इस शहर के उस ओर

शहर के उस ओर अब जाता नहीं मैं
     वायु वहां की रास आती नहीं
        
 शोर वहां का अब चहल-पहल सा
         लगता नहीं


वहां का हर इन्सान
एक रिक्शा सा लगता है 
       जिस में कोई भी पैसे दे कर
         सवारी कर सकता है


और मुझे तो सवारी करनी नहीं

मुझे तो यहाँ
     शहर के इस ओर
     नदी की तरफ ...


जहां काँटों को
काटा नहीं जाता
उन को फूल बनाने की कोशिश
       नहीं की जाती


बस, उनके पैनेपन से
कुछ सीख लेते हैं हम

Monday is a working day

I really like going to office. I don't go to it everyday, but still, of late I've been going there whenever I get the time. I have to leave early, a little before sunrise, so I can catch the best moments of my colleagues. My office (the one I'm using right now) is about seven kilometres from home. I take a bottle of water, the books I am reading, the cellphone (in case the wife wants to call me) and set off with a flutter in my heart. I drive over a hill and then on a stretch of coastal road and then I pull over in my parking space. This is what the parking space looks like:

I take a quick look around, get a sense of the mood in the office, and then after about ten minutes of that I pay closer attention to my colleagues. I say a warm hello usually and leave it at that, settling into my work, but sometimes I take pictures of my colleagues. Here are some:

I push my chair back and settle down to work, looking up every now and then only out of habit, or when there is some commotion. It's a busy office with lots of shouting and shrieking in the morning. And there's always fighting over space or about who saw what first. Look at these guys fighting over sitting space:

All of a sudden there will be clapping and I will look up to find someone congratulating themselves. It's that kind of office:

I'm lucky to be in a happy office. There is a lot of singing that goes on, especially in the mornings. Some of us, me included, like to go about our business in silence, with a grunt or two now and then. Like these guys: 

Okay, gotta go now... Monday is a working day.

Zhuangzi's dream, red leaves and a cat

This morning, when I woke up, I said to Monika, 'What if we were really a couple of deer?'

We usually say a 'Hari Om' to each other when we wake up, but the waking up moment is such that one could be anything, really, A lot can happen while sleeping. I am reminded of Zhuangzi's famous dream of a butterfly, and how he had no way of knowing if he was now a butterfly dreaming of a man, or earlier had been a man dreaming of a butterfly. Anyway, so thinking of ourselves as deer, we gently rubbed ourselves against each other (since we didn't know what deer did to each other in the mornings. Of course, we could have done anything, but we weren't that kind of deer this morning).

Later, I wrote:

Your love comes to me
    in particles      and yet
 in waves     giving me
no reasons, but only
tendencies to exist.
Still        the leaves turn red.

(Speaking of red, we went out to the beach a few days back when we saw some evening clouds forming. We watched the sun set behind an island.)

While still on red, the badam tree (Terminalia Catappa) outside our house has been changing colours and I have been watching this change keenly. A few days ago it looked like this

before turning into this one morning.

Now, that the tree is bare, I find the crows have also shifted out to the adjacent tree. Everyone likes a bit of privacy, I guess. Or perhaps, no one likes a bare tree.

Meanwhile,

she comes and sits on the wall some afternoons. Fortunately she is well behaved and doesn't raid the kitchen. A few nights back she was at the open window of our bedroom, meowing in the dead of the night, asking permission to get in. I woke up with a start, a bit freaked out at seeing a cat silhouette at the window. Very Egyptian it was. Anyway, we shooed her away. The next day we saw a big rat in the house.

Two short stories

Two short stories of mine in urban settings --  SILK (something to do with a cellphone and a massage), and WINDOW SEAT (something to do with a pilot) appear in this anthology brought out by Grey Oak Publishing, in partnership with Westland.

You can order the book here or here and avail a decent discount.

I do hope you'll help in the sales of the book by buying it, and making it your choice of gift for friends and family.  If you can, please promote it through your online networks.

Would also love to hear from you about the stories.

Smells good

Remember the turmeric we had harvested? Oh, I realise I never posted that on the blog. That yummy photograph was shared with a local gardening group. Okay, so first the turmeric we harvested about two weeks ago, and which I had titled turmeric and tummies:

Today, we (meaning Monika) ground the dried turmeric and got about a month's supply of turmeric powder. It's coarser than the market variety because it has been ground in our moody home mixie, though it smells divine. Raw and earthy. I wish I could somehow get its aroma across, but alas, technology doesn't allow that.

