As I See It From My Niche...

Up I come

2006-11-29T05:18:00.000-08:00

Thousands of miles across, the sun continues to scorch this earth. Wilted crops are being harvested by emaciated farmers; they smile and wave as they see me. Why have I become so thin, they wonder.
I am becoming one of them once again. Once again, my land has begun to attract me and once again I wonder if this is really where I belong to.

India & Pakistan;how do we help ourselves?

2006-09-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

Do we agree that we need to see a new India in coming decades ? If yes, we must do 'something' about troubles bequeathed by our history and do that somthing more confidently. Mending relationship with Pakistan is one of them. If we agree on this, then we shall have to talk about Kashmir, whether we like it or not. And yes, 'they' also must realise that terrorism shall have to go...in whatever way they define it. The point is, these two points must move together; otherwise, both people and political parties across the borders shall remain on the defensive about this detente. That is why we must welcome the new sets of decisions agreed in Havana.

That said, I do understand that we are dealing with a country that is fragile and fragmented. What happens if General Musharaff is replaced by someone after elections? What happens if, as many Indians ask, anti-India feelings and acts continue even after Kashmir issue is settled, just as a result of their own internal bickerings ? These questions can not be wished away. But they can not be an excuse to sit back and keep our fingers crossed. On the contrary, we must have a more nuanced, engaging and forward looking policy towards them precisely because of these questions. We have two choices; bid our time and keep things dragging as they go worse ( as moderate and reasonable elements in Pakistan loose ground to more fundamentalist elements) or stand up and begin acting more intelligently. The BJP sort of approach does not take us any farther than a month or year. We need to look beyond that.

Vidya's wonders; II

2006-09-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

And when she smiles, her open lips stir up a mound of her left cheek. Thick chocolate curls come flowing down to claim that mound. Triumphant curls!
Vidya, the wild geographies of your face...

Address changed!

2006-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

I shift my home next tuesday. On the plus side, I shall get to see and explore the other side of London. I shall have a lot of stuff on my plate for the first couple of weeks-visit the Freud's museum, see the Camden Arts Centre and also take long walks to the Hampstead Heath lakes. Sounds pretty exciting.
On the minus, I shall miss my old companion, the river. Tower bridge will miss me now. And walks along the Thames are also going to be a distant dream.
And I shall also not be able to blog for a long time now; there is no net connection there.

All in all, the life takes a gentle curve.

devotion deficit

2006-09-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

It has been more than two months struggling with this essay. Yeah, it is pretty long-20,000 words or thereabouts. Nevertheless, the truth is that I have not really given myself to it completely.
That is why I continue to suffer.

Chinese puzzle

2006-09-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

China continues to tell us, in its own ways, who is the master; the state power or the technology?

when that man was born..

2006-09-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today, 100 years ago, Gandhi began what was his maiden campaign of truth and non-violence in South Africa. I have often tried to imagine the ambience of that night which created Gandhi; thrown out of the train for his colour, he says he shivered in cold..in the dead of the night, he sits on the lonely platform..see-sawing between thoughts of a retreat and a resolve to stick around. Pregnant time..when time ticked away in silence to shape history...of a nation and the future of an idea . As we march on, the profoundity of that night and that decision shall become only more sublime.

( and also today, some boys thought of having fun by throwing a beer can at me near tower bridge, as I surveyed the Japanese photograph exhibition. I wonder what Gandhi would have thought of it. )

Envious..hum!

