Words (are all I have ...)

Magic lies in words. In their sound, their meaning, their power to raise dreams and memories and sudden emotion.

Consider this passage on names …
“the tribes of men use many names, the Sarmatians from the Germans and the Goths frequently from the Huns. Tutizar was a Goth and Ragnaris a Hun, but Tutizar is not a Gothic name and Ragnaris is Germanic. The Byzantine generals who in 493 fought against the Isaurians were Apsikal, a Goth, and Sigizan and Zolban, commanders of the Hun auxiliaries. Apsikal is not a Gothic but a Hunnic name; Sigizan might be Germanic.”

[The Language of the Huns, in O. Maenchen-Helfen's "The World of the Huns” (University of California Press, 1973) which I, of course, have not read. I found it on languagehat.]

Those names …. The clash of arms and the baying of war-horns, frost-rimed forests, the stench of horses after a gallop, ice crashing on black rocks and the terror of a burning town. All from the hard clanking echoes of Tutizar, Ragnaris, Apsikal, Zolban, a charivari against the ominous background chords of two names of terror, the Huns and the Goths.

History echoes through those names. And one of my favourite celebrants of history was a wordsmith par excellence, a modern-day Homer of India and of Britain, a balladeer and teller of stories who never fails to charm. Maenchen-Helfen’s paragraph on the names of the tribes brought to mind “Puck of Pook’s Hill”, the Beetle’s love-song to the land of his fathers and the tales of its history that he read and read through his growing years.

Consider now the craft in this list of spirits, a counting of dreams, a naming of names, a promise of stories to come …
“I saw them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest - gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.”

That invocation at the end, creating its own icons and sorcery! The man knew, above all, the magic of words. Because there can be no stories without words. Emotions and relations can spark wordlessly between lovers or enemies, but they cannot resonate till their story is told. Their very reality can be altered by the story-teller’s perception.

Would Romeo have been aught but a callow youth if Bald Will had not set him to music unheard? Imagine if his story had been written by Stephen Fry instead – would he not have been a delinquent teen, goaded to murder and suicide by the torture of repressed homosexuality? While the world, of course, bayed in laughter at the screaming fun of it all.

But to come back to Kipling and his craft. Here is the balladeer tuning up ’is bloomin’ lyre:
“I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic - Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!”

Tintagel and Hy-Brasil bring to mind T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”, but I shall resist the temptation to digress.

The Beetle has much in common with my other Master. The creation of a world, but that is the skill of all great story-tellers from Chaucer to Tolkien. The celebration of an age, whether the Raj in India or the Home Counties in the lull between the Wars. A drawing upon the treasures of reading, the use of quotation and reference to pay homage to past masters and enrich their own work through it. The painstaking attention to construction, the long hours at their craft to polish each paragraph to a lapidary glow.

Above all, a consummate mastery of the language, the ear for its music and the sense that can cull a false rhythm. This is also the point where they differ, each setting his own signature rhythms that can be recognised at a hundred paces like “the set of a trooper’s shoulders”.

Kipling stuck to more basic rhythms, his language a means to an end, subsumed within the larger need to tell the story. The Master on the other hand revelled in the words themselves, playing with the language, spinning out a paragraph over half a page like an angler casting over a mountain stream, yet with such supreme mastery of the basics that neither clarity nor construction suffered in the process. Like a great batsman playing the push-drive to the sight-screen, he made it look so easy that we never realize the effect until the final moment.

“Belloc, to the consternation of Hugh Walpole, forthrightly declared him to be the best prose writer of the age (his exact words were “the finest writer of English in the 20th century”); Ronald Knox, most fastidious of scholars and stylists, rejoiced in him.” Evelyn Waugh, himself a fine craftsman and perhaps best known to a wide public as “the man who wrote the blurbs for Plum’s Penguin editions”, looked on him as “the head of my profession”.

Words may not suffice. The attempt in any case would be presumptuous, because words were Wodehouse’ forte.

Marxism

Three things that I’m happy about.

The first should be evident. The side-bar is up, I even have a CCL, I can take the Chicago gamer and the Uncut commentator out of my bookmarks. Thanks to He-of-the-uncut-locks and to Bhegoo-bhayya for their help.

Then … I now have an inamorata. Sleek, chic, quietly confident and capable. Petite, almost waif-like. But very very sexy. Oh, VERY hot. Think Penelope Cruz, but (pardon the sexist analogy) with tetas grandes.

Now to push Anil to activate the bloomin’ RIM card, then my baby and I can be really free … (He’s in sole charge now, he should get a move on.)

Finally, something that makes me feel good but also faintly embarrassed. People whose writing I admire have linked me on their blogs. Very flattering, especially in the case of a Writer of Repute who has a short blog-roll.

All very nice, but I hold, with Groucho Marx (through Woody Allen) that “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have ME as a member”. In other words, self-doubt lingers. If old TSE himself rose from his grave and gave me an approving nod, I’d suspect the Guv’nor had lost it.

Oh well. Enjoy it while it lasts, try not to feel guilty.

Positively the last Dhaka Diaries ...

(... for the time being)


The way it goes in Blogworld, reading follows browsing. Then come comments, curiosity, interaction, perhaps mail. Eventually, personalities emerge from the cyber-haze – at bloggers’ meets, in airports, once (as mentioned elsewhere) at a cricket match.

