It happened to my Pushpa patti and by the time it was done with her she resembled a vapid treasure chest, after a pirate invasion. While old age is just another chapter, if you’re among those who envision one’s life as a book and death as both the last chapter and word in it, for some like my late grandmother and my now withering grandpa, it doesn’t look that pretty. Coming to think of it now, it wriggled into both their lives like this innocuous little worm in the form of an innocent slip in the shower, a bout of afternoon dizziness, a jolly good meal-amnesia, some unsolicited instances of incontinence and before we could nip the ebb, voila, it began to flow and flow it did into something else. The worm done with being a second fiddle, had assumed the form of this ostentatious serpent that began poisoning the pond, that my grandparents’s dignity was. It coiled around them slowly and started choking life out facet by facet, virtue by virtue, till they became innocuous worms, who couldn’t wriggle away from their karmic comeuppance.
I still can close my eyes and smell the room reeking of ammonia, from the flotsam that my grandma had become from the cherubic, loving matronly goddess I knew her as. All she did in her last days was stare. Stare from the window next to her bed at the backyard, that she used to lord over in another life with wet clothes and home made pickle material; stare at the moving ceiling fan which didn’t miss a single moment to remind her that it was constantly on the move like she once used to be; stare into our eyes like they were mere black beads that didn’t belong in people she had breast fed and raised from the cradle. I’m particularly not the poster boy for unconditional niceness, neither am I an ungrateful cunt. I’ll forever be in Pushpa patti’s debt for laying my groundwork right. Having said that, I was hoping for her death every minute of those days, for I couldn’t recognize the stranger lying on that bed covered in a rubber sheet, who kept appearing stranger and strange as time trickled away. And like that, finally when old age was done swinging its wrecking ball and all that was left of my beloved edifice were debris, she was already dead to us, before she died.
Last week at my uncle’s was an encore. I saw my grandpa display similar symptoms, of a stranger trapped in someone that once used to be my beloved buddy. A harmless, god loving simpleton whose good intentions more than made up for his pettiness. Again, this wasn’t the dynamic insurance agent I remembered with a crutch, who stood on his own feet all his life, even despite being short of one. What I saw there was a decaying frail man in dalliance with a bygone era, with his diapers and mashed food being the only things, contemporary. From interacting with the dead to inquiring about them, he constantly seemed preoccupied with people who have been gone for a good few decades now. And trust me, when one begins to live with the dead and chooses the past over the present, he is a goner despite what his pulse says.
Using the movies as a metaphor, death is the climactic culmination to an individual’s existence. The end card to the movie of life if you will. So all of us are trained to expect a movie to eventually reach its climax , but it’s actually the last act which makes or breaks the movie before even it approaches the climax, akin to old age. For some, this last act is a gradual segue in tandem with the rest of the movie and the first act, so even if the climax is a little underwhelming, sudden or even long drawn out, it still is a good movie, a good life. For some like my grandparents, the last act not only blows, but plods along pointlessly without resonating with the rest of the movie, that by the time climax or death comes, we’re relieved. Maybe, it is the closet misanthrope talking, but it’s during times like this that I hope for the dispassionate sentiment behind disposing off a flickering bulb or putting down an injured pet animal out, to be extended to a beloved elder as well. Love is life, but love is dignity too. And it takes a rare kind of a love to mourn a life when dignity has left it.
Gokarna epiphanies
Half past ten, ensconced in pitch darkness is the town preceding Gokarna. And the long winding part-muddy part-tar roads run through it like thick green nerves on the body of a sinewy hirsute going by the endless forests defining his contours. And piercing through the heart of his dark is a beam of a scooter. My scooter. I was headed to Gokarna, not the wisest of choices if the timing was anything to go by considering how the place rapidly turns into a ghost town in tandem to the hour hand’s movement past six beyond sunset. But in a life punctuated by impulses and instincts, this seemed like a fart in a hurricane. Singaravelan songs were playing in my ears as I kept riding through a rather murky stretch which resembled a bad joke that I just couldn’t seem to come out of. Oh, the irony of listening to the tracks of one of the most hilarious movies put together by humanity in a morose, eery humourless stretch that kept getting colder and colder with every passing metre; not to mention the absolute lack of traces of humanity at calling distance, either sides. The inconsiderate cold winds weren’t particularly in a forgiving mood that night as they were up against the chest like frozen daggers while whistling in the ears just enough to keep the haunting intact. It’s not like this was my first time to Gokarna in the past few days. So I could pick on this route’s unfamiliarity in a bit, a few kilometres uphill. For the first time in my life, I felt marooned in the dark of the night. Ask the men who wax about the pretty silhouettes that eucalyptus trees make on postcards to be here. They were inundating giants, dispassionately looking down upon you with pygmy disdain. Broken vehicles scattered in every bend, anklet creeks of night creatures and the cold in the air that felt tepid less than diabolic, this was one stretch that made me feel like a scampering rodent in a hole with a serpent lurking around.
