Bombay Diaries: Nepean Sea Road. Kala Ghoda

With visions of being stuck in rush hour traffic, I wake up really early, watch the sun rise as I sit with a cup of tea. I have three bags to carry, with assorted things, every one of them necessary. I convince myself, with no great difficulty, that I need to take a cab to Kuntal's place on Nepean Sea Road.

I haven't seen Kuntal and Nandita in years and I haven't seen their daughter, Meha, at all. The last time I visited them at their home was back when they were staying in Bombay Central, in a building I still remember for being almost one flat thin. Nandita says, as soon as she sees me, "Your hair looks different every time I see you!" I realise I haven't seen Nandita for at least five years in that case, because I've pretty much looked like this since the time Shanker took me to Juice at the end of 2003 and made me get a haircut. (That is another hilarious story. Or does it only seem hilarious to me because I was very high?)

My first view of their house is misleading: I see Meha in her room, the floor scattered with puzzle tiles. At first she is a little shy but soon she's showing me her toys and books. The rest of the house is very zen: all white and wood, with touches of grey. It's a gorgeous house, with even a sliver of sea visible between the gaps of other buildings.

Looking out the window, I see an old house, its terrace littered with dry coconut fronds. The terrace is the kind with broken tile, with unexpected touches of colour. It's an intriguing house, basically a curved triangle. Sandwiched between highrise buildings, it looks like it's been made in the spaces that have been left over from those constructions, but it is clearly older (or perhaps just ill-maintained) than those buildings. I'm wondering what the inside must look like, with those odd corners.

There's a certain amount of work to do before lunch, and Kuntal and I get on with it. Four hours later (this is why I stopped doing film. Can you believe the amount of time it takes to get the simplest thing done?!) there's an enormous spread laid out, though everyone else has eaten. I stuff myself, firmly pushing the thought of saris and blouses out of the way.

*

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is going to start on a solemn note, with memorial readings for those writers who had died in the previous year. I will be reading to remember Revathy Gopal. In the interests of not appearing to festive (I'm wearing red), I've brought along a sari in back and beige, which I change into shortly after lunch. It's a good job I always carry safety pins, because I needed them. In a while, I say bye to Kuntal, Nandita and Meha (who is one photogenic kid!) and head out.

They're still setting up. Which means that though the major installations are already up, the banners announcing the festival are still being unfurled. A girl at the Help Desk, the inevitable phone at her ear, interrupts her conversation to talk to the woman who's asking her something. She's clearly useless where she is, because she is shrugging and the woman turns around with a flounce.

Elsewhere, people with cameras are bustling around the mosquito man (sorry, no photo!) and the giant wheel made of inverted bicycles with dabbas strung on the handlebars. There are also brightly painted Revas, an Ambassador covered with fur just like those annoying tissue boxes. I think of giant germs and supress a shudder.


Crossing the road, I step into the cool garden of the David Sassoon library. The chairs have been set up. The stage is being set. Two wrought iron benches have been painted a bright green and every once in a while someone touches it to check if the paint has dried. I carefully select a plastic chair to sit on and survey my surroundings. The arrangement with the books, the light stand on which a man is trying to put coloured gels without toppling the whole thing over. A little kitten scurrying under the chairs. I whip out my camera but the kitten, being skittish, is totally uncooperative and comes out, looking very unphotographable.

In a minute, Chandrahas arrives and he tries to get the kitten to model but it is useless. I was to meet Sampurna early, but I'm told she's at Jeet's poetry performance workshop, so I head out for some nice, orange Irani chai with Chandrahas. By the time we return, the place is looking very socialite, with people hugging and kisses colliding in the air and raining on unsuspecting people.

I meet Jeroo there, who has survived cancer and had been talking to Revathy. Gopal, who I'm meeting for the first time since Reva passed away. Amit is also there, and it's a relief to meet him, after all the solemnity. He recommends en exhibition that's called, I think, Terra Kutta, but the chances of my catching it are pretty slim (sorry Amit!)

It turns out that Revathy's reading is not on first, as it said in the schedule. The first memorial reading is for Kersey Katrak. Maia Katrak talks about her father and Usha Katrak reads out a poem of Kersey's. She reads well and though there are very minor breaks in her voice, she is not overcome. The mike is passed around to others in the audience who want to say a few words.

