The Sea

Though I am tempted to walk
I remain seated on the sands,
Like a specter in the evening,
Loneliness for a silhouette.
Have traded innocence with age
And I am not any wiser.

The horizon lies in the shadows
Somewhere, beyond the growing waves,
Beyond the flickering boat lights.
Waves with each foray reclaim
Another stretch of the sands.
And finally, with the last of their breath
Wavelets kiss my toes.
I get up to sit out of their reach
Only to realize I wanted to walk,
Hear the sea, feel his breath

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The Street - I

Childhood

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Breakfast

A symphony in progress amidst

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The Charlatan

Quell the desire to express,
You charlatan of a poet,
For it was only the muse’s beauty
That gave your unintelligible words
Some semblance of a verse.
And you, the semblance of a poet.

Refuge

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What I miss most about staying in Uttaranchal is the daily interaction with Nature. Had an opportunity to stay in Gopeshwar for a while, which was a memorable experience even though I was an infrequent visitor. On any given morning, a discerning eye could spot so many different species of birds in the garden and in the nearby trees. It was like being in a National Geographic feature. Of course the lush garden that Ba keenly nurtured did its bit to attract our feathered friends but residing in Uttaranchal has its pastoral merits. It was quite common to spot Ba very early in morning, at the window or in the garden, behind the lens.  The poem titled ‘The Window’ captures those moments and the photographs here are a result of those ventures.

The photos are accompanied by a verse or two, inspired by the pictures. Hope the verses will do justice to them.

The Window

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It has been a while since AGM in Pangu. This was the first AGM held in any Rung village and it became evident in the way not only the even was organized but also in the attitude of participants.

Lasting memory for me have been two. One was the walk around the villages like Rhimjim, Rongto and Pangu School. This is probably first time when we had time to look around the village and school. There were some people from Pangu and nearby villages who have not visited Pangu school in a long time. Views from Pangu School and Rhimjim were so breathtaking that I just wanted to live there :).

Second was the improptu mehfil session at one of the hotels (as we call them in our area). It was after election of the new central committee of RKS. People had gone in different directions from the venue  after the election but a group gathered in this hotel. When we landed there mehfil was in full swing. Dr. Gagan Sonal and Suresh 'Guddu" Napalchyal were at their mehfil best. It was so good that people started digging into their wallets and money came pouring onto a plate ( which also appeared magically from somewhere). Mood was electric to say the least which prompted our serious looking Arvind hya into surprising us with a few urdu couplets. Then came chhupa roostam of the night Kishore Kutiyal 'Keshwa'. He presented Rung couplets so touching that even elderly people started digging into their wallets :) I wish i had recorded this sessions so that you all would have had first hand experience ( and would not have had to suffer this inadequate narration from me)

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I took to the world of letters pretty late, and one of the books which gently nudged me on this path was ‘Mrs Dalloway.’ It was a book I really enjoyed and I couldn’t help but marvel at the author’s ability to get under the skin of characters, and lucidly delineate their motivations and thoughts. Her approach referred to as ‘Stream of Consciousness’ gently draws you into the plot as Clarissa Dalloway goes about her day preparing to host a party.  

While Mrs Dalloway remains a mesmerizing book, I write to share a few thoughts on another book ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ I realized that portions of the book were familiar since they are oft quoted in the context of feminism.  Virginia Woolf (henceforth referred to VW) explains that in a sensitive topic such as gender ‘one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold,’ and her opinion I must say is surefooted and convincing. ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write,’ suggests VW, since ‘intellectual freedom depends upon material things.’ The above holds true for all, irrespective of gender, nationality or any other classification and the fact remains that the living conditions of women have been significantly lower than that of men. Therefore participation of women in literary activities at a given point of time has been lesser than that of men. One will agree that to write one needs some privacy, and to write professionally, privacy and financial independence. An Englishwoman of the 19^th century may seemingly have had more independence than a woman in the Indian sub continent, but she was second to the Englishman and her financial independence was restricted.

VW wonders why ‘no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet.’ I can think of many male Indian writers from the 20^th century (prior to 1970s) but one will struggle to name women writers (most that spring to mind being from the post independence era). Now one mustn’t forget that VW is writing this in early 20^th century, with England as her landscape. Women have just secured the right to vote but their financial independence remains precarious and European society was largely patriarchal. An indirect result of the World War II was greater participation of women in economic activities hitherto unavailable to them, but until this period, the choice of occupations was very limited, the writer herself having dabbled in many odd jobs before discovering financial independence, thanks to an aunt who left her a fixed income of 500 pounds/ annum as inheritance. Somewhere in the book VW muses that she treasured this financial independence more than the right to vote for the ‘change in temper a fixed income brings about.’ It gave her the independence to write without having to worry about basic necessities. Also doesn’t one’s state of mind have a direct bearing on the quality and coherence of a literary output or output of any endeavor?

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‘Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.’

This was one of my most keenly awaited reads. While ‘The Black Book’ remains my favourite of the lot, ‘The Museum of Innocence’ is an engaging novel, not as effortless as some of his other books, but potent enough for a melancholy, characteristic of Orhan Pamuk’s writings, to descend upon me.  My mind will not be at rest until I can experience Istanbul for myself since Orhan Pamuk (hereafter referred to as OP) writes so masterfully about it. From his writings it appears to be a city struggling with its cultural and political identity, a city trying to come to terms with the changing mores. OP points out in his semi autobiographical ‘Istanbul’ that unlike other languages, in Turkish there is a word to describe the melancholy of a city, ‘huzun.’ In most of his books this melancholy pervades through the novel’s landscape and exercises much influence on the protagonists.  

The novel starts with following line ‘It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it. ‘This captures the fleeting nature of happiness and beauty, and Kemal, our protagonist spends a considerable part of the novel chasing happiness in the form of an elusive Fusun Keskin, and after rediscovering her , loses her tragically. Kemal is betrothed to Sibel and both of them belong to wealthy and westernized Istanbul families. Their lives are proceeding as per the script and their wedding is a highly anticipated social event. Hw just before their engagement, Kemal discovers love in an impoverished and a younger distant relation, whom he begins to meet clandestinely and this affair will go on to change the lives of the three principal characters.  He is torn between happiness and shame at not adhering to the norms, torn between taking it too seriously or too lightly, and this confusion only grows as his affair with Fusun intensifies. Though the city displays all the external trappings of modernity, it’s struggling to view the more sensitive societal topics through the same lens. Kemal is a reflection of this and he is suspicious of Fusun since she had ‘given herself up so easily’  even though he knew that Fusun was one who believed that ‘love was something to which one devoted one’s entire being at the risk of everything. But this happened only once in lifetime.’ Also the Keskins were once closely associated with Kemal’s family and enjoyed a cordial exchange with the society, which had since shunned them due to Fusun’s participation in a beauty pageant.  Kemal is wary of the precarious situation his transgression puts the two women in but still goes ahead with the engagement to Sibel, and with an intention to continue his tryst with Fusun. The writer mentions that the ‘Istanbul society was such a small and fragile circle that the deep shame of any member was no less universally felt than in a small family.’ His relationship with Sibel is a well know fact and the society grins and bears this transgression because the couple belong to affluent families and also because it has for long been assumed that this relationship would lead to an engagement and a marriage. Sibel is therefore not in a position to walk away from the relationship for fear of disgrace given her intimacy with Kemal before her marriage, besides she does love him too.  Fusun meanwhile has neither a fortune nor a social standing to fall back upon, and is indeed risking her all given the bleak future for the relationship.

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