Strangers in the train : Murakami Style

7 minutes means a lot in a daily routine. By 7 minutes one can miss the metro, one can alter the morning schedule, one can mix the faces of the fellow passengers; Life can change. Most of us do not like missing those 7 minutes. We don't like being late; we don’t like having our well prepared lives altered in any way. There is some sense of soothness in the daily chores, a kind of rhythm which reminds us of the world around. To be sure it is still the same place we last checked in; we need the boredom. It is difficult accepting change in anyway.

I am a daily passenger and I travel for hours for daily commute. One needs hobby to spent these hours. I somehow never developed the habit of listening to music. It never made sense to me, having the blast coming from tiny little things. I would see thousands of people getting lost in this noise. I somehow could not get myself into this.

Most of the people don't notice things happening around. Some say nothing special ever happens. I cant argue with that. There is always a sense of uniformity in everyone in the metro. Everyone wears clothes, everyone has a bag, everyone is tensed and everyone is rushing. Nothing exciting ever happens.

Maybe we don't look enough.

I spend hours staring at the sky; the sky is always lot more calmer than the crowd inside the metro. I love the way how colours of the sky always have a story to tell, There are scores of birds diving in and out of sky creating beautiful aerial shows. If I am not gazing at the sky, then I am sometimes listening to conversations. Conversations sometimes tend to be boring, most of the times repetitive. It's amazing the amount of mundane and repetitive conversations human beings are trained to deal with on a daily basis. As an observer most of the times, I don't get to chose my performers. I become their observer sheer out of luck. Some people enlighten me, most disappoint.

I have been reading Harumi Murakami for last few weeks. This was a desperate attempt to slow down my brain's deterioration in the metro journey. A flat hard bound black book helps me cut of from the rest of the noise around me. These noises are neatly divided into two source: the humans and the non humans. Both of them are without aim and mostly nuisance. As someone had once rightly stated “I wish I could control my hearing devices and go off on mute mode”. Murakami 's book is currently playing the role of mute device. I start reading : and before I know I am reaching the destination. Time and Noise both lose their significance or as stated in the world of Murakami, they lose their essence. It keeps travelling in two and fro movements.

Going and Coming in and out of Murakami is bit of harrowing experience . I am engrossed in his work, am going though his journeys and then out of nowhere, I hear a sound at the far end. And slowly my brain starts tracing the source of it. And then zapped into the real world. I used to get sad, an immense amount of sadness would dawn upon me on this realization. In the crowd one could not look sad, even though nobody really looked on the faces. Slowly got used to this time travel or even better as Aisha would say: this was my entry point to my third level. I could get in whenever I felt like and get out whenever heard a noise at the end of the tunnel.

7 minutes where about to change, something. Reading Murakami has its own defects. The magical realism starts spreading into your parallel lives. One starts craving for those things , even starts justifying the imaginary world created. I start looking for miracles.

7 minutes and I was late today. Everything behind time, I was no more interested in the sky. I was pissed at the birds for not getting the formation right. Passengers looked uglier and noises became unbearable. Murakami smiled at me from this world to another. I refused to enter the third level that day. I just had him next to my body.

Staring at people, I realized another soul staring at the sky. People don't stare, people look at things. Their eyes are always drifting. Its as if eyes always are in a hurry, there is so much to see. I have sometimes caught people staring at me. I don't mind that. But they always revert their eyes. Eyes are always moving from one place to another. But she was staring, regardless of time, regardless of space. The whole profile looked peaceful. Her hair long and curly,refused to be calm. Her eyes lost and her lips as straight as possible. She looked like lost in trance. I could not help but check her body, her feet, her hands and her beautiful little hands. It grasped my attention and I was awaiting for a big surprise. A fellow Murakami fan. She was reading one of his works; work I simply love. I really wanted to make sure I was right. I really stared hard at her book, I could see the grasps of her fingers getting tightened around the book. She was nervous and I was excited. Was it really possible ; a fellow Murakami fan looking at the sky at the same moment as I was involved in the same process. Maybe not in my world, but in Murakami's world it was totally possible. Maybe it only happened in Murakami's world.

I struggled to keep my nerves under control. I really wanted to know if she liked the book, did she like the protagonists, what did she think about it? Could she sing for me the song in the novel? I was bubbling with questions, unable to control my stare. With my body getting excited, my stare did become incomprehensible. I could see her pupils staring at me and increasing in size.

7 minutes late that day and I was standing face to face with a Murakami's fan. In ordinary world this was no miracle, nothing extra ordinary happened, there were no magic moments. But I could not help feeling excited about the prospects of talking to her. She was some metres away and it felt like miles away. She suddenly had this immense power over me, that I could feel my feet going numb.

I gathered all the courage of the world and went and dropped in a hello. It is not easy saying a Hello in the world of metros. One has to manoeuvre through a lot many faces, a lot many thoughts. One has to side away one's own thoughts,the thought of encountering a stranger. It is tough in its simplest way. It is no easy job talking to a person.

