It's been there.
There since I can remember...
And it's been complicated. a little less overwhelming now, because the passion has diminished a little. But i know how it was. i'm going to say it in simple present tense, though the rains are over now.
It's a passionate relationship.
It's that kind of love that you wish you didn't get.
The love of bombay rains
is like the love of a passionate, foolish man.
it comes into your life like a storm and totally takes it away from you. totally destroys it.
he is unpredictable, he is insensitive, you have no idea why you bear with him. he's like an annoying arrogant 4 year old, but you can't help it. you long for him. you long for him so much that you'll go upto his feet and beg for him to come back.
helplessly wait for him. carry an umbrella everyday, just in case. you know if he does arrive, you're not going to open it. you'd rather get drenched! but you think may be he'll see that you're carying it and be pleased.
Little do you know that your actions have no bearing on this bastard's whims. You may have a personal relationship with him but his relationship with you, is strictly impersonal.
you are just someone he happens to oerwhelm when he felt like overwhelming someone.
but he will listen to you. none the less. be caring, and loving. he will appear to give you everything he has and you would feel 'he is mine. all mine.'
and then his love will be too much. he'll come to your doorstep any time of the day and shatter your plans. He'll take away your loved ones frm you. sometimes forever. he'll depress you with his constant outpouring and his tiring streak of conversatios and questions that are no doubt redundent and demanding at the same time.
He'll confine you to his embrace and you'd begin to hate him. you'd want out.
you'd want to breathe freely.
you may even want to see the sun now.
The sun is reliable. he's not as interesting, but he does his job. he's a solid support. he does not bother you at odd hours. he's very predictable, sometimes boring i must say, but then, you can live with boring people if they are functional. why desire the sly and insensitive bastards who will never be there when you need them? why be treated like a doormat?
Why not be wise and go with the one who you can rely on. Who's loyalty you can trust with your eyes closed. Your childhood friend who has been with you all your life. the person you have never felt the least bit of attraction for, but who has never hurt you!
You decide it's over.
I hate this Rain. i want to see the sun now.
you curse you abuse you fight you try to break free and the rain leaves you.
for a time it's good.
You feel the sun's warmth day in and day out. you like this dry feeling. you admire the sun for his forgiveness.
I'm a morning person now!
You are a changed person. you are not that dark witch that loved the clouds and the demonic rain.
But inside, you are.
it comes back to you like an addiction.
There's nothing wrong with the sun, really, just that he's so dry! he has no sense of humour you know!
The heat bothers you. his light, his honest light becomes a glaring problem.
and you long for the rain again.
You wait you beg, you scream
and it happens again.
but not everytime.
so you can never know.
for these four months, you become a woman in an abusive relationship.
I become the rain.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Samandharma
Samaan: Similar Dharma: Path, Creed, Religion, Moral Constitution at times even Destiny, by implication.
ये नाम केचिदिह प्रथयन्त्यवज्ञाम्
जानन्तु ते किमपि तान्प्रति नैष यत्नः
उत्पस्यते हि मम कोऽपि समानधर्मा
कालो ह्ययं निरवधिर्विपुला च पृथ्वी:
For those who deride me and decry my work (my prophecies)
May they know, that this effort is not directed towards them.
There will arise some one who'd share my creed (my Samaandharma,)
For eternal (infinite) is time and ample is the earth
-
Bhavabhooti, Uttarram charit.
ये नाम केचिदिह प्रथयन्त्यवज्ञाम्
जानन्तु ते किमपि तान्प्रति नैष यत्नः
उत्पस्यते हि मम कोऽपि समानधर्मा
कालो ह्ययं निरवधिर्विपुला च पृथ्वी:
For those who deride me and decry my work (my prophecies)
May they know, that this effort is not directed towards them.
There will arise some one who'd share my creed (my Samaandharma,)
For eternal (infinite) is time and ample is the earth
-
Bhavabhooti, Uttarram charit.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Of mangoes, our village, our family, children, money, work etc.
We are, on my father's side, a family of intellectuals. Most of them have been teachers all their life or for some period for sure. One more thing in common to all of them is that they are all amateur artists. in one form or the other. My grandfather D, used to paint very well. I've seen some of his work still on display at our village temple. He had sketched all the plans for the school building to be built at the village. One can say he was an amateur architect. He was quite talented in music too, they tell me. His second brother G, sings very well. He was an amateur actor for village theatre groups. Of course being from a respectable upper caste yet poor family, he was never allowed to indulge in theatre more than the parts he played as favours to the theatre groups... but I'm told he held Keertans and was quite talented in that. His son, my cousin-uncle, who is a doctor by profession is also a nice singer. The only one in the next generation. Despite my father's talent in music as a composer and a critic, he has not been able to sing as well as he would have liked to. Never the less, the talent is still there.
My grandfather’s youngest brother V, however, was a problem case. Unlike the rest of the lot he was called 'the Aurangzeb of Music'. A no-talent man.
This is his story.
His and mine.
V, the youngest brother was probably the most well endowed with the gift of sarcasm that people from Konkan love to show off. But apart from the wise-cracks he was never considered to be a genius.
