Dawning Realisations

It’s dawn. And I am wide awake. Not because i have suddenly turned into a morning bird, but because i haven’t slept at all. Beside me is also wide-awake Preetha. For some reason, both women are in a deep meditative/contemplative/insomniac/talkative mode this day. You may want to attribute this to watching two admittedly chick flicks, but which are also soul-stirring: 50 First Dates and A Walk to Remember (Come visit Venus sometime!).

Watching Shane West turn into a miracle and Drew Barrymore battle with the reality of her life every single day can have its sobering effect on you (Yes it is possible!). And so, the contemplative mood goes in search of something to roost upon, and ends up with Chapter 420 – ‘Repression in this country!’ Not just in the sense of “O we can’t be open about boyfriends we can’t be open about sexuality we can’t wear revealing clothes like these American kids………..” strain. That got left behind with the ‘Hip Hip Hurray’ (remember the ’super-cool!’ series on Zee that was about a bunch of high school kids in short skirts and even shorter flings)stage passing by after creating mucho-flutter, at least in certain public schools in urban India.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines repression, in terms of Psychology, as: ‘The unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind’. It also means ‘forceful subjugation’, and involves a defence mechanism somwhere down the line. A wee bit of analysis should get us thinking. keeping in mind the ‘colonial hangover’ that we’re all still striving to get over, the secularism that we’re still trying to imbibe, despite having proclaimed it half a century ago, but still fighting like grumpy children over nothings, still invariably finding something to step on and dominate in all respects – children, women, farmers, the less fortunate, the plants, trees and animals – despite also proclaiming the ideal of equality, i’d say it is surprising they don’t adopt repression, in the above stated senses of the word, as another clause of the noble constitution, since it is practiced freely, by all elements of the government and the civil society as well.     

tears for fears

Wouldn’t you agree that it is repression that rules the roost in our much coveted 61 year old nation? repression-oppression-suppression of PDA, ideals, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, sexualities, emotions, euphoria, feelings, women, children, ‘the other’, temperatures, what-you-really-think, desires….it can go on forever. When whole lives revolve around, and are directed by, the mighty ’society’, repression becomes the unnecessary but natural offspring of “what will the neighbours say?!” and “this is not allowed in this country, even if it IS in the West!”

When living by rules, by perceptions and by God are just three examples of the shackles that we entwine ourselves in, when microcosms of envy, jealousy and greed become the governing monsters of our disbelief in each other and when the super-structures that we create in our mind, and unleash on (arguably) empty vessels of unresenting acceptance, it is a repressed organism that breathes through nasal septal perforations.

But then, in a place which calls the cow as its mother, but also feeds on its flesh in dark stinking alleys, it’s not metaphor or allegory that you need to give reality/truth a face. “We have too many religious textbooks here,” says sage Preetha, resting under her tree of knowledge. True. The multiple interpretations of which add still more spice to this saga of pushing the roots of change back underground. Then again, is it fair to blame the sacred pothas to this extent? they written with good intentions, by possibly good men, after all.

Why is it that we follow the Quran, the Geetha, the Bible more than our Constitution? If it is all about governing man to lead a better life, and if the end-product is happiness and all around growth of mankind, what stops us? Not that the costitution is infallible. Hypocrisy comes as a side salad there too. But anything that is unattempted remains impossible. Is it impossible to conceive of an open, liberated, truly secular India?

I don’t know. There is despair. They jail teenagers for ’coochie-cooing’ in parks, they beat up nuns for forcing ‘conversion’, they bomb market areas to make a rebellious statement about Islam, they protest against the Tatas’ project because the capitalists take away their lands, they don’t send their daughters to school but she is going to be someone’s ‘ghar ki lakshmi’ by bringing in all the dowry, they ……………

I guess when we begin to accept that it is ‘we’ and not ‘they’ that make it all happen, even as just a collective wilfulness, that ‘we’ might be able to move beyond it.

it’s another kind of double life – being victims and perpetrators –  that we live. or maybe its just cyclic. like the destructive chakravyuha.

Sheer Beer Pressure!

heh. - www.cafeultravioleta.files.wordpress.com

…And so it is saturday night, again. At a loss for what to do, there is always the fallback option, at least as far as i am considered. Pubbing. Pub - jumping – cruising – hopping. Whatever. And top of the charts is Peco’s, on Rest House Road. Just off Brigade Road, this beer spouting little tower has only recently acquired a neon signpost, since it might have finally penetrated the manor’s masters that not a few enthusiastic new patrons on the block are at a loss for its whereabouts…since it was expected that word-of-mouth alone would get you crawling up their steep creaking staircase, in search of your nirvana. Or your next hand-me-down maid/prince..if you like.

So once you do manage to locate it, sandwiched between ’fashion sense’ and another non-descript bar, and as you manage the crawling towards superior chambers than what first impressions might shock you into sensing, the greasy smiles of the chambermasters, thudding music and whiffs of the many kingfishers and fosters being downed, in addition to a certain ‘herb’ being rolled up and lit to flames, you might be transported into ‘relaxo-world’ (that of the chappal fame, possibly).

The darkness engulfs you, as does the evergreen (in more ways than one) crooning of Jim Morrison, begging you to assist him in his immolation (oh har-de-har-har!), and you can just about make out scattered popcorn, ash on wooden tables, chairs, floors. The ceiling is black as a moonless night, ie, if there is a ceiling. Mirrors and rock legends glare, and simultaneously wink at you, depending on your degree of intoxication, and no, you’re not subjected to a self-study on identity, or crises, or the like. Since, at this particular juncture in time and space, you’d rather fly, and the smiling wizards will help you do just that.

Bob your head, head bang, on tables, sing along, dance on table tops, do whatever you like – there are no rules. They’ll keep smiling through it all. It is another world, a much live-in-able one, despite the 50% diluted with water beer. And of course, they know how to make chilli beef, and keema dosas. If intoxication is not your thing, pay them a visit on a weekend morning, before noon, and you’ll get a reportedly fantabulous buffet. Reportedly, since i’ve never bothered to wake up at that ungodly hour. *shudder*.

This moment

 

twisted villas - by J Karam

Michael Jackson sings of his lovely days that are gone.

the office is beginning to get frantic, in a bid to meet deadlines. I sit in a corner, gaze at my computer, drink some coffee, ponder over ‘money for nothing’ and fidget in my chair, in various ways – tap the inside of the table, swivel my chair between a degree here n there. bob the head coz whatsisname is singin ‘unwell’, and i feel the sniffles coming on, as the virus takes over on auto pilot mode.

images chase each other in the head, scurrying around the (few) grey cells, playing at being Sponge-Bob Square-Pants. visions, sounds, aromas, ideas, solitudes, feelings, aspirations, blankness – past, present, future (that would be bleakness). many frolicking toddlers, down ‘Chhatra Marg’, with the trees and the sun, on the cycle-rickshaws, with the coffees, and the melodies, past companies (now gone sour). many shadows, many more replete-with-satisfaction moments, music, intoxications, histories, journals, stage performances, good intentions. blissful boredom, tea stalls, chocolate muffins, conversations, predominant strains of humour – good and bad. three years of sheer love, sheer beauty, sheer indulgence.  

What a journey it has been!

Bless thy heart, o days of yonder. for giving me this chance to indulge in a bit of what’s been and done, the beauty of immortal castles constructed, that will stay forever with me, and where a part of me shall stay forever.