Life, and living it

This is a post I wrote in 2008 and never published. My grandmother (Ajji) lived five more years. Among the people whom I have seen pass away, she and Jyoti Sanyal are the ones who still live fresh in my memory. 

Ajji was a remarkable woman. She once gave me her definition of beauty: "When you have two hands, two legs, and all other organs given by God in perfect shape, what else can you be but beautiful?" She was the kindest, most loving woman I have known. And, her love for children stayed intact after the many years of bearing and rearing children. 

Ajji is standing beside me, peering into my laptop. I ask her if she wants to try her hand at the computer. She doesn't say anything, but comes closer, grinning. I type out her name in very big font. She reads out each alphabet, puts them together mentally, and says with a wide smile, “LAKSHMI.” She stumps me with her life spirit each time I see her. She always has been, all these years. Then, she asks if I can take pictures from the laptop. I say there's no camera attached.

“Oh, I wanted you to take pictures of me,” she says. Am a little surprised, but I just tell her that I can take pics from my mobile. “Oh good, then you must take pictures of me. You'll need it ... later ... give a copy to your mom here..., you too take a copy and go. Aamele bekaagtade (you'll need it later),” she says.

I understand, but only a moment later. My stupid grin disappears. I feel empty in the stomach. My mom is raising her voice over the din of the music am playing, and explaining some recipe to me. My eyes cloud over. I look at ajji, she's still smiling, standing beside me. I tell her I'll take her to a studio. She likes the idea.

My phone rings .... work calling. Ajji moves away.

Life's incredibly beautiful, isnt it, thanks to death?

Motherhood that looks and smells good

Bhargavi, when she was about a month old. 

Often, it’s the simple things in life that people don’t understand and miss out on.

Recently, I visited a credit card site in the course of some work and saw an image of a young couple obviously in love. The caption used words to the effect that said that the credit card made it all happen or some such thing. It’s an all-too familiar hook that advertisers use to get up close with the customer, but the problem is that people actually fall for this, and sometimes even without knowing it.

We begin to believe that we need the wherewithal to express love. We begin to believe that everything needs to be templatized in a follow-the-herd spirit. Hence, we ‘equip’ ourselves by buying whatever can be bought in preparation for the roles we must play in life, but when the time comes to actually don that role, we chicken out. Because, reality is much more than money can fathom.

Why I am thinking this way? Just today I heard from a friend how someone she knows was following the motherhood template: she had the posh crib from a pricey shop, a 24-hour ayah in place, and so on, but no time or intention to actually be a mother.

Motherhood is a one-way journey: once a mother, you’ll always be a mother. You can’t go back to the place when you weren’t a mother. You can’t expect that your baby will grow up overnight once your maternity leave ends. Motherhood isn’t always glossy. It’s wet, it stinks, and it’s sleepless. Yet, there can’t be a better feeling in the world than to be a mother. Now that I am a mother I can easily imagine how some mothers must feel when their children become uncaring and turn away from them. That’s truly sad.

What I said about motherhood applies in many respects to other roles in life. After the wooing with diamond rings and what not and the grand wedding, there comes the reality of actually having to live with the person – warts and all – day after day. No holiday from that. How many of us are ready for this?

Really, the most important lessons in life are ones that no one’ll teach you, but you’ll learn nevertheless.
If this post sounds like a lot of meandering, that’s because I am. Sometimes, it just feels nice to speak your mind, rather than collect and compose thoughts. Almost relaxing.

How death happens

Hmm, this has almost become a quarterly blog. Well, what can I say? So many things have been happening workwise that I should say I’m lucky to be able to breathe.
There were a couple of things that I sorely wanted to blog about.

Like the crow nest in front of my office which will perhaps never be filled. Two crows were trying to build a nest since quite a few days. There was nothing that couldn’t find a place in their nest. Twigs were passé, they even wanted to put a bucket handle up there. I have no idea about structural design, but am pretty sure the bucket handle just wouldn’t have fit in the fragile nest.

