Just for You

My pen craves for its lost muse

I seek recourse in prose,

While longing for the poetry of my life.

As I agonize between,

Silence…

Words…

Silent Prayers…

As I witness another year of eternal time left behind,

While  journeying into a nameless, frame-less future,

As I mourn the loss of those who were once near,

And watch numb shrouds being borne out of the terror-ravaged world,

As I coldly sigh over distances and distancing,

My heart fervently calls for You…

You?

You who are neither a Hindu nor a Muslim,

You who are neither a Christian nor a Jew,

You who are neither a religion nor a cult,

You who are neither Time nor Eternity,

You who are neither war nor peace,

You who are neither chaos nor structures,

You who are neither mine nor theirs…

They say,

You are unbeatable and indefatigable,

That You are the light at the end of the tunnel…

They say You are forgiving and kind…

That the Father/Mother mourn the most when their child is lost…

Do You then not shed tears over us?

Enough! You make me angry,

If You are there…

Then do not make me ashamed of Your presence,

Do not make it so easy to use Your name,

Your name that has turned into a murderous brand…

Haven’t You heard of things called copyright and patent?

Why don’t You sue us?

And claim Your own right to be called “God”…

God! That’s what You are called, aren’t You?

If You bless us with life and seal our fates with death

Can you not bestow…

A little peace and beauty on my (yours too) joyless, loveless world?

Tamasomaa Jyotir Gamaya

Love,

Iris

Wish you all a belated happy new year.  Just for You is a letter written to some one called God on 1st January 2009 — requesting Her/Him to directly claim His/Her patent to be called God. Else, it’s becoming intolerable and chaotic as so many different names have been assigned to this person (if someone like that exists) that slowly the world is moving towards self-destruction. Ironically this name  is supposed to have created the world….

Public Amnesia: a Wakeup Call

We say “Enough is Enough” …

Indian Republic seems to be united at these crucial moments after 26/11. I have never seen a more severe public outcry against terror and terrorists (some Indians choose to call them terrorists and not militants deliberately). My 7 year old cousin called me up from home and said, “listen, I had plans to go to meet you in Mumbai during these winter vacations, but am not coming any more. You see there is so much of Diwali going at every moment in Mumbai, it’s tough. Can’t you see Steel George Jack, Black beauty, General, Hunter wala all roaming around Mumbai.” I asked him who these people are? these are the names of the terrorists who attacked us, he said nonchalantly. I was shocked and surprised, asked him: “but these are not the names of the terrorists. What makes you think that they are terrorists’ names?” He replied: “boku (stupid)! They are terrorists you don’t know them…everyday I see them in cartoon network. The people who had grenades, bombs and guns in Mumbai are also the same Steel George [et al] and they are still alive. I will not come to Mumbai until Das, Eon kid, Master Liv, Shadow, Captain Magna have not finished them off completely. You know even aeroplane is unsafe now.” Understandably, the second set of names are given to our NSGs and MARCOS. Clearly, the little child has followed the entire operations televised. It has left a very strong impression on his mind and he keeps bugging his parents to call me up and get the latest update. His imagination makes him believe that since all this is happening in Mumbai and I am in Mumbai, I must be the Live witness of the tragedy. When the operations were actually on in full swing, one day he called me up and asked: “do you think you are safe in your hostel?” I didn’t know what to reply and just said: “ye probably, since we have watchman uncle waiting with a large gun at the ground floor.” He was not at all convinced and said: “what watchman uncle will do? they have grenades and they can beat watchman uncle into pulp (chutney is the word he used) and can come into your rooms with AK-47. What will you do then?”

Such is a little child’s memory and the strong impression that the terror attacks have left on his mind. He will remember it for a very long time, but adults suffer from a kind of mass amnesia. Or perhaps our sensitivity level is less than that of a child. We love to forget. The comments that have come to the last posts relate to this theme of “forgetting and forgiving” and the comments aptly point that should we forgive or forget? We say we might forgive but not forget, but actually the fact is that we forget so we forgive. Kargil had left us wounded, angry and painful — but we have forgiven and forgotten. Perhaps, because the war was not between common everyday life leading people. We have started and restarted “samjhauta” every time, and what is the return? 26/11? Now the war has come to our streets and our homes — and when our streets are burning we can neither forgive nor forget. 26/11 has humiliated and insulted us — “hum yeh zalil maut nahin marenge” — we refuse to die this humiliating, soul-killing death, do what you may.

