The Circle of Life - It has no Beginning, no End.

I wanted to do a mother's day post, but realised that I  wouldn't know what to write.

Of mothers perhaps.

There are loves that we are born into, and there are loves that are born of us. And painfully enough, the loves that are born of us, find, in some strange way, a precedence over the loves that we are born into. Perhaps its the love, perhaps its the responsibility, let greater minds debate on that. But it is the same primeval instinct that
makes a mother love her child.

That is what a mothers love would be. An instinct. And so, in a sense, a mother's love is also tragic.Because, an instinct must wean away from her the object of her love.

And when you dwell on things such as these, better left mingled in your being and uncomprehensive to rationality, you'll realise that the tragedy is heightened when the instinct is pure. Undiluted by learning and education enough to bring an awareness of the emotions undergone.

This is the point where you think of the millions in  your country,  the unsung heroines who haven't heard of a Mother's Day.

And even though you feel an anguish, the pain is washed over by a soothing balm as you watch your child play with the waves.

Iktara.

The Iktara is an ancient North Indian single stringed instrument, capable of deep bass and sharp treble, and hence produces all seven notes distinctively, symbolizing  life in its myriad hues.

Few months back I heard one of the most soulful songs I've heard in many, many years, and these late spring nights when I stay up preparing for exams, in the silence of an otherwise maddening place nothing seems more beautifully haunting.



Rooh ka banjaara re parinda,
(Rooh- spirit, Banjara- nomad, parinda- bird)
The spirit, like a  nomad bird,

Chad gaya dil ka re gharonda
( chad- left. gharonda- shackles)
has broken  the shackles of the heart.

Chad gaya dil ka re gharonda tod ke
Has left, breaking the shackles of the heart,


Re gharonda tod ke, gaya chod ke.
Breaking the shackles, has left.







Je naina karun band, band,
(naina- eyes; band- close)
And everytime that I close my eyes,
Beh jaaye boond boond.(2)
(Beh- wash boond- drops)
Pain is washed away in droplets.

Tadpaye re, kyun sunaye re, geet malhaar ki,
(malhaar- a classical north Indian raaga, sung with the coming of monsoons, the source of life)
Then why do you make me listen to the anguishing  monsoon raagas?



Chorus:
Be malang tera Iktara (8)
The iktara has lost its melody and now continues without any symphony.






Itra tu baasi baasi,
(Itra- dialectical for Itr - a perfume made of herbal scents, popular only in the  northern parts of india. : baasi- stale)
Perfume, you are stale now.

Padi hai sirhane,
(sirhane- the area along the head of the bed, often, in india, a place to keep things.)
and lie uselessly along the head of my bed.

Band darwaaja dekhe, lauti hai subah,
(darwaaja- dialectical for darwaaza, or door)
 My closed doors see a morning return.

Thandi hai angeethi seeli, seeli hain diwarein,
( angeethi- a crude mud oven, used in the extremely chilly winters of north India to warm homes.)
The angeethi lies cold, and so are the walls.

Goonje takrake inme, dil ki sada
(goonje-echo)
And the dirges of my heart echo from these walls.

goonje hai re( 2) dil ki sada (2)
Ah, the dirges echo.

Je naina karun band, band,

(naina- eyes; band- close)

And everytime that I close my eyes,

Beh jaaye boond boond.

(Beh- wash boond- drops)

Pain is washed away in droplets.

Tadpaye re, kyun sunaye re, geet malhaar ki,

(malhaar- a classical north Indian raaga, sung with the coming of monsoons, the source of life)

Then why do you make me listen to the anguishing  monsoon raagas?

Chorus:

Be malang tera Iktara (8)

The iktara has lost its melody and now continues without any symphony.

Birth Pangs

I live in a crowded, ever-shifting locality, and though it had never been a cause of concern for me before, for the past few years I find that I've tired if it. As much as I love food, I'm tired of the new, newer newest restaurants that keep opening up. I'm tired of the new buildings that forever keep rising.And I feel angry every time that I look up skywards to see only smog and none of the stars that I've spent a childhood trying to count. Environment is something I'm truly concerned about, especially since last year when I experienced the warmest winter of my life. But I digress.

