The Writer's Blog

"Later, sometimes I would look at the advertisements for diamonds and jewellery in the British Sunday magazines, or I would read their accounts of filmstar romances and I would wonder why it so happens that it is in this state, the state we call love, that people are most driven to enumerate and quantify, when the state itself, or so those very magazines tell us, is the obverse, the antithesis, of the notions of number and quantity. I would wonder what the circumstances could be that would prompt a man to tell a journalist exactly how much money he had spent, down to the last pound or dollar, on buying a car or an island for the woman he loved; I would wonder why the advertisements hinted so carefully at the exact price of the jewellery they urged men to buy for their girlfriends and lovers; why a girl had attempted suicide exactly nine times to get back the man she loves; why I had been driven to count all the yards that I had walked when I went to see Ila. I could think of no answer, except that it is because that state, love, is so utterly alien to that other idea without which we cannot live as human beings- the idea of justice. It is only because love is so profoundly the enemy of justice that our minds, shrinking in horror from its true nature, try to tame it by uniting it with its opposite: it is as though we say to ourselves- he bought her a diamond worth exactly so much, or she gave up a career that would have earned her precisely so much- in hope that if we apply all the metaphors of normality, that if we heap them high enough, we shall, in the end, be able to approximate that state metaphorically. And yet between that state and its metaphors there is no more connection than there is between a word, such as mat, and the thing itself: they are utterly indifferent to each other, so that we may heap the metephors- the diamonds, the suicides, the miles, the suffering- till the end of our abilities, and yet find no trace at all of the state itself. And equally we may find the opposite."

"He said to me once that one could never know anything except through desire, real desire, which was not the same thing as greed or lust; a pure, painful and primitive desire, a longing for everything that was not in oneself, a torment of the flesh, that carried one beyond the limits of one's mind to other times and other places, and even, if one was lucky, to a place where there was no border between oneself and one's image in the mirror."

The Shadow Lines
Amitav Ghosh

"It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stroies is that they have no secrets. The Great Strories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't decieve you with thrills and trick endings. They don't suprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again."

"He didn't know that in some places, like the country Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Beacuse Worse Things had happened. In the country, where she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening."

The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy



“… I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini



"The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight."

"One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Conversations with You

2nd March, 08

Dear Diary,
What a feeling to wake up to!
The first thought that crossed my mind today when I first blinked sleep from my eyes in the morning was that 'Today is a Blessed day'. In a long, seemingly endless count of one day after another this seemed like a Sunday granted after ages. A real Sunday...to take a breather from life and inhale the air that normally rushes past you on a busy day...on busy days. So here I was, on a Sunday morning, endowed with the luxury of lying awake in my bed for that precious amount of time without having to worry about getting ready, about missing trains, about reaching places on time, about changing, struggling, acheiving...about being happy. I could stare at my stickered cieling, unsuccessfully try to distinguish from each other the three blades of the fan as it moved, notice the various books, clothes, papers, bags, shoes strewn across the length of my room, leftovers of an entire week.

And for the first time in a long time, I saw the morning dawn in my very room. Slanting inside from behind three vaguely lit curtains drawn across two brightly lit windows. I saw the morning paint itself golden on the walls of my room, get caught in the corner of a glass frame making the room slightly warmer.This brought back a burst of nostalgia...nostalgia of summers I spent in similar fashion...how long back was that? How weird is nostalgia? In the growing heat what touched me the most was the occasional brush of cool air from the fan...and that reminded me of happiness, of repose and calm...of similar cool rooms on hot days...of summers...because that is what summers are most remembered for...their coolness.

And as I finally shrugged from me, the remains of the previous night to brace another day, another week, I felt refreshed and energised like I hadn't in months. Giving my room, the morning and the gold filtering through the windows one last look, trying to imprint the image, both the warmth and the cool, in my mind to remember until another such morning granted me itself, I stepped out into the world.


