The Circle of God

Yesterday news channels were filled with two recent religious news. Sea water in Mumbai has turned sweet and in North India, Lord Ganesha and other porous deities are thirsty again. I still remember the first Milk Drinking event when I was in my hometown and everyone rushed to the temples and sewage turned white, the good ol' Ram-Rajya has come back, "jahan doodh ki nadiyaan behti thi". One of my aunt said to her relative, who claimed that Ganesha didn't drink when she offered milk, you need to offer from heart. I was really confused because I believed what my grandmother always used to say about god, "Bhaav ka bhookha, Bhaat ka naahi" (Hungry of devotion, not of rice). Sometimes I feel, believing in such miracles comes as an exercise in abidance, like the hereditary baggage of religion itself and at times I wonder the necessity of religion in our empty lives, what if there are no ceremonies when people are born or when they die, no godly sand bag to hit on, things like that.

Recently on my trip to Hampi, I saw a similar thing. Inside Virupaksha Temple, there is a circle curved out of stone and who so ever can encircle his/her hands around it, is considered Bhagyashaali (the fortunate one). When I went to see it, there was a group of women trying their luck with it. The first lady tried to cup her thumbs and index fingers to enclose the circle of divinity She did it like a magician, swiftly and thanked her gods. She was a clever lady (I think she cheated). The other ladies saw her as if she is goddess of 2 min fame and the craze to try it and be the auspicious one, gripped the other ladies. The next lady started to cup the stone circle but was not able to. Either two thumbs will move apart or the index fingers, the loose skin joining the thumb and fingers stretched out. She removed all her rings and tried again, hard as if she could squeeze the stone with two fingers.

Someone in the crowd whispered, pray to god, remember your deity. The lady who did it successfully, came to her and said your heart should be pure and should have devotion to god. Think nothing but god. Pray. The other lady closed her eyes and started praying. Her faced filled with helplessness, took deep breath with every chant to god. The ladies behind her started closing their eyes and started praying for their friend in despair. Little ones were just curious of the result. She opened her eyes with a godly grace and cupped her small palm again around the circle and tried desperately. Closed her eyes and called for god to save her. Some people standing nearby chuckled and the embarrassment grew. Now her face turned into despair as if her lord has left her.

Nevertheless in devotion, she lowered her head on the stone and thanked god again and moved away. May be next time the circle with shrink or her palms will expand or her heart will be purer. No other lady from that group touched the stone again, till the next group came by for their share of disappointment and luck. The circle carved in stone stood there, some people passed the test, some failed, it stood there as a mark, a ritual, a trial of humanity, a circle of endless conformity.

A Tale - 2

In a dark silent room of ones mind, with just enough light to see one word at a time, enough thought to form one sentence at a time, someone sits, word by word, truth is woven, the light in the room increases, the darkness is at time understood or at least acknowledged. No shouts of rhetoric will ever spoil that word of small truth, no god will ever pray for it, it will exist and it will survive. Several such pages will color a book, a picture of life might emerge, another image of life may get shattered, there is enough pain in the room and there is slight truth in that, and there is little joy in the room and there is ample truth in it. Someone sits, smells and sweats of imaginary, touches the real, sleeps on the paper and shits near by.

A written word transpires out of the living flesh, that is sure of its demise, that is sure of others demise too, it is sure that written will outlive him, even though that decaying body writes, flesh writes to raise above fleshiness, to put spirit to matter, to put some being into non-beings. Its not above anybody, it just raises onto itself. A win, a very personal success.

A thousand spoken words will not erase a single word that is written, not shout will ever blow the paper away, no book can imitate life but some will rise above it, will become portals to those silent rooms where they are written, word by word, flesh to spirit, puff of smoke to fire. No book will be greater than life but some will breathe like life. No book will ever move, but some will spread their fragrance. No book will ever speak but some will be put to tune, paper to sound. No book will ever capture the whole world, but some will capture the inexpressible. No book will change the world, but there will be some that will point to the problems and say it should be. No book will ever stop the people for interacting or expressing them but some will express and interact as no human can. No book will ever substitute any of your senses but some will become the extensions of them.

