The mad hatter

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction

2011-01-26T14:51:00.018-05:00

V came back from India armed with what she called a "surprise" gift. Being both bored and curious at the same time I trudged to Brookline, toddler in tow, to check out the surprise. It turned out to be the best gift I’ve received in a long time - "The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction". She brought back a copy of volume 1 when she came back from India last year but I was only allowed to read it under her supervision (thanks to R's vathi vekkal that I let books borrowed from her languish in the bathroom) and for 15 minutes at a time ("Did you come all this way only to read a book?"), which for a thriller like this is extremely frustrating. This time around, in an effort to save our friendship, she brought back a copy for me.

I've been reading this anthology of novellas one story at a time, making sure I earn the story before I read it i.e. I only allow myself to read a story if I've been very good that day (by my definition of course) or if I have something to celebrate. In a time when everything is plentiful but nothing has value -as my SIL likes to put it- this sort of discretionary consumption took me back to a different time when chitrahaars had to be paid for with homework and Sunday movies were literally fruits of scholastic penances. I haven’t had to practice delayed gratification in a long, long time.

It's sort of lame to enjoy a book written in your mother tongue in translation of course, but hey, the alternative would be to squint at words that don't jump out immediately and lose the story in the process. The first story I read was written by Indra Soundarajan -the author of Chidambara Ragasiyam, Vidadhu Karupu etc.-and was about a raja samskaram, set in modern times in Kottayapuram, in which the kings mysteriously die by age 30 as a result of an ancient curse. I was charmed by the hot blooded, engineering college educated ilaya raja and his moped-driving girlfriend who ends up solving the mystery and saving her future thaali. The story is a page turner and had me waking up at 4 AM to figure out what the hell was going on in that accursed kingdom. The book is dotted with such dialogs as "She looked like an amman selai" and "I want her to live with flowers and pottu". What fun!

Total timepass and value for money which is what this whole genre, sold predominantly in bus stations and kodi kadais, engenders anyway.

2010-09-17T14:13:00.008-04:00

Very superstitious, writing's on the wall.

Very superstitious, ladder's 'bout to fall.

Thirteen-month-old baby broke the looking glass.

Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past.

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.

Superstition ain't the way.

Hey, hey, hey.

-Steview Wonder

There I was, all of 30-something years old, driving to work on a regular work day, when out of the blue a bird came and perched on the hood of my car. I was alarmed. The thing was completely black and looked remarkably like a crow. Do they have crows in New England? A quick google search told me that indeed they do. Me, with sixteen years of superstition blasting convent education behind me, ignored the honks from other irate drivers and craned my neck for a second crow. I was darned relieved to find one - "One for sorrow, two for joy". How do you explain this? My parents may as well have burnt their money in a bonfire for all the enlightenment my education accorded me!

Has anyone done a study on why it is that we lean towards the unbelievable and unproven, suspending our reasoning in the process? There are stories of scientists (Neils Bohr, for instance) who were superstitious, so it has nothing to do with IQ. It has to do with man's fear of the unknown. Or his fear of death. How else can you explain it?

Minority status

2010-01-10T07:50:00.010-05:00

"Looking Out"

It must be odd

to be a minority

he was saying. I

looked around

and didn't see any.

So I said

Yeah

it must be.

- Mitsuye Yamada

I was doing my weekend should-I-work-shouldn't-I dilly-dallying and part of this ritual is reading that last piece of poetry before paying respects to Outlook 2007. Today, this act led me to an interesting poem by Mitsuye Yamada that took me back a few years in time. It was 2003 and I was travelling on a train between Sweden and Denmark. Across me sat a Malaysian girl who looked well put-together and like someone who had spent a considerable amount of time in Scandinavia. We got friendly during the ride and I found out that she was adopted, as an infant, by her Swedish parents. The landscape that passed us, as we chatted, was breathtaking and the girl pointed out to some sites occasionally and named them. "They must really feel lucky living here." I exulted after witnessing the most glorious sunset of my life. Something flashed in her eyes and she replied, a fraction too soon - "Yes, we do."

A similar statement is made here, by this poem. Yamada shakes her head at people who cannot look beyond her minority status. I cannot say I feel like I do not belong in the United States and this may be a function of where I live (liberal Massachusetts) or because I am not so assimilated into the mainstream as to notice the subtleties. Perhaps it is a bit of both. S may feel differently as he grows up in this country and goes to school here. He may consider himself an American first and may have his conception questioned, ever so often, like Yamada's was. If he does feel challenged thus, I'm glad I can point him to the considerable body of literature that exists on the topic of being neither here nor there.

I like espresso shots of poetry, I do.

Find more on Mitsuye Yamada here.

Maargazhi thingal

2009-11-14T15:40:00.011-05:00

Lessons were being learnt even as I lay cursing, pillow held firmly over my head, trying to blot out the vadhiyar's loud voice chanting - "MAARGAZHI THINGAL MADHINIRAINDHA NANNALLLAAAMM...". I knew he would come the next day as well...and the next....and the next. For the whole month of marghazhi the vadhiyar would come, in his moped, at the crack of dawn, to wake sleeping children up with his loud bell and staccato voice. The smell of ven pongal would permeate the house. Amma, bathed and dressed for the recital, would prod me awake with the long stick that was used to pull clothes down from the line, in order to get me to participate. This scene was repeated thousands of times over the twenty five margazhi months I spent in my parent's house. My distaste for pongal began, I am sure, from being fed the damn thing for breakfast for a whole month every year.

