Witness

There are moments to like or dislike

Or stoically watch the same thing;

Be it a passage of music unlike

any heard before, or a painting. 

I am, the unchanged I but I

am inconstant in my becoming. 

From a lowly pit to exalted high, 

like an onion subject to reckoning. 

Who is avenged, not I, but I

just watch my self-suffering, 

like idol adored for its idiotic smile

before a believer lamenting. 🌹

Tongueage

If we expose ourself to any language we learn it. An illiterate beggar on the road is more likely to surprise us with a turn of phrase which a scholar may not. It is the same reason why an ordinary German may know fluent German than a foreign scholar of the same language. It is because language thrives on the open streets, not in closed biblioteques. 

Why we accept the elitist opinions on the beauty of language is beyond me. A workable grammar, proper syntax & a reasonable vocabulary are the survival kit of any language. What gives language its vitality is its easy use with the purpose of carrying a thought across and not ornamental doodah! It is not what the 'Shastrys' of language claim and whose advise is taken by the Goverments in their official documents, circulars, etc. It is not a living language but a pile of dead bodies of words, put together to sound officious only to be, more likely, misunderstood. On Indian railway platforms you read notices with words like " नि:शुल्क" for instance. Most people who travel are not pundits or poets or logophiles. They are ordinary people in a hurry to catch the next train to their destination. Platform notices and other public notifications should serve as tools for easy communication & not impress with some idiotically inflated word which not all are likely to understand. It is because such words are not prevalent or even in day-to-day use. 

Poets, especially Mir Taqi Mir, who is called "ख़ुदा-ए-सुख़न" (God of poetry) used commonplace words in some of his most celebrated couplets. 

"सिरहाने 'मीर' के कोई न बोलो

अभी टुक रोते रोते सो गया है"

See that word 'TuK'. It is vernacular and it is that word which has made the shér famous! 

Javed Akhtar has told of his father, the celebrated Janisar Akhtar, telling him that is is easy to write with difficult words but difficult to write with easy. 

This fallacy seems to be universal. Pakistan made Urdu the national language but Pakistanis are obsessed with the exercise of infusing Persian and Arabic words in their Urdu. Just listen to the new field marshal Munir speaking at public meetings! His lips swear by Pakistan but his rooh, soul, seems to crave to fly out of his body and hover over the Arabian skies! 

I recently watched Dr. Arfa Syeda Zehra in a video saying that now-a-days Pakistanis are making Urdu more & more Farsi. (Rather farcical, methinks! ) 

Similarly, Ashok Vajpeyi, admittedly very eloquent and learned, uses Hindi in a manner that may be understood by only the educated elite from the Hindi belt. Sanskritisation of prakrit (which means unrefined! ) to me seems to fail in recognizing the very raison d'être of the natural reasons why a khadi-boli stood shoulder to shoulder with the classical languages. Tamil, debatably the only old-world language which has evolved through centuries with a regular maintainance of her vitality, has successfully retained her quality because it admits the seepage between the use of language in the various sections of her populace. There is a give and take. It is this barter, the natural exchange without imposition, which makes a tongue thrive. 

Some learned fellow in the aechelons of the ruling party has the wish to unify Indian subcontinent with one language and he feels it should be Hindi. The people, the end-users of language do not feel comfortable with this proposal. I am with the sentiment of the people. #Tamil Nadu for one, should NOT accept this proposal. So also west #Bengal, Assam and other states with literature comparable to the best in the world. If the nation wants to unite on the basis of one language then the nation must decide, the people should decide, not some official with his private, hidden agenda. RSS is trying to revive Sanskrit. With all due respect to its pliant, rigid classisism and the elitist aura, sanskrit will not regerminate in modern climate. We have only to go into the reasons why such a great language dwindled in the first place in a nation with such diversity as India. Diversity cannot, by definition, admit uniformality. Diversity must remain; it must be prioritized because it is more adaptive to vitality within its elements. For instance in a rose garden not all roses are of the same subspecies. We have red, yellow, white, blue, magenta,crimson, scarlet, salmon and even the rare black roses on display. Imagine a rose garden with one hybrid tea rose spread across furlongs. It may look fine but it may not have the sense in which Gertrude Stein said, "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose..."In this context Stein's line seems apt because a rose cannot be merely representational.  Seeing one rose is not enough to experience the essence of rose yet a rose in any shape and colour and fragrance is a rose. So it is this rose and that rose together gives you the broad picture of rose. That must be understood. A forest has more vitality than a laid out jardine. It needs maintaining. A forest, on the other hand, is best maintained if left to its own resources. 

The values which hitherto fore held things together are collapsing. Perhaps, letting go of the old is advisable to usher in the new, but right now the chaos makes deciding difficult. 🌹

Dream or a mare?

I sleep deep & so don't remember dreams. I dreamt last night and on waking up past 3.40, remembered parts of it. Decided to write it down lest I forget. 

I was lost in a village, deep inside Tamil Nadu. 

Much of the dream is forgotten. Don't know why or how I went to that village. Perhaps in passing, got down in that village mistakenly. 

