Sunday 31 August 2014

Chameleon unleashed

At first, you only see black and white.
Like words on paper.
Like dark and day.
Then the grays unveil
The zones of what - ifs,
Of the red carpet of rage,
Of the yellow sun of doubt,
The brown of dried blood,
The blue doom of gloom,
The green leaf of disbelief
In happy endings.

There is no happy ending.
Endings are sad. Always.
And then you know it's time
To bring the inner chameleon out.
It's good to hide
In colors
Sometimes.



Sunday 17 August 2014

The bluest eye. Willingly blind.

Does it ever happen to you, say when you are reading a good book and all of a sudden you notice it is drawing to a close, the pages unread are growing lesser in number, the right hand side thickness of the pages slimming down gradually and the left increasing in familiar abundance, disrupting the balance of the book's binding - and you get sore and panic? Do you suddenly feel empty in your gut at the prospect of a goodbye? Of an imminent closure that is at once satisfying and unnerving?

Well, I do.

Then, as a self induced therapy, I start making a mental list of the rest of the cool reads I still have in the pipeline. Just for some consolation. Sometimes I go back to the earlier chapters of the same book I am reading and reread. Just for prolonging the pleasure, you see. And then I quite self consciously unread what I have read already. I tell myself that this is a part I missed paying proper attention to and the author must have had a hidden purpose in dealing his tale this or that way. Which I had completely overlooked in my initial and cursory read. I think I tell myself a lot of rubbish to keep myself amused. I horse around a lot with my reading. That, I guess, makes me one helluva phony. 


But it works for me.



But sometimes I chicken out. I stop telling stories to myself. I stop rereading stuff. Like when I read The Bluest Eye. I couldn't dare a second read. And I have since then pushed myself away from the memory of the story so far that you may call it a willful suspension of belief. I lost my nerve. I loved it. I hated it.

I still don't know how to unlove Pecola. How to neutralise my outward gaze toward her lot. How to see her as she saw herself from within. How to anaesthetise my agony at her frailty, her supposed ugliness, her mad wish for blue eyes. How to exorcise her destruction from my memory.





I realise that I have pushed her story so hard into an enforced forgetfulness that I no longer remember the full story. I dare not pick up the book again lest it haunts my waking moments with the pain it once shot me.

Call me a lousy coward. A selfish sentimentalist. A stupid one-eyed reader. But I will keep looking for make believe happy endings.

For truth hurts.

The day I met and lost Shibdas Choudhury

A middle aged man in a white dhoti – nondescript, bald, slim, of average height, dark skinned, who always wore a smile and a pair of thick rimmed glasses.

Ever since I knew him, I loved that vision of him. He was mostly unkempt, buried under a heap of books, manuscripts and papers. He would momentarily look up from the pile of print and smile at me as I would shyly enter his room. I was a kid in a frilled frock with lots of mischief in my eyes. But he also knew I was fond of books and would always ask if I would like to see a few illustrated ones he had. I would nod a quick yes and pick up a glossy Span that would lace his desk. There were magazines from all countries, but the ones from Russia are what I remember mostly. There could be a special reason for that, which I cannot remember now. Maybe the color or the glossy feel of them. But he would watch me leaf through them with a twinkle in his eyes. Before he could find something suitable for my age, I would scamper away in a flash to the balcony or the roof to play. He would go back to his endless notes and theses – he was my Boromesho. My mother's elder sister's husband.



I was the youngest in a brood of nine cousins. And the most pampered. I was in a hurry to grow up so that my older cousins would take me in their circle of secrecy. But apparently no one noticed my desperate rush. Soma didi, didibhai, Mantu didi, Munni didi, Sanju dada, Sumit dada, Amit dada, Raja dada – would gather at Boromashi’s at CIT road, Park Circus. Mostly it would be Ashtami or Nabami during the Durga Pujas. Boromashi’s apartment is on the fourth floor. It had no lift, no air conditioner, no extra rooms for guests, no plush carpets.  That made no difference to us. We were always dying to go there! It was a yearlong wait but worth every minute of it. The Pujas was the time of our lives.