In moments, verses from my morning Hanuman chants were on my lips. It’s funny how a cocktail beaten out of fear,vulnerability and jeopardy of survival tilts one in the direction of spirituality almost instantly, if not subconsciously. So much for the bamboo brittle rationality of unconditional prayers of mere gratitude. With freshly gathered unsure courage, I turned around my scooter to ride back downhill to where I came from. Thank my good karma that this downhill spiral felt anything but downhill. Cowering hadn’t felt this sweet in ages. Call it my ability to overtly dramatise, but I could sense air return to the lungs as I was coming away from the woods, like out of a reluctant unclench. With God’s name on my lips and little over half a tank of petrol in the tank, I rode as fast I could through the smog of unfamiliarity, till my eyes met the mistake that was starring right back at me from a board smugly. Tatadi was on the left and Gokarna was on right and I had taken the left for a good half an hour.
After that, things pretty much took a turn northwards, figuratively and literally. The street lights, the mudhouses, the warmth in the cold breeze and regular sight of cars going past reeked of familiarity that calmed the faculties within. And it was a precious reality check that proved to me that my misanthropic fangs were afterall only a making of my low threshold for bullshit, boredom and body odour. Everything that came up in this right detour was a sharp antithesis of the left detour. This place was teeming with life in the form of boisterous tourists, shopkeepers looking to close the day with a sale, mongrels peacefully coiled up in cosy street corners. Take all these things away and still the energy shift couldn’t be any more stark. This side felt warm. Warm from the happy memories of hundreds of strangers, comforts of a congenial coast line, profitable trades made by locals or maybe from the prayers offered in the plethora of temples; each of which had a distinct structural identity
.Probably it was from the epiphanies before, but each of these border punctuating religious monuments seemed like walls of a fortress guarding this side of the town. Couldn’t put a finger on it, but if the suffocating quality of the other side could be felt as a choke on the throat, the reassuring aura of goodness in this side was palpable as well.
Long after I had come to my room, had a long warm shower and tucked myself, I still couldn’t stop being intrigued about the past few hours. And did I tell you there were actually signs of things to come in the form of my phone that fell off the bike, a bruised leg and a torn footwear. The transition of things commonplace gaining gravitas to become conspicious coincidences, then bad omens and finally conduits of bad time felt like a very subjective stretch of sorts. Probably had I turned right the first time around itself, none of this would’ve mattered. Probaly this entry wouldn’t have existed or would’ve been about Nutella toasts in beach facing cafes.But the the yin yang personalities to two sides of the same geography-Tatadi being ghostly and Gokarna being godly; one side brimming with life and the other from the utter lack of it was simply unmistakable. Still wasn’t absolutely sure if the cold and warmth, negativity and positivity in the vibe were a making of the place or my vivid imagination that often gets ahead of me. Just that in the coming days I can start saying things like,”When life takes you to Tatadi, just know that Gokarna is not far away.” with a straight thoughtful face.
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Sorry for being a dick, Dhoni
We are an instinctive lot, this generation or for that matter every generation that preceded us. We believe in saying and doing things without thinking much and later not just think, but muse, retrospect rather tragically, even romantically about could’ves and should’ves of the past, about how things would’ve accrued had they been done differently or people been treated differently at their times of relevance when it really mattered. Only if collective regret had that kind of power.
It’s no more about the aesthetic appeal or the intrinsic value of a thing. It’s become all about flamboyance, instant gratification, bigger the better kind of scene.
