The Idea-smithy

The only way to be generous when you care,
 is to be ruthless when you don’t.

Sunday afternoon screening of Choti si baat. Associations aplenty.

(more…)

From Sandman: Endless Nights

Most people want like a candle flame, flickering, wavering.
But you want like a forest fire.

Getting what you want and being happy are two very different things.

When there is nothing left to want, all you do is wait till there is nothing left to wait for.

And what when there is the world to be wanted?
Like a forest fire, like a volcano, like a flaming, blazing star, like a thousand shooting suns?
And along with desire, the equal knowledge that what you want can never be
Like a parallel universe of ice, diamond-hard and bright

Waiting is all there is, for an end that will never come since resolution can never be reached without possession.

I once said that when I want someone or something, I want them like the air I breathe.
And people like me can learn to survive without air
Gill-like swimming around in the pools of substitutes

But one never forgets what real air tastes like.

24 hours just never seem to be enough in this city, you know? Every minute, every day feels like you’re running just 10 minutes behind. The one bit I really agreed with this otherwise horrific movie on, was the tightly managed shuffle for space and time. There’s a Rahul (Sharman Joshi) in every Mumbaiker. Managing a social life is always a joke – other people’s or your own!

Careful planning makes it possible to strike up a close friendship, despite the stretched-to-snapping-point schedules. How? There’s the mammoth time-budgeting through the week for the one day when one can get out of office in time to reach place A at the same time as the other person. Of course place A is only the least inconvenient meeting spot for the two people, not necessarily delightful in its sights or other attractions. And then there’s the fact that this rendezvous may happens about 2 minutes away from what is euphemistically known as ‘the ungodly hours’.

But all efforts bear fruit as my date swishes onto the kerb Superman style just as my taxi pulls up or I jump onto the footboard (Spiderwoman like?) of the exact compartment in precisely the same train my friend is taking! Yes! Commuting is indeed a social occasion in Mumbai!

I appease my I-hate-Mondays whininess with the thought that I do after all have a whole lot of people I’m going to be meeting during the week. The fact is that I do. And how surprising is that in a city that’s known for its crowds? Mumbai doesn’t make me particularly religious except when it comes to the near-holy adage that

IdeaSmith proposes, Mumbai disposes

Thus work spillover cuts into drinks with friends, which must be compensated for on another day. But what the hell, there was the half-hour phone call in the middle of the day with buddy about a relationship emergency.

So drinks-with-friends on Tuesday turns into the Wednesday play that you had planned to review on the weekend. Fantastic, you’d never have managed tickets otherwise! That now leaves us with the problem of…ah, what to do with:

1. Today’s original plans
2. Evening free on weekend
3. Person who was supposed to accompany you to the play

You’re just going to have to shift that mid-week coffee with former colleague into an hour-long phone call on the commute tomorrow. And drop best friend a message to explain why your line’s going to be busy and to discuss her new dress with you on email instead.

The second is the least of anyone’s concerns…if a concern at all, since time, like space is at a premium in this city. The last– ah, that’s tricky.

• Movie? (Nothing great showing. Who wants to see SRK’s abs again? And Ranbir Kapoor isn’t that cute)
• Drinks? (Work the next day! “I don’t drink!”, no good pubs in the vicinity)
• Shopping? Works very well if said friend is female. Works reasonably okay if said friend is male and in dire need of new clothes, gift for mum. We trade favours.
• Dinner? Boring option, safe option, but always an option.
• Watch the play again. Last resort but think of it as the price to pay for getting off the guilt of ditching them earlier and their not being able to catch it later.

That’s taken care of. Lock kar diya jaaye. So the first concrete block is laid on your weekend calendar. What of the rest? It’s amazing how quickly things fill up.

