It has long been proven that Jesus was a Bengali. He was with his mom for 35 years; he thought his mom was a virgin; his mom thought he was god. Now, these three are common with all Bengali sons, and it also proves beyond doubt that he too was none other than our Jishu. Historians are looking for just one proof before declaring this to the world. Did Jishu use a bolster while sleeping?
If he was a Bengali, he must have used a bolster to sleep at night. Bengali sons, who sleep between their parents till the age of about 15, are given a bolster thereafter as they move to their own room. By 15 they have obviously learned to jerk off, so the arrangement of another room. Most Bengalis could not afford a separate room for their children until even the last decade, and that also perhaps explains why they had to keep their children in the same bedroom, but something tells me they don't want their children to grow up.
In the other room, the Bengali son goes off to sleep after hugging a soft bolster. In his wet dreams, of Madhurima, Tilottama, Tamali, Tisyapali, or even of goddess Saraswati at times, the Bengali son chokes the bolster to death.
And then he grows up and is sent to the hostel. Bags are packed, a horde of relatives accompany him to the railway station to see him off. Everybody is teary eyed, as he fades with the train into the distance, his fat lunch box still dangling from his other hand. With one, he is busy wiping his tears. "Dugga dugga."
The Bengali son writes his first letter: Ma, I reached. Got my room and put up your pic there. My roommate is a Bihari, a very studious guy. My bolster is a huge hit with the others. Arup borrowed it the other day to get a good night's sleep after his class tests. You know ma? Everybody is a nocturnal here. They stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning. I too join them at times. I take my bolster there and our senior dada, Gora, who has failed a couple of times, leans on it and tells us stories. Bishnu says he will get a nice, embroidered cover for my bolster from Gujarat this summer.
The Bengali son grows up even more. Almost can be called a man by now. He has learned to shave and also say hello to the girls. But even today he terribly misses his bolster when he visits the girls' hostel. That could have given his restless limbs something to hold on to like a koala hugs a branch. In the absence of a bolster, the Bengali son is absolutely clueless about what to do with his limbs, and mostly one can see them hang about his body without any definite purpose. "They gave me a nick, ma, but I like it. They call me a chimp." So, the Bengali son has learned to pocket his hands and has also coined the idiom "deep pocket," which has found some different connotations these days.
The Bengali son gets married. All these years of jerking off are going to pay off now. He will step into manhood. For a brief moment, the bolster is relegated to the backyard of the Bengali son's mind. All he can think of is how to pounce on his live bolster the night of his wedding. In anticipation, the Bengali son keeps checking himself in the loo and goes around asking his friends about the female anatomy. Just where is it, can you tell me? The experienced Bengali sons tell him. He enters the room. The bed is covered in rose petals. His bride is perched on the edge of the bed with her face covered. She too has forgotten her bolster for a brief moment and is counting her rapid heartbeats. He reaches the bed. She looks up at him. But his gaze is fixed somewhere else.
There are two red bolsters on the bed, covered in nice red velvet.
"Eta tumi nao, borota aami nilam" you can hear the Bengali son mutter with a big smile as he takes the bigger of the two. And then they go off to sleep.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
the monk on the 19th floor
Deepesh mailed me the other day asking if I was interested in this rather nice 3 bhk apartment being sold at the L&T. What's the price? Oh, I didn't ask, but you can calculate . . . the apartment is about 2060 sft and the going rate here is around Rs 4000 per sft.
I calculated and could just manage a wry smile that is best known as kashtho hashi in Bengali (literally translated it means a wooden smile). It costs a whopping 82 lakhs. Even if the guy negotiates, he will probably bring it down to 76? When did the property prices skyrocket like this, and who allowed it? When our parents, mostly government officers, retired, they made a paltry amount that they deposited in banks for a good return of about 15%. With the inflation rising and the banks making lesser profits, those interest rates came down to around 10, and even lesser. My dad suddenly realized he has to cut a lot of unnecessary expenses to make do. And meanwhile, the salaries kept rising beyond the limits of decency, and when the companies realized that it was probably sensible to hire an Irish or a Romanian instead, our economy had already been sitting on a huge ball of uninflammable gas. If the ball deflates, people would fall and die, so no need for me to make them burn for the sake of prose. They will die, that's it.
No Deepesh, how can I? I can't make so much money by selling my apartment, and it is indecent to ask for so much, I commented. Deepesh, however, left Mr Subramanium's number with me.
Came home and told Sayantani that we shouldn't keep dreaming of absurd things like a flat at South City in 2008. Maybe, if we bought one in the year 2000, it would still have been affordable. Now women, let me tell you, seldom like to see reason. She made me call the person.
"Hello? Mr Subramaniam? I'm Arijit. Got to know about your apartment and was curious about the price." I managed to squeak over the phone.
"Oh, hello. We can talk about the price later, Mr Arijit. You just come and check out the place."
So, we fixed an appointment with him and went over to check out his place. It was on the 19th floor, huge, and with an awesome view. "Where's your furniture?" I was curious because there was nothing in the house, making it look even huger. The marble on the floor shone like a mirror and the midday sun was reflected on it like a huge ball.
"Oh, I just use the kitchen to boil my vegetables and I sleep in that room," he pointed to the third bedroom that we hadn't checked out. I went in and found a mattress on the floor, with a pillow on it. Everything was very clean, but I was a little surprised because a person who can buy an apartment in a condo like this definitely is rich. Maybe he doesn't stay here, I was thinking, when he almost read my thoughts and said
"I do stay here, you know :). I have a phone, some utensils, my clothes in one of the wardrobes, and that bed. I know you are surprised, but that's all we ever need, don't we?"
"Oh, not at all. I wasn't thinking about that. Very true indeed... what else do we ever need?" I need my internet, my car, my mobike, my freezer full of meat, and also need to change my cell phone every two years, so I was another middle-class man with middle-class dreams. It reminded me of my mom. All she had as a teacher were a huge gladstone, a table fan, and a small kerosene stove. And she could survive on anything. She didn't splurge, neither was she stingy when it came to my needs, but for herself, she needed just a fan. It was hot in Durgapur and she was always overweight. Just a fan, now, but as a student we didn't have ceiling fans either, she used to tell me. I wondered how that was possible. To live without a ceiling fan. It always reminded me of how Gabriel Garcia Marquez keeps dwelling on how sultry and hot it is in his country. His descriptions of heat can make you squirm in discomfort at times. Where is he from? Spain or Mexico? Like Senator John McCain, I too forget my geography at times. And like my mom, Gabriel Garcia Marquez never allowed his protagonists the luxury of a ceiling fan.
"So..." I tried coming to the point, although I knew I could never afford even half of that amount even after selling everything I had and paying off my mortgages "...how much are you selling it for?"
"How much are you ready to pay?" he smiled at us.
Now it's coming, I thought, and was about to say something when I realized it's best not to give him false hopes. "Well, frankly, sir... we cannot afford this place at all, but then, we just extended our dream and made it spill over into our reality." I tried being abstruse. "If I sell my apartment and pay off the mortgage, I will be left with about half of what this apartment is for. And no bank will lend me the remaining amount because we cannot pay so much in EMIs."
He smiled and walked to the french window.
"I'm sorry, sir, we must go now. Thanks for being kind enough to show us around."
Sayantani looked at me and smiled too. I guess she too finally stepped out of her absurd dream and joined me in my reality. There, on the floor, were our Bata shoes, not Guccis.
"But I never told you my price, did I?"
"You don't have to, sir. I know the going rate, and it is rather high for us." I kind of leaned toward the door, pretending to leave...
"Hmm, see... I bought it in the year 2000 for 20 lakhs. Now I am leaving. So you pay me those 20 lakhs and the apartment is yours."
"LOL" I snorted and then broke out into a laughter. (Damn this chat lingo, man, I can't even laugh normally these days)
"Good joke, sir. And my son Aaron can pay you the remaining 60." I tried to continue the humor.
