“He said that she said that he told her about how he is now officially broken up.” A long winded relational theory more complex than the relativity theory of the last century, landed upon my head in the middle of an unsuspected (and, I am presuming, unsuspecting) coffee. I met TwitterBoi after a long absence. With our work and whatsname, we have been playing some sort of a intercontinental version of Catch-Me-If-You-Can the last six and a half years, always escaping (unintended choice of word) meeting each other.
However, this time, with my prolonged stay in the galaxy of towns, we finally collided, like dwarfed planet being struck by a passing meteorite, and met over coffee. Meeting TwitterBoi is like suddenly getting acquainted with the intimate workings of a whole lot of people by proxy. You feel like you are suddenly caught in a J.C. movie, the world sinking around you, and lots of people you have only vaguely registered in your romancing, are suddenly talking to you and fighting with you and making the most of the dramatic encounter. I pointed out to him, when he made the revelation that his girlfriend’s brother told her that he heard from his drama partner that she had heard from her cousin’s wife about how a common friend we had known eight years ago in grad-school has broken up with a woman I didn’t know at all, that I really didn’t know any of the people involved in the story. At that point, he simpered and giggled and announced “Of course you know them all… Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know them… because they know all about you. I talk to them about you all the time.”
I suddenly felt very naked and violated at the idea that there is a whole gene pool of people who know me, who know of me, who apparently hear other people talk about me and can claim bonds of familiarity and friendship with me. As things are, coming back to Galaxy is claustrophobic enough, with people meeting me everywhere and claiming acquaintanceship and demanding my cell phone number- at late night cafes at one thirty in the morning, at movie theatres and multiplexes in the early morning cheap shows, at picnics into far beyonds, at parties where I sometimes don’t know the hosts, at marriages and funerals, at the park where I go for my walk, at the gas stations where I am getting some fuel, at the ice-cream parlour where I have walked in my pyjamas for a late night binge, at the karaoke bars and dramatic performances, at book shops and cyber-cafes… these being the instances where I was surprised by people I vaguely remember (sometimes I don’t remember) stopping me and saying hello, claiming acquaintanceship through knowing my parents, my family, my friends, my cousins, my college, my school, my drama club etc. It is a very strange and warm feeling that so many people should remember me or even take the time out to stop me and reacquaint themselves to me but it is also rather cumbersome to know that there are so many people in the world and that I know them (or pretend to anyway).
I wondered if all these people talk about me to somebody else. I also wondered why a completely non-glam undramatic life like mine would be of interest to anybody who did not have immediate claims of affection, money or lack-of-choice. And most importantly I wonder what they talk about when I am not there. Do you ever wonder about it? What would people be saying when they don’t know you too well but still think that you are talk-worthy? What would they be saying? What? What?
Question: Do you know what your favourite animal says about you?
Me: What? Behind my back?
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
What is success?
I have been doing some deep thinking and right now I am writing down what came to mind as my definition of "success".
Achievement of my aspirations. And what are these aspirations?
1. to do good to my work, in all honesty, to the best of my capacity.
2. to do good to my family and loved ones, to the best of my capacity.
The latter is easier for most to understand because one way or the other everybody does the same- it is natural.
The former is trickier- because it is acquired, and it changes contours according to the place I am , the situation, the organisation, the people who work for me, people I work for.
Achievement of my aspirations. And what are these aspirations?
1. to do good to my work, in all honesty, to the best of my capacity.
2. to do good to my family and loved ones, to the best of my capacity.
The latter is easier for most to understand because one way or the other everybody does the same- it is natural.
The former is trickier- because it is acquired, and it changes contours according to the place I am , the situation, the organisation, the people who work for me, people I work for.
Monday, December 24, 2007
With Kind Regards:
was
what once was chance is now the norm
what once was lull is a storm
what once was company is set asunder
what once was only is many-a-blunder
was it luck that he met her?
or was it meant to be?
was it the walk in idle hour?
or was it blackened coffee?
is it 'was'?was it here, or just because.
what once was chance is now the norm
what once was lull is a storm
what once was company is set asunder
what once was only is many-a-blunder
was it luck that he met her?
or was it meant to be?
was it the walk in idle hour?
or was it blackened coffee?
is it 'was'?was it here, or just because.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
A Short Lunch Goes to Make A Long Day a.k.a. The Family luncheon - Straight Out Of Poe's Less Cheery Yarns
A lot of independent worldly matters have been discussed and decided over courses of food. Mine was debated over food.
I got invited over lunch by R. to her place. I was to split the bread with the whole strength of her family. The whole strength of her family was daunting. Daunting enough to quail the bravest of her suitors. Needless to say, I couldn't with all honesty, consider myself to be a brave person, least of all her suitor. I was just playing enamored hope I spelt that correct. I’ve been trying to use that word for a while. I am digressing. Her family is of essence here. So be it.
She had a grandmother. Also a grandfather. And a father. Everybody has one. It’s a necessary evil. A mother. And a brother, an unnecessary evil. I notice I put them down in decreasing order of toxic and degenerate contents.
Her grandmother was ancient. She still is. She is one of those who you’d presume to exist underneath those mixed bundle of shawls and rugs looking out with a beaky nose and piercing eyes. Shooting out disapproving whistles appropriately.
Her grandfather didn't make his presence felt after he'd shooed me off at the gates when I was coming in. He thought I was asking for alms. I have learnt to think kindly of him ever since .After all he was the only one who went by first impression. And it's common knowledge first impressions can be, ah, misleading.
Her 'Dad' was the father. He was a dyspeptic looking bird who looked as though he had had some bad news in the year 77 and never really recovered from it.
We were all seated cosy.On separate sofas. Face to face. At least I could see her dad's face. More importantly, he could, mine.I felt like Exhibit A.
He measured me up with a visual yardstick and shot a question in a hushed-speaker-of-the-floor note. It was a polite ice-breaker about the health (and wealth) of my family. I must have answered, because he trotted out another about the status of my education and if I see any future in it. I made some fine murmurs. He really warmed up a bit, and was just fixing the next one on the degradation of youth of the country, when he was interrupted by a strange buzzing noise in the form of a kid; who entered through the kitchen-garden-door, shot past and out of the front-door.
"My son”, the old man groaned in a 'mean-culpa' voice, as the thing went out into the garden.
The conversation took a more cheerful nature. And was without any mentionable hiccups. Except on one occasion when in the middle of a tricky question,R. winked at me and stuck her tongue out. I stuttered. The dad frowned. We were called to lunch.
The table was laid-out. We were seated. I was placed strategically between R. and her grandmother and in front of her dad. The mother scuttled back and forth.
Dad said,” You are a non-vegetarian".
It was a statement and not a question. So I thought I aught not to answer. And in any case my mouth was full. So I grunted prudently in the affirmative. Good manners came first, or so my father taught me as a kid. When I was a kid, I mean.
After that the dad had a smug smile on his face throughout lunch, as though he just hit the jackpot. At least like when you just hit the jackpot and the tax policy realisation hasn't hit you.
The mother was quiet. Extremely soft-spoken. She said her words, as if pondering over them. Spoke quite a lot of Bengali. She certainly looked careworn. Quite appropriate me thinks. For a mother of two growing kids. That too, one like R.
Luncheon came to a close with a terrible lot of excitement. Just on one occasion R. upset her 'raita bowl' over my lap and her dear brother exhibited his sense of humour at splitting his sides at this extremely poignant moment.
After lunch, we were left alone. And I was taken on a guided tour. We visited Her room, the sibling's room, the kitchen, the master bedroom, and guest room, besides the kitchen garden, the garage and the front garden too. All well, except those fleeting moments of buzzing from the dear sibling. Must have been a personality disorder.R. explained he was playing MIG-21.I thought he was eavesdropping on our conversation.
As the rest of the family retired for the siesta, the two of us sat cross-legged underneath the old eucalyptus tree, while quizzing each other on our ignorance.
