Saroja and her saaman

Attachment

2009-12-23T16:19:00.006-05:00

I'm using this post as a think-through, and not to arrive at any conclusions, so it's going to be problematic to think of this as anything but a sort of purging or catharsis.

Sometimes I feel very close to an anthropologist--the emic kind, not the etic kind. The emic kind is the person who is so involved within or implicated in the culture they are studying that their observations stem from close knowledge, involvement and even experience of the culture as a subject themselves. (If I'm reducing the definition, dear Sarah, you must forgive me). The same applies for me as a person. I am an emic person. I don't merely observe people as spectacles or as objects of study; I try becoming them. This becoming is not a literal thing--I have no desire to be in anyone else's place, but I wish to be part of an experience larger than the confines of my closed physical and mental space. So when I meet someone interesting-- a potential friend, a mere acquaintance, a friendly child, an interesting old man--I am drawn to their own interiorities. I implicate myself in their being by becoming more than a spectator. And clearly, this is a very rigorous and very exhausting process because I can only involve myself in so many people at once. The most invested and yet the most complicated of all these subjects, is of course, the person who borders on more than a friend, and more than a mere acquaintance. What do I do with this person? How much do I moor myself in an emic attachment? How much is the problem of falling in love a problem because I am just so completely lost in someone else's mental processes? Or worse yet, more. What really gets me is when I become the subject so fully in the process of this emic excavation that this other person has really taken over my role. How, then, do I stop being the observed?

What is worse is that I have begun to write love poems. After what seems like forever. And I really find that detestable. To write for him is to desperately use those words to grasp his face, some kind of futile attempt to circumscribe his presence in these letters, and that is totally frustrating. At some level, this truly is me, but at some other level, this is very unlike me. I detest attachment at this kind of primordial level. It makes me uncomfortable, and it makes me feel as though there is something beyond myself that keeps me grounded. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Just to be clear, I don't feel this way about every person I meet. It's just this one particular person who has had me revise my my-ness.

On another note, also, Mami thaathi passed away while I was in the US and the same thing happened as when thaatha died. I pulled out that book about what happens to the soul after death and couldn't just wrap my head around this absence. Surely it is a filling absence, one that has its presence flourishing elsewhere, but I am just never epistemologically satisfied with these pulls and pushes that emerge from the physical self. And often, I just want to not be me, this enclosure of boundaries, this head full of thoughts and this body that controls everything I do, or at least does so because I have no way of reining it in. Sometimes, and this will sound strange, I spend a lot of time just looking at my hands, and they feel alien. They feel as though they belong to someone else--like they've made from earth from someone else's backyard and as much as amma keeps commenting on how I stare at myself in the mirror, I can't help but feel completely alien in this thing. Sometimes, I think, when I buy a dress or something, how strange it feels to say that I am a size eight or something. I took this Bodylore course in my first semester at Mason and my professor spent a lot of time talking about what makes us us and how we use the body as a way of identifying with us-ness. But is that all I really want to do? Really? Sometimes when the slip disc comes back and the nerves pinch really hard, and I am lying down or something, I try feeling the line between my back and the bed, and to be really truthful, I can't feel it. It's not physical numbness; it's just that in those moments, I have to consciously bring myself to spell out that this is just a symptom, just a thing of physics and anatomy. That is indeed comforting. It is comforting to know that the vehicle is indeed what I am in control of and not vice versa.

Coming back, therefore, to the whole love problem, feeling this strangely comfortable otherness also makes me more aware of how much my own body controls me in those moments. I mean, have they found out where this love thing originates? Random people have theories about it and I remember watching this program on podhigai once where this shastrigal was trying to explain how the tying of the thaali was symbolic of some kind of mooring the self in another and vice versa. (Or maybe my understanding of it is totally messed up). But I found the whole thing amusingly and scarily too close to the truth. What is more confusing than some kind of ritualistically (or better yet, a spiritually sanctioned) otherness?

I am just glad that my subject is being highly recalcitrant and is honestly not interested in taking over the role of observer. Perhaps it is not the time for these kinds of attachments.

Moving, moving

2009-11-28T00:25:00.026-05:00

Prefatory Note

I promised myself that the next piece of nonfiction I wrote would be a "serious" piece that I could add to my memoir-in-progress. (Is it really even in progress?) Oh, well, at least I tried. But the white space on the blog, or perhaps just the possibility of the fictional white space remaining unwritten presses down quite heavily on the mind. So I decided I would write. Also, many thanks to my lovely co-poet Moriah Purdy for her brilliant epigraph idea--looking up definitions before/ as one writes. Needless to say, this one is still in the smithy.

***

move., v.

a. Of a person or thing: to go, advance, proceed, pass from one place to another

b. spec. Of a celestial object: to travel in a regular path or orbit, or to appear to do so because of the earth's own motion; to exhibit real or apparent motion.

e. colloq. To go quickly.

3. a. intr. Of a person, a part of the body, etc.: to change position or posture; to exhibit motion or physical activity. In negative constructions (freq. in imper.): to remain still, not to stir.

d. intr. To bow in acknowledgement or salutation. Obs.

b. Of something mechanical: to revolve, to work. Of something on hinges, as a door: to turn.

c. to move to mind: to come to mind. Also to move of (also out of) mind: to be forgotten

9. intr. To incline, tend (to something, or to do something); to be favourable (toward a proposal). Obs.

10. intr. To proceed, emanate, or originate from. Obs.

--Oxford English Dictionary Online; accessed thanks to GMU's brilliant library

When he came into my life, I think I was most impressed by his ability to not consume caffeine and operate normally. Not even juice, actually. No. Just milk or hot chocolate, and that too, only on occasion. He was reticent and wasn't just someone who grew to enjoy my relatively bland Tambrahm booking, pepper rasams and whatnot; he actually grew to find something in common with me. Of course, we had no idea that this was nothing except a sort of elemental holding together, a sort of containment within a unit that did not draw out our individual desolations. Basically we were both outcasts, or more significantly, fancied ourselves to be. We had our individual insecurities. Perhaps his was the insistence of his family on his lack of academic and overall "achievement." My problems seemed to be quite the opposite-- I was tired of trying to be good. I wouldn't necessarily qualify as an overachiever, but I think I was sort of suspended between my desire to do what needed to be done (get on with life, choose a career and all that delightful growing-up) and what could not be done but lay somewhere just at the horizon, between those gaps, those boundaries, those self-contained vividities.

This Ramzan I felt our differences really consolidate. And I really look at that process as a constructive uncovering of what lay simmering underneath, a legendary, almost cliched clash-of-faiths/ civilizations scenario. One of those days, he came home and we decided to watch a movie. He sat next to me and I switched on the video, but the whole time, we were both thinking of how I was some kind of distraction, an infiltration of this sacred space, this silence that one needed to think about God (not Gods-- "us" Hindus and our postmodern comfort with multiplicity and simultaneity of divine existence confounds others). I withdrew, which I am sure is more frustrating than reassuring for the other people around me, since that only makes me more blatantly aggressive, more prone to clatter dinner plates, open the fridge loudly, spend whole evenings grading three student essays and guilt-tripping people on the phone with allegations that I have been "abandoned." As intensely aware I may be aware of these realities, I am no less inclined to act differently, even though I (in)sincerely try. From the first day we started talking, I spent an average of an hour or more talking to him, giving him updates on purchases, beverages consumed, general people-watching results, poems, etc, occasionally cajoling him into defining the nature of long-term commitment.

That was precisely the problem. In his rubric of existence, there is no place for "long-term" outside of the sacred precincts of the five pillars. This is not meant to be a demeaning statement, as perversely opinionated as it may sound. I empathized with his desire to understand what lay ahead of the lived experience, but I believe I was always the quintessential Balachander side-role character-- occasionally emerging from her preoccupations to essentially steal the proverbial cake from under the lead actors' noses. If you remember the role of Kalki's landlady in the film by the same name, you may recall her transition from being the wallflower, to the abused, the confident and then almost passionately invested mother character. Of course, the main character, Kalki, remains the focus of the film, but this other woman, a mixed bag of happinesses and betrayals comes off as having the richer life. There is an immediacy in attempting to be nonchalant or matter-of-factly while constantly struggling and failing miserably at doing so. There seems more satisfaction inherent in that struggle.

Recently, a friend, and perhaps it is most reasonable to admit that more than one friend, actually, suggested that I loved the drama, or rather, the dramatic itself. I may have tried smiling wryly, but I really doubt it turned out that way, because if anything, I am rather transparent about my insecurities, which is what makes me seem rather dramatic. And besides, the attempt at a wry smile is perhaps more dramatic than actually flashing one. So, what remains is this foiled attempt at being something and this something, I have grown to think, is the notion of the witness. Sometime midway through my writing program, even as I was teaching and learning how to guide my students towards this writing "ideal" that did not exist but had to still be discussed, I read poetry that was constantly called that of witness. The word interests me precisely because it is so closed--a gap, a line, a horizon pretending to be a boundary. For a writer, a poet especially, being a witness becomes an ethical obligation. (I think I've heard most poets in the US echo this sentiment, especially Srikanth Reddy and my guru Susan Tichy). This ethical consciousness becomes not a by-product of the poetry but a necessary consideration for the project of the poem. (The "project" of the poem, loosely put, is that which the poet thinks or aims for the poem to achieve, as broad as that sounds, and also how the poet intends to achieve this). So, in essence, my poems don't just land up being about my experience as a post-colonial female but emerge from a conscious realization of that process. (The Tamil word for realization is very important here-- uNarndhu, which indicates that the process is more dynamic and experiential than "realization" suggests).

