tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-292351182024-03-18T15:18:19.520+05:30Encounters of a cynical kind'That ... be not told of my death,
Or made to grieve on account of me,
And that I be not buried in consecrated ground,
And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell,
And that nobody is wished to see my dead body,
And that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral,
And that no flowers be planted on my grave,
And that no man remember me,
To this I put my name.' - Thomas HardyKushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-88402149756553233002015-06-27T10:12:00.001+05:302015-06-27T10:16:56.092+05:30A Weekend In The Sahyadris<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaBglnx45aPYpoaQn42iz7JZhyf-I8uIeON6dXplUenRbSl5oOcBw2PDdRCjYPvTIQkvTTK6Ms3l8t7wck01BneeVbpaTYdQ9UrNnZP7lz1e9sAssAuHA4sVHD3xPvC4lP04i8/s1600/IMG_5074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaBglnx45aPYpoaQn42iz7JZhyf-I8uIeON6dXplUenRbSl5oOcBw2PDdRCjYPvTIQkvTTK6Ms3l8t7wck01BneeVbpaTYdQ9UrNnZP7lz1e9sAssAuHA4sVHD3xPvC4lP04i8/s640/IMG_5074.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I chuckle
quietly as the kids argue and fight. We are playing cricket - three of us from
Mumbai and a bunch of 10-12 year olds – on the patio of a abandoned decrepit
house in the village of Kelichapada and one of the kids has hit the ball out
into the street and is adamant it bounced on the parapet before it went over while
the rest are busy trying to pry the bat out of his hands, because ‘direct
bahaar jaaye to out’. I was once one of these kids, I think to myself. Except,
I was not. I am here in Kelichapada, about 7 kilometres from the town of Jawhar,
nestled in the gorgeous Sahyadris, a region dotted with tribal villages of the
Warli, Kukana and Kolchas. I grew up in a city and went on family trips during
my summer vacations and these kids here have never stepped outside Jawhar and
their only assured meal of the day is the one the village school provides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">About 160
kilometres north of Mumbai, beyond where the local trains can bring legions of
daily commuters and cheap housing, lies the town of Jawhar. I visited Jawhar in
February this year as part of an initiative called Rural Mania. The group works
with the tribal-folk in a village near the town, to provide for basic
necessities and infrastructure and avenues for generating income. But more on
that later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The town of
Jawhar lies about 160 kilometres north of Mumbai, beyond where the local trains
can bring legions of daily commuters and cheap housing. The town is largely
nondescript – rows of small stores with decayed doors, haphazard houses and
garish telecom signage – but all around it the Sahyadris rise and fall
majestically and create gorgeous vistas that change colour with the seasons, browns
and yellows in the summer months and intense greens in monsoon. Sprinkled
throughout are the striking reds of Semal trees. Tiny tribal hamlets, clusters
of thatched and red-tiled sloping roofs, dot the landscape. The ancient art of
Warli paintings is still alive in them. They are simple stick-like drawings
that depict profound messages on life and its harmony with nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">During the
rains, water weaves through the many fields of red millet (known as Nachani
locally) on the slopes and accumulates in paddy fields and provides the region
with its annual harvest. The air is fresh and the sounds of automobiles are
rare and when a breeze blows the trees bristle and the grass rustles and smoke
from a farm in the distance unfurls and hangs languorously in the air. I
imagine the gentle guitar strains of a Kings of Convenience song in my head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">It is a
place perfect for a refreshing family expedition, filled with leisurely strolls
and invigorating hikes. With me are a group of ten people, ages ranging from
the twenties to fifties, and by the time the trip ends, each one of us will
have found something in Jawhar that will make it worth our while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">On a hill
overlooking the town, stands the now decrepit Jay Vilas Palace, inside which
entry is forbidden. Some structures still stand, however, and against the
backdrop of blue skies and rolling hills, they make excellent subjects for a
photograph.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Pc7prIZeodybX4gPHNlWVxwcKUAzLZe6ZnHHo9HAdyfrbmk9v4U_AyFX9RVadh5rOTDi6DXo7iYXz9HKEOU_jHq-skjb0zhGxIMaDIYt9HkzI-hQeRv2Ju0B0WMQnPCivOWb/s1600/IMG_5138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Pc7prIZeodybX4gPHNlWVxwcKUAzLZe6ZnHHo9HAdyfrbmk9v4U_AyFX9RVadh5rOTDi6DXo7iYXz9HKEOU_jHq-skjb0zhGxIMaDIYt9HkzI-hQeRv2Ju0B0WMQnPCivOWb/s320/IMG_5138.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is a
lake called the Jaysagar near the city. It swells in the monsoons and then
recedes through the rest of the year and leaves in its wake, smooth rocks
imprinted with intricate patterns of moss. We stroll on the lake’s banks in the
early morning sun, under a cluster of trees, and the water is clean and blue
and resplendent and there is not another soul in sight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw4K0SuhunPOa86jY2_Yyh4G2uvmvMV_-XV4fUrbilze5rcOGkMl8NtGSYYcAU2aYu3GEcHUh65ktiEuHS_8ilBIeJ4p7hA_V_7v_GWLJf4GF5C5d3jjP-EnwiYH2q9wIlet-/s1600/IMG_5132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw4K0SuhunPOa86jY2_Yyh4G2uvmvMV_-XV4fUrbilze5rcOGkMl8NtGSYYcAU2aYu3GEcHUh65ktiEuHS_8ilBIeJ4p7hA_V_7v_GWLJf4GF5C5d3jjP-EnwiYH2q9wIlet-/s640/IMG_5132.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There are
two waterfalls near Jawhar and they do not run dry even in summer. Dabhosa,
around twenty kilometres away from the main town, is the more popular. Somewhat
closer, is the lesser known but equally pretty Kal Mandavi waterfall. To reach
it requires a short but steep hike, perfect exercise for the younger members in
the group. Kal Mandavi rarely sees visitors and its pleasures can be had
without intrusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is
another, less pretty, side to Jawhar, and that brings us back to the Rural
Mania initiative. The region is one of the worst in India on the issue of
malnutrition in children and the initiative’s primary objective is to provide
balanced meals for the kids at a local village school. Each weekend, a group (such
as the one I am in) travels there with supplies of grains and other necessities
and spends a day with the locals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The village
– Kelichapada - is a tight little cluster of low buildings. The road which
leads to it rises abruptly into a hill beyond and a short walk up provides a
vantage from which the entire village is in view. Against the backdrop of low
rolling hills, it forms a grand sight. The sun sets directly behind the village
and for a few precious moments, the houses turn into elegant dark silhouettes
with soft reddish edges. Roosters loiter on the street and rarely react when
people walk past, except for when a kid chases after them. Women carry vessels from
a well outside the village throughout the day. There are DTH dishes on the
roofs of several houses, a curious detail given how expensive they are and the
frequent power-cuts in the region, and when I ask a local, I learn they are
remnants from a ‘goodwill gesture’ by a political party during last year’s
election campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
village-folk are warm, friendly people. Most of them can only speak Marathi,
but language, really, is only as much a barrier as one allows it to be. People
get along perfectly well with simple monosyllables and broad smiles. We hang
out with the kids for a while, playing board games and cricket. The extent of
the effects of malnutrition become clear only when we ask what age they are,
and they turn out at least 3-4 years older than what we estimate from their
appearance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We leave the
village after dark, pensive but also warmed of heart, and return to our
splendid holiday cottage. A light rain falls and the air is cool and we stay up
for a long time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><i>Article First Published on Livemint in slightly modified form <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/DwkKV5Eo9wcegzUDzeTNMP/Mumbai-to-Kelichapada-Far-from-the-madding-crowd.html">here</a></i></span></div>
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Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-59021691616046854202014-07-10T21:52:00.000+05:302014-07-10T22:09:52.067+05:30Ulan Bator: A City In Flux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLRSpldTwcidPLQPOieXnEyVLmfTayBlc6LnclNxOkDI4M1FxcfxJ6wAMsVv9-j2UokSbnoKfKG6qOtPGLgKBHRGtZRIsjn-AKDP7XFT0HzDMdK655Hlsixsw6XyXUGMUcUwP/s1600/IMG_1909.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBLRSpldTwcidPLQPOieXnEyVLmfTayBlc6LnclNxOkDI4M1FxcfxJ6wAMsVv9-j2UokSbnoKfKG6qOtPGLgKBHRGtZRIsjn-AKDP7XFT0HzDMdK655Hlsixsw6XyXUGMUcUwP/s1600/IMG_1909.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Unending Steppes</i></td></tr>
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The train rounds a hill and we
catch our first glimpse of Ulan Bator from a slight vantage - a sprawling
cluster of low buildings, a great deal of it tin and asbestos and rust. What we
see is unremarkable, neither particularly disappointing nor exhilarating. The
city lies there modestly and without pretension, like a great many cities that
lack unique character or iconic structures do. Nevertheless, the sight lifts
our spirits up considerably since, for many hours and miles all we have seen
are panoramas of empty desert and steppes, jaw dropping for a long time until
they have become something close to mundane.</div>
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By the time the train reaches the
Ulan Bator railway station, it is past ten in the morning. The sun is already
high up and it is warm and bright and will remain so for many hours. It is July
and summer, and the days never end.</div>
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It is not often that one spends a
week exploring a foreign land without it being central to one’s itinerary. But
that is how it is with Ulan Bator on this trip; our expectation from it, at
best, is that of a side attraction in a larger, grander scheme – the
Trans-Manchurian rail trip from Beijing to Moscow. There is something
wonderfully liberating with traveling to places without preconceptions; the
disappointments are muted and the joys, unexpected and intense.</div>
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Before the trip, I have, of
course, spent time reading on the internet about the city of Ulan Bator and
Mongolia in general, to learn of the country beyond the embarrassingly little
that we already know – the Gobi Desert and Genghis Khan. Ulan Bator, I learn,
has moved - physically moved - a number of times since it came to be in the
1600s. For a long time, it remained a monastery on wheels and its accompanying
ecosystem and moved to wherever the land was more fertile and the fauna
abundant. The Ulan Bator of today, in its present location, was established in
the late 1700s and remained there. </div>
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The impression I get, from
reading, is of a city and a country that have remained, until recently, cocooned
in age old customs and traditions and a way of life that is still sparse and
self contained. Mongolia is half the size of India and still remains mostly uninhabited.
It’s entire population is a fraction that of Mumbai and Ulan Bator, its capital
and largest city, accounts for 1/3<sup>rd</sup> the entire country’s population,
and yet, is about as populated as, say, Jabalpur, but only half as densely.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2prd9Wft6cKddvTl6IzI-FSZUHF8yOjMr-RTESqjjW5ISl5Bcv72oAJ6klI1E34jjI0yTDl73UK_eQltWYytvpWePQFwhqQx49BldOTXJSxjC2e6a1VV3xvfrphzMOZDeo_kV/s1600/IMG_1747.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2prd9Wft6cKddvTl6IzI-FSZUHF8yOjMr-RTESqjjW5ISl5Bcv72oAJ6klI1E34jjI0yTDl73UK_eQltWYytvpWePQFwhqQx49BldOTXJSxjC2e6a1VV3xvfrphzMOZDeo_kV/s1600/IMG_1747.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Blue Sky Tower and other impending constructions</i></td></tr>
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I read of life on the unending
slopes, of living inside portable tent-like structures called ‘ger’ - a nomadic
existence, harsh and unforgiving and only occasionally romantic. I imagine men
with hard weather-beaten faces on horses, tearing after their prey - sometimes
animals and sometimes other men. Men with double barreled rifles and enormous
knives and immovable moralities.</div>
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A country lost in time.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho9b5XY15eE5U8yx8Ni1ncuw2jBf86TbMt-VxICiIaonabkJmpbLowaw8YVwL3nlN98y1hIhDL-mZTge1MYOgapyq4tmaV2e9EusH-yKXO-EkWeAeKN8cRW2-W_-fJk6qQ7jVz/s1600/IMG_2103.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho9b5XY15eE5U8yx8Ni1ncuw2jBf86TbMt-VxICiIaonabkJmpbLowaw8YVwL3nlN98y1hIhDL-mZTge1MYOgapyq4tmaV2e9EusH-yKXO-EkWeAeKN8cRW2-W_-fJk6qQ7jVz/s1600/IMG_2103.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a>And yet, inevitably, in the past
few years, I read of slowly stirring ambition. Of minerals and mining and
exports and industry and forecasts of economic analysts. Of traffic congestion
and pollution. Of social unrest and crime. Of a developing Ulan Bator skyline,
tall glass buildings, sometimes casting shadows over and sometimes
illuminating, ancient monasteries.</div>
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And so it is that when I reach
Ulan Bator, I am still unsure what my expectations from it are. How much of it will
still be austere old world charm and how much, fast cars and supermarkets?</div>
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We find a cab that agrees to take
us to the hostel we have booked, near Sukhbaatar Square – the centre of town. The
cabbie quotes us a rate that sounds absurdly high until we calculate it in
Indian Rupees and decide there isn’t a point in quibbling. One of the great
joys of traveling to Mongolia is that the Indian Rupee buys nearly 30 Mongolian
tögrög (pronounced as Tugrik) and one is able to experience a sense of wealth a
bit like what the Europeans and Americans must feel when they travel the world.</div>
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From the cab, in fact even before
we get into it, we observe amusing contradictions – the signage on the railway
station, in the shops and on advertising hoardings are a quirky mix of the
Roman and Mongolian-Cyrillic alphabets - ‘Restaurant’ written in the Roman and
then below it, the restaurant’s name in Mongolian-Cyrillic. Advertising
hoardings with English punch-lines but unreadable product names. </div>
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The logic, names in the native script
and the nature of the utility in English, is obvious and sensible for a city
that is gearing up for international relevance.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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There is no particular
architectural style we can discern, the buildings are haphazard, multi coloured
and of wildly varying sizes. For much of the way, we travel through what
appears to be the main avenue of the city, and supermarkets and restaurants and
fashion stores and tattoo parlours dot both sides of the street. The women are
dressed in modern attire and have legs to die for.</div>
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The monasteries, wherever they
are, are well hidden.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjAm78ihTG2iouWudyJiRZoaExDHpBHV4FJmKBiajbCl_ORdqNPnF0c1DTg1ma215trtOAzuzPMEv4AbN7Y_92_dfieYzmObT3gxFaZV8IKKZJU1UTcTt3U1pl8PE-X25I1N4H/s1600/IMG_2096.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjAm78ihTG2iouWudyJiRZoaExDHpBHV4FJmKBiajbCl_ORdqNPnF0c1DTg1ma215trtOAzuzPMEv4AbN7Y_92_dfieYzmObT3gxFaZV8IKKZJU1UTcTt3U1pl8PE-X25I1N4H/s1600/IMG_2096.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
And then there’re the vehicles
and the streets. The roads and signs are built for left hand drive, but most
vehicles we see, including our cab, have the steering wheel to the right. There
are, of course, cars with the steering on the left as well, but throughout our
time in Ulan Bator, we continue to see as many cars of one type as the other,
and it is impossible to say on streets without dividers, which way one is
expected to drive. It also makes for heart-stopping experiences throughout;
imagine yourself in a car with a steering wheel on the right side overtaking a
car from the left on a street without a divider or on s two-lane highway, with
the oncoming traffic hurtling towards you. It is like overtaking from the wrong
side in India with the added challenge of traffic from the other side coming
straight at you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When we have the chance, we ask
some locals about this and they explain to us how, in recent times, with
increasing affluence, a growing number of cars are imported from Japan, instead
of from China or Russia, and since Japan is unlikely to customize its vehicles
for quantities as low as what Mongolia requires, the Japanese cars come as is,
with the steering wheels on the right.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
One of the stray bits of
information I have come across from reading of the country is that injuries and
casualties from collisions and road accidents in Ulan Bator have gone up
substantially over the past decade.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Now I know.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Our hostel room, crammed with
several two-storey beds, has a small balcony that opens out on to the street
and offers a partial view of the Sukhbaatar square. There is room for two
people on the balcony at a time – the rest of it is occupied by clotheslines
and empty beer bottles – and early in the mornings and late in the evenings
when the room is full, there are forever two people on it, smoking, while
several others wait expectantly for them to finish. During the day, however,
when everybody is out in the city, one can lean on the parapet and watch the
world go by, undisturbed. In addition to the Sukhbaatar square, the balcony
also offers an uninterrupted view of the Blue Sky Tower, one of Ulan Bator’s
famous new high rises. It does tower over Ulan Bator’s skyline at the moment,
but in truth isn’t particularly high, and with its odd shape, resembles a
shorter, better fed, Burj Al Arab. The brilliant blue of a cloudless sky,
uninterrupted by the presence of other tall buildings, reflects off its glass
exterior, but I suspect, as the city grows and other intimidating structures
grow around it, the tower’s resplendence will wear off in more ways than one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
By happy chance, we find out that
our presence coincides with Mongolia’s national festival of Naadam - a week of
obscure sports competitions (wrestling, horse-racing and archery) and general
revelry. Competitors from across Mongolia turn up for the event. Most of the
action takes place inside the National Sports Stadium, a large circular ground
with spectator stands around it, very much like a cricket stadium. We are not
sure how tickets to the event are to be procured but a helpful lady at the
hostel assures us that, once there, entry into the stadium will not be a
problem.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_WcERLnbpS9NcI8pD0AjUctftbTA99oYAZBUoVR8YeIB1iyvJXm_ld5WN-YBzmxB4nkJMUQRKkHGH-2e_yKPejC9YXZCSF4Df2XvgNZYTotkyf1yI_B4UFJ7lfXbJeMKJZa1r/s1600/IMG_1820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_WcERLnbpS9NcI8pD0AjUctftbTA99oYAZBUoVR8YeIB1iyvJXm_ld5WN-YBzmxB4nkJMUQRKkHGH-2e_yKPejC9YXZCSF4Df2XvgNZYTotkyf1yI_B4UFJ7lfXbJeMKJZa1r/s1600/IMG_1820.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Naadam: The Stadium</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We walk to the stadium, which is
only a few kilometers away, and on the way, we see lines of makeshift stalls
and bicycles on which meat is being barbequed and sold. We ask if it is horse
meat – one of our primary motivations during the trip is to try as many
varieties of meat as we find – and are told that it is the meat from Mongolian
wild asses. It is thick and chewy and, with a smattering of salt, pepper and
lemon, tastes delicious. Later in the evening, we will eventually also find horse
meat and ox tongue at a restaurant, and taste both, but by the end of it, the
street side wild ass meat will remain my pick.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
When we reach the stadium, like
the good lady from the hostel foretold, a number of men crowd around us, asking
if we’d like to buy tickets. They obviously quote rates well above those mentioned
on the tickets and explain to us that the seats they have to sell have the best
views, but we desist and locate the official ticket counter instead. Tickets to
the most expensive stands are indeed sold out, we are informed. We consult
amongst ourselves and decide that we are unlikely to be able to make sense of
the games and their rules anyway and the importance of a better view will
likely be lost on us. We buy tickets to the cheapest available stand.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwYQlelq6gE2c4Eazv_jYUrIJpweQmxWYpm8EhZQIz1-Ts5kdREuWrBiLi6-ZlxLg01rFyEWjIUuf4xQXK68J1HjEBlfJyzmrXRdmW2PUtc0yN3_YV8CZYsS6l7G4hU7a38Gyp/s1600/IMG_1757.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwYQlelq6gE2c4Eazv_jYUrIJpweQmxWYpm8EhZQIz1-Ts5kdREuWrBiLi6-ZlxLg01rFyEWjIUuf4xQXK68J1HjEBlfJyzmrXRdmW2PUtc0yN3_YV8CZYsS6l7G4hU7a38Gyp/s1600/IMG_1757.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wrestling at Naadam</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We reach after the Archery event
is already completed and the wrestling competition is underway. Several rounds
occur simultaneously, all over the ground – sets of two wrestlers, enormous but
not too flabby, dressed in sumo-like attire and a fully clothed referee
overseeing the action. The objective, from what we can see, is to force the
opponent down on the ground. The rounds last for very little time, less than a
minute; how long can two similar sized people go at each other without one of
them losing balance? After a wrestler defeats his opponent, he does a ritual
dance, a small lap around his fallen opponent, arms raised, with large lumbering
steps in slow motion and ends it with a pat on the loser’s backside. It is a
unique sight, grown men such as these prancing around like this and I wonder if
some of them turn up in formal attire at the Blue Sky Tower on weekdays.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYFOGLqKrA7hzvfAM7gMkv1inaJSi0e9Fwf9RPHf5E8bpxre9hqF1ydxjWVQfB1-YBRde4KRsbzBVx0V5CR-g3EntDs_G5Wf43iiIlR2rm-N1TjlvsU19kXsSyus_GbUOnllN6/s1600/IMG_2095.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYFOGLqKrA7hzvfAM7gMkv1inaJSi0e9Fwf9RPHf5E8bpxre9hqF1ydxjWVQfB1-YBRde4KRsbzBVx0V5CR-g3EntDs_G5Wf43iiIlR2rm-N1TjlvsU19kXsSyus_GbUOnllN6/s1600/IMG_2095.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sukhbaatar Square: The Black Statue in the centre is Genghis Khan</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The Sukhbaatar square is a large
open space, tiled and predominantly white, surrounded by busy streets on three
sides and the Saaral Ordon (Government Palace) on the fourth. Throughout the
day, it remains crowded with tourists, the elderly and the noise of traffic.
