Author: parmanu

Morning walk

In Finland, says an article today’s FT Weekend, 14 percent of the population are avid bird-watchers. “Armed with binoculars and a mobile phone”, they venture out to explore “an oasis of birdlife on the Gulf of Finland”. If someone spots a rare bird, they use text-messaging to inform others of the find, and those who are interested in the species converge on the area where it was spotted.

The article reminded me of my walk last Sunday. The weather forecast for the weekend promised clear skies and moderate temparatures, so I planned on Saturday evening to walk through the nearby fields next morning and capture moments of life at that early hour we mostly miss during work-days.

Sm_neighbourhood

Dawn was breaking out when I left home next morning, armed with my camera and zoom lens (no mobile phone – whom could I SMS to describe the beautiful sunrise I was about to see?). The sky was clear, there was moisture in the air due to overnight rain, and the sleepy streets were slowly showing signs of waking up – I must wake up this early and walk more regularly, I told myself. And immediately I was reminded of the protagonist in R.K.Narayan’s The English Teacher, who wakes up early one fine morning to walk along the riverside.

“I stepped out of the hostel gates….As I walked down the lane a couple of municipal lamps were still burning, already showing signs of paling before the coming dawn.”

I soon crossed the edge of town and walked into the fields adjoining it. The eastern sky was lit up in orange.

“The eastern skyline was reddening and I felt triumphant. I could not understand how people could remain in bed when there was such a glory awaiting them outside.”

Sm_sunrise

I knelt down to click a few photos.

Sm_signboards

The dew on the grass, so fresh and pure, struck me as something I hadn’t observed in a long time. All through the walk this feeling kept coming back. How beautiful – I must do this more often.

“Nature, nature, all our poets repeat till they are hoarse. There are subtle, invisible emanations in nature’s surroundings: with them the deepest in us merges and harmonizes. I think it is the highest form of joy and peace we can ever comprehend. I decided to rush back to my table and write a poem on nature.”

Sm_fields

The stillness in the surroundings was broken from time to time by the click of the shutter. Such an experience was so uncommon that I began to romanticize it – me, my camera, and the sunrise, all merged into one …..

Sm_maninfield

I got back home refreshed, and spent a few minutes telling my wife what she had missed. Then it was time to write.

“I returned to my room before seven. I felt very satisfied indeed with my performance. I told myself: ‘ I am alright. I am quite sound if I can do this every day. I shall be able to write a hundred lines of poetry, read everything I want to read, in addition to classwork…’ This gave place to a distinct memory of half a dozen similar resolves in the past and the lapses….I checked this defeatism! ‘Don’t you see this is entirely different? I am different today…”

I couldn’t think of a single topic to write on, so I jotted down some random pieces about different things. And felt very satisfied. Just as I am feeling now, after having written one more.

Random jottings on a Sunday morning

Ever since I learnt of M.O’s ailment I have started thinking about cancer and our war against it. A recent article in The Economist gave some grim statistics: 10 million people were diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and 6 million died from it. And the numbers are growing, despite the billions being spent on cancer research. The article, however, said there was hope for the future, in the form of a new treatment that is yielding positive results.

I am reminded of the first time I saw the movie Anand. I was probably 12 years old then, and the movie upset me terribly. I resolved to become a “doctor” and “find a cure” for cancer. My dad was very amused at this resolve – he even mentioned it to a friend and they laughed about it together. I didn’t find it funny at all.

Over the years two aunts in my family have succumbed to this disease. The count in my wife’s family is at three. And now M.O – someone who was in perfect health until the other day – has it too.

* * * * * * * *

I’m reading Pablo Neruda’s The book of questions. I fall into a trance, reading the questions…

If all rivers are sweet
where does the sea get its salt?

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?

Why did the grove undress itself
only to wait for the snow?

Where can you find a bell
that will ring in your dreams?

Whom can I ask what I came
to make happen in this world?

Love, love, his and hers,
if they’ve gone, where did they go?

* * * * * * * *

On a recent drive with a friend, we were listening to songs from Swadesh.