So hello it was, and she still did not smile. She thrust her book inside her bag and awaited my reply. I continued my monologue, How I loved that book, How I am a big fan of Murakami and how I had to drop in a Hello. It would not make any sense in this world, but as Murakami fans know,it did make sense in his world. That was the only driving force I had myself going. Murakami would have made sure that his characters dropped in a Hello.

My rambling eased her tensions, She smiled, she understood my craziness about the book. She smiled further and let me unnerve my fears. She was a patient listener and I could say she was glad that someone spoke so long about Murakami. She confessed how the book had left a mark on her, how she was trying to re-read the book in every sense possible. The part of staring at sky was an attempt to understand his world. I was only glad to hear her version of Murakami.

We had a total of 7 minutes for all this. It never occurred to either of us to ask each others names. It was not important. The discussion was about Murakami and somehow it was complete in its own way. She got off the same platform as mine. I had never seen her on this platform and somehow I had the intuition that I would never see her in future either. We continued our conversation fully aware of the fact that we might never see each other.

She ended the conversation on the note that it was wonderful meeting someone who was equally in love with his worked. I fully agreed with her, in my heart of heart wishing she would ask my details. She did not. I did not feel the need to ask her contact details, this is how Murakami worked. You had to give coincidences some credit, serendipity had its own role to play.

7 minutes and that day felt so different. In a way beautiful and complete. I had done things I would have normally not done. Talked to a stranger and had a beautiful conversation about an author. I did not make a friend , instead found a beautiful soul.

It's wonderful to realise that there are more beautiful souls out there somewhere.  

Little bit of space, little bit of thought

A friend of mine started the day saying, women are risk averse, we don’t like taking 'risks'. we calculate and avoid risks. We only move accordingly. If only we had taken more risks, if only we had faced our fears more, life might have been different.

She was quoting Nivedita Menon ( one of the Indian feminists) who have been ferociously arguing that women need to reclaim public spaces, they need to get out and take back their rights.

This statement and Menon's arguments have left an impact on me . I have always considered myself pretty bold compared to my counterparts in the given social set up. I always assumed I had faced more challenges and did feel that I had crossed the binaries of gender. I was also aware of the fight I was fighting to seek my freedom, but it was really difficult for me to accept that I was being calculative while doing all these things. That is, I was still being aware of the risks involved, and would always avoid the risks. I would not just jump into any situation just because I felt so. I was always calculating. I would never venture into public spaces,even if I craved for parks, I would not go there alone. I was fighting, but I was cornered and as I have said before in my blogs,the fear was instilled inside my own body. There were no eyes to avert, no gossips to avoid. I had the parameter and the risks calculating devices within my body. It was always ticking.

Some women in Delhi hardly ever go to public spaces. By public spaces,I mean the parks, footpaths, gardens,monuments or any common open space where people could sit and chat. I am restricting the women here to middle and upper class women. This group has been shifted to cafés, malls and shopping areas. This is the space that has been created for them as the public spaces which are safe, even though these spaces might be expensive and not always available.

There is still a big chunk of women who still venture out to those public spaces which somehow does not resonate the essence of safety. The parks, footpaths, gardens and monuments are visited by some women, some with family , some as part of their work, some might use them as shelter. They still tread these so called unsafe places. These are women who belong to the lower economic strata of the class structure. So what makes them more 'risk taking' while others happily corner themselves into these limited and expensive options ?.

I recently joined a survey initiative regarding women's safety on roads in Delhi. I conducted a survey in Nehru place regarding women's safety in the surrounding areas. Nehru place is a commercial hub which is thronged by dozens of people who visit it on daily basis for work purposes. These transactions are mainly around electronic equipment. It was difficult for me to find women there. There were very few women on the streets, plaza or the open area.

While conducting this survey I came across various interesting anecdotes which in a way, made me re-think on the idea of 'safety' that I have always considered somehow universal. There were women from different class who were part of this crowd we were about to question. My colleague suggested that we should take the views of the women hawkers also. At this point the answers to the questions somehow became obscure for me. The questions themselves became redundant in a way For example, in the beginning of the survey, we were asking questions regarding usage of mode of transport, air pollution and length of distance a women is willing to walk without being scared, ( these are some of the questions that somehow were thought to be important for women's safety). We found out that most of the women who had come for shopping there, or who were working were either dropped by their partners or were using private mode of transport. Their idea of safety was pretty much restricted to the usage of their private vehicles or using expensive mode of transport. They did not expect any public amenities to alleviate their distress regarding safety aspects.

On the other hand, the women hawkers when they were questioned, their sorrows were very different. They were far more risks taking and far more dependent on public amenities for their public safety. For these women, questions regarding air pollution and length of distance they are willing to walk alone, were totally useless and I thought so bit cynical too . Some of them found the question of length of distance willing to walk, but amusing as they were walking miles to reach their homes. They did not care much about the pollution as such. They knew it was very unsafe but still had to walk. Did they have an option ? They had to earn and they simply could not afford the expensive safer mode of transport. They just could not be calculative as some other women out there. They had to take the risks.

