The train was shooting through the green landscape. It was crossing plantain groves, ponds, cows, thatched houses, and smiling onlookers, in flashes. I was not looking. It was ticking. And it was painful. For I knew it wont be an easy transition. Not easy enough to cry for, not easy enough to talk about, not easy enough to think over. (Do you remember writing with your first ballpoint pen, after the velvet touch of the fountain pens? Don’t you wish…)

But I was just looking at the eyes. The eyes that stopped speaking then. The eyes that wanted to see more. I looked. The chugging of the train had stopped long back, the pitter-patter of conversation was hardly registering, the somnolent breeze, the pregnant silence. Nothing. And I was desperately looking for words.

Enveloped in verbosity, shrouded in faces and names, that moment stretching aeon made me realise…

Naiveté had made me believe that words can change the world. We make friends through words, and that love stays wrapped in her purple casket neatly ribboned with unforgettable words. Words prick insatiable memory, cooped like pigeons, with nowhere to go. Words are bridges and roofs, words are rains and petrichor, and words are the innocent and the patriarch… And how wrong was I!

Word really fall short…

the guava seller

there used to be a guava seller outside my school. he had a reputation also. there used to be double rows of dusty black boots on the pavement encircling his stall. now i cant remember his face. all i remember of him is his dexterous hand and the corroded steel knife. he let the  kids hand him over the fruit, which he tossed twice in his palm, half out of habit, and half out of joy. with the other hand, which incidentally had a mind of its own, the knife came into being. he used to meticulously cut the fruit into four almost equal part with his knife, with two quick cuts. next, he dipped the knife into a plastic container which contained a unique mixture of tropical salts. then he put the knife, pregnant with salt, in between the four pieces. he wrapped the fruit in a newspaper and served.

when reading Milan Kundera i have the feeling of being the guava in the fruit seller’s hand.

Chana Masaledar

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

a piece of fresh ginger, about 1/2 inch square, peeled and grated

2 tablespoon tomato paste

24-ounce can of chickpeas(garbanzos) salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoon lemon juice

Garnish

3 tomatoes, quartered

1 medium onion

4 green chillies, or a green pepper sliced

heat the oil in a large heavy skillet. while hot, put in the whole cumin seeds. as soon as they begin to darken, after a few seconds, put in the chopped onion. stir and fry for 7 minutes. turn heat to low and add the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and coriander. mix and add the garlic and ginger, stirring for 3 minutes. add the tomato paste. open chickpeas and drain out most of the liquid, leaving a couple of tablespoons. pour this and the chickpeas into the skillet. add salt, cayenne, and lemon juice. mix well, cover, and let the flavours combine for 10 minutes. stir gently every now and then, taking care not to break the chickpeas. serve with basmati rice in a bowl lined with quartered tomatoes, raw onion slivers, and either green chillies or slices of green pepper.

Serves 4

Of toothpastes, newspapers and other mundane rituals.

Toothpastes taste better at home. This is an observation I made, quite serendipitously.

To think of it, it came quite late in my life. I have been swallowing Colgate right from when I can remember. Then, after a few tooth-decays, they forced me to Pepsodent (they were first to bring in those white-sleeved dentists on their commercials) and, at times, some awfully bad ayurveda paste, which was, quite rightly, green in colour.

Coming back to the original hypothesis. I have seldom cared about toothpastes when I am not home. I brush with whatever I have at hand, and when I am out, I borrow. The taste of toothpaste is never worth a bother. But back home, it is almost like a ritual, the waking up, the morning news, the bed-tea, and so on…

I somehow could never convince myself with the idea of wastage of time. Time, howsoever spent, carries its worth, or, for me, its emptiness.

~ ~ ~

The newspaper is another integral part of the ritual. The biscuit as well, with the morning tea, but lets not get into trivialities.

The newspaper, for me is an art form. Again how good or bad it is depends on the execution. They have their own personality. While you would think of The Hindu in a dark brown Safari suit with horn-rimmed glasses, The Statesman comes across as summer suited middle aged man with unpolished shoes, and The Times of India, definitely in netted stockings and red bustier.

A newspaper for me is as good as a collage. A collage of the important, the ludicrous, the facile, the angry, the surreptitious and the sublime. What sets one from another is the sleight, the art of the maker.

~ ~ ~

They don’t worship Brahma much; they have temples of Shiva everywhere. I never believed that it’s fear that moves faith. True faith.

A creator who has the audacity to destroy his own creation is indeed a genius. The bravery of being able to outdo himself, his own self is challenging time itself.

To think of it, it’s only the second creation that is destroyed. The first is stolen by the transience of time itself. And the palimpsest hardly matches up the original.

The rituals, on the other hand, make a mockery of this transience.

Walk down Park Street (or The Rear View Mirror)

 

It has changed. The lights have grown brighter, the horns blare more, and there are more people on the streets, more swashbuckling cell-phones, and more suave cars burning their rubbers. Every time I walk down the familiar lanes, I feel the same. Now, as a matter of fact, it is more tangible.

1. Crazy Horse, yes the one I used to watch on TV, is coming down to Calcutta. Can you believe it! The poster shouts, with its benign umber and white stockings.
2. They are serving free complimentary goblets of wine at lunch, to Nehru-coat clad, monkey-capped, kids-dangling families.
3. The music stores have pushed the Bengali pop numbers to their back-shelves. They now cover Byrds, Dylan, Ozzy Osborne, Kenny G and Lynryd Synryd. And Calcutta never understood Hindi anyway.
4. There are jamming sessions in pubs, where newfound riffs holler with the sound of jazz.
5. The ubiquitous muffler is gone. Bandanas are in.
6. The straitjackets are off; they are hugging on the streets.
7. Calcutta has vanquished her freedom to urinate on sidewalks.

