happy birthday!

i was overwhelmed today!
i am generally an introvert and a rare bird on facebook. but i had to visit my facebook for some reason and suddenly there it was! so many birthday wishes!  i had  no idea that so many people would have an inkling about my birthday. i generally do not reveal my birthday date, neither do i celebrate it properly.
but to my strange fortune i found them wishing me. and now after two months i feel absolutely guilty for not responding to their wishes.
i don't like birthdays. they remind me of too many things, too many mistakes and too many troubles i have faced over the years.
somehow all birthdays are alike.

Two suicides and Heartbreak

Suicide! Those of you who have read today’s newspaper (Deccan Chronicle) would know that a PhD scholar committed suicide in HCU yesterday. He used to live in NRS hostel, the same hostel where I had spent almost a year during 2009 – 2010 session. I heard of the suicide yesterday itself at the HCU English Dept where I was attending a seminar. I felt bad for the young man as I tried imagining his difficult final moments. He had left a suicide note saying he was a heart broken man.The newspaper reports that one day before he committed suicide he changed his facebook status to single. Yesterday morning he died after consuming toxic acid.

Sometime in early December, 2011 my friend Amityedu rang me up in the morning. i was astonished to see his number vibrating that early on my mobile screen. he is if not anything else, never an early bird. he broke the sad news then: "Balaji, you knew him?" (Yes, he used to knock on my door often, a good friend, funny guy), "well I am afraid Rishi, your friend Balaji has committed suicide." I remember to have gone to the verandah of my house (for i was in Kolkata then)  staring at the passers-by for a while. I had no clue how to react to such an end. Almost a month later I met Mir, who told me that he had exactly felt the same way. Well he did not tell me but i guessed from what he said to me that he was equally, confoundedly shocked (Mir is a sensitive man). "Everything seemed to be right in his room. His shirts hanging from the hooks on the wall, his room neat and clean, his laptop in stand by mode. Just the man was no more."

"I did not want to see his body hanging from the ceiling," my friend Binayak told me later. "But still i went and saw him hanging. he had used a nylon string as noose and his body had come close to the ground as the noose had slackened. His body was oscillating sideways in breeze or because of imbalance in weight." 

 Vidyut, who lived opposite to Balaji, changed his room immediately. I met him few days ago. "Thank God you were not there when it happened," he told me. Vidyut does not want to live near that room anymore. 

My friend Sudip came to stay with me for a while when i was in Kolkata. he said Balaji had probably suffered a heartbreak and hence had decided to take his life.

I also noted a marked  sense of amnesia among my friends about Balaji. Most were unwilling to recall him or the incident of his suicide. This happens even in the case of impolite deaths. We cope with unnatural death in a very civil sort of way - by trying to forget it. i think it's a normal coping mechanism. The fire of what happened must burn within.

It's never easy to deal with heartbreaks - not in an advanced stage of loneliness. Several of us individualistic scholars are highly sensitive to feelings, emotions even though we do not show it. Heart break is common for us. I have seen several men (mostly) and women (some) suffering badly from  heart break.  To sympathize with the recent suicides I tried to walk in their shoes and i was reminded of a bad heart brake (intentionally misspelled) towards the end of my HCU days. Now i can laugh at it but at that moment it was difficult. The first thing that strikes you is a sense of emptiness, it's like an algebra solution where the constant X has gone wrong, the person you thought was a constant for you has suddenly disappeared and with that several of your pleasurable day dreams. 

then comes a cynical sense of anger, bitterness towards the opposite sex in general. You feel betrayed, victimized and taken advantage of. Then comes the worst of all - guilt. It consumes you so much that you become completely de-moralised.

I , dare say, have devised a treatment for heartbreaks. And it's a homeopathic one. I think catharsis is the best way. So instead of trying to cheer yourself up during heartbreaks (which is an allopathic treatment), indulge in grief as much as you want. The idea is to mourn your loss properly though proper rituals and these rituals may vary from man to man. We generally tend to follow the ritual of becoming introverted and lonely. We listen to philosophizing Bollywood songs and try to feel good. Instead follow a ritual of good eating. Try playing computer war games or best go to the zoo and stare at the animals. 

I think a good long walk is a good way to release your anguish, preferably if the walk is through a market where you can see several things together. For Hyderabadis the best market is near Charminar. Go there wallow in your emptiness for 24 hours and release your anger on some shopkeeper. I am sure you will feel much better at the end of the day.

As i write this blog two juniors have appeared at my door: Suman and Angan. Telepathically they are looking for H12: Balaji's room. They want to stay there. "Why?" I ask. we thought people were afraid of entering the room after the incident. "It's much better to deal with a ghost than bloody spiders." Spiders -  yes these boys are living in a room outside all hostels and have so far managed to exist in a cramped shelter. But with the rise in temperature spiders have started serenading their abode. They desperately need a room. 