A though lying for eternity, unattended, unsaid, is there for a book to pick up, someone will pick it up and put it as it is on the paper by himself, devoid of himself.

The girl with decorated locks thought about the lie she told to the fish. There is no such book. A book that reveals all. Filled with memories of the unchained past, a love that never consummated, she took a pen and a pale paper, sat on the bare hills to fill the pages. A book may emerge, it may not. Fish of the far seas, went to the far seas, in search of the book of revelations, it found nothing, but swam the pacifics and atlantis, may be it can write something about the experiences sometime, the upstreams and downstreams of fresh water rivers, the salt of the sea, the world and its waters.

A Tale - 1

A frozen sea. Snow melts. Color changes. White to blue. Sun shines, painting yellow and sets with red smearings. Dark night, cooler than the day, quieter than the noon, slower than the dusk. Sea roars and breaks itself on shores. Life lives near by, it dies nearby too.

On the far side of the blue waters, a big boat with small people with books in little robed hands arrived, the boat was painted blue to match the sea waters, it had drawing of wild life, lofty hills to match the terrain and it had its peaceful music which didn't match the wilderness of the place it arrived. That peace obstructed the vastness of the wild, the music was no noise but no better than that. A stream of logic came with them, the sun should rise in east and should set in west, and an apple falls down. The oral truth became a written passage, more stringent, less fluent. The greens of forest, the dark greens of rocks and the colors of sea remained as they were. The truth has not changed but now it howled at them. The blue boat anchored. The little men walked on the sand with shells of gray white color, shells camouflaged to hide the pressure of foot that pressed them, the people lived there, and they died there too.

Little palms with books of wisdom touched the dirty hand of oral verity, Midas touch changed everything to words, note them down, no rote, no communication. A book opened the face of its folks, it said its art, it said its truth, and it said it's all. A garland around the neck, over the beautiful beaded breast, curved and dark, colorful flowers, was decorated. The suns of different seas saw it, changing their colors, falling in west every night without fail. A poem missed its tune, and the air missed its noise, better than the music.

A girl was asked to tie her hair because they fall too much. They spoil the cleanliness of civilization. They are decorated with flowers of the hill, the braids of locks married the words of books, the fragrance of the flower was fabricated, the smell ceased to grow, the girl rarely spoke, her hair became her identity, a mix of art and beauty, revealing some obscure truism, far from the noise of the wild. Smell, like that of the unwritten paper, is now killed by the precisely written word. It is not smelt, it written in some book, incisively, its an experience to read it, it reaches near the smelling sensation, can it ?

Sun of bigger truths now rises every day, without fail. The Gods of untied hair and oral truths have lost their noisy tune. At times, a fish from the far away sea comes to the shore, looks for the girl with untied hair, looks for the dark green of rocks. Once it made an effort to talk to a girl with a waist band of gold shining against the rocks behind that covered her deep dark navel, girl told her that fish lives in water, asked it to go back to waters and didn't answer anything about the untied past. She told the fish that whenever it sees someone with sweet voice and big ship, try to ask them about the past, there is a book which reveals it all. Fish never came back from waters, may be it read the book, could be.

Not so bad !

I saw KANK yesterday and I must write about it asap because it is one of those movies which you forget soon, and with all honesty that I can gather, I must say it is not a bad movie that I thought it would be, given the big constraints it has, it has Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee - together, its directed by Karan Johar. As in one of the interviews, I heard SRK saying that it is Karan's most mature effort. Actually it is, and the most honest too. This honesty at times tips the movie to the other side which Karan Johar may not have even desired. Those of us who have seen Karan Johar movies (or its types) know that they are shot with excesses, everything is much more than required, the great Indian family throbs in every frame, love is too pure to handle, movie runs for hours, SRK overacts, every frames is lush green or blood red - color coded, excesses everywhere, and when it come to what we call substance, they have passionate confessions of love to parents or lovers and excessively choreographed songs. There is no denying that KANK has it all. We also know that a Karan Johar film is a cliché extended for hours. Given all that the question may become how well rounded the cliché is, but it is also not the case. So when I say KANK is not bad, what I want to say.

