Remember, remember, the sixth of December

There have come days in our calendars which make me want to wake up to the rubber-faced caricature of "India Shining" and spit on it with force. And one such day was today.

As a nineteen year old woman, I'm (predictably) fiercely independent, so despite being duly warned by my parents about Dadar being a little more than just anti-human as it usually is today, I brushed their concerns aside. I read about a seventeen year old girl talking to a Hindustan Times journalist about how it was impossible for girls to travel during these two days, with equal dismissal. After all, there could be nothing could be worse than Shiv Sainiks letting loose their deeply secularist whims and fancies, could there?

Apparently, there is something even worse.

Eight o'clock in the morning, and Dadar was fairly as normal as it could get. Then I reached college and forgot everything about how somebody's death anniversary celebrations could possibly affect me adversely. It was 6:30 in the evening when I entered Dadar station and ten minutes later, I was on the bridge. The area around the flight of stairs leading to platform one was like a bee-hive in April - multitudes of people in white, pushing and shoving like the space around them had punching bags and not other people. I took a deep breath and pushed my five feet three inch frame ahead.

If you have ever been in a similar situation, you'll know that a mob is very similar in its mental and physical tendencies. They think alike and also move alike, so there is absolutely no control over something as personal as where you want to go with your own two feet. Climbing down the bridge was therefore nightmarishly difficult, and add to that an invisible number of starved, hungry male hands spreading their way all across your body like Medusa's hair, all wanting a piece. The free-for-all stopped only when I entered the first-class compartment. Which was packed with women and kids, all of whom obviously had valid tickets. I got off at my station thirty minutes later and made my weary way home.

Throughout the journey a million questions banged and bruised my head. Who was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar? Was he the same harmless fellow we studied as kids in Civics, who'd written our Constitution? Who'd vehemently opposed caste-based reservation? Who'd warned us against the very thing he feared would rule Indian Democracy one day - hero-worship - and sadly became a posthumous pawn in the grand scheme of things?

A billboard with his face splashed all over it spawned seven metres of my sky-line home, and I suddenly felt a sporadic moment of intense hatred towards him. You're dead, I thought, so you don't have to see what you left behind. Your legacy is asphyxiating my country. Your words are being twisted so horribly out of context, solely so that they can be capitalised to put blinders on the sensibilities of India's millions. Your good-will, your sacrifices, your keen foresight died a quick death with you 51 years ago.

It's tough to blame accurately when you're boiling inside. It's not and never was Dr. B.R Ambedkar's fault. Maybe his only fault was to try and logically streamline the divisive forces of Indian politics. It is devastating irony that when our politicians play reservation politics, the one man who resolutely opposed the introduction of any kind of quota is their favourite poster-boy. Is this what he strived for so hard his entire life? Is it chilling prolepsis when he talked about caste not dividing labour, but labourers?

My anger energises me with a wild kind of force to do something. Simultaneously, I also feel trapped in my helplessness, when I realise that I am placed very low in the hierarchy of people who can make a significant difference in Indian politics. But there is always a hope, a belief that I can and I will change things. And although everybody reads the newspapers and shrugs their shoulders, I will remember not to forget.

When

When you are not scared of being vulnerable to someone.

When you know so deep in your heart someone will be there, that expectations cease to exist.

When someone makes you let go of your hatred without letting it turn into indifference.

When you converse with someone in haikus.

When you perfectly complete someone's sentence.

When thoughts of someone are stuck so deeply in the clock that you don't feel the effects of time anymore.

When you don't have to prove.

When you realize that the silence between the two of you isn't uncomfortable anymore.

When you can actually feel your heart breaking or soaring, like it's happening in your hands.

When goodbyes are the beginning of beautiful memories.

When you don't need to say, because you feel it.

When you kill the need for more, because you don't need more of anything.

When you listen to a song that electrifies and fragments you, moment by moment, together.

When you listen to the pain in someone's voice and find that your hands have turned cold.

When you stop looking for reason in someone's presence.

History and Humility

"History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme."

- Mark Twain

I have opted for History as a core subject at college. I love my course, and a lot of that love has developed because I love my teacher. She is not a professor. She is fireworks in flesh. She is the reason my eyes have begun hating me and loving me, when I watch History Channel in the middle of the night, with ear-phones on and the living-room lights switched off. And yesterday night, while I was watching something on the Inquisition (ironically started by a person called Pope Innocent III) and Witch-Hunting, it struck me that History has taught me to be humble.

When I would read about things like the Holocaust, the Dark Ages or the the terrible, terrible condition of peasants during the French Revolution I'd think, "I could've shown them a thing or two about how to run the country; they handled things so badly. I could've shown them how to resolve conflicts on the ownership of resources, or how to develop efficient infrastructure, or how to draw public policies, or how to manage public dissent. Were I there, things could have been handled so differently. I could have shown them the way to do it right, and prevent so many catastrophic consequences. Things would have been so incredibly different." Then I stepped down from my pedestal, but just a bit to think, maybe not me but at least any capable leader of my time.

