'the world of children'- poems on innocence

1.THY NAME IS...

Nethra  firmly believes 

We have failed miserably

In naming  Animals..

Especially, the cat..

While We call it

‘alex’

Or ‘sweety’

Or without reverence, simply as”hey cat’”

It  cries in dissent ...

‘meow’ – introducing itself

Which is its proper name..

Or so she believes...

In the naming game, i lose her..

'Vivek' seems  philistine  to her..

She calls me ivik..and i am just a four letter word after that

in her world.

She calls the dolls by their name

And talks to them in earnestness..

Without losing sense of the etiquettes, manners and such,

all the while..

In the older quarter of our house,

The grandma is slowly dying..

At the end of a life oceanic in itself

Confined, though to her single room

with a keyhole for eyes...

Nethra has not yet named

‘death’

2 .THE BATMAN'S SKY

i opened that window to the east
still
untainted by the algal chain of sentiments....
and then i wriggled my head out
and spread my hands
expecting feathers to sprout out
from the tips..
then realizing i am not the batman,
i looked below
where the groundfloor boy
accelerated on his invisible motorbike
at the speed of light...


3. THE MOST PRIMITIVE EMOTION
          

          1


grandma always warned of this world,
as being a big inert tortoise..

i said i didnt believe her..
her ancient knowledge came from her
tussles with the foxes and the crows
and the infamous vada that she eventually lost

i didnt give a damn..outside in the valley,
niveda was running across ..
a butterfly on legs
chasing rainbows and fireflies in the morning sun
she gives me those flying kisses as she speeds along..

i pointed to the grandma
how the world moved on a hare's legs..
a tortoise could never have hare's legs..

she grumbled and went away to the moon..
she set up  a pastry shop i guess is running well ..

                                     2

on a rainy night,
when the streets of this world
closed all their windows on you,

you , who imbibed the most primitive emotion
of this blood stained earth
let out a curse that has  haunted its womb
from the moment
our brother committed his first murder
with the jaw bone of a mammoth..
his brother lay dead in the mountain cave..
the jaw bone was the first crucifix..
revenge sustains human appetite..
killing gratifies the yearn of our song..

        3
on another sunny day,
from my porch , as i saw niveda watering the hibiscus in the garden,
 a soft spoken businessman stealthily
swindled her  playground..
buying the stars that mourned
at a price  he as usual, fixed....

on that night , niveda's eyes turned
the shade of the jawbone's stain..
as she slowly imbibes that primitive emotion
the earth  has always offered...

the world suddenly waddled like a huge tortoise..

as i looked up, i imagined grandma laughing..

the next new moon night,

they fixed the inauspicious dates

for the apocalypse.

4.THE SACRILEGES IN A SUPERMARKET COUNTER

now we were at the counter

to price our soaps and hair oil..

the wild child with her trolley

of chocolate boxes

and pink teddy bear dolls

hustled with her sullen mother

putting in a new pencil box..

the  orange t shirt counter man

looked at us

through eyes that have been through..

he lifted the bear by its ear

and put it under the red laser beam..

the chocolate box child

lifted her toy gun at this sacrilege

the  counter man refused to die..

5.  GREAT GRANDFATHER'S SPOTLESS WHITE HORSE

Hoofs used to fill my ears 

or did i really hear them..

white horses and red ants, 

coffee berries and the monsoon rain..

fiction and truth , starting where the other left off..

the dampened red soil of fantasy blending 

with the coffee brewing in the dim kitchen ..

in the nights i would miss my mom, 

and  clutch grandma's  arm, 

as she  told me of the great grandfather 

and his famed white horse ..

guarding the hills , the house and the shrubs..

he came from a very small tombstone

in the hill side..i remembered it had gathered moss

and he brandished his sword on those bad bad guys of childish universe..

and probably watched over my paper boats and cricket bats while i slept..

now the spider spins its web

in the northernmost corner -

and in the yellow plaster that peels away 

is written the loneliness of having to live out of a room..

where are the guardian angels..

and great grandfathers.

and their white horses.. 

what would he have become now.. 

the great grandfather?

a chauffeur ,

trading his horse for a limousine..?

in the world where everyone can be bought,

would he have become a seller..

6. PINK SKIES AND BLUE SKIES

Niveda wants to make a perfect paper boat..

in these dog days ,

she is counting on the mirages to set sail..

while we dissatisfy her 

with our pragmatic talk

she is learning again 

her alphabet lessons..

probably thinking 

 the grown-ups

must practice them too,

daily ,in secret,

long after she goes to sleep.

after all, W is not an easy alphabet..

not in the practice books..

she colors her skies pink 

and dresses up in bright yellow..

the crayons accompany her 

every afternoon in those siesta lands..

she sleeps with her mouth open 

always, three pillows around her..

i am contented with the imperfect hull,

anyway, 

i have stored it in my warm cupboards 

for the rainy days..

in the half completed drawing books,

i paint the skies blue

dress the little cartoon  in black and white..

for the offices of the future..

now the homework is over

and i remind myself 

to tell niveda 

to use the toy cars 

in these hot summer roads..

7.TO SARAVANYA... WHO STILL SPEAKS IN THE PUREST OF TONGUES

It was dark..
we are too afraid to reach our fingers
For the door..
The air  is suddenly sick
and sickness seems transferable
flowing  from one vessel to another and infects us
with mysterious slime..
Then she drops a chuckle
into our pestilential  universe
accustomed to one rupee coin donation boxes
kept in medical stores
for the welfare of the sick.....
But the lid broke open
like a dissected artery
and a thousand suns blossomed in the vulnerable flower heads that
turned towards the moon
to watch her smile

8.  A NEW SUNSET

 1

what did you do with your elder son today ?

did you refuse to sign his notebook

for not topping the class

did you forget the everyday kiss 

slumped in your dusty office files

did you scold him for chatting 

with the flower girl and the servant maid

                                     2

what will be the issue with your neighbour this evening?

will you quarrel over the 3 inches

his compound wall intruded on your side

or take up your wife's side

in the skirmishes of metro water pump

perhaps it will be the  war for the drumsticks his little daughter 

stole from your overhanging branches..

