When memory ...

This was in the days when you didn't know what the picture would look like until the entire roll of 36 shots was used up and you sent it for development. Uncle joined a photography class, working out his homework of painting a glass, half filled with water, in the evenings, as the niece and the nephew and the daughter scrambled to see what was it that was being done. There would be some interesting words floating in that room - 'perspective' being one of them.

As the course advanced, the three kids followed him around, bewildered at all the machinery and the set up that was now being put up in that little room above the garage. The glass was being covered with black chart paper. There was something sinister in it, the kids thought. Uncle suddenly talked about what was it like when there was a war. To keep the houses drowned in darkness, for the sake of safety, the lights were put off in the evenings, the glass windows were covered with thick black clothes when a lamp was lit. It seemed to be a story to the kids, like the one they read in books.

Years later, the story of the war is suddenly re-lived. The numbers of the dead, of the injured, of the demolished , the heroes and the villains, the sounds of the guns and the bombs - are returning to the consciousness. This time around, there are no popular names, no popular faces, no history text books analysing the primary and the secondary causes of the war. This time around, there are only faces of people who could have been an acquaintance, a friend, a lover, a family.

*****

It all began with Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August. 

The musical name and its soft vowel sounds betray the unease that permeates this film. While their parents visit a newly found relative in America, the kids spend their summer holiday at their grandmother's country-side home. The long lost and the newly identified relative is supposedly one of the grandmother's brothers. The grandmother doesn't remember it however. The kids spend their time speculating how wonderful it would be to go to America.

They attempt to remind their grandmother of her past, so that she would accept the invitation of her 'brother' to visit America, along with her grandchildren. In the process, they unwittingly have a view of a war that is only a story to them. The ripples of the devastating atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 touch their hearts for the first time in their lives.

In the sun and the rain of their summer holidays, they come to know their grandmother as they have never known before. Her silent ways perplex the kids at first. They do not understand why their grandmother sits, face-to-face with a woman, for a long time without uttering a single word. The silhouette of the two silent old women, with white light flooding in from the background creates an uneasy frame even for the viewer. Later on they come to know that, both the old women had lost their husbands to the atomic bomb.

A distant past, untouched by the children, returns as a newly realised emotion in the now.   

To be contd.

Colours (the concluding part)

Another dream it was in a series. On the plain black screen figures appeared. The language was unknown. It meant "Mount Fuji in Red". 

Since the geography project in which the nine year old had presented the 'land of the rising sun' as best as a nine-year old could, Japan became the land of dreams. Internet was still a few years away. Scourging through books in libraries, Japan unfolded in its mystic charm. The kimono, the island country that feels the sun first - so to say - every day of the nine-year old's life, the eyes like little arcs on the face, and Mount Fuji, the dormant volcano, pristine in its silence, against the backdrop of the aqua sky - enchanted the mind.

Mount Fuji as the nine-year old found it

Ah! It was a land of dreams; it was a dream in which the music from the string instruments always flowed on, as can only happen in dreams.

  

Mount Fuji was standing tall. It was changing hues - red, orange, blood red. There were a series of explosions behind Fuji. There was a mad rush of people. The middle-aged man in black and white formals mused : "Japan is so small, there is no escape." The woman, holding on to the hand of a child, another child secured on her back, spoke as a living being speaks till s/he is dead. She said, "We all know that! No way out! But still we have to try. No other way! " 

Akira Kurosawa stepped into the world of coloured films towards the end of his directorial life. After directing films in the black/white medium for about twenty-five years, he used colour for the first time in Dodesukaden in 1970. The film was a financial disaster possibly because it was unlike any film that Kurosawa had done. Along with the explosion of colours in every frame, the camera was used almost as a detached observer, with no desire to create a causal narrative. It was simply watching things, people, places. 

It is truly an experience to observe the use of colours by a director who has worked for long in black/white. 

Dreams (1990) (accompanied by Ishiro Honda in direction) presents eight 'dreams', that, critics argue are Kurosawa's own. However, it seems that Kurosawa travels from the personal to the universal in them; as dreams usually do. 

Dreams are never what they seem. They never tell the whole story. They hold un-uttered fortunes in them. It is here that the psychoanalyst and the viewer of Dreams gain a space of existence in disturbance, like volcanic islands in placid lives.

Mount Fuji, the landscape from the land of dreams, appeared in a macabre splendour in Dreams. In spite of the fact that it was still dormant, there was absolute chaos. Something tells you that the scene is progressing to absolute annihilation. This dream titled "Mount Fuji in Red" is actually a nightmare of a nuclear meltdown. 