Bid fare-well to the family, even to the ancient relatives. Though I suspect her grandfather was hard of hearing.On the whole they all seemed to be very glad.
I got invited over lunch by R. to her place. I was to split the bread with the whole strength of her family. The whole strength of her family was daunting. Daunting enough to quail the bravest of her suitors. Needless to say, I couldn't with all honesty, consider myself to be a brave person, least of all her suitor. I was just playing enamored hope I spelt that correct. I’ve been trying to use that word for a while. I am digressing. Her family is of essence here. So be it.
She had a grandmother. Also a grandfather. And a father. Everybody has one. It’s a necessary evil. A mother. And a brother, an unnecessary evil. I notice I put them down in decreasing order of toxic and degenerate contents.
Her grandmother was ancient. She still is. She is one of those who you’d presume to exist underneath those mixed bundle of shawls and rugs looking out with a beaky nose and piercing eyes. Shooting out disapproving whistles appropriately.
Her grandfather didn't make his presence felt after he'd shooed me off at the gates when I was coming in. He thought I was asking for alms. I have learnt to think kindly of him ever since .After all he was the only one who went by first impression. And it's common knowledge first impressions can be, ah, misleading.
Her 'Dad' was the father. He was a dyspeptic looking bird who looked as though he had had some bad news in the year 77 and never really recovered from it.
We were all seated cosy.On separate sofas. Face to face. At least I could see her dad's face. More importantly, he could, mine.I felt like Exhibit A.
He measured me up with a visual yardstick and shot a question in a hushed-speaker-of-the-floor note. It was a polite ice-breaker about the health (and wealth) of my family. I must have answered, because he trotted out another about the status of my education and if I see any future in it. I made some fine murmurs. He really warmed up a bit, and was just fixing the next one on the degradation of youth of the country, when he was interrupted by a strange buzzing noise in the form of a kid; who entered through the kitchen-garden-door, shot past and out of the front-door.
"My son”, the old man groaned in a 'mean-culpa' voice, as the thing went out into the garden.
The conversation took a more cheerful nature. And was without any mentionable hiccups. Except on one occasion when in the middle of a tricky question,R. winked at me and stuck her tongue out. I stuttered. The dad frowned. We were called to lunch.
The table was laid-out. We were seated. I was placed strategically between R. and her grandmother and in front of her dad. The mother scuttled back and forth.
Dad said,” You are a non-vegetarian".
It was a statement and not a question. So I thought I aught not to answer. And in any case my mouth was full. So I grunted prudently in the affirmative. Good manners came first, or so my father taught me as a kid. When I was a kid, I mean.
After that the dad had a smug smile on his face throughout lunch, as though he just hit the jackpot. At least like when you just hit the jackpot and the tax policy realisation hasn't hit you.
The mother was quiet. Extremely soft-spoken. She said her words, as if pondering over them. Spoke quite a lot of Bengali. She certainly looked careworn. Quite appropriate me thinks. For a mother of two growing kids. That too, one like R.
Luncheon came to a close with a terrible lot of excitement. Just on one occasion R. upset her 'raita bowl' over my lap and her dear brother exhibited his sense of humour at splitting his sides at this extremely poignant moment.
After lunch, we were left alone. And I was taken on a guided tour. We visited Her room, the sibling's room, the kitchen, the master bedroom, and guest room, besides the kitchen garden, the garage and the front garden too. All well, except those fleeting moments of buzzing from the dear sibling. Must have been a personality disorder.R. explained he was playing MIG-21.I thought he was eavesdropping on our conversation.
As the rest of the family retired for the siesta, the two of us sat cross-legged underneath the old eucalyptus tree, while quizzing each other on our ignorance.
Bid fare-well to the family, even to the ancient relatives. Though I suspect her grandfather was hard of hearing.On the whole they all seemed to be very glad.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Write ,Wrong , and Left(out)
Titled and re-titled and before I change my mind again about what I should call this piece of rag , ( I know I will) - I dub thee " Write , Wrong and Left , (out)".
Fore-word:
---------------
The author is a self-styled genius , and , an authority over a wide array of subjects ranging from kitchen-blues-music to nutritious diet for domestic pets ( aptly demonstrated in his critically acclaimed work about the futility of domestic cats as pets , called ,"A Street Cat Called Desire` ", for it's in French ).
If you think I am one of those craven-faced grey haired birds writing about the juicy bits of my life and other people's lives, sitting in a dingy-seedy-looking pad, then you are mistaken. For I am darkish-sort-of-a-johnnie-type-of-a-chap with black hair writing about the juicy bits of other people's lives, sitting in a seedy-looking-dingy-pad.I am far too young to write an autobiography, old enough to reminisce about the days gone by.I settled for the one "R,W & L (out)".I have chewed upon a number of titles for this book. Names like "Light of Other Days","There Were Places" are taken.Or names which nobody understands , and attributes to deep thoughts, for instance,” Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle" or "There's No Such Place As Far Away”. But the one I have chosen is not overtly mushy or cumbersome.It's just the way it is or was or ever will be - for all. Somebody also said that an autobiography is an unparalled vehicle to write the truth about other people.
Well, mostly.
**************************************
It was the worst of times, times have been worse.I was covered with muck (shit in the unabridged version),there should have been better covers. It was the winter of despair, it was the summer sweaty as hell.I had everything before me, or maybe nothing. I gave a damn anyway. Love had seeped into my veins like tea from teabags into a cup of millk.I get high on tea now. No choice. The doctor says I haven't long to live.He is surprised I lived this far. I gave up on the stonger stuff for a long time now. Frankly, it doesn't do me like it used to.It also costs a lot.Last week I went bankrupt. Also, probably that silly feeling of being part of the picture has left me.You know one of those pictures,in which the guy strolls into a nickled-bar,parks his backside on those high chairs and orders a double on the rocks in a concocted-nasal-american-accent while one hand reaches out for the stuff,the other hand flicks a cigarette in his mouth and lights it too in one smooth practised manner.Macho.Phoney.Doesn't last. Lasts as long as his lungs does.
I was born in a middle-class-bengali family as middle-class-bengali baby in the revered city of Calcutta in Woodslands Nursing Home on the eighteenth day of the month of May.Was before time as usual.Premature.Half-baked.My mother had a Caesarian,like Caesar's mom.I meant a hell of a lot to my folks.Apple of their eyes really.A rotten apple, but fruity nevertheless.They tell me I was pretty much underweight,frail and skinny-looking.So they named me 'Bonnie' and kept hoping I'l live upto it.I didn't take much to that name and changed it to 'Boney',which was quite ambiguous for I could go either way.That suited me fine.
Still on nomenclature.I was also tagged with a rather formal name,"Aniruddha" which was not only false and pretentious but also way too uncomfortable to call by.It meant something in Sanskrit.It also meant something on the same lines in various other languages.
It meant nothing to me though,till I was in second form when a teacher asked me what it meant.She knew perfectly well.But asked nevertheless.I was rather weak in language and stuff.She knew that too.Damned pervert.She waited for me to answer in the negative.And triumphantly gave out the answer.I felt rather sore.Not so much at her ( for she was a pervert anyway),as I was at my folks for naming me so.Was the only chap in school with that kind of name.At least,if it had been a commonplace name I could have got it out of other people.I had to be the only one in the whole bally school.At lot many years later another chap appeared on the scene.But the purpose was lost.Felt sore again,piqued at this character, for sharing the same name.Got quite used to be an endangered specimen.Most people didn't know him,so I was still much the only "Aniruddha".But I felt sore nevertheless.I attended various institutions later in life and have been quite unique by virtue of my name.It was not only difficult to pronounce and invariably everybody spelt it wrong.I have grown with it and feel alright.Since nobody could possibly yell at me in a pally way with that name,I wasn't much surprised to find myself not endearing enough.Folks had snappy chummy names like "Ajith" or "Amit" and you could holler their names about.You couldn't do that with mine.Not with its nine letters arranged in the most disturbing fashion.No.Nobody hurled it around without straining one's tongue and all.Almost all my form teachers were anglo-indians.And though very kind and Christian-like they were,their missionary spirit was lacking when it came to being kind to me.I was most likely to be addressed as "Anuradha" than anything else.This also led to me being the only girl in an all-boys school.Things weren't easy.To establish oneself as an entity in a crowd of prospective hooligans is difficult enough,and ill-equiped as I was - it was herculean.Quite similar actually.Hercules had almost as bad a first name.But offcource he was famouser.
