tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346052172024-03-05T20:23:30.832-08:00Walking the LabyrinthJigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-4942693210189900442012-05-04T08:47:00.002-07:002012-05-04T08:52:49.097-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Sisyphus </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This
is how it happens. I choose not to know anything. I try my best to avoid any
familiarity with him. Don’t tell me his name. Yes, this is what I tell them.
Because it starts with the name, and if you allow some liberty, if you loosen
up even for a moment, then it starts housing in you, in one of the many unvisited
rooms contained within you, and it remains there forever. The white of his
cloth clung to his sweaty back, his hairy hands shivering, the unkempt beard,
and his eyes, always the eyes. I dare not look into them. But he looks at you.
He always does. And oftentimes your glances meet. No sir, I don’t want to
remember that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">He
has the most unsatisfied shit that day. Not the kind that thaws his heart. A
good, smooth shit can make you feel elated, the jailor once told me, but they
never shit properly on their last day, they can’t. That’s the jailor’s theory.
It is a curious thing to observe, but there you go. So when he stands near me,
his heart almost racing, I wrap his head with a dark cloth, and the jailor,
standing in the other direction, admires his sorry body about to swing
helplessly and winks at me because I am supposed to respond to our little
in-joke about the shit. It is difficult to smile then but I do. Don’t tell me
what he has done and I will smile as much as you want. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s
been more than three decades now. Earlier I used to remember his face, not
without feeling glum or guilty. He used to torture me in dreams. Torture me
when I was awake. Pull the lever and squeeze every ounce of life... out of all
the possible things that you could do, how did you end up doing this? Then one
night when he reappeared, I made peace with him. I took his face, his sweaty cloths,
his name, the sound of his hasty heartbeats, that chilling gaze – a device he
used to scare me, and threw everything in a deep well and closed the lid tight. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Even
today, when he stands near me, his hands tied from behind, he wants me to
recognize him. Wants me to know that he’ll be back. It starts the moment I tie
a rope around his neck. He starts pushing that lid. He starts coming out of the
deep well with enormous might. It tightens my chest. It gets tougher with every
passing second. Inside that black mask, I can almost see him grinning.
Restless, almost panicky, my nose of no great use, I have to take big scoops of
air with my mouth. I feel as if I might pass out, once and for all. That is
when I pull the lever… and things get back to normal. </span></div>
</div>Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-58166949209459873242012-04-30T01:55:00.000-07:002012-04-30T01:55:22.732-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<b>The Note
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You are in a library. You amble around the racks. You are not really looking for anything. It’s just that you are not sure what else you could be doing. So you browse through the books. Then you stumble upon The Jungle Book. You’ve never read that book. You open a page at random, and find a note. First you don’t give much heed to it. It’s a note after all. Oftentimes people leave notes in books. But the one you discover is a double folded page length note. You decide to take a look at it. It’s addressed to anyone who cares so much as to take a look at it. It is an invitation of sorts. Your curiosity is piqued. </div>
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It informs of a curious kind of book. It explains that a book exists that requires not one, but two readers to read it. As in, a single reader can’t read it. It’s not a magical book or something, but its structure is such that no matter how much a single reader tries, nothing makes sense to him unless another joins. With two people reading it, the book transforms into a web of meaning, something so ultimately satisfying that no other book will be able to surpass its pleasures. The note doesn’t explain the architecture of the book or how it functions. But it is quite matter-of-fact in its description. As if there’s nothing strange about the existence of such a book. The note then cordially invites you to join in the reading of this strange book. It is signed by a girl. Not the book but the possibility of contact has thrilled you. </div>
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Because the note is signed and not dated, it is difficult to know when it was written. But it mentions that if you are interested in the offer, you must respond by writing a similar note affirming your interest and must provide your contact details. You should then place your reply at exactly the same place in the book where you had found the note. You do the needful and replace the book on the rack. </div>
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You are doubtful at first. It may happen that someone issues the book, finds your note in there, and throws it into a dustbin. End of story. There’s no possibility of further contact with the mystery girl. Or worse still, maybe the girl – if at all it’s a girl’s doing – who has left the note in the first place had done so more than a year back and having received no reply she got tired of waiting and forgot about it completely. If it has to go wrong, there are a thousand ways it can. But there’s no harm in trying. </div>
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You decide to check how many people have issued The Jungle Book. It’s only a natural reflex. But you quickly discard that idea. Let it be a mystery. You walk out of the library, unaware that for the rest of your life you’ll never be able to look at The Jungle Book without thinking of lost possibilities.
