My iridescent bubble

These are such perfect alone days of contentment. I converse when I want to, I clam-up whenever I feel like. I'm  no longer good, no longer worried about being good. No pressure of trying to live up to an image that people conjure for me. I, somehow, could never live-up to anyone's expectations, I frequently disappoint. 


Perfect days of contentment,
stretch their legs in my chair,
and sleep in my bedroom.
While I watch, 
from another room.


We don't talk,
the days have their hours to keep,
I have some words.
To write,
from another room.


There are no curtains though,
I remember who wants them,
There are no sparrows too.
An empty room,
from another room.

A happy insomnia

I wonder what could be the cause for me being awake every night these days. I'm not worried or tense, I just find it very soothing to be up till 4 a.m. The world is quiet and the early morning cool steadily creeps onto you and makes your toes go cold.


Cold, that is one thing I miss from my Doon, the winters when the hands go numb and the eyes water. February is a strange month in Dun, just like September. It's too cold inside and too warm in the Sun, there's a steady breeze that blows throughout the day, making those curtains flutter.


Aaaah and the nights are amazing. I usually sit out in the verandah, jostling with my ageing dog, who still likes to think he has the vigour of a two year old. You can smell the weather changing, the wet clammy monsoon giving way to the clear, crisp autumn.


The freshly painted night sky with the Orion and his dog, rising in the south, chasing Lepus. There is a slow moon that rises from the East, starting just under the hills, and about as big as my palm. On nights like these, I just sit out and stare at the skies, tracing those stories. I miss such a sky in Bangalore. I miss those mango trees, our red gate, the seasonal river, that road up the hill.


But then I forget all this when I am in Bangalore, I never seem to hanker for anything from home. I think they go into some dark corner of my sub-conscious and snapped shut. Only once did I dream of those wild flowers that grow on the hilly slopes of Mussoorie. I could feel that dew, cold on my palm, and smell that wet grass. I woke up. Funny, how it's never funny.


I guess in these early mornings, I remember a lot of things that I loved and have left behind. What I wouldn't give to watch the Sun rise from behind those mountains and sit in the bare branches of that gigantic semul tree.

Ending summer

In days of despair,

I offer a prayer

of breaths and whispers,

half-lies and apologies.

Hope ferments

a dreamer's mind,

drunken wild with visions -

of mountains and a stream.

To have a home
beneath those stars,

while the world goes round,

chasing its tail,

giddy to its teeth.

A letter from Israel

Life has a habit of surprising us, I'm saying this because one fine day I received this bit of very personal information in an official communication from a colleague in Israel.

He, I imagine, would have been pleasantly surprised to find somewhat of a Jewish name in far-off India. And I was equally pleased to receive these following words -

"You might find it interesting that your first name "Shakul" means: a person who is responsible and gives a good thought to things before he/she makes a move. Shakul comes from the word "lishkol", which means to weigh stuff, like fruits for example. :-) I thought I write it to you even that it has nothing to do with the CSN."

Thank you Roy for taking the time and effort to provide me with something that I'm going to cherish for the rest of my life. And now I can tell my mom where the most probable origin of my name lies :)

The entropy of elegance

Can we say something without saying everything? What determines the threshold of words to express our ideas? And what is elegance anyways?

Haven't we all faced that time where we could have said something in a better way? A witty repartee, a quick retort. A swan gliding on a stream; watching as the interlocutors' questions unravel on themselves.

Somewhat like an implosion, eating up its dust. How beautifully unrealistic. Do you remember the scene where an expression says it all? No words could have expressed whatever that gesture did, not so perfectly at least.

Why do we still cling to poetry and aphorisms to express and understand the world around us? Does a limiting structure guide and compress our expression into a powerful idiom? I believe it does. Words in an insipid sentence lose their rhythm and convey a meaning that is bland to clerical precision.

How many times has a legal paragraph stirred you? It makes perfect, technical sense and yet it conveys nothing. It just trots along mechanically, without breaking a sweat, while our fallible minds and hearts respond to that mystic rhythm of line and metre.

An elegance conjured out of words, their placements, their meanings and contradictions and the apparent dissonance between them. A harmony from the entropy of alphabets.


I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

                   - Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

An anthology of Urdu poetry

I have to admit it is one of  the most prized books in my collection, being my first and only copy of Urdu poetry, gifted so thoughtfully by Raj.

Urdu is a fascinating language, so delicate and graceful that you cannot go wrong with it even if you were to pronounce the basest syllables of it. It gives human speech a whole new dimension, an almost unspeakable aura of ethereal beauty. And to think that it was born in the military camps of the Persian rulers of India; a child of Pharsi and Hindustani.