When I moved to America I lost the concept of the tamizh months and the festivals that came with them. Sometimes my parents or in-laws would send out a reminder email and we would make a half-hearted attempt to follow protocol. And then, the year that I was pregnant, my mother convinced me that my unborn son's spiritual life hinged on how much I exposed him, abhimanyu-style, to the secrets of vaishnavism when he was still in the womb. It worked. That whole month I tried to recite, if not all thirty, at least the song of the day. I found, to my surprise, that I knew most of them by heart.

This past month - thanks to nanowrimo - I've done a lot of reading about the temples in Mylapore, since that is the backdrop of my story. Again, I found that I knew about a lot of the rituals and that I, in fact, have fond memories of some of them. The mesmeric drumbeat to which Kabaleeshwarar is carried on the bull (adigara nandi), the pradoshams, Sreenivasa perumal taken on utsavam through the steets etc., When did I pick these things up? Since temple talk was constantly in the background when we were growing up I suppose I must have unwittingly soaked it up.

How much of what I was exposed to as a child did I want to subject S to? I can't conjure up a moped-driving vadhiyar but I suppose I could play some thiruppavai tapes in December. Would he get it? Is having a cultural context important? Is it possible to incubate a whole cultural experience in isolation?

I struggle with these questions.

I've decided, however, that this year I will take S to the early morning thiruppavai recitals at the local temple as often as possible. Don't tell my mother!

And miles to go before I'm done...

2009-11-05T05:43:00.005-05:00

8000 words down; 42, 000 more to go. The characters are speaking to me already, whispering their secrets so only I can hear. They want to use me as a medium to tell their story and who am I to protest?

Stephen King's advice is that you write about what you know and you say it as it is - no window dressing. I realize everyday, as I write, that there is an awful lot I do not know. There are holes in the plot because of facts I do not know and reseach I do not have the time to do. And this despite the fact that my novel is set in the Mylapore of the 80's - the place and time that is in my blood. For instance, 'Murder in Mada Street' is centered around, well, Mada street, but looking at the map of Mylapore on google maps I realize that there is no Mada street. There is a N.Mada street and a S.Mada street but no Mada street. Really?

Going by King's dictum I've also given up the hope that I can ever write something that is not macabre. I have to be myself - no window dressing.

The working mother experience - part 2

2009-10-26T01:45:00.010-04:00

I received an email from a friend complaining that the previous post was all about the trials and nothing about the triumphs. I have been remiss, I admit. The fact that the triumphs outweigh the trials, I thought, was self-evident. She says no, not if you’re not on the conveyor belt yourself. So, here goes. Here below is my exposition on why I choose to work instead of staying home with my son.

As with all things, it began many years ago, with my mother. My mother, rabidly religious and old-fashioned, was also a working woman. She belonged to the working women legion of the previous generation that did a 150% job at home (cooking, cleaning, in-laws, kids et al) while still holding down a fairly serious, well-paying job. I know very little about the nature of work she did, just that every weekday morning, for thirty five years, she demonstrated responsibility by stepping out of the house to face the world. I was never told how much money she made but I knew it wasn’t a pittance.

I’ve been to her office a few times as a little girl and vividly remember the room she worked in. The room was large with big windows and a tall ceiling from which fans hung and hummed all day long. A broad, glass-topped desk stood under one such fan, mounted by several thick ledgers. I usually took with me a book to read while she worked but most days I would just daydream that I was the person on the other side of the desk, peering into that important looking ledger. I remember being kicked that the person I called mom was someone the Reserve Bank of India considered important enough to employ, retain and promote periodically. I knew even back then that I wanted a career.

All through her working life Mom came back home with stories about class fours (clerks) who didn’t work, typists who sleep in the cloak room, her boss, who’s son or daughter was getting married and when and so on. I listened, not fully understanding, but when I went to work myself I was able to better relate to some of her stories. After work I would stop by the kitchen and relate the day’s happenings, receive advice and compare notes (our careers overlapped by a few years). The fact that I could discuss the nitty-gritty details of my job with my mother was something I was very grateful for.

One fringe benefit of mom’s job was that when mom made friends with women from different geographies she picked up their cuisines. Rajma/Chawal was introduced to our household thanks to Panjwani aunty and Karakuzhambu thanks to Ganga aunty. By the time I was in my teens her repertoire of dishes had grown to include such items as chop suey, jams, pizza, biscuits and nan breads, to name just a few. Living, as I do, in the west, I cook way less adventurously than my mother did all those years ago in remote Mylapore.

