Silver Jubilee

This post was supposed to be up this morning. But things haven't really turned out the way I've planned them today :) (and that is, probably, the first smiley on this blog)
***

Conversation with a good-friend-at-the-bar (both bars):

"Dude, a review of my concert came in the Hindu Friday Review!"
"Kick ass, macha. What did it say?"
"He bambooed me here and there. But there was some encouraging references to 'interesting' and 'promise'..."
"How many years will you be promising, da?"
And we laughed.

It's a big number - twenty-five - a quarter of a century, one-fortieth a millennium (think about it - lay forty of my lives end-to-end, and you've covered everything from Allauddin Khilji to Facebook), silver jubilee and all that. It is also a small number - Sachin (and Javed Miandad before him) has played international cricket for nearly as long, wars have taken longer, and really, in the context of the cosmos and other large items, twenty-five years is nothing.

Let us get back to the main issue - my promise. [I have a vague philosophical doubt here - when someone shows promise, who is this promise made to? To the world at large? To specific people? To themselves? Anyway, irrelevant.]

Apparently, when I was a year-and-a-half old, I could identify fifty flowers in a book and tell their names. When I was four, I could recite some two hundred shlokas from memory. I'm sure my Amma saw a lot of promise at this stage. Lots of people who heard me sing as a kid said I had a great voice and all that - when I first started singing swarams and stuff, there was even talk of 'natural' and 'genius' and the dreaded 'promise'. When I was a kid, I was really good at mental arithmetic - I could multiply, add, subtract, divide large numbers without pen and paper. My teachers always thought I was smart because I'd come up with geometry proofs that weren't in the textbooks. Today, I'm introduced to people variously as a promising flautist, promising lawyer and a promising writer (the last one is a bit random, really - I've been a musician of some sort all my life, and associated with the law for seven years, but writing, apart from this blog, there isn't much at all).

Today, my memory only serves me in one useful way - I remember phone numbers (lots of numbers I know are not saved in any medium - only recollected when needed) and people (this is an embarrassing skill sometimes, because I know exactly who people are and they have no idea I know them). Otherwise, my memory is as normal as anyone else's. I can barely listen to myself sing anymore. True, I'm doing a lot with my music - but nothing to match that early 'promise', no signs of all that 'genius' people spoke about. I'm not confident of solving a quadratic equation today, although I'm sure minus-b-plus-or-minus-root-b-squared-minus-four-a-c-by-two-a will come in handy. I haven't written much at all - there are stray articles here and there, those short stories that appeared in vague magazines and newspapers, there's that aborted novel - nothing of note, really.

Which is why, on my twenty-fifth, today, I wonder if I will spend my entire life as a promising fellow and nothing more. Like Amol Muzumdar. Like Dinesh Ka(a)rth(h)i(c)k threatens to be. Hirwani. Kambli. People who were expected to become the next big things, but never did. Perhaps the pressure got to them, maybe their promise was miscalculated, they might not have worked hard enough, or they just weren't lucky.

I'm guilty of the first three, and I cannot comment on the fourth. Which is why I think it is time to spend my next quarter-century fulfilling this promise; not wholly, or in full measure, but very substantially; not to the world, or to my Amma, or anyone else, but to myself.

Happy birthday to me.
***

(Apologies to people for slightly personal nature of post. Apologies to Jawaharlal Nehru for the plagiarism.

I share my birthday with Indira Gandhi, Sushmita Sen, Sonali Bendre, Jodie Foster, Zeenat Aman, Calvin Klein, Larry King, Arun Karthik Mohan. Today is also International Men's Day and World Toilet Day. I think we can safely assume that the latter was not invented by greeting card companies.)

Return of the Odds and Ends Post

See previous such posts here, here, here, here. I'm sure there are more, but I can't find them now.
***

Hanuman

I'm a slightly religious guy, although temples don't really interest me. I prefer finding my Gods elsewhere. Like lots of people in my generation, I've gone through an atheist phase, and then I've come around to where I started - although, in the process, my conception of this Being might have become slightly more sophisticated. Coming back to the point, temples don't really interest me. So, I often evade and avoid visits to temples (unless there are concerts happening there). Even so, the Anjaneya temple in Nanganallur has always intrigued me. Every single person who has gone there has told me that it is a must-visit. I haven't heard a single bad report of the temple - even people who tell me it is really crowded always add that it was still worth it.

