sleepwalktalk

A prayer, a faith, a surrender: Sarnath

2011-03-21T12:23:00.002-04:00

Random Pix

2009-06-07T15:29:00.010-04:00

A kid jumps about on a rainy afternoon in Hyderabad
An old woman blesses her son after a holy dip in Shipra

A tribal little girl in her finery somewhere in Madhya Pradesh

The Holy man and his Cow in Ujjain

A bunch of girls going home from work in Madhya Pradesh, India

A girl muses as she waits for her friend in a village fair in Madhya Pradesh, India

A horse cart traverses the length of the Burhanpur fort in Madhya Pradesh

Pilgrims soak in the winter sun at Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India

A Muslim girl watches the world go by in Bhairongarh, Madhya Pradesh

Pilgrims dry their clothes after a holy dip in Shipra River in Ujjain

A man studies the Quran in a lane next to Ujjain Mahakaal temple

Kids look for pebbles and shells in River Narmada, India

Late summer sunlight streaming through a tree

A little girl smiles as she watches her brother play a game at a fair in India.

A fisherman awaits his colleague to come ashore in Andhra Pradesh

A Hindu wedding in progress

A fisherman gazes into the water to spot fish in River Narmada

Boys on a deserted beach carry shells in a bag in Andhra Pradesh

A tribal girl smiles into the camera in Hyderabad, India

Cotton Chronicles

2009-01-20T15:11:00.010-05:00

White gold is what the farmers call it as cotton ranks among the most lucrative of the cash crops. Indian cotton is popular internationally, making its way into the cool, smooth folds of branded shirts and yet has left tears and blood for many small farmers in Andhra Pradesh. Dogged by genetically modified seeds, fertilizers, treacherous monsoons and impossible debt, farmers lost their money, hopes and even lives to the white fluffy masses.

For the marginal farmers beleaguered by crop failures, cotton, which fetches a much bigger minimum support price from the Government, seems like a cloud nine descending straight to the earth and the area of cultivation has gone up drastically over the years, now ranging between 1.2-1.4 million hectares.

Wiki says cotton has been grown in India for more than three thousand years, and it is referred to in the Rig-veda, written in 1500BC. The pictures are taken outside a ginning mill in Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. Ginning is the process of separating the fibre from the seeds and then it is sent to a spinning mill to be turned into yarn.

Thousands of tractors and carts bring loads of cotton to the ginning mills and are unloaded at the weighbridge and is bought by millers and the Cotton Corporation of India, the government agency to buy the raw cotton.

Cart wheels trundle on the gravelly and hilly roads of the Adilabad as the farmers patiently await first for their cattle to take them to the destination and then to line up among hundreds like themselves for the miller to accept the load.

Exploitation is the name of the game as the carts are made to wait for days so that the farmer tires himself out and would sell without asking for a remunerative price. Children often accompany their fathers on the trip and small groups find their own forms of entertainment as they recline on the carts.

Transitory Dreams

2008-08-29T04:18:00.013-04:00

Sleep, sleep..Go to sleep... Soon you'll be on your journey...

Mirabilis : "The Journey"

Transit Passengers at Amsterdam Airport

On work-bound train to New York

At Penn Station

Resprout!

2008-06-18T14:12:00.003-04:00

Salad days, "when I was green in judgment;"
Sensible days, ideals tucked into the backmost pocket
of my purse and discretion the better part
Scarlet days when my blood boiled over
To paint my sky crimson and carroty
And then days when I was saintly
When it was all self-pity and righteous piety
My Sinner days, decidedly the happiest
When all lines were grey and delicious
corners darkly mysterious
My blue days, when copious tears drenched seas
And sunshine days when my nerves tingled in silent music

Take away my salad days and the scarlet ones
The blue days and the yellow ones
Give me a clean slate
Give me sheets of emptiness with no edges
Whiteness where I can redefine my hues

Take away the memories of days sensible and sinful
Erase my footprints until the last one moment
Give me a bare canvas, a blank window

So that I can begin again with no ado
And engrave a better story for tomorrow
If...there is a tomorrow

Stranger in My Mirror

2008-05-08T09:45:00.003-04:00

Thank You Note

2008-05-01T14:39:00.010-04:00

Picture this photographer. A photographer who not only goes click click with his camera but also clicks with his subjects like they have known each other always.
Knowing colleagues closely rarely throws up anything more than typical, predictable encounters. Finding a chance to work with someone non-temperamental, perceptive, receptive and professional is a pleasure that is surpassed by few things in working life.
My honour to meet Harsha – one such professional. He does not complain about heat or hunger or lack of sleep. Or miles to walk or bumpy, sweaty rides across rough terrain. Not crowded trains or shabby hotel rooms. He sits patiently through long-winded interviews, boring presentations and issues that are virtually greek and latin to him. He impassively yet kindly responds to weirdos of all hues and shapes, enthusiastically shoots the remotely interesting ones and passionately absorbs the beautiful ones.
A walk on a winding hill road, lined by cashew trees; A ride in a sarkari jeep through mountains, steamy one moment and lustrous the other as a gentle shower picks out the rocks among the satiny trees; An evening spent watching sun-kissed Godavari and languid fishing boats delving idly into the waters; fragrance of jasmines colouring the breeze from the river and attuned by chatter of women, gossiping without sting. Midnight chat on a train, congested with snoring men and bawling babies, as it chugs through the bridge on the river; Eating a spicy snack on the riverbank - a chunk from childhood nostalgia - a burnt breakfast in a ramshackle café in a small town, a bus ride on a straight-line highway, squeezing into low huts, spreading into sprawling forests – the journey is made up of many vintage snapshots and Harsha shares it and makes it even more memorable.
His subjects are as charmed by him as he is curious of their context. They pose for him - - bare-bottomed kids, toothless grandmothers, synthetically made-up sex workers, innocent villagers, strait-jacketed officials, young men and women - as he orders them to and he gives them solemn advice.
Attentive companion, sensitive friend. Intelligent researcher, interesting conversationalist. A worthy opponent in quibbles. Someone who sieves through every moment of life, without missing the details. Open to ideas, adamant on functionalities. Firm on principles, malleable to situations.
Working in tandem with a thorough professional is a pleasure that is rarely surpassed in working life. Thank you, Harsha, for agreeing to be on that trip.