                            3

let the engines of production halt ,

turn this city over in its sleepless awake 

let the skyscrapers come down on their camel knees

stop teaching math and science and blood tainted human history

just for today

bring the children back home 

and bestow kisses in compound interest

for all the forgotten days..

take them to the beach and lie beside their tender hearts

twine their hands with yours

and teach them how to love

a new sunset is unfolding before your very eyes now..

on love and loneliness; 14 poems

A NOTE; i have always believed men in love cannot live beyond their amateurish , quixotic attempts at poetry..very rarely do we touch the true blood of a well lived moment..the romanticism confuses us, i guess..hence , i ask you to read these in their due context and laugh it off, if you have to..for , when i sat down to compile , a long time after these were written, the person who wrote these seems very alien to me...as alien he may seem to you

WHY I AM SMOKING THIS CIGARETTE?

i would have preferred
your lips darling
would ve been sweeter
or perhaps
your words
that angrily beseech me not to smoke ..
the hint of love in that sternness
like sunshine through my cracking roof ..

or the scent of your anger
childish and useless;

like fighting your dolls
, advising them ...
codes of conduct in a filthy world
of unkept promises ...

it has been a long time, darling
three months and twenty days
since the last one
..in my world this is
a light year traveled at the speed of snail

but this will be an exception .
just this one..

i want to see
if i can be playful and dead serious
flirt around with lies
and yet be completely honest..
cheat you badly and still be loved

intrude into soft territory
yet not be caught stealing;

still in bed
yet awake to your tenderness
and warmth

the cancer creeps down and
the smoke moves up;
death and life caught in the
the vacuum in between ;
magdeburg's hemispheres and a dozen beautiful horses
trying their might
prying apart a coalition made in heaven ..


but the look in your eyes..
tender coconuts
and kitkat wafers...
brown outside
and white inside;
breaking first
and jelling next;

what are you telling me ..
yes this WILL be the last..
promise ..... 

2 .       AUTUMN OF A LOVE 

we looked at each other
 and that
was the beginning
and the end
 of  a  geography drawn with a charcoal stick
 by the shaman of love

in that land
we commonly own
but cannot take home
like a piece of stolen cake ,
dwells our little daughter
who will never be born

the color of the blossoms
flowering in her head
we will never see but
always scent

for in the autumn of our lives,
we would  stand under an odd tree
that still blooms yellow flowers like spring
while you continue to blush and refuse
like in the teens...


p.s ; inspired by the song- carnival of rust- poets of the fall

3. INTERPRETING LOVE

The wetness in the evening light
  is  a paradox,
coming  with the only streak of light
that drifts into our common room...
the wetness reminds me of  darkness
and still air..
and also  a pristine voice  that
is clothed
only  with your prejudices...
it is a nakedness that talks to mine
it is feminine and motherly
and uncold ...
then it leaves me altogether
and
the morning light next day  is  a perversion-
that brightness  is a poison

4.DESERT THE FOUNTAIN


perhaps i could start like neruda
we could retire to our private horizons in a venetian gondola
and there we would kiss  till i die..
no, then , i know even dreams are not that merciful..
and romance has  not been my forte ,
since we chose to burn the small town down..

everytime a word or a phrase that would twist itself
into that funny place between love and dream
in a cosy poem, presents itself
i dread it, transform it into a passage about
kindness , charity or sympathy
and finally smother it out of existence.....

and then i mourn alone
the slow death of  a flower
that blooms in a forbidden city
everytime  a man falls in love...
and withers
when his love dries up...

the sadness is in drying up..
and
in waking up at odd times
knowing you cant really love again



....
p.s. thanks be to abbas , who inspired certain lines of this poem and sir ed hart whose words sparkled it
...

5. WHERE ART THOU, SHAKESPEARE?

  we go playacting
     again
   in a stage where
all the men and women
are already actors

our act is an act
within an act
our dialogues are anticipated
but not rehearsed
our gestures follow the rules
but carry a mysterious symbolism
that only both of us understand
 too perfectly

and hence mock the stage
and other honorable actors

but your eyes
and that look
today
were neither anticipated nor rehearsed

those eyes of
an angel
with pristine wings ,
unbelonging and far away
alighting in my lowly earth
just for a light second

that , my dear
was OUT OF THIS WORLD


 6..ANCESTRY, ARCHAEOLOGY AND OTHER THINGS
1 millionyears ago , a man appeared out of lake turkana in kenya
he had buried his twelve year old son in its bank,
he had a sloping forehead , half the brain of a modern human
and no chin..
he ventured out of africa .and his sons and grandsons copulated with
the chinless women of middle east and europe..
some of them went to southern russia
and rolled with the wild horses and tribes of the never ending steppes..

they were to enter india
scores of lakhs of years later..
the half brains grew double, the chins appeared out of nowhere.
and the sloping foreheads rounded beautifully,
women and men were presentable.
then in india,
far south of the himalayas, arising from a subspecies
born out of a climatic divide,
a brainless youngman(as they always are, when in love)
is working out his ancestry..
thinking of his ambitions in a queer world
cursing his ancestors for his failed love..
once in a while rubbing his
slightly sloping forehead  that
came from the twelve year old boy in lake turkana ..

now described by the archaeologists who dug him out of his grave..
as
A COMPLETE FOSSIL SKELETON EXTREMELY USEFUL IN TRACING THE
EVOLUTION OF HOMO SAPIENS...



