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Hang a Ding-Dong on my Tree

23 Dec

As obscene as that line sounds, I’m going to be irreverent and it stays put. Yes, this is my “that time of the year” post and oh yes, I’m so doing it because I’m supposed to be on the job. So hah. :mrgreen:

This year, instead of the usual wishes (that I wish for you anyway), let me tell you about a tradition we’ve instated. Now you know I’m not the epitome of traditional and you also know I’m anti-symbolism. That said, I do value personal meaning and bonds and like to create my own rituals around them. As a selectively practicing Zoroastrian, Christmas tends to be my annual biggie (yeah, go figure….all that wicked, wicked missionary schooling, how come there’s no Peace & Love Jihad yet?) so this year, when we brought home a brand new baby tree to the Boy’s apartment, we invited each of our friends, neighbors and guests to put up an ornament on a branch. Whether the glow on our faces was the warmth of the season or the red and green fairy lights we’ve put up is anybody’s guess, but boy, did it feel like community.

How is that not symbolic, you ask? I don’t know if it isn’t. OJ say wisdom can be ambivalent. But the gathering of friends over prawn curry, chicken pie and cranberry juice, Bocelli’s sonorous booming of Adeste Fideles on Playstation, the BFF baking a dish for my dinner party that she didn’t even attend, a borrowed table cloth that was someone’s wedding present, the red-and-gold wreath on the front door, bought after much debate and hullabaloo on a Saturday afternoon jaunt to Crawford Market, a whiff of a vanilla-scented candle lingering in the air, welcoming visitors with the warmth we hope to extend, videotaping Ghattu as he boogied to the Trisch Trasch Polka (Strauss over Singh is King, y’hear that J?) and the wish that the love of friends will fill this little corner of our home and hearts aren’t mere symbols and it is these I am basking in as I ask the Lord to bless us and keep us while December rounds out into the unknown days ahead.

Were I clever and all tech-savvy, I would put up an e-tree and have you add baubles, but in the absence of either attribute, I’m going to ask you to visualize. Dear reader, gentle friend, won’t you hang a ding-dong on my tree?

Still Home, Still Heart, Still Horror

26 Nov

Time has done nothing to heal this wound.  I still come perilously close to tears each time I pick at the scab that has barely formed. What did help, though, was putting myself to use.  And it was only as I spoke about it at a couple of media interviews this past week that I realized how blessed I am to have found this route to sanity. With me in this journey have been 39 wonderful people in 5 countries around the world. For our stories, head to the India Helps blog where some of us will write about the year that was, beginning today all the way up to the India Helps anniversary on December 3. Wish us luck in the times ahead. Join us, because we need you. Tell your friends to spread word of our movement. And before you go, answer this: Whom Have You Helped Today?

Heeding Cultural Memory

1 Oct

I came across this phrase in the last book I greedily guzzled from my library and it struck a deep, sonorous chord too personal to ignore.  It implied that every culture disseminates its core values and practices deep within its holders, where it is sometimes held dormant like a capsule, and even though we may outwardly reject the mores of our milieu, there comes a time when we subconsciously succumb and are drawn to the very acts we shunned. It may not be as extreme as a vegan reverting to his lassi-chugging Punjabiness, but second-rung beliefs and commonly practiced routines often heed this siren’s call. And, surprise surprise, we find ourselves walking in the footsteps of our forefathers.

Some weeks before this concept popped out at me, I had the opportunity to meet someone who has given me a lifetime’s insight in a matter of hours. And in the course of seeing life patterns emerge before my very eyes, I have had it pointed out to me how much a product of my socio-ethnic culture I really am. And for all my rebellion against the values my parents in particular and my community in general hold dear, I am, inseparably, a composite part of both.

