Train House

"Park your car in that corner, you won't be able to take it inside the street," the old lady said, hauling a mridangam from the back seat onto her shoulders. I parked the car, picked up the other mridangam, the heavier one, and followed her onto the street. With a sprightly gait that belied her age - she was seventy-two - and unmindful of the weight of the mridangam on her shoulder, she turned into the most invisible of gullies that led to this sprawling network of narrower gullies.

"They really should fix that streetlight," she said, pointing to this dark pole. It was eight-thirty in the evening, and it was too dark to even tell if there was supposed to be a light on that pole. Then she realised, "Oh, there's no power!"

She shined a torch from her phone, and took a right turn into an even narrower gap between two buildings only wide enough to admit a small motorcycle - even a malnourished Royal Enfield wouldn't make the cut. The buildings on that street were locked in a tight embrace, covering every inch of space, almost growing into one another, sharing walls, terraces, balconies and doors. Compound walls were forgotten as a concept, breathing space was given a go by, and the view from any window was only another one. Even in near darkness, I could sense that I had stepped into another age. I had to remind myself that I was still in Central Madras.

She stopped at a narrow iron gate leading to a long, tapering, snaking corridor lit by two tired bulbs and lined by three worn out motorcycles. "We have a small generator - I can use one light and one fan when the power is gone," she said. At the end of the corridor was a dull blue door that had surely seen happier times. When she opened that door, a new world unfolded behind it. I didn't realise that there was so much space behind that iron gate. Her torch light revealed more iron gates next to the one we entered, and I wondered if all of them hid worlds like this.

"I used to live closer to the tank, but the owner wanted the house back for his daughter's family," she said, "But this is not too far from the tank. I walk down, sometimes, but I'm growing a little old, no? I am looking for a house closer to the tank, though." I smiled. Civilisations grew around water bodies, I had read in my history classes, but I couldn't believe that proximity to a tank was still a prime consideration for choosing where one lived.

On the ground floor was another blue door, of the same construction as the one outside, and the indistinct hum of a Tamil serial - that mix of pounding background music and thundering melodrama - floated from behind it. I thought I heard a child scream, but that might have also been the serial.

In the corner of the corridor was a closeted flight of stairs that had been standing for half a century at least. I didn't ask her how old the building was, but the stone stairs had a particular kind of construction that suggested that era. "Thank you so much for coming. You see how difficult it would have been for me with two mridangams up these stairs." The stairs were steep, and the mridangam I was carrying was boring into my shoulder. If the walk were a little longer, I might have needed a little break. "You're carrying the big one," she said, "I can't even lift that anymore. It's that heavy. But that naadam..."

We reached a landing that was almost cruelly taken over by a large and incongruous asbestos door. She unlatched it, and led me into what used to be the landing - it had a tap in one corner, a chair and two pairs of slippers on a tiny wooden shelf - now converted into her sit-out. She kept up the chatter, as she fumbled through her handbag for the keys to the inside door.  Her nephew, a well-known mridangam player himself, lived in the next street, she said. The neighbours here kept to themselves, she hardly knew who they were, she complained. "They don't even come and talk, you know," she moaned. She still gave me a fairly detailed biography of the family living in the house watching the Tamil serial.

The inside door said, "Mridangam and vocal classes" in a scribbly Tamil handwriting. No one could see this board when the asbestos door was shut. I wondered if that door was a new addition.

She found the key, finally, and opened the door and led me into a room that was not much wider than the door itself. On one side of the room was a wooden bench with two pillows on it. The other side of the room was a thin shelf that held a bewildering assortment of things. She put her mridangam on the bench, and I followed her. There were two more mridangams in that room, both standing proudly on their thoppis. I walked up to one and struck it. "Tom!" it rang across the house. I was quietly proud that even though I hadn't played one in three years, I could still get a clear tom out of it.

The narrow room ended in another door, beyond which there was a columnar kitchen, about two-thirds the length of the first room. "That's about the entire house," she said, proudly, "The first room is where I sleep and take mridangam classes. This is the kitchen. And there," she said, pointing to another hidden door on the right side of the kitchen, "Is a bathroom." The entire house was built like two coaches of a train with a toilet and bathroom in the vestibule.

A thought struck me - it would be nice to disappear into a house like this, in a gully like this for a few months. It was hidden away from the madness of mainstream Madras, but it was still right there, in the centre of it all.

"Sit down," she said, "I'll make coffee."
I had to go back to a friend's concert, I protested. I'll come back another day, definitely, I promised. "It will take me five minutes to make you the coffee," she insisted.
My friend would be most upset if I missed her concert, I said. Another day, one-hundred percent, I assured her.
"At least have some kali," she said, "Today is a special day for Nataraja. You know that, no?" My grandmother had mentioned something in the morning, and so, guiltlessly, I nodded. She hurriedly put some kali on a steel plate and handed it to me. Suddenly, she said excitedly, "Oh wait. I wanted to show you. I have Anna's photo here on the wall." I looked. It was her much more famous older brother, and it was the photograph most widely released to the press. "A very nice photo. He looks so happy!" She attended almost every one of his concerts in Madras, "I am not able to travel too far these days. You know, Anna plays in places like Madipakkam and Annanagar... Then I can't come. But otherwise, I come, somehow or the other." And she always sat in the front row, and enthusiastically kept taalam for the stage.

Next to her brother's, was her own photograph. She was with our dark-glassed leader in it, receiving an award. "Kalaimamani," she said, as I finished my kali and handed the plate to her, and added "I got that years ago. You can wash your hands in that sink," like the two were a part of the same thought. I looked closely at the photo. She did look younger, and so did our leader. I had heard strange things about that particular award, about when, why and to whom it was given, but she didn't look like she could pull any strings.

