Indian Culture

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I was watching the attacks in the Mangalore pub on TV. In earlier days, when I was feisty and change-the-world, this would have earned a nice long blog post all by itself. Not that it makes me any less angry now, but I've sort of given up ranting on subjects I'm going to do nothing about. I'm also a little weary of people who send me email forwards about Sri Lanka while acting mean to everyone else around them. They remind me of the lady in The Catcher in the Rye who cries for a scene in the movie but will not take the kid next to her to the bathroom. This is not to say that you ought to wash your hands off the world. But merely agreeing to be angry in little cliques changes nothing.

But I can rant about what I can change. That's allowed. So when I was watching the Mangalore attacks and listening to these Ram Sene people vowing that they were doing their duty by saving Indian Culture from the corrupting influences of the West, I was reminded of the conversations and snarly email exchanges at my workplace. Culture, somehow, has become a thing of the past, something that remains beautiful because it is veiled from the present. I had to struggle quite a bit to include the contemporary section in the revamped magazine. Contemporary stories are, apparently, not part of Indian Culture because well, how can children learn the Right from the Wrong in this godless age? I have nothing against mythology- on the contrary, I read as much of it as I can because I delight in ambiguity. I love the same tale recast in several moulds. I love folk tales and the whole Akbar-Birbal witticisms. But I cannot see why contemporary writing should be treated with disdain just because it is set in the here and now of things.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire on Monday. I loved the O Saya song in which the kids race from the airport to their homes in the slums. This is perhaps one of the not-okay scenes for those branding the film as 'selling poverty to the West'. And yet, the mood of the song does not dwell on the squalor. The filth is in the background, something that the children hardly notice in their mad, joyous scramble to safety. This is not to romanticize poverty at all- I think the film had enough gut-wrenching material ('feel good' movie it certainly isn't, improbable perhaps) to demolish such notions. Instead, what I found interesting was the script's genuine attempt to engage with the children's reality. The fact that Salim tells Jamal he dropped a sitter- the noisy plane that flies over Jamal's head is of no significance to the cricketers because it is the everyday, the unremarkable- shows an understanding of their lives and their realities. Cricket everywhere, cricket anywhere is a scene that we are all familiar with and it's not surprising at all that the audience unanimously cheers for the players, no matter how many rules they break in the process. Because this is such an integral part of our culture. And this is a story that is set in its here and now.

At present, only the English magazine has been revamped. When I suggested that we begin to do the same for regional languages as well, there began a dispute on whether we should 'contemporarize' the content at all since the brand stands for Indian Culture. I find this self-imposed alienation from everyday culture indigestible. That by writing a story in which I mention a mobile phone or a packet of Lays, I have somehow squandered away the wisdom of my ancestors. That by mentioning incidents that happened in real life which can serve as reference points in chronology for children, I have somehow killed their value systems. You can't teach culture to someone. You learn it by observation and through experience. You can tell a child not to spit on the roads till your face is blue, but if you spit on the roads right after the lesson, chances are that he/she will remember your deviance more and devalue the lesson.

A refusal to talk to children about everyday reality and contemporary culture is a dangerous trend. We have somehow convinced ourselves that the word 'culture' means 'tradition' and that anything traditional is compulsorily good. By the same logic, anything 'modern' becomes compulsorily bad. It's funny how 'modern' has come to have such heavy negative connotations. There is no creature more dangerous than the Modern Young Woman. She is an indisciplined child who has set out to wreck the cultural ethos of entire nations. Whether it be Arvind Swamy in Roja who wants to marry a 'simple, village girl' or Vijay in Sivakasi exhorting Asin to wear silk sarees, our movies have made it amply clear that Modern Young Women are undesirable in the family scene. They are great for item numbers to show the hero's unbridled sexuality, of course. While the issues I've mentioned here might seem different, they all hinge upon the rhetoric of Indian Culture- an increasingly saffron and ironically Talibanesque ideology that is being allowed to grow. While the obvious reasons for this growth are political, it is also true that such ideologies receive some degree of support from the societies that they thrive in- not for political reasons but because the people believe they are indeed the protectors of Indian Culture.

I don't want to write about the Kamasutra or Kajuraho because citing them time and again makes it seem as if these are the only examples of a different Indian Culture. Besides, doing so once again makes culture a thing of the past. I read Meenakshi Madhavan Reddy's You're Here a while ago and quite enjoyed it. Before reading the book, I'd read a number of vicious comments on her blog, scathing reviews that criticized her for equating a 'sex and drink' lifestyle with feminism, and strong denials that her urban India was anything close to reality. Nowhere in the novel does Meenakshi say that her protagonist is a feminist. I found it funny that so many reviewers, predominantly male, were thumping her down as a pseudo-feminist while crying themselves hoarse for upholding brand feminism that is self-sacrificing in its desire to save poor women in rural India. If one is female, one necessarily has to be self-sacrificing, I guess. If you self-sacrifice yourself for a man/family, you are an acceptable woman, if you self-sacrifice yourself for a woman, you are an acceptable feminist. But if you lead your life the way you choose to for nobody else but you, you lose the right to call yourself a feminist. I don't think You're Here is chick-lit either. It is the story of a young woman in urban India and it is pretty realistic in its description, accurate in its moods, and funny in all the right parts. Novels by Sashi Deshpande that typically deal with the sodden, depressing 'realities' of uninspiring women who will do nothing about their lives somehow find their way to the Feminist section in bookshops. I guess her protagonists' typical disenchantment with sex automatically displaces them from the chick-lit genre. The brooding misery of the women in her book have always bored me, they are all victims, women who absolve themselves from the crime of letting their lives get so pathetic by wearing the helpless tag of womanhood. And yet, Deshpande won the Sahitya Akademi while a book like You're Here that's far more realistic and honest about a growing section in contemporary culture gets flayed because of the unapologetic Modern Young Woman who tells her story in the book. I am not suggesting that You're Here is the greatest book I've ever read. But it is certainly a book that I enjoyed because it's refreshing to read writing that you can relate to. That celebrates ordinary moments and admits that however much life sucks, there are plenty of things that make one laugh. Deshpande's heroines never laugh. Not in a self-loving way at any rate.

