Mythology & Current Affairs

A dear friend gifted me an RK Narayan book, an omnibus collection. This was a few weeks, perhaps a couple of months ago. At any point in time I usually have a few unread books, and so, it was only around a week ago that I got around to commencing reading "The Indian Epics Retold" comprising of "The Ramayana", "The Mahabharata", and "Gods, Demons, and Others". 

Narayan's prose is simple, free flowing, easy on the mind and, thus, beautiful. I've enjoyed reading his other, more original works - Swami & Friends, Malgudi Days, The Guide, The Painter of Signs, etc. So, taking up the Ramayana was a pleasure. Narayan, in the foreword, states that he has been inspired by the version of the epic written/composed by the 12th century (A.D) Tamil poet Kamban. A brief memory, from my Class X days, when Tamil was my second language, and memorising swathes of verses in (what, then, was) incomprehensible Tamil.... I remember, vividly, the description of the river crossing when Ram, Sita and Lakshman are being ferried by Guha. Among the lines, this stays in memory, when Ram tells Guha that "This lady of the beautiful forehead is as your sister". For the first time, growing up at an age where James Hadley Chase's ladies had long legs, and Perry Mason's Della Street had a curvaceous figure, it seemed unique to focus on a forehead!

Narayan's retelling of Kamba Ramayana has quite a lot more seductive imagery, which I'm not sure would have passed a censor's eye in today's tolerant India. Describing the first moment of their seeing each other, Narayan writes: He stood arrested by her beauty, and she noticed him at the same time. Their eyes met." And, a few moments later, "She lay tossing in her bed complaining, 'You girls have forgotten how to make a soft bed'... They (her maids) found her prattling, 'Shouders of emerald, eyes like lotus petals, who is he? He invaded my heart and has deprived me of all shame! A robber who could ensnare my heart and snatch away my peace of mind!'

A few chapters later, Soorpanaka having described Sita to Ravana, he is already smitten by the imagery that Soorpanaka has wrought. Even before seeing Sita, Ravana has suffered the pangs of Manmata's love arrows. "Every syllable that Soorpanaka uttered gave him both pleasure and pain.... Ravana felt uneasy. he rose abruptly and left the hall, unwilling to let the assembly notice his state of mind.They rained flowers on him and uttered blessings and recited his glory as usual when he strode down the passage.... He ignored his wives, who were awaiting his favours, and passed on to his own private chamber, where he shut the door and flung himself on his luxurious bed. He lay there tossing, unable to rid his mind of the figure conjured up by Soorpanaka's words. It was a total obsession"

And so on, vivid imagery bordering quite on the mushy, romantic and at times mildly erotic. Till the final set of chapters that deal with the actual battle between Rama and Ravana. Ravana using all his might and the special weapons that he possesses, gifts and boons bestowed upon him by the gods themselves... weapons with evocative names such as 'Danda', 'Maya', 'Thama' etc. And, to each of Ravana's special weapons, Rama has an equal, if not superior counter weapon... 

It was at this point, suddenly, that I realised I was no longer reading a story, this is not mythology I realised. This is current affairs, history as it is evolving today, in the here and NOW. 

Substitute the word "gods" with "USA, Russia, France etc" and in place of Ravana and Rama think of the many warring factions of peoples from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc - the Mujaheddin, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, LTTE and what have you. Rakshasas and Asuras who, after bitter penance and strenuous prayers found their gods showering them with favours and who, then, went on a rampage as the gods looked on helplessly while mayhem reigned.... 

Not for nothing, not without justification is this the age of Kali.... 

The "Usual" and the "Unusual"

It's around 2:00 p.m as I walk in to my "usual" restaurant, in Chembur, for lunch. One of those "Udipi" type, pure veg restaurants that serve good food at affordable prices and fast. Today the place is overflowing, customers standing in a queue, hoping to get a vacant table. Now THIS is unusual, not that the place does not do good business, but just that usually, while most tables are occupied, one can always hope to find at least one vacant table. Not today.

There seems to be a crowd of wedding goers - or, more accurately, wedding returnees. Unusual. One would have thought that guests who attended a wedding would have had lunch at the wedding hall itself, no? Even more unusual, I even see the bride and the groom having lunch here. She, sitting demurely, draped in a rather stiff green silk saree. He, clearly hot and sweating, looking not very gruntled. Both of them, sitting side by side, not talking to each other but volubly talking all the same, to surrounding friends, well wishers, family. The groom's friends seem to be the quieter lot, the bride's group seem to be having all the fun, cracking jokes and laughing loudly, mouths covered behind folded fists and handkerchiefs.

A table gets partly vacant - which suits me just fine. An elderly gentleman, rather unkempt, unshaved and scruffy looking is the lone occupant. I ask him whether I can sit at the table. He is busy having his lunch, does not even bother to look up, let alone reply. So I sit down, anyway, and wait for the waiter. Meanwhile, the e.g across the table is tucking away into his meal, idli-vada-sambhar, eating rather sloppily. I can't bear to see this, so look around. The bride & groom are still not (yet) talking to each other, each busily ignoring the other while speaking to their respective groups. The "party" is almost over, several tables all getting cleared at once. 

