In between songs

I slept to Ennio Morricone,

And woke up to Gustavo Santaolalla ,

What was in between,

I do not need to know.

In Sync

Sit alone in the dark and notice yourself suddenly fall silent. The dark heavy silence envelopes around you and me in a vicarious mercurial fashion . Slowly, noises of awareness start creeping into the dark mass. All objects seem more solid than at other times. All voices seem peculiarly unfamiliar. A desperate run for the candle stick is made from all directions, like it was the most heroic act expected to be done at the moment. ‘A change of paradigm’, a self conceited architect would say. All the noise, all the trash, and the chaos of light, just like jargon, weigh heavy in such dark moments ; suspended mid-air, ready to crash down anytime. Blindness and silence – when juxtaposed with each other, seem such a perfect match. An erasure of vision equals an erasure of sound. Only the music remains , one that deserves a listening. Footsteps tap on the ears in rhythmic beats, in sync with your heart beat. A sync of time and feelings. A sync of synchronous butterflies swimming in symmetric seas to a Mozart staccato. When the lights are out , synchronization takes over.

Standing at the centre of the dance floor , shiny disco lights in rhythm to the DJ’s groove, I feel the warm breathing of wriggly bodies, the complete sync of bodies in a mass, a singular entity in a sea of togetherness. There is an enigmatic duality in the discotheque’s role of connecting you with people and at the same time disconnecting you on a personal level. But everything happens in sync. Like the physics experiment in school on resonance, when you blow into one bottle, and can hear the whistle in the adjacent bottle.

A truck rumbles on the highway and the window pane of a house two lanes away shivers. The truck driver is whistling the latest song, ‘Haley paatre! haley kabbanaa ! haley paper kanahoi..’. He is going to catch the new Vijay starrer flick, Junglee after delivering his truck load of sand. The sand in the truck was dug out from the river bank, where a little boy sits plopping stones into the water , watching the sun dissolve in ripples and thinking about his elder brother who has left him there and still not returned. Two lanes away from the highway, the resonating window pane looks into the room of a teenager deep in sleep and dreaming of drowning in the same sea, wave after wave after wave. As he wakes up to the tremor, the truck driver’s song, the little ripples in the pond ,the waves in his dreams, are all in sync. At one moment in the same link , in different paradigms.

When Cinderella left behind her glass slipper at the stroke of midnight, it was the last figment of her enchanted state. After the 24 hours of being a princess , she went back to her normal self, the chariot back into pumpkin, the horses back to mice, the robe to rags and the lonely glass slipper vanished with her enchanted 24 hours. But the slipper she left behind, remained a reality; a metaphor of her parallel paradigm. The glass slipper lies now on the drafting table of an architecture student. She gazes at it every now and then, and transports herself into Cinderella’s time. Only this glass slipper, with its swooping sole rising high up to a towering heel , perched precariously yet touching lightly upon the surface , stands like a crystal clear negation of all things around, solid and dark. In sync with its ground, the glass slipper beckons to shed her opaqueness and synchronize with the beat of life around her, like water ready to ripple in sync with the breeze.

Remembering My dearest Ajju

That afternoon comes back to me , when I went and sat by him on his bed and had a nap in his lap as his soft wrinkled hands patted my head. That vacation , I had got my walkman player, and ajju’s favourite Marathi natya sangeeth cassettes, which he used to listen to , from earphones. Every time, the earphone fell out of an ear, he used to call out, ‘Gonti!..” and I used to run to him and plug him back into his musical world. This was the first vacation I was spending in Gokarna alone, as we sat in the verandah and darkness fell.Having waved goodbye to my father, who left me with dear little grandma and grandpa, tears streamed down my eyes, as I sang bhajans for ajju.. My voice choked as I sang ‘dehi dehi sharade.gnyaanam dehi sarvade’, but soon it was fine, and I no longer felt frightened. Except now and then, when I came across a dark threatening corner or lightless room in the vast house, especially after sunset. I had never felt happier to greet the morning and the sun, as I did then.

It was the last vacation I could spend with ajju, because, on the November 14^th early at two in the morning, we all had to say goodbye to ajju. That year we (the family) stayed back after the funeral ceremonies , during karthik poornima. And we went to the Deepotsava that happens every year in the Kotiteertha, the sacred tank.

It was magical as hundreds of lights reflected in the water along with a bright moon who seemed lost in all the celebration, and fireworks lit up the sky effusive with joy. It seemed a fitting goodbye to our dear grandpa. Last week, when I was back in Gokarna on my usual visit, I stayed back an extra day hoping to catch the Deepotsava on karthik poornima. But it is never like that first time, is it? How much ever one tries to re-live past moments, it is never the same. Each time is a new time.

