One and a Half Years

In the year 2011, I shifted to Delhi for starting a new phase in my life. Unconsciously, I was celebrating the centennial anniversary of the shift of Capital from Calcutta to Delhi. This post is being written as I soar through the smog enveloping Northern India at 6am on 5th January, 2012

[Aside]

a) In Delhi, I stay quite close to the site of the historic Kingsway Camp. Its still an unique canvas of the multiethnic fabric of India, with students and immigrant labourers and wild animals coexisting in harmony.

b) GoldFlake Exotic Orientals, part of their Centenniel Series, has just been launched in New Delhi. Its good value for money, specially on late night walks with friends, down the historical pathways of  Purani Delhi. However, couple it with a 15 rupees matka phirni,easily available opposite Gate One of Masjid-i Jahān-Numā. You'll suddenly feel thankful about life and whatever little joy you've found in it.

My third semester exams were an experiment in higher academics. I forfeited the hope of scoring well and studied bits and pieces of most syllabi texts. In the end, I found some good essays to take back-

a) A.N. Kaul's Theory of the Critical Romance by Tapan Basu
b) David S. Reynolds' Walt Whitman and Politics:Leaves of Grass
c) Terry Eagleton's The Rise of English
d) Ranciere's Poltics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible
e) Modernity and The Men of 1914 by Peter Nicholls

But all these essays were read when owls are preternaturally active and not having slept for 4 days, I almost passed out on my flight back to my Lazarus Pits.

[Aside]

Lazarus Pits were accidentally discovered by Ra's al Ghul in an effort to cure a dying prince of the sultan he worked for. Ra's al Ghul dug a pit where he discovered the restorative chemical pools that he dubbed Lazarus Pits for their abilities to heal those at death's door.

I dont quite like Nolan's interpretation of the Pits. I rather liked the tubs of healing fluids shown in the 2008 Angelina Jolie starrer Wanted.

In these 18 months, my relationship with the city has undergone transformations which I could never predicted at any point of my life. From getting awed in the presence of the cosmopolitan culture of Delhi to realizing that its not very much unlike the City of Joy to appreciating the subtle shades of either city, its been quite a refreshing mental and physical exercise. I used to consider my experience of any city being a composite of two things-the people I meet there and the artistic wealth or challenge it offers my sensibilities. The experiences are now being governed by a more robust vision. Something like this song-

Dekhechho ki take
Oi neel nodir dhare
Brishti paaye paaye
Tar ki jaano ki naam
Jole bheja mathe
Akashe haath baraye
Megher arale bheshe thaka
Shei rongdhonu ke chay

Have you seen the one 
Who tiptoes through the rain
Along the banks of the blue river
(What's her name, again?)
Through the wet fields
And reaches out to the grey skies
Where she searches for the rainbow
Hiding behind the clouds

The song makes so much sense as the Spicejet pierces through clouds, in the direction of the rising sun. And who would have thought that the otherwise routine experience of 2 hour and 10 mins will be punctuated with a nice up-the-river aerial experience of romancing the City of Joy. So this blog was born when the Pilot announced a detour owing to some ruddering problem and the plane gradually started tracing the path of river hooghly and we witnessed a city generally seen in maps.



I have read in novels how the existence of a river through the heart of Delhi and Kolkata, influences much of the culture on both banks of it. I have never understood its emotional purport though. Today's little detour, aerially nonetheless, put things in perspective. I fell in love with the way the snaking water body made sense of the spectacles of uneven development. I was amused by my distance away from the city, in the same way I flirted with Delhi from the eyes of a perpetual tourist.

 In those little houses down there,
my friend sits staring out of her window
Her text on post modern critical theory
Gathers dust or flutters in response
To a chilly December gale.

She wonders when I will announce my arrival
Or maybe, its just my delusion.
She is probably thinking about what to eat next
Or how to push her mother off an imaginary cliff.

Hello Nirvana. Meet Samsara.

When Celine Dion sang," Its all coming back to me now," she meant two things. In context of the whole song, it means the sensual memory of the estranged lover. Out of context, it means, what you do, so shall you reap. Not necessarily from the same person or group of people. Human nature pays you back in your own coin. I am making an organic thing out of human nature.

Your curse still reigns supreme.

Now my foresight comes back to haunt my foreskin.

Devaluation

The perfect title for the first chapter on you.

How selfish an act it must have been?
Equating our relationship into an exchange value between clusters of people
And not class.
Because we all belonged to more or less the same class
Except you.

You were always classless
or you stood for an entire community of people
Whose lives have enticed me
So much so that I grew to love them
Through you.

I objectified you because I needed an abstraction from you
Exclusive love is an abstraction
If you come to see life in philosophical terms.
Somewhere down the line, I felt I have started caring about you
My class thought that always.
Not the class which studies with me
Or doesn't turn up in class.
But it happened that day, I started to question
why I care about you?

These are not questions of travel
but Questions asked during moments of travelling
From Vishwavidyalaya to Kailash Colony.
Its a one hour and ten minutes ride to a coffee shop
Which saw us order one espresso every evening
For Some months and some days.
I use some these days
Its a better adjective to quantify the times
We spent walking together but alone.

