what passes off for news in indian media

I watched this clip on zoom (yes, my own fault) about Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha, and god is it ridiculous or what? Here is the breaking news: Amitabh Bachhan was at an award show, he was walking up to the stage, he passed Rekha, Rekha was looking at him as he walked her by and he walked by. umm... i am still waiting for the news.

What happened? Nothing? Then what was the big deal?

If one person is walking up to the stage and they stop on the way, they falter, they say hi to someone, they talk to someone, well even that is not news, it happens, but the fact that they were focused and kept walking in the direction they were going is most certainly unremarkable, every one does that.

If you are sitting in the front row and someone is walking by, you will have to look at them, it would take a lot of effort to look away, why would you bother doing that. So she looked at him, and he walked by, seriously, who cares? But apparently this is enough for some people to lose their marbles.

This passes off for main stream Indian media? This is journalism? By what standards is this news?
arghh!

Now the other part of the picture, let us for the sake of argument assume that maybe there is something between them. Let us agree that she actually has some feelings for him - no i am not saying that based on badly edited flimsy evidence the zoom people provide, i am just saying, for no reason in the world at all, let us just take that as a given. Even then, where is the news.

So one person likes another person, the second person does not reciprocate those feelings, the first person is unable to get rid of their own feelings, I am still looking for the news? They are not stalking anybody, they are not going out of their way to impose themselves on the object of their desire, they are just choosing to experience an emotion they have, and not bowing down to the fanatic societal pressure that tells them that what they feel inside their bones is wrong. Yes, it stands to reason that they are being self destructive, it is counter productive, and no good ever comes out of this kind of business, but still, it is their life to live, and their life to mess up. Leave them alone people. I do not know a single person, and I do mean a single person on the face of this earth, who has not experienced unrequited love at some point or another in their lives. It is as prevalent as human beings are.

The duration is immaterial, whether you suffered for two hours or two days, you remember what it felt like. You can extrapolate and imagine what it would feel like for someone who has been nursing this for two decades. No, don't tell me you cannot. If you have ever burnt your finger you can imagine the hell it would be if you sustained whole body burns. Yes, it would take some imagination, a whole lot of compassion, and kindness, but if we apply ourselves, everysingle one of us is capable of imagining what it would feel like to be in someone else's shoes, within an acceptable margin for error. So maybe we can stop being Mr. Lazybones and exert ourselves, and let people be.

And finally, the feminist in me is offended by the insulting tone this channel uses for Rekha. If a man nursed a wound for a woman for ages, he would be deified, and hero-fied. The woman would be made out to be a callous, calculating, cold-hearted B***h, who hurt him. But when a woman holds out for a man, the man is made out to be a decent family man being unnecessarily harrased by some female banshee who does not take no for an answer. They make Rekha look so pathetic. Oh my god! are you kidding me! get out of my face! seriously!

That's why I don't watch TV.

december books

So i had decided to start keeping track of the books i read, coz i find i am getting more forgetful lately, this list is to be irrespective of whether i liked them or not.

hmm..

what did i read this last month:

Anna Karenina
1984
Games people play


that's it? I have been reading all month, how is that possible? :( this memory loss is more real than i thought :D

उस हाथ का साया सर पर था
तब बाप का साया सर पर था
मैंने गलियों गलियों ढूँढा जिसको
वो पीर तो मेरे घर पर था
उस हाथ का साया सर पर था
तब बाप का साया सर पर था

the rogue data point... excerpt

here is an excerpt from a story i am supposedly working on, supposedly coz, i am not actually working on it. it is just sitting here...

To my happy place,

The source of youth, renewal, and forgiveness

To T,

For her receiver transmitter analogy

And

To Mohammad Rafi,

For singing so beautifully ‘tumne mujhe dekha, ho kar meherbaan, ruk gayi ye zameen tham gaya aasman’

(You looked at me, in kindness; the earth stopped, the heavens bowed)

Started: 17 March, 2009

Finished: not yet

Dr. Mahesh Dixit was at the clinic when the call came, a barrage of words that he is supposed to understand, but somehow do not seem to be making any sense. An accident, his wife, severe traumatic brain injury, subdural hemorrhage, the information does not sink in to the extent that he actually debates whether or not he should ask Patricia to cancel all his day’s appointments.

