I Thank My Pet Goat

Once again, the world patronises India in an age when we don't need that. A. R. Rehman, the Indian music maestro, won not one, but two Oscars in the last thirty minutes! I would have been really pleased had the movie he won the award for been a Delhi 6 or a musical track of that standard!
But no - like most award juries that lose sense and sensibility, the panel at the Academy succumbed to the global hysteria that Slumdog Millionaire has been riding on the back of. A movie that uses a word never heard in India (slumdog???), showcases a British actor Dev Patel with a thick British accent trying to pull off a Mumbai slum teenager, and a screenplay that distorts the captivating and non-linear narrative of the original book. If the movie had been made in India without a British producer or director, then it would have struggled to enter the Oscars in the foreign movies category. Even if it had been made in impeccable English!
And Mr. Rehman? Brilliant Mr. Rehman! He who has given most of us Indians hundreds of enchanting and heart-throbbing tunes in the last decade and more. Yes he deserves an Oscar for many of those melodies! But certainly NOT for "Jai Ho" and similar mediocre matter which he stooped to in this movie.
Should I wave the tricolour because two Indians (Rehman and Resul Pookutty, who won the Oscar for Sound Mixing) have won India's maiden Oscars? I want to! But something stops me, and I think I know what it is. It's a yell inside that NO! They do not deserve it for Slumdog Millionaire. Much greater is the joy when a reward is won fair and deserved, and not when it rides mightily on mass-propelled biases.
I had given up on most award systems in the performing arts because they have suspended all notions of fair play over the years, including India's venerable Filmfare awards. Now the Academy has proved itself no different by glorifying Slumdog Millionaire beyond what it deserves.
Art is a realm of inspiration, as well as a gateway to pretentious abuse.

I crave for a respite, the sort that an engrosser like Delhi-6 provides. I can my distaste for the coronation of Slumdog Millionaire and toss the screaming can into the garbage bin of creativity.

Good night, Oscars!

The Roads Not Taken

Almost a year ago, I had accompanied some of my bosom buddies on a hiking trip to the magnificent Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, Malaysia. Standing at the summit of Kinabalu for the second time was a joy that surpassed numerous lofty heights reached before. Soon after that, achilles tendonitis had crept in like an uninvited guest at a wedding and plagued my left foot for months. The resolve to overcome that has still not succumbed a year down the line.
I have travelled much since then but have always had an eye on my left leg, making sure it's not put under duress unnecessarily.
That resolve popped up in my mind when Poonam and I travelled with a couple of friends to the picturesque ski resort of Killington, Vermont, last weekend. Many call such trips a "honeymoon" but that word seems shady to me, since this is just the beginning of our travels and will feature again and again. Thus we drove to Vermont, the rarest of the New England states.

Moments slow down when the surroundings overwhelm. As we bend out backwards to reach inside the confines of a far-reaching desire, perspective does a tribal dance and changes shape and colour. I believe that the nomadic and pastoral persona that many of us keep suppressed has slowly convinced itself to be urban. A getaway to the majesty of mountains, for whatever reason, pulls one back from the cliff-edge of self-absorption, where we stand like a fool, wondering whether to jump or to lie down. The snow-capped peaks, the conifer trees, the slow and smooth glide on dewy roads and the occasional gurgle of a nascent river that keeps us company as we drive higher and higher. These provide the canvas for an idyllic journey, one that crystallises my mind and sings lullabies to preoccupations. I learn and re-learn that valuable lesson every time I come under the shadow of towering peaks. The state of Vermont offered countless such moments, and I barely stopped myself from flowing away like an eager young river myself. The company of loved ones makes such a passage even more refreshing. With each passing turn in the road, the slivers of sunlight played hide and seek with us, and bounced off the fragile ice on the accompanying river like a runner at the end of a shuttle leg. The laughter, the music and the jokes joined hands to create a cocoon of calm as we slipped off easily from the slopes of reality into a Narnian snowscape where all that mattered was each other.

Occasional warnings on the road about reckless mooses crossing the road almost made it feel as if the road was an overspill of the mountain woods. That kept us on tenterhooks as we expected a grim-looking moose to jaywalk sometime soon. The clickety-clack of a camera kept breaking my frequent reveries and those drift-offs into the hills yonder. But the biggest reverie that was broken was our illusion that skiing was a matter of whooshing down white powdery slopes with cinematic splendour. The first couple of minutes on gentle and innocuous snow smoked away all such illusions as we opened our eyes to the challenges of basic skiing where gravity lives in a straitjacket and friction is fast asleep. Bumps and collisions, crashes and awkward attempts to salvage grace while getting up decked our next few hours. Fall, amble up, slide, twist, turn, soar for half a second, giggle at the others falling and then fall once again. This was a proper sport which we had misunderstood. The boots played some cruel jokes on us by making us feel like we were on a planet that had a gravity ten times that of Earth.
I wish I had picked up skiing when I was a kid. Dad, why didn't you let us ski in Cuttack? Oh that's right - we were hundreds of miles away from snow, forget slopes!

