Hello...hellow

I finally say hello to Hello. Stray wisps had come flying suggesting that I try and follow the trail where music gets drowned in the deluge of drama.

I like drama.

Hello leaves me unmoved. Can you hear me? Yes, I say it leaves me unmoved, and words of loss usually move me immensely. In fact, words move me as much as silences do when both seek to communicate.

So here I am, with Adele on my stomach. My breathing synchronised with her whispers and whimpers. I am lying down in bed. A Sunday afternoon in December feeling the late winter upon me.

I like the sound of hello, any hello. It is the beginning, even of the end.

Why does this Hello not work, then? Why is this Hello like the stretching of elastic, and not the thread that links? Why does it seem that the mundane is overwrought with the weight of ennui — to say that I've tried, I've tried, I've tried...

Running out of time? Hello! We do not know how much time is there to be able to measure its running out.

What does "hello from the outside" mean when it is the heart that breaks or is broken? There is no outside then. Not even when we break our own heart. It happens. Can you hear me? No? That's the outside. When you can't hear the sound of another's self-destruction.

"Did you ever make it out of that town where nothing ever happened..."

Is she hoping he has or delighting that he hasn't? Is it that nothing ever happened or something never did? Does another's stillness bother us when we are escaping from the noise or when we remember noises fondly?

Hello...could have been a deep sigh. Instead, it is a phone connection with too much static. Or, is she speaking from a phone that's dead, crying to herself about herself?

Is the hello just a question mark hanging in the air?

The lion and the vultures

How different are the two pictures really? In one the man poses with his kill; in the other the industry caters to consumerist bloodthirst that feasts on the same kill.

I'll be honest. I found the moral high ground on the Cecil the lion story hyperbolic, and in many ways a pretence. And it had nothing to do with it overturning the fairytale where the ogre is the beast. There was just too much of reductionism going on — of race, of bestiality, of the hunter as sinner.

The American man who killed a lion in Zimbabwe became a villain everywhere; to boot, a white with a whiter smile. One news report even spoke about how it was discovered that the killer of Cecil "turned out to be" an American dentist. How was this a discovery or of any consequence?

Hollywood's avande garde voice and general conscience-keeper was so riled that she even posted the address of Dr. Walter Palmer's clinic. It became just another, what we Indians call, jungle raj.

It is important to question such trophy killing. We need to forget one ism to favour another in some cases, so not all animals are equal and indeed we would need to understand that animals in the wild play a different role. However, if we are going to talk about sensitivity, then why is it that we don't ever evince any such sensitivity when we see stray dogs rounded up in municipal trucks?

Now, there are Cecil memorabilia. It is not an environmental consciousness initiative but a commercial enterprise. Is Cecil the first one one to be ever killed? How did the "local favourite" become the pop favourite globally? Can people really tell one lion apart from another?

Instead of buying mugs and other paraphernalia with a lion face, perhaps we should all just stop visiting zoos, which is where the animals are slowly reduced in stature and where we learn how to recognise that what's behind a cage should be naturally game outside of it. 

Sunday ka Funda

I don't like this tree, a hybrid tree that bears forty different kinds of fruit and flowers in varied colours.

This "sculpture by grafting", the brainchild of art professor Sam Van Aken of Syracuse University, might be a great scientific experiment and good as curiosity or art installation that it initially was, but a workable green option?

There is something about orchards with trees bearing one sort of fruit; it feels like communion, familiarity, and also to an extent hierarchy when one picks the good ones. The birds too know where to come for what they seek.

A huge tree with different varieties appears to compress nature. It is also demeaning in a way for spoiled for choice, one may either make the wrong move or the one not intended, or just walk away awestruck.

Trees are designed to be resilient, not to multitask. And some of us like our trees and people to just do one thing at a time.

As the Zen teacher told his pupil, “When drinking tea, just drink tea.”

Sunday ka Funda

This Eid, in India, belonged to two films that essentially celebrate Hindu mythology.

At a late night show of 'Baahubali' on the day that celebrates the conclusion of Ramzan, we watched a celebration of Lord Shiva. In the audience were quite a few Muslims in identifiable clothes — caps, hijabs, even burqa.

Despite its obvious mythology it does not alienate those who might not follow its precepts. In that sense, it is a truly secular movie, and I say this despite my aversion for standardised norms of secularism, or of the fads surrounding it as well as the slurs it invites by way of spelling. No, it is not sickular! (A review will follow later.)

***

I have not yet watched 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan', but from what I've read and heard it is also simplistic and guileless. Here, a Hanuman bhakt takes it upon himself to unite a little girl who is Muslim and Pakistani with her family.

This qawwali here is something I've heard from better artistes, but just that moment when the protagonist breaks down as the music soars conveys that faith — religious or otherwise — is essentially about flowing.