We too, like most average minded people of the world are obsessed with outcomes, lack the vision to see an event- not as a standalone one – as a point in a continuum in the vast history of an ever evolving sport or an legend’s long career that segues seamlessly into it. With the efflux of time,
we tend to become more forgiving. Nostalgia brings back fond memories. The parts of the heart that had hitherto dried up, begin to moisten up. And it also helps that a chapter has ended or an era has concluded. Because time lends us a dispassionate, panoramic perspective of things, that the heat of the moment eluded. We once again begin to see the good parts, understand their value, miss them to only realize that it’s too late and then go on to write eulogies like this one. But what’s the point when of a eulogy, when they weren’t treated with respect in their times.
That press meet in Wankhede was a very different place for Dhoni on the evening of April,2011. Moments before which, he had just transitioned from superstardom to something far beyond- eternity. A place very few people have gone to like the little man in the dressing room who was playing his last world cup at that time. Sachin’s retirement was the most second guessed item of that time and it was no surprise that it was an area of interest at the press conference post the world cup victory. Dhoni stood by him at that time with both, adulation and gratitude for his contribution to the sport and his career.
It is cryptically funny when observed from a distance that destiny is a dense collective; a design full of echoes and ricochets of events from the past repeating themselves in the present. Eight years later, yesterday, Kohli found himself in the same place Dhoni was that day, fielding questions about his retirement in a press conference, same way he was that day about Sachin’s. Only that this wasn’t an occasion of victory. And like every tragic hero, there was a touch of irony as well. Dhoni, the world’s best finisher couldn’t finish the game one last time after getting so close to the finish line, because the world’s fastest runner(also him) was….. run out by a miserably out of form Guptill, whose contribution to the game till that point was strictly headcount.
In time details will fade and there will be a point where water would’ve gone under the bridge. Dhoni may or may not retire immediately. The helicopter shots might come back in this last phase. Or maybe we’ll have to settle for the ugly utility knocks that help the team, but get lost in the scoreboard. He might be around just long enough to become a sort of villain, Nolan was talking about like Sachin almost did. But all I know is he’s changed the way the sport was played – with the mind as much as the bat and ball. No doubt that history and historians of the game will definitely be kind to him, lavish in fact. That’s a given. How are we going to be to him when he’s still around?
How VIP became a bookmark in my life
It was coffee time and Udhungada Sangu from Vellai Illai Patadhari(VIP) was playing in my earpiece. Over the years, it’s been a favourite earworm, but this time it strangely brought with it memories from a grim period. A time I was out of my damn depth, when life was dealing me one crisis after another and I was going through each one with the grace of a blind man, ice-skating in his jogging shoes. At that time any amount of retrospection, seemed to only plumb out more rejections than anecdotes. Epiphanies were painful pockmarks on an already worn out mind , which I didn’t know then, would go on to become war scars I would wear as a badge of honour. It was at this point, that I found my first trace of light at the end of a long winding tunnel in the form of a movie.
VIP was that movie, which would go on to become a watershed moment in my life. We Indians, at least the ones from this part of the country are absolute drama queens(of varying degrees) with a surreptitious penchant for identity crisis and self destruction. We are an ironic lot that fondly continues to moon over the conundrum of whether art imitates life or life imitates art, after selling our souls at the movies.
I remember a friend’s dad, a self confessed Kamal Haasan devotee(like yours truly) talking about how the actor’s Varumaiyin Niram Sigappu was the most affecting and personal work of his. Not merely due to its cinematic syntax, but the language it spoke in and the mood of the collective youth it became a balm to. It was the eighties and serpentine queues of under nourished graduates outside employment exchanges was the order of the day, to which my friend’s dad belonged. So a tastefully made movie about a uptight, uncompromising Bharathiyar spouting youngster holed up with his cohorts, fighting over half smoked cigarettes, in the capital city was the vicarious experience he could grab onto as a low hanging fruit till better days dawned upon.
It romanticized that rough phase of his life, not with broad strokes of lush green, but with a heady integrity. It showed people like him that self respect was a luxury they could afford, if not the next meal. That good women would after all be interested in unemployed gentlemen with five o clock shadows. In short, it captured the zeitgeist of the eighties, while giving hope, that everyday life didn’t.
