Family: It's tough to be tiny

With my niece Goolli when she was a baby, 1992

(I wrote this as a 'middle' in 1998)

          It’s tough to be six, and to be treated as a child. Especially when she’s got a questing mind buried in a tiny frame, topped by enormous eyes and a silky mane ~ giving her the overall appearance of a lemur. And she is as endearing as an untamed creature of the wild.

            That’s my cousin’s daughter, my niece Goolli (because of her round eyes) ~ and we’ve been friends for six years.”Doesn’t matter if Didi-Akka is older than me,” she insists, referring to her sibling, who’s ten. “I have to be your favourite ~ because you came to see me when I was just born.”

            She’s always disliked being ‘small and cute.’ In an argument with Dimi, her grandmother, Goolli at three once shrugged off these despised labels.

            “Dimi, when I was a big girl, I used to switch the lights on and off. I used to press the lift button. I could even climb up that tall ladder,” she announced.

            “If you were a big girl then, what happened?” asked Dimi.

            Goolli replies, “Then, Didi-Akka was born… and I became a baby.”

            Refute that, if you can. I didn’t try. I continued to answer her questions, come when they might. The latest torrent arrived when I was babysitting her and her Didi-Akka overnight.

The dialogue lasted a half-hour. Here’s an excerpt:

“Are you coming to stay with us again tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Why not? We can make up some more stories…”

“I’m going to watch the Football World Cup.”

“”Where? You don’t have a TV at home…”

“At a friend’s house.”

“If the World Cup wasn’t on, what would you do?”

“I’d read a book or listen to music.”

“And if there’s no electricity?”

“I’d go to sleep.”

“If you’re not feeling sleepy?”

“I’ll walk up and down till I feel sleepy.”

“For how long?”

“Maybe until my legs begin to ache.”

“If your legs ache, you won’t be able to sleep. Then, what will you do?”

“I’ll take some medicine.”

“Suppose you don’t have any medicine at home?”

“I’ll go to a pharmacy and buy some.”

“What if you don’t have any money?”

“I’ll borrow some from my friends.”

“And if all your friends are out of Bangalore?”

“Then, I’ll ask my cousin for some money.”

“Which cousin? Mamma?”

With Goolli at the Chennai beach, 1998

“Yes.”

“And if she’s also out of town?”

“I’ll probably ask you if you can lend me some pocket money,” I tease.

“I might be away in Canada.” She is solemn.

That’s where her cousins live, but she hasn’t been there yet.

“If nobody you know is in Bangalore, what will you do?”

“I’ll go away to Chennai.”

Goolli has always wanted to travel to Chennai with me ~ without her parents or her sister.

“How will you go?”

“By train.”

“If all the trains from Bangalore are not allowed to go?”

“Then I’ll take a bus.”

“But if none of the buses can go, either. If they have a… strike!”

“In that case, I’ll fly to Chennai.”

“What if all the planes in the world… crashland!”

“I don’t know…”

“How silly, can’t you walk to Chennai? And take me with you?”

As usual Goolli had the last word. Even at six!

(Deccan Herald, 1998) 

Musings: Summer song

Summer is… the sizzle of heat through the asphalt that fries your thoughts to a crisp, as the grey swirl of smoke from the exhaust in front addles your vision, the haze of the day swathes you in a cloak that clogs your sinuses and smothers your olfactory nerves, perhaps forever. 

Summer is… the sound of your neighbour’s shower and her voice raised in old-world song, out of tune. Just the tinkle of her bangles and the trickling sound of water soothes your nerves and allows you to dwell on images of waterfalls in your smoky mind.

Summer is… the pile of watermelons piled Everest-high by the roadside, green crusted and red-bodied, waiting for the first, crunchy cooling bite. The juice dribbles down your chin and bathes your neck, just as rivulets of sweat snake their way down your back and turn your smock into a towel.

Summer is… the rattle of cooking vessels next door being scrubbed by their maid at the crack of dawn. The power cuts have eaten into the short, restless stretch of rest, and transformed the night into a nightmare.

Summer is… the whining of the baby in the cradle because the mosquitoes and flies will not let her sleep. As her tiny limbs flail and kick away her bottle, she has no inkling of the procession of summers that life has in store for her.

Summer is… when the madness of the city jars on your nerves, when every screech, every honk, every gust of hot air from the neighbourhood drain makes you want to tear your hair out by the handful. Or head for the hills for a solitary getaway.

