Si ridesta in ciel l'aurora

Sometimes, surprises come when you least expect them. Nothing happens and yet, everything does. As I write this, I think of the song from La Traviatta, Questa donna conoscete? It is 1 AM and nothing moves outside. I decide to play La Traviata softly on my PC.

Un di, felice, eterea.

Have there been days like this? Perhaps, perhaps not. Today is an important day for so many reasons. Where is warm rain when you most need it?

Libiamo ne' lieti calici.

Cigarette smoke. Nervous energy. A group of three women behind me glide past their drink superfacially. I come alive inside a gin and tonic. Gin and tonic and coffee. Coffee drained itself with cigarette smoke. Like a dream. I must have been there for two hours, perhaps more, perhaps less. Might have sat there all night too. So much sadness, death and fear. I see these two red marks on the palm. Must have accidentally held the fist so tight? But why?

I feel happy, right at this moment. Enough. I am not ever interested in perpetual happiness. To quote George Bernard Shaw, "A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth." I am looking for spare change. And unexpectedly, I find it. Days I am happy, I want to remember them.

(I feel like I am inside a Thomas Mann novel)

It is so much easier to write about others and other things. I don't hesitate and sit here blankly staring at the keyboard when I think of writing about others. I feel unlettered, uncouth trying to describe my feelings and emotions. Smiles frighten me because I know they are fleeting. I know there is a warm sun on the other side of these clouds and I just sit here waiting for glimses of the sunlight behind them. But today I am thankful for the warmth. I am happy for the arrival of an unseasonal spring. I remember J. D. Salinger writing about being a paranoid-reverse, people plotting to make him happy. I think I am addicted to sadness. I thrive on sadness yet today I am smiling, I feel happy. Just this moment, for no particular reason, looks great to me.

Peace is such a transient thing. Sometimes it is just enough to be happy for a second or a minute. That is enough to recharge you for a year of detachment. But you have to allow yourself to be happy without thinking of the next day or the day after. Or the end of this life. It is today that matters, and more precisely right at this minute.

(I see no lights outside my window. All apartments in Petit Saconnex have gone to sleep. The sky is cloudless and open. Moonless.)

Why am I so uncomfortable with happiness?

"'Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies not plenty"

(Anyway, none of this writing makes any sense to you reader. I think i know how to write more clearly but I dont think I want to. What is the fun in being clear, it is overrated:-))

Sempre libera!

May be tomorrow, the moon will descend at my feet on a puddle.

Lunge da lei per me non v'ha diletto.

I turn the opera off and go to sleep.

FIN.

Perchance to Dream

Perfectly silent evening. I think of what today could have been as I drift in and out of sleep. I imagine the lake, still lit with the effervescent energy of the day, waving around us, beckoning. Crowds pass by the fair, sliding past each other, casually looking but noticing nothing. Sometimes a smile is offered, sometimes a shout is heard. The darkness falls deliberately and envelops all that is around. The stairs to the old town are steep and I am in no hurry. Somewhere in the distance, a waiter drops a tray of water and laughter roars. Deep inside a building a child screams just for a second and is quiet again.

Here in the old town, time moves slowly. It sits with dignity and aloofness away from the lake. Today, no young couple stop in the middle of the cobblestone streets to play violin. Today, nothing out of the ordinary happens. No glass shards rip the sole, no ice cream is spilled on the lap, no catastrophic event occurs around the block.

As I drift in and out of sleep, a vision awakens in me. A wasted song plays for no one and then dies. My vision is in sapia tones, my voice is from very far. Memory strains itself to recollect. How do you convert new experiences to old memories?

I wake up and realize that another day is over. The night may still be with me, but time is no friend of mine.

I imagine reading Jibananda Das or Bukoswki. I miss my iPOD. I imagine I am in one of those surprisingly trendy new bars in Rosalindale that appear pleasantly out of character. I can taste Tibetan food from Rangoon in Cambridge. In my mind, I hear the music from Die Fledermaus and Mefistofele over and again. I miss the voice of mezzo sporano Malena Erman singing in Italian with her Swedish accent.

I could be hiking up amidst the trees all around the blue hills, to rediscover the surprise of finding the Harvard observatory all the way at the top of the hill, I miss the ordinariness of everything, just so because it is so familiar.

Perhaps I must go back to sleep, perchance to dream.

Another Rant - Globalization

Globalization has become to new buzzword to all kinds of movements, addressing all kinds of solutions. The right and left, bereft of their traditionally-held ideologies in the new context, have devolved into caricatures of their former selves and new battles are being fought by proxy for or against this new entity in the global village. However, what really drives this engine?

An objective telling of history is an impossibility in any circumstance. On the one hand, historiographer is biased by temporal or ideological proximity which makes the historiography necessarily subjective. On the other hand, the narrative is too far removed from the facts and therefore, the historiography is a shell of a story with gaps. When perceptions and cultural judgments are added, the history that emerges is necessarily corrupt. It is this vein attempt to look for objective historiography, more importantly, the vein belief that an objective historiography is possible, is what leads to problems in interpreting events. History thus becomes a pseudo-science, with rigid notions and standards and inflexible interpretations and assumptions. This history is then peddled to the masses as “the” truth with which one is supposed to gauge their moral compass and judge the morality of the past.

