Sunday Reminiscence

In India, as in many parts of the world, we follow a Monday-Friday work week. In Madras, where I grew up, a work week could be taxing for most. It was not the work itself, but the commute. I’m sure those of you who live in metros around the world (New York and Chicago especially) would understand. Madras can be quite an aggressive place and at least once a day, it was not uncommon for most people to be yelled at by someone on the road – be it an autorickshaw driver, a bus driver, a pedestrian, or a fellow car driver. The journey to and from work demanded high adrenalin and a thick skin, and provided a free lesson in the local 'gaalis' (swear words). 

Professors, teachers, artists, sales execs and small business folk apart, most grown-ups we knew wrapped up their workdays at around 530 or 6pm and arrived home at 630 or 7pm, after a 30 minute to 1 hour commute by bus, car, autorickshaw, scooters or motorbikes.

Most kids in our neighbourhood returned home from school between 230pm and 430pm, depending on their after-school sports classes and also the time at which their schools closed for the day. While we were young, those of us whose mothers worked always had someone else receive us at home – a grandparent, an aunt, or a domestic help who had been with the family for ages.

As the years passed, this routine changed. Grandparents and aged housekeepers passed on, aunts got married and left. Some of us let ourselves in and took care of our younger siblings, made the tea and served snacks, etc…while some of us were once more received by recently hired cooks and housekeepers who had replaced the ones we’d lost. Evening fell, we spoke with our parents, dinner came by swiftly, it was study time again, and then we were off to bed, sometimes with our books on our chests…

After a 5 day cycle like this, it is not surprising that the weekends were looked forward to as a time to wind down. Come Saturday evening, families with younger children would let loose on Marina beach, while those with older children would opt for dining out, going for a walk in the park, catching up with family and friends over chai or an Indian dessert, or finishing up some shopping long due. College students would be off for a movie with friends or hanging out at the cooler Eliot’s Beach.

We really didn’t see too many unmarried couples hanging around because, well, honestly, the Madras back then was quite conservative. I’m guessing the only places where couples could hold hands were dark cinema halls, or cars with tinted and rolled up windows. You might think a beach or a park after dark might have worked, but only if you didn’t want to be robbed, or arrested by a policeman on his rounds. If it seems unbelievable, well...this was life in Madras till 2000, the last year I lived there and it seemed right.

After a lazy, happy Saturday, was the special Sunday lunch at home. Of course, each family made 'specials' peculiar to their community, religion, region...Different kinds of rice (lemon, tomato, tamarind, pulao), stews or kuzhambus (more – yogurt, vatral – roasted vegetable, kara – spiced), curries, kootus (mashed vegetables with lentils), sambars (pearl onion, drumstick, gourd), rasams (lemon, Mysore, pepper), poriyals (vegetables sautéed with curry leaves and mustard seeds), avials, masaiyals, thuvaiyals...really a vibrant expression of each community.

Our North Indians friends also relished the South Indian sides and stews as the curry leaves and mustard seeds with which these dishes were seasoned would complement their cuisine – the East and West Indian seafood curries, and the North Indian tandoori or korma dishes.

As Urdu-speaking Deccani Muslims, our cuisine was a mix of the South and the North. Over the years, those of us who lived in Madras moved towards adopting Tamizh dishes and wholeheartedly appreciated some knock-outs like Chettinaad Chicken, Meen Kuzhambu, Mutton Varuval, and Liver Fry. Over time, we stopped using yogurt to lend body to our stews in the North Indian fashion (as our Grandmothers used to), opting for the richer and creamier South Indian coconut milk instead (as our Mothers did). If given a choice today, I would still opt for coconut milk over yogurt, except where it cannot truly be substituted (as in the Biryani yakhni).

More often than not, our breakfast choices grew to incorporate idlis, dosas, vadas and pongal rather than puris, chappatis, or parathas. I suppose our working mothers also found it convenient to just allow the Tamizh cooks to make what they were best at - the local fare. About 10 years ago, cereals caught on and from what my friends say, they are becoming more popular in all households due to a more hectic lifestyle and their convenience in use. Well! The pros and cons of globalization...

So on Sundays, in 80s and 90s Madras, our tables gathered the family around with the curries and the fries and the stews. I describe it that way because the Sunday repast was a big event, and all visitors who dropped in were welcomed to join. Somehow the bright blue skies, easy sea breeze, lazy puffs of clouds, and the hum of sleepy insects created these perfect Sundays fragrant with the blooms on the creepers of our garden, and heady with the aroma of a specially prepared family meal in appreciation of our gift of life, of living, and of one another…Sunday evenings were really a wind down time, gearing us up for the week ahead.