But it turned out that he was serious. Mr Subramaniam even worked out my finances for me. "If you sell your apartment and pay off your mortgage, you have x amount left. Pay me 20 from that, and the remaining can be your retirement package. Just retire and stay here."
I couldn't believe what he said. My wife was about to walk away, thinking he was deliberately insulting us, but he was serious.
Then he told us his story of how he turned into a monk. But now it is almost midnight for me.
I calculated and could just manage a wry smile that is best known as kashtho hashi in Bengali (literally translated it means a wooden smile). It costs a whopping 82 lakhs. Even if the guy negotiates, he will probably bring it down to 76? When did the property prices skyrocket like this, and who allowed it? When our parents, mostly government officers, retired, they made a paltry amount that they deposited in banks for a good return of about 15%. With the inflation rising and the banks making lesser profits, those interest rates came down to around 10, and even lesser. My dad suddenly realized he has to cut a lot of unnecessary expenses to make do. And meanwhile, the salaries kept rising beyond the limits of decency, and when the companies realized that it was probably sensible to hire an Irish or a Romanian instead, our economy had already been sitting on a huge ball of uninflammable gas. If the ball deflates, people would fall and die, so no need for me to make them burn for the sake of prose. They will die, that's it.
No Deepesh, how can I? I can't make so much money by selling my apartment, and it is indecent to ask for so much, I commented. Deepesh, however, left Mr Subramanium's number with me.
Came home and told Sayantani that we shouldn't keep dreaming of absurd things like a flat at South City in 2008. Maybe, if we bought one in the year 2000, it would still have been affordable. Now women, let me tell you, seldom like to see reason. She made me call the person.
"Hello? Mr Subramaniam? I'm Arijit. Got to know about your apartment and was curious about the price." I managed to squeak over the phone.
"Oh, hello. We can talk about the price later, Mr Arijit. You just come and check out the place."
So, we fixed an appointment with him and went over to check out his place. It was on the 19th floor, huge, and with an awesome view. "Where's your furniture?" I was curious because there was nothing in the house, making it look even huger. The marble on the floor shone like a mirror and the midday sun was reflected on it like a huge ball.
"Oh, I just use the kitchen to boil my vegetables and I sleep in that room," he pointed to the third bedroom that we hadn't checked out. I went in and found a mattress on the floor, with a pillow on it. Everything was very clean, but I was a little surprised because a person who can buy an apartment in a condo like this definitely is rich. Maybe he doesn't stay here, I was thinking, when he almost read my thoughts and said
"I do stay here, you know :). I have a phone, some utensils, my clothes in one of the wardrobes, and that bed. I know you are surprised, but that's all we ever need, don't we?"
"Oh, not at all. I wasn't thinking about that. Very true indeed... what else do we ever need?" I need my internet, my car, my mobike, my freezer full of meat, and also need to change my cell phone every two years, so I was another middle-class man with middle-class dreams. It reminded me of my mom. All she had as a teacher were a huge gladstone, a table fan, and a small kerosene stove. And she could survive on anything. She didn't splurge, neither was she stingy when it came to my needs, but for herself, she needed just a fan. It was hot in Durgapur and she was always overweight. Just a fan, now, but as a student we didn't have ceiling fans either, she used to tell me. I wondered how that was possible. To live without a ceiling fan. It always reminded me of how Gabriel Garcia Marquez keeps dwelling on how sultry and hot it is in his country. His descriptions of heat can make you squirm in discomfort at times. Where is he from? Spain or Mexico? Like Senator John McCain, I too forget my geography at times. And like my mom, Gabriel Garcia Marquez never allowed his protagonists the luxury of a ceiling fan.
"So..." I tried coming to the point, although I knew I could never afford even half of that amount even after selling everything I had and paying off my mortgages "...how much are you selling it for?"
"How much are you ready to pay?" he smiled at us.
Now it's coming, I thought, and was about to say something when I realized it's best not to give him false hopes. "Well, frankly, sir... we cannot afford this place at all, but then, we just extended our dream and made it spill over into our reality." I tried being abstruse. "If I sell my apartment and pay off the mortgage, I will be left with about half of what this apartment is for. And no bank will lend me the remaining amount because we cannot pay so much in EMIs."
He smiled and walked to the french window.
"I'm sorry, sir, we must go now. Thanks for being kind enough to show us around."
Sayantani looked at me and smiled too. I guess she too finally stepped out of her absurd dream and joined me in my reality. There, on the floor, were our Bata shoes, not Guccis.
"But I never told you my price, did I?"
"You don't have to, sir. I know the going rate, and it is rather high for us." I kind of leaned toward the door, pretending to leave...
"Hmm, see... I bought it in the year 2000 for 20 lakhs. Now I am leaving. So you pay me those 20 lakhs and the apartment is yours."
"LOL" I snorted and then broke out into a laughter. (Damn this chat lingo, man, I can't even laugh normally these days)
"Good joke, sir. And my son Aaron can pay you the remaining 60." I tried to continue the humor.
But it turned out that he was serious. Mr Subramaniam even worked out my finances for me. "If you sell your apartment and pay off your mortgage, you have x amount left. Pay me 20 from that, and the remaining can be your retirement package. Just retire and stay here."
I couldn't believe what he said. My wife was about to walk away, thinking he was deliberately insulting us, but he was serious.
Then he told us his story of how he turned into a monk. But now it is almost midnight for me.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Anne comes back
The last post about Anne Frank brought back memories of the other Annes in my life. Well, they were never part of my life and neither will they ever be, but they did take up a lot of time in my growing-up years, occupying a large enough RAM in my brain to deserve a mention in my blog today.
The first was Anne Frank, whose 13-year old photo was of the most beautiful girl I could ever imagine. As a 10 year old boy, I couldn't fall for anybody else at that time. Anne Frank, the girl who, if cryogenically preserved and brought back to life today, will be my girlfriend forever. I will make sure she never gets to shed a tear. I will make sure she never runs out of food. And many of you out there must have fallen for Anne like I did. It wasn't unnatural. Many of my friends were in love with her too. We were of course in love with little Priyanka Gandhi at the same time, because she was the most beautiful Indian girl we had seen, but then, Anne was dead and gone, and indelible from our memories, whereas Priyanka was probably still wetting her bed on troubled nights. 
And another collective crush was on Nazia Hassan, who brought disco to India. Everybody I knew was in love with her. All the girls were in love with her brother, and their LP Disco Diwane was a must have in all homes, save the ones of the proletariat, who shunned the influence of disco on their carefully preserved culture. Trash, I tell you. That's gonna ruin your culture.
I agree with the Bengali proletariat. Poor guys. But anyway, Nazia's LP was coveted as much for her picture on the cover as for the songs.
Meanwhile, most of Enid Blyton's characters had made a rather boisterous entry into the collective psyche of the school students. Sometimes to such an extent that the girls chose either to become the tomboyish Georgina (George) or to become Anne, the perfect British blond schoolgirl. We heard of sausages and bacon and made our parents run to Janata Variety Store in Benachitty to find out what these things meant. That man had canned food: the food of the whites! Every time we passed by, we looked at the Russian, German, and British engineers and their wives buying their monthly provisions. We were certain that they read Enid Blyton too and got the idea of having sausages from her stories.
I was in love with Anne of Famous Five. With the character, believe me! She was small, sweet, a little foolish at times, scared of darkness, and needed protection. Can't really explain to you here how she appealed to me. And to add to my wonder, they started telecasting the Famous Five series produced by BBC at more or less the same time. No, maybe I am wrong... maybe I had moved to Alistair Macleans by then, but I was in my early teenage years when they showed Anne on TV. We had a portable, b/w TV and the transmission wasn't clear, so it was difficult for me to get her name from the credits. Sometimes the credits move too fast, don't you think? I think I got her real name and also the address of the BBC, but don't know if I could finally muster the courage to write to them about her address. Maybe I did. I do remember that I never got an answer.
