Thursday, June 16, 2011

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy

I'm wilfully trapped in a song going in loops. I want to borrow the words and use them. Like a car, sit in them and drive around the feelings surrounding me.

There's a little bit of gloom in the corner of my room, peeking at me from behind the chair. I look away, staring into my computer listening to my song. I pretend to ignore Mr. Gloom frantically waving for a lift. But he lingers in my rear view mirror, in the back of my mind.

It's raining outside and I don't like this weather much. 

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Books I've been reading and associated thoughts...

The reason for this post lies with the beginning of my next book: The Hungry Tide. Actually, I was planning on buying this book as a gift for a friend’s birthday and now in retrospect ( 200 odd pages later) it seems I should have opted for this than for two other non English native speaking authors.

After having been swept away by the epic magical fable of Macondo by GGM (yes, I read 100 Years only now! And I wonder why? Maybe it has to do with the fact that LiToC didn’t impress me much when I had borrowed it from a senior in college and had to return it rather abruptly.)  I wondered if Mr. Ghosh would stand up to the mystical village of Macondo. I am a little extra judgemental, critical, cynical of authors of Indian origin. The very few I’ve read have generally tended to write about identity, family ties and culture... largely having been part of the diaspora that experiences these crises frequently. But Ghosh had been impressive through his skilful execution of radically different genres through Calcutta Chromosome, In An Antique Land and Shadow Lines.

I picked up the book yesterday and 200 pages hence I have spent a half my time googling and google map searching the whole Sunderban archipelago. In his afterword he cites the influences and people the story is loosely based on. On googling Annu Jalais my first reaction was that I was looking at Piyali Roy. The short cropped hair, the wiry frame. Just that Piyali Roy in my head is a little shorter than Annu Jalais in the jpeg image. Marichjhapi (I'm making this into a separate post), Francois Bernier and Annu Jalais’s studies are ALL clawing away at my limited attention simultaneously. And the background of the tide country, the delicate relationship between man and his lethal predator all converge together teasing my curiosity into a frenzied madness.

I have been to Sunderbans, a huge family outing on one of the many grand get together that are the hallmark of Bengali families. My uncle, on his once-in-two year visits to India in tow with 3 children and my kakima, is the lead character of these shows, taking it upon himself to force everyone to come for these vacations. My childhood is littered with memories of 18 people crammed into my grandmothers flat making plans simultaneously on where to go and what all can be done; everyone pushing their own agenda. So yes, we once happened to agree upon Sunderbans, and set off on a bus from the city to Gosaba. Other than an accident our bus was involved in, that trip would be remembered for a string of mishaps and of course a tiger sighting claimed by my mother and aunts. We firmly maintained it was a mud covered wolf/dog they had seen, too disappointed to admit that we missed seeing the great and elusive RBT. Otherwise, for me and my cousins those 3 days on a tourism dept. launch/ferry was more of running around mad and occasionally listening to tiger stories from the boatmen.

But now, reading this book and living just a 100 kms away from bhatir-desh (tide country); reading about Francois Bernier, of his travels in this dark corner of the world some 300 years back is just too cruel on my imagination. The thought of it chills my bones, the sense of adventure fills my body. Just like stories (actually fact, rather than fiction) of Heyerdahl’s crossing of the Pacific and Shackleton’s doomed Antartica expedition. Phew... who can dare say that I’m getting older!

Marichjhapi and Havelock (ideally, better read after my post above)

The Marichjhapii incident brings to mind my rather innocent encounter with the refugee rehabilitation travails of our government in the aftermath of independence and the Bangladesh wars. This was when we were in the Andamans last year and at my insistence the parents agreed to stay a couple of nights on Havelock Island. Lately, (2006, not so lately I guess) Havelock has become a fairly well known place after a certain Time magazine issue listed Radhanagar beach on Havelock as one amongst the 10 best beaches in Asia. It takes roughly 2-5 hours from Port Blair on sea to get to Havelock depending on the type of boat/steamer/launch you’re going in.

It’s a tiny island (22 kms in length and less than half that in breadth), which I’d read up about before our trip. So I had the geography of the island in mind, something I like to do before I go to anyplace. I must have a look at a map once at least. Despite all my reading up the biggest shock came when, reaching this tiny island consisting of one village, we realized that the local dialect was Bangal – the east Bengal version of the Bengali I’m used to speaking in Kolkata. In answer to my puzzled looks my father shared what he knew about the rehabilitation programmes set up by the GOI and the state governments to address the refugee migration problems. A large chunk of refugees coming in from Bangladesh were settled into areas around Kolkata and horror of horrors, a certain group was sent off on this island to be rehabilitated! As I read about Marichjhapi and the origin of the settlements in Sunderbans it is difficult to ignore the deep intertwining of caste in our DNAs. The refugee resettlements were guided by this too! High caste/better off people getting lands in around Kolkata to settle in whilst the lower castes sent off to places like Havelock.

Now Havelock, other than two roads and a maybe a handful of shops selling regular fmcg goods is an entirely forested island with at most 30% land cleared up for farming and village life. And this was 2010. Imagine having been uprooted from your homeland, forced to flee to a foreign country and then practically sentenced to a life of complete isolation on a dense forested island 1000 miles from mainland, 3 days by any ship today. Being able to comprehend the local dialect helped in interacting with locals and personal histories were shared. In complete awe I listened to the stories of the current generation relating their grandparents’ adventures in rebuilding their lives again. What I took away from those stories was realising the immeasurable strength of the human resolve. To be left with no choice and overcome a forced undeserved fate, heroically or rather plainly (deprived of my romanticised notions) I cannot say, but overcome it all nevertheless. Today the village on Havelock seems just about as well off as any other village in mainland Bengal. Of course school, hospital is a problem. The lack of easy mobility limits the development of this isolated community in certain ways I’m sure.

Monday, June 06, 2011

Song for the morning.

Not exactly being lazy with the posting but this song just crawled into my head. Sometimes I wake up in the mornings with a song in my head. I wonder if that's one of the many weird things I have. Of course, it's not just songs; paragraphs of prose, descriptions and stories twisted out of fiction I've been reading are all to often part of these morning assemblies like those in school. The charmed life of being on a break.

Love the rough edges to this rendition. The single guitar and the harmonics. Also, Art G's intense looks into the camera towards the end of the video :D. It is indeed, as Paul S puts it, a rather neurotic song. But I like it. I too have an armour of football, books and painting to wear whenever needed.