Naipaul, in India: A Wounded Civilization, analyzed MK Gandhi's obsession with himself and observed caustically that there were just two or three descriptions of landscape in his autobiography. Whether in England or South Africa, Gandhi was so immersed in the duel with his self that he failed to observe what went on outside him.
Naipaul could not have made this observation about the other great, modern Indian, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru wrote his remarkable and voluminous autobiography, running to 600 odd pages, within a short, uninterrupted, and largely undisturbed period of eight or nine months that he spent in the Naini Jail from June 1934 to February 1935. It is a story in which Nehru resorts to the plural "we" to include the collective involvement of his less articulate colleagues in the nationalist struggle. And a story in which amidst the confusion, uncertainty and chaos of the times, he could be lyrical, longing for things he misses or things he observes anew -
"Once I remember being struck by a new want. I was in the Lucknow district gaol, and I realized suddenly that I had not heard a dog bark for seven or eight months."
Nehru imagined and longed to see the trees and mountains beyond his confinement, described the cool breeze he felt on his face while being moved from one jail to another, and retains his good humor even while recollecting the first lathi-charge he faced as an activist. More than its considerable literary worth, Nehru understands and describes the contemporary nationalist currents better than any history book. There is intellectual rigor and a sense of historical purpose in him. He analyzes the political situation in India before the advent of Gandhi and how it changed after him. In fact, Nehru gives us better insights into the "Political Gandhi", and his magical hold over the masses, than Gandhi himself. Nehru frankly looked at his vanity, arrogance, and his susceptibility to compromise his strong beliefs to move forward, to be his key weaknesses.
MK Gandhi’s autobiography, on the other hand, is at the other end, and reveals a primary, child-like, instinctual mind at work. Gandhi’s subject is no doubt Gandhi himself, and describes his most personal events in meticulous detail. Whether it is his lapses from vegetarianism or petty thievery in childhood, or struggle with his sexual passion, Gandhi remains convinced about their impact on his inner life and conscience development, even while it may make the reader uncomfortable or even bored at times.
However, as Ramachandra Guha has pointed out, in spite of his seeming idiosyncrasies, Gandhi's memory has been treated more kindly by his countrymen, even as his ideals lay tattered. The more militant of our middle classes may look at his frailty and seeming physical weakness with derision, his sexual struggle as hypocrisy and his concessions to Muslims as treason. But, by and large, his reputation as a great apostle of peace, tolerance and non-violence remains unchallenged while his ideas on ecology and sustainable development have received delayed interest.
Nehru, on the other hand, in spite of irregular, obsequious gestures from the ruling Congress party, is mostly an object of ridicule, derision, anger and hatred today. The more sympathetic consider his idealistic approach "naive", while the more vocal and hostile consider him responsible for every ill facing India from bad roads to dynastic politics.
However, in spite of their obvious differences in thought and approach to nation building, Gandhi and Nehru were united in their fundamental quest for a moral and ethical life. Gandhi contested, in his own unique way, the "maleness" of the western colonialism in greed, power and violence. How endless consumption can minimize life, making it nothing more than acquisition and ownership of stuff valued by others. How centralization of power begets corruptibility, and how violence begets violence. He centralized the importance of means over ends.
Nehru's aspiration of morality and ethics extended to the kind of state he envisioned India to be. This is of course at odds with the view expressed by most of our rationalist commentators today, who consider the nations not to have any morality, but only “self-interest”. This view also perhaps governs pillorying of Nehru for all his supposed mistakes, whether on Kashmir, Organized Development, Hindu Code Bill, pragmatic socialism, Non-Aligned Movement, UNSC Permanent Seat, or Panchsheela.
In this revisionist narrative, real history of India begins with the liberalization in 1990s when India unshackled the license-permit-raj of “Nehru’s” legacy. It is perhaps true that last twenty years have opened doors to entrepreneurship and innovation, enabled upward movement of lower-middle and middle classes, and created a situation of plenty for an enthusiastic, consumerist class. But twenty years is also perhaps also a good time to take a hard look at what an unbridled quest for “self-interest” has resulted in.
A corrupt polity. An intricate, compromising nexus of political establishment, corporate czars and fourth estate. A moneyed culture where heroes are judged solely for their ability to make money regardless of morality. Celebrity-obsession. A stressful, spiritually vacant life mushrooming with spurious Godmen, astrologers and soothsayers. A booming industry of self-serving, bad books on self-help and management. A reputation for being a bully with most neighbours.