She looks too beautiful for someone who can fall for Jack Black, but the beautiful sister in Nacho Libre looks like someone you can keep on the altar and worship all your life. A google search of her images will yield better results, am sure (if you want to see her posing in the nude), but I like her in her nun's habit, thank you. I guess she has never looked prettier in anything else, or rather, anything less. However, I saw her last night and already her memory is fading.
But I doubt if anyone can ever take my Anne Frank away from me.
And another collective crush was on Nazia Hassan, who brought disco to India. Everybody I knew was in love with her. All the girls were in love with her brother, and their LP Disco Diwane was a must have in all homes, save the ones of the proletariat, who shunned the influence of disco on their carefully preserved culture. Trash, I tell you. That's gonna ruin your culture.
I agree with the Bengali proletariat. Poor guys. But anyway, Nazia's LP was coveted as much for her picture on the cover as for the songs.
Meanwhile, most of Enid Blyton's characters had made a rather boisterous entry into the collective psyche of the school students. Sometimes to such an extent that the girls chose either to become the tomboyish Georgina (George) or to become Anne, the perfect British blond schoolgirl. We heard of sausages and bacon and made our parents run to Janata Variety Store in Benachitty to find out what these things meant. That man had canned food: the food of the whites! Every time we passed by, we looked at the Russian, German, and British engineers and their wives buying their monthly provisions. We were certain that they read Enid Blyton too and got the idea of having sausages from her stories.
I was in love with Anne of Famous Five. With the character, believe me! She was small, sweet, a little foolish at times, scared of darkness, and needed protection. Can't really explain to you here how she appealed to me. And to add to my wonder, they started telecasting the Famous Five series produced by BBC at more or less the same time. No, maybe I am wrong... maybe I had moved to Alistair Macleans by then, but I was in my early teenage years when they showed Anne on TV. We had a portable, b/w TV and the transmission wasn't clear, so it was difficult for me to get her name from the credits. Sometimes the credits move too fast, don't you think? I think I got her real name and also the address of the BBC, but don't know if I could finally muster the courage to write to them about her address. Maybe I did. I do remember that I never got an answer.
Many such crushes followed: Suchitra Sen in the movie Shaar-e Chuattor (Seventy Four and a Half), 
Meg Ryan, and later Helen Hunt. I would watch their movies and stay mesmerized for days, but all of this faded after a few days. There was also Carrie-Anne Moss in that list but I hadn't noticed the Anne in her name until recently. I was growing up, feeling responsible enough for my age, happy with the Anne I married (she too is afraid of the dark and needs a lot of protection) until another Ana arrived in the scene.
And this is Ana de la Reguera.
Meg Ryan, and later Helen Hunt. I would watch their movies and stay mesmerized for days, but all of this faded after a few days. There was also Carrie-Anne Moss in that list but I hadn't noticed the Anne in her name until recently. I was growing up, feeling responsible enough for my age, happy with the Anne I married (she too is afraid of the dark and needs a lot of protection) until another Ana arrived in the scene.
She looks too beautiful for someone who can fall for Jack Black, but the beautiful sister in Nacho Libre looks like someone you can keep on the altar and worship all your life. A google search of her images will yield better results, am sure (if you want to see her posing in the nude), but I like her in her nun's habit, thank you. I guess she has never looked prettier in anything else, or rather, anything less. However, I saw her last night and already her memory is fading.
But I doubt if anyone can ever take my Anne Frank away from me.
Terrifying Lullabies
Why is the door open? Why can't I lock it? What if the robbers come in?
The door in question always remained just out of my reach. I would desperately try to close it, bolt it from within, but wouldn't be able to. When I later discussed my dreams with friends or read about dreams unexplained, it was seen as a plain and easy case of insecurity. You had an insecure childhood, people concluded.
So I believed them and blamed the insecurity on the communication gap between me and my parents. They were both 34 when I was born, and weren't very communicative, if you know what I mean. Of course my dad wanted to baptize me with Dialectical Materialism and Marx when I was in my kindergarten years, but then, there wasn't any kind of heart-to-heart possible with them. If I was insecure for some reason, I had to handle it on my own. And because there were no gods to turn to either, it was a helluva lonely experience. If I socialize a bit too much today, it is because friends meant everything to me.
Insecure childhood it must be. I was sold to this idea pretty much until the other day when a friend mentioned that her daughter wanted a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank. That's when it all came back to me.
My dad studied the WWII to the core and still has almost a hundred books starting from the proverbial Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to The Diary of Anne Frank. He didn't of course have those Commando series comics that I later read and thoroughly enjoyed. Were those published in the UK? The jerries always got beaten in those. Yeah, so my dad, when he put me to sleep, used to tell me about each day of Anne Frank. Or about how the French surrendered. Or about how some brave little boy in Czechkoslovakia fled with a German train! Stories of war. And then the stories of the Vietnam war as well. Pictures of how the Americans tortured the Vietnamese: of a smiling soldier twisting and breaking the arm of a lady or of three soldiers cutting out the liver of a live Vietnamese guy! Gore? Osama is a kid compared to the Americans in Vietnam or the German concentration camps. The Muslim terrorists of today are nothing. When you cut open a guy's liver, he stays alive for almost an hour after that, writhing and dying a slow death. Daniel Pearl died in about three seconds. Have you seen that video, btw?
So, these wartime stories, of bravado and victory of the good over evil, were playing on my mind. The enemy was on the other side of the door. I was a little kid, hiding inside, from the german troops, our dwindling resources getting over by the day. And the door, slightly ajar, was always just out of my reach.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
[{(delimiters)}]
This morning we were looking at some style issues and suddenly i came across something that made me sit up. "What is this? You have it wrong here," I asserted vehemently, because what I had in front of me was definitely wrong, and far away from the truth about mathematical equations that I learned in school. the style guide had the braces as the outermost brackets in a mathematical equation, in this sequence: {[(blah blah) x blah] + blah blah}. the person with whom i was looking at the stuff, somehow felt this is correct, but given her mathematical acumen (or what I believed was utter lack of it) I didn't pay much heed to what she had to offer. I know what it is like:
[{()}]
And I couldn't be wrong.
So I wrote both [{()}] and {[()]} on a piece of paper and went around our bay, to almost twenty people, quizzing them about what they thought was right. Some had always used the former, while some others, hold your breath now, had actually used the latter. So, soon we had two groups discussing and debating which one is right. Veena, from the publishing team, came to me with a photocopy from some style manual, which supported {[()]}. A vice president with a consulting company told me it is [{()}] and also that her son learns the same thing in his ICSE school.
Soon the entire office was abuzz with this issue and gradually we were losing out, the supporters of [{()}], that is. Only Lata Sundar was kinda nonchalant about it. Although she felt [{()}] is correct, she was the only one who didn't feel too strongly about it. How does it matter, she felt, as long as it is consistently used?
Meanwhile, some people looked up the Web and someone looked up the Chicago Manual of Style and it was {[()]} all over. I hadn't really ruled out writing to the Chicago Manual board of editors and wasn't ready to accept something other than what I had learned in school. It was like my faith being shaken. It turned out that the ICSE board still uses [{()}] while the CBSE changed to {[()]} according to some international rules, but it still wasn't clear.
I was constantly asking people around over chat and over phone about what they thought was right, still trying to digest the thought that some conspiracy this big could be hatched behind my back without me having an inkling about it, when I remembered to call up doc.
"What do you use doc? Do you keep braces or brackets at the extreme ends?"
"Oh, Arijit, braces and brackets are basically the same thing. Braces are made of metal or plastic, braces include brackets attached to the teeth and wires that connect them...
... but wait a second! I thought you needed a root canal treatment, and not braces! Where did this question come from?"
And I realized, the sequence didn't matter after all.
[{()}]
And I couldn't be wrong.
So I wrote both [{()}] and {[()]} on a piece of paper and went around our bay, to almost twenty people, quizzing them about what they thought was right. Some had always used the former, while some others, hold your breath now, had actually used the latter. So, soon we had two groups discussing and debating which one is right. Veena, from the publishing team, came to me with a photocopy from some style manual, which supported {[()]}. A vice president with a consulting company told me it is [{()}] and also that her son learns the same thing in his ICSE school.