There’s the old school friend, now in town whom you haven’t managed to meet in 4 months.
There’s that non-promoted, surprisingly good movie that you must catch, even if you have to get up early to see the morning show.
There’s the city spot that you’ve been dying to visit ever since it stopped raining for photography.
There’s your grand-uncle who you want to sit down and write a real letter to, since email is only a word to him.
There’s shopping for a gift for a birthday around the corner.
There’s errands to be run, bills to be paid, cleaning to be done.
There are also a zillion books to be read and more getting written every day!!!! Honestly, sometimes I worry about how I’m going to find time to buy those books, let alone read them (never mind even afford all of them).
And finally…if there’s an hour free somewhere, there’s always somna for this sleep-deprived populace.

*Sigh* The thing about having a lot of options is that you don’t always get to exercise all of them! Life is about trying though. Always for more.

Jack’s eyes lazily scanned the room, taking in all, accommodating none.

Gillian paused mid-speech, in spite of herself and her breath stuck in her throat. Then she caught herself and smoothly moved on, ramming her words into each other to create an artful slip of tongue. The ripple of amusement that passed through her listeners washed away the traces of anyone noticing her real mistake.

From her peripheral vision, Gillian knew that he had moved into focus and was weaving his way slowly but definitely towards her group. She never did the ‘corner of the eye’ thing…it was too obvious and blatant, a real pathetic ‘I can’t help looking but I don’t want to be seen looking’ gesture. No sirree, she was never pathetic. No sidelong glances, no downcast gazes, no secret looks, she didn’t do those.

What Gillian did do was yoga. It kept her eyesight as flexible as her fingers, her mind as nimble as her feet while dancing. Yoga allowed conversations to become like dances. Where you could move, navigate and control without actually thinking or making an effort to. Doing without trying. And what Gillian was doing without trying was turning herself and her little knot of people into a Jack-magnet…by sheer non-magnetism.

The man on her right turned slightly to accommodate the newcomer. Jack was smiling as he looked at the guilelessness in the eyes that seemed to be focusing and finally noticing him. Interesting, he thought.

And then, inspite of herself, Gillian smiled. Graceleness was her art and artlessness was where she was most graceful.

* Yes, the title is an unabashed rip-off of “I am Jack’s cold sweat” from the movie Fight Club.

Being my own best friend is probably even more powerful than it sounds. I’ve been groping in the dark for faith, for reason, for light. And then, I find this, written three years ago, or slightly longer…by me. And to think I’ve been brooding over bad traffic, space constraints and petty mind games. When I wrote this, my maternal uncle was battling cancer and the family plunging deeper and deeper into the despair of watching a second loved one dying before their eyes, in the space of 4 years. And I was encountering the disillusionment and vileness of the working world for the first time. Surprisingly, I pulled through. When did I forget how to?

This morning I thought that real rejuvenation could only come from the company of the young, untainted by cynicism, unbroken by disappointment. But I guess real inspiration comes from those who have weathered it already. I stand in awe of both, youth and old age.

14 October 2004

Yesterday was voting day and I left home early so I could register my vote before going to work. I felt a little silly especially since all my friends who were working shrugged and begged off and the lucky ones with a holiday decided to ‘enjoy it and chill out’. As I walked into the schoolroom, deserted as it was at the early hour, I realised I must be the only voter there below 50….and one of the few below 60.

Today I drifted back home wondering whether I’d missed a cycle and somehow the nightmare world had got interchanged with reality…I seem to be going through 18 hours in a dazed state and 8 hours in complete comprehension…instead of the other way round. I walked down the road, my vision a blur as I kept dabbing at my eyes and finally I broke down. For the first time in months I cried….and cried…and cried.

A little old lady in snow-white hair and a sleeveless terrycot dress ambled up to me, patted my shoulder and said

Are you feeling alright dear? Is there a problem? Are you not well? You can talk to me.

I managed to shake my head and indicate the phone in my hand. After the call I went to say thank you to her for caring enough to ask…and I had to stop and talk..and listen to her story. So many little things she told me….that she was 80 and loved people and life, that she had lost her husband to cancer 10 years ago and what a wonderful, loving man he had been and how much he loved her…her eyes gleamed as she said,

Cancer is a very bad thing. He was 80 years old when he died. I am 80 now.