A nation at war with its own people. A nation ravaging itself to satisfy its consumption needs.
Is it that while we have been busy making money, we have lost something of the way of a soul or an inner life? We perhaps need to re-posit a few questions to ourselves.
What is a nation, if not a community of individuals united by common territory and sense of purpose? And, if that is true, what remains, if that nation is drained of morality and ethics?
Perhaps, we still need Gandhi and Nehru, if not for anything else, then to be our super-ego. Nehru’s idea of an inclusive, egalitarian, industrially developed, socially conscious and morally alive nation, tempered with Gandhi’s ideas of personal virtue, sustainability, devolution of power, and compassion towards the underdog, remains enticing and an ideal to remake ourselves and our nation.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The Losers: The First Story
It is early evening in one of the villages in Delhi. Sun is there in full force, but they are sitting in a Buddha Jayanti park like park, an old favorite of repressed lovers, under the ample shades of trees. Rahul is sitting tensed with his head down, full of that nervous energy that indicates coming of a climactic event, and asks hesitantly, so, who is the boy, you love. She smiles, says, the boy is so stupid, does not even know she loves him, walks to a nearby tree and starts carving a name on it. Rahul gets up, sees his name printed as a solid proof, and a new lightness comes into his being.
A commonplace event that happens to countless commonplace couples every day. But it still moves you when brought to the screen with bare honesty by Dibakar Banerjee. It is truly disconcerting to realize the banality of our "most precious" experiences. But then, the experience, for all its' cliched nature, is still unique to us. And capturing it with honesty is perhaps also what lends it the special poignance of the sense of it being shared with others.
There are three stories in Banerjee's Love, Sex Aur Dhokha. Each told with his quirky, earthy sense of humour, connected very tenuously and perhaps having separate lives of their own. In all three stories, he plays off the intense sexual tension between couples, whose love hovers in a rapidly changing, uncertain world between the old and the new.
The first story is that of an artist, whose dream fails him. He is a lower middle class boy, who lives with his single mother, and nourished by bollywood love stories and a scholarship that allows him to pursue his film studies. Considering "Adi Sir" his Guru, he is paying homage to the iconic 90s mainstream love story, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge in his own humble way. With Shahid Qureshi, whose father has a big shop in the Atta Market, as his Raj, and Shruti Dahiya, daughter of a big Jat businessman cum robber baron, as his Simran. Shruti is his muse, his Simran, with whom he falls in love irresistabily. The boy is dreamy, shifty looking, lies easily, and knows how to curry favor with the big men of the village. You look at him with suspicion, and may even have some sympathy with the big father, who looks hideous but honest. This is a story of puppy love, where bollywood logic is inverted with uncompromising failure and a denoument that is as horrific as it is unexpected.
While it is a great indictment of the tremendous damage which a movie like DDLJ may have brought to popular culture, it also left me dissatisfied. It seemed to play on the mythical rich vs. poor conflict of bollywood love stories. From anecdotal experience, the real conflict in Indian love stories is social - caste, region, religion - most often caste, in mofussil towns, with class usually playing a subservient role. This unsettling aspect of the closeness of the killers and the killed is what perhaps brings in the pathos, apart from just anger.
In "Maps for Lost Lovers", Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam's telling of an honor killing in a small, sleepy British town, the killers are not some invisible henchmen of an impossibly rich businessmen. They are friends and brothers of the killed couple, who were apparently "living in sin" before marriage. You see the parents of the killers returning from jail after visiting their sons. Sons have been beaten up, racially abused and taunted not only about their crimes, but their origins. Their parents are unable to understand why their sons have to go through all this, when they probably did what was right. You also see the sister-in-law of the killed man, who loved him like a brother. She is grief-stricken, but has very ambivalent feelings about what he was doing and perhaps even considers his killing as a just retribution from the lordly powers up there. And this ambivalence is all around, unlike the screaming media headlines. You constantly feel something churning inside you, burning you, making you feel not just angry but deeply uncomfortable about yourself, your family and your society.
This ambivalence and duality of the situation is lost in LSD. We go back to the nostalgic images of the lost couple to reflect on what could have been, with anger towards the perpetrators, but never really to examine aspects of our selves that are part of both the killers and the killed.