Sunday afternoon siestas were followed by bajjis (batter covered deep fried vegetables) or samosas (fried pies stuffed with minced meat or vegetables) or vadas (lentil and rice-batter savory doughnuts), and chai (tea made the Indian way). Then a game of cricket, a walk around the block, flying kites on the terrace, watching the weekly Sunday evening Tamizh movie telecast at 530pm, or catching up on reading and homework (the procrastinators like me, that is).

On these evenings, my parents played their favourite Hindi film music from the 60s, 70s, and 80’s (tape-recorders back then)…When I catch those strains from my husband’s laptop today, I remember those calm, golden, Sunday evenings in 80s and 90s Madras.

Here are some songs my father loved:

He would sing this one often - ‘Tum Bin Jaoon Kahaan’ (roughly translated as ‘where would I go without you’?), lip-synced by the incredibly handsome Shashi Kapoor J – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta89As3Nru0

And yes, although this semi-classical one picturizes a couple off on a date, may I mention that it was shot in 1980’s Delhi…a very different place from the Madras of the 1990’s even… - ‘Kali Ghodi Dwar Khadi’ (roughly ‘the dark horse stood facing the portal’), from one of my favorite Hindi movies ‘Chashme-Baddoor’ (meaning ‘Begone, evil eye!’) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw4oWvCB19A&feature=fvst

May I also mention that most couples I observed as a child pranced about on screen and not off J, as seen here in ‘Do Deewane Shehar Mein’ (roughly ‘two lovers in the city), lip-synced by the hero Amol Palekar, whom my Dad strongly resembled - http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-0KHOuzL3z4&feature=endscreen

A song my mother would sing, from ‘Baton, Baton Mein’ (transliterated, ‘as we spoke…’), again lip-synced by my Dad’s twin Amol Palekar, and Tina Munim, a real cutie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJSJz6tXvSY

The Sun's a Shining, The Flowers' a Blooming...

It is a day for love and romance...let us shout out our love from the mountain tops...(or failing that, the rooftops), till all the seas gang dry my dear, so deep in love am I.

Can love or the lack of it make a person ill? I believe so. Once upon a time, I was amused by those who sighed and stared dreamily into space, high on a drug called love...or as I called it, 'infatuation'. I joked with the lovesick that what they needed was a wake-up call - an injection filled with a healthy dose of reality. They agreed, weakly nodding their heads, before falling back into their catatonic states, like lotus eaters defenceless against the songs of the sirens. Some of them married their loves, some were forced to marry the men/women their families chose for them...

I am 36 now. I humbly admit that love is the most powerful drug of all. I apologize to all those whose love I teased them about.
It is true that God is love. But of course, if people truly believed that (or maybe I should have phrased it 'If people's belief were true...'), they would not attack other nations on the insistence of a few war-profiteers, based upon cooked up, elaborate conspiracies. NOBODY gains from war but those who manufacture weapons and the few at the top who have an direct economic stake in the natural resources of the country being attacked.

Love is one's conscience. Whether one believes or not in God, and regardless of our nationality, race, religion, and community, ALL of us share universal values that compel us to recognize human rights and common ground for happiness.

Hopefully, the world is moving towards more acceptance and an appreciation of its beautiful, diverse cultures. I pray my sons live life to the fullest and spread happiness in such a world, marry the women whom they love, and celebrate contentment with their many children.

It all begins with a little spark that burns bright in our hearts...

A Red, Red Rose 

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June :

My love is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I :

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun :

And I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only love,

And fare thee weel a while !

And I will come again, my love,

Thou’ it were ten thousand mile.

- Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796)

In truth...

My friend and I were debating Keats’ line the other day: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. – that is all/  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

We had actually started off discussing the tendency of most people to see only what they choose to see - conveniently by-passing truths that could be uncomfortable, distasteful, or not in conformity to their ideas on life, culture, religion, etc. For instance, homeless people are described as the “invisible community” because 99% of people choose not to “see” them, although a homeless person might have been standing on the pavement right in front of them, sleeping on a park bench, or begging on a road median. Is the truth that they see beautiful? And what about the truth of their attitude to this reality?

From the other point of view, people in war-torn countries learn to ignore shelled broken-down buildings, rubble, and daily frustrations with regards to basic needs such as security, food, education…They just trudge on. I’m guessing this is how a homeless person learns to deal with his/her situation as well, through grit and perhaps the numbing of senses…not a pretty picture, but again the truth, and the act of coming to terms with the truth or reality of their circumstances.