2006-09-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

I am blighted by many vices. Some of them keep me company all the time-such as day dreaming- and hence I am not much ruffled by them. But some others come over more surreptitiously. Envy is one of them. When it comes, it fills me, literally with a burning sensation in the chest. Acidic feeling . Where does this bitter bile flow from? It is so interesting; many things just begin to exist for me when I see a potential competitor for them. Does it come from the fact that I wish to own people/things? No. It comes from the rather interesting disbelief that seizes me on such occasions; how on earth could something desert me and go to somebody else, for I must be better than my competitor! Its time I turned the tap of self-glory off.

happiness kids bring

2006-09-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

I was buried deep in my books straightening my arguments. There was a knock on the door. I hurried up, put a T. shirt on and opened the door. And guess what..I find two angels staring intently at me. The elder one, named Avani is about 8-9 years and the younger - Ananya- is about 4. What cute names..Ananya means the dearest one in Sanskrit, perhaps . I do not know what Avani means!
They trooped in..Ananya made herself comfortable on the revolving chair and began revolving right away! Her small pony tail revolving all over her head! Avani was more shy, throwing occasional glances to me, laced with her beautitiful smile. And then Ananya began chatting..fighting..pulling her sister down and giggling.
Can you imagine my happiness recieving my young guests-my youngest guests in fact here in London. I humoured them, teased them and of course giggled along with them . In India, smiling at a cute kid on the road, in the trains or buses is always almost an automatic reflex . London is little complicated.

Gendered thoughts

2006-09-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Why does Nietzsche sound so moronic about women; " women are considered deep- why? because no one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow." And he is not alone. I read Picasso also having his mouthful of the same stuff. How come men of such geniuses could ever make such vague and grandiose generalisations ? It is one thing to splutter something of this sort during a conversation over a few pints of beer (with an insurance cover on one's head, of course), but it is quite another to propose it as a philosophical maxim in one's writing.

continental drifts

2006-09-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

My friends continue to drift across continents. In search for something. When we meet, they compare London and Paris, Paris and Zeneva, Zeneva and New York, all in one breath. I wonder as they speak. It sounds as though they were comparing the streets they ran errands in during their Indian childhoods. And yet, I ask, why should they drift? Money, easy life, opportunities?
None, perhaps; it all has been achieved. Then? Perhaps looking for just a face, one face, one person in whom they could build a nest and take residence and feel securely tied. Or perhaps they are drifting in delusion that the next stop shall bring them an even higher form of thrill...

I see my friends while they change their long haul flights in London and continue drifting away...

Vidya; her wonders...

2006-09-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

Her large black eyes had possibilities floating. And wealth shone on those thin pink lips. A strand of her thick lustrous curl swayed down on wheatish brown cheek, whom she occasionally pushed behind her ear, so diligently, as though chiding them softly back. And her smile? Where did it rise from; her heart, eyes, cheeks or lips? But wherever it went, a gentle lightness followed.

Duel

2006-09-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Either this essay kills me
or
I shall massacre it.

it became my pigeon..

2006-08-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

' lost my card at the Library and invited unnecessary trouble for myself. And then sat down dejected, grumpily, on a bench in a well-littered and empty plaza. A pigeon ambled up and perched itself on its one leg on the table in front of me. It looked equally weak and down; feathers ruffled hither and thither, those beady eyes silently trained in what I thought was my direction. It stood that way for about 10 seconds or so. I began to wonder if it knew of a sort of a balance of power it had against me. I wanted it to stay that way longer ..I thought of the warmth it brought to me in such disagreeable state of affairs. Looking at it, I remembered how you felt when you held a bird's body in your hand..like a new born baby..you weren't sure where really should you have held it from, how tight or loose your grip should be, lest it was too hard on such a softly throbbing peice of life, even as you enjoyed that strange sense of relatedness to its pounding heart. Suddenly, I felt nice that I left eating meat some years ago.
By this time, my pigeon had a call from its family. My thoughts were now far away from a sore jaw and soured mood. But then, tell me, this was the second disabled pigeon I saw; Are there really many around in London ?

