I wish I were a little rock
A-sitting on a hill
A-doing nothing all day long
But just a-sitting still.
I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't brush
I wouldn't even wash
But sit and sit a thousand years
And rest myself b'gosh.
(anonymous)
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Thought For The Day
Friday, March 11, 2005
Knopfler-o-saurus
The newly discovered Makkiasaurus Knopfleri.
I'm sure there are lots of people in the world who deserve to be immortalised - saints, supermen and saviours. But personally, I'm glad about this tribute. :)
Monday, March 07, 2005
The Sultan Sings
So here's the thing about Mark Knopfler: he's old. See him now, and he reminds you of nobody so much as of Richard Dreyfuss as the aging music professor in Mr. Holland's Opus. And it's fitting too, because Mark has a distinctly professorial air about him... he looks like the kind of professor you'd really wam to in college - the kind with whom you might go out and have a couple of beers and talk about books and music.
Those of you who, like me, have brought up on a strict diet of Dire Straits music and the Alchemy video, might expect to see Mr. Knopfler with his headband and a shock of unruly hair, dressed in stark black-and-white-and-red, wearing his ironic, amused expression while he moves around the stage, casually playing the lead for Sultans while he checks out what his band-mates are up to, occasionally imitating them even... So it comes as a bit of a shock when Mr. Holland walks out on stage, wearing a white full-sleeve shirt, his almost-bald crown ringed with the kind of hair you associate with somebody's grandfather. He looks, for all the world, like an somewhat elderly professor, who should be walking across manicured university lawns somewhere - not standing on a stage with an electric guitar strapped on, neon lights playing over him. He shouldn't be there, and neither should the screaming, shouting sweaty crowd in which I'm being slowly crushed.
Until he starts to play.
That's when you close your eyes, and get beamed back, straight into Alchemy. The same numbers you played at maximum volume at home, on your 1500 watt speakers... to which you've rocked most of your life... all coming at you live. Mr. Knopfler is, admittedly, less active than before, but still a beast on the lead... and Telegraph Road never sounded so good before.
2 hours of listening to "the voice and guitar of Dire Straits" (which is how he's been billed in all the promos - they even gave out lyrics booklets with incorrect song names), and my night is made. All is worth it - the stench of others' sweat, having the breath slowly squeezed out of me by the crush of people, having to walk half-way to Bandra afterwards...
Even if he does look old, the sultan's still swinging.
Those of you who, like me, have brought up on a strict diet of Dire Straits music and the Alchemy video, might expect to see Mr. Knopfler with his headband and a shock of unruly hair, dressed in stark black-and-white-and-red, wearing his ironic, amused expression while he moves around the stage, casually playing the lead for Sultans while he checks out what his band-mates are up to, occasionally imitating them even... So it comes as a bit of a shock when Mr. Holland walks out on stage, wearing a white full-sleeve shirt, his almost-bald crown ringed with the kind of hair you associate with somebody's grandfather. He looks, for all the world, like an somewhat elderly professor, who should be walking across manicured university lawns somewhere - not standing on a stage with an electric guitar strapped on, neon lights playing over him. He shouldn't be there, and neither should the screaming, shouting sweaty crowd in which I'm being slowly crushed.
Until he starts to play.
That's when you close your eyes, and get beamed back, straight into Alchemy. The same numbers you played at maximum volume at home, on your 1500 watt speakers... to which you've rocked most of your life... all coming at you live. Mr. Knopfler is, admittedly, less active than before, but still a beast on the lead... and Telegraph Road never sounded so good before.
2 hours of listening to "the voice and guitar of Dire Straits" (which is how he's been billed in all the promos - they even gave out lyrics booklets with incorrect song names), and my night is made. All is worth it - the stench of others' sweat, having the breath slowly squeezed out of me by the crush of people, having to walk half-way to Bandra afterwards...