Like the 5 blind men and the elephant, the world sees only what it wants to. It manufactures many truths even as each person describes the elephant only in terms of what he/she feels with his/her hand. As someone said, there are as many opinions as there are people in this world. Could an opinion be a truth? A lot of people sure defend their opinions as though they must be!

The blind men were being absolutely truthful about their empirical knowledge about the elephant, but they were missing the actual truth altogether – that the elephant was all that they had described it to be, as a whole, and yet not what they each had concluded, separately. One notes Keats' intent in using the word "beauty" to mean the perception of the larger picture, of the whole, and not just the parts.

How true is Shakespeare’s observation of human nature and its tendency to create illusions to live by, of being unable to look beyond the conventional and the immediate – “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet). In truth, we have no idea.

Applying this to culture, my friend and I agreed that most people accept that which is synonymous with their culture/ philosophy...their ‘weltanshauung’ or world view, as it were. They tolerate some differences, and absolutely dislike that which is more different than similar. Things or people that do not conform to popularly accepted norms/ ideas are often mocked and worse, humiliated and ignored or ostracized, like the homeless folk who arouse feelings of discomfort due to their shabby clothes, unclean appearance, and general dissociation with the world (no doubt brought about by severe mental and emotional trauma). That which does not fit into the popular "order" or "perceived universal truth" is written off.

All human beings – regardless of race and culture – are driven by the need to belong, and being ignored quickly breaks down a person’s sense of self. In this sense, the homeless person has been as much created by the very society that ignores him. Again, the truth about society’s reactions to a kink in the pattern is not beautiful at all.

And so most people – to remain ‘acceptable’ – attempt to simply keep up a diplomatic working relationship with the larger community, and shy away from directness in communication. This is not wrong. It is just convenient. And just as all things convenient fail to nourish the body, so also these conveniences sans depth or substance fail to nourish the soul. Is this truth also beauty? Maybe it is beautiful in the motive involved – that one wants to please, to be accepted, and is willing to do what it takes to be accepted, to a certain extent. Ego has been partially let go in lieu of the greater benefit of harmonious relations with the greater group.

I don’t champion intense, life-changing relationships as the ideal substitute to the superficial, necessary drudge of socializing so excellently captured by T.S.Eliot - “People come and go talking of Michelangelo”. To be realistic, one has neither the time nor the inclination to indulge in the same, post the 30’s. I just talk of simple, honest friendships that don’t stand upon ceremony, and where acceptance of the other with all of his/her shortcomings trumps the need to ram one’s opinions down the other’s throat, or throw jibes and judgments at the other’s words. As with all relationships, mutual respect and acceptance are key to a long-lasting friendship. In some cases, we are pressed to do so for the sakes of our children and their social circles. We happily submit.

…Which brings me to the point I was making to my friend – that sometimes, illusions are necessary if one is to remain part of any society. Many truths are really not beautiful. Beauty itself is defined differently by each one of us. Sometimes, it is the illusion that is considered beautiful (the geisha, for instance, wear thick make-up and assume different identities when they are entertaining, and that role-play is extremely exciting for their male guests). Again, as an Indian Muslim non-conformist feminist female global citizen in her mid-30’s, I’m perhaps biased in considering this idea from an Asian perspective, when the idea itself is from the Western canon of thought.

But I talk only of relationships and their small illusions. Where social change or social service is needed, it is imperative that the truth – however unpleasant - be looked at squarely and in the face. War, the abuse of vulnerable members of society, and the plight of the unfortunate cannot be swept under the carpet. They are clarion calls that knock on the doors of our conscience, like gritty photo-journalism that seeks to rock one's foundations from stupor. How truthful or beautiful are our responses to these distress signals?

An Early Spring

We have been blessed with a mild winter and an early spring this year. This morning, gentle showers heralded what is known as the most romantic season. The day began temperate and grey, with a gentle drizzle spraying the blossoming trees outside our bedroom window. The weather has been perfect – temperature in the early 60s – and the landscape is a burst of color, greens of all shades, buds pushing their way through headfirst, washed and nourished by the rain. One hears the steady drip-drip of water falling from the roof’s gutters onto the cement patio, and the staccato of raindrops on the eaves.

