Charming Charbagh

There’s a regular din of traffic from behind the roseate walls that envelopes the subconscious. The drizzle, accompanied by the wind flitting past, sprays my face with tiny droplets. I squint my eyes to keep the water out, then relax, closing them completely and losing myself to the invigorating concoction of air and water, and that musty smell of raw earth. The ground blushes as some of the drops rush forward to embrace it with a splatter, and then slowly disappear, imparting a tinge of rosy hue. I walk barefoot on the textured floor, a pebble pricks the toe, turning it a beetroot red. The breeze turns to wind, the vines swing and sing. I run my fingers along the wall, feel the crests and troughs on the uneven surface, quietly exploring the vertical terrain. I draw a little closer, tentatively, putting my ear to it, and hear the wall humming slightly, a dull vibration, a silenced thunder concealed under the stony bosom. The fountain makes one valiant attempt after another but sky-high is an ambition too tall for it. It rises a nimble foot, and plops back into the reservoir, an orchestra, a symphony of bubbles bursting to order.

A Promise Unfulfilled

I had promised myself to start this blog with a pensive post, the one I’m posting now. I didn’t really get about to writing it properly till today. Thanks to Pritha who kept nagging me and reminding me of my promise to myself. I have not gone into the details but share briefly the anguish and despair at the apathy that prevails. I do not know if I could have done anything to improve the situation. If I could have, and didn’t, I am as much a culprit as the ones I insinuate in this post.

A synopsis of various viewpoints

“She was a morphine addict.”

“No she wasn’t. She was under immense pain.”

“She never let anyone in on her secrets. She never shared. There were no prescriptions found.”

“She shared with me. I knew she had ovarian cists, possibly leading to cancer. She told me, and a few others, about her desires, ambitions, issues at home and everything else.”

“She had no prescription. She was faking it. Why weren’t her parents involved?”

“Her parents were involved. The doctors were the ones who didn’t want to operate on her at this (st)age. Issues of pregnancy later.”

“She didn’t take our help when we offered it. She was too arrogant.”

“She wasn’t. She liked to stay independent. It wasn’t pity that she sought. You offered her help, not friendship.”

“She never attended classes, lied at home, and didn’t even interact much with her batch mates.”

“She couldn’t attend classes because of her health. Whether she lied at home or not is not your concern, and something that cannot be determined anyway. Her interaction was limited to the girls’ hostel as she couldn’t go out a lot due to her physical weakness.”

Official intimation by the Director to the campus community – numerous emails and announcement at the beginning of the convocation (paraphrased)

We sadly announce and deeply mourn the tragic demise of one of the bright students, Toya Chatterjee, Roll Number *****, B.Tech. student of the department of Biosciences and Bioengineering on the night of 30^th May, 2008 in her hostel room. Ms. Toya Chatterjee, Roll Number ***** was a bright and promising student, and is as great a loss to the academic community as it is to her near and dear ones. May her soul rest in peace.

Press release/interviews, talking about the worth of a student of IIT Kanpur, B.Tech. with a GRE score of 1560, an admission offer from Cornell (I think Cornell – the name is irrelevant), and calls from ALL the IIMs. (paraphrased)

Ms. Toya Chatterjee, Roll Number ***** was a weak student and her performance in her courses was not up to the mark. She had failed two courses and was not due to receive the degree at this convocation. Her performance has been a matter of concern for her teachers and friends alike, and repeated attempts to improve the situation had failed.

Talking of ends, some bring respite, some melancholy, some longing, and some simply suck out every feeling, every desire, everything, leaving nothing but a hollowed feeling of emptiness, of helplessness and despair. That was how Toya’s end was. Most of us would have read about it in the newspapers. Toya Chatterjee was a final year student of my batch at IIT Kanpur who committed suicide on the eve of our convocation. I will not go into the reasons behind it. I have given a sneak preview into the various versions that were given to us by friends, professors, administrative officials, and co-students. There is too much speculation and hardly any consensus. We may never know the truth. The certainty with which people enumerate the reasons of her suicide irritates me. Hers was the 7^th suicide in IITK in the past 3 years, and the first suicide by a girl in the history of IITK. It’s the frequency that bothers me as much as the fact that the administration is doing nothing about it as far as I know. Yes, they do take some apparently visible reformatory steps, but they’re all useless, tangential to the real problems that exist. I am not suggesting that those were the problems behind any of these suicides, but if we are trying to weed out problems, we might as well get rid of some real problems along the way.