I, when I met all of them, took to him immediately. I was surprised to learn later that he had failed in his matriculation and was not the brightest of the lot. I couldn’t believe it. He had a talent for words and he and I shared our delightful sarcasm and respected each other for that. The other link was the then obscene jokes referring to shit and other dirty parts of the body. I loved him, in my first meeting.
I later realized that he was considered a very unpleasant person because of all of this.
I had become an arrogant kid with sharp language and no mercy. The next time I met him, he hated me. I hated him back. By then I had learnt a thing or two about his past and made no hesitation in throwing them at him when he tried to scold me.
I don’t want to go into the details of why my hatred for him grew stronger, because the people who caused it did not mean for it to happen. I was a very emotional kid with intentions to reward and punish moral and immoral behaviour as I saw it.
Later, when I realized that things were not as I saw them, but much simpler, I repented and wanted to make amends.
This happened around that time.
I was in my village on one of our visits, and I hated him as I used to but I felt nostalgic none the less about how we had shared jokes and witty remarks before.
I don’t know how he felt.
So I went with him, simply because I had nothing else to do that afternoon, and I had heard they had got some men to pluck mangoes off the trees.
I had heard people talk very respectfully of V, when they referred to the mangoes because he was the one who took care of the entire little plantation -a few mango trees (kalams- alphonso mangoes, which require special care and are made specially) a few cashew trees, countless vegetables. It was all mainly his work.
So I was with him when we went to see how they pluck mangos. They have these long sticks, with sharp hooks at the ends, with nets below the end. (these things are called akdaas) you catch a mango by the stem in the hook, give it a twist with your wrist and the mango lands softly in the net attached to it.
The men plucking the a mangoes hated him because of his comments, but more so because of his insistence that they bring down the aakdas after plucking two mangoes.
‘To avoid them falling on each other and getting damaged’ he explained to me later.
I had never seen him so particular about anything.
For that period he forgot that he hated me, and explained all of the things. I had forgotten I hated him and asked more and more questions.
I did everything I could to help him there.
I was with my cousin, and did everything I could to shine over him, with displays of understanding and physical strength to carry more mangoes at a time.
I don’t remember whether I wondered why I was trying to impress him!
Anyway, I do now, and I know the answer.
Because I was seeing an artist in concert. He was one with the plantation and the mangoes and I was mesmerized because this was a new form of art I had ever seen and I could not even define it.
We then carried all the mangos inside. A lot of them. Hot, hard green fruits. The king of Konkan as they call it.
We then began to arrange them in neat rows. He was very particular about the arrangements. The smaller ones on one side, the larger ones on the other. The ones that looked like they needed more care in a different row.
He explained to me why that had to be done. It's because post-plucking care for mangoes is as important as the care they need while they are on the tree. I understood totally why he hated the nice neighbouring kids for trying to steal them. I began to hate them too.
He told me how they were still alive even after being plucked as long as they were warm, and how we had to take care of them as the tree would if they were still left there.
In my attempts to overshadow my cousin, I hurried through the arrangements. He rushed to me and asked me to treat them tenderly. He told me to make sure I put them on the bedsheet softly as not to hurt them, or damage them in any way. (we had put a bedsheet on the ground, so as to not get any dirt on them.)
I had never seen this man, who was at times so hurtful to people around him being so tender and fatherly.
Afterwards, he looked at the neat rows and smiled at me. That was a real high!
After all of that was done, I asked him what we were to do next.
He simply said, we were to wait for the company people who came to collect the mangoes to make ‘Fruity’ or ‘Mangola’. I waited with him. Within half an hour a big truck stopped at the village and some men came with gunny bags.
They all went to different houses, and two of the hairy lot came to ours. They looked at the rows once, spoke to him for a moment. Then the two of them went to the mangoes, one of them held one end of the bedsheet, the other one held the other end, and they picked the entire arrangements of mangoes- the big ones, the small ones, the healthy ones and the sick ones, all together, and hurled them ruthlessly in the gunny bags.
They landed with loud thuds in the gunny bags as I watched with my mouth ajar, totally out of words. Totally out of any emotions too.
They took the other pile and inflicted the same atrocities on that one too. Then they picked their gunny bags up with a grunt and went straight to their trucks where they hurled the bags into the truck from below with the same ruthless mechanicality that German soldiers may have shown to the bodies of Jews they had just tortured and killed.
Then they returned and pushed some notes into V’s hands, and drove away.
That’s when I noticed him for the first time.
He gave me a defiant yet apologetic smile that I always gave to the people I had intentionally hurt and felt sorry for after I met them again. ‘Well, that’s what we do with mangoes.’ He said to me and went into the house.
I don’t know how, but my hatred for him lost all of its sharpness that day.
Whenever I eat a very good mango, I think of him. Whenever I see a mango that has been damaged, I think of him. I don’t drink mango drinks too often, but if I ever do, I think of him.
Whenever I write something for someone now, I think of him.
p.s.
Disclaimer
There are facts in this, and the gaps in the facts, I have filled with fiction. For any family member, if yo stumble upon this somehow, all of this is fiction. I respect and love all of you.
