Sign o' the times

A bit of a homage. And since it does feel like closure, I will get back to it at the end.

What have I got to say today about the world? I had an usual holiday (weekend) which is to say that I did nothing much. I read, I listened to music and I looked for interesting books and bits which is what I do. And I was glad to do that. I read today's Mint lounge (link to the piece that most appealed to me here, but do read the entire set) and I owe a bit of gratitude to the editors and writers who made the issue happen. As these things are designed to do, I essentially spent the rest of the morning morose and mopey and melancholy. I know that I will probably never go back to the place where I grew up but I know I will always miss it. What Nehruvian socialism left a significant section of our middle-class generation with would be memories of growing up in townships that sprouted around industrial developments, the public sector undertakings that even today form a massive part of the infrastructural backbone of our country. A childhood spent near enough to the countryside to take in yearly floods, kalboishakhis, starry nights, prickly yet scented grass you walked barefoot on, massive rivers and long rides in unreliable public transport. You ever feel that you could never really envy anyone too much? I only envy myself, in the childhood and the lazy joy I had without knowing what I had. What would you promise me? I had books, I had sunshine, I had cold foggy mornings, I had hours understanding whatever I wished to, I had everything I had imagined of. The only thing that makes me sad, and it does make me incredibly sad, is that I will never return that place out of time, and I won't be able to make someone else understand what I felt, or how I happy I was or that I can't make someone experience it. Thick glasses, childhood drama, teenage angst, all these things remain indelibly tied with the experience of the place itself. But then we all make our own memories and maybe that's how it is supposed to be, each experience colored in the shade we infuse it with. I just wish then that I could relive them sometimes you know? Not in a Total Recall kind of way (that's another fantasy and that just not me), but on weekends like this I really want to just escape into my head. A solitary retreat of happiness and warmth. Tell me you don't want that. Tell me you can promise me more than that.

A billion and quite a bit more. That's how many people are crammed in, ass to cheek, in this country of ours. A hardscrabble battle to grow food in a country that depends so pathetically on the monsoons should be unacceptable. Two years of below average rainfall and drought like situations in four-five states already is shameful. We are living in a world teetering on the brink. And we as a country are going to be so woefully underprepared. This is going to be different from the times when greed/corruption/poor governance (all synonyms really) killed people (like the famine in 1943). Think of a world which is just not enough to meet the requirements of all its people. Simple pigeon hole principle. Some of us, quite a lot of us, are going to be nonviable. Its weird isn't it. We are consuming more and more, growing bigger and fatter and more conceited and demanding, all the while picking up speed and rushing to the point when everything will be taken away. Its already more difficult to buy a house and ensure a decent education for your children than it ever was (these are things that a 30 something guy is supposed to worry about, right?). Sometimes I think that the only option is to give it all up, this false striving for the promised land of vegetarian gravy and soy lattes. But then I need my caffeine fix and I smile at my foolishness. So what if everyone's a patriot and all you think of is the collective delusion of jingoistic masses who care of whatever stimulates their primitive medulla. It is the only way. And therefore it is the right way (it is, just don't argue).

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So onto things more recent and the movies, music and books I feel I should tell you about (and keep a memory of). 

Movies first. Two tonally similar movies in that there was a focus more on the action than on the actors in them. There's hardly any 'acting', no mannerisms that are exaggerated, no drama, no pathos (except for the deep bleakness in both of them and how people react to that). Both movies about people doing their jobs. Journalists working in an non-glamorous setting and doing almost menial work, focused on details as they seek to uncover a scandal. Based on true stories, as these things often are, Spotlight is truly worth watching. The other movie had more memorable acting with Emily Blunt being the strong kick-ass yet fragile FBI agent who rides shotgun with Benicio Del Toro, who's playing a Mexican/Columbian hitman, the titular Sicario.

I haven't read a lot of books. I am trying to remedy that. I have gone through the first 2 volumes of Fables (Legends in exile & Animal farm), the first volume of Sandman (Preludes and Nocturnes, in dead tree format no less). And I have read Alex Ross' Justice (mostly for the art, I am shallow). All these comics I have liked. I have a few books I am in the midst of reading. I will write about them when I am done reading them I guess.

Onto music then. Its been a sad few months. You are 10, then you come home and play a cassette and then there's a song called Purple Rain and you are never quite the same. You don't really understand the words at first and then you pay attention and try to understand the lyrics and it still doesn't make sense. It never will make sense but you know that Purple Rain makes you almost shake with longing for something (you are 10, remember?). Weird stuff, all in all. So, listen to the Purple One's songs whenever you can. He could be operatic and melodramatic and sweet and his craftsmanship was truly without compare.

1. Prince - Sign O' the Times (his people take the music down most times but this is a song well worth seeking out). Utterly relevant even today. Stripped with a electronic background beat, his voice melds beautifully with occasional riffs of guitar. Also suggest listening to Purple Rain (duh), When Doves Cry, Little Red Corvette... etc etc (buy a Best of compilation maybe?)

2. Eagles - Take it easy. The one song I would karaoke to if I needed to escape being shot or something. These songs form the soundtrack of our lives (if your life involved going to a college anytime between 1980 and 2005 or if you had decent friends).

 

3. The Glitch Mob - Starve the Ego, Feed the Soul. I end up coming back to instrumental tracks. All new music isn't bad.

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#findyoursentence

P.S. In case you want to know...