Anyways, moving back to me and VIP. At that time, my first love had come to a crushing end. Happy endings were a myth of the fat and ugly. Antacids were ineffective. And I got to know the hard way that break-ups were a lot more than dense facial hair and brooding. In a life of nuanced narcissism, self loathing came as an effective option.Things weren’t great at the home front either. When I couldn’t figure myself out, what chance did my family stand? I couldn’t put a finger on what sucked the most: being unemployed, having to ask mom for money, the thinly veiled condescension from acquaintances around or the fact that I hadn’t got laid in a while.
That’s when Dhanush’s Raghuvaran came as a whiff of fresh air. This guy’s life sucked too. He was also unemployed. Even he had a condescending dad. He was also grappling with his life. And his frustration, tirades and rants were all mine. And I convinced myself that he was imitating my life onscreen with better music and cinematography. And that song on the terrace! That’s a song I would’ve sung too, had I known to vent out through song and dance. The lines: Maanam Roshamlam Keezha Vittachuda, Plastic Poo Kooda Vaadi Poyachuda, Vella Søllama Ulla Azhuguraen Da just tugged at my heart strings. It was like someone translated my heartbeats to words. I hadn’t cried like that in a while. And I remember looking like an absolute unit to the clueless couple next to me who were baffled by my endless sobbing in a harmless song sequence. I was for the first time in my life stewing in self pity and it surprisingly felt good.
And like how it all spiraled downwards before I could take notice, things got back on track in run of the mill fashion like in Raghuvaran’s life, minus a grumpy Amul baby and a hot dentist for a wife. Again I didn’t know, who was imitating who. I had found a decent job. Started making a few bucks. Romance or something to that effect kept happening in life from time to time. And like his dad, mine too started respecting me from a distance. My home once again became a peaceful place. And like that, life again became a colourful place, that felt like living in. And VIP became a bookmark to that chapter of my life when I was Single and Youngu
On women safety and train delays
Mobile phone rings.
It’s seven in the morning. It’s an absolute crime for someone to call at this time. And an even bigger one to call on a Saturday. It better be important, the person or their reason to pick the phone.
I reached for my phone and it was mom.
“Your sister’s not come still. We’re worried.”
“Wa……(yawning till my eyes well up)What happened?”
My body was yet to fully wake up to the panic, my mind had woken up to.
“Her train from Hyderabad was to scheduled to reach Chennai at 5.45 and it had arrived on schedule. It’s 7.30 now and she’s still not come.”
“Ok. Probably a delay. Did you call her.”
“Ya. Several times. It’s either not reachable or goes to the voice mail which speaks Telugu. We’re worried.”
God. Suddenly the distant empathy I’ve hitherto felt for those breaking news stories were starting to become personal. The possibilities it was impregnated with, this news was breaking me from within. The several instances of misogyny, violation and sexual assault that’d taken place in my backyard and left me disturbed for a while— before I could vent out in the form of an angry tweet or a post or launch into a diatribe about women safety with some acquaintances —were sprinting across my head from ear to ear. I was sweating like a virgin murderer on a cold Bangalore morning. I was terrified of the possibilities.There’s no way I could let out my feelings. Not now. I had to put on my brave face, if not for my sake, for my parents to not cave. The gravitas of the situation was sitting on my chest like a giant toad.
She’s my baby sister. We’re good people. All’s well. All will be.
“Don’t worry ma. She’s not the brightest of bulbs. Her phone’s either died or on silent and she’s probably asleep. It’ll be fine. Let me try calling.”
My head was running without a harness in directions I didn’t want it to. The “what ifs” were freaking me out as I kept getting her voice mail with every attempt to reach. I then reached out to the railway police to be safe than sorry. I needed all the ammunition I could get and needed them fast. Meanwhile I told my parents to go the railway station and launch a formal complaint. Every minute was precious. And we couldn’t let her be off the grid for any longer, not in a place that’s teeming with ten deviants per every plot hole on the road.
I was looking for the next flight leaving to Chennai, when mom called me again.
“Your sister called. We were looking at the wrong train. She was asleep.”
“Fuc….Anyways. Thank god. Let me try and get back to the sleep I was having before this.”
“Ok da.”