There was another photo next to it, a still from a popular Tamil film. I remembered that scene well - a bunch of mamis reinterpreting a popular Hindi song Carnatic style at the behest of a man dressed as a mami. There she was in that still, in the left-hand corner, playing the mridangam. I remember being amazed by the fact that they had actually found a mami to play the mridangam.

I smiled, as I bid her goodnight and walked out the door, but I couldn't help wondering, given her talent, if her life would have been different as a man.

Ideas for a Carnatic Music Bar

I was at Zaras last night with some friends, sitting at the absolute edge of a table of nine people. I didn't hear a word of the conversation at the table. I was distracted by a little thought-breakthrough, an idea that took over my mind last evening, whose clouds will not leave for a while - not a full-blown cyclone, no, but a refreshing thunderstorm. But this post is not about that thought-breakthrough. I just worked it in to make myself sound posh. It is about another idea that intensified when I couldn't hear the conversation over the DJ-din last night.

Music at Zaras, and most other decent pub/bar/lounge-types in Madras, suffers from three issues. First, it's homogenous. It's the same kind of music everywhere. If you don't like that particular kind of music, you're stuck, you have no option (of course, there's Queens Bar in T.Nagar that plays SS Music, but those are exceptions). Second, it is usually too loud, yet not of danceable variety. So, you cannot talk, and you cannot dance. Which means you end up staring at each other with a rather silly expression on your face for most of the evening. Third, the music simply sucks. Last night, at Zaras, they were playing The Offspring. For Lord Kapaleeshwarar's sake, The Offspring! I count buying that cassette with Pretty Fly (For a white guy) in eighth standard amongst the most embarrassing moments of my life. Sheesh, Offspring!


So, I told my friend, a fellow Carnatic musician sitting next to me, "Dude, we should start a bar that plays Thodi raagam." He demonstrated an exaggerated Thodi, and I said, "Yes. Exactly."

Here are some preliminary thoughts:

1. Music: The music will be hardcore Carnatic - you are likely to hear Punnagavarali or Asaveri over  Kurai onrum illai. There will be no songs in Marathi. There will be no Meera Bhajans in badly pronounced Hin-dee. We will play English Note, don't worry.

Of course, lots of Thodi will figure.

The evening will typically begin with some KV Narayanaswamy, and over the course of the night, it will progress through Brindamma's wailing padams, Mali's broken spurts of beauty, and S. Balachander's overwhelming raagamalika taanams. And then, after the waiter asks you for the last order and makes the lights a little brighter, and you're in that phase when you get up and realise you're drunker than you thought you were, we wind-down with MD Ramanathan's baritone that seems to emanate from the centre of the earth. It will give you a sense of balance and purpose.

There will be regular occasions, like November Nadaswaram Nights (ideally live, open-air, late night), February Fusion Week (we have to attract youngsters also), Mridangam Mondays (featuring extended tani avartanams where you will get free drinks for putting correct taalam), Tambura Tuesdays (Where you drink to the drone that somehow signifies the omkara, that primordial sound that contains a  universe. Yes, yes. We have philosophical pretensions also.), Flute Fridays (cocktails will be served in a large flute the size of the table - you can put straws in each hole and drink), Violin Wednesdays (where if you tune a dummy violin correctly, you get extra sundal), and the occasional Seshagopalan Saturday or Sanjay Sunday. Cheesy things like playing music by musicians called Krishna or Krishnan or Krishnamurthy on Christmas will be encouraged. Occasionally, like the Music Academy, the bar will feature a Hindustani night (and the mama who comes there every week will identify every raga as Mishra-Maand) or a Ghazal night (which will be popular amongst those mamis who find Hariharan cute and his voice mellifluous, and amongst posh Sowcarpet residents and the Annanagar North Indians.)

For the sake of inclusiveness, themes like "Raga-based songs of Maestro Ilayaraaja" and "Golden Melodies of AR Rahman" will appear once a year.

The sound system will be uniformly bad, the recording quality worse.

2. Decor: The walls will be plastered with portraits of "doyens" of "yesteryears" who rendered "yeoman service" to Carnatic music, with appropriate flower garlands, incense sticks and a solitary, small, red zero-watt bulb. Drinks will be served in steel tumblers with davaras. Plates will look like kanjiras, spoons like morsings, straws like flutes (with fake holes, of course), pitchers like ghatams. Just so that the electronic tambura doesn't feel left out, one will be left on each table for no reason. You can irritate everyone at your table by constantly changing sruti. If they tell you off, tell them you're playing jazz.

3. Decorum: Decorum without rum is mere deco. Therefore, the worse you behave, the better the ambience is. You will be expected to let out an occasional "Mtch-mtch," or a "Tut-tut-tut-tut..." or a "Bhale" or a "Sabhaas". You are expected to noisily put taalam. You are expected to bring along a small raga book for ready reference.

If you wear shoes, you will be asked to remove them at the entrance (take that, Zaras!), if you wear a veshti, you will get extra ribbon pakoda, if your shirt is un-ironed and nondescript, you will get the title of Rasikar Vendhar along with some coconuts, bananas, a dilapidated orange, two suspect apples, a few betel leaves of no use to man or beast, two packets of pak, a shimmering ponnaadai that no human being can publicly wear, a citation and a purse of Rs. 101.

