Something of Myself
Monday, August 28, 2006
Untitled
My horoscope for the day says, "Be open about your feelings and feel free to air them." Now, that would be a really scary proposition in a space such as this, which can potentially be read by pretty much anyone! But the strange thing is this: yesterday night I was thinking of writing (or is it dedicating?) a post on someone who has been my friend, philosopher and guide...someone who has really seen me grow as an individual and made sure I became what I am today. But then, I dropped the idea. It's too personal. Blogs cannot be mirrors.
All the thoughts that actually appear in this blog are a curious mixture of fact and fantasy, fiction and exaggeration. That's a sweeping statement, but I always leave it to my readers to decipher the ruins of my life, the fragments of my self...
She is on her way to my second home. England.
Richard II, Act II, Scene I ("This royale throne of Kings, this sceptred isle...This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.")
I cannot lie and pretend that I felt like this from the day I landed in England. It was unwelcoming at first sight. I was unbecoming as days went by. For the first time, I became acutely aware of the colour of my skin. Would that decide my fate, in England?
But months made way for years and after four and a half years, when the time came to suddenly uproot myself, I felt as if I was being exiled. Almost. As if, I was leaving behind a part of my self. So many lives, so many people, so much to learn, so many places unseen - together with the fond memories of triumph and victory. Of learning and un-learning. Of creating. Of re-writing.
It was during the later days that I realised that England and it's history was changing. That the times of the Anglo Saxons were over. That British historiography had, like with all families and countries, undergone severe changes. Changes that were not noticed. Just recorded. Zadie Smith was a success not because she was a good writer but because she was an incredible historian who put her finger on the pulse of England. Archie Jones and Samad Iqbals made England. It was evident on a busy Oxford Street. It was evident on a trip to Oxford University. It was evident at the Argos stores. It was evident at the tube stations. It was evident at the Victoria's Inn.
Somewhere with all the fears of dilution and disapperance, there was a strong urge of assimilating myself with the culture and people of a country that had given me more than I could ever return.
I wonder if this gratitude is an immigrant's dominant feeling. Or is it just content at being able to settle oneself after being displaced? The question, for the time, will have to remain unanswered.
My horoscope for the day says, "Be open about your feelings and feel free to air them." Now, that would be a really scary proposition in a space such as this, which can potentially be read by pretty much anyone! But the strange thing is this: yesterday night I was thinking of writing (or is it dedicating?) a post on someone who has been my friend, philosopher and guide...someone who has really seen me grow as an individual and made sure I became what I am today. But then, I dropped the idea. It's too personal. Blogs cannot be mirrors.
All the thoughts that actually appear in this blog are a curious mixture of fact and fantasy, fiction and exaggeration. That's a sweeping statement, but I always leave it to my readers to decipher the ruins of my life, the fragments of my self...
She is on her way to my second home. England.
Richard II, Act II, Scene I ("This royale throne of Kings, this sceptred isle...This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.")
I cannot lie and pretend that I felt like this from the day I landed in England. It was unwelcoming at first sight. I was unbecoming as days went by. For the first time, I became acutely aware of the colour of my skin. Would that decide my fate, in England?
But months made way for years and after four and a half years, when the time came to suddenly uproot myself, I felt as if I was being exiled. Almost. As if, I was leaving behind a part of my self. So many lives, so many people, so much to learn, so many places unseen - together with the fond memories of triumph and victory. Of learning and un-learning. Of creating. Of re-writing.
It was during the later days that I realised that England and it's history was changing. That the times of the Anglo Saxons were over. That British historiography had, like with all families and countries, undergone severe changes. Changes that were not noticed. Just recorded. Zadie Smith was a success not because she was a good writer but because she was an incredible historian who put her finger on the pulse of England. Archie Jones and Samad Iqbals made England. It was evident on a busy Oxford Street. It was evident on a trip to Oxford University. It was evident at the Argos stores. It was evident at the tube stations. It was evident at the Victoria's Inn.
Somewhere with all the fears of dilution and disapperance, there was a strong urge of assimilating myself with the culture and people of a country that had given me more than I could ever return.
