Things in common

Every time I come across a stirring theme like this one, I pray to God its apocryphal. I can wager my life on the fact that this intransigent take on something so innovative is in fact, personal. My little black book of tinder stories might corroborate this belief, but that is for another time. To put things in perspective, I speak of the new (or newfangled?) ‘Things in Common’ feature, Facebook’s latest pilot project that has been making headlines lately. It is more or less like Tinder, minus the titillation I hope.

The personal here is geographical, cultural and all other connotative -als that just go with India. Sartorial, material, mercurial, ethereal, sexual. You know, the basic. Here, you don’t need a billion-dollar enterprise to encourage ‘friendly-stalking’ that turns into cold-blooded murder. We are wayyy ahead of time. Techn-savvy, unemployed youth express their bottled-up frustration by being effusive with technology. No strings attached- the ideal relationship. It is not a western concept anymore. We redefine the zest in the west. Innovation is a tricky little territory you know. Its all around you. Its extrinsic-intrinsic, in the most prosaic articles, in websites that foster the zenith of consumerism like OLX, Quikr. Buy-sell. Acquire-jettison. Becho-khareedo. What a trite.

Not for all though. This headline explains it in perspicuous terms- Online ‘buyer’ stalks woman. The tiding goes on to explain how a woman was trying to sell a coat online, when a man on the pretext of purchasing it began stalking her. Calling her, video-calling her, sending lewd messages and what not. The Indian audience will not be surprised I am sure. Its so diurnal that we have accepted it as normal behaviour. As the world jaywalks forward, some millions of the 31 million unemployed youth (as of February 2018, CMIE) skulk and skedaddle about, seeking opportunities to menace the women-folk. And there again the tattered question Why special treatment for women? I believe in equality but I am no feminist boomerangs back into our chafed laps.

So how will this work here? I like to imagine.

It was a rainy day like most in June. Marshy, mosquito-ridden and pleasant. The sultry summer sun scrounging an indefinite sojourn from God. Permission granted. Off it goes. But the summer in my life was nascent. Stilted conversations soon turned into amorous ones. The Great Leap Forward, soon to be The Great Famine. In retrospect, a foreboding did fill me up as I set this liaison into motion. The Super Cup it was, Atlético de Madrid Vs Real Madrid. August 15. Independence Day. Post-match as I shot open my Facebook profile to discuss everything there is with my coterie, a young boy of twenty caught my vigilant eye. He was rare, since everybody I knew supported the enemy. But not this one,

He was oh! so handsome, so patriotic and stern

my affection in a second did he earn

His raunchy talks, did ring no bell

all conscience did go to hell

At a time I should’ve been Alice Walker

 I fell prey to a vicious stalker

And here I sit on my grave

with indelible memories of that knave

 

Should have stuck to daydreaming about Antoine Griezzmann

 

 

 

 

Mr. Hopper

A hopper’s take on human life.   It hopscotched right in from the juniper berry to sully the razzmatazz of the coterie, Of fat-bottomed girls with inked orifices Who hide …

An elegy on the death of Rokuko

 

Tis’ no ballad, tis’ no sonnet, tis’ no praise of Troy

tis’ the tale of  tiny blighted Beetul, and a boy.

Rather an elegy, for the town and boy both dead

pray muse me as I serenade this tale instead.

Rokuko was the boy, a happy boy was he

Until Yama summoned his soul in a cosmic prophesy.

And like a white patanga (moth) that jauntily flutters  around cemeteries

oblivious to epitaphs that decorate diseased bodies

Rokuko too chased the perihelion too long

Asvadityo brahma and poof! the lad is gone.

He lived in a joyous family. At least that’s what they say. Oh! the scurrilous hearsay, that encapsulate lives better than a death note. And a diary in which he confided like a gauche boy of thirteen. More trusted than the revered banyan tree that canopied his young body as he hung by its frail branch that witnessed many bodies succumb to the immortal subpoena of Shiva. The wise tree did not fail him, as it prodded a new cosmic cycle into play. Perhaps the only time he did not feel vulnerable.