On the morning of the festival of colours, a peculiar scene from this 'dream' kept coming back amidst the waking life: the scene of the coloured clouds gradually shrouding Mount Fuji as the middle aged man in formals explained 

Radioactivity was invisible. And because of its danger, they coloured it. But that only lets you know which kind kills you. Death's calling card.

The different radioactive elements had been coloured so as to identify them. The man in formals, a man who had worked at the nuclear plants that were exploding, named one radioactive element after another, specifying how it affects human beings. The woman with two kids was increasingly becoming horrified. Her words seemed to come from beyond the cultural calm that Japan was showing in the waking life, faced with the possibility of a nuclear meltdown. She screamed as she held her kids to her bosom: 

They told us that nuclear plants were safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That's what they told us. 

As I remembered all the clouds of colours that we created on Holi, a prickly sensation passed through the body. As I remembered how we used to run after anyone who wanted to stay away from colours on Holi, I shivered. The memory of faces smeared in red, in yellow, in purple made me feel weak in the knee. The stomach curled up, trying to expunge the nightmare of the dreams that can be tangible and real in the crudest manner possible. How horrific it seemed, that, on a day celebrating the vigour of life, the terror of colours was engulfing the mind.

Mount Fuji looked as if it was a glowing hot iron. And then, there was no one around except the woman with her kids, the middle aged man in formals and a young man in jacket. And then, there were only the woman with her kids and the young man frantically waving his jacket at the coloured clouds - red, yellow, purple engulfing them. 

I do not know what numbed the mind more - the possibility of a nuclear meltdown or the truth that human beings, like you and me, had chosen to develop this power on which they truly have no control.

You can watch "Mount Fuji in Red" from Kurosawa's Dreams here.

(Special thanks to Arijit for discussing the films and enriching my understanding of them) 

season of closures 1

It is the season of closures now. The days are rushing towards the culminating last week of the year. In this part of the world, stars, in different shapes and hues, emerge from nowhere. A passing glance will get stuck at the decorated Christmas tree beside the couch. Newspapers are seeking the 'top' 10/20/30 ... stories to be assimilated together for the special world-this-year edition. The individual is re-opening the Pandora's box of long-shelved ideas and commitments. Resolutions for the new year are diligently being formulated in personal journals. It is as if, on the last day of the year, time will re-start from the beginning. Without a before, without an after; in medias res. 

As the liberal snowflakes settle on the nose, the eyelashes and the cap tops, another part of the world lives in memories. 

(to be contd.)

Puja Chronicles:A memory

On the eve of the festival of lights or Deepabali/Diwali (deep/dia=an oil lamp), 14 earthen lamps are placed on a round tray. We sit and talk about all the trivialities as we make the cotton wicks (solte) by rolling the cotton between our hands. With the wicks ready in the lamps, we vie for the opportunity to pour oil into the lamps. And then we light them. one by one, as the oil-soaked-wick starts being consumed and starts emanating light, I always remember a Tagore song Ei korechho bhalo... where occurs the expression:

Aamar e dhup na porale, gondho kichui nahi dhale 

amar e deep na jalale dei na kichhui alo ...

If I do not burn my incense stick, it doesn't spread its scent 

if I do not kindle my lamp, no light is emanated ....

To be contd.

Image courtesy: yummy4tummy.wordpress.com

Puja Chronicles : To continue or not ...

Now that the festival is over, it seems appropriate to conclude the series 'Puja Chronicles'. That time has passed.But does any time really 'end' ?

The smell of the slightly chilly morning wind, that of the incense sticks; the sounds of the dhak and the repeated-forever selection of songs in the para (neigbourhood) pandal (the structure which houses the deities for the festival); the illegible mantras (Sanskrit slokas used in the process of praying to the deity) of the mumbling priests; the sight of the strangely blue sky of shorot (a month in the Bengali calendar in which the Durga Puja takes place) - do they not leave behind traces of life in our beings? A friend and a reader of this creative blabbering, Supratikda, commented on a previous post, asking whether the pain of an ending can be mellowed by the resurgent nature of hope. That made me think. Do we really want to mellow down an experience that is rich and trying? I, for one, wouldn't want to do so. But yes, hope is the elixir of life. It does not only signify the possibility of a better tomorrow, but, to this hopelessly optimist soul, it also keeps alive, and burning, the possibility of miracles. Or, to use a more candid expression - the possibility of the absolutely unexpected awesome happenings. This brings us to another bend in the road of thought. What defines and measures the awesomeness of a happening? Well, I am sorry to confide that I can not help in your understanding of the element of 'awesomeness' in a concrete manner. But I can, and will, share with you my experiences of the 'awesomeness' of life which happened in strange corners of the busy-dom in which we live.