They should vet these people, really they should. One man took the mike at the very end and claimed that Kersey was mad (only people in advertising think that's a genuine 24 karat compliment) and how he won't be missed, not one bit.

Next up is Jeet, talking about Shakti Bhatt who passed away very unexpectedly on 31st March last year. She was only 26. It's hard to talk about listening to those who speak of the dead in remembrance. Nothing one could say is adequate and one teeters on the edge of voyeurism while even listening. To report it feels slightly obscene.

We're up next. I'm reading after Skanda, Revathy's son, and before Sampurna. I've chosen four poems to read: 'Lines On Meeting a Cousin, Long Lost', 'Just a Turn in the Road', 'Carved in Stone' (which I've posted on this blog before) and 'Reclamation'. By the time I'm through, I'm trembling just a little bit. It's hard to understand why because Revathy's long gone and I've read these poems many times since. It's sad, also, that these strong poems will only every be read in light of her death, each phrase of longing and loss sounding like a premonition. There ought to be another way to celebrate her life without referring to her death.

There's another reading, for Qurratulain Haider, but we do what others before us have done: move away once the person we've come to remember has been memorialised.

Neeraj is there and I haven't seen him for several years. We head out for a drink. Mondy's is crowded with people actually waiting outside for a table; Gokul is also crowded but the AC place inside has a few tables free. I can see why. As soon as you step in, you could put your hands out and grab a slice of the air before stepping out again. I endure it for the duration of one quick drink and am grateful to be out in the fresh air again. For a few minutes I feel a cloud of smoke and stale alcohol follow me.

Finally we go into some place, the name of which I cannot remember. (Have I ever said how low my alcohol tolerance is?) I think I'm talking too much but that always happens after a reading. The place is quiet and nice, though Neeraj says it isn't always like this. There's a sign I want to photograph (and I assure you that I wasn't drunk when I took the photo; there was not enough light.) Neeraj says its a good job there aren't too many people otherwise I might have had sone tough asking to see what I'd photographed. Apparently the joint's not exactly a drop, but a place where deals are made. In a while I can see why but my mouth is sealed. I'm constantly surprised by the kind of people who read my blog.

Some time in the middle of all this, I've called home and I feel relieved to know that my uncle and aunt have come for the weekend from Chennai to hold the crumbling fort. As always, relief is tinged with guilt and I instantly start making heading home noises.

Nearing Wadala, I notice that the refineries are in Sunday mode because all the chimneys are silent. Why do I sleep so well in Bombay and so badly in Hyderabad. Nothing - not even the loud music downstairs and the call to the cops that I'm told about the next morning have awoken me.

Festive Restive

I lay in bed at 6am listening to my mother in the kitchen. Feeling pressured by all this excessive energy early in the morning, I got up. The smell of roasted rice and dal greeted me halfway down the stairs. But before I could reach the kitchen, my mother had disappeared somewhere.

Every available surface on the kitchen was occupied by cut vegetables and ingredients for pongal. The coffee was relegated to some corner and much effort had to be made to heat up some milk. The pongapanai was all decorated, with fresh haldi - leaves and root - and chandana-kungumam and all. If my mother was not busy in the kitchen, it meant she was doing some competition entry type kolam outside.

Sigh.

Can someone tell me why this business of varying the tedium of our days and celebrating every minor shift in the skies falls to the women? I mean, most of these festivals seem to be about eating different kinds of food not available during the rest of the year (with good reason. I mean, try making some of these things every day of the year) or waking up at the crack of dawn to stare at each others' very familiar faces in a different light, and somehow drumming up enough enthusiasm in the middle of wanting to murder somebody for making you lose sleep.

But coming back to the women question - seriously. Name one festival that requires the men to do most of the work: the cooking, decorating, feeding and cleaning up. No, don't talk to me about Rakhi: it's the women who fast until they manage to tie a little bit of thread around some fellow's wrist.

As for me, my idea of a festival is one that celebrates not having to wake up early and cram a days' worth of activity into the first two hours. But Pongal I remember with especial fondness: in Delhi during the old-style film festivals - the one that used to run from the 10th to the 20th of every other January - I remember some young men from Madras shivering in the wet and cold January morning, shouting pongal-o-pongal! to each other in their thin, miserable voices. Lines of people waiting to go in to the warm theatre looked at them curiously and wondered what all this waving of leaves and festive looking pots were about. Ah schadenfreude!