The biggest influence my mother’s job had on us was, of course, financial. She got me my first computer and my first moped. She further financed the fueling of the moped with some arcane allowance the bank accorded. My college education was funded by a scholarship from the bank. Owing to the fact that she worked in a bank she knew the basics of investing and did not have to depend on the man of the house to secure our future. As a child I used to listen to my parents discuss investments and I grew up with the knowledge that it is not necessarily something that is relegated to the men of the house. When I got my first job she appointed herself my financial planner and opened LIC accounts, fixed deposits and purchased jewelry with my savings. To this day mom manages my bank accounts in India, sending me scanned forms and balance details even without my asking her.

Mom was an ace at taking exams. To prepare for one particular exam held by the bank, I remember that she checked into a hotel room for a few days, which was an unusual thing for a woman of her generation to do. Sure enough she topped that exam but perversely declined the promotion that came with it, since it required that she relocate to a different state. Right there she was demonstrating the fine art of balancing priorities.

Being a working woman made my mother an independent entity in our eyes, not just someone who made our meals and took care of us. She never once lectured us to be independent. She did not have to. She was leading by example.

I work because my mother worked and that enriched my life. I can expect to do no less for my child.

The working mother experience

2009-10-20T09:53:00.004-04:00

The one opportunity I had of getting published, I blew. The office was compiling a list of stories about the trials and triumphs of working mothers on their rolls and an email was sent out soliciting inputs. I was thrilled to bits. So much so that I had the email safely tucked away in my 'Follow up' folder and promptly forgot about it. The book, when it came out, was glossy and attractive with dozens of stories that pulled at my post partum, hormone surged, and sentimental heart. There were stories from people at all levels, stories of the every day kind, stories about what a struggle it is to raise a child in this shifting world of changing priorities. At the time that I browsed through the book S was seven months old and I was a tired, groggy-eyed, barely-alive human being who was just a millisecond away from a meltdown at any point of time. I was touched by several stories in the book, especially one by a manager who spoke about attending a customer call on mute while rocking her sick baby in her office chair and changing his diaper at the same time. (been there, done that). That one moved me to tears. So here is the story I would have written had I remembered to contribute:

November 17, 2008: My first day alone with my son, Sanjay. No more parents or in-laws for cushion; it’s just the three of us. I'm terrified of screwing up. I'm terrified of not being able to cope with work, chores, a manic pumping schedule and the sometimes monotonous task of caring for an infant. I have no experience to count on, only overly confusing and contradictory advice from the internet.

November 18, 2008: Two days in my administration and S is having a triple assault of fever, ear infection and a stomach bug. I am terrified that my child will die in my care. When I tell my doctor this on the telephone she does not rise to the bait. She will simply not have him brought in till he is hot enough to iron clothes with. In the middle of this blue funk I catch myself thinking about the afternoon meeting that I will have to skip. Can I catch-up on what happened tomorrow? And then comes a stab of guilt. What kind of mother thinks about work at a time like this anyway?

November 19, 2008: S is feeling better. The woman at the daycare urges me to bring him in. She assures me that playing will make him forget his discomfort. I dress S warmly - over dress him - and that makes him unhappy. He whines all the way to his daycare and then some.

November 20, 2008: I'm late. My first meeting for the day begins at 9.00 AM. It's 8.15 AM now and I can smell the diaper that is inside several layers of winter clothing. It would take five minutes to remove all those layers, two minutes to clean him up and five more to put them back on. I would never make it in time for the meeting. Should I just drop him off in his morning mess? Is it very discourteous to do so? Or should I dial in to the meeting like yesterday? I'm so sleepy and tired. I don't want to be faced with any decision at the moment.

November 21, 2008: I read the book 'The working mother experience' and realize that I’m neither a mercenary nor a freak. I am just one of several thousand working women trying to do the best she can when both time and energy are shrinking.

Flirting with writing

2009-10-05T08:30:00.010-04:00

All over the web people point to nanowrimo as a way to kick start that novel you always wanted to write but never quite got around to. Its quite simple. In the month of November one does his darndest to write 50,000 words towards that elusive novel with little or no emphasis on quality, grammar, or even plot. It’s a simple number game or a literary enema, if you will. Once the darn thing is out -and I'm not belaboring the enema bit here- one can take as long as he wants to rework, restructure and basically beat it into shape. At the end of the month you submit your post to the website and get a pat on the back from them and from then on you're on your own. The website apparently only does a word count so you could upload your mortgage document or a legal brief and be called a novelist but why would you want to? There is an editing equivalent of nanowrimo but I’ve spent very little time on it primarily because I feel that if I’m going to write in a tearing hurry, I'd be better off editing consciously. However, since my focus is completely given to nanowrimo prep at the moment, I reserve the right to go back on my opinion on namoedmo. The website has a list of authors who went through this "novel" processing line and ended up with a published book but - this won't surprise you - none of them have gone on to win the Pulitzer yet.

When I read this I went through a cyclical round of embarassment, shame and excitement. I felt like a loser even considering the possibility of enrolling but the chance of shooting Mr that-is-such-a-stupid-idea-i-can't-believe-I-wrote-that in the head was enticing. If you'd even participated in a high school creative writing contest you'd know what I mean. The whole challenge in writing is that this busybody of an inner critic sits with you and takes over the whole process till it reaches a point where you crumple the paper, toss it in the bin, and drown yourself in back-to-back 'Sex and the City' episodes. To be part of a process that says quality is overrated and that its all about the act is liberating. For me, however badly I may write, writing really gives me a buzz. Just for that, it's worth going through this exercise, don't you agree?