After the Sun arrived
These words shouldn't have seen the light of the day
But they are.
Maybe with the hope that you might just pass by
Read through this
and not claim
to have understood what I've meant so far.

I didn't want us to be sorted out in definite terms.
I wanted to hurt myself and everyone else in
this indefiniteness that misplaced desires could give us.

You live with your misconceptions.
I'll live with mine.

Good Shit. Finally.

The reading for the Nineteenth Cenury Novel paper has been boring till about 6 hours before the end semester exam. Just then I read Dorothy Hale's summary of Benjamin, Lukacs and Jameson's Marxist approaches to the Novel as well as this-

http://thowe.pbworks.com/f/WattNotes.pdf

Kind of cool, no?

These are the moments I look forward to before every exam. Which is when I take away some theoretical formulation which will prove useful in life and not just for those measly three hours.

Here comes the Sun!

There's something extremely refreshing about a hot bath on a winter afternoon in Delhi. What is it, I dont know. But the activity cleared my mind and gave me a new perspective of things. I have reading novels about adultery, of late. Also something called Triangular Desire. I have come to the conclusion I have not been in love so far. Just like the characters in those books who seem brilliantly confused. Now This is not my bildungsroman, so you cant expect me to jump onto railway tracks or be guillotined  or undertake community development projects. I shall not be unhappy about nothing.

Only the best lies ahead of me!

This is not pOetry

Get into a new set of clothes. Exchange your shabby sweater for navy blue thermal. Be superficial enough to wonder whether you should paint your face before you meet the friend. Take up strip of bamboo, dip it in white poster paint, make a magnetic field around your left eye, accentuate the fact that you were wearing lenses by putting on kohl. Smudge it out, in a vain attempt to hide the crow's feet. Leave.

Stagger a hundred metres, push through a line of bodies, wondering when to blow up the tightly surveilled entrance to the metro. Wait in the queue to check into the station, before flashing your Metro id, check your sms. If your friend has fallen asleep, take a step back. You put your feelings to sleep the night you confessed it again. This time, the Big Sleep. Because it clearly aint a person you'd ask to call you up when you see 5 deaths back to back.

Mashup your thoughts. Second image.

Text to clear up confusion. Clarify your position with regard to an event, maybe a sheaf of poetry mistakenly addressed to the wrong person. Clarify that you like the imagery, you like the thoughts, you like the textual help that person can wield. But clarify as well, you dont give it much of a thought. You'd rather figure out people who come across as complicated. Because complicated people are the most perceptive and the most sensitive and well its important to put on a sad face when somebody dies. 

Somebody jumped to his death. Three deaths in four months. Three suicides. Three people away from exams, misplaced feelings, failed ambitions, and the tiring business of proving yourself everyday.

Actually three human deaths. 

Repeatedly insist on the fact that you need to find an answer to your dilemma. Depend on human beings to hand you the golden ticket to soul satisfaction. Get bewildered knowing that the world actually speaks your language of there being no-labels and shit. Live and let live. Meet people, smile, be friends, be like a breeze, never be a storm, pass. 

You are in control of your life. Not your death. 

Sit by your lover. Gently caress her trembling legs. Realise you are sitting in a pool of blood and that you'll start feeling cold soon. Be dumb so as not to realize that maybe you could've prevented this blood loss or whats to come after that. Dim the lights, when you smell the odour which greeted you as you trapezed down the hospital morgues. Watch your friend get afraid and rush out of the room, when the first still born arrives. Put on your headphones, shuffle your blues playlist, and pick your lover up and place her on the bed. Get down on the floor and read british modern poetry while the children arrives in kidney shaped packages, dead and hanging from a lifeless umbilical cord. Smile at your lover while she stops eating her children and looks at you. Go upto her and kiss her and when her mouth's adequately bloody with the flesh of the newborns, gently sing her to sleep. Pick up the remaining two babies, place them close to her deflated tummy. Assure her its alright and leave for the friend's place. Its time to sleep.

There are so many lives and deaths to choose from. Its pointless wasting words for people who are vague or beside the point. Travel for yourself. No use compromising, no use pretending that this companionship means anything to you.

I never thought I'd deal with horror with the help of a blogpost. I am attempting that right now.

Winter's here, getting food for you has become tougher than useful. They have installed artificial eyes all over the place to keep track of rationed food being used for non-human purposes. I stopped eating the juicy pieces of chicken or weekly quota of eggs that I am allotted as part of mess food. I pack them in tiffin containers when apparently no one's observing, hide them in my jacket and rush back to my hostel room. You aren't always around and when you are, you seldom listen to me. Tasty food is all that  you look forward to.

This evening was supposed to be like the previous few winter evenings. You'd express delight on rediscovering the weekly mess food, wag your tail while you munch on it and after some time, you'll doze off to finish your daily habit of 15 hours of sleep.

It didn't go as planned.

I returned to my room to find the entire placed bathed in blood. I have seen bloodshed in my life. I spent half my childhood in operation theatres, observing my father sew mutilated limbs and reset bone dislocations or mend fractures. Blood used to flow out then but there was a very strong disinfectant used all the time which masked the smell of warm blood.