Ma would have said eyes and no eyes....what a ruckus I create sometimes, from oversight or sheer stupidity.. the new Sony WX80 wasn't charging, a charger wasn't available online... ordered a new battery instead... that's when I notice I have been inserting the battery incorrectly....so so silly...offers food for thought, how many challenges in our lives arise from such instantaneous reactions??

Yesterday something good happened after a really really long time…a project got returned with corrections… relief—I had forgotten what that emotion felt like, what being on the right track again felt like. I know there's tons of work ahead, this is only the starter.. yet.

The young girl starts singing crystal clear, falters a bit.. stops almost in tears... asks the judges if she can begin again...The song is Begum Parveeen Sultana's Hamey tumsey pyaar kitna...

She is admonished go ahead, sing the next line but no restarting and what a voice... enough to pull scabs from long healed wounds-- WONDERFUL!

 Last night I chanced upon a ghazal reality show on DD National-- Main khayal hoon kisi aur ka, mujhe chahta koi aur hai-- very good, excellent singing and strong judges in Kavita Krishnamurthy, Devika Pandit and Prof. Brelvi.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhopal/reality-show-on-classical-music-ghazal.html

Only DD National can offer such content for the soul.

Very difficult to put the experience of the last few days into words. One cannot.  I do not have the vocabulary, and the essence is so rich. But yes, I did feel blessed and I did feel connected to the greats from the ages past. Much gratitude, a life time debt. 

So much still to learn. Also how deceptive appearances can be, when someone looking so simple holds a doctorate in Sanskrit…

Also heard this OUTSTANDING traditional band- dhol tasha band-- that accompanied the procession:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWzmAlI15Po

EK Cup Chya. One more solidly good Marathi film watched, thanks to DD Sahyadri.  

A bus conductor  who lives in a village gets a light bill for 73,000… and fights back. (I got up and immediately switched off the fan.)The three fourths I saw was very good, the rest of it must be as well—but it was getting late. How is it that Marathi movies get made on sensible budget with a solid storyline?

http://in.reuters.com/article/2009/11/26/idINIndia-44262920091126

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ek_Cup_Chya 

So tomorrow it is; the big day or the bad day or whatever, though the poll verdict seems to be clear. Sadly.

With massive chunks of people not being able to vote, how can this be the mandate of the people?

Now we have 5 years to get our names on the lists.

If its any consolation the markets have been hyper, stocks long asleep, the sleep of decades of a drugged Cinderella, have suddenly jolted awake.

I shall remember what they say about "Raja, vaja, vandra"-- Kings, harmoniums, monkeys, they work as long as they do, and then they don't.

Oh well.

What intense energy, how many dreams in that room… On Sat. I attended a Q&A with Lunchbox Director Ritesh Batra, organized by Dear Cinema. To say it was amazing does not do justice to either Mr. Batra’s generous, freewheeling responses or the range of questions. Few things have stayed with me—begin with the character… and writers block is sheer nonsense…the sheer fussiness involvement with the script...What also came across was the importance of being networked… somewhere I also noticed I was almost the oldest person in that room.. somehow a liberating feeling, nothing to prove… I can mess up as much as I like and it simply doesn’t matter

Some neat links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lunchbox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o4woxWWk_4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H61lZokeB7o

The new Nokia was on silent. Which means I missed or messed up the calls from the writer of the book I transl. He doesn't care for the tx, the treatment. AFTER I filled in one notebook in neat handwriting.... We shall see what happens… but over the weekend I read a book after ages, relishing the written word and the heft of the book, the luxury of looking outside at sunshine on green and doing nothing...

Three hours of the young girl’s first-ever dance recital. Four, the audience restless. What  adrenalin must be pushing her on, each step perfect? The performance includes a piece dedicated to her God, who is different than the Gods prayed to at this event, a  specially composed and choreographed number. Later I see her God too propitiated at the altar on stage.... Only in India…

At a meeting, people step up and share their lifechange stories. No Gods here, only chanting, some as much as ten TEN hours a day. Not my way, but to each his own... Only in India…

At the temple I go to every week, preparations are afoot for a 4 day-religious ceremony to commemorate 5 cr renditions of the 1000 names of Lord Vishnu… momentous… all mistakes we make will accrue to him, and all the punya ours to keep, Guruji says... I'm  speechless. Only in India…

Sunday with a religious OD.