My alarm clock

I just unearthed the alarm clock from my college days.It had been lying in a pile of forgotten belongings for these past five years, until I decided to rescue it. A battery change later, it's ticking off cheerily and has even assured me with its shrill electronic dual tone alarm.

Hmmm ... wonder why I feel so rejuvenated, so young because of a ticking clock. Isn't it supposed to work the other way? The clock running our youth down, grimly indicating to us the fleeting nature of time.

I guess it reminds me of my college days, when it would sit pretty on top my study table and when my life used to be regulated by its two unequal whiskers. All these years, I have been free of it, waking and sleeping and slouching as I please but today I have found that determined friend who will goad me to a schedule.

Its good to have friends.

She left me with the kids

I had a feeling that she would do this, enter my home, use me and then leave me stranded with the kids. All my restless anticipation and even my caution couldn't save me from the situation I'm in, her three kids are on my hands now.

Rewind?
5:30 P.M. Well I came back earlier than usual from office, and there she was, sleeping with the kids. A small confrontation and she rushed out without a word. Out ... out of the window??! Left her three new-born kittens on my inept hands, all barely a few hours old and still blinking and mewing at the world they were brought in. Colossal!

5:40 P.M. My cupboard is in a mess. A couple of my shirts have crap all over them and I don't have enough milk in the house. Had to rush out and buy a dropper and a couple of packs of milk, just in case they got hungry and made me sit up all night. Though I know that felines are known to be less troublesome than their canine colleagues. But, just in case.

6:30 P.M. I have been locked out of my own room; I've switched-off the lights and kept her babies in a shoe-box lined with a used tee-shirt. They seem to be quiet and comfortable, no noise from their quarters. I'm hoping the mother returns to claim her babies, I'm not in a position to play a surrogate parent to them. Heck! I'm not even married yet.

7:30 P.M I do a quick check on the kittens, they seem to be asleep, oblivious of their missing mother. I start making dinner.

9:00 P.M. Just finished with my dinner, I peep in to find that two of the three have vanished. The mother had quietly slunk into my room, grabbed her kids by the neck and made good her escape from my first floor window. The single kitten is mewing and mewing and mewing for its mother.

10:00 P.M. I'm praying that the mother acrobatically carries off her third kid as well. I decide to check on the last kitten in half an hour.

10:30 P.M. I cannot hear the mewing any more, so I tip-toe into my room and switch on the lights and expect to see the disappearing act once again. Huh?! The last one is still there. Has she forgotten it? Doesn't she want this one? Hmm...I'm scratching my head.

12:00 P.M. Last check before I settle down to sleep in the hall, I can safely affirm I never expected to vacate my room for a kitten. You little packet of trouble :)
Ooh! Suddenly the shoe-box is empty! Mrs. Cat has successfully rescued her babies from the clutches of the evil Ogre. A toast to all the moms.

Chooran waalaa

Its been a while since I last thought about that old man who we only knew as the Chooran waalaa. He was entirely unremarkable in his appearance; a small, dark, bald man who would always wear a white dhoti-kurta. In the 1990's he seemed an anachronistic relic of pre-Independence era. A man with nothing on him except a basket full of chooran and sweet and sour pellets that made your mouth tingle.

I remember him coming to where we used to play in the summers, calling out hoarsely in his guttural voice, selling to us his little joys of life. Two pocketful of goodies worth Rs. 2; there was nothing too expensive then. Not even fun.

Now and then I saw him walking along the road under the hot summer Sun with nothing but that basket on his head. He was a poor man. I often wondered what had happened to his family because he seemed too old for work like this. I don't think he ever complained about his fate.

We used to share our favourite spot in the canal near my home with him. Summers were just endless hours in the canal, thrashing about in  that cool water, trying to catch some fishes which somehow never survived more than two days at home. I still think that it was the tap water that killed them. Like the municipal corporation that killed our canal and overlaid it with a wider road.

His lunch was invariably in the old village temple near my home, where he used to put his basket down and chat with the man who pretended to be the priest. Though we knew he was no more than a refugee. Time was so simple then, you knew everyone around you and everyone knew you. Somehow all of it just went away; you went away - to college, got a job, started earning and lost him to memories.

And then you saw him again, still in his white dhoti-kurta, his skin still as dark as charcoal except for a huge scar on his chest, and you knew that this was the end. Somewhere a voice went silent, like your canal, covered, hidden and to be forgotten.