P.S. I choose to continue the series 'Puja Chronicles' not because they have some connection to the event of the puja itself (well, it may, at times), but because life is possibly the greatest puja (prayer) that any being can perform. 'Puja Chronicles' henceforth will celebrate life with its resplendent awesomeness.         

resplendent in its awesomeness

Image: An Evening Sky in Lund, Sweden.

           © 2010 Susmita Paul

Puja Chronicles contd. A Bisarjan on Dashami

Pre-script - definition of Bisarjan according to Samsad Bengali-English dictionary is "immersion of the image of a deity"

 

Every year the idol is carried down the broken stairs with inappropriately dazzling neon lights pouncing down them. There is a crowd of faces that can't decide whether they should express the grief at the end of the carnival or the chilling fear of losing someone. The idol of the mother goddess in the avatar of Jagaddhatri ,meaning the One who bears the world (a festival similar to Durga Puja, most grandiosely celebrated in  Chandannagore, a town near Kolkata) has been the centre of all the joy and laughter for the past few days. She is the reason we got to meet our friends and family, whom we haven't met for over a year. The end of the festivities means an empty dalan (a broad space within the house), with a singular lamp lighted in front of the empty dais on which the idol was placed. The end of festivities means a strange emptiness amidst the pedestrian duties in the household. The end of festivities means the chilling knowledge that the one who will be holding the idol from behind, just before the idol is given bhasan (immersion of the idol in a water body),  is most dangerously placed.

*****

The idols are usually given bhasan with their faces looking skywards. They are not slumped into the water face down. The individual standing behind the idol can't be seen by the other fellow bearers of the idol. There is a dangerous possibility that the idol will fall on him, resulting in his drowning.

*****

The laughter of the last few days, or, even of the last few moments - when everyone was travelling in a hood-less vehicle with the idol from home to the ghats (stairway leading to the river), sounds of the voices singing and of the conch-shells, interspersed with the occasional frenzied cries of "Aschhe bochor abar hobe!" (We will have this fun again in the next year!) - now transforms into panic-stricken shouts rising above the beats of the dhak (a drum-like instrument used during the pujas in India). They are cautioning the individuals carrying the idol - 'Watch out that step! It's broken!' ; 'Don't stand behind the idol directly!'; 'Be careful!' All such panicky cries would be subsided by a few calm voices. One of them was his. 'Don't worry, I am there.'

*****

Dashami is the last day of celebration held in honour of any of the deities in Hindu mythology. The immersion of the deity is accompanied by the distribution and exchange of sweets. Why would one think of celebrating the end of a festival? Why would one have sweets after immersing the deity into the oblivion of the water world? Possibly because the act of bhasan means the continuing cycle of creation, procreation and destruction. Like the trinity espoused by hindu myths - Brahma (the Creator god),  Vishnu (the Protector god) and Maheshwar or Shiva (the Destroyer god). The bisarjan (i would translate this not merely as immersion, but as 'bidding adieu') is also a part of the festival; just as death is a part of life. Whether we want it or not, humans will be born and they will die. All that remains is the essence of the life that an individual leaves behind. 

*****

Dashami of the Debipokkho had always been a little saddening. It meant the end of no-studies schedules while I was a student. It meant that all the gorgeous dresses will now be packed away. It meant that all the freedom of living off the street food is lost. It meant the end of incessant parties and doing nothing all day long. This year too, Dashami has saddened my heart and my soul. The voice that said 'Don't worry' has received bisarjan from all its worldly noise. Long after his song has ceased, souls like mine, which heard and saw him weave those brilliant patterns in life, will echo his songs. Who he is you may not know. But what he is,  you will fathom if you think about an individual who inspires you, whom you love, who makes you smile and who encourages creation in any form. Imagine an artist you love. You will know. Imagine an individual you love. And you will know. 

RIP C_K_.

Image Courtesy © Subhaneil Chakrabarty

     

Puja Chronicles contd. A magical allowance

This day has always had a special resonance. Mahashtami (the eighth day in the Debipokkho). This was the day, when, decked in new clothes, we (my sister and myself) sat on the broad stair at the foot of the staircase with our feet resting on some old newspapers. Our grandma would sit on the floor to apply alta (a  red liquid), outlining our feet.

alta adorned foot of a bride

This was messy since it meant we would have to wait till it dried or else our footprints would follow us wherever we went. As we grew older, the mess seemed less in the outer world and more in the inner world. The mind would get busy contemplating whether we are moving to adulthood by wearing alta like the elder women. But throughout, the singular exciting part of this kumari puja was that we received sweets and ten rupees each after the alta wearing ceremony. What little things give us joy! 

