I am trying out something new called micro blogging. I can post links, photos, text, quotes, audio or video separately. Conceptually, it’s in between twitter and a blog. I felt rather restricted by twitter, what with character limits. I like micro blogging more. It gives me the freedom to add a link alone if I felt like it without having to explain anything! I know you can do that both on twitter and on a blog but somehow it seems a bit much for twitter and a lot less for a blog. In any case, twitter, tumblr, and blogs fill a different type of communication need in a person. One cannot override the other. It’s like friends. You need some friends for some purposes. Not all friends function in the same way. And it is in perfect tune with who they are, what they want and what is your connection with them.  

And oh, this is my tumblr microblog: South Side Blues.

After a week spent slouched in front of the computer, (spent, not slouched, more than normal), it was such a relief to have a creative weekend where I escaped from my life. On Saturday, I had the delightful idea of meeting up with friends and attending the Korean contemporary music concert that was going on as a part of the November music fest. Oh, it was such a feast for the senses. I say senses, because you don’t listen to music with just your ears, you listen with your eyes and with your body. This was one music concert where I listened with my body.

Four Korean musicians, Gong Myoung, transformed the Music Academy stage into a playground for their music. A music that was strange and familiar at the same time. The multi-talented instruments played contemporary instruments (guitar, drums) and traditional Korean instruments as well as the ones they themselves had created out of bamboo. The music they drew out from those instruments was dynamic, pulsating and energetic. I couldn’t sit still for long. The repertoire of music changed from fast and vibrant to slow and melancholic but each had its own crystallised beauty. True performers that they were, they combined many genres in their performance including acting. Their music spilled over the stage making them move all about the ground floor. They didn’t stay in one place. They entered (I couldn’t help notice like the Jatra) from the aisles just like the audience as if to say “We are just like you”. English words escaped them but the music made its way to an encore performance. We couldn’t just get enough of these sound magicians. Even household items were converted into musical instruments like bubbletop plastic water containers made into drums and walking-sticks made into flutes. Every thing has its music. Only a few seem to find it. They were one of those few.

Listening to their music made the dust off my life fall off . Gong Myuong’s music performance reminded me that there is so much to live for. I remember thinking in the middle of a stirring composition that a universe that has this music can’t be all that bad.

Image courtesy: Inko Center, Chennai

If at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world— unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

— e e cummings

I write because I delight in words

I write because it helps me sort out my thoughts

I write because I really like the idea of creating something just out of nothing

I am not sure what I get when I come away from watching Wong Kar-Wai’s films but I know it’s something unnameable, unspeakable, something that cannot be caught with words. Some critic calls his works “mood pieces”. He stretches a mood to the point that it might almost snap and then moves on to create the next. I never saw another rain-drenched street again without thinking of Wong Kar-Wai. His frames are almost perfect. Watching a billowing skirt on a rain-drenched street, for two seconds, I was confused if I was watching a still painting or a movie! In Days of Being Wild – on second thoughts, not just Days – he concentrates on the inner life of his characters rather than the oppressive outer life in cramped, sweaty apartments.

The blatant image of clocks signified – not surprisingly – time and what we lose every second, because his films are more about loss than love. We don’t just lose time, we lose everything every second. Time becomes a symbol of loss even. With such symbolisms floating all over the place, I consider him a literary director.

I felt this huge sense of relief when I saw Chungking Express. Subsequent viewings would reveal other feelings but the first one was very significant. I was relieved that someone had put emotions under a microscope. Wong Kar-Wai was so interested in finding out about the minutiae of emotions, some specific emotions at that. He dissects love, loss, and longing the best. At the end of the movie, the viewer is completely immersed into the mood/atmosphere so much that it’s difficult to get out of it for a few days at least. The music, the rich visuals, all assault the senses. One of the few assaults that I actually like.

…to feel a beautiful calm inside me. It’s to do with finding spaces to breathe in this sad-crazy world.

On the Scribe

As I write, I write myself. I am the one who has spent endless hours with the night ink, committing men’s memories to paper each day. I have written on the desert and every period is a grain of the same. Letters on the sea have been liquid and every word is anguish when it concerns oblivion. Sometimes I am the distant sign that judges. Other times, the letter that extols love. Almost never the one talking about what is just. In me are all the alphabets and I have tried complex calligraphies brought to me from unknown peoples hour upon hour. I have written in blood about gory battles. I have celebrated the triumph of death. I have celebrated the consecration of life with the sap of trees. I am the stellar sign. The sign of so many times that I am lost in it. I have written epistles of pain, of rejection, of sentences. Most times my hand shakes. At some moments my hand enjoys what I write and I feel as if I were caressed by a lost dove. I have brought order to obtuse thoughts. I have reordered the stars and their movements. I have attended the assembly where men conspire against others for power. Death also dictates its judgements to me. I am the celebrant of ancient alphabets in this half-lit room. Only the candelabra keeps me company and with its light I write a better horizon for the future generations. I write now, possessed by the syllables, I write on the stone of sacrifice. Hence the writing. The letter that accompanies me polishes my blood as if it were a diamond. I write with blood, with the same I have seen shed, like rivers of ink, in battles, with the same blood I have wrenched from the mauve sunset, I shall use the same blood to add the full stop to these folios on which I write my life.
© 2008, Juan Diego Tamayo
© Translation: 2009, Nicolás Suescún

Thanks to: www.poetryinternational.org

Sometimes, I develop a knot at the base of the throat. It’s like the throat is tied up or like my throat is closing in on me. It starts with a a light twist and progresses into a full-fledged traffic jam that doesn’t let even air get through. Most of the time, I try to work it out rationally. But that doesn’t work all the time. I have started trying a new tactic. I decided to trust life. As in, trust that everything will be fine. It’s a kind of blind faith I am not used to. I always question. And that’s the itch to reach for reason.