- written by the young man with a slightly sloping forehead
december 2009

with significant information obtained out of reading the morning HINDU one thursday

7. A SERIES OF JUDGEMENT DAYS
another  time you walk out my door
that was never closed ..
your eyes are on me,
i turn into shades of colors
myriad and unnamable..
is it your color screens
or my chameleon being..

i never wished i knew..

another time you pass that judgement and wait for my eyes..
waiting to see what i would become
under the slowly descending hammer
and broken fountain pen..

i shrink away as a snail would..

away from your pincers
into the web of my own questions
ceaselessly knit by a spinster woman
in her choiceless loneliness..

with a throw of your head,
another time you walk out the door...
you walk out on me..
 away from me..

as i watch enchanted, for the one thousandth time ,
madly in crazy love..

and in vain, i try to walk out on myself
through the door that was never closed..
through the door that was never closed

- june 28, 2010

8.LOVE IN THE TIME OF TIMELESSNESS

   1
i switch on the audio
this song transports me
thousand years back
when i had visited the earth again
you were in the prince's court
and we sang ballads in his praise
there was no rock music then

then one day
the prince flogged us in the
open
for transgressing the law of the slaves
and shamelessly falling in love

we wondered then,
how long...

       2
two hundred thousand years back
we did not need marriage
to make love in the wild grass
one day i left you behind
in search of breakfast

you never heard of me after that
there was no blues then

dying in loneliness
we had wondered then,
how long..

   3
the song is over
now i wonder

you left me yesterday
professing radical feminism
(though i agree with you)
while being in love with the whole of your being
your resistance, your callous palms
and your never ceasing bellicose laughter,

how long ....

 then we both wonder

how long

 9. THE TWILIGHT GIRL

i kissed her hard
in  yesterday's half-dusk
the twilight girl ;
she is so beautiful,
but i must go..

my thick red blood conjures a canvas
the landscape of a disease
in the hypochondriac's nightmare ...

my body is now  a mushroom bomb
waiting to blast over..
but the twilight girl is beautiful
though i must go..
 so i feed on my nausea
and travel to the distant desert land..

there , i lie down
and wait...
for the final act...

10.MOON RIVER

Music falls like the pebbles dropped
In the lakes of morning silence..
World is filled with silence
And silence
The latter is an euphemism veiled
Hitherto  as music..
I am telling you
One thousand stories tonight..
The music player could be
A lonely tap running in my lonely bathroom..
Or the moon drawing blood on the unseen river
of a forgotten jazz beat ..
What  difference will it make?

I have to bide this night alone
Trying not to think of you

11. UNTITLED-

the morning light
confesses in feeble tones ,
meekly failing to cleanse my mind
of your thoughts,
pleasing to my senses
as the convectional rain
of hot summer days...

those eyes which once
dispersed a block of ice
into a solid rainbow
now lie behind
the horizons of time ..
i tire , stretching my hands
in mute despair

12. GHOSTS, GODS, WINE AND MUSIC

i am some years past my mother's hug
when i roll around , feeling the rough threads
of my bedspread and insomnia..
my moustache has grown..
i am five inches too tall..

i look back
at her, that  uncertain relationship
with the most beautiful woman of my life..
at our ragged palms bleeding ,
polka dotting the snow of our separation..
as we pulled at the ropes
of each other's hearts,
sometimes pining in the effort,
sometimes wishing it ended..
the blues and greens, golds and whites of
the trails in water
 of that crazy eel like love..

now i am going back to the black
of a night that wouldnt give me sleep..
of a dawn that wouldnt assure me
ambitions or tears or relieving failures..

somewhere in the cacophony
of the ghosts, gods , wine and music
i fall asleep
and wake up again...

13. SHELLEY’S SPRING

sweet angel somewhere..
my immortal beloved..
i have not thought much of you these days..
perhaps you left behind some of your rain clouds
that trail you like a disappointed balloon vendor..

i am down with fever
shivering like an abandoned squirrel
beneath two blankets made of fur...
this winter is cruel, my once sweet love..

a spider is spinning its life inside me
memories laugh at me like the forgotten dead
at odd hours....

and all things around me..
the steel chair and straw mattress
they suddenly have waged a silent war..
while all i want is a hug
and something to hold onto
as i sleep... animate or inanimate ..

so,i have left my lights on,
they warm up my body..
but their stare
is so cold upon my soul..
friendless and unloved...
the last smite of a street urchin's staff
on a man dying of consumption..

the winter has come,
my dear ..
will i survive till the spring

 14.LOVE, REDROSE AND COMIC BOOKS
from behind the coconut tree household,
the sun comes up every morning
chasing crows across the day sky

i collect their shadows and lost feathers ..
keep them in a private safe

i think of mother,
when she fed me with riceballs ,
sun was a cartoon in the comic book
nestled between two mountains , always unnamed ..

i reverie her warmth
that first taught me the science of love
i m searching for the lessons i didnt care to take notes ..

love travels like sunlight on water
and drowns deep at nights..
while aeroplanes travel the star studded sky
of a poet’s cliched world..

the groundfloor boy rushes in for the video games..
i picture him ten years later..
and want to hug him and cry..
but i m the secondfloor anna who knows everything
who couldnt be weak..

the crow feathers are crawling out of my safe
drawing on the night ..

keep a red rose on my cemetry
for the love i couldnt give this world

9 poems

1. AFTER MY DEATH 

After my death

give my eyes to an old man

still married to a wife

whose wrinkles , talk incessantly

Of  a love blind to  his blindness....