Summer is… when you can watch your best friend’s freckles multiply by the passing hour, as sunscreens and sunblocks do little to deter the almighty sun’s determination to blot her flawless complexion.

Summer is… when coconut water spiked with lime and honey seems like nectar, a sip for celestial beings. That’s when tea seems too strong and coffee too heady, except when a Tom Collins or a Kahlua on the rocks tastes like a drink divine.

Summer is… when everybody on the street seems to be on a short fuse, ready to explode over cricket scores or examination mark-sheets or even the decibel level of your car stereo. What happened to the fun and games you all had together, you wonder, before the heat frazzled your heads.

Summer is… the call of the mountains, the gurgle of the river, the cawing of crows outside your window at daybreak. Why can’t the wretched birds sleep longer, you hiss in anger, while the air-conditioner rattles and rumbles its way through power fluctuations.

Summer is… the lapping of frothy waves at your toes, the gush of blue that smothers you waist-deep. It is the soothing cool of the sand beneath your soles, the shells that beckon you to scoop them up by the fistful. It is the ice-cream cone that drips down your elbow faster than you can lick it up ~ and is gone before you have had your fill.

Summer is… when shorts and skimpy T-shirts feel as if you have too many clothes on. And that first glorious bite of the ripe golden mango ~ luscious and juicy and sweet as a love poem.

Summer is… vacations and holiday homework and escape from the routine.

Summer is… my very least favourite season.

Would you beg to differ?

(wahindia.com, 2002)

  

Musings: Sans Science

In front of the House of Science with my classmates at school. I'm seated, second from the right.

Decades ago, when schooling was different (and 10 + 2 was a haze in the future), we had to pick an optional stream for the Indian School Certificate (ISC) exam once our Std. VIII exams were done. That meant we could study either Science or Arts in the last three years at school, culminating in Std. XI.

At 13-plus, the choice loomed larger than a monster in our lives. How was I to choose? Should I base my decision on my marks, which showed soaring scores in English, Biology, Geography and Health Science, while the numbers took a drastic dip in Physics, Chemistry and Maths? Or should I give priority to my close bonding with my best friends ~ the very essence of residential school life in Jaipur ~ most of whom were opting for Science? Did it make sense to consult my class teachers, who kept pitchforking me into every inter-school or inter-house contest for dramatics, elocution, debating, even panel discussions? No, that would be insane. I’d probably talk circles around those sane souls.

Confused by the profusion of potential directions, like stray shafts of sunlight in a forest thicket, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t permitted to opt for just English poetry, medieval history, cartography, pottery, theatre ~ and perhaps hockey! There seemed to be no school course on earth that made that combination possible. But why?

What made the choice even more difficult was the fact that the brightest girl in our class (our icon of sorts) excelled at everything ~ athletics, hockey, art, every subject under the sun, even the popularity ratings! And she had opted for Science!

Science seemed by far the more glamorous option than mere Arts. Somehow, Einstein and Galileo exuded as more radiant aura than George Orwell or Jane Austen; advanced maths appeared more alluring than Shakespeare. Or so I thought then….

A bad bout of fever just before my Std. VIII final exams put paid to my chances of allowing my teachers to evaluate my talent, no matter how shadowy. Stuck in a bed in the infirmary, doused with green syrups and red, I wasn’t allowed to appear for my finals (perhaps the only time I wanted to). So, what was I to do?

Back home in Madras (not yet Chennai), promoted on the basis of past performance, the looming decision threatened to ruin my winter vacations. Science or Arts? Which was it to be? And how was I to choose?

And then, my father decided to take the matter in hand. “Have you made up your mind?” Baba asked one day after lunch, just as I was all set to plunge into the pages of Gone with the Wind.

“Not yet, Baba,” I said, “but I think I’d like to take Science.”  

“Why?” he persisted.

“I don’t know. I just feel like it,” I responded.

“It’s a good idea. But it only makes sense if you choose a career that is science-based. What would you like to do after college?”Baba explained patiently.

“I haven’t yet decided. I still have a few more years to go…”

“Do you want to be a doctor?” he said, helpfully.

“Never. I hate the sight of blood.”

“An engineer?”

“What will I do with all those machines and gizmos?”

“How about architecture?”

“Too much of maths in that…”

“A bio-chemist?”

“What do they do?”