It is with this corrupt historiography that one has to approach globalization. One has to also distinguish between the globalization of the economy and the globalization of the marketplace. If you were to use the image of an Asian bazaar or a Latin American Village market, the concept of the marketplace emerges not only as a place where commerce takes place, but also as a place where diverse cultures meet and interact, values clash and judgments are made. In this regard, the assault of the marketplace is a bigger crime than just the assault on the commerce of the marketplace.

To quote Nicaraguan poet Giocconda Belli, “What worries me about intellectuals nowadays is that globalization has isolated us, and we have to look for ways to rekindle the communication that used to exist, and the influence that intellectuals used to have in their societies. Many intellectuals renounced their commitment when the Left failed. When socialist ideology showed itself to be a failure in the way it was applied in the Eastern countries such as Russia, a wave of shame came over the leftist intellectuals. Many went back to the trenches, this time to hide, swearing, "I won't get involved in politics anymore. I'll just be in my ivory tower writing and doing my thing and that will be my contribution." Thus the critique of the Left was entrusted to the Right.” (interview with Bomb Magazine) What this isolation and abdication of critique to the right has resulted in is a perception, bred through by the right with selective exposure and history, that the entire question of globalization is the question of economy and economic development. Furthermore, with the left not available to defend its own ideology or methodology, the right has had a field day in detailing the troublesome aspects of the methodology to their great benefit. Thus the contrast of well-attired economists meeting in a conference room against unruly mobs chanting in the streets and destroying property is presented as a tacit value judgment on the ideas that they espouse.

What has been the response to this avalanche of public discourse representing the right and the virtual silencing of the arguments from the left? Two things have happened. The left has thus become more lethargic at the prospect of complete loss of voice and have disappeared entirely from the public sphere, retreating back the ivory tower. To this vacuum, a more fascist, jingoistic right, one that have much in common with the group they oppose but with clashing economic interests, has moved in. The new right is appealing to the populace that is fast losing its identity to cling back to its traditional protectionism at the cost of all the gains to the subalterns under previous progressive conditions. Reproductive rights are challenged, language supremacy is asserted, women are increasingly being forced off the public sphere and religion is used in increasingly fascist ways to stifle debate.

This opposition to the globalization is much easily discredited and thus its rise has been a welcome change to the forces of globalization. Having vanquished the voices of the left to the ivory tower, they are now allowing the new opposition to grow and become uglier at which point they can be neutralized with military force which will be welcomed, as the thinking goes, by the native population.

Can globalization, the marketplace variety, be evaluated without paying attention to the historiography on terrorism, revolution, dictatorship and political disfranchising of large populations? As Noam Chomsky points out, the root causes of terrorism lie in the much larger imperial sins of the powers of globalization.

Nothing Venured, Nothing Lost - A Cautionary Tale

Sometimes, life offers an opportunity and you don't take it. Is the fear of pain more important than the possibility of pleasure? Is the memory of sadness stronger than the dream of happiness? Perhaps it is. What would you rather be, a lobster of a fish egg? A lobster slowly cooks itsself alive as it swims in increasingly heated water until it succumbs to the heat. On the other hand, the fish roe(eggs) floats over the surface from wave to wave towards its unknown destiny which could be the promise of being a fish on a restaurant table or being pray to some creature in the sea (Hmm, those are quite lovely choices, come to think of it. May be it is an inedible fish, and ugly, not the sort people pay lots of money to put in fish tanks). On the other hand, our friend Lobster is a victim of paralysis, it dies in its own inability to move even as it feels the heat. Fish egg is helpless to decide where its destiny lies and thus floats with the current whereever it is taken.

I don't know what is better. But at the end of the day, you alone are responsible for your happiness. Like all those Arabs that walk by the lake (When it like 40,000 degrees in saudi Arabia, they come here to cool off. When it is time to marry, they fly off to create a new hymen). You are never reponsible for the happiness of others however terrible it might be.

I would rather be a fish egg floating in the open ocean knowing not what my destiny is than a lobster who is too paralyzed to jump out of the hot water. But then, who is to know...

Sushi anyone?

Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No? Yes? No?
This is what you get when you have no sleep and no food.

_______________________________________________________________________________
Apparently not. With apologies to Dr. Seuss:

I do not like them
Sam, I am

I do not like them here or there
I do not like them anywhere
I do not like them in a boat
I would not, could not, with a goat

I will not eat them in the rain
I do not like them on a train
I do not like them in a box
I will not eat them with a fox

I do not like them in a house
I would not, could not, with a mouse
I do not like salmon roe and wasabi
I do not like them
Sam, I am

Mid-morning

I took a cab to the airport yesterday to the airport. ever since the big dig collapsed and killed that poor woman, Handsome Mitt has made it miserable for people to get to the airport. I am sure, Handsome Mitt has no problems himself. So, driving to the airport is not a hassle anyone wants to take. Gawd, I hate that town. Hey Mike, if you are reading this, I hope you remember how I told you thant this damn thing will collapse on someone's head one day. How do you solve traffic congesion by reducing the number of lanes and the speed limit is anyone's guess.

The flight was so uneventful, I dont remember a thing. Was it this week or last that I moved my seats so an older couple can sit together? I can't even bloody remember.

I was the last person to enter the flight. Absolutely the last. So late that the entire plane was probably waiting for me cursing under their collective breath. No fault of mine though, my flight was late. I sat next to a Frenchman who was very nice and quite helpful (even though what help one needs on board a 40 minute flight is debatable).

