Once upon a time, in times such as these, migratory birds used to come to this city. You could see them everywhere: around the marshes and ponds, the grassy fields where kids used to play football, atop the branches of the trees struggling to breath in these confused, confused spaces of mud, grime, and concrete, fleeing from the harsh winters of the north.
The birds have stopped coming to Kolkata city once these spaces have disappeared. And in the few places that are left; the birds have stopped coming.
Yesterday, I was at the National Library, and after few hours of reading, I decided to visit the Zoo all of a sudden. There were the usual crowds, the hawkers selling badaam, the monkeys crying for attention, the tigers and lions sulking in their dark cages. The last time I visited the zoo was in winter, years and years ago. Now, Bengalees in stiff-necked sweaters and jackets, a pleasant wind from the north, mufflers on kids running around with balloons, reminded me that winter was 'officially' here. I watched a few couples smooching on the benches; I walked past a few old men who had wandered into the zoo like me, aimless and undecided about what to do next. But I missed the birds of my childhood memories: free uncaged birds from distant lands who once came to this city and the zoo to revisit life. What is it about, what is in the air that makes me feel so nostalgic? Everything around me now seemed to wear a melancholy look: and there were no free birds about this winter. Or perhaps, I had failed to spot them...
Showing posts with label unbearable lightnesses of being. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unbearable lightnesses of being. Show all posts
Vague traces
Vague traces of childhood return to haunt. You feel miserable and low.
You sit for hours looking at the blank pulse of the electronic screen, addicted to shifting words and misshapen soundscapes. Images watched with red, listless eyes. You know there's no changing the past. The past decayed, and then melted away. The present is an empty waiting for the correct words to form. And no matter what old Althu said, even the future doesn't seem to last forever.
You realise that 'justice' you'd learned about in school and the academy has nothing to do with right or wrong. It is just used to justify the arrogance of power. Once you kept asking yourself why. Now you don't. The same goes with 'freedom'. No one learns freedom by rote and you cannot do a thing. Just watch the whole thing happen, just stand there firm, bleeding deep inside. If someone asks, tell them freedom cannot be had through rations.
It's just like you to find a spot like this. Here you've already failed your own dreams once. You won't probably qualify for other dreams the next year either. Your skepticism will be construed as conspiratorial. You'll just provide them with some information and emotions they can never process. And you'll be back here in two years' time saying "Yes, I'm fine, thank you..." to someone or the other, when you didn't mean that at all.
But you'll never forget. Like stale tea from inside a thermos, believe me, you'll be okay.
If someone is still listening to this rambling talk, here's an old favourite song of mine, sung before it got famous, and the singer was still nineteen.
Slumdog, caramba, and an old ad jingle
In the search for superlatives, the limits of sense and decency have long been passed. Did you ever think a person living in the Mumbai slums could be so lovingly called a 'slumdog' in the yankee fashion in print and the boom, and everyone would celebrate the triumph of this repulsive rags-to-riches story with obcene hurrahs, and people not even being slightly uncomfortable with the word?
"Woof! Woof! This is all so boring!"
Sigh, the Indian advertisement industry too has ceased to manufacture simple wish-fulfillment messages: of a TV that made your neighbours green with envy, a red soap that could be used alternately as a brick and a magic token for winning football matches, a scooter that 'united' India, or simply those 'amazing whiteness'-inspiring detergent powders of Lalitaji and (oh ho!) Deepikaji that lost their appeal once the publick took to mall-visiting sprees, and chucked all their old clothes out somewhere.
But these are remembrances of things past, and no one can be forced to read Proust anymore.
I was inside a ramshackle Kolkata bus last week when I spotted a rather strange advertisement outside the schlock South City mall:
"You shall be judged by the colour of your skin; your second skin."
In a sense, the product which happens to be some fashionable clothing has become irrelevant: the advertiser with the exaggerated imagination of an ant inside a Myrmecophaga tridactyla's snout is trying work directly on self-congratulatory images and dreams using coloured words. Images and dreams inspiring "colour confidence", and revealing the rest of the world in its true (bad) colours, words that remind you once more of the complex past and confused present that your country suffers inspite of all that fashion the advertisers offer you, dear Neo, this time you get to choose a skin instead of a pill!
"Woof! Colourman, colourman, which colour do you choose?"
¡Ay, Caramba! I have a suggestion, though, and I think I've mentioned it somewhere above in the oblique. But in case you're bored, let's forget that and let me sing for you a old ad jingle of times when you never thought of the big, bad world. And in case you've been wondering, Myrmecophaga tridactyla is the scientific name of a morose 6-ft long snouty creature found in Central and South America that lives on ants.