Kalboishakhi (credit)

I watched platform no. 2 being built

Them's the breaks

You feel invincible sometimes. Not all that often, not often enough to mess up your ego. But there are some mornings, you bounce off the bed and just feel good. You tend to remember these days now, notice them more. They come by much less frequently now. You tend to not notice your body when it works the way you want it to. You punish it with late nights, awful eating and 'other' habits. And then it slowly starts to quit on you. Joints pop, you let out involuntary hisses of pain when you make sudden movements, muscles seize and cramp. You turn to those trusty white pills, the new prescription that the nice doctor gave (along with the warnings, of course) and trust the relief modern medicine grants you. Its bliss, its comfort, its better than any oblivion granted by any other drug. You feel invincible again. Its a rush. And you keep pushing.

Anyway, you don't mind it. Its a body, and you think its just a vessel for the mind. Terribly conceited of you. And you know that you are wrong. You have had nights when you felt like clawing your brains out if it just meant not hurting anymore. You have had days like that. You know that but you forget. And its understandable. The mind wants what it wants. And it usually gets its way too. But there's a comfort that a body that is yours to command gives you. The blind trust that you can have in it. Of getting somewhere. Of reaching someone. You could run, scale those mountains like you always wanted. It would stop distracting the mind then, the nerve receptors signaling pain. But what would the mind do then with all this free time, all this focus? Well it would figure something. Not just worry about what's broken, maybe for ever. It needs to not fret about the troubles and just go about creating its own bubble of synthetic reality and then decorate and renovate that space to its specifications.

Anyway, that's its for today. Stretching the fingers a bit. Inconsequential non-sense. Which all non-sense is. I think.

A mild case of anglophilia

What is it that I like about Great Britain? That's what really what this post is supposed to be about. And during the dueness of events, we will venture into why I have been thinking about it. Well, not why I think generally, per se if you will, cause the post involving psychoanalyzing myself is the one I am saving for later (like for the last one, well... apart from the fact that every post in a way is really me analyzing myself), but the reason as to why I am thinking of Britons and of English and other things that, to an Indian of limited knowledge, are essentially brit. We will be determinedly ignoring the negative things that might otherwise need to be included in the argument for fairness and justice and equity. Apologies for that, but that's that really.

Well, the first and the most obvious thing is obviously the language itself. English is the lingua franca for most of the world ain't it? To look for historical roots wouldn't require us to look too far back either.

Little Bengal

There was a front-page article on The Telegraph the day before yesterday (link) on a panel of economists which questioned the current state government's "hands-off" land policy and populist schemes (including promotion of small and micro-industries). The panel included India's chief economic adviser and rather pointedly talked about the 'fetish' for small and the elevation of smallness that permeates Bengal. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that economists are subject to biases and political motives themselves (which becomes pertinent in light of the state elections scheduled next year and the fact that the current national government (and part of the state opposition) has a much-touted industrial development plank), I wonder to myself about the price development really demands. 

I have been home for a week now and I like the fact that the air is cooler and cleaner, the pace is unhurried (comparatively) and there's usually a lake within walking distance. I will probably go stir-crazy in the next three days and I dislike the fact that there's a fucking queue for everything and the fact is that I can't really imagine enjoying the general convenience of things that I do have in Bombay, in Calcutta. People leave the city, nay the state, for opportunities and that's a sad indictment of what has come to pass in what I really believe is one of the best bits of the country in terms of pure potential. People comfortable with a mediocre existence and fostering modest expectations, easily herded and kept content in a nation of sheep. It is easier to manage expectations when such expectations are tempered by ignorance, of not knowing what is possible and what is to be demanded as a right. When the basics are withheld and compromises are made daily, you don't really expect or feel that you deserve more or indeed that there can be more. What we are developing (yes, developing is so the wrong word) is a state where people are being made to accept that aspirations are wrong, hopes are unwarranted and that progress is a filthy four letter word. A medieval mindset that parleys narrow fears of religion into electoral gains in such a short-sighted manner needs to be questioned and changed and if necessary, uprooted.

Anyway, not really my point. And not a fight I really want any part of. Its just such a shame that any economic and social change depends on political will and patronage. I think democracy makes it so, power to the people and all that. But maybe we, as people, can only define ourselves by what our forefathers had accepted and decreed themselves. We accept roles, as parents and as children, as plebs and as middle-class. And so it goes on, a non-life of setting and meeting middling non-expectations, passed in the dull and comforting opiate daze of ignorance and smugness. And this post was originally meant to be about the things that make Bengal unique and interesting and that could probably highlight what it actually can promote and develop and at the same time retain its identity and yet not remain in its current position as one of the has-beens in the Indian context. I think most of those things will keep for another day and another post. 

In my week at home, I encountered a few things that I think lie rather low in a non-Bengali's awareness scales. They are rather cultural, even folk-ish in nature and they piqued my interest now, even if I have known about them since forever basically. Things like baul-music which I recollect from my daytime travel in the local trains. Curious half-sanyasi, half-beggars, the baul musicians would board the trains with their ektaras (and often with khartals and manjiris) and sing songs of Lalon-fakir while they collected their alms. Numinous yet gratifyingly earthy, mystical and curiously non-denominational, I was reminded of it during a three-day festival of folk music that happened too close by to ignore. It was rustic and simple and honest and painfully charming for the half an hour I was there. Apparently, Tagore was greatly influenced by them and you can probably find signs of the baul-culture in his songs and in Shantiniketan as well.


Then there is kirtan that I caught a few surprisingly rousing performances of (on TV and yes I wasn't looking for it) and there was a chhau performance that I missed at Princep ghat. These things, the intangible cultural heritage of the state needs to be showcased and appreciated better. We got some things, pretty baubles, intricate masterpieces and these are things to be proud of, even if they aren't really enough to stake entire futures on.