As far as my memory goes,now it goes back a long way really.It's amazing how I remember trivial things of ancient times.I was a kid then.I was a kid in many places.My mom is to be a school teacher.She must have had a very strange teaching career.She taught toddlers,high schoolers and collegers.My dad's a professor.He has been a professor in colleges throughout his life.I was the kid throughout mine.During my first few years of memory,I don't think I saw dad.Wasn't around.My first memories involve my grandma holding me tightly on her lap; a garden;the gardener Khalil;a man-servant Jugal.Jugal was always fat and Khalil thin.I was always in the garden before I was in school.I remember a scared little owl that had lost it's way somehow and got inside our glasshouse.It was supposed to be a green house,only wasn't much green.Just glass.The poor creature fluttered around,got confused and much scared.My mom held me aloft above the window sill,and I gazed at it long.I spent the better half of that day standing on a chair,gazing at it.It was the most exciting thing I ever saw,I thought.I was a quiet child they tell me.Kept to myself except during meal times.When I used to make for the rest of the other times.Before school came into my life,I invested most of my leisure in gardening.Khalil was a big help.He would plant the stuff,sow the seeds, prepare the flower-beds and all.I would sit beside and watch.He didn't mind me at all.After a while I got hooked to the stuff.Couldn't keep away from it.Got bored from being a passive gardener.I could see plain and easy,it was simple enough,planting saplings.So K. would plant them one by one in a nicely engineered row,and I would pull them out and substitue various species of twigs instead.Soon my mom got wise to the game.And sanctions were laid against my gardening.Got into house-arrest of sorts.I would crawl all over the place all day.Mom would be busy for most of the time she was in.I got interested in ants at that point of my life.They intrigued me a hell of a lot.
For they crawled like me.I sort of identified with them.I would often do races with the chaps and want to catch them or just get friendly in general.But the darned things were downright impolite.Every time I got bitten,I would bawl.Everytime I would bawl,mom would come rushing to see a bleeding finger.And she would go all nuts.For a moment she would be all sympathetic and stuff,but right after that she'ld scold and do a hell of a lot of trouble in explaining that kind of company is evil.All would be well after ,till the next time around.Never was a fast learner you see.But I learnt gradually that even though ants and me shared the crawling business and lots of intamacies and had the same first two letters in name,we had different ways.In short different frquencies.
Everytime I would get a scolding, I would run out.Down the garden path, yelling "Daddy!Daddy!".I knew by that time that there was a chap by that name,and sort of thought,he'ld be kinder.My mom informed me this.She would feel blue and sorry for me.Daddy was in America then.
Then I saw him.Whatever I remember of him the first time,he was a smart looking guy.Much taller than me or mom or sister or grandma.They tell me,the first time I saw him,I struck up a very nice pally thing with him.Took him all around the house for a free tour,proudly showing him the kind of stuff we had at home.
I saw very little of him after that.
Don't remember no event majoris,except for my visit to my mom's school once.The kids in her class were lousy and giggly and way too tidy to be kids.They kept on giggling in a silly imbecile way incessantly.I didn't bother them and all.Mom told,"Just give him a paper and pencil and he'll be happy."And so saying she got on with her yelling.But those giggly-imbecillic-half-witted kids kept pestering and petting.Wouldn't leave me in peace.Realising the futility of carrying on with my work,I handed over the stationery.Instead tried to comprehend what my mom was yelling about.
She looked quite grand while teaching.All stern and serious and I-know-better-so-don't-fool-around stuff.Liked her a hell of a lot that way.
Things get a little hazy.
I was in Nigeria,Benin City.And I was still a kid.The night we reached Benin,after a very long drive from Lagos Airport,we were all very much bushed.Think I was a trifle scared.'Twas pretty dark.All i could see were dark shapes all over the place.Unfamiliar faces.The flight had been uneventful mostly.We had some excitement however when my sister threw up half a dozen times and made a nuisance of herself.
As for me - was mostly staring out of the port-hole like windows at the white stuff below.Folks told me it was cloud.Think they were bluffing.They looked so darned boring and colourless from up-close.I think I slept mostly.
At an age I was living,it was very difficult to exert one's individuality.Nobody wants no opinion,about nobody,no place,at no times about nothing.Learned folks eulogise it as the 'age of innocence'.It should be age of inconsequence.I shall be damned if I were innocent.For instance I knew about sex and all it had to do with birds and bees.Though I don't suppose I knew right words.Rather handicapped there.Don't think I spoke much of a language.Though there are plenty of stories circulating amongst my family & folks about my absurd accent I had in olden days.I spoke gibberish usually.
That itself was extraordinary I believe.
I mean, I never knew a kid of four in a strange land,with a foreign accent who was still in the process of conforming with the humdrum english alphabet and knew all about birds & bees too.I had a number of girlfriends when I was about six yars old and was speaking gibberish with an accent.I woould have had even more had I persisted speaking that way.There was this Bulgarian chick I recall.Her name was 'Yana'.She yelled a lot.She lived on the 3rd floor,me on the first.I loved to play with the street puppies.She liked sand mostly.She had this sand bucket and a spade.Silly thing to have.Especially since there was so little sand around.I mean it's okay to have that kind of gadget if you're living on a sea-shore or something,but sea wasn't around for miles on end.It was plain dumb.And she didn't learn even after the first day that there wasn't one chance in hell of her filling up that bally bucket.Every evening she'ld bring the damned thing and park it somewhere in the garden and fool around.It was a bright red sort,the kind one gets pissed off with at first sight.I kicked it sky high once and then she had hit me with the spade.I hit her back with a cactus I found in the garden.Then she yelled for help and fled.I loved cactii of all sorts.They fascinated me.Still do.I know a lot of people too who reminds me of cactii.
I knew a couple of blokes who lived nearby.Sometimes we would gang up.There was this guy called 'Shamu',I don't know his real name.And then there was this kid called 'Zayeid'.One was from Pakistan,the other from Bangladesh.Forgot which was which.Anyhow hardly mattered.We were international.Zayeid was younger than me.He was real kid.Didn't have any brains at all.It hadn't started growing in him probably.He had a nice looking sister though.Her name was 'Moona'.She wasn't a hell of a lot older than us,but acted ancient.
Shamu was okay.Had a terrific wailing voice.He'ld call me from the street in fron of our house.And boy did he really crank up those vocal cords of his.His voice could cut through concrete walls like a torch.Don't know why he called me everytime.We never seemed to do much together.Just explored a lot.We had a lot of unchartered territory to explore those days.There were those high drains for rainwater.They ran for miles really.In places were there was a difference in elevation,there were breaks.So we'ld go in through one end,come out the other.Knew the places like the back of our hands.Zayeid was kind of sissy.He's scared of the dark drains.He preferred the terrain to the sub-terrainial stuff.He also loved to drink Coke.That killed me.I hate the stuff.He was a real dypsomaniac,a real blotting-paper of a chap.Soaked Coke like nothing I'd seen.
There were a few other interesting kids around.I recall a fat looking girl called 'Madhu'.She was a nice sort.Had loads of Lego at her place.I also had my first sexual experience with her.Pinched her on the bottom.There was another chap called 'Manku',I think,I called him 'monkey'.He lived a good deal far away.I heard some years back,he was orphaned after his parents died in a car crash in Nigeria.Lives with some relatives now.Must have been hard.There was also this nice kid called Georgina Anderson,who used paint a great deal.There was another family quite nearby,they had a kid my age in that household.Can't place his name.All I recall of him,is ,he was real filthy.Had a perpetually running nose.There were two Polish brothers.Ivan and Evan.There were bigger than most of us.And there natural born bullies.I usually kept clear of them.