Lost Warrior

2008-04-13T05:32:00.004-04:00

The fight seems so important. Each syllable aimed and flung like a bullet, the words are intended to wound. The tone is poison sprayed over the opponent. Winning an argument is of paramount importance and vanquishing the other, life’s sole purpose. Small fights, big fights, issueless ones, righteous ones – fights seem the essence. Life is dialectic and conflict the essential.
But as the barb strikes the mark, I flinch. The blood that oozes out is my own. The expression of defeat on that face hits me in the solar plexus and I am crushed in victory. I win the battle every time. I am strong, invincible. Yet, I lose.
In the last few months, I lost people close to me. Some to death. Some to time and then some more to anger. And all that remains at the end of the day is the fights that I had with them. Harsh words uttered and crystallized. Angry whiplashes. Nasty shots.
I won every time. But none of the moments spent in happiness remains. When I run my tongue on the rim of my memory, all I taste is bitterness. And there is no way I can undo my victories.
I am a warrior who never learnt the rules of war. My battles are with my people, my homegrown plants, my little dreams, my ill-defined, ill-found loves. And against myself.
I am a warrior who never learnt the rules of revenge. I lash out with all might at my foes, writhing in waking nightmares and sleeping agonies. And, when I wake up, the scars are all on me. I am a restless fighter. And an eternal loser.

Into the Storm

2008-01-18T19:08:00.000-05:00

You walk the streets. Aimlessly but in the garb of purposeful busyness. Your eyes dart from light to shadows, never meeting other eyes. You never look back but your eyeballs shoot back into your head to gaze fearfully backwards, to check if someone is following. You cross squares, turn corners but your flights always end in circles, reaching where you started. And when you walk back in, pain pounces on you from where it has been hiding.

Your sleep fights sleeplessness but always loses. You cry, laugh. Hit out at everything that moves. And those that don’t budge. You cover your ears, shut eyes. Your desperation slides down your throat as white drops of inducers.

I run but abruptly turn back and ram straight into my pain. It is a red light that sucks me in. It pricks, pierces. It is a high-pitched scream inside my head, a drill down each of my teeth. It is a needle that stitches my pores close together so that my breath is trapped writhing inside me. And I hit back. I strike out until the clouds of pain disperse. I plunge into the whirlpool, I fly into the turbulence. I catch pain and terrify it into flight. I bleed but exhale through a zillion free pores.

I fight pain, you suppress it. Your blood runs cold, I simmer in maniacal challenge. You wear blinds over your eyes, in monotones. I crush tragedies under my feet, into multi-coloured pieces of transparent glass.

I am battle-scarred but proud to be alive. You are pure as a petal but stink of escapism. Who is the loser?

Not to Human Scale!

2007-12-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

Can a mere blog-writer comment on one of the most momentous events of human history? An event that left a mammoth blot on a nation, smaller than a mole on the world map?
What must she have thought in those very last moments? That this is it? Or that she was gonna be ok? That she will fight those kafirs, those who broke the very tenets of the religion they profess to protect by aiming at a woman? Of her kids? Of her dead father? Of all the dreams she had for herself and her country? Of the vengeance she must have felt for her detractors? Or her isolation in a world full of manipulators? Or of the Heavens above?
Whodunit? Whocares? It’s not going to bring her back. The woman who was destined to die violently among faceless crowds, but on her soil, the soil that she kissed in gratification when she finally came home. Gutsy, spirited, brave, hardened, vociferous, feminine, regal, sophisticated, earthy, shrewd, lonely, homesick – a hundred words spring to mind.
Politician, leader, prime minister, campaigner, dreamer, manipulator, conspirator, woman, wife, daughter, mother – whatever she was, she is a persona who slowly descended into my consciousness through the million frames seen and words heard and read about her. So much so that when I saw her in person in New Delhi years back, all I could do was stare. So much so that the purported pic of her in a short skirt circulated in recent times offended me.

For the journo in me, she is a name often uttered, analysed and thought about. For the people-watcher in me, she was a suave woman of the world. For the human being in me, a skeletal shell that lost some parts of her flesh and life blood every time she lost a parent, a brother; when she lost precious years of her eventful life in an uneventful prison and the power that came to her as an inheritance of turmoil. And, now her life for a cause that seems like seeking Eden in a desert.

Benazir Bhutto was just one of her kind. Like Rajiv Gandhi, whose beautiful face was smashed into an unrecognizable void, they chose to hit her handsome face. So that, nothing of her remains. Not even the shell. How mean can they get!

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

..And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's

My Neverfoundland

2007-12-02T03:20:00.000-05:00

Steam from chai mingling with fog. The result a damp swirl that dances before the eyes before floating away into the neem tree. Silence trudges to and fro on the deserted road, carrying the heavy load that the fog has put on its back. Gulp down the first chai so that another hot cup can keep the cord of the warmth from breaking down. Birds are numb, leaves motionless, sky lost somewhere. The chai fellow, simultaneously happy and irritated, with the merry chai drinker of the unearthly hour.

Just then a razor-sharp noise slashes through the white curtain. Wheels trundling on the gravel and even as the clatter cuts through the chill and the chai to reach the ears, something flashes before the eyes. Men, all wrapped up, with their profiles barely visible, huddled over bicycles, furiously pedaling. Bicycles laden with huge bunches of flowers. Roses, gladioli, gerberas, orchids, birds of paradise, anthuriums, angel spray, nestling in green leaves, tied up in ash-coloured fabric. Each cycle slices through the fog and vanishes as a second one replaces the frame. In the monotone of the fog, the splashes of colour coagulate mid-air and stay there as the black outlines of the dozen or so cyclists melt into the fog.

