Dust Ink

So I wanted to make something grow. To watch something flourish from dry earth, to dampen dust and make something with it. To have many revolutions in one day, to never have to think before I speak and more importantly, never stop writing. Where and when did the ink turn to dust. Was it when my keys changed, when love became a relationship, when aspirations turned to career moves and life became a series of interviews- education, scholarship and job. The circuit of life leaves you feeling short. Short of yourself and everything you were. 

Pinjra-- Mind. You. Life

Somewhere in the vortex of our daily lives, between the eddy of people we meet and places we go-- there are stark naked ideas and tiny picture memories, the ones we keep to ourselves. Tiny pictures of distaste and occasional joy; that psychedelic soap bubble on a stick catching light and scattering a billion passing faces-a single transparent oily circle of people-rainbows in riot...quite like the crowd of thoughts that is our mind. Indefatigably it reflects all that is around till something sticks, till something makes synaptic sense and then, bursts.

The road to Gulmarg Apartments takes fifteen minutes on weekdays and ten on Sundays. Three crossings and two turns later you find yourself at the Times of India Chauraha. One turn previously, you were passing the Director General of Police’s office. The obese guards alternatively stroking their dyed moustaches, bellies and groins; sometimes stealing puffs from 1 rupee capstans somebody ‘off duty’ managed to procure at Tiwari’s paan shop. His anaemically white banarsi paans lying stacked on red cotton napkins he washed or wet today. With police-paan shop Tiwari you never can tell.

One red-blue barrier later you try to make sense of the childlike animal paintings on the back gate of the Lucknow prince of whales’ zoo. The animals include a rhino, giraffe, lion, monkey and an elephant in deep, what could be called animated conversation. Some enterprising, egalitarian type has also added a stork or pelican to this happy story. Representative perhaps of the new big-bird cage built in 1999. There are giant happy plants in the picture too, some trees and other flowers carefully shading children riding a rusty toy train. The gate is sometimes white and other times a free sky blue.

Ahead, you may miss the Dalmatian walking happily at the end of a red lead. He is completely unoblivious to the red scents at The Chauraha, which is if you’re both passing by before 10:30 a.m. The purple sweater wearing sweeper with one leukodermic hand will be standing in the sun or leaning on the green space shuttle like garbage can, rubbing his face with his good brown hand. I am not sure about the right and left of it. A helpful, shorter sweeper holds his tall broom while the other completes this ritual and almost always spontaneously pees away from the can.

You’re now at The Chauraha.

Tan stray dogs sit together on the traffic policeman’s post, daring you and him to disapprove. They’re strong, beautiful and conceited. Their eyes almost always on the lone meat shop which is right there, by the road, on the pavement, in full view as you pass. No black, white or other dog passes by here. They stop at the popular five to fifteen rupee kabab roll and twenty to thirty-five rupee biryani plate stalls ahead. These are popular because of the coaching institutes that run something close to six-shifts a day, and the journalists at Times of India and Dainik Jagran who can be told apart by plates/rolls consumed and other such significant little things.

The meat shop, the first time you see it is like any other. Though there is a little white and green passage adjacent to it that runs towards a masjid. Hanging from the front of the shop are white-red muscled bodies of goat, I have not spotted a chicken crammed in the cage below where the butcher sits. The bars of the pinjra are wide, rusty and a menacing gray like a good bollywood jail. At about three feet, there’s just a pinch of light that gets in. Just enough to show you the face of tomorrow or today’s bakra sitting, staring. Mouth shut tight. No bleating. No fighting against circumstances. No standing up. Just resignation. Irises contracted, yellow cornea shining like glass.

At a right angle to tomorrow’s or today’s bakra, next to the blue tehmat wearing butcher’s thigh is a head of yesterday’s bakra. Looking like it did yesterday. Almost as noble and stupid. No tongue hanging. Eyes open. Irises contracted. Cornea less glassy. Just, a little slacker. Still staring at the body hanging from the roof right in front of its nostrils. His own body, kilos of red-white muscle. The tail curving with its bob of vulgar black fur on the tip. The dogs staring at this new dead nakedness. People buying it.

Others, passing by. Thinking. Always thinking.

Of 1984 and Nanak's new children

I understand the Congress party’s tributes to their ‘martyred’ leader of 1984, 25 whole years later. What I refuse to understand is the Indian Petroleum Ministry (amongst others) buying half page ads in significant express-ential newspapers to remember Her. Even go as far as to say, ‘we shall never forget your sacrifice’.

Sacrifice?

Patiently scouring every bit of news about great trees falling, the Nanavati commission’s reports, advocacy campaigns and efforts, watching movies about the carnage, reading ‘human interest’ stories such as those of a victim of the ’84 riots in Kanpur who is still waiting for the compensation promised a year ago by our Prime Minister (perhaps with his hands folded, asking for forgiveness from his own community on behalf of his party...perhaps.), I also often find myself abusing Sajjan Kumar and Tytler for the lack of or too much? evidence implicating them but nothing has perplexed me more than how Punjab’s dysfunctional civil society seems to have failed to pursue the cause of 1984’s victims. Except a handful of retired Sikh army officers, advocates and a few others who continue to fight a fast fading-in-public-consciousness war few are associated with justice being delivered to the victims of the riots.

If 1984 was 2002 and if Teesta cared about our Samarjeets, would justice be delivered fast-track style? Would the likes of Rohit Bal have Akshay Kumar and Sunny Deol walk the runway with an exclusive line of couture shirts with prints starring Tytler and Sajjan on a leash screaming Nazi? (ref. The great Indian Fashion Industry’s response to the riots in Godhra and subsequent Modi Hate shirts, unavailable of course to those who needed them most.)