With me, of course, it has to happen the other way round. We met at the conference in Dhaka, exchanged smiles, pleasantries, bitched about the arrangements. Some time on the second day, my Net deprivation crossed reasonable limits and I took over the only available machine. Whereupon I was told, in passing, that there is a Blog. I went. I read. I laughed. I like. Check it out.


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The other high point was dinner on the last night. S- (confusing, that. The three young people who were shovelling the shit for the conference all have that initial. One of them is even a descendant of a Chief Minister of Bengal) led me to Dhanmundi to buy CDs and to gormandise. The 'mall' could have been 'AC Market' in any given Indian city in the early '80s, except that it wasn't AC. And that there was a cornucopia of products that were all, pre-1991, very definitely for the phoren-returned.

The restaurant was tucked away on an upper floor of what seemed like an office building. The lighting was dim, there was a smell of smoking generators, the table-cloths were pink and blotched. Half the stuff on the menu was not available.

We ordered (in my case, with much trepidation), went outside to light up for a while, came back in ten minutes to find a procession of dishes arriving. S, my apologies once again for doubting you. I’d wondered why we were ordering what I considered ‘North Indian’ cuisine. We were served superb naan and a daal that tasted like haleem, a dish that overshadowed even the beef bhoona and the traditional Bangal muroger zhul. (And yes, if I visit Dhaka again I shall dine at Mama Haleem’s.)

The piece de resistance was a Bong fantasy, the kind of thing that Mr. Haldar from Paikpara and Mrs. Baidya from Akhon Bazaar moan about in their restless dreams, a dish of rui kaaliya that overwhelmed with its Brobdingnagian bounty. I felt like Cap’n Ahab in the MAD Magazine version of Moby Dick – ‘Now you’ve GOT it, what are you going to DO with it’. (We ate all of it. Eventually)

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I wouldn’t go for a walk in Dhaka. Not, at least, in the town itself. North of the clutter, however, there are places that could pass off as Jodhpur Park or even Vasant Vihar. Past a pile of masonry that used to be one of the Gates of Dhaka; apparently there was a time when Dhaka was closed down at 10 p.m., the gates were shut, “nor all your piety nor wit” could get them to open again till 6 o’ clock the next morning.

Past tatterdemalion commercial districts, brash with neon and trailing wires and hoardings in execrable English, shop-fronts like painted ladies. Past a vast field ghostly under floodlights, while the Jatiya Parishad building loomed dark and unlit beside it. Past a million rickshaws, autos, Toyotas, pedestrians, even a couple of double-decker buses that could have pulled up at Gole Park or Dunlop Bridge.

I mentioned this to a friend and his answer made me think. “Dhaka has no Marwaris.” True. Nor the Tamizh cadences of Lake Market nor the Punjabi bustle of Bhowanipur. Calcutta survives as part of India, and I’m profoundly grateful this is not a Bangali ghetto. Kudos to Mumbai for rejecting Bal Thackeray’s insider theory.

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Many uniforms. Every wing of the police - immigration, traffic, security - has a different uniform. Smart new uniforms, too, with flaps and epaulettes and wide belts. Apparently, every time the government is reminded that the police are paid so little that they HAVE to resort to graft to survive, they hand out new uniforms. My new friend was mugged a month ago. He says there was a policeman three feet behind him who just looked the other way.
A tribute to Bong innovation ... in Noo Yawk the women carry Mace to ward off muggers. In Dhaka, muggers carry Mace and pepper sprays because they work just as well in the other direction. *Shrug* Simple, innit?

Strange - Bangladesh has the 7th-largest standing army in the world. That's good in terms of employment potential, but the Bangladeshis I met did not seem to feel exceptionally secure. "Yeah right, our army's going to be very sharp if, like, China dumps on us. Or - oh boy! *and much rolling of eyes* - India wants to walk in and take over!" I coughed politely and changed the subject.

The great Bangladesh Rifles are not very popular either. I mentioned the murder of a BSF officer at a flag-meeting some months ago. "We never hear about that kind of thing here ..." So check the Internet, friend, you're supposed to be the new generation!

I mention the middle-years paradigm of the effectivemess of an elected government, that in a five-year term the first year goes for consolidation and the last two are spent preparing for the next election, leaving just the middle year-and-a-bit for hard decisions. "Here the entire five year period is spent with a single objective - making money. Why do you think we consistently rank as the most corrupt country in the world?"
I point out that greater visibility could be a factor, since there are so many international agencies working in Dhaka. He doesn't agree.

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Wednesday 15th June

The hotel lobby, deserted except for flight crew from an unidentified airline. The women dark-eyed and sassy, two husky blonde pilots and a huge African, all chain-smoking. Helpful check-out desk, urging me to have a coffee while I wait for the airport shuttle.
Bunch of Americans munching stolidly in the coffee shop. How can ANYbody have breakfast at a quarter to 7 in the morning?!

All day for the last two days, there has been a sweating man in knee-high waders cleaning out the ornamental pool. Water occasionally slops into his waders as he moves. He worked on even when the rains came down.
The tables in the lobby, however, have not been cleaned since last night. I have to ask for a bunch of tissues to wipe away the glass-rings and the chanachur.

