

“Pass me a piece of cloth”. This soon appears and is tied around his left hand.

The mangled torso, sans the head, right leg, left arm and much of the shoulder blades is taken out. Intense white of the inner body. The cloudy yellow of the intestines.

“We need the head”, says Kaka. “I am not starting the train without it”.

I am shivering. I’ve been through this before half a dozen times, I remind myself. Steel up, you bastard.

We fan out on both sides of the long train. I am walking towards the locomotive when I spot something. Hair. Please don’t let it be me. Please don’t let it be me. My hands feel all jelly and noodley. Three quarters of a head, sliced from the left side upwards.

Crouch. Extend hand behind battery box. Gently push. Extend another hand and catch. Feels heavy. An over inflated volleyball. Leathery, texturey. Speckled with earth and blood. Still, blue eyes stare back. Fear. Guilt. Help me.

“No. 28”, says Bharucha Kaka as we start the train.

************

“How do you deal with it. All of it?”, I ask

It’s a sweltering Madras evening outside, but the air conditioner inside is making sure the temperature is a steady 21 degrees. The enticing, amber peaty roughness of a Laphroigh 12-yr lingers on the tongue. Grilled Chicken and Sriracha sauce are on the table.

“Honestly, boy, you don’t.”, says Peter Johnson.

“I’ve been at this 29 years and I still don’t know how. I keep reminding myself, and I’ve told you this many, many times, that I am not guilty, but that’s a hard thing to reconcile. You know the story of what I went through when it happened for the first time. And yet 28 years on, I still wake up some mornings with those nightmares.”

“The wait at the coroner’s offfice is horrible. You remember that one young man that died at Tondiarpet no? 2 days later I saw his father. He slapped me. That’s the first time its ever happened. I almost hit the guy back, boy, I almost did. I cried with the father for 20 minutes.”

Janet, Peter’s beautiful, graceful wife, walks in with some more eats.

“He doesn’t deal with death all that well. His father was the same too.”, say she.

There’s steel in the voice that lost a daughter a long, long time.

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 20:00:56 +0530

“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.”

- Jorge Luis Borges

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o’ clock..."

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 20:11:00 +0530

“When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o’ clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

- from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

"I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really..."

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:49:29 +0530

“I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.’”

- Susan Sontag, quoted by Brendan Berg. She’s right, precisely and exactly.

It’s not the first element of her argument that’s arresting; any idiot knows that intelligence is overrated in all sorts of ways. But the insight that when we are real and human with each other we produce ‘intelligence’ —as an outcome, not as an attribute— is profound, true, and an explanation I’d never encountered for why I prefer the company of the real and dull to erudite performers distracted by their own brilliance. It is not merely a question of taste: the former converse collaboratively, build meanings with you, surprise you; the latter are not so open to discovery because the dialectic process is for them both a pleasure and a competition, and their intelligence is too precious to them to be risked on banal inquiries, dumb guesses, the fatal utterance “I don’t know.”

We stepped on to the slippery cobblestone steps. We were present. We climbed. Through rain and...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:25:37 +0530

We stepped on to the slippery cobblestone steps.

We were present.

We climbed. Through rain and sleet. Feet giving away sometimes. But never giving up.

We smelled fresh pine.

We rested under the meagre bulk of cedar.

We reached our cabin.

We had no internet.

We drank half a bottle of rum. Neat. We kept ourselves warm.

We smoked too. Whooping coughs echoing across near hills.

In the vast whitespace that existed between these activities, we talked. Confided. Motivated. Cajoled. Cried.

We ate simple food. We played scrabble. We drank a little more.

We slept to the sound of crackling fire and the whistling wind.

We said goodbye to an year.

We woke up to a frosted ground. And snowy mountains.

We said hello to a new year. In beautiful sunshine.

We made friends with the locals.

We walked more. We slept a lot. We drank cold beer at 10AM that needed no fridge.

We ambled down. We dispersed.

We need to go back.

The photo is a purplish yellow frame now, the edges bleeding vibrant color. “23 years...

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:29:00 +0530

The photo is a purplish yellow frame now, the edges bleeding vibrant color.

“23 years ago”, my mother helpfully points out.

“Barely 5 minutes after we took this photo, it started raining like crazy. We had to run to the far end of the platform for shelter.”

I nod along as if I remember everything to the last detail.