So this brings me back to my question, why is that women from lower strata of economic ladder willing to tread into the public spaces; are willing to sit in public parks whereas middle/upper class women are willing to lose their claim to the public places? Should it not be the other way round, the middle/upper class women who are more educated, independent, and liberated in a typical sense be claiming their rights to public spaces. Why are they happily resorting to the cornering , why are they satisfied to the limited spaces which are being produced by some capitalistic ventures?

In response to these questions, I have been told that if the women from lower strata are provided with enough access to resources even they might not venture outside. They might restrict themselves to cafes and malls.

Is there something more to the 'risk taking' nature of ours?

I have been told that every day when a man leaves his house, he is aware of the fact that he might be humiliated , he might be killed,or he might not return back. He still goes out, takes the risk and has been doing this for a long long time. On the other hand, women are mostly restrained to some private spaces, fully aware of the fact that if they venture out, they might get raped or assaulted , women don't even reach the part of murder, for women rape is the ultimate, and this has been a good enough risks to keep women outside the public spaces and inside the private space.

To be continued ….

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There have been days I have wished, if only I could go and lie with a book in a park and stare at the sky. I like the feel of big large sky looking at me. I have not done so, I do think about it a lot. The stars shining, and the big big sky.

.

Single Ladies

All the single ladies......

I remember dancing over Beyonce’s song, it was bouncy and exciting. All the single ladies were indeed dancing, but it had a caveat, it was begging for a ring, it sought for a companionship, it was dancing towards the ring...

All the single ladies

25 and single and not at all ready to settle. This might be a story about one girl, two girls, many girls, or a whole sector of our population. One is 25, one is single , and one suddenly finds herself in the marriage market.

Let me give a background scenario first, This is the story from India. This is story of Indian girl, who just turned 25, finally realized it is awesome being a woman and finds herself in the marriage market . I say marriage, cos we don't date just for companionship, we don't date just for fun, we are always seeking an end, a purpose. Maybe something to do with our Indian philosophy and karma; maybe the fact that one of the ashrams, 25-50 years age group is meant for family and companionship. So please bear in mind all these factors before judging me and my friends, or even sympathising with us. We just exist with all of this as a backdrop.

I see myself walking on the road, I see myself dreaming, I see myself smiling over a cute guy, I see myself curious about future. So many girls spent most of their metro rides talking to some cute person somewhere, the smile with which they reply to some messages is too adorable to ignore. The hundreds of girls who spent hours on talking on phone while supposedly walking. This is what I see around myself. The bursting romance economy, the joys of so many people going gaga over so many tragic romantic songs.

what I don't see is the marriage market, but I feel the presence, I hear about it, I cant seem to ignore it and its looming all over.

It is not a great time to be 25 on the streets of India, you are either too old or either too young. You are always asked about your future and it is always about a guy. (I am sorry for restricting my story to heterosexual reality). Most of my friends are going through similar phase. I wish there was secret society of 25s where everyone could meet up and rant away their sorrows.

I am not against the marriage, I am extremely happy for couples who happily get married. Remember the focus is on 'happily get married'. I have these wonderful conversations where people say how much they long to be in a relationship. It is beautiful to be with someone, it is beautiful to see the dreams together. It might be even beautiful to be part of this beautiful dream. But not everyone has a bollywood story. 25 and not yet kissed, 25 and not yet in a relationship, 25 and forced to get married, 25 and many more sagas. These are some of the common stories. And people genuinely want to get out of their different stories.

How do we get out?

You look out and think about where have all the men gone? C'mon, they need to be somewhere. I don’t want to be introduced to a friend's friend or family friends. Why cant I just start a wonderful conversation with a stranger. No, I am not a fan of making friends of facebook, what I am seeking is real life friendships , real life companionships. And I am not ready for marriage and so are billions of people out there.

Tricky right, but how is that in this population of billions we are still unable to find our soul mates. I remember once a German friend of mine telling ,me, C'mon Jas, in this population of yours, it might be so difficult not getting into a relationship. They are just so many of you out there. But is it true? If there are so many out there ? Why cant we just talk to them, why cant we just drop in a hi, why is there always a wait for someone to start a conversation?

I have thought thousands of different reasons for why exactly people get into marriages, my all time favourite would be this short story written by Prem Chand, he gives 31 reasons as to why men get married. Some of the funny ones are like,

• I did not like coming back to empty houses
• everyone around was getting married so even I got married
• needed someone who would tell me I am smart

I have thought about similar reasons for women. Why would women want to get married? We all look for this perfect Ryan Gosling and yet we sit on our asses and just wait. We are all bursting with life and we sit and watch it pass by. I am asking for a life where we decide and demand our lives.