Now since my camera settings were on 'yellow,' I looked around for other things and found two more in the garden, so here they are:

Morning walk, mantis and Spiderman

Decided to pick up the camera today while I walked around in the early hours. The Indian roller's chack-chack-chack had been baiting me for a few days. I would hear her when it was dark in the evenings, and I know that this bird can hunt till the dusk has well settled in. So, I was delighted when I heard her above my head in the morning sitting on a neighbour's dish as if waiting for the signals.

Then, in our garden, I spotted this dude. He is quite tiny but does he have blades. I began to wonder what it must be like to have such sharp claws and pincers. Something out of X-Men maybe. But, I realise that all our inspirations are from Nature around us, and because we are generally scared shitless of Nature we ascribe these evil qualities to their largely peaceful denizens (more peaceful than us at any rate.) 

So, here is the dude and below it a list of villains inspired by the animal world from just one comic book series, Spiderman. Click on the links and read a little of the info, or see the visuals. Great fun to know how kids are told subliminally that animals are intrinsically EVIL.

Scorpion
Rhino
Swarm
Vulture
Black Tarantula
Grizzly
Iguana
yes, even a Kangaroo
Raptor
Beetle
Chameleon
Jackal

अब मिट्टी नयी है लाल

अब मिट्टी नयी है लाल
      खुरदुरी, कंकड़ी, किरकिरी
ज़ुबान पर सौंधी

थोड़ी मीठी
      बादामी
दूसरी बार चखने को जी चाहता है

कपड़ों पर एक धूमिल याद सी
      हाथों पर हल्की
लाल मुस्कान

महक बस वही...
    जिसे हम कभी-कभी किताबों के पन्नों में ढूँढते हैं –
सुगंध कहानियों की!

और उस में गुंथे
      करोड़ों बारिश की बूँदें
पत्ते, पत्थर, पहाड़

और एक मौन महान
      जैसे किसी गूँज गंभीर के गर्भ में गिरी
शून्य कविता!



(अब  हम गोवा में रहते हैं, और यह कविता यहाँ आने के बीस दिन बाद लिखी,  हालांकि यह कहना ठीक होगा कि बस अपने आप ही लिख गयी )

Ady and the birds

It was a day for birds.

Ady had a holiday (the birthday of the guy who wrote Ramayana in Sanskrit, she told us) so we all decided to drive off in the morning to the Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary, a 15 km drive form our house.

We were the only ones that early, discounting an old, friendly gentleman who was shooting pictures with a long lens and was collecting feathers for a friend in Bombay who is doing PhD research on Francolins. One of the feathers kept getting out of his pocket and Ady kept picking it up and returning it to him.

We parked ourselves at a spot and enjoyed the fly-by's.

Monika and Ady went up for a better look, and Ady was all taken up by the birds' display.

Amit and I enjoyed the morning, too, marveling at the lazy smooth flights of some grey herons over the water, but we don't figure anywhere in the photographs.
It was a day for birds!

The silsilah of wheelchair travels

These pictures are relevant to an article of mine published in the October issue of Himal. You can read the article here. The editors couldn't include the images due to space constraints, but I thought I'd make use of the blog and share the images.

Do go to the home page of the magazine and check out other articles in the travel issue, too. There are interesting travel accounts from Mark Tully, William Dalrymple, Dilip Simeon, Aniruddha Sen Gupta, Richard Boyle, Vivek Menezes and many others.

A name is not a knowing

A name is not a knowing
You have to hug a tree.
Feel its bark, the texture of its leaves
to understand how it manufactures tiny capsules of desire
and puts them into seeds
with just enough wisdom
not too much
enough to know
that the outside is the new inside
that everything that grows is life
that spaces are expanding
that too much of life is but a death
a choking point for a new beginning
and that all beginnings are old, old, old.

My sister is now mostly smoke
and some ashes
a few tiny bones on a river bed
She was gone much before she went
Now she has put the sky below me
and the earth above
On the knoll from where I can see
that peacock, Mandira
the pink flower bushes, Mandira
the hidden partridges, Mandira
the pipit songs, Mandira
the wind among the grasses, Mandira
A name is not a knowing
You have to hug a tree.

Ah!

the

limitless   

                               wisdom

of           spaces

visible                       only when

you put

down        some  

                    words

Yang City Yin

The city. Macho.
   Tall hard-on buildings
   cemented to hide the erectile dysfunction
Scrotum sacs of stadiums
for gladiators competing sperm-like
    The manly spitting
          of messages from billboards
          of people from well-muscled, bulging metro stations
Tight-fisted elevators
masturbating the building slyly into pleasure.
The city. Where every half-assed dream
gets to pee standing up,
    and women get to be someone
    when they peel back a foreskin.