What hurt me most is the attitude with which the administration at IITK received and projected the death of Toya. I knew she existed in the vicinity but didn’t ever get a chance to talk to her during my 4 years at IIT, yet I think of her as a real person. That’s not how they think of her. In all email notifications regarding her and in the official announcement at the beginning of the convocation, it was always ‘Toya Chatterjee, Roll No. *****, department **** was...’ She is a mere statistic for the institute, one more to the list. Every time in the two days I was there and thereafter, her name was suffixed by her roll number and department, which I found extremely annoying. With such gruesome suicides – she hung herself from the fan in her room while sitting on a chair, another one had lain on the railway tracks at the IIT gate and was beheaded by a train – I would think that they would take some personal interest in the students’ lives, not as administrators saving face of the institute but as humans, teachers, friends. Isn’t the extent of infliction of such pain upon themselves a statement of the fact that we need to change, doesn’t it feel like they are trying to convey a message by taking such drastic steps? Yes, it is a difficult task to bring about change in as big an institute as this, with ways as set as it has, with so many things that could be changed. But we need to make a start somewhere, sometime, and isn’t the effort worth it? It is an institute for the students and if they are not happy, and not just the ones committing suicide, then the entire purpose of the existence of the institute is lost. I couldn’t think of one reason why we shouldn’t start right now.

I sincerely hope that they will treat students like humans and not institute records to be filed away and milked for money as alumni. I don’t know how they will manage it with 4 more IITs being opened when even the land for those has not yet been finalized. IIT Rajasthan is being mentored by IIT Kanpur which means that its students will stay and study at IITK, stretching its already thin resources, and that, when it hasn’t yet been decided which city will be home to IIT Rajasthan. If political pressures, or aspirations, are going to take precedence over human lives, God save the premier institute of education in India.

Poetic justice? Or pros(e)aic justice?

From Samit Basu's blog:

"...not even the worst excesses of Bollywood SFF filmmaking could match Lollywood's International Gorillay, the climax of which features arch-fiend Salman Rushdie being laser-skewered by four lightning-emitting flying Korans..."

A Poned Post

A few days ago, some of us were having a conversation with Suchitra ma'am about our convocation and she mentioned that a student had emailed her saying that he was about to be 'convocated'. She said that she hadn't thought of the word before but that it had a lovely feel to it, as if someone was going to be beheaded. Sice then, she said, she was having visions of the convocation with a lot of decapitated heads lying all over the auditorium. I completely share her views on the matter.

The conversation then steered to the word 'prepone'. It was her father who brought it up saying that the MS Word editor gave it as an error and that was the first time he realized that the word did not exist, after confirming it with the dictionary. I had known for sometime now that there's no such word as prepone but did not know the reason. Suchitra ma'am ventured to explain it to us based on a conversation she had had with someone else. He had explained to her, as she did to us now that prepone would be a valid word if 'post' in postpone were a prefix so that 'pre'pone becomes its antonym. For that to happen, there has to be an independent word 'pone' with its own meaning (a synonym of schedule) that can take prefixes which alter its meaning.

Since pone clearly doesn't exist (as our flights are never poned at 2 pm and our doctor never pones an appointment), and there doesn't seem a possibility of it happening in the near future, prepone, though a very convenient word, is not a part of the Queen's English, or American English, for that matter. Use 'advance' if you are finicky, or simply prepone your usage of the word till it makes an entry into OED! :)

Edit: Just googled a bit and read through a few discussion thread on the topic. Most Indians think that prepone is a logical opposite of postpone. It certainly does appear that way, I must admit. While the Americans prefer to use 'move up', I came across a really interesting entry where a person claims that a more appropriate and logical antonym to postpone would be, wait for it, antepone, as opposed to prepone. I bow to this person. After this, there's nothing left to write.

Must go to blog: http://weirdbooks.blogspot.com/

Masti

I was going through a collection of essays, "Because I Have a Voice - Queer Politics in India" edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan, and published by Yoda Press, and in the introduction to the book, the editors were discussing the scope of the word 'queer' - of relationships and sexualities that extend beyond those encompassed by the words gay, lesbian, bisexuals, transgenders, hijras, kothis etc. and at one point they said "Where do we draw the line between intimate friendships and queer relationships? How do we understand a concept such as masti - a term that refers to the sanctioned space for sexual activity between men - in our framework of sexual desire?"