So single and not ready to settle, might be a dangerous path to tread. I finally reached a stage in life where I think so I am falling in love with myself. I am developing a strong taste for good things about life. Finally doing things that I love and I would happily seek for companionship.

and it feels good saying this.

Let me look around and find some cute guys, flirt with some and maybe smile a bit. Let me live my life a bit and let me start making my dreams come true.  

Beyonce has to wait. I might just go ahead and find my Ryan Gosling :) 

Dilli ki ladki, Dilli ki Metro

Women's only [in Pink].

I grew up hating pink, it was girly and then when I became a women I was told pink is cute. I do agree it is cute.

I see throngs of people rushing to the metro. I missed this rush of Delhi metro. I see thousands and thousands of them. I see a section of women only section devoid of Delhi men. Ah! Women's only, and that too in Pink. What a relief.

For people who are not accustomed to Delhi men, we do need some crash course. They are bit different. Little bit of hooting and a little bit of whistling thrown in. Delhi has a past for these men.

So I was new to this women's only section. I was used to travelling with people from other sex. I was used to being alert all the time. I was always defensive. There were always some hustle and bustle and I was always pushed. But it was nothing to do with men inside, it was just the part of being a crowd, a crazy crowd.

This women's only was different. Yes, there was a crowd, there was pushing and lack of space. But there was a sense of calmness. As though we were all united by a sisterhood, some sort of solidarity. I saw women dressing up, touching on their make ups in the metro now. I saw women generally being relaxed. I myself was no more tensed or alert. There was nothing to worry. I could notice it was generally used more by younger generation. The ones who were dressed up; Who had higher chances of being stared at, This was like a heaven for them.

So I made it a point to travel only in women's section. I ran to get to the coaches at time, I stood in for extra minutes even if there was space in general category. I enjoyed this freedom in this Utopian sense of coach for women. I was not aware how I was teaching myself a fear of the other sex.

I used to see the men section sometimes, it was always packed. Well Delhi metro was generally packed, so it was not like a new thing but this time the view looked different. Slowly the number of women in general category were reducing. Yes, more and more women were opting for women's only. We could see some men standing at the middle of the two coaches and staring at this Utopian world. Yes, it had loads of women of different sizes and shapes.

Michel Foucault, a French philosopher had once mentioned about a phenomenon called panoptican. Panopticon discusses about having a security vigilance write inside the victim. Its an art where instead of looking at the inmates from outside, one looks at them from centre, from within.

And never realized but Foucault's panopticon was inside me now. I would interpret him in my sweet own way. I was developing my own check system where the ladies coach was the safe world and the general coach was unsafe. No one said this, it was not written anywhere. There were no laws about it. Over time I just realized I had instituted a panopticon right inside me. I was scared, and I was scared of my own mind.

General coach was always an option, I could always enter it. But somehow with time, I could no more enter. Yes, a bit of schizophrenic identity might be thrown in, but I was not ready. I had started becoming too relaxed in my comfort zone. I could no longer enter the general category. There was a fear of those men, I started developing this fear that they would stare. I was becoming handicapped, I needed my social protectionism all along. Yes, I was all happy in the women's only section, but it never tackled the issue of woman feeling safer. I had imbibed the fear in me instead imbibing a respect in them .

So what was the need for the protectionist attitude? Did it really help protect me?

Was it not downplaying the purpose behind it?

I did not feel liberated, I just felt more handicapped.

With time I developed a fear of entering a general category where I was a usual commuter before. Now I feel like I am encroaching an untouched territory. I always feel like I am being gawked on. The protectionism played the other way round. The panopticon instead of being kept outside in the open; was kept inside my mind. The eyes I was trying to avert, were becoming my own eyes.

2 months and I still travel in ladies coach. There are moments in the rush of the day, when I am at ease, when I am not worried being harassed, or raped in these women coaches, and then there are moments I do look around to get a glimpse of a cute guy. And then I go out of that safety box and get mixed in the crowd.

Now days I spend some time of my life fighting with a guy telling him to go to the general category. Sometimes its one and sometimes I see half of the coach being taken over men. I ask them, tell them, fight with them and in some instances even resorted to calling the driver. I am always stared with a perplexed look. And the usual dose of questions thrown at me, Tumahara kya jaata hai, aapke paas to seat hai, there are other guys also?

I feel let down, when I see women giving me those stares, when women justify the men standing in the ladies coach. Their silence hurts me, and gets me thinking maybe I should just adopt apathy. One person will not be able to make a change, how long will you fight.

How do I instill the message in them and not in me ? How do I tackle this fear without foregoing my ease. These are questions I have been struggling to answer.

I want the other coaches to answer. The colours other than pink to respond this time.  

Room of one's own

Room of one's own : Virginia Woolf

I remember reading her in narrow lanes of an old library. It was an old book; tattered pieces. I was aware of the scepticism I felt regarding feminists books. Woolf was ready to argue for women and her rights. But I was feeling dejected with life and I wanted to read some fierce article seeking my place, my thoughts and my views. Woolf did not disappoint me at all.

