Gladys

(I read Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled' earlier this year, and this short piece is inspired by the style of that book.)

"Have you ever been to India? Is this your first time here?" The woman seated across me on the other berth asks. She looks like an Elizabeth. But her name is Gladys.

"No, I grew up in India. I was born in India actually. But I live overseas now," I reply.

"It's my second time here in the country," she says.

She gazes out the train window, putting her hand on the frame. We are now leaving West Bengal, approaching notorious Orissa and Bihar.. Notorious - atleast that's how the media puts it. And I have no intention of trying to prove whether that is a true assumption or not. Tomorrow I will be seeing the blistering mountains in the blistering merciless Indian summer sun - my favourite part of the country. Sugarcane drinks in the sun. Nothing quite like it.

"Now you have a highly romanticised idea of your home country." Gladys says, her eyes gazing out the window. She is squinting because the sun is harsh.

"What are you talking about?" I demand. She looks at me and smiles.

"You are thinking about the Himalayas. And sugarcane juice in the sun. And birds and dragonflies."

"And am I wrong?"

"You're not wrong." She comes across the aisle and sits beside me. She is in no hurry. She will get off at Mughal-Sarai station on her way to Varanasi. From there she will meet some friends, a couple from Pennsylvania and another couple from Lucknow and maybe one or two mates from Varanasi. She will then retire to a shanty old hotel with no hot water - but overlooking a busy market street that belch a perennial stream of oil fumes and dust. So she will put on a scarf made of Banaras silk and cover her mouth while she closes the window.

"You're not wrong in your reading of me too." She smiles, "I am going to Varanasi and will put up at a hotel overlooking the street."

"What is your name?" I hold out my hand. She takes it.

"Gladys." She replies, almost whispers.

"You're strange. What are you doing in India?"

She laughs.

"I am part of India. The blistering Punjab sun - the cold wasteland of Kashmir - the green fields of Kerala - the tea slopes of Darjeeling - the thundering rains of Meghalaya - I am India."

"Snap out of it. Do you want a drink of tea?"

A tea vendor had appeared calling, "Chai chai chai!"

"Yeah, but I will pay for it. I will not have a stranger pay for my tea!"

So I let Gladys pay for the tea. Five Rupees each.

"So what brings you to India?" I ask her. She takes a long sip and looks out the window again. Thinking she must not have heard my question I open my mouth to ask her a second time when she lifts a finger to silence me.

I remain silent as we pass through the tea estates of Bengal. 

On nostalgia, wanderlust and writing

I wrote this a week ago in a spell of a few minutes trying to capture the sense of wanderlust and nostalgia that sometimes hits you when you're most unaware. 

-

Elijah hadn't thought about it in a long time. He used to hate the idea of going into long bouts when he would not even think of Sirion and Town - but now as he awoke from his forgetfulness, he realized it really had been a long time since he had last thought about them.

He sat down at his writing table, but like vapour, the thoughts and memory of his home vanished. It flickered now and then, but the silence in his room, the rhythm of his routine and the drone in his head drowned them out. Even the memory of five minutes ago slithered away like an insensitive snake regardless of the song of the charmer - regardless of him trying his best to hold it at bay. 

He missed the refuge so much. But that refuge felt now like a lost dream. A lost dream lost to void. Slippery dreams like slippery eels that you get a hold of for a split second and then are gone in another split second. 

-

Maybe in a couple of year's time, I will still travel to a hill town and put down for a few months to finish my book about SIrion and Elijah Emory. The town shimmering in the Himalayan afternoon sun, clamouring of life. And souls brought together there to live, to breath the sepia air, to resurrect past demons, to drown in love, to hear the pines brushing in the moonlight.. 

