time of my life

A history of Southasia.

Late it was

Late it is

Late it shall be.

We learn what we never should have written

Maps with line revisions

20 hours to Manhattan and four extra for Wagah

To step or not to step

To cross or not to cross

To step or to cross

To cross and to live

Or not live…

We need routes that were never to be.

We tread grounds which were rivers…once

Rivers are lands today

Tears…fire

Warmth…wires

Homes hate

And,

Lands lie

 

 

 

God’s unstoppable and his wok never stops. But there are many who’d like him to disappear. A few live in London.

Just read that many of the buses plying in London have the following painted on them: “God possibly doesn’t exist; so enjoy and have fun”. Apparently The Humanist Organization has spent 35million pounds advertising this concept. Why then add “possibly”? 35 million could have very well done without it. For all that money, any statement should be decisive.

I wonder how the atheists would react to a shift in their scans, a blow on their head, bankruptcy at their doorstep, an ailing friend, child or parent; I wonder how they go on. For me, my days start with fear. I live restlessly and in fear. My thyroids have gone haywire; my hyperactivity knows no bounds; I seek action and I find it…always. As much as I want laughter, I also know that I need to remember my losses. I find it strange when my last moment of having a Chinese lunch with my son at the Side Wok at Khan Market turns sour over a simple telephone call about my best friend being whisked off to the Intensive Care Unit in Apollo in Kolkata. My last planned minutes in Delhi, shopping at Oma and Good Earth were zillion miles away; I am heading towards Kolkata praying for my friend to be only conscious.

Even with a 35 million, you can neither wipe God away, or his miracles. Let’s hope He spins a few tonight.

17 Feb 2009

When my son and I were headed towards Delhi with the sole purpose of shopping for his apartment, I knew that recession had hit Southasia bad enough to make consumers shy away from the malls at Gurgaon. But that was the bare minimum I could do for my prince and therefore we were heading off to our Milano of the East: Gurgaon and Saket in New Delhi. My son is extremely conscious of the fact that his mother had always shopped at the boutiques with extreme caution, balancing between brands and no-namers. He knows that our house hosts a balance too; we are happy with our paintings, music and books and we are unhappy when there’s an assumption about our lifestyle. We live well but we are well within our means. Our vacations are rarely spent in Europe or in some breathtaking spots; our ideal vacations (if any) mostly consist of being with each other in the far east, but yes…possibly in a great hotel. East has always been friendly for our pockets.

Back to the airport scene now…While checking in, I notice a few people who are checking in as well. All VIPS! And yet not checking in through the VIP lounge??? Hmmm….fair enough…three out of four shied away and hesitated to greet me. I understood and remembered Alain Botton’s Status Anxiety. But then the fourth was mean. She looked away with a degree of contempt. All four dressed to kill were the perfect picture of the Dhaka scene. My son and I, perhaps did not look chic enough. We did not head for the lounge, rather went to the departure gate. And while we were about to board, I heard my prince breaking into uncontrollable bouts of laughter. What was it, I asked? He shared with me a peak into his facebook account, where the 4^th one, the meanie had just posted from the lounge a new status statement: “In the 1^st class Dubai lounge, wishing if only I had a visa to go to town and shop!”.

She was in Dhaka airport, transiting Delhi and heading for London. Close enough, but Dhaka and Dubai only have the first letter in common. And 1^st class lounge? The girl in boots was obviously hallucinating about Dubai being transported to our very comfortable Balaka restaurant. Is this what the virtual does to us? Or is this what our tiny pots of gold tempt us to believe? I don’t blame the girl; she probably has grown up watching her mom clad in the smartest suits, bragging about the terrace of her London house while in reality, in an incestuous dinner setting, she will have people whispering to each other about the leaks in her bathroom in her very own “London” villa. These people belong to a special breed. They are anxious about what they have, frantic when they lose a bit, unashamed when their sons get arrested for drug trafficking. These are the same people who host lavish dinners where most of the diplomats make an appearance and who address them by their first names. Are the people of this impoverished land unable to carry poverty with pride?