Soon the entire office was abuzz with this issue and gradually we were losing out, the supporters of [{()}], that is. Only Lata Sundar was kinda nonchalant about it. Although she felt [{()}] is correct, she was the only one who didn't feel too strongly about it. How does it matter, she felt, as long as it is consistently used?
Meanwhile, some people looked up the Web and someone looked up the Chicago Manual of Style and it was {[()]} all over. I hadn't really ruled out writing to the Chicago Manual board of editors and wasn't ready to accept something other than what I had learned in school. It was like my faith being shaken. It turned out that the ICSE board still uses [{()}] while the CBSE changed to {[()]} according to some international rules, but it still wasn't clear.
I was constantly asking people around over chat and over phone about what they thought was right, still trying to digest the thought that some conspiracy this big could be hatched behind my back without me having an inkling about it, when I remembered to call up doc.
"What do you use doc? Do you keep braces or brackets at the extreme ends?"
"Oh, Arijit, braces and brackets are basically the same thing. Braces are made of metal or plastic, braces include brackets attached to the teeth and wires that connect them...
... but wait a second! I thought you needed a root canal treatment, and not braces! Where did this question come from?"
And I realized, the sequence didn't matter after all.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
jealous pig
well, only in this case, the pig is not jealous, it is me who is jealous of the proverbial pig who has its orgasm for thirty minutes. strunk recently sent me this joke and although i knew abt it, i laughed again when I thought about it. laughed, with a tinge of jealousy. thirty minutes!
i have seen some blogs with a huge readership. always looked at those blogs askance, you know. like okay, what is this person writing about that it attracts so much readership? i have of course survived without almost any, so can't say not having comments is in any way detrimental to writing; i survived with the hope of getting published one day, and "wait and see who has more readership" was always my comeback, albeit uttered to myself. but recently i saw a blog with thirty comments on one single post. somehow, that reminded me of the pig. the joy of reading thirty comments on your blog is probably comparable to the epitome of all orgasms: that of the pig. it is a pleasure incomparable with anything else. you can buy a merc and tomorrow get bored of it; you can own an industry, but that will probably give you grey hair...but to be read and appreciated by so many netizens is like something i have always dreamed of.
some are lucky enough to be pigs. i am still striving to reach that suilline level. in both.
i have seen some blogs with a huge readership. always looked at those blogs askance, you know. like okay, what is this person writing about that it attracts so much readership? i have of course survived without almost any, so can't say not having comments is in any way detrimental to writing; i survived with the hope of getting published one day, and "wait and see who has more readership" was always my comeback, albeit uttered to myself. but recently i saw a blog with thirty comments on one single post. somehow, that reminded me of the pig. the joy of reading thirty comments on your blog is probably comparable to the epitome of all orgasms: that of the pig. it is a pleasure incomparable with anything else. you can buy a merc and tomorrow get bored of it; you can own an industry, but that will probably give you grey hair...but to be read and appreciated by so many netizens is like something i have always dreamed of.
some are lucky enough to be pigs. i am still striving to reach that suilline level. in both.
(image copyright: http://www.hillquest.com/images/pig-lipstick.jpg)
Sunday, August 24, 2008
dharma
according to AnandaDasa, the dharma of any object is the basic characteristics of that object. the dharma of water is to be liquid. it is the state you are in.
when did a religious connotation rear its ugly head into something that pure and essential? my dharma is clear thinking and not to be waylaid by any religious overtures. religion of any kind is like a multi-headed serpent waiting on the sides of the road that leads to salvation. if you can overcome the challenge and move on, you will soon be all alone, but free. your mind will see things in perspective. you won't be surprised when humans defy death or when aliens come visiting. you will wish you were with Daniken. you will look up Zacharia Sitchin's articles on the Web. you will work as a volunteer with Teach India. You will work for the Church that takes care of HIV-infected children. All this, with an open mind.
Come out. Let clear thinking be your true dharma.
when did a religious connotation rear its ugly head into something that pure and essential? my dharma is clear thinking and not to be waylaid by any religious overtures. religion of any kind is like a multi-headed serpent waiting on the sides of the road that leads to salvation. if you can overcome the challenge and move on, you will soon be all alone, but free. your mind will see things in perspective. you won't be surprised when humans defy death or when aliens come visiting. you will wish you were with Daniken. you will look up Zacharia Sitchin's articles on the Web. you will work as a volunteer with Teach India. You will work for the Church that takes care of HIV-infected children. All this, with an open mind.
Come out. Let clear thinking be your true dharma.
the new mullahs
i have removed this post in the wake of the new violence that erupted in Orissa, initiated by the Hindu extremists against the Catholic missions in that state.
Monday, August 18, 2008
time to sleep
after five posts in quick succession, all with enough proof about my growing insanity, i give in to the temptation to sleep. try visualizing a light tap on a cymbal and it fading away in slo mo. try hearing it. and associate it with the fading out of conscious memories of the day. can u hear it any more? the nnnnnn fades and you slip into the darkness of a whale stomach. the projector is on.
which movie should i play for you, sir?
which movie should i play for you, sir?
the rain
is sinusoidal today.
going up,
coming down
filling you with hopes of sinning
and new beginnings,
but going up again
going up,
coming down
filling you with hopes of sinning
and new beginnings,
but going up again
origin of poetry
like an extended private moment during long hours of solo biking, another nice time to let your mind wander is in the morning when you are at the kitchen. a slice of sun through your window, which keeps out the early morning chill. you are waiting for the newspaper, the tea is brewing.
yes, the tea takes time to brew. about five minutes or so. the trick is to not let it get bitter or too dark. so, the best way to get that optimum level is to stand next to your teapot and wait for the right aroma. you must keep your cups ready, washed in boiling water to keep them warm till the time you take the first sip. sugar in the strainer. that's what my mom always did to ensure just that right amount of sweetness. she hated saccharine. ready, you can sense the tea ready, nicely orange, the leaves floating on the surface. pour it out and serve it with digestive biscuits.
when the water is boiling, and this is before you have put the tea leaves into the water, you can add a cut slice of ginger and a little piece of cardamom. after about fifteen seconds of boiling, turn off the flame and then add the leaves.
thankfully am not a technical writer. they would have found the sequence wrong, perhaps. why didn't you write about boiling the water first? you will end up confusing our makers of early morning tea. and then they won't buy the manual. but this is not a manual. this is the free state of a wandering mind. it is a democracy and no matter how you want me to prepare for the visit of the inspector of schools, i will remain free. and tell you about that private moment when you can stand in front of your teapot and think.
try it. am now going to embark on a therapeutic lecture. try it. it increases your love for the person in the next room, packing your child's schoolbag.
yes, the tea takes time to brew. about five minutes or so. the trick is to not let it get bitter or too dark. so, the best way to get that optimum level is to stand next to your teapot and wait for the right aroma. you must keep your cups ready, washed in boiling water to keep them warm till the time you take the first sip. sugar in the strainer. that's what my mom always did to ensure just that right amount of sweetness. she hated saccharine. ready, you can sense the tea ready, nicely orange, the leaves floating on the surface. pour it out and serve it with digestive biscuits.
when the water is boiling, and this is before you have put the tea leaves into the water, you can add a cut slice of ginger and a little piece of cardamom. after about fifteen seconds of boiling, turn off the flame and then add the leaves.
thankfully am not a technical writer. they would have found the sequence wrong, perhaps. why didn't you write about boiling the water first? you will end up confusing our makers of early morning tea. and then they won't buy the manual. but this is not a manual. this is the free state of a wandering mind. it is a democracy and no matter how you want me to prepare for the visit of the inspector of schools, i will remain free. and tell you about that private moment when you can stand in front of your teapot and think.
try it. am now going to embark on a therapeutic lecture. try it. it increases your love for the person in the next room, packing your child's schoolbag.
bad poetry
if you read my earlier post, you will have a good example of what bad poetry is all about. i have always held that poetry should be spontaneous (although I pretend to like the modernists) and should not be attempted when you don't feel it from within. some translations are weak, but the essence of the spontaneity comes through even through that. that is when a poem is successful. i have read some really pathetic poems in my lifetime, and some really abstruse ones, but the ones that are most dangerous are like the one I have published below. my own blog, so i can publish anything, but this was done with a purpose. is poetry always conceived and executed with an end in mind? is it just a means to an end? always? do love poems satisfy the lover and make her yield into an abyss, a victim of charm?
whereas this was an example of something that came out of casual flirtation, there are also serious attempts that are born out of deeper emotions. emotions are flirtatious too: they are always transient and seem foolish the day after. so, if your objective of using that emotion for creating something is met, you are successful.
