Landlocked

Yes, yes,

              I know.
              Every man is an 'i'land
              marooned on his own sea of
              contradictions and lies,
              swimming between
              the dilemmas of
              solitude
              and loneliness.

              Every man is
              settling into
              shape-changing
              sands,
              confused by
              the sanguine sunsets:
              "why does such passion
              not run colour?"

              But, what if
              islands could choose neighbours?
              little pieces of
              forgotten land
              bumping into one another
              as they float
              aimfully
              on the seas of time.

Ah!
              I'd choose an island as
              beautifully isolated
              as I dream to be.
              I'd choose an island with
              Bookshelves.
              Ah yes, that
              would be
              quite perfect.

The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa

Perfect on those long summer afternoons. 

I really enjoy fiction based in India. It is always interesting to watch an author weave a tale against the backdrop of familiar landscapes. Chaiwallas and dust, matrimony obssessed women and fans that whirr irrespective of which way you turn the regulator, summer heat and Lifebouy soap. Rupa Bajwa won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for this one; a simple story of Ramchand the sari seller in the city of Amritsar (which like every other major city in India has the 'old' areas of narrow lanes and the newer parts with broad roads and fancy houses). The narration charts his efforts to realise a dream and step into a world far removed from his, where people speak in English and travel in air conditioned cars. However, the crushing revelations of the reality he belongs to, send him spiralling into an abyss of depression. As the story allows Ramchand to crawl back to sanity, Rupa Bajwa deftly narrates his resigned acceptance of the reality of his existence.

Here is a review with a spoiler. Ha don't you just love those?

On Forgiving

"Perhaps the first step to forgiveness is trying to put yourself in the other person's place."

The Nightmare

Reason 

lay putrefying on my pillow.  

I woke up

in a breathless hurry,

this heart weaving beats

in a crazed drunken stitch.

My eyes screamed

at replays of 

The Dream

stretched taught

against a canvas of terror.

Caught between fiction 

and fear, 

I wretchedly thirsted

for reality 

to get more real.

A binding silence

stitched my limbs to

my heavy sides

fetid fingers scratched

at my will. 

The sheets were drenched in salt,

a fever of sweat and tears.

I lifted a hand - rag puppet limp

and in a voice splintered by fear,

called out, "Name".

You walked in,

my Dandelion wish

I blew you into reality

and watched you

slowly sift through 

those threads of cacophony

cocooning me

into comfort. 

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Oh the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness, that one is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we meet in society here! The ambition of rank! How they watch, how they toil, to gain precedence! What poor and contemptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness!"

Read when you've reached The Edge. 

When I started on this slim book (a mere 88 pages long!), the prose seemed unwieldly, too ornate for my taste. I grew apprehensive, perhaps I'd been reading too much 'new age literature', perhaps it was my waning patience? Thankfully, it was neither, and slowly, Young Werther grasped.

Goethe was only 24 (!) when wrote this semi-autobiographical book, applauded as one of the most important milestones in his career. The preface states "it rose like a literary meteor in the world and carries his name on its blazing wings."

Narrated in the form of letters Werther writes to his friend, the story charts the spiral of wrenching emotions he faces and finally bows down to. For all the weaknesses of his character, Werther is strong in his love, something he nourishes and fans till there is nothing left for himself. With an almost morbid fascination, I watched him rise, on the ecstacy of finding love, even if unrequited, and then his fall into the Abyss of No Return. His introspective letters are exquisite pieces of prose and I watched Werther wade through anxieties that I have often had at different turns of my life. He too holds an immense fascination for Nature. He echoes the feelings of jealousy and pain I have ridden. And that, for me, is Goethe's triumph. He transcends time. Werther is a young man in 18th century Germany. I, a girl in 21st century India. Our contexts could not be further removed and yet he manages to build a story that resonates.

"This confirmed me in my resolution of adhering, for the future, entirely to nature. She alone is inexhaustible, and capable of forming the greatest masters."

