One Who Learnt Art in a Law Court: The Life and Art of Kumar Ranjan

(Kumar Ranjan)

Aaya Nagar is the southern end of Delhi and a few kilometre from there India’s current international trade hub, Gurgaon that falls in Haryana starts. The metro station that takes you to Aaya Nagar is Arjan Garh. Get down at the station, take a left turn and you hit the road that leads to Aaya Nagar. It is still a village dominated by Jat and Gujjar communities. No autos or cycle rickshaws ply on this road because village pay with lathis and fists than with currency notes. A few rickety Maruti Omnis provide the feeder service for the people, the ones who are ready to pay ten rupees. The side lanes are narrow as the villagers do not want their boundary walls to be broken down for widening the roads. Hence, often the traffic stands still on these roads. Local businesses thrive on either side of the road; from chana walla to fruit juice sellers, vegetable vendors to hardware dealers do well here. There is a pervading sense of non-belonging in most of the faces that you see on the roads. The local youngsters zoom past by their motorized mean machines and open jeeps that blare out Punjabi songs. That itself is a signal to keep off not only from the vehicle but also from the occupants in them. Migrants who live there have learnt to live with the reality and they just do not mess around with the locals. Even in this carefully created insular society a sort of multi-culturalism thrives. People from different parts of India have found their dwelling here. Aaya Nagar is a place trapped between the cosmopolitan Delhi and mega-polis Gurgaon. And one may feel that it would remain like that for centuries. Kumar Ranjan, a young artist from Jharkhand lives here.

Kumar Ranjan, for those who regularly visit art openings and discussions, is a familiar face. But all the familiar faces in the art scene are not well known artists. They are familiar because they attend most of the art dos not because they want to be a part of the glitterati and chatterati, but because they feel that they need to make up with what they have lost. They are the people who have been denied opportunities and chances to make it big and they are the people who have been even denied their right to art education in the established academies. Kumar Ranjan, however is not a failure amongst such visible yet invisible artists. He came to Delhi for the first time in 2002 and then came back again in 2008. Now he has chosen to be a Delhi based artist and it is his sixth year in Delhi. Kumar Ranjan is not a failure because he has a good studio in Aaya Nagar, though rented out from a banker couple from Jharkhand. He has made his own house in Faridabad and has put it on rent. He is married and has a nine year old son. He misses his wife and child who are with his parents in village. But he has made it a point to be in Delhi because it was in Delhi he finally found his vocation as an artist. All what he has earned so far is from art and he is proud of it. But all these do not make is story interesting because there are so many artists like him who has migrated to the big cities and become moderately successful. What makes Kumar Ranjan’s story interesting is something else besides his art. It is his story that I am going to recount here.

I like Kumar Ranjan’s art. When I first saw his works in the absence of the artist in one of the galleries in Delhi, I had asked the gallerist about the artist. The naive language and the playfulness of strokes seemed to hide the real angst of an individual that I had felt while seeing his works. I thought he was more like Bhupen Khakkar, who refused to be ‘realist’ because what he knew naturally was not realism. Bhupen could have trained himself to be academically perfect; he could have polished his skills. But his polishing act itself was his works and they were charged with the artist’s world view. I found such sincerity and straightforwardness in Kumar Ranjan’s works. Graphically they were not perfect, they were not figurative and narrative. But the works had it all in an entirely different way. A person with trained eyes could see that. In one of the openings, a few years back, Kumar Ranjan came to say hello to me. Since then I have been seeing him and his works in the galleries and outside the galleries. As I am genuinely interested in those artists who see more than they exhibit, or rather work more than they display, I took a special interest in Kumar Ranjan’s works. Those were confusing at time as they did not show a chronological development. I thought the artist was jumping fences of his own mood. As such there were no influences in his works so I could not have said that he was chasing a dream of success. The more I looked at his works the more I thought I needed to know the artist. Then finally I met him at his studio on a Sunday afternoon.

Hailing from a remote village in Jharkhand where the sonic ambience was that of the birds and animals than those of the horse power engine vehicles, Kumar Ranjan’s only familiarity with art while school was seeing some of the magazine illustration and some reproductions of M.F.Husain. His parents were school teachers and the four boys they had were of different talents. The eldest one aspired to be a writer; but at the age of twenty four he committed suicide. Parents did not interfere in Kumar Ranjan’s life after that incident even when he told them that he wanted to become an artist. A drawing teacher in the Navodaya school where he completed his higher secondary education told him of Santiniketan. So Kumar Ranjan packed his bag and found himself at the Bolpur Railway station. He walked into the Kalabhavan premises, sat for the practical examinations. Now in Kumar Ranjan’s own words, “If I could get the face right, the hands were not happening. If I could get the hands right the head was not happening.” Result was simple; he did not get admission in Santiniketan. The same ritual repeated almost all the major art institutions in India. He applied in Baroda and Delhi College of Art but in vain. He was not just getting it right. “Whenever they asked me to draw human figures, I was drawing some human figure in my mind, like a village artist,” remembers Kumar Ranjan.

Kumar Ranjan’s real art education was done in court premises. You may be surprised to know how it happened. After a series of rejections, he had been informed by one of his friends that Patna College of Art could be the next place to try. He also told Kumar Ranjan that some bribing would make the things possible. Kumar Ranjan was ready to bribe anybody to get into a fine arts college. He did bribe, not the authorities but his friend. His friend forged a signature and made some attempts for admitting Kumar Ranjan in the college. Indian authorities are very diligent when the bribe is siphoned elsewhere. He was caught and the university filed a case against him. Now it was Kumar Ranjan’s responsibility to prove his innocence. To attend the court hearing he started visiting Patna regularly. It was here he came in contact with the local artists and art students. With them he started sketching and painting. He learnt the techniques of mixing colours, making canvases and also finding different qualities of art materials. Interestingly, he was living with the same friend who had got him into the soup. Finally in 2006, Kumar Ranjan was acquitted by the court after finding him innocent. But by that time he had learned the basic skills. In between court hearings, giving test in other colleges, Kumar Ranjan once walked into the Triveni Kala Sangham in Delhi where he was told that they did not teach the beginners but they admitted only those people who had the basic skill. Their job was to prepare them to be professional artists. Loaded with experience and a burning passion to become an artist, Kumar Ranjan finally reached Delhi, this time but with a determination to live in the city.