When I liked the way I walked

2006-08-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

For a while, I thought I had darted out of my thesis as a butterfly.. on my own imaginary motorcycle ride acrosss an equally imaginary monument valley. For a while , my nose looked less flattened and so much better. And I thought the ticket selling girl who did not smile at me at the theatre box office today just wanted to say my smile was priceless and it couldn't be returned back!
For a while, everyone laughed riotously in the theatre as if all 'stiff upper lips' were left at home. And for a while I thought all three women I have adored in life stood around me together and whispered softly , " Nilotpal...go on ..another one of your endless anecdotes"..
For a while, I walked contentedly..with a Buddha like smile and thought contemptously of Sartre. For a while, I felt blessing all souls who were capable of such a foolish act as loving someone. And for a while, I felt like hugging all souls who could forgive after having realised this folly.

Delirious were the effects of watching Almodovar's ' women on the verge of nervous breakdown'!

a damsel in..

2006-08-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

The girl next door appears a trifle enigmatic. Yesterday, she was sobbing inconsolably and today she was all gales of laughter. She, her tears and laughter, I have been trying to tell myself, are none of my business. But, somehow I am stuck in on the subject of tears. This is the second time in a month that I have heard her cry. Why? She looks temperamentally sound..how can she allow herself to break down?

I hate overhearing this crying stuff..

between chit-chat and conversation

2006-08-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

S came for a night to London. Over pizza and fish, we talked seamlessly; the Oval fiasco, Malaga tragedy, Islam and terrorism, India's economic boom, our own PhDs, the torture of watching Bollywood films and the joy of Bernal's cinema ..Amores Perros...Mama Tambien..Motorcycle Diaries ..Bad Education..Almodovar attracted us and we sighed that we had not yet seen 'Volver'. I forgot to tell him that Ms Cruz has never looked more stunning than she does in Volver(from posters that I have seen)

We dispaired of the BJP and cursed the Congress...we agreed that India's economic boom could be a farce...issues of governability, distribution of wealth and corruption remained pushed under the carpet. We also cried that all this 'boom' talk concealed absence of any sort of 'renaissance ' in Indian Science research..(why not more of "Boson" and "Chandrashekhar limits"? ), Indian cinema (why not more of Ray..and Ghataks instead of stupid Johars ?) and Indian literature..(why not another Rao and Narayana..if not a Tagore?)..

Talking with an old friend...is like driving a brakeless car..

holding it against each other

2006-08-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

In the last six months or so, I have often been led to wonder if Londoners have become more irascible lately. Well, I am too young a resident of the city to compare its civility these days with that of bygone times. And I also know that the charm of politeness and a benign mutual indifference still holds in the city, a charm that I have increasingly felt falling for despite possessing my own 'stronger' Indian vocal chords and ear drums.

But there is something about the frequency of broad day light street fracas- not the friday night brawls, mind you-that I find hard not to make note of . Today, in Illford, I saw two perfectly weekend loving sort of gentlemen shoving each other and exchanging swear words even as shoppers around them stood watching. Somedays back, there was a long and not so pleasant argument between two gentlemen just outside of my window, this time on car parking in the street. Before that, once while in the tube , I found a person blasting what he thought was a piece of great 'music' off his earphones. When told to tone it down by one of our fellow commuters, his reaction was equally musical; "f'... off".
It is saddening..so unseemly for a city of such exquisite beauty and refinement. Or am I overstating my case; an error of pure randon sampling?

treading on..

2006-08-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

My shackles
-all my own making-
yet
I grudge them!

groping closely about myself
I find
a web
I have been spinning
for decades
to hang myself

Now, in this web
lie my hopes...
hoplessness..
none..outside of it.

Birthday wish..

2006-08-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

'Into ever widening thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom...let my country awake'

A wish on my dearest India's 59 birthday.

Terrorised..

2006-08-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

A civilization of madness is laying siege around us.

Sacred collective liberties, of being, saying, loitering and travelling, all are slipping away from us..

For we who came from a generation fortunate enough to have inhaled these freedoms in every moment of our existence since birth..from different countries and colours.