I am not a fan of Derek Walcott. Or Ted Hughes even. Give me a footnote to howl or something, baby, to light my fire.
the same poem, written for the same person a year later when things are deeper, may read:
eventually
walking back to the kettle
another morning,
i drank straight from it.
my rational faculties,
awake by then,
didn't ask me a why or a how.
by then, after the night
i knew
it was tea to be savored
hot, cold, dark, or orange.
and from my lips
it went straight to His ears.
and hers.
whereas this was an example of something that came out of casual flirtation, there are also serious attempts that are born out of deeper emotions. emotions are flirtatious too: they are always transient and seem foolish the day after. so, if your objective of using that emotion for creating something is met, you are successful.
I am not a fan of Derek Walcott. Or Ted Hughes even. Give me a footnote to howl or something, baby, to light my fire.
the same poem, written for the same person a year later when things are deeper, may read:
eventually
walking back to the kettle
another morning,
i drank straight from it.
my rational faculties,
awake by then,
didn't ask me a why or a how.
by then, after the night
i knew
it was tea to be savored
hot, cold, dark, or orange.
and from my lips
it went straight to His ears.
and hers.
darjeeling tea
i can feel something brewing,
and the heat seeping out in the form of smoke
from under the lid
i can feel something brewing
but i can't see the water getting its color
from above the lid
i can feel something brewing
but with a finite limit in time
and something tells me now
i must lift the lid and see
if it is my darjeeling tea
i walk out of the kitchen and stand in the dark room.
let it be a dark decoction
darker than the witch's broom...
she says she wants to fly
to srilanka and kashmir
she is not scared of bombs
"a witch is covered by virtue of being a witch" do you see?
i know something is brewing
let it be for you
my darjeeling tea.
and the heat seeping out in the form of smoke
from under the lid
i can feel something brewing
but i can't see the water getting its color
from above the lid
i can feel something brewing
but with a finite limit in time
and something tells me now
i must lift the lid and see
if it is my darjeeling tea
i walk out of the kitchen and stand in the dark room.
let it be a dark decoction
darker than the witch's broom...
she says she wants to fly
to srilanka and kashmir
she is not scared of bombs
"a witch is covered by virtue of being a witch" do you see?
i know something is brewing
let it be for you
my darjeeling tea.
Friday, August 15, 2008
India's next Olympic medal
Although Leander and Mahesh and the three boxers are still in the fray, I am gearing up for 2012. I will be 41 by then, and four years should be enough for me to get India's next Olympic gold. Only problem is, I haven't been able to decide my sport yet. Individual scull? Taekwondo? Or plain marathon? Maybe long distance cycling?
With my knees giving in, running is ruled out. I have to decide soon. Time is not on my side, but India gets a gold in 2012.
In something.
I will be famous then. I will get lots of awards. And if I write my book after the gold medal, it will sell too. But what if the book is not on sports but of sports of a different kind? What if I write about the emotional sparring and tactical gaming that you need to master when you date someone? Will that sell, you think? I think it might. But I can write a treatise on mindgames right now, right from fucking someone's mind to allowing another person to slide into a dangerous comfort zone with me? I can pass on the trade secrets to all the budding gamers and mindfuckers? So why wait for the gold to write? Let me write my book now and also work on the sport. Individual scull, I think, will be good. I can row faster than many. I could, some 13 years back. I could row upstream in the Ganges for almost thirty minutes or more. With practice I can win a medal. Not much time left. Let me continue with my pushups for the time being, till I decide which sport.
It wasn't Aravind, it was Akhil Kumar who said he will get the gold. So all the best, Akhil. I will join you next time.
This day, 61 years back, was the saddest day for millions of Indians from Punjab and Bengal. Rendered homeless and sent out of their country to another because of their faith. Millions died in the riot, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Come let's celebrate the day our country was divided into three parts to make room for Muslims and Hindus. They could not cohabit any more, so the ever so thoughtful Brits made a hurried line on a paper map. Let's celebrate our Independence from the Britishers and also the going over to the hands of Indian politicians. And let's vow to get a medal each for India in the next Olympics. Despite the politics, despite our limited dreams, despite the fact that we are mere Indians after all.
We can kill though. If killing were a sport, how many Michael Phelps would we have created, I wonder. We kill after raping a minor, we kill when someone hits our car from behind, we kill when someone refuses to serve a drink after the stipulated hour, we kill policemen when a celebrity dies, we kill at our own free will. We kill Hindus with bombs, we kill Muslims in riots, we kill innocent Sikhs when Indira Gandhi is killed. Believe me, we are good at this. And there are plenty available too, to kill. More than a billion, in fact.
Think of a sport for me, people. I can't kill either. I can sleep, talk, and fart. I can blog all my life. I can talk of a gold medal and promise you the moon.
With my knees giving in, running is ruled out. I have to decide soon. Time is not on my side, but India gets a gold in 2012.
In something.
I will be famous then. I will get lots of awards. And if I write my book after the gold medal, it will sell too. But what if the book is not on sports but of sports of a different kind? What if I write about the emotional sparring and tactical gaming that you need to master when you date someone? Will that sell, you think? I think it might. But I can write a treatise on mindgames right now, right from fucking someone's mind to allowing another person to slide into a dangerous comfort zone with me? I can pass on the trade secrets to all the budding gamers and mindfuckers? So why wait for the gold to write? Let me write my book now and also work on the sport. Individual scull, I think, will be good. I can row faster than many. I could, some 13 years back. I could row upstream in the Ganges for almost thirty minutes or more. With practice I can win a medal. Not much time left. Let me continue with my pushups for the time being, till I decide which sport.
It wasn't Aravind, it was Akhil Kumar who said he will get the gold. So all the best, Akhil. I will join you next time.
This day, 61 years back, was the saddest day for millions of Indians from Punjab and Bengal. Rendered homeless and sent out of their country to another because of their faith. Millions died in the riot, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. Come let's celebrate the day our country was divided into three parts to make room for Muslims and Hindus. They could not cohabit any more, so the ever so thoughtful Brits made a hurried line on a paper map. Let's celebrate our Independence from the Britishers and also the going over to the hands of Indian politicians. And let's vow to get a medal each for India in the next Olympics. Despite the politics, despite our limited dreams, despite the fact that we are mere Indians after all.
We can kill though. If killing were a sport, how many Michael Phelps would we have created, I wonder. We kill after raping a minor, we kill when someone hits our car from behind, we kill when someone refuses to serve a drink after the stipulated hour, we kill policemen when a celebrity dies, we kill at our own free will. We kill Hindus with bombs, we kill Muslims in riots, we kill innocent Sikhs when Indira Gandhi is killed. Believe me, we are good at this. And there are plenty available too, to kill. More than a billion, in fact.