Interestingly, we tend to forget previous attacks so easily in the wake of any new attack. New Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalaore, it has been happening and re-happening, yet we forget. There was nothing new in Mumbai except the tactics of the terrorists. We forget M.C.Sharma who too was a martyr — he was the first one to die in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Delhi. Therefore, he is so easily forgettable and in the words of some of our own people “forgivable” too (remember he was allgedly violating human rights?).

Yesterday, there was a news in CNN-IBN that a young Jawan was lynched and killed by an angry mob near Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in a train bound from Howrah to Chennai (Koramandal Express), just because he did not allow certain people traveling without tickets into the reserved compartment of the train. People pelted stones at him and beat him to death. This is the respect we show — this is the discipline we follow and rigour that we have as common human beings. What use is the candle light vigil and tribute to the armed forces if we have this kind of an attitude, where we lynch some and make some others our martyrs? Everything is chalta hai and not-my-business for the common Indian. If we say that politicians are corrupt, media is cheap, then who is to be blamed for? We elect the politicians, and we choose the leaders and then forget everything — leave things at their hands, and wait for some supernatural forces to protect us. If you ask Who is accountable? one answer to it is, that we are ourselves first accountable — because a democracy doesn’t need only voters it needs active participants in the governance system. We forget the moment we vote (many of us don’t even vote in the pretext of whom does one vote?) . Then, we wait for terror groups to come and bomb us or take us as hostages, and shriek who will protect us? No one truly, unless we ourselves do.

We have been shouting slogans against the political system — but we are responsible to make that system corrupt. If you see some of the videos of Pak News channels on You Tube, gosh! they are capable of making a falsehood into a complete, palpable, ready-to-dish reality. Hats off to them for propagandist writing — some pathetic hypotheses given colours of truths. Whereas, we are even incapable of handling the reality that are in front of our eyes and projecting it rightly to the world. What to do? We live in the practical possibility of a postmodern world where every individual formulates their own theories to avoid responsibility.

26/11 has made us forget many things. We forget the fire that was shimmering in Mumbai with MNS activists (lumpen elements) fencing off Mumbai from the rest of India. Some of the famous personalities had come out at the time with inflammatory statements about non-Marathis to be not allowed in this state. Rampaging, killing, beating people on the streets — how are you different from the terrorists? These activists (as they are called) also are among the common human beings, waiting for the next chance when 26/11 is forgotten and election season is close. So how does the junta distinguish them from terrorists? If anyone who harms national property, human lives are terrorists, then these are the first people who should be caught. They have killed and they have destroyed national property (railways).

One 9/11 was enough to keep an entire United States on its toes. There have been no attacks since then, even if it meant curbing individual rights. But, I wonder how many 26/11s more are needed to wake us from our slumber? Amnesia is good to a certain degree, but if we don’t learn lessons from these tragedies — then they will become more and more frequent.

Mee Mumbai Boltoae — Doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to be a Mumbaikar, who cries. At present, the entire India and the world is mourning for Mumbai. I wonder how long is so long for India and it’s common people to wake up from the public amnesia?

Durga Puja 2008: A reflection

“Hey are you going back for Durga Puja this time?”

“Me? No. Not possible…We have a celebration and Yajna here, so going home is not possible. What about you?”

“I’ll be reaching late….Have got some library work. Will be there just for the Dussehera day and rest have to go and meet some friends. What about mamu and chinky-pinki.”

“Mamu has official work and Chinky-Pinky are going for a camp and aunty will be leaving with her friends to her maternal home. Youngest mamu has a Durga Pooja at his own office and so he’s the host of the entire office. All the rest are going to some place or the other for these holidays. No one’s coming back home.”

(Teleconversation)

So how did you spend your Puja vacations? Writing this blog piece takes me back to class 5th when we were given assignments at school post Puja vacations to write small essays on the topic: “Durga Puja and how you celebrated it?” It was my favorite essay topic. I had hoards of things to write from my first-hand experiences starting from the Puja celebrations, rangoli, new dresses and wonderful delicacies cooked everyday with new menus, meeting cousins, aunties and uncles from paternal and maternal sides and freaking out full-measure. This was the time when we were actually FREE as during the Pujas moms were busy cooking, meeting people and dads in “men talk” and moreover in grandparents’ places you are just fearless of any parental attack. We played through the day, sometimes were dragged by an aunty to be given a quick bath and then were left on our own to do what we pleased and play and fight through the day. No one interfered and no parents stopped us from doing whatever we liked until the friendly squabbles got into bloody war. An uncle would then intervene and take the entire team out for icecreams. For people in the Eastern regions of India, Durga Puja is considered as the best time of the year. Navarathri celebrations are one of the most vibrant celebrations in India. But in our homes (mostly in Orissa) Maha Sasthi (the sixth day of this nine-day festival) to Vijaya Dasami (tenth and final day), celebrations are at their peak. The festival is known for its splendour, its uniting factors and specifically for its family oriented values.