And like that, the storm we were preparing for, turned into an unpungent fart. But those long thirty minutes weren’t merely painful. They were unsettling. None of our heads went to the possibility of a wrong train like it should’ve. Instead, it went to the news about a group of pedophiles who violated a eleven year old from a week ago. Or to the possibility of a long delay or of her being asleep like it should’ve. But to the possibility of a looming threat of another lurking deviant who stepped from the shadow. It was just a very brief period to let the mind come up with such morbid iterations. But trust me, it was the most helpless we’ve felt as a family in a really long time. The fact that we live in a time, we can’t suppose the safety of our women on the collective decency of the society is a worrisome-irrefutable truth. We (think we)know the men in our lives by the masks they choose to sport- of a decent looking guy, well-natured uncle, father’s friend, pious old man, nerdy accountant, carpenter, preoccupied bookworm, introverted socially awkward guy. We just can’t be sure anymore, that they will be the same men when their mask comes down in a moment of weakness. Hope this nation that’s often personified as a mother, feels safe for her daughters some day soon enough.
The things we wear and the way they wear us
It was a little past three and like always I had come downstairs with a friend for coffee to the kiosk, adjoining the smoking zone. The beverage along with the condescension of the fashion faux pas of men and women gathered on the opposite, had grown into a sort of a little sport at this time of the day. There’s a faint line between being observational and judgmental and I was way past that. Now don’t ask me who made me this high priest of fashion in the ten kilometre radius, I can’t come up with anything better than “myself”.
“He shouldn’t be wearing such shirts, with lungi checks. The heroes from that era are either worm chow or onscreen grandpas.”
“Unless he’s playing a school PT master in a play at workplace, he’s got no business wearing those thick white sports shoes with formals.”
“He’s wearing a black strap watch with tan brown leather shoes.” -the nuggets of thought just float around.
Coming to think if it, I’ve been doing this for a while now; playing this sport. But I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t come from a space of elitist entitlement as much as from one of cultivated awareness. Agreed I’m an extremely sarcastic creature by nature, but over the years I’ve come to respect and regard the clothes and accessories as being a representative extension of a state of mind. A navy blue for a sunny mood, robin blue for depth of character, floral patterns on a holiday mood,polka dots to party. Thick checks when chirpy, negligible ones to mean business and a sharp fit for a solid first impression. These are some of the things I’ve picked up over the years from people I looked up to at the farther end of my learning curve. It’s not robust rocket science perse, but colours, lights and predispositions interact in a predictable manner to create an impression or an illusion of it at the very least in a certain direction.
I’ve seen many turn up to an event in obnoxious clothes— even the ones who swear by the sanctity of forks and knives at dinner tables and the ones who wait for months together for a specific car color —without an iota of understanding about the appropriateness. Picture this- a dark-thick guy in a wine red shirt with disco ball depictions and embellished cuffs at a brightly lit wedding gala. Or another one at the same event, in a half sleeve T shirt with multicoloured horizontal lines running across and sandals from village movies about misogyny. While the former’s subtle as a sledge hammer, the latter’s a slacker with indifference to his image from a mental menopause. While the first guy should’ve toned it down a lot, the latter should’ve dialled up several notches. The former’s clothes belong in a tribal mating ceremony, the latter’s dressed up for a casual zoo visit with an utter lack of interest. The sad part is both are nice guys with a decent amount of self awareness. Both use overpriced grooming products and get haircuts, the price of a flight ticket. But they’re somehow utterly naive when it comes to the fact that their outfits talk for them and also about them. And so do their watches that resemble lunch boxes with a golden dial.
Clothes exhibit one’s age. personality, grace(or the lack of it),maturity,depth of character and artistic preferences. At times from the foreground and at times from the background, their role keeps changing from one phase of life to another. In our teens and early twenties, anything that was in vogue would’ve caught our attention. We were gullible clean slates who would dress up in a way to highlight our clothes to draw attention to ourselves. Our personalities were at a formative state and it was safe to tow the wagon. So anything that caught attention worked for us- from vibrant colours, loud checks, hooded shirts to even comic print T shirts. These things were making our identity and an easily digestible ersatz persona from the foreground, as the real us lurked back in the background.
But with time, as we age and the personality assumes a vivid shape and form, we pick clothes that would highlight us and remain an ambient amplifier in the background. Flamboyance paves way for laid back charm. Trends get replaced with personal statements. Aesthetics comes before appeal. The equation with the wardrobe changes from us being the soda to the single malt, over time.
