An ode to my tired legs

I'm out of breath
didn't do the customary warm-up
just started running
braked suddenly to let the path clear
and then kept on

I know I should have paused to stop and stare
let some breeze ruffle my hair
debated whether to take the dirt track
I know I lack the stamina
so why don't I rest my shoes?

I ran into a wall of smoke
sputtered through the haze
carried on, like a mule
who knows only the straight way
and wandered further on

they say they know where I go
the usual bend, the safest route
running's the only way they say
the fore-st plays
the cure for the deadness that lies under

My chest hurts, I cannot sleep
my hair is white, I cannot weep
the marathon idea was mine
blinkered vision is all i have
oh, must not forget the smelly laundry stack

my knees will give away soon
as the last of my will will be written
through all the curves there will come
the cliff or the ditch
and then I'll step over.

Selfish love
or self-ish love
love for the self, 
or love like the self?
love that you hoard for your benefit
or love which is like the love you have for self?
can you love outside the self without having loved the self?
does selfless love mean love without the self or love beyond the self? 
Is this oxymoronic hair-splitting even necessary for one who loves to just love?

"The story of you never begins with you..."

I just finished reading Manreet Sodhi Someshwar's The Long Walk Home, and it's been a long time since I have felt a connection with a story so much. My regret: this is like the story i wanted to write, or had begun to write and left midway due to lack of inspiration, and now someone else has beaten me to it! (I almost felt the same wth Unaccustomed Earth) I am to blame - I don't take my writing seriously, or take it way too seriously. I'm a bundle of contradictions..

The book is centred around an ordinary Sikh family living in a border town in Punjab, tracing their history within the larger history of the Punjab. For a writer or reader in the 21st century, Punjab's history begins at the moment of partition. It is ridden with angst at a world forcibly cut off from their being.. "Jinne Lahore ni vekheya au jameya hi ni" - but the hostile border has ensured that at least two generations of Punjabis have been deprived of the fervour of life. This book deftly takes the reader, who is present in the narrative as a silent witness-observer, through the Nehruvian years of territorial betrayal, land fortification and agrarian reform, to the profits of the Green Revolution and the emigration flux. It deliberates on the ideological contingencies that plague Punjab to this day, especially as it tries to represent the cause and effect of militancy in the region. It records instances, especially of violence and hints at the pogrom, of the like which go unaccounted for in the regular or mainstream representations. As Bitta remarks in the text: "You children can write an essay on the Holocaust. But on your own history you come up short. Why?". To which Noor retorts: "No Sikh producers in Hollywood?" But Neymat offers a better answer: "Noone really speaks about it...reluctant to talk"(213). This exchange to me sums up the problem of dissemination of information, the apathy even among the university educated, and the general glossing over of political stance in favour of a single-minded pursuit of prosperity. The last part of this exchange, however, raises greater issues of expression - can there be a suitable vocabulary to talk about painful incidents, trauma? Why do people choose not to engage with uncomfortable questions? Why are future generations shielded from the baggage of both personal and political history?

The narrative is sensuous - you can touch, feel, smell, taste and hear the elements that ooze out. And most of all you can visualize - the narrative functions with a cinematic consistency, almost as if the writer has consciously constructed it as a film's screenplay. In no way does it take away from the "aura" of the written text since the influence of one form of representation over another can be taken as a given, especially since film as a medium dominates the postmodern consciousness. The language reads as if affected in many places, in a harried and beaten expression, but the essence it seeks to capture is fairly fresh. It falls into the Rushdie-an trap of "magic bilingualism" (or multilingualism) as it tries to seamlessly fit proverbial phrases into the idiom of English. It works, as in Rushdie's case, but for a non-native readership.

The title is inspired by Tagore's translation of "Ekla chalo re", "Walk Alone", which serves as the latent motif through the text. The blurb also carries a sher by Gulzar especially written for the novel..."ye faasle  teri galiyon ke humse tey na hue..."

All in all, a definite read. Especially for those who engage silence and unknowability. But don't conceive of the text as a lesson in history. It is not. It is a novel written with care for context, as it spills out of the ramifications of its own literary intertexts.

Of crushes and petit amours

I need a bigger drive. Or a penseive. My memory may be leaking, or it may be blocking some things out and overwriting many others. I had to jog it today (quite literally, at 9.2km/h) to reveal a 9-year old turn of events. Nothing catastrophic, thankfully, that did not alter the course of my life (at least not adversely). But it sure got me thinking about the function of memory in the narrative of our lives. There we were navpurush and I recounting moments and incidents, desires and aspirations over glasses of cold coffee (or in my case sparkling water with green apple flavour). It is incredible to witness thoughts spilling out in conversation. Somehow time and distance make memories more palatable, not to mention enjoyable.

That's what I'd like to do on no work, or out-of-work Friday afternoons. String together lost or forgotten bits of information.

Or may be I'm just growing old.

P.S. Sometimes there are records (as Anne Frank would have you know) to hasten the "it's all coming back to me" moment. Round 1 to you, mister.

Mein tainu pher milangi (I will meet you yet again)

I will meet you yet again
How and where? I know not.
Perhaps I will become a
figment of your imagination
and maybe, spreading myself
in a mysterious line
on your canvas,
I will keep gazing at you.

Perhaps I will become a ray
of sunshine, to be
embraced by your colours.
I will paint myself on your canvas
I know not how and where –
but I will meet you for sure.

Maybe I will turn into a spring,
and rub the foaming
drops of water on your body,
and rest my coolness on
your burning chest.
I know nothing else
but that this life
will walk along with me.

When the body perishes,
all perishes;
but the threads of memory
are woven with enduring specks.
I will pick these particles,
weave the threads,
and I will meet you yet again.

--Amrita Pritam