The other day, I had an opportunity to visit such temple - Guru was getting an award from the Rotary Club of Nanganallur for his services to Carnatic Music, and I was the driver to Nanganallur. Mami (his wife - a most sweet lady) came along. He was least interested in seeing the temple (actually, he was worried there'd be too much crowd - Sunday and all that, given his advancing age etc.), so Mami and I (ooh, that makes it Mami and Mami) went to the temple.


Now, when people hype up something majorly, often it disappoints. The temple didn't. The idol ("32 feet high," Mami whispered in my ear, as I stared at it in awe) was large and beautiful. There was this stateliness about it (not easy to achieve when the statue in question is a plain black, monolithic monkey with folded palms), and there was a dignity to the way the temple was kept. I liked that. Don't get me wrong - I love my chaotic temples, but this had a real dignity to it. Really enjoyed myself there. (Also saw a Hayagreevar Temple where said Mami did an archanai in my name for my early marriage. That was a bit trippy.)

I even liked the awards function that evening. Except for the Rotart District Governor (who spoke too much and knew little), no one else engaged in mindless superlativitis (none of the he-is-an-avatar-of-Lord-Krishna-himself-type stuff - only some very well-written words about ). At the end of it, there was a heavy saapaattu. Felt like a wedding - two payasams, sambar, vetthakozhambu, rasam, chips, chepankazhangu (chamagadda) roast, ghee, fruid salad, curds etc. Yum.

I will soon forget the contents of the meal, I'm sure. I might even forget why I went to Nanganallur. But that Hanuman will stay with me.
***

The Post Office

I went to the T. Nagar Post Office with aforementioned Thatha to collect his pension. Each year, in November, all pensioners must give this thing called an "Existence Certificate". Basically, you must certify that you exist. "Respected Sir, As evident from this letter, I still exist. Regards, TVKRS Subramanian" type thing. I once heard of a case in one of the High Courts where a man hadn't given this certificate for 3 years, but still got his pension. Suddenly, when he gave the certificate in the fourth year, the Government discovered that there was no certificate for the three previous years and demanded that he return his pension. He argued in the High Court, successfully, that if he exists now, he must have existed in those three years also. Unless he was Jesus Christ or Vishnu (who came back ten times).

Anyway, I went to the Post Office with Thatha. The pension section is on the second floor of a building with no lift - some basic planning, perhaps? (Thatha is surprisingly fit for his age, and I can think of people twenty years younger than him who'd find it hard to make the trek up the building.)

Nevertheless, he called the mobile number of a friendly lady who worked in the pension section, and she told him she was in Bombay. They had a conversation for about five minutes where they caught up on each other's lives (her Appa was not well, apparently, and Thatha informed her about his own recent sortie to the hospital), at the end of which she said she'd send someone downstairs to get the form and take his signature. He said he'd ask his grandson to go up and bring the form. Friendly substitute lady came downstairs with me, introduced herself to Thatha, asked about his health, he found out some basic info about her (Husband's job? How many children? Son? 11th Standard? Going to IIT class?) and took his signature.

The institution doesn't work, but the people still seem to make it friendly enough - just like how many nationalised banks and government departments work.
***

Twins

When I was (much) younger, I couldn’t tell the difference between Anandabhairavi and Reethigowla, Darbar and Nayaki, Bhairavi and Mukhari (sometimes Huseni also!), Kedaragowla and Yadukulakambhoji. Today, I find it hard to understand why I couldn’t tell these apart! (I sometimes still don’t understand how people who know no music tell really close ragas apart, rarely, if ever, making a mistake.) I think it is like telling the difference between Sehwag and Tendulkar. When Sehwag burst on to the scene, I’d often look at him bat and presume it was Sachin. And he’d take a single, and the guy at the other end would look the same. Soon, you begin to tell Sehwag from his backlift, his slightly wooden legs, his bat-speed, his savageness on the on-side and his slapping cover-drive. Sachin’s legs are always in position, he doesn’t look brutal even when he lifts it over mid-wicket and his cover-drives are lovely punches. They haven’t changed over the years, you’ve learn to identify them better. When you first see them, you only learn to look at the patterns you already know. You’ve seen a Sachin. So, when your mind is faced with Sehwag, it only sees the similar stance, the build, the irreverent shot-making. Only after some time, do you begin noticing those differences. When I was first faced with Reetigowla (after I had already learned to identify Anandabhairavi), my mind immediately slotted it in the ‘Anandabhairavi’ folder. Only with time, did it see those differences.