And all this at the crack of dawn in the new century?

my day in the country

2006-08-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

I sat regally, on a prized first front-seat upstairs of the doubledecker bus. The evening sun rose to my challenge and sprinted with me calmly all along on M40 from London to Warwick. Fields and moors rolled by. Perfectly sqaure chocolate bars of hay lay stacked in undulating fields. Flocks of sheep nibbled away in distance, contently, self absorbingly, while stallions swayed their bushy tails leisurely. Neruda asks in one of his poems, if there is anything sadder than a train standing alone in rain. I asked myself, was there anything more idyllic than a sheep feasting so absorbedly on vast greens.

Elegant english villages skidded past us..and past went a handsome pigeon couple that sat solemnly on the electric pole in the evening. Romance of the first order(left my heart aching!!)
But streches of highway also spoke of blood and death; near to woodlands, wildbirds in dozens lay crushed. In spinning road traffic.I thought I found an answer to Neruda's question..this was certainly sadder than a train in the rain..

Close to Shakespear's home, clouds burst upon us with vengeance..confused stallions strode forth as if whipped suddenly. Their tails up...although I smiled on them but I confess I was as bemused at the clouds as the stallions were.

Idyllic. Even mushy in a way. This short trip to Stratford. News of trouble in London airports, imagine, was a bolt from the blue.

a bug's week

2006-08-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

a shokingly ignorant, self conscious and pessimistic insect that I am..self-flogging you say, yeah, but every ounce a truth ; how on earth could I have not known Dali this far...this bug who has lived 1/3 of his life on this planet chose a ruined sunday to crawl to Dali's museum at Waterloo last week and found a cave full of wierd, yet chewable bones...a hell of a genious of twirly moustaches..they entangled this creepy creature with meanings told in whispers and mockings..they laughed at the bug's victorian moralities on life, sex and time...

if that was not enough..later in the week, the bug happened to tiptoe on BBC music page and discovered Paganini.. he bore the dagger deep and turned it in bug's chest; 12 tones on violin in a sec..sheer 8 years of childhood to compose his first piece...the bug cried inside the hopeless burrow that covered his PhD thesis papers..

by then..the bug lay exhuasted by self-loathing; he could only read "the french leiutenant's woman" all night through . But glad this creepy thing was, for he woke up with the taste of bitter honey on his tongue..a taste that only a great tale of unrequited love that simmers through life leaves.. and has a feeling of love and warmth for this land he presently lives in, that is, England..

for a fleeting moment of happiness

2006-08-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

I have got it!! yupp..that scholarship for which I was checking my mailbox everyday and prayed to dear god everynight..I have got a few thousand pounds worth of smile on my lips right now..and feel like hugging someone and plant a peck...
It is so beautiful when someone believes in you and what you say, gives you a thumbs up and tells you that your journey has a value of its own...your legs begin to hum a song..your eyes polish that dream and your nerves begins to spark their own firework...

It' s all so lovely a moment..

of East (and West)...

2006-07-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

I am violating my promise of not blogging for two weeks...but I am kind of overwhelmed with thoughts, having seen my first Satyajit Ray film this evening.

There is nothing exceptional about the story of the film- a young son's relationships with her mother as he grows from his childhood to adolescence- except that it is an Indian story told with an authentic Indian sensibility (Ray's genious). A mouthful of 'Indian', I know, but I surely mean all of it. Take Ray' s son, Apu..a roughly ten year old boy..an innocent wave of breeze that he is..comes from one cavernous street of the holy city( of Banares) and goes into another. His wanderings on the steps along the river Ganga, in solo frames of mesmerising black and whites, are so untouched by the weight of hindu tradition that flows around him seamlessly..

Take Apu's mother..a person whose grace, and there is not a single shot of her in which she is out of that, comes from the fact that she knows only to give..to her husband and to her son. She is not self-less, but her own idea of herself is so completely merged with that of her son that she becomes one of him...she is not overbearing. There is just one shot in which she slaps him and only one shot in which Apu puts his head on her lap..but you cannot but imagin her being around him all the time. In fact, it is this interplay of her selflessness, and the growing Apu's consciousness of his own individuality that begins to hunt a viewer. I had something breaking inside me at the shot when she finally reconciles to the scene of Apu leaving her to go to Calcutta for his study.

