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Toasting, tasting

Seven days into the new year, I’m still high on the heady surge of intentions. One of which is to blog more regularly. (Assume all possible disclaimers here.) The year’s been going well. So far:

• uppit and rawa idli at Mavalli Tiffin Room: a wonderful place to witness a strange alliance of motion and stillness — waiters moving in and out of the kitchen in their white knee-length lungis serving an endless inflow of hungry patrons, clattering plates, clinking coffee cups, and everywhere, the relentless slurping, chewing, swallowing. Then there are the people waiting to eat. Groups of two or three around every table. Patient as flies. They stare into the distance or read the newspaper, do their best not to hover. This is also a place that strips the act of eating down to its basics. Assembly line preparation and precise, almost-mechanical servings. How simple the act of eating and feeding can be, how devoid of fuss, how elemental. Photos.

• three beautiful books of poetry: Answering Back, an anthology of poems edited by Carol Ann Duffy, features current poets talking back to poets from the past. It includes gems like Carol Rumens telling Larkin that “Not everybody’s / Childhood sucked”;  Billy Collins’ gumptious answer to Yeats’ Musee des Beaux Arts; and Imtiaz Dharker matching Rumi myth for myth. By and large, I found myself preferring the older poems, but of course this is not a competition and one doesn’t have to choose. What it’s really about is language play, subversion and, in some cases, plain defiance, as each poet tries to fashion something new within the derived framework. Here’s a review. I also (finally) found and bought Daljit Nagra’s Look Who We Have Coming to Dover and Tishani Doshi’s Countries of the Body.

• a new pair of sneakers for all those noble resolutions about getting some exercise. They’ve been carefully put away in the shoe cabinet. Any day now.

• and my article on female condoms at The Guardian Cif.

The end of a year

…and thank god. Not one of my favourite years, this. And yet this date-to-date construct is misleading. Some months were good, some bad. Really, some days were good, others bad.  But we need our spans, our lengths, our life measured out in new year parties (if not coffee spoons). And the events of the past two months have led to a general agreement that this was a terrible year.

It makes me wonder about those who fell in love or got married or had babies or struck it lucky / rich this year. Do they feel guilty or want to say, ‘er…but it wasn’t such a bad year for me.’ Do they feel the world’s anguish crowding in on personal joy? Do they feel pressured to relinquish it? I feel a little bad for them.

No matter what kind of year you’ve had, this definitely is a time for hope.And who can blame us for sorely needing some? So I was thinking about hopeful poems and Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh came to mind. (Do read her disclaimers / disowning of it. Heh.) I rather like it precisely because it is one of those simple, feel-good poems but it reminded me of how hard it is to write about happy things without sounding greeting card-ish. My attempt at a new year poem resulted in something fairly bleak which I won’t impose on you right now. So instead, here’s New Year by Rachel Hadas, and for those who like it the old-fashioned way, Ring Out Old Bells by Tennyson.

And a bit  late in the day, here’s Mrs Scrooge written by Carol Ann Duffy for Christmas.

Happy New Year. Have a safe one.

Poetry with Prakriti

Poetry with Prakriti is on between the 16th and 30th of December in Chennai. I will be reading on the 20th at Vastra Kala and Goethe Institute, and on the 21st at Oxford and Apparao Gallery. I don’t know the timings yet but they’ve promised that the schedule will be up on their site soon. If you’re in Chennai at the time, please drop by for one of the readings .

The entire list of poets is here.

Update: The schedule…

Saturday, 20th December

11 am at Vastra Kala

4 pm at Goethe Institute

Sunday, 21st December

5 pm at Oxford Bookstore

7 pm at Apparao Gallery

Horror and memory

Perhaps it’s time I talked about something else. But here is OJ tracing memories of her home:

And that one over there was my perennial threat from Nana. “If you don’t eat like a lady, how will I take you to the Taj?” And so I fed my face like a well-trained robot lady at 6, because the Taj, as we know, is The Taj, and every 7-year-old dreams of a Shamiana ice cream with a pink biscuit stuck in it. In college, our parent Rotary held its weekly meetings at the Ballroom and we’d gatecrash them on flimsy pretexts so we could devour pastries from the Sea Lounge. It was earlier this month that the Boy and I strolled outside the ‘old’ Taj while I narrated the story of Watson’s Hotel and how an insult founded this magnificent structure.