The earlier works of Kumar Ranjan were done in large jute clothes because he did not know how to prepare a canvas. In his village there was no possibility to get prepared canvases. So the easiest surface available was jute clothes. Patna had taught him about acrylic paints. He collected enough paints and started working. Initially the surfaces were filled with people or people like figures. Then slowly he started emptying out of the surfaces. It became a string and random human figures hung from them. It was then Kumar Ranjan found out that his visual images needed the support of some texts. He wrote some cryptic words on these pictorial surfaces, at times in speech bubbles and other times scattered in the surface. The figures were not having any hagiographic details. As he progressed in his working both in style and use of materials, he started bringing more and more defined figures into his canvases. Once he had shifted to Delhi, art material problem were solved and he started working in proper canvases. In Delhi he found something more, something which would become a defining feature of his works. While strolling along the streets of Delhi, near Mehrauli he found an enamel signage of a bone setter. In India the local wrestlers still double themselves up as physiotherapists and bone specialists. Their advertisement often showed a well muscled man in his underwear with limbs in bandages. Though it is the pahalwan (wrestler) who sets the bone, the signage showed the pahalwan himself as an injured person. Painted by local artists, these advertising enamels exuded a strange naivity verging into comedy. But Kumar Ranjan adopted this figure and also created a female counterpart for him, with more or less the same physical attributes.

In many of his figurative works, Kumar Ranjan portrays the protagonist with a pressure cooker attached either on his body or as an emblem on his clothes. Also he presents them having a torch light in their hands. Pressure cooker, according to Kumar Ranjan, is the emblem of the human emotions. Each human being is a walking pressure cooker, about to release all the pressures welling up in him or her. Torch is emblematic of a search for redemption though the image comes from his childhood memories. As a child he used to use the torch to look into the darkness and also to frighten the other children. When he came to Delhi, this part of his memory also came with him which he started transporting on to his canvases. Besides these figurative semi-narratives, Kumar Ranjan also takes a lot of interest in machine drawings and paintings where he converts the human beings and male-female relationship into certain mechanical devices. Human body gets extended to machinery and these machine parts are intricately connected often giving these drawing some sort of erotic charging.

Male-female relationship also comes to play a very interesting role in Kumar Ranjan’s works. He admits that his depiction of female figures is tinged with some sort of sadism. He also says that he does not see women as objects or he does not have any intention to demean them. But for him, female figure is something really enigmatic and it is his ‘failed’ attempts to understand a woman. “I am enamoured by women’s presence. I am not so keen about their body but I am attracted to their presence. This presence is an enigma. I become absolutely helpless before them. It is my helplessness that comes to appear as cruel treatment of female figures in my canvases,” says Kumar Ranjan. However, in his erotic drawings, which he does not do often but only on rare occasions, he is extremely sensuous and unapologetically open. What intrigues the viewer is his logical identification with gay and lesbian relationship. As many people see it in their lives, it is not a theoretical position for Kumar Ranjan. He says that he used to enjoy male company and has always been curious to know about the girls who like other girls not just as friends but as something more than that. Kumar Ranjan, however says that he is not a gay. But he believes that there could be very sensitive relationship between men as well as women even amongst the heterosexuals. One of my personal favourites in this series is ‘Anita’ where one could see two girls trying to measure up their physical beauty.

Kumar Ranjan has been invited to be a part of Vadehra Gallery’s FICA show and Raqs Media Collective’s Devi Art Foundation show. While he is happy with FICA and its attitude in promoting artists, he is not at all happy with the way Raqs Media conducted their program at Devi. “What Raqs wanted was their own promotion,” Kumar Ranjan does not mince words. He says that FICA participation has done a lot good to him. It was after the FICA show that he started getting invitation from other galleries to participate in group shows. Some of the collectors were very benevolent to him. Kumar Ranjan says that whether there is money or not, his whole aim is to paint; perhaps his life’s mission itself is to paint. “I am not thinking about living in a big house or buying big cars. They are good. But having a studio is important and decent amount of money to live. If I have these two things then I am happy.” He goes to art openings to see how people see art and also to see how he sees art himself. “I want to see myself from another person’s perspective. Galleries and openings give me that space to divide myself into two different personalities. I am often silent and I learn a lot from these occasions.” Kumar Ranjan however is not cynical about these openings. He enjoys these evenings and says that his aborted art education is still on even in these gatherings.

Kumar Ranjan, unlike many artists of his age (mid thirties), does not complaint about anybody. He is not anxious about the returning of art market boom. He does sell his works but never yields to the pressure of the gallerists who ask him to paint in a certain style. “I work two or three themes at once. I flit between ideas and rendering styles. It may appear different but the difference is only superficial. Inside all these works, it is the same spirit working; the spirit of an artist, that is me and my life in Aaya Nagar.”

Sunday Thoughts: Baby Haldar’s Less Ordinary Life

(Baby Haldar with her books)

Sometimes, when you are in a busy street, quite unexpectedly a family approaches you. There is a man, a woman, a couple of children and some baggage. They ask you whether you speak Hindi or Marathi. Caught unaware you may say yes. Then they tell their story. It is the usual story. They just came from a remote village as they could not live in their village anymore. Poverty has driven them to the city. They do not know anybody here. Could you please help with some money? They point out to the children. The children look at you with their wide eyes. By the time you brain comprehends what has just happened, a sense of disgust comes filling your mind. You feel that this is the same old story. They are the migrant poor, one family amongst many that come to the city from somewhere and join the milling poor in the city. They are just exploiting your goodwill. They do not want to do any work. It is a different form of begging. By the time you reach this conclusion, you have already walked off. Still the faces of the children haunt you for a while. Then you forget that too. You do not have time or mind to think about these people. You don’t want to listen to their stories. Or do they have a story at all? Isn’t it the same as the ones that you have read in the feature stories in the newspapers? Forget them.

They do have stories. As we think, those stories are the same kind of stories; the tales of famine, exploitation, failed crops, growing debts, land grabbing by the corporate houses, loot, rape, natural calamities. The list is too long and you just do not want to listen to that. But these are the people who have just survived the calamities both natural and man-made. They did not commit suicide like many others do. Instead, they have packed up their things and moved to a city, hoping that one day they would make their lives there. Death looms large over their faces and only hope lies in the horizon that still shows the silhouettes of skyscrapers under construction. Tomorrow, if they are lucky here, they are going to disappear behind these buildings. They become a few amongst the many urban poor who too had come to the city the same way, or in a better way. But the result is the same. However, I feel their stories are different. Each struggle looks like the one that has gone before and the one yet to come. But they are different. And each person has a different story that we do not care to listen. You never know the poverty stricken woman who had come to you seeking help a few years back could turn out to be a writer of international repute one day. While you continue with your well paid obscure life, these people rise up from their obscurity and write their lives. Though it is a rare phenomenon, when it happens they hit you right at your guts. The visceral reactions that their recounted lives generate in you cannot be measured using your already felt emotional parameters. Is it of shame, remorse, repentance or disgust?

