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!

odd flights...

...

sometimes the old wind catches up pretty fast,
no matter if I am riding the rocking horse
that gives me visions.

On such days,
above the clouds,
the planets hang out
the sun takes a nap, and,
the holy cow flies across the moon.

And then, the pegasus of my vision
shrinks to the rocking horse,
that once gave me dreams ...

image: detail of a bird, medium: porcelain, @ Szentendre, Hungary

I have a author in my head...

There are times, in the real time mode, when mornings are not noons and summers are not winters. Yet, homogeneity is a latent dream that we nurture. If the only thing constant is change, then, why does the mind continues to desire the dream? Guess the desire for change is interspersed with bouts of those for the droning regularity, a hum of the bees (or of mosquitoes in more tropical regions). Someone (or, possibly every human being has got philosophical enough, at least once in his/er lifetime, to make this observation) articulated it precisely- habits are deadening. I add, now, (this is my bit of philosophical input) it is the most deadly addiction. If given a undiluted control of the mind, it becomes an up-mountain task to undo the rules of the game of life that it produces- to be an armchair critic ( I refrain from using the term uphill, since, it undermines the significance I want to attach to the task; besides authors are not liable to write meaningful stuff). This deadly addiction (but it never appears to you that it has the potency of blinking the bone-and-the-skull logo at any juncture) numbs the senses, making the reflexes unaware of variable stimuli. In English, this means it makes us as good as dead. The mind stops functioning and it sloths and slumbers and continues to say in a mangled voice: “Delhi abhi dur hai!!!”* To him, like to many of the species, concord was/is a natural alibi to calm. But what is calm if not juxtaposed with the discord of the impending storm at the horizon?! Unilateral thinking, the armchair critic and writer would say [don’t accuse me of generating opinion in favour of any (or, all) political party(/ies) though]. It is a two-dimensional diagram that draws the locus of the mind in the dubious dual coordinates of singular time (nullifying the possibility of time-transfer and time-machines sadly; I wanted to visit the Atlantis, the lost Greek city) and singular space (quantum space is still a theory hence). The dimension of the chasm in between is not considered at all!

The mind is not always functioning, neither is it idle when it is not functioning. In English this is the equivalent to the statement that nothing can be definitely defined (if that is English enough or not, I don’t know. If not, kindly help yourself). There are lapses in time when the mind is suffering from what I would call the third-person-narrator-syndrome. Like in the novels (the ones that Jane Austen and her clan wrote) the omniscient narrator is like Casper, the friendly ghost. S/he observes, though not too objectively as we presume. These observations are almost always induced by the authorial intention. In the functioning of the mind too, the author is omniscient (though Barthes proclaims otherwise). The author that is making me write all these crappy pseudo-philosophical rambling is possibly the same one that makes me choose between butter and cheese. Her name is Prejudice.

* Bahadur Shah Zafar’s observation when the British forces were approaching his fort and he was busy in shayari mehfils (Urdu poetry soiree)

Image: Original Woodcut illustration from the Just So Stories 'The Crab that played with the sea' by Rudyard Kipling

Winds of change?!

Whether or not it’s happening in the human political framework, it surely did unfold today, in front of my eyes, in what can only be called the political work of evolution. I don’t remember who told me (or if anyone ever told me at all!) that cats chase rats, and, get chased by dogs. It is possible that Jung would call this the archetype of enmity arising from the Collective Unconscious of all species. But, I don’t know what he would make out of today’s incident.

I was appreciating the bounty of colours brought forth by spring, when movement in my field of sight attracted my attention. The archetypal European with her dog was nothing intriguing. The lady was wearing a red jacket with navy blue tracksuits, and was holding on to the collar of her dog. I have watched her dog very often. He (I assume from his gruff attitude) is a very strange dog. He is a huge dog with a lot of hair, the kind of hair that you can possibly imagine falling on the face of a rock-star and hence contributing to his enigma. It incidentally does obstruct this dog’s face too, and, makes me feel that it’s a mobile bundle of wool, with innumerable loose ends that is. So, this woolly, hairy, black, gruff dog was being held at its collar by his master.