Now it knows that for all their likenesses, Anandabhairavi and Reetigowla are very different animals. Anandabhairavi seems to enjoy meandering in the madhya sthayi – that glide from panchamam to nishadam to panchamam that defines the raga, the twisty sgrgm phrases; and has heart-rending tara-sthayi sancharas (recall the anupallavi in Marivere). It has been interpreted, reinterpreted, encroached upon over the years, but it retains its classicist nature – like Sachin. Reetigowla, on the other hand, has trademark mandhra-sthayi sancharas (unlike most Anandabhairavi interpretations), has a lovely plain double nishaadam (oh, I love that sound!), an odd symmetry amidst its jumpiness (the nn-s/ gg-m combination, for instance), and a different kind of joy from what its predecessor offers. I’ve always thought of Reetigowla as slightly moody. When the artist has got it right, he’s on a roll, but on days that he hasn’t, you’re waiting for the next guy to come in – like Sehwag. Reetigowla might have looked to Anandabhairavi for inspiration, like Sehwag did to his guru, but it has carved an identity that gives it its own flavour.
***

('Twins' might appear in the next edition of Sruti - if you like Indian classical music/ dance, I'd strongly suggest subscribing to it. Check out maadi!)

Rowena

Someone told me this story. He's even written it, and will publish it as part of an anthology of his writings. Something about this story made me want to tell it. So, Ram Mama, apologies in advance for this borrowing.
***

I remember Rowena as a collage of images. Montage would be the more correct word, but collage seems more apt - my memories seem to be a jumbled set of stark pictures, each with its own identity, yet wedded to the other; they all jostle for space, yet they feed off each other; they are irregular, shapeless, but just right. Some images are larger than the others, some brighter, some sharper, some colour, others in black-and-white. I don't really remember when I first saw her or where. It must've been on a hot mid-morning (my memory suggests the month of May) in Adyar in nineteen-seventy-one or seventy-two. This much I can guess, because I know I was not married, living with my parents in Adyar, doing my Bachelors, and I have one memory of her linked to a Test Match that definitely happened in seventy-one.

Back then, when the people in the locality discussed her, they did it for one of two reasons. First, they didn't know who she was or what she was doing in Adyar in the seventies. She was a doctor, an MBBS, who worked out of an old house converted into a clinic three roads parallel to mine. The white text on green background on the board outside merely read "Dr. (Kum.) Rowena, Physician, MBBS" and had consulting hours written at the bottom. She hadn't grown up in Adyar, unlike many of us, she moved there and set up her clinic. She lived with her parents in the same house, I gathered. I never really found out what her father did, or where he worked, or why he moved to Adyar. I didn't even understand her name. There was no surname - at least not on the board. She could have been a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. Something in my head suggested she was a Christian. I think it was the 'w' in her name - a very Western alphabet. I wondered if she was Bengali. A corruption of Raveena, perhaps. Or from Orissa, which is in the same general direction as Bengal. Maybe she was from Sri Lanka, the Maldives, or Mauritius. A friend suggested (correctly, in hindsight) that she was from either Goa or Mangalore.

The second reason was that she was quite a stunner, looks-wise. She wasn't the fairest around - her skin was chocolate-like. I liked that. Her large, black eyes were very beautiful, but they gave one the sense that they would be even more pretty if she weren't that overworked. Her nose was a tad long and pointy, although that seemed to add to her. Her hair fell from head down to her waist. It was always neatly combed and pleated. She wore lovely clothes - colourful, neatly pressed kurtas and chudidars, with the most fetching of dupattas, deep-hued sarees, even tops and bell-bottoms. Above all of this was the way she carried herself. There was a certain dignity to the way she walked, talked, behaved; but that didn't diminish her vivaciousness. She was very aware of her attractiveness, but never let it influence the way she dealt with people. Even when she knew she was being leered at, she didn't let it bother her.