The story of Baby Haldar, a domestic help who became a writer of international repute with her first autobiographical book, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’, which was initially published in Bangla, then in Hindi and later on translated and published in English by Urvashi Bhutalia of Zubaan Books, reminds you of one of your encounters with the urban poor. Baby Haldar too had come to Delhi/Faridabad like an urban poor looking for a job. She was literally escaping from a violent marriage and uncaring relatives. She wanted to stand up in her life and do something with it. But she had three children by the age of twenty from a ruthless husband. But when she decided to leave, she took the children along and migrated to a strange place, where after a few years of toiling found her place as a domestic help in an old scholar’s house who treated her like his daughter. The rest, as they say, is history. I would like to recount her story here for you.

Baby Haldar was born to a lower middle class family. She was born in Kashmir and later she spent her childhood in Dalhousie. Her father had a job that took him to different places. Finally he brought them to Murshidabad, Kolkata and left the family there. Her mother waited for him endlessly. He had already taken another woman as his wife. One day, taking her youngest son with her and pushing a ten paise coin in the hands of Baby, the mother walked out of the house, never to return. The burden of the family fell on the young Baby. She and her siblings were taken by her father but the step mother was not so kind to them. Though some of the relatives treated the children with kindness, it was not sufficient for the children to grow up. Her father married again. By the time Baby became fourteen years old, they married her off to a twenty four year old man with no particular job. Baby started off her life in a poor shanty but before she could know what the meaning of marriage was, she became pregnant. Domestic violence was a permanent feature. Baby was fiercely independent but she did not know how to exercise her rights. Finally, by the time she got the courage to walk out, she picked up her children and travelled to Faridabad where two brothers lived. By the time her real mother had been brought back but she did not feel anything for that woman, though she wanted to feel.

In Faridabad, she faced a new reality. She was a woman without husband and her sisters-in-law treated her very badly. Finally, she got the job as a domestic help somewhere in Gurgaon. But the woman at the house treated her like a slave. But the dog in that house loved her. When she was about to leave that job and went to collect her things from the servant quarters, the owners did not allow the dog to come out and say bye to her because they feared that the dog would feel bad and it might create a bad effect on it. Baby got a job at an old scholar’s house. He, Mr.Prabodh Kumar was the great grandson of Munshi Premchand, the legendary writer. He found out that Baby spent a lot of time cleaning his bookshelves. He asked her about her education and once he knew that she wanted to learn and write, he encouraged her. To resume reading was really a tough task for her. But she did start reading and later on writing. The pages she wrote were full of her life, its woes and her dreams. The landlord was touched by her story. He sent it to his friends in Kolkata. They too liked it. Finally it started getting serialised in a Bengali magazine. Soon it became a best seller book Bengal. The Hindi edition followed and then the English edition. Now Baby Haldar is an internationally reputed writer and she is currently working on her second book. But she still works as a domestic help in her mentor’s house, whom she considers as her own father or rather the family considers her as their own daughter.

Baby Haldar’s story, the history of her life is very inspiring. It should be inspiring to all those women who think that their lives, despite all the facilities they have is full of pathos and they are absolutely helpless and victimized by the society and the family members. One does not need a proper job or a cushy life to become a writer. If you have the will to live and the guts to face life, and above all if you have the urge to put those experiences in any one of the mediums of expression, you could become a Baby Haldar. We treat domestic helps as wretched women who are forced to do such work. Their woes start from the very roots of their lives. But those who come up for air and breathe it afresh survive not only as human beings but as creative human beings. Baby Haldar is an exceptional woman amongst the domestic helps. But I think that if one is given a paper and pen to any poor person in this world and asked him or her to put down their thoughts without heeding much to the style, they would come up with exceptionally touching autobiographical literature. But writing is one of the cruellest of acts. It needs guts. It takes courage to face the society as a writer who ruthlessly reveals his or her innards in public. Even the poorest of poor however is afraid of the society for no reason. So they do not write or express at all, even if they are asked to. That’s why Baby Haldar is exceptional. She dares to bare and in that baring act, she gives a different dimension to her life not only as a domestic help but also as a creative writer.

To a Young Agnostic: A Letter to (my) Son.

(Narendra Modi)

Dear son,

I know at this early age itself you have started questioning the existence of god. The other day when you were talking to me, while I was driving you to your school, and you said, gods are non-existing beings and all we know about them are just stories. I was trying to reason with you and was telling you that gods exists as certain moral check dams of the society. Had it not been gods people in any country would have remained barbarians. Gods were a necessity to create a controlled society as people afraid of all those things that were beyond their comprehension. They worshipped thunder, lighting, storms, forests, sun, moon, stars, shadows, snakes and all that made them fearful. To tame them they had to name them. They named them and those people tamed these forces and communicated them with secrete languages became the mediators between the mortal beings and the frightening ones. Such mediators were called shamans; they were priests, occultists, magicians, dancers, singers and painters all rolled into one. People believed that they had ethereal powers as they could communicate with even the dead ones. As times passed, personal stories, oral tales of wonder, saga of chieftains, ballads of warriors and all such came together to have a heady mix and over the years they became legends of gods. It was a necessity of time. And without our noticing, these myths and legends take newer forms and become new gods, new myths and even new histories.

Definitely your dislike for gods is appreciable. I believe that at this tender age itself you have seen the truth in your own way. You insist on scientific truth and mathematical calculations. That is wonderful and even you try to tell me that everything could be explained by and through science even if you do not know yet how to go about it. It is a great thing to see that how you will use your power of logic to set up different fielding patterns as solutions to the current problems that is faced by the Indian cricket team in the fielding and batting fronts. It is interesting to see you speaking in first person singular as if you were the captain of the Indian cricket team already. But the cutest thing that I found in those observations is that you imagine that your fellow team mates would be the same Dhoni, Virat, Yuvraj and so on, when you become the captain of the Indian team. I too had a dream when I was a child like you; my idea was to fit an engine to my cycle and make it a moped. Somewhere in a magazine I had read at that time that if you bought a Raleigh Engine and fitted to your cycle it would run like a moped. I had even written to a cousin who was in Gulf at that time to get me one of those engines. Another idea I had was to become a horse rider. I had spent several days day dreaming me as a jockey. But I became a writer. And I am sure your idea of becoming the captain of Indian cricket team may change and you may become something else. But the important thing is that you have a dream, I am sure all your friends have such dreams, and you are working towards it. Great.