A flavour of Dhaka even as I leave. Twice, a car draws up to the porch and the (smiling) bell captain washes his hands in invisible soap as he ushers me to the door. As I step out of the door and my glasses fog up, the car zooms away. Back to the lobby …
Cloudy skies and a faint drizzle as the car finally pulls away from the hotel.

This time I have a seat ahead of the wing. The air-conditioning works. The plane takes off on time. As it climbs, the water-world appears below, all too briefly before the damp clouds wrap the windows in grey. All too brief, actually. I want to come back.

Perhaps in the cold weather. Walk under the coconut trees with people from my other home-land, search a map for the village where my grandfather was born. And sit on a steamer deck all night long, while the wind blows the moonlight over the Padma and bhatiyali songs float up from the after-deck.
Perhaps.

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Duh Dhaka Diaries again

It's a small world. With large people in it. Both demonstrated when, in the mirror over the bar, I see a portly turbanned form with a designer stubble. It turns out B has an office here (and one in KL and one in Singapore .... basically, he's a hot-shot).

Breakfast in the coffee shop of the Pan-Pacific Sonargaon in Dhaka. The Delhi Ashoka must have mated with the Central Park in Bangalore to produce this pile. No, that is NOT a picture of the hotel on that web-page, don't ask me what it is. Nor do I know why it's there if it's not the hotel.

Everybody is so damn HELPFUL. Polite. Smiling. I'd feel effing guilty if I were to shout at them, but I've explained THRICE that I want THAT item on the menu, that that THAT one (stabbing at it till my finger almost goes through the pasteboard), now another smiling person has turned up with an omelette that I do NOT want and now I need to SHOUT at somebody!
Deep breaths, fourth explanation. Eventually I get some toast. And the omelette I wanted. With some cold cuts that taste like seekh kebab, how did they do that? And - I wouldn't believe this myself if I hadn't checked it out - a bowl of dried fish along with the baked beans and the kebab / sausages. Dude, this stuff smells, take it away!

I'm probably not the only one who feels this way. A big Australian in a sweat-shirt, jeans and Caterpillar-type designer boots sits at the next table over a coffee. The words "appalling" and "amazing" recur in the soft burr of his conversation.

A bonus - the bill for breakfast is just a little over half of what I'd expected. From the menu.
Again, what kind of hotel charges you separately for breakfast when you're part of a block booking of about a hundred room-nights?

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The first night in Dhaka was .. weird. Driving in from the airport, everything looked familiar but faintly off-kilter, like your friend's face, that afternoon in college when you first smoked weed.
Then it hit me - this is like the parts of Calcutta that the visitors don't see (s***w you, Roland Joffe! You shot your film in Howrah). The little gas-lit sheds selling ornate furniture carved out of cheap wood, the sudden row of about a thousand shops all selling electrical stuff like plugs and flex, the mosquito nets, the narrow roads.
Or perhaps a backwoods town, a "mofussil" town like Bahrampur or Alipurduar, where people go shopping for bright green plastic water-bottles because their children are going back to school the next week.

Right. The next corner had a 20-storey building with a humongous three-layer gleaming-glass showroom on the street level. Pacific Motors, the local Mercedes dealership. And the BMW showroom was a couple of hundred yards on. (The next day I salivated over a Porsche parked in the hotel porch. Convertible. The Porsche, not the porch.)

The first night (and the next) was weird for another reason. I fluffed up three large pillows (there IS something about a hotel room), drank a Diet Coke, sucked at my pipe. Then for the first time ever, I actually watched TV for hours. The Simpsons, Boston Public, even (wincing) Friends. Hours? About 70 minutes, actually. By half past nine in the evening I was sprawled across the bed, doing my celebrated imitation of Large Harmless (Mostly) Jellyfish. Another first. Ravelled sleeve of care be damned.
Night life in Dhaka. Hmmm.

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Visiting Dhaka from Calcutta is nice. You merge right in, or if you don't, the locals seem genuinely happy to hear Bangla from a phoren specimen. They have such lovely warm smiles. So nice.
Till I realise that I have made three calls back home (total time 3:12. Minutes, not hours) and they have charged me nearly NINE HUNDRED TAKA. (OK, don't laugh, who pays $4 per minute to call 200 miles?) I slitted my eyes and tried to look tough, but it didn't work. They just smiled at me. Bloody stupid grins.

Tip: if you're visiting Dhaka, don't bother to activate international roaming. The strike rate on calls going through, cell-to-cell, is rather worse than Saurav Ganguly's. Slightly better when calling a land line. Even after my cell phone started working intermittently, all the calls showed some Delhi number. Added spice to the interactions, especially after I greeted my boss with "Hello, f**k-face", under the impression that it was my journo buddy from the capital.

Bangladesh actually has problems with telecom. I saw headlines with complaints, explanations, allegations. And it took six hours for a fax to get through.

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Tuesday 14th June 2005

The hotel staff have a nasty sensayuma. Yesterday a housekeeping guy stopped me in the corridor and told me (with a smile, of course) that he'd put extra shampoo in my room. This morning a lady knocked on my door and handed me a comb. Do I need to be told my hairstyle's like Telly Savalas'?

