The Post master and other stories

I've been reading this wonderful collection of short stories by Rabindranath Tagore. They are probably the best ever written, but since I read rather emotionally, they made me feel hollow inside. They are beautiful as well as heart wrenchingly sad..

I love the way he writes about children, especially little girls. ..For his little girls are not young goddesses with model behaviour, they are full of mischief and fun. They run around, trouble their parents, throw tantrums, shout at street mongers, write nonsense, whimsical verses on the wall, pick fights with friends and smash musicals instruments in fits of anger. Sometimes they go down with cholera and malaria and die unexpectedly. Even if they don't , their childhood dies at the age 9 or 10, because that's when they get married and start the dutiful life of a 'kulin' wife.

Today I cried for Tagore's little girls, especially for the nine year old who wrote childish verses in an exercise book,  which got destroyed by her writer husband.

Sometimes when we blame time for its ruthlessness, we don't consider the history of tears.

Thank you again, dear brother..

The Tom bombadil song

Tom Bombadil is a character from Tolkien's Lord of the rings, who never made it in to the movies. His songs remind me of the evenings a decade ago, when I used to sit in the office reading room, reading Tolkien, waiting for my husband to finish his work. The perfect phase of my life, only I didn't know of it back then.

This is a fun song!
 

 Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.
Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o,
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!
Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Tom's in a hurry now. Evening will follow day.
Tom's going home home again water-lilies bringing.
Hey! come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?

Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!
Tom's going on ahead candles for to kindle.
Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping.
When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open,
Out of the window-panes light will twinkle yellow.
Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow!
Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you.
Hey now! merry dol! We'll be waiting for you!

Hey! Come derry dol! Hop along, my hearties!
Hobbits! Ponies all! We are fond of parties.
Now let the fun begin! Let us sing together!

 Now let the song begin! Let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reads by the shady pool, lilies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!

 O slender as a willow-wand! O clearer than clear water!
O reed by the living pool! Fair river-daughter!
O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!
O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
 

Some more detour philosophy

There are a few, old, moth eaten books in my house in Trivandrum, which originally had their place in one of the huge book shelves of my mother's ancestral home. I had brought them over in the hope of finding the same ambience there, to tell myself that I will always have something of where I belonged, to turn those yellow pages over and over and smell them whenever I feel sad... It sounds kind of pathetic, I know, but the physical presence of those books always made me feel better.

There was a small book among them, which inspired me a great deal. The first or second edition print of Uroob's first novel, Amina. Amina is the tragic story of a Muslim woman, caught in the violence of partition. Like any other book written on the subject, it is deeply disturbing. But there was another reason which made the book all the more special for me, it's original owner had scribbled a few lines on the first page, just below the title. As a pre-teen, I by-hearted  those lines, I think I even taught some of my friends. Every time I said those lines aloud, I felt strong, every time I thought about them, I felt proud, that I was related to the person who wrote it.

I cannot translate those lines, if I even try, that will be an insult to both languages. It began something like this,

"മനുഷ്യത്വത്തെ മാനിക്കാത്ത മാനവസമുദായത്തിനുമുന്നിൽ മനുഷ്യനെ മനുഷ്യനായി കാണുന്ന മാനവർ മഹാസമരം തുടങ്ങിയിരിക്കുന്നു. കരുതിക്കൊൾക !"

The book had belonged to my uncle, my mother's elder brother, who is probably 14 or 15 years older to her. I had grown up hearing stories of his vibrancy, he was both the legend and the black-sheep. After graduating from Madras medical college, he worked as a tutor in Calicut medical college during its initial years. He was very popular among his students. He then went to UK to do his MRCP, married a British lady and settled down there.

His decision not to return, was a blow upon his family and probably the cause of his father's sudden demise. As a little girl, I used to play in the outhouse which was once his consultation room, his father, my grandfather, had constructed that for his son with a lot of love. I have wondered about both men, their lives, their believes, and their pain.

When my uncle left for UK, he probably thought it was only for a year or two. Then his life took a detour, he fell in love; he knew his family wouldn't approve of his love, he decided to make the detour, his way of life.

I met my uncle for the first time when I was 24. He spoke to me in English. I heard him talking to my valyammaayi in effortful Malayalam. I tried to see the traces of the idealistic young man who dreamt of a better nation, wrote excellent Malayalam and liked to read Uroob.

Sometimes small decisions change our whole life, our whole being. Sometimes we lose ourselves on detours, irretrievably..

And sometimes we have to succumb to changes, sometimes they are just too strong for us to fight, that there is no point in fighting.