Think of a sport for me, people. I can't kill either. I can sleep, talk, and fart. I can blog all my life. I can talk of a gold medal and promise you the moon.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Another disappointing year
Although this is the most blogged about story these days, I couldn't help join the bandwagon in lamenting the poor show by the Indian contingent at Beijing. Every Olympics we hope against hope, give out our hearts to all the Indian participants, but they come back empty handed. Saina made me cry today. It was another matter that her dad cried on national television. She is the next Leander Paes in Indian sports, with a determination that we haven't seen in a long time. She won the first game after a long rally, lost the second one, and was leading the third one 11-3 when her nerves started to fail. She lost the third game to an Indonesian girl whose game is just about at par with Saina's, but whose nerves proved to be a lot stronger. The nation cried with her and there was this collective sigh, so near yet so far...
Take Anup Sridhar. He lost to Sochi Sato in the prequarters. Sochi Sato of Japan can pass off as a cold blooded drug peddler and has the meanest and most insular look amongst all the Japs you meet. The first thing you want to do when you see him is to tie him to a pole and arrest him on various charges. Anup, on the other hand, is the perfect gentleman vegetarian who has gone out there to play badminton. With Pullela Gopichand as his coach. Pullela Gopichand? He might have won the All England cup and might have been a world champion, but is he a hunter? Does he eat meat? Can he go out into a jungle and kill a wild boar and eat it? Does he have the instincts of a killer? If not, what is he doing as the national badminton coach? Why does his protege Anup, who is technically perfect, taller, and has a much better reach all over the court lose out to Sochi Sato, whom he has beaten in three out of five previous outings? Despite leading in each game?
Is it because he is an Indian? It is because he is from the Indian middle class. The middle class in India have limited dreams and they pass on their limited dreams to their children too. They are happy if their children manage to become computer engineers or manage a government job at the most. They are happy to excel at the national level (which is a pathetic level to say the least) and manage to get a nice job. Where is the winning spirit? Where is the scare of not being able to face a billion Indians if you go back empty handed? Sab chalta hai... after all who expects an Indian to win anything at the Olympics, boss, let me just have my share of fun and go home and start a coaching academy. Or join politics. Jyotirnmoyee Sikdar, after two golds at the last Asiad, is a member of the parliament now. Happy. What else does she want?
Who is fighting? Leander and Mahesh are. They are professionals, but they have to face Roger Federer's team in the quarters. They beat Federer and his other Swiss partner last time at the Olympics easily, so am hoping (and you all are hoping too) that it will be a breeze for them. But it is the Olympics, and we are Indians, so who knows after all? The nation knows we have this psychological disadvantage and there's nobody waiting with a stick back home. So why worry.
Take the archer Dola Banerjee and the shooter Manavjit Singh Sandhu. World champions by their own right. The nation's hopes pinned on them. What do they do? They bow out in the first round. Dola was even seen smiling in an interview later. Go commit suicide, you loser, or go cry in the locker room. Don't come out smiling and give a silly press interview saying you enjoyed and gave in your best. Is this your best? You are a world champion, for god's sake. Is this ALL you can do?
Who sends them? Who chooses these guys? Who is this Kalmadi guy? Why is he there? Why don't you put him in jail for the next four years?
The pugilists are fighting. Sons of farmers and grade 3 government employees in Haryana, they are fighting. They are punching their way through each round. One guy, probably Arvind Kumar, even said he won't be satisfied with a silver or a bronze... only a gold. At least one guy has dreamed of it. May the force of a billion physically, culturally, emotionally, psychologically challenged Indians be with him. Or do you think he needs our support? He doesn't. He has reached where he has by himself. His dad is probably thinking of how to buy a tractor or how to repay his loans. He cannot afford a private coach for his son from Cuba. But Arvind Kumar has a dream. A lone ranger's dream. If he loses, he will go down fighting and for the handful of Indians who have seen him on TV, he will remain a fighter to reckon with.
Will someone else be able to give Abhinav Bindra some company up there? Anyone? Someone with even a little bit of pride for the country? With grit? With the instinct of a game hunter? Please say yes, please... we are waiting for you dear hero...
Take Anup Sridhar. He lost to Sochi Sato in the prequarters. Sochi Sato of Japan can pass off as a cold blooded drug peddler and has the meanest and most insular look amongst all the Japs you meet. The first thing you want to do when you see him is to tie him to a pole and arrest him on various charges. Anup, on the other hand, is the perfect gentleman vegetarian who has gone out there to play badminton. With Pullela Gopichand as his coach. Pullela Gopichand? He might have won the All England cup and might have been a world champion, but is he a hunter? Does he eat meat? Can he go out into a jungle and kill a wild boar and eat it? Does he have the instincts of a killer? If not, what is he doing as the national badminton coach? Why does his protege Anup, who is technically perfect, taller, and has a much better reach all over the court lose out to Sochi Sato, whom he has beaten in three out of five previous outings? Despite leading in each game?
Is it because he is an Indian? It is because he is from the Indian middle class. The middle class in India have limited dreams and they pass on their limited dreams to their children too. They are happy if their children manage to become computer engineers or manage a government job at the most. They are happy to excel at the national level (which is a pathetic level to say the least) and manage to get a nice job. Where is the winning spirit? Where is the scare of not being able to face a billion Indians if you go back empty handed? Sab chalta hai... after all who expects an Indian to win anything at the Olympics, boss, let me just have my share of fun and go home and start a coaching academy. Or join politics. Jyotirnmoyee Sikdar, after two golds at the last Asiad, is a member of the parliament now. Happy. What else does she want?
Who is fighting? Leander and Mahesh are. They are professionals, but they have to face Roger Federer's team in the quarters. They beat Federer and his other Swiss partner last time at the Olympics easily, so am hoping (and you all are hoping too) that it will be a breeze for them. But it is the Olympics, and we are Indians, so who knows after all? The nation knows we have this psychological disadvantage and there's nobody waiting with a stick back home. So why worry.
Take the archer Dola Banerjee and the shooter Manavjit Singh Sandhu. World champions by their own right. The nation's hopes pinned on them. What do they do? They bow out in the first round. Dola was even seen smiling in an interview later. Go commit suicide, you loser, or go cry in the locker room. Don't come out smiling and give a silly press interview saying you enjoyed and gave in your best. Is this your best? You are a world champion, for god's sake. Is this ALL you can do?
Who sends them? Who chooses these guys? Who is this Kalmadi guy? Why is he there? Why don't you put him in jail for the next four years?
The pugilists are fighting. Sons of farmers and grade 3 government employees in Haryana, they are fighting. They are punching their way through each round. One guy, probably Arvind Kumar, even said he won't be satisfied with a silver or a bronze... only a gold. At least one guy has dreamed of it. May the force of a billion physically, culturally, emotionally, psychologically challenged Indians be with him. Or do you think he needs our support? He doesn't. He has reached where he has by himself. His dad is probably thinking of how to buy a tractor or how to repay his loans. He cannot afford a private coach for his son from Cuba. But Arvind Kumar has a dream. A lone ranger's dream. If he loses, he will go down fighting and for the handful of Indians who have seen him on TV, he will remain a fighter to reckon with.
Will someone else be able to give Abhinav Bindra some company up there? Anyone? Someone with even a little bit of pride for the country? With grit? With the instinct of a game hunter? Please say yes, please... we are waiting for you dear hero...