“I want to see this movie” he said, after listening for a while.

“Why?” I asked.

“I like the songs – not one of them so far has been of the pyar-mohabbat type!”

* * * * * * * * *

We watched Khoobsurat (starring Rekha, Rakesh Roshan, etc) some days ago. Loved it, as always. Movies are reasonably accurate mirrors of the times they are made for, and this makes it easy to see why they do not make such movies now-a-days. Life isn’t so simple anymore. An Amol Palekar like character – full of innocence, simplicity and quite the opposite of a macho-man – would probably be a misfit in today’s world. Atleast he wouldn’t be someone most people would want to pay and watch in a movie. Thank God for old movies and literature.

* * * * * * * * *

It is a bright morning, and sun’s rays illuminate dark corners of the house and expose well-knit spider webs. Should clean up before wife spots them, I tell myself, and reach for the jhaadoo.

Her eyes are quicker than my hands.

Winter approaches

Leafblower

One notices the onset of winter through different signs. Fallen leaves are most common, but this time I saw winter coming differently: last weekend, when I was outdoors taking photos, I couldn’t hold the camera still and found my hands reaching for the pocket as soon as I completed a shot. It reminded me of last winter, which seemed not too long ago.

Conversations

“Finished with the comp?” she asks.

“Yes.” I reply

“Put up your next post, have you?”

“No.”

“No? Then what did you do?!!”

“Read other bloggers’ posts and felt guilty.”

“Serves you right. Hope the guilt kills you.”

“I see. Well, I just decided I haven’t finished with the comp. Not yet.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Last week a friend was here for a few days. He had some time before his next term started, so he flew over from Ireland. We spoke – or rather, he spoke, while I listened – of many things: of days in Hyderabad (where he spent most of his childhood), of life in the CIEFL campus (where his dad, an English professor, acted with other colleagues in plays staged for the CIEFL community, and where he, as a kid, read Hansel & Gretel for a programme aired on the UGC), and life now in Ireland (where he sometimes visited friends who owned sheep which ran all over the place and refused to get back in after grazing despite his earnest and exhausting efforts, after which the dogs were let out and he watched with disbelief as they barked and hounded the sheep until they fell in line and walked back obediently into their enclosures).

His CIEFL days reminded me of my younger days, the times spent with families my parents socialised with, the uncles, aunties and their kids whom I played and fought with, the picnics and parties we attended, the movie-weekends we spent together and so on. And I could not dismiss the thought that kept coming back: how different the times are now.

It was the aspect of socialising that interested me most. Back then, dad used to come home around 6 pm and we would go out often, either shopping or to meet friends. If we stayed back, chances were good that someone dropped in home. There was constant activity, and the chatter never seemed to end. These days, the evenings seem to offer little time and energy for such activities (And on the rare occasions I get back at 6 pm, the abundance of time available sometimes makes me feel disoriented – for a while I’m unable to decide what to do, although I know that there is a lot to be done and that this extra time is such a blessing.)

We earn much more than our parents did during those days, and the work is good too, but most of life revolves around aspects surrounding work. Even when we find time to socialise, we do so with people in the software field (a lot of them are colleagues), and conversation often leads to topics related to office or software (and when it doesn’t it means the men are talking about cars or some new electronic gadget, while the women are exchanging recipes or discussing the merits of following Atkins’ diet).

I cannot help thinking about the families we interacted with many years ago in Kathmandu. Ravi Uncle worked at the Indian Consulate, Ramu Uncle worked with the Geological Survey of India, Venkataramiah Uncle was a professor of Psychology, Anand Sir was a teacher at the Central School I studied in, Mini aunty’s husband (I miss his name) was an ex-pilot, and my dad was an engineer – imagine the conversations such a motley crowd could have!

New times bring in new possibilities; these days I read blogs. And although they cannot be substitutes for real-life conversations, they open windows into other people’s lives and offer a chance to know – and sometimes interact with – people from different backgrounds. Alpha designs roads, Leela is in advertising, Patrix is an architect and public-policy expert, Rash and Anita are journalists, Hekate is (or was?) an ‘Instructional Designer’ – I shouldn’t really be complaining, should I?