Not just clothes, everything including accessories like watches go through a similar tangent. The toyish looking G shocks digitals pave way for Citizen metal straps, which wither away into Seiko leather straps with a minimalist old school appeal. Even the art one consumes changes. Character driven stories begin to appeal to the sensibility over plot driven ones. Rhythm and beats become incessant noise, the heart craves for soothing melodies with specific emphasis on lyrical value. Personal conversations become more and more precious as generic discussion become passe. The proverbial boy becomes the man and these things punctuate his transition.
Size of a man’s imagination
Freshly ejected from a sea of body fluid,
Becoming undetached umbilically,
When it’s the size of a button mushroom,
He’ll look at all of you as his mother.
Give him some time to learn.
Learn language from sounds,
Feelings from touch.
In his third multiple of five,
When puberty begins to confront,
From places hitherto Sun hidden,
He would’nt look at all of you as his mother.
When it’s about the size of a puppy’s tail.
Give him some time to learn.
Learn expletives from language,
Female from male.
In his fourth multiple of five,
When it’s about the length of his palm,
Disobedient like a boisterous labrador,
He would look at all of you as his lovers.
The Sun rises from his navel,
And sets between his legs.
Give him some time to learn,
Learn to lech from look,
Stimulate from touch.
Between the fifth and eighth mutliple of five,
When it’s become a domestic appliance,
From the cool gadget it once you used to be,
Fatigued from myriad experiences,
He would look at only one of you as his wife.
Batting is still fun, but the strike rate isn’t there.
He now knows love from lust,
Insecurities from trust.
After his thirteenth multiple of five,
That is if he’s still around.
When it’s hung, shrunk and vestigial almost,
He would look at all of you as his daughter.
The game has become passe,
His upkeep has watered his impulses.
He’s collecting epiphanies from experiences,
Nostalgia from memories.
From a button mushroom,
To a puppy’s tail,
To palm length,
To a docile appliance
And being hung and shrunk,
It’s after all, not that hard to size up-
A man’s imagination.
On being a global individual with a local identity
I’m in a certain frame of mind at the fag end of a work day. Standing in my terrace, head’s imploding with epiphanies as waves of cold night zephyrs keep hitting against the chest. Rocketman is playing in my ears. The line “I’m not the man they think I’m at home. Oh no no no…..” play over and over, in my head. Probably because I’m living away come from home, in a new city and could use the comforts of a set of lyrical nails running over the itches of home sickness. But why was I listening to Elton John and not a familiar earworm like Tanhayee, when grappling with solitude? That’s because this song plays over an episode end of Californication, where Hank feels alone and apart from his loved ones. I simply loved Californication and maybe even ended biting up into its aura more than I could chew. As a result,I not just love Hank now, but look up to him to an extent of imitation. Scratch that, internalisation.
That’s probably why I had subconsciously come to outgrow(temporarily) the emotional referencing to Dil Chahta Hai, in a situation like this. Fake and not organic some might argue, such conscious mapping of outbursts to cultural intake. But when common parlance, cuisines and wardrobe can be susceptible to such influence, this doesn’t seem far fledged. Agreed they’re epidermal strokes, at a hardware level. Apples and oranges. An Indian in a Zara sipping a Glenlivet on the rocks is still an Indian, largely. But someone, who summons the spirits of a 1970’s composition of a British meth addict, to address his state of mind in a dingy Indian lane that resembles a dust bowl and smells like feet, after a vernacular conversation with someone close, is a creature of some transnational complexity. It’s not good or bad, organic or fake. It’s just a lot of upkeep, to keep one’s core individuality from getting coloured in a crisis of such myriad extramural choices.
Let’s now try and deconstruct something very basic, like the perception or the idea of an attractive woman and it’s systematic shift in shape and size at the hands of time and trends.
Take the times of my great grandfather, a little more than a century before. He would have assessed his wife’s appearance in comparison, to the few hundred women past their puberty in his side of the town and behaved with her in a manner that was debonair back then. Naively walked a certain way while she looked, talked a certain way, looked a certain way and smelt a certain way even, based on the collective input of men he looked up to with envy. Cinema was yet to spill over to the streets. Televisions didn’t exist. Phones were a Victorian luxury.