My grandfather’s youngest brother V, however, was a problem case. Unlike the rest of the lot he was called 'the Aurangzeb of Music'. A no-talent man.
This is his story.
His and mine.
V, the youngest brother was probably the most well endowed with the gift of sarcasm that people from Konkan love to show off. But apart from the wise-cracks he was never considered to be a genius.
I, when I met all of them, took to him immediately. I was surprised to learn later that he had failed in his matriculation and was not the brightest of the lot. I couldn’t believe it. He had a talent for words and he and I shared our delightful sarcasm and respected each other for that. The other link was the then obscene jokes referring to shit and other dirty parts of the body. I loved him, in my first meeting.
I later realized that he was considered a very unpleasant person because of all of this.
I had become an arrogant kid with sharp language and no mercy. The next time I met him, he hated me. I hated him back. By then I had learnt a thing or two about his past and made no hesitation in throwing them at him when he tried to scold me.
I don’t want to go into the details of why my hatred for him grew stronger, because the people who caused it did not mean for it to happen. I was a very emotional kid with intentions to reward and punish moral and immoral behaviour as I saw it.
Later, when I realized that things were not as I saw them, but much simpler, I repented and wanted to make amends.
This happened around that time.
I was in my village on one of our visits, and I hated him as I used to but I felt nostalgic none the less about how we had shared jokes and witty remarks before.
I don’t know how he felt.
So I went with him, simply because I had nothing else to do that afternoon, and I had heard they had got some men to pluck mangoes off the trees.
I had heard people talk very respectfully of V, when they referred to the mangoes because he was the one who took care of the entire little plantation -a few mango trees (kalams- alphonso mangoes, which require special care and are made specially) a few cashew trees, countless vegetables. It was all mainly his work.
So I was with him when we went to see how they pluck mangos. They have these long sticks, with sharp hooks at the ends, with nets below the end. (these things are called akdaas) you catch a mango by the stem in the hook, give it a twist with your wrist and the mango lands softly in the net attached to it.
The men plucking the a mangoes hated him because of his comments, but more so because of his insistence that they bring down the aakdas after plucking two mangoes.
‘To avoid them falling on each other and getting damaged’ he explained to me later.
I had never seen him so particular about anything.
For that period he forgot that he hated me, and explained all of the things. I had forgotten I hated him and asked more and more questions.
I did everything I could to help him there.
I was with my cousin, and did everything I could to shine over him, with displays of understanding and physical strength to carry more mangoes at a time.
I don’t remember whether I wondered why I was trying to impress him!
Anyway, I do now, and I know the answer.
Because I was seeing an artist in concert. He was one with the plantation and the mangoes and I was mesmerized because this was a new form of art I had ever seen and I could not even define it.
We then carried all the mangos inside. A lot of them. Hot, hard green fruits. The king of Konkan as they call it.
We then began to arrange them in neat rows. He was very particular about the arrangements. The smaller ones on one side, the larger ones on the other. The ones that looked like they needed more care in a different row.
He explained to me why that had to be done. It's because post-plucking care for mangoes is as important as the care they need while they are on the tree. I understood totally why he hated the nice neighbouring kids for trying to steal them. I began to hate them too.
He told me how they were still alive even after being plucked as long as they were warm, and how we had to take care of them as the tree would if they were still left there.
In my attempts to overshadow my cousin, I hurried through the arrangements. He rushed to me and asked me to treat them tenderly. He told me to make sure I put them on the bedsheet softly as not to hurt them, or damage them in any way. (we had put a bedsheet on the ground, so as to not get any dirt on them.)
I had never seen this man, who was at times so hurtful to people around him being so tender and fatherly.
Afterwards, he looked at the neat rows and smiled at me. That was a real high!
After all of that was done, I asked him what we were to do next.
He simply said, we were to wait for the company people who came to collect the mangoes to make ‘Fruity’ or ‘Mangola’. I waited with him. Within half an hour a big truck stopped at the village and some men came with gunny bags.
They all went to different houses, and two of the hairy lot came to ours. They looked at the rows once, spoke to him for a moment. Then the two of them went to the mangoes, one of them held one end of the bedsheet, the other one held the other end, and they picked the entire arrangements of mangoes- the big ones, the small ones, the healthy ones and the sick ones, all together, and hurled them ruthlessly in the gunny bags.
They landed with loud thuds in the gunny bags as I watched with my mouth ajar, totally out of words. Totally out of any emotions too.
They took the other pile and inflicted the same atrocities on that one too. Then they picked their gunny bags up with a grunt and went straight to their trucks where they hurled the bags into the truck from below with the same ruthless mechanicality that German soldiers may have shown to the bodies of Jews they had just tortured and killed.
Then they returned and pushed some notes into V’s hands, and drove away.
That’s when I noticed him for the first time.
He gave me a defiant yet apologetic smile that I always gave to the people I had intentionally hurt and felt sorry for after I met them again. ‘Well, that’s what we do with mangoes.’ He said to me and went into the house.
I don’t know how, but my hatred for him lost all of its sharpness that day.