“Kaifi and I… “ watched this play at Prithvi on May 1. Packed audience, encore audience etc etc. Commemorating May day. Also 22 years at work here. Twenty two.  Something nudged me in the polished, flawless performance. Something itched, and throttled me by the collar. Once, there was personal honesty and personal integrity and personal values.Now there is bottomline. so where did "I" go?

Serendipity… how lucky can one get!  Stepping out early for a tree walk on Sunday morning, I’m one of the privileged few to chance upon TONS of books someone is just giving away… mostly spiritual, but some not. What a collection! Wonder who this person is, so well read, so evolved. But giving books away! Now I have enough material to keep me engrossed for the next decade… :)

Dharavi Nature Park, or DNP….Even though it was HOT, what lovely trees, shrubs, herbs… old friends Brahmi Ashwagandha Rauwolfia  nudged me on about long-forgotten pharmacognosy texts…but encroachment by the slums that line the park continues, unchecked.

Oh yes, we have a pigeon birdling on the window sill! What magic, to see the change from perfect oval egg to chirping trembling mass. Yesterday it/she was all quiet, having moved from the aloe vera pot that it had earlier claimed as home.. checked a few times, from a distance of course, to see it was still alive. I guess this will take time...

It takes someone's loss, impending loss to show you how minimal, how insignificant your own trouble is, even if it aint going away someplace. Impending loss that, but of course one will battle, one will use up all the tools, with all that modern science etc etc offers, knowing, knowing the science, knowing the odds yet…Life…and life is so beautiful…sunlight,  a radiant halo around a sprig of buds and blooms, and you stop and stare and wonder why you never saw this before. And you wonder about loss, and the cost one pays incrementally over the years with cumulative loss, this one and that one, and that one, quite different but quite the same, and after a time one can react, feel no longer but just shrink, bow in  stunned silence.

PQ asked for photos of the park, so here we go...

orange copper pod sandwiched by bakuls

magnificent raintree... blooms too fine to be seen

fresh leaves on the kailashpati

kailashpati... what a heavenly scent

apta... bauhinia leaves

stylo! HK orchid , Bauhinia

tivar... a carpet of fine blooms underfoot

glorious gold

sita ashoka

the first amaltas or laburnum

persian lilac... delictate and poisonous as hell

amla!

the first gulmohur

our own problems shrink to insignificant.
in the park where i walk, angelika  walks too. sort of.
she's five.
she walks few hesitant steps.
and plops down, all tears.
her father and grandfather are coaxing her to walk. 
everyone tries to help. make her stand waist deep in sand at the beach.massage her legs. do this, do that.
now it is everyone's problem. a grandmother holds her hand and runs with her.
today she walked a great deal, fifteen steps, all alone.
everyone's happy.
yes, I can put foot in front of foot and walk. I can do that.

the Tivar are in bloom now, a fine carpet of red blooms beneath your feet.

Yet.
the copper pod trees have flared into bloom. All at once. As if someone put on a giant switch.
Despite all.
My grief claws about for a language.

I've just called off plans to go trekking  the next week.
Sorry GHNP, some other time -- if the fates will it. Else my backpack was packed and raring to go.
Given current exigencies, this decision was called for. Why handover someone a stick to beat you with?
Each day brings in new surprises. I could use a few good ones.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.

My warm, lively friend Guilie—who I first “met” on Practice group at IWW where all good things happen-- well, Guilie tagged me on her blog. 

These are questions re my writing process, and I’m being as honest as I can.  To begin with, the word “process” makes me squirm…I don’t think I have a process per se. Writing for me is like whittling away at the words, revision after revision, a chip there, a  bit of sandpapering there…

What are you working on?