It was a hamlet through which buses passed. There was a temple, small shops selling groceries, etc. It was difficult to communicate with the people because the people there spoke only Tamil & I don't speak Tamil. I have no phone with me, didn't remember any number to call, didn't see a post office or a government building and I had no cash! Had no idea what the name of the place was. One or two people I tried to ask for help waved me off. I wasn't looking like a beggar, I'm sure, not shabby in appearance but I didn't speak Tamil! That was the only reason why they didn't speak to me. 

Remember walking on the same street again and again, looking for a way out. I wanted to be comforted by some familiarity. I was hungry but moreover, I wanted to know the name and location of that god forsaken, damned hamlet! I roamed the streets, a few times pathways which led me to empty, uncultivated fields. I just roamed, trying to find some sign which gave me an idea. People didn't entertain me so I stopped trying to ask them, 

I saw at some point two boys of about ten playing along as they returned to their homes. I approached the boys and asked the one slightly fairer than the other whether he spoke any English. Yes he said. I wanted to know so much within a few minutes so as to not delay the boys from going home. The first thing I asked was the name of the temple. He told me some name which sounded like "Chincinati". Then I asked him the name of that place but before the boy could reply, I woke up. 

So weird! 

Drawing... 1392025

 

Monikers

The habit some people have of giving funny names to passers by.

 There were two cousins, Sanjay and Mahesh, who stood at the window of their house and called passers-by all sorts of strange names in Konkani. Something about their appearance made them come out with the most ridiculous names. A short, roundish man waking with a limp would be, for instance, "polio-pedha". 😄Sanjay was the one who shouted out aloud so that people would actually hear. At times he would address the person. The best part is, some of the passers smiled at Sanjay's mischief but most just ignored him. Mahesh, his cousin would usually simply laugh, holding his palms across his mouth in order to suppress his own laughter. Sometimes he would improve on his cousin's suggestive name. I used to watch them doing it.  The trait developed in me with good fertilizer of idleness & productive alluvium of boredom. 

I have christened many school mates in this fashion. A classmate of mine, Vallabh (we did KG to secondary schooling together), was "Vakl " meaning spectacles. He wasn't bespectacled; there simply was something about his frame and character which was very 'Vaklesque'. He came to mind early this morning. 

Devendra, another classmate, was "Amo". Those names stuck and those two, I remember, were called by those names just short of being official! When Devendra was to be included in the basketball team for instance, the coach would say, " OK, here's the first five: Nemi, Reza, Edwin, Amo & Shiva."

After decades, the other day my friend Mahendra gave me a call out of the blue from a bar in Panjim. After the initial huuhu-haaha, he said, hang on speak to your friend and gave Devendra his phone to talk to me. "Hallo",  I heard Devendra's distinct voice & I literally shouted with a pleasant surprise, for he was the last person I expected. "AVVOISSSS, "AMO" mare!!!”. 

He seemed surprised that I had remembered him after all those years. I had names for my women friends as well. One fish seller was named 'Kharén', (dried fish). Another one was RravLuk, a small hopper, believed to eat human hair, etc. 

It is not unique. I have heard many do it but not openly. Some of my friends have the habit and I have heard some of them whisper under their breath monikers given by them to others.

I myself was called by many names, right from Maruti, Mungerilal and what not. Some stuck, others didn't. My friends often made me believe that I was better then what I was. I played along. I made people laugh; if there wasn't that, life might have been not worth living considering my personal history. 

Not that it matters but someday I must pen an autobiographical. May be my nonchalance was a bluff! 

Bal-mukund

 This morning a bird fell from the sky with a damaged wing. Not a fledgling but not fully an adult, a common Indian hawk. That's the generic name. On refining my search it is most likely to be a common hawk cuckoo, 'Brainfever' as it is popularly known owing to its call. 

(This is not Bal-mukund but a common Hawk cuckoo"brainfever" ) 

I'm not into ornithology. I like looking at birds. They are an industrious lot. Peacocks and other "elite" birds are fine because they are bestowed with glorious plumages, breath taking coloring, some with purposeful, strong beaks and others with fascinating crests. But a bird without beauty is beautiful too. I am intrigued by babblers. What do they have, really, just one indeterminate tawny color with some variation – like an embarrassing consolation! They keep babbling and they are busy picking this and that from here and there. A babbler is the underdog and I am the supporter of any underdog.

I used to take lunch at a garden cafe called The Neem Tree. There is in the garden a tree (don't know what tree) with intertwined branches. Many babblers get busy there, making commotion but a tolerable one. If you listen it doesn't jar. It's a short & sharp, high pitched but rather soft chirping. And it is ceaseless!

The babblers come closer when people eat there. On my lunch days I used to feed them sometimes. Just hold grains in my palm and wait for the babblers to pick from it. I have noticed that some other eaters fed them. An occasional maina with another for company waits at a distance wary of humans. Crows are even more suspicious but not babblers. They flocked close to my plate and took food grains from me. Feeding those birds is one of the most shantiful * feelings in my experience. I have strayed a bit. This is about ''Bal-mukund", the CHC which fell from the sky. 