By the end I was convinced I needed a room of my own.

This was three years ago, when I had read her work. Three years later I still never got the room, I remember coming back and staring at my parents room. I went and stared at the kitchen and stared at it for good 10 minutes. The kitchen, where the most important work was done : cooking. I would be there one day , trying to hold on to some thought.

But now I needed a room. A room not just devoid of disturbance, a room devoid of responsibilities, a room devoid of cynicism. In short I was aware of the fact that I was demanding a room of thoughts.

I am still romanticising this room, but am sure this room exists somewhere.

Why do I need a room, for the fact that I am not a painter, I do pretend to be one sometimes in my mind and sometimes in my life, but no where near being chaotic and messy. I do try my hand at writings sometimes, I write for 10 minutes and then I see my words and my mind travelling to an another zone, yes I have a small attention span, so there goes the art of writing. But I still sometimes  crave for this so called room where I could just lie down and stare at wall and think of these great great great thoughts.

There have been time when I think of thoughts, and then by the time I finish all my work and come back to write it, it melts away. As someone rightly said there is something about a great idea, one needs to write it down as soon as it is planted. Or it will be lost in the valley of thoughts.

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

So I take care of myself, I take care of home, I take care of food, I take care of family. No, no; this is not a Victorian set up . This is what happens in everyday life.

The idea keeps floating. And one keeps holding on to this great thought which floats around. I am not the first one who is going through this, Kamala Das had to wait for night to set in to write, Jane Austin had to hide her manuscripts.I am way better than these women, I am allowed to think and I am allowed to write also. Just that I am not able to find the time to write it. Excuses, petty excuses.

I am not stating anything which is out of the ordinary, these things happen all the time, but what does not happen is repetition of these problems in the 21^st century . Nothing has changed with time. Women are still playing the roles of home-makers; With time, we have become even more super-human.We are playing double and triple roles. I don’t think so we ever inherited any room. We inherited multiple rooms with multiple complexities. Our roles and duties increased.

Woolf when she was debating for a room of her own, I repeat she was not seeking for space, she was seeking for an idea where women were the producers of thoughts. Where women instead of being the care-takers, were the Einstein of their times. Women were not responsible for a man's success, woman themselves were success.

I still have not found the room.  

Quotations from some lovely novels .

I learned this art from Akira Kurosawa. He used to take down notes of novels he read. Mostly Dostoevsky .i used to read , read a lot and then I used to yearn for some lines. Writing down these lines helped. As though one preserves these lines for sometime with oneself. It freezes the time. 

these are some of my favourite lines from the following novels 

 Sugar Street : Naguib Mahfouz

• My Dear Coffee-house, you are part of me. I have dreamt a lot and thought a lot inside you. What value does nostalgia have?Perhaps the past is the opiate of the romantic . It is most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a sceptical mind.
• When we are in love, we may resent it, but we certainly miss love once its gone.
• he had been his drinking partner.
• The most wretched thing that could happen in this world, would be having to ask in one step-hour one day, "where am I"?
• a woman does not need to read or write unless she is exchanging letters with a lover.
• I don’t care for sick romanticism
• independence is not the ultimate goal. It is a way to obtain people's constitutional, economic and human rights.
• Artists too must learn their share of science. It is no longer just for scientists.
• I am a tourist in a museum where nothing belongs to me, I am merely a historian. I don’t know where I stand. You observe and ponder everything with total freedom acting like a tourist
• I am certain that I am miserable , despite having created a life that assures me both intellectual pleasures and bodily delights.
• You have liberated your mind from every fetter, but your body is bound with chains. Your body, at-least your body was created to be a teacher.

Notes from Heart of darkness : Conrad.

• No, I don’t like work . I had rather laze about and think of all fine things that can be done. I don’t like work – no man does but I like what is in the work, the chance to find yourself. Your own reality- for yourself. Not for others, what no other man ever knows.
• There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself, but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, water and silence.
• Intimacy grows quickly out there,I knew him as well as it is possible for any man to know another
• he had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there.
• The last words were : the horror! The horror!
• Pull of the primitive upon the men
• what white civilization is doing in a black Africa, sine in effect,its veneer soon vanishes in situations, where colonialists are far from their own European environment.