My grandfather’s time coincided with the advent of films into lives and popular culture in this part of the world. Singing men with shoulder length tresses were sex sirens. Railways made hitherto unconnected frontiers, affable. By the time of his wedding, the sample space to yardstick his wife would’ve grown from just the immediate routes his cycle could take him, to the adjoining towns the bus went.
By the time my parents got married, cinema had married into politics; indelibly trickling into day to day life; with tickets and votes flying congruently. Men not just had women from their vicinity to check out, but from other states and ethnicity as well. The sample pool to yardstick one’s partner had grown in size. So earlier, if a guy in Chengalpet was just exposed to women from his area, to base his attraction for a woman who gave him that funny feeling just above his navel. He now, not only had women fraternity from uptown Chennai, but from Kerala, Andhra,Karnataka, Delhi and Bombay to form a collective sample to fashion his attraction for the opposite sex along with the gyrating sirens who toyed with him from the silver screen confines. He was spoilt for choice.
Coming to think of it, I feel I would’ve been better off born a few decades earlier. Because the speed at which the world’s spinning, I just can’t keep up with, without constantly stumbling upon or spilling over, with little time for picking up or cleaning up after. I occasionally flatter myself to be this analog guy in a digital world, but that’s just euphemism for inability to cope up with the multitude of apps and networking fads that keep mushrooming every fortnight to render me a dinosaur. And let me not even begin about how screwed up it is to just find a woman attractive. Every happening place I’m in on a Saturday night, I’ve got women- indigenous and foreign. Then I’ve got actresses and models photo-bombing into my life from their carefully curated Instagram accounts. Almost each one of them looks positively minted out of gyms, hazelnut coated with absolutely no human flaw to relate to or notice, occasionally talking ironical stuff like “the joy of accepting one’s self” from surgically corrected faces. So I just can’t make up my mind on a girl’s desirability without ruminating briefly on the images of Priyanka Chopra, Ileana, Eva Mendes, Sonam Kapoor, Trisha. an ex girlfriend, Jessica Biel and a colleague. Leave alone love, I can’t afford lust at first sight. There are so many facial symmetries, so many complexions and so many body types to cross reference to find a middle point of personal taste at even such a very shallow level. I’m not just spoilt for choices, but spoilt somehow by them.
Ten years before, hunger would’ve had a simple fix- to eat. Now, the buck doesn’t stop there, it extends to “what to eat” and culminates in “where to eat”. It’s a beautiful time to live in. No two ways there. Don’t let my dogged pragmatism suggest otherwise. The idea of being a global village isn’t anymore an Utopian aspiration, it’s a tangible reality. I’m a cab ride away from Mexican food. And possibly, Tesla away from Mars. My only concern is, how does one continue to remain peaceful and rooted while walking facewards into an avalanche of options. At any given point, there’s endless content to consume, endless news to take in, endless information to process and endless possibilities to a stimulate a experience with the intellect,mind and appetite continuing to remain finite concepts.
Our core personality is an extension of our predispositions, school of thoughts, likes, dislikes and inspirations that we pick along the way. This part responds to stimuli in an indelible manner. A stain once left here, remains forever. That’s why we’re consciously molded by the society to be receptive to a certain thoughts and wary to some. This part is the sanctum sanctorum of our being, the anchor that keeps our shit together through thick and thin.
Then comes the external personality. The one that we project to the world around. This makes instant impressions, not indelibly though. This place is the combined colour of recent experiences and influences, that managed to leave a mark beyond the momentary. So it trips on Woody Allen during misanthropic phases, listens to Rahman to cheer up, wears monochromatic pastal shades to imitate David Duchovny, keeps a stuble to appear deep and commemorates a cold night with the occasional Marlboro. It then trips upon another set of personas, another season, another flavour and it becomes their collage.
The core personality doesn’t let in things that easily. In fact it shuts itself down after a point, to remain predictable and rigid. What it however takes in are strong influences along the way, that question its very fabric of being or the ones that make a convincing argument for an alternate course. The external personality is a naive and boisterous entity in comparison. Its impressionable and responds to what’s loudest, latest and relevant and assumes an accommodating form to stay relevant to a particular state of mind or a season.