School was fun.We didn't need to carry bokks and things like that.Just a tiffin box.All our books were in school.There was hardly anything worth remembering inside the class rooms.I recall I sat beside this anglo-saxon kid who owned a real swell pencil sharpener and used to show-off quite unnecessarily.We had nice games in school.There were good fights too.I used to have a full set of teeth.But over a lenghty piece of time attending school - I managed to get rid of almost all of them.
Won a few trophies too.Prize fights you see.I don't think any of my dentures met a timely demise.At any time of a week one tooth or the other would be wobbly.If I had an intact set for a whole week,that would probably mean I had been too ill to go to school.My school was called "USS",meaning "Uniben Staff School".'Uniben' stood for University of Benin.
It's sort of dark ,back ther in the dark continent.Didn't see much.Except for a few stray excursions that I had been a party to.There was a place called Warrii,some distance away from Benin.Don't recall what brought us there.Probably my Dad's some-official-can't-be-postponed sort of work.Anhyhow the whole strength of the family accompanied him in the official station wagon.We left early.It was usually pretty much pleasant at that hour of the day.Nice,crisp and cool.Then it starts getting heavy.When we reached Warrii,it was pelting cats ,dogs and other minor animals.Never seen so much rain in my life.Everything was covered up in darned sheets of rainwater.Grounds flooded.There were gullies beside the highway,carved out by the rain.I was sure,the rain would punch holes into our car.Jolly good fun.Noon time around.We were in Warrii.Near an Indian Super Market owned by a indian business community.Mom got busy.Sis and me and the driver were let loose on the premises.Then we had a nice luncheon.Mom packed a hamper.She's real swell at such things.It was 'Alu dum' and 'puri' (actually 'luchii' in bengali).Tasted lots better than it did back on the dinner table.We came back late in the evening after a long drive.It was good.
There was this another place that we did usually visit off and on.Don't recall the name.But I do recall a super market there called 'Tamsax'.Small cluttered old place like most departmental stores.What's so special?Only place that sold small models of cars.Everything.Benzes,Fords,convertibles,Jaguars,sedans,Bentleys.Sort of speciality.I collected quite a fleet.Had a Benz which had real doors,that had hinges and could be opened and stuff.
Also a real Benz convertible.Smashing.There was another,rather obscure reason,why I lied this place.Liked the drive upto the small township.Nice alleys lined with huge trees.Darkish.Coolish.Shady.The sun blazing outside the cordon.The road,greasy smooth and black.Chlorophylled and very quiet.Funny sort of beauty to appeal to a kid like me.I would hate to have a kid like me,I think at times.Mooning around,fooling about,day dreaming,with the surest signs of a jeevenile psychotic maniac at the greenest stages.Childhood skipped off pretty fast.I soaked in all that I saw,felt,heard - and it got in indellibly.Remarkable how the mind when so young could cram so many things and so easily.
All those days mingled-up ,seem like transparent coloured slides.One upon the other,through one another.Colourful like those oil-stained films on the rain puddles.Every hue.And the voices of people come in.All jumbled,driving one crazy if one listened too carefully.The wild cacophony of unfiltered noise.Garbled speech.Sexless tones.Meaningless words.Images as in a badly dubbed foreign film.Words in coherent and a couple of frames delayed,after the picture has vanished from the minds eye.
I would often accompany my dad,in an early morning drive.To bring in the freshly baked bread,and eggs and milk from a farmhouse close to the university campus.It was a proper farm.A badly rutted rundown road,which dealt a very bumpy ride.Loved it.There were trees all around,grew very thick and close together.A broken down rickety wooden gate.The entrance to the poultry farm.The smell of chicken coups.The bakery.Fresh baked dough.Warm in my hands.It so much a part of the green woods,the wooden gate,the cackling chicken barns,the stink of farmyard manure strewn all over the place.The sights and smells still linger faintly.The place was a proper nightmare when the rains hit.
Among the other coloured memories, I have one of a local market.Think it was called 'Uuselu' market in the local lingo.It was very much the african version of our own 'haat' as in Bengal.People,farmers mostly,and hunters and traers came down from surrounding villages to sell their merchandise.And would you be surprised at the wide variety that was sold there.They had every form of food,raw,half-cooked and fully cooked.From commonplace fowls strung by their toes to baby crocodiles with their jaws tightly tied,would be on display.Very few foreigners came here.It wasn't sqeaky clean like the big departmental stores.Dad loved this place.He had a liking for local flavours.The shopkeepers would be yelling "Oibo!"Oibo!", meaning 'foreigners'.It wasn't actually a very flattering slang,from what I gathered later on.
They really hated us.Called us "brownies".Like we call them 'blacks'.I suppose their hatred is justified in a way who would be happy to see their country emptied out,looted every day by people superior to them by virtue of knowledge of science & technology and skin pigment.Given an equal chance they would have had the better of all in this unequal battle.
Once a very strong economy, a wealthy nation owing to their natural wealth of oil and marine industry,Nigeria had seen very good days indeed.Now they have a tottering economy;a country torn to rags by civil strife.Civil strife comes in hand in hand with poverty.A disease ridden mongrel lay paralysed like a leviathan bowing down by its own weight.The developed nations encroached silently.The country's spine was now broken.Incurably.Law and order had flown out of numerous windows punched into the national character.There was hatred,loathing,hunger,grief and the wild look in their eyes.These simple minded emotional people felt wronged somewhere deep within.My sister was in secondary school.They had a test book in english literature.It was written by Mr.Alan Patton,titled,"Cry,The Beloved Country".How appropriate.How anguishing.
There were people from many countries.A cross-cultural interaction - not much of interaction.Just cross-cultural xenophobia mostly.So whenever we got together in the clubhouse it was to be in small pockets on nations.Europe,America,Asia and others.Europe looked down with disdain on America.America looked down with disdain on Asia.And the three looked down with the same d. on others.Sounding each one's pompous trumpet at every occasssion of social gathering.It was fun on the whole.And I was just a kid.Kids hadn't any discernable nationality.Kids don't even have a langua franca that grown-ups bother to understand.
I have this belief ever since,that every age has a language.New borns have that funny gurgling warbling speech which doesn't matter, but its mostly pleasing to all ears.Then kids,a little sophisticated language.Filled with words and punctuated with explosive noices.Noices alien to their world.Noices originating from an adult world mostly.Noise of a car starting.Noise of a car screeching to a halt.Noise of guns blazing away.And such like. Then there's the sound of youth.Loud.Flauting sound.Lots of fillers.And we have a language of the mature.Measured minds.Contrived.Scheming.Careful.Wary.Pretentious.Dishonest.Polite.Well mannered and crappy.So let's not get into that.
Fast forward into a few years of the life.And I find myself an awkward youth in the midst of a small town.A place called Durgapur,(fashionably called DGP after its more fashionable cousin).A fine place to grow up with.I mean,peer pressure and all.Absolutely fruity.Got all the wrong things and few of the right things in a crazy blend.Industrial township.The whole damned town smacks of polluted air & breathing disorders.The trees don't look any greener,except after those heavy rains.They are mostly a dirty grey-green.Summers are terrific.Hot.Stinging.Dry.With a typical summer tang of dried leaves and of late-sunsets.The summer nights plagued with frequent power cuts.Rooftops and terraces were but short-lived respite,the mosquitoes wised-up to it soon.These days would often find me a loner,ungainly boy with hardly a word to his lips and boundless energy in scouring the wilderness.I had a cycle,one of those dwarf machines meant for people of my age.I called it my "Blue Ferrari".It was faded-red in colour.I had come across that name somewhere and it stuck inside my mind somewhere.I had aptly talked it over with myself.It was not blue.But then it was not a Ferrari either.So why the heck bother?
Those days the place I was living in,saw a sudden increase in the number of street dogs.And these dogs were not like most other street dogs,lolling around idle or snoozing lazy.These characters roamed around in packs.A pack could have as many as a dozen dogs at a time.