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</div>Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-59941017923449327542011-09-07T23:05:00.000-07:002011-09-07T23:12:16.673-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Camera Lucida</span><br /><br />This is where it comes down to.<br />Like in a lake reflecting,<br />A temple on a mountain, and a snake therein<br /><br />In this grand human drama, <br />We too yearn to be preserved. <br />To be memorized in a frame, because<br />Passing through, we are destined for oblivion.<br /><br />That this feeble reality, <br />With all its ecstasy and agony, is but a dot on an infinite plane.<br />Free of history, of future, of past, of regrets, of any burden, <br />We have come to this instance.<br /><br />Strange, <br />That the mirror which captures us is itself captured by the other,<br />Which in turn by another<br /><br />What remains after us is this moment, this reflection of images,<br />A proof that there was life, after all <br />But where is He who placed the first mirror?<br /><br />Here, in the quincunx of mirrors, only He remembers…<br />Or perhaps He does not, that we who are the victims of memory,<br />We too have lived and loved.Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-64462666001281739702010-02-24T05:12:00.001-08:002010-02-25T22:14:57.675-08:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj9aF-2vUFAhLRIvNCjva_zhmayG9-gKnIdEmPjC2bqc0zxxYwVrRKAEx-74W13LrN5Mkbdp9I13ndJYzXZfGXv4XW3B6OK1L_f6vE0Z28W1hQN6ImAZicbAkUPuT43dCU9tue/s1600-h/ogawa.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 266px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441808431188501618" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj9aF-2vUFAhLRIvNCjva_zhmayG9-gKnIdEmPjC2bqc0zxxYwVrRKAEx-74W13LrN5Mkbdp9I13ndJYzXZfGXv4XW3B6OK1L_f6vE0Z28W1hQN6ImAZicbAkUPuT43dCU9tue/s400/ogawa.jpg" /></a><br /><strong>The Professor's Beloved Equation</strong><br /><br /><div>Came across a beautiful book by chance and fell in love with its humble characters. It reassured me that it is still possible in today’s time to write without cynicism, while still avoiding the usual sentimental clichés. The book, <em>The Housekeeper and the Professor</em>, written by Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa is about three characters: a housekeeper, her son, and the Professor.<br /><br /><em>We called him the Professor. And he called my son Root, because,<br />he said the flat top of his head reminded him of the square root sign.</em><br /><br />With an opening sentence like this, one is intrigued enough to read a little more, still further, one more page, until it becomes really difficult to part with the book halfway. Its charm lies entirely in the humanness and simplicity of the characters. The story is narrated by the housekeeper. She is assigned by her agency to look after the Professor, who is apparently alone, is in his seventies, and whose memory lasts only eighty minutes. It is certainly difficult to look after a man who will not remember her the next day. In a situation like this, where memory no longer helps, where there is no rigid ground for people to connect, numbers come for a rescue. They bond over mathematics.<br /><br />The housekeeper is not mathematically sound, but is patient with the Professor whose effusions are also numeral. He is a dense man, has been living with this ailment for a long time, and sticks notes to his coat like: <em>my memory lasts only eighty minutes </em>or<em> the housekeeper has a son</em>. The sight of him sitting in his study doing things that matter to him, which includes hours of silent thinking, is at once sad and intriguing. With simple prose, Ogawa reveals layer after layer of the Professor’s persona, channeled through the housekeeper’s eyes - who is caring, empathic, and her observations make some of the best paragraphs of the book. If it sounds like a mystery, then it is a mystery about the human heart. There are no lurking or bygone secrets in this book; nothing the characters should come to terms with in order to conclude the story. It is like a flow. It is about people who could have ended up lonelier had they not met each other. It is about the goodness of life that makes such chance meetings possible.<br /><br />Professor provides a sort of grandfather-figure for the housekeeper’s son. He teaches him mathematics and they share a common interest for baseball. The housekeeper and her son remember everything they converse with the Professor about numbers and baseball everyday, but he does not. And I leave it solely on the reader to discover how nicely Ogawa handles the growing relationship between them, with the Professor being a constant, as days gather into months, and months gather into years. There is something beyond memory that binds us humans. The book never explains what it is. It vaguely alludes to numbers as a possible connecting factor. However, there are places where things get a little unconvincing, at times the feelings of the characters appear palpable, but as a reader I am not too critical; I generally get carried away, and am always ready to suspend my disbelief if the story offers something that appeals to me. This one did.