The Media and 1984

I don’t even want to begin with national media reports on the riots; at journalism school, I remember our photography professor, Tirlochan Singh shedding tears when he spoke of 1984 and how he had to cut off his hair and become a ‘mona’ to photograph the carnage of ‘his people’ in Kanpur. Those tears were real too.

International media it is said, was largely indifferent to what happened to their turbaned taxi drivers families back home. Tarun Tejpal often speaks passionately about 1984, even at events where everyone else would rather discuss sycophancy—interestingly,outside the media world.

Every Indian magazine, including the friendly little Week has gone out of its way to ferret the photographic archives of the Government and Family maybe, to get a dozen too many shots of our own Diana. Her style, her personal letters, favourite holiday spots, saris and the famous temper. I’m tired of reading Khushwant Singh (whom I love and respect dearly) talk about her innate dislike for women prettier than herself, about how she distanced herself from those she was closest to, her loyalists. Each article being more surgical than the previous.

Almost everything about Indira the woman and Indira the leader, 1984 and its aftermath as recorded by magazines, newspapers and to an extent film now seems to scream ‘Pop Fest’.

Mr. D’souza senses ‘Unease in the Museum’

And then today I read an article by a one Dilip D’Souza mentioning how pained and shocked he was to see the portraits of Beant Singh and Satwant Singh being conferred titles of ‘Shahid’ and spaces next to a portrait of Bhagat Singh in the museum at Darbar Sahib (The Golden Temple). Well Mr. D’Souza, why bloody not? If this party and country chooses to see Mrs. Gandhi’s death as an act of Sacrifice and call her a martyr, her bodyguards being conferred similar titles by their community is hardly scary. Many Punjabi- Sikh grandmothers have donated their gold by the kilo to the building of statues of Bindrawale, for reconstructing Darbar Sahib although I’m yet to hear of any grandmother sponsoring the children of victims of 1984. Is this shocking too?

While I do not condone the killing of a Prime Minister, be it the lady who chose to attack the Temple my community holds most sacred...violence (including assassination) they say is never the answer to such problems but there are a new breed of young Sikhs like myself who are turning towards the teachings of our tenth Guru, the valiant Guru Gobind Singh. The new breed chooses to defend it’s khalsa identity, maybe even get answers for 1984 but at the cost of forgetting our pioneer saint, Guru Nanak.

Nanak, forgotten?

Nanak’s new children quote him not.

Few know that 2nd November is not even his birthday; Born on Buddh Poornima approximately in April, we now celebrate his birth on Karthik Poornima with a great show of saffron and navy blue, PT shoe wearing fat nihangs exhibiting a variety of war and fighting tricks that look a lot like Punjabi kung fu. At least in Lucknow they do.

This distresses me greatly. Guru Nanak, would perhaps never have approved of the turn that Sikhism is taking. While we young Sikhs strut about with kilo heavy khandas strapped to our necks and hands, we forget his message of accepting peacefully people, living simple lives, looking after those that need help, respecting women and our elderly and realizing that All is Within.

Spiritually there is no dalit, no Jutt Sikh, no bhapa, no Khatri, no Gyani (etc) in Sikhism. It is one religion sans the castes and sects (in it’s original unadulterated form!) but with deras sprouting up all over the globe and ‘richer, landed’ Sikhs killing the ‘dalit’ Sikhs and ‘their leaders’ one wonders where Nanak’s children and students are taking themselves.

The SGPC fights over rights in Haryana, there are new hukams being manufactured regarding trivial issues such as the plucking of body hair by Sikh women, the ‘times for prayer’ and more stringent rules emerging daily. I hear young girls recite the Sukhmani Sahib by heart a good 30 times to get a husband, often destroying the family with too much sukh later! While Indians enjoy a laugh or two at the expense of Santa and Banta and their Preetos, suddenly the average office surd is turning sentimental and feels hurt and cornered at such discussions.

I am truly surprised and worried.

Technically I wasn’t even born in 1984, with God’s grace nobody in my immediate family was hurt in the violence though our farm was almost burnt down by hardliner Hindus and Brahmins in my village (note- dairy farm) here, and my mamu’s house was surrounded by a mob in Delhi but he did manage to escape with his wife...I have much to be thankful for. Yet, I cannot forget 1984 and would like to see a Government as sensitised, ‘new’ and committed as this solve, compensate and rehabilitate the people and families who were crushed when a Great tree Fell.

In praise of Khakhi cars – Part 1

Reader, this one is dedicated to every official car, jeep, truck, dhai-tonne, water carrier, jonga, gypsy and their drivers... especially those whom I’ve had the honour of knowing and growing up amidst. Part—2 being about the drivers themselves and why exactly the new gaddi is now cool.

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We take un-inspiration too seriously, the search for that searing little pork chop of a story to make our readers feel “yesss” is relentless and often unforgiving. While I have travelled, seen and felt Poonch, Rajouri, Daksum, Circuit Houses, Srinagar nurseries and shavarmas rumble in my wordicle, I haven’t been inclined towards writing this season. Not until yesterday at least.

By a quirk of khakhi fate, we now have an AC-less gaddi. It isn’t dysfunctional and we don’t mind the lack of stale condensed air as much as we do the multicoloured-bead decorated seats (something the car decorator could only have outsourced from Peshawar). There isn’t the usual divider cushion in the back seat either, and I never thought I’d miss the fancy clips that held together the modest gray towels in the previous gaddi. Neither is there the slap twice- to work music system with a specific taar that needs strategic manhandling to make a certain speaker work. The only ‘homely’ thing about this one being the two inverted little fans on either side of the front doors and the dirty little nylon curtains (with ribbons) on the windows.

This gaddi wasn’t cool till yesterday.

