GBL

Not very long back, perhaps even today, when foreign reporters visited North Korea, they were taken through a guided tour of the "achievements" of, no not the country, but the GBL. The Great and Beloved Leader, as Kim II-Sung perhaps christened himself, was the war hero, the helper of the peasants, the builder of dams, the leader of armies, the hope of the working class, the eternal leader. Songs were sung about him. Symposiums were held celebrating his very many political and intellectual achievements. Anybody who had slightest of doubts about GBL's greatness was deemed a traitor. In the meanwhile, the country lived on the edge of fear and insecurity, held massive military parades and kept one of the largest standing armies. No doubt all of it helped conceal the massive under-development, corruption and sheer ruthlessness of GBL's regime. Even self proclaimed leftists felt his fat neck to be a constant provocation in need of a bullet through it.  But why all this song and dance about a man dead and gone in a land far and away? Because we have our own GBL in the making, variously called NaMo and Feku, who is being propped up by a relentless marketing machinery to be the saviour that India has been waiting for the last millennium. And we would have been terrified by the prospect of his homecoming, if we did not know that India is bigger and older and more diverse and secure than North Korea or Gujarat. We should perhaps only be amused, but then how can you be before an Indian elections?

Cold beauty

Last weekend, as we sped through the road from Chirag Dilli to Panchsheel, leaves were coming off the trees in a torrent. The road shimmered with bright golden yellow leaves, noon sun lighting them up like fluorescent bulbs lined up to welcome us. With a cold breeze washing up my face and wiping off some of the pain and tiredness that I had felt all through the week, I grew into a marvellous and delicate mood.

This mood was subsequently destroyed quite abruptly when I read the news about the battering to death of an auto rickshaw driver by couple of drunken youth in the early hours of the morning. All because the driver scraped past their Innova, which they had parked alongside the petrol pump, besides which one of them was puking off the excess liquor. So, they stopped the driver, got him out, and then battered his head with bricks to make sure he dies. I felt anger and disgust in equal measure.

These feelings of ecstatic happiness and unmitigated hatred are not uncommon to the denizens of Delhi. In Mumbai, in my limited experience, these feelings are usually muted and absorbed by the sheer madness of the city. You would see fights in the local, even women tearing each other apart, but the inhumanly fights and rages are not seen. It makes Mumbai, without doubt, a more civil, real city, but does it make it happier as well? Where are the spaces to relax or places to see without hounded by a persistent stream of noise? Or, even time outside commuting between home and office, to search for them?

Mumbai provides a living to a lot of Indians, but takes life out from their lives. Delhi is chaotic, cold, violent, almost a strange modern village, but also provides far more moments of sheer joy and ecstasy to those who seek them.

Everywoman: Alice (Woody Allen)

Alice has a gnawing emptiness inside. A yearning for something she knows not what. A feeling that she has not lived the life that she had thought she would lead.

But we look at her life and wonder what does she have to complain about?

She is rich, with a large house, full of servants at her beck and call. Chauffeur driven cars. A fine marriage with a dutiful, faithful, loving husband. Growing children. A rich, social life, full of parties and banquets and gatherings.

What is eating Alice Tate? After all, starting off from a middle class background in a small, provincial, American town, she could have hardly hoped to do better than where she was? Why is then happiness so elusive for her? Why do her compromises and longings seem so familiar to us?

She finds and goes to meet a Tibetan 'medicine man' in his quaint little clinic, who helps Alice to unravel her whole life, bit by bit. How he helps her recover the self that was long buried inside her, and corrects the lies that made up her persona, forms the meat of the movie.

And we watch enthralled as to how our deepest emotions are laid bare with such deft lightness of touch. Woody Allen lends his magical words and lens to the tale of this everywoman with great empathy and humour, and renders a fantastic, comic, movie.

Inarticulate joy

Home after five days.