And then there’s yet that other one, the Victoria Terminus that was our pride as we carted suitably admiring foreign visitors around, reveling in what was ours. The first train in India chuffed off from here we’d point out, as their eyes took in the gargoyles and gothic grandeur. So many bleary-eyed childhood trips were flagged off from its innards. Two minutes away at college, we’d laugh about how every Hindi movie has its one obligatory VT shot to depict arrival in Mumbai. What would we know about arrival, chronic natives that we were.

Mumbai: random thoughts

I’ve been unable to do much all day. I’m not an obsessive television watcher and deliberately did not switch on the tv. But there’s a surfeit of information right here on the Internet and not knowing felt worse than knowing too much. Also, suddenly, a lot of other things seemed trivial: deadlines, applications, regular things. I know they’re life affirming but they also felt like sand for the ostrich’s head. The city I grew up in and love very much was burnt and bleeding. It was hard to turn away from the sight even if all one could feel was helpless anguish. And a suspicion that I don’t even have a right to all this anguish. After all, it is a home left behind.

So anyway, my thoughts have been all over the place. One was that even those of us condemning media hysteria were clearly tuned in (how would we know what was happening otherwise?) , just possibly through alternative media. So the information overload that comes in for so much criticism at a time like this is a double-edged knife. Because much as we hate it (in ourselves and in others), there is a need to know.

24/7 news channels feed this need with endlessly repetitive (read looped) footage, breathless sensationalising and plain stupidity. Last night, I almost laughed out loud in disgust to hear the excitement in a young journalists’s voice as he talked about how many were dead. (I understand you’re going on pure adrenalin right now boy, but can you try to sound less thrilled?) Then, of course, there is the giving of valuable information right onto the screens of terrorists like Sridala and Falstaff have pointed out. So there are several questions here: how much should they cover, how frequently or continually should they air it, and in what manner should they deliver the news? When does fatigue set in? What constitutes voyeurism? When does one person’s tragedy become another person’s flavour of the day? How can this sort of event be reported without giving it action-movie treatment?

I also thought about what my dear friend OJ said on chat this morning: “I’m safe but they wrecked our home”. She meant the city. The city as home. By targeting such iconic buildings, they’ve managed to make people feel that sense of wreckage. Of deprivation. It’s like walking into someone’s house and smashing what they’re most proud of.

Then, the layers of grief that come through at times like this. There is, of course, the immediate and terrible kind when you actually lose someone dear or are directly involved. Then there is the kind that is more removed, the sadness and anger that one feels when anything of this sort happens — loss, destruction, death. Empathy for human suffering.  Somewhere in between lies the ‘removed personal’, the city as home. You’ve lost nobody and are unhurt but it is still personal. You’ve identified with the fabric of a place. The fabric is being ripped. It takes you from sad to irrational sad. Hasty sad. Even dangerous sad.

I found this emotional spectrum quite clearly on display in chat and FB status messages and blog posts. At one point, I found myself (irrationally?) angry with friends who seemed oblivious to what was happening and were talking about other things. Parties, dinners, concerts. Do they live under a rock?, I found myself wondering. What is wrong with them? Then I reminded myself that they’re just at another point on the spectrum. It feels less immediate to them, and less personal. I stopped being angry and settled for disturbed.

And yes, my post at Guardian Cif.

Darling

The tree outside is dead.
Unhand me, will you? My bones
melt in the heat when I go out
in the afternoon sun.

Look how crows have replaced the leaves.
Their silent, alert eyes fix me.
They have me down as someone
who fails continually
to understand the simple things.
That water boils.
That one is alone.
That there are things one cannot bear.

They know I have lost my destinations,
that I am unplanned and motiveless.
I need to be cut down,
resprouted in some place
where land meets water
with relief
and there are geese,
fish, sea urchin.

***

This and two other poems (this one and this) in the latest issue of Yellow Medicine Review.