Right at the centre is a statue of a man on a horse, pointing at something in
the distance. On the side of the Saaral Ordon, under an archway with huge
columns, is another statue, that of a portly man on a throne, staring
benevolently at the world. Genghis Khan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I recall a conversation with a
friend, while we wandered around the Prince of Wales museum in Mumbai, some
months ago. After we had walked past a line of statues and busts of important
figures in our history, my friend remarked how, sculptors in our part of the
world, almost always chose to sculpt their subjects, kings and Gods, in
imperfect shapes, pot bellies, sagging cheeks and an overall lack of
muscularity, an approach markedly different from their counterparts in Europe,
where every sculpture looked like it had just stepped out of the gym. We
wondered why that is. With Kings, one could perhaps make a case for them
preferring realistic reproductions to the Europeans’ preference for ideal
bodies, but what about Gods?</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsNxSfV19KmLdUS-03P0CRhigAn6boIIlfCZfLdtTnsC2CJ1SOPfBq_Iq4T4593xsmoyfrkW64SvZ8B4_e8jH1ER-lEssJP8gzNj4Gv2hcfQ22UTvtmxtZSaSlzinoCI9YMJA/s1600/IMG_2083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsNxSfV19KmLdUS-03P0CRhigAn6boIIlfCZfLdtTnsC2CJ1SOPfBq_Iq4T4593xsmoyfrkW64SvZ8B4_e8jH1ER-lEssJP8gzNj4Gv2hcfQ22UTvtmxtZSaSlzinoCI9YMJA/s1600/IMG_2083.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sukhbaatar</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The other statue, the man on a
horse, we learn is of one Damdin Sukhbaatar, after whom the square is clearly
named, although, at the time, we have no idea who he is. I assume that he must
belong in the same era or thereabouts as Genghis Khan, during Mongolia’s glory
days, but later learn that he was in fact at the forefront of Mongolia’s
struggle for independence as recently as the early 1900s. Wikipedia tells me he
is considered the Father of Mongolia’s revolution, clearly their most important
figure in the modern era, and yet, incredibly, I have never heard of him until
then. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It must be so with innumerable figures
in history, their statures immense and secure for all posterity in their own
countries and yet completely ignored elsewhere. And there must be countless
others, whose names even their own people no longer remember. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
How does one know what will
travel through history and how far? What will be important or relevant for
generations hundreds of years later? Art, I suppose, travels through time
better than wars and conquests and revolutions and social change, for a work of
art retains its form forever while society and the lay of the land remain in
perennial flux. Any notion that an empire once established, a country that
becomes relevant for a time, will remain forever so, is laughable. And yet, in
the shaping of human history, who is to say which is more important – creating
great art or leading a revolution?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpA2cCrTOoWEmv_zaiuuEoUXnwEpJo2KKSUL0NFHZjDvxQhbO6Xm1juMTLnSzhsfYrClJYxqmEHigjED87lBX8hIQMgAVizMZ0cDx6S0E20Uz8Xfdb2iJ9ZV0bKBlVzszCYZpV/s1600/IMG_2100.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpA2cCrTOoWEmv_zaiuuEoUXnwEpJo2KKSUL0NFHZjDvxQhbO6Xm1juMTLnSzhsfYrClJYxqmEHigjED87lBX8hIQMgAVizMZ0cDx6S0E20Uz8Xfdb2iJ9ZV0bKBlVzszCYZpV/s1600/IMG_2100.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Square in the Morning</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I return to the Square again
early the next morning, around seven, and find it silent and desolate. A few
stray pigeons hop about and an old couple occupies one bench. There isn’t a
vehicle on the street, not a single on. The rays of the sun fall glorious and
golden on the face of Sukhbaatar and his horse and on the buildings beyond,
which the previous evening, had remained hidden behind their own garish neon signs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I walk a block and then a little
beyond it, until I reach the end of the city. It ends abruptly and without
fuss; a street leads to the very end, buildings still on both sides, and then
turns away, and beyond it lies the vast Mongolian landscape and nothingness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5c7Zvh3neoJcB_h5jQiBI4GluSl855XO0hQ7aW8NOscDSzcJllN4gYjL6fW9bVF862DWAZ5JAJv1hrvvBBWs6_ORa1STrxS1K7mqxavRCChP3eVuUEx0kOX3QAr-9Kd-Ib1nM/s1600/IMG_1839.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5c7Zvh3neoJcB_h5jQiBI4GluSl855XO0hQ7aW8NOscDSzcJllN4gYjL6fW9bVF862DWAZ5JAJv1hrvvBBWs6_ORa1STrxS1K7mqxavRCChP3eVuUEx0kOX3QAr-9Kd-Ib1nM/s1600/IMG_1839.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pretty Monasteries</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A little later, after everybody
else is up and we have had a dull breakfast in a fast food joint, we explore
some of the city’s monasteries. They are tucked away in various corners, away
from the main thoroughfares, and still retain something of their air of
isolation, peace and tranquility. It is a gorgeous day, the sky bluer than
ever, and the stark colour tones of these monasteries stand proudly against
this backdrop. The prayer wheels are bright and golden and we see our faces
reflected on them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqHftYnMToNcUEO2cbNY9kY8sm_ivNML8iJcochBeWSbxLgwuhej7OmUmpHia3jBACq-YuT2iRxn8c0yjWAXKu_7Ic3Q9RDtTLS1pTKmozSo9jv5t9awx2A-Ss8Aqo18SvQjce/s1600/IMG_1875.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqHftYnMToNcUEO2cbNY9kY8sm_ivNML8iJcochBeWSbxLgwuhej7OmUmpHia3jBACq-YuT2iRxn8c0yjWAXKu_7Ic3Q9RDtTLS1pTKmozSo9jv5t9awx2A-Ss8Aqo18SvQjce/s1600/IMG_1875.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Prayer Wheel</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
At the square, on the way back to
the hostel, we find much fanfare. There is a long procession of men and women
in outrageous costumes and they dance and make merry and pose for pictures with
tourists without asking for money. It is a ritual procession, we learn; an
integral part of Naadam. It is quite a sight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We have booked a ‘ger’ camp
someway away from the city for the night; chosen from several such camps strewn
at intervals from Ulan Bator for many miles, because it is the farthest we can
find. It is on the banks of a </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaDLZVXRxnOgPqoHgE_WRszDQap-5bH1LnFUHFQnTQp1h_GM8yBNFqKAPXSUTHbQclwBjhCtYAD11p5-lEaz83brEqUvpGwhZ9qWsVT4p0IHCTo_P_a8bwbs3vcU0aGxbbu_V9/s1600/IMG_1884.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaDLZVXRxnOgPqoHgE_WRszDQap-5bH1LnFUHFQnTQp1h_GM8yBNFqKAPXSUTHbQclwBjhCtYAD11p5-lEaz83brEqUvpGwhZ9qWsVT4p0IHCTo_P_a8bwbs3vcU0aGxbbu_V9/s1600/IMG_1884.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Naadam: Ritual Processions</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
river - the Kherlan River I later find – and, by
late afternoon, we are on our way to it.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We leave the city behind in a
matter of minutes and for the next hundred kilometers, apart from a few stalls
that sell fermented horse milk (delicious) and men with enormous eagles on
their arms which they rent out to anyone wanting a picture clicked with it, encounter
no habitation. The terrain remains uniformly green; in the distance we
sometimes detect herds of sheep and wild ass. The highway is narrow but
sufficient, since there is hardly any traffic on it. I suppose, if Mongolia
succeeds in transforming itself into an industrious, prosperous nation, they
will have to do something about the width of these highways in the future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We take several breaks along the
way, walk on the grass and have our pictures clicked from low angles -
reclining on the highway, with the road continuing on behind us and then
disappearing over a hill.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The location of the camp and the
scenery is everything we’d imagined and more. The waters of the river are a
deep, wonderful blue and there are stretches of tall yellow grass on the banks.
The green rolling steppes stretch out for as far as we can see in every
direction. I imagine characters in a Terrence Mallick film moving slowly and
nonchalantly in this landscape, with outstretched arms and enigmatic
expressions, to a Wagner and the sun’s flare on the camera lens. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It is a place for the recluse
writer to spend months in and produce a masterpiece from. We have one day and
busy ourselves with taking pictures.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7iwe22KZykThCepblVmSXzY6a5r2gVC9_uWfBCOfzhLuTY5S5nHapFX6KfYJIxDSnDmJYDcmgDnMkMgkozoqN382THznPOa0zZcONyeqYAeAZz0vhfNF_92PovmFESXtLvKcB/s1600/IMG_1918.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7iwe22KZykThCepblVmSXzY6a5r2gVC9_uWfBCOfzhLuTY5S5nHapFX6KfYJIxDSnDmJYDcmgDnMkMgkozoqN382THznPOa0zZcONyeqYAeAZz0vhfNF_92PovmFESXtLvKcB/s1600/IMG_1918.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The camp is spread over a large
area and contains several ‘ger’ huts and is cordoned off by knee-high wooden
fences, like ranches in Sergio Leone films. There is a shooting range even - bows
and arrows and a buffalo skin for a target. We try our hand at it for a while,
fail miserably, and spend the remaining sunshine walking and rolling on the
grass and staring into space. The sunset when it comes, is golden.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Fw9mfJgiONdgbcRYSTSveQrtFY5PRzOplEk8hAS5-AsTC2B-H1G16CnQU4bhZ6dw4gIoWlqs018C4iejRfpQ1thB0_ImmUVSpZAJoBf5R3cW3gTccn3su5wKlDAzQyzwgoxQ/s1600/IMG_1923.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2Fw9mfJgiONdgbcRYSTSveQrtFY5PRzOplEk8hAS5-AsTC2B-H1G16CnQU4bhZ6dw4gIoWlqs018C4iejRfpQ1thB0_ImmUVSpZAJoBf5R3cW3gTccn3su5wKlDAzQyzwgoxQ/s1600/IMG_1923.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We stay awake through the night;
inside the tent, a fire burns and we sit around it and drink rum. We step
outside, every now and then, and take a look around the landscape, now moon-lit
and ethereal, and sigh deeply before returning to the tent again.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGSYLSnASU2OPhn_8Fn29Chp3Fi4LMAIqB99JWd3AvNLB2UTbZhepNVXhW8jlVvPQTD7iiJveNXgURJhr60l4dHOSm3g2oXlG_nuMZADqBBZFc1rQ4AfX8IYUawUF58KLDHzL/s1600/IMG_1979.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGSYLSnASU2OPhn_8Fn29Chp3Fi4LMAIqB99JWd3AvNLB2UTbZhepNVXhW8jlVvPQTD7iiJveNXgURJhr60l4dHOSm3g2oXlG_nuMZADqBBZFc1rQ4AfX8IYUawUF58KLDHzL/s1600/IMG_1979.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
By the time it is morning and we
are done with breakfast and with the hopeless wondering about why we cannot
stay back for a few more days, it is time to return to Ulan Bator.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We reach Ulan Bator with many
hours of sunlight left. There are a few other places we have planned to see – a
museum here, another monastery there - but when we get to the city, our heart
is no longer in it. There is already an overwhelming sense of melancholy; we
will leave the next day, we know, and never return.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And even if, someday, we do, who
knows what Ulan Bator and Mongolia will have turned into.</div>
</div>
Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-86805375770468744712014-07-10T13:41:00.001+05:302014-07-10T13:41:42.557+05:30Memories & Istanbul<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSBcQsl7X8abiCmYGkqCvsJPEM4ewfLswgg3QvleQrpXs8K84WK9Y6863d6e58S7WMDVmF5rBqXrg_9JLxSQ-HkIK0TUpJPasE5TmRcZhWHvcASJcS13NAhvnAIOXGHTyHkWxP/s1600/IMG_3100.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSBcQsl7X8abiCmYGkqCvsJPEM4ewfLswgg3QvleQrpXs8K84WK9Y6863d6e58S7WMDVmF5rBqXrg_9JLxSQ-HkIK0TUpJPasE5TmRcZhWHvcASJcS13NAhvnAIOXGHTyHkWxP/s1600/IMG_3100.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not at First Sight</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">My first vivid recollection of
the Bosphorus is, strangely, not of the first time I saw it. I know, of course,
when I did see it the first time – on the bus from the airport to our hostel in
Sultanahmet – and it must have been as majestic and as resplendent as ever. But
try as I may, I cannot recover this image. It is, perhaps, lost in the
labyrinths of my memories forever. There is a story in here somewhere, of a man
lost in a maze of his own memories in a quest to find a particular image – a
story that a Borges might have fancied.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It is the view from the rooftop café
of the hostel that I do recollect. A warm sunny July afternoon. The red
chequered table cloth. The beer (Efes). The quaint white-gray houses that lead
up to the waters. The vast muddle of buildings on the far side, indistinguishable
from one another. The occasional dome and minarets of a mosque. Sea gulls.
Everything in shades of gray. In Elif Şafak’s delightful novel “The Flea
Palace”, a character muses about how her memories, of every city she’s been to are,
defined by a particular colour. Except Istanbul. Istanbul, she says, is devoid
of a colour. In that moment, taking in the city as it spreads around me, I
understand what she means and yet, disagree with her.</div>
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For right through the middle of the
muted shades, flows the legendary Bosphorus. It is just as I have imagined for
all the years since I first knew it existed. Its famous waters sparkle in the
afternoon sun – turquoise and white and turquoise again – a gentle shimmery
haze hangs over the many boats and yachts and sea vessels that bob over it. If
this cannot define the colour of a city, nothing can.</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4hpMntlTLpG0NNKF8dupWmLjNTu4zwyKwSSv6GC0pfEfGuHTVzX_H5Rd8Fmt-lvjy3SoOj0NzDXPXURQOQvu7FvmQMyUW22R7F2QY89_mH-avahy4HIQPHXuKAElG3Jm6mIRs/s1600/IMG_3055.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4hpMntlTLpG0NNKF8dupWmLjNTu4zwyKwSSv6GC0pfEfGuHTVzX_H5Rd8Fmt-lvjy3SoOj0NzDXPXURQOQvu7FvmQMyUW22R7F2QY89_mH-avahy4HIQPHXuKAElG3Jm6mIRs/s1600/IMG_3055.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What other Colour does one need?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">I traveled to Turkey for 10 days
with two friends in July 2011. Now, almost a year later, reading about the
turmoil the country is in at the moment, my mind, invariably, takes me back to
those 10 days and it occurs to me that I must document them as best as I can,
before more images slip away into that unforgiving labyrinth like the first
view of the Bosphorus has. As I write, I realize that I recollect a great many
scattered images in glorious detail while large chunks in between have gone
missing. I suppose it is comforting to presume that the brain intuitively
retains only the best and the most important bits, but really, can one be
certain?</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I remember, for example, a
mundane breakfast in one of the many by-lanes that thread their way through İstiklal
Avenue. It isn’t our first day in Istanbul. We are in a café; the tables set
outside on the street. We eat what we have eaten pretty much throughout the
trip – simit (ring-shaped bread with sesame seeds) with cheese and tea (çay in
Turkish; pronounced chaai). There are
two old men sitting on chairs set out for them next to us. They share a
newspaper and a cup of tea. There is no table laid out for them. They are
regulars. The street is quiet and peaceful at this hour. I remember sounds –
the swishes of brooms, the unseen scooters on another street and the sirens of
ferries. Why do I remember all this?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLyzFn8PzWYaw1rnnPROFwasVwH0ks_Mtr_yuNUhO4LsAFkIwSLefxYTyZg8OJ024lHQeV6jUTXz9ExwgWKosiohpy_JuUqgp629iDR8bDhcES6tXyGI19oGHVqzBkhkSihFjk/s1600/IMG_3695.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLyzFn8PzWYaw1rnnPROFwasVwH0ks_Mtr_yuNUhO4LsAFkIwSLefxYTyZg8OJ024lHQeV6jUTXz9ExwgWKosiohpy_JuUqgp629iDR8bDhcES6tXyGI19oGHVqzBkhkSihFjk/s1600/IMG_3695.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
İstiklal Avenue, incidentally, is
right in the eye of the storm that Turkey faces today. It is where the fiercest
protests have been. It is where the voices against Erdoğan are the loudest.
From having spent several hours there, it is not hard to understand why this
must be the place. It is in İstiklal that Istanbul is at its most modern, most
liberated - or most <i>‘western’</i> if you
like.</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xloanuJD7QpHAJP7CJK8mKuRKtk-VdpmnXhofdaG4V_526o-3svphrxRCmMNHhM61d03n2OKRPfHx8ujLr_xLCdPHkX_NU512u4iVgFG6Fyv7h_OTgi0DjtSne5eIL0_lMcA/s1600/IMG_3222.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0xloanuJD7QpHAJP7CJK8mKuRKtk-VdpmnXhofdaG4V_526o-3svphrxRCmMNHhM61d03n2OKRPfHx8ujLr_xLCdPHkX_NU512u4iVgFG6Fyv7h_OTgi0DjtSne5eIL0_lMcA/s1600/IMG_3222.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">İstiklal Avenue</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">I remember the first evening of
revelry in İstiklal. We have spent the day visiting the main tourist
attractions of Istanbul – The Topkapı Palace, The Blue Mosque, The Aya Sofya,
The Basilica Cistern. They are all overwhelming structures, each of them; it is
impossible to not be overawed by their grandeur. But like most tourist
attractions anywhere in the world, they have long become limited to that
identity. They teem with foreign visitors and profiteers and the discordant
sounds of several languages spoken all around at once. All of this cannot take
away from the splendor of the architecture and the building themselves, but it
robs them to a great extent of the unique sense of place and feeling they could
evoke in the centuries gone by. As an outsider, the feeling one is left with
inside The Aya Sofya or The Blue Mosque is exactly the same as if one were in
the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpojSUralEGlhRvRE8gkkCutF7bZzarzZZjyt309k_v1oc8LVFHMqeRB5fXZw2wTI0bAsvVifjU2tKIjvKdRbM2TPp_7CwFearAozY-KZ3x2kxJJKXcuK6HxVen2Mv8hQyP4_Q/s1600/IMG_3257.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpojSUralEGlhRvRE8gkkCutF7bZzarzZZjyt309k_v1oc8LVFHMqeRB5fXZw2wTI0bAsvVifjU2tKIjvKdRbM2TPp_7CwFearAozY-KZ3x2kxJJKXcuK6HxVen2Mv8hQyP4_Q/s1600/IMG_3257.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The Blue Mosque</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And so it is that we head to İstiklal
for the evening, having been simultaneously awed and underwhelmed by what we
have seen during the day, with high hopes of an exuberant evening. My cousin,
who is incidentally in the city for some months as a visiting faculty at the
local university (Man, how I hate him!), has assured us that there isn’t a
better place to be in after the sun goes down. </div>
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He meets us at the Sultanahmet
end of the Galata bridge near the Grand Bazaar. We walk on the bridge over to
the other side as the sun sets, the inimitable Istanbul skyline behind us. On
both sides of the bridge, we see hundreds of men – tourists and locals, rich
and poor – fishing. Their fishing rods are placed on the parapet, the lines
plunging to the water below. Next to each man lies a basket or a vessel to hold
the day’s catch. It is a unique sight.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcjrIUO_jJ05D9moVlOd31hIV6gT_74fvYxUSK3TCUAcKWASGpcaULyTSYrDSau_2G2p5Jm0q2z_ehcuwz_CDnF0FROtVtWKlQ8cAQd5nSqEagDpAvN_FI79JFf5V0RS7LqNj/s1600/IMG_3172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcjrIUO_jJ05D9moVlOd31hIV6gT_74fvYxUSK3TCUAcKWASGpcaULyTSYrDSau_2G2p5Jm0q2z_ehcuwz_CDnF0FROtVtWKlQ8cAQd5nSqEagDpAvN_FI79JFf5V0RS7LqNj/s1600/IMG_3172.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Fishing on the bridge</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The bridge deposits us into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karak%C3%B6y" title="Karaköy"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Karaköy</span></a>
(Galata district; for the football minded, this is where Galatasaray belongs)
from where the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCnel" title="Tünel"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Tünel</span></a>
– a two coach shuttle train inside an underground tunnel – takes us to İstiklal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
An astonishing range of colours
and lights and smells greet us. There are neon lights of every conceivable
colour; the shops on either side, the quarters over them, the spaces between
them – they are all covered in these lights. The street itself stretches out
ahead of us and although it is only a few kilometers before it opens on to Taksem
Square, just then it makes us believe that it never ends. All around us there
are food stalls and restaurants and cafés and pubs and turku bars (dimly lit
spaces with live Turkish music). Somewhere in the middle of all these, there
are the unavoidable McDonald’s and Subway; we are grateful to find that they
are both nearly empty. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiva6YW-ONm9kOSpEguIpMLMLxUkyGla2uSdLVrpXyv9rbFCIyLwU0VpG97ZgCQayg5GyFi91qf3eHPJQXYQ7lEXzpYhOVQBMgRl7qgic7-oDcsnRYmlBG02nonBvrHiIpTfqul/s1600/IMG_3193.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiva6YW-ONm9kOSpEguIpMLMLxUkyGla2uSdLVrpXyv9rbFCIyLwU0VpG97ZgCQayg5GyFi91qf3eHPJQXYQ7lEXzpYhOVQBMgRl7qgic7-oDcsnRYmlBG02nonBvrHiIpTfqul/s1600/IMG_3193.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
İstiklal</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
On the street, there are hundreds
of thousands of people, walking. They scarcely pay any heed when the famous
antique tram passes through, perilously close. They step aside at the last
moment to allow the tram to pass and it is only in those instants that the tram
lines on the street are visible. There aren’t many people on the tram; people
are happier looking in from the outside than the other way round.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We start with a turku bar.
Inside, a lady and her troupe sings for the customers. Her voice is boisterous
and interspersed with exaggerated quivers and the main accompanying instrument
is the bağlama (or saz – a Turkish version of the guitar with seven
strings), both of which are in line with what we have seen in Fatih Akin’s
enchanting film on Istanbul and its music - ‘Crossing The Bridge: The Sound of
Istanbul) and we are, therefore, absolutely thrilled and speak of Sezen Aksu in
barely constrained voices. We drink Raki – Turkey’s own aniseed flavoured drink
– from tall glass flutes. My cousin explains to us the ritual that goes with
drinking Raki – two flutes, one filled with raki and the other with cold water,
a sip from one and then the other, and enormous plates filled with fruits and
sometimes some form of meze. They have built rehydration into the ritual, he
tells us. If one were to adhere religiously to it, no amount of binge drinking
would lead to terrible mornings after. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3AdWjaBW6jMLHQM0BK1b0l6tlLJDOiUGB7cxaGFz56OOeYFGc1WkAF8_BEfxB8Dfup3CJ9EiIVV24sJyVogkLnBCCLOvlvIoBakFNZ6alRSc_-eJ5QGTzhpbxd5TnzHBig40j/s1600/IMG_3229.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3AdWjaBW6jMLHQM0BK1b0l6tlLJDOiUGB7cxaGFz56OOeYFGc1WkAF8_BEfxB8Dfup3CJ9EiIVV24sJyVogkLnBCCLOvlvIoBakFNZ6alRSc_-eJ5QGTzhpbxd5TnzHBig40j/s1600/IMG_3229.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Turku Bar</div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDh0itljDfextUDLBzZqTZrRykikou8lNWOxcnduYjUF79lOwtPVfUl1xb_xJbmJWjIWDY76PxwNULMhHx1kGN3XHWjAeFKleFEyq11R9531MkpYR4t3koxQs7yzX-fGruVOm/s1600/IMG_3298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDh0itljDfextUDLBzZqTZrRykikou8lNWOxcnduYjUF79lOwtPVfUl1xb_xJbmJWjIWDY76PxwNULMhHx1kGN3XHWjAeFKleFEyq11R9531MkpYR4t3koxQs7yzX-fGruVOm/s1600/IMG_3298.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Soon, people on other tables get
up and start dancing and swinging and singing along. Much drunken merriment
ensues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We leave the joint near midnight.
The street, it appears, is even more crowded than when we left it. We eat Dolma
Kebaps (one of the great joys of traveling in Turkey are the innumerable words
that one recognizes from Hindi) at a busy, cramped restaurant; they are
delicious. There’s also Ayran, which is basically buttermilk, and Baklava. The
Baklava is so heavy it could easily pass for the main dish. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We head for our hostel in the
small hours. At no point, during all of this, have the lights dimmed or the
crowds thinned.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJZHleSGKtsYQ87EVJk-NWaEGGVT6yJVtTQ6FF9qvDdOZIDldv4IQskMWK9yjgRkbHpao4VEhAbSgAtNGpz4bsSu86TkxBUIW2MPW2Hhzn7WdTj8lZjm83FFIURaNgAvK4I5ep/s1600/IMG_3321.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJZHleSGKtsYQ87EVJk-NWaEGGVT6yJVtTQ6FF9qvDdOZIDldv4IQskMWK9yjgRkbHpao4VEhAbSgAtNGpz4bsSu86TkxBUIW2MPW2Hhzn7WdTj8lZjm83FFIURaNgAvK4I5ep/s1600/IMG_3321.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a>I remember a particular
conversation with a young local who spoke half-decent English. We meet him on a
ferry ride to the eastern shore of Istanbul. He is studying film at a school in
Izmir, we learn, and immediately hound him for the names of Turkish filmmakers.