Men and women will be made to sit in separate enclosures (oh wait, they already do this at Bikes and Barrels).  Then we won't do this, we don't want to copy. Like Kamal Hassan, we will be different.

4. Food and Beverage: While all the regular items will make an appearance, there will be some raga-based cocktails. The Gandharam Gargle is a tribute to Thodi's ga - its taste will be ambiguous yet heavy, and it will taste differently when drunk from different parts of the glass. A vodka-and-red-bull-based cocktail is planned for Kadanakuthoohalam's jumpiness. Prussian Blue, based on Neelambari's lullaby will lull you into comforting slumber. Piping hot filter coffee with a dash of brandy will be available.

As a tribute to the local, Vorion 6000 beer will be given prime importance.

Keera vadai, samosa, ribbon pakoda etc. will form the side eats. Special sundal during navaratri. Pongal and chakkarapongal during pongal. Adirasam, murukku and mixture from Suswaad, T. Nagar, throughout the year.

5. Karaoke Night: Once a fortnight, there will be a Carnatic karaoke with live mridangam and violin. They will play the raga and song of your choice, which you will choose from an unmemorable yellow and pink printed file, to which you will be required to do elaborate neraval and swaram. Sometimes, there will be a Royal Challenger RTP Challenge where each table nominates one person, and the pallavi goes around the bar in sequence. Tables will be eliminated if they muff up their round. The eduppus and the ragams get tougher as each round progresses.


More ideas are welcome. This is a work-in-progress.
***

(I wish to acknowledge the occasional inebriated inputs from one Shri. Aditya Prakash (Los Angeles).)

∨™⏎§♬λ Ğ ę ¥ ₠ ⅞

I sit before the computer screen,
My mind as blank as this page
Struggling to write some poetry
For it will give me an intellectual air.

I can't rhyme for nuts, or bolts.
(Though I can crack a bad joke, or two.)
So, poems with strict meter are out
And so is flowing, recitable verse.

I decide that the best scam to pull
The one that's the intellectualest
Is modern society's greatest invention:
Verse that's blank, free or simply random.

The trick to this, my research reveals,
Is to use language to weave webs.
Weld words into winding verse
To paint half-formed thoughts.

For if the thoughts are complete,
You tend to express them with clarity.
And even an amateur will tell you
A poem's success lies in ambiguity.

And so I wrote pages and pages
With
single-
word
lines,

And single-line stanzas


And that bizarre line, usually at the end of a stanza, that is much longer than the rest of the lines simply because it must be so.

I made patterns
               with tab stops
To give the poem
               a certain brokenness.

Then I thought,
why not take this a step further.

Why     should  the   space   between   two         words be           fixed?
Why should stanzas be separated by one line-break?



Words don't need to be completed
for you to comprehen?
You are intellig, aren yu?
Sentences can be left adhoora
(random Hindi words can be ghusaoed)

Ooh, I must make delibrate typoes,
Whee, this is sch funn!
And use RANDOM CAPITALISATION
and not capitalise when i use 'i'
or invert capitals when one talks of tHOMAS tHANGADURAI

Why should stanzas have words at all, when mere alphabets will do?
h
f
rr
j

But even alphabets can be superfluous sometimes:





(ah, that was my favourite stanza)

There must be the occasional profound thought, of course:
the banality of domesticity is pregnant.
it has a strange sort of poignancy.
pause. think.

And an out-of-the-blue reference to sex:
He liked behinds that were as crisp as a vada.

Before we get back to the madness.
Make up words bahustalically
Resort to utter gibberish like asfjherulism.
Write in code
aggtuk fhrein o polsrff!!
Go completely wild. The world is a free place!


Somewhere, when it gets shittier and shittier,
A barrier is breached
And it becomes art again:

∨™⏎§♬λ Ğ ę ¥ ₠ ⅞

 

Her Obviousness - V

Sorry for the delay.
***

It is nearly two-thirty AM, and I am at the Chennai Central station. That unearthly humidity hangs in the air amidst moderate to not-so-moderate temperatures, the sea-breeze bids goodbye for the day with an unsaid promise to return tomorrow, the ineffective air-conditioning whirs, trying to drum up some enthusiasm. People lie in various levels of comatose, on steel chairs, plastic bucket-chairs, on suitcases, bags, dhurries, newspapers fashioned as dhurries, on hard concrete, or on the cool marble flooring in the new waiting room. Some are waiting for trains that should have come yesterday, others have trains to catch tomorrow. Some work here, others have no other place to sleep.

A nasal voice makes occasional announcements in three languages, the sort where some numbers, like six, are high-pitched, others, like three, are low-pitched, and the rest, like seven, are of medium pitch. Prefixed and suffixed by a gong, the whole thing sounds like a Vedic recitation.

Most of the shops are closed; a tea shop with an incongruously awake and alert shopkeeper is open, and so is another little hole in the wall that stocks chips, biscuits, fried knickknacks, chocolates, sweets, soda, and cup noodles. The noodles excite me, and I help myself to a cup. In my hurry to eat, I open the cup too early, and the noodles aren't boiled enough. But I am hungry, I gobble them up eagerly.

My idea of spending the night at the railway station doesn't seem very smart anymore. Gopal left last night, with Sundari, to Bangalore. Their train was at eleven-fifteen. Uma arrives, from Bangalore, by a train scheduled to arrive at four-thirty, but often arrives earlier. It sounded like the soundest of plans - drop Gopal, say bye, act like I'm going back home; once the train leaves, slip back into the waiting hall, and wait for Uma's train - but it isn't.