I suppose most of us have maternal-paternal “ancestral” homes. Ancestral — even if your grandparents live there, because that is not your home and you go there either during Pujas or during some other function. In the earlier times, we divided the vacations between my maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents’ place. Our time was spent in shopping for the festoons, colourful dresses and cloth materials for the gods and altar, decorating and colouring the puja place. This year I reached late to my maternal home, on the Navami day (ninth day) and was busy roaming around and tasting delicacies that were cooked as Prasad. Only during the lunch hour after the morning arti did I realize that there was no one in the gathering except grandma, aunty and my mom and I. Durga puja was a time when our homes were packed. In fact, sometimes some of the family members carried their sheets to the outer verandah and slept there because of the lack of space. In my maternal grandparents’ place when nanu was alive, not just all his children but his brothers’ wives and children, his cousins and friends, grandmom’s parents, everyone came and stayed during the pujas. Food was cooked in large dome shaped vessels, meant to cater more than 100 persons. But this time when I went there, there was only silence and space to greet me. The puja altar was also very sparsely decorated and things seem now to happen because there is just a tradition of Durga Puja in our homes. People have done away with the formality of community gathering and joint family system for good or for worse.

In my paternal grandparents’ place the silence is even more deafening. The family is huge with 8 daughters and four sons, each of them having children and spouses. So the gatherings during Puja (we mostly met for the next big festival after Durga Puja called Kumarpurnima) was even more vibrant. Grandpa in his 90s stays there in that village, missing and waiting for his children to come back. However, we have different plans for vacations.

One might think that this a natural syndrome of joint family system and Sociologists and economists might argue that the nuclear family helps. But, I can claim that we don’t meet that one brother or sister or even our parents for years. They are alone during Diwali and our plans are separate from that of our parents. But, to what extent and which future are we moving? What culture and what family values are we going to pass on to our children? I wonder…

But, for the time being if someone asks me to write an essay on Durga Puja I might fail the test.

Humanity or TRP?

Recent blasts in New Delhi have left the entire country shimmering with fear and apprehension. Who/Which area is the next? This is a question which haunts individuals, government machineries and media houses through day and night. The Delhi blasts have left gaping open holes in the system, which I wonder if can ever be healed. Anguish, anger and pain are the first responses that one goes through when repeatedly viewing the post-terror attack pictures. The target of these attacks are neither corrupt government officials nor bureaucrats, but common man, everyday life leading people — whose deaths are as absurd as their lives. Some of them earn not even 50 rupees per day and feed their entire family with that amount, and yet they are doomed to death in the most inexplicable fashion. We have blamed government machineries in this entire terror mechanism. But there is more to the story. Terror has become a lucrative business, where earlier it had a motive (political freedom being one of them), now it’s an economic drive. It not only supports organizations involved in the process but also supports media houses in “news mongering”.

Just after the blasts, the media houses go TRP crazy — so much so that instead of a news-hunt the media goes amok with advertisement hunt. Especially the visual media. They hijack viewers from other channels and create the most misleading picture of the blasts that one can ever find. Some times even they show images of previous blasts as live blast images.

I was observing the movements of one or two particular channels and “disgusting” and “lewd” are the words to describe the way they broadcast a certain piece of news. I wonder whether their creative heads have any sense of moral propriety at all. In fact, one of the channels gave a complete demo as to HOW TO MAKE A BOMB! The channel gave a step-by-step demonstration of the making of a bomb and the exact way in which a bomb can be prepared, packed and planted. It showed how ammonium nitrate can be filled into boxes, batteries and a time piece can aid in the explosion, a black polythene adds icing to the cake and finally the right locations to plant the bomb, as if it were a cracker! Thanks to the channel even kids can easily learn to make bombs and plant them in the right places. The problem with these channels is that they do not assess the viewers’ attitude (there is hardly any survey as to who the viewers are?) and do not maintain a dignified level of broadcasting sensitive pieces of information. Next moment I saw some kids of that building who were watching the “special show” get down to actually make a bomb! They tried to look for boxes in the kitchen and get batteries and so on. To witness the event was itself ghastly and devastating. Could not believe my eyes, but it is true! I wonder what kind of psychological perspective the channel was actually presenting by giving a demo of making bombs?