I've been preparing furiously for the event, scribbling notes on paper napkins and 5-subject spiral bound note books. For a while I contemplated getting yellow legal pads to write notes on but dropped the idea because it's old (Scott Turrow wrote Presumed Innocent in this manner). I've purchased several books on the subject of writing which I've stashed in all locations where I could potentially have a free minute (in my car to read when i'm getting an oil change, in the kitchen to read while i'm waiting for the water to boil over, in the...you get the picture). These include such thrillers as Plot & Structure, Strunk & White etc., I've been reading a lot of writing blogs in my free time as well and some easier reads such as Stephen King's 'On Writing'. The only non-writing book I've read this month -Murakami's 'What I talk about when I talk about running'- ended up having considerable advice for writers.

Here is Murakami on the subject of writing:

"Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor."

And here is what Stephen King says in 'On Writing':

"Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

Two experts saying more or less the same thing - that it's as much about ass-to-chair as about fickle talent and the former can sometimes compensate for the latter.

I'm willing to buy it. I have nothing to lose and 50,000 words to gain.

Poetry to beat the blues

2009-10-04T15:39:00.005-04:00

I never thought I’d say this but my adolescent fascination with Vikram Seth’s poetry is wearing off. His prose I still love, but his poetry, when i re-read it, sounds clichéd and affectedly cute. There, I’ve said it, and now that I have I feel less of a traitor. That said, I heartily recommend chanting the following verse fifty times as an antidote to Monday morning blues. It works for me.

'Voices'
Voices in my head,
Chanting, “Kisses. Bread.
Prove yourself. Fight. Shove.
Learn. Earn. Look for love,”

Drown a lesser voice
Silent now of choice.
“Breathe in peace, and be
Still, for once, like me.”

-Vikram Seth

Once upon a time...

2009-09-18T16:34:00.004-04:00

Time was when all the waste my family of ten generated could be contained in a broom and dustpan that one of the servants we employed would take out daily and empty into the community dustbin. The waste itself comprised mainly of vegetable matter, tightly wound balls of hair and grains of sand and dust that accumulates so easily in India. Rarely the dustpan would take out an empty rasna carton or frooti tetrapack. The presence of these blatantly commercial items usually implied that the children of the house had been indulged by a visiting relative or a family friend. For the most part we made everything in-house including ice creams, puddings, juices and jams. In that huge, rambling ancestral home there was no place for a dustbin or at least I have no recollection of one. Likewise, i don't recall vegetables being purchased in bulk and stocked in the refrigerator either. My aunt and mother took turns going to the vegetable market to bring home the vegetables in a green knit basket. I remember that green basket so well that I can almost feel it between my fingers now. The basket was placed under a brown bench alongside an aruvamanai and another basket that held onions and potatoes. As my mind roams through the rooms in that house I can recollect every item we owned back then and where they used to be placed. This is partly because we owned so little but also because we never threw anything away. When we outgrew clothes we sold them by weight to someone in exchange for pots and pans. When the pots and pans wore out we took them to someone to have it fixed. In fact some of these utensils outlived their purchasers by several decades and when they were eventually sold it felt like a girl of the family was being given away in marriage.

When my grandmother died and it was time to sell the house and move on, all the objects of our life together were apportioned among the families that lived in that house. When I go home today, I still find some of these objects from my childhood in my mother's kitchen but now they share berth with tupperware containers and ziplock bags and a profusion of other modern storage innovations. These bright and shiny items change and are often replaced but the green bag, my grandmother's dosakal, the ancient wall clock etc., are cherished possessions of the house.

A quick zap to my life in America and what have we? As a nuclear family of three we generate so much trash every day that it frequently threatens to take over the house. Huge plastic sacks stuffed with coke cans, milk, diapers, water cans, plastic bags, bills, flyers and so on. Every year it seems to me that our plastic footprint just keeps going up despite our increasing awareness and the over-priced, cloth-based grocery bags. With time being scarce the shelf life of goods becomes an important parameter and in comes the shrink wrapped carrots and tomatoes and the bread, that must be made of cotton wool, given its propensity to stay mold-free for weeks. I see that the pace of my life has brought about these aberrations but even if I wanted to live a little slowly and deliberately I would have to jump through hoops to live the lifestyle of my childhood. Where would I find a milk man who would walk around town with a cow and a tall silver container to measure out milk? I would trade my organic cartons of homogenized milk were such an option available, even if it meant I had to spend precious minutes every morning yelling at him for slipping in water into the milk. Even after the milkman was replaced by Aaavin covers it wasn't too bad. We had the convenience of pastuerized milk delivered to our doorstep (or street corner) and a safe way of disposing the covers (as we call it in India). We piled the cover up for months and then sold them by weight to a wholesale store that bought such things for money. The children of the house fought endlessly over whose turn it was to sell the covers and pocket the proceeds. Today, I throw into the dumpster, three cardboard cartons of milk every week or twelve every month. Not to mention the countless plastic spoons and forks and all manner of non-degradeable things.