Chorus:
“Washing powder Nirma, washing powder Nirma
Dudh si safeedi, Nirma se aaye
Rangeen kapda bhi khil khil jaye
Sabki pasand Nirmaaaa. Washing powder Nirma. Nirma.
Woof. Woof.”
[Credits: See this blog by Vinayak Razdan if you're really nostalgic about the Indian advertising world of the eighties. The image of Lalitaji is borrowed from At the Edge.]
Words, warmth, and peace
You wander...
You wander through the mindlessness of ether, you wear your trousers rolled, and you see words and images combining and confusing the odd zeroes and ones that supposedly make meaning in the void, your activity limited to a vacuous stare patiently negotiating the occasional and listless flicking of a screen.
Ah, but you still got your old yellowing books, armour, and a rusty sword, dear, and your love for the fantastic, for unusual, unheard-of adventures which once opened up vast horizons, the end of which now can't be foreseen, even when the sound of the motor whirring in the background no longer resembles that of a giant windmill...
Where are you?
Long, long ago, in the company of Pantagruel on a strange beach, you had once encountered words frozen in time from the last winter. The people who’d spoken might be dead, but their words and whispers remain. You used the palms of your hands, breathed some warmth, and held the words close to your ears, and listened to their tales.
Remember? Remember and breathe...
Relax now and breathe. Breathe easy and deep like the man who dreamed of making a fire in the Jack London tale. The year’s almost over, home’s someplace called nowhere, and apart from intentionality, the smiling-faced pecunious people who are usually content with lighting candles and spewing useless words on violence are planning more harm. Others, too, are playing out their confused parts of the zealous activist who is unable to act for himself but can only act for others (“oh, the proletariat”, “ah, the exploited and dispossessed”) or for ends and abstractions (“world peace” and, yes, “global revolution”).
You know nothing will come of the candles and the guns, but smoke; dense, dull, congestive smoke.
Wishes for the dead, the living, and the half-deads...
Refresh your mind, please, once again, this time of the year when there’re only smokes and mirrors. All you’ve got is your memories, and a sobriety shaped by those memories that want meaningful words, and warmth. And a sense of peace- for yourself and others, striving to overcome their isolation, and still looking for meaning.
From a strictly secular and non-religious viewpoint, here’s me wishing you for the new year:
As-Salāmu `Alaykum (“Peace be upon you”) and warmth.
[Pix Credit: The beautiful artwork above is by Anthony Russo, a freelance illustrator living in Rhode Island. I found an illustration of his while googling, and I've been a fan ever since. Here's a link to Russo's homepage.]
[Pix Credit: The beautiful artwork above is by Anthony Russo, a freelance illustrator living in Rhode Island. I found an illustration of his while googling, and I've been a fan ever since. Here's a link to Russo's homepage.]
Dot dot dot- understood
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
Suddenly the realisation sinks in. No more will I have to explain these lines to anyone. Nor will I have to look for their meaning somewhere, in someone else's 'closer' reading. I seem to have understood. Somewhat.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Look carefully.
Measure your steps.
And start walking backwards.
And now, without turning back, walk through all the countless spaces between those gaps, and I'm sure you'll understand as well.
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
Suddenly the realisation sinks in. No more will I have to explain these lines to anyone. Nor will I have to look for their meaning somewhere, in someone else's 'closer' reading. I seem to have understood. Somewhat.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
Look carefully.
Measure your steps.
And start walking backwards.
And now, without turning back, walk through all the countless spaces between those gaps, and I'm sure you'll understand as well.
Don't blog
If you aren't thinking of yourself and your words and expressions as ephemeral, don't blog.
Don't blog if you're seriously thinking there's someone out there who will feel and understand your thoughts as they are, and, soothe, caress, feel and understand the broken wings of your overburdened incomplete expressions, as you've yourself done countless times in your solitary wanderings.
If you aren't an advertiser for palliatives, a dragon-tooth seller, a high-flier, a lighter of a protesting candle, or a teller of lies who believes in his own conflated exploratory balloons mapping the world, don't blog.
Don't blog if you aren't a serious voyeur for soft and hard schlock images, someone who suffers from serious symptoms of security-complex, or a bibliophile who doesn't want to share what he has read of the world.
No one wants to hear of you as yourself. You cannot write of yourself. For yourself. Even against yourself.
Don't blog if you're scared, sick, angry, unhappy, radically mad, rabid, or immaturely happy about your family's vacation to the dull sea no one wants to hear about.
If you stir in sleep and think you can speak of those dreams and visions which drove Nebuchadnezzar mad, don't blog.