I never really spoke to her. I might have helped her out with bus numbers once. I remember smiling at her each time we crossed each other. I remember treasuring those smiles and recollecting them for months. At twenty, you don't need to know someone to be infatuated with them. I knew she was older, but she couldn't have been much older. She was unmarried - the "Kum" was ample evidence of that. This was enough for an obsession to mushroom. I vaguely remember making changes in my schedule to catch her at the local vegetable shop and the bus stop in front of her house. I also recall hatching a grand plan to distribute sweets to everyone in our locality to celebrate Deepavali just so that I could enter her house (She wasn't at home when we went, but I met her parents, who didn't care much beyond accepting the sweets with a smile). Beyond this, I didn't have the courage to do anything.

My only real tryst with her came through her work. I fell really sick around the time when India won that dramatic Test Series in seventy-one in England. I remember listening to the radio commentary, wrapped in a blanket, with my extended family crowded around the room trying to decipher what Chandrashekhar was doing with the ball. My fever raged on unabated even after the series ended. My thrifty father decided that before a big doctor sees me, he could try the local physician. I didn't complain.

She came in an off-white-and-black patterned sari - even today, I can draw those peacock feathers and the ornate flower-patterns from memory. She didn't talk much, only asked me professional questions on my health. I don't know if she made the correct diagnosis: my pulse raced when she took it, my heart beat harder when leaned over me with her stethoscope. When she was done, she patted me on the head, and said with a smile, "You'll be fine in a day or two." I melted. As she was leaving, she asked my father what I did. He said, "He's an Economics student. Sings a bit." "Next week, you can sing again!" she said, and left.

After that, each time we bumped into each other (often, I engineered this), we'd have a little conversation. Always the same conversation - we'd enquire about each other's health, I'd ask her about the health of the people in the locality, she'd ask me about my economics and my music. In my head, I was engineering a lot more, but in reality, I was highly unsuccessful. One day, without warning, the board came off, and we heard that she had moved with her parents. No one knew where they'd gone or why. The locality gossiped for two or three days, but soon forgot. I moved from that silent romance to the next.

I met Rowena only once after this. At the Central Railway Station, around six months after she left. She stood alone, with a large bag, and looked even more overworked. I noticed her first, but was too nervous to talk to her. She noticed me, our eyes met, and she half-smiled. I became braver, and walked up to her.
"How are you?" I asked, "Long time!"
"I'm okay. You?" she asked.
"The same." I couldn't now ask her about the health of the other people in the locality. Our conversation would end. There was a lengthy pause, before I asked, "You left without telling any of us..."
"I ran away from home. Got married to someone. I'm living with him now in Nellore."
We said some more things to each other, but nothing really registered.

About two months later, I read in a newspaper that Dr. Rowena (still no surname), aged 24, committed suicide in her house in Nellore after her husband, Raghavan, aged 27, died suddenly in an accident.

I've been attracting a lot of Japanese spam on this post here - taking the comment count to a whopping 61 (and increasing by the day).

Obviously, when people try to sending me a message with such alarm, one is curious to know what the message is. In such cases, one uses Yahoo! Babelfish.

Sample translations:

"The price checker of the life who can diagnose present life experience! As for experience abundant your life being one no point? If you do with everyone, super it is pleasant, also the entertainment people doing, price check of [ru] life! You bodily sensation will try doing the price checker of the life who is spreading with the television and word-of-mouth communication"

My life is price-controlled.

"Young the wife of the world which is called [serebu] is hungry to the man, especially position disturbing, because the encounter unexpected is little, everyday you buy the man to always stress emission via the SEX circle and search. Here is the word-of-mouth communication sight of their business"

There's too much word-of-mouth happening, no?

"It doesn't try diagnosing the price of life? You diagnosing your own value, price your life annual income, as a human becomes the nudity. Challenging in the friend, and simultaneous it will deepen the bond."

Human becomes a nudity. Deep.

The Delhi High Court on Sex

Continuing this search, I came across Justice Sikri of the Delhi High Court, in a case relating to intellectual property and viagra, Pfizer Products v. B.L. Company and others (2002 (25) PTC 262 (Del)).