She told me how she loved coming out for walk and talking to nice people like me, how her neighbor had taken over her house and was trying to oust her, how she cooked for herself, cleaned her house and walked and talked and was never sick.

Life has come to me in huge, overpowering waves recently.
I am watching a loved one sink into an abyss where no one can pull him out.
I am holding together like a dam against the flood of the grief of the people around me.
I am fighting battles that everyone says are routine but rough nevertheless.

Yes, there is a lot of pain in this world
There is injustice and grief and jealousy and manipulation and cruelty and sadism and weakness and terror.
But there is also hope, blind optimism perhaps but hope nevertheless
…I have seen it in slightly breathless but determined faces of the senior citizens who believe that this country is theirs to respect and run.

There is courage and compassion and inspiration….in the eyes of an 80-year old widow who fights worse battles than mine and more bravely.

Yes, life has its miracles.

In the Snake Woman issue that I read, Jessica says:

Maybe that’s what growing up is….realizing the things we do don’t mean anything. Things aren’t right or wrong. They’re just impulses. They just are.

Or perhaps in the grander scheme of things, beyond everyday breaths, in an entire lifetime some things cease to matter. Even within one relationship in a few years, it may be forgotten - those details of who spoke first, who made the first move and who ended it. Where then, is there any significance of our mundane emotions and selves in the grand panorama of multiple lifetimes?

Is it possible to live several lifetimes in one? I always liked taking stock at the end, summarizing, taking one key point out of each of the lengthy stories beforehand. What if this lifetime were nothing more than a fast-forward of a thousand others, a recap, a reminder to pick one sentence, one word from each lesson? An executive summary of everything thus far.

Then that’s why there’s so much room for deja vu, familiarity and seemingly-magical connections in my life. No wonder then I’m frequently bored…I’ve seen all of this before. Who’s got the time or the inclination..or the need, to recreate the entire production again? When all I have to do is run through it just to pull out the very essence of it? Ah, no wonder I seem cold and even slightly mad sometimes. I’m running the same tape, but just at a different speed than you are. And I loved you no less than yesterday. Or was it three lifetimes ago? I forget, the order doesn’t matter anyway.

My love, my hate, my passion, my indifference, my callousness, my grief….everything was just a series of impulses. Ha.

I realized yesterday that you can’t control your friendships any more than you can control your love life. I heard someone ask, almost reproachfully,

Since love happens on its own,
Without will or volition,
Why hate someone for loving you,
Or, for not being able to?

I thought long and hard but I never had an answer to that.

You certainly can’t control who you fall in love with. Or who falls in love with you.
You can’t control who to like or not like. Or who places you up on the pedestal of friendship. Or sacrifices you on the alter of love.

All you can do, is turn your back on relationships that you think aren’t right…and hope to heaven that they leave you alone and don’t come knocking on the door of your unconscious every now and then.

J once told me that,

A relationship is like eye-contact. It takes two to maintain it. But only one to look away and it is broken.

I disagree. As long as one person is still looking, the gaze exists, the spotlight, the glare and eventually, the other must come back to look again. It takes one to start and two to end.

In my mind, I effectively killed off those that hurt me and inadvertently created the ghosts of my past. Now, I am done and wish them nothing any more. Not joy, not fear, not hatred, not love. I’ve been the response to their initiation. Each spell of wonder, of lust and of love that was cast on me, I reciprocated with a counter-spell of murky attachment, of resentful longing, of secret guilt.

I wrote this months ago but did not publish it because it didn’t feel real. And now, finally that the impulse has caught up with the truth….like colour filling into the lines of what must come to pass…here it is.