Don't blog if you try to run away from life and wish to start afresh from childhood.
The words will remain as they are, in suspension or in disbelief, in wonder or in imagined imaginings, and the crazy world will go whirring past as you stare at the blinking screen.
Don't blog if you can smile, weep, or scribble on a real piece of paper that no one can read but yourself.
If you think yourself staring at the void or if you don't see emptiness enveloping your memories, don't blog.
Don't blog if you have life outside this ether, these crumbling bits of real or imagined space, or if you believe that you have made peace with your mind after spewing out whatever troubles your mind right now.
Random thoughts after the 'festival'
Finally, those horrid five days are over, at least for an year.
The days collectively miscalled a festival. Of crowds pushing, jostling, shoving, digging, cursing, groping, stomping throughout the night.Strutting, shrieking, belching, spitting and shitting, mobbing their ways through the city.
All to catch a glimpse of a few decorated earthen straw-filled idols of the Hindoo mother-goddess propped with bamboo. Or to gape at all that brightness surrounding the lights and stars, the 'themes', the near-empty stalls selling Marxist literature, potency-oils and perverse industrial logic. Or to look at the unknown faces of others similarly hysterical. Or more probably looking for some change in their lives drudging along the too-familiar course of work, taxes, insurances, premiums paid in one form or the other, or lives without them.
Witness mass hysteria at close-up, with loudspeakers blaring; academically-minded Marxists might find strong elements of Bakhtinian carnivalesque in the phenomenon. Look really close, and you might find people who're really lonely, trying to drown out their drudgery in the tours they make throughout the mad, sullen city.
I only wonder how many are there in this city who lock themselves up inside rooms with lots of books and trying really hard to shut off the hysteric loudspeaker sound, concentrate on imagining alternative worlds of possibility.
The days collectively miscalled a festival. Of crowds pushing, jostling, shoving, digging, cursing, groping, stomping throughout the night.Strutting, shrieking, belching, spitting and shitting, mobbing their ways through the city.
All to catch a glimpse of a few decorated earthen straw-filled idols of the Hindoo mother-goddess propped with bamboo. Or to gape at all that brightness surrounding the lights and stars, the 'themes', the near-empty stalls selling Marxist literature, potency-oils and perverse industrial logic. Or to look at the unknown faces of others similarly hysterical. Or more probably looking for some change in their lives drudging along the too-familiar course of work, taxes, insurances, premiums paid in one form or the other, or lives without them.
Witness mass hysteria at close-up, with loudspeakers blaring; academically-minded Marxists might find strong elements of Bakhtinian carnivalesque in the phenomenon. Look really close, and you might find people who're really lonely, trying to drown out their drudgery in the tours they make throughout the mad, sullen city.
I only wonder how many are there in this city who lock themselves up inside rooms with lots of books and trying really hard to shut off the hysteric loudspeaker sound, concentrate on imagining alternative worlds of possibility.
How to fly a kite and claim empires of the sky
Under a gloomy sky, after a night and a day of sudden spells of rain, it's evening. From my window, I see a kid loitering around on a nearby terrace, a kite in his hand. He stands close to the edge and staring out at the huge expanse of the sky, uncertain of the rain that might arrive of the clouds and spoil his conquest of the sky. He sees birds flying out towards the west, he wonders why there are fewer birds and kites flying above the city.
He's engrossed in his thoughts, he doesn't spot the envious eyes of anyone observing him. He carefully measures out the string that will link him to the endless possibilities of the sky, the inverted blue ultra marine that flickers and changes shape; he heaves and tugs for the kite to raise its wings and soar away.
But the kite refuses to budge.
With each tug, it lifts its head, only to dive down, like the melancholy that dives deep down inside you every time you think of your childhood. The kid untangles the strings and starts afresh. Call it persistence!
I try to attract attention. I will be screaming out the directions to him, I think. "Hey, you've to feel the wind, even if it's a slight breeze. And then you've to learn how to tug, not too hard, not too soft for less than three seconds, and then you've got to lift the kite in a series of hard and quick pulls..."
But visibility is a mirage, you are visible only if the other person thinks that you exist. And you're audible only after that.
The distance separating my window and his terrace is considerable, measured not only in terms of years and realisations, but actual moments, imaginings, and a geographical distance of about 300 meters. From the terrace, even if he allows me to speak to him, he will be seeing a host of half-closed darkened windows of a dozen apartments and houses, all too self-engrossed.
The kid doesn't see me.