A man I know once told me that he gets one of those huge dumpster pods every few months to dispose off the waste from his house. Have you seen one of those things - those mammoth boxes that a low income family in India would consider ample living quarters? What's alarming is that at the time that I heard this information I remember thinking to myself that it was a good idea. It's amazing what you can get used to. It’s certainly a long distance to travel for someone who slept on the exact same brown pillow for the first seventeen years of her life.

I make fun of my parents when they reminisce about their childhood. They talk wistfully about how things were so different back then and how people were good and kind and milk and honey flowed the streets. Although I recognize that i'm doing the same thing here in this post I also acknowledge that some things have changed for the good. My only gripe is about those instances where we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Sustainable practices seem to have become the buzzword now with the educated classes but for most of my life in India it was the only reality. It made economic sense but it was also a way of life. Were my grandmother Pushpammal alive today I suspect she would disapprove of my commuter mug and pedometer, signs that the concept of time has gone out of wack in my life. And who can blame her?

Some prose, some poetry

2009-08-07T16:02:00.003-04:00

I love all kinds of poetry but I’m definitely partial to the smaller ones especially those that make a wry, ironic point with what is said as much as what isn't.

Case in point -

A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

-- Stephen Crane

On the subject of prose, i'm reading Northanger Abbey right now which is one of Austen's least popular and much reviled book. Damn my literary tastes if you will but I find that I rather like it. The language is delightful and Austen oozes satire. My only complaint about the novel is that I never quite get the same feel for Henry Tillney as I did for her other heros. He is difficult to pin down or form an opinion about and not at all well characterized. He must be one of Austen's weakest heros but i'm willing to forgive her for the fact as this was her first novel (Sense and Sensibility was her first published novel).

I'm looking forward to watching the movie rendition of this book.

Here is a passage about our anti-heroine Catherine Molland -

"She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach [i.e. attract], they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance."

A modern reader will cringe at this passage if read out of context but Austen is merely being facetious.

Bittersweet

2009-07-27T10:49:00.002-04:00

So many of the banalities that my parents had mouthed to me when I was a child have come true in my adult life. I have to give it to them - they were dead right about a lot of things. They were right about the fact that some skills, swimming and music for instance, are better learnt as a child, about the fact that adult life is more complex than a child could ever imagine, that money is the universal divider, that more pleasure can be derived from a job well done than from idle chatter - I could go on. They were speaking from experience, of course, but as is typical of parents of that generation they made no attempt to coerce me into their point of view. Instead these tidbits of wisdom were delivered as-is or in between thrashings or during the-annual-report-card-lecture. Would I have been more receptive if they had made an attempt to seduce me with reason? I don't know. I was foolish and idealistic then and only had a head for Agatha Christies and writing bad poetry (the kind that rhymes "fun" with "bun").

Yesterday I was playing ball with my toddler son and out of the blue he came over and delivered a wet kiss on my face. My heart constricted with pleasure and in the next instant there was a slight jab of something that I’ve come to identify as guilt. I think they call it survivor's guilt. If you have a loved one in pain about which you can do little or nothing or if you've ever been through an ordeal and emerged unscathed while others have succumbed, you would know what I’m talking about. Its this feeling that you don't deserve to be happy just as those others don't deserve to be unhappy. What did you do to earn you happiness? That other person was more talented, better looking and better positioned to have a fruitful life than you. What throw of dice cheated them out of their happiness and delivered it to you? And when will it be your turn to pay up? Every new experience, every one of life's pleasure will be tainted by this nagging guilt, this reality check.

This is why that sometimes, when my son lifts his curly head in the middle of watching TV and delivers an absent minded smile in my direction, I feel this compulsion to freeze him in time. Or at least tell him to enjoy his childhood as best as he can because adult life is a mixed bag. That was the stuff of my parents’ message to me but I never got it.

Semblance of normalcy

2009-06-19T19:33:00.002-04:00

I made the time (by shooing my son away when he came with a board book with 'Poi appa kitta padikka sollu') to read two books in a month, something I haven't done in a while. I've been avoiding reading 'The White Tiger' for a year now, primarily because i'm sick to my stomach of the genre but when I did read it, I found that I rather grudgingly liked it. The second book was 'The Reader' - a book about Nazi war guilt which I found completely unbelievable and upsetting but which I finished out of sheer habit. So, there, i've squandered the time I stole from my child by reading two books that made me quite queasy in the stomach.

It can only get better from here.

Other books in line are - Buy-ology, Northhampton Abbey, Mistakes were made (but not by me).

On a different note, I hope that Sanjay discovers the joy of reading. He seems to be quite keen on knowing what happened to the hungry catterpillar but i'd be more reassured if he didn't hold the book upside down!

Missing the obvious

2009-03-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

Have you ever felt that most of life is about realizing the obvious? Do you struggle for years with something till one day the solution comes to you in a swift a-ha moment? And do you, when you sit down to think about it come to realize that your a-ha moment is the stuff they hawk in self-help books on M.G Road for fifteen rupees? If you answered yes to the questions above let me assure you that you are not alone. It happens to me all the time too.