I often think of him. I often think that he was a troubled boy. He waggishly brushed aside all significant tidings that deluged the entire world in a frenzy. But the insouciance was a contrivance, for he thought. He ruminated on everything, that boy. He strafed his grey cells when all else was languid. And when all else was restive, he would succumb to horrid languor. Although, there was this one time I vividly recall, three years ago, the most skittish I had seen him. As skittish as a horse. I was at a book-club meeting at school and he was prosaically waiting for me at the window, as he beckoned me over. I remember this vividly because that had to be the worst timing and the most squalid window for it stunk of sewage from the primary wing. It was a confession which I waggishly brushed aside. Things were normal post that. But we rarely talked after school. And now I can’t go back.

The imagery consternates me. Did he hang by the rope the way he obstinately hung by that window three years back? He was a menace as far as I can recall. Whats more menacing is that everybody around him waggishly brushed aside his confessions like I did that day, just different confessions. Nobody took him seriously because he talked in ridiculous riddles, always desperate for an irked response. So when he told his friend from college that he tried to kill himself before his successful act, the friend waggishly brushed it aside. And all else failed that day.

I often think that the universe has two types of extraordinary people- the OTB and the aberrations. But when I think of him I realize that we are much more complicated than that. For he was an antithesis to this irrefutable theory, for he was both.

 

January 10, 2018

What a lovely evening. The bitter cold surmounting all maladies into a void. The abominably loud sound of an engine long uncared for, conflating the synchronized howling of a pack of winterstruck mongrels, and the sporadic tring of rickshaws, into one bitter sweet symphony.  I moon away.

Until…the alacrity of my mischievous thoughts bludgeon this sweet reverie, dissipating it. Only to return with more furore, uninvited, on an occasion later. The road from West to South Delhi isn’t too natty. Perhaps, East to South, I cannot remember. My mind, more often than not, is growing twisted. Rather placid. If only I could prune it like a vine of cranberries, to its old, ethereal self. If only I could usurp this unwanted residue, and reprimand it waggishly, recalling things would be easy. Not long ago, I had an entire repository of insolvent beliefs. So insolvent were they, that I would dismiss all contradictions with utmost glory. So easily. Not anymore. Today, even more, my mind is incredulous. Impressionable like a child. Rather jaded. I find it hard to focus on one subject at a time. Often my mind, my stupid mind, prances about like a fox, that manages to somehow deceive the hunter at snares. It prances, disoriented, at the horizon, rejoicing at this tremendous subterfuge.

Through the window I observe, a cavalcade of tamed horses, embossed with black leather bridles, gallop alongside my car, eager to attend a wedding (or two, I don’t know) they have been most graciously invited to. So naive, these horses. Mighty, yet powerless. If only they had the vice, this cavalcade could easily smite the owner and tear this perpetual state of anguish asunder. But they choose to be self-involved and remorseful. They would rather assail their ears and skins for a lifetime, than their masters. How devious.

But who am I to issue such a wretched polemic? No Samaritan for sure. I am but a ditzy girl, who would rather moon about lusty green pastures, than issue a petition challenging the inebriating smoke. I am a horse. No, I am the horse.

I am also the youngest of the progeny and a victim of facetious, diurnal banter. God Oh God! I am an ore, smelted to the very last element, for nothing. For forbearance, ostensibly. And each time, I would rather moon away than be marooned in this ocean of despair.

Hypercritical! Hypercritical!

time to put on the bridle.

We must assail,

and  go to jail…

 

Where do we go now?

What inspired me to write this article is my Facebook feed brimming with memes about procrastination. About disorientation, disenchantment, disillusionment. No matter how hard I try to do something constructive in a day, I come back to social media like an addict. It is ironical because, I procrastinate on social media, reading about procrastination. Which makes me ask the question, is social media the underlying cause of procrastination? Come to think of it, what activity forms a major part of your procrastination ordeal? For me it has to be social media, rather technology. I was so convinced that we procrastinate because of technology after watching a talk that was doing the rounds on the internet last month, Millennials in the Workplace by Simon Sinek. I was convinced to blame my entire generation for this evil, labeling them as incompetent and disillusioned, with no fault of their own that is.

Which makes me ask the question, how evolved is procrastination in its present form? Is it a legacy of the past? Or is it an invention of the millennials, courtesy our lack of fortitude and decisiveness, technology and a cushioned environment? Have you ever wondered how generations before us would procrastinate? What their definition of procrastination would entail? Playing the piano out of boredom? Inebriation to the point of unconsciousness with a bottle of Absinthe? Or going to a jazz club at night? Well, today none of these activities would qualify as procrastination. Would we have a Chopin, a Bohemian Revolution, an Ella Fitzgerald if it wasn’t for them? Well, putting this grossly overarching assumption aside, all these activities would qualify as productive today. So has procrastination evolved, or devolved?