And, in the end, it was the nest that killed one of the crows. They had put in a lot of plastic thread in there, and, I don’t know how it happened, but yesterday I saw the crow dangling from the branch of the tree, still bound to its nest by the nylon string.

Is this what they mean, when they say, life is what happens to you when you are busy planning other things? Sometimes, death happens that way, too.

Like it happened at Stephen Court. I drove past it a week ago, and the building looked gaunt, violated, and out of place on shiny, cushy Park Street. What’ll we do about tribals being shot down in some remote village when we can’t get things right in the heart of this metropolis?

Kolkata is full of such Stephen Courts, so where will you even begin? They pay much less rent than the prevailing market rates and the building goes to waste. So, people walk past dangling wire bushes and up creaky staircases, thinking some idiot somewhere is responsible for all this. The owners of the building are nameless, perhaps dead, even, and everyone else continues in a state of inertia (and some false pride to do with heritage buildings) all too common in Communist Bengal.

This is not the first major fire in the city’s recent history, and something tells me, it’s not the last, either.

Love is a beggar on the streets

Love is a beggar on the streets!
She is not to his need -
Like the have not's creed;
Seeking what's not his,
Dreaming of eternal bliss;
She is a sucker on his wits.

Love is a cur in a deserted ditch!
Howling drearily at midnight's hour,
The Solitary wail of a bond gone sour;
Dribbling wearily for emotions gone by -
Pondering passions that were a colossal lie;
She is but now a bitch.

Love is a bonded slave!
Genuflecting at her master's caprice,
For which she must pay any price;
She can't avenge herself in rage,
She is the serf of an amorous bondage;
Where is the freedom she might crave?

Love is a merchant of pleasure!
Trading her wares in a fleeting transaction -
In the capitalists' dream of free market fruition,
Or the stagnation of the socialist paradise -
Here fidelity is an utopia vice;
Love is a use and throw treasure.

Love is a nuclear device!
She detonates a passionate fallout,
And brings mutually assured destruction about
The dispassionate soldier of the information age -
Awaiting orders for people to ravage.
Will love ever cease strife?

-- Lincoln Roy (1999)

(The magazine in which this poem was published has been lost and found too many times, and I cannot take any more risk with it. So, am recording the poem here. Image source: www.popandpolitics.com)

No explanations will do for little Moshe. He will cry for his mother for a long time to come.

Heart goes out to him.

All of life ...
just a meeting and a parting.
Why meet when we must part?
Why part when we must meet?
But who am I to complain?
Nothing began,
hence, nothing ends.

Sir.

Linc said, “Considering your capacity to cry rivers and oceans, you didn’t cry much.” And I thought, yes. Linc, who is usually much stronger than me, was breaking down every now and then, and frequently had a lost look in his eyes. How was it possible that I wasn’t reacting similarly? What stopped my tears?

It is his voice in my ears. I hear it all the time. To me, he is ever-present: in each book I read, each comma, each apostrophe that I will ever use, each sentence that I write, and re-write, for I hear his voice in my head, “Be human, be clear.” Somehow, his absence is not as strong as his presence was.

I was changed from the first day I met Jyoti Sanyal at journalism school seven years ago. He overawed me by his passion for lucid writing and also his sweep of knowledge, but I never remember being terrorized by him, as so many others do. I saw through his sound and fury quickly for the compassionate man he really was. (I realized his anger was not directed at individuals, but at the obsolete way of writing that has entrenched itself in India. He set up Clear English India in Kolkata, where I still work, to fight the evils of legalese, officialese, circumlocution and the like that plague Indian writing.)

He was fired from that school by a maniac, but Linc and I kept visiting him every week at his place in Fraser Town. It was there over cups of coffee he made that I learnt my editing. I pasted newspaper clippings on to a sheet of paper and edited on the hard copy. He corrected them with his red-ink pen. I think I still have them somewhere, must look for them. With each visit, my horizons of knowledge expanded and my love for him grew.

Sometime during those meetings, our relationship graduated from teacher-pupil to father-daughter. What fun and joy-filled moments those were! Those raunchy jokes he cracked, the anecdotes he shared, those conversations rich in information…, everything is cherished. Going back home after each visit, I remember thinking that each conversation could be the subject of a book.