Happy Pongal, everyone. I suppose.

Rishi Valley

Fourteen Year Later

Our Volvo bus from Hyderabad is late by about an hour. I’ve been up for an hour and a half watching the dawn slide off the railway tracks that cross and re-cross the road on which we are. It is the old meter-gauge railway line that’s no longer used.

At 7.15 the bus drops us off at a village with an unpronounceable name. A van from Rishi Valley is waiting for us. We enter the mouth of the valley and watch Lion Rock standing sentinel as it always has done. As I point out landmarks to my son, the driver realises I’m an ex-student and becomes chatty.

*

As I go through the routines of bath, breakfast, assembly I’m filled with a sense of relief. I had imagined that this place would be strange, smaller than I remembered, darker and more inadequate. It most certainly isn’t that; but this feeling inside me as I let the silence seep in, is not nostalgia. Nostalgia is inherently false and tarnished. Nothing can live up to it. Being back here is not an act of remembrance; it is of a return. Something umbilical ties me to this place. It is home, so I do not resent the changes that have taken place in the time I’ve been away. In fact, I delight in rediscovering the old and marvelling at the new. I’m amazed that I’ve forgotten nothing: every tiny ritual – the silence bell before lunch, the day divided by the ringing of the big bell – the routes, names, paths and activities.

*

From the Principal’s office one can see Boat Rock – a fanciful piece of granite perched on top of a hill. Excepting only our talk, the silence is complete. If the leaves rustle, or if there is a snatch of birdsong, it is so fleeting as to be almost unnoticeable. Perhaps it is only my citified ear, used to more noise, unable to detect sounds in lower registers. Given time, I might be able to separate all of this. Even the new lab being constructed just outside the senior school building seems to rise without any sound.

*

There’s been a lot of construction going on in the school. As we walk around, I can see the lab coming up and at least two other buildings on the way to the Big Banyan Tree. There is steel and cement lying about; there are construction workers. But they seem to work silently. I don’t know how they do it. No construction in the city seems to take place without a large amount of noise and dust.

In the fourteen year I’ve been away, several new buildings have come up. I’m not sure how old each of these buildings is but they seem to merge seamlessly with not only the old buildings but also with the trees around them. I had imagined that the place would have had to be scraped and raw on the surface; to go through a necessary phase of ugliness before turning beautiful. But these buildings, held safe within the nest of surrounding trees, don’t look like they have disturbed a single thing while they came up.

*

On the first day I drag my son to every single place I urgently need to see: the Big Banyan Tree, the Junior and Senior Schools buildings, the new library, Asthachal (which now no longer takes place because of the mosquitoes) and a short way up Cave Rock hill. I want to see everything at once so that I will have time to see it all again, at leisure. By the end of the day, my son is exhausted. His seven year old legs have walked more than ten kilometres all told, and he’s ready to pass out. This happens every single day that we are there. We walk and walk and walk until he gets cramps in his legs and at night he’s asleep almost before he’s changed into his night clothes.

*

The Big Banyan Tree was rumoured to have died. This is the tree that J Krishnamurti saw and decided he wanted his school be where the tree was. When we were in school, the area surrounding the tree had been cemented up to allow for performances under the tree. Stone benches were laid out around in semi-circles.

The benches still stand, but the cement has been removed. It appears that they were choking the tree and because the tree couldn’t put down its aerial roots it was dying. There must have been other reasons. Whatever the problems, the tree seems to be reviving now, though it looks more sparse and bleak than it used to.

*
The first evening there is a dance performance. We used to have ML Vasanthakumari living on campus and the Bharatanatyam performances used to be full-length ballets done in collaboration with Kalakshetra. MLV Akka, naturally, used to compose the music for the whole ballet and sing. (I’m trying hard not to say those were the days!)

Now, however, there is no one with the stature or the inclination to do things on such a grand scale (this is a separate post altogether, this business of the education at school) and so the children put up several individual pieces, moving from Allaripu to Jatiswaram to Tillana.