This is not the only instance. Sometimes, the titles of a particular news piece are mock heroic. “Bharat ka Osama (India’s Osama)”, “Osama ke thikane pe (Osama’s hiding)” – at a time when a country is in a state of paralytic crisis how can the channels be so insensitive as to broadcast news in the wrap of an entertainment show? I agree news has become a more entertaining medium because of its “reality-show” kind of approach, but how far can this approach be dragged in order to attract viewership? Viewers are pulled by these attractive captions and news then becomes a gory drama. Moreover, by giving a certain incident/individual a senseless comparison with another figure/incident are the channels not creating a sense of terror in the common being? Mindless names and thoughtless expressions are something which have become remarkable features of media these days. In the name of freedom of expression media has become a mockery of its own self. Its role has become questionable and dubious, since news channels hardly focus on the linguistic content of the news broadcasted. In the name of “Breaking News” and “Live” coverage what one gets is a pathetic dramatization and commentary of what can be termed as a “national tragedy”. I wonder if the media houses realize that the very people who are responsible for various terror attacks might be enjoying their news broadcast as one of the adventure series of Cartoon Network?

Not just visual media, but also print media sometimes creates a very different kind of picture. What kind of reality are you trying to project in front of the world when you write “Mumbaikars live spiritedly after terror attacks” or “Delhi comes back to life after terror attacks” ? And antithetically, the other report comes as “7/10 or 20 killed in such and such place” as if those 7/12/20 were not human beings but merely numbers. We have to live on, since there’s no other way out. The very person who was killed in yesterday’s attack has a child and a wife who have no other means of survival except to go and work next morning. For some of us life has never been the same since 2006 or September 2008. To find heroism and project pseudo-patriotism in front of the world will be of no help. If one actually intends to help, first there has to be a sense of respect in terms of the language that one uses for these sensitive events and secondly if you cannot help then kindly do not misguide and create panic in people — some of whom might belong to lower economic and educational classes and may get biased easily.

As viewers and readers too, we have the responsibilty of not buying all that is sold to us and not getting involved with their TRP business. Discretion, discrimination and questioning with a humanitarian angle are the most important aspects in this world of open information systems. We have to agree that there is no one truth but many truths. Which truth we buy is something that will be our individual prerogative and priority.

My Little Red Umbrella :)

Beautiful things of life are simple and they are often taken for granted We realize the value of a certain thing which might be dear to us after losing it forever or at times when someone else makes us feel its importance.

I gave my little red umbrella few moths back after ten years of “rainy-sunny” relationship with it to Hemant. The red umbrella has been a part of me for the last ten years of hostel life. It has seen me rushing for classes, jumping out into the rains, battling the heat waves in summers and most significantly growing up from an undergraduate to a researcher. It was raining heavily the evening I joined the under-grad hostel in RD Women’s College Bhubaneshwar. I was nervous and sad since it was the first time was leaving home for a new life. We had to rush out of the car to a small shop in the Market building area of Bhubaneshwar to get a few stuffs for the hostel room. It was in that shop that we found the red umbrella, sitting on one of the shelves, bright-gorgeous red, smiling at the customers but waiting for the best one to pick it up . It was actually so deep red in colour that one had to have the guts to buy the umbrella. But we did! Instantly both papa and I fell in love with it!!! … It smiled at us from the shelves, happily waved a goodbye to the shopkeeper and was ready to open its wings and fly into the world waiting outside with both sunny and rainy sides. From thereon we have been together till recently.

I forgot to mention one interesting characteristic of the red umbrella. On one of its flaps there are many-many painted golden smiley-suns. So, when one opens the umbrella the suns will smile at once ….The practical advantage of these suns are that they are kind of birth-marks, identification symbols of the umbrella. It doesn’t get stolen or lost easily because of these suns. Who will dare to steal it? It remains with you wherever you go or wherever you leave it.