The external personality is the one that’s not only just flamboyant, but more accessible from a surface level to an individual. So it barely comes as a surprise when over time, one mistakes it to be his core personality and starts making consequential decisions from here. Unlike the core, the external personality is a finite-brittle space, that tends to clog beyond a point, when confronted by a barrage of stimuli. And at this juncture, when it doesn’t know where to draw the line, come the treacherous roads to identity crisis and insecurities.
While it’s wonderful to soak in the endless possibilities that today’s world has got to offer, it becomes a responsibility in equal parts to choose as to what to let in and what to surface graze, as these seemingly innocuous experiences go on to endow us with some sensibilities that stay with us for time to come. With habits, cultures, practices and influences from every nook and corner of the world making a steady influx into our living rooms, we’re going to remain inevitable global individuals. Knowing indulgence from immersion; imitation from immersion and inspiration from imitation would go a long way to allow one to have his voice, amidst the cacophony.
global, stay local. English.
Not so bad to listen to english songs, inspirations good. That can scale up, imitation not.
Nothing wrong.
Crazy stupid thing called love
To some the destination,
To some the vehicle.
To some the reason to live,
To some the reason to quit.
To some an obsession,
To some absolution.
To some a blind religion,
To some a ponzi scheme.
Where some broken hearts get fixed,
While some good ones get broken.
To some an autumnal zephyr,
To some a ruthless storm.
To some, a blissful blindness,
To some, an impending eye opener.
The thing that renders tectonic plates maternal,
Making countries out of land masses,
Idols out of stones,
And memories out of wrappers.
Wonder Woman
I’m not sure, but I guess it was sometime in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century; feminism wasn’t a fad or even an afterthought for that matter. The country was preoccupied with a different ism. It eventually went on to get its independence, but women like my grandmother didn’t get theirs from the excuse for farm animals that their husbands were. Irrespective of flags, their lives continued to be at half mast. Like a delicate doll dealt from one monkey to another, my grandma was short-sold in the marital market by her father(of sixteen children) to a man with an attention span of a three year old in a candy shop, who went on to give her four children. Those times, even if a marriage wasn’t made in the heaven exactly, it was meant to last for a lifetime. The painful idealization, vanilla mythology and the Chinese whispering septuagenarians, ensured that a woman endured,even if she didn’t enjoy. So even before my grandma could come to terms with her womanhood, motherhood had confronted her with a child per limb with a man who had abandoned boat.
Carrying way more than her shoulder could bear, with no real help in vicinity than concerned elders and ancient places of worship, anyone’s mind would’ve scurried to a drastic way out of the purgatory life had become. But not my grandma’s. Whatever doesn’t break one, makes them stronger. She became a stronger person who learnt to make lemonade out of the limes thrown at her. She singlehandedly went on to raise her boys into decent men, who would never be how her husband was to her and them, to their wives and children. Not a remarkable feat normally, but from where she got it done and how she did it, it’s an incredible journey of a single woman through an uphill path strewn with insult, taunt and chauvinism in every twist and turn. By the time my generation had begun, she had mentally turned into this zen like war veteran, wary of the crowd of ersatz relatives and acquaintances that had conspicuously bulged in size. Most of these anecdote sharing well wishers in attendance at the peak, were somehow coincidentally absent at the foothills. Her wounds had healed. But she had hardened from within. She could forgive, but never really get to forget.
Pride gushes through the nostalgic arteries every time I reminisce of my childhood that eventually became hers too- growing up to her gibberish, sleeping next to her, calling her fat, the jawarsi payasam, being fed while watching TV, those few fables that were on infinite loop, the solicitous commentary during movies, the hush hush manner in which she kept helping others. And almost forgot those clumsy diabetic break-ins to the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat sweets. My house might be under constant CCTV surveillance with a guard on the gate now, but somehow life felt the safest with a fat old woman overseeing it.
We see the sun rise from our sides of the sky, to kiss the morning sky saffron. Some of us from the sea, some from a sea of buildings and those with the jogging pants, through a bunch trees in a park. Although an epic event for a planet to find compassion in a distant star, the everydayness lets it remain slighted. All of us have such Suns in our lives, who shine on us while we continue to take them for granted, till an eclipse comes to wake us. My grandma was one such Sun from a early horizon. She will continue to be a part of my life as a deity. As a guardian angel. My family’s very own iron lady.
ashgoodasitgets 