Twenty One Years and Two Days

Birthdays - I do not how they are supposed to be spent. Each one has been different, memorable for different reasons. Some have gone worse than the others, hurting me for years. But, this twenty-first birthday was mellow, cinematic (watched Iron Man 2 and Kites in the span of three days), and yummy (ate Korean food at InSeoul). Thank you to everyone who showered love!

Leaving to Hyderabad. Lots of people to meet there, things to pick up, stories and plays to write, proposals to finish, and cousins and parents I need to catch up with.

Goodbye.

See you all in Hyderabad.

The Vashi Window

Inside a joint, if there were a million eyes:

"Sometimes I think it runs more than twenty-four hours, Where my eyes - two of them are fixed, on the simple computer of mine.

'But, it is pleasant, more than ever, to sit by a barricaded window. This looks out to not more than wheels.'

'In this bright yellow hue, I might never recognize the form of this written piece. But, I have realized that I am very much at home."

: all this and more would go into the oblivion far far away, with a drag and a gulp of coffee. Written on 03.01.2009.

Banana Man

Kolkata Trip, May 2008

rajasthan village woman who fed me dinner - bhajra rotis

I found this woman in the sky, the land of the stars, where the milky way was mine and hers! A secret revealed at 5.30 a.m. Is a secret of Suns and Moons and Flowers new?

Back home

A new place is always old to me. After many homes that were created for me, I walked into the arms of my own family. It is a good feeling, but I am really torn apart from a lot of other people. Planning for another getaway, soon! Now, Kolkata had the people, the books, the colours, the traffic, the markets, the walks, the tea, but no sea. And Mumbai had the people, the books, the colours, the traffic, the markets, the walks, the tea (I hate it), and the sea (which likes to think it is a beach). I am packing bags again...moving out of this house! Creating homes, spaces, getting jobs, losing time..new lives. Loving it. Want to travel. Get out of this city soon.

Urban Dusk

One by one, a thousand at once, Flooding the streets and over-head bridges, Windows, hoardings, and cars Light up the land below, For a dark dome Of sleeping dust. Coast rushes in a breeze, Blending in battle with noon’s Wave; Confused and loud, Dynamically proud With a brimming species, On two feet, wearing faces And masks. Like the wheels of train, All unchanged and same toil, Rolling on and on, The two feet ravage about. A million feet above Concrete builds cages: Human zoo of colors, Paints, and plastic sounds. Metallic breezes blow beneath A dusty dome, Where in a lived spirit, Music still runs. Something stays alive, No sunflower beds or swallows, None of the bright daisies, But within the caged expanse Of footprints, many spirits Lie and tear apart these walls.

Magi, Him, and us

"A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The was deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter."

T.S. Eliot starts by speaking the words of Lancelot Andrewes, a 17th Century divine, who spoke on the dangers the Magi faced, in his Nativity Sermon in 1622. Eliot, in his middle age, needed a recluse from his hardship, confusion, and drudgery. He converted to Christianity, and confirmed his catholic faith in the Church of England in 1927. 'Journey of the Magi' is a dramatic monologue by a Magus describing his journey to see the Birth of Christ, but the words delve deeper on a spiritual journey that is the need of every human. After the hardship and rumination, Eliot claims Christianity offered him a journey to answers, a spiritual calling, and something that transformed his life.

Journeys that transform lives, callings that direct people on various paths, can never be explained to the larger reality. It is a personal experience. These journeys involve an eventful path of difficulties and conflicts. Eliot known for his obscure imagery details the Magi's hardship, yet again based on Andrewe's sermons. Journey of the Magi is the story of the three kings of Orient, believed in legends to be Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar.

The lack of logic, and pure spiritual absorption, reeks in the fact that they set out in the dead of winter. The camels, vehicles of the desert, traveled on their soft hoofs through thick snow. The calling was only powerful enough to drag along the three kings, who are believed to have brought frankincense, gold, and myrrh. (According to Mathew 2:1-12 2: 1–12, the magi are not specified as three, but as the first Gentiles to believe in Christ were venerated as saints in the Middle Ages.)

The camel men could not be torn apart from their material desires and homes. They ran back to civilization, to their sexual pleasures, and intoxicating habits.

"The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women"

Even the Magi, still clouded by their desires, regretted going to far from their palaces, especially not knowing if what they were heading towards was a fruitful calling. Practical rationality always tries to defeat instinct, passion, and a drive towards misty goals. Here, Eliot hands out an interpretation of life. The mind will constantly create conflicts of two faces, but sometimes the pathless goal is the right calling; like seeking truth, which is always a pathless land.Abandoned by their camel men and camels, torn away from their comforts, and stuck in the middle of winter, their journey is not understood by anyone. The dramatic monologue is delivered with the undertone that even years after the journey, it cannot be explained in any way that could be understood. Understanding is personal, justification is personal. Spirituality is personal. God is personal.

Eliot's vivid description of their loneliness and physical hardships are a symbol of their psychological turmoil. This turmoil is owned by anyone who asks questions, and searches endlessly, with no path or maps, just some single light guiding her (Star of Bethlehem), not knowing within the question lays the answer, and the significance lies not in the answer, but the process of asking questions.