When I was a kid there was no fancy mall to go to for Puja shopping. My mother had a knack for tailoring and had a score of DIY dress design manuals picked up from last year’s Boi Mela (book fair). The Usha sewing machine would wait in anticipation of late night labour in one corner of our house and I would hug myself in delight at the thought of hunching over Maa’s side watching her stitch my new dresses. The house that my father built before I was born was in Behala (still is!). It was a long way from Park Circus. In the 80s the EM Byepass had not yet materialized. Nor did many back then, have the recourse to the luxury of cabs. But one thing was guaranteed - while the Pujas were still a month away, Boromesho would come to our Behala residence carrying a plastic bag in his hand. I knew it.

Our Behala house had Burma teak chairs in the front verandah (sadly replaced with molded plastic ones now) overlooking the long road that leads to the front gate. Sitting on the chairs one can still see people walking down the road going about their daily business. I would wait for Mesho’s arrival with an eagerness with which nestlings wait for worms from their mamma birds. From the distance I would catch the first glimpse of his starched dhoti and most importantly the bags in his hand. His smile told us that he was as glad to see us as we to see him. I would run quick to open the gates for him and Maa would usher him in with a glass of cool water. 

He would wipe his vast forehead with a clean white handkerchief and ask: “Kemon achho tomra shobai? Dekho toh egulo pochondo hoy kina” (“How are you all? See if you like these” It was as if my life hinged upon that cue and instantly I would snatch the packets off his hand and take them inside to inspect my prize. Orange, blue, green, pink – dashes of colors, abstract prints, flowers, dolls, teddies – so many motifs to marvel at. Glee had no bounds. My Saptami was going to be memorable. What would it be? So many options to choose from: a knee length midi, a two part frock or a mini? When I grew older, he would bring textiles for salwar suits. He knew.



This is one of my favorite memories from childhood. May of the rest came from his house at Park Circus where we would huddle during Ashtami. Life was simple, even simpler were the joys of it. The taste of Boromashi’s daal and fish, the smell of her sari that she always wore in a traditional way, the hoots of passing local trains, the dull drone of the heavy ceiling fans, the whisper of conspiring cousins, the cool of the cement floor where we would be bunched together for a midday nap and the sight of Boromesho stooping to pick up a book – all priceless. We all knew he was a learned man. He was synonymous with the Asiatic Society and he was one man who could start a discourse on anything – theology, Indology, culture, arts, religion, politics, history – and even the tritest of subjects like “you”. But what made him different was the way he blended inconspicuously with the surrounding becoming the only one solid thing you could surely lean on. The reason why no one noticed him was because he preferred it that way.

Why am I writing about him? I do not know. He died last week, peacefully, having lived a life blessed with love, respect, wisdom and humility. I never knew what he was to me while he was alive. I went to Boromashi’s house last night to pay my respects only to find Mesho gone. Good people die, good times pass. We write obituaries to deify dead people, because we feel obligated to speak words of praise for departed souls. I do not need my words to canonize Shibdas Chaudhuri. People who were blessed to have come near him, knows.

I had stepped in gingerly at their house last night. Death is unsavory. I am scared of bereavement, of people in mourning. I was greeted at the door by his son, Sanju dada. I was startled to see him in white. He had puffy eyes, maybe from crying or from missing his father. Everything else looked normal. How easily do we accept death and its aftermath. No wait, was that Boromashi? A thin shriveled woman in a bedraggled white saree? A wraith of the plump cuddly woman we called “Boromashi”. A woman who liked feeding hungry mouths with ladles of her exquisite cuisine. A woman who would chop betel nuts all afternoon and push that perfectly rolled paan into her mouth reddened by the betel juice. A matriarch who had the authority to shut my arrogant father up in a minute. She was called “didimoni” by all her sisters and their husbands. She was a shadow of all the glory that was didimoni now.