A commonplace event that happens to countless commonplace couples every day. But it still moves you when brought to the screen with bare honesty by Dibakar Banerjee. It is truly disconcerting to realize the banality of our "most precious" experiences. But then, the experience, for all its' cliched nature, is still unique to us. And capturing it with honesty is perhaps also what lends it the special poignance of the sense of it being shared with others.
There are three stories in Banerjee's Love, Sex Aur Dhokha. Each told with his quirky, earthy sense of humour, connected very tenuously and perhaps having separate lives of their own. In all three stories, he plays off the intense sexual tension between couples, whose love hovers in a rapidly changing, uncertain world between the old and the new.
The first story is that of an artist, whose dream fails him. He is a lower middle class boy, who lives with his single mother, and nourished by bollywood love stories and a scholarship that allows him to pursue his film studies. Considering "Adi Sir" his Guru, he is paying homage to the iconic 90s mainstream love story, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge in his own humble way. With Shahid Qureshi, whose father has a big shop in the Atta Market, as his Raj, and Shruti Dahiya, daughter of a big Jat businessman cum robber baron, as his Simran. Shruti is his muse, his Simran, with whom he falls in love irresistabily. The boy is dreamy, shifty looking, lies easily, and knows how to curry favor with the big men of the village. You look at him with suspicion, and may even have some sympathy with the big father, who looks hideous but honest. This is a story of puppy love, where bollywood logic is inverted with uncompromising failure and a denoument that is as horrific as it is unexpected.
While it is a great indictment of the tremendous damage which a movie like DDLJ may have brought to popular culture, it also left me dissatisfied. It seemed to play on the mythical rich vs. poor conflict of bollywood love stories. From anecdotal experience, the real conflict in Indian love stories is social - caste, region, religion - most often caste, in mofussil towns, with class usually playing a subservient role. This unsettling aspect of the closeness of the killers and the killed is what perhaps brings in the pathos, apart from just anger.
In "Maps for Lost Lovers", Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam's telling of an honor killing in a small, sleepy British town, the killers are not some invisible henchmen of an impossibly rich businessmen. They are friends and brothers of the killed couple, who were apparently "living in sin" before marriage. You see the parents of the killers returning from jail after visiting their sons. Sons have been beaten up, racially abused and taunted not only about their crimes, but their origins. Their parents are unable to understand why their sons have to go through all this, when they probably did what was right. You also see the sister-in-law of the killed man, who loved him like a brother. She is grief-stricken, but has very ambivalent feelings about what he was doing and perhaps even considers his killing as a just retribution from the lordly powers up there. And this ambivalence is all around, unlike the screaming media headlines. You constantly feel something churning inside you, burning you, making you feel not just angry but deeply uncomfortable about yourself, your family and your society.
This ambivalence and duality of the situation is lost in LSD. We go back to the nostalgic images of the lost couple to reflect on what could have been, with anger towards the perpetrators, but never really to examine aspects of our selves that are part of both the killers and the killed.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The insubstantial life
Michael was born slightly disfigured. His mother, poor, single, looked at him as a burden, with his unlovely face and slow mind. Unwanted and unloved, he spent his childhood in a special institution, Huis Norenius. Most of us remember childhood fondly, suppressing the many cruelties that accompany innocence with the magic wand of selective memory. Michael is bereft even of that imagination, and Huis Norenius hangs on his head like a cloud that keeps on growing but never bursts. Derision of others, real and imagined, sits on him tightly, and he lives alone without friends or any companion.
In the thirty first year of his unobserved, unreflected life as a Gardener Grade B in Cape Town municipality, he discovers his sick mother, and with her, the meaning of his life.
"The problem that had exercised him years ago behind the bicycle shed at Huis Norenius, namely why he had been brought into the world, had received its answer: he had been brought into the world to look after his mother."
Michael resolves to fulfill her stated desire to leave the city to go back to her native village by building a makeshift barrow for her when they don't get a permit to leave the city. At that point, one may sense the onset of a new, redemptive, journey for the unfortunate man. Reader's hopes are to be belied of course. JM Coetzee does not provide easy journeys or easy answers to the mess of modern life. Particularly one that takes place in a war-torn, race-torn, country.
