So what do you do?

At best it’s patch work, a hotchpotch of ragged defenses that you tack together. A, yes; but possibly B as well, don’t you think, you say as you try veer the talk to directions more propitious, but you’re by far too clever. No facades, no charade, as real as real is, but its your sense of humor to appeal to.

Perhaps.

Elphinstone:

Its been a busy time. Dashing about two cities, just glimpses remain. Trying to cook and keep a basic meal for the days I’d be away. The middle aged British lady waiting in the queue for a security check, completely frazzled and desperately needing to talk, getting back after the flight she was on was diverted since she needed to be hospitalized, she was in hospital for five days and doesn’t know what for. The crisp voice of the pilot saying that the temperature on arrival in Delhi was four degrees, which is quite a bit away from Mumbai’s chill ten The young couple on a tour of the cold hill stations,Kulu and Manali all prepared with woolens and suchlike,waiting for their first glimpse of snow. The roads and trees which are as beautiful as ever, just hints of a regal past in places, and one envied the tremendous space they seem to have spare. The meetings which were like any other, but lunch that was served on the lawns, freezing despite sunshine. Being told you’ve been overbooked on the return trip, and pulling rank even though that is something you really don’t like to do. Returning to find that a wicked man has held a giant of a city to ransom. Walking home past rows of downed shutters. Leaving for town really really early the next morning to notice that the city is back on its feet again. Hint of news and learning to say thank you, Mister God. Realizing how beautiful a art deco spire and a silhouetted branch seems against evening ink dusk.

The markets are sloshing with red ink. Benumbed and indifferent, I shrug at whizzing bank headlines, what’s eight billion or ten, give or take a few? A great IPO fizzles out to nothingness and is withdrawn petulantly. Then, another, even the Burj builder has no takers, not at these levels. These are GOOD issues, not your fly by night z listers. I watch that kid of a day trader juggle non stop calls on his cell and blackberry, his face grimmer with every call; three years, I tell him, before it looks up again. Pity he’s never seen the way the markets were a decade ago, pity he’s never been burnt, but there’s a first time to everything, and you may as well lay back and enjoy it.

Yesterday all my silent cribbing about a train journey that took long disappeared in a whiff, when I talked to this young girl whose shift would begin at eleven in the night, selling credit cards to customers in far away lands, so as to support herself through college, a masters degree and hopefully a better life. The city does that, shuts you up and stops you short.

This is interesting for the rough edges and polishable instances, a Gatsby redux: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/books/review/Greenberg2-t.ht

Colors.

It’s a game I often play with myself, traveling to town.
This time too, I have fun.
The colors of the bangles glinting in lazy sunshine, from the huge box that the bangle-seller is carrying on his shoulder.
The trains are wearing a new color, a smart gray- red.
The brilliant blue on the Reliance Mobile Ad kiosks.
So that’s three.
And sun-dappled stone of Elphistone College, what color is that?

I went for the translation workshop over the weekend.
The translation workshop is part of the kalaghoda festival. Read more about it here.
I was there to learn what exactly I was doing wrong.
And learn what I could do to get someone to read.
Even the rejection letters are dust coated now.
The group allowed for personalized attention.
I shall forever be indebted.
I learnt about possibilities.
Now to figure out how to write a synopsis.

Elphistone is majestic. The corridors echo with history.
A plaque in the foyer lists distinguished alumni. Such as JN Tata. Bhulabhai Desai. Setalvad.
A list of Principals of the college goes back to 1845.
The Department Archives, Govt of Maharashtra is in the wing opposite. Or so I learn, just walking past, for a look.
Unsettling, somehow, to see documents with the Peshwa’s seal.
And letters that Subhash Chandra Bose wrote, and Gandhiji wrote.

And the street fair?
A riot of colors, noise- excitement, great installation art, and too many people.
What color is that?

Looking at the mountain
Looking at the sea...
Autumn evening.
- Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827)

This morning I’m delighted to host a book tour with Dr Eric Maisel, psychologist and creativity coach, who’s just published a book on Creativity and Depression, Van Gogh Blues. My introduction to Dr Maisel was through his newsletter, creativitynewsletter, on yahogroups.
I shall be completely indebted to Phoebe, the gutsy protagonist of some of the parables, for guiding me through a maze of words, ever- so-gently.
I confess I haven’t customized this, with my internal editor on high, I got myself into a complete frazzle about my questions on culture and creativity, the late bloomer and creativity, self doubt and expression, and latent talent.

INTERVIEW

Q: Eric, can you tell us what The Van Gogh Blues is about?

E: For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.

To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.

Q: Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, we are looking at existential depression? Or might that person be depressed in “some other way”?

E: When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play. But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life.

Q: So you’re saying that a person who decides, for whatever reason, that she is going to be a “meaning maker,” is more likely to get depressed by virtue of that very decision. In addition to telling herself that she matters and that her creative work matters, what else should she do to “keep meaning afloat” in her life? What else helps?

E: I think it is a great help just to have a “vocabulary of meaning” and to have language to use so that you know what is going on in your life. If you can’t accurately name a thing, it is very hard to think about that thing. That’s why I present a whole vocabulary of meaning in The Van Gogh Blues and introduce ideas and phrases like “meaning effort,” “meaning drain,” “meaning container,” and many others. When we get a rejection letter, we want to be able to say, “Oh, this is a meaning threat to my life as a novelist” and instantly reinvest meaning in our decision to write novels, because if we don’t think that way and speak that way, it is terribly easy to let that rejection letter precipitate a meaning crisis and get us seriously blue. By reminding ourselves that is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us. Having a vocabulary of meaning available to talk about these matters is a crucial part of the process.

Q: How does The Van Gogh Blues tie in with other books that you’ve written?

E: I’m interested in everything that makes a creative person creative and I’m also interested in every challenge that we creative people face. I believe that we have special anxiety issues and I spelled those out in Fearless Creating. I believe that we have a special relationship to addiction (and addictive tendencies) and with Dr. Susan Raeburn, an addiction professional, I’ve just finished a book called Creative Recovery, which spells out the first complete recovery program for creative people. That’ll appear from Shambhala late in 2008. I’m fascinated by our special relationship to obsessions and compulsions and am currently working on a book about that. Everything that we are and do interests me—that’s my “meaning agenda”!

Q: What might a person interested in these issues do to keep abreast of your work?

E: They might subscribe to my two podcast shows, The Joy of Living Creatively and Your Purpose-Centered Life, both on the Personal Life Media Network. You can find a show list for The Joy of Living Creatively here and one for Your Purpose-Centered Life here. They might also follow this tour, since each host on the tour will be asking his or her own special questions. Here is the complete tour schedule. If they are writers, they might be interested in my new book, A Writer’s Space, which appears this spring and in which I look at many existential issues in the lives of writers. They might also want to subscribe to my free newsletter, in which I preview a lot of the material that ends up in my books (and also keep folks abreast of my workshops and trainings). But of the course the most important thing is that they get their hands on The Van Gogh Blues!—since it is really likely to help them.