First of all, KANK has some decent performances, mainly Preity and Abhishek, it may not make the film any good but balance the Rani Mukherjee tear tub drill. I stopped hating (that doesn't mean that there is any love) SRK after Swades and here too amidst all the mandatory overacting, he gives moments, and more than that he is not a god here, he is ordinary man, a bit abnormal too and people may say (as the girls sitting behind me said), he is a loser, and he remains so till that supposedly happy ending. And here comes that honesty bit I was talking to before, to show his lover such a loser, bad tempered soul, KJ shows great courage. Perpetually irritated SRK is an opposite to his good old charms that irrirated us for years. KJ does suffer from Substance Syndrome, but at times he delivers too on a commercial scale. There is another bit about this honesty part, the spouses are not only shown loving their partners but their sides are presented equally, if not well. Actually when Preity Zinta slaps SRK (yes, she do), the whole theatre burst into clapping, this might not be the response KJ expected. Actually KANK puts Abhishek and Priety's arguments against the monumental Chopra's hogwash of love, reason against emotions, and in an unintentional, almost self destructive way, puts that evertrusted love in despair of disbelief, even KJ's reel romance looks anti-romantic, although in the later part of the movie, director tries to undo the damage but fortunately it was too late by then.

Apart from some good jokes that go to Abhishek, the humor is KJ types, lot of butt jokes and toilet sort of humor, its cheap but it works for me. At one point SRK's character even says something like "cheap is good', I totally loved the scene following it, it's cheap and done is bad taste, but it works for me. Actually, these are not the things that pain me in KJ type movies, its their smugness on paper-thin wisdom that kills me. 2/3rd of KANK is manageable in that respect; it has its paper thin wisdom but not so much of smugness. Its the last third where Rani Mukherjee starts to cry to dehydration and director starts giving her every filmic toy to console, the film drags and drags and at last SRK and Rani weep together (Rani's cry is inducive) and the film eventually ends. Is this film really a mature film, yes, for KJ, its really so. It is naive if one says that it shows honest efforts of saving marriages, but it does work to some extent if one says that it shows such efforts fail, surprisingly so.

A Queue

One of my old friends told me something that I didn't think about then. It was so simple a fact that one can easily over look its meaning, and some times we tend to consume the humor of a line and lose its seriousness and wisdom. Years later he met me again in a railway reservation queue and the queue made me think about what he said. I was ahead of him in the queue so we are not able to talk and as usual, when in queue we tend to become most time efficient, our time becomes more valuable miraculously. The goal of life become to be first in the queue and to get our work done before anybody does it. As the queue moves ahead, first in first out, our hearts go lighter as we tend towards our goal, a small goal, but that all we care then. People start bitching about separate queues for girls and never lose an opportunity to move ahead.

Last time, in my hometown, I went for a railway reservation. We all are waiting outside the reservation counter which was supposed to open by 8:30 am but the wise men in the crowd rightly predicted that it will open only by 9:00 am. By nine, the crowd turned into a mob, and they started banging the grilled gate of the office. As soon as it open we all rushed like mad inside with sole aim to be as ahead in the queue as possible. Amidst all this chaos, when someone pushed open the grilled gate, one hand got smashed the array of Xs. That man shouted aloud with all the motherly abuses he can think in the split second. A second later I found a respectable position in the queue and as the voices lulled, we all heard a man of over 30 bitterly crying in pain. None of us left our positions and used our precious time fill in reservation forms.

Only after few minutes, when queue queued up, some people who were less fortunate to get a good rank in the running competition, left the queue and made a circle of pity around the guy whose hand was bleeding. Some old men blamed the youth, women in their separate queue asked other about the incident, the person ahead of me said "I didn't open the gate, it was someone else". I, as usual, felt bad about the guy and myself, left with my confirmed tickets. While leaving, stopped, to see the guy, even thought to talk to him, but couldn't. But I was sure that in previous hour or so, I have shown my queue-character.

Now the thing that my old friend said, he said that "Real character is shown in queues". When I think about it now, sometimes it takes a gigantic meaning, like a world is a queue, all queued up, all in hurry, to get out of this queue to move to some other queue. and at times this thing stays on its ground, the literal meaning, a cliched proverb-type existence, at times as a moral rule to show your character in queues. Like every body else we don't like queues, more than our everlasting concern about increasing population, which is fashionably used as a reason for everything and more than the waiting time, something else bothers us being in a queue. Sometimes we search for special queues, like for those who search for a separate queue for the AC ticket, or for those who pay money to visit their favorite gods in better-off queues.