It made shrieking noises, of pain and fear, when I picked him. I brought him and made him temporary hospice in an Amazon carton. A soft cloth spread, some water provision and food (cooked rice & some meat). Except for checking on it from time to time I haven't disturbed it. Tonight is for Bal-mukund to get acclimatized to his new surroundings. He is calming down. When I tried feeding him with my hands he pecked at my fingers, taking the morsel but shaking it off from the beak. Droppings suggest that he eats sparingly. As the evening fell I cleared the food but left water there, made sure that he's safe. He seems ok, a little sad perhaps and may be lonely. 

Tomorrow we shall tend to his broken wing. 

(*The word "Shantiful" is my contribution to English. It means peaceful*) 

____________________________________

             —Sunday 8.40 pm.—

                    BULLETIN

It is with a heavy heart I announce that the common hawk cuckoo breathed its last. 

 

Brief encounter

Luca and Jean Pierre were seated bare chested on a rock, basking, sipping beer from the bottle. Bala saw them. 

He rolled a joint quickly & started walking in their direction. 

As he approached them, he lit the joint. The scent of hashish mixed with the marine sea-smell briefly soothed his nose before disappearing in the breeze. Bala was looking towards the sea, not the firangies, deliberately, because he wanted them to smell his joint but not him looking at them. He wanted a conversation with them. He wasn't a drug peddler. Bala was curious about white people like his million other countrymen. 

He blew a large cloud of smoke and hoped the scented cloud would target the European noses. It did. Luca and Jean Pierre suddenly acted like two Salukis in the sands of the Sahara. They sat up and sniffed at the air, their necks straining. Bala, without looking at them saw, his peripheral vision informed him that his scent-cloud had achieved its objective. He blew another. 

The hash was potent. The French 'saluki' used his sight to locate the source and whispered to Luca and they both began peering at the approaching figure of Bala. 

When Bala reached closer he released one more cloud and appearing as disinterested as he could, casually looked at the two white men. The two foreigners smiled and Luca waved. "Ciao", he said. Bala didn't smile. He didn't want to seem interested. He just made a peace sign and crossed them. But his ears were strained—he was expecting an "excuse me". 

"Excuse me", he heard it. He let it be repeated before turning, taking care not to look first thing at the caller. Instead he looked around and then at the foreigners. The Europeans made to get up but bala stopped them with his hand and suggested with signs that they need not take the trouble, instead he would come to them. He approached the boulder on which the pair was haunched. He made sure that his eagerness to meet them didn't give out too much in his expression. 

When he was close the foreigners held out their hands to shake his. Bala shook hands with them. 

"Ello! said Jean Pierre; Luca said "allo", betraying their nationalities. Bala shook those sturdy palms in which his own looked like an echidna in cold. "Hello", said he and waited for them to lead the conversation. 

" My nem is Jeanperre and zis is my frãnd Luca", Jean Pierre introduced in a typical French accent. Bala just said hello. He didn't tell them his name, revealing in turn his national custom. Indians don't always follow the norm of telling their name when the others tell theirs. 

"Nice théy, no? " Jean said and Luca agreed. To Bala it was just a day, not to be taken notice of and though he didn't understand why exactly  the day was nice, he said yes. "Yaya, vérry nice..."

"You haar from 'iere? ", Luca asked in keeping with the Italian manner of aspirating the first 'a' of the word 'are'. All three men gave away their nationalities through their accents. 

"I yum living here only but my native is another estate", Bala said. 

" Oh nice. You are a directeur! " 

"No, nono, not director. I yum Bala only. Bissness, bissness. "

"You are a businessman? "

"Yes yes". Then after a pause he asked, " Whatabotyou? 

"I am peintre et Luca is schoolture"

Bala didn't understand but he pretended he did and said, "wo! "

Luca wanted to know about hashish More than about Bala. With his Roman pragmatism Luca came straight to the point when he said that they were looking to buy hashish. "You know where I buy 'ashish?, he asked. 

Bala looked around more to heighten the suspense than with genine caution. He nodded & said that it was "verrydificult. Police peoples catching. Ayyo bayam! " 

"What is Ayobayam?" Jean-pierre asked but Luca cut in and said that they would give a cut to Bala. Bala wanted to act pricy. He was not a dealer, but a cut was tempting. He took out from his pocket a plastic pouch in which there was a rectangle of hashish. He fished it and broke it into a pea size ball. 

"I give sampletaste for you. You like, you buy? "

"Okay " The salukis barked in unison. 

"Cigrett? " Bala asked with that nonchalance of the man in control. 

"Yes" said Jean-Pierre. He took a pack of cigarettes from a pouch on his waist, took out two cigarettes, gave one to Bala, lit one himself & started smoking. Bala took the cigarette and hooked it behind his ear and he began meshing the goli. Both Jean Pierre and Luca watched silently like good students. They were used to rolling their joints from morning to night but right now they were watching Bala as if to learn if there was a detail there which they could benefit from. There was always a scope for improvement, even in rolling a joint! An Indian in their place would pretend to know. There was less pretense in a Westerner.

Bala softened the goli, wiped his fingers to his trouser. Then he pulled the cigarette out from his ear and began emptying the tobacco onto his palm. When half the tobacco was on his palm, he emptied the rest behind him, blew into the empty cigarette shell put it carefully in his shirt pocket vertically and began mixing hash & tobacco with his thumb. 