This was no Venice, but a gondola ride up to the pinnacle of Mount Killington granted us a spectacular view of six states and Canada. I felt the old surge through me - of flapping my imaginary wings and taking off into the sunny blue. So much purity, so much freshness that possesses a majestic mountain, makes me raring and eager to migrate and set up tent under a rock and grow a beard. We found secret paths between the woods that vanished into the snow, and a paradise of a restaurant at the top of the mountain that provided luscious hot chocolate.

The cherry on the cake actually lay in the quaint little European-looking towns of Woodstock, Quechee and Shelburne Falls. Enthralling covered wooden bridges, half-frozen rivers, curving little by-roads that snaked off into the wilderness, and fascinating houses that had thick layers of snow peched on their rooftops. The average speed of people in such towns is probably seven miles per hour. In Woodstock (no, not the legendary one), my eye caught what I had it trained it to catch. No, not a sparrow. Not even a fish. But the sight of a little shop hidden between houses, with a rusted sign hanging outside saying "Rare, old books". The little shop was a world in itself, and included books from half-forgotten authors as well as books from popular ones. Some were yellowing, others were squeezed in tight racks and most had a page or two falling off. But when I saw Tagore's Gitanjali and I heard the shopkeeper say what a wonderful book this was, I realised that I was in the company of a genuine bibliomaniac. Such was the pull of words that he seemed content in his magical shop.

What do book-sellers gain in their profession? They get to know who's who by looking at their choices. They get to explore the vast worlds which lie in their books whenever they feel like. Theirs is a route that is often not taken, akin to the sentiments of Robert Frost the poet, whose poems coincidentally focussed on rural like in New England, of which Vermont is a part.

I flashed upon that moment when I had toyed with the desire to be a book-keeper for a few moments when I was ten years old. But that was in the list of fifty other potential careers which I had fantasised about before entering teenage.

As the icy winds of Vermont met the cheerful sunlight on our drive, the lush expanse of distant hills made me forget that it was the popular weekend of the biggest social scam ever, Valentine's Day. As mass dementia spreads like hay fever to make pomp on one day in the year where love apparently reigns supreme, I question myself and I put the question to Poonam - what makes one day so special, when there are 364 others?

Why should we always follow that road of celebrating one day in the calendar as a day of love? Isn't that supposed to be an omni-pervading feeling?

I see the question stoking fires in her eyes. I also see Robert Frost turning in his grave with another grin.

Of all the roads not taken, that is not one I would return to.

The Whole Seven Yards

A blitzkrieg of hugs. Swathes of smiling faces. Fire, incense, and the conch. Squeals from kids twirling to the music. Friends, friends and more friends. More hugs. Flowers, disco lights and photo-shoots. Reunions and gossips. Music, moves and grooves. Folded hands, confusion and chaos playing guest appearances. Chiffon and silk engaged in battle. Kurtas and dhotis. Whitewash and blazing colours. Recollections and flashbacks. Brass bands and street rowdies. Succulence and reticence swinging together. The list goes on and on. In-between, was I the protagonist or was I them, the hundreds of eyes watching and revelling in the goings-on?
Seven days of my life flew by in unchecked, unaudited and uncontrolled reverie as I slid into matrimony and came full circle to witness that which I had seen happening to others. Dad's eyes followed me everywhere I went, perhaps remembering the same week thirty-eight years ago when he was himself in the thick of things. Mom was too busy to be nostalgic except when she was smothered with hugs from visiting kith and kin.
No amount of preparation readies one for an Indian wedding. It's a toast to merrymaking, raised by one and all. We don't live in a palatial mansion, and yet the feeling was regal. I kept cautioning myself not to get carried away, for beyond the mirth and the chaos was a new turn in the road. But the cautioning fell on deaf ears as it was easy to let go of the useless inhibitions and jump into the fun.

