O Captain, my Captain!

(image courtesy: Pinterest)

It has been more than a week and the world's back to its usual, sad rounds. But some things take time to sink in. Even when you are far, far removed from its bleak actuality. You are still capable of feeling that ache, however feeble and tangential. You are still shaken, for days together, by the tragedy of it all. Such is how some people touch your lives. And he was one of them. 
  
Farewell, Robin Williams. Thank you for the laughs. And for that eternal twinkle in your now-happy, now-sad eyes. You'll be missed. Terribly.

November surprises

November always takes me by surprises, like these tiny lilac flowers cascading down from the otherwise plain, undemanding basil. I had never seen one flower, or in fact knew it did, before this. With the winter on her way to making an elegant comeback, the days have begun to shrunk. That strange yet delicious coming together of torpor and restlessness is back, and nothing like these quiet little awakenings to kindle the winter woes.

Then, there's a tiny yet overwhelmingly mulish part of me, that takes almost a century to finally acknowledge greatness that has long surpassed its peak. Of course, it's not the first time I'm regretting this, but with The Kite Runner the regret almost leaves me gasping. After two days of sleepless reading punctuated by stifled whimpers (yes, I do that), I am yet to come out of Khaled Hosseini's stunningly devastating world, a world that is so tenderly painted with love, hopelessness, and loss. Loss of everything, almost. What tugs at my heart is the one line - "There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood" - and perhaps there, in those heartrending, resigned words, lies the soul of the novel.
I won't say much about my afterthoughts, mostly because I realize I don't have words that would express the deluge of emotions pirouetting inside me, and also because I don't want to say goodbye yet. I can still see Hassan's carefree smile, the one sugared with unwavering love for 'Amir agha'; I can still smell the warm naans that Ali brings from the bazaar; I can still feel the cold crunch of snow under the zealous feet of the kite runners; I can still see Baba and Rahim Khan enjoying their black tea amid swirls of smoke rising from their cigarettes; I can still imagine the colours of Kabul before its war-torn, harrowing doom; I can still see Amir endeavoring all his life 'to be good again'. And I can still hear Hassan's heartbeat humming the only song of his life...

"For you, a thousand times over."

So long...

"If I were another on the road, I would have

hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight ... stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!"

~ Mahmoud Darwish, If I Were Another

These lines have often come to me in different times over the years, but mostly when I'm the most unsure about things. There is a certain flimsiness about them, the kind that stirs you but still somehow keeps the cascade of emotions from tumbling out in the open. And hopefully they will pull me through the painfully long, fourteen-hour flight to Mumbai tonight as well (I'm not even counting the six-hour misery from here to Newark!). The time has come at last and being the lost soul that I am, I never understood what is the good in goodbyes. Nevertheless, I'll have a go at it, however feeble and halfhearted it sounds.

I will miss Seattle, a city that I've been madly in love with from then to now and forever will, despite its notorious reputation of the nine-months-a-year rains. What I have for this place is a very first love sort of fixation, for this is where I had first come, after crossing the proverbial seven seas. This is where I had first felt that acute, empty moment of being a foreigner once and quite ironically three years later, this is where I felt the most at home. There'll always, always be bits and pieces of our life spent here that I'll be rambling on about now and then, no matter how repetitive and annoying it gets.

I will also miss being a regular here for sometime, the blog-land camaraderie in particular. Howsoever virtual it is, my fellow bloggers have been a very integral part of my life for the last couple of years. Here I've found joy, compassion and comfort from sharing and being shared, and I wouldn't let anything in the world change this. Not even change, the big old bully.
So this is not really a goodbye, for as soon as I find myself rested and revived on the other side of the globe, I shall definitely try to sneak in a post or two about our 'Incredible India' or whatever it is the cliches say.

So long then!


P.S. As a befitting resolution to my Seattle diaries, the azaleas did bloom and how! They now flourish in the foster care of a very good, equally plant-loving friend.