"So, what estate business you do? Jean Pierre asked taking a sip from the bottle of beer. Bala looked at the beer, wanting some and when Jean Pierre held the bottle for him he shook his head, declining. Although he wanted the beer, his caste confusion forbade it. An Indian in his own mind is always purer than the other man. This subliminal response cuts across faiths. It gets more pronounced when you ascend the ladder of caste ; the purest is the Brahmin. 

The joint had been rolled. Putting the final twist at the tip giving it a wick like appearance Bala handed over the joint to Jean Pierre. Jean Pierre put out the fag he was smoking and put the stub in a bag he had kept in his pouch only for butts. (He disposed off the butts of the day in a public dump or a waste basket as he entered his hotel room every evening.) It was discipline. A negligible little detail which impressed IF one noticed it at all. In India You just tossed shit everywhere. Bala didn't even notice Jean Pierre doing it. 

Jean Pierre brought out his lighter and gave it to Luca along with the joint. The guy was a painter. Painters are famous for making a mess. A painter is an iconoclast, ill mannered, indisciplined, a footloose fancy free maverick but here was Jean Pierre, a painter who was conscious of the environment. He collected his own cigarette butts and disposed of them! Significant insignificance of imperceptible details! 

Luca lit the joint took a big drag and passed it to Bala. Bala signaled that he didn't want and nodded at Jean Pierre. Jean Pierre took a drag. 

"Incroyable!!" He exclaimed truthfully. " Ziss is véry good!" He took one more puff and gave the joint to Luca. Then he turned to Bala and asked, "You sell 'ash? " Bala shook his head muttering "ayyo! " He said but he would introduce them to the dealer.

"Finishfinishfinish.Then I take you to the man selling maal" Bala said. 

'Ow mush moneé? '

Bala shrugged & told him that he would do the talking. " They cheatting vellakaras. I talk, you chumma waiting, vokay?" It was an order of sorts which ended with a question mark. Jean Pierre managed to understand. Okay he said looking at Luca who passed the fag end of the joint to Jean Pierre. Jean Pierre finished the joint, stubbed it and carefully put it away in his butt-bag, took a gulp at his beer and kept the bottle carefully behind a tree nearby. Turning to Bala he said, "allon-y! 

Luca got up, then Bala and they began walking towards the town. 

The cat

 A black cat has made Parul's varanda her home since about a month. She is healthy and seems to have no abnormalities in her behaviour. Parul despite her allergies to dander has began feeding her. 

Since a few days another, a replica of the 'Parul's' cat, was spotted lurching in the bushes. This one was aggressive. At a closer look I saw that she had abrasion on her neck. She was attacked by an animal or possibly a human. This cat was in need, but I felt that cat lovers should be concerned before me. I'm a dog fellow, not cat-crazy. 

 Last week my dogs tugged at their leads, making me look and I saw that the aggressive cat was hissing at them from under a bush close by. I threw a tiny pebble at it but it remained stay put. I took the dogs away with some force and forgot about it– I have little interest in cats. 

Last night I saw the cat curled up in a corner looking frail. It appears that her time has come; she's going to die. The year end of 2023 saw a cat endemic that killed many cats in this town. Now cats dying seems commonplace. 

This morning the cat was still in the same place, unresponsive to my curious dogs. We, my dogs and I, came indoors with urgency. 

That poor cat is dying and though her frame is where I saw her this morning, she has pervaded my conscience! I'm a few meters away, knowing that she needs help, ready to bear the burden of guild rather than try to call a vet. Right now all manner of philosophical reasoning like purpose of that cat's brief life, purpose of my life and of life in general is having a ball in my mind's ball-room! Something like guilt is appearing along the edges of my reason : I am being torn between inferences of morality and the impersonal regard of equanimity. 

I think I'll use the Ganga-jal which my friend brought from Kashi when he visited Banaras. Probably add milk to Ganga, offer it to the unresponsive cat and prey! 

What else can we do? Vets SUCK at their job! The best is to allay your guilt for,  as Faiz says, 

"और भी दुख हैं ज़माने में मोहब्बत के सिवा

राहतें और भी हैं वस्ल की राहत के सिवा"

                            😇

                          —+—

Forty Four dusty almanacs

A trivial page to the world,

one less important than an obituary,

where warm smiles are caught

in grey pictures of people once living and warm, now cold and dead.

That page is my residence.

Beneath forty four dusty almanacs

scattered across time’s table

and the passage of years.

minute

                               

 I waited for it to go, 

 the minute. The long minute. 

A sky-wide moment, 

Just a minute. 

Moment

Like the last orange

On an impersonal grey, 

A sinking sun-curl

Far far away. 

Soon the night will fall, 

It will gobble-up all. 

Rest, with her black spell, 

man, to wake another day. 

Barrier

An airy quality buoys me up

Barring my brave plunge

Into the abyss of love....

