Guest Post - Chaddi: A Case Study, for Purba Ray

As if you don't know already who Purba Ray is!

If you are reading something A-Musing like nothing else for miles around, you know it is written by her. Satirical without being condescending and creating humour sans mockery, Purba Ray writes about our life and our times - to shock, surprise, tickle, tease, and basically make us have a good laugh, post-after-post. Rumour has it that because the velvet darts are thrown with such skill and style, many would pay to just get featured on her blog, even as a butt of her jokes (and end up falling in love with the very same jokes of which they form the butt. She is that good!).

I did not pay. But I did offer thanks to the powers above, for a most fortunate day in my blogging life had dawned. Purba had asked me to write a guest post for her space. I have never understood what 'you have arrived!' means, but I think I felt that on the left side of my chest, first, when she asked me to guest blog and then, when she loved the post I sent.

It is called 'Chaddi: A Case Study' and really, you should not judge a post by its title. Or its picture...

After you have picked your favourite one from my collection above, read the post at Purba's blog. And listen, spare me half the laughter you gift her, and I tell you I will taste Nirvana.

Here is the link then: http://www.purba-ray.com/2014/04/chaddi-case-study.html

Early birds and night owls

They say an early bird catches the worm. But it had to take more than a wriggly worm, not an object of my desire at all, to tempt me into becoming an early bird in my school days. It took my mother. 

By some divine coincidence I would always forget that exams were round the corner, as if they were one-eyed monsters dragging their many hands and feet towards me and my neck. Well, they were, but who wanted to believe that before the results were out, warts and all? So, for the most part of my school days, and especially for classes we hauntingly called ‘Boards’ (such a hoax!), my mother was more serious about our exams than me or my kid brother were. And she also believed (show me the person who told her this, by God!) that no time like early morning to study. Sometimes, very early. 5 am in those “crucial” days. It was almost like she was messing around with my whole genetic make-up, by forcing me to open those leaden eyes and mutating me into an early bird when my very genes were protesting to tell me (quietly of course) that you have been adopted, without doubt. I am sure I could sue her for this in a Court of Science. But I had my own science to study. 

So, with the valley stars still out and the gardeners and sweepers yet to come, the light in my room would be the only one switched on till all the way to Mussoorie, and me and my brother would be staring into the space between the two pages of open books. You know, the spine area. For it would be the safest place for the head to drop, without crushing the letters printed. Oh the tricks we tried! I would lie down on my tummy, rest my face between my hands with fingers in blinker-position, and snooze. Eyes tightly shut but ears totally open for footsteps coming to remind me of those monsters I had to pass round the corner, and with flying colours no less. My brother, the smarter one, discovered super smart angles to study. Where even closed eyes seemed open. I had a feeling one morning that he had painted his eye lids with black dots in the middle to confuse people around, but I can’t be too sure. My eyes were tucked inside my own lids, lids the inside of which I especially loved to admire those times. 

Needless to say, and since I am a safe distance away from those days, not a wee bit did we study in those wee hours. Or maybe he did, for now he’s a doctor, but I’m going to drag him into this without his permission. There is comfort in numbers. Plus, I know he used to sleep on open books. I know! If there is anything I could know in those days of sleeping with eyes open wondering why the ureter and the urethra look the same or why I need to know that ethyl alcohol cannot be drunk or how unfortunate that I cannot calculate my escape velocity, it was this it was this it was this. 

But college changes everything, this being one of the loveliest cliché. 

Add to it a hostel full of girls and every atom in your body gets a makeover, much like those black and white pegs in the board game ‘Othello’. Black becomes white. No, wait! White becomes black and the person in the mirror transforms into a being she would not have recognized one of those early-bird mornings from school. Here, she is a night owl. Here, all good things happen at night. All good things. 

You are productive soon as the sun sets, dinner had, mess exited and rooms entered – your own or another’s. Usually, another’s. A two-seater transforms into a train’s top with girls sitting wherever they find enough space for their derrière. And then discussions happen, serious ones. Warden and matron, princy and that-other-mahila-college. About cranky calling on the yellow hostel phone and who stands in a queue for receiving their after-dark fantasy calls. There is midnight hoot-hoot-twoeetohoo everywhere. Also, a no door policy, where you walk in and walk out of rooms asking ‘I need your iron. Is it still hidden in the bin after the last check?’ or ‘May I borrow a packet of Maggi? Promise, will give you a packet back tomorrow’ or even ‘Hey, will you put my bucket in the hot-water-geyser-tap line early morning? I have to study till late!’