Change

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

~ Anatole France

I wish I could frame and structure my emotions better than what the great poet has already said, and how beautifully. Achingly beautiful, actually. How very ironic it all seems - when the whole world around me is undergoing a spring makeover and getting dressed in the splendor of a newly sprouted green, inside, I am groping for ways to embrace this whole other kind of change.

Change, however insignificant or huge, has never been my forte. An annoyingly stubborn creature of habit, I can crack and burst under the slightest of pressures, a trait I have continually loathed. Last week saw the beginning of the much dreaded goodbyes - bittersweet dinners and parting gifts - and as much as I would wish this all away, I know it's out there lurking around the corner.
However this time, I'm still in one piece and that is quite unusually strong for someone like me. The feeling is yet to sink in, although the countdown has certainly begun knocking at the back of my head. I don't know if this is good or bad but trudge on I must, belting my emotions for a proper unleashing, for some day quiet and befitting. Whether this is being brave or just wallowing in denial, let it just be. It's only a handful of days anyway.

The sparrows have come back in flocks and broods. The bird-feeder, never left a moment alone, swings in joy from the dance of their communal meal. Jostling for space while eyeing that next precious morsel, the patio fills in with their noisy chatter. The furry little guy has returned too from his long winter sleep, scurrying up and down the mossy branches, sometimes even hanging upside down in the most precarious of positions. Plump, promising buds on my potted azalea stir to burst open, the full-bodied May bloom of which I won't be here to see. Unfamiliar birds grace the berry tree, just like new future residents will inhabit this apartment. Chocolate-pecan scones, the last of the homemade goodies to come out of my oven here. And thus, the temperamental baker signs off. Of course, for the time being only. 

Rumi and the rock star

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I will meet you there."

~ Rumi

Last night a bunch of us friends had been to watch the just released Hindi musical drama Rockstar. I had been looking forward to this since months because of the soul-stirring music of the legendary A.R. Rahman which is accompanied by the sonorous vocals by Mohit Chauhan and the poignant poetry of Irshad Kamil. One absolutely intoxicating trio that is! Now with all the Academy adulation and international accolades post Slumdog Millionaire, the home country had been missing the quintessential Rahman for some time (strange, that I should be talking from that perspective sitting here). His sheer brilliance lies in creating tunes where rhythm after rhythm the music just grows on you and crawls into your soul till you are left with nothing but raw, scathing emotions.

That said, I'm currently mulling over something rather perplexing. The Sufi ideology that pain and heartbreak are the utmost important ingredients for creativity is where the major plot of the movie whirls around. An artist, of whatever form his/her art is, must undergo a powerful emotional catastrophe in order to get truly inspired. That is where I got stuck, and still am. What if there is no internal conflict? How much pain is enough pain? Till what extent does one push oneself and the boundaries? Or should one just wait for the elusive muse of creativity?
In the movie, as an aspiring rock star, Jordan must let his heart ravaged and torn by the ruthless claws of love and rebellion. An Indian, albeit a bit patchy take on Jim Morrison, Rockstar portrays Jordan's tumultuous journey as he lives through it all - love and loss, fame and fortune, destruction and disillusionment. By the end of the movie, when the closing credits were rolling and Jordan was reciting  the above quoted Rumi lines with a gnawing intensity, I could no more feel the world around me. Nor could I see it well with a pair of blurry eyes and a tight face. Yes, I do cry at movies but this one just went a tad further and woke up a sea of dormant emotions in me. Some other day I'll sing their moods here, but not now.

Here is one of the jewels from Rahman's eternal collection. Jordan, with his newfound success and staggering popularity, is unable to understand the ways of the world. He laments his inability to articulate the beauty of emotions surrounding him - "Jo bhi main kehna chahoon, barbaad kare alfaaz mere..." (Even though I try to say something beautiful, my words make it mundane and trivial...)

And yes, from now on I am a Ranbir Kapoor fan, stamped and certified. The boy sure has blossomed and how. He has so eloquently eternalised Jordan that it is difficult to get the character out of my head. He just sits there in his military jacket and Afghan pants airing his angst while I croon the songs again and again. And again.