Bull-frogs in local pubs

Where are my childhood heroes?
Tall giants all,
Bull-frogs in local pubs, 
Bards who sang
Adventure and heroism
From far-out lands,
On sandy beaches drew
Makalu and Manaslu;
Or sitting on dunes
Dream again of oceans
Where they said they swam
With silver mermaids
And chased white unicorns
In Takamanohara.

I grew wings 

On their dreamings... 

But today
Where are they
now that I wish
to compare my myth 

With their fibs?

Heard you have gone

I heard that you have gone

To join our ancestors.

We will see you from now on

In memories or in pictures.

All these odd years You were 

to me but loss... Yes, loss! 

Now as my own living wears, 

from vacant fields across 

I hear your cheerless call.

Sometimes I longed to refashion

a happier you; Freeze time up 

but all I remember is tension —

An irredeemable pall rises up, 

A cold pity, without a good reason. 

Paper Boats

Parting is a gift.

If part You must 

Like ashes and dust

Then part unbroken.

It is an Art.

**

Funerals are

Those long rituals

The needless drama

to drop a body to a pit's

hungry stones some bones

**

And let's now come to you and I. 

We drifted apart like paper boats

in puddles dried in sudden sun 

after a  very good monsoon

.

Quarter Town

This Quarter town

And half a village

Cannot be my own

 But its fusty

Insular air helps me

 Dream better. 

Pity and dignity

The twin crow

Mascots 

On every door

Hung below

A humdrum stretch

Of lackluster sky.

Only so 

this Quarter town

and half a village

Cannot be my own

The Pachyderm

A picture

Elephant

Even smaller

Than a hopper

Then was huge-

When I was

Small

And I saw

A real beast

In my youth

As it whipped

Dreamily-

Its eyes

Two pools

Of jungle-pain-

Its leafy food

Against

Its pillar-legs.

My thoughts

Were then

About the taming

Of big beasts.

I saw the other

Day

In mirror

My eyes

A forest anguish

Brimming

Just besides

The skin

Around'em

Sun cracked

With fifty years

Of wrestling

With life

And it

Resembled

The pachyderm.

The anguish of villainy

Phayllus

 The picture above is me in character:

"IN EGYPT THEY HAVE OTHER NEEDS THAN OURS. 

THERE LUST'S ALMOST AS OPEN AS FEASTING IS; 

SCIENCE AND POETRY AND LEARNED TASTES 

ARE NOT CONFINED TO BOOKS, BUT LIFE'S AN ART. 

THERE ARE FAINT MYSTERIES, THERE ARE LURID POMPS; 

STRONG PHILTRES PASS AND COVERT DRUGS. DESIRE 

IS MARRIED TO FULFILMENT, PAIN'S ENJOYED 

AND LOVE SOMETIMES PROCURES HIS PREY FOR DEATH..." 
                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                             - Phayllus.

SRI AUROBINDO -
'Rodogune', a play in five acts

 Phayllus (pronounced Faayoos), is the central villain in Sri Aurobindo's tragedy, "Rodogune". In the play this character is a Greco-Syrian commoner whose ambition raises him to the post of a chancellor in Post Alexandrian Seleucid empire, in the court of Nicanor. Phayllus, with his ambitious machinations becomes the cause of the ruin of the empire.

In around August 2012 when we began reading the play little did it occur to me that impersonating this character by carrying him inside for about four months would be most painful.  

Phayllus began getting vitalized roughly around October. He began having thoughts of his own and I experienced depressions. I experienced a heightened persecution which made me remain aloof and feel comfortable in the company of certain kind of people. I felt judged all the time. I struggled to keep appearances. A fellow actor on two different occasions during rehearsals asked me whether it was difficult but it felt uncomfortable to admit to being so completely possessed by an evil entity created by the fancy of a playwright. I have even scoffed at my partner's theory in the past that I 'bring my characters home'.

I have played villains before. Caliban and Claudius, two Shakespearean villains from two of his solid plays, Tempest and Hamlet respectively, were terrible although Caliban had a certain innocence about his crass nature.

On the first run-through of Rodogune I could not bear it and I confessed to being depressed. I was surrounded by many kind people who understood the travails of transformation. Many of my co-actors and the crew sympathized ( although some did snigger behind my back saying that I was craving attention!) and things got a little easier.

In January this year, Phayllus was exorcized. 

I have decided however, not to play negative characters. I realize that there is nothing in my physic which justifies heroic personality, but there are innumerable grades of characters between a hero and a villain, good character rolls, like the one I am going to play tonight. It is the character of a good doctor on a ship - the only "undamaged character on the ship", to quote my director Paul Blanchflower - and the play is called "Sorcery at Sea".

There are other plays in the offing and the characters I am asked to play are all good guys, Thank God!

I am no Sisyphus

I am no Sysiphus but I 

 roll a stone, 

 Laugh, keep my time, 

long for myself alone.

Morning vision of BalaKrishna

Bala-Krishna. Depicting Krishna beautifully is to start on the wrong footing. Krishna is experience.  One must key him manifest, not labour with mind to make a "beautiful" picture. 

However he decides to come, he is bound to be delightful. Isn't that why he is Vasudeva? 