I was very touched when you told me that I should not be voting for either Congress or BJP. You had just set your eyes on a little boy working in a shop on the way to the school. You started screaming in the car itself, ‘Look Dad, Child labour.” Your logic was simple; child labour is a sin and a crime and any party that does not assure the abolition of child labour did not deserve your papa’s vote. Further your logic went in this way: both the Congress and BJP were promising so many things but if they cannot do the simplest thing on the earth, that is the abolition of child labour then what kind of change that they were going to bring in for the society. I was really amused to hear that. I could understand the sensitivity that children of your age have today. Though you and your friends watch a lot of television, I am happy that you people have not lost your tenderness. But you gave me another surprise while I said that I might vote for the AAP. But you said, Papa, if there is a ‘none of the above’ option, you should be pressing it. I have never heard a better advice than that except in the competitive questions of application forms.

In fact I want to tell you something very different yet connected to your way of thinking. Today I happen to watch the noted documentary film maker Rakesh Sharma’s two and half hour long documentary movie on Narendra Modi’s rise and his claims about Gujarat and India. The film titled ‘Final Solution’ focuses on the post Godhra ( February-March 2002) violence in Gujarat instigated, strategized and executed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the lumpen elements in the Bhartiya Janata Party and all other right wing fundamentalists in collusion with the state civil administration and police. The film is an eye opener. The film came to me as a surprise as I have been reading Manoj Mitta’s ‘The Fiction of Fact Finding’, a very interesting investigative literature on Post Godhra violence, for the last few days. This film gave full visuals to what I have been reading. The film starts with Narendra Modi’s Gaurav Yatra in order to establish and consolidate his regime in Gujarat immediately after the pogrom. The horrendous violence unleashed on Muslims is unimaginable. The survivors are still in rehabilitation camps, which Modi is desperate to close down. Muslims were killed in thousands as retaliation against the torching of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express that had carried the Ram Sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya after a VHP call. Fifty six people had lost their lives in this incident. They said that there was a Muslim conspiracy against it. So they killed thousands of Mulisms, raped their women and looted their business establishments. All for what and in whose name? In the name of God.

I am happy that you believe that there is no God. You are too young to take a decision on your choice to be an agnostic or atheist. But at present when you say this I am so proud of you. If there is a god who asks the believers to kill the sons and daughters of other gods, then what kind of god is that? Which is that god that asks an eye for an eye. There is a great saying by Gandhiji, ‘an eye for an eye would leave a country of blinds.’ You should believe in that. If people kill each other, rape and loot in the name of god and if they could justify all their actions based on bigotry, false nationalism, imagined mother land and all based on one or two religious texts and exhilarating speeches by illogical orators who put on the guise of great theologians and spiritual persons, then what kind of a world that we would be given to live in. With what kind of face that we would look at young people like you? You should see this documentary, if possible. This is full of pathos. One cannot justify the Muslim conspiracy in killing the Ram Sevaks in Godhra. Its retaliation in the form of genocide also cannot be justified at any cost. Those leaders give inflammatory speeches invoke Pakistan, Islamic terrorism, the backwardness of Muslims and so on. But none cares to ask what the dominant Hindu religion has done to its own people, the tribals, the backward Hindus, the Dalits, women and children? How could Hinduism survive as an exclusionary religion as leaders believe? How can they claim that India would be land of Hindus? In the documentary one of the leaders in Pavagad in Gujarat says that they are not asking the Muslims to leave the country but in any family there are big brothers and small brothers. The small brothers are expected to follow the big brothers whatever they say. Muslims in India also have to live like small brothers. It is a chauvinistic attitude. The patriarchy that thrived in the joint family systems amongst the Hindus has given birth to such kind of arrogance. Today, where people live in apartments and flats and in nuclear families does anyone think that younger brothers blindly follow the older ones?

The film of Rakesh Sharma shows some graffiti written on the walls of Muslim shanties. They are all abusive and provocative. I was reminded of the similar graffiti during the Nazi regime in Germany. Also it is clearly shown in the film Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin. I thought those were the album pictures from the dark history of the previous century. But it is happening right in front of our eyes. Nazi people used propaganda in different ways. They used to call for mass meetings at night and it was compulsory for the people to attend them. Leaders used to give inflammatory speeches in highly charged hysteric fashion. They connect their illogical ideas with the larger idea of nationalism and they tie it up with the imagined enemy and ask the people whether they agreed with it or not. The people are very susceptible in those hours and they shout out that they hate the Jews. And in those moments they are ready to kill. When these meetings become a regular feature, they are intoxicated by these speeches. During night, after a long day’s work, people’s brains are very prone to suggestibility. They could be taken in to a hypnotic trance with mere suggestions filled with histrionics. Hitler was exactly doing it. He moved the large masses of hypnotised people and they were ready to kill the Jews. In this movie, you could see how the right wing leaders were using the same technique of moving people in the same Nazi fashion.

What touched me in the film was the last seen where we see a four year old boy in a kindergarten class. He had already been shown in one of the earlier segments of the film. To the query of Rakesh Sharma, the innocent boy looks at the camera and tells us how he witnessed his parents and relative were hacked to death right in front of his eyes. He even says that they forced the women to strip and they did all the wrong things to them. Mere aunty ko bhi nanga kar diya (they stripped my aunty too), says the boy. If you are a human being you will be shattered to hear this, not because it is done to his aunty but because he was there to witness it and later recount it. In the final scene of the film, the same boy is interviewed again. He wants to become a soldier when he grows up. What he would do once he becomes a soldier? He would burn them. Who? The Hindus. Is it right burning Hindus? Yes, I want to burn them. I am a Hindu, tells the film maker to the boy. Will you kill me too once you become a soldier? The boy hesitates for a moment. He looks deeply into the camera (into the eyes of Rakesh Sharma). He says, No, I will not kill you. But I am a Hindu, insists the film maker. But you don’t look like one, says the boy. Son, I cried watching this.