I want to get into sanskrit literature - I need to find out some suggestions and some accessible translations. 
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Peace and hope.

Past time chronicles

I am happy to report that I am home for the holidays. Home now means a specific location, it means family and an address. I don’t think of the city as my home really, I have been gone quite a while. The longest period at a stretch I have ever spent in the city is three years, during my graduation and I have been away, save for the occasional visits, for much longer, more than ten years. But I still quite like this city of faded yet undoubted charms. There is a need to recharge and renew at the end of the year, an year that’s almost done with and I am here to do just that. Not a noteworthy year really, time spent doing uninspiring work with little spared for enjoyment and learning. I would be at a loss to describe the things that were different this year from the last. Not exactly a perfect state of affairs, is it? But the weather is thankfully cool now, with the hint of a fog in the nights and sweaters brought out from storage. I like the winter, always have, the sun bright and warm and delightful in the mornings where it manages to find skin. A delightful contrast to the tents you make at night under sprawling blankets while you read books on the e-device of your choice (brother gave this for a birthday, a proper surprise and a gift I was extremely glad for). And breakfast was cakes and oranges to go with the time of the year. So yes, I am content today.

I have been trying to read again. I find it difficult to work up the energy and the enthusiasm at the end of the day or at the end of a work week to do a deep-dive into a book or a lengthy article. You end up barely glancing through the newspapers, ignorant of even the most important things, unaware and stupid and shallow. I hate it. Hate everything that people seem to be accept as inevitable, even as I learn to accept them as inevitable myself. I understand that there are other ways of processing information these days, through snippets on social media, snatched conversations around the water cooler and jingoistic peddlers of unadulterated nonsense. I feel like running away from it all most days. I read a few books these past weeks, one on Tintin and Herge, which I will talk about in greater detail later, then there have been a couple of others on basic maths and a Michael Lewis book. Also found a great site (WaitbutWhy) which is premised on an idea that I would have been so proud to come up with and execute. So the intention is to keep the reading habit going and trying to find other things that are somewhat fulfilling and trying to find the time to do those things. Things need to be changed, quickly and with decision. It is a fool’s errand to look for satisfaction and contentment in activities that preclude creativity and inhibit originality. Spending twelve hour workdays trying to manage insane workloads involving inane activities is not my idea of any kind of life, let alone a perfect one.

There isn’t enough time now to spend on useless things. I am past thirty and am pretty sure I will not be one of those people who are active and vigorous even when they are sixty. I am reluctant to waste time these days on undeserved and unwarranted politeness and pretenses. I hate arguments, if only because they require me to spend time and energy that I am loathe to. The same really goes for all my interactions, if not interesting, I prefer them to be non-confrontational and non-demanding and short. I do make allowances if my interest is piqued though. Its the only thing that really counts, am I better or at least not lesser, because of the time I spent. Was anything of minimal value created? Is it something I will remember, even subliminally, five minutes later? I can’t remember the last time I wanted to linger over a chat, when I was excited and challenged over the conversational gambits that signal furtive interest and a shared excitement (I am discounting the incredibly rare times I get drunk these days and even then I get excited about topics and imagined interests from others that I usually forget the next day). I would rather curl up with a good book and a cup of tea. Or maybe I would write something non-angst-y or paint a bold sketch in black. I would rather cook a perfectly nice meal for myself than have a tortured and banal conversation. I could travel, take the weekends to nearby places and walk a bit. I would like to do that. The family has been about town a bit this weekend, we visited Princep ghat and the Dakshineshwar Kali-bari and it was good to get out and see a bit of the history here.

The year is nearly gone now. The change gathers pace. We live in such great times, incredible times. Radically different world perspectives are developing. We shouldn’t be happy choosing to be on the sidelines, waiting for the dices to be rolled and finding out where our fates land. This has been a crazy year for the world, the rise of religious fanaticism on a world-wide basis to levels unseen since the crusades which led to large-scale human migrations, development of religious states for the first time in living memory, eradication of major diseases in the poorest countries, legalization of same-sex marriages (and subsequent setbacks too), technology developing to help realize the dream of interplanetary travel etc. We are in the cusp of so many paradigm-shifting changes and the world that’s coming into definition now is going to be unrecognizable from the one we grew up in. We need to lay down our markers and choose our battles and ideals. Isn’t it going to be a shame if we didn’t do what we should have done, could have done. Ain’t nobody judging us but ourselves. Nobody else holding us back either (yes yes, all this psyching up is for my benefit alone).

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For the books I want to mention today -