My ancestors

Distant points of light, so light
drifting in megaparsecs
stretching wave-like
illuminating particles
illustrious buzzing electrons

they are not.

My ancestors have rejected the vast darkness of Space
its limitless possibilities
its curve, its bent, its fields
of emptiness; stars scattered like seeds
its near-nothingness, its buoyancy
that floats humans
just as well as planets and giant reds
not to speak of galaxy spirals
suspended in its lymph

They have rejected its silence that swallows exploding stars
as if nothing had happened
My ancestors have refused their place in the firmament.

They have instead chosen to be trees.

Digging in their roots, spreading
their filament fingers in the meshed darkness
grabbing hillsides, mountain slopes
finding footholds on foothills
feeling the rain, guiding it
through their driplines – a drop at a time –
letting the water in to the neural networks
of Prthvi, forging partnerships with mycorrhizae
playing footsie with other ancestors in the secret hallways of Gaia

My ancestors have embraced
the swirls and eddies of soil
the mutating wilderness
the slow walk of trees
the fungal lattice under the forest
which spreads for hundreds of moist, dark miles
making it impossible to distinguish one ancestor from another

My ancestors have taken green responsibilities –
the ten-thousand-leafed munching of light
the electric enlightenment of Buddhas
the tracing of our ductile futures with trace metals
molybdenum for desires
phosphorus for pleasures
zinc for beliefs
sulphur for anxieties
phosphates for passions

My ancestors have settled
for unbroken views from ridges, for the howls
of tuphon, the father of wind, for breathing canopies
for the healing through forests, for the whorled wisdom of wood
for an in-breath of prana in summer; an out-breath in winter

so…
I don’t do to trees
what I don’t do to mothers.

and…
I wake up when it’s still dark
and kill the ego before the sun peeks in through the window
and then wait, wait, for the wilderness to take over.

इस गमले की मिटटी

इस गमले की मिटटी

सारे गिरिजाघरों, मंदिरों, मस्जिदों

गुरुद्वारों और पैगम्बरों

से कीमती है |

क्योंकि जब तुम हाथ फैला कर

अपनी रोज़ की रोटी मांगते हो

तो इतना तो पक्का है

कि तुम्हारे भगवान ने

उसका अनाज इसी तरह की

किसी मिटटी में उगाया होगा |

और देखना, अगर तुम्हारे देवता के नाख़ून में

तुम्हे थोड़ी सी मिटटी जमी

नज़र न आये

तो उसे मानना छोड़ देना |

पाखंडी या चोर होगा वो !

और उन इंसानों से दोस्ती

करना छोड़ देना

जिनके हाथ

महीने में कम-से-कम एक बार

मिट्टी से सने न होते हों |

A summer storm

a summer breeze
        cool
whispers of possibilities
        look
even the trees
     out there
 are grabbing at birds

Have you CHEEKED recently

Early this morning, around 6.30 am, I went to the Anand Vihar Bus Terminus. The mission was to collect a bottle of home-made honey that was being carried by the driver of UP 93 T 1494 (says 'Pawan' on the bus, I was told by the driver).

Well, the decision to leave early was a good one because on the way back, even though it was a Saturday, the ant swarms of people were out and the going was risky. But, what made the journey special was a sign put up by the Uttar Pradesh police (Once a UP cop came home to verify me for a passport application and asked for a bribe. I said, 'Yeh to nahi ho sakega,' and he replied, 'Sir, yeh, UP hai. Matlab, You pay!') so, anyway, there was this checkpost where they had metallic boards to stop traffic, the kind you see everywhere in Delhi, and it said on it in bold red, STOP FOR CHEEKING.

Unfortunately, I wasn't carrying my camera, but the thought was delightful, though the idea of a gruff UP cop cheeking me was not so nice, but even so, I think we should sometimes cheek each other.

The Lotus Singers

Just received my copy of The Lotus Singers, a short story anthology of South Asian writers (from India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Maldives), published in Canada by Cheng and Tsui as part of their Contemporary Asian Literature Series.

The Indian writers include (in the order that they appear in the book): Neeru Nanda, Mahasweta Devi, Salil Chaturvedi, Manjula Padmanabhan, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Keshav Meshram, Mridula Koshy, Ela Arab Mehta and Usha Yadav.