She broke down in a fresh outbreak of tears – the natural tendency of people to seek newer reasons to mourn the loss, to keep the loss alive. I stood away from the scene of tragedy. It was a private loss for me – I was jealous about sharing it with anyone else. Grief for me can never be social. I can write about bereavement but can never let it show. It was sacrilege for me to demonstrate it as a ritual. There were relatives present who by virtue of their characteristics could quickly change the scene. I was watching in silence their resilience, marveling at their expertise to quickly embark on hilarious exchanges even with death around. Also practical chores had to be taken care of: could someone talk to the cook? Could someone make some tea? Could someone dance in front of a grown up son or a granddaughter? Could a skinny cousin grow obese? Could one mashi still wear nailpoish at the age of 65? Considerations – all relatively significant, I am sure, to some.

Boromashi was telling Maa how Mesho had loved me specially. How when I had last visited him, he had told her after I had left “This daughter of mine is showcase stuff, she looks like Durga”. Is that how he saw me? Is that why every time during the Pujas he would touch my head and kiss my forehead and bless me like he never did to anyone else? Did he see Durga in me?



As a testimony to the man he was, his wife said a thing I can ever forget::

Ponchanno bochor e ekta kotu kotha manush ta koy nai  kono deen amare…amaar joto raag jhaal shob dhalchhi tnaar opor kintu uttore ekta o kotah shuni nai” (“In all our 55 years together he had not uttered a single bad word to me. I had poured my anger and complaints on him but he had always listened patiently never returning any of it”). 

No one, not a single living soul has ever seen Mesho lose his temper or self control even for a single moment his life. His was an extraordinary soul.

I remembered myself. My petty ego, my bloated self respect, my false pride – how puny, how small I looked. Mesho was a man so big, so elevated, that he understood and forgave human follies. He forgave every weakness with a smile, he never took himself seriously enough to take offence from people. Or did he know his own enormity, did he know that no one could ever measure up to his wisdom or greatness? Did he realise he had to humour our inflated personas or did he know that only love and patience can bring out the best in ordinary mortals? Whatever it was, he stood tall amidst us midgets. 

Boromashi asked me to sing a song and I sang a Rabindrasangeet. Would it be stupidly sentimental if I told you that I felt Mesho had unobtrusively come to the door of the room to hear me sing? He was fond of my songs, I know. Boromashi repeated it so many times last night that when I sang out of tune with a choked voice I saw him there. For the last time – in a blue lungi, his sacred thread hanging loose over his bare torso, wearing the same old smile.

I had lost a father.




Wednesday 13 August 2014

How I stumbled upon the oldest university of the world!

Did you read The Treasure Island as a child? Nope, I didn't either. But I know that the plot revolves around some people searching for a treasure chest hidden deep inside a deserted island. Given the fact that ‘treasure’ means different things to different people, I will not venture to explain my reference to the classic text by Stevenson. But you must also know that we often stumble upon treasures accidentally, that is to say, even when we are not looking for it. You may call it a windfall, a lottery, or a chance visit to one of the oldest universities in the world.



I had no plan or intention of visiting Bologna on my recent trip to Italy. I wanted to see the popular spots, which the travel media has been systematically selling as must-visit holiday havens, such as Milan, Rome, the Vatican, Florence, Venice, and Pisa. Bologna featured nowhere on my travel itinerary. But since I was driving through Italy in a rented car, it made sense to lodge somewhere in between Venice and Florence, for a night to stretch my tired limbs. Looking at Google map, I figured that booking a hotel in Bologna was the best option to reduce the driving time between two geographically distant cities that I dearly wanted to tour. So off I went, and stationed myself at Bologna after a long drive from the Vatican, promising myself an early exit the next morning. I had a long drive to Venice the next day. After a hearty dinner, while I was almost ready to hit the sack, I had this sudden idle urge to check out the history of Bologna on my phone. Just for the heck of it. Bless these clever devices with roaming mobile data, for keeping you well grounded even on remote shores!

