Stories

"You know I've had this poem for so long, much before I even met you."

"Its freakish, isn't it."

"It is this kind of tying of loose ends that makes my world go round. Make me feel like I am in a well-written book."

"Don't you think at times that we are just characters in a story?"

For as long as I can remember, I have felt like my life is a story. Sometimes well written and crisp like a taut screenplay, sometimes meandering and obtuse like a Proust novel, at times verbose and idealistic like a Sorkin script, on occasions replete with a background  track and wide angle lens shots. Often times, it is sprawling and messy, there are side-plots abandoned midway, staircases that lead to nowhere. Characters exit abruptly at times without it being woven properly into the story like a bad past-it-best-by-date-American-TV show. It has no real beginning and end, like the Great Banyan Tree in Calcutta. Somebody accused me of being terribly pompous and egocentric when I tried to explain this recently. I was at pains to explain that it was not so much that it was my story, I was just a part of a story constructed by forces beyond me. What could be more humbling? Nor do I feel that my life is particularly interesting. There is more  Dravid in it - ponderous and full of struggle - more ebb than flow, than the theater of Brian Lara or the artistry of Laxman.

Off late, I have come to realise that this lack of agency transcends to what we write as well. When I write, my stories never end up where I intended them to. They have a mind of their own. Fiction and poetry are supposed to be medicines that heal the rupture that reality makes on imagination. We try to get right in stories what we can't in real life. But, more often than not, we can't. Stories have a life of their own, they lead you down rabbit holes that mess with your head, they can surprise you and on rare occasions, even take your breath away. They are pretentious bastards up on their high pedestals looking down on you. And there is nothing one can do about it. I am completely helpless in front of them. Stories, quite literally make my world go round.

For some time now, I have been trying to write a novella. The process has been largely slow, laborious and frustrating with brief bursts of furious typing. Somebody told me recently she felt the idea of the muse was a made up one, an excuse when you can't write. But inspiration is a very real, living presence for me. She (she's always a she) visits rarely,  more often than not at the end of a tiring day, demanding that I write. There are days when she has to be coaxed, bribed even. And when she leaves, I miss her. I miss being able to think the way I do when she is around. Lately, I have been struggling to write the narration from the point of view of my central female character. There is nothing I find harder than writing for a girl, even that girl.

Recently, someone left an anonymous smiley as a comment on a post on my blog. I immediately instituted inquiries with the regular followers (those known to me, at least. I'm hoping there are many more of you out there who wait with bated breath for new posts) of my blog if any of them were the source of that smiley. Having found not one person yet who has claimed responsibility for the smiley, I am more than curious about where it came from. It made me think who or what I write for and I came to the conclusion, that pretty much everything I do in life, is with an audience in mind.

Yet, most of what I write does not go up on any public space, it is reserved for private consumption only. My best pieces of writing, which I have noticed are intensely personal, though not necessarily about but more often connected to my own life, are reserved for select few, shared via e-mails and chats or read in private. Nothing, I noticed a few days back, gives an indication of my regard for people as much as the amount of my writing I share with them. Writing is, for me, something that keeps me me sane. If you are privy to what I write, chances are that I will do as much for you as I can for anyone, it's a good measure of how much I care about you. This is all, a little strange, I think. 

The Fall

I have always thought Pride and Prejudice was one of Austen's inferior works. But the scene where Darcy confesses his love to Lizzy and she turns him down flat is genius. It's not your conventional proposal, there is some amount of pacing up and down, every compliment he pays her sounds underhanded. What works in this scene is its abruptness and its general incongruity. Darcy is not himself, the quick witted Elizabeth is left speechless. ( I love her graph as well in this scene where she moves from curious to surprised to indignant to shellshocked to overwhelmed but that's digressing) Why the scene is sheer genius is because it shows at one level that all raw emotion is intensely personal, often disregarding even the object of the emotion. Darcy is so hung up on his internal struggle to accept his love, he can't be bothered to give any thought to the fact that he will end up insulting Elizabeth through his confession. In a strange way, I find that poetic.