I’ve watched him the last few days, walking back home from work; not quite staring, but not looking away either. Wrinkled face, a little bemused, he’s seated on a raised platform in front of a shop, watching the night traffic go by. He’s completely incongruous in attire better suited to small village Kathiawad: a white turban, an overshirt called an angarkha, a dhoti, stick in hand. Better dressed to herd a flock of cattle home. But he’s seated by a display of scantily clad, perfectly-proportioned mannequins, with cascading curls, or straw colored blunt cut hair, watching a sea of Hondas and Indigos coast by, and the contrast is quite something.

sub's up on sixsentences.blogspot.com.
dated January 26.
the lastest one, lots and lots of commas. semicolons surfeit.
thanksforreading.

Where and exactly how do values, culture, upbringing shade our reactions? After weeks of detailed reviews which showed much work had been done on the backstory- on blasts, building crashes, land grabbing deals, mill redevelopment and suchlike- I finally mailed across the definitive Mumbai book. Sheer scale and fine writing, nothing that captures the pulse- the pace, the dirt, the grit and adrenalin, quite like this one does. But how will someone far older, genteel and refined, raised in another land, react to these lines? Particularly the lissome, completely fragile Mona Lisa Patel? So sad, so beautiful, and your heart could weep.

Maybe there is something to this theory of filling in the blanks: I build 300 word stories with grand scale, with cunning and deceit, criminal code complexity and conspiracy, where the girls are necessarily not nice, gentle and pretty; but not raving stock market maniacs, and the men handsome, completely complex and unpredictable, but it is the sheer scale that surprises me, not for us a domestic story littered with he said and she said’s.

Red splattered the street today.
A carnage, long foretold.

When US accounts for 50% world consumption
Decoupling is a joke.

An exit far past overdue.
When teenagers play the market for pocket money.

V & V's baby:

Your tiny face grimaces for a bit.
You redden and pout in your sleep.
In an entirely enviable manner unique to three-day old babies.
Miracle baby. That’s what you are.
Born after a decade of waiting.
Born after a decade of well-meaning questions, freewheeling advice and snide remarks.
Born after horrendous treatments for fertility.
Including an ectopic “mistake”, that was near-fatal.
After visits to temples, and special puja's.
Born after systems had stalled, hormones at a standstill.
That’s when Dr UJ stepped in.
Oils, baths, powders, and inhalations.
All herbal.
Horrible diet restrictions.
Over two years of almost daily treatments, normalcy was restored.
And then the “good news”.
Miracle baby. Perfect.
Ten litt-el toes and ten litt-el fingers.
Sonu.. chotu…baaibeegoogaa I mumble in a strange baby language.
Proof that stardust exists.
“ Make a wish upon a star”.
Your mom and I laugh and cry, remembering.
Will you ever understand what you mean?

sub's up, on sixsentences.blogspot.com.
thankyouthankyou.
pushy, ya?

Because its mostly run run run and work work work; because how one has discovered voila! measuring the spices overnight can help save precious kitchen minutes groggy-eyed the next morning isn’t rocket science; and because a newspaper- attack strategy that consists of ripping off select pages for “later!” isn’t exactly a poem with blues, sapphires, deep sighs and onyx; and because the book for the blog tour sits unread past chapter two; because there is a flurry of subs, crits and very interesting ppl in the news you could just spin a yarn about although 100 suits is way too much; because experts sometimes don’t know anything; that I have not been writing.

Khoya khoya Chand is Pakeezah on speed.

Beautiful. Etched. Grand. Cruel.

Dialogue very fine, fast and if you miss a subtle point or two, zoom, its gone!

A 2000’s treatment for a movie about the movie making business circa 1950’s.

This rediff review says it all. If a feel good film is what you were looking for- this is not it.

The characters sound true to life, delineated with just enough, nothing over the top. A sketch in a few swift lines and the rest of the colors you’ll fill in yourself; that fat financier, that aging diva, the hero recommending his current flame as the next Garbo, the starlet taking “everyone does this” shortcuts to becoming a star, don’t they exist even today?

Incredibly complex lifelines, too much at stake. Yet that sepia and lavender- lace feel to it.

Nothing is what it seems. Everyone and everything is dispensable.

Layered characters. Dig a little, and ” What is in it for me” is all that matters.

You think later about the characters, and their behavior, this is the way it is, and this is the only way it can be, there is no other alternative, not really given this background and this lifeline.

The music is period classical and tinsel town chorus classic, both apt in their own place.

Some of the scenes didn’t render too well on dvd, dark blobs on the screen, or a black surface for way too long.

Either you’d like this very much, or not at all.

Worries melt as its tangy contents dissolve the crisp wheat exterior to a soggy nothingness, and then the spicy red-hot concoction that you gulp works its magic, opening up long forgotten centers in the brain, demanding attention as the next serving is unceremoniously thrust upon you. Pani puri bliss: utter confidence and all’s right with the world.

On the movie agenda this weekend: The lost lost Moon (khoya khoya chand). That is, if I can find a reasonably priced dvd to rent. The man who owns the corner shop has a monopoly in the area- and he knows it. Yup, I’m cheap.

An NRI cousin is to visit over the weekend. I wish they'd stay put.

This year, I have a to-do list, somewhat.

What the hell is this?

Toshi Sabri, one of the twelve finalists on the Amul Star Voice of India show, was knifed near Andheri Station at ten in the night a day ago.

Crazy!

At that time, the place is buzzing with activity, buses double parking, people hustling autofellows to take them home, lots and lots of people trying to get home, by bus, car, walking, autos. It’s a sea of people. A crazy hullabaloo. Just mad noise everywhere. You get tired seeing the energy and constant activity.

How can this happen?

The specialist practices in the next suburb. Ghatkopar, or beyond the hills. Only, its not verdant hills anymore, just highrises and shanties and a road that climbs, curves and dips. The auto fellow takes a long road to take a short cut, a sleek new road with a flyover and a road that races past a lake and some fancy riverfront apartments with names of flowers. Only one crawls past in the most horrendous traffic jam, inch by inch, and a “ten-minute only” short cut takes one hour to navigate.

Saturday was interesting. As in a test of patience. After two false starts to register customer names, there is finally one more “ register or take your money back” directive from the government for people who put their money with mutual funds. I spent half the day trying to submit forms correctly filled in.

Watched Jab We Met (hilarious) and Laga chunri mein dagh (schizoid, the two halves of the movie don’t match).

Who is Phoebe?

Dr Eric Maisel, psychologist and creativity coach is a familiar name to some of you, I’ve written about his work and how it helped me-struggling with my internal editor, and feelings of complete inadequacy. Last year was particularly bad, but the poetry was good. At that point I stumbled upon the creativitynewsletter on yahoogroups, and read up most of the archives. Phoebe features in some of the tales, stumbling some, skipping some, and finding her way past issues all of us somehow stare out, deal with, or dive under.