Saturday, August 09, 2008
A lifelong experiment
teaching a child is a lifelong experiment and I have completely immersed myself into it these days. a child has certain learning huddles to cross, and crossing each one almost catapults the grasping power to the next level of difficulty.
here are a few hurdles that aaron was faced with. he wouldn't be able to figure what came after 19 or 29. This made it really difficult for us to teach him beyond 1 to 9. we realized that explaining the concept of zero always coming after 9 was what can help him overcome this hurdle. he managed to grasp it. so, soon he was able to figure what came after 39 or 49. After 4 comes 5 and after 9, it is always zero. So 50 after 49. It seems funny and rather simple, but at the age of four, with the schools moving on at an absurd pace, it can sometimes be hell for the kids.
later, he grew fond of math puzzles. we taught him little tricks to help in quick mental math, and instead of making it like a mandatory session everyday when he has to study, we made it a game. each time he missed one, I scored a point. because he takes me as a competitor in everything, this really spurred him on. he always had to score more than daddy.
we both are rather weak in math, so our obvious focus was on him to be good with the numbers first, but in this process, his English got neglected. it is still rather weak and it is always a work in progress for us. what he got stuck with were the vowel sounds. it is difficult to explain to a kid how a sounds like a: and ae or how e sounds like a. am still struggling with his phonics and trying to encourage him to read, but this, as i mentioned, is a work in progress. i used some visual aids to help him remember spellings, like the word acTiviTies became a battleship with two masts and ten letters, while consonanTs was a ship with a single mast but ten letters nonetheless. imagine the amount of doodling all this needs. am planning to read up about phonics in the next couple of days to be able to devise new methods of teaching.
the school, unfortunately, is an average school that focuses mainly on the higher classes and their mathematics. phonics and phonetics are absolutely ignored because the teachers are not capable enough to speak proper English themselves. in our obsession to make our children computer engineers, we have ignored all the other subjects. but in a country where basic civilities like not littering the streets or not jumping a traffic signal or not honking are never taught or practiced by the teachers or the parents, it is difficult to expect a child to learn to be a good human being...forget learning how to speak properly in English. I pronounced shove shov (show) or chores coarse for a long time and have still not been able to get my intonation right. These days you have these accent training institutes, so that's an idea brewing in my mind. but my English can wait. aaron's cannot.
like i said, it is a lifelong experiment and will continue for a lifetime. someday, i will also have to teach his children. i better equip myself to be a good dad first . . . :).
here are a few hurdles that aaron was faced with. he wouldn't be able to figure what came after 19 or 29. This made it really difficult for us to teach him beyond 1 to 9. we realized that explaining the concept of zero always coming after 9 was what can help him overcome this hurdle. he managed to grasp it. so, soon he was able to figure what came after 39 or 49. After 4 comes 5 and after 9, it is always zero. So 50 after 49. It seems funny and rather simple, but at the age of four, with the schools moving on at an absurd pace, it can sometimes be hell for the kids.
later, he grew fond of math puzzles. we taught him little tricks to help in quick mental math, and instead of making it like a mandatory session everyday when he has to study, we made it a game. each time he missed one, I scored a point. because he takes me as a competitor in everything, this really spurred him on. he always had to score more than daddy.
we both are rather weak in math, so our obvious focus was on him to be good with the numbers first, but in this process, his English got neglected. it is still rather weak and it is always a work in progress for us. what he got stuck with were the vowel sounds. it is difficult to explain to a kid how a sounds like a: and ae or how e sounds like a. am still struggling with his phonics and trying to encourage him to read, but this, as i mentioned, is a work in progress. i used some visual aids to help him remember spellings, like the word acTiviTies became a battleship with two masts and ten letters, while consonanTs was a ship with a single mast but ten letters nonetheless. imagine the amount of doodling all this needs. am planning to read up about phonics in the next couple of days to be able to devise new methods of teaching.
the school, unfortunately, is an average school that focuses mainly on the higher classes and their mathematics. phonics and phonetics are absolutely ignored because the teachers are not capable enough to speak proper English themselves. in our obsession to make our children computer engineers, we have ignored all the other subjects. but in a country where basic civilities like not littering the streets or not jumping a traffic signal or not honking are never taught or practiced by the teachers or the parents, it is difficult to expect a child to learn to be a good human being...forget learning how to speak properly in English. I pronounced shove shov (show) or chores coarse for a long time and have still not been able to get my intonation right. These days you have these accent training institutes, so that's an idea brewing in my mind. but my English can wait. aaron's cannot.
like i said, it is a lifelong experiment and will continue for a lifetime. someday, i will also have to teach his children. i better equip myself to be a good dad first . . . :).
Planet X
If I mention some kinda expense my wife usually thinks for a few seconds and almost always tries to reason with me, but that night as she walked out the auditorium door and I hollered after her that I want to buy a CD by the performers we just watched, she just raised a hand in consent, much to my surprise. We had gone to attend a jazz concert at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore, arranged by Sandip Chowta, a famous music composer and jazz artiste. He got Virgil Donati to Bangalore, along with Brett Garsed, who plays almost as good as one of the 3G guitarists.
Virgil is this esoteric drummer whose sense of rhythm had the audience in raptures. He paused after a few tracks and probably thought it is better to explain to a Bangalore audience why his drums sounded abstract and offbeat. He played five different samples in increasing order of complexity, explaining how each one of the sample tracks he played were in 16 beats but broken into triplets and quintuplets. Brett accompanied him with a riff on the guitar, which made it easy for us to hold on to the actual rhythm and also realize how Virgil's drums always stayed within the strict 16 beats that he started off with. He started from half beats and often at various points from within two beats and by the time he finished, we were all on our feet asking for more.
I love Dave Mathews band (songs like Where are you going, Grace is Gone, Bartender, etc.) and the drumming there is quite interesting too, but it follows a particular rhythm that a even a novice can understand. Even if it starts at half beats, it is steadily like that for you to be able to headbang with. This, however, was nothing I had ever heard.
Bought one of the many CDs on display, Planet X. They had played some of the tracks live too. This music makes you want to drive fast and also increases your aggressiveness. Thankfully the roads that night were absolutely deserted after the concert and I hadn't the chance to indulge in some foolish road rage.
I took it out of my car stereo and put back John Maclaughlin's Live in Tokyo. The old jeep cannot take any abuse. Planet X is for my next round of psychedelia, to be enjoyed in the confines of my house, with other biker friends.
Watch Virgil here: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=NjWJuxlXzoc
Read about their kind of music here: http://images.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ozprog.com/images/interviews/interview_9.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ozprog.com/interviews/view/9&h=150&w=150&sz=10&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=BQiLQvcM8oOKxM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvirgil%2Bdonati%2Band%2Bbrett%2Bgarsed%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
Virgil is this esoteric drummer whose sense of rhythm had the audience in raptures. He paused after a few tracks and probably thought it is better to explain to a Bangalore audience why his drums sounded abstract and offbeat. He played five different samples in increasing order of complexity, explaining how each one of the sample tracks he played were in 16 beats but broken into triplets and quintuplets. Brett accompanied him with a riff on the guitar, which made it easy for us to hold on to the actual rhythm and also realize how Virgil's drums always stayed within the strict 16 beats that he started off with. He started from half beats and often at various points from within two beats and by the time he finished, we were all on our feet asking for more.
I love Dave Mathews band (songs like Where are you going, Grace is Gone, Bartender, etc.) and the drumming there is quite interesting too, but it follows a particular rhythm that a even a novice can understand. Even if it starts at half beats, it is steadily like that for you to be able to headbang with. This, however, was nothing I had ever heard.
Bought one of the many CDs on display, Planet X. They had played some of the tracks live too. This music makes you want to drive fast and also increases your aggressiveness. Thankfully the roads that night were absolutely deserted after the concert and I hadn't the chance to indulge in some foolish road rage.
I took it out of my car stereo and put back John Maclaughlin's Live in Tokyo. The old jeep cannot take any abuse. Planet X is for my next round of psychedelia, to be enjoyed in the confines of my house, with other biker friends.
Watch Virgil here: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=NjWJuxlXzoc
Read about their kind of music here: http://images.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ozprog.com/images/interviews/interview_9.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ozprog.com/interviews/view/9&h=150&w=150&sz=10&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=BQiLQvcM8oOKxM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvirgil%2Bdonati%2Band%2Bbrett%2Bgarsed%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
Ghosh Rider
Two very important blogs about experiments in pedagogy and one on Virgil Donati and Brett Garsed's music are pending, but due to lack of time, here's a pic of Ghosh Rider, who came visiting me the other day...
say hello to him...