Let my heart  be with

the little girl

whose  heart is beyond repair

but  her smile still blossoms like a rose everyday

and her chuckle never fails to amaze...

give my fingers to the groundfloor  toddler

I have always wanted to

Caress his cheeks…

Give my skin to the chameleons

Let me live

sans the politics of colours  for sometime..

Send my kidneys to

the anatomy lab ,

a specimen immersed in formalin…

Whoever needs shall avail

of my spine..

it is not much in demand as much it is a necessity...

give my legs to my best friend,

he has to walk a long way,

away from me…

throw my brains to the last desires

of a dog awaiting execution

to feed  the insatiable appetites of multicuisine restaurants  ..

finally

when everything is over,

something is still left..

in the battle against death, I only want to lose…

now , erase all my memories

and submit only my love,

unconditional and limitless....

to this world

   2.  A NOTE ON RAHUL K

1

I gave a friend  request to rahul k 

twenty days after he died...

his password must have burnt

inside the electric crematorium..

his profile would look like this always,

to the unfriended..

just like he has become,

alien,and  distant 

after his death

                2.

i first met rahul k 

in the obituary banner

 outside his school

by  friends who think they know him well

because they were with him all the time

they are the ones that believe they know themselves well

because they are with their own selves all the time.

               3

i have never met rahul k

i can never be friends with him..

noone knew him

better than the median of the road 

his superbike hit...

it met him without prejudice 

without the batter of his friends,

without the hullabaloo of adolescence

without the money of his dad

and with that mercilessness ,

crushed the  flowers of his innocence

all of us had ignored when he lived..

           4

then in the darkness ,

he remains as a profile in the facebook

and a few photographs that 

wouldnt yellow with time..

and that is just about the only thing

the internet saved for ' us'

from the sands of time...

DEDICATED TO RAHUL KOSAKI AND EVERYONE ELSE HE EPITOMIZES

3.ONE MORE INCH

yesterday, 

i murdered three men 

in my dream

perhaps,

conscious that i wouldnt be liable 

i pushed the switchblade 

an inch further

this morning, 

in the bathroom sink,

i washed my hands 

again and again

mother was calling me 

for breakfast

4.THE DEATH OF THE STORY TELLER

I tell stories 

for a living

stories 

I eat and sleep with..

fight with..

Or  flirt with..

the clientele 

decides 

where I start 

and how I twist..

when it is my sister's little daughter

i elaborate on the

newest adventures of dora

or chip in with a word 

about the carpets that could 

fly her outside  classrooms 

for my dad,

I conjure 

 a new  life in late grandpa's house
after retirement..

mother needs a story 

where I get married 

to a girl of her  wish 

neatly combed and shaved for the reception

for my friend 

I reserve a quarter whiskey 

and 2 packets of cigarette to last the night

i borrow my dad's voice 

when i narrate to my kid brother..

.

I tell a story that wouldnt 

make 'her' regret coming to meet me in 

that forlorn park..

I wear the clown's bonnet 

and commit my little suicides so
she smiles with scorn.

then when everyone has slept 

perhaps assuming 

I  dont need a tale ,

I  search my notebooks

and bookshelves..

fall through staircases

of libraries stuffed with 

bedtime stories...

and roll in bedrooms

full of madly wandering pages

I  am lonely when I  have no stories to tell

5.THE LONELINESS OF THE MASOCHIST

in my lonely verandah,

everyday i fed the crows

coming by punctually

i felt they smiled

and opened my cupboard 

reserved for  warm  words 

and embraces..

yesterday 

they pecked at me

and dropped crow shit

on my blue shirt..

sure enough

they crow-scowled at me..

so i cursed them and 

returned 

satisfied after ages....

6.THERE IS NO POSTHUMOUS NOBEL
   1.

you could live in 

the grandest wax palace 

you could fudge everybody's account 

and still get away

drawing gratification at the heap

curses build..

curses of people who would have lost..

you could eat the best savouries ever made

lounge in the state of art furniture

and sleep in the bosoms of naive beautiful maiden

still you might die 

the dragonfly's death

at the errant child's foot

then again, you might not...

               2

you could live in 

the grandest wax palace 

you could fudge everybody's account 

and still get away

drawing gratification at the heap

curses build..

curses of people who would have lost..

you could eat the best savouries ever made

lounge in the state of art furniture

and sleep in the bosoms of naive beautiful maiden

still you might die 

the dragonfly's death

at the errant child's foot

before the last breath 

you tend to think 

you will be remembered..

you won't be...

7.INTERPRETING MIRACLES

he never said he would walk on water

 neither did he attempt it in the neighbourhood lake

he never brought pastries from thin air,

 nor did he vanquish snakes

 slithering through our hallways ..

and it never rained

 when he played the flute..

but

 the day he died,

 there was a strange fragrance

 in  our dirty streets..

people who ran  him on  errands

 and the scoundrels who trampled on
his naivety
 lost sleep in their cosy beds..

children thronged his corpse,

waiting for the dragonflies and bananas
he promised them everyday.

the rain that began then
did not let up
for three days and nights.

on the day of funeral,
his grandson picked up a fallen leaf
from the porch tree

that was when we saw him

 arise from the corpse ,

 and walk past the mourners,

 offering his shoulder ,

 to the pall bearers...

 and 

 narrating   aloud
a  pointless joke

DEDICATED TO MURUGESAN MAMA WHO DIED OF MULTIPLE MYELOMA AT 52


8.THE LAND OF NO TEARS

in the cot near the entrance,

kuruvamma haggles with throat cancer,

for a couple of months more..

a sparrow at the mercy of the lashing rains 

she ..

ponnamma rolls her doll eyes

she wants the doctor's nod

for the orange drink,

her long time desire

since her liver broke down

and threw up signals too confusing 

for her vegetable brain..