My writing bloomed under his watchful eyes. About a year after I met him, he told me he saw a maturity in my writing. I felt like I’d won the Pulitzer prize. Those people who have ever been complimented by him know the weight and sincerity of those compliments. Then, one day, he told me I was among his smartest students. I simply laughed it off. That was too huge a compliment for me to handle. But he kept looking into my eyes, and said, “Yes Viju, you are.”

Just a year ago when I did a series of stories on street children for an NGO, he asked me to send it to P Sainath and get it published as a book. These are landmark moments in my life.

When he gave these compliments, I had shaken my head incredulously. But now I know I have to believe in myself and cannot look for reinforcements. He believed in me, so shall I.

He lived a simple life, and though he was associated with a business in his last years, was never really money-minded. What he loved to do was to teach and make more people convert to plain language and practise it. I hope I shall be able to further his work here at Clear English India.

You don’t meet too many great people in one lifetime, and get to know them closely and then work for them. I can’t believe my luck sometimes.

I remember you, Sir, for everything you gave me.
Continue to be the voice in my head,
and hold my hand as I write each word.
Sit here beside me as you would,
with answers to all the questions I asked.
You would say these words are unnecessary,
and would have deleted them right away from this post,
But Sir, thank you.

Life, and living it

Ajji is standing beside me, peering into my laptop. I ask her if she wants to try her hand at the computer. She doesn't say anything, but comes closer, grinning. I type out her name in very big font. She reads out each alphabet, puts them together mentally, and says with a wide smile, “LAKSHMI.” She stumps me with her life spirit each time I see her. She always has been, all these years. Then, she asks if I can take pictures from the laptop. I say there's no camera attached.

“Oh, I wanted you to take pictures of me,” she says. Am a little surprised, but I just tell her that I can take pics from my mobile. “Oh good, then you must take pictures of me. You'll need it ... later ... give a copy to your mom here..., you too take a copy and go. Aamele bekaagtade (you'll need it later),” she says.

I understand, but only a moment later. My stupid grin disappears. I feel empty in the stomach. My mom is raising her voice over the din of the music am playing, and explaining some recipe to me. My eyes cloud over. I look at ajji, she's still smiling, standing beside me. I tell her I'll take her to a studio. She likes the idea.

My phone rings .... work calling.

Life's incredibly beautiful, isnt it, thanks to death?

Smart bus drivers?

As a kid, my hubby Linc would wonder, "How do bus drivers know exactly where each person is gonna get off?"






Sometimes, he still manages to come up with similar original thinking.

Bachche wala ghat

Even the sound of it chills me inside. A place where children are given a sort of a half-burial. It seems Hindu law doesnt provide for cremating children below three years. I didnt know about this.

At first glance, I thought this was something to do with the UP High Court's ruling on minorities. Must say plesantly surprised to know why Hindu priests want to boycott Uttar Pradesh polls. For whatever reason, save the river.

Just not enough

How much of stretching can you do? A couple of my friends/colleagues recently became mothers. They used to work their asses off pre-motherhood. Now I wonder how they will be able to manage. And how I, too, will one day.

I have often thought about what this article says. At workplaces, mothers are often considered less productive. This asumption, Naomi Klein points out in her book No Logo, obviously ignores the fact that humans need a womb to spring from. Reproduction has more than a personal value. All these people slogging away in offices, hospitals, factories, etc., were born to mothers who took time off or simply thought of nothing else. Might sound like a lot of obvious things being stated here, but then nowadays, I think it's better that way.

Because, for instance, isnt it common sense that your hi-flyin life comes to nothing if you dont have simple things like water. The way builders are filling up lakebeds, doesnt seem like it's very obvious any more.

Six rupees

That's how much Baby Naaz's family of five earns in a good day, cutting about 240 rubber slipper straps.

Six rupees for three meals for five people.

If it weren't so tragic, it would have made for a brain-racking puzzle.

(Part of ongoing work for a local NGO here. With luck, should be able to post all the stories here in the coming weeks.)