There's a steel plate in the bathroom wall. There's a slot in the steel plate. A sign next to it says "Old blades here".
I squinted in for some sign of Beau Brummel or the Hellfire Club. If they were in there, they were keeping very quiet.

Wonderful exchange. Executive Floor guest in the lift, to the bell captain in a very patronising tone - "That's a new tie". Measured, deadpan response, "I have two".

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Dhaka Diary (Pts. 1 - 432)

The start was ominous. A yawning airport lounge in the aftermath of a Lunch. (What a lunch ... those who rant about Calcutta have obviously been deprived of biriyani from the Bengal Club. And have no idea what Munna Maharaj can do with a mango).

I'd been warned that I might be offloaded if I didn't turn up in time, Biman is famously the only airline flying out of Cal that doesn't have a computerised booking system (the web-site just about sums it up). So, still sweating from biriyani + gilawati kebabs + heat, I rushed into the airport.
I was the second person at the check-in counter.

The other passengers (an A-300/310 can carry 325 passengers. Except when it's Biman, then it's configured to carry 580. Do the math) were squabbling at the X-ray machine behind a looming stack of about 7835 pieces of baggage . Mostly cardboard cartons tied together with nylon cords.
I swear there were even TVs in there. Who comes to Cal to buy a television?!
And of course the flight was late.

The lounge was different (from the lunch, that is). The crowd had B.O. And the man next to me had halitosis.

I moved. The television was too loud. To be fair, J.P. Dutta's LOC is probably loud even when you use the 'Mute' button.

I moved. Right to the other end. Baghbaan this end. Tolerable when muted, because of The Man. But of course it wasn't muted.

So I'm old and bald, but I LIKE looking out of the window. So I'd asked for a window seat. Got it, too. Right over the wing. Damn.
The air-conditioning didn't work. How much of a moron do you have to be to make people sweat when outside the plane it's something like -40 Celsius?!
And the bloke next to me also had halitosis.

Then the steward spilt Sprite in my lap. After I'd told him politely that I did NOT want his tray of scavenged scraps.

I woke up as we were landing. The part of the view that wasn't blotted out by the wing was amazing. Water. Except for the occasional patchwork divider, it was like landing in San Francisco (which is scary the first time, the plane skims over the waves, you can't even see the airport and a little voice in your head keeps telling you This-is-not-a-normal-landing-the-pilot-is-dead-up-there, we're-going-to-come-down-in-the-water-why-don't-you-panic)

But the glimpse of Dhaka was serene, beautiful, clumps of greenery and toy houses in an expanse of water that reflected the last of the light. Very Kevin Costner but without the stoopid costumes. I relaxed, breathed deep, thought long cool green thoughts.

Then they opened the aircraft door and my glasses fogged up. Cool. Yeah, right.

Chernobyl

Near-complete technological melt-down.

My last office finally woke up to the fact that I am no longer at their beck and call, that I am in fact only an ex officio operative. So I had to turn in my gun and badge.
(Guitars and a honky-tonk piano go berserk on the soundtrack as Dirty Al strides into the precinct, face lined and gaunt, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dull metal star, then draws his .44 Smith & Wesson Magnum from under his arm, cracks open the cylinder to shower slugs on a worn and scarred desk, flips the cylinder shut with a flick of the wrist and throws it on the desk whence it skids into a corner .. CUT, yells the man in the baseball cap, we need to shoot this again with Clint, WHO let Danny de Vito onto the set?!)

Okay, they never gave me a gun or badge. I turned in my laptop.

My trusty steed, my lance and shield all in one. A dull black square-edged IBM Thinkpad that was so over-used, the keys had gone bald. (I need to read up on conditioning and habit - I'm only a sight-typist and yet I could cruise at 70 wpm on a key-board where most of the letters were worn away. Hmmm.) I'd lugged that damn box all over the country and hated its weight, yet when I had to return it I felt a distinct wrench.

Partly because my present office used to be run by A Moron who had No Idea about Laptops. I'm saddled with a Thing that weighs just a little less than the Reserve Bank Building, boots in about the time it takes George Bush to Get an Idea and does NOT connect to the Net under Any Circumstances.

AND ... the Net connection on my home PC is kaput, my office PC has to be re-formatted about thrice a day, I'm reduced to carrying my essential files around on a pen drive and I feel like Robert Redford (orl ROIGHT, so it wuz Peter Finch!) in Network where he goes to the window and yells I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

Excuse me while I have a nervous breakdown. Normal service will be resumed soon. Like some time before 2009 ....

Chicken?

Summ pear-son frum Kaiii-rrlla haze a vendor-full ayyy-deuh awn-leh.

There are some who think this idea (or ayyy-deuh, or biz-niss maw-dll) can be replicated in other parts of the country. Their number includes my Blogger-in-the-Flesh who (like his hair) remains largely Uncut (yes, this is sheer envy speaking) and a correspondent with a wonderfully evocative name. (Digression - our friend in college, Jane Mary John, soon became Jane Meri Jaan. Her shyam-borno boyfriend, of course, was Tar-jane).
I would advise them to do a market survey first.