I keep watching him until the evening turns to dusk, and it's too dark for me to spot even his silhouette. It's a moment of pain, but it's also a moment of realisation the Marcus Aurelius way, confining yourself to the present. Every kid learns the little facts of life the hard way, experience always works in retrospect: "Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."
He's engrossed in his thoughts, he doesn't spot the envious eyes of anyone observing him. He carefully measures out the string that will link him to the endless possibilities of the sky, the inverted blue ultra marine that flickers and changes shape; he heaves and tugs for the kite to raise its wings and soar away.
But the kite refuses to budge.
With each tug, it lifts its head, only to dive down, like the melancholy that dives deep down inside you every time you think of your childhood. The kid untangles the strings and starts afresh. Call it persistence!
I try to attract attention. I will be screaming out the directions to him, I think. "Hey, you've to feel the wind, even if it's a slight breeze. And then you've to learn how to tug, not too hard, not too soft for less than three seconds, and then you've got to lift the kite in a series of hard and quick pulls..."
But visibility is a mirage, you are visible only if the other person thinks that you exist. And you're audible only after that.
The distance separating my window and his terrace is considerable, measured not only in terms of years and realisations, but actual moments, imaginings, and a geographical distance of about 300 meters. From the terrace, even if he allows me to speak to him, he will be seeing a host of half-closed darkened windows of a dozen apartments and houses, all too self-engrossed.
The kid doesn't see me.
I keep watching him until the evening turns to dusk, and it's too dark for me to spot even his silhouette. It's a moment of pain, but it's also a moment of realisation the Marcus Aurelius way, confining yourself to the present. Every kid learns the little facts of life the hard way, experience always works in retrospect: "Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."
Memory of images
Human beings can understand nothing without images, said the eccentric called Thomas Aquinas, and I guess he was right to insist at the same time that these images are mostly phantoms. So if you're working with your memory on the vacuity of substances, expressions, purity of faith, prohibition of imagination and so forth, you're probably restructuring the smoky images you have of them in your mind. And these appear, or fail to appear, at the unlikeliest of moments, severing and transforming possibilities you see of the world, and for yourself. To think outside images, is to think within them. To be outside memory, is to think within forgettable frames.
Consider, I mean what you call the 'past', in terms of these simultaneous processes of inclusion and exclusion. And you invariably get to think of yourself as of 'now' as obese, inactive and static, a melancholy witness to unchanging differentiation of the world around you. Call this thinking historical if you like. But you know there lies a serious flaw in those pristine pasts imagined, as they were, those mosaic of images, separated only by the reverberating smoke mists above the swamps of your mind, those that try to call themselves hoarse the perfect picture, simultaneously running along with that strange neurophysiologic logic of the thing called memory that exterminates any images and anything that cannot be easily understood.
Ah, observe how Walter Benjamin defines this position wonderfully:
The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast... For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it.
(Benjamin, Thesis V, On the Concept of History, 1940)
Because, perhaps, and also because, you exist as a gaze that's incapable of convoking its own shades, images and shadows, the harsh voices, the wailing cries, the cults of appearances and disappearances...
Consider, I mean what you call the 'past', in terms of these simultaneous processes of inclusion and exclusion. And you invariably get to think of yourself as of 'now' as obese, inactive and static, a melancholy witness to unchanging differentiation of the world around you. Call this thinking historical if you like. But you know there lies a serious flaw in those pristine pasts imagined, as they were, those mosaic of images, separated only by the reverberating smoke mists above the swamps of your mind, those that try to call themselves hoarse the perfect picture, simultaneously running along with that strange neurophysiologic logic of the thing called memory that exterminates any images and anything that cannot be easily understood.
Ah, observe how Walter Benjamin defines this position wonderfully:
The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast... For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it.
(Benjamin, Thesis V, On the Concept of History, 1940)
Because, perhaps, and also because, you exist as a gaze that's incapable of convoking its own shades, images and shadows, the harsh voices, the wailing cries, the cults of appearances and disappearances...
Twelve rules for perfect tea-drinking
What are the twelve golden rules for tea-drinkers? What makes the perfect cup of tea? Let me invite you to a problem. If you haven't noticed, there are few railway stations in Bengal which still sport the almost-century-old colonial-era advertisements promoting tea-drinking. The mystery lies there. Needless to say, these have been missed out by the Archaeological Survey of India and frantic journalists looking for bytes and column spaces for the next day. These have gone into the shaping of the Bengali tea-drinker.