I never did learn how to make a person stay
But it seemed like I learnt how to let them go
And I’ve always known how to make sure I’d be missed

Today, after all the grand entrances and exits,
All the passing throughs and mixed memories
I acknowledge what I’ve done

And to all the people I’ve bound to me,
Without seeming to,
I set you free

I stole my freedom away from you and us
Now I give you back yours, as a parting gift

You have been loved. And hated. And indulged. And denied. And finally absolved.
Your crimes washed away along with mine. And your pain redeemed for my tears.

I don’t have any regrets
And I hope, neither do you

Go in peace.

This is for everybody I’ve had any kind of strong attachment to, especially in the past few years. Friends, lovers, foes, ex-boyfriends, rivals. I’m letting you go. Not with any ulterior motives or from misplaced pride anymore but because…it is the only thing left to do. Please let me go. And let’s just get on with the rest of our lives. And lifetimes.

You know what it’s like to wake up in the morning to a blaring alarm and you wonder what sort of perversion in the human mind permitted the invention of such a torturous experience? Till you remember that you set the alarm.

You know what it’s like to bounce out of bed in feigned energy in an attempt to ‘kickstart’ the day and start your yoga to muscles so stiff, they may as well wrap you in plasti-shield and hang you up to display in the butchers’ market?

You know what it’s like to run out of your bath and discover you are 5 minutes late? 5 minutes!! Do you know what 5 minutes look like? I’ll tell you….

5 minutes are the breakfast you would have had in comparative leisure, when you think of the bites of lunch that you will bolt down before a meeting, tea that you will have no time to walk to the vending machine for, the sandwich that the canteen runs out of just before you place your order and dinner that you will nibble at, in what is technically part of tomorrow. 5 minutes.

So last-ditch attempt, you grab a soggy sandwich – your jackpot if you make it to the lottery of a seat on the train.

The autowallah gets to keep the change because you have no time to collect it.

The creep on the bus gets a bonus hard-on squashed up against you since you didn’t have time to wait for a less crowded bus.

And you watch your precious seconds melt away as the senior citizen in the aisle, ambles to the door, patiently sorts through old ticket stubs before handing one over to the TC. And you stop yourself just in time, from thinking the unthinkable.

As you run, you feel your legs start to cramp and remember…that…damn…with your blood pressure, you aren’t supposed to stay hungry OR stressed OR tired. Bully for you, the doctors may as well tell you not to live.

So as you watch the station indicator blink the next train due any minute, telling you that missed yours…and before your eyes, your day collapses like a stack of dominoes even before it has ‘officially’ begun, you wonder…
….why one of those damn bombs didn’t go off in the compartment you were in?
….why you don’t fall off the on-time train and hit your head on the tracks?
….why you don’t get put out of your misery forever?

Do you know what that’s like?

I don’t believe you do. When I read this tomorrow, I will wonder what sort of demented stranger thinks such things. And I’ll be annoyed at the man who steps on my foot in the bus, the girl who barges into the auto that I was actually closer to. I will frown disapprovingly at the evident annoyance in my co-passanger’s face when the old gentleman up ahead climbs down with painfully rheumatic feet. And I will wonder…

Where has all the humanity gone?

Because remembering would mean judgement, remorse, slowing down? Who’s got the time? I’ll probably be running late if I did. Otherwise as well.

Update: This post and its photograph were quoted in Hindustan Times’ Blogosphere section. Unfortunately they didn’t credit it back to this blog but instead linked it to Mumbai Metroblogging where it was cross-posted.

I sometimes hear people describe Mumbai as a place where people treat each other equally and that this city doesn’t face the societal seggregation that Chennai and even Delhi have. I disagree. This city has its own version of a caste system. It is subtle and isn’t immediately apparent, especially to people who haven’t lived here for very long. Bear with me while I alternate between ‘thoroughbred Mumbaiker’ parochialism and an objective viewpoint, as I explain.

The city is tangibly marked length-wise by the three major train lines…and believe me, these divides are practically political boundaries! Besides the metropolitan railway network’s tangible lines…much more subtly, the city is divided into town and the suburbs. The grand North-South divide that splits the country seems to be micro-imposed onto our seven islands. There are the suburbs and there’s town (not of course counting those ‘in-between’ places like Dadar). I’d say never the twain shall meet except for the omnipresent railway network that holds the city together and makes it possible for the gypsies like us to shuttle between the two disparate worlds every day.

