filament2

I've moved

2006-02-23T19:52:00.000+09:00

I am not blogging here anymore. I am blogging at http://peacefarm.prayas.in also accessible via http://blog.prayas.in

To see what I've been blogging about lately, do visit me at my new address.

mumbai breath

2005-12-02T14:25:00.000+09:00

Am working in Mumbai now! Searching for a place to stay. Same old story.

What happens when you decide to look at a situation differently? I felt after I point, I had gotten too clever for myself. "What I could do" was becoming more important than what I did, what I experienced. I was to-do happy. So I have shifted base for some time. I realize a lot of the threads I have been following are incomplete. I want to meet people, bond with people, see things, see what I am doing and how it comes across to others.

I want to finally decide. What is it I would feel comfortable doing all my life, all the time? Leave the other interests/occupations alone, fending for food. Why is this neccessary? Well, if I expect some form of art/creative activity to carry me across to the state of absolute peace... I need to commit to a path. Poetry, video, art, copywriting, internet activism, social venture... what will I bet on?

As of now, I am going strong on art. Visual art, which strongly engages with "bunches of words" I create... I have been drawing regularly since October. I can see something emerging there. I have neglected my drawings for so long!

So in mumbai - I look around. I learn to be relaxed but enthusiastic, easy but passionate, productive but peaceful.... I want to throb with simplicity. Not get caught up in some crazy obtuse trip...

first winter poem

2005-11-12T19:14:00.000+09:00

faint as an ancestor
who forgot to tell me his name.
I have appeared now
under the other end of this periscope...
I have nothing to say.
why can't you lie down beside me
and be with me - lonely, easy, peaceful.
doing as much in a day as a ball of wool
walking in the garden
sleeping in the shade of words too big
to live up to.
going from refrain to refrain,
waiting for the chorus again
some songs have no meaning
they just like to be played
again and again and again.
leaving my passport at the window
putting stones on a slow-boil.
sometimes climbing a hill
is easier, than climbing two steps
to someone's front-door.

how much is this blog worth ?

2005-11-07T12:57:00.000+09:00

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

like a drumcall

2005-10-17T13:44:00.000+09:00

be blind to the humdrum murmur.
let your hair slide away easily.
now you can run into the breeze
as if your words were laughter,
the garden in front of my house
has my shadows tied up in a knot -
I speak as if the importance of each decision
outweights the pleasure of trouble, silliness
a braghost myself - I build my walls.

Where am I?

2005-09-02T19:27:00.000+09:00

Have been travelling for the past week! From Ahmedabad to Delhi to Nagpur and soon to Ahmedabad. I forgot to carry any of the books I've bought and have been waiting to read... Am regretting that.

A good time in Delhi, couldn't meet up with any friend, was mostly holed-up with my computer and blogging or dreaming. Making proposals.

Spreading myself thin. I have been warned against it. I admire people who do less but do good. I am moving towards it. Work either on a part-time job or a fellowship and just tap away slowly at the imagination I want to translate into the real-world?

Work with stories. When I get back home, I will first be completing my short-video -- "Introspection". Maybe expand the theme, explore the subject... more. Beyond pattern can it also be words, voices, people, process. How would I show it. I have been shooting clips for this video on my still-camera. Why? Maybe to speak for introspection being as close and easily-possible for you as possible... what can be simpler than shooting limited-seconds of video on a still camera. A video camera felt too intricate... some of these things need to go my new trigger2 process-blog...

Have bought 6 long canvases maybe 6 ft X 2 ft? What will I do with these, do I fancy myself to be a painter? I want to play with words and with poems on these. I have heard of the "supremacy", the "absolutist regime" of the image, the visual... maybe play with words, with letters, with alphabets in the realmn of the visual... might be fun.

Not be over-productive, that is NOT my defining characteristic... do something which has the captivating narrative which impresses me about a lot of good blog-postings. Captivating narrative. Freeze on that.

Where to live?

2005-09-02T19:18:00.000+09:00

I think in India it would a good idea to live in a town, which The Times of India thinks is too small to sustain a city edition. Such a city is bound to be mundane, quiet, cultured in a meaningful way and cheap!

Why do most Indian films increasingly only either have only fantastic or Mumbai landscapes. No variety, no imagination. I have seen films (luckily!) in which the landscape/the locations themselves have a character. They have something intrinsic. They play a role, they have a story to tell.

It is an unexplored area. Iranian films seem to explore it consistently. American films surely. Are we ashamed/not-proud of our geography?

Something worth thinking about. Why are the cinematic landscapes of our films so monotonous.

I have tried to create a rich landscape in the script I have been working on. How will it turn out?

Summary of the next three days at the workshop

2005-08-29T02:09:00.000+09:00

Kiran did a study on livejournal and the features it has which enable and strengthen community formation. One thing which struck me - for a group to form encourage the formation of a sub-group. Vishnu did a presentation on the mythologicals in Telegu cinema. He said, mythologicals cannot take the burden of star-systems.

I learnt about the work of a lot of researchers. Research is thought - how do others think, what is making them tick - the room was constantly charged with passion. I felt comfortable!

Carrrying on my earlier loop - discussion on the creative process. It is the process which I need to focus more on, I have been obsessed with the creative act, the product of this... It is not that product is not important, it is that the product needs to be qualified - by process, by stories, by narrative. I need to talk about / think about the process more - the process is a committment.

I was wondering why working on the internet is often such a hyper, breathless and anxious process - pages take time to load, the process bar gives a realistic indication of how much time it will take, and I hold my breath?

Khaled made an interesting presentation on the working culture in fast food chains. He focussed on McDonalds. As a fact - when there are too many customers and serving isn't happpening fast enough - they stop serving! They stop serving and they dance. To distract the customers and then when there enough pizzas are cooked again - they stop dancing and start serving.

Kiran posed an interesting question to Khaled - does dancing in a pizza-shop make Mcdonald's a dance-bar - the definition of dance being, "swaying the body"? Technically yes. So down with McDonalds!!?

Kuldeep Kaur had a very intense presentation - unheard voices from the birthing room in hospitals. She is a nurse, the intensity in her presentation was in the statistics, the demonstration of the scale and nature of the problem. Many seemed to need her perspective, her personal knowledge and experience of being present there in that space... she related some poetry. It was strong.

Bodhi's presntation on the Mess rooms in Kolkatta was fabulous. It was presented very passionately and eloquently. I could conjure images of the messes as he spoke. He said that in the Bhadralok Theatre the messes were like a perpetual green room. Another interesting thing he said was that the generations which have grown up in the messes have been accepted in society but the institution hasn't been accepted.

In a question, Karen asked Bodhi how was "hetrosexuality exercised" in the mess-houses, being all-male? I liked that term, and the way she put it. The day ended with a rich, immersing performance by Mohammed Farooqui, "Dastan E Amir Humza."