And consider this, whatever be their Olympian achievements, Bengalis of India can out beat Chileans, Japanese and Russians (legendary tea-drinkers), and Britishers (the initiators of this strange habit) in at least one act—the relentless consumption of tea. Whether you are in a remote village without electricity, roads or hospitals, or inside the mad crazy urbanias (again, without access to electricity, roads and hospitals), you'll find people making, drinking and talking tea— the solvent for all troubles, the panacea for lost souls brooding over life and other complexities, the magic potion brewed from stranger leaves all claiming to be 'Darjeeling Tea' that eases out the problems of your being (without your being Subhas Ghishing).
Does that mean you've to know all these? Well, no.
Ah, but those wonderful historical signposts. Close to the subway entrance on platform no.2 of Dum Dum railway station, and at platform no. 1 of Krishnanagar railway station, they survive, in spite of scrappy paint and buckling tin, and bemuse tea-drinkers who wonder how that brown (ugggh!) liquid served to them in small plastick cups can be officiously called 'tea' . But even when you're, let's say, hypothetically drinking 'tea',— it is a forced optical illusion, my mother always insisted that the cup of Horlicks I had back in schooldays was tea— you've to believe. And these adverts tell you 'bout the benefits of tea-drinking
("চা-পানের উপকারিতা", in bold letters).
The first of these benefits is very interesting:
"There is no harm from tea-drinking"
("ইহার কোনও অপকারিতা নেই").
The other benefits are, er, less interesting: tea increases your appetite, tea affects your intelligence, tea is not an addiction... but then you're not supposed to ask questions, are you?
If you'll remember, these adverts have their bearing to a forgotten past, when in the early part of the 20th century, tea was viewed with extreme suspicion here by people who are still suspicious about anything and everything, and deeply, er, stoically, philosophical about life. It was the boom time of anti-colonial Bengali nationalism at around 1908— the package complete with bombs, Hindutva and secularism, rallies and successful protest marches after the stalling of the Partition of the Bengal Province— when there were British tea-company people out on the prowl, surreptitiously armed with cups, saucers and even money in some cases, trying to entice would-be Bengali consumers, in what could have been the best example of successful marketing of consumables against odds.
I think tea appealed to the philosophical bit of the Bengali mind— you can philosophise best when you got a purpose to your inactivity ('Hey! I'm sitting in this roadside tea-stall and this is only my seventh cup! I've got lots of work to do, you see!), and which outmaneuvers the suspicious bit ('Why is the boy sitting next to me not in school or college at this time of the day? What's cooking up between him and the girl he's talking to on the phone?'). But excessive philosophising makes you forget your tea in tasseomancy.
Enough of lengthy digressions. So you consider yourself a serious tea-drinker, and want to know. OK, try considering the twelve golden rules of tea-drinking. Eleven of them were compiled in 1946 (by a wonderful Englishman who hated calling himself an Englishman) and this still stand relevant. The twelfth is an unfortunate addition by me.
And consider this, whatever be their Olympian achievements, Bengalis of India can out beat Chileans, Japanese and Russians (legendary tea-drinkers), and Britishers (the initiators of this strange habit) in at least one act—the relentless consumption of tea. Whether you are in a remote village without electricity, roads or hospitals, or inside the mad crazy urbanias (again, without access to electricity, roads and hospitals), you'll find people making, drinking and talking tea— the solvent for all troubles, the panacea for lost souls brooding over life and other complexities, the magic potion brewed from stranger leaves all claiming to be 'Darjeeling Tea' that eases out the problems of your being (without your being Subhas Ghishing).
Does that mean you've to know all these? Well, no.
Ah, but those wonderful historical signposts. Close to the subway entrance on platform no.2 of Dum Dum railway station, and at platform no. 1 of Krishnanagar railway station, they survive, in spite of scrappy paint and buckling tin, and bemuse tea-drinkers who wonder how that brown (ugggh!) liquid served to them in small plastick cups can be officiously called 'tea' . But even when you're, let's say, hypothetically drinking 'tea',— it is a forced optical illusion, my mother always insisted that the cup of Horlicks I had back in schooldays was tea— you've to believe. And these adverts tell you 'bout the benefits of tea-drinking
("চা-পানের উপকারিতা", in bold letters).
The first of these benefits is very interesting:
"There is no harm from tea-drinking"
("ইহার কোনও অপকারিতা নেই").
The other benefits are, er, less interesting: tea increases your appetite, tea affects your intelligence, tea is not an addiction... but then you're not supposed to ask questions, are you?
If you'll remember, these adverts have their bearing to a forgotten past, when in the early part of the 20th century, tea was viewed with extreme suspicion here by people who are still suspicious about anything and everything, and deeply, er, stoically, philosophical about life. It was the boom time of anti-colonial Bengali nationalism at around 1908— the package complete with bombs, Hindutva and secularism, rallies and successful protest marches after the stalling of the Partition of the Bengal Province— when there were British tea-company people out on the prowl, surreptitiously armed with cups, saucers and even money in some cases, trying to entice would-be Bengali consumers, in what could have been the best example of successful marketing of consumables against odds.
