The warm grey twilight of the Deccan, a sky painted with bold strokes of vibrant purples and reds, the mad games and the glorious mud, the ajjis and ajobas walking with a slow and easy gait, kindly smiles and twinkling eyes all bestowed by long years fruitfully spent, walking and watching us as we played the exuberant and carefree games of our vigorous and happy childhood, watching us but seeing themselves, in a time long gone, in a world no longer theirs, as they played games with names now strange, with companions long forgotten, but seeing the same flushed faces, the same excited voices, I wonder if they did not feel just a bit sorry for man, and us kids, destined to move on and forget, the exausting and cozy evenings of boyhood, the casual familiarity and implicit trust of treading on land well known, the food we knew awaited us when we went home and washed off ourselves the day's grime, the delight of fathers returning, the comfort of mothers scolding, of siblings fighting.

What life, what man be so forsaken that there are none who are awaited, none who have the time to scold, none who will dispute and argue secure in the knowledge that destinies so intertwined cannot be burst asunder by trifles !

Blood is thicker than water they say and the love of the land more dear than money. I will miss them ! The roads I have always detested,the neighbours whose existence I rarely had the energy to acknowledge, friends whose names I no longer recall, the strange, rich, multi textured smell that suddenly springs out of books long unopened awakening memories long buried, they wave me onward on my journey, they let me go secure in the knowledge that they shall never be lost to me, that I should continue working the spectacularly beautiful, impossibly intricate, consummately eternal tapestry of which my life is a small part. It is hoped that my little contribution shall be of good workmanship, that it should - at the least - be suitably profound and appropriately bright.

I shall do my best then, but from time to time I'll miss them all, and one day, if only to be able to see what I have really done, I will come back.

And Suddenly, I do not want to write anymore. When its all one can do to keep from imploding into the vaccum within, its difficult to throw anything out. Its difficult to speak when a brooding silence fills the void, engulfs the heart and subdues the mind. Faint and vague ripples over the texture of conciousness - silent but disturbing - give subtle but sanguine indications of a struggle - slow and quiet - taking place in dark, profound and misty reccesses, where immense forces are mustered from nowhere, exert themselves mightily against nothing, and thus having expended themselves for no reason, mutely disappear whence they came - the obscurity of faliure.

Outside, one sees only a manner that is sometimes energetic and suddenly blank, eyes that can flash with spirit before looking timidly at the ground, and sometimes, a faraway smile or a doubtful laugh.

Thats all there is to it.

I do not mind.

(Why should I ?)

About itself.

Its quite sad really, and makes me feel not a little guilty, that I dumped into this post and subsequently deleted, two random thoughts that occurred to me before I started blogging. The purpose of my blog you see, is to write. My purpose in writing is not to blog. Its strange that the deepest guilt and hurt are felt when we defeat our own purposes. If our purposes are defeated by circumstances, then we are sad, but sadness is a burden man has been given the ability to carry, for it has been, is, and will ever be, his companion - sometimes forgotten, but always there. Guilt, however, is a load that quickly becomes unbearable, and results in men either cracking or trying desperately to undo their mistake. A very nice example of the latter, is this little paragraph of mine.

I could have written a lot. I could have shared the thick, fragrant, soothing taste of a divine scoop of sitaphal icecream, the quiet but disconcerting hum of a cold computer lab in the wee hours of the morn, the cool silence projected by the silvery glitter of a grassy maidan on a moonlit night as seen through clumps of dark swaying trees or the loose relaxation and quiet satisfaction brought on by a good head massage. But I did not, because unlike feelings of anger, bitterness, frustration and their kin, feelings of gentle peace, detached loneliness (mostly), enthusiastic interest and likeable pressure are easier to experience than to write about.

One for Buzz Aldrin.

Along with le Tour de France, two very different but inextricably entwined stories will come to their conclusions on the 24th of July 2005.

One the story of an average man overcoming great adversity, and rising to dominate his profession to an extent unprecedented in history. The story of a man who is as revered as he is disliked all over the world. His successful fight against debilitating and mortal illness inspires devotion, and his impersonal, machine like and extended domination of his sport fuels discontent. There are two kinds of people in this world - those who love Lance Armstrong, and those who despise him. The other story is strikingly different. It consists mostly of frustration, criticism and bad luck. Don’t get me wrong, Jan Ullrich is a great cyclist and a very successful man by any standards, but with 5 second places (3 of them to Armstrong) after being one of the youngest winners of the tour in 1997, a tendency to come into the season slightly overweight, and consistent failure to do justice to his talent, History will judge him harshly.