The real problem with queues is they stink of equality, which a normal human mind cannot stand. and that's why queues show real character, the character of respecting equality. The other prominent problem with queue is priority based on your action, if you come late, be at the end. Moreover in a queue you are left alone, no family to cheer you up, no friends to give you friendship benefits. After standing for a few minutes in a queues our minds with its tiny calculations make us believe that coming little late doesn't make us less equal and also, how can we be equal to the common man. What is given the name of wasting time is our contempt for equality. Standing in queue, left alone on the mercy of time, the efficiency of queue processor, we start losing our pseudo-importance, little bourgeois in us hits hard and our little mind helps it.

Packet from Past

Disclaimer: This post is mushy, personal and self indulgent. Posting it to keep the blog alive or as an obituary for a dead blog.

Last night, I cleaned my room after 6 months or so and found a packet which my mother gave me when I last visited home. It has some things which made last night so light and happy. First was my birth certificate, Baby Anand was born on 21st July, 9 lbs, very healthy. and it too has the dates of the vaccinations I got. It has my first snap (I think so) pasted too. It has my handwritings samples too. I used to sign every year on my birth certificate (Hey, I am still alive!). My first signature was the exact copy of my father's signature and later I copied some of my teachers and then classmates. There were few copies of Hindi Calligraphy from 5th and 6th std. It contained essays on "Swaadheenta Divas" and "Ek Mele ka Varnan", both of which had similar details. It has some news paper cuttings. Our local newspaper printed my name on few occasions, the regular annual result news. My mother used to say "iska naam to newspaper mein aata rehta hai". My father used to laugh "Kal to nahin tha, aaj aaya hai kya ?". My mother will carefully cut the newspapers and my father will laminate them to be kept in my blue file. It has some of my report cards. I failed in English in first unit test in Standard 2, I got 4 marks out of 25. I used to think that my class teacher can never fail me, it was arguably the first betrayal of my life. She got married next year to confirm my apprehensions. Later I realized the concept of young girls, budding wives and dormant housewives being perfect material for primary school teachers, in fact I told this to one of my professors while discussing the dismal state of primary education in India. My professor kept a detached look during the whole stupid statement of mine. Months later I found out that his beautiful wife is a school teacher and also realized how unfair it is for kids to deny that pleasure, the perfume on silks and the fancy dresses. There were some pics. The birthday pic where I wore a yellow shirt with black blazer, I looked like a smiling taxi, a Faustian bargain to look different on your birthday. The last thing was a black glass, which my friend gave me to view the eclipses. I and my friend, saw the sun in school, diamond ring and all. Later he gave me that, as he claimed that he had many such dark glasses at home. I saw all my childhood eclipses with that glass. As I grew I feared that a simple black glass may ruin my eyes, so packed it away, by that time eclipses were telecasted live on TV, no need for black glasses and no fear of hurting the eyes. Later I got specs from watching too much TV. I glanced the packet and its contents for the last time and closed it neatly. The kid in me strangely felt as if he has got his birthday present. He went to sleep, light and happy, only to grow up and grunt the next morning.

Faith

These tears will not reach there
Can they travel far away
Does this sadness has any purpose
May be here faith comes to play

Those who can not say words
Or sing songs and offer smiles
They do have a lonely hearts
And they do travel lonely miles

Shards to sand, down the palm holes
Into the earths of distance
An itch remains deep inside
The eternal itch of existence

Is there a place of no words, no eyes
Is there a place of no sands, no bay
May be, may be....
May be there faith comes to play