The Blue Bedspread by Raj Kamal Jha

"...when you find it difficult to say something, when the words get trapped in your chest, your lips quiver, as in winter, you can always write it down."

I'd read it on a train journey.

Raj Kamal Jha writes exquisitely, there is little to doubt there. The attention to detail is awe inspiring and rather envy inducing "the black rubber bands that held her white socks in place". And he is a crafty writer, luring you by nuggets of familiarity in the same way one rejoices at meeting people and recognising oneself in them.

Set in the humidity of Calcutta, the book is in the form of words being fervently written by the protagonist as he sputters out his strange story. All in the span of one night. A baby lies near him and he is addressing it as he writes. The story is powerful and delves upon the delicate and contentious subject of physical intimacy between siblings (some threads reminded me of A God of Small Things). At times I wanted to read faster than the words were written, but the tone sometimes collapses into overt sentimentality, and sometimes, the reader is almost isolated as the protagonist moves ahead. However, for its calmly urgent story telling and perhaps because of its flaws, The Blue Bedspread is a book I wouldn't have wanted to miss.

For a taste, here is the first chapter.

"Like lonely lovers often do, I keep thinking things, I conjured up worlds where we were husband and wife, we had taken a house, all for ourselves, with a tiny garden in front."

Looking For Alaska by John Green

Read it lying down

"If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."

I know many people must have said this, but John Green's Alaska aims to be the Catcher in the Rye of this generation, and it comes pretty close. Miles 'Pudge' Halter and his band of misfits: the Colonel, a rotund short guy who knows the names of every country's capital (it is his coping mechanism), Alaska, the impetuous pretty girl who says she 'smokes to die', Takumi, the Japanese kid who is supposedly the best rapper in all of Alabama, and Lara the Hungarian, Romanian blue-eyed beauty. They're high school teenagers in boarding school with an abnormally high proclivity for pranks. And then something happens that changes the way they will witness their world, shake it to the very marrow and leave everything slightly hollow. 

John Green keeps the language simple but manages to come up with wonderful phrases, you know, the kinds you underline?  

"... the glittering ambiguity of a girl's smile, which seems to promise an answer to the question but never gives it."

Underneath a story of a group of nicotine starved teenagers, and how they grapple with the first big tragedy of their lives, John Green weaves in a parallel narration on religion. Through the voice of the very old and crumbling Religious Studies teacher Dr. Hyde, the story attempts to understand the questions raised when the mind is faced with unfathomable suffering. I wish he'd have delved deeper, but then that would have been another book. 

My only grouse with the book is the lack of empathy the character of Alaska aroused in me. She seemed too shallow for my taste which sat uncomfortably with her very voluble feminist streak. The layers that Green tried to create for her, didn't seem to go very deep. But while she seemed superficial and at times forced, I warmed up to the the other characters especially my personal favourite; the Colonel.

If for nothing else, I recommend the book for introducing me to the ideas of the Great Perhaps and Simon Bolivar's labyrinth.

In Absentia

From Typewritten

A room with walls painted the sound of rain. Yellow light bouncing off my bookshelves, fanning some stories, banishing others into dark solitude. On the uneven floor, a mattress lies covered with that cotton bedspread, the colour of autumn, coarse and handwoven. The window is agape, cooling this long summer night and a breeze lilts in. A glass of nimbu pani sweats, encircled in its wreath of condensation. The night is silent, as silent as snow, and I can hear my heart beating. Calmly. Pirouetting in the pool of light, memories confuse themselves with wishes. My tired eyes strain to read between the lines I've already rewritten. The curtain flutters and flails in the fanciful breeze. The yellow flowers on it rise, expecting a new lease of life and then, collapse, breathless and disappointed. Shadows ink the walls and I watch them dance. Merging in and out of my consciousness, they fight for attention, only to dissolve into shades of light. It's warm and the mogra flowers are exhaling their fragrance in desperation. I smell impending death and crush them before they turn to rust. Footsteps? Did I hear footsteps? Yes, but they seem to be walking away. The breeze has stopped its playful banter and the curtains lie inert, looking vacantly at the stillness. I realise I've been holding my breath. And exhale. For you're not here. 