I have two hours to kill now. Sleeping is an option, and it sure seems like the most desirable option at the moment, but I fear that the sheer coolness of this exercise will be lost if I slept through it. I want to tell people, "You know, I once spent the night at the Central station, and there, I saw..." Somehow, "You know, I slept at the Central station one night," just doesn't cut it. It doesn't have the makings of a tellable story.

But staying awake hasn't given me any stories either. I'm sandwiched between a fat man who snores like an asthmatic rhinoceros and a drunk whose head has comfortably settled itself on my left shoulder. The station is lifeless. No, wait, it isn't lifeless, there is surprising amount of activity, but nothing worth reporting. People are doing what people do in a railway station - waiting for trains. This exercise is heading towards resounding flop.

The word 'flop' that passed fleetingly through my conscious makes me wonder if I'm spending the night in this station only because I want to tell this story to someone. If that is the reason, I could just make up a story - tell people that I saw a young couple who looked suspiciously like they had just eloped, or that there was this man who delivered a shady looking bag to another man who quickly tucked it within his t-shirt and disappeared. Real-life untrue stories are easy to invent - the art is in striking a balance between the reassuring boundaries of possibility and the subtle thrill of the marginally unordinary.

But this doesn't answer the original question - am I here for a narratable story, or am I here just for the experience? Do I want to tell myself that the station holds no apparent stories? I say "apparent", because each person here, in this newer waiting hall, must have a reason for why he or she is in the station. Some might have finished a job assignment of some sort, some might be visiting relatives. Someone might have come to Madras for a funeral, a wedding, an engagement, or one of those undefined "family functions" and someone else could be going somewhere for one.

One of these guys might be missing his girlfriend or wife terribly, and might be going back to see her. On a whim. Another might be going back to see some girl his parents have lined up for him. Overcome by shyness, he will probably look at her through the corner of his eyes, while his father asks her what her hobbies are. He will hope that she can sing. The old lady sleeping in the far corner might be visiting her son, she might be upset that her daughter-in-law, from another religion, cannot be bossed around - or she might be happy that her daughter-in-law has found a voice she never found.

For the vendor in that tea stall, afternoons might be as exciting as nights - he probably hasn't seen one in years. The afternoon air, like the night air to me, is alien to him. His sleeping self knows it well, but his consciousness is unaware. Lunch is like dinner, going for a matinee is like a night-show.

None of the people in the waiting hall look like holidayers, though, except the two foreigners I saw entering the AC waiting lounge. That is strange. Do Indians not go on holidays? Or do the Indians that go on holidays not wait in the halls of railway stations?

I wonder - am I here to ponder over these life-altering issues? Create stereotypes for sleeping people in the station? Am I here out of sheer laziness? Do I not want to drive up and down twice in five hours? But if I am lazy, I should sleep. So, I reject that idea. I guess I am here because I find an excitement in this, an adventure even. When Uma arrives, I will tell her that I've been here all night, and she will think I'm strange. I like people thinking I'm strange. But there I go again, defining myself in terms of how people will think of me. Is everything I do just for effect?

It is shocking how innocent boredom can lead one to rethink one's life.

I bury myself in the book that keeps me company - a collection of Raymond Chandler's not-so-short stories. The one I'm reading is called Trouble is my Business. Chandler writes in stereotypes. The men in his books come in five varieties - the gritty, world-weary, sarcastic, Philip Marlowe, who "collects blondes and bottles"; the rich old men with slightly dishonourable backgrounds, whose money the world is after; the  smart, suave, smooth, big-time gangster, (though Marlowe eventually shows he's smarter, suaver, smoother) who has a convoluted plan to get the rich old man's fortunes; the honest, hardworking small-time crook, the sort that needs the money, the sort that is willing to work for it, the sort that's not wily enough to be the big-time gangster; aad lastly, the dumb small-time crook, who says stupid things and indulges in random acts of violence before sleeping the big sleep. The women in Chandler's books, they're from another world. A character says about one of them, "Every time I think of that dame, I have to go out and walk around the block,". He invented the femme fatale - the maddeningly alluring, coldly calculative, morbidly manipulative sort, whose only fault seems to be that she cannot keep her hands off Marlowe.

In a sense, he does just what I did a while ago - sees faces in a crowd, and categorises them into pigeon-holes he invents for himself, and writes stories around them. There is a joy in stereotyping, there is a joy in telling stories about caricatures.

The story simmers and rages to a chilling end. Marlowe ends up with the girl, but only briefly - he has to be available for the next girl in the next story. He says this girl was nice, but he doesn't have "the money, the clothes, the time or the manners". I smile. I'm like this, sometimes. I don't have the time, the money, the clothes or the manners. The only difference is that I hate to admit it to myself.

There are three stories left in the book, all enticingly dangerous, but I need a break. I get up to buy myself some tea. As I near the tea shop, I wonder if that's a good idea - it might affect my sleep. But again, how much will I sleep once Uma arrives?

I don't even know why she wants to spend the weekend here. She's getting married in the wee hours of next Sunday, there is a cocktail party the Saturday before, and a soporific reception on Sunday night. I am sure there are lots of things she has to do - shopping, planning, inviting. Maybe she needs space to do something she hasn't done enough of - pondering. She's unsure of Arun, or she's unsure of the permanence of marriage. But marriages are not necessarily permanent, she knows that. Maybe that's what worries her.

I'm being presumptuous, I know, she's probably tired and just wants to sleep. The more I think of it, the more convincing it sounds. She has had too much wedding planning over the last few months, and wants to get away for a weekend, think of other things, and go back to Bangalore fresh.