Anyway the views were spectacular this morning.

And time to forget aesthetics, I am in the office already. How is that for working with no sleep?

Reader, this for you

I started to wrie this blog for me, as a diary. Now I write this for you. Even if you don't read this. I would like to think you read my blog tonight, perhaps because you were bored or perhaps because it was just there. More likely, you didn't have the time or it was too uninteresting.

It takes a long time to develop a perspective when writing a blog. A very long time. You write so many different things and recycle previous writings until you find your wings. It finally comes to you, the right words and the right ambience. First of all, the right emotional tone needs to be found. That takes time. My blog is not matured yet. However, eventually I think I will find my voice. Which is funny coming from a guy who has spent thirty seven years on this planet, drifting from place to place. I wish finding a voice was at least as easy as finding an apartment in my town in Europe, which, anyone will tell you, ain't that easy.

I am sitting 40,000 miles over the ocean somewhere over the Atlantic on my way to Munich. I am connected and online. I have just finished a glass of wine and ate perhaps half of my salmon dinner. The cabin is dark and I just have my seatback reading light on. All is still except for the muted roaring of the engines.

May be next week, I will find my voice.

Nice Summer Day

As I drove to work tis morning, I couldn't help but notice how perfect the day is. Looking outside my window, I see that the grass is perfectly green and the sun is hitting the leaves in just the right angle.

My office is cool, but not cold. I like the feeling of solitude when I am here and the door is closed. This stillness is overwhelming.

This afternoon, I will take a flight to the other town for my weekly commute. Tomorrow will be a different day. I can almost see how the streets in Europe will look when I begin my drive to the hotel.

A freind told me the other day that the hotel I stay at was the first place that gave Sharon and Arafat the same point of view:-) Apparently, when they came to visit for the accord, both of them had the same view out of their windows. Then I wonder, who got the higher floor?

And this is usually the view from my hotel room, the picture next to the post "Mid Morning" (I edited this post later to correct it, the picture here is a stock picture of another city). I can't wait to buy a place and move out of this. It doesn't matter how nice a hotel is, it is still a hotel room. By the way, the big glass building in front is the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and of course, you see the Lake in the background.

Musings on Governance

I spent this morning wondering if democracy, as experienced by most people, is the best form of governance. Don't get me wrong, I am not a cheerleade for theocracy or military dictatorsip. But the fact that the other alternatives stink doesn't mean we stop searching for other more meaningful alternatives.

At least here in the US, democracy is not all that participatory. It is really the government of the rich for the rich by the rich. What most Americans think as participatory democracy is a staged show managed by a few unelected power brokers. They manufacture messages entirely designed to play to the emotions of the majority to secure the votes and then once secured, use the mandate to continue the will of the military-indusrial complex.

Recently, for example, a bill was introduced tat tied a minimum wage hike to further tax relief for the richest. Apparently, no more than 10 of the total strength of congress even bother to read the provisions of the intellegence bills before voting on them.

This is of course the oldest democracy in the world.

The largest, India, is worse. Instead of checks nd balanced, what India has is a sort of anarchy that functions for a few power brokers. It is even more complex and in the true fashion of India works in all other areas, truly incomprehensible. Where else can systematic discrimination of the meritorious is hailed as social justice?

Is this the best we can do?

Surely there must be a better way to govern.

Blame It On the Vaccine

(First Published on Sulekha.com on Feb 20, 2000 - http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?contributor=Desiensus%20Mobilus)

On the green helmet-top hill, overlooking the saffron-colored waters of the river sat Bhagothi1, the goddess of underclasses, the bestower of plurabilities, in the dark and damp temple to watch over the town. Compared to the temples of milder goddesses and gods, lit by oil lamps and smelling of fresh flowers and incense, Bhagothi’s temple bore the smell of dried blood and sweat. All over Valiakavu Kunnu2, People whispered in low voices about her powers and feared her proxy, Thatchan, the priest. The high caste priests shunned him and his Bhagothi in favor of smiling and fair gods with proper deportment and even temperaments. The even-tempered gods were happy with sweetened yogurt and paste of sandalwood. They wore white sheets and gold ornaments over their potbellies and listened to scriptures. The goddess shook her curvaceous bare breasts and smirked at them from her dark abode. She stuck her tongue out and irritated the twice-born3 with her raw sexuality.
Secretly, even the twice-born feared the goddess. They gave money to the workers who toiled in their fields to buy toddy and roosters for the goddess. Bhagothi received the offerings and blessed the workers who brought them in instead of the farmers who paid for it. Workers and Bhagothi kept the secret from the rich and the high-born.

Toddy4-tappers and their women placated her with songs and taught their young stories of her powers. Nubile young women hoped for breasts like her and young men longed for wives that looked like her. And they collectively kept their fantasies a secret, except during the festival when they sang obscene songs in her praise. Bhagothi was tickled by it all for she knew everything and saw everything. But when she saw decadence growing in the huts around Valiakavu Kunnu in the form of progress, she got angry. When women started to cover their breasts, when men cut their long hair and shaved off their moustaches, when Kumaran marched shirtless workers of the timber mill for higher wages under the banner of communism, when young children failed to light lamps in the turn of twilight, she showed Valiakavu Kunnu her displeasure. Thus every now and then, she threw raw seeds of feverish anger that blossomed into little red flowers of pain on the dark skin of her children. Men and women slept on straw mats in dark, unlit rooms, uncared for and unwept, in fever and delirium, seeing nightmares about the craters on their own future faces, until they were redeemed by Bhagothi in death or were allowed to survive yet another day in weakness, disfigurement and blindness. Even Kadan Pulayan5, the toughest undertaker of them all, had to get high on arrack6 before he could walk into the huts to drag the straw bundles of death out for burial.