Quite charactertistically, his mother dies on the way cutting his life's meaning in the middle, and Michael's lonely journey takes unexpected turns subsequently. There is no great action that ever happens in his life, and his physical condition gets worse with struggle and malnutrition. There is complete absence of any romantic interest, and one charitable sexual encounter. Once, while locked in a camp of unemployed refugees, Michale is struck by a woman, who had lost her new-born recemtly. Michael feels compelled to wait and watch as she comes out of her room every evening, silent, tearless. He feels he may be falling in love finally. But then, one day, the woman, who remains unnamed, grows out of her meloncholia and merges with the crowd. Michael never notices her again. Coetzee describes life like this. As it unfolds pitilessly in a humdrum, but still unique way.
You are also struck by the pictures he draws of loneliness. Intense, deeply evocative, they remind you of Dosteyvsky and his embitterd, lonely, men. Men carrying deep grievances in their hearts, and running away from people. Men watching life pass by, without entering into it, without engaging with it. But the greatness in Coetzee is that he also makes one realize that, in a deeply rooted way, these are also the men who recognize, most acutely, the futility of struggle and existence.
The nature of Michael's rebellion also dawns slowly to you. He leads an insubstantial life, yes, but this inarticulate man also stands outside the ravages of history, refusing to join a camp, refusing to become a slave. He is attached elementally to very few things - his mother who refuses to leave his mind, a small farm he creates in wilderness. When he had to leave that "patch of earth", he felt that a "cord of tenderness" was being cut. Very affectingly, "it seemed to him that one could cut a cord like that only so many times before it would not grow again."
The exterior world is always like a shadow to Michael. As Robert, one of his camp mates, who was growing closer to him, comments, "I have never seen a man so asleep". And Michael instantly recognizes the truth in that. It is solely his interior life that feeds him and also cuts him. Even when his physical self dwindles to a skeletal figure with sustained malnutrition, there is still life in him that thrives and seeks to be free.
"Life & Times of Michael K" is a luminous novel, even if not Coetzee's best, that raises important questions on the notion of social progress and individual rebellion, of the supposedly irresistable march of history, and what it does to the people sitting at the margins. I have read only three novels of JM Coetzee, but can perhaps say this for him more than any other writer that reading him makes living worthwhile.
In the thirty first year of his unobserved, unreflected life as a Gardener Grade B in Cape Town municipality, he discovers his sick mother, and with her, the meaning of his life.
"The problem that had exercised him years ago behind the bicycle shed at Huis Norenius, namely why he had been brought into the world, had received its answer: he had been brought into the world to look after his mother."
Michael resolves to fulfill her stated desire to leave the city to go back to her native village by building a makeshift barrow for her when they don't get a permit to leave the city. At that point, one may sense the onset of a new, redemptive, journey for the unfortunate man. Reader's hopes are to be belied of course. JM Coetzee does not provide easy journeys or easy answers to the mess of modern life. Particularly one that takes place in a war-torn, race-torn, country.
Quite charactertistically, his mother dies on the way cutting his life's meaning in the middle, and Michael's lonely journey takes unexpected turns subsequently. There is no great action that ever happens in his life, and his physical condition gets worse with struggle and malnutrition. There is complete absence of any romantic interest, and one charitable sexual encounter. Once, while locked in a camp of unemployed refugees, Michale is struck by a woman, who had lost her new-born recemtly. Michael feels compelled to wait and watch as she comes out of her room every evening, silent, tearless. He feels he may be falling in love finally. But then, one day, the woman, who remains unnamed, grows out of her meloncholia and merges with the crowd. Michael never notices her again. Coetzee describes life like this. As it unfolds pitilessly in a humdrum, but still unique way.
You are also struck by the pictures he draws of loneliness. Intense, deeply evocative, they remind you of Dosteyvsky and his embitterd, lonely, men. Men carrying deep grievances in their hearts, and running away from people. Men watching life pass by, without entering into it, without engaging with it. But the greatness in Coetzee is that he also makes one realize that, in a deeply rooted way, these are also the men who recognize, most acutely, the futility of struggle and existence.
The nature of Michael's rebellion also dawns slowly to you. He leads an insubstantial life, yes, but this inarticulate man also stands outside the ravages of history, refusing to join a camp, refusing to become a slave. He is attached elementally to very few things - his mother who refuses to leave his mind, a small farm he creates in wilderness. When he had to leave that "patch of earth", he felt that a "cord of tenderness" was being cut. Very affectingly, "it seemed to him that one could cut a cord like that only so many times before it would not grow again."
