One Strange Moment of Inconsequential Inspiration

The title is self explanatory. It was one of those moments that enraptures you. These moments can be as varied as seeing the Titanic just touching the iceberg to something as mundane as someone being punched in the gut and the grin turning to a grimace(in the middle of a joke for example). Time stops on these occasions and the the instant is seared on your mind. These seconds of infinity makes one wonder at the compressibility of time. This post was written a couple of months ago and the memory is something I keep as a snapshot.

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She sat still and all alone,

The beautiful slender hands covered her face,

Her torso was slightly bent forwards,

Those locks fell loosely around her face

And caressed her hands.

She sat still in that posture for

An ephemeral entirety.

I tried in vain to see beyond her

Captivating hands but they had filled her features,

Her hands told a story that

Probably her eyes couldn’t capture.

The veins of her hands stood out slightly,

Her hands didn’t clench the face but

Was placed lightly on it as if a

Work of a divine sculptress.

Through this blur of movement,

Sat she calm – the deity of distress silent.

Her hands with the long fingers,

Ending in natural pink halfmoons,

Twas like a river dissolving the grief of her mind.

It felt like she was channeling her sorrow

Onto her palms, and from her palms to

Whatever she would touch next..

Hallowed Corridors

Offtopic : 1) My last post was not exactly yesterday. I have tons of stuff to write about but somehow lack the execution with which I am satisfied. Hence I tend to have a few incomplete docs in "My Documents". My new computer and better net connection will hopefully make me a better blogger.

2) I also put a lot of passion into my blogs and can't write when I don't get the feelof it. A large part of me is smirking and telling me that I am plain lazy.
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The last viva of my engineering career got over a couple of days back. It was a relief to walk out of it, never to face strange externals and smirking internals. My friend(Abbas) and me decided to visit our school which is located right behind my college. Abbas was a year younger to me at Christ Church school(CCS). We never knew each other at school but had similar experiences.

Both of us were happily anonymous and were utterly confused about life and times during our school days. I put it that we just took like 15 years to get accustomed to the world around after our birth. ( We cry as we are confused on being born, the lights, sounds and PEOPLE scare the umbilical cord out of us. We both seem to have stopped crying but were similarly confused throughout school). I passed through school similar to a blind man walking without a stick in a rain forest. The highest post I ever held was desk monitor when in the 5th standard. To cut a long story tiny, I spent my school days catching up and fitting in. Abbas tells me, he spent his- brooding.

Hence, it was with mixed feelings that we entered our school gates. The place was deserted as the vacations were going on and the watchmen were kind enough to have a free run of the place. That walk around school on the 9th of May healed me. A lot of confusion, wounds and regrets melted away.

My school was initially meant to be a school for poor Europeans and had a very post Victorian design and legacy. The school was dark and cool. Not a soul around. As I entered the first floor corridor, a tingling sensation that comes with bottled emotions exploding overwhelmed me. Memories of far ago started running towards as if it was suddenly lunch break and the whole corridor was teeming with seven year olds. I joined in the 2nd std. I vividly remember 3 incidents of my first day at CCS:
1) I entered the girls bathroom.
2) I got my chair taken away when I entered class and plump I was on the floor.
3) I was helped up by Mrs. Bhagat - My class teacher and my first crush.

Nothing much changed during the next eight years expect that I never entered the girls toilet again.

My first class was just as I remembered it. The furniture was from the lands of Lilliput. The 2nd and 3rd floor evoked very similar memories. The staff rooms, the computer lab and everything deserted. But wherever I looked, I saw tons of people. Wherever I looked, I saw me - in different stages of childhood. White stained shirt, dirty white pants and a crooked green tie. All those regrets of having a below par school life washed away like the tide washes away things written in sand. I realized that I am what I am because of each and every event that happened in my life. The person that is me (whatever is me) is because of each second that I lived. If my school life was any different, I wouldn't have been me. That walk through empty corridors taught me never to regret even a second. Never to regret events that have gone past. Each and every second is a brick on which we stand.
I remembered how I used to fly out of the house with socks in my pocket, tie around my ear and toast in my mouth because the bus had arrived. I remember a large cock called Mr. Khan chasing the living daylights out of me. I remembered going over a broken wall with friends to get ice cream. We also used to search for stone age tools at a deserted corner in school. Things came flying at me with every step. Lots had changed in the school but the aura hadn't. Endless memories that would make this a very long blog indeed snapped playfully at my feet. The silent school and its deserted corridors whispered : "Good to have you back, Mr Chatterjee, things were not so bad was it? Dont' always trust your memory. Face your past and walk into it, the minuscule specks of bad times will fade away and all that you will see is the beautiful colours on the canvas. Your Alma matterS, always."
That was the lesson I got, the final lesson from my school, seven years after leaving it. Life is beautiful - change your vision.

Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle – the director of slumdog – said at a recent award function “This movie is a love note to Mumbai”. Tonight’s the 4^th time that I have sat through this movie. It was not disgust that I felt when Jamal – the main protagonist – jumped into a pit of human shit on hearing that Amitabh Bachchan’s helicopter had landed nearby. It was not pity that I felt when Jamal tells the police officer that “If not for Allah and Ram, I would still have a mother”. But through each sitting, I felt cramps in my stomach. I felt as if, there was a human corpse in my cupboard. But I chose to ignore the stench whenever I’m at home. I chose to ignore the half rotting flesh whenever I opened my cupboard to get dressed. I not only shut out my sense of smell or touch or sight but I also shut out my mind. 

This movie is an amazing piece of creative art. Any accolade that is thrown at the movie and the people associated with it is very well deserved. I aint a movie critic to discuss about aspects related to movie making. I want to go through a catharsis as I write this. It took a man who lives a 1000 miles from Mumbai to make us feel violated and naked. Whoever has ever lived in Bombay will not feel pity, shame, disgust or anger. Because this city teaches us that none of these things are really valid. This city and this movie just tells you to cope up with what you are seeing. It tells you to swallow and blink and never to process whatever you have witnessed. Just like, the two brothers -Salim and Jamal- did throughout the movie. They didn’t wallow in self pity. Nor did they give the viewers a solution, nor a message. They just took the cameras around into the heart of our city and gave us what is real. Good, bad or ugly was not to be judged. One only had to cope…

Grime on my Windshield

Around the blocks of my home, I drove
Lost and never found, Searching for love
And that poise profound, I drove a few blocks
Around my house, My home was somewhere
I reasoned aloud, why then
Was I lost never to be found?

Frustrated – the highway was what I turned
My steering wheel around to, On I went to a
Land only whispered about, a road went there and a road
Went there, Choice was my foe - for both looked
The one to drive about, Blindfolded myself to
Turn in rounds, Whoosh - I went on one without
Caring about the consequences it held for the empire
I was to found.

Immediately the grime - my windshield found, The
Windows too and all around, Could I see? – yes and no,
Yes – to know the road from the ground, No – to
Enjoy the richness abound, What was to be done
I questioned aloud, onwards should I walk or
Drive without a sound, For the grime on my windshield
Was to stay bound.

And here lay the paradox of that devil’s choice,

What was to be done, for my windshield lay soiled?