no regrets

what delectable arrogance.

another

dragged new beginning, or an end. one can't tell one from the other. the centre seems to have disappeared somewhere in this mad sequence of jumping through hoops.

there should be a time-out option in life.

Nine minutes at the end of three years. Or two, that felt more like three.
Yet another Cambridge farewell. A hurried wish for a safe journey ahead, a photograph of packed boxes, and plans for future meetings.

Paris is not far, we know.

And yet, there's a sense of an end here. End of my post-Trinity years. Yes, I have moved myself (as evidenced even in our last conversation), but it never quite felt like moving. After all, you were here, and she was here, and we had our weekends.

'What's next?' is a quintessential Cambridge question – which many have failed to answer, and they were taken from their room in a hearse van through King's Parade at the age of ninety-three. For those that answered it, there was elsewhere.

There was, and always will be, Paris.

Here's to the next phase, you.

Godspeed.

ऐसा भी हमने देखा है अक्सर

रात कटे और सुबह न आये

the two worlds of cambridge

reading an abstract on the effects of steroid exposure to the rat brain on fear responses, and listening to the accordion player in the island across the cam. a group of people dancing around a barbecue grill. punts pass lazily by the river, while somewhere from deep within the library emanates this soft irregular sounds of fingers on keyboard.

the river separates the two worlds.

another postcard, four? five?

a late dinner by the pantheon, listening to the lonely bandoneon player playing old world tangos. me and him. i walk back in no hurry.

this stay is almost coming to an end. and my love for the city grows every day, and now it has seen a lot of me. if i believed in eternal life in the conventional hindu sense, as l asks me to believe, there's reason to trust that there are ties with this city that span multiple births.

strains of a string ensemble draw me to this otherwise unnoticed church. the basilica di san ignazio di loyola. ties across multiple births, indeed. i sit through an overwhelmingly beautiful rendition of beethoven's sixth, swirling over the eighty violins, and rising toward the intricately decorated spire.

divinity.

to think

that two and a half years of work, with all its sweat, blood and tears would end in a half-hearted smile within a pointless conversation.

postcard 4

the hospital where i work specializes in treating and housing patients with lifelong disabilities, most of them with severe brain damage. every other evening, at sundown, all the patients come out in their motorised chairs to the open quadrangle in front of the hospital. they number a little less than a hundred, and while they enjoy the evening breeze , there is always a local singer or musician playing for them.

the tragedy and the beauty of my evenings in this otherwise sterile enclosure.

postcards from rome

postcard 1

a tired egyptian mummy sits on a cheap plastic chair in a deserted piazza navona. the plastic glass for coins, now empty, rolls about in front.

postcard 2

sunset on the fontana di trevi.
again, and again, and again.

postcard 3

white seagulls on a deep blue night sky, circling above the colosseo.

barcelona

was absolutely beautiful, by the way. i never got to write about it. but what was quite surreal was the fact that i was reading 'city of djinns', this beautiful history of delhi's architecture, while sitting in roadside cafes and benches on la rambla, the road that runs through the heart of the city. given that one of the features that makes barcelona unique is its urban architecture (led by gaudi, among others); the stories of delhi's making, unmaking, and remaking provided an engaging backdrop. 

spring

'there's something in the air', m mentioned gravely, 'that's not quite conducive for working'. 

'spring', b quipped.

indeed. 

what else could account for this dogged resistance to finishing my paper, and writing here instead?

rain on the hills

sunset, barcelona

bring it on

that's the mood just before the crazy travels begin. here's hoping they don't stop me in barcelona airport tomorrow, for coughing. 

but shouldn't the first ever trip to spain be longer? perhaps no, given that my love affair with rome begun pretty much on the basis of a three day trip, during most of which it rained. 

desperately seeking

the boy who started writing his first peer-reviewed paper at three in the morning, one delhi insomniac summer.

एक नई कोशिश, एक नया अनुभव

आ गए उसी मोड़ पर जिसकी इंतज़ार थी। इस 'अंतरजाल' में अपनी राष्ट्रभाषा में लिख पाना कितनी खुशी की बात है।
भाषाओँ के संरक्षण के लिए (ख़ास तौर से छोटी भाषाओँ के लिए) गूगल द्वारा उठाये गए ऐसे कदम बहुत ही फायदेमंद साबित होंगे।

अब इस चित्रपट पर और भी तसवीरें बनाई जाएँगी, और भी रंगों का बहार आएगा। काश अपनी मातृभाषा में लिखने की सुविधा उपलब्ध होती!

E li, E li

A classic from Ofra Haza.