Nobody can match Krishna Iyer for sheer hilarity, but this still is quite something. The opening lines of the judgment are:

"Sex is an inescapable part of us. It is there from the moment of birth when we are given a sexual identity - boy or girl - and it is with us until the day we die - when it goes on the death certificate."

Innocuous enough, even if the logic is a bit stretched. (As in, what goes on the death certificate?) Then, comes the real meat:

Ever since Adam and Eve ate forbidden apple and were transported to earth, sex has become basic human instinct. Among other creatures copulation may be only a biological act - for procreation. However, for human beings, sexual intercourse is not only procreative. It is creative as well. It has been described as "the greatest driving force in the living world".

No wonder then, that much is written about it. From time immemorial. On how to enjoy it most. On how to continue to enjoy and be sexually active even at advanced stage of life. Vatsyayana's 'Kamasutra' has placed him among the immortals and no better elegy or eulogy can be written than the following lines:

"So long as lips shall kiss and eyes shall see. So long lives This, and This gives life to Thee".

So, it's all Adam and Eve's fault. Skip a couple of paragraphs to find this:

Sex may be most confusing, disappointing and lonely experience. It may also be most piercingly beautiful, earthshaking and companionable experience. It is the experience of latter kind, which human beings cherish.

Adapting someone else's joke - as far as confusing and disappointing experiences go, sex ranks quite high. Further:

Knowing this insatiable appetite of human kind, medical science - traditional and modern - has not lagged behind. Aphrodisiacs are "discovered" and "invented" for prolonged and enhanced sexual encounters. Various therapies are administered for treatment of impotency or for sexual failures of all kinds. What a remarkable gift it would be, for those in need, when it was accidentally discovered that the drug - sildenafil citrate, commonly used for treatment of angina, could be a stimulant for male Erectile dysfunction. The plaintiff became pioneer in commercially exploiting the same. When a drug of this nature hits the market, there are bound to be many players. More and more would inevitably enter the arena. They would make the exploit. And it is bound to create economic war. That is exactly what has happened in these cases.

A slightly needless introduction to a judgment, but we could all do with some bad, kinky humour once in a while, no?

(More judgments will come.)

Before Sunr-eyes!

The other day, when I watched Before Sunrise (again), I spent the entire movie watching their eyes. Through quick glances, fluttery glimpses, stares, glares and glints, their story unfolded, and the movie was even more enchanting than it used to be!

I love that stupendous scene in the listening room of a record store - their eyes truly rule it. The record starts playing, a guitar plays a repetitive string of chords, they look at each other briefly, smile and look away immediately. The scene is slightly claustrophobic (they're closer than they are comfortable being?) - the low, close camera angle, them leaning against the corner of a presumably small room, music all around them. They turn away from each other for a few seconds, and slowly, her gaze sets upon him. A smile is beginning to develop on her face when he suddenly turns to her. Deftly, she looks away - as if she had never been looking at him at all.

Now, he looks in her direction - his expression shows that he likes looking at her. Julie Delpy's cuteness sure is infectious. The song starts, she smiles to herself. He smiles, his eyes are still on her. She turns to him suddenly and catches his stare, he turns away uncomfortably and there is an impish smile on her face. They both look away at the soundproof walls around them.

It's her turn now. She barely looks in his direction when he turns to her. Has he caught her? The moment is too brief for her to really know. Then, he gets a good, long look her her as she pretends to take in the music, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes a couple of times. For a second, their eyes meet. They smile, but it is a fleeting one. Then, they're back to playing their game. She looks longingly while he stares at the ceiling and turns away just as he turns to her, he does the same, they flash slightly longer smiles at each other just as the singer croons, "I have never wanted you so much/ Come here." Then, the scene cuts to them walking down a road.

The scene in the listening room isn't more than a minute long, but their relationship strengthens from this point onwards - it is almost as if that closeness, those glimpses and that music somehow convinced them that their idea might not have been such a bad one after all. Maybe, it gave them time to be with each other, but not talk - something they didn't have until then.

Later that evening, they're sitting in a church (one of the few places open at that time of the night) and they've just had an aimless conversation about how she feels like a very old woman, and how he feels like a thirteen-year-old boy. She jokes about how, earlier, on the ferris wheel, it was a very old girl kissing a very young boy. She finds it funnier than he does. Their eyes meet, his hand reaches out and tucks her hair behind her ear.