And what do I find? I find among many other interesting trivia, the piece of ancient academic excellence that Bologna is famous for - the University of Bologna. It is one of the oldest in the world. Older than even Oxford and Cambridge! The University was probably the first university in the western world and is even now the crucial point of reference in European culture. Over the years, as other seats of learning emerged in the scene of global culture, Bologna has modernized its teaching and research.



Founded arguably in1088 it has housed as students great personalities like Dante, Petrarch, Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli, Thomas Becket, Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Cavendish, Marconi, and Umberto Eco, to name a few. Even today students from all over Italy and many from Spain flock to the place to seek the best of training.

As I parked my car and started walking toward the university campus, the deserted halls and parking struck me as peculiar, it suddenly dawned on me that I had chosen the wrong day to visit the campus – a Sunday! Not to be daunted by this faux-pas, I kept walking toward what appeared to me as the University center – a rectangular clearing marked by a church on one side and flanked brick red buildings on all the other. The path to the center was through a narrow alley laced with pillars on both sides and arched roofs. The central campus looked like an elongated courtyard surrounded by pillars and graffiti. For a university that was almost a thousand years old, the campus had a surprisingly urban look.



Like any other college in the world, Bologna looked like a hot seat of student politics with wall arts carrying slogans for and against parties. There was also chalked folk art on walls, vivid colors depicting legends from the past. My absolute ignorance of Italian pained me at that point as I had no clue what I was looking at other than familiar replicas of flags, the sickle, the hammer, rope. Impressions of unfamiliar faces looked back angrily at me, perhaps chiding me for daring to stand at a place, the immense significance of which, I had no clue of. Hand bills plastered the pillars, informing in advance of dramas and debates to take place. The stark contrast of the archaic red pillars to my right and the angular white concrete ones to my left was testimony to a culture that blended its history well with its present.




A scattered group of students hung around aimlessly on staircases by the side of the aisles, smoking cigars, drinking beer. A café stood open announcing their daily spread of Italian snacks in a standing black board. People sat in chairs outside, indulging in the Sunday relaxation. I crossed the main door to the University with a bold white marble plaque shouting Alma Mater Studiorum – the motto of the institute in black engraved font. The massive wooden doors were tightly shut. The Palazzo Poggi looked like an abandoned preserve of frescoes. Via Zamboni, the main hub of the faculties wore a similar vacant look. Bicycles and motorbikes were lined up beside the road. I spotted Italy’s biggest library, Biblioteca Sala Borsa. I was amazed to see it open with a few students thronging the doorway. I asked if there was anything worth viewing as a relic from the times of Petrarch or Dante?



The disinterested look in their eyes disappointed me – I was not fortunate to have bumped into people who cared for history as much as I did. After trying very hard to explain what I was looking for, I gave up. And instead decided not to run after the tangible treasures after all. Sitting down on the stone dices that lined the narrow alley in between the pillared corridors, I took a deep breath and tried to feel the vibe of a past that was so different from my own, yet so similar in many ways. I felt a calm descending upon me as I thanked the freak addition of Bologna into my Italian retreat.



Here I was sitting miles away from home, at a place, which had seen the stalwarts of science and arts pass by. Here was a place that could teach me a thing or two about European civilization and history. Here was a place that still throbbed with the presence of all this richness bundled into a time-travel only dreamers like me could undertake. I don’t remember for how long I had been sitting there, but suddenly the hunger pangs brought me back to reality and also nudged me to hurry up. For Venice was waiting for me. Venice with all its aquatic gullies and golden gondolas. I bid goodbye to the exquisite Bologna and set off.

As I was negotiating a sharp swerve out of the campus, a building emerged straight upfront – Hotel Academia! And I decided that Bologna was alright in cashing in the hotspot of its academic lineage. Even the hoteliers knew how to align their nomenclature. Before I sign off, here are some interesting facts about the University of Bologna: The University has about 85,000 students in its 23 colleges. It was the first to use the term universitas for the students and masters. It has 33 departments in all. 

And if you are interested to know more about the place, you can always count on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bologna
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