It’s the little things, really. Insignificant details that ought never to govern a life but they do. Nudge it, at any rate, and prod it in the direction their owner wishes to move. The firm belief in wearing slippers in the home (or else you’re a ghata-ghariya who deserves to curl up and die.)  Knowing more people at a western classical music concert that any other congregation on earth. Growing up hearing about the “good old” (i.e. Raj) days. Wearing Queen Elizabeth in your ears. Watching grandmothers hold office jobs and balk at cooking. Recognizing aunts thrice removed by their uniform of bobbed hair and sleeveless frocks. Dancing the Birdy Dance at weddings and singing Chaiyye Ame Zarthoshti amid raucous uncles down several Parsi pegs. Taking pride in the family gara. And kors. And vintage pearls. Smiling indulgently at Duke’s raspberry, an insider secret the community still holds close to its chest (and there, I just let it out.)

Putting education first. Especially if you’re a woman. Tasting brackish water from ancient Gujarat village wells. Sticking a fravarshi on the back of one’s car (and sometimes the front as well.) Being aghast at the merest hint of dishonesty. Being aghast at another Parsi not being aghast at the merest hint of dishonesty. Guarding your Sunday dhansak with the zeal of a Rottweiler. Always, always going back for seconds. Snapping “ovaryoo” at inauspicious talk and basking in the fragrance of lobaan, never mind that the smoke kills your tonsils every time. Dwelling in high-beamed homes where your grandfather grew teeth, the ones in which you could tricycle to dinner. Listening to your neighbor play Chopin and willing her fingers to fly across the ivory.

Tossing your head with cosmopolitan pride, declaring you have no Parsi friends, generating conversations across time zones and immersing yourself in the 21st century globe, but that tug, that teeny tiny tug, on hearing the accent only you fully understand and no one can replicate, nodding in agreement over disciplining children, cooing over plaid dresses and understated frills on display at Bambino, eyeing lemon tarts at RTI, coveting familiar cuckoo clocks and wanting to be that charming Aunty Hilla 40 years down the journey.

This is my cultural memory and whether I’m ready or not, this I know: the heeding has already begun.

Through the Looking Glass

4 Sep

a.k.a. Goodbye Ganpu

***

I’m not religious. That’s an understatement. If I had my intolerant way as Empress of the World, religion as a construct and a practice would be officially banned and I’d happily skewer secret societies out of existence. My weekly foaming at the mouth necessarily includes how stoned the masses are on ritualism, symbolism and the debilitating need to worship. Add to it the human penchant to vilify nature as part of the revelry and I’m ready to burst a blood vessel. Ergo, my reaction to socio-religious occasions like Ganpati is a resigned trip to buy ear muffs and periodic shuddering about sound pollution and the state of the sea.

So it took me more than a little by surprise when I found myself peering curiously at the crowds at Chowpatty a few days ago and patting the little idol I took to school today for show-and-tell when it toppled over. For the first time in the 26 Ganpati festivals I have been witness to, I didn’t shut my windows to the sounds of the streets. I let the reverberations stream in, pretending not to listen to the roar of the crowds and the insistent throbbing of drums, louder than the rain that poured on their upturned faces, watched the lights and the flowers from the darkness of my balcony, pushed back the faint stirrings of a vague something as I saw truck-sized statues trundle their way toward a watery grave and I wondered. About what it is that so many people seem to find in faith and belief that I cannot be a part of. About why I can only find higher power(s) in leaves and waves and certain people. About how the socio-religious propriety gene went missing in me.

But this once, I wasn’t the critical outsider. This once, I was part of that little bobbing universe. This once, I walked willingly into the inevitable, not away from it. And I write this to the rhythm of an insanity I have long disowned. Now, I’m unsure. And I guess I’ll have to wait a whole year to find out whether this was momentary madness or old age has arrived some decades early.