Kumari Puja

As the years passed and we grew older, though, customarily, the kumari puja stopped, yet we continued to receive the monetary allowance on this day. We bargained with Dida (that's what we called our paternal grandma) to increase our Kumari Puja allowance with hilarious outcome. It was amusing each year although the same sequence of events took place.
Since we were no more 'kumaris' ritualistically, she would initially refuse to give us the allowance, stating the obvious - that since there's no more ritual, there would be no more allowance either. But we kept following her around and pestered her. My  kakima (aunt) would join in and re-enforced our demand. Dida would lose her cool sometimes. My baba would try to be a peace-enforcer by volunteering to pay the allowance. But we refused stoically. Finally, Dida was cajoled, by everyone in the family, to give us our allowance. What joy we felt, although the allowance never crossed the twenty rupees benchmark. It was not about the amount we received. Just the pure magic of being a pestering grand-child.  

Photo courtesy: 

'alta adorned foot of a bride' © Self

'Kumari Puja' © SHIVA DURGA PUJA OF THE DUTT FAMILY OF NORTH KOLKATA

When the pebbles taught the soul ... Noori Ganga's Philosophy

 Ganga descending from the heavens

The cool breeze is blowing across Har-ki-Pauri. The ghat (the river side area) is lit with a thousand twinkling flames that are flowing across the Ganga. Prayers for plentitude, for health, for peace sail in those little boats of fire. Looking out to the busy riverbanks in Haridwar, one will notice the bustling devotees eager to wash off their bad karma in the Ganga. They stand in a singularly identifiable posture-hands folded at the chest, eyes closed and the lips making arbitrary movements. It makes one wonder, whether, organically, the river is more polluted by all the sins that it washes off from the soul, or, by the filth that it washes out from the bodies of the modern metropolis. There is however little time to ponder on this philosophic proposition since the water of Ganga has started receding. We watch in amazement as the flowing vital river gradually reduces to a trickle, till its bed is visible. It is not the wrath of the Gods that has taken away the mythical bestowal of the Ganges from the earthlings. It is but a temporary situation caused by the technical functioning of a dam, a human endeavour with machines. That however does not take away the charm of philosophising about it!

The penitent figures gradually get replaced by several kids and teens, running along the river bed, waiting cautiously for the water to recede completely. They are the paisa collectors. The five rupee coin that you had thrown in the Ganga this morning, wishing for a raise in your salary, is now his. They fight fiercely over the territory each will cover. From the bed of the river, that once flowed down the jata (patted hair) of Lord Shiva, now provides them with 'survival' money. As the evening light recedes and the land of the lords fall asleep, these busy hands continue to search the pebbles and their glistening corners for a coin or two. 

The evening, that saw the drying of the river to the white-and-light-brown-stained pebbles and rocks, melted into the morning light. The morning brought with it the scorching sun and the curious onlookers. What now lies before me is the route that the melted waters of the Gomukh glaciers had chosen a couple of thousand years ago, maybe. 

As I set foot on the pebbles and the rocks that usually lie uneventfully at the belly of this ancient river, I feel tremors of myths and histories rumbling under my feet. Several artefacts are strewn across the river bed. Who knows to which age this statue of Nandi (the companion of Lord Shiva) dates back to? Who knows what god or goddess was this four-legged deity in some lost temple of the yesteryears? Which was the era in which Ganga changed her course, making those houses of the gods vulnerable to temporality? All these redundant questions clatter in the mind as I walk across the  noori Ganga (pebbled Ganga). Murmuring winds blew across the expanse. They echo voices from the past...telling tales of grandeur withered by time ... from the present ... the curious tourists randomly picking artefacts strewn  across the bed ... from the future ... the rambling waters that will flow again in this course and will wither more eras and their cravings to transcend time.

People call Haridwar the seat of Hindu pilgrimage. To me, on this very day, when Ganga dried, I realised in this bustling city of religion, a law of life in its resplendent purity. What we may be in the times to come are but  hypothetical ideas. What is, in this moment; what I am , in this moment is true to my being. There is no before or an after. It is all in the NOW.

Remembering Birth

I ask my mother,

As I count to three:

“Did you find me

Under a tree?”

She stooped across the sea

To light the waves, and

Whispered in my ears:

“I found you in dew, floating

On the waves at my door!”

I grasped her aanchal and

Let out a glee -

“I knew! I knew!