1. Tintin: Herge and his creation by Harry Thompson (http://www.amazon.in/dp/0340564628) - Tintin forms a significant part of the childhood of Bongs of a certain age, including me. I have read the books (most of them certainly) in a variety of formats. The Bengali translations that were serialized in Anandamela (the bi-weekly magazine), the soft cover editions from Mammoth and Methuen which I got on birthdays from Diyama or rented from the local library or the hardback ones in the school library which collected four stories apiece. It was my earliest introduction to foreign lands and foreign people (along with books by Enid Blyton) and I guess I got my start in reading from these books. I had kind of been out of touch with Tintin, apart from the Spielberg movie obviously and then I happened on this book (though I still felt foolishly arrogant if there was a Tintin related question in a quiz). Lucidly written with sections named after the various books in the order they were written (Red Rackham’s Treasure following The Secret of The Unicorn, for example), the writer narrates the life of Herge with the backdrop of the books and the world war and charts his growth as an illustrator and as a storyteller. I am re-drawn to the stories after all this years and have found great joy in searching out the panels that Thompson refers to in the book and re-reading the entire thing ultimately with the backdrop of the book.
2. The Big Short by Michael Lewis (http://www.amazon.in/dp/0141043539) - I had read Liar’s Poker (which is kind of a mandatory MBA read) and Moneyball (after watching the Brad Pitt movie) and I had liked them. The financial world he describes is familiar enough to not be too off-putting and its high-finance enough that it plays into your fantasies. So with the new movie coming up (no idea if its out in India yet) I decided to read the book. The book doesn’t really break new ground in terms of what we now know about the 2008 financial crisis but it does introduce you to real life characters who predicted and profited from the meltdown. What the book does provide in terms of its message is the fact that a lot of transactions and entire financial systems in fact, are predicated on questionable judgment and incomplete understanding of the risks involved.

Apart from the above, I would definitely recommend checking out Here’s looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos (http://www.amazon.in/dp/1416588280). Its a beautiful book on a beautiful subject. There is a bit of history in it, never a bad thing. I read it over a month’s worth of weekends. It made me remember why I loved maths in the first place and makes me want to reconnect. So, gotta make the time for it now. And I really want to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces next.

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I haven’t really been listening to songs much. Here are a few that I think I have been listening to recently -

1. Zero 7 - Destiny - So bright and so fresh and so the aughts. And it has Sia in it (she’s undoubtedly got vocal chops). Easy listening.

2. U2 - The First Time - a big fan of U2 (I haven’t really mentioned that before, have I?). Nobody does big sound as well as them and I still remember the goosebumps I got when I first played Joshua Tree on the home stereo-deck (I was young but the experience was no less honest). This is one of their songs that I get the lyrics wrong to and everytime it makes a different sort of sense to me. A quiet song building to a wailing harmony at the end. Perfect.

3. X Ambassadors - Love Song Drug Song - a new band. Haven’t really heard too much of them apart from this. They can’t even be called a one-hit wonder seeing as I don’t think even this song counts as much of a hit. However this is such an awesome song with stripped vocals, easy rhythm and a sax solo at the end that I need to put the song here.

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So that’s pretty much it. I did watch Episode VII: The Force Awakens with the rest of humanity. Star Wars and George Lucas and Disney are all going to make a shitload of money. JJ Abrams did an acceptable job of maintaining a familiar/comfortable plot-line whilst setting up the trilogy. No standout new characters for me (BB-8 doesn’t count) though I have hopes that the Poe Dameron character will turn out to be more interesting.

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There was a Communist plenum in Calcutta today.

Racing thoughts

Pretty late in the night. It's all right though. I can stay awake for a bit. 

The brain is strangely reluctant to shut down tonight, grasping at muted noises and faint lights. From the window on the 9th floor, you can look out pretty far. Not that you look that often, but now you have the time and the mood, so as to say, and you can look, if you wanted to. The leaves flutter in the semi-dark of a moonless city night but then quieten quickly as if ashamed to have broken the silence on this hot, muggy night. The sky is red at the lower edges as the lights from the streetlamps and the houses bleach into the darkness. And if you stare long enough and hard enough, you can make out the clouds churning ever so slowly in the distance, with a bit of menace. The patterns they make are hypnotic and bring to mind ink-drops dissolving into a glass of water (its the other way round really, like if you could figure out a way to dissolve a drop of water into a bottle of ink, but then you can't do that). Lives, muted in sleep, go on. In urban cages. You can't even see the stars.

The Bombay rains are never easy but I just can't wait for them to arrive this night. I could use a bit of rain.
 

It will be a short post tonight. I won't sleep for a bit. But I am thinking too loudly to write.

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Songs now. Trying to keep the selection a bit different this time around, including a couple of acoustic/ambient ones.

1. Mofro - Brighter Days

This song and indeed this band is by now an old favorite that I keep going back to. The vocals are unusual, JJ Grey has a very Southern voice (what I assume to be one from my familiarity with US tv shows, a very scientific assumption therefore). The spare guitar and drums and the piano that leads the intro all make for a very good song. It makes me hum along (and if you know me, that's a pretty rare thing).

2. Sublime - What I Got

A guilty pleasure. But such a beautiful rhythm. I challenge you to not feel your mood change for the better while this song is playing. A mish-mash of styles with white-rap and vinyl scratches to boot, this song is simply too good to not be heard.

3. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy

The first of our instrumental/ambient entries. I don't quite remember how I found this song. But I am incredibly glad I did. The video has a story in itself and the tonal shift at around 1:40 still gives me goosebumps. Play it and ignore all other noise. P.S. their entire catalogue is pretty good.

4. Aphex Twin - Xtal

Richard James is almost the founding father of all electronic music and this song is probably the one that started the EDM craze. And while I don't really know or care about the classifications, I do really like the headspace this song gets me into. The entire album (Selected Ambient Works 85-92) is amazing and any good listen would have to be punctuated with pauses as you try to figure out where exactly you have heard all the good bits before.

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You need to see Whiplash. If you don't care about jazz, you still need to. JK Simmons bloody deserved his Oscar.

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Happy Mother's Day

Of making things

There is something in the weather these days. The dog days of summer are a bit far away and it’s never a proper winter in Bombay anyway. It is not quite spring here either, not that I have ever seen it in the seven years here.