He asks her, "Have you heard about the Quakers? The Quaker religion?"
She tells him she hasn't.
He says, "I went to this Quaker wedding once. It was fantastic." He goes on, "This couple comes and kneels down in front of the whole congregation, and nobody says a word unless they feel that God moves them to say it. Then, after about an hour of," a slight pause, he turns, fixes his eyes on her, "staring at each other, they're married."
"That's beautiful. I like that," she says.
He's staring at her now, watching her eyes, hoping she will also stare at his. Three or four seconds pass, she looks away. The look on his face tells us that he has realised that they still have a long way to go.

Somehow, they traverse that path very fast, for by morning, they cannot take their eyes off each other. They hear a harpsichord play from a house on the street, they look through the window to find a man actually playing it, peering nervously into the notation in a book. They watch him for a bit, and they launch into a brief, impromptu dance to the music. He asks her if she has ever danced to a harpsichord, she says, "Of course not..." He twirls her and releases her. She stands a foot-and-a-half away from him now.

Their eyes are locked, and he says, "Wow."
"What?" she asks, unsurely.
He puts his hands on her shoulders and says, "I'm going to take your picture... So that I don't forget you, or... or... all this."
"Ok. Me too."

Then, they face each other and just stare at each other, like the Quaker wedding, soaking in each other, till their mind cannot forget the scene. Their eyes look tired, because they haven't slept all night, but there's still a freshness about their gaze, there is longing, nostalgia for just the previous day, there is this urgency, there is even a touch of sadness. The photograph they take is not of that second, or that street, or of their faces, or the harpsichord-player - it is a photograph of an entire day - of the train, the men in the cow-play, the record store, the poet, the church, the concert in the bar, the wine, of making love. The photograph captures the fact that they will probably never be together like this again, and yet, that they are just where they want to be.
***

(I just realised that two of my favourite movies are set in Vienna. I wonder if that is just a coincidence.)

Break an Egg

Here are some choice comments and observations on Wake Up, Sid (in bullet point format for easy reading):

• The Director seems to have watched Dil Chahta Hai too many times (which is not a bad thing). And I think he liked parts of Lakshya also. So, there's either tons of internalisation (a la Kavya Vishwanathan) or lots of nudge-nudge-wink-wink-check-out-this-tribute to DCH (that scene where Ranbir Kapoor tells someone on the phone - "Mard ban. Be a man!").

• Every father seems to tell his son to "kal se office aa jaao" at the breakfast table after the son has scraped through (or, as in this case, not scraped through) college. We saw it in DCH, in Hero No. 1 and so on and so forth. Moral: chilled out sons must avoid the breakfast table.

• I have no issues with understated drama. But no drama? Instead, a series of highly convenient (non) events - not my tumbler of filter coffee. Even Sooraj Barjatya films are slightly edgier than this.

• Do all rich kids drink orange juice in the morning? If so, I want to be a rich kid. Yum. Orange Juice.

• I want to understand Konkona Sen's revenue model. The way she moved into a new home, painted and decorated it in a highly un-struggling-writerly manner even without having gotten her job was a bit much. Then, she just allowed Sid to stay with her, not thinking of how she would feed him two square meals a day. Maybe she was also a rich kid masquerading as a non-rich kid.

• Wasn't the Background Score highly elevatorly? Yet, it failed to elevate. (Ok. Fine. Bad joke. Sorry.)

• The paper birds in on the wires in the house represent the fact that the inhabitants are aware of the fact that they can fly, but they prefer sitting on a wire. If this were a Fellini film, I'm sure this interpretation would be welcomed with open arms in the psuedo circles. Unfortunately, this just seems to be the art director being arty and the director going along with the idea.

• Am I the only one who found it significant that Sid had major senti feelings towards the rain and his father's company manufactured showers?

• Is there any reason why one would cry at the end of the movie? (Other than crying out of sheer frustration.)
***

(a) No. I didn't hate the movie this much. Feeling slightly uncharitable currently.
(b) Oh, super super girl, Francis Buchanan (swalpa gender-identity-crisis) has a hilarious blog. Go read.