The Neighbors, my translation of the Gujarati story Padoshi by Pravinsinh Chavda, is up on Calque.

http://calquezine.blogspot.com

This story details two very different life trajectories, mindsets and expectations on the two sides of a fence in a lower-middle class locality. Sometimes life decisions are made much before one’s birth.

The first rains.
Light as a feather.
Drops flurry about in the breeze, not the real monsoon furor as yet.
For so long now I’ve scoured the skies. Scowled at the sun.
Thank the heavens.
Beneath the leaves too, a fluorescent green.
A strange bird warbles out a tune, three clear notes in three octaves.
To all things, a season.

He is a genius-Nobel laureate, fine.
But verse usually stops me short.
What startles is the simplicity, the permission to write what he will, even an Ode to a lemon.
So right.

I am, as most know, fairly taken with the stars and reading the signs.
Daft that way- but let it be.
But this is different.
Perhaps it is the art- so beautiful. There is an old age, lyrical museum-quality feel about it.
Perhaps it is the openness to interpretation that's intriguing.
You can read into it what you will. A portend is a portend, after all.
A feature may be positive, or not.
Or it can be both at the same time, depends on what you bring to it

One of the singular pleasures these days has been "sandwiching", squeezing in slivers of whatever movie catches my fancy from the bouquet on the satellite channels, of course my current faithful Ladies Special must be watched as well. I could get addicted to this movie-a-day habit.

Pico Iyer on simplicity.
My thoughts exactly.
Less is more.

Last night, enthralled, I watched Matilda, a child’s tale, a fantasy with clear line dividing good and bad, based on a Roald Dahl tale about a six year-old super smart kid with telekinetic skills. Why do we need to believe? Is it a desperate scramble to hold on to anything, something? Why do we make up improbable tales, knowing fully well they are beyond what is real? Perhaps the need to feel hope despite and notwithstanding, is genetic.

Another June 9. With the years, I see the good that was there- and there was so much solidly good, so much that changed my life. The bad I acknowledge, but its like reading lines in a history book.

Somenath Maity/ Structures/Jehangir Art Gallery.

Its the colors that draw you in. Light fireworks in your brain.
Amazing strokes of oranges and reds.
Once you've regained your breath and found your feet after the shock suddeness of it all, you begin to look at the details.
The shanty resting by a tall glass and chrome tower. The hut is on earth, the tower seems to lead to the sky.
The lane that leads beyond the building, and beyond you're sure it twists and turns and curves impossibly before leading on to who knows where.
That line of lamps on the water, and a bright-lit niche in the dark, past all the blues and blacks, so dark, why is it brightly lit?
There are hints of a nameless mystical, in the domed structure with a flag swishing atop,in the block of a building by a fort.
Why are there no titles? I ask. Because a title limits, draws a boundary- this way you think.
He stands in front of a blank canvas and then the colors explode and overtake, and he sees what he sees. There is a child-like simplicity, a honesty that's clean.
Go there if you're prepared to think.
Go there if you can see beyond.
Go and see the thesis encapsulated in a hint of a line.

Ashok Mody/ Images of the Mahatma/ Jehangir Art Gallery
"Minimalist realism" is how Mr Mody, an architect and a self taught painter, describes his canvases.
In a few strokes he has captured the directness and simplicity of Bapu.
You wait a few feet away from the canvas and wait for the lines to come together and speak.
This is graphic art in the way the bold lines speak, this is also modern art, in knowing which lines to pick and strengthen.
The canvas of a young, turbaned Gandhiji, the version one saw if only on the screen- the pics after his return from South Africa - has a clarity of purpose the old man would have approved of.


After these brainstorms, fuel for the soul, I walked through Chor Bazaar, the thieves' market.
Which is rather like a flea market.
Amazing antiques. Some made-as- antiques.
Film posters. Glassware. Clocks. Furniture. Crockery.
All arranged as and when is.
A writing desk took away my heart.
Tons of photos were taken.

So that's how I spent saturday, traveling cattle class to town.
I hope that lady who was going to a holy place to present her mannat to the soul of the holy person who once resided there, the pir, finds her wishes blessed.

