A Song 108

Aji scratchy
as food art, artistry
in pickle jars,
gets patchy.
From the morning
she wedded
in Alleppey,
for 40 years and more,
sambhar,
avial,
thoran
spiders the imagination
woven in Sreevatsam.
Slips there are
these times;
a Tata salt grain more;
fingers chipped
chopping vegetables,
coffee,
a suggestion of waste,
imperfections of
an enthusiasm.
Ajoba suggests a cook.
Aji is in a no.
Could snap her
wedding,
her
loving. 

My dear Kuttappai...

My dear Kuttappai,

Me wants to see you, Kuttappai, your grandfather, Valiyappachhai and Ottal (The Trap), the Malayalam film about you and Valiyappachhai. Rama also liked it. She comes from Allapuzzha and knows Vembanadu kayal and Kumarakom and Kuttanad. Today me saw a white-fronted kingfisher at the Vazira temple pond in the morning in far away Mumbai and that's not the same as a white-fronted kingfisher on a bamboo pole in the deep waters of your kayal. Living in Vembadandu kayal with Valiappachhai, a kingfisher for you may be a laugh. Me knows nothing of birds, rice, fish, waters, wind, night skies, sunrise, stars having lived in cities with electricity, cars, mobiles.... Perhaps, Ottal is the Malayalam film in recent years from Kerala without bikes, sex, mobiles, cars ... and all that; it is of kayals to which me brother in law Hari Gopalakrishnan took us one entire day in a boat, a motorised boat. Me just got your letter written to Valiyappachhai. Me never had a grandfather like your Valiyappachhai. No grandfather stories. 'Aarengilum padichhittano kuyil padunnanuthu (Did a kuyil learn singing at a school?), you ask and the film director Jayaraj let goes. Me had read Vanka, the Chekov delight, on which Ottal is based. Me read it again. Me do not know whether we will ever meet. But its worth saying Hullo. When you grow up read Vanka with Valiyappachai. Vanka is the next best after living a childhood with a grandpa in the kayals. Do not know if this letter will reach as letters do not arrive at Kuttanad. Me have posted it with an address: Kuttappai, Kuttanadu, Vembanadu kayal.

Ottal is that sort of film, we saw on TV (Mami film festival). Jayaraj and cameraman, MJ Radhakrishnan are poets; no camera has shot Kuttanad as lyrically as MJ Radhakrishnan; possibly, Kuttanad looks better on films than live. Songs in simple lines evoke a simple life and me doubts whether all that will be lost. Perhaps, the film could have wound down with Valiyappachai furiously ploughing the waters in a country boat after handing over Kuttappai to a child recruit. The old man says wryly: 'Avan padikkan poi, jeevikkan padikkan poi (Gone to learn, learn living). Yes, Malayali imagination is alive. Perhaps, Jayaraj has placed Malayalam films beyond Adoor Gopalakrishnan. And that's something. Hugs for Ashanth K Sha as Kuttappai and Kumarakom Vasudevan as Valiyappachhai. Durga and Apu in Pather Panchali, Swami in Malgudi Days and Kuttappai in Ottal .... a legacy me has been lucky to witness. Now a request to Jayaraj: Camera track Ashanth K Sha... like Ray and Trauffat. Nanni (Grateful). 

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.