Even if he does look old, the sultan's still swinging.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
A Life Gone By
My grandparents lived upstairs from us - 1 floor up - in an old-new house in the centre of the city. So much in the city that if we kept the windows open during the day, all the dust from the city blew in and settled inside the house, and we walked about in a layer of grime half an inch thick. Our house was on the main road, and if you stood on the verandah, you could count the cars going by (for every white car that went by, you got extra points). Or add up the numbers on their number plates to see who got the highest numbers. The noise was deafening - especially in those days, with that impossible traffic. So impossible that I have distinct memories of the family getting in the car one evening, trying to reverse the car out of the house (onto the main road), and eventually giving up after sitting in the car for two hours, driving the few feet back into the garage and going back upstairs, to where the noise and dust of the traffic still got us, but at least we could sit under the fan. Or shut out the world outside (starkly lit by fluorescent tubes, replaced over the years by sodium vapour lamps, soft and luminous) and watch my parents dance to Valentino Tangos or Burt Kaempfurt or Fausto Pappetti.
My grandfather was tall and dark and handsome (really). He had silvery white hair, and white teeth that laughed out of his dark face. He drank gin with bitters (Angostura), and smoked several fascinating pipes, stuffing them with tobacco out of a soft green pouch. By the time I knew him, he had long retired. He surfaced at 5:00 a.m., almost before the sun, and drank his tea, while my grandmother did her morning puja. When she finished, and she'd drunk her tea, he did the "bazaar", then returned home to have breakfast - tea, toast, butter, jam, cheese, fruits. Whenever I had breakfast with them, he cut my toast (pink with lightly spread jam) into tiny pieces - more fun to eat.
Every afternoon, after their siesta, my grandparents would drink afternoon tea (with Britannia Marie biscuits) in their verandah (1 floor above our's), where they had made their peace with the noise of traffic that often prevented them from hearing people at the door. If I went up in the afternoons, I would have to hammer on the verandah door leading off from the dark cool landing, sometimes for up to 15 minutes before they heard me and let me into the cool-warmth of the balcony, afternoon sun sloping through the grills, my grandmother slowly perspiring flakes of Ponds dreamflower talc like snow against her white skin.
Of course, I bonded primarily with my grandfather. He was more fun. He took me swimming. We walked together to the park every day, where he waited and watched while I quarrelled with other kids to take rides on the huge elephant-trunk slide and see how high I could take the swing, then bought us groundnuts (roasted in their shells, that you had to snap open to reach the warm red-brown nuts) and chocolate on the walk home. I sat on his lap all evening, watching TV with them (we didn't have a TV at home, 1 floor down). He got me my first dog - a puppy that someone picked off the road - and kept it for me when my parents refused to let it into the house.
My grandmother was another story altogether. She wore thick glasses that magnified her eyes to about 5 times their normal size. And against her short and generous build, and unbelievably white skin, they seemed a hundred times more frightening. She scowled and scolded a lot more, she frowned over huge boiling pots in the kitchen (eventually producing the world's most delicious dishes) and told me not to "sit like that" and "do that" and constantly reminded me of what ladies should and shouldn't do (and mostly, what I did wasn't ladylike). She pushed me to the end of my short temper, and didn't allow my beloved dog into her puja room (but didn't god make him too?). But in the soporific heat-drugged afternoons, after her hectic mornings of directing the cooking and putting away the bazaar and scolding and scowling and frowning, she sat on the sofa reading, her starched cotton sari limp from the heat and her sweat and smelling faintly of talcum powder. And when I deigned to lie on the sofa, head on her lap, she told me stories - about avatars and rakshasas and gods and kings. Greek and Roman mythology, I read in Tales From Long Ago. Indian mythology, I heard from her, begging her to tell me that particular story again and again and again, drifting off to sleep in the familiarity of the words, the genial comfort of her lap, to be awoken for afternoon tea at 4:30.
My grandfather was tall, dark, handsome; my grandmother - short, fair and once, quite a stunner. I can close my eyes and see them still, sitting there in the cane chairs (that once were rusty-red, until someone had them painted a hideous sky blue), in the still afternoon, drinking their tea and watching as the world goes by, the traffic roaring by their windows (three floors up from the road), the dust settling more and more firmly around them.
The house now seems empty without them. For days after my grandmother passed away - just over a year after my grandfather - we felt like peas rattling around in an empty can, intentionally increasing decibel level to fill up the unfillable emptiness their absence left behind, moping over a pair of spectacles, an expression captured on film, the contents of of a dressing table as familar to me as the palm of my hand. A briefcase, a stool, the view from the verandah, and inside my head, my grandparents drinking their tea in the noise and thrust of an ever-lasting summer afternoon.