17th jan,08
Dear Diary,
Another long walk from the crowd to the crowd like every day. As I climb the stairs to the hall with the faint strains of music ...from the outside... growing stronger I brace myself for another few hours of my "journey". I reach the hall, the excitement, the music, the competition and zeal everything is at its peak. I wave to known faces, smile at unknown ones. Then, instinctively, I walk behind the mirrors that I drag back to a store every night am here. Further on is a door, before which a group of orderly positioned people are dancing in 'disorderly' fashion, struggling to 'get it right'.
I open the door. I step out... and step in. When the door closes, the voices have muffled, as if from a distant carnival and what remains is the length of a long passage at the end of which is sunshine. I walk towards it in the semi-darkness, for a drink of water. Pit Put Pit Put... Along empty classrooms. Suddenly I want to stay here the whole evening. On this side of that door.
As I keep walking the voices grow softer, until I can only hear the chirping of the birds. Miraculously, the door hasnt blocked that sound. In the frame of the solitary window of the corridor, the sun sets. Vague this should seem so peaceful when just 50 m to its right is the busy maddening world, honking and roaring.
A figure walks in the shine of the black tiles, the brown polish of the walls. A figure I wouldn't see in the mirrors I drag back to a store every night am here, but in this refraction of light, it seems fascinating.
I have my drink of water. Look at the dark side of the passage and then at the light. I like them both. Looking back across the corridor, through the glass of the wooden door I see no one. They have all gone. And its time for me to go too. I walk back. My two feet issue two different kind of sounds.
Left Right Left Right... Pit Put Pit Put
I extend my hand. I open the door. I step out...and step in.



8th dec,07
Dear Diary,
A brief half hour between jobs gives me an opportunity today to lunch, alone in a crowded restaurant. With a book in my hand that all of a sudden I find unable to keep down and tray of food that is my answer to lunch- the iced tea going down my throat in spite of my cold. The excitement in the voice of the person at the counter has got nothing to do with me and everything to do with the number of people queued up behind me. Once in a while, I spot a face I turn to look at a second time, maybe even a third. A group of foreigners huddle together, they look odd- not as much by the colour of their skins as by the scantiness of woollen clothing on them.
Delhi is seeing another winter!
(Already my light 'Jaipuri rajai' has been replaced by heavy quilts.)
My lunch is over within minutes and I have an entire half hour to spend before I catch a bus to my next destination.
I plug myself to the radio and walk out of the restaurant, with a bag full of clothes and my dancing shoes on my back and a jacket I find too warm for the day, on my arm.
I cross a left turn and then a zebra. The traffic is thick, urgent and busy, just like it is on all the other days. But something seems different today. I follow a car with my eyes. It turns right at the traffic light and past me. And then another and another.
The music plays in my ear as I begin to walk on the pavement lined with rectangular shops. My feet match the rhythm of the song. The green of the trees bend with weight allowing the sun rays to play yet another checkered game with the season. I see a lot of faces that remind me of a lot others, that resemble...even if for seconds...the contours of faces I've known well, seen day in day out, bumped into somewhere, forgotten.
A beautiful number from a yet-to-be-released film plays on the station I'm tuned to. Suddenly the music stops, long enough to make my hand pull out my phone from my pocket, but its only a pause, followed by the crescendo. I increase the volume.
I feel certain that this number would be a background score in the movie- a background score to scenes that the director wishes to linger on or furnish with poetry rather than monologues.
Its giving me a warbed sense of time. As though time was not the 24 hours, not the Greenwich Meridian, but this- this chaos and this beauty where everything around me seems to be ticking...standing still in eternity.
I seem to be walking a street from out of one of those books that are remembered, not so much by their words as by the images they leave in our minds like footprints on wet cement.
The market is flooded with people. On a weekend like this, the entire town seems to have stepped over the threshold to shop.
Three shops in succession, selling footwear. The walls on either side are lined with picture-perfect, eye-catching jutees, kolahpuris. The same design in 20 colours...repeat...on the next wall. I'm reminded of one such photograph I had seen. The colours had struck me then as they strike me now. I look around and I suddenly realise whats different today- the colours of course.
Multi-hued, multi-shaded, today is too colourful for a winter day...or so I perceive.
For I have always associated winters with gray and black. I love winters and I love black but nobody wears so much colour in a season like this.