I just received my review copy of “The Van Gogh Blues, The Creative person’s path through Depression”, well in time for me to read and prepare for the interview I will host here early next month. But I’ve said this before- it is as if someone took you by the hand and guided you past crevices and pitfalls, and told you steps 1-2-3 that would help, if you but look at them. You can hear Dr Maisel’s podcast, “How Purpose Heals Depression,” here.

Kenya looks bad. Brought back memories of the Asian exodus from neighboring Uganda in the early seventies, when Idi Amin’s overnight decree caused hundreds of Indians, mainly from my state Gujarat, to flee, with little more than the clothes they were wearing. Suddenly Kinshasa, Kampala and Nairobi became familiar places as my sleepy university town shook itself awake and found space for the returning hordes to settle in. And now its happening again.

It was a pleasure watching you navigate you taxi in the holiday traffic past Mahim, Panditji, yet another story of a runaway vagabond with a hundred bucks stolen from a village home, running away because a parent has been unfair; stretching the money till you can’t pay for even the cheapest streetfood, taking on odd jobs carrying cement-brick loads at a construction site, and then as the contractor notices your dedication, watching your luck turn, the quick rise to supervisor, after a few years changing over to the hotel field and learning about its pitfalls firsthand with one more inebriated Arab to entertain; the realization that this was taking you “ the wrong way”, the simple drivers job at a conglomerate chauffeuring the scions of industry and learning their whims and eccentricities, the forced retirement with pay post-strike, the nine months at the pretty star’s as you watched her metamorphose from refined to foul mouthed, and then your own taxi, short on earnings but high on self respect. Yes,your children go to an English school, you proudly tell me. What a contrast to the chiffon and diamonds clad hi fi lunging for the buffet tables later, yesterday evening.

A flock of black dots a peach sky.
It is colder than usual this morning.
Only a few have stepped out.
A bed of sunflowers slowly unfurls, lazily stretches to greet the sun.
A dewdrop is poised at the edge of a jade bamboo leaf.
Extravagant gold lights up the sky
A new year .

An enriching, meaningful new year!

May it bring much that is good and real in your life.

I shall put your lopsided smile in some story someday, the combat pilot’s sharp gaze that scans miles of empty desert, that completely shrewd infotech brain with a mass of equations and calculations, the smooth professional calm so essential in your current line of work; that, and the color of sunlight on straw bleached.

The old church is at the end of yet another winding lane past a row of spiffy office blocks and a valiant industrial estate for small scale units that hasn’t succumbed to the ever-increasing price of real estate. J says the altar features the same gold leaf design as it did two centuries ago. And you need special permission to reach the other church, now in complete ruins, in the hi tech IT export zone, but its supposed to be the oldest church in all Mumbai, from a time when it stood amongst verdant fields and rolling hills with tracks that meandered about. Some of the old village names exist, with lanes that are shortcuts that only old timers know, and you can find them if you look for them.
Strange how some signs remain even after so many years, and you can find them if you look close enough.

A Joyous Christmas.

Of the paper lamps with intricate cutouts outside the shops that I tried to photograph-three were file errors, one or two are ok shots, nothing like the lanterns dancing daintily in the wind.

Stepping in at the Sacred Heart Church to photograph it, light-festooned trees, lights on the high wall and all, I felt like an intruder and quickly stepped back. Today, I shall try again.

Yesterday’s reception was all aglitter and quite okay, we sat all huddled and put the parade of bling and nice intricately embroidered sarees and glitter thread salwars and flowing shararas into two simple categories, “liked” and “naah”. Got home midnight, but the traffic on the highway was horrendous.

P’s news left me shocked, perhaps ought to think of something apt from the scriptures to quote, light and dark.

So did the BJP win back home, nothing can stop this juggernaut now, and history will repeat itself as liberals shut up. Sad.

NYT story: The US has been funding our esteemed western neighbour’s onslaughts on India.
Blunders and wonders, and the world is indeed a strange place, oh my!

Merry Christmas!

Here is my sub!

So over the last few days you dissect the database into three; for cards, chocolates and calendars, and you wonder, how many are still there, how many survived, so quick shifting and merciless this industry is. And you look at the subprime tally, 10.8 billion at one prestigious firm alone, TEN POINT EIGHT billion and how much is that in rupees or God forbid, the lira or the Turkish currency before they knocked off the swimming zeros? And you wonder what the suits were up to, why no questions were asked, the Emperor has no clothes but are you blind, and someone forced to move, homeless in this mad weather, and like dominoes stacked to collapse, where what next.

Tis the season, but much too much.

sorry but I'm seeing double. am good.

abc's
A page comes back littered with pov’s. I didn’t know so many existed.
Now I don’t know what to do. Toss a coin. Yes, I said thank you.

Trying to think from an antisocial viewpoint is so bloody tough.
Manic, childhood trauma, race, revenge, superiority. Recipe for a madman-loner.
Yes?
Not if you’re the snook your nose and shrug-trot kind.

Terrific, the subs rate. Gush-write it, send it, forget it.

Maisel is so right.
That anchoring is addictive. Meaning- giving.
Like thirst.

Bright lights on the trees, ‘tis the season; a wonderland and wishes-come-true feel to it all.

Fluffy clouds a light streak on a pink peach dawn, sultry seagulls and crows wheel overhead. Clarity.

Taught Aunty y’day how to use rediff bol so that she, too, could send forth a volley of sms’s for free. Mildly amused. Patterns and circles, ring a ring a roses.

And I chanced upon a superb shop, a Spencers’, a real lifesaver.

Abstract, yes?

2 days of assertiveness training.
Maybe a better way of handling stuff than bottling it up, all pickled in brine, and then kaboom! one day with a well placed sock on the jaw.
:)
Perhaps.

Of course the words are dry as a stick, or like a photo, unidimensional; that’s because I am as well, and if you don’t like it you may as well lump it, I shall continue to write of bombs that blink at inopportune moments and casual rambles through century-old bazaars that become life-defining moments; for lissome lasses long-legged (but of course!), that cavort on sun-kissed beaches or sob away when you push a button, you may as well wait ‘nother lifetime. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Dilli shootout. A fourteen year old butchered in cold blood by his own classmates at fancy IB school. No more will we be able to scoff and say, “nah. Not in MY country.” What a licensed gun was doing stored around like chutta paisa I will never know, but then some ppl should have to take an exam to be parents.

Why is this happening?
Not my country. Not my faith. Yet.
The snow covered streets of Colorado are far from bustling Mumbai.
A schoolbus, for heaven’s sake a bus with kids, in the neighboring country to the west I refuse to call by name.
So completely random.
Tomorrow, my home state votes. No way must the genocide of 2002 be allowed again.

Slow down, the forecast says; slow down and listen to the earth move on its axis.
In peace.