I have finally enrolled myself in a German language course. My classes start in January. So I guess that's where this detour ends.

Every end is a new beginning as well. I will be a student once again. I will try to find a job and of course, I will still find time to write.. For somebody who lost way, many, many years ago, life is nothing but a sequence of detours.

I want to end this on a lighter note. One of my young second cousins got married to his Italian girlfriend earlier this year. His parents (my cousin and his wife) and siblings travelled to Rome to attend the wedding. the cultural difference was the theme of the celebration. Those photos were passed around on FB, there were a lot of smiles, a lot of love. Our world is changing, and change doesn't always have to be 'for the worse'.

So lets celebrate the changes.

Dankeshoen!








 

Navneeth and the village

 

 

Revisit to wilderness

A month ago I had an interesting conversation with my 10 year old niece. She was telling me how she generally finds people boring after she discovered the wonderful world of books.
'I would rather read than talk to uninteresting people,' she said shrugging her bony shoulders, 'Sometimes I cannot distinguish between books and reality.'

She then told me about her favourite book, George Orwell's Animal farm, which she had just finished reading.
'What do you like about the book' I asked her.
'Oh, I liked the animals, I liked the pigs, and the horses too, I liked their song. I thought there was something wrong with the ending, but then my father told me that its really about politicians, power and things like that.'

I think she was really impressed with herself. I could not help smiling, she looks like me, sometimes I think, that I'm talking to my 10 year old self.

When I was her age, I used to read books well beyond my level of comprehension. Not because I was particularly bright or anything, but I grew up in an old house, with a lot of old books and that was the most natural thing to do. I would judge the books which I do not understand as 'utter nonsense'.
Some of the books subjected to my biased review were real classics ( Daivathinte Vikruthikal - who in their right mind would write awful things about children, Mayyazhipuzhayute theerangalil - Did that guy really die or not? Nalukettu - Everything gets really weird after the first chapter, oonjal- More than 800 pages, really? for this?) but what did I know, I was just 10 or 11.

There was a book I read when I was 11. My review would have been something like this, 'Its about a forest, and how a city man has to go there and live. Its also about different trees, plants, flowers, birds and animals.  And people too, These people are farmers , they are really poor and they do not have anything to eat. well, its all about the life in a forest, basically.'

The author had a big Bengali name, which I did not care to memorize. Little did I know, that after a few years, I would read another of his novels and literally fall in love with it.

I reread Bibhutibhushan Banerji's Aranyak after 23 years. I really don't even know how to describe the experience.

May be it is really about the life in a forest, but the forest was alive too, it breathed the chaste air of prehistoric times, it held many ancient secrets, it witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations and it protected the life with in. And then men found it, the untrodden earth was ploughed, sowed and reaped, it bore all the wounds and gave away to their cruelty. Did the Goddesses of the forest try to protect it? Did they give up too?

Aranyak is the story of young man who takes up a job as the manager of a private forest. As he goes on finding contractors and farmers for the land within the wilderness, a deep pang of guilt grows with in him - the awareness of what he is destroying, the knowledge that it is as much alive as himself, this thing of incomparable beauty, of impenetrable secrets and of unfathomable depths.

Do read Aranyak, if you can!






 

Satyajit Ray's years with Apu

Satyajith Ray's Apu trilogy probably belong to the finest class of movies ever made in the world. Since I am a big fan of the 2 novels it was based on, I always had a few questions in my mind about the places where the movie went away from the original.

Now , reading Ray's account on his journey through Apu's life, I finally got my questions answered.
Thank you, dear brother, for this wonderful gift.


I have wondered about the absence of Leela, to me she was one of the most important characters in the novels. Its a great relief to read that the original script had considered Apu-Leela equations, but whenever the shot was ready the girl's fiancé made problems in the set. Leela was just unlucky, as she was in the novel.

Apur sansar ends when Apu sees above his own sense of loss and reunites with his son, Kajal. I have wondered why he threw the manuscript away. I wanted Apu to be a successful writer , I did not want him to throw away the manuscript, its pages flying in the background as Apu and Kajal starts their journey together.

I guess it must be a totally liberating experience for any struggling writer, to throw away the manuscript. What should we do these days? throw away the laptop? crack it open and do a tap dance on the hard disk?

Ray elaborates on different aspects of the film, right from the day he fell in love with the abridged version of 'Pather Panchali', his quest to follow the dream, how he found fellow film buff friends, his struggles with the child actors, ever diminishing fund and resources. Well, classics are not born in a day.