And so, after we’d progressed down a list of 40 professions, Baba asked a final question before giving up, “Then, why do you want to take up Science?”

“Because all the clever girls are taking Science!”

And that’s how I came to study and celebrate Arts for the rest of my life….

(Sunday Herald, 1998)

Books: Musings on 'Curfewed Night' by Basharat Peer

CURFEWED NIGHT.

By Basharat Peer

Random House India. 2008. 243 pages. Paperback. Rs. 295.

I’ve been a journalist since June 1976. Yes, that’s midway through the hated Emergency in India, when I joined Indian Express, Madras/ Chennai, as a rookie. I’ve read reams of reportage and editorials and other media output on Kashmir. But I have to confess that I really did not understand what had happened in Kashmir since 1989 until I read this book by Basharat Peer.

I won’t even try to summarize ‘Curfewed Night.’  It’s an act of love, a splendid interweave of history, reportage and memoir that moved me intensely the first time I read it in 2010. I can understand with clarity and empathy why a whole generation of protesters has come into being in Kashmir.

 

Confessions first. I had never been to Kashmir until 2008, on our way back from a trek in the Markha Valley in Ladakh. Six of us drove towards Jammu in a SUV through the dark night past Kargil, Drass and other places that created a mind buzz from past reportage. I couldn’t sleep. So, I kept my eyes on the luminous moon overhead.

The jammed mountain roads teemed with army trucks, filled with men in camouflage fatigues. En route, we were repeatedly stopped to ask if we had seen an escapee from the army, a Sikh soldier. At one point, we had to disembark, while army personnel frisked us and emptied out our luggage.

On the way to Srinagar, we didn’t go to Dal Lake. We stopped at a roadside dhaba for aloo parathas and chai for breakfast. Our eyes took in soldiers in uniform, their guns pointed at some invisible enemy, in idyllic wheat, mustard and rice fields. 

In Srinagar, armoured personnel carriers rambled through the streets in daylight. Young men, supposedly on daily errands, were stopped and searched on the streets. It was definitely a city in siege, mentally, physically and emotionally.

 I’ve been a journalist, but never a reporter. So, I’ve never been in a minefield or a war zone. The closest to that experience was probably during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, while I was at school in Jaipur. Sirens went off from time to time. Our windows were blacked out with paper and paint. During air raid drills, we had to run out of class or our hostels, and jump into the closest trench. If we had time, we were told to grab hold of a small bag each with our bare necessities. It was both exciting and scary at 10 or 11.

Act 2. Then came the war to liberate Bangladesh when I was a teenager at college in Kolkata in 1971. I recall that Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Arora and his wife, friends of my parents, had come to dinner at our home, along with others, in November 1971.  In December, Indian troops marched into East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Over 2 million civilians died. Over 400,000 women were raped by the Pakistan armed forces. I was horrified, more distressed by the day over man’s inhumanity to humankind. I was a pacifist even then.

Act 3. In the mid-1980s, while at Indian Express, I was talked into interviewing Gavin Young, who reported for the Sunday Times in London, by our editor Saeed Naqvi. He insisted that I would find Young intelligent and engaging because he had covered 14 wars across the globe, including the Vietnam war for over a decade. I’ll never forget what Young he told me: that wars are not about soldiers and generals, politicians or power; they are about little people in unknown places who are impacted by it all. (Young was, after all, a witness to the surrender of Pakistani Lt. Gen. Niazi to Gen. Arora in a bunker in former East Pakistan).

  

His home-truth rang sharply through my being as I read Peer’s human documentary in words. He made me think of the mythical ‘objectivity’ that is supposed to be the mean in journalism. After all Peer did report for Tehelka, which I respect. But how can you possibly be objective about your family, your closest friends, a land that means the world to you? Basharat Peer brings Kashmir today alive with confidence, emotion ~ and a quiet, yet poetic, touch. That’s an amazing feat, to my eyes.

Basharat Peer

 At just 32 when the book was published in 2008, Peer couched his reportage with flair and great emotional intelligence. Such as the impact of the interrogation camp at Papa-2, or the shattering impact of ‘disappeared persons,’ or how the redressal mechanism is totally corrupted, or the disappearance of Kashmiri Pandits and where they are now.