And then it hit me - were it not for History, I wouldn't have known anything at all about these things.

Indeed, these concepts wouldn't exist.

History gives us a chance at something which always seems to be just out of our reach - the future. We can't rewind the tape and live it all over again, no matter how differently we would and no matter how hard we want to. But what we can do, is learn some useful lessons from the past and change where we're going to.

Cheap thinking

(Caution: Extremist views expressed. General feeling while writing this article was, "Screw Laissez Faire opportunists!")

This article is partly my undigested and very frenzied thoughts on gossiping and partly something I wanted to write after I read an article written by my friend Tina, which you can read here.

It doesn't take much to get my neurons and tongue fired, often in quick succession. One such thing is the word, 'gossip' and any faint strains of an argument justifying it. It gets me kicked inside, I cannot stop myself from making myself heard - loud and clear. So I've decided to write it all down and get it thrown out from my system once and for all, so that the next time I hear that odious word, I'll just give them the link to here. (Narcissus and I seem to share an awful lot of genes)

If talk is cheap, gossiping is free of charge. When we gossip about something/body, we're doing the least amount of separating-rational-from-rubbish kind of discretionary thinking possible. Some people like to say gossiping brings about a little magic in their lives. I really don't agree with this. Seeing dust particles dancing in Medusa-esque frenzy, suspended in a beam of sunlight cutting through a dark room seems more like magic, in case David Copperfield is not on your speed-dial. The sense of 'magic' these people are talking about is delusional and borrowed because we don't create anything, we just propagate water-tight, compartmentalized thinking. Adjectives are thrown around like used recharge coupons and prejudices become as convenient as disposable tissues. Agreed, it takes effort to convert something mundane in to something magical. But the satisfaction in doing just that is Premium A-Class. And who's asking you to be Superman? Go for a walk. Watch the sunset. Turn over stones and see what's below. Doodle. Listen to RHCP. My cousin-brother's favourite - give your boss a sudden smile, just to see his expression defrost.

Some people like to sugar-coat gossiping by calling it, 'expressing an opinion'. Bullshit. Gossiping is a dirty word and you can't canonize it. If gossiping is an expression at all, it's an expression of unconformity to what you think is right. She doesn't walk talk dress eat think like you do. Big deal, sweetheart. I don't think we realize just how much we're limiting our ability to embrace and find beauty in things which at first appearance may look a little off the graph's co-ordinates or just plain crazy. Me thinks crazy is good, real good. (Ahem. About this unintelligible piece of gibberish here - I don't apologize for it, but you have to meet me to know this)

One universal element in gossiping is the presence of an air of collective agreement (thus eliminating the possibility of alternate opinions). Everybody nods their heads like they're all in some Very Serious Seminar For The Upliftment Of Humanity. I'm very sure there are atleast a few people who have had no exposure to the kind of things being discussed but nod their heads they will. And we talk about rebellion and being teenagers.

Sometimes life is labourious, grey, boring, empty, pendulating in vacuum. I give you all that. But how on earth does tracing the trajectory of somebody else's life give you a purpose to your own? Maybe George Clooney's life is labourious, grey, boring, empty, pendulating in vacuum. Who knows? (Apologies to Sonal). I'm still waiting for my illuminating moment of insight here. Because there is so much ignorance, so much naive realism involved when we juggle thoughts and speculations around like that. It's all a question of personal bias vs. personal experience or knowledge.

These severely perpendicular views aside, my indignation here is not meant for people who may have indulged in a word or two against somebody. Heck, I do that too. But if your indulgence is similar to that of a desperate diabetic's, you're sadly just another drop in the ocean.

Urban euthanasia

He wears a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt with torn shorts, both of which have succumbed to an easy brown colour. His hair is greasy with that very Bombay combination of humidity and dirt, and his face is a refugee camp of diseases. But all these physical generalisations of poverty come to an end when your covert glance reaches his eyes. They make you refute the Classical Indian Conditioning of underestimating the personality in black eyes. His sooty eyelashes reverently caress irises which look like two lunar eclipses. Pain, hunger, terrible beauty.

His daily job is as monotonous as a blue-collar worker slugging it out on his five inches of the assembly line. He cleans the compartment floor with an assortment of fossilized bamboo branches - but then his gaze sweeps over you and cleans up so much more. His alleys brushed, he swiftly stands up as if righteously reminded of his dignity and takes out two shiny pebbles from his pocket. Suddenly, the frozen atmosphere of the train compartment is shattered. He starts singing. His song is a cliched cacophony but he does create music. (I have always been against the idea of genres)

A wave of disapproval washes over - how did this piece of persevering vermin find its way in here? But he remains invulnerable to his cocking sixth sense. Swaying to the gentle rhythm of the train, he clicks his pebbles with fluid expertise and blares forth. There seems to be a disconnected quality to his song; the lyrics seem to struggle against becoming a robotic monologue till somebody hands him a tired two-rupee note. He weaves his way between an impossible number of bodies and bags, his jarred notes heightening the silence. Finally, the train halts and the boy nimbly jumps off onto the platform, his thin frame dissolving easily, exiting one crowd and entering another.

