Karachi

It was a balmy night like tonight, when I stepped out of the Karachi airport. I looked around for a clue for my rapid heart beats: visually it looked like Delhi and felt like Bombay on the skin. I had this insane urge to touch the ground but as a guest representing a major television network, such actions might give a kookie start to what would be active negotiations in the coming days.

My father’s family comes from this city. My childhood myths had colours and smells of this place so this chance journey was making me sentimental. The drive to my host’s house showed a pleasantly laid out city. It was just like any Indian city: I was talking in Hindi to my host, and if he was answering in Urdu, I could scarcely make out the difference. The house looked like a bungalow in Vasant Vihar, the family like any warm Indian one, the clothes, the thandai, the furniture, just like home.

Where to look for Pakistan?

We went out for dinner to a great tandoori open air restaurant where 500 people were being served great gosht preparations and there was a smell of spices just like Jama Masjid or Mohammed Ali Road. I kept looking for differences. The buses were very flamboyantly decorated, the cars were all imported, the roads smooth but other than that nothing to tell me why I had needed that visa to come here.

In the next few days I couldn’t shake away this feeling. I worked from 9 a.m. to midnight everyday with people who were exactly like the ones in Bombay. I walked the streets, went to bazaars, restaurants, houses and met strangers that felt just too familiar. Towards the end, I gave up looking for Pakistan. I just became this professional out on a mission.

And then a very small incident broke the illusion.

Every night when I would return to my room at the Defense Club, an old man would be on duty and he would insist on carrying my tapes and papers up a flight of stairs. I would typically fling off my shoes and go to wash up. He would pick up my shoes, dupatta and put them away. Then he would bring me hot water and salt: ‘Garaara kar lo, bibi’- I had this cough that I was barely conscious of but he would never fail in his ministrations. No protests for him not to touch my shoes since he was much older than me would meet with acquiescence, nor my request to sleep without ‘garaaras.’ One night when I fell off to sleep out of exhaustion, he knocked on the door for half an hour to make me gargle. I knew how long it was because the water had gone cold and he insisted on bringing more hot water.

When I was leaving, I decided to give him a set of marble coasters instead of money. He accepted it with great tehzeeb. As he looked at them, tears were running down his crinkled cheeks. I asked him why. And he looked through those cataract eyes and I will never forget the pain in them. He said ‘Yeh to hamara mulq hai, bibi. Sadiyaan ho geyi dekhe hue.’ (This is my land, it’s been ages since I saw it). The coasters had little inlay work of Red Fort, Taj Mahal and other monuments.

What is this half a century old border? Just a mythical line to make exiles out of us.

(this article is still up on zine5.com!!)

first musings

I want to sit in the centre of a pyramid and send out a lot of prayers and once they line the insides like wall paper, I want to sleep for a long long time.I did this little experiment recently. After 24 odd years of smoking, I took a month long sabbatical and then went back to it yesterday. First cigarette was awful, second bearable, third getting friendly and so on.... thing is, after the 14th one I have a mild headache and backache and my body is just not liking it like before. And so: its quits. Next : the writing thing. Two years back i had heard Amitav ghosh tlk about the inertia of writing. How that walk to the table is fraught with every conceivable distraction : from suddenly remembering a friend to speak to, to wanting to read, eat, shit, smoke.... just about anything that will keep you away from the task. Never have heard more true words. here i love writing, i have to publish quickly to save me from the ignominy of streetwalking. This trick monster mind is so unruly.Come to me my muses. Come, wander near and sail me through.


(the above are writings salvaged from a blog that i can no longer continue writing on. I suspect it has to do with google worldwide takeover and dumping the old bloggers in a ditch. sigh!

our myriad selves

Was that I?

I just read my last post and have this obscure sense of disbelief. Did I really think and feel that way that saturday. It also happened when I opened this unposted letter to a friend written 8 months back. It astonished me that I thought those thoughts then. Now I am quite convinced that we are not the same person all the time. A few hours back I was at Fountain, that me was so pissed off over some trivia and this me is so indifferent to that trivia. That me is a ghost memory and right now I am an engagingly new person, relatively speaking.From my level of evolution, this is certainly a new discovery. I think I have figured out a very essential phenomenon for Life. I think I understand why I escape from myself so much. Old me and new me are constantly at variance.Then I recall that Greek thought : You never step in the same river twice. Always thought that meant the river is different, now I think it is us who are different.Halt. Pause. Just read back what i had written. Happy to report that atleast in the last 10 minutes I can recognise myself as the same me that began this piece. Life is merciful in short spans of time.I like steadiness. I expect steadiness in others too. Maybe this is the fallacy that creates disharmony.Must investigate.

winter in paris

Le Gruyere
The human heart is a kaleidoscope. With almost every beat a new pattern emerges and a bit like the 24 frame effect of the movies, we feel a sense of continuity.

There were three of us that late Sunday morning in Le Marais, the hip and smoothly international district in downtown Paris. Maya and Sebastien are theatre actors, once were lovers, and I envied their unstated understanding of each other. As Sebastiens guest who spoke only English, I had to accept an unnatural passivity and stayed alert to cues for action. It was then my first week in Paris.Till Mayas arrival, I loved the moments : the walks to Notre Dame, the early winter baring of trees and the occasional burnt sienna maple leaf skipping a few feet ahead of me gathering its momentum from the drafts of hot air through heating vents. Sebastien would nestle my elbow into his to make me walk faster and I had to remind him that I was fascinated by the sights and sounds and didn't care to be rushed. He looked way thinner than our last meeting and at 34, his handsome face was sharper and crinkled into lines every time he laughed. Life is difficult for sensitive people and being French doesn't help. Nor does it to be an actor, however talented. So there was this unsaid pain hanging in the air but I liked my days with him. Simple merry days of shopping, cooking and walking.And then came Maya. She spoke no English, had a week of rehearsals and was extremely hyper the whole week and Sebastien was so understanding of her. I had to suddenly find my way around and the French disdain and arrogance hits you like a chill. They will not give you directions, not return a smile and make you feel like scum even when you are burning money at their stakes. It was so confusing those days and I wondered why I wanted to write my film set in this city.On Sunday morning, I was making plans to shorten my stay. Or go to London instead. Sebastien and Maya were doing the routine morning at the cafe and I, my yoga at the appartment. They returned laden with food and a lets do a big brunch sort of feeling in the air. Eggs were fried as was steak and crusty French bread to go with. Then he opened the fresh gruyere cheese and I was beaming at the sight of its soft whiteness. In the past I had always eaten this cheese in a semi hard form and light yellow look. This cheese was something else. As my face showed my delight Maya warmed up to me. She insisted on knowing about me and Sebastien did some rapid fire translations till I could almost sketch her boyfriend. Such a moment of intimacy and all because I loved their cheese. Maya's mother was an Indophile and had lived and taught in Pondicherry. By evening we wanted to do live the next few rebirths in the same city.The french are a bit like us indians : rude and arrogant most of the time but in both hearts is a old worldly love foreach other.

Just took fresh gruyere to discover it.

a street of la marais