If we as adults- writers, editors, publishers, and parents- must produce literature for children that teaches them about Indian Culture, let's not play down the value of a culture that they see and experience around them. Explaining contemporary culture does not translate into morbid and scary realities alone. While it is important to discuss child sexual abuse with children, discussing issues such as these is not the only claim to contemporary culture that we have. There are so many stories tumbling out of everyday India that children will take pleasure in reading. I say this with some degree of evidence since month after month, I get mails from kids who tell me what stories they enjoyed in the magazine. And contemporary stories figure heavily in the lists. If these stories did not touch a chord in the lives of these children (again, not necessarily a chord of tragedy), they wouldn't have stayed in their memories. It is difficult to explain content to people who ride the Holy Cow of Indian Culture. Who assume that contemporary stories lack values because they don't come with a moral at the end. It is frustrating to explain day after day that if children reject the trite moral stories and didactic mythology that forms much of our editorial fodder, it is not because they don't know any better. It is because they do know and have read better. If you don't respect your audience's ability to discern good material, then you are making a grave mistake. This is an editorial moral, a valuable lesson, a great value that we must all digest before we begin to 'educate' our audience.

This strange appropriation of Indian Culture that has turned its back upon so many of our realities must not be allowed to continue. Whether it is a question of beating up pub-goers in Mangalore or insisting that children don't know what Lays is. Philip Larkin once said, "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth." If you continue to write about flowers in idyllic settings as if this is in the here and now long after they have been mowed down to build roads, somewhere down the line, you will lose your audience. Instead, look at what Allen Ginsberg did with flowers:

"...A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent

lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye

to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited

grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden

monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your

grime, while you cursed the heavens of the

railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a

flower? when did you look at your skin and

decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?

the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and

shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a

sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me

not!..." [From Sunflower Sutra]

People who are not fans of poetry may find Ginsberg difficult to understand. This poem was a mighty favourite for many of us in our BA. I don't want to do a critical analysis of it here, but the fantastic thing about Sunflower Sutra is that it situates the sunflower in a sordid reality that we all know (the grime, the dirt, and the dust that make all of us resemble tired machines by the time we come back home after boiling for hours in Vadapalani traffic) and yet celebrates nature without alienating it from humanity. The nicest thing you can say about Daffodils is that it is a nice poem. It reads nice; the images are nice; the rhyme scheme is nice. But it is difficult to whoop through the poem in joy because fields of daffodils are merely paintings to me. I can admire them, but they do nothing for my soul. Ginsberg's sunflowers, on the other hand, are the flowers that bloom on the narrow parks that serve as road dividers in my city. Never mind if he imagined them to be in America. They bloom in my city, in my time, in my culture.

So my dear colleagues, I did not send out this email because this Modern Young Woman has no hope that you will read it with patience. How will you when you don't read your own magazine? But I do intend to go after you with my claws out, with every rage that is worthy of a shrew. You have no right to define my India for me. And so I will rant here about this and not about Mangalore.

Random Rangan Read

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The conference lived up to our expectations. It was dull and full of short-haired people gasping with important things to say. There was also the mandatory clan from Kerala that turned up to receive certificates and informed the world once again that we don't care about vowels. N and I were practically the only geniuses around. Really. After we presented our respective papers, a host of professors congratulated us and advised that we register for PhDs at once. But the more PhD people I meet, the more disillusioned I become. Long long ago, when I was starry-eyed and pigtailed, PhD was a faraway land where intelligent people lived. I really did believe that to do a PhD, the first thing you needed to have was a brain. But life, ah life, how much you unlearn as the years go by! The well-meaning professors told us that we would be able to 'contribute' to the academia a great deal with our 'analytical skills'. That might be true, but I truly do not want to contribute to the academia. There will always be conferences and sad teas and earnest student volunteers, whichever century we wake up in. There will always be polysyllabic people. I could spew analysis with formidable regularity and get introduced as Dr.Gounder Brownie, the prolific literary critic and winner of the Dusty Award for Unwashed Hair; I could get tea in a special cup while the academic plebians drink theirs in plastic cups; I could, pleasures of all pleasures, listen to safari-suited Vice Chancellors make endless speeches from handouts I wrote. I could do all of this and there would still be children reading trash. Because who cares about your powerpoint presentations with headline animation really?

It is true that I learned a lot from papers I read during my college days, but it does seem a little sad that I did all of that only so I could write more such papers. Much better doing something that puts all of my polsyllables into practice.

We went to see the Taj. And ate dinner at Leopold Cafe. The bullet holes are still there and so are the crowds. Leopold has 3 three bored security men with rifles. They did not check our bags when we entered. I am very glad that they did not. This chaos, this noise, this unruly dash of colour, this madness, this chessboard of skin shades- none of this will submit to orderly security checks. One day, one week at the most. It cannot, simply cannot, last forever in this big-hearted country of too-many-people.

