The Truth Beckons

I came back with the wrenched heart with so many philosophical questions. When I first read about Gautam Buddha’s tryst with philosophy on witnessing the travails of old age, the understanding could not permeate me. As they say examples are better than precept and I add they are bitter than precept, especially when you see it in real life.

I took a train to Kashi to meet him. He was my first encounter in life to strength, power and authority. Everybody was scared of him. He stood like a banyan tree giving shades to all of us. There had been complaints that he could never see anyone above him but I reject them as small weeds in his shade. I love to have pillars around me. I love holding them dance around them, the way I did as a kid. You grow up and you are suddenly thrown in this sea where you keep swimming. Those pillars become hindsight. The heart is relieved to let the fleeting memories get washed away with time but the scar which entrenches in the personality constantly reminds of the aches. His seventy five years old frame of 71 inches lying on the dilapidated bed, the orangish yellow eye opened as I touched his feet. He smiled and to me that moment meant the world. I could not control the sudden rush of salty liquid from my eyes. Yet I managed to hide it somehow. I wanted to hug him and cry my heart out. It was my pillar falling infront of my eyes and I was helpless. The first encounter of strength in my life is my latest rendezvous with the fragility and weakness. I could not see the coin reversing. He tried being as normal as he could but I felt his pain in my heart, soul and mind and my eyes were refusing to obey my brain. He kept smiling and slept.

His frame is still so formidable. In this frailty, he commands that respect which none other in that room can ever; the way he did in his youth, when he would jump from the boat in the mid of Ganges just because his instinct would ask him to swim the other half of the river. Now also, he was ordering everybody about how he should be fed and how his pillow is supposed to be kept. The love for his empire could not take a back seat even now. He had been sorting out all the matters related to money in that one stroke of pen and whisper.

I know what Buddha must have felt that moment when he questioned the beauty of life while seeing the senescence. It’s Karna’s lines from Mahabharata which reverberates inside my head, I see it now, this world is swiftly passing.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my grandfather who passed away thirteen days after I wrote this post. Incidentally it was my birthday that day and it ceases to be happy ever.

Diary of a Technically Retarded

I like coming back to catharsis to think aloud, when I get really pressurised and choked to behave in a certain way and guard my feelings in the shell. I like it here because I am not moderated.

I have been feeling quite frustrated with the technology of late. Well that has been the case since the very begining of my life. When I was two and a half, I peed on the speaker of a music system because I wanted it to shut up and it refused to.  I feel glad to declare myself a technically retarded person at 27 when I see half of tech savvy  friends glued to their laptops all the time. Nevertheless I must confess that I too at some level is so mesmerised by technology that I dont prefer to write on paper anymore. I am so much addicted to my laptop. It hurts me deep down when I rely on services of things which 'technically' I detest but we all fall for convenience at one level or the another. What a pity!

My childhood remains special to me for number of reasons. I was brought up in a close knit community of uncle and aunts who constituted our neighborhood. Well, they were not my relatives, my parents chose their friends wisely. That is why the bonding was so natural and nothing came as an effort but out of spontaneity. Whenever my father introduced me to someone, he would make sure that I know something special about that person. This gave me a choice to reject or accept the social capital which he offered to me in legacy. The simple things which my  mother did; inviting neighbors to home for dinner atleast twice in a month, the card games happening throughoout the night at our home, the movie sessions where whole community would go in a mini bus to watch it, just because they wanted to do things together. There was never a dearth of people around me. Uncle, aunts, bhaiyas, didis. I dont remember anyone who was younger to me. Whenever I go home my parents still give me updates on whereabouts of their friends. He has his friends who are there with him for past forty years.This is when people of his generation prefer to restrict their internet uses for professional reasons most of the time. I find the fact amusing.