I'm thrilled to be in a book right next to Mahasweta Devi! And I'm happy that I'm not before her, but just after her, at her feet.

The foreword to the book is written by Urvashi Butalia.

I think the book is available at Amazon, and Cheng and Tsui's order page, here:
http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/lotus_singers

Now, I'll go and read the stories. Read two last night. Quite yum.

Caterpillars, tomatoes, mustard and corn

Saw these beauties munching away on the nasturtiums today. They are the caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly. The nasturtium is disappearing rapidly and these guys grow at a tremendous rate. The nasturtiums were on their way out anyway, and one gets the feeling that they are passing the baton of their life, sort of saying, oh, okay, now we are through with being nasturtiums and will reappear as butterflies.

The tomatoes are going strong. We've made salads (our attempt at an Insalata Caprese salad with fresh basil and tomato came out yum, though we substituted the mozzarella cheese with paneer), chutneys, sandwiches and have also had the tomatoes raw. The tomatoes have been affected by the hornworm, the larvae of a moth, I think the Sphinx moth, but I'm not sure. We've sprayed a neem concoction, though the companion planting of petunia did help a little.

A tea made from petunia leaves is recommended for these worms, but we didn't have that much petunia growing. I realise that the best way to enjoy a crop is to know that you will not get all of it! In a Permacultural vein: 'Care for the earth, care for people and share the surplus.' And it's nice when the surplus gets shared with animals.

Meanwhile...

...we collected the seeds of mustard. This lot is from one single plant

and there are many more left. The mustard seeds falling on the plastic sheet sound like the pitter-patter of a light drizzle. Like a green God, you can even control the intensity of the yellow rain!

The new crop is coming up well. We wanted to try out the ancient Mayan way of growing a combination of corn, beans and squash, though we've substituted the squash with cucumber. It's an interesting combination where the corn provides the support for the beans, the beans provide nitrogen for the corn, and the cucumbers provide a green mulch and keep the area humid. Would be nice to build a small community of people with talents and temperaments that weave in so naturally.

A feeling I get when seasons change and new crops take hold is of watching a raga being played out on the land. The aarohi crops are the ascending notes, and the avarohi crops are the descending notes in this Land Raga. The local climate, then, becomes the taal of this fascinating raga. And every farmer plays a raga of his liking with the choice of these note-like crops.

Saw this really tiny insect on a clover leaf in the morning. I wrote:

Incredible That This Tiny Thing

                    I
Incredible that this tiny thing
this minuscule drop of shiny green
that I can barely moving see
on top of a sunlit clover leaf
this thing this microscopic gleam
this miniature winged polished dream
this nano life lit by light
knows the things i'll never know
it goes to places i'll never go.

                   II
Incredible that this tiny thing
this minuscule drop of shiny green
that I can barely moving see
on top of a sunlit clover leaf
this thing this microscopic gleam
this miniature winged polished dream
this nano life lit by light
with a heart and legs that are so fine
has a soul as big as mine.

                    III
Incredible that this tiny thing
this minuscule drop of shiny green
that I can barely moving see
on top of a sunlit clover leaf
this thing this microscopic gleam
this miniature winged polished dream
this nano life lit by light
this point of existence pearled
is the final jigsaw of the world.

Seventeen small steps and one Big one

This morning, I collected seventeen tomatoes from the garden. This is about a quarter of what's still ripening on the bushes.

Then, in the afternoon, my friend Orijit called me to inform me that Binayak Sen was free. He has been granted bail by the Supreme Court. Orijit and I were working on this parcha (pamphlet) to be printed and circulated, but now it's not needed.

Seventeen tomatoes and a free Binayak Sen.
Not a bad day at all.

There's a Pir in every corner

Less than a kilometer from our house is a park. The park is an oasis in the middle of tall high-rises. In a corner of the park is a date palm and under it is a mazhar. A slim old man with a flowing beard looks after the mazhar. I've never met him, but I met him today in a dream.

I was sitting somewhere collecting mustard seeds from dried mustard pods. In the warm afternoon sun, the old man appeared next to me. He watched what I was doing. Without any preamble, I asked him whose mazhar it was. He told me that it was a Pir who had said that if anything will be built on this land, 'nuksaan hoyega.'

I kept on collecting the mustard seeds. 'You are doing the right thing,' the old bearded man said to me. 'Go towards this,' he said, 'and not towards this,' he said pointing to my car which had now appeared alongside us.