Whenever I eat a very good mango, I think of him. Whenever I see a mango that has been damaged, I think of him. I don’t drink mango drinks too often, but if I ever do, I think of him.
Whenever I write something for someone now, I think of him.
p.s.
Disclaimer
There are facts in this, and the gaps in the facts, I have filled with fiction. For any family member, if yo stumble upon this somehow, all of this is fiction. I respect and love all of you.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Lord Dumpling (II)
Lord Dumpling (also Demi Don Quixote), formerly known as 'Dean Kamen' AKA Thomas Alva Edison Junior, is a famous inventor who invents science fiction stuff that works and works well!
Remember the little two wheeler thing that people are riding in big tech companies? that's the Segway Human Transport System he invented. (don't remember? look it up on wikipedia.)
Or the electronic wheelchair that makes non-handicapped people jealous? that's also by him.
So as he spends time creating little things that take all people far, he also has managed to earn himself a lot of money... (and quite a reputation!)
But apart from his genius in Science and Technology, his innovative and active approach to politics is something far out!
He bought a small island called the 'North Dumpling Island' 38 miles away from main land.
Now to support his quirky electronics inventor mind , imagine how much electricity he would have to buy. Not to mention the cost of the sub-marine cable etc.
So he decided to build a wind turbine on the island.
Now the authorities on main land objected, and told him he couldn't do that on the U.S. soil.
So as a great inventor knows, the solution to the root problem in any complex problem is actually a simple one.
So what did he do?
He called up the then president (who was obviously a friend of his) and declared independence!
The president knew that this was a joke and played on.
He even signed a non-aggression treaty with the US and gave the US government a generous 'Foreign Aid' from the 'Kingdom of North Dumpling'
The island now has a constitution, a national anthem, postal stamps, A currency (which is in denominations of 'Pi', I've heard it's actually ice cream, and we have to all try and keep it 'stable'!) and a ministry with ministers of ice cream, of brunch and of nepotism, a single-ship navy, a king, no queen and yes, a wind turbine! (did i mention Don Quixote?)
When he installed a helipad on his island, some people complained that he did not have the required three feet wire fence around it. when the local authorities went to check this, he made them go through an emigration process.
When they finally did reach the site, they noticed that there was a fence, only that it was lying on the ground.
They scanned their rule book and found it never said the fence had to be erect...
This is just one of the lessons he has taught the 'neighbouring country'.
But the biggest achievement of the Lord, i think, is that everybody still thinks the whole thing is a joke! :D
Remember the little two wheeler thing that people are riding in big tech companies? that's the Segway Human Transport System he invented. (don't remember? look it up on wikipedia.)
Or the electronic wheelchair that makes non-handicapped people jealous? that's also by him.
So as he spends time creating little things that take all people far, he also has managed to earn himself a lot of money... (and quite a reputation!)
But apart from his genius in Science and Technology, his innovative and active approach to politics is something far out!
He bought a small island called the 'North Dumpling Island' 38 miles away from main land.
Now to support his quirky electronics inventor mind , imagine how much electricity he would have to buy. Not to mention the cost of the sub-marine cable etc.
So he decided to build a wind turbine on the island.
Now the authorities on main land objected, and told him he couldn't do that on the U.S. soil.
So as a great inventor knows, the solution to the root problem in any complex problem is actually a simple one.
So what did he do?
He called up the then president (who was obviously a friend of his) and declared independence!
The president knew that this was a joke and played on.
He even signed a non-aggression treaty with the US and gave the US government a generous 'Foreign Aid' from the 'Kingdom of North Dumpling'
The island now has a constitution, a national anthem, postal stamps, A currency (which is in denominations of 'Pi', I've heard it's actually ice cream, and we have to all try and keep it 'stable'!) and a ministry with ministers of ice cream, of brunch and of nepotism, a single-ship navy, a king, no queen and yes, a wind turbine! (did i mention Don Quixote?)
When he installed a helipad on his island, some people complained that he did not have the required three feet wire fence around it. when the local authorities went to check this, he made them go through an emigration process.
When they finally did reach the site, they noticed that there was a fence, only that it was lying on the ground.
They scanned their rule book and found it never said the fence had to be erect...
This is just one of the lessons he has taught the 'neighbouring country'.
But the biggest achievement of the Lord, i think, is that everybody still thinks the whole thing is a joke! :D
Thursday, March 20, 2008
It's a pokémon world!
there's a saying in marathi that 'a converted muslim eats more onions. '
this basically means that a person who has changed faith or has become something he didn't use to be, follows the new regime more strictly and methodically than a person originally from that regime.
japanese are doing well. very well. they all wear suits now. and they have even bigger automobiles than fords etc. they have preserved their originally borrowed script and used it effectively to mean exactly what american-english means.
anyway, i'm no one to comment on geo politics and cultural meltdowns in a big pot called corporation.
but basically whatever americans can do, the japanese can do it much better. ( i'm assuming good-bad as relative terms, at times interchangeable.)
americans merchandised from a given content and then moved on to produce content that can leave scope for merchandising. japanese, went ahead. they made the boundaries between merchandising and conetnt disappear. americans placed existing products into films. Like how cast-away is a very entertaining advertisement for fed-ex. or made products based on existing content. (bugs bunny stuffed toy, or wwe playing cards).