One is tempted to curl up in bed with an Alexander McCall Smith (preferably an Isabel Dalhousie), Simon & Garfunkel playing in the background, and a box of truffles by one’s side or a caramel macchiato, whichever appeals at that moment. But there is work to do and miles to go before I sleep ;). All I can indulge myself are a few words of thanks to Mother Nature in this post. So I quote Chaucer on this delicious day, in ceremonious gratitude to the universe…These are the first 18 lines of his ‘Prologue…’, a fictional (perhaps) account in verse of the stories told by a group of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Thomas a Becket (Canterbury Cathedral) from Southwark (London). To be honest, the felicitous weather urges me to embark on a pilgrimage myself - to the homes once inhabited by Keats, Dickens, and Dr. Johnson - but that will have to wait till a trip to London is in the offing. For the present, daydreaming with Chaucer will have to do...

Diane Jones' reading of the Prologue in Middle English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahuT-JwxIa8&feature=related

(right) An engraving of Chaucer in Speght’s 1598 edition of Chaucer’s ‘Works’

(The first 18 lines of)

The General Prologue – Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400)

Middle English…

Pronunciation…

Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote
Wan thot A'prill with his sure-es soo-tuh

The drought of March hath perced to the roote
The drowgt of March hath pear-said to the roo-tuh

And bathed every vein in swich liquor
And ba-thed every vane in sweech lee-coor

Of which vertu engendred is the flour
of wheech ver-too en-jen-dred is the flu-er

When Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
When Zeph-er-us ache with his sway-tuh breath

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
In-spear-ed hath in every holt and heth

The tendre croppes and the yonge sun
The tawn-dray crop-pays and the young-gay soan

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne
Hath in the rahm his hall-vey coors e-rown

And smale fowles maken melodye
And smal-ay foe-lays mock-en mel-oh-dee-uh

That slepen all the night with open eye
That slep-en all the neekdt with open ee-ah

So priketh hem nature in hir courages
So prick-eth him nah-tour in hear core-ahj-ez

Thanne longen folke to goon pilgrimages
Thah-nay lon-gen folk to goen-on pilgrim-ahj-ez

And palmeres for to seeken stronge straundes
And palm-ers for to sake-en stroan-jay stroan-days

To ferne halwes couth in sondry londes
To fair-nay hallways kouth in soan-dray loan-days

And specially from every shires ende
And specially from every shear-ez end-uh

Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende
Of Eng-gal-ond to Khan-ter-bury they wend-uh

The hooly blissful martyr for to seeke
The holy blissful martyr for to sake-uh

That hem hath holpen whan that they were sike
That hem hath holp-en whan that they were seek-uh

In modern English…

When fair April with his showers sweet,
Has pierced the drought of March to the root’s feet
And bathed each vein in liquid of such power,
Its strength creates the newly springing flower
When the West Wind too, with his sweet breath,
Has breathed new life – in every copse and heath -
Into each tender shoot, and the young sun
From Aries moves to Taurus on his run,
And those small birds begin their melody,
(The ones who ‘sleep’ all night with open eye,)
Then nature stirs them up to such a pitch
That folk all long to go on pilgrimage
And wandering travellers tread new shores, strange strands,
Seek out far shrines, renowned in many lands,
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England to Canterbury they wend
The holy blessed martyr there to seek,
Who has brought health to them when they were sick.

Chaucer’s portrait from Hoccleve’s ‘Regiment of Princes’ (1410 - 11). Hoccleve (1368 – 1426) was a self-proclaimed ‘literary son’ of Chaucer, and it is possible that he may have met him.

Words Don't Die of Cold

Words don’t die of cold
they die from a lack of courage
Words often perish
because of humid weather

I once met
a word
that was like a bright red bird
in the swamp along the riverbank in my village
I brought it home
but as soon as we reached the wooden door-frame
it gave me
a strangely terrified look
and breathed its last

After that I started fearing words
If I ran into them I beat a hasty retreat
if I saw a hairy word dressed in brilliant colours
advancing towards me
I often simply shut my eyes

Slowly after a while
I started to enjoy this game
One day for no reason at all
I hit a beautiful word with a stone
while it hid
like a snake in a pile of chaff

I remember its lovely glittering eyes
down to this day

With the passage of time
my fear has decreased
When I encounter words today
we always end up asking after each other

Now I’ve come to know
many of their hiding-places
I’ve become familiar with
many of their varied colours
Now I know for instance
that the simplest words
are brown and beige
and the most destructive
are pale yellow and pink

Most often the words we save
for our saddest and heaviest moments
are the ones
that on the occasions meant for them
seem merely obscene

And what shall I do now
with the fact that I’ve found
perfectly useless words
that wear ugly colours
and lie discarded in the garbage
to be the most trustworthy
in my moments of danger

It happened just yesterday –
half a dozen healthy and attractive words
suddenly surrounded me
in a dark street
I lost my nerve –

For a while I stood before them
speechless
and drenched in sweat
Then I ran
I’d just lifted my foot in the air
when a tiny little word
bathed in blood
ran up to me out of nowhere panting
and said –
‘Come, I’ll take you home’

- Kedarnath Singh (2003, 'Poetry International')

Settling Down

She watered the roots of her love

Tenderly cradling its new leaves in her palms

Whispering to them in secret

Like a little girl gifted a dream.