However, as the term itself suggests, being a witness also implies that on is to some extent on the sidelines. As Susan Sontag says in her essays on photography, one must relegate oneself to observing primarily even as one experiences physical or less tangible things so that the process of recording begins even at that stage. There is some extent of reflection required, in inward-turning, I suppose. I think it's important, as digressive as it seems, to look back at a review of Rick Barot's book Want that I wrote for Eric Pankey's class called "21st Century American Poetry:"

Yet again, using these considerations of beauty, Barot brings us back to the question of the poetic self and what its “ethical” expression consists of. Do Barot and his poems’ speakers identify with the “old poet” of “Say Goodbye..” who is “so silent with grieving/ that he has to be given the word of his farewell,” or does Barot place himself as the young poet from “Psalm with a Phrase from Beckett” who is grappling between “narratives of desire” and presumably, the “Captivity Narrative” itself? Barot probably wants to reach out or atleast reshape the young poet, by suggesting new possibilities—“Let the offered living hand/ be an oar…/Because that is your singing too.” It thus seems as though Barot has reached a stage between his “old” and “new” poetic selves—a point where he acknowledges that it is acceptable to “drink the blue sludge/ of airplanes” as well as consider the more oblique “words exploding just under/ the ground.” In other words, he may be ready to exercise his poetic will simply for the sake of beauty, for the sake of drawing a picture, for rendering as if on canvas.

Barot also seems to find comfort in the “dark,” a word that he constantly repeats like a mantra and a space that he dwells in. The dark, especially in “Psalm…” is the space where the poet is considering where his ethics lie, and Barot masterfully provides the answer to this question in the title of his last poem—“Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It.” Even as a poem about history—about the beauty of rain and the sheer destructive energy it possesses during a flood—this last sequence of eighteen ten-line sections carries a certain reassurance, an affirmation that the poet is both witness and witnessed, a documenter of history, as well as the documented. Barot reaches this conclusion exactly halfway through the poem, in the ninth section, where he admits:

…There is never

an answer here. Only that you have to need

the justice of looking, even after everything else

you’ve seen.

One could possibly say that Barot’s poetics here acknowledges that the poet must, painful as it may be, see and color the world using the self, and must always be at odds with this “requirement.” After all, if the storyteller doubts himself, how does the listener know where the “truth” truly lies? Yet, that is the implicit level of trust that history places upon poets, and it is this trust that Barot wants to complicate. If this collection of poetry indeed is an answer to the question posed by Antonio Porchia in its epigraph—“I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received,” the answer is startlingly clear and complicating at the same time—that the poet must continue to invent, reinvent and engage with the world, even if the act of rendering the world is complicated, and possibly even limiting. Poetry, after all, as Barot’s collection would say, may be “bleak with story,” but is one legitimate re-enactment of history by that poet, nonetheless.

The key idea here is the poet's role as both witness and the witnessed. The act of transcribing, representing and presenting experience also makes one a witness of one's own selfhood, one's identity as a person and as a writer. And so, it seems to be that as my own conscious and focused investment in this process increases, my awareness of my own self increases. This is one of the most conscious and studied kinds of meditation one can indulge in, provided there is a near-obsessive need to understand what one wishes to achieve from a poem or why one chooses to place those words on the page in that very arrangement (which is what Jennifer Atkinson tells me very regularly. She is the wisest living poet I have met and is my other guru).

It becomes problematic for me, therefore, to write about my failed relationships in this context. Instead of worrying about what this says about me, the individual, I become more invested in how I choose to present these failures to my fictional reader. But let me address you directly--friend who has known me but have not really known what I have been writing about, friend who is hoping for more than friendship, occasional friend who resents me for this ostensible self-righteousness, friend who will never read this, mother, father-- I write this for you. I write this to tell you that I loved someone, just as you have loved me or loved your own at some point, listened for the occasional sound of footsteps on the porch, the scent of the fall breeze heavy with drying leaves and pine and a sunless clutching. I did not love to lose, or to slam the door in their face. I hoped for the same footsteps to return. I hoped to stand at the door with the same lightness always, the same understanding that bridges had been built, that your prayer mat would fit into my world full of elai vadams and arusi kolams and panchamis and navamis and chaturthis. This constant orbiting of the relationship became my goal. Did I necessarily lose sight of whom I loved? No. Especially not at the cost of the self. Now, I let go, not easier, not swifter, not more willingly, not only because I have to or because it comes naturally, but because there is no natural, there is only the gained, the experienced, the controlled. The choice to hold my breath underwater may seem natural given the construction of the body, but it is a choice nevertheless, and it is made in that instant one steps into the water and sinks lower, to that point where the water tickles the nose. It is a desperate flailing, a slipping between gaps, a pause, a slippage between meaning, between the pasts and the presents, regardless of whether emergence ensues or not.

What follows is not a holding on, not a letting go, not a constrictive word-space that I can use to contain that moment. It is a lived (moment). It is the being (not merely the act of, the process of, the experience of, etc). So, it is not gracefully, naturally or any such adverb-ially that I move on. I move on with misgivings, with a constant desire to understand the spaces within my self, to realize, to rise, to be liberated from all these muliplicities. And, in the process, love again, not only easily or naturally or with the ease of the archetypal perfectly-poised woman, nor with the awkwardness of the archetypal angst-er, but with the simultaneous awkwardness of that imagined horizon.

Welcome to this beauty. Poor Kevin Spacey died in vain at the end of American Beauty, indeed.

Three Reviews-- Volumes of Poetry

2009-11-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

(This was written for a course, but it seemed to be a waste to have it tucked away in a file, when there is all this lovely poetry to talk about. I believe all copyrights still belong to me and GMU. It's also rather long, so grab some more coffee).

21^st Century American Poetry and the Poetics of Re-Enactment

Literature often attempts to re-enact history, just as the art of painting hopes to re-create or approximate the “real.” However, while these may be controversial statements, the truth is that the poetics of each of the three twenty-first century poets reviewed here is revisiting these very “controversies.” Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility is an ambitious and possibly “experimental” re-enactment of language, a language that paces itself so that the reader is constantly catching up. It presents and posits language as an inadequate yet necessary medium for articulating experience, if not meaning (which, it may be argued, poets such as Gertrude Stein and others have successfully achieved before). In his second book of poems, Want, Rick Barot explores similar themes, but the subject this time is not language but poetry itself. The limitations of poetry as one mode of viewing, and the complications of reconstituting and re-enacting the world through the poem are acknowledged and grappled with. Barot ends by making peace with the problematic nature of poetry, by assuring himself and the reader that regardless of where the poet’s passions may lie—narrative, image, lyricism, line, or all of the above—every act of representation becomes “true” by virtue of its own integrity, its own “reality.”

Finally, Sean Hill, in his first book of poems titled Blood Ties and Brown Liquor, executes a different kind of re-enactment. His is the re-enactment of history through poetry, the re-enactment of the written history of the African American community through an approximation of a transcribed oral work. Each voice in his book, part of the six generations of the family of Silas Wright, a fictional Black man, unvoice and revoice history, through what could be called dramatic monologues or straightforward stories. Yet, as mentioned earlier, these are important voices and important renderings of history. They are indicative of the empowering nature of poetry, of its ability to create what was previously held sacred—language, histories, and even its own notions of self.

So it seems that these books are perhaps part of the larger poetic discourse of this century which may involve asking the same questions as before but also simultaneously re-enacting these questions that have always been asked by poets before our time. The poetics of this century may quite simply be called the poetics of re-enactment, which may not be novel, but is atleast highly aware of its own potency as a way of preserving a new enactment of older concerns—language, history, and itself.

***

Irresponsibility by Chris Vitiello; Ahsahta Press; pp 101

Chris Vitiello begins his investigation and active-re-enactment of language and semantic possibility using motifs that he wields successfully throughout his collection—"beachcombing" and an exploration of "experience" using "seeing" versus "saying" as axes. His investigation of the act of poetry, and the problems language poses in order to thwart a process as dynamic and proactive as poetry, begins with idea that both seeing meaning as well as saying it—the acts of reading as well as hearing—are both almost reductionist approaches to poetry. In order for the poetic act to be represented on more than a simply two-dimensional graph, or even a "lyric [that] forgets a category of thought out of reading," one needs to see that "there are many degrees of being open."

Such is the scope of Vitiello's investigation that it constructs or perhaps consciously develops a lexicon—a mathematical, scientific, geographical and even meta-poetic set of symbols, approximations and progressions. And these are precisely his subjects. The space of a poem— the "geographies," –the idea of symmetry and blank space on the page acting as enclosures as much as the text or lines do, and even the idea of left-indenting poems on a page are circled and re-circled in every poem. Titles of poems are places, and they are repetitive, suggesting that the same place is never conducive to the same experience— the same set of material possibilities. Characters reinvent themselves; numbers appear and re-appear, but the investigation of language, through itself as well as symbols and visual re-arrangements, continues.

Vitiello's poems are a syntactic maze; they embody the very possibilities they present and also offer the alternatives that were rejected in constructing the lines the way they are constructed—"Forget how to read this// Forget how to read// Parsimony// Quit." Vitiello concedes that lines are not sacred; "every line simultaneous" is a device, an "enclosure [which] permits the system." This recurrent idea of being and not being—a line including, acknowledging and enclosing what it could be, or the presence of words and combinations that were forsaken in order for the line to exist in its present state, are in keeping with what Vitiello proposes the poem to be—"an oscillating shell."

Equally important to the consideration of the nature of the poem is the consideration of surface. Vitiello posits that "Making an argument is a surface/ Making a mistake is an argument" and thus possibly pre-empts any excessive critical consideration of his attempt to contort syntax and semantics. In addition to using the // symbol to present the reader with a set of possibilities for the same ideas, Vitiello also renegotiates the importance of meaning derived from syntactic configurations. He does that by leaving the "is" out of "every line simultaneous" and by interposing a number series poem in the midst of other poems.