After a while we have come to know that there are several students eyeing that room. I guess that's a healthy sign. 

Adieu.

introspection

it has been a while since i wrote my last blog. these days i am busy, working on my research writing. in fact the last month was bad and harrowing. i was sick for about twenty days at a stretch. the ritual of recovery brought me closer to my friend sudip who nursed me during those bad hours.
the silence of illness also gave me time to think. i mused over psychological display of personality. i thought over my infantilism and prolonged pretension of boyhood.
i come from a middle class joint family which began disintegrating during my teenage years. in my early youth the disintegration was complete and i had to create and recreate several defence mechanisms in order to cope with the experience of disintegration. the near ones started to behave like aliens. i remember to have hidden myself behind a wall listening to my father and uncles quarrelling.
once the disintegration became deep, i realized that i must keep alive the love and care for the persons who have now turned half demons. enter my pose as an infantile, boyish man. this personality helped me believe in the possibility of an eternal childhood - a moment when i would be loved by all in my joint family. i could congeal myself in an everguarded sense of innocence.
over the years this defence mechanism has become so strong that i can be completely at ease in front of the people i dislike and yet put up a smiling caring face. the ego has developed deeper roots. i mean the guilt of duality does not exist anymore.
i guess my early expereince with heartbreak has to do a lot about this evolution of strong defences. i have created intense sense of outward hygiene as a result of this. therefore i have a cleanliness fetish.
the only problem i find now is the problem of speaking aloud my troubles. i can write but cannot speak. the self hides behind mirrors that are exact;y not mirrors but letters of display.

Onam that was!

Yesterday was Onam - a Malayali harvest festival. Onam is a big harvest festival in Kerala. Floral decorations, traditional dresses, and traditional food served with payasam as dessert are common things. It’s basically a vegetarian festival. You are supposed to eat several vegetable curries and fried menus along with rice and sambar. Onam would mean boat races, traditional dances and family gatherings. Onam would mean retelling of the Mahavali myth. But Onam for several diasporic Malayalis mean food, tradtional dress and soppy programmes of dance and music. Like the post Durga puja celebration of Bengalis, I have seen Malayalis celebrating Onam with a variety programme evening that reminds you of middle age pageantry. Everybody has to perform some nonsense in these shows.

King Mahavali. The myth associated with
Onam is related to this King.

But it was Onam yesterday.
In the afternoon my friend Sudip took me to a dingy restaurant at Nampally to have Onam lunch along with two Malayali friends. Well actually there were nine of us from various states of India trying out onam. I did not like the food. I felt it was hideous. 

After the lunch I asked our Malayali friend about the food. He said he liked it because it reminded him of home. Another girl who was with us said it was all nice except that they were not served properly. I realized that they could never be the right judge of onam food. Wearing traditional dresses, remembering family members constantly, physically displaced from Kerala, their judgment of onam food is bound to be nostalgic and in all probability any semblance of onam menu would be nice for them.

At dinner our mess served onam special and it was bad.

Were the onam meals badly prepared? Was it that I lacked the taste to appreciate the food? I guess both. I also heard that what we had in the name of Onam was nothing compared to what Malayalis have back home. i heard that there would be several more curries and vegetable fries. Whatever may it be I am sure most of the vegetables would be prepared in the same vein as those of fried beans and beans with coconut.

Actually, yesterday, I didn’t see the point of celebrating onam.

Harvest days are long gone and personally I am removed from farming so many times that I cannot even count. In Kerala harvesting has taken a new turn. There are very few vegetable farm lands now, most have turned into cash crops and poultry. And yet Onam like all other regional festivals in India is a farmer’s festival. I guess the food served in onam completely lacks meaning for urban Malayalis as well as for me. We celebrate it because it is part of our growing up and nothing else. I cannot appreciate this pre modern food menu of vegetable mishmash because it is completely beyond me. Point is the menu does not answer the question: why am I eating this? The vegetables do not give you any pleasure at all. Neither does the menu challenge your digestive system. I have a thesis for this. When a culture is colonized and recolonized as the Malayalis have been then it is worth holding on to extremely private practices of culture which would not be touched by modernism or colonialism. Onam is that private undercurrent, saved for generations from outside pollutions. So no innovation, no new menu. It is a cultural freeze. It serves the food which has been served in pre modern harvest times. It is without meat, without strong flavor, syrupy and slurpy. I cannot connect to it because it does not question my taste buds like a nice hot kabab or an Aloo Dum.

It also might be that Onam reminds me of the pre modern undercurrent within me. I might hate Onam because it is messy. My experience at the restaurant had been bad because it lacked hygiene. Eating Onam food might be messy in front of several people because you have to literally lick your hands – a connotation which in modern times has become linked to obscenity. Eating Onam, for me, then might be an uncivil behaviour.