Smell of hopelessness, death, turpentine and morbid lust permeated the whole town and even the households that were spared stayed in and submitted themselves to the will of Bhagothi.

Kadatha Pathiyan6 fell ill on the second day of the monsoon. For decades, he climbed the coconut trees early in the morning and tapped them to make toddy, as all his ancestors had done before him. He worked diligently, drank a little arrack7 at night, beat his wife and children in keeping with expectations and bought them fish fry from Kelu’s tea shop to make up for the beating. He seldom spoke; walked agile and erect, with a sickle by his side, short and ageless, with a full head of black hair. No one knew how old he was but he seemed to have been around ever since anyone could remember. He shared his toddy with Bhagothi and stayed out of her path for many, many monsoons until his luck ran out. That monsoon, Bhagothi visited him with a bouquet of red flowers that spiraled up his back and bloomed on his face.



"Oy Bhagothi, have I been good, took your name every evening in prayer, send you toddy and roosters, married my daughters off and stayed away from macrists8", he moaned in delirium, "Why are you angry with me?" Bhagothi smiled an enigmatic smile showing the trace of her teeth and touched his forehead, "need your company, my child", she said. "Need you right here by my side, you are growing tired." Kadatha looked around and saw nothing but darkness. He felt a million wet needles on his skin. Bhagothi didn’t sound malefic at all, he felt her touch on his hot dark skin until he felt light and clean.

Fourteen days passed while the rain drummed up a constant beat on the roof and floodwaters rose. Kadatha’s children went in and out of his hut in small, slender boats looking for things to do and came back empty handed. They ate rats and lizards that floated by their hut and ignored the smell of age and disease. On the fourteenth day, great thunder and lighting came from the north and felled a giant tamarind tree. Shortly thereafter Bhagothi came to Kadatha and tapped him on the shoulder, "come little boy, time to go." Kadatha looked for his bundle of belongings. Bhagothi shook her head in an indulgent smirk, "Don’t bother my child, you won’t need it." Kadatha felt stronger as if he drank from the fountain of youth, he wanted to kick, fuck and talk like he has never done before.

There wasn’t a patch of dry land around his hut, so his sons dug a big hole in their kitchen and buried him without ceremony. Then they made an oven over the mound and cooked a funeral feast of squirrels and restlessly waited for the rains to stop. There was nothing to do but to wait, so they twisted the tip of their moustaches and made small talk about the rain.

Nobody mourned his passing until the floodwaters receded. Numbness hit them just as dry ground was spotted. Kadatha, the oldest of them all, was gone to a perpetual dry land where toddy and arrack flowed. And all that left of him was an oven and empty vessels.

"Acho9," mumbled his daughter, "stay young acho, and keep us happy." In a belated chorus all women joined in. Men morosely bonded over a bottle of transparent fire. They decided to spare the bother of digging him out to find him a more appropriate place of rest. "There is no point in messing up the kitchen floor again," pronounced the eldest son, Krishnan. That put an end to any argument to the contrary. They cooked rice and fish over him and threw the dregs down into the river. The river flowed silently by the Goddess temple and the Goddess licked her thick lips with her long, red tongue in the dark and winked at Kadatha sitting at her feet. Shortly after, his daughter ran away with her brother-in-law and somewhere in Pala or Kottayam or some such big city, her jealous husband cut them both down with a sickle.

After forty-one days of relentless destruction, the curse of red flowers and damp needles disappeared from the land and what was left of the sick crawled out of their beds and headed for the river for baths. Goddess greeted devotees who come to see her with tender coconuts and red flowers with giant petals and granted them their wishes; a new yellow dress of Veli, a tractor for Raman Pillai and high marks in the exams for Sunil Thandan, the misfit who insisted on going to school instead of helping his father in the field.

Life limped back to normal in all of Valiakunnu Kavu. Kadatha’s sons went back to toddy tapping and arrack drinking. In the evenings they beat up their wives and fucked them with great raw carnal energy while their post-pubescent daughters pretended to sleep and dreamt their own erotic excursions and longed to be wed.

"Why do you want me here?" Kadatha asked Bhagothi in half-knowledge and speculation. Bhagothi laughed and held him close to her breasts without answering. He ardently drank the warmth of nipples and felt the changing seasons. Spring has come too soon, birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, Kamadevan10 is inflicting everyone with the pain of lust. He felt an eternal spring deep in himself and he indulged in the unspoken sin of his thoughts.

"Things are changing, my boy’" she sighed, "You’ll see."