<br /><br />There are numerous references to prime numbers and equations. But they don’t disturb the flow of the narrative. They are not there as the display of the author’s erudition. They merge with the story, with the characters, and aids explanation to feelings otherwise difficult to explain. It made me feel that Yoko Ogawa not only knows mathematics, but possesses a wonderful ability to lift numbers from the logical realm and carry them to the emotional zones. After I finished reading it, I realized that she must have undergone a complex thought process to produce something so simple. It is a feat. </div>Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-61879741915130195332009-11-06T03:47:00.001-08:002009-11-06T03:47:48.320-08:00<strong>Midnight Hymn for the Unrest</strong><br /><br />Questions! Always questions!<br />Better questions than answers<br />The delight is in the uncertain<br /><br />And the interpreters of everything<br />Better be a symphony than a composer<br />Better surrender than investigate<br /><br />Life may be elsewhere<br />A touch, a smell, a feel, a taste<br />But it is near – so near!<br /><br />The blue sheet of water<br />The brown film of soil<br />The green shade of tree – feel alive!<br /><br />The theory, a final explanation<br />All roads lead to unification<br />A joke – everything but laughter<br /><br />Myths and mysteries – rejected<br />Laws – accurate but dry<br />A need for God<br /><br />A search for the purpose<br />A search for the self<br />Endless labyrinth, finite footprints<br /><br />A goal in the making<br />A future tirelessly perceived<br />The traveler of chance, racing after tomorrows<br /><br />It does has speed<br />A promise of light<br />How beautiful life be, if lived in moments<br /><br />A will not ready to submit to boredom<br />The philosophy to live recurrently changing<br />But the wisdom may just be there<br /><br />Joy in sorrow and hope in longing<br />Love – the essence of life<br />It is there – very much there<br /><br /><em>In the blink of an eye, you discover everything</em>Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-63021839406328410592009-09-17T21:42:00.000-07:002010-03-09T23:16:05.980-08:00<strong>Mother, Effusions , and Salt</strong><br /><br />The sterility of the kitchen will always mark the absence of their mother, at least for them. There was something unexplainable about the sweet spicy smell wafting from the kitchen every morning, spreading from room to room, filling the home with a sort of life-affirmation. It gave one an unconscious hope that someone was there… This house, with its kitchen and rooms rusted in time, still echoes distant laughter. When they lived here decades ago, the place didn’t appear as glorious as it does now. “Was it any different from what it is now?” asks the younger of the two. Nostalgia must be some trick of the mind.<br /><br />Both brothers, who are now living separate lives in separate cities, had decided to return home, together again, if only for a day, to rejoice in the past. So here they are in the kitchen, trying to prepare a recipe just the way mother did… Mother.<br /><br />“It was then that she had told me ‘in a year or so your brother will also leave this house’. I mean, it is understandable. You were about to finish your graduation. She had spent her life raising us…”<br />“And with us taking charge of our own lives, she was left with no purpose at all?” interrupted the younger one.<br />“That’s what I think.”<br />“But she was happy, wasn’t she?”<br />“It’s not about her happiness; yes, it’s about that too. But I wonder… have we ever thought of her as just another ordinary human being, with human desires and doubts like everyone else… like, did she ever seek ambition? Did she ever regret the life she had chosen? We always felt secure in her presence, as if she had all the answers. It was so comforting. If I ever miss anything real bad, it is that expression of hers. That all-knowing, everything-will-be-fine expression! How did she do that? ... Do we even know her?”<br /><br />Mothers are mysterious and sometimes sorrowful, according to the elder brother. The younger one calls him too emotional for his own good. To prepare a recipe just the way mother did is a difficult task. Because the taste and aroma of her food depended not only on the spices, the pastes, and the gravy she prepared; it also depended on her moods, her emotions, her whole-hearted acceptance of the kitchen as a workshop, and the painterly skills with which she created food that might have given her artistic joy, who knows? To prepare food like her required to be like her.<br /><br />“It must be God…” begins the elder one.<br />“Is that enough?”