Because it really wouldn't work in Bengal, you know. We've got it down pat here, we don't need to outsource the event management, "our boys" can handle it well enough, thank you very much. They've been doing it for years, why should we give somebody else the chance to make a little on the side?

And even in the supposedly apolitical Pnnn-jaabb-uh, I came across the "rum and rally" idea three years ago. Only there they called it "pagg-uh hore lagg-uh", which (translated for those who don't understand this most melodious of all languages) means "a peg and a leg". Nothing to do with Long John Silver (Digression #2 - the original title idea for "Treasure Island" was "The Sea Cook"), but a Peg of Whiskey and a Leg of Chicken. Of the National Bird of the region, in fact. To wit, Tnn-doooree Chik-ken.

In the constituency where I'd been sent, one candidate's election platform was a large trailer drawn by a Tata Safari. Loaded with CRATES of Solan whiskey and the charred remains of a poultry farm. His appetites were as large as his heart. For every sip he offered, he would take one himself; his day's canvassing ending only when he subsided into the trailer, snoring blissfully. At which point his nephew (on Safari with him, so to speak) would steer homewards. Steer a little erratically, since Said Nephew shared the family trait of appreciating the simple pleasures (or plai-years) of life.

Within the letter of the law, this school of campaigning amounted to soliciting for votes with promise of gain. Another candidate ventured to complain about these methods. The native Punjabi, however, has a large heart. The complainant was immediately rebuked and shushed by at least three other candidates, the largest of whom turned to me and said, with a dismissive wave of a huge hand, 'Wo koi nahin jee, bacche thod-di si jo pee pah lehnde so ki fark painda'.

Sadly enough, the devotee of Bacchus lost his deposit. Quite a pity. His career in the Assembly could have been of considerable interest.

(Digression #3 - I now have an Actual Post with Links to Other Posts. I am well on my way to becoming a Serious Blogger. Maybe even - be still, my beating heart! - a Libertarian Despite Being in Gormante. [And I thought that only the C-hollege Mafia could be so entirely patronising!] Oh frabjous day!)

Kafka Moment #3

It’s been one of those phases when people want me to “speak”, on anything from industrial resurgence to ethics in advertising. (The latter gave me an opportunity to expound on the common occurrence of Googling for Angelina Jolie. Don’t ask.)

Doordarshan (India’s state-owned television channel - I explain merely for the benefit of the teeming millions of non-Indians who visit this site …) wanted me to make up the numbers for a “panel discussion”. On the prospects of the sponge iron industry in West Bengal. Riveting stuff. Should have the viewers welded to their seats. Chance to prove my metal. Yes, well, where was I?

In the cavernous innards of Doordarshan Kendra, Kolkata, actually. I had to negotiate my way through a series of half-hearted barriers. There was a gate wide enough for a carnival float to drive though, but of course it was shut. Entry was through a tiny gate off to one side, then into a hut that evoked déjà vu. I’d last seen it in “The Dirty Dozen”. Donald Sutherland hit his thumb with a hammer building it.

A large middle-aged lady who had more lipstick than good taste asked me why I was there. Beside her, an alarmingly frank gentleman who lacked two buttons on his shirt scratched his intimate regions with obvious enjoyment. Beside him, another man sat in the manner of Borneo’s “man of the jungle”, gravely contemplating his nether regions where his hands cradled his manhood. Neither of them displayed the slightest interest in the proceedings.

Having convinced the Lady with Lipstick that I was not an arsonist or a carrier of the plague, I filtered through to the main lobby. As I left Sutherland’s Folly, the Large Lump of Lipstick fished a smelly substance from beneath her table and bit into it. With a loud squishy champy sound. I held my breath and speeded my exit.

The lobby was dusty and large. Very large. At first glance it seemed to cover the better part of an acre. What with the dust and the distance, I had this vision of Peter O’ Toole and Omar Sharif, canteens held aloft and eyes crinkled, riding out of the far corner.

“Turn left”. Through a door-less frame, past a glass-and-plyboard enclosure where a step-ladder reached into a hole in the false ceiling, down a corridor with finger-prints on walls of indeterminate colour, “through the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden / ‘Quick’, said the bird …”

Corridors stretched to right and left, corridors filled with an echoing silence, with the smell of years of “Polli Kotha” and “Chiching Phaank” and timorous sarengi recitals and “High-Power Transmitters will now de-link for the News”, ominous with the threat of po-faced doctors holding forth on skin diseases or juvenile hysteria.

For some time I “wandered lonely as a cloud”. In that strange place, where dreams seeped into reality and no human voice intruded, I walked what seemed like miles, up one echoing dark expanse and down another. Mid-way down one stretch I had the feeling of being observed. A wary glance over my shoulder spied nothing, till I lifted my gaze and saw It, “perched above a shelf above a frame above a door”. No, not the Raven, but a bearded brown bust that regarded me gloomily.

In Bengal, the default option for bearded busts is Rabindranath. (Tay-gore, for the academically inclined) This one looked more like Alan Rickman about to ask for an aspirin. I passed on before it could clear its throat and broach the issue …Eventually, I wearied of my Long March and started to retrace my steps. Then came the Apparition.