We mention Nuri Bilge Ceylan (he is thrilled that we know of him and teaches us
to pronounce the name properly) and Fatih Akin. Fatih Akin is German, he states
quietly. He recommends other names that we hear for the first time – Dervis
Zaim and Zeki Demirkubuz. In the last year, I have seen films by both men; they
are brilliant.</div>
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I do not remember a great deal of detail of the hours we spent in Kadikoy, except a half hour we spent in a cafe. It is on a little known street, where we spend a half hour sipping tea.<br /><br />The place is a cluster of tables with green velvety tablecloth and on most tables, old men sit and play cards. Their attention scarcely strays from the cards they have been dealt and even when they pick one and flick it carelessly on to the table, their eyes are glued unwaveringly to the ones that remain in their possession. Their teacups are never empty. A large man refills them every few minutes; nobody on the table notices him do so.<br /><br />There is a particular moment there that has stayed with me -- a man about to throw a card on the table and the large man serving tea standing between him and the window behind just so a shadow covers the player but not his card (a seven of spades, I think, though I am unsure if my memory can be that precise).<br /><br />We take the ferry back near sundown, and this time, the domes and minarets and everything else form silhouettes against a gradually darkening orange sky. The waters of the Bosphorus are no longer turquoise; they too reflect the sky's orange. Some of our best pictures of Istanbul are from then.<br /><br />Is it then that our memories are slave to the pictures we take? I wonder while I write. Is it then that the fact that I remember so much of certain passages and nearly nothing of others is merely a product of the pictures I have or have not taken?<br /><br />I haven't a single photograph of the Bosphorus when I first passed by it. But I remember so much else that is not captured in pictures, that can perhaps not be captured in pictures.<div>
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<br />I remember searching desperately for ways to grasp the concept of Huzun, as I have imagined it, from reading Orhan Pamuk's fascinating memoir on Istanbul. Pamuk describes 'Huzun' as it applies to the residents of Istanbul -- as individuals and as a people. 'Huzun', he explains, is a Turkish word, without a precise English equivalent; it defines a state of mind in which one experiences a melancholy that comes from a mixture of great spiritual loss and hope. Istanbul evokes it, according to Pamuk, through the awareness of its glorious past and the realisation that the city's greatest era is, perhaps, left behind forever; a forlorn pride that the people of Istanbul experience throughout their lives.<br /><br />Although I have spent hours in the neighbourhoods Pamuk actually describes -- Cukurcuma, Cihangir, etc -- it is, in fact, in Kadikoy that I recall sensing this feeling most palpably -- perhaps because the old, short buildings, red-gray and decrepit, the damp streets, the old people gathered in cafes such as the one I just described and a general sense of artsy decay remind me of Kolkata -- a city that I believe will understand and embrace Huzun as much as Istanbul does.<br /><br />It is a great city, Istanbul -- to me, the greatest city I have seen yet. The sights are breathtaking. The people are warm and friendly. The women are gorgeous. The food is sumptuous. And the memories of it still left to me are incomplete and haphazard but filled with indelible images and cheerful vagueness.<br /><br />And there's the Bosphorus.</div>
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Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-56599909243711551412014-07-10T12:54:00.000+05:302014-07-10T12:54:01.651+05:30Backstreet's Back, Alright!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Its been a long long time since anything's happened on this blog apart from posts being removed. I had started to think I might give up blogging altogether, and I am still not convinced I won't, but for now, I've decided I might as well keep it going, shamelessly posting links to other websites where my name has appeared.<br />
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It also allows me to let some of my previous posts slide down the page, where not many will see them. It is inevitable, I suppose, that one's own creative output cannot age gracefully. That everything one has written in the past, when revisited years later, appears frequently embarrassing and sometimes cringe-worthy. And that one shouldn't be too hard on oneself in such matters. The same, perhaps, goes for one's choices in films and music (refer title of this post) and yahoo chat ids.<br />
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But really, some of what has appeared on this blog earlier, is very nearly utter bullshit.<br />
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A couple of years from now, I might start finding the articles I've written today to be as embarrassing, but we'll see what to do about that when I get there.<br />
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So here're 6 travel articles I wrote for Rediff over the past few months. The latest of these is a month old, so presumably, Rediff won't mind duplicate versions floating around the internet.<br />
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Istanbul, Turkey - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/report/slide-show-1-travel-inside-istanbul-the-greatest-city-in-the-world/20130728.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/report/slide-show-1-<wbr></wbr>travel-inside-istanbul-the-<wbr></wbr>greatest-city-in-the-world/<wbr></wbr>20130728.htm</a></div>
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Tuscany, Italy - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/report/slide-show-1-travel-travelogue-under-the-tuscan-skies/20130818.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/report/slide-show-1-<wbr></wbr>travel-travelogue-under-the-<wbr></wbr>tuscan-skies/20130818.htm</a></div>
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Ulan Bator, Mongolia - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/report/slide-show-1-travel-pics-the-in-between-world-of-ulaanbaatar/20140119.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/report/slide-show-1-<wbr></wbr>travel-pics-the-in-between-<wbr></wbr>world-of-ulaanbaatar/20140119.<wbr></wbr>htm</a></div>
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Ventimiglia, Italy - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-travel-tales-the-most-amazing-stories-from-up-to-italy/20140411.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/slide-show/slide-<wbr></wbr>show-1-travel-tales-the-most-<wbr></wbr>amazing-stories-from-up-to-<wbr></wbr>italy/20140411.htm</a></div>
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Fethiye/ Pamukkale/ Birgi, Turkey - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-travel-anatolia-chasing-the-absurd-and-the-exotic/20140216.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/slide-show/slide-<wbr></wbr>show-1-travel-anatolia-<wbr></wbr>chasing-the-absurd-and-the-<wbr></wbr>exotic/20140216.htm</a></div>
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Irkutsk - <a href="http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-travel-a-journey-within-exploring-the-mysteries-of-asia/20140524.htm" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.rediff.com/<wbr></wbr>getahead/slide-show/slide-<wbr></wbr>show-1-travel-a-journey-<wbr></wbr>within-exploring-the-<wbr></wbr>mysteries-of-asia/20140524.htm</a></div>
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Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-51093009586789656482011-06-12T11:50:00.003+05:302011-06-12T12:16:01.470+05:30Saving Money<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Classroom sessions ended, twice every year, at the end of a semester, well before the exams began. The intervening period – ‘Study Leave’ was the college’s name for it – comprised of a marked increase in alcohol sales, comfortably above the annual average in Dhule. The nights were spent in frenzied binges that ended, near dawn, when hands could no longer guide a glass to the lips. Bodies lay sprawled in hostel corridors and out on the street until they were deposited into a room by sweepers. There, they remained until the next evening, covered in slowly drying, flaking sweat and, often, not much else. And then it began all over again. It is likely that, had the weeks of soot and grime been washed off these bodies during such times, it’d be found that their complexions had turned decidedly fairer, for the Sun hardly ever shone upon them. They may as well have been living on the Arctic Circle.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the middle of all this, there came and passed a mock examination that the college conducted in anticipation of the actual university exams. Not even the most dedicated students appeared for it, choosing instead, to go back to their homes and spend that time studying on their own, while being taken care of by deliriously happy mothers . Kaushik, too, chose to go back home.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The going back itself, he had turned into an adventure. Since there wasn’t a train station in Dhule, the prescribed and widely used method of travel was buses, privately run, that looked like they were occasionally cared for. There were several that plied, daily, between Dhule and Ahmedabad; a ten hour ride through the night while one slept as comfortably as is possible on a reclining seat. This, however, wasn’t Kaushik’s preferred travel plan; he took the groaning, cracking at the seams, stiflingly crowded state transport bus. It rattled along minor streets, instead of the main highway, and stumbled frequently into empty bus stations, where it shuddered to a stop, thus nullifying whatever little wind its motion artificially created, and remained for interminably long periods. He rode it up to Surat, a city of much wealth and enterprise but no aesthetics, halfway between Dhule and Ahmedabad, having slept fitfully throughout. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One time, he had boarded the bus and found two girls from his college, one pimply and the other plump, both love interests of friends of his, already seated. He stopped abruptly when he saw them, considering whether or not he should show himself, while scanning frantically for seats where he could be hid from their sight. The moments wasted in this state of indecision absolved him of having to make a choice, for the pimply girl spotted him and waved a cheerful Hi. He reciprocated with as much cheeriness as he could muster, given his conversational skills in the company of women. Besides, he was returning at the end of nearly six months and, in his mind as much as in others’, stank unpardonably. The second of his concerns was relieved within a few minutes, for he soon realized that they were returning home after a while too. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Of the two, his preference was distinctly for the plump one, who, as soon as the bus began to move, fell asleep. The pimply one, who Kaushik wished would fall asleep, did not. So he spent the rest of the night, grunting and offering the odd interjectory word while she rambled on about, amongst other things, how she wished to work at NASA – an ambition that Kaushik thought hilarious for he was convinced she couldn’t tell a capacitor from the resistor. When Surat arrived, he got off the bus as quickly as he could, before the girl could get halfway through an ominous sounding sentence, one that he imagined would end in a plea to stick with them for the rest of the way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In subsequent years, especially when his fumbles and struggles with Ritika began, he looked back upon this and other occasions and wondered he should’ve been more open, tried harder to be interested.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Once in Surat, he had the option of continuing on in the bus or taking a train for the remainder of the journey. He usually took the train.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train station was a quarter of an hour away from where the bus left him and he walked to there, feeling the slight chill of the night, no matter what the time of the year - an indication that the desert underneath, upon which the cities of the region were built, still breathed. Yellow-orange halogen lights lorded over empty streets, lightening them but not the constructions on either side, which was just as well, for had they done so, the illusion of romanticism would’ve washed away. It occurred to Kaushik in subsequent years, when he tried to recall those nights, that such streets – halogen-lit and dark at the corners where imagination was allowed to fill in the rest - always appear the same in memory, no matter what city they belong to.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train station too, at those hours, looked like it had seen grander times. The queues at the ticket counters were short, populated only by haggard looking men off night duty or with a stack of newspapers around them. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The platforms were long lines of white tube-lights and nothingness - the odd porter hurrying along, smelling of dried sweat on decayed leather, a rare sign of civilization. Sometimes, the sound of running water on utensil, flat and gradually dampening, punctuated by harsh clamours of the most recently washed joining the rest of the pile. The occasional lonely hoot of a locomotive on its way to the shed. Shuttered tea, snack and newspaper stalls. An empty bench in an unlit corner.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He waited at the station until about four in the morning, which is when all at once, a flurry of trains begins to arrive, and the world comes alive again. He never reserved a seat and therefore entered into one of the unreserved ‘General’ compartments that were attached at the front and rear ends of the train. There was hardly ever a place to sit; he usually sat on the floor near the entrance, his legs dangling outside, the wind blowing into his face, tiny bits of used match sticks, cigarette butts and groundnut shells pinching his backside. Food was passed around, offered and accepted with soiled, sticky hands and grins stained with tobacco. He overheard conversations, mundane and exotic, and sometimes indulged in them. Seats were magically found whenever an old man or woman entered the compartment. And there was much bargaining with hawkers and bickering amongst themselves– men’s loud voices and women’s mumbled responses. It was all before Kaushik had an IPod or knew of phrases like ‘the human condition’.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He reached home before his father left for work and the family had their breakfast together, over which, the two elders explained to him the safety and good sense in opting for private buses and the lack of both in how he travelled. He laughed them away, stating he’d saved more than a hundred bucks this way and pointing out how the same father, in years past - when he’d thrown tantrums for having been bought a regular pencil instead of one with a tiny plastic hand at the top which, the manufacturers claimed was to let kids scratch their own backs during the prickly heat of summer - had intoned gravely, ‘A rupee saved is a rupee earned’.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In his own mind, however, he liked to think that that wasn’t the point.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-65155138050115896922011-05-22T13:21:00.001+05:302011-05-22T13:21:29.955+05:30Yab-Yum<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik hated spending nights away from his apartment when he was in Mumbai. He did not know why, but there it was. Even in college, after nights of frenzied drinking in different rooms and on the hostel terrace, that left in its wake a floor full of empty bottles clinking against each other, vomit, piss and spent bodies, he would stagger alone on the empty tar road that ran through the campus, shivering slightly in the morning chill, looking for a cup of tea, fancying himself to be the tragic hero of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Sometimes he would find his tea, most times he wouldn’t. But he would return to his own room at the end of it anyway. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ashish and Ritankar had long since realized this, and so, without ever explicitly discussing the subject, it had always been understood that it was to be Kaushik’s apartment where most of their weekends would be spent.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Tonight, however, it was to be Ashish’s place. He’d shifted into a new apartment and was thrilled with its balcony and the view it afforded.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It is like in Boston Legal!” he’d explained to the other two, “I’ve got beanbags, a small table on which to place the whiskey bottle and the glasses, we’ll be on the twentieth floor, the view’s awesome. One can sit there with one’s feet up, sipping whiskey, looking up at the night sky and down at the city lights. Just like those episodes end!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Besides, Ashish’s parents were away for the weekend and he had the apartment to himself apart from the presence of his younger sister, who he’d assured them, wouldn’t get in the way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ashish’s Dad, the owner of a smalltime stocks & funds trading agency, after having witnessed his business wiped out during the recession, had had to liquidate most of his assets, including a spacious four room flat in a plush suburb of Ahmedabad to pay off his debts, and had since shifted to Mumbai with his wife and daughter. There wasn’t enough income in the family to pay the rents for two separate places, and so they’d all moved in with Ashish. The immediate fallouts of this were that Ashish had to rent a much larger apartment and that Ritankar and Kaushik were having to nod through Ashish’s incessant assertions that it was all going according to plan.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It is going to be perfect,” he’d say, “when they spend some time in this city, they’ll start to see how I live and what I want out of life and they’ll get used to it. In a couple of years, it should all be stable, and I’ll have enough money saved to buy them an apartment in Ahmedabad so they can move back and then I’ll be free to go settle in Italy!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“A provincial Italian seaside town. Or Tuscany.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes yes. Exactly.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And what happens when they start pestering you to get married?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, we’ll see. I am hoping they wouldn’t. And if they do, well, we’ll see.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was in this new, larger apartment where the three were to meet. And so, Kaushik was now on a train that would, in a half hour, take him there. The evening rush had peaked and there was scarcely enough space to maneuver his hand so he could pick his nose if he wished to, while he stood squashed between men he did not know, smelling their day’s work on their bodies. He had a vision of a clean, dull, dutiful wife who waits in a cramped one bedroom apartment with flaked walls, a silent dinner, an absent son out with friends and her submission to her unwashed husband’s needs on a creaky cot in a stuffy room with a creakier ceiling fan and<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>a window unopened in years.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His train of thought was broken by a sudden elbow to his rib. A station. People replacing other people. Among the new set, a girl, young and pretty. A definite oddity in the men’s compartment. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Kaushik scanned the area around her for the male classmate that, doubtless, must exist. He found him half hid behind her, a frail boy with spiked hair and acne. Kaushik smirked. Leap of faith, he thought. The man next to him looked at him sharply and he realized he’d said it aloud and smiled apologetically. He resumed looking at the girl. She wore a pink t-shirt with a white bunny on it. The bunny’s eyes, strategically placed, sparkled with what Kaushik gathered were round glass chips. The lower half of her body was obscured by the bodies between them but that she’d be wearing jeans was a safe guess. What else could she? His thoughts turned to Ashish’s sister. He’d never met her. What would she be like?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">She was a pleasant looking, slightly plump girl. She wore glasses and once when she took it off to wipe with her napkin, he noticed that she had a slight squint and that she had an old scar from a stitch running above her right eye. Instinctively, his fingers touched the spot under his chin where his own stitch marks were, from a bike accident in Lucknow, when on a stormy night on an unlit single-lane highway he’d slammed into a fallen tree and rolled directly into the path of an approaching truck. He’d gotten out of the way in time; a spare tire on the side of the truck had brushed his back while he stared wide-eyed into space, expecting the impact that never came. His injuries, apart from the peeled skin on his back, were all from the fall, including the one under the chin where his face had struck the road. He remembered clearly what he’d said when he’d cried out loud just before the truck brushed <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>past him. “Fuck Motherfucker!” He’d said it in Hindi, of course, and it struck him that he’d never thought about how, if he were to write about the experience, he would do so. Images of old Arnold Schwarzennegger film posters swam into his mind; he imagined one with Arnold’s huge face and a sawed off shotgun with “Fuck Motherfucker!” written on it in bright red fonts and underneath, in smaller, more fragile fonts, “(In Hindi)”.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He laughed out loud and they all stared at him. Second time it has happened today, he said to himself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh,” he said, “nothing, just remembered an old joke.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yeah?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Isn’t it time we let the wine flow?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Absolutely.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">She stuck around for a drink or two, making the odd comment, asking a bunch of questions, stemming the flow of their conversation. The other two waited patiently while Ashish answered her, explained to her the jokes and the references they contained; they walked over to the edge of the balcony and stared at the sweeping cityscape, and smoked. It was indeed a grand sight. Before long, however, she excused herself quietly and, as Kaushik put it in his interpretation of the British Accent, “retired to her chambers.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So how’s the novel coming along?” Ashish asked. It was the first time he’d shown any interest in the subject.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Still some way to go,” Kaushik said, “meandering all over the place at the moment.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Meandering?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yeah. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any definite plot emerging.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“From whatever I’ve read, it doesn’t have much hope for a plot, does it?” Ritankar asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I guess not. We’re just a bunch of armchair losers after all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Too many Sal Paradises. We need a Dean Moriarty at some point.” Ritankar mused, stumbling a few times over Moriarty.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And a bit of yab-yum perhaps. I wouldn’t mind it certainly.” Ashish said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik grinned, “At this point, I estimate we are miles away from either.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Damn. We really do need to get out of here.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Italy.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Or the French Provence.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yeah sure. After you buy your parents that house in Ahmedabad.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“About three years.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Be married by then.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“This isn’t helping.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Here, have some more wine.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As the night wore, the city grew quieter. The sound of heavy tires on tar accompanied by the nasal buzz of automotive engines broke the stillness occasionally. In another setting, Kaushik thought, this could be the sound of insects. Honeybees, probably. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“When I am drunk,” Ritankar said and then exhaled deeply a couple of times, his head lulling to one side.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“’When’ was not required in that sentence, I’d say.” Kaushik quipped.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar ignored him.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“When I am drunk,” he resumed, “it seems to me my ears become more sensitive. Everything sounds louder. Clearer. The clink of glasses. Those trucks on the highway. Water leaking from that tap in your washroom.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. Happens to me too.” Kaushik said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So for the hearing impaired…” Ashish began before he was cut short by Kaushik.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. I thought of that. Low hanging fruit.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar looked at the two, a little lost.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What the fuck are you guys talking about?” he said, exhaling thrice between the sentence.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh don’t bother. We are drunk too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“How wonderful would it be,” Ashish said, “when we’d have nights as these ending in the arms of women we met at a café.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And in the mornings, when we’d wake up, to find them gone, leaving behind baked bread, jam, eggs and fruit juice on the table.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And on the next evening, to find them at the café again. Continue with them if we liked them or smile politely and leave with other women…”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Lets play some music.” Ritankar interjected.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yeah sure. The Carla Bruni variety.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t have the speakers set up in this apartment yet.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Damn!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When the sun rose, they were still there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, there’s hills there! Nice and lush, too!” Ritankar pointed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. That’s the Goregaon Film City area. The National Park’s somewhere in that region too, I believe.” Ashish said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“We must go there sometime.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, how about now?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No, not now,” Kaushik said, “I am totally not in the mood for walking jungles at the moment. I am hungry though.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“We can go have some breakfast downstairs.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You know a place?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No. Haven’t explored too much yet,” Ashish said, “but we could start today.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Or,” Ritankar said, “we could go to Café Ideal!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But that’s more than an hour away!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, so what?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Isn’t a bad idea, Ashish,” Kaushik said, “we can.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And then come back all this way?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“We don’t need to. My place is closer.”</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-3959766664518733372011-03-13T11:40:00.000+05:302011-03-13T11:41:28.054+05:30Short Story - Words<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The wind grew stronger. It howled its way into the gaps of shut windows and doors – a path otherwise monopolized by sunlight – but there wasn’t a sun this afternoon, or maybe there was, hidden behind the angry, dirty clouds, but from the ground, it was difficult to say.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the distance, thunder clapped, as did the errant tin roofs of makeshift shanties. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Inside the old, crumbling mill, where the air smelt of rotten moss and animal excreta and where nobody had entered for any definite purpose in years, apart for vagrants and stray dogs, the two men stood facing each other. One of them wore a gray woolen cap, through the sides of which, strands of silvery white hair crawled out. The other man had a gun in his hands.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“How was that then?” asked the man with the gun.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The man with the woolen cap and silvery white hair did not immediately respond. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sounded alright,” he said finally, “you always have had a way with dramatic imagery. Woolen cap - Gun in hand isn’t bad at all! Sums up our situation here, quite effectively. Those first few lines though – the shut windows and thunder claps and all that – that sounded to me like you’ve been reading, or maybe rereading, Cormac McCarthy lately.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“That has nothing to do with what I wrote!” the man with the gun fumed, “you condescending bastard!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ah! So I take it that you have indeed been reading McCarthy, yes?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sonofabitch!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You might as well have included some Spanish dialogue, while you were at it. Given me a sombrero to wear instead of the woolen cap, perhaps?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sonofabitch!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Repetition. You already used that just now.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I am glad I am going to kill you!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So it appears.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sonofabitch!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh come on.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">An old mill. Abandoned. Walls smeared with soot and piss on both sides. Doors and windows fallen away, leaving behind ugly, blank gashes. A good thing in this gale. The wind’s fiercest gusts dissipate through there, the path of least resistance, letting the crumbling walls hold fort against the rest. Dry leaves, bits of paper and plastic blow in through the gashes. A smell of stagnant water, rust and piss. Strangely, there aren’t any cobwebs. There were once floor tiles, or maybe just stone slabs, but they’ve been stolen away, exposing the soil underneath, on which, now resides ankle-high undergrowth. Two men. Out of place. Middle aged perhaps. Difficult to say in the gloom. It is raining outside. They are dry. They must have been inside for a long time. One points a gun at the other. The other has his hands in his overcoat. Perhaps he has a gun too.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You have a gun!” the man with the gun in his hand exclaimed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The other man chuckled.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I might. I leave it to the readers’ imagination. Unlike your narratives. All wonderfully described, all close-ended. No helpful pointers for the reader to exercise a brain cell or two.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Piece of shit!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Good. You are improving! Marginally.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Anyway, who’s to decide who described this better. I think yours is shit too. All lame showy minimalism.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I’ll decide. I am the published author here, aren’t I?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Bullshit!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You want me to repeat the entire Architect response to that from the Matrix film? I have it all memorized, you know.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You are just a pompous piece of shit!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And a published author.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And that’s why I am going to kill you.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You didn’t even win the bet!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t give a damn. I believe mine was better. Besides, I have the gun.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I might have one too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Rubbish.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“The rain’s stopped.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“The rain’s stopped. The wind’s dropped. I can hear the sound of vehicles on the street again.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Why did you do it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Why did you do it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Do what?