Chasing Cars (i)

The road glistens like fine silk,
grey and silver, an old sari
hung out to dry
on that familiar line
loping into the distance–
my insatiable need for a
different place.

I squint at water,
slide grief and hope
back and forth
across the smoky windshield.

***

This picture was taken from inside the car on a rainy afternoon while travelling down East Coast Road near Chennai.

A tough language

Jeanette Winterson on poetry:

So when people say that poetry is merely a luxury for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read much at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

Let’s not confuse this with realism. The power does not lie directly with the choice of subject or its social relevance – if it did, then everything not about our own contemporary situation would be academic to us, and all the art of the past would be a mental museum. Art lasts because it gives us a language for our inner reality, and that is not a private hieroglyph; it is a connection across time to all those others who have suffered and failed, found happiness, lost it, faced death, ruin, struggled, survived, known the night-hours of inconsolable pain.

and on TS Eliot:

Now, when we are told that everything depends on our “personality”, it seems strange to hear Eliot saying, as he does in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, that “poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from those things.”

Read the full story. Link via Silliman.

The comfort of strangers. And animals.

I was in Malaysia recently, working (well, sort of) at a golf resort in Johor and then holidaying in KL. The first part of my trip went off smoothly but the excitement started when I reached KL. A close friend who lives in KL had left the keys to her apartment for me with her security guard, Stanley. (She was in Africa at the time.) Unfortunately, Stanley was having a bad day (gastric problems, his colleague later whispered to me) and feeling low and scatty. He went home with the keys when his shift changed. So I found myself standing outside her apartment building at 10 pm facing blank stares from the other security guard. Now, communication not so good between these guys. Because when I got him to call Stanley, nothing came up. It took all night and frantic calls from Africa to jog Stanley’s memory. (“Ah, that key! Why didn’t you say so earlier?”)

Meanwhile, I had thrown myself at the mercy of strangers. It’s a long and blood curling story but it included dumping my strolley with the security guards (I figured it was better to stay agile and inconspicuous and nobody would want a bunch of jeans and some rather snazzy shoes) and taking lifts from various harmless-looking people, including a pizza delivery guy, because there were no  taxis in sight. Not a single one. Anyway, I ended up in a hotel for the night, without being robbed or worse, got the key from Stanley the next day (without killing either security guard) and spent the next two and a half days in relative safety.

I did all the usual things after that. The tickets to the Petronas Tower skybridge were sold out when I got there but I walked to KL Tower (which we are told has the better view anyway), went on a magical bus ride in the rain (the KL hop on-hop off), haggled at Chinatown, walked some 3000 miles of mall floor, and ate. There was something about the city that I found unnerving though. Maybe, it was all the warnings about thievery. Or the quiet swooshing of fast cars on streets empty of people after dark. Perhaps, it was just the way my stay in the city had begun.

Places affect us in ways we sometimes don’t fully understand until later. And I suspect that KL made me a more wary person than I usually am. Logically, there was no reason for this. Key mix-ups can happen anywhere and I would have probably felt as lost in any city if I was alone and temporarily homeless at night. Plus I keep reminding myself of all those wonderful strangers who helped me and did not, in fact, harm me.

But reactions to a place are driven by instinct and emotion, and logic has little to do with it. And emotion-wise, KL was the equivalent of the guy who spooks you on the first date. You may like him more when you get to know him better — but you can never forget that first cringe-inducing moment.

Plus, I have problems with places which don’t have a million people on the street at all hours. I used to find even Bangalore dismally deserted after living 22 years in Mumbai. I mean, I miss Churchgate station at rush hour. You know, the crowd of about two hundred total strangers who look like they may stampede any moment? And then you fall in step and realise the crowd has a rhythm. I always associate that walk with music in my head. Anyway, yes, it’s a good reason for me to not live in many places in the world.

Most of my pictures of KL (Petronas Towers and the like) reflect a starkness I was feeling, a tensing in the gut. Gigantic towers rising into the sky, grey and solipsistic. Cityscapes in miniature viewed from some abominable height. That sort of thing. But these, taken at the KLCC Aquaria, I like.