And then, the third unassuming protagonist came into view. It was a she-cat (I assume this from its slender movements directed at attracting attention). She was looking at this disgustingly chauvinist dog from behind the trunk of the tree, with little or no attempt to hide herself from him. The dog didn’t even care to sniff and look up in that direction. This, I think attracted the cat, because she trailed him throughout his walk, keeping the same tactic of hiding-and-not-so-hiding intact. I expected a final showdown when I saw her making a desperate attempt to gain attention, when she mustered enough courage (and also enough readiness to flee in a hopeful way of sorts) to stand within a finger’s distance as the lady led him home. I was ready to see a screaming lady trying her best to control that huge dog growling and charging at that cat, and she gleefully sprinting across the ground. with her mission (of irritating the dog and causally its owner) accomplished.

Instead, what I saw would deeply affect the confidence of that cat if she knew I saw her failure, both as archetypal representatives of her species and of her gender. That dog didn’t even look up!!! He dispassionately walked past her!!!! Her next neck movements validate my assumption that she was at a loss. She looked around to check if anyone of her kin was audience to the spectacle of her absolute failure. What would her father say? “MEOW!!You are not cat enough to provoke a dog!!!” Her mother would be doubly devastated: “O Almighty Bastet *! What is to happen to my girl! If dogs don’t charge her, where will I find a suitable groom for her!!!” Thinking about Jung’s possible thoughts, I presume he would possibly brood over his archetypes and deem the archetype of the Everlasting Maid appropriate to her.

But that surely doesn’t lessen the probability of the dying hostility between cats and dogs (since Jung is not here to validate my observations on what he would have said and besides, you don't presume Jung and I think alike!) That would surely make this world more peaceful. If only humans care to learn from cats and dogs as George Orwell wanted them to learn from pigs! However, if this extends to the domain of cats and rats, frankly, I wouldn’t be too happy. I don’t want to lose out on the Tom and Jerry cartoons after all!.

*Bastet is the Egyptian Cat-Goddess

love actually ...

"...love is a doing word..."

It undoes the rumours

I have heard about myself,

and, engages them with a vice

called action-

It lets the world unfurl,

to be ruffled

by the petty, uncertain onslaughts...

....

Love is a doing word ... it kills for a prize...





p.s. quote from "Teardrop" by Massive Attack & picture: at Salzburg, Austria by self.

Amen

He was jovial. His sister had just begun college and was selected in the present edition of Roadies (an MTv show). This other girl was a colleague of the guy and they were in Pune to spend the weekend with the sister. My brother said, he used to frequent it while he was posted in Pune. And I think, this is possibly the closest I have been to terror. Or, maybe not.

Last Saturday's bomb blast in Pune brought back memories of the earlier blasts in Mumbai. My then would-be-husband used to travel in the same train route in which the serial blasts took place. My sis, who was working in Mumbai, was untraceable for a few hours. I had felt a numbing sensation in my legs as I finally got to talk to my sis. My hands were trembling and my voice quivered. I wanted to say a whole lot of pacifying words to my little sis in a city ripped apart by blasts, but the only thing I did was cry. We cried together across a hundred/thousand miles. I cried out of a terror-stricken soul who wanted to hold all the dear ones close. I guess, saying goodbyes are always tough. Thinking about having to say the same is tougher.

Last Saturday when I first came to know about the blasts, the television visuals of the injured lying in blood-soaked clothes initiated a very disparate stream of images in my mind. I thought, was it a dimly lit bakery? May be. There may be woodden tables which had scratches made by restless people talking about the passing of another busy week. The chairs may have squeaked each time a customer took his seat. In another Saturday weekend, my brother may have been sitting at the same place where this young boy, his sister and his friend sat. I didn't feel terror. I was numb within.

Wisdom honours a single truth: The future does not live out of blueprints. But may be, we need a blueprint to save the human race. Or else, even before the global warming endangers mankind, man will not leave any stone unturned to be the cause of his own extinction. Amen.

an ode to extinction...

I thought the jihad was over
when the dinosaurs died.

May be extraterrestrials attacked,
or,
a volcano swept them under its warmth,
or,
that rock reminiscent of the beginning
hit them on the head .
Either way,they dropped
dead.

Even as I thought
That
was the last of the jihads:
an unimaginable humiliation,
Evolution continued
...
unperturbed.

It will take a couple of extinctions
till the jihad is over.

I guess.

 the animation video made by arnab & Utsav; narration by Sreemoyee

meditations while cooking ...