Two things

1

A German acquaintance died yesterday and as death always does,  she flung at me the same old surprise - a vacant recurring thought that he whom I so often saw on roads, a one purposed anti-pesticides man is no more! The  campaigner will no longer ride on his '0 emission' tricycle along the dusty roads. The cashew patch which he tended since a little over a decade near my house will feel empty. While he was alive, till the day before yesterday in fact, those were trees which yielded organic nuts. Now, with this hero fallen, they may yield the yearly, if not worthless, unworthy fruit.

Death of an activist, whatever the scale of his activism, leaves behind a lacuna until something more exciting comes along to divert us. Yesterday when I read of his demise in a brief circular I made a mental note to meet his partner, a Mangalorean,  lover of stray dogs and a staunch  but subdued activist herself. I saw her standing in the shade of the organic cashew stall by the edge of the patch. She was with one of her dogs, a kind eyed black and white Besenji-like Indian mongrel.

 She looked collected. "How are you holding up?" I asked her. She smiled and said that she was better, but that if I said anything wrong at that moment she might break down. "Anything right, for that matter, too" she said, making me consider not making small talk. But then she began talking herself. She recounted the last few hours when her friend for the last 20 years was still living. It was a feeling account, of good deeds mostly, of her friend. She referred to him as an artist and I remembered a scrap metal installation he had made bang in front of the new town hall. That wasn't a long time ago.

He will be ' buried', she told me, on Earth day, which falls on Sunday, the 22nd. Quite fitting  for an avid naturalist to be inhumed even in today's trend of cremations, I thought. Like "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" of old. And She insisted that I visit his corpse in the 'farewell room' at the health center. She said that her friend looked serene and peaceful. I left her with her dog for the farewell room about 15 minutes ride away.

In the farewell room his body lay in a glass casket. The air conditioned room was fragrant with various bouquets and flowers. The picture of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother by H. Cartier Bresson, taken when he was in India in 1949-50, seemed to be the only permanent presence there in our world of fleeting forms and things. There was a white man sitting in meditation. At some point in time he would break his meditation and go about his business, whatever it is. He seemed to be one of those principled foreigners who come to India for 'right reasons'.

***

2

Of late I am reluctant to go to functions. It seems there is hardly anything novel. I am so tired of vernissages and public gatherings that I choose to borrow English and American TV serials in bulk from our library and watch them till almost dawn. Their serried, sequential order seems to satisfy my old world logic. I know that the serials are humbug but they move before my eyes better than the stiff public display of concealed compromises we humans choose to flaunt as our success stories. Watching the false as real is better than watching the real knowing it is false. In the former there are no expectations of me; in the latter there is nothing but expectations...

I guess I am becoming a loner! And quite understandably because the Himachala or The Arunachala still beckon the deeper me. I think that I belong there.

Lili

                             Lili 

The last howl from the cross

The painting above is by F.N.Souza. 

O time, slow thee thy pace

O time now slow down
Your phrenetic pace
Else bring not along
opportunity
To my refractory
Door

Ceaseless and pulsing
Your patient knocks
Trip compellingly
My circumspection
Each reluctant step
A lure

A sure circumstance
Of death and You O Time!

Selvaraj

Selvaraj 

Diwali

Tomorrow, the 15th, is the festival of lamps. Tonight they will burn the effigy of Narakasura, the demon of Hell. When the evil Hell-power represented in Narakasura will be destroyed lamps will be lit everywhere, marking the advent of a new dawn, a new beginning and enlightenment. All darkness will be dispelled; light will be ushered in and life will be "even as in heaven"...Well!

I have not celebrated Diwali after 1973. There is the usual greeting thing and other routine stuff but I really don't remember being enthusiastic about festivals like Christmas and Diwali post 1973. There was always something to mend instead of celebrating. However, that never prevented me from drinking a peg too many on Narakasura nights or on the 46  Xmas eves I have lived so far. I think that was because on such occasions there were friends to drink with well into the deep of the night celebrating Diwali. I usually hooked up with this one or that, depending on who was there, and drank to feel better. I usually ended up feeling worse, but that is besides the point.

This may present me as an alcoholic, which I am not.

Wait, what am I saying? This is all wrong because after coming to live down south I have stopped doing that. I do not have so many friends who drink, nor folks who are willing to stay up on festive nights with me. They tuck their dreams in their pillows and dream-sleep while I sit with my mending or read fat books waiting to sleep.

I will never understand why atheists all over celebrate festivals . They are associated with Gods usually. The  nonbelievers everywhere- the French, the Italians, the Americans...even the socialist states importunately celebrate fests which have roots deep in religion. Moreover, the roots are more into religious myth rather than fact, so why do these high priests of reason and sworn analysts of Truth celebrate an occasion associated with the one they want to prove does not exist? These uneasy questions are rarely asked. It is an indication that man is naturally a self-indulging spoiled brat of God our father. Whenever he has a chance to fling the moral clamp out the window he does so without ado, keeping all the goodies. What he ends up throwing is God, for in all this the only 'baddy' seems to be God, poor fellow !; everything else is good, the wine & the women & the dance & the shindig.

The hypocrisy of it all annoys me. Just to protest against that I shall light one single  oil-lamp on my doorstep tonight and pray privately to God. I shall sincerely ask him to heal our planet and ask him to make me a better human being.