But then, History is a bitch.
It is she who has decreed that the difference between being 'there' and being 'almost there' is the same as the difference between immortality and oblivion. She bestows her favours upon those who court her. The 'big' people. People who say the things that she considers right, people who fight and win enough battles that she considers to be important, people who manage to put upon themselves a veneer of goodness and invincibility. She cares nothing for the rest.

If Armstrong wins his 7th tour on the trot, he might deserve every accolade and every superlative bestowed upon him, but that will cause everything else, the daily heroism of so many men on the tour, the brave, the resilient, the stoic, to not only be forgotten, but under the ubiquitous shadow of that celebrated achievement, also belittled. In the frantic celebrations that will follow, with everyone scrambling to outdo everyone else in congratulating the champion, inventing new words, spending millions of dollars on congratulatory advertisements, who will have the time or the inclination to remember the brave Erik Dekker at the fag end of his career on a long breakaway, refusing to give in, refusing even to look back at the chasing peloton led by the sprinter's teams, the young Nicholas Portal, from a different team, weak and exhausted but helping Dekker all he can, doing his time at the front to give Dekker some rest, sticking to the task for no reason other than character and pride, the spectacular ride of Mike Rassmusen who rode 167 km all alone on a average mountain stage and won it, the resilience of Christophe Moreau and Jens Voigt as they tried to chase him down, the spirit that caused Moreau to stop when Voigt had a puncture, and the countless, countless other examples of all that is good in man that the Tour throws up with such breathtaking regularity ?

People will talk about how dominant Armstrong was even on his last tour, passing his main rival Jan Ullrich in the time trial on the first day after starting with a one minute deficit, and not a thought will be spared for the pain, anguish and despair of a proud man with his last chance to make amends and pull something back, as he saw himself being overtaken and left behind.

A win for Jan Ullrich, on the other hand, will force history to look at the other men who rode with Armstrong, it will add a huge amount to what will otherwise degenerate into a long paean to the praise and glory of one man at the cost of all others. It will be a demonstration that not always will the favourite win and the mighty triumph. It will be reassuring to see the beleaguered and fallible triumph against the perfect. It is the same fight that you and me face everyday, the fight to overcome our faults, to justify our talent, to fulfil what we consider to be our destiny. It will add balance to scales that are tipped overwhelmingly towards those with success and power, and that strange blinkered vision that causes a man to achieve impossible things. It will bring a ray of hope to so many of us, who battle against overwhelming odds and stifling systems, against our own record of indolence and failure, against the unfair and cruel manner in which the world determines who deserves to be respected and who does not.

When Jan Ullrich rides out on to the Alps tomorrow, he rides not just against Armstrong, but against History. He rides not just for himself, but for all those of us who have had too much to do with the words 'imperfect', 'incomplete' and 'unfulfilled'.

To 'flow', 'lilt', 'tune' and other precious things

Sarojini Naidu: Palanquin-Bearers

Lightly, O lightly we bear her along,
She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;
She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream,
She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream.
Gaily, O gaily we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

Softly, O softly we bear her along,
She hangs like a star in the dew of our song;
She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide,
She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride.
Lightly, O lightly we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string.







That something so prosaic and mathematical as symbols representing sounds can be arranged into patterns that carry meaning quite independent of the specific interpretations of the symbols themselves, that there exist certain forms and structures that strike a chord within the beholder which is independent of the function/meaning associated with them, that this effect is remarkably universal in nature and transcends race, background and age, surely, surely in these degenerate, disturbed times these things should tell us something about ourselves and our place in the loose but omnipresent structure of our splendidly exasperating species.

One for Bertie.

Note that a lot of what is said below, applies to itself.

Implicit in maintaining a blog, is the wish/expectation that it be read. It may help the writer organize his thoughts, yes. It may help the writer write better, yes. But a blog is primarily meant to be read. Otherwise, one would write in word, and make a folder on the pc, and not take the pain (not that there is much of that) to put it all on a website.