Thus, one could argue that Vitiello is interrogating language in a Steinesque manner by theorizing that "A noun is a process/Nouns is a decision making process." There is definite onus on the collectivizing nature of language; plurality, after all, is the basis for making generalizations, just as the lines above demonstrate. If, then, Vitiello is indeed subverting that process of pluralizing, then he also simultaneously questions if “is” is the same as “is equal to”—"Differentiate is from =." What is the value of a single noun or object or process when it is equated with a collective subject on the other end? In other words, how can "nouns" be a process? Similarly, when Vitiello tells us that "One thing is not any thing," is he presenting a counterargument for "One thing is not anything" where the pluralizing quality of "anything" is challenged?

The theme of accretion and repetition is another a central concern in this work. "Durations are a name," Vitiello says, reinforcing his theory of white-space as well as repetition. The idea of repetition is important for this book, but even more so in poetry, and it pivots on mathematical theories concerning series and the space between the elements of a series. Is that why Vitiello lists the first 1000 prime numbers for us? Is this a distinct attempt to demonstrate that " a series is a defense not a concealment" and that there is "no sequence without duration?" Isn't white space, by these standards, a device that acts as duration in a sequence--a characteristic that repeats itself in order to establish a pattern? Vitiello definitely stresses the need for the act of poetry to be aware of what he calls its "characteristic," which, in this book's case is that of lack of end-punctuation.

Even more delightful that Vitiello's meta-poetic statements about repetition are the measured and delightful execution of these theories that he proposes. On multiplicity of meaning and temporality itself, he says "The gerunds are still a buffer àGerunds are buffersà Gerunds bufferà/I'm seeing instead of elapsing," after already positing that "the site of the poem elapses," distributing the active responsibility of "understanding" the poem between both the reader or "I" and the "site" of the poem or the surface and location of the poem itself. Vitiello also enacts the erasure of stacking of surface over surface by providing us with multiple reading cues—superscripts, substitutions (words written below words to suggest the use of alternatives), popular music, motifs such as hawks and the beach, and his own daughter and friends. Vitiello thus creates for us a surface that is plainly aware of its own multiplicities, as well as its own materiality:

“Sunset” is a lie// Snakes do

not elaborate

By naming the suspension of judgment you

miss the point

↑

There were no single grackles// The understood it

Grackles is singular

It may be very rare for a book as ambitiously theory-reaching as this to meticulously follow the standards it has set for itself; still, Vitiello's book does just that. It consistently shies away from presenting a meta-poetic fact as a "singular" and sacred entity; even such assertions are reasserted and reshaped and torqued to produce moments of surprise. There is a very ambitious expectation of the act of reading, interacting and understanding poetry itself—that "[a]ll you have to do is pay attention and it's not that simple." A book as aware as this of its attention to its own structure—that "each level posits an idiosyncratic attention”—is seldom an "easy" reading experience for the reader, but it is, at the very least, one that challenges and renegotiates our own passivity in receiving poetry. The visceral nature of reading and the physicality of a poem have never been spoken of in as diverse, and yet, in as versatile a manner as this.

***

Blood Ties and Brown Liquor by Sean Hill; University of Georgia Press; pp 82

The lyric as re-enactment of location and history is one of Sean Hill’s primary accomplishments in this volume, where he attempts to document the history of the family of Silas Wright, a fictional black man who lived through both segregation and integration in the United States. For a book that is fraught with history, this composite-voiced set of lyrics (or even dramatic monologues) manages to capture the individually-voiced moment, and not just the “collective” voice or history of a community (which may imply a certain universalization, or dramatization, even, of the events sought to be documented). Every voice in the book, as the book’s jacket claims, is a “response” to a “call” that has issued forth from the mouth of another speaker. One wonders how the poems have the kind of lyric timbre that they possess—richness of imagery and texture, juxtaposition of luxurious sound and musicality with the vernacular—while also sustaining a distinct sense of speakerhood. The formal variations (line breaks and stanza forms) may cue us towards identifying every monologue as being “differently voiced,” but the repetition of sensuous images and color—“rust” and “clay”— that speak to the history of the African American community in Midgeville, Georgia of the late 1800s, sustain the reader’s attention simultaneously; the speakers are different, but perhaps, their voice is essentially the same, and it speaks of the same history at concurrent and varying points of time.

As a reader aware of the political immediacy of the poet’s voice and project, one cannot help but ignore the imagery that is associated with the oppressive past that African Americans, and Silas Wright’s family in particular, seem to have reconciled themselves to in wholly different and unique ways. Silas’ brother Willie is perhaps one of the most intricately sketched characters in the book. In a song-like lyric entitled “Willie’s Say 1954,” one sees a resigned but matter-of-fact voice making admissions about the speaker’s failure to please his parents. “What am I supposed to do when money and honey/ part with me,” Willie says in an almost movie dialogue-like manner. But there is little room for real disapproval on the reader’s part, since he does admit that he “would beg or borrow but not rob or kill/ for liquor or dope.” These almost-earnest lines disarm us in a way that the poem “Learning to Walk” does not; instead, the act of walking is brutalized here—the lines read sharply down vertically and then proceed to the next column, almost as if to approximate the “chain gang” practice in prisons that African Americans were subject to. This poem is a statement on the brutalizing and corrosive nature of “civilizing” techniques—the act of causing someone to forget how to walk by chaining them to others and depriving them of their sanity and their sanctity of space. Amidst all of the various physical hardships borne by the community—burning on roofs, dying of scarlet fever, dying in wars or of childbirth—the most animalistic seems this “undoing” which Hill devotes simply one column poem to. The poem, however, begins with a sequence of images of the speaker “swinging,” while watermelon juice drips on his feet which are in braces (a so-called natural trauma), and then leads us into the more brutal and “unnatural” way of losing one’s mobility—trauma in captivity. But nothing except the form of the poem itself – “short quick” – belabors that point.

In this book, the lyric mode is in capable hands for the most part, reaching some high points in poems such as “Words Like Rivers” and “Lineaments Through the Line of Seasons” which are incisive and yet nostalgic about the act of preserving history through the spoken word. Since almost every speaker relies on what someone else in the family had told her/him, these poems bring forth a culmination of all these individual conditions in a few lines, moving from “I say blood ties is/ like liquor and water,” “[ which]stream words like rivers/ and families riven over centuries” to “lines reveal themselves, remind the face/ what it has done.” Apart from the play on the possible meanings for the word “lines” – lines of the poem, family “lines” or even a reference to the power of the oral narrative tradition that is central to the speakers’ way of life—these poems seem to present the historical lyric as that which takes account of both the immediacy of presenting the “present” moment as well as a seamed series of images that precede this “moment.”

The scope of the lyric, too, as Hill demonstrates, is truly limitless and yet limiting in an undertaking such as this, which is suggested in “Lineaments…”: “Each day Silas revises/ the text underscoring the repetition.” Is this a meta-poetic revelation? Is the moment central to the lyric in a way that the collective experience cannot be? Is the moment when Sam is plucking out “flaming shingles from the steep pitch,” and is the single moment a more immediate historical-lyric representation than the repeated image of the “mocking bird/ [that] greets the morning with many tongues” ? Is the iteration of experience and sensation channeled through another voice in time a “faithful” execution of the lyric in a way that a frozen moment is not? Or, are the frozen moments and images the focal point of the culmination of lyric sensibility in a book such as this? Whatever our answer may be, Sean Hill answers this question by presenting us with a range of possibilities from which to consider the question of time, location, identity, and “enclosure.”

The last poem in the book is a reiteration of its previous version which begins the last section, and chooses to approach the question of the speaker’s birth by solidifying the image of the house he was born in—“a house built by men, all dead now.” Silas Wright proceeds to mention that:

The house was built straight but over the years

it settled crooked. I was born in that house.

Generations all together in that house, still standing.

While it could be argued that this could be a belabored gesture on the part of the speaker to speak about his “roots,” there is a sort of macabre humor to the idea of people “still standing” – the idea of location, physicality and existence (even after death) as a set of voices that the speaker is comfortable accessing in order to define himself. And suddenly, we are able to find a cohesive thread that links each of the speakers in the book; Silas speaking for them or even on their behalf at some points is not merely an artifice. In fact, the lyric renditions of others’ stories that Silas attempts in his self-voiced poems are merely an extension of poems where the others in his family are speaking themselves. Why should “I used to work clay too” and “I sure do miss it—being with them men/ and the clay—making a living” be any different from the repeated image of “Benny’s skin red-brown like rust on a hoe” or even the poem where Silas’ wife laments that “he has to unload/ them kilns there sometimes it be so hot/ it singe his eyebrows and lashes?” While one is certainly aware of either the distance between such a speaker and Silas, or even poems that have no identifiable speaker, it seems to be the author’s very project to bring into relief the “space” that exists between each speaker and Silas, which Silas identifies in the voice of his Uncle Phineas as having a “hollow- not like the dark well…but a hollow like a hug-space enough to climb in and be held.” And it is precisely this sensation of being enclosed, of the family voices “growing” inside him like “watermelon seeds,” that Silas seems to allude to every point. That being the case, as a reader, one feels delight and a sharp sense of surprise at every point that we hear the symphony of voices in this book, each selecting and encasing one hollow, a space where there is a solo tune being played for sometime, before fading into another voice. If the lyric has been said to often represent history as what was ignored, or left unvoiced, it confirms as well as undoes those allegations brilliantly in this book, giving the oral historical tradition adequate space and expanse in these written, or rather, “voiced” lyric outpourings.

***

Want by Rick Barot; Sarabande Books; pp 67

Rick Barot’s second collection of poems, titled Want, is in conversation with his previous book, The Darker Fall, in the sense that it too, like its precursor, announces a certain presence, a here-ness, which the poet describes thus: “What is it to be here but to want.” These poems communicate a desire, and not just ordinary desire, but an ambitious desire to “want” and to expose “want;” they are full of sensory and sensuous brilliance—“the body on a canvas/ the incremental layers/ of red. In the end, the blossoming flesh.” Yet, this collection does not limit itself to interactions with beauty, art, literature and nature; it presents an ethical and disarmingly skeptical evaluation of poetic selfhood, as Barot himself says in the poem “Pescadero”—“I turn from/ what I know is there, that true, concluding figure.”