 

Today was the second day of Eid. There was a special bazaar today. The vendors were unusual. They were the fakirs who had received their meat from different households. While some of their meat was being stored in their own refrigerators, some were being sold out in the open for people in rickshaw, motorbike to come and buy from them. Indeed, the buyers have changed their position. Indeed, this is the middle class of Bangladesh that cannot steal, beg or borrow meat from you and me; indeed it is the same middle class that would rather buy the meat from this special bazaar.

I’ve learnt a new word today: Mandel.

For some strange reason, my Microsoft word took the word in without any hint of

spelling mistake. Apparently the new maid in the house is: “Mandel” (mental) Took me some time to figure out what the word meant and by the time I had figured it out, the subject was out of my domestic picture and was on her way home, 200 km from the capital city. The woman had vigorously complained about not being given enough rest and about having to work too much. We are currently three at home now and the only time I see our staff around me is when they serve my dinner. Breakfast is only tray full of muesli, fruits, toasts and jam. Lunch is always a deep fried vegetable roll and dinner is mostly at 7:00 where I like having options. Rest of the day, I am tolerant.

You see, it’s all about tolerance. Yet, as Manmohan Singh yesterday pointed out, we were all getting less tolerant about the “Other”. The fake occidentalist in me ultimately hates the “other”.

I would have been far better off if I didn’t have to look at the complaint letters, didn’t have to talk to personnel or didn’t have to take calls at midnight from an enraged worker who thought she was mistreated.

This is always the problem of being us. We always want to look away from the other.

The other may be a group of dedicated youth like ‘Jagoree’ trying to bring about election reforms in the country by raising awareness; the other may be a group of young people from ‘AIESEC’ looking up to us for guidance and support; the other may be a few secular stories from the region in these times of madness; the other may be a lone honest politician in the offing. Whatever the case may be, the ‘other’ is never to enter the ‘us’. What we believe in is right, what we want to continue believing is what we choose.

 

The fight between us and them has gained a lot of ground ever since 11/26. Mumbai has gone insane; Pakistani journos have taken a recourse to aggressive self defense and to put it mildly, the region is getting ready not for a conflict, but for a full scale war. The borders are tense; the frontiers are flexing their soon-to-disappear muscles and from a distance, a big Boy is waving the flag of truce by wagging its own tail in glee.

We are all closing our eyes, at one point in contempt of the alternate other. The rationale of not being the other has come home…just because it suits us. After all, it’s not my son who’s killed in the blast; it’s them. Just hold it right there, though…

But wasn’t it just the other day when I noticed my nephew growing a beard? Isn’t it just the other day when I heard a group of young people rationalizing Jihad? Is the circle closing in on us too fast, too soon…? Is the ‘other’ on its way of becoming ‘us’ now?

 

 

 

The best time to blog, once again, is at the airport, in between hand luggage, the senseless local channel hosting couple of dancing idiots, the cramped lounge with almost all the passengers coming too close to the next one (one place where one fears intimacy), the security checks, the pressure of boarding and the last minute rush to delay boarding till the last precious second. One just doesn’t want to disengage and one doesn’t want to fly. The sky’s unknown, the land isn’t. Well, frankly, the time gods aren’t favoring certainties either. With elections a couple of weeks away, timeline’s menacingly vague; parties are obnoxiously hopsacking their way to the finish line; and loyalties are mostly scarred by greed. Changing faces, changing friends are not surprises one expects during pre election periods; these are a given. What surprises a citizen of this land is the insistence of leaders repeating history in the same doses and eventually cursing the led. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina exchanged pleasantries and had blessed the Armed Forces Day, a couple of days back. The entire media couldn’t have been happier, and there couldn’t have been a better photo opportunity. Also, there couldn’t have been more talk shows on this rare meeting. The nation has declared itself eternally grateful to their glances and smiles. Terming ourselves unfortunate maybe the worst understatement of all ages. A nation that celebrates the 2 minutes meeting-cum-Colgate event of its two leaders couldn’t have been more unfortunate. I am not surprised that general people don’t want polls. Apparently 70% of the surveyed, according to yesterday’s local daily have voted for continuation of the present government. Helpless and hopeless encore! The ‘doctoral elites’ have returned the country to disaster and yet we want them! Some even want more uniformity in attire and are opting for the khaki. Nation, do get ready for being raped once again. This time, just watch your ass as you may lose your vital organs along with your virginity. The world’s all about whores. Get used to that.