She waits every Sunday evening, laptop on the ready. This is aunty, aka my ex-landlady.
Quick with questions, slow to get it.
Taking notes so that she remembers.
Photographs. Sepia. Color. Some thumbnail only.
Of her wedding. In all her finery, that fresh-as-mountain-dew look on her face.
Of the kids.
Of homes moved across the country, three kids in tow.
Of the son’s first birthday.
His graduation ceremony.
Of the son’s first frigate, and its not a toy.
Of the grandkids.
Day one, year one, scrawny baby.
Day one, year twenty-five, stethoscope in hand.
Quite a journey. So much to note.

The stream that flows past point A is not exactly the same that flows there five minutes hence. The current is different; the body of water is different, the ripples and eddies that the wind sketches on the glass-like surface is different. In the flowing, does the river bank change, whittled away bit by bit, deposits of silt, sand and grit carving its course?

Isn’t it strange how we need our little pats, that nice woozy rush of approval? In writing, or in any art, is there ever a dispassionate creator who works for himself alone? So, what does that make me- an exhibitionist? Would I like to write if I were never read? No, I don’t think so.

Damage control initiated back home, doors to be metal-welded shut.
Silver lining: No encroachments. Not as yet.

The translation contest results are out. Some other time, perhaps.
Any takers for a story?

So Omaha has another claim to fame in addition to Mr. Buffet.
What kind of rabid gun control law is this?

In the meanwhile, I stay calm and take it day by day.

It is horrible, this feeling of helpless nasty.
I watch distanced.
Once again, the doors have been sprung open.
Once again, the lock hangs useless.
There is nothing much left inside.
Don’t you know?
There was nothing much anyway, don’t you know?
The people, laughter and fistfights have long gone.
Just old photographs, scraps of paper with an awry doll or tree, some music notations.
Two chairs, dust covered, in case someday we need them. Now gone.
Old photographs, a visit to the zoo in kindergarten, Heidi, Churchill.
That LP record, gloated over, Karen or Olivia or some such.
The tanpura is overturned, broken.
Glassware still there, the domit ovenware-gone,but its users left a long time back.
Books, some brown paper covered, are scattered
Perhaps in poems and philosophy, there is nothing to steal.
The double lock leading to the kitchen is useless now.
They’ve broken the attic door, the fence spikes that it took three grown men to lift
Gone now.
Storeroom emptied out.
My grandmother’s brass vessels, or her grandmother’s, who knows
Awol.
It is horrible, this rage, and cussing the thieves to generations gone and hence.
A repaired door, but for how long?
Had I not chanced to visit, no one would have known.
Detachment, aloof is a coward’s fate.

What do you do when you get the words too late? That particular deadlines’ come and gone, but its only now that the words rush in a heady flurry, so you extricate them from their involved kaleidoscopic dance and string them into six lines or some such, ah this works, for me, it does, you tell yourself happily and pat yourself on the back.

For Monday’s return ticket, Air India in all its wisdom called, and offered to take me to Ahmedabad (2 hr drive, but in the opposite direction) in order to bring me to Mumbai (1 hr flt). Amazing.

I have a cold.
Pronounced gcholdachooo... ! if you please.
I speak and sing from a hoarse bass tone, interrupt every second word with a cough cough.

I'm learning new meanings of old values every day. A year or two ago, the reaction would have been "what??" shreiked, bold all caps underlined. This change, it is interesting to see.

The Great Big Indian wedding.
Song, drama, tears (some), laughter (lots). Somber. Fun. By turns.
The bride (my niece), and groom were from different parts of the country, different customs, languages.
The bride, your typical Indian immigrant to the land of greenbacks, was radiant.
The groom, also the typical Indian immigrant also to the land of opportunity, was handsome.
The festivities were spread over three days. I was there for a day.
Things I’m not likely to forget in a hurry:
The choir like quality of the manglashtak, a poem that is specially written for the occasion, and sung out by all the women invitees. With no prior practice, how is it that it sounds like a hymn, not one word out of tune? Superb soaring notes.
The setting sun, the lush green of the lawns and the Sanskrit hymns rendered by the flames of the auspicious fire, set against the stillness of the countryside around.
Hunting for a blade of a special kind of grass, because that’s the requirement for a custom from the groom’s family, of course this is the first anyone on this side has heard of it.
Shivering in the cold, grimacing at an art deco-ish waterfall, too cold and too hungry to appreciate the glow of light on gleaming water.Family of course eats last, once the guests are done.
Realizing that the next lot of nieces, kindergarten level and nursery rhyme reciting tots not so long ago, have grown into sharp and very pretty young women, oh so confident.
Catching up, all ears, with M’s post retirement success story, and how anything can happen.
Finally touching the feet of the big man, and expressing gratitude for all that he has saved the family from, and how some debts will never be repaid.

Hope I didn’t look too daft, all smiles; but what a marvelous accent, I caught one in five words this Brit spoke.

A day of surprises.
Of laughter. And giggles.
And not knowing quite what to say. Aye.
And family insider-stuff; kidding, teasing.
To top it all, NSDL sent an alert . I almost fell off my chair
Thank you.

Laughing over lunch why how a cycle rickshaw was the most appropriate mode of transport to get to work, and how one with a funny horn would be the best for me, gliding past the bmw's and cityz. This is the sillyness I want to remember even as I feel the moments trickle away, and does that make any sense.

What a nice man.
He’d come to take the rent cheques early morning because that’s the best time traffic-wise.
Now he could have just taken them, and said good day, thank you, but he didn’t.
He checked how we were doing, if we were happy, how many people ask you that?
“The place looks neat! Much brighter! What’s new?”
Nothing is new, perhaps the green curtains are, but I was all smiles.
Doesn’t take much, does it?

Delhi was ok, in a rushed way, which means I passed India Gate twice, looked on proudly at parliament house, enviously shrieked OMG the square footage! outside Lalu Prasad’s palatial mansion, and fretted over why or why not we ought to remain a democracy.

The flights were late. Both to and fro. I’m learning zen meditation, from three hours of idling on the tarmac waiting for takeoff. From waiting four odd hours amidst squabbling children, the CNBC newsfeed and announcements of delayed flights in two languages. Cussing silently till I meet the Tutsi from Rwanda who had his 18 person extended family decimated in an hour of carnage in 2002. It unsettles you completely.

(pics from the hotel where the conf. was held)

Am fine, all sunshine, bright and kicking just a little caught up.
Update in a while.

Two days away from my desk.
Delhi’s chill should be interesting.
I’ve forgotten what low temps feel like.
Today’s begun with a few unexpected boomerangs, like “oh, really?”
Part of the day.

I have a strange sense of disquiet about this year.
Not been able to trace the reason, though.
Spectator- quality distance.
Perhaps all one can do is to remain calm: physically, emotionally, spiritually.

This is what I did all morning.
Fought.
Over these lovely trees.
A green jade poem, in concrete Mumbai.
Cut, murdered brutally, for no fault of theirs.
I’ve run out of cuss words.

Saal Mubaarak!

That’s the wish for the new year. Vikram Samvat 2064, which begins today.
Back home we’d buy rock salt pre-dawn, and shiver in the dark chill as we’d hand over Rs.1.50 for good luck.
May the Goddess of Wealth and Good Fortune light your way!

lights

Diwali!