I always knew that the word masti had sexual connotations but I had always presumed it to be a heterosexual one. I always find it interesting to see how words change meaning or grow to an umbrella term that comes to tolerate a lot more in meaning than just male homosexual activity, or simply sexual activity for that matter. I tried to google the word in a million combinations to find some references or the original meaning but the internet is cluttered with Bollywood and masti phrases clubbed together. Very annoying. Couldn't find a single relevant site.

An Ego Booster

Some ten months ago, I had done a book review of the six book Ramayana series written by Ashok Banker in a Harry-Potter-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings Science Fiction-Fanstasy genre for our campus newsletter, Vox Populi. The same, I had put up on my earlier blog here. Today, while browsing through Banker's website, I saw that a couple of days earlier, he acknowledged my review on his website and has reproduced it in full over there (without informing me, though. Edit: The review has been removed by him, probably after reading this post.). It might have been a little polite to drop me a comment on the blog, or an email, but even so, it made me happy. I really like that guy's writing and it's an honour for me that he liked the review (I presume he did, or else he wouldn't have posted it on his website).

Thinking of that, and rereading my review reminded me today that although I wasn't happy with his portrayal of Sita in the book in the sense that he is unable to create the character of a paragon of purity and chastity as we know Sita, but he did something really important. I realized that he created a woman of action. From the introductory scene onwards, Sita is shown to be a warrior princess, whose swordsmanship rivals the best in the business. She's fearless, witty, decisive in her actions, fleet-footed and nimble-minded, very different from the image of Sita that has been given to us over and over again, without compromising on her ideals. I liked that. I really liked that.

This thought led me to another one, that of the Taj Mahal. We have been brought up being told that it was built by Shah Jahan in the memory of Mumtaz Mahal to immortalize her. If so, why did he name it the Taj Mahal. Does it symbolize his eternal love for Mumtaz or his eternal love for Mumtaz. All it has done is put him in the history books and rendered him immortal. I, somehow, have always been uncomfortable and unsatisfied with the origin of the Taj Mahal and the explanations that have been provided to me thereof. On the contrary, I find a valid reason for Rama relinquishing Sita after he heard the washerman's comments. Banker is quiet on the issue. He said that he couldn't relate Rama's character to this incident (or something to that effect). I can. If Rama had kept Sita with him even after a seed of distrust had taken roots in the mind of his subjects, as the rumours grew, he would have become the bigger person, one who accepted Sita unconditionally, with her follies. Sita's purity would have been a matter of constant scrutiny with Rama rising above all debate. By sending Sita to the forest, Rama diverted the public's sympathy towards Sita, took all the blame upon himself, making sure that all the accusations ever made in the ages to come (which they continue to be till today), were hurled upon him and not his wife. He made Sita into a revered goddess while he himself stepped down the pedestal. This is not a religious interpretation of the story, it is an attempted literary analysis where the coherency of a character is maintained.

I once attended a talk by the famous Hindi author, Narendra Kohli who has written another six book series on the Ramayana (sadly I haven't read those as yet) and he spoke on a similar issue. We all know that Lord Krishna had 16000 wives, and he has been a subject to constant ridicule (and envy) for his flirtatious nature and the excess of his paramours. What Kohli revealed was that not many know the story behind the secret to his 16000 wives (apart from Rukmini). These were all women who were captured by the asuras, raped and kept in captivity. Krishna went on a mission and rescued all of them. Being 'impure', these women were shunned by the society and no one accepted them in marriage. With no other alternative, they turned to their rescuer, Krishna, some with plea in their eyes, others with accusations. It was then that he decided to marry all of them to validate their place in the society and grant them the respect that they deserved. Yet, a sin had been committed with each one of them and that had to be paid for. By marrying them and liberating them from their misery, Krishna took the responsibility of those 16000 sins upon himself, and that is what he pays for till date by being ridicules by the common man unable to comprehend the immensity of his action.

It doesn't matter if it conforms with the actual epic or not, or if it comes under the purview of people's religious beliefs, but it is a valid interpretation and an interesting take on the whole issue. These two incidents always remind me not to judge in haste, and not to judge with incomplete information. There are always more reasons, more thoughts, more leading circumstances to any action or event than we can ever find out. That jigsaw will never be complete.

Creativity

There's a Ghazal by Jeet Thayil that I'm reproducing here. It's one of my favorite pieces of poetry, mainly because of the flow. It's such a pleasure reading this one aloud.