You may also see the resonances of Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of Ram), a documentary done by Anand Patwardhan, almost a decade back from the date of the post Godhra violence. History repeats first as tragedy and then as farce, said Marx. Ayodhya movement led by Advani was a tragedy, a national historical tragedy. Godhra led by Modi was a farce. But in both cases innocent human lives were put at stake. Massacre was large scale and absolutely remorseless. The same Advani justified Modi during the Godhra days. Like the irony of history, exactly after a decade from the Godhra days, Advani was sidestepped by Modi to become the official prime ministerial candidate of BJP. The game of political dice is still on, where women, children and old people are made into living victims. Most of the men are killed in the process. One of the right wing leaders says, all the Muslims are not terrorists, but if there is a terrorist, he is a Muslim. The Orwellian double speak is blatantly put to use by these leaders to seduce the lumpen to commit atrocities against Muslims. All in the name of God. I am happy that you do not believe in God.

With love

Papa

Sunday Thoughts on Healthy Life

We all hate war. All the wars are waged in the name of peace. No soldier in the world fights for his country. He fights for his platoon. His loyalty is primarily to his team mates. He is not supposed to exercise his free will; he is supposed to take orders from his commander and act upon it unquestioningly. If you watch Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987), you will see how soldiers are made into puppets in the hands of a commander. Nationalism is a pre-training and post-war/victor or failure doctrine. A soldier fights for his commander. And the commander knows that the soldier exercises his free will only to survive and that is often while attacking the enemy. There he becomes an individual and his whole effort is to save his life; for him a war is his own life and his own death. He chooses his own life over death. So he is ready to ambush, kill, rape and loot. All is justified, by the end of the war, in the name of patriotism and pension. But a soldier is on his own and in his most brooding self when he is back in barracks or in the trenches made in the battlefield. A man in combative mood becomes as soft as a rose petal or as melting as a piece of ice under the cruel sun. His provisions are limited and his devices are minimal. He needs to survive by the rations provided to him. He becomes careful in using it. A soldier who torpedoes the main water supply pipe to an enemy land protects his water flask with utmost care. One who vandalises and torches down the food stores in a hostile country, takes care of his food packet as if it were a piece of gold. A soldier who rapes and shoots innocent women and girl children weeps when he takes out the yellowing piece of paper in which his girl friend has written the parting letter. He weeps over a fading photograph of his family and children. A soldier is a field of contradicting emotions. A man who lives alone (most of the human beings live alone even when they are inside a crowded family) is like a soldier; a man in a battlefield that assures more death than life. He needs to survive. That is where when he comes to think about healthy living. Healthy living has a lot similar to the life of a soldier in a remote trench. I am going to talk about how you could live a healthy life.

Most of us, especially those who earn good for themselves, tend to live according to guide books. These guide books are not concretely prescribed text books imposed on us by any academy or agency. These guide books are virtual and notional. They come in different forms; through television and print media advertisements, life style magazines, health clubs, yoga classes, laugh clubs, joggers’ club, sports clubs, health spas, gyms, organic food outlets and what not. These text books tell you how to live a healthy life; and healthy life has somehow got mixed up with trendy life. Rather I would say, it is imperative for the consumer market to blur the demarcations between health and trend so that they could pass off the latter for the former and vice versa. That’s why, to take a very mundane example, most of the middle class families when they set up a home, first and foremost fill up their moderate homes with huge sofas. Sofas are meant for sitting or reclining. People are supposed to sit in these sofas, make conversations with family members or guests. And those bookish types could even read books sitting there. Sofas define a modern avenue for family communion. But over a period of time, sitting in a sofa has become a by word for sitting to watch television. Communication between family members is supposedly pushed to the dining table (which again is a market compulsion) or bed time talks. A good amount of the leisure time of all family members are gobbled up by television programs. Today, good life means having more than one television in a house. As a result of it, family is fractured into several pieces, where individuals watch their respective channels in their respective pads. It indirectly underlines the age old ideology of male chauvinism; that pushes women to television serials, men to news channels and children to imported and dubbed Japanese animation programs. All in the name of a good and healthy life.

That was a random example and my focus is not on that. My idea is to talk about surviving in a lonely world in a healthy way. Being lonely is a choice, first of all. You could be lonely even in a crowded place. But families and such familial situation are ideologically conditioned spaces where individual human beings (both male and female, children included) do not get any time to be alone. Right from the dressing habits to food habits are dictated by the idea of good life. Where men eat and women cook, they cook something that men want or they would relish. Where men cook and women eat, same thing happens again. While women do cooking with compassion, men often do it with arrogance. I have noticed people actually performing cooking on a Sunday because that is how it is said in life style magazines. Children eat what the market prompts them to eat. Parents live in the illusion that they provide whatever children want but they never think that there is an alternative way of living possible. Children are like sponges. They eat Mcdonald burgers not because they want it but because a desire to have it is created in them. This desire could be curtailed then and there. But our parental instincts, which are often faulty these days, tend to take them to have those burgers. None seems to take any care to give an alternative and healthy life style to the kids. Within a family everyone is invisibly oppressed in this way. That’s why Aldous Huxley in his path breaking novel, Brave New World said, (let me paraphrase), ‘family, oh, two small rooms filled with the presence of a man, constant harangue of a woman, the din created by children, illness, noise, dissatisfaction.’ All these happen because we have failed to live a healthy life.

A healthy life starts with a healthy food habit. This does not have anything to do with what you are told by the television channels or life style magazines or movies. When you have a healthy food habit you start behaving life the soldier in a war trench; careful and parsimonious. To have a healthy food habit what you need to do is to eat more or less the same amount of food on stipulated time. It need not necessarily be a variety of food. You may cook for yourself. But cook something that is very simple and the way you could with limited resources. A food cooked with limited resources is the tastiest food in the world. A food cooked in an elaborate style with elaborate condiments to go with it is often found to be a teaser or tastes. It takes you to different level of experiencing momentary pleasures. That’s why people talk more about exotic food than cooking it for themselves or eating it regularly. You have to cook like a soldier and eat like a soldier in a war trench. You are completely aware of what you are cooking and what you are eating within the limited resources. You do not waste water and you do not waste any food material. Once you cook and eat in that way, you find great satisfaction about it. And more importantly it is pertinent to see what goes out of your body. You should be equally aware of your bodily excretions. Once a balance is achieved between what you take in and what you eject out, then you could say that you live a healthy life. But make sure that you do not resort to any kind of medicines. Human body is capable of curing itself (though it cannot grow a cut off limb back). Most of the people rush to their medicine box even if they have a simple headache. Do not take any medicine. That should be the mantra of life. But those who are suffering from real illness and those illnesses that have already set in and need to be prevented from growing further should take medicine based on the doctor’s advice. Never self medicate. The best way is to eat health and remain healthy. One has to start really early for this.