The death of ghazal

Jagjit Singh is no more. The ghazal maestro whose poignant voice gave many a reason to dare to love despite its signature haplessness, and in the process even unravel a certain chaste Urdu/Persian word or two. Whose silken voice healed many a wound, even when sometimes there was nothing to heal. Who revived the ghazal for us Indians and yet stuck to its core character - poetic expression and the unmistakable pathos of the lovelorn. I, as a mortal, was fortunate enough to go to one of his live concerts in Hyderabad five years back, the prized memory of which shall live with me forever.

His soulful renditions stir and brew a little storm in me every time I listen to one of his effortless creations, and then just like magic that very voice would lull that raging storm as well. I have been witnessing this spell, ever since I was a bratty, moody 13 years old. And through the treasure trove of lilting melodies that he has left behind, I wish to be continued to be bewitched so. May your soul rest in eternal peace. Although I still cannot believe the tragedy. To borrow a YouTube fan's very befitting tribute - "Ghazal died today, again."

Here is one of his many heart-searing ghazals and an old, old favourite. A lover implores his long lost love to be careful in the ways of this shrewd, interfering world. She must not pay heed to people's trivial gossip about their once beautiful past and must guard her present honour. Written by the Urdu poet Kafeel Azer, the intense lines are a coming together of sarcasm and love at its best.

My heart owes so much to him. Every time it was broken or fractured, his voice would mend it and make it ready to brave the world again.

And it didn't have to be love every time.


(Image courtesy, desiclub.com)

Books that make you think

There are books that make you think, and there are books that make you think till it starts to hurt and open wounds unknown to you before. Plagued by images and insomnia, I cannot help being pensive about the fabricated yet mind-numbingly real worlds of Ian McEwan's Atonement and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The power of good books being such, I am in a mood of denial. Of the reality. Of the world around me that whirls like a possessed dervish. Of my own meaningless existence. Thanks to my wise enrollment in the Contemporary British Fiction course from the University of Oxford, without which I probably wouldn't have been introduced to such achingly beautiful reads. And I see the world with a new pair of hollow eyes - hollow, because they've emptied themselves of the pestering wants. At least for now. Let the eyes be.

Atonement, Ian McEwan

It is an unusually hot English summer of the 1930s. The looming inertia and ugly stoniness of the Tallis estate lend character to the mounting sultriness. A thirteen year old Briony Tallis is like any other child at her age - curious, immature and impatient to understand the complicated world of adults. Harbouring a feverish passion for a literary career, she loves imagining stories and giving them shape with words whose paramount importance is the moral they convey. Amidst the clutter of her castles in air, lies her twisted reality - an absent father, a detached mother, a philandering elder brother (Leon), and a confused elder sister (Cecilia). Then there are the visitors - the cousins from the north, Lola and her twin brothers, who must stay with the Tallises till 'the Parents' sort out the nasty business of divorce; and Paul Marshall, a foppish rich friend of Leon's.

Despite the smothering heat, silence and hushed up family secrets, blossoms a surprising romance between Cecila and Robbie, the charlady's son who has been friends with the Tallis children since forever. With so much oh her platter and an imagination that already runs wild even when leashed, Briony weaves truths of her own. And when she stumbles upon her sister and Robbie caught up in a passionate moment which is ominously followed by Lola's rape, Briony cannot wait to give a conquering pattern to her story. Seizing the moment and impatient to cross the threshold of childhood, Briony's prejudiced testimony sends the wrong man to prison. Sixty years later, a famous writer, she writes a novel to atone for that one sin - to rectify her mistakes via her characters and give them another chance. Is she forgiven? On the canvas of a dysfunctional family, British class system and World War II, McEwan paints a haunting picture of love, longing and loss.