At another table is a sight, unusual. A young mother, perhaps 26, with a baby girl, perhaps just over 1 year. No one else. Now, that's unusual. Where's the dad, I wonder? Perhaps he's gone to wash his hands? But no, I see no sign of the man. The baby is sitting atop the table, the mother looks lost in some private thoughts as she ignores the playing child. A waiter, standing behind the mother is making funny faces at the baby who is happily gurgling away at him. Amid the hustle-bustle of the mad rush hour, a moment of joy, an island of innocence. I smile, inwardly, feeling that wee bit happier than before.

My waiter has arrived and I am about to order, when the gent at my table jumps in with his order - "Ek plate gajar halwa" he says, brusquely, spittle spraying through his dentures. I order mine. The waiter goes. I look around again.

Another table, a fairly common sight - usual - in Mumbai. A young couple, looking like college going kids, sitting side by side, sharing an ice cream, two spoons. He is feeding her, she is (also) feeding herself. Lost in whispered conversations. She looks pre-occupied, he is giggling, nervously. Love, Mumbai style, I guess - or, perhaps, I should rephrase that, "Love, Harbour line style"? (C'mon, Western liners, go swagger!)

My waiter is back, with my order and the gajar halwa - I take my time, while the g.h is swallowed in three quick gulps. The old man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of notes (no wallet) and pays the waiter. By some odd coincidence, his bill worked out to an exact Rs.100/- I see, so a hundred he pays. The waiter collects the cash and goes off. The old man, who, I expected would have got up and gone, keeps the wad of notes back in his trouser pocket, reaches into the other trouser pocket, takes out a rather gaudy coloured kerchief, loudly honks into it clearing his nose unabashedly and places the dirty rag back into the pocket. I'm quite "Yuck"ed by all this and am waiting to see the last of him.

His hand now comes out, minus that offensive kerchief, but holding another wad of notes, small denominations - he painstakingly sorts them out, unfolding them one by one, searches for and finds a fiver, places that on the small platter of saunf, reaches again into his shirt pocket, takes out some coins, and places a Rs.2 coin, collects his tattered brief case, and has - finally - gone. Leaving behind a tip of seven rupees. I am actually surprised - but, a few seconds later, when the waiter came, I could see that he was even more surprised than I. The look on his face gave him away, seeing a tip where he apparently expected none. 

Mumbai still does that, even to the most jaded of cynics. Hits you, right between the eyes, with little stories of optimism. Islands of dreams inside a sea of bleakness.  

Main SAMAYY Hoon

So, Planet Earth has gone around the Sun one more time. It's been doing that even before hominids even thought to look up at the sky. It will continue doing so long after the next Ice Age or whatever other cataclysm lies in store, somewhere (hopefully) in a too distant future.... meanwhile, at some point of time, "modern" man invented a whole lot of stuff, from aeroplanes to atom bombs to ziggurats and zithers. Somewhere, along the way, we also invented "time", "discovered" how to measure it, split it up into years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, nano seconds and God (another of our "inventions") knows what else.... 

When I think of "time" it seems to me that it is like a marker on a vast, unmapped land. Helping us to put a reference to events, memories. Remember THAT day? When you were married? When she was born? When your best friend died? Goddamn, remember that day when you stupid bloody insurance policy is due to expire?!! So, yes, time (specifically, the way we measure it) is quite a neat trick, a sleight of mind, quite useful.

And, as with most of our inventions, not content to merely creating the utility, we've also built elaborate rituals around Time - so, we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, observe fasts and sacraments on specified dates.... and thus, in one such "time honoured tradition", New Year's Eve rolled around once again yesterday. As good a time as any to look back and wonder/ponder....

The excitement of childhood, when my school's academic year used to be the calendar year. A New Year meant a new class, the smell of new books & brown paper covers, the excitement of walking in to a new class, the eagerness to find out which of our classmates came through, the disappointment of discovering friends who'd stayed behind having failed, the unspeakable fear of meeting new classmates who - being a year older but having failed - waited to welcome you with their bullying stares.... 

That innocence, inevitably, giving way to adolescent rowdy eagerness in later teen years as the New Year's Eve meant "party time", gathering of friends, cheap booze, smokes, revelry... a long period of adolescence growing well into the mid 20s and even early 30s.... when "fun" meant being out, "enjoying" loud music, frenzied roaming the streets, drunkenly cheering strangers with wild cries of "Happy New Year", "Happy 1990" or whatever number it happened to be....

Until 31st December 2002 when, on arrival in Mumbai - the city that used to say "Raat ko baara baje din nikalta hai" - venturing out for the first New Year Eve party in Mumbai I realised that I was getting nowhere, stuck in an interminable traffic jam! 3 hours in my car, alone, stuck, motionless, while the RJs on the FM stations pretended that life was gonna be fun!

And so, winding down to yesterday. A quiet evening. At home. With a dear, dear friend, Arun Jaiswar. Pleasant, rambling conversations, about this, that, and nothing. Even quieter silences, in the comfort that exists among the best of friends. A little bit of music. And, as always, booze. A good bottle of Chivas. We did justice to the "tradition".

Truly, time rolled by. We've aged, grown older, perhaps (and this is quite doubtful) even wiser. But, hey, this is TIME we're talking about. Constant. Ever changing. Never changing. So, grey hair not withstanding, we boozed till well past 1... because, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Main SAMAYY Hoon.....

Sats