The khakhi brigade takes car decoration very seriously. If it’s the saahab’s ambassador, he must wait a week till decorations are in place. These are a reflection of the driver’s personality and clout with the babus at headquarters for disposable funds. Within driver-circles, apart from the number of stars on your ambassador’s behind, the ability to drive for X-hours straight, the number of times one has ensured the saahab reaches his flight/train within ‘Paanch Mint’ (preferably on a route everybody knows as one that would take no less than 20 minutes at 60 kmph) it is the number and variety of decorations in The Car that really set you apart.

There are towels, perfumes (often with whales or hearts submerged and swimming around blissfully till they reach the glass bottom of perfumed perfidy), bouncy brown, white, black yeti like creatures with bow ties and if the car/jeep belongs to a lesser officer with ‘fewer’ funds, he must make do with a bunch of dust gathering luscious plastic purple grapes. If the driver is from ‘the south’, there will be some covert copy of vanmalas that grace Lord Tirupati and if he is from ‘the north’, particularly Purvanchal in Uttar Pradesh there WILL be a shrine dedicated to Bhole or Hanuman ji with little red and green lights. All these little luxuries hang from the rear view mirror, sit on the dashboard and generally suffocate you while passing through tunnels or give you faith while zipping through mad crowds of stone throwers. And all this irrespective of whether he is Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian.

The khakhi gaddi is a secular Hindu vehicle; it is blessed on every Vishwakarma pooja where drivers stand at attention while the fattest Brahmin poojari (picked up, or rather escorted from the nearest temple) performs complex ablutions on each, not without increasing his pitch, fervency and taking just a wee bit but definitely noticeably longer when he reaches the jhande wali ambassador.

Old timers remember fondly their Ustads who all taught them something special and life affirming at driving school, memories of lessons behind the wheel for cop drivers are almost always fond. So are memories of cars which are always remembered by their number plates taintis taintis, chauvaalis chauvaalis, chabis sau chaudah etc that had long runs and then, were ruthlessly condemned (kan-dum) at auctions to rough taxi driver types.

The driver and his gaddi are one, they soak in salutes, savdhaans and other respects over the years as they run through districts, offices, homes and capitals. Often abused for stalling traffic their blaring red and blue sirens, feared by the tired traffic/home guard man on extended duty and secretly desired by a hundred thousand eyes that watch them pass.

Some hurt themselves in action, lose a windshield during stone pelting, receive blows in uncontrollable crowds, bullets and sometimes even the odd grenade. They make journeys to faraway villages, thaanas, mountains and camps chugging along roads behind or as escort vehicles, part of convoys and Road-Opening-Parties. They brave landmines and ambushes, forever at the edge when in areas of conflict, forever ready to rush through to safety-- protecting the Important Man in khakhi within.

My mother's magpies, mind it

It was an eventful morning today, I am told.

Not only did one of mama’s bratty robin magpie’s little ones manage to fall out of its strategically placed bird house (constructed by Tuk-Tuk bhaiya with more precision than most of his footstools, end tables, doors, barricades etc etc; the only thing missing in those two birdhouses is a chimney, air-conditioning, a flat screen tv and a broadband sorry wi-fi connection) but it also managed to squawk my heavy sleeping (understatement, understatement) brother out of his surprisingly weak slumber at 5:00 a.m. He told me so over a disappointing lunch.

Lunch comprised something that might have been keema but was covertly camouflaged soya bean scrapings with season defiant pea balls. Well, it wasn’t that bad. Besides, dadima will have you believe her when she says that soya beans have more proteins than the bloodiest meat; hah tell Soxx that.

Because it was Soxx who missed a sumptuous little magpie meatball pre-breakfast-fix due to the wonderfully brave, empowered and cheeky set of parents that little bird was/is blessed with. They cursed her, pecked at her crooked ear tops, gave her one on that stub of a tail (I dare to assume), beat against the verandah windows, hoarsely twittering for help. I have reason and evidence to believe that the magpie robins defended their feather and blood today, Bollywood bird style.

To their rescue came Yogeshwar, guardian to fowl and feline, chief zookeeper Le Subhash Marg, eater of everything and succumber to the patriotic bhojpuri bansuri of Mahesh the Milkman, heart throb of Bandit the guinea fowl and superhero to Bad Dog and the Quacker Club. Present at the spot was also Eshan bhaiya, most concerned about the welfare of his double petalled tuberoses , the nearby Nasik roses, a few clambibos who haven’t been keeping too well I’m afraid, these other three belas and our mother’s little magpie when he found his 5:00 a.m. bearings.

The magpies have been my mother’s sweethearts since they arrived early Feb.

It all began with that ceramic basin being bought for the wild little birds (little wild birds, sorry), the doves and the others. It was one of those urgent buys, the kind you pay fifty rupees extra for under the pretext of it being from Siligudi (but that’s another story). The basin was suitably placed below the lone peach orange masanda, camouflaged from all corners by a savannah of sweet flowers and grasses, exposed only towards the verandah for my mother...at an angle within view from her favourite and only chair.

These efforts put in, you may now understand why mama does not approve of the thirsty sojourns of our five graceless lap it, topple it or sit in it dogs to that very basin. Off late the dogs avoid the basin for the volley of no’s they receive. Instead, they trample bhaiya’s beloved tuberoses if only to express their hurt.

As the frequency of the worm eating, sweet singing, not so daft as a dove magpies visits increased, new shrubs were planted. Red hibiscuses, a mandarin tree, other unobtrusive tiny bird friendly bright plants. But the curs preferred the walls. Our little gally-ara, Castro’s terrarium soon became their haunt; there was a new plate with snacks for them and their friends..one day we saw the bird house hanging defiantly on a wall Castro once scaled. We didn’t mind. Not much. Which bird lives in a birdhouse anyway? Umm, magpie robins.

Not only do magpie robins live in these houses the minute they’re put up, they do not take too kindly to doves who dare to roost on their roofs. ‘Goddamn squatters’, is on the Billbird top ten list, one of the little punks sings it atop the maalti which now belongs to his ever expanding empire.

