Sniff, Sniff

Every once in a while it happens that I’m getting out of the gym, a sweaty smelly piece of goods that even your cat would hesitate to drag in, and there, lo and behold, would stand my boss. Or someone else, I’m trying to make a favorable impression on for that matter. And, as it happens in the civilized world, this someone would stop and make polite conversation about this and that but before moving on to more interesting things he or she would sniff. A single sniff, nose up the air, as if trying to assess the source of a gas leak. And that single sniff would spell the end of a productive morning or afternoon.

It happened today. Conscious of a certain pair of smelly gym socks I decided to mitigate it by eating my lunch in my cubicle in the hope that the pungent smell of indian masalas would compensate. Fat chance! When the boss man dropped by for a chat he sniffed and said "It is hot in here!”. I had to gag the impulse to say "If by that you mean that something is smelly around here, let me assure you that it is not me but a pair of malodorous socks."

But I stopped myself. Owning to smelly feet is as fatal to career progression as owning to smelly armpits.

On a lighter note....

THE TERMITE

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

-Ogden Nash

Eaten by guilt over yesterday's morbid poem, I'm compelled to quote something to compensate. Nash is the other American poet I love and surely you can see why.

I should really stop quoting poetry as an alternative to writing a real blog!

Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

- Ezra Pound

An admittedly dark poem to quote on ones birthday but here it is. If the rest of my life is as perfect as this poem I would not have lived in vain.

Pound is one of the few American poets i've read and I simply love his works. This particular poem struck a chord with me because it is so simple as to not need explanation and yet so flawless.

Read more about Ezra Pound here.

Gainfully unemployed

Had my first brush with the rough side of American capitalism today. Most of the engineering force where I work was ‘let go’ and I made the charts.

I was relieved.

To be free of toil for even a few days in this glorious weather is a blessing. A paid vacation with medical insurance? It’s a sign that the man upstairs has chosen me on this turn of the roulette.

Now, in how many ways can one be idle?

Lounge on the banks of the Charles with book, beer and blanket – Wednesday
Lounge in Boston Common with book, beer and blanket – Thursday

Lounge in Arnold Arboretum with aforementioned items - Friday
Heated yoga, hair salon – Saturday

…
……

………

…………and she lived happily ever after. Or at least till the credit card companies began sending love notes.

That’s my stance and I’m sticking to it!

Genki Cat

On a related note, I found this blog that looks at Japan through the eyes of a foreigner. Genki cat makes me long to be in crowded, vibrant Shibuya again, going around in circles to find a lone Indian buffet restaurant called 'O, Calcutta'.

The lunar pull of Japan

I’ve been attracted to all things Japanese ever since I was a little girl and my uncle came from a business trip to Tokyo bearing exotic gifts, a lot of it made of paper!

Japan, in my eyes, is modern and quaint, poetic and practical, the land of rock gardens and pachinko parlors, of Starbucks lattes and moss burgers. Completely beautiful in its contrasting characteristics.

‘The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto’ by Pico Iyer is an excellent travelogue that manages to catch the pulse of this enchanting country. It manages to be lyrical, exploratory and profound at the same time. Which is a tough act for a travel book.

Da Vinci Mania

[Onion - litter in crash site]

Apparently tourism to France is 'sky high' after the release of the much-hyped movie.

Methinks this badly written book and its only-slightly-better movie version has traveled a long way indeed. Just goes to prove that life is not a meritocracy.

Anyway, with all the brouhaha in the press and the Indian catholics asking for a ban on the movie, I was glad to get some comic relief from Dave Barry. I can't find the article on the Miami Herald anymore and am therefore linking to another blog.

Vikram Seth on being Bi

Some men like Jack and some like Jill
I'm glad I like them both but still
I wonder if this freewheeling
Really is an enlightened thing,
Or is its greater scope a sign
Of deviance from some party line?
In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight
What is my status: Stray? Or Great?


Seth was the Aamir Khan of my teens. Years have passed, much has changed in the world and yet, and yet, when I met him at the reading of his latest book (Two Lives) a few months ago, I became once again the schoolgirl who skipped school to finish reading his tome. A few weeks ago I discovered his bisexual leanings that, in hindsight, was always conspicuous in his books and poems.

How deceitful are teenage hormonal surges!

As the poets have mournfully sung

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are very well hung.

-- W. H. Auden

It takes an Auden to be tongue-in-cheek about death!

A Shinagawa Monkey

Loved the story 'A Shinagawa Monkey' written by Haruki Murakami and published in 'The New Yorker'. Read 'A Shinagawa Monkey' here.

Pursuing Happiness

New Yorker and fine writing are synonymous; anyone could have told you that.

Every week I discover at least one article that I think is profound, intriguing or just beautifully written. February’s issue had an article about the pursuit of happiness that made interesting read.

There was a time when I had fancied myself as being unhappy and went around spouting such nonsense as “Sorrow is more profound than happiness”. Now that I'm older and wiser by a fraction, I am gobble smacked that I am not skipping merrily about. My “set point” is perhaps not given to happiness. To find out what I’m talking about read the article. I promise you’ll thank me for it!

Feminist rant

I read an article in Boston Globe recently that irritated me quite a bit. The article claimed that if a price was to be paid to moms in the United States the number would be $134121. Now, here's the rub: half a dozen people mentioned this article to me and most of them were men.