Across dinner I had a discussion with Soudhamini. She asked a very pertinent question to me, "Why the images?" - in context of my presentation. She felt my poems were quite strong and telling and the images were not needed at all. She was saying that inter-disciplinary discourse/approach was all fine - but maybe a purist eye would enable a healthy marriage of mediums. She said good poetry can and should stand on its own.

Next day started with a presentation by Sudeshna Chatterjee... about child-friendly cities. It seemed to be quite classical in terms of approach and form, good academic research? Presented quite crsiply. Kaiwan introduced ways of reading architechture like novels. Very interesting. In Meera's presentation about children who lived at Vijaywada railway station. She said children can be hurt very easily. She presented the confusion which was quite prevelant - "being able to write is a pre-requisite to being able to draw."

Now more strewn and unorganized notes - In Vasudha and Soudhamin's presentaion - the actuality of research for creative projects was presented. Both presented ruses of films very much in progress. Soudhamini seemed to be very much a process person - she said to rush with the work to be able to present it could short-circuit it. Vasudha talked about interactive video, video with choices.

Videndra's presentation was really good. It had a mood and a sense of space. He chose to disassociate sound and picture. The video played in the background and he performed the audio. Every time he needed to, he just paused the video!! The demonstration/lecture was on songs of protest / motivational songs in the tradition of the left, and mostly in Bengal. Some great histroical recordings were played out. Sumangala commented on a singer's seemingly deriving perverse pleasure from singing a hindi song in a karnatak fashion.

Shruddha commented on some researchers' anxiety about proving the truth of what they were talking about. He suggested - that this anxiety could be dealt with awareness.

Because keeping up is difficult

2005-08-27T04:23:00.000+09:00

Breath has an inherent rhythm. Why do I sit at the window and suffer the anxiety of having nothing to say. Invented conversations. Today again, my weakness and my lost frontiers featured together on my lips in the span of a few hours. Why can't I just be dealing with stories, following traces, following paths, not trying to re-read, re-appreciate, remember everything that I like at the same time. These stories would have mornings, noons and nights - discussions would be the altars to which I could bow down to, be humble and listen. You could say something today - so meaningful for me that I listened agog. Everything is equally difficult, equally simple. Do what you do, its all about committment - but the train leaves the station at half-fast midnight and fantasies are slowly filling up the prime real-estate of my mind.

Actually things were cut out well enough, clearly enough for me. I chose to be insecure. Insecurity can make you try playing walkie-talkie with a little dead mobile-phone.

So it is very clearly writtien in what I see - straight-on, decide today.

I have taken this decision too many times to be able to take it again.

Sometimes a question can be rendered meaningless by over-contemplation. What is the time?

Egoless, melted, semi-transparent - I sit on his laps and ask to be fed, I ask to be suckled. But the bus we are in has an accident and it topples over. It falls over the cliff and falls into the sea.

As an idea - the ride from karol bagh to mumbai and back seems interesting - combined with some exciting variations in tax and traffic-jammed delhi streets - it becomes cinematic. What all will I do?

Looking at the insignificance, the sorrowful waste, the shallowness of my experience - I seem to be resonating soundly with the other lost, limping the way back to the hotel. In a bus what do they do on the back seats, they get drunk and swear, they curse, they demand attention.

Cows of the hindi belt, we are like cows in the hindi belt - refusing to understand and mooing consistently - for the real discourse listen to the monkeys - tying a rakhi to a monkey, to a dog - the creativity in the bond?

Workshop Notes

2005-08-25T03:47:00.000+09:00

Workshop at Sarai, all the fellows making their presentations. Shruddha started today morning with a presentation on Sarai. "Distributed Public Research Network," public knowledge generation. I was sitting at the far-end of the long table. I haven't had time to get my beard trimmed, I look anarchic, accepting, wild, unstructured?

There are some amazing individuals here, solid as rock, porous as clouds, rain-clouds?

Someone asked - should critique be pre-judging everything, or should it be commentary and negotiating?

B.Mahesh Sharma made an interesting presentation on the adoption of CNG in Delhi. He commented that our tendency to fallback on experts and trust them is dangerous.

Listening to others is rather engaging for me - it reminds me that I cannot invent every reality inside my head, I need to learn, need to know the world around me. Approaching the world with curious, eager-to-learn eyes is the only way to remain young. Karen Cohelo presented a paper on the urban water conflicts in Chennai. I liked the way she started her prestentation with lots of pictures of grids in the city. Grids of hoardings, of construction... of underground water-pipes. Pipes which no one hasa map of, a blue-print of - people know more about the pipes in the areas where they live, than the municipality which supplies water through them!

Science is a brand of logic. Science is about the time between life and death. Nitoo Das in her paper on hypertextual MSN poery communities talked of how a sense of community was developed online - through well-defined rituals and practices.

Do I have power over my work?

Maybe I should have a nickname - a screenname, have too much of a direct online presence. It is liberating to be writing as someone else as a non-self engagement. "strung onto something else". All research, all thought distilled and deliberated on enough is a story. Generalization, over-simplification is a guide to searching, seeking - is a form to fill in the shades, the details.

Archana Jha presented a very interesting histroy of Nautanki (a kind of folk theatre). The story goes this way. Kanpur develops as an industrial city. Labourers migrate to the city for work. They were exploited. They needed some form of entertainment. They started nautanki - which built on earlier forms of music and theatre. The industry fell through, the labourers moved to another city to search for work - nautanki disappeared! The situation of Kanpur which was the catalyst disappeared...

It is not that product is not important - but what is more important is what qualifies the product, the qualities, the story!!! The process which needs be talked about leads to a product which is a sum not a deliberation. Thinking without the pressure of having to decide. Shouldn't intwine my process of searching for my voice very strongly with livelihood issues - it can get very confusing. Both are different things, let it be that way.

Nitoo mentioned (while commenting on someone's presentation) how early performers, singers were reluctant to record their songs, because they said that - successful Indian classical music was the only good Indian singing, it should be performed only LIVE.

Performed only being swayed by "the moment's variance", being swayed by subtle doubts. Prashant Pandey asked an interesting question. Is what we know as the male and female style of singing, basically based on the concept and quality of voice developed by the female voice impersonators.

Shruddha called for "impersonation of impersonation". "Female impersonation of females of an earlier time."

Morning

2005-08-12T11:25:00.000+09:00

feeling the range of
gray colours
inviting me
a song, a dance will be
easily managed?
flowers break themselves
in to fragrances
which can travel,
how far away can you go
and still
stay?
lactating mothers
and insolvent flavours
nothing will seem real today,
from being barren to writing of children
nothing will seem real today.
cold in the head
and being blown up in bed
the sitar is playing softly -
instead we will put on the radio
put things out
on the patio
let guillable folks believe
we are happily dead.