I think tea appealed to the philosophical bit of the Bengali mind— you can philosophise best when you got a purpose to your inactivity ('Hey! I'm sitting in this roadside tea-stall and this is only my seventh cup! I've got lots of work to do, you see!), and which outmaneuvers the suspicious bit ('Why is the boy sitting next to me not in school or college at this time of the day? What's cooking up between him and the girl he's talking to on the phone?'). But excessive philosophising makes you forget your tea in tasseomancy.
Enough of lengthy digressions. So you consider yourself a serious tea-drinker, and want to know. OK, try considering the twelve golden rules of tea-drinking. Eleven of them were compiled in 1946 (by a wonderful Englishman who hated calling himself an Englishman) and this still stand relevant. The twelfth is an unfortunate addition by me.
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays - it is economical, and one can drink it without milk - but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities - that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.
Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes - a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.
Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.
Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.
Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup - that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.
Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.
Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.
Lastly, tea - unless one is drinking it in the Russian style - should be drunk 'without sugar'. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
(The complete article by George Orwell can be accessed here).
Stretching the eleventh point further, you reach the twelfth point (though it contradicts point no. ten in a way): Have your tea without milk, sugar or any other addendum. The best tea-leaves are not powdered, but small, delicate, and visibly green. Pure tea is organic, and without artificial flavours. Add that to boiled water (not boiling water) and leave it covered for 2-3 minutes, to make the perfect cup. The brew should be dark like mature wooded rum, but it should not be dark like the night or coal. Use the tip of your tongue to savour. You'll know heaven.
In search of answers: A Visit to the Oracle
Pythia, the old Oracle of Delphi is no more. But there is another oracular namesake that gives you supposedly intelligent answers. Troubled with life as it is, I went looking for enlightenment. You can go there too, if you know where to search for, and importantly, the questions to ask. I'll be providing you with the address, but if you care to, go through the questions that I asked and the Oracle's philosophical replies:
What is the meaning of life?
The Oracle replied: To live in peace with oneself.
Why does the cigarette burn?
The Oracle replied: If you want to find the root cause, look in the mirror.
Why does the sky appear blue?
The Oracle replied: The causes of this incident are rooted deep inside the human mind.Where do I find peace?
The Oracle replied: In Afghanistan.
How to understand Derrida?
The Oracle replied: With unlimited money.
What is the most surprising thing about the universe?
The Oracle replied: Hate. This is sensitive information and you must keep it to yourself. Got it?
The most confusing question?
The Oracle replied: Hmm. You could ask me any question in the world and you come up with this?Understanding my limits, I was rather confused. So I asked:What would you like to ask?
The Oracle replied: "Why is there no cat food which tastes like mouse?”
This answer made me angry. The next question appeared instantaneously:
Why are you so stupid?
The Oracle replied: The cause is insignificant. You must focus on the consequences.
This made me suspicious. And like all sensible people walking the streets of Kolkata, I asked the most sensible question we ask strangers when they make us angry. And it left the Oracle, I believe, in eternal confusion.Tumi ki bangla bojho? (Do You understand Bengali?)
The Oracle replied: My Artificial Intelligence failed to parse what you said.
Ha! Guessed it at the beginning! But here's the link, if you're interested...
Liver of the Dead
It's a strange tale and it goes like this:
In the village of Hammer near Czernikowo many years ago there lived a young married couple. The wife loved to eat liver and could not live if she didn't eat a liver every day. One day she sent her husband once again to town to fetch a liver. However, in Czernikowo the husband met a group of young merrymakers and went with them to a tavern, where he drank away all his money.
Sad, and without the liver, he made his way homeward. It was late. On his way he had to go through a great forest. Here he met a hunter, who asked him why he was so sad. The man told him everything, upon which the hunter said, "In the middle of the forest there is a clearing with a gallows, upon which a number of dead bodies are hanging. Take one of them down, cut out his liver, and give it to your wife. Tell her it is beef liver."
The man did just that.
When he arrived home his wife was at first angry because he had been away so long, but she calmed down as soon as she saw the liver, and began frying it. The man lay down and went to sleep.
Suddenly a white figure appeared at the window, and it cried into the room, "Everyone is asleep. The dogs are keeping watch in the yard. And you are standing there frying my liver."
The man was terrified, and in his fear he cried out to his wife that she should come to bed. But the wife wanted first to dip a little piece of bread into the gravy and taste it.