somewhere in the southern corner,

a bottle of fluids is on the flow..

for the dehydrated ones..

a destitute mother

asks questions

no one wants to listen to..

down the corridor,

there are many more wards like this one..

many more cots,

many more cotless,

many more stories...

the government hospital

waits with its thousand eyes ,

the entries to its mysterious labyrinth 

bright and open..

this night 

people roam its halls 

with blood samples of the kith and kin..

towards laboratories 

clean and alien...

like the linen of the dead and the departed..

the ashoka tree inside the compound

silently chants to its ancient heart

stories that will soon be forgotten

and hence cease to exist...

as a  rain drop rolls over its diseased bough

a lonely  kingfisher starts off towards 

its eternal search for a  land of no tears...

and in that pretty ordinarymonsoon night,

a rare lightning in the western sky

 reveals 

just for a fleeting instant,

the grey silhouette 

of a sinister madhouse...

9. THE ART OF BECOMING SOMEONE ELSE

this road resembles so much

the one that leads to my home..

only that a hinter part of my brain

delineates the kafkaesque quicksands

the world has become

this city , eats your identity

and mourns shamelessly

while my body is lustreless as the rest

i wander in vain

trying to learn the art of becoming someone else..

i climb ladders and come down the snakes...

a magic seed has fallen in the womb

of this machine,

people barge into these institutes,

promising you careers,

as doctors, bureaucrats and technocrats ,

a poet passes these streets crestfallen..

the art of beoming someone else haunts

and reeks of an ancient smell..

a binary VIRUS in my mobile phone ,

regularly gulps down its memory..

by dint of a software error,

it professes in satanic ways,

the art of becoming noone...

the face in shaving mirror

asks me

"have you learnt the art of becoming yourself

THE PILGRIMAGE OF THE ATHEIST

Two thousand three hundred years after Chandragupta maurya had come to live out the last days of his life on an insignificant hillock, (lost) in the vast expanse of his empire – the very first of the subcontinent- I was reading from the information board of the archaeological society of india beneath it.. Chandra gupta maurya had since then passed into history and the face of the earth itself had undergone a change that nothing that happens now can  turn the wheel backwards, but I doubt if that change had touched shravan belgola  at all.It is still a sleepy town insignificant  in the larger scheme of things for the ‘growing’ nation of india except for a slot in the tourist itinerary of the domestic pilgrims and foreign students; there were a few bakeries and two hotels and small shops that sold handicrafts one would find anywhere in india. It is an irony that there is a wiki pedia page on shravana belgola though one has to search hard to find a browsing centre. but that is another story.

                                                                                           As I looked up to see the nuns walk up the hillock of chandragiri , I realized that between two millennia , the only thing that symbolized any change in their lives was, perhaps, the handle that holds  together the peacock feathers  which  they use,  to sweep the earth clean of small organisms they might  inadvertently trample..that handle is now  made of plastic..

                                    They were clad in white and wore the cloth as a shroud over their heads as they moved like little white caterpillars up the small steps to the temple complex.  One of them had chosen not to use the steps and hence crawled over the curvy hillside.

                                                                                                                                  Then as I too made my way , I tried to understand what it means to actually ‘relinquish’ an empire – not an inherited one, but one established after a lifetime of struggle subjugating  a wide range of people- from the culturally, aesthetically refined Greeks in the northwest to the warlike nomadic tribes of the subcontinent. For every interested reader, ashoka’s  repudiation of war  is an eye catcher; but to me, chandragupta’s renunciation has always implied a much more deeper desire for truth. What makes a man who was an emperor one day , a naked monk the very next day. As I kept thinking, groups of rocks welcomed me, like their ancestors that welcomed Chandragupta maurya- rocks that are as old as the Indian subcontinent- professing a way of living equally ancient.

                                                                                                                      In shravana belgola , there are two hills, one is the chandragiri , the other is the one housing the more famous bahubali statue. Chandragiri temple complex had not a single tourist when I went inside (the previous night, 3 buses full of tourists had come to the same place where I was lodged ). however, the market always  belongs to bahubali, the tallest statue made out of a single stone- people flock towards the superlatives, little aware that , nine out of ten times, the small can be extraordinarily beautiful. In the process , that left me at peace with the place.(bless them)

                                                                                                      The temple seemed like a delicately balanced diadem on the locks of a runaway princess’ hair;  the decision not to pave the turbulent rocky surface of the hill (as we usually find in hill side temples)  gave the impression as if the whole complex was a boat swaying over the uncertain waves of an ocean’s middle. The jaina artist, it seems, thought it better not to try and master nature but just coexist with it. Even the statue of bharata , bahubali’s brother , his legs mutilated and standing beneath open skies symbolize this spirit. If one looks closer , the broad chest disappears and one can see only the rock , a fragment of the mountain’s wilderness; but once  you walk further , the limbs and torso of a meditating man- emerges out like a dream. I wondered if  the sculptor wanted man to be like the mountain. Stubborn, but warm; raw but extraordinarily broad hearted.

                                                                                                                                            Cavalry and infantry and knives and swords can capture the people who dwell in the mountains; but the mountains themselves cannot be easily conquered. It means much more than transforming  a thousand human beings into captives. To subdue the mountain, one has to climb it, only at the pace the mountain allows one to. And the man has to climb, not just physically , but psychologically.. he has to outgrow himself to the extent that he is never the same person again. Perhaps that is why monks capture kingdoms that emperors never could.