Listen! Someone’s saying a prayer in Malayalam.
He says there’s no word for ‘despair’ in Malayalam.

Sometimes at daybreak you sing a Gujarati garba.
At night you open your hair in Malayalam….

…Visitors are welcome in The School of Lost Tongues.
Someone’s endowed a high chair in Malayalam.

I greet you my ancestors, O scholars and linguists.
My father who recites Baudelaire in Malayalam.

Jeet, such drama with the scraps that you know.
Write a couplet, if you dare, in Malayalam.

Here's a link to a page with two short stories of Angela Carter. Both of them are rewrites of the 'Little Red Riding Hood'. I had read the first one a couple of years ago. While looking for it today, I came across the second rewrite, which is a little longer. Haven't yet read it but I can bet it's going to be as good and innovative as the first one.


If anyone's interested in a review of the linguistics in Amitava Ghosh's new book 'Sea of Poppies' by Jai Arjun Singh, it can be found here. Click here for Ghosh's full-length interview with Singh.

Bookslaps

As a second exercise in the Creative Writing course, we had to come up with the names of our top 10 books (thank god it wasn't coming up with good titles). I’ve tried to compile a list of the books that have made some sort of a lasting impression on me, but the problem is I cannot recall the names of so many books that I have read. It might have been easier if we were to make a list of top 10 books in each genre. There are loads of others books that I have immensely enjoyed but they’re not the top 10. My list is displayed in the panel on the right hand side. To this list, I must add two plays – Betrayal and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, and three short stories – Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, The Dead by James Joyce and The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol.

These pieces of literature would constitute the best I’ve read, or at least the ones that I’ll remember for a long time, with the disclaimer that some of the works might have been left out simply because I couldn’t recall them.

Mat gave his own list of top 10 books. These were:

• The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien
• Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
• The House at Pooh Corner – A A Milne
• Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
• The Cider House Rules – John Irving
• Flashman – George Macdonald Fraser
• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
• The Sandman – Neil Gaiman
• The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling

What are your top 5 books? Looking forward to interesting and unusual titles. See, this is how I make my reading lists. :)

Feels Like Shedding Skin

I’ve recently finished college, attended my convocation, received my degree in a temporarily exciting but very colonial setting, and am all set to join my job at Schlumberger in Mumbai this September. With such major changes occurring in life, I went to my old blog and found that I had outgrown it. It was, for quite some time, my most beloved belonging. I would at various times of the day go to my blog and scroll up and down, reading and rereading my own writings, good or otherwise. But today, for good or for worse, I don’t feel connected to it in the same way. I feel it is time to move on and hence this blog and this post. There are quite a few new beginnings as some things come to an end.

My earlier blog, where I put my last entry today (go read), will always remain special to me for a variety of reasons, the most important being that it was my first blog. It was the first place that gracefully accepted my tentative forays into ‘writing’, and was instrumental in getting me the much needed inspiration and encouragement from friends and fellow bloggers. It provided me the anonymity of the internet yet it was a strong reflection of my identity. Both the blog and the first attempts at poetry were inspired by Akhil, and that one thing has snowballed into something so big today that it seems almost surreal that there is always a bigger picture, hidden from us, revealed piece by piece over an agonizingly long period of time.

That blog is invaluable to me for having given me some really good friends that, I hope, will last at least one lifetime, if not more. Akanksha was one of my first readers and though we generally share a mutual liking for each other’s work, it has been her world of dreams that has given me the courage to really go and do what I like rather than falling in with the herd. She’s been this ethereal angelic person always hovering somewhere in the subconscious, ever present yet not imposing. Then there was the SRCC group, Amiya, Richa, Ishani, Jayant and Vidur. There’s Rohit, and there’s Sinjini, and then there’s the indomitable Sayandi. I have been lucky to have stumbled upon so many amazing, friendly, talented people, each of whom I adore and respect for their set of qualities, and all of them have unfailingly taught me so many things about life in the course our interactions. It’s been a real pleasure.

All this wouldn’t have been possible but for Akhil. He’s one true role model that all of us should have, and it’s not just the blogging. I won’t write a testimonial for him over here, but suffice it to say that I hold him in the highest esteem. In an age and time when I have a million issues with people in our age group, he’s one who has set higher standards than I’d have thought of. It’s beyond words, so I’ll just shut up.

Welcome to the new blog everyone! :)