The Namesake

I have always been a little uncomfortable with my name, it was, as a lot of people said, "unique". I had to spell and pronounce and correct a hundred other people whenever they would ask me my name.
Imagine my surprise when I was chasing around the ball in a football game and someone kept shouting for me . Confused, I looked up and saw that there was another guy in the opponent team with my name! Travesty? More of a release rather, because from that moment on I knew that there was another guy who would be sharing my burden.

Why write about it today? Well, because weirdly enough I shook his hand today. It was a bit surreal to hear someone introduce himself as "Shakul", and I was stupidly wondering that how could he know my name.
He smiled again and repeated, my mind rebooted in the mean time, saving me from some mild embarrassment. "Of course", I muttered and managed a retard's grin. It took us ten years to finally meet, and under such circumstances.

You see, he is the guy who will be doing the arrangement for the tent, lighting and music system for the various events in the four day long itinerary of my brother's traditional, Hindu wedding. He handed me his card and pointed out his name and number, and we talked about where to fix the tent and the lights. We again shook hands before he left, I suspect it to be some vague feeling of closeness. Anyways the good news is, I will be seeing him pretty often for the next few days.

P.S. He seems to be a pretty cool customer compared to staid old me. I flipped his card and saw DJ SHAKUL emblazoned across it.

A Happy New Year

Every blogger worth his salt has already done a special post wishing his readers on the turn of this millennium's first decade. Of course, not me. I have been neck deep in tasks to finish and deadlines to meet before I take off for my brother's wedding.

New year came and went and I merely nodded to welcome it. It had been pretty mundane till I got a hand-made greeting. It was a pleasant surprise to get a sentiment that had been expressed especially for me. I really can't remember when was the last time someone had so painstakingly made one for me.

After all, with electronic communication killing off the joy of having the postman ask for you, this is but a rare pleasure now. Nobody mails me except the credit card people sending those typed, impersonal mails once a month. So I'm going to keep it safe and read it whenever I'm feeling unwanted and small, it'll surely make me smile.

An anecdote

I woke up really early today to catch that extremely early train they call The Taj Express. I was going to Agra to get some work done and I was a little nostalgic and excited to be back after four long years. I kept peering out of the window and wondering if everything was still the same or had it changed.

I arrived at Raja Ki Mandi (RKM for us), a tad inconvenienced and looking for a Prasaadhan(or toilet, for those of us who do not converse in such chaste Hindi). There was a long queue of gentlemen, all patiently waiting for their turn inside the facility. An elderly sweeper, who chanced to come in was so overcome by his love for humanity that he tried to do his best for us.
"Bhaiyya, baahar deewar per kar lo", he warmly confided to that noble group of Indian males who had resisted their primal urge to let go on the walls.

Taking a train to India

After a prolonged absence of four years, I finally fixed my date with Indian Railways again. I work in Bangalore and have my home in Dehradun (they are more than 2500 km apart), so usually I fly to Delhi but this time around I thought it would be an adventure to spend 33 hours on a train to Delhi. (Actually, I didn't, truth is air-tickets were too expensive.)

And an adventure it was, not it terms of exciting, adrenaline rushing moments but feeling the pulse of the vast nation that I call my home. I think if you really want to see India, you have to travel by railroad. Flying just whisks you up above the clouds, suspends your consciousness and then drops you right at the destination. It just abstracts the road you take to the point you want to get. Much like everything else we like to call "convenience".

Travelling on a train, is quite another matter. The engine and its retinue rush along the land, linking the various nondescript villages, barely known stations and huge junctions and big cities. With the airlines, you just get to see the big, important cities; with railways, you see India. And its heartbreakingly beautiful. When you live in a big city long enough, you lose touch from the rest of the nation. Nothing quite brings you in contact with the forgotton hinterlands as a railroad.

I sat all day at the footsteps of my compartment staring out at the settlements that passed; the tiny huts with reddish-orange shingles on top or mud huts with rough fences made out of twisted, dried shrubs. There were large wastelands, too dry to produce anything but there were families still tilling and cultivating and hoping for a decent price for their labour. Almost everyone on the field was burnt deep-brown by the unforgiving tropical Sun. This was their price of labour. Sometimes they would look up and see rest of the world rushing by ahead of them. Did they ever think they were missing out on life?

The land changed when we got to Maharashtra, the soil was darker and thicker, plants were greener. This was a fertile land and you could tell by just looking at it. The people were again something very different from me and you, who still did penance once a year for the local deity and celebrated harvests. There were numerous temples dotting the land, all flying a single, somewhat triangular saffron flag. And as the train crossed the roads, I peered at all those faces waiting across the gates and wondered what their lives were like. I wondered if they were interested in mine.