Any shift in pots below The Palace is not taken to very kindly, neither is any banging of doors, loud voices, dogs, the occasional cat...me! Not only will his and her highness give you a long cold stare by popping a head out of their ‘balcony’, they will also crush the vestiges of your assumed territorial pleasure by making you realize the terrarium is not yours to loaf around in.

If one birdhouse wasn’t enough, mama hung up another, “nearer her”. The doves seized the opportunity only to be chucked out, their two little twigs in tow.. all this by some cousin of The Family that lives in the terrarium. Now we have The Magpies that live There and The Magpies who live Here.

On returning from a weeklong visit to Delhi, our mother called to check...on her magpies. We hadn’t heard from them till the veranda phone rang. We almost sighed in relief. It was believed that The Families disappeared because of the constant din due to the renovation work around the house, but we’re pleased to report it was just a rumour.

And Now that those magpies have completed their Indian duties and given my mother the pleasure of early nani-hood, I shudder to think how many bird houses we might have to adjust to in the coming years.

So about the little one, it was safely deposited in its ‘penthouse’... Praise the Lord. The father (a Rhett Butler look alike with a slick jet black head and chest and what have you) peeps out irritably every now and then when we dare to talk/laugh louder than usual in the veranda below. And yes we hush ourselves, because that is all you can do when his beady eye looks straight into yours as if to say, “Do you mind?”.

...Just like mama.

The he in a she: Gender in local writing

It happened again.

I saw the book lying at the bottom of the shelf this time, like countless others except that one time when I found The Second Sex lying helplessly under some Arabic soul sister (read Sassoon’s horrific cellar jaunts) would I buy it this time? I’m afraid not. But there she lies in all of my frequented bookstores in Lucknow, waiting for some sordid pseudo feminist DU return or even LSE/SOAS return to read her. I’m waiting for whenever that is. I’d like to witness the veritable exchange.

Well I was thinking, I don’t remember the last sensible Indian female writer in fiction/poetry I read (true I don’t read much) and now Kamala Das is dead. Jhumpa for God’s sake is not Indian anymore. The Desais are different. Gita Mehta’s Raj, struck me as the typical lovely Indian saga of lusty princesses and damned princes, set of course in Rajasthan. A proverbial satin-sandy pick me up for the air-conditioned, overpriced, wall papered, playing Ravi Shankar at a bleak 19 firang flocked bookstore in Agra. Even the pappu pyaare kulfi guy outside that store sells sanitised strawberry icecream as authentic ice fare from the times of the Taj.

Mimlu Sen has emerged with her Baulsphere, but they say Mimlu was always gifted and bright through college. Is that to say that true expression comes only from the bright? Or is that to add with a smirk that social science/literature studying Delhi University girls score over the rest of India’s second sex in writing? Have I read anything by Lucknow University’s young ladies or old? I don’t think so. Does Lucknow University even stock or even update one about writings by its alumni forget female!?

So what’s the deal with having women’s studies and feminist literature shelves/sections in stores like Landmark? Is that some gender policy? Show me some fugly book-keeperesses instead of counter women. When was the last time you had a woman show you/help you around a bookstore in Lucknow. Ummm Never? Are you one of those few Lucknowese (yes, thank you Samar) who have been asked “do women really read?” Have you then been attacked by sapiosexuals who’d like to know whether you’ve really, really read?

It could happen. It does happen. So does being told to do soft stories and features in local newspapers because you’re a girl. If you’re a woman, read married, settled, preferably police or IAS officer’s wife you become some kind of desk sub editor who gets extra passes and feels important basking ‘out of’ her husband’s shadow. Otherwise, Mrs. Unconnected will be left to handle screaming women’s affairs and sometimes the lecherous population of politicians such at Laddoo Bhai and Company Telibagh waale who may or may not give you a lead. You may even do some development stories—as in regurgitate press releases from International Agencies, diligently. Often for the front page even!

Sometimes, the female columnists I read with much sado-genderistic joy-- Tavleen Singh (India’s first female political columnist I am told), Seema Chisti, Bacchi Karkaria, Lady De, Pamela Philipose (who I’m sorry to have not read in a long time but delighted to have met and heard last year), Coomi Kapoor and whoever that young lady is that writes TeleScope (she can be frightfully funny). But of the young ladies including the A-list of stiletto and kolahpuri wielding bloggers I’ve sometimes read, there’s Georgiana Maddox who does the music-art etc beats in The Express (you will notice most of the above write/used to write for The Indian Express). Not only does Georgiana have verve, she has interests, colour, rhythm, a past, present, future and so much going for her...she’s a chilled out young woman who’s comfortable in her skin not screeching like a lip-popping bindi butt from TV or the magazines.

Ah, the magazines. Good Housekeeping ladies, scores way above Femina, Marie Claire, Cosmo and all those dumb magazines I love flipping through every trimester. Not only does the team on Good Housekeeping know more than the pseudo pentilectual rest, they have taste and dignity. Also, I think the team isn’t just the Bombay-Delhi hellowww types. They have photographers, writers etc from all over India.. (but this too, I think, vaguely).

Gender in local writing. Is there a bias in the bias?

Am I a Biharan (oops, UPite) because I belong to slow Nawab, Kabab Lucknow. Oh shut up please. You all really should realize that there’s more to Lucknow than the Nawabs and Kababs. We had Qurratulain Haider. We have Shirin Abbas. There are reasons to rejoice local writing, to give gender a little push every now and then. Encourage that poetess in your “maid” and “her daughter”, expression does not need to align with the times. Any expression especially from the voice, eyes and fingers of a woman, especially one who is ‘real’ is valuable.

Next time you observe someone dissuade your neighbour, cousin, sister, daughter from studying journalism/mass comm. or such forward subjects because she’s a small town girl and “what will people say”, help them realize this...you are depriving yourself, your city, your people a space in words that will stay somewhere and even forever. Say it in your own language, but say it at all !!