but pokémon the animated series is an advert, a prologue, an epilogue, folklore, legend and an educational video for the avid users of pokémon video games and playing cards and much more.
if you were to find out what came first the product or the content, you'd have to open history pages. the content by itself is so well bound, it's an entire system, a parallel world and what came first doesn't even matter. it's an evolutionary step in product-content relationship.
but when merchandising evolves, it does much more than just bring in money. it brings visual content into life. real life. (no relative terms here.)
of course it's most effective when similar archetypes or concepts are present in the mass consciousness and in the individual consciousness of people..
such visual concrete works speed up the process of folklore and legend and thoughts become knowledge without the churning of time.
the real bitch is when we start acting upon this knowledge. when we naturalise it.
every common insect, every common animal or bird is a pokémon now. a pocket monster that fights itself dizzy for you. a friend who lives inside a small ball, that you can carry about in your pocket. you love it and it loves you and you throw it on a battlefeild to fight for a ribbon or a badge.
(and we thought dog fighting was illegal..)
is it slavery and 'love your slave' ideology?
tha could be valid if there was a clear division that human beings are masters and pokémon are to be captured and made slaves of. butthere's an interesting twist to the whole thing.
pokémon try to catch other pokémon! (dog eat dog!)
so is it animals we're talking about or is it other people?
a friend of mine is very organized, so he has 'organizaton power'! how can i use him? how can i capture him?
A friend is very logical in his thinking so he has 'logical power' how do i put him in a ball and unleeche him when i need?
this basically means that a person who has changed faith or has become something he didn't use to be, follows the new regime more strictly and methodically than a person originally from that regime.
japanese are doing well. very well. they all wear suits now. and they have even bigger automobiles than fords etc. they have preserved their originally borrowed script and used it effectively to mean exactly what american-english means.
anyway, i'm no one to comment on geo politics and cultural meltdowns in a big pot called corporation.
but basically whatever americans can do, the japanese can do it much better. ( i'm assuming good-bad as relative terms, at times interchangeable.)
americans merchandised from a given content and then moved on to produce content that can leave scope for merchandising. japanese, went ahead. they made the boundaries between merchandising and conetnt disappear. americans placed existing products into films. Like how cast-away is a very entertaining advertisement for fed-ex. or made products based on existing content. (bugs bunny stuffed toy, or wwe playing cards).
but pokémon the animated series is an advert, a prologue, an epilogue, folklore, legend and an educational video for the avid users of pokémon video games and playing cards and much more.
if you were to find out what came first the product or the content, you'd have to open history pages. the content by itself is so well bound, it's an entire system, a parallel world and what came first doesn't even matter. it's an evolutionary step in product-content relationship.
but when merchandising evolves, it does much more than just bring in money. it brings visual content into life. real life. (no relative terms here.)
of course it's most effective when similar archetypes or concepts are present in the mass consciousness and in the individual consciousness of people..
like how anybody who looks at the tightly woven world of interjecting co-incidences and increasing virtuality of real life talks about 'the matrix'. it's a work of art that simplifies certain yet intangible thoughts in your mind and simplifies them and categorises them for future reference. this makes us aware of these thoughts and they become archetypal knowledge for us. something we know deep down. (or we have an illusion of knowledge.)
such visual concrete works speed up the process of folklore and legend and thoughts become knowledge without the churning of time.
the real bitch is when we start acting upon this knowledge. when we naturalise it.
every common insect, every common animal or bird is a pokémon now. a pocket monster that fights itself dizzy for you. a friend who lives inside a small ball, that you can carry about in your pocket. you love it and it loves you and you throw it on a battlefeild to fight for a ribbon or a badge.
(and we thought dog fighting was illegal..)
is it slavery and 'love your slave' ideology?
tha could be valid if there was a clear division that human beings are masters and pokémon are to be captured and made slaves of. butthere's an interesting twist to the whole thing.
pokémon try to catch other pokémon! (dog eat dog!)
so is it animals we're talking about or is it other people?
a friend of mine is very organized, so he has 'organizaton power'! how can i use him? how can i capture him?
A friend is very logical in his thinking so he has 'logical power' how do i put him in a ball and unleeche him when i need?
the utility of people and the collection o people has been an old concept, but the physical appearance of it in real life is very intriguing...
I don't think i have what it takes to be a pokémon trainer (i.e. the collector)
I often wondered what the pokémon do while they are in the ball...
I guess they wait for being called upon and in the meanwhile, I guess they write blogs.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
of becoming.
the word metaphor sounds like a butterfly to me. it's difficult to explain.. may be it's something to do with Marathi, because 'butterfly' is called fulpakharu in marathi and the pronunciation is like opening up something with your fingers. like unfolding a cool object made of paper. anyway, this is not about metaphors.