Study. Or something like that, needed no mother-figure to enforce. Actually, needed, but there was none. So from 10 pm to 2 am we would be seen with books around us and 30 days to go before those badly-printed university question papers graced us with their presence. While we did not have mothers, we needed company – as constant support against the the mosquitoes, the sleep, the hunger and the heat (Delhi is closest to the Sun in university exam months). In the common room we’ll study as one, motivating others and getting motivated in return - was our motto! Some walked around at sonic speeds slightly swaying as they read, others closed their ears to the buzz turned their backs to everyone else. Some, sans books, would be seen mumbling to themselves and others borrowing papers, critiques, odomos, tea, pencil, tuck, tweezers, erasers, rubber bands, books. It was a Study Carnival, and one which promised us good hostel days to remember, if not university marks.  Ahem!

But that was so many years back. You see …

Oh dear, I just heard the ‘rise and shine’ alarm going off. I better go shake my lazy 3-year-old up. It's 7 am already. You see, next week he takes his exams in the play-school. Colouring, tearing paper, stringing beads, identifying means of transport, and the usual S for She-becomes-her-mother. And no time like early morning to learn it all up! 

Isn’t it?

P.S - Mummy, I can explain. Bhai, this is a test to see if you read my blog.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Your time to shine - Early bird, or night owl?]

The Oranges

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Her green bangle broke as she scrubbed the collar. Three pieces. The dirty soap water carried them to the drain cover, where they sat. Waiting as if to go below, and drown. She looked at her brown wrist with a gaze full of vacuum. The shirt collar in contrast gleamed white under it. After madam’s last tirade she was making sure the laundry was done properly. But, her bangle had broken, one from among three her husband had gifted her a certain Teej. Her husband who… She got back to the clothes. Scrubbing knees of jeans and seats of pants with new-found fury in her hands. Holding cuffs in both and rubbing them. Suffocating the dirt off them. The plastic brush lost some teeth, which joined the exodus near the drain. She didn’t notice. For the sound of the tap running had filled the bathroom. And her head. And in came that pain her constant companion. And its lover, tiredness. Oh how they screamed now, the two left bangles. Going in and coming out from the sea of water in the bucket. Rinsing. But as if being murdered. Being forced into a watery grave. Clips bit into the wrung clothes now hanging in a line. Hanged with care.  

2:30 pm. She could hear madam, shouting on the phone at a tele-caller in crisp English and so had to wait for her to finish. To leave. To take bus number 199 to Mangolpuri. To her husband … lying in his watery grave. Drunk. Always. Angry beyond measure for today she was late.   

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Every day he was made to sit in the middle. They did not give him the window to breathe. As if intentionally. As if he was dead already with sorrowful faces sitting around him. Taking him … home. The cab full of tele-callers turned corners lit by twilight. Speeding. The driver in a wakefulness full of hurry. But he sitting behind him, sitting as if in a syrup. Half-asleep and half-aware of leaving the maddening buzz of telephone calls behind, for a day. The Chris the Bob the Alex that he had to be. Day after day. ‘Hello, would you like to buy a credit card?’ and the ensuing abuse. He remembered the bitter lady on the other side today. In crisp English she had dis-robed him. Of his mask which did not pay. He closed his eyes, and his hands around his neck-tie. No way to set his self free from the computers clicking and targets hitting. Bills and mortgages, EMIs and rent. Too much to think about. So little left to dream. The cab climbed a flyover and the metro bridge loomed large. Larger loomed the advert of a car with a smiling family of four. Like a dream. He felt his gorge rising, the faux silk noose tightening, the faux leather belt squeezing him into a tiny sphere. Of monotony, and meaninglessness. Fake accents and mechanizations. Of missing … 

The driver shook him awake with a strange haste. He had missed his home stop today. Last one dropped. That much less time to sleep away, in a home empty of any more dreams. Empty. But home still. But empty.  

Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

The needle returns to the start of the song

And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

He could barely see. Except, the calendar next to the clock. They said it was a miracle. It must have been, to be able to see through the cataract. No longer did he know when his drawstrings hung low to the floor. No matter that spittle dribbled down his lip as he mumbled. To the winds. About his loneliness. His hands too he could not see. To feed to clean to hold the stick and sit outside his room in the old age home.  But he always knew the date and time. When his son would come. This evening, for instance. To see him dressed in his cleanest. Oranges in one hand and a hug in the other and 'how have you been, papa?' on his lips. Once, when he said he saw things heard voices, they put him here. Love remained, but he scared the kids at home. His son’s. His son is a driver. ‘Oh, he will find his way here in time’ said the old voice to the bench beneath him. Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick… The wrinkled hand loosened its grip. The stick fell. His son was too late to reach. Too late. Forever. It just so happened.

He had to make a detour, to drop a man who slept off and missed his home stop. 

The oranges lay at the back, suffocating silently in the bag. 

Unseen.  

  

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts: 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Earworm - What song is stuck in your head (or on permanent rotation in your CD or MP3 player) these days? Why does it speak to you? I picked Del Amitri’s ‘Nothing Ever Happens’. The song has always spoken to me of a post-modernist angst that individuals are living.]

Book Review - Collection of Chaos by Tikuli

‘From chaos emerge new paths’, says Tikuli, as she introduces us to her poetry and her book, aptly named, ‘Collection of Chaos’. When you begin reading the verses contained within, you understand why this name. Not just because the author admits it was the ‘swirling chaos’ of her personal life that gave birth to this poetry, but also because each verse penned manages to bring forth the exact turbulence that it intended to. Such is Tikuli’s skilful style and thus rendered the emotions and moods behind each piece. 

The book ‘Collection of Chaos’ carries an unconventional structure. None of the poems have been titled and one page flows into the next, as if in seamless continuation even if the theme of the next poem is different from the one before it. Perhaps, this signifies chaos? Imagine, a battalion of verses coming at you without any method, without any reason to make you pause. Like a chaos of thoughts themselves, one after another. Similarly, the form of individual poems is unconventional too in keeping with the disturbance around. Single words as whole sentences, or even whole paragraphs. Six words as a poem or a sudden 60 traversing two pages. In this unpredictable structure lies one of the most important ways in which Tikuli paints Chaos in our minds. And to get the moods-behind-the-poems across. 

What are the poems about? About the dark underbelly of city life and the dreariness of the country’s. Poem after poem, Tikuli explores bitter truths of social existence. She shuttles between controlled rage and uncontrollable empathy to draw vivid but disturbing pictures of conflict and chaos – both within beings and around them too. The poetry is not pleasant, and neither is it kind. It was not born to delight but to shock you out of your comfort zone. Her recurrent imagery is of black crows, crushed flowers, shadows, solitude and silence. Tikuli writes about refugees and loneliness, martyrdom, mad women, farmer suicides and honour killing. She removes the veil off wifedom and even shows us the mind behind prostitution. There are labourer women and those being abused in plush settings. Old age and widowhood. Emotional infidelity, divorce and even rape. Yes, like I said, these poems are not kind. They are too real to care to be polite. Much like some of Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry. Like his ‘Hunger’, for instance, which I read so many years back but which refuses to leave me for the stark reality it threw at me, and which this poetry reminded me of.

Some things I found particularly interesting, and you may too. The placement of Children, the over-arching feminist angle, the use of Nature and finally the play of Contrasts. 

It is interesting how Tikuli brings in children into her scenes. In a poem about ‘bone coloured sky’ and ‘parched earth, baked brown. Fields, dust bowls’, a scene of drought, perhaps, she says:

‘On a scorched tree –

A body hangs.

A child’s striken eyes,

Not really understanding,

keep a watch.

A vulture

awaits his chance.

In another place, 

‘A little boy stands alone

On the banks of Ganges,

his head shaven clean

Waiting for a crows touch,

for deliverance of his father’s soul’

In Tikuli’s poetry, children are neither the perpetrators nor the direct sufferers. They are mute spectators to violence and blood, rites and rituals and aspects of society they either don’t understand or know not how to respond to. Is the poet trying to remind us of our Tomorrows’ eyes watching the carnage, with the incipient fear that they may carry it into the future? 

The second idea is the predominance of the female presence. Tikuli’s poetry makes no attempt to veil her inclinations – that of creating verse upon verse to poetically document the Female Experience. Women – their wronged bodies and broken hearts, suffocating roles and helpless lives – are what keeps the poet’s pen occupied. So much so, the men automatically become conspicuous by their absence. Actually, they are not absent, but are present – as the perpetrators, the deceivers and the wrong-doers. The poems are sung by a female voice and aim only to give voice to women. Somewhat like Adrienne Rich?  