On Friendship Day

2005-08-07T19:11:00.000+09:00

Today is friendship day,
does that mean
someone will call me
today,
wish me
happiness.

Will it mean out of nowhere,
out of the grey clouds which rain
consistently over this city -
someone will come home
and ring the bell...
all that friendship means to me
is loss, remembering, memory.
I think
of all the friends I have had
and I don't have today.

These words, fall
shapeless
on the screen.
Nothing can cajole these ideas
into stability.

Window

2005-07-29T13:48:00.000+09:00

letting the last strands
of hair still-born,
run as thick
as the smoke
in the chimney
of my mind.
I have never seen a chimney,
it is a read-concept,
it comes out only in words
verbs mean nothing to me,
sedantary on a chair.

The Post-Nonprofit World Is Now Emerging

2005-07-22T03:16:00.000+09:00

So writes, Andrea del Mora at Lip Magazine in the article titled, "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded". I am quoting some parts which hit me. Hard. The article is well worth reading.
For those of us seeking fundamental, revolutionary change, the nonprofit glut has cost us our broad-based social movements...

..."A lot of nonprofits have a bigger stake in staying alive than in accomplishing their mission," (Ruthie Gilmore)

Kim Klein tells of an anti-domestic-violence organization that created an endowment so that it could be funded in perpetuity. "An endowment allows you to exist forever. So…what are you saying? Are you saying there will always be domestic violence?" As appealing as the financial security of an endowment is, the goal of an organization working to end domestic violence (or poverty, police brutality, the death penalty or any of the other things that social justice activists are working to end) is to make its activities unnecessary.

This is the catch-22 for social justice advocates of working within the nonprofit structure. You work to solve the problem at its source, and therefore make your work obsolete. But you also want to be able to stick around long enough to actually do that, so you need to work in a way that promotes longevity, skill building, social networks, and organizational stability, so that the movement grows and people don't burn out.

Here is the link of the story again: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.

I used to think on similar lines. But have been getting more and more blunt and "well-adjusted" about it. Considering that, things are going in the same direction in India, MSWs (Masters in Social Work) being more conscious of TA and DA, people being generally more appreciative of the way Nonprofits are becoming more professional and corporate.

This is a debate which would gather more weight in India than in US. Because, maybe we have had different traditions of "social work" and "social service". But like many other things, how our nonprofits work, for whom they work and why they work is increasingly being based on western standards and guidelines.

This "blood transfusion" sure seems to be pathogenic...

BTW the poetry section of LIP magazine is edited by my friend and co-blogger Miriam Hall. That is really great! It sure is.

Environmental Issues

2005-07-06T02:22:00.000+09:00

SO what do I care about the environment? Depends on how I define the E word. If it is the city, culture, family - I have some concerns. If it the wild life, the forests - I don't know if I have anything to say, which isn't said everyday (with meaning!).

I am working on a proposal for the Vatavaran film-making fellowship. And yes, making applications is my chief after-job occupation. The next being collecting rejection slips. BTw had another few bright ideas for reviving the regular print issues at crimson-feet. But it was with breath - held back. I was screaming inside my head, "I do not want to slip into another andrenalin recourse."

Back to environmental issues. So what should I take up? I don't know if urban issues, planning issues will be elegible. How should I find out? Then, maybe I would like to extend my current project (public space & advertising) into this, a documentary would a great medium to work on this subject.

Somebody Talk About "Old Media" (please!)

2005-06-30T00:30:00.000+09:00

New media needs new talent. This was the lead caption of the imaginary front page of a newspaper. There is a absentee bridge hanging betwen the world which was and the world which is. The digital divide doesn't divide the rich and the poor - it divides creation which was and creation which is. Everything new is essentially floating in chaos. Make your own rules, preach from your own stools while you can.

How can skills, which the mediums of poetry, theatre, puppetry, sketching, sculpture have developed through legions of practising creative artists suddenly have nothing to contribute anymore? How can "new media" be embraced in such an uninhibited manner that it almost seems that old words are forgotten, bookshelves are empty, all celluloid has cracked up and everything is hazy?

Dozens of new media institutes have sprung up across the country and funds are freely flowing to set up more. They are selling the future and their relevance in the new world to students who believe blindly. Nothing wrong with learning new things, wich seem to be relevant and marketable... seems kind of fragmented. It is emancipating in a way, because the word creative and art are not used only by some academics but by many others - it has opended up the perpetually ongoing discussions on aesthetics, voice and vision. But somewhere everything reeks of a novel, bubbly, frothy naivity.

Digital storytelling? Digital narratives, digital *.*. If changing the world was so simple - converting waves to 0 and 1. It would have changed long back. It is essentially the same. In many ways. Can this be denied?

On Manipulation

2005-06-25T02:50:00.000+09:00

Democracies are easy to manipulate. I am easily smothered with sweet talk or good tea. You can corrupt elections, talk about rights, talk about development goals and agendas, point out how countries are missing out on the "BIg Party" by being underdeveloped and poor. But where is the "Big Party".

The more countries, which have democracy - the more countries American have to preach to. Since when have middlemen and pimps been Acceptable High Priests? "Know your rights, people. You deserve to be like us. Demand development from your government" And they do. Elections are no longer won on false promises. Elections are won on false promises of development. And once people know what they want. American know whom they can sell it to. The Government buys into arguments, into development agendas, economic policies, reforms. And gradually the world is made an easier place for Americans to understand.

I was reading the other day, how the British interest in Kashmir started with an officer's curiosity - "Can Kashmir be made into a colony for retired British Officers." Sometime in 1880s. Somehow it didn't work out. But it seems like the world is being trained into becoming a better tourist hotspot for Americans?

Why so much American-bashing tonight? Well got nothing else to do. Nothing else closer to my mind, right now. The world imitates US - so just ranting against the "Big Guy" will do, I guess.
Personally I feel - US is like a lovely monster - who eats everyone except the people already inside its stomach. Frankly, with the way things are going - Europeans haggling on petty politics and discounts like fishermen, US seems to be poised to remain The Only Power. The safest place to be, is either inside US?

Parineeta: A Review & Cat-shit On The Window

2005-06-23T23:31:00.000+09:00

We saw Pareneeta yesterday, hit-banging emotional action from start to finish. Nothing emotive, evocative enough to take home. All the cast was as it is trapped, in starched well-designed costumes and a script, which seemed to be extremely future-sensitive. Vidya Balan(Lolita) was resigned to play the entire part through her eyes and her smiles. Half, quarter and quarter of quarter.

If characters in a story don't have space, they are not memorable. If characters are not memorable neither are their stories. Stories of drab, starch-necked characters go home with us seeming like logical sequences, stage-plays continuity-exercises.