N and I met T today for lunch. T is our professor from college- she must be 5-6 years older to us. T used to be terrified of our class in the good old days because we were a fastidious bunch of snobs. She taught us Romantic Poetry in our second year. We'd successfully scared the junior profs who taught us in our first year and T had heard enough about our elite group that showed no mercy. Understandably then, T nearly passed out when all of us signed up for her MO (Major Optional). She'd hide behind her large book of notes while handling our class and we used to get phenomenonally annoyed that she was killing Keats for us. But slowly, we warmed up to her. I mean, her classes did not get any better; she was too nervous, read out poetry badly, and gave us way too much notes (biography is a bore). But she gave us a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do- not because she was scared but because she understood and recognised the fact that much of our bad behaviour stemmed from a true love for literature. That we were acting like pigs because we were frustrated by boring lectures. That we were at an age when expounding theories in class made us stars in our own universe. And that this confidence that grew from all the fire-in-the-belly speechifying we did would make us self-assured individuals who are not scared to express an opinion. Somewhere in our hot-headed, juvenile heads, we saw her kindness and were grateful in an undemonstrative way.

At lunch today, T told us that we were the best batch ever and that she's never felt the same about teaching any other class. It feels good to have been the Golden Age in Stella Marian history.

We went for the official office picnic yesterday (MGM was only for 'youth'). We went to Pulicat Lake. It's a very beautiful place and I request all of you not to visit. The fishermen and the flamingos would do well without tourists littering the place with plastic. I spent hours floating in the water pretending to be dead.

I wish people would shut up about Slumdog Millionaire not deserving an Oscar nomination. I'm sure they've all seen forty thousand movies that are way better. But for once, can everyone just shut up and be happy? And as for people who are cribbing about the fact that the movie shows India in 'poor light' in the 'West', please learn to look at a slum without averting your eyes. We are all pretty much Slumdog Millionaires in the universities we go study in. India is a poor country and there's a lot to be ashamed about (for not doing anything about it, to start with), but there's also tonnes to be proud about, and I don't mean it in the India-Shining way. Be proud about the fact that a packed to capacity 29 C always expands enough to take in 1 more person. That you can dump your heavy bag on a seated passenger without making any request. That you can feel a little holy every time you hear church bells ring while you are editing the Ramayana at work. That children who don't speak your language write emails to you about your stories. Some from as far as Assam. That depite Narendra Modi, your van driver who is Muslim can be a beloved 'bhai' to everyone. That you can use phrases like 'quick gun murugun' without being conscious of the fact that two of those words are from the English language. That we have dead-body dances that block the roads. And no matter how big a hurry you are in, it is difficult not to let your foot tap and enjoy the moment. That nobody gets off the car and shouts at the mourners that they have no civic sense. That we have marwadi weddings with horses in Madras. That we are home to so many refugees. That we worship our cricketers and will miss trains and flights to watch an Indian victory. That though many of us sing Jana Gana Mana with the wrong words, it's hard to sing it without getting goosebumps. For this much and more, shut up and watch the Oscars. Also, everyone knows Slumdog isn't Rahman's best. We've grown up on his songs and we know we've heard better. But do shut up because whether or not Slumdog deserves an Oscar, Rahman does.

Happy Republic Day, everybody!!

Air

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I busily did the bibliography at work today. What a bore. This endless requirement to stick to 'format' and 'standard procedure'. One can't type out a sentence without using parenthesis anymore! (I am a great fan of parenthesis, but only when they provide digressive relief- do you like 'digressive relief'? It's the sort of stuffy thing paper-presenters say.)

A child had mailed us yesterday asking if he could make friends with a certain editor aunty (I should probably stand before a mirror sometime with Ponds anti-ageing cream in my hand). And of course, I had extended my fullest, undying friendship to him. He then sent us this reply (edited only to prevent snoopy colleagues from finding this!):

Hi,

....Just telling frankly(dont feel bad) I used to think ********** was an ordinary
magazine and used to keep it aside......................................but now as
the new editions of ********** have stepped in it is one of the only books I dont
keep aside and wait eagerly how much ever it costs.I also use it for my
projects,charts and chatting with friends at school.It is indeed a garden in
a pocket![?]! And after all happy pongal(sankranti).Please reply about
this whenever u are free.

With regards,

******

Charming, charming, don't you think? I love how this kid does not want me to feel bad for saying that the earlier editions used to suck (I agree, champion, that's what got me this job). So this made my day- that I've made at least one kid like the new magazine. Hurrah. Editor aunty is most pleased. And after all, Happy Pongal to you too. When I get back from Bombay after boring myself to tears listening to a bunch of bird-haired people drone on, I shall write you a lovely letter of friendship. Really I shall. I'm honoured, son.

Also, N and I had worked on a book on gender for children. It's about a girl called Mayil and it's in the form of a story. Without a single reference to any theoretical book. We wrote this because we were pretty frustrated with the amount of jargon present in any gender book- besides, gender constructs are formed early on and there are no books really to explain these things to children. So well, we wrote this book for children because we believe it's important. There's a publisher who's interested in it, so if all goes well, you'll find elaborate directions on this blog on where to find your copy. I dream of an India in which nobody gets asked, 'Oh you mean MA General Studies?' *sniff*

I watched Troy for about the hundredth time. We'd watched it so many times in the Epic class in college. Of course, Troy is a far cry from the Iliad. But who's complaining when it's got Eric Bana and Brad Pitt! I was watching my favourite scene today- the one in which Achilles [I used to think 'Achilles' was pronounced 'Ashyles' in school] challenges Hector. HECCCCCTTTTOOOOOOORRRRRR, he yells. And then our dear noble Hector, kisses everyone goodbye and walks towards lion-maned Achilles, son of Peleus. And I was thinking how absurd it is, actually, that nobody thinks of killing Achilles while he is fighting Hector. King Priam watches his beloved son die, Paris watches his brother bleed for the sake of his love, and yet, no one steps forward to shoot an arrow at Achilles on the sly (like our Rama did to eliminate Vali...but even there, they included some great righteous explanation). Of course, this is the 'code of honour', but isn't it pretty daft to let someone you love die for the sake of this 'procedure' (same way we kill poetry by writing about it)?