The exterior world is always like a shadow to Michael. As Robert, one of his camp mates, who was growing closer to him, comments, "I have never seen a man so asleep". And Michael instantly recognizes the truth in that. It is solely his interior life that feeds him and also cuts him. Even when his physical self dwindles to a skeletal figure with sustained malnutrition, there is still life in him that thrives and seeks to be free.
"Life & Times of Michael K" is a luminous novel, even if not Coetzee's best, that raises important questions on the notion of social progress and individual rebellion, of the supposedly irresistable march of history, and what it does to the people sitting at the margins. I have read only three novels of JM Coetzee, but can perhaps say this for him more than any other writer that reading him makes living worthwhile.
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Big Fight
One day, some time in the evening
He: Get the hell out of my life.
She: I don't want to see your face.
He: Your face depresses me. The sound of your voice annoys me.
She: I really wish we had not married.
He: My words! Marrying you is the worst mistake that I have ever made!
She: Don't grind your teeth while you speak!
He: Why the fuck are you laughing? You know, we need to take a break from each other.
He walks out.
30 minutes later
He: Were you serious when you said, you wish we had not married?
She: Are you crazy or what?
He: I didn't hear you.
She: Were you serious when you said, "Get out of my life, I don't like your face, I don't like your voice"?
He: I never said, I don't like your face. I said your face depresses me.
She: Same thing.
He: It is not. And, I was the one who asked the question first. Were you serious when you said, you wish we had not married?
She: So what, you also do the same thing. Whenever I point out something to you, you always pinpoint back something or the other. You never accept your fault.
He: Ok, I don't think you are interested to resolve this. We will talk later.
40 minutes later
He: You know, when we go to my mother's house this weekend, I think you should stay on for a week or so.
She: And, what about my Yoga classes that have just restarted?
He: I don't think chucking your yoga classes matters that much. This is more important.
She: Look, my Yoga teacher was on vacation for 10 days. He just came back this week. If you wanted a break, we could have taken it last week.
He: This is only going to get worse, we are falling apart. If you don't agree to this break, it will only get worse.
She: I cannot miss my yoga classes right now. If it has to get worse, let it get worse.
1 hour later
She: Tell me one thing. Who started saying all those things, "I don't like your face", "Get out of my life" and all.
He: Didn't you say you wish you had not married me?
She: But I said it only after you said all those things. And I was laughing while I said it. You were grinding your teeth.
He: You know I become extremely unhappy when I use this kind of language. I don't like saying these things.
She: I know. Thats why I was laughing. I knew you were saying these things because you were angry. You didn't mean any of it. Did you?
Silence
She: Tell me, did you mean all those things?
He: I don't know. At that point, I was very serious. May be. I don't know how to get angry.
(Waits for some time)
She: Why didn't you take me seriously when I asked you to be back before 5? You knew I had a doc appointment. You never take me seriously.
He: Ok, I will stop joking now completely with you.
She: I am not asking you to stop joking. I am just asking you to take me a little more seriously.
He: (Laughs) Taking your words so seriously landed us in this. And you want me to take you even more seriously? You will kill me one day.
(Remains serious)
He: Get the hell out of my life.
She: I don't want to see your face.
He: Your face depresses me. The sound of your voice annoys me.
She: I really wish we had not married.
He: My words! Marrying you is the worst mistake that I have ever made!
She: Don't grind your teeth while you speak!
He: Why the fuck are you laughing? You know, we need to take a break from each other.
He walks out.
30 minutes later
He: Were you serious when you said, you wish we had not married?
She: Are you crazy or what?
He: I didn't hear you.
She: Were you serious when you said, "Get out of my life, I don't like your face, I don't like your voice"?
He: I never said, I don't like your face. I said your face depresses me.
She: Same thing.
He: It is not. And, I was the one who asked the question first. Were you serious when you said, you wish we had not married?
She: So what, you also do the same thing. Whenever I point out something to you, you always pinpoint back something or the other. You never accept your fault.
He: Ok, I don't think you are interested to resolve this. We will talk later.
40 minutes later
He: You know, when we go to my mother's house this weekend, I think you should stay on for a week or so.
She: And, what about my Yoga classes that have just restarted?
He: I don't think chucking your yoga classes matters that much. This is more important.
She: Look, my Yoga teacher was on vacation for 10 days. He just came back this week. If you wanted a break, we could have taken it last week.
He: This is only going to get worse, we are falling apart. If you don't agree to this break, it will only get worse.