Was disappointed with the film. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, either way had always seemed to be driving more and more to a controlled-brilliantly-executed kind of film-making. Maybe he should stick to production (Munnabhai, MBBS)?

The fundamentals of the film seem to have potential enough to maybe do another re-make. Characters can have lives in the story, the delivery of the story is not their only responsibility.

Pareneeta starred Saif Ali Khan as Shekhar, Vidya Balan as Lolita and Sanjay Dutt as Girish.

The time the film was set in was quite confusing. Was it the colonial or post-colonial years. If it was the pre-colonial then what did Saif mean when he said "The English have left but they have left their children." But maybe I missed something important in the first ten minutes? (I entered the theatre late!) And if it was the post-colonial period what were all these guys doing, fixing deals with foreigners. What were all these foreigners doing in the train, looking totally unlike tourists of any kind.

Did Cadbury Dairy Milk look the same back in whenever-the-film-is-supposed-to-be-set-in?

After the movie, sitting in the air-conditioned theatre (fun republic is good! but too expensive), loitering around we thought we would catch some potato wedges at McDonalds... but hysteria got the better of us. The ice cream and the wedges fell! What a waste...

Saw something interesting at McKitchen though... the guard was standing behind the counter, flashing his food card. The guy behind the desk waved nonchalantly, "Help Yourself". He took a serving of each? Don't know... So everyone eats the same stuff at McDonalds, except me, that is. I drop it on the floor. And then sweep it to the dust-bin.

What Price Art ?

2005-06-21T11:50:00.000+09:00

What price art?

Well, definitely a crore or more. Yes?

Pays who? Everyone is all horny about the few painters who regularly sell their work for millions and get their names splashed all over the news. Everyone is claiming it means great things for the art market of India, great things for the talent...

The wrong kind of money keeps coming into the art world. People who can pay are paying, and no one is bothering to see what role art is taking up in society. Whether the populace-at-large can afford the essence of what is happening. "They don't have to. Not everything has to hold true for all the levels of the pyramid, let everyone enjoy!"

In a story which talks about something as fictious, non-standard and marginal like art, there will be two characters. One is a painter who wipes his brush on his apron, sets his price pretty high, goes to parties, networks, shows his work... interviews. Who believes arguments which are about what art should be and shouldn't be are essentially by non-artists who sit with history books on their laps.

He believes that people who place art in the refrigerator, meuseum, gallery, fireplace and expect the artist to forgoe, suffer, make a face, act pure were never professionals anyway. They have grown up on fairy tales.

The other character is this writer who claims he has a vision for the world. Who writes nonsense wbout little babies painted into patterns on the wall but have nothing to say about what they have to say.

These two meet in a cyber community and break into a brawl. The writer asks the painter to stop worrying about his livelihood and think of God. The artist throws a chair at him and says, don't hurt, think of God.

As each of them crumbles into little pieces the idea goes up for takes. Leave theories aside, and collect the cash.

Part from each other tonight, and let the confusion take on elitist shades. That is good for the market. Everything elistist is good for the Indian market.

Refer: Times of India

Cheap Vacations

2005-06-17T21:43:00.000+09:00

My new friend, S. didn't laugh when I told her the basic story, of my small life. She was like, "Ok, I've like seen cooler people do cooler stuff." That was nice. Our cities are more and more conservative, expecting more and more, that common things should happen again and again. Its not just the media with its syrupy formulations of family life, its also the fact that the neuclear family, the cosmopolitan reality and the rapid and universal debasement of all things simple and small in the market-we-call-our-world. In this-world-which-is-a-market-in-disguise each of us is merely wearing clothes, wearing tongues which makes it easier to sell in our lane. There is no bigger context, there is no bigger rationale. Most of the time. It feels almost sick sometimes seeing everything reduce to their peculiarities. Films sound and look like films, TV like TV, Art like art, artists like artists, love like love. Sometimes someone dares to be honest, speak the truth - things seem fresh, as sharp as chilli pizza on buttermilk. This way to be, or feel cannot be aspired to.

We have tied ourselves up in knots which are more complex than what a new aspiration could resolve. We need respiration not aspiration. Anyone who is trying to inspire you, trying to make you take a ride to the other side is essentially short of breath.

In cities we don't care so much about what anyone else is doing or being - it is a diasporic, immigrant experience. Re-inventing our history and tradition, desperate for some prescription. So the urban ethic has re-defined itself as the TOI-experience. British or Australian education, call-centre jobs, new Nokia phones. The immigrant experience has its own freedoms and liberties - if we are truly able to leave, cut-off, disintegrate our memories into foam and lather which goes down the drain.

This need for tradition distorts our guilt-processor playing with it like a honky-tonk horn. People actually feel guilty today because they do things, they think they remember they were told by someone not to do! Else the guilt is sterilized and the role of the window-watcher, wallflower is easily taken on. Militancy in the social order is not on the cards, liquor is pretty cheap and there are havens, there are vacations which one can easily enjoy for a small price.

Small Change

2005-06-16T00:53:00.000+09:00

Micro finance seems interesting to the extent of the peer-saving-groups and loans and poverty reducing... why do people start talking about entrepreneurship at the slightest provocation? Entrepreneurship as a strategy for development? Irrational. Unless you see US as the ideal situation to be in. Ensuring that the economic ecosystem is healthy for all those who want to be entrepreneurs makes sense - making entrepreneurship a choice of favour, something ideal... is stupid.

All the government sponsored / private incubators (trying to make entrepreneurship a priority) are looting young blood anyway. Trying to make an easy buck. Trying to offer "consulting" to entities which are not even business as yet. Charging money which is loaned. Keeping their belongings as ransom in lieu of pending charges after they have gone bankrupt.

Promoting entrepreneurship / calling-for-entrepreneurs to support them is the same is self-publishing mostly. Some guys do a good job. Others take others for a ride, while they try to make a living themselves.

Peace On A Platter (maybe)

2005-06-16T00:13:00.000+09:00

Peace from a simplistic perspective. Not implementable, not realistic. What no one will do, is not doable. Imagine a canopy spread out on Relief road and the rain is jumping on it. What does it mean. Too many people are trying aggressively to change the world. The world can only be peaceful if world change went off development agendas. Natural human activity could be, "making things better for oneself." We have seen the havoc - in a way - that this activity has led many of us to get carried away and make megacities on enchroached land. Made skyskrapers on prime agricultural land.