Then, my mind leapt (my elders tell me, manam oru korangu) to this movie Pudupettai in which Dhanush falls in love with Sonia Agarwal, the bride in a wedding he's come to attend. As the guest of honour, he's asked to hand over the thaali to the groom and our man promptly ties the thaali around Ms.Agarwal's neck. All hell breaks loose and all. And then, we're shown the whole pathos and bathos of the situation. The bride obviously did not want to marry our man (mainly because he's ugly, also because he's a rowdy), but now, what can she possibly do?? Throughout the time I was watching this, I kept shrieking inside my head- "Kindly remove that thaali and stop pretending that this is an irreversible chemical reaction".

Not just in this situation, it is rather funny, if you think about it, how much significance we place on ceremony. It reminded me of what Falstaff says in Henry IV- What is honour? A word. What is that word honour? Air.

Or in contemporary language- gas.

I'm off tomorrow. Bye bye. And after all, do have a Happy Pongal.

Pongal

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It being Pongal and everything, we had a holiday. As I was just telling my overworked journo friend, I love being part of a Press that has so many holidays. So since I'm a festive person and all, I celebrated Pongal like I do all other festivals by lying down on the sofa all day and watching TV. I'd planned to do the citations and bibliography for my paper in the morning. But that didn't happen owing to the fact that I woke up when it was close to afternoon. So then I just read through it, got enormously bored, and decided I'd do it at work tomorrow. After all, I have to keep myself occupied for 8 hours and I might as well do something that comes close to useful.

I watched this hilarious movie called Office Space which is about a guy who hates office. Who hates going and sitting on a chair for 8 hours a day. Who hates the idea of human beings cooped up in cubicles day after day. Who wants to murder the printer. Who doesn't see the point of Hawaiian Shirt Day. You should watch it, really. I was laughing myself crazy.

Then, I read Chetan Bhagat's The Three Mistakes of My Life. My mother bought this book for some obscure reason and it has been lying around for ages. It was so-so. A bit too phallic for my tastes. Also, he had all these corny smses as part of the narrative and it totally put me off. People do send awfully sad-looking smses with words like 'kewl' ['cool' is four letters too, would it kill you to spell it right?] and I guess it's got to do with 'being real' and all, but I kept getting irritated. Anyway, it was blah.

After that, I watched Ghajini on Sun TV. I wish they wouldn't use handicapped people to show how kind-hearted the heroine is. Also, if Asin had been spectacularly plain in an outsized salwar, the hero would have just thought, "Indha auntyku vera vela illiya" and gone to work in his big car. Why summa do this drama about him liking her for her goodness and all? The villain in the movie is a terrible actor. He has shapely eyebrows though. For such a bald head.

There's a new kind of junk called Crunchos. Apparently, it is garlic murukku. I wonder what this is coated with. Lays is supposed to have all sorts of deadly concoctions poured on it. Tastes really good, though. I'm dying to eat Crunchos. I think till I go and throw this paper into the Marina, I'm going to end up blogging every day just so I can get distracted.

I hope someone brings leftover Pongal food to work tomorrow.

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The paper is over at last. It isn't the best paper I've written or the most inspired, but it will have to do. There is no time, you see. Prufrock still has one arm over my shoulder and he's whispering,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I guess at the conference, too, people will come and go, talking of Michelangelo. And I will sit by the seaside waiting to hear the mermaids break into song.

This act of writing an academic paper is so terrifically boring. I tried reading about ten theoretical pieces of writing, and I just couldn't take it. It seems so pointless, this endless reading and writing and analyzing when people who are going to listen to you speak are dully practising their lines inside their heads. Deciding when it is that they will give out that short, intellectual cough. When it is that they will look up, raise their eyebrows, shrug their shoulders, and make a sarcastic comment about the foolishness of persons outside the academia. Who go about life thinking a piece of bread is joy (perhaps it is, you sad mutt). And after every paper is presented, someone with distinguished hair will ask a godawful long question and the paper presenter will give a long reply that answers not the question asked but sounds polished enough to make both parties feel good. My, my, do I have a bug in my brain!

Anyway, so I've decided I'm never going to write a paper again because I've grown out of them like I've grown out of amusement parks. I don't want to make a thought-sandwich: you put yours between layers of other people's thoughts and then you put mayonnaise to make it all look good and sell it for the price of your soul (yes, I do think writing a paper comes close to playing Faustus). This post is going to get zero comments or something because I can barely understand what I'm writing. What I want to do is to actually tell you all about my favourite works of literature in a non-paper way. My mum was on her 'Where is your Life going?' mode and she wanted to know why I didn't want to become a professor. That way, I'd have lots of time to manage a career and a non-existent husband plus kids. So then, I started off on how the academia depresses me, how writing papers is a transfer of bullshit, that I don't want to set out to prove what I already know. That am done with justifications. That I did not want to commit the heinous crime of telling trusting students the snivelling significance of mermaids that don't sing to Prufrock. That I may burst into tears in a classroom if I had to stand up and confess that I am no Prince Hamlet myself.

When we were in college, this poet called Ranjit Hoskote came for a writer-in-residence program. Physically, he was about as attractive as a prawn- small and pink. (Dear Ranjit- sure, we can be on first name terms in my personal universe at least- if you are in the habit of Googling for yourself as I am and find this, do not let your heart smite you, read on.) But the minute he opened his mouth, all of us promptly fell in love with him. He had a voice that knew pain, understood vowels, and dug into your skin like the rain. Also, one of the first things he said was, "I'm rather reticent." And we all knew he wasn't a prospective GRE exam writer. Somebody who uses words like 'reticent' in normal conversations is, you ought to agree, tres charmant. We took him out to dinner despite our HoD forbidding us from doing anything of that sort. La di la. How sweet is the forbidden fruit to every rebellious Eve. We went to Red E Food Court in Chetpet (which has now been closed so that that dinner with Ranjit has acquired the beauty of myth) and we sat like dumb bells just giggling foolishly at his pink face. Really, tres charmant. Morning wells like blood in the stag's hollow eye, he said in his mournful voice and we all sat like frogs with open mouths waiting for the flies that never came.