Exercise is a must. That does not mean that you need to rush to a gym. Buy expensive gears for jogging, do yoga under a trained master, or do aerobic dances, diet or anything like that. One has to be aware that he or she has to do good enough bodily work so that whatever has been taken in is digested properly. If that much physical work is done, then one need not even go for morning walk. We have avoided all kinds of physical work. We have mistaken physical work for lack of sophistication. We are not ready to walk and we are not even ready to clean our own homes. If we do these things properly, all kinds of demands for doing physical exercise are satisfied. But today people just do not do it. They drive five kilometres to a park to do a one kilometre of jogging. They buy treadmills to keep their unwashed clothes. People talk more about exercise and make their tongues stronger than any other part of the body. Simple thing that is to be done is this: If you are not able to do anything else, just walk in silence for at least fifteen minutes. But people cannot walk in silence. They listen to music when they walk or they talk over mobile phones. You body does not get any exercise out of it. When your bodily movements become full in tune with your own awareness of being, then only your body gain health. Listening to classical music or rap does not make any difference. They are meant to distract. To have a healthy life you just need to be silent. You do not call it spiritual or meditation. It is nothing. It is just being silent and get lost in that silence. Then everything becomes clear; as if from a vision your life will reveal unto yourself.

I am forty five years old. Vital status of my body could be roughly something like this: Weight 69 kg, Height 5’ 8”, Waist: 30, Chest 40. I go for morning walk in silence. I cook and eat like a soldier. And I refuse to take medicines. But I do take medicine when it is unavoidable. But such chances have been rare so far. I sleep early and get up early. No washing machine, no refrigerator, no maid servant. Everything is done by hand.  The routine is simple. Get up and drink lemon water with honey. Make sure the bowels are clean. Read or write for an hour. Go for walking. Come back, clean up and wash clothes. Make a simple breakfast that comprises of two eggs and four pieces of bread. Go to the work place. Work for eight hours. Come back, cook dinner, which is often rice, dal and vegetables put together and pressure cooked. Taking bath is an important thing. Massage your body with soap or oil as if you really love it for almost ten minutes. You will not feel any tiredness during the day and above all you will look fresh. And make sure you do everything in silence. A healthy life is assured.

The Auto Conversations but Not Soliloquies

(Grameen Seva auto in Delhi. Picture for illustrative purpose only)

Some call it shared auto and some say it is ‘grameen seva’, and there is yet another group that makes things much simpler; they call it ‘auto’. They don’t care whether these vehicles have three wheels or four wheels, a steering wheel or a handle fitted with clutch and gear. What is there in a name? Whatever be the name these vehicles ferry people from suburban rural areas to the arterial roads or metro stations. They are too many in number and their strong fleet itself is an indication of government apathy. They ply in places where the authorities have not provided public transportation. It also implies that the state of the art metro rail system has not yet fulfilled its promise of giving feeder services from the metro stations to interior localities where public transports have not started their operations. There used to be small denominations like five rupees at some point of time and now there is only one rate, that is ten rupees. The distance that you travel may be a kilometre or eight kilometres but what you shell out is rupees ten. An auto at a time take average ten people but the aim of the drivers/owners of these vehicles are to accommodate fourteen people in them which have been designed for carrying eight people including the driver. But the inflation is so much that they are hard pressed to accommodate the maximum number of people (at times even fifteen) so that they could get one hundred and fifteen rupees in one trip.

I call them autos and prefer travelling in them. The small republics that form within these rickety vehicles are insular as the constituent individuals though adjust themselves for squeezing in more people remain unconnected with the other people sitting next to them, mostly involved in telephonic conversations or listening to music through ear plugs. No eve teasing or molesting happen in these vehicles, at least during the day time, because everyone is so cautious about their body movements while in it. Your body may be stuck to that of a man or a woman but that is it. You just cannot acknowledge it; acknowledgement is a dangerous invitation to trouble because your involuntary movement of a limb could be mistaken for an act of insult of the other person’s sense of dignity. One interesting thing in these operations is the honesty that people show in paying the fare. As there is no conductor or cleaner to collect the fare from you, once you get down, you go and pay ten rupees to the driver. None runs away with the money. I remember reading one small essay in fourth standard. It was titled, ‘Uncle Krishnan in London’. In late 1970s, as people were bound to their own locales, seeing less and imagining more, London was a mystery land though the British had left us with our own devices of rule hardly twenty years before. In the school essay, Uncle Krishnan talks about the wonders that he saw while visiting London. Two things he notices; one, there is something called escalator, which is a moving staircase. Two, people pick up newspapers from the news stands and put the exact amount there in box. And Uncle Krishnan tells us that people in Britain are really honest. In the class we were asked to repeat a particular question and answer: What is an escalator? Escalator is a moving staircase. When I travel in auto and then in metro I remember Uncle Krishnan and the London he had seen.

As people are quite disinterested in others’ affairs, I should say, even if the trip is very short, you get terribly bored. I do not speak to people over telephone when I am in an auto mainly because I just cannot concentrate on what I am talking. What I do is looking at the same scenery, the busy street, the dusty food stalls and the machines that squeeze juices out of various fruits and sugar cane. It is not good to stare at the faces of the people who sit just opposite to you; modesty of people is very brittle. But I am very keen on listening to what others talk, if at all they talk. Recently I intently listened to a conversation between three young men (fresh in the job industry or fresh from the colleges). One of them was holding a copy of Gandhiji’s ‘My Story of Experiments with Truth’. I noticed him because of the book. The other young man asked him how the book was. My curiosity grew. The one who had the book was a bit intelligent, it seemed, as he answered in the following way: “It is Gandhiji’s autobiography. So how can I say that it is not good?” The other man was obviously dumb as he queried: “Still, it is old stuff, no?” “I am interested in autobiographies.” “Oh, where did you buy this one?” “I bought it from the Delhi Book Fair.” “Which other books do you read?” Now, there were three pretty young girls sitting next to them. Obviously their conversation now had a different dimension. The one who acted dumb wanted to tell these girls, hey look, I just don’t care. But the man of autobiographies was not far behind. He wanted to say, look man, I am not your type, I am one of those people who ‘read’. “The other book I read is Mein Kampf.” I could understand his library. Mein Kampf, surprisingly is one of the best sellers in the world, like Ayan Rand’s Fountain Head, Mario Puzzo’s ‘God Father’ and ‘Catch 22’, three books that you see in any book stall as eternal best sellers. However, some of my friends had persuaded me to read the latter two books, I never felt like reading them. I am sure, many who suggests these books also might not have read them. I have read Mein Kampf. I was nineteen years old then. Every evening I took this book to a public park in Trivandrum and read it there. I liked Hitler and more than that I disliked him. Reading Anne Frank’s Diary at the same period intensified my hatred towards Hitler. It was lightened up when I watched Chaplin’s ‘Great Dictator’. Hitler was comically justified by Heinkel in the movie.