A way to change this could be to support people who want to "make things better for themselves" in other ways. A way aroun this could be to place social restrictions on the growth of companies - to legislate that companies be split into two the moment they grow beyond a certain size. Why? In masses of millions individuals don't seem valuable. The pressure to keep growing creates the myth of permanence, of drastic decisions, of being manipulative, of being abusive, of cheating. And the truth is all compaies all businesses die. Everything is cyclical. Allowing companies to grow beyond their destinies is ensuring the death of other companies, other individuals. The solution is not to keep looking for new markets, new opportunities to grow - it is to make sure that companies keep shrivelling and dying and the market is renewed all the time. To define an equation which decides that companies cannot grow more when each of their constituents is rich enough for a lifetime. Wealth should not be allowed to grow to hysterical ammounts. It is disheartening.

Innovation is not fuelled by greed, it is not fuelled by neediness, it is fuelled by need. We don't need unethical triggers for anything... we weren't born with any compulsions, we inherited everything. We don't need to constrict the range of our experience and our possibility with the narrowness of white people's minds...

This is an escapist note in response to the passive and limited repsonses to africa's situation. Maybe it is nonsense, but I feel a the trick will also be to keep thinking up all kinds of nonsense as long as the sense of the common dialogue is as dull and colourless as it is. Out of nonsense the queerness of "white companies" arguing for the shortage of new markets, begging us to allow them a few more violations... more possibilites to grow, more worlds to ruin - expand the extent of damage they can muster courage for.

Raghuvansh Prasad Singh's Gossip

2005-06-15T10:58:00.000+09:00

Yesterday you were confused. You did not know if paid features were allowed in newspapers or magazines. You did know that other have asked you before, and this is an unnecessary expense. Marketing rep 1, and Aroon Purie's determination have a different plan. They plan to confuse you, gag you with words which do not mean anything and them make you sign a contract. "If you don't understand, why do you bother? We are offering you a good deal."

Tomorrow you might be clear, you will discover that a journalist is flying with you. You will discover that he will talk to you about India Today and its one crore circulation. "Sir, our readers lap up evrything we give them. They believe everything. What do you want them to believe." You will keep his visiting card.

Being upright is one thing, being honest is one thing, but being a simple conversational lollipop is another. "I for one, agree to anyone saying anything - provided he sucks up to me the right way." Lets suppose Aroon Purie does, what do we have tomorrow - the Indian Today sponsored by the ministry for rural development?

That might be good for the publisher. Aroon as it is is 60 but looks like he is 50. But what about the readers, who lap up everything. Some willl feel that they have been wasting their time, calling Raghuvansh Prasad's office asking him to sponsor their aspirations for development. So more in their village could read and write. Read news, read India Today. Make it circulate to one crore+. Each time they called, Mr. Prasad said they do not have budgetary provision for anything like anything and now India Today is supporting them and one crore people are lapping up India Today - who will believe them anymore. Believe them that the ministry doesn't listen to them & doesn't explain to them why what is good for them is not good for the government.

Mr. Prasad's new friends will call on him everytime they are running short of ADs or everytime they feel like expanding. His PA has been bribed once, he can be bribed again.

Refer: Known Turf

Obese Balloons On The Front Page

2005-06-15T03:05:00.000+09:00

Vijaypat Singhania, you were often the last person left standing on the playground. You would come and stand in the middle and behave as if the world was tied to your tail and you were fidgeting so you could shake it off.

Then we got to know each other, you would name drop a lot, you would wear exquisite suits - Raymond, perfect man you were. That you owned Raymond was a different story. Why you namedropped J R D Tata, I couldn't understand - surely you were competitiors?

Anyway, you were often the last person left standing on the playground. You would jump up and down, cheering the winning team. Your bald head seeming like a flash pan. You said you were planing to break the international ballooning world record. You would go up 70,000 feet in the sky and wish you were a few kgs lighter.

You were hiring a British firm to make you the balloon. I said, "whom are you hiring to puncture your balloon? any vacancies." "You joker!" he shouted back.

You appeared on the front page of The Times of India, not the third page of its city suplement. You apppeared on a patch which is usualy reserved for Mr. Manmohan Singh. Do you have his blessings, or do you compete ?

That sunday you blew up your balloon and you got ready to soar up into the sky, you were a bundle of excited bullshit. Frankly I didnt care if you broke the world record or not - but I would feel less guilty about being obese. Because I am not as obese as you, and if you can do it, so can I.

Refer Story Titled: "Singhania scales 28,200 ft: mission to break world hot air balloon record" i Times of India dated June 14, 2005.

Free To Corporate

2005-06-14T02:09:00.000+09:00

Shell awnsers to an angry poster on its corporate "open forum" - "we did express our disapproval and dismay about the means the government chose to silence our critics". They would have chosen to silence them in a different way. Just ignore and deny them, just claim to understand reasons behind the "roots of grass" turning blue and hostile towards you.

Royal Dutch / Shell forgot that it was already in the danger of being proven guilty. It is big, rich, arrogant and professes to have grand visions of leading the world to prosperity. How can any oil-hawker profess to desire prosperity, successfully. Siro-Wiwa was found guilty by judges who were feeling guilty about finding Siro-wiwa guilty the next day. He was hung, or shot - but exterminated. How can a poet ever be forgotten, how can guilt ever be ascertained by someone who is already guilty. He had a simple suggestion. Let so much of everything you take away go to my people. We stay here, you stay in Holland. You have other things to go back to, we have nothing else to go away to. Simplicity seems deplorable to businessmen, to politicians working under the pressure of international complexities. How can you? How dare you? Bang Bang Bang. Good thing about humans is nothing is ever forgotten, the world can never be the same again, because now we know.

Siro-wiwa had a son he wanted to come to India, this summer. Then the execution happened in November. He cried and cried and cried for two months. Now it is really hot in India - I don't know where that little child has gone away to. I don't know how I can reach him. He might be thinking his father died and Nigeria was isolated and now there is nothing to think about the roots of the grass which grow under his feet. Not the way his father used to, patiently, holding each blade of grass respectfully between his fingers, allowing each root-strand to speak fairy tales of the distances it had travelled through dense soil.

Reference: A Noose not Bracelet @ Guardian.co.uk, by Naomi Klein

Noose Not Bracelet

2005-06-13T01:56:00.000+09:00

Siro-Wiwa defended a stance too subtle for a world steered by stockbrokers, to understand. He said let the tree fall in the patch of land it grows in. But the tree was taken away to Russia, where it was made into paper, on which the Judge in America wrote, “Cease or Desist”. He ceased to be, he was not so powerful that he could ask Shell if they knew what they were doing.

And they didn't. The American ambassador who was recalled after the Siro-Wiwa was assassinated says what the oil companies do cannot be blamed for what the military executes. He says the oil companies cannot be blamed for what the military executes. If someone is to benefit from the present circumstance, it is the ease with which everyone can lie, smile and wave to smiling crowds, win elections. Truth is an equation. It is an equation which can tally in percentages.