When I was there this time , I dug into the shelf in the study, which was full of books ( as is any shelf in our house) ; but this one almirah had a special taboo attached to it. Once long ago, I had ventured to open this very cupboard, and to my horror, there a was a tiny rat inside which ran right up my arm and jumping off my shoulder, scurried away victoriously ! I was a state of hysteria , as I ran and locked myself in my room and refused to come out , till the maid came and consoled me that she had taken care of it and it was safe to come out now. Later , though the poor creature was a subject of my sympathy and I even wrote a small verse on it.

So, well, after mustering courage , I opened it this time . Happy to see no moving tails or black beings inside. I found a whole range of books on culture, Leninism, Marxism, and the likes, which were from the local library. And each of them had markings in pencil , made by Ajju when he found certain passages or points which were notable. And after long I felt I was in touch with him. I was reading the same passages, that he had read many years ago, and wondering what thoughts must have arisen in his mind then. The very awareness of this idea gave me an immense sense of peace. The signs one leaves behind, signs that remind us of a healthy living thinking mind, signs that give you solace when you need it, signs that give hope when you are in despair. Finding those books, inspired a new zeal , a new feeling of awareness and a bright feeling of joy at the very prospect of discovering things that are waiting to be .

All the letters he wrote to us, me and my brother, are safe with me . Spontaneous limericks on us and advise on how we should read a lot , learn music, not fight, study well, and not worry much about subjects I dint like. In every letter, he never failed to say a little sorry for his handwriting , which he considered illegible. His handwriting in fact was like a mysterious codec to me , evolving in its own speed and design to become a script that could be read by a select few. Now I see my father’s writing follows the same trend. The explanation he gives is that the mind thinks faster than the hand’s capacity to catch up.

I have known my grandfather as a grand daughter , but there is also the need to know him completely through his mind, through his ideas, through his writings. He seems an ocean. I am yet to learn to swim so I could delve into it. Remembering and missing my dearest Ajju , on this Children’s day, November the 14^th, 2009.

Dil se re

Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se ; the first time I watched it was, long years ago, when I was a primary schoolgirl in Mumbai. Dil se is a picture of me and my baby brother dancing like jumping jack Shahrukh Khan, on top of the double bed, which was our very own train top. ‘arey oyyy!... bhai sahib! Aap ke paas maachis hai?’ Manisha Koirala’s pristine freshness, as the thunder storm blows away the black shawl wrapped around the lady like the night itself was blown away to reveal light. “ek cup garam chai….” Rain drops plopping into two chai glasses in All India radio broadcaster Amar verma’s hands as her train chugs away.

‘Jinke sar ho o o , ishk ki chaaon, paaon ke neeche jannat hogi..

Chal Chaiyaa chaiyaa… I had the whole song memorized by heart, gulzar sahab’s urdu lafz and all, not even wondering what they meant. It all sounded too esoteric and mystic. Kalma wohi mera nagma wohi, taaveez banake pehen use , woh yaar hai jo emaan ki tarah. The afternoon comes back to me, when sitting in the living room of our tiny Mumbai flat, my brother and me religiously sang out the whole song , to papa, and had a victorious grin after we had finished.

So the enigmatic Koirala , like a fresh lily with dew drop on her nose listened glassy eyed, to the tinkling chai gilass from the ajnabee crooning over aakashvaani , awaaz de kaheen se. ‘woh jo doodh dhuli masoom kali…’

‘wooshki chaayeee..nahe haay’ smiles a beaten up hero. Lying on the stretcher, with swollen bruised lips , but as happy as a school boy , he tell his friend, ‘ushkeeee…. Shaaadi.. nahi hui hai…!’ And laughs.

Cascading through the white Ladhaki landscapes, two beings bask in illusive happiness of togetherness. ‘Main farsh pe sajde kartaa hoon, kuch hosh mein kuch behoshi se..’ Satrangi fakirs in lofty play of a veil blown by the wind ; a veil that at times conceals , at time reveals, at time is and at times exceeds love. ‘Ishk par zor nahi , hai yeh woh aatish ghalib…’

I loved every bit of it, do so even more today , because with it comes back that time of smallhood , those fleeting bubbles of joy , when sister watched her baby brother sitting in their verandah of their house by the beach and screaming into the sea breeze till happy exhaustion.. ‘Oooooo, ek soooraj niklaa tha…..’

Dil se ; from the heart . It is the essence of living , isn’t it ?

"The Unbearable lightness of Being"

Violet

Grapevine nail polish

Dripping from her glass

As fingers rap in rhythm

With her mascara lashes.

Scenes seem to change

with the bat of an eyelid,

Inking tears and memories

together into an esoteric wine.

Sitting at a table

where nobody waits,

Legs crossed,

Stilettoed high,

On hopes of blissful bewilderment,

She raises a toast

To violet moments.