My eyes are fixed on my father in the photo. He is holding me in his left arm. The right arm pointing to two diesel locomotives about to pull out the Karnataka Express from Bangalore. The locomotives are colored in cream and brown bands. The coaches behind spinach green and mustard yellow. His shirt is checked, the trousers in darkish grey, making a stab at getting away from the bell-bottom fit of the late 70’s and early 80’s. He is beaming. His stance straight. The clothes seem to fit perfectly.

******

This one’s in black & white. I am a few years older and at the far edge of the frame. My makeshift bat is held high, Graham Gooch style. Behind me, on the wall, are three thin lines in red. Stumps. Nearer in the frame, now with a small pot belly, is my father. He is just about a deliver a off-cutter. The arms are taut and raised high.

I tell my mother, “This I remember well.”

He bowled the ball, the action resembling Ravi Shastri’s. A sort of languid crane, confused about his sense of gravity. The ball looped in the air. I took three steps forward, hoping to meet it just as it pitched. Then something wicked happend to the bright yellow ball. It drooped, the angle of rotation changing ever so slightly. My bat, my eyes and swing looking towards a mid-wicket shot. The ball pitched a foot in front my left leg. One sharp turn. Out of my ground and a wild flay. The ball caught the edge of the bat and ballooned towards mid-off. He ran back, feet moving effortlessly. A small shuffle to the side. John Travolta would have been proud. Another shuffle to the right. And in cupped hands the ball landed safely.

“Out.”

“Ya, ya, pa. That was a good ball.”, shoulders drooped and resigned over handing over the bat.

******

It’s funny when you first note a vulnerability in a person. One part of your mind refuses to give credence to the thought. Bullshit, you are imagining things it says. But, the other, more sensible part knows what you saw.

We’ve just finished breakfast and are on a round of excellent coffee.

“I’ll just head to the toilet and then we can start again”, he says.

Outside, he asks the attendent which way.

As I watch the scene, perhaps for the first time in my life, a black flash crosses my eye.

His back has stooped. His clothes are ill fitting, the trousers too high above the wait, the shirt too flabby. The limp has become more pronounced and the strides slower. The confidence seems to have evaporated a bit.

The black flash again.

“He’s become old.”, the mind speaks. “He’s become vulnerable”, it pushes its case further.

The coffee scalds the tongue.

A deep sigh. A realization. Of temporality. Of physicality. Of inevitability.

Tears.

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a..."

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 18:47:42 +0530

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”

- The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Jeur

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:38:00 +0530

The cyclone has hit the house hard. The old tiles don’t stand a chance. Your grandma is asking you to get more buckets from the attic. The power is out and you are scared. Your mother is out to buy milk and rice. You want to be with her. Grandma’s skin is cold and weathered. A line of ants heading towards the kitchen seem to be confused. They go in circles. The storm is near now. The fishy tang is on your tongue.

She points at the ants. “One day you’ll know the taste of freedom”.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I was talking to the ants”.

******

Most of the coach is asleep. You open the door. A solid blast of cold air rushes past your face and tousling your hair further. The sun outside is low on the horizon. Orange. The sky extends. Pink and indigo. A reservoir. Blue and green. Dark figures in wobbling boats casting nets. Cormorants and Ibis splashing. You have your feet firmly planted, one hand on the window grill and other against the bulkhead. The woman a couple of bays down protests against the sharp wind. Ignore.

The blue coaches dive into a deep cutting. The wheels screech against the steel. The rocks are brown, black and sharp. Some grass between them. You look out, the wind picking up pace with the train. Your toes start to tingle. Waves of invisible energy pushes up. Your fingers get twitchy. Your ears acutely aware of Khan saab’s voice. The clackety clack is distinct.

The pulse hits your head. Boom. Crash. Silence. Blind. Blank. Tears.

“Freedom, grandma”, you say, “tastes like salt”.

“What are you reading?”, I ask. This only the second time I’ve seen her. I already...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:00:28 +0530

“What are you reading?”, I ask. This only the second time I’ve seen her. I already like her. I am very nervous.

“Oh, some Conrad”, the voice confident and clear.

“Do you read much?”, she asks

“Oh, a lot. Mostly Tom Clancy shit though. Need to read more intelligent stuff”

Giggle

“I wish my brother would read more. I hate buying books just for myself. Dad & mom don’t like their money spent this way by just one child.”