Despite fear of sounding like a feminist I have to ask -

What about fathers? Don't fathers count?

My issue is not that such a study was made and reported. I am only nervous about the idealization of motherhood and of any mention of ‘penmai’ and ‘thaimai’ as a virtue. I see this whole deifying of motherhood as a function of the society we live in. Indian society, especially, comes down pretty heavily on mothers by weighing in on their feelings of guilt. Some other cultures may be a tad lenient but the difference is marginal. The bottom line is always that, an woman is expected in any society to put nurturing right up there in her list of priorities. Contrary to popular belief psychologists will tell you that the mothering instinct, like any other skill, does not come naturally to all women.

Nancy Friday speaks about this syndrome in the book "My mother, myself". Friday talks about how women are, from birth, taught to believe that their success and failure is hinged on whether they are good mothers to their children or not. This, according to Friday, is psychologically the most limiting factor to women's growth. Because they cannot think of themselves in any larger context apart from that of a mother they never let their children grow emotionally, preferring instead to keep them tied to themselves.

By idealizing/idolizing motherhood we also deny them the right to make mistakes and learn from them. We set them up in a pedestal from where the only place they can go is down.

Girl Power (Illustrations by Manian)

Kundavai 'The Brain' Piratti

Poonkuzhali - not your average boatwoman

I can't seem to find pictures of Nandini the seductress,who could make the legs of strong men turn to Jell-O!

Ponniyin Selvan & my mother

My mother is not very excitable but she usually lights up like a deepavali lamp at the mention of ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. I’m reading the last book of the series and when I mention this on my weekend call home, I can here the excitement in her voice. She does not agree with me that Arulmozhivarman is a pious goody-two-shoes and that Vandhiyadevan’s character is the least well delineated of the lot. But, like me, she is drawn to the female characters – especially Nandini (‘Enna strong character ava!’) and Poonkuzhali(‘Woman with loads of attitude illaya ma Poonkuzhali?’).

Now mom can no longer complain that I have poor literary taste - Ponniyin Selvan has bridged the divide between my literary gene and its blueprint!

Wondering Minstrels

If poetry makes you sigh and moan, then you probably already know about the website Wondering Minstrels. I’ve been receiving poems from this poetry-a-day-with-some-analysis-thrown-in website for several years now and can’t recommend it highly enough. Every once in a while turns up a gem that is truly delightful but their everyday fare is pretty palatable too. They are rather snooty about not sending amateur poetry, which is the way I like it (bad prose is condonable but bad poetry rankles and grates on the nerves).

Some years ago, I’d heard that the duo who run the show -Thomas Abraham and Martin DeMello- were planning on holding poetry readings in bookstores across Bombay. Wonder what became of that idea.

Warning: I would recommend you subscribe to their mailing list or at least wear sunglasses if you’re browsing their site. The blue can be blinding!

Kaavya Vishwanath and Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen

A friend called from Chennai and in the course of our conversation (that spanned Lok Parithran, the need for an association for in-house lawyers and random regurgitation of a shared childhood) she spoke about how Kaavya Vishwanath, the Harvard-grad-cum-author who has been accused of plagiarism, is splashed all over the national dailies.

“Damn, now Harvard is going to be doubly cautious about admitting Indian women.” She complained.

The conversation set me thinking. Why would an obviously intelligent woman resort to the morally bankrupt act of plagiarism? Several years ago, I read and immensely enjoyed a book called ‘Crane’s morning’ by an unknown (at least to me) writer called Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen. Later, I discovered to my disappointment, that the book was almost entirely plagiarized from a British novel published in the 50s. Read details here.

Now, these two women have nothing in common save for an error in judgment that extracted a heavy price from them. Vishwanath paid with public humiliation and Aikath-Gyaltsen with her very life.

Whatever their respective motives, I’m tempted to simplistically wager that insecurity was an enormous component contributing to their downfall.Which makes me wonder. Why does intellect sometimes divorces a strong sense of self?

Breathtaking Issa Kobayashi

What good luck!
Bitten by
This year's mosquitoes too.

medetasa wa kotoshi no ka ni mo kuware keri

-Issa(1816)

Springtime is also mosquito time.

On Spring and the love of Haiku

at my gate
the artless pigeon too
sings "It's spring!"

waga kado ya gei nashi hato mo haru wo naku

how far across
this deep snow
for a decent spring

ôyuki no do[ko] ga doko made rokuna haru

- Issa Kobayashi

Spring visits Boston again. Magnolias flirt with the nose; sparrows chatter from their hidden posts; winter tweeds are packed away even as bared legs peer with renewed bravado from under flowered skirts. The cafes are always crowded. Duck boats begin their lazy rounds of the water in Boston Common. The Boston marathon is hosted, cheered and taken inspiration from. Much beer is guzzled.

My first ever brush with spring was in Japan. Glimpses of cherry blossoms stolen from speeding shinkansen trains. A blur of pink against a cameo of stark steel buildings.

One either has to be a martian or woefully pollen allergic to not feel uplifted by this season.

Like spring, haiku takes my breath away. There are many websites devoted to haiku (17 syllable despot) rules but who says one has to be an expert chef to relish a signature dish! Suffice it to say that haiku is poetry's Kodak Moment. A crystallized image, dazzling and zen-like in clarity, held up for admiration.

Read more about Issa here.