I amble to the tea shop, and ask for tea. And then I change my mind, hot milk might be a better idea. "No sugar," I tell him. He tells me in a grumpy mumble that the sugar is already in the milk. I give him six rupees, and take the paper cup from his hand. He asks, "What sir? Diabetes already?" much more brightly. I smile, "No, no. I just don't like sugar in milk." I sip on the milk, it isn't all that sweet after all.

He asks, "Are you Kannada?" I'm surprised, but he explains, "Your Tamil accent..." I nod. He adds, "Also, you are very fair. First, I thought you were a North Indian, after I heard you speak Tamil, I realised you might not be." I smile again. I take another sip from the paper cup, and feel the warmth go down to my stomach. I have no obligation to stand there, I know, but I remain. He continues, "You don't talk much, do you? I jabber away to everyone who comes to the shop - I have to stay awake, no?" I smile again, I really don't know what to add to this conversation.

He continues, undaunted, "I come here three days a week. You know, if you come here every day, it's not too bad. But when you come here three days a week, your sleep gets disturbed. Your body, you know, it has a clock inside it." This is where I switch off. He speaks for a while on body clocks, afternoon naps and various domestic issues that invariably end with him not being able put mutton on the table for his family. My cup is nearly empty, I keep up the polite nods and hmmm-s.

He asks, "Sir, what train are you taking?"
I say, "I'm just waiting for the Bangalore train... Have to pick up someone."
He looks at the large station clock, and his eyes widen, "Sir! You're too early! The train will not come for another half an hour."
I wonder if I should tell him that I've been waiting all night. I don't. I just make some noise that suggests that I know.
Like a bolt from the blue, he asks, with a twinkle in his eye, "Sir, girlfriend aa?" I glare. He grins. My glare turns to a smile, I put the empty cup of milk on the counter, and leave.

The train chugs in purposefully almost exactly half an hour after I finish my milk, just like the tea-stall vendor predicted. Pairs and pairs of groggy eyes stare out the grilled windows, the enthusiastic stand at the door (in a tearing hurry to alight, of course), and the lazy will wake up only when the porters wake them up.

Uma emerges from one of the air-conditioned compartments in a loose t-shirt and bright orange pyjamas, hair tied-up in a haphazard bun, carrying a backpack and another little bag. She sees me, smiles, and her step quickens in my direction.

"I've missed you," I say, hugging her. She doesn't say anything, not even a hi. A smile of contentment fixes itself on her face and she clutches my arm fondly as we walk to the car, wordlessly holding hands. This was the typical Uma emotion - a muffled sort of joy.

We reach the car when she breaks her silence, "New car?"
I look at the grey WagonR - I only bought it to bring a modicum of respectability into my existence - with stifled pride, and say, "Yeah. Like it?"
She throws her bag into the backseat, settles down in front and says, her voice barely betraying emotion, "It is a little uncle-ji..."
Only Uma can talk like this - say something that someone else might have said with a twinkling eye, a wink or tongue firmly in cheek in the most inexpressive manner.

The parking fee comes to seventy-five rupees for six hours, and I rummage in my wallet for change when Uma asks, "When did parking at this station become this expensive?"
Avoiding her eye, I say,"I spent the night at the station." She doesn't ask me for an explanation, but I find myself constrained to offer one, "I dropped Gopal and that girl..."
"Can't bring yourself to say her name?" she asks, again, in that same distant tone.
"Nothing like that! Pah!"
She smiles. "What is he up to in life?"
"Gopal?"
"Yes."
"He's writing a book of some sort."
She stares out of the window for a long time, observing early morning Madras. I don't think this city is especially pretty. Large parts of it are just dusty brownish grey buildings and dusty brownish grey roads. She throws her hands out and feels the wind against her arms. Then, she asks, "Fiction?"
I have forgotten what we were talking about. She asks again, "Gopal's book - is it fiction?"
"God, no." I say, cackling. She looks at me questioningly. "He tried writing this novel some time ago... I told you."
"Oh. That one," she says, with her hands still outside the window, "I was surprised when you told me it was bad. He wrote some really good plays, you know."
"I thought he only acted."

Uma first saw Gopal at a rehearsal for a play for which she designed costumes and sets. He played an odd character whom nobody, not even the playwright, fully understood. The character was on stage even as the audience were settling in and sat on a high stool at the back of the stage, looking around expectantly, checking his watch a couple of times, not too fidgety, not too dispirited - just like a person waiting for a show to start. The play started. Gopal's character, who had no name, reacted to the play like the audience - he laughed at the jokes, he gasped when he was surprised, he frowned when he was confused and nearly cried at the climax. He didn't speak a word, he didn't get off the stool or get involved in the story.

No one was told what or who he was, but everyone remembered him.

A reviewer, who noted that a couple of characters in the play referred to the eyes of God always watching over men and their actions, wrote that "Gopalakrishnan as God watching over us, was an eerie presence." Someone else called Gopal a mirror, "...an interesting device to show the audience who they are." A third review said, "The unsettling story was accentuated by an unexplained panopticon-like person scrutinising the proceedings."

At the rehearsals, for days, Uma did not even know Gopal was a character in the play. He sat on the stool for the three hours as actors rehearsed and re-rehearsed their lines, blocked their movements, the director stopped the play every now and then to issue orders or discuss something, the backstage crew figured out their parts. And when it ended, he got off the stool, hung around in the background for a couple of minutes, and without saying a word, left. It was like he was in character throughout. Only ten days before the show, when he asked Uma what he should wear did she realise he was actually going to do on stage what he did every day in the rehearsals.