“Cooking is like making love, you do it well, or you do not do it at all”

- Harriet van Horne (1920-1998)

I was anything but a cook when I entered a kitchen for the first time. It was in high school and we were attending our first practical class for Nutrition. To me, the kitchen appeared to be as awe-inspiring as a Disney store would to a kid. Soon the awe gave way to embarrassment as I was paired with a fellow classmate who was excited to cook poha (an Indian snack). I mustered enough courage to mumble about my ignorance. But that wasn't of much help either. She put a potato in my left hand and a peeler in my right hand and asked me to peel the potato, assuming, that I could at least perform this elementary task. I sat on a stool which swung occasionally because one of its legs was shorter than the other three. With an exasperated sigh I prepared for the ultimate humiliation. I needed to tell her that I didn't know how to peel potatoes. I refrain from providing details to what happened next. But, the point of contention is this that the same individual, who couldn't peel a potato, can now cook excellent chicken tikka masala. I am amazed at the way I have evolved. This introspective rambling is on that process of evolution ;)

Cooking was an ordeal to me. It was akin to being thrust into the gas chamber. After I had had a few ( or many, to be correct) expressive days of disgust, my husband, who is incidentally a good cook, referred to a movie where the chef, while cooking, had the same expression as an individual reaching orgasm. I was disgusted by the association of such outrageously disparate ideas. After that several days passed without any reference to such creative links. And then, it happened.

It was just another day when I was cooking while he was away at the university. I remember I was cooking an Indian curry with eggs. I heated the oil in the pan and sprinkled cumin seeds in it. I had cooked the same dish numerous times before, but the spluttering of the cumin seeds had never arrested my attention. I looked on as the seeds were at first gathered in a cluster, then started spluttering and breaking away from the cluster. Uncalculatingly a smile spread across my face. I was interested what the next ingredients would do when they enter the domain of the hot oil. From inanimate spices, each ingredient suddenly gained an individual dimension. The dried red chillies which turned black in the hot oil reminded me of the myth why the monkey has a burnt face (well, that's another story altogether). The tomatoes became lascivious ladies and the glazed onions were the chivalrous men. As each ingredient changed its colour, I had a heightened olfactory perception. The fact that the cooking was progressing was evident from the smell. I had been cooking daily for the past one year, but I had never experienced anything like this before.

Since then cooking has become my creative zone. It is sometimes like a musical presentation where the order in which the ingredients enter the creative cauldron is as important as their optimum quantities for the best performance. As I now observe the changing colours of the curry that I cook, I feel that I am present in a fluid state where the various colours flow continually onto a canvas. You may as well categorize me as delusional, but before you do that, pause for a moment and think. Did you ever pause to see the changing colour of the leaves- from the sap green vibrance of summer to the autumnal orange? Or, have you ever looked up at the sky and seen the crazy shapes that the clouds form? I did something in the same vein.

That day I had learnt to pause and tap the various stimuli that are organically active in every moment. We rarely perceive them. We are always multitasking in order to capitalise time to its maximum possibility. Though hundreds of Bollywood movies are released every year, nobody learns anything from them. Had they, they would have learnt by now the impossibility to grasp time as it is to grasp sand. The more you tighten your clutch, the more it escapes. However, this article is not meant to be a Baconian piece either telling you how to cook egg curry or how to watch Bollywood movies. It's my way of pausing and allowing the mind to rattle on. Simple.

Eureka Balle Balle !!!

The strange dialectic of the ego is that it manifests from the desire to BE a persona that has an individual impact on others, while, its manifestation necessarily defeats its purpose. The persona that the human self dreams of crafting is something like the Hollywood he-man hero.While choreographing a Bollywood dance number I had this eureka-ish idea :)

I was interacting with a group of dance enthusiasts, and each member in the group was pretty sure that he is the next Hrithik Roshan or Prabhu Deva or Michael Jackson, if nothing else. It was interesting to observe how one claimed to do the "moonwalk" with élan and when requested to show a glimpse of his talent kept complaining about his ill health !!! I suppose, he firmly believed that he could do a better job if he was not feeling a little shivery. Another was a dedicated student who desired nothing but the appreciation of the teacher in presence. There was this other guy who, I guess, believed that he was a great dancer (I don't know if his train of female admirers invested this confidence, but I have a strong positive instinct working in favour of this logic) and hence needn't really practice much. And then there was this guy from the hills who was the epitomic heart throb of any party with his childish enthusiasm, sweet voice and a passion for dance. With  regards to this last variety of the dance enthusiast, I feel like sharing a couple of notes.

