A Song 107

Six years ago
Ajoba played cricket
with Shreya,
held her crossing the road;
placed her on the
dining table,
fed her,
with food and tales.
Today,
Shreya fried Lijjat papads,
microwaved
rotis, dal, aloo sabji;
walked Ajoba to the
dining table,
served food, school fables.
Growing ups
at the dining table.    

Crows and coucals

Sleep broke at around 4; for the first time ever made me filter kapi as Rama was in a snore. With hot kapi not as good as the Rama version, sat down to random read A Necklace of Skulls, Collected Poems, by Eunice De Souza.  In Aunt: My aunt loves bright colours./Widowhood be damned./ Ninety-one years be damned./ She reads newspapers from/first page to last/looking for a cheerful story. Got out for a walk before morning newspapers hit the door. Newsvendor Patil is always on time. There are no cheerful stories to read. Papers have turned me a fake currency; maybe, they are not wrong. Wished for some cheerful moments... and today they came. Maybe De Souza is a talisman.  We have become friends somewhat. Coucal and me. On the gates of Management Development Centre, LIC, LIC Colony, it sat and walked; some five feet away, me stood on the footpath; do not know if it is the same coucal of a few days ago; from the gates it flew down to the footpath, flew up to a copper pod; went back to the walls of the gate; it opened its beak for a soft call; looked around when two coucals flew over to a mango tree inside the LIC compound; me stood watching as crows formed a crowd over and above me and coucal; the bird shifted to a bokeda tree inside the LIC green; the goondaish crow crowd cawed together; the coucal flew down and disappeared into a hedge; the crows looked cheap as louts do; the two coucals on the mango tree kept quiet; about 10 minutes of an early morning walk and me walked on. Coucal Point. LIC Colony throws up friends from the many trees in the area; passing Karuna Hospital, the now certain glimpse of bats (flying fox) in a chatter ahead of settling down, upside down; their browns glimmer as the sun hits pans them; and then bumped into a new friend, a beagle called Toffee; the owner does not mind me giving it a rub. A small hound, wikipedia says. Toffee has sad eyes, saddest me has seen. Some mornings are blank; and coming home sinks into the arm chair, upset. Today, it was different as the coucal will be with me through the day. No reading newspapers. Went back to De Souza. To a Naturalist: Mine's an humbler occupation,/hunting dog ticks, bed bugs, ants/ whose steadfastness I can rarely match./Fed up of concrete,/ a rat decided to/ take up residence in my oven./ Watchman and broom soon settled him./The wild parakeets chortle their way/through the seed box, three times a day./ As for fat pigeons/pushing each other off my air conditioner,/ there's no escape from their/orgasmic cries.  

Of others....they are ours

'Who couldn't resist a smirk on discovering that in Lucknow the slang for homosexual was 'chhota-line wallah' because the station there took both the broad and metre gauge?, writes Ian Jack in a prologue to Mofussil Junction, Indian Encounters 1977-2012. The lines lead me to a clutch of films on this human group that me has been seeing recently: Brokeback Mountain, Aligarh, Memories in March and My Brother, Nikhil. Have seen them twice and some snatches more and they remind me of the chemistry lab in Hindi High School where me was parked for practicals; labelled bottles and jars of acids -- sulphuric acid, nitric acid and many more -- stood in ranks on glass shelves; concentrated sulphuric acid, H2SO4, being perhaps a dangerous customer. In India, humans have labels, many: caste, sex (male, female, nongays, gays), religion, colour, language (English, Indian languages); females and gays are dealt in the same way, cruelly; in Memories in March, Deepti Naval pleads with Rithuparno Ghosh to take home a fish tank; 'no, do not like fish tanks, of putting everyone in a box,' Ghosh replies. Yes. Boxes. Displaying identity like Saivite and Vaishnavite caste marks. 2016 India is cruel to humans playing out their lives in these films; lives which have no say on their sex; they have to live with it and me wishes courts will make up their minds fast. Perhaps, the Supreme Court should see these films before writing their judgements; they could start with the 2005 film, My Brother, Nikhil, by Onir on an AIDS patient, Nikhil Kapoor  (played by Sanjay Suri) and his sister Juhi Chawla (Anamika); Juhi sticks to her brother; its about relationships, natural for Nikhil Kapoor, unnatural for his parents; the film flows like the Mandovi in Goa. Twice over seen Memories in March and Aligarh; Aligarh can be termed a classic; a film that will stay on; there is no fiction, only facts; bare, brutal and brilliant is Manoj Bajpayee; 'Love is a beautiful word,' says Manoj to Rajkummar Rao, boating perhaps the Jamuna; director Hansal Mehta keeps to the bones of the story; the legal scenes could not be otherwise. For me Aligarh is a notch in front of Memories in March with Deepti Naval and Rituparno Ghosh; not many have written of her; in Firaaq and Memories in March, she shakes the viewer; sound-speech links in Memories are indeed rare for an Indian film; directed by Sanjoy Nag, Memories and Aligarh butt me. A fair deal for those in hiding. Perhaps, Brokeback Mountain is the weakest going on and on ... unwinding to a few seeable last shots. Our directors have offered an unfortunate set of humans a better deal; insisted on they being humans. Indian cinema has grown beyond Ray. It can be proud.  