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You know what I am talking about, asshole! Why did you ask the publisher to reject my manuscript?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It wasn’t any good.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Bullshit.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I didn’t like it.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You’ve never liked anything I’ve ever done.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I enjoyed your fifth grade essay on your brother very much.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They smiled, both of them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You are such an asshole.” The man with the gun said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You shouldn’t lose hope.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“As long as you are alive, I have no chance!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And after I die?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh! The world will mourn your death. They’ll all be shattered. And in all that nauseating sympathy and mush, I will quietly sneak in my book. Be quite poignant. Sell well, I believe.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I see. So you are going to exploit my name to peddle your sorry literature.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It isn’t sorry literature!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Who cares?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, exactly. Who cares? It will be name on the book.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It is my name too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Who cares?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Repetition. Again. Your lack of creativity appalls me.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Who cares?” This time, with a sly grin.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Whatever happened to your self esteem?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What about it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You want to use my name.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“The man you hate most.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ironic. Must be tough living with that knowledge. I am glad I am not in your position.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And I am glad I am not in yours. At least I will be living for a while yet.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And then? When the euphoria of the first work fades away? The remaining years wallowing in self pity?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I’ll publish more. Grow out of your shadow.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“My shadow. Yes, precisely.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sonofabitch.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I predict you’ll commit suicide before another decade is out.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“We’ll see.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I had such a great obituary in mind for you.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ha!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No. Serious. I’ve spent years perfecting it. In my head, of course.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The man with the gun, momentarily unsure, looked down at his trouser pocket while he fumbled inside for a cigarette with his hands, then all at once realized his error and jerked the gun into position again. The other man had made no attempt to move.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Don’t fuck with me now!” he said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I am not.” The other man responded.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Then what’s this about an obituary? What’s that got to do with any of this?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh nothing. Just a thought.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Tell me.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Fucking tell me or I’ll kill you right now.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I believe that’s what you intend to do anyway!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Tell me!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Nothing, really. I was just thinking, is all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Go on.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I mean, this manuscript of yours, it isn’t that bad after all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Silence.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“In fact, I think it might actually fly. Become a classic even, given the correct circumstances.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Circumstances?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. A legend around it. Like, maybe, a posthumous publication, you know. A premature end to what could’ve been a great career.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. It always works out that way. Look at James Dean. There are those who think there wasn’t a greater actor. And yet, he did only three films. If he’d done more, who knows?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Stuff your movie references!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I was only saying.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Saying what?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Saying, if only you were to die, and this manuscript was to be published afterward, it could bring the glory you always wished for.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What about the obituary! This started with an obituary! Don’t fuck with me man! Don’t you dare fuck with me!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ah yes, the obituary. Be honest with yourself. Who else but me could write a better obituary for you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t know. Maybe.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. So that’s what I was thinking. A tragic death. The publication of a masterpiece. The obituary as a catalyst. A great deal of dignity in that, no?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“There is a cat meowing somewhere.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“In Japanese myth…”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Shut up! I know.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Are you crying?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No I am not! I don’t know.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What are you crying for, you idiot!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Shut up bastard!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh come on, you’re the one with the gun!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You might have one too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Chuckles.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-86926410260561250012011-01-31T12:20:00.002+05:302011-01-31T12:22:39.938+05:30Short Story - Wrong Skills<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When the benevolent old king died, the kingdom was flung into great turmoil. The feverish King, on his deathbed, in his final moment of lucidity, pronounced that which most of his subjects had hoped he would not – that after him, his son be made the rightful King. The collective gasps from everybody present in the room at the time drowned out the King’s actual last words, ones that he had meticulously prepared and rehearsed over the previous week.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That a ruler’s son would succeed his father to the throne was not the cause for concern. The problem was the son himself. It was a widely held belief that the boy was a retard. Indeed, there were whispered suggestions that he was not even the King’s own son and that the King had in fact enlisted the services of his closest minister to administer the requisite services upon the Queen.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Now, these insinuations, though vile, weren’t entirely unfounded either. It was common knowledge, that the King had, for many years remained childless, despite having changed wives and doctors numerous times, before there had finally arrived the news that the then Queen had miraculously delivered a son and that the King’s succession was, therefore, assured. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The skepticism of his subjects found its roots in this miracle, and though the kingdom had rejoiced with great fervor, there had hung over the festivities a perceptible air of doubt, even mild discontent, for there was the matter of the King’s hugely popular teenaged nephew – son of his long dead brother – whom, the Kingdom had regarded as the next King with much fondness and whose life had suddenly become so utterly meaningless.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And then, over the next two decades, their hopes had slowly gathered wind again. From the outset, the young Prince had demonstrated a complete lack of appetite for learning. He fumbled when he spoke. . He couldn’t remember letters of the alphabet. He failed to remember the names of objects. He was clumsy with weapons and armour. He couldn’t ride a horse. He developed a pot belly. By the time he was fifteen, he had begun to go bald.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His only interest, it appeared, was food and it’s cooking. He spent hours in the kitchen with the royal chefs and servants. They were, of course, embarrassed by his presence and begged him to stay away so they could concentrate on their work, but he obstinately stayed on. The King was understandably dismayed by all of this. He forbade the Prince to visit the royal kitchens, to which the boy responded by locking himself up in his chambers for weeks, without food. It wasn’t until the Queen (against the wished of the King) promised to the Prince that not only would he be allowed to enter the kitchens but that she would accompany him there, that he agreed to emerge. Soon after, he became an indispensible member of the chef’s team; he showed such great aptitude for his work that in a year’s time, the chef let the Prince prepare entire meals for the palace, without supervision.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By and by, the King resigned himself to the ways of his son. He began to divert an increasing amount of attention to his nephew, who by this time, had turned into a fine young man. At dinner, the nephew regained his place next to the King and the two of them spent their time at the table speaking highly of the Prince’s cooking. The Prince was thrilled by their compliments. The Queen wept quietly inside the isolation of her chambers. The Kingdom again came to regard the nephew as their next ruler and so it was that when the King pronounced the wrong name on his deathbed, the kingdom was flung into great turmoil. The very next day, the nephew announced that he would leave the kingdom and refused to attend the crowning of the new King. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He left and with him left hundreds of his most loyal men and women. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The first request the Prince made, <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>to his appalled ministers whilst they were in consultations on the impending crowning ceremony, was that he be allowed to oversee the grand feast after the ceremony. That is impossible! They told him. They couldn’t let the King become a subject of ridicule! Now that he was no longer just a delinquent Prince but the ruler of a kingdom, there was the matter of keeping up appearances! They reasoned with him. But the Prince remained unmoved. There is only one thing I know to do well and though unworthy of Kings it may be, I believe my subjects should not be denied the best that I have to offer them. He said. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The day of the ceremony arrived. The crowd cheered and then fell silent, while the new King fumbled through his first address to them. Towards the end, some were openly jeering him and when it ended, polite applause was offered, and the kingdom entered the grand hall, venue of the grand feast, in a sombre mood.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But at some point during the feast, towards the end of the second course, they say, a remarkable thing happened. The subjects, quiet and despondent until then, suddenly started to find their voice again. There was laughter, isolated at first, but soon it had spread over the entire hall. By the time the feast ended, the hall was in an uproar. People danced on the tables in manic frenzy and when the King appeared before them, they screamed and chanted his name. The ministers were dumbfounded. They scratched their heads and looked quizzically at one another, unable to comprehend the incredible scenes being enacted before them. The King looked towards them and smiled, although later, in memory, it was to change into a smirk. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The grand success of the ceremony ushered in with it a period of magnificent joy and peace. The King allowed his ministers to decide matters of the state, ill equipped as he was to do so himself. Instead, he spent his days walking around the kingdom and mixing with his subjects. Often, he would stop at a house and offer to cook for them. The food he would cook would melt away the last remaining vestiges of cynicism from the minds of his subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Kingdom prospered. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It went on for many years thus, before, the inevitable news trickled in. The nephew, together with a massive army he had built in the intervening years, was planning to attack the kingdom. The King consulted with his ministers and they suggested that the best course of action would be to send out a team of emissaries to negotiate peacefully. The severed heads, ghastly pale - the skin on the faces had flaked off from lying submerged in stagnant water for there had been a torrential downpour the previous day -, of the emissaries returned in a creaky chest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Next, a troop of the kingdom’s finest warriors was sent out. At the end of a month, they had not returned. The ministers were at a loss. The King asked if more forces could be sent out, but the Ministers asked him to not do so, for there was no telling what had become of the ones sent earlier and that they would need as many at hand to defend their land when the enemies were upon them. One or two ministers broached the possibility of a surrender so further damage be spared, but this the King would not allow. And so they waited, fearful and desperate, for the dreaded forces to arrive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The King spent his days increasingly confined to his chambers. He grew dejected and sad, and with him did the entire kingdom. He refused to venture out into the city, although he was urged to, in order to reinstate morale. What can I do! He cried. I can do nothing for them! I cannot save them! What can I do! Cook for them? Someone commented, wryly, that that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Then one day, the enemies arrived. It was a staggering sight. From their vantage points on the watchtowers, the men reported that the troops stretched for miles and miles; the last of the men weren’t even within sight. There was nothing that could possibly be done, the King was told, other than die a heroic death. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A heroic death! The King gasped. A heroic death! Why, I cannot even hold a sword without cutting myself!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That is when it occurred to him. The last thing, the only thing he could do. And so, he called upon his subjects to gather in the grand hall where his first feast had been, so he could address them in this time of despair. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">You have seen the enemy advancing at us! He told them. And much as I would like to calm you, to assure you that everything will be well and we will defend our lands successfully, you know that it is not true. I am not the King that can save you, my subjects! And you have known this all along. We have spent some good years together, feasting and celebrating our lives. But I cannot be the King you will now expect me to be! There is nothing I can do to save you. And so, I propose to do the only thing I know how to do. One last time. A grand feast! The greatest celebration of our times yet! Food that nobody’s ever seen before! Revelry that will resound through times to come!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The grand feast began. The sound of the merriment floated through the wind and reached the enemies. The Nephew, seated at the dinner table with his chiefs, heard it and couldn’t suppress a chuckle. Fools! He laughed. The Chiefs joined in the laughter and when it subsided, returned pensively to their dinner. They lay in their beds staring at the darkness, kept awake by the delirium of their enemies, until suddenly near sunrise, all became quiet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When they reached the gates, wide open, they found the town deserted. A bewitching aroma lingered in the air. They stumbled around the streets cluelessly, unsure of what to expect, until they reached the grand hall of the feasts, where they encountered the extraordinary sight of thousand s of men and women, piled over one another in wild orgies, eyes open in expressions of mad joy and bliss, stone dead, poisoned by what they had eaten.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-66436870955186866682011-01-08T23:41:00.001+05:302011-01-08T23:44:11.332+05:30Short Story - A Life Less Regular<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was to my third mail that I finally received a response from the man who, after having disappeared for nearly twenty five years, had been found to have returned to his home one fine day. His reply was a curt mention of a date and time; I had expressed a desire to meet him and, in the second and third mails, assured him that I was not a journalist and had no intention of publishing his story. I had, of course, lied. As a symbolic gesture, however, I had agreed to not carry notepads or other recording devices and, therefore, if the story is found to carry a tone more akin to a narration than a conversation, and lacking in specific details, you know why that is.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I spent a few hours in his neighbourhood, wandering around and striking up conversations at cafés, before I went in to meet him. It was one of those quaint colonies on the fringes of a big city where the same families had spent generations and would continue to do so. I learnt that nobody quite knew where he’d been all these years and how he’d miraculously reappeared. It appeared he rarely ever ventured outdoors since his return and hardly anybody had actually seen him. They spoke of obvious physical changes; the man was in his mid twenties when he disappeared. He belonged to an affluent family. His father had run a pretty successful business, something to do with auto spare parts, until he had died in a freak accident at a golf course when he had tripped on something and the golf cart behind him had run over his face. The business has gradually decayed and shut down. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I was ushered into the drawing hall by an old maid, who asked me to wait there. There wasn’t a sofa or a chair in sight. When she left the room, I walked to the window at one end of the room and found it overlooked a garden of weeds, mushrooms and wildflowers. I stood there waiting, smelling the musty, not disagreeable, smell of disrepair. Presently, I heard a man’s voice behind me and I turned to find him standing near the door into which the maid had disappeared earlier.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He was a frail man, stooped slightly, and when he extended his hand, I found it pale and exquisite, like that of a young woman. Greetings exchanged, we stood there in an uncomfortable silence, looking at each other sheepishly and then away, for several moments, and I was beginning to wonder how to begin when the maid returned with two plastic chairs. She asked if we’d like some tea. I nodded and he asked to be brought whiskey instead. I thought briefly if I should do so too but from the maid’s audible sigh I realized it wasn’t a habit she entirely approved of and decided against it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What do you do? Who told you about me?” He asked. He had a raspy, whispery sort of voice – the voice of a man not used to speaking and used to a lot of cigarettes, I surmised.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, I am just a, you know, I work for this glass manufacturing company, I am in the administration department. Quite boring actually.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He nodded. “And where did you hear of me?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, I don’t remember. I think a friend of mine has some relatives who live in this part of town – he may have mentioned you. It was over drinks, I remember that. Later, I asked him if he could get me in touch with you. He brought me your mail address about a month back. I have no clue how he got it.” I hoped he wouldn’t delve further. He did not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Do you know why I agreed to see you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I shook my head. He continued.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Because you made at least seven fairly obvious grammatical mistakes in the twelve lines you wrote to me. Told me you are unlikely to have read anything beyond office memos. I avoid people who have an interest in literature.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Instinctively I turned towards the huge wall mounted bookshelf in the room and I registered for the first time as strange that it did not contain a single book. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how he expected me to react to this strange explanation and remained silent, fighting back the obvious urge to ask what those grammatical errors were.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So, what happened?” I asked and realized immediately how utterly clumsy the question was.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He chuckled. “That’s it? That direct?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The maid arrived with her tray in time to spare me further embarrassment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Well,” he said after sipping the whiskey a couple of times, “I suppose there wasn’t another way. Unless you had the patience to become friends with me – and right now you don’t know if that’s even possible – the subject wouldn’t appear in course of a normal conversation.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He gulped down the rest of the whiskey in his glass and filled it again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What would you say,” he asked me,” if I say I was trapped inside books all this time?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, what would you say?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Well, I wouldn’t know what to say.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He gulped down the contents of the second glass. Filled it again - this time, only ice cubes to go with the whiskey.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But that is what happened.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Over the next half hour, the man went on to narrate to me this astonishing story.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“As a kid, I used to make entries in a diary that my father had bought me, just random stories, completely lacking in even basic literary value. My father also bought me a bunch of books – some of the great classics in abridged, children’s editions – and I read them with great interest but precious little understanding. I used to try and copy the themes of those books into what I wrote myself. So after I read Treasure Island, I wrote one about a lost island with treasure in it, that sort of thing. I wrote them on pieces of stray paper which my father then meticulously arranged, stapled together and filed away. He used to think, or at least I think he used to think, that I had a talent for the written word and like most things he said then, I blindly believed him. And so, by the time I entered my teens, my sole ambition in life was to become a novelist. So I kept writing this and that and found everyone who read them had good things to say. Everyone, until I became friends with this bespectacled guy in college who had a reputation for being a great lover of literature. So obviously I asked him to comment upon some of my stories. I remember vividly his words after he’d read a few. “There isn’t a doubt that you have a way with words. But really, all of this stuff you’ve written, what use is it? It means nothing. Honestly boy, don’t take it hard, but you’ve nothing to say.” I was shattered. I didn’t leave my room for days after that. I came to loathe myself, my father, the life I lived. Was it my fault that I was born into a regular family, a life where all my needs were fulfilled and grew up like everyone else did? Why wasn’t I born in a troubled society instead? During a revolution! How cruel is it to bestow upon a man a gift for something and then give him a life in which his hopes of using it are taken away! Anyway, after a few days, that boy came to see me in my room. I told him everything. How can I have anything to write about if nothing happens in my life! I asked him. “I do not have the answer to it,” he said, “but I can bring you books. Novels. Great works. And you can read them. And you can learn from them. And who knows, maybe one day you will discover something in your life worth describing, worth sharing with everyone else. “ So he began to bring me books. All kinds. Authors I’d never heard of. In the beginning, I found reading those terribly difficult. I’d throw away a book in disgust having read barely a page. And then, one day, he brought me Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I read it wide-eyed late into the night. And when I woke up the next morning, I found myself on a strange new bed and beside me lay Gregor Samsa as a vermin.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I shall refrain from recounting details of my exclamations of disbelief and amazement beyond this point for they serve no purpose to the story. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, Gregor Samsa,” he continued, “I was petrified. I shrieked and jumped up from the bed. He continued to sleep undisturbed. Presently, the door opened and the story began. I realized none of the characters could see me. I was just there in the story and there was nothing I could do. Of course, I thought that I was dreaming and with the end of the story, I’d wake up and everything would be fine. But when I reached the end of the story, the strangest thing happened. I found myself suddenly transported on a boat traveling through a murky river. I didn’t know where I was until I began to listen to the conversations of the other five men on the boat and found one of them was called Marlow. Charles Marlow. And thus began Heart of Darkness. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Heart of Darkness ended and another novel began and so it went. I lived inside story after story for years, trapped and unable to get out. I saw Renaissance Europe – Michelangelo, Da Vinci, all of them and I saw the deplorable acts of sexual theatre in De Sade’s imagination. I fought against the Germans and then, in a different story, with them. One of my greatest experiences was when I lived through pretty much the history of the world at the side of Beauvoir’s immortal character of Fosca. So you see, I was trapped inside books for twenty five years. I do not expect anyone to believe it. But there it is. And then one day, I don’t know how, I woke up and found myself here. For a while I thought this too was a story. Who knows, perhaps it is. Anyway, here I am and my entire life has passed me by without my having lived it.”</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-55313781495817380872011-01-02T18:12:00.005+05:302011-01-05T23:48:02.158+05:30Short Story - Stories of Pain and Bliss<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“And then one day, “said the Novelist, “I woke up and found myself gripped by an overwhelming fear of I knew not what.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Yeah?” I murmured, engrossed in the frantic, haphazard movements of the ant around which I had marked an imaginary boundary with my finger.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Are you even listening to what I am saying?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >I sighed. It had been over an hour since the man had approached my table and asked if he could join me. His eyes were red and he looked so troubled and in need of some company that I had not the heart to refuse. And so he’d occupied the chair opposite mine, introduced himself as the writer of a dozen novels, out of which I’d heard the name of one or two and hadn’t read any, and begun to narrate a story which he said was the most bizarre and insisted was that of his own life. Through the next forty minutes, he recounted, in excruciating detail, his most trivial memories of growing up and writing. Twenty minutes into it, I was convinced that there wasn’t really a story at all. Whatever it was, however, wasn’t done yet and the only reason I hadn’t walked out on him yet was the beer mug in front of me and his offer to pay for it and as many others as I liked. I squashed the ant with my left thumb and looked up at him.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“You woke up gripped by a strange fear. Yeah, I am listening.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >He looked pleased.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Yes, a very strange fear. In fact, I am not even sure if it actually was fear. More like anxiety, probably. Only, it wasn’t vague and less immediate as anxieties usually are. My heart beat violently and I could feel drops of perspiration emerge from behind each ear and trace their paths through my cheeks. When you are a writer, you tend to remember that sort of detail, I suppose.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >He paused as the waiter refilled our mugs. My eyes wandered to the other tables. On an adjacent table, another man, affluent of appearance, sat alone. His glass of whiskey looked untouched; the ashtray on his table was choked with cigarette butts. Perhaps sensing my gaze, he turned towards me and I realized how incredibly feeble the lights were, for I couldn’t make out his features. He fumbled inside his coat and found another cigarette. He struck a match, holding it between his thumb and middle finger, and it illuminated briefly, a wistful smile and the stump where his index finger had been. The Novelist was speaking again.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“At first I didn’t know what to do. I paced my apartment purposelessly. Everything looked in order. The girl I had spent the night with was gone; it was past noon. I went downstairs and read a newspaper at the café on the other side of the street. I spoke to two women on the next table. I don’t remember the conversation but it was genial. But when I returned to the apartment, that oppressing feat still remained. Anyway, I sat down to work on my novel, thinking it would take my mind off whatever it was that bothered me. I found the words come surprisingly easy to me, as I started to write. In no time, I had three paragraphs penned. I was thrilled. I made myself a coffee and returned to the table. As I glanced through what I’d written that morning, I had this odd feeling of having read it before. I re-read it a few times. Yes, definitely, I’d read it before. In fact, it occurred to me that I had actually written something like this before and unintentionally, I was repeating myself.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >I noted that the man at the other table had now turned towards us and was intently listening to the Novelist speak.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“So,” the Novelist continued, “I pulled out one of my earlier novels from the shelf – the one in which I thought I would find the paragraphs in question. I flipped through the pages and eventually found it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >His voice had turned into an agitated hoarse whisper and his eyes shone. I surmised we were finally getting somewhere with the story.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“And guess what I found! Those same sentences, word for word, not a single punctuation out of place! The exact same thing! I couldn’t believe my eyes! ‘How is it possible’, I said to myself, ‘How can it be exactly the same!’ I read some of the earlier paragraphs from the book. And it began to dawn upon me. I went back to my unfinished manuscript. Sure enough! Those paragraphs were all there too! I was rewriting a book I’d already written! Word for word!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >The Novelist began to sob. I glanced at the man at the other table. I still couldn’t see his face in the darkness but I had a feeling he was smiling. Frankly, I wanted to burst into laughter too, so outrageous was the story.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“But…that has to be, I don’t know, how can that be true?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“But it is! It is!” he wailed, “And it doesn’t end there. You know what I found after that? I opened one book after the other. And they were all the same! All the same! All those books I’d written, all of them, with their different covers and different names, they were all the same!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >At that moment, I couldn’t control it any longer and burst into laughter.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Come on man! Surely, you don’t expect me to believe this!