This book is largely free of divisions, sections or compartments, and it is this quality that seems to suggest some connection or even commonality of intent between the speakers in all the poems. The speaker is very often an observer, of art, of life, of life in art—“the horses, even/ in their speed, as though not breathing”—or the observer-self who is becoming painfully aware of the act of exposing the self even as the self sees. In one of the longer poems called “Captivity Narrative,” the observer-speaker’s awareness reaches its zenith at precisely this point—the point when the self is both seen and discovered, and the point when the self and its intentions are betrayed to others:

…You’re walking

not knowing you’re walking, just someone

turning in sleep, someone turning

a corner and appearing unannounced

on a storefront’s dozen TVs.

Barot’s speakers are thus at most points very aware and/or severely skeptical of the self. Yet, this skepticism is accompanied or even followed by a sense of reinvention, of rejuvenation, or even epiphany. Take, for instance, the poem “Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor,” which may be loosely called an ekphrasis, where the speaker assembles the self using his own acute self awareness—“all day I walk around as though/ a bowl were balanced on my head, the fish inside kissing,” incidents from the life of his grandmother, and a commentary on the physical process of the painter himself. At every point, we see the speaker grappling with the realities he sees—the images that play out in front of his eyes. He goes on to admit:

…Tell each

story cold, I tell myself. Tell it dark: the berry eyes of deer

among trees. Tell it without need of an answer…

What could be more ironic than this poet- speaker who transparently projects his own expectations from the poem and his art and simultaneously critiques his own motivations and expectations? And yet, what could be more sincere and self-gauging than this? Barot’s poems are full of desire and sensuousness, indeed, but they are even more imbued with the need to thwart this desire, to remove the self from its involvements with the words on the page. The speaker, therefore, in this poem, consistently reminds himself in imperatives that begin with “tell [it],” thus dividing his self along the edges of his own craft—the need to inform or describe or simply interact, and the need to comment, to talk of how the “clearing’s downed birches are melting into rot, chip.”

This brings us to the question of what a self-aware ethical poetry could really be. There are speakers who are so intent on fulfilling this desire for removal and distancing from the poem that the poem becomes devoid of a certain luxuriousness—of image or lyricism—or even, simply put, the beauty of the line. Yet, Barot maneuvers lineation and stanzas in a measured and taut fashion—whether they are the tercets of “Say Goodbye…” or the lines of the sonnet “Litany” where time and possibilities are reinterpreted and refashioned by using “when” at the start of every sentence, a “when” that without much ado declares that “[w]hen the snow/ is pink, something has been left motherless” and then proceeds to exhorting that “[w]hen singing, think of articulating silences.” Hence, if the pause is what makes music beautiful, and the silence is what seals the edges of a beautiful melody, Barot does exactly that. He moves from spare and perhaps even definitive statements to the more questioning poems, where the self is constantly reconstituted, and where this re-sculpting causes pain, which the speaker acknowledges plainly and directly.

This happens even in poems like “K,” which Barot draws from Franz Kafka’s diary entry proposing that he will be a nude model for Ascher’s rendering of Saint Sebastian. The violence of the act of painting is exposed here; Barot follows and considers the artist’s choices carefully— “how the “rouge of some emotion/ gets slowly placed on the cheek of nothing” and how the “martyr’s accepted/ brokenness” culminates in death due to an arrow in the face, even as a deer nearby is “eating even the bark/ even thorns.” The sheer excess of death—that something should die, and yet be violently targeted again, simply to ensure it has died—and simultaneously, the pollution of beauty that emerges from the deer’s simple act of eating, articulate the dilemma the speaker faces in almost of all of his poems in this book. While there is “want” and near-decadent desire, there is also the decay of self which accompanies this “want” and here is where the poet places himself—at the point where awareness of both beauty and the pain of beauty become acutely obvious.

…There is never

an answer here. Only that you have to need

the justice of looking, even after everything else

you’ve seen.

The prof. is back!

2009-08-09T23:26:00.002-04:00

Ladies, gents and the odd spectactor: I have decided to put my entire past back on this blog, for your perusal, and perhaps also for my own. I have somehow reached a place where I can revisit the former selves I inhabited and actually enjoy the trajectory of the I.

From here on, I'll be starting afresh. I'm a professor now, aren't I?

Much good karma!

Mysore & Pondicherry, circa 2007

2007-10-08T03:17:00.001-04:00

Lacquered and painted
you arrive, embalmed
Ready to be taken apart
by the sequential reels
Running rapidly in the back
Of the eye.
Wet
Blurry
Lost

I bought a blue set
of round cakes
of myriad watercolours
To paint my face on your time
They dripped
And ran into the weave.
Lost
Confused
Taunting.

Our rhythms never matched
Yoked by arcane magnets
Proceeded to cut into raw flesh
Lights flashed when the plane took off
The soil left behind burnt red brown.
The night is often vivid with sensations
Of a warm body and breath lost
Swimming
Dissipated
Alienated.

I woke up to coffee and newspaper and you one morning
And never slept again.

Untitled

2007-08-19T23:57:00.003-04:00

Temple after temple
Every grey stone fighting to tell its tale
Of a king long forgotten
Name etched in the English alphabet in some faraway town
On some nondescript road
Where the flies hover near dyed fried treats
While little boys in cotton shorts
And girls in red ribbons and yellow bangles
Strain their eyes to look at jars of aniseed coated in sugar
While a harried dishevelled mother in a patched saree
Or a father with oily hair and a wobbling potbelly
Drag them to schools where they are taught
To write letters of leave to erstwhile Irish headmasters
Ending in ' faithfully yours, signature'.

Forgotten sunsets

2007-08-19T23:09:00.002-04:00

Carved upon your lined face
In fragile haphazard strokes
Is a folly now regretted.
Hot pride now flustered
Cold veins thwarted by feeling
There is nothing to do except bless.
Age is redemption, experience calloused
The time was different then
When the eye could see and stop
At the epidermis tanned despite your threats,
Steel and fire sprayed your myopia
Where it now warms arthritic limbs.
Years turned, days revolved in unfelt patterns
That drew you in
And left you unheard, untouched.
Where was your mind, your cognizance?
Your identity, your music?
Lost, or never heard by the laity
Who sat around you in silent envy
Of sparkling womanhood, embellished, preened
While a girl sat nearby.
Watching the ants on the floor,
Horses in the sunset

That gaped in between the blinds,
Purple eyed.

Accented

2007-08-19T22:51:00.001-04:00

I must stop where your line begins.
Fermented snack after another,
Each golden ray breathing fine warmth
Upon rivers of murk lurking in the wayside
Upon supine forms lost in calculated daydreaming
There was no remorse, no looking back
At a gaudy wayside sign reading ' diffin redy'
Highlighting every road trip undertaken in high summer,
The pungent odour of sugary coffee in silver tumblers
Punctuating every stop.

Now there is waffles and syrup
And tranquillity that makes the breath sharp
In expectation of stamping the existence
Of silent footsteps on a polished sidewalk.
The rancour and sullenness of a forced togetherness
The brushing of unknown fingers, sweaty forearms
The acrid foreign breath of aniseed and garlic
Sped away as fast as the salty foam
That splashed our feet tracing formless shapes
Amidst wet, plastic littered sand.

Home came long after the sound
Of your pulse pounding on my face.

The Autorickshawman that cried 'God!"

2007-02-18T07:19:00.001-05:00

I am only human.

First, he spoke to me in what seemed to be ACJ-acceptable English. He said that sixty rupees was 'reasonable' in a tone that convinced me, I figure, and was more difficult to refuse by its implication of reasonability rather than some sort of arbit(rary) demand.

I got in.

Random thoughts. On singledom. Or the lack of it. Duality in singledom. Solitude in relationships. Loneliness in a relationship. Bhel Puri. Umrao Jaan. Wanted touch. Unwanted looks. Pilgrimages. Names. His names. Change as obstinate as the lack of it. Irreversible changes. Proselytization. Coimbatore.

Few observations. Dhaaba spelt as Dhabba.Giggle. Old man in extremely white cap and lady in pink burqa holding hands and crossing road. Unseen faces of children in an auto; little girl in blue uniform making herself comfortable on a little boy's lap, his hand protectively closing around her waist.

A phone call. Electronic concern. Better than mechanical, perhaps.

Another. An infectious laugh.

Signals. Big, small. Red, green. Long. Crowded. Smoky.

The flapping kurta stops.Rummage for a sixty.

He says something starting with 'Madam', involving the words ' I asked for too much', and ending with "Please give me forty-five".

I blink. Squint. I do not like this one bit, though I am surprised and happy on one hand. I shove a fifty in his hand and get out.

Wait.

What now?

A pamphlet. Please give to your friends. Can you read Tamil?

I need to get to work soon. I nod. He doesn't need to know about my abysmal word per minute count while reading Tamil.

Vrooms off.

I am left with a picture of a conductor telling a boy coloured in pink, how we all 'must get a ticket' (front cover). To where? Heaven, apparently, as I found after more squinting. (Not by me, but by a colleague who was handed the task after my infinitely limited reading skills failed me.)

And who gets us the ticket? Kartar. Translation : Jesus Christ.

Great timing. There must be a convention of proselytic-minded people converging on my life.

Wonder why my family astrologer didn't send out a red alert involving abshishekams to every deity in town.

Or wearing topaz rings.

Identity change

2007-02-18T06:51:00.000-05:00

Hello, and peace.

Several U-turns later, a new leaf has been turned.

There is a God. And I'm getting there.

Peace again.

The Case of the Missing Murukkus

2006-12-10T08:04:00.001-05:00

You can run but you can't hide,
Don't you know you're goin' straight to my backside?

Zehn mein hai ki..

2006-12-09T12:05:00.001-05:00

Hum khush hain to kya hua,

Har mulaqaat ka anjaam judaai kyun hai?
Ab to har vaqt yehi baat sataati hai humein..