The chai freezes, the hand holding the cup stunned into an askew angle. And, silence shoos away the remnants of the wheel-talk. Was it for real? Or just a chemical explosion in the brain?

Early morning. January fog. Parliament Street, New Delhi. Flower-sellers on their way to Baba Kharak Singh Marg for the early-morning wholesale vending in the bay.

Delhi winters are made up of cameos like this. Trees that drip dew in Amrita Shergill Marg even when it is not raining. Hot Moong ka Halwa at Kaleva’s. Langar at Gurudwara Rikabganj. Rosy apples piled up at Central Secretariat. Planes descending like smoky mountains at the mouth of the runway on Jaipur highway. Chrysanthemums in Defence Colony market. Adrak Chai flavours mingling with the fragrance of mattri outside Metro station, Chandni Chowk. The occasional flash of feminine colour among the grey/black/blue/brown masses of sweaters that walk on ITO road. Women knitting away furiously everywhere – on buses, in offices, on India Gate lawns and in balconies. And steaming Aaloo paranthas in road-side bunks.

It is a winter that haunts and terrifies the spiritless. It kills the cowards. It chases the weak-hearted into their blankets. It tip-toes through sealed windows, from under doors and nibbles at the toes of those who hide. It burns scrunched up skin, rattles chattering teeth.

It is a winter that loves those who let go. Those who run through the leafy streets of delhi like hot blood coursing through veins.

‘Before the stars have left the skies,

At morning in the dark I rise’
I watch the sharp, crystal-clear air
turn into milky fog in a trice

I am indefatigable, I seek romance.
On deserted streets, I do a snowman dance
Chilly air, breaths verbose
I shoo away the stealthy sunrays

If winter be always
If fog never goes away
Over the wintry days and nights
when I hold merry sway

My life’s one-act drama
unfolds amidst curtains hushed
Alone, lost and content
Angst frozen and desires unleashed

Winter!!

So like me?

2007-11-26T22:43:00.000-05:00

Bus, itna sa khwaab hai!

2007-11-23T12:03:00.000-05:00

It takes three lean days at work for Bharati to finish her paperback. And she has mastered the art of reading while in constant motion, most often on a rough track and leaning on to a metal pole. For the adolescent students of the Govt Junior College in Nampally in Hyderabad, Sheela 'Akka' is a great source of inspiration. And advice and counseling! They enjoy their daily journey with her while getting back from college. And Suneeta confesses to a temptation to ring out a piercing whistle and shout at the top of her voice “Right Right!” – “just the way we saw the bus conductors doing all through our lives.”
All these women are conductors on the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transportation Corporation buses, attached to one of the 21 bus depots in Hyderabad. They are among the 5000 plus conductors recruited across the State during the past four years as part of APSRTC’s implementation of 33 per cent reservation for women in all cadres.
The slightly framed women, who wear a grey jacket over their saree or shalwar kameez, wield the full cash bag as well as the sheaf of tickets with aplomb.
Recruitment of women in the APSRTC – which has the distinction of having the largest fleet of buses in the world under a single owner, 20,000 buses - happened without much ado. While the first conductor was recruited in 2001, the number has now grown to 5098. There are also 126 women working as mechanical supervisors and 146 as traffic supervisors.
And Conductors are only one of the segments. RTC has women in every cadre – from mechanical supervisors to Depot Managers.
When it is time for change of shift at the RTC bus depots, there is a huge bustle with new arrivals checking out their tickets and those who finished depositing their cash. Chai, chat and community interaction has to happen during those twenty minutes because, very soon, the women are on wheels.
“There is the occasional smart Alec or someone who wants to feel you up, but we set them right in two minutes. I once slapped a guy for misbehaving with me and refused to let the bus move until he got off. Others on the bus were more than enthusiastic to throw him out,” Suneetha recalls with glee. “We do get complaints of misbehaviour, more often about the drivers and other male colleagues rather than outsiders. We have an effective mechanism in place to deal with it,” Madhavi, Manager (IT), APSRTC, reveals.
APSRTC has set up a Women Grievance Redressal Cell but the complaints are mainly regarding service matters rather than any harassment. “But we have enough evidence to suggest there is harassment. We are doing what we can even without formal complaints,” an RTC official says.
For Sheela, mother of two kids, the work is strenuous. The seven hour shift, the one hour commuting from home and the long hours spent in motion tire her out by the time she reaches home. “But I am grateful for the fact that we were not denied this income opportunity by labeling it a job not meant for women,” she says.
“In fact, we have strict reservation rules even for selection of drivers. But then it is rare that we find a woman who has a heavy vehicle licence and five years experience driving a heavy vehicle,” the official says. Interestingly, the organisation saw a need to teach the lady conductors self-defence techniques. “All our lady conductors underwent Karate classes for a week. Except for this, there is no other way we distinguish between male and female employees,” Madhavi explains.
And though the crossover has been quiet, RTC does seem to keep the ‘delicate sensibilities’ – of the women in mind while assigning some duties. The women get to take the longest route so that there is no jumping about. Except for the mechanical staff, nobody needs to work on late night shifts and the management effectively quells male colleagues with ego hassles.
Some of the concern Sheela has for her children waiting at home is transferred into solving the small problems of her regular adolescent passengers. Whether it is soothing college blues or discussing the latest film, from hair care tips to preventing an early marriage of one of the girls, Sheela does much more than just punching tickets during her eventful day at work.

2007-11-20T15:25:00.000-05:00

Dr. Padmabhushan Megastar Chiranjeevi: This is probably the longest link for any living/dead/legended celluloid star on Wikipedia. And the link takes you to a man, whose life's graphs always shot well beyond their coordinates.

All film stars are larger than life. But this is someone monolithic. His name, fame, his films, family, his business, charity, his presence, his labels – all so towering that no ordinary mortal can even look up at him without being blinded, leave alone summon the strength to sling mud at him.