Mediations : Rene Decarte

• usefulness and greater appearance of truth, which shows us man naked. Empty aware of his natural weakness. Fit to accept outside help from high.
• Our senses frequently deceive us
• what do we know ( que sais je) ? The implied answer is very little.
• Favours conservatism due to ,imitation in our native intelligence : faith over reason
• anyone who regards themselves more intelligent from others take refuge in scepticism. When they find nothing in the commonly accepted philosophy to satisfy them and cant see any alternative which is more true.
• Waldeinsamkeit : the feeling of being alone in the woods

Notes from Norwegian woods: Murakami

• I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend.
• But if I do have the time, I will come to understand you, better than anyone else in the world
• I want you to always remember me. Will you remember that I existed and that I stood next to you here like this ?
• A map that shows too much can sometimes be useless
• have you ever be in love? Never
• that has not had the baptism of time
• when you are surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up
• we had completed one full cycle of the seasons, only dead stay 17 forever
• I think you got me all wrong
• the true enemy of this bunch was not state power, but lack of imagination
• way more than I need. I wish I could give you some to help you sleep
• you have to find those 'episodes'
• I have got pretty good intuition, I am hopeless as a logical thinker, though
• you should not trust anyone who calls himself an ordinary man
• because we would have to pay the world back what we owed it
• it was an awfully long day
• that can be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh
• I sucked the music right out of it
• what does sine and cosine mean \?
• Peace. Peace.
• Polaroid camera.
• Its good when food tastes good, its kind of like proof that you are alive.
• Did you ever run away from home, wanatbe . Never. Why not ? Lack of imagination. It never occurred to me to run away.
  Notes from Little Prince
• They always need explanations
• I have seen them at very close quarters which I am afraid has not greatly enhanced my opinion of them
• I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously
• straight ahead of oneself, one can not go very far
• grown ups love figures
• it is sad to forget a friend, not everyone has had a friend.

Notes from Wedding Song: Naguib Mahfouz.

• No one is crueler than an idealist. Who is responsible for all the carnage in this world ? Idealists.
• Why don't we keep track of the happy moments, so that afterwards we will believe them?
• And the people are clapping, they are clapping!
• So when does one become a whore?
  After getting raped.
  After sleeping with someone
  after developing a desire. When ?
• If these walls could speak they would tell you the most fantastic tales
• the dramas of the stage, with their heroes and victims, had moved into our house.
• I used to make lengthy speeches about these things to myself in my solitariness
• A playwright must learn about everything, the good and the bad. The theatre had its fountain-head in wickedness
• It is unfortunate that life of the soul can not do without money
• Abu-al-Ala-al-Ma'arry ( 973-1057) born near Aleppo was a blind poet-philosopher who is said to have been a sceptic, free thinking and materialist.
• What is life? It is the struggle of soul against materialism.
• The battle in mind between the erotics of Omar Khayyam and epic romance of Magnun Leila.
• He is going to be the author of tragedy, how beautiful, that anyone could be virtuous these days, his eyes are weak, so he cant see what is going around him .
• Could there be a playwright without love?
• Failure in art is death itself- that is the way we are made and art, in my case, was made not just art but the surrogate for action that an idealist like me is unable to take.
• A world where a man could travel lightly, immersed in art alone.   

Cairo dairy..

Walk like an Egyptian!!!

For starters, Egypt is called as Misr in Arabic. Remember this! You would see Egypt some places, but most of the places use Misr. And it helps knowing this basic fact. The other two important words : La ( no) and Aiywa ( yes). And you will survive, if you want to live, learn how to read numbers from 1 to 10. They look different but very easy to learn. Once you grappled these words, you are ready for Misr ;)

some of us might have heard this song, some might have even tried walking like an Egyptian,

but very few would have walked like an Egyptian in Egypt. and here comes the first first myth breaking :you can not walk like them, you have to run, you have to get petrified, you need to handle the cars, the two-wheelers,the loads of people trying to cross the road and in between all of this, the smart salesman :)

Welcome to one day in Cairo, I would not say Egypt, cos I have been told Cairo is plain crazy, the

rest of the county is better :) but somehow, after 2 weeks, the craziness is catching on me and I am able to handle this madness around :)

So where should I start ? Let me start by breaking the Myths about Cairo:

1) you will not find mummies everywhere, you will not see Pharaohs walking around, all those great stories about mummies are better in Hollywood, here life has other things to unfold...Mummies are there, but in the museums, in the pyramids, they have their respective places. Like any other country, its hidden away in its past. Its more intriguing for the foreigners, the locals smile about them. Ask an Egyptian about pyramids and they would say , yes wonderful rocks, and most of them have not seen it yet :)

2) Egyptians talk , and when I say I mean they TALK ABOUT POLITICS. Life starts and ends on this note. They love their politics and with the post -revolution scenario everyone talks about it.

And I am not talking about people sitting in the parliament , or the news channels or the academics. These people who come from different walks of life. Some are selling vegetables on the street,

some are passengers in a bus, somewhere are the bus-conductors, some are 14 year old boys and some are 68 year old women. they all have opinions and they all are vocal about it.

3) Egyptians are lazy. One of the first things I was told, when I landed on this part of the world. their days start at 1pm, ( yes they do not know hats getting up at 6 am:))

and they go on till 3 in the morning. If you look at the weather here, I think this is the most sensible thing to do. The mornings are hot and evenings are cool. Its great to work in the evenings. The heat

can sap your life out even though the temperature might say 16 degrees as forecast. They are just laid back, who love going at their own pace. You cant make them move fast, their sense of race comes only and I repeat only when they are driving..