Sometimes, there's only so much of change that's good and as a blogger whom I read put it, "Change is often over-rated, and the known and comfortable past too under-rated and vilified."
Increasingly, there's a feeling that I tire of change itself. Not change as in newer experiences into which I gladly and a tad foolishly still jump into, but change as in a continuous movement.

But more than anything, I'm tired of a changing mind. Things that I hated earlier, I turn to again only to find that I like it after all. Perhaps you would remember this post where I wrote about my reaction to The God Of Small Things. The heavy pessimism still weighed down on me, but surprisingly I could just glimpse the beauty beneath the terrible reality. Sample this:
"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." . But what's painful is when you look at things that you loved and find that you don't like it after all. That hurts. Maybe this book was about having the maturity to have understood it. Maybe before growing up, life is about growing out of  the birth-pangs.

When Things of past return to haunt, Morphed many times over in their terribleness.

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough”
- Jean Paul Sartre.

Through the Looking Glass.

In the post before last, I spoke of choices.

Now that post was very inarticulately written, but as S told me, it's all the age da.Maybe it happens to all, but currently, it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturbs me sometimes.And many more things besides. I still have steps to tread before I develop a distinct apathy that makes survival a happy affair. Though in alternate stages of my oscillation I doubt if I haven't too much of it already.

Do we choose the coloured glass through which we look at life ? Or maybe they are presented to us, gifts or curses as we make them out to be?

I look at life through Red coloured glasses, and this shouldn't come as a surprise, given that I've literally bathed myself in this colour since age 8.

Which coloured glasses do you look at life through? Find here.

Then share.

Of The Many Firsts.

Tis' a season for travelogues and train journeys.

Yesterday was the day I traveled, for the first time ever in a local train. It was not a choice and I was out of options.

The station at Garia stank of rotten fish and shit. Small holes broken into the concrete clogged with squishy dirt in water with flies hovering over them. Not a pretty sight. And I had to wait for 45 minutes before I could board a train. I drank in every sight. A portion of the platform was covered in chicken blood and feathers. Killed for food, presumably. The flies were densest there.The food stalls surprisingly had less of them.

People might have seen spirit in people there, waiting for hours under the flimsy shade, mostly with heavy loads, usually goods to be sold, and often of weight capable of bending spines. The will to survive as it were, to fight. People might stand applaud courage they see. Courage to carry on. Carry on in all that misfortune and brokenness .

There are people who write of pain. I myself tried writing of it, and that was the point of realization. We can hardly write of pain without romanticising it. Just like we cannot write of the past without romanticising it. Remember the time you were ostracised in a juniour class? Bet it wasn't as nice then while you went through it than it is now when you write of it. Ruskin Bond did say it: " Looking back on boyhood years/ Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow"
No, you need to have truly fantasised about pain to imagine that it can intoxicate you. You need to have been truly insulated from pain to find it heroic. I envy you. You've felt hurts maybe, and slights also. But pain? I doubt.

The people I saw too did not have a choice. They suffer and endure not in heroism, but in necessity. Their sufferings are not awe-inspiring. Anyone placed in their shoes would find that they could continue to exist. It is the most ancient and primitive law of our existence.

Choice. That key-word.If your Choice to live your life a certain way brings you to hell-holes, I give you a standing ovation. That is why Mother Teresa is her. And indeed, so are countless others, all unsung. If your choice to be a vigilante takes you to our borders, we the people who sleep stoned at night give you another ovation.But if you arrive at our borders to fuel your hearths at home, we know that the day something else guarantees that, we shall no longer sleep safe.

They had to carry on. For the alternative to that is obliteration.

