nani’s watch

It was the summer of 2012. Just like ever year, all of us cousins had gathered at nani’s place to spend our vacations. It was the way it usually went - nani was in the kitchen on the first floor of our family home, making laddoos or anything it was we wished to eat that year, her daughters on the floor below taking turns to go up and help her, us kids getting lost in our own games, only appearing every now and then for water and snacks, and disappearing again. I was playing around with my new keypad phone, clicking everyone, and subsequently I clicked a photograph of nani’s hands. She was making her patented bundi laddoos. 

The photo wasn't all that much. A pot with bundi. Both her hands shaping them into laddoos. Her feet crossed on the floor. Silver payal on both feet. Years later I am still grateful that that moment was captured. 

When I was asked to write about something by nanaji, there was not even a shred of doubt in my mind about the subject. Of course it would be about our nani. I don't know why but it seemed as clear as the day. Probably because she inspired us in ways unknown even to us. Probably because she every time I think of people that I look up to, hers is one of the first faces that comes to my mind. Probably because all of us in our house aspire to be a little bit like her in some way. 

She was born in 1950. From what we have heard, she always had the greatest desire to not only learn, but also actively educate those around her, and try to bring about a change in any way possible. And she did that. 

Mom tells me that back in the day, it wasn't considered very agreeable when women wore footwear or wrist watches when they stepped outside their homes. It was considered untowards in society at the time. These institutionalised biases did not dim her light. 

Every morning she would get dressed, choosing a sari from her carefully curated collection, wearing perfectly matching jewellery, ultimately wearing a watch; and go to the temple. People talked. She still continued wearing her watch - a symbol of resistance perhaps. The symbol, albeit physically small, still made a difference, as eventually people moved on to more important matters. She ended up educating women and bringing about change through her position as a member of the local council. And yes, she still rocked that wrist watch in those council meetings. 

This is just one of the many instances where she was subtly resilient. I have no doubt in believing that there must be many, many more such examples. I will never be sure about where she got this immense tenacity to be such a loving nani, a responsible member of the society, and most of all a thoroughly resolute woman. Maybe it was nanaji who stood by her enduringly, or her brothers and sisters, or her kids. But the one thing I am sure about is that in any of these instances, the one constant element was her humility and respect. Respect for her community, her fellow women, her family, even herself. 

I still see the dignity with which she carried herself reflecting in her daughters. She left us last year but somehow she still teaches me to be a better woman every single day, and encourages me to find my own ‘wrist watch’. 

writing brought in a very real creative-based fear in me, where, when i was a child, i thought i’d have to write in a very mystical, poetic, traditionally beautiful, slightly archaic style and sense to be taken seriously by the writers community; a community which can stratify itself and more often than not, entertain some very self glorified people. 

and this held me back and helped me produce some (great) unstructured, albeit cinematic but generally bad writing. 

then i figured if i am going to be a ‘’bad writer”, i might as well produce some substandard writing which i was bound to like a little, rather than some conventional writing which i’d be bad at anyway. 

and so, disentangling myself from this vast clump of nonsense, categorically helped/is still helping me write some of my best and worst lines i’ve ever read in this genre.

make sense? 

 

Yesterday, I was thinking about writing and the invisible weight of responsibility attached to it. When I read a ‘perfect’ paragraph (ignoring the infinite, structural connotations the word perfect attaches to itself), I instantly have an image in my head. There is the writer and there is the perfect, beautiful, clear-cut, flawless thought in their head which they note down. There is the pen and there is the paper, the laptop and the writer. Always the writer. 

But I imagine there must be absolutely no doubt or discourse in their writing process on where the comma should be, or whether it should have been a semicolon instead. It must be just the most beguiling thing ever, to translate the alphabets, letters, words, paragraphs as intended, mind to paper, like nature’s printing press. My brain must be the most incoherent thing ever. 

To put myself at ease I am lying to myself, reality is not built this way and I have only given verisimilitude to this simulated perfection. Who knows?  In this newly built real world which now exists outside my head (which will now concur with my writing ineptitudes), writers no more have methodical and clear thoughts. One is here and the other is there and maybe, after a few days, they will manage to gather them. Later on they will make it into something resembling coherence, and maybe, after an embarrassing amount of time has passed, it will look a little bit like the original paragraph we talked about. And finally, during editing it might get cut out entirely. If not, it will be the perfection we talked about. 

Of course the writer would still not appear to be outwardly satisfied with perfection. Secretly they could be the most pleased with their printing press, but cannot show that, as it would mean they approve of the writing. And self approval is plain unpleasant. 

Now, this paragraph, these four lines of chomskyan beauty that I will have produced will be forever attached to me, and I to them. I cannot detach myself from it ever. This ordeal I went through, this mammoth task, will only be justified if I put it out there and make it real. Publishing entails responsibility, but is anyone ever wholly prepared for that? 

salman ❤️

 

Lady Winchelsea was shrewd, crude, and childless (majorly inspirational). Personally, i love her works and she’d be one of the dinner guests at my dead / famous people dinner party.