- Talat Aziz, 'Zindagi Jab Bhi' ( from the vintage 'Umrao Jaan')

2006-11-25T13:37:00.000-05:00

Rows upon rows
Of shiny swollen mangoes
Dripping with the juice of life
Staining the dull knife with vitality.

She looks at me
Smiling
Chewing her paan
Asking me which one.
The pure gold one, please
Just yellow, no tint of parrot
No bronze blotches
I want a virgin
Just right
Cooked to the right ripeness

Kaanama Poiten

2006-08-13T04:12:00.000-04:00

Lost

Amidst censors

Censure

Runorders

Rain drops on leather seats

The reek of paan and roadside bhel

The Unanswerable: Etchoose me may-dum..

2006-06-29T12:39:00.001-04:00

Neenga, single aa illa double aa?

:-)

Feelings?

2006-04-23T03:54:00.002-04:00

Feelings feelings
Everyone talks
About them.

My gut knots
Like an intractable
Scout's rope,
Digesting biliously
What I feel
When you walk by
Swaggering
Content
In your syrupy
Moral universe.

Why must I be bound
To your hard heart
Your tight-shut world
Why must you
Be my closest comrade
And still draw your spear
At my 'frailty'.
I am a girl
You are boy
And we play dominoes.

Not house.

I have another for that.

Oh if heaven was a place on earth...

2006-01-10T14:07:00.002-05:00

Yeah sure,when people told me Kerala was God's own country,I had that "yes-I-have-heard" look quite often.But thanks to Amma's new Hyundai Santro and Guru's initiative(ok well,we forced him to come with the "guys"),we landed up,during my New Year break, in this place called Nelliyampathi (for more info do a google search you couchies!).It was,to say the least,breathtaking.

The drive down was ANYTHING but uneventful.I got to take turns riding pillion with each of the guys.We came across an elephant which was in the middle of having supper.I was told very convincingly to get into the car with the "other women" while the guys took the bike.I was very upset,whiny and gnashing my teeth.But Guru and Co got their way.I had half a feeling they did it less for our safety and more so they could escape on the bike if that thing chased us down the narrow hill road.$&*#!!!!

Meanwhile,some other stupid tourists anyway got off their cars,but left the lights on and kept honking!So,our party had to run,because ermm..we can't handle trouble as big as that because of some twits who don't know how NOT to act around wild animals.The "chivalrous" males of our company didn't even manage to get a decent video or snap of our soon-agitated friend.Bleagh!So much for not being boxed in a car and for disallowing spirited young women from exercising their natural talent for filming.Humph.

But I got back on the bike soon enough because of my sheer stupid stubbornness anyway.It was wonderful.My heartfelt thanks to the very silent but sweet and accomodating Vishwa whose bike I rode on.

Here are some snaps I took.The place is wowie!I wanted to go closer and get the valley below,but you know mothers. :-)

There are others Guru took below them.His are better,because atleast he got to hold his camera.Mine was hijacked and filled with pictures of people acting like clowns.

My snaps:The top of the Nelliampathy hills and the valley below.

Guru took the following.

A view from the Pothundi dam nearby(Funny,I thought "pothundi" was Telegu?!)

Atop the hills,the winding road leads to the summit(Yikes,waxing poetic)

Misty view from the valley.

Where are the small pleasures?

2006-01-10T11:26:00.001-05:00

Happy new year,o ye faithful (and few?) reader-friends!

Journo school is back to it's mad pace after my two-week long vacation back at home,where I did nothing except make trips to Kerala nearby and other places of interest in and around Coimbatore.

Coming back to Chennai was a drag.God,just coming back to the apartment and feeling the mad rush of the traffic hit my eardrums again.Felt like that familiar but necessary nightmare again.
It was somewhat comforting to see my fellow amateur-journalists at college,cursing the newly formatted computers in the lab and complaining about P.Sainath(Yes,Rural Affairs Editor,The Hindu) and his theatrical lectures on poor people.
I have even started a new diary.Pen,paper and all.Because,somehow I feel that this blog's become more of an impersonal journal.At times it feels like that,atleast.So,all the juice is in that leather bound diary:D

And,life is resuming normalcy.Well,almost.

I was on the bus yesterday and the conductor owed me some 50 paisa change.And,every time I asked him for it,he'd mysteriously not have one.But other people got their 50 paisa back.I asked him twice.Then I got so busy thinking about the 50 paisa coin itself,that I forgot to collect my change in the end.

About a couple of years back,a 5 rupee coin was a rarity.It was this cute,fat,ridged round thing the weight of which you could distinctly feel in your hands.And then,almost overnight,they became ubiquitous,and as we all know it,if one guy gets popular,he's edging someone out.So,the twenty-five paisa coin slowly started becoming less and less common.The ten paisa coin had already disappeared then.

The reason I'm saying all this is because,slowly,even the fifty paisa coin seems to have no value too.The conductor didn't seem to think that a well-off person needed that fifty paisa coin anyway.And,I dispensed with it very readily too.Didn't really mind losing it.In fact,it seemed to even out my accounts.

But the value of every unit of money,and I am saying this on a general level,not as an economic theory,is falling.
The 50 paisa no longer buys what it did a while back.If you're lucky you would be able to xerox one side of paper using that,or buy a small Mentos(the mouth freshener :D ) with it.The exoticism of holding and clanging small metal round things weighing like a feather and feeling like Midas are all gone.

When I read R.K Narayan's novels,or listen to my mother's tales of how they bought treasures with one or two rupees,I am fascinated.The little copper anna(I hope I got that right!),which I am ashamed to say I've never seen lost the battle.So did the ten,twenty,and the twenty five paisa(to some extent).Very soon the 50 paisa will become obsolete.

As the units of money become higher and higher,they will buy fewer things.And fewer treasures that little children can eye greedily at small tea shops.

Instead,little girls and boys today glance hungrily at the colourful and conceitedly high priced packets of Lays and Kurkure on stands.That is,if their parents deign to get off their a/c cars and step onto the dusty and non- existent sidewalks.

Sigh.The small pleasures of life.I build my life around those.No wonder I take a beating many a time.

Guh,no "self-flagellation":-)

ps:I've been buying kilo upon kilo of "ber"(Hindi) a.k.a "elandapazham"(Tamil) at the bus-stand.Apparently,this is the season.Still have no idea what they are called in English,but they are sweet and tangy.Slurp.

Breaking the lull, and finding the self

2005-12-21T06:20:00.003-05:00

It's been a long long time since I've written.

In fact it's been a while since I've felt like myself at all -powerful, energetic, smiling.The second term of my course has drained whatever was left of my physical and mental energy.

There are a lot of gaping holes now.There is a lack of direction to life,that I am actually enjoying.There is no past,no future.Just this moment.And this is what made my college trip to Vellore a delight.

-------

We went there to shoot a fifteen minute documentary.After arriving there,on the first day,we had lunch in this absolute mess of a place called Arya Bhavan.Their dosas were floating in oil,and the sambaar tasted like ink.(That's right,I've tasted ink!)Their chilli parota,I'm sure,as delicious as it was,could seriously block a few arteries if you ate it for lunch for a month.

We set out to the Tamil Nadu Science Federation after that,to meet our resource-people.They gave us a broad outline of the topics we could focus on,which were like the usual beats in an newsroom-education,environment and health.My group chose child labour and education.Some rather enthusiastic people even insisted on climbing the Yelagri hills,which were being battered by Thor and Co to see the tribals.I tried to keep a straight face.Yep,I even teased my friend Krash about it.What did they expect?Face-painted,spear-toting,humba-humba chanting blokes who sang and danced around the bonfire and worshipped bottles of country liquor?

So much for not exoticising the marginalized.I gave up.As did my Professor.

In the evening,Krash and 2 other friends- RK and AP went to a delightful place called Chinatown opposite the famous Christian Medical College a.k.a CMC.Then we decided we'd find a bar nearby.There was a good one in a hotel nearby and as RK said,it was "hardly shady".I couldn't suppress a giggle when he said that.It was like a cave and new Tamil songs were playing on overhead TV sets,the lurid colours lighting up the place in flashes.

-------

Day 2 was desperately and hopelessly pathetic.We started nearly 45 minutes behind schedule.We tromped around two villages,looking at special child labour schools which make sure kids are weaned off their jobs and slowly integrated into mainstream schools eventually.

We skipped lunch because our resource-person was magnificently resourceful and did not expect that the only hotel in the village would be shut.We couldnt go back to town,whcih was a good 20 km away,as we had more work in the village.So we had bread and potato fritters for lunch.I ate half a loaf that was begging for some cheese as company.But I was told very sarcastically that cheese was a luxury item.

I know.No harm in trying for it though,right?:-)

------

Day 3 was manna from heaven.It set into motion a frenzy of activity that resulted in all of us shooting a formidable 4 tapes (roughly 240 minutes of footage) within the next 48 hours.I'm not even attempting to explain exactly how we did that.
All we did is go back to the villages and shoot all that we had simply gaped at the previous day.In the pouring rain.

We even followed a kid called Faizana(oh yes,name changed to protect identity)who led us to the dirtiest village river I've ever seen.The banks were strewn with multicoloured plastic bags.Looked like a giant confetti can had exploded over it.The water was a murky,opaque brownish grey and Faizana walked barefoot through the path to the bank.We walked with our expensive running shoes firmly ensconcing themselves in the five different types of shit that were on the way.

Our brave cameraman Saru,in his state of dedicated focusing and defocusing("broadcast language is so showy,humph"),even sat on some shit.No idea what kind.But I was benevolent enough to make it known to the entire lodge in the evening that he had shit on his backside which wasn't even his own.Some laughed,their eyes catching the dim light.Some grimaced.Some chortled till their eyes disappeared.

And lunch?Oh,it was orgasmic.Earth shattering.Lovely,scrumplicious South Indian meals for 15 bucks!One rupee extra for extra appalams (paapads).I was the first to finish everything on my banana leaf.