Eid Mubarak!

Sunday ka Funda

Time flies, we say, as another dawn, another dusk arrive and leave. There is birth. And rebirth. Yes, rebirth. The soil is fertile. It creates.

Then, there are needs, wishes, desires. Each one takes away something from us even before it has given us anything. Indeed:

"Hazaaaron khwaahishein aisi ke har khwaahish pe dum nikle..."

Sunday ka Funda

"I've laid in a ghetto flat
Cold and numb
I heard the rats tell the bedbugs
To give the roaches some
Everybody wanna know
Why I'm singing the blues
Yes, I've been around a long time
People, I've paid my dues"

(From: "Why I Sing The Blues")

There is always a reason why we do things, and sometimes the reasons become the things we shall always do.

I cannot claim to know much about the Blues, but the genre is rooted in pain, a pain that reaches out. The sweat and tears gush forth in the voice.

This cannot claim to be a tribute to B.B.King, for I know little about him on my own. He had said that playing the blues was "like having to be black twice", and instantly one understands. One understands how art will be judged by who the artiste is when he says that the blues was like a "problem child" only because you are concerned about how it will be perceived by the world. In that itself is an indictment of such perceptions that see the colour of the singer, and not the shades of the song.

However, a true artiste would mesh with his art. For B.B.King, “The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.”

Sunday ka Funda

"Most days it feels as if the world is whirling around me and I am standing still. In slow motion, I watch the colors blur; people and faces all become a massive wash."
- Sarah Kay

When I posted the sidebar image, I also found another one by Henri Matisse called Still Life with Dance. I was immediately struck, not so much by the painting as by the title. Dance is movement and fluidity; still life is, well, still. How and why did they come together.

I have been looking at it frequently, and the more I look the more I find the dance to be still and the still objects to appear moving. The flowers  seem to almost quiver, and the fruits glisten with new dew.

Naturally, then, I'd say the same about all that happens in life too. The moving and the static can interchange at any time.

Sunday ka Funda

A nun who was searching for enlightenment made a statue of Buddha and covered it with gold leaf. Wherever she went she carried this golden Buddha with her.

Years passed and, still carrying her Buddha, the nun came to live in a small temple in a country where there were many Buddhas, each one with its own particular shrine.

The nun wished to burn incense before her golden Buddha. Not liking the idea of the perfume straying to others, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend only to her statue. This blackened the nose of the golden Buddha, making it especially ugly.

(A Zen story)

I don't know what category to put this story into. Is it about greed, or selfishness, or possessiveness? Perhaps it could be envy. How can it be envy, you might ask. After all, the nun had the incense and wanted to deny it to others. If anything, others should envy her. That is the point. Very likely she envied the emptiness she assumed and found arrogant solace in what she had but did not really need.

In the more material world you will find many such instances where those who apparently have everything will assume others want what they have, and then they proceed to deny others what they have no use for but which helps while away their time by fattening their sense of superficial self-worth.

Sunday ka Funda

I've been reading about how tomorrow, Januray 19, is going to be the pits. It has been marked as the "blue Monday" of 2015, although nobody will enlighten us as to who decides on our happiness and unhappiness in such a fashion and how this will be the only blue Monday to qualify as the one for the year.

There are experts too on the subject who say the weather, debts, Christmas hangover and low motivational levels will make us all morose. And, yes, they also add failed New Year resolutions, and it is only 19 days since some of us might have made them. Why the hurry to damn us?

Indian papers and news magazines have picked up this 'news', even though our weather does not swing all that much and Christmas, although celebrated with much joy, is not the same as it is in many western countries.

If these are the yardsticks for unhappiness, would the opposite hold true for happiness? Are we all alike in the way in which we respond to the weather, for example? Grey clouds are elevating for me, and for a gambler a few debts are part of the game. Anyway, how much can happen to one individual in a day? Will we all go back to smoking and ditching healthy eating habits together?

In that case, such social congruity ought to be reason to celebrate and be happy.

For those of us with less ambition, there is Berke Breathed who said, "It’s never too late to have a happy childhood."

Sunday ka Funda

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth.— Joseph Conrad

Who defines truth is now in the realm of debate once again. And cartoons and caricatures are being heralded as the new truth.

How truthful is racism and sexism if it is only seen as a sharp comment without any supporting analysis or explanation?

If the pen is in opposition to the sword, why does it not take on more than one kind of sword?

Should we exercise freedom of expression without fear or favour? Or be selective? Here is a selection — some are Charlie Hebdo covers; a couple are responses to the recent terror attack:

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.—George Santayana

Sunday ka Funda

You go out for a meal and take a picture and post it. What are you really telling the world? You drive and capture the streets, the clouds, sunsets. Are any of these new to those who see them? You meet friends and one of the most important takeaways from this "wonderful evening" is to pose for a selfie, after taking picture of tea and snacks and of the interesting tree in the compound.