So, i had heard that caterpillars become butterflies. they go into cocoons and become butterflies! in marathi the itchy caterpillars are called 'Surwanta' they're furry and your hands itch really badly if you touch them, and they're really slow. 'Ali' on the other hand (is the green worm in green peas.) is much faster and cold and you can touch it. it feels like a very soft but cold lip of some sort. i used to find them very adorable to be frank. (and it's not because of my pretentious sensitivity.)
i also liked butterflies a lot. my father used to get me this plastic packet full of tiny butterflies made of some papers. very colourful. i used to empty the entire pack out of our balcony and watch them swirl. quite a few times we had real butterflies fly into our home on the third floor. My mother used to say they've come here to die. because most of them would be really tired and our cats would eventually eat them anyway. but there were the really vivid ones. ones which had a substantial body and comparitively smaller wings. The kind that does not stick its wings together when it perches, insteads holds them down like an aeroplane. i recently found out that those ones are called moths.
look at the difference : 'butterfly' and 'moth'
anyway, i liked them too. but most of them would be really sick and tired and even if i tried to protect them from my cats, they'd refuse to fly. most of them when they were really old, would have a reddish bulge on their backs. without any fur. quite smooth. they ran but couldn't fly much.
ofcourse i had tried to pluck wings off some of them sometimes but i didn't enjoy that and felt very bad for doing it so i didn't do it much. instead i'd try to keep them out of reach of our cats. my very sensitive arts teacher aunt had told me that it was a great idea to keep their wings in the notebooks. i thought that was a ghastly idea. (this same aunt who teaches poetry to children, also had procured a bunny's tail once for me and preserved a wing of a sparrow my cat once killed. she used to read poems to me and i used to love them! i still remember our lazy afternoons over 'aathvanitlya kavita'. but i didn't like this dead animal body parts storage.)
anyway, so those bulgy moths. i never thought they were beautiful, but i always thought they were sick and needed help.
once or twice i had tried to make butterflies myself. i had learnt that you can put a worm 'Ali' in an empty matchbox put some food and holes in the matchbox and wait till it makes a cocoon.
my previous attempts were not exactly successful. once the Ali mysteriously disappeared. i still don't know how.
once i found this really meaty ali but when i touched it it stuck out two big red horns and began to stink. i got scared and threw it away. ( i later found out that those stinkers and the itchy ones become the most beautiful butterflies.)
the third time however, i found a nice big ali in our kadhipatta. i put her in the matchbox and put some corriander and other green vegetables for her to eat. though the ali didn't eat much, she began to become brown and hard . i waited for weeks then i realised it was not a cocoon. the ali had died and it had hardened and changed colours.
i didn't try much after that.
but i still had empty matchboxes.
so after a few years, i tried again. i found an ali in peas so i put her in the matchbox, and kept peas for her there. she ate the peas like a hog, i had to give her peas all the time. she shat like anything in the matchbox, i cleaned that too.
soon she formed what looked like a cocoon. but i wasn't sure coz the cocoon was substantially smaller than the ali. so i probed a little. i touched the cocoon quite often. but once i was sure it was really a cocoon, i decided to quit it.
but it was taking too long to become a butterfly. and i had had this image of a nice BIG black butterfly with white patterns on the wings and the kind that sticks its wigs together when it perches. the beautiful kind.
after a few days, i had kept the matchbox open and i was probing the cocoon, just to check whether it was still alive, it made some movements. it began to crack and an insect did come out. it had very small brown wings. it hopped onto the window and began to open its wings. the wings were folded and rounded, but when it sat on the window, it began unfolding them. it had become a brown moth. the wings were forming right in front of me. i had expected this to be a beautiful event, but somehow it was very sad. it's mostly because it was a very ugly moth, improperly formed, and i didn't like it. it flew away. didn't even turn back. it was big one though. i looked at the broken cocoon. and tried to smile. succeeded to fake happiness. i jumped about and told everyone that it had become such a beautiful butterfly and i saw it come out and fly away. i acted brilliantly and everybody believed me. but secretly i blamed myself. i thought had i not touched its cocoon and not probed it, it would have become a nice big butterfly. it was my fault that it had become that ugly thing that flew away.
it had hurt me very deeply and i was acting ecstatic. holding on to the brown cocoon in the matchbox.
my aunt suggested i should preserve it.
the next afternoon, when i was alone, i burnt it.
So, i had heard that caterpillars become butterflies. they go into cocoons and become butterflies! in marathi the itchy caterpillars are called 'Surwanta' they're furry and your hands itch really badly if you touch them, and they're really slow. 'Ali' on the other hand (is the green worm in green peas.) is much faster and cold and you can touch it. it feels like a very soft but cold lip of some sort. i used to find them very adorable to be frank. (and it's not because of my pretentious sensitivity.)
i also liked butterflies a lot. my father used to get me this plastic packet full of tiny butterflies made of some papers. very colourful. i used to empty the entire pack out of our balcony and watch them swirl. quite a few times we had real butterflies fly into our home on the third floor. My mother used to say they've come here to die. because most of them would be really tired and our cats would eventually eat them anyway. but there were the really vivid ones. ones which had a substantial body and comparitively smaller wings. The kind that does not stick its wings together when it perches, insteads holds them down like an aeroplane. i recently found out that those ones are called moths.