Voila! last evening, what did I find?
A huge garden with lovely trees and a paved walking track.
Purple orchid-like flowers, a GIANT aloe vera tree.
Lots of wild hibiscus. A jade bamboo grove.
Wild grass that bows to the gentle breeze.
Color. Laughter.
Yes!

From cream-silk covered hotel corridor walls, sepia portraits of kings and chieftains look down upon at the world at large.
Makes you stop a moment and wonder, about kings and the mad march of time.

Lights everywhere.
Pretty white and blue twinkling, lights. A magic carpet, glittering lights.
Gold and red strands of lights outside shops, homes, by roads.
Diyas with flickering flames, on doorsteps and parapets.
Lights that brighten up faces. Soften harsh contours.
Even the potholes and yesterday’s trash look pretty.
Why didn’t I see this before?

I wanted to write about the missing driver, the mad race to the airport in an auto, the almost-missed plane, and young child I saw by the flyover , propah school uniform and all, throwing up her arm in glee..
I wanted to write about the massive billboards with strange squiggly letters, not one hindi film, but all the diwali releases of telegu-dom, heroes and heroines one had never heard of, the poster design, quality was very very good…
About the innumerable gold shops (who ever buys so much jewelry?), with today’s price in blazing red, as if it were the stock market closing price
I wanted to write about the massive consruction, not one old building left standing on somajiguda circle, all chrome and glass, but they forgot to take the zig zag patterned wall down in places.
And lunch on a plantain left, with lots of tear-inspiring chutneys, at a place called just that, Chutneys.
And wheezing yellow buses jampacked, and how its impossible to cross the road.
And how lovely the city looks from the air, a carpet of bright lights on velvet.
But all I’ve been doing is chasing deadlines.
And signing cards for Diwali.
Tis the season.

Everytime I go to Hyderabad, I salute that ancestor in the 1800's who walked all the way from my distant dusty village to this strange city to make some kind of a living.
He was atleast spared the silly traffic, and humongous malls; walkers, beware!

A longer post later.

Quite thrilled! A friend taught me a new word today- ekphrastic!
What it is? A kind of poetry.Awesome, this take is, a kind of tangent, an interpretation of an interpretation, a leap into the blue!





Wheat field, Auvers, van Gogh


ekphrastic?
A salute, of sorts,
shorthand
words mumbled, scatter, trail away
a wish, a sigh
captured for a bit, edgy
black on white.
my eye, distanced, views
past life filters and bills
azure blue, spring sunlight, a field of green
in a grim city night.

Wheat field with crows, Auvers/ van Gogh.

This is so very beautiful.
If only they had the medication to administer. To shut the dark voices out.
All the lovely perazines and dols and the quetiapine and risperidone..
If only they had the insight.
Maybe he’d have been happier?
Maybe not.
Maybe the burnt sienna and awesome blues (just look at that sky!) jade greens and the generous mad shower of sunlight that dances through his work, wouldn’t have been seen, understood and mixed in the brain, for the transfer to canvas to happen.
Who knows!
“Here is an artist literally on the verge of taking his life and filled with a tremendous despondency yet he is still painting with lemon yellows, azure blues and emerald greens. We know that this is a man barely holding on to his will to live, yet he is able to separate his energy and focus on what he sees before him.”- Sotheby's official.

A friend on the writing list emailed me a book she'd written about recent Writing festivals in Australia.
Gratis, and lets forget about the dollars.
Sometimes unexpected kindness shakes me up.

These days I quick march home.
No, the autos wont go short distances.
So I quick march home.
Nice to get back into the pace. leff right leff right...
Better than shouting like a banshee and gesturing wildly.
Fun, high energy.

It is not that I have forgotten.
Looking around the mess strewn in the house the other day, I remembered your word for it, “pasara”, and sort of half smiled.
I still wake up early sometimes, see that still image, and then force-steer my mind to the science of it all, why the cells had to frenzy dance as they did.
I still look across to your cubicle with the Arabic-prayer-inscribed- corner, and wonder at the sigh like traces of consciousness we leave behind in places that have mattered.
Yesterday was a good day.
A marigold string across the doorstep.
Fantastic fabrics from fabindia, a different look for the sofa and dust covers, blue-green- rust, one light and one dark, that should last a decade.
Clothes for the season from Westside, should last me through a few more nieces’ weddings.
The evening arati at the garden, photographing the lights.
I think somewhere you would have understood.
Onward ho, and all that.
No, its not that I have forgotten.

There is another kind of spiritual courage as well, quieter and less celebrated, but just as remarkable: that of making each day, in its most conventional aspects -- cooking, eating, breathing -- an oblation to the absolute.-- Philip Zaleski, "A Buddhist From Dublin", New York Times, July 24, 1994

Dussehra tomorrow.
Rows of marigold-garland sellers line the roads, rich green-orange.
Just awesome rangoli designs in the office.
Looks like the girls on the two floors have tried to out decorate.
Lovely patterns with colored chalk powder.
With salt.
With petals.Lights.
Beautiful.

Navratri.
The festival of the Mother Goddess.
Nine nights of the garba.
With all the different steps, the three clap basic and the heench, the one and half step one, and then all the complex steps.
Never felt a connect to these days.
Maybe it was the two left feet factor.
Maybe because I was never allowed to go out, dancing all night, and return only pre-dawn.
Maybe the memories of not having enough, not the right clothes, rich flaring skirts in satin or silk with mirror work and embroidery, a new outfit for every one of the nine nights.
Lots of maybes.
So, I never felt a connect.
Returning from the old mill-lands (now reclaimed by glittering malls) the other day.
Past the strings of gleaming red and yellow lights strung on the roads for decoration.
Past the decorated stages, the pandals, with consecrated statues of the Mother Goddess.
Amusing to see how the city has modified the festival, so that what was a way of celebrating with origins in the neighboring state of Gujarat, has taken on big city colors.
In the city, they dance on modified Marathi numbers set to the garba beat.
In the suburbs, its disco- garba and disco dandiya all the way.
But as I said, its not me.
So I watch the lights that line long roads, and sometimes sing old garba songs that we learnt for school concerts.
Till yesterday.
Across the landing, the new neighbours are Mangloreans.
Last evening, I followed traces of a hymn in a strange language.
They had brought a statue of Mother Mary home, and were celebrating, and after a day, the statue would travel to another home.
Lights, candles, hymns, song, a clear voice straight to the skies.
Mother Goddess.
She has a strange way of getting to you.
I watched, bemused.

Walking into a completely empty home, realizing that the gutfeel “this is it!” when you saw it the first time, was not wrong. That yes, the palm fronds and the raintree that curves just so outside the window and tiny balcony look magical, as if you are sitting in a sea of green, a leaf curtain from the world outside.