The performance is in the open air, just outside the auditorium. Between each dance, the sky drops like velvet on us and I can’t remember seeing as many stars in the sky in the last 14 years. The Milky Way is clearly visible, as is Scorpio. I used to be able to name more constellations but now I can’t remember any. All around me the children take this utter darkness for granted and worry more about the dog in their midst.

The performance is, I’m afraid, rather mediocre. I feel disinclined to excuse it because they’re children. If you’re learning dance, at least the first thing you ought to get right before you’re allowed to perform, is your posture. Not one person dancing that evening got that basic thing right. Half-way through, I decide not to put my son through this any more and we leave.

*

The second evening, there is a film. Nothing we want to watch, so we hang out with Vidya. Vidya and her husband, Kartik, run the rural medical centre. It is a much bigger set-up now than it ever was. This is separate from the ‘hospital’ meant for the school.

Vidya seems to do work outside of her responsibilities at school. She has some slides she must examine and write reports on before sending them off to Madras. My son has a lovely time looking through the microscope, playing with Kartik’s dinky cars and reading Asterix comics.

*

Sunday is a packed day. There are matches in the afternoon – handball for the girls and football for the boys – and folk dance before dinner. After dinner, the school has arranged for a reading from my book, in the Library.

The girls match is sharper and more exciting than the boys’ football. There, the boys kick the ball with more enthusiasm and less skill, with no idea of how they’re contributing to the game. This same spirit of happy mediocrity I notice once again during folk dance.

I remember more dances than I thought I would but I notice that they’re dancing them differently. I must be getting old, but I can’t but call it a corruption. Every step, separate and purposeful is elided over and made into one continuous sloppy movement. Sunil, who is now in charge of folk dance, can’t tell the difference because he doesn’t know most of these dances. They were taught when we were in school and he wouldn’t know a right step from a wrong one. But I do and I can’t bear to watch my favourite dances being butchered the way they are. We leave for dinner and wait outside the dining hall.

*

After dinner, nearly all of the senior students turn up, in addition to the teachers. The mezzanine of the library, which has been built for such purposes, is full. I had asked earlier if I could sell copies of my book and the school had said I could.

When I stop, it is nine. After only a few questions that the teachers start to ask, there are several kids with their arms up in the air. The questions come rapidly for the next hour, some of them very interesting ones and some others that are usual but don’t sound annoying coming from these children.

One boy asks me if I feel weird hearing English read aloud. I say no, but I want to answer this at greater length. I remember that sense of embarrassment when hearing ‘My heart is beating’ from Julie. I know what he means, in a way.

There’s a question someone else asked me that I know is important but I can’t remember it now. Maybe it will come back later.

At the end of the reading, I find I’m six copies short. I tell the school office that I will courier the copies when I return.

*

The next day, it’s time for us to leave. The taxi arrives at 10 and after some minor wrapping up and saying all our goodbyes, it’s time to leave. As the taxi turns on to the main road, I realise that I haven’t taken a photograph of Lion Rock at all. I hope that it will be there the next time I return and make a vow to not let another 14 years slip by before I make another visit.

Crossword

We were supposed to have lunch with Sarita, who was organising the reading. I was cool with the idea, sort of, because I was staying reasonably close to wherever they were likely to choose (unless it was some Udipi in JP Nagar or something). But - given the traffic - the thought of turning up in town five hours ahead of a reading because you couldn't go back and return unless you had Scotty to beam you up and back and forth was enough to give you an asthma attack, we decided to meet at the coffee shop attached to Crossword two hours in advance of the reading.

My son and I, always unpunctual, turn up at half past four instead of five. Turning down the aisle with the DVDs, we bump into Sarita, who seems like a soul twin cut adrift - I've never met anyone else who turns up for everything as early as I do and who lurks furtively until it's time to show face. But Sarita is early, we find out, because she needs to get things organised. As we sit in the coffee shop, we see Crossword altered: shelves are carted away, big backdrops appear, as do tables and more chairs than are likely to be filled.

Anjum Hasan joins us soon. Her husband, Zac, had broken his leg a few months ago but will be coming for the reading. I'm secretly gratified, because given the nature of his fracture, I know what an effort it is for him. We've things to discuss, and I'm happy I'd chosen what I was going to read and timed it earlier in the morning. I will be reading two long poems instead of the usual one and I'm more than a little worried about my cough. What if I bend over and start hacking and gasping as if I was being turned inside out, just as the most solemn and breath-consuming poems are about to begin? And with two hours ahead, there's a lot of talking to be done.