My grandfather was tall and dark and handsome (really). He had silvery white hair, and white teeth that laughed out of his dark face. He drank gin with bitters (Angostura), and smoked several fascinating pipes, stuffing them with tobacco out of a soft green pouch. By the time I knew him, he had long retired. He surfaced at 5:00 a.m., almost before the sun, and drank his tea, while my grandmother did her morning puja. When she finished, and she'd drunk her tea, he did the "bazaar", then returned home to have breakfast - tea, toast, butter, jam, cheese, fruits. Whenever I had breakfast with them, he cut my toast (pink with lightly spread jam) into tiny pieces - more fun to eat.
Every afternoon, after their siesta, my grandparents would drink afternoon tea (with Britannia Marie biscuits) in their verandah (1 floor above our's), where they had made their peace with the noise of traffic that often prevented them from hearing people at the door. If I went up in the afternoons, I would have to hammer on the verandah door leading off from the dark cool landing, sometimes for up to 15 minutes before they heard me and let me into the cool-warmth of the balcony, afternoon sun sloping through the grills, my grandmother slowly perspiring flakes of Ponds dreamflower talc like snow against her white skin.
Of course, I bonded primarily with my grandfather. He was more fun. He took me swimming. We walked together to the park every day, where he waited and watched while I quarrelled with other kids to take rides on the huge elephant-trunk slide and see how high I could take the swing, then bought us groundnuts (roasted in their shells, that you had to snap open to reach the warm red-brown nuts) and chocolate on the walk home. I sat on his lap all evening, watching TV with them (we didn't have a TV at home, 1 floor down). He got me my first dog - a puppy that someone picked off the road - and kept it for me when my parents refused to let it into the house.
My grandmother was another story altogether. She wore thick glasses that magnified her eyes to about 5 times their normal size. And against her short and generous build, and unbelievably white skin, they seemed a hundred times more frightening. She scowled and scolded a lot more, she frowned over huge boiling pots in the kitchen (eventually producing the world's most delicious dishes) and told me not to "sit like that" and "do that" and constantly reminded me of what ladies should and shouldn't do (and mostly, what I did wasn't ladylike). She pushed me to the end of my short temper, and didn't allow my beloved dog into her puja room (but didn't god make him too?). But in the soporific heat-drugged afternoons, after her hectic mornings of directing the cooking and putting away the bazaar and scolding and scowling and frowning, she sat on the sofa reading, her starched cotton sari limp from the heat and her sweat and smelling faintly of talcum powder. And when I deigned to lie on the sofa, head on her lap, she told me stories - about avatars and rakshasas and gods and kings. Greek and Roman mythology, I read in Tales From Long Ago. Indian mythology, I heard from her, begging her to tell me that particular story again and again and again, drifting off to sleep in the familiarity of the words, the genial comfort of her lap, to be awoken for afternoon tea at 4:30.
My grandfather was tall, dark, handsome; my grandmother - short, fair and once, quite a stunner. I can close my eyes and see them still, sitting there in the cane chairs (that once were rusty-red, until someone had them painted a hideous sky blue), in the still afternoon, drinking their tea and watching as the world goes by, the traffic roaring by their windows (three floors up from the road), the dust settling more and more firmly around them.
The house now seems empty without them. For days after my grandmother passed away - just over a year after my grandfather - we felt like peas rattling around in an empty can, intentionally increasing decibel level to fill up the unfillable emptiness their absence left behind, moping over a pair of spectacles, an expression captured on film, the contents of of a dressing table as familar to me as the palm of my hand. A briefcase, a stool, the view from the verandah, and inside my head, my grandparents drinking their tea in the noise and thrust of an ever-lasting summer afternoon.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Ye Olde Hag
This morning, as I got ready for work, the TV blaring, I happened upon a promo for the Grammy Awards. As soon as the awards were mentioned, I was alert - waiting for the date and time of the telecast, promising myself that I'd watch the awards this time - after year! My mind skipped back several years to the days of Tracy Chapman and George Michael winning awards.
And then, the promo showcased some of the big-time stars who had been nominated. Of whom, I could identify only one name - and that too, because she'd been billed to be "the second Aretha Franklin."
My posture went slack, and I could almost see the grey hair pushing through my scalp, the creases appear on my forehead, the crows' feet next to my eyes.