Or is productivity subjective? You might relate productivity to doing something that might lead to success, but what if a person doesn’t care about success or being useful at all? Productivity would have a completely different meaning to them. What if somebody is an existentialist by nature? What if to them, everything is an inevitable consequence of a cosmic cycle beyond human control, that is bound to happen? Maybe they believe in metaphysics, religiously? Or perhaps, they are a Meursault ( The Stranger, Albert Camus), completely indifferent to everything human, furthermore to make life worthwhile in societal terms?

Or are we more prone to ideas of contemplating the very essence of existence, because we are millennials? There were undoubtedly, Camus and Nietzsches before us, but are we more prone to existentialism from a lack of innate capability to fulfill our ideal of a satisfactory life, by virtue of being ‘disillusioned millennials’ ? Or is this all juvenoia? The fear or hostility directed by an older generation toward a younger one, or toward youth culture in general? ( Wiktionary). ( Juvenoia-Vsauce, YouTube). 

To be honest, I don’t know how to decipher these trends anymore. I think the problem starts when we try to categorize every trend into comprehensible patterns, and envisage the future based on trends of the past. Karl Popper in his eponymous work,  The Open Society and Its Enemies, makes a vehement case against this practice of historicism, that is, predicting what will happen in the future based on your analysis of historical events. He particularly criticizes self-made theorists like me ( kind of patronizing) who are eager to predict what is happening, or what will happen, without realizing that by predicting the future, they are already putting it in the heads of people that some xyz thing, that they predicted, will happen. Such predictions, will entice the masses to see the xyz thing as inevitable, natural and ordained, and will further ensure that the masses accept it without criticism or revolt.

Thankfully, I deem myself incapable of having such a great impact. The millennials, after all, are people born after 1993, which is a very precarious way of clubbing an entire people together, while looking for homogeneity. I can not reminisce about feeling bored, disillusioned or depressed in the past, simply because my brains is incapable of retaining so much information in the Conscious. Maybe the Unconscious has answers. Maybe it knows how I felt on the afternoon of 28th September, 1999. To discover this, I would need to engage in psychoanalysis, free association perhaps, which will cost me a fortune, and may destabilize me further if I lack the necessary psychological sturdiness. What if excavating history makes me Schizophrenic, if I am genetically capable of apprehending it, that is. But we’ll never know if we don’t try.

So folks, I have made up my mind.

From today, each time,

I shall write a journal, and record how I feel,

And in 20 years, you’ll know what is real.

However, that is a very Freudian way of looking at things. How am I supposed to convince 50 other people to do the same?

The conclusion is, there is no conclusion. We shouldn’t worry about how older generations procrastinated too, and feel good about ourselves. The bottom line is, procrastination is a filthy habit, which is insidious.And here I still am.

(Excerpts from a bloody long conversation with a fellow millennial).

 

The Quaint room

Katha is a publishing house cum non-profit organization that works in the education sector, for underprivileged children and adults. It is primarily based in New Delhi, India. Recently, I visited Katha Lab School, which to me is the most evolved manifestation of innovation. This is an excerpt from what I observed.
A contagious verve had taken over every nook of the school. Violet, scarlet and amber hues embossed milky walls. 26th Katha Lab School Day read a heading in bold. An intermixture of excited giggles, rhythmic strums from an acoustic guitar and an incoherent baritone beckoned. Every labyrinth had a monologue to narrate, waiting patiently to be discovered. As I made my way through a melee of kids playing hopscotch, a tiny-matchbox room caught my eye. Handmade tigers, abstract handmade paintings and glittery paper planes made the quaint room irresistible. Tempted, I silently stood at the door, leaning against the frame. Inside, a teacher was teaching a bunch of children how to punch paper with a paper-punching machine, which was a novelty to my eyes. Curiously, I looked closely only to realize that the every time a new student faced the machine, the teacher would employ a different technique to explain the process to them. Minutes later, when my conscience came into play, I learnt that the students were differently-abled. Before I could synthesize my thoughts, the teacher saw me and beckoned me over. A little embarrassed for intruding, I walked in. Young eyes spectated every stride I took, religiously. I wouldn’t lie to you, a reign of anxiety overwhelmed me, but I was thrilled to be present there. The teacher introduced herself as Poonam. She told me she had been teaching at the Phoolwari, the room, for over 7 months now. “Although this job is challenging, there’s nothing else I’d rather do!” she emphasized merrily. On being asked how she resolved to take up this job, she shyly explained how three years ago, she had applied for a teaching job at a primary school in Delhi. The school however, had no vacancies for teaching regular students. However, a vacancy had just manifested for teaching differently abled children, but she had no experience in it. After multiple insistences from the Principal of that school, she decided she was up for it. A 6-month rigorous training consolidated her decision even more. “Since then, I haven’t looked back. I am glad there was no vacancy that time. I’m glad to be here”, she said.