Meanwhile, the phantom, a white skeleton, had already entered the house, always calling out the same words again and again. The woman was not afraid, but asked the ghost, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your flesh?"
The ghost replied, "The ravens ate it, and the wind blew it away."
Then the woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your eyes and ears?"
And the ghost answered, "The ravens ate them, and the wind blew them away."
The woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your liver?"
Then the ghost cried out, "You have it!" And with that he seized the woman and strangled her to death.
End of tale.
But why did the ghost strangle the woman? It was the man who was to blame, surely. And going by the ghost's pattern of logic, his fetish for lost body parts, a number of ravens should have also been strangled, not to mention worms, insects and bacterial life forms. I think the meaning of this runs deeper than the folk-practices that suggest not to meddle with the physical remains of the dead.
[A Polish folktale compiled by Otto Knoop in 1909, and translated by D. L. Ashliman.]
In the village of Hammer near Czernikowo many years ago there lived a young married couple. The wife loved to eat liver and could not live if she didn't eat a liver every day. One day she sent her husband once again to town to fetch a liver. However, in Czernikowo the husband met a group of young merrymakers and went with them to a tavern, where he drank away all his money.
Sad, and without the liver, he made his way homeward. It was late. On his way he had to go through a great forest. Here he met a hunter, who asked him why he was so sad. The man told him everything, upon which the hunter said, "In the middle of the forest there is a clearing with a gallows, upon which a number of dead bodies are hanging. Take one of them down, cut out his liver, and give it to your wife. Tell her it is beef liver."
The man did just that.
When he arrived home his wife was at first angry because he had been away so long, but she calmed down as soon as she saw the liver, and began frying it. The man lay down and went to sleep.
Suddenly a white figure appeared at the window, and it cried into the room, "Everyone is asleep. The dogs are keeping watch in the yard. And you are standing there frying my liver."
The man was terrified, and in his fear he cried out to his wife that she should come to bed. But the wife wanted first to dip a little piece of bread into the gravy and taste it.
Meanwhile, the phantom, a white skeleton, had already entered the house, always calling out the same words again and again. The woman was not afraid, but asked the ghost, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your flesh?"
The ghost replied, "The ravens ate it, and the wind blew it away."
Then the woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your eyes and ears?"
And the ghost answered, "The ravens ate them, and the wind blew them away."
The woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your liver?"
Then the ghost cried out, "You have it!" And with that he seized the woman and strangled her to death.
End of tale.
But why did the ghost strangle the woman? It was the man who was to blame, surely. And going by the ghost's pattern of logic, his fetish for lost body parts, a number of ravens should have also been strangled, not to mention worms, insects and bacterial life forms. I think the meaning of this runs deeper than the folk-practices that suggest not to meddle with the physical remains of the dead.
[A Polish folktale compiled by Otto Knoop in 1909, and translated by D. L. Ashliman.]
dreaming of dragons
In China there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly.
His deep affection for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window.
It is said that he died of fright.
(from Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo)
His deep affection for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window.
It is said that he died of fright.
(from Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo)
After a day of intense neurotic reading
A sound is lost in the continuous deafening noise that they still call language, and you feel like a specialist in repetition. Repetition, as a distinct category of social existence, i.e. the separation of all the capitulative decisions that determine our lives from the execution of different arrived-at decisions. This transformative pattern of repetitiveness is simply a matter of degrees, of one’s position along an ongoing trajectory, pretending to be different, and forgetting to think of the tiresome repetitive pattern. The right amount of adjustment will get us “there” (wherever “there” is). But do I learn? Do I learn?
You realise your being, and ah, also that mutual recognition of responsibility that only happens on a plane of mutuality. Imagined, i.e. deep inside your mind, a simulacrum invented by neurons, a neurotic activity, anyway.
Creation is thought, desired, projected and organized. Your mind silently works on destruction. And destruction is a creative joy.
So sayeth the ancients.
You realise your being, and ah, also that mutual recognition of responsibility that only happens on a plane of mutuality. Imagined, i.e. deep inside your mind, a simulacrum invented by neurons, a neurotic activity, anyway.
Creation is thought, desired, projected and organized. Your mind silently works on destruction. And destruction is a creative joy.
So sayeth the ancients.
Remembering to forget
If the construction of memory is a core theoretical issue in historical and cultural analyses, understanding how personal memories give way to forgetfulness and selective attention is a damn confusing area.
"We'll remember," we swear, but we happen to forget. Why is that? Just because our brain cells get renewed after certain periods of time, and we emerge as newer forgetful humans after that? I don't think the answer is that simple. But it's the question that worries me further. What accounts for my selective remembering and unremembering?