The process of falling for someone is a fascinating one. For some people, it's their default setting, they're constantly falling for someone or the other, yet there are others who have experienced it only vicariously. For someone generally tightly wound up, I have a tendency to fall headfirst. I somehow find the process, cathartic and excruciating, and in restrospect, therapeutic. To accept the fact of the fall is to open yourself up to complete misery. Why we do it? Aside from the fact that we all get high on drama, it's pretty cool when it's all just a little bit worth it.

An afternoon in Calcutta

Last week, en route to my hometown, I had to stop in Calcutta for a few hours. With nothing to do, and an entire afternoon to kill, I wasn't quite sure what to do. Despite my intentions to take time to explore this city , I have somehow never managed to. My visits to Calcutta are always stop-overs for a a few hours in which I travel from Dum Dum to Sealdah or the other way round. There was the other matter of having to deal with the June heat and I was already regretting not taking having booked a connecting flight to Bagdogra as I stepped out of the air conditioned comfort of the airport to the thick humidity.

In proper tourist fashion, I put on my headphones and set my pod to the recently re-discovered Amelie soundtrack by Yann Tiersen as I got into one of the city's famous yellow taxis. My destination, Park Street could not have been more touristy, either. It was my accidental choice of music that proved to be a masterstroke, as it not only transformed my until then sour mood, but also as the day progressed, I discovered, proved a perfect backdrop for this most romantic of cities. The music often blended with the sounds of the city, most notably in Soir de Fete where the sound of footsteps made me turn around to check if there was a horse-tonga behind my taxi. 

You can tell a lot about a city from its taxi rides. Bombay has its ancient Fiats - uncomfortable, hot at any time of the year but no one really cares; the attempt to find the faster route (there seem to be three of them for everywhere) a constant preoccupation with the taxi driver. Delhi taxi drivers often have an earthy charm, complete with ready wit and mischievous grin, suggesting the sharing of some inside joke with you and most prone to being chatty. I am told things are different now, but they have been traditionally notorious for stunning you with a sudden "Right se le loon?" at a random turning and once having ascertained you don't know the way, take you for a spin all over the city. Travelling by a Calcutta taxi often seems to involve having to deal with the tiffin, lunch and tea time of your driver

True to the words of the Airport security guy, I did not manage to find an open internet cafe in the entire journey from the airport to Park Street as it was lunch time. It was exactly this sort of thing about that city that had riled one of my friends no end, who having spent most of her life in Bombay had to spend some time in Calcutta. I imagine on a regular basis, something like this would get to me as well, but being there for just a few hours, I was inclined to see it as amusing rather than exasperating. The taxi ride involved some random gyan on the city ranging from Howrah Bridge to the Indian Museum to Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappel to Sonagachhi and an invitation to get a private tour of Eden Gardens for a hundred bucks in the "off-season". We stopped for tea at a corner tea shop where my driver debated animatedly with a bunch of other taxi-drivers about what time I should leave from Park Street to comfortably make it in time to catch my train. 

Despite having visited Park Street many time, I had never been to the cemetery and headed there straight. I reached there just before 4 pm and had about an hour to roam around before closing time. In his short story, 'The city of dreadful night', a colorful and fascinating take on the city, Kipling described the cemetery as standing in utter desolation. "Men must have been afraid", he wrote, "of their friends rising up before the due time that they weighed them such cruel mounds of masonry." For a tourist spot not quite so popular anymore, I was very glad to find it well maintained, clean with neatly clipped vegetation. Its a great walk, calm but for the occasional bird sounds, serene yet majestic. Those buried here included William Jones who founded the Asiatic society, the great poet Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and famous Indophile British officer Hindoo Stuart. The causes of deaths were commonly tropical diseases but what surprised me was the number of people who had died as a result of being struck by lightning. The largest edifice belonged to Elizabeth Barwell, a famous beauty and supposedly the heartthrob of many an Englishmen. Eventually, I found the one I had been looking for. I had been fascinated with Rose Aylmer ever since I read about her in Vikram Seth's book. A spiral obelisk, her tombstone was inscribed with the beautiful elegy by Walter Savage Landor. A family friend of Landor, Rose Aylmer was instrumental in inspiring some of his finest poetry having gifted him a copy of Clara Reeves' The Progress of Romance which led to him writing the famous 'Gebir', quite simply his star-making poem. Landor wrote a most beautiful elegy for Rose Aylmer which was later inscribed on the tomb, a lovely ode to which I have felt a profound personal connection myself. 