A Story

I can tell you a story. This story will have its highs and lows, reader may even get involved, tricked and tipped but why should I tell a story, any story of highs and lows, involving any act of tipping someone. Till I say that 'someone', 'someone', I can't write anything, and how to make that 'someone', 'me', eludes me, without going through what he/she has gone through, the highs and lows, how can one write a single word. I overheard two people talking about a woman and her lover and how severely she is treated by him and he by her. The discussing couple is treating it like a therapy/way to probably say something that is not possible without the invention of the story. Girl used her eyes to show the unsaid happiness and sadness and she waited if he could read it, if he couldn't, it could well be her story. The story had become a tool, a wrapper of personal anxiety and mutual-introspection. She will ask him what he will do in such a situation, before he replies, she will give him mute hints and expect something. He moved from logic to love in split seconds. By this time, that story has become their story and they were finding spaces inside each other, scavenging through the cavities of past, adjusting zeolites of today. The fast calculations of love are happening, whether she will understand , whether he will say what she long for. A story has left its ground, its caste and nationality and reached where it should be, in the lives of people. Fiction going to reality, from where it originated, a full cycle, sound of paper-turning morphing into heart beats, faster...slower.

I can tell you a story. I can give you some part of me, some code to me, some code to air I breathe, something more even. But why should I. When I will be mocked for what I am, when I will mocked for being naked in a fashion show. A story is not told to remove the clothes, or the show the flesh, but to show what clothes and flesh are made of. A story may point to the robbed beauty of the peacock whose feather you sport in your crown, or the origin of the flame from which the kohl in the eyes of girl originated. What constitutes me, can very well constitute you. Can someone cut though the flesh, can someone tear the clothes and remain unharmed ?

I can tell you a story. But when it ends, will you read it all over again. Once the last pages have revealed themselves and the book lies naked without secrets, will you touch it again. Or will you just say, I have read it and walk away. If yes, I should not tell a story. A story should not end , but on paper. A story revolves on the periphery of real and unreal, you can never touch it but revolve with it, it let you move from real to unreal, happiness to pain to numbness and then back and then back again. It sits somewhere on the blurred outline of a distant shadow, not in light, not in dark, but revealing both light and darkness, the pleasures of both, the horrors of all. A story sits like a old dog, who has seen a life and has become a story, the dying flesh but the ink on paper still glowing as sunshine on pavement stone and saying the unsaid, just near a sewage, he sits all day, the world come to him every moment and reveals itself, becoming the story, a dog - a mute dog of letters.

Happiness

Hari was 6 years old. With his twin sister, Harini, he has created a world of his own with his mother at its epicenter. Mother used to sing, she used to dance and she used to make the kids laugh, sometimes loud and the other times just a sumptuous smile that fills the small heart of a child with happiness and forces the teeth out. She used to tell the funny stories how she was refused the vocal classes when the teacher heard her sing 'Mera Saaya Saath hoga' in raag Anandi and how she never wanted to learn any other instrument except tabla where she can beat her life off, thump her palms on it. After her marriage, twins came, and her dowry tabla was beaten by them till they broke it. Hari used to play, his sister used to dance, imitating her mother, although she can never smile that way and hence Hari was never satisfied my her performance and as a return gift, she was never with his. Mother managed to teach them 'Teen taal' and 'Kaherwa' or they just picked it up by listening. They laughed when she laughed, later they wept along with her, everything about her was infectious. She never kissed Hari, if he ate onions at dinners, those slices that are dipped in salt and lemon, he liked those but kiss was precious, he was lucky to realize it so soon in his life. She danced in some vague kathak form, some steps which she had picked up from her elder sister, the more beautiful one, the more admired one, she showed a respectable sibling vanity towards her. Her Kathak was funny but the children never used to laugh on her dance, or on her songs, the fact that she is laughing makes them laugh, the fact that she is happy, made them so, the sphere of influence of happiness. A child's power to be happy when he sees happiness. The stupid child's mentality of being happy just because someone is. That someone was their mother. Later she stopped smiling and moved more towards god and his glory, daily chores, children's education and their career and the usual social stuff, children moved to maths and physics books, now the stories are not told but read from story books. The smiles were occasional, the talkings were more rational, any laugh has to be accounted for, why are you laughing .., should there be always a logic to life is repeatedly asked by them, but as kids they were never able to frame the full question and never been confident enough to ask it out. She seemed to be at peace inside but happiness doesn't show outside, a disconnect that a child can see and be sad about. Hari started to eat onions at dinners.