More light. More space. More quiet. The sounds of kids playing cricket in the common garden, a swing squeaking as a kid waves to the skies. Suddenly you realize you miss the rattle of trucks, arbit horns and the wheeze of the buses on that concrete stretch outside your old home, and yes, that time you were almost run over, remember? That the peace is heavenly. That you can actually hear bird calls, fall asleep looking upon a single star in the sky out of windows you can keep open, are awoken by the first call to prayers that some muezzin sings far away, so crystal clear in the clean dawn air.

Unpacking. All that had been carefully packed a few short hours ago. Corrugated sheets, bubblewrap, newspapers, as the efficient packers went about their business. Amazing, but nothing’s broken.

Pictures on the walls, things in their place, more or less. Need an electrician, plumber, the phone fellow, and the tatasky fellow to do their part, I guess it will get done by and by.

I pray and keep my fingers crossed. I hope Papa will like this place as well, and not stay as withdrawn.

So much happened last week. Much too much. I just hope this one’s better.

I got them moving blues woes
The packers were in tday
The house is a mess. Tomrw the apt will be in a mess.
telephone, tatasky still to be sorted out.
Singing Ol Macdonald in a loop.

Dont feel Navratri-ish.

the things I’ll always remember:

the tone of your voice when I asked “you’re getting better bit by bit, right?” and you said “I really don’t know”

the roza you taught me to keep, and how the dawn to dusk fast gets easier with the years

how you’d chase people twice your age and get work out of the most reluctant

praying at Haji Ali and Mahim dargah when your elder one got better from that illness, we would have gone this once too, all the shrines, all the religions, that’s what I’d told you.

that run-in with homeland security over your prayer book

the toss of your head, that power walk

how we went to pier 29 just because even if all you have is four days in SF, you SHOULD see some America, even if you’re completely jetlagged at nine in the night.

Taking that tram back to someplace which seemed close to Union Square, but wasn’t, with all those funny ppl on the street,and how we rushed into a taxi.

How you found it difficult to speak for long the last time we met

sugar coated biscuits from your village, Murud, and the great time we had there; the dhow-like boat we took to the ancient fort on the island

How you’d dress up for events, parties, inaugurations, anything was a good enough reason to celebrate


(more)

I watch you wipe a stray tear.
You have your mother’s eyes
Curling eyelashes and brown
A scary calm, too calm for thirteen

I watch the droves, black veiled women
Their eyes bent with sorrow
A month of dawn to dusk fasts to purify
A month of pleas to bear His will

I sit by the shroud
white, the color of pain at rest
white the glee at first ever snow
white, the color of a cry to the skies

the mayyat: green-glitter, jasmine-lily bedecked
I yearn for that “let’s go!” echo
gray skies overcast
palm fronds standstill
watch this final goodbye

THE FINAL CALL
DEATH BE NOT PROUD/JOHN DONNE
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

In peace, IE.
Killed this morning. Wrathful cancer, heart damage.
Sons aged two and thirteen.

In peace, little one.
Sweet sunshine. Laughter gales.

a sub on sixsentences.blogspot.com

YESTERDAY WAS GANDHI JAYANTI
Dharasana. Bardoli. Chauri- Chaura. Noakhali. Dandi.
I turn the yellowing pages, the leaves falling out of the binding at places, pages fragile and tear at touch. A word cloud rushes, overwhelms.
How did he do it? A simple man, not particularly charismatic unless you call that toothy smile charismatic, tone high pitched and insistence on frugality, how did he hold a country, so many diverse interests, tempers and egos together and charge it to seek the freedom that was rightly its? A sharp negotiator, a great reader of humans, tactful when he wished to be, blunt at times, only too human with his temper.
Such a simple path, “No, you can’t do this.”
Satyagrahis, people like you and I, filled up the jails at his call. Even if their lands were forfeited, jobs lost, years in their lives lost.
The best minds in the country prone to “ jailitis”, a horrible affliction where even the calmest and most placid of men flared up or turned irritable at a whim.
So many that the jails were overfull, so many that had to be divided up into three categories, class A, B, C.
And the elite A class prisoners gladly opted for the worst, C class food.
How did he do it? Tell an entire mass of people, to get up and go for what was rightly theirs. Without violence or untruth.
Who knew that the best way to stop riots was not tear gas and the police, but going out on the streets and lending a patient ear, a big heart.
Negotiating calmly with the British, empire builders and statesmen, on his terms. Even if it meant attending the Round table conference dressed in the poor man’s garb, as equals, on his terms.
How did he do it?
I guess we shall never know.
The strangest feeling in my throat. I guess I’ve been over-reading.
A salute to the Mahatma, on his 138th birthday.

Is it possible to scowl at the computer all day?
Yes.
That’s what I did yesterday, fingers inches away from the delete key.
Feeling awful, inadequate, irritated, put-upon, by turns.
By evening things were somewhat better.
Somewhat.


Italian sauce; the recipe said, but by the time the cutting out and adding to was done with, it was something else all together, not bad.

Palm leaves against gold, a stroll around the block, watching the changes that have crept in over the time we’ve been here, the morphing from ignored suburb to prime commercial space; a prelude.

A sub on sixsentences.blogspot.com
yahooooooooooo!

Calypso beat.
Pulse staccato, steel.
Primitive
some half-forgotten trait.
Maddening.
You rush to the door.
Bewitched. Stand still. Your blood sings.
They’re taking the idols for immersion
With due ceremony. Colors.
Deserting you like this to the waters? As the skies thunder? From dust to dust?
Why?
Tears. Grief.
The drumbeats fade.
I can never do that. Never.

(Y'day was Visarjan, the last day of the Ganpati festival when the idols are taken to the sea and immersed)

INDIA WONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Lines.
At six thirty in the morning, as the first birds begin to chirp and the rustic milkman makes his round with rattling cans.
Long winding lines, making their way past three suburbs. So if the line began in Lalbaug, it ended in Ferbunder, past Byculla and Chinchpokhli, and whoever knew where these places were till now?
Lines of the devout, waiting for a glimpse of the King of Lalbaug, a statue of Lord Ganpati, the one who grants boons. Looked like all the roads led to the suburb of Lower Parel yesterday pre-dawn.
I left for this distant suburb at 5.30 am, taking the 5. 42 slow (commuter) train, but not early enough, it looked like.
Winding lines, two and three strong in places, ran past old mills, now long shut. With names like “New Bombay cotton mills” and “ United India Mills”. Closed down, gray weathered concrete. Lush green where the natural vegetation has returned with a vengeance, taking back the land, lush overgrown and rich, half-close your eyes and you’d think you were in a forest. Some mills already reclaimed, tall towers with glass fronted penthouses and a clubhouse, gated security. Some in process, the land leveled, awaiting contruction, but the old walls still stand with padlocked steel doors to the ration shop. One mill valiantly struggling under govt management, a list of demands of the union on the wall outside. Whoever knew all this was here.Typical squat and slanting-tiled roof apartments of the mill workers, holding on to scare real estate, next door neighbors to luxury towers.
So you wait, making small talk with the strangers in the queue. It rains, and umbrellas spring open. Hordes walk past looking for the end of the queue. Did you look so surprised shocked when you walked past, on and on, you wonder.
After two and half hours, you’ve crossed one lane, step by step by step. Only to realize that the line has suddenly become longer from the middle. That it has become much longer than it logically should have, and changed directions so it winds twice over.
Sorry, Mr God.
I have an hour-long ride home.
I’d like to go and cook rotlis for lunch, if you’d excuse me.
Next year perhaps.