A language affair

The first German word I came across was one I was to encounter frequently in the years to come, but rarely put to use.

It was in 1998, when I had recently joined a German multinational in Bangalore. Among my colleagues were a few who had returned after short assignments in Germany. They spoke of the autobahns, described blondes with skimpy summer tops, showed pictures of snow-covered streets and houses, and every once in a while uttered something I gathered later to be Scheisse. What does it mean, I asked one of them when I could no longer sustain my curiosity. What does it mean, that word you keep uttering now and then when your program does not work the way you intend it to? Oh that one, came the reply, that quite simply means Shit. I prefer, continued this colleague, the German word over its English counterpart because it does not end abruptly but trails endlessly, carrying my frustration farther away each time.

In early 2000 when I was assigned to a project in Germany, my vocabulary did not extend beyond a few scattered phrases, containing words I was wary of using beyond my circle of programmers. In Germany I enrolled, along with a few other Indian colleagues, into the course we were eligible for. Our teacher, Alex, surely must have been perplexed by the sheer variety of sounds our class produced – to him we were all Indians, but amongst us were a Bengali, a Tamilian, an Andhraite, and a Kannadiga. The umlauts pronounced by each acquired a distinct character, and after a few sessions of trying to mend our ways, Alex gave up and moved on to less vocal aspects of the language.

As the course progressed my colleagues dropped out one after the other, citing reasons surrounding work, and towards the end the classes were between only Alex and I. It was during this period, when we chatted well beyond the class, that I learnt Alex was a student of English literature. (But, he told me, we study English literature in German, through translated works). He was curious about India, a land whose impression he had obtained from E.M.Forster’s A passage to India, one of the novels he had to study in his course. It took a while to explain to him that things were very different now, and it ignited in him a desire to visit the country. I also told him about more recent works of Indian literature, and the day before I was to return back to India I met him with a small gift in hand – Rohinton Mistry’s A fine balance. He thanked me and proceeded to pull out a cover from his bag, which he said contained his gift for me. The bundle contained A passage to India (in English), and a few sheets that looked like copies of some study material. He said they included copies of a few critical studies (in English) of this novel, and also his own thesis (in German) on the novel. My eyes lit up seeing all that, and I promised to send him my impressions on the novel.

Eight months later I relocated to Germany, and although for over two years I picked up very little of the language, there grew within me an association of the sounds, the accents and the mannerisms of people speaking German to elements of surrounding life in Germany. I wasn’t aware how strong this association was until one day, seated on board a Lufthansa flight at Cincinnati on my way back to Germany after four weeks in the US – four weeks of constantly hearing the verbose Americans air their thoughts and opinions – I heard the voice of the flight attendant on the speaker welcoming passengers aboard and wishing them a pleasant flight, in German. Those syllables were music to my ears; I felt I was going home.

The medium used at work was English, and that gave me and other foreign nationals little opportunity to practice the local language. Then, about an year ago, an informal “rule” introduced on our team led to the usage of German as the predominant form of communication – oral and written – which in turn acted as catalyst in our learning process simply due to the volume of German we encountered – and continue to encounter – each day.

It is difficult to put into words the feeling that passes through someone who discovers that sentences which seemed to make little sense until then had turned, all of a sudden, much more transparent and could be easily understood. After months of struggling to get a foothold, after countless occasions when concentration lapsed due to the sheer effort needed to maintain an overview of what was being spoken, when one day you become aware that you do understand a lot with little effort, it is as if someone had placed a Babel fish into your ear. On the radio the broadcasts seem familiar and discernable, on TV you begin to laugh at the comedy shows, your elderly neighbour seems more communicative that you thought she was, and suddenly a new world opens out, waiting for you to step in and participate.