Two things, actually.  Or maybe three. I put writing in two boxes—translation and “own”

Box One currently has the longer term stuff, the translation of an important memoir, a tome in two parts, where I’ve finished the rough, handwritten word by word draft of HALF the book. I need to finish this as quickly as I can, but typing it out, making changes as I go along, is going to take what it takes. Meticulous, laborious WORK—but it chronicles an important decade in my country’s history AND I quite enjoy the challenge of a personal narrative as versus the fiction I’ve translated before. Plus this is a paid assignment, and cash appeals to the Gujarati in me. I also need to revisit Bharat Trivedi’s verse and translate the ones left out from the book—Since that’s the only way we can reach poetry journals.

Box Two, labeled OWN, has three things primarily. One is the PRACTICE group stubs.  This is something I MUST do, maybe two times a year I allow myself a pass. Most of these are “inspired” from the newspaper. The second is working and reworking (after rejections) longer stories built from these practice stubs. The third, which I should do more of, is writing poems and CNF.

As you can guess, I’m  perpetually trying to balance out Box ONE and Box TWO.  That I write Indian English, that I write sentence fragments and have the attention span of a frisky sparrow, doesn’t really help.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

Box One: Not too many people work on translations from Gujarati. For translations I prefer to work on one author, one poet … instead of flitting about from one masterpiece to another. This gives me a certain comfort with style and nuances, a sixth sense of sorts that lets me go beyond the printed word.

Box Two is mostly newspaper-inspired and Mumbai-inspired. Not sure how it is too different, other than the form—mine are short stories, even the murders are crisp and elegant.

Why do I write what I do?

Box One: Because I can. Also because the next generation cannot or will not read Gujarati, perhaps this is the only way to preserve our heritage.  Most of this work has been gratis—only now bits of it are paying off.

Box Two: I don’t know. Sometimes stories nag you, itch till they’re out in B&W. Also, because as I invest time in BOX ONE, this tiny voice prods me—so what did you do for YOU?

How does my writing process work?

Box One: Translate by hand, word by word.  Type out, changing, whittling as you go. Print and revise. Incorporate Author comments and revise. For a book, send final version to ALICE, get her comments, revise.

Box Two: Read newspapers, keep a radar scan watch for anything that seems unusual. Cut pages that seem interesting. Save news from online city papers. WRITE a PRACTICE stub with suitable story. Extend stub. Polish, sub, rework, sub… endless cycle.

Her mail said she was a sr. citizen, it didn’t say she was a swimmer, techie, a trekker (Everest base camp, Kailas Mansarovar). Age just got trashed. Inspiring.

“must notice the small miracles in my day….”  What a thought, first thing in the morning…. 4.30 AM. A cuckoo trills in the distance.

Iyer aunty’s insistence that I watch this TV discourse first thing in the morning… means I now get up at a decent hour. No more 7.30 AM sluggish wakeup.

Bauhinia. Nagkesar. Kailashpati. Blooms not as profuse, but I take delight in showing them off. Sunlight showers on green. On my skin.  I think of the wonder of energy, of nourishing food and GI villi...and the magic of ATP= ADP +P.

HERE IT IS!

DRUMROLLLLLLLL …

FIRST, THE SHORT VERSION …

Harper Collins (ahem!) has just published a condensed ebook of my forthcoming translated NOVEL,

* Hon’ble Minister Jagubhai*

http://www.amazon.in/Honble-Minister-Jagubhai-Harper-21-ebook/dp/B00J3T46G8/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395660491&sr=1-3

http://tinyurl.com/pdxgrud

http://www.whereiwrite.org/index.php (via shoeboxdwelling)

Suddenly my couch perch with large window does not look too bad.

Also:

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/

The heat is building up terribly this year, the park is drying up much quicker than in previous years. This morning I noticed fruit on the Midas tree – a tree that I walk under every morning, but eyes and no eyes! The Kailashpati are a beauty too. Very sad re the snow and hailstorm in interior Maharashtra... horrible losses.

RIP, Mr. Khushwant Singh. The end of an era.

I remember reading *Train to Pakistan* in secret, class 9, was it?