My grandmother lived in Nairobi – she said the roads were shaded, food was abundant , snippets of the continental language sounded like language falling on drums softly.

Siro-Wiwa asked the grass under his feet for an answer to a simple question, somebody who lived to the east of Greenwich misreported his question, he was asked to undress his eyes. Refuse to see the startling simmering figment anymore.

He refused. He was executed. Nelson Mandela called for sanctions, Nigeria is isolated. Nobody can ask any questions anymore. America recalls her ambassador. A minor airline buys discounted oil and guzzles into the air. Somebody gets away from a farce by wearing white skin, a suit and tie. Guilt is a tool of mass destruction, it should be missiled across the Atlantic, across the Mediterranean.

Reference: A Noose not Bracelet @ Guardian.co.uk, by Naomi Klein

Announcement: Season Of Stories

2005-06-12T12:37:00.000+09:00

For a week, it will be story season at filament2@blogspot. I will posting 200-500 word every day this coming week. The stories will be based on actual happenings or actual news coverage in The Times of India, The Hoot.org or The Guardian (UK)

This will speak for a couple of apprehensions I have -

News is fiction. Not that news is false, but news is fiction. The perspective from which events become news is fictional. This perspective is informed and guided by a certain moralism, a certain starched judgment which continuously qualifies things happening around us. News is not a record/log of everything which is happening in the world - it is everything happening in the world from a particular perspective.
Fiction is news. The direct or imagined experience, subtext, history, encrypted commentary... of which fiction is knitted, connects in real ways with us. It becomes part of our experience, which we use to understand the world, find our place in it.

I have selected each of the three news sites for different reasons.

The Times of India - to make a comment on the reserved, disbelieving attitude most of its readers have towards the news it publishes. This publication is known for the "entertaining" flavour, which their news has. The perspective of "news" has been expanded/distorted/commercialized/belittled by them - almost singlehandedly.
TheHoot.org - it watches the media. It has another set of morals / values with which it keeps a watch on deviances / distortions by the contemporary media industry. It has a perspective - based on ideals, vision and the accorded mandate of "media".
TheGaurdian - As a source of international news. It is known to be quite diverse and I like their tone !

I might also take stories from other news sites, if these fail to excite me sometimes... will always be posting a link.

I hope you enjoy the stories, and I hope the experiment goes off well... !

Keeping Away From Cob-webs

2005-06-11T19:33:00.000+09:00

I am trying to keep away from laboured - carefully wedged-in arguments, designed to think that realities other than the reality of being are more important. Are more worth thinking about - worth disrupting sequences for.

For example, take revolutions... revolutions get the blood boiling, get the head thinking of long nights spent dreaming of deliverence. Revolutions marry theory with disaster. They are obselete. Adolscence is all about revolting against revolving dors which parents install in our minds. Revolving doors - with free wheeling motion - easy come easy go.

That's the only revolting we know. Lights can go off in the middle of the day - leaving us hot and dry. Sowing seeds is not on my agenda anymore - watering shrobs would be more like it. I can't speak one sentence, which doesn't break into miniscule pieces the world through images, which I invoke.

National Arts Policy for India ?

2005-06-11T18:34:00.000+09:00

What can be done to get more of us talking about this ?

I read Gordon Knox's interview at ArtKrush, he raises similar issues. :

AK: The interest in contemporary art in China is booming. Do you foresee the same future for Indian contemporary art?

GK: Absolutely. The great difference is that China decided some few years ago that advancing its contemporary artists was an important initiative if China was to become an even more potent global player in the world economy. The Indian government has not yet determined that developing this line of dialogue is useful. We believe this is a profound error and our work with the iCon exhibition in Venice is an effort to jump-start a change of heart both within India and with the expatriate Indian community."

Gordon Knox is the co-curator with Julie Evans and Peter Nagy of iCon: India Contemporary for the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Transport

2005-06-09T21:04:00.000+09:00

Spicejet has started 6 flights a day from Ahmedabad to Delhi and four flights a day from Ahmedabad to Mumbai. The only realistic alternatives to travelling by train until last month (when this new airline launched) was roughing it by the bus. The Volvo busses run by many travel & tour companies locally were the best best. Quick, no unnecessary stops for the driver to buy Pan or beedi and punctual. Of course the added attraction were the movies and the AC. Sometimes the movies were not the everyone-dies-in-the-end Ram Gopal Verma movies and they were fun.

With spicejet promising to cover the distance to the flying for everyone promise, which Air Deccan could only do lip service to, India is in for a rush. I have skipped going to so many places, where I felt like just because it would be too much of a hassle or get too expensive.

As an interesting sidetrack I would like to observe that - travelling by air, in pressurized Ac cabins is nothing experientially compared to doing the Volvo. I did a bus trip once long back (non-Volvo) from Delhi to Pondicherry. It took me five days and I can still brag about it.

WoW ! Blog Books...

2005-06-08T02:51:00.000+09:00

I had commented on someone's blog today that blogs will go back to be like the old diaries.. by being compiled or anthologized into books. And then a few minutes back I came across BlogBinders.com (Turn your blog into reality.) These guys offer a service of compiling and printing out blogs !

As an additional benefit they also sell the PDF file which is produced as part of the process.

Good for micrpayment shops on personal sites. "to support buy my last year's blog posting, especially selected, compiled (and proofread) for you." : )

Searching For Messiahs

2005-06-07T04:33:00.000+09:00

I think I am searching for messiahs - messsiahs move about invisible now. They do not wear clothes like us, they wear wings and fly over tea shops. Thats why I think. I doubt if any one can be a be-all do-all take care of the charged field of expectations that I have.

That we can do small work is good enough.

Between Words

2005-06-07T04:12:00.000+09:00

Each acceptance need not threaten my reluctance. What as I accept as hers, I might not accept as mine.

Been wondering about the potency of judgement and the reinforcements behind it.

I am as much more stern with myself than others. I murmur and pamper myself too much, how shitty !!

After a while someone will give me a table to sit, ask for tea. I won't speed at the speed of a speedy train, drag in breaths between words.

Defy gravity

2005-06-07T04:06:00.000+09:00

Well, social communication is not so simple. It is not so personal and idiosyncratic a way to work as I am used to !

Well the objectives are broader, the concerns critical and a lot of complex things to take care of. Its maybe like playing soccer with a bomb - which can go off, if you kick too hard.

But somehow - has to be done, with my inter-disciplinary eyes. Some stones, which I throw in anger - should reach the moon. Defy gravity.

Defy gravity. Defy Gravity. Remember that today.

Letting Strange Brew Flow Into Old Saucers

2005-06-05T02:08:00.000+09:00

Why the think tank presses the trigger and my head feels shattered as if it knows the end of no war, end of no availabilities.