The stern, completely simple and blunt voice speaks out from closely typed, yellowing pages, in five volumes that document recent Indian history. Events that have been conveniently forgotten,”oh, is this what happened” you say; events tucked away under the bright lights of a shining mall and fifty sweeping flyovers. Life impacting. Am honored to be able to read, regardless of who works on the project.

the lease is done, one arm and a leg, but its done.. phew.
Bless.

Strands of lights from the bus window, twinkling red-yellow-green against the dark. Reflected a million times in the lines of raindrops on the glass, that you watch with halfclosed eyes.
Gratitude for all there is, and isn’t. Hypnotic drum beat, cymbals and fireworks, the fifth day of Ganpati pujan, enroute to the sea for immersion. Do even the divine have goodbyes in their scripts?

Silver
The week had good parts and the bad. Sometimes they morphed, sometimes you sing Lucile, you know how the lines go, lucillllllllle?
Like missing the train on Monday last.
You watch fumbling, open mouthed as the last compartment vanishes into the distance, in despair wring your hands, scramble up and down several flights of stairs huffin puffin, queue up with five minutes to spare for the next train and emerge victorious with a ticket. A second class ticket, standing room only for two hours and some, in the corridor by the open door, watching the world go by.
And:
*Vasai creek is a silver sheet early morning, dotted with fishing boats
*Sunshine showers generous on a field in green, a benevolent drenched yellow rain past jade black green
*Mist lifts off a hill dreamily, curling at the edges, this is the side the sunshine hasn’t reached as yet, and you can just about see the edges of the hill there.
*Watch a therapist with miraculously clean hands do emergency sujok on a co-passenger, and then she talks about sadhana and priorities, and you’re beginning just to understand.
*Being irresistibly drawn to a banyan tree on a back road, a track to nowhere, only to find a prehistoric site, fluttering flag and all, the silence of the fields and a distant bird-call.

Like missing the train on Monday last. And waiting for it endlessly on wednesday. And finishing off office stuff that needs to be done on the rest of the days, not to mention swirling dust storms in the margins that you try and duck, no, not my battle.
Am back.

busy, but good.
As soon as I can.

I wanted to take the greens, all the shades, light dark almost yellowgreen and greedily drink them in, the sap running along my veins, feel the gritty texture of the earth on my skin and look up to a blue sky fluffy with clouds and count them, blow at them the way a child blows bubbles. The black road was surprisingly smooth, for a non-important back road joining two non-important places in the state, too good for a tar road, as it wound its way languidly past two-shop hamlets, a primary school in pale blue with its gates wide open, a translucent pond with lotus blooms and a white temple with a fluttering flag in the distance, fields with straight furrows, a donkey or two. I wanted to take the greens and drink them in, instead I went shutter happy. The road, the road through the windshield in focus out of focus offcentered, the roadside, tea stalls, a sundry buffalo or two, a kid by an oversized cycle who toothily waved goodbye.

It doesn’t need an announcement or crowds or followers, I notice, as I watch the ascetic blend with the people mass, a certain bearing, aloofness hints at a different order of priorities, a watchfulness that preempts any new karma from being created even as the backlog is dutifully, systematically, sorted and settled.

A train waits at a platform. A ride you’ve taken every weekend for a year, a decade ago, till you were brain-dead and confused coming and going. Bleary eyed, you walk to the end of the platform where the AC coaches ought to be, but they’re not there, promoted now to a better spot. Perhaps the movement of a compartment from its customary spot means something in the metaphysical interpretation of things.

Pleasantly surprised at the café coffee day outlets on the platform, surprised to encounter smart design that late in the night.
On my To-do list, one more: touring.
Oh well!
But I can blog, and sub and crit to my heart’s content, so there.

Logically, cinderella’s shoe can’t fit, the foot’s morphed, well not fractured you know, (fractured reminds me of 2003, and algorithmsyouwhatchacallit and that’s a totally different substory, and lets not get into branching substories like my mother would, she was SO good at meandering off, and then THAT one would have another branch and so on and you wouldn’t quite know, like the pied piper perhaps, what you began with); so yes, not fractured, not misshapen, not Chinese petite bound, not enormously large storytale giant-like either so there, but maybe dainty, I like dainty, it has a sweet lavender cut-glass and lace feel to it; so her foot has morphed the event (or nonevent, depends) was life altering ergo the foot, and she’s trying for size huffin puffin but it slips off and yet she tries, and of course it hurts, pooah dear and when will she ever learn to shrug and say humbugbobsaget logic.

Woke up with hangover quality blues y’day, energy drained, brain dead pathos. Ran into this group of hmm economically disadvantaged seven or something year olds, outsized hand me down clothes, lean, hair-slicked, some had no slippers, but they were all high energy, a smile-chatter, "salman khan dhishkaaon! this car JUMPED over the bus", never have I heard a movie scene being discussed with such passion; instant grin on my face.

No updates. You want the 1998 set of reader’s digest? No? How about ten years of navneet samarpan? September housecleaning on, and on.

And as we take this misshapen thing; for want of a better word let’s call it that, shall we, and turn it around and throw it on the floor to see if it bucky-ball like bounces or breaks shatters with an eerie whistle into zillions of glistening shards, or what (it could well have been a “or what” for all you know!), and after all the to’s and fro’s and infinitesimal analysis, I guess that’s it, as we sit in a silence not entirely uncomfortable, and I realize you know things I’d never tell my mother, either of them.

Can you tell a story in just six lines?
Try! Not easy.
sixsentences.blogspot.com

Also, that eternal day job versus the call of the muse debate, day job or writing all day. Just check the record six-hundred thousand plus comments. I’m still reading them.

No other updates till they're done.

It is not a language that I read aloud in, usually.
So the words jumble up in places, speed up at will, and come to a sudden halt.
Much like the train that runs to my village back home, stop, move, stop.
It is quite funny once it stops being irritating.
That was on the first day.
The second day is surprisingly smooth. Jet smooth.
A transference of the goodness and strength from the book? I’m still surprised.


The hill in the distance is covered in darkest green, veiled over with whiffs of cloud , you draw a sharp breath and remind yourself, yes, this is Mumbai.

Yesterday L, a colleague, handed me a book, memoirs with Vimala Thaker.
Profound, he said.
It was written in high caliber gujarati that had me asleep in ten minutes.
Totally profound.