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >He looked at me with wide disbelieving eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Shut up, you dumb fuck!” he exploded, “Do you have any idea what it feels like? What it feels like to discover that everything you’ve written is the same thing? You laugh at me in my face, you moron! I went to every bookstore in the city that day! Every fucking bookstore! And I read every last damned copy of my books available in the city! And they were all the same!”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >He became silent, breathing in and out in great gasps. I continued to stare at him, unable to find anything appropriate to say.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“I knew you wouldn’t believe it,” he said after a while, “so I brought these with me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >He brought out a bunch of books from his bag, which I hadn’t noticed thus far, and placed them on the table. I instinctively noticed that they weren’t the same size. There were some that were far thicker than the rest. I picked one up. It was one of his. I opened it to the first chapter and read two paragraphs. Then I picked another.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >It was true. They were all exactly the same book.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >I found the Novelist staring straight at me. I realized, with a shock, that my own eyes had welled up.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“I am sorry,” was all I could manage. He remained silent.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“So what did you do after that? You abandoned the unfinished manuscript? Changed it?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“No,” he said, his voice calm now, “I can’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Can’t?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Yes. Can’t. Each time I begin to write – a fresh chapter, another paragraph, anything at all, I find I cannot write anything other than what I have already written. I just cannot. I am doomed to writing the same story till I die. So I’ve stopped writing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Well,” said someone and I looked up to find the man at the other table standing next to us. He was smoking another cigarette. “that is a most interesting story. I wish I could write it. But as you will soon see, I too cannot. Perhaps the young gentleman here will.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“What are you talking about?” I asked. He drew his chair from the other table and sat down at ours.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“You see, I am in the middle of, let me see, a somewhat similar situation.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“What rubbish!” said the Novelist, “similar situation?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Yes, well, not exactly the same, mind you. Similar.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Uh-huh?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“I am a novelist too, you see. But I only published one novel.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“And that makes you similar how?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“Let me finish,” the man said impatiently, “I said I only published only one novel. On the other hand, I have written close to fifty.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >The Novelist and I looked at each other, the exasperation clear on our faces.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >“I wrote the first one,” he continued, “and at the end of it I realized how complete it was! How truly perfect! I couldn’t ever hope to write anything like it again. And why would I want to? So after it was published, I decided to not attempt anything else ever again. I wrote the same story again. Oh, the utter exhilaration of reliving one’s finest achievement! Every punctuation, every word! Mesmerizing! I didn’t waste a minute before starting to write it, a third time. And thus it has been, for more years than I care to remember now. So you see, our stories aren’t very different.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; " >We pondered this until the bar closed that night.</span></p><p></p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-29672232895630222682010-12-16T16:18:00.001+05:302010-12-16T16:18:50.384+05:30Short Story - The Story That Can't Be Told<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I walk into the railway station still cursing the traffic under my breath. The clock on the wall with a white dial and square black numbers and hands shows a time well after midnight. The platforms appear deserted except for the odd porter hurrying along, smelling of dried sweat on decayed leather. I hear the sound of running water on utensil, sometimes flat and sometimes gradually dampening, punctuated by a harsh clamour of the most recently washed joining the rest of the pile. It mixes with the occasional lonely hoot of a locomotive on its way to the shed. I ask a passing porter and he informs me that the last train of the night has already passed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I find an empty bench in an unlit corner. A dog lies on its side next to it; it’s left ear flaps lazily when I place my suitcase on the bench. I stretch my legs out in front and tug my tee a few times near the belly so it lies loosely and creased, camouflaging the paunch. The weather is balmy. A faint breeze rises and falls. In the distance, infinite lines of semaphore signals trace the path of railway tracks.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is no open tea stall in sight. I close my eyes and try to sleep. Perhaps, I do. I am not sure. When I open my eyes again, everything is the same. I decide to stroll on the platform in the hope of finding an errant hawker still peddling stale readymade tea from a steel cylinder. Even if I do not, I say to myself, it will let time pass more unobtrusively.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">To my right, the platform ends sooner. So I walk in that direction first. I consider briefly, if I should carry the suitcase, but decide against it. It is dark under the bench and it is unlikely that, even if someone were to pass by it, the suitcase will be noticed. The glimmer of lights from the platform on the track beside me, move with me. I walk for a while, gazing intently and continuously at them, until it makes me a little dizzy. Have you ever felt a bizarre restless desire, without reason, to jump onto the tracks just when a train is about to pass? Just to see what happens? Happens to me all the time. I have to turn away and look elsewhere until it passes. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Presently, the platform ends and I turn back.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is not until I am almost at the other end of the platform, that I notice it. Through a fissure in the parapet wall that lines one side of the platform to mark the perimeters of the railway station, I see a line of square white lights. The light disappears by the time I register it. I step back and forth a few times, until I locate it again. I move closer to the wall. The lights reveal themselves to be from windows of a train compartment. On each side of it, I see the ends of adjacent compartments. Through the windows, I spot human outlines. It is a train! The porter was wrong! There still is a train tonight! I rush back to my bench and pick up the suitcase. The dog, I notice, has slipped away. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Of the long line of ticket counters, only one is open at this hour. A pleasant young girl smiles sleepily from behind the grilled window. I ask her for tickets and she explains to me that there are no more trains for the rest of the night. “But you are making a mistake!” I tell her, “there is another train! I have seen it just now!” She looks bemused. “No Sir,” she explains again, “there is no train.” “What rubbish!” I scream, “are you stupid? I have seen it myself, I said!” Her forehead creases. “What train, Sir,” she asks, “where have you seen it?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I tell her. She looks at me strangely. “You want tickets for that train?” she asks. I am thoroughly exasperated by now. “Yes yes,” I say, “that very train! Is there a problem?” “No, just that…”she starts to say and then pauses. “Wait”, she says, “I will consult the station master.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I throw my hands up but she does not see it, for she is gone by then. I wait impatiently. She returns, and I can say this confidently since I’ve been watching the clock all the while, seven minutes later. “Has the Station Master agreed to offer me a ticket?” I ask her testily. She busies herself with typing whatever it is that she needs to type for a ticket to be produced. After she hands it to me and I glance at it to confirm the requisite details, I ask her if she will tell me how to get to the train. “I saw it through a crack in the wall. I didn’t have time to find a route.” I tell her. She offers me directions. As I am about to leave, she says, “There’s another train in just less than three hours Sir. Are you sure you don’t want to wait for that one?” I don’t even bother to answer. I look back once and see her smiling sadly at me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train is scantily populated, as befits the time. I walk past a few compartments before entering one. It appears empty. I pick a seat and stuff my suitcase under it. Then I pace the entire compartment a couple of times. It is indeed empty. The train begins to move.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I drift off to sleep. I do not know if I dream, since I never remember them when I wake up. But when I do, I find another man sitting opposite me. He is a middle aged man, quite unremarkable, except for his strange choice of attire. He wears a woolen overcoat, under which, I catch glimpses of a sweater. A muffler is coiled around his neck and he holds one glove in the other gloved hand. When he realized I am awake, he smiles feebly and greets me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Are you alright?” I ask him, “it isn’t that cold, is it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No,” he says, “I always put these on when I travel at night.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I nod disinterestedly. Outside, a full moon shines brightly. I wonder why it has escaped my notice so far. It seems to be a cloudless night, although it is difficult to say, since the lights inside the compartment reflect off the glass and obscure the view. The other man has dozed off. I get up and walk to the toilet. When I come out, I find one of the doors to the compartment unlatched. It creaks softly. I open it wide and stare outside. A full wind blows into my face and I shut my eyes for a few seconds. The train, I sense, is moving at great speed. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The view outside is surreal. The train is blazing its way through a bridge. The sky is indeed clear, and bathed in moonlight. The moon is a perfect circle, and occasionally, small wisps of cloud flow across it. When they do, they look like paper burnt at the edges. I look for stars, expecting to find whole clusters of them, but find only one, that shines brilliantly a little to the left of the moon. I am not sure if it is, in fact, a star. It could be - probably is - Venus. Below, everything is pitch-black. I wonder what this bridge crosses over. The train is still over it – bridge of great length. Almost as if it were crossing an ocean. But that couldn’t be – there wasn’t an ocean on this route. I made a mental note to check what it could be when I reached my destination in the morning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I lean out of the train and count the compartments. There are twelve. The light of the moon, strangely, does not touch the land. Everything lies in darkness. Just the train with its luminescent windows. I wonder what this scene must look like from a vantage point outside the train. A stark moon. One shining planet. And the train as a streak of white light suspended in the darkness. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I see a face appear at the door of the next compartment. It belongs to an old woman. She wears a scarf that hides her hair. The scarf flutters in the wind. I smile at her. She smiles back. I resume staring at the moon.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Through the corner of my eye, I detect movement. I turn and find that the lady has taken her scarf off and her hair, long and grey, blow eerily behind her. She is staring at me. I don’t know what you say. So I smile again. She whispers something, but I can’t hear her. The wind carries her voice in the opposite direction. Then she jumps.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I am so shocked, I become paralyzed. It is perhaps that I even stopped breathing momentarily, for when I regain my composure, I find my chest heaving, drawing in great gusts of air. I keep staring at the door, where the lady was until a few minutes ago, almost hoping that I hallucinated and that she will appear again. Or maybe, if I hallucinated, there wasn’t a lady at all. Another face peeps out. It is not the old lady. It is a young woman, extremely pretty, and she smiles at me before I can. I smile and then remember about the old woman and start to tell her what I have seen. She shakes her head and waves her hand before I am through the first sentence. Then she jumps.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And now I notice the macabre spectacle. On each side, at every door, I see faces. They appear, stay there mutely for a few seconds and jump. A dozen bodies together, almost in unison. Their faces are replaced by others’ and then they jump. Thus it continues. I am so struck by horror, I cannot take my eyes of it. I realize I do not even see what I see. Indeed, my vision appears from that vantage point of my imagination, and I see from there, in addition to the moon, Venus and the train, bodies, their backs lit by the train lights, in free fall. Then they disappear.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Someone places a hand on my shoulder. I turn to find the man who was sitting next to me. “No! No!” I scream, “don’t push me!” He shakes his head and pulls me in, instead. He drags me to my seat. From inside his overcoat, he produces a flask. The brandy flows warmly into my stomach. The sound of the train comes back to me. It is still on the bridge and still at great speed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What train is this? What is happening? Did you see what is happening outside? Did you see!” I sputter</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, I know.” He says.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I gulp down more brandy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You shouldn’t have forced yourself on this train.” His voice is deep and rich.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What train is this? What train is this! Oh my God!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It is the train of suicides,” He says, “on every full moon.” He continues to speak for a few more minutes. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What? The Government! What rubbish!” It seems my voice returns to me, “that is just bullshit! Such a thing could never exist!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But it does.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No, it doesn’t! If it did, everybody would know!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He smiles wanly. “Well, everybody does.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And…and, who are you then? Why are you here?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh,” he says and places a hand firmly on my shoulder, “I am here to make sure nobody has a change of heart.”</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-61139674786901737772010-12-05T13:09:00.007+05:302010-12-07T21:04:27.509+05:30Short Story - The Stories of Borges<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The first Borges I read was when a friend sent me an electronic version, doubtless not paid for, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Death and the Compass. </i>Such an impression did it have upon me, that I hurried to a bookstore the same evening in search of more. They told me they did not stock Borges and had not done so in twenty years. I returned home dejected but determined to find it elsewhere the next day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In those days, I lived in Ahmedabad, a city of somewhat meager literary ambition. Over the course of the next few days, I found out just how meager its ambitions really were, for nowhere in the entire city could be found even a scrap of paper with the name Borges on it. Indeed, it appeared as if my lips were the first from which anyone had heard that name escape. The closest someone came, was when one bookstore owner, with eyes lit up, scurried to the musty innards of his store and returned with a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">A Clockwork Orange by Burgess</i>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There were, of course, versions of his work available online. My friend sent me a few more. But I believed, and still believe, reading from an odorless computer screen can never substitute the romance of a creased copy in hand. Can you imagine sitting at an idyllic café, without work, and lazily stare into a computer for hours? I can. It looks absurd.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Anyway, I read one or two more of what my friend sent. It only strengthened my conviction that a printed copy must be found. I could’ve ordered a copy online from Amazon, but at that stage, I was a student and dependent wholly on the pocket money that my parents doled out, and that money was lesser than even the cost of shipping Amazon quoted. So I waited till it was time to visit Kolkata again, a few months later.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">My luck turned, as I’d expected it would, almost the minute I entered Kolkata's renowned College Street. This was after all the place where, once earlier, I’d found a copy of the Communist Manifesto’s original 1848 publication. The first store I asked at, the storekeeper shrugged ruefully and said they’d just sold their last copy yesterday. There must be other stores, I asked. Yes, there must be, he answered and pointed towards the dark alley that wove further in. There are a million stores in there. Lanes and by-lanes. Labyrinths, he added and winked. I smiled and moved on. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I finally found success in the fourth store, tucked away in the remotest corner of College Street, where the smell of books had, over the years, permeated the walls and the rusted iron shutters. The owner, a wizened old man, nodded when he heard the name and then bent down and disappeared under the counter. I waited patiently, the sound of shuffling and scratching provided evidence that the man was still under the counter and had not disappeared into the pages of a book like in some Borgesian fantasy. Presently he rose again, with a book in each hand, which he then slammed against one another to rid them of the gathered dust, which rose in dirty wisps starkly illuminated in the forlorn ray of light that trickled in through a termite hole in one of the boarded windows. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Labyrinths, </i>read the cover of one and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory</i>, read the other. They were Penguin Classic publications, both, which were fine in themselves, but since my hopes were raised considerably higher by this time, I enquired if perhaps an older, more exotic publication of the same works could be found. The man shook his head sadly and just as I was about to leave, he said that he once did have a copy of the original Viking Penguin publication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Collected Fictions, </i>in which the stories of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Shakespeare’s Memory</i> first appeared. Unsure of what my reaction to this piece of information should be, I merely shrugged. “A man bought it from me three years ago,” he continued. “My bad luck” I said, intending it as a final word in, what I at that point considered a futile conversation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Terrible luck, in fact,” he said, “you know what he found in that book?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I waited for him to continue since I gathered this was a rhetoric question and one that he couldn’t possibly expect me to know the answer to.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He pondered over something for nearly a minute before speaking again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But before that, tell me, have you read any of the stories from Shakespeare’s Memory?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I told him I had not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Will you please read the one called <i>Blue Tigers</i> right now? It is important for the story I have to narrate.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I looked at him quizzically, gauging if he intended all this as some sort of inexplicable joke. He looked earnestly back at me. I opened the book in question and studied the Table of Contents. <i>Blue Tigers</i>, it informed me, was only 12 pages long. I looked at the watch and shrugged.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Alright,” I said, “I will read it if you will offer me a place to sit.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He disappeared under the counter again and returned with a metal folding chair that creaked open.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I read. When I’d finished, I looked up to find the man staring intently at me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It’s a wonderful story. And perhaps his only one set in India?” I said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, yes, it’s a great story!” he said impatiently, “but now I must continue my story.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I asked if he could offer me a cup of tea to go with his narration. He responded with the usual exuberance of a Bengali on the subject of tea, shouting into the interiors of the store to an, as yet, invisible assistant to prepare two cups. It arrived almost immediately, accompanied by a plate of crumbling dog biscuits and a packet of cigarettes. He lit one and asked me if I’d like one. In those days, I did not smoke.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Then he narrated his story:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is about that copy of the original publication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Collected Stories </i>I mentioned earlier. A man, of considerable means I later learnt, bought it from me about three years ago. When I handed the copy over to him, he flipped casually through it, like most people do when they buy a book. As the pages fluttered past the grasp of his left thumb and into right thumb’s, something fell out and down to the floor. He picked it up and we studied it. It was a small, almost completely round stone, blue in colour. It is strange that such a thing should not cause a noticeable bump while inside the book, but evidently it had not. As we examined it, it fell to the floor again. The man bent down to pick it up again and when he straightened again, I saw his eyes were flashing. I asked him if something was the matter. He simply held up his open palm. In it, I saw incredulously, were now three stones instead of one. He dropped them again, this time intentionally. This time, his palm rose from behind the counter before he did. In it were now so many stones, all the same size, that I couldn’t at once count how many. <i>Blue Tigers</i>, I whispered in a quivering voice and he nodded gravely. The magical stones blue stones that multiply at will! He said. He pulled out a wallet from his trouser pocket and extracted five hundred rupee notes from it. He handed them to me, without word. I accepted. Then he walked out.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The man stopped and sipped once more from his cup. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What an extraordinary story!” I said, still skeptical, “and this man, he never returned, did he?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“He did return. Two years later.” The man said, “One day, I found the same man standing near the entrance of this store again. He was the same man, but for one remarkable change. Running down his cheek and through to his neck was a deep angry scar.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Form of the Sword</i> now?” I said half jokingly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ah, you have read it,” the man said, ignoring the sarcasm, “that is good.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sure is,” I said, “or I might’ve had to sit here and read it now.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The man continued.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I asked him what had happened to him. And this is the story he narrated to me:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That day, after we found those stones in the book, I went back home in a daze. I had, of course, decided by then that I would pursue this for as long as it took. So, I read that story, <i>Blue Tigers</i>, again, to check if there is any indication in it of which village on the foothills of the Himalayas, it was set in. There’s isn’t. But the descriptions sounded fairly close to either the Garhwal or the Kumaon region and so, I set out as soon as I could, for Dehradun. From there I went to Rudraprayag, choosing it above others for my fascination with it ever since I read Corbett’s story of the man-eating leopard. Anyway, from Rudraprayag, I travelled through the hills into every village that the locals named, and everywhere I went, I asked if they had ever heard of the existence of such mystical blue stones as were in my pocket. For seven months, I travelled and found not a single soul who could help me. At the end of those seven months, I returned to Dehradun, severely ill and dejected. While I recuperated, I pondered about what could be done next. I re-read Blue Tigers. It got me no further. I decided I would drop the stones into a river and return to Kolkata. That evening, in a long time, I found myself relaxed and in an agreeable mood. I had a few drinks at the bar and returned to my hotel late at night and that is when I remembered Corbett again. Wasn’t there a story in which he describes mysterious lights up a mountain in the dark? Almost exactly the kind of superstition the villagers of Borges’s village harboured? I spent the night unable to sleep. The next day, I searched the city frantically for a bookstore that stocked the works of Corbett. I found one fairly easily; Corbett is still a popular fellow in that part of the country, evidently. Had I been adept at the internet, I might’ve saved myself the trouble of reading through his books again, but since I was not, I had to do it the hard way. I read whatever I could sitting at the store, and brought the rest back to the hotel with me. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Talla Desh Man-eater </i>story, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Temple Tigers</i> collection. Corbett mentions sighting mysterious lights going up a hillside at night and the villagers’ singular reactions to them. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The next day, I travelled to Almora and from there to Talla Desh. Throughout the journey, I could barely sit still with excitement. If indeed it was true that it was the same village that the two men describe, how incredible would that be! </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I was right! The first person I showed the blue stones to in Talla Desh, looked at me wide-eyed and refused to answer my questions. The same thing happened with half a dozen other people. By and by, I found a saintly man who, though distressed at the sight of the stones, agreed to speak to me. He told me the name of the village I sought and how I could get there. When I reached there, it was of course summer, and the hillsides looked very different from what one would’ve visualized them through Borges’s words. I did not waste any time there and showed them the stones. Remarkably, none of them shrank away like the people of Talla Desh. They looked at me and smiled and their eyes became sad. I explained to them the sequence of events that had led me here. They nodded gravely but said nothing. That evening, there was a knock on my door and I found an old, grizzled lady standing outside. I invited her in. The first words she spoke were a name. Vincent Moon, she said. Vincent Moon? I asked, disbelievingly. She repeated the name. “But how can that be?” I asked, “Vincent Moon isn’t a real person! He’s just…he’s just…” She did not let me finish, “Vincent Moon” she said again, this time more vehemently. Then she traced a line down her throat and said “Scar. Vincent Moon. Scar.” For the rest of the night, she had my full attention. This was her story:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Many years ago, a man called Vincent Moon had come to their village. He had a large scar running down his face, which the villagers deeply distrusted. He had asked to be taken to the top of the mountain, where the blue stones were. Everybody had refused. He spent a year with them, trying to convince them to partake in his adventure, until one night, he had sneaked up there, alone, and returned with a handful of those stones. Within a month he had gone crazy and another month later they had found his battered body in the undergrowth at the bottom of the mountain. He had climbed up again and evidently jumped. They had sold off all his stuff to pawnshops and wherever else they could; he also had various books with him. They had never found the stones.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This is the story she told me. I surmised one of those books was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Collected Stories</i> and a stray blue stone had somehow made its way into it. The complete truth, nobody would ever know. Vincent Moon? From <i>Form of the Sword</i>? A friend of Borges’s? A character of Borges’s imagination somehow magically come alive? And he had evidently arrived having read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Blue Tigers</i>. So Borges had written the story before that. How could that be? Was it that Moon had come in the same quest that I had? Perhaps Moon had found the blue stone in the book before he had arrived, just as I had! Was there a whole universe of Borges’s characters that actually existed in some unknown dimension?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">At this point, the old bookstore owner said, the man had finished his story. The tea cups were empty by now; at their bottoms, globs of soppy wet biscuits remained. I was still skeptical, but it was a darn good story. In those days, I had only begun to think of myself as a writer, and I found it important to appreciate the exquisiteness of the yarn either the old bookstore owner or that other man with the scar on his face had woven. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But,” I said, “what about the scar he carried? Where did that come from?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I asked him. But he wouldn’t tell me. “It’s a secret I will never tell anybody” He said”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I walked out of College Street some time later, my head full of wondrous imaginations. Ever since I’d decided to start writing seriously, I’d always sought ways of acknowledging the inspiration I’d derived from the authors I’d read and admired. So far, I’d been largely unsuccessful, offering shoddy and direct references that meant nothing. And now there was this story. But it needed an end. Or at least, some semblance of an end. I walked past a bar and realized I was drenched in sweat. I decided to go in for some beer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The place was almost empty, except for the bartender, a shabby waiter and a man on a barstool hunched over a glass of whiskey. The place smelt faintly of vomit. I made my way to a barstool and ordered a beer. The other man sat to my left. He turned his head towards me and glanced disinterestedly, and resumed looking into his glass. I wished him afternoon. He turned again, this time completely and smiled. An old, dry scar ran down the left side of his face and throat and disappeared into his shirt collar. The beer arrived. After two sips, I whispered to myself to check if my voice had returned. Then I addressed him again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Excuse me, Sir. Can I speak to you for a minute?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes?” He said, in a rich baritone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Haltingly, I recounted my encounter with the old bookstore owner. He listened gravely, occasionally furrowing his brows and shaking his head, as if to say this was not exactly how it had happened. When I finished, he turned to the bartender and ordered another glass.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, it was I” he said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So, you thought that old man was making it up, didn’t you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Well, yes, sort of”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Do you think I am made all of it up?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I…I am not sure. I don’t know.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He smiled. We stared silently at each other for a while. Then he spoke again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You know, I did reach Talla Desh. After that, well, who knows?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I remained silent.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It is a fitting tribute, but, don’t you think?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“To Borges?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I suppose so.