Staring at the screen can become a habit, twitching, avoiding everything essential. The tea spills on my thigh, I scream the chocolates fall out of the window. The flowers with their thorns become tired of pretending, presenting their best face. Fire errupts in each lie, ever spoken in this room. My friends sleeping all over the floor, the animal of the forrest having leapt into me and there being no way out of this mess.

Salient features of the Model T of literature, the slambam poetry vending machine - it rhymes, stupid with your middle name, Guaranteed !

Old fools, small whiskers. The world is round, it figures.

When the suit-and-tie has had its buy, we will search for witnesses who can convict the Prosecutor of having vested interests. Of being a moralist. Crass carcass then will not hang from trees, the tres which line the road to your house....

Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi: a review

2005-06-04T00:17:00.000+09:00

Next time you hear a leftist ngo-types preaching to you, telling you the way this world should be. Telling you, how you should be, if you know whats' good for you... you can remember Sidharth of Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi (HKA) and get a kick out of fantasizing the end he could come to. It is summer in India and he is dreaming for the best, for the best of us. Betting his life on the world changing on Saturday, just in time for the sparrow to shit on his eyeglasses.

If One Billion minus Ninety Nine million people are wishing-well for India's future... this minus another hundered thousand are betting their lives on the world changing on Saturday - whether or not at that same time... imagine how confused the wish-fulfilling fairy will be ?

Someone wants to end globaliztion, someone wants to end dust, someone wants to end illitracy... and all of them are funded by someone of the other. Each is capable of trigering a change.

Anyway, from a ramble to a gamble. Vikram in HKA gambles on mediocrity, on well-adjusted cynicism. Mostly quite successfully. Geeta gambles on faith, in Sidharth's vision on his love and sincerity. Sidharth gambles on the world changing at that precise time on Saturday.

We see everyone's world fall apart - but all the characters are sketched so evenly, no one is made out to be a hero. You don't end up sympathizing with any one - so much so that you start hating the director. Every one seems to have - in the karmic-cycle-perspective - some reason to suffer.

This has always seemed the most difficult thing to me. The film is remarkable well-scripted.

The political context of the story - seems to be more of a potent and vocal backdrop than a major concern of the filmmaker. And it seems to me, thats the way it always is, except in history books and academic papers.

History was approached in very personal and pained steps. Nothing was said - everything was an undertone, an undertone resounding in each moment of the film.

Population Explosion

2005-06-01T14:36:00.000+09:00

I went down to Patel Media in the afternnon to check if they had a pirated copy of Final Draft 7 - I have been putting together some ideas for a feature film script. I have put the story together, am working on the characters. The shop was full of avid pirates... and it was hot. The shop-assistant was hassled, he refused to understand what Final Draft was.

One of my reactions that I was aware of - "There are so many of us, I believe in the population boom." But sometimes I wonder if the population program is not a theory. A repressive theory - which somehow conjures an entirely hysterical and dehumanized concept of India. The moment you think of India as an over-populated country - you can get away with not feeling sensitive about train mishaps, tsunamis, earthquakes....

It starts making you feel insignificant, jinxed and doomed. I wonder where this concept came from. British rule ? Direct Comparitive Inference ?

I feel the population boom is an abstract concept. Each person on the street is an idea waiting to be realized. The population boom is of ideas - not of humans. That is not possible. Humans being agents of the ideas-to-be-realized-in-them.

I think Asia, Africa... could think about this. Who really feels that some person is "extra" that s/he is part of a boom, an over-productive country ?

Everyone Knows What Will Happen

2005-05-31T12:56:00.000+09:00

Too many prophets administer the countries. And that's how we have corrupted passion. There are stories which are memorable - which relate in parables how things are - beyond the horizon. Which relate in sermons how the world should be to move towards it.

Revolutions which happened were surprises. Its becoming more and more difficult to be surprised - because we all know everything about how things will happen. Analysis is astrology.

Minds have become conceptual - they can't look beyond the logic. That seems to have worked. Made evangelists out of activists.

Nothing can ever happen now. Revolutions were all about passion - our passion is now confused.

That man who sits in the chair and stares at the window. Stares at the window. And he will do nothing all day. But he may turn his head in the evening.

Concepts are / have-to be productive. Productivity can be misleading, it can establish strange benchmarks.

Liable To Forget

2005-05-30T12:48:00.000+09:00

These days are forgettable, from the after-calm of summer, lethargy and passivity - I am choosing. The filament of my mind is already confused.

Waiting is not a primary activity - it has become a primary activity these days.

But being able to selectively withdraw - and think of something entirely different. Like writing, poetry - is so liberating.

Situations are impermanet, states of mind can become semi-permanent. They can become difficult to break out of.

I need not count metaphors, count the range of notes I can sing in. I got carried away yesterday - music entrapped by sound-proof walls. I know no one who would give beats to my paced words - give percussion till I am hopping, everyone around us is hopping and everything becomes a song.

The instruments are all there. Today maybe, I will pitch for work... "Look at me." We find it so difficult to be happy, allow ourselves to be happy - because it takes a lot.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time at Himmat - it felt nice, except I felt that things could be happening there at much more pronounced and fast pace. Does it take wisdom to allow things to happen slowly ?

Maybe.

Youth and me can possibly disfigure most vision by franctic, mindnumbing enthusiasm. Look at my father - raring to go at 55. If anybody will change the world he will. Will he like to be around in the world of his design... so many details overlooked... Remarkable patience, working selflessly for a concern which is close to you...

How many days later will I count till ten and hold my breath ? Expecting the world to disappear.

Today Morning

2005-05-28T15:53:00.000+09:00

Manju said spiritual emptiness felt like a potent hunger in the bosom. I said, "yes ?" So the plan of the morning was - we would first go to the temple and then we would come back home and get to work.

I am sitting in the temple now - ISKCON temple near the Fun Republic cross roads. I quite like temple spaces. They are so well-planned, the energy - everyone comes here with their most pious selves hanging on them ? Don't know. Haven't much thought about temples. I like to go sometimes and sit - a community space we all maintain together - for a different kind of reflection / introspection. For me the temple doesn't mean religious / ideological identification at all. Sometimes some of what you do can grow beyond your smallness. This much I believe in.

She is sitting next to me, trying to fill up her emptiness, a child runs around on the marble floor.

Would it be a good idea to wear a mala of tulsi beads ?

Climbing A Slow Escalation

2005-05-28T04:38:00.000+09:00

When does the length of a moment spread into becoming history ? I can breeze past day after day after day and I seem to be waiting for solutions to happen. Some people I meet, encourage, support - they give me hope.