We sit, comfortable in our houses warmed by the heat of their bodies, and then we talk about Art. Literature. Poetry. And oh, we talk about the misfortune of their existence, hoping we could do something to change it. Then the more conscientiousness of us go home, stopping at the local NGO to drop off some notes, hoping to make some difference, as of course, that is all we can do.
And then, there are some people like me, who blog about it, every once in a while as the realization strikes them. Doing so eases a guilty conscience, maybe.

The drunks at the overhead bridge in Park Circus were no Devdases, pining away. That is their way of life, they know no better. They have never known any better.

Never mind, Never mind.


"With great power comes great responsibility" - Uncle Ben.


P.S : I'm not too sure of the point I'm making. Actually, I'm not sure that I'm even making one.
Confused, Confused, Me, Me.

Brokeback Mountain

Somehow, I had missed Brokeback Mountain when the world seemed to be enraptured by it, and so after a conversation with a friend I finally sat down to it.

After the first watch, all that remained of the movie was a collection of images and a realization that never before had I been so utterly moved by a love story, for that is what it is, titles of a gay cowboy movie be damned. It is the story of a shared love, love that is not once called love through a lifetime, because it yet does not know its own name and also perhaps because it is denied by its own preperator.

The second watch still left me dazed , the sheer power of Lee's imagery is incalculable. Jack and Ennis barely speak, their dialogues, especially Ennis' are at a bare minimum and yet they wash you totally with a deep, gnawing, longing.

After the third watch to-night, I think I can finally begin to understand the different layers on which this movie is fleshed out.

What is truly heartbreaking is Ennis' tragedy of not knowing himself, He is as stoic as the mountains among which he had come to love, and in his confusion he has learnt to lock himself within his eyes that do not once overflow. He is unconnected and out of sync with the world, and in his happiness with Jack we discover his vast pain. It's not easy being different, and Ennis' difference nearly bleeds him out. 'Its a film about hearts - broken or otherwise. It's pure romance.'

There is something forlorn and broken about Ennis even as we see him in the opening scene, and he walks with a head bent forward, weight on his sturdy shoulders, all his worldly possessions in a brown paper bag. The brown paper bag would re-surface at the end, when again, he carries all that he has in this world in a brown paper bag- Two shirts, remnant of the only love he had ever experienced .

And he has an enormous capacity for love, coming even from his abandonment. Through his life he makes terrible sacrifices for jack, quitting jobs and forsaking his marriage, not mentioning about his jobs for nearly 20 years, and claiming , when Jack turns up after his divorce that "It's a mistake."

As the story opens, in the silence of Jack and Ennis for so long after they first encounter each other, we see a foreshadow of the course which their love shall run- silent and intense. They are
actually placed in the role of a husband and a wife by the foreman who employs them; Ennis is the camp tender, while Jack is the man, who goes out herding sheep and instructing Ennis "No more beans." But because of Jack's complaints, their roles are more effectively reversed to that which suits them more. And indeed , in Jack we see tenderness and affection, and in one of the most haunting scenes of the movie, watch out for Jack's expression when he dabs Ennis' wounds with hot water.

One late evening, over whiskey, as they always have it,
neat,
Ennis speaks of his bringing up and slow abandonment by
his siblings, and though he bears no bitterness, its understandable enough that Jack is the first person he's ever mentioned this to. ('Hell it's the most I've spoken in a year.")
Perhaps there is a consciousness of having spoken too much, for Ennis seems partly ashamed of his now exposed brokenness. There is a ghost of a smile that never does come, inhibited like all other emotions in him. Yet he shall soon learn to open up to Jack, however briefly or rarely.


Four years after they went their own ways, they re-unite to a heart- wrenchingly beautiful kiss, this time initiated by Ennis. And Ennis chalks out a plan for them to able to keep meeting over fishing, making it obvious by his easy lie to Alma "We was fishing buddies" that he had thought about it long before he heard from Jack. Ennis' plans, unlike Jack's adheres more to practicality, and gives their relationship scope to exist in midst of cruelty that Texas, even today, meets out to Jack and Ennis. But Ennis' practical plans can never quite fulfill Jack's longings and he blames Ennis for a half-life in the climax of the movie, a climax were vividly Ennis' confusion of himself is brought out.