Somewhere after Nagpur, the light started to fade and then I could see men cycling back to their unlit homes and the faint glow of the kitchen fires that must have welcomed them. The land suddenly started rising and the train was running in between a bed of rock, there were three tunnels that darkened the compartments and caused the lights to be switched on. There were a couple of smokers who came out to the door but I held on to my spot, after all these were the dying minutes of my train journey. Come tomorrow morning and I would be the city-dweller again.

Friday

A Friday is one great day to spend in the comfort of a completely deserted office floor and pretend that your living room has grown to a size you would ideally like it to be. Hmmm...as I stretch and start typing the random tumble of letters and words, I realize that I quite like it here. There are no prying eyes or a boisterous group, and in the soft glow of the evening, the place seems cozy.

I can wander around aimlessly, and just stare at the clouds from my sixth floor station and the distant flashes of lightning that grumble and growl. Threats of rain, and it really seems like its going to break out pretty soon, but I don't mind. Not today, I 'm happy.

Sometimes, all that it takes to give you that nice, easy feeling is something as trivial as a phone call. Everything looks up and better when you get to talk to someone you have been waiting for, the ritualistic eight hours of office or the traffic marred ride back to the house. Everything is at peace. Everything is perfectly beautiful. And you have an inwards smile.

Something inspires you to be better than you really are, nothing competitive, just a man who wants to improve. You want to read poetry, and wish and hope that someday you could write as beautifully as Cohen. Someday. Yet all you can do is listen to him.

Ah! The world is beautiful today.

Conversations

I got a call from an old friend tonight, and it was the most satisfying conversation that I had all week. Have you ever noticed that usually most conversations that we (guys) have with anyone, are impersonal and discreet? There are a very few people with whom we really open up and talk about ourselves, our lives and our fears.

Here's how a general conversation flows for guys:
1. You say hey to your buddy
2. Proceed with some usual, friendly expletives if you are close.
3. Ask him how's life.
4. He asks you the same.
5. Go on goofing about some irrelevant topic.
6. Hang up.

And that's standard guy talk anywhere. No one talks about himself unless he is in some kind of trouble. That's the rule. Its funny I'm writing about this, because this was pointed out by this same friend (who called me today) of mine. At that time I had thought that it was weird of her to make that observation. Nobody wants to know if you have problems, especially your guy friends. Emotions make us jittery and unsure, humour is the cure-all in our universe.

However, humour isn't working as it used to.

Jack Johnson: Surfer, poet, film-maker and a musician

I think I discovered Jack Hody Johnson around three years ago, he was there on FM. I had no idea who the guy was, singing "I can't always be waiting, waiting on you". To be fair, it sounded like another of those break-up songs, poetical remonstrances which would in any other way sound harsh but was rendered seductively melodious here.

But the germ had been planted, I went back and searched Last.fm (please try it if you are a music freak, its AWESOME!) for Jack Johnson and found one gem after another. The quietly acoustic settings with Jack singing in his mellow voice paints a calm, blue Ocean. It was a very different dimension in contemporary music that I had discovered and have faithfully followed.

There's  no extravagance in terms of musical arrangement or lyrical poetry,  thats because I guess he wants his songs to be heard and the lyrics to be understood and digested. But above all, his songs are a reflection of the peace that he has within, a quiet place of Zen that he has discovered and from where his music flows to meet us wafting across the airwaves.

It,s weird that you can actually connect so deeply with another human being whom you have never met and probably never will, but it's his music that does all the talking to me. Of course, writing about it now is the only way that I can feebly try to reply.

I think he is an exceptional human-being in a lot of ways; he was a champion surfer by 18, a critically acclaimed documentary maker, a songwriter and a very successful musician. Finally its the fact that he is never into controversies or chasing that elusive byte of fame that completes his persona and makes him so likeable.

Album List:
Brushfire Fairytales
On and On
In Between Dreams
Sleep Through the Static
To the Sea

Some of my personal favourites:

Home
Good People
Constellations
If I had eyes
Enemy
Angel
A pirate looks on 40  (cover for Jimmy Buffet's original)
Upside Down
Broken
Plastic Jesus/Fall line
Rainbow
Cocoon
Better Together
Holes to heaven

P.S. I have always had this weird idea that Jack must be a really good cook, will ask him sometime when we meet ;)

Everyday conundrum

Somehow my eagerly awaited weekends always turn into hours swollen with boredom and ceaseless worrying. If its not my career hitting a trough, it's my life not being lived to the fullest. I always think that I should be doing more, enjoying more, travelling more and smiling more. To hell with worries and numbing, worrying thoughts; if only I was occupying my mind with other things I might just find that evasive nook of solace.