There is one such day I would remember for a long while.
I had a very appropriate liking for nature trails.And would often choose those in preference to accepted roads or pathways.One such pathway led to an abandoned house.It was really a villa of sorts.For a wide variety of reasons the house had been abandoned and like all empty houses true to their nature this one too was steadily falling to pieces.There was hardly anything but the empty shell.For the most part of the evening I had been iside this house,going around from one room to the other,waif-like.Finally having satisfied my curiosity that the place was devoid of any nature lonely spirits or anything other than me I set off for my home.The evening was drawing to a close,with the sun going down over the horizon sending some goodnight streaks of light.The trees grew closer here.And I was pedalling leisurely enjoying the steady rustle of dried leaves on the floor of the trail.In the places where the trees made an absence,the gnarled shrubs thrived.It was this shrubby area which caught my attention.I thought I heard a lot of angry snores coming from them,so,I deviated from the trail towards it.I wheeled my cycle to a nearby tree,and took off on foot.Maybe I was some fifty metres away from them when I froze on my tracks.
There were about a dozen dogs gathered around,crowding a water buffalo calf.The calf must have been quite dead.His throat was torn apart and the decapitated head with its terror stricken eyes staring upwards away from the obscene gaping gore.
The gathering looked up from their meal with concern.Uncertain about the nature of the interruption.The whole crowd looked like a group out of one of Edgar Allen Poe's less cheery yarns.Then one of them took a step forward.I ran.Pell-mell.
I could sense their growls getting audibly loader by now.
And how I pedalled that evening.For dear life.
When I reached quite unscathed,my mouth was bone dry and I was trembling all over.
"To each man, a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like the pain of an amputated leg no longer there.."
-Greene in 'Our Man In Havana'
The summer sky is simple yet pithy and intriguing. During the day, it is an immense azure canopy with the few brave white puffs brushed roughly aside to the fringes. In the evening, it glows gold, amber and pink like an unfinished canvas as weary herons and egrets fly back that extra mile from the last few remaining water-holes. At night, with late moonrises, the glazed quietude of the starlit firmament is disturbed only by occasional lightning streaks as rare summer-storms promise welcome relief on yonder horizon. Amid the busy rustle of numerous coconut palms and the almost imperceptible rumble of distant thunder, stars silently await the April moon's arrival like tribal trappers awaiting their quarry. Thus unfolds the celestial tableau which I have so come to love over the years, complete with the daily transcontinental jets and perchance shooting-stars.
One of my first books was a bright and colorful one about the universe - a typical Russian children's book with magnificent illustrations and an intoxicating smell of fresh-print that Dad got me in one of those then-ubiquitous New Century Book Houses. The book opened my eyes to the magic of the night-sky. It introduced me to the world of The Big Dipper, The Orion, The Scorpio and others. It thought me how to spot planets and how a line drawn between the first two stars of the Great Bear led to the Pole Star. I remember picking favorite stars and naming them with a childhood friend...I remember waking up at midnight to watch lunar-eclipses and meteor-showers (never saw the latter, though)... And I remember being filled with wonderment at the eerie possibility of alien eyes gazing into the same stars from yet another third rock from yet another sun... (Recently, I passed on the well-preserved book to a young friend... Hopefully, the book's spell has endured long enough to lead another wide-eyed boy into the enchanted gardens of the night sky.)
For several years, before work and relocation stole away such languorous summer indulgences from me, I used to spend hours and hours lying supine in my terrace with my hands folded behind my head, staring at the stars. Summer then was two months with the clichéd “little to do and all day to do it in”. Even if you did device interesting activities, the sapping heat soon left you drained. At night, the heat stuck on to you in palpable molten sheets of sweat and stickiness. The hot air that the fans dutifully spewed offered little respite. So, post-dinner I'd rush to the terrace where few welcome wafts of breeze from heaven-knows-where would have already begun to caress the coconut-palm fronds with the first few songs of a nightlong serenade. Oh, how I valued those hours I had for myself in the terrace!
Starlight, unlike the gaudy showiness of the sun and moon, is refined - mysterious and ancient.Likliness to wine.On a clear night, a billion twinkles seem to whisper primordial secrets into discerning ears. There is a certain aloneness about star-gazing that is fascinating - a thrill in lying in communion with life or lifelessness billions of light-years away even as the hustle and bustle of mundane livelihoods right below recedes to a dull din. Under the stars, there are only two entities - you and the universe. There is nothing that is "yours" - the universe in its might encompasses and embodies everything else in one single unfathomable space-time continuum. You realize how small and immaterial you are in the scheme of things. Yet you feel part of something so immense and expansive that there is a certain pride in being even the transient diminutive speck that you are in inter-galactic shifts. And you lie transfixed as the stars continue their timeless march...
Yesterday,I crept up below the night-sky,switched off my cell-phone and gazed at the astral vision fill my senses... As one half of the sky lay bedecked in stars and the other rumbled ominously with lightning streaks like some wild drum-beat at the altar of pagan deities, I pushed strains of soap dialogues from neighborhood TVs, distant traffic and the cackle of conversation from other terraces into the background... The several untied ends in untied affairs that had kept my forehead permanently knotted in stressed wrinkles over the so-many weeks didn't matter anymore... After four long years, I stood soaked in the all-embracing benevolence of a solitary dip in the summer night sky... With nobody to share the moment with, with no fear pain or worry weighing my mind down, with the irritating glow of city lights wiped off my consciousness, with only the old song of coconut fronds on the night's invisible ears, I found a part of me that I thought I had lost forever...
And I then remembered the most fascinating fact I'd read in that old Russian book - that we see some stars the way they were years back because starlight takes years to reach the earth. As I began to slip into the depths of sleep, I wondered how the stars today will see a different me- a Me from a happier time who believed that one could strip down life's complications at will, shed all the ties and binds of civilizations, stop chasing shadows and just be alone in the starlight
Fore-word:
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The author is a self-styled genius , and , an authority over a wide array of subjects ranging from kitchen-blues-music to nutritious diet for domestic pets ( aptly demonstrated in his critically acclaimed work about the futility of domestic cats as pets , called ,"A Street Cat Called Desire` ", for it's in French ).
If you think I am one of those craven-faced grey haired birds writing about the juicy bits of my life and other people's lives, sitting in a dingy-seedy-looking pad, then you are mistaken. For I am darkish-sort-of-a-johnnie-type-of-a-chap with black hair writing about the juicy bits of other people's lives, sitting in a seedy-looking-dingy-pad.I am far too young to write an autobiography, old enough to reminisce about the days gone by.I settled for the one "R,W & L (out)".I have chewed upon a number of titles for this book. Names like "Light of Other Days","There Were Places" are taken.Or names which nobody understands , and attributes to deep thoughts, for instance,” Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle" or "There's No Such Place As Far Away”. But the one I have chosen is not overtly mushy or cumbersome.It's just the way it is or was or ever will be - for all. Somebody also said that an autobiography is an unparalled vehicle to write the truth about other people.
Well, mostly.
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It was the worst of times, times have been worse.I was covered with muck (shit in the unabridged version),there should have been better covers. It was the winter of despair, it was the summer sweaty as hell.I had everything before me, or maybe nothing. I gave a damn anyway. Love had seeped into my veins like tea from teabags into a cup of millk.I get high on tea now. No choice. The doctor says I haven't long to live.He is surprised I lived this far. I gave up on the stonger stuff for a long time now. Frankly, it doesn't do me like it used to.It also costs a lot.Last week I went bankrupt. Also, probably that silly feeling of being part of the picture has left me.You know one of those pictures,in which the guy strolls into a nickled-bar,parks his backside on those high chairs and orders a double on the rocks in a concocted-nasal-american-accent while one hand reaches out for the stuff,the other hand flicks a cigarette in his mouth and lights it too in one smooth practised manner.Macho.Phoney.Doesn't last. Lasts as long as his lungs does.