'But, baba,' I said, 'there have always been troubles. Even before industrialization there were Pirs and people's problems. Problems don't seem to have vanished.'

'Of course, there will be problems,' he said to me. 'The human race is a problem in itself.'

I smiled.

'But the problem now is that they are having problems,' he said, pointing to the date palm. And they are the real Pirs. If they disappear, the human race will disappear, but if the human race disappears, they will continue, perhaps a little happier.'

I continued to collect the mustard seeds. The number of seeds in each pod were multiplying and I had a big heap of seeds with me now.

The old man chuckled and disappeared, but as he went, he pointed to a tree and said:

'इनसे नहीं  है  कोई  बड़ा 

कोने  कोने  में  है  पीर  खड़ा '

I woke up. My direction was clear.

Happy Birthday, Ma

Ma
I understand
  ­– I really do
that when you
do a task
the task does you
             – and that I am
             the sonning smoke
             of your mothering fire
but you can now stop
pouring yourself
into me
I’m quite full
             – even though I know
             you have no option
             but to keep on making your oil
             pressed out hot once
             from your breasts
             and now as the fire weakens
             cold-pressed from your cellular soil
I have no choice
but to dissipate
into the unpredictable winds
and carry the smell
of your essences far
             – as I watch
             you wrinkling
             (and wonder: how much effort
             did each wrinkle take?)
All I can say is
a scattered thanks
             – for the pulleys
             of stories wispy
             that have helped
             me ascend
And though no smoke
ever makes a return to the fire
I know now what
mothers are trying to do
             – to send their smokes up
             in the hope that
             they will know
             something of the mysterious blue
Ma, I have seen the high blue
which is not half as good
as one of your sarees
to wipe my face on
             – and though I’ve seen
             how you stoke the fire
             with left-handed proteins
             and right-handed sugars
             and the reason you go to
             temples is to pray that you
             never lose the magic touch 
             of a magic so secret
             you even guard it from your conscious self.
I understand, Ma
             – I really do
Why you celebrate my birth
and only mark yours
It’s because, strange as it may seem
You feel you are the effect and I am the cause
It’s true that in the birthing a mother is born
            – But I hope you’ll look up today
             and see the graffiti in the sky
             My shape. My form.
             That constantly spells, Happy Birthday Mom.

Let's play a game

In Anna Hazare I see an old man who is giving the responsibility of his life into the government's hand. Here is my life. Now you are responsible for it. So make a responsible choice. That's what he seems to be saying. Funny, isn't it, that that's exactly what the government is meant to do. Show responsibility towards our lives and make responsible choices. It's also our responsibility to make responsible choices, that is why we elect our leaders. Anyway, let's play a game. Here's what I propose:

We'll take up one thing and stick to it for an year. That's the only rule of the game. (Not really. There's one more rule which I'll tell you later). So, it could be something like,
No TV: so, you don't watch TV for a year. You can listen to the radio, watch a movie now and then, go to the internet for news, etc, but NO TV.
or, you could say
No Plastics: So you don't buy anything which is plastic. Stop using plastic bags, or bottles, don't drink out of plastic glasses or take drinks that are sold in plastic containers (there go your colas), etc. NO PLASTIC. Remember, it's only for an year. After that you can come back to it.
or, you could say

No driving to the local market in the car: So, you walk it, or take a rickshaw or cycle down, but NO DRIVING TO THE LOCAL MARKET.
or even,
No buying veggies from stores: Because with every additional mile of transport your food drips with that much more oil. So, NO BUYING VEGGIES FROM STORES.
or, how about
No wearing a watch: That would mean you use your cellphone to tell the time, or ask people around you, or learn to tell the time within a fifteen-minute accuracy by looking at the sun (what a wonderful skill that would be), but NO WEARING A WATCH.

If you feel more comfortable, you could use half instead of saying a compete No (though I recommend a complete No. The game will be more fun that way and you will have lesser work, not having to keep track of complicated halves. And it will also mean you haven't taken any half measures). But, still, you could go the half route, too, like
Reducing shaving by half: So, you reduce the use of shaving blade by half. I guess, this will apply to women, too.

So, think about it, and let me know what choice you have made. I'll put down my choice in a day or two as well. We'll touch base after a year and see how our choices went. That's the second rule of the game. We must share our experience at the end of the year. Game? Don't leave me playing with myself!

I'll remind whoever leaves their No (or half) choice after a year to share the experience. No reminders in between. Taking responsibility, remember?

And if you decide not to play, that's also OK. But, do play some other game.