And when a mere mortal actually tries to recall the star is human too, the retribution is swift, irrational, disproportionate and merciless. Few withstood the tsunami of fury that bubbled upwards from the ocean of humblest of fans to the leaders of the associations, themselves important members of civil society in that capacity.

Let me stick to the strange experiences widely known. A journalist who dared to say a certain mega movie was average had his car burnt down by incensed fans. Another who gave a three star rating was almost killed on Film Nagar road in Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad, involving a lorry and a wonderfully freakish accident, staged in perfect filmi manner. Call it sheer coincidence. And another journalist who committed the blasphemy of saying that it is time this talented actor considered meatier roles and made a special place for himself in the annals of Telugu cinema, is threatened with grave (pun intended) consequences and is asked to 'publicly apologise' since her review in the largest circulated Hyderabad daily does not - for the zillionth time in the history of cinema writing - say the mega star dances well.

When Chiranjeevi’s film is released, it is with a record number of prints, to record collections. When he makes a public appearance, it is mass frenzy. Every award he wins is followed by a million other eulogies, wishing for the sun, moon and everything in between. So much so, another demi god of the Indian screen, Amitabh Bachchan, himself went so far as to say nothing less can be a worthier tribute than the Bharat Ratna for this actor. And when he seeks support, it is Kishkindha resurrected in support of their Lord.

The man himself, once one manages to access him breaking through the purportedly protective layers of fans and well-wishers, is a man worth knowing. Ever courteous, humble and remarkably balanced, Chiranjeevi demonstrates how exactly he has succeeded in winning hearts on and off the screen. And why his one plea can make his otherwise belligerent fans go all charitable, donating eyes and blood to the now-massive Chiranjeevi Blood bank with a visible sense of pride.

And today, as his young, stoic daughter faces a battery of cameras, displaying an almost scary clarity of thought, even those who have been at the receiving end of the wrath of his fans, remember him with a pang of sympathy.

Like always, this is big too. It is big rejection from a chit of a girl, who took three of our largest institutions – media, police and courts - along with her, in her stride against a celebrity father, who never seemed anything but benevolent. And that she should hold the hand of a faceless young man in her defiant voyage. The news is big, the father's reaction shell-shocked, the family's response befuddled. And, for once, his fans are speechless. They just do not know what to say, which side to take in this clash of the Titan and his toddler.

A journalist would understand the media's avid interest in the entire bizarre episode. The tone is of suppressed delight, the frame enlarged to fit in the blown up dimensions of a small flutter. The clamour of statements, interviews and investigations much louder in face of dignified silence from the wounded parent.

It is the first-ever opportunity for the media to peep into a life that has never dipped once it touched the skies of stardom; into the insides of a persona who never let anything but humility appear on his handsome face. It is a chink in armour carefully built around a man who was positioned beyond even reasonable critique. It is a chance to throw pebbles at someone who has, for many years, been a colossus, not a mere human. And, this probably, is the only chance they would ever get.

Stardom disproportionate to human scale spawns anomalous public responses. Glorification of a pedigree generates obnoxious curiosity about roots. And a mega star's personal life and trauma become comic book stuff, dinner-time conversation and luscious dissection pieces for lustful media.

It is another day. Another scandal. The drooling public turns to a new piece of bone. And the story of the young couple is forgotten. But, while it lasted, at least some people must surely have given this saga a dramatic title - Poetic Justice!

Life Elusive!

2007-11-07T05:11:00.000-05:00

There are many ways to reach this village. And you have to take all of them. Your car will desert you at the first streambed and you splash out to set off on a rough track. Drivers of passing bullock carts solicitously offer you a ride but remember carts don’t have shocks. Then a moped ride, a bicycle ride, a trek and a trudge and you reach your destination.

The destination is least bothered that it is so inaccessible. Mainly since it needs nothing from outside; it is a world in itself. Thirty families, about a hundred and eighty people, almost half of them children, dirt roads, indolent cattle, sturdy homes, a small temple, a tiny school, and a common granary. The village nestles in a valley, green-sheathed hills sheltering it from belligerent winds.

All the adults are land-owning famers, all the kids study in the school which has a 21-year-old girl teacher cycling in from ten km away everyday. The kids grow up and are sent to the social welfare hostel in the town where they finish schooling, they grow up a little more, get married and come back home to start working on their crops.

This village is Ravan Palli – the village of Ravan – in the Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. The village is amidst hills on the Andhra-Maharashtra border and, by default, all villagers speak at least three languages. Why Ravan? “Ravan was a king. An administrator and he ran his kingdom well. He was a great devotee too, so why not?” Bheem Rao counters. “In any case, it has been named generations ago,” his sister Suman adds.

Ravana Palli never communicated with the rest of the world. Not for any transactions, at least. They didn’t need to. They grew their own food, married within their clans and continued with the pattern for generations together. They run their own bio-diesel generator for a couple of hours in the evening until after dinner with each household sporting two bulbs. Their techniques, technology, traditions and traits were all their own. Even after the world decided to poke its nose into the village life.

Something else came to be common to the farmers of Ravana Palli. Organic farming of cotton! The farmers grow their own food and alongside grow cotton that goes directly to branded T-shirt makers of the US. They are all covered under an initiative which not just encourages them to practise organic farming but facilitates for sale at a better price.

And, yet, life has not changed in any way for the denizens of Ravan Palli. There is still no road, still no electricity supply, still no transport, no phones and no gadgets. No external governance, no bosses. They live happily ever after.

Life without technology, gizmos, phones and pen drives. Life without multiplexes, without pubs, laptops. No internet, no chat, no downloads. No eating out, no entertainment, no targets, no projects. Time does not stop here, it is just a kind of timelessness. Just a circle of survival. And of procreation. And of natural fruition. Is this what Gandhiji had called Gram Swaraj?