look at the difference : 'butterfly' and 'moth'
anyway, i liked them too. but most of them would be really sick and tired and even if i tried to protect them from my cats, they'd refuse to fly. most of them when they were really old, would have a reddish bulge on their backs. without any fur. quite smooth. they ran but couldn't fly much.
ofcourse i had tried to pluck wings off some of them sometimes but i didn't enjoy that and felt very bad for doing it so i didn't do it much. instead i'd try to keep them out of reach of our cats. my very sensitive arts teacher aunt had told me that it was a great idea to keep their wings in the notebooks. i thought that was a ghastly idea. (this same aunt who teaches poetry to children, also had procured a bunny's tail once for me and preserved a wing of a sparrow my cat once killed. she used to read poems to me and i used to love them! i still remember our lazy afternoons over 'aathvanitlya kavita'. but i didn't like this dead animal body parts storage.)
anyway, so those bulgy moths. i never thought they were beautiful, but i always thought they were sick and needed help.
once or twice i had tried to make butterflies myself. i had learnt that you can put a worm 'Ali' in an empty matchbox put some food and holes in the matchbox and wait till it makes a cocoon.
my previous attempts were not exactly successful. once the Ali mysteriously disappeared. i still don't know how.
once i found this really meaty ali but when i touched it it stuck out two big red horns and began to stink. i got scared and threw it away. ( i later found out that those stinkers and the itchy ones become the most beautiful butterflies.)
the third time however, i found a nice big ali in our kadhipatta. i put her in the matchbox and put some corriander and other green vegetables for her to eat. though the ali didn't eat much, she began to become brown and hard . i waited for weeks then i realised it was not a cocoon. the ali had died and it had hardened and changed colours.
i didn't try much after that.
but i still had empty matchboxes.
so after a few years, i tried again. i found an ali in peas so i put her in the matchbox, and kept peas for her there. she ate the peas like a hog, i had to give her peas all the time. she shat like anything in the matchbox, i cleaned that too.
soon she formed what looked like a cocoon. but i wasn't sure coz the cocoon was substantially smaller than the ali. so i probed a little. i touched the cocoon quite often. but once i was sure it was really a cocoon, i decided to quit it.
but it was taking too long to become a butterfly. and i had had this image of a nice BIG black butterfly with white patterns on the wings and the kind that sticks its wigs together when it perches. the beautiful kind.
after a few days, i had kept the matchbox open and i was probing the cocoon, just to check whether it was still alive, it made some movements. it began to crack and an insect did come out. it had very small brown wings. it hopped onto the window and began to open its wings. the wings were folded and rounded, but when it sat on the window, it began unfolding them. it had become a brown moth. the wings were forming right in front of me. i had expected this to be a beautiful event, but somehow it was very sad. it's mostly because it was a very ugly moth, improperly formed, and i didn't like it. it flew away. didn't even turn back. it was big one though. i looked at the broken cocoon. and tried to smile. succeeded to fake happiness. i jumped about and told everyone that it had become such a beautiful butterfly and i saw it come out and fly away. i acted brilliantly and everybody believed me. but secretly i blamed myself. i thought had i not touched its cocoon and not probed it, it would have become a nice big butterfly. it was my fault that it had become that ugly thing that flew away.
it had hurt me very deeply and i was acting ecstatic. holding on to the brown cocoon in the matchbox.
my aunt suggested i should preserve it.
the next afternoon, when i was alone, i burnt it.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
I like this!
i really do!
i mean it's just poetic that this thing is called something that sounds as meaningless as 'blog'!
this brings back another childhood memory.
when i was old enough to have memory, my parents moved into a one-room flat system building. so the door was always shut. and mostly i was alone at home. may be a cat.
anyway,
so they realised that leaving such a small kid alone is not a good idea and i should be watched over. since i totally refused to be watched over by strangers, they decided that i should go to my grandma, who lives alone in a chawl. so they asked the woman who used to drop me to kindergarten and bring me back to drop me to grandma's instead.
since childhood i have the tendency to become popular in small groups. (at least in the begining, the tendency extends to becoming the laughing stock in long term. i'm not old enough to know what happens next in the tendency. anyway.) so i became popular with the kids in the chawl almost instantly and everybody wanted to be my best friend and everybody wanted me to visit them etc.
but at lunch hour, one must go to one's home. so i finally did enter my granny's house who declared that i'd not get any food untill i got out of the school uniform and got into cute clothes that i wore at home.
my gran's house in the chawl was also a one room and it had a common balcony that faced a row of other houses. mostly houses of my new found friends.
since it was a one room hall, i relaised that i'd have to change in front of my gran, who i decided i didn't know enough.
when i had to change in fron of strangers at home, i'd go into the bathroom . but here, no such system seemed to exist. so i took my cute clothes, walked out the door, into the common balcony and took off my uniform. as i was wearing my home clothes, thnking i should not have to go through this for lunch, i heard my gran laugh, and i saw around and noticed that most my newfound friends were staring at me from their houses right accross.
i think a blog is this sort of a common balcony where you strip yourself naked in front of newfound people as you hide yourself from the ones that are actually closer to you.
it's like writing how you hate your parents and your best friend on a piece of paper and then origaming it into a boat and sending it down the gutter, hoping a stranger would rescue you.
hmm..
before you start analysing, let me tell you, i'm an only child and i was loved immensely and genuinely by both my parents. i'm not a teen ager and this blog is not about me and my parents.
and i'm male.