He drives himself to the hospital, all the time wondering if it was a mistake of some sorts, because shouldn’t she have been at work, what was she doing down at queen street anyways? It was only when he saw her, in the sterile hospital bed, surrounded by the low hum of equipment over which was the voice of this bright young thing, rehashing the very same words that Dr. Mahesh Dixit has himself fed to countless spouses and their families before, that a strange numbness spread down his arms. He glanced at the name tag, Gordon Smith, first year? He must have said it out loud because the bright young thing was now defending himself with medical jargon that doctors throw down at the simple folk. Dr. Dixit just stared at him, the numbness having now made its way to the rest of his body.

“Dr. Dixit! I have been waiting for you.” It was Janelle, one of his favourite nurses, from back when he was an attending neurosurgeon at this very hospital years ago. She glanced at the listless figure that was his wife, pursed her lips and looked away. Then with an effort that showed, she walked around the bed, and hugged him, “I am so sorry.”

Dr. Gordon smith had now stopped talking, it was the sheer helplessness of the young doctor’s expression that set off a cold bitterness cruising through Dr. Dixit’s veins, his stomach churning, and before he knew what was happening, he was throwing up in a bin.

The next few days are a blur. She never regained consciousness. He was never left alone. friends, or supposedly friends, they are all husbands of her friends, people who surround him, who look into the details of the funeral arrangements, and their wives who take over the home, filling it with so much unnecessary food. Women, when they don’t know what to do, they bring you food. And they say stupid stuff; like God’s will, and destiny, and she is in a better place; when they don’t know what to say why don’t they just shut up? He totally understands why Rohan has not come home, why he is staying at a friend’s place, and no matter what these women tell him, he is not going to call him until he knows what to say to a boy who has just lost his mother.

Sanjana was different, she came home, she cried, she hugged him, she went to see Rohan, she did the laundry, she did everything a sensible person would do, everything except she ironed her mother’s blouses and hung them in the exact color coded spot in her closet where she herself would have hung them. That was the only indication he had that Sanjana did not know what she was doing either.

These days he spends half his time trying to remember the last thing he said to her, it was something about a soap dispenser, it was not important at all, another one of those mundane conversations they have been having these past many years, only now, that conversation has acquired new meaning. What was it? He keeps racking his brains, what had she said? Somethigna about buying it on sale, what had he said? Something not nice, not intentionally bad of course, but he remembers having hurt her slightly, he had not meant to, and he knows that she knew that, she was not mad at him either. A lousy soap dispenser. This is nto what it should come down to, a twenty year long relationship ending with – not even an argument, not a fight, at least you could have had that, gone out with a bang, said something terribly mean and hurtful, something worth being guilty about for the rest of your life, but it was not that. Their last conversation was unremarkable, nothing stood out, no grand last words, no frilly promises, no instructions, no secret desires or wishes revealed, nothing, there was absolutely nothing in it that you could hold on to.

He had gotten her clothes, her bag, her shoes with a heel missing, and the remnants of what was her phone at the hospital that day. He has gone over the contents of her bag many times in order to make sense of what has happened. You see, he gets the old woman driving the car, looking away for a second, he thinks it is acceptable that Ipsita came out of nowhere, he understands the accident, the injury, and her subsequent death. All of that makes sense, the part he still doesn’t get, is just what was his wife doing at that place at that time? It is the kind of thing he cannot speak to anyone about, without making it look like he doubted her and he did not, it is just that it does not add up.

Her purse was full of junk you would expect, nothing out of the ordinary, make-up, wallet, cards, money, loose change, a couple of business cards – some investment banker and a nail salon, and receipts – a bag full of receipts, from all sorts of places, grocery, dry cleaning, gas. For all her organization, he wonders why she never threw out the garbage receipts, what did she plan to do with a receipt of bread bought five months back? You are not going to return it, why hold on to it? He has figured out that she had a dentist’s appointment that day, she evidently left work for it, her car was parked in the basement, why did she not drive? If she was not going to her dentist’s why did she not call to cancel? That was not like her at all; Ipsita was meticulous about keeping appointments, so why would she choose to miss an appointment she apparently left work for and then go in the exact opposite direction? It is the one fact that does not sit in with the rest, the one piece of the puzzle that stands out, the one question he would very much like answered.