This was the last monsoon before the smallpox vaccine became mandatory and before Bhagothi lost her tremendous power. Government came to town in a big way in the form of young men in trousers and bush shirts. They sat in new offices and issued ration cards and cycle licenses. They made speeches about new beginnings and new technology. Light came at night through metal wires that came all the way from some far place and wiped the darkness. Thatchan, the dedicated servant of the goddess sat outside the government office in protest of the vaccine after the goddess lost her power and people stopped the flow of toddy and live roosters to her temple. He looked back at the old days of chicken butter roast and sweet toddy with longing and blamed the government and the vaccine for all the ills in society.

"This year the monsoon is bringing much devastation, what with each rain drop packing the punch of an elephant-trunk full of water", said Thatchan with resignation, "But what can you say? No one cares anymore."

Goddess shook her head in the dark. Kadatha watched Thatchan and his grief. Children went to school and were pricked with little needles of dried flowers that stayed in their blood and fought Bhagothi head on. Bhagothi and government fought in their bloodstream for control and government won.

Grass grew around her temple and floodwaters rose and fell. Thatchan grew frail and weak and wept for redemption. He slept at the temple, unwashed and unshaven and waited for his next lifetime. Finally, a little green live wire with a golden head came out of the foliage and pricked Thatchan gently in his sleep and allowed him his purple sleep. Bhagothi felt the sting of abandonment and invited a deep slumber upon herself and Kadatha.

Darkness fell over Valiakunnu Kavu as if a dark giant cloud had stood over it. Electric lamps were lit and devotional parodies of film songs were played over loud speakers. Fair Gods in their brightly-lit temples negotiated visas to Persia and Dubai and granted engineering college admissions for fair children in far off Manipal and Bangalore. Toddy-tappers left their coconut trees for palm trees and camels in the Persian Gulf. They returned with money to build concrete houses and played devotional songs in music systems.

Bhagothi and Kadatha woke from their deep hibernation to find the cacophony around them. People were building an approach road to her temple and painting the temple in bright yellow and white. Kadatha’s children, and grandchildren, in polyester slacks with new currency were watching over them.

"Let me see my children, let me fly over the land and watch palm flowers and tender coconuts" asked Kadatha softly, he longed for the weight of seeing and hearing upon him. He looked at Bhagothi and saw that she was aging. The sun was shining outside and the yellow flowers around the temple were in full bloom. Bhagothi shook her head sadly in consent and gave Kadatha his wings back. All the dead have wings my child, she said to herself, I apologize for keeping yours from you for so long. Kadatha rose over the temple like a butterfly over the hill, then over the green canopy of trees, over electric lines and the river, and the concrete house where his hut once stood and flew to the clouds silently.

Looking down, he saw a new priest covering Bhagothi’s face in sandalwood paste.

***********

1 Goddess. Corr. From Bhagawati.

2 Lit. Big temple Hill

3 Brahmin. Reference to the sacred thread ceremony.

4 Sweet fermented liquor made from tender coconuts

5 Caste name of farm workers

6 Traditional caste name of toddy-tappers

7 Distilled country liquor

8 Marxists

9 Father. Coll.

10 God of love

Haridwar, India

This picture was taken outside a gas station near Meerut on the drive from Haridwar back to Delhi with my mother and sister a few months ago. My dad's death anniversary. Haridwar was very disappointing, considering that the last time I was there in 1989. We stopped the car so the qualis could get some gas ("petrol") and so my sister could feed my nephew. I wandered away from the car and stopped at this field with trees. There was nothing particularly fascinating about the field or the trees. But it was nice and like how Indian small towns often feel, quite familiar. I always get lost in these places.

Two nights ago, I flew in from the US to Delhi and met up with my sister at the airport. She flew in from San Frasisco via Bombay. So she brought mom along with her. We had an interesting but tense dinner at this Indian restaurant at Le meridien after the hotel sent a baby sitter to watch my nephew. I can't remember the last time the three of us were together like this for a meal. The hotel had a weird vibe. The last time I was there was two years prior to that and some politico's daughter was getting married. All I remember is a sea of safari suits and white kurtas.

Dad's absense was weighing heavily on everyone's minds.

The driver of our SUV was a young man that never took a shower or changed his clothes the entire time he was with us. His teeth were yellow and he spoke very seldom. He was barely twenty four. I wondered what it was that kept him going. I never saw him eat or sleep in spite of us giving him plenty of breaks to do both. I tried often to strike up a conversation with him, but I couldn't get much out of him except smiles.

He must have been amused by us and the way we were, excited about the drive. And for my nephew, this was heaven, this was the first time he ever travelled in a vehicle without being restrained. Dangerous, but also freeing.

Last time I went this way, back in 1989, I was in one of those prvate buses. Roads look different and things look prosperous.

Life changes so much around you.

Silent Benediction Mid-Flight

Bombay hangs over me like a dust cloud left behind after the Loo in the Gangetic plains. It is more than a memory, more than a feeling; it is an alter ego of my identity (or shall I say, identities, forged as it is of multitudinous pasts and parts); I recognize in it a faint shadow of self that I left behind so long ago in its alleyways and open spaces. Every trip to India then takes the form of reinvention, or rediscovery, of accents, and verbal truancy, an alien tongue forged in my own incantations, then re-forged in an alien world. I don’t know why I try to discover myself through words and smells and feelings (and sights and sounds, even the most disagreeable ones, viewed from a self-sanitizing lens of the west) of a land now alien, yet holding secrets to my boyhood, so confusing. In the end I discover nothing more than the truth about my own alienation from past and from memories. Khali-pili phokkad! Such trite waste-of-time, such nonsensical time-pass that benefits no one, not Bombay definitely as she smiles at this with a half smile of indulgence, how many of us does she have to suffer. And definitely not me, given that I don't discover much outside JW Mariott and Taj Land's End. I made these elaborate plans to visit my past(s) and end up hiding out in hotel rooms and lobbies.