<br />“A little bit more, add some lime juice too. That’s it.”<br />“You know it too well.”<br />“You were lazy enough to learn, then.” They smile quietly. “By the way, this will taste best with some chavanu sprinkled over it!”<br />“What were you saying about God?”<br />“I just think it was her belief in God that kept her hinged.”<br />“And with all your doubts you don’t share her faith!” the younger one says in a jovial, if sarcastic, tone, knowing too well that these effusions are not new; they have been thrown at him time and again, whenever they are on their own. “Why this urge, brother?” he continues, “why this urge to understand her? We don’t understand so many things.”<br />“She was mother!” replies the elder one, and adds, “It’s not that these questions are tormenting me. I just want to know.”<br />“Let her be mysterious, as I always tell you. Let her evade your understanding forever. Okay, let us do what we are here for. Let us prepare this dish.”<br /><br />They are midway through their preparation. But they are not alone. Somewhere in time, mother is also preparing the same dish, in the same kitchen, only a little younger. She is adding turmeric. So are they. She has added a clove of garlic. So have they. She is stirring. So are they. She leans over and smells the aroma. So do them. Onion by onion, clove by clove, sugar by sugar, pepper by pepper they are trying to catch up with her. All they have to do is to surrender and stop inquiring. A symphony is not played so that one can understand; it is to be felt.<br /><br />Then, as if by chance, they acquire the same gestures and emotions that mother is having. The steam from the pan smells familiar. Mother and children are almost at the same stage, though separated in time; the color, the smell, the taste of both the preparations ring out in accordance. A moment in the past and a moment in the present resonate in unity: a little pattern of order is formed in the eternal chaos of space and time. It is as if everything is clear, the way a newborn child looks at the universe – not with doubt, but with marvel. Oh! It was so simple, and we spend ages trying to understand. But before they can comprehend it, before they can put it in words, they lose it. How long it lasted is an unnecessary question. It was too fragile for words to capture.<br /><br />In the distant kitchen mother turns back and smiles at both the brothers sitting at the dining table, scribbling in their maths journals as if by compulsion, waiting for the food to be prepared. The food is ready. They start eating. But the taste and smell of the dishes are not the same anymore.<br /><br />“Something is missing, isn’t it?” asks the elder brother.<br />“Salt, maybe?”Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-91342401986790616242009-03-01T22:42:00.000-08:002009-04-29T01:56:56.086-07:00<strong>Rose in the Abyss</strong><br /><br />What one understands of those lonely winters?<br /><br />In the beehive of beehives, my legs move<br />In the residue of dreams, I smell her bosom<br />As I try to snuggle, so I understand<br />She too is a fantasy, dreamt in solitude<br /><br />So I pick up a book, lying in the dust of time<br />My eyes run over hazy words, scribbled by a lonely warrior<br />Between us, centuries of separation<br />But the joy is real, so are our agonies<br /><br />(unfinished poem...can't think further)<br /><p></p>Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34605217.post-72117838263108886582008-11-20T01:50:00.001-08:002011-05-04T02:28:57.875-07:00<strong>The Memory of Eden</strong><br /><br />You are observing a shelf in the British council library. You slide some books here and there and notice a face – a pretty face on the other side of the shelf. It’s a girl whose big watery eyes are moving from one book to another. She is tardily breathing with her small nose. You like the way she is breathing. She softly bites her lower lip and rolls back both her lips to moisten them, and pouts them back, as they were, pink and inviting. Hair firmly tied, with her forehead shining, she has the kind of face you’d like to keep looking at. It can be called beautiful but that would not explain it. It is intriguing. She picks up some book, shuffles few pages, halts at a particular page, and after some time gives a faint, though noticeable, smile. She has dimples. You have always loved dimples. Before long, you are filled with an urge to caress those cheeks real gently. That would feel really nice, isn't it? But you quickly discard that thought. That's how you've been raised.<br /><br />You are watching her unaware of anything else in the world. ‘She is lovely’, you have told yourself a thousand times by now. And suddenly she glances at you. You feel shattered, and pretend to read the back cover of Hawkins’ <em>On the shoulder of giants</em> as if it interests you. But don’t worry, she’s not angry. Every female admires it: a pair of male eyes fixed on her face. But the stares of admiration should submit to an interval - too long a stare can be disturbing for anyone.