So engrossed in the conversation, I didn’t realize that a young boy was tugging at my kurta, pointing at a handmade ice-cream stick stand. He couldn’t speak and  was trying to show me his masterwork. Eventually, there were fingers haphazardly pointing in every direction, as every student competed to show their art work. It was a beautiful sight with no element of pathos, only appreciation.

What everybody fails to notice in Jaipur

Dynasty of Sawais were alchemists more than playwrights!

Awestruck! As I slackened in awe of the quaint shops at Tripolia bazaar. Pink and red sandstone embossed the archaic walls while an acrid stench beckoned me over. Making my way through the hullabaloo, I got cold feet as I spectated a giant camel carcass, adding to the furore of the chaotic bazaar. The welcome was not exactly warm, rather sultry, the July heat stealing Jaipur of its salubrity. Not much had changed, I suppose. Pawn shops, hathi ghode ke thekedaar (dealers of horses and elephants for traditional weddings) and ganna ras (sugarcane juice) corners painted in parrot green. All looked well. I was desperate to sustain my profound observation of the city, but as the old aphorism preaches, “All that glitters is not gold.”

The Rajasthani architecture of Hawa Mahal with fine latticework sneered at plebeian labourers, forsaking their central role in maintaining the profligacy. A century ago I reckon, their ancestors worked as maidens to the Kesaria (bridegroom). Today they work like shadows, burnishing sandstone walls and cleaning clogged gutters, going to their matchbox houses in Bapu Bazaar after a hard day’s work. Houses, Maharaja Jai Singh II leased out to them at 10 rupaye a month ( Rupees 10 a month), perhaps. To every labyrinth I ventured, the juxtaposition between these grandiloquent masterpieces and a dying culture was way too apparent. Although diesel dyed Kohlapuri chappals and intricately worked Meenakari jewellery, along with medieval tapestries boasting of camel motifs made up for a substantial argument, Kalaiwalas, craftsmen who used to make a living by shining brassware and copperware (Polish wearing off, The Hindu) and the vulnerable art of Koftkari , damascening steel weaponry with inlay of gold and silver, for which Jaipur is well known ( Treasures of the Albert Hall Museum, Mapin) looked not very promising.

As a fifty something man sat desolately outside Hawa Mahal, with his fifty something bellows stoking up the fire, a tempestuous fervour took over me as I watched carefully. Overwhelmed by emphatic sympathy for him, I offered him 100 rupayee (100 rupees). The man immediately took umbrage and in a cranky voice said, “Kala ko muft mein nahi khareeda jaata memsahab” (Art cannot be bought for free madam). It took me a while to interpret what the man had exactly implied since I was just trying to help him. However, hours of distressing contemplation later, I knew exactly what he meant, and it filled my heart with utmost respect.

 

 

The wench

As I religiously watched  Delhi in a Day (a film by Prashant Nair) about four house helpers- Raghu, Udai Singh, Chottu and Rohini (the wench) and how they are unfairly warped in a ludicrous plight involving the cops and huge money, I couldn’t help but wonder how easy it must be to get into trouble. Financial especially. You just have to be poor!

Ostensibly, the Victorian era is a phenomenon of the past, and so are prudent mothers legitimizing their illegitimate progeny with death certificates of their husbands. This however, is amiss. Some antiquated legacies refuse to be time-bound and to confine them in eras would be to err. Suffragettes for instance (though their roles have modified with current circumstances) rather feminists, are not antique. Neither are wenches ( house-maidens) especially where I live, India. Domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales in the Victorian era (Wikipedia). In India however, time has altered little.