After four shows, one afternoon, Uma came to the rehearsal to see Gopal engaged in an enthusiastic debate with the director over the finer points of a new script. "Uma, can you read this and tell me if you like it?" the director asked, "This guy here, Gopal, he wrote it." Uma gave him a searching look, but he hardly reacted.

Soon, the rest of the players arrived, and the rehearsal proceeded as usual. When they were leaving, the director called Uma aside and said, "I think the play is brilliant, but I have a crush on this guy and I want someone to read it objectively." Uma smiled.


The play is set in the drawing room of a bare Brahmin-looking house somewhere in Madras. A woman, a violinist, waits for her brother, who was once a child-prodigy Carnatic violinist, to come home after fifteen years. She has a little argument with the help who insists she has been too jumpy all morning. Their stern father, a legendary violinist himself, is barely alive - the world doesn't know if he even comprehends life around him. Everyone hopes the return of his favourite son will help.

The son, now a photographer living anonymously in Delhi, arrives. We learn that the son ran away from his talents years ago. The reasons are ambiguous - a combination of his father's over-disciplining, pressures of being constantly reminded of his genius, and an aversion to incessant travelling is hinted at.

His sister says, "Appa was jealous of him, I think. He told me, 'I spent two years learning to play that raagam perfectly. He took two hours.' It wasn't a vindictive sort of jealousy. No. But it made him push my brother more than he should have been pushed. The jealousy drove my father to want to be a part of my brother's genius, by moulding him and mentoring him too much." 

The son shows little interest in his father who invisibly disintegrates, but takes a fancy for his young student - a girl from the US. Their repartee, musical and conversational, culminates in a tender moment where the son reveals a story he had been hiding within himself for years.

"When I was fourteen, I had a concert in a town near Ernakulam," he starts, "I can't remember the name of the place now. It was in the evening, and when I reached the station in the morning, there was an unexpected thunderstorm. The venue for the concert was an open air place and I expected the concert to be cancelled. But it wasn't - this was Kerala, right? A fairly decent audience showed up, and stood in the rain holing umbrellas.

"This sort of thing should have inspired me, but it didn't. I played horribly, losing focus, trying strange ideas that I never tried before, being very fractured and insipid. It was like I was deliberately trying to get rid of the audience. But they refused to leave. Every single one of them stayed till the end and left silently.

"When the concert ended, I had this thought that I wasn't able to get out of my head - that the entire trip had been slightly wrong. My mother usually saw me off when I left for the railway station. This time, she was asleep. There was too much salt in the curd rice she packed for the journey. I usually called her before every concert, to discuss the concert plan with her, but the rain meant that there was no working telephone around. I usually called her after every concert again, but I couldn't.

"I had another concert after this. In Bangalore. And I was supposed to take a train from Ernakulam. On the way from this town to Ernakulam by taxi, the rain suddenly stopped. It was unseasonal rain, and the driver said it was just a passing cloud.

"I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. On the way, I saw a hill with a temple on top that took my fancy. The hill was not very tall, and it stood out in the flat coastal landscape. There was this bright light coming from the temple - someone had lit a really large fire. I asked the driver if I could go see it. My train was much later in the night, I had a lot of time to kill.

"The driver told me that there was a road two-thirds the way up the hill, but I had to climb the last stretch. I could do that, I told him. He asked me, 'Sir, don't you want to make that phone call home? You will not find a phone until the station now.' I considered that question for a second, because he delivered it like it was some kind of warning.

"But I ignored him, and asked him to go. We snaked up the hill road through some really dense forests - the vegetation did not look that dense from the bottom. There was one thing, though. We could see the light from every part of the road. At one point, the road just ended. The driver said, 'I'm too old to climb, sir. But just follow the mud path. It is a little steep towards the end, but you should be able to manage fine.'

"I trudged along the path that climbed gradually, and it was much like the road - snaking around the hill carefully. It was very unlike a path made by people on foot, which tend to cut corners and go through little crannies. It was as if someone deliberately wanted you to be able to see the light until you reached the top.

"At some point, the path narrowed and led itself into this shrubbery of sorts. The path was lined by four feet of dense bushes on each side. It got steeper, but never too tiring. It was getting slightly darker as I climbed, and the light shined even brighter.

"I tripped over a stone, after which I tread carefully, my eyes glued to the little road. The last part of the path led into a rock-formation tunnel, which was hardly fifteen feet long, and when I emerged from it, I was at the top. The climb was rather easy, and I wondered why the driver said he was too old to make it.

"It took me a couple of seconds to realise that there was something wrong - the light had been put out. There was light, but that was from the fading day. The temple was deserted, the door was locked with an old padlock that looked like it hadn't been disturbed in decades. There was no smoke, no sign of any flame having been lit anywhere.

"Dejected, and frankly, quite spooked, I hurried down the path, through the rock-tunnel, the shrubbery and the forest back to the taxi. The driver was fast asleep, and I woke him up. I told him what I saw, and unfazed, he said, 'Oh, they lock it after six, I think. The fire would have gone out once the firewood ran out.' It was a completely plausible explanation, but there was one flaw. There was no other way down from the hill, and I saw no one pass me while I climbed up. The driver remained silent when I asked him about this. Something in his silence suggested that I shouldn't probe more.

"I reached the station by around ten at night. By this time, the phone booth was also closed. Again, that thought struck me - that something was amiss. I bought myself a pack of biscuits and a cup of tea for dinner, and got on to the train to Bangalore.