The Buddha would have said, “True happiness comes only if you can delight in things without wanting to possess them”. This is true. If only I could be sufficiently Buddha-like. When we see grass, or the sunlight, we do delight in it without the urge to posses them, don’t we? Then why not with the others? Especially situations where we are not in control. I have tried to be detached, Buddha-like sometimes. And it does work. But there are times when I have slipped as well. And I know there will be others. Imperfection is the fun of life.

In fact, one morning while getting to office, I had an epiphany. I was thinking that I mustn’t try to run, metaphorically, that is. I am always thinking “if only this was this way, or that way…; what can I do to change things?” In short, always trying to be somewhere else. I must enjoy the present moment. I am here in this present moment because I have chosen to be here. My soul has consciously chosen to be at this point in life; it’s not an unconscious accident. (All this would make sense if you believed in souls. Do you?) It’s a sort of accepting my state of being without questioning it. Something like Keats’ negative capability (or the Buddha’s detachment). Every time I try to work out something, I always come back to Keats’ negative capability. There are many explanations. This is the original.

When a man is capable of being in doubts, uncertainties, mysteries, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. (Keats’ Letters)

Buddha’s detachment, Keats’ negative capability, Rilke’s questions go hand in hand. Rilke said:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. (Letters to a Young Poet)

After reading such enlightened lines, or rather embracing them, I can feel the knot in my throat loosening.

The talk about the arrest of Kobad Ghandy and the debate in the media, the retelling of old stories, the birth and growth of the Naxalite movement remind me of the stories that my mom used to tell me. It was more than just stories. She was showing me something that no text book would ever speak about. She was in Calcutta University during the peak of the crackdown on the Naxalites in the 70’s. She wasn’t one herself but had friends who were sympathisers and activists. The confusion, danger, madness that prevailed then was truly exciting at least from the point of view of someone who was listening to her in the 90’s. Some people even people blamed Gandhi for actively involving students in politics. Had they not been involved during the freedom struggle, they wouldn’t think of protesting in the 70’s, they said.

My first lesson in survival under duress of any kind (to run away) came not from any book or even the media (the media cannot be trusted, remember?) but from her. I have grown up the stories of police raids (sudden, unwelcome), illegal newspapers (must be burned), bomb explosions (regular), blood-spattered shirts (which had to be washed before the police turned up), Mao-Tse Tung pamphlets (banned, must never been seen with it), police investigations (brutal), detectives in mufti (handsome, not to be trusted), University politics (appear as a sympathiser but never join in) and near escapes. I got to know of “the system”, the student protest and the clash between them. But I also got to know that many people who were neither. They didn’t care if the system failed them. The system was attacking their kids. People who had faithfully served the system now had to protect their children from it. It was a confusing time. Many people send their kids away to different parts of India even the world to escape being picked up by the police. I admired that people had courage to stand up to the injustice. But also was scared for people who had to live through this uncertain time. There was a certain purity of purpose but everyday events smacked of corruption anyway. You could for instance bribe your way into seeing a friend in prison who was “allegedly” picked up for questioning. But you could not free him or her. Some of the kids of the richest people were wanted for their involvement. It was best to be like Switzerland, neutral.

A healthy society should always have the space for protest without fear of retribution. It’s when this space is vacuumed out, that the problem starts, the protest starts. On the other hand, can one be idealistic, have the same purity of purpose without being violent? If idealism and protest go hand in hand, is idealism dead or has it morphed into something we don’t recognise anymore? Or is this question even relevant in today’s context, where conformity is the new cool?

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Further Reading

1. The incisive article in Tehelka on the debate surrounding Kobad Ghandy.

2. The personal article in the Hoot on Kobad Ghandy.

3. The nostalgic article in the Times of India on the 70’s rebels.

Do you feel like you are living a different life? Different from the one intended for you, that is. Like you have gotten off the wrong station on the way to your destination proper and couldn’t find your way back. So, you stayed. And in time participated in the activities of the place—the many decisions, the maddening pace, the little rebellions. You also fell in love with the sensuousness and life that the place exuded. (How heady and delightful they were!) Then you forgot that this was never the place you intended to get off. At first there was this nagging feeling that something was off kilter. Sometimes when you looked out of the window the noise receded and a sense of calm descended on you, you got the feeling that you belonged somewhere else. That you are here temporarily. That however beautiful, frightening, confusing and alive this place was, this was not YOUR place. You’d rather be somewhere else. Should be somewhere else. Must be somewhere else. At other times, while reading (always poetry, of late lyrical prose) a feeling strong enough to defy gravity gripped your insides. Invariably, someone would ask you a question (sometimes as innocuous as “how was the drink, madam?”) and you’d be pulled back to the pageantry of this world. The noise, the strange beauty and startling insights anchoring you again. At least, till the next time you float away. Do you feel like you are living a different life than from the one you intended? 

I do.