“Anyway, do you mind if I read to you a few pages? I quite like doing things like this.”

********

And so we read to each other aloud. Different books. Different voices. All under the dimmed light of our bed rooms. It felt like a ritual. It felt sacred. It was. Her husky voice adding gravitas to the already tortured Flaubert. My tone-meandering utterances adding comic relief to an already funny John Mortimer. Her emerald eyes always shining. Always looking at the next sentence before the current one was finished. “You have a funny, flat nose in this light”, she said often.

“We should read aloud to our kids….someday…whenever that should happen”

“Yes, yes. We should start with A..B..C..D”

“You doofus”

********

Always an ice-cream and a smoke after the read. Strawberry and menthol.

I miss the dim light. The reading. The voice. Her.

Maps and compasses

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:58:26 +0530

Maps and compasses:

Seth Godin on the topic:

The compass, on the other hand, is more important then ever. If you don’t know which direction you’re going, how will you know when you’re off course?

And yet…

And yet we spend most of our time learning (or teaching) the map, yesterday’s map, while we’re anxious and afraid to spend any time at all calibrating our compass.

Sweep

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:10:19 +0530

The police constable’s boot goes straight for Seenu’s jaw.

*Thwack*

It’s a sickening sound and a quarter of the coach I am in turns around to see where it came from. I am 3 ft away from it.

There’s a howl of pain for an instant. Then silence. The rhythmic clack of steel on steel suddenly roars. Dies. And roars again.

“How dare you enter these coaches? Have I told you before not to come here?”, booms the constable.

“But aiyya, where else will I earn my money?”

“I don’t care. Get out of this coach now and this train at the next stop”, the boot swinging into position.

“That’s quite enough. I’ll make sure he leaves the coach at Hindupur”. The constable looks at me in disbelief for a second. Then storms off to the next coach.

Seenu, with one arm and two missing legs nods and says “Dhanyam, aiyya”. The bruise on his jaw

****

Outside, the landscape in stunning. Makalidurga and the hills surrounding it are the gateway to Bangalore. Small tomato farms are dotted around large vineyards that’ll soon yield some of the best wine in the country.

Seenu is back from cleaning the coach. His tool? The shirt that he presently dusts off against the wall, flicks a stubborn hairball from the collar and puts it back on. It’s tattered at the back. I give him a 10 rupee note.

“Thanks again aiyya for saving me”

“It’s OK. I did what I had to do. Inhuman to treat anything that way”

“I have to face this everyday. At least today I get one less slap and 20 rupees more in earning.”

He looks longingly at the stump of his arm.

“God gives and god takes away, no, saar? I was a bhel-puri seller earning 100 rupees a day on this route until 5 years ago. Now see.”

He flaps trouser legs where his calf and feet would have been.

“What happened?”

“I fell down just outside Penukonda while changing bogies. No one saw me go down, so when I became conscious again, I had to drag myself half a km to the level crossing gate. There after 2 hrs some ambulance came and took me to hospital, but too late to save my arm and legs. Doctor said some infection.”

“I was lucky train was slow else I would have died”, he looks at me wistfully.

“But sometimes I wish I was dead. What can a one armed person do in life saar? What can a one armed person do.”

Three more of his buddies join him. One guy has both his leg tethered like a head of cattle. Another has both arms missing.

Soon there is laughter and money counting. I hear one of them go “Treat, maamu, treat!”

****

Hindupur. Screeching halt. Seenu hauls himself off the coach and onto the platform. He looks around, turns and drags himself down the concrete. The constable is nowhere to be seen. The tattered shirt fluttering in the strong breeze.

That Father Lost

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:41:00 +0530

That Father Lost:

As one commenter notes, this sublime piece of writing is a meditation:

Two griefs: the first, the departure of him whom we had loved, demands suspension of our normal lives. The second, the departure of those with whom we had grieved, demands resumption.

Also: On fathers and loss.

"No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:48:45 +0530

“No one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That’s all I have to say on that subject.”

- Philip Pullman

"Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:13:13 +0530

“Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map.”

- Alan Moore

"There’s no remaking reality. Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:58:00 +0530

“There’s no remaking reality. Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes.”

- Philip Roth

"That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:58:00 +0530

“That’s what so many people didn’t understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes.”

- Orson Scott Card