You know there is an apartment, in one of those old buildings where the paint is chipping and the balconies are devoid of fashionable chairs where the smell of ocean and taste of salty breezes hang in the air, that is waiting for me to claim it as my own. Even as I live suspended in this reality (and I write this on an airplane going from Baltimore to Los Angeles) and dreaming of the New Year’s eve party in some farmhouse in Pune, I think that I shall have to claim it to complete my story, to make sure that I become the person I set out to be. There are lies and deceptions, untold cruelties and wanton acts of kindness that propel my everyday life. But to know and feel that I belong would require that I embrace the possibility, the future that may substitute a past, and not be consumed of worry about healthcare and insurance and running hot water.

You may think that I am now a such a firang, a quasi-American, an angrez-ka-aulad christened in a new form of the brown sahib returning home with a peculiar language and an attitude to match..but inside this incendiary beast that strays, there is a soul longing to be lost in the chaotic overbridge in Andheri in the evenings wading through the multitudes selling thisthatandtheother, choodiyan, scarfs, imitation watches, cheap toys, metallic whatnots… I feel that my mind is often like that too, a cornucopia of fears, aspirations, dreams, interrupted sequences, and desire to be complete. To run from it all is so futile.

My parents lived in Bombay for so long. They aged, and like the city, their proverbial paint chipped and finally my father’s lungs gave way. The pollution of the city choked them. But in the end, the city outlives us all.

I left, became what I have become, lost so much, gained some, and in the process lost count.

I am tired. Of fumes in Chembur, defecating crowds in Bhandup, distance to Thane, the lost causes, and the benediction from the unknown.

I am tired.

Arundhati Roy

Recently I went to hear Arundhati Roy at the UCLA. It is very difficult not to hear Ms. Roy these days. She is everywhere. If she is not doing radio interviews in New York, she is attending a book reading in Santa Fe or speaking at a Baptist Church in Harlem. Or as in this case, speaking at the UCLA.

Royce Hall was full; latecomers were ushered into the nosebleed sections of the balcony. The audience was mostly sympathetic, white middleclass liberal Americans waiting to hear the lone voice of liberalism that speaks from the brown world.

The show started with a film about Arundhati starring, who else, Arundhati Roy. Arundhati with a new hair style. A conscious, intellectual hairstyle. A definitive I-don’t-want-to-be-among-the-100-sexiest-people haircut. The movie connected the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the petty fights Arundhati had with the Supreme Court, the nuclear tests, the jail sentence and the personal tribulations in her life, all in a neat package, reinforcing the cleverly marketed liberal hero image of Ms. Roy. Real activists like Medha Patkar had a collective 3 minutes in the movie, while Ms. Roy coquettishly flirted with an assorted number of village people, rode in rickety boats and wore flowery skirts, a scene reminiscent of the images of Indira Gandhi in the 70s touring the country dancing her way through social problems in tribal head dresses to the tune of Dalit folk music. There were small doses of reality that slipped in the documentary though, a glimpse of her opulent residence in Delhi, a hug from someone who appeared to be her domestic help, her car(s) and drivers. If Ms. Roy’s carefully created persona of the political animal, the passionate liberal activist had not already made a lasting impression in you through her articles and the media hype, the movie appeared to have been designed to close the gap. It was her version of “Love me in the time of Cholera on the banks of Narmada”.

At the end of the movie, following a standing ovation, chairs were arranged and spot lights focused on the chairs. Ms. Roy appeared, in a flowing white dress- these little details are important, after all we are speaking about one of the 100 most beautiful people, don’t forget- and seated herself next to an erudite-looking college professor sycophant who was playing the part of the interviewer that night. The questions and answers were predictable and unfortunately repetitive, if you had read the transcripts of her previous conversations, as I had.

If you have read this far, you must think I am some kind of a conservative, fan of the rampant globalization, pro-war, pro-VHP reactionary. I am not. I am actually the opposite of all those things.

But I am also not a fan of important debates, important social debates that may determine the future shape of the world, hijacked by self-propagating, well-coiffured, media products like Ms. Roy who peddle their brand of global dissent at the brown man’s expense to the white audience. Isn’t it a wonderful coincidence that her conscience rises and falls with the schedules of a book tour?

Don’t get me wrong. Ms. Roy can write. She writes beautifully, she can conjure up lyrical and poetic imagery with little effort. She also speaks well, she can engage in wise repartee with the best of them.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make her a spokesperson for any of the causes she seem to champion. Her potion that she brews for the globalization and its perils, fundamentalism and death of democracy is as effective as the solutions the other side is selling. In an effort to appeal to the American populace, the real problems are confused with the petty follies of local politicians and mistakes in the democratic experiments in India. The American audience loves it. Because once she leaves the room, while her message against the war may have gotten jumbled in with the relentless media garbage the flows from all sides, mainly the right, her portrayal of the Government of India and its architects and its keepers remain vivid, reinforcing all the stereotypes that they have already developed.