Bleddy popular culture. It’s finally had its way with me.

ganpu_cp

Kambakkht Shit

14 Jul

a.k.a. The One in Which Isabgol is a Silent Sponsor

***

Yes, yes, it’s all my fault. A violent downpour and rush hour traffic delayed our cello concert plans and we ended up at Inox with an evening ahead of us. Our choices were New York and Kambakkht (that’s all it deserves to be called, nothing remotely lovable about it) and voicing my concerns at already having lived through 9/11 America, I whined my way into getting tickets for the latter. (It also helped that the Boy had forgotten his wallet at home, so I maturely used the opportunity to wave my meagre money in his face.)

Now there’s garish, no-excuses, Jeetendra-Sridevi-and-pots-on-the-beach ‘80s Hindi cinema and then there’s Kambakkht Ishq. A script, as the Boy mentioned, scribbled on a shred of toilet paper, gyrating numbers that blasted out of seemingly nowhere, an absence of Govinda to justify the mindlessness, squirm-inducing attempts at slapstick, ugly as sin non-actors, wince-worthy sidekicks and the whoring of two wrinkly, past-their-prime Hollywood stars made this flick that passed off Cannes as Los Angeles the Convention of Extreme Designer Exhibitionism and nothing more.

Not even the usually watchable Kirron Kher, completely wasted in this celluloid tsunami, could save it from stinking like rotten eggs. Akshay Kumar hammed through the torturous two hours and thirty seven minutes like a beast on a leash, something I’d throw a couple doggy biscuits at before getting safely out of the way. That the Kapoor girl left a watch inside his belly and not one of her fake lashes or acrylic nails is a minor miracle in itself. (The major one, of course, being that she lives to make another movie.) Kahkashan Whatsherface Patel’s saving grace was that she sports a nose more bulbous than mine, and somebody rescue Javed Jaffrey from himself, please. Repeated exposure to his schizophrenic behavior makes us gloss over the fact that this man needs help. Really and truly. I don’t have degrees in Psychology for nothing.  [An aside: I have a theory that someone made off with the original script, where all the characters were to be herded into a hospital room and gassed into lifelong coma. Now that would be off-the-charts reality filmmaking with a happy ending.]

Watching through fingers fanned across a mortified face, pinned against my seat by roaring sound waves, bleating apologies every third minute to the grim, angry man to my left, and almost making history as the first woman to be divorced before she was married did not make for fun viewing. I want my money and Thursday evening back. And told-you-sayers can just take a long hike. In those 8-foot heels ripped off the matchstick draped in Dior. Now cross your fingers that the Boy doesn’t read this post. The tiniest of reminders may just hurtle me toward history.

On Writing

25 Jun

It starts with the mildest of anticipation, a sense of prelude, the uncharted liberation of an empty Word document.

I pause, even though the sketch has been formed, for the lines to get darker, firmer, definitive. Shards cohere into rapidly swirling aerial whirlpools, spilling out into letters, words, and then lines sliding off the page. I can take no credit—I will not—only convey what needs must be told, for holding words within, like ingesting too many groundnuts, routinely fosters belly aches.

And finally, when it leaves you, there is a sense of relief. A package sealed, a job done, the closing of another sub-chapter in that coffee table tome we only occasionally browse. Applause is extraneous, the act itself organic, a past I am all too comfortable leaving behind.

Manivannan Magic

12 Mar

witchcraft_cp

Credits: OJ and her new Panasonic Lumix LS 80. Taken in completely natural lighting.

She pressed crimson lips to an inner page, scribbled a message that held much meaning, smiled mysteriously and then it was mine.

To assert that Witchcraft weaves a spell is to state the obvious. But to denude oneself to the obvious, offer one’s vulnerability on a platter as the words tunnel through your onetime resilient spirit, to let them screech into the cubby holes of your gut and torch craters the size of coffee mugs takes a brave reader, one who is amply rewarded by Sharanya Manivannan’s book of magical verbal imagery.

Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the place, maybe it was the situation I chose to be in: a lone woman seeking anonymity and solitude in a seaside town by the blue Bengal bay. Watching waves and people and bougainvillea nuzzling whitewashed villas, happy to be the outsider in a world content without her. It was a day of soul-searching, of excruciating subtleties, of the drama of frothing, unstoppable words. Of walks and self-hugs and avoiding curious passer-by eyes. Of honesty, wildness and liberation. Of knowing it would end and that madness has its price, but trading in sanity for freedom for just one precious day is sometimes infinitely worth it.

Witchcraft is devourable. It may hollow out your heart and hold up a mirror to the real you, but if you survive its brutally enchanting onslaught, you may perhaps have really lived.

I’m Loving It

7 Mar

pcc

A spot-on e-poster from the Pink Chaddi Campaign. And you thought they were done?

Spread the word, put it up on your web space, get more posters here. It’s a crying shame we need to fight for tolerance, but if that’s how we get to live lives of our choosing, individually and collectively, then so be it.

Things I’ve Wanted to Rant About….

29 Jan

…but didn’t know where to start. The WTFness of the world has shot through the roof right about when I don’t have the time or the bandwidth to go on a verbal dharna. Not that my vicious teeth-grinding changes the course of the planets, so it’s just as well that this remains limited to brief bullet points:

  • The Dutts, ‘Mr. and Mrs’. Waste of space, waste of time. I hope Lucknow kicks his criminal ass. We’ll see how long the wife leech hangs around.

  • The Rai-Bachchan. Or Padma Shrimati, as the grown woman giggles. To have a credit card version of a human being (flat and plastic) receive the nation’s premier civilian award with utter disregard to bronze-winning Olympians makes me a very ashamed Indian. And I’m not even going anywhere near the subject of booty-swinging, cleavage-flashing Helen, supposedly deserving of a national honor for the worthwhile legacy she’s left in her bubble-butted wake. Quick, who’s next? Emraan Hashmi? Shakti Kapoor? Aaaooo would be my very appropriate response. I can’t think of better catharsis than baying at the moon.

  • The Mangalore moral police who protected women’s honor by assaulting them and depriving them of the rights a sovereign, socialist, democratic nation assures them of. Who says there’s a Karnataka-Maharashtra feud? They’re swapping furtive cross-border notes on pious guardian-hood, for sure, for sure.

  • The rabble-rousing cowards also known as MNS. After public barbs temporarily silenced them in the aftermath of 26/11, they’re back with a new target and the same hackneyed agenda that is transparent enough to walk through blindfolded. Karachi Sweets now sours their unschooled minds. If only they hadn’t played all that hooky when they had a chance at an education, they’d have known that history can’t be painted over and re-inscribed in Marathi.

  • The Baap of Bullies, the Godfather of Goondagardi, the original Papasan of Parochialism: the Sena. Yes, we know Bombay doesn’t have many open spaces for the youth to get their regular exercise. 5-star hotel lobbies and kitchens however, are not fair game to flex frustrated muscles. (Didn’t their mamma teach them not to play with their food?) A gentle suggestion to our ungentle buffoons: We have a beautiful sea. Feel free to swim. And DROWN.

  • Damien got an early start and the MNVS is taking a chapter out of his book. Not content to wait until full-time rowdyism beckons, this student wing of our stellar MNS has swung into the local front pages for their sound logic, exercised so aptly in the halls of highest learning. “The security staff person was rude to us and so we vandalized the Registrar’s office.” But of course. Who has the time to confront lowly grenade-toting terrorists? We train our sights on antique desks.

  • While we’re condemning the brawn brigade, I don’t mind confessing I’d like to do some swatting of my own. At the top of my everyday list would be parents who send their children to school with viral fever so their 3-year-old doesn’t miss out on a whole 2-hour school day and falls behind on the accelerated learning curve that goes with all the sand play and singing. Never mind that the other children, their teachers and the Vice Principal are infected and hacking half to death.

In case you were wondering, yes, this is what PMS feels like. GRR.

Quil(l)t

4 Jan

Poetry is not optional.

It is what warms your innermost throat when your breath has been snagging.

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