I refer to these ‘indispensable’ helpers of the urban-elite as ‘Wenches‘ for a reason. As natty as the word sounds, it is embossed with many connotations. For example, an euphemism for the wench who beguiled the uxorious husband. Or the wench who heisted the gold chain. Such allegations sound impeccably vehement no doubt. But I am no fan of euphemisms. I like to say things as they are. Accident of Birth, is the only one to allege. Or are there others?

 

Bachni

Part 2 (A)

circa. 1947. Thantholi, Pauri Garhwal. She attentively listened to the rhythmic chirping of a cricket (she had trapped minutes ago) under a mugga (mug) from a distance. The many incongruities surrounding Bachni’s life. Undeterred by a bear, but crickets were a big no. Precisely why she loathed the rainy season so much. It seemed as if crickets had colonized all of Garhwal. Her day dreaming was disturbed by a creaky door. And a cranky boy she had never seen before.

The boy looked ancient, relentlessly bad-tempered, but moralistic. He handsomely donned an immaculate white dhoti, too loose for his skinny thighs. He briefly looked at her, as if trying to say something, but words escaped him. He narrowed his gaze in an irritable manner and set forth to the bathroom. Perplexed by his unprecedented reaction, the cricket under the mugga completely escaped her mind, and seconds later, a loud ‘aaah!’ resonated in the bathroom. She followed the sound only to encounter a doubly exasperated boy. The sly cricket had made a lucky escape, leaving the boy in deep bafflement. She couldn’t help but sneer at him, as a sardonic smile stretched across her young face. ‘Isn’t he too conceited for a man who is threatened by crickets? What a wuss!’ she thought to herself. “So you find that funny?” he retorted. “How is this for funny?” as he let out a giant hopper towards her, which landed right on her head, as intended. Insanity possessed Bachni, as she made a run for her life. The boy laughed like a frustrated half-wit who had finally proved how E = mc². 

‘This will not go unpunished, I can wager my life on that”, yelled Bachni from outside…

 

 

 

Bachni

 PART-1

circa. 1946. Mitragram, Pauri Garhwal. In a serpentine street, embedded deep in the chasms of Himalayas, a woman with eyes like splinters of ice, held her breath, only to see another day. A famished brown bear stealthily stalked her about, as she hurried down the street, the bear in impeccable hot pursuit. As the escapade spurned all proposals to slacken, making her more despondent with each minute, an adage struck her fatigued mind. An adage to outsmart the bear, presuming he got an F in physics class. “A bear can not walk upwards since the hair block the vision”, she recalled buaji (aunt) tell her one lazy afternoon. Oh, how much she missed that! But this was no time to reminisce about warm days. Gathering her wits, she hauled the bundle of dry grass, gathered from her expedition, down the slope (her angst with it) deceiving the bear as it chased the bundle mistaking it for her. And of course, on discovering the truth, it could not climb up. She ran for her life…

Of course, nobody believed her. Women sniggered, men sneered. And only when Kanti, a taluqdar (land holder) of Thantholi, ancient, contemptuous and scornful of plebeians, narrated his discovery of a humongous bear’s corpse( embellishing it with details of his old-age infirmity, of course) in the exact pagdandi (street) Bachni had described, did the villagers believe her. Like, Yeti, Bachni became a legend. The woman who outsmarted the bear. Over time, delinquent bhullas (younger brothers), hookah-hooked bodhas (uncles) and chatty kakis (aunts) tweaked a few details here and there to their convenience, jeopardizing the veracity of the encounter, as it settled for a scurrilous myth. This, however happened a little later. Prior to that, the word spread like wildfire across Gweel, Banchuri, Nisini and Thantholi . Besides covering his incompetent bhulla’s (half-brother’s) tracks, who could be persecuted for dereliction of duty by the sarpanch (head of the village) for failing to protect the pahadi (mountain) cows from blood-thirsty leopards, Baba (father) now had to deal with so many marriage proposals.

After a hard day’s work on the groundnut field, Baba lit up his intricately-carved, wooden chillum (pipe) and lay down on the khaat (bed). His wife gently massaging his giant feet. Being the patriarch he was, he generally made all decisions in the house. For this one decision however, he decided to involve his laati (dumb) wife. And boy, did he regret it. Consequently, the debate overstretched to three nights and on the third night, when the kids were fast asleep, Baba decided it was time to marry Bachni off. God had blessed her with so many marriage proposals. It would be blasphemous to not acknowledge God’s blessings…wouldn’t it?