Crushed and broken

Shredded and shrunk

The match box lungs needed fire

The nude and the nail

Knotted in ‘touch-me-touch-me not’

Wanted flesh in place of ink

The jacquard dots on gold

Ready to slip away from the slip cover

Searched shoes to walk on

The lover’s parcel

Wanted to flatten the starlet against the red letter box forever

While they invaded her wardrobe

 

 Were we all what we were not?

i visited one of the factories today…a factory that has only 4 sewing lines and 300 workers. it’s small, clumsy yet efficient. the workers had stopped working three days back asking for a raise. now that’s what i call offence. apparently they had asked for ’sir’ or ‘madam’ and would not listen to anyone else. so i went. it was easy getting into the cabin sitting down and listening to the compliance guy. sure….he made sense. these were all people from the cutting and finishing section who had been with us for years and who had suddenly been converted to the religion of protest and violence by some ‘other’ NGOs. so i sat and listened and listened and…listened. none of the workers had come in to meet me. i figured that perhaps they wanted me on the floor. so i went and sat and sat and sat… suddenly i saw all 300 faces all around me, trying to talk to me all together. the noise killed me, the frustration hit me and i decided to ask questions. some said they had written innumerable letters addressed to me which had never reached me; some said the nurse was a bitch who didn’t give them more than one medicine a day; some said the GM Productions had told them that the only way was to protest and get their due raise; some even said that they were always penalized for being vocal. so i told them my story. i told them that every morning when i am on my to the office, i try and dodge my chef at home. i don’t want to face him as i know his obvious demands. more money for more dishes. frankly, i don’t mind my aloo bharta anymore. i still don’t want to dish out a few hundreds for a fancy lasagna that we all can live without. i don’t need the salsa dip; i don’t need the pita bread; i don’t need the rich filling anymore. at a time when there’s no vegetable selling at less than Tk 32.00/kg (except papaya), we all might as well say a special prayer and have only one dish per meal. so i told them that i understood what they were saying. they listened and listened. they understood and made me promise that i would go back and talk to them at least once a month. i promised that i would. after all, my office was only 5 minutes away from theirs. am surprised how i have so far managed to take a vacation and be gone for so long, so far away from home. home’s where those 300 and i would like to be.

It was strange to find Shomiron landing up at my doorstep. He’s an artist who has pride and a lot in his strokes to take pride in. Shomiron’s paintings sell at almost 80k in the local market. I presume 50% is taken by the galleries which do him the favor of providing the walls to hang his absolute beauties. Long ago, I had promised him a photograph of my best friend which he was supposed to translate into charcoal or color. That never happened. So, I assumed that he had come to me just to remind me of my broken promise. But I was wrong. Shomiron had come for a different purpose altogether. He was here to share a grief and perhaps, a mass of regret.

He had come to ask me if I would like to take a look at a few abstracts that he had in his studio which were created by a Norwegian artist he had met in
Norway, during one of his exhibitions. I was surprised. But why would he carry paintings from the West for sale in Dhaka? So, I probed. He gave in finally with tears welling up in his eyes.  Those art were all his. He had simply chosen a Norwegian name to put his mark on the canvas. I couldn’t have been sadder. He explained. Apparently the art critics were addicted to European names or desi high selling masters. Names like his which only painted women artists were not of interest to the art circle. So he had reverted back to his old habits of painting abstracts. And they were beautiful. Those pieces were rare and rewarding for any audience that sought beauty and meaning in art. I was told that the circle in the gallery was divided about his creations. Some said they made sense. Some said they were brilliant strokes of a Norwegian master. Some said they would be able to sell them at nothing less than half a million.

I heard Shomiron out and convinced him to go back home, change the signatures, re sign and claim his beauties back from masked walls. He deserved to be real.

 

On board Z5 001, September 21, 2008