The two parts of the movie were Ennis is faced with the reality
of losing Jack, draws extreme physical reactions from him.
The first time , he breaks down sobbing uncontrollably in
an alley, the second time when Jack states " I wish I knew
how to quit on you " Ennis falls down to his knees, both
trying to escape from him and cling to him. Ennis might be in a state of cognitive dissonance , or denial, but sure as hell Jack wasn't to blame- "Its because of you that I am like this. I'm nothin, I'm nowhere. " This is Ennis' fear in seeing a murdered homosexual as an 8 yr old. He has painfully tried to carve out a safe path for himself and jack and nowhere does his scarred psyche and need for Jack become as vividly apparent as here.

Here also, there is a flashback, and those who have read the story would understand it in all its enormity:
Proulx writes, "What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. ...Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

This is a saga of an intensely complex emotional relationship, at the end of which we are left crying for the broken survivor: Jack is lynched to death as Ennis had feared he might and the closing shots are wonderful in their duality.

Ennis, finds a shirt of his which he had 'forgotten' on the mountain, in Jacks closet, still smeared with his blood, and within a shirt of Jack, also smeared in his blood. And in one of the rare moments of luxury when he allows himself to release his emotions, he feels jack's shirt with his cheek. We find the same pair of shirts in the very final scene of the movie, only, this time, the order is reversed, and it is his shirt which encloses Jack's. Perhaps Ennis is at last ready to commit, and maybe even protect Jack, but it comes a tad too late. Both times, their shirts, and metaphorically, their relationship, hangs within a closet, from which it could never emerge, and perhaps their only rightful place in those times.

Beside the hung shirts, we find a picture of the Brokeback mountain, framed within a postcard, which for Jack, is almost a pretend place, "where blue birds sing, and there's a whiskey spring" ; and just beside, framed within the frames of the window, is the landscape of America, certainly and cruelly real.
Both these frames are enclosed within another frame, that of the screen, and we realise that the movie is offering a choice- we can choose any of the two frames.

All through the movie, Jack and Ennis' love is shown against the background of the river, sometimes running and frothing, other times, calmingly present, yet immeasurably large and always pitted against the squalor and mess of Ennis' home and the lack of freedom in Jack's.

There is no doubt that the movie is a powerful lobby, and because it appeals to our hearts with images, rather than mind with words, we are left just all the more vulnerable.

17 Again.

One of my very late night movies, and loved every moment of it. There's something about no honks, loudspeakers, mothers popping in forever for just that little errand or a younger sibling asking "aisa kyun hua?" (why did this happen?) that makes a late night movie on a small screen memorable. But this did go beyond the 'Me Time ' I always keep craving for and getting so little of.

For those who havn't watched it, as I know most of you havn't ;) this tells the story of Mike who as a high school Basketball champion, now this was also one of the reasons I loved the movie- I used to play basketball in school, and it still remains close to my heart though alas I play it no more, but I digress. So to continue where I trailed off, Mike was a star athlete with a full college scholarship imminent. He seemingly had it all, when, right before the championship game, his girlfriend Scarlet informed him she was pregnant. In that moment, he made the decision to throw everything away (including basketball and a chance at a scholarship) and proposed to her, only to regret it 20 years down the line when bitter at his professional life he thinks that he might have had a better chance at life had he been to college.

So enters a mysterious janitor who gives him an opportunity to live back his life but "To do it right." Mike , transformed back into a 17 yr old lives a part of his high- school again, setting many things right ,before finally at the same basketball match, he throws it all once more for Scarlett.

And so we realize that maybe the best decisions are the ones made by the heart.

And at the fag end of my life, I will want to have lived my life like Mike. Knowing that if I am given the chance to be 19 again I will not have done anything differently.