I remember the springs (the season and not a band) from when I was young. Perfectly golden sunshine in the afternoons sandwiched between the slightest tinges of cool breezes in the morning and in the night. They last for a month, maybe two. Starting a little after Saraswati pujo and continuing till the final exams – glorious days in which to cycle around the township and to stack up a pile of books in the balcony and read them till the sun went down. You could try growing a small garden inside medicine bottles and watch an ecosystem of ants and insects develop around them. You could gather the fertile clay from the river banks which have fed probably the oldest continuous civilization in the world and make little figurines with no feet and large heads and bake them inside the kiln of an old school kitchen heater. You could make a garrison of them and they would defend the garden against the threats that a child’s mind dreams up.

The world is generally a different and a more difficult place these days. That’s what I think anyway. There is more pressure to make your presence felt. To achieve, even if it is to achieve a sort of dull mediocrity measured on parameters of shallow success, meaningless pedigree and financial gains. People seem entitled to have opinions without really being qualified to have them; there is a lot less forgiveness and mercy (not a religious sentiment, though I believe that the one thing that recommends religion is it’s espousal of a quality of mercy in its followers) in their interactions and a shortsightedness and cruelty that comes from a casual disregard for the feelings of others. There is noise, so much of it. Updates and queries come at you from all directions, a restless urge to know the most banal and the most trivial forcing you towards wasting precious time on them. There is consequently less time for considering the worthy, what should be worthy.

We don’t spend time building things, developing them, learning to work with nature and materials. A nation of software developers and coders exists side by side with poor farmers eking out a livelihood from dirt, each ignorant and unmindful the other. And I understand that it must be so, an economic system that requires specialization and a world that’s grown so far away from the simple self-contained village economy. Doesn't really stop me from wishing for a simpler time while typing all this on a laptop made by a Japanese company in its manufacturing facilities in China using a platform that is spread the world over (its ownership by a corporation out of California is just another piece of redundant information). I find technology fascinating; it is endlessly wonderful how a physical world and its physical forces are finding new applications and new uses. It is just that with industrial manufacturing and miniaturization, so much of technology is just inaccessible now. It saddens me a bit, in a way humans being made redundant by this march of science, a redundancy of the human dexterity and individual innovation that was a hallmark of ours as a species. At the same time, I still think it’s just a matter of scale that makes the modern world a bit incomprehensible. You break it down to its basic bits and it is still understandable for the most part. You have to kind of accept that the world is too complicated in its totality and that there is a size beyond which it’s not really your world. It has an existence separate from you and you exist as a small, nay miniscule cog inside this giant machine which doesn't really need you to function.

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Onto the things I have been reading and listening and watching. I have been busy, that's a caveat. So most of what I have been reading have been things on the fly, articles and such, which you save to the trusty app and then get around to reading only later. But there have been some interesting things, so I will mention them here. Books first.

1. Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X)

Since I belong to the Nerdus eternus sub-genre of human beings, reading comics was de riguer and though I am a way bit older now, I continue to be fascinated by them as an art form and as a literary medium. They do ensure a jolly good time in most cases at least and you will never really convince me that Maus or Daytripper have lesser value than most Booker winners. So this book, in which McCloud explains the form of them and a bit of the history of them and the thought behind them and the art and what makes a gutter special (you gotta read the book to find out), is important. It's not florid or self-important. It is simple and thought provoking and endlessly interesting, at least to me.

2. The Periodic Table - Primo Levi (http://www.amazon.com/Periodic-Table-Primo-Levi/dp/0805210415)

A book that effortlessly blends chemistry and history. That's not a book I thought I would ever get to read. Short autobiographical stories that use science as a metaphor. Can't really recommend it enough. The language is concise (the original language of the book is Italian) and somehow in between the stories you come to realize the beauty of science and how it is really everything that is around us and how meanings can subtly extend from one part of life to another.

Songs next. Except that I can't really think of many songs. So I will give you a couple of my favorite Neil Young songs and a Sigur Rós song for variety.

1. Cortez the Killer - Neil Young

This is one of those songs I can listen to on loop for almost forever. The story, the sadness, the nostalgia. Pretty much perfect. Don't point out the historical inaccuracies. They don't matter and you would be an idiot to point them out.

2. Heart of Gold - Neil Young

Beautiful song. And because it is a live performance that demonstrates his charisma and talent quite perfectly. And again, it's a damn good song.

3. Njosnavelin (Untitled #4) - Sigur Rós

Don't ask me why I like this song. Not because I understand it.

So that's pretty much it. I watched a movie,71 (directed by debutant Yann Demange), about a British soldier stranded overnight in Belfast in 1971 (that where the title comes from). That period of history is called the Troubles and the movie is gripping and good. In case the history interests you, definitely suggested movies are In the name of the Father (1993) and also Bloody Sunday (2002, like the U2 song).

That is pretty much it.

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Three-oh

A bit of nostalgia

Growing up in a determinedly middle class Bengali family, your identity and sense of self gets linked irreversibly to that annual ritual called Durga Pujo. And so I want to write about it. Not about how I celebrate it now, but about how things used to be. It is not going to be a dirge (hopefully), it is, like most things here, about putting down in words the feelings and emotions that it evokes.

Firstly, it is not just the glorious 5 days starting from Sashthi (the sixth day) till Dashami (the tenth) that identifies the festivities, it is, on a conservative basis, at least a couple of months before that. The severity of the rains, and it used to rain quite a bit in Farakka, had usually lessened by the time Pujo came. Obviously, it would still rain, but it wasn't quite so bad, if you get what I mean. 