I can't say all of this is a recent phenomenon. I have done much of this, although I believe that taking a photograph of a meal you share with somebody is an intrusion into their space as much as yours. The same is true of wanting to capture any and every meeting.

This is not a judgment, for I am aware that I'd be guilty at some point in time of all of these. It points out to the utter isolation, so much so that even real interactions seem legitimate only when they are virtualised.

Like this very normal view of the balcony and from it. It is a wry comment on what we have become, the bareness of the room only highlighting disengagement with reality:

Sunday ka Funda

Much as I detest crass ambitiousness – whether it be in the professional sphere, or the one-upmanship of social interactions, not to speak about the more damaging one of close personal relationships – I find some kinds of politically correct and syrupy assertions to the contrary examples of stepping on toes. They convey that by not doing so, someone will benefit from the munificence. It gives them a higher place to function from.

When this becomes cultural, it results in supremacist ideology. A slightly different view is expressed thus:

“Politeness is organized indifference.”

― Paul Valéry

The idea behind much indifference is also supremacist – it can afford to ignore others by faking concern or shielding real intent. 

Sunday ka Funda

Sometimes, soundtracks make you cry. Sometimes, simple words do. Sometimes, your thoughts find mirror images. From one of my favourite movies.

Yu Shu Lien: The Green Destiny Sword. You're giving it to Sir Te.
Li Mu Bai: I am. He has always been our greatest protector.
Yu Shu Lien: I don't understand. How can you part with it? It's been with you a long time.
Li Mu Bai: Too many men have died at its edge. It may look pure..., but only because blood washes so easily from its blade.

Sunday ka Funda

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.
— Hunter S. Thompson

Sunday ka Funda

"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth."
— Henry David Thoreau

Why pick on how humans have failed the environment during times of natural disaster when we in our pampered lives slowly destroy Nature every day?

And then we do not even look back to clean up the mess.

Sunday ka Funda

Symbols are not ritualistic. They often have deeper connotations. Ganesh Chaturthi is being celebrated now, but not many would ponder over what the elephant god means. One need not even be a believer to comprehend these symbols that seem more like a manual for ethical living. Rituals and deification, and marketing, alter the very nature of spiritualism and faith.

Spiritualism does not need the crutch of blind belief.

Somebody has filed a FIR against film director Ram Gopal Verma for these tweets:

• “The guy who couldn't save his own head from being cut , how he will save others heads is my question? But Happy Ganpathi day to morons!” • “Can someone explain how someone can cut off a child's head who was just trying to protect his mother's modesty? Am sure devotees know better”.
• “Can someone tell me if today is the day Ganesha was originally born or is it the day his dad cut his head off?”
• “Does Lord Ganesha eat with his hands or his trunk?”
• “I would really love to know from Lord Ganesha's devotees a list of what obstacles he removed in all the years they prayed to him.”
• “Happy Ganesh chaturdhi. .may this day 29th aug bring prosperity and happiness to everybody so that there will be no problems from 30th aug.”
• “I think my films are flopping only becos of my attitude towards Gods. ..I wish I can become a devotee.”

Although some might seem insulting, the general tone is childlike. Children often pose valid, if uncomfortable, queries. All religious fables have one given meaning, and the rest are open to interpretation.

For that, one needs to have an open mind that can read between the lines.

Sunday ka Funda

What could the camel be thinking — that he is protected or that he is a threat? And do camels come in the way of camels?

Sunday ka Funda

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."

This quote is attributed to Jim Morrison, but Aldous Huxley had also said the same, adding "of perception" to doors.

My interest is in the unknown. There are many fears and misgivings that so prevent us from exploring outside our comfort zone that we miss out on what could become a part of us. Sometimes, for me, just posting on my 'Sunday ka Funda' helps me step out of the closed doors, of the world of familiarity, and just soak in the alien. It often does not feel as strange as what I've known does.

This song has been with me for a while now. I do not understand the words. They have ceased to be Arabic; the singers are not Egyptian anymore. It is now only about sounds that produce an ache and a smile, and I don't even know if that is what they are meant to do.

Sunday ka Funda

"Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down."

— Mahmoud Darwish

Sunday ka Funda

“What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

― Pablo Picasso

There is destruction everywhere. And I thought about Guernica. As those who visit here often know, I am opposed to posting violence porn, especially if the images have children. I explained my stance earlier.

Guernica is not just art; it is deliberate defacement. That becomes its message along with the motive and the inspiration. The realism lies in the unreal.

How would it be if that painting came alive not as faces behind the 'masks', but as masks? Here is one interpretation. In the robotic sinew one can feel the cracking of bones.