In the second stanza, Eliot sinks into his comfort zone - symbolism. It is highly metaphorical and requires a deep understanding of biblical imagery. After experiencing the hostility in cities and villages, the magi travel in the dark (no light of understanding). They reach a temperate valley, a symbol of the birth of spring, birth of something new and blossoming, and the coming of God. They pass a water-mill beating the darkness signifying that paganism, idol worship, and magic will be beaten to ground by the New Spirituality. The three trees on the low sky is a symbol of the crucifixion day, when three different men were put on crosses on Calvary; Jesus, the compassionate son of God dying for the sins of humankind, the stubborn thief who even considers Jesus as a man of magic and trickery, and the thief who understands his sins and confesses to be redeemed of it to reach God. The old white horse galloping on the fields is the Holy Spirit who spoke of the gifts of humankind, and the second coming of Christ as in the Book of Revelations.

The Magi, eventually, reach a tavern (an inn/bar) with vine leaves on the lintel, interpreted as the ancient Jewish custom of hanging vine leaves to announce the birth of a child. Guided by the star they assume they have reached the place and enter the inn in triumph, but all they find are intoxicated sinners.

"Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins"

The six hands are those of the soldiers gambling for Jesus’ seamless cloak and also a mark of Judas’ betrayal. The inn is filled with men drunk in their pleasures and slurring in intoxicated trances. They are the people with empty wine-skins, those bodies with no souls into which no new life can be poured.

The most momentous ingredient of this poem is Eliot’s interpretation of Birth (physical and spiritual) and Death (physical and spiritual). Christ was born in a manger, well among the lower class of the society. Seeing this, the magi are merely ‘satisfied’. All the prophecies lie fulfilled, making the magi those of an alien kind, and truth lies asleep in a hay crib, in a lowly stable. They are dumbstruck by God’s plan. They have only seen the births and death, purely physically manifested, that all of human race has seen and will continue to see. This Birth of Christ creates a Death.

The poem is not a physical account of the magi’s journey. It is indeed written in a confused chronology, of how an aged magus’ memory may aid him. It is the agony and transformation that each magus went through when all their beliefs were put to torturous death. Christ awakened the birth of the Kingdom of God. His teachings broke the vertical hierarchy and made everyone a person of God, a vessel of God. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

“This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?... this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death”

Old ritualistic manners of clutching to one’s household gods were murdered by this Birth. The beliefs that the kings had laid all their life and growth on seemed to be buried and hanged. Witnessing the birth, and the death of their systems, the moment was agonizing. Under the Kingdom of God, when the return to palaces, their kingdoms seemed of an alien race and system. Everything they lay their cards on in their kingdoms seems untrue, unfamiliar, and lacks the understanding of God.

The magus (Eliot) still ardently hopes for another death, large enough to happen in every human’s conscience. This is the spiritual death of prejudices, sins, rituals, ignorance, materialism, discrimination, violence, and resentment that dies deeply rooted in human-made systems. Change is the only goal one must await in a quest.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi#cite_note-9 http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/eliot.htm#biography http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/w/e/wethree.htm http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/291.html http://mariannedorman.homestead.com/Star.html

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

Often when a writer travels, interviews and by life gets to a know a lot of people, he/she goes through much trouble to unearth privacy, stories that don't really belong to them. Yet again, that is the job of writer, mainly a journalist - making another's story a creation of their own intellect. The triumph to stay alive, the implications of heroism, the social set up of Columbia under the military and social dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, run a seam across the story-line of "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The narrative stands alone to talk about the wavy depth of the story telling talents both that the protagonist and Marquez have acquired through the years. This book, particularly, is a different and unique publication by Marquez. It is a typical journalistic reconstruction, like many of his other creations like "Of Love and Other Demons," but these pages are thoroughly filled with the view Luis Alejandro Velasco.

Marquez, the famous magical realist, with in-depth understanding of realism needed for courageous jounalism, reconstructs a narrative, publishes it, but warns us that he was pretty much persuaded to lay it on the shelves for sale.

The most intriguing aspect of this author is that he will never fail to tell you from which incident and from what understanding of realism, did the narrative bloom.Nothing puts his magic in words, other than his own, where he writes an abstract for this 'reconstruction' - "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor who drifted on a life raft for ten days without food or water, was proclaimed a national hero, kissed by beauty queens, made rich through publicity, and then spurned by the government and forgotten for all time."

Marquez has a passion for magic, and writes poetic prose. Much noteworthy claim goes to the translators of his writing. This book has been translated from Spanish by Randolph Hogan. The translator needs credit for keeping alive a writer in a different language, a different system, with the same magic.Penguin Publishers sell this book globally, at reasonable rates. In India, one can get a legal copy for Rs. 170.

The VLR Morning

The VLR Morning To be sure that your stomach doesn't start growling and grumbling eat your breakfast. However, circumstances and situationspersuade one to skip meals just because food access is not ready enough to grab. Chennai local railway stations do not give you the option of catching trains as an excuse for such impeccable crimes to your stomach and day. The Vegetarian Light Refreshment stalls, in most of the stations, provide one and everyone with good, warm, light, and healthy food and eating conditions. VLR saved my morning and put some steamy hot Pongal on my plate to subdue hunger, growling, grumbling, and mental crankiness. Food is important! Pongal is dhal and rice steamed together with black peppers, asafoetida, and jeera. The rice becomes soft and blends with dhal in a comfortable way. VLR stood up to the normal standards of pongal. Crispy vadai accompanied this pleasant surprise. With three generous scoops of pongal, warm sambar, new coconut chutney, the vadai just adds to the glory. The crispy fried vadai woke up my senses for the morning. Yum, to be precise! All this costs a person twelve rupees. Standing up to its name, the food is clean vegetarian, light on the stomach and pocket, and is absolutely refreshing as a emotional and physical hunger saver.