Then we headed to a one of many leather factories in Ambur,which my Professor called "f*cking fortresses" in her shrill voice.Twice.A few winced.I agreed,because,by the time Saru tried to get shots of any one process in the factory,the tour escort would come and whisk him away.But Saru is like a wall.You can pound and scream,but he won't budge.And he didn't.

The same leather factory owner also talked to his shoe factory owning relative and got us in there.But we couldn't take the camera.So,we had to make do with still cameras.My friend,Niv managed to shoot a small video on that before we were whisked away unceremoniously once again.

On a more serious note,these visits revealed a lot.In the tanning factory,some guys who treated the leather with acid were standing absolutely barefoot while a sign "Caution:Enter with footwear" shone overhead.And nearly all the workers in the shoe factory were women,some of whom have to stand for hours at a stretch.We couldn't even talk to those who looked underage.

Next,we went to more villages in the vicinity.In one place,there was a house where there were children sitting and stitching "uppers" for shoes openly under a thatched roof in the terrace.Oho yeah,field day for us with the camera.We did some interviews and took shots.That is,before the owner of the house realized we were potential mischief- makers and told us to unplug the microphone from the camera.But all cameras have inbuilt mics yaar.:-)

Now,the day was fruitful.My professor even said "You're human,R.You're a good person".The previous day I was behaving like what they call a typical "broadcaster", pushing everyone and telling them we could do without food for a day,and nagging them, and driving everyone,including myself,crazy.So,when she said this,I smiled.
I'm human all right.And very weak.

The one sore point of the day was our resourceperson.The man brushed past my rear during lunch ,while heading to the handwash,which I dismissed as a possible mistake.
But then he insisted on coming in front of the camera when we shot in the factory,and tried to grasp some girl's arm or the other,under the pretext of getting into the van,or saying we're late.I kept running from him.Didn't make a fuss.I think I should have.I told A about it and he was very clear that if people like us didn't speak out,these morons wouldn't learn.

He was right.

------

Day 4-we called up a contact another one of our professors had told us about.The gentleman was really sweet and showed us around another school for child labourers.It had a Muslim majority and the kids talked to us in Hindi,much to the delight of my teammates,many of whom found they didn't need me to translate their queries for once.The anklebiters called me "aunty" and I said,nah,akka(elder sister) please.They made us write our names in their notebooks and yelled goodbye into the camera very spiritedly when my pal Meen asked them to.And then,when we got ready to leave,we were asked the question that always leaves me stumped: "You will come back tomorrow?"

I could only stand there,my mouth moving wordlessly.I cannot believe we are using children to sell a story.Such is the nature of what we do,say my professors.

The rest of the day was spent in talking to the "official" chaps who work on the child labour elimination project.They were real darlings.

Went for drinks again.Before dinner this time.It was just me and three of the guys.I wasn't exactly tipsy but RK insisted on cracking jokes in Malayalam that I couldn't help giggling at.He even solemnly told me while leaving the restaurant "R,this is the first step,this is the second.Can you see?" And while I giggled some more and raved to them about how I was grossly misunderstood and a lon(s)er,RK made two very accurate observations.One,I wasn't drunk,but just needed an excuse to talk.And two,that I seemed uncomfortable around and allergic to people.

I was startled.I tried defending myself,but it was pointless.Because RK said what he did based on instinct,not just reason.I knew that.

------

Day 5 involved getting up at 12pm and sitting around,watching every movie that had been denied to us by the idiots who had implemented the set top box fiasco in Chennai.

At midnight we gave my friend Niv a surprise birthday bash,and woke up all the other guests in the lodge.Irate and groggy,they dialled the manager's number.We were told to shut up.But the cake was just going around,and the chips hadn't even been opened yet.After another four warnings,we went back to our rooms,a bunch of blubbering postgraduate journalism students in pyjamas and faded T-shirts.

-------

On day 6,we were ready to leave.We had wrapped up a day earlier than expected.

But the plan was to visit the Vellore fort first.And it was beautiful.The moat was filled and a lazy sparkling granite grey,with green grassy banks.We went to the Jalakantheshwarar temple inside.

I wanted an archanai(Offering.Don't know how else you explain in English.)
For love.For idealism.For hope.For family and friends.
The Lord takes many forms and graces our empty lives.For Him.

The church and mosque in the fort were, unfortunately, closed.We headed back to the lodge,but not before my Professor treated us to gulab-jamuns.:-)
There is still idealism left in this world.In the most unlikely places.

The return journey was blissful.Just miles of grey highway and the azure sky,which turned a deep dark blue when Chennai loomed ahead.

And thus ended what my college touts as its unique feature-a deprivation trip.

I discovered a lot.I learnt a lot.I came back with a smile and a picture of Lord Jalakanteshwarar for Ma.

My slum report

2005-12-01T05:31:00.001-05:00

Warning:This was an academic exercise I am posting just to read any time I run out of sleeping pills, and is highly context specific.Therefore,if you have no interest in the words "slum" or "report" or/and are not a Leftist(I admit I am not one),then you will find yourself highly somnolent after paragraph two.
If you're still awake,you must be related to my Left-"leaning" professors or must really like the way I write in journo-officialese i.e the language confused journalism students use to write errm..."reports" :-) .

And no,I do not have any pictures.Not soft copies atleast.

A slum is the dwelling place of the urban poor,and slum dwellers are often described as “squatters”,” and “encroachers”.Slums are stereotyped as unhygienic and “illegal” settlements which breed criminality and detract from the beauty of a city.
Usha Ramanathan,in the Economic and Political Weekly(July 2005),however,defined them as “service providers who keep urban inhabitants in home,health and happiness” and “migrant workers who build up cities for those who can afford to buy what they build” and whose labour is recognised but whose need for residence is simply ignored.
This is despite the fact that they constitute nearly 30 percent of almost any city’s population.

Another misconception about slums is that people who have built cement houses or have access to power or water supply,are in fact not “poor” but belong to the middle-class .But according to Purnima Arun, a teacher who works in slums, any one whose family cannot function if one earning member falls ill for a week or more ,is poor. “If they can be pushed to poverty,and have no savings to fall back on,they are poor”,she elaborated.

About the slum studied:

The Bharatiyar Nagar settlement is located at Bugari third stage,off Canal Road near Neelankarai,Chennai.The estimated number of families here is between 1000 and 1200.

The Neelankarai Panchayat leader,Mr.Ettiappan of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(DMK) is in charge of the area.Since it is outside city limits and does not come under the purview of the Chennai Corporation, civic facilities are the Panchayat’s responsibility.

Except for two streets among the 17 streets of Bharatiyar Nagar,the rest are entirely kuccha roads. One small bylane had been cemented,but incessant garbage dumping and the recent rains have reduced it to a heap of rubble.

The fourth and fifth cross streets have been made pucca by the residents themselves,by collecting the required sum and ensuring that a rough gutter was built at the side to divert waste water.

There are streetlights on the main road leading into Bharatiyar Nagar.However,they are absent in several places inside.The main road itself is littered largely with rubbish on the sides and one particular low-lying stretch gets inundated if it rains for an hour.Due to lack of underground drainage,residents are forced to use septic tanks.Those cannot afford to possess and maintain these, use gutters outside their homes.

All those living here are aware that they are living on low-lying land with no patta-which is like contract of ownership given by the government. Many have been here for 12 to 20 years and migrated originally from districts north of Chennai.There are people of varied religious denominations here.

Livelihood , living and income-related data:

Most families in the slum are dual-income families atleast.The monthly income ranges from Rs.2000 to Rs.5000.The men are mostly construction labourers who shift jobs or work as coolies or painters in the nearby markets or industries.Women work as domestic helpers,cleaners,maids,or even as tailors in small companies.

Reena Murali,the wife of an auto-driver,does not work..Their family of four is sustained by Rs.4000. “Once my two-year old son goes to school”,she said, “ I will look for a job.” Meanwhile,her husband has bought his own auto,for which he has obtained a loan of nearly 2 lakhs from a “Seth” in Mandaveli.Reena did admit that repaying the loan will be their first priority.

Maheshwari Balasubramanian is a house-maid with three children.She proudly displayed a new toilet that she constructed and added “The streets were public toilets earlier.We had no real ones.Now we have a septic tank that the Panchayat cleans up at regular intervals”.Her husband is a site supervisor for Tamil Nadu Housing Board and he told us that the land they are staying in belongs to the Army.

Health and facilities available:

The absence of public toilets was a significant problem .However,now out of some 500 brick houses,only a handful do not have toilets.

Drinking water has also become a problem.Metrowater supplies water every alternate day,but residents feel that after the Tsunami the quality of the water has changed.
“We buy water cans because we can afford it.I don’t know about the others”,Tulasi Kanniappan observed.

Also,drain water and monsoon water stagnate and serve as a breeding place for mosquitoes. Kalamani,whose husband Ilango is an opposition leader in the Panchayat blamed the authorities for this squarely. “Our leader Ettiappan says that if you are a slum dweller,you cannot expect better facilities.They should atleast spray some mosquito medicine.It has become impossible to step out of the house after 5 pm.”

Hyrul of Kasturba Gandhi Medical Hospital agreed-“I am a nurse and so I buy bleaching powder for the drain near my house.I still try my best to make these people aware.” Hyrul also administers first aid and emergency help to those in the area.She co-ordinates with the Assistant Nurses sent from the Government to perform routine health checkups.

Before the Injambakkam government hospital became functional a few months back,people here had to go either to Royapettah or to Thiruvanmiyur government hospitals.The irony is that there is a medical shop in the area,but no affordable doctor in the vicinity.M.Kartik,the only one in the area who is pursuing an Engineering course, regrets that there is only a private hospital close by called Shanthi Hospital which is “very expensive” for people with uncertain incomes.