The village ambience is bright. In spite of the silence that reverberates in wind, the blobs of dirt that softly suck in your feet as you walk, cow dung, clouds hovering over the looming hills, there is colour in the air. The adults look content. The kids are perky. Visitors are treated with polite stoicism, as if the inevitability of their exit is well known. And there is self-reliance to a stunning level. What are we missing here?

Harakiri

2007-10-10T13:24:00.000-04:00

From one long window to another, the room stretches out, chequering between shadows of twilight growing long. The window frames birds on trees, settling down for the night like quiet balls of fur but the occasional bird flutters its wings wide and sweeping as if to mock the still figure watching from inside the room.
I sit still because I can’t move. I am transfixed to the 17 inch square of blazing light that attracts me like a deliciously dangerous flame. And the evening slips out of my fingers.
My wings are folded up and pinned to the sides of my invisible spirit. So tightly pinned up that even a flutter tears them. I want to unpin them, shake them up to fall into graceful, satiny pleats. I want to raise them to shield my eyes against the golden evening and spread them and fly straight into the sun. Dip the wings into molten gold and soar into the sky, re-mocking the bewildered little bird and the dead square of light in the long room.
But I don’t. And the bird preens itself and the blaze buzzes on.

I am still sitting still when they walk in. And walk over me, across me, through me. I could be one of the shadows or may be less, may be just half a shadow.
They hoop the questions through my ears, loop the exclamations around my fingers. They rifle through my best laid plans, which just lay there, all dressed up in their best. They clamour all around me, tousle my hair, give me pecks and tug at my sleeves. They are incoherent, don’t know what they want from me, yet speak in a rush, in a garbled tone. Their faces swim into focus and then out. And, they finally walk out. Some in a huff, some on a glide as their remembered chores beckon them. And they walk away from my equally still, virtual life.
They – my well-wishers, my friends, my folks - shake me but can’t stir me. And I sit still as the dirt of footsteps fades away from my shadow. And the nerve ends, that rose startled into the air at the bustle, settle back into their nooks.

I am still sitting still when he arrives. And it is a resplendent arrival. The flashing splendour unseen by anyone else but me! The caprice is packed in six syllables and a million words. He is volatile, predictably unpredictable, he is velvety, rough. He is quiet, vociferous. He demands, he yields.
The 17 inch square is electrified and the current flows into my stillness. It is then a flurry of words, smiles, tears and some more smiles. When he turns away for an instant, it is darkness, when he turns back in a trice, it is like paused soft music playing again.
I fly high with my unpinned wings, I melt into the laughter of the bustling crowds around me. I pause, I dance. When the music stops, I settle down in a velvety heap. My visibility is ephemeral. My wings silver.
I am a moth. Transfixed to the 17 inch square of light, I live my virtual life. I am shrouded in an illusion, my wingtips touched with finely trembling anticipation. And he is the fire that flickers through my stillness.
My stillness is transient. My movement impermanent. And I live in the moments in between.

'Man'ager of the Masses

2007-09-25T20:12:00.000-04:00

He hurtles down the pot-holed roads on a fat bike and heads turn. He baritones into a microphone and an auditorium full of women reacts with delight. He flashes a grin and people fall all over themselves to do his bidding. He is young and dashing. Pop singer? Macho man? Casanova? Corporate honcho?

Meet Gaurav Joshi. The dirt roads that he races down are that of Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The women are the slum-dwellers of the small city. And he is the Programme Officer at the NGO, the curiously abbreviated CECOEDECON, which works with women in slums. And Gaurav barely has time to stop and take stock of the waves of admiration and compliance in his wake as he zooms from one task to another errand.

And he works in a State where nearly 40 per cent of the urban population, comprising six million people, lives below the poverty line. A whopping 2.4 million people live in slums, a figure that even officials admit is far below the actual statistics. The Human Development Index ranks Madhya Pradesh as 28th in India, way down the table. About 40 per cent of Indore's population lives in slums and half the children in the slums are born at home.

Gaurav is a social worker by profession. An M Phil in Social Work from Delhi University, he came back to his hometown to work with a slum health project. His area of operations is about 50 slums spread across the rapidly growing city. His constituency: about 3000 women who work variously as maids, labourers, rag pickers and sanitation staff. His mandate: To ensure that the women organize themselves and implement a calendar of ante-natal care and immunization for pregnant women and their children. His brief: Ensure the cooperation among the women goes beyond health and disentangles the myriad problems they face living in such degraded conditions.

What’s so special about him? “Nothing special! Except that I am in a profession that is yet to be recognized as one. I think that is what we need now, people taking up social project management as a serious, academic discipline and training. That’d make implementation of development schemes so much more efficacious,” he says. And isn’t politics another such avenue? “Yes, that too, though I am not thinking about it right now.”

People are the driving force behind Gaurav Joshi. “Whatever I do, I want to work with people. They inspire me, they motivate me. I am exhilarated when I am with people,” he says. As it is evident from his unbounded enthusiasm and the willing participation of the women in the mammoth urban health event he is anchoring. The exhaustion darkening his face cannot dampen his spirits as he implores the gathering to do just one more slogan.

“I try to be as sincere as possible in my work. It seems futile to even have projects like this unless we put in some dedicated efforts to make it happen. It is all scientific, plugging gaps, identifying strengths and shoring up leaders. And then they, the people, will take care of it.”

It is a heartening imagery that Gaurav features in. A growing city in India, slums waking up to better infrastructure, supportive, aware men, confident, smart women, happy, healthy children who may yet see the black of a board in some school soon.

Sheer drive, unerring instincts, ability to build up rapport with and crack the toughest of nuts, hardened in the miserable slum scenario, steely grit sheathed in petals! And an unadulterated, streamlined, spiral-bound dream for tomorrow!

– Meet Gaurav Joshi, the ultra savvy, true-blue, ivy league professional in a social worker’s khadi wrapping. All set to change things wherever he is. He is, indeed, worth writing a blog about.

Koi Lauta De...