Yet.

Comprehension

Image from Krisatomic

Perhaps I understand it

Perhaps I don't

Perhaps I hoarded all 

your subtleties 

to build an ark

for a rainy day like today.

Perhaps I tried,

but failed and

lost my tools along the way,

they drowned in 

our sea of suppositions

long before the ark took shape

long before I thought I'd need it. 

But is there not space

on your raft? 

the seas are so choppy

and I never learnt how to swim.

Someone once told me (and at that time it seemed like such a revelation!) that we barely understand ourselves, so trying to fathom (and perhaps empathise with?) what another is feeling, what is motivating someone else to act, can, at best, be a guided guess, at worst, a shot in the dark. I wish we all would accept this better and save ourselves so much anguish. For when it comes to the mushrooming mess of human feelings, everyone is just searching for the proverbial needle in that haystack, and every ounce of help counts. Reminds me of that scene in Waking Life where they talk of language. Oh the infinite possibilities of our perceptions of  the intangible mismatching!

The Epic and I

(Oh what a long post! you say. Happy New Year, say I) 

I firmly believe in the importance of timing. Travel teaches you that I guess. The train you take (or miss) decides whether you are surrounded by a cackle of unruly children or an old lady who will feed you matthri achaar from large steel boxes you wouldn’t expect anyone to be carrying on any kind of trip. The when you meet a person is often most crucial, it determines the conversations you have, the relationships you forge. And so, without emphasising the importance of timing through tangential metaphors that don’t really make any sense, I am glad the Mahabharata happened to me when it did. Though looking back, I do realise it has always been around, waiting in the shadows for me to seek it out. Man 1, an eternal believer in the Mahabharata’s ultimate supremacy when it comes to philosophical stimulation, entertaining storytelling or spiritual direction, has always been my favourite person to look to for book recommendations, so I guess it was only a matter of Time that I dug into his eclectic collection on the epic.

My tryst with what is often applauded as ‘the greatest story ever told’, began, like so many Indian kids of my generation with Sunday mornings on Doordarshan. Right after our head baths, we’d be plopped on the carpet in front of the TV, our hair drying as B.R. Chopra’s rendition of the tale entertained. Of course there were tacky special effects, a lot of jewellery, flashy aakaash vani, and sensational hyperbole, but to a child, uncluttered by the burden of opinion, it was the ultimate entertainment. The chariots and the demons, pretty bejewelled women and ambiguous gods, they all made Sunday mornings all the more interesting. But in the fervent process of ‘growing up’ the Mahabharata was nearly forgotten. Of course, there were the odd Amar Chitra Kathas, cherished and much-tattered. And sometimes, in those days of pigtails and ironed uniforms, the epic would make an appearance. While sorting the books in Rasmai, Ammaji’s well-worn volumes in the original Sanskrit were dusted with reverence. Her wooden book stand, beautifully carved, had once proudly borne the weight of the mighty Mahabharata. As I collected quotes (something I do fervently, like an old lady with her yarn) I often encountered quotes from the Bhagvada Gita on the relationships between Purusha and Prakriti; man and nature and the urge to explore would make its presence felt.

Fumbling towards adulthood, and an upheaval in my taste for books, Man 1’s patient devotion for the book (and the much-maligned, charasmatic character of Karna) made its subtle presence felt. One day I picked up R.K. Narayan’s “The Mahabharata”, a mere 190 pages long. In his characteristic simple style, R.K. Narayan, managed to make the Mahabharata seem within my grasp. Retracing my steps, I see it was the first time I read the story and felt I needed to be ready for it. The next time I encountered the book was through a rather long (and at that time amusing) telephonic conversation, which was a breathless recounting of some of the stories and subplots that make up the epic. The caller had been reading C. Rajagopalchari’s version that I later went on to buy, read and enjoy immensely. For any beginner, perhaps getting the story and its numerous characters right is a challenge in itself. Thanks to the book, I found myself on a path towards that. 