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Mindless Churning Out
Now that people are expecting me to write (even if it is one person), I feel this pressure, almost like many Bengali authors feel when they have to churn out good novellas and stories before the Pujas. People wait impatiently for these annual issues of all the popular magazines and whereas some buy all the magazines (Anandabazaar Patrika, Anandamela, Sondesh, Desh, Bartaman, Aanondolok, etc.), some others coordinate among themselves about which magazines to buy. If Rekha buys Anandabazaar, Madhumita will buy Desh and they will exchange later. I belong to the later class. I believe in exchanging books. It always gave me the opportunity to mingle a little more with the girls. To keep them happy, I even borrowed M&Bs from my cousins and lent them. The girls knew Arijit had a library. If they smiled in return, I would think about that smile for a lifetime. There were many such smiles, and I didn't remember any of those smiles for long either, but that was a later realization. That was much later, when I realized it is foolish to be crazy about a girl's attention. I hope to pass on my wisdom to Aaron so that he can concentrate on better things in life.
But then, I myself am scouting girls for him. While Ananya found him herself, I found him Arshita and Sanjana. Ritu Malhotra says her daughter Navya is a little older, but she will wait for Aaron to grow up. Aaron won't be very tall. He is my son, so maybe he will cross me and be 5'9" at the most. Does basketball help? Ritu and Daman are both rather tall, so Navya will be taller than Aaron. Ruled out.
Do you try to visualize how your child will look when he/she grows up? I do that all the time. Try to close my eyes and think what he will become like. Will his eyelashes continue to be as long and dreamy, or will they fall off? What if his eyes become small like mine? And the career choices for him are again as vast: rally driver, model, painter, diamond merchant? He has this absolute fascination for gems. Sometimes you can skid on the imitation gems and jewelry strewn all around our floor. I told him he has to speak Gujarati and has to have some contacts in South Africa to become a diamond merchant, but he doesn't seem deterred by all that. "treasure, treasure" you can see him jumping all around, without even having read Stevenson's Treasure Island.
Treasure Island was our most fave novel. I know it was probably your fave too. I must have read it umpteen times. And then King Solomon's Mines. Will our children read those books? Will they read at all? Or will they not be bothered. My friend Hamsa hasn't read one fiction in her entire life. Has it made her a little unromantic, a little less dreamy? Too practical? I don't have an answer, but I feel you are missing out on a veritable treasure out there if you don't read fiction.
These days I watch movies more than reading books. Reading books had taken a backseat long back. Right after I joined publishing, I guess. Looking at manuscripts all day and learning to edit has taken the joy out of reading without being hawk-eyed about the typos and other errors. Editors are mostly cynical people and can't accept anybody else's writing without trying to butt in with their ideas. It is a generalization (and I will still hold that sweeping generalizations make the world a funnier place), but there are so many live examples that I have seen. I wonder how the editors would react if their writing was to be put under the lens. I write without worrying about construction or spelling errors. You cannot write and go back to it. You have to let it live and breathe like a living organism. Once born and severed from you, it is on its own.
Is it then wise to think too much about how your child is gonna grow up to be? Or is a little bit of editing necessary?
But then, I myself am scouting girls for him. While Ananya found him herself, I found him Arshita and Sanjana. Ritu Malhotra says her daughter Navya is a little older, but she will wait for Aaron to grow up. Aaron won't be very tall. He is my son, so maybe he will cross me and be 5'9" at the most. Does basketball help? Ritu and Daman are both rather tall, so Navya will be taller than Aaron. Ruled out.
Do you try to visualize how your child will look when he/she grows up? I do that all the time. Try to close my eyes and think what he will become like. Will his eyelashes continue to be as long and dreamy, or will they fall off? What if his eyes become small like mine? And the career choices for him are again as vast: rally driver, model, painter, diamond merchant? He has this absolute fascination for gems. Sometimes you can skid on the imitation gems and jewelry strewn all around our floor. I told him he has to speak Gujarati and has to have some contacts in South Africa to become a diamond merchant, but he doesn't seem deterred by all that. "treasure, treasure" you can see him jumping all around, without even having read Stevenson's Treasure Island.
Treasure Island was our most fave novel. I know it was probably your fave too. I must have read it umpteen times. And then King Solomon's Mines. Will our children read those books? Will they read at all? Or will they not be bothered. My friend Hamsa hasn't read one fiction in her entire life. Has it made her a little unromantic, a little less dreamy? Too practical? I don't have an answer, but I feel you are missing out on a veritable treasure out there if you don't read fiction.
These days I watch movies more than reading books. Reading books had taken a backseat long back. Right after I joined publishing, I guess. Looking at manuscripts all day and learning to edit has taken the joy out of reading without being hawk-eyed about the typos and other errors. Editors are mostly cynical people and can't accept anybody else's writing without trying to butt in with their ideas. It is a generalization (and I will still hold that sweeping generalizations make the world a funnier place), but there are so many live examples that I have seen. I wonder how the editors would react if their writing was to be put under the lens. I write without worrying about construction or spelling errors. You cannot write and go back to it. You have to let it live and breathe like a living organism. Once born and severed from you, it is on its own.
Is it then wise to think too much about how your child is gonna grow up to be? Or is a little bit of editing necessary?
What are you hiding? Eugene?
what is to be hidden is not yet clear, but something has to be.
something more than just friendship on friendship day between you and me. sneaking out in the rain wearing a parka, i wait for a nod from you. a nod enough to start my newly acquired KTM and start riding. while you drive toward me.
what i must hide is not clear, but something has to be.
the tobacconist, leaving at midnight, leaves me in more darkness than even a few seconds back. only the tall tree is darker than the night.
it houses the owls. the last few cellphones can be seen fireflying in the distance, walking away toward their respective homes. i call you up and you are driving. what is there to be hidden, you ask. it isn't clear, but something has to be.
am online now, waiting for footsteps in the corridor. hushed, with your pajamas brushing against the wooden floor. maybe you will open the door and answer me.
maybe you don't know the answer.
maybe i am rushing it. maybe imagining there is something while there is nothing. yet. nothing yet, maybe. am i killing the possibility of something? overreacting? trying to turn this into an inspiration? my muse?
will it help me write about mashi tomorrow? that's one blog post been waiting for long to happen. it is in the form of a draft. mashi. our mashi is probably not gonna live much longer. she is running around the house looking for her antidepressants like a maniac. i ignore her for now. she will be written about separately. she deserves a little more than some weird confusion in my mind. right now, it is this. do i find you beautiful? i can't tell, but definitely attractive. do i know you? definitely not. do i know myself? that's always had no for an answer. truman, right now, could say "and...in case i don't see you...good afternoon, good evening, and good night"... and walk out the door in the sky. i could not because i haven't reached that door.
how far is that door in the sky? who is on the other side?
something more than just friendship on friendship day between you and me. sneaking out in the rain wearing a parka, i wait for a nod from you. a nod enough to start my newly acquired KTM and start riding. while you drive toward me.
what i must hide is not clear, but something has to be.
the tobacconist, leaving at midnight, leaves me in more darkness than even a few seconds back. only the tall tree is darker than the night.
it houses the owls. the last few cellphones can be seen fireflying in the distance, walking away toward their respective homes. i call you up and you are driving. what is there to be hidden, you ask. it isn't clear, but something has to be.
am online now, waiting for footsteps in the corridor. hushed, with your pajamas brushing against the wooden floor. maybe you will open the door and answer me.
maybe you don't know the answer.
maybe i am rushing it. maybe imagining there is something while there is nothing. yet. nothing yet, maybe. am i killing the possibility of something? overreacting? trying to turn this into an inspiration? my muse?
will it help me write about mashi tomorrow? that's one blog post been waiting for long to happen. it is in the form of a draft. mashi. our mashi is probably not gonna live much longer. she is running around the house looking for her antidepressants like a maniac. i ignore her for now. she will be written about separately. she deserves a little more than some weird confusion in my mind. right now, it is this. do i find you beautiful? i can't tell, but definitely attractive. do i know you? definitely not. do i know myself? that's always had no for an answer. truman, right now, could say "and...in case i don't see you...good afternoon, good evening, and good night"... and walk out the door in the sky. i could not because i haven't reached that door.
how far is that door in the sky? who is on the other side?
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