This idea of selflessness in Apu's mother is what I find Indian..I wonder if India is not a country where pain is, in some way or other, very often turned into such sublime beauty..don't get me wrong...I am speaking within a specific context.
The last thought is, as we ruthlessly try to modernise ourselves and our country, are we going to loose such charms as Apu's childhood or such self less love as his mother's. If we do..we shall loose something quintessentially Indian.

a medley of no-things...

2006-07-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

On the threshold of low, broody mood. Read Shakespear say this, exquisitely, huntingly;

" and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

Tiger Woods' s British Champ win and tears had something moving,something tender about them. A father's loss makes some ever more determined..

Middle East is, as usual, annoying me no end..should not have read those Beirut blogs ...I am no more certain of this hopeless..helpless image of Lebanon..being bandied around. Israel is no good, agreed, but how on earth could a country ever tolerate Syria's messing around for three decades...and taking Hizbollah in administration? Blame me for my ignorance , but in Middle East, you can't have peace in your courtyard while dabbling in the game of 'fraternity' and one-upmanship outside of it.

As for myself, I am grumpy ,whiney, broody.. are there more of them left?

for birds flying continents ...

2006-07-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

Do birds have their own truth to seek?

Otherwise, why should so many of them fly across

thousands of miles every year, from one continent to another..

using a sun and stars (!!) for a compass,

and then falling dead in unknown, unforeseen winds....

feeling the heat

2006-07-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

The tube was unbearble.
The room has been hot,
And kitchen..well , sort of putting the oven to rest.

Objects of happiness ; the shower and fan.

On second thoughts, though, I shouldn't be complaining at all!

BBC for a boy!!

2006-07-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

Most of my late childhood was spent in a small north Indian town close to the Indo-Nepal border. Summers in our small town brought out the ferocity in the Indian sun and that brought, in turn, a lovely mellow smell of mangoes ripening on our neighbour's trees. The summers also brought the death of electricty; there would be hours of load shedding in the evenings. But then, no one valued electricty so much as to complain about it. We children would all clamber up on a rickety ladder to reach our vast rooftop and lay ourself half naked on a bedsheet in those dazzling moonlit evenings. Blue skies, white moon, steady stars and the BBC airwaves...

Yes, one of our fellow residents had a transistor and every evening at 7.30, finding himself a suitable place, he would tune his machine into the BBC Hindi service. With typical soundblips preceding the news, the male voice would begin with his daily fare....India...Pakistan..a bit of Nepal..and lots of Sri Lanka because of India's peacekeeping interventions in that countryin late 1980s. We children would be chided by the radio owner, if we made any noises. Often, we did not need to ; the ever so remote voice of the BBC newsreader would often be encroached by competing radio stations and our tormentor would struggle for minutes finding the exact station back!

Blue skies, steady stars, silver moon and the names of countries one after another on the BBC news..my first impressions of the vastness of space I lay in.

Choices!

2006-07-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

The more I work on my PhD thesis
the less I get to see the sunny side of this summer
The more miserable I feel about what I am loosing

The less I work on my thesis
The more I get to see the river and my friends and the net
The more miserable I feel about what, after all, am I achieving?

Phew...

For this lovely sunday...

2006-07-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

What a lovely sunday! That Physic ( and not Psychic!!) garden in Chelsea is such a charming place for a summer sunday's quiet sitting. Plants, shoots, creepers, grasses, bushes ...some of them sprouting like new babies in the maternity ward of a green house...having come from different soils of different continents and now calling London their home.

Those homes in Chelsea gardens, with their ivy covered white windows and faintly fragrant portico gardens...they were simply mesmerising. Well...some times it is just so wonderful to open one's eyes to this maddening kind of beauty and life as if it came out of nothing...all of a sudden. So those tall maple trees on the street suddely wore a rioting greenery today, the Thames' water became purer and Buddha's smile in that lovely Pagoda on the river bank was distinctly warmer.

and hence , I braved the heavy pound-ing that my shallow student's pockets recieved today!!