“I do not understand many of the words,” the dumb one said. The erudite was now in control of the conversation as he knew it was benefitting the pretty girls and some shy smiles were playing hide and seek in their lips. May be he read it right, thinking that the smile came as disparage for the dumb’s lame questions or assuming that the smiles were an appreciation for his scholarship, he continued. “That is not a problem. You can read it in ipad or mobile,” he said. There was no answer from the other side. “For example,” the scholar took out his large screen mobile phone with various ‘apps’ displayed on the screen, “you could download books from Torrent or X or Y sites. And while reading if you find any problem with a word, just put the cursor on the word and the meaning will pop up,” saying this he gave a quick demo to the dumb one but I knew by that time he was just an excuse for the reader to flaunt his abilities not only as a reader but also as a person who reads from his mobile. I was quite amused. I was waiting for the list of books that he had recently read. But the other person was not interested. And now he was talking more about some competitive examinations and how he had miserably failed in it. I saw six kohl lined eyes shining with suppressed smiles. He was lamenting on his bad luck. However, before he left, he said, “Gandhiji is too old to read.” I wanted to tell him, if you read Gandhiji you could win any competitive exams because he was the best problem solver, negotiator and strategist available at that point of time. Even Gandhiji is interpreted by corporate heads for their purpose. Soon there will be an adroid that facilitates a Gandhiji apps, who knows. I wanted to tell him so but by that time they had got out of the auto and left.

Later in the same evening, I walked into a medical shop looking for a body spray. There in the shop, two young boys, apparently who worked as sales people there, were engaged in some heated discussion. One of them at the counter asked me: “Uncle, here is a problem. We want to know your opinion.” I was willing to participate. “Suppose you get ten thousand rupees per month as salary but in stringent working conditions and you are offered another job in a comfortable atmosphere but the salary is a thousand less, which one would you take up?”  I did not take a moment to answer and I said, “I would go for nine thousand rupees in a comfortable work atmosphere.” The boy who raised the question was triumphant. But the other boy was dismissive, he said, “Uncle, today everyone needs money.” He gestured counting notes with his fingers. “What if the conditions are tough?” I said, “It depends on who takes up the job.” The boy at the counter was jubilant as he could find a supporter in me. But while I walked out after paying for the spray, the other boy asked from behind, “Uncle, what if one finds those stringent conditions comfortable?”

I think I did not have an answer for that other than a vague smile. 

Sunday Thoughts on Reading Menu and Food

(Menu- for representational purpose only)

Art market boom stories do not end it seems. To qualify a contemporary incident it is always good to contrast it with a boom time story. I remember how ‘stylish’ our artist friends had become during those years. Especially when it came to ordering of food or wine in a restaurant they used to compete with each other in ordering (as well as paying the bills) the most exotic food available and also in selecting the best wine available there. I lack in such skills. I do not understand most of the names seen in a restaurant menu. Obviously as a writer I am interested in reading the names of the culinary specialities of the place and I like the phrases that they people have come up to qualify their food and beverage items. Like many names in the Latin American and African novels I still find it difficult to remember the names of food items. While I could comprehend which character does what in a novel, in a menu it becomes all the more difficult to track the movements of the ingredients (which are often given in brackets in black italics) and how they turn to a classic taste wonder.

Sometimes it reads (in bracket) ‘king prawns fried with spinach in white rum and coconut paste’. I wait for a royal lobster to come hiding its untimely death in the beautiful shroud of coconut paste and the dirge of neat porcelain accompanied by the stewards who exactly look like bier carriers of church. The head priest (the chief chef) makes an appearance to recite some magical words of exhortation that makes the passage of prawn to the nether worlds of hungry patrons in mourning clothes (haven’t you noticed that for both mourning and celebrating they prefer black attires?). But often I am disappointed. Instead of a majestic prawn what I see is its shrivelled soul of it hiding in the centre of the plate with an abundant dressing of various greeneries for effect. Where I expect a Delacroix and I get to see an Ophelia; Where I want to see Sudhir Patwardhan they give me a Prabhakar Barwe. I should not complain because the pure ecstasy seen in the countenances of my hosts and their Epicurean words remind me of Ecstasy of St.Teresa by Bernini; I cannot deny it as faking though it is faking. If I go by Descartes, I say then and there, ‘I accept, therefore I am.’ However, I cannot suppress a reeling out of pornographic visuals in my mind when I read a menu and come across something like ‘Sex in the Beach’ (a mocktail) and ‘Chicken 65’. Except for the small little umbrella that comes perching at the rim of the mocktail glass there is neither sex nor beach in it. Only evidence that you had drunk something of that sort last night is seen when you confront a blue pee at your commode; only if you care to look at what goes out of you with as much as care you had taken last night about what went in.

One day I was telling my inability to decipher a menu to a rich young artist friend of mine. When I say, rich, young and artist, polite arrogance comes with it as topping. He said, “You are not able to do it because you do not have the habit of throwing parties or taking out family or friends eat out in high-end restaurants.” For a moment, it was shocking for me. I am used to bluntness but such straightness is sometimes difficult to take. ‘Satyam Bruyat, Priyam Bruyat, Bruyat na Satyam Apriyam’, says Indian philosophy. That means, Tell Truth, Tell Pleasing things and Never tell truth that hurts (obviously, the listener). I, happily do not believe in it. My motto is exactly the opposite; even if it hurts, tell it. Hence, when he said it I liked it. I liked the way he told me the truth. But after some deliberations in my mind I thought why he had told me so. He knew that I did not take friends and family to high-end restaurants. But still, was he doing the same till recently, till acquired all his wealth through his art? So, for him it is an acquired etiquette; something came to him by chance. But the fundamental truth is that millions of people in this country are not able to do what he does. They never understand a menu. The eateries that they frequent out of choice or by force may or may not have menus with or without spelling mistakes. But they do not want to read the menu to order their food. They already know what they want. They know how much they could pay for what they would eat. So it is economics/wealth that takes a person out to high-end restaurants. Some people, however wealthy they are prefer to live a simple life; they too do not read menus. They already know what they want.