In reality, the acquisition of language skills is gradual and most of it happens without our noticing it, until one day we become aware of how much we actually know. Then it seems to have happened all in that instant, and such an instant is a magical moment, a moment you do not wish to let go of. There occur many such moments during the course of learning a language – as one passes through different levels of understanding – each spurring you on to move further to a higher level, towards a deeper understanding of an alien culture.

It is difficult, however, to sustain this magical moment for long. Every now and then you come upon a word you haven’t heard of, and this little word robs you of the meaning of a sentence you had been following perfectly well all along. If you are reading, you can refer to a dictionary, but if you are listening to someone, the sentence is lost forever.

These days there are times when I stand outside bookstores and look longingly at German titles adorning the glossy paperbacks on display. Someday, I tell myself, I will be able to walk into such a store, just as I would walk into an English bookstore today, pick up books of my choice, turn their pages and enter, with effortless ease, the universe contained within.

Lausanne

Last weekend we were in Lausanne.

Our drive towards Switzerland – along the patchy A5, through edge of black forest, to the border city of Basel – is always uneventful and one we try to get over soon. The scenery alters dramatically after Basel, so much that someone who lands in Frankfurt and drives into Switzerland along this route would label Germany as a featureless land with clumps of trees and houses, and, impressed with the transformation a little after crossing the border, would concur with the image of Switzerland portrayed by travel brochures and Bollywood song sequences. This time, however, the difference was less evident as we stopped at Basel to meet a friend.

The second half of our journey acquired a surreal quality under the fading light. Wife and I drove on in silence, watching the shifting colours of sunset under a clear sky, with the soft rhythms of Norah Jones in the background. Towards the end of our journey the sight of Lake Geneva – a huge mass of molten lead reflecting the last rays of a dying sun, surrounded by outlines of hills below a sky sinking into darkness – formed an image we would remember for a long time.

Our hotel – one from the Novotel chain – reminded me of the Novotel we recently had stayed at in Paris. Hotels in the same chain tend to reuse the same architecture and design which sometimes creates a feeling of having been there before; this one even had a receptionist who spoke French (Lausanne lies in the French-speaking part of Switzerland) and the rooms were furnished with the same elements we had seen earlier in Paris. I looked for a connecting door that would lead to the adjacent room my parents would have been staying in; there was none.

Next morning we drove into the city centre and parked the car in a lot next to the lake. As I walked towards the ticket vending machine I realized that my Euros would be of no use here – I needed Swiss Francs to purchase my parking ticket. There was an elderly man at the machine, trying to insert a five Franc coin into a slot that accepted a maximum of two Francs. He muttered something to himself in German and tried again. I spoke to him in German, explained that the machine would not accept his five Franc coin, and later bid him goodbye after he had received his ticket.

It was my turn next, and I had only a ten Franc note in my wallet. There was no shop nearby; the place looked deserted. I was looking around, unable to decide what to do next when I saw the old man walking towards me. He came up and asked me how much change I needed – five Francs, I replied, and gave him four Euros in exchange. After thanking him and wishing him a good day, I picked up my ticket and walked over to the car to keep the ticket inside while my wife waited at the entrance of the parking lot. When I joined her she told me that she heard the old man tell his wife: “Er spricht perfekt Deutsch“. We both had a good laugh. My German is still eons away from perfection, and I can barely speak a few sentences without making a mistake. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling thrilled by that remark. (A little later I bumped into the old man and his wife again and we had a small conversation. They were from a town near Dusseldorf, and the lady wanted to know if Lausanne had any interesting sights to offer. I somehow held on – without revealing the imperfections in my German – until we parted, and as I walked away I sensed a tinge of excitement at the thought of how many more such conversations I could have in future. Learning a foreign language does open up new worlds.)

My wife had some official work so she went her way while I walked along the waterfront on Lake Geneva and spent the next few hours simply lying in the sun, watching birds and boats, dreaming, reading, and taking the occasional photograph.