<br /><br />Your heart has picked the pace. You are excited. You try looking at her again putting Hawkins aside. But she’s no more in the science section. You search for her like the players of the game search for perfection. At last you find her in the History section. You go near her and pick Edward Gibbon. She notices you and gives you a look; a very strange look that can never be interpreted. Maybe, she is thinking that only a fool will read about the fall of Rome in the times of random terror attacks and global economic crash. But you are not really bothered about what goes inside her head. Not yet.<br /><br />You try to talk to her. You really want to. But as you prepare your mouth to produce audible words, something holds you back. Maybe it is the superego (a feeling that some big brother is wathcing and you should abide by his rules) or maybe it is some fear – some unknown fear concerning the future.<br /><br />“Is this the girl I have been waiting for?”<br />-- Oh Come on! Don’t think this far.<br />“But... I will loose this part of me... the lonely wanderings... it is my urge to be complete with some girl that keeps me excited...”<br />-- At least talk. You do want to, don’t you?<br />“I do... but it’s a matter of choice... the pleasure of love is acute in the span between the yearning for ‘the other’ and actually finding someone... it is the <em>between</em> that I don’t want to loose... it lasts only for a sort while, this thing called love... all then remains is need”<br />-- This is an outsider's view. The view is quite different from the inside.<br />“Maybe, but I don’t know what to talk... what can you possibly talk about with a stranger... you know, I think I can wait a bit more... I can...”<br />-- Stop talking nonsense, will you? There’s no harm in talking. Everybody does that. Take it as a simple affair of two people conversing. It can be, in fact, nothing more than that. <br />"Yes, but where to begin?"<br />-- Just start and you'll know. People talk. It's a fact of life.<br />“I know. But I am not sure…”<br />-- Congrats! She left. Now spend this beautiful evening with Gibbon.<br /><br />You stand there still unaware of what just happened. Why desires come into play? Okay. Don’t worry about the girl now. You haven’t lost anything. Or have you? Now you have all the time you want. Select a nice book for this weekend. Sadly you shuffle different books in different sections of the library...<br /><br />Naipaul’s <em>Loss of El Dorado</em>, Hemingway’s <em>Men without Women</em>, Barrow’s <em>Impossibility</em>, Green’s <em>Lawless Roads</em>, Maugham’s <em>Of human bondage</em>, Sullivan’s <em>Labyrinth of desires</em>, Brunton’s <em>Search in secret</em>... What! Are you upset? Can’t choose anything? Oh! Come come, it's ok now... Narayan’s <em>Vendor of sweets</em>, Nietzsche’s <em>Human, all too Human</em>, Gould’s <em>Hedgehog</em>... And, as usual, you are not able to decide which book you want to read. You decide to pick up any book and leave. So, you pick up the one lying besides <em>Gray’s anatomy</em>.<br /><br />You catch bus number 11G and go directly to Broadway, with a regular feeling of incompleteness in your heart. Like every other day you couldn’t choose a book, couldn’t talk to a girl. You couldn’t decide what you want.<br /><br />At night you dwell into your dream world, where you have an archetypal book (the one in which all possible knowledge is contained, wherein not a single idea is missed. All that is thought by all possible human beings is in that book) and you have your archetypal girl – the way you want her: color of her eyes, length of her hair, smoothness of her skin, the fragrance of her breath, the throb in her voice, the way she turns, the way she sits, the way she looks at you, the way her hair fall on her forehead, the way she reacts to your jokes, the span of her boredom, the movement of her eyebrows when she frowns, the way her lips part when she speaks – her every gesture, her every desire, her every joy, even her sorrows are what you have decided. Every night you sleep embraced in this beautiful thought of yours. And every night you fail to notice that you are always trying to map the ideal over the real.<br /><br />Maybe, it’s not only your problem. Maybe, this problem comes in hereditary from one man to the other. Maybe it is not rooted in you, but it is rooted deep inside the collective unconsciousness of humankind. It is the collective idea of some perfection that never was. Isn't it from this womb that all the miseries are born? Maybe, all the dreamers are endlessly trying to regain this never-existing perfection. Be it knowledge or beauty, they are never satisfied. And what do they get in the end? In search of the infinite, they end up in void.<br /><br />Next day you go to the library again...Jigarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10415921549462017325noreply@blogger.com6