India, which road shall thou take?

2006-07-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

Like many other Indians, I have also become rather used to hearing/reading futuristic accounts of the road our country takes in coming decades. Although I am not as patently excited about these accounts ( BRIC Sorts, remember !!) as I think I was in the beginning, I find at least some of them worth attention. This is because, I think it is fascinating to look at "who" is saying "what" and "why" rather than feel drawn to the "rosy " faces of these predictions. I am not thinking of doing this analysis here although I am sure of its merit as a promising academic paper. What I think I thought of jotting down here were just a couple of thoughts that flashed in my mind as I read on one such account prepared by Chatham House, a respected London based think tank along with Americal National Intelligence center.
Though my readers (if there are any) may find this moronic, I sometimes wonder if this euphoria of India rising should really catch us unawares( as I think it did ; it appeared so suddenly on the international horizon in 2003-04). When looked at from the sheer size of our country, isn't it rather given that even a moderate and skewed increase of incomes ( which is what it is) produces figures of impressive scales at the national levels? Why should we think we have "arrived"? Change the question slightly ; why we should have doubted in the first place that we could ever "arrive"? I think, the answer to both these questions lie in our distinct sense of self doubt as a nation, coming from a certain political and economic history. In many senses, we Indians often carry an image of ours that is seen in a " western mirror" and this self doubt was often a consequence of how we thought we were seen and described by West as struggling/fledgling toddlers stumbling ahead on a trail we thought could lead us to a highway they were sprinting on. The euphoria of Indian 2020 or 2050 contains a distinct psychological soothing to it; it assures many Indians, in a fundamentally Karmic sense, of a their destined and deserved future. What is interesting is to note is that many in the western world(epsecially US-UK) are not also entirely unaffected in this psychological sense; reading some of these reports, I wonder if I have not sometimes picked up a lurking fear of " overcrowding " on this highway of development they believed was more or less spacious enough for only a few. One has to read some lines of this Chatham House report to see such insinuations; Chinese " unscruplousness" in Africa to secure oil reserves, India's lack of morality in dealing with Myanmar to get hydrocarbons at any cost. This has a classic element of irony to it ; after having defined and rigourously specified the only course of economic development (and used it for moral judgements) for decades, promising upstarts now are seen as representing blurred moral dispositions.

I think I have some more fodder left and can push along with these thoughts for a couple of more posts.

Blown up in a Bombay local

2006-07-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

That Bombay, my dearest city, where I have lived some of my best years in life so far, had to suffer so brutally on tuesday, is a numbing. Having been there and used those trains so often(which I thought were the "coolest" ( although trying) part of this mindboggling experience called Bombay), I know there can be no more hopeless manner of dying; imagine being packed like sardines, gasping for air for your lungs and space for your body, the most important thought on your mind is " which station next" and " how many stations more to go before this ends" and then imagine a bomb ripping all this simmering humanity apart. No running around for safety, no automatic reflexes of closing eyes or covering ears..a moment of sound and then eternal vacuum.

I am frustrated; on sunday I mourned here for London and since tuesday have been mourning for Bombay. Why are we so hopelessly condemned to live just a sound away from death and why is it that wherever we might go, that potential sound follows us like a shadow of our own...whoever are these people who could ever bring themselevs to kill hundreds who were so innocent as to count stations before they returned home feeling happy that one more day of survival in the city was over. Why such hopeless hate...from whichever religion, whatever "cause" it might have come..how could it not see its ugly face in those blood splattered railway platforms ..

How inncocent of my mother to have called me up from India today and asked if I was "safe" here in London....

Birthday thoughts

2006-07-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

Quietly remembered that I turned 29 today. Woke up to Ma and Ba's call early morning and the surprise b'day messages included one from my former flatmates and batcha. What a painful idea that the city I live in had to suffer on this day last year. People mourned the day and I did not see how I could remain impervious.