2007-09-06T14:32:00.001-04:00

That evening in Hyderabad, a baby gurgled somewhere. A woman painted her eyes carefully with kajal, looking into the mirror. She must’ve gazed into the eyes of her absent lover, somewhere in the city, and awaited him with longing. A jasmine gajra bloomed in the seller’s basket on the street corner. A birthday cake glowed in its candlelight. A dog woofed for his master. A song came and went in waves in the slow breeze. And the moon waited. They had time. Before they knew.

A man, a woman, a child. Men, women and children. It is a tragic irony that they were trying to have fun. They probably rebelled mutely against the daily humdrum and tried to have fun. They laughed and chatted. They teased and mused. They watched and wandered. Until they died. They had no time. They never knew.

Getting shocked at bomb blasts is passé. It is just news. Until one steps on the first sticky patch of someone else’s blood. Until one sees gory figures lying prone in undignified heaps. And, masses of flesh, shapeless, bloody and anonymous.

It is not the violence that strikes me most about the bomb blasts. It is the suddenness. The abrupt way in which it snuffs out lives. The swiftness with which it seals our lips, our minds and our fates.

Shouldn’t we have a right to know when we are going to end? After all, there would be goodbyes to be said. There is the warmth of the flesh that we want to leave behind, in the closed fists of our loved ones. There are the apologies we want to make, for the small and the big hurts we caused…since there is no time to make amends. There is the little sweet nothing we wanted to whisper before both sound and sweetness were snatched from us.

For us news folks, bomb blasts are just about the toll, the blood and the destruction. They are about terrorists and police. About conspiracies and security failures. But that is not what goes missing in the melee.

It is about life shattered. It is about the candles on the cake blown out. It is about the jasmines that are reduced to dry, bitter crumbles. It is about the child’s cry in the middle of the night for its missing father. It is about the headless, lifeless body that lies alone, orphaned, anonymous in the hospital lobby. Until, a shell-shocked someone turns it into a person. It is about individual lives, changed forever.

I stood in the hospital lobby where shock made the scene a bizarre stilllife. Even as hundreds milled around, there was some kind of stillness, muffled like there is cotton wool all around and people struggled to move through it. I looked at the stricken faces all around and the bloodied bodies lying around. And I knew.

That bomb blasts are not about terror. We can live with terror. We did. We do. We will, too. We get used to taking the shadow of fear with us, wherever we went and not mind it. We can tuck fear into the folds of our mind and cover it with layers of colourful gaiety and everyday life.

Bomb blasts are about moments lost between people, separated brutally at that split second. Bomb blasts are about what cannot be avenged. What cannot be grown back. And what cannot be explained.

How does one find retribution for the dark kaajal that melts with tears and leaves behind the waiting in those young eyes? For a lifetime to come!

Feverish!

2007-08-29T02:14:00.000-04:00

Fever. Like a red flower blooming under closed lids. Like a warm breath whispering into the ear. Fever. Like flame licking across dried grasslands.

Fever like walls closing in. Like roof falling away. It liberates, it suffocates. It gives feet to the nerve ends.

It escalates. It simmers. And plummets to cold sweat only to surge again. It sighs at every joint. Tells tales hiding under the skin. It turns into red whatever the fingers touch. It turns me inside out. And outside in.

It drips in drops from the porch of my consciousness. It rages and rants and raves inside of me. It fights with me but embraces my body in lethal love.

It is spring fever, like reds of tender leaves I nibbled when I lay down in the grass. It is autumn fever, stripping my soul bare of pretended normalcy.

It is red. Hot. Clear. Dense. Chilling. It is black, swirling in the whorls of my mind. It is blue, washing me out.

It is a thirst, quarrelling with my parched insides. It’s a hunger that eats me up and empties me, mercilessly bringing me down on my knees for the next dole.

He gives me fever.

“Fever when you kiss me ..fever when you hold me tight
Fever In the morning…Fever all through the night.”

He comes in the night. Spreads through my day. He pulls me up, by a string of words, out of the honeyed stupor that I slip into. He paints my waking hours. Lights up my sleeping ones.

He hides, he surfaces and my fever undulates like the calm ocean…smooth, velvety and deep. He gives me fever. Even when I am all cold outside.

I hear poetry. I hear a song. The flutter of a bird and the marching band of invisible ants, tickling across my arm. I quiver at the breath that draws images on my moist shields. And tugs me back by the arm as I turn away. I want to go away. I want to be feverish.

He gives me fever. My very own invisible prince. I fret and flame. Burn and seethe. I love and live and walk with a spring in my step. I am a rainbow that lost its moorings, a colourful balloon in the sky. And he is the fire that feeds my flight. He gives me fever.

Where did my fingers catch this fever? In which instant did fever creep up on me?

I love fever. This fever, my fever. His fever.

Whisper of Steel

2006-12-29T01:23:00.000-05:00

How much is a zillion? I think I know after a visit to the Imphal’s Ima Market – the women’s market as it is called. Zillion is the number of fish sold at the market, along the streets around the market, and at the entrances and the exits.

For a vegetarian, it is a living – or is it dead – nightmare. Very dead, beady eyes staring up at you sullenly, mouths angrily open, scales that shine in the sun in silver melancholy. Occasionally, the startling sight of a fish leaping up in the throes of its final agony as it is kept in two-cm deep water, meant to keep it barely alive.

And the smell – it is the kind of smell that has even my fish-crazy North Indian friend go green at the gills and black out and lie sprawling on the wet floor. Really! Truly! Literally! She is probably the only one in the entire market who had a fish-eye view of the palm-covered ceiling of the market yard. No one other than the prone fish has the time to look up.

But then the other things in the market are as overwhelming as the piles of fish. The colours of Manipur are vivid, varied and vibrant. Traditional clothes that hang from the wooden pegs, stacked neatly like towers of wool and cotton. Knives, spices, handicrafts, trinkets, jewellery, dolls, fruit, vegetables – everything.