Take this excerpt about the book’s raison d’etre:

“I shared some stories with a few friends in New Delhi, but I could never say everything. I would find myself stopping in the middle of a sentence, choked, rendered inarticulate by memory. The telling, even in the shade of intimacy, was painful. There was also a sense of shame that overcame me very time I walked into a bookstore. People from almost every conflict zone had told their stories: Palestinians, Israelis, Bosnians, Kurds, Tibetans, Lebanese, East Germans, Africans, East Timorese, and many more. I felt the absence of our own telling, the unwritten books about the Kashmiri experience, from the bookshelves, as vividly as the absence of a beloved ~ the empty chair staring at you across the table in a coffee shop, the vacant seat in a theatre playing a movie she would have laughed through, the email with an idiosyncratic title that did not arrive in the inbox. The memories and stories of Kashmir that I carried with me like my VIP suitcase could fade away. I had to find the words to save memory from the callous varnish of time. I knew I had to write. And to write, I had to return and revisit the people and places that had haunted me for years…”

This is the story of Peer’s life. But it is equally about the lives of the 70,000 young men who have lost their lives in the ongoing battle in Kashmir. For bereft  of hope, without access to quality education or good jobs, a youthful generation has chosen to model its resistance on the stone-throwing youths of the second Palestinian intifada, not on the Pakistani militias who trained them to use guns.

Curfewed Night was on the New Yorker list of the year’s 100 best books. Granta editor John Freeman picked it among the five best debut books of the year. It won the Vodaphone Crossword non-fiction award 2008.

Why? For multiple reasons. Peer has access to the men who move about only at night. He tunes in to those who fight against the might of the Indian state. But most deeply, he is the voice of real Kashmiri people, like the old man who, mourning his murdered family, said to Peer:  “Go back and tell them what has happened here.”

Peer has done just that. He reveals the insider truths of Kashmir of the recent past with an incandescent brilliance that is tragic, poignant, and impossible to forget. If you’ve been as puzzled as I was about the true story of this tragic state, this is the one book I would reach for. It lights the way to understanding. 

Musings: Leaf tracks

Once upon a gentle breeze, a leaf blew to life. It turned its fragile tip to the morning dew as rays etched its face, deep into its veins. It stole a whisper from the ages past, rendered on the wind.

In a muted voice, it sailed to faraway shores, borne on the crest of a wave. It dipped into streams of thought, feather-edged as the air. It swept the skies with the fringe of a palm, swaying to a timeless beat. The rhythm that raced through its grain was laced with the ferment of being.

Its infinite array was vernal-hued, painted in a flurry of light. Wind-carved, delicate as dragonfly wings, it etched gossamer shades on a sprawling mosaic, a jigsaw of water and land.

But as time took its toll, the greens turned to brown. And new nodes sprouted to bloom. Then sap rose anew, humming with life. As the breeze bore a jade leaf again.

Musings: Confessions of a once-reluctant Netizen

It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication. By 2000, this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet

In 2002, I wasn’t too clued in to the online world. That’s what triggered these thoughts, way back then. A decade later, I have as healthy a life online, as I do in real time. 


*       *       *


You've got mail! The words dance on the computer screen, lighting up the early moments of my day. Until I scroll down the 17 messages in my Hotmail inbox — and find 15 of them are just junk. What do they offer?

Free CDs, with strings attached. Flyaway holidays, with the hidden print tucked in fine. Personal favours, ones we can do without in the thick of a hectic social life. It's like having a surfeit of empty toothpaste tubes on your bathroom rack, when you need to perk awake with a brisk brushing away of last night's debris.

It's at these not-so-hot Hotmail moments that I long for old-fashioned communication. Letters scrawled longhand from cousins and family and friends in distant climes. Or real invitations to meet flesh-and-blood people — not faceless cyberfolk in an unidentified never-never land. Not condensed-into-chaos verbiage from Jaan, John or Dante at unidentifiable addresses that end with .com or .net or .edu.

I'm now a citizen of the World Wide Web. I can zoom into a cool, instant network at the click of a mouse, the touch of a key. In a trice, I'm one with the global village. Yet, over the past decade, my frame of reference has turned topsy-turvy.

No longer do the lines of communication flow straight and narrow. No longer is there an unbearable agony of waiting — for a line from afar brought to the door by the postman's ring. No longer do smell and touch and memory contribute much to messages that summon up the face of the sender, a lifestyle sandwiched between strokes of the pen. Instead, I'm flooded by messages that come from light worlds away — and usually mean nothing. I can get across in a jiffy, yet I reach across sans face, sans emotion. I'm the centre of a communications universe, yet I pine for a Jurassic Age of cross-cultural vibes.

