Dignity of the dead

"How old is this?," the young labourer asks me. I take the plastic can filled with water from his hands without answering him. I'm still looking at the gravestone. I splash some water on the stone, removing layers of mud and dead leaves. The name is clear now: The Michaels. Died 2 July, 1868. Read on.

Chess and Nirvana: A travel along the Ganges

One October afternoon, in 1994, a young, bespectacled man arrived at a roadside resort on the Delhi-Dehradun highway. He was accompanied by a tourist from Britain. The man carried a copy of Plato, and most of the times he talked about chess and the virtues of arm-wrestling.

The British tourist had been invited by the man to accompany him to a visit to his ancestral village. But a few hours after they had lunch at the resort, the Brit found himself kidnapped on gun-point and dumped in a dark room in Ghaziabad town, neigbouring Delhi. It was by sheer chance that a Police party, investigating a case of cycle theft, crossed way with the kidnappers and the tourist was rescued.

Twelve years later, I am at the Cheetal Grand resort, trying to Imagine that I am sitting on the same chair on which sat Omar Sheikh, the bespectacled man, who would grab headlines, worldwide, years later, for the gruesome murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. It is an October afternoon and instead of chess, I have in mind a long journey, which I have planned to undertake with a friend of mine.

Earlier that day, we left Delhi, on an Enfield motorcycle. The plan is to take a night halt at the holy town of Rishikesh, where flows the river Ganges, and then proceed to Srinagar town in Garhwal. We have no further concrete plans. The aim is to just let things happen. Like Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, we just want to explore as much as we can and bask in the glory of the miles covered. Rishikesh is 225 kilometres from Delhi and Cheetal Grand resort is approximately mid way. After a breakfast of Masala Dosa and a lemonade, we proceed on to Rishikesh.

It is towards late afternoon when we reach Rishikesh after crossing Haridwar. The market is bustling with foreigners, mostly from Israel, who have come to Rishikesh in search of Nirvana. Some of them have been staying here for months now, in cheap hotels and paying-guest accommodations. No wonder, I see a restaurant carrying this message: Israeli, Japanese, Nepal-special Chowmein (whatever that means), Italian, Continental cuisine served here. Next to the restaurant is a barber’s shop, where a foreigner is getting his head tonsured. We check in a hotel on the banks of the Ganges. Tariff: Four hundred rupees. I am in a mood to complete this journey in a shoe string budget.

Inside the hotel room, the first thing I do is hide the remote control of the Television that looks down at us from a pedestal. I don’t want my companion to succumb to the temptation of watching the prime-time news bulletin in the night. After a bath in the freezing cold water, we just lie down on the bed to comfort our bottoms. My friend, you see, has not cushioned the seat of his motorcycle.

The sun is setting and we venture out. After gulping down a bottle of water, we cross the Ram Jhula. There are two rope bridges in Rishikesh named after the Hindu God Rama and his brother Lakshman. We cross to the other side to witness the evening Aarti (prayers). Every morning and evening, there is a prayer session on the banks of the Ganges. We can hear it from a distance – the sound of drums and cymbals. Devotees have gathered over the stairs of a temple and they are signing hymns in praise of the Ganges and Krishna. Young boys, wearing saffron dhotis, who have vowed to a life of celibacy, are singing passionately. Between prayers, they raise their hands in unison to offer their salutations to God. Many tourists form a part of the prayer group.

Earthen lamps in small baskets made of leaves are put in the river waters. The lamps bedazzle the water around them and after they have traversed till some distance, they topple in the water as it gains momentum. The water is in a hurry. There are people waiting for it. Waiting to be absolved of their sins.

There are many book stores and music shops selling stuff on Yoga, spirituality and Hindu way of life. On our way back, I can hear an English artist chanting Hare Rama, Hare Krishna in her album. We are going to have food in Chotti wala Baba Restaurant. It is very famous among tourists in Rishikesh. In the evening, a man dressed as a Sadhu sits outside the restaurant on a bridegroom’s chair. It is a gimmick to attract tourists and it also serves as a signboard. Not that you need them in a small place like Rishikesh.

Next morning, we take off for Srinagar, which is 105 kilometres from Rishikesh. The plains give way to hills, as we find ourselves under the shadow of the Himalyas. I am about to experience a very strong déjà vu.

To be continued…

Nonsense offerings of Peace

Drink tea from a bone-china saucer with a slurp. Walk on a highway, whistling, hands in pockets. Listen to a Mohammed Rafi song, in darkness, lying on a cold marble floor. Hear a church bell ringing in the hills. Sing to oneself, the song from the film Khamoshi: Pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do koi naam na do (Let love remain love, don’t put a name to it). Make an omlette and name it Temptation. Smell the scent of the earth when it is about to rain. Dance in front of the mirror in the washroom of the pub. Search for a round pebble and offer it space on your writing table. Keep a flower to dry between the folds of a book. Wash your white shirt with your own hands. Run for no reason. Sow a seed. Watch a burning pyre. Sharpen a pencil. Throw a coin from a bridge into a river. Climb stairs with hands held behind the back. Talk to yourself when no one is watching. Look at the palm of your right hand the first thing when you wake up in the morning. Rub some cream in your elbows. Imagine your belly to be a drum and try sending a coded message to Phantom. Imagine peace to be a piece of cake and eat it.

In search of a poet

The train passes through lush green fields and small towns with walls painted with advertisements of quacks and tantriks, who claim to have an antidote for everything, ranging from bad jobs to failed love. I really do not know why I am on this train, bound for Lucknow. But gradually I figure out. Back home, in Delhi, the Internet is not working and the service provider is behaving like Dickensian Uriah Heep. My desktop gets restarted after every fifteen minutes. A local courier has not reached even after three days have passed. The electricity is playing truant. I feel like joining the Gestapo. Instead, I run away to Lucknow.

I have been to Lucknow many times before and if you really ask me, I have never ventured anywhere barring an old bookstore in Hazratganj market that has in offing a decent collection of Hindi literature. But this time I know something which was previously unknown to me. Just few metres away from the book store is an old hotel that has been renovated recently and turned into a huge banquet hall. But on its rooftop it carries a burden of history from which it cannot be absolved. It is the Capoor Hotel.

Raaste mein ruk ke dam le lun, meri aadat nahi
Lautkar waapas chala jaun, meri fitrat nahi
Aur koi hamnawa mil jaaye, ye kismat nahi
Eiy Gam-e-dil kya karun
Eiy vehshat-e-dil kya karun
(That I should stop and take a breather is not my habit
That I should turn back and return is not my nature
That I should meet a co-traveller, I am not that lucky
What do I do, my sorrow-filled heart?
What do I do, my grieving heart?)

These lines were written by Asrarul Haq Majaaz, who is known as the Keats of Urdu poetry. He was very famous among poetry-lovers. Ismat Chughtai recounts that girls used to take out lottery in order to decide who among them would marry Majaaz. They used to sleep with his photograph under their pillow.

Majaaz was a progressive poet who believed in the equality of women. He wrote:

Tere maathe pe ye aanchal bohot hi khoob hai lekin
Tu is aanchal se ek parcham bana leti to accha tha
(The scarf on your head is fine
Only if you could turn it into a flag)

Many of Majaaz’s friends made money by writing film lyrics. Majaaz never belonged there. So he spent most of his life in taverns of Lucknow. It is said that after drinking, Majaaz would wander on the streets of Lucknow. His fans would take him home, make him drink more and make him recite his poetry till he collapsed. Then they would ask a servant to drop him on a bench in a park or in a railway station.

It was on a chilly December night in 1955 that Majaaz was taken by some of his fans to the rooftop of Capoor Hotel where they left him alone after drinking till midnight. In the morning he was found unconscious and was then rushed to a hospital where the doctors said that he had died because of severe cold which had damaged his brain. He was 44.

Bohot mushkil hai duniya ko sanwaarna
Teri zulfon ka pecho-kham nahi hai
(It is very difficult to simplify this world
It is not the tangle of your tresses)

What else is there to write? About Lucknow? About anything else?

More Pics

Your almond eyes

Tumhari aankhon ka aakash
Saral aankhon ka neela aakash

(The sky of your eyes
The blue sky of
Your simple eyes)

You were too young to have inspired the above lines of a Hindi poet, who wrote it decades ago. But if you ask me, Priyadarshani, I would like to compare your eyes to the raw, green spring almonds of Kashmir. I have been told that you were an award-winning singer, who performed in faraway nations like Russia. Tell me, did they look at you, the Russians, and utter: Mera joota hai Japani, ye patloon Hindustani – did they?

I imagine you walking on the road near your South Delhi house, humming a tune gently. Or smiling shyly in affirmation on being asked: Are you a Kashmiri? Yes you were and to be recognised on the streets as one, you did not need the symbolic Dejharu.

Long before you turned 26, your parents, like almost all Kashmiri Pandit families, must have begun to amass many small and big things to be sent along with you at the time of your marriage. Kashmiri shawls, carpets, silverware. They must have spoken in hushed tones about this or that boy who they would have seen during marriage ceremonies of friends and relatives.

These days, I visit your area quite often. I am just trying to help my friend Ajay in his next film. He lives just behind the road that Santosh Kumar would have taken to approach your house, rape you and then kill you by strangulating you with a telephone cable.

You are no more than a faded picture in this mortal world. Your killer is a practising lawyer. But you know, Priya, I have just been back after listening to a man’s story who witnessed the 1947 Indo-Pak partition as a five-year old kid. There is no heaven or hell. Every account is settled here on Earth. His will be too. But don’t you know that already?


This evening, a friend sang Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s song:

Ik kudi
Jidda naam mohabbat
Saad muradi
Soni fabbat
Gumm hai, gumm hai
Gumm hai

(A girl
Named love
Simple
Lovely
She is lost
Lost she is)

Where do I find you? Hey don’t pinch my shoulder.

The shades of his evening

When
Many suns will die
Then
Your era will arrive
Isn’t it?

Many suns have died since these lines were written but their time has still not come. So more lines are being created, more suns are being done to death, in that brick dwelling. Inside the four brick walls, the sun that survived, is wreaking havoc with its heat. The room is hot like a furnace. In the middle of the room, over a string cot, lies Lal Singh Dil, writing the last paragraph of his 78-page poem.

On the cheap register that bears the lashes of his personal history, Dil has noted down the day when he began writing the poem, two years ago. In front of his cot lies another cot, like a berated lover. Few dirty cups share a table with few saucers and two kettles; one made of cheap bone china and the other of aluminium. An old iron trunk plays foootsie with rust in one corner. Numerous mementoes weigh heavily on a cement slab. Their plastic covers have never been lifted. The floor near Dil is littered with Beedis and burnt and unburnt matchsticks.

Jo ladna nahi jaande
Jo ladna nahi chohnde
Wo gulam bana liye jaande ne

(Those who do not know how to fight
Those who do not want to fight
They are turned into slaves)

Lal Singh Dil is sixty-three now. He wrote these lines in 1967 when the thunder spring of Naxalbari reverberated in faraway Punjab. For the first time in his life, he felt as if his life had a mission. There was no point in remaining only a poet now. So Dil picked up a gun and joined the movement.

In his recent unpublished poem, Dil describes a dream where he sees his mother washing his clothes. He tries to hold her and she breaks away, prompting him to write:

Mein kis da putt han?
(Whose son am I?)

It is a manifestation of Dil’s longing for love, which he did not receive from anyone except his mother. Born in the chamar (tanner) community in Samrala town of Punjab, Dil was the first member of his family to finish school. His mother sold off her ear rings to make sure that Dil went right up to college.

Those who know Dil since college days say that he was very handsome and because of this and his poetry, many girls fell for him. There was one girl who wore her hair in plaits and lived in a neighbouring village. She was from an upper caste family. Dil’s friend lived in the same village and so Dil would see that girl often and developed a liking for her. But she died of cerebral haemorrhage. Later Dil would find another girl who looked like that girl, wearing her hair in the same fashion. One day he was invited to that girl’s house where he was offered tea in a steel tumbler. Afterwards, the girl’s mother picked the tumbler with a pair of tongs and threw it in fire to purify it. Dil writes in his autobiography Dastaan (Story) that he can still hear the clank of that tumbler thrown in the fire.

Dil began to write poetry during his college days. One of his early poems was published by Preetlarhi, a leading literary journal of Punjab in those times. He was working as a daily wage labourer when the peasant uprising in Naxalbari spread like wildfire. That was the time when Dil wrote a poem called ‘The shades of Evening’.

After remaining underground for four years, Dil was arrested by the Police. In the lock-up, the upper-caste Police officer slapped Dil hard and shouted: Ab chamar kranti layenge is desh mein? (Would the lower caste bring revolution in this country now?)

For nine months, Dil would face extreme physical torture. He would be subjected to more torture than his fellow comrades because of his caste and because of his poetry.

Soon after his release from the prison, Dil had to go into hiding once again. Only this time the period of hiding was much longer. He fled from his hometown to a village near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, where he worked as labourer in mango orchards. He made a comeback in mid 80’s, after a gap of fifteen years.

By that time, the memory of Lal Singh Dil had faded away from people’s memory. He was an icon in 70’s, Samrala’s own Che Guevara. Fifteen years later, he had to open up a tea-stall to make his ends meet. Even that did not last for long. But what did, and still is, is Lal Singh Dil’s ink.

Dil happens to be the contemporary of radical poets like Avtar Singh Pash and Santram Udasi. In ‘The shades of Evening’, based on his experiences during the Naxalbari movement, Dil writes:

The shades of evening
Are old once again
The pavements
Head for settlements
A lake walks
From an office
Thrown out of work

A lake is sucking
The thirst of water
Throwing off all wages
Someone is leaving

Someone comes wiping
On his dhoti
The blood of weak animals
On his goad

The shades of evening
Are old once again
Loaded with rebuke
The long caravan moves on
Along with the
Lengthening shadows of evening

In his one-room hermitage, Lal Singh Dil, the biggest name in Punjabi free verse poetry, spends his last days in penury. He told someone recently that he does not expect anything from anyone.

In the same 78-page unpublished poem, Dil writes:

I do not want to write about my personal sorrows.

Lal Singh Dil’s wounds are too many to heal. And something has to be done with his sorrows also. The shades of evening may have to turn like old once again.

***
This journey became possible because of my friend, filmamker Ajay Bharadwaj. His recent film Kitte Mil Ve Mahi features Lal Singh Dil as radical poet.

My Mother's 22 Rooms

I cannot sing the old songs, or dream those dreams again - Charlotte Barnard

There it is. Huddled among other dolls and a few shreds of cloth. It is wearing a blue dress. I don’t remember what mine wore, for it has been sixteen years since I saw it. It might not be there anymore, but I would like to believe that it is there, invisible to the new occupants of my house. It is a dancing girl made of earth, decorating a corner of my friend’s drawing room. Touch it a little and it will start dancing, moving her neck gracefully. My dancing girl, mother bought it, when I was a child, from a potter selling his stuff on a pavement in Lal Chowk.

And sixteen years later, as I speak to you, there is no significant noise outside my room. No guttural voice and no sound of my mother’s U-shaped walker making its presence felt through the small corridor of my house. Mother fell down from her bed again this morning.

23 years ago, in Srinagar, a team of health officials was to arrive at our school. Their aim was to administer cholera vaccines to children. But for that we were supposed to take the written permission of our parents. Back home I told my father and as expected he wrote ‘No’ on my home task diary. I found it very insulting. Tomorrow all my classmates would take the vaccine and sing laurels of their bravery. And me, I would be hidden in some corner, red-faced with shame. It was not acceptable to me. So I erased father’s nay and wrote ‘Yes’ on the diary. Next morning as the needle of the syringe pierced my left arm, I did not even flinch once. I became an instant hero. But as it is with most acts of heroism, I had to pay a price for mine as well. By late afternoon, a lump had formed in my arm. By the time I reached home I was feverish and drenched in sweat. As I pulled off my shoes, mother saw me and in one instant she knew what had happened.

It was August and even by Kashmir valley’s standards, it was hot. I flung myself on the bed. Mother came and sat next to me. She gave me a glass of milk and kept her fair arm on my forehead. It felt very soothing and cold; like a spring. I went off to sleep. Next morning as I opened my eyes, the fever was gone.

Mother handled the affairs of the house like a seasoned ascetic would control his senses. She knew what was kept where. Rice, coal powder, woollen socks and gloves, soap – she kept a tab on everything. Her daily routine was more or less defined. She would wake up in the wee hours of the morning, wash clothes in the bathroom, sweep and mop the floor of every room and corridor, put burning coal dust in Kangris in winters and ultimately take stock of the kitchen. She did not believe much in spending time in worship. She was not an atheist but her belief was restricted to occasionally folding hands in front of the Shivalinga. Her God was her home and hearth.

But mother was in awe of nature. She feared its fury. Sometimes, when a storm blew, she would close all doors and windows and sit in one corner. When she no longer could face it, she would ask my father, “Will this storm stop?” Father would usually try to pacify her, but ultimately he also lost his patience. “What do you think? Would this storm last till the doom’s day?” he would snap at her. But the same meek heart turned into brave heart when any family member struggled with adversity.

It was in the mid of 1988 that my father had a mild heart attack. Actually father had a pain in the stomach and an injection prescribed by a gastroenterologist reacted, which led to the attack. Everyone in the family was too shocked to react. But not my mother. She single-handedly took my father to the hospital in an auto rickshaw. At the hospital, mother recalls, a doctor appeared like an angel. He had a black mark on his forehead, a result of praying five times a day. The moment the doctor started examining him, my father vomited. Mother says it was so intense that it went right into the doctor’s shoes. But not once did he raise his brow. He kept on treating my father.

By the end of 1989, men like that doctor somehow became rare in Kashmir. One day mother came back from office and she was crying. In the bus someone had tried to help an old Hindu lady in getting down from the bus. Another woman, who was a Muslim, criticised that man saying that the woman he helped was a Hindu and she should have been kicked out of the bus. Mother didn’t know whether what she heard was true or whether it was a nightmare. But what she had heard and seen with her naked eyes was what seemed like holding a mirror in front of Kashmir in a few months time. The time had come, once again, to leave our homeland. The migration began. Salvaging whatever little we could, essentially a few utensils and educational degrees of my college-going sister, we reached Jammu.

After spending a couple of nights in a hotel, father hired a room in a marriage house. It was situated in the old city, amidst a bristling market of saris and dupattas. Every now and then marriage ceremonies were solemnised in the marriage house. When the crude ovens, laced with mud and gas cylinders arrived at the house, we would understand that a marriage was taking place that evening.


In the ten by ten feet room, ants held a sway. No matter what you put outside, it would be swarmed by ants in a matter of minutes. They appeared in hordes, hundreds of them, attacking every edible item. It was similar to how people would come out on streets in Srinagar, few months before we were forced into exile. Mother obviously could not put up a fight with them, but she always managed to save a bowl of curd from the marauding ants, by keeping it in a basin of water. I always felt that whenever mother took out that bowl of curd, a secret smile would pass her lips. It was like a symbolic victory for her or so I thought.

And one night, that smile was also snatched from my mother’s lips.

I remember that evening. Somebody was getting married in the marriage house. The entire compound was filled with men, women and children, dressed in shimmering clothes. The stereo with huge speakers played popular Bollywood numbers as some of the guests danced on the tunes. And a few metres away, we had closed ourselves in the room.

When the bride was taken away and the noise had eased, there was a knock on our door. Mother opened the door and found a young man standing there. He was holding a plate in his hand. He said that he had been told that there were refugees living here and so he came to offer us some food. Before mother could say something, he handed over the plate and turned back. Mother lifted the cover and I caught a glimpse of the food inside. There was rice, dal and some vegetables. Mother kept on staring at it for some time and then she cried.

After this incident, Mother developed a strange habit. She would tell all, whether they cared to listen or not, “ Our house in Kashmir had 22 rooms”.

For the next few years, we would keep on shuttling from one place to place, becoming victim of the whims and fancies of landlords. We stayed at various places. After the marriage house, we stayed in a window-less room in a dilapidated lodge, where the number of mosquitoes was probably more than the cells constituting our bodies. Then we rented a single room where we ate, studied, slept, cooked and ate our food as well. Then there was another house. The bathroom there had no door and we had to keep on coughing for obvious reasons. Amidst these episodes of Greek tragedy, mother kept her struggle on. Everyday was a battle. From filling water from a leaking tap to bathing under the tap of an adjacent vacant plot, life threw numerous challenges at us.

It was years later that I completed my education somehow and came to Delhi. Few years ago, we bought a 2-bedroom flat in Delhi. But the struggle of Jammu has left a mark on mother. She cannot walk now. Her left leg is paralysed. Sometimes she falls down as she tries to drag her leg. As it happened this morning. She cannot even speak now. Degenerative neurosis, whatever that means. With each passing day, her condition is worsening.

I walk on the road. There is a sea of vehicles moving; endless. Sometimes I feel that there are more vehicles than humans in Delhi. And when I cannot bear the noise any longer, I feel like shouting, “Our house in Kashmir had 22 rooms.”

This Morning

Then and Now

Tomorrow, this girl will become mother of two children. The boy with an elephant drawn on his shorts always rolls his sleeves now, at least till his elbows. His hairline is receding. He hates to wear a watch now. But time moves on.

Of Horses and Illustrations

I have been reading a number of Graphic novels these days. Sharad had got Art Spiegelman's Maus from Manchester. H sent the complete volume of Joe Sacco's Palestine. Last night, I told Sharad that I need to tell a number of stories. Mostly from Kashmir. For my stories, I don't have to depend on 'Saande ka tael' (If you know what I mean).

B said rightly, few weeks back, that if he spends an hour with his village barber, he comes back with a sackful of stories. And his barber is so witty, B tells me. One example of his humour: B sahab, you know there are only two creatures who have benefitted from terrorism in Kashmir - one the horses and two impish children. Horses because there are hardly any tourists now and they no longer have to carry fat Marwari families on their backs. Children because they are no longer required to attend school.

Meanwhile, I am trying to improve my drawing skills. Do you think I stand a chance?

A Journey from Kashmir to London

A dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment changed his life. My friend Basharat Peer from Tehelka told me the story of Iqbal Ahmed, who left Kashmir in 1993 to work in London. He was 26. Iqbal worked at a number of places and is currently a porter in a London hotel. It was in Kashmir that he got hold of the classic book and decided to become a writer. His loneliness as an immigrant and the way London failed him inspired him to write a book titled: Sorrows of the Moon, A Journey Through London.

You can read his experiences he shared with the London Review of Books here.

Only one Dream

This is a box item from Page number 113 of Fimlmfare, May 2005 issue. I was flipping through this magazine to pass time as my Hair Dresser Pran drank tea. And then suddenly this page flashed in front of me. As Pran got busy with cutting someone's hair, I silently tore away this page. I could not resist because for long I had been wanting to lay my hands upon these lyrics. These have been penned by Gulzar for film Kinara.

Gulzar says he always wanted to write songs that could be part of narrative. Ek hi khwab... was one such experiment. Gulzar remembers taking this song to Pancham (RD Burman). When he came to learn that Gulzar wanted him to put these words to music, he smacked his head and exclaimed: Koi kaam seedha nahi karta hai.

This song was recorded in Bhupinder's and Hema Malini's voices. Bhupi was given a pair of headphones and asked to strum his guitar spontaneously. Bhupi did it in one take.

The Design of Madness

He was mad. His madness did not require him to wear torn clothes and let saliva drip from the corners of his mouth. Or to mumble to himself. Or to throw stones at people. His madness had its own way. Its own design.

Like this. He drank whisky with roasted grams. Sometimes he would begin drinking at three in the morning. Switch on his CD player and listen to the melancholic songs of Talat Mehmood. And cry very silently as the night broke down into sunrise. And then he would wet his hair, look into the depths of his retinas in the mirror and laugh. Laugh till he collapsed.

Sometimes he would begin writing in the evening. He had held himself for long. No longer anymore. He would put choicest Bhangra tunes on his player. After pouring himself half-a-finger whisky, he would begin typing. And then rise suddenly from his seat and begin dancing. His dance was so intense that frenzy would hide itself. When one song finished, it meant five hundred words and innumerable tiny droplets of sweat on his forehead. And then another half-a-finger, another song and another five hundred words. And a round sun of sweat on his shirt.

Aaja mere khaetan di bahaar ban aaja
Faslan da roop da shingaar ban aaja

Come on, be the spring of my fields
Come, be the ornament of my harvest

That was Amarjit Sandhu doing a private show for him. He danced with his eyes closed. He would even type with his eyes closed. And blindly take a swig from his glass. When he was exhausted, he stood in front of the mirror again. Looking intensly at himself, as if the mirror enabled him to see the blood surging in his arteries, he would laugh again.

By that time, Maya would appear. He would kiss her delicately, undress her and enter her. While he made love, he would recite poetry. Mostly James Thomson.

And so throughout the twilight hour
That vaguely murmurous hush and rest
There brooded; and beneath its power
Life throbbing held its throbs supprest:
Until the thin-voiced mirror sighed,
I am all blurred with dust and damp,
So long ago the clear day died,
So long has gleamed nor fire nor lamp.

Maya would begin to ebb away from his febrile consciousness. She was an illusion after all. But his madness was real. The words that you read right now are a testimonial.

The Sampaati Club

Membership Open Now...

Postman, Bouncing High

A paralysis has gripped me. There is internal bleeding as well. Of words, which don’t come out. I imagine myself, on a bed in a hospital, wrapped in a calm, white sheet. A needle lies embedded in one of my veins, near the elbow joint. I also visualise a red-coloured Thesaurus attached to it, hanging upside down on the drip stand. I imagine.

I think of myself to be a Postman at a hill station. I walk on the lonely stretches, negotiating bends and curves; a bunch of envelopes in my hands and an old-fashioned black umbrella held under my left arm. I stop at the tea shop. I have a bun and an extremely sweet tea, served in a chipped glass. Sometimes sun shines. Sometimes I cut through the mist. And sometimes I have to open the umbrella.

Actually it is nothing but loneliness. Also, there is no agitation of mind. My inner demons are in a state of comatose. I am stuck. Struck off too; struck off from my own margins.

I try to write. Like:

When he saw a snake creeping over his leg; making a rustling sound on his silken pyjamas, he knew the time had come. Time to tell the story. (Sentence left as it is)

Insalubrious. (Nothing)

It rained heavily as we carried his body till the main road. The load was very heavy, almost backbreaking, despite the fact that he was a mere skeleton now. But carrying him from his cottage till the main road, climbing those fifty-eight steps, laden with bare leaves, we stopped at various places and tried to take stock of our breaths – the phenomenon that he had ceased to perform. (Harmonica, four years ago; as I saw it. MS word file closed)

Maqbool Sherwani. Hindu astrologer; the story of 300 apple cases. Snake bite outside Bhadrakali temple. Raahchok, the ghost. She jumped into the river. Dost Mohammed jumped after her. Leather sandals for seventeen rupees. It was snowing when I opened my eyes. Six months had passed. (Wrote it on the stick pad and pasted it on the CPU)

Yes, aware that I am dying,
I carry my body on my back
Into my mind. Take a shovel
Dig myself a pit. It’s simple. (Doc’s poem. Put it back in the cupboard)


Isko kisi ki arzoo bhi nahi. This does not desire of anything. This. This. Write Rahul write. For God sake write. Please. Write for the sake of that red wall. Write for the sake of that look in your eyes (Secret). Write for the sake of that thought in your mind (Top Secret).

If I can bounce high. High-bouncing self, I must have you!

Retinas on Nanda Devi

After six years, he came back. For a day. To visit an old, empty cottage. To taste the strawberry lip gloss. Images of a plane hijack. Tunes of Latino. Smell of ear wax. And Nanda Devi. And a promise. Of coming back. Permanently. And then...

Half Tomato, Boiled Sparrow Eggs

I wrote this story, in two parts, for Intentblog:

Half Tomato and Boiled Sparrow Eggs

Half Tomato and Boiled Sparrow Eggs: Part 2

This story extends from Kashmir to Gujarat. It is the tale of a man haunted by tomatoes; of a sparrow, its master and a naked fakir called Sarmad. It also has Ehsan Jafri. And it also has she, who hates tomatoes and eventually...

The Quest for a House

The front wall painted red. Pebbles of various shapes and sizes put in a ceramic basket. A sofa set in one corner. Not the Godzillas put on sale in imported furniture showrooms, but medium sized with striped upholstery. An orange rug beneath a mahogany table. A laughing Buddha on the side table. A bunch of Narcissus in a transparent vase. ‘Potato Eaters’ on the wall. Floor cushions scattered here and there. Coffee table books on the shelf. Black and white photographs, framed, placed under the hanging light. Two goldfishes in a glass bowl; ones which would live till he did. A Thai mask, smiling at him, from above his bottles. And then he pours himself one, swirls it in his mouth for a while and gulps it down without making noise. Abida Parveen’s voice wafts through the house. The house which is his home.

A study in the remotest corner of the house. Books on shelves, with a delicate layer of dust on them. But not on ‘Lust for Life’. How could it be? He reads it daily, taking inferences from it to conduct his own life. There is a Van Gogh’s Self Portrait on the wall. A table lamp – 70’s model. A rock picked up from the Dead Sea. Fountain pens and sharpened pencils in a holder. Few read and unread mails. A paper cutter. Some white, neat paper. A few lines scribbled on the topmost paper. A mattress thrown in one corner. Cushions of various hues. Thick curtains to darken the room or let in streams of sunshine once lifted. A DVD player to watch ‘Pyaasa’.

And then the bathroom. Dry, first of all. With water coming in taps, whenever needed. A shower. Clean hand towels on the shelf along with a bamboo shoot. One single stick of Gladiola in a sleek bottle. A quote or a thought on a stick pad, pasted on the wall. A mirror with electric blue frame.

And finally a terrace. Flowers in pots. A reclining chair in one corner. Terracotta pots and figures in one corner. A rug to sit on the floor. Petals floating in water in a rectangular earthen basin. A water lily, may be. Overlooking a park or a monument.

Honkkkkkkk… he woke up startled. Dam’n these cabs which come to pick up call-centre executives. Naipaul’s ‘A house for Mr Biswas’ fell from his chest. He was reading Page 329, where Mr Biswas writes a report for his newspaper Sentinel. One of the lines in his report read: “It was midnight and I was alone”. He looked around. A dog was barking incessantly in the street. Tunes of Jagraata, based on popular Hindi songs also reached his ears. In the night, trucks came along with drillers for illegal boring of water. There was everything illegal in the colony he lived.

For years, they had lived in rented rooms, he and his family. One room – where they lived, cooked, ate, slept, studied, received guests. Then a room and a kitchen, but the bathroom had no door. So once inside, you turned into a singer. He still sang pretty well. May be he needed more practise. But by that time the landlord had turned hostile. So the singing stopped. Then they shifted to another room. And then another. And then another.

Once he shifted to Delhi and his parents came to stay with him, he wanted to put an end to all this. In his own little way. Four years ago, he finally managed to buy a 2- bedroom flat in the illegal colony. “The colony will be regularised in no time by the Government and then you will see the rates sky-rocketing,” the builder had told him.

His father followed the Hindustan Times everyday. “Oh, that colony has been regularised. Our colony will also be, in no time”. Yes, the colony was regularised, but nothing changed really. The water remained scarce. Power cuts were a reality that downed upon them, a dozen times a day. There was no place to park the car. There was no pucca road. After every rain, the road became a swamp. There was noise everywhere. Of children wailing on the road. Of cabs coming to pick up call-centre executives. Of loud music being played on local-made speakers. Of dogs barking in the night. Of drunkards creating a brawl in the back street. Things turned from bad to worse in four years.

Then his father banked his hopes upon house loans. Every week, he would study Property Times, as if he was preparing for an entrance exam. “We will sell this house and take a bank loan. We will shift to Gurgaon from Delhi,” this became his new mantra. But his horoscope dashed his father’s hope. Every astrologer who studied his horoscope would prophesise that he would turn into an ascetic one day and run away. That is why his father always grew wary when he chucked his jobs like diapers. He feared that now, now he will run away. Whenever he chucked his job, he would not wake up in the morning at his usual time. For two days, his father would watch patiently and pray that what he thought was not true. But when the same thing got repeated on the third day, his father would understand. Then he would talk to himself for some time which sounded like, “God knows what he keeps on doing! I don’t know what he is up to! Bad luck, nothing else. Unlucky stars.” And then he would throw away the Property Times and immerse himself in the almanac. Study his son’s planetary position. But nothing would help. One day he would run away. One day.

He was not meant for these regular jobs. He wanted to write. He had all his hopes on Yimberzal. The novel which he claimed to work on. Yimberzal would bail him out or so he thought. And then there would be a red wall. Pebbles. Paper cutter. Mask. Narcissus. Water lily. And a dry bathroom.

He put the book back in the shelf and began to write: It was midnight and I was alone…