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Nestled in the picturesque English countryside is the prestigious school of Hailsham, where the students are exceptionally well taken care of - weekly medical check-ups, no unhealthy teenage habits and an abnormal emphasis on art and poetry by the 'guardians' (yes, not teachers). This is the story of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy - three best friends who grow up together in this idyllic setting and fall into the ruts of the inevitable love triangle. Through Kathy's take-me-with-you narration, we at once become a part of their cloistered, yet happy lives. Almost after you are there, drawn in by her nostalgia, you wonder why these children are never let out? Who and where are there parents? Why this almost fetish-like obsession with health? And then, amidst flickering flashes of fear and discovery, it strikes you on the face - they are clones who are being reared in isolation and are perfected for their future as 'donors'. Their lives are mapped out even before they are created. But what is surprising and heartbreaking at the same time is how normal these children are - they fight and fuss, they listen to music and draw pictures, they fall in love - everything that the ordinary humans do.

Once they are adults they begin donating their organs till they just 'complete' (that's the word). Then there are the nurse-like 'carers' who take care of the donors during and after their extraction surgeries. All the while we keep asking - why this mute resignation to a horrible fate? Why the lack of rebellion? Riddled with euphemisms and a compelling narration that resembles a teenager's diary, Ishiguro slowly but steadily pushes us to an edge from where there is no escape. Dancing on tumultuous undercurrents the narration sails through friendship, love and sacrifice. And all this while death is just out there, lurking around the corner like a giant phantom beast. What option does one have on the face of absolute powerlessness? To go on living and loving, or to just wait for it?

My green star

I had found you sitting abandoned, tucked away in the corner of a horticulture isle. You had no expectations, except the tag on your neck that read, "water once a week". This tempted me, your no strings attached demeanor. I brought you home and you seemed to love it. Sitting by the living room window, you feasted on plenty of unadulterated sun. The mountain air of the countryside suited you well. Plump and pretty, you soon outgrew your old container. Here's a guilty secret - I never really liked that brown thing much. So there you were, happy in your new home - green and transparent - just like you. Religiously, I would feed you, keep your home clean and photograph your blossoming loveliness. You were my green star.

They call you the 'lucky bamboo', the fate-driven mortals. But I had no expectations from you. I loved you in my own way, proud and attached. And every time we would leave you alone (sometimes for months) you proved my pride - you flourished and sang, all by yourself. With time you became self-sufficient and basked in the glory of a perpetual solitude, just like me. When we moved to a new place, I took you along and there you were, sleeping soundly in a zip-lock bag throughout the two-hour flight. Like me, you quickly adapted yourself to your new surroundings, irrespective of the jarring ugliness of the place. But there was the sun, and there was love. And they say love conquers all.

Then crept in the cruel winter with heaps of pompous snow. Undaunted, you kept a brave front and cheered me up every morning when the chill would seep into my bones, sawing them mercilessly. As all nomads must, we were on the move once again. And once again you battled the odds alone and thrived spectacularly.

Unfortunately, the winter was rather long and severe. This time when we returned, your smile had withered. You looked wasted, perhaps tired of keeping a constant vigil and being pretty at the same time. I don't blame you. To please, is a monstrous responsibility and one that often has wretched ends. But at the end of it I, too, had fallen into the smelly worldly trap of expectations. I hoped for miracles from you. Even when I left you deserted and alone, to rot in the filthy slimy water. How could one survive this continuous barrage of impossible expectations? You could, because you were mighty brave. Much more than I could ever be.

Thank you for everything, my faithful Greenness.

Dhobi Ghat - lights, camera, reality!

Last week we went for Dhobi Ghat, Kiran Rao's debut directorial baby, despite the not so encouraging reviews. For me, the one hour and forty minutes was spent well, enwrapped in a poetic meaningfulness. What could be more rewarding than watching four real people, made of the same blood and flesh as mine, battling the whims of a big bad world in search of a life? And not once did it feel like I was there for Aamir Khan. Not this time.