The women sit in their alcoves, their square of space on the endless platforms that are rowed up along the breadth of the market enclosure. The thatch-covered tin roofs shut out the sun, who nevertheless peeks through the walkways in between, slowly seeping through the roof edges and dripping through the gaps in the ceiling. And the light takes many hues as it bounces off the million things that clutter the market.

And the rainbows reflect in the faces of the women. So that, the most colourful are the women themselves. Crinkly-eyed, rosy-cheeked, dapper in their shirts and wraparound sarongs, the women preside over the market with resplendent poise. Their greetings, their smiles, their thank yous and their pleases are all like the graceful motions of a peacock.

But these women are not just all silk, spice and swan down. They are strong and steely too. Numbers show every second household has a drug user or a positive person. And it is the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives who are standing by them, helping them to find their moorings.

The women’s market is not just a traditional hub, it is also a contemporary process for the women to earn for the family, to sustain the economy and to ensure some semblance of order in a society torn by many insecurities.

The serenity in the faces of the women belies the turmoil inside. Their indolent posture belies their sheer dynamism. And the sights, smells and movements of ordinariness in the market belie the simmering layers beneath.

Ima markets of Imphal are a study in non-militant feminism. Of women power sheathed in daily life. Of human spirit breaking through the cobwebs of obscurantism. And, of unknown shades of colours you thought you knew.

Moonlight On The Cesspool

2006-11-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

She walks with a swing. It is a gait that has been achieved with much imitation and practice. It is meant to be provocative but somehow makes her look like a school girl doing a mock ramp show.

The tinseled sticker she wears for a bindi catches light whenever she turns her head. And the long chains dangling from her ears sway whenever she gestures, whenever she looks around – which is like, all the time. She is just like a little sparrow.

Her mouth is a small cupid’s bow, with an almost imperceptible downward tilt at the corners, an indication of some untold tragedy deep inside her.

But, wait! The tragedy is not untold. It is visible to every man who walks past her on the street corner. It is visible to everyone who has seen the girl grow up. Yes, they remember! She once dressed in robes made of jute packaging bags and sooty rags. She now dresses in slinky jersey kurtas or shiny, slippery, bright-coloured sarees.

Her hair on a good day looked like the straw that she slept on in the night. And her eyes were red rimmed most of the time, because of all that crying. Now, she wears her hair in a fancy do and her eyes are shielded under a heavy coat of kajal.

There was a time when she slept behind the bus stop, on a running parapet that adjoined a wall, painted everyday with stinking urine. She never noticed the stench. After all, she used to be so exhausted by the time she reached her night shelter. And she shared the parapet with some of her friends. Friends that she made while begging.

She still shares her bed. This time with a new man every night. Sometimes, more than one.

She is Chitra. Age: 23. Height: Five feet. Occupation: Sex work. Address: Bus Stand in one of the world’s holiest pilgrim towns. Family: One daughter, father unknown.

Chitra has dark eyes, lanky hair. And a voice like a child’s. The girl grew up but her voice never did. It is still the childish tenor that one vague day in the past called out to her mother across a courtyard somewhere in a village. It is still the same trill that reverberated around the mango orchard when she whooshed in the air on a swing.

The voice is the same. And the girl is still a child. A poster child for Tragedy.

The days when she wandered around the village streets, bought biscuits at the village store, went late to school and got spanked are hazy memories. The day she flung a slate at a teacher and injured her, the day she ran away and got into a train to an unknown destination is the only link to the past she has.

I was a baby once, she says. Once? Isn't she still?

Chitra is a fighter today. She fights for the handful of rupees that she has to somehow earn everyday. She fights for the space on the barely curtained corner at the rear of the bus terminus. She fights for her baby to have a less raw deal than she had. And she fights for dignity. Just like other people.

I met Chitra. I met a child who lost her childhood. I met eyes that are pools of sadness, sentinels for her safety, camouflage for what she does not want the world to see - all at the same time. I met innocence, brutally violated yet somehow intact. I met the ugly side of life. I met my Guardian angel who saved me from being Chitra.

And I met my image in mirror that refuses to acknowledge the existence of Chitras in my cosy little world.

Corny love poem

2006-10-03T04:18:00.000-04:00

Unlike the love stories, this is real...written all by me

And sent to someone...with disastrous effects. He's since migrated to the West African Republic of Burkina Faso.

I would have seen you in the Babylonian legend
In Egypt, in the palm tree's deep angular shade
We must have patterned the Mediterranean sand
And soaked up Africa's gossamer green woodland

We must have dabbled in the hues of every sunset
And walked every path that was wind-swept
I remember we scented the pages of history
And drew new lines on the palm of destiny

How can you say we met only yesterday?
How can you say you tread just once this way?
How can you say this is our time only now and here?
How can you believe you are human mere?

Did it not occur to you in the misty winter’s yesterday
Did you not see my life in flowers dotting delhi’s kings’ way?
In the steam from the tea cup ensconcing our oh-so-short day?
In the wakeful dreams and the dreamy sentience?

That we have not met yesterday but you were always there
mingled in the drops of rain, in volcanoes afire
In the red stellar circles around distant planets
And in my each breath and my soul and intellect

So we have not met just now, my dear love
You were always there in the fragrance of flowers
And in the belief that there is a sheer touch alive
Between two beings across eras, eons and miles

Remains of the Day: Three Love Stories (?)

2006-10-02T04:37:00.000-04:00

She was a butterfly
Around the garden she flew
Colourful and capricious
Red green yellow and blue

Just 23, she was at an illogically intense age. And it was an accident waiting to happen.

They worked at the same office. First day at work, he swept into the office. It was his habit to open the door wide…totally wide…and walk in without breaking stride. And he walked right into her mind…without breaking stride…into her consciousness, her heart. Seems clichéd? Well, 23 is cliched.