Taking care of an infant without familial support is an all-consuming task - an obvious fact that never registered with me although I've heard it said several times. When people spoke about parental sacrifices I did not realize that they meant basic things like not being able to read a book, soak in the tub or have an uninterrupted conversation with your mother on the telephone. It was with shock that I realized that the most basic of activities require detailed planning, something I can't say I’m very good at. I've had one real vacation since Feb of 2008 in which I spent 70% of my time in a hotel room, read two books in twelve months and probably watched the same number of movies. I was doing nothing yet time was slipping through my hands. I was beginning to feel a little bit trapped in my life.

And then R suggested that I try to attack the day 15 minutes at a time. How about I try to play the violin 15 mins a day when Sanjay is napping, get a 15 min afternoon snooze over the weekend, spend 15 mins cleaning the kitchen etc? How about I look at the day as 15 mins times 96? I began doing this in earnest and sure enough it made a difference. After a year i actually wrote a blog post. I was able to practice the violin at least 2-3 times a week. I even get to read a few pages of a book every once in a while. Minutes add up to hours, hours to days and days to months. I always knew that but it took thirty two years to internalize it.

Fourteen minutes down, one to go. Perhaps I can fill my timesheet with the spare.

The year in passing

2009-03-06T11:00:00.009-05:00

When you meet a close friend after a long time what do you say after the pleasantries are exchanged? Where do you begin? I suppose you give them bullet points on what happened over the days, months and years you have not been in touch. And then if the momentum continues and you meet him/her regularly for a fashion, slowly a pattern emerges, the minor details are pulled out one incident at a time and the dots are slowly joined.

That is how i feel right now. More that a year has passed since I wrote anything on this blog. What do I say now? What do i write about? Does it even matter?

Still, the year that has passed has been the most significant one in my life. I had a son, battled post partum depression, juggled work and motherhood sometimes successfully, most of the times by the thread of a hair. All my life I've tended towards cynicism, towards the glass-half-empty-point-of-view. Having Sanjay put some pink fluff on my somewhat jaundiced eyes. Not that I’ve been transformed overnight to the new Miss Sunshine but I don't pass my life under the microscope every opportunity I get as I used to either.

How did what was obviously the most stressful year of my life turn out to be the most significant? I don't know. Maybe its hormonal. Maybe its that fact that I have a whole new opportunity with a whole new person who believes, at least for now, that I’m rather hunky.

Here are some other ways I’ve changed (the bullet points):

I take the color and texture of my son's poop seriously and have serious discussions with other mothers about it.

babble.com has supplanted New Yorker as my favorite reads.

I think about him several times at work.

I do not correct my mother when she suggests that he is a musical genius.

I feel tenderly towards the people who remembered his birthday.

I call strangers to discuss my concerns about my son.

I send flowers to his pediatrician.

Names like Dr Spock, Dr Sears, Gina Ford, and Richard Ferber are integral part of my vocabulary, although I follow nothing and have no method to my parenting madness.

I 've started writing mushy posts.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

On this beautiful thanksgiving morning I stand by the kitchen sink cutting, slicing, dicing, stirring the pot on the stove and all the while speaking to a friend on the telephone about diaper rashes, ear thermometers and breast pumps. In the living room office communicator blinks. I finish my telephone conversation abruptly in order to chat with a colleague in India who has a question to ask. In the kitchen the pot hisses warnings and then boils over in a jealous rage. I dart back urgently to attend to it, scald my fingers, curse and then curse some more as the phone rings again. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a few lines swim into my head from a poem I’d read a long time ago and memorized. I ignore the telephone, the colleague, the belligerent stock pot and turn to google to look up the rest of the poem.

I'm Kamla

or Vimla

or Kanta or Shanta.

I cook

I wash

I bear, I rear,

I nag, I wag,

I sulk, I sag. I see worthless movies at reduced rates

and feel happy at reduced rates...

- Kamala Das

In those few lines, I read my life. And then I put on my winter coat and gloves and step out in the sun to seek the day.

Ganja in Wonderland

2007-07-24T07:54:00.000-04:00

I have long suspected that some serious Ganja was involved in the writing of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and this link just confirms it (not ganja really, but close). Explains why ‘Alice in Wonderland’ feels like a trip whereas ‘Haroun and the sea of stories’, a book that I usually think about in the same thought signal i think about ‘Alice in Wonderland’, feels like a serious endeavor at writing fantasy.

How come the once I tried this weed I fell promptly asleep while some others are obviously able to write beautiful fiction?

Passion...blah, blah...

2007-07-13T15:07:00.000-04:00

I’ve been listening to ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't’ on my way to work this week. The book looks at a dozen or so successful companies that have consistently surpassed other companies in the same market segment over an extended period of time and tries to discern how these companies made the cut. For a period of five years the author and a team of researches pored over hundreds of companies analyzing their stock performance, reading their balance sheets and following their recruitment/layoff policies and selected only companies that showed remarkable growth. The growth of such companies was found to be consistent regardless of who was at the helm. One of the conclusions the author and his team came to was that such companies (Kroger, Walgreens, Fannie Mae to name a few) were led by what they called level 5 leader and by their definition, level 5 leaders are people who are passionate about the company and put the company’s interest ahead of everything else, including their own personal interest. Such leaders apparently set their successors up for success, choosing only people who can take the company forward. Such leaders are strongly motivated and passionate about their vision and only choose to play in fields where they know they can be the best.