...and help her say it too.

But this is besides the point. Is it not?

12 Big Ones

12 Big Ones

(Reader, much has changed since I wrote this, end of December... a longish one about nothing in particular, quite Dear Impersonal Diary if you ask me...but yet, this is how it has been..and is. Thank you for waiting.)

No, I’ve not been busy… and if I said I was, it was just to feel mysteriously important.

Truth is I’ve been doodling my Big Ones this year. The Ones that made the two zeros in 2008 specialer than those in 7, 6, 5 etc.

Of all the fantastic lists I’ve made since I discovered the power of feeling organized, 12 Big Ones is suddenly closest to my aging heart. Choosing 12 was not harder than remembering 12 to begin with.

(A special mention of all those diaries destructed by scribbling on the first two pages and sometimes beginning new in middle months such as June and August.)

The thing about middle months is that they let you believe it’s not too late, that you really are more than a pathetic lump of lard with secret ambitions that fry your veins every quarter of a weekend… Very unlike condescending December. I do hate December, it either refuses to get over or smarts before it gets started like some fussy old car you can’t get rid of because of soggy sandwich-picnic-puppy memories.

1. I did not—lose weight, buy a monster car, travel around India third class with Madiha, learn Gurmukhi, the sitar, better French, proper Sanskrit, read Proust or Kant, certain classics, certain other classics, find a corgi, raise peacocks, stay ‘in touch’, write that story, figure out what I want to do exactly, demand a raise, a space, start Chowk Talk, and unfortunately, I did not learn Braille either.

2. The pups of war grew up in our fowl backyard—Stubbs Scillaci and Soxx Soprano will be one year old on the 24^th of January…Subhash Marg’s pups of war have chewed, scratched, broken, broken again, killed (RIP dove 1, dove 2, dove 3, kochri 1, super fat inspector civet cat, nameless chicken 1, nameless chicken 2, chipmunk a-z and the other’s I’ve not been informed about yet.)

That crazy phantom face you see peeping out/over the walls/windows is Mr. Stubbs, the lone territorial male who likes nothing better than warm meat gruel, his pink Minnie Mouse squeaky ball (thank you Mike), a small female lap and much fussing ov

er his palm sized black button nose. Stubby boy responds well to calls of “Abbey” instead of “shoo”, he has a certain dislike for children, gardeners, red ants and Suu Kyi.

Play-bitch Soxx Soprano is a poser. She revels in the curves of a sofa only once she has expended her energies howling (note-she can’t really, bark) at

passing tongas, the GOC’s mini convoy for his early Sunday game of golf, at the local curd man (who surreptitiously buys kabaad under another name). Soxx likes aeroplanes, yellow butterflies and the Dalmatian across the road. My girl’s all grown up.

December’s ducklings have added much joy to our fowl backyard. Gobble and Gook the long tormented turkeys now have feathers that shine, Gobble prefers being called Bad Dog with a harsh undertone, I always did think he had a masochistic fetish. Calling him BAAAD DOG will result in his hurling back a stream of expletives the sounds of which shake his wattle into alert deep redness. Gook likes her Pedigree milk and chicken to the special seed mix I so lovingly prepare every morning.

Chilli the chiken was bought for half a five hundred, she lays an egg when she feels like it. Chilli is ugly and does not deserve the amorous advances of Sunder Singh Jr. Jr. or Chunni Lal who look like a certain Professor Prince at Lucknow University in a double breasted coat…that colour too, now that I think of it.

Bandit the guinea fowl has not learnt from the five before her that crossing the road must be left to chickens. She flies to number 6 for her Parle G fix every day, 4:00 p.m. sharp. Last heard, the ladies at number 6 learnt the hard way that cream biscuits are unacceptable quick fixes.

My fowl backyard is populated by other magpies, doves, red cheeked bulbuls, the hornbill family and my cheeky tree pies. Life would be sodden without all the action the fowl-pup skirmishes cause. The politics of my pets will always remain a Big One that I cherish.

3. When best friends get married, to men—So they’re getting married. My ‘college friends for life’. If it all happening far too soon wasn’t enough, they’re getting married to men. Madho to Suhail and Harshita to well, whoever…sometime soon.
   

The big M was something we talked, poohed, secretly smiled about and even looked forward to...some days. There were night outs when we wondered who the buggers would be, when we would, what we’d wear all the suffocating pinkness of other firsts. But the romance got knocked out of me with the actual taking over instead…three months to go before Madho gets married, before our gheris come to a halt, before there’s a string attached—finally.

4. Because Steinbeck’s for life—The best Big Ones I’ve read all year have been John Steinbeck’s. Having read Steinbeck, I know every decade is worth looking forward to, just for the re-reading. Knowing that he sits in my bookshelf is quite like having a sunny attic for a Dalhousie winter morning within reach. The camaraderie, summer, observations of the writer are those of a dear friend you can look at and know, he understands. But Steinbeck, really, is not a woman’s writer. Hemingway would probably have more female admirers, critics etc but Steinbeck is often in danger of being lost in a girl’s classic bookshelf. A plea to female readers—banish Austen, the age and our kind demand and deserve some Steinbeck.

5. Every girl deserves a Big Brother— this was the first year I spent with bhaiya, January to January. The most special year out of all 22 I’ve known him. He’s the sunny oak that roots me. There will always be five years between us but for once, I feel, we crossed over and t’was special.

6. And a Good Dog—Cinders has been my soul-sister since I was in 7^th grade. ‘Michico’, ‘Cindy Baba’ and I go a long way. We’ve investigated logs of wood, run from snakes and crabs, eaten from (almost) the same plate, snuggled together every winter, fought for the couch opposite the AC every summer and sat together in the porch watching monsoon fill our garden to the brim. We’ve dealt with death, when Dadaji passed away Cinders and I would walk many a block to get away from home. When Zulu urf Sable Singh (her son) passed away because of peach pip-poisoning, we dealt with it too.
   