Sophia,a non-governmental organisation(NGO) worker from DESH(Deepam Educational Society for Health) has created much awareness regarding health problems in the area.She originally conducted HIV related campaigns in the area,but in 2002 was assigned the task of starting Self Help Groups for women in South Chennai.

These SHGs or magalir kuzhus are actively involved in making women aware of health problems,affordable treatment and post-natal childcare. “Women who were delivering babies at home without medication and facing unsterilized instruments now understand the significance of basic medical facilities.So,we direct them to the Primary Health Centre in Neelankarai or Voluntary Health Service Hospital in Thorapakkam”,she said, when contacted.

It is due to these SHGs that more women and children attend immunization camps for tuberculosis,filaria and polio.Awareness about problems like osteoporosis ,Reproductive Tract Infection(RTI) and Sexually Transmitted Diseases(STDs)has increased,and due to routine checkups by a mobile health clinic,women are directed to government hospitals for surgical procedures like hysterectomies.

Women’s Issues:

The evolution of the SHGs in Bharatiyar Nagar has ensured that women contribute economically to their homes by learning, working and saving.Sophia from DESH and Dhanalakshmi from Annai Theresa are NGO workers whose efforts have paid off despite initial protests from the men.

The SHGs under Sophia contain a minimum of 20 women are there are eight such groups in Bharatiyar Nagar.The central idea is financial self-sufficiency and the aim is cumulative growth in savings.Women in these groups contribute Rs.100 a month which is deposited in a bank account in a nationalised bank in Adyar.Sophia is also involved in teaching these women,most of whom have just primary education on none at all,how to handle passbooks and transactions.Ambika Srinivasan,a SHG member is happy to acknowledge that they can now access a loan of Rs.80,000 with simply 0.75 percent interest on the strength of their savings.She is a tailor at an exports company but is sure that she can put her daughter through an architecture- diploma college.

These women are also very aware and articulate about problems.Ambika is unhappy that there is no ration shop nearby except at Neelankarai where there is often shortage of stock.The recent rains and resulting malaria and typhoid have exposed the need for a proper drainage system.M.Shanthi is indignant- “Why did they not divert the water to the Cooum like they promised?Now,our area along with the nearby slums in Rajendirar Nagar are inundated.We will ensure this does not happen again.”

Education:

There is a Government Hospital in Vetuvankanni with classes upto fifth standard.
Sasi,a class 10 student of St.Joseph’s school-also situated nearby, said that they are given mid-day meals and that she pays Rs.1500 per year.Her school has upto Class 12 for girls and class 10 for boys.

Durga Kanniappan ,her schoolmate and neighbour is unsure about studying beyond class 12.She felt that if she found a job soon,she would contribute to her five member family’s income.

Most of the youth have better access to education than their parents.Both daughters of T.V Sekar,an ex-official of the Panchayat Ward,for instance, are postgraduates.

Political affiliations and rain relief:

Political awareness in the area is slowly growing.While the womens SHGs are planning to choose a candidate for the next ward elections,the area is clearly demarcated based on supporters of Ettiappan and his detractors.This difference is more pronounced after the residents failed to received the rain relief grant of Rs.2000 and 10 kilos of rice as the Government had promised.

Ganesh,a driver blames the local leaders for letting the residents bear the brunt of their squabbles.He felt that since Ettiappan was not on good terms with the ruling party,the AIADMK,he had ignored their demands for relief. “He did not even come to see us once”,argued Sekhar,a mechanic.But Ettiappan remained unavailable for comment.

Conclusion:

While the recent rains have only exacerbated the lack of drainage and infrastructure, in the area, the more crucial problem here is that of people ignored by their leaders.

Some AIADMK supporters were quick to point out that M.C Munnusamy,Ettiappan’s main rival and opposition leader was able to co-ordinate better with his counterparts in the State Government.They claimed that Munnusamy provided drinking water thrice during the rains for free.The residents are fully aware that this will also affect their vote in the ward elections to be held next year.But they are certain that they will vote only for the leader who stands by them when they need him.

Another long-term question for these slum dwellers is of earning a stable livelihood and saving enough. Though they are not in danger of being evicted anytime soon , their effort at self improvement will need stronger support from their leaders.Till then, they will remain pawns of political tussles.

Swamped by problems

2005-09-22T10:47:00.001-04:00

One of my assignments involved the Pallikaranai Swamp.Here is the piece.It is important to me and I intend to follow up on it.

The Pallikaranai Swamp along the old Mahabalipuram road has always served as the city’s stormwater drain and as a mini-ecosystem supporting over 106 kinds of migratory and wetland birds.However,over the years,its size has shrunk from 40 sq km to four square kilometres.The marsh has served as a landfill for solid waste and sewage and part of it has also been used by Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority(CMDA) for housing,and for building a Government hospital,colleges, and the Mass Rapid Transit System(MRTS) .

(Photo taken from Frontline magazine)

According to Mr.Ramkumar,an advocate working with Exnora,the two main issues concerning residents and others like the Save the Pallikaranai Marsh Forum(SPMF)are the unscrupulous garbage dumping and the destruction of the water ecosystem.Mr.Ramkumar said that under the pretext of reclaiming the marsh,the National Institute of Ocean Technology had been allowed to construct its building right in the middle of the wetland.

Exnora has been propagating a system of waste management that would tackle both the volume and nature of garbage.It is suggesting the use of composting and recycling,both of which can reduce reduce the volume of garbage to only 10% of the original volume.Mr.Ramkumar explains that since roughly 50 percent of the city’s garbage is organic it can be composted and the inorganic waste can be recycled.

Even composting,he said,can be done at the family level or at the community level- “You can compost garbage in plastic buckets at home.Or, a few families can employ a person to do it.Only 25 percent will remain,which you can add as fertilizer to the topsoil”.He adds that it is essential to develop a market for various recyclable items.This could reduce the city’s solid waste output from 5500 tonnes to merely 250 tonnes.

The SPMF,on the other hand feels that the encroachment of the marsh will affect its biordiversity as it is the breeding place for wetland birds.Mr.Murugavel of the SPMF pointed out that birds are hunted down indiscriminately using ‘spray bullets’ that contain metal ions to stun them en masse.

The SPMF also voices the concerns of citizens living nearby.Many people have respiratory diseases due to garbage burning.Similarly, discharge of industrial effluents has caused an increase in the levels of lead,chromium and mercury in the water table.

Due to the efforts government organizations and fora like Care Earth,SPMF and Sustain the Government is finally “taking interest now” in declaring Pallikaranai a protected area,Mr Murugavel said.

However,the SPMF still plans to conduct a ‘Satyagraha’,involving fasting,on October 2nd.Their goals are to ensure that the marsh soon be declared a protected area under the Tamil Nadu Forest Act (1882) and Wildlife protection act (1972),to prevent dumping or burning of garbage,and to ban building construction in the marsh.

However,if the Government does not do so quickly,and if the remaining part of this natural flood barrier is destroyed,the whole of the adjacent area of Velachery could be flooded.This will not only mark the end of an ecosystem but will leave the city bereft of a storm drain and the residents of the area swamped by new problems.

Observation piece

2005-09-14T08:53:00.001-04:00

My Professor who took the Language and Style classes asked us to write an observation piece.It has been returned to me,and I think he marked me pretty okay since his comment was "very nice". :)

The dark, betel- juice stained, narrow stairway leading to the flat actually had vivid electric blue walls that were hidden by the lack of more than one zero-watt bulb on one floor.Even summer daylight did not seem to touch them.

The house on the second floor had a disproportionate “K” written in white paint on a black circle near the doorbell.The door which was usually a dull white was open,and revealed pale blue walls within.A dull beam of light from the balcony near the door rested near on the right temple of a man lying in the middle of the hall.At that exact moment, a series of splitting wails from a plump woman sitting by him drowned out the horns of impatient buses on the street.

Her partially silver hair was loose,and she hit her chest rhythmically,blowing her nose on the red border of her saree at intervals.A lopsided reflection of her on the television screen nearby faded slowly as the sky was overcast.There was no sign of blue anywhere for a moment,until the clouds passed.

An old man in an immaculate white dhoti with many warts near the hollow of his eyes
went to a dresser.He pulled out a bottle,vigorously shook the pale yellow liquid and
sprayed it,his nose crinkling.The strong scent of airplane tissues swam around the room.

The dead man seemed around sixty,his hair grey and sparse at the temples.His nostrils were stuffed with wads of cotton and the bandage binding his big toes was fast wearing out. A young girl of about thirteen sat near him,her face smudged with tears.She rested her head on the still chest occasionally and closed her big brown eyes.But everytime she lifted her head,her eyes would be flooded again.

The number of hushed voices and dusty bare feet increased slowly.The sky faded to the same colour as the wall and the odour of death overcame the reek of the eau de cologne.But the girl did not move.

(Note:No guesses as to the protagonists of the piece.And though it looks incomplete,we had to work on a word limit,and plus the point was not to write a novel.)

Women and public space

2005-09-02T08:52:00.001-04:00

Here is an assignment I wrote.I had written a very acerbic and unconstructive critique titled 'Why men are pigs' prior to this.But I found that thinking for a while actually helped me in putting my point across.

A few days back,I was travelling by a city bus that was splitting at its seams.Everyone knows it can be very suffocating and painful to remain standing in such a situation,while being sandwiched between the lady whose hair is laden with jasmine and the ubiquitous man who reeks of beedis. Most of us get used to it.

But what I can never get used to is the occasional male who insists on using the crowd to add to your discomfort.He stares, breathes down your neck, or pretends that his hand has no place to rest except a vulnerable part of your anatomy.Both your body and your perception of public space are altered.

Perhaps the most vexing experience I’ve had is on a cold night a few years back during a school trip in Hyderabad.Three of us were walking towards our bus, when three men started following us.Panicking,we started walking faster and then broke into a run.But then, overwhelmed by a mixture of mad rage and helplessness, I turned back and yelled at them,using the choicest profanities I knew.They stopped and faded into the nearby shops.But, my sense of security was eroded.