In him, I saw a partial resolution of the dialectic of the human ego. He desired appreciation ,but not without investing labour; he vyed for the central position in a group, but, never allowed his attempts to cloud another member; he wanted neatness and perfection in his performance and was ready to accept positive criticism for it. Though I was visiting them as a choreographer, and they had accepted me as their tutor with respect, while observing these budding individuals, with the natural gift of imperfection, I gained a new skill. While the others helped me realise my shortcomings, this young man actually helped me understand the potential that I contain in me to unlearn my learningsand learn anew. What did I learn is a pertinent question for you to ask. But the answer is as intangible as the sense of contentment that arises after this voluntary exercise of choregraphing. Not only did I teach them a couple of moves that are akin to the dance of Punjab (called Bhangra), they taught me in turn what the sages have said: look not without, but within. Each of these young men put forward an essence that I could identify with. Standing from the safe objective distance of being a "guest" teacher, I could analyse their attitudes. And even before I could realise, I had analysed a whole cupboard-full-of-'me's!!!! I had kept this cupboard bolted for a very long time (even twenty-something year olds feel time to be a vast expanse dear you-s!). I needed to unlock and clear the clutter that had been the self that I would like to believe is me. To those young hearts who put up a mirror to me, a humble bow with Bhangra-ish flamboyance: Hadippa! tinak-tin-dhaa!!! :)

p.s. the above picture is clicked on way to Havelock in Andaman Islands by either me or my hubby Arijit

i have a well in me...

a gutsy dream once overheard a desire.the desire in that instant was wishing for a well, different from the fantabulous classic wishing wells of the forever-fairy-tales. and yet it was, after all, a wishing well only. the desire was for a well that was dug till the centre of the earth, with a brightly lit tunnel leading to the luminous centre of the universe. the gutsy dream ventured forth and asked the desire: why was it wishing for such a fearful well? the desire smiled with an honest intent and said, if i can not dive in the sea of fears that i harbour in me, how will i find the true centre of my being? when i desire this well, you see a dreaded dream; one that you would call a nightmare. but, if you look deep enough into that well of unholy dreams, you will see the light at the centre...

I hope there's a fairy tale in her...

My vision stuck to a face that was constantly peeping from behind an ambush of grown-ups. Those glittering eyes with a hint of "kajal", the flowery hair-band on an almost barren head, the streak of lip-colour on those kiddy lips reminded me of something. Someone, to be precise. Me, in my pristine childhood days.

It was an unpleasant bi-yearly event which I resented for the utter humiliating effect it had on my sense of prestige. Yet, I remained silent for the promise of a future that would undo all the suffering. Those were the ignominious visits to the hairdresser. My grandma was of the opinion that shaving the head bi-yearly (if not yearly) will produce a Rapunzelesque cascade of tresses; my mother abided by her word and cajoled me into this routine with the assurance of being Rapunzelesque one day. I put on the I-don't-care-about-your-laughs attitude with a peculiar choice of appearance. I insisted that the hair-band be put on my shaved head. As I imagine myself gliding through the bewildered looks of my batch mates, I break into splits of laughter. Gosh!!! What did I think when I did that??? Several psychological ideas flash through this grown-up brain of mine none of which bears any connection with this article whatsoever. And that brings me back to that little girl who had braced herself up to face all the jeering eyes of her contemporaries. As I saw her, picture postcards of my fairy tale dream rushed back to me. It reminded me of the choice that I had made. It was a choice of forgetfulness. The dream was THE absolute truth. It was the 'real' for me.

As I look at today's little girls, I see in their not-so-twinkling eyes the dreams of Bollywood actresses and fashonistas. They look into the mirror never imagining it to be the magic mirror that would start speaking in this moment. They are independent and mature in the choices they make. But, what are childhoods for if not for the natural ability to create perpetually unreal worlds and accept their existence with nonchalance? There are a hundred thousand reasons, from globalisation to genes which can justify the behaviour of these little girls of today. But, one thing that I know in my heart of hearts, is, if these pretty junior fashonistas do not have their own kiddy worlds today, they will lose a smile in their future. The not-so-perfect choices of childhood give a reason to smile in the not-so-perfect futures. As I caught that little girl's eyes I hoped dearly, that, she has her fairy tale dream too...