Back at the university Anushree, my old friend, was not wearing traditional dresses. She said she did not have anything new to wear. I got it then. Onam if not anything is part of a wide consumer culture that is all around us. A blog post at Kafila told me more. Onam is basically shopping for many Malayalis. We Indians (cheap that we are) have turned every damn festival and every damn religious gathering into a money spinning ritual.  Onam is also about the joint family. It’s the time of the year when you gather around and get close to your family. But with joint families breaking up in Kerala I don’t think Onam holds on to familial relationships beyond your nearest ones: mother, father, sister, brother or if you are married, your wife and children. Otherwise Onam is about friends. In consumerist society often friends are more important than the immediate family. Friends have this weird habit of congratulating you at every step and taking you out on dinner or lunch to celebrate nothing. Together with a friend you can have the freedom to consume anything, anytime anywhere. My junior Upamanyu has made it a habit to tease me at every step with his absurd sense of consumption: “Oh new pen, let’s go and have lunch somewhere!” Oh new bed sheet, let’s go!” His absurdity proves the shallowness of consumer friendship in many ways than one. Onam I believe has become a consumer friendship even though the coating of harvest festival remains.

So that’s how it stands: I may never like Onam food again because it is related to several things I detest and reject. 

back on a plane

nearly two weeks ago i wrote my last blog. i was in Kolkata then trying out fuming coffee at the college street coffeehouse. the next few days after that entry were hectic. i had to run around the city, meet some friends and relations, and work out deals with my business partners. finally the last day dropped on me like a broken egg on sauce pan. my father woke me up early morning and i had to slumber heavily to the airport for my flight back to hyderabad.
the airport looked emptier probably for the less amount of traffic in the monsoon months. the security did not let my father in. they were blocking "outsiders" from entering airport this freedom ( read August) month. i had to rush in, waving an untimely good bye and a shake of hands, father melting away in the haze of the morning.

i remembered the older avatar of Dum Dum airport as i went through a series of security checks.

i was a little child of six or seven when i boarded a plane first. those were really elite days in the airport. no one spoke words more than what were necessary and flying was a luxury you could afford if your father's office paid the air fare. aeroplanes fascinated me then. watching these things flying would fill me with an awesome dread.
In those days the Dum Dum airport was cleaner. people spoke in english, wore suits and costly saris. there was a small canteen where sandwiches cost eighteen rupees. the air hostesses were cool pretty women who gave you heart breaks. and yes it was only indian airlines then. the hostesses i remember would pamper me because i was a  fluffy koala kid.
deep down i have always associated the Dum Dum airport with my forbidden introversion. its cleanliness, its elitism as spaces of high hygiene, superior aesthetics, something that is incompatible with the Kolkata i have grown up with.
but that Dum Dum for better or for worse is no more. Dum Dum is now like any other over crowded unclean shopping malls in the city. only the air condition helps. the wonder is suddenly gone.

i board a kingfisher air craft where over worked air hostesses wear garish make ups. the worst part is their smile. i can't stand the mechanical good byes and "welcome aboard"s. they look like cheer leaders to me. i guess the old classy feeling of flying on plane is gone with the large down cut in the plane fares. However, even though i enjoy the benefits of flying  because of this reduced fare, i still cherish the Indian Airlines classiness.

in Kingfisher flights the air hostesses do not show you the security drill. supermodel Yana Gupta appears on a small screen attached to the seat in front showing you the drill. i switch off the screen. i can't stand heartless show of concern. i remember Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation.The 
fast food industry teaches emotional drills to its employees: you can never be pissed off with your customer, always smile etc. i think the air hostesses in these new airlines are like that, drilled to smile, drilled to hide their inner anger.


i spend the flight sleeping. when i was a kid i would always feel like looking out the window for possible movement. now i generally take the aisle seat just to avoid that inner rush of kiddishness, of peering out and looking for wonder where there isn't any.

given my introversion i long for those quiet "leave me alone" days of flying experience when i would have to read out for my mother the basic instructions on " how to ask for a glass of water on an aeroplane". my mother would later boast how smart i have become.

a smart kid who somehow grew to choose a bad aisle seat to get bumped by air hostesses every time they passed by.

yesterday at kolkata

i am in kolkata now.
yesterday our esteemed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had arranged a holiday for every state department. yesterday was Rabindranath Tagore's death anniversary. this year being the 150th year of Tagore's birth is being celebrated in style by the genteel Bengalis, therefore this holiday to commemorate Bengal's vintage style icon. so there were day long programmes: songs, dances, dramas on every makeshift stage at every street corner.
yesterday was also a day of rains. parts of this ancient city drowned raising fears of terrible traffic jams.
yesterday i had fishes after a long time. pomfret fried lightly and cooked until the masala enters its body and parshe (not the hydrid ones but purebred ones caught from sweet water ponds) done in mustard sauce.