I call out his name. He looks up. Then, looks at his mother shyly, as if asking for permission. I call out his name again. This time, he gets up and walks slowly towards me. A shy smile coming over his face, he puts his hands up, and allows me to lift him up and shower his face with kisses. A laugh comes out and his whole body convulses with laughter. Life comes back to me.

80's in brief

"So, which movie is this", I disrupted the quiet proceedings with a sudden "Abhimanyu, chakravyuh mein phas gaya hai tu...". As I started singing, my voice gained in vigor, owed to this rousing hit of the lousy 80's. Mr. Ali shrugged his shoulders, and looked askance at me. He was nonplussed.

Undettered, I launched another ditty from the same movie, "Saare badan mein zahar chadh gaya". And light re-entered Mr. Ali's eyes. Light, that was good. He joined in chorus, "bichchu chadh gaya, bichchu chadh gaya". Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ali proved himself a thorough sleazeball once again!

My world

I was in a deep, deep slumber when they cut my home into two and plucked me out like a vegetable. Moved me out of my home and cut my ties from my world permanently with a single snip of scissors. And then, they were surprised, these strange beings, when they found me in a state of trauma unable to open my eyes to this new, hostile world.

I have grown used to this world slowly. From three four people initially, it has expanded to six seven people now. Two seem more prominent than the others, and I am being taught to call them "peppae" and "memma". It has taken me time to know which one is which. Both are big but I am quite sure now that the bony one with the long nose is peppa and the fleshy, pretty one is memma.

Peppa is funny. I use him for my daily rides around the house once he comes in the evening. He also tickles me with his thin fingers that move up from my toes to tummy to create a goody-goody sensation, making me laugh. But he can also be very annoying, particularly on days when he is at home in the morning. You know, I like to wake up late on days I am not supposed to go out for exercise and play. Even when I wake up, I like to lie down, and with my face up, admire the fan whirring on the ceiling. Or chew little scraps of paper meditatively. At those ruminative moments, he has to come shouting into the bed, and grab my cheeks violently. Sometimes, I humor him and let him abuse my modesty. But then, he takes my good grace to be compliance and assaults me further with his rough face rubbing my soft cheeks. I usually get rid of him by the simple device of twisting his long nose sharply. Crying "oye oye", he relents and moves away.

The best thing about memma is her tummy. I like to put my nose into it every now and then, and find it to be soft and giving with nothing to hurt unlike Peppa's bones. She wakes me up in the morning more gently than peppa by putting something good and crunchy in my mouth and cuddling me with her smaller nose. She is however even more annoying than peppa at times. She is constantly shouting "aa aa", "ba ba", "pa pa" into my ears, and pointing to strange things which are of no interest to me. Sometimes, I repeat what she is saying to make her happy and go away. At those times, she takes me on her shoulders or tickles me hard.

Memma and peppa think they are smarter than me, and constantly try to teach me one thing or the other. They seldom make any attempt to learn from me though. If they are really so smart, why are they unable to slide down the sofa with the ease and control that I do? Or, gargle and throw water from the mouth precisely into a glass kept at a distance from me?

They are ok but I wish they would bother me a little less and let me on my own a little more.

In the eyes of his woman

He reads too much and speaks too little. And she regrets the times when he does speak. It is in rapture over books and ideas and music where he loses all control and balance and propriety, or self righteous indignation against one thing or the other, or inappropriate jokes and songs on the strangest of occasions.

He tries hard to look like an intellectual but has no idea of how and why people act and think the way they do. He tries to make his naivette sound like idealism, and manages to fool some of the people some of the times.

He claims to be lost in thought when he choses to disregard the unavoidable work, and makes reminding him to do important things a specially ordained task for everybody else.

He considers the floor of the bathroom as a washing machine where his dirty undergarments can be dropped at will, and the footwear of everybody else in the house as his personal property.

He considers himself to be liberal-minded and open to criticism, but becomes Mr. Sensitivity when probed even slightly on his pet theories and ridiculous habits.

At first, she thought he is a little different, thats all. Now, she believes him to be completely mad, thats it.