I was born in a middle-class-bengali family as middle-class-bengali baby in the revered city of Calcutta in Woodslands Nursing Home on the eighteenth day of the month of May.Was before time as usual.Premature.Half-baked.My mother had a Caesarian,like Caesar's mom.I meant a hell of a lot to my folks.Apple of their eyes really.A rotten apple, but fruity nevertheless.They tell me I was pretty much underweight,frail and skinny-looking.So they named me 'Bonnie' and kept hoping I'l live upto it.I didn't take much to that name and changed it to 'Boney',which was quite ambiguous for I could go either way.That suited me fine.
Still on nomenclature.I was also tagged with a rather formal name,"Aniruddha" which was not only false and pretentious but also way too uncomfortable to call by.It meant something in Sanskrit.It also meant something on the same lines in various other languages.
It meant nothing to me though,till I was in second form when a teacher asked me what it meant.She knew perfectly well.But asked nevertheless.I was rather weak in language and stuff.She knew that too.Damned pervert.She waited for me to answer in the negative.And triumphantly gave out the answer.I felt rather sore.Not so much at her ( for she was a pervert anyway),as I was at my folks for naming me so.Was the only chap in school with that kind of name.At least,if it had been a commonplace name I could have got it out of other people.I had to be the only one in the whole bally school.At lot many years later another chap appeared on the scene.But the purpose was lost.Felt sore again,piqued at this character, for sharing the same name.Got quite used to be an endangered specimen.Most people didn't know him,so I was still much the only "Aniruddha".But I felt sore nevertheless.I attended various institutions later in life and have been quite unique by virtue of my name.It was not only difficult to pronounce and invariably everybody spelt it wrong.I have grown with it and feel alright.Since nobody could possibly yell at me in a pally way with that name,I wasn't much surprised to find myself not endearing enough.Folks had snappy chummy names like "Ajith" or "Amit" and you could holler their names about.You couldn't do that with mine.Not with its nine letters arranged in the most disturbing fashion.No.Nobody hurled it around without straining one's tongue and all.Almost all my form teachers were anglo-indians.And though very kind and Christian-like they were,their missionary spirit was lacking when it came to being kind to me.I was most likely to be addressed as "Anuradha" than anything else.This also led to me being the only girl in an all-boys school.Things weren't easy.To establish oneself as an entity in a crowd of prospective hooligans is difficult enough,and ill-equiped as I was - it was herculean.Quite similar actually.Hercules had almost as bad a first name.But offcource he was famouser.
As far as my memory goes,now it goes back a long way really.It's amazing how I remember trivial things of ancient times.I was a kid then.I was a kid in many places.My mom is to be a school teacher.She must have had a very strange teaching career.She taught toddlers,high schoolers and collegers.My dad's a professor.He has been a professor in colleges throughout his life.I was the kid throughout mine.During my first few years of memory,I don't think I saw dad.Wasn't around.My first memories involve my grandma holding me tightly on her lap; a garden;the gardener Khalil;a man-servant Jugal.Jugal was always fat and Khalil thin.I was always in the garden before I was in school.I remember a scared little owl that had lost it's way somehow and got inside our glasshouse.It was supposed to be a green house,only wasn't much green.Just glass.The poor creature fluttered around,got confused and much scared.My mom held me aloft above the window sill,and I gazed at it long.I spent the better half of that day standing on a chair,gazing at it.It was the most exciting thing I ever saw,I thought.I was a quiet child they tell me.Kept to myself except during meal times.When I used to make for the rest of the other times.Before school came into my life,I invested most of my leisure in gardening.Khalil was a big help.He would plant the stuff,sow the seeds, prepare the flower-beds and all.I would sit beside and watch.He didn't mind me at all.After a while I got hooked to the stuff.Couldn't keep away from it.Got bored from being a passive gardener.I could see plain and easy,it was simple enough,planting saplings.So K. would plant them one by one in a nicely engineered row,and I would pull them out and substitue various species of twigs instead.Soon my mom got wise to the game.And sanctions were laid against my gardening.Got into house-arrest of sorts.I would crawl all over the place all day.Mom would be busy for most of the time she was in.I got interested in ants at that point of my life.They intrigued me a hell of a lot.
For they crawled like me.I sort of identified with them.I would often do races with the chaps and want to catch them or just get friendly in general.But the darned things were downright impolite.Every time I got bitten,I would bawl.Everytime I would bawl,mom would come rushing to see a bleeding finger.And she would go all nuts.For a moment she would be all sympathetic and stuff,but right after that she'ld scold and do a hell of a lot of trouble in explaining that kind of company is evil.All would be well after ,till the next time around.Never was a fast learner you see.But I learnt gradually that even though ants and me shared the crawling business and lots of intamacies and had the same first two letters in name,we had different ways.In short different frquencies.
Everytime I would get a scolding, I would run out.Down the garden path, yelling "Daddy!Daddy!".I knew by that time that there was a chap by that name,and sort of thought,he'ld be kinder.My mom informed me this.She would feel blue and sorry for me.Daddy was in America then.
Then I saw him.Whatever I remember of him the first time,he was a smart looking guy.Much taller than me or mom or sister or grandma.They tell me,the first time I saw him,I struck up a very nice pally thing with him.Took him all around the house for a free tour,proudly showing him the kind of stuff we had at home.
I saw very little of him after that.
Don't remember no event majoris,except for my visit to my mom's school once.The kids in her class were lousy and giggly and way too tidy to be kids.They kept on giggling in a silly imbecile way incessantly.I didn't bother them and all.Mom told,"Just give him a paper and pencil and he'll be happy."And so saying she got on with her yelling.But those giggly-imbecillic-half-witted kids kept pestering and petting.Wouldn't leave me in peace.Realising the futility of carrying on with my work,I handed over the stationery.Instead tried to comprehend what my mom was yelling about.
She looked quite grand while teaching.All stern and serious and I-know-better-so-don't-fool-around stuff.Liked her a hell of a lot that way.
Things get a little hazy.
I was in Nigeria,Benin City.And I was still a kid.The night we reached Benin,after a very long drive from Lagos Airport,we were all very much bushed.Think I was a trifle scared.'Twas pretty dark.All i could see were dark shapes all over the place.Unfamiliar faces.The flight had been uneventful mostly.We had some excitement however when my sister threw up half a dozen times and made a nuisance of herself.
As for me - was mostly staring out of the port-hole like windows at the white stuff below.Folks told me it was cloud.Think they were bluffing.They looked so darned boring and colourless from up-close.I think I slept mostly.
At an age I was living,it was very difficult to exert one's individuality.Nobody wants no opinion,about nobody,no place,at no times about nothing.Learned folks eulogise it as the 'age of innocence'.It should be age of inconsequence.I shall be damned if I were innocent.For instance I knew about sex and all it had to do with birds and bees.Though I don't suppose I knew right words.Rather handicapped there.Don't think I spoke much of a language.Though there are plenty of stories circulating amongst my family & folks about my absurd accent I had in olden days.I spoke gibberish usually.
That itself was extraordinary I believe.
I mean, I never knew a kid of four in a strange land,with a foreign accent who was still in the process of conforming with the humdrum english alphabet and knew all about birds & bees too.I had a number of girlfriends when I was about six yars old and was speaking gibberish with an accent.I woould have had even more had I persisted speaking that way.There was this Bulgarian chick I recall.Her name was 'Yana'.She yelled a lot.She lived on the 3rd floor,me on the first.I loved to play with the street puppies.She liked sand mostly.She had this sand bucket and a spade.Silly thing to have.Especially since there was so little sand around.I mean it's okay to have that kind of gadget if you're living on a sea-shore or something,but sea wasn't around for miles on end.It was plain dumb.And she didn't learn even after the first day that there wasn't one chance in hell of her filling up that bally bucket.Every evening she'ld bring the damned thing and park it somewhere in the garden and fool around.It was a bright red sort,the kind one gets pissed off with at first sight.I kicked it sky high once and then she had hit me with the spade.I hit her back with a cactus I found in the garden.Then she yelled for help and fled.I loved cactii of all sorts.They fascinated me.Still do.I know a lot of people too who reminds me of cactii.