Three years ago

It was a colleague who asked me if I had heard the news. What news? About some terrorist attack on the WTC, came the answer. I logged on to CNN.com and saw a small photo of smoke billowing out of one of the towers. The article that followed the photo was brief and sketchy – two planes had hit the WTC, and one had apparently hit the Pentagon.

I called my wife, who had just received a call from her mom (they lived near New York). They were okay, but no one knew how to react to what they had seen and heard.

In the office corridors the large plasma screens that usually displayed documentaries produced by the internal communications department were now showing CNN. Groups of people were watching in stunned silence. Soon the unthinkable happened – one tower came down. There were gasps from people around.

We soon went home (it was late afternoon) and spent the rest of the evening glued to the TV. Thinking about those events and their consequences was difficult – there was no precedent that could be used as a model to guide our thoughts – and we spent the day simply absorbing the unbelievable happenings.

What did you do on 11.9.2001?

Specs

On Thursday night I broke my specs.

It happens every once in a while. I would be sitting calmly, reading a book or magazine, or simply daydreaming, when a whirlwind begins to form and threatens to disturb my equilibrium. I would ignore her for a while; sometimes it would pass, and sometimes it would turn into a hurricane. Silence can withstand even a hurricane, but is difficult to maintain at such times. My first response is to reach for the nearest object – the spectacles on my nose, at most times – and break it: click.

The first time I did it, I was surprised at the ease with which it broke. I felt disappointed – it appeared too trivial – and wondered if it had had the intended affect. It did – she was stunned for a few seconds.

These days she ignores it. It now only means a new one will have to be requested from my parents in India the next time we call them.

In the beginning, it used to happen frequently – once every few months. After a while my parents expressed concern about this tendency of mine to step on or sit down on my specs – could it be a bad omen? they wondered. Or was it the severe winter in Germany that made the frame and glasses so brittle?

My sister – who studies in a university nearby – once happened to chance upon the broken artefact. “This doesn’t look like you sat on it – it is neatly cut into two. How come?” she asked. “It was placed between two hardbound books when I sat on it.” I replied.

The last time I was in India, I picked up four pairs. The person at the opticians wouldn’t have normally given it a second thought, but these were four pairs with identical frames. “Two for me, two for my twin brother.” I explained. He nodded with amazement – “Two people, same power – what a wonder of nature!”

On Thursday I broke one after a year and half. Its time had come.

Today

…by the way did you notice those workers who are cleaning the windows at office these days actually this afternoon I saw them stretched out on the grass taking a break munching something plucking blades of grass and I immediately wished I could be there and not in the corridor walking back to my seat back to my monitor back to what I find these days a narrow existence which is perhaps what happens when one spends seventy hour weeks successively at work and one doesn’t know if that is exactly the place to be in and so I was thinking how nice it would be to be lying there under the warm sun when it struck me that all these continuous moments with artificial elements at work – keyboard, mouse, monitor, cyberspace – has made me crave for something natural, something physical, no no not that physical you dirty mind you all-words-no-action woman it is not that but what I mean is for example when we stop each morning at the traffic junction next to those fields on the way to work I feel like getting down and walking over to the grass just to feel the earth feel the dew and take in the freshness – what’s this, pumpkin again in the sambar and the palya I can’t believe it I think I’ll never forgive Stefan for giving us the pumpkin so what if it is a rare Italian type how long can I eat this alone tell me how much is left also can we please please give part of it to someone ok then as I was saying I’m missing being in touch with nature so I’m going walking to work tomorrow you can take the car I do not want to miss the chance to spend time outdoors when we’re having this fine spell of weather God knows how long it will last I hope it will be nice and sunny at Laussanne this weekend oh that reminds me I am yet to book my leave for next Monday you must remind me about these things and have you booked the hotel yet good and what about my jeans has it been put for washing fine then I’ll put it yes I’ll clean up also don’t worry and yes the dishes too no no I won’t keep the dried ones in the wrong shelves you mustn’t really interpret my words as missing physical work what an opportunist you are taking advantage like that I must really be careful of what I speak so what are you going to do now talk to your parents of course go ahead I’ll join you after I finish everything….