Her complete biography and works -https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/finch/finch-anne.html 

How we are fallen! fallen by mistaken rules,

And Education's more than Nature's fools;

Debarred from all improvements of the mind,

And to be dull, expected and designed;

And if someone would soar above the rest,

With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,

So strong the opposing faction still appears,

The hopes to thrive can ne'er outweigh the fears.

beauties of data compilation | sagar central university

 

shady afternoons

 

You made me feel like I felt on those long summer afternoons, where I would be lying down on the muddy patch of the garden, carefully calculating what would be worth draining all my energy in the sun, some more goofing around with friends or some earth digging or some orange juice on the cold cement floors. I would always choose sleeping on the garden patch. 

It was the perfect spot, the tall kapok tree would provide just enough shade and the occasional cotton-ball-hit on the head. I could also hide behind its trunk. No one would come there to talk to me, it was out of the way of the main building area, just in front of the fence to keep other kids away. You were my garden patch, in theory at least.

I visited it not long ago. Now the tree has become old with rubbish around, the fence is broken and a few shrubs have rebelled their way through the area around the tree. So, I'm left without my old patch, I think. 

In all honesty, I haven't bothered reviving it or finding a new one I can call my own, because I don't need it. You still are my garden patch, in theory at least. Does anything else really matter?

Amartya's Science, Epistemology and Heterodoxy = Saussure's Object Of Study??

 

 “Indeed it can be argued that the major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter. In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.”

― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

hopeful or anxious

a beautiful read (from rega's newsletter)

A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful is a living catalogue of the ways in which we relate to the uncertainty of tomorrow. Visitors of the Rubin Museum of Art were invited to anonymously share their anxieties and hopes on vellum cards and hang them on the collective wall. The installation grew into a monolithic barometer of the year where visitors could explore thousands of individual meditations that ranged from personal, local, and specific statements to political, theoretical, and spiritual reflections. Read about it here.

il a plu ce soir

pov - it is sunny and not in a good will-make-you-happy way. instead it is hot and the streets are empty. your clothes stick to your skin, nothing brings you comfort anymore. all you do is wait for some relief and then it starts to rain. slow at first, but later heavily. 

you are in the kitchen, dancing to the oldest of tracks; the ones you think you absolutely forgot about, but when they play, you remember each and every line, you know?

it is thundering and nothing can give you such joy. it is the same kind of joy you get when you hear the sounds of tired raindrops finally falling down. the joy of eating alone if you long to be untethered, or the joy of eating with company if you long the warmth of family idiocracies.

rains are reliable, they will be there always. they may skip a year or two but they'll show up, no lies, a little drama. 

pov - it is raining in a will-make-you-happy way. there is no other way it rains. the streets are empty. your clothes stick to your skin, but you don't mind it. 

complexities?

The Italians have a saying which goes like,  "Chiodo scaccia chiodo". It literally translates to - a nail drives away another nail. Figuratively though, it means whatever is troubling you right now, keeping you up at night, festering your thoughts minute by minute, will be pushed away simply, by another problem. And I for one can deeply relate to that.

If you don’t have problems, you create your own. And I think that is beautiful, as a state of rest scares me. For every single day I have managed to create my own bundles of absurd, unnecessary problems that depress me to newfound levels. Others continue to maintain that they are more affected by my absurdities than I am. I continue to smile less and less.

One Hundred Years of Solitude. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

💓Magical realism~

• The growth of the civilization on the banks of a river in Colombia, founded by a patriarch, was flavoured with modern and interesting innovations that astonished the ignorant citizens of the small town. Only a few carried forward the legacy of science, literature and ancient manuscripts, one of them being the same patriarch of the Buendia family, with the help of a strange gypsy.

• This stirring tale transcends the ordinary by exploring complex characters and rich dialogues that range from downright bizarre to philosophical.

• As time passed by, the Buendia family tree grew wide with its roots all over the world, but ultimately bringing each and every person back to Macondo, in whom the blood of their matriarch Ursula ran.

• There is a strong emphasis on the women, who continued to hold the family together in the loop of time which seemed to be repeating itself, going around in circles, destroying the long line of their ancestry one ashen day at a time. 

• This story is unlike any that I have read before. The grandiosity, the simplicity, the hideousness of it all, illustrated Central and South America in its rawest form, complete with unusual phenomenon, war, death, natural disasters and weird coincidences; the idea of magical realism blended with the life of a simpleton creates an entirely different genre, which I would like to further delve into.

• The only thing I felt after completing the book was gratification. With its plethora of characters, their history and relationship with every other character, a new person introduced after every 3 pages and the excess of similar names, along with a rich verbiage, this book is definitely not a page turner. The family chart given in the beginning certainly helps but after a while tracking the individual lineage becomes difficult.

• This is a mesmerizing creation with insane epitomes, where the author has delicately woven the force of nature, love in its many, often uncomfortable forms, and a lifetime with recurring predictability.