But the problem was he was not 23…...far from it. And he was far from her in so many more ways…as she discovered gradually. No, he did not lie that he wasn’t married…not possible when they are working together…nor that he is the father of two school-going kids…They made an unlikely pair…he tall dark rugged…she fair petite…but then no one knew they were a pair…not even themselves.

It’s just that knowledge about him did not prevent her from loving…and losing. They had a million cups of tea together…they took a thousand midnight rides through the city…they shared a hundred letters….he said he loved her…the first time ever he loved a woman.

And that was all…no exploitation, no deception, no commitment. Is that a love story? Or is it a freakinfukkinstupidrelationship?

She said let’s just let it fade out….easy…slow…and gradual…but suddenly he remembered he was 34..that he was married…that he was a father…and he said break…now. And what a bloody mess it was. She still bleeds from one corner of her heart…

Now when she sees him on the street suddenly, all that she can notice is that his hair…the thatch she had loved so much…sports so much silver.

The other corners have not learnt their lessons well.

She was 27. At an age where experience does not get better than impulse.

He is a Kashmiri. Is it the extremities of geography that attracted them to each other?

He barged through closing lift doors one afternoon and gate-crashed into her life. Why does she have this tendency to love people who walk in uninvited? Weird.

He is so handsome…and such a crook. She knew from the first moment that he was a rogue…and yet loved him….guess u know her a little by now.

She saw Himalayas in his eyes…and apple sweetness in his smile…he was soo handsome…

And then he vanished…just like that…again…what was lost? Nothing really…no commitment…no more in the relationship except exchange of sentiments…

What was that? Was it love or just freakin-fukkin-stupid-acquaintance-at-convenience? If only she knew…

She was 35…at an age when one becomes blasé at even being stupid…

It is the virtual space…she does not know him…has never seen him…or heard him…it is just red words between them…and an intensity that came more from the late hour than from any real feeling.

The monsoon night’s moist noises…the cool air heavy with the fragrance of rebellious jasmine…the remaining traces of a youth fast evaporating…whatever was it….the red words became the Truth…..the Obsession…the Preoccupation.

She wanted more…he gave none…She sought personal touch…he shunned even virtual presence…And she ranted and raved and then bled quietly…and he just watched….when he had the time…

What was that? Was that love or just a freakin-fukkin-killing-stupid-adult-delusion?

Three Love stories…..are there more coming? God forbid…

Jaane Chale Jaatein Hai Kahan!

2006-09-26T15:10:00.000-04:00

I watched a clichéd Telugu movie called Johnny the other day. Singularly unremarkable except for a scene where the hero takes his cancer-stricken wife to Mumbai for treatment and rents a house there. They are in an upbeat mood until the woman opens the window…and sees a massive cemetery right outside…the way her face falls and the sheer frustration in the hero’s face are priceless.

The helplessness we feel when our loved ones are beyond help is a pain that is impossible to describe. Apparently, no one I know noticed that scene but for me it was as real as my waking nightmare.

The effect is quite physical on me. First numbness and then an overwhelming weakness. As if I just wanna sleep wherever I am. And that is the beginning of my sleepless nights and hungerless days

When my mother was wheeled into emergency after a cardiac seizure, my life came crashing down all around me. Nothing seemed important. Nobody else mattered. It was she and she alone who filled my entire being. And how subjective physical pain is! It was her pain alone. Thank god, she came back to us. And saved us from becoming orphans.

It happens to all of us. We lose some, come close to losing some. Everyday life suddenly becomes irrelevant. It is as though that one day, one moment of trauma, stands alone, detached from other parts of life. And that moment is filled with regrets and inadequacies.

Heartbreak seems so much easier when we know what losing a loved one to death means. Because, when people go away, we can never make amends.

That’s why, thirty two years after my father passed away – a hazy figure since I was just a baby - I now know that time does not heal some wounds, it just shows us afresh how deeply permanent they are.

Rhyme of the Rain

2006-09-24T13:30:00.000-04:00

How it pours, pours, pours,
In a never-ending sheet!
How it drives beneath the doors!
How it soaks the passer's feet!
How it rattles on the shutter!
How it rumples up the lawn!
How 'twill sigh, and moan,
and mutter, From darkness until dawn.

When it is like the tender touch of a baby’s hand on mother earth’s yearning cheek, it is a drizzle. When it sprinkles down fragrantly like a burst of cherry blossom, it is a shower. When it cascades like a silk curtain swaying gracefully in the wind, it is rain. And when it unceasingly flows down from the heavens like a heart-broken beloved’s tears, it is a downpour.

It teases, it taunts. It plays, it punches. It dances, it drives. It nurtures, it crushes. It gives life, it washes away hope. Rain.
Rain is the elixir of life. Rain is the tears of heaven. Rain is the nectar of gods. Rain is power unleashed by the sky.

Rain is white, silver, blue, black. Green, brown and violet. When it mingles with the earth, it is red and brown. When it drenches a tree, it is green honey. In the night it is black Indian Ink. In the dawn, it tinkles like silver anklets.

Across Andhra in the last few weeks, Rain Lord arrived in all his glory. Trumpeting thunder, flashing flags of lightning, the swoosh of winds and the rumble of dense clouds. The parched world eagerly drank up the monsoon.

And at Antarvedi, at the confluence of the mighty Godavari with the sea, the sky bent down to meet the ocean...the ocean surged to meet the river...the river embraced the earth as it went to meet its destination and rain hung from the sky like the pearls of a queen's crown.

We climbed into the light house perched right at the edge of the madness, angry waves rebuking the tower. The steam from the tea cups of the tower attendants mingled with the curtains of mist that wafted in from the sea.

Wind howled in the tower and I stood at the window. ...a mere teeny weeny dot in front of the mammoth cosmic drama where elements talked to each other, argued, fought and made love.

sleepwalktalk

2006-09-23T14:25:00.000-04:00

I have just constructed this. Let me think and then come up with posts. Why have i done this? lot of time on my hands, i guess.

somnaloquist sleep-walker