Seeing Cinders in pain, with cancer, her big operations this year killed me. But her spirit and desire to bounce back time and again inspire me. Cinders is well and spends her days by my side, looking up every now and then just to make sure through all that cataract that we’re still a team…and always will be.

7. Great trips begin from home—Yes they do. Some of the best I’ve had all year were to Punjab, Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, Jharkhand, Srinagar and then they all did begin and end at home. Special efforts for vacations don’t work half as well as spontaneous plans do. It’s the bloopers, the spilled teas, the left-at-home little luxuries, the blame games, the silence that make it all so very special.

8. This can’t be work – For the longest time, I’ve not known what it is I exactly want to do, be. But maybe, what I am now, whatever it is I’m doing, is closest to what I almost always wanted. I’m a part time vet, a writer when I want to be and have to be, a full time zoo keeper, I get to travel, I have my Faith in tact…and the purpose, continues to Burn on In.
   

Most importantly, The Lucknow Book Club was FINALLY registered and is an actual club...A big hug and thank you to all the wonderful people, Dok Saab, Nitin, Masto Paahji, Sid, Blah Kween, the Crazy Owl, Rajat and Siddu for putting up with me and making 'our dream' that much...in fact this much, truer.

9. Lovin’ Lucknow University – Post Amity, Lucknow University was a welcome and much needed change. Classrooms with walls that fall apart, see saw benches, boys sitting on one side and girls the other, discovering the gravity of characteristic differences between samosas and khastas…understanding the economy of cutting chais, colourful Professors and of course great friends. I love the University, it’s a world populated by people who find significance in six page answers versus four and friends who share their Prasad with a smile.

10. Home’s where your parents are—Living without mama and papa in this house is not unusual; I have however never missed their physical presence as much as I did this time round. The Srinagar fortnight and now, them returning drove home the biggest one of all… Home’s where your parents are.

11. Castro’s 11—Castro the garden lizard met his end somewhere between Nayak’s broom and the jaali behind the washing machine. Five days a week, Castro could be found soaking in the sun on Chinese solar lamps that would stand guard outside a hard-to-shut door in an open air gallery, that belonged solely to him…his eyes followed the frantic parading of ants, roaches and other little insignificants. Not one cold muscle would flinch while the fattest, reddest pointy arsed cheenta walked by his fine nostrils for Castro, liked to wait.

The other two days of the week, in case you were wondering, were reserved for plundering the contents of a mud wasp nest precariously pasted to the middle of the back verandah’s passage jaali. Two days every week, Castro sat gazing lovingly at the mud vessel, while I imagined the wailing white bundles that lay within.

It was when the wasps stopped leaving their baby sacrifices for Castro that bhaiya and I decided to invite some commotion to Castro’s Terrarium, the open air gallery that was to be our little nursery. A quick visit to our garden for potted plants and the subsequent visit to Uncle J for more somehow led us to relay our entire garden.

Castro’s 11 are the team who have chopped, mowed, pruned, climbed trees, pulled weeds, sowed and gardened with great fervor with the captain, Eshanvir, immersing himself so completely, in developing the perfect natural garden… this is a project that is in progress, one that includes breaks for sipping cups of noisy masala chaa early mornings since October 2008.

Most early mornings, bhaiya and I fuss over our daffodils, ornithogalum, rose creepers, honeysuckle, ticoma, son champas and many other shrubs and trees we’ve amassed from dodgy Lucknavi nurseries, from gentlemen such as Edeneum Khan of Meerut who sells only the best edeneums in the world, Arvind who has a new mobile number, or two…and Uncle J, who gets us the goods from Bangalore and Pune. We’ve visited government nurseries, CIMAP, rather gay flower shows and stolen pretty old hardbacks on English, Japanese and every other kind of garden. All this would have been impossible without our muse, Castro…rest in peace scaly one, we shall miss all 15 centimeters of you.

12. Chapters we write—It’s 2009 as I write this, I feel a little older already, and as I read all of the above, I wonder about the definite bigger ones… Cinders passed away on the 13^th this month, Iggy arrived on the 14^th, papa and mama’s three week stay was a holiday spent ‘being home’…so much is new professionally, personally, in my head. The big break from writing almost at an end.

And yes, the chapters we write are true, sometimes. We find friends, love, family, the warmth of a tiny cold nose, the happiness of sunshine, an old mango tree with its population of upside down squirrels, wandering eyes, a hand, a single glass of tea. The hellos and goodbyes, a first blossom, winter dew under warm bed feet, the comfort of familiar snores, the joy of being told off and the greater joy of being together and so far away.

Hard ends, special beginnings… may your universes, too, conspire.

The communist in my chair

Who is this man? He’s sitting in my chair.

Not the one I work from, but the one I like arguing and agreeing with M from. Frankly, I didn’t even know it was my chair till I found him sitting in it. I’m looking at this scraggy, obviously young man with unbelievably fine hair while I find myself another chair. Here, I’m used to men not standing up when I enter a room or pulling chairs out for me. But honestly, I like it this way.

Every afternoon I’m called to ‘office’, I know it’s to be introduced to people I’ll be working with. People who come from pink, green, yellow and orange places on the Uttar Pradesh map that hangs portentously behind M’s head. Most days, I find myself plotting red ant lines from Fatehpur, Mahoba, Azamgarh (etc) all the way to Lucknow. Some days, they march straight through M’s forehead to that imaginary little flat that must be where we are right now.

I didn’t expect to meet a communist Awasthi today.