Link Road

Link Road,
no more,
any more.
Drillers hole
for sky-rail,
dredge from deep,
ajis, ajobas
wrapped in
Tuka and Kabir;
chapsticks of memory,
invalid currencies;
odd ends of Tulsi,
grass, bric brac,
fronting tiled homes,
today, sky stabs
taunting Vittala's Vaikunt.
On Link Road,
to drilling drums,
owners selfie Mercs,
wiped neat
by Nepalis.
An early morning sun
pauses behind
sky tops.
'In 5 years,
a sky rail
on Link Road,'
says the driller
from Chattisgarh.
'We wont be there,'
says Rama.
Making of an aged,
dentured
future,
on Link Road,
birth of a death. 

Supermoon

A joyous swoon,
a haiku croon,
a Supermoon...

Mid-night Supermoon tickled me from bed, got to chatting. 'For you am poetry; for me am hungry,' mused Supermoon. Felt like some haiku poet as Supermoon pleaded for eats; 'something to eat. Rama might have kept sambhar and rice in the fridge', Supermoon said; one wriggled out into a chilly night and fed me friend with vetta kuzhambu and rice; roasted a few tapioca papads; Supermoon sat on the bed, chewed steadily, slapping a few mosquitos; me got curious: 'You get your daily prasad with hundis full; and tonight you are Supermoon, there will be huge offerings,' me said. Supermoon snapped a papad and was into a bite; 'When did you last go to the temple,' Supermoon asked; me passed the query; 'the hundis are empty, there is no cash, the priests have scooted with currency; no prasad; why dont you walk the streets, visit some temples; the gods are planning to stand in bank lines; you may see them at private banks as reports are they are better with separate counters for senior citizens; all gods are senior citizens,' Supermoon went on and on. His talk longer than bank lines; he did not like me laughs; Supermoon screwed his face as he licked clean the plate; 'pass on thanks to Rama,' Supermoon said and went to sleep while me hunked into a sofa. We went for an early morning walk -- LIC Colony and Assisi grounds; on the closed gates of the Management Development Centre (LIC) sat a bharadwaj, Lady or Gent, we were not sure; from behind a tamarind tree we watched, the bharadwaj walking the top of the gate, pausing over some dried roti on a wall, nibbling at the breakfast, hopping over to a tamarind and away; for about seven minutes we observed from about five feet; we came into the open and the bird did not fly away; this November, LIC Colony seems to be holding a sizable lot of bharadwaj with their hoarse calls. 'Been years since I had a relaxed morning, watching birds, earring their calls .....'said Supermoon preparing to go. 'Where to,' me asked? 'Where else but to a bank to stand in the queue for some cash, not for the hundi and priests, but for my lunch. Cant tax Rama, who also will be in some bank branch,' said Supermoon. 'Will the banks have some TV sets beaming the South Africa-Australia Test match? asked Supermoon; ' the match is over, South Africa has won,' me replied; 'so no cricket?' Stars, planets, fates stood cashless. 

A banking tale...

Working in the Times of India in the 70s, journalists were paid in cash. Afternoon, on the last day of the month, an attender would walk into the newsroom with named, pay packets in a wooden tray; distribute them to journalists (me got a Rs.400 pay packet as a Journalist Trainee), take their signatures on a register, and that was it. After payback of loans, me started the month with Rs.200 and went back to money lenders by the middle of the month; an ever revolving debt. Me never went to a bank, had no bank account, at the end of the month lived on borrowings or on food served at press conferences and seminars.....life jogged along. Like the Kamal Hasan times in silent film Pushpak; a likeable film; there is no dated feeling; he and the beggar on the footpath never go to a bank, are always in cash, there is not a shot of a bank, life is a laugh; currencies come and go; no IT officials, no Modi surgical strikes; chuckled watching it on youtube in the night; simpler times. In 1976 got married and Rama opened the first bank account at Canara Bank, Dombivili East branch; appa took her to open the account; me avoided the bank; the account got transferred to Borivili and she holds to it for old days' sake; for some delicious memories of never having more than Rs.50 in the savings account; today Rama runs the ATMs, talks easily of credits and debits; does not write cheques; swipes cards buying sarees and sweets and samosas; me am not into it having never gone near an ATM machine; financial powers rest with Rama; am in a fright, scared (cant explain) of banks and bankers. Modisation of currency has not unnerved Rama. My paternal grandfather, a Devarajan, a broke temple priest at Suchindram temple, never heard of banks, probably never saw a bank branch living in Ashramam village; Kannadi Vakil Swami, maternal grandfather, a lawyer without case papers in Kottarakara, did not have a bank account; but he talked of bank and bank accounts as amma retailed financial histories of me generation. 'Pichchakkara (beggars)', she used to exclaim with an odd tear wriggling. Kannadi Vakil Swami, Thatha, promised to pay all during banking hours, when he got pumpkins and raw bananas as fees from broke clients. My grandmothers, well, resided in kitchens. A fixed deposit of Rs.20,000 from Calcutta times is alive on Rama's name in Axis Bank; that my mother got from appa, she passed it on to Rama and the lady has tossed it to son Ganesh .... a family loom, lone family loom. None can touch it. Rama will not allow it.