"I reached Bangalore in the morning, not having slept for most of the night, and found the sabha secretary and his wife at the station. They were to send their driver, but they came. Instead of being pleasantly surprised by their presence, I was disconcerted. This trip was not going to plan at all. I got down from the train, and they asked me to sit down on a nearby bench. I asked them what was happening. The lady merely asked me to drink some coffee. The secretary told me that my mother was seriously unwell, and handed me a train ticket to Bangalore - the train was to leave in minutes.

"I rushed to Madras to find out that my mother died even before I reached Ernakulam.

"My father didn't know how to contact the sabha in that small town... No one even remembered the name of the town. When they finally found out the details, they couldn't contact the place because the phone lines were down and it was impossible for anyone from Ernakulam to travel in that rain. The messenger set out as soon as the rain stopped, but by the time he reached, I had left for the station. My father was forced to contact the sabha secretary in Bangalore."

He paused for a long time, before saying, "I felt I had to run away that day. And I did."

At the end of this story, the young girl hugs the son comfortingly, and soon, the hug evolves into a kiss and the lights fade out.

Next morning, a lady arrives at the house and declares herself to be the son's live-in girlfriend. They even have a two-year-old daughter.


Here, the script that Uma read said, "Interval." She put it down, picked up her phone, called the director and said, "Do the play."
***

To continue.

Photograph

He reacts to most photographs of himself in his gruff, growling voice, "Kandraavi." And adds, "Aiye. No one should take photos of me anymore. Chi, chi."

And then he saw this photograph of him like an Emperor ensconced on a throne, in a vast hall, lording over his surroundings, and said, with obvious pride, "Parava illiye! I look younger."

She sees the photo, nods and quickly moves on to others in the album. When she's finished with the album, he asks, "You didn't say anything about how I look..."

She looks at him, and at the photo, and back at him, and says, in a resigned tone, "Great." There is a moment or two of silence before they cackle heartily.

Aap Kaa Surroor v. Rockstar

A comparative examination of the dialectic dinchak discourses and discombobulated lumpen demetia.
***

Fifteen years ago, if someone told me that there would soon be two movies about Indian rockstars singing in Hindi who are wildly popular in Europe, I would've said sarcastically, "Yeah. And Govinda and Navjot Sidhu will end up as Members of Parliament." At that point in time, the only non-English singers to achieve mass hysteria were Ricky Martin and Las Ketchup, and neither was a rockstar in the Himesh Reshammiya or Ranbir Kapoor mould.

The parallels between Rockstar and Aap ka Surroor - the Moviee - the Real Love storyyy are plain for everyone to see. An Indian rockstar, with humble roots and extreme angst caused by flimsy reasons, rises to the top of the Indian music firmament, and in a totally unexpected turn of events, has wild shows in Europe. He gets arrested. He romances some woman who cannot act. There's a spunky other woman whose love he cannot reciprocate. He sports a stubble. He pontificates in Urdu.


(Oh man, Himesh should think of a copyright suit!) 

A detailed point-by-point analysis is required.


Name
Himesh is just called HR. Human Resources. Human Rights. High Risk. Hrithik Roshan. Heart Rate. An html code that creates a horizontal line...
There's a gilt-edged glitz to it. A starry shiny feel. It's the sort of name that can inspire and conspire (and the name rhymes with TR, who rhymed many things with many things).

Ranbir is called Jordan. Jordan? Why would you want to share your name with a Hashemete Kingdom, a retired basketball champ and an erstwhile pornstar? And dude, you're from Pitampura. Face it.

AKS: 1. Rockstar: 0.

War Cry
A no-brainer.

"Jai mata di. Let's rock!" versus "Sadda Haq!" The former is traditional with modern outlook. The latter sounds like a burly Pakistani middle order batsman's genial brother.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 0

Lead star costume and make-up
This is a toughie.

Himesh's wardrobe included the bizarre Hrithik Roshan inspired black see-through banian showing off his insides in gory detail, the Neo-from-the-Matrix-trenchcoat with an incongruous red baseball cap, and a red turtleneck sweater I'll never forget for as long as I live. But let's face it, the costume was monotonous. And you couldn't see his hair, which just eliminates so many possibilities.

Ranbir wore a Sgt. Peppers' jacket and a Subhash Chandra Bose topi for one concert. For merging these two influences, and showing that the rebel can be a patriot (or a fan of Balakrishna, who famously wore the topi in this mind-warping, soul-twisting, brain-hurting video) Rockstar deserves an award. Those harem pants, those strange things hanging from his neck (sources tell me they included one item from the dargah, one from the temple and a miniature samosa), the I'm-a-turban-I'm-not-a-turban... Rockstar had some incomparable gems. And the hairdo - when Nargis is in coma, Ranbir's hair simply transforms from shoulder-length to middle-of-back length, and he grows a Craig McMillan moustache. Magical realism only.

AKS: 2. Rockstar: 1.

Pained expression of lead star
Himesh was the definition of pained. Even when he woos Hansika with a song, he looks pained. When he is arrested, he looks like someone pinched his nipples with tweezers. And when he asserts his innocence with the legendary, "It's a mistaaaake!" the German prison establishment's hearts melt and they allow him to be rescued by some auto-rickshaws.

Ranbir's expression somehow didn't convey the requisite pain required to be a rockstar. When he played with those Sufi people, for large swathes of the song, he looked bored, not troubled. I guess there's only that much pain you can convey about missing Nargis Fakhri.

AKS: 3. Rockstar: 1.

Lady love
Nargis Fakhri made me wish Genelia played this role - she is that bad. Her mouth is always in the wrong position, her eyes look eternally glazed, and her body is stiffer than Sadagopan Ramesh's feet.

