La la Land

Why am I constantly wondering? Why can't I just observe?

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

Looking to learn, to explore and to imagine possibilities......

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Sunil Dutt, Nargis and Mother India

Sunil Dutt is dead. May his soul rest in peace.

The first thing that struck me was he died within weeks of her death anniversary, May 3rd. It’s a special day in my family so I remember the day she died too.

He married her breaking every taboo in a time not many had the courage to. She was older, eminently more successful and to top it all, a Muslim. Not that it was a big deal, but for one who was a victim of partition, that monstrosity that made us “independent,”
It was a step of humanity not many of us are capable of, even when not victims of the same order. Needless to say, I admire him.

Nargis was the star of many movies, the most important of which was Mother India, where Sunil Dutt played her son, who turns to “the dark side” and only a mother would understand that anguish. He saved her life from a fire on the set and asked her to marry him in return. Nargis, in a futile relationship with Raj Kapoor, which threatened his marriage, with Krishna having moved out of home, married Sunil Dutt. She married him simply, with none of the splendor stars displayed...

My favorite Nargis film is “Raat aur Din” where she plays the woman who leads a double life... The following song still plays in my mind.

“Dil ki girah khol do, chup na baitho
Koi geet gao
Mehfil mein ab kaun hai ajnabee, tum mere paas aao”

(Untie the knots of my heart,
Don’t be silent
Sing any song

There are no strangers in this audience
You can come close to me)

PS I think that’s not a good translation, but it is close…


For this couple, who were about the love beyond human differences, my heart says a silent prayer...

Monday, May 23, 2005

Time: some observations

Watches seem redundant to me. Am gifted by this strange alarm clock in my mind which beeps at exactly the time I tell it to. I have not worn one for several years but have rarely ever been late due to this idiosyncrasy.


A long time ago, I think I made a strange observation. When on a plane, it’s strange to wake up and see the watch. It always surprises me to see how little time went by and how long it felt when I was asleep. Whether this is a subjective thing or not, I am not sure but have found this to be true of any kind of motion. In a plane, it seems more defined though.

Sometimes, when I watch a movie, this aspect of time being contrived also catches my attention. It’s like perceiving time through the story teller’s eyes. Sometimes I feel the story is too fast and at other times, I feel it’s too slow. The speed of passing time is has some strange effect on the emotional reaction it elicits. The sensual mind slows things down, relishing every detail, every nook and cranny of the seconds and the secrets it holds. The thoughtful mind does a gestalt, taking in the complete picture, and putting it in its place, which maybe a bird's eye view, a bird flying really high.


In my dreams, this time dimension ceases to have meaning. On several occasions I have dreamt of places and people and things that make no sense to my immediate world and within a few days, it’s spooky to see a house from one’s dream and know exactly what the backyard looks like or where the kitchen is. The first time that happened, I thought it was weird and told no one for a few days. The goose pimples didn’t seem to die down. People sometimes also have that effect too. Not necessarily people I know, sometimes complete strangers. While having a conversation, I know exactly what the next sentence is going to be. A tame word for it is déjà vu but it’s a hard awareness to come to terms with. Sometimes the knowledge is too much to bear. It seems to me things are linked in several ways rather than just being in the same time frame. And as one moves through events in one’s life, these things come together in strange ways, defying laws of linear time, sometimes called serendipity.

It seems to be that in perception of time lies several keys to life questions. Am not sure what all this means, these being merely observations.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

The art of indifference

When people from two mindsets interact, funny things happen. Language and behavior takes Rorschach form. How people interpret them is a window into how people attach meaning to certain things and how they don’t. Of course, any new bride will tell you the same thing, when she interacts with a family with a different worldview than hers. Many cross cultural training sessions have been constructed on this and yet understanding has not found a formula.

I think the “art of cultivated indifference” has something to do with this. It seems to me a modern malady, where thought seems to have overtaken feeling. It is not OK, in civilized society to express feeling without the label or being “irrational” or “emotional.” Public discourse seems to be always about thought, and any subjective experience seems to be relegated to the realm of art, namely exotic, and esoteric. And while all this happens, processes are developed for how we talk, how we interact, and these rules of behavior drive all interaction, mechanical, and without authenticity. While sitting on many meetings at work, PTA and committees of myriad hues, and when developing friendship with people of many kinds, colors and races, the gap between public and private personas always seems to be fallout of this modern art. Who I talk to as a friend is very different from the person in public. And funnily, I always like the friend better. To be socially intelligent seems to be a garb of hiding what one feels while wearing a beautiful mask. No wonder then, we have so much conflict. Wit, humor, and the ability to turn everything into trivial are considered sophistication, as opposed to authenticity, which is somehow associated with being emotional, and hence not respected enough.

Somewhere, the subjective experience seems to have been relegated into the world of the inferior. A natural reaction, accompanied with thoughtfulness, cannot be such a difficult goal to aim for. However it seems to me, that not much effort is made, leave alone achievement. Maybe a greater need exists for faith than reason. Reason has been highly overdone.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

On funerals and friends

I have to go to a funeral today.