I wonder if this gratitude is an immigrant's dominant feeling. Or is it just content at being able to settle oneself after being displaced? The question, for the time, will have to remain unanswered.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Hanif Kureishi, The Body
"If anyone asked me, I said that consciousness was the thing I liked most about life. But who doesn't need a rest from it now and again?
Lying beside Margot, chatting and sleeping, was exceptional every night. To be well married you have to have a penchant for the intricacies of intimacy and larval change: to be interested, for instance, in people dreaming together. If the personality is a spider's web, you will want to know every thread. Otherwise, after forty, when the color begins to drain from the world, it's either retirement or reinvention. Pleasures no longer come to you, but there are pickings to be had if you can learn to scavenge for them.
Later, unusually — it had been a long time — she woke me up to make love, which I did happily, telling her that I'd always loved her, and reminiscing, as we often did, about how we met and got together. These were our favorite stories, always the same and also slightly different so that I listened out for a new feeling or aspect."
"If anyone asked me, I said that consciousness was the thing I liked most about life. But who doesn't need a rest from it now and again?
Lying beside Margot, chatting and sleeping, was exceptional every night. To be well married you have to have a penchant for the intricacies of intimacy and larval change: to be interested, for instance, in people dreaming together. If the personality is a spider's web, you will want to know every thread. Otherwise, after forty, when the color begins to drain from the world, it's either retirement or reinvention. Pleasures no longer come to you, but there are pickings to be had if you can learn to scavenge for them.
Later, unusually — it had been a long time — she woke me up to make love, which I did happily, telling her that I'd always loved her, and reminiscing, as we often did, about how we met and got together. These were our favorite stories, always the same and also slightly different so that I listened out for a new feeling or aspect."
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The God of All Things
The songs are still fresh in the memory. 15th August, each year, beer, mangsho and songs. Laughter and quarrels, making and un-making, belief and dis-belief, conversations, dialogues, monologues, reflection, bonding, the coming together of three not-so-different worlds. So different, so unique, yet in so many ways similar to every other nucleus that sticks together.
One wonders if time is God's way of making us realise that we are, after all, all of us, caught in an ever-changing protean existence. Now here, now there, slipping, holding on, and now, nowhere to be found! Gone! Magic.
Rabindrasangeet. Folk songs. Dijendra geeti. All making way for an extended brunch!
There is something permanent about such endings. The guarantee of finality. The inevitability of incompleteness. The coming of the end. The beginning of another story, another life, lives intertwined with other lives, criss-crossing each other, stepping upon, stepping over, unwantedly, lost in the maddening chase. The chase to succeed, the chase to chase all that will never be.
Inured.
Halted. There is so much to pick up and see. So many fragments to put together. So many tears to lick. And there is God.
The God of all things. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Watching over. Silently. Entering dreams. Whispering words. Infusing courage. Distilling anger. Assuaging pain.
There can be no continuity in a narration like this. At best, it can be what it is - disjointed, floating, malleable...
The songs are still fresh in the memory. 15th August, each year, beer, mangsho and songs. Laughter and quarrels, making and un-making, belief and dis-belief, conversations, dialogues, monologues, reflection, bonding, the coming together of three not-so-different worlds. So different, so unique, yet in so many ways similar to every other nucleus that sticks together.
One wonders if time is God's way of making us realise that we are, after all, all of us, caught in an ever-changing protean existence. Now here, now there, slipping, holding on, and now, nowhere to be found! Gone! Magic.
Rabindrasangeet. Folk songs. Dijendra geeti. All making way for an extended brunch!
There is something permanent about such endings. The guarantee of finality. The inevitability of incompleteness. The coming of the end. The beginning of another story, another life, lives intertwined with other lives, criss-crossing each other, stepping upon, stepping over, unwantedly, lost in the maddening chase. The chase to succeed, the chase to chase all that will never be.
Inured.
Halted. There is so much to pick up and see. So many fragments to put together. So many tears to lick. And there is God.
The God of all things. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Watching over. Silently. Entering dreams. Whispering words. Infusing courage. Distilling anger. Assuaging pain.
There can be no continuity in a narration like this. At best, it can be what it is - disjointed, floating, malleable...