She: I cannot miss my yoga classes right now. If it has to get worse, let it get worse.
1 hour later
She: Tell me one thing. Who started saying all those things, "I don't like your face", "Get out of my life" and all.
He: Didn't you say you wish you had not married me?
She: But I said it only after you said all those things. And I was laughing while I said it. You were grinding your teeth.
He: You know I become extremely unhappy when I use this kind of language. I don't like saying these things.
She: I know. Thats why I was laughing. I knew you were saying these things because you were angry. You didn't mean any of it. Did you?
Silence
She: Tell me, did you mean all those things?
He: I don't know. At that point, I was very serious. May be. I don't know how to get angry.
(Waits for some time)
She: Why didn't you take me seriously when I asked you to be back before 5? You knew I had a doc appointment. You never take me seriously.
He: Ok, I will stop joking now completely with you.
She: I am not asking you to stop joking. I am just asking you to take me a little more seriously.
He: (Laughs) Taking your words so seriously landed us in this. And you want me to take you even more seriously? You will kill me one day.
(Remains serious)
Friday, June 4, 2010
Becoming whole
I am becoming whole again. Fragmented, broken, angry, I was for the last four months. Anger, not of the righteous kind that nourishes you, anger, of the impotent, diminishing kind that makes you smaller.
I stopped writing, which I had begun after years of hesitation. I read scraps of tabloids, watched movies disinterestedly, and listened to whatever noise played out in the garb of music. I also became quieter, which some say was not very noticeable and akin only to another degree of silence.
I felt as if I was fighting a losing battle against monsters, both real and imagined. Frankly speaking, this is what I feel now. Then, I did not really feel much. Just something sore inside, when pain refuses to go away but is always around, popping up every now and then. Staring at you, mocking you.
Rather then bore you further with the "why" and "what", let me tell you a little, borrowed, story.
In Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Mr. Hamidi is looking for an accomplice to help him commit suicide. More accurately, to bury him, to cover his grave with earth, once he has killed himself. In the industrial wasteland of outskirts of Tehran, he seeks the lonely and impoverished, who would be desperate enough to accept his offer of money for little help. Adolescent soldier away from his native town, rag-picker, exiled Afghan seminary. Some get scared, some discourage him. One of them asks, why don't you share your pain, may be, it will make it subside? Mr. Hamidi desists, even if I tell you, you will never be able to feel what I am feeling inside. You will sympathize, you will probably feel pity towards my condition, but you will not understand me. Mr. Hamidi does not tell anything, but he lays bare the ultimate loneliness of human condition, and its accompanying pain and suffering. But, he still finds something in the "taste of cherry" to go on living.
Suddenly, I am also feeling that the happiness, that I have longed for and tried to attain, is returning. Perhaps in half measures, not fully, but I am losing the resentment towards happiness that I had built so assiduously. And I can feel a void getting filled within, I still don't know by what. I just feel that I am slowly coming back to life.
I stopped writing, which I had begun after years of hesitation. I read scraps of tabloids, watched movies disinterestedly, and listened to whatever noise played out in the garb of music. I also became quieter, which some say was not very noticeable and akin only to another degree of silence.
I felt as if I was fighting a losing battle against monsters, both real and imagined. Frankly speaking, this is what I feel now. Then, I did not really feel much. Just something sore inside, when pain refuses to go away but is always around, popping up every now and then. Staring at you, mocking you.
Rather then bore you further with the "why" and "what", let me tell you a little, borrowed, story.
In Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Mr. Hamidi is looking for an accomplice to help him commit suicide. More accurately, to bury him, to cover his grave with earth, once he has killed himself. In the industrial wasteland of outskirts of Tehran, he seeks the lonely and impoverished, who would be desperate enough to accept his offer of money for little help. Adolescent soldier away from his native town, rag-picker, exiled Afghan seminary. Some get scared, some discourage him. One of them asks, why don't you share your pain, may be, it will make it subside? Mr. Hamidi desists, even if I tell you, you will never be able to feel what I am feeling inside. You will sympathize, you will probably feel pity towards my condition, but you will not understand me. Mr. Hamidi does not tell anything, but he lays bare the ultimate loneliness of human condition, and its accompanying pain and suffering. But, he still finds something in the "taste of cherry" to go on living.