The biggest hint that the festivals were around the corner came when upon returning home from school one day, you'd chance upon the glorious sight of the pujabarshikis, the annual editions of the Bengali magazines that every self-respecting Bengali household still subscribes to. Satisfyingly thick and substantial, those editions of Anandamela and Shuktara were like nothing else. Food would be forgotten, TV shows brushed to the side as I would rush to turn the pages and read the many stories and novellas and articles and quizzes that populated them. The adventures of Kakababu and of Arjun, the seafaring sagas of Francis the Viking prince (not a very Viking name I realize now, but then Ranulf doesn't lend itself to easy typesetting in Bengali), the sporting stories by Moti Nandi where the underdog always triumphed and most specially, the stories of unique folks that used to live in the worlds created sublimely by Shirshendu. This is not quite the complete list obviously, but there used to be enormous comfort somehow in getting in touch with all these characters who had been away for an year and then returned magically to tell the tales of where they had been. I haven't traveled much, but I have been to everywhere in my head and most of that is because of these books.

There were other things that heralded the coming of the Devi. The kaash phool (Lat: Saccharum spontaneum) that colonized the banks of the Ganga as the monsoon waters receded, the sari-wala who came over on at least two Sundays carrying an almirah-sized cloth sack on his head. The buying of saris was an extremely delicate affair, with color schemes and design patterns and price points which would mysteriously accord varying levels of respect to the gift receiver. I used to be so fascinated by it all.

The last couple of weeks leading up to the Pujo used to be extremely tough, almost character building I'd call it. The teachers usually accepted defeat after handing out the half-yearly marksheets and then there was this unbearable tension and anticipated ecstasy as  Mahalaya came closer. There were milestones along the way, Viswakarma pujo which heralded the beginning of the pujo season, the first lot of new clothes that were bought (the rest were all given by the relatives you see, refer the sari buying process), the tickets to Calcutta that hopefully would have been booked. Calcutta, where the relatives would gather and where we'd have our very own Pujo. And that's a memory for some other day.

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Now, onto our irregular feature - "Songs I have been listening to". 

We have 2 songs from The Cure - the seminal English band which inspired and stimulated the growth of post-punk and goth rock movements while evading any such categorization themselves. To explain further, here are the songs themselves -

1. Lovesong

The song that proves that they could write, well, a love song.

2. Pictures of you

The song that proves that the first one was no fluke. The better song in my opinion. The opening hook builds up with the drums and leads to chimes and synths and a wall of noise that segues to almost pop vocals around the 2:20 mark. Robert Smith has a voice that is quite unique, persuasive and melancholic with a stalker-ish undertone - no wonder he is a favorite. The album, Disintegration (1989), that both these songs belong to, is a classic. If you are interested and you should be, try catching the Trilogy series of concerts - performed earlier this decade if memory serves me correctly - this band still has legs on it.

I also have a documentary to suggest, Steve James biographic documentary on Roger Ebert, Life Itself. Ebert is somewhat of an idol. I came to know of him during my MBA days and the way he overcome physical setbacks (and here I am understating things) to find a new voice and become an inspiration for so many is something worth knowing. Read his books, visit his site.

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The Indian PM is visiting the USA.

Top 10 Books - Fiction

This is basically a re-post of my first ever Facebook post. And I wrote it honestly enough, just that I found a few grammar issues with it afterward and since I also don't like the fact that any edits to the post would show up, I decided to put it here as well - with a few improvements, of course.

Here goes.

Its impossible to really pick your favorite books, they change from day to day and as you get older, your tastes change and your language changes and all that makes it really difficult. Most of these books are ones I grew up with and ones which introduced genres to me.

Top 10 books - they all turned out to be fiction, cause those were the ones that first came to my mind.

1. Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury - Upendrakishore Rachanasamagra - 2 volumes, cardboard bound and with blue glossy covers. Ultra thin paper. For really being the first literature I read and for being my introduction to the Indian mythologies (including being the best possible introduction to Ramayan and Mahabharat).

2. Rabindranath Tagore - Gora - Its about religion, tradition, family, caste, patriotism and identity. Big words and big ideas that make quite an impression and the first book that made me really think. Set in an incredible time and populated with a wonderful cast.

3. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay - Srikanta - the eponymous character is hardly the most interesting part of the novel - its the women in his life which actually give it direction and structure and ultimately make the novel.

4. Saradindu Bandopadhyay - the Byomkesh series (and if asked to pick a favorite, I'd pick two - Chorabali and Chiriyakhana and beg you to let me include Satyanbeshi). The thing is I know of the inspiration it takes from Sherlock Holmes and I have enjoyed the author's historical novels more probably - but Byomkesh for me remains the best portrayal of a detective.

(a little too many Bengali books probably, but I read the collected works of the authors in that wonderful 3 month period after the 10th board exams that we all get and that influence has remained - we'll move onto English now)

5. O'Henry - The collected short stories - The gift of the Magi and The Last Leaf are probably the only stories that have made me cry (I was young, so don't be judging). And A Retrieved Reformation and The Buyer from Cactus City are my favorites - if you need a picker-upper and are in no mood to self-medicate - may I suggest these two.

6. Agatha Christie - The murder of Roger Ackroyd, And then there were none - easily the author whose books I have read the most. Anytime somebody needed to gift me something or I had saved up some money, I would head to the one bookstore in the township and pick up a new Christie. Not the greatest fan of either Poirot or Miss Marple, I have liked the standalone ones more. But Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a masterpiece honestly, the twist is something that you don't see coming (don't lie to yourself now) and both the books have formats that differ from the one-camera format (to borrow from movie-making) that most books follow.