Could it be because of the giga-heaps of information that die at first printout, lacking personality and humaneness? Could it be because people still count in a world grown competitive and dispirited? I'm still trying to figure it all out.

Take this instance. One morning my Inbox had a mail from KrytonCasablanca@sabena.edu. Who could that be? What did this creature seek? From where in the cyberspace woodwork had it crept out? The questions kept my being abuzz. Dare I open the file? Could there be a real being behind the cloaked identity? What if it proved to be a virus in disguise that wiped my life on the Net out clean?

I dared not delete it. I was curious enough to keep it pending. Two days dragged by... in a week, I mustered up courage enough to resolve the mystery. And made a cyber friend.

Though I steer clear of online Chatrooms, I find I've acquired a pal of unknown origin, faceless to boot. His identity? A young intern at a Swedish hospital, who's fired up with religious fervour, signing daily mail with: God bless you! Three days later, this total stranger invites me to holiday with his family in the summer.

Isn't that disarming? Is this an alternate interpretation of global warming? That the borderline between friends and strangers fade into the twilight zone?

As time and space collapse in a sci-fi moment around my keyboard, as megabytes of information swamp me, I yearn for emotion, for face-to-face deadlocks, for exchanges with pen on paper that are as sharp and striking as duelling swords or as gentle as a shower of feathers. For love notes and hate mail, for swirls and curlicues, for dark ink on handmade paper textured with petals or jute fibre. Or even for inter-office memos that signal a boss with a frown or a reprimand couched at fever-pitch.

Unlike my Inbox crammed with insane inputs, my In tray doesn't tango with the ceiling. In everyday life, the postman seldom brings me snail mail from total strangers — apart from the bill collectors of the telephone or electricity departments. Nor do the assortment of courier boys who range in and out of the door, with magazines with my byline in them or long-forgotten cheques for assignments accomplished as a freelancer.

I'm connected by words, by recognisable signals, by life signs I can touch. Then, why do these strangers intrude on my life over email?

Their immediacy, their peremptoriness, their hard sell cues, cast a shroud of gloom over me. What do they signal? That I must forget every rule of spelling, language and grammar nurtured over the years, and opt for telegraphese that tortures my world of words. I can't bring myself to type out messages like U R 2 GD 2 B TRUE! Or lapse into the laconic with `LOL.' I didn't cotton onto that right away, until a pal in the US spelt it out: Laugh out loud! Give me old-fashioned, head-on conversations any day. Or even eye-to-eye communication.

I still shy away from ordering a diamond ring on the net, though a CD bargain seems pretty safe. Would I call for monthly provisions over the keyboard? No way, when I can cross swords with the loud-mouthed resident groucho at the provision store just two doors away. Would I invent myself an identity for online chats when I have stranger-than fiction folks in my circuit? Perish the thought. Heave-ho! I flail out of my cushioned chair and back into the world of outdoor action. Just a staircase and a jogger's trail away.

Between the cryptic and the scripted, between the argot and the agony, falls the shadow in my life. Between the recognisable and the surreal, the beauteous and the banal, throng the question marks. Between the Inbox and the In tray lies the murky area of potential misunderstanding I'm trying to sidestep.

And so, a reluctant Netizen rocks on her heels and wonders. What's the write line, by the way?

Cloud-gazing I

On some days, the words sag at the joint. Then fold up and squeeze into a trapezoid zone of silence. They refuse to wake up, dance, sing and play at my bidding.

On other days, my landline rings (yes, I still have one). Or my mobile shows 12 missed calls, 10 messages, when I check after an hour or two of putting it on silent mode  ~ to gain mindspace enough to write a fantasy for children or a travel piece for adults.

Which is more real: the far outposts of my imagination… or the tring-tring land of laughter, layered deep in sadness, embedded in personal encounters?

Pause. Delete. Escape. Is that even possible in real life? 

I escape into a 'now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t' world. Away from my PC. Away from my mobile. Far away from my landline.

My Olympus DSLR in hand, I set out to record flyaway memories ~ of clouds, of flowers, of leaves, of shadows, of sunshine. Of all that erases the mood of dyed-in-the-moment life as a fleeting sigh.

Here are a few images that shout out: ‘Hey, I’m free, nothing’s worrying me’: