A graphic novel on Indian television

A couple of years ago, I created a mini graphic novel for Sarai. A friend, Irfan, who is the only sensible guy in the entire Radio FM industry had been trying hard ever since to put this novel online. I sent a CD to another friend, Avinash, who runs perhaps the most popular blog in Hindi, Mohalla. But owing to my rich technological skills, the CD was found out to be blank.
After waiting for any initiative on my side, and getting tired of waiting, Irfan has finally taken pains to scan a copy, page by page, and now, it is online.
You can see it here.

Gods' court marriage

I am late again. It is close to midnight as I drag my feet, climb the eighteen stairs that lead to my first-floor flat, and gently knock at the door with my car keys. A faint cough sounds from inside – that is my father’s way of telling me that there is no need to knock again, he is awake. In a moment the door opens and I am let in.

My clothes reek of cigarette smoke. My dinner is kept on the table, covered with my mother’s old shawl to keep it warm. After tearing open the day’s posts – bank statements, old copies of magazines which should have arrived a week ago, books, free passes – I sit down to eat. On the table, beside a reclining Ganesha, there is an almanac and a tattered copy of Shiv Mahimnastotram.

“Don’t eat anything impure tomorrow, it is Ashtami,” my father’s voice almost gets drowned in the hum of the ceiling fan. A siren begins to blare somewhere and, on the road below, the watchman, probably drunk by now, strikes the electric pole with his cane.
By “impure”, my father implies eggs, meat, and, if possible, alcohol also. Every month, a day before the Ashtami, my father issues this advisory.

I don’t know how to use the almanac that has guided my family and thousands of others for generations. For us, the Kashmiri Pandits, the entire life cycle is dictated and, perhaps, led by the minute calculations of the planets. For as long as I can remember, a thick, blue book has been arriving at our home every year around Shivratri and then, for the rest of the year, our lives are governed by it. Every month, on Ashtami, for instance, my father keeps a fast, after consulting the almanac.

The almanac decides everything for us – when to get married, when to enter a new house, when to buy a new car or when to join a new job. The last one is a very touchy issue at my house since I change my jobs so frequently that even the muhurat – the auspicious timings – fall short.

Over the years, though, the almanac has somewhat faded from our spiritual consciousness. There are times when my father no longer remembers the Shraadh – the death anniversary of my grandparents; on those days he is supposed to keep a fast. After he has had his breakfast, he then remembers it all of a sudden. But by then it is too late.

He spends the rest of that day looking at the wall in front of him.

Barring Ashtami, no other auspicious days such as Amawasya and Purnamasi are remembered any longer. Even if they are, no one cares about them any longer.

Even our festivals and marriage ceremonies have changed altogether. Shivratri, for instance, would be at least a week-long affair back home in Kashmir. I remember, as a child I would accompany my father to Habbakadal, built on the banks of the river Jhelum. We would get fresh fish and then earthen pots required for the puja from the Muslim potter.

For other puja paraphernalia, we would visit Kanth Joo’s tiny shop. The old, toothless man would be sitting on a cushion and over his head was a pulley through which ran thread used for tying up small and big bundles of almonds, cashew nuts, silver foil, vermillion, lotus seed, sugar cones, chestnut flour and what not.

At home, mother would cook three varieties of meat and fish curry apart from spinach and, of course, the Haakh. The electrician, sweeper and many others would come and ask for small tokens of money. The children would play with sea shells and men would gamble for the sake of fun.

In the spring of 1990, no ceremonial conch would be blown in the Pandit households. We were too scared. On the roads, young men, their LT jackets stuffed with weapons, roamed around, looking for potential targets.

On the fourth day of Shivratri, a hush prevailed on the banks of the river. Families arrived silently, to immerse the gods in the water.

In the dark waters, devoid of floating earthen lamps, the newly-wed Lord Shiva and the goddess looked as if they had eloped and then solemnized their marriage in a court.

In Jammu, and elsewhere too, we now have Chowmein stalls in marriage parties. Instead of Lalded, the youngsters would rather listen to Latino. The marriage ceremony itself, which took close to eight hours, is now finished in two or three. Nobody has time.

Jobs are waiting. Traffic signals are waiting. Friends who don’t what Ashtami is are waiting.

The next day, I am at the press club with a group of friends. There are fish fingers and grilled chicken on the table. I pick up a piece and bring it closer to my mouth.

Suddenly, I remember last night.

I remember the look in my father’s eyes and the cream-coloured wall.

“One fresh lime please,” I tell the waiter.

To Sir, with love

The story of an award-winning, upper-caste Geologist who is silently changing the lives of underprivileged children, most of them from lower castes, in a remote corner of India.

A fan has finally started working. But it is not that electricity has reached Kunaura, a small village, around 23 miles from Lucknow, the capital of eastern state of Uttar Pradesh, one of the major centres of rebellion during India’s first war of Independence in 1857. It’s because of a few solar panels which have been erected on the top of the Bhartiya Grameen Vidyalaya (Indian rural school) building, which has been running here for the past 35 years.

More than the blades of the fan, this new development has energized Dr. S.B Misra and his wife Nirmala. With the searing summer heat already knocking at the doors, they are glad that at least children in one classroom can breathe easy now.

The fan is a milestone in a journey which began in Canada in 1967 with three words: Kya kiya jaaye? (What to do?). As a young Geologist, Dr. Misra had come a long way from his village, adjacent to Kunaura. Though the village was not very far from Lucknow, it was light years away from development. As a child, Dr. Misra had walked for hours on non-existent roads to attend school. He had studied hard during hot summer nights, devoid of electricity. And now, in Canada, his entire future lay in front of him – bright and promising. More so after he had made a very important discovery – a 565-million-year-old fossil that is the oldest record of multi-cellular life on earth.

But 1967 was also the year when parts of India reeled under a severe drought. And then there were those three words: Kya kiya jaaye? which Dr. Misra and his friends had scribbled on a notebook.

It was time to make some tough decisions.

By the time Misra returned to India, and got married to Nirmala, the foundations of Bhartiya Grameen Vidyalaya (BGV) had been laid.

In 2008, the roll-call in the school is 720 students. A majority of them are from the lower castes. It’s not that they don’t have an option of studying in the nearby government schools. “It’s because BGV is as renowned as Welhams (a very renowned school in India) here,” quips Dr. Misra.

As we enter the school premises, the classes are on, and except the sound of recitation of tables from a junior class, there is not a whimper of sound to be heard anywhere. Nirmala, who is the principal of the school, looks at the campus and a faint smile appears on her lips. “It was my husband’s dream, but for me it became the greatest challenge of my life,” she says.

On May 14 in 1972, Dr. Misra and Nirmala got married. Dr. Misra had laid only one condition for marriage: The girl should share his vision of a school for the rural children. Before marriage, Nirmala had never seen a village but she had a passion for teaching. In less than two months after her marriage, the couple landed at Kunaura. Initially, Nirmala would make a round of villages, asking people to send their children to the school. “In order to avoid offending local customs, I would draw a veil over my face while talking to them,” remembers Nirmala. In between, a rumour spread that Misra had come back because his mental condition was not fit and he had been advised to take rest. Nevertheless, in the first year, fifty students joined the school.

A few of Misra’s colleagues, who shared his passion also helped initially. One of them was VVN Rao, a physicist, who helped build the school building.

But in two years, all of Misra’s savings were exhausted. So it was decided that one of them would have to take up a job. “Since it was I who would earn more salary, I left,” says Dr. Misra.

Meanwhile, Nirmala had given birth to twin sons. And now, in the absence of her husband, she was required to run the school. That meant a walk of eight miles to school and then the same distance to reach home. There were no roads and during monsoons, the narrow path would turn into a swamp. “Nirmala didi would cross through knee-high slush of mud and dung and then, after reaching school, she would change into a spare sari kept in her bag,” remembers a teacher, who has been with the school since beginning. Later on, the kids joined their father in Nainital where Dr. Misra had taken up a job, while Nirmala kept running the school.

In all these years, BGV has literally changed the face of this part of Uttar Pradesh. The first child who went to school from a village called Jafarpurua – known for producing dacoits – came to BGV. Today, another boy from this village, who studied at this school and went on to complete his Masters in Economics teaches here. Another teacher, Banke Lal cycles to school every day from his village, 13 miles away. “Every day, a few staff members of a nearby school accost me, and put pressure on me to join them, but I always refuse.”

For parents here, it’s a tough decision sending their children to BGV. In government schools, they provide children with meals, something that BGV cannot afford. “One day I asked a child if he was feeling well. He said no; he had a stomach ache. I realised later that he was simply hungry,” remembers Dr. Misra. Another positive development has been a steady increase in the enrollment of Muslim children. “Those families now prefer our school to their madrassas,” says Nirmala.

Even after these years, the lack of funds means that there still is no electricity in the school. “Bringing it to the school will cost 50,000 rupees which we don’t have right now,” rues Dr. Misra. Recently an Indian company and an NRI has donated some money but there is a lot that needs to be done. The temporary roof over few classrooms needs to be changed. Pointing towards her chair, Nirmala says, “ This is the chair I got here in 1972.”

How difficult has it been to run this school? “It’s a battle between Eklavya and Arjuna,” says Dr. Misra.

In the meantime, the fossil Dr. Misra had discovered in Canada has just been named after him – Fractofusus misrai. Initially, a deep conspiracy had taken place, hatched by Western scientists to deprive Dr. Misra of his credit. But his family fought a sustained battle; one of his sons actually learnt HTML programming to put his father’s case on the Internet. And finally, the Misras won.

Dr. Misra is now writing a story of his life in his book, The story of an ordinary Indian, which will appear later this year. But for him, it is, perhaps, this school which is his reply to the eternal quest of Kya kiya jaaye.

(The school really needs support. Those who want to help can contact Dr. S.B. Misra at 91-94155-60309 or 91-522-4010 640)

Not without my father

Away from the pseudo-activism of the Bollywood glitterati, a young assistant director of Taare Zameen Par fights for her father, who is under arrest on charges of being a Naxalite commander. Rahul Pandita reports.

Aamir Khan has probably never heard of Prashant Rahi. But on the day his maiden directorial venture Taare Zameen Par was released to critical acclaim, a young assistant director of his production team lay huddled, crying silently in one corner of a Mumbai apartment. Like the rest of the production crew, Shikha was very excited that the film for which she had worked really hard for months had finally hit the cinema halls. Her friends and relatives had begun to call since morning, and, in the late afternoon when her mobile phone rang again, she took it for yet another congratulatory call. But that phone call changed everything. It was a phone call from the police station.

In the newly-built state prison of Uttarakhand, on the outskirts of the capital Dehradun, a line from Iqbal’s immortal Saare jahan se accha Hindostan humara, written on a wall in front of the jail superintendent’s office reads, Hum bulbule hein iski (We are its bubbles) instead of Hum bulbulen hein iski (We are its bulbuls).

“So you have come to meet Prashant Rahi?” asks the young deputy jailer, and then instructs his junior, “Photo khincho inki (Get his picture clicked.) Anyone who comes to meet Rahi has to get his picture clicked first. A young man, perhaps a prisoner on duty, does that job, with a camera attached to a computer. He also then takes a printout of that picture.

In the visitor’s hall, 49-year-old Prashant Rahi receives his visitors with a warm smile. “Imagine, the policemen who claimed to have recovered a laptop from me did not even know how to operate that; they actually sought my help in getting it started,” Rahi tells this laughingly to anyone who cares to listen.

The Uttarakhand police claim to have arrested Rahi three months ago on December 22, from a forest area near the state’s border with Nepal, which they say was a temporary base of the Maoists. He is charged of being the zonal commander of the CPI (Maoist). Apart from the laptop which Rahi mentioned, he claims that some Maoist literature, which included books on Mao and a few pages of a magazine, taken out by the CPI (Maoist), was recovered from him. But senior police official refute that claim. “We also recovered a complete blueprint of the Naxalite movement in Uttarakhand which was commissioned to him by the top Naxal leadership,” says a senior police officer, who supervised Rahi’s arrest. The officer says that in the blueprint Rahi has written clearly that earlier he was a member of the People’s War Group, which merged with another Naxalite group to form the CPI (Maoist).

Rahi, a former journalist with The Statesman, says he was picked up from Dehradun itself on the afternoon of December 17, while walking on a road. “I was immediately blindfolded. The policemen in plain clothes said I was someone called Ram Singh who had robbed a businessman in Bijnor,” he says. It was only after senior police officials came to interrogate him, he says, he realised that he was being charged of being a Naxal leader.

Rahi is a very well-known face in the intellectual circles of Dehradun. He is believed to have translated a number of literary classics into Hindi. His friends say he was also very active during Uttarakhand’s movement for a separate statehood. He had also been trying to organise landless labourers against landlords.

“Let’s put it this way: Rahi always felt the urgency of doing something for the voiceless more than we do,” says Ashok P. Misra, a senior journalist and a former colleague of Prashant Rahi. “But to think that he was an active Naxalite commander is too far-fetched; I have a problem with the way the state has dealt with it,” he adds. Another former colleague and senior journalist, Rajiv Lochan Shah said that the state was trying to exaggerate the Maoist threat by arresting people like Rahi. “After the PM’s statement that the Naxalites posed the maximum threat to the country’s security, it seems that the Uttarakhand government wants to bite deep into the cake of Central funds allotted for fighting Naxals,” he said.

“If Rahi was indeed a Naxalite commander how come not even a tamancha (country-made pistol) was not recovered from him?” Shah asked. “The fact that we didn’t plant any arms proves that our recoveries are perfectly legal. Let Rahi’s fate be decided by the judiciary,” Inspector-General (Law and Order), Uttarakhand Police, M.A. Ganapathy said.

Rahi alleges that he was tortured brutally while in captivity. “At one point they said they will bring my daughter and force me to rape her,” he alleges. He says he was even forced to sign his confessional statement. “When I wrote ‘signed under duress’ they did not understand what that meant,” he says.

The police has filed a charge sheet against Rahi and, as per his lawyer, the chances of his release on bail in near future are almost nil. “There are lessons to be learnt from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh,” says the SSP of the state’s Special Task Force, Abhinav Kumar, “It doesn’t make sense to wait for anything big to happen and then act.”

Meanwhile, the battle has just begun for Shikha. A letter written to her by her father on the International Women’s Day is clutched hard against her chest (“He asked me to be strong”). Away from the pseudo–activism practiced by the glitterati of Bollywood, she is hoping that her father is freed soon. “There is a strange rule in the jail manual – I cannot send sweets for my father which he likes very much,” she regrets.

The making of a Naxalite

In his first ever interview, top Naxal leader Misir Besra tells me how a jackfruit tree led him to the Naxal movement.

When the police party approached the car in which Misir Besra was travelling, he did not run away. The strategy was perfect since Besra’s photo had never appeared in the police records. And looking at his face and physique, no one would ever suspect him of being one of the most-wanted Naxalite leaders.

But this time, the police were not taking any chances.

Besra was detained and his photo circulated among jailed Naxalites. In no time, his men identified him. After all, Misir Besra alias Commander Sunirmal alias Bhaskar was no ordinary foot soldier. As a member of the CPI (Maoist)'s politburo and the Central Military Commission, Besra headed the Eastern Command, supervising the party’s activities in Orrisa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and lower Assam. He was also the incharge of the Military Intelligence wing and helped the party procure arms and ammunition.

Besra was feeling cold when I met him in Jharkhand. This was his first ever interaction with the media. Upon being offered a cigarette, Besra politely refused saying he had quit smoking. “I had come to drink tea when the police came and picked me up,” he said with a smile on his face.

Besra has come a long way having spent 22 years in the jungle. While studying at a school in the Giridih district of then undivided Bihar, Besra says he witnessed a lot of discrimination against tribals. Later in 1985, as a student of Hindi Honours, he also showed keen interest in Political Science and read about the lives of revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh and Khudiram Bose. “One day, I took mahua (local brewed liquor) to a shopkeeper and he refused to pay me. He asked me to run away or he would thrash me,” recalls Besra. Soon after this incident, an old jackfruit tree in his village was cut down by a few landlords. “They took away the branches but I decided that I would not let them take away the trunk,” says Besra. Along with a handful of friends, Besra guarded the trunk. “The Block Development Officer and the Tehsildar tried to convince me to let the affluent families take away the trunk but I did not budge,” he says.

According to Besra, this incident left an indelible mark on him. “Earlier, I was even influenced by Shibu Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha but soon it would appear to be a false movement to me,” says Besra.

In October 1985, a troupe of left-wing Akhil Bharatiya Krantikaari Sammelan came visiting Besra’s village. After listening to the revolutionary songs, Besra decided to join them. “I slipped away with them after the programme was over,” says Besra.

There was a time, Besra remembers, when the Naxalites were only in possession of a few double barrel guns. “Initially we were treated like dacoits by the villagers,” he says. But gradually things changed.

This was the time when disconnect between ‘Bharat’ and ‘India’ was widening. People in this area were increasingly getting discontented with New Delhi. People were increasingly going to bed with empty bellies. Healthcare and education were nonexistent. More than two decades later, nothing has changed in these parts of India.

Initially, the new recruits like Besra received training from the rebels of the People’s War Group (PWG), active in Andhra Pradesh. In 2004, PWG and the Maoist Communist centre (MCC), active in Bihar and Jharkhand, joined hands to form the CPI (Maoist).

According to Besra, many recruits leave after being inducted since they cannot handle the rigours of jungle. But most of them stay since this at least ensures that they get food to eat. Moreover, a gun in their hands also gives them a sense of empowerment.

During the 9th Congress of the party, held in Bhimbandh in Bihar, Misir Besra was the incharge of security. While returning back, his company raided a police picket in Lakhisarai district of Bihar, killing four police personnel. In 2004, Besra is said to have planned and executed an ambush in Baliba in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district in which 29 police personnel were killed.

In 2003, Besra met the chief of the CPI (Maoist), Muppala Laxmana Rao alias Ganapathi in Jharkhand. During interrogation, Besra told the police that Ganapathi dyes his hair. He keeps trimmed moustaches and sometimes shaves them off. Another top leader, Mallojula Kotheshwara Rao alias Prahallad is deaf and also suffers from severe health problems. Another top party functionary, Pramod Mishra, who is the incharge of Punjab, Haryana, New Delhi and J&K, is a fine sports person. Also, there is only one female member in the 17-member Central Committee. Her name is Anuradha Gandhi and she happens to be the wife of politburo member Koppad Gandhi, who is incharge of party documentation.

Besra says that the state committees of the CPI (Maoist) also exist in states like Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. “Without the participation of middle class, there will be no revolution,” says Besra. So how much success have they achieved in urban areas like Delhi? “Not much,” Besra confesses, “but our members are active there.” Besra’s admission is confirmed by the fact that recently Maoist literature and propaganda CDs were recovered in Haryana. In Delhi, an undercover Naxalite was arrested from Sangam Vihar in Delhi. An intelligence report by the Home Ministry states that Maoists are trying to engineer cast conflicts as a part of their strategy in states like Haryana. After the clash between the police and the workers of Honda factory in Gurgaon in 2005, a Honda showroom was attacked in Haryana’s Kaithal. The attack was led by Ravinder, a member of a left-wing organisation.

According to Besra’s interrogation report, Naxalites were also planning to target at least two police officers. One of them is H.J. Dora, former Director General of Andhra Pradesh Police, who lives in Delhi.

The Naxalite leadership is also looking for experts like Computer engineers. According to Besra, the Central Committee had asked for allotting a Chemist and an Electronic Engineer as well.

How does he spend time in jail? “I read a lot; I have just finished reading a novel by Agyey.

Is he in touch with his comrades? “No,” replies Besra in a matter-of-fact tone, “since I am under arrest they won’t trust me any more.”

Who is Manmohan Singh?

Coke and Haldiram's have reached the worst-affected naxalite areas of Jharkhand but not the government. On the budget day, Rahul Pandita travels through the state’s remotest villages to discover that almost nobody has ever heard of Manmohan Singh, leave alone Chidambaram.


That day, the Block Development Officer, Lalan Kumar visited Gitildih village for the first time. He brought along with him a cheque of 12,500 rupees, 10 litres of kerosene oil and 50 kg of rice. But by then it was too late. A week ago, on February 3, when the entire national media was going gung-ho on the war of words between Jaya Bachchan and Raj Thackeray, a landless Adivasi labourer, Turia Munda climbed a tree and hung himself with a rope. Employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme, 48-year-old Munda had not been paid his wages for more than a month.

A year ago, Munda’s wife had died because of diarrohea, which takes many lives in this small village, 55 kms. away from Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi. They leave behind four children. Three of them now live with their maternal uncle while the youngest, 12-year-old Jholu Munda has stayed back. A student of sixth class, he has stopped going to school ever since.

Gitildih village is a stark reality. It is because of villages like Gitildih that many people are left with no option but to join the Maoist fold. There is not even a sub-health centre for a population of 1,000 people. Only a nurse comes once in a week. The nearest hospital is ten kilometres away and the road is non-existent. When a person in Gitildih falls ill, the family prays that Ravindra Singh Munda has not gone anywhere. Ravindra is one of the four persons in the village who own a motorcycle. So the patient is taken on the motorcycle to Bundu town. But during monsoons, the road is submerged under water and the sick person has to be either taken on a cycle or somebody’s back. “My motorcycle is known as the village ambulance,” says Ravindra. In the months of July and August, diarrohea strikes Gitildih. In November and December it is malaria. Children die. Women die. And so do able-bodied men.

There are a few handpumps in Gitildih but most of them are dry. And those that work have contaminated water. So the villagers drink water from a nearby river. During summer the river dries up too. So they just lie down on string cots and stare at empty spaces.

There is no electricity either. Only a few boys have seen Jharkhand’s own Mahendra Singh Dhoni play cricket on a television set in the town.

Jagan Nath Munda is 65 and he collects firewood from the nearby forest to buy rice, salt and oil. Out of 20 other people who have assembled outside his house, only Munda knows that the Prime Minister of India is Manmohan Singh. “But I have never seen him; how does he look like?” he asks. Does he know which party does Singh belong to? Munda scratches his head for a while and then replies, “I think he is from a party called the BJP.”

Near the entrance of the village, Samla Munda points towards a building which looks like a building from Kabul after September 11. “This was supposed to be a health centre. But no doctor has come here for almost two years now,” he says.

Narsighpur and Mirgitand in East Singhbhum district are the last twin villages in Jharkhand, bordering West Bengal. 15-year-old Jhumri collects firewood and then walks barefooted on stones and thorns till Galudi town which is 14 kilometres away. If she is lucky, she might get 20-25 rupees from a dhaba owner. Then she will walk back to the village after buying rice from that money. If she fails to sell the firewood, she will have to remain hungry. Has she heard of Manmohan Singh? “Who is he?” she asks.

Like Gitildih, there is no electricity in Jhumri’s village. A High School is 14 km. away. There is only one well for water. A sub-health centre is 4 km. away. “But that exists only on paper,” rues a villager. “We are getting mowed down by elephants, wild pigs and naxalites – in that order,” says a teashop owner. “20 years ago, life was better. We had tough life but we were happy,” he adds. Has the NREG scheme made any difference? A villager laughs and says, "NREG is for the rich, not for the poor.”

Meanwhile in Gitildih, Jholu Munda kills time by killing birds with his sling. The naxalites have been urging villagers to join them. Next time when they pay a visit, at least one person from Gitildih may join them. The sling may just be replaced by an AK-47.

(This report appeared in the recent issue of The Sunday Indian weekly)

Times like these

How does one live
In times like these?
Does one have to live
In times like these?

I don’t remember last night. It rained heavily and I only have faint memories of being held up at a traffic intersection. My shirt collar was still wet when I felt it this morning; I had not changed my clothes. While I was asleep, the maid had kept a cup of tea on the side-table, covering it with a tattered copy of Humboldt’s Gift. And now my tea tastes of damp earth.

I take out a cigarette from a pack, crumpled in my jeans pocket. The match sticks won’t burn one after another. I get up and stumble towards the kitchen. I light the cigarette with the flame of the gas burner; I think a few strands of my hair also get burned.

I stand there, taking stock of things, and of my own life. I open the cupboard and peep into the small bone-china containers. There is no sugar. Only a little bit of tea leaves is left in another. A lump of ginger lies withering in one corner.

I close the cupboard and then return to the bed. The cigarette ash falls on the bedsheet. I remove it with a stroke of my hand. It leaves behind a grey line. I throw the cigarette in one naked corner of the room and slip back into the folds of the blanket. I try to remember last night.

I can’t remember last night.

What does one remember
In times like these?
Is there anything to remember
In times like these?

Could I ever sleep?

On the road below
They keep on creating noise:
Hawkers looking for
Stale newspapers and empty
Whisky bottles
Beggars masquerading as ascetics
With a tin God immersed in mustard oil
Salesmen selling aluminum foil
And those who clean gas burners
And herbs for slow learners

I try to sleep
Over yesterday’s headlines
And hangover induced at midnight
And the stains that won’t purge
But the shouts that emerge
From the road below
Won’t let me sleep

A child begins crying too
And a scooter won’t start
A plane also flies overhead
While I toss and turn in the bed

During the night too
Someone snored in the other room
And the walls won’t keep it
To themselves
The sound kept on tumbling in
From racks and shelves

Can I sleep peacefully now?
Or do I have to wait till
I turn old
To sleep in my grave
Without hearing a whimper
As if in my ears
They have poured
Molten gold

The man with a tie

I like it when people pay attention to my stories. For a living I sell medicines – promote them, to be precise – but my real talent, if you really ask me, lies in storytelling.

Six days a week, I wear a tie brought from the underground Palika bazaar, comb my hair backwards, eat my breakfast of two boiled eggs (except Tuesdays), wash it down with a glass or a cup of tea, depending on my wife’s mood, and then make rounds of clinics and hospitals with my leather bag, telling doctors that the medicines and drugs produced by my pharmaceutical company are God’s gift to mankind.

Some of them are busy treating patients and ask me to come later. But some of them invite me in. They shift uneasily on their chairs while I tell them about new medicines introduced in the market. They quickly take free samples I offer, putting them inside drawers.

“And, what else?” the moment one of them asks me this, I assume my hidden role and regale him with my stories. There are so many anecdotes I know. Like about this neighbour of mine who dropped his wife from the back of his scooter in the midst of a bustling market and drove straight home, only to find his wife missing. It is rumoured that she did not come back for six months, choosing to stay back at her parents’ house. Or about this friend of mine who attended a meditation session and, afterwards, began to suspect that his mother was a monster. Or about this distant relative of mine who committed suicide one wintry afternoon. He was ironing his trousers as he waited for an official pick up. He had ironed one of the legs when he suddenly decided to end his life and did so by hanging himself with a Bombay Dyeing bed sheet.

Sometimes, I invent my own stories. I cook them up. Sometimes, I also offer diagnosis to doctors who know me for long now. Recently, one such young doctor looked sullen when I entered into his room. This doctor is also a writer, or at least he claims to be one. Behind him there hangs a portrait of Ernest Hemingway. Between thick medical encyclopaedias stacked on a shelf he has kept copies of The Old Man and the Sea and A Moveable Feast.

The young man is restless as I can see. I rub my fingers on my striped tie – the two fingers of my right hand between which I hold cigarettes. The fingertips have almost turned yellow and they perpetually smell of cigarette smoke. Adjusting the knot of my tie, I speak to him.

“Doctor sahab, it seems you are stressed out with work. I think you badly need a vacation,” I throw the bait.

He lets out a guttural laugh. He takes out his spectacles and keeps them gently on the table. “Do you really think so?” he asks. And then without waiting for my answer, he continues.

“Actually what I need right now is to be able to spend time with a
like-minded person who is either a painter or a writer. She (There he goes, I think, so he has facing difficulty with his spouse) and I could go somewhere in hills where we could create our own mini workshop. She could do her own thing and so would I and, in the evening, we could go for long walks, drink tea at roadside stalls.”

I see dreams floating in his eyes. Then I know that this is the time.

“Let me tell you a story, Sir, about this man who had this habit of rubbing his fingers over his tie…” And so I begin…

Our own Kolkatas

In the miasma of darkness, cars moved along the tall building. Their high-beam lights shone on the glass façade for a moment and then moved away quickly. Men did not have that virtue. They would slither through silently, some of them on rickety bicycles, their bottoms turned sore by cushion-less seats.

From the third-floor window of a restaurant, he watched it all – the grand trapezium of light and darkness, muscle and bone. The cigarettes, one after another, weighed heavily on his chest, like a secret kept for long. The dark rum numbed the pain in his lower abdomen. But it would return, as it did every night, keeping him awake to nurse hopelessness.

By the time he was on the road back home, the city had been put to sleep. Towards his left, the Qutab Minar stood absolutely still, its reverie broken at times by honking drivers who probably were in a hurry to reach home or elsewhere. But nothing awaited him; he was in no hurry.

In few hours, the flower market adjacent to the monument would buzz to life. Florists would arrive and haggle for better rates. Afterwards, they would carry huge bunches of flowers on their scooters. Later in the day, people would buy them for sustaining love affairs, decorating marriage venues, brightening up small office cubicles and even for feeling good while shitting in bathrooms.

A little ahead, frail men, wearing bright, fluorescent helmets on their heads, worked in an almost geometric pattern, trying to build a metro rail system for the people of the city. Many of its users would consist of men from their own villages, from the eastern part of the country, who would have gone to Kolkata once upon a time but now chose Delhi to be able to send modest money orders.

Eiy sajni re, eiy sajni re, eiy sajni
Piya gayen Kalkatwa eiy sajni
Kaisen chalan rahetwa, eiy sajni

How would it work for young brides when their grooms went away, a few days after marriage, to far and distant lands, only to come back once a year, or once in five years, or never? When the rain arrived, would they let it needle their anaemic skin?

He stopped his car. A car whizzed past him. Then another. He counted them for a minute or so. His last count came to around eleven. Or may be it was twelve. He opened the back of his car and took out a half-finished bottle of rum.

No one he knew had gone to Kolkata. But Kolkata, sometimes, could also be a state of mind. And now, he needed to find his own needles.

(Pic courtesy: Preeti Paul Kannath)

Let's remember each other by name

I have this very strong belief that all stories deserve to be told. For a
story-teller, imagination is like a whore. She entices him with fake lipstick. But despite her sagging breasts sometimes, a story-teller must conscript with her. He must be a debauch, or at least, act like one.

I have told you many stories. Sometimes you get too entangled into it. There are times when you think that every story I tell comes from my own life. Well, it may be true in some cases but most of the times it is my imagination which runs amok. When it takes a leap, I am forced to run along lest I be left behind. That, my reader, is the essence of my life. I am not capable of anything else except imagining (I may also produce exceptionally-well brewed tea or a finely garnished omelette at times). I spend most of my time day dreaming.

Let me tell you about this character of mine. He is a young man, let us say, in his early thirties, who knows a girl who is few years younger to him. They have never met in person; they have never known each others’ voices. And yet, they are very close. They share intimate details of life with each other. Probably also because they are separated with a veil of anonymity. I mean, they know each other, but only through SMS or an occasional e-mail.

One day, as the man lay on the top berth of a train, he feels alone. The train is taking him to a place where he has spent few years many years ago. The man wishes that all the faces he remembers would just fade away. A curtain is drawn across his berth and he lays half awake, trying to take stock of his life. His strongest urge, he realises, is to be able to lie next to someone. And then he remembers her.

“You remind me of hot chocolate,” he sends her a message.

She replies and thus begins a string of conversation that extends till wee hours of the morning. The girl confides in him, as usual, telling the man about a boy whom she is in love with. But she says she fears that she might lose him. She is a compulsive dreamer and is taken aback, sometimes, with the boy’s practicality.

“I want to grow old with him,” she writes.

The man realises that his dreams are similar to that of the girl. He doesn’t want to be rich and nor does she. She loves rain and so does he. He feels like putting her head in his lap and read poetry to her.

“I am knitting a sweater for him,” she writes.

All his life the man has waited for someone who would knit a sweater for him, like one of those characters in a Russian novel which he has read as a boy.

“Let us meet,” he tells her, “but we won’t speak to each other; we will just converse through writing. We will meet at a fixed place and may be sit in front of each other in a café.”

“But you will hear me when I ask for a mocha,” she replies.

“No, we will just point it out to the waiter.”

“I am smiling in the dark,” she writes back. He smiles too.

After he reaches home, he collects scraps of paper on which he could write and converse with the girl. She goes home to clean and feed a friend who is staying with her.

They might meet soon.

Not me. He. And her.

At the Oxford Book Store

Speaking at the Oxford Book Store, Delhi during a discussion on Media Nagar 03.

"Writing is the most exciting thing in my life"

He teaches Marketing at the Oxford University, but if you read his three novels, you might take him for a historian. Unlike some of the Indian writers in English, his stories do not drip with nostalgia. A CPM cardholder in the 70s in West Bengal, Kunal Basu, by his own admission, is no longer a Communist. His latest work, a collection of twelve short stories, titled, The Japanese Wife is being made into a film by filmmaker Aparna Sen. In Delhi for the launch of his book, Basu spoke to me on subjects ranging from writer’s discipline to the changing world order.

A reader of yours made a comment about you recently, and I quote: “History seems to be his only fetish.” Does your latest work, in some way, try to break that mould?

Kunal Basu: It is very curious comment. The collection of short stories is different from my earlier works because these are all contemporary stories. There is a story in this collection called The Accountant which has deep historical coonections. But, in a way, yes, it is different from my earlier novels.

You have written about hundred articles in Marketing and you also teach Consumer Behaviour and Brand Strategy. How do you manage to juggle between your life as an academic and that of a novelist?

KB: I am passionate about my writing; I have always been an author at heart. The choice of a professional or academic career was to some extent circumstantial. We Indians, more than anybody else, should realise that our career choices often don’t reflect our true passions. At the time I was growing up in India in 70s, if you did not become a doctor or an engineer, most likely you became unemployed. As a middle class Indian boy, I studied subjects that really didn’t interest me as much as others. So when actually I should have studied literature, history and things like that, I studied science and engineering. And that took me down to a certain career path. I am not saying that my current academic job is completely uninteresting to me, but if given a choice I would have done it differently. And how do I manage the two worlds? I try to manage the academic writing and literary writing by being very disciplined in what I do. I also try not to think too much about the difference.

Your first novel is about opium and as per your own admission, you have never tasted opium. The second novel’s protagonist is a bisexual, and you are not one. Where do you get the inspiration for your characters?

KB: I do not write surface autobiography; some of us do. How can I take bits of my own life and that of people around me and turn it into a novel! The inspiration for a story comes from most unlikely places. Grateful Ganga, for instance, is a story which began forming in my mind after I read a small, little newspaper report about Jerry Garcia’s (Rock star) wife coming to India to sprinkle his ashes on the Ganga. And that was all that there was to the story. And I started seeing images of this woman arriving with the ashes. So inspirations from life, interacting with people, snatches of conversation, newspaper reports, day dreaming – that is how stories are born in my mind.

You grew up in Kolkata, and both your parents were really into activism. You were yourself a cardholder of the CPM during the heady days of Naxalism. Have those days in any way shaped what you are today?

KB: Very much. Not the politics, I am not a Communist anymore, but – let me answer it this way – if I hadn’t taken part in student politics, I would not have had an exposure to aspects of life which tremendously benefited me as an author. It would have been very easy for me to go through life or substantial parts of my life being very comfortable; afterall I had come from a middle-class household. I was reasonably well-educated and I had been to good universities. I could have spent my life in offices, in movie halls, golf courses, cafes, but life in politics took me to places that were outside my comfort zone. It took me to people whose living conditions are very different, very difficult - absolutely poor people, people at the edges of the poverty. It exposed me to a whole range of human sensations that otherwise I would not have been exposed to. So I owe a lot to my upbringing, although the politics of that period does not remain with me.

And why is it so? What has changed really?

KB: Sadly, the world has changed. If you read Lenin’s Café (One of Basu’s stories), in some way it hints to that. The world has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. And some of the things we took forgranted are no longer valid. The ways with which we saw our friends and enemies and so-called friends and so-called enemies, have changed. I no longer subscribe to a particular political philosophy because I have seen that, perhaps, it would not deliver the kind of society that I would prefer for myself and for people around me. But what has remained from that period is deep compassion for the underprivileged. And in many of things that I write, it seeps in.

We have this huge debate in India whether artists – writers, filmmakers, painters – should be turning to activism at all. Do you think a writer like yourself can detach himself from what is happening in his society?

KB: Nowhere in life and in any society at any point in time has one been able to build a wall between art and life. And why would you want to build that wall! When you are writing something, obviously you are commenting on society and the way people live. It is absolutely fine to do that. People can take issue with that; you can say that I disagree and say I do not like the way you have portrayed a certain reality. And that’s fine too. The world of art is the world of debate and arguments. One would hope that such debates and arguments are conducted in a civilised fashion. But you would want your authors to address substantial issues. What else would they be writing about?

There is this impression that the Indian Diaspora basically writes what we term as “nostalgic fiction” about India. Do you think that assessment is true, or fair?

KB: This field of Indian writers writing in English is so vast – you have got people like Salman Rushdie on the one hand and Arundhati Roy on the other. How on earth can anyone draw any generalisations from that! In fact, the generalisation is often made in the West and we Indians shouldn’t make that generalisation. There are so many different genres, so many different stories; I don’t think Amitava Ghosh’s novels are about nostalgia at all. Certainly, my writing is not about India. I have not left behind India, I have just gone travelling.

Salman Rushdie once remarked that writers writing in English in India are producing far more important body of work than the regional writers. What is your take on this?

KB: I completely disagree; the best Indian authors write in vernacular. I am a bilingual author – my early short stories and poems have been in Bangla. It is an outrageous statement for Rushdie to have made because, one: he doesn’t know and read and speak all Indian languages. All regional literature doesn’t get translated in a very stylish way around the world. It doesn’t win major prizes but that doesn’t diminish it any way.

What does your knowledge about consumer behaviour tell you about the present-day India?

KB: India is in the grasp of a consumerist culture that we have never seen before in the past. I am not saying all of India because all of India is not privileged and financially well-off. But the middle and the upper middle class is consuming with a passion and that has really changed the face of urban India in a significant way.

There was a time when you told someone in India that you were a writer and his next question would be: Wo to theek hai magar karte kya ho? Do you think that opinion about writers has changed here in India?

KB: Actually it hasn’t changed and it hasn’t changed in the whole world. I am given to understand that about 95 percent of all published authors in the English language, worldwide, have a day job. I am one of the 95 percent. Even the Indian authors I meet in various literary festivals, most of them have a day job.

Rembrandt once said: Not a single day without a line. Though he said that in context of painting, that holds more or less true for writing also. How discilplined are you as a writer? Do you write everyday? What is your writing pattern?

KB: Writing is the most exciting thing in my life. I wake up in the morning to run to my Study to start writing. Either I am writing text, or reading for my writing or taking notes, this is something which I do everyday – this is not something which is done certain time or certain days or certain weeks.

Your literary agent, I believe, keeps on asking you about your “Bengal” book? Is it coming?

KB: There are some Bengal stories in my story collection but after I put them together I was really surprised that there are more Delhi stories than there are Bengal stories. I am not at this point of time thinking – I might at some point of time – of sitting down and consciously writing a Bengal story. As a matter of fact, I do not write anything by first identifying a theme and then say, okay, I want to write about opium, what’s the story! I do it the other way. When I think of a story, I say, well, this is exciting, let’s do it.

The Japanese Wife is already much-talked about, also because it is a film now. Do you think that film as a medium does justice to stories such as yours?

KB: This is not new, vast number of films have been made out of novels. Look at India, Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay is perhaps the most-filmed Indian novelist. Sometimes you have got brilliant adaptations of mediocre stories; sometimes you have bad adaptations of great stories. But I am very much in love with Cinema; I have been connected with cinema as a child actor for Mrinal Sen. I am a film buff.

What next ? Have you begun thinking about what to do next?

KB: I have started work on my next novel set in India, but I am not prepared to say anything more than that right now.

(An edited version of this appeared first in The Sunday Indian weekly. Pic: Mukund Dey)

On suicide, Wandhama and, perhaps, everything else in life

This evening, a middle-aged man with receding hairline jumped from the top floor of my office building and died on the floor, next to a promotional board of Johnie Walker which reads: Keep walking. His one shoe lay near his motionless body.

People watched him from a distance. By the time someone called the police, a pool of blood was created beneath his face. The man was wearing a jacket and a pair of blue jeans. While I sat in my office, discussing literature with a friend, the man must have decided to take the final plunge.

I don’t know who this man is. Probably he was not an employee of any of the offices in the building. Probably he was an outsider who just climbed the fifth floor to end his life. Probably he was tired of life. Probably he loved it too much.

N was with me when this happened, and like me, he also rushed out after hearing the commotion. When we entered back into my room, we just sat there, perhaps avoiding each other’s gaze. I tried calling an ambulance service in the hope that the man might be actually alive. I could not connect. I switched off my computer.

As we left office, N and I, we passed by the man. The police was yet to arrive. The crowd of spectators had grown thick. N mumbled something – something about the inefficiency of police. I thought the man’s family, if he had any, still did not know. Probably his son would be playing cricket. His wife would be watching television, getting ready to cook their
dinner – probably his favourite dish. And the man is no more.

Driving back home, I tell two friends about it. One of them laughs. I reach home. I pour myself a stiff drink. I gulp it down. I open my laptop. I make another drink.

P has downloaded some new songs. As I browse through them, I realise that she surely doesn’t have the inclination to listen to at least three songs she has downloaded. Probably she has downloaded them for me. But she hasn’t been able to tell me that for twenty-seven days now.

The police must have arrived by now. They would have removed his body. How would they ascertain who he is? Probably he has a mobile phone. Or may be, they find his visiting cards in his wallet. May be, he has a driver’s license.

Ten years have passed today since a 16-year-old boy saw his father, mother, sister and his neighbours being killed in front of his eyes. It happened in Wandhama , in Kashmir valley. The boy’s family begged the killers to spare them but they had come with a clear task: annihilate the few Hindu families who had chosen not to leave their home and hearth. The 23 dead included four children. That boy was the lone survivor. Where is he now? The case has been closed, as a newspaper report tells me. But who will close the memory gates of that boy?

Did that man look at the Johnie Walker board as he entered into the building? If only he had – may be, he would have been walking towards his home right now.

There is a knock at my door. I am being called for dinner.

Friends don't die

“He was carrying his revolver when they shot him dead.” The old caretaker at the Ghadar Memorial Hall in Jalandhar takes out a blue handkerchief and spreads its content on the table. There is an old spectacles frame and a blood-stained bus ticket, recovered from Darshan Canadian’s shirt pocket.
“The problem with Comrades is that they are very fond of justifying their viewpoint. When the two young men waylaid him, he got into an argument with them instead of taking out his revolver,” an old associate of Canadian tells us. It was on September 25, 1986 when Darshan Canadian was shot dead by Khalistani terrorists.

In Punjab, the wounds have healed more or less. One deadly decade of terrorism has passed since long. Beyond Punjab, people only know of a super cop and a chief minister who finally led the Khalistani dream to its nemesis. But in Punjab, those who actually offered resistance to the movement without being protected by gun-toting policemen, are part of the folklore, much like Bhagat Singh. These are a handful of Comrades, like Darshan Canadian, who laid down their lives fighting religious fundamentalism. These were the men who were armed only with idealism.

In village Talwindi Salem, the mango tree still exists. Sukhwinder Singh Sandhu takes me there. At first, he talks in a matter-of-fact manner. And then his eyes turn wet. Sandhu vividly remembers that sunny morning on March 23, 1988, when he left his cousin Avtaar Singh ‘Paash’ and his friend Hansraj near the mango tree at the family tubewell. “When we heard the gunshots, Paash’s mother thought that the nearby cold storage was on fire. But I knew “saade ghar te aag lagi hai (it’s our house which has been set afire.)”

The most dangerous thing is to be filled with stillness/Not to feel any agony and bear it all/Leaving home for work and from work return home/The most dangerous thing is the death of our dreams… These lines by Paash, considered by many as Punjab’s most influential revolutionary poet is, in a way, a reflection of his combativeness. In the mid-`80s Paash was the cheerleader of resistance against Punjab terrorism.
Through his writings, he had become a festering wound for fundamentalism. From America, where he had shifted in 1985, he took out Anti-47, a magazine that opposed those who supported Khalistan. “In his village, his friends had advised him to go underground since he was on the hitlist of terrorists,” remembers Sukhwinder. But he had refused. It was on that morning in 1988 when acting upon a tip-off, terrorists lay their hands upon Paash and his friend. After being hit by a bullet on his hand, Paash tried to ecsape but fell down near the mango tree. The terrorists pumped an entire burst into his head. Hansraj was also killed nearby. Paash was 38. Fifty-seven years ago, on the same day, Bhagat Singh had achieved martyrdom.

Not very far from where his brother fell to bullets, Harbans Lal sits in his newly-built bigger home, trying to remember his brother’s journey. “Hansraj was very close to Paash and even in their death they were together,” he says. After Hansraj’s death, the village elders advised him to sell off his land and settle down somewhere else. “But that would have been an insult to Hansraj’s martyrdom,” says Harbans Lal. After his son’s death, their father stopped working in the family fields. In the memory of his late brother, Harbans Lal encouraged his son to become a weightlifter. (“I wanted him to be as physically strong as Hansraj was mentally”).

In retaliation to these killings, their comrades killed a woman and her father in Talwindi Salem. The woman, a supporter of Khalistan, is believed to have passed on information about Paash’s location to his killers.

In Majha area – the worst-affected area during militancy – Harsha Sheena village is the Panjshir of Punjab. Long before Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two men posing as journalists two days before 9/11, a woman met Hardev Babbu just outside his home.
Babbu and his other comrades had been paying the terrorists back in the same coin – hitting them without waiting for them to attack. In many areas, the fundamentalists would block entry points leading to Hindu households, denying them access to essential commodities like milk and vegetables. But Babbu, a Sikh by birth, would lead his men to break such blockades. It was after a dreaded terrorist, Kuldeep Singh Tolanangal was killed by Babbu’s bullet, that the terrorists decided to annihilate him. But they could not fight back. So they hatched a plan. Posing as a journalist, the woman met Babbu and enticed him to come to Amritsar for an interview. It was there that Babbu was drugged and after being tortured brutally, his head was cut off and hung outside the gurudwara in his village to terrorise his friends. But instead of discouraging people from speaking out against terrorists, such killings motivated men like Tarsem Peter. Four years before Babbu’s barbaric killing, Comrade Baldev Mann was killed by terrorists in Harsha Sheena. “That day, I became a full-time opponent of oppression,” says Peter.
One night, while returning after addressing a public gathering, Peter was stopped by CRPF men. “I told them clearly that I had hidden a revolver under my motorcycle’s seat and that it was meant for self-defence. They let me go,” recalls Peter. Today Peter is the state president of a labour union.

In Lakhan ka Padda village, poet Jaimal Padda was shot dead on March 17, 1988. During the peak of terrorism, Padda would take out processions against Khalistan movement and write against terrorists in his journal. For his departed comrades, he had written a poem: Mitra di yaad nayo pulni (The memory of friends won’t fade away). Long after he is gone, Padda is still remembered by his friends. It is not important to raise statues in memory. Carrying forward his work is how he is being kept alive.

Years after the Khalistan movement withered away, dirty politics has begun once again. Sikh fundamentalist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale’s portrait has been installed at the SGPC museum in Amritsar. How do those who opposed the idea of Khalistan tooth and nail see it? “The whole politics of Punjab is based on such bogus issues; they are trying to divert peoples’ attention from problems like unemployment, etc.,” says writer Balbir Parwana. “Everything has been commodified,” says Peter. “Recently I saw 10-12 girls in a village bus. All of them wore air-hostess uniforms and wanted to make it big. But the problem is that the so-called university they go to operates from a single room,” he adds. “Some of us frequent a food-stall that sells fish fry. But this evening we couldn’t have it. A prominent politician from Punjab is staying at Radisson Hotel here and he has ordered the entire stock of fish for his chamchas and himself,” another Comrade tells us in Jalandhar.

As the night approaches, I am led to an ahaata (open-air bar) for a few rounds of vodka by some of the Comrades. After three rounds, one Comrade slurringly tells us: “You know, Yudhishtir’s (the eldest of Pandava brothers) chariot used to run two inches above ground since he only used to speak the truth. But after his role in Ashwathama’s death, his chariot hit the ground. If you really ask me, the chariots of today’s politicians have got stuck in the ground since they lie so much.”

Next morning, in Harsha Sheena, Hardev Babbu’s closest friend, Surjit Sheena is sitting outside the CPI-ML office. From the walls, the departed comrades stare back. “There have been some cases recently where postgraduate boys were involved in chain-snatching since there are no jobs,” he rues. I remain silent. After a pause, I ask him, “Do you still remember Comrade Babbu?” He looks at me, and then at Babbu’s picture. There is another pause and then he speaks: “Friends don’t die.”

(This essay first appeared in the year-end special of The Sunday Indian).

On the Kodak paper

Beneath the red quilt, your memories seep inside me like brandy. The days are shorter now and, in the night, when I am sometimes awakened, I feel my heartbeat – the feebleness of it. I have no more stories to tell; all plots are revealed. Some lie low, like dormant volcanoes. I suspect they will never ever erupt.

How do I weep silently again, like I did that night, years ago, when I came home, staggering on my feet, and listened to a song from Raincoat? The intensity of youth is fading away.

Yesterday, I was searching for old papers and it led me to an old, worn-out envelope. I recognised the stamp on it, probably stuck on it with your saliva. I opened it up with trembling hands. On the Kodak paper, your lips, glistening with Vaseline, sent those familiar invitations to me. In the luminosity of the pinewood burning in the fireplace, your face looked like Chinar leaves in autumn. In your hands you held a copy of Love in the times of cholera: hands that I have held in mine for God knows how many times. My fingers feel like dead branches; the lines on my palm are nothing but marks of your coming in and going out of my life.

Cook up a surprise for me. When I am lying down in a feverish blur, arrive silently and touch my parched lips. I will erase all lines from my palm. I will embalm my hands.

Come back, Maya.

For old time's sake

Theek hai - so be it
you said, promising to
buy me a pocket watch.
Opening its lid, I'll
watch seconds glide into
years; wait for Captain Time's
whistle, and then, I'll
caress your tresses

These days I play to
destiny's packed gallery,
watching it bend with laughter
at my antics. And in the solitude
of Begum Akhtar's voice
when your memory bedazzles my heart
like her nosepin, I cry silently

I remember you wore one too
years ago, when we met at
the house, close to the spot
where they had silenced Safdar Hashmi
I had thought that you'ld look like
your mother when you grow old

Please grow old with me
Don't travel alone in desolate
railway compartments, while
sun and shade roll dice after dice
I shall wait for Captain Time's whistle
and when I hear it, I'll sit beside you
and I'll caress your tresses

(In memory of Agha Shahid Ali)

One of those days

Sometimes, nothing matters in life. You wake up, stumble towards the balcony, pick up the bunch of newspapers, remove the rubber band which binds them together, read the headlines, look at the edit page, stare at Calvin and Hobbes, and throw the sheets away.

You don’t care about a smooth shave. It is a nippy end-October morning, and you wonder whether you should have a cold shower or switch on the geyser. Ultimately, you make do with a few mugfuls of cold water.

Books, which you collected for more than one decade, look like bricks. Sunflowers evoke no emotion. The crests and troughs of Abida Parveen’s voice irritate you. It is the same song on which you cried last night.

The statue of the unknown soldier, kept on your table, looks like an intruder. You don’t care whether your handkerchief is neat or not. You don’t bother to tie your shoelaces like butterfly wings, something your father taught you, twenty-five years back. You just do things.

In the evening you come back. You enter your room, closing the door behind you. You stare at the wall. It stares back at you. You pick up the mobile, searching for names you would like to talk to. There is no one. You switch it off.

A DVD of The Motorcycle Diaries is gathering dust. You close your eyes. You are not sleeping. You are not awake either. Someone calls your name outside. You don’t call back. You don’t get up.

Sometimes, nothing matters in life.

Hindi post

I have just written a piece in Hindi for a friend's blog. You can access it here.

Is the apple tree still there? (Part2)

Twenty-nine years ago there were very few houses there. And those had no boundary walls. The blossom-strewn patches of grass outside a house mingled freely with marigold flowerbeds outside another. In kitchen gardens, fenced with tree branches and thorny bushes, there grew tomatoes, chillies, brinjals, pumpkins, cucumbers, and on the small embankments, corncobs smiled gingerly from within their furry frocks.

The world was much simpler. An occasional thief would feel content by stealing an old, flickering bulb or a pair of worn-out slippers kept out on the verandah.

A few years before I was born, father had sold-off mother’s jewellery, emptied his provident fund, and got the house constructed at what was then a Srinagar suburb. My earliest memories of those days are to stare at green apples that hung like celestial bodies, amidst a cluster of leaves, on a tree in the front garden. The apples were of sour variety. My grandmother would pluck some of them, slice them with a small knife kept in her pheran pocket, and, after sprinkling salt over them, eat them with a girlish excitement.

During the day, when father and mother went off to work, it was my grandfather who took care of me. In the afternoon, we would sit under the shade of the tree; he would keep a pebble on my head, asking me to balance it. One of my favourite childhood stories was how the Earth was balanced on the horns of Lord Shiva’s carrier – the Nandi bull. And, grandpa told me, whenever Nandi shook his head, it would cause an earthquake on the Earth. When grandpa kept that pebble on my head, I imagined myself as Nandi, and shook my head vigorously.

“Totha, what if the Earth falls down from Nandi’s horns; then where will it go?”

“ In that case, it will crash into the Pataal lok – the nether world, where demons live.”

The Kashmiri Pandits believe in the power of Apezyeth – one moment in a 24-hour cycle, when whatever you say comes true. It was as if grandfather had said that bang on that moment. Ten years later, our world came crashing down.

It snowed heavily that January. Rahman, the milkman stopped coming. Men, wearing heavy LT jackets with stuffed pockets would cross our street. One by one, the neighbours locked their houses and went away. No one played cricket in the backyard.

That evening, the lights had gone off. Father heard someone laughing on the street below. Lifting a corner of the curtain, we looked down. A few boys were distributing houses among themselves. “You take Razdan’s house and I will take Kaul’s,” a boy called Imtiaz said. Then they all laughed. My father turned back. The next day we left.

Seventeen years, six months, and five days later, I am back. After Natipora’s cremation ground, where the ashes of my grandparents are scattered, I can’t recognise anything. The roads have become congested. The empty spaces I remember have all turned into concrete jungles. The streets are shabbier.

“This is where your house should be; the gurudwara is here,” Zubair points out. Yes, Zubair, it should be here. But where? I enter into the street.

A man, wearing a starched white shirt is standing at the gate. He is looking at us. “Whom are you looking for?” he finally asks. I remain silent. The pause is too deafening. Zubair explains. The man breaks into a smile, and extends his hand. As I shake it, he pulls me towards him, into a tight embrace.

‘My name is Gazanfar Ali; I am an advocate,” he says. “This is your land as much as it is mine. I am glad that you came.”

My house is right in front of his. We politely decline his offer of tea. I am madly clicking pictures. I want to show them to my ailing mother.

We enter the house. The blue gate is intact. So is the taur – the handle my father had specially got built. The new inhabitants have retained the name of the house. Aabshaar – the waterfall: the board outside the house still reads that. Zubair has to do a bit of explaining again. It is very uncomfortable. “Well… err… this is Rahul. Err… this house belonged… err…. They used to live here before.” The retired man understands. We are led inside.

I am sitting in my drawing room. All the show pieces in the glass almirah are gone. They have put crockery inside. There was a picture of my father receiving a state award for meritorious service from Sheikh Abdullah. It lay on the walnut-wood table. The photo is not there. The table must be in someone else’s house – displaying, perhaps, a replica of Taj Mahal. I am talking to the man. And I am clicking pictures.
“When we shifted, the house was in absolute mess. The walls were damp and the ceiling had come down at various places,” he says.

“We had been told that after we left, they had taken away sanitary fittings, leaving the water supply open,” I reply. There is silence. And then we both let out embarrassing smiles.

On my request, I am led upstairs, to what used to be my room. I had some books kept on a shelf: My experiments with truth, Freedom at midnight, Arabian nights, Tagore’s Geetanjali and the complete works of Swami Vivekananda. I look at the shelf. It has potatoes on it now. And some onions. One portion of the room has been converted into a sink; there is a tiled slab beside it. I look out from the window. There is no kitchen garden. A few yellow flowers have appeared on the pumpkin creeper of our times. It sways gently, as if welcoming me.

I finally say goodbye. On the verandah, the number of water works connection father had taken is still there: 44732. I am reminded of the apple tree. I turn towards it. A wall stares back at me.

“There used to be an apple tree here,” I ask.

“Oh, we got it cut; it was occupying too much of space.”

Ghulam Hasan Sofi’s voice rings in my ears:

B’e thavnus chaetit’h tabardaaran
Yaaro wan baalyaaro wan
Che’ kamyu karenay taveez pan?

(The woodcutter, he left me broken
Tell me my friend, tell me my beloved
Who has put you under a spell?)