7. P. G. Wodehouse - You are expecting the Jeeves and Wooster books or the Blandings Castle series. But I'll put forth the Wrynkyn series as my pick here - the language is incomparable (but that is true of all Wodehouse), there's usually an underdog and it introduced me to Mike and Psmith (probably my favorite amongst all of Wodehouse's characters). Favorite book though - The White Feather.

Now we are doing genres, cause there has to be some structure to this and I really don't want to miss out on something obvious.

8. Alistair MacLean - The Last Frontier / Frederick Forsyth - The Day of the Jackal / Robert Ludlum - The Bourne Identity. If I am picking thrillers, then it has to be one of these three. I read the Alistair MacLean novels by borrowing them from the school library - enormous fun and easy reads. If I had to pick just one though, it would be the Ludlum - I was quite furious after they changed the basic storyline in the 2nd film. I think the Bourne Identity is pretty much perfect.

9. Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon - Daytripper - Unique and perfect. The graphic novel that would likely be on any favorite books list I make. Gorgeous and moving, without being manipulative, I have probably read too much into it - but this makes you question the ultimate value of your life. A book that I have loved everything about from the very first time I held it.

10. Neil Gaiman - American Gods / Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light / Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand - I don't think I can choose between these three. Shadow is that most inscrutable of anti-heroes in a world that's both mythical and modern, nowhere else is Hinduism more mysterious (and the hero prefers to call himself Sam - a little bit of conceit here, yes, permit me that) and Bartimeus and Nathaniel have the most interesting of relationships. So, I won't be choosing here - some leeway must be allowed in the last entry anyway.

So that's the list. As I am typing this, I am starting to question certain omissions. But this is the list for today and this it shall remain.

P.S. Found this picture - it is quite perfect ain't it?

A few well hidden speakers and we're set

Thoughts on the future

In a not quite so perfect mood today, so maybe the post won't turn out to be very optimistic. I don't think much these days, there's work and then you are home and then you want to sleep. Ain't that the dreariest thing? And the sad part is that I am sure that I am not unique in my experiences. Every person I meet, I go to work with - and since 'every' doesn't allow for exceptions, I'll use 'most' - most people live this way.

And I was thinking. Shouldn't there be some mandatory thinking time? Time that you have to think and reflect and plan and resolve. What could I do? Think about it and then do it. Something that makes me happy and makes me feel good about myself. Trivial and selfish, like a pencil scrawled self portrait. Its a disconnect. There has to be a way, a way to be happy and not starve, be useful and productive, yet selfish and conceited. Make something beautiful, make something worthy, make something that lasts, that makes someone happy. Could be one (though that shouldn't just be me) or could be many. But what remains essential and necessary is that I should be happy doing it.

I can't change the future of the country (the sheer ego of it all!), I can't invent something that will make everyones' life easier (though a fruit slicer that makes juice does sound like something an enterprising Chinese gentleman will make a fortune out of), so I should really find out what I should be doing that will be relevant and important to one more person. But it is a must that I do that one thing. I don't want to be no one. I believe that I can't be no one. Not being egotistic here, honestly. There's a miracle to life and there is an endless chain of permutations and possibilities and chances that has led to this moment and therefore this moment and the next and the one after that should mean something. I would like to teach and for that I would have to learn. So I guess I will be studying some.

I am just worried. I don't care about politics when my options are a dithering novice and a disciplinarian dogma-led scare-mongerer. I can't bring myself to care about a job which needs me to follow arbitrary ugly formats blindly, where the choice that I have is between following up with treasury or compliance. I don't care much about cricket (sacrilege! blasphemy!) and the football teams I support do a darn good job of crushing any early season hopes. I want to find the time to find myself, find what I am good at, what I have an eye for. And then do it, even if only for a while.

That's pretty much it.

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Two musical bits here for the discerning audience -

1. This one is an instrumental piece (I am going classical with a monocle and all here) - Divenire by Ludovico Einaudi - a performance at Royal Albert Hall, London. Gets me a little weepy and heavy hearted. The payoff moment comes at around the 1:50 mark. Watch it first and then listen to it with your eyes closed - I promise you that there is a tear waiting to sneak out. Listen to it on the loop if possible.

2. The 2nd one is a complete concert film - Burning by Mogwai. I have written before that I am fan. This should tell you why. Its a beautifully shot film - all black and white and ambient noise filtering in (on the screen and in the music). A very spare set, the musicians don't make jokes or say how glad they are there to perform. They make extremely beautiful music and you are supposed to just lose yourself in the sound. Try to listen to 'Mogwai fears Satan' at around the 27 and a half minute mark. No words again. Apparently their sound is not in fashion at the moment. Well, I am just the least fashionable guy I know.

A book as well - 'Bhima - The Lone Warrior' (translated from the Malayalam original 'Randamoozham' of M. T. Vasudevan Nair by Gita Krishnankutty). The Mahabharata from Bhima's perspective. Can't praise it enough. I had loved Bhimsen which Prem Panicker had put up way back when. And this is the book that inspired it.

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Is there anything special about the 15th of February? Maybe.

Reason

He rolled over and shut the alarm off. The battery on the darn thing was weak, had been weak for weeks now, it wasn’t really ever going to wake him up – it let off a pitiful squeak every morning at seven and then fell silent, cowering like a dog that’s been beat up one too many time. His bones hurt, he had been generous with the last couple of shots last night, but hey Jim Bean was a good mate and keeping the last inch in the bottle was bad luck. Barney had told him that, back in junior year.