Round a corner it came, with short rapid jerky steps reminiscent of the Egyptian Walk of the ‘80s. Brown trousers and a shirt of a violet hue so virulent as to be actually audible, blue-strapped “Hawaii” sandals that slapped on the dusty tiled floor. At the other end, thick-framed glasses perched on a nose like the Raven’s beak, Adam’s apple jerking convulsively from the strain of concentration. He looked not to right or left. I might have been a formless wraith for all the attention I got.

One arm swung vigorously at his side as he marched forth. The other was held up in a S-curve, ending in outstretched hand, palm upward. Balanced on the palm, saucer, one brown ugly. Balanced on the saucer, pantua (gulab jamun in the rest of India), three numbers …

Violet shirt and the slap-slap of Hawaii sandals receded into the gloom. With the pantua. I resumed my trek to the nearest outpost of civilisation.

Rum in Asians

"and the elements / So mixed in him " ... A man sits across from me in a meeting, exhibiting no less than three characteristics I detest.

Sneakers - cheap ribbed sneakers of a plastic-bucket blue - worn with formal trousers (how I would hate California!). Mouse-coloured trousers at that, guaranteed to deliver maximum puke value in combination with that blue.

A comb-over. Wispy, ineffectual, like clouds across a full moon, ending in a coy swirl of curls near the nape of his neck. And dyed to boot!

One of those vestigial moustaches that crawl across the upper lip like a thin tardy millipede or perhaps a smear of snot from a half-suppressed sneeze.

A fourth trait is evident the moment he opens his mouth - knows nothing himself yet believes that nobody else knows anything. As if he, greasy disastrous assortment of ugliness, is competent to judge.

On the wall just above his head is a picture of a sewage treatment plant. Two giant circular pits that process shit. How appropriate.

I have such a rewarding work environment.

Kafka Moment #2

She exuded sincerity and focus as we discussed a paper mill. Slickly groomed and accessorised from her Gucci glasses to her Choo footwear. Fashionably slim and business-like. Infrastructure, financials and coffee dealt with, she unbent so far as to take off her glasses and shake out her hair. And disclose the reasons for her tardy follow-up to her e-mail.

“Over the last two weeks I’ve spent half my working days in police stations …”

Eh? What could SHE have been accused of?! The left half of my brain swivelled in its orbit and clawed at air. It must have showed on my face. She hastened to explain.
“Oh, nothing against me! It’s all about my boutique …”

I know she also has a boutique. A lingerie boutique.

For which she has to visit police stations in Calcutta? My eyes widened, the camera zoomed in on my pupils and farther inwards … slow dissolve to the Duty Room in Bhowanipore P.S., Inspector Gobindo Nandan Guchait bridles a little as she holds out a lacy scrap of almost-nothing, frames it against his heaving chest and exclaims “It’s so YOU!”

Fast cut, series of jerky frames in grainy finish … S.I. Shubol Kormokar prances off to the Armoury to try on a blood-red thong, Detective Constable Deodhar Parshad Singh fastidiously steps out of his sandals and dhoti and into some high-support panty-hose, Boga the handy-man (“daily wage” worker, makes his living from tips) wistfully strokes a silken camisole …
The Krazy Kross-Dressers of the Kolkata Police?

The last shards of reason gave way and crashed into nothingness with the tinkle of breaking windows.

Epilogue. She was talking to me. I opened my eyes wide and tried to listen. “neighbours … encroachment … I filed a complaint … ” Reason stirred, shook its head, clambered groggily back onto its tottering seat.

The Ascent of Man

The USP for the Maruti Omni – the New, Improved Version – is that it has (gasps of awe) a cup-holder on the dashboard. Which speaks volumes about the level of technological innovation in the rest of the car. Bill Bryson, where are you?!

Kafka?

Travelling on business, a weekend in the foothills. Expectations of winding drives on hill roads, with the smell of the crouching forests. Morning in a wood-walled room, curtains parted for a glimpse of the river far below.

Instead of which ...

Reality check – coffee served by a surly personage, accompanied by salt. Salt?! (Reminiscent of the Injun in Leon Uris’ ‘Battle Cry’, “Whatcha want, Chief, eggs in your beer?!”)

All night long

I hate being a last-minute person.

It's been months since I have had to put together a presentation on my product. Mainly because I got promoted from travelling salesman to head of division. Ohhhh yes, freedom!

Or so I thought.

Now I have a morning flight tomorrow. I shall have to make a presentation when I get wherever I'm going. I thought I could put it together in a jiffy.

I thought wrong.
Hell is a blank PowerPoint template.

... and the chicks for free?

I do not eat candies. Not, at least, the kind that used to be called ‘boiled sweets’ in the yellowing books I read in my youth.

(I confess to a weakness for chocolates, especially liqueur chocs, Grand Marnier for choice. Of course I’m not cadging, perish the thought, I merely mention it as a matter of passing interest and absolutely and categorically deny that that statement is directed at any charitable souls in the cyber-ether …)

To resume … I do not like candies. There is nobody in my home who likes candies. I do not normally interact with children whom I can bribe with candies.

Then why, when the stewardess comes round before take-off with that tray heaped with Alpenliebe and Cofitos, do I grin ingratiatingly and pick up a fistful of the stuff? Why do I try to make light of it by telling her, in conspiratorial fashion, that “I’ll be just a little greedy”? And why oh why do I compound my sins by chasing down a stray strawberry bite and then explaining weakly “I have a daughter”?