Perhaps, next time Mr. Bush is itching for a regime change, he can look at Ms. Roy to provide him with all the reasons to Bomb India, Narmada dam and all.

Her theories are simple. Nationalism doesn’t work any more. We have to have a global dissent against the big corporations that finance the war, the ones that benefit from it. India has become a fascist country and Supreme Court of India has no accountability. Narendra Modi is as much a big criminal as King George the Second.

The sad truth is that Narendra Modi, with all his leanings toward fascism, is a storm in a teacup, an idea-man whose only idea won him one re-election. Has he committed crimes? Of course, he is a criminal who is responsible of the death of over two thousand inhabitants of his state, mostly Muslims. But to compare him with the man who is responsible for the death of millions, through direct military action, through embargoes and covert support of state-sponsored terrorism of other nations, and through orchestrated famines and poverty, is to trivialize the global scale of misery the current regime has perpetrated on the people of the world.

Has India become a fascist country? Those of us who can filter out rhetoric from the truth in India, and I hope this includes Ms. Roy; know that electoral speeches never materialize into policy. This does not mean they don’t do any damage. The current political climate in India is far more vituperated that it was in the past. There is a clear emergence of a fashionable visible right wing especially facing the prospect of an ideologically-pauper left that is not able to counter this with anything more viable. Hey counter the threat of further slide to the right with the likes of an Italian with poor communication skills and an even poorer understanding of policy, a practical illiterate caste-Mafioso who rules a state with his wife as the puppet chief minister and a 25-year old waiting in the wings to take over after her mother gets bored.

It is a sad state of affairs. In such a world, where the legislature refuses to do its duty, the Supreme Court has to step in and do its job. This is indeed a dangerous trend. However, the solution does not lie in reforming the court. It lies with reforming the legislature. Perhaps we want Ms. Roy to run for the elections?

But that will not allow her to profit from going around America getting applause from gullible spectators by comparing India to Hitler’s Germany.

And I think that is the easy route.

Arundhati Roy does take the road less-traveled, but only in a chauffer-driven car.

National Day

Yesterday was the national Day and at the English Garden, they must all have gathered to celebrate and watch the fireworks. I went by there yesterday, and people were already getting in the mood with the help of copious pourings of wine and beer. Many were grooving to the free concert. I was invited to go but here I am sitting in this town. I can see all the smiling faces and their laughter. I too got a special 5 bucks coin sized chocolate cake on the flight... and that was my celebration:-) Mid-air celebration of a holiday that doesn't hold much significance to me except that there are people on the streets and here I am alone again.

This started out as a bad morning. My first flight was cancelled by the airline, so here I am standing in line to rebook on a another flight. A South indian girl with glasses, without much ceremony, disappears from her place in front of me, after asking me to look after her bags. Fortunately she returns before my turn arrives. And I am not a huge fan of this airline. I get to the hub city and suddenly Tii and Amit both call asking if I would be up for a drink later that day. Well, that ain't gonna happen, now will it?

The German guy sitting next to me is a lucky upgrade and he is thrilled to be there. So he decides to live it up Cliff Richard's new wine they are serving today. What the hell, I join in. It is not like I am flying the plane. (A good thing too, unlike the time I went flying with Tim Long over Ventura).

And now at 3:00 AM I am wide awake. I should be feeling at home to be back. But for some reason, I feel like I left something back there. This commute back and forth is hard. Harder than I ever thought. And now I have to go to my office in the morning, did I ever mention I have two offices, lucky me!:-(

All the unspoken words. I am afraid if I start talking, I will never stop.

3 AM. Wednesday

Seen From Above

Seen from above all things become clearer
Why the tiny village roads have sinuous curves
Why villages fight over property lines
Why the traffic chokes in the streets of Rome

It is perpetual winter here, and the sun shines bright
Where a few lucky souls dine on veal and drink
Merlot from good vineyards in France
And others spend miserable hours smelling farts

I like to lie down, my head tilted away from all
Eyes buried deep into a book, a headphone
Protects me from the sounds of others
All so I can weep and still pretend to be man

I apologize to my neighbor for I haven’t been very neighborly
Commenting on the fine bouquet of the new wine
Or how they serve salmon ever so cutely
And of course, aren’t these stewardesses old?

Seen from here all things become clear
The loneliness, the thread-bareness of the soul
The hollow need to love, be loved, to include
Be included
To not apologize
To justify
To go-for-it
To reach-out and to pounce-on
To get invited, to exclude
To look down, to pretend, to show-off

And at the end, after all that drama
To still feel naked inside
Like there is nothing to any of this
And all that matters is how much
You love yourself
Without conditions and without expectations

The dead don’t communicate
They have better things to do
And the ghosts of the past have lost
Their fangs and scary eye-glow
But seen from above
It is clear
That all that is scary
Is how I still manage to scare myself
For I have nothing else to cry for
Unless I cry about this lost love
For me.