Here I come back to my life. My social capital of 27 years. The fleeting one. My parents friends' kids who I was supposed to be friends with. Frankly speaking I have been unable to keep them for this long. We know each other, meet when required but definetly would not like to hang around with each other, the way our parents did. Then came the teenage when I started exercisng some choices to decide on my social capital. Those intermittent crushes who were like candies to the eye in school. Like lot many, even I would make an attempt to get closer to them. No social networking site existed then, so it was a physical attempt to stand and wait at a point where you can actually meet rather see him.Those rambles with the female friends where we would discuss endlessly about everything happening in our lives, from guys to extra curricular activities to studies. Our bicycle  rides in the evening for which we could die for, the badminton sessions, the number of durga pujas and many more. We all wanted to be together for these moments. We valued the moments and the ineveitability of each other in creating them.In my 20s, I had a new vision for my life, I met so many good people who were never very comforting but would help me in unleashing a new dimension in my life. I guess my heart took a back seat.

Every morning, I open my facebook account to wish people on their birthdays and aniversaries. It's just once in a year that I have to do this ritual. I don't care if they exist otherwise for rest part of the year. I would not have even wished them on their birthdays, if facebook would not have flashed it. Recently, I saw a flurry of b'day wishes  on the facebook wall of an acquaintance who passed away last year. I bothered to visit her wall and saw the number of condolence messages which made me write something to stop people wishing her who probably were unaware about it. As a follow up, I received lot of querries on my fb inbox about how her death happened. They all claimed to be her friends. I always was her acquaintance and told them how clueless I am. Irony is that her 'friends' were asking accquaintances about the details. All I rememeberd of that acquaintance was her beautiful smile and was deeply saddened at her untimely death.  I have close to 550 friends in my list yet I dont even feel connected to them at any level. This includes all of my socialcapital.

Every evening I come back from office, my only friends are the dinner cooked by me, workout and a novel. This is the point where I have brought down my expectation level too. Emotions are no longer the driving force. In the quest of financial capital, we have probably changed the identity of our social capital. It hurts me  but I am happy till the time I become 'numb'.

Monologue

Have you ever felt that your pillow should have arms?  I hugged it for long. We both were wet with the salty liquid, consoling each other. My heart whispered what a pity; the fellow does not have hands to hug me. The pillow whispered, ‘Thank god I do not have hands or else I would have always craved to hug someone.’

Gangs of Wasseypur

I am not a movie buff who would be writing a review of the movie but sometimes there are reasons or rather 'emotions' compelling enough to do things which one has never done before. It was only when I read enough number of status messages on Facebook that I decided to research on what 'Gangs of Wasseypur' is all about. My interest in the movie rose exponentially as I uncovered the layers.

 I have spend first fifteen years of my life in the coal belt of Jharkhand. This belt which was like a black hole for the rest of the world during 1990s . The nearest town which one could  find in the map of government of India was Hazaribagh, which was still 20 km from my home. The collieries would just have residential colonies with basic minimal amenities and mines. Many a times we would see crack in our boundaries of our house when blasting in the opencast mining took place. My father had a tough life.We too had a tough life but we never felt it because of the way we were shielded from all external influences. We had a defined territory to play and specific people to talk to.We would never mingle with the masses.There were no STD phones. Father's wireless would start beeping at 6 in the morning when production reports would come from the mines. The number of lines in his forehead would be directly proportional to the amount of coal lost in the theft which would mean decreased production for the day. I remember once he had an altercation with a local goon. The next day the goon was at our gate hurling abuses at my dad and also threatened to kidnap him. The security stopped him somehow.  I was into tears, scared to the core. This was when I was twelve. At sixteen, my father decided that I should pack my bags and leave the life in the coal belt. I left home for good. Father's life continued there.