And a seventeen-year-old boy, in his tattered vest tugs on his two goats with bells that herald the holiday season. And a beggar with her kid tucker under her blouse watches the glitterati with the impassivity of a snake that’s forgotten to hibernate. And among other incongruous fragments, a sadhu, in decadent yellow-orange, strums his ektara in sync with the notes of a faraway past.

Park Street is moving. Quite fast.

Why books?

 

Books, I cant live without them. Be it a wintry afternoon, a rainy morning, a sultry dusk, a valentine evening, I need readables! I have realized that if there has been anything that has remained the same, it is my love for books. Maybe, the tastes have changed. Shelves where the Blyton, Cristie and Doyle once ruled were taken over by Kafka, Camus and Sartre. While the perambulatory train journeys warranted paperbacks, the morning walks were okay with The Telegraph. There was a book for every occasion I partook, every class I missed, every meeting I avoided, every phone call I evaded. And for each piece of furniture there was one too: the coffee table journal, the monitor-top jargon-breakers, the armchair hardbounds, and the under-pillow sleepovers.

 

Books have been said to be the lonely man’s best friend. They give company for hours at large, they exchange ideas, create dreams and images to seek refuge in. Like friends they make us forget or sorrows and share our joys. Like friends they take us to their own world of daydreams.

 

Nevertheless, books unlike friends, can be ignored at will, and taken seriously at others. They can be thrown around, dog-eared, torn apart and lost. Books can be read, appreciated at times or denounced at the others (sometimes the same book!), forgotten or re-read. Books can be bought and sold, disposed of, lent, borrowed, and donated. Unlike friends, there is no love lost, no pains of separation. I can always go back and pick it up from a dusty shelf, and start over anew, anytime I want.

Wiki says…

“Empty vessel or the empty vessel approach is a business term describing the negative effects of how one ends up with a worthless outcome when trying to please everyone. The term is more commonly used in psychology and behavior analysis. Worthlessness cannot be measured, but there will be consensus among the participants that the end product does not even come close to the previously desired outcome.

The “empty vessel approach” can be characterized by lack of leadership and unwillingness for the members to take individual responsibility. Larger corporations with many mid-level managers are more easily trapped in this negative spiral where the company essentially becomes a “meeting company”, where most of the employee’s time is wasted away in meetings instead of actually making products or providing services.

On a smaller scale, the empty vessel syndrome can be observed when ordering pizza. Everybody wants a different topping but there is no designated “pizza-master” that will ultimately choose what to order. You end up with one Cheese pizza and one Supreme pizza with everything on it. Nobody gets exactly what they wanted and would have to endure eating a plain pizza or picking off toppings they hate.”

You just hit the nail on its head, folks!

Samson

Samson lived on his locks. He could lift mountains and fight lions. He could crush stones and tumble pillars. All because of his locks.

After lifting several mountains and killing packs of lions, he grew tired. No one challenged him for a fight. Not even the intrepid vultures, nor the invincible scarecrows. He searched for purpose. A purpose to show his strenght. The valiance the drove the pigs out of Cuba, the valiance that pulled down the walls of Berlin, the valiance that drew the continents closer. But alas! No one asked Samson.

Samson was tired of Delilah as well. She fonded his locks, when came back with a lions heart. But then  Delilah was bored as well, for she doubted if Samson was as strong as he claimed. She shrugged and she pampered, and in the moonlight blue she whimpered. But she didnt cut his locks off, nor did she run away to the palaces grand.

Togather they grew old in their domecile fantasies. And slowly they started to believe in whatever they did.

And when Samson grew bald, they fell in love again…

The long shadows of winter

It has been a couple of days since i saw the sun. The clouds have taken a tinge of violet, on their ususal intrepid grey. The mercury has surely not risen above the doleful decade, and the peacock haven’t cried. There have been occassional disingenuous drizzles as well. As i sip my last coffee in my haunt, i see the long shadows of a yellow bulb bidding the day goodbye. Not the usual oasis-in-the-desert kind of a day i must say.

The hopeless part is that i am not feeling that bad either. Had it been my usual self, i would have snuggly tucked under my blanket refusing to comprise on the centigrade. However, i am walking far more that i should, and talking way less than i normally do. Well, i might be wrong, but then, that’s what i feel.

Maybe, it’s because cricket is being played in some distant part of the country, and i like to pretend, for once, that i am terribly happy that the bengali has exonerated his pride. Or maybe, i am extremely nostalgic about seeing Madhuri Dixit in her latest goof-up, gyrating herself to weird melodies. Maybe, i am relieved at having finished all my coursework, and just jumping in joy. Maybe, the twinkle hoot of travel is again ringing in my head.

Or just maybe, i am terribly screwed up, and the weather is not bad at all!

If i could travel time…

i wont kill John Lennon
i wont build the stock market
i wont buy DOS
i wont drop the H-bomb
i wont do calculus
i wont play the tambourine
i wont be a 6-year old
i wont sell Playboy
i wont discover America
i wont do the talking
i wont let the apple drop on my head
i wont say the earth is round
i wont commit suicide
i wont seduce Monroe
i wont tell them to go home
i wont travel time again
i wont betray Christ
i wont go to the mountains
i wont start the fire

Now, will it do?