End of the eclipse

Perhaps I was born at the end of an eclipse
right as the moon turned to pictures and
dissolved away in the eyes of progress

I used to walk these shores
endlessly lost, with hours to kill
collecting sea shells and dreams

She smiled at me, nude in my dreams
pure as the ocean and clear as a shard of broken glass

I had nothing to do
but remember the world
dressed in bright metaphors

My eyes turned feverish red
she was drunk on satisfaction
and the stars really spoke in poetry

Right then, at the end of the eclipse
when the moon dissolved
in a bright beaker of progress

Science came about
in a prism lens
and burned my dreams

A speeding automobile
hit my knees
and now I walk with a cane

Far away in a distant land
she sleeps, clothed and silent
almost as if she is absent

These days when dreams arrive
I chase them off my sleep
with scientific equations

And pretend to find
precise directions
on colorful maps



“Silence is the absence of words. I feel that words have failed me because I am being filled up by them. I silently walk the narrow streets of the old town, leaving words behind as if they were falling from a long evening dress that I might have worn and never did.”

A City Emptied

Cambridge
Is like a monster with a thousand faces
And a pointy tail
Without lights and sounds
The city empties in my dreams
Like a slept-in bed
With rumpled yellowing sheets
And lost strands of hair

Every puddle marks a death trap
Stepping into their unattractive depth
I could get lost
And pass into the nether-regions
Of the planet’s magmatic interior

Chaucer comes alive in the ironies of my wanton imagination

I smell phosphorus
When I walk these lanes
Burning incandescently
Through my nostrils
All the pains and ailments
Of my old age
And hurts and tears of the middle years
Are seeping through my pockets
Into the thighs like acid

Akhmatova adds intensity to my pathetic self-interest

Cigarette smoke
Paces heartily up and down through the holes
In my lungs
Somewhere along the distance
Trampling through the insides of
A sleeping home
Berlioz makes a racket
I can’t listen
To the empty protestations
Against the sweet nature of life
When love decomposes in my hands
Like a banana past its date of decent storage

I scream
As far and loud as I could
Before the noise from the traffic
Drowns my lungs


On the floor I see remnants of dog food
Torn pieces of New York Times
A dime forgotten in the crevice between
The floor and the kitchen island
Behind me I hear
A rumbling noise like a personal
Nightmare, a helicopter crashing
Into a lost valley of dreams

I want to be naked
And run through the mall
At Copley
And vanish into thin air!

Poof!

My insomnia and depression
Are
deep
deep
deep
like a valley of flesh
Between gargantuan breasts
Where, suffocated in its Pernicious aroma,
I read a love poem

Mayakoswky has nothing on my despair

I walk with my eyes down on the floor
Tracing stains of origins unknown
Trying to craft stories and messages
And hidden opportunities
Until I come squarely to the end of the path
And find that the way up is
Also the way out

Insomnia

It is 2:30 AM and I am wide awake. It has been a long time since I wrote. A lot of life happened since then.

Am I going to catch up? May be. No promises.

I am very upset about the Bombay train terrorist attacks. I don't know whom to blame. It doesn't even matter. I learned about it the day it happened, while reading the internet. I just really wanted to go somewhere there were many Indians. So I walked over to Royal India at the Paquis and watched BBC.

Sometimes you just have to be upset.

I walk to work in the morning, I see all these people crowding by the lake, running, walking and cycling. There are these giant poster boards with the articles from the UN Human Rights charter by the lake. In the morning, giant sprinklers come up and water all this meticulously maintained laws by the lake. Sometimes, I see Arab men of means sitting on lawn chairs brought in from Inside their cars sit under the shade watching the water with their flunkies standing about deferentially. It is a serene sight, life by this lake.

If you go upto Vevey, the lake changes. Summer is nice here. I can't wait to see Winter.

I feel perpetually jet-lagged. Alternating one week here by the lake and one week thousands miles away there is taking a toll on me. Now you know why I don't write.

May be tomorrow I will write more if the plane has a hotspot.

Good Friday

Reaching to the infinity until the end of time
a bed of clouds wait for me under the plane
With her kind eyes, Mary waits for me
to wash my sins, wipe my blood away with her veil

And descend, crying, feeling small
that you have become just a memory
with blood spots on your veil
and my sins on your shoulder

far away
a bottle of liquor empties, a pitcher of sangria empties
she smokes a joint and smiles
and the lights go out

I wait for my salvation as I descend
with new sins
opting to hurt, opting to make my mother cry
opting to tire my self
from all that I do

I am tired
too tired to feel
her heaving bosom
bending down to wipe my feet
and wipe my tears

I am tired

This side of Iraq

This side of Iraq, I will give you something to remember:
A poster with a dove flying out a of gun barrel,
A woman hugging a boy soldier on a railway platform,
A pair of eggs, a red ribbon, a child's smile.
A picture of a child's smile.
A web site with the picture of a child's smile on it.
A search engine for that web site,
Right under a listing for pedophilia and child pornography.

This side of Iraq, I will play some sounds for your pleasure:
The creaking noise of a bed
Of lovers making love.
The cackling noise of a child's laughter.
A tape of a child's laghter.
A web site with the sound bite of a child's cackling laughter.
Her father who made the web site is in kosovo,
Fighting the war he doesn't care to fight,
Started too late, limping like an anorgasmic penis.
The sound of his voice cracking with fear before his flight,,
The sound of death following, a requiem.

This side of Iraq, I argue with my Russian friend,
I paint white flags with blue circles,
Watch television with weary eyes,
Both sides.
Wrong, and right,
Since thirteen hundred.

Always killing,
Always running.

And this side of Iraq,
I stop my car by the gas station and
complain about The gas price.
I watch the blue sky and
Cry about smiling children.