And then, and without recourse to the Jungian collective subconscious, which is of course extremely stupid, my memory is never about the past alone and, at least in its guise as commemoration, never private and solely individualised. There are contestations, skirmishes, memorials and commemorations about the present as well as about the past, and since commemoration tends to make past and present as stiff and as a freely-flowing linear continuity, competing moral-aesthetic orders of the present make up my choices of refering back. "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future," as Orwell put it in another context. But let me reframe the question once again: Do we chose to remember? Do we chose to forget? Even when we've emphatically claimed to do otherwise?
On liquid recollections
Close to the rented house a diseased old mango tree stands shivering in the midnight rain. I had never seen it before, for there used to be a house in the middle, obstructing my view for over a year. A gaping hole on the ground, and some rain-drowned debris, marks the house's absence. But the leaves of the tree tremble in the dark, the relentless rain makes a strange pattern of awareness or memory.Black, turbid, liquid memories of the multiple pasts and presents suddenly oozes out of nowhere, and like busy and confused insects lost in the rain, agonise your minds. It is in these intense moments you get to feel that the tree's silent presence, the tranquilising nocturnal of rain falling, and your vacuous stare into a blinking screen, are the only sure proof of your existence and of the reflected reality of the world, outside this strange city cage of concrete and glass. Makes you realize that memory is forever liquid, but never lost to time, for it makes a pattern of timeless moments.
Drawing the perfect crab
The king asked Chuang-tzu, an expert draftsman, to draw a crab.
Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants.
Five years later the drawing was still not begun.
"I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them.
At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen.
[Source: Calvino's Memos for the New Millenium; Picture by Ch'i Pai-shih (1863-1957)]
Tree-faced sanity
Societal culture had always created a slew of new poseurs with affectations and idiosyncrasies that sane people earlier found easy to ridicule.True, in the crux of that ridicule lay ignorance, apathy, superstition, political blinkers or cultural incomprehensibility, and the hostility of a people who considered themselves hypothetically sane; sanity was, and is, always a confusing term. The constants that people used to assume, always melts away to incomprehension, or to newer constants.
But here, I am speaking in specific terms, like the sanity that goes into the planting of rice-buds in the rainy seasons, and not in the blight of summer, or something that teaches you to be observant, if not critical, when the world around is changing fast to far-fetidness. The sequence of the conceptions is at the same time a sequence of realisations, as the grand old man put it.
This brings us to what I would like to call tree-faced sanity. It is a category in preconception, self-relation and self-realization in a removed societal fabric, approximating as universal infinitude. It assumes a lot, and is itself subject to varicose interpretations. It's distinct from the above sane 'sanity', for it talks big structures and branches, and does precisely nothing to realize.
Does scorn and ridicule build up inside you, even when you choose to remain silent, hearing people talking tree-faced sanity? Is it discernible from your face? Careful then— the edges are showing.
But tell me: Do you consider yourself sane?
[Pix: Jurgen Habermas and a tree-face]
House-break
Houses are crumbling. Houses are crumbling all around. Right next to this first-floor rented apartment in south Kolkata, the sounds overwhelm, confuse.
You wake up hearing the dull thud of hammers falling on brick, lime, and mortar, frozen in time, outside your southern windows ; the intolerable screech of the "mosaic-machine" hits you from the east, time is wet and whirring, the morning sun has already been blotted out, months back.
You slide a glance at the debris— there still remains a wooden toy car, a crumpled calendar with a goddess's face, some unidentifiable pieces of wood and iron. There used to be giant mango, guava, jamrul, and jackfruit trees—their stumps remain; the flowers have died in their beds, of cement and dust consumption.
All in the space of an year...
You wake up hearing the dull thud of hammers falling on brick, lime, and mortar, frozen in time, outside your southern windows ; the intolerable screech of the "mosaic-machine" hits you from the east, time is wet and whirring, the morning sun has already been blotted out, months back.
You slide a glance at the debris— there still remains a wooden toy car, a crumpled calendar with a goddess's face, some unidentifiable pieces of wood and iron. There used to be giant mango, guava, jamrul, and jackfruit trees—their stumps remain; the flowers have died in their beds, of cement and dust consumption.
All in the space of an year...
First hand invigilation
A motley crowd of brutish father-figures are jostling and pushing, heaving and screaming, to accompany their girls to the examination-halls. An insignificant number of student volunteers are trying to be patient; a lone fatigued university security guard, past his retirement age, is trying to be invisible; it’s 11 o’clock at Gate No.4.
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