If we were to divide the book, roughly, into three parts, we see how the first and last part is only dark and chaotic whereas in the middle lies bright sunlight too. Tikuli gathers within her painting the world of animals too. You know, somewhat like the technique of Pathetic Fallacy, attributing human emotions to all things that make up nature too. These handful of verses right in the heart of the book stand in direct contrast to what the reader has witnessed till now. And all of them are deliciously imagined and penned. A banyan tree ‘standing tall … holds the cosmos in its canopy, a centre for life – insects, snakes, birds and humans’ and where ‘children play’. To nature we can turn for relief, seems to be the message in the riot of green introduced within all the grey, all too suddenly. Unlike the Romantics, who deified nature largely, Tikuli celebrates aspects of it which lie in our kitchen slabs or grow in our gardens. An organic whole of which humans and animals are part and parcel. Such verses are full of visual beauty and flowers, fruits, ‘marmalade skies’ and ‘sunburst margarita’ seem to signify fertility and growth, satiety, love and even happiness, actually. 

Love and Happiness? Not something one would imagine to find within the folds of this book, wrought with a lot of imagery from bad marriages, separation, infidelity and even sexual abuse. But Kris Saknussemm does prepare us for ‘a powerful sense of hope at work’ in her introduction to the book. Throughout the book, as you go from page to page, you see how for every 5 lines full of despair, in comes one pointing to hopefulness. Usually a fleeting sense of bright, but there. A woman is killed by a mob, like a witch hunt maybe. Tied to a tree she is stoned to death. And ‘her eyes closed forever, relieving her of the misery of being a woman’, and there is positive deliverance in death. A mad woman is always mocked near the village square, but ‘she rejoices in a life well spent,’ rising above the crowd, mocking their lives in turn. A labourer woman, mother, poor, but ‘in her vacant eyes an abstract dream of four walls and a roof,’ daring to dream. 

And this leads me to the play of contrasts in 'Collection of Chaos’. Tikuli admits the poetry was born out of chaos, thus metamorphosing chaos itself into something that can feed creativity, or give birth to poetry…

From the

Incessant dust

From the doors

Closed forever

Poems burst forth

Remember Blake’s ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’? He said-

“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”

Rich and poor, city and village, fertility and barrenness, chaos and creativity, and finally a breathtaking spiral downwards between words and silence near the end of the book are just some of the contrasts Tikuli works around. The poetry in this book arises from and breathes between them. Like:

Canvas of snow

A raven adds colour

Yin and yang

How ‘contraries’ are important to move ahead, to understand, to assimilate, perhaps to even realize the good parts of life, to celebrate. Why, I can almost imagine Yeats’s Theory of the Gyres – how in the death of a civilization lies the very seed for its birth too. And this to me remains the most beautiful aspect of this book.     

I see two problems with the compilation though. One, even as the title-less format adds to the effect of the mood the book is talking in, it can become confusing. Most poems begin and end on a single page. But some don’t. Which means, you may close the book not knowing the same poem continues on the next page. I wonder how many will find this format convenient to read the book over multiple sittings. Secondly, the idea of men being the perpetrators in multiple situations comes to me too strongly, and if I may say so, bordering on the prejudicial. The book voices the feminine, only, to the extent of silencing the other side of the story. I continue a little disturbed on this front. 

The poetry in ‘Collection of Chaos’ must be read. For those who enjoy structural unconventionality in poetry coupled with bold issues usually made invisible, this book offers a most mature poetry. For those who like it lyrical and light, the verses on nature will leave a permanent impression on your minds. And for some others who like to take it slow, to read a poem a day, know that each poem of this book is like a world in itself – offering you thoughts to think and maybe ideas to pen even. I got mine! 

The last verse of the book: 

Unlit words

Slumbering 

In the shadows

Of your silence

Luminous within

… points to an awakening. A sense of something to come. A fire smouldering to burst forth. Perhaps, another collection, Tikuli?

Titile: Collection of Chaos

Author: Tikuli

Publisher: Leaky Boot Press

2014

Why I blog, you ask?

How daring of you to ask why I blog! Who do you think you are, Modi’s kurta-pajama maker? Don’t you know my deadly IndiRank? Or my bust-line and views punch-line and page-views? Or even that I am on speed dial with BlogAdda’s dadda whom I send a carton of alphonso to every Diwali? Badey aaye!