                                                                                                                                    The shrines housing the tirthankaras are deafeningly silent. Their nude bodies  exude a stark simplicity, of the soul unlike any other. The transformation the Indian mind had to undergo  to learn to revere a human being- “a renouncing monk” above that of the divine and celestial must have been a watershed in religious psychology. Surely, the tirthankaras are not imagined as all powerful. They are certainly not multi cephalic nor are they thousand limbed. Their majesty is the majesty of the man who gives up. Their strength comes from their courage to be vulnerable. They are not the ones who give answers, they are silent to one’s questions and perhaps in that silence one begins to think.

                      Suddenly, the profuse hemorrhage of images  from the hoysaleshvara and chennaksava temples of belur and halabedu faded into an avalanche of silence that the shrines exuded and I was lost into that vortex of meditation. And as I walked down the hill, I felt I understood what the birds were chirping was indeed , the mountain’s song and the song was inseparable from the monks ‘ song.  They had both drunk at the fountains of divine silence.

                            And that song was blooming like a dark flower in the moist recesses of the unknown forests of my heart. 

the artist - the silence of the fall

After the movie, i wanted to stand there forever and clap till my hands would wear out.. the audience walked  out noisily before the credits rolled ..the theatre had a handful of audience some of whom had moved away to darker corners in search of privacy. . the nation’s most famous multiplex theatre had employees who either had the brains of a hare or the heart of a hyena, else there wouldn’t have been a  cut in the movie  at 40 minutes for a desi style snack break ..this is just one of the sacrileges , a movie like ‘artist ‘ has to face to survive the crass ness of the movie market..

George valentin, the protoganist in the movie undergoes nothing less. The artist is  a powerful movie, one of those epics that redeem the tragedy of a ‘fall’ in the everlasting gardens of aesthetic art form..

The movie is about a silent movie superstar whose fall coincides with the rise of talkies – this is personified in the character of peppy miller who is just a sidekick in the silent movie era and who owes her screen appearances to the initial kindness of George valentine, but who goes on to become the Hollywood sweet heart in the talkie era. The rest of the movie describes in subtle imagery , the penury of George valentin’s fall along with the growing admiration and affection of peppy miller towards the former even when he is becoming a shadow of his former self

                                                                                                                                     This is certainly not a new story, but it certainly is not a cliché, as one of my friends has exclaimed. The newness is not in the story, but,  in the vision, in the human touch and in the questions it raises in the mind of the audience .    these questions, we remind ourselves with so much pity, have no definite answers.

                                                                   Have we ever been bored of the moon ? have we ever said, oh, the same crescent? The story of a man’s rise and fall , the magnificence of the contrast of the rags and the riches is too close to a man’s heart to ever become a cliché.

                                                      The movie asks some fundamental questions. What does the artist mean to the society? Is he dispensable even in a capitalist model of world where markets determine what art is to be seen and what should not be seen?

What are the options for the artist in a changing world? His stubbornness is characterised as vanity and pride , it would make a good picture , though..but his willingness to go with the flow is decried as a COMPROMISE..is there any way out?

The movie knows too well that answers are not what make an epic..the movie reminded me of another Indian classic- guru dutt’s kaagaz ke phool and brought to a faltering memory, the likes of Chandra babu, thyagaraja bagavadar, v k ramamsamy , kanchana and many more who made everything and lost everything in cinema..

                                                                                                                                              At one scene, the hero realises that he is living in a world of his own, where the sounds are absorbed into themselves and everything is explained in gestures of ethereal beauty while the world outside wishes even the dogs would talk ..such was the frenzy, talkies must have created in the lives of silent movie stars.. i remembered reading about akira kurasowa’s brother, who was working as a narrator in the silent movies . He committed suicide, when the talkies robbed him of his employment. May be it was more than that. It is the robbing of one’s own existential purpose. What a person, has believed , is his life’s meaning. How can the removal of that be lived with? i still remember with sparkling vividity the tremor in the face of a therukoothu artiste, who while performing  as raavanan, made a short detour to describe the struggle his life had become everyday in a world of decadent values and decaying villages.. it would do well to understand that koothu artists are one of the highly skilled and trained whose mastery goes beyond the confines of any written grammar. This is the significance of the 'artist' in our lives. he entertains us, thinks we will look after him in his failures or bear with his shortcomings, but, we , in the mad race for survival, inevitably ignore the unsuccessful, little knowing that the circles of life might soon bring us to the same point in the circumference....But the pain of an artist's fall is indescribable....Ironically,in one of the scenes,  the artist auctions his own portrait to raise money so as  to escape bankruptcy. The memory of all those nameless portrait artists who lost their livelihood with the entry of still cameras and motion cameras flashes in our mind, barely, bringing a smile that would get lost in our tired sleeps.

                    When the movie started, i had prayed to my stars to give me the strength to sit through a silent movie. I am one of those people who live and die on the seashores of words. But as i walked to the parking lot, i listened to the sounds of footsteps and bike engines with the ears of a newborn and then i realised how superfluous sounds actually are , in human life, even if  only for a second..perhaps, there is no other image that could better explain the impact of a movie like artist..

an innocent massacre

Two days back, a fifteen year old became the murderer of his hindi teacher in Armenian street.  He slashed her throat and stabbed her abdomen , effectively killing her, for writing down reprimanding remarks about his dismal performance in hindi , in his school diary . We all stand shell shocked,t his act of gruesome violence difficult to digest even in a world where such incidents are becoming common place. The Americans have been under fire , literally , from their younger generation that brings guns to the school .

How do we make sense of this incident and what diagnosis we label on it are equally important to determine our own actions in the future .

Some of my friends might put the blame squarely on the turbulent younger generation . i would like to disagree. The younger generation looks up to its elders subconsciously. We are the moral sanctioners of their vices, knowingly or unknowingly.. we provide the wrong cues for their body shots. As wordsworth said, “ child is the father of the man” .. the children right now are revealing the underlying filthiness  and goriness of our society, its values and mores, deeply nauseating to someone who is willingly to sanely and objectively examine it.