I am left with a will-o-the-wisp memory of a boy and his song. And I undergo the sixth panic attack I've had in this week.

There are two things in life that I fear the most. One is being seated in an over-speeding motor vehicle and the other is becoming desensitized. Desensitization is one of the side-effects of living in an incredibly fast-paced city which is still dealing with a lot of unclaimed baggage. I sometimes feel the emotional quotient of our people is ten points short of a plastic bag's. And I can't imagine anything more catastrophic to the future of humanity. Yeah, I know that sounds straight out of a UN World Poverty Report, but it seems this will become just more than red-tape lingo.

Bob Dylan said it best:

"Yes and how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind."

I hope we strip ourselves of our wind-cheaters.

Letting things on

You know you've slept too much when the sheets start becoming itchy and the air presses down on you. It was 2:18 am by my neon-happy digital clock, and I decided it was time I got brave. I threw my fleecy bed-covers away and hauled myself out of bed. The chill brushed at my skin but it was welcome after the suffocating warmth of the room.

Shaking off my state of vegetative placidity, I headed towards the bathroom. Nothing shocks better than cold, cold tap-water first thing in the morning. Sufficiently aroused, I wondered around the house. It's funny, but habituation comes to nought when you move around your own house in the darkness. The house's familiar architecture seems formidable and challenging to the purpose of smooth motion. So much for night-vision goggles .. you crash into everything that comes within a three-inch radius of your feet and arms and you are, literally, in the dark. And sounds, oh god. Every rustle, every whoosh and every creak is magnified so deeply, you think you're in one of those ads where the fellow begins by tapping his cellphone on the table and before you know it, the whole restaurant is in the midst of a full-blown A Capella instrumental concert.

After bumping around a la carte Don Quixote, I finally reached the balcony. Although it looks like a stunner even during the day, it had never looked more beautiful than it had that night. Bathed in silvery moonlight, it looked like a ship sailing confidently across a dark ocean. Dad's shirts strung artlessly on the clothesline looked like sails and the railing made good to the imagery of a deck. I could almost lean over the railings and shout, "To the Seaboard!". There was a tall wooden stool to the far right and I couldn't resist sitting on top of it. A once-upon-a-time handkerchief served as an eye-patch and a discarded tissue-paper roll served as my telescope. Our balcony overlooks the lake and so my vision of an ocean was complete. I realized that everything was with me. Figmental or factual, all the elements came together and lent themselves to my maritime imagination wholeheartedly. Move over, Keira Knightley.

I didn't plunder or order about or take control of rough seas. I just sat there and thought, how often do Time and a Situation come together and actually help you create something like this? I would've created something similar with or without these little associative aids but I wouldn't have felt so much in peace with the world. There wasn't much I was looking for when I had entered the balcony.

And there shouldn't be so much force, so much conscious intent attached when you decide to create something. There's something very wise about the myth that you never find pots of gold under rainbow if you deliberately search for them.

Everydays

It was when I was in 9th that I began to notice the whats-up phenomenon. It was a phenomenon in its own right; everybody seemed to be swept by the two words. Whenever I met a friend say after a week, those two words would issue forth.

I think it was the same time when conversation started to become compact. Situations were abbreviated, gesticulations were more and more flowery and in cyberspace, emoticons created a short-cut for my tongue. I knew the right word was waiting to be thrown out, but the urgency to articulate was too great. This is something I constantly experience not only in a real but also in a virtual conversation.

I love walking on a road unknown and unsought for. Sometimes I wonder if friends have become a necessity to flatter the need to be heard, understood and most importantly known. There is great peace in being alone. Not because you're a rebel without a reason, but because if you give yourself time, there's so much to listen to, so much to wonder about. We do have moments of what I call cosmic connections; something like an intuitive strand which weaves itself between two people. These moments are beautiful and are always cherished lovingly. But it's the rarity, the yawning eternity between these moments which makes them so beautiful. I wonder why we have to ceaselessly search for something like that, some semblance of purpose, need, existential worth.

I still feel a little disconnected when somebody asks me what's up. As if there is this tremendous need for things to be bright, perky and strawberry-pink. I like the worn-out-socks comfort of a day when I get a bus on time, when the train compartment is not reeking with Darwinism and when the sun isn't sweaty and thirsty. Or days when I don't get a bus on time, when the trains are reeking with Darwinism but I'm under my umbrella and still smiling at a puzzled sun. How do you describe a day when you just sat on the train, straight from Dadar to Kanjurmarg, just peacefully thinking about nothing at all. I remember something I read from a Calvin and Hobbes Jumbo Book:

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want." - Calvin
Amen to everydays.