After an hour in the cemetery where I was charmed and moved, in turns, I headed for the customary visit to the Flurys treating myself to rum-balls and a stop at the Oxford Bookstore. Soon it was time to head to the station, a new slightly nondescript one in Chitpur. As I headed to the diner at the station, a slightly seedy establishment quite suitably named 'Khaan Pina' with margarita and martini glass shapes making the 'i' in 'Pina.' What was utterly strange about the place that the menu mentioned along the dishes and their prices, their supposed weights, also. Against my better judgment, I ordered a 325gm plate of Chicken Chowmein and having wolfed it down, rushed to catch my train. As always, my time in Calcutta was limited to a few hours, and having wet my beak but not entirely whetted my appetite, I left the city with the familiar feeling of being thoroughly charmed yet completely unsatisfied with the paucity of my time there.

Love Poetry

It was pointed out to me at some point that I am all about the chase. While I am not sure if I agree with that, the chase is definitely the most thrilling phase. Who would want to woo someone who could be gotten easily! If the chase is what I am all about, poetry has often been the map I use to navigate it. 

Love poetry is tricky. The line between creepy and romantic is a very ambiguous one. What is the right time to give someone love poetry? Sometimes it is difficult to even rely on first impressions for while you may be suitably flattered by the poem but find it creepy, in retrospect. Others still might get creeped out by the idea of having a poem written for them, but come to love the poem as it suffers re-reads. More often than not these considerations are not thought out. Love (or its second cousins like infatuation) makes us put ourselves out there is crazy ways. While it starts as strange feeling in the stomach, the problem is it very soon floods your brain. Love poetry is often less about love, than about longing. Poets get high on the drama, they are attracted to complications. They fall for other people's wives, people who are unattainable, people who don't love us back. 

Sometimes love poetry comes by itself, it is spontaneous, almost impetuous, daring you to say things you do not want to admit; at other times, it is contrived, deliberate, planned. There are simple ways to write a love poem, and in my experience, it is the preferable way. Tangled love-lines tend to leave the recipient confused rather than flattered. I often rely on the acrostic. For one, it conveys that you know the name of the object of your affection. And, it makes them feel connected to not just the sense but the structure of your poem as well. Great passion at times can be counter-productive, you may say too much or scare off your love.  Mostly, a pretty turn of phrase, some self deprecating humor, and a bit of flattery does the trick.

Most of all, love poetry is bold, its dramatic, it appeals to our need for some theatrics in our life, something beyond the subtlety. The world is a little better when you have someone writing poetry for you. Writing poetry and making the day of the special someone makes the world feel even better.

The poem 
does not lie to us. We lie under
its law, alive in the glamor of this hour.
able to enter into the sacred places
of his dark people, who carry secrets
glassed in their eyes and hide words
under the coats of their tongue.

John Wieners

"Is it possible that you are so addled that you have come up with some nonsense excuse just so that you could talk to me?"

Pause

"Well..I mean, is it possible..I guess, I mean, I suppose you could say.."

"I don't believe you! You know the thing with guys like you?"

"What's the thing with guys like me?"

"You like being 'hit over the head.'"

"I don't know what that means."

"This is the part that you like. This. The chase. Not anything else, this is the fun part for you."

"That's not true."

"It is. And if this thing was five minutes longer than you wanted, you'd run for the hills."

"That's not true."