Yes , my friends, these are our corpses that have come out in the open. The violence of our children are the violence of  us, fathers and mothers.

Ironically, if we are to understand deeply, sadly, the knives of boys like irman have the inappropriate and unjustified  role  to act as scalpels that perform the debridement of our diabetic society.. We  perhaps, are suffering from a disease of excess. Excess technology,excess communication, excess entertainment, excess consumerism.. but our children cannot grow into an adult at the same velocity our excess external growth mandates and requires them to be. After all, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly only at its own pace. The fifteen year old today,  has in his hands , the gadgets and machines, that require the maturity of thirty year olds to handle . Now they have set about to correct that anamoly by upgrading themselves to crimes fit for thirty year old, albeit with the intention and motives of a school goer.

What does our education system set as  objectives? What are our students being prepared for? These are crucial questions that need to be answered.

Take this specific case. The student was certainly concerned with his parent’s view regarding his poor performance in hindi. The teacher did nothing that other teachers all over this state do not do. She just did what has been a routine practice when it comes to students scoring  low marks in examinations. She only wrote in the school diary about it.

What went wrong? For an adolescent boy bogged down by peer pressures and parental admonishments , this routine act might have looked as a violation of the teacher -student's  unwritten pact of DONT TELL ON ME, teacher....after all , fifteen is an age when children first attempt to stand on their legs, it is the age when the budding adult wants to have a world view of his own; this is the age that suspects the right things and accepts the wrong things without judgement or examination; Surely, this is the age whose mores are only in the transition between naivety and maturity – the teacher who complains to  ‘dad’ is  ‘bad’ and the teacher who is willing to let them off the hook is ‘cool’. As an young boy , i still remember, that  in my school days, the most fearsome feeling was always the moment when my class teacher informed my father about my little serenades of indiscipline.

Obviously, that was the ‘school diary ‘ hating age.The principal deficit in the student teacher interface is that the latter do not either understand or do not want to cross the boundary to understand the peculiar problems of  the fragile innocence of adolescence. They actually assume the airs of a judge though this  is not a wrong thing in itself in the outside world. What most  teachers forget  is that ‘a school is the place where they learn to live before they actually start living. ‘It does not serve well to treat them in the manner of , “ cross the line and you will be thrashed” – in other words, ‘if you judge them , you lose them’. This alienation is only bound to widen when these children are mercilessly prepared for careers in an adulthood they have no idea about.

Come to think of it. While most of the classmates if  Irman might have known of his anger towards his teacher, the poor teacher would have had no clue of this vicious animosity.Perhaps , the deficit lies there.

How can the teacher not know ?

How can one be ignorant of the student’s trespass into the self destructive swamplands of violence while knowing about  his or her poor academic performance . ? which is the pathology?  Look at it like this. Perhaps , if the teacher had known of the student’s feelings towards her, she would have called the parent over the phone instead of communicating therough the diary. If she had done that, perhaps the pathology in need of correction – which is the delicate balance of student teacher relationship – would not have been preposterously substituted by the ‘ superfluous concerns of poor performance in hindi’.

It is sad that education has become a formula and not an attempt at the realisation of one’s own vision of life.

I could write more , about how flawed the entire premise upon which the whole complex operates- but it is only obvious that the fruits of a system that treats schools as profit making enterprises that specialise in the production of high mark scoring candidates fit to be set in motion in to the race for high earning jobs will smack of a ‘poison without an anti dote’

Because , for all the logical distortions of neo liberal capitalism that endorses this mad race of competition, survival of the fittest, etc, LEARNING  can only be cultivated in the tender soils of curiosity and love. Otherwise the harvest we reap from our “educated young minds” will always bear the inevitable obituaries of innocence- irrigated as they are by the bloody red streams of violence-

The knife of Irman has actually been dissecting with a mad man’s blind fury, the fast putrefying flesh of our own children as much as  it  did that of the poor teacher who lies sacrificed at the altar of an obnoxious system

AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...

Many years back, a man called jean paul Sartre refused the nobel prize for literature. He openly refused to be on the side of the west in the endless confrontation between the west and the east. His act effectively put  the nobel prize in its proper place.  Only nine years later in 1973, the nobel committee vindicated sartre’s act by awarding the prize to the greatest peace monger of them all, henry Kissinger. Wow and, what a genius of a man. It was not the first time in the history of mankind . butchers always solve the brutal suffering of the lambs, by killing them. they are  the ultimate purveyors of  human charity.  

  An award has always been a political event . the giving, the accepting or the occasional refusing – all these three acts anoint the event with a politics that we do not want to discuss.  And our intransigence to discuss the underlying politics ensures that the award becomes the ultimate scale to measure a personality.  Very rarely, though , the personality measures the award. What if albert Einstein had not won the nobel prize for physics ? would another physicist have respected the physics nobel after that..i doubt it..(i am personally of the idea that the nobels for the sciences are still worthy of the name. But myself being a  layman, could provide just  an amateur view)

So with the premise that an award is not just the measure of someone’s performance , we are obliged to explore as to what other components are signified when a person receives an award.

May be

1. The person is of the same political camp as the award giver
2. The awardee  ignores the   negatives of the award giver
3. The awardee is perfectly non political and excels in the field of his interest
4. The award giver wants to send a symbolic message to the opposite camp

Beyond this , there is one rare possibility that the awardee is a figure loved by people from all walks of life. The political implications of the act of giving creates  a space for the discourse for its counterpart. The act of refusing.  Refusing  an award is a symbolic rejection of the legitimacy of the awarding authority’s right to measure a person ‘s contribution . It is in itself as much a political act as it is a demonstration of self confident and assertive  heroism.