yesterday i was at the legendary coffee house in college street. i sat there sipping two cups of hot coffee and read a book (nightrunners of bengal by john masters, a mutiny novel for those who do not know). i drew some doodle figures and stared at the people around me. yesterday being a holiday coffeehouse wasn't busy. young couples came in with their charms. there were middle aged men and women sipping their coffee alone watching people.

yesterday was a day of memories. i remembered several of my old associates (god bless them) while walking through the streets of this city. at the college street i visited my old chai shops and book stores and YMCA canteen and sweet shops and Medical College. i saw a complex game of football on the wet playground inside Presidency College. (why were the players avoiding the wet parts of the field i don't know, specially when the wet parts were near the goal posts.)

finally i boarded a train at central station and rattled home. opposite me sat a series of glum looking creatures. i don't know why underground metro railways in kolkata makes you melancholy. i guess it is the stuffiness of the underground or maybe the lack of scenery outside.

at the end of the day this melancholy got into me. The only image of the city that stayed was the face of lenin soaking under the rain, forgotten as if, looking sharp as usual, carved on a cement slab with red background in front of Hindu School.  like this sooty dark city, he too was probably waiting for thy kingdom come. 

the unusual poet and a book about a dying teacher

Two unusual scholars have gifted me two unusual books. both these scholars are elderly, both are bengalis and both are connected to EFLU. i don't know how and why they have picked me as their friend but that they have is my biggest fortune. i like meeting people at various stages of their evolution and these two scholars are in their own devastated way at a stage of evolution when enthusiasm is the biggest life force. without the enthusiasm they might just give up, fall flat, look for meaning in a Hiroshima after the atom bomb. 
their enthusiasm for life and literature reminds of my graduation days when i thought i might end up as another Rushdie any day. their energy to read and absorb literature is rare in India where half way through you give up studying literature and look for call centre jobs. 
it strikes me suddenly that the lives of these scholars are other way round. i mean generally we study and after that we look for a job. but my two friends gave up their jobs when they were 35 or 40 to start studying anew. 
i find this amazing. i find this urge to renew oneself, to at least to make an effort at reclaiming the residual aesthetic sense in you, to at least make an attempt at putting the clock back, unrusting yourself , a superb habit. 

sajalda in my room

first let me tell you something about Sajal Dey. he had been a medical representative with established pharmaceutical companies in india. he gave up his job to study russian in EFLU. now he is in shantiniektan doing a phd. by the way he is domiciled in shantiniketan and his wife is a professor of Viswa Bharati.


my second friend is Kingsuk Basu whom i met few days ago while having my lunch at the mess. he had been a globe trotting software consultant. now he is going to complete his M.A. in Spanish at EFLU through distance mode. he lives with his wife (a French teacher) in Kolkata.


Sajalda is a poet. i have his book of short poems. i like his sense of rhythm. i like the sudden drama in his momentary ideas. he has published the book with lot of care. the care of a passionate man. he also gave me Tuesdays with Morris by Mitch Albom. here an old sociology professor and his favourite student talk about love, compassion and friendship. the professor is dying and the student is accompanying him to his journey towards his end. their sympathy for each other constantly  reminds me of the love we lack.

Dag hammarskjold

Kingsukda  loves to read poetry. i remember to have discussed Rilke's Duino Elegies the first day we met. impressed, he had handed me a thesis he had xeroxed somewhere on chinese poetry edited by ezra pound. i confess i have not read it yet. probably i am afraid of connecting myself to poetry. i confess i have been too poetic for a long time. i confess i don't want to relive the emotional miseries poetry brought for me. 
kingsukda has also introduced me to Dag Hmmarskjold, a swedish diplomat who kept a personal diary. The rescuers found the diary clung to the dead body of Dag after a plane crash which killed this remarkable man. he was a UN diplomat running across the world looking for possible solutions to battles in Arab-Israel and Africa. Kingsukda wanted me to read his diary (published and edited by an eminent poet) to understand the gloominess in the movies of Bergman. "Since Bergman was also Swedish you'll find similarities in their gloomy vision," Kingsukda said. "I know about Sweden and i know how hard living can be under the snow. it's too much of  melancholy," he would add. 


i still don't like bergman but i like Dag's poems because his fears, anxieties, momentary philosophies are like our own. a man desperately trying to pursue the world to come to some sense and then losing out, yet smiling and then waking up in the morning and saying hello to himself in the mirror, the first thing in the morning. his poems are like the vaporized guilt of a diplomat.