23 years old.
etc.
i mean it's just poetic that this thing is called something that sounds as meaningless as 'blog'!
this brings back another childhood memory.
when i was old enough to have memory, my parents moved into a one-room flat system building. so the door was always shut. and mostly i was alone at home. may be a cat.
anyway,
so they realised that leaving such a small kid alone is not a good idea and i should be watched over. since i totally refused to be watched over by strangers, they decided that i should go to my grandma, who lives alone in a chawl. so they asked the woman who used to drop me to kindergarten and bring me back to drop me to grandma's instead.
since childhood i have the tendency to become popular in small groups. (at least in the begining, the tendency extends to becoming the laughing stock in long term. i'm not old enough to know what happens next in the tendency. anyway.) so i became popular with the kids in the chawl almost instantly and everybody wanted to be my best friend and everybody wanted me to visit them etc.
but at lunch hour, one must go to one's home. so i finally did enter my granny's house who declared that i'd not get any food untill i got out of the school uniform and got into cute clothes that i wore at home.
my gran's house in the chawl was also a one room and it had a common balcony that faced a row of other houses. mostly houses of my new found friends.
since it was a one room hall, i relaised that i'd have to change in front of my gran, who i decided i didn't know enough.
when i had to change in fron of strangers at home, i'd go into the bathroom . but here, no such system seemed to exist. so i took my cute clothes, walked out the door, into the common balcony and took off my uniform. as i was wearing my home clothes, thnking i should not have to go through this for lunch, i heard my gran laugh, and i saw around and noticed that most my newfound friends were staring at me from their houses right accross.
i think a blog is this sort of a common balcony where you strip yourself naked in front of newfound people as you hide yourself from the ones that are actually closer to you.
it's like writing how you hate your parents and your best friend on a piece of paper and then origaming it into a boat and sending it down the gutter, hoping a stranger would rescue you.
hmm..
before you start analysing, let me tell you, i'm an only child and i was loved immensely and genuinely by both my parents. i'm not a teen ager and this blog is not about me and my parents.
and i'm male.
23 years old.
etc.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Toad
I was 6 or 7 or 8. and walking home from school. My parents always made sure I was accompanied to school by someone. A maid or someone. It’s still a profession in suburbs by the way.. Old women who walk children to school. They carry all their schoolbags and waterbags or tiffin baskets. But you have to be a woman and you're preferred if you're old.
I pretended to be sensitive as a child. So I never gave my school bag to the lady. But I always asked her to walk from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her to. So I’d feel asif I were walking alone.
I’ll talk more about walking alone a bit later.
So I was walking home. It was raining. I must've lost my umbrella as usual or I must not be wearing my raincoat so that I could feel the rain. (I told you, I pretended to be sensitive as a child.) I used to really like the rain. But I always thought a man may choose to become anything he wants in life, but he should never become the rain in Mumbai. You’re hated for coming and you're hated for not coming too.
I’ll talk more about Bombay rains a bit later.
So I was walking in the rain. Drenched. My schoolbag getting wet and the maid looking on helplessly at me from her umbrella from as far away from me as her conscience would allow her.
There was a small playground with red soil. Very dusty. And always behind a closed door. But during the rain, it'd be full of mud. i imagined quicksand must look like this. Anyway.
So one monsoon, i noticed HUGE frogs sitting in the mud. They were HUGE. as big as a big rat. Frogs toads, whatever, it's called 'Bedook' ( i think that's a better word anyway.) so Big yellow bedooks. And spots all over them. Also getting drenched in rain.
I loved animals. (For reasons I have specified earlier) but something about those bedooks really scared me. I was never afraid of cats big dogs, even cows with horns. But the bedook scared me.
It was asif it was a being stuck in the middle of vegetation and animals. It had big eyes and it never blinked. Raindrops went into its eyes and it would not blink. And some of them croaked, but they didn't open their mouths when they did that. They had yellow ski with spots and looked like a diseased human skin. I mean they had no fur or pincers or any of that stuff. Plain skin and they did not react to anything. But they were alive.
They scared me. And I flung a stone at them. Not a pebble, a stone. I wanted to see them move.
The stone landed in the mud and splashed a bit but they didn't move. Then I targeted one of them. A big one. And threw a stone straight at him. He didn't even blink. The stone hit him, he reclined a little, but that was more like how a sofa would go in if sit on it and got back to its position staring straight at me.
I ran as far away as possible from those things.
I didn't know what scared me really, but it was this numbness I felt. This coldness. This tendency not to even move after being hit and this half alive state. I don't know. I was really scared.
Later when I went home I found out that they are hiding during the rest of the seasons and come out only during monsoons. I didn't want to see them again.
I thought a man may become whatever he wants to in life, but he must not become a toad.
--
The Toad.
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