Yasmin, in her quest for happiness, introduces us to Bombay - the crowd; the incessant rains; the fast paced individualistic life; and finally the sea, that omniscient secret-keeper. In an eloquent narrative shift, these regular details of the city blend in and get lost in Yasmin's existential angst. Trapped in a lonely and loveless marriage, her only way of escape from reality are the videos that she records as letters for her kid brother.

Arun, an upscale artist who takes up Yasmin's old flat, discovers her video letters and some rusty keepsakes in a dusty corner of an almirah. Curious, he begins watching these videos with a regularity that can be compared to one's cup of morning tea. Divorced and reclusive, her naivety unhinges him in a haunting way, so much so that he wears her trinkets as one would wear one's faith. He is drawn into Yasmin's little world and begins emptying her essence onto his canvas in colours of hope. It is only when he watches her last video, a suicide letter, he is jolted out of the reverie.

Shai, an investment banker from New York stumbles her way into Bombay for some soul searching through her camera lens. She meets Arun at one of his exhibitions which culminates in an unexpected impulsive night. Time passes but Shai is unable to forget the moment and longs for the enigmatic artist. In such desperate times, she turns to Munna, the shy dhobi who aspires to become an actor. Together, they explore the city - he as her guide and she as his portfolio photographer.

Munna gradually falls in love with his Amriki mem, although he knows of her fixation with Arun. Worse, he knows the improbability of his own dreams. Besides the matters of heart, his closest friend, the only sense of family he has ever known, is murdered in a gang war which leaves him disillusioned with the "big city". He realises Bombay, with all its money and glamour, is heartless. Only lifeless skyscrapers can thrive in its cold bosom. Surely, this is not the place for fragile human hopes.

Dhobi Ghat is an experience, a myriad of emotions, a lyrical portrait of reality. How far can one push oneself for that tiny flickering ray of happiness? It tries to answer this one question that has been throbbing inside every man's heart and mind. And it will continue to do so forever.

In Ashima's shoes

"For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realise, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts."

~ Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

Seven winters back when I had first read The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri's heartrending tale, it had stirred and brewed a little storm inside me. Since then I have gone back to it, in chunks and bits, like a fate-worn lover who has to return to the memories, living and losing at the same time. The love affair continues, only this time I am one of them from the pages. Ashima - a demure Bengali woman born in Calcutta, brought up amidst a fierce sense of culture and draped in unpretentious tangail sarees. She marries Ashoke, an engineering student at MIT and accompanies him for a new life to America - "the land of opportunities".

Ashima's life in the States is shaped out of many realities - the regular calls to Fulton fish market in the hope of a lucky catch of rohu or ilish, the much dreaded driving lessons when she would cringe her face and push the accelerator uneasily which would result in a beeline of traffic honking impatiently behind her, the mounting vexation during the customer care calls when she has to spell every single alphabet of 'Ganguli' unfailingly and with examples. Prior to my life as a foreigner, this futile yet continuous search of one's identity and the reluctant unraveling of oneself to blend in, both physically and mentally, had not been this huge a part of me. Now I, too, am ashima - one who does not have boundaries - for one simply cannot afford any in the desperate confusion of the old and the new.

My solidarity with Ashima transgresses the boundaries of age and experience. A surge of tender pity grips me when anxious and alone in the final trimester of pregnancy she craves for jhaal muri (an East Indian snack of puffed rice and spices) and quite helplessly tosses chopped onions into a bowl of Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts. There was not much choice for an Indian's culinary comforts in the America of the 70s. Ashima's most intimidating task, more so because she wears her Indianness with aplomb, is to understand and accept the American ways of her children who are themselves trapped in a huge chasm of cultural mores. How much could one fight one's way out of the linguistic and cultural barriers back then?

Even after a good thirty years nothing much has changed. Foodwise, yes, a lot has. With the mushrooming of Indian grocery stores and restaurants in almost every corner of the States, pleasing one's taste buds isn't a questionable dream anymore. Also, what was once the struggle for existence has undergone a vast change over the last twenty years resulting in an unbecoming vanity fair. But the old haunting feeling of rootlessness sits still in the same dusty corner of the heart. Festivals come and go, seasons spring and fall, but the ache remains. I have been walking in Ashima's shoes for the past three years, across six states and on a multitude of roads. With each step the bite has become worse, fanning the sore of longing till the wound feels like a second skin. And thus another day breaks, impregnated with a perpetual unknown wait...