Milkha singh refused the padma shri for the same reason. His defiance was an indictment  of the pro cricket politics of the Indian government. Subhash Chandra bose’s family refused the posthumous bharat ratna  awarded to him, which can be considered as a criticism of the privileged  few who  treat bharat ratna as an essential familial commodity. 

These are precisely the reasons why one feels compelled to drop his  own worthless opinions into the boiling broth of the debate on “who should be given bharat rathna ?”

                                                                          “For me as a sports minister this is one of the biggest days of Indian sport and next biggest day I think will be the day when any sportsperson is named as an awardee of Bharat Ratna,” this is what the minister of sports ajay maken had to say when the decision to throw open the award to sportsmen  was taken(.this will enable sachin to get bharat ratna. )Politically i am wrong, ‘sachin and dhyan chand’. One tends to wonder of the innocence  of the Indian politician and lobbyist who have suddenly and naively , ‘discovered’ dhyan chand.  When dhyan chand died of liver disease, he was a bitter man , penniless and largely forgotten. And i am sure, if there was no wiki pedia, most Indians would have had no one to answer for them , the perennial question of Indian sports ,”who is dhyan chand” ?

I have expressed my opinion too many times about the greatness of sachin that i do not wish to risk additional physical injuries for my thoughts. So i want to go into the mind of the lobbyists who want to award sachin tendulkar the highest civilian award of the nation.  The case is made out as though it is inconceivable that a person of sachin’s stature is without a bharat ratna.  That irks somewhere in a nation where the professional footballers clean the seats of the cricket stadia to get some extra pocket money. What does it mean to lobby for an award ,for a person,  even if he had clearly proved his dominance in his field of work , when there are more pressing issues in the same field and the person is quite young himself? What kind of cunning calculation allows somebody to dig out the legend of dhyan chand and project it side by side as a sort of legitimizing act  for the former  crass9obviously) suggestion? It means a  lot. It requires a mediocre mind , of which we have aplenty. However, it also means a politics of purposely projecting a hero in the Indian mind , linking sports with national honour and a contrive association of greatness with patriotism.

It is also necessary to make out the beneficiaries of such a move. As sure as anything else, the corporate houses for which sachin has been the relentless poster boy, will gain a big boost. More incentives for the unrecognised cricketers , chicken soup for the  cricket industry, (!) more and more advertisements , felicitations ,  huge placards , flexboards, commemorating the feat, and also subjugation of other sports beneath the overpowering weight of the skyscrapers of BCCI. And they are the ones who parade for tweaking of the rules to help sachin tendulkar get his rightful due. I wonder why everyone does not see the irony of reading out sachin tendulkar anecdotes seriously . after all we are the ones who enjoy a good hearted laugh about rajni kant’s version of chuck Norris facts.

But strangely, men in india are not all that naive. There has been a marked criticism of this lobbying by people of noted reputation such as the respected judge markandeya katju. However, in this regard, i  differ with him because he has not taken into account the fundamental politics behind all award giving. His tireless promotion of the ‘right kind of heroes’ who need to be brought back into the deculturised public perception, is an utopian vision of the ageing generation- a generation that has rightly observed the decadence of values in a sea of consumerism .

However,  the politics of award has a logic of its own. Everyone and every faction has a perception of the ‘right kind of ‘ heroes they want to promote. I do not doubt for one instant   people like mr katju  would revive in the dusted corridors of public memory the forgotten and un recognised personalities whose relevance to the current world is altogether obvious. on the other hand, take for instance, the persons , a bjp government would prefer as the ‘right kind of heroes’. Their politics would point to someone like v d savarkar; Shyama Prasad mukerjea; this would develop into  an awarding game of bizarre proportions in an already pestilential  environment of acknowledgements.

Nay, sir. India needs heroes . but they are not present in the yellowed pages of history, but in the sweaty soils of the present. Have you ever heard of  a person as selfless as dr binayak sen? A rare gem of a doctor who chose to work in the tribal villages of central india after an education ,extraordinarily intelligent persons would die to lay hands on, he has been a person who stands  for civil liberties to the tribals. His political stand is one reason why he was not given  even a padma shree when lobbyists like sant singh chatwal get padma bhushan. (chatwal has recently  been alleged of malfeasance). But then , the chattisgarh government had decided dr.sen  should wear the crown of thorns-perhaps because that is the only laurel truly righteous men deserve to  get- and had him behind bars.

Another dimension ; how far would the ‘right kind of heroes’ stay in public discourse because of a bharat ratna award. How many of us remember the last bharat ratna awardee.? To me, the angst of justice katju can only be solved when children in school, are taught history with the same passion as they are taught  computers.

The contrasting images of those historical men who were rebels in their contemporary societies and the pathetic members of  ' generation  next'  lingering inside the golden bars of a dangerously' near- true'  digital world need not be stressed upon too often. I  now remember with regret the ground floor kid who is in his tenth standard, who replied with indifference , that he does not know who bhagat singh was . Believe me, he has not even heard of him. He knows the life history of sachin tendulkar upside down. He can talk at length about steve jobs and suresh raina and create powerpoint presentations in a jiffy.

I do not want to be seen as the vendor of pessimism , but reality hits very hard .  justice katju’s  lofty ideals are something that i would recall with nostalgia when thinking  of these times, thirty years from now. By then, sachin tendulkar would have been knighted .

And if we are lucky enough, he might be the president of india . there would be an award in the name of saibaba. I only pray the latter award does not replace  bharat ratna  as the highest civilian award.

 p.s. the oscar is an euphemism for all the awards here- if that clarification is required for those who want to be obsessively right..