So what am trying to say in this very drunken fashion is- I'm such a sucker for pretty words. Really. Take this bloke Milton. I thought I was engineered to hate him since he was a misogynist and all. Besides, I did not like his name. But we had him on our syllabus for the Epic course and I had to read Paradise Lost. Then, of course, wham, there I was fervently wishing Milton were alive so I could see what his teeth looked like. All those bits about Lucifer's beauty gave me goosebumps, they did. Another bloke I was unexcited about earlier but became all hey-you're-hot later is Shakespeare. I didn't think much of him because well, the only Shakespeare I had read before college was the terrible abridged ones. Then, I read Othello and wept. Othello acts like a downright bitch and kills Desdemona (which does piss me off), but yet, he does it so beautifully that he made me weep. Ever since, I've defined my happiest moments in Othello terms- if it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy. I discovered that there is such a thing as being 'too happy' and that when that moment disappears, your fall downwards is harder, steeper, and that it will ask of you to bleed your heart. It is better not to have Othello moments, though if you haven't had one, you haven't lived recklessly. Or maybe you haven't lived at all.

Then of course, there's Salinger. I am friends only with people who read and like Salinger. Really. Not that he's on my checklist. I don't go around asking everyone I meet, "Do you like me? Do you like Salinger? Can we be friends?" But inevitably, they all do. He has such a roaring sense of humour, something that makes me laugh with a rip in my heart. It's so hard to write about nothing, just an ordinary day, an ordinary life, and to do it thus in a way that several decades later, a crazy girl in India reads it and thinks these are her thoughts, published so prettily, by a man she never met. Holden Caulfield has been psychoanalyzed enough by literary critics- and I'm so glad the book wasn't on our syllabus. I would have hated to point out theme, setting, language in that book. This bit that Holden says about a woman who is weeping at a sad scene in a movie but refusing to take the little kid next to her to the bathroom- it will stay with me forever or something. This definition of kindness. Also, Seymour. The chap who blows his brains off after telling a kid a story about bananafish- I want to sit with him someday and not talk at all.

Another fictional person I'd like to meet is Septimus Smith who also killed himself. He's from Mrs.Dalloway and he thinks the birds sing to him in Greek. Towards the end of the book, he flings himself from a window and there....that's the end...the war, the coming back, the shell shock, the endless measuring of coffee spoons. Like Icarus, Septimus Smith falls to his death. Melted by the sun, undone by the world. Even CR who taught us Literature like it was Math, couldn't strip away the beauty of the Septimus fall.

Oh there are way too many of them for me to write it all down. Also, I'm yammering on because I know I shall never be happy about writing a paper again. The Othello moment for that has come and gone long back. Now, I can only pull out my sword and stand like a late entry for a costume party.

Good night.

Prufrock in MGM

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I went to MGM yesterday with the office crowd. I wasn't excited about going at all. In fact, I did not want to go. But I went anyway because I hadn't gone on earlier trips they had planned. It's a little difficult to dodge social life all the time especially when you are perceived to be in the 'youth' category. All I wanted to do on Saturday was to wake up late, watch TV, read a book, work on that paper, eat fish for lunch, and go to sleep. Instead, I went to MGM. And since I couldn't take it all by myself, I forced dear N to come, too.

When we got there, I plonked myself on a bench with N while the men of the group took charge and began efficiently collecting random strangers so we could get a group concession. While they were accosting unsuspecting tourists, finding maps, making logistical arrangements, and taking charge (though I sound ungrateful, I'm very glad that men of all ages have this great urge to take charge and manage your life for you- it's useful sometimes, like when you don't want to wait in queues in amusement parks), a big crowd of school children came in. They were poor kids- no slippers or shoes, old-looking uniforms, and no unisex accessories- and varied between ages of 3 to 14 or so. They had come with their teachers, school ayahs, and two men who carried their lunch in huge containers. N and I immediately began to observe them and it was marvellous entertainment.

All of them were standing in pairs- the age-old school mechanism of ensuring that kids don't get lost in a sea of strangers. One is supposed to hold hands with one's partner, come what may, as long as one is in the crowded place. One is always supposed to check if one's partner is there when the group leaves a spot. If the partner is missing, the teacher is to be informed. I remember how we used to plot in school to get a partner we liked. The whole trip could be spoilt if your best friend wasn't your partner and you got stuck with an 'enemy' instead (small kids always have enemies. My enemy, for a long time, was this girl called Eldrisha who my father once helped cross the road. I was insanely jealous). It's such a random work of fate, this picking of partners. N and I named one of the kids in the first pair Grumpajee since he remained impassive despite all our attempts to make him smile. Grumpajee could not have been more than three. He had oiled, spiky hair. He distinctly looked displeased with his partner who was excitedly trying to see beyond the entrance gate. I waved at him, he ignored me. I made a 'Hanuman' face and he looked away. This sent N and I to splits, of course. Grumpajee was disgusted by our juvenile behaviour. His schoolmates, though, were entertained by us. Some of them waved and I rewarded them by making a wide range of faces. The teachers did not know if the children or I should be encouraged. Their faces were half-frowns, half-smiles.