Simple answer, of course. Freebies.

Suspended above Death Valley on a clear day with an awe-inspiring view of the most starkly majestic landscape below, I could still turn away from the window to claim my share of the booty (one plastic cup of flat cola and a miniscule sachet with exactly 5 salted peanut halves). Prompted by hunger? Thirst? What about the hoagie and Diet can in my carry-on?

When a Certain Magazine (one does not name That Media Group’s publications on blogs) started to appear in a cellophane pack with free samples of toothpaste/shampoo/hair-oil/whatever, I regularly bought it at airport bookstores. After all, it did have some good reviews. As my emigrant friends would say, Yeah right! What made the purchase even more stunningly irrelevant was my .. aerodynamic? .. hair-style. (Well yes, I do still need toothpaste)

Freebies.

We all hate airline food, or claim to. We all agree that it’s terrible. We know, because when the long-suffering lady leans over and asks ‘Vaige or nawn-vaige, Sir?’, we fold out the seat-tray and hunker down over the Rice a la Rubber and the Putrid Pickle. Prompted solely by civility, mind – how COULD we say No when the nice lady’s taken the trouble to wheel her trolley up the aisle? Braving indigestion and obesity out of sheer kindness.

Something for nothing. Beating the system. Getting a bargain. Poor Milton Friedman, the history of mankind demonstrates that there will never be a significant number of people who believe him.

Postscript – the kind lady actually came back after take-off. To present me with an air-sickness bag. Bulging with candies. “For your daughter, Sir”. She has a genuine smile.
I checked her name-tag. Thank you, Ms. Lovely Sarkar.

Continuum?

The bright spot in the morning ... a letter from a Bihar bureaucrat that ends with "The inconvenience caused is being regretted".

Fascinating. I can almost see the huddle of Bihari babus intensely conjoined in the process of regret. Afterwards, they will send us Completion Certificates in triplicate.

And perhaps a bill as well. For "contingent expenses".

The Emperor's attire

Is it just me (I !!), or are there other people in this world who think that R.K. Narayan is actually a very pedestrian writer? Three issues here.

If a man publishes books (as distinct from topical articles) in English, perhaps he should write English and not an Indian dialect? The great R.K.'s work is full of the very warts that I abhor - "am wanting", "was in the habit", passive voice. This might seem to be quibbling, but his language seldom rises above that of a competent clerk.

You there by the window ... I know what you're going to say. Style over substance? The man is a writer. I assume he has something to say, but then, so does my grocer. A writer is a craftsman. Or should be. Would you pay a carpenter for a botched-up cabinet on the grounds that his design was wonderful on paper? Ergo, if a man has a bushel-full of great ideas but lacks the ability or the effort to express them fluently, is he still worthy of praise?

One of my favourite themes, in keeping with my belief in the free market - a writer does not pay the reader, it's the other way around. Therefore it behooves the writer to work hard to retain the reader's interest. (This holds equally true for films, for music, for any form of creative art. I'd rather read Bill Bryson than Marcel Proust, rather watch "Notting Hill" than "The Others".) I'd say that RKN doesn't make the cut on this count. He is not a very good story-teller.

On the other hand, his books sell. Therefore he is a successful writer. But not, in my opinion, a good one. His acclaim may be the outcome of a good marketing machine. Or there may be hordes of retire civil servants and Southern gentlemen who buy his books because they feel comfortable and nostalgic. And are reassured that the English they use is acceptable, even good!

Point to ponder (thank you for the 50-year cliche, RD) - if one were to accept my premises, Dan Brown is a better writer than RKN. Hmmm. Back to the drawing board, fellas.

Loser!

I am such an Utter Failure. As further corroborated by this test.

It is Fashionable to be a little dysfunctional. It's Cool. It's So Totally Happening to have mood swings.

And where do I end up? Take a look ...

Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Moderate
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: Low
Dependent: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Low

Completely Kaspar Milquetoast. I shall have to go out and ravish a few maidens, not to mention spread pillage and rapine. Just to overcome the severe feelings of inadequacy engendered by this assessment.

Hand me down my ski-mask and corkscrew knife, will you?

Rainy Day People

As distinct from Rainy Day Women, Zimmerman's better-known treatise with a blues harp. THIS one is Gordon Lightfoot and quite ideal for a darkling afternoon with the rain chasing the mud off the tired windows, the sky replaced by bands of cloud in blue and grey and wind-blown patterns on the wet roads chasing the cars that leave a double-wake.

What do I do for a living? Nights and days like this make me wonder and regret. Why do I sit and shuffle papers when I should be cursing the weather from the after-deck of a tramp steamer stuck in the exact centre of the sky and the Pacific, somewhere off Cape Horn ...

What DID I do today? I claimed a vast amount of money from the Gorment. For which I had to sign my name on 19 different sheets of paper. I counted.

Followed my personal principle of NOT writing bureaucratese in files. Repented when one file came back to me and I read my note from earlier in the day; had been rather too harsh and caustic about a good man's lack of initiative. Made amends, I hope.