Suddenly, I am also feeling that the happiness, that I have longed for and tried to attain, is returning. Perhaps in half measures, not fully, but I am losing the resentment towards happiness that I had built so assiduously. And I can feel a void getting filled within, I still don't know by what. I just feel that I am slowly coming back to life.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
The Night's Beginning - A Story
The white Indica slowed down and took the right turn from the dark, empty highway to move onto the village kachcha road.
As the car stumbled its way between the golden mustard fields, Shama wiped her shirt sleeve on the February midnight mist and crowed excitedly to Riaz, 'See! You always ask where are those mustard fields of Yash Chopra's DDLJ. Your own village!' Riaz absent-mindedly peeped outside, gave no intimation that he saw or understood anything, but smiled at Shama to assure her that he agreed as usual.
'Almost twenty five thousand', said Riaz to himself for the third time, 'if only we had taken the two hours later Spicejet flight instead of the 0815 Air India flight, it could have easily cut two thousand. But then we would have also missed the afternoon Gharib Rath to Allahabad, and then Amma's 'mitti' also tomorrow morning.'
Amma had lived a long life and died slowly over the last one month agonizingly. Twice, Riaz had made plans to visit, and each time, he had put it off for some or the other reason. Truth be told, her death was constantly on his mind, but he felt that he could not take two long leaves from the office within a short period. One for visiting an ailing grandmother, the other for burying one. He had somehow always felt it more important to be by her side when she was dead than when she was critically ill. He could stand death, not the process of dying.
Now, Amma was dead, and he was irritated at himself for thinking about money. He put on his special, serious pose and tried to concentrate on Amma to prepare himself for the mourning. Tears did not come easily to him, and he did not want the look of the dry-eyed, unfeeling grandson.
As they crossed 'Pasiyana', literally the abode of the 'Pasis', and slowed to a halt in front of a large, white house, he saw his uncles coming out in white. As he embraced them one by one and got his shoulders wet from their wept tears, he felt his guilt and uncertainty dissolving. The Uncles pointed him to go inside where his mother and aunts had started wailing in anticipation. He moved gingerly from aunt to aunt, aunt to mother, mother to aunt, consoling them in turns with gentle embraces, making sure he followed the age hierarchy religiously. He then went to the inner room to look at Amma, and was astonished to see her thin face, gaunt from the recent illness, but still severe and serene, the only visible part of her body, covered from head to toe in a white shroud. He felt her death intimately for the first time and felt a vacuum growing inside his chest that expanded outwards.
His chest swollen, his gaze uncertain, he moved outside the house to look at the village stars and a place to sleep the night. As he stood looking with invented fascination at the deep orange object in the sky, which he guessed to be Venus, he felt somebody nudging him. Only when his uncle whispered, 'Abba, Abba', into his ears did Riaz turn around, and saw Abba leaning on his stick. Abba had woken up from the commotion and come outside. Riaz moved slowly towards him for the ritual embrace. When Riaz buried his head in Abba's chest, he found Abba immovable and heard no tears for the dead wife, his constant companion for the last sixty six years. Astonished for the second time, Riaz looked up gently and saw eyes that were unslept, dead and that were going to be closed permanently within the next one year.
As the car stumbled its way between the golden mustard fields, Shama wiped her shirt sleeve on the February midnight mist and crowed excitedly to Riaz, 'See! You always ask where are those mustard fields of Yash Chopra's DDLJ. Your own village!' Riaz absent-mindedly peeped outside, gave no intimation that he saw or understood anything, but smiled at Shama to assure her that he agreed as usual.
'Almost twenty five thousand', said Riaz to himself for the third time, 'if only we had taken the two hours later Spicejet flight instead of the 0815 Air India flight, it could have easily cut two thousand. But then we would have also missed the afternoon Gharib Rath to Allahabad, and then Amma's 'mitti' also tomorrow morning.'
Amma had lived a long life and died slowly over the last one month agonizingly. Twice, Riaz had made plans to visit, and each time, he had put it off for some or the other reason. Truth be told, her death was constantly on his mind, but he felt that he could not take two long leaves from the office within a short period. One for visiting an ailing grandmother, the other for burying one. He had somehow always felt it more important to be by her side when she was dead than when she was critically ill. He could stand death, not the process of dying.
Now, Amma was dead, and he was irritated at himself for thinking about money. He put on his special, serious pose and tried to concentrate on Amma to prepare himself for the mourning. Tears did not come easily to him, and he did not want the look of the dry-eyed, unfeeling grandson.