Reading The God of Small Things

I've just finished reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. A book critic on the back cover of the book mentions that Roy has a keen sense of her surroundings that seems heightened compared to the rest of us. They say it took her four years to write this book. I imagine she went to train stations to watch filthy beggars, observe banana trees, try and put to words the flight of grasshoppers in thick Kerala air, delve deep into her own self to conjure language-worthy adjectives to describe the strangeness that dwells in the deepest hearts of every human - from a silly cafe waitress in London to an untouchable caste-man working at a pickle factory in a communism wreaked India to an unexplainable bond between twins who according to Roy are strangers "met by chance before their lives began" in their mother's womb.

I imagine if I spent a four years of my life honestly digging into myself I would drain myself and find myself going mad. Putting my dreams, nightmares, 'afternoon-mares' on paper would again bring to the fore many unsettledness that I had put to rest inside the chest of forgetfulness.

The lake of my soul feels disturbed somewhere within, by something like a churning of a tablespoon. Very minor, very tablespoon-like, but very unavoidably present.

Like a hungering and dread for a potential storm, and a new sense of awareness of my human-ness and its deficiencies.

He looks down from his throne
He who fashions the hearts of man
He who observes their puny little ways
He who knows the actions of every man

He makes the counsel of nations
Come to nothing
He frustrates the plans of men
Of rulers and the influential

By the word that flew out of his mouth
Forests, cedars, ramparts, refuges
Are shattered, as by a mighty sword.
By that same word, life came to being.

He challenges the arrogant
They that speak boastfully, he says to them:
Come and reason with me
Present your case before me

Proof yourself to me
That I may bow to you
That I may declare you
Righteous and blameless

The army and their horses
Are vain hopes in the day of battle
The wisdom of men
Are as nothing and they come to nothing

But behold, the eye of him
Is on those who wait on him
Who clings to him
Who are glad in him

They will never be put to shame
Who looks to him
Who inquires of him
And trusts in him without wavering

Exit Through The Gift Shop

So much hype around this movie. It's kind of like the Helvetica documentary movie in a few ways:

1. It came out about at the similar time - when public appreciation of a form of art is more noticeable.
2. It was made for the general public - a sort of an eye opening introduction to the artform.
3. It was movie that was inevitable. If the makers of Helvetica and Exit Through The Gift Shop hadn't made it, someone else would have made it sooner or later.

I watched it last night with so much anticipation. I realised quite quickly, from the first few shots that I wasn't going to like it. This movie is not about Banksy or the art that he is and does. It is not about graffitti form, nor any philosophy or principle that artists live by. It is not a tribute to anything like Helvetica is a tribute (love and hate) to the typeface.

This movie is about a Frenchman who has too much money for his own good, who should have spent more time with his family than muck around with his camera, who sneaks himself in, winning the trusts of real artists, getting into their lives and making a crass self-centred documentary film about him vandalizing on the works and lives of the vandalizers. And what's worse, as people do all the time, he begins to be convinced that he can produce works of art himself and goes on to produce an exhibition.

To be fair though, this is the game that Banksy and the grafitti cronies play. This is their way of making their statements, defacing walls, beautifying walls, with and without permission, with their ego and name plastered all over it, a bold declaration that the artist is 'the man'. Everything that Banksy does, though he insists that it is not about the money, is aimed to make his name famous. They get their kicks seeing their names (hideously and beautifully) painted on the sides of the passing trains. Theirry, the maker of this film, has done exactly that. Except this crackhead (or a genius, some will say) didn't use the public space or famous landmark to piss his name all over it. He does it on the very people that vandalize.

I heard that the whole thing is a hoax. Of course it is! And does it even matter? Thierry is a nutcase. Banksy (and the other artists in the film) is only a pawn in his little game.

There was a gang of robbers and thieves who looted the rich in the towns and returned to the villages with their riches. But then there was Thierry who hid in the woods, having planted booby traps on the path. The looters were caught unawares, and they all fell. Thierry plundered them, in the full view of the villagers, who watched with great amusement. Banksy, the leader of the gang watched, not saying anything, his arms tied behind his back unable to do anything. He said to himself, half jokingly, This sneaky little guy has won at our own game.

Thierry was a coward and not a worthy robber. But he hadn't lost.