Moments later when I will step into the main market I'll begin by scanning all the black from among everything else.That is what I wear now, and that is what I want to wear, until I'm left awed by the immense display of colour this winter.
I'll go from one shop to another, admiring the brightness of the pink here, the dazzle of the yellow there, the gleam of the turquoise, the burgundy, the green, the peach, the blue...not meaning to buy anything although my wallet keeps a stack of crisp notes today. I'll see people touch the fabric for warmth, point to sweaters hung beyond their reach, haggle with the shopkeepers.
I'll walk up and down and emerge from this fish-market, stand aside for a dumbstruck family of three to pass who will gape at the shops and their brilliant wares. And then as I walk back once again, in and out of sunshine, I will smile-wide and unabashed, making people who see me wonder what makes me so happy with myself.
I'll take the zebra again and walk two streets to board a bus, watching the city come alive,watching this winter I've never seen before, as if from a distance-all in a matter of half an hour.

Gulzar Ki Siyahi Se

Chav- Chav

Mein chav chav chala tha apna badan bachakar
ki rooh ko aik khoobsurat sa jism de doon
na koi silvat, na daag koi
na dhoop jhulse, na chot khay
na zakhm chue, na dard pahunche
bas aik kori kuwanri subah ka jism pehna doon rooh ko mein

magar tapi jab dopahar dardon ki, dard ki dhoop se jo gujra
to rooh ko chav mil gayi hai

ajeeb hai dard aur taskin ka sanjha rishta
milegi chav to bas kahin dhoop mein milegi


Maani

Chaunk se chalkar, mandi se, baazar se hokar
laal gali se guzri hai kagaz ki kashti
baarish ke laawaris paani par bethi bichari kashti
shehr ki aawara galiyon mein sehmi-sehmi pooch rahi hai
har kashti ka saahil hota hai to-
mera bhi kya saahil hoga?

aik masoom-se bacche ne
bemaani ko maani dekar
raddi ke kagaz par kaisa zulm kiya hai


Good Morning

Kholkar bahoon ke do uljhe hue-se misre
hole se choomke do neend se chalki palken
hooth se lipti hui zulf ko minnat se hatakar
kaan par dheeme se rakh doonga jo aawaz ke do hoonth
mein jagaonga tumhe naam se 'sona-o sona !'

- aur tum dheere se jab palke uthaogi na, us dum
door thehre hue paani pe seher kholegi aankhein
subah ho jaygi tab, subah zami par



Shararat
Aao tumko utha loon kandhon par
tum uchakkar shareer hothoon se
choom lena ye chaand sa maatha

aaj ki raat dekha na tumne
kaise jukh-jukh ke kohniyoon ke bal
chaand itna kareeb aaya hai


Aik Khaab
Aik hi khaab kai baar yoon hi dekha hai meine
tune saari mein uras li hai meri chabiyaan ghar ki
aur chali aayi hai bas yun hi mera haath pakadkar
ghar ki har cheez sambhale hue apnaye hue tu
....

A Sister and A Scooter

The hot wind on my cheeks was like pin-pricks, as I sat at the back of the scooter, perspiring profusely, trying to keep my hair rooted to my skull as the speedometer raced. Despite that, I could not help smiling; my un-helmet head (call it privileges of being a woman) tickling with the excitement caused by the speed of the scooter and the reaction that followed.
My five-foot something sister gripping the handles of a Bajaj Chetak on a hot, sunny, crowded road is (still) almost-abnormal even in a self-proclaimed 'liberal' metropolitan like Delhi. Talk about girl power! For Bajaj Chetak is among the heaviest of scooters in India. The horrible spat of pain my back received when I tried to hold it bore testimony to this fact.
A woman driving a scooter is rare enough and a Bajaj Chetak at that; I bet people who saw this had visions of a new age Durga- with a huge helmet on her head instead of the crown and a scooter replacing the tiger. The breaks, clutch, horn, keys all in the numerous hands she possessed and instead of that half-placid, half-divine expression on the face, a very 'Muh-To-Band-Karo-Uncle' look.
So as the heads turned one after the other, and people gaped from inside car windows, truck windscreens, bus rear-views, rickshaws, cycles, other scooters I smiled and whispered into my sister's ear-
You've Got Audience!
She, with her pretended nonchalant giggles responded-
Really??!!