I didn’t notice the distinction as much when I was a kid. Obviously, my circuit was restricted to the ‘burbs (Only the townies say that by the way!) after all. In the later years, as my world expanded to college (also in the suburbs but peppered with frequent trips into town and increased association with the townies) then work, I began seeing how people seggregate themselves and others. It is human I suppose to have to put people into boxes and live by a ‘your box-my box’ mentality.

I watched a few movies with a friend…a lot in the suburbs and one in town. He took great delight in pointing out that the town theatre was quieter and that ‘people knew how to behave and watch movies like civilized human beings’. Yes, the suburban cinema halls are noisier. Easier on the wallet as well. As for being more civilised, well, I’ll reserve my comments on that one for the time being, save to highlight the fact that ‘town’ is aspirational heaven for a certain section of Mumbai’s upwardly mobile.

The suburbs, begin with Bandra (at least in my mind) on the Western line and the equivalent counterparts on the other lines. Bandra is attractive of course with its by-lanes and busy main roads, shops, theatres and the seafront of course. On the other hand, I’m starting to think Bandra has pretensions to being the new ‘town’ to the suburbs. Don’t get me wrong…I love the area but the Bandra-ites seem caught someplace between being the genteel townies and the down-to-earth suburbanites.

The townies of course dress a certain way, talk a certain way, are a certain way. I really can’t stop myself from hurling a volley here when I say that if I lived in a place that was as well-nourished by the authorities that be, I’d be genteel too. Instead I trudge the length (and breadth) of the city daily. I satiate the ego of the greater powers that want a “fancy South Mumbai address” while also staying within the budgetary restrictions that make the suburban reality home.

And really….what is with ‘the real Mumbai’ and ‘those suburbs’. Yes, I’ve heard all about the logic of Greater Mumbai and how everything else is just an off-shoot. But well, that’s the point, isn’t it? The growth is happening North-ward. Office complexes, shopping malls, educational institutions and most importantly…housing…all of the action is happening in the suburbs. True, it’s more like a mad melee than planned development but well, whose fault is that?

Where do we hear of train lines breaking down? Which are the overhead bridges that fall? Where do residential buildings collapse? What part of Mumbai gets paralysed in the monsoons, during bandhs and festivals? Alternately when ‘the city breaks down’, where is the collapse actually happening?

True, it is negligence, corruption and plenty of lawlessness that has caused some of these disasters. Considering that most Mumbaikers live in the suburbs, isn’t it then the area that deserves greater attention than South Mumbai? And yet, sudden disasters like flooding, unexpected traffic snarls are all left to get worse while images of ‘life returning to normal’ hit us from the media….all conveniently shot at Marine Drive or Worli of course. It is definitely a fact that the suburbs while not getting the same pampering attention from the authorities are growing faster…well anything is faster than no growth, isn’t it?

Take a minute to look at the picture in this post. That’s Churchgate station, the starting point of the Western line. How many townies recognize that at a glance? Well, most ‘burbies do. But then again, it’s the suburban-ites that primarily use the train lines, isn’t it? This picture, in my mind, represents Mumbai’s very own caste system. This is the magic entrance, the metaphorical line of control with its gate opening up to the hallowed ‘town’….and a few hours later sucking up the teeming majority of the populace back into the vast infinite of the suburbs.

The caste system exists, no doubting. Each section fighting for its share of space. It just seem strange that the divide is so unequal in terms of numbers and facilities available. Then again, that’s life. Life in Mumbai anyway.

The room has a view. An expensive view.

She says,

Take a walk in the mud. Stay out in the rain so long that you never feel clean and dry again. When you return, you won’t need to stand at the window to see the view.

He shrugs,

Too late, I already paid the rent.