Gak! (A pointless effort to try to sound young - I feel like an aging con artist.) How did this happen? WHEN did this happen? When did my tastes turn from music to news? How did I get so out of touch that I don't know who USHER is, nor American Idiot (humble, ain't he?). Nor Kanye West, who, Google searches reliably inform me, has been nominated for 10 Grammies. Ten! And I've never heard of him.
So, 28 and popular culture's already passing me by. I think it's time to go back to learning something about the new music that's out there.
For fresh reviews from a new listener, watch this space after the Grammies are telecast.
And then, the promo showcased some of the big-time stars who had been nominated. Of whom, I could identify only one name - and that too, because she'd been billed to be "the second Aretha Franklin."
My posture went slack, and I could almost see the grey hair pushing through my scalp, the creases appear on my forehead, the crows' feet next to my eyes.
Gak! (A pointless effort to try to sound young - I feel like an aging con artist.) How did this happen? WHEN did this happen? When did my tastes turn from music to news? How did I get so out of touch that I don't know who USHER is, nor American Idiot (humble, ain't he?). Nor Kanye West, who, Google searches reliably inform me, has been nominated for 10 Grammies. Ten! And I've never heard of him.
So, 28 and popular culture's already passing me by. I think it's time to go back to learning something about the new music that's out there.
For fresh reviews from a new listener, watch this space after the Grammies are telecast.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Happiness is
A steaming mug of coffee (milk, no sugar) early in the morning, while the dew's still steaming up from leaves and daylight's still fresh and tentative...
Waking up on winter mornings to find a big, warm dog curled up in the crook of my knee. When I yawn and stretch, she also stretches, watching me out the corner of her eye for any sudden movement. If I sit up, she pushes me back down again, big paws on my shoulders, doggy weight settling on my chest as she studiously licks away my sleep. If I just turn over and snuggle back under the covers, she snuggles closer and goes back to chasing the birds in her dreams...
Meeting an old old old friend, losing all track of time and chatting till four in the a.m., waking up bleary but deeply satisfied, drugged with "do-you-remembers"...
Agatha Christie's autobiography (that woman is phenomenal).
The last few steps, coming in from the cold into the warmth and glow of home, my space.
Calling a friend when you're feeling blue... and ending the conversation laughing so hard that you pee...
The way my father's eyes gleam when he tells a joke...
Talking to home, hearing about the doggies' latest exploit and how they're still climbing onto the bed in the morning and waking my parents up...
That feeling of total faith in oneself and the world that comes upon me when I least expect and most need it - the feeling of "Oh. Well, that's alright then..." (Thank you, Douglas Adams)
A pat on the back at work after. (Means more than I like to admit!)
A day off, with sunshine windows, good books and pepper-tea...
A Saturday afternoon off to browse around book shops...
Happy new year. Here's to fame and fortune, peace and quiet, and everything in between.
Waking up on winter mornings to find a big, warm dog curled up in the crook of my knee. When I yawn and stretch, she also stretches, watching me out the corner of her eye for any sudden movement. If I sit up, she pushes me back down again, big paws on my shoulders, doggy weight settling on my chest as she studiously licks away my sleep. If I just turn over and snuggle back under the covers, she snuggles closer and goes back to chasing the birds in her dreams...
Meeting an old old old friend, losing all track of time and chatting till four in the a.m., waking up bleary but deeply satisfied, drugged with "do-you-remembers"...
Agatha Christie's autobiography (that woman is phenomenal).
The last few steps, coming in from the cold into the warmth and glow of home, my space.
Calling a friend when you're feeling blue... and ending the conversation laughing so hard that you pee...
The way my father's eyes gleam when he tells a joke...
Talking to home, hearing about the doggies' latest exploit and how they're still climbing onto the bed in the morning and waking my parents up...
That feeling of total faith in oneself and the world that comes upon me when I least expect and most need it - the feeling of "Oh. Well, that's alright then..." (Thank you, Douglas Adams)
A pat on the back at work after. (Means more than I like to admit!)
A day off, with sunshine windows, good books and pepper-tea...
A Saturday afternoon off to browse around book shops...
Happy new year. Here's to fame and fortune, peace and quiet, and everything in between.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Year End Black Funk
It's been a hard day's night.
For a year.