Stopping at red lights turned out to be even more amusing. I could hardly contain my smiles and burst into giggles at sporadic intervals. The people around us looked everything from awed to shocked to 'This-is-once-in-a-lifetime'. The pleasure of the entire ride, of course, belonged entirely to me.

However, the smoothness of the entire experience did not last for too long. A couple of more rides made me realise that something had gone awry. Every time I went out with her on the scooter either the petrol would finish up half way, or the breaks will fail or some such thing will happen. Mostly when we'd begin, the scooter would not kick start, at least not at once, and I would look at my sister-
Not Again!
while she would laugh and rubbish my forebodings with a wave of her hand and force me to sit. Invariably we would come back home on foot, dragging the scooter along with us, at times, welcomed back by sniggers from roadside rogues.

It was like a jinx- My sister and I on the scooter.

After every such experience I would swear to never set foot (read bum) again on that scooter with my sister but something or the other always brought the three of us together for another one of those trips.

We undertook one such unforgettable trip during the time I had to visit the university to put in my admission application forms for my bachelor's. Surabhi, my sister, decided to take me to the north campus and argued that it was more feasible to ride on the scooter than to drive the car because half the world would have turned up at the campus and it was bound to be exceptionally crowded.
It was a very hot June noon. The university was some six kilometers from our house. I collected my documents and we started. A few kilometers went by peacefully and I was almost settling in that feeling of being both a witness and performer in something out-landish when there was a loud crack. We stopped the scooter and Surabhi announced that the clutch wire had just snapped. This meant that although the engine would start, we wouldn't be able to change gears and therefore the scooter wouldn't move.
An autorikshaw driver who had been listening to our conversation hurried to pour some words of wisdom on our fickle minds. He examined the scooter, confirmed that the clutch wire was missing, even found it a few meters ahead of where we stood. Then he assured us that our problem wasn't very big and as is characteristic of people living in India, he came up with a 'jugaad'. He told us that all we needed was to ask someone to push the scooter and when it gained considerable momentum we must put it in gear and it will move. Surabhi, for some weird reason thought it was a very good idea and refusing to hear my pleas to at least visit a mechanic ordered me to hop on and requested the autorikshaw driver to do the honours.
After we were seated the driver began to push the scooter...faster and faster until he was running with it. And just then Surabhi decided to put it in gear. There was a great jerk as if the tyres of the scooter had suddenly rolled back as it ran forward. The impact of it was such that I was thrown off balance- even as I sat on it. My back hit the stephanie as I rocked on my bum. My hands and legs momentarily kicking the air. It was embarrassing and I thought I must have looked like one of those teddy bears that have all their limbs suspended abnormally in the front or like a baby rocking in a cradle making a bee-line for the ceiling fan with his two hands and two legs.
Nonsense- I spat out.
Surabhi broke into horrendous laughter at my outburst.
"What are we going to do when it stops again?”,I asked