In post-grad and M.Phil days I was identified in the campus by the umbrella. Dressed up in a red dress, red shoes, red lipstick and red clips …walked with pride with my little red umbrella . In the summers when I walked with the umbrella, a very soothing red-shadow coloured the face, giving it a fine blush. In the rains, when transparent rain drops fell on its surface, the umbrella would smile back at the clouds daring them to pour down even more. I remember on 4th September 2002, I was carrying the umbrella to the hospital where grandpa was waiting for his last moments. Aunty was also wearing a bright red coloured dress–same as my red umbrella. The umbrella smiled at grandpa and he smiled back at it and said to us in a shivering voice: “life is that red in colour–bright and smiley and is meant to be enjoyed. It is not of the dull grey colours (someone else in that room was wearing a dull grey shirt)… everywhere there is god and he smiles.“ Those were his last words.

When I came to IIT Bombay for PhD, during the coursework phase I tried to behave a little intelligent and would visit the library late nights. It was the flash flood year and everywhere umbrellas were in high demand. One night, I went to the library with the red umbrella but left that on one of the library shelves. It was time for the library to be closed and everyone was hurrying out. Lights had been turned off and the staff and security had already started leaving. I too hurried out and forgot all about the existence of the umbrella in my life. Suddenly, the moment I came out of the library, my tube-light mind went twang!!! Oh gosh! I had left the umbrella in the shelves. Before anyone, including the security realized what went wrong… I was scooting down the library shelves like a biker. The librarian rang the alarm, everyone was running behind me, security was summoned, lights were turned on, librarian and the library staff were running to catch me, I was stopped but nothing would stop me…It was a chaos!!! Finally, I located the little red umbrella sitting on one of the shelves along with Foucault and Derrida, smiling back relaxedly at me. I kissed the umbrella and was happy. Then, it was my turn to be embarrassed. The librarian, security and staff were close on my heels. One of them asked me: “B.Tech first year?” I nodded in negative… “M.Tech first year?” “No” … “Then??” I replied calmly: “No PhD first year!” and walked away with the umbrella.

Three years have passed and have lost and found the umbrella many-many times in IITB…

Few months ago I saw Hemant going around in the rain without an umbrella. He was frustrated and angry. He has bought at least 12 and lost all 12 umbrellas. He had lost one of his umbrellas the day before. There was a sad look on his face and he said that he will not buy another umbrella. I decided to give him mine. He was overjoyed to see the red umbrella and was simply delighted like a child. Additionally, I thought that need to reduce over attachment towards material possessions. So, finally I gave my red umbrella to him with a barter-trade of a beautiful Chinese floral umbrella. I lost the Chinese umbrella in no time though. Don’t know where it went but just got lost somewhere.

However, he still carries it — keeps loosing it and forgetting it, but the umbrella funnily returns back to him every time and smiles at him like it did at me. Being a researcher he often calculates the probability of the umbrella being stolen…and he says the probability of not losing it approaches to 0.9. …whatever that is! (I am very poor in maths ) … Interestingly, these days he has publicized the red umbrella so much that the thing is a star now! Many of his colleagues are buying red umbrellas but they are sad that these umbrellas don’t have the suns which the little red umbrella had.

The umbrella has become a little squeaky and tired now with life’s wear and tear…it has also lost some luster of its earliest days, but it makes everyone happy when it opens its flap and goes out in the sun and rain confidently.

The little red umbrella is simple, ordinary, you may see many such umbrellas everyday…yet it bonds and that’s what its beauty is in .

9.00 PM CST-Khapoli Local…

Life moves on…

My Cellphone rang and woke me up from my nostalgic travel through memory lanes.

It was around 11.20 pm when we reached Khapoli on a chilly December night. We were traveling by the 9pm Local from CST to Khapoli. I had never traveled out of Mumbai or even in Mumbai in a local train at that hour of the night. It hardly made any difference — trains were bustling with human beings at least up till Kalyan station and even a little later. I could not believe my eyes to see that so many people travel so late from offices to their homes in distant corners of Mumbai suburbs. In Odisha there is not much of a crowd after 9pm. The office-goers who come from smaller towns like Dhenkanal, Angul, Talcher, Khurda to work in offices at Cuttack or Bhubaneswar usually return by the 5: 15 pm local and reach their homes by 7.30-8.00pm.