People turn up. The chairs fill up. Except for JJ, none of the people here today came for my first reading in Bangalore, so there are no familiar faces. A couple of old school mates - one of them, at least completely unrecognisable (it's a good thing I was told her name. I'd have had trouble remembering) - and a friend from Hyderabad being the only exceptions. Anindita comes in wearing a pink kurta. Practically the first thing she says is, I was wondering if you'd be wearing your pink sari! (I'm not. Why would I repeat clothes? Jools, yes; but not clothes).

It's past seven and the place is more full than I'd have thought - about 35 people. We've spent the previous hour trying to find things for Sanjay - the face of TFA - to say about us. He wants the dope. Anindita and I are reticent. I think Anjum should introduce me, as does Sanjay, but Anjum doesn't want to. She wants to sit and enjoy the reading, and I don't blame her. Finally, armed with the few impersonal lines he has, Sanjay invites us on stage and the reading begins.

Anindita goes first. She said to me that she was nervous but she doesn't look it at all. She has a bunch of printouts that she reads from. We have a lectern, which is better than just a mike. I like to read standing up, but never know what to do with my hands. A lectern is like a table cloth - much can happen unseen behind it.

Anjum had suggested that I should start the questions, because of the awkward silence that drops on everyone straight after the reading is over. I write down the names of the poems, though frankly, not much else registers. I'm looking at my list, wondering frantically if it's too short - I thought I had 20 minutes, but Sarita says I have 30. Midway through Anindita's reading a fly buzzes around her face and the mike. But Anindita handles it really well, shooing it away and re-reading a few lines. Two other things I remember: spontaneous applause after her poem, 'Medusa' and one poem that starts with the 'Dover Beach' line, 'The sea is calm tonight'. Oh, and the Ghazal she ends with.

My turn. I have my notebook with the reading order, and I start. I'm aware of a comment someone made the day after my reading in Rishi Valley, that I ought to give a little more time between poems, for the listener to absorb the words. I rarely say anything by way of explanation - a point that came up in the after-reading interaction at Crossword - so I move from one poem to another almost without pause.

I'm reading very different poems than usual. I've done ten readings in the last three months and I'm sick of the poems in the book. Nearly the only considerations I have are that the listener hasn't heard anything before and I owe it to her to read as if for the first time; and the ways in which I change the reading order gives me a chance to reshape the manuscript, as it were, so that unusual juxtapostitions emerge. But the second is only for me; the audience can have no reason to be interested in reading orders.

Mid-way through my reading, the music, which had been turned down early on, starts to get loud. In the middle of 'Hospital Catalogues', which is practically my showpiece poem, I'm competing with whatever the crap it is on the speakers. As I'm reading, I notice Sarita whispering to Jeet, who gets up and goes away somewhere; other people turn around. I'm surprised I don't stumble through my reading. There's something to be said for knowing one's poems 'by heart'.

I end with the last poem in the book. It's one I've never ever read before, because I've always thought it was too long to hold anyone's interest when read aloud. But I'm surprised to find that it does hold the audience, except for one little bit midway though the third section.

So to the inevitable awkward silence. But since I'd promised to start, I do, with some questions to Anindita. The discussion moves elsewhere. Anjum, who refused to ask questions unless she really had something to ask, had something to say about the choice of subject. She asked it of me, with regard to 'Hospital Catalogues' but I think it was meant for both of us. (Later, at Koshy's we continued to talk about this intermittently, through other conversations. But this is another story.)

This was one post-reading discussions that threw up some interesting points, among them the uses of irony in poetry; the importance (and the lack of) good writing about poetry in India; and the inevitable question about form.

After the signing (and collecting of book coupons!) we severally repaired to Koshy's to wet our whistles. The best compliment I got that evening was when Anjum and Zac both said that I read very well, with a range of emotion and pitch. Yay!

Oh...did I say that in the hours before the reading I had plenty of time to exhaust my bank balance in the buying of films? Derzu Uzala on half-price, Gone With The Wind (I had to own it, you know), and Once Upon A Time amongst other purchases. Sigh.

Those of you who were there - this is the time for you to say what you thought!