But now that you have asked that question, dumb as a nose hair it may be, I will answer. Even if you are blogging bloke-ing sitting on the 11th planet, for you have to be far removed from blog-o-sphere to ask anyone like me why I blog, I shall answer. What goes of my Swarovski studded pen? 

Once upon a time on a cold winter night, when my umbilical chord was cut came a divine voice which announced – ‘The Writer has been born’. Swear! Such power in that voice and such truth there was, the doctor fainted, then quit doctory and is now a best-selling author himself (He writes self-help, for himself, but I digress). Now, that lovely voice was heard by all, including my newly-opened ears. Which meant, I had to write for I was born to write. 

The divine itch to write something would strike me by surprise and in amazing places. Really! I was 5 when I wrote my first word in my convent-created school diary. It was F … whatever. But it felt so good. To have written something meaningful. Something worthwhile and something I could pass down generations as my own F… anyway! My itch to pen had to be taken care of at every stage in life. When it loomed large, it was larger than the one which rears its head the moment you step into a bus, all sweat and grime and slime and no B-tex. Passionately I scribbled ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, what features you have, what jaw-line too’ sonnets for good looking pahari waiters on restaurant serviettes and etched biological haikus behind monuments. I wrote here and I wrote there and I wrote everywhere when my talented hands yearned to write the gloriously wonderful things that came to mind.

And then one day, bhagwan ka shukra hai, I discovered blogging. Tailor-made for hands such as mine, like a glove. My blog was born, a cross between a c-sec and a natural birth, and I felt reborn somewhere ‘Between Write and Wrong’. And simultaneously was born a desire to take it to the next level, all my writing power and prowess. To practice, for it makes a 10/10 woman even more perfect, and to experiment. After my first post, a tribute to all the <3s and the ‘F’s and the smileys I had been writing, I lay back on bed, imagining myself waking up to a butler asking me to sign copies of my books for the crowd downstairs. Or sitting on a news panel to blah-blah about topics from women to politics to mitochondria to leather soles to diaper rash to lycra to anything. In short, to be a celebrity writer like Honey Singh Freida Pinto. Toh you see, to reach that one fine butler morning in life, I blog and blog and blog.

However, ab jhooth kya bolna. I also relish the attention. Here in the world of blogging, age is no bar at all, to anything, and neither is writing skill. ‘Kudos’ and ‘brilliant’ flow as free as pee after two bottles of Budweiser. Such doses of generosity, over-wired support and sense of oneness that no one will leave without saying ‘well written and poignant’, even if the post was a happy photograph no more and even if photograph was spelt Photograff. There is ample gas to make you fly like a hot air balloon and start planning your Booker book after post no. 16, ‘brilliant’ no. 160. Such love and encouragement that you don’t even need to open the dictionary to learn how to spell ‘encourazement’. Fark hee nee painda! As long as you are nearing what they call a ‘pro-’ vitamin B5, teens hosiery, relief balm Blogger status.  

And no better exercise than to blog away and share with all 7 continents the bhadaas that networking sites or neighbourhood networking pants up inside you. Typing all the frustration down in one breath and sans susu-breaks, extra !!!! marks and what the hale, you have a healing post ready. I have experienced it often. I wrote and wrote and wrote, forgot to blink, sweat came and fingers cried, but I wrote and wrote and that witch and what does she think and have you seen his hair and who you calling rude, dur fittey muh and I was going yes, oh yes, ohhh yessss and a … release. It ended. What catharsis what freeing. What a ‘powerful’ … rant post ready! More power to me!

I’m hungry, which reminds me. Some of life’s biggest pleasures come in the form of big mounds of biryani served to you in star-rated crockery, for free. Just like all hostellers are poor, well, so are we. Hence the blogger meets look like mini-Kumbhs except no one is a sadhu here, or naked (Sigh!). I blog so that I remain forever eligible to walk into a gathering of fun-loving people who love free food, free drinks, free face-to-face networking, free birds and freebies too. Being contest-crazy needs hard work, sometimes 4 times over. And while hard word breeds satisfaction, at no point does it match the sated burp of three kinds of cheese cakes settling in your stomach's wall. For free. Free!

Ab bolo, got your reasons why I blog ya you need more? Or did you also just get the reasons why you blog? That or this, time to press ‘Publish’. 

And go dream of that one fine butler morning. It will happen, you see!

Jai Mata Di!


[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Million-dollar Question – Why do you blog?]