My sense of never-ending, ever-extending possibility is being trampled into slush in the grey fog of discarded illusions, as I get into my annual another-year-gone-by-and-what-have-I-achieved angst.
Every year, around this time, my insides start squirming around, to lead me to an overwhelming question (forgive me, TS: no, do not ask what is it).
In the matter of Universe Vs. Frog, the defendant stands accused of being an undisciplined, lethargic bum, a prefers-lying-around-reading-and disappearing-into-dreamworlds-to-getting-up-and-initiating-some-action hope-less, soul-less thrift-less, shift-less, drifting piece of human excrescence. And usually, judged by the high standards of this court, the defendant doesn't just lose - she's demolished, decapitated, de.
It begins like this. Suddenly, one afternoon at work, remembering that it's a friend's birthday, I send him a message. My mind works slowly during this run up to this epiphany. I'm going along, clicking my fingers, thinking, hey, wow, time really passes like that... And suddenly, it hits me. December. End. Finito. New. Old. Shift. Change. Ding!
And so. I withdraw. I start thinking about the year. Can't be that I've accomplished / achieved nothing, it just can't. I can distinctly remember actually being nice to some people sometime during the year - surely that ought to count in my favour. I've refrained from eating potatoes for 150 (give or take) days out of 365 - that's gotta show some iron self control, huh? And, well, god knows I did well at work (even though somehow, these days, dragging myself out of bed in the morning to go to work is such a pain that I almost want to be diagnosed with some non-mortally-serious disease that demands bed-rest for a month, without too much imposition on people around, - a disease that also leads to steady - and rapid - weight loss without seriously impairing my energy / health... ).
I start drawing up hysterical sets of accounts, covering everything from the professional (Spear-headed the retail marketing initiative. Sassed the boss.) to the personal (Learnt a language. Forgot it.) and so on.
So this is due warning. All my posts over the next few weeks are likely to zig-zag wildly between foul moods and introspective calm. Bear up. This weather is likely to continue until, on New Year's Eve, I find a bonfire into whose embers I can stare thoughtfully, for hours, remembering and letting go and learning to live all over again.
Meanwhile, here's food for thought:
"The worst thing about the future is that it keeps turning into the present."
For a year.
My sense of never-ending, ever-extending possibility is being trampled into slush in the grey fog of discarded illusions, as I get into my annual another-year-gone-by-and-what-have-I-achieved angst.
Every year, around this time, my insides start squirming around, to lead me to an overwhelming question (forgive me, TS: no, do not ask what is it).
In the matter of Universe Vs. Frog, the defendant stands accused of being an undisciplined, lethargic bum, a prefers-lying-around-reading-and disappearing-into-dreamworlds-to-getting-up-and-initiating-some-action hope-less, soul-less thrift-less, shift-less, drifting piece of human excrescence. And usually, judged by the high standards of this court, the defendant doesn't just lose - she's demolished, decapitated, de.
It begins like this. Suddenly, one afternoon at work, remembering that it's a friend's birthday, I send him a message. My mind works slowly during this run up to this epiphany. I'm going along, clicking my fingers, thinking, hey, wow, time really passes like that
And so. I withdraw. I start thinking about the year. Can't be that I've accomplished / achieved nothing, it just can't. I can distinctly remember actually being nice to some people sometime during the year - surely that ought to count in my favour. I've refrained from eating potatoes for 150 (give or take) days out of 365 - that's gotta show some iron self control, huh? And, well, god knows I did well at work (even though somehow, these days, dragging myself out of bed in the morning to go to work is such a pain that I almost want to be diagnosed with some non-mortally-serious disease that demands bed-rest for a month, without too much imposition on people around, - a disease that also leads to steady - and rapid - weight loss without seriously impairing my energy / health... ).
I start drawing up hysterical sets of accounts, covering everything from the professional (Spear-headed the retail marketing initiative. Sassed the boss.) to the personal (Learnt a language. Forgot it.) and so on.
So this is due warning. All my posts over the next few weeks are likely to zig-zag wildly between foul moods and introspective calm. Bear up. This weather is likely to continue until, on New Year's Eve, I find a bonfire into whose embers I can stare thoughtfully, for hours, remembering and letting go and learning to live all over again.
Meanwhile, here's food for thought:
"The worst thing about the future is that it keeps turning into the present."
~ Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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