It was almost a month after she had passed away that he noticed the coffee shop receipt from the day of her accident, and he didn’t tell anyone about it. He told Patricia to find him an hour’s break between patients and went to the place, with her picture, he felt guilty doing it, but he did not know what else to do. The girl remembered her, mostly because of the accident; she was sure the lady sat alone and did not talk to anyone. ‘She seemed thoughtful, pensive, you know, like she knew what was coming.’ This was said in a conspiratorial, half leaning into him, whisper. Dr. Dixit took in her blonde dreadlocks, the charms, her crystal bracelets; he realized he must have been staring at the pentacle on her neck, because she touched it and said ‘Oh! I am a witch, you know.’

‘Right. Right. Of course.’ He nodded, stepping back.

‘I can see you were related…’ it sounds like a question, takes him a few seconds to answer, ‘Yes, She was my wife.’

‘Oh I am so sorry.’

‘Thank you. But are you sure she was alone?’

‘Yes. But I am really sorry, I should have done something.’ He is perplexed what does she mean, ‘I saw her ethereal aura expanding, but I am new to reading auras and I doubted myself, I did not want to scare her, but now I know I was right, I should have warned her. I am so sorry.’

It is perhaps his professional training that reassuring people comes so naturally to him. ‘No, it was not your fault; don’t beat yourself up for it.’ He says. ‘Did it look like she was waiting for someone?’

The girl looks away, bites her lip, ‘Umm…. Now that you mention it, I think it was the other way round. I think she gave up on waiting for someone. Like she was finally ready to let go, to leave. You know.’ She expects some appreciation for this deep insight. Dr. Dixit has none for her. ‘But then, why would she come here? She had to be meeting someone. Was she looking outside? at her watch? Anything of that sort, that looked like she could be waiting for someone?’

‘No, not that I can think of.’ She is not happy that he was not grateful for her deeply perceptive observations, he seemed more hung up on obvious details.

‘Was she making phone calls?’

The girl really does not know. ‘I was working you know.’

‘How long would you say she stayed here?’

‘I don’t know, an hour maybe.’ There was a lineup beginning to form behind him ‘You shouldn’t do that you know.’

‘Do what?’

‘Think ill of the dead, it hurts them.’

‘I am not thinking ill of my wife.’ There was anger rising in his voice.

‘You are doubting her, snooping around.’ It is an accusation he cannot bear to hear, the audacity of this, this little chit of girl, what does she know what he is doing. ‘I am not snooping around. I am trying to understand why she was here in the first place, when she should have been at the dentist’s or at work. That is not doubting.’ He is almost talking to himself now. ‘In the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, why would she sit here, for an hour, alone?’

‘Oh I know you are hurting. But she had to come here.’

‘Had to, why?’

‘To die. She was meant to die here, so of course, she had to come here, she could not have been at her work or the dentist’s, this is where she was meant to be.’

‘Right.’ it is more than what he can take, he has had his full of this brand of philosophy. It is too much, he is walking out, this girl; he wonders if she has lost her brains, or never had any to begin with. She calls out behind him, ‘I am sorry for you, for what it is worth, she had a beautiful soul you know.’

‘Right.’ He waves his hand abruptly and steps out.

The freezing air hits him with a bang; he wraps his scarf around his neck, he shakes his head trying to get rid of the ‘witch’, no it still does not make sense. Why did she miss an appointment to do nothing and if she just sat here doing nothing, why did she not call the dentist? That girl is wrong. It is not like he does not trust her, twenty years of being together; she never gave him any reason to doubt her. It is just, it is….

anna karenina

I am just about finished reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and I say I really enjoyed it. I had tried reading it a few years back, well, many years back but I did not like it at all, I barely got past the first page, perhaps it had to do with that particular translation; this time it really jelled.

My first reaction, after reading about three pages was that of utmost joy. I have not enjoyed anything this much since Jane Austen. So I was just unabashedly happy with the mere thought that I had War and Peace to look forward to. Yes, yes, it is stupid to think about the next book when you still have about nine hundred and sixty pages left to read in the book in your hand and that probably qualifies for another kind adultery, but, whatever. I was just so amazed that here is this wonderful book, this writer, that I have known of all my life, and yet, have never bothered to read, and there is not just what is in my hands but more of what he has written. An embarrassment of riches if there ever was one.

