"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
19 December 2007
9 December 2007
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.
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.
2 December 2007
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
....
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
....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