Anyway, by then, the men of the group had successfully accomplished their mission, and we were requested to move (some males in front and some males behind to ensure enough protection, in case one of the stone-dinosaurs in the park came alive). The dinosaurs, by the way, have red nail polish on their nails.
I was mildly excited when I saw the Giant Wheel. I used to mercilessly make my dad take me on the Giant Wheel at least three or four times every time the Trade Fair came to Island Grounds. I loved that lurch of dread your stomach gives when you begin to come down on a spin from the top. When I got on the ride, however, I felt nothing. I was bored, to tell you the truth. Lines from The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock began to run through my head like the News. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? A dulled sense of pain began floating through my being and I felt so angsty that I began laughing like a hyena to cover up my greyness.

I felt a little better when N told me that she had been bored, too. At least, I wasn't the only sour lemon around. We then went on that side-angle Giant Wheel with umbrellas. I found it hysterically funny that I was sitting on it like I had come for a conference. I was bored, ladies and gentlemen. Like Prufrock, I wanted to gently tell the operator in the booth, this is not it at all, this is not what I meant at all. I couldn't believe it. I used to be such a great fan of amusement parks when I was a kid. I'd drag my poor parents to every ride ever invented by humanity and go on it twice at least. Yesterday, though, I was watching people screaming to show that they were having fun and feeling like a Zen philosopher. A couple of women fainted and puked. Though I am probably being unfair and unsympathetic, I have no patience for people who keep fainting. I want to slap every damsel-in-distress I see. I cannot stand the type that shrieks "Aiyoooooooooooo", vomits, faints, and then stays away from all the rides due to delicate health. I feel like going to them and saying, for the sake of womankind, grow a brain. Leave your high heels at home when you visit zoos, amusement parks, hill stations. A grown woman acting like a baby is demeaning, if your embroidery-on-the-ass-jeans-wearing boyfriend finds this 'femininity' appealing, he's an idiot and you'll ruin your whole life by marrying him.

All the operators in the amusement park were unamused. They wouldn't crack a smile, come what may. The only employee with a smile was a dwarf with a mask on his face whose job it was to shake people's hands. Of course, this made me sadder still though as a child, I would have felt joyous. Every ride had a board that indicated whether heart patients, pregnant women, and children could be allowed or not. 'Pregnant' was spelt differently in each board- pregnet, pregnat, pregnut and so on. The fetus inside the woman was a nut on some boards (the pregnut ones), a worm in some others, a full-grown child in others. I had a tremendous urge to go and correct spellings on all the boards. Somehow, it seemed very important.

We had lunch at a multi-cuisine restaurant. The men of the group handed out menus, took our orders, brought us the food, paid the bills from the money they had expertly collected earlier, and gave us time to rest. Their efficiency left me breathless. They deserved black horses and swords, all of them. Really. I would have breathed my last in an amusement park if not for them, brave knights.

The MGM loos have a big King of Hearts card for the male loos and a big Queen of Hearts card for the female loos. I wonder what that indicates. Royalty pees here. Or we love you though you pee here.

I went on all the rides because it's a matter of principle. In school, I was one of the few females who went on the roller coaster, ranger et al. In college, too, our group always abandoned the damsels in distress the second they fainted and got on all the rides. It ought not to be different now, so I did. The scary rides were all right though they definitely weren't as scary (and therefore as enjoyable) as they used to be earlier. With a sinking sense of disappointment, I knew that I was finally a boring adult. One who would not bring her kids to amusement parks because it was too much of a pain.

Slowly, but surely, I'm becoming a senior citizen. When I was small, I used to be enamoured by soaps, creams, and cosmetics of all kinds. My dad used to bring me so many varieties of soaps and I'd open all of them at once (and get a pinch from my mother promptly). I would spend hours on end looking through the Pears soap though it never really was transparent. I also had an enviable collection of nail polish. Blue, green, red, pink, etc. Elle 18 was such a rage and I was a collector of sorts. But through the years, I've become a monk. I hate shopping. Certainly, I like looking at pretty things, but I become bored by them almost simultaneously. My bathroom has one soap and one shampoo. I'm always awed by the number of things on display in other people's bathrooms. So many soaps, face-washes, combinations of creams for different types of skin, shampoo, gels, body spray, hair spray blah blah blah- often, I stay in these bathrooms just looking at these things. N was shocked the first time she saw my room because it had nothing in it. It still has nothing to show what sort of person I am. It's impersonal, like a hotel room. I never buy jewellery (the only piece I like is my nose ring) and I'm notoriously minimalist (to the point that every time we go for weddings, my mother and I have a quarrel)- but I really wasn't this way as a child. I used to be attached to my earrings and dolls fiercely. I think I grew out of all that like I have amusement parks. It's tragic, in a way.

I'm not really that old. I still laugh at van races unlike two other really old people in our van who sit tight-lipped throughout the whole experience. We are amused by how unamused they are. But I'm terribly afraid I'm going to become like them in the next hundred years. And then, some child who works with me will write sarcastic posts about what a starchy cat I am.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Vetti Betty

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Every morning, I wake up and sit in the van.
I make a little speech to myself- YES I CAN!

I can sit today for 8 hours on a chair,
and buzz NR about Mandodari's hair.

I can rotate on my chair and ideate
about torture systems for people I hate.

I can edit stories about blue men and monkey kings,
while chatting on Gtalk among other things.

I can dial extension numbers on my LAN,
and hang up on people because I can.

I can write rejection letters in pretty words,
and research wikipedia for trivia on birds.

I can write ads with words like Dhamaka in gold,
and say 'thank you' with grace when the idea is sold.

I can shake my leg like a thayal machine,
because in my cubicle, I rest unseen.

I can say Yeehaw how many ever times
and make little pigs heroes in my rhymes.

I can make S cry and be a bitchy boss:
the ends justify the means for a lofty cause.

I can go to Ode Cafe and chat with the ducks,
while drinking lemon-water for sixty bucks.

I can watch my stat counter like I have OCB,
while analyzing every spam mail I get to see.

I can get tired of Office Funny jokes,
and the collective ugliness of all these blokes.