As they crossed 'Pasiyana', literally the abode of the 'Pasis', and slowed to a halt in front of a large, white house, he saw his uncles coming out in white. As he embraced them one by one and got his shoulders wet from their wept tears, he felt his guilt and uncertainty dissolving. The Uncles pointed him to go inside where his mother and aunts had started wailing in anticipation. He moved gingerly from aunt to aunt, aunt to mother, mother to aunt, consoling them in turns with gentle embraces, making sure he followed the age hierarchy religiously. He then went to the inner room to look at Amma, and was astonished to see her thin face, gaunt from the recent illness, but still severe and serene, the only visible part of her body, covered from head to toe in a white shroud. He felt her death intimately for the first time and felt a vacuum growing inside his chest that expanded outwards.
His chest swollen, his gaze uncertain, he moved outside the house to look at the village stars and a place to sleep the night. As he stood looking with invented fascination at the deep orange object in the sky, which he guessed to be Venus, he felt somebody nudging him. Only when his uncle whispered, 'Abba, Abba', into his ears did Riaz turn around, and saw Abba leaning on his stick. Abba had woken up from the commotion and come outside. Riaz moved slowly towards him for the ritual embrace. When Riaz buried his head in Abba's chest, he found Abba immovable and heard no tears for the dead wife, his constant companion for the last sixty six years. Astonished for the second time, Riaz looked up gently and saw eyes that were unslept, dead and that were going to be closed permanently within the next one year.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Peeping at life
His chin holds the vest, while he tightens the strings of his drawers. One eye towards the standing bus, the other towards the small group sitting cross-legged on the earth, wet by the leaked water from the tanker. A bunch of used utensils on a half-broken rack, a bundle of clothing, pot being stirred on the fire burning in the middle. Life on the move under the flyover. I lock eyes with him, look at his exposed emaciated body. The light turns green, and the bus moves away from the flyover crossing. The image of the child standing with his back against the makeshift railing again comes back to me. He was gazing intently at us, curious at the flood of traffic surrounding, or rather, going past his home, constructed of the used tin sheds by the roadside near the faux Greco-Roman structures of Powai. I was sitting in the air-conditioned car, stuck for the last quarter of an hour, and irritated by his curious, impish, smile. What is he doing here? Does he realize the absurdity of the situation?
Covering up anything personal, life, emotions, opinions, from the public gaze and scrutiny is a lifelong project for most of us middle-class Indians. We live in large well-secured apartment complexes, take up higher floors to avoid peeping toms, erect safety doors beyond the already formidable locks, draw dark curtains on the windows, and build thick walls around our homes and ourselves. We long for that personal space we call home, where we get transformed from engineers, doctors, managers, brokers, into mighty kings whose every wish is a command.
I sometimes wonder what desperation compels these men and women to abandon their safe havens in far-off villages to come to Mumbai and live like this. To open their life for everybody to see, comment, get amused with, trample. While India keeps shining, Sensex keeps touching new heights, the life stories of these men remain untold and un-addressed. An old doggerel (or, is it a hindi movie dialogue?)says nobody sleeps hungry in Mumbai. May be. But a lot of them do sleep shamed, humiliated, insulted.
Ashis Nandy once commented that the personal and the public, the village and the city, are always close, ready to converge, in India. He could have added that they remain separated by visible and invisible boundaries.
Covering up anything personal, life, emotions, opinions, from the public gaze and scrutiny is a lifelong project for most of us middle-class Indians. We live in large well-secured apartment complexes, take up higher floors to avoid peeping toms, erect safety doors beyond the already formidable locks, draw dark curtains on the windows, and build thick walls around our homes and ourselves. We long for that personal space we call home, where we get transformed from engineers, doctors, managers, brokers, into mighty kings whose every wish is a command.
I sometimes wonder what desperation compels these men and women to abandon their safe havens in far-off villages to come to Mumbai and live like this. To open their life for everybody to see, comment, get amused with, trample. While India keeps shining, Sensex keeps touching new heights, the life stories of these men remain untold and un-addressed. An old doggerel (or, is it a hindi movie dialogue?)says nobody sleeps hungry in Mumbai. May be. But a lot of them do sleep shamed, humiliated, insulted.
Ashis Nandy once commented that the personal and the public, the village and the city, are always close, ready to converge, in India. He could have added that they remain separated by visible and invisible boundaries.
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