Despite the kind of research that seems to have gone into the book I must say the conclusions are remarkably clichéd. Regardless, listening to this book has had the most depressing effect on me and here is why – for the life of me I cannot figure out what ignites my passion.

What makes me heart leap and my nerves race?

Answer: That brief moment before sleep when I know the day is done with and I don’t have to remain half-alert, half-asleep anymore.

What gives me pleasure?

Answer: Waking up in the morning and realizing that it isn’t really that late, that I need not force wakefulness on myself just yet.

Where would I rather be right now?

Answer: Under the covers thinking it really isn’t that late, that I really need not force wakefulness on myself just yet.

What am I currently doing that I would rather not be?

Answer: I would rather not be awake at this precise moment.

What do I love to do?

Answer: Lie in bed with a good novel and a packet of chips waiting for sleep to descend.

What's the single most important thing I've learned about myself as a result of answering these questions?

Answer: I am not a level 5 leader from the sound of it. I am, in fact, doomed.

Leaders or the led?

2007-05-29T18:19:00.000-04:00

Picture of the conference that formed the subject of the previous posting. That's me circled in neon, looking askance as always.

Leaders who happen to be women

2007-05-06T12:34:00.000-04:00

I was asked by my office to attend a conference on ‘How women lead’ hosted at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. I went with much trepidation fully expecting it to be a run-of-the-mill, self-helpish kind of gathering with some good food thrown in. I went for the gourmet breakfast and lunch and the chance to make some interesting contacts but, on the contrary, it turned out to be quite a day. Two of the speakers – Christiane Amanpour and Queen Latifah - made the conference worth its while. I left the conference thinking that true women leaders are almost sexless, or rather they are not women who are leaders but leaders who just happen to be women.

Christiane, a CNN war correspondent and the winner of several awards, spoke about the women in the Bankan and other war torn areas who have leadership thrust upon them. These women have to speak up to survive; they have to run with leadership because the alternative is death. She spoke passionately but without sentiment. She was quite magnetic. Answering a question from the audience about how she juggles parenthood and globe-trotting to war torn areas Christiane was quite candid – “I live with constant fear but I’ve learnt to manage it…And the fear factor has multiplied in the last seven years after my son was born…Being a parent comes with certain responsibilities the most basic of them being trying to stay alive…these days I try not to be away from home for long durations if I can help it.” Here is a woman of the world who has risen above her gender. It is women like Christiane who make gender insignificant, and it is increasingly women like her that I’m inspired by and drawn towards.

Queen Latifah came on stage to the strings of “When you’re good to mama, mama’s good to you”. Unlike Christiane she spoke not about the world but about herself. She talked about her childhood in a poor neighborhood in Maryland, her parents, her brother and how she got to where she is today. She was funny, self-effacing and quite honest. There were no rhetoric, no Hollywood-style gimmicks and absolutely no self-propaganda. She let the audience meet the poor black girl who made it big because she never really tried to do anything she was not good at. The audience gave her a standing ovation and no one deserves it more than her.

When life decides to put me in my place it does not do so by half-measures. Not only was I proved wrong by the speakers of the day but, contrary to my expectations, the fare served for lunch was also below par!

On sense, sensibility and sentimentality

2007-03-24T10:18:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has watched that somewhat tawdry, sentimental kitsch of a Tamil movie called Kandukonden Kandukonden can be said to be acquainted with the broad storyline of Sense and Sensibility. The story is about two sisters, refined and accomplished, who are temperamentally polarized between an impulsive, passionate disposition of one and the moderate, sober, deliberate nature of the other. The former – Marianne Dashwood – represents Sense and the latter – Elinor Dashwood – represents Sensibility. The story, while tracing the romantic pursuits and consequent heartaches of the sisters, indirectly poses a question on the superiority between the two traits. Does Sense triumph or does Sensibility? It might be said that since Marianne loved deeply, was hurt deeply by the inconstancies of the object of her affections and eventually reconciled to marry an older man (Mammooty!) whom she had to learn to love but who had loved her through all her excesses, she had, in fact, lost. Elinor, on the other hand, is the only person in the book who ends up marrying her first choice, albeit after much confusion and heartaches that were borne with a dignity far beyond her age. Therefore it might be argued that Sensibility triumphed. But the author does not pronounce any such black-and-white judgments but instead leaves the reader to form their own ideas.

What I liked best about Sense and Sensibility was, of course, the sheer beauty of the prose. Jane Austen is ruthless when it comes to exposing characters she is not fond of and she does this with such mockery and with such clever use of language that it delights the reader in its wickedness. I was astounded to find out that the book was written when Austen was nineteen. How did someone so young come to know so much, to understand so much about the society in which she lived and learn to articulate it so perfectly? At nineteen I was still trading Mills & Boons with my girlfriends!

For instance, consider the following description of the sisters’ half-brother John Dashwood and his wife Fanny, who throw the sisters and their mother out of the family home (roles played by Raguvaran and Anita Ratman in the tamil version. Ugh).