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The bartender reappeared and filled my mug. I had so many questions in my head, I didn't know what to say to the man. Presently, he spoke himself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I know you want to ask me more. But you are not sure how, is it not? Well, tell you what, I will tell you the story of the scar myself. Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not. After the point up to which you’ve heard the story, and whether or not that itself is true is a matter of conjecture, but let us play along for now – after that point, I realized there wasn’t much else I could do. The stones had taken up too much of my time, and I was afraid I would lose my sanity too. So I returned to Delhi. I put the stones in a bag and gave it away to a beggar. But I needed a story – you see, I had ambitions of becoming a writer then. And I wondered how I would end it. Of course, I could’ve ended it anywhere, for such a story is hardly expected to have a conventional end anyway. But I wanted to give it one. As an experiment, you see. A ridiculous tale with a conventional end. So I worked out the rest of the story in my head. I travel to Argentina and look for Vincent Moon. He is dead, yes, but if he has indeed existed, he must’ve left some traces. A family or a business. Something. In Argentina, I somehow – I never did manage to flesh this out, or maybe I don't want to tell you – stumble upon a mythical town, inaccessible to all, where Borges still lives with all his characters. Moon is there too. And Borges tell mes that it was in fact he who is writing this story and that it is I who am a part of his imagination. I refuse to believe it and want to return. He tells me that the only way out is if I allow myself to become a character in one of his other stories, in which case, he can end my story there and I become redundant and he has no further need of me. I choose Moon. Magically, a scar appears on my face. And I return" He paused.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">"So?"I asked.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">"So? Well, if this was to be the story, I would actually need the scar, I thought. And so I made myself this.” He ran his index finger over it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The silence hung between us. We finished our drinks. I paid my bill and began to leave. Then I turned and asked him, “And why did you not write the story then?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, I don’t know. I just couldn’t. As you can see, this still wasn't a conventional end. I couldn't come up with one. Maybe I am not a writer, after all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-40734184393339215892010-12-04T12:49:00.003+05:302010-12-04T15:34:46.256+05:30Short Story - The Ferris Wheel<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But for the gigantic Ferris wheel that towered over it, the town was utterly unremarkable. A handful of brick houses, painted white and with grilled square windows, lay scattered about, perimetered by short thick boundary walls that kept the stray dogs away. A solitary road, covered in dust with disuse, passed through the town and continued on, on either side, in a straight line across the unending, barren plains. No vehicle had been seen on this road for many years; the wizened elders of the town spoke wistfully of a time when each day, in the early morning light, a long line of trucks, came and went, and the kids ran behind them for as long as they could, and sometimes came back with lozenges that the drivers had offered them. Not even a mailman came now, for everyone the townsfolk knew lived in the town, and there was no need for a letter to be written or received. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Nobody remembered how the Ferris wheel had come to be there. It had been there for as far back as the oldest memories would go. It belonged to the family that had a different last name than everyone else’s and had been passed on from generation to generation like an heirloom. In the evenings, the wheel was lit up with a million yellow-red bulbs, and the entire town made its way to it for a ride. They waited patiently for their turn to arrive, indeed often allowed the kids to break line and run up ahead of them in the queue; after sundown, when the children were no longer allowed on it, the elders rode the wheel and stared into the moonlit distances with tears in their eyes. There were no tickets; the family was recompensed with free food and a place to live. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The family, two middle aged men, their wives and the old invalid patriarch, lived in a cottage right next to the wheel. Throughout the day, the two men toiled on the wheel, cleaning and oiling and fixing, while the wives cooked their meals and looked after the patriarch. The patriarch, whom the rest of the village had rarely seen since the incident, remained in bed throughout, moaning occasionally whenever a sharp spasm shot through his wasted muscles and bones. On some evenings, when the weather was pleasant and the patriarch was in a good mood, the two men, his adopted sons, carried his cot outside so he could see his beloved Ferris wheel. On such days, the queue below the wheel appeared shorter than usual and nobody rode after sundown. They had, several times, asked the family to not bring the patriarch so near the wheel again, but his two sons had remained defiant. There was one time when the entire town threatened to never ride the wheel again and stop offering them food. For ten days, they did not; the brothers still spent the day working at the wheel but in the evening when nobody arrived, they took turns to ride the wheel themselves with their wives, while their father lay on the cot below, watching them. The lack of food, it appeared, did not bother them. On the eleventh day, the kids returned with their mothers, and a couple of days later, so did the fathers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Though there were various versions of the story of what happened to the patriarch all those years ago, they varied only in the minor details. The story went thus:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The patriarch was six years old when it happened. In those days, he was like any other kid his age, oblivious and happy. It was his father who worked the wheel then. The boy hadn’t ever been on the wheel till then, of course, for kids below the age of six weren’t allowed on it. On his sixth birthday, like had been the tradition in the family for many generations, he was bathed with rose-scented water, and odes of the family’s unknown, mysterious religion were sung. His father then spent the rest of the day with him, explaining to him the many intricacies of the wheel and that he was now as much the owner of it as his father. When the hour came, they placed him in one of the gondolas, to the sounds of conch shells blown into.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But then, something strange started to happen. The moment he entered the gondola, the wheel began to move by itself. It moved slowly at first, and the father tried to stop it with his hands, for he thought it was merely a stray gust of wind that had caused the movement. But it didn’t stall. It continued to move and pick up speed. By the time the gondola was halfway up, the wheel had begun to rotate as fast as anyone had ever seen it. The boy began to cry. The people, gathered below, who had stood staring up until then, unable to comprehend what they were witnessing, eventually snapped back into action. They shut the power supply and when somebody suggested that putting an obstacle in its way might help, they found a long sturdy ladder and dragged it to the wheel, so its sides brushed against the wheel’s. The wheel did not stop. Each time the gondola with the boy in it came down to its lowest point, they caught glimpses of him trapped inside, staring back at them. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For two hours the wheel rotated thus, and would not stop. And then they saw the grilled gate of the gondola swing open and the next second, the boy jumped. In a few minutes, the wheel came to a standstill. The boy lay in a pool of blood, miraculously alive but robbed of the use of his legs forever.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That the boy, now the patriarch, had the devil in him was unanimously agreed upon.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He moved around on crutches for a few years. He even tried convincing his father that he could still help with the wheel. His father refused to let him touch the wheel, but agreed that he could collect the bread and other food that the people brought for them. He did it for one day, forcing himself to not look at the wheel, for whenever he did, he could see kids like him on it, and it made him cry. The next day, nobody turned up. It emerged that the town would have nothing to do with the wheel if the boy was to be present near it, in plain sight. That evening, he told his father that he would stay indoors. He went to bed later in the night and never got out of it since. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By and by his father died. The town became worried that, with him, the Ferris wheel and their evenings riding it would die too. But then, one morning, they found two teenage boys cleaning the wheel. When asked who they were, they said they were adopted sons of the patriarch. The Ferris wheel survived.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It had been twenty years since.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One day, the town woke up to torrential rains. They looked out of their windows in amazement, for it hadn’t rained in three years. They poked their hands tentatively out; the raindrops were exploded in their palms in small, frosty bursts. The sky had turned an unnatural grey and in the distance, lightning spread like fissures on parched soil. The clouds hung so low, they seemed to touch the top of the Ferris wheel. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The rain fell for a month and nobody ventured outside their homes. Then, all at once, it stopped raining one morning. The clouds turned paler, and a red glow seeped into them from the horizons. Immediately, everyone rushed to the Ferris wheel. They found the two brothers sitting on the soggy soil and staring at the wheel. It wouldn't start, they said. The motor had remained submerged in water for too long. They'd drained the water out and tried everything they could, but it wouldn't start. The town hung around the wheel for the rest of the day, staring suspiciously at its parts and offering suggestions. Nothing worked. The wheel stayed resolutely still.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The next morning, the Patriarch woke up to an unnatural stillness - a stillness that seemed to him like it pervaded the world and not just his cottage. And there was a smell – a damp pungent smell, which made his nostrils itch. It was a smell he had smelled in his most terrible dreams, in which he had visions of the Ferris wheel on fire or disintegrating into the ground. He did not move for a long time, waiting for a common sound, a whiff of the usual arid breeze that would pierce the stillness. None came. The crutches, unused for decades, stood by the bedside. He looked at them and sighed. He felt nervous but not agitated. Perhaps, he had seen this in one of his dreams. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He walked out to a crimson sky, with patches of fire, out of which bellowed out black smoke. On both sides, the barren plains were obscured by huge columns of smoke escaping the earth, the same colour as the smoke in the sky. The town was burnt to ashes. All that remained was his cottage and the Ferris wheel.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He smiled. The ends of the crutches dug into the black soil as he made his way to the wheel. When he reached the wheel, he turned and looked back at the devastation. Then he helped himself into a gondola. The wheel began to turn.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-60830625501842409072010-11-21T09:46:00.001+05:302010-11-21T19:13:17.081+05:30A Good Two Years<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In addition to the whiskey and vodka, there was also wine to mark the occasion. The open spaces of a shapeless grassy lawn behind the hostel buildings was chosen, for it was estimated that the crowd would far exceed the average and could not, therefore, be contained in the cramped confines of the Community Centre. It was March. Winter had melted away slowly and its meager existence was now evident only in the agreeable chill of the evening breeze.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The day had been spent running frantically around campus, returning books, handing over keys and signing documents. Outside each hostel room, a pile of papers, notepads, plastic waste and bottles of alcohol lay in a heap; the doors to the rooms, all open, since inside could be found only packed cartons that were ready to be shipped and unwieldy to be stolen, swung in the strong wind of that morning, and crashed into the heap periodically, toppling the highest objects from their perch. Loud music blared from some of the rooms; Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m coming home’ appeared to be greatly in favour. Kaushik wondered if someone would play Altaf Raja’s ‘Tum to thehre pardesi’ to counter this unnecessary western predilection. In the end, nobody did. Now that would have been something.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">As always, Kaushik was one of the first to reach the lawn. He spotted a few small groups scattered around but did not find anyone he wished to be in the company of. He walked around for a while, familiarizing himself with the dimensions of the scene, seeking unobtrusive corners that could be utilized later in the evening when he was in need of a few moments of relative aloofness or a place to puke. He was determined to avoid the alcohol counters at least until one good friend turned up. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">A DJ, well known evidently, had been paid for and brought from Delhi, for the night. His wares, when he began to peddle them, did not appear very different from what they’d been hearing all through their time on campus. It did not matter, however, for before long they were all too drunk to notice. After a few glasses of whiskey, Kaushik, having found another willing friend, tasted the wine. White. He wasn’t aware what kind and, after two tentative sips, decided not to bother finding out. Near the middle of the evening, as always, the whiskey would run out and sometime thereafter, the vodka, while the wine would remain almost untouched. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The ladies, it appeared, had collectively decided to wear gowns for the occasion. They came, in swinging, shining, bunches of reds, blacks and blues, their bare arms folded bewitchingly below the breasts. The conversations in the lawns stopped momentarily and the music became suddenly audible again. Kaushik chuckled inadvertently, too conspicuously, for the guy next to him looked towards him and smiled. “Yeah man. We’re such miserable losers.” He said.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Raakesh was nowhere to be found. Kaushik strolled around the lawn, the whiskey glass never empty, looking for him. He ran into the same people all the time, and each time, they hugged and said, “Man, it has been a good two years here, has it not?” Sometimes, he found himself in the middle of a group indulged in wild dance and they forced him to match steps for a few minutes. He did, and when he was confident they weren’t looking, slipped away quietly and resumed looking for Raakesh. Ritika had appeared in a ravishing red gown and he ensured he was always aware where she was so he could steal glances every once in a while. He never, however, passed too close to her, afraid she might notice. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">He gave up after nearly an hour. Raakesh had, evidently, not turned up. He would come to know later, when he would chat online with Raakesh the next time, that he’d been smoking pot and drinking all afternoon and had passed out well before the farewell celebrations had begun. They would chat often in subsequent years but never meet. But since Raakesh did not turn up on that last day, Kaushik would never recall the last time they did meet - an occasion that had not registered as one of enough consequence to assign to memory, for he couldn’t have known it would be the last. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Kaushik spent the remainder of the evening drifting from one group to another. He danced with them in short, outrageous bursts, and then when he felt too tired, broke away and walked about. When the whiskey ran out, he turned to vodka and then, ruefully, to wine. Once in a while, he stumbled into a sloshed bunch engaged in animated, tearful, conversation. It reminded him of Dhule. These were men and women, who would, a couple of months down the line, walk into fancy organizations, discuss serious corporate issues with solemn countenances and earn abundantly, in some cases, obscenely. But right now, they were just people who had had too much to drink.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Well after 3 AM, when most of the congregation had been reduced to a mass of human beings sprawled on the grass, with their arms held up, lazily swaying to the still preposterously loud music, he heard Ritika’s voice behind him. “Hey, Kaushik,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">He was still standing, with a whiskey glass full of wine, staring intently at the stars in the sky which looked to him like they were all merging into each other in what he fantasized was a celestial orgy. He turned slowly, deliberately, for his body had lost its appetite for rapid movement much earlier in the evening. One of the sodium lamps traced a defused white path just below her waist.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Hi” Kaushik said, “Up early?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">She smiled and embraced him. “Man, it has been a good two years here, has it not?” She said.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">“Yeah, well,” he mumbled in response.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:12.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">He let one arm hang limply by his side, for he was not sure what to do with it, while with the other he still held the whiskey glass. He breathed deeply, searching for a smell that he could remember for the rest of his life, and write about, but found nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-55438578998000042072010-11-20T17:04:00.001+05:302010-11-20T17:04:28.076+05:30Stromboli<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Stromboli was never part of the plan. They had intended to spend two days in Florence and then travel to Rome where they’d already booked beds at a youth hostel. From there, they’d return to India three days later. However, before Florence was Venice, in the itinerary, and when they reached Venice, it took them less than two hours to realize that they couldn’t possibly stay there for the two days they’d expected to. It was far too expensive and there were too many people around, many of them wearing ‘I love NY’ tees. And so they fled Venice just after lunchtime on the same day and thus found themselves in possession of two additional days. They picked the Aeolian Islands to spend those two days in. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When they reached Milazzo, from where they were to take a ferry to one of the islands, they still weren’t sure which one they would go to. The best islands also seemed the farthest from the Sicilian coast and since they had to be back in Milazzo in time to catch a train late that night, travelling too far was risky. Eventually, they chose Lipari, the largest and one of the closest.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The ferry ride was their first encounter with the deep, sparkling blue waters of the Sicilian coast. A man and his wife sat next to Kaushik on the ferry and they asked him if he was Sri Lankan. When he told them he was Indian, they appeared to become even more interested. “My wife and I weesh tu traavel tu Eendia!” he exclaimed, “whaat ees the best time tu viseet?” Kaushik considered if it would be appropriate to respond in the same accent but decided against it, since he figured it could offend them. “Between November and February”, he told them and returned to the book he was reading. A few months later, when he went to an Italian restaurant in Mumbai with Ritankar and Ashish, and the owner, an elderly Italian, came to their table to speak to them, Kaushik looked on while Ashish conducted the entire conversation in that accent. Evidently, the elderly Italian did not take offence. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Lipari did not even look like a volcanic island. From a distance, it looked large and low, the hills on it resembling tabletop mountains rather than the volcanic peaks they’d imagined. By the time, the ferry rolled into the pier, slipping deftly between two other ferries, Ritankar had already announced that they’d have to find another island. “This is just ugly, dude,” he said, “I can’t spend too much time here.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Fifteen minutes and a cup, each, of espresso later, they set out finding ferries to Stromboli. Ritankar was keener on Panarea, one of the smallest islands in the bunch, and one that the Lonely Planet declared as the least crowded, but Kaushik argued that the sight of live flowing lava was an experience worth more than a lonely isolated island.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And now they were stuck in Stromboli. They’d reached the island just after noon. The weather had already begun to worsen then. The first thing they’d done was check for ferries back to Milazzo. There was one at four, they were told. They bought tickets for it. Four in the afternoon arrived but the ferry did not. Somebody said there’d be another one at five. That didn’t arrive either, although the rain did. The lady at the counter announced, ruefully, that the weather was too tricky to sail in the open sea and there wouldn’t be another ferry till the next morning. She offered them tickets for the first ferry the next day, which they duly bought. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There was also the problem of cash. They didn’t have enough to pay a hotel bill for one night. They asked around for an ATM. There was only one on the entire island. It had run out of cash. It wouldn’t be refilled until the first ferry arrived the next morning with the requisite wads of notes on it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar, Kaushik realized, had become unusually quiet, occasionally, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What’s the matter dude?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Nothing”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh come on, you’re still cross that we chose Stromboli and not Panarea?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t know what your fixation with a live Volcano is”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It’s a pointless argument, man. I am sorry I got you here. But if it makes you feel any better, we’d probably have gotten stuck at Panarea too!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar nodded. “Well, we’ve got to find someplace for the night, now”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They walked together in silence through the narrow, winding alleyways that rose and fell gracefully, offering tantalizing glimpses of the ocean, which, incredibly, retained its blue under the gloomy sky. The volcanic peak loomed above them; smoke and haze rose from its peak and mixed with the dark clouds above. On both sides of them, houses were built in closely knit clusters, into the mountainside, and they were all, extraordinarily, painted white. “They must paint it once every month.” Kaushik commented. Through the gaps between the houses, they could see the black sands of the beach. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I must say,” Kaushik said, “the place does look gorgeous.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I think it is very artificial. These white coloured, shapeless houses.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But that’s the point Ritankar! They are so incongruous, so out of place here, its surreal, like in a dream”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar muttered something under his breath which Kaushik did not understand and chose not to ask him to repeat.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They found a house where the owner agreed to offer them a spare room for the night. They explained to him they did not have cash and could only pay by card. He shook his head a few times as if to deny and when they shrugged and began to lift their backpacks again, he asked them to wait. He returned, a few minutes later, and led them to the adjacent grocery store, which is where their card was swiped. “But, what did you put in the bill?” Kaushik asked. “Oh, nothing,” the man said, dismissively, “some food. I use it for dinner tonight.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Now that we’re here,” Ritankar said, “why don’t we ask about that guided tour to the top of the peak in the night?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, I’ve been thinking about that too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They found that the tour had been cancelled for the day. “Wind tu much. Not good,” they were told. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The rain had stopped. There were fleeting, shifting specks of blue in the sky. They found a café by the sea, playing pleasant Italian pop they did not recognize. They entered and ordered beer. The woman at the cash counter was a blonde, middle aged but attractive. There were prominent creases on both ends of her lips, which seemed to pull the edges of the lips down with them a little. It reminded Kaushik of Jeanne Moreau. The crowd bulged towards evening and thinned out barely an hour later. Kaushik and Ritankar shifted to whiskey after a while, for there was a chill in the air, and sat through all this. They spoke little. The music continued to be warm but not intrusive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It isn’t such a bad place, after all” Ritankar said at one point. Kaushik did not comment.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The next morning, they woke up to a stark blue sky, except above the peak, which, as it always did, remained partly shrouded in the ashen smoke and haze. They hurried down to the pier and found the ferry hadn’t yet arrived. There wasn’t any money left for breakfast. That’d have to wait until they were back in Milazzo. They waited, with growing impatience, for an hour before walking to the ticket counter to ask what the problem was. The forecast was for rough weather till afternoon, it turned out, and therefore, services would resume only after that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But it is fucking glorious weather!” Ritankar said, “I could walk on water to Milazzo in this!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They spent the day sitting in the sun, on the black sand. Occasionally, the mountain grumbled, and they looked up anxiously. They hadn’t noticed it the previous day, mistaking it for thunder. The locals appeared unflustered. They too grew used to it after a while. Once, near noon, Ritankar asked Kaushik if he had any small change left, while he fumbled inside his own pockets. Their combined wealth came to seven Euros and a bit more. “Let’s go buy something, whatever’s available for this much.” Ritankar suggested. They could either have a Panini each, or a beer each. They chose beer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">At four, the ferry arrived. That evening, they took the train from Milazzo to Rome. They shared the couchette with an old woman and a middle aged, balding man. The man pointed to the copy of On the Road on Kaushik’s lap and said, “I wrote that book twenty years ago.” They stared at him incredulously and he realized something was wrong. “Oh,” he corrected, “I mean I read it. My English is not so good.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They spent three wonderful days in Rome, soaking in the staggering grandeur, but in their hearts they knew their best experiences of the trip were behind them. The joy they’d found in those first days in Montmartre, in the Cinque Terre and in those hours at Montefioralle, even Rome could not match. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was only later, when they’d narrated their stories a dozen times after their return to India, that they realized Stromboli had been equally special.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-89541163276463912502010-10-27T21:01:00.001+05:302010-10-27T21:01:54.264+05:30Escape<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">After they exited from the exam centre on the last day, they would slip away, in ones and twos, towards the back of the campus, where a crumbling wall serves as a boundary between the college and dirty undergrowth and sewerage. A short walk in the mud would get them to a near forgotten by-lane which winds through clusters of houses interspersed with nothingness for a kilometer before ending right in the middle of Dhule’s busiest market. There they would wait till the last of them arrived and then collect all their bags and suitcases from the stationary shop nearby, where they had deposited all of it the previous day. That was the plan.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was all necessitated by love. With six months to go before they’d graduate and be gone, one of them fell for a girl in college. That in itself, however, was not reason enough for the matter to precipitate into the strife that it had, for there were several dozen others who were already in love with said girl. It was that the girl decided to reciprocate. The boy offered her a bar of chocolate and she smiled and accepted it. Then, she tore the wrapper and took a bite and then offered the remainder of the bar to him. The two had never spoken to each other before then.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That evening there was a knock at the door. Kaushik opened it. Two boys, friends of theirs, walked in. These two, everyone knew, were the messengers, the bottom rung, of the campus’s tough-guys gang. They explained to Kaushik and the rest of his friends that the leader of their gang was himself smitten by the girl and that he was not currently looking for competition. The lover-boy reiterated his unshakeable love. Kaushik pointed out, laughing half-heartedly and backslapping one of them with the intention of conveying that he meant it as a harmless wisecrack although he was fully aware that it would not be considered so, but unable to let pass the opportunity, that the gang leader’s only attempt at conversation with the girl had ended in her slapping him full on one cheek, and then the other. After a few moments of silence, which allowed everyone in the room to draw closer, one of the two messengers punched the lover boy in the stomach.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Now, the campus and its goons, over the years have developed a code of conduct and propriety, which they follow to every last detail. This explains why it was the lover boy who got punched instead of Kaushik. Over the course of four years, each student is rated by the then existing gang on a moving scale based on how many members of the gang are friends with the individual, if there have ever been ugly run-ins between him and them and how indiscrete he has been in foul-mouthing them. Whenever the opportunity arose to beat someone up, the gang referred to this scale and only when there were sufficient delinquencies and a sufficient number of them found him despicable, was he beaten up. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Kaushik, by virtue of his near invisibility, had always been near the better end of the scale. If these messengers went back to their bosses and explained to them that they were involved in a brawl with Kaushik and that he had to be dealt with, there was absolutely no chance the case would be taken up. The lover boy, on the other hand, stood no chance. Thus, the punch in the wrong stomach.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The punch was returned with a punch to a face, which resulted in a nosebleed. The other messenger started to throw a kick but was surrounded by the half dozen inhabitants of the house by then. While they went to work on the poor boy, Kaushik wrapped his arms around the boy with the bleeding nose, ostensibly to keep him from entering the action, although with that nose it was unlikely he even attempt it. Later, when the two boys were gone, the rest cornered Kaushik and asked why he hadn’t involved himself in the action. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I was making sure the other guy didn’t get into it! I held him so hard the air must’ve been squeezed out of his lungs!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Bullshit,” someone said, “it is just that you don’t have any balls. Not even tiny pea sized ones. You’re a fucking embarrassment!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik looked at the group with steady eyes, which he narrowed, so the tears would be less visible, and thought it over. He knew what they said was right. He just didn’t see what was wrong with what he’d done. Yes, he’d avoided a fight. So?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh, just fuck off, all of you,” he said, “now they’re going to come after all of us anyway.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Strangely, they didn’t. Not immediately. They spent the night - all of them wide awake - plotting their defence when the inevitable knock on the door came. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It did not. They did not attend classes for an entire week, staying confined to the house and venturing out only for food and always in groups. By the tenth day, everybody was fed up with the waiting. They’d resume classes, they decided, but all together. They’d spent the entire day in college and only when everybody’d finished their lectures would they return home, together. For the rest of the semester, their attendances were the best they’d ever managed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Slowly life returned to normal. It had been decided, evidently, that retribution would wait till the last day of college. This, too, was a ritual. Every year, after the last exam was done, there was a massacre outside the campus gates. Dozens of students gathered, armed with hockey sticks and cricket bats, and scores were settled and resettled until the police siren was heard and everyone fled. And so, Kaushik and his friends spent the rest of the year leading regular lives and discussing details of the plan to escape through the walls on the other side of the campus. The lover boy never spoke to the girl again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">After they’d collected their bags and suitcases, they went to a restaurant on the outskirts of the city for dinner. They had never been there before; the usual hangouts were too risky. They spent two hours there, continually glancing at the entrance and the clock, and chatting absent-mindedly. Afterwards, they arrived at the bus station together; all of them had buses to catch to some place or the other. They waited in a dark corner keeping wary watch on the road for known faces. Kaushik’s bus was the first to leave. He embraced his friends and they all promised each other they’d be back in Dhule after a couple of months for a get-together. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He later learnt that all of them had escaped without incident. None of them ever returned to Dhule again.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-78433745105852081332010-10-24T13:18:00.001+05:302010-10-24T13:23:08.001+05:30Before I Sleep<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Once every month, Kaushik visited his parents in Ahmedabad and spent a weekend with them. On the preceding Fridays, instead of his usual backpack, he carried a duffel bag to office, so he could go straight to the train station in the evening. This was such a Friday.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His colleagues nodded and smiled with their eyes on the bag and made the requisite observations.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Going to Ahmedabad tonight?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“By air? Or train?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Train. I avoid flights to Ahmedabad. They reach after midnight and make a mess of my sleep and my parents’.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“How long does the train take?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Seven hours, thereabouts.” Then he added, “Miles to go while I sleep, evidently,” and smiled benevolently in response to his colleagues’ blank expressions. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He left office earlier than usual, his bag swaying proudly from one shoulder. He knew he would reach the train station early, so early in fact, that he could make another trip to office and still be back in time. But he knew of a cozy little restaurant near the station and enjoyed spending a couple of hours there. It was a place he had discovered many years ago and had then forgotten and lost until recently when he had stumbled upon it once again. He had wondered how it could have so completely slipped his mind, for he had been a regular visitor there, in a time when he considered saving fifty rupees on a meal important. When this was not the city he lived in, but travelled frequently to, necessitated by work and B School admission interviews. And each time he came, it was here that he had his dinner before boarding the train back home. So when he found the restaurant again, he resumed the ritual.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is a place that revels in its incongruity. A tastefully tiled courtyard, open at the top, overseen by three resplendent sodium-vapour lamps. More than a dozen rickety steel tables, most of them unoccupied and visibly rusted at the edges, spread around the area, trapped between quartets of dust-coated finely carved bamboo chairs. Men in faded maroon shirts and khaki trousers, the ends of their shirts heavily crumpled from being tucked in earlier and now irrevocably stained with oil and grime from being repeatedly used as makeshift napkins, tending to the orders of the handful of customers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was a warm night and Kaushik chose a seat next to one of the standing fans. It blew his hair into frenzy and reminded him that he must have a haircut in Ahmedabad. The fan emitted a continuous creaking sound, evidently from a lack of maintenance and lubrication, and it tore into the sweet melodies of Belle & Sebastian that were presented to him through the IPod. He wondered if he should shift to Joy Division and turn up the volume so the fan would become inaudible or at least less conspicuous in the industrial clamour. He sighed and asked to be shown to another table instead. He ordered a Dosa and a Coke and settled down to reminisce about Ahmedabad.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ahmedabad, he had always lamented, was a city without character. It just lay there in the heat and sand, a cluster of short plain buildings with wealthy, peaceful people in them whose principal pastime was eating vegetarian food in expensive restaurants. It was a city that, if lived in, offered all that was nice and comfortable but never any romance. One could live in Ahmedabad for decades and then simply get up and leave, inconvenienced only by the movement of one’s belongings. It was not a city one could write about. Kaushik was certain there would never be great literature produced for it in the way that there was and could be for Mumbai or Kolkata. It was like having to write about a bunch of regular people with regular jobs and good money instead of a struggling artist in Paris or even a cheerful farmer in the Italian countryside.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was ten years ago that Kaushik had left for Dhule. He had, since, become a visitor to the city of his childhood. He had returned briefly after his graduation, for two years, and found all his friends either gone or no longer friends. He had spent those two years forging new friendships and had then moved to Lucknow. Now another four years had passed and all that remained of his life in Ahmedabad, were his Mom and Dad.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik reached the train station with a half hour still to spare. He found a bench on which an old bespectacled man sat clutching a walking stick and speaking to a middle aged man, ostensibly his son, who stood next to him. Kaushik sat down on the other edge of the bench and placed his bag in between. The two men turned briefly towards him and then resumed their conversation. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The platform bustled with purpose and emergency. Presently, a local train arrived and a mad rush ensued. At the end of it, most of the people on the platform had emptied out into the train and when the train left, the place settled itself into a different, calmer pace. Kaushik had often noticed how people waiting for long distance trains behave differently from those waiting for local short distance ones. When Kaushik’s train arrived, people moved with more composure, secure in their knowledge that their seats were reserved and there wasn’t the need to win them over the trampled bodies of fellow travelers and competitors. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After he’d located his seat and rid his, now aching, shoulder of the bag, he exited the train again and peered over the reservation chart pasted on the compartment’s door. He scoured the sheet for his name and when he found it, looked at the names immediately above and below his. It was his Dad who had first suggested this to him as a method to find out if he could hope for the company of women on the train. He now religiously followed it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He was pleased to note that there was a Nisha Chaturvedi, female 24, on the seat opposite his. Over the years, when he had found himself in similar circumstances - and there had been many - he had rarely ever even bothered to introduce himself. Most of the females had turned out to be unattractive and married and they usually carried a baby or a self help book in their arms. And yet, he waited expectantly each time, eager to catch the first glimpse of these unknown women, letting his mind create hopeless fantasies of one day finding a Julie Delpy on the train, reading Georges Bataille.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik often wondered what he would do if were actually to find a girl like that. Would he have the courage to propose what Ethan Hawke had proposed? Or even the courage to at least start a conversation? And if he did, how would the girl react? Wouldn’t she look at him incredulously and ask him to fuck off? And how would he feel if she were to do that?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When he was only beginning to watch foreign language films, he found it weird that in so many films, when a man proposed intimacy with a woman who was not similarly disposed, the woman, instead of reacting with shock and hysteria, tenderly pushed him away, with gentle apologies even, sometimes even allowing his lips to brush lightly with hers. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Kaushik found it, at the time, a case of downright western callousness and immorality. And then he became interested in Ritika and spent those hours thinking about how he could approach her and what she would say. It was then that he realized how incredibly compassionate the reactions of the women in those films were. It is perhaps one of hardest things for a man to do – to profess his love and attraction to a woman and thereby willfully place himself in a situation where he and his ego are so thoroughly exposed, so pathetically defenseless. A situation where even the slightest hint of mockery and disgust in the woman’s reaction could bruise his self esteem so badly, so indelibly. And under those circumstances, to allow a man to salvage his pride, to offer him a graceful way out. So incredibly compassionate those women were indeed! </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He felt the train shudder and then move slowly. He sighed. Nisha Chaturvedi hadn’t appeared. She would possibly aboard at the next station, still an hour away, by which time he would have almost certainly dozed off. He rummaged in his bag and found the novel he was carrying, opened it, read a few lines and then shut it again. His thoughts drifted back to Ahmedabad. His Dad would be waiting for him at the station the next morning. He would comment how Kaushik had put on even more weight, an observation that his Mom would echo when he reached home. He would just smile and mumble something about how he did not care. Tea would be ready and so would be breakfast and the three of them would spend a pleasant hour together, after which his Dad, whose weekly break occurred in the middle of the week, would leave for work.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It occurred to him suddenly, what would have happened if, instead of their marriage being arranged as it was by their respective families, his Mom and Dad had met on their own all those years ago. Would they have fallen in love with each other? If his Dad had proposed marriage to her, would she have reacted hysterically or tenderly pushed him away? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He tried to recall incidents from his past, the oldest that his memory would allow him to fetch, of the two. For a very long time, he knew, he was completely oblivious to the possibility of love between his Mom and Dad. For him, they existed in order to love him and that was all there was to it. That there could be a relationship between the two of them, that need not include him, did not even occur to him until he was into his teens. One day, he clearly remembered, his Dad asked his Mom if she wished to have a pair of Diamond earrings and Kaushik stared at the two of them uncomprehendingly for it had never crossed his mind that his Dad could care for his Mom enough to buy her gifts as, or even more, expensive than the ones he bought for his son. The next day they went shopping for the earrings; Kaushik was with them. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This, he found, was his earliest definite memory of them as purely a man and a woman capable of finding joy and happiness in a world without him. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He picked up the novel and began reading again. By the time the train entered the next station, he was fast asleep.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-40567103364049541092010-10-06T17:55:00.001+05:302010-10-19T23:41:50.232+05:30Closely Watched Films<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik grew up watching and revering Amitabh Bachchan. His father deified him for Kaushik, describing his films and acting in every superlative he knew. His mother did not care much either way, happy in the Bengalis’ indivisible love for Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Every fortnight, his father would come home with a rented VCR and two tapes – one Bachchan and one Uttam – Suchitra. The films were watched huddled around a 14 inch colour television set. The first film was always Bachchan’s since Kaushik would have to be put to bed by ten. His mother would keep hurrying away to the kitchen whenever the pressure cooker whistled and sometimes his father would call out to her for a cup of tea and she would return with it. Kaushik would sit through all this, staring at the screen with rapt attention, waiting for the next action set piece to begin. When it would, Kaushik would scramble up to his feet and kick and punch the air with sounds of ‘Bhishoom Bhishoom’. Sometimes he would punch his Dad on the arms and he would grab a squealing Kaushik and pull him down to his lap and hold him tightly and tickle him and Kaushik would love it. In movies where Bachchan died in the end, and there were several of those, Kaushik would become glum and his Dad would promise to show him another film where Bachchan does not die. He would go to bed after that, his mother by his side, and when he was asleep, his Mom and Dad would watch the Uttam – Suchitra film.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In those days, the entire family visited Kolkata for a week or two every year. Kaushik loved going there, for they usually stayed at one of his Uncle’s house – his Dad’s elder brother – and he had a large television set and a VCR of his own. He did not see Bachchan films there, but instead he saw magic tricks his Uncle had recorded during TV programmes and Satyajit Ray’s ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’ and ‘Felu Da’ films.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It wasn’t until he was past fifteen that he started to realize that he was watching the same films over and over and they were starting to bore him a little. He asked his Uncle if there were other films he could watch and his Uncle would speak animatedly of the latest Magic show they’d shown on television. At first, he continued to sit through those but soon he learnt the art of wiggling his way out ot them. “I want to read a book now” he would say, waving an Enid Blyton and scampering off to another room. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His father realized what was going on and Kaushik noticed that now there were three tapes being brought with the VCR – a Chinese Martial Arts film in addition to the other two. “Enter the Dragon!” or “Fist of Fury!” or “36<sup>th</sup> Chamber of Shaolin!” his Dad would announce when he returned from work and they would settle down to watch it soon after. His Mom would now sometimes make tea for him as well. Of course, he was now allowed to stay awake well after midnight since two films needed to be watched and slowly, Uttam Suchitra faded away into oblivion for there just wasn’t enough time for a third. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was around that time that English films and Coca Cola came back to India. And Schwarzenegger rode into Kaushik’s life, shotgun in hand on a motorcycle, and wearing leather jackets and dark glasses and it was ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ to Bruce Lee and his ilk. These movies, of course, were somewhat more risky in that there was gore and scantily clad women involved, and Kaushik’s Dad went to the theatre alone first to check if Kaushik could be allowed to watch. Once in a while, he would take Kaushik on the condition that he would walk out of the theatre, when asked, for a few minutes in the middle of the movie like during Jamie Lee’s striptease in True Lies. He would do as asked. One time, his Dad allowed one of his friends to sample a film since he was busy and Kaushik got to sit through an entire James Bond film, while his mother muttered under her breath next to him. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Dhule brought with it porn. He learnt to revel in the terrible odour and creaky chairs that permeated shady video theatres. He learnt to not let his concentration flag even as those around him moaned and groaned in the darkness, although he never did that himself, choosing to wait until he got back to his hostel room. He began to read Sydney Sheldon and Harold Robbins too and for those years, all literature and film became for him means to a single purpose.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By the time he graduated and returned home, however, he had begun to tire of them. He still watched porn, of course, but it seemed to him it had become more a matter of need and continuity than actual excitement. He shifted to Maclean and Forsyth in the written word, but about films he did not know what else he could do and, therefore, he eventually stopped watching them altogether, except for the odd one that appeared on TV. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In Lucknow, while he walked around campus and into classrooms with novels in hand, Kafka and Hemingway and Conrad, he scoffed at those that displayed interest in films. “They’re just a waste of time”, Kaushik said to himself. What good would films do to him? He’d rather spend that time reading or playing cricket. One of the first times he spoke to Ritankar, they discussed literature, but when Ritankar brought up the subject of films, Kaushik made excuses and turned away. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And then one day, Ritankar forced him to watch ‘Apocalypse Now’. And he stared at the screen spellbound by the extraordinary translation of Conrad’s vision. Afterwards, while he mumbled on about the greatness of the film, Ritankar asked him if he’d seen ‘The Godfather’ films and he nodded his head even though he had not. The same day he returned to his room and spent the night watching all three. He then watched ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and ‘Scent of a Woman’ and ‘Heat’ and Pacino replaced Bachchan, for whom his feelings by this time were less of reverence than of adoration in any case, in his head.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Bergman, Godard and Truffaut, they are the real stuff,” another friend told him. He found their films unavailable on the campus LAN and therefore had to wait till he visited home during a term break. There, he convinced his Dad they needed an unlimited downloads broadband connection and when that arrived, he downloaded films by all three, and spent the rest of the break watching those. He found ‘Week End’ fascinating although he understood very little of it. When he returned to campus, he sought out the friend and asked him what else he would recommend. “If you liked ‘Week End’,” he said, “you will probably enjoy Last Year At Marienbad.” Kaushik was in a trance when he watched. A few months later, when he was beginning to discover hints of superiority in his behavior with other, less informed, people, he realized the only thing similar between ‘Week End’ and ‘Last Year At Marienbad’ was that he had understood neither. He watched them again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The next windfall came when the Post Graduation program ended and Kaushik returned home for a three month break before he would move to Mumbai for work. He decided he’d had enough of the French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism and that he would now devote himself to contemporary cinema. He discovered ‘Sex & Lucia’ and for a brief period, Paz Vega became more beautiful to him than Penelope Cruz, until he watched Volver. Sex & Lucia led him through Julio Medem to ‘Lovers of the Arctic Circle’. He spoke to Ritankar and Ashish about the film and found they had not watched it. He was thrilled that he finally had a film that he alone could recommend. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He began to detect hints of snobbishness creep into his conversations. “Oh! You haven’t seen Head On? Dude, you must absolutely see it!”. He warmed to the romance of Europe. He cursed himself for not going there when he had the chance, for the International Student Exchange program. Ashish did go and when he told them stories from his time there, Kaushik listened wide-eyed and jealous. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Once they were all settled in Mumbai, Kaushik sought out film appreciation groups and special screenings, better placed as he was in a film production company than Ritankar or Ashish. They enrolled to every club they could find and each Sunday morning at ten they began to go to a movie screening, red eyed and disheveled from the previous night’s drinking. In the afternoons, there was another club that exhibited films in a pub and they went there too. Occasionally, an obscure film released in theatres and they bought tickets for it, incredulous that such films could release in theatres – ‘Edge of Heaven’, ‘Turtles can Fly’, ‘Secret of the grain’. Kaushik became friends with Kartik and found himself being invited to special screenings of independent film directors he was in awe of. He contemplated becoming a filmmaker himself. He spent hours in office conceptualizing stories and camera angles. He looked forward to returning home each evening so he could watch a film and to weekends when he could discuss those and watch more.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He often reflected on how much films had affected his life. His world view expanded. He realized he couldn’t be very happy living the rest of his life in clusters of five day weeks. And he drifted apart from his friends of Dhule and to an extent, his parents, for he couldn’t bring himself to find conversations with them engaging anymore.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-25512157631365922542010-10-03T09:13:00.003+05:302010-10-03T16:30:25.253+05:30Stone Wall, Stone Fence<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was on a cold winter night when Raakesh told Kaushik he would not take up a job. “I’ll do something, maybe try and be a journalist”, he said. Afterwards they strolled around the campus, covered in a thick veil of radiant fog. The vapour from their coffee rose and mingled with the fog, as did their own breaths.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ever since they’d become friends, Raakesh often hinted at not wanting to carry on with the mistake he’d made. “This MBA stuff, it repels me,” he would say, “I can’t see myself doing this, being surrounded by people such as these. I just can’t.” Kaushik, unsure of what his own feelings in the matter were, remained silent on these occasions. He knew that he too was not thrilled at the prospect of spending years in an elaborate office in formalwear, but in the apparent absence of immediate alternatives, he was loathe to make a choice. He felt curiously envious and, at the same time, relieved each time Raakesh renewed his vow – relieved that it was Raakesh and not he. Raakesh, in the meanwhile, continued to take his exams and prepare sufficiently before them to get by, forever threatening that the next time he would not.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Somewhere in the most isolated corner of the campus when the thuds of the woofers in the Community Centre no longer bothered them, they stopped walking. They sweated lightly inside their jackets. Raakesh still carried <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">‘The remembrance of things past’</i>, tattered and yellowed with its years in the library, in one hand. For some reason, he had taken it with him to the Insti party. “I came straight from the library,” he’d said by way of explanation. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Two years from then, when Ritankar and Kaushik stood before the grave of Proust in Paris, Kaushik would recount the episode to Ritankar. “Oh, that library version had about twenty pages torn off it. I had to stop reading it because of that.”, Ritankar would say in response.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They stood there for a while, silent, for they could think of nothing to discuss in particular, but unwilling to return to the din or to their rooms. Kaushik leaned against a tree trunk. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So then, journalism, son?” Kaushik said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes son, that seems to be the idea.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“But how do you plan to get in? An MBA degree, even one from the IIMs, does not help much in these matters, I gather.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t know son, honestly,” Raakesh flushed, “but there must be a way. I’ll get into a separate course on journalism if need be.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“A separate course? That is an extra year son, yes?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Raakesh nodded, a little exasperated. Why must he think of all this now? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What about the enormous loan you’ve run up here? How do you pay that back?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Maybe I will not, son.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They started to walk again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So son, any new efforts coming up?” Raakesh asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I think so son, yes. A short piece about a prisoner and his life. Will probably write it at some point tomorrow. You, of course, will be informed when it goes up on the blog.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Of course.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You? Anything in the offing? Besides the love poems to be pushed under the door?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes son, rubbing it in, it seems!” Raakesh paused, “No, nothing really. I am afraid the Booker will have to wait for a while.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Listen, lets go to the canteen. I would like some tea, a bowl of noodles too, perhaps.” Kaushik said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Sure son, lets. What time is it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ten minutes to two. Early days yet. We’ve plans for Counter Strike at three. Another hour to pass.’</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The canteen was largely deserted; occasionally people appeared in ones and twos, and carried their tea cups, once those arrived, outside. Nobody sat at a table. Outside the canteen, there was a clearing, that looked like it had been commissioned as an ampitheatre but construction was abandoned halfway, and this is where most people sat with their teas. Raakesh and Kaushik chose to sit inside, happy with the warmth and the isolation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“These computer games you play son, I never understand what is so interesting about them.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Perhaps not as interesting as a course in journalism son, yes. But whatever little there is, it is more immediate one feels.” Kaushik chuckled, pleased to have constructed, verbally, a somewhat more convoluted sentence than he usually did. Conversations in English were something he’d never had before he came to Lucknow, and he still found himself fumbling with the spoken word once in a while.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Really son, that is just a ridiculous comment. What has one got to do with the other?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I know son,” Kaushik conceded, “just popped up in my head and I said it. Nothing to get so peeved about.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Raakesh would indeed take up a course in journalism a few months later and then find himself employed with a well-known English daily, as a Sports Correspondent. In the first few months, he would cover minor Snooker and Table Tennis tournaments and fill his reports with references from The Dante, Homer and the Bible. He would then show those to Kaushik and they would have a good laugh. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">On this night, the two would separate after an hour at the canteen. Kaushik would go back to his room and play Counter Strike under the alias of Che Guevara on the campus LAN with a bunch of friends. Raakesh would go back to weed.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-53927014521653967682010-09-26T19:28:00.000+05:302010-09-26T19:29:37.929+05:30Montefioralle<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was the first time they were both together in front of the camera. The camera, placed on the parapet that separated Montefioralle from the lush Tuscan landscape, stared at them motionlessly, while they sat on a wooden bench and gazed at the unending countryside that the camera couldn’t see. There was nobody else in sight. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They remained silent for a long time. The camera heard the peaceful sound of birds and occasionally, the church bells toll. A light rain fell and the cobbled streets and ancient stone walls glistened. Tiny droplets fell on their shirts, darkening the colour where they fell and then spread, lightened and became undetectable. The glow of their cigarettes reddened when they drew in smoke.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I wonder how they capture that sound of paper and tobacco burning when people smoke in films.” Kaushik said aloud.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t know. I think they use unfiltered cigarettes.” Ritankar said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik nodded and stole a glance at the camera, then looked away again. The church bells chimed again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“How about we describe what we see in front of us, the magnificence that lies there unseen to those watching through the camera?” Kaushik said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar did not respond and continued to stare into the distance. They heard the fleeting sound of a car passing by on the highway behind them, hidden by the walls of the church. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Look at them hills yonder,” Kaushik began, “green, wonderful. Oh bliss.” He sighed. “Those clouds brooding over them, perhaps drawn to their beauty as much as we. Those tiny houses with red roofs down in Greve clustered together like in a dream. Oh, that smoke rising from the chimney over there, snow white against the green grey.” He paused, shook his head thoughtfully and looked straight at the camera. “I wish you could see what I can see.” He clucked his tongue, “Oh nature, why art thou so cruel!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar smiled but did not comment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“This must be right up there with the best of our trip”, he said after long minutes had passed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. With Cinque Terre and the Père Lachaise.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I hope the Aeolian Islands turn out alright. That should cap everything off nicely. And Rome, obviously.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I think this is going to be the best scene of our travelogue,” Kaushik mused, “if we do manage to compile one.” He added.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar stood up and strolled around for a bit, moving out of sight of the camera. Kaushik took a sip of water from the bottle he’d carried and settled back into the bench again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Must be twenty minutes since the camera started rolling,” Ritankar called out from where he stood, a few metres away, staring up at a streetlamp.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, must be. Why?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“No. I guess we beat Hunger. That was seventeen minutes, wasn’t it?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik laughed. “Yes, thereabouts. We weren’t that intense though, were we?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Two years hence, Kaushik’s hard drive would crash and take with it everything they’d shot. In that time, they would’ve watched the videos once and never have worked on them. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What time is it?” Ritankar asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“One. You want to leave? We’ve got to get back to Greve by three.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Lets walk through the village one more time. Then we can leave.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik walked away from the line of sight of the camera and then detoured to it from its blind side. He switched it off and picked it up. “This should be fun to watch.” He said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">On their way down to Greve, they walked by the cemetery compound again – a small space enclosed by a thick wall that rose up to their chests. On the other side, over the wall, Tuscany rose and fell in all its glory. Stone plaques, some with faded photographs on them, stood in a four uniform columns. They read out some of the names under their breath, fearful that a raised voice might disturb the exquisite equilibrium of the place. They mulled over the paradox of what they felt – extreme calm and a warm melancholia. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was only when they’d descended to Greve and sat in what appeared to be the only café in town, sipping warm steaming cups of cappuccino, that Kaushik finally spoke aloud.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Not a bad place to die.”He said.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-78106056803844736812010-09-26T11:34:00.000+05:302010-09-26T11:36:02.994+05:30Amores, indeed, Perros<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They were seated on the stone parapet that separated the tube-lit street from the sand. Around them, hawkers were preparing to shut shop for the day. It was a weekend and they had perhaps sold off everything earlier than usual. Pieces of old vernacular newspapers, folded into cones with hollow bottoms, lay about; a stray peanut or two peeked from a few. The smell of roasted maize hung in the air. On the street, the occasional group of tourists passed, hurrying to their hotel rooms, oblivious to the brooding hum of the invisible ocean to their side. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“What time is it?” Ashish asked. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik peered at his watch, twisted his wrist in search of a stray column of light from the streetlamps, for the dial not immediately visible in the darkness. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“About half past nine.” He answered.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Early days yet, although by the looks of it, sufficiently late for everyone else.” Ashish said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Anyone wants more tea?” said Ritankar and waited for the other two to nod. “ Lets order before the fellow leaves.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They called out for three more cups from where they were seated. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I wouldn’t mind an omelet either.” Said Ashish.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You go ahead. I am stuffed.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yeah, me too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Oh well, then I guess I’ll skip it too.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They had reached Murud that afternoon with growling bellies and aching backsides, a five hour bus ride behind them. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Apart from the quaint thatched houses with sloping roofs and the faint, agreeable odour of cow dung that hung perennially in the air, the first thing they had noticed was the street names. Every street, even the narrowest by-lane, was named after a popular figure of the Indian freedom struggle – Gandhi, Nehru, Bose, Patel, Ambedkar, Tilak. Evidently, Murud thought itself important enough for this to be construed as bestowal of honour. They had found themselves a cozy little room on the first floor in a makeshift two storey hotel; the owners themselves lived on the lower floor. The stairs opened straight into a grassy courtyard with a palm tree in the centre, which overlooked the ocean. They had found the place enchanting although the bathroom door wouldn’t lock and the ceiling fan screeched and shuddered every once in a while. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A handful of tourists hung around the beach. They were surprised to note that some of them were foreigners. They couldn’t imagine how anyone outside India could’ve heard of this place, tucked away as it was in the long and largely inaccessible Konkan coastline. The nearest train station was two hours away. Three buses, state owned, plied to and from Mumbai each day on roads, narrow and bumpy, that weaved in and out of the lush Western Ghats. Whenever two buses crossed each other, they came so close one could smell the passengers’ breath in the other bus through the window.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The tea arrived in plastic cups. Kaushik blew into it and the vapour settled thinly on his glasses, then gradually faded away. The breeze had picked up and now ruffled his hair. He passed his hand through them and it came away with particles of sand sticking to it. He remembered he’d forgotten to bring the shampoo. He grimaced. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I will be travelling to the Philippines next month.” Ritankar announced.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“To <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Philippines? What for?” Kaushik asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“It’s the annual conference for our company,” Ritankar said. He stood up and stretched his legs before continuing, “they’d eventually told us it would be in Beijing but it appears they’ve now chosen Manila.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Perhaps they need to send out a lot of letters during the conference,” offered Ashish, “Envelopes must be cheap in Manila, no?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They laughed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So, how many days?” Kaushik asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“About two weeks I think.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Two weeks! I’ve never heard of an annual conference lasting that long!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar sat down again. “No, the conference in only 4 days.” He said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So what about the other ten days?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar stood up again and lit a cigarette, with difficulty since the breeze was strong and he wasn’t very good at cupping his hands around the matchstick. In fact, none of them were. He sat down again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I have something to tell you guys,” he said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ashish and Kaushik looked at each other. Kaushik raised an eyebrow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Go on.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You remember that girl from China I told you about? The one that works in our Beijing office?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ah yes. She was here a few months ago for some training, right? Told you she didn’t like shopping for clothes, I think.” Kaushik said, glancing once again at Ashish. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar nodded. “Yes, she wanted to go to a bookstore, instead.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“And you took here there. Yes, so, what about her?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Well, you see, I’ve been chatting with her since then,” Ritankar’s tone was almost apologetic, “off and on.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Off and on, I see.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Drop the sarcasm for once, Kaushik” Ashish said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes, of course. And I did not detect any in what you just said.” Kaushik countered.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar grew visibly impatient.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Ok, Ok. Let’s get back to what his story now. Yes, so you were,” Kaushik paused, “chatting off and on.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Yes. And it, sort of, clicked.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Clicked?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Lets get more tea” Ritankar suggested.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik yelled for more tea again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritankar went on to tell them how it was that they had clicked. He provided excerpts from their conversations, which turned out to revolve mostly around love and life and their meanings. “If you were divided into equal halves,” she had asked him once, “would one half love the other?” “Oh, really?” Kaushik remarked, “She asked you that? Very novel. Very subtle.” Ritankar waved Kaushik’s comment away with his arms and continued on. They had grown used to each other over time and spent an increasing number of hours chatting in office. They had exchanged novels and later, text messages, with each other. The girl, Ritankar told them, had majored in French literature. Kaushik and Ashish nodded approvingly. At some point, Ritankar had mentioned his interest in her was beginning to evolve beyond the confines of their chat window. Kaushik was certain Ritankar could never have said that if the two had been face to face, but did not mention it. The two had then agreed to find a way to meet again. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“So anyway, where do matters stand now? In all of this, that point has remains unclear.” Ashish said, when Ritankar finished.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I don’t know. We’ll meet in Manila, spend a few days together and see how it works out. I am not sure.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Back in office after the weekend in Murud, refreshed and bored, Kaushik and Ashish discussed this new development and sipped coffee pensively. “What the fuck man! What wrong have we done?” they said to each other. They determined they must get Ritankar to share a picture of her and based on what they saw become a little relieved or more depressed. The weekend before Ritankar was to leave for Manila they met again and wished him luck. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When Ritankar returned from Manila, he was convinced he had a future with her. So was she, he told Kaushik and Ashish. They had spent a fabulous week together, travelling through Philippines and its many islands. They had discussed their future together and a way out of, as Ritankar put it, all this. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Does she have any lady friends she can introduce your friends to?” Ashish quipped.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-54397504699855925652010-09-19T12:39:00.000+05:302010-09-19T12:40:10.450+05:30Once<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik’s interest in Ritika, as much a product of incessant suggestion as of actual attraction, was firmly established, in his mind and of others’, by the time the second month in Lucknow had begun. She, with her aquiline nose, high cheeks and terrible voice, was one of the most sought after, although not overwhelmingly so, for that year the campus had witnessed a markedly increased influx of attractive women. The presence of competition – stiff is not the appropriate word to use in this context – meant Kaushik did not even try seriously, although it was unlikely he would have succeeded even if he did. For a long time, he wasn’t even sure if she knew his name.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was still that phase when Kaushik was only feeling his way into the company of the Illustrious and therefore, his poise, never assured amongst womenfolk in the best of times, wasn’t what could be considered self-confident. Indeed, he fell back, more strongly than ever, on his time-honed defense of sarcasm and feigned indifference.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He never really had been a ladies’ man. In school, as a kid only dimly aware of man woman relationships beyond that of playing Snakes & Ladders together, he, along with his friends, had enjoyed the company of women often. By the time his dim notions had developed into more coherent physical urges – he woke up to these much later than most of his peers since at the time his naïve faith in his parents was unshakeable and they had begun to drop frequent, subtle hints, that he shouldn’t be getting carried away with himself at this precarious age -, he was almost through school.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He went to college in Ahmedabad for a couple of months to pass time, while he waited for the letter, from Dhule as it turned out, to arrive. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There, he noticed how the women wore dresses very different from the full sleeved shirts and ankle length skirts that had been their school uniform. He registered the clearly defined curves, accentuated by the tighter tees and jeans, and the occasional, bewitching, sight of an exposed knee. At this stage, he himself was barely above five feet and in the nascent stages of obesity, and this meant, his advances, friendly and unsure, were met with only mild, somewhat sisterly, reactions. The subject of his height, a matter of great concern to his Mom & Dad for the past few years, suddenly became important to himself. He hunted around for girls his own height but found himself hopelessly distracted by those that weren’t. He went into a shell, eating sandwiches at the canteen alone, and taking the bus back home as soon as lectures ended. Sometimes, when he bunked class, he went to the neighbourhood bookshop and read.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The problem of his height alleviated significantly by the end of his first semester in Dhule. He never became an imposing presence, other than horizontally, but he grew enough to have a physical vantage point with respect to most women.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the Lord that gaveth also, snidely, taketh. Dhule proved barren in more ways than one. The one female worthy of, at best, passing attention garnered so much, she abandoned college, two weeks into the first session, and returned to her hometown. There were a handful others who were alright, not unworthy of mankind saving liaison after a nuclear attack by machines wrecks the planet leaving only two survivors, and these were quickly picked up by the locals boys, who, armed with a bunch of hockey stick wielding sidekicks, wrestled their way through the cluster of less connected aspirants and into the women’s hearts. Kaushik, of course, stood no chance.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And thus, by the time Ritika turned up, his wooing and conversational skills were still only marginally better than at infancy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">She was interested in literature and in western music. She maintained a blog which sounded profound and vague. She had a sense of humour, it appeared. Kaushik mentioned his interest casually to his friends and they latched onto it at once. They cajoled and goaded on his desire for her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He constructed conversations with her in his head, fretting over each detail, going back and changing his own words, wherever he felt he had gone wrong, but never hers since what she said was of her own volition. They all turned out to be conversations worthy of the best noir and that he couldn’t actually have them with her depressed Kaushik further. He passed her by several times each day, at the coffee shop, at the student mess, in classrooms, but never said hello, choosing instead, to steal sidelong glances at her. Once in a while, when his glance would be caught by hers, he offered a frail smile and quickly looked away, not waiting to check if she’d smiled back. At this point, everyone was adding everyone else to their Social Network friend lists and Chat lists, but Kaushik desisted from sending her an invite, afraid he’d be turned down. It wasn’t until they were grouped together, along with a couple of other fellows, for a project, that he eventually sent her an invite, making up his mind to clarify it was to discuss about the project lest she harbor suspicions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was around this time that he met Raakesh, who was then struggling with romantic demons of his own. Since his gift for the written word was universally acknowledged by this time, Raakesh had figured he could use it to his advantage to make headway with the object of his desire. And so, he composed sonnets in her name and slipped them under her door in the early hours of the morning. After weeks of expectant waiting, when nothing happened, he and Kaushik figured the girl was probably too airheaded to appreciate the magic of his words. And they returned to their novels and their alcohol. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ritika, it emerged one day, had succumbed to the charms of another man, a senior. Kaushik took the news with great equanimity and immediately set about finding all he could about this man. He was a hopeless alcoholic, Kaushik found, and evidently had a knack for growling absurd Death Metal songs. Nobody on campus, even those of his own batch, liked him. When the news of his conquest spread, they liked him even less. It won’t last, was the general opinion. In three years’ time, the two would marry each other.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">With time, Kaushik grew out of her and a strange thing happened. He found he could now speak to her. They spoke a few times during the final months in Lucknow, sometimes face to face and sometimes in a chat window, and Kaushik found he enjoyed these occasions with a faint hint of wistfulness, even as they were underway. He recognized the transient nature of these conversations and that they would probably die away slowly once they left Lucknow. He still liked the sight of her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They did chat once or twice after Kaushik, and she too, had settled in Mumbai. They did not have occasion to meet. She remained on his Gtalk list and he looked for her name each time he logged in, for no purpose other than to simply register her presence, until he grew out of that too and she became just another name.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-43270792366084824182010-09-19T02:27:00.000+05:302010-09-19T02:29:36.982+05:30The Earning of Respect<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The summonses from the Director’s office weren’t ever entirely unexpected and yet, when they did arrive, those summoned put up shocked countenances nonetheless. One or two burst into tears even, genuine, for although they were aware exactly how it would all play out in the end, there was always the lurking fear that this could be that occasion when Neo chooses the other door. They would then spend the rest of the evening plotting how best forgiveness could be asked for when they were presented before the Director next morning. Those that had cried earlier were usually chosen as the spokespersons; sympathy was most likely to be won by the soft and the unmanly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It happened every year. The sophomores, basking in their newfound seniority, sat atop the hostel wall, their legs wafting cockily below them, and watched the stream of new arrivals enter the hostel, a parent or two in tow. Some of the parents, usually fathers, greeted them cheerily and asked after the amenities their progeny would have at their disposal in the hostel. These fathers were then duly offered lengthy insights that eventually ended at the tea & snack joint round the corner. ‘We’ll take good care of your son, uncle, you don’t worry at all’, they were told. The new students continued to trickle in for a while and by the time the last of the parents abandoned their child to the vagaries of Dhule, more than a month had passed by. That was when the clarion call was sounded and the newbies were asked to gather on the hostel’s roof for a round of introductions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The rules were simple and scant. The seniors, sophomores and beyond, would need to be addressed as Sir. Only formals could be worn. At all times, including in bed. Formals would include socks and boots too, except in bed, where the boots could be taken off. In a senior’s presence, their gazes could not meander above the third button of their own shirts. They would complete the seniors’ projects and assignments for them and do whatever else was asked of them at any point. The rest of the night was spent in various festivities; the newly inducted kids, generally unclothed, catered to their Sirs many requests, most of which were of a distinctly, although only mildly, homoerotic nature. One of the favourites over the years was getting one of the kids to pick up a pen or pencil from the floor with his buttocks, exposed of course, without using his limbs. Nobody had ever actually found success in doing so, which was the point, since nonperformance led to more severe punishment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This continued for a couple of months, each night. On weekends, when everybody was more drunk than usual, several groups convened in one or the other seniors’ private apartments, outside the hostel and therefore, outside the immediate reaches of the warden. Kaushik too, not drunk but eager to pay it forward, having earned his badge the previous year, was among them. And pay it forward, he certainly did. He hadn’t read The Marquis De Sade then, but when he did, he was confident that the great man would have approved.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In time, the inevitable happened. One of the kids wept and whimpered into a phone and the voice carried through miles of metal and fiber to his shocked parents, who, in turn, wept and whimpered into the ears of the college authorities. The boy, one of Kaushik and his group’s victims, was called to the Director’s office. He named as many people as he knew the names of. And thus, the Director’s summonses. Kaushik’s name, it was found, had not been announced. He grinned from ear to ear and explained to the others that it would all be fine.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It began as it always did. The Director raged and fumed and spoke to their parents. He informed them that their sons were being rusticated, a somewhat inappropriate term to use since it could hardly get more rustic than Dhule. Some of the accused, a markedly larger number than the previous day’s, began to weep openly. ‘Won’t happen again, won’t happen again’, they sobbed. The Director remained firm, for he was supposed to on the first day, and asked them to leave his office and pack their suitcases. They needn’t attend lectures, he added.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">That evening, the mood in the hostel was sombre. A first year kid even whistled his way to the toilet. Towards midnight, the hostel warden asked the beleaguered gentlemen to his office. There, he informed them that he was ashamed of them and such a thing had been unheard of in his regime before this. A little later, he asked the accuser to be brought to him and when he did, he asked the rest to apologize. They did as they were told. The warden’s voice softened. He told them he would talk to the Director the next morning and see if something could be done to save their careers. They thanked him profusely.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Director acceded on the third day. They were all called to his office again. He too did not wish to see such bright careers brought to premature ends, he said, but they could not completely escape punishment. And so, the best way, he continued, would be for them to be paid back in the same vein. They were all made to stand just inside the entrance to the college for the entire day, in the heat, without shirts and with their arms raised above them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What embarrassed them was how filthy their undershirts were. The girls passed by them, wrinkling their noses and giggling to each other. A few, with commendable oversight, had omitted wearing an undershirt and shaved their underarms and were, therefore, decidedly less embarrassed. Their friends, on their way to the lecture halls and back, waved to them and cracked jokes. Kaushik cracked a joke or two too and they glared at him so hard, he asked them if they wanted something to drink. They said yes. A few minutes later, Kaushik and a few others, returned with packets of wafers, aerated soft drinks and mineral water. The professors and other staff allowed them to finish most of it before asking them to stop the nonsense and take the punishment seriously.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In a couple of hours, when they couldn’t keep their arms aloft any longer and the heat wet their pants with sweat, the Director called them again. They fell at his feet, exhausted, and asked for mercy. The Director launched into another half hour monologue, which they all nodded thoughtfully through. By evening, all was well again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Later that night, the first year students were summoned to the hostel roof again and the essential concepts of solidarity and unity were explained to them. They wouldn’t be ragged anymore, they were promised, but in return, they would have to continue to wear formals and address the seniors as Sir. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">By the end of the semester, the only rule that remained, and would remain through the next three years, was the form of address. </p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-80085815278662323452010-09-12T21:38:00.001+05:302010-09-12T21:39:29.541+05:30Rishikesh<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Kaushik’s eyes opened and saw darkness. The eyelids opened and shut with trepidation several times since, when they opened, the retina they housed weren’t used to capturing a somewhat similar image to what they’d been seeing with the shutters down. Still dark. From somewhere close, came the sound of snoring. He felt damp and realized he was still wearing his jacket, which combined with two blankets and alcohol, had made him sweat. He also realized he needed, urgently, to relieve his bowels. He sighed, sat up and fumbled under the bed, first for the glasses and then for the mobile phone. The phone’s screen, once it lit up, informed him it was three in the morning and cast a ghostly halo around the tent. Kaushik spotted two bodies on the other two beds – Ashish and Raakesh – although he couldn’t be sure which was who. He stepped out of the tent and immediately a chill breeze blew into his face and he stepped back inside. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">His backpack lay by his bedside, upon which a woolen cap and gloves had been carelessly tossed. He put them on and stepped out again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It was a brilliant moonlit night and Kaushik was staggered to find how clearly he could see. The white sand stretched out ahead of him and he could see exactly where it met the water. The Ganges, blusterous and white foamed, hurtled down towards Haridwar, eager to complete the remaining distance to the plains, barely twenty kilometers, as soon as it could. On the other side of the river, the Himalayas loomed dramatically, the summits hidden by a luminescent sheet of white clouds that, miraculously, seemed immobile in the gusty breeze. Overhead however, unguarded by the mountains, the clouds scurried off, also in the direction of Haridwar, and Kaushik glimpsed a sky filled with stars. Looking directly up made him sway a little. The effects of the alcohol had evidently not worn off completely. He didn’t detect a headache though, a good sign. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The makeshift toilets were about fifty meters from the tents. He walked lazily in that direction; his slippers sunk into the soft sand and threw up miniature volcanoes each time they came back up again. He passed by the bonfire they’d lit earlier that evening; the embers were dull grey with patches of simmering deep red. Thin tendrils of smoke still rose from them and hung a few feet above. Kaushik stopped for a moment and flapped his arms through the smoke. He chuckled. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When he’d reached the first of the toilet doors, he looked back at the line of tents, about a dozen of them, milky white against the thick dark cluster of trees in the background. Apart from them, he had spotted only one other group that evening. He decided he would return with his camera after he’d relieved himself. The toilets had no roofs and no taps. One plastic mug, half broken, was placed inside each. Outside, a solitary cistern stood; its dark wet surface glistened in the moonlight. He picked up two mugs from adjacent toilets and fetched water, freezing, from the cistern, although, going by the smell inside the toilets, he was convinced that carrying the extra mug, which he intended to flush the toilet with, was a futile exercise. Squatting inside the toilet, he stared up, partly to savour the view he was afforded and party to escape the stench. He inhaled in short sharp bursts and exhaled deeply. The sheet of clouds above and the walls of the toilet below hid from view most of actual peaks. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He returned to his tent a quarter of an hour later, his buttocks and palms numb from being exposed to the water. He thought of the camera and then abandoned the idea. He slid back under the blankets and did not budge until the morning after.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Two years later, when he was reading of the Dharma Bums’ climb up the Matterhorn Peak, his mind threw up that image of the barely visible mountains from inside the toilet. It made him reminisce, fondly, of the bonfire of that night and the white water rafting of next morning and of Raakesh and Ashish and Lucknow. It was the three’s only trip together. And yet, for Kaushik, the defining image of it was of the mountains at three in the morning, and he suspected it would endure through his life, entwined as it was now, with The Dharma Bums. </p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235118.post-53227117481711035442010-09-12T10:15:00.000+05:302010-09-12T10:16:16.258+05:30Lunchmen<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">At one every afternoon, Kaushik picked his phone up and began calling his fellow lunchmen – about half a dozen of them - located variously around the office campus. Once this was done, he took the elevator down to ground level where the Food Court was and found himself an unoccupied table, where he and his friends would congregate for the day. Kaushik enjoyed lunchtimes, happy for the break and the conversation after the monotony of reading, for three straight hours, Roger Ebert reviews and essays from The Economist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Food Court was a huge open space with round black wooden tables spread around it. There were five counters, each run by a different caterer, that served the same food, except one which served sandwiches and pasta that smelled of unventilated cellars. Over time, Kaushik had picked his favourite amongst the other four and stuck to it ever since. By the time the food he ordered was ready, Ashish usually arrived. Ashish, since he lived with his parents, brought home-cooked food in a black oblong Tiffin box. The rest – some of them friends from IIM Lucknow, the others colleagues whom they minded least <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>– trickled in, in ones and twos; by half past one the congregation was complete.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The conversation usually revolved around neutral subjects. Cricket, the weather, politics, work. Most preferred cricket, since they followed it closely, with the exception of Ashish who, therefore, did his best to turn the conversation to politics. When they spoke of work, it was usually about one of the bosses; their favourite was a stocky old man with a permanently bemused expression, who addressed everyone, including in emails, as ‘Guys’. The expression wasn’t without reason; it was widely believed that he indeed had absolutely no clue what happened around him. Stories of him abound – of how, even as he signed proposals, he recommended that they not be taken forward, how he contended that their reporting systems should somehow capture and track competition data and how he, the bloody nincompoop, had a wife of the MILF variety. Sometimes, they spotted him approach their table and immediately made as if they were done and were about to leave.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Discussions on films and literature were usually avoided; Ashish and Kaushik were aware their fellow lunchmen weren’t terribly interested. They did utter the occasional wisecrack though, like when the only female amongst them, a pretty little girl with a shrill voice, had informed that she would be migrating to Ho Chi Minh City in a month’s time, for her husband had been transferred there, and Kaushik had said how she would love the smell of napalm in the mornings. Or when one of them had had his overtures turned down by a girl, a co-worker, and Ashish had declared he could smell bitter almonds. On these occasions, while the two of them laughed uncontrollably, the rest looked at them with expressions that resembled that favourite boss of theirs. They spent close to an hour at the table, continuing to occupy it long after their plates were empty and other groups began to circle around like eagles. Eventually, when someone mustered the courage to ask them if they were done, they shrugged and got up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Afterwards, while most of them returned to their desks, Ashish and Kaushik did not. Instead, they made their way to the Visitors’ waiting area, empty at that hour, and lounged there for another half an hour. They exchanged notes – interesting articles they’d come across during the course of the day on issues that they would like to further delve into. Invariably, the conversation degenerated, at some point, into a cribbing session on what the fuck they were doing in this place and how they would happily relieve themselves of an upper and lower limb each to get out of there. There were long periods of silences in these conversations, during which neither of them could think of anything worthwhile to talk about but found simply sitting there more worthwhile than going back to their desks. It would be past three by the time they would wearily make their way back, promising each other to read more on that interesting issue and discuss it when they met in the evening. Once in a while, Kaushik would have a meeting he’d have to attend and he’d go straight to it, unprepared but convinced he’d breeze through it without the least trouble.</p>Kushal Chowdhuryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08464633744067862078noreply@blogger.com0