I used to travel from Bhubaneswar to Angul/Dhenkanal every Saturday-Sunday and sometimes even on holidays in this particular local train for 7 years; first during Graduation and then during my University days in Post graduation and M.Phil. Either my parents or my uncles would be waiting to receive me from the station. Every time I came back home from the hostel on weekends, I would be received in a grand fashion. When grandpa was alive, he would come to pick me up or drop me while on his morning and evening walks to the Dhenkanal station. I would jump down from the boggy, hug him as if I had not seen him for ages (it might be even less than a week) and then happily chatter away about my friends/teachers in college or University till we reached home, where specially made delicious baingan bharta and mushroom deep fried with garlic and steaming hot rice would be eagerly waiting for me. I think I lost my best friend when I lost him. Grandmom and my aunty sadly would lament on my health condition because of malnutrition in the hostel food .

Probably, this nostalgia was the reason that when we were offered a “Special Paper” in PG English, I had enthusiastically opted for a course in “Professional Writing” and chose to write my dissertation on “The Life in Local Trains”. There were diary entires, interviews with commuters, history of the train, letters and statistics collected on the 5:15pm local train for the dissertation. In fact, at the peak of my data collection I had traveled almost everyday by that train to observe and record events and take snaps of various landmarks. I had a very strange, mysterious bonding with the Local trains, as if these trains gave a miniature version of my world.

All these memories of the past years had come drifting towards me when I saw a group of office-goers boarding from different stations, in one compartment on the CST-Khapoli Local. Probably they were using this one compartment for many years and were now friends or perhaps family. Interestingly, one of them carried a mouth organ, another a dafli and another a flute. While some of them sang some Marathi and Hindi numbers, the others’ played on these instruments or listened silently. I thought there was some special occasion and asked one of them sitting close to me that what was the reason for celebration. He replied with a smile; “nothing! we do this everyday! we celebrate everyday…we come from different stations and from different offices, but make it a point to meet in the train, share some joys or our troubles, sing, laugh and get down at our respective stoppages. This has happened for years now.” He grinned and the song : “hai apna dil toh awara na jane kis pe ayega” …wafted in the air. Everyone in the compartment was silent, listening intently to the songs; no one felt like talking…I suppose everyone had some or the other nostalgia to go back to.

These people specially reminded me of an event which I have documented in that dissertation on local trains. It’s the story of one particular gentleman who had traveled in the 5:15pm local from Bhubaneswar to Dhenkanal for 30 years of his service in the AG Office (Attorney General’s Office) in Master Canteen Bhubaneswar. He worked as a senior clerk there.On the day of his retirement from service, the entire compartment (he had boarded the same compartment for the last 30 years) and his fellow office goers had organized a grand farewell for him in the compartment itself. People sang, made speeches on the small tid-bits of their experiences with him, cried, hugged him and then saw him off with tears as he got down at Dhenkanal station on his final day from work. I was very young then to understand the realities of these emotions — because I had everything and everyone around me at that point of time.

But, of course the event had intrigued me and my imagination. I tried to locate his home in the town and went for an interview for the dissertation. He had told me during the interview that more than his family he valued the friends in the train. They shared all his day-to-day stories, gave valuable advice like his son’s job or a daughter’s wedding or official tussles. They had laughed, played cards, gossiped against their office colleagues, sometimes also fought, but most importantly had grown old together. He added that he will not miss office so much as much he would miss his commuting in the train. “Sadly I will not meet my fellow passengers any longer as I will not need to travel from this small town to Bhubaneswar anymore. My friends in the train have shown more patience and have listened to me more than my own family”... I saw his eyes moisten.

The picture of the old gentleman vividly came before my eyes in the CST-Khapoli local train after another 7 long years of my life. I realized seeing these people around me on the train, that there are certain human emotions which cut across narrow language, caste and cultural divides and time. When the politicians and even some theoreticians seek to divide my nation on the basis of caste and language politics, I still can see that the emotion which people have in Odisha is similar to that which they have in Maharastra or maybe elsewhere in the world — the emotional bond of one human being with another.

On My Deafness…

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content. Helen Keller (1880-1968), US Blind and Deaf Educator

Remember Hellen Keller — the wonderful woman writer-essayist of the early 20th century who created her own niche and overcame her deafness and blindness to become one of the most popular American writers of her time? As a school kid , I used to be absorbed for hours in Keller’s autobiography The Story of My Life and the way she described the various faculties of sight, sound, smell and taste. The descriptions used to be so vivid that when she described a cricket making noise in the darkness, I could actually feel the cricket making that noise. We had a few pieces of Keller’s writings in our class eighth syllabi. My English teacher at school asked us to variously identify the sounds and the colours that Keller described and I would just love to identify those. At the end of the class, Ismat maam would say “kids can you actually tell that the person who has written this beautiful piece was both blind and deaf. As kids of a very impressionable age, we would gasp. For a very long time Keller’s descriptions followed me. But as memory has her own way always and with more demanding texts to be read and analyzed in Honours and Postgraduation classes , I forgot all about the simple writings of Helen Keller.