“ He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was; he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself; more narrow-minded and selfish. ”

Coming from a conservative tam-bram family, I could draw many parallels to life as it used to be when I was growing up in Mylapore. The emphasis on refinement in women as being the most ‘marriageable’ trait, the fact that social intercourse was the chosen vehicle for forming marriage alliances, the sentimentality of women and men alike, the overriding unabashed place of monetary affairs in the center of marriage negotiations - these were as much a reality in the Mylapore Mami’s life as they were in the fictional Marianne’s. As I read (or heard) Sense and Sensiblity I could connect to it from deep down. In the lives of Marianne and Elinor I saw the lives of my grandmothers and aunts. As pre-globalization women, they were but a cog in the Mylapore social wheel - “cultivating” themselves by learning to sing and dance and trying very hard to uphold modesty.

This book made my long drive to work well worth it and is second only to The Paycheck!

Trite

2007-02-11T21:07:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wince when i re-read some of the blog entries I've logged. The previous one is a case in point. Why, I can even hear the self-righteous voice of the moral science teacher from more than a decade ago when I read it.

Sometimes, what I have to say is so hackneyed and commonplace that I might as well save the effort of saying it.

Sometimes I think that most things worth saying have already been said, and said very well, by people better acquainted with the tools of language than I.

Yet, this is not their blog but mine.

This above all: to thine own self be true

2007-01-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

These lines have been ringing in my ears all week.

I’ve been listening to ‘The age of innocence’ (by Edith Wharton) on my way to work and driving has never been so much fun, with my finishing a book a week! I’ve particularly taken to listening to the classics, as these are books I take the longest to read in paperback. ‘The age of innocence’ follows ‘A room with a view’ which follows ‘Stumbling upon happiness’ (not a classic, not even that good come to think about it). Given the subjects I’ve been listening to all month – the human brain's capacity for self-deception; enforcing conformity being society’s primary purpose; prudishness; perception and its loopholes and so on – its little wonder that Shakespeare’s ‘To thine own self be true’ keeps popping up in my conscious mind ever so often. In the midst of busy workday I pluck out this line, examine it, and although I am two hours behind schedule in finishing a particular task, here I am writing this blog.

It’s funny, really, but given that we spend so much time with ourselves it seems to me a fundamental flaw in design that one can lie to the one person one cannot escape from. If the man above was a software engineer he would have made the reality object immutable because, as it stands now, nothing is as easy, nothing is as self-serving as pretending that one is what one isn’t.

I knew this woman once who told elaborate stories about how she could not do the one thing she wanted to do – paint. She had it rehearsed so well that it was near-impossible to find a chink in her armor, to make her see that the fabrications were a mechanism to avoid reality because reality is bitter; reality means struggling with oneself and facing up to what a slacker, what an escapist, what a lying, deceptive piece-of-goods one really is. That kind of admission hurts. It is said that meditation, when done near-continuously, reveals to one the disastrous traps of ones mind, and many a strong-willed person have been reduced to tears at the harsh, unsolicited clarity that they have had to look in the face. As for this woman, she eventually honed her stories into a moral-superiority thing, labeling her inaction as ‘sacrifice, in the name of family’ – which is good and virtuous, especially in a woman.

It happened that one day we were lunching together when a mutual acquaintance walked in on us. We had not met her in a long time and invited her to join us. Over coffee, we found that she was a cartoonist now, freelancing with several newspapers and the recipient of many awards. At the very moment this fact was revealed, I saw a look of red-hot jealousy pass through the eyes of the erstwhile painter. It was shrouded and stifled instantly but at that moment it was like looking into her soul. And I did not like what I saw there. Minutes after the cartoonist had left the only thing my friend could bring herself to say was “Now that she is divorced I suppose she has all the time in the world to spend on herself.” I could see it so clearly. Her mind was hunting for an escape clause, some salve with which to soothe her aching ego, some proof that the cartoonist had paid a heavier price for her success than was warranted and that she was better off for not rising to the bait.

My friend, the painter, is as normal, or abnormal, as any one of us. She could be me. Or you. We are all mostly like this, authors of our own failures, passing it off as virtue or bad luck or destiny. No one is fooled but us; No one stands to lose but us, or even cares about our loss. They are all busy lying down on the bed of lies they have made for themselves.

These are the things that occupy my mind as I drive to work everyday, invariably late for my meetings and telling myself - lying to myself - that chronic unpunctuality does not matter in the bigger scheme of things.

I desperately need to listen to some whodunits.

Sniff, Sniff

2006-12-21T15:19:00.000-05:00

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....

2006-10-12T10:12:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-11T17:04:00.000-04:00

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.

Gainfully unemployed

2006-08-16T05:54:00.000-04:00

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

2006-06-15T15:05:00.000-04:00

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

2006-06-10T14:53:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

[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

2006-05-17T23:58:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-13T20:53:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-10T20:16:00.000-04:00

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

Pursuing Happiness

2006-05-09T19:02:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-08T15:27:00.000-04:00

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)

2006-05-04T18:23:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

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

2006-05-02T23:06:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-30T18:59:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-28T11:39:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-27T16:25:00.000-04:00

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.