What have been my birthday thoughts? well...just that I am quite like ( or would like to be ) a shooting star, impermanent by birth and meaningless by death. Yet, in these tiny seconds of existence on the horizon, I must radiate every thing around me. For, after it, there is nothing but an expanse of forgetfulness.

Any answers, if you know ?

2006-07-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

A genuine curiousity;
Why is the ozone hole centred only over the South Pole, when the CFCs are emitted all around in the Earth's atmosphere?

A frustrating question;

When shall Israel come to understand that no " buffer zone" can ever be created between her and the Palestintians, if her policy of mindless aggression continues to shed so much of innocent blood ?

One's departure.......

2006-06-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of my sweetest flatmates left for California this morning once and for all. I have known her only for two months and yet, today when I went to see her off at Victoria station with two other flatmates, I felt we were loosing a valuable part of us in her departure.

She is gone and gone are those things of her she lent to our flat: her vivacious charm, her loud but hearty laughter, her intriguing ( at least to me) love for pigeons and an equal obsession for vaseline lipgel. That lovely american accent is going to be missed now: all of us here left now are from Asia, Europe only.

A message from Home(?)

2006-06-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

A cool
summer evening breeze
rising from home
ran over sun scorched earths

over
silky paddy heads
broken village trails
and over
kids returning from schools

to
whisper
that
it missed me
sorely
today.

2006-05-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

The city : some images today

(I)

On
one leg,

its body
could not stand

the pigeon
kept tumbling sideways

On a busy pavement.

(II)

While
his mother and father
talked their worlds out

he made
our bus
his vast playground....

(III)

The Sun
held its fingers with his opulent shine

and
The Earth gave it
her luxuriant love

And the day
hummed merrily all day long...

" Choiceless Awareness"

2006-05-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

" What is important, surely, is to be aware without choice, because choice brings conflict. The chooser is in confusion, therefore he chooses: if he is not in confusion, there is no choice. "

A stage where we reach a state of consciousness where moral choices are not binary or obligatory ( do not force us to follow them): where we are able to relate and harmoniously idenify with each of them or rather all of them and contain them in our vast consciousness is the stage where good life begins.....

But, my dear Krishnamurthy, is it really ever possible to reach that state?

Living in the times of fanaticism

2006-05-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

I am angry and ashamed and feel like shouting my lungs out at these louts who call themselves "Hindus" and have prevented one of India's best painters from showing his work in London just because some of his pieces sh0w Hindu goddesses in "nude". What the heck...as if he is the first one to do a nude of Hindu goddesses. Any knowledgeable Hindu knows that our scriptures are full of imageries carnal in nature and our temples are full of carvings explicitly erotic in form. There are "Slokas" aplenty where the goddesses are adored , in fine details , for their physical beauties and reciting these "slokas" are part and parcel of our worshipping rituals.

Or wait...is this lousy drama being staged because the painter happens to be a Muslim? If it is, it could not have been more hypocratic.

And if this is not enough to get me worked up, there is another new brigade of people threatening to stop a film being screened in an Indian state just because the lead actor has supported the cause of rehabilitation for those millions who have been displaced due to a dam without any reasonable compensation given to them. Again, this actor- one of our finest ones ( of course, I love him for his acting)- is a Muslim guy.

I hate this. And this is not only about Hindus only, I know. Just a week ago, it was Christian groups against " da vinci code". Where is this world going? Where is my country going? Why we love regressing back to our parochial outlook? Why?

Where is the India Tagore dreamt of : " where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action".

Why some louts are bent upon making my country go to sleep when he so passionately wanted her to awake years ago..... why some people are bent upon turning Hinduism into a dirty drain when it has been flowing majestically for centuries like our adorable Ganges...

providence

2006-05-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

I am fully buried under books and papers..if this is what it is in the beginning...will I be deep dead under at the end?

Thank god, this hole called my room is going to stay with me until September end....imagine this impossible pile of books and papers being taxied around London...and all precious Scholarship Pounds being pounded out of me by the red taxi metres.