But it’s different today! Suddenly Keller comes to haunt me after many-many years and that too not without a purpose. It’s my Birthday tomorrow and the doctor quitely announced to me this afternoon that I am at a risk of slowly turning deaf. After the audiogram and other formal tests, the doctor silently but very concernedly announced that I had a bad virus attack in my ears and that there has been a small hearing loss which might get amplified if there are recurring colds.

I was numbed for a moment! No this can’t be me! It’s just a wrong test analysis! The doc was also sad but he nodded in affirmation to all his satetments adding that it is irreversible. He just patted my shoulders and said: “do not worry it is a small hearing loss…nothing to be too worried.” I came out of the hospital not beliving all that happened a moment ago. But then that was the truth and I had to eschew it.

In the hostel friends used to tease me earlier that I was turning deaf, sometimes I would laugh and sometimes I would react saying it was mean to tease someone on their physical challenged parts. Earlier, even I remember taking pleasure in laughing at people’s abnormalities and anomalies, like obesity, hearing imparities, thinness, memory loss, etc, but today I realized that how painful it is to the person who faces an imparity himself/herself. It is only the individual who undergoes such a state that understands the amount of pain when one has to choose between life and living.

While I was on my way home today, I listened to every little sound as if it were my own baby. The noise of the crickets, the autoricksaws booming through the gullies, the distant woodpecker pecking at a raw wood, the call of familiar voices, the cell phone ringing, everything suddenly seemed music and harmony to my ears. I realized that God has made some human beings receptive in a different way than others, the only thing they require is not your sympathy but your understanding that they are just different not incapable….

We just need to behave as human beings with another human being…

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller, My Religion, 1927

(This post is dedicated to all those small kids who are undergoing some or the other form of physical/mental battle…remember God loves those who are capable of making themselves strong against any form of road block)

The “R” Bug

I kept my lights “on” for one whole night after reading The Calcutta Chromosome of Amitav Ghosh. No doubt, the book is marvelously structured and is a researcher’s delight, but I took the text so seriously that by the end of it felt the ghosts of “Lakhan” and “Murugan” had come to claim my poor book-ridden soul. I thought I too was “in the story” because of my perpetual and dooming curiosity for “what happened next?” There was an intense feeling that I had a trace of the “lost chromosome”. Falciparum Plasmodium, Syphilis and all these diseases described in that novel seemed to be making me their guinea pig.

Anyways, I was sure that there is some bug somewhere in my campus, my immediate circle, my department and also in me that made the case a little queer. The symptoms — “a divine discontent”, an occassional irritability, frustration on the other, sudden love-hate relationship with “The” Text, friend making and friend breaking processes, pulsating-throbbing effect of an approaching seminar, periodic pro-guide-anti-guide-contra-guide feelings, the “ABD” : “All But Dissertation” syndrome (That’s my senior’s term)…I can sit and count millions of such common symptoms. The Calcutta Chromosome merely strengthened my belief on an actuality of the existence of such a “bug”. Ghosh might choose to name it “the chromosome”.

That night I looked frantically for this bug underneath my pillow, my room, my workplace…but couldn’t find it…I sensed it was somewhere very close, but eluded me every time that I attempted to reach it and destroy it. I was angry with myself for being so curious that people almost took me for being insane. My family for the next few days thought of withdrawing me from the campus and increasingly felt that I was likely to go to Mars, friends found it difficult to cope with my happiness-anger-nabad cycles, Hemant gaped with concerned eyes and tried his hands at 24 hours counseling, etc., .

Finally, there came the break through in this status quo. One day in KResIT, the epiphanic moment dawned after two strong cutting chais. I felt like a scientist who has accidentally stumbled upon the discovery of her life and is now queuing up for the Nobel. Spoke feverishly to myself –”Eureka! The bug that’s bitten me I coined as “R-Bug”, the same bug has bitten the people around me too — for some the degree of poison is slightly low and for some it’s simply self-destructive.