Joymakers, dance and sway
'tis your playground, so play
Old friends meet and hug
One by one, they pull the plug
as music welcomes the big day

The day before the wedding was a mutiny of laughter where all present had misplaced their anchors. As the beats pumped out, Bollywood moves were flaunted while those who were newcomers to this (read - friends who were first-timers to Cuttack) gaped and drank in the fun. Even aunts who symbolised prosperity causes seismic ripples, which would alarm Richter. Even yours truly wasn't spared.

I had not expected the big day to jump on me with the agility of a four-year-old playing hide-and-seek. Throngs of boisterous faces rent the air hoarse with excited chatter as my grand vehicle bedecked with floral decor (no, wasn't a horse) left home. An hour later, the public in Bhubaneswar witnessed a motley gang of normal people turn the road into a stage when the "Baaraat" wove its way to the tune of rambunctious Oriya songs as well as memorable numbers. I was the subject of a million stares and a thousand whispers in ears. I felt like I was on a ramp or at a movie-shoot. I learnt later that the feeling was the same on her side as well. Like a magnet, the fun on the road pulled me out and made me groove a bit as well, much to the delight of the youngsters and my pals, and to the chagrin of an impatient uncle!

Beautiful, those kohled eyes
These kids, the groom's spies
Lifted with cheers, heave-ho
I gave in, all smiles aglow
while hundreds swam in glee

If I were to take a snapshot of each smile that day and paste it onto a collage, I would run out of space on my walls to paste it on. Young and old, jubilant and senile, bouncy and fragile - everyone who had waited for that day was there. As the fire burnt, and the smoke hazed out the irrelevant chants of the priests, I could not help but lift myself out from there and mingle with the crowd. Sumit's beating of the drum, Gayatri's focus on her photography, Aai's patient observation of every little activity, the constant attention from the scores of women who I had never seen before, the knowing looks of her friends who I didn't know, the tugging of the turban by truant kids, the pouring of ghee into the fire and the full-blown feeling that I was entering a new dimension. All of these things conspired on the spot to make me smile, an unrestrained smile that healed old scars and opened new windows in the mind.
Is this what everyone goes through? Where were my good friends Cynicism and Skepticism? Why did they not attend my wedding?

Shy, the lowered gaze
the noise, the flames, the daze
The give and take
the cowries at stake
With sunset, the seven circles

As we sat the next evening on a glittering stage and playing the perfect hosts, my eyes searched for myself in the faces of those who came to wish me.
"Do you recognise me, Bobby?"
"Yes ofcourse!"
"Really? Who am I?"
"Errr....ummm...."
I quickly jumped back onto the last carriage of Honesty Express and the evening became much better. Smile this way, smile that way, shake hands, kiss the cheeks of a toddler, lift another, pose to the left, pose to the right, open my coat, flick my hands, and turn straight ahead. The burdens of an evening in glamour! But that was all worth the delicious moments. Especially when Ramesh Aja, my grand-uncle aged 92, turned up in a wheelchair. The lights and the ghazals joined hands, with my sister's lovingly arranged orchids doing their part to perfection. It was an evening that could be wished to last forever, especially when the grand photos of the family were snapped.

It was like a steep climb onto the peak of a rollercoaster, which is followed by a sudden tumble that knocks the breath out of you. Even when I saw the amused looks on the faces of Christian, Anita and Laurant, who were in India for the first time, I knew that they were making the most of it. My sincere hope remains that they went back with a much clearer picture of what happens in India. The chaos, the comfort, the compulsions and the cosiness.

Two days later, a gang of us travelled to the western town of Sambalpur, singing and making merry in a chaotic train compartment. The sheer delight on my cousins' faces made the journey flash by in a jiffy. Burla was a world in its own, where the same delights and postures of an evening reception continued. All hell broke loose in the final hour when the dance floor opened up and I was haplessly dragged onstage. The evening turned into a free-for-all dance fiesta where everyone mellowed down and let their hair down.

She smiles, the music slows
A wish to hold her close
The moment goes and comes
like deejaying phantoms
Boom and slick, the party goes on

Anecdotes are many, and memories are infinite. They merge and mix and produce sweetness of an untasted flavour. The tears of a grandmother, the clipped delight of a brooding father, the hearty sounds of enthusiastic laughter, the warmth in hugging friends, the curiosity of new kin, the ecstasy in the dances of Google, Khushi and Sheela. Moments caught on camera and lost in the inner tunnels of the mind. We all wake up every day with traces of a dream.

When the overwhelming continuum of those seven days ended, I looked at the surviving ring on my right hand and browsed through all the moments gone by.

I still could not see Mr Skepticism and Miss Cynicism in those moments.

All I could see were the laughters and those kohled eyes.

Joy. Transient, yet refreshing, joy.