Quite muddled about floor raises, square feet, carpet area, super built up, broker run-ins, and weird weird wayward cell counts, strange how everything has to happen together, but ok otherwise. I thought I was clueless, but seems like no one quite knows, not even the top man in India…These days I wake up super-early and fret.
Will catch my breath in a while.
But ok, am doing what can be done.

It is better that he remain nameless, this Mr Shah from Parla W.
Read this morning in yesterday’s Mumbai Mirror (which is appropriate to read only in that mad morning rush), about a motorist samaritan. He commutes from Parle to town, yes all that distance, everyday.
And while he drives into town in the morning he hands traffic police constables on duty, chocolate bars.
When he returns home in the evening, he hands out snack packets.
Each signal, each man on the way. As a gesture for keeping the city safe, snarl free.
BRAVO!

It’s Raksha Bandhan on Tuesday.
I sent out letters wishing sundry cousins and cousin-brother-in laws, just in time.
Used to be a time we’d use hand made paper to make cards, and carefully trace out the words with a nib dipped in red paint, on uneven fibrous background in cream, deck it up with a border and a mirror-sequin or two.
Was tempted to send a cryptic typed note, refrained.
We’d wait for the celebratory lunch at my uncle’s, the family gettogether with everyone in their festive best, and all the talk and teasing. I still have some books I was gifted then. This used to be “entertainment”.
The best thing about sepia is the feel-good factor.
The shops are lovely, decorated with lights and strands of rakhis displayed on poles, in so many colors, designer rakhis with beads, decorations. A tree outside a shop is strung with lights, glamorous against the still black of the night, and you forget the jostling crowds and traffic.

Nothing remarkable happened yesterday. Words, Casablanca and a food experiment with palak paratha and mint coriander chutney.
Yes, the movie was from a flimsy street-bought CD someone had given me a long time back. I had not expected it to work at all, so it was a surprise. How the brain craves these “oh really!” upticks.

The sea glitters as you soar past the flyover that just touches marine lines when it ends.
A solitary boat bobs in the shimmering peach and blue waters off Haji Ali. A bird, perchance a seagull flies off the oriental pergola of sagar mahal, which stands sharply etched against the colored waves and the far horizon. Ah life!

For long, you’ve been uneasy, watching the weight whittle even as you ply him with simple, nutritious home cooked food and soups. For every drop in the levels, you’ve added on kilos, fretting. Should know one way or another by the weekend. Is knowing better? I don’t know. The doc is the absolute best in this area, about 60 people from distant towns were waiting in the consulting room. So many people, so many problems, one life!

The mail is addressed to Austere. Seeker.
(Another austere)
It has three tickets from Delta. Return tickets to the US.
Mumbai- NY- SF- NY-Mumbai.
Someone is all set for a three-month vacation.
I spend all evening trying to find out a person with my name in Bellaire, Tx.
End up finding 2 more Austere. Seekers. But not the right one, not yet.Suddenly makes you wonder about parallel universes and lifelines.

Thank you, Portia!

* thinking up Oscar style speech*

*drumrollll*

This Writer's blog is where it all began.

Wow.

Independence day

Beyond the jargon. Beyond the paper supplement. Beyond the expressway that is blissfully empty. Beyond the PM’s broadcast from the Red Fort. The colors saffron, white and green. What is it? Can’t answer.

Is a celebration. surprise at the flags and sweets distributed at work

Is hearing about Noakhali, about sacrifices, intrigue and betrayals so vivid they sound like they happened yesterday and not 60 years ago, hearing about how trains with the migrants were shunted off from the Pak,Punjab to Sindh, masterminded by the province CM, Sir Noon himself, avoiding future refugee issues.

Is suddenly standing to attention dinner time, mid morsel, as the Nightingale sisters render the national anthem. Airtel.in/jayahe

Is singing along with S Balasubramaniam, and a sudden tear- no, not because you cannot hit the high notes

Is oohing and aahing at the property but stunned, putting your calculator away because there is just no way you can afford it, not on your salary, and anyway it is too big and too far away. Will keep looking, next please.

Is a day when you sit and think of the nation’s issues and problems, your issues and somewhat problems, the widening divide between the haves and the have-nots. The next day you get up and walk. We thrive in chaos, like this only we are.

Highly recommended: Dr Eric Maisel’s creativitynewsletter on yahoogroups.com.
Read the archives.
I did. Spent an hour translating this morning, drawing an amazing sense of purpose from his words, even if they are a bit of a scold.

Every week start, I wonder why I load Sunday with so many things to do, way too many things.
A mental things to do list, to cross out.
And knowing this, I still do it, everytime.
Maybe I should pencil in some time to watch the world go by.

The kid we met this morning is totally enthusiastic, all charged about making a mark in this city, taking on this qualifying exam and that one, making a name in his line of work. Does me good to see such drive.
Envy that.

The last few weeks I have often idly thought about the need for structure and routine, its place in a day. Somewhat like a grid to hang the rest of your day on. A security blanket? A filler? Also to avoid having to do something else, which needs to be done. Or to avoid thinking. Which makes me wonder how people sit through ten days sitting still, of just watching their minds when they opt for vipassana meditation?

No, this post hasn't quite got written the way I wanted it to sound.

those red and blue lines, the markets...
And where will you go today m’love?
Last few months, I’ve watched you zip and zoom the blue line marching on, when, matter of fact, you ought to be dipping a tiny bit. Catching your breath a bit on every stratospheric increase. But on and on you went, adrenalin charged. A different beat.
A rumble in far away China, something to do with stamp paper? But no.
A trade built on a house of cards,energy whatchacallits, reminds me of playing with make-believe paper money as a kid, you print more as you go along. but no.
but subprime lending? Who in their right minds would lend on the back of nothing? Not the stodgy neighhourhood bank, not the flashy private one, the government wouldn’t allow it. Why didn’t they step in earlier? RBI would have, quick and early on, threatening blue murder and brimstone, so why didn’t the Fed? they were being nice because next year is election year? And for crying out aloud slicing debt into pieces like it was a salad you were making and marketing this to hedgies? Las Vegas, anyone? I scold myself- real men, good brains, real money. What the…
And a tanking $ that punishes performance. It was 46 to the dollar not so long ago, now it is 40. You do well internationally and it shows up as pathetic, just because you are now multiplying by a different number. Life’s not fair. Scott Peck said that first.
So where will you go today, m’love?

A recent Peopletech column in the Business Standard (last week, not so recent) speaks about the columnist’s utter confusion/ frustration/ irritation at having to wade through old-fashioned reading material, Proust, for a writing class. When he tries to read this later, at his own pace, he quite enjoys the work.
Now, Proust I haven’t read. Don’t think I shall, either. But couldn’t help free-thinking some of the likely reasons for this sudden change of heart:
-that the brain looks for patterns, and tries to fit new information within a preexisting grid, or linking however obtusely to existing nodes, if that takes longer than expected, impatience sets in.
-it was too late in the day to process new information even if you wanted to- fatigue
-a stage of life issue- you are not used to not learning things quickly and therefore have no patience with slowly unraveling something that’s different
What other reasons?