Some ptngs

, I 

Pen and ink

Boy with house

Weirdo

Drawing

Owl

Migration

Head

Sphynx

Transplanting

Man-Rooster

Taming Chance

There is a painter friend of mine who has gone all abstract. (read nuts) He has strength, but he is not a strong painter, according to me. He is aware that I don't particularly like his kind of work: it is serendipitous.Not that it does not work, only I tend to see almost nothing of the man in his work. Besides, he has a scattered sort of continuity to his work. One of his works in room A, for instance, could be quite removed from another of his in room B. Nothing wrong with that , I know, but it leaves me with a unfulfilled sense of that something which is so vital to the seeing of art.

But these are times when absence of virtue in a painter can be convincingly proposed as his very quality. In other words, a chap who can not draw puts up his bad work as his original 'style'! (reminds me of a remark this same abstraction-ist had made regarding someone who could not draw. "...forget a straight line, but he can not draw even a crooked one" He'd said. Made me laugh that, but all this is besides the point.) The point I am making here is that there are artists who follow their experience with admirable honesty, "with a dangerous disregard for money", yet there are others who chance upon something that works once, and since it worked for them once, they capitalize on it and make it part of their natural repertoire. Taming chance is what I call it. Chance was an important part of a certain phase of Dada, the art movement. Arp and others used this gimmick to make a statement. Up-till there it is acceptable to me because Dadas and the Surrealists were exploring possibilities of language. Besides, their manifesto justified the Gimmick. My abstraction-ist friend's case however is, personally, unacceptable. This man has indeed taken up the entire field of abstraction - Gorky, Man Ray, De Kooning,Kandinsky, Hartung, Gaitonde, Raza, Kolte - they are all there in some corner of his work, along with other marks and dents - and is freaking out a free-for-all-dance in that huge ball-room called ABSTRACT ART. There is no appraisal, no self doubt, no analysis. The only thing that matters is whether he can sell or not. He sells, and going by his telling, he sells quite some. He seems happy and confident. That is what matters in the final analysis, for at the end of even the most selfish act on the part of man, he should be happy. Otherwise, what the hell. *** A crow lay her egg in a kite's nest. The eggs hatched and a crow among kites was born. Little did he know of his origin, his identity. He was happy and hunted and grew up with kites. He even learned to soar high up in the sky and on spotting a prey could swoop down upon it quite like a kite. It was a time when there were no mirrors. But one day the crow and his sibling kites were made aware of their identities. It was a fox, let's say, in keeping with the tradition of tale-telling, who told them of their difference. They did not believe the fox, but agreed to follow it to a lake to see their reflection in the clear water. One by one they sat on the rock in the mid stream and each looked at his image in the water. Each one found nothing wrong. They were feathered brothers of a feather. The fox realised that unless they compared each with the other, the difference would not be noticed. It wanted to make them all look at once at the images of each other, so it asked them to fly some distance right above the water and plunge . "look," it said, "at your image as you fall. Look at your bodies and the crow's." The birds did as they were told and noticed that the crow was very different indeed from the rest of them.

The story above can take a turn in any direction: Propaganda is like that. It sees reality as a coin with two sides. The flipping of it is not left to chance, but to a careful appraisal of social or political climate. Motive determines the presentation of art as ART or saleable art object. When latest research in particle physics suggests an implicit subjectivity present in matter, who is to say what is what? But then, why define and categorize, set aside and compartmentalize? The need in the mind to deduce seems to be losing its hold on things. Or is it? The utility of this seems to me to come to an agreement in order to share our common heritage, simply for the joy of living together. May be man has come full circle with his mental approach. May be he needs another tool of inquiry, for it seems the age of reason is coming to an end. May be we also need a new field to inquire into. Spirituo-materialism may be? Or materiospirituality? For that we will need something else, not mind, but perhaps, Supermind. Till that happens unlimited abstraction has a life-line,. May it live long and my friend too, who is quite a likeable chap. Only, I wish he made his point a little less aggressively.