The past few years have seen within me an upheaval of the strangest kinds, from the books I read, the words I write, to the company I keep, the things I choose to indulge in. And so, when I was ready to truly explore it, I was glad to find the Mahabhrata waiting for me, peeking from various corners of our bookshelves, hidden in conversations I was to have and of course, in the pages of Chaturvedi Badrinath’s highly recommended Mahabharata – An Inquiry in the Human Condition. There are some books in whose company you feel uplifted, you know it is changing your life in subtle and not so subtle ways as you go through it. Badrinath’s careful analysis of the Mahabharata makes it gripping and accessible, without compromising on the depth of the subject. He picks up questions that have (hopefully) bothered everyone at some point in their life (am I really in control of my decisions or does ‘fate’ determine them for me? What is truth and when is it ok to lie? If we all are to die some day, what is the point of all this?) and goes on explore them, quoting pertinent lines from the Mahabharata, narrating stories to shed more light, cushioned between his own analyses and careful years of reading. Personally, what I found most uplifting was to finally internalise the clear practicality of the Mahabharata. There is no preaching and sermonising, no lofty ideals that one must adhere to. It does not answer how you should live your life, but explores the answers various people have given, shreds them to bits through debates and dialogue, and then leaves you to reach your conclusions, find your answers. It is, as Badrinath so poignantly portrays, the most systematic enquiry into the human condition.

“...beyond all theories, all interpretations, all arguments, the essence of the Mahabharata is this, which is also the essence of the human life. Each person has a relationship with his or her self; with the particularities of one’s body and one’s mind and with the specific workings together, in the form of desires, motives, acts and emotions. Each person has a relationship also with the other, with his, or her, particularities. This other, is a collective entity too: group, society, nation. The other is not necessarily the human other. The other is also nature: earth, sky, fire, wind, water, trees, plants, rivers, lakes, hills, mountains. The Mahabharata makes us aware of the plain truth that is not until one’s relationship with one’s self is right that one’s relationship with the other can be right. At the same time, it is by achieving a right relationship with the other that one achieves a right relationship with one’s self. The two are inseparably linked. Life is relational.”

Excerpt from: What is Death? The Origin of Mrityu, Chapter 6, Page 170
. 

Recovering from that consuming literary gem, I turned to Yuganta by Irawati Karve, a collection of essays about characters in the Mahabharata. Though widely applauded in reviews, was, to me initially, a disturbing read. Her demanding dissection of the epic's characters was slightly startling at first but slowly I realised that only a person with immense love for the poem she fondly calls 'Jaya', could delve so deeply into its complexities. With the fine comb of her anthropology background, she deconstructs characters, placing them in the unforgiving light of history and questioning their motives and actions ruthlessly. I found her unrelenting interrogation of Bhishma 'selfless' Pitama's sacrifices most interesting. As an opinion, Karve makes a bold statement and though it often sounds narrow, I found myself admiring her passionate essays.

Now, at the end of my current conversation with the epic, I find myself in the company of The Difficulty of Being Good by Gurcharan Das. I had bought the book in the climax of my affair with Gurcharan Das’s clear writing, and a year later, it was still sitting on my bookshelf, miffed at being left behind when I set off for the Next Big Step. But coming back to the importance of timing, I am glad it is now that I have finally found the leisure and inclination to read this book. With a title so well thought of, I am glad the book is turning out to be a stimulating read. It is after all, the very readable Gurcharan Das (who, has off late, taken to Mahabharatising everything he writes or says, which I must admit, is a tad irritating).

As he undertakes his quest to understand the dharma, the one thing Das repeatedly encounters in the Mahabharata is that "it is not easy to be good". He teases out parallel narratives in Greek epics, cushions his findings with his academic background on Western philosophy and finally 'spices' things up with his observations from Indian public life. Chapter 7 titled Krishna's Guile is most captivating in its queries, God or human? Trickster or harbinger of Kali Yuga? As I'm reaching the end of the book, the only thing I can claim to have learnt is that I have so much more to learn. What a fascinating find! : )