4)You can die, while crossing a road in Cairo and I say this with a straight-face. There have been moments where I have stood half-an hour trying to figure out how to cross a particular street. Be it major roads, narrow lanes basically anything which has vehicles plying on it. You would see cars, dozens of them coming, you would not see red-,lights. I am yet to see some operational red-lights. There are police officers who just decide when to stop the on-going traffic. You have to depend on the whims of these officers. I get very happy on seeing them. They are the only ones who can stop the traffic. I have , had random strangers holding my hands and helping me cross the road. random guys stopping vehicles for me to cross the road. Sometimes cars have come dangerously close. I have seen old people crossing roads like its empty. I have seen young boys running across the major lanes. The way cars are parked is one more fascinating feature. They are just parked in the middle of the road. The roads are not so broad and yet you have cars parked on both the sides, so vehicles have to drive through these narrow roads. And forget about pedestrians.. I have met fellow pedestrians who walk with me. I might have walked miles by now. So I do consider myself an expert on this issue. You just need to navigate between the active vehicles, the parked vehicles, the running cats, the other pedestrians and the boys :)

5) travelling in a public transport : One of the cutest, craziest coolest experiences of my life. Buses here are 3 types : the big ones, the micro ones and the notorious mini vans. All of them

are dirt cheap, so don’t expect anything great. They would take you to your destination and they would entertain you. In between all of this, you would see different stories unfolding in front of your eyes. I once acted like the conductor of one of the mini vans. I was seated right next to the driver as I could not speak Arabic and I was entrusted with the duty of charging everyone for the tickets. I spent the whole journey collecting change and passing tickets to passengers. I genuinely thought he should share his earning for the day with me :) I have caught singing Arabic songs unconsciously, very loudly.. These journeys are long and sometimes taxing, but its a great way to see the city.

6)The weekends here are Friday and Saturday. Yes, they do not observe Sunday as a holiday. something different for me, and something I am still learning. the Fridays here are spent in prayers and Imam would preach for some hours. Having a Masjid, right outside my window did give me free access to some of his Arabic lectures. Not knowing the language, did not stop me from me listening to him.

7) The Cats: I can not believe this : but yes they love cats. A country of cats. I have never seen these many cats in my whole life. Maybe there is history, I know they were worshiped , but the number of cats on the roads is just unbearable ( I do not like cats, so yes I am biased), but they are there. The young ones, the fat ones, the long ones, the small ones. Even the kittens know they belong or I must say they own the territory. Cats should be declared as the national animal here. Maybe it is the national animal.

8) The Food : Egyptian food is basically meat. Bring the meat out, and you would not see anyone even touching the vegetables. As the famous saying goes, vegetables are meant for small animals :) The first word I learned in Arabic was ahamadullah ( which basically means god is great, and also signifies I am FULL!). Cos Egyptians do not understand the meaning of getting full. and they eat, and eat and eat and hog :) and eat again. Yes they love their shai ( tea), be it scorching heat,any weather, they would drink shai. Egyptians are family people, they flock around in numbers, in communities, together. They always are welcoming to guests.

so there some of the things .. i can go on... kullu Misr magnoon :)

A Search for Oasis

ISLAMIC AND COPTIC CAIRO

The Gift

He would have liked a daughter. Someone he could play with, someone he could kiss, someone he could cuddle with. He wanted someone to love. I was not the one. No one could be the one. It had to be a part of him.

It was raining again in Hanley and it was as usual settling the scores with the city. The buildings were soaking in the sadness of the city. It was sharing the grief of the people. This city had seen a lot of pain, but over the years even the buildings had become immune to it. The buildings could not be blamed, they were brown in colour. There was nothing to be cheerful about, so they tried level reducing the pain by soaking in the dullness. It rained, the city wiped the silence, it rained again and city wiped the hints again. It was a constant battle the two were fighting for. Shikha liked this battle. She always felt she was part of this great epic, a mere silent spectator for whom this battle meant something.

And this time Shikha was not alone, she was going to deliver a child, and she really wanted it to be a girl. He would have liked it. The girl and Shikha had clearly understood each other. This was an act of love , a gift from someone who loved someone, a gift for someone who wanted to love someone and a gift which was to be loved. It was supposed to be a surprise. He hated surprises. He hated losing control of his life.

He had taught her to cry in the rain, it was the only way to share your life with nature. He used to believe that rain was a message from heaven. Rain had to pour, there was no way out, and we had to be part of this ceremony. Shikha wanted him to be romantic in the rain. To hold her, and tell her how much he loved her. She wanted him to speak, talk , say things, share. And this was all possible in the rain, after all rain wanted us to share.