Acquarelle jottings

The swimming pool at Perola Do Mar in Candolim is a place where day trippers come to swim. Families with young come and break every rule in the resort. They drink and eat at the swimming pool, dive, make noise and they leave filthy plastic all over, after chucking their packages of chips and things. Most can't swim at all, but a dip in the pool is a must. It is cool. This chap here in blue was there, literally like the pillar of strength to his son, who was so scared of getting into the pool that he remained sitting on his dad's shoulders all the while they were in the pool. I saw how dead statues can become objects of admiration and worship to angels. The size is all that mattered: The dead statue is BIG and the angels small. ...And I saw a cock in Fontainhas. He has a personality. He reminded me of my years in Fontainhas between 1970 -85. Not much has changed, I think, except economic conditions. People in Mala have become cockier! That one is a thing that comes again and again. Sometimes it is a tiger who is carrying his belongings and his house and wife and all, other times it is people or birds who carry their homes on their heads or backs. I had seen Luis Bunuel's film-don't remember which- but in it, there is a rich man who is so tired of his way of being that he goes on a holiday. He carries with him a sac of his burden. After checking in a hotel, he rests, freshens up and free from his burden, decides to go for a walk to explore the town a bit. But as soon as he steps on the street a funny thing happens. The sac of his burden clings to his back. That, I thought then, was witty cinema. You can't rid of your worries by escaping them. A friend of mine has become a succesful lawyer. I met him on a Sunday. Court were closed due to elections etc. and although it was a Sunday this lawyer friend of mine was wearing his tie and a spotless clean white shirt and Black pants. We sat down in casa Xetyo to drink. More of his friends joined us and a passionate conversation soon started. During the course, he made three points with perfect logic, but he craftily kept shifting premise. Most were impressed, I was too, for it showed me how 'arguing' must work in courts. But I objected to his line of argument. I remember giving him a funny analogy: I said that his case was like shifting of IPL venue from India to South Africa and back, two times. He seemed to like what I said, for he laughed heartily. Narendra Bodke was an intelligent student as I remember him. I notice many grandfathers with their grandchildren. Perhaps their wives are busy cooking since their daughters or daughters-in-law and their sons or in law sons must be officers. Children need to be looked after, right? These old shriveled up men tend to their 'fruit' in this manner to be useful. How much of the old values can they infuse into generation next. Old values seem redundant. They seem to influence modern life negligibly, if influence at all.

Talking of things

I am looking at the screen. Letters in black get typed here. They make sense as sentences. Sentences which I read conform to the thought-vision. They are manifest forms of the abstract depth of my being. The other day I was looking up at the ceiling fan, and as it rolled, round went my own thoughts. I registered some of them in my mind, put them to memory. I type them here as I recall them. But not everything is from that recall. Some of the things are 'inspired', additives. (I may be accused of meddling with 'facts'. They are fabricated. But they seem truthful to me, the experiencing agency.)

I was thinking: as an artist, a painter, I have a continuity in my drawing. By continuity I mean that there is a logical growth over the years. Way back in '86, Gulam Sheikh had invited a British artist by the name Gillian Barlow to paint with us for a week. She had told us how she brought home her subjects from the outside, the streets and bazaars and fields, to her studio. And she painted them from recall.

I began drawing from then on with more emphasis on memory, and the recall factor. I would stress more on retaining an image and drawing from there.

Later I attended a workshop by a Dutch sculptor, whatshouldacallim, who said that there was no need of 'copying' what you are drawing. That furthered my cause as far as drawing was concerned. I began since then drawing with my eyes closed. Not always, but most of the drawing I do without looking.

The advantage is a more intimate sense of tectile-ness; they are more sensuous, a shade more uninhibited. Besides there is the element of surprise which more often pleases than otherwise.

***

Kishori Amonkar

Gaanasaraswati Padmabhushan sreemati Kishoritai Amonkar sang the other evening at Kala academy. I missed another event I was invited to because I wanted to listen to Kishori. Given the choice of listening to Kishori Amonkar on one hand, and a few arty-farties on the other, the former is several times valuable, I thought. Kishoritai was bang on time! The programme was to start at 6.30. It started at 6.30 alright, but then, the flowery felicitations and other formalities took another 20 minutes or so. More minutes went in tuning the swaramandal and other instruments. Then Kishoritai was not satisfied with the acoustic arrangement. She kept on ordering the staff stage manager to shift this and that ; lower the violin out put and kill the boom. Then she made as if to start. Within the first two phrases she established the rukh(face) of Miyan ki Malhar. Then she stopped to order the poor stage manager again. She asked him to increase sharpness of the sound, which was promptly done by the tech-man. But Kishoritai was not happy. She wanted it sharper. The techie had gone to the max capacity sharpness level, so he told her, very guiltily I must say, that it could not be increased any further. Kishori seemed to understand the limitation of the machine and the helplessness of Kala Academy's technical staff, so she began the alaap. She was doing it so well, so beautifully and effortlessly that I caught myself shutting my eyes in anticipation of bliss. The very next moment I had to open them wide, almost in horror, because Kishori Amonkar had stopped singing abruptly! she was complaining now that she could hear only through one of her ears. She placed her swaramandal down and spoke to the audience in that packed auditorium. She spoke in Konkani. She said that as long as she could not enter 'that' mood, she would not be able to sing. She excused to be given the chance to re tune her instruments. "Would you please give me another twenty minutes?" she figure speeched her adamant plea. The audience responded with that peculiar inaudible collective murmur which is normally taken to mean yes. However, my own contribution to that peculiar inaudible murmur was this: madam, your problem may be simple. Why do you not see an ENT expert? And then I went some distance outside the auditorium to smoke a cigarette. When I returned, Kishori had started singing the Kyaal. It was not, I was surprised, Miya ki malhar, but what I heard was a striking Shankara. Yet the manner of singing Shankara was new to m. The blend of upper dhaivat and nishad in the descent, the avaroha,was superlative. The raga developed, and soonbegan galloping like a beautiful wild stallion in the wild. The taans were incomparable to any other woman vocalist I have heard. None among the living can sing quite like Kishoritai Amonkar. I am toying with the idea of forgiving her thiose pre-concert delays.