But slowly I have been feeling more and more content in the patient window-watching, the patient swagger of someone has more dreams than time to live them out. Trying out so many options - what if I was still going to be left standing on the street. Being ambitious and arrogant can be dangerous, it can remove you from the danger of reality. One moment I can enjoy poetry - the next moment I can take that perfectly balanced double swing - I can risk extermination. So many web links bookmarked in my mind, everything is an option - maybe really allowing oneself to hear the creaking of the door, the ticking of the clock. There is nothing funny about not knowing how to spell tomorrow. And that's what its all about. Ask each bank account if it matters - where the money comes from. The minimum balance should be maintained to ensure the account remains open.

People I have met, drinking lemonades at the canteen, when will I meet them again ? I have let the sun dry out portraits into shrill screams, I have let the sun cast shadows on my dreams. Some people will always remember, why I met them the first time, holding an umbrella under my arms. Taking U-Turns, going past the bridge, through the under bridge - to the riverfront, looking into a dry scarce mirror.

A Nonchalant Day

2005-05-28T00:59:00.000+09:00

Today is passing away in total disregard. I have chosen to not remind myself of anything I have to do, anyone I have to meet. I have sleptin the afternoon, calmly allowing myself to be startled awake.

In trying to speak in my own lingo - I am having to deal with things I wanted to ignore. Working within the strictures of coherence and definition. I felt I could just stage private shows - in which each of the invited would take pains to listen to me, the way I dribbled, the way I speak. No one has been coming home to listen to me, everyone isaway, at most waving at me from there, outside the fence.

I am putting up my flag today.

Where am I going, only where I am not allowing myself to not go. I am slowly sliding into the grooves. What is the story ? The story is that, time has passed without asking any of us and we have been stuck in our own rants. I can breathe. Real deep, my lungs can expand to hold everything I can see, everything I want to speak. Dance itself is motion, it can never be a metaphor - metaphors who know what they arecan sink without a trace.

I am not meeting anyone - each meeting being an interview, because sooner or later I have to allow myself to love my obese body. I have to allow myself to love the conflicting, self-conscious areas I swim in. I really cannot become anything I am not, when I am not trying anything.

The story is that the volume of each TV in each room is higher than the volume of the voice I am dying to hear - the clear, potent voice which is not bothered by either newspapers or agendas or livelihood pressures.... Imagine being poor after you've had a good time, had seven bank accounts, all loaded... Who'll want to help you ? You'll only want to time-travel.

I will not wipe my feet on the mat, see if you can stop me. Potency can be diluted by a shallow comment. Or can be ignored in view of other things. Going from swing to swing to swing. Slowly settling downby the river, playing with pebbles.

The Congress is having a great time ruling India - the ruling coalition is always in the news. The newspapers love to photograph the PM, it is good filler material. Last year it was Vajepayee, this year it is Singh. My wife switched from Express to the Times because Vajepayee was Express' favourite front page model for six days in a row ! At least times changed the semi-nudes everyday...

Looking squarely at the road ahead - I can barely keep memories away. I remember that day Amy, Anne, Paulette, Miri and I were driving to Karma Chilling. It was a good sunny day for Vermont and I was halfway between hyper and hysterical and sober / intense. I was part of this writers' reidency, Vermont Studio Center at Johnson. It was a month with a freakish freedom of being able to think only in one tongue, one language. There were no fights, induldences... which I risked falling into. Standing in the middle of a meditation room, balancing my notebook on my palm and writing poetry. Words were seeming to be neatly patterned in bits of rhythm.

Some snippets reach out to me quite intensely - our guide, Ukranian had quite a stylish slant in her smile, she was like slang rung out intemple bells. And like small child's half-smiling prayer.

Her introductory fragment in the cafe, her taking us around the centre... The room where Shambhala Budhism was born ! She saw us offto the path which went up to the retreats.

Making conversation, talking of meditation. The stupa / shrine in the middle of that forest clearing. Covered by hay, surrounded by hills. Half thawed slices of ice on the ground, small streams of waterflowing from here to there.

We walked thrice around the shrine, those of us who knew how to pray, prayed. And then we were all rushing back to our center in Amy's car. Which reminds me I haven't yet written back to her. At that moment I was feeling the sheer expanse, the scale of the silence, peace around me. Large fields strewn with small huts, converted to antique shops. Small covered bridges, dogs barking at passing cars.

At that moment, I felt I would like to come back to US some day... I still feel that.

From the room of memories

2005-05-27T03:13:00.000+09:00

Its been a couple of weeks already since I returned from my long trip. I travelled quite a bit. I am toying with the idea of writing a travelogue... ? Writing from the experiences, the happenings, the memories of the sensory remains... ?

But I am not sure, I seem to be playing with so many ideas, actually not so many. I need to hold my hand and not let it shake under its own weight. Today, maybe I am taking decisions out of a different need.... need to slowly build a view out of the fragments and disjointed peepshows. A view which I can see calmly for some time, as I think of what to say, where to go, how to breathe.

Actually I was not very keen to go on this trip, it was going to cost much more than I could afford and I was not really sure of the logical consistency of doing so... Go to US to write poetry ? Whatever did I mean ? India has enough green space, free space.

I realize it was not about space, it was about getting away. Not just from friends and family but from my culture, country, context and everyday-grind. All the things which were slowly convincing me to be nonpluses, frozen... a mute spectator ?

I have a big problem - trying to figure out how to speak, being overwhelmed enough by impulses to speak, scream, yodel ! Not only is my culturing too politically correct, it is too perfectionist, it is too worrisome -- worried about the balloon bursting, and all the paper
snippets, all the shiny deco spilling out.

It is nearly midnight and I am realizing silence for me is not so good - as it is silence for me only means, not appearing to speak. Under my skin, behind my eyes, words are being translated to hysteria, ambition and paralysis, ruining all the dams I have built over the years.

Chasing The Concept

2005-05-22T17:41:00.000+09:00

I wouldn't start describing this day by speaking of circumstance, my impatience or the way the world would swell up inside me and threaten to spill out. In the midst of my experience – feeling vaguely lost and listless and very charged, ready to strike at the same time, I got a vague idea of the other things which were going on in the world.

In that fantasy I believed that my friend in the drivers' seat was driving with me through life. That the roads we were crossing were only through time. We were reaching absolutely somewhere, we were going absolutely somewhere.

Today's news will not reflect my heartbroken night, the exact time when the paper was being printed across town. Today's news will not reflect any story of anyone in this city. The front page is a monument to the day in the currency of the world leaders and the wannabes. Every eye which will read the paper today will have her own story running in her head. Every eye will be a heartbroken eye.

My filament2 lighted up today - I believe - when I could string up sentence after sentence after sentence, in the waiting room as my wife saw the doctor. But I am still approaching the concept of the "filament2" - "the greater filament", I am thinking about the myriad kinds of connections, deliverances happening during the day, which lights up more of us than just a specific cubic inch in our brain.