My God, My God

May these things never end: 
The sand and the sea

The rustle of the water 
The lightning in the sky

Man's prayer.

newfound eternity

in a way this hasn't really happenned before. we seem to have picked up eternity as a careless byproduct of a revolution that's swept most of the literate world within a span of less than a decade. online social networks have come a long way since the days of random oldworld chat forums, where very often one would choose strange identities, to talk with other strangers with stranger identities. these metastranger conversations did not last very long. soon there was reality, a force to reckon with. and all of a sudden, i could be myself, have photos of myself, and hobbies and writings, all up there on my profile for a whiz-through tour. if i have a few smart quotes in the profile, i am profound. if i have a few 'right' movies mentioned, and hopefully some good enough pictures - sometimes in black and white, some with me looking at a distance, i am deep and intense. alternatively, i can be the party animal, showing off my eighthundred and second friend how many gorgeous people i have been with in the last however many weekends of my life. and the astonishing variety of embarrassing acts and postures that i am happy to share with all these people i call friends on my network. all eighthundred two of them. 

but then you may say 'but i don't add people i haven't met in person'. as if, meeting someone in person (even once, in a random house party with eighty people) is enough for them to be on the billboard of your list of friends (thank god for the circles of privacy that are now coming around to the social networking sites, almost reflective of a new culture that's grappling with its own developing value systems). and as if one can not be lifelong friends with people who one hasn't met. in another world, there used to be penfriends, who one would almost avoid meeting, just to relish the mystery. 

but what has really changed is how we deal with the past in public. people die, but their profiles live on. relationships die, but the pictures live on. one foresees a time in about a decade or even less, when, at any given timepoint, a sizeable number of people on a social networking site would be dead. arguably, none of us would have the exact knowledge of our lifespan, so that we can close every account before we die. we would have to be waiting for their 'inactivity' period (which ranges widely between different sites) to kick in, for our profiles to be deleted. and it is possible that other people visiting and commenting on someone's profile could very much count as 'activity' on a profile - giving a degree of eternity to the profile. for associations lesser than life and death, there would always be concrete remnants of the past that one has to carry. through photos, notes, scraps, tags and wall posts. how much of it should we share? and does my sharing something right now necessarily mean that i would want to share it five years from now?

the culture must find its own value system, its own parameters, its own limits. and it will only survive if it mimics human life as closely as possible. the age of staged conversations between staged profiles is bound to be short-lasting.

birthdays

a few weeks back i attended a seventieth. of a friend who's been the quintessential bohemian. from a gancho in the patagonian desert to a cowboy in australia, and a gypsy in southern spain with nothing much worldly other than a flamenco guitar. stuff people would make a film out of. and yet, sadly or otherwise, our lives are not quite films. and so here we were in his seventieth, and his oldest brother stands up to read a speech emailed by the youngest of the three, who unfortunately couldn't be there for the sunday lunch.

and he talked of ships in stormy seas that a had painted as a kid. perhaps an indication of his life's journey: of a search that never quite finished, of a closure that never quite came. like the short story, like the milonga that you keep dancing in your head long after the music has stopped.

this evening was a fortieth of a friend who is dark humour personified. with his brothers, friends,a son from a previous association, and an ex who came the closest to marrying him. there was a strange cloud all around. happy, but almost surreally so.  from the outside it would appear a total antithesis of the central tenet of the south asian ethos, the family: with the main units that would appear rather dysfunctional in this case. but in a strange way, it wasn't all cold. i guess maturity is all about accepting malfunction, smiling through it, and raising a toast to it occassionally. all good, really, till the party is over. hugs are done, kisses on the cheeks, and it's time to walk back home alone. at forty, i would not want to be there.

we are hardwired to be social beings. and in spite of all the individual-mongering of the predominantly western 'liberal' cultures, there is no point to celebrating the individual if all that remains with him at the end of his fortieth birthday party is a walk back home on his own.

good reading ahead

just discovered a nice set of essays that nature has been publishing, on 'being human'. stuff for a long train/plane journey.

Translating Faiz

Aj tanhAi kisi hamdam-e-derin ki tarah

karne Ayi hai meri saqigari shAm dhale

muntazir baithe hain hum donon ke mahtab ubhare

aur terA aks jhalakne lage har sAye-tale

Loneliness like an old friend

turns up this evening to pour my wine

Together, we wait for the rising moon

to reveal your face behind every shadow.

___________________________________

my translation of TanhAi by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

some things never change. unpacking boxes, listening to khansahab, anticipating. reward, dopamine, sunsets. poetry, and the unmatched sa of the top octave in that ethereal voice. 

i like

the new place. the people are being super nice, and i just hope i can live up to their expectations.

where did the words go

from a time when even the most mundane evening would generate paragraphs of verbosity , i seem to have reached a place where even four word status messages on facebook look like too much information.

it's time to make a start again. it's time to open all those boxes that lie around the bed now. it's time to write. 

coming back again

just to start all over from scratch. i hope this is the right move.