That's it.

Will they come my way? I am tired of this wait, for the words. I can't write. I have been trying, trying rather hard, to write a few simple words that make sense, as a result of which I have five incomplete, badly scribbled posts. And I have this dreadful feeling that I won't be able to finish them anytime soon. All I have are thoughts, a chaos of clumsily jumbled thoughts which disappear the moment I start to type or pick up a pen. It's not only with words, but with everything I love. I can barely read a page before I get all restless and edgy; I am tired listening to the same songs again and again; and there is nothing exciting about this place that inspires me to grab my camera and go shot after shot till I'm happy. I feel a strange loss. Probably it's plain boredom. Or just the jitters of a new place. Whatever...

I remember holding on to One Art by Elizabeth Bishop six years back, after I had read it for the first time, when 'losing' had seemed my way of life. Perhaps I must do so now.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Musings of a cat lover

Hero, a year and little old

"Who would believe such pleasure from a wee ball o' fur?"

~ An Irish saying

Cats and I go back a long way. It all started with a bowl of milk for a wandering grey tabby cat in a sultry summer afternoon. This was how we found Jhumri, the veteran girl of our cat family. The consequent generations had funny names too (courtesy me), irrespective of gender - Elli, Biti and Hero. My father was never fond of the brood and much to his chagrin there was always an addition or two every year. With time he became tolerant although he would remain aloof as ever. While my mother would be attentive to their whimperings, my love for them was overwhelming. I would sacrifice my share of fish for the greedy Elli who was the dearest of the lot and would swing and rock Biti's newborns no matter how ridiculous a spectacle it was. I was scratched on countless occasions as a means of retaliation for the suffocative, smothering love. Once I tried to chase off a poor garden lizard who was being stalked by Hero only to end up with a badly sprained leg. This time when I visited my parents, there was a looming emptiness. For the first time in ten years it was a cat-less home. There was no furry bundle cozied up under the blankets or sniffing flowers in the garden or trying desperately to catch its owl tail in circles in the most comic manner. Their absence felt louder and more annoying than the ruckus of meows on the fried fish days.

The other day as we were watching our neighbour's Persian cat, Sam casually remarked, "You must be this only crazy cat lover who doesn't own a cat". Not many would understand how crushing it felt at that moment. I always lament our nomadic lifestyle and how I can never have a cat until we have a permanent home of our own. Or I might just end up as one of those batty old English women sitting by the fireplace reading or embroidering, with a cat curled up in my lap. Sigh!

The spice jar

"Take this with you, but careful -
Don't lose it in the vastness of the Atlantic."
She meant her words, my mother,
a simple woman with little desires.
True, losing 'things' across infinite miles is easy.
I have learnt it well, bit by bit.
A dear dear uncle, a cousin...
Ma told me how the sad, hungry ocean swallowed them all.
And I just stared, defeated and distanced.

The glass walls of the small jar looked familiar,
choked with cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon sticks, pepper pods.
A very Indian smell, guardians of my world.
I've emptied it into my days and nights,
into my morning tea, flavouring the curries,
always searching for that familiar aroma.
The aroma of Ma's palms,
of ginger garlic, of love and sacrifice.

Everyday I see it, the half filled, half emptied jar,
sitting mute in the disturbingly neat white kitchen cupboard.
Perfunctorily, I refilled the jar today
with imported spices from the India bazaar.
Spices that have traveled across the proverbial seven seas
shedding some skin of originality on their way.
And so I mixed them all, the Was and the Is,
letting my world unhinge into an unknown territory.
But deep inside my labyrinthine thoughts
I am scared, as if I have lost my only defense.

For the Was and the Is never meet.