I was expecting a harassed head of a potentially viable network of NGOs, somebody I must remember as so and so ji for the next tea break at the potato smelling Sahabaghi Shiksha Kendra canteen. M introduced him as being obviously leftist to which he laughed and waited. I was introduced with incredible fortuity as being this young writer. The obviously leftist young man felt this was rather ‘inconclusive’ and for someone sitting in my chair, he pronounced it only too instantly.

The usual suspects popped into my head. Well actually just JNU did. That’s when he recited Nida Fazli, Faiz and Ghalib in one breath with a series of coughs that rankled his ribcage, pronouncing the yellow eyes further. I understood why he was popular with the lot he was popular with. Clever, I thought to myself.

After blowing some about programmatic concerns, M really got down to what he wanted to know. “So why were you at the – manch yesterday?” Comrade Awasthi knew he was to tell his story. He probably knew it when he walked into the flat with unending blue curtains and sat in my chair. He might have thought about it at Chacha’s paan shop, smirking while spitting out quickly chewed gutka juice. He said his story was painful and long enough for another time. So we sat and smiled silently to tell him, this was another time.

It began fifteen years ago, after he’d been messed up at one of the sixteen or is it twenty something CMSes in the city. He decided to study something technical so papa and mama Awasthi would let him go; and to Gonda he went. Spending his evenings with old men who drank like fish and talked of days when they were in the Bolshevik party, he didn’t drink with them then. He sat, listened and remembered. Till it was enough for the parents who put him into the University, that’s when it begins.

Two months later, he shifted from a Bsc to a BA, wore his hair long and was young McCocky on a Suzuki. He’d read nothing much then, but spoke Urdu like a dream. Things pained him and nobody understood, but that’s when he read what old timers wrote on the University back walls. In a script that ran left.

There was a Man who fed them butter-buns, tea and handed them these little booklets every now and then. He gave them lifts and asked them for some. The Man also got young Awasthi out of jail this one time. Soon he joined The Party, left his family and was promoted as Secretary almost every month. Now, he was in charge of picking up and dropping off the Big Guys at the station... he held promise. Much promise. That’s before he was expelled…about a girl.

I watch his cough and hear his ribs. His skin is drawn so tight all over him, as if to keep him warm from us. Everyone’s silent. I’m waiting for him to pause. He doesn’t, not even through the coughs. This is a long story.

But he won’t write them a sorry note, he’ll do something as lowly as joining a certain orange party, but won’t write that sorry. He won’t hear a word against the party either. ‘There are some true men who have given their lives, everything to the party…I won’t have you say that’.

Comrade Awasthi spends his days organizing unions, teaching ‘khurafaat’, reciting poetry and befriending unlettered young divorcees and widows on the other side of Chowk. He likes George Bernard Shaw and despises incorrect spellings. His hands shake and his beard was once longer than it is now. The blue curtains are suffocating him; he walks out to our balcony and then downstairs. He’s forgotten how to sip his tea and laughs about it. I don’t want to know more. But maybe I will.

Give it a BREAK!

“Peaceful protestors fired at…”

“Has there been a delay in responding to the violence in Srinagar?”

One question, who the fuck are YOU?

I am fed up with the electronic media. I’d love to short circuit the squealing little bastards on television, the oh so brave camera men who run alongside the uniformed, coming in their way more often than not and of course, inciting more violence from the same peaceful protestors who love to play to the gallery. The gallery of course, being the moving picture sort, flickering images of violence and unrest in the streets of Kashmir while the Sharmas, Srivastavas, Singhs, Khans, Simons and all The Seculars of 61 year old massive India sit cozily together, slurping sunfeast protein rich pastas in their all in one (bed/drawing/tv/dining) rooms.

The Seculars, who revel in pointing their sick grubby-fat little fingers at those in uniform for acting late, acting wrong, not acting at all. Try staying awake a whole week in order to ensure your 30,000 men make no mistakes in the field, any clue what it feels like being responsible for all those men? Oh no, you’d rather dissect the Arushi case, and ask pseudo journalists like me for inside information on “who did it”? Why would you care about say the CRPF or the civil police in J&K. You, who believe the electronic media so happily, but then The Seculars are gullible little patriots who believe their income tax is wasted on the same men who act late, act wrong and oh so often, don’t act at all.

As much as I’d like to whop the whippet out of anybody who says anything anti-uniform at this very moment, I’d rather just stick to how the electronic media is putting words in your mouth and planting tetchy ideas in your impressionable minds.

The retarded weekly debate in my mass communication department always ended up with somebody whining about ‘The role of media’. I suffered countless abuses when I said it was ONLY to report and report what’s true. Leave the analysis to a page/show that specified “This is analysis” (as in, the edit/op-ed page or talk shows/dateline/we the people you get my drift!) and not “Front Page”/ “9 o’clock”/ “Lunchtime/Breakfast” News.

Currently, I’m proud of the Print Media and their sullen treatment of the issue, this is not to say that they’re any better than the Electronics, but certainly the Print Media is more responsible today than any other form of media in our hemisphere.

But the bunch whose case I want to take are “citizen journalists”, who are these guys? Responsible little prats who have a mike and an accent? Or concerned individuals who like the rest of India believe they know better than everybody—The Government/The so and so’s/Themselves? These guys, blog and yap endlessly about murder mysteries, dying democracy, Kalawati! Educated and well read (fattened on a diet of Chetan Bhagat, TOI, A few shows on NDTV) types who think the onus of running this country depends on their second-hand, tired and tried to death deliberations.

I am sick of them all. Especially the content-less “journalists” on television news this very minute, going on and on and ON… here’s a suggestion, DROP the concern. Just report what’s actually happening and if you are in a particularly generous mood, spare us the torture of hearing YOUR opinion.

And seriously, give it a BREAK!

Shinjini Singh.