A momentary quiet period.
What have I been up to?
Manic times at work. Plus the usual reading-writing.Plus running somewhat, a home.
Cutting 400 words from something one thought of as "finished work" a year ago, is painful.Humbling.
Been thinking. brooding.
Heard an expert talk about how we're not done yet, the brown shoots theory.
I agree. The markets dont. So I go back to thinking.
Anyone remember John Galt?
We're getting closer to Atlas Shrugged.
Amity Shlaes says it much better.
Link from Mint.
The red splash of the gulmohar can wait for a day.

http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/02210725/Rand8217s-Atlas-is-shruggin.html

Oh yes the genre is new for me. I learned to reach beyond the obvious.
To look at the shifting, surging, shimmery layers beneath.
That reality can be what you want it to be.
That writing about sneering men and women on pencil heels is not the only choice.


(story courtesy: Swapna)

I cough my lungs out. I wheeze. I concoct and sip strange admixtures. I sigh like a heroine in a Victorian novel, my voice a throaty rasp. I sniff and inhale, alas its only steam.
As you may see, I’m doing better now. Somewhat.

Parallel veins on the palm leaf stand out, etched in mad hues of green crayon by THE master artist; what does it take to see, for long I had eyes but did not.

So filigree like; hinting at the shadows and shapes beneath the surface:

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
-Wordsworth, from Lines written in early spring.


With shock I watch the reigning king of the marquee walk by, dark, wiry and unimpressive. Its all the director’s doing, all glam sham I realize- the emperor has no clothes! Under the harsh lights they’re practicing a mass drill type of dance step in a purported state room- no envy, not for anything in the world. Not this.

Basking in reflected glory.
One more.

calquezine.blogspot.com

At a quarter to three in the morning the clouds are low and bear a trademark red tinge, as if streetlights flood the heavens; but that's not reason enough to awake at that blessed time every night, like a third bit actor in a ghost movie. Neelkamal anyone?

Copyright infringement can be infuriating. But I got back, I stood up to authority- a big change.
And then I let go.
Like several I let go in the recent past.
You have to choose your battles.

yahooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
A Fistful of Flowers.
On Muse India
A translation of the original by Shri Pravinsinh Chavda.
http://tinyurl.com/q7ramk

Just coasting along. In a state of contemplation. In the quiet.
Marking the shadow of the palm fronds on the tar.
Marking the curtain of sunlight past the green on the awning.
Revelling in the gulmohars that bloom, no reason or reasoning required or proffered- they just are.
Thrilling in the cuckoos and parrots and sundry strange birds.
An orchestra or a cacophony? You decide. I can't be bothered.

If only I’d known cleaning out my mailbox would be as therapeutic.

From a visit to Mani Bhavan on Saturday.
Gandhiji stayed here from 1917-1934.
This is where the civil disobedience movement began.

Youtube. And you.
You're like a child. Elated.
You insist on K L Saigal.
1944. 1952.
Every evening.The IPL be damned.
Babul mora. Ek bangla baney nyara.
A question barrage.
I scramble. I steal time.
Who with. when. why. which show.how much was the ticket?
Oh really! And then?
So many questions.
Anything. For a slice of your life.
And you know. And I know.
Time's a thief.

Last night, we ended with Geeta Dutt.
Chain sey hum ho kabhi...
As also the Sanjeevani and Asha Bhonsale versions.
In my brain loop, her voice echoes.
To sing this one, you have to live life a little.

As the mostly young audience cheers and hangs on to every wizened word
Past the halo of honors and laurels that rest lightly on your frail shoulders;
I see
deep furrows and fine lines that crisscross your face
the sharp-as-paper-edge temper
your lack of patience with fools
that blunt directness of your cryptic, barked replies
the arms you’ve earned, from a life honestly lived
I learn
That 9 to 5 is not mandatory
That putting up, adjusting, making do is not mandatory
That it is completely possible to hold a point of view, which is entirely your own
To fight an unfair fight without bitterness corroding
To wait for the end with composure
Nothing is mandatory.

Thoughts on listening to Mahasweta Devi (84), the feisty fiery brilliant author- activist, at Prithvi y’day.

Today we are 86.
:)