Women everywhere are forced to accept the violation of the little security that public places provide us, since any recourse by law is tedious.We are routinely leched at, touched inappropriately and then are trained to accept it as normal behaviour.We lobby to be given the right to work night shifts in factories,but forget that the right to safety may not accompany it.

Any attempt to walk on the roads with the simple identity of being just a human being is futile .Most of us grow up actually feeling grateful that we have not faced more than the “usual” or “acceptable” amount of harassment.We never stop to examine what this means and who defined its parameters.

What is worse is that,universities are now setting dress codes to condone popular perception of women.In public consciousness,there will then always exist a clear division between the vamp and the virgin,the woman who can be whistled at because she is 'inappropriately attired', and the woman who will be whistled at even if she is 'acceptably dressed'.

But the irony is that neither category(if you can divide women so rigidly at all) can walk on the road as just another person.The identity of being a woman will always remain. And,not as a positive one.

Chennai speaks!

2005-08-30T07:33:00.001-04:00

Here are some pictures(Sid and) I took.Life in Chennai as a journo student..man is it craazy!And,no comments on how you find my pics.Kidding.No comments on both our pics.:)

The books are from a bookseller who claimed that he had paid 10K to get out of a court case for pirating Harry Potter 6.

The lady is the middle sister in a family of three ladies,each of whom was named by their mother after Tamil film actresses of the 60's and 70's!

This picture was taken by Sid.Good ol' Ranganathan street literally has NO breathing space.Sid actually climbed atop the police booth and took this one.

The vivid red can either make your salivate or throw up..you choose!

It doesn't look like it..but this man stopped and posed for us.

This picture needs no explanation!The cute boy speaks for himself!

Of agrahaarams and my frog prince

2005-05-05T15:09:00.001-04:00

What is all the fuss about indigenous Brahmin settlements,namely agrahaaram(s) disappearing ?

After that tiring spate of exams I caught myself enjoying Bhagyaraj's Idhu Namma Aalu,and wondering what kind of man would elicit a promise from his son-in-law forbidding him from "touching" his nubile wife?

I really enjoyed the oft-repeated ellam manidhargalum samam message.It seemed even more prounounced as I realized that my own family(not immediate,but extended) would never understand the importance of..err..."being earnest".

I really wonder how my nosy father's myriad uncles and co will react if I get married out of my caste. I get such cheap thrills out of imagining their vehement faces and their fired up patriarchal egos,their mumblings and mutterings and inability to say anything directly to me or dad.Wow..I am amazed at the number of cold war versus open ridicule scenarios I can conjure up.

Just as I was cherishing this very interesting thought,I started singing some old Hindi numbers and went to do some laundry..And lo,we have a small green fella with a supine look hiding behind the detergent box.Wowie..a frog of my own?
If I kiss him,will he become a raajkumar?But in case he doesn't..won't that be a perfectly good first(yeah that's right..first) kiss gone waste?

So I said what the heck,I might as well sing for him.So I stood there wailing Hai re hai,neend nahi aaye... at the top of my voice(pining for my mard(man)...which is what they say in aamchi Mumbai).Turns out he wasn't a big fan of tha musik.He leapt up as if to say,shut up bitch,and hid behind another box.So,now I was very piqued.Hamne mehfil jamaya aur koi beech mein utthkar jaaye?(Rough translation:How can you leave in the middle of my musical effusions?)So,I got a take-out food box and decided to trap him in that and MAKE him listen to me.

Then,I found myself,dabba in hand,prodding him,gently trying to coax him into jumping into it,only to have him jump at me instead.I leaped up in dismay with a ear-splitting "aiyoooo" and banged against the tap behind me which splurged open instantly wetting my backside and my clean jeans.

Great.No prince,no connoisseur,just a wet bum.This is what happens when exams are over and one has nothing to do.

Anyway,luckily for me,that day ma's pal Guru had come over(eligible ladies:he's looking!) and after hearing my repeated rantings on how even a frog had turned me down,he rolled his eyes,grabbed a broom and a dustpan and shooed the little fella into the box.Finally!

So dripping wet and all,I sang all the way as we took him to the garden and dumped him near the bushes.He looked relieved and took off in the opposite direction.I contemplated following but then,....I could smell palak paneer.

Later on, I decided to call my vehement froggie fella kammnaati.Manorama uses that term in Samsaaram Oru Minsaaram where she wittily says "Come na come,come naati(kammanaati) GOO!"

Sorry da froggie ..for having disturbed your nap.But someday...oru naal..we will meet again.And I will win you over too.With or without a kiss.

Got my DL!!!!!

2005-03-11T10:04:00.001-05:00

After a gruelling wait of nearly a month and sustained back ache I got my DRIVER'S LICENCE!Man,it was a long wait.I was so bloody sick last week with my back,I couldn't move.Landed up missing college the whole week.

So, on DL-Day,I get up real early(read:7 am),get dressed in conservative clothes.This test is not based on best eye candy,yaar.So,I'm off in the chugging white Maruti 800.Is this the test car that the Driving Institute has sent?Crap,will it go above 40 kmph or what?The driver shakes his head.Ma'am(he says that really smooth,like an angrez),not necessary to cross that speed even in fourth gear?ENNA?(What?)He tells me I should "show" all the gears to the official.Stifling a giggle.Before leaving,ma gets glucose biscuits and mango juice(even though I said no,thanks.)

Have to go to the Institute first.Dingy office.Sophie the receptionist with her "butler English" tells me to meet the owner.Gosh,I hate that creep.Don't get nervous he says.It's all luck and the RTO(Regional Transport Officer) guy's mood.As long as the car doesn't stop and you don't smash into a tree it's okay.Sure,it's okay for you el creepo.

Ma's car I had tried last night and it stopped 7 times!I nearly cried the last time,and so did she except she said you dumkoff why demoralize yourself by driving this 19 year old Maruti Suzuki.Point noted,ma'am.

Went to the place where they take the test next.Race Course Road.Made a few friends due to my incessant banter.First,Mrs.Deivanai(whose husband is in Sharjah and she's leaving soon), then Mary who works in a bank,Mrs Jancy who was thoroughly amused by me humourous observations and finally Poorni who turned up sensibly in a sleeveless kurta.She'd flunked before for switching from the second to the fourth gear.One Mr.Sandalwood paste on his forehead and Lime Green T-Shirt clad round guy turned up too.They took their test in Mr.sandalwood's red maruti 800 which looked like "chandu pottu" colour.All from the same driving school.But there were other driving school people and even private candidates.I saw atleast six schools with Godly names like Vinayakar,Ganesha,Devi, and some other weird ones like True Wish and Excellent Drving school.Gosh!

Waited for 2 hours!Man,got fried,then flipped then fried again.Never going to have eggs again!Then the RTO guys show up and some other driving institute people got ahead of us in the line.Poorni came last and the RTO guy refused to sign her papers.Only 30 people are allowed to take the test everyday.

Nevertheless all my pals being from the same driving school,we boarded 2 cars-an ambassador and the maruti for the test.Some 9 of us.The white maruti(for the test)went ahead,the rest of us followed in the ambi,and between us was the red maruti 800.The official tests all the people from one driving school together.We drive for say 3 minutes and then the next person takes his/her chance.Since we were many(mostly women),3 boarded the maruti first and the rest of us followed in the ambi.None of us wanted an ambi for the test.

The first three were doctor women who took their test first.One babe flunked.Car went off the road.Then we got in.Poorni hoped this guy would give her a chance.She too couldn't bunk college for a retrial.

Mrs Deivanai went and drove well.Only thing is she parked the car some four feet away from the tree.Our frantic driver cum instructor beckoned to me.Only I can swerve enough to take the car back on the right.Was flattered.So took the car out and drove.Was amazed at my own fearlessness.Used all four gears by 40kmph.Then the RTO guy tells me to "lessen the gear".Yeah why not.

Thrilled at the finish!Whew!Next is Jancy.Her mallu accent is damn cute.But her driving is not.The car stops three times!She's at this junction,and doesn't know how to restart it, and tries to start in first gear.It lurches ahead.The driver is muttering and sweating.Then worse still,it starts to head backwards towards the ambi.She doesn't apply the brakes.The official is petrified.Applies the brakes(It's a two way brake and clutch vehicle).Still doesn't start.He asks her to get out.

Now three of us who've finished run back to the ambi and Mary and Poorni board the maruti.Everyone finishes.Poorni gets another chance at her test.We come to know that Jancy has flunked.Her voice gets all choked and she wonders what went wrong.Decides to go home and come back next week.Poor thing.So Mrs.Deivanai and I have got through.We are to go to the RTO office first.The rest will follow.We have glucose biscuits and juice to celebrate.

It's mid afternoon and the RTO wears a deserted look.Everyone's eating.I call up the driver to ask if the rest are coming and he says your ma's getting lunch.Hai Raam..ma's solicitousness really makes me wild and grateful all at once.Hot chappatis and kurma.God bless her!Deivanai eats sparingly.Maybe she's too polite or maybe she hates North Indian food.

Then they all come.The driver says he's going,please find your own way home.In other words,nice knowing your sorry asses, and now that you're getting the licence,astalavista.Not so soon smartie.Tell Sophie to send us a car after we finish.He shrugs non-committally.

Next is photo taking,signing the licence and lamination.My initial comes before my name.Damn,I hate that!I know it's called an initial but I think my name is more important.Plus,my address is misspelt.Anyway,this is India,baby, and the licence is cool.The 3D logo of the State has a maruti on it.Wowie!

Parting time.Got everyone's cell numbers.Almost walked halfway to the busstand when Mary caught me walking.We both live nearby,so she and I caught a rick back home.I overpaid,but it was totally worth it!

Came home and collapsed.Heard some Beethoven.Oh joyful joyful I adore thee,God of Gears and Lord of Licences.Long Live!