What else could we do but that search for someone who could push the scooter yet again? This time we had stopped at a left turn. Surabhi confidently announced that the 'rikshaw walas' in the north campus were very sweet creatures. So we approached the only one we could spot. He was sprawled across his machine and when we said,
"Bhaiya, zara scooter ko dhaka maar dijiye"
he gave us a look and muttered something about not being free. Sweet indeed!!
Minutes had passed and we still couldn't find anyone to help us push the scooter to a run, although the campus was crowded. Obviously we couldn't have asked any one of the aspiring DU students walking the streets though I’m sure chivalry would have made them do it. The crowd only served to jeopardise my dreams of happy times in the near future. Maybe a month down the line I’d be studying with some of the many walking the streets today, watching us make a spectacle of ourselves.
In the meantime, Surabhi had caught hold of a hesitant 'rikshaw wala'. He began to push the scooter with the two of us sitting on it but less than ten seconds had passed before he turned around and walked off. The scooter was hardly rolling and we couldn't have put it in gear. Both of us were desperate not to lose the little momentum that the scooter had gained.
What happened next was instinctive!
We placed our feet on the road and sitting on the scooter we began pushing the road away with our feet. So basically what it looked like was a scooter with legs working like paddles work for boats. We were sitting on the scooter and pushing it with our legs. So as it gained momentum it looked like we were running in perfect unison, our legs just inches from each other, just that we had forgotten that the scooter was under us.
Doing it was wierd enough- I can hardly imagine what it would have been like watching from the pavements. To me it would have seemed the limit of stupidity, which it did but there was more to come. Just when I thought I wouldn't want to be found dead doing something that ridiculous, Surabhi put the scooter in gear. A moment ago I had been looking like the Salman Khan of 'Andaz Apna Apna' paddling a bike with his feet on the road, a moment later my legs were lifted off the road, my hands in the air as the scooter began to move. I had to snatch whatever part of Surabhi that came within reach- helmet, hair sticking out from under it, collar, sleeves, everything to keep myself from somersaulting over the stephanie and onto the road.
My string of What Nonsense!, Garbage, Idiotic, Rubbish only served in making Surabhi laugh even more like one of those highly stylised Ravana's you would have heard at one of those 'nukkad Ramlilas'.
To this day, I roll my eyes whenever I remember that day. We ran with the scooter under our bums quite a few times.
The most embarrassing however, was a very crowded red light. There was a mechanic shop right next to the pavement near which we posed in preparation for what was to come. But Surabhi refused to hear a word, enjoying every bit of it. When the light turned green everyone started their vehicles, put them in gear and began moving, while we- we began walking as we sat. Everyone was staring at us and like always I was the one to see most of their reactions. People sticking out their heads from out of bus windows, smiling. People in cars, slowing down and turning back to look at us. Traffic swished past us and we still walked as though we were in knee deep water and of course, on the scooter. The worst was that a lot of vehicles also got to witness what happened when Surabhi changed gears.
That day I was ready to sign on a stamp paper and swear that I will never accompany Surabhi on the scooter. Of course, it happened again and again. Not the clutch wire, but sometime the petrol, at times the break and at times simply 'I-don't-know-what's
The jinx is still there.

This happens only in India.
Much as we were amused by sighting the sardarji on the scooter with half his face covered with his white handkerchief supporting the tyre of a truck at the back of the scooter, we couldn't help but marvel at the sheer innocence or guts (whatever it was) of this man who didnt realise how amusing a picture he made. We had to make a go for the camera. The flash was really powerful and quite a few vehicles realised what had happened. Our car saw a sudden increase in speed after our eyes saw the expression on the face of this man.

My head seems to be overflowing, full to the brim with things so much so that another addition to it would have the same effect that one tiny drop of water has when it is allowed to fall into a glass full up to the brim.
Everything is jumbled up and i seem to be trying to tug at strings of thoughts that have instinctively wrapped around each other...so much so that my tugging only serves to worsen the confusion.
At times like these (and this is one such time) I feel, most direly, the need to express myself in inkblots, on paper or simply put in words. So I take out my diary that i have taken to ignore since some time now. I sit on my bed, propped up on a cushion. I take off the cap of the pen and flip open to a brand new page.
But just when i'm about to touch the nib to the paper, I stop... I don't know what to write! Not that I have nothing to write about but just that words fail to come. I don't know what to say...to myself, or to this make believe person I pretend to talk to...my diary. I'm speechless... at my inadequacy to express myself in words. There is something I want to say but what is it?

A fine line appears in the sky- the one that seperates the dark rain-impregnated clouds with the brilliant glow of the sun rays...moments before it will finally fade. The distinction is unmistakable. But to me it seems to bring that which it seperates, together, in a confusion of contradictions, of binaries, of opposites that do not really stand for two poles, that somewhere, somehow, merge...intermingle, become indistinguishable. They turn out to be a set of opposites or shall I say contradictions, that never stand in isloation, that evade fruitition without the other.

The identities, thus, become confusedly entangled, intertwined in a cosmos of mess. And every second life pulsates, throbs in this limitation of comprehension...this paucity of words to express that we call...Contradictions.

The sun leaves a trail of pink and the sky, the clouds, smitten by this eternal performance...put up yet another. Moments before it rains I see the sea,the mountains, the frozen oceans, the remains of a lost country beyond the horizon. And I'm desperate...desperate to hold on to this, to understand...despite everything...its meaning, before I Lose it Again...Again till another Day...