I can, at the Marketing department, once again yell,
for never reading the magazine they are trying to sell.

I can weep at the traffic and the terrible roads,
I can hold my breath till my head explodes.

I can hope to die in my chair today,
so tomorrow I can go on holiday.

Gobbledygook

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I haven't touched that paper since the time I blogged yesterday. What I did, I read my new Salinger book. I woke up feeling remarkably upbeat today. So I wore govinda yellow and pearl earrings and all (N commented on the earrings at once in the van because everyone who went to college with me finds it funny when I attempt to dress up). Then I was listening to some depressing songs on my MP3 player and feeling perfectly cheery.

I became paranoid today and started work on the March issue while editing stuff for the Feb issue. I sometimes get these superhuman urges and I'm terrible on days like these. I feel all accomplished and am highly likely to turn my nose up at ordinary mortals who plod through their schedules. I gave the texts in advance to the illustrators with great joy and they promptly shoved it into the drawers. No matter. I can still put a 'DONE' in my excel sheet and feel proud of myself.

Some of us went to Krishna Bhavan for lunch today in SNG's car. He'd not parked it in the shade, so we were all fried in the behind by the time we reached Krishna Bhavan. Since the guys are apparently regulars there, the waiter gave us two appalams each and all. I had a chilli parotta that was a delightful red (I could hear my mother clear her throat and deliver a lecture on artificial food colours). Also, a sweet lime juice. Then when we got back, HR told us that we had a 'Canteen Meeting'. So we all gave suggestions on what we want in the canteen (sadly, no chicken)- breakfast, lunch, snacks (cutlet, cutlet, hip hip hurray). It was a fun meeting because everyone was seriously analyzing if 4 idlis in one plate was worth 20 bucks. Some people wanted Pongal for breakfast. Everyone had a suggestion to make, from the oldest employee (87 years) in the room to the youngest (22 years) and the canteen lady would have pichufied her hair if she had had any.

I forced V to eat half the bread upma that I had brought for lunch because my mum would yell otherwise (I used to do this in kindergarten and am still doing it). V put in some superhuman efforts and succeeded despite the full meals he'd eaten in Krishna Bhavan. Atta boy. I'm glad the Marketing department has some use.

I go by Van 1 and come back by Van 2 (I get dropped at the railway station, can't stand the traffic!), so my allegiance to either of the vans is dubious. Every evening, we have a spectacular van race which is reminiscent of the mental boat race one sees in Kerala. Basically, everyone is hanging out of the window and egging the driver on- yei dhithithara dhithai dhithai thaka thai thai thom- to overtake the other van. Since we have PRESS stuck on our van, the traffic cops don't bother us. Last week, our van collided with the Doordarshan van and the cops did not dare to interfere in a Press Vs Press battle. I never know which van I should be cheering for since I'm half and half. I'm a tragic mulatto.

I'm going to feel sorry for myself and go to bed now. No work on the paper today either.

Yeehaw

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So every time I have lots of work to do, all I want to do is to blog or eat bananas or do something of that sort. Today, I was trying to work myself up into a frenzy. To calm myself down, I sat and decided who the winner of the 'Fast Formula' contest is. It's one of Life's little jokes that I, a grand poojyam in Mathematics, write this page for the magazine. Month after month, I research mathematical tips online and come up with complicated word problems to intrigue children nation-wide. I write inspirational sentences to encourage children to adore this subject that I myself loathe with such passion. It was to the eternal bewilderment of teachers in PSBB, that I, sister of an IIT-Stanford character who was and is forever occupied in the task of filling large notebooks with numbers in minute handwriting, should be so angst-ridden about Mathematics. I didn't fail or anything, I managed to get eighty plus and all in every Math exam I wrote- but I said 'I hate you' to every sum I solved in all of those papers. If you saw me after my Math exam, I'd have a nice Medusa head of hair because I'd have shown all my vehemence by pulling clumps of hair out of my scrunchy (see, it's called 'rubber band' in school, 'scrunchy' in college). The only Math joke I like is this, what is Sin(tex)/Cos(tex)? Answer is Tantex. Hohohohoho. Anyway, so judging this Fast Formula page is a delight because there are lots of kids who arrive at fantastically wrong answers. I want to give them all a hi-5. Way to go, soldiers!

There was one kid who had solved the problem so wrongly that it had arrived at an astronomically huge answer. A very long number scrawled painstakingly with step numbers and all. I want to give it the prize, but I can't. Life is a tough cookie. There were some smarties who had done the problem right like meticulous little chumps. So the poor kid with the long number didn't win. After I'd finished with this, I tried to think about that paper I have to write. But I just couldn't bear to. Then, for some weird reason, I started thinking of animal sounds and how donkeys are always made to say 'Yeehaw'. I tried saying 'Yeehaw' in a low voice like a solemn donkey a couple of times, but I was afraid B in the next cabin would hear me. Then, I noticed that I was shaking my leg in a thoroughly unfeminine way as I always do when am edgy- which I almost always am. So I decided I'd stop it, like giving up smoking or something. But when I looked from the corner of my eye again, there was my leg shaking away! I'm a leg-shaking addict, I realised without pain.

We had a meeting about the van routes again. I swear, I'm going to kill myself if someone mentions van routes to me one more time. I noticed how much like Pandiarajan our van driver looks, in a much nicer way, actually. There's precious little to look at in office.

I took tea-cake in a small box to be eaten on the van today. I ate half and put the rest in my bag. When I reached office, that half was so pitiably squashed. I'm sorry I let you down, tea-cake.

Okay, enough fooling around. I'm going to work on that paper NOW. Fast Formula I'm going to do with it. Yeehaw, everyone.