To verbalize what is felt, seen and thought is an extremely uninteresting thing if done for itself. Writing, being much more involved a process than speaking, (atleast for beginners like me) the motivation for it can only be found if one wants to be heard.

There are several different reasons why one would want people to receive any thoughts/ideas that one may scatter round. Some of these being -
1> The need to be understood/appreciated/be shown sympathy. (selfishness)
2> The feeling that one has something so important to say, that it might be in people's interest to read it. (altruism)
3> The feeling that change can be brought about in the world by ideas expressed through writing.

The first is weakness, the second presumptuous and the third naive.

How much we presume !

We think that the simple act of criticism puts us on a higher plane. We think that we can escape responsibility for the state of affairs by dissecting it. The more bitter and verbose our critique, the better we feel about it. We let off steam and frustration by tearing apart that which we ought to fix. Trying to hide impotence by ranting against fertility clinics. We fool ourself into thinking that we know, because we have not the strength to face the infinite complexity of our issues, the deceit and darkness inherent in the multidimentional character of our people, and the terrible contradictions underlying our nation. We choose our opinions and jump to one side of the wall, because to sit on the fence, to reserve judgement, would be to be able to see both ways, and our sanity would not survive that. We are mortally afraid. Afraid that we might find that Gandhi, Godse and Laden are all wrong. Or even worse, that they are all right. Where would that leave us, and our selfrighteous, indignant, verbose rantings ? Where would we put all our literary references and quotes then ?

We presume too much.

"Behold we know not anything,
I can but hope that good shall fall,
At last far off, At last to all,
And every winter change to spring."

Said some guy. Nice thought, but its not going to happen. This is the way things are, and this is the way they are always going to be, so we could shut our sensitive eyes, cover our snobbish noses and daintily try to pick our way through life (saying clever things all the while), or we could stride along, taking in the sights and smells of our world, willing to administer a firm tap on the jaw as well as lend a helping hand, right in the thick of things, lost but comfortable, minute but measureable, helpless but happy.

And if I see one more flower because I kept my eyes open among the dungheaps, I'll consider it a square deal.

"As long as she swims, I will cook !"

If time is not flowing in the smooth, mellow and scenic way that one would want it to, if the whole idea of continuing in the same way has begun to seem dull and uninteresting, if one more obstacle in the way threatens to end the journey, if one is enmeshed in a web of spoiled relationships that threaten to slip carelessly away, if hollow, insecure, bitter, petty aims and feelings threaten to take over one's mind, it is time to dig deep, make a stand, show some fiber, scavenge some defiance from those ruins, summon some pride, find that courage, and after having done all that, with the comfort of having arrayed all that you have around you, show some restraint.

For it is not always doing what one can and saying what one might, that add to a man. Often it is not doing what one could have, leaving clever words unsaid, that remove bitterness and add peace. Any random obnoxious fool can call a spade a spade, but it is a wise man who will leave it alone, give it the benefit of the doubt, and save himself the anguish that invariably goes with trying to say things as they are, because all too often, they are not.

The title, intended to signify dogged defiance and adherence to personal beliefs in circumstances of great adversity, comes from a brilliant passage from Joseph Conrad's "The Nigger of the Narcissus". The ship has half overturned in a terrible gale, and has somehow stabilized in that position. The sailors are all lashed to the deck. The winds are icy cold and the rain continuous, and the men have been that position for days. They are dying from the exposure. The cook, an extremely eccentric religious man, suddenly lets go of his support, and precariously begins to make his way to the galley. The bewildered sailors are shocked, hoarse and weak voices ask him just what the hell does he think he is doing. With a strange light in his eye, his ragged clothes flapping in the wind, he cries out "As long as she swims I will cook !" Unbelieving men say that he is mad, "I will get ye some coffee" says he "Till she swims, I will cook !” A weak and pitiful cheer goes round the desperate company, "Cook ye are a gent!" cry hard men with tears in their long suffering eyes, "Till she swims I will cook !" he cries again and disappears with a bound.

The situation loses a lot in my rendering of it. I had tears in my eyes when I read the book.

"As long as she swims, I will cook !”