Ranthambhore Recall--Liar the Guide

Ranthambhore Recall

Reader, there are people we call ‘characters’, as if to distinguish them from the rest and to etch them in our petty memories. People we treat as savories for amusing afternoon conversations that would be dreadfully dull without their special buttress. We share them with others who will perhaps, never meet or know them…not at least as we did. This does them no justice. They exist without knowing they are princes.

I had the particular fortune of meeting not one but three such princes last week. Liar the guide, Gulchand ji the forest guard and Dashrath the driver. This is what I recall.

Liar the Guide

He is too convincing.

Leaning over the canter (a safari truck full of phony tourists with flashy silver cameras), Liar clicks his tongue at a passing gypsy. Ours. He demands attention, this impossibly important looking short man in fatigues.

You can tell he’s the most important man in the canter, the fragile and pink gori sitting next to him wrapped in numerous cotton scarves is proud to be parked right there. The fat brat kids in holiday shorts stop crackling their frito packets when he speaks. Sweaty piggy faced men sporting shades with complicated geometric frames hang onto every word Liar spurts. They pant every now and then, as if to register the facts for easy regurgitation from their foot long and foot wide cabins at work. The women are too busy looking at each other to watch the performance. It’s creepy how all the women, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters at Ranthambhore are always checking each other out.

Liar tells us where he last saw a tiger and for how long, we believe him…though gullible idiots we aren’t. We follow the suggested trail and find nothing but a group of randy langurs grimacing at us with their butts. Nobody is amused.

We meet him the next day and he says we missed it by ten minutes elsewhere. There’s a new gori sitting next to him, in fewer scarves and bigger dark glasses. She puckers her lips mimicking his for some odd reason; I trust that’s what she’s doing.

Liar spots something in the elephant grass, we follow his lead and realize it’s a bloody ‘Indian mongoose’. How rare is that. He continues hemming about how the tigers made a kill, there is a collective gasp of horror from the phonies and pansies. This one guy at the back has his legs all over the seat in front; he’s the only one who’s not gasping. Liar, without looking back at him very coolly warns the entire lot about loose body language and how everyone must be alert… because you never know “kahan se aayega...Woh”. Mr. Legs is suddenly very afraid, his heels and the rest of him shrink back to him.

You see, nobody disputes Liar. The driver doesn’t seem to listen to him ever. He’s always rubbing his spindly arms, as if his power steering wheel is a secret only he knows.

Liar changes his position, his line of vision. He’s concentrating hard on a particular gully. We all trust him; he doesn’t care if we don’t either. He is always watching, with an obviously bored demeanor. “Andaar hogi, bacche saath mein hain naa”. He’s referring to The Lady of the Lake, who’s been enjoying the supply of bambis etc at the waterhole. She has three cubs and a fourth from previous years to feed and care for. My mother feels for her.

I am too busy cursing Liar and the fact that he’s so certain.

The Bengali birdwatcher, who looks like he suffers from some kind of dysfunction down there is painfully searching for a bird to capture with his most professional looking camera. He’s pointing it everywhere. Fake stuff I tell my brother, it isn’t a SLR, just something like it. Liar puts his hand on the poor chap’s shoulder, stirring a semi shriek from the bottom of the babu’s throat. Can a tiger’s paw really reach 30 feet above trail level? “Uddhar… paradise flycatcher” slurs the bored little Liar. Yawning before he looks down at the pucker queen. He says “Bird” and points behind him for her convenience. She smiles and nods vigorously. He enjoys it very much when she does that. So he repeats himself.

Liar is a veteran. He’s been in the park since he was a kid, since before it became a sanctuary and before people made elaborate and expensive holidays to see tigers and experience a safari. He knows the routes like everyone else, yet more so. Nothing excites him, not even his endless supply of goris. The park staff adores him. His canter is the most punctual, his driver the quietest. He sits with the forest guards every evening, at the exit waiting for the last gypsy or canter, every day. With much confidence and a touch of gloom he ponders upon the ‘movement’ of the tigers. Which paths they’re likely to take, which ones they took. What mountain they’re on, who they last killed and why they haven’t made an appearance all day. Everybody gathers to listen to him. Wide-eyed, believing and envious of his superior knowledge.

But Liar is superior to us all. He is content, impervious, unamused, objective…above it all even. If a gecko dropped onto his shirt he’d let it stay there. He wouldn’t pluck a leaf or twig from a tree while waiting for a tiger. He’d never do that.

The gypsy renting sort who dish Rs. 2500 for three hours in the forest bear the brunt of his humor. He settles scores between drivers and guides and forest guards. The fatigues he wears twice a day every day, reflect him. No naturalist and wildlife enthusiast escapes his shrewd eye and malicious tongue. He can smell out the smart alecks and put them in their place…He is a loner. A prince.

So, no sign of The Lady and her cubs till the next day.

Today we meet him again. He doesn’t smile at us; he’s not interested in tormenting us anymore. He’s caught some Oberoi hotel types with a spanking new red ice bucket in their gypsy. He’s lying about seeing tigers yesterday evening. We smirk at him. Like it makes a difference. I cheekily ask him where exactly he intends to see a tiger today so we can be there. He laughs and scratches his head. We go on. His canter is full of new phonies who’re scared shitless about the possibilities.

We spot her by the water hole; she’s watching a group of sambhar wading naively in the water. There is much commotion in the canters and gypsies around us, the Oberoi types are drinking cokes with much arrogance dripping onto their shirt fronts. We shut our eyes tight in anger at the noise. The Lady doesn’t care, she’s too far and maybe she’s used to it. Some tree pies are begging for namkeen from the brats while Liar decides this is too much. He shouts “Shut up” and all are quiet. He tells them the animal deserves her space, this is HER jungle. They listen to him and some actually do keep quiet. We watch the spectacle before us in silence, like grace before supper we bend our heads and wish our silent wishes to see or not to see death this evening…

Liar leans over his canter and looks at us. We appreciate him. He points at her and says nothing.