I knew a couple of blokes who lived nearby.Sometimes we would gang up.There was this guy called 'Shamu',I don't know his real name.And then there was this kid called 'Zayeid'.One was from Pakistan,the other from Bangladesh.Forgot which was which.Anyhow hardly mattered.We were international.Zayeid was younger than me.He was real kid.Didn't have any brains at all.It hadn't started growing in him probably.He had a nice looking sister though.Her name was 'Moona'.She wasn't a hell of a lot older than us,but acted ancient.
Shamu was okay.Had a terrific wailing voice.He'ld call me from the street in fron of our house.And boy did he really crank up those vocal cords of his.His voice could cut through concrete walls like a torch.Don't know why he called me everytime.We never seemed to do much together.Just explored a lot.We had a lot of unchartered territory to explore those days.There were those high drains for rainwater.They ran for miles really.In places were there was a difference in elevation,there were breaks.So we'ld go in through one end,come out the other.Knew the places like the back of our hands.Zayeid was kind of sissy.He's scared of the dark drains.He preferred the terrain to the sub-terrainial stuff.He also loved to drink Coke.That killed me.I hate the stuff.He was a real dypsomaniac,a real blotting-paper of a chap.Soaked Coke like nothing I'd seen.
There were a few other interesting kids around.I recall a fat looking girl called 'Madhu'.She was a nice sort.Had loads of Lego at her place.I also had my first sexual experience with her.Pinched her on the bottom.There was another chap called 'Manku',I think,I called him 'monkey'.He lived a good deal far away.I heard some years back,he was orphaned after his parents died in a car crash in Nigeria.Lives with some relatives now.Must have been hard.There was also this nice kid called Georgina Anderson,who used paint a great deal.There was another family quite nearby,they had a kid my age in that household.Can't place his name.All I recall of him,is ,he was real filthy.Had a perpetually running nose.There were two Polish brothers.Ivan and Evan.There were bigger than most of us.And there natural born bullies.I usually kept clear of them.
School was fun.We didn't need to carry bokks and things like that.Just a tiffin box.All our books were in school.There was hardly anything worth remembering inside the class rooms.I recall I sat beside this anglo-saxon kid who owned a real swell pencil sharpener and used to show-off quite unnecessarily.We had nice games in school.There were good fights too.I used to have a full set of teeth.But over a lenghty piece of time attending school - I managed to get rid of almost all of them.
Won a few trophies too.Prize fights you see.I don't think any of my dentures met a timely demise.At any time of a week one tooth or the other would be wobbly.If I had an intact set for a whole week,that would probably mean I had been too ill to go to school.My school was called "USS",meaning "Uniben Staff School".'Uniben' stood for University of Benin.
It's sort of dark ,back ther in the dark continent.Didn't see much.Except for a few stray excursions that I had been a party to.There was a place called Warrii,some distance away from Benin.Don't recall what brought us there.Probably my Dad's some-official-can't-be-postponed sort of work.Anhyhow the whole strength of the family accompanied him in the official station wagon.We left early.It was usually pretty much pleasant at that hour of the day.Nice,crisp and cool.Then it starts getting heavy.When we reached Warrii,it was pelting cats ,dogs and other minor animals.Never seen so much rain in my life.Everything was covered up in darned sheets of rainwater.Grounds flooded.There were gullies beside the highway,carved out by the rain.I was sure,the rain would punch holes into our car.Jolly good fun.Noon time around.We were in Warrii.Near an Indian Super Market owned by a indian business community.Mom got busy.Sis and me and the driver were let loose on the premises.Then we had a nice luncheon.Mom packed a hamper.She's real swell at such things.It was 'Alu dum' and 'puri' (actually 'luchii' in bengali).Tasted lots better than it did back on the dinner table.We came back late in the evening after a long drive.It was good.
There was this another place that we did usually visit off and on.Don't recall the name.But I do recall a super market there called 'Tamsax'.Small cluttered old place like most departmental stores.What's so special?Only place that sold small models of cars.Everything.Benzes,Fords,convertibles,Jaguars,sedans,Bentleys.Sort of speciality.I collected quite a fleet.Had a Benz which had real doors,that had hinges and could be opened and stuff.
Also a real Benz convertible.Smashing.There was another,rather obscure reason,why I lied this place.Liked the drive upto the small township.Nice alleys lined with huge trees.Darkish.Coolish.Shady.The sun blazing outside the cordon.The road,greasy smooth and black.Chlorophylled and very quiet.Funny sort of beauty to appeal to a kid like me.I would hate to have a kid like me,I think at times.Mooning around,fooling about,day dreaming,with the surest signs of a jeevenile psychotic maniac at the greenest stages.Childhood skipped off pretty fast.I soaked in all that I saw,felt,heard - and it got in indellibly.Remarkable how the mind when so young could cram so many things and so easily.
All those days mingled-up ,seem like transparent coloured slides.One upon the other,through one another.Colourful like those oil-stained films on the rain puddles.Every hue.And the voices of people come in.All jumbled,driving one crazy if one listened too carefully.The wild cacophony of unfiltered noise.Garbled speech.Sexless tones.Meaningless words.Images as in a badly dubbed foreign film.Words in coherent and a couple of frames delayed,after the picture has vanished from the minds eye.
I would often accompany my dad,in an early morning drive.To bring in the freshly baked bread,and eggs and milk from a farmhouse close to the university campus.It was a proper farm.A badly rutted rundown road,which dealt a very bumpy ride.Loved it.There were trees all around,grew very thick and close together.A broken down rickety wooden gate.The entrance to the poultry farm.The smell of chicken coups.The bakery.Fresh baked dough.Warm in my hands.It so much a part of the green woods,the wooden gate,the cackling chicken barns,the stink of farmyard manure strewn all over the place.The sights and smells still linger faintly.The place was a proper nightmare when the rains hit.
Among the other coloured memories, I have one of a local market.Think it was called 'Uuselu' market in the local lingo.It was very much the african version of our own 'haat' as in Bengal.People,farmers mostly,and hunters and traers came down from surrounding villages to sell their merchandise.And would you be surprised at the wide variety that was sold there.They had every form of food,raw,half-cooked and fully cooked.From commonplace fowls strung by their toes to baby crocodiles with their jaws tightly tied,would be on display.Very few foreigners came here.It wasn't sqeaky clean like the big departmental stores.Dad loved this place.He had a liking for local flavours.The shopkeepers would be yelling "Oibo!"Oibo!", meaning 'foreigners'.It wasn't actually a very flattering slang,from what I gathered later on.
They really hated us.Called us "brownies".Like we call them 'blacks'.I suppose their hatred is justified in a way who would be happy to see their country emptied out,looted every day by people superior to them by virtue of knowledge of science & technology and skin pigment.Given an equal chance they would have had the better of all in this unequal battle.
Once a very strong economy, a wealthy nation owing to their natural wealth of oil and marine industry,Nigeria had seen very good days indeed.Now they have a tottering economy;a country torn to rags by civil strife.Civil strife comes in hand in hand with poverty.A disease ridden mongrel lay paralysed like a leviathan bowing down by its own weight.The developed nations encroached silently.The country's spine was now broken.Incurably.Law and order had flown out of numerous windows punched into the national character.There was hatred,loathing,hunger,grief and the wild look in their eyes.These simple minded emotional people felt wronged somewhere deep within.My sister was in secondary school.They had a test book in english literature.It was written by Mr.Alan Patton,titled,"Cry,The Beloved Country".How appropriate.How anguishing.
There were people from many countries.A cross-cultural interaction - not much of interaction.Just cross-cultural xenophobia mostly.So whenever we got together in the clubhouse it was to be in small pockets on nations.Europe,America,Asia and others.Europe looked down with disdain on America.America looked down with disdain on Asia.And the three looked down with the same d. on others.Sounding each one's pompous trumpet at every occasssion of social gathering.It was fun on the whole.And I was just a kid.Kids hadn't any discernable nationality.Kids don't even have a langua franca that grown-ups bother to understand.