Good heavens...I am doing allright here, thank you for sending that nice bit of " providence".

Premonitionary Intuition?

2006-05-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

While buying canned beans at Sainsbury last week, I thought about the risk in opening the can. I came to the hall and searched for a safe can opener in the kitchen and to my relief and reassurance found a new and good piece tucked neatly in the drawer. I slept well thinking there was no way I would have even a scratch on my fingers, let alone a cut.

This evening, at the job in the kitchen, I moved the opener safely around the mouth of the can and smiled with true happiness whenI kept it aside having finished the work. After all, I had proved my premonition wrong. Suddenly my eyes turned to the frying pan which was blackening with heat on the stove and I needed to pour the beans right in. Hurried, my fingers went in to take the slit mouth of the can out ......aaah...a sensation of a sharp edge slicing past my skin in that tiny bit of a second leaving a red streak of blood on my thumb. ....

And sadly then, I remembered Garcia Marquez's exquisite " Story of a Death Foretold"!!!

The charms of Physics

2006-05-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

How does one decide what is the most important thing to study in one's life: the luxury of having an overarching subject of Philosophy is long since gone. Our collection of knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds and so is its organisation in different disciplines. Aside from extraneous factors like family, school, teachers who contribute to the shaping of our early childhood curiousities, I guess what we eventually tend to love are subjects that ask questions we think are important for us to think about. Of course, I know that many of us choose subjects we think are going to get us a job..social status ...blah..blah blah..

I am a toddler in Social Anthropolgy and I have a fascination for Physics. It is another matter that I left Physics the day I realised it had Mathematics as its long term paying guest! Yet, I love it for the kind of questions it asks. They are,as it seems to me, fundamental to understand who we are and why we are who we are. I also believe that, besides Biology, it is the only other subject that has the capacity to dwarf ( or may be, altogether dismiss) the idea of " god". Imagine the power of the subject.

In quantum theory, they say that a particle can be created out of nothing. They also say that matters have equal amount of anti- matters. They amuse us with the fact that just some atoms, if smashed with each other at an unimaginably high velocity can produce enough energy for the entire globe. Death, they argue, is not only human, it is cosmological but life (in biological sense ) is preciously "earthly" ( at least so far).

How interesting...how lovely to ask these questions and moreover, how lovely to be told their answers . I do not mean offence to the computer science ..but I feel terrible that the whole nature of science nowadays seems to be defined by only its application aspect rather than then the theoretical/ conceptual ones. Every year, once the cacophony of Nobel Prizes die down, we hardly even hear much about what is happening in "pure" Sciences.

I know that if I were to be born again, I would love to become a crawling Physicist than a toddling Anthropologist.

2006-05-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

" Voilence feared in Indian Caste row", was the headline of the story the Guardian carried yesterday. So much for the understanding of the British mainstream media on issues Indian: they can hardly make a distinction between a row on reservations in public educational institutions based upon one dimesion of the Caste system and the entire system of Caste itself. No surprise, then, that they use the fallacious term "anti-caste" agitation referring to the current strike of the medicos in the country.

But when I am reminded of what the New York Times had to say on the death of Gandhi (reading more into his hindu background than anything else of his life and work), my discomfort on reading the Guardian story automatically vanishes in thin air.

Nilotpal

Thought of the day

2006-05-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

In Academics, you can not run if you do not have the crutches of "evidence" with you.

words

2006-05-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

Words,

when you dance on blank spaces weaving your ever lasting magic...

Words,

when you speak you wise counsel like my lovely old grandfather...

Words,

when you begin swearing at me from your luxurious inanimate distance!

Words,

when you feed on me like cancer when I hold you against your will!

Words,

when you lie miserably on my chest in those dark nights of lost hopes...

Words,

When I hear you bitch against me for taking your poor replacement along. ...

My Words,

I know that you very well know this; the path of my salvation goes through you and you only.