Gangs of Wasseypur seemed like a repeat telecast of lot of scenes which I witnessed directly or indirectly during my childhood. Watching the movie in Jharia Raniganj belt added to the excitement.  The dialogues and the locations seemed like a deja vu. I was happy to see Dhanbad opencast mining and underground mining being captured so well and the abuses used in the movie are so much part of the language used in the region. My female friends warned me but I enjoyed each of the dialogues . More so because, it is so much imbibed into the language of the region that it is no more considered an abuse. People just do some permutation and combination with the abusive words to create a new one and if you can do so well, you are considered very smart. It is a symbol of heroism too.The plot of the movie seemed weak. In the first hour, the chronology of coal theft discussed gave an impression that the movie is about how the power equation on the monopoly of coal that has changed over the years. However as it progressed, it lost the grip and slipped into something entirely different. Despite this weakness, the characters have been well crafted and actors did justice to their roles. Manoj Bajpayee  is brilliant and is effortlessly excellent. The best part of the movie is the direction.  The scenes and the dialogues have done wonders. The accent has been well picked up by all the actors and it feels as if Anurag Kashyap has actually found them in  Dhanbad I bow to Sneha Khanwalkar for the composing the music. When I listened to the songs first, I could never imagine that they have been composed by a female.A true feminist indeed! The songs have such strong rustic touch and a style popular amongst the male folks. Music is exact replica of the folk songs which one can hear in the region during Holi and other festivals.I had an opportunity to record these songs this Holi when the bhaang ridden crowd came to our house with their dholak and refused to budge without getting appreciation from my father.I just wish that story line would have been stronger. I expect that the sequel, adresses these gaps.That would make the movie holistic. The one good reason for which Anurag Kashyap needs an applaud is selection of subject of the movie. Gangs of Wasseypur has definetly given recognition to the region which was an important undiscovered territory for ages. The region has long been non-existent for the sophisticated urban crowd whose energy needs are met from coal coming from Jharia Raniganj coal belt. 

While I was coming back home after the movie, I saw these lean men on bicycle carrying tonnes of weight. I asked the driver that why are they carrying so much weight. He told me, Koyla chor hain saare. Kaafi kamai ho jaati hai bechne se. I smiled and rolled down the window to see the beauty of hinterland. A group of young boys stared at me as if I am an alien. Wearing sunglasses is still not cosidered the necessity in the region, it is a fashion statement. In the local language, bahut style maara jaa raha hai. I quickly pulled the windows up. It flashed in my head that one of them must be Sardar Khan, Faisal Khan or Danish Khan. They have been flourishing in the region for years. I reached home and in all my excitement started narrating the story or rather scenes to father. He seemed disinterested and his looks told me, tell me something new. I have been seeing this for forty years now.

My vacation would end soon and I would be packing bags again for better leaving behind the memories of childhood. Not that I want to relive them. A glimpse of that as a child was scary, watching the movie on it was fun but living the life in the coal belt is out of question. I would continue to see it through father's eyes. 

Conundrum

In that agression, the renaissance man never knew what he did to me.

 For I knew deep down, with each stroke of brush I was turning prettier, identifying the subtle shades within me. The mesmerising painting, his brush and colours flowing within me. We were engrossed in each other.It seems like a never ending journey.The best symbiosis we could ever experience.

I showed the painting to mirror today. The mirror smiled . Oh! wait it was me who smiled :) .The mirror laughed at me and I blushed. This euphoria confuses him. He would be a painter forever without knowing the reason ever.

we laughed at his fate, both the mirror and me. The Renaissance man would have the renaissance after he finishes but he would finish only when I get finshed. He is fatigued, tired..mesmerised by colours, he is starting again. The colours oozing out of me fervently..the one he has never seen before..painting was his fate...and I am at bliss, I am the painting.

Refuse

How to keep a heavy heart, with the ego intact,

and every time I tried, my pieces fell apart,
the pieces in different hands,
dazzling like the particles in the sand

At the abyss of my consciousness,
I knew I could do it someday.
the pieces joined; falling and not breaking

Thus, when I grew up,
I was meant to weigh heavier,
in the body, soul and heart.

Au revoir

As I sailed off-shore, I waved good bye to them.
I saw them in tears, and drank mine too.
Our oceans different, we would never connect

Inside the veil, I was drifting with them,

The illusionary figures in the vicinity,

pulling me farther away from the reality.

They swam with me for a distance,

those angels seemed in transition,

we needed resistance,

Proximity was against my volition.

With each stroke, the figures became vivid

The masterpiece created, the untimely art,

gifting so much sorrow to the heart.

The figures were so surreal,

To escape from the art was a demand so unreal.