I came from the sea!”

I ask my mother,

As I sit on the swing:

“Did you find me

Blowing in the wind?”

She cuddled the trees,

Kissed the moon, and

Whispered in my ears:

“I found you in

The sun’s womb!”

I grasped her aanchal and

Broke into laughter-

“I knew! I knew!

I came from the sky!”

I ask my mother,

As I hear the bee:

“Did you find me

Floating in the sea?”

She blended the mud

With a drop of ray,

Touched it with passion,

And set it free:-

She took me in her soul

And whispered in my heart:

You are the dream that

I always have had.

You touch my feet

As I stand in the ocean,

And run across the earth

As fast as you can...

I reach out my hand-

You smile at me,

Clicking the leaves

You climb up a tree...

You hide in the sun

As I wait an era,

And the next,

And a few more,

Till you blow

Down the sky

As dew on my shore …

Note:

aanchal means

the flowing end of Saree,

an Indian dress for women

Postscript:

written when suddenly felt

the onslaught of images from

Rabindranth Tagore’s Shishu

the forever NEW...

A new year comes with a peculiar entourage. The English New Year is just round the corner of the week celebrating Christmas. So it is like a practice match, celebrating celebrations! With the Bengali New Year, there’s nothing dramatic as that. Occasionally though, the “kalbaisakhi” (the storm, peculiar to the Bengali month of Baisakh) used to act as an announcer of sorts.

The kalbaisakhi, which was more frequent when we were kids, used to be a typical blinding storm of dust, which would leave people on the streets in tears, literally. I remember another aspect of the kalbaisakhi too. The first rains of the season would mean the smell of the parched earth drinking water like the thirsty car in Rwitwik Ghatak’s film, “Ajantrik”. The smell of the wet earth is a dreamy nausea of sorts. Imagine yourself to be terribly thirsty under the scorching tropical sun. Imagine yourself drinking after that dryness. The sounds that you would hear - the sound of the gulping down of water - is what the director used in a scene, in the movie “Ajantrik”, where water is being poured down the ‘throat’ of the car by the driver. I always visualise the same sound coming from the dry earth, greedily drinking the rain water in huge gulps. I love the way it sounds in the smell it emanates.

Another aspect of the Bengali New Year is similar to any new year – the ritual of sharing greetings. It would almost be a competition of sorts to be able to call and greet first. Those were kiddo days but they were good nonetheless! The greeting ritual would typically begin in an interesting fashion in my home. No matter how late we slept the night before, we (i.e. my sis n me) would wake up early on the first day of the Bong New Year. Sleepy, as we would obviously be, we would dress up in a new saree (that great Indian drape!), and, accompany my mom n my aunt to the nearby temple. I have always lacked consistency in matters of faith. Some years, I would be devoutly greeting the deity and, in others, the ritual of the new year greeting with God would be more of a fun-filled outing in the morning (the reasons varied from me believing that I was a believer or an atheist; to the more humdrum reality of me being in a soup or not). Either way, the Bong New Year was eventually a day when we would end up buying the absolutely yummy packets of Uncle Chips and if good luck prevailed, then hot kachori and potato curry from a shop which believed that cleanliness is conflicting to the perfect taste of the crispy kachoris and the spicy aloo curry. It surely was a pleasantly auspicious day!

The element of the auspiciousness of this particular day, the first of the first month of the year (poila baisakh) was, however, more seriously taken by some. These are people who have businesses. On this particular morning, the temple would be thronged by several businessmen and they would, usually, wear the white kurta-pajama duo. I couldn’t help but notice their eagerness to have their business registers (haal-khata) marked by the holy sign of good luck (the swastika; well it existed even before the Nazis you see) by people, who I presumed were yet to be initiated in the duties of the priest. So, it could be that a novice priest was drawing the swastika in unsteady hands as a devout businessman was thanking the Almighty for assuring security and steadiness! The most interesting people in the crowd were however the most busy ones. They were the little ladies and gentlemen who imitated their parents in everything. If the mom was seen covering her head with the saree as she bowed to god, the little lady would wrap the “dupatta” over her head and attempt to bow with a greater arch of the body. The little ladies and gentlemen would also be seen climbing on to their parents’ lap to reach the temple bell and played it till the guardians forcefully put them down.

The fun and frolic of the day would pass and the eventual outcome of the grand Bengali New Year would however be the gruelling truth of the scorching sun the day after, and a fatigued and perspiring self only 24 hours from the grand opening of another lunar Bengali year! For all that and more ... let the Bengalis keep celebrating the Bengali New Year forever!