I have this belief ever since,that every age has a language.New borns have that funny gurgling warbling speech which doesn't matter, but its mostly pleasing to all ears.Then kids,a little sophisticated language.Filled with words and punctuated with explosive noices.Noices alien to their world.Noices originating from an adult world mostly.Noise of a car starting.Noise of a car screeching to a halt.Noise of guns blazing away.And such like. Then there's the sound of youth.Loud.Flauting sound.Lots of fillers.And we have a language of the mature.Measured minds.Contrived.Scheming.Careful.Wary.Pretentious.Dishonest.Polite.Well mannered and crappy.So let's not get into that.
Fast forward into a few years of the life.And I find myself an awkward youth in the midst of a small town.A place called Durgapur,(fashionably called DGP after its more fashionable cousin).A fine place to grow up with.I mean,peer pressure and all.Absolutely fruity.Got all the wrong things and few of the right things in a crazy blend.Industrial township.The whole damned town smacks of polluted air & breathing disorders.The trees don't look any greener,except after those heavy rains.They are mostly a dirty grey-green.Summers are terrific.Hot.Stinging.Dry.With a typical summer tang of dried leaves and of late-sunsets.The summer nights plagued with frequent power cuts.Rooftops and terraces were but short-lived respite,the mosquitoes wised-up to it soon.These days would often find me a loner,ungainly boy with hardly a word to his lips and boundless energy in scouring the wilderness.I had a cycle,one of those dwarf machines meant for people of my age.I called it my "Blue Ferrari".It was faded-red in colour.I had come across that name somewhere and it stuck inside my mind somewhere.I had aptly talked it over with myself.It was not blue.But then it was not a Ferrari either.So why the heck bother?
Those days the place I was living in,saw a sudden increase in the number of street dogs.And these dogs were not like most other street dogs,lolling around idle or snoozing lazy.These characters roamed around in packs.A pack could have as many as a dozen dogs at a time.
There is one such day I would remember for a long while.
I had a very appropriate liking for nature trails.And would often choose those in preference to accepted roads or pathways.One such pathway led to an abandoned house.It was really a villa of sorts.For a wide variety of reasons the house had been abandoned and like all empty houses true to their nature this one too was steadily falling to pieces.There was hardly anything but the empty shell.For the most part of the evening I had been iside this house,going around from one room to the other,waif-like.Finally having satisfied my curiosity that the place was devoid of any nature lonely spirits or anything other than me I set off for my home.The evening was drawing to a close,with the sun going down over the horizon sending some goodnight streaks of light.The trees grew closer here.And I was pedalling leisurely enjoying the steady rustle of dried leaves on the floor of the trail.In the places where the trees made an absence,the gnarled shrubs thrived.It was this shrubby area which caught my attention.I thought I heard a lot of angry snores coming from them,so,I deviated from the trail towards it.I wheeled my cycle to a nearby tree,and took off on foot.Maybe I was some fifty metres away from them when I froze on my tracks.
There were about a dozen dogs gathered around,crowding a water buffalo calf.The calf must have been quite dead.His throat was torn apart and the decapitated head with its terror stricken eyes staring upwards away from the obscene gaping gore.
The gathering looked up from their meal with concern.Uncertain about the nature of the interruption.The whole crowd looked like a group out of one of Edgar Allen Poe's less cheery yarns.Then one of them took a step forward.I ran.Pell-mell.
I could sense their growls getting audibly loader by now.
And how I pedalled that evening.For dear life.
When I reached quite unscathed,my mouth was bone dry and I was trembling all over.
"To each man, a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like the pain of an amputated leg no longer there.."
-Greene in 'Our Man In Havana'
The summer sky is simple yet pithy and intriguing. During the day, it is an immense azure canopy with the few brave white puffs brushed roughly aside to the fringes. In the evening, it glows gold, amber and pink like an unfinished canvas as weary herons and egrets fly back that extra mile from the last few remaining water-holes. At night, with late moonrises, the glazed quietude of the starlit firmament is disturbed only by occasional lightning streaks as rare summer-storms promise welcome relief on yonder horizon. Amid the busy rustle of numerous coconut palms and the almost imperceptible rumble of distant thunder, stars silently await the April moon's arrival like tribal trappers awaiting their quarry. Thus unfolds the celestial tableau which I have so come to love over the years, complete with the daily transcontinental jets and perchance shooting-stars.
One of my first books was a bright and colorful one about the universe - a typical Russian children's book with magnificent illustrations and an intoxicating smell of fresh-print that Dad got me in one of those then-ubiquitous New Century Book Houses. The book opened my eyes to the magic of the night-sky. It introduced me to the world of The Big Dipper, The Orion, The Scorpio and others. It thought me how to spot planets and how a line drawn between the first two stars of the Great Bear led to the Pole Star. I remember picking favorite stars and naming them with a childhood friend...I remember waking up at midnight to watch lunar-eclipses and meteor-showers (never saw the latter, though)... And I remember being filled with wonderment at the eerie possibility of alien eyes gazing into the same stars from yet another third rock from yet another sun... (Recently, I passed on the well-preserved book to a young friend... Hopefully, the book's spell has endured long enough to lead another wide-eyed boy into the enchanted gardens of the night sky.)
For several years, before work and relocation stole away such languorous summer indulgences from me, I used to spend hours and hours lying supine in my terrace with my hands folded behind my head, staring at the stars. Summer then was two months with the clichéd “little to do and all day to do it in”. Even if you did device interesting activities, the sapping heat soon left you drained. At night, the heat stuck on to you in palpable molten sheets of sweat and stickiness. The hot air that the fans dutifully spewed offered little respite. So, post-dinner I'd rush to the terrace where few welcome wafts of breeze from heaven-knows-where would have already begun to caress the coconut-palm fronds with the first few songs of a nightlong serenade. Oh, how I valued those hours I had for myself in the terrace!
Starlight, unlike the gaudy showiness of the sun and moon, is refined - mysterious and ancient.Likliness to wine.On a clear night, a billion twinkles seem to whisper primordial secrets into discerning ears. There is a certain aloneness about star-gazing that is fascinating - a thrill in lying in communion with life or lifelessness billions of light-years away even as the hustle and bustle of mundane livelihoods right below recedes to a dull din. Under the stars, there are only two entities - you and the universe. There is nothing that is "yours" - the universe in its might encompasses and embodies everything else in one single unfathomable space-time continuum. You realize how small and immaterial you are in the scheme of things. Yet you feel part of something so immense and expansive that there is a certain pride in being even the transient diminutive speck that you are in inter-galactic shifts. And you lie transfixed as the stars continue their timeless march...
Yesterday,I crept up below the night-sky,switched off my cell-phone and gazed at the astral vision fill my senses... As one half of the sky lay bedecked in stars and the other rumbled ominously with lightning streaks like some wild drum-beat at the altar of pagan deities, I pushed strains of soap dialogues from neighborhood TVs, distant traffic and the cackle of conversation from other terraces into the background... The several untied ends in untied affairs that had kept my forehead permanently knotted in stressed wrinkles over the so-many weeks didn't matter anymore... After four long years, I stood soaked in the all-embracing benevolence of a solitary dip in the summer night sky... With nobody to share the moment with, with no fear pain or worry weighing my mind down, with the irritating glow of city lights wiped off my consciousness, with only the old song of coconut fronds on the night's invisible ears, I found a part of me that I thought I had lost forever...
And I then remembered the most fascinating fact I'd read in that old Russian book - that we see some stars the way they were years back because starlight takes years to reach the earth. As I began to slip into the depths of sleep, I wondered how the stars today will see a different me- a Me from a happier time who believed that one could strip down life's complications at will, shed all the ties and binds of civilizations, stop chasing shadows and just be alone in the starlight
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