But nothing. He had never once said he loved her. For that matter, loved anthing. He knew what love was. But he was not ready to trade it off with anything in the world. He wanted that for himself. He wanted that deseparetly. He never cried either in the rain.

Shikha never wanted a family, never wanted attachments. She was well verse with idea of love and was blindly in love with love. She never wanted to have children but had  dreamt of being pregnant. Even when she was with him, she would always have his hand on her stomach.She loved the glow she had on her cheeks, the idea of a bulging stomach, the idea of being loved, the idea of having a life within oneself, everything gave her a tingle. She had given a lot of thought to it. She had sorted out this well written script where she would get to play the lead. She loved the idea of it.

Shikha still remembered the first time she met him. He was in the library and she was scribbling down notes. He came over and took her for coffee. It was as simple as that. And within one hour of being with him, she was sure that she would carry his child one day. She wanted to. She wanted to have that bulge around her stomach. She had fixations about her body. She had always thought she would look good with her stomach out. After the first night, he had complemented her tummy and he told her one day that she would make a wonderful old lady.

Shikha had wonderful dreams that night.

And then he asked her to marry her and walked away from her life with the negatives of their lives. Shikha could not hold him back, he was looking for love and she was not the one. It was raining that day. She wanted to cry, but there were no memories to etch in her tears. She was unable to remember any romantic moments with him.She only remembered his touch and only craved for his body. She knew that she had to gift him. She had to give him the parting gift.

Dance like a Man

I remember reading the play: Dance like a Man, by Mahesh Dattani, about a man who wants to perform the dance Bharatnatyam . He is met with scorns and rebukes and he ends up mocking his partner, a female dancer saying that “men love watching her body and not the dance itself”.

I have often thought about this line.

In Indian context, most of the recent forms of formal dance are performed by female dancers, They do have male dancers but they are insignificant in numbers. However, if one counts the various non-formal dance forms, which includes the tribal as well other forms of dances like kathakali( masked dance) which have existed in Indian subcontinent for centuries one would find that most of these dance forms were male-dominated. These were more in the terms of theatre which were either used as story-telling or for crowd gathering.

On this note I would like to bring the readers to Cairo and Egyptian dance forms. I am yet to see a belly dance live. I have heard so much about it and have seen it in so many TV shows that I am dying to see it. But there is a disdain for women who perform these dances, these are considered to be women of desert and they are still seen as nomads. Belly dancing is still considered to a low class profession and is restricted to women from lower classes. This was in sharp contrast to the popular dance form Tanoura, which was performed by men. These are also people from lower class but they are considered as artists.

I was sitting in Cairo watching Tanoura dance and its similarity to Turkish Mevlana struck me. No doubt they were similar, other than the fact that one was fast and other slow, there was not much of a difference. And I got into my thinking mode... all these dance forms have similar notions, similar dance steps, even similar backgrounds. Both were performed by men. Note : I use similar and not same, because there was a BIG difference. Mevlana was meant to be prayer whereas Tanoura dance was more in the form of entertainment.

If one goes back into history of these dance forms, they were both formed along the lines of Sufi tradition. It is more in a devotional form, where the soul is considered to connected with spiritual world. Sufism is an offshoot of Islam which restricts dance and music, basically any sort of entertainment. The very fact that women are not seen as part of this tradition further signifies the male-dominating approach of this dance forms. There is an imposition of protection of women from the male gaze. It was fine for a man to be gazed and awed but women had to be protected.

However there are feminine aspects to it, one more factor which intrigued me. There were men who took the lead as female figures, and who pretended to dance like females. The dance tries to emulate the different aspects of life, and thus includes the feminine virtues of the dance forms. But why not women , why not just have women perform these dances ?

Was the protagonist in Mahesh dattani's play right in saying, “they just want to see your body, and not the dance” ?

When I was looking at the men performing this dance form, I did think women would have done better. These men were definitely graceful and some were very handsome , maybe it was my subconscious mind that wanted to see a women performing it. I love Kathak ( a dance form which involves a lot of twirling and dance steps) and I love watching women perform it. And I prefer women because they are beautiful and graceful. Maybe this is subconscious, maybe I was taught to appreciate and view women like that, and see men as strong and ungraceful.

I am well aware of the fact that I am leading on to the discourse of dance itself, maybe there is a history of dance, history of entertainment, but this is just a blog and no more a thesis.

The more regional dances I witness the more I fall in love with our past. We had such wonderful beautiful dance forms. Today, they are all restricted to some corners of tourist attraction. No one is interested in them any-more. These artists are dying a slow death. Their profession is dying. No one realizes  this is a culture-cide of a whole generation of work-ethics. Not everyone was meant to be doing 9-5 jobs. Not everyone was supposed to live a scheduled life. There were souls, who had transcended these boundaries. There are still souls who love art for the sake of art.

Maybe they do stare at her body, but what if she dances for herself.

Maybe we all should dance like a man, unaware of the stares and gaze.

Dance ,dance . Dance like a man.