I have been living alone for some time now. This stay has given me a few great revelations. As I have not yet set up a kitchen where I could cook what I want to eat, I eat outside once in a while. There are a few blessed hands that give me home cooked food even if I do not expect them to do so. I want to acknowledge them taking their names but they are not doing it for name or the ‘good points’ that they would earn in the final count before the so called God. If I mention their names they may be offended; so I avoid doing it. Blessed are those hands that feed me; be those of a friend or of a person who works in a local wayside eatery.

I eat from the places where working class people eat. When I say working class one may tend to think that they are all menial workers. No, working class includes office goers, people working in IT industry, doing small executive jobs, people who have come to the city for giving job interviews, college students, drivers, helpers and people who look like coming from settled home with caring families. People eat from such places for different reasons. For some people, like me, they have not yet set up a kitchen, for some others they could not eat at home, some people do not have a permanent place to stay or they have erratic hours of work. So they all eat from small eateries; they are affordable. But I wonder how a person who earns two hundred rupees a day (approximately four US Dollas) spends fifty rupees out of it for one time meal? It will be too pinching for him. I see people drinking sugar cane juice early in the morning so that the sugar in it helps them to hold the body and soul together till the next meal which may come or may not. I see rickshaw pullers sucking on cheap sweets in their mouth to supply the body with sugar. I see young people eat a full meal for Rs.20/- from subsidized food booths between 10 am and 11 am so that they can skip at least one meal. I see people eating two samosas (Rs.10 or Rs.12/-) for their dinner! People do not have money. If I do not know how to read menus, I am okay with it.

In small eateries, you may not be treated with affection. In high end restaurants, everyone would come to you as if you were a king or queen. The waiters in the small eateries work for their food. They are weary of doing what they are doing. They are saddened by their hands to mouth existence. They cannot give you a smile with the food they serve. Even if they try to smile at them they will look at you with suspicion. In high end restaurants, you eat the exotic sounding food items with relish. But your relishing is affected one. More than you eat, you talk to your companions. You pretend to be happy. None goes to a high end restaurant to feel depressed. Eating there is a celebration, feeling good; it is about accomplishment and gains. It is a display of your social skills. It is a temporary feeling of power to order others around and pay. It is about negotiations and setting up deals. It is more about acting out than eating out. But in small eateries, there is a strange communion with the food. You do not hear people talking there. People eat as if they were participating in a secret ritual. Yes, there is a secret ritual there; between the miseries of life and the act of bracing up for facing it in the next moment. Eating is an interval of introspection; meditation. It is a communion with one’s own self. The saddest sight in the world is that of a person eating alone in dim light; perhaps, that person is the happiest person in the world too because he is one with his food. It is my flesh and it is my blood, take it, says the son of God. And you break bread with him and you feel good about it. Never mind you don’t know how to read menus. 

A New Beginning

(Indira Gandhi National Open University Campus, Delhi)

Smell of dust inside. Smell of poverty mixed with rich arrogance outside. Beyond that a rocky land covered with shrubs. In unplanned colonies, obviously in not-gated ones, huge buildings are seen at the beginning of the alleys. As you go inside, the size of the buildings reduces and they end up shanties as if they were the frills of India’s fabric of mixed development or un-development. A curtain-less glass window gives me a full view of the other houses. Balconies flaunt washed clothes and from that one could even understand the taste of the occupants. People look like intoxicated with life; the life shown to them by television channels. Most of them look like characters coming out of these television boxes. Amidst these dreamscapes coal fired choolahs edge into the street, dirty children with unkempt mops move around, a harassed mother makes her plunge into something called a ‘day’. For her it seems, everyday is like any other day. I walk through these scenes as if I were an invisible man.

I walk into the Indira Gandhi National Open University premises. The government owned gated property with more than enough security men at gate, unusual for an early morning, allows the local people to use it as a jogging track. From the filth of mixed development din, one enters a different world. The main arterial road is spacious and is lined with carefully pruned flower plants. The joggers do not belong to the upper middle class. Most of the morning walkers here do it for medical reasons, it seems. A few youngsters jog vigorously in their track suits, expensive shoes and ears plugged with music. Fat women amble by, men with expansive paunches discuss politics. The huge campus of this open university does not show the arrogance of academics. In fact I do not see any professor or lecturer jogging by. I walk towards East as I know the direction from the rising sun. Even in the cruellest month of April there still a nip in the air. I receive the sunlight with gratitude.

From the arterial road, small roads branch out to either side, leading to department buildings. Every inch is filled with trees or flowering plants or well planned gardens. A few men do stretching exercises in one of these gardens. Identical men and women broom the road clean. They must be coming from the same community or family. They are well dressed and they seem to be very serious about what they are doing. The surroundings display their sincerity; every inch is clean. A peacock walks past me. It turns its neck and looks at me for a moment and then minds its business. My mind goes blank. After a few minutes of from the peacock, I start wondering why I am not thinking about words, as I usually do. May be the beautiful road, the calm university environment, the chirping of birds, the prattling of monkeys and many more small little things of this morning has filled in my mind. I do not need words to interpret what I see; this is just an experience, perhaps not to be expressed through words. But once I am back in my new place, I sit to recount that experience.

I thirst for a morning tea. Once out of the university campus, I look for a tea shop. The world has come too much alive or frantically alive by seven thirty in the morning. When I was walking into the campus the road was rather empty; world could change in moments. Push carts sell not tea but rice and dal, and I wonder why people eat rice and dal in the morning. The juice shops have become already active. People drink sugarcane juice and mosambi juice and go to their work places. The sugar in these drinks keeps them active. Dabas too are active. Most of the workers in these eateries are busy making bread pakoras. The way they make it is disgusting. I sit in one such shop and order for a cup of tea. While drinking tea, I see the man making bread pakoras asking another worker to change the newspaper spread on the tray. I see the oily newspaper. The other man looks for a sheet of newspaper and that is the last thing available in that shop. I once again see the oily spread and realize that it must have been there for at least a week.

I go back. I am going to live in this place. I am going to make unfamiliar into familiar. And I am sure I am going to succeed. The most important thing that comes to my mind is this: if one has peace of mind one feels time at his/her side. I have been awake for the last five hours doing things at my own leisure. One could do anything, if one could make space in mind.