Now, having almost finished it, I am a fan of his writing style. He is able to draw each character in such detail, he is able to relate to them all emotionally and he is able to give the appearance of them all being very different from each other. That in my opinion is the hardest thing for a writer, at least that is what I think right now. I am impressed by how equally well he can describe what the women and the men in the book feel, think, and want. Being a woman, I always find myself wondering what the men think and feel, mostly because of this notion in popular culture that men and women are so different.

Personally I am intimidated by the though of writing about a political, socio-economic debate between characters. I feel severely lacking in such knowledge and feel I shall not be able to bring out cohesive arguments, besides I always find such arguments pointless. They are a bad waste of good time in my opinion, and I am often bored when I listen to men discuss policy and stocks and stuff at parties, mostly because either they are all saying the same thing, or they are not listening to each other and merely want to prove they know more than the next guy, or more often than not none of them have any idea what they are talking about. Most of these discussions that I have heard in my lifetime, between my dad and his friends, and now between my husband and his friends are sad attempts at paraphrasing yesterday's editorial in one's own words and passing it off for original thought! really! I read the paper too! so please, spare me the horror!

Now what has that got to do with Tolstoy and Anna Karenina? Well, this, that he is able to not only write these arguments in a convincing coherent manner, but he is also able to show that they do not really matter. It is the fluff that the real story happens around, but it also goes to give depth or depict the shallowness of certain characters. I think I can never do it myself, not without considerable to the power of infinity effort that is, and hence I admire him even more for being able to do that. And I love him, for showing one of his principle characters (Levin) as taking no interest in these discussions. Well, glad to know there are men who are equally bored of this nonsensical talk. And yes, I accede that the stuff that women talk about, food, housekeeping, and kids is equally nonsensical too. They are both means of structuring time in social contexts coz for some weird reason we cannot sit together and be comfortably quiet. We just have to talk. It's a part of the human condition.

What I did not like that much about the book was Tolstoy's failure to depict Anna's emotional state when she decides to finally give in to Vronsky's overtures. We see her resistance, we see she is aware of the downfall this will be, we see her pushing him away and then suddenly she has taken the plunge. Why? What was she thinking? It was especially disheartening for me to see Tolstoy evade that part, because I see him doing this astonishingly detailed description of her mindset just before she commits suicide. It was like I was with her, I was feeling and thinking everything that she was, I took that journey with her going to Dolly's home, feeling humiliated, lost, option less, and I was with her when she went to the railway station, I was with her when she stood beside the platform and imagined herself falling on the tracks. I can't say if I agreed with her about the hopelessness of her situation, but I know that I understood her. I got it. I got why she felt that the jump and the subsequent death could be her only means of getting out of the mire she was in.

So when he can write so well, that he can convince me that she felt helpless enough to jump, why did he not write to convince me that she felt equally compelled to commit the adultery. Which in effect was the same thing. I got the impression that Anna, from the beginning understood that adultery was suicide, in her social position. She understood that it was a one way street and at the end of it, she would be a fallen woman. But he never goes into her mental state at that time, he does not so acutely describe why she took that first step towards her ruin. She was smart enough to expect every single consequence, but Tolstoy does not describe it, why? Is it because it is impossible to keep the aura of the heroine if you go into such murky confused workings of the brain? And by the time he begins to describe her end, she has already fallen from grace and we can pity her as a once loved friend who has lost her mental balance, whereas in fact that balance never existed. It would be hard to love an imbalanced character from the start so he hides it? Because when i think about it, Vronsky was was just another young captain trying to flirt with a married woman. Anna must have met many of them. Why him? What was so special about him? Why does Tolstoy not write about that? At times I felt like the adultery had nothing to do with Vronsky. It was all Anna, and her own self-destructive streak. He just happened to be there.

Is that what is his "brilliance" because Tolstoy without writing it explicitly, creates her character as one that defies logic to make these grand acts of self-annihilation and self-loathing. Her committing adultery, her telling her husband about it to incite his wrath, her refusal of his offer of divorce, her insistence on going to public places and facing humiliation, and her final suicide. I don't know. Maybe that is his brilliance, but I felt cheated. I think these were such complex decisions that he being this great writer that he was, I wish he had tackled them. I wish he would have written about her mental state at each of these moments, when she took these logic defying steps. It if it meant she could no longer come across as a cool heroine then so be it. I would have still read that.

But, overall, he writes beautifully, and I feel a special friendship to Levin, which i believe is Tolstoy himself, and that is nice feeling, to feel like you and someone else this great think on the same lines :)