Does it bother other people too, I wonder. At least, I know a lot of genuinely happy, contented people who are settling down into the cozy hum-drum of domestic life. Meanwhile, I keep vacillating from one idea to another. Should I go for an MBA? Or should I just stick to my job? Should I take my guitar more seriously? What about football?
 A thousand and one options, and no decisions. None, at all!

Its just frustrating to have the knowledge of your faults but have no will to correct them. Its a little like being blessed with good taste but have no talent of your own, just being a critic on the fence. Pass judgement, lament, rant, applaud but make no contribution.

There's got to be more life in me than the one that I'm living. It's a passive existence with a gnawing feeling of the dullness that is eating away inside. Someone told me it's "emptiness". Turn to music or poetry or anything; find a vessel that will resonate to your tune.

Freedom at Midnight

India is impossible to define or confine in a few sentences. Here the wheels turn, halt, wobble, break-down and then complainingly start rolling again. Its a vast melting pot of people all thrown together to co-exist. India is everything, its a metaphor for life. There is no distant way to say what it is, you can never understand it unless you have felt it.

Its frustrating and limiting and then being free again. Its a land of heterogeneity, of races and cultures so diverse that they could fit a continent. And ironically we have been called a sub-continent :)

I don't intend to write up a primer to understanding India, it's as I said, to be experienced. However, as it is Independence Day today, I could not resist myself from watching a few black and white,grainy videos of our Freedom Struggle. They still give me goose-bumps, watching them is unlike anything I have seen in my life. Scores of people marching 400 km just to take up a handful of salt? Getting caned in most brutal fashion but not retaliate or run away? They were a different breed of people, fearless and self-less, not defying or destroying but calmly and persistently disobeying the Establishment. Yes, we did have our share of revolutionaries and proponents of armed struggle, but people embraced Satyagraha overwhelmingly and the struggle remained famously non-violent. Thats what makes me so proud to be a free child of India.
The images and videos lift me out of the mundane existence that we have become accustomed to and take for granted. They give me belief in the strength of our country and its collective humanity.

And a prayer for peace:


"Om dyo shaanti, Antarikshagwam shaanti
Prithvi shaanti, Aapah shaanti
Roshdyah shaanti, Vanspataya shaanti,
Vishwedeva shaanti, Brahma shaanti
Sarvagyum shaanti, Saa ma shaanti-re dhi.
Om shaanti, shaanti, shaanti."

BWSSB ... may I have some water please?

If you live in any of the big cities of India, chances are that you would have seen such days. The days when the taps whistle, water supply boards are untraceable and the water tankers make a killing. Well, except for me it has been almost 365 days of intermittent water supply and consistent bucket-hauling trips to a gracious neighbour's.

Now its become even better with everyone in my lane getting plenty of water but not a drop for us.

Incidentally ours is the last house and the combined curse (supposedly) of extremely low pressure and an upward bend in the pipe, makes it impossible for that holy liquid to trickle down to our parched tanks. And boy, when it does, do we feel blessed! So each day, my friend checks the meter below and announces the bad news solemnly "Buckets tomorrow".

Is it Karma? I don't really remember what I did to upset the Municipal Corporation gods, this past year has been hell. "Pay the linesman", confides our helpful neighbour, she has a private well in her house! Pay him? I would rather string him up.

You know that the situation is going to worsen when you can spy 100 liter drums being sold at your nearest departmental store. Oh yeah, I watch out for the signs.

Time to change the neighbourhood, suggestions anyone?

The curious case of my degree and some rum induced rant

My parents instilled the fear of karma into me, "Reap as you shall sow!" So here I am, already at the end of  four years of my professional life and still have no news of my engineering degree. Its a constant source of entertainment for my colleagues and friends, and an obvious thorn in the flesh for me.

If only I had studied and got into a decent college. Another "if only", the god damned thing seems to pop out everywhere in my life like a flaming Jack-in-the-Box. Its my mom's favourite lament, "if only ......".

So why am I thinking of my B.E. degree at midnight? Must be one of those Rum and Coke moments. Aaahh ... yes, we did after all have a great time stirring-up the muck in our lives today over a glass, under the cool breeze and star-light of Bangalore skies.

Did you notice that nothing works like alcohol to set loose a spirit of camaraderie? "You are not alone", thats what the conversation soothingly says to you and you slip away into its arms like a willing child. Of course, some annoying people turn to their blog!