On the other hand, Hansika Motwani deserves every accolade for playing her role with rare elan and panache. She had to act like she was in love with Himesh Reshammiya and repeatedly refer to him as HR. She also gets additional points for holding a cello like it was Himesh Reshammiya, and holding Himesh Reshammiya like she should have been holding the cello.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 1.

Supporting female characters
Ah. Mallika Sherawat, called "Ruby James", in love with Himesh Reshammiya (this gives men of all shapes and sizes hope). Plus, she's a lawyer and I have professional bias. Plus, she dances to Mehbooba o Mehbooba sung by Himesh in all his nasally overwhelming voice.

Aditi Rao Hydari's ultimate dollness on the other hand.

Hmmmm. Difficult. Hmmmm.
Ok. The sheer yumminess of Aditi Rao wins this. But it is a close call, very very close.

AKS: 4. Rockstar: 2.

Sufi-based song
Gun Faya is a great song, and I love the way the guitar blends into it. Somehow, that part of the movie reminded me of the story about The Beatles at Hamburg. But that's a subject of a different post. Gun Faya is superlative, and the only thing going against it is that in English those words sound like someone setting off some ammunition.

Listening to any of Himesh's songs is like going down the Carrollian rabbit hole. But have you heard Assalam Valekum in an indefinite loop on a still, quiet night, alone in a hostel room through booming speakers and felt a brown creeper growing from beneath your feet, crackling as it wraps itself around you, digging its knife-like thorns into your flesh until the pain becomes your friend and puts you to restful dreamless sleep?

AKS: 5. Rockstar: 2.

Climax
Rockstar's climax is poetic, with that execrably translated Rumi verse about someone meeting someone else in a field and the ambiguity surrounding her death - there's one perplexing shot of her in coma with her bosoms heaving. But she's waiting. On "the field". For him. Really, she should give him better directions. 


Aap Kaa Surroor, on the other hand, had a climax that even Kidnap couldn't compare to, where the villain's confession is surreptitiously recorded on a mobile phone and beamed live on a large screen. And what does the villain confess to doing? In Wikipedia's words, "Khurana reveals that he wore a face mask to appear like HR and committed the murder to frame him."

We have a winner.

AKS: 6. Rockstar: 2.

The Best Movie about Indian Rockstar in Europe Award goes to...

(As a consolation, we give (posthumously) Shammi Kapoor the Best Fake Shehnai Playing Award.)

Gaze

At a lecture on native language and Indian English writing, I first felt his gaze upon me. It had this reassuring warmth, as if I were sitting at the perfect distance from a campfire in mild winter. It came from three rows in front of me combating the harsh air-conditioning, enclosing me in its cosiness - it was like he picked the ideal spot to get a clear view. The gaze was distant, but pointed; it was welcoming I smiled at him, once, and he turned away immediately. After that, I pretended not to notice, and he pretended not to look. The gaze followed me after the lecture, as I walked through the lobby, down the stairs and into an auto.

A week later, I felt the gaze on my neck, from behind me, at a book launch. I was surprised to see him, and that manifested itself in a smile. He was bolder now, he smiled.

I remember his face vaguely - it was shaped like an elongated egg and punctuated by a round nose that ended almost as soon as it started. His hair could only be described the word nondescript. His eyes were as genial as his gaze. He wore a dangling earring in one ear - but that was a fashion fiasco I could live with (or eliminate).

There was this moment, after the launch, when we passed each other, a colony of butterflies fluttering in my tummy, when I hoped he would say something. He didn't.

The gaze was upon me frequently over the next few weeks, at a concert here, a play there, at the beach, even at a bookstore. He often moved in my direction, exciting those butterflies each time, but never said hello.

I am in a concert now, and I feel a warmth that I only vaguely remember now. I turn around, to see an elongated egghead and nondescript hair. I am in the blanket of his gaze now. The earring has disappeared - perhaps he works in a cultured atmosphere - and his eyes look tired, but the gaze still envelops me snugly, and I can still feel it upon me even when I'm not looking.

The concert starts, I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.

The concert ends, I head out into the cavernous lobby. He approaches me, with purpose this time. The butterflies wake up from a six year slumber.

He talks, finally, in a baritone warmer than his gaze, with clarity of expression that suggests he has practiced this speech, "Some years ago, I came across a short story by Haruki Murakami. About this guy and girl who walk past each other, but don't make conversation."
I say, smiling, "They know they are 100% perfect for each other..."
"And yet, they don't talk. They just walk past."
"And the guy says he knows exactly what he would have told her had he walked past her now."
"Yeah. He'd tell her a story."
"One that starts with 'Once upon a time...' and ends with, 'A sad story, don't you think?'"
"Yes... That story."

We pause, breathlessly, and I say, "Sorry for ruining your speech."
He says, "I like the way it went." He pauses, and says, "You disappeared." He wants an explanation, I think.
"I moved. I don't live here now. I'm only visiting..."
"Oh," he says, indeterminately. If he intends to convey sadness, he fails. He asks, "Coffee?"
I cannot, I know, but I make it look like I'm giving it some thought before saying, "I should be going, I'm in a hurry."

I walk away, leaving him jolted. The gaze is on the back of my neck until I disappear amidst the crowd. I walk out to the blustery evening, and wait on the pavement until a car pulls up. My daughter waves at me from behind the glass. I open the door, hurry into the warmth of the car-heating, and close my eyes. The car stereo starts - I drown in the tambura's drone and melt into the song.