How can I ever forget the first one I attended? My grandmom died and the months leading upto it were life changing for me. To see her reduced to helplessness physically was the easy part. It was her struggle to show love for my father who she had systematically hurt and scorned all his life, that stayed with me. He took care of her lovingly, with no thought of physical or financial consequence and my mom was with him in all those moments.

Not sure why I felt so angry about all this, I remember waiting in the hospital for the documents. There was this very handsome monk, also waiting in the the same room for some other documents. What would we learn without the bureaucracy of life? He was one of the most attractive men I have ever met in my life and he was quite unperturbed by the long wait, unlike me. At some point we got talking and naturally we talked about death , which is why we were there. His youth, looks and intelligence seemed very attractive to me at 18, which is how old I was, and I had to ask him what he was doing in monk clothes at such a young age. ( I am shamed of my irreverence now but kind of glad at what happened next)
He told me how he became a monk.

His best friend and cousin got into an accident with his wife, (who was a very beautiful and talented young woman he had fallen in love with), and while she escaped unscathed, he was paralysed for life. They had only been married a few months. He talked to her and asked her to go ahead with her life. She would not hear of it, totally engulfed in grief and took care of him night and day. It pained him more to see her in pain than to think about his life cut short but not quite yet. After two years of taking care of him night and day, even he grew used to her loving presence and began to think of it as his right. In time she grew bitter about her life, and all her love started draining away, leaving a coldness behind, which was much more painful than anything he had gone through. The monk said he was witness to all this and it caused him grief to see human frailty for which noone could be blamed. He said sometimes its easier to blame than to empathise. I think I now know what that meant. She slowly fell in love with someone else, and got involved, and all this was hidden from the guy. Her deception made her angry and guilty and her cruelty to him grew day by day. He said the guy died finally, setting all of them free from this absolutely harrowing experience. All this made him think about what he was living towards, a job, love, success, and it all seemed meaningless and he decided to find another path to ask these questions and here he was, a monk, waiting for another monk’s papers.

We talked for several hours, and he talked to me about my feelings regarding my grandmom’s death and he asked me for my address, saying he would write to me if it was OK. He sent me postcards for several years and I wrote back too, probably not contributing as much as he contributed to my growth.

I still wonder whether his journey took him closer to the meaning of life. I am still living mine.

Bombay in the rain

I remember Bombay in the rain. There is always the first time one experiences what monsoons can mean in Bombay, when the sea and the sky meet in a grey line that is invisible. The waves are usually foam tipped and white, sometimes gentle and sometimes high.

This was a long time ago, when I was a new bride. There was beautiful henna on my hands and S. held my hand firmly, as though he could not believe I was here, with him, by his side. He told me about our new home, an old Bombay cottage, which he said was on the verge of breaking down. However, we were happy just to be with each other after waiting for a time period which can only be described as too long. Tepidly, I entered our first home. The first thing that struck me was the pigeons that lived in the red tiled roof… so many of them. They had made a mess of the place, but had left some of their happiness of nesting right there, as a gift for us. The windows had trees outside them and for a moment, the damp green feeling transported me into a different place…This could not be Bombay, the Bombay of numerous inhuman stories, of skyscrapers, of raw ambition, and survival fights that would make even Darwin shed tears.

I guess that’s why it rained so much.

But I remember the song from 1942, a love story. “Rim Jhim, Rim Jhim,” and can still hear myself humming it. The air seemed damp at all times. One moment that stays with me is waiting on a platform as the crowds grew bigger and the train did not arrive, leading to restlessness. Then a whisper went through and I overheard someone saying the trains were all held up as someone fell off the crowded train. A man threw his cigarette down in disgust. “I’ll be late for work today, again. Couldn’t that guy die in front of another train?’
Now, the pictures of trains in Bombay have been seen by many but this moment can never be captured in words or pictures. I still feel numb thinking of that moment, not knowing what to think or feel and wondered whose father or husband did not go home that night.

A few years later, when my husband interviewed in New York for a job and five out of the 10 people who interviewed him asked him if he was comfortable with crowded New York, and narrated this story to some of us, one of our friends quipped. “Didn’t you tell them, if the train doors can shut, its not called crowded.” And laughed loudly. I remembered that day when the man died as his grip was not hard enough, and I could not laugh. Also, we did not travel by trains anymore so it did seem appropriate to say anything.

But then I also remember the monsoon when my son was born right the day when my husband went on a short trip, a good eight weeks early. He was so tiny, that I have never seen anyone so tiny before. He was small, bony, and very soft. I agonized for years that it must have been my fault that he was so little and ill equipped to handle the harsh world and he was born as some result of my inability to take better care of him. In time I would learn, that things happen, and the best thing I can do is not let my angst affect this lovely gift of a child. So I learnt to smile….and let the rain do the crying in its season.