I don’t think she was prepared

When he trimmed the sapling carelessly

Bound its stem and snipped its roots,

Placing it in a smaller pot to flourish as a bonsai.

“You are the ornament of your home,” visitors marveled.

An impeccable hostess, with eyes downcast,

She served them the fruit of her labor in small, tasteful portions

On a silver salver.

A Slice of Tea And a Cup of Bread

He succeeded in upturning meaning and breaking narrative the first time we met. Let’s just say he ‘liberated’ verbal communication from the staid bindings of logic and symmetry.  In the manner of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Roald Dahl, and Dr. Seuss. Maybe his was a case of the need to indulge in a natural, vibrant, free-flowing kind of expression after the heady throes of having graduated from the straight-laced Indian Institute of Chartered Accountants, Madras.

I talk of my First Mate, who cracked a joke and drew a smile from the serious, earnest academic – me – the first time we met, after our respective parents had approved of an initial meeting via the marriage broker. At that time, 12 years ago, I was nursing a crush on chaos theory…mainly because a dreamboat called Jeff Goldblum had mentioned it in ‘Jurassic Park I’…and also because ‘good’ Indian girls from ‘respectable’ families (I, for example) had been strictly instructed since birth to steer clear of ‘interests’ of a more earthy kind. And so our passions during adolescence and young adulthood were spent upon books or music or sports or art, etc. No Veronica Lodge pursuits here. Anyways, my amateur explorations of chaos theory had been extremely exciting. In vain did I keep trying to find a reason to incorporate its very cool concepts in my thesis. So when the First Mate spouted such nonsense as “a slice of tea and a cup of bread” or “the molar ice caps”, for instance, with a straight face, you can rest assured that I was very taken indeed. Years later, thanks to having had my brains addled by the First Mate's non-linear vibrant expression (and possibly dehydration from not having stopped for tea) I would ask the way to Vaida Male and elicit a fountain of giggles from an affable old Londoner.

Chaos theory had its seed in the non-linear math of Henri Poincare during the early 20^th century. Similar expressions of the bizarre have been made in the surrealistic art of Dali, and the irrational anti-logic of Dadaism. As per chaos theory, all systems are said to be in flux – interchangeable between order and chaos. One finds the seeds of order in chaos and vice versa. Language evolves (French as well, in accordance with the stringent measures of the Academie Francaise), with the exception of Latin, the ‘dead’ language.  Academic theory keeps changing ever so often after short periods of stagnation. Businesses change in strategy - essential for their survival and evolution. Just as our skin cells are constantly renewing themselves after the old ones slough off, just as trees sprout new leaves, and sharks newly positioned rows of teeth, so also all systems must renew themselves through re-creation.

But neither is all change synchronous, nor linear, nor predictable. We see this while forecasting risks in the equity markets. Systematic risk (market macro-economic risk from unexpected wars/ man-made and natural disasters/ fluctuating exchange rates/ etc) cannot be diversified away and hence must be factored into the risk and return of an investment. Similarly, Lorenz’s ‘butterfly effect’ is also not predictable. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings may set off a series of events in a non-linear system that could or need not result in a tornado. What makes the difference is the set of conditions for the one or the other. Perhaps like the ‘choose the next scene and decide the storyline’ kind of adventure or horror novels that became popular in the 80’s. Or perhaps like the challenging of narrative sequence by such films as ‘Mulholland Drive’. Or like running a simulation in a Statistics class, using a different variable each time. Whatever be the result, the point is that this asynchronous, non-linear, unpredictable metamorphosis is continually taking place within us and in the universe all around us, on different levels. It is a reflection of the creative force of the universe. To quote Dylan Thomas:

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
  Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
  Is my destroyer.
  And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
  My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

  The force that drives the water through the rocks 

  Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
  Turns mine to wax.
  And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
  How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.”

This creative force of a kind drives my love for my First Mate – his twisting of words, his fearless whittling away at meaning, his dedication to teaching our boys new ways of approaching games/ learning/ situations, his ability to literally meet the land and bend it to his own terms...Taking a bite of my slice of tea, I raise my cup of bread to my crazy First Mate.