Come to think of it, if files from the late 20th century are ever dug up for research, the unfortunate researcher will probably end up walking around like a zombie and bumping into things. Files are for record. A bureau keeps records, hence the Weberian "bureaucrat". Would I want to place on record for posterity or its spavinned cousin that I could never bestir myself to write simple straightforward comments or directives? That I used the linguistic equivalent of a Word template to record what I thought?
Mem: now that you're the boss, write what you bloody well feel. And you CAN say sorry even in file.

But the weather, the weather. Weather to seduce me from the air-conditioned sterility of my room, weather to yearn in as the lights come on and glisten on the walls roads cars rickshaws drainpipes lovers ... Weather to exult in, to shout aloud to the streaming skies, weather to make one throw one's arms wide and breathe the just-remembered scents of childhood. Weather in which to make long languid love on cotton sheets and lie in the half-dark afterwards. To stand on a high balcony amid the rain-fat breezes and look for miles across the washed-clean city.

Lines from The Bearded God ... "brishti nesha bhora shondhya bela / kone Balaram-er aami chela / Aamaar shwopno ghirey naache maataal jutey, joto maataal jutey ..."
(I'm not sure how Balaram comes into this, since his "chelas" were the two plough-bullocks .. our first Nobel Laureate had fantasies about being a bullock?! Jeepers!)
But these lines ... "here, in this rain-raptured twilight / I am a mad savant's acolyte / while drunkards dance in circles through my dreams" .. bring back memories of the courtyard in my mamarbaari when the rain pelted against the tiled verandah and we needed umbrellas to dash across at dinner-time.

"Dance in circles"? An echo dredged from my subconscious, surely, since I started this post with Zimmerman ... all together, now ...

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free / silhouetted by the sea / circled by the circus sands / with all memory and fate / driven deep beneath the waves ..."

Piscine ponderings

Morning. Not early morning, not the time when the body creeps reluctantly towards the day, not light-breaking crow-waking tree-shaping dawn. But the time when tea is brewed and road-side flower-vendors importune walkers, when conservancy trucks clear their throats hesitantly and judder forth, when the lights strung above the fish-market begin to pale in the sun.

Buying fish. The essence of the morning round for the good Bangali householder. If one image, one metaphor were to sum up grihasti for the Bong, it is this. Little bag in hand - usually plastic yarn, distinctly mildewed and with an odour that leaves no doubt as to the usual contents – most likely dressed in flapping crumpled wide-legged pyjamas and a shirt, rubber “Hawaii” sandals flip-flopping, the man of the household shuffles between lines of vendors perched on the long platform, peering suspiciously at the beady-eyed glistening wares and occasionally asking the price in a tone of deepest disgust.

Stone chips crunch underfoot as I approach the market. There’s a new “mall” coming up here now, to replace the sprawling muddy chaotic bazaar that I grew up with. My grandfather’s house is on the next road up, and over the years the bazaar has spilt its banks every morning until it laps at our front door and little trickles now run even farther up-shore.

I remember the huge black Brahmi bull that used to stand in the vat at the corner of the road, blinking as flies buzzed around his nose, occasionally putting his head down to sample some exceptionally choice piece plantain leaf. After the bazaar had packed up for the day, he would lurch down our road through the mess of leaves and peel, snorting at anything that crossed his path and pausing only to scratch his hump against the occasional parked vehicle. Mr. Gupta across the road eventually stopped replacing the wing-mirrors on his Maruti.

Now, as I enter the little alleyway into the fish-market, there’s the thump-pause-swing-thump of a man breaking ice in a plastic tub. Little flakes of fishy ice fly onto the clothes of shoppers who remain either unaware or oblivious. I sidle past, determined to shower at the first opportunity.

A chorus of blandishments rises from the fishmongers, excited by the sight of the first lot of customers. Mostly wasted on me, because I can’t even identify most of the more common kinds of fish. I am relegated to third-class citizen status the moment I ask about the difference between paarshey and bacha. I haven’t figured it out in 30-odd years, so I wonder why I even bother to try now.

Some of the vendors, of course, welcome my ignorance. The fatted calf, they must be thinking as I approach. My shorts and tee are not the attire of the serious fish-fiend. And I hesitate to actually touch the wares … eewww, to prod and part flesh that looks quite so mucoid round the gills. As a middle-aged man beside me leans over to prod the flanks of a vast scaly thing, I am reminded of W.C. Fields’ reason for refusing to drink water – “Fish fuck in it!”

I begin to think he had a point there.

Buck's fizz? I DON'T think!

Bloody awful day. Had to sit in office even though I have passes to the Test. Now I'm home and I can't change into my disreputable but divinely comfortable singlet and shorts because we Expect Visitors.

Tendulkar batted in vintage form and my friends messaged from the Clubhouse.

Then Steve Bloody Bucknor gave him out caught behind when Amit Verma categorically stated that he could "see daylight between bat and ball from the Press Box".

Now to make matters unbearable, Amit has NOT ranted against the Ageing Nestor on Cricinfo or India Uncut. Hang political correctness, maaan! KILL 'IM! (think Sabina Park and Holding running in to bowl to some shivering Pommie ...)

Just checked Cricinfo again. Samiuddin and Vasu have presented the Bucknor Angle. Not, however, in language strong enough to salve our agony. I empathise with Shylock ... my pound of flesh!