The R-bug has certain tragi-comic symptomatic attacks on the junta that it chooses to reveal itself. Some folks are so allured to be bitten by it that they leave jobs of lacs and choose a state of penniless survival in the campus. For, some others the “bug” serves as a substitute for food and drink, while some think that its bite open new vistas/career of life. In my case, the bug holds me in a trance/ voodoo kind of magic for certain periods of time and then suddenly loosens its grip and allows me the liberty of a desire-ridden lady. When under its intense bite, I produce (sometimes worthless) papers, write-ups, and also spontaneous outburst of the long-lost muse. I realized with a jolt sitting there that everyone around me, including Dr. Ghosh is under the sway of this bug/chromosome…whatever u name it.

After realizing this potential destructiveness/constructiveness of the R-Bug, thanks to Amitav Ghosh’s wonderful text…I also understand the potential incurability of poor mortals (including me) bitten by this bug…

Any Nobel for me ?????

Banker’s Pride…

Remember the famous Onida ad of yesteryears in which a green demon comes licking his lips surreptiously and sneakily commenting : “neighbours envy, owner’s pride!” ? These days, money and partners have become the owner’s pride. Both money and a lovely, smart, not-the-coy “homemaker”- type individuals are amazingly in-things.

However, it is my personal observation that somehow in our times it is money — dollars, euros, rupees, yen…which is sexier than any female/male creature. As a poor researcher in literature, having no support from my institution and living through my most unforgivable sin, “not cleared JRF/NET exams”, I live in perennial penury. When I started with research some three years ago, I prided on this penury. In fact, I felt like a la John Keats or a laGabriel Rossetti living with no Govt support — all in order to create history. The result…like brain drains, I drained my father’s last savings which he had saved for my “dowry” .

After three whole years, I realize that it was my greatest blunder and a desperate Romantic foolishness.

This bit of history was a little important for my recent money hunting ventures. Last month, there was a notice somewhere from some enthusiastic, social-service kind of bankers, offering to help any “meritorious” student of this great institution. Overestimating my merits I applied for this “loan-scholarship”. After ten pages of form filling, two long days of running around to and from various offices, 100 rupees of fax with an estimate of my father’s entire “remaining” property, I was one day summoned to this illustrious baker’s office for a “discussion”.

Of the few interesting questions put to me in what I would say the unforgettable interview of my life, here are some excerpts (folks kindly forgive memory, there might be follies in the recount):

Banker: Hello Lady! So You are a researcher in Literature? How is that going to help you earn?

Me: (scratched my head) Sir, I may join a corporate or an academic institution as a Prof., or at least I can earn by tutions (aur yeh galat jawab)

Banker: You should have been in a University…what are you doing in a technical institution?

Me: (biting my nails — guess interdisciplinarity is in fashion) No, actually I thought great research in Humanities can also be done from technical places. Even Chomsky is from MIT, I guess. (why do you write your Electronics text books in English? why do you study Census, maps in English? )

Banker: You said that you are good in your field…how can u say that…ur CPI shows you are only an 8 pointer in a class of three…

Me: (oops caught! How does he know I was sleeping during course work) Sir, I never knew that talent is judged only from CPIs… I have enough mettle to prove myself in the long run.

Banker: Humanities people can never equal technos…we transform knowledge into work….

Me: (Angry :X) I don’t want to equal…I think we are better of…at least we realize the value of technology…we don’t ask an automobile engineer “do you make scooters”, unlike some of you who tend to ask “u r researching in English, do you write novels”?

Banker:(mellowed) It is ok…my niece too is in Boston doing something with International studies!

Me: Smiled (I come from an orthodox family who will never allow me to Boston without a husband )

Banker: We will see…if possible to fund you…actually I am a technical person…so it is kind of a risk you know…to fund researchers and that too in Lit. Moreover, your generation is a little distracted generation…we were a generation which took work seriously…your generation is not much dependable that way…But we will let you know soon…you will receive a mail from our side…ciao…!

Me: Bbye sir…!

Conversation ends…I come out wiping my sweat… it seemed I was emerging after a round of stress interview.

For the last whole month, I was desperately angry and frustrated with myself for showing byronic foolishness by defying the NET thing. I prayed to God, to give me tons of money so that I can show down the whole technos and bankers community of the world. But, I realized that will be another foolish recklessness on my part. Some people spoil the name of an entire community. It happens in my field too…. And moreover, the person who owns money always has a certain degree of advantage o’er subalterns like me…. Egalitarianism is a utopian fancy, u know. This pride comes as a bonus with both money and intellect.

Forgivable sins…