Where was Barney these days, anyway? He remembered a mail from him, about Sara and him finally getting hitched. But that had been a year ago and they really hadn’t been in touch since. It was weird. It seems only so long ago, that they had been puking their guts out side by side after a night of drinking and side-stepping in the melting pot and now they didn’t know in which city the other guy was. Weird.

He was just lying there, wasn’t he? Fuck it, he didn’t feel like getting up at all. The sky was grey outside and the only bloody sliver of light was falling directly on his eyelids. Damn it, the curtains were useless. He stretched, knocking over the pile of cloths that had just been washed. Fuck it. It was just Monday, damn it. He hated himself most days, but this was more. This was like being in a blender of detritus, sinking into shit even as it slowly choked you.

Looking for a reason to get up, was he? Well, he had to take a dump and he was hungry as hell. That bowl of day old insta-noodles was good for an hour and for making your insides clamp up. So, he got up, sat hunched on the edge of the bed for another five minutes, absently scratching the old scar on the left knee. Then he went in and stared at the bathroom mirror, the toothbrush absently foaming in his mouth. His hair was thinning, a prominent widow’s peak making itself known. The cheeks were shrunken, with a couple of days of stubble, streaked with gray and the eyes were dull. He sighed. Was he dying? He wasn’t even thirty. He hadn’t done anything yet. And well, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He always drifted. He had tried studying, he had tried working. He had been drunk and he had been high. He tried writing and he tried construction. Nothing worked for him. It was like something was broken in him, something that stopped him from feeling. And now he was in his seventh job in three years, fielding calls in a call-center surrounded by giggling children barely out of their teens. He was called Uncle, behind his back, quietly and sometimes not so quietly. It was a fucked up job and it was a fucked up life. He sighed again. He was getting started fucking early today, hmm? He didn’t bother shaving.

The day went down the shithole pretty much from the start. He’d forgotten his umbrella and the 411 was late by twenty minutes and then filled with sweaty and wet people, rancid with yesterday’s hopes and today’s fear. Made him want to put his fingers down his throat. He’d even tried cycling to work, but after the last near-death experience which involved a cow and a cat and an Audi and put his arm in a cast, he’d pretty much resigned himself to a lifetime of nausea and to holding his breath. A bus it was, then, one that made him wait, even as it took him to a place he didn’t want to go.

He stopped by Leo’s after work. The day had been a doozer. That rat Iyer, a glorified pen-pusher, a sodomizer of little girls and a filthy excuse for a human had again called him to his cubbyhole of a cabin. The walls were paper thin and the faggots could probably hear every word as the shithead tore into him for ‘irreverent attitude’ and ‘irresponsible behavior’ – like the bastard would even know if reverence and responsibility smacked him in the face, repeatedly,  wearing an iron glove. So, maybe he had shown up drunk at work thrice in the past week and maybe he’d called a caller a ‘whiny bitch’ – but that woman had deserved it, too.

As always, Leo’s was good, silent almost, the people there thought drinking was serious business. He picked his spot, the solitary chair and the lonely stool that masqueraded as a table. It was the beginning of the month and George, the busboy who brought him his Vat and his cheeselets, was attentive as usual. He spent a little longer than usual, sitting in his chair, staring at the grime colored glass pane that blinked with the stare of fireflies as cars passed by outside. He could get drunk here, often had, and then make the stumbling walk, smoking his Classics, the fifteen minutes and three blocks to chez home.

It was past one when he walked out, the last one to leave. It was raining now, again, and the night seemed to have hunkered down, speaking to itself, the way he often caught himself doing, that it wasn’t planning to change tonight and this was what it was – silent, sad, long hours, hours without end. He didn’t mind too much, it was almost as if the world was sharing his mood with him, at harmony for once and he had learnt to shield his smokes from the rain – it was easy, once you burnt your fingers a few times.

He took the longer route home, getting water in his eyes and walking through the narrow lanes that threaded through the shantytown of the menial class. The mongrels on the doorsteps gave small, angry barks and then settled back into the cocoon of shared heat between man and animal. And there it was, a man lying in a puddle just across the corner in the dark. He stumbled against him in the dark and then unable to hold his footing in the slippery mud, he fell awkwardly and hard into the ground. Even as he fell, he could smell the vomit and the cheap booze and the piss on the other guy. The man moaned and shifted a bit as he fell on top of him.  And then the drunk belched a stream of fluid on him – well, rum tasted as good going down as coming up someone had told him once. And something snapped.

He wondered about that half an hour sometimes, in the moments that he thought about the past. He could see himself, burning with anger and self-loathing, this mirror of the man that he was. Could see himself, standing up, looking around dazedly, and then picking up a fist sized brick from where it was resting, gleaming, wet from the rain and then getting down on his knees and smashing it down to the face. There was a soft crunching sound, curious in its normality, and there was a harsh shuddering answering moan from the man as the blood started pouring down from the mouth and the nose. And he just couldn’t stop pounding the brick, pounding it till it broke and the man’s face was unidentifiable. And then he just stood there, swaying, as he slowly became aware of his surroundings. It was still raining, gentler now, and there were grunts of faraway trucks on the highway. His senses were heightened, he could smell the damp in the air, the lingering traces of fresh vomit and he felt more alive than he’d ever been.

He slept well that night. And next morning was the brightest one he had seen in a while. And if the world started to make a little less sense, he knew what he had to do now.