Happy New Year to Me

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Last New Year, I was at work. January 1st is not a Central Government holiday, so like a conscientious little champ, I'd begun the New Year on a sincere note. Our Director, Shri. IAS , gave us our very own RGNIID diaries to draw doodles in. We also had a fantastic pongal-vada breakfast at the institute, courtesy the taxpayer's money. I was roundly abused for not wearing a sari; deep was the grief in RGNIID over my sadly mismatched clothes. Even the ayahs had come in saris with zaris and here I was, as degenerate as ever. Anyway, so last year was pretty horrible in more ways than one. I lost my temper about a million times and in about a million different ways. Also, I think I went insane for a while. I was discovering many profound truths about myself and all this digging deep proved to be quite tiring. I don't like this 20 plus age either. You're supposed to make all sorts of life-altering decisions or people start pitying your parents (one grey bag asked my father if he was keeping me at home because he wanted my salary). You have to explain your decision to be indecisive to just about every kindly soul who sets eyes on you. It's enough to make me want to go to sleep and wake up when am seventy five. I'd then wear a canary yellow polka dotted umbrella on my head and run down the road with my Arthritis. They'd just say I was a nice old ga-ga person and take me home, no questions asked. Twenty is the new seventy.

So this New Year, I didn't exactly wake up with a spring in my step (I've only ever woken up like that on excursion days and it's been three million years since I went on an excursion). I woke up feeling pretty irritated as a matter of habit. TV was terrible. I watched Pachakili Muthucharam and I found Sarath Kumar's hairy chest deeply disturbing. Also, they have way too many close-up shots in that movie; the kid in the film was highly annoying, too. It kept saying 'Okay pa, Okay ma' for everything and I wanted to hit it despite its juvenile diabetes. Then they had to make Sarath Kumar hit ten people all by himself and I got violently bored. All the Malayalam channels were deeply depressing. I ate some jalebis from Shree Mithai. They were cheery.

I was supposed to work on this great paper I'm writing. I'm going for a conference on children's literature in Bombay in mid-Jan and I'm presenting a paper on Indian mythology in children's literature. But every time I start work on the paper, I want to curl up and play dead. I think my MA dissertation put me off academia for good. I don't want to theorize, I don't want to quote, I don't want to argue, I don't want to substantiate. I want people to shut up and listen because I'm right and to hell with whoever said whatever I want to say ten years back.

So anyway, since I wasn't able to do anything productive, I decided to go to Landmark and pretend-research. I looked at all the Ramayanas that they had and I got angrier and angrier because they were all so boring. I half-heartedly typed out some of the absurd lines from the books on my phone and saved them as 'notes'. I found my magazine on one of the racks and I lovingly pushed back all the other stuff on that rack and gave it the best possible display. I checked every fifteen minutes or so to see if someone had picked a copy, but nobody did (not when I was there at least). Some New Year this, pah, humbug! I am such a loyal employee, I did not pick up ACK's Adventures of Suppandi though it was such a temptation.

Then, I read as much Calvin and Hobbes as I could. After about an hour or so, I started looking for books I could actually afford to buy. I bought Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman, and Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. The first I bought because it was recommended to me. As a rule, I don't read all these Nobel prize dudes (TS Eliot is an exception). We had the Gitanjali on our syllabus in the Third Year and it was godawfully boring. It was full of these confetti images- flowers and lovers and bees and some shit. Happy sublime world where nobody gets a pimple and everyone sleeps on some flowers with Sanskrit names. I don't know why Tagore is considered to be some mega-personality, honestly. Anyway, so I wasn't sure if I should get this Hesse chap. But I read a few pages and I liked the book- it was elegant in a non bullshit way. It didn't try to be charming and it was philosophical in a matter of fact way.

I got The Whole Woman though I'd decided never to buy a theoretical book again in my life. I quite enjoyed Greer's The Female Eunuch. She's brash and speaks her mind- which is a refreshing change from all these Gayathri Spivak-Homi Bhaba sort of people who sound like they eat idlis with hairpins. Also, I was feeling pissed off and reading angry people is good for health. I got Salinger because I knew for a fact that I wouldn't regret it.

Then I went to Sweet Chariot in Ispahani and ate pepper chicken steak for dinner. I like Ispahani, it's a loser-mall. I remember it used to be highly happening when we were in school. All these sad get-togethers during which all the boys sit on one side and all the girls sit on the other side used to happen in Ispahani. Then one kewl boy will attempt to bridge the gap and he'll be hated by the rest of the testosterones for the rest of his life. All the girls will keep giggling and adjusting their hair because there's nothing else to be done with their hands. Ah what Sweet Valley High memories. I saw a similar school group when I was sitting like a pokey old person, alone with my steak. There was a very fat girl (like the sort who should be on TV) with a very scrawny boy with tight pants and gelled hair. He definitely was the type of person who cannot draw a heart without drawing an arrow. They were eating cake. Happy New Year, happy new year, everybody. The waiters in Sweet Chariot wear orange uniforms to match the orange walls. It is sort of sad in a way to dress up like a wall. Anyway, I ate my steak while people-watching and even tipped the waiter. I'm a fantastic human being.

The church opposite Ispahani was all lit up. I got into an impossibly crowded 29 C because I wanted to be at one with humanity that moment. I reached home in a reasonably joyous mood and began reading Siddhartha at once. I finished it in one sitting because it was all elegant and I quite liked some of the things this Siddhartha bloke says ("People are children", for instance). Then I discovered that Hesse was nuts for a while and that explained it all. All my favourite writers are/were nutty or suicidal. It's a happy coincidence, one would say. I tried saying Om-Om because that's what Siddhartha says and slept off in peace. I didn't feel glowy or anything but it was a good start